ISRAEL - PALESTINE - UNITED STATES

A Test of Israel’s Character

By ROGER COHEN

September 23, 2010

NEW YORK — At a dinner hosted by American Jewish leaders for the Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, I was seated with a senior U.S. diplomat to my left, the secretary general of the Palestine Liberation Organization to my right, and Abbas opposite.

It was like listening to a rousing peace overture as an ominous leitmotif of disaster keeps returning with ever greater insistence.

While Abbas referred to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as his “partner in peace” and said it would be “criminal” if Palestinian and Jewish leaders failed, the American diplomat and Yasir Abed Rabbo of the P.L.O. kept whispering in my ear that the mother of all train wrecks was looming. “Netanyahu is playing games,” Rabbo said.

I came away from the dinner convinced the United States is on the brink of a diplomatic fiasco. Less than a month after President Obama put the imprimatur of a White House ceremony on renewed Israeli-Palestinian talks, the negotiations are close to breakdown. If that happens, as Netanyahu and Abbas know, Obama would look amateurish.

The two leaders need the United States, an incentive to avoid humiliating Obama. But with just a couple of days to the expiration Sunday of an Israeli freeze on settlement construction in the West Bank, both sides are digging in. Despite Obama’s public plea to Netanyahu — “It makes sense to extend that moratorium” — the Israeli government seems to have rejected a formal extension.

That would be a terrible mistake. Obama should fight it until the last minute. His international credibility is on the line.

Abbas made nice at the dinner, inching back from earlier statements that he would abandon the talks if settlement construction resumes. He could not say he would walk out but it would be “very difficult for me to resume talks.” Bottom line: Renewed building would be a body blow to the latest peace effort.

Why, Abbas asked, could Netanyahu not tell his center-right cabinet he needed a three-month extension because direct talks were at a delicate stage? Good question, in response to which Netanyahu could ask another: Why did the Palestinians wait until the moratorium was about to expire to resume talks? Dan Meridor, Israel’s minister of intelligence and atomic energy, got philosophical: “The end of the freeze is a test case for the concept of compromise. Neither side will get all it wants.”

Fair enough in principle, but Meridor misses the point. This decision is a symbolic test case of something much deeper. It is a test case of Israeli seriousness about peace. It is a test case of whether the two-state idea really outweighs the lingering Messianic one-state Judea and Samaria illusion.

If there is to be a two-state solution, it cannot be that the physical space for a Palestinian state keeps diminishing, square meter by square meter, as settlements expand. Two plus two cannot equal five.

The 43-year history of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank has been painful and corrosive, a cycle of harsh repression and Palestinian terror. In “The Yellow Wind,” the Israeli novelist David Grossman, whose New Yorker profile by George Packer is a must read, put it this way: “I could not understand how an entire nation like mine, an enlightened nation by all accounts, is able to train itself to live as a conqueror without making its own life wretched.”

Do Israelis, in their majority, want to continue to lord over another people? Or are they ready, with the right security guarantees, to make the painful choices that would, in restoring dignity to a neighboring people, also confer riveting new dignity on Israel?

I believe they are ready to take that risk — peace is also risk — but Netanyahu has to lead them there. He has not yet made the decision to do so. He’s a politician with his finger to the wind. What he senses from within his own Likud party and others further right is that he cannot extend the freeze and hold things together.

Or so it seems. Oh, sure, he’ll commit privately to limiting West Bank construction to a bare minimum. But that won’t cut it with a Palestinian leadership that has taken courageous steps to stabilize the West Bank and needs a clear signal — now — that Israel understands peace will involve reversing the settlements, not growing them further.

Abbas is serious about peace. His prime minister, Salam Fayyad, is very serious and has done enough on the West Bank to prompt a World Bank statement this week saying: “If the Palestinian Authority maintains its current performance in institution-building and delivery of public services, it is well-positioned for the establishment of a state at any point in the near future.” Both men have done an enormous amount to curb violence, renounce it as a method, and establish credible security services. Israel will not find better interlocutors.

But the progress is fragile, as recent clashes have shown. That’s why Obama must now break some bones to get his way: “Bibi, read my lips. It makes sense to extend that moratorium by a few months. For Israel and for the United States.”

 Source : http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/24/opinion/global/24iht-edcohen.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&pagewanted=print

Wikipedia Editing for Zionists

Readers Discuss Wikipedia Editing Course That Aims for ‘Balanced and Zionist’ Entries

By ROBERT MACKEY

Since it touched on two subjects of great interest to readers of The Lede, Wikipedia and Israel, it is not surprising that Friday’s post, “Wikipedia Editing for Zionists” — about an initiative to edit entries in the online encyclopedia to make them “balanced and Zionist in nature” — has generated an impassioned debatein one of our comment threads.

While several Israeli readers argued that the initiative was necessary in a part of the world where even the term “facts on the ground” is used as a euphemism — for the dispute over Israeli settlements built on occupied Palestinian land — some readers who take part in the editing of Wikipedia entries objected to the effort to make the encyclopedia conform to an ideological point of view.

Miriam Schwab, a Canadian-Israeli blogger who participated in a seminar last week in Jerusalem teaching supporters of Israel to edit Wikipedia, wrote on Twitter on Monday that the Lede post on the initiative, which included a video interview she had given to an Israeli broadcaster, was “a horrible report” that made the editing course “look like some Zionist conspiracy to take over Wikipedia.”

In a comment posted on The Lede, Ms. Schwab defended the course as an attempt to balance opinions about contested issues in entries in the online encyclopedia. In Ms. Schwab’s words:

[T]he goal of this workshop was to train a number of pro-Israelis how to edit Wikipedia so that more people could present the Israeli side of things, and thus the content would be more balanced.

I personally believe that in many, if not most cases, regarding the Israel-Palestinian issue, Israel is in the right. Pro-Palestinians think the same about themselves, and that’s fine by me. We both have the right to express our opinions online, and in Wikipedia.

Wikipedia is meant to be a fair and balanced source, and it is that way by having people from all across the spectrum contributing to the content.

That view contrasts sharply with the comments of a reader using the name Anonymous Wikiperson, who wrote:

Of course there are small, loosely defined groups of individuals who edit Wikipedia in a manner congruent with their own ideological predispositions; no one who has spent any amount of time on Wikipedia can deny that. However, these editorial cliques don’t openly recruit or hold seminars on how they can make Wikipedia conform more closely to their perspective, which is precisely what this article draws to our attention. In my opinion, that is what makes this case newsworthy and, indeed, unsettling. [...]

This belies a larger difficulty in contemporary media, one hinted at by [the] phrase “balanced and Zionist in nature.” There is an assumption that any ’story’ can be approached from two perspectives and that the goal of the media is represent a ‘balance’ between the two, as opposed to attempting to get at the truth. Liberal/conservative, Israeli/Palestinian, science/religion: you’re either with us or against us. According to this binary logic, a story or article that does not reflect one perspective is taken to be sympathetic to the other, which therefore calls for the intervention of the ‘wronged’ party. This is the rationale that has splintered contemporary media into hostile, mutually exclusive camps catering to niche audiences who want their own ideas parroted back at them as news.

This is, of course, completely antithetical to the mission of Wikipedia, which is to provide accessible and accurate information that anyone and everyone can meaningfully contribute to. Indeed, one might even argue that efforts such as the one discussed in this post actively subvert and devalue Wikipedia, as edit wars push articles further and further into conflict between interest groups and away from a consensus-based, democratic approach. [...]

If individual Zionists wish to edit Wikipedia, more power to them. They are welcome to contribute and I’m sure they have interesting information and perspectives to offer. However, to recruit blocs of new editors based on their ideological positions instead of their expertise or commitment to the ideals embodied by Wikipedia is to subvert the site’s very project and ought to be viewed as what it is: an assault on those of us who want to build the most coherent, consensus based approach to information sharing by partisans convinced solely of their own opinions.

Another reader, Mike, wrote that a contest over the facts in a contested part of the world is “unremarkable,” since:

Wikipedia seeks to write from a neutral point of view, but on many issues there is no neutral point of view. We should expect the true story to be contested, because reality itself is contested. We should expect the writing of the story to mirror the reality on the ground that the story attempts to report.

I can’t judge whether someone is being underhanded about the issues, but any time people are fighting for their lives they are going to have subjective views of the situation. You’ll know there is peace when it is possible to write an uncontested neutral story.

Shalom Freedman, a reader in Jerusalem who agrees with the effort to correct what he called “the many distortions presented in Wikipedia entries,” argued:

[T]he first principle of this effort should be to stick to factually accurate information. In other words there should be first and above all a respect for Truth. I believe if that is the case in the struggle between Israeli supporters and their enemies the balance will be in strong favor of the pro-Israeli group.

Incidentally, Ms. Schwab, the Israeli blogger who is taking part in the editing initiative, is new to Wikipedia but not to online battles over perceived bias against Israel. In addition to writing a blog, she is the chief executive of illuminea, a social media marketing company in Jerusalem. Her profile on that company’s Web site notes that she “was selected out of 900 applicants to participate in the U.S. State Department’s Middle East Entrepreneur Training (MEET) Business Executive Program at the Rady School of Business, University of California in San Diego in 2009.”

It turns out that her involvement in that program was itself part of the struggle against what some Israelis see as bias against them by parts of the American government.

As she explained on her blog, in September, 2007, Ms. Schwab wrote:

I discovered “The Middle East Entrepreneur Training (MEET),” a U.S. State Department-backed program geared towards strengthening leadership and entrepreneurial skills among residents of the Middle East… except Israeli Jews!

I quickly contacted as many people as I could about this blatant discrimination, including reporting this on a mailing list for journalists and writers. This happened last Thursday, Sept. 21, and by Friday morning all of the related web pages had been taken down, and were changed to include Israeli Jews.

After Ms. Schwab’s case was taken up by Michelle Malkin, a conservative American blogger, the State Department accepted her into the program.

AUGUST 23, 2010

Source : http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/23/readers-discuss-wikipedia-editing-course-that-aims-for-balanced-and-zionist-entries/?pagemode=print

Israeli – Saudi Interests

By Jerusalem Post Editorial

15-08-10

Jerusalem is not thrilled with a huge arms deal materializing between the US and Saudi Arabia. As part of the $60 billion 10-year package, the Saudis will reportedly be receiving 70 UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters, 60 Longbow Apache attack helicopters, 84 Boeing F-15s and upgrades for older combat planes, as well as flight simulators, spare parts and long-term support for the planes. In addition, Kuwait wants the latest Patriot missile defense system, and Oman might be buying 18 F-16 fighter jets.
From an Israeli perspective, the deals are highly problematic. Washington’s intention is to build up the Gulf states’ confidence in the face of an increasingly belligerent Iran. But these fighter planes can just as soon be used against the Jewish state as against the Islamic Republic. The present Saudi regime seems stable. But what would happen in the event of a coup d’etat or if a rogue pilot went wild? 
Still, Israel is not expected to oppose the deal, for a variety of reasons. The F-15s being sold to the Saudis will not be equipped with standoff systems – long-range missiles to be used against land and sea targets. Also, the US and Israel may clinch a deal for the sale of about 20 F-35 Joint Strike Fighter jets, which would help us maintain an uncontested military edge. In addition, US lawmakers can always hold up parts of the deal or seek assurances that Israel’s core military interests will be protected when all the details of the sale are presented to Congress next month. And if the US does not sell to the Gulf states, EU countries or even Russia, which are much less receptive to Israeli interests, might fill the vacuum.
It is also worth noting that military cooperation between the US and Israel is at its peak. This month, for instance, the two countries conducted their largest-ever joint infantry exercise in Israel. Since his appointment in 2007, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Michael Mullen has visited Israel four times. US military aid is expected to reach a new high of $3b. in 2011, and the Obama administration has already committed itself to the $205 million Iron Dome short-range rocket defense system to protect cities neighboring Hamas-controlled Gaza.
But there is one further reason Israel will most likely not oppose the deal. Riyadh and Jerusalem, while hardly allies, share a common enemy in Teheran. The Islamic Republic is threatening to tip the delicate balance of power in the region by attaining nuclear capability. Differences between the Gulf states and Israel, however acute, pale in comparison.

TO FULLY appreciate the change in relations between Israel and the Saudis, it is instructive to revisit the 1981 AWAC surveillance planes deal. It was only through the sheer force of his personality that the newly elected US president Ronald Reagan managed to push the deal through Congress. The Saudis were a central supporter of the PLO and other terror organizations. US assurances that the deal would not hurt Israel’s military edge were rejected by prime minister Menachem Begin, who had just presided over the air strike against Saddam Hussein’s nuclear reactor at Osirak. The Jewish lobby, which fought the AWACs deal, was accused of putting Israeli interests before the US Cold War imperative of blocking Soviet expansion in Afghanistan, Yemen and Ethiopia and protecting American oil interests in the Gulf after the fall of the shah in Iran.
In contrast, today, the US, Israel and the Saudis are on the same page as far as Iran is concerned. In fact, the Gulf states seem the most gung-ho about stopping Iran. The United Arab Emirates’ ambassador to Washington, Yousef al-Otaiba, estimated publicly a few weeks ago (before he backtracked under pressure) that bombing Iran was preferable to an Iranian bomb. A few months ago, Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal said sanctions were not enough.
Nonetheless, while the mooted arms deal might reflect geopolitical changes in the area, it is no substitute for the determined action necessary to thwart an intransigent, saber-rattling Iran.
The question remains whether, if the current sanctions effort does not quickly bear fruit, America will take more concrete moves to stop Iran or ultimately remain passive. Iran’s nuclear ambitions are a challenge to this region – as the US evidently recognizes, and the latest arms packages underline – and to the free world. It should not have to fall to Israel to act alone on behalf of Saudi-US-Israeli interests.

Source : http://www.jpost.com/LandedPages/PrintArticle.aspx?id=184868

Ground Zero Mosque - America - Israel

Our World: Standing on a landmine

By CAROLINE B. GLICK

Obama’s stance on the Ground Zero mosque should signal to Israel that the president is so wed to his ideology that he will push it regardless of political conditions.

             

US President Barack Obama’s warm endorsement of the plan to build a mosque by the ruins of the World Trade Center tells Israel – and its enemies – everything we need to know about the president of the United States of America.

Speaking during a Ramadan fast breaking meal at the White House to an audience of people affiliated with various Muslim Brotherhood- related groups in the US, Obama couched his support for the mosque at Ground Zero in constitutional terms.

In his words, “As a citizen, and as president, I believe that Muslims have the same right to practice their religion as everyone else in this country. And that includes the right to build a place of worship and a community center on private property in Lower Manhattan, in accordance with local laws and ordinances. This is America. Our commitment to religious freedom must be unshakable. The principle that people of all faiths are welcome in this country and that they will not be treated differently by their government is essential to who we are. The writ of the Founders must endure.”

Of course, none of those who have voiced opposition to the mosque project at Ground Zero have claimed that the Islamic group behind the mosque project is acting unlawfully in seeking to construct a mosque. The nearly 70 percent of Americans who oppose building a mosque at Ground Zero oppose the mosque because they believe it is wrong to build a mosque at the site where less than a decade ago Muslims acting in the name of Islam murdered nearly 3,000 people in an act of war against the US and an act of terror against the American people.

Obama has been pilloried by his opponents for his position. And his fellow Democrats, facing the likelihood of massive defeats in the Congressional elections in three months, are reportedly deeply frustrated by his statements. Indeed, the uproar Obama’s pro-mosque remarks has unleashed has been so harsh it raises the question of why he made it.

THERE ARE two possible explanations for Obama’s move. Either he was motivated by politics or he was motivated by ideology. The view that Obama was motivated by politics is easily dismissed. With more than two-thirds of Americans telling pollsters they oppose the Ground Zero mosque project, it makes no political sense for a politician to strike out a position in favor of the mosque. Indeed, major Democrats have either refused to state a position on the issue or, like New York Governor David Paterson, they have recommended that the mosque builders construct their mosque elsewhere.

Perhaps Obama thought he could he could get away with making his statement. However, with his polling numbers consistently eroding, it is hard to imagine Obama’s advisers would have told him that was a realistic view.

This leaves ideology. But what ideology motivates Obama to embrace such an unpopular initiative at such an explosive political juncture? Obama and his supporters would like us to believe this is a civil rights issue. In his defense of the Ground Zero mosque, Obama claimed his position was based on the American values such as, “The laws that we apply without regard to race, or religion, or wealth, or status. Our capacity to show not merely tolerance, but respect towards those who are different from us.”

But if Obama is motivated by a belief in civil rights that is so strong it propels him to take on deeply unpopular causes in an election season, then one could reasonably expect that his support for civil rights would be absolute. That is, one could expect him to use the same yardstick for all groups, in all places and at all times.

But for Obama, there are some groups who must be denied the same civil rights he upholds as absolute in his defense of the plan to build a mosque at Ground Zero. As Obama has made clear since his first days in office, he believes that Jews should be denied the right to their property in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria simply because they are Jews.

OBAMA IS so firm in his belief that Jews should be denied civil rights in Israel’s capital and in the heartland of Jewish history that he has provoked multiple crises in his relations with Israel to advance this bigoted view. Almost from his first day in office Obama has struck out a radical position in which he has insisted that Jews must be prohibited from building anything – synagogues, homes, nurseries, schools – in Judea, Jerusalem and Samaria on land they own. Jews – Israeli and non-Israeli – should be barred from exercising their property rights even if their construction plans have already been approved “in accordance with local laws and ordinances.”

At the same time, Obama has insisted that Israel take no action to enforce its “local laws and ordinances” against illegal structures built by Arabs in Jerusalem, Judea, or Samaria.

Next month the deeply discriminatory and legally dubious 10-month moratorium on Jewish building in Judea and Samaria that Obama coerced Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu into instituting is set to end. So now Obama is putting the full weight of the White House on Israel to again coerce Netanyahu into prolonging the discriminatory ban that denies the civil rights and property rights of Jews simply because they are Jewish.

Obama claims to be embracing the nullification of Jewish civil right in the interests of peace. In his stated view, to forge peace in the Middle East it is necessary for the Palestinians to achieve statehood. But it hard to see how the establishment of a Palestinian state squares with Obama’s purported dedication to civil rights.

In a briefing with the Egyptian media last week Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas told reporters that no Jews will be allowed to live in a future Palestinian state. He also said that while he would agree to allow NATO forces to deploy in the future Palestinian state, he would not permit any Jewish soldiers to serve in the NATO units stationed on the territory of such a state. As he put it, “I will not agree that there will be Jews among NATO forces and I will not allow even one Israeli to live amongst us on the Palestinian soil.”

The notion that an inherently anti-Semitic Palestinian state, predicated on Jew hatred that strong, could possibly live at peace with Israel is simply ridiculous. But tellingly, in all the American pressure that has been placed on Abbas to begin direct negotiations with Israel, at no time has the administration been reported to have insisted that Abbas abandon his anti-Semitism. Obama has made no statement addressing the fact that the Palestinians demand that Jews be barred from living in the future Palestinian state. He has certainly not objected to this position although it squares with none of the American values of tolerance and property rights he upheld so strongly in his remarks on the Ground Zero mosque.

SO THE ideology Obama holds so strongly that it provokes him to take positions antithetical to the political interests of his party during an election season is not civil rights. Rather it has to do with his commitment to advancing the interests of a specific group or groups over the interests of other specific groups. In the case of the Ground Zero mosque he prefers the rights of Muslims over the values of the overwhelming majority of Americans. In the case of the Palestinians, he prefers their anti-Semitic nationalism over the civil rights of Jews.

Obama’s behavior tells Israel’s leaders something very important about how they should think about their relations with the Obama administration. It tells them that Obama is so wed to his ideology that he will push it regardless of political conditions. This means that for Israel, dealing with Obama is like standing on a landmine. Just as a landmine can explode at any minute, Obama can attack Israel at any moment. He is so ideologically bound to the Palestinian cause against Israel that he is liable to provoke a crisis when it is least politically advantageous – from his perspective – for him to do so.

This lesson is particularly urgent on the eve of yet another round of direct negotiations with the Palestinians and as the freeze on Jewish property rights is about to expire. Obama’s ideological fanaticism means that nothing Israel does in the upcoming talks will help us.

As Obama’s media surrogates like Tony Karon at Time magazine have made clear in recent weeks, the anti-Israel narrative has already coalesced. Everything that happens regarding those negotiations is Israel’s fault. It is Israel’s fault that they haven’t begun. It will be Israel’s fault when they falter. It will be Israel’s fault when they fail. And if they succeed, Israel will still be blameworthy.

Facing this US President and his radical ideology, Netanyahu and his deputies must understand that they cannot appease him. They cannot convince him of Israel’s good intentions.

The US leader who has rejected the expressed views of 68 percent of his fellow citizens in favor of the construction of a mosque at Ground Zero is not going to be moved by reason. The American president who defends the Ground Zero mosque builders even though their leader refuses to acknowledge that Hamas is a terrorist organization and has claimed that the US had the Sept. 11 attacks coming to it; and the American president who upholds the Palestinian cause even though it is virulently, and often genocidally anti-Semitic is not going to be appeased by Israeli building freezes and other confidence building gestures.

What this means is that Netanyahu and his deputies must concentrate on defending Israel and advancing its national interests. It is in Israel’s national interests to guarantee the civil rights and property rights of Jews. It is in Israel’s national interests to forthrightly set out and defend Israel’s legal rights in Judea and Samaria and its sovereignty in united Jerusalem. It is in Israel’s national interest to enforce its laws without prejudice towards all its citizens and expect all its citizens to respect its laws.

We are dealing with a self-consciously radical President who intends to remake the US relationship with the Muslim world. We will find no understanding from him.

caroline@carolineglick.com

Source : http://www.jpost.com/LandedPages/PrintArticle.aspx?id=184987

Sacrilege at Ground Zero

By CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER  
08/15/2010 22:46

No German of good will would think of proposing a German cultural center at, say, Treblinka.

A place is made sacred by a widespread belief that it was visited by the miraculous or the transcendent (Lourdes, the Temple Mount), by the presence there once of great nobility and sacrifice (Gettysburg), or by the blood of martyrs and the indescribable suffering of the innocent (Auschwitz).

When we speak of Ground Zero as hallowed ground, what we mean is that it belongs to those who suffered and died there – and that such ownership obliges us, the living, to preserve the dignity and memory of the place, never allowing it to be forgotten, trivialized or misappropriated.
That’s why Disney’s early ‘90s proposal to build an American history theme park near Manassas Battlefield was defeated by a broad coalition fearing vulgarization of the Civil War (and wiser than me; at the time I obtusely saw little harm in the venture). It’s why the commercial viewing tower built right on the border of Gettysburg was taken down by the Park Service. It’s why while no one objects to Japanese cultural centers, the idea of putting one up at Pearl Harbor would be offensive.
And why Pope John Paul II ordered the Carmelite nuns to leave the convent they had established at Auschwitz. He was in no way devaluing their heartfelt mission to pray for the souls of the dead. He was teaching them a lesson in respect: This is not your place, it belongs to others. However pure your voice, better to let silence reign.
Even New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who denounced opponents of the proposed 15-story mosque and Islamic center near Ground Zero as tramplers on religious freedom, asked the mosque organizers “to show some special sensitivity to the situation.”
Yet, as columnist Rich Lowry pointedly noted, the government has no business telling churches how to conduct their business, shape their message, or show “special sensitivity” to anyone about anything. Bloomberg was thereby inadvertently conceding the claim of those he excoriates for opposing the mosque, namely, that Ground Zero is indeed unlike any other place and therefore unique criteria govern what can be done there.
Bloomberg’s implication is clear: If the proposed mosque were controlled by “insensitive” Islamist radicals either excusing or celebrating 9/11, he would not support its construction. BUT THEN, why not? By the mayor’s own expansive view of religious freedom, by what right do we dictate the message of any mosque? Moreover, as a practical matter, there’s no guarantee this couldn’t happen in the future. Religious institutions in this country are autonomous. Who is to say that the mosque won’t one day hire an Anwar al-Aulaqi – spiritual mentor to the Fort Hood shooter and the Christmas Day bomber, and one-time imam at the Virginia mosque attended by two of the 9/11 terrorists? 

An Aulaqi preaching in Virginia is a security problem. An Aulaqi preaching at Ground Zero is a sacrilege.

Location matters. Especially this location. Ground Zero is the site of the greatest mass murder in American history – perpetrated by Muslims of a particular Islamist orthodoxy in whose cause they died and in whose name they killed.

Of course that strain represents only a minority of Muslims. Islam is no more intrinsically Islamist than present-day Germany is Nazi – yet despite contemporary Germany’s innocence, no German of good will would even think of proposing a German cultural center at, say, Treblinka.

Which makes you wonder about the good will behind Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf’s proposal. This is a man who has called US policy “an accessory to the crime” of 9/11 and, when recently asked whether Hamas is a terrorist organization, replied, “I’m not a politician....The issue of terrorism is a very complex question.”
America is a free country where you can build whatever you want – but not anywhere. That’s why we have zoning laws. No liquor store near a school, no strip malls where they offend local sensibilities, and, if your house doesn’t meet community architectural codes, you cannot build at all.

These restrictions are for reasons of aesthetics. Others are for more profound reasons of common decency and respect for the sacred. No commercial tower over Gettysburg, no convent at Auschwitz – and no mosque at Ground Zero.

Build it anywhere but there.

The governor of New York offered to help find land to build the mosque elsewhere. A mosque really seeking to build bridges, Rauf’s ostensible hope for the structure, would accept the offer.
– The Washington Post

Source : http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Columnists/Article.aspx?id=184863

No carrots for Iran

Wednesday Aug 11, 2010

Posted by Ed Koch

The Sunni Arab countries, including Saudi Arabia, the Gulf states and other nations in the region, are a majority of the Arab people. Because of a 1,300-year-old split between Sunnis and Shia, the Sunnis are just as fearful of Iran, a Shia country, getting a nuclear bomb, as are Israel and the United States.

The Israeli position is well known. For Israel, already singled out by Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for extinction, the Iranian nuclear threat is an immediate danger. But the rest of the world knows that Iran has long-range missiles and is working on increasing their range. Iran's most recently tested missile has a range that includes parts of Europe.

The United States under President Obama has many times said that no option on our part, including a military action, is off the table. So far, our efforts have focused on negotiating with the Iranians. When they spurned us, we turned to sanctions. We recently were successful in convincing the United Nations to pass more severe sanctions against Iran, but the UN will never go for the jugular which would include prohibiting gasoline from being exported to Iran, it having insufficient refineries to supply its needs.

Russia and China have made it clear they see Iran as a supplier of their growing oil and other needs and will never agree to the kinds of sanctions that could cause Iran's total capitulation. Apparently, they believe they have no cause to fear Iran's missile wrath being launched against them, and they are content to allow the US to expend its efforts and spin its wheels trying to rally international support for further sanctions against the Iranian regime. China follows a similar policy with nuclear North Korea, which they allow to exist because it's a thorn in the side of the US, Japan, and the West.

Nevertheless, importuned by our allies Israel, Saudi Arabia et. al., and perhaps beginning to feel even greater frustration with Iran, President Obama is thought by many observers to be reaching the point where the military option is beginning to look more attractive.

We know that once Iran actually achieves the nuclear bomb, a military option on our part becomes less viable.  Surely, that is why we have accepted without retaliation so many punches and insults from North Korea, even the recent destruction of a warship of our ally, South Korea, by a Chinese-made torpedo fired by a North Korean submarine. Shockingly, the UN Security Council resolution on that clear act of war by North Korea did not even mention that North Korea was responsible for the destruction of the ship and deaths of 46 South Korean sailors. That cowardly resolution was agreed to by the US at the insistence of China, North Korea's protector and neighbor fearful of an exodus of North Koreans across its border.

So, we permit South Korea and Japan to live in fear of further military aggression by North Korea against them while North Korea and its apparent mad man president, Kim Jong-il, remains convinced that they need not worry about retaliation from the UN or the US. North Korea, after all, has the nuclear bomb and can use it, perhaps against Japan and certainly against South Korea.

Now comes an editorial in The New York Times on August 7th which unmercifully castigates former President George W. Bush for standing up to Iran. In 2004, I crossed party lines and supported President Bush because I said that, while I did not agree with him on a single domestic issue, I appreciated his willingness to stand up to Islamic terror which the Democratic Party was not so willing to do. In my view, Islamic terror trumped all other issues because it involved the very existence of the United States and the Western world. I have no regrets.

The Times editorial denounces former President Bush, stating:

At first glance, President Obama's policy on Iran and its illicit nuclear program is not all that different from President George W. Bush's. They both committed themselves, on paper, to sanctions and engagement. Mr. Bush, however, was never really that serious about the carrots, and he spent so much time alienating America's friends that he was never able to win broad support for the sticks: credible international sanctions."

Then, the editorial praises Mr. Obama, but only to a limited extent, stating:

Mr. Obama has done considerably better on the sanctions front - at the United Nations and from the European Union, Canada and Australia. But the other piece of a credible strategy - serious engagement - seemed to be getting lost.

So it was encouraging that he made the effort this week to reassert his commitment to talks with Tehran. Meeting with journalists from The Times and other publications on Wednesday, he said his pledge to change the United States-Iran relationship after 30 years of animosity 'continues to be entirely sincere.'

The Times asserts that "a package of inducements first proposed in 2006 - diplomatic ties, trade, nuclear energy technology - needs to be on the table." The so-called carrots.

Shall we go back to the days of Munich, 1938, when Neville Chamberlain was dealing with "Herr Hitler." All Hitler seemed to want at that time in exchange for "peace in our time," was the Czech Sudetenland, and he got it. Without asking, he took the balance of Czechoslovakia and then went on to Poland and brought about World War II.

I believe Ahmadinejad treats his own people, particularly dissenters, no differently than Hitler treated German dissenters, exclusive of the Jews. No matter what he agrees to, does anyone think Ahmadinejad will give up his goals of getting the nuclear bomb and exterminating Israel and its Jewish population? Hitler wasn't satisfied with carrots. They just whetted his appetite. Ahmadinejad won't be satisfied until Israel is destroyed.

Senator John McCain said it best - "I still say there's only one thing worse than military action against Iran, and that is a nuclear-armed Iran." President Obama hopefully will reach the same conclusion.

Source : http://cgis.jpost.com/Blogs/koch/entry/no_carrots_for_iran_posted