Ron Kampeas, Washington bureau chief of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, interviewed Ali Abunimah, cofounder of The Electronic Intifada, about his new book, One Country, for C-Span‘s After Words. Kampeas attempted to retire the promise of the book under a fuzzy blanket of half-truths and conventional wisdom but Abunimah repeatedly dashed his efforts with logic, reason, resurrected facts and morality lessons sharpened by Abunimah’s personal struggle to bring resolution to the century-long conflict. Abunimah is a Palestinian whose mother was made a refugee in 1948. His father is from a village in the occupied West Bank that is near the open-air prison of Bethlehem. He hopes that his book will encourage Palestinians to think about Israelis in a different way and will encourage Israelis and their supporters in the United States “to think about Palestinians in a different way.”
When asked by Kampeas why he now endorses a one-state solution, Abunimah replied that as he grappled with the moral, political, and practical issues on the ground he came to realise that the two-state solution is an illusion and concluded that, “Justice for Palestinians, security, recognition, legitimacy for Israelis cannot come through dividing this country it can only come through putting it back together and giving equal rights and protection to all the people living in it.”
Kampeas spoke of Zionist attachment for the land and wondered if Palestinians would ever accept it. He didn’t explain why Palestinians should be forced to accept the alternative – that Zionist claims on their land and resources may be redefined whenever Israel decides to do so and that these claims must always pre-empt their attachment, needs, security and desires.
After the break [29:00] Kampeas put forth the argument that Israel must maintain separation for security reasons. This bottomless well from which all Zionist apologists draw from to justify the inhumane oppression and endless annexation of Palestinian lives and lands was siphoned most recently and deeply by Avigdor Lieberman to enlist supporters for his racist agenda of ethnically cleansing Israel proper of its Israeli Arab population.
Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Strategic Affairs since November 2006, Lieberman is now “the second-most popular politician in Israel,” according to unnamed polls cited by Ira Stoll in his article for the New York Sun, Israel’s Lieberman Calls for Tougher Stance on Israeli Arabs. According to those same polls, Benjamin Netanyahu is the most popular, a man who like Lieberman has been touring the U.S. promoting military intervention in Iran by equating Ahmadinejad with Hitler and the nuclear impasse with World War II.
Israeli Arabs are not the lone target of Lieberman’s pogrom. If he has his way, “he would also deny Israeli citizenship to extreme anti-Zionist Orthodox Jewish groups, such as the Neturei Karta.” Lieberman’s party, Yisrael Beiteinu (“Israel, Our Home”), draws most of its support from Israel’s 900,000 Russian immigrants. Lieberman himself is a Russian immigrant with alleged ties to the Russian Mafia. An Israeli citizen since 1978, he is now “pushing a plan to overhaul the Israeli government and give the prime minister much expanded executive power,” that if enacted, would further his personal power immensely.
The main feature of the law is that under no circumstances can early elections take place for the prime minister unless the serving prime minister wants the elections to take place. If he dies or is removed from office he is replaced by his deputy who serves the rest of the term. Under previous direct election law this would lead to new elections. Those familiar with American political history might term the provision that removing the prime minister leaves the control of the government in the hands of the deputy a “Spiro T. Agnew” provision. During the Nixon administration’s first term posters featuring a photo of vice president Agnew were popular with the line “Keep Nixon Alive”. Agnew resigned in 1973 following evidence of tax evasion.
Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh must be shaking his head over that one. Israel and the U.S. have waged a merciless campaign of brutal sanctions and collective punishment to coerce the Palestinians into holding such elections in the hopes of ejecting Hamas from power. President Abbas, who has always prioritised the needs of his western benefactors above those of the Palestinians, may be shaking his head for a different reason. Lieberman has no use for him and advocates installing U.S. educated, Chalabi-types to oversee Palestinian affairs. Apparently the democratic process will not be transferred with Israeli Arabs when Lieberman sends them to their ethnically cleansed Bantustans, neither will autonomy be granted.
It is clear why Avigdor Lieberman prefers loyalty oaths to religious affiliation in his requirements for Israeli citizenship in his homogenised utopian state.
In a study by journalist Yair Sheleg, published in 2004 by the Israeli Institute for Democracy, “Jews Not Considered Jewish by Law: The Case of Non-Jewish Immigrants to Israel ,” it was reported that “240,000-300,000 people who have immigrated to Israel from the former Soviet Union since 1989 describe themselves as non-Jewish, although one third of them have a Jewish father. About 11% of immigrants openly describe themselves as Christian (about 3% of all immigrants). Additionally, in 2002, 51% of immigrant soldiers were non-Jews; in the past few years hundreds of new soldiers have sworn their oath of loyalty on the New Testament rather than the Old Testament.”
And it is clear why he has “toned down” the rhetoric whilst his plans to transfer thousands of Israeli Arabs remain the same. The overt racism of Lieberman’s proposal, so foul even Olmert won’t openly endorse it, could prove difficult for his U.S. hosts to sell to their constituents if they were finally made to explain their past and present affiliations to the voters.
Exactly what are U.S. taxpayers supporting?
Lawrence of Cyberia provided a translation of a poem that was written in support of Lieberman’s vision and published “pseudonymously in Israel’s leading Russian language newspaper, Вести (Vesti), on 25 Aug 2005.” No truer analogy to WWII exists in the current landscape than Lieberman’s rise in popularity due his genocidal agenda.
Johann Hari writes, “Anybody who studies the history with open eyes can now see that ethnic cleansing of Palestine’s indigenous population was Israel’s original sin, a prerequisite for the state to come into existence. Today the Israeli people feel their existence is threatened once more, so they are returning in their minds – via Lieberman – to those birth crimes in the search for solutions.”
Abunimah noted these solutions have only succeeded in making Israelis more vulnerable than ever.
Kampeas wanted to know how to protect Jewish citizens from Ahmadinejad, a Holocaust denier who would not be “assuaged” by a one-state solution. According to Morris Mottaned, at the time of this interview serving his second term as the Jewish representative to the Iranian parliament, “Iran has the second oldest Jewish community after Israel, with Jews having lived in Iran for 2,700 years. There is a mausoleum for Esther and Mordechai in Hamadan, and for Daniel in Susa.” Kampeas voiced no concern for Iranian Jews should Israel engineer an attack against their country.
I agree with Max Sawicky, “that Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad couldn’t care less about the Holocaust.”
Dror Etkes of Peace Now believes that [via], “The primitive instrumentalism with which Iranian politics treats the holocaust is merely a mirror image of the way in which the memory of the holocaust is exploited in political life in Israel.”
Israel’s true attitude to the holocaust, Etkes writes, is reflected in its treatment of aging survivors, a large number of whom live in shameful conditions and in poverty. Etkes cites the recent decision of Israel’s government to continue nationalizing the reparation monies owed to tens of thousands of survivors and its concurrent “criminal neglect of many of them” as factors which belie the “memory worship that provides a podium for every politician who is seeking a way into the heart of public consensus.”
A primitive instrumentalism imbued the publication of highly-offensive Muslim-bashing cartoons and seeped into the reams of commentary they generated but the same cadre of enlightened reviewers barely sneezed at the publication of the following cartoon.
Cartoon by Abdellah Derkaoui – First place in the International Holocaust Cartoon Competition
Still Jews only by Jonathan Cook:
Israel has been leading attempts to characterise the Iranian regime as profoundly anti-Semitic, and its presumed nuclear ambitions as directed by the sole goal of wanting to “wipe Israel off the map” — a calculatedly mischievous mistranslation of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s speech.
Most observers have assumed that Israel is genuinely concerned for its safety from nuclear attack, however implausible the idea that even the most fanatical Muslim regime would, unprovoked, launch nuclear missiles against a small area of land that contains some of Islam’s holiest sites, in Jerusalem.
But in truth there is another reason why Israel is concerned about a nuclear-armed Iran that has nothing to do with conventional ideas about safety.
Last month, Ephraim Sneh, one of Israel’s most distinguished generals, a senior member of the Labour party and now Olmert’s deputy defence minister, revealed that the government’s primary concern was not the threat posed by Ahmadinejad firing nuclear missiles at Israel but the effect of Iran’s possession of such weapons on Jews who expect Israel to have a monopoly on the nuclear threat.
If Iran got such weapons, “Most Israelis would prefer not to live here; most Jews would prefer not to come here with families, and Israelis who can live abroad will … I am afraid Ahmadinejad will be able to kill the Zionist dream without pushing a button. That’s why we must prevent this regime from obtaining nuclear capability at all costs.”
In other words, the Israeli government is considering either its own pre-emptive strike on Iran or encouraging the United States to undertake such an attack — despite the terrible consequences for global security — simply because a nuclear- armed Iran might make Israel a less attractive place for Jews to live, lead to increased emigration and tip the demographic balance in the Palestinians’ favour.
Regional and possibly global war may be triggered simply to ensure that Israel’s “existence” as a state that offers exclusive privileges to Jews continues.
Sens. Joe Lieberman and John McCain led a congressional delegation – Sens. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.; Susan Collins, R-Me.; John Thune, R-S.D.; and Rep. Mark Kirk, R-Ill – to Israel this week to urge the country “not to be tempted by Syria’s recent overtures regarding negotiations.” They reassured Olmert that the Baker-Hamilton recommendations to engage Syria and Iran in dialogue were not likely to be adopted by the Bush administration.
Jim Lobe reports that “Neo-conservative hawks in and outside the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush” are claiming to have influenced the Bush administration to hold “off demands by U.N. Security Council members to halt Israel’s attacks on Hezbollah and other targets in Lebanon during the summer war,” and they encouraged Israel to strike Syria.
Not only are these people vehemently opposed to dialogue with Syria and Iran, they do not want critics of their policy recommendations to engage in dialogue with the American people.
A New America Foundation/American Strategy Program featuring Flynt Leverett on the subject, “Dealing with Tehran,” was carried live by C-Span on 18.12.06. An op-ed that Leverett was preparing for publication in the New York Times was heavily censored recently by the CIA Publications Review Board when urged to do so by the White House National Security Council staff, specifically, Michael Duran, Elliot Abrams, and Meghan O’Sullivan. The Washington Note blogger Steve Clemons, who is a colleague of Leverett’s at the New America Foundation, reported that this WH intervention and subsequent CIA censoring of Leverett’s work was unprecedented. White House and CIA spokesmen have “adamantly disputed” the charges.
Excerpt from Leverett’s official statement published by Clemons on 16.12.06 :
Until last week, the Publication Review Board had never sought to remove or change a single word in any of my drafts, including in all of my publications about the Bush administration’s handling of Iran policy. However, last week, the White House inserted itself into the prepublication review process for an op-ed on the administration’s bungling of the Iran portfolio that I had prepared for the New York Times, blocking publication of the piece on the grounds that it would reveal classified information.
This claim is false and, I have come to believe, fabricated by White House officials to silence an established critic of the administration’s foreign policy incompetence at a moment when the White House is working hard to fend off political pressure to take a different approach to Iran and the Middle East more generally.
The op-ed is based on the longer paper I just published with The Century Foundation — which was cleared by the CIA without modifying a single word of the draft. Officials with the CIA’s Publication Review Board have told me that, in their judgment, the draft op-ed does not contain classified material, but that they must bow to the preferences of the White House.
Clemons links to the longer paper (.pdf), which thoroughly reviews Bush administration policies on Iran, in a post that inspired this comment – a stinker amongst others more coherent – from Juan Cole:
Ironically, the White House attempt to stop high-level discussion of talking to Iran comes just as the Iranian public dealt a slap in the face to extremist President Mahmud Ahmadinejad, who stole the presidential elections in summer of 2005. Former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani appears to have trounced Ahmadinejad’s own favorite cleric, Mohammad Taqi Misbah Yazdi, an authoritarian anti-democrat.
Ahmadinejad “stole” the presidential elections but allowed the trouncing of his favourite cleric?
Leverett provides a more nuanced view of Ahmadinejad’s real influence and political skills during the question and answer portion of the New America Foundation presentation. Leverett’s “grand bargain” allows its enemies to stockpile nuclear weapons but denies Iran that technology, “maintaining U.S. leadership both regionally and internationally and ensuring Israel’s long-term security and standing,” by promising that Israel and the U.S. would respect the sovereignty of Iran’s borders. Leverett liberally seasons his substantial paper with terrorism rhetoric that is demeaning to every victim of western terrorism in the region. The clearly brilliant Leverett has either been dulled by the demands of his positions or he suffers some other impediment that renders him blind to the view from the other side.
But he suffers from no illusions when he says that an attack on Iran would be a disaster.
His colleague at The Century Foundation, Barry Posen, has also published a paper: A Nuclear-Armed Iran A Difficult But Not Impossible Policy Problem. I haven’t read it yet. But if it mirrors Leverett’s grand bargain and insists upon isolating Hamas, Hizballah, and denying the Holocaust taking place in Israel, it is an outdated prescription that kills rather than cures.
Ali Abunimah’s remedy is a tonic for life and well-being.