C H I N A & I S R A E L

GETTING PAST INSCRUTABLE



It’s easy to overshoot the Tel Aviv embassy of the People’s Republic of China, located on Rehov Ben-Yehuda not far from the beach and the Mediterranean. You enter an unassuming structure scarcely in keeping with China’s status as an aspiring superpower.
What’s really notable, however, given the long decades of Chinese communist hostility toward the Jewish state, is that China maintains an embassy in Israel at all.
It’s been a bumpy relationship.


WHEN FOREIGN minister Moshe Sharett cabled Jerusalem’s recognition of China back in January 1950 to foreign minister Zhou Enlai, Israel became the first Middle East country to recognize the PRC. Throughout the mid-1950s, a lone Asia-based Israeli diplomat named David Hacohen struggled mightily to foster ties between China and Israel. Hacohen became Israel’s first ambassador to Burma and used his Rangoon base to promote Jerusalem’s interests throughout Asia.

In December 1953 he met with Chinese ambassador Yao Chu Ming, who told him that Peking (as it was then called) was interested in diplomatic relations. The following year, Yao told Hacohen that China wanted to at least establish trade relations (presumably to get around the US embargo of Red China).

But back in Washington, Israel’s ambassador to the US, Abba Eban, under State Department pressure, was pulling in the opposite direction. It was Eban who would prevail.


IN JUNE 1954, the indefatigable Hacohen met with Zhou Enlai in Rangoon and was invited to “visit me when you are in Peking.” A few days later, Zhou told the People’s Congress that negotiations were under way to establish normal relations with Israel.

Around this time, though, Eban sensed he was moving closer to clinching an arms deal with Washington, forcing Hacohen to forgo a follow-up meeting with Zhou.

The momentum toward an Israel-China relationship had been halted dead in its tracks. The consequences would be tragic.


THE first intimation that China had given up on Israel and turned to the Arabs came in April 1955 at an international conference in New Delhi. The Chinese delegation voted for a resolution calling on Israel to accept the return of the Arab refugees who had fled during the 1948 War of Independence.

But the real turning point came later that year, at the Bandung Conference, which Egypt helped organize. It brought together newly independent Asian and African states with the goal of establishing a bloc allied with neither the West nor the Soviets. China was keenly interested in playing a leading role in this so-called Third World movement, and that required courting favor with the Arab states.

It was at Bandung that Zhou first met Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser and heard a full exposition of the Arab case against Israel’s establishment as a Jewish state in the Muslim Middle East. Ahmed Shukeiry, who would go on to become the first leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization (established by the Arab League in 1964), joined Nasser in his meetings with Zhou.

For the next several decades China’s political system grew ever more radicalized. It was in this fanatical, ersatz revolutionary context that Chinese denunciations of Israel became ever more vitriolic. For instance, in March 1965 Mao told a PLO delegation: “You are one gate of the great continent. We are the other. They created Israel for you, and Formosa for us. Their goal is the same: to exploit us. The West does not like us... The Arab battle against the West is the battle against Israel.”

Thus long before there was an “occupied West Bank” China enthusiastically embraced the PLO cause. Indeed, while few in the West even knew the PLO existed, Shukeiry was having audiences with Zhou and Mao in Beijing and being feted like a head of state.


REVOLUTIONS may consume their own, but they don’t last forever. The end of the Cultural Revolution in 1976 saw China inching toward acceptance of “bourgeois” international norms. A subtle shift in China’s understanding of the Arab-Israel conflict had been discernible as early as 1975. Foreign minister Chiao Kuan-hua made a “secret speech” arguing that Israel was a fait accompli and that repatriating the 1948 Arab refugees was unrealistic.

With Anwar Sadat’s 1977 visit to Jerusalem as a turning point, and Mao dead and buried, Chinese policymakers embarked on a long, slow journey which took them from wholeheartedly embracing the Arabs’ intransigent position of “no peace, no negotiations and no recognition” toward favoring a negotiated settlement between Israel and its neighbors.

Diplomatic relations were finally established between China and Israel in January 1992; China welcomed the 1993 mutual recognition agreement between the Palestinians and Israel – the Oslo Accords – as “an important turning point.”

These days scores of Israeli businesses are active in China and Chinese investment in Israel is aggressively encouraged. Last year bilateral trade surpassed $2.6 billion. Israel’s military industry has reportedly sold billions of dollars in advanced weapons to China since 1984 and would gladly keep the spigot flowing were it not for Washington’s intermittent moves to block our efforts.


THESE THOUGHTS ran through my mind as Jerusalem Post diplomatic correspondent Herb Keinon and I sat down with Ambassador Chen Yonglong at the embassy in Tel Aviv on a sweltering day earlier this week.

A practiced diplomat, Chen has served here, with little media attention, for several years. His previous postings include Amman, Washington and the UN in New York.

The drapes are drawn to keep out the heat. I’ve never been to China, but the decor gives me a sense of what it must be like. A valet serves tea. There are Chinese sweets on the coffee table.
This is the same Ambassador Chen who on May 18 was summoned to Jerusalem by Foreign Ministry Deputy Director-General Raphael Schutz for an unprecedented reprimand – expressing Israel’s chagrin that a Chinese diplomat based in Ramallah, responsible for liaison with the Palestinian Authority, had held meetings with Mahmoud Zahar, foreign minister of the Hamas-led government.

Message sent – and ignored.

On May 30, Zahar arrived in Beijing to attend a Sino-Arab forum.

SO WHAT gives? Does China want good relations with Israel or with Hamas?

Wrong question.

China, the ambassador will tell you, is friends with Israel and with the Palestinians. At every opportunity China urges the Palestinians to end the violence, recognize Israel, and accept agreements reached between Israel and the PLO.

Besides, China didn’t invite Hamas to go to Beijing, the ambassador explains. China invited the Arab League, and the Palestinians are part of that group. And Mahmoud Abbas himself selected the Palestinian delegation.

The ambassador addresses the threat from Iran with similar dexterity – and evasiveness. China imports 58 percent of its oil from the Middle East – 11% from Iran. China, he tells us, wants Iran to honor the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, and has communicated this position to Teheran time and again. At the same time, China strongly favors dialogue and opposes sanctions. Talk is better than sanctions.


IT’S ALL A bit frustrating. The ambassador does not tell us what we want to hear. He won’t say that China recognizes the danger the Islamist threat poses to the region; that Hamas is incorrigible; that Iran is as much China’s problem as anyone else’s.

And why should he? Today’s China genuinely wants to see Mideast “peace and stability” so that Beijing can pursue its primary global interest – not “national liberation” or “revolution,” but economic growth.

In the Chinese hierarchy of foreign policy concerns, neither Hamas nor Iran tops the list. Whether Chinese decision-makers can be persuaded that an Islamic regime in Iran, armed with nuclear weapons, threatens not only Israel and the West, but also China’s long-term strategic interests, remains to be seen.

China’s long-standing and genuine sympathy for the Palestinian cause helps explain Beijing’s willingness to show courtesy even to a Palestinian regime led by an extremist religious movement long engaged in anti-civilian warfare.


WHATEVER THE disappointments from the Israeli perspective, China’s current attitude to the Arab-Israel conflict is like the proverbial journey of 1,000 miles, from the days when Beijing openly fueled Palestinian violence and denied Israel’s right to exist.

Plainly, the more exposed Chinese officials are to the Israeli narrative, the better our chances of fulfilling David Hacohen’s long-ago dream of harmonious relations between our two civilizations.

A certain amount of wisdom is needed as Israel (population seven million) contemplates strengthening ties with China (population 1.3 billion). To that end, we need to spend less time calling Chinese diplomats on the carpet and expend more effort in explaining our position.

We need to promote more cultural exchange, and welcome more Chinese workers (there are only 3,000 here now, mostly in construction). Jerusalem needs to facilitate a protocol, now pending, that could bring thousands of Chinese tourists here – something the ambassador has been pushing for.

As Mao said: “All genuine knowledge originates in direct experience.”

Confessions of a Kadima voter

I voted for Kadima because I supported Israel’s withdrawal from the Gaza Strip. There’s no need to rehash the persuasive diplomatic, strategic and domestic reasons why the pullout was a good idea.

But my support for the disengagement idea does not mean I favor rushing into a further West Bank pullout. Not now. Not yet.

On the contrary, Israel is “parked” in a good place while events in the Palestinian areas play themselves out, the security barrier is completed and policy makers assess what our Gaza departure has done for the country’s international standing and for domestic cohesion.
In other words, disengagement was a costly experiment whose results have not yet been fully analyzed.

I didn’t vote for the right-wing parties because they opposed any withdrawal from any territory under (virtually) any circumstances. And I didn’t vote for the left-wing parties because they were itching for unconditional negotiations with the Palestinians and favored uprooting (virtually) every West Bank settlement.

I prefer realistic policies to anachronistic ideologies; meaning that, like other Kadima voters, I accept that Israel can’t rule over millions of hostile Arabs in perpetuity, ignore international opprobrium over the so-called occupation, or allow cleavages over the settlement enterprise to rend Israel’s body politic asunder.


THE ONLY THING that’s new since I cast my ballot for Kadima less than two months ago is my discomfiture at Ehud Olmert’s speed. He told a group of visiting US mayors last week that he’s ready to “wait a month, two months, three months, half a year” before moving forward.

But with Disengagement I behind us, a Hamas-led PA in power and an international community that seems primed to take the heat off the Islamists by funneling moneys to cover the salaries – not just of PA doctors, nurses and teachers, but also gunmen – the operative question is: How can Israel move forward without making matters worse? Certainly not by lurching ahead, when the situation demands cautious deliberation.

Disengagement is supposed to be a strategy, not a theology. I would expect leftists to adhere to the Geneva Initiative and rightists to uphold the Greater Israel teachings of Rabbi Zvi Yehuda Kook, regardless of real-world events.

But I opted for the pragmatic party precisely because I wanted leaders who would calibrate policy to reality. So I’m glad that a committee headed by incoming Foreign Ministry Director-General Aharon Abramovich is right now analyzing the challenges that implementing convergence would pose.

At the end of the day, future withdrawals should be carried out only if they result in lasting diplomatic gains such as de-facto US and EU recognition of the new boundaries; if they enhance the personal security of Israelis; and if they set the stage for making our society more cohesive.


OLMERT IS scheduled to meet with President George W. Bush on May 23 to launch his diplomatic push for convergence. The prime minister’s working assumption is that Washington sees Disengagement II as the only game in town.

But writing in the April 7 Jerusalem Post, former US special envoy Dennis Ross predicted that while the administration is “likely to be open and encouraging about” an Israeli withdrawal from most of the West Bank, “no one should assume that such talks” would “be quick or easy.”
Sure enough, the White House has already signaled that it’s not keen on picking up the multi-billion-dollar tab a West Bank pullout would incur.

And an Olmert-Bush meeting resulting in a vague, non-binding memorandum that speaks in broad terms immediately open to contrasting interpretations should be a red light to any further unilateral moves by Israel.

Olmert also needs to listen very carefully to what the EU is saying: Europe has made it plain it wants to see Jerusalem negotiate with PA President Mahmoud Abbas.

Behind the scenes – and with Israeli acquiescence – Palestinian factions, led by inmates incarcerated in Israel’s Hadarim Prison, are pushing a formula that would give Abbas sufficient clout to make negotiations a credible exercise.

While most Israelis see talks with Abbas as a futile charade, the process must nevertheless play itself out. But even if the international community gets over its delusions about the value of “talking to Abu Mazen,” there would still be no point in a West Bank pullout if it didn’t result in an imprimatur of international legitimacy for our new – albeit impermanent – boundaries.


CONVERGENCE ALSO has sobering security ramifications. The IDF needs time to work out how to prevent enemy rockets from landing in Tel Aviv, just 18 km. from the West Bank. Strategic depth, as residents of Sderot and Ashkelon can testify, still matters. That Gaza’s Kassam and Katyusha problem has yet to be solved must surely have implications for moving ahead in Judea and Samaria.

Also we need to allow the IDF time to figure out how it can operate in Judea and Samaria (and the Jordan Valley) long after a second disengagement. What are the military implications of losing settlements situated at strategic junctures and on mountaintops? What happens to the listening posts in Samaria?

With the situation on our eastern front in flux (think Iran and Iraq) and with an obdurate Islamist leadership directing Palestinian affairs, Israeli security control of the West Bank remains indispensable. A haphazard pullout that left issues such as these up in the air would have no popular support in Israel.


FINALLY, CONVERGENCE has profound implications for Israel’s internal cohesion. Olmert has spoken of the need to act on the basis of a broad national consensus. That promise must be fulfilled. We simply cannot afford to have a further pullout handled as atrociously, by all sides, as disengagement was.

Some settlements have allowed themselves to evolve into psychological ghettos, effectively cut off from the mores of mainstream Israel. Meanwhile, many Israelis have developed a dismissive and dangerously prejudiced attitude toward the settler enterprise – as if all settlers spent their lives harassing Palestinian children on the way to school.

The work of reversing the stereotyping and scapegoating prevalent on both sides of the Green Line needs to begin, at the very least, in advance of any further pullout.

And how can we talk about moving ahead with convergence until we start seeing the kind of construction able to accommodate – whether in existing settlement blocs, desirable urban neighborhoods, or in the Negev and Galilee – the 70,000-plus citizens who would be displaced by a withdrawal?


AGAINST THIS background, with so many of the diplomatic, security and domestic issues surrounding another pullout still up in the air, it is perplexing that the prime minister appears so frantically committed to moving full speed ahead.

Israelis like me support the general direction in which Kadima wants to take the country. But the prime minister would be imprudent, not to say irresponsible, to imagine he has a blank check.
With only 29 seats in the Knesset (not the pollsters’ anticipated 40) and a coalition already showing signs of fragmenting, the last thing Olmert should want to do is lose faith with pragmatic voters who gave him their support on March 28.

My advice: When Mr. Olmert goes to Washington, he should do a lot more listening than talking.

Kevin Phillips - Q&A

Kevin Phillips may not be the angriest man in America, but he's among the gloomiest. He's pessimistic about the radicalization of American Christianity, the unhealthy relationship between foreign policy and oil interests, and about how deeply in debt America has fallen.

Phillips worked on Richard Nixon's 1968 presidential campaign, and is credited with helping the Republican Party permanently capture the middle-class populist vote from the Democratic Party. With an uncanny ability toidentify Middle America's attitude toward those who largely run the country, he's long been a bellwether political prognosticator.

The erosion of America's middle-class is, for Phillips, linked to the country's impending decline. He worries about class polarization, elite irresponsibility toward working people, and ­ in his 13th and latest book ­about the dangerous manipulation by the Bush administration of religion for profane ends.

HOW WOULD YOU CHARACTERIZE YOURSELF POLITICALLY?
I would not, really, try too much. In ways I'd be a progressive; in otherways a conservative ­ never as a liberal.

YOU STARTED OUT IN 1967 WISHING FOR A MORE TRADITIONAL ­ MORE CHRISTIAN ­AMERICA. NOW, YOU'RE ARGUING THAT AMERICAN CHRISTIANITY HAS BECOME RADICALIZED.
What's changed is that 1/3 of the population now believes in a coming Rapture. Religion wasn't central when I wrote The Emerging RepublicanMajority.

I had no problem with challenging the secular extremes of the 1960sand 1970s. Back then traditionalists were rightly feeling aggrieved. Lately, however, radical secularism hasn't won many battles. The excesses are mostly among the religious.

For instance, the idea of teaching creationism in the schools ­- that's not conservative; that's radical. So too is the infatuation with the Book ofRevelations.

YOU ARGUE THAT OIL INTERESTS DRIVE US FOREIGN POLICY.
Yes. The US Army has basically become an oil protection service. If you want to know the real cost of a gallon of gasoline, you'd have to factor-in the budget of the Defense Department.

WHY DON'T US POLICY MAKERS TELL AMERICANS THAT IF THEY WANT CARS THEY MAYNEED TO FIGHT FOR OIL?
You don't want to acknowledge petro-imperialism which Europeans have been pointing to all along. James Baker and Bush senior did openly talk about it. But also for a considerable percentage of Americans everything that is unfolding is Biblical.

Forty-five percent believe in Armageddon. So it's just easier to mobilize support using religion.

AND BUSH HIMSELF?
He may well subscribe to this theological framework too. But it's Cheney who's the driving gun of American oil policy.

YOU'RE ALSO WORRIED THAT AMERICA SPENDS FAR MORE MONEY THAN IT HAS AND IS FALLING EVER DEEPER INTO DEBT. THE CURRENT US DEBT IS $8 TRILLION CAUSED BY REPEATED BUDGET DEFICITS.
We've become a financial services economy. By 2000, 21 per cent of the economy was devoted to finance compared to 14 percent for manufacturing. The big reason was the huge growth of debt. The total credit market debt is $40 trillion -­ 3 times the GDP.

Everything runs on debt and credit. But if you're in the debt and credit business --­ which Wall Street is ­-- this makes you happy.

AMERICA'S ELITES ONCE PUT THE NATIONAL INTEREST FIRST. NOW THEY SEEM TO PUT PROFITS FIRST.
Yes, absolutely. There is a level of self-interest that views itself as entitled. You saw the same thing in the Roman and Spanish empires. Also among the Dutch and British when their elite dominated the world.

They too thrived on the financialization of the economy. But such reliance eventually becomes conducive to class tensions.

STILL, WHY DOES IT SEEM THAT CAPITALISM HAS NEVER BEEN MORE OBSESSED WITH PROFIT TO THE EXCLUSION OF EVERYTHING ELSE?
There's been a deification of capital in the market place; taxes are seen as the major determinants of behavior.

And intellectual frameworks now exclude other economic factors. Meanwhile, elements on the Christian Right have become cheerleaders of this kind of capitalism. Some fundamentalists say that people should be preoccupied with salvation-- not the economy, and others teach that God wants you to be prosperous.

SO IF NEITHER COMMUNIST STATE-PLANNING NOR PITILESS CAPITALISM WORK ­ WHAT WOULD?
Unfortunately, the US is too far down path of over financialization.

History shows that only societal upheaval is going to change things. Empires become chastised by losing their position. You saw this with the British after WWI as their power dissipated. It was a wrenching experience.

WHAT WOULD SUCH A WRENCHING TRANSFORMATION OF THE BODY POLITIC MEAN FOR AMERICAN JEWS?
The historical parallel should be what happened when the 18th century Dutch and 20th century British empires declined.

Jews were identified with capital, but were not singled out. That's not tosay that some American elements wouldn't scapegoat Jews. But if you read the histories by Jonathan Israel (The Dutch Republic: ItsRise, Greatness, and Fall 1477-1806) and Simon Schama, (A History ofBritain: The Fate of Empire 1776-2000) there's little evidence of economic scapegoating in Holland, and the same is true of Britain.

HOW DOES ISRAEL FIT INTO YOUR PARADIGM?
Israel is what you get with the bible. And one of the characteristics of radical Protestantism is that there's an intense biblical focus as well as the idea of biblical inerrancy. Contemporary events are seen as the fulfillment of the bible.

So just as Israelis have to be concerned about the Jewish fringe that wants to rebuild the Temple, they have to be similarly concerned about Christians aligned with those Jews searching for the pure of Red heifer.

It's the same fundamentalist mindset. It's also interesting to ponder how they're using each other. Who's gaming whom?

SO, YOU DON'T NECESSARILY AGREE WITH JOHN J. MEARSHEIMER AND STEPHEN M. WALT IN THEIR STUDY OF THE ISRAEL LOBBY ­ -- THAT ISRAELI INTERESTS DRIVE US FOREIGN POLICY.
FOR YOU, POLICY IS DRIVEN, LARGELY, BY OIL INTERESTS AND THE MANIPULATION OF RADICAL CHRISTIANITY.
What I am suggesting is that the most pro-Israel forces and Christian true-believers are locked together. So what you have is a common outlook, on the West Bank, for instance.

My assumption is that AIPAC is one of the most aggressive lobbies around. But the real enabling power base comes from the huge population of end-of-time Christians.

ARE YOU YOURSELF RELIGIOUS?
Not by any yardstick could you call me religious. I am a nominal Protestant. I go to church, maybe, a couple of times a year.

AMERICAN THEOCRACY
The Peril and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil, and Borrowed Money in the21st Century
By Kevin Phillips
462 pages. Viking. $26.95

A ‘chosen diplomat’ in the promised land

On the face of it, Germany, France and Britain dominate Mideast policymaking for the EU. It is these – the E3 – who are negotiating with Iran in an effort to head off Teheran’s dash for nuclear weapons. They’ve also led the way in setting criteria for Hamas to meet before Europe resumes aid to the Palestinian Authority.

Which is why it is easy to misjudge the influence Spain wields in the EU’s corridors of power. On Saturday, for instance, Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos made it a point to meet in Amman with PA President Mahmoud Abbas to talk about ways to funnel aid to the Palestinians which would bypass the Hamas-led government.

For years now, Spaniards have played key EU policy roles relating to the Arab-Israel conflict. Javier Solana is the European Union’s foreign policy chief; Moratinos, the foreign minister, was the EU’s special Mideast envoy; and Josep Borrell is president of the Euro-Mediterranean Assembly as well as president of the European Parliament.
(The new UN special representative to the Middle East, Alvaro de Soto, is Peruvian.)


I WAS IN Spain some weeks ago. Strolling through Madrid, you get the sense of a first-class European capital: grand boulevards, expansive parks, fantastic museums, quaint, old-world squares, and big-city urban gentrification.

Spain, which sits on the crossroads of the Atlantic and the Mediterranean, between Europe and Africa, was one of the places in Europe where Islamic civilization clashed with Christianity (in 711 AD), and then melded with it. It is a country where the Jews thrived – under both Muslim and Christian rule – but were also cruelly persecuted by both civilizations.

But whereas Germany, France and Britain all have modern relationships with Jews and Israel that are fraught with emotional baggage, Spain’s truly ghastly past as far as the Jews are concerned – the Inquisition and Expulsion – is the stuff of history.
In Spain you can visit flourishing cathedrals that were once great mosques. But as you wander through Barcelona, Seville, Cordoba and Madrid, not only have most signs of the Jewish past been obliterated, there is little indication of any modern Jewish presence. Among Spain’s 44 million population, there are said to be perhaps 40,000 Jews.

During Francisco Franco’s long reign (1939-1975), Spain was diplomatically isolated and heavily reliant on the Arabs for both oil and UN votes. When the old dictator died, Madrid’s isolation from liberal Europe ended, and in 1978 the country became a constitutional monarchy. And just this past January, Spain and Israel marked the 20th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations.

Spain is a country in transition. Though overwhelmingly Catholic, most Spaniards are drifting toward a secular lifestyle. Politically, Spain’s integrity as a unified nation-state is challenged by demands from its 17 regions for ever greater degrees of autonomy. The recent decision of the Basque separatist group ETA to end its long terrorist campaign is a bright spot. But whether Spanish decision-makers can placate the region with offers of autonomy that avoid outright self-determination is an open question.

The country is led by Socialist Workers Party leader Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, who defeated Jose Maria Aznar’s conservative Popular Party in March 2004 shortly after Islamist terrorists bombed a Madrid commuter train, slaughtering 191 people.


MADRID’S ambassador in Tel Aviv is the urbane Eudaldo Mirapeix. He began his Foreign Service career as a North America expert. But after successive postings – in Egypt, Jordan, and now Israel – Mirapeix is one of the most experienced European diplomats in the country.

Q) Based on your experiences in the region, what’s the one thing Israelis need to understand about the Arab world?

That relations between Arabs and Israelis are distorted by reciprocal, derogatory clichés which make it hard for people to identify common interests.

Q) For instance?
For instance, Arabs are today fully reconciled with the idea of the existence of Israel living in peace on its soil on the Middle East. The radical, sometimes violent, contrary trend persists here and there – like Hamas, but it is a minority belief. Arab governments and average people think differently.

Q) Plenty of Israelis expect the EU will find some formula to allow it to continue to funnel financial support to the Hamas-led Palestinian Authority. Are they being unnecessarily cynical?

Do you think that the EU was cynical when, as a member of the Quartet, it stated three conditions – recognition of Israel, assumption of past bilateral agreements, abandonment of violence – that the Hamas-led government had to fulfill in order to, among other things, receive financial support?

Look, Hamas is described as a terrorist group by the EU. And on April 10, EU foreign ministers endorsed a temporary halt to direct aid to the Hamas-led PA. The EU does not have any intention whatsoever of circumventing these conditions.

Having said that, we cannot let the Palestinian people starve, and we must help them with their basic needs. Ways to maintain humanitarian aid will take into account the need to avoid allowing it to fall into the wrong hands.


Q) Your government has recently given the PA $3.6 million. More has just now been promised. Do you track to see how that money is actually used?

Of course we do. Spain’s foreign assistance to the Palestinians, especially under the present circumstances, is channeled through programs and organizations that have a track record.

But let’s not be misled by the continuation of some EU assistance to the Palestinians. For all practical purposes, international assistance to the Palestinian people can be arranged under three general headings: budget support, humanitarian and development aid. Donors have on the whole agreed that humanitarian assistance is not an issue in the ongoing discussion.

Not only that. It might even be increased to alleviate the added hardships that those Palestinians most in need will have to endure as a result of the reduction in other forms of assistance.


Q) So what does Europe now expect from the Hamas-led PA?

Hamas cannot change its past, but it can change its future. Europe, alongside other major international partners – the US, Russia and the United Nations – is now expecting that Hamas will, in the near future, fulfill the three key principles we have set out for political dialogue and financial assistance.

Hamas-affiliated leaders can be heard protesting their democratic legitimacy. They say that they won an unequivocal victory in the January 25 legislative elections and that we consequently should conduct business as usual with them.

Let’s have no doubt about it: Violence and terror are not only repulsive, they are incompatible with any genuine democratic engagement. That’s why we have urged Hamas to renounce violence, to recognize Israel’s right to exist, and to disarm.

Q) Why is Europe pushing Israel to “help Abu Mazen” (Mahmoud Abbas)? Given that the PA Chairman cannot use the tens of thousands of militiamen under his command to take security control over the areas under PA jurisdiction, what continuing value does Europe see in helping him?

I would say the same value many Israelis see: Mahmoud Abbas was democratically elected on January 9, 2005. He is the president of the Palestinian Authority. Abbas won over 62% of the votes cast. That’s not a tiny fraction of the Palestinian people, is it? He has a strong mandate by any standard.

Why, then, should we boycott him? It would be foolish to give up, for such dubious reasons, such an important asset as President Abbas.

Abu Mazen is one of the leading Palestinian figures devoted to the search for a peaceful solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. He has consistently advocated negotiations with Israel since the mid 1970s. He is moderate, smart, experienced. He is a potential partner for whatever negotiations might appear appropriate to conduct with the Palestinians.

In his own victory speech just after the elections in Israel, Interim Prime Minister Ehud Olmert referred to his willingness to engage Abu Mazen. If we want this engagement to be successful, Abu Mazen should be empowered.


Q) But if it turns out there is no Palestinian partner, Ehud Olmert has advocated an alternative approach. Can you imagine a situation in which the EU would diplomatically embrace Olmert’s unilateralism or his convergence plan? Would the EU be willing to negotiate with Israel over acceptable new borders between Israel and the Palestinian entity?

Borders between Israel and the future Palestinian state will have to be discussed and agreed upon between Israelis and Palestinians. It is an inescapable fact: The EU cannot be a negotiating partner for Israel. The EU, the Quartet, the international community can offer their good offices to mediate between the negotiating parties, which are those recognized in the Oslo agreements and the road map.

Olmert and Abbas have both made commitments as to their readiness to resume negotiations. The priority of the EU is to facilitate the endeavors of the two leaders to reach a negotiated settlement.

We believe the objectives that both the parties and the international community want to achieve – that is, two states living side-by-side in peace and security – can better be served through a bilaterally negotiated process coupled with the external assistance the parties themselves see fit to request, and which the international community can provide.

Q) What part does Spain play in Middle East issues within the EU?

I would say it is a committed member state – no more or less than others – to finding a peaceful agreement between Israel and her neighbors; if, as I think, by “Middle East” you mean the Middle East peace process.

Proof of our commitment includes the 1991 Madrid Peace Conference, the launching of the Euromed Barcelona Process in 1995, and the fact that the first European Union Special Envoy for the Middle East was a Spanish diplomat, now our foreign minister, Miguel Angel Moratinos.


Q) Still, many Israelis feel Spain tilts toward the Arab point of view. Are we being overly sensitive?

The answer to your question is not an easy one, and I will try to be as candid as I can. I assure you that Spain is neither pro-Palestinian nor pro-Israeli. Spain is 100% pro-peace. How do you best serve peace? Well, we believe you do it by abiding with the principles and norms of international justice and international law.

I can, however, understand that one or other position can at a certain point in time be perceived – I repeat, perceived – as being either pro-Israeli or pro-Arab. But that would be a misperception because international legality should be the main yardstick to measure the correctness of the positions taken at any given moment.

If by “Spain” you mean Spanish public opinion, I would risk presenting some sweeping generalizations which may encapsulate the general mood: full support of the Spanish government’s policy toward a negotiated solution; sympathy to the Palestinian suffering; outright rejection of terrorist methods to foster the Palestinian cause; admiration for the Israeli building-nation feat and, by the same token, unreserved condemnation of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s threatening comments; and pride in the role played by Judaism in Spain’s history.
In fact, nothing would move a Spaniard more than being addressed in sweet-sounding Ladino.

In sum, the pro-Arab suspicion associated with our foreign policy is wrong and might be due to the fact that only in 1986 did we establish relations with Israel.
Today no objective observer can say that Spain’s approach to the Arab-Israeli conflict is biased.

Q) What do Israelis need to appreciate about Spain in order to understand your country’s role in the Mediterranean and the Arab-Israel conflict?

Perhaps the persistency with which we try to support the parties in their efforts to find a solution to the conflict through such initiatives as the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership (the so-called Barcelona Process), or the Alliance of Civilizations. This is not done only out of altruism.

Spain, due to its geographical position and historical experiences, cannot look confidently into its own future unless the Mediterranean basin becomes an area of peace and prosperity, as called for in the Barcelona Charter.
We also need to confront stereotypes on both sides. The current Spanish government is engaged in that task. For instance, January 27 has been designated as International Holocaust Remembrance Day. Holocaust education will have the effect of increasing understanding of Israeli politics and culture.

Last year’s OSCE Cordoba conference on anti-Semitism and other forms of intolerance proved significantly useful in raising public awareness.
The Casa Sefarad Program for intercultural dialogue between Spain and the Jewish community is now in full swing. Studies of Judaism, Jewish history and the joint legacy of our two peoples will receive strong support from the initiative.

Q) Are you managing to enjoy your posting here?

Very much so, both from a professional and personal point of view. This is a challenging post for any diplomat; you keep learning things and understanding new angles each day.

But doubtless I would put people, the people of Israel, in the very first place of interest. Meeting people here makes me feel like the chosen diplomat in the promised diplomatic post.

The rebbe and the chancellor

JEWISH RELIGIOUS MODERATION IS OUT OF FASHION


The theological distance between 3080 Broadway, the Manhattan headquarters of Conservative Judaism’s Jewish Theological Seminary, and 500 Bedford Avenue, home of the Satmar hassidic dynasty across the East River in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, is best measured not in miles but in light-years.

It was always a stretch to find any common denominator between the foremost insular ultra-Orthodox hassidic sect with its vilification of political Zionism, rejection of modernity and theological rigidity, and the stream of Judaism that was first to embrace the Zionist idea, foremost in pursuing a golden mean between religious practice and secular ideals, and which preached that Halacha need not calcify into irrelevance but could evolve to meet contemporary needs.

Both groups, however, are in the throes of leadership changes that reflect polarization and radicalism as the dominant trend in Jewish religious practice. “Mainstream” Judaism, it appears, is becoming passé.

Satmar, self-obsessively, has long thrived on religious and political intemperance. Now it is to be mirrored, or so it seems – at the opposite extreme – by Conservative Judaism, which is on the brink of rejecting Judaism’s admittedly unprofitable middle road for a theological radicalism that would make it nearly indistinguishable from Reform Judaism.

FIRST THE Satmars. Their transition crisis results from the grave illness of Grand Rabbi Moshe Teitelbaum, 91, who has led the dynasty since 1980. He hovers, unconscious, near death in Manhattan’s Mount Sinai Hospital. His dynasty, which originated in the Transylvanian Mountains of Hungary during the late 1700s, looks set to break apart.

The ailing rebbe is the nephew of the fiery, charismatic grand rabbi Joel Teitelbaum. In the late 1940s, following Hitler’s war against the Jews, rebbe Joel brought the sect’s survivors to the New World and settled in Williamsburg.

As a little boy, I met Rebbe Joel when my father – a hassid, but not a Satmar – took me to him for a blessing. We were ushered into the rebbe’s study; he spoke briefly to my father, offered us his blessings, and gave me a ritual wine cup as a keepsake. It is the one I use to this day.

(In the hassidic haredi world the rebbe serves as a spiritual conduit to God. A hassid makes no milestone decisions, in either business or private life, without the rebbe’s blessing. For a hassid the rebbe’s mystical powers trump mere talmudic prowess.)

With no natural successor – rebbe Joel, who died in 1979, and his rebbetzin, Feige, were childless – their nephew, Moshe, was anointed the sect’s leader in 1980. The transition was not a smooth one; the community was bitterly divided between supporters of rebbe Joel’s widow (who had her own candidate) and those of her nephew.

Eventually, Moshe’s leadership was solidified and the sect continued to thrive. It now numbers perhaps 100,000 souls, some 20,000 families.


EVEN BEFORE he took sick seven years ago, two of Moshe’s four sons – Aaron, 57, the eldest, and Zalman Leib, 53, the youngest – had contested for their father’s mantle. Aaron was named (by his father) chief rabbi of Kiryas Joel, north of New York City, while Zalman Leib was brought back from Jerusalem to became the chief rabbi in Williamsburg.

As the April 7 New York Jewish Week phrased it, “the sons have waged an unstinting, contentious battle for control of the Satmar Empire during their father’s long decline.” At stake is a communal estate estimated at $500 million, including 26 properties throughout New York State, plus the political clout and religious direction of the movement.

That struggle has forced the factions to turn to the New York State courts, which appear reluctant to intercede. Rabbinical courts controlled by the respective sons have issued halachic rulings in their own favor. And when push comes to shove – as it did one recent Simhat Torah – the NYPD had to be called to physically separate the warring factions.

Chris McKenna of the Times Herald-Record, which serves the Hudson Valley and Catskills, described the scene outside the hospital where the dying Moshe lies: “As Zalman Teitelbaum, chief rabbi of the main Satmar congregation in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, was about to be driven away in a black SUV, his older brother, Aaron, leader of the dominant Satmar congregation in Kiryas Joel, arrived in front of him on Fifth Avenue in a black Cadillac and swept into the hospital with his entourage. No words were exchanged.”

Observers predict the Satmars, with their two religious courts, will fragment into separate factions with Aaron controlling upstate and Zalman downstate; but only after a bitter dispute over a division of the communal assets. Neither will lead the sect toward a more centrist Judaism. Each seems intent on putting his own narrow interests above the good of the kehilla, forget the larger Jewish world.


ACROSS THE East River in upper Manhattan, a new chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary was announced last week. There were no traumatic deathbed scenes, no charismatic rabbis vying for supremacy, no NYPD breaking up unruly factions. Everything was done with the decorous understatement one would expect from a moribund movement. The previous chancellor, Rabbi Ismar Schorsch, simply retired. His successor is Prof. Arnold M. Eisen, 54, chairman of Stanford University’s Religious Studies Department.

The seminary does not formally control the movement; but, as its flagship institution – whither JTS goes, so goes Conservative Judaism.

Eisen, and those who backed his appointment, clearly want to take the Conservatives to the theological Left. Schorsch had opposed the ordination of gay rabbis and the authorizing of Conservative rabbis to perform same-sex marriages. Eisen, in contrast, seems intent on championing the cause of gay and lesbian ordination.

Whether Conservatives will also sanction homosexual marriage may be decided in December by the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards.

It’s worth recalling that Conservative Judaism broke away from the Reform movement – not Orthodoxy – in the late 1880s in order to “conserve” traditional values and as a reaction to Reform radicalism. Some say the catalyst was Reform’s 1885 Pittsburgh Platform, which abandoned Jewish dietary laws and the idea of Jewish peoplehood.

But now the Conservatives – once the largest non-Orthodox stream – are shrinking. Reinvigorating middle-of-the-road traditional Judaism seems beyond its leadership’s abilities. With Orthodoxy moving theologically ever more rightward and Reform moving ever more to the left, Conservatives have failed to make an appealing case for a centrist alternative.

Once the movement joins the more liberal branches in (what amounts to) dispensing with Halacha, the trend toward religious fragmentation will accelerate further.


ALMOST paradoxically, then, the new leaders of both the Satmars and the Conservatives share a commitment to parochial interest over what is best for Jewish civilization as a whole, thus devaluing the idea of striving for a religious consensus.

Each faction professes to know God’s will. Indeed, as this momentum spirals one can foresee a Judaism that is ever more heterogeneous, losing its philosophical, civilizational and theological core.

It is already happening. What do Chabad and other millennial sects have in common with Satmar? What does ultra-liberal Judaism – which increasingly is to Jewish observance what homeopathy is to traditional medicine – have in common with Orthodoxy? Left unchecked, this scenario of religious disintegration will result in a Jewish people with no sense of a common past and no aspiration toward a shared future.

Such worries seem irrelevant to the protagonists on both sides of the East River. But to this Jew, who long ago left the insular haredi world into which he was born for what he hoped was a more centrist Judaism, the trend is tragic.