Obama meets US Jewish leaders

Whenever American Jewish leaders are invited to the White House to talk
about Israel --­ as 16 were on Monday evening ­-- rest assured that the purpose
of the invitation is not to give the machers an opportunity to sway the leader of the free world, but for the administration to diminish any prospect of them lobbying against the president's policies.

White House aides Rahm Emanuel, David Axelrod and Dan Shapiro sought to
exclude anyone who was likely to strike a discordant note.

None of Israel's leading Christian supporters were invited. And just to be on the safe side, the heads of marginal groups lobbying for an American-imposed solution to
the conflict were invited, and put on a par with the leaders of mainstream
political, religious, fraternal and philanthropic organizations.

It's one thing to criticize Israel's policies; another to advocate
approaches that endanger our security.

Jewish personalities have been legitimately criticizing this or that Israeli
policy since the 1950s, long before the "occupation" and settlements.

When the settlement enterprise got under way after the 1967 war, American Jewish
leaders were not enamored. But so long as the Arabs were perceived to be in
a zero-sum conflict with Israel, Diaspora discomfiture over settlements was
mostly muted. That changed when the perception became one of an emerging
moderate Palestinian Arab leadership genuinely committed to a two-state
solution.

Various administrations have since found it easier to pressure Israel into
concessions by dissociating the pro-Israel community from Israeli West Bank
policies, and by promoting American pressure as being in Israel¹s own best
interest.

Today, we are witnessing a "perfect storm" of diffuse US pressure on Israel.
Begin with the unyielding opposition to the settlement enterprise of every
administration since Richard Nixon's. Add the growing sense among
establishment figures that non-strategic settlements really are an obstacle
to peace. Consider that the overwhelming majority of American Jews have
never once visited this country and have no understanding of the topography
of the West Bank, or of Israel's legitimate security needs. Then throw in
the emergence of self-proclaimed pro-Israel groups ­ stridently ideological,
highly mobilized and well-funded ­ advocating an American-imposed solution
to the conflict.

Never has criticism of Israel been less nuanced and more unhelpful to
fostering peace.

Who can blame Barack Obama for exploiting this political environment to put
the screws on Israel?

Answer: Those who realize that the settlement-freeze
issue is a red herring; that the non-zero-sum nature of Palestinian
intentions is far from assured; and that it is the Palestinians, not Israel,
who are inhibiting progress on a two-state solution.

AT MONDAY¹S meeting, according to The Los Angeles Times, Obama told the Jewish leaders that public disagreements between the US government and Israel were useful leverage in the pursuit of peace. The AP synopsized
Obama¹s position this way: Eight years of demanding Palestinian concessions
produced no results; it was time to try a different tack.

Assuming these accounts are accurate, it is depressing that Obama's words
did not elicit respectful dissent. Rather, as one rabbinical attendee -- a leader of the Conservative movement -- told reporters, he was keen to let the president have a go.

Obama claimed that the media tended to play up disagreements with Israel
while ignoring his demands of the Arabs. If so, that's probably because the
administration's calls on Israel are public and strident, while those on the
Arabs are hushed and diplomatic.

I'm not suggesting that Obama is substantively less pro-Israel than most
of his predecessors. But I am concerned over his refusal to explicitly
embrace the 1967-plus strategy enunciated by his predecessor. The furthest
he seems willing to go is to hint that changes which have occurred since
1967 will inevitably influence final-status negotiations.

IF THE administration feels it faces no countervailing pressure, it will go
on maintaining that settlements are the obstacle to peace. This alienates
Israel's majority, which is willing to make painful territorial concessions,
yet believes that ill-tempered calls for an unconditional freeze everywhere
only encourage Palestinian intransigence.

Pro-Israel Americans should caution Obama not to lose the Israeli "street"
as he seeks favor with the Arab one.

They need to say --­ loud and clear --­ that the principles enunciated by Prime
Minister Binyamin Netanyahu at Bar-Ilan deserve strong the administration's
backing.

Javier Solana and an imposed 'peace' in the Middle East

'Real mediation'


Javier Solana has had enough. After 10 years as the European Union's foreign policy chief - and despite all the treasure and energy he has poured into Middle East peacemaking - the physicist-turned-diplomat is heading into retirement with Iran on the cusp of an atom bomb, Hamas solidifying its control over Gaza, and Mahmoud Abbas as recalcitrant as ever.

On July 11, Solana gave a speech to the Ditchley Foundation in London which made headlines.

Like many diplomats and intellectuals, Solana appears to regard a Palestinian state as some kind of regional cure-all. Reading between the lines, it's as if he believes that the mullahs in Iran will stop grabbing for regional hegemony, stealing (rigged) elections, and pursuing nuclear weapons; that Arab autocrats will guide their polities toward tolerance and representative government; that Shi'ites and Sunnis will stop blowing each other up; that Kurds, Copts and Baha'is will gain equality.

The Taliban in Afghanistan will liberate women from their burqas; North Africa's Islamists will lay down their weapons; al-Qaida will disband. And millions of restive, alienated Muslims throughout Europe will find a sense of belonging, allowing tranquility to prevail in the continent's inner cities... If only the Palestinians had a state.

THE FRAMEWORK for Palestinian statehood Solana referenced in his London speech included the Clinton Parameters and the Geneva Initiative. Israelis find these, whatever their imperfections, broadly acceptable as points of departure for negotiations.

It was on January 7, 2001 that then-president Bill Clinton called for the creation of a contiguous Palestinian state on most of the West Bank; for the incorporation of settlement blocs into Israel, and for land swaps as necessary. Palestinian refugees, he said, could "return" only to a non-militarized Palestine.

The European-financed Geneva Initiative similarly called for settlement blocs to be annexed to Israel and for a demilitarized Palestinian state. It also insisted that a solution to the refugee issue had to be found in "Palestine," not Israel.

Tellingly, Solana chose to ignore the fact that Ehud Olmert, at the end of 2008, had essentially offered Abbas a turbo-charged version of the Clinton Parameters. Abbas said no, insisting that Israel pull back to the 1949 Armistice Lines and permit itself to be demographically smothered by Arab "refugees" in their millions.

Solana's speech then went off on a tangent about settlements - about how many more Jews lived in Judea and Samaria today compared to when the Oslo Accords were signed. Solana knows that were Israel and the Palestinians to agree on permanent boundaries, settlements situated on the Arab side of the border would, in all probability, be uprooted. It is the Palestinian propensity for violence and intransigence that has robbed Israelis of any incentive to abandon the Jewish heartland.

Solana's fixation with settlements obfuscates and plays to the galleries, but does not genuinely illuminate why peacemaking has stalled.

Next, he turned to Hamas: "Whether we like it or not, Hamas will have to be part of the solution." Full stop. Not a word about the Quartet's principles on recognizing Israel, ending terrorism and abiding by past Palestinian commitments.

He did offer a circumspect critique of the "binary character - all or nothing" of the Arab Peace Initiative, which he admitted would have to be "nuanced."

SOLANA THEN offered a way forward toward creating a Palestinian state: "real mediation." By this, he appeared to mean imposing a solution, and a timetable for its implementation. If the parties didn't go along, he'd have the UN Security Council essentially codify the "real mediation" with its imprimatur.

The contrasting reactions to the Solana speech are instructive. The Palestinians' creative interpretation had Solana calling for the Security Council to recognize a Palestinian state - in line with their maximalist stance - by a certain deadline; even if Israel does not.

Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said: "We do not object. It's time for the international community to stop treating Israel as above the laws of man."

The reaction of Israel's Foreign Ministry was that peace had to be built on negotiations, not imposed.

Plainly, the Palestinians trust that an internationally imposed "peace" would mostly ignore Israeli concerns, while catering to theirs.

Israelis do not disagree.

NAACP at 100 as seen from Jerusalem

Out of Africa

In the American ideal, leaders who cling to power through deceit and the silencing of dissent are on the wrong side of history, to paraphrase a line from President Barack Obama's inaugural address.

This was essentially the message Obama brought with him as he and his family spent a day over the weekend in Ghana.

The president is of Kenyan descent on his father's side; the First Lady is the great-great-granddaughter of a slave.

In Ghana, the couple and their daughters, Sasha, eight, and Malia, 11, passed through the "Door of No Return" at Cape Coast Castle, where African slaves were "warehoused" in dungeons, sometimes for weeks on end, before being shipped to a life of bondage in the New World. Obama said the 17th-century fortress was "reminiscent of the trip that I took to Buchenwald. It reminds us of the capacity of human beings to commit great evil."

Though the White House kept the itinerary of the visit low-key, thousands of Ghanaians, many wearing souvenir T-shirts and waving American flags, lined the streets and crowded on rooftops to catch a glimpse of Obama.

Ghana was selected for the visit because it is one of the few stable democracies on the continent.

Obama met with President John Atta Mills and addressed parliamentarians and dignitaries at Accra's convention center, saying: "We must start from the simple premise that Africa's future is up to Africans… The West is not responsible for the destruction of the Zimbabwean economy over the last decade, or wars in which children are enlisted as combatants."

He drew applause when he added: "No business wants to invest in a place where the government skims 20 percent off the top, or the head of the port authority is corrupt. No person wants to live in a society where the rule of law gives way to the rule of brutality and bribery."

OBAMA returned to the US just as delegates of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) were gathering in Manhattan to mark the group's centenary. An impetus for the NAACP's founding was the revulsion liberals felt toward the vile practice of lynching; another was shock over the anti-black rampages in Springfield, Illinois, in 1908.

The NAACP's founders and early activists included legendary African Americans, among them W.E.B. Du Bois, joined by socially committed Jews, including Henry Moscowitz, Joel Spingarn, Julius Rosenthal, Lillian Wald, Emil G. Hirsch and Stephen Wise.

Over the years, Jews also contributed to some of the key legal victories achieved by the civil rights movement. For instance, Jack Greenberg assisted Thurgood Marshall in the watershed US Supreme Court case of Brown v. the Board of Education of Topeka, and succeeded him as counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund.

When the black power movement achieved ascendancy in the 1960s-1970s, and violent Jew-hatred became a regular occurrence in urban America, what divided Jews and blacks became stronger than that which united them. The two communities were further driven apart because Jews mostly opposed racial preferences in employment (affirmative action) - even to compensate for institutionalized discrimination.

Meanwhile, the NAACP went through a period of racial chauvinism, reaching its nadir with the brief appointment, in April 1993, of Ben Chavis as executive director. He was and remains a follower of the notorious hater Louis Farrakhan.

TO A welcome and remarkable extent, tensions between African Americans and Jews have receded in the 21st century. It seemed only natural that Obama should receive 78 percent of the Jewish vote, and that two of the president's closets aides would be Jewish.

Today's NAACP, led by Benjamin Todd Jealous, has recommitted to the values of its founders: "We are from our origin a multiracial, multiethnic human rights organization."

And so long as prejudice, sometimes spilling over into outright hate, remains intrinsic to human nature there will be work for advocates of civil rights.

The US civil rights movement and our Zionist enterprise, 6,000 miles away, share a passion for the Promised Land. For Zionists, it is a tangible place; for African Americans it is more of an destination. As both secure their hard-won achievements, they need to strive to remain faithful to their founders' ideals.

NETANYAHU'S FIRST 100 DAYS

Credibility is key


It's doubtful the media ever assessed David Ben-Gurion's "first 100 days"; or Moshe Sharett's - or, for that matter, Menachem Begin's.

The idea of evaluating the first 100 days of a modern head of government originated with the American presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who came to power in 1933 at the height of the Great Depression. Said political scientist Robert DiClerico: "The first hundred days of his administration were a bustle of activity, producing the greatest waterfall of legislation of any president in [US] history."

Most of FDR's successors found him a hard act to follow. But the 100-day milestone stuck and eventually gained momentum even outside America. In Britain, for instance, Margaret Thatcher's leadership was critiqued in June 1975, 100 days after she assumed office - and that's been the case with every premier down to Gordon Brown. Nicolas Sarkozy, among other European leaders, came into office promising results "within 100 days."

BINYAMIN Netanyahu may have imported the "first 100 days" concept to this country when he became premier in 1996 and pledged to come up with a list of state-owned companies that would be privatized. He didn't.

Ehud Barak's first 100 days were charitably evaluated, in October 1999, as "at least setting the stage" for fulfilling the promises he had made in his campaign. When Ariel Sharon was elected to pick up the pieces of Barak's premiership, his first 100 days were devoted to figuring out how to defeat Yasser Arafat's second intifada. Yet Sharon still managed to obtain Knesset support for a bold economic recovery plan.

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's first 100 days were upstaged by the kidnapping of Gilad Schalit and the collapse of his convergence plan.

Now the first-100-day criterion has come back to haunt Netanyahu, with Kadima opposition leader Tzipi Livni attacking his government for zigzagging, lack of direction, and failing to address the economic crisis. Her party unveiled a bumper-sticker - "Bibi's the same Bibi. 100 days, zero accomplishments" - which reportedly upset the premier when an aide showed it to him.

Meanwhile, on the steadfast Right, Netanyahu is being pilloried for turning his back on what was understood to be his pledge to oppose a Palestinian state.

NO ONE can fault the premier when unprincipled reporters ambush his venerable 100-year-old father to extract assertions that make the son look like a dissembler. Yet the criticism that Netanyahu has been zigzagging, on both foreign policy and domestic issues, is not without merit.

He hesitated too long before making his Bar-Ilan speech articulating mainstream Israel's acquiescence in a demilitarized Palestinian state.

He misguidedly enlarged Defense Minister (and embattled Labor Party chief) Ehud Barak's portfolio to make him de facto special envoy to the Obama administration. By sidelining Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, Netanyahu has been signaling a "soft" negotiating strategy when, arguably, a better bargaining approach - given President Obama's apparently resolute determination to force a categorical and unconditional settlement freeze on Israel - would have been to let the pragmatic but tough Lieberman play his scripted role.

The government has also been ineptly leaking its compromise proposal for a settlement freeze before locking in Washington's assent, eliciting State Department denials and making a face-saving compromise harder to achieve.

In the domestic sphere, Netanyahu's first 100-day flip-flops on budget cuts and, this week, on the proposed imposition of VAT on fruits and vegetable, have manifestly undermined his credibility.

On the positive side, he's advocated a two-year budget process, which if implemented will promote fiscal stability. He has sought to codify the Bank of Israel's independence. His championing of a bill to reform the Israel Lands Administration, while problematic, deserves to be frankly debated.

AT THE end of the day, Israel's hyper-pluralist political system cannot fairly be compared to America's, or even Britain's forms of government. For an American president, the 100-day countdown is typically accompanied by a political honeymoon. Not so in Israel, where Netanyahu was forced to cobble together a coalition of ideologically disparate parties, making and breaking promises just to get from one day to the next.

But the peculiarity of our political system notwithstanding, Netanyahu needs to stop hemorrhaging his credibility if he is to provide the leadership these times demand.
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Shabbat shalom
thanks for reading....

Abba Eban interviewed in 1958 by Mike Wallace

The more things change, the more the stay the same.

The interview below was just brought to my attention and I wanted to share it with friends and readers who see my postings.Very much worth watching.


http://www.hrc.utexas.edu/multimedia/video/2008/wallace/eban_abba.html

You'll particularly enjoy the Parliament commercial -- Wallace always the showman. Wallace has been accused of being a self-hating Jew over his long career. I think that's a bit harsh. But his ability to articulate the Arab critique of Israel, I know see, dates back decades.

Watch. Enjoy. Learn.
elliot