How Ted Kennedy's death is seen in Jerusalem

Liberals and Israel


The death of Sen. Edward Kennedy, a quintessential liberal, reminds us that there was a time when liberalism and pro-Israelism were synonymous.

Kennedy-style liberalism was rooted in optimism about human nature, trust in the good that government can do, and faith in the power of negotiations to resolve seemingly intractable problems.

Kennedy made his first trip to Israel in 1962 as a prelude to his senatorial campaign. Though it was billed as a "private visit," Kennedy gave a "fervent Zionist address" before 2,000 Hebrew University students. A handful of local communists protested the appearance. In those days, liberals and communists were bitter enemies.

As a freshman senator, Kennedy became chair of the subcommittee on international refugees. When he came to suspect that UNRWA money - largely contributed by US taxpayers - was being diverted to Ahmed Shukeiry, Yasser Arafat's predecessor, and his gunmen, he protested.

After visiting Arab refugee camps in Lebanon and the Jordanian-occupied West Bank, Kennedy advocated rehabilitation and training programs to help those displaced by the 1948 war start new lives. Israeli leaders supported his efforts. But the Arabs insisted that the only just solution for the refugees was their return to their original homes and the dismantling of Israel.

KENNEDY was by no means a knee-jerk supporter of this country.

He opposed Israeli retaliatory raids against Arab fedayeen and called for third-party mediation.

In 1966, he introduced his own plan for Middle East peace which advocated respect for the territorial integrity of all states in the region. The Arabs would have none of it.

After the 1967 Six Day War, Kennedy remained a steadfast friend of Israel and said that on a personal basis, he did not object to Jerusalem remaining united under Israeli sovereignty.

During the Nixon administration, he urged the sale of Phantom fighter planes to Israel, clashing with J.W. Fulbright, the powerful chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations committee.

By the early 1970s, he had became a key champion of the Soviet Jewry movement. In 1974, he irritated the Kremlin by meeting with Jewish refuseniks in Moscow.

Throughout the Nixon and Ford years, Kennedy steadfastly championed military aid to Israel.

When Jimmy Carter pushed a major arms package for Saudi Arabia, Kennedy voted against - though he honored a White House request not to lead the opposition to the deal. He also opposed Carter's occasional flirtations with the then-quarantined PLO.

And when the Carter administration supported an Arab-inspired UN Security Council resolution calling for the removal of all Jewish settlements beyond the 1949 Armistice Lines, Kennedy called the US vote "shameful." He wanted to see the parties negotiate the issues - including settlements.

He unsuccessfully challenged Carter for the 1980 Democratic presidential nomination, while receiving strong support from Rabbi Alexander Schindler of the Reform movement and other liberal Jews. (Carter ultimately lost his bid for a second term to Ronald Reagan.)

When Reagan sought to sell F-15s to Saudi Arabia in 1981, he too ran into opposition from Kennedy. And in the face of unbridled Reagan administration outrage over the Israeli attack on the Iraqi nuclear facility later that same year, Kennedy lambasted the administration as "profoundly wrong."

THE PRO-ISRAEL liberalism embodied by Kennedy, Hubert Humphrey, Henry Jackson, Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Jacob Javits seems archaic nowadays.

Their generation knew first-hand that the Arabs' rejection of Israel's existence was at the root of the conflict.

Today, calls for throwing the Jews into the sea have been replaced by reasonable-sounding Arab initiatives for a two-state solution. Only the fine print - pertaining to recognition, borders, militarization and refugees - suggests something else.

Once there were no settlements, and still the Arabs sought Israel's destruction. Yet yesterday, a CNN primer of the conflict pointed to settlements as the stumbling block to peace.

Maybe the old Kennedy liberals were really centrists, and today's progressives are really leftists. Or maybe, 60 years on, liberals have just grown uncomfortable and impatient - after Lebanon wars, intifadas, checkpoints, barriers and Gaza blockades.

The liberal catechism is 1. All conflicts are soluble; 2. Israel is the stronger party; 3. And so it must take the greater risks for peace.

Liberals are exasperated by Israel's failure to embrace these principles categorically. Yet we survive in this region because we don't.

Edward Kennedy understood all this and more. Israel feels his loss acutely.
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Shabbat shalom to all

MERKEL & NETANYAHU MEET TODAY IN BERLIN

The PM in Europe


Were it not for fresh revelations about the cause of Michael Jackson's demise and embarrassing questions about British Prime Minister Gordon Brown's involvement in setting the Lockerbie bomber free, the media in England might have devoted itself to more thoroughly bashing Israel on the occasion of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's visit to London this week.

Alas, the Guardian on Tuesday relegated its two anti-Zionist pieces to page 16. The Times carried a Ramallah-datelined interview with Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salaam Fayad on the inside pages. The Telegraph reported (incorrectly) that Netanyahu was about to concede on the settlement freeze issue, but worried that "his nationalist foreign minister" had "inflamed the situation by dismissing the prospect of a diplomatic breakthrough." The Independent tried to uncover the real reason Israel has lifted checkpoints in the West Bank including around Nablus, the "town once synonymous with the Palestinian resistance." According to one local, it was a temporary charade put on for the Americans and Europe.

That was the context for yesterday's meeting between Netanyahu and his "good friend" Brown at No. 10 Downing Street. Britain indeed counts itself as a "true friend" of Israel deeply concerned over a Jewish presence beyond the 1949 Armistice Lines. Yet despite incessant pressure from pro-Palestinian advocates for a boycott, Israel-UK trade remains strong. Netanyahu also thanked Brown for his support on the Iranian issue. Britain does not promote trade with Iran, though the extent of commerce between the two countries is hard to gauge since much of it takes place surreptitiously via the United Arab Emirates.

ON THURSDAY, Netanyahu is to meet with Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin. The last embers of hope that economic penalties could sway Ayatollah Ali Khamenei not to proceed with his bomb may well rest with her. Unfortunately, Germany has the distinction of being Iran's second biggest trading partner after China.

Germany is deeply involved in trying to influence events in the Israeli-Palestinian arena. It has lent its good offices to help free Israeli captives; it provides important military support to Israel. After Netanyahu's path breaking Bar-Ilan speech in June, Merkel telephoned with words of encouragement. Germany is also heavily involved in aiding the Palestinians - spending $50 million on West Bank sewage treatment plants.

Popular attitudes in Germany toward Israel are little different than elsewhere in Europe. The Economist recently described Germany as "a place built on consensus - in the workplace, in society and in politics."

It must exasperate Germans that Israelis and Palestinians have still not buried the hatchet. But they place the onus squarely on Israel because of the "occupation." It does not occur to them that unremitting Palestinian rejectionism is the main obstacle to peace. That explains why President Horst Kohler was tone deaf to Israeli outrage over awarding the Federal Cross of Merit to the anti-Zionist campaigner Felicia Langer.

During Operation Cast Lead, polls showed that Germans found Israel "aggressive" (49 percent) and "ruthless" (59%). Seventy percent of young Germans rejected the idea of a special relationship with Israel because of the Shoah. In fact, 13% opposed the existence of a Jewish state altogether.

In this context, it is notable that Merkel feels quite differently. During a March 2007 visit to Israel she insisted that Germany did have a "historic responsibility" to the Jewish state. "It means for me, as a German chancellor, Israel's security is non-negotiable." She has a reputation for being "a strong backer of Israel" and "instinctively pro-American" in venues where these are not necessarily meant as compliments.

Netanyahu arrives in Berlin a month before parliamentary elections that may see Merkel's Christian Democratic Union in a position to jettison its "grand coalition" with Vice Chancellor and Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier's Social Democratic Party. Arguably, one reason German policy has been less demonstrably pro-Israel than Merkel's rhetoric is Steinmeier's influence.

Guido Westerwelle of the Free Democratic Party, a likely Merkel coalition partner, is in the running for the foreign minister job. When Westerwelle's homosexuality was exposed, he was "smeared" with the - unproven - allegation of being "excessively pro-Israel."

After the September 27 elections, Israelis are hopeful that Merkel will find a way to bring her sentiments and her government's polices - especially on Iran - into greater harmony

What Obama can learn from LBJ

How to lose a war


Earlier this summer, The New York Times reported, Barack Obama gathered a group of historians for dinner at the White House. The president expressed concern that Afghanistan could hijack his presidency just as Vietnam overtook the stewardship of Lyndon B. Johnson. LBJ pursued a grand domestic agenda - civil rights and the Great Society - yet failure in Vietnam defined his presidency.

Military analyst Harry G. Summers, who died several years ago, identified two reasons why the US abandoned the fight in Vietnam in his book On Strategy: 1. There was no society-wide commitment to victory. American leaders had not psychologically mobilized the home front behind the war, refusing to ask Congress for a declaration of war; 2. The US failed to go after North Vietnam for most of the war, focusing instead on its Viet Cong proxies.

These fundamental errors are being repeated in the struggle against Islamist extremism.

People in Europe and America do not grasp why their troops are fighting in Afghanistan. On Iran, Western leaders have not only avoided a head-on confrontation with the mullahs, but are even seeking to appease their Hizbullah and Hamas proxies.

In fairness, Obama has tried to explain that Afghanistan is not a war of choice, but of necessity. "Those who attacked America on 9/11 are plotting to do so again. If left unchecked, the Taliban insurgency will mean an even larger safe haven from which al-Qaida would plot to kill more Americans."

In fact, the situation in Afghanistan is muddled. The surviving Arab terrorists responsible for 9/11 - including Ayman Zawahiri and Osama bin Laden - have found refuge inside Pakistan. The Taliban are actually a loose confederation of religious fanatics (whose leader, Mullah Omar, also survives), Pashtun xenophobes, drug lords and tribal chiefs. The war is being waged on both sides of the Afghan-Pakistan border, and Pakistan has its own Taliban. In this context, Afghan election results - due today - are unlikely to herald a new dawn.

The war is not going well. So America has revised its strategy. The focus is not on killing the enemy, but on avoiding civilian casualties while creating conditions necessary for society-building. Unfortunately, there are insufficient troops on the ground to accomplish this goal. Most of the country is too unsafe for aid agency personnel to operate.

Washington has invested $30 billion in Afghanistan since 9/11 and now has 57,000 military personnel on the ground. Britain has committed to 9,000. In theory, there are 42 nations in the anti-Taliban coalition, but whereas the US has suffered 796 combat deaths and Britain 206, the combined loses of Germany, France and Spain amount to 87. No wonder support for the war in Britain is stagnating at 46 percent, while fully 65% of Americans expect the US will eventually have to withdraw without achieving its goals.

BRITAIN'S unconscionable release on humanitarian grounds of terminally ill Abdel Baset al-Megrahi, the only person convicted in the December 21, 1988, Lockerbie bombing, could pave the way for billions of dollars in oil contracts between Tripoli and London. But what message does the Brown government's decision to play footsie with Muammar Gaddafi - while hiding behind the Scottish justice secretary - send to Britons already feeling cynical about staying the course in Afghanistan?

This sordid episode, moreover, does nothing to illuminate who really blew Pan Am flight 103 out of the sky.

In 2000, a man named Ahmad Behbahani, claiming to be a defecting Iranian intelligence operative, told CBS's 60 Minutes that Iran was behind Lockerbie; and that the motive for the attack was retaliation for the accidental downing in July 1988 of Iran Air flight 655 by the USS Vincennes, killing all 290 passengers. Behbahani spoke of an operation involving the Syrian-based Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command and a group of Libyans trained and funded by Iran.

If patience is running thin on Afghanistan, and there is no stomach to stop Iran, the reasons are obvious. From Lockerbie to Afghanistan, Western decision-makers have compartmentalized Islamist violence - rather than defined it as a strategic menace to the Western values of tolerance and liberty.

The lesson of Vietnam is that wars become unwinnable when leaders fail to identify their true enemies, leaving their societies unmobilized, confused and lacking in motivation.

Civil liberties even when it is not easy

From 'Aftonbladet' to Neve Gordon

It's easy to support freedom of the press and freedom of speech as abstract principles. But what if a Swedish newspaper publishes false stories that could inspire violence against Jews? What if a tenured Israeli academic calls on the world to boycott his country?

Last week, Donald Boström "reported" in the mass-circulation Swedish tabloid Aftonbladet that the IDF murders young Palestinian Arabs to enable the harvesting of their organs for transplanting. On Sunday, the paper said it had sent two other journalists, Oisin Cantwell and Urban Andersson, to the West Bank, where Palestinians confirmed Boström's original expose.

If Israelis have overreacted to this mendacious twaddle, it's because anti-Semitic blood libels have had deadly consequences for our people ever since Greek pagans first accused ancient Jews of kidnapping foreigners for sacrificial purposes. Christians picked up the theme in the Middle Ages, accusing Jews of drinking the blood of Christian children for ritual purposes.

In 1236, Germanic Christians "modified" the vilification by claiming that the Jews used the blood of Christian boys for medicinal purposes. And the Nazis brought the defamation into the 20th century via Der Stuermer.

Now Aftonbladet has the distinction of keeping the lie alive in 21st-century Europe.

Had the Swedish Foreign Ministry backed the condemnation of Boström's article by Elisabet Borsin Bonnier, Sweden's ambassador in Tel Aviv - instead of reprimanding her - the matter would have ended there. Stockholm could have announced that in a democracy, the government does not muzzle newspapers; but that the blood libel does not reflect the views of the Swedish people or government. Israel did not ask for anything more.

Instead, while Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt opted to pontificate about the Swedish constitution and freedom of speech, he could not bring himself to dissociate from the substance of the defamatory article.

STILL, perhaps the Israeli reaction has been over the top. While Aftonbladet was exposing the Jews for snatching Arab body parts, Britain's Sun newspaper revealed yesterday that space aliens may be in the process of invading that island nation. Indeed, over the weekend, the Scarborough Evening News reported fresh UFO sightings over Yorkshire.

Meanwhile, in America, the Weekly World News covered the discovery of the secret burial ground of Bigfoot. Only recently, the paper had revealed that the head of the Orthodox Church of Ethiopia would soon announce the location of the Ark of the Covenant, noting that some experts saw a link between UFOs and the Ark.

Perhaps Aftonbladet will now investigate the connection between other reports circulating on the Web of alien sex experiments on earthlings and the missing Palestinian organs. Or does the paper take itself too seriously to pursue such a line of inquiry?

Aftonbladet can take succor from the support it received Sunday from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. The terror group recalled that as early as the 1980s, the IDF had been suspected of stealing organs from Gazan children who had been taken to Israeli hospitals - ostensibly for treatment.

Free-world newspapers, in both hard copy and electronic form, can write basically anything they want, subject to self-regulation and national libel laws. So it should be.

The bylaws of the Swedish Journalists Association call on members not to lie. Sweden's press ombudsman and its press council are charged with monitoring and promoting good journalistic practice. Let them judge whether Aftonbladet has violated the ethical standards of Swedish journalism.

WE FEEL much the same way about Neve Gordon's op-ed in The Los Angeles Times last week, in which the Ben-Gurion University political science instructor called for boycott, divestment and sanctions against our country.

If the op-ed editors of the paper want to maintain their practice of carrying two pieces critical of Israel for every pro-Israel comment, that is their prerogative.

But it would be an egregious mistake - playing straight into Gordon's hands - for donors to punish his Zionist university in Beersheba for upholding freedom of expression in connection with Gordon's destructive views by withholding their support.

The most apt response would be for contributors to endow a chair in Zionist studies in Gordon's department, and for the university to fill it with a Zionist scholar of world renown.

Maybe there are just too many generals in Israeli politics

Ya'alon's misstep


Here's a prediction: When Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu travels to London and Berlin next week, Vice-Premier Moshe Ya'alon won't be standing in for him as acting premier. That's because Ya'alon has gone off the reservation.

As guest of honor earlier this week at a meeting of the Jewish Leadership Movement, a stridently right-wing Likud caucus led by Moshe Feiglin, Ya'alon said the wrong things, in the wrong way, in the wrong place.

In arguing that Jews have a right to live anywhere in Judea and Samaria, Ya'alon was articulating a fairly conventional Israeli position. Yet this government, in pursuing an accommodation with the Palestinian Arabs, has agreed that Israel will not exercise Jewish rights everywhere between the River Jordan and the Mediterranean.

In arguing that even unauthorized outposts "are completely legal," Ya'alon was staking out a position at odds with his own government.

The tone of what Ya'alon said was also off-putting. This newspaper has been critical of Peace Now for its wholesale marginalization of the entire settlement enterprise. We've criticized the organization too for taking money from foreign powers and foundations intent on swaying Israeli public opinion and government policies. Yet we have never questioned the motives of grassroots Israelis who earnestly identify with Peace Now. And we think Ya'alon's intolerant characterization of the organization as an elitist "virus" further demeans the level of political discourse in this country.

Ya'alon's venue was also peculiar. Netanyahu opposes any role for Feiglin within the party. The premier's ongoing campaign to block Feiglin, who nowadays plays by the rules of the political game, from lawfully dissenting within the Likud strikes us as wrongheaded. But in aligning himself so publicly with Netanyahu's nemesis, Ya'alon has demonstrated a remarkable lack of loyalty to the man who so recently ushered him into politics.

THE YA'ALON affair exposes yet again why the Israeli political system is dysfunctional. There is something awfully wrong when a number two feels no compunction about turning against his chief after only five months in office.

The controversy also reminds us that generals tend to find the give-and-take of politics exasperating. Politics is the art of the possible; it demands compromise and endless bargaining over who gets what, when and how. The military, in contrast, is a hierarchical organization. Generals give orders; subordinates obey.

Just as Ya'alon is proving a divisive force in the Likud - irritated, perhaps, that he has to compete with others in influencing the premier - Shaul Mofaz is champing at the bit as Tzipi Livni's number two in Kadima. Ehud Barak, meanwhile, has practically eviscerated the Labor Party to maintain his grip on power.

Ya'alon presents himself as a man above the fray who speaks truth to power. His supporters believe that Ariel Sharon did not extend the then chief of staff's term by the customary year because Ya'alon opposed the Gaza disengagement. Opinions differ on whether this was really so.

In any event, Ya'alon could learn something from his cabinet colleague Bennie Begin about honorable behavior at the apex of government.

THE PRIME Minister's Office announced that "Minister Ya'alon's statements are unacceptable to the prime minister, both in substance and in style, and do not represent the government's position."

Speaking at Bar-Ilan University in June, the premier outlined the peace policies of this government. He noted that "in the heart of our Jewish homeland [there] now lives a large population of Palestinians. We do not want to rule over them. We do not want to run their lives." He offered to negotiate the creation of a demilitarized state for the Palestinians, insisting that they recognize Israel as a Jewish state and renounce the "right of return" to Israel proper for refugees and their descendants. A pullback to the 1949 Armistice Lines is out of the question.

Ya'alon heard that speech - some reports suggested he participated in drafting it - and the next day told Army Radio that he could live with a Palestinian state under the conditions defined by Netanyahu.
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Shabbat shalom