Obama's first 100 days & Israel

Thursday - Two new leaders

As Israelis celebrated Yom Ha'atzmaut yesterday, President Barack Obama completed the first 100 days of his presidency - with some pundits and lobbyists baying for him to "stand up to Israel" by imposing an American diktat to "solve" the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

These calls often come from those who - without a trace of irony - say they are friends of Israel. Zbigniew Brzezinski, for example, wants Obama to declare: "This is the settlement. This is what we're for."

J Street's Jeremy Ben-Ami is more tactful, saying his goal is to provide Obama with political support within the Jewish community for what amounts to an imposed solution.

Thus has Binyamin Netanyahu's new government been greeted just 30 days after taking office.

From the day he took office, Obama has been under vicious attack by incorrigible partisans who stoke the flames of polarization. Nevertheless, his approval ratings are higher than those of George W. Bush or Bill Clinton 100 days into their presidencies.

Netanyahu has been called an enemy of peace and an opponent of a Palestinian state.

Obama has been accused of embarking on a march toward fascism or socialism; one critic even claimed the US government was building "internment camps" for its enemies. Regrettably, even mainstream television and radio outlets have given platforms to such absurd accusations.

The truth is that any president inheriting a nosediving economy in the midst of a global financial meltdown would have embarked on something like Obama's $789 billion stimulus package. While Americans have every right to debate his economic policies, no person of good faith can claim that Obama is leading America toward "tyranny."

Obama inherited a quagmire in Iraq, which is again being riven by sectarian bloodshed and anti-American sentiment. But aside from Iran, his most formidable foreign policy dilemma is Afghanistan-Pakistan, where al-Qaida and the Taliban pose a clear and present danger to the cities of America and Europe. The president is committed to defeating the extremists on their own turf.

Netanyahu, for his part, inherited a moribund negotiating process after the Palestinians rejected an extraordinarily magnanimous peace overture from Ehud Olmert. No reasonable critic of Israeli policy would suggest that Netanyahu wants to rule over the Palestinians, or that he is not committed to a territorial arrangement with them.

SO AS Israelis consider Obama's first 100 days, and as American policy-makers mull over Netanyahu's first month, here's what really matters:

• America is Israel's closest ally because the two nations share values and interests. Still, Washington and Jerusalem have long differed over how best to trade land for peace. We anticipate that the new administration will stand with Israel no less than its predecessors did. Similarly, we fully expect there to be sharp differences - as there always have been. Simply, the interests of America and Israel are not always identical.

• The link between the peace process and confronting Iran is straightforward. We in Israel need to do a better job of explaining to the administration that the menace of an ascendant, nuclear-armed regime, funneling guns and cash to Hamas and Hizbullah, inhibits the Palestinians' taking the most elemental steps toward peace.

• The administration warns that Teheran faces "crippling sanctions" if its rapprochement with Iran fails. It must realize that the clock is ticking.

• No one, least of all the Arab states, should need to be bought off to oppose a nuclear-armed Iran. Stopping the mullahs is a shared Arab, American and Israeli interest.

• Funding a Fatah-Hamas unity government - not that there's one in sight - without an explicit Hamas commitment to recognizing Israel, ending violence and abiding by previous Palestinian commitments would achieve only the illusion of momentum. A "unity" government not wholeheartedly committed to a two-state solution is hardly worth anyone's effort.

Candidate Obama chose his words carefully when he declared that "Israel's security is sacrosanct," and that "the United States must be a strong and consistent partner - not to force concessions, but to help committed partners avoid stalemate."

Those who would try to talk Obama out of this solemn pledge are no friends of Israel - no way, no shape, no how.

Israel at 61

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Dear readers,
Wed is a bank holiday in Israel. In fact, it is the ONLY day off that is not connected to a religious holiday that I can think of. (I work on election day.) And because we don't have a paper on Wednesday, if I play my cards right, I can do my Thursday writing today and have a real day off. Yipee!
Happy independence day.
elliot

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Tears and joys

Do you want to understand this country? Accompany us during the 48 hours that take in Remembrance Day and Independence Day.

There's a joke that says most Jewish holidays can be summed up thus: "They tried to kill us, they didn't succeed, let's eat." Yom Hazikaron and Yom Ha'atzmaut are different. The reality is more like: "They're still trying to kill us. We won't let them win. Let's eat."

Remembrance Day commemorations began yesterday at Ammunition Hill in Jerusalem, where one of bloodiest battles of the 1967 Six Day War was waged. The fortified Jordanian police station that stood on the hill had to be overcome to help clear the way to Mount Scopus, the campus of the Hebrew University and the Old City. Thirty-six men gave their lives to achieve that mission.

At 8 p.m. last night, a siren ushered in memorial services throughout the land. Television and radio broadcast the main ceremony from the Western Wall plaza. Stirring our emotions, the cameras showed the memorial flame being lit, our flag at half-mast and the honor guard at attention, with the Wall illuminated in the background.

When our dispersed people began their return to this land in the 1880s, who could have foretold that the culmination of that homecoming would be too late for millions of them? Who, moreover, could have known that the 1948 War of Independence would be but a down payment on further wars to come?

Another siren will pierce our heart this morning at 11 o'clock in remembrance of the 22,570 men and women - of the defense forces, police, secret services and the Jewish undergrounds - who fell defending our national renewal; from 1860, when those Jews already here first began trying to build their lives outside the Old City walls, up to Operation Cast Lead this year.

What a lot has changed in 61 years. Iran, once friendly, is now an implacable enemy racing to build a nuclear bomb and threatening our annihilation. Egypt and Jordan once warred against us; now there is peace.

But the elusive peace is the one denied us 61 years ago. The Palestinian Arabs call our achievement of self-determination their catastrophe - nakba. In his latest book, One State, Two States: Resolving the Israel/Palestine Conflict, historian Benny Morris writes: "Put simply, the Palestinian Arab nationalist movement, from inception, and ever since, has consistently regarded Palestine as innately, completely, inalienably, and legitimately 'Arab' and Muslim and has aspired to establish in it a sovereign state under its rule covering all of the country's territory."

In other words, even if one has a skewed view of the conflict in which the "occupation," "settlements" and "east Jerusalem house demolitions" block out every other reality, Morris is implying that were these seemingly burning issues made magically to disappear, Israel would still be at fault - for existing.

This explains why, in late 2008, the most moderate of Palestinian moderates, Mahmoud Abbas, spurned Ehud Olmert's overture to create a Palestinian state on the equivalent of 100 percent of the West Bank, plus Gaza.

It also explains why the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative is predicated not just on forcing Israel back to the hard-to-defend 1949 Armistice Lines and on swamping us with millions of Palestinian "refugees," but also on the Arab League's unwavering refusal to accept the legitimacy of Israel as a Jewish state. Why? Because to do so would be to admit that the Jews have a connection to this place that predates the arrival of the Arabs and the birth of Islam.

It would be an admission that the Jews have a right to share this land.

INDEPENDENCE Day celebrations begin at 8 p.m. Tuesday night. For many, the transition from somber commemoration is jarring. Yet there is no better way to demonstrate the link between the tears of sacrifice and the joys of independence.

And so, we wipe away our tears and begin counting our blessings: In 1948, this country started out with 600,000 Jews; today there are 5,593,000. Since Independence Day last year, more than 150,000 babies were born; more than 12,000 Jews made aliya.

Keep counting, and Hag Sameah.

AND IN OTHER NEWS....

Monday - New flu in perspective


Gone are the days when a public health scare in Mexico or Hong Kong had little relevance for Israelis.

No sooner had Shabbat ended when news arrived that the H1N1 swine flu virus could be threatening a global pandemic. Over 80 Mexicans have been felled. Hundreds more are sick. Possible cases have been reported in France, Spain and New Zealand (among a group of students and teachers who returned to Auckland via Los Angeles after spending several weeks in Mexico). Eleven cases of H1N1 have been reported in California and Texas, along the Mexican border.

Some 3,000 miles away in New York City, health officials are examining whether eight students in Queens have come down with mild cases of the disease. And in London, officials breathed a sigh of relief after determining that the flu-like symptoms experienced by a British Airways cabin crew member on a flight from Mexico City was not swine flu.

Margaret Chan, director-general of the World Health Organization, declared the disease a "public health event of international concern." The WHO threat level is currently set at 3. If a pandemic is imminent, it will rise to level 5.

Public health experts find it worrisome that those affected are not mainly the medically vulnerable, whose immune systems may be compromised, but also many young and vigorous people.

While swine flu is not new and cases of human-to-human transmission have previously been documented, the current H1N1 is the result of a mutation of genetic material from pigs, humans and birds.

There is no vaccine for H1N1, nor do scientists know whether individuals vaccinated against regular flu will be protected.

NATURALLY, there is a psychological component to the crisis. Images beamed around the world from Mexico City of nuns on their way to Sunday services and train commuters wearing surgical face masks create a sense of unease. Even the White House found it necessary to say that President Barack Obama was fine, thank you very much, in response to a disconcerting report that while in Mexico City, he met with Felipe Solis, an archeologist who subsequently died of flu-like symptoms.

While epidemiologists gather their data in an effort to clarify the nature and extent of the outbreak, Israel, like all countries in our globalized world, is gearing up. Better to be prepared, as we were for the 2003 SARS scare, than to be caught off guard.

H1N1 symptoms include a fever of more than 37.8°C (100°F), body aches, coughing, sore throat, respiratory congestion and, in some cases, vomiting and diarrhea.

At this writing, there have been no confirmed cases of H1N1 flu here. Physicians are, however, diagnosing a 26-year-old Israeli who returned from Mexico on Sunday and had himself admitted into Netanya's Laniado Hospital.

Obviously, Israelis who return from abroad feeling ill, with a fever, need immediate medical evaluation. Our Health Ministry has been in contact with health providers to ensure that cases of flu are promptly diagnosed and reported. Since carriers of the disease could themselves be asymptomatic, quarantining is not necessarily indicated. Still, the MDA is deploying special equipment in some of its ambulances should it prove necessary to transport highly infectious cases.

THE potential crisis comes just as Ya'acov Litzman takes over at the Health Ministry as deputy minister. Litzman is a savvy, dedicated and personally modest public servant who grew up in the Borough Park neighborhood of Brooklyn. Although his haredi and non-Zionist United Torah Judaism party prefers (for religious reasons) not to have a cabinet vote, Litzman's talent and drive should not be underestimated.

Moreover, Israel enjoys a highly advanced medical infrastructure; and ample supplies of Tamiflu, generally effective against flu symptoms, are available. We're also fortunate that with spring here and windows open, making ventilation easier, the virus should find our climate less than hospitable.

As long as the authorities are alert, the rest of us can stay calm. Still, basic precautions are called for: Cover your nose and mouth with a tissue when you cough or sneeze. Wash your hands often with soap and water, especially after coughing or sneezing. Alcohol-based hand cleaners are also effective. Avoid touching your eyes, nose or mouth because germs spread that way.

We should all stay healthy.

Dr. Fadl and the muddled moralists

Erev Shabbat

How the human rights community keeps getting it wrong

Sayyid Imam al-Sharif - known as Dr. Fadl - was an early "spiritual" leader of al-Qaida and inspiration of Egypt's Islamic Jihad, which assassinated Anwar Sadat. In the wake of 9/11, he was arrested in Yemen. Today, sitting in an Egyptian prison and having experienced an epiphany, he spends his days writing on Islamic jurisprudence.

As Israel Television's Arab affairs analyst Oded Granot reported, Dr. Fadl recently launched a religious attack on the way Hamas conducted the recent Gaza war. The prophet Muhammad, he declared, would not have authorized the battle; and Allah will hold Hamas leaders accountable for every drop of Muslim blood spilled.

Granot's report came just as the preliminary results of the IDF's probe of civilian casualties in Operation Cast Lead were released. Five military investigative teams reviewed how our armed forces conducted themselves in the recent fighting. They examined incidents involving UN or international facilities fired upon; medical buildings, ambulances and crews shot at; numbers of civilians harmed; use of weaponry containing phosphorous; and, finally, damage caused to infrastructure and buildings.

WHEN Israel withdrew from Gaza in summer 2005, the Palestinian leadership wasted no time in turning the Strip into the prototype of the "Palestine" they hope to create, firing thousands of rockets and mortars at our civilian population. The people of Sderot and the surrounding Negev communities were traumatized; homes, schools, synagogues and parks were damaged. Life became close to intolerable. In December 2008, after Hamas refused to renew a de-facto cease-fire arranged under Egyptian auspices, Israel finally struck back.

To warn civilians away from areas about to come under bombardment, the IDF dropped 2,250,000 warning leaflets. It commandeered enemy radio frequencies, and made 165,000 automated telephone calls alerting individual Gazans. It used costly but highly accurate munitions. And it authorized humanitarian convoys to enter Gaza - indeed, it halted offensive activities for several hours a day to allow Palestinian civilians to obtain basic necessities.

While our army was attempting to minimize civilian casualties, the enemy's forces operated largely under cover of those civilians. Violating the elementary rules of war, Palestinian gunmen utilized residential dwellings, hospitals, mosques, schools and UN and other international agency buildings. Ismail Haniyeh chose Shifa Hospital as his headquarters, his gunmen camouflaging themselves as doctors and nurses. Red Crescent Society ambulances were used to smuggle fighters and weapons.

And still, according to these preliminary results, the IDF managed to operate in accordance with international law. Grossly irresponsible accusations recently aired by several Hebrew media outlets claiming that soldiers intentionally or recklessly targeted Palestinian civilians were, according to the probe, baseless.

SADLY, wars claim the lives of innocents: 150,000-200,000 in current intra-Muslim fighting in Algeria; 25,000-50,000 in Muslim-Russian fighting in Chechnya; and, since the US ousted Saddam Hussein, 600,000-1.2 million in Iraq, to cite just a few examples.

In the course of the Gaza fighting, the IDF killed 709 enemy combatants and 295 civilians (the identities of 162 other male dead have not been established). There is not an iota of proof that Israeli forces willfully killed a single civilian. And yet - because Hamas embedded itself among its own population - innocents died. To cite one ghastly blunder, 21 members of the Daya family were killed on January 6 because Israeli forces hit their home instead of the weapons depot just next door.

Some 600 structures were destroyed, either when gunmen shot from inside them, or because they served as armories; or to provide our troops with safe passage around booby-trapped buildings.

Will the IDF's probe lead media outlets to retract their assertion that "1,300 Palestinians, mostly women and children, were killed"? Probably not.

Will it make Israel's human rights community, or the foreign governments and foundations who bankroll them, stop claiming that the army is lying, or even inject greater caution into their critiques? Unlikely.

At root, the army's critics are frustrated by the link between the IDF's determination to minimize its own casualties (disparaged as "zero-risk" doctrine) and the number of enemy non-combatants killed. They see Israel's refusal to play into Hamas's human shields strategy as unethical.

For them, too few of our sons came home in body bags.

Which tells us that Dr. Fadl now has a better grip on right and wrong than certain morally obtuse human rights advocates.

CATCHING UP - Durban & Incitement

this brings me up to date... as far as catching-up goes.

The case for 'incitement'

It's no secret that stories critical of government polices that appear in the Israeli media become fodder for those abroad with an anti-Israel agenda. Indeed, foreign critics can honestly claim that they are "echoing" what media outlets or prominent journalists here are asserting.

But while there are often disturbing aspects to the populist and ideological bent of much of the media - which sometimes lapses into dangerous irresponsibility - our robust press is integral to civil liberties.

"Hasbara" - Israel's public diplomacy - is self-evidently problematic because the country does not speak with one voice. Israeli officials may be vexed by what they read in the morning papers or watch on the evening news. But they rightly have no control over news and opinion.

A free press is a "handicap" this and any democracy willingly embraces.

NOT SO in much of the Muslim and Arab world. Recently, Arab extremists learned that the Israel Foreign Ministry had been translating and posting articles on its website from the Arab media. This material highlighted the ideological divide between writers associated with the rejectionist camp (Syria, for example) and relative moderates (Egypt and Saudi Arabia). As reported by the invaluable Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), a number of media outlets aligned with the rejectionists then published a blacklist of "moderate" writers who, they claimed were paid Zionist agents since their criticism of Arab affairs was picked up by Israel.

To which one blacklisted "moderate" retorted: "Israel is winning the wars because it has mechanisms for [self-] criticism [even] in times of war… The resistance and jihad movements must be divested of their aura of sanctity and subjected to a cost-benefit assessment."

Of course, the main reason differing views among the Arabs are aired at all is that opposing voices toe the line of the respective regimes under which they live; or because they work and publish in the West.

THE ISSUE of press freedom is very much on the agenda at the Durban II conference in Geneva even though Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's pathetic Monday performance hogged the media spotlight.

At stake is the question of whether Muslim and Arab delegates will succeed in imposing their free press "standards" on other civilizations. The conference will be voting on whether to include in its closing policy statement an innocuous-sounding clause prohibiting "incitement."

As anyone who has strolled down the streets of, say, Cairo, or picked up an Arabic newspaper knows, incitement to Jew-hatred and anti-Zionism is perfectly acceptable.

But the Muslim delegations would use the incitement clause of the final Durban II statement to ban all criticism of Islam, Shari'a law, the prophet Muhammad and controversial tenets of Islam.

Muslims point to the controversial 2005 cartoon depicting Muhammad with a bomb in his turban which was published by the Danish newspaper Jyllands Posten as precisely the kind of "incitement" their Durban II efforts are intended to head off. That cartoon, and 11 others simultaneously published by that newspaper, sparked Muslim riots worldwide.

Flemming Rose, the editor who commissioned and published the cartoons, said he did so because he had noticed a disturbing trend of self-censorship. Writers, artists, museum curators and translators had all been intimidated into avoiding involvement with projects critical of Muslim extremism.

Rose, currently in Israel to deliver a series of lectures under the auspices of Hebrew University's Shasha Center for Strategic Studies run by Efraim Halevy, says he ran the cartoons to draw a line against this encroaching self-censorship, and to hammer home the idea that criticism of Islam - actually of those who hijack it for extremist purposes - is not synonymous with insulting the religion.

If Durban II supports the anti-incitement clause, the Muslim and Arab world will have succeeded in insinuating its illiberal attitude toward the press on the international community.

And if the West compromises on press freedom to placate Muslims, the capitulation will be seen, correctly, as a sign not of respect, but of submission.