State Dept. bureaucrats on religious freedom

More than 40 years ago I chose public administration as my specialty in political science. I still poke at it, despite being interested in other things as well.
 
Here I will take a poke at the US State Department's 2009 Report on International Religious Freedom published by the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor. It was prepared for Congress in compliance with Section 102(b) of the International Religious Freedom Act (IRFA) of 1998.

All that is bureaucratic folderol meaning that Congress gives the State Department a mandate, among its many other duties, to monitor and report on religious freedom throughout the world - but not in the United States. More on the exclusion later.
 
The section on Israel and the Occupied Territories is long and detailed. It will offend Jews hyper-sensitive to criticism, but is generally accurate. It describes the considerable advantages that government policy provides to Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox Judaism, and incidents of violence and property destruction attributed to individuals against non-Jewish facilities and individuals, including Messianic Jews, i.e., individuals claiming to be Jews who have accepted Christ as their messiah.
 
Critics could find additional reasons to cite Israel for its lack of conformity to what is considered acceptable among politically correct Westerners. There is no mention in the report of the restriction against a man with the surname of Cohen marrying a divorcee.
 
The section on the Occupied Territories is appended to that on Israel, and spends considerable verbiage criticizing Israeli restrictions on Palestinians, including Israel's closure of the territories during Jewish religious holidays, and the impact of the security barrier.
 
One item in the section on the Occupied Territories deals with ultra-Orthodox modesty squads that attack Jewish women on account of their behavior. Civil rights advocates may applaud the language, but it appears to be an issue among Jews in Israel. I recall one incident in the Mea She'arim neighborhood of Jerusalem. The bureaucrats in the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor do not document the location attached to this allegation. Perhaps it has signed on to the Palestinian narrative that Jerusalem is Palestine. 
 
It's a stretch, but one can describe the Report on Israel and the Occupied Territories as "balanced." It's the same stretch required to conclude that BBC and CNN are "balanced" in their coverage of Israel and Palestine. One can find criticism of all sides, but the overall flavor is not friendly to Israel.

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The crippled giant

You've heard of the crippled giant? The term refers to an entity with so much power that its obligations work against one another.

Consider the United States, with President Barack Obama trying mightily to break the bonds of lethargy identified with his predecessor.

An article in The New York Times describes his handicaps in Afghanistan. President Karzai is not cooperating with American goals of development and reform. Evidence is that Karzai stole the most recent election, and has put in key positions individuals soaked with blood, drug and financial corruption. Advice from White House and military aides is to try harder. One proposal is for an additional 40,000 troops.

The trap is that Obama cannot threaten Karzai without losing face and confirming American weakness. Karzai has already promised reform, more than once, without delivering. Obama cannot pull out his troops. That would weaken the resolve of Pakistan to work with diligence against Taliban. Without that, where is the war against terror?

Obama's handicap in Afghanistan is costly in American blood. His handicap in the Middle East is measured in embarrassment.
 
The president included a major effort in the Middle East as well as in Afghanistan under his banner of Change. A few days ago, one of Israel's respected and moderate commentators called his efforts "childish" on a widely-viewed evening program.
 
Remember the speech in Cairo? The president made demands on Israeli, Palestinian, Egyptian and other Arab leaders. So far there has been hemming and hawing, and assertions by one and all that they cannot take major steps without someone else moving first. While the president seemed to overlook Hamas-controlled Gaza, perhaps in the hope that it would come along if everything else worked, it remains one of the elephants in the Middle East living room.

A multi-cultural conundrum

The Fort Hood killings will reverberate. At the lower end of the military, Muslims will find their property trashed, and hear themselves called "camel jockeys" and "rag heads". The stories will differ only in detail from those told over the years by Jews, Catholics, African Americans and Hispanics. Soldiers the world over are young and the salt of the earth, not likely to be the most sensitive members of society. 
 
The killings also reflect the US problem that stems from its assumption of responsibility for wherever in the world it decides to intervene. Its most prominent enemies are now Muslims, and it has few citizens with suitable language and cultural skills. It needs American Muslims. Hasan's story illustrates the trap comprised by that need; some American Muslims will inevitably respond badly to serving against other Muslims.

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Friedman gets an A-

Thomas Friedman has written one of his better articles. 
 
As a retired professor still inclined to give grades to everything I hear or read, I'd say about 92, or A-.
 
The major theme is quite good. Friedman recognizes that there is no gas left in the peace process. It's like going to an old play, where the actors are no longer inspiring while reciting their well worn lines. As a result, the Obama administration should back off, tell the parties to call the White House when they're interested, and spend its energies fixing the many problems of the United States.
 
Why only an A-?
 
Friedman cannot refrain from giving equal responsibility to Israeli and Palestinian participants, with a nod toward the negative contributions of other Arabs, and finds no fault whatsoever with the American administration or decent governments elsewhere.

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Political aggression and its consequences

Excerpts from an official United Nations summary of the Human Rights Council resolution on the Goldstone Report:

. . . while the Israeli Government sought to portray its operations as a response to rocket attacks in the exercise of its right to self defence, the Israeli plan had been directed, at least in part, at the people of Gaza as a whole ... the treatment of many civilians detained or killed while trying to surrender [is] one manifestation of the way in which the effective rules of engagement, standard operating procedures and instructions to the troops on the ground appeared to have been framed to create an environment in which due regard for civilian lives and basic human dignity was replaced with a disregard for basic international humanitarian law.... The destruction of food supply installations, water sanitation systems, concrete factories and residential houses had been the result of a deliberate and systematic policy by the Israeli armed forces and not because those objects had presented a military threat ... other Israeli activities, particularly in Jerusalem, including ... limits to Palestinian access to properties and holy sites based on national origin, religion, sex, age or other grounds ... a grave violation of the Palestinian people's civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights ... Israeli violations of human rights in occupied East Jerusalem, particularly the confiscation of lands and properties, the demolishing of houses, the construction and expansion of settlements, the continuing construction of the separation wall built in part on land Israel occupied in the 1967 war, and the continuous digging and excavation works in and around Al-Aqsa mosque and its vicinity.... The Council demanded that Israel allow Palestinian citizens and worshippers unhindered access to their properties and religious sites in the occupied Palestinian territory, cease immediately all digging and excavations beneath and around the mosque, and refrain from any acts may endanger the structure or change the nature of Christian and Islamic holy sites."

What to do?

An obvious option is to persuade friendly and neutral governments that the resolution is one-sided, distorted or false, and a threat against Israel's elementary right to defend itself. Israel will work with its friends to assure that other United Nations forums, the courts and governments of individual countries do not respond to the Human Rights Council resolution with any concrete actions against Israel, its citizens, officials, or soldiers.

The most obvious falsehood is the claim that Israel is digging and excavating in, around, or beneath the Al-Aqsa mosque. The closest Israeli excavations are outside the large elevated area on which the mosque sits. The one-sided nature of the resolution is evident in that 10 out of 11 paragraphs deal with Israel's alleged violations, while only a "by the way" paragraph deals with allegations about Hamas:

(The Report) also found that Palestinian armed groups caused terror within Israel's civilian population through the launch of thousands of rockets and mortars into Israel since April 2001, determining that both sides may thus have committed serious war crimes and possible crimes against humanity."

Some Israeli politicians are blaming the resolution on the lack of sufficient efforts by Israel to explain its actions. More and better explanation is their solution.

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Tempest in a teapot

It's one of those times that excites Jews' well-developed paranoia.
 
A sizable majority of member states in the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva endorsed the Goldstone report, and sent it on the General Assembly and Security Council. Supporters will try to get an endorsement from the Security Council to indict Israel before the International Criminal Court.
 
The resolution not only accepted the Goldstone report on the Gaza Operation, but for good measure condemned Israel for human rights violations in the West Bank and Jerusalem, including the denial of religious rights. (During times of tension, Israel does not permit entry to the Temple Mount for men under an age when they are thought to be potential troublemakers.)
 
Not even Richard Goldstone was satisfied with the decision of the Human Rights Council, insofar as it did not condemn Hamas for its violations.
 
The delegates who voted for the endorsement came from Argentina, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, China, Cuba, Djbouti, Egypt, Ghana, India, Indonesia, Jordan, Mauritius, Nicaragua, Nigeria, Pakistan, Philippines, Qatar, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, South Africa and Zambia. Some of these we should discount as international good-for-nothings allowed to yell and scream, but not permitted by the rules of the game to do anything serious. Saudi Arabia is tolerated on account of its wealth, but also kept from serious damage by existing rules and norms.

Some speak in double talk, endorse what the Palestinians want, perhaps to keep some of their own people quiet, but deal with Israel. Jordan and Egypt are prominent in this group. China, India and Russia are important for Israel, but do what they have to in order to satisfy their other interests. None of them is on the verge of taking serious actions against Israel. All are more violent than Israel in dealing with those who threaten their own regimes.
 
Indonesia has no diplomatic relations with Israel, but we have encountered large groups of Indonesian Christians in our favorite Jerusalem Chinese restaurant. The Philippines enjoys the foreign exchange earned by thousands of its people working here as care givers for the aged and infirm.
 
Altogether, the votes in favor of endorsement are just part of the international background static. Not pleasant to the ears, but not likely to affect one's quality of life.

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Competing to establish Palestine? Or to kill it...

Recent expressions coming from the Palestinians reveal a chronic internal competition that does not auger well for their ability to get it together and reach statehood.
 
A week ago the Palestine National Authority, presumably under the direction of Mahmoud Abbas, withdrew its demand that the Goldstone Report move up from the United Nations Human Rights Commission in Geneva to the Security Council in New York.
 
Leading Palestinian voices accused Abbas of caving into Israeli demands, and say he did it to get Israeli permission to open a second Palestinian cell phone service, in which they claim his son had a financial interest.
 
Abbas responded with a "who, me?" He insisted that he was acting on the advice of the United States rather than pressure from Israel, and that his son was not involved with the cell phone initiative.
 
Egyptian opposition politicians are calling Abbas a traitor to Palestine, and demanding that the Palestinian ambassador leave Cairo.
 
Leading Palestinian figures accuse Israel of taking more and more land in Jerusalem, say that Arabs are not investing enough in their neighborhoods, and recall that it was Benyamin Netanyahu who opened a provocative site for tourists that threatened Muslim landmarks during his previous term as prime minister in 1996.
 
Abbas has joined the chorus, led by Hamas and its Islamic allies, that Israeli extremists are behind the recent incidents of violence in Jerusalem. Palestinians must defend the sanctity of al Aqsa.
 
This is not the first time Palestinians have accused one another of not being sufficiently shrill, and fiddling with sacred causes. Ranking office holders and their relatives have been involved with selling cement meant for Palestinian purposes to Israelis for building apartments in the West Bank, and even for the awful security barrier.
 
What is most worrying is the inclination of religious and political leaders to goad one another for not being sufficiently extreme on issues of national importance.

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Some puzzles for Israel and others

Should Israel be scorned because its former prime minister is said to have helped himself to financial favors during his service in increasingly important government offices on the way to the top? Or be praised for indicting him on charges of fraudulent receipt of goods, false registration of corporate documents, fraud, breach of trust and tax evasion? Should it be scorned because its former president is alleged to be a sexual predator, or praised for indicting him on charges of rape and sexual harassment?
 
Even those who praise Israel for cleaning house may criticize it for taking so long to do so. Investigations went on for years before the Attorney General handed down indictments, and the trials may last even longer. 

Justice, and the closely related legitimacy of criticism, are deeply rooted in Jewish doctrine. Israelis who do not study sacred texts acquire the traits somewhere else.
 
Should one doubt the presence of criticism, it is only necessary to look at the front page of the country's most distinguished newspaper the day after the Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu spoke to the United Nations General Assembly.
 
Praise for a speech carried live in Israeli and international media? Think again.

Big egos, good intentions and failed policies

Seventy years ago, a distinguished scholar documented one of the keystones of politics: politicians have abnormally large egos. (Harold Lasswell, Psychopathology and Politics)
 
His finding is worth remembering today - policy failures continue to hurt because people with big egos have trouble admitting mistakes.
 
American history, wealth and military power may serve to magnify the phenomenon, in a field where even the leaders of small and pathetic states think of themselves in grand terms. It is certain that the mistakes of American leaders touch directly more people than the mistakes of national leaders elsewhere. The world-wide reach of American aspirations means that poor judgment in the White House has greater impact than errors coming out of other national capitals.
 
There is no shortage of examples.

Simple solutions and other sewage

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