United against Britain's 'Israel lobby'

Lavish praise was heaped on some of Britain's media in the English-language Saudi Arab News, where columnist Neil Berry hailed last week's screening of "a groundbreaking Dispatches documentary for Britain's Channel 4 television, trailed by an article in The Guardian newspaper, [that] investigated the covert influence of Britain's 'Israel lobby.'"

If you take Berry's word for it, Tony Blair was a Zionist stooge, the British Labor party is run by the "Israel lobby," and if the Conservatives come to power in Britain, things will get even worse - if that's at all possible. But Berry assures his readers that not all is lost: he describes the publication of the Mearsheimer/Walt book on "The Israel Lobby" in the US as "an epoch-making event" that has led over the past few years "to a sea change in the climate of Western intellectual, as well as general public opinion, vis-à-vis the boundaries of debate about the Jewish state."

Indeed, relating to another event that caused much debate in Britain last week - namely the publication of the English translation of Shlomo Sand's new book, The Invention of the Jewish People - Berry confidently asserts that this book "is of similarly cardinal significance."

So let's try to get this straight: first the Jews (or maybe the Zionists?) invented the Jewish people, then the Jewish people and/or the Zionists proceeded to invent the Jewish Lobby - no, make this the "Israel lobby" - and then all these inventions went on to control much of the world.

Obviously, the idea that every Jewish achievement, including nowadays the Jewish state, comes at the expense of non-Jews and is somehow due to one big conspiracy that needs to be uncovered and undone, is hardly new. It unmistakably echoes the idea "Die Juden sind unser Unglück," that is: "the Jews are our misfortune," a concept first made popular by the German historian Heinrich von Treitschke in the 1880s and later adopted by the Nazis.

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Eliminationism

In the mid-1990s, political scientist Daniel Jonah Goldhagen caused a heated controversy with the publication of a book arguing that the Holocaust was possible because ordinary Germans served as "willing executioners [...] who believed that exterminating Jews was right and necessary." Last month, Goldhagen came out with a new book, that is likely to once again generate much controversy.

The book's main title, Worse Than War, is already provocative: what could be worse than war? The subtitle hints at the answer: Genocide, Eliminationism, and the Ongoing Assault on Humanity.
Some of the controversial aspects of this book - as well as the still-lingering controversies about Goldhagen's previous work - are addressed in a recent interview with Goldhagen published by the German news magazine Spiegel.

One issue that will certainly invite much criticism is Goldhagen's view that "political Islam" poses a very serious danger. As Goldhagen explains in the interview:

'Political Islam' is the appropriate term to describe political movements that are grounded in an understanding of Islam and seek to assert control - often totalitarian control - over their societies and other societies which they think should be Islamic. These movements often use violence and often with a genocidal or eliminationist attempt."

Goldhagen's views on this subject are also highlighted in a New York Times review of his book. Noting that Goldhagen argues "that 'political Islam' - jihadism - constitutes 'the most coherent and deadly mass­murderous ideology since Nazism,'" reviewer James Traub accuses Goldhagen of turning "political Islam into an eliminationist bogy." Traub also argues that "even al Qaeda, with its ideology of mass murder, has not been able to marshal the resources of a state to attain its ultimate goals."

However, from an article published in the spring 2007 issue of the progressive journal Democracy (free registration required), it is clear that Goldhagen's primary concern in this context is not al Qaeda. Indeed, he explicitly argued in his concluding paragraph:

Abandoning the Middle East to the Political Islamists and having Israel capitulate (and ultimately surrender its existence) is the only thing that will satisfy them - the only thing that will stop Political Islamists […] from feeling 'humiliated' (and then only partly, given the growing number of Muslims in Europe). Needless to say, this would be extremely self-injurious, not to mention immoral.

Instead, we should recognize the broad-based danger not merely of terrorism, but of Political Islam. And we must realize that it can only be defeated by active diplomatic, economic and military containment and, when practical, rollback by the United States and its allies in Europe and in the Middle East.

We should stop fixating on al Qaeda and terrorism, narrowly construed, as the overwhelming problem and recognize that the biggest danger is the Political Islamic colossus and aspiring hegemon: the soon-to-go-nuclear Iran."

This view will of course be vociferously rejected by many as just another variation of the "clash of civilizations" theme. While there is obviously room for a legitimate debate about Goldhagen's arguments, it is clear that this debate will inevitably reflect the wide-spread Western ignorance - and even denial - of anti-Semitic, anti-American and anti-Western sentiments in the Arab and Muslim world.

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Kristallnacht reflections

When President Obama welcomed the newly re-elected German chancellor, Angela Merkel, in Washington last week, he commented on the imminent 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989. But as Merkel emphasized in an address to both houses of the US Congress, November 9 is also the anniversary of the so-called Kristallnacht in 1938, the "night of the broken glass," when Nazis brutalized Jews and attacked their homes and property in an orgy of unrestrained violence that "later turned into the break with civilization that was the Shoah."

In the same speech, Merkel also declared that a "nuclear bomb in the hands of an Iranian president who denies the Holocaust, threatens Israel and denies Israel the right to exist is not acceptable." A few weeks earlier, Israel's Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu had focused on this specific issue in his address to the UN General Assembly, where he sought to highlight the danger posed by a fanatic Iranian regime that is pursuing its nuclear ambitions at all costs while denying the Holocaust and Israel's right to exist.

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Claiming credit for Goldstone

Al Jazeera is currently marking the 40 year anniversary of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) with a special program and reports. One of the featured articles in this series is entitled "OIC initiated Goldstone inquiry." The article consists of an interview with the secretary-general of the OIC, who right at the outset emphasizes in response to a question about the Goldstone report:

What I would like to put on record is that the OIC was the initiator of this process. On January 3, during the attacks on Gaza, we convened the executive committee of the OIC on a ministerial level. It was decided that the OIC group in Geneva should ask the Human Rights Council to convene and consider the possibility of sending a fact-finding mission to Gaza. The OIC was instrumental in getting through this resolution and thanks to the good offices of Ms Pilay, the UN high commissioner, that she formed this fact-finding mission headed by Judge Goldstone."

That is surely a worthy achievement for an organization that owes its establishment to an incident that, for the past 40 years, has served for baseless anti-Israel incitement: According to its own website, the OIC "was established upon a decision of the historical summit which took place in Rabat, Kingdom of Morocco on 12th Rajab 1389 Hijra (25 September 1969) as a result of criminal arson of Al-Aqsa Mosque in occupied Jerusalem."

Of course, then as now, the mosque and indeed the whole Temple Mount platform were under the authority of the Waqf, i.e. under Muslim authority; moreover, the fire was started by a mentally-ill Australian Christian tourist inside the mosque, where it was obviously the responsibility of Muslim guards to watch visitors. However, the arsonist not only managed to set a major fire, but was also allowed to escape from the mosque and it was only the efficient and professional conduct of the Israeli authorities that led to his quick arrest and prompt trial.

But of course, then as now, such facts were irrelevant.

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'The Arabs will change'

President Shimon Peres hosted his second "Facing Tomorrow" conference in Jerusalem last week. In an interview with Newsweek shortly after the conclusion of the conference, Peres acknowledged the many problems and challenges Israel was facing, but also re-iterated his oft-stated conviction that peace in the Middle East is possible. At one point, he noted: "Some people ask, 'What will happen to Israel in the coming 100 years vis-à-vis the Arab world?' And my answer is, the Arabs will change. Not us. They have to join in a new age."

There are of course many Israelis who don't quite share their president's optimism, but some recently published books make the case that the kind of change Peres is expecting is already taking place in the Arab world. One of these is Robin Wright's Dreams and Shadows. However, as a sympathetic yet critical review in The New York Times has pointed out, Wright's own research actually gives little reason to think she is right to believe that "a budding culture of change" at the grassroots level is about to bring meaningful and constructive reform to the Middle East. 

When it comes to the attitudes toward Israel prevalent in the Arab world, it is certainly difficult to detect any positive change. Particularly dismal to contemplate is the fact that even the two Arab states to have signed peace agreements with Israel have shown little interest in any normalization of ties. If we just look at the news from Egypt and Jordan over the past few weeks, the evidence seems clear: instead of any sign of change, it's the same old story of deep-seated hatred toward Israel and Jews.

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'Psychoactive' against Israel

What a bizarre title, you may be thinking - and you're right. But it only reflects how bizarre things can get when you venture out to the fringes where it's fashionable to demonize Israel as a uniquely evil force in today's world. It wouldn't be worth writing about it were it not for the fact that when it comes to demonizing Israel, nothing is too absurd to get aired in respectable media outlets or at academic conferences; indeed, there are even prestigious awards to be won.

A good example is former Israeli lawyer and political activist Felicia Langer, who was recently awarded Germany's "Federal Merit Cross, First Class." Langer, who has lived in Germany for some 20 years, has made a name for herself as a fierce critic of Israel who wouldn't even shy away from language that suggests comparisons between the Jewish state and Nazi Germany. Reportedly, she left Israel out of protest and has explained that she made "a politically conscious choice for Germany ... because I understood with what brutality and sophistication Israel was exploiting the Germans' guilt."

Obviously, the kind of positive reinforcement bestowed on Langer is by and large reserved for Jewish "critics" of Israel, because if a non-Jew suggests that Israel should be suspected of genocidal intentions or be compared to Nazi Germany, most people realize that this kind of "criticism" of Israel is tainted by anti-Semitic attitudes. The phenomenon of Jews eager to level those preposterous charges against Israel has led to a debate about the question if this is a manifestation of "Jewish anti-Semitism."

Recently I came across an article that railed against the "tropes of 'Jewish antisemitism'" and dismissed the "concept of the 'self-hating Jew,'" which was described as having been "dignified with a pseudo-psychopathology by those keen to suppress dissent." The writer, Antony Lerman, is a regular contributor to the Guardian's "Comment is Free" blog, and this was not the first time that he expressed his passionate rejection of the concept of Jewish "self-hatred." One of the previous occasions was in Lerman's recent review of a book by Chief Rabbi Sir Jonathan Sacks, whom Lerman criticized sharply:

He wants space for dissident voices, yet repeatedly gives credence to the notion of Jewish self-hatred, a bogus concept that serves no other purpose than to demonise Jewish dissent. He calls on Jews not to see all criticism of Israel as anti-Semitism, but he endorses wholesale the idea of the 'new anti-Semitism' - basically, that Israel is the Jew among the nations - which licenses Jews to do precisely what he says they shouldn't."

Since a note at the end of the review announces that Antony Lerman "is writing a book reflecting on his personal experience of Zionism and Israel," we can expect to hear more from him in defense of even the most outlandish accusations against Israel.

While I myself have reservations about the concept of Jewish "self-hatred" - though for very different reasons than Lerman - it seems to me that his thinking on the matter is rather confused. To give just one example, consider his assertion: "Far from being the antithesis of Jewish self-hatred, it is arguable that Zionism was actually a display of it." Really?

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80 years of Al-Aqsa incitement

In Israel, the news that President Obama was awarded this year's Nobel Peace Prize came together with news of renewed violence in Jerusalem. It's unlikely the Nobel laureate will be briefed about the recent riots in Jerusalem - after all, among the world's many violent conflicts that require the president's attention, the incidents in Jerusalem are hardly more than minor disturbances. But it's a great pity, because these events tell the story of the Middle East conflict in a nutshell and illustrate why peace has proven so elusive.

Some of the crucial points have been highlighted in an excellent commentary by Marvin Hier and Abraham Cooper that was published last week in The Jerusalem Post. Hier and Cooper rightly contrast the easy accessibility of the Western Wall - which can be visited by anyone - with the restrictions imposed on visits to the Temple Mount, where non-Muslims have access only at strictly limited hours and are prohibited from praying or performing any religious rituals. However, not for the first time, recent events have shown that observing all these restrictions still doesn't guarantee that visitors will not be pelted with stones by Palestinian Muslims who see themselves as heroic "defenders" of the Al-Aqsa mosque - which is threatened only in their fevered imagination.

It's safe to assume that those stone-throwing youngsters have never asked themselves how it is that the "occupied" Temple Mount is under the authority of the Muslim Waqf authorities. If they had ever asked this question, they would find out that in 1967, when Israel gained control of the area, Israel acknowledged the authority of the Waqf over the Temple Mount as an immediate gesture of goodwill - which came after almost 20 years of Jordanian control of the area, when Jews had been prevented from coming to the Western Wall in breach of the armistice agreement, and when Jewish property, places of worship and cemeteries had been systematically destroyed and desecrated. 

The idea that the Al-Aqsa mosque is threatened by Jews is an invention that goes back to the days of Haj Amin al Husseini, the Mufti of Jerusalem, who later gained notoriety as a Nazi collaborator. In the 1920s, al Husseini renovated the "Haram al-Sharif" - as the Temple Mount is known in Arabic - and he began to accuse "the Zionists" of plotting to rebuild the Jewish Temple. His incitement contributed to repeated outbreaks of violence against Jews that culminated in the Hebron massacre of 1929.

Some 80 years later, al Husseini's legacy is echoed in the incitement spread by the likes of Sheikh Raed Salah, the head of the Islamic Movement's northern branch, and Sheikh Kamal Khatib, another leading figure of this group.

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The 'lawfare' pioneer

Reports last week that described efforts to obtain an arrest warrant against Defense Minister Ehud Barak during his visit in London named the British barrister who filed the application as Michel Massih QC. Chances are that, just like me, you have never heard of Mr. Massih, but it turns out he is actually Britain's foremost expert when it comes to trying to get Israeli officials arrested during their visits to Britain - indeed, Mr. Massih can rightly claim that he is a pioneer in this field.

I came to appreciate Mr. Massih's role when I read about him on the blog "Harry's Place", where a post explained some of the relevant intricacies of the British legal system and provided some choice quotes from a very interesting profile of Massih that was published in Abu Dhabi's The National last March. Entitled "The best defence", the rather long article opens with an intriguing summary:

Michel Massih has spent much of his 30-year career advocating for clients accused of terrorism and war crimes, but now the consummate defender is leading the charge to prosecute Israel."

Obviously there is nothing wrong with a lawyer who defends clients accused of serious crimes; moreover, without lawyers prepared to defend even those cases where the evidence seems overwhelming, the legal system wouldn't work. However, the fact that Mr. Massih is widely regarded as an expert in the defense of terrorists (his truly astonishing CV can be accessed here http://www.tooks.co.uk/people/michel_massih/ ) suggests that there is arguably a political dimension to his choice to specialize in this field.

And when it comes to his other field of specialization, namely his efforts to get Israeli officials arrested and prosecuted in Britain, the possible political dimension is clearer.

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The Gaza occupation

Almost exactly four years ago, the Israeli and international media were dominated by reports and commentaries about Israel's disengagement from Gaza. A CNN report described the events, stating: "On Monday [September 12, 2005], Israel withdrew its final troops from Gaza, ending 38 years of occupation."

The same report noted that "Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas toured the evacuated Jewish settlement Eli Sinai Monday, calling Israel's withdrawal a 'great moment,'"; Abbas was also quoted as saying that the Palestinians "need to look at the West Bank and end the occupation there." That sounds very much as if Abbas shared the common-sense view that the occupation of Gaza had indeed ended when the last Israeli left Gaza in the early morning hours of September 12, 2005.

Almost exactly three years after Abbas declared his desire to "end the occupation" in the West Bank, he had the chance to do so: On September 13, 2008, Ehud Olmert hosted Abbas in his home in Jerusalem "and presented him with a detailed proposal for a peace agreement."

A map that Olmert had prepared for this meeting outlined a Palestinian state covering an area equal to the pre-1967 territories controlled by Egypt and Jordan. Olmert's proposals included 93.5 percent of the West Bank, with another 5.8 percent added through land swaps that would allow Israel to keep the main settlement blocs - Ma'aleh Adumim, Ariel and Gush Etzion - in exchange for lands in the southern Hebron Hills, the Judean Hills and the Beit She'an Valley. In addition, Olmert offered a "safe passage" corridor from the West Bank to the Gaza Strip.

The question of Jerusalem and the refugee issue were also addressed; reportedly, "Olmert proposed dividing sovereignty between the Jewish and Arab neighborhoods, and leaving the Old City's 'holy basin' and its surroundings without sovereignty, under the management of an international committee with the participation of Israel, Palestine, the United States, Jordan and Saudi Arabia."

With regard to the Palestinian refugees, Olmert reportedly "did not recognize the Palestinians' demand for a right of return," but nevertheless offered to allow a small number of refugees - about 3,000 people over a period of five years - to settle in Israel.

Mahmoud Abbas never bothered to let Olmert know what he thought of these proposals; eventually, he got around to rejecting them in media interviews in spring 2009.

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The anti-Israel professionals at HRW

In recent weeks, there have been a number of disturbing revelations about Human Rights Watch (HRW) and about individual staff members involved in the organization's work on Israel.

Predictably, HRW and the group's many supporters have brushed off all concerns and criticism as politically motivated.

And they didn't change their tactics when it turned out that one senior staff member, HRW "senior military analyst" Marc Garlasco - who has issued quite a few damning statements about Israel - is consumed by fascination with military Nazi memorabilia.

Indeed, it seems we are even supposed to think Garlasco's obsession with Nazi military memorabilia somehow enhances his professional expertise.

One thing is for sure: Being an avid collector of Nazi medals doesn't make anyone a military analyst - so what exactly are Garlasco's professional qualifications?

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