Israel Connections

The Middle East remains in the news.  Be it Iran, Egypt, Israel and the Palestinians, there is always another thought or another theme to ponder.  Read on! 

 

Josh Weintraub
Israel Advocacy and Awareness Chair

The Israel Connection is brought to you by THE ASSOCIATED: Jewish Community Federation of Baltimore and the Baltimore Jewish Council. This e-newsletter includes such items as: news updates about Israel and the Middle East, Action Alerts, and upcoming programming.  Our goal is to provide you with relevant information that you can use in your advocacy efforts and to express your support and solidarity with the people of Israel. We always enjoy your feedback - please email us at [email protected] or call the Baltimore Jewish Council at 410-542-4850 with your comments.
Don't Fear All Islamists, Fear Salafis

By Robin Wright
August 19, 2012

The New York Times

 

Washington- THIS spring, I traveled to the cradle of the Arab uprisings - a forlorn street corner in Sidi Bouzid, Tunisia, where a street vendor, drenched in paint thinner, struck a match in December 2010 that ignited the entire Middle East. "We have far more freedoms," one peddler hawking fruit in the same square lamented, "but far fewer jobs." Another noted that Mohamed Bouazizi, the vendor who set himself on fire, did so not to vote in a democratic election but because harassment by local officials had cost him his livelihood.

 

As the peddlers vented, prayers ended at the whitewashed mosque across the street. Among the faithful were Salafis, ultraconservative Sunni Muslims vying to define the new order according to seventh-century religious traditions rather than earthly realities. For years, many Salafis - "salaf" means predecessors - had avoided politics and embraced autocrats as long as they were Muslims. But over the past eight months, clusters of worshipers across the Middle East have morphed into powerful Salafi movements that are tapping into the disillusionment and disorder of transitions.

 

A new Salafi Crescent, radiating from the Persian Gulf sheikdoms into the Levant and North Africa, is one of the most underappreciated and disturbing byproducts of the Arab revolts. In varying degrees, these populist puritans are moving into the political space once occupied by jihadi militants, who are now less in vogue. Both are fundamentalists who favor a new order modeled on early Islam. Salafis are not necessarily fighters, however. Many disavow violence.

 

 

Egypt's New Leaders Must Accept Reality

By Dennis Ross

August 19, 2012

The Washington Post

 

A new reality and an alternative reality are shaping up in Egypt. President Mohamed Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood

appear firmly in control . Morsi seized on the killing of 16 Egyptian soldiers in the Sinai early this month - an embarrassment for the military and particularly the Supreme Council of the Armed Force ( SCAF ) - to remove the most senior military leaders from office. He also unilaterally amended the March 2011 constitution declaration and gave his office executive and legislative powers. In short, with no hint of resistance from the military, Morsi has imposed civilian leadership on Egypt.

 

Many see Morsi's move to control the SCAF - he sacked Field Marshal Mohammed Hussein Tantawi; military chief of staff Sami Anan; and the heads of Egypt's army, navy and air force - as finally giving Egypt's revolution the chance to remove key remnants of the Mubarak regime and fulfill its promise. Others, particularly non-Islamists, are more prone to see recent actions as the Muslim Brotherhood removing any checks on its power.

 

Given some of the other moves that Morsi and those around him have made, there is reason to be concerned. Morsi has appointed a new minister of information, Salah Abdul Maqsud; he, too, comes from the Muslim Brotherhood and actively supports the move to replace 50 leading editors and journalists. Charges have been filed against the editor of the independent opposition newspaperal-Dustour for insulting the president. It is probably no accident that the state media's tone has changed markedly in the past week - and is far more favorable toward Morsi. 

 

Read more...  

Iran's President Calls Israel 'an Insult to Humankind'

By Rick Gladstone

August 17, 2012

The New York Times 

 

Iran's president fanned the flames of confrontation with Israel on Friday, calling the Israeli government "an insult to humankind" in a speech on the annual Iranian holiday that calls for the Palestinian

reclamation of Jerusalem from Israel's control.

 

The speech by the president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has become known for his baldly anti-Israel and anti-Semitic remarks, came as tensions had been intensifying with Israel, which regards Iran's nuclear program as an existential threat.

 

Speculation has raged in the Israeli press about whether the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has decided to order a military strike on uranium enrichment sites in Iran that Israel suspects are part of a clandestine effort to build nuclear weapons. Iran contends that its uranium enrichment is peaceful.

Mr. Ahmadinejad's speech, as reported by the official Islamic Republic News Agency, added some new and incendiary flourishes to a theme he had pushed for his entire presidency.

 

"The very existence of the Zionist regime is an insult to humankind and an affront to all world nations," the news agency's English-language report on the speech quoted him as saying. "Confronting Zionists will also pave the way for saving the whole humankind from exploitation, depravity and misery."

 

In another passage, Mr. Ahmadinejad was quoted as saying that Jerusalem Day, which the Iranians call Quds Day after the city's Arabic name, was "an occasion for all human communities to wipe out this scarlet letter, meaning the Zionist regime, from the forehead of humanity." 


  

 

What Obama Isn't Saying About Iran
The sanctions aren't 'crippling,' Tehran isn't isolated, and there aren't any tough American red lines

By David Feith

August 16, 2012

The Wall Street Journal 

 

The United States doesn't want Israel taking military action against Iran's nuclear program, and top officials have been traveling to Jerusalem this summer to make their case in person. Any attack would be dangerous and premature, they say, because Iran is suffering under crippling sanctions, the world is united against Tehran as never before, and all options remain on the table.

 

The problem is that every one of these points is false or misleading.

Start with sanctions. After years, they've proved troublesome, not crippling. Yes, the Iranian rial has lost half its value in 12 months. Oil exports are down by about half, too. And Tehran admits that inflation is above 20%, with unemployment above 13%. Yet this isn't an economy in freefall. The volume of oil exports is stabilizing, and the government has an estimated $60 billion to $100 billion in foreign currency reserves.

 

The unfortunate reality is that sanctions are generally a limited tool-and the Obama administration has made these sanctions even more limited. When Congress wanted to sanction Iran's central bank last year, the administration initially opposed the effort. The Senate endorsed it anyway, on a 100-0 vote, so the administration focused on getting last-minute loopholes written into the law.

 

One of them gave the State Department the authority to exempt from sanctions any country that it determined had "significantly reduced" its imports of Iranian oil. No one paid much attention at the time, but eight months later we know the loophole's effect: All of Iran's major oil-trading partners-20 of them-received exemptions from U.S. sanctions.

 

The Obama administration says all countries with exemptions earned them. But here again the rhetoric is slippery. India was exempted for pledging to cut its Iran imports by only 11%. Japan cut by 22%. Then there's China, which cut 25% overall from January to May but increased its take of Iran oil by 35% in the final two months, just before earning its exemption.

 

President Obama said in March that "the world is as united as we've ever seen it around the need for Iran to take a different path on its nuclear program." Yet China, India, Japan and others that continue to do big business with Tehran aren't focused on squeezing Iran's economy. They're focused on such things as getting around banking restrictions by bartering rice and steel for oil. Whether they're motivated by trade imperatives, nonaligned politics or something else, these countries show that Iran is by no means as "isolated" as Mr. Obama asserts.

 

There's another problem with the claim about a united front. The U.S. and Israeli governments may be the world's most important parties on this issue, but they disagree on a basic question: Is the goal to prevent Iran from "developing a nuclear weapon," as Mr. Obama says, or to prevent Iran from "possessing nuclear-weapons capability," as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu puts it? This difference matters.

 

The Israelis believe that a nuclear-capable Iran-one with sufficient fissile material and weapons technology to be able to build a bomb in a few weeks-is as threatening to the international order as an Iran with an actual weapon. Either circumstance, Israel fears, would allow the mullahs to carry out future adventurism under the protection of a credible nuclear deterrent. Any response to Hezbollah terrorism or to the murder of diplomats at Washington restaurants would have to consider that Tehran could retaliate with nukes.

 

This helps explain why a 2010 U.S. sanctions law committed Washington to doing "everything possible . . . to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapons capability." But you wouldn't know that from the Obama administration. Instead, we get Defense Secretary Leon Panetta pledging that America "will not allow Iran to develop a nuclear weapon, period."

 

That sounds tough and unequivocal, but it says nothing about an Iranian nuclear capability. As such, it suggests to Iran's mullahs that as long as they don't parade a bomb through downtown Tehran, they can expand their nuclear program without crossing any American red lines. That's good if the priority is to avoid confrontation in the next few months; it's bad if you want to stop Iran from ever wielding a nuclear deterrent.

Administration officials argue that their nuclear-weapon red line is prudent. For one, they say, the concept of nuclear capability is vague. Moreover, as Mr. Obama said in March, if Iran really pushes to go nuclear "we will know that they are making that attempt." But that confidence in U.S. intelligence on Iranian enrichment sites, weaponization experts and the like may be misplaced.

 

In the Cold War, Stalin's Soviet Union first tested a nuclear device in 1949, four years before U.S. intelligence was expecting it. Mao's China did so in 1964, months earlier than anticipated. U.S. intelligence also underestimated Saddam Hussein's nuclear program before 1991, was surprised by India's nuclear tests in 1998, and overestimated Saddam's arsenal before 2003.

 

Regarding Iran, significant nuclear facilities went undetected for a decade until exposed by a dissident group in 2002. Now every six or 12 months we read that, as the New York Times put it in February 2009, "Iran Has More Enriched Uranium Than Thought." For all the achievements of U.S. intelligence, few include pinpointing the progress of shadowy weapons programs.

 

Which leaves the administration's bottom line: All options remain on the table. Mr. Obama has invested much political capital in this assurance.

 

Yet he's also deeply invested in the idea that "the tide of war is receding"-which, as Syria burns and Iraq and Afghanistan backslide, seems increasingly to mean only that U.S. military force is receding.

 

Would this president, so dedicated to multilateralism (except where targeting al Qaeda is concerned), launch a major military campaign against Iran even without Russian and Chinese support at the U.N.? Do Iran's leaders think he would? Or have they noticed that American officials often repeat the "all-options-on-the-table" mantra as mere throat clearing before they list all the reasons why attacking Iran is a terrifying prospect?

Those reasons are plain to see. An attack could lead to a major loss of life, to regional war, to Iranians rallying around their regime, to global economic pain. And it could fail.

 

But the question that counts is whether these risks outweigh the risks of a nuclear-capable Iran. That's a hard question for any democratic government and its citizens to grapple with. The Obama administration's rhetorical snow job only makes it harder.

 

U.S Must Recognize Jerusalem as Israel's Capital 
Presidential Candidates promise to move embassy, but nothing happens

By Robert Pines

August 14, 2012

The Baltimore Sun 

 

At first glance, Jerusalem appears to be the quintessential capital city: The sprawling, modern metropolis is home to Israel'sparliament, the Knesset, and courts, ministry buildings, monuments and museums dot the surrounding area. Lining the main streets are alternating Israeli and Jerusalem flags - all symbols of Israel's proud ownership of the city.

 

Yet unlike most other countries in the world, embassies in Israel are not located in the capital. Instead, foreign delegations from around the globe are housed some 50 kilometers away in the coastal city of Tel Aviv, save for two embassies in the Jerusalem suburb of Mevaseret Zion.

 

In a show of unprecedented defiance, not one country has recognized Israel's rule over Jerusalem, even over the undisputed western part of the city. In fact, the few consulates in the city - in the western and eastern sections - report to the Palestinian Authority.

 

The hypocrisy shown by the U.S. in recognizing other, disputed foreign capitals is particularly disheartening. In the past two decades, Kazakhstan and Myanmar have moved their capitals cities, while several new countries, like Palau and South Sudan, have come into existence. In none of these cases did the U.S. oppose the countries' choice of capital, even when dealing with despotic regimes.

 

The lack of legitimacy granted to Israel's rule over Jerusalem has long been a point of contention between the Jewish state and the international community. The United States, Israel's closest ally, has persistently avoided the issue since Israel officially declared Jerusalem its "complete and united capital" in 1980.