Israel attacks aid ship, kills at least 10 civilians

Israel attacks aid ship, kills at least 10 civilians -- international outrage grows

By Glenn Greenwald

This video image released by the Turkish Aid group IHH Monday May 31, 2010 purports to show Israeli military vessel at sea in international waters off the Gaza coast near a ship convey carrying aid to Gaza. Israeli commandos on Monday stormed six ships carrying hundreds of pro-Palestinian activists on an aid mission to the blockaded Gaza Strip, killing at least 10 people and wounding dozens after encountering unexpected resistance as the forces boarded the vessels. AP Photo/IHH via APTN) ** TURKEY OUT ** (Credit: AP)

Topics:Israel, Washington, D.C.

(Updated below – Update II – Update III – Update IV – Update V – Update VI – Update VII)

Late last night, Israel attacked a flotilla of ships in international waters carrying food, medicine and other aid to Gaza, killing at least 10 civilians on board and injuring at least 30 more (many reports now put the numbers at 19 dead and 60 injured). The Israeli Defense Forces is claiming that its soldiers were attacked with clubs, knives and “handguns” when they boarded the ship without permission, but none of the Israeli soldiers were killed while two are reported injured. Those on the ships emphatically state that the IDF came on board shooting (though see this video and discussion here, as well as this). An IDF spokesman said: ”Our initial findings show that at least 10 convoy participants were killed.”

The six-ship flotilla was carrying 10,000 tons of humanitarian aid along with 600 people, all civilians, which included 1976 Nobel Peace Prize laureate Mairead Corrigan Maguire of Northern Ireland and European legislators; an elderly Holocaust survivor, Hedy Epstein, 85, was scheduled to be among those on the ship but remained in Cyprus. In December, 2008, Israel, citing rocket attacks from Hamas, launched a 22-day, barbaric attack on Gaza, bombarding a trapped population, killing hundreds of innocent civilians (1,400 Palestinians and 13 Israelis were killed), and devastating Gazan society. A U.N. report released earlier this month documented that, as a result of the blockade imposed on Gaza by Israel and Egypt (the two largest recipients of U.S. aid), “[m]ost of the property and infrastructure damaged . . . was still unrepaired 12 months later.”

The flotilla attacked by Israel last night was carrying materials such as cement, water purifiers, and other building materials, much of which Israel refuses to let pass into Gaza. At the end of 2009, a U.N. report found that “insufficient food and medicine is reaching Gazans, producing a further deterioration of the mental and physical health of the entire civilian population since Israel launched Operation Cast Lead against the territory,” and also “blamed the blockade for continued breakdowns of the electricity and sanitation systems due to the Israeli refusal to let spare parts needed for repair get through the crossings.”

It hardly seemed possible for Israel — after its brutal devastation of Gaza and its ongoing blockade — to engage in more heinous and repugnant crimes. But by attacking a flotilla in international waters carrying humanitarian aid, and slaughtering at least 10 people, Israel has managed to do exactly that. If Israel’s goal were to provoke as much disgust and contempt for it as possible, it’s hard to imagine how it could be doing a better job.

It is appropriate that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is scheduled to meet with President Obama on Tuesday in Washington, because — as always — it is only American protection of Israel that permits the Israelis to engage in conduct like this. Initial reports speculate that Netanyahu would cancel that meeting in order to return to Israel in light of this attack. But there would be something quite symbolically appropriate about having the U.S. stand at the side of Israel in the aftermath of this latest massacre, because it is only the massive amounts of U.S. financial and military aid, and endless diplomatic protection, that enables Israel to act with impunity as a rogue and inhumane state. So complete is the devotion of the U.S. Congress to the mission of serving and protecting Israel that it even overwhelmingly condemned the Goldstone report, which found that Israel and Hamas had both commited war crimes and possibly crimes against humanity during the Israeli attack on Gaza (the U.S. Congress, of course, never condemned the Israeli war crimes themselves — only the Report which documented those crimes). Israeli actions are a direction reflection on, and by-product of, the U.S. Government, because it is the U.S. which enables and protects the behavior.

The one silver lining from these incidents is that the real face of Israel becomes increasingly revealed and undeniable. Not even the most intense propaganda systems can prettify a lethal military attack on ships carrying civilians and humanitarian aid to people living in some of the most wretched and tragic conditions anywhere in the world. It is crystal clear to anyone who looks what Israel has become, and the only question left is how will the rest of the world — beginning with their American patrons — will react.

As Americans suffer extreme cuts in education for their own children and a further deterioration in basic economic security (including Social Security), will they continue to acquiesce to the transfer of billions of dollars every year to the Israelis, who — unlike Americans — enjoy full, universal health care coverage? How is the revulsion justifiably provoked by this latest Israeli crime going to impact American efforts in the Muslim world (as but one of many examples to come, Al Jazeera reports that “Moqtada al-Sadr has called for a large anti-Israel rally across from the Green Zone in Baghdad”)? How much longer will Americans be willing to pay the extreme prices for its endlessly entangled “alliance” with its prime Middle Eastern client state, whose capacity for criminal and inhumane acts appears limitless?

* * * * *

On a day when the meaning of “heroism” is often discussed, the people on these ships who tried to deliver aid to Gazans, knowing that they could easily find themselves in a confrontation with the Israeli Navy but doing it anyway in order to bring attention to the extraordinary injustice and cruelty of the blockade, are pure, unadulterated heroes.

UPDATE: Regarding the blockade of Gaza itself — about which “Dov Weisglass, an adviser to Ehud Olmert, the Israeli Prime Minister [said when it was first imposed]: ‘The idea is to put the Palestinians on a diet, but not to make them die of hunger’” — this post documents just some of the effects, with ample links to U.N. reports, including:

* since the intensification of the siege in June 2007, “the formal economy in Gaza has collapsed” (More than 80 UN and aid agencies [.pdf])

* ”61% of people in the Gaza Strip are … food insecure,” of which “65% are children under 18 years” (UN FAO)

* since June 2007, “the number of Palestine refugees unable to access food and lacking the means to purchase even the most basic items, such as soap, school stationery and safe drinking water, has tripled” (UNRWA)

* ”in February 2009, the level of anemia in babies (9-12 months) was as high as 65.5%” (UN FAO)

The Washington Post‘s Jackson Diehl, whose entire political world view is shaped by his devotion to Israel, today criticizes President Obama for rejecting ”Bush’s conclusion that the promotion of democracy and human rights is inseparable from the tasks of defeating al-Qaeda and establishing a workable international order.” That’s ironic, because if “human rights” played any role whatsoever in American foreign policy, the massive American aid and other protection for Israel which Diehl cherishes above all else would instantaneously disappear.

UPDATE II: Just ponder what we’d be hearing if Iran had raided a humanitarian ship in international waters and killed 15 or so civilians aboard.

UPDATE III: One of the ships attacked by Israel belonged to a Turkish aid organization, and it’s been reported that among the dead are at least two Turks. Turkey today “warned that further supply vessels will be sent to Gaza, escorted by the Turkish Navy.” Among other things, Turkey is a NATO member with increasing tensions with Israel. Its Prime Minister today condemned the Israeli action as “state terrorism.” Amidst worldwide protests aimed at Israel, along with possible internal unrest if (as has been reported) an Israeli Arab leader was among the wounded or dead, it’s possible that this incident could produce some serious unforeseen consequences for the Israelis.

UPDATE IV: So, to recap what seems thus far to be the central claim of Israel apologists: Israel is the official Owner of international waters (which is where the flotilla was when it was attacked). As such, they have the right to issue orders to ships in international waters, and everyone on board those ships is required to obey and submit. Anyone who fails to do so, or anyone in the vicinity of those who fail to do so, can be shot and killed and get what they deserve.

What’s so odd about that is that the U.S. has been spending a fair amount of time recently condemning exactly such acts as “piracy” and demanding ”that those who commit acts of piracy are held accountable for their crimes.” When exactly did Israel acquire the right not only to rule over Gaza and the West Bank, but international waters as well? Their rights as sovereign are expanding faster than the BP oil spill.

UPDATE V: Israel’s foreign minister is now actually claiming that attempts to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza are “an attack on Israel’s sovereignty.” Is that supposed to be some kind of a joke? The only claim that I can recall that’s remotely comparable is when the U.S. General serving as Commander of Guantanamo condemned suicides by three detainees there as an “act of asymmetric warfare waged against us.” The U.S. and Israel are very adept at claiming victimhood: even when they’re killing large numbers of civilians and locking people up in cages with no charges, they’re the ones who are the suffering, wronged parties.

Thus, there are at least 10-20 dead passengers and 50-60 wounded on those ships — compared to no Israeli fatalities and virtually no wounded — but it’s the passengers, delivering humanitarian aid in international waters when Israel seized their ships, who are the aggressors and were “attacking Israeli sovereignty.” The only thing worse than this claim is how many apologists for Israel will start parroting it (see Andrew Sullivan for more refutation of the claim that it was the passengers who were somehow the “aggressors”).

UPDATE VI: Among the countries condemning Israel for its attack are Russia, Turkey, India, China, Brazil, France, Spain and many more. By stark contrast, the White House issued a statement which conspicuously refused to condemn the Israelis (Obama “expressed deep regret at the loss of life in today’s incident, and concern for the wounded”), while the U.S. State Department actually hinted at condemning the civilians delivering the aid (“we support expanding the flow of goods to the people of Gaza. But this must be done in a spirit of cooperation, not confrontation”).

Obama’s call for “learning all the facts and circumstances” is reasonable enough, but all these other countries made clear that this attack could never be justified based on what is already indisputably known: namely, that the ship attacked by Israel was in international waters and it resulted in the deaths and injuries to dozens of civilians, but no Israeli soldiers were killed and a tiny handful injured. In any event, Obama’s neutrality will have to give way to a definitive statement one way or the other, and soon.

UPDATE VII: The formal statement submitted to the U.N. by the U.S. Ambassador today rather clearly seeks to blame everyone — from Hamas to those attempting to deliver the aid — for what happened: everyone, that is, except for the party which actually did the illegal seizing of the ship and the killing (Israel):

As I stated in the Chamber in December 2008, when we were confronted by a similar situation, mechanisms exist for the transfer of humanitarian assistance to Gaza by member states and groups that want to do so. These non-provocative and non-confrontational mechanisms should be the ones used for the benefit of all those in Gaza. Direct delivery by sea is neither appropriate nor responsible, and certainly not effective, under the circumstances. . . . We will continue to engage the Israelis on a daily basis to expand the scope and type of goods allowed into Gaza to address the full range of the population’s humanitarian and recovery needs. Hamas’ interference with international assistance shipments and the work of nongovernmental organizations complicates efforts in Gaza. Its continued arms smuggling and commitment to terrorism undermines security and prosperity for Palestinians and Israelis alike.

Given that the Israelis refuse to allow anything other than the most minimal “necessities” to enter Gaza, I’d love to know what “non-provocative and non-confrontational mechanisms” exist to deliver humanitarian assistance? And it’s extraordinary that we refuse to condemn a blockade that, as classic “collective punishment,” is a clear violation of the Geneva Conventions, and even refuse to condemn today’s violent seizure of ships in international water. But, of course, the central rule of American politics is that Israel cannot be criticized, even as the rest of the world condemns it. How do you think the rest of the world will perceive the U.S.’s extreme, out-of-step protection of the Israelis, while subtly (or not-so-subtly) heaping the blame on the victims of its aggression?

: Follow Glenn Greenwald on Twitter: @ggreenwald. More Glenn Greenwald

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Israelis prepare for war with Iran

Even ex-Mossad chief who opposes an attack on Iran seems to have given up

By Larry Derfner

Ex-Mossad chief Meir Dagan no longer warns against attacking Iran (Credit: AP/Dan Balilty/Reuters/Baz Ratner)

Topics:Iran, Israel

JERUSALEM — After bombs went off near Israeli embassies in New Delhi and Tbilisi, and a man with an Iranian passport accidentally blew himself up in Bangkok, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu couldn’t let the opportunity pass. Yediot Aharonot, the country’s most widely read newspaper, reported Wednesday:

An updated list of talking points distributed by the national advocacy desk in the Prime Minister’s Office sought to connect the wave of terror with the international community’s efforts at tightening sanctions on Iran, and also to prepare the ground for a military option to stop Iran’s nuclear program.

According to Yediot, the new talking points read: “Iran and Hizbullah are behind these terror attempts. If this is what Iran is doing now, imagine what it will do if its nuclear arms project reaches the goal.” The tabloid’s story was headlined “Iran’s long arm,” and the subhead read, “Israel to the world: ‘Terror acts show nuclear Iran cannot be allowed.’” The story’s ominous tone meshed perfectly with the talking points.

Israel’s whole body politic – politicians, media, influential public figures and public at large – is now leaning into a war with Iran. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta’s recently reported opinion that Israel would likely strike between April and June is shared, give or take a month or two, by countless others.

The consequences of such an attack range from a bilateral missile war and intensified international terror attacks, to a regional war involving weapons of mass destruction. Israel may not pull the trigger, of course. But at this point, that seems the only realistic working assumption.

Israeli talking points are coming faster and sharper. Iran’s nuclear project is marching toward the “zone of immunity,” says Defense Minister Ehud Barak. “It is our duty to rely on ourselves when we are concerned with a threat to our very existence,” says Netanyahu. Their apparent aim is to create an aura of inevitability around an imminent Israeli strike. Leading the drive, Netanyahu and his one-time army commando unit leader, Barak, want full support at home and no serious opposition from the U.S. if and when they send the jet bombers on their mission. Naturally, they would prefer that the U.S. do the job – inflicting lasting damage on Iran’s nuclear infrastructure could well be beyond Israel’s military capability – but from here, at least, the American military option looks unlikely, certainly within a time frame Israel accepts.

Some skeptics think Netanyahu and Barak may just be engaging in psychological warfare aimed at keeping Western economic pressure on Iran, the goal being to force or scare the Tehran regime into giving up its pursuit of nuclear weapons, which it denies pursuing. But it’s hard to imagine anything short of visibly destroyed hardware on a massive scale that might convince Israel’s leadership that the nuclear threat had been lifted.

Yet while there is skepticism about the leadership team’s true intentions, there is virtually none being expressed here about the wisdom of going to war. The paucity of dissent is remarkable, not to say depressing, in a country that prides itself on being a “vibrant democracy.”

At the end of last week, the media were talking about which towns had good bomb shelters and air raid sirens and which didn’t. The likelihood that Israel would soon be attacking Iran had begun to sink in. An antiwar demonstration was held across the boulevard from the Defense Ministry compound in Tel Aviv. About 25 people showed up. They held signs that read, “Don’t bomb – talk” to the evening rush hour traffic going past. One driver honked.

I asked a sidewalk passerby, a woman in her mid-20s pushing a baby carriage, what she thought of a possible government decision to bomb Iran. “They sit up there, they’re smarter than me, whatever they decide, I’ll support,” she said. A fellow of about 20 on a skateboard said: “I’m not for war, I’m against war. But if somebody is going to attack you, if your enemy is going to attack, don’t you think you have to attack him first, for the sake of survival?” I asked if he thought Iran would attack Israel first. “I don’t know, I’m not privy to all the information. But good luck,” he said, and skated off.

For all the famous outspokenness of Israeli politicians, not one is speaking out against an attack, not from the moderate opposition nor the “peace camp.” Peace Now, a group that has organized huge demonstrations going back 30 years against the Lebanon War and the occupation, has said not a word about the extraordinarily high-risk war of choice that looms in the very near future.

The news media, with the exception of the liberal Ha’aretz newspaper, is fully on board. The mainstream media reflect and reinforce public opinion, which shows weariness with settlement-building and settlers, but automatic support for any decision taken in the name of security, especially in the face of a nuclear threat from a regime like Iran’s.

The tone is set by the red-on-black scare headlines in the tabloids and the grim facial expressions and bracing reports from correspondents on Channel 2, which dominates TV news. On the night of the Bangkok bombing, Ehud Ya’ari, dean of the country’s so-called Arab affairs correspondents, reported that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was expected on Wednesday to inaugurate the uranium enrichment facility in Fordo, a site built deep underground in the side of a mountain. “Thus,” said Ya’ari, “Iran’s nuclear project enters what Defense Minister Ehud Barak calls the ‘zone of immunity.’” Draw your own conclusions, folks.

Except for Gideon Levy at Ha’aretz, no well-known newspaper columnist or TV commentator has come out against a war; nearly all are worried and noncommittal. But one of the most influential columnists, Yediot’s Sever Plocker, a passionate centrist with long-standing contacts around the Israeli establishment, wrote a column Tuesday titled “Israel won’t blink first.” Declaring that “the State of Israel, as the national home of the Jews, has decided to prevent Iran from possessing nuclear weapons,” Plocker maintained that unless Iran freezes its nuclear weapons program and allows international inspectors into the underground sites and even the “secret” ones, “zero hour” will soon arrive. “No begging will stop Israel at that point. There will be a war,” he wrote.

Meanwhile, the literary triumvirate of Amos Oz, David Grossman and A.B. Yehoshua, Israel’s loftiest voices of peace and enlightenment, have remained silent. President Shimon Peres, who has put his days as a peacemaker far behind him, is warning only about the dangers of a nuclear Iran and not at all about those of an Israeli attack.

So what’s going on? What is this lockstep march to war in a country that made peace with Egypt and Jordan; that at times tried to make peace with the Palestinians; that absorbed missile attacks from Saddam Hussein in the first Gulf War yet held its fire at America’s behest; that had “warriors for peace” in the Prime Minister’s Office, “peace governments” and a “peace camp”?

It’s all gone. Since the Palestinian intifada ended the “peace process” in 2000, Israelis blame everything that goes wrong, every political dispute, violent or nonviolent, completely on the other side. No politician, commentator or other public figure who seeks mainstream approval can be thought of as “weak on security” or “naïve about the Arabs.”

Yet the reaction to the Iranian nuclear threat has deeper roots than that. While Netanyahu is known for his Holocaust analogies on this issue, his predecessors going back to Yitzhak Rabin 20 years ago have all lobbied the world to stop Iran from going nuclear, which has been marked “unacceptable.” Since Menachem Begin ordered the 1981 attack on Iraq’s reactor (over the opposition of Peres and war heroes Moshe Dayan and Ezer Weizman), Israel has lived by the doctrine that no enemy in the Middle East will have nuclear weapons. After the 1981 attack, it acted on this doctrine a second time in 2007, under Prime Minister Ehud Olmert (and defense minister Barak), with the airstrike on Syria’s embryonic nuclear facility.

So the issue for Israel isn’t just the Iranian regime’s jihadist craziness and Holocaust denial. Israel bombed the Iraqi reactor when Saddam Hussein was the Reagan administration’s man in the Gulf against Iran. It bombed the Syrian installation before Bashar Assad started slaughtering Syrians en masse, when he was offering Israel land-for-peace negotiations.

While it’s true that Iran isn’t just any Middle Eastern enemy, the Israeli doctrine applies to all of them.

Only one person has made a real effort to reverse the country’s course, and lately he’s given up, too. At the start of last year, upon finishing his legendary tenure as Mossad chief, Meir Dagan, then the country’s unchallenged supreme warrior, did the unprecedented. He began speaking out openly against an attack on Iran, calling it “the stupidest idea I’ve ever heard,” and warning that afterward, “the regional challenge that Israel would face would be impossible.” He was going public, he explained, because “there is no one to stop Bibi and Barak” from undertaking such a “dangerous adventure” now that he and the other military and intelligence chiefs, who had the clout to rein in the political leadership, were retiring.

Last week, after months of silence, Dagan resurfaced to announce he’s heading a new NGO to change Israel’s parliamentary system – an old chestnut of the good government movement that seems conspicuously irrelevant now. For nearly a year, Dagan raised a flag, and when he saw hardly anyone behind him, he lowered it. A few high-level ex-warriors, including two former army chiefs of staff, warned against the consequences of attacking Iran. But these were isolated remarks that got very little attention; in the public’s mind, the antiwar movement began and ended with one man.

I asked a retired army general who agrees with Dagan’s views why he and the many others like him didn’t get together and sign a letter in a major newspaper, or hold a press conference, or do something that might start a public debate over this fairly fateful matter; after all, Israelis listen to generals. He replied that he and his fellows didn’t have the information that those around the cabinet table had, they didn’t know if the government really intended to order an attack, and they didn’t want to take the chance that this was all “psychological warfare,” which they would be undercutting if they spoke out.

“You have to understand,” he said, “Israel is a small community, everybody knows everybody else’s opinion, so you have to be responsible. That’s the way I was educated.”

No opposition – that’s what Netanyahu and Barak want, and at home, that’s what they’re getting.

As for opposition from the Obama administration, it has been awfully muted. The Republican presidential candidates (with the exception of Ron Paul) have been gung-ho, which has much to do with the administration’s wariness toward Israel in this election year. But then how strong an argument for restraint can the administration make to the Israelis, after repeating for years that a nuclear Iran is “unacceptable” and that “all options are on the table”?

: Larry Derfner is an Israeli journalist who writes for +972 Magazine and American Jewish publications. More Larry Derfner

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When Iran and Israel were friendly

As the two countries prepare for war, a forgotten history of collaboration

By Jordan Michael Smith

Israeli diplomat's car damaged in an explosion in India.. (Credit: AP/Mustafa Quraishi)

Topics:Middle East, Iran, Israel

The explosions in Bangkok on Tuesday that destroyed an Israeli diplomat’s car escalated the already-dangerous situation between Iran and Israel. Israel’s defense minister connected the attacks with others on Israeli embassy personnel in India and Georgia. “Israel will act methodically and take strong yet patient action against the international terrorism that originates in Iran,” warned Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. For its part, the Iranian regime strongly rejected the charges, angrily claiming the attacks were the work of Israel itself. Each week seems to bring fresh evidence that a full-blown Iranian-Israeli war is growing more likely, a conflict that could engulf the entire Middle East and draw in the United States.

Yet it would be a mistake to believe that Israel and Iran are eternal enemies. In fact, these two countries that despise each other so much — Iran’s Supreme Leader recently called Israel a “cancer” — were once allies. This is not ancient history. Both pre- and post-Revolutionary Iran had extensive military and economic ties with the Jewish state. As recently as two decades ago, each country considered the other a vital friend in a region filled with hostile enemies. Conflict between the two may be bitter, but it is not, and never was, inevitable.

Iran informally recognized Israel in 1950, becoming the first Muslim-majority country after Turkey to do so. With few allies in the region, Israel welcomed Iran’s modest support. That support increased when England and the United States overthrew a democratically elected government in Iran in 1953, installing in its place a more Western-friendly regime. The new regime, headed by the Shah, was so aligned with the United States that a deal was stuck granting the Persian nation a huge nuclear energy program, as well as large quantities of plutonium and enriched uranium — two pathways to a nuclear bomb.

The Israeli-Iranian alliance was a part of the Shah’s pro-Western orientation. “The Shah looked at Israel as a way to establish friendly relations with the U.S.,” says the Rand Corp.’s Dalia Dassa Kaye, co-author of a recent monograph on Iranian-Israeli relations. Israel saw Iran as a way to escape its regional isolation. “They were bound by common enemies: the Soviet Union, and Arab nationalism, especially Iraq,” says Kaye.

The alliance, though never formalized or publicized because of Israel’s unpopularity in the region, consisted of deep intelligence and arms cooperation, as well as oil sharing. In the late 1950s, Israel, Iran and Turkey formed a trilateral intelligence alliance and performed counterterrorism intelligence operations. In the early 1960s, they teamed up to support Iraqi Kurds fighting the central regime. According to Kaye’s research, “Tehran and Tel Aviv developed a close military and intelligence relationship that would continue to expand until the Islamic revolution.”

The extent of this alliance should not be exaggerated. The Shah kept Iran’s relationship with Israel secretive for fear of rousing his own anti-Israeli population as well as those of Iran’s neighbors. Instead, “the alliance was based on the perception of common threats,” says Trita Parsi, author of a prizewinning book on relations between Israel, Iran and the United States. But the threats emanating from the Soviet Union, Iran and the Arab bloc were perceived as so serious that they outlasted the Shah’s overthrow in 1979.

The Islamist government that took power in Iran in 1979 was deeply hostile to all things Western, Zionism not least among them. And yet, the requirements of Iranian national interest trumped ideology to force the Islamic government to cooperate with the hated Jewish state on a number of issues. Once the U.S.-supported Iraqi government invaded Iran, the Persian state turned to Israel for much-needed arms. Phantom fighter planes and weapons for the Iranian army were sent by Israel. One estimate puts Israel’s arms sales to Iran at $500 million annually.

In the mid-1980s Israel was the conduit between Iran and the Reagan administration during the illicit Iran-Contra affair in which the Reagan administration sold weapons to the Iranians and used the proceeds to fund the anti-communist insurgency in Nicaragua. Even as it was relying more on Israel for arms in its war, the Iranian regime increased its poisonous rhetoric attacking the Jewish state, just as the Shah had done. According to the Iranian-born Parsi, such rhetoric was meant to maintain credibility in the wider Muslim world, but wasn’t matched by action. “Israel is Iran’s best friend and we do not intend to change our position,” Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin said in 1987.

Two events caused the gradual splitting between the erstwhile allies. First, the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, removing the greatest threat outside of the region to both nations’ security. Second, the weakening of Iraq during the Persian Gulf War diluted its menace. Simply put, Iran and Israel needed each other less, as both were more secure in the post-Cold War world. As Parsi wrote in “The Treacherous Alliance: The Secret Dealings of Israel, Iran and the United States,” “the common threats that for decades had prompted the two states to cooperate and find common geo-strategic interests — in spite of Iran’s transformation into an Islamist anti-Zionist state — would no longer exist.”

The Israelis, who had long ignored Iranian rhetoric, decided it needed to be taken seriously, especially in light of the Islamic state’s support for Hamas and Hezbollah. Iran worried about Israel’s growing power and wanted to assert power in the region. “Iran once had a more pragmatic leadership and policies,” says Kaye. The marginalization of the reformers that were popular in the 1990s meant that the extremist factions in the leadership became dominant. America’s invasion of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq in 2003 removed that country’s threat to Israel, leaving it with Iran as the most menacing nation in the region.

Now, Iran and Israel seem headed for war. One of those countries, or possibly the United States, will take an action that its opponent sees as requiring a military response. Assassinations of scientists and diplomats are bad enough, but a full-scale war could be the greatest disaster of the young 21stcentury, a battle between well-armed bitter enemies who once found it possible to coexist.

: Jordan Michael Smith writes about U.S. foreign policy for Salon. He has written for the New York Times, Boston Globe and Washington Post. More Jordan Michael Smith

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Adelson’s other pet project: The Israeli right

Newt's billionaire backer poured tens of millions into a media campaign to get Netanyahu elected prime minister

By Noga Tarnopolsky, GlobalPost

Sheldon Adelson (Credit: AP Photo/Vincent Yu)

Topics:GlobalPost, Israel, Newt Gingrich

This article originally appeared on GlobalPost.

JERUSALEM — As more and more people wonder how long Newt Gingrich will persevere against the growing inevitability of a Mitt Romney victory, one man appears to be holding firm: Sheldon Adelson, the Las Vegas casino mogul who just poured another $5 million into Gingrich’s coffers.

Superficially, the two men appear to have little in common. Gingrich, 69, is a lifelong politician and consummate Washington insider whose trajectory has famously taken him through three wives and three religious renderings: the Lutheranism of his birth, the adaptable Southern Baptism of most of his adult life, and now, a Bible-thumping new Catholicism.

Adelson, 78, born to Jewish Ukrainian immigrants in Dorchester, Mass., crawled his way out of the New England working class and, in addition to his vast wealth, is known for a stable and enduring second marriage to Miriam Ochshorn Adelson, with whom he has two children.

She is apparently the key to the one subject that links the two men, the country of her birth, Israel.

According to most reports, Adelson got to his mid-50s before ever really thinking about Israel. Then, a single trip to the Jewish homeland changed his life. When he got back to the United States, the divorced Adelson started telling friends he was interested in meeting an Israeli wife. A mutual friend set him up with Miriam, a physician and expert on addictions. Together they have developed two principal enduring passions and philanthropic commitments: centers for the treatment of drug addicts, and Israel.

The Adelsons have always maintained a mainstream but clearly right-wing line regarding Israel. They are major supporters of the American Israel Political Action Committee, of Birthright, an organization that brings Jewish youth on “roots” trip to Israel, and they love Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s conservative prime minister, as well as Gingrich, who has long been a fervent defender of Israel.

Not much is known about Gingrich in Israel, but it is thanks to support from Adelson that, in Israeli media reports, he is almost universally referred to as “Netanyahu’s friend.” There is no public information confirming an actual bond between the prime minister and the former speaker of the House, but Netanyahu is, coincidentally, a thrice-married politician known for a messy personal life and for playing to his religious and conservative base.

And both men benefit greatly from Adelson’s support.

It was in order to help a future Netanyahu candidacy that Adelson, in 2007, established Israel Hayom (Israel Today) a daily tabloid newspaper that quickly rose to have the widest circulation in the country. The newspaper was founded on the conviction, widespread among the Israeli right-wing since Netanyahu’s first term in office in the mid-90s, that the media held a deep-seated antipathy to Netanyahu.

A much-repeated rumor, impossible to verify, has it that Adelson has told Israeli friends he is happy to lose even $150 or $200 million dollars on the venture.

Conservative estimates hold that for now, he has lost at least several tens of millions of dollars. The paper boasts an extensive and expensive list of journalists and analysts, it is printed in massive quantities and distributed widely and for free, yet it does not display advertising in sufficient quantities to offset significant costs. It is a rich man’s luxury.

Israelis uncomfortable with the paper’s big shadow have bestowed it with a jokey moniker, Bibiton, a play on Netanyahu’s nickname, Bibi, and on the Hebrew word for newspaper, Iton.

On Thursday, new revelations about just how deeply Netanyahu is entwined with the Adelson’s newspaper came to light, and now threaten to blow open an unsavory, and perhaps illegal, link between the American billionaire and the prime minister.

Israel’s Channel 10 revealed Wednesday night that Dror Eydar, a media columnist for the Adelson-owned daily, who frequently pens irate articles accusing the Israeli media of an anti-Netanyahu bias, is simultaneously on the prime minister’s payroll, as a speechwriter and adviser.

This is the first indication that a direct connection may exist between the prime minister’s staff and the paper, which while right-wing and pro-Netanyahu, has always maintained a line of neutrality.

It remains unclear just how much the scandal will affect one of the largest media outlets in the country, but some expect there will be resignations from within the prime minister’s office.

To entertain the notion of how big a player the Israel Hayom is in the diminutive and struggling Israeli media market, the mere question of where Israel Hayom is printed is a matter of life or death for several other daily newspapers. Israel HaYom is now printed at the presses owned by the liberal, intellectual and highly regarded Ha’aretz, ideologically Israel Hayom’s antagonist.

The owner of a rival paper, the popular, mass distribution daily Ma’ariv, is known to be vying for the printing contract, which is worth about 100 million shekels, or about $27 million. Whatever Adelson decides could determine, at the twitch of his wrist, the fate of either of these established, traditional national papers.

Not the least of the issues that create unease among wide swathes of Israelis is the fact that Adelson, a controversial and enigmatic whale that has taken virtual residence in the local media pond, is a foreigner residing abroad. He has never pretended to be an Israeli. But whatever decision he makes, in the words of Ma’ariv columnist and Channel 10 analyst Ofer Shelah, “is not a decision for which he will pay any price. We will. Yet the future of pluralism in the Israeli media market may reside in his hands.”

Mordechai Kremnitzer, a professor of law at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and an expert on the media, points out two positive aspects of Adelson’s emergence on the Israeli scene.

“After many years in which the Israeli right wing claimed it was discriminated against by what was perceived as a generally left-wing media, and after many years in which this was a real perception held by many Israelis, now it is very difficult to make that case. Israel Hayom has the largest readership in the nation, and it is without question a right-wing operation.”

Secondly, in Israel’s very small and concentrated media market, with very few published papers, “the simple addition of another one is a positive thing.”

“The problem,” he said, however, “is that because the paper is distributed for free, the pressure this puts on other papers — that are already struggling to survive — is huge. This could even cause the collapse of another newspaper or papers, and if that happens, it should be viewed with real concern. It would be very negative, principally because it would not be the result of free competition among outlets, but it would simply be a consequence of the huge amount of money Adelson has at his disposal.”

An additional and related concern, Kremnitzer said, is the influence a foreign citizen can acquire on the free market of opinions in Israel.

“And even more worrisome than that is the question of the independence of the prime minister’s judgment when he becomes dependent on a person who is not an Israeli citizen and on a source of funds that is foreign,” he said.

No Israeli law restricts foreign ownership of media outlets, and Adelson’s activities are not challenged even when they are called into question for influencing Israel’s democracy.

“In my opinion, everything Sheldon Adelson has done is completely legal and legitimate,” said Moshe Negbi, a legal analyst for the Voice of Israel radio and a professor of communications at Hebrew University. “I’m sure Sheldon Adelson is not operating for any personal advantage. He does not personally need Netanyahu. He’s not advancing his own interests. I think he believes with his whole heart that Netanyahu is the best medicine for all of Israel’s problems. He has very right-wing views in many areas, and it is his right. In addition, he is willing to spend his own money to advance his ideas and his ideology.”

“It is part of his freedom of expression to use his money to advance his opinions. It’s the same as Amos Shocken, [the owner of Ha’aretz] who I admire greatly, who is willing to lose a lot of money to advance his point of view,” Negbi added.

Negbi’s concern lies with the “inability of the capitalist, democratic system to find the tools to regulate censorship that is brought on by business people who deal in media. There is no legal way to say to a person with money how he can manage his own property.”

“A generation ago, the concern was with governments’ attempts to control opinion. Now, the person who controls such a popular paper has tremendous power over what the public hears and does not hear, and therefore over the public’s political opinions.”

The issue is worldwide, but Israel’s case, according to Negbi, is particularly extreme due to its size. Israel’s total population is 7.5 million people, about the population of northern California’s Bay Area.

Despite the legal propriety of his actions, Adelson, who is accustomed to operating with a very wide berth, occasionally skirts the customs and ethics of Israel’s media world in a manner that raises eyebrows, or sometimes, causes fury.

The latest revelations made by Channel 10, a struggling commercial network known for a bold and authoritative investigative style, are only the latest in a series of skirmishes that threaten his reputation in Israel.

Last September its news division broadcast a critical but unchallenged profile of Adelson’s global casino operations. In reaction, Adelson threatened to sue. Both Channel 10’s news director and its legal counsel examined the claim and determined that no apology was due. But Channel 10 shareholder Ronald Lauder, another conservative American Republican and a friend of Adelson, thought otherwise and ordered that an apology be extended.

When the apology was issued on the main news broadcast last week, outrage ensued, including the resignation of two senior Channel 10 executives.

“This is exactly the crux of the matter,” Shelah, the columnist, said. “The media is at its knees and apologizing for something its professional authorities determined required no apology because they depend on the ongoing financial stream from someone who is a non-resident of the state. In this case, two of them.”

“That two people live in the US and have a relationship does not bother me. And Adelson was just normal in demanding an apology he did not deserve. But the problem was Lauder, who forced this behavior on Channel 10,” he added.

Lauder, of the Lauder cosmetics fortune and a former ambassador to Austria, is also president of the World Jewish Congress and is, like Adelson, close to Netanyahu. In 2011 alone, he pumped an estimated $16 million into Channel 10 to keep it operational.

The realization that in a moment of pique Adelson was able to rock Israel’s entire media world and possibly impact upon a government decision regarding debt relief for Channel 10 caused a nationwide shudder and reconsideration of his influence.

The latest revelations are sure to underscore the concern, expressed by Kremnitzer, the law professor, that Adelson may influence day to day decisions in the prime minister’s office.

“If Channel 10 were obliged to apologize for a broadcast not due to proper procedure like the correction of a mistaken pronouncement, this is clearly a grave abuse of the power of influence. This is what I mean when I say ‘negative and dangerous,’” he said.

The scandals have caused much worried flippancy in Israel about the political Kabuki theater Adeslon may have been dreaming up this winter, in which Gingrich and Netanyahu, both his protégés, could have a run at running a new US-Israel relationship.

“We are a very little country. And into this crucible Sheldon Adelson arrives, with a legitimate motivation. He sees a leftist liberal media and says, ‘I will establish a right-wing conservative balance,’ you know — fair and balanced — and balance out the media market. It’s all well, except for the problem that invariably arises when someone who literally has no budget limits is willing to invest his unending amount of money in Israel,” Shelah said. “What do you do then?”

: More Noga Tarnopolsky

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What the Adelsons will want for their money

The $10 million in pro-Newt money that transformed the GOP primary appears to be all about US policy toward Israel

VIDEO

By Justin Elliott

Sheldon Adelson and his wife Miriam Ochsorn Adelson (Credit: AP/Vincent Yu)

Topics:Newt Gingrich, 2012 Elections, Israel-Palestine, Israel

Casino magnate Sheldon Adelson and his wife Miriam have transformed the Republican primary by pumping $10 million into a pro-Newt Gingrich super PAC, thereby enabling his surge against Mitt Romney. So it’s surprising that comments Gingrich made last week about what the Adelsons expect in exchange for their money haven’t gotten more attention.

Ted Koppel asked Gingrich the key question: what do the Adelsons get if you win?

Gingrich, in response, suggested it all comes down to U.S. policy toward Israel.

Here’s the video, via Mondoweiss:

Koppel: But there has to be a so-what at the end of it. So if you win, what does Adelson get out of it?

Gingrich. Well, he knows I’m very pro-Israel. And that’s the central value of his life. I mean, he’s very worried that Israel is going to not survive.

That’s in line with what we know about the Adelsons, who have supported Israeli settlements in the West Bank and once pulled their money out of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) because of that group’s putative softness on the concept of a peace deal with Palestinians.

ABC, meanwhile, reports that “a source close to” Adelson says he wants “nothing” in exchange for his contributions. That claim doesn’t amount to much, especially coming from an anonymous source.

The latest $5 million to the pro-Newt super PAC was donated by Miriam Adelson, who is reportedly a dual citizen of the United States and Israel. And here, as reported in the New Yorker, is a small but telling example of how Miriam previously interacted with the recipients of the Adelsons’ largesse:

The Adelsons seem not to take their power for granted. Recently, Miriam told an associate, “I had a CD on Islamic jihad. I brought it to the [Bush] White House and told the chief of staff, ‘I would like the President to see this.’ It really is amazing that we have this influence.”

And here is another episode from that New Yorker article in which Sheldon personally leaned on the president:

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was organizing a major conference in the United States, in an effort to re-start the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, and her initiative had provoked consternation among many rightward-leaning American Jews and their Christian evangelical allies. … A short, rotund man, with sparse reddish hair and a pale countenance that colors when he is angered, Adelson protested to Bush that Rice was thinking of her legacy, not the President’s, and that she would ruin him if she continued to pursue this disastrous course. Then, as Adelson later told an acquaintance, Bush put one arm around his shoulder and another around that of his wife, Miriam, who was born in Israel, and said to her, “You tell your Prime Minister that I need to know what’s right for your people—because at the end of the day it’s going to be my policy, not Condi’s. But I can’t be more Catholic than the Pope.”

So the idea that the Adelsons expect “nothing” from the recipients of their millions is belied by their previous behavior.

Gingirch himself seems to have gone through a transformation on the Israel-Palestine question. As Wayne Barrett recently documented, Gingrich was as recently as 2005 praising the Palestinians, referring to “their ancestral lands” in historic Palestine, and, amazingly, inveighing against “the desire of some Israelis to use security as an excuse to grab more Palestinian land.”

That’s the type of language – Gingrich even used the phrase Israeli “land grab” in that 2005 essay – one wouldn’t hear even from alleged anti-Israel radical Barack Obama.

Fast forward to the current election cycle, of course, and Gingrich has veered way to the right, famously questioning the very peoplehood of the Palestinians and blasting calls to end Jewish settlements as a “suicidal step” for Israel. (Adelson, by the way, personally praised Gingrich’s claim that the Palestinians are an “invented people.”)

It’s very difficult to determine whether the Adelsons’ money prompted the shift or has simply reinforced it. In any case, you can be sure Gingrich won’t be talking about the Palestinians’ “ancestral lands” any time soon.

: Justin Elliott is a Salon reporter. Reach him by email at jelliott@salon.com and follow him on Twitter @ElliottJustin More Justin Elliott

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Ex-AIPAC flack loses gig over “anti-Semites” flap

The Truman National Security Project expels Josh Block after he attacked progressive writers as anti-Semitic

By Justin Elliott

Josh Block

Topics:Israel-Palestine, Israel, AIPAC

Politico’s Ben Smith reports today that the Truman National Security Project has severed ties with one of its fellows, former AIPAC spokesman Josh Block, following a multi-week flap in which Block attacked several progressives because of their writings on Israel-Palestine.

Smith reports:

The decision to expel Block appears, first hinted at by Greg Sargent, aimed at sending a message of solidarity with the other progressive groups, which have been infuriated by the attacks, and at defending allies from being criticized as anti-Israel at a moment of intense and often partisan debate on the issue.

“This has nothing to do with your policy views, and is a decision solely made on the basis of the need for this community to privilege the ability to debate difficult topics freely, without fear of mischaracterization or character attacks,” [Truman founder Rachel Kleinfeld] said in the email [to Block].

Truman is a Washington-based “leadership institute” which cultivates a network of young fellows who “advance strong progressive national security policy.” Block’s position was unpaid; he says he attended one Truman meeting per year. (Also worth noting: Center for American Progress chairman John Podesta is on Truman’s advisory board.)

Now Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol is expressing outrage at Truman’s move:

The Truman Project says that it seeks to advance a ”strong progressive national security policy,” and claims to represent mainstream liberal and Democratic foreign policy thinking. Doesn’t the expulsion of Block suggest that it is now impossible to be unapologetically pro-Israel—and publicly hostile to those who are anti-Israel—and remain a member in good standing of the liberal and Democratic foreign policy establishment?

But missing here is any mention of what really got the Truman folks upset at Block. As I reported earlier this month, Block had sent out an email to a neoconservative listserv in which he said, referring to writers at the Center for American Progress and Media Matters, “These are the words of anti-Semites, not Democratic political players.” That was further than Block had gone publicly and it was a particularly serious charge; he also urged journalists on the listerv to “amplify” the attacks.

Truman spokesman David Solimini told me that the anti-Semitism charges from Block were particularly troubling.

“Josh was removed from our community because he’s unable to differentiate between an honest debate and a personal attack,” Solimini said. “There is real anti-semitism in the world and we can’t debase the term by using it for everyone who disagrees with us on Israel policy.”

Solimini added: “There is a clear pattern here. Over time many of our community members had come to realize Josh isn’t interested in an honest debate.”

Block, in an email to Salon, responded:

As the Simon Wiesenthal Center made clear, the ideas and words used and promoted by people at CAP and Media Matters included “dangerous political libels and toxic anti-Jewish prejudice.” If there is no room in their organization for those who would raise alarms about that and similar language, that is their choice, and says far more about them than me.

But misrepresenting my comments and suggesting that my pointing to such speech constituted a ‘personal attack’ is laughable and the height of hypocrisy. Apparently Simon Wiesenthal wouldn’t be welcome there either.