EDITOR: Gideon is almost right
Below Gideon Levy does a demolition job on the new star on the Israeli political stage, Yair Lapid, the man with no politics. This is quite accurate and due, but Levy is wrong in his claim that this is a new development – the bizarre party Shinui, more than three decades ago, was no different. Ina country tired of inflamatory and ideological politics, not to mention deeply corrupt politicians, anyone offering no politics as his slate, can be quite successful. In the past, even celebrity thieves have run for the Israeli Knesset, and won… One example is Shmuel Flatto-Sharon, who was a fugitive from the French justice system, and went for the Knesset so that he would win immunity from extradition… and it worked. Israeli senior politicians have only themselves to blame – with Olmert about to be tried for numerous instances of corruption, with Sharon saved from prosecution by a stroke, with the ex-President in jail for multiple-rape offences, with the ex Justice minister in jail for corruption – the list goes on. At least celebrities with no criminal background look like an improvement – the politics will be the same, but they won’t go to jail so soon…
Israel’s winter of political emptiness: Haaretz
A new political species has arrived in Israel, the celebrity-politician, and this is bad news. It doesn’t say much about them but it says a lot about us.
By Gideon Levy
It’s a political upheaval – a bunch of celebrities are going into politics. A high-profile broadcaster, a high-profile father and a high-profile widow have announced their intentions, and maybe other people like them will join in. Maybe they want to do good or are bored with their lives and are looking for something else to do. Maybe they want to achieve (even ) more fame or want a change. Whatever the case, let’s not complain about them – they have a right to do what they’re doing.
Yair Lapid, Noam Shalit and Karnit Goldwasser will certainly liven up the dull political map with bright new colors. But adding water to rotten soup won’t change its taste. Basically we know all three of them well. They were frequent visitors to our living rooms. Lapid made our Friday evenings more pleasant with an entertainment program dressed up as a news broadcast and a mushy personal column dressed up as commentary. Shalit touched our hearts as the father of the national prisoner of war, as did Goldwasser, a charming war widow.
The attitude toward each of them was emotional – and nothing more. Lapid created a pleasant atmosphere and amused us, Shalit and Goldwasser touched our hearts, and all three roused in us a bit of identification. In a country where almost everything is emotional, they were the heroes of the hour, the heroes of the time. We laughed with them and cried with them. We followed them and identified with them; they took us into their lives and the lives of their families in good times and bad, but – oops – we really didn’t know them at all.
What we know is the image built around them, and that’s enough to make them celebrities. But we don’t have the slightest idea about their positions, and that’s not enough to make them politicians. No one in this country but their family and friends knows anything about their opinions. Maybe they have opinions and maybe they don’t. (My suspicion is they don’t. )
Is Lapid for or against continuing the occupation? Is Shalit willing to fight for minority rights the same way he fought for his son’s rights? And what about Goldwasser? Nothing. We don’t have the slightest inkling. After all, they’ve never expressed a word on the subject, and we can assume they never will. Like foam on the waves, the ripple of an exciting celeb.
A new political species has arrived in Israel, the celebrity-politician, and this is bad news. It doesn’t say much about them but it says a lot about us, the Israelis. If Shalit and Goldwasser merely have pretensions to adorn party lists, Lapid sports much broader political pretensions. Their repercussions have already shown up in public opinion polls. Surrounded by others of his ilk – a reserve major general, a woman mayor, an industrialist, a high-tech expert, a token religious person, and a social activist for good measure, he’ll create a movement.
There is no greater proof of the emptiness of the public discourse and the shallowness of Israeli politics – the hope for change and the desire for salvation by a celebrity. This is an unprecedented discouraging phenomenon – the people don’t want anything. Neither revolution nor change, neither positions nor opinions. Just make things pleasant for us. Let’s forget the summer, autumn has already passed, and here comes the winter of emptiness.
This may have been reasonable in a country where there’s order – but in Israel? Who will stand up to the threats and dangers – to democracy, to the rule of law, to human rights? Who will stand up to the worsening racism? And who will end the curse of the occupation?
A nationalist-racist is preferable to a hollow celebrity – Avigdor Lieberman rather than Lapid. At least there are no illusions about the nationalist, and maybe one day he’ll even spark an active opposition and struggle. But to oppose Lapid? To fight against him? What is there to oppose and what can one fight? After all, he’s so “Israeli,” the most “Israeli,” and he wants a better education system. Who knows, maybe deep down he also wants a better health system. And he wears a leather jacket.
It’s a new kind of Israeli blindness. If until now Israelis closed their eyes to what was happening, now they’ll enjoy themselves with the celebrities. If until now it was cynical and deceptive politicians who pulled the wool over Israelis’ eyes, the people they loved to hate, now it will be the heroes of their TVs and living rooms, the people they love to love. How good and pleasant it is: The celebs rule (or will soon ).
EDITOR: Israel’s racist policy upheld by court
The Supreme Court, being part and parcel of Zionsit racism, always upholds the racist policies and acts of government. Every Jew (or Mock-Jews, as was the case in the ex-USSR)
Israel upholds constraints on Palestinian spouses: Guardian
Most Palestinians who marry Israelis are still banned from living in the state
Israel’s supreme court has upheld a controversial law that bans most Palestinians who marry Israelis from living inside the Jewish state.
The court agreed in a majority ruling of six to five that Palestinians who gain Israeli citizenship through marriage pose a security threat. The law is believed to have prevented thousands of Palestinians from living with their spouses.
The Israeli parliament passed the law in 2003, at the height of the second Palestinian uprising, when militants from the West Bank were frequently entering Israel to carry out attacks.
Civil rights groups had argued that Israel’s Basic Laws – the country’s de facto constitution – grant all citizens the right to family life. They also say that few Palestinian spouses of Israelis have been involved in violence.
Justice Asher Grunis wrote in the majority opinion that “human rights are not a prescription for national suicide”.
According to the ruling, about 135,000 Palestinians were granted Israeli citizenship through marriage between 1994 and 2002, compared with a few hundred before 1994. Most were married to Israeli Arabs.
About 20% of Israel’s citizens are Arabs. They share common roots with the Palestinian community in the West Bank, Gaza and abroad, and frequently intermarry.
The law bans granting citizenship or residency to Palestinian spouses of Israelis, but allows exemptions for certain people who are not believed to pose security risks, including Palestinian men older than 35 and women over 25.
Last year, only 33 out of 3,000 applications for exemptions were approved, said Sawsan Zaher, who filed a challenge to the law on behalf of the Adalah Arab rights advocacy group. She accused the government of interfering in the personal lives of its citizens.
“The court has failed in its main role, which is defending the rights of the minority,” Zaher said.
EDITOR: Haaretz continues to cry wolf in the wilderness of Israel
Haaretz, a liberal-minded centre-right publication, is periodically crying wolf on the so-called ‘peace-process’ – a process of cheating the Palestinians off more land by having periodic meetings to make sure peace is never an option – while they see through Netanyahu’s ruses, they miss the big picture – the fact that there never was a real peace process, and that based on such premises that existed in the last three decades, a real peace is an oxymoron in Palestine, which remains under colonial occupation. Netanyahu is just another Israeli politician doing his job – making sure Palestinians cannot live in their country.
Israel must stop stalling on peace process: Haaretz Editorial
Netanyahu’s systematic foot-dragging, like his encouragement of settlement construction, stems from an irresponsible policy that ignores the changes happening in our region and increases Israel’s isolation.
Just as with previous efforts to advance negotiations on a final-status agreement, the Jordanian attempt to breath new life into the diplomatic process has gotten hung up on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s policy of dragging his feet. As Barak Ravid reported in yesterday’s Haaretz in Hebrew, at this week’s meeting in Amman with chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat, Israeli envoy Isaac Molho refused to present Israel’s positions on borders and security.
Molho argued that under the Quartet’s plan from September 2011, the deadline for submitting proposals on borders and security falls two months after the first meeting between the parties. In other words, the deadline is in early March, not January 26.
This is not the first time (and presumably won’t be the last) that Netanyahu has avoided discussing core issues. But without discussing these issues, his Bar-Ilan University speech, in which he expressed willingness to advance a two-state solution, is meaningless.
The prime minister’s refusal to present his final-status map and respond to the Palestinians’ proposal on security led to the failure of the indirect talks that began in May 2010, under the guidance of George Mitchell, U.S. President Barack Obama’s special envoy. And at the end of that year, Netanyahu rejected the Quartet’s urging that he accept the 1967 borders as the basis for negotiations – a move that would have prevented the hubbub surrounding the Palestinians’ application for admission to the United Nations.
Netanyahu isn’t demanding the extra time in order to reformulate his positions on the extent of Israel’s withdrawal from the West Bank or security arrangements in the territories; his views on the territories’ future and Israel’s security needs aren’t expected to change in the next six weeks.
This systematic foot-dragging, like his encouragement of settlement construction in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, stems from an irresponsible policy that ignores the changes happening in our region and increases Israel’s isolation.
Netanyahu promised the Israeli public to work tirelessly to advance a two-state solution. Postponing the deadline for submitting his positions to the Quartet may prolong the life of his government, but it undermines the national interest.
EDITOR: Justified murder?
Western intellectuals have no problem with murders committed in their name! With the sacred stamp of security of Israel, one is supposedly justified in killing and maiming scientists and others everywhere Israel deems necessary. Of course, Israel could not get away with this practice, unless there were those willing supporters of its crimes, such as Andrew Cummings.
A covert campaign is the only way to stop Iran’s nuclear ambitions: Guardian
The death of another Iranian scientist has led to criticism of such actions, but Tehran’s refusal to co-operate leaves little alternative
Andrew Cummings
As yet another Iranian scientist becomes the victim of increasingly bold and creative attempts to disrupt and delay the Iranian nuclear programme, commentators around the world have lined up to point out the risks to this audacious approach.
It is true, as both Julian Borger and Saeed Kamali Dehghan pointed out, that whoever is doing this risks profound consequences for the region. What many people fail to recognise, though, is that a covert campaign, while rife with physical, diplomatic and legal risks, is the lesser of many evils.
No one should doubt that the west (and Israel) desire a negotiated settlement to Iran’s nuclear programme. The Stuxnet virus, mysterious explosions at military bases and the James Bond-esque antics of motorcycle assassins have taken up many column inches, while less has been written about the efforts of the E3+3 (China, France, Germany, Russia, the UK and US) to reach a diplomatic solution.
Since 2003, western powers, working closely with their often-resistant Russian and Chinese counterparts, have kept the door open to Iran to negotiate. This has been despite continual provocation, whether in the form of secret enrichment facilities such as the one outside Qom or in Iran’s bellicose pronouncements regarding enrichment.
The E3+3 continues to hold out a generous offer to Iran: give up your military programme that even the International Atomic Energy Agency has expressed concern about and receive economic investment and a properly safeguarded modern civil nuclear programme. That would be a good deal in most people’s eyes.
A military campaign is one alternative to a diplomatic solution. The debate around the pros and cons is unlikely to reduce any time soon. Meir Dagan, Israel’s former spy chief, has been one notable voice sounding caution, with the US Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum at the opposite end of the spectrum, preparing to fuel US fighter jets if he becomes the US’s next commander in chief.
Many commentators argue that supporters of a covert campaign see it as an alternative to war. They warn that covert action will ruin chances of dialogue with Tehran while encouraging Iran to use its own covert operations. What this fails to recognise is that Iran has long been the master of covert operations.
Through the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC), Iran has been responsible for increasing the efficacy of insurgent improvised bombs in both Iraq and Afghanistan. It has helped to prop up Bashar al-Assad’s murderous regime in Syria and has a track record of attempting to assassinate or imprison its enemies – both at home and abroad.
Instead of damaging the chances of dialogue, covert action might actually do the opposite. All those who have been involved in negotiating with Iran understand the difficulties involved. Iran’s leaders continue to see the Islamic Republic through its long and rich history as a regional and world power rather than through its modern reality as an isolated pariah state with a weak economy that oppresses its brave citizens while rigging “democratic” elections. As a result, the supreme leader has consistently refused to allow his negotiators to engage in a meaningful dialogue. Instead, Iran has held out the prospect of talks while more often than not refusing to even put the nuclear issue on the agenda. The E3+3, in their desire to keep the door open, have accepted these talks, but have never seen any fruits from their labour.
The one notable exception to this was in October 2003, when, surrounded by hundreds of thousands of US troops in Afghanistan and Iraq, and having seen its closest neighbour toppled, the supreme leader authorised the signing of the Tehran declaration. This agreement with the UK, France and Germany led to the temporary suspension of Iran’s uranium enrichment and demonstrated that, when faced with an existential threat to the regime, Iran was willing to deal.
What followed, however, was an uprising in Iraq (assisted by Tehran), stalemate in Afghanistan (assisted by Tehran) and a reduction in pressure as the international community focused on other issues, believing the problem was being solved.
To deliver a negotiated settlement needs a comprehensive strategy. Covert action, increasingly robust sanctions, along with a credible threat of military action remain one half of the E3+3’s dual-track strategy of pressure and engagement that was recently restated by the British foreign secretary. Covert action carries risks, but does not impact on the brave Iranian people that the Iranian authorities continually oppress.
Covert action creates the time and space for pressure to build, while reducing the need for military action. Ultimately, covert action should be aimed at bringing enough pressure to bear on Iran’s leaders so that they understand they will never reach their goal of being a nuclear power. It is only at that point diplomacy can have any hope of success.
Iranian nuclear chemist killed by motorbike assassins: Guardian
Tensions escalate with US and Israel as Tehran accuses the Mossad in fifth murder of scientists
Saeed Kamali Dehghan and Julian Borger
Footage from local TV shows the scene in Tehran where an Iranian professor working at a nuclear facility was killed Link to this video
A chemist working at Iran’s main uranium enrichment plant was killed on Wednesday when attackers on a motorbike stuck a magnetic bomb to his car.
The assassination – the fifth against Iranian nuclear scientists in the past two years – is likely to further escalate tensions between Iran and the west.
It took place at 8.30am, at the height of rush-hour in Tehran, according to witnesses quoted in the Iranian media.
A motorcycle pulled up alongside a silver Peugeot 405 carrying the deputy director of the Natanz enrichment plant, Mostafa Ahmadi-Roshan, 32.
The pillion passenger stuck a charge to the door next to the chemist, which detonated as the motorcyclist drove off.
The car’s driver was also killed and a pedestrian was wounded, but the charge used appeared to have a sophisticated shape that focused the blast into the car. While the door ended up in nearby trees, much of the car remained intact.
Ahmadi-Roshan was the fifth nuclear scientist to be attacked in Tehran in 24 months. Only one target has survived the daytime attacks, apparently carried out by a well-trained hit team.
Iran has said the US and Israel are behind the assassinations, and blamed the Mossad for Wednesday’s killings.
Washington denied any involvement, while Israel, whose military chief had warned Iran on Tuesday to expect more “unnatural” events, declined to comment.
The attacks come at a time of high tension and high stakes in the Gulf. The US has declared it will prohibit the global financing of the Iranian oil trade starting in June in protest at Iran’s nuclear programme. The EU is due to decide on its own embargo on Iranian oil later this month.
Iran has reacted by threatening to close the Gulf’s narrowest point, the strait of Hormuz – cutting off a fifth of the world’s oil supply – if its oil exports are embargoed.
A European diplomat said on Wednesday night that a decision had been taken to impose an oil embargo in six months’ time and an embargo on the imports of petrochemical products in three months’ time.
This decision will be reviewed in April, in light of its anticipated impact on global oil markets, and then in July, on the eve of it taking effect. The decision will be formally endorsed by EU foreign ministers on January 23.
The Iranian navy has warned the US against deploying an aircraft carrier in the region. The US, with British support, has vowed to keep the oil shipping lanes open and patrol the Gulf as it sees it fit.
Iran has carried out naval exercises in the Gulf and has announced more to come, while Israel and the US are due to carry out their biggest joint war games ever in the next few months.
The oil embargoes are the result of a report by the UN nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), in November citing ‘credible’ evidence to support longstanding western charges that Iran has experimented with nuclear weapons design. Iran denies any military applications of its nuclear programme.
Iran raised tensions further this week by announcing it had begun enriching uranium at a second plant, a highly-fortified underground site called Fordow, near the holy city of Qom.
Western intelligence agency officials have admitted they are using covert means to try to slow the Iranian programme, including the supply of faulty parts and the Stuxnet computer worm which infected and slowed centrifuges.
Sir John Sawers, the head of MI6, said in a speech in 2010: “We need intelligence-led operations to make it more difficult for countries like Iran to develop nuclear weapons.” He added that the intelligence services’ role was “to find out what these states are doing … and identify ways to slow down their access to vital materials and technology”.
All western intelligence agencies have denied involvement in assassinations.
However, the head of the Israeli Defence Force, Lieutenant General Benny Gantz, predicted on Tuesday that 2012 would be a critical year for Iran which would undergo more “things which take place in an unnatural manner”.
Ahmadi-Rohsan was killed in a manner now terrifyingly familiar in Tehran. In November 2010, not far from the scene of Wednesday’s assassination, there were two identical attacks involving assailants on motorbikes and magnetic bombs.
One killed Majid Shahriari, a member of the nuclear engineering faculty at Shahid Beheshti University in Tehran who was working on research projects with the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI). The other slightly wounded Fereydoun Abbasi-Davani, the subject of UN sanctions and widely suspected in the West of involvement in nuclear weapon design.
In a reflection of his importance in the Iranian programme, Abbasi-Davani was made the head of the AEOI a few months later. The first assassination victim was also a senior figure. Physicist Masoud Ali Mohammadi was killed in January 2010 when a bomb on a parked motorbike exploded as he walked to his car. In what seems unlikely to be a coincidence, Ahmadi-Roshan was killed on the second anniversary of Ali Mohammadi’s death.
Last July Darioush Rezaeinejad, an electronics expert, was shot in a Tehran street by gunmen on a motorbike. His affiliation to the nuclear programme has been debated. According to some reports, he worked on high-voltage switches that can be used in nuclear weapons design.
Iranian state agencies described Wednesday’s attack as a terrorist operation, and a senior official blamed Israel for it. “The bomb was a magnetic one and the same as the ones previously used for the assassination of the scientists, and is the work of the Zionists,” Tehran’s deputy governor, Safarali Baratlou, was quoted as saying by the Fars agency. Iran refers to Israel as the Zionist regime.
Iran’s vice-president, Mohammad Reza Rahimi, in quotes carried by the state Irna news agency, said: “Iran’s enemies should know they cannot prevent Iran’s progress by carrying out such terrorist acts.”
The AEOI said that Ahmadi-Roshan’s death would not deter Iran from its nuclear aspirations. A statement read: “The heinous acts of America and the criminal Zionist regime [Israel] will not disrupt our glorious path and Iran will firmly continue this path with no doubt.”
Iran said it was prepared to hold further talks with the international community, represented by a six-nation negotiating group of Britain, the US, Russia, China, France and Germany. However, the office of the EU foreign minister, Lady Ashton, who acts as a point of contact for the group, said it has received no indication from Tehran suggesting any meeting.
IAEA inspectors are due to visit Iran this month to discuss the “possible military dimensions” of the nuclear programme outlined in their November report. Diplomats said the talks’ agenda would have to be agreed before the visit went ahead.
Iran nuclear scientist attacks: a covert war that carries serious risks: Guardian
Whoever is killing Iran’s scientists is clearly willing to risk catastrophic consequences that could engulf the whole region
Julian Borger
The method of the assassination was all too familiar. The motorcycle with the pillion passenger, the magnetic bomb and the lifeless body left in the car. This is the fifth attack on an Iranian nuclear scientist. In four cases, including Wednesday’s assassination of Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan, the results have been fatal.
What is different this time is the level of tension that surrounds the murder. Naval war games have been performed in the Gulf and more are planned. There is a war of words between Iran and Washington over the flow of oil through the Strait of Hormuz, the choke point in the Gulf that Iran threatens to close.
The level of stress in the west’s confrontation with Tehran is about to be raised yet again with a new EU oil embargo, due to take effect in six months’ time, according to an agreement in principle in Brussels.
There are some get-out clauses, with a review in three and six months to assess the impact on the oil price, but the news is likely to draw more defiance from the government in Tehran.
The European embargo is due to coincide with US measures targeting the financing of the Iranian oil trade, effective in June – an attempt forced through by a combative Congress in December to strangle the Iranian economy. Even some US commentators think this could be equivalent to a declaration of war.
“The Obama administration has no intention of going to war with Iran,” said Trita Parsi, author of a new book on Obama’s policy on Iran, entitled A Single Roll of the Dice. “But the administration wants to create a credible threat of war, in the belief that Iran only responds to such credible threats.
“However, there is little confidence they can contain that threat. The vote on the sanctions in the Senate showed that their control of Congress is very limited.”
In the midst of this volatile situation, the killing of another Iranian nuclear scientist has all the potential of a struck match at an explosives dump.
Parsi said the Israelis, well aware they cannot destroy the Iranian programme on their own, have a motive for lighting the match.
Whether it is responsible or not, the Israeli military establishment has a motive to claim successes in the covert war on Iran, as General Benny Gantz did this week, because it is under political pressure to start an overt one. The generals, however, know that Israeli air strikes would unleash a war without accomplishing their goal of destroying the Iranian nuclear programme.
A covert war, based on assassinations and sabotage, may appear a better alternative. Individual killings may not seriously hinder a large, wide-ranging programme, but they would certainly deter young Iranians from taking that line of work.
However, such a campaign is not without huge risks for the region. Elements of the Iranian establishment seem to be lashing out in frustration. Last October’s bomb plot against the Saudi ambassador and Israeli diplomats in Washington, alleged to be the work of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, was amateurish and reckless.
Likewise, the storming of the British embassy, on the anniversary of Majid Shahriari’s assassination, appeared to have gone much further than the leadership intended, and deepened Tehran’s isolation.
“The old guys at the top are losing control of the situation,” a senior western diplomat observed, the day before this latest killing.
The fragmentation of the regime will have unpredictable, and possibly very violent, outcomes. Whoever is killing Iran’s scientists is clearly willing to risk catastrophic consequences that could engulf the region.