Jeffrey Goldberg and Hussein Ibish offer a lengthy compendium of the Good News From the Middle East (Really) in the New York Times. The pleading headline betrays the special pleading to follow.
Mondoweiss thinks Goldberg is “panicked” by the death throes of the two-state solution. To me the piece–and its extraordinary length–illuminate that unrealistic discourse about the region that permeates the liberal Washington policy culture. Maybe its the same thing. Continue reading »
Jabar al-Fifi, former Guantanamo detainee and reborn al-Qaeda jihadist, was recently arrested in in Saudi Arabia. Last month he told a TV interviewer why he went back to waging war on America after getting married and accepting money from the Saudi government. From kingdom-controlled Arab News:
Al-Fifi said he relapsed back into terrorism and fled to Yemen after going through a rehabilitation program at Prince Muhammad bin Naif Center for Counseling and Care. “I was looking for martyrdom and was deeply affected by the war in Gaza and the atrocities in Iraq.” he said.
This is how Israeli actions endanger American lives.
Thomas Joscelyn of the Weekly Standard successfully undermines President’ Obama’s claim that Guantanamo is Al Qaeda’s ‘Number One Recruitment Tool.’ And in scoring a point, he missed the point.
Joscelyn notes that Guantanamo has been rarely mentioned 34 messages and interviews delivered by top al Qaeda leaders since January 2009. The translations were published online by the NEFA Foundation, a non-profit that does research on global jihadists. (One reporter associated with the group is Doug Farah, a former colleague and friend from the Washington Post. For that reason, I implicitly trust the group’s research, even if I don’t always share its politics).
Joscelyn’s keyword analysis finds that Al-Qaeda’s ‘Number One Recruitment Tool’ is the Zionist Occupation of Palestinian. Keywords associated with the issue (“Israel,” “Zionist,” “Gaza,” “Jews,” “Palestinian” etc) far outnumber references to Afghanistan and Pakistan. Iraq is a distant fourth, and Guantanamo is rarely talked about. So Obama’s claim is exaggerated at best, and perhaps not true at all.
Joscelyn is so busy thumbing his nose at the president that he fails to notice his study usefully refutes The Lobby’s talking point, honed by convicted deceiver Elliot Abrams of the decadent Council on Foreign Relations, that the U.S. diplomats should not focus on Palestine settlements, because the issue really isn’t that important. To the contrary, the Weekly Standard has confirmed that al- Qaeda thinks the best way to recruit suicide bombers to kill Americans (like Elliot Abrams and myself) is to call Muslim attention to the Zionist siege of the Palestinians.
So while U.S-Israeli alliance remains strong and Kristol’s tough guys sleep well, al Qaeda’s pitch is working.
Tomorrow is the first anniversary of Al- Qaeda’s most successful strike on a U.S. target since Sept. 11. I refer to the Human al-Balawi’s suicide bombing at CIA base in Afghanistan. Balawi, invariably described as a Jordanian by U.S. news organizations, actually came from a Palestinian family displaced by the ethnic cleansing operations of 1948. Balawi’s martyrdom operation was proof positive that the Israeli Occupation is al-Qaeda’s biggest recruiting tool.
President Obama can’t admit that but the Weekly Standard just did.
The IDF’s Operation Cast Lead, mounted two years ago this week, is probably the prototype of Israel military action in Lebanon in coming years. Cast Lead had lethal effect on children in the battle zone, 352 of them.
In counterpoint to Leslie Gelb’s happy (and not implauible) assessment from Washington that Wikileaks vindicates U.S diplomats, comes a more sober assessment from Haaretz’s excellent Aluf Benn in Israel. Benn says the documents
depict the fall of the American empire, the decline of a superpower that ruled the world by dint of its military and economic supremacy. President Barack Obama emerges from the cables as a weak, flimsy leader, whose good intentions and lofty visions dissipate like dust in the wind in the face of the conservatism and stubbornness of his Middle Eastern counterparts.
At micro-level Gelb has a good point. U.S diplomats come off well. At the macro-level, Benn has a better one. U.S. diplomats are doing an good job playing the bad hand dealt to Obama who underestimates the players around the table.
Who to believe in the cyberwar story of the year?
With the Wall Street Journal and others reporting this week that the Stuxnet computer virus temporarily shut down Iran’s uranium enrichment, the head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization saracstically dismissed the story to IRNA as “rumor.” A former top U.N. nuclear inspections officials says Stuxnet might well be responsible but cautions there is “no evidence” to support the claim.
But the change in Iranian comments seems revealing. The Fars News Agency in Iran today offered what it described as “new details about the West’s cyberattack.” While describing the media reports as a “propaganda stratagem,” a Foreign Ministry spokesman also said “Stuxnet is in a league of its own” as a virus.
Not coincidentally, the single biggest Iranian news agency, IRIB, today played up the boast of nuclear chief, Alik Akbar Salehi, that the West had been caught “off guard” by Iran’s recent nuclear gains. That sounds like counter-messaging.
The Iranian statements this week differ notably from those issued in September which claimed the virus has affected only staff computers at the Bushehr nuclear power plant but not the computers that run the reactor.
The American Arab Anti-Defemation Committee honored Helen Thomas at a dinner in northwest Washington last night. The evening was all Helen, all the time, featuring accolades from the (still!) irrepressible Sam Donaldson(!), sweet Rosemary Oakar, and the pungent James Abourezk.
Donaldson called Thomas “the best White House correspondent ever!” Abourezk gibed Thomas was not fired because of comments she made about Jews. Her “fatal sin,” he said, was asking President Obama if any countries in the Middle East currently possessed nuclear weapons. The always-self-righteous Ralph Nader said, “If ten reporters had acted the way Helen acted there never would have been an Iraq war.”
He’s probably wrong about that but it is an inspirational thought for ill-paid scribes. In the course of the evening there were a couple of references to Arab dictatorships but with the superb Seared Filet of Wild Salmon with Pinot Noir Sauce paid for by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (“Ultimate Underwriter”) the focus wisely remained on the 90-year old honoree.
The crowd of well-dressed crowd five hundred welcomed Thomas to the podium with a standing ovation.
“U.S. policy is supporting man’s inhumanity to man,” Thomas said in brief remarks accepting the ADC’s award. ” I pray that my country will return to the morals and ideals that made it so great.”
A personal aside: At one point, Abourezk said “Israel doesn’t have a lot to do with Judaism. It has a lot to done with fascism.” Without passing judgment on the latter proposition, I paused over the former. “Israel doesn’t have a lot to do with Judaism.”
That struck me (a secular, non-practicing Judeo-Christian by culture and marriage) as true as a matter of theology but not of practical politics. The most public sign of the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory in Washington D.C., I realized, are the signs on the lawns of the synagogues where I used to attend bar mitvahs when my kids were younger. These expressions of concern for Israel’s security are worth respecting but they do amount to code words for occupation. So I would have to say that in northwest Washington Judaism does have something to do with Israel. An irritating thought with uncertain implications. Maybe it was Helen Thomas that made me think it
Al Jazeera’s panel highlights the unexpectedly good work by Dubai police.
Don’t believe the hype: Israel has survived such flaps “with very few repercussions” in the past.
Israel wants to know: What was Mabhouh doing in Dubai? Why not investigate that?
Australia provides ans answer: Because Hamas wasn’t systemically abusing the passport system on which the global security depends.
Meanwhile: Get your Mossad T-shirt now!
The pleasant notion that the Israeli-Palestinian “peace process” will make “progress” has receded. PALESTINE CRY notes “newspapers from the region [outside of Israel] are in agreement that Israel is acting to escalate the conflict and foment a war in the region.”
