Barry Rubin to Kerry - You are Playing with Fire!

The Obama administration and the entire strategical decision-making capacity in the US seems to be on an extended leave. It's a shame that such a weak administration is in charge at such tumulus times.

Recently, John Kerry came out in support of the demonstrators in Bahrain in a sign that could be interpreted by everyone as an American approval of a free-for-all against its allies. 

Rubin writes:

Senator John Kerry, who when I worked in the Senate was regarded as...let's just say as not a great genius, is now chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Kerry regards himself as something of a shadow secretary of state. If he ever actually gets that job we're all in trouble.
Kerry has been perhaps the most outspoken member of the Senate, now that Senator Arlen Spector is gone, in flattering the tyrannical government of Syria. Yet now Kerry is giving Bahrain the "Egypt treatment." He warned that government:
"Using tear gas, batons, and rubber bullets on peaceful protestors is the worst kind of response to a nonviolent demonstration. I urge the government of Bahrain to put an end to the violence and allow the Bahrainis to voice their call for greater political freedom. Historic protests are taking place across the Arab world and it is vital for every government to respond peacefully and listen to their own people.”
In principle,  these are fine sentiments, but in strategic terms they are foolish indeed. Bahrain is different from the Egyptian case in two important respects. First, the uprising in Bahrain is openly being led by islamists. Second, the problem of democracy in Bahrain is that the great majority of the population--about 85 percent--are Shia Muslims while the monarchy is Sunni.

If the majority were to rule, Bahrain would probably align itself with Iran. Following the fact that Iraq has a Shia-majority government, the transformation of a Gulf Cooperation Council state to Shia rule would freak out the Saudis and other Gulf monarchies as the beginning of the end for them.
So to play with backing an uprising in Bahrain is extremely dangeorus and no doubt Kerry, like the sorcerer's apprentice, has no idea what he might be unleashing there. If he wants to urge on an uprising he'd be better advised to stop coddling and start criticizing his friends in the Syrian regimet.

Barry Rubin: Egypt: The American Debate Has Gone Stark, Raving Crazy

By Barry Rubin

As I pointed out recently (it will be the next item so hold on for the link), the mass media in America generally presents only one side of the debate nowadays. Then, it publishes nonsense which survives because it is protected from the withering critique it deserves. And even people who should know better are just losing it.

Consider one example (Roger Cohen has gone beyond ridicule so let's focus on someone who should know better). I regret criticizing Robert Kagan of the Brookings Institution as he is one of the smarter, saner people. 

Yet the kinds of things he is quoted as saying in the New York Times remind me of why the "neo-conservatives" have been so dangerous because of their naivete about the Middle East. They are fitting counterparts of the apologists for radicals who have demonized them. Both groups are trying to impose their fantasy model on the real Middle East. Of course, if Kagan didn't say things like this he wouldn't be quoted at all in the New York Times.

Kagan explains to us:

Barry Rubin: Palestine Papers: We Know the Real Story

By Barry Rubin

We now know what actually happened in the negotiations mischaracterized by the "Palestine Papers," but before I tell you the true story, let me say some words about how it has been distorted.

Maybe it's just me out of step with the rest of the world, but someone tell me where the following paragraph is wrong:

The world is judging and condemning Israel on the basis of incomplete notes taken by people many of whom are not fluent English-speakers (of statements made by people who are not native-speakers of English) and who are passionate partisans of the Palestinian cause and who hate Israel; documents that have not been authenticated by anyone and whose translation has not been checked; documents that leave out much of what the Israelis said and leave out the concessions they made; then are filtered through the pro-Hamas, anti-Israel, anti-Palestinian Authority (PA) al-Jazira (whose record of reportage is marked by some amazing lies) and the anti-Israel, pro-Hamas, anti-PA Guardian (which is more  radical sect than newspaper); which then misinterpret them in ways that seem deliberate to make Israel and the PA look bad; and then are quoted by journalists around the world who know little or nothing about the issues, haven't read the documents, have never seriously considered the possibility that they aren't 100 percent accurate, and ignore every other previous negotiation and public statement by Israel and the PA that contradict the claims being made; and who then add on even more claims that are neither in the documents nor in al-Jazira and the Guardian!

Sorry that paragraph was so long but it had to be to cover everything. Now have I missed something here?

The reaction to all of this in an age supposedly fixated on tolerance is more like that of a lynch mob than anything else. And have no doubt that before this is over there will be people who are lynched.

And now what actually did happen? The story is told here from interviews with then-Prime Minister Ehud Olmert before the papers came out. Briefly, Israel offered concessions; the Palestinian side talked about concessions. Olmert suggested they make a deal. PA leader Mahmoud Abbas hesitated and said he needed a few days, and then never responded, making public statements rejecting Israel's position.

So this does not prove that the PA made a generous offer of peace and Israel rejected it, the spin put on it by the media and by selective release of badly flawed documents. The PA rejected peace, as usual. Of course, a big reason for doing so was the fact that they knew they could not sell it to their people (who would denounce it as a sell-out), or Hamas, or even the Fatah Central Committee.

Note the new spin will be that if only Olmert remained in office and Netanyahu had not been elected there would have been a two-state solution. In other words, it will still be portrayed as Israel's fault. But this is ridiculous since the PA did not, and could not, agree on the conditions it had discussed. This is the structural problem with the peace process and it has not changed. The latest affair has made it worse.

No Israeli prime minister could make peace with the Palestinians when the Palestinian leadership isn't ready to make peace.

Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). The website of the GLORIA Center is at http://www.gloria-center.org and of his blog, Rubin Reports, http://www.rubinreports.blogspot.com

Barry Rubin: Coming Soon, From Those Wonderful People Who Brought You The "Palestine Papers"

By Barry Rubin

Do you really believe that suddenly, for no apparent reason, and no big Israeli concession the Palestinian negotiators tossed away their demand for a "Right of Return" for millions of Palestinians and accepted a mere 100,000 being let into Israel? And if you don't believe it, how can you think that these papers are authentic?

Do you believe that this could have happened without the U.S. government knowing about it? And if so why didn't it factor into U.S. policy at all? Indeed, anyone who understands Israeli politics would comprehend that if given such an offer Olmert and Livni--desperate to survive politically--would have made a deal.  

Only someone who believes that Israel has no interest in peace--which is what the Guardian and al-Jazira think--could conceive that these leaders would just walk away after the PA made an offer that was light years' better than anything ever hinted at before. Only those who demonize Israel could believe that Livni was advocating expelling Arab citizens of Israel as if she were no different from Meir Kahane.

Do you not realize that this is a disaster for hopes of peace since no Palestinian negotiator in future would dare to offer any concession at all? And that's even if more radical forces don't sweep away those held responsible for "treason."?

In its defense the Guardian published an article by Jonathan Freedland entitled, "The Palestine papers have broken a taboo. Now the arguments for peace can be open. The papers show how much ground Palestinian negotiators were willing to concede. This isn't craven. It's admirable."

You might admire it but how many Palestinians are admiring it? And doesn't it matter more what they think about their own leadership? Does Hamas admire it? Does the Fatah leadership admire it? And of course, most of them will believe that this is what happened. I don't.

Don't justify this by saying it helps advance peace. It doesn't. Quite the opposite.

Incidentally, the Guardian offers neither evidence for its claims nor a response to specific issues raised about problems with the text. This makes me even more suspicious.-----------------------------



The situation demands satire:

From those wonderful people who brought you the “Palestine Papers!”:

Coming soon to a credulous, irresponsible, and/or malicious newspaper near you!

The Cold War Papers: Revealing that Stalin desperately wanted peace and offered to give up control of all the Eastern Europe countries but Roosevelt and Churchill refused. (Actually, the Guardian editors probably believe this one!)

The Iran Papers: Revealing that Iran was eager to give up its nuclear weapons project but the Obama Administration  refused because it wanted an excuse to go to war with Iran, take over the country, and steal its oil.  (Hm, they might believe that one also.) 

The Bush Papers: "And then the president said, 'Hey! Let's pretend that Iraq is a threat so we can invade them and steal all their oil!' Then Tony Blair responded, `Right, master! Whatever you say!" (Oh, no doubt they believe that one.)


The Obama Papers: "And then the president said, 'Hey! Let's seize control of the car and health industries so we can institute socialism and Death Panels!" (Okay, they don't believe that one.)

OK, Funny, I hope. But this latest example of madness should teach a lesson. Not only the acceptance of obviously false claims but then actually making it worse than the original by “creating” new Palestinian “concessions” and slanders against Israel.

Here's how a friend of mine summed up the recent period:

1) Reporters accepting as fact that a woman died of tear gas inhalation despite there being no recorded cases of such an occurrence ever happening.

2) Treating the Mavi Marmara incident as Israel said/Turkey said despite video evidence supporting Israel's version. (Not to mention a hostile witness supporting Israel's version.)

3) Taking the Palestine Papers at face value despite the fact that they came from Al Jazeera, despite past Palestinian statements to the contrary. Despite, I might add, the fact that they include alleged statements like when the Israelis say they are going to return the Golan Heights to Syria, the Palestinians reply that they will compensate Israel with more concessions.

How can one not believe that by these standards, if properly presented in modern terms, much of the media would accept as genuine the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (Gaza’s government does), the claim that Jews grind up children to make Passover matzos or organ transplants (the Saudis and Sweden’s biggest newspaper do), that the Holocaust never happened (Iran), or that Israel doesn’t want peace and is responsible for all the Middle East’s problems (Oops! The Guardian, much of the New York Times, and the Fairfax newspapers in Australia, among many others, say that).

This debacle should be the last straw. Unfortunately, it won’t be.

Here's how I would explain this issue:

1. Most of the routine material comes from actual documents but not the "interesting" parts that everyone is talking about.

2. That still does not mean that these documents accurately reflect what happened since they are the version of PA officials

3. On a number of specific points and on all the points being publicized the claims made are so ridculous that these dicynebts must have been altered.  The texts read almost like a satire themselves in which someone set out to write a narrative in which the PA gave everything and got nothing in return. Indeed, the picture is so exaggerated that it should be obvious these claims are phony. But of course that assumes that people were going to use logic and know something about the issues.

There are about twenty reasons to believe this is essentially a hoax. Here's one: Do you really believe that after demanding a "Right of Return" for all Palestinians over decades as the most passionately held position, the PA leaders would give it up in exchange for only 100,000 being allowed in and get absolutely nothing in return for that concession? 

4. In addition, the Guardian and al-Jazira often distort what is in the documents to exaggerate it even more. Some of the specifics are really absurd like the legalistic-minded Tsipi Livni saying she is against international law and even saying she planned to expel Palestinians from Israel after an agreement.

5. Yet almost all of the media uncritically quote these distortions. 

6. Some even add new items that were neither in the documents nor in the original coverage. The most notorious example is the claim that the PA recognized Israel as a Jewish state.

This, for example, is a case study showing how Tzipi Livni’s words are twisted in a way that nobody who didn’t read the original would know. 

In other words, Islamist (al-Jazira) and radical pro-Islamist (Guardian) writers are being taken by the rest of the media as the definers of reality. 

The Guardian has now defended itself by ridiculing the idea that this is a hoax or a forgery. Let me be clear: I have no doubt that real documents of the PA were purloined, but the text of these includes such nonsensical material that it looks as if the "editors" overdid it. 

Finally, the statement of Nabil Shaath. As always, the Guardian's claims don't stand up to close inspection. He did say in passing they were authentic but gave no reason for this claim nor sign that he had read them. Shaath also was not involved in the talks during the time when the most sensationalist material supposedly happened. So he doesn't actually know. Moreover, he made remarks that seem to imply that he doesn't accept the idea that huge concessions were made at all. In other words he denies the content that is the subject of so much controversy.

From the coverage in other publications one can see that few journalists are actually reading the documents and none are seriously analyzing them. I don't think I've seen a single reference in the mass media (but I'm happy to be corrected) showing the contradictions and inconsistencies involved in these papers.

And if anything the madness is accelerating. As Christians are being driven out of the Muslim world, homosexuals are threatened with death, women are treated as property, and hate is incited there every day, the Los Angeles Times chooses to publish a long article on, well let's quote from it:

"Israeli intolerance shows up on Internet, in Knesset, on the street....Racism, homophobia and religious discrimination seem to be more prevalent, taking the form of threats and even a government motion." 

I could answer this but why bother? I'd suggest that racism and homophobia, along with intolerance in general, are less present in Israel than in any European country or the United States. I repeat: there is no sense expecting fairness from a long list of media outlets and reporters any more.

Nor is that the fault with Israeli hasbara. I once heard the great journalist Eric Severaid say that nothing can protect one from a journalist who's determined to distort your views or character.

If people in academic or journalism won't listen, or report, what you have to say, how can anyone do a better job of getting them to understand the situation and report on it accurately? We are often dealing with willing participants in a propaganda campaign for whom professional ethics has no meaning. 

Here is a brief biography of the Guardian editor who co-authored the Palestine Papers articles:


     Seumas Milne, who is the co-author of the scoop, and is likely to have been the conduit for the leaks is an interesting character. He is a Wykhamist, via Balliol, Oxford. Prior to joining the Guardian, he worked for "Straight Left", which was the newspaper of the hard line, pro-USSR, "Tankie" faction in the Communist Party of Great Britain. These were the guys who applauded the suppression of bourgeois nationalist backsliding in Hungary and Czechoslovakia. If you want a taste of Milne's current politics, try googling his articles in the Guardian along with the words "Iraq" and "resistance". You'll see pretty clearly where his sympathies lie. 

Milne was appointed Comment Editor of the Guardian just prior to September 11. In its wake, he filled the Guardian comment pages with op eds by Hamas officials and spokesmen, and their British and Middle Eastern supporters. On one occasion, they even had an op-ed by Al Faqih, Osama Bin Laden's man in Britain. 

Milne also wrote articles basically calling Fatah a bunch of Israeli stooges and puppets. He knows very well what he is doing. 

And that is his purpose here. Smearing Israel is a plus but destroying the current leadership of the PA and bringing Hamas to power is his main goal. This is the man, along with the Islamist-dominated al-Jazira whose reportage is now being taken at its word by the world media.

Note also that the Goldstone Commission consistently based its conclusions on claims by Hamas, a group that publicly announces its goal of commiting genocide against Israel's Jews.

As a Muslim friend who has seen this happen in his own country on various issues puts it, "Words mean nothing to these people... as long as they get them the desired outcome. The end justifies the means. Period."

Nor have I seen a single person in the mainstream media pointing out how disastrous this affair is for any chance of peace. Even if they were willing to make real concessions in the past--which I doubt--no PA official will ever do so in future. Granted, peace was unlikely any way but this makes the chances for a negotiated agreement pretty dead for a whole generation.

The most likely source of the material is increasingly appearing to be disgruntled hardline staffers in the PA's Negotiations Support Unit who quit, rather than some foreign, Hamas, or factional conspiracy.

But the real problem is the insanity of our current era. We live at a time when the UN's chief "expert" on the Israel-Palestine issue, the fanatical Israel-hater Prof. Richard Falk, can claim that by saying that the U.S. government is staging a cover-up on what really happened on September 11. And that's the Obama Administration he's talking about! This  is the man whose condemnations of Israel help determine the direction of UN reports. 

Many people now understand that regarding Israel and a host of other issues we are simply not dealing with professors who have any care for logic and journalists who are interested in facts. Others don't.
Here's a story a reader sent me today:

"[A person I know] gets almost all his news from CNN. So today he gave the important news that he received from CNN that the "Palestinians said they were willing to give up most of Jerusalem for peace." I tried to explain to him that the story was completely false. He just gave me a blank stare back. His mind could not comprehend how such an authority as Wolf Blitzer and CNN could report something as fact but that is in fact completely false.

"Do you ever just want to scream? I do. What can we do? What can the average person do? Does it have any effect at all if we write to the media, expressing our outrage. Does the truth matter if the official truth is all that people believe?"

Do I ever want to scream? What do you think! Does it have any effect when we complain to the media? No. 

Does the truth matter if the official truth is all that people believe? Well, that's different. Roughly two-thirds of the American people do not accept what the media tells them on this issue. In fact, support for Israel in the United States went up during the Gaza flotilla crisis. Every day, more people are waking up. New sources of information are expanding.

A lot of average people have common sense. A lot of government officials (not enough, for sure), have to deal with reality and sooner or later see through the illusions. Polls on media credibility show it to be quite low. Student sit through indoctrinating classes and don't accept what they are told.

Basically, we have to wait it out. Meanwhile, we need to tell the truth, educate as many people as possible, help build an alternate elite to replace and repair the diseased segments of society. 

Rabbi Tarfon said "It is not incumbent upon you to finish the task, but neither are you free to abstain  from it." Pirkei Avot, Chapter 2, Paragraph 16.

Or here is the Enlightenment version of that principle from Edmund Burke: "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing."

Barry Rubin: Who Killed Lebanon's Rafik Harari? Say It Nicely or the Terrorists Will Get Angry!

By Barry Rubin

We are awaiting the publication of the international tribunal report on who killed former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri  We all know the Syrian government did it but recently there seems to have been more and more evidence that Hizballah was involved as well.

The problem is that if the tribunal says that and not everyone in Lebanon--including Harari's son, Said--says that they are deeply offended, Hizballah is totally innocent and wouldn't hurt a fly (unless it was a Zionist imperialist fly) there's going to be big trouble. Already, Hizballah has brought down the Lebanese government and staged a show of force in Beirut to make that point clear.

This is the latest example of the "do what I want or we will kill you" syndrome which has been so successful around the world. As in: Publish those cartoons and we'll kill you; translate Salman Rushdie's book and we'll kill you; cross the street in Israel and we'll kill you; be a Christian and we'll kill you; and the latest, show this film on Iran's nuclear program and we'll kill you.

Ibrahim Kalin, chief adviser to the Islamist Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan--who is an ally of Iran, Syria, Hizballah, and Hamas--claims that his government has been urging everyone in Lebanon to get along with each other. Perhaps, he suggests, the tribunal report should be delayed, since if--my words here--everyone pretends that the Hizballah terrorists didn't murder the leader of the moderate forces it will be easier for the moderate forces to stay in a coalition government with them.

He added:

"Of course, the truth about the Hariri assassination should come out, but it should come out in a way that will not fracture the Lebanese society. Otherwise, in the name of finding the truth, we create a situation in Lebanon where people start killing each other off. And then what truth are you talking about?"

Right, so if the tribunal tells the truth about who murdered Hariri (and about a dozen other members of parliament, journalists, and others, all from the moderate side), the terrorist killers will then kill more people, and so what good will it be to know that they are terrorist killers?

Still, I believe in doing things constructively so I tried to figure out a way to have the truth come out "in a way that will not fracture the Lebanese society" (by making the killers angry).

I began with the vulgar,  Hizballah and Syria killed Harari, 

then went to the more subtle, Hizballah and Syria were happy when someone killed Harari. 

But finally I found the solution. Here's what the tribunal should say:

If Harari were driving down the street, and Hizballah and Syria knew there was a bomb that someone had planted in the roadway in order to assassinate him because he was being too pro-Western and actually standing up to the revolutionary Islamists, they would call Hariri up to warn him but wouldn't use their speed dial. Thus, tragically, the warning would be too late and Harari and two dozen bystanders would be killed.

How's that, Mr. Kalin?

Here's a good, brief, background piece on this issue and what might happen next by Professor Bill Harris, a real expert on Lebanon.

Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). The website of the GLORIA Center is at http://www.gloria-center.org and of his blog, Rubin Reports, http://www.rubinreports.blogspot.com.

Barry Rubin: Does Iran Now Decide The Limits of Free Speech in the West?

Another great article by one of my favourite analysts. Check out his blog



By Barry Rubin

Something happened in Canada that's truly terrible, far more terrible than even the people who think it is terrible realize.

Here's the story from Canada's National Post, January 18:

"After receiving threats and two suspicious letters Tuesday, the National Archives of Canada cancelled the screening of a controversial documentary that critiques Iran's nuclear weapons program.... 

"Once we started to receive threats from the public and threats of public protest, we deemed the risk associated with the event was a little too high," she said...."

Can you tell me what is unique about this situation? No one has pointed it out yet. Yes, there has been frequent intimidation regarding materials about Islam when Muslims have complained and violence has been threatened. This in itself is an important issue involving free speech.

But that is not what's happening here. A film about a nuclear weapons program isn't a discussion of Muhammad, the founder of Islam. It's about a country.

So for the first time I'm aware of a state--a radical, aggressive, terrorist-promoting, genocidal regime at that--has blocked a public event including criticism of its policies in a Western democracy. This is a big extension of the existing problem. What's next, people scrambling to avoid being accused of Iranophobia?

Parallel things have happened before. For example, Saudi Arabia managed to block the showing of a film on British television about the execution of a princess and a British investigation into corruption in arms sales to Saudi Arabia. But that kind of thing, also increasing, was on a state-to-state level.

By the way, of course, in the Middle East the most extreme anti-Jewish, anti-American, and anti-Western material (it would be called hate crimes in the West) is churned out at high volume every day without Western complaint, much less threats.

This is part of the taming of Western democracy and the closing down of freedom of speech so prevalent today. Voltaire spoke of the torturable and untorturable classes in the eighteenth century. Now we have the criticizable and uncriticizable countries. 

Here's the truth: A huge amount of what masquerades as public discourse today is the result of propaganda campaigns. The Palestinian Authority, Hamas, and their allies run a huge anti-Israel slander machine that masquerades as human rights, news, non-governmental organizations, and so on. Professors and teachers conduct indoctrination brainwashing in the guise of education.

If you don't know this is going on then we are all in serious trouble. And we are aware of only a small portion of what is happening.

Here's an example. By accident, I run into a family that lives in a small town in Maryland. The daughter who is in high school mentions to me that two Palestinian girls came into the classrooms and gave a presentation on how horrible and evil Israel is. You can imagine. I ask, "Was this part of some series or program with people coming from various countries?" 

"No," she replies. It just happened. It is the only such session they've had this year. 

So on the one hand there is a relentless onslaught of misinformation on behalf of anti-democratic movements and regimes; on the other hand a relentless onslaught of anti-democratic manipulation and intimidation to block the other side. 

By the way, the group sponsoring the film showing in Canada is called the Free Thinking Society. Apparently, that is out of fashion.