Hell Bent on Dragging the US into Another War.

Jerusalem - Israel and the US have agreed to postpone a major military defence exercise, a senior security official said on Sunday, amid rising regional tension over Iran's nuclear programme.

"Israel and the United States have agreed to postpone the manoeuvre planned for spring," the official said on condition of anonymity.

"The exercises will take place between now and the end of 2012," the official added, without elaborating.

Earlier, public radio said the "Austere Challenge 12" exercise would be pushed back to the end of 2012 over unspecified budgetary concerns, citing military sources.

Army radio, citing a defence official, said it was being postponed to avoid "unnecessary headlines in such a tense period".

Weapons drive

The joint manoeuvre was to have been the biggest yet between the two allies, and was seen as an opportunity to display their joint military strength at a time of growing concern about Tehran's nuclear ambitions.

Israel, the US and much of the international community accuse Iran of using its nuclear programme to mask a weapons drive, a charge Tehran denies.

The postponement appeared to suggest fears the exercise could dangerously ramp up regional tensions, at a time when Iran has already threatened to close the strategic Strait of Hormuz - a chokepoint for one fifth of the world's traded oil - in the event of a military strike or severe tightening of international sanctions over its nuclear programme.

Meanwhile, the US sent Iran a letter over its threatened closure of the Strait of Hormuz, the Iranian foreign ministry spokesperson said on Sunday, without revealing the letter's contents.

"The US ambassador to the UN, Susan Rice, sent a letter to Mohammad Khazaie, Iran's UN representative, which was conveyed by the Swiss ambassador, and finally Iraqi President Jalal Talabani delivered its contents to officials" in Iran, the official IRNA news agency quoted Ramin Mehmanparast as saying.

"We are in the process of studying the letter and if necessary we will respond."

In December, the Israelis insisted the joint manoeuvres were planned in advance and denied they were related to Iran.



Unease

"The exercise scenario involves notional, simulated events as well as some field training and is not in response to any real-world event," the military said.

The postponement was not expected to affect a visit to Israel by top US military chief General Martin Dempsey, who is scheduled to arrive later this week and meet with Israel's Defence Minister Ehud Barak and Chief of Staff Benny Gantz.

But the delay was announced as reports suggested unease in US-Israeli relations over the best response to Iran's nuclear programme, and after an Israeli official voiced "disappointment" at Washington's approach.

Washington has spearheaded a push for international sanctions against Iran, including on its oil exports and financial institutions.

But Israel's Strategic Affairs Minister Moshe Yaalon told public radio he thought US President Barack Obama's administration should be tougher.

"France and Britain understand that the sanctions must be strengthened, in particular against the Iranian Central Bank," Yaalon said.

"The US Senate is also in favour, but the US government is hesitating, fearing higher oil prices in an election year," Yaalon said. "It's disappointing."

Assassinations

Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon, speaking on Sunday ahead of a trip to Britain, also accused the international community of dragging its feet.

"It is regrettable that the international community has not yet used all the means at its disposal to stop the Iranian nuclear programme," he said.

Israel has made no secret of its desire to see crippling sanctions imposed on Iran in a bid to slow its nuclear development, and reports suggest it has also taken other actions to delay the programme.

The Jewish state is suspected of involvement both in a computer worm that reportedly set back Iran's nuclear efforts, as well as a campaign of assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists.

Media reports have pointed the finger at Israel's intelligence agency Mossad.

Foreign Policy magazine reported that Israel's actions had created friction with Washington, and the Wall Street Journal said on Friday US officials had warned Israel against unilateral military action against Iran.

Yaalon said on Sunday that a military strike remained a last resort for Israel.

"Israel must defend itself. I hope that we will not arrive at that point," he said.

Ready for the next war in the Middle East?

"You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye
Who cheer when soldier lads march by,
Sneak home and pray you'll never know
The hell where youth and laughter go."

-Siegfried Sassoon

The media consensus on Israel is collapsing

Across the political spectrum, once-taboo criticism is now common

BY JORDAN MICHAEL SMITH SALON

With Hamas and Fatah meeting this week in Cairo, reconciliation between the rival Palestinian political parties is likely only a matter of time. Official U.S. policy holds that Hamas is only a terrorist entity, and any agreement between the two factions jeopardizes continued U.S. aid.  There is reason to believe, however, that more flexible, productive positions will be expressed in the U.S. media. Slowly but unmistakably, space is opening up among the commentariat for new, critical ideas about Israel and its relationship to the United States.

Freedom of this sort was visible in the pages of the New York Times last week. Thomas Friedman, the paper’s foreign affairs columnist, wrote that American leaders were betraying the country by outsourcing their foreign policy to Israel. A standing ovation given to the Israeli prime minister by the U.S. Congress this year was “bought and paid for by the Israel lobby,” he wrote. Phrased bluntly as it was, Friedman’s sentence was startling. As the quintessential establishment columnist, Bill Clinton’sfavorite pundit and a thrice Pulitzer Prize-winner, Friedman is often seen in the U.S. as authoritative on the Middle East and rivaled only perhaps by the Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg in the influence of his writing on popular discussion.

Not surprisingly, Friedman’s piece elicited furor from those policing the conversation about Israel. The Israeli ambassador, American Jewish Committee, Jerusalem Postand even members of Congress gang-swarmed Friedman, accusing him of anti-Semitism and hatred of Israel. It was not the first time in recent months Friedman has been critical of Israel policy. In September, he wrote of the Obama government that the “powerful pro-Israel lobby in an election season can force the administration to defend Israel at the U.N., even when it knows Israel is pursuing policies not in its own interest or America’s.” A more damning critique of Israel and the lobby would be difficult to make.

Even so, Friedman is not the only Times-man to let go the pro-Netanyahu line. Columnist Roger Cohen is even more critical of Israel than is Friedman, and like Friedman he is notable for being a liberal supporter of the Iraq War — not exactly a radical, in other words. Cohen now regularly writes about Israel’s “illiberalism,” says U.S. foreign policy has been “Likudnized,” and calls opposing Israeli oppression of the Palestinians the most important task currently facing diaspora Jews.

Cohen believes the new conversations he has contributed to represent “changes going on in the U.S. Jewish community,” he said in a phone interview. “Jewish identify in postwar America was built very much on the Holocaust and support for Israel, and for younger American Jews that may have less resonance. There may be a rethinking of that form of attachment to Israel.”

J Street, the organization devoted to lobbying for Israel from a liberal perspective, is both reflective of, and a stimulant to, a more balanced conversation about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Cohen says. If he is right, J Street is performing its job well. Public discussion about the Mideast conflict is still nowhere near evenhanded in the United States, but it is more so than it used to be.

Three academics, Tony Judt, Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer, deserve a lot of credit for expanding the permissible. Whatever one thinks of their analyses or prescriptions, they endured opprobrium and ostracism, to state the obvious: The unconditional U.S.-Israeli relationship is good for neither the U.S. nor Israel. Walt has an important perch at Foreign Policy’s website, which he uses to regularly espouse his once-radical views on Israel.

Criticism of the special relationship, once rare, is now frequent. Newsweek/Daily Beast’s Andrew Sullivan  has become a regular source of attacks on the unqualified U.S. support for Israeli policy. Time magazine’s Joe Klein has been similarlyoutspoken. “If you don’t think that the Israel Lobby has an enormous influence on the Congress, you’re deluding yourself,” he wrote recently.

Peter Beinart, also of Newsweek/Daily Beast, inspired headlines with his critique of the “Failure of the American Jewish Establishment.” He has a forthcoming book sure to get a lot of attention called “The Crisis of Zionism.” Former New York Observer writer Philip Weiss has created a one-stop shop for critics of Israel and U.S. policy. And, of course, Salon’s own Glenn Greenwald regularly questions the bipartisan consensus on Israel.

As one would expect, these developments are causing a great deal of consternation from those determined that views favorable to the Palestinians never get a hearing. In 2006, the American Jewish Committee released its infamous report accusing these new critics of Israel of being simply anti-Semitic. Last year, Lee Smith of Tablet magazine made the odd charge that publications like the Atlantic and Salon encourage Jew-hating writers in the hopes of increasing page views. Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol has lamented that charging Israel’s critics with “anti-Semitism” doesn’t effectively silence them any longer. And this week Iran-Contra convict Elliott Abramscriticized Friedman and Klein because they exemplify the mainstreaming of Walt and Mearsheimer’s ideas.

But it isn’t only pundits and academics. Diplomats and the people who would be on the center-right of American politics (if such a thing still existed) have been vocal about their alienation from U.S. discussion of Israel. Bruce Riedel of the Brookings Institution, an advisor to three presidents on Middle East and South Asian issues, told me in an email that “Fear of angering extreme evangelicals and the old lobby still inhibit real debate about Israel in American politics.”

Paul Pillar, former CIA bigwig, has become a stark critic of Israel for the National Interest. He has defended the comparison of Israel’s occupation policies with apartheid South Africa, and says that he agrees with all of Walt and Mearsheimer’s analysis, including the most incendiary charge — that the Israel lobby was instrumental in pushing the U.S. to invade Iraq.

Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff for Colin Powell, has been similarly outspoken about the power of what he calls “the Jewish lobby.” Jack Matlock, Ronald Reagan’s ambassador to the Soviet Union, has written that by far the greatest threat to Israel’s security and well-being is the policies of its own government. And in 2009 longtime diplomat Chas Freeman blasted the Israel lobby for successfully ending his nomination to be chairman of the National Intelligence Council.

For all the discussion-widening in the chattering classes, official U.S. foreign policy has changed little, if at all. Obama has overseen unprecedented military deals between Israel and the United States, and all but abandoned the Palestinians in the international diplomatic arena. Newt Gingrich’s historically discredited claim that the Palestinians are an “invented people” shows that American politicians still take some of the most extreme positions in the Israeli polity as gospel.

Still, at the outset of his term Obama made the biggest rhetorical push against Israeli settlement policy that any U.S. president ever has, only to back down in the face of Israeli objections. The resulting animosity between Netanyahu and the administration is no secret. Democratic rank-and-file voters are also less supportive of Israel than they used to be, and less so than Republicans are now. The new conversation about Israel has yet to make its way into Congress and the executive branch, but that day may be coming

Netanyahu to Freeze West Bank Settlement for 90 Days, To Cost US Taxpayers $3 billion

Netanyahu moves on U.S. incentives for construction freeze in West Bank

Washington Post Staff Writer, Joel Greenberg
Monday, November 15, 2010

JERUSALEM - Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu on Sunday presented his cabinet with a package of diplomatic and security incentives offered by the Obama administration to extend a building freeze in West Bank settlements for 90 days and resume stalled peace negotiations.The incentives were hashed out in more than seven hours of talks between Netanyahu and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton in New York on Thursday. Netanyahu told the cabinet that details of the proposal were being finalized by Israeli and U.S. teams, and that he would submit the completed plan toa smaller group of ministers known as the security cabinet, which is expected to approve it.

"I insist that any proposal meet Israel's security needs, both in the immediate term and regarding the threats we face in the coming decade," Netanyahu said in public remarks at the start of the cabinet meeting.

Palestinian officials said they were awaiting official word from the United States about the proposal but expressed concern that the extended freeze would not include East Jerusalem, which the Palestinians seek as the future capital of a state.

President Obama called Netanyahu's actions "promising."

"I commend Prime Minister Netanyahu for taking, I think, a very constructive step," Obama said aboard Air Force One, during the flight home from his 10-day trip to Asia. "It's not easy for him to do, but I think it's a signal that he is serious."

According to diplomats familiar with the incentives, they include asking Congress to approve supplying Israel with 20 advanced fighter jets worth about $3 billion and a U.S. commitment to oppose moves at the U.N. and other international bodies to impose terms of a peace agreement on Israel and to delegitimize it or deny its right to self-defense. Talks also would begin on far-ranging bilateral security understandings that would buttress a future peace deal with the Palestinians.

Israel would suspend new construction in West Bank settlements for 90 days, an abeyance that would apply to any building begun after a previous freeze expired Sept. 26. The U.S. would not ask for an additional extension under the terms of the package. The freeze would not apply to construction in East Jerusalem, which Israel annexed after capturing the area in 1967 and claims as part of its united capital.

Peace talks relaunched in early September broke off after the building freeze expired, and the Palestinians said they would not resume negotiations unless there was a complete halt to settlement construction, which they said was eating up territory they seek for a future state. Netanyahu had refused to renew the freeze, citing pressures in his governing coalition, which is dominated by right-wing parties that support the settlements.

The three-month extension is supposed to allow time for efforts to reach agreement on the borders of a future Palestinian state and to clarify areas where Israel could continue building and where it could not.

An Israeli official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity in order to speak freely, said Israel was prepared to negotiate borders, but, "We want to make sure other issues are discussed in parallel," such as the nature of the Palestinian state and Palestinian recognition of Israel as the Jewish state.

Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator, said Palestinians would formulate their position on the proposal after receiving official notification from Washington. But, he added, exclusion of East Jerusalem from the extended moratorium was "a major problem" for Palestinians.

The prospect of a renewed building freeze raised objections from some senior ministers in Netanyahu's Likud party.

Silvan Shalom, a member of the security cabinet, told Israel Radio that negotiating borders during the building moratorium meant that Israel would be bargaining away territorial assets while other core issues of the conflict with the Palestinians remained unresolved.

Despite the vocal opposition from some ministers, analysts said Netanyahu appeared capable of securing a narrow majority in the security cabinet for an extension of the freeze.

Eli Yishai, leader of the ultra-Orthodox Shas party, a key member in the governing coalition, said that he and a colleague could abstain from a vote if building in the settlements were allowed to continue unimpeded after the freeze and in East Jerusalem.

Staff writer Scott Wilson, traveling with President Obama, contributed to this report.

Apartments and Nuclear weapons

I'll never leave you and I'll always love you unconditionally sounds romantic coming from a lovestruck teenager but is it a sensible foreign policy statement?

Barack Obama has reassured Jewish American leaders that his administration's commitment to Israel remains "unshakable" despite recent tension between Jerusalem and Washington over a moratorium on Jewish construction in the West Bank.

Surely there must be some act or decision so in opposition to the interests of one party that it is unacceptable to the other. For instance, building apartments.

This morning, Haaretz is reporting that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has rejected the Obama administration's demands to freeze construction in East Jerusalem. That is the right and the business of Israel.

Israel should do what is in its best interest, especially apartment construction.

The United States should do the same. Clearly, we would all be better off if we built more apartments.

The Obama Administration has also stated that no option has been taken off the table when it comes to Iran.

Iran seems more interested in nukes than apartments.

Where is this going?

Iran is determined to build a nuclear weapon system. The Russians and the Chinese are not being helpful in stopping it. Both the Russians and the Chinese have nuclear powers on their borders and they include India, Pakistan, and North Korea. They have found that to be acceptable if not desirable.

China and Russia, coincidentally, both major nuclear powers are major constructors of apartments.

The United States is in no position to be contemplating a third war in the Middle East. Iran knows that and is determined to test the United States.

Obama is not going to war over Iranian nuclear ambitions. Neither is Israel.

There is an obvious solution.

We need to go to the UN and force Iran to stop building bombs and force them to build more apartments.

_______________________

U.S. President Barack Obama reassured Jewish American leaders Thursday that his administration's commitment to Israel remains "unshakable" despite recent tension between Jerusalem and Washington over a moratorium on Jewish construction in the West Bank.

In a letter from Obama to Alan Solow, Chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, the President wrote that his administration is committed to "special relationship with Israel and that will not change.

"Our countries are bound together by shared values, deep and interwoven connections, and mutual interests," he added. "Many of the same forces that threaten Israel also threaten the United States and our efforts to secure peace and stability in the Middle East. Our alliance with Israel serves our national security interests.”

“As we continue to strive for lasting peace agreements between Israel, the Palestinians, and Israel’s neighbors, all sides should understand that our commitment to Israel’s security is unshakable and that no wedge will be driven between us. We will have our differences, but when we do, we will work to resolve them as close allies.”

The President added that “for over 60 years, American Presidents have believed that pursuing peace between Arabs and Israelis is in the national security interests of the United States.” He also addressed the peace negotiations, asserting that he would not impose “peace from the outside; it must be negotiated directly by the leaders who are required to make the hard choices and compromises that take on history.”

Jerusalem Post