May 4, 2010

The Israeli Exception

 


Foreign Policy In Focus

Institute for Policy Studies Logo A project of the Institute for Policy Studies
World Beat
by JOHN FEFFER | Tuesday, May 4, 2010
Vol. 5, No. 17

N E W  A R T I C L E S


MAY 3 | Review: 'What's That? A Human Hell'
Kyi May Kaung


E V E N T S


MAY 10 | Brown-Bag Discussion: 'Out of Okinawa: Military Bases and the U.S.-Japan Alliance'
Washington, DC


MAY 11 | Author Event: 'Undaunted: My Struggle for Freedom and Survival in Burma'
Washington, DC



The Israeli Exception

North Korea and Israel have a lot in common.

Neither is a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), and both employ their nuclear weapons in elaborate games of peek-a-boo with the international community. Israel and North Korea are equally paranoid about outsiders conspiring to destroy their states, and this paranoia isn't without some justification. Partly as a result of these suspicions, both countries engage in reckless and destabilizing foreign policies. In recent years, Israel has launched preemptive strikes and invaded other countries, while North Korea has abducted foreign citizens and blown up South Korean targets (including, possibly, a South Korean ship in late March in the Yellow Sea).

And they're both exceptions in their regions: Israel is a Jewish state in an Arab region; North Korea is an old-style feudal dictatorship in an Asian region marked by relative prosperity and political openness. But the two countries often behave as if they are exceptions to all other rules as well. For instance, they both share an antipathy toward human rights organizations that attempt to hold them to international standards. Witness the recent attacks by Israel (and its hard-right supporters) of Human Rights Watch because of reports critical of Israel's human rights record. North Korea also routinely rejects human rights inquiries as a challenge to its sovereignty. (For a proposal on a better strategy to engage North Korea on human rights issues, check out my latest article Starting Where North Korea Is.)

Despite these similarities, these two roguish powers haven't had a great deal of interaction. Between 1992 and 1994, Israel secretly negotiated a billion dollar buy-out of North Korea's missile export program to the Middle East, and the United States intervened to nix the deal (only to explore a similar option with North Korea at the end of the Clinton administration). In 2007, Israel bombed a suspected nuclear facility in Syria that may or may not have been built with North Korean assistance. Otherwise, the two countries maintain their innocence and distance.

And yet one country is an official rogue and the other country only plays one on Arab TV. The difference in designation owes much to U.S. policy. One of the perks of world domination is the chance to make like Adam in Genesis and name all the animals. North Korea, according to Washington, is beyond the pale. Israel, however, is "one of us": firmly ensconced in the Judeo-Christian tradition, accorded honorary European status, and even considered worthy of membership in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

In certain respects, of course, Israel readily qualifies for OECD membership. Its per-capita GDP is larger than current OECD members Turkey and Mexico. But as FPIF contributor Adam Robert Green explains in Does Israel Belong in the Club?, Israel faces two types of barriers to access. For one thing, Israel is increasingly according second-class status to its non-Jewish citizens. For another, he writes, "Israel occupies swathes of East Jerusalem, the West Bank, and the Golan Heights, and exerts physical and bureaucratic control over these regions, without granting any political representation to the inhabitants. By governing de facto, without giving voice to those governed, Israel cannot be described as a democracy: not technically and not in spirit."

So, why does Israel merit this exceptional treatment? Certainly, the country has a supportive constituency in the United States, although this "Israel lobby" doesn't have the magical powers that some would ascribe to it. The United States supplies Israel with $2-3 billion annually in military aid for geopolitical reasons, to have a friend in the region. But we also send over $1 billion every year to Egypt for the same reason. Heck, we used to send arms to Saddam Hussein, and it wasn't because of an "Iraq lobby" pulling the strings.

Of greater salience is the overlap in the exceptionalist traditions of Israel and the United States -- the notions of "chosen people," the "redemption" of the land by settling it -- which I've written about here before. This symbiotic exceptionalism can also be found in the relationship between North Korea and China. Both Beijing and Pyongyang view themselves as the centers of the world and, through transmuted nationalism, the true heirs of the communist tradition.

In both cases, however, the sense of overlapping exceptionalism may be coming to an end. Beijing tolerated Pyongyang's out-there behavior because both countries were part of a larger communist bloc, the Cold War in Asia required clear allegiances, and at times North Korea was useful as a cat's paw to swipe at the United States and its allies. Pyongyang tolerated Beijing's older-brother paternalism because -- to quote Woody Allen's famous joke about the guy who accepts his brother's delusion that he's a chicken -- it needed the eggs, namely China's shipments of food and energy. Today, however, these two countries are no longer as "close as lips and teeth." By pursuing nuclear weapons and refusing to pursue Beijing-style economic reform, North Korea has become like one of those embarrassing relatives who keeps getting thrown in jail and refuses to go into rehab. China tried tough love but now much of the love has drained from its approach, leaving only toughness.

So, too, have U.S. and Israeli interests begun to diverge. Israel's invasion of Gaza, its refusal to stop new settlements in the West Bank, and its on-again-off-again desire to bomb Iran's nuclear facilities are all anathema to the realists in the Obama administration. Important actors in the U.S. political scene will still support Israel regardless of its behavior, since they want to see Hamas punished, Palestine carved up and impotent, and Iran batted about by our cat's paw ally. But mainstream opinion is beginning to shift away from Israel -- or at least the Israeli right's version of Israel. From above, the public criticism of Israel by the U.S. president and vice president conveys Washington's anger and frustration. From below, the emergence of J Street, the pro-Israel and pro-peace policy outfit, challenges the monolithic, Israel-right-or-wrong consensus that has had such a stranglehold over U.S. policy.

Just as China would not likely abandon North Korea, the United States isn't about to sever relations with Israel any time soon. Rogue allies are allies first, rogues second. But both North Korea and Israel may soon find that they've invoked their exceptional status one time too many. Some day, when they look over their shoulders for back-up, they might find nothing but air.

Bracing for the Offensive

U.S. troops are preparing for an offensive this summer in Kandahar, a Taliban stronghold. The surge has led to an increase in violence and larger numbers of civilian casualties in northern and southern regions. In an important new Carnegie Endowment report, Gilles Doronsoro argues that the Coalition strategy -- of ramping up the fighting, winning local hearts and minds, and persuading Taliban fighters to switch sides -- won't work. If we don't start negotiating with the Taliban, we'll just sink deeper into the quicksand.

News of Pentagon cover-ups -- for instance of a raid that killed three women in mid-February -- have not made matters any better. "Many nighttime raids conducted in Afghanistan are based on poor intelligence and result in the deaths of many civilians," writes FPIF contributor Fouad Pervez in Cover-ups in Afghanistan. "Yet there is little in the way of public accountability. No information is available about reprimands handed out to troops who kill civilians, intelligence officers who obtain poor information, or higher-up commanders who plan these botched raids."

Is Oliver Ressler a political scientist, an artist, or just an agent provocateur? The Vienna-based Ressler creates works that straddle categories. His What Is Democracy?, for instance, pushes us to challenge our own received notions about the political systems in which we operate. "I asked this question to people in different cities around the world in order to formulate a critique of representative democracy, and arguments we should take into consideration when starting to conceptualize a new system," Ressler tells FPIF contributor Niels van Tomme. "Such a new democratic system should have certain institutions, giving people the possibility to get more directly involved with decision-making processes than they do in a representative democracy, which is actually not able to represent people accordingly."

Barack Obama's Kenyan grandmother is alive and well, and still active in her hometown of Kogelo. FPIF contributor Andre Vltchek visited her recently. She doesn't expect any special treatment from her grandson. "Now people come here to see us. Some people want things from us, knowing that we are related to the president of the United States," she reports in Postcard from…Kogelo. "But Barack Obama said repeatedly that he is not interested in helping any of these villages. He is interested in helping this entire country."

Last week, we helped publish a full-page ad in The Washington Post on the Okinawa issue. What Okinawa issue, you ask? If you want to find out more about why the Pentagon wants to relocate a U.S. military base in Okinawa, why the Okinawans are dead set against it, and why Tokyo is caught in the middle, come to a brown-bag lunch presentation by Japan specialist Gavan McCormack on Monday, May 10 at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, from noon to 1:30.

. . .

Foreign Policy In Focus is a network for research, analysis and action that brings together more than 700 scholars, advocates and activists who strive to make the United States a more responsible global partner. It is a project of the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) in Washington. www.fpif.org

The Institute for Policy Studies is a community of public scholars and organizers linking peace, justice and the environment in the U.S. and globally. It works with social movements to promote democracy and challenge concentrated wealth, corporate and military power. www.ips-dc.org





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Peace.

Michael Santomauro
Editorial Director
Call anytime: 917-974-6367
ReporterNotebook@Gmail.com

http://www.DebatingTheHolocaust.com

Amazon's: DEBATING THE HOLOCAUST: A New Look At Both Sides by Thomas Dalton

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Suspect arrested for Times Square bombing attempt

 


                     
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
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Suspect arrested for Times Square bombing attempt

Top news: Faisal Shahzad, a 30-year-old U.S. citizen from Pakistan, was arrested on Monday night in connection with the failed bombing attempt in New York's Times Square on Saturday. Shahzad, who had recently bought the SUV that was found filled with gasoline and fertilizer, was apprehended on board a plane about to leave for Dubai from Kennedy airport.

The investigation of the incident has now been transferred to the international terrorism branch of the Joint Terrorism Task Force to look into whether any international terrorist organization was involved. The Connecticut resident who was married with two children, had recently returned from a trip home to Pakistan.

While the Pakistani Taliban appeared to take responsibility for the attempted bombing over the weekend, authorities are not ready to say whether Shahzad was connected with any terrorist group or acted alone. Pakistan's Interior Minister Rehman Malik says his government has not yet been asked to cooperate in the investigation but is willing to help.

Attorney General Eric Holder did say, "It's clear that the intent behind this terrorist act was to kill Americans."

Nukes: The United States announced the size of its nuclear arsenal at the U.N. yesterday: 5,113 warheads.


 

Asia

  • Thailand's red-shirt protesters say they have accepted Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva's offer to hold new elections on Nov. 14, potentially bringing their months long standoff with the government to an end.
  • Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama says at least some of a controversial U.S. marine base will probably remain on the island of Okinawa, despite previous pledges to move the whole thing.
  • North Korean leader Kim Jong Il reportedly toured an industrial zone and met with Chinese leaders on his low-profile visit to China.

Middle East

Europe
  • Protesters hung banners on the Acropolis to protests the Greek government's new austerity measures.
  • Ireland's airspace has reopened after a six-hour shutdown caused by volcanic ash from Iceland.
  • Spain has taken in a second former inmate from Guantanamo Bay.

Americas

  • California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has dropped his support for offshore drilling in response to the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.
  • Cuban President Raul Castro fired his transportation and sugar ministers in the country's latest political shakeup.
  • Argentina has charged its former dictator with an additional 49 murders.

Africa

  • Darfur's largest rebel group has broken off peace talks with the Sudanese government.
  • The Somali Islamist militants to seized the pirate stronghold of Haradhere over the weekend say they will put an end to the practice.
  • The ice cap on Uganda's highest peak has split due to global warming.

 

-By Joshua Keating


Yana Paskova/Getty Images



--

Peace.

Michael Santomauro
Editorial Director
Call anytime: 917-974-6367
ReporterNotebook@Gmail.com

http://www.DebatingTheHolocaust.com

Amazon's: DEBATING THE HOLOCAUST: A New Look At Both Sides by Thomas Dalton

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