The Sharon government has offered revenge, but no resolution

Martin Woollacott Friday November 1, 2002 The Guardian

It is an indication of how weirdly oblique Israeli politics can be that the Labour party could only raise the profoundly moral issue of the settlements by staging a row about what they are costing the government.

That the settlements are the cause of a war which takes lives every day of the week somehow takes second place to the fact that they are burning a hole in the pockets of taxpayers. To break up the ruling coalition on the grounds that pensioners are not getting enough while settlers are getting too much is akin to divorcing a violent husband on the grounds that he has been pinching the housekeeping money. And it is an indication of how much the world has to dance attendance on the chaotic ups and downs of democracy in Israel that the manoeuvres of the country’s present set of pretty dismal leaders could be of especially critical importance in the next few months.

As the US prepares for a war against Iraq, the dangers of which will be increased by any worsening of mood in Arab and Muslim countries, Israel’s contribution could well be a period of political instability and, very possibly, of worse violence between Israelis and Palestinians, if Ariel Sharon hangs on in government by appeasing his even more rightwing allies – or if the story ends with Benyamin Netanyahu returning to power.

Yet it would be hard indeed to argue, even in these threatening circumstances, for the continuation in office of Sharon, whose leadership of Israel has been an utter disaster. Ever since he took over, his opponents inside and outside the country have been turning and twisting the Rubik’s cube of the Israeli political system in the hope of chancing on the sequence of moves that would lead to his removal and then, perhaps after further vicissitudes, to the election of a government able to make peace.

It can be said in defence of Benjamin Ben-Eliezer, the defence minister whose calculations led to this break, that he has such a long-term strategy in mind. But even in purely Israeli terms it is surely risky to precipitate such a period of struggle and inevitably distracted government at a time when conflict with Iraq is not far away. Life-or-death decisions may soon be needed on such questions as whether Israel should respond to Iraqi strikes on its territory – conceivably by missiles carrying chemical, bacteriological or radiological warheads – should Saddam Hussein be able to stage such attacks.

Careful judgment on how to respond to events in the West Bank and Gaza, events which Saddam will certainly try to influence in the worst possible direction, may also be needed. Whatever the stance of particular parties or their leaders on theterritories and on reacting to Palestinian actions, especially those of suicide bombers, this will be a time for the utmost prudence.

That becomes more problematic if the government is wobbling or playing to the gallery. The answer may be that national government would be reconstituted as these dangers draw closer, which may happen in any case if Ben-Eliezer beats his rivals in the coming contest for the party leadership and then comes back for a while into coalition with Sharon.

Supporters of Ben-Eliezer may claim, too, that by pulling out at this stage he increases the chances that Sharon will lose his position to Netanyahu in the Likud contest for leadership that must precede an election. Then, perhaps, Labour can go into elections as the peace party – or at least as the party which offers, in Ben-Eliezer’s words, “a diplomatic horizon” to the Palestinians, and win, next time if not this time. Israelis themselves understand the peculiar nature of their political system, the way in which it enshrines division and staggers from bargain to bargain, the way in which issues are coded, and the way in which objectives are almost always approached indirectly. They enjoy it, while often deploring it, they make jokes about it, and they have to live with it as a product both of their history and of ill-judged efforts at reform. But among the many factors that keep most Israelis from facing up to the reality of their relationship with the Palestinians, the complex nature of their own political game is not the least important. There are so many political trees that the forest is not easily seen.

Even in more normal times the US is a constant presence in Israeli politics, but one that has far less influence, for often noted reasons, on Israeli policy than its weight and importance in Israel would allow.

The Bush administration now has an opportunity to reinforce trends which, even if they are not the basis for instant optimism, could be an improvement on what went before. In particular it could try to ensure that the eventual choice between Israeli parties which want to perpetuate the occupation and parties which want to end it will be a clear choice, and one which could be made in the absence of significant continuing violence by the Palestinians. The way to do that would be to transform the so-called “road map” to peace, which the administration revealed last month, into a genuinely balanced plan which promises the Palestinians a state in all of the occupied territories except where they might freely decide to trade small portions for lands of equal value in Israel proper.

The present plan does not do that. Instead, in return for reform of Palestinian institutions and, of course and as usual, for a complete or near complete end to violence, it offers a provisional state on 40% of the territories, with negotiations to follow to settle permanent borders later. Like all the schemes that went before it, including Oslo itself, this asks too much of the Palestinians and gives too little. Even this half a loaf is only available, Sharon has insisted, if Israel judges the Palestinian performance to be acceptable, a judgment which one can be pretty sure would never be made as long as he is in power.

What both sides need is a plan, laid down in general terms by the US as the only nation capable of leading the effort to monitor and enforce it, which has at its centrepiece a clear vision of the end point for the two peoples – security for Israel in its pre-1967 borders, a state for the Palestinians in the occupied territories.

Palestinians, a majority of whom are showing clear signs of readiness to desist from attacks on Israeli civilians if only another way could be opened up, are ready for such an intervention. So perhaps are Israelis, disillusioned with policies which offer revenge but no resolution. An American-led return to these earlier simplicities, with which everyone is familiar but which have been so obscured, would alter both Israeli and Palestinian politics, strengthening the moderate and pro-peace elements in both nations. Whether the Bush administration is capable of seizing the opportunity is another question.

m.woollacott [at] guardian.co [dot] uk

———–

-Ian. …….

http://www.usatoday.com/usatonline/20020814/4358473s.htm

Global warmth for U.S. after 9/11 turns to frost Wed Aug 14, 8:33 AM ET Ellen Hale USA TODAY

OXFORD, England — On a packed train out of London recently to this historic college town, a young American woman struck up a conversation with her seatmate, a nattily dressed older British man. hey chatted amiably about Oxford until she worked up the courage to ask what was weighing on her mind:

”Why,” she blurted out, ”does everybody hate us?”

The man paused — but didn’t disagree — before proceeding to enumerate the reasons, from U.S. foreign policies to the seeping influence of American popular culture.

In the shock wave that followed the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, many Americans found themselves asking why so many people in Muslim countries hate the United States. But the anti-American sentiment has turned into a contagion that is spreading across the globe and infecting even the United States’ most important allies.

In virulent prose, newspapers criticize the United States. Politicians ferociously attack its foreign policies, especially the Bush administration’s plans to attack Iraq. And regular citizens launch into tirades with American friends and visitors.

Here in Britain, the United States’ staunchest friend, snide remarks and downright animosity greet many Americans these days. It’s not just religious radicals and terrorists who resent the United States anymore.

”Now, it’s everyone,” says Allyson Stewart-Allen, a consultant from California who has lived in London 15 years and heads International Marketing Partners, which advises European companies on how to do business with Americans. The sea change in attitude toward the United States, she says, has ”profoundly” altered her advice to clients:

She now must counsel them to resist ”taking digs” at her countrymen.

What happened, many Americans are wondering, to that wave of sympathy and stockpile of global goodwill they encountered after Sept. 11?

”It was squandered,” says Meghnad Desai, director of the Institute for Global Governance at the London School of Economics and Political Science and a member of the House of Lords.

”America dissipated the goodwill out of its arrogance and incompetence. A lot of people who would never ever have considered themselves anti-American are now very distressed with the United States,” he says.

Desai and others blame what seems to be a wave of new U.S. policies that they regard as selfish and unilateral, stretching back to President Bush ( news – web sites)’s refusal last year to support the international treaty on global warming ( news – web sites).

Many are enraged by Bush’s support for steel tariffs and farm subsidies, his refusal to involve the United States in the new international criminal court and what is widely regarded abroad as one-sided support for Israel and its prime minister, Ariel Sharon ( news – web sites).

The rash of corporate malfeasance and blanket arrest of terrorism suspects after Sept. 11 further fuels critics, who say the United States preaches democracy, human rights and free enterprise — but doesn’t practice them.

Growing gap with Europe

In a recent article in Policy Review magazine, Robert Kagan, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, says the divide between the United States and Europe is getting wider than ever as the continents go their different ways — one operating on a foreign policy based on unilateralism and coercion, the other on diplomacy and persuasion.

Europeans, he says, have ”come to view the United States simply as a rogue colossus, in many respects a bigger threat to (their) pacific ideals than Iraq or Iran.”

The differences, he says, are deep and likely to endure.

”Why do people attack Americans?” asks Tiny Waslandek, a social worker in Amsterdam, Netherlands. ”Because they have a big, big mouth and they mind everybody’s business.”

Bush’s plan to topple Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein ( news – web sites) is stoking anti-American hostility to bonfire levels. In Germany earlier this month, Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder launched his re-election campaign by denouncing what he derisively called Bush’s proposed military ”adventures” in Iraq. In England, the new head of the Anglican Church and other leading bishops circulated a petition proclaiming that any attack would be illegal and immoral.

Linked to Iraq and Israel

”My sense is that much of the rampant anti-Americanism we see now is very much linked to a war with Iraq and the Israel-Palestine issue,” says Mary Kaldor, a London-based scholar on international relations.

In the popular Straw Poll BBC radio show July 26, Kaldor debated with Washington Post reporter T. R. Reid whether ”American power is the power of the good.” She argued that the U.S. role as the sole superpower was a danger to the rest of the world.

At the end of the program, 70% of the studio audience said it agreed with her.

Anti-Americanism is nothing new. Surveys a decade ago in Britain showed that one in four people here are what pollster Robert Worcester, a transplanted Kansan who runs the Market Opinion Research Institute, calls ”culturally anti-American.”

(According to a survey taken in 1989, one in five said they found American accents irritating.)

To some degree, the resentment against the United States is inevitable now that it’s the only remaining superpower. Even so, Desai, who says that he is ”very, very pro-America” and that people forget the United States saved Europe from itself twice in the past century, notes that America has been on top for a long time. ”So what is happening now is not the inevitable result of being No. 1.”

(Desai and many other Europeans give Washington credit for dismantling the hard-line Taliban regime in Afghanistan ( news – web sites), which harbored Osama bin Laden ( news – web sites) and his al-Qaeda terrorist network).

In recent months, polls have shown a less-than subtle change in attitudes toward Americans, U.S. foreign policy and, in particular, the president from Texas. British newspapers reported Thursday that secret polls commissioned by Prime Minister Tony Blair ( news – web sites) revealed ”spectacular unpopularity” for Bush among voters here.

In April, the German news magazine Der Spiegel reported that less than half (48%) of Germans consider the United States a guarantor of peace in the world, compared with 62% who did in 1993. Nearly half — 47% — rated Americans as aggressive rather than peaceful (34%). And 44% called them superficial.

Meanwhile, in an April poll for the Council on Foreign Relations, based in Washington, Europeans proved highly critical of Bush and what they label his unilateral approach to foreign policy: 85% of Germans, 80% of French, 73% of Britons and 68% of Italians said they believed that the United States is acting in its own interest in the war on terrorism.

Philadelphia transplant Susan Steele, head of Forum management company in London, has noticed that many Europeans have started using the phrase ”that’s American,” which is shorthand, Steele says, for ”not taking anyone else into consideration.”

”People here were truly shocked and horrified by Sept. 11,” says Marjorie Thompson, an American who runs the consulting group C3I in London. ”But since then, they’ve come to believe that the United States is using that as an excuse for a unilateral foreign policy, and they’re starting to make sweeping anti-American comments.”

‘Oppressed opinion’

Even British pop star George Michael and tennis pro Martina Navratilova have taken swings at the United States. Last month, Michael declared he was ”definitely not anti-American” after receiving criticisms for his new single, Shoot the Dog, which lampooned the relationship between Bush and Blair.

In June, Navratilova, a Czech native who became a U.S. citizen 20 years ago, had to defend herself after writing an article for a German newspaper in which she said that the United States now ”oppressed opinion” and that decisions there were based ”solely on how much money will come out of it.”

That the United States is suffering an image problem abroad has become obvious at home. Two weeks ago, the White House announced it would create a permanent Office of Global Communications to enhance America’s image around the world. At the same time, the House of Representatives approved spending $225 million on cultural and information programs abroad, mostly targeting Muslim countries, to correct what Rep. Henry Hyde, R-Ill., called a ”cacophony of hate and misinformation” about the United States.

Meanwhile, the Council on Foreign Relations simultaneously issued a biting report warning the Bush administration that it urgently needs to upgrade its efforts at public diplomacy to counteract the country’s ”shaky” image abroad.

It called for a range of actions, from increased spending on polling of foreign public opinion and more training of foreign service officers to giving journalists from other countries access to top U.S. government officials.

‘Ominous’ consequences

The consequences of neglecting such public diplomacy are ”ominous,” warns Peter Peterson, chairman of the council and of The Blackstone Group, a New York private investment bank. He says bin Laden has ”gleefully exploited” the United States’ poor public image.

”Around the world, from Western Europe to the Far East, many see the United States as arrogant, hypocritical, self-absorbed, self-indulgent and contemptuous of others,” Peterson says. ”This is not a Muslim country issue. It has metastasized to the rest of the world and includes some of our closest European allies.”

New Yorker Julia Magnet, a journalist who just moved to London, found that out when she decided to throw a Fourth of July party for British friends. Between grilled sausages and chocolate cake, her friends launched an attack on Bush and the United States. They called Bush a ”homicidal maniac” and ”stupid” and the United States the ”world’s biggest terrorist.”

Magnet, 22, was forgiving, and she labeled their assault ”uninformed” and ”ignorant.”

Nevertheless, she was surprised by the venom in their words.

”What I hear from people all the time now is that we’re going to go to war with just about everyone and we don’t need a coalition to do it,” Magnet says.

”It’s obvious they are very, very disturbed by the power America now has.”

———–

Who are America’s real enemies?

To find out, just go and see the new Tom Clancy blockbuster movie

John Sutherland Monday July 8, 2002 The Guardian

The Guardian is furious about it. The Dutch Guardian (De Volkskrant) that is. About what? The American Service-members’ Protection Act, otherwise known as “The Hague Invasion Act”. You can read the legalled-up version, as passed a fortnight ago, at www.nrc.nl/Doc/ASPA.pdf. The long and short of it is that America will use military force against the Netherlands to free any of its nationals held by the international criminal court (ICC) at the Hague.

The ICC got up and running on July 1. Running might be in order. How would Tom Clancy pitch it? Opening shot: Jack Ryan Botox-faced at CIA/HQ Langley. Clear and Present Danger. Operation ScrewDyke is authorised. Soften the target with Stealth bombers from RAF Wittering (Dubya’s got Tony’s pecker in his pocket). Insert a Seal extraction team. Bang, bang, bigger bang. Bring our guys home and kick some cloggie butt in the process.

Our Netherland neighbours are not amused (are they ever?). As one MP indignantly put it, “We’re not Panama”. I asked a Dutch colleague what he thought about the HIA. “Bush is a dickhead,” he replied dourly.

President Dickhead approves, but the idea was hatched by the geriatric senatorial bigot Jesse Helms (come back Caligula’s horse, all is forgiven). It was Helms who put in an amendment to the Defence Department Appropriations Act of 2002, sanctioning the bombing of Holland.

Helms was not primarily worried about American soldiers – he and his colleagues have, after all, blithely let 5,000 of them rot with gulf war syndrome. It was the international big-game hunters that alarmed him. Belgium’s moves, for example, to indict Ariel Sharon for genocide (until the ICC, Belgium was the only country to sanction prosecution for war crimes committed by non-nationals outside its borders).

America is nervous. Not just about where the next attack might come from but who its real enemies are (apart from al-Qaida and the LRB). All of which is reflected in the strange and fearful career of the latest Tom Clancy movie, The Sum of All Fears.

Current industry wisdom is that you can’t lose money with a Clancy scenario. The novel was published in 1991 and features an anachronistically young Jack Ryan (played, anaemically, by Ben Affleck; come back, Harrison Ford, all is forgiven). The film was in the can well before September 2001.

The McGuffin is that some Israeli plutonium gets into the hands of Palestinian extremists who use it to detonate a dirty bomb at a super-bowl game in Baltimore. Their dastardly aim is to fool the US and Russia into launching the third world war.

The studio tried the film out in sneak previews in October 2001 and got reassuring feedback. They prudently tweaked out from the explosion scene skyscrapers resembling the World Trade Centre. And they added a health warning to the trailers about horrific “disaster images”. Backsides were covered.

Or were they? While making the movie, Paramount had been under fierce pressure from the Council on American-Islamic Relations not to demonise Arabs. Clancy’s Muslim villains were dropped.

The film’s Osama was recast as an Austrian neo-Nazi (played by Alan Bates in a false beard – at his own insistence, one imagines). But this got the film-makers into another bind. If they let their European evil-doer rant about the Jewish world conspiracy they would be slammed by the Anti-Defamation League and possibly sued by Jorg Haider. The J-word never passes the villain’s lips. Decaff fascism.

There was worse to come. The film’s release in America at the end of May coincided with Jose Padilla (aka Abdullah al Muhajir) being arrested on charges of plotting a dirty bomb explosion on American soil. They should have stuck with Clancy’s version. Hollywood is now under ferocious attack (led by the Jewish World Review) for “downplaying the obvious connection between international terrorism and fanatical Islam”.

Weak knees never won wars against terror. And, to cap it all, because of the anti-European theme (and all that fuss about the ICC) they can’t foresee a time when it will be safe to release the movie over here.

Even a super-power can’t win, it seems. Unless, that is, you pick on a seven-stone Dutch weakling.

I heard a truly great quote from Scott Petrack yesterday when we were talking in the halls at Spring VON. Apparently it’s some sort of Chinese proverb:

“It takes a thousand wise men to lift from the well a stone that was cast by one fool.”

I happen to believe that Ariel Sharon is that fool and that the damage left by his junta will be irreparable.

On 4/10/02 10:51 PM, “Mike Masnick” wrote:

> However, I do think that the Israelis have every right to go into the
> occupied territories and do what is necessary to break up the suicide
> bombing network. It is a protective measure. The suicide bombs are not a
> protective measure. They are a deliberate attack on civilians.

You can’t beat a dog with a stick and then complain because you think it’s too aggressive. Palestinians are not dogs, mind you, but a society’s behaviours are relatively predictable and entirely reasonable considering their status.

> If I see proof that Israelis are using the incursions to randomly and
> maliciously kill innocent civilians – then I agree that they are very wrong
> in what they have done. However, the simple act of going in to the
> territories and breaking up the bombing network is a completely defensible
> move.

Regardless of whether or not it happens you likely won’t see this — the Israelis are refusing to allow the world press access to the combat zone. Reporters have been told that they’re “fair game” for target practice if spotted in the zone.

-Ian.