US support for Israel strong

The American people's strong support for Israel remains constant and their support for action to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power has substantially increased, according to a new nationwide survey released by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) on Monday.

The survey's findings demonstrate that Americans recognize Israel as a strong and loyal US ally, are skeptical about "peace dividends" that would be realized by Israel stopping all settlement construction and believe that a Palestinian state must not be established until the Palestinians demonstrate a commitment to end violence and accept Israel's legitimacy.

The 2009 Survey of American Attitudes on Israel, The Palestinians and Prospects for Peace in the Middle East, a national telephone survey of 1,200 American adults, was conducted September 26-October 4, 2009 by Marttila Communications of Washington, D.C. and Boston.

"This latest survey of the American people, coming at a time of a full range of challenging issues facing Israel and the region demonstrates anew the breadth and depth of American public support for Israel from a variety of perspectives," said Abraham H. Foxman, ADL National Director. "Americans see Israel as a loyal ally to the US, as being very serious about wanting to achieve peace with the Palestinians and as deserving the sympathy of the American people in the conflict with the Palestinians."

Foxman also noted a changing dynamic regarding Iran and the nuclear issue. "The significant increase in Americans viewing Iran as a threat and supporting, if nothing else works, US or Israeli military options against Iran, reflect a new and needed sense of urgency about the issue in light of Iran's oppressive policies and the discovery of a secret Iranian nuclear plant," he said. "This is the first time a majority of Americans - 54 percent - support such an option for the US"

Some two thirds of Americans consider Israel a strong and loyal US ally, as previous surveys showed. On the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, 64% believe that Israel is serious about achieving peace with the Palestinians, with three-to-one respondents expressing more sympathy with Israel than the Palestinians, when asked to choose a side. Support for US involvement in the peace process rose by nine percentage points to 39% since 2007, but 48% believe the two sides must ultimately solve their own problems.

With recent US efforts to freeze Israeli settlement activity, 53% of those questioned believe that even if Israel halts all construction Arab leaders will continue to refuse Israel's right to exist. Some 61% believe that the conflict will continue for years with 51% claiming that Palestinian divisions are an obstacle to peace and 56% saying no Palestinian state should be established until Palestinians cease violence and accept Israel's legitimacy.

Concerning the question of the Iranian threat, 63% of the respondents consider Iran an immediate or short-term security threat to the Middle East compared to 50% in 2007. There has also been significant gain in those who would support either Israel or the US using military action to stop Iran from developing a nuclear weapon, with 57% of Americans supporting an Israeli hit, up from 42% in 2007, and 54% supporting a US campaign, up from 47% in 2007.

Goldstone fallout is political, not legal

The challenge facing Israel over the Goldstone Report is political and not legal, Israel's ambassador to the UN Gabriella Shalev said on Wednesday. The report, which has unleashed worldwide criticism of Israel, accused it of violating the laws of war during Operation Cast Lead. Shalev was speaking from New York by video conference to participants in a round table discussion in Jerusalem sponsored by the Israel Democracy Institute on the challenges to Israel posed by the report and what Israel should do about them.

According to Shalev, some countries are challenging Israel's right to exist as a result of the report. "We are facing an attack on Israel, our army and our judicial system," she said, adding that Israel must not shy away from the fight or treat it as a lost cause but should participate in every forum and try to prove its case.

"We rely on our friends, the US and other enlightened countries," she said. Welfare and Social Services Minister Isaac Herzog said Israel had made mistakes all along the line in its handling of the situation that developed after Operation Cast Lead.

First of all, he said, Israel should have agreed to cooperate with the Goldstone Commission and should not have treated Goldstone himself as a persona non grata. The government not only refused to cooperate with the commission, but also prohibited it from entering Israel to visit Sderot and the Gaza periphery or entering the West Bank via Israel.

Herzog added that the government should have challenged the appointments of the other three members of the commission and perhaps tried to cancel some of them. All three appointments were problematic, said Herzog, since one of them, Professor Christine Chinkin, had already accused Israel of committing war crimes while fighting was still going on in Gaza, another, Hina Jilani, was Pakistani and the third, Colonel Desmond Travers, lacked battleground experience.

Herzog also blamed Israeli leaders for making irresponsible and bombastic statements which had no operative significance but were used by the Goldstone Commission to "prove" that Israel's aim in the fighting was to punish the Palestinian civilian population for Hamas's military actions.

He said Israeli leaders continued to talk too much about establishing an investigative commission to examine the allegations that Israel violated the laws of war. Herzog warned that should an investigative commission be established, such statements, which he called thoughtless, would be exploited in the future to "prove" it was solely a tactical move to preclude the possibility of an international investigation, rather than the result of genuine desire for a serious and objective investigation.

Herzog added that he sided with those who believe the laws of war must be changed to address the issue of fighting terrorist organizations which deliberately involve civilians. The current laws of war did not address the new reality, he said. Hebrew University Prof. Mordechai Kremnitzer charged that the Goldstone Report was clearly influenced by the political opinions of the commission. "Goldstone," said Kremnitzer, "believes that Hamas is fighting for independence. So he thinks that there is nothing the poor, innocent organization can do but fire rockets at Israel.
"This is obvious because Goldstone did not attribute any motive to the fact that the Hamas fought from among the Palestinian civilian population, but had no problem determining that, given the number of Palestinian civilian casualties, Israel's premeditated aim must have been to wage war against Palestinian civilians."

But Kremnitzer added that Israel did not act wisely by angering Goldstone during the investigation. "The courtroom rule is that you don't make the judge angry," said Kremnitzer. "But that is exactly what Israel did in systematically refusing requests by Goldstone throughout the investigation."

In the long run, he added, the only way Israel stood a chance of putting an end to the harsh international criticism against it was by reaching a diplomatic solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. So long as the conflict was unresolved, no amount of Israeli propaganda or information would help, he said.

Israel has no chance in UN

President Shimon Peres called the Goldstone Commission's report "a great victory for terror," saying a "built-in majority against Israel" in the United Nations means the Jewish state has "no chance to win" support on any single issue.

In an interview with Newsweek published on Saturday, Peres said, "Never before did any terrorist organization gain such recognition, in the most unfair way," referring to the UN-commissioned report on Operation Cast Lead, which accuses both Hamas and Israel of committing war crimes and possibly crimes against humanity.

The report was endorsed earlier in October by a majority in the UN Human Rights Council. Among the countries who voted in favor of endorsement were Bahrain, China, Egypt, Indonesia, Jordan, Pakistan, Qatar, Russia, and Saudi Arabia.

"We have a problem in the United Nations: There is a built-in majority against Israel. Israel doesn't stand a chance to win any single issue because the Muslim and the Arab nations and the ones who follow them are a majority," Peres said.

When asked whether he would support an internal Israeli inquiry into alleged war crimes committed during the three-week IDF operation in Gaza, Netanyahu replied that such an option was being looked into "not because of the Goldstone Report, but because of our own internal needs."

Speaking the truth was "the best way to defuse this issue," the prime minister said, because "Israel was defending itself with just means against an unjust attack.

"Serious countries have to think about adapting the laws of war in the age of terrorism and guerrilla warfare. If the terrorists believe they have a license to kill by choosing to kill from behind civilian lines, that's what they'll do again and again. What exactly is Israel supposed to do?" Netanyahu said.

In response to Netanyahu's remarks, Defense Minister Ehud Barak reiterated his opinion that Israel should not appoint a commission to investigate the actions of IDF officers and soldiers during Operation Cast Lead.

Barak stressed that he fully trusted the operational investigations conducted by the IDF, adding that "there is no army in the world that investigates its actions like the IDF."

Also in the interview published over the weekend, Peres said Netanyahu could no longer be called "right-wing."

"He came from the Right, but he's no longer a rightist. He agreed to a two-state solution and to what no other prime minister ever agreed to, to freeze settlements," Peres was quoted as saying.

Peres told Newsweek he may have had "a certain influence" upon the steps that Netanyahu has taken. "I don't expect him to take everything that I say. My advice is simple: We have to make peace. We shouldn't postpone it," the president said.

Netanyahu, for his part, expressed his belief that the government represented the "consensus of the Israeli public."

He went on to blame the Palestinian Authority for preventing the resumption of peace talks by setting preconditions. "We just wasted six months because of the Palestinian effort to place preconditions on the negotiations, preconditions that weren't there for the last 16 years … it's freezing the settlements, it's committing in advance to the results of the negotiations."

The prime minister claimed that "the gist of the problem is that for 62 years the Palestinians have refused to recognize Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people

Europe and Obama's relationship

When US President Barack Obama was named the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize winner, a tidal wave of reactions emerged from international leaders. Many western European leaders responded positively, with French President Nikolas Sarkozy stating that the award showed that “America had now returned to the hearts of the worlds’ peoples.” Meanwhile, German chancellor Angela Merkel declared that the award was an incentive to do more for world peace.

Nobel Committee Chairman, Thorbjoern Jagland, former prime minster of Norway and a Labor Party politician tried to explain that “it could be too late to respond three years from now” to Obama’s call for change. The Nobel Committee further elaborated that it was Obama’s efforts to ease Western conflict with Muslim nations and nuclear disarmament that they found particularly worthy of the prize.

There is a less noticeable reason for the Norwegian committee and Western Europe’s overall embrace of President Obama’s diplomatic dialogue with Iran. Many European leaders have a vested interest in keeping Iranian President Ahmadinejad content because of their countries’ involvement in Iran’s oil and gas industry.

The Tehran Times, Iran’s leading international English-speaking daily reported on August 29, 2009 on Iran’s major oil and gas contracts with its European partners. “Iran has been negotiating with over 30 companies from 9 European nations in recent years to carry out energy projects, despite mounting global economic sanctions and political pressures,” the article said.

Norway’s oil and gas companies, in particular, are heavily involved in Iran’s energy production. Statoil, Norway's biggest oil company is currently developing what is known as the South Pars project to tap Iran's biggest single gas deposit. In a Reuters report Statoil indicated that unless there was “significant sustained improvement in Tehran’s relations with the West," the company would not expand activities.

Obama’s engaged diplomacy with Iran has offered European energy companies new hope after years of Iranian isolation under the Bush Administration. According to the Reuters article, “major European energy firms are keen to tap the world’s second largest gas reserves but have shied away from investing huge sums under pressure from their own governments and Washington.” Statoil’s Vice President Peter Mellbye indicated in the Reuter report that the early months of the Obama presidency have shown “that there might be signs that things are changing...”

Lucrative relationship
In addition to Norway's economic ties with Iran, The Tehran Times reported that in 2008, the Swiss energy group EGL signed a 25-year gas purchase worth over $13 billion with Iran. In past years, French-based energy companies including Technip Conflext, have built petrochemical plants in the Persian Gulf worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Spain has been negotiating with the National Iran Gas company to construct refineries. Austria, Italy, Turkey, Russia and China are also involved with Iranian energy projects.

The above may suggest why Western Europe favors dialogue over military action with Iran and why European leaders favor President Obama's policies. A hard line stance against Iran's nuclear arms, one that involves international military action would place billions of dollars of European investments in Iran’s energy production at stake.

If President Obama can do more to strengthen this lucrative relationship, the continent that has the most to gain is Europe. And the Nobel peace prize, as the Norwegian Nobel committee indicated, is just one way to urge the US president forward in that direction. Indeed, Mr. Jagland himself is doing all he can to make President Ahmedinejad happy.

As the chairman of the board of directors for the Oslo Center for Peace and Human Rights, he has refused to recognize any human rights for the young Iranian killed by the Islamic regime on the streets of Iran. Other human rights violations committed in Iran also receive little response from European countries that have no problem publicly condemning Israel for alleged war crimes.

From persecuting its Bahai minority to securing its national elections by force, the Iranian dictatorship will stop at nothing to gain power and promote its radical Islamic agenda. The Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs warns in its September bulletin that "Iran is a true revolutionary power whose aspirations extend into the oil-producing states."

While Western Europe continues with its economic investments in Iranian energy, and grants President Ahmadinejad the UN platform to spew hatred against Israel and the West, Iran is gaining the momentum to become the nuclear powerhouse of the Middle East. It is time that Norway and Europe place oil aside and respond to President Ahmadinejad’s actions - instead of to President Obama's calls.

US-Israel

A major US-Israeli missile-defense exercise begun this week was planned several months ago and bears no relations to current events, US and Israeli military officials said during a press conference in Tel Aviv on Thursday.

Military representatives from both countries sought to downplay any tensions that might be fueled by the drill, pointing out that the Juniper Cobra Air Defense Exercise is held every two years, and is designed to test the active missile-defense capabilities of both armed forces. But in the shadow of increased regional tensions sparked by Iran's nuclear program, the presence of the US Navy ships in Israeli territorial water and 1,000 US European Command soldiers in Israel, together with a number of advanced American missile defense systems, will be seen by many as a sign of US readiness to assist Israel in defending its skies in the event of an Iranian attack.

The American Navy will activate its AEGIS Ballistic Missile Defense System and Patriot advanced capability missiles during the drill. Israel's Arrow 2 Theater Ballistic Missile Defense System will also be tested.

Brig.-Gen. Doron Gavish, who commands the IAF's Air Defense Corps, and R.-Adm. John M. Richardson, director of US Naval Forces Europe and US Naval Forces Africa, praised each other's professional abilities and said they looked forward to a fruitful exercise over the coming three weeks. The officials said the drill, the largest of its kind, is divided into three stages. In the first phase, American missile ships, radar stations, planes and missile-defense systems will take their positions. In the second, a computer simulation will test responders with scenarios of missile attacks. In third phase, dummy missiles will be fired from US Navy ships and intercepted in live fire exercises.

"The crews will be jointly made up of Americans and Israelis, and the commands will work should to shoulder with one another," Gavish said. "Our level of cooperation and consistency is very deep," Richardson said. "Our picture of the scenario is very common."

Radar stations have been set up around the country, and Israel's Green Pine and Super Green Pine missile detection systems will be activated. The US-made Forward Based X-band Tactical radar, situated in the Negev, which has long-range missile detection system, will also come into play.

The X-band radar works in conjunction with the Arrow missile defense, while also transmitting data to a US joint tactical ground station.

Clinton's agenda on Iran

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the world "will not wait indefinitely" for Iran to live up to its international obligations regarding its nuclear program. Speaking in London, Clinton said that the recent meeting in Geneva that saw Iran and six world powers resume nuclear talks was "a constructive beginning, but it must be followed by action."

British Foreign Secretary David Miliband, who Clinton met with in London, said the Islamic republic would never have a better opportunity to establish normal ties with the rest of the world, Reuters reported.

Clinton, who is on a tour of Europe, was due to meet British Prime Minister Gordon Brown before travelling to Ireland later Sunday. US officials said Iran is at or near the top of Clinton's agenda with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov .

Russia and China have long balked at imposing new sanctions on Iran if it fails to come clean about its suspect nuclear program, but Medvedev hinted the Russian position might be shifting after Teheran disclosed a previously secret uranium enrichment site near the city of Qom.

But US officials believe it will be a hard sell to convince the Russians on fresh penalties since Iran agreed to allow UN inspectors to visit the Qom site and has agreed, in principle, to send most of its low-enriched uranium to Russia for reprocessing.

Iran agreed to allow inspections of the Qom site following talks last week between Iran's chief nuclear negotiator and diplomats from the US, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany. The Iranians were given time to decide whether to accept a package of incentives in exchange for Iran's compliance with international demands to suspend its uranium enrichment or face new sanctions.

The Obama administration is anxious not to let up on the pressure and Clinton will be looking for Russian expressions of support for sanctions and other penalties should Iran continue to refuse by the end of the year, the officials said.

Goldstoned

News-consumers tuned to foreign channels these past two days are being treated afresh to horrific footage of bombed-out Gazan buildings, accompanied by damning quotes from the Goldstone Commission Report.

Israel is accused of having committed war crimes, and possibly crimes against humanity, during Operation Cast Lead last December and January. The rocket barrages against southern Israel that prompted the IDF assault on Hamas are mostly relegated to the margins of the new-old TV coverage - just as in the Goldstone report itself.

The learned judge's concoction, based heavily on unverifiable claims from avowedly non-objective sources, some of them long-since discredited, is a feat of cynical superficiality, without appropriate distinction between terror and defense. The distorted picture justifies the Foreign Ministry's reaction of "nausea and fury."

Yet nobody here is surprised. The verdict was sealed before the probe had begun. NOTHING WAS impartial about the Goldstone panel. It was dispatched by the UN Human Rights Council to compile a case against Israel for "violations of international human rights law and international humanitarian law..." Because the panel's conclusions were pre-scripted, its mission was opposed by Canada, Japan, Switzerland and the EU (America wasn't a member), and Israel refused to cooperate with it.

The council itself - the UN's most anti-Israel subsidiary even vis-a-vis other ultra-antagonistic UN forums - was established in March 2006 to replace the much-discredited UN Human Rights Commission, which spent its energies in obsessive demonization of Israel. But the new body was so akin to its predecessor that, in November 2006, then-UN secretary-general Kofi Annan was moved to deplore its "disproportionate focus on violations by Israel" whereas "graver crises," like Darfur, were overlooked.

Annan's successor Ban Ki-moon echoed the sentiment in June 2007: "The Secretary-General is disappointed at the Council's decision to single out only one specific regional item, given the range and scope of allegations of human rights violations throughout the world."

Among these are atrocities committed in intra-Palestinian violence, to say nothing of a decade's indiscriminate rocketing of Israeli towns. The UN's own indifference toward the latter, it must sadly be noted, helped render Israeli counterstrikes unavoidable.

Considering the UNHRC's inglorious record - not to mention the fact that the Goldstone panel was set up at the instigation of Syria, Somalia, Pakistan, Malaysia and Bangladesh - there was plainly no point in Israel abetting its own vilification.

BESIDES OBVIOUSLY rewarding terror, demonizing Israel and seeking to constrain Israel's capacity to protect itself, the Goldstone Commission displays contempt for Israel's judiciary. UN human rights frameworks were founded to combat abuses by rogue states and dictatorships, where autonomous legal systems are nonexistent. Israel's courts are renowned for their activism and independence, often provoking government displeasure.

Yet the Goldstone report, while effectively giving Hamas a free pass, demands "an independent inquiry to assess whether the treatment by Israeli judicial authorities of Palestinian and Jewish Israelis expressing dissent in connection with the offensive was discriminatory."

Such wholesale bias leaves no room for fair evaluation of the IDF's own probes. The IDF judge-advocate general has initiated 24 (ongoing) investigations into some 100 allegations by assorted NGOs against soldiers who may have deviated from stringent IDF codes. Respect for enemy lives, indeed, often culminates in the endangerment, even sacrifice, of Israeli troops.

Goldstone also faults Israeli investigators for not collecting evidence in Gaza as per "domestic police investigation of a murder in Manhattan." This analogy is absurdly misguided. In warfare, different rules apply from those governing civilian law enforcement. Goldstone can hardly expect Israelis to collect evidence in hostile Gaza. The fate of kidnapped Gilad Schalit (an outrageous human rights violation, on which the Goldstone report also falls short) should elucidate why.

Israel knows that its survival depends on it continuing to act in the best interests of its own self-preservation, consistent with its own profound moral obligations. But the Goldstone phenomenon is not only a challenge to Israel. It underlines that any democracy, and most pertinently the US, can find itself prosecuted and judged by the cynical scales of the worst tyrannies.

In their ongoing handling of the Goldstone recommendations, the world's democracies must demonstrate their refusal to be cynically manipulated by the rogue states that empowered this panel. They must refuse to be Goldstoned. Today, Israel has been manoeuvred toward the dock. Who will it be tomorrow?