by B.RAMAN (questions and answers)
Question: Was the operation that was carried out by the U.S. Special Forces against Osama bin Laden resulting in his death at Abbotabad in Pakistan on the night of May 1 an exclusive U.S. operation or was it a joint U.S.-Pak operation?
Answer: Till now the indications are that it was an exclusive U.S. operation. Since it involved the ingress of the U.S. specal forces into Pakistani territory by air in helicopters, it was likely that Gen. Ashfaq Pervez Kayani, Pakistan's Chief of the Army Staff (COAS), was informed before the helicopters with the special forces took off from Afghanistan for the raid even though U.S. officials have reportedly been asserting that Pakistan was informed only after the helicopters had taken off at the end of the operation. When Bill Clinton's Administration launched the Cruise missile strikes on the training camps of Al Qaeda in the Jalalabad area of Afghanistan in 1998 they followed a similar procedure. Gen Anthony Zinni, the then Commanding Officer of the U.S. Central Command, flew to Islamabad from a U.S. naval ship and informed Gen. Jehangir Karamat, the then COAS, about the impending raid. The U.S. did so to make sure that Pakistan did not interpret that the missile had been launched by India and order a missile strike against India. A similar precaution was likely to have been taken this time too. Moreover, Abbotabad, an important military garrison town, has high air defence cover. It was important to prevent a messy air defence action by Pakistan against the U.S. helicopters if its radars had detected their approach. The entire operation lasted a little over two hours. During this period, one of the helicopters crashed. It was blown up and destroyed by the special forces. A newsletter disseminated by a retired U.S. naval officer says: "Source says actual crash sight was on Kakul Road, Abbottabod, Pakistan just down from the Pakistan Military Academy exercise grounds. See image for road, which was reportedly blocked off by local security after the incident. Folks in the city mentioned on Twitter at the time that the action was very, very close to the PMA." This would indicate that during the entire operation on the ground, which lasted over 90 minutes if one excludes the time taken by the choppers for their to and fro journey, the Pakistani security forces did not intervene and try to find out what was going on. The local police blocked the stretch of the road where the helicopter had crashed to prevent onlookers rushing there till the Americans had destroyed the chopper. All this clearly shows that the Pakistanis must have had advance knowledge of the operation and had instructions from above not to intervene.
Q: Has the U.S. undertaken similar operations deep inside Pakistan before?
A. Yes thrice before. Twice in 2002 in Faislabad and Karachi to capture Abu Zubaida and Ramzi Binalshibh respectively and once in 2003 in Rawalpindi to capture Khalid Sheikh Mohammad (KSM).
Q: How did those operations differ from the latest operation to kill OBL?
A: The three previous operations were joint U.S.-Pakistan operations with the Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI) playing the leadership role. The raids were organised on the basis of technical intelligence (TECHINT) collected by the U.S. agencies due to the careless use of mobile telephones by the three arrested persons. The latest operation against OBL seems to have been an exclusive U.S. operation with the prior knowledge of Pakistan, but with no Pakistani role in its planning and execution. Since OBL was not using any communication equipment such as mobile telephone, Internet etc in his hide-out, no Technical Intelligence would have been possible. It seems to have been mounted purely on the basis of Human Intelligence (HUMINT). The success of the operation speaks very highly of the improvement in the HUMINT capability of the U.S. agencies.
Q: Wherefrom could the HUMINT have come?
A: Abbotabad is a Hazara town. The Hazaras are strongly against Al Qaeda and the Afghan Taliban because of the massacre of the Hazaras, many of whom are Shias, in East Afghanistan when the Taliban was in power in Kabul. It is likely that the local Hazara community might have played a role in assisting the U.S. in its OBL hunt. In fact, it is surprising that OBL took shelter in that town despite the strong presence of the Hazaras there. No explanation for this has been forthcoming so far.
Q: Is it possible that the ISI might have played a role in the collection of the HUMINT?
A. Difficult to answer this question.
Q: How come the huge mansion in which OBL was reportedly living did not attract suspicion as it was being constructed in 2005?
A: Difficult to explain it unless the mansion had been constructed by a retired senior General of the Army as his farm house and then given on rent to OBL's family with or without the knowledge that it was the family of OBL.
Q: For how long OBL must have been living in the mansion?
A: According to U.S. media reports, the house had been under watch by the U.S. since Auguat last year. Obama gave the order for the operation on April 29 on the receipt of precise information that OBL was inside the mansion. This would give rise to the possibility that Osama's family had been living in the mansion at least since last August, that OBL had been visiting them off and on and that Obama gave the order for the operation after receiving information in the last week of April that OBL had come to visit his family. This is what happened in the case of Baitullah Mehsud, the Amir of the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) who was killed in a Drone strike. His wife and children were living with her father. Baitullah was visiting them off and on. The Americans had reportedly managed to find out the details of the car of Baitullah. One day they received information that Baitullah's car was parked outside his in-laws' house. They directed a missile strike at it. Baitullah was among those killed. In the case of OBL, they did not make a missile strike. Instead, they sent a special forces team to kill OBL in a fire-fight.
Q: Was there an official Pakistani complicity in OBL's living in Abbotabad?
A: The evidence till now is circumstantial and not direct. Why did OBL choose to live in Abbotabad despite the presence of a large number of Hazaras there? The only possible answer is because he felt confident his security would be assured there. He could have got this confidence only if had the support of some sections of the local security agencies and/or the police and also of some local elements of the non-Hazara segment of the population. This is more speculative than of any evidentiary value. The direct evidence could come from the interrogation of those arrested alive from the mansion by the U.S. special forces.
Q: What impact this will have on U.S. relations with Pakistan?
A: The U.S. already has considerable suspicion that Pakistan has been playing a double game by dragging its feet on the issue of action against Al Qaeda. This suspicion will now be further strengthened. The smoking gun in the form of OBL's dead body has clearly established that OBL was living in an urban town of Pakistan. Was he living there with the knowledge or collusion of the Pakistani security agencies? There is no smoking gun on this yet. Unless that becoms available, the U.S. would find it difficult to act against the State of Pakistan. The relations will continue as before with ups and downs and with alternating praise for action taken and reprimands for actions not taken.
Q: Will the death of OBL be the end of Al Qaeda?
A: No.Since 9/11, Al Qaeda is already a weakened organisation due to repeated Drone strikes on its hide-outs and capture of some of its leaders on the ground in Pakistan. This process of weakening that has been there since 2002 could acquire pace and strength as a result of the death of OBL. Despite this, Al Qaeda, by itself, will remain a potent force for some years to come until it suffers more attrition.
Q: Will it have any impact on Obama's plans to start thinning out troops from Afghanistan? Will it enable or tempt Obama to accelerate the process?
A: No. Obama's decisions relating to Afghanistan will depend on the evolution of the ground situation in Afghanistan and on the proved ability of the Afghan National Army to withstand pressure from the Taliban.
Q: What are the dangers of reprisal attacks by Al Qaeda and its affiliates?
A: High in the Af-Pak region. The Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and Al Qaeda affiliates like the Lashksar-e-Jhangvi (LEJ) and the Jaish-e-Mohammad (JEM) will presume that the Pakistani security forces must have co-operated with the U.S. Acts of suicide terrorism against the Pakistani security forces and U.S. nationals and interests in Pakistan could increase.
High against U.S. nationals and interests in other countries.
Medium to low in the U.S. homeland. ( 2-5-11)
(Bahukutumbi Raman is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com)
Monday, May 2, 2011
Francoise Hardy
Francoise Hardy was a favorite with European audiences in the 60's. She sang mostly love songs. Her approach to music was serious (she almost never smiled) and direct. She sang mostly in French (the language of romance). In addition, she was considered to be exquisitely beautiful. Hardy would never have caught my attention if I hadn't frequently visited Europe during those years. She, like many others, were swept under the bridge by the British Invasion.
You've Gotta Believe
If you believe Osama bin Laden is dead, you’ve also got to believe that our terrorism problem is now solved; that Obama handled the whole thing himself on the golf course on his Blackberry; that Obama is native born; that Bernanke is not trying to devalue the dollar; that Israel either is or is not our friend; that we either will or will not protect her should her neighbors attack; that Obama is not a Marxist; that we are in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya to win; that 'global warming' is not a hoax; that Reid and Pelosi were fairly elected; that Sarah Palin is stupid; that Trump is just playing and not out for bear; that Obama is not trying to choke off our own energy supplies; that Iran is not a threat; that Bush was the worst president ever; that Bush personally brought down the World Trade Towers; that Obama is not trying to start a race war; that Obama is not beholden to George Soros; that both Bush and Obama were (are) interested in protecting our borders; that Bush hated black people and personally blew up the New Orleans levees; that Obama wrote his own books; that the pictures of bin Laden the White House is about to release were not photo shopped; that Obama’s birth certificate was not photo shopped; that Obama either wants or doesn’t want Kaddafi killed; that, just as there are several ways to spell Kaddafi’s name, there are several ways to spell Usama; (that one can positively determine the identity of a person/corpse via DNA overnight in a helicopter).
Note: If just one of these things turns out to be wrong, then we’ve got to go back and examine all the others all over - AGAIN.
http://pkoelliker.blogspot.com/
Ding Dong The Witch is Dead
Good story, this morning’s news. I don’t know if my heart can take it. In less than a week’s time we’ve unearthed no less than two holy grails: Obama’s alleged birth certificate and Osama Bin Laden’s alleged body. Both make Obama look like Superman, himself of now questionable citizenship.
Note that by POTUS’ own admission, we have now entered the silly season. In Obama’s mind, he sees himself as running against both Bush and Trump. Both opponents – one clearly virtual; the other quite real – have been one-two punched in early sparring. It makes Obama seem heroic and effective. “Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee.”
The way our present political system is structured, we need a boogie man inspire and maintain cohesion. If bin Laden is indeed dead – as everyone is currently reporting – it would serve as somewhat of a blow to our hawkish stance re Afghanistan. I note that the president made sure to take personal credit for the kill. All that was missing was the banner proclaiming “Mission Accomplished”. The mystery that remains is who will be next to serve as a foil?
Unfortunately, holy grails no longer suffice to change the facts on the ground. These themselves are frequently contrived to distract from the obvious. Personally, I’m still somewhat confused. I’ve heard the phrase “architect of 9/11” applied to both KSM and Osama bin Laden. Which one is it? I’ve heard the term ‘justice’ thrown around to apply to practically anything and I note it’s even used do denote Eric Holder’s Federal fiefdom which to my mind hasn’t exactly distinguished itself.
I can hardly wait to see what the mainstream press will be making of these latest developments in the face of our continuing economic collapse and other tensions. It’s too bad that both Batchelor and Bahukutumbi Raman happen to be ‘away’ at this momentous juncture. Frankly, there are precious few others whose analysis I respect.
Suffice it to say, that we are now in full re-election mode and anything can still happen – even the improbable. Was happy to hear that bin Laden was buried at sea in full accordance with Islamic custom. I’m sure that the American military had been adequately instructed in advance. If bin Laden had been a Parsee, this exercise might have presented some logistical problems. But, never mind; what’s done is done and seems to have worked out nicely for our president and all concerned. If nothing more, Obama has discovered the power of documentation.
http://pkoelliker.blogspot.com/
Sunday, May 1, 2011
View from Israel: Netanyahu's Time to Choose
by Caroline Glick
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s response to the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority’s peace deal with Hamas would be funny if it weren’t tragic. Immediately after the news broke of the deal Netanyahu announced, “The PA must choose either peace with Israel or peace with Hamas. There is no possibility for peace with both.”
Netanyahu’s statement is funny because it is completely absurd. The PA has chosen.
The PA made the choice in 2000 when it rejected Israel’s offer of peace and Palestinian statehood and joined forces with Hamas to wage a terror war against Israel.
The PA made the choice in 2005 again when it responded to Israel’s unilateral withdrawal from Gaza with a tenfold increase in the number of rockets and missiles it fired on Israeli civilian targets in the Negev.
The Palestinians made the choice in 2006, when they elected Hamas to rule over them.
They made the choice in March 2007 when Fatah and Hamas signed their first unity deal.
The PA made the choice in 2008 when Abbas rejected then-prime minister Ehud Olmert’s offer of statehood and peace.
The PA made the choice in 2010 when it refused to reinstate peace negotiations with Netanyahu; began peace negotiations with Hamas; and escalated its plan to establish an independent state without peace with Israel.
Now the PA has again made the choice by signing the newest peace deal with Hamas.
IN A real sense, Netanyahu’s call for the PA to choose is the political equivalent of a man telling his wife she must choose between him and her lover, after she has left home, shacked up and had five children with her new man.
It is a pathetic joke.
But worse than a pathetic joke, it is a national tragedy. It is a tragedy that after more than a decade of the PA choosing war with Israel and peace with Hamas, Israel’s leaders are still incapable of accepting reality and walking away. It is a tragedy that Israel’s leaders cannot find the courage to say the joke of the peace process is really a deadly serious war process whose end is Israel’s destruction, and that Israel is done with playing along.
There are many reasons that Netanyahu is incapable of stating the truth and ending the 18- year policy nightmare in which Israel is an active partner in its own demise. One of the main reasons is that like his predecessors, Netanyahu has come to believe the myth that Israel’s international standing is totally dependent on its being perceived as trying to make peace with the Palestinians.
According to this myth – which has been the central pillar of Israel’s foreign policy and domestic politics since Yitzhak Rabin first accepted the PLO as a legitimate actor in 1993 – it doesn’t matter how obvious it is that the Palestinians are uninterested in peaceful coexistence with Israel.
It doesn’t matter how openly they wage their war to destroy Israel. Irrespective of the nakedness of Palestinian bad faith, seven successive governments have adopted the view that the only thing that stands between Israel and international pariah status is its leaders’ ability to persuade the so-called international community that Israel is serious about appeasing the Palestinians.
For the past several months, this profoundly neurotic perception of Israel’s options has fed our leaders’ hysterical response to the Palestinians’ plan to unilaterally declare independence.
The Palestinian plan itself discredits the idea that they are interested in anything other than destroying Israel. The plan is to get the UN to recognize a Palestinian state in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and Gaza outside the framework of a peace treaty with Israel. The PA will first attempt to get the Security Council to endorse an independent “Palestine.” If the Obama administration vetoes the move, then the PA will ask the General Assembly to take action. Given the makeup of the General Assembly, it is all but certain that the Palestinians will get their resolution.
THE QUESTION is, does this matter? Everyone from Defense Minister Ehud Barak to hard-left, post-Zionist retreads like Shulamit Aloni and Avrum Burg says it does. They tell us that if this passes, Israel will face international opprobrium if its citizens or military personnel so much as breathe in Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem without Palestinian permission.
These prophets of doom warn that Israel has but one hope for saving itself from diplomatic death: Netanyahu must stand before the world and pledge to give Israel’s heartland and capital to the Palestinians.
And according to helpful Obama administration officials, everything revolves around Netanyahu’s ability to convince the EU-3 – British Prime Minister David Cameron, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel – that he is serious about appeasing the Palestinians. If he doesn’t offer up Israel’s crown jewels in his speech before the US Congress next month, administration officials warn that the EU powers will go with the Palestinians.
And if they go with the Palestinians, well, things could get ugly for Israel.
Happily, these warnings are completely ridiculous. UN General Assembly resolutions have no legal weight. Even if every General Assembly member except Israel votes in favor of a resolution recognizing “Palestine,” all the Palestinians will have achieved is another non-binding resolution, with no force of law, asserting the same thing that thousands of UN resolutions already assert. Namely, it will claim falsely that Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and Gaza are Palestinian territory to which Israel has no right. Israel will be free to ignore this resolution, just as it has been free to ignore its predecessors.
The threat of international isolation is also wildly exaggerated. Today, Israel is more diplomatically isolated than it has been at any time in its 63-year history. With the Obama administration treating the construction of homes for Jews in Jerusalem as a greater affront to the cause of world peace than the wholesale massacre of hundreds of Iranian and Syrian protesters by regime goons, Israel has never faced a more hostile international climate. And yet, despite its frosty reception from the White House to Whitehall, life in Israel has never been better.
According to the latest data released by the Central Bureau of Statistics, Israel’s economy grew 7.8 percent in the last quarter of 2010.
International trade is rising steeply. In the first quarter of 2011, exports rose 27.3%. They grew 19.9% in the final quarter of last year. Imports rose 34.7% between January and March, and 38.9% in the last quarter of 2010.
The Israel-bashing EU remains Israel’s largest trading partner. And even as Turkey embraced Hamas and Iran as allies, its trade with Israel reached an all time high last year.
These trade data expose a truth that the doom and gloomers are unwilling to notice: For the vast majority of Israelis the threat of international isolation is empty.
The same people telling us to commit suicide now lest we face the firing squad in September would also have us believe that the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement is the single greatest threat to the economy. But that lie was put paid this month with the demise of the Australian town of Marrickville’s BDS-inspired boycott.
Last December, the anti-Israel coalition running the town council voted to institute a trade, sports and academic boycott against Israel. Two weeks ago the council was forced to cancel its decision after it learned that it would cost $3.4 million to institute it. Cheaper Israeli products and services would have to be replaced with more expensive non-Israeli ones.
Both Israel’s booming foreign trade and the swift demise of the Marrickville boycott movement demonstrate that the specter of international isolation in the event that Israel extricates itself from the Palestinian peace process charade is nothing more than a bluff. The notion that Israel will be worse off it Netanyahu admits that Abbas has again chosen war against the Jews over peace with us has no credibility.
SO WHAT is preventing Netanyahu and his colleagues in the government from acknowledging this happy truth? Two factors are at play here. The first is our inability to understand power politics. Our leaders believe that the likes of Sarkozy, Cameron and Merkel are serious when they tell us that Israel needs to prove it is serious about peace in order to enable them to vote against a Palestinian statehood resolution at the UN. But they are not serious. Nothing that Israel does will have any impact on their votes.
When the Europeans forge their policies towards Israel they are moved by one thing only: the US.
Since 1967, the Europeans have consistently been more pro-Palestinian than the US. Now, with the Obama administration demonstrating unprecedented hostility towards Israel, there is no way that the Europeans will suddenly shift to Israel’s side. So when European leaders tell Israelis that we need to convince them we are serious about peace, they aren’t being serious. They are looking for an excuse to be even more hostile. If Israel offers the store to Abbas, then the likes of Cameron, Merkel and Sarkozy will not only recognize “Palestine” at the UN, (because after all, they cannot be expected to be more pro-Israel than the Israeli government that just surrendered), they will recognize Hamas. Because that’s the next step.
It would seem that Israel’s leaders should have gotten wise to this game years ago. And the fact that they haven’t can be blamed on the second factor keeping their sanity in check: the Israeli Left. The only group of Israelis directly impacted by the BDS movement is the Israeli Left. Its members – from university lecturers to anti-Zionist has-been politicians, artists, actors and hack writers – are the only members of Israeli society who have a personal stake in a decision by their leftist counterparts in the US or Europe or Australia or any other pretty vacation/sabbatical spots to boycott Israelis.
And because the movement threatens them, they have taken it upon themselves to scare the rest of us into taking this ridiculous charade seriously. So it was that last week a group of washed-up radicals gathered in Tel Aviv outside the hall where David Ben-Gurion proclaimed Israeli independence, and declared the independence of “Palestine.” They knew their followers in the media would make a big deal of their agitprop and use it as another means of demoralizing the public into believing we can do nothing but embrace our enemies’ cause against our country.
The time has come for the vast majority of Israelis who aren’t interested in the Nobel Prize for Literature or a sabbatical at Berkeley or the University of Trondheim to call a spade a spade. The BDS haters have no leverage. A degree from Bar-Ilan is more valuable than a degree from Oxford. And no matter how much these people hate Israel, they will continue to buy our technologies and contract our researchers, because Cambridge is no longer capable of producing the same quality of scholarship as the Technion.
And it is well past time for our leaders to stop playing this fool’s game. We don’t need anyone’s favors. Abbas has made his choice.
Now it is time for Netanyahu to choose.
caroline@carolineglick.com
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s response to the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority’s peace deal with Hamas would be funny if it weren’t tragic. Immediately after the news broke of the deal Netanyahu announced, “The PA must choose either peace with Israel or peace with Hamas. There is no possibility for peace with both.”
Netanyahu’s statement is funny because it is completely absurd. The PA has chosen.
The PA made the choice in 2000 when it rejected Israel’s offer of peace and Palestinian statehood and joined forces with Hamas to wage a terror war against Israel.
The PA made the choice in 2005 again when it responded to Israel’s unilateral withdrawal from Gaza with a tenfold increase in the number of rockets and missiles it fired on Israeli civilian targets in the Negev.
The Palestinians made the choice in 2006, when they elected Hamas to rule over them.
They made the choice in March 2007 when Fatah and Hamas signed their first unity deal.
The PA made the choice in 2008 when Abbas rejected then-prime minister Ehud Olmert’s offer of statehood and peace.
The PA made the choice in 2010 when it refused to reinstate peace negotiations with Netanyahu; began peace negotiations with Hamas; and escalated its plan to establish an independent state without peace with Israel.
Now the PA has again made the choice by signing the newest peace deal with Hamas.
IN A real sense, Netanyahu’s call for the PA to choose is the political equivalent of a man telling his wife she must choose between him and her lover, after she has left home, shacked up and had five children with her new man.
It is a pathetic joke.
But worse than a pathetic joke, it is a national tragedy. It is a tragedy that after more than a decade of the PA choosing war with Israel and peace with Hamas, Israel’s leaders are still incapable of accepting reality and walking away. It is a tragedy that Israel’s leaders cannot find the courage to say the joke of the peace process is really a deadly serious war process whose end is Israel’s destruction, and that Israel is done with playing along.
There are many reasons that Netanyahu is incapable of stating the truth and ending the 18- year policy nightmare in which Israel is an active partner in its own demise. One of the main reasons is that like his predecessors, Netanyahu has come to believe the myth that Israel’s international standing is totally dependent on its being perceived as trying to make peace with the Palestinians.
According to this myth – which has been the central pillar of Israel’s foreign policy and domestic politics since Yitzhak Rabin first accepted the PLO as a legitimate actor in 1993 – it doesn’t matter how obvious it is that the Palestinians are uninterested in peaceful coexistence with Israel.
It doesn’t matter how openly they wage their war to destroy Israel. Irrespective of the nakedness of Palestinian bad faith, seven successive governments have adopted the view that the only thing that stands between Israel and international pariah status is its leaders’ ability to persuade the so-called international community that Israel is serious about appeasing the Palestinians.
For the past several months, this profoundly neurotic perception of Israel’s options has fed our leaders’ hysterical response to the Palestinians’ plan to unilaterally declare independence.
The Palestinian plan itself discredits the idea that they are interested in anything other than destroying Israel. The plan is to get the UN to recognize a Palestinian state in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and Gaza outside the framework of a peace treaty with Israel. The PA will first attempt to get the Security Council to endorse an independent “Palestine.” If the Obama administration vetoes the move, then the PA will ask the General Assembly to take action. Given the makeup of the General Assembly, it is all but certain that the Palestinians will get their resolution.
THE QUESTION is, does this matter? Everyone from Defense Minister Ehud Barak to hard-left, post-Zionist retreads like Shulamit Aloni and Avrum Burg says it does. They tell us that if this passes, Israel will face international opprobrium if its citizens or military personnel so much as breathe in Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem without Palestinian permission.
These prophets of doom warn that Israel has but one hope for saving itself from diplomatic death: Netanyahu must stand before the world and pledge to give Israel’s heartland and capital to the Palestinians.
And according to helpful Obama administration officials, everything revolves around Netanyahu’s ability to convince the EU-3 – British Prime Minister David Cameron, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel – that he is serious about appeasing the Palestinians. If he doesn’t offer up Israel’s crown jewels in his speech before the US Congress next month, administration officials warn that the EU powers will go with the Palestinians.
And if they go with the Palestinians, well, things could get ugly for Israel.
Happily, these warnings are completely ridiculous. UN General Assembly resolutions have no legal weight. Even if every General Assembly member except Israel votes in favor of a resolution recognizing “Palestine,” all the Palestinians will have achieved is another non-binding resolution, with no force of law, asserting the same thing that thousands of UN resolutions already assert. Namely, it will claim falsely that Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and Gaza are Palestinian territory to which Israel has no right. Israel will be free to ignore this resolution, just as it has been free to ignore its predecessors.
The threat of international isolation is also wildly exaggerated. Today, Israel is more diplomatically isolated than it has been at any time in its 63-year history. With the Obama administration treating the construction of homes for Jews in Jerusalem as a greater affront to the cause of world peace than the wholesale massacre of hundreds of Iranian and Syrian protesters by regime goons, Israel has never faced a more hostile international climate. And yet, despite its frosty reception from the White House to Whitehall, life in Israel has never been better.
According to the latest data released by the Central Bureau of Statistics, Israel’s economy grew 7.8 percent in the last quarter of 2010.
International trade is rising steeply. In the first quarter of 2011, exports rose 27.3%. They grew 19.9% in the final quarter of last year. Imports rose 34.7% between January and March, and 38.9% in the last quarter of 2010.
The Israel-bashing EU remains Israel’s largest trading partner. And even as Turkey embraced Hamas and Iran as allies, its trade with Israel reached an all time high last year.
These trade data expose a truth that the doom and gloomers are unwilling to notice: For the vast majority of Israelis the threat of international isolation is empty.
The same people telling us to commit suicide now lest we face the firing squad in September would also have us believe that the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement is the single greatest threat to the economy. But that lie was put paid this month with the demise of the Australian town of Marrickville’s BDS-inspired boycott.
Last December, the anti-Israel coalition running the town council voted to institute a trade, sports and academic boycott against Israel. Two weeks ago the council was forced to cancel its decision after it learned that it would cost $3.4 million to institute it. Cheaper Israeli products and services would have to be replaced with more expensive non-Israeli ones.
Both Israel’s booming foreign trade and the swift demise of the Marrickville boycott movement demonstrate that the specter of international isolation in the event that Israel extricates itself from the Palestinian peace process charade is nothing more than a bluff. The notion that Israel will be worse off it Netanyahu admits that Abbas has again chosen war against the Jews over peace with us has no credibility.
SO WHAT is preventing Netanyahu and his colleagues in the government from acknowledging this happy truth? Two factors are at play here. The first is our inability to understand power politics. Our leaders believe that the likes of Sarkozy, Cameron and Merkel are serious when they tell us that Israel needs to prove it is serious about peace in order to enable them to vote against a Palestinian statehood resolution at the UN. But they are not serious. Nothing that Israel does will have any impact on their votes.
When the Europeans forge their policies towards Israel they are moved by one thing only: the US.
Since 1967, the Europeans have consistently been more pro-Palestinian than the US. Now, with the Obama administration demonstrating unprecedented hostility towards Israel, there is no way that the Europeans will suddenly shift to Israel’s side. So when European leaders tell Israelis that we need to convince them we are serious about peace, they aren’t being serious. They are looking for an excuse to be even more hostile. If Israel offers the store to Abbas, then the likes of Cameron, Merkel and Sarkozy will not only recognize “Palestine” at the UN, (because after all, they cannot be expected to be more pro-Israel than the Israeli government that just surrendered), they will recognize Hamas. Because that’s the next step.
It would seem that Israel’s leaders should have gotten wise to this game years ago. And the fact that they haven’t can be blamed on the second factor keeping their sanity in check: the Israeli Left. The only group of Israelis directly impacted by the BDS movement is the Israeli Left. Its members – from university lecturers to anti-Zionist has-been politicians, artists, actors and hack writers – are the only members of Israeli society who have a personal stake in a decision by their leftist counterparts in the US or Europe or Australia or any other pretty vacation/sabbatical spots to boycott Israelis.
And because the movement threatens them, they have taken it upon themselves to scare the rest of us into taking this ridiculous charade seriously. So it was that last week a group of washed-up radicals gathered in Tel Aviv outside the hall where David Ben-Gurion proclaimed Israeli independence, and declared the independence of “Palestine.” They knew their followers in the media would make a big deal of their agitprop and use it as another means of demoralizing the public into believing we can do nothing but embrace our enemies’ cause against our country.
The time has come for the vast majority of Israelis who aren’t interested in the Nobel Prize for Literature or a sabbatical at Berkeley or the University of Trondheim to call a spade a spade. The BDS haters have no leverage. A degree from Bar-Ilan is more valuable than a degree from Oxford. And no matter how much these people hate Israel, they will continue to buy our technologies and contract our researchers, because Cambridge is no longer capable of producing the same quality of scholarship as the Technion.
And it is well past time for our leaders to stop playing this fool’s game. We don’t need anyone’s favors. Abbas has made his choice.
Now it is time for Netanyahu to choose.
caroline@carolineglick.com
S. And the Christmas Pig (with a name)
I understand the purpose of the last remaining stricture - against political assassination - left standing, even in the chaos of war. It is a concept also reflected in the game of chess. Assassination goes beyond mere killing. It targets a leader – the head the snake, in some cases – a man (or woman), nevertheless with a recognizable name. It violates the last law of civilized behavior after which there is no telling.
S. was a little boy living in Goa. It wasn’t the place of his birth or even where he grew up. His parents moved around a lot due to the nature of his father’s job. S. used to like watching the yard from his second floor window. He watched the cow being milked and the chickens. His very favorite was the pink piglet with the curly tail. He gave it a name and it would follow him around when he went down to the yard to play.
Came Christmas, there was much activity down in the yard. S. had been struggling to stay awake the night before. Midnight mass seemed to drag on endlessly. Around daybreak he finally fell asleep. Consequently, he awoke late. It was already time for the holiday feast served on a festive table at midday. When S. came downstairs, the heavily laden table was the first thing he saw. In the center was his pig – the one with a name. It had an apple in its mouth.
S. ran back upstairs weeping. He could not eat that day.
The assassination of a leader is considered by some to be the most effective way to rid oneself of an adversary. And perhaps it is. But it flies in the face of any shred of doubt one may still harbor as to the rightness or wrongness of one’s intent. There must always be doubt. Without doubt, there is no countervailing force to mitigate madness, and it’s off to the races. Why not target Ahmadinejad, Mugabe, or Kim Jong-Il? We know where they live.
Of all the palpable threats that are facing our nation, I consider Barack Hussein Obama to be at the top of the list. Still, I would shudder if he were to be assassinated. It would mean that we have stepped over and obscured a very delicate line. It would be difficult – if not impossible – to find our way back to any semblance of normal.
Targeting Kaddafi is wrong. I know the sainted Reagan did it. He was wrong as well. Kaddafi may have been tipped off as he might have been tipped off also this time around (I should like to believe so).
http://pkoelliker.blogspot.com/
View from India: Beginning and End
by Parvathi
Last week saw a beginning and an end. The beginning was the wedding of Kate and William, the current sweethearts of Britain, and the end was the death of Sathya Sai Baba, spiritual guru to millions around the world.
Both sparked endless chatter on the tube and on the virtual networks. My son told me in disgust "They are still showing the wedding on most of the channels!" and it is now two days after the event. Well, there are enough and more people who want to watch it! "Colonial hangover" you might call it; but, no, it is something much deeper than that. Sai Baba's funeral was watched live over the television, again, by millions who mourn his passing like they would their own kith and kin. It is time now to ask why, and let us then like the Red King says "Begin at the beginning."
Kate and William stand for romance and love both very elusive values in this increasingly rushed present life styles where only money really calls the shots. Anything that simply exists for the pure beauty of itself is quickly swept aside for gains, so there go love and romance unless they come with the grinning sidekicks of power and pelf. The royal sweethearts are dream symbols that "love will find a way" in the tradition of Diana who turned away from a cold, loveless marriage. Princess Katherine, Kate as the Brits are wont to call her in their very Anglo Saxon way, is a commoner and therefore the romantic angle gets another boost. Then of course there is the done to death pageantry of the House of Windsor. Rationalization seems to have slowly killed the joy of celebrations in the developed world. Not so in this part of the planet, we still have much to hope for and more to celebrate in hopes of better things to come, and therefore we are a celebratory people. Good for us. Every festival is a huge celebration of colors, smells, sound and taste. Here, religion is a living breathing tradition and God ceases to be abstract and is part of the medley of life: a young impish boy, a dutiful son and husband, a faithful and beautiful wife, a lovable glutton ...the list is endless. They all fit into the normal register of life, and therefore represents a transaction with God on a personal basis.
This is where Sathya Sai comes in. The tirade against him has been there for decades and it is mostly from the rationalists who seem to hate his guts for performing miracles. What's wrong with miracles? Does only rhetoric have value? Don't we all want miracles in one way or the other? And also, if Sathya Sai had not performed miracles, could he have manged to catch the attention of the masses? The miracles are NOT important inasmuch the loaves of bread and the water to wine at Cana are not the pivot on which Christianity turns.
People get curious, they come to scoff, see, and as we saw, remained en masse to pray. When there is darkness at noon, one needs faith that the sun will come out again, and that is the surety that Sai Baba gave millions around the world and they are the better for it. Better because there he was a living breathing, smiling, talking entity you could tell your troubles to, and he had answers. What is faith if it is not a psychological crutch? Why berate it? Look at the practical efficacy of confession among the Roman Catholics. It does one good to go every week and confess everything to the good and holy father in the confessional. The wonderful thing about it is that you don't see each other. Anonymity helps clear the air. So, you confess and are pardoned; told to say a dozen Hail Marys and you come out having got it off your chest. Never has anything more practical been ever thought of. They knew, those crafty cardinals and popes the psychological angle of faith. Today the confessional has been replaced by the psychiatrist's couch, but are there enough takers? Does it really help?
Do the rationalists bother to mention Sathya Sai's charity? What matters the most is that Sai Baba gave enormously back to society.
His epitaph should read: "You receive but what you give."
Last week saw a beginning and an end. The beginning was the wedding of Kate and William, the current sweethearts of Britain, and the end was the death of Sathya Sai Baba, spiritual guru to millions around the world.
Both sparked endless chatter on the tube and on the virtual networks. My son told me in disgust "They are still showing the wedding on most of the channels!" and it is now two days after the event. Well, there are enough and more people who want to watch it! "Colonial hangover" you might call it; but, no, it is something much deeper than that. Sai Baba's funeral was watched live over the television, again, by millions who mourn his passing like they would their own kith and kin. It is time now to ask why, and let us then like the Red King says "Begin at the beginning."
Kate and William stand for romance and love both very elusive values in this increasingly rushed present life styles where only money really calls the shots. Anything that simply exists for the pure beauty of itself is quickly swept aside for gains, so there go love and romance unless they come with the grinning sidekicks of power and pelf. The royal sweethearts are dream symbols that "love will find a way" in the tradition of Diana who turned away from a cold, loveless marriage. Princess Katherine, Kate as the Brits are wont to call her in their very Anglo Saxon way, is a commoner and therefore the romantic angle gets another boost. Then of course there is the done to death pageantry of the House of Windsor. Rationalization seems to have slowly killed the joy of celebrations in the developed world. Not so in this part of the planet, we still have much to hope for and more to celebrate in hopes of better things to come, and therefore we are a celebratory people. Good for us. Every festival is a huge celebration of colors, smells, sound and taste. Here, religion is a living breathing tradition and God ceases to be abstract and is part of the medley of life: a young impish boy, a dutiful son and husband, a faithful and beautiful wife, a lovable glutton ...the list is endless. They all fit into the normal register of life, and therefore represents a transaction with God on a personal basis.
This is where Sathya Sai comes in. The tirade against him has been there for decades and it is mostly from the rationalists who seem to hate his guts for performing miracles. What's wrong with miracles? Does only rhetoric have value? Don't we all want miracles in one way or the other? And also, if Sathya Sai had not performed miracles, could he have manged to catch the attention of the masses? The miracles are NOT important inasmuch the loaves of bread and the water to wine at Cana are not the pivot on which Christianity turns.
People get curious, they come to scoff, see, and as we saw, remained en masse to pray. When there is darkness at noon, one needs faith that the sun will come out again, and that is the surety that Sai Baba gave millions around the world and they are the better for it. Better because there he was a living breathing, smiling, talking entity you could tell your troubles to, and he had answers. What is faith if it is not a psychological crutch? Why berate it? Look at the practical efficacy of confession among the Roman Catholics. It does one good to go every week and confess everything to the good and holy father in the confessional. The wonderful thing about it is that you don't see each other. Anonymity helps clear the air. So, you confess and are pardoned; told to say a dozen Hail Marys and you come out having got it off your chest. Never has anything more practical been ever thought of. They knew, those crafty cardinals and popes the psychological angle of faith. Today the confessional has been replaced by the psychiatrist's couch, but are there enough takers? Does it really help?
Do the rationalists bother to mention Sathya Sai's charity? What matters the most is that Sai Baba gave enormously back to society.
His epitaph should read: "You receive but what you give."
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