The Jerusalem Post
September 11th Commandment
Editorial
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon nixed a proposed meeting last night between Foreign Minister Shimon Peres and Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat, yet this is not the significant fact. What matters is that Peres himself remains open to a meeting, and seems to be constantly attempting to lower, rather than raise, the standard of what is being expected from Arafat.
For all his talk of the need to formulate a global coalition against terrorism, Peres seems unable to fathom that the post-September 11 world is a different place. In this new world, Arafat's Palestinian Authority not only belongs on the list of regimes that support terror, it is the only regime that directly engages in and justifies terror on a systematic basis.
While it may yet be proven that government agents from Iran, Iraq, Libya, and Syria have directly engaged in terrorist acts, these governments by and large prefer to support proxies - such as Osama bin Laden and Hizbullah - to do their dirty work. Arafat has no such distance from terrorism. Organizations directly loyal to Arafat, such as Force 17, his hand-picked 'presidential guard,' and the Fatah Tanzim, have committed about half the terrorist attacks against Israelis over the past year. And just yesterday, a Fatah representative told Israel Radio that the current 'cease-fire' is being coordinated with Hamas and Islamic Jihad, and that there is no distinction between these groups when it comes to 'resisting occupation.' The whole point of America's war against terrorism is that there are no 'good terrorists.' Yet the Arab world, led by the Palestinians, is trying to argue exactly that: there is terror and there is terror against Israel.
One of Egypt's most prominent journalists, Ibrahim Nafie of Al-Ahram, just wrote that there must be a 'demarcation between terrorism and national liberation. It is unacceptable, for example, to brand as terrorists -- as Israel has sought to do for its own ends -- members of Palestinian and Lebanese liberation groups exercising their internationally sanctioned right to resist foreign occupation.' Israel has, indeed, been at the forefront of a what was a lonely battle, arguing that gunning down civilians on roads and blowing them up at discos and pizzerias is terrorism, not some exalted form of resistance. Now, tragically, the world is ready to listen, and who should come along but our own foreign minister saying -- Wait a minute, I am ready to meet with the man who practically invented the idea that terrorism is a legitimate form of 'struggle,' and still champions that idea to this day.
If the Bush administration announced that it would meet with Osama bin Laden after 48 hours of 'absolute quiet,' it would be the laughing stock of the world and would be roundly criticized, not least by Israel. We are beyond the point where pathetic, partial, and temporary cease-fires can be held up as a standard for acceptance into the community of nations.
The Peres-Arafat meeting did not take place because Arafat has not produced 48 hours of quiet. On Friday, Israel Radio's 6 p.m. news reported that Peres was pleased that there had been 'a few hours' of quiet, while the same broadcast reported that three firebombs, 15 grenades, and three mortar shells had been thrown and fired at Israelis just that day. Peres's standard of 'quiet,' it seems, is if by dumb luck no one has been killed in the last few minutes.
But let us say that the deadly Palestinian attacks were to stop for two whole days. What reason is there to believe that they would not resume once Arafat had received the stamp of approval he covets from Israel?
We expect the United States to be serious in the fight against terror; we must expect no less from ourselves. For all our exalted reputation as a terror-fighting nation, our foreign minister seems to be determined to set exactly the wrong example for the US and the world.
Israel should be insisting that the Palestinian Authority, as a minimum, scrupulously fulfill the commitments it made to CIA Director George Tenet after the Dolphinarium massacre in May. This means not only a total and unconditional end to terrorism by the Palestinian Authority, but arrests of Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists who refuse to abide by a permanent cease-fire.
If Peres had so insisted on September 12, rather than continued to entertain the idea of (and even press for!) a meeting with Arafat, the United States would not be mistakenly pushing Israel toward such a meeting now. Peres has done more than squander an opportunity to hold Arafat to a new, post-September 11 standard - he has created an eminently avoidable rift between Israel and the United States.
When Ehud Barak was trounced in the last election, it seemed that Peres might have internalized the overwhelming message from the public: no more negotiations under fire. September 11 should have established an equally resounding commandment: no more business as usual with regimes that support terrorism. Israel should be the last country in the world to exempt itself from this commandment.
Shimon Peres
An obstacle to peace
Wednesday, September 11, 2002
Tuesday, July 02, 2002
Peres's hoax is up
Prime Minister Sharon must say 'enough is enough'
The Jerusalem Post
July 2, 2002
by Isi Leibler
Woe to the people of Israel if their elected representatives are a true reflection of the electorate.
The public has become so accustomed to the appalling behavior of its politicians that it seems to have become immune to outrage. At present, the problem is principally centered on a group of Labor ministers and MKs who are unable to come to terms with the reality that the Oslo Accords were a cruel hoax and that Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat is an outstanding con man.
The successors to the great Labor Zionist movement of David Ben-Gurion - which headed 20 out of 29 governments since Israel was established - have marginalized themselves to the fringes of political life. Many lifelong Labor supporters have defected from the party in disgust.
Today, radicals who still occupy the dominant role in the party are behaving almost as though they were members of Matzpen, the loony leftist group which sympathized with Palestinian terrorism in the 1970s. Their behavior is also reminiscent of that of the members of Mapam - the Marxist antecedent to Meretz - which refused to recognize the evil of Stalinism even when Jews were being murdered at the height of the Soviet anti-Semitic purges. When Mordechai Oren, one of their own leaders, was arrested in Czechoslovakia on trumped-up charges of espionage, Mapam still refused to believe that a Communist party could behave in such a manner.
Now the contemporary counterparts to those discredited Marxists of the past are the apologists for Arafat. Former ministers such as Yossi Beilin and Shlomo Ben-Ami have no qualms about making statements which provide encouragement to our enemies and undermine the morale of a people under siege. Beilin, the previous minister of justice, backed by substantial funds provided by European countries opposed to the Israeli government, actually consorts with those who endorse the killing of fellow Israelis, and actively lobbies foreign governments to take up positions against the policies of his own democratically elected government.
In most countries, such scandalous behavior, especially at a time of war, would be considered treasonous. It stands in stark contrast to the behavior of American politicians who, in the wake of September 11, set aside partisan politics and united behind their president. Beilin could also have taken a cue from Menachem Begin, who, as an outspoken leader of the opposition, never criticized the government when abroad, stressing that divisions in Israel were not for export and had to be resolved within the country.
This bizarre political environment was highlighted during U.S. Vice President Richard Cheney's visit to Israel in March. Foreign Minister Shimon Peres argued with Cheney, urging him to avoid publicly humiliating Arafat. Cheney had to terminate the discussion by stating: "I respect the foreign minister, but disagree with him on this situation."
More recently, at last week's Jewish Agency Board of Governors meeting, Peres insisted that we are obliged "to give credit to Arafat for having been courageous enough to endorse the Oslo Accords." That remark was made a few days after the country had endured most horrific casualties from Arafat's Al-Aksa homicide bombers.
Even the "moderate" head of the Labor party, Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, feels impelled to make statements and gestures to promote his personal political agenda, irrespective of the damage he may be causing. Immediately following US President George W. Bush's speech last Monday, he released a plan for resolving the ongoing crisis in Israel, using the hostile east Jerusalem Arabic media as the vehicle.
This infuriated Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who was aware that the initiative was motivated solely by a desire to score points against Labor MK Haim Ramon, Ben-Eliezer's rival for the party leadership. Sharon rightly observed that it was "not fitting" for a senior government minister at a time of war to unveil his diplomatic vision to Israel's enemies before presenting it to his own people and the government.
Such appalling deviations from rationality and acceptable civic-political behavior pale in comparison, however, to some of the reactions on the part of Labor politicians to the Bush speech. For the first time in Israel's history, the leader of the most powerful country in the world spelled out the truth. Instead of employing the customary rhetoric about "cycles of violence," or other statements creating moral equivalence between perpetrators and victims, Bush clearly stated that Israel is entitled to defend itself against those seeking to destroy it and murder its citizens.
And though he endorsed the Palestinian right to a state, he did so conditionally: demanding that the Palestinian people elect leaders who are not tainted with terrorism and that their governing bodies undergo genuine reform. There is little question that today, the overwhelming majority of Israelis enthusiastically endorse that formulation.
Lo and behold, however, the Peres, Ramon, Ben-Ami, and Beilin people considered the speech "unbalanced." Peres was even "dismayed and frustrated" by Bush's call for the ousting of Arafat, describing it as a "fatal mistake." A few days later, on a BBC program, Peres reiterated his willingness to continue working with Arafat as a partner for peace if he adopted reforms.
When our foreign minister publicly expresses his willingness to cooperate with Arafat after the president of the United States calls for his ouster, the time has arrived for the prime minister of Israel to say enough is enough.
But the prize for the crossing of red lines must go to Knesset Speaker Avraham Burg. It is axiomatic that in Western parliaments, the speaker rises above the political party fray. Indeed, all of Burg's predecessors endeavored to be apolitical, regardless of their affiliation.
From the day of his election, however, Burg created a political fiefdom, using his office to torment former prime minister Ehud Barak on one hand and enthusiastically joining the campaign to demonize Prime Minister Sharon on the other. He felt no constraints in initiating independent political forays.
Despite the fervent opposition of the prime minister and the Knesset majority, he pulled every lever to address the bogus Palestinian Legislative Council in Ramallah -- even while the killings of Israelis had already become a daily occurrence. When his efforts failed, Burg discovered a new vehicle through which to ingratiate himself with his radical Left colleagues, by assuming the role of promoter of the so-called Saudi Peace Plan. He -- the former chairman of the World Zionist Organization and Jewish Agency -- even tried to sell the Saudi plan to Diaspora Jewish leaders by promoting it at a World Jewish Congress conference in Brussels.
At that meeting, he misled his audience by denying that the Palestinian right of return was a crucial component of the plan. Now, when most Israelis -- and Jews the world over -- are relieved that for the first time an American president has pointed a finger at the man who "traffics with terrorists," Israel's Knesset speaker tells that president that his speech may be nice, but that "you won't be coming to the funerals." He also told Israel Radio that despite his fervent opposition to Sharon, he would have suggested to Bush that he mind his own business should he ever be inclined to tell Israelis to reject their own prime minister.
This hint of an analogy between Arafat the terrorist, and Sharon, the democratically elected prime minister of Israel, is repugnant. For someone whose own election to the Labor Party leadership was disallowed because more Druse voters supported him than were on the electoral rolls, it is perhaps somewhat grotesque for Burg to extol Arafat's virtues as an elected leader. After all, Hitler was also democratically elected. Does that mean that the Allied demands for unconditional surrender and the trials of Nazi war criminals were wrong? Should we be expected to come to terms with a future transparent Palestinian government that reelects Arafat, or new leaders who still believe that the eradication of Jewish sovereignty through the blood of their children is more important than peace?
Bush told the Palestinians that if they want a state, they should replace those of their leaders who are contaminated with terror. If they don't, they get no state. Does the speaker of the Knesset consider such a proposal to be unbalanced, unfair, or undemocratic?
In light of such remarks, it is not surprising that Burg also calls for greater European involvement in the Middle East and an end to the "occupation." Burg's outrageous behavior makes him unfit to hold office. He should resign or be dismissed.
Sharon is heading a country at war. His political and military strategies enjoy the support of the vast majority of the public. Let him therefore now take decisive action by demanding the dismissal of those who undermine his administration from within and thus neutralize the impact of the unrepresentative noisy splinter groups.
If he acts with strength, he will achieve unity and raise the morale of the nation. Perhaps he will even revisit outdated concepts such as patriotism and solidarity, rather than indulging fringe elements whose governmental style is that of a banana republic.
The writer is the senior vice president of the World Jewish Congress.
The Jerusalem Post
July 2, 2002
by Isi Leibler
Woe to the people of Israel if their elected representatives are a true reflection of the electorate.
The public has become so accustomed to the appalling behavior of its politicians that it seems to have become immune to outrage. At present, the problem is principally centered on a group of Labor ministers and MKs who are unable to come to terms with the reality that the Oslo Accords were a cruel hoax and that Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat is an outstanding con man.
The successors to the great Labor Zionist movement of David Ben-Gurion - which headed 20 out of 29 governments since Israel was established - have marginalized themselves to the fringes of political life. Many lifelong Labor supporters have defected from the party in disgust.
Today, radicals who still occupy the dominant role in the party are behaving almost as though they were members of Matzpen, the loony leftist group which sympathized with Palestinian terrorism in the 1970s. Their behavior is also reminiscent of that of the members of Mapam - the Marxist antecedent to Meretz - which refused to recognize the evil of Stalinism even when Jews were being murdered at the height of the Soviet anti-Semitic purges. When Mordechai Oren, one of their own leaders, was arrested in Czechoslovakia on trumped-up charges of espionage, Mapam still refused to believe that a Communist party could behave in such a manner.
Now the contemporary counterparts to those discredited Marxists of the past are the apologists for Arafat. Former ministers such as Yossi Beilin and Shlomo Ben-Ami have no qualms about making statements which provide encouragement to our enemies and undermine the morale of a people under siege. Beilin, the previous minister of justice, backed by substantial funds provided by European countries opposed to the Israeli government, actually consorts with those who endorse the killing of fellow Israelis, and actively lobbies foreign governments to take up positions against the policies of his own democratically elected government.
In most countries, such scandalous behavior, especially at a time of war, would be considered treasonous. It stands in stark contrast to the behavior of American politicians who, in the wake of September 11, set aside partisan politics and united behind their president. Beilin could also have taken a cue from Menachem Begin, who, as an outspoken leader of the opposition, never criticized the government when abroad, stressing that divisions in Israel were not for export and had to be resolved within the country.
This bizarre political environment was highlighted during U.S. Vice President Richard Cheney's visit to Israel in March. Foreign Minister Shimon Peres argued with Cheney, urging him to avoid publicly humiliating Arafat. Cheney had to terminate the discussion by stating: "I respect the foreign minister, but disagree with him on this situation."
More recently, at last week's Jewish Agency Board of Governors meeting, Peres insisted that we are obliged "to give credit to Arafat for having been courageous enough to endorse the Oslo Accords." That remark was made a few days after the country had endured most horrific casualties from Arafat's Al-Aksa homicide bombers.
Even the "moderate" head of the Labor party, Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, feels impelled to make statements and gestures to promote his personal political agenda, irrespective of the damage he may be causing. Immediately following US President George W. Bush's speech last Monday, he released a plan for resolving the ongoing crisis in Israel, using the hostile east Jerusalem Arabic media as the vehicle.
This infuriated Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who was aware that the initiative was motivated solely by a desire to score points against Labor MK Haim Ramon, Ben-Eliezer's rival for the party leadership. Sharon rightly observed that it was "not fitting" for a senior government minister at a time of war to unveil his diplomatic vision to Israel's enemies before presenting it to his own people and the government.
Such appalling deviations from rationality and acceptable civic-political behavior pale in comparison, however, to some of the reactions on the part of Labor politicians to the Bush speech. For the first time in Israel's history, the leader of the most powerful country in the world spelled out the truth. Instead of employing the customary rhetoric about "cycles of violence," or other statements creating moral equivalence between perpetrators and victims, Bush clearly stated that Israel is entitled to defend itself against those seeking to destroy it and murder its citizens.
And though he endorsed the Palestinian right to a state, he did so conditionally: demanding that the Palestinian people elect leaders who are not tainted with terrorism and that their governing bodies undergo genuine reform. There is little question that today, the overwhelming majority of Israelis enthusiastically endorse that formulation.
Lo and behold, however, the Peres, Ramon, Ben-Ami, and Beilin people considered the speech "unbalanced." Peres was even "dismayed and frustrated" by Bush's call for the ousting of Arafat, describing it as a "fatal mistake." A few days later, on a BBC program, Peres reiterated his willingness to continue working with Arafat as a partner for peace if he adopted reforms.
When our foreign minister publicly expresses his willingness to cooperate with Arafat after the president of the United States calls for his ouster, the time has arrived for the prime minister of Israel to say enough is enough.
But the prize for the crossing of red lines must go to Knesset Speaker Avraham Burg. It is axiomatic that in Western parliaments, the speaker rises above the political party fray. Indeed, all of Burg's predecessors endeavored to be apolitical, regardless of their affiliation.
From the day of his election, however, Burg created a political fiefdom, using his office to torment former prime minister Ehud Barak on one hand and enthusiastically joining the campaign to demonize Prime Minister Sharon on the other. He felt no constraints in initiating independent political forays.
Despite the fervent opposition of the prime minister and the Knesset majority, he pulled every lever to address the bogus Palestinian Legislative Council in Ramallah -- even while the killings of Israelis had already become a daily occurrence. When his efforts failed, Burg discovered a new vehicle through which to ingratiate himself with his radical Left colleagues, by assuming the role of promoter of the so-called Saudi Peace Plan. He -- the former chairman of the World Zionist Organization and Jewish Agency -- even tried to sell the Saudi plan to Diaspora Jewish leaders by promoting it at a World Jewish Congress conference in Brussels.
At that meeting, he misled his audience by denying that the Palestinian right of return was a crucial component of the plan. Now, when most Israelis -- and Jews the world over -- are relieved that for the first time an American president has pointed a finger at the man who "traffics with terrorists," Israel's Knesset speaker tells that president that his speech may be nice, but that "you won't be coming to the funerals." He also told Israel Radio that despite his fervent opposition to Sharon, he would have suggested to Bush that he mind his own business should he ever be inclined to tell Israelis to reject their own prime minister.
This hint of an analogy between Arafat the terrorist, and Sharon, the democratically elected prime minister of Israel, is repugnant. For someone whose own election to the Labor Party leadership was disallowed because more Druse voters supported him than were on the electoral rolls, it is perhaps somewhat grotesque for Burg to extol Arafat's virtues as an elected leader. After all, Hitler was also democratically elected. Does that mean that the Allied demands for unconditional surrender and the trials of Nazi war criminals were wrong? Should we be expected to come to terms with a future transparent Palestinian government that reelects Arafat, or new leaders who still believe that the eradication of Jewish sovereignty through the blood of their children is more important than peace?
Bush told the Palestinians that if they want a state, they should replace those of their leaders who are contaminated with terror. If they don't, they get no state. Does the speaker of the Knesset consider such a proposal to be unbalanced, unfair, or undemocratic?
In light of such remarks, it is not surprising that Burg also calls for greater European involvement in the Middle East and an end to the "occupation." Burg's outrageous behavior makes him unfit to hold office. He should resign or be dismissed.
Sharon is heading a country at war. His political and military strategies enjoy the support of the vast majority of the public. Let him therefore now take decisive action by demanding the dismissal of those who undermine his administration from within and thus neutralize the impact of the unrepresentative noisy splinter groups.
If he acts with strength, he will achieve unity and raise the morale of the nation. Perhaps he will even revisit outdated concepts such as patriotism and solidarity, rather than indulging fringe elements whose governmental style is that of a banana republic.
The writer is the senior vice president of the World Jewish Congress.
Friday, June 28, 2002
In spite of the terror, Peres stands by his man
Despite Bush speech, Peres sees Arafat as partner for peace
June 28, 2002
By Reuters, LONDON
Foreign Minister Shimon Peres said Thursday he could still work with Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat, days after U.S. President George W. Bush urged Palestinians to dump their longtime leader.
In an interview with the BBC's Newsnight program to be screened in Britain on Thursday, Peres said he could still work with Arafat as head of the Palestinian Authority if he was prepared to adopt sweeping reforms. "If he would do it, yes," he said. "It is not an abstract question. If Arafat would reform, the whole thing would lose its urgency." Arafat has called elections for January and plans to run again despite Bush's call for him to be removed.
Peres said the Palestinians could not escape the need for reform. They had a clear choice -- either stop the terror or accept the cost. "If you make peace, nobody would be talking about democracy but if you don't make peace, then we cannot stop fire unless there is one chain of command for the whole forces. "It is not just an exercise in order to obtain democracy, it is a democratic exercise in order to obtain peace."
Peres said reform was needed not to satisfy the United States or Israel, but to satisfy the Palestinians. "They cannot go on like this. They are the only group of people in the whole world that is dealing with three or four armed groups, each of them shooting in a different direction.
"I talked with Arafat about it a long time ago, I told him 'look, you too have different views in your own cabinet'. He said 'yes we have different views but one rifle. You may have one view but 10 rifles'."
June 28, 2002
By Reuters, LONDON
Foreign Minister Shimon Peres said Thursday he could still work with Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat, days after U.S. President George W. Bush urged Palestinians to dump their longtime leader.
In an interview with the BBC's Newsnight program to be screened in Britain on Thursday, Peres said he could still work with Arafat as head of the Palestinian Authority if he was prepared to adopt sweeping reforms. "If he would do it, yes," he said. "It is not an abstract question. If Arafat would reform, the whole thing would lose its urgency." Arafat has called elections for January and plans to run again despite Bush's call for him to be removed.
Peres said the Palestinians could not escape the need for reform. They had a clear choice -- either stop the terror or accept the cost. "If you make peace, nobody would be talking about democracy but if you don't make peace, then we cannot stop fire unless there is one chain of command for the whole forces. "It is not just an exercise in order to obtain democracy, it is a democratic exercise in order to obtain peace."
Peres said reform was needed not to satisfy the United States or Israel, but to satisfy the Palestinians. "They cannot go on like this. They are the only group of people in the whole world that is dealing with three or four armed groups, each of them shooting in a different direction.
"I talked with Arafat about it a long time ago, I told him 'look, you too have different views in your own cabinet'. He said 'yes we have different views but one rifle. You may have one view but 10 rifles'."
Tuesday, June 11, 2002
Peres's lethal messianism
The Jeusalem Post
June 11, 2002
Krauthammer: Israel has abandoned Oslo messianism
by Etgar Lefkovitz
Foreign Minister Shimon Peres's vision of a "new Middle East," as espoused over the last decade, is a lethal form of secular messianism that has led to the worst bloodletting in Israel's history, internationally acclaimed American columnist Charles Krauthammer said last night.
"Israel has at long last awoken from the most devastating messianic reverie the Oslo Agreements," Krauthammer said last night at a Jerusalem lecture, where he was presented with Bar-Ilan University's annual Guardian of Zion Award.
Calling the 1993 Oslo Accords "the most catastrophic and self-inflicted wound by any state in modern history," which was based on "an extreme expression of post-Zionistic messianism," Krauthammer said that the secular messianism espoused by Peres was more dangerous than the religious messianism of Gush Emunim or certain followers of the Lubavitcher Rebbe because of its impact on shaping contemporary Jewish history.
"For the messianic Israeli left, Oslo was more than a deal, it was a ratification [in their minds] of a new era in modern history, a new era in human relations and a radical break in history which they declared was occurring not at some point in the future, but now," he said.
"In the 1990's America slept and Israel dreamed," said the New York-born and Montreal-raised Krauthammer, whose weekly syndicated column for The Washington Post Writers Group which now appears in over 100 newspapers, including The Jerusalem Post won him a Pulitzer Prize in 1987 for distinguished commentary.
"The US awoke [after the terror attacks on America] in September 2001 and Israel awoke [after the start of Palestinian violence] in September 2000," he said. "Like the Israeli Left, the US in the 1990s was intoxicated with the idea that history had changed from military conflict to a world of markets and technology. September 11 abolished that illusion and taught us that there are ideological enemies who care nothing about economics, and like in the old history of war of one God against another, will use all military means to attain their goals," he said.
Krauthammer, one of the few American columnists to warn from the start that the Oslo peace accords were a fraud and deception that were doomed to failure, said that talk of Israeli-Palestinian economic and technological cooperation as espoused in Oslo was an "insane" idea which was based on a "dangerous mirage" of those who sought to transpose the entirely different idea of EU cooperation on the Middle East.
"Israel labored seven long years until reality declared itself with former prime minister Barak's astonishing conciliatory offer at Camp David [in July 2000], which was met by Arafat with suicide bombings and terrorism," he said. Declaring that peace is "not impossible," but contingent on an Arab willingness to live in coexistence with the Jewish state, Krauthammer said: "The idea that one can strike a real peace agreement with [Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser] Arafat without a Sadat-like acceptance of the Jewish state is an illusion."
In contrast to what he saw as the secular messianism espoused by Peres, Krauthammer said Zionism was the very antithesis to messianism, in that it was against Jews waiting in the Diaspora for a last-minute miracle to occur. In contrast to the Oslo Accords, which were dependent on the will of Arafat, Krauthammer said "Zionism was a movement based on self-reliance, self-realization, and a refusal to depend on others. Zionism accepted the world precisely as it is and because of that Jews saw that they had no future in the Diaspora and that they must go and build a state for themselves in Zion."
The full text of Krauthammer's speech can be read on Bar-Ilan University's Web site at http://www.biu.ac.il/
June 11, 2002
Krauthammer: Israel has abandoned Oslo messianism
by Etgar Lefkovitz
Foreign Minister Shimon Peres's vision of a "new Middle East," as espoused over the last decade, is a lethal form of secular messianism that has led to the worst bloodletting in Israel's history, internationally acclaimed American columnist Charles Krauthammer said last night.
"Israel has at long last awoken from the most devastating messianic reverie the Oslo Agreements," Krauthammer said last night at a Jerusalem lecture, where he was presented with Bar-Ilan University's annual Guardian of Zion Award.
Calling the 1993 Oslo Accords "the most catastrophic and self-inflicted wound by any state in modern history," which was based on "an extreme expression of post-Zionistic messianism," Krauthammer said that the secular messianism espoused by Peres was more dangerous than the religious messianism of Gush Emunim or certain followers of the Lubavitcher Rebbe because of its impact on shaping contemporary Jewish history.
"For the messianic Israeli left, Oslo was more than a deal, it was a ratification [in their minds] of a new era in modern history, a new era in human relations and a radical break in history which they declared was occurring not at some point in the future, but now," he said.
"In the 1990's America slept and Israel dreamed," said the New York-born and Montreal-raised Krauthammer, whose weekly syndicated column for The Washington Post Writers Group which now appears in over 100 newspapers, including The Jerusalem Post won him a Pulitzer Prize in 1987 for distinguished commentary.
"The US awoke [after the terror attacks on America] in September 2001 and Israel awoke [after the start of Palestinian violence] in September 2000," he said. "Like the Israeli Left, the US in the 1990s was intoxicated with the idea that history had changed from military conflict to a world of markets and technology. September 11 abolished that illusion and taught us that there are ideological enemies who care nothing about economics, and like in the old history of war of one God against another, will use all military means to attain their goals," he said.
Krauthammer, one of the few American columnists to warn from the start that the Oslo peace accords were a fraud and deception that were doomed to failure, said that talk of Israeli-Palestinian economic and technological cooperation as espoused in Oslo was an "insane" idea which was based on a "dangerous mirage" of those who sought to transpose the entirely different idea of EU cooperation on the Middle East.
"Israel labored seven long years until reality declared itself with former prime minister Barak's astonishing conciliatory offer at Camp David [in July 2000], which was met by Arafat with suicide bombings and terrorism," he said. Declaring that peace is "not impossible," but contingent on an Arab willingness to live in coexistence with the Jewish state, Krauthammer said: "The idea that one can strike a real peace agreement with [Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser] Arafat without a Sadat-like acceptance of the Jewish state is an illusion."
In contrast to what he saw as the secular messianism espoused by Peres, Krauthammer said Zionism was the very antithesis to messianism, in that it was against Jews waiting in the Diaspora for a last-minute miracle to occur. In contrast to the Oslo Accords, which were dependent on the will of Arafat, Krauthammer said "Zionism was a movement based on self-reliance, self-realization, and a refusal to depend on others. Zionism accepted the world precisely as it is and because of that Jews saw that they had no future in the Diaspora and that they must go and build a state for themselves in Zion."
The full text of Krauthammer's speech can be read on Bar-Ilan University's Web site at http://www.biu.ac.il/
Thursday, April 25, 2002
Follow the money
The Jerusalem Post
April 25, 2002
Column One - The Peres Center scandal
by Caroline B. Glick
First came Foreign Minister Shimon Peres's lone defense of Terje Roed-Larsen, the UN special coordinator for the Middle East peace process who last week insinuated that Israel committed war crimes in the UN-managed Jenin refugee camp. He stated, among other things, that "Israel has lost all moral ground in this conflict."
Then came the Makor Rishon newspaper's revelation that, in 1999, the Shimon Peres Center for Peace gave Larsen and his wife, Norwegian Ambassador Mona Juul, an unprecedented cash payment of $100,000. Larsen sits on the board of governors of the Peres Center. Then, too, the Norwegian government is one of the chief contributors to the multimillion dollar enterprise.
Peres strenuously denied charges whispered by high-ranking members of his own Labor Party, and made public by investigative journalist Yoav Yitzhak on Channel 1 on Tuesday, that the payment to Larsen and Juul was a kickback for their intervention on his behalf with the Nobel Committee in 1994.
In this, he must be given the benefit of the doubt. But it strains the imagination that the fact that Larsen sits on his center's board of governors and his wife represents one of the center's main donors had no impact whatsoever in Peres's unabashed defense of Larsen after he libeled Israel in front of the international community, and did so hours before the UN Security Council passed a resolution calling for the establishment of a fact-finding mission about the battle in Jenin.
Just hours after the cabinet meeting at which Attorney-General Elyakim Rubinstein said Larsen's mendacious remarks were cause for declaring him persona non grata, Peres released a statement rejecting the "horrible calls to declare Larsen persona non grata." "A procedure like this," he added, "would do injustice to a man who has made a special contribution toward peace in our region for years."
Looking over the Peres Center's Web site, one is hard-pressed to understand what the center, whose 1998 budget was almost NIS 30 million, actually does. Its project descriptions, which mainly describe actions the center "promotes" or intends to carry out, have not been updated since the Oslo process disintegrated at Camp David and the Palestinian terrorist war against Israel began.
According to an independent audit conducted for the registrar of non-profit organizations by accountant Boaz Gazit in March 2001, the center's largest outlay is salaries, of which the directors receive a disproportionately large share.
The auditor's report pointed out that in 1997, the center's 35 employees received a total of NIS 2,312,688 in salary payments and that five of the employees received 78 percent of the total amount. In 1998, the center expanded its workforce to 63 and paid close to NIS 5 million in salaries, of which the top eight salaries constituted 54 percent of the total.
In addition to payment of employees, the Peres Center apparently also knows how to throw a good party. A three-day meeting of its full board of governors in 1999 cost NIS 2,328,990. Outlays included footing the bill for the travel and lodging expenses of all board members.
One of the members of the board is Andrei Azulay, president of the Marc Rich Foundation in Israel. The auditor's reports states that "one of the most prominent contributors to the center since its inception is Marc Rich." According to press reports at the time, Andrei Azulay was the main lobbying force for then U.S. president Bill Clinton's 11th-hour pardon of Rich, a fugitive from justice. Peres was one of many Israeli personalities who sent letters to Clinton beseeching him to pardon Rich in the closing months of his presidency.
One cannot help but notice the strong stench of influence-peddling that rises from Peres's defense of both Larsen and Rich, given their intimate connections with his center. But these examples are not isolated.
According to the Peres Center's Web site, among the many projects it promotes, one that actually received funding ($63 million) was the "Peace Technology Fund." The fund's aim, according to the site, is "making equity investments in Palestinian companies and joint ventures." The two Palestinian companies that were invested in by the fund, are "Paltel - the Palestinian telephone operating company - and the Palestinian Mortgage Housing Corporation."
Both of these concerns are infected root and branch by Palestinian Authority corruption. Muhammad Rashid, Arafat's economic adviser, is vice president and one of the principle stockholders in Paltel. In an investigative report from December 1998, The Financial Times reported that Rashid and Paltel were deeply involved in stealing the $160 million Gaza Employees Pension Fund, which was transferred to the PA by Israel in 1994 and emptied of its funds by Rashid between early 1996 and late 1997. Freih Abu Medein, the PA's justice minister told the paper at the time the money had been invested in telecommunications projects.
The Palestinian Mortgage Housing Corporation was involved in scandal in 1998, when the EU discovered that $20 million it had donated for the construction of low-cost housing in Gaza had been used instead to build luxury apartments for wealthy supporters of Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat.
So not only does the Peres Center reward its managers and European friends, it also serves to legitimate PA corruption committed by Arafat's men, who steal money from their own impoverished people.
But this should come as no surprise. Former Shin Bet officer Yossi Ginossar, Rashid's partner in his various business dealings and behind-the-scenes go-between with Arafat for Labor prime ministers, also sits on the board of directors of the Peres Center. Ginossar is himself so intimately involved in the business end of the PA that when Ehud Barak brought him in as a pinch hitter at the Camp David summit, press reports at the time described the participants joking that they didn't know whether he was there to represent Israel or Arafat.
The single largest contributor to Arafat's PA since its inception is the EU. Still today, as the evidence has become overwhelming that the PA is a terrorist entity from head to toe, the EU insists on continuing its financial support. Just last month the EU announced it was donating another 340 million euros to the PA. This week, the Ad-Hoc Liaison Committee, the body responsible for coordinating aid to the PA is meeting in Oslo to put together a new financing package.
The EU also is a major financial backer of Yossi Beilin's Economic Cooperation Foundation. In addition, it funds organizations like Rabbis for Human Rights, which recently participated in organizing delegations of foreign activists who were brought here to stand in front of IDF tanks and attempt to force their way through IDF roadblocks.
Aside from the realpolitik justification for such meddling in Israel's internal politics - that such organizations, through their work provide a source of influence and a launching pad for increased EU power in the Levant - the revelation that the Peres Center paid Larsen and Juul $100,000 provides a fiduciary interest as well. Simply put, keeping Oslo alive is good business.
The victims of all of this inbreeding are, of course, the Israeli and Palestinian peoples. On the Israeli side, having Shimon Peres wearing the twin hats of life force behind the Peres Center enterprise and foreign minister represents an inherent conflict of interest with potentially serious repercussions for the conduct of foreign policy. On the Palestinian side, the continuation of Arafat's mafia-style reign suffocates any prospect for economic growth and development and, of course, destroys any possibility of political settlement.
A few months ago, a senior governmental source said to me, "If you want to understand why Israel isn't fighting Arafat, follow the money." Well here you have it.
April 25, 2002
Column One - The Peres Center scandal
by Caroline B. Glick
First came Foreign Minister Shimon Peres's lone defense of Terje Roed-Larsen, the UN special coordinator for the Middle East peace process who last week insinuated that Israel committed war crimes in the UN-managed Jenin refugee camp. He stated, among other things, that "Israel has lost all moral ground in this conflict."
Then came the Makor Rishon newspaper's revelation that, in 1999, the Shimon Peres Center for Peace gave Larsen and his wife, Norwegian Ambassador Mona Juul, an unprecedented cash payment of $100,000. Larsen sits on the board of governors of the Peres Center. Then, too, the Norwegian government is one of the chief contributors to the multimillion dollar enterprise.
Peres strenuously denied charges whispered by high-ranking members of his own Labor Party, and made public by investigative journalist Yoav Yitzhak on Channel 1 on Tuesday, that the payment to Larsen and Juul was a kickback for their intervention on his behalf with the Nobel Committee in 1994.
In this, he must be given the benefit of the doubt. But it strains the imagination that the fact that Larsen sits on his center's board of governors and his wife represents one of the center's main donors had no impact whatsoever in Peres's unabashed defense of Larsen after he libeled Israel in front of the international community, and did so hours before the UN Security Council passed a resolution calling for the establishment of a fact-finding mission about the battle in Jenin.
Just hours after the cabinet meeting at which Attorney-General Elyakim Rubinstein said Larsen's mendacious remarks were cause for declaring him persona non grata, Peres released a statement rejecting the "horrible calls to declare Larsen persona non grata." "A procedure like this," he added, "would do injustice to a man who has made a special contribution toward peace in our region for years."
Looking over the Peres Center's Web site, one is hard-pressed to understand what the center, whose 1998 budget was almost NIS 30 million, actually does. Its project descriptions, which mainly describe actions the center "promotes" or intends to carry out, have not been updated since the Oslo process disintegrated at Camp David and the Palestinian terrorist war against Israel began.
According to an independent audit conducted for the registrar of non-profit organizations by accountant Boaz Gazit in March 2001, the center's largest outlay is salaries, of which the directors receive a disproportionately large share.
The auditor's report pointed out that in 1997, the center's 35 employees received a total of NIS 2,312,688 in salary payments and that five of the employees received 78 percent of the total amount. In 1998, the center expanded its workforce to 63 and paid close to NIS 5 million in salaries, of which the top eight salaries constituted 54 percent of the total.
In addition to payment of employees, the Peres Center apparently also knows how to throw a good party. A three-day meeting of its full board of governors in 1999 cost NIS 2,328,990. Outlays included footing the bill for the travel and lodging expenses of all board members.
One of the members of the board is Andrei Azulay, president of the Marc Rich Foundation in Israel. The auditor's reports states that "one of the most prominent contributors to the center since its inception is Marc Rich." According to press reports at the time, Andrei Azulay was the main lobbying force for then U.S. president Bill Clinton's 11th-hour pardon of Rich, a fugitive from justice. Peres was one of many Israeli personalities who sent letters to Clinton beseeching him to pardon Rich in the closing months of his presidency.
One cannot help but notice the strong stench of influence-peddling that rises from Peres's defense of both Larsen and Rich, given their intimate connections with his center. But these examples are not isolated.
According to the Peres Center's Web site, among the many projects it promotes, one that actually received funding ($63 million) was the "Peace Technology Fund." The fund's aim, according to the site, is "making equity investments in Palestinian companies and joint ventures." The two Palestinian companies that were invested in by the fund, are "Paltel - the Palestinian telephone operating company - and the Palestinian Mortgage Housing Corporation."
Both of these concerns are infected root and branch by Palestinian Authority corruption. Muhammad Rashid, Arafat's economic adviser, is vice president and one of the principle stockholders in Paltel. In an investigative report from December 1998, The Financial Times reported that Rashid and Paltel were deeply involved in stealing the $160 million Gaza Employees Pension Fund, which was transferred to the PA by Israel in 1994 and emptied of its funds by Rashid between early 1996 and late 1997. Freih Abu Medein, the PA's justice minister told the paper at the time the money had been invested in telecommunications projects.
The Palestinian Mortgage Housing Corporation was involved in scandal in 1998, when the EU discovered that $20 million it had donated for the construction of low-cost housing in Gaza had been used instead to build luxury apartments for wealthy supporters of Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat.
So not only does the Peres Center reward its managers and European friends, it also serves to legitimate PA corruption committed by Arafat's men, who steal money from their own impoverished people.
But this should come as no surprise. Former Shin Bet officer Yossi Ginossar, Rashid's partner in his various business dealings and behind-the-scenes go-between with Arafat for Labor prime ministers, also sits on the board of directors of the Peres Center. Ginossar is himself so intimately involved in the business end of the PA that when Ehud Barak brought him in as a pinch hitter at the Camp David summit, press reports at the time described the participants joking that they didn't know whether he was there to represent Israel or Arafat.
The single largest contributor to Arafat's PA since its inception is the EU. Still today, as the evidence has become overwhelming that the PA is a terrorist entity from head to toe, the EU insists on continuing its financial support. Just last month the EU announced it was donating another 340 million euros to the PA. This week, the Ad-Hoc Liaison Committee, the body responsible for coordinating aid to the PA is meeting in Oslo to put together a new financing package.
The EU also is a major financial backer of Yossi Beilin's Economic Cooperation Foundation. In addition, it funds organizations like Rabbis for Human Rights, which recently participated in organizing delegations of foreign activists who were brought here to stand in front of IDF tanks and attempt to force their way through IDF roadblocks.
Aside from the realpolitik justification for such meddling in Israel's internal politics - that such organizations, through their work provide a source of influence and a launching pad for increased EU power in the Levant - the revelation that the Peres Center paid Larsen and Juul $100,000 provides a fiduciary interest as well. Simply put, keeping Oslo alive is good business.
The victims of all of this inbreeding are, of course, the Israeli and Palestinian peoples. On the Israeli side, having Shimon Peres wearing the twin hats of life force behind the Peres Center enterprise and foreign minister represents an inherent conflict of interest with potentially serious repercussions for the conduct of foreign policy. On the Palestinian side, the continuation of Arafat's mafia-style reign suffocates any prospect for economic growth and development and, of course, destroys any possibility of political settlement.
A few months ago, a senior governmental source said to me, "If you want to understand why Israel isn't fighting Arafat, follow the money." Well here you have it.
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