The WINEP crusade to discredit the Egyptian revolution

A few days ago I noted a pretty awful piece by WINEP's Robert Satloff and Eric Trager in WSJ. But there is more:

• WINEP fellow Eric Trager has had more negative pieces on the Egyptian uprising, focusing on how nasty Islamists are, than anyone. His latest, published on the revolution's anniversary, is titled Happy Birthday To Egypt’s Doomed Revolution. I share Trager's concerns over the Islamist ascendency but the entire premise of many his pieces is wrong: he argues that somehow the West was fooled into thinking this was a liberal secular revolution. It was not, and it was obvious from the start. It was a revolution against a dictator and his autocratic system, but joined by all sorts of people — from undemocratic radical leftists and Islamists to mainstream Islamists, liberals, centrists of all shades. And it's amusing he decries that some activists would not meet with Hillary Clinton. Nothing new here, it has been the case for a long time and a completely understandable decision considering US policies in the region and backing Mubarak (and perhaps SCAF). He also is fighting a home game, the one WINEP cares most about, about US foreign policy and the engagement with the Muslim Brotherhood. Why anyone would object with US officials meeting with members of the largest party in Egypt is beyond me, and some sort of policy was necessary to break the ice considering past kowtowing to Mubarak regime restrictions on meeting the Brothers. (Update: The Lounsbury chimes in.)
• David Pollock, also a WINEP fellow, has a rather trite piece attacking the Muslim Brothers for what they say in English vs. what they in Arabic. He doesn't even provide the best examples, which come from the governorate websites of the Brothers. This kind of argumentation is futile, because the point is no longer what the Brothers say in one language or the other, but what they do. This is precisely why the US is talking to them – to have an impact over what they do. And the real big problem with this piece in meta: its underlying assumption is that the US is "trusting" the MB's "private assurances" and statements. What, in this chaotic situation? No one runs foreign policy like that, as if Obama is saying, but that guy Beltagui of the Brothers assured me this or that. Paul Pillar has more on this piece at National Interest.
• But the real WINEP Egypt bash-feast took place at one of the organization's "policy forums" which Trager, Egyptian activist Samuel Tadros and old WINEP hand David Schenker. I am quite alarmed by Tadros' phrasing of the Egyptian political scene as what non-Islamists can do in conjunction with the US (of course Tadros was previously a recipient of MEPI funding) – as if the US has historically been a great friend of Egyptian democrats – and I remember his rather nasty attack on Ayman Nour as anti-Semitic (as if anti-Semitism is really Egypt's biggest problem.)

It's not that there aren't real foreign policy conundrums towards Egypt – there are plenty. But WINEP's entire approach, focused mostly on bashing the Obama administration's cautious engagement of Islamists who are sen by most Egyptians (despite the elections' many flaws) as democratically elected and constant return to the question of Israel is neither helpful nor analytically interesting. What it amounts to, in other words, is another Israel lobby initiative to ensure that one of the worst aspect of US foreign policy in the region – seeing everything through an Israeli prism – continues. In Egypt, as I've argued in the past, the best way to calm regional tensions may be precisely to decouple US-Egypt relations from the Camp David framework. It's not the propaganda of an outfit dedicated to furthering Israel's interests in the US that's going to provide much insight into how Egypt can make it through the tremendously difficult road ahead, or credibly give advice  about promoting democracy when it spent so many years defending Mubarak when he backed Israeli interests (such as the blockade of Gaza) and bashing him after 2004 when it became politically fashionable.

Dennis Ross's hotline to Obama

Haaretz's Barak David asks, Why did the White House install a secure phone in Dennis Ross’ office in the Washington Institute for Near East Policy?

Apparently, a short while after Ross left his position in the Obama administration, the White House made an unusual request to install a secure phone line in Ross' office at the Washington Institute. The secure line is known in Israel as a "red phone", which could be used to discuss confidential information without the risk of wiretapping.

In America, the term “red telephone” brings back memories of the Cold War and apocalyptic films such as of Dr. Strangelove. Guarded telephones in the U.S. Department of State as well as those in the White House are mostly white or gray. One of them sits in Dennis Ross’ office in his research institute, through which Ross receives updates regarding classified government information connected to his profession. There aren’t many independent researchers that receive such privileges.

I'm glad to provide an answer: because Dennis Ross is the Obama administration's chief interlocutor with the Israel lobby and Israel officials. Name me another country that has such power in the United States, or another (kind-of-former) official that has such influence despite having publicly adopted positions that are the opposite of those of the administration that he advises (on Iran, on settlements, on Jerusalem). That's because Ross is not the Obama administration's advisor on Middle East policy – he's one of the main conduits for the Israel lobby's to the administration.

The Arab Spring, US foreign policy, the Status-Quo Lobby and the Dream Palace of the Zionists

I'd like to touch upon America and Egypt, because I've seen a lot of hand-wringing in American newspapers about the future of that relationship and a sense of misplaced buyers' remorse about the Egyptian revolution – misplaced because the US had little to do with the revolution, and because it is wrong-headed thinking about an unstoppable, irreversible event.

Generally speaking, the American foreign policy establishment is stuck on Egypt. It is having a hard time imagining a different Middle East. Its path of least resistance is banking on their financial and political relationship with the generals now in charge and maintaining the ability to project power in the region that it has had since 1945 to some extent and since 1990 in particular. If it continues on this path, which is unfortunately likely, because of the dearth of imagination in a foreign policy elite that has grown lazy in its imperial thinking, and because of the dire state of American politics, it will fail. 

Click to read more ...

Israel and the American right

Take note of this Politico story by Ben Smith about the launch of the Center for American Freedom, a right-wing answer to the pro-Obama Center for American Progress that is setting up as a right-wing echo chamber ahead of the presidential elections. All of which is fair enough, but there's a passage revealing of the ties between the Israel lobby and the increasingly extreme (one might say proto-fascistic — note its militarism and eagerness for war with Iran) aspects of the contemporary American right:

A test run for CAF, Goldfarb said, was the Emergency Committee for Israel, which he also advised, and which waged a relentless guerrilla media campaign against the efforts of J Street – a national membership organization with a sizable Washington staff – to create a liberal counterweight in American Middle East policy.

“That showed that you can have a less well-funded organization but you can present a pretty devastating asymmetric counterweight to something much larger and more established on the other side if you go about it in an effective way,” Goldfarb said.

More on Dennis Ross

The praise keeps coming in!

Rashid Khalidi, in a piece really worth reading entirely:

Dennis Ross has finally left the building. Since the Carter administration, Ross has played a crucial role in crafting Middle East policies that have prolonged and exacerbated the more than six-decade conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. His efforts contributed significantly to the growth in the number of Israeli settlers in the occupied Palestinian territories from well under 200,000 in the 1980s to nearly 600,000 today. It is in no small measure due to him that the two-state solution is all but dead.

Ross’s tenure during the administrations of five presidents over parts of five decades was marked by a litany of failures. And yet he went from success to bureaucratic success in Washington. His ability to flourish despite these failures reflects the degree to which obsequious support for Israel has become the norm in American politics, even when it contradicts U.S. national interests.

Click to read more ...

L'Affaire Jennifer Rubin

Why the Washington Post won't fire Jennifer Rubin - Salon.com:

What’s particularly remarkable is that Pexton is admitting (albeit wanting it kept secret) what any honest observer knows to be true: that there is a very high likelihood — I’d say absolute certainty — that Rubin would have been fired had she promoted a post like this about Jews and Israelis rather than Arabs and Palestinians.

But this is the insidious, pervasive bias that has long been obvious in a profession that relentlessly touts its own “objectivity.” Even the mildest criticism of Israelis and anything even hinting at criticisms of Jews is strictly prohibited — a prohibition enforced by summary, immediate dismissal and enduring stigma. As Nicholas Kristof wrote during a visit to Jerusalem last year: Israel “tolerates a far greater range of opinions [about Israel] than America.

The takeaway: endorse racism against Arabs all you want, but not the other way around.

Reasons for Dennis Ross' departure

I have no idea why Dennis Ross, to the surprise of many, has announced he will leave his White House position next month, as the NYT reported. Some questions this raises:

• Why did Ross make the announcement at a gathering of Jewish leaders? Is it linked to the recent comments by Obama and Sarkozy about Netanyahu? Ross was often said to be, among other things, a key liaison to the lobby writ large — in a sense, their man inside the White House of a president that Zionists never fully trusted. 
• As a corollary: does this mean that major Jewish organizations are likely to dump Obama for re-election? This is what Elliott Abrams suggests (perhaps wishful thinking on his part, and not representative in any case of the wider average Jewish-American electorate which remains pretty Democratic and mostly concerned about other issues than Israel — even if the major Jewish organizations have significant fundraising clout).
• Is it linked to Obama's Iran policy, including his reluctance to beat the war drums? Ross was supposed to be the key pointman on Iran — was he pushed out of that role or frustrated because he could not get his way?
• Is it simply that with the peace process going nowhere (Ross having made sure of that), he is no longer needed or no longer feels useful?
• Is it that, ahead of the presidential election, the Obama administration will not engage in any major new initiatives, and thus Ross feels like he would be twiddling his thumbs waiting for an uncertain second term?
• Or maybe it's just the promise to his wife — but if so, how come we didn't know earlier than he would leave in December 2011?

Whatever the reason, good riddance.

That "unbreakable bond with Israel"

Barack and Bibi, at one the usual ritual humiliation meetings

… that America — against all common sense, national interest, and morality — is stuck with:

The French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, described the Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, as a "liar" in a private exchange with Barack Obama at last week's G20 summit in Cannes that was inadvertently broadcast to journalists.

"I cannot stand him. He's a liar," Sarkozy told Obama. The US president responded by saying: "You're fed up with him? I have to deal with him every day."

The Rio Grande, the Jordan and the Hudson

Hoo boy. It's going to be a real a Zionist lovefest in NYC today as the GOP, members of the Israel lobby and Likud convene at 10am on Tuesday, September 20th in the W Hotel in Manhattan. Their rally/press conference will be led by GOP presidential hopeful Rick Perry and KM Danny Danon. From JPost:

"Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry will hold a press conference with American and Israeli-Jewish leaders in New York on Tuesday in which he is expected to address the upcoming deliberations at the United Nations, MK Danny Danon (Likud), said on Saturday night."

"Danon, who will participate at the press conference, said he would ask Perry ahead of the conference to adopt the initiative the MK is advancing to annex Judea and Samaria in response to the unilateral Palestinian moves at the UN."

Danon, already in the U.S. to speak at nationwide Zionist fundraisers and rallies prior to the UN vote, has proposed an "Annexation for Declaration Initiative," which would "establish full sovereignty over the Jewish communities of the West Bank . . . our historic homeland of Judea and Samaria:"

"Under [my] three-state solution, Arab-Israelis residing within Israel would be welcome to join the official new State of Israel. The remaining enclaves of Palestinian towns and villages in Judea and Samaria would become part of either Egypt or Jordan, and the Egyptian and Jordanian borders would extend accordingly to these designated towns."

[Snip]

"Both Jordan and Egypt have expressed strong support and concern for Palestinians living in the West Bank. If they truly care so much, then they should readily agree to a three-state solution and incorporate the Palestinian towns located adjacent to their current borders."

Click to read more ...

Hospitalized for heckling Bibi

The Emperor’s clothes are still on, for now (while his heckler is roughed up, hospitalized):

There on Capitol Hill, Netanyahu still has friends like Senator Chuck Schumer, who told a Jewish radio program that “One of my roles, very important in the United States Senate, is to be a shomer [guard]—to be a or the shomer Yisrael [guard of Israel]. And I will continue to be that with every bone in my body." With friends like these wrapped around his little finger, no wonder Netanyahu’s forcible denunciations of international law were met with such rapturous approbation by Members of Congress who applauded his rejectionism dozens of times.

This bonhomie was punctuated only once during Netanyahu’s hour-long speech, when a lone and courageous activist—Rae Abileah—from CODEPINK, disrupted it. CODEPINK organized a series of events and protests—“Move Over AIPAC”—to coincide with the annual policy conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee last weekend. From the gallery, Abileah shouted “No more occupation, stop Israel[i] war crimes, equal rights for Palestinians, occupation is indefensible.”

Her protest was quickly shut down in a “hey rube” moment by AIPAC attendees in the gallery who assaulted and tackled her before she was hauled away by police, causing injuries to her neck and shoulders requiring hospitalization. At the same time, Members of Congress joined the AIPAC carnie thuggery by shouting down Abileah with boos before quickly resuming to feed out of Netanyahu’s hand.

Obama's AIPAC speech

It's interesting that a lot of people who follow Israel lobby issues think that Obama's speech to AIPAC was actually a tough one, once you strip away the usual "unbreakable bond" stuff. I'm less excited about this because I think in their enthusiasm that Obama is making it clear to the Lobby that they are imperiling Israel's future (and America's ability to guarantee it) they oversee the fact that the Lobby is winning the tactical fight — even if it may be at the cost of longer-term strategy. Netanyahu will once again get away with running circles around an American president. People might be growing increasingly bitter about this, but American politics is structured in such a way that it resets frequently. A new PM in Israel or a new president in the White House and we might be back, for all intents and purposes, to zero while we wait for the long game of delegitimizing AIPAC and the lobby more generally. 

Anyway, here are some of these takes.

Click to read more ...

The NYT on Dennis Ross

When George Mitchell resigned last week, a PA official suggested it might have been because he had been elbowed out of his role as US envoy for the Middle East peace process by senior White House advisor Dennis Ross, the longtime peace-processor of the Bush I and Clinton administrations. Some were skeptical when it came from a Palestinian, but the NYT runs a rare story basically confirming this take on Ross' role in the White House as an advocate for Israel. In a sense it might be seen as a positive step that the NYT is talking about this: Ross is a major figure pro-Israel figure of the Democratic establishment with strong ties as a "centrist" or "moderate" in the Israel lobby.

One thing that's signicant in the article is that Jordan's King Abdullah chimes in on the criticism of Ross:

From the State Department, “we get good responses,” the Jordanian king said, according to several people who were in the room. And from the Pentagon, too. “But not from the White House, and we know the reason why is because of Dennis Ross” — President Obama’s chief Middle East adviser.

Mr. Ross, King Abdullah concluded, “is giving wrong advice to the White House.”

By almost all accounts, Dennis B. Ross — Middle East envoy to three presidents, well-known architect of incremental and painstaking diplomacy in the Middle East that eschews game-changing plays — is Israel’s friend in the Obama White House and one of the most influential behind-the-scenes figures in town.

Click to read more ...

Funny because it's true

From the Onion:

Government Official Who Makes Perfectly Valid, Well-Reasoned Point Against Israel Forced To Resign

MAY 20, 2011 | ISSUE 47•20

WASHINGTON—State Department diplomat Nelson Milstrand, who appeared on CNN last week and offered an informed, thoughtful analysis implying that Israel could perhaps exercise more restraint toward Palestinian moderates in disputed territories, was asked to resign Tuesday. “The United States deeply regrets any harm Mr. Milstrand’s careful, even-tempered, and factually accurate remarks may have caused our democratic partner in the Middle East,” Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in an unequivocal condemnation of the veteran foreign-service officer’s perfectly reasonable statements. “U.S. policy toward Israel continues to be one of unconditional support and fawning sycophancy.” Milstrand, 63, will reportedly appear at an AIPAC conference to offer a full apology as soon as his trial concludes and his divorce is finalized.

AIPAC, a Not-So-Benign Night Flower

Below is an article by one of the organizers of the Move Over AIPAC campaign, which will gather Americans in Washington, DC later this month to protest US foreign policy on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the nefarious role played by AIPAC in ensuring aid to Israel and support for its occupation of Palestine continued unchecked.

AIPAC, a Not-So-Benign Night Flower

By Janet McMahon

One could be forgiven for thinking that the last three letters of AIPAC stand for “political action committee.” But since the American Israel Public Affairs Committee does not itself make campaign contributions to political candidates, technically it is not a PAC.  Curiously, however, the 30-odd “unaffiliated” pro-Israel PACs, most with deceptively innocuous names, all seem to give to the same candidates—almost as if there were a guiding intelligence behind their contributions. In the eyes of the Federal Election Commission, AIPAC is a “membership organization” rather than a political committee. This means that, unlike actual PACs, AIPAC is not required to file public reports on its income and expenditures.

Not for nothing, however, did Fortune magazine once name it the second most powerful lobby in Washington. So it’s easy to understand why, like a night flower that blooms in the dark and dies with the light of day, this particular organization which advances the interests of a foreign government has fought long and hard to ensure that its funding sources and expenditures are not exposed to public scrutiny.

Click to read more ...

Daniel Levy: US "irresponsibly indulgent" toward Israel

A great passage in this interview of Israeli-British former diplomat Daniel Levy, in America as Obstacle | Souciant:

We need to acknowledge that American domestic politics will not allow the US to lead on this issue in a way that is conducive to advancing a breakthrough. Most people would look at this as being patently obvious, this administration included. US leaders are sufficiently boxed in politically and lack maneuverability to carry the peace process forward. If that is the case, for anyone caring about Israel’s future and the Palestinians, it is worth considering what would get us out of the impasse, whether it is the UN or Quartet playing a more active role.

Click to read more ...

Footnoting Elliott Abrams

Elliot Abrams forgot to include the footnotes in his latest piece for the Weekly Standard. I started adding them for the first two sentences, then realized doing the whole thing would be too much work:

With the Great Revolt of 2011 shaking Arab capitals, Israel briefly seemed a Middle Eastern Switzerland1 when March began. There were no demonstrations,2 there was no dictator to protest,3 and there had been three years without terror.4 

1: If Switzerland was an apartheid state that still hasn't defined its borders.

2: If you don't include the demonstrations by Arab-Israelis and Palestinians under Israeli occupation.

3: Unless you mean the dictator who is the miliary governor of the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

4: If you don't include the terror of the January 2009 Operation Cast Lead and its doctrine of collective punishment.

Over $3bn in US aid to Israel in FY2012

The AIPAC-bought Congress continues to hand over American money — surely needed at home when unemployment is at over 10%, a lot of infrastructure failing and poverty rising — to Israel, a country that defies US demands, breaks international law, and continues encroaching on Palestinian land.

From the US Campaign to End the Occupation:

Obama Gives Israel Too Much Love in Valentine’s Day Budget

(Washington, DC) February 14 -- The US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation today criticized the Obama Administration for giving Israel "too much love" in its FY2012 budget request to Congress. The budget request, delivered today to Capitol Hill, contains a record-breaking $3.075 billion in military aid to Israel. 

Click to read more ...

Postcard from Herzliya

Matt Duss writes in the Nation about the annual regional security conference in Herzliya, outside Tel Aviv, where the Israel national security establishment and American neo-conservatives talk shop. This year, Egypt was a big topic:

As a result of the revolution in Egypt, a key theme that emerged at the conference was hostility to Arab democracy and the assumption that it would bring only chaos and danger for Israel—a mantra that also exposed a division between Israeli neoconservatives and some of their American comrades. “In the Arab world, there is no room for democracy,” Israeli Major General Amos Gilead told a nodding audience. “This is the truth. We prefer stability.” Former Israeli Ambassador to the US Zalman Shoval scoffed that George W. Bush’s freedom agenda’s “principle accomplishment seems to be the victory of Hamas in Gaza.” Boaz Ganor, the executive director of the IDC’s International Institute for Counter-Terrorism, warned, “When these people [Arabs] vote, they are voting for what Coca-Cola calls the real thing and that is fundamentalism.” Shmuel Bar, Director of Studies at the IDC’s Institute of Policy and Strategy, declared that the US had “become an agent of revolutionary change in the Middle East, at the expense of stability.”

Click to read more ...

The lobby in Canada

In the last five years, Canada has emerged as one of the most pro-Israel country in the world. The reason: Stephen Harper and the Conservatives and a very powerful lobby.

[Thanks, Al Haraka]

The definitive take on Ethan Bronner

People sometimes say I'm too harsh on Ethan Bronner, the NYT correspondent in Jerusalem whose son is in the IDF. Here's what Bronner wrote today:

It is worth noting that the Palestinian-Israeli conflict has been largely drained of deadly violence in the past few years.

That statement is only true if you don't include the Gaza war, with its thousand-plus Palestinian casualties. It's only true if you live in the Israeli bubble that says the conflict has died down because there are fewer terrorist attacks, even though occupation and war crimes continue against Palestinians. It's because he lives inside that bubble that he does a disservice to the NYT's readers.

Via Norman Finkelstein, whom I am happy to see blogging at Mondoweiss.