Remarks to staff of the Royal Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and, separately, to members of the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs
Ambassador Charles W. ("Chas") Freeman, Jr. (USFS, Ret.)*
1 September 2010, Oslo, Norway
Charles W. Freeman, Jr.: United States Ambassador to Saudi Arabia. In office 15 June 1989 – 13 August 1992
You have asked me to speak to current American policies in the Middle East, with an emphasis on the prospects for peace in the Holy Land. You have further suggested that I touch on the relationship of the Gulf Arabs, especially Saudi Arabia, to this. It is both an honor and a challenge to address this subject in this capital / at this ministry.
The declaration of principles worked out in Oslo seventeen years ago was the last direct negotiation between Israelis and Palestinian Arabs to reach consequential, positive results. The Oslo accords were a real step toward peace, not another deceptive pseudo-event in an endlessly unproductive, so-called "peace process." And if that one step forward in Oslo in 1993 was followed by several steps backwards, there is a great deal to be learned from how and why that happened.
There can be no doubt about the importance of today's topic. The ongoing conflict in the Holy Land increasingly disturbs the world's conscience as well as its tranquility. The Israel-Palestine issue began as a struggle in the context of European colonialism. In the post-colonial era, tension between Israelis and the Palestinians they dispossessed became, by degrees, the principal source of radicalization and instability in the Arab East and then the Arab world as a whole. It stimulated escalating terrorism against Israelis at home and their allies abroad. Since the end of the Cold War, the interaction between Israel and its captive Palestinian population has emerged as the fountainhead of global strife. It is increasingly difficult to distinguish this strife from a war of religions or a conflict of civilizations.
For better or ill, my own country, the United States has played and continues to play the key international part in this contest. American policies, more than those of any other external actor, have the capacity to stoke or stifle the hatreds in the Middle East and to spread or reverse their infection of the wider world. American policies and actions in the Middle East thus affect much more than that region.
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By Jeff Gates* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz
Here's a news flash for Tel Aviv: it's not a sign of respect when the bulk of humanity views you as psychopathic.
The concerns of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are misplaced. The legitimacy of Israel is no longer threatened. It's already lost. Long gone. Kaput.
Nation states are shared states of mind. The mindset in Iceland differs from India. Israel is the most unlike of all. Founded by extremists and terrorists, it's been downhill ever since.
Psychopaths want to be loved. That's why they're so charming, albeit only superficially. They're also pathological liars, egocentric, callous and remorseless.
Those qualities have long been familiar to Israel's neighbors, particularly the Palestinians. After WWII, Harry Truman was charmed into treating this extremist enclave as an ally.
That decision may well go down in history as America's greatest mistake.
Though we've served for 62 years as Israel's patron, pocketbook and apologist, the respect and affection has flowed in only one direction.
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For real peace he must bang heads together at the United Nations to finish their unfinished business
By Stuart Littlewood* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz
Geroge Mitchell, Barack Obama's Middle East envoy
On the eve of the silliest peace talks in history, the big question is this. What makes Obama's envoy George Mitchell, a negotiator of high repute, say there is "no role" for Hamas?
The talks are silly because they seek to overturn what the United Nations has already decided for resolving the Israel-Palestine conflict and drive a bulldozer through the building blocks of justice.
It might be music to Zionist ears, but to people of good will it's a cruel, futile and immensely damaging ploy.
The talks are also silly because they bring together two people who by no stretch of the imagination could qualify as partners for peace. And they sit down under the auspices of a third party with an appalling track record in the Middle East and whom no-one trusts to act fairly.
So Mitchell has been dealt a crap hand. The former US senator, we're told, has had an illustrious career in politics. Honours have been heaped upon him for his part in the Northern Ireland 'Good Friday' agreement.
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By Yousef Munayyer* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz
In the late 1980s, Robert Putnam’s argument about multi-level games in international bargaining kicked off a rich debate over domestic constraints. The thesis, in essence, is that interlocutors in bargaining may chose to lend extra power to political opponents to argue that domestic constraints tie their hands and prevent them from making concessions beyond a certain, often minimal, limit.
This is not unlike what Binyamin Netanyahu did when he was elected Israeli prime minister in 2009, shortly after the inauguration of President Barack Obama. As President Bush left office, it was clear that the field day Israel enjoyed as it violently repressed the second Palestinian uprising and increased settlements at a pace unrivaled since the Menachem Begin era was over. Obama was largely suspected to be much more critical of Israels expansionist policies. So when elections came to pass in Israel and the leading Kadima party failed to put together a government, Netanyahu joined his Likud party in a coalition that staunchly favored expansionism and retaining the West Bank and Gaza. Netanyahu would argue that even temporarily halting the illegal construction of settlements would jeopardize his coalition, and that political suicide is an unreasonable request, even from the United States. Questions about core issues like Jerusalem could not even be muttered.
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By Max Blumenthal* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz
A rabbinical guidebook for killing non-Jews has sparked an uproar in Israel and exposed the power a bunch of genocidal theocrats wield over the government.
When I went into the Jewish religious book emporium, Pomeranz, in central Jerusalem to inquire about the availability of a book called Torat Ha'Melech, or the King's Torah, a commotion immediately ensued. "Are you sure you want it?" the owner, M. Pomeranz, asked me half-jokingly. "The Shabak [Israel's internal security service] is going to want a word with you if you do." As customers stopped browsing and began to stare in my direction, Pomeranz pointed to a security camera affixed to a wall. "See that?" he told me. "It goes straight to the Shabak!"
As soon as it was published late last year,Torat Ha'Melech sparked a national uproar. The controversy began when an Israeli tabloid panned the book's contents as "230 pages on the laws concerning the killing of non-Jews, a kind of guidebook for anyone who ponders the question of if and when it is permissible to take the life of a non-Jew." According to the book's author, Rabbi Yitzhak Shapira, "Non-Jews are "uncompassionate by nature" and should be killed in order to "curb their evil inclinations." "If we kill a gentile who has has violated one of the seven commandments… there is nothing wrong with the murder," Shapira insisted. Citing Jewish law as his source (or at least a very selective interpretation of it) he declared: "There is justification for killing babies if it is clear that they will grow up to harm us, and in such a situation they may be harmed deliberately, and not only during combat with adults."
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