Pro-Israel control of Obama’s Middle East Policy

I usually regard as Ronnie Barker-type news (“No nuclear bombs fell on Scotland again last night”) all commentary to the effect that the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP) is a creature of the pre-eminent pro-Israel lobbying organisation the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), that senior US foreign policy adviser Dennis Ross is a member of the AIPAC crowd, and that he once served as WINEP chief.

After all, the Wikipedia entry on WINEP tells us here how in 1985 AIPAC “helped” to bring WINEP into being. The deal as I understand it was that AIPAC, as a lobbying organisation, was not entitled to tax deductibility of donations, so AIPAC decided to set up an “independent” think tank which would qualify for tax deductibility, would do deep intellectual “research” of the right kind, and enable the AIPAC crowd to sail under a different flag when it suited them to do so.  The idea was that WINEP would disseminate the AIPAC line, but in a way that disguised its AIPAC origins.

In March 2009, in Hillary's envoy: not everyone is cheering, I commented on the bizarre appointment of Dennis Ross as Hillary Clinton’s special adviser on Iran, and followed up with a post in May 2009 – Iran: Hillary’s envoy (contd.) – in which I noted the perception by an Orthodox Jew who had served as US Ambassador to Israel and Egypt, who commented that the perception was that in Middle East peace negotiations:

The perception always was that Dennis started from the Israeli bottom line, that he listened to what Israel wanted and then tried to sell it to the Arabs.

Further posts included Dennis Ross on the move?, noting rumours that he was moving to the White House, and Making U.S. Iran policy, an extended analysis of the dysfunctional way in which the US Administration was approaching Iran, and Dennis Ross’s role in that.

Andrew Sullivan addressed this theme in March 2010 in a post Dennis Ross Bats for Netanyahu on The Atlantic’s blog The Daily Dish.

So the links between AIPAC, WINEP and Dennis Ross, and the fact that Dennis Ross is unashamedly an advocate for Israel within the highest circles of US foreign policy making, are not news.

Nevertheless, some important posts on this subject have gone up in the last couple of days.  In a 14 January post on TPMCafé, AIPAC's Man, Dennis Ross, Now In Charge of Middle East, MJ Rosenberg, in discussing “why the Obama administration’s policy on Israel-Palestine is such an epic fail”, points to a well informed piece by Nathan Guttman in the US Jewish online journal Forward which catalogues how Dennis Ross has edged out the official US Middle East peace envoy George Mitchell as the dominant player on the Middle East peace issue. In Guttman’s piece, Latest Chapter in Mideast Tenison is Dennis Ross vs. George Mitchell, he says:

Ross’s increased involvement in the Middle East peace process became apparent when the administration engaged in talks with Israel over extending the moratorium on settlement expansion. Ross, according to American and Israeli officials, was the driving force behind the idea of offering Israel a generous package of assurances — both defense-related and diplomatic — in return for three extra months of a freeze on the expansion of settlements in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

...

Even though Israel ultimately turned down the offer, the episode reinserted Ross as a key player not only on broader strategic Middle East issues, but also on the nitty-gritty of the peace process.

Later in the piece Guttman says:

Ross’s involvement in the peace process increased when the administration sought to ease its troubled relations with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government and with the Jewish community. A longtime Middle East hand, Ross, who is widely liked and trusted by Israelis, was sent to assure Jerusalem that the Obama administration was committed to Israel’s security and wellbeing. He also publicly addressed Jewish audiences at several events.

Ross’s history as a veteran peace negotiator under successive presidents from Ronald Reagan through George W. Bush gives him a record of experience in the region that few can match. But critics counter that this experience reflects a record of U.S. failure in the region, particularly with regard to the Oslo process that collapsed under his long-term role as its chief negotiator and strategist on the U.S. side.

Nevertheless, Ross’ strong ties to Israel now make him indispensable to the administration. Those ties include his previous role as head of the Jewish People Policy Institute, a Jerusalem-based think tank founded by the Jewish Agency for Israel. His son, Gabe, is also married to an Israeli. These factors, together with Ross’s strong personal sense of Jewish identity, have gained him a reputation of being pro-Israeli.

Finally, there is this priceless quote from Abraham Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League:

“Dennis is the closest thing you’ll find to a melitz yosher, as far as Israel is concerned,” said the Anti-Defamation League’s national director, Abraham Foxman, who used the ancient Hebrew term for “advocate.”

Further background on the origins of WINEP and its links with AIPAC may be seen in a 12 April 2010 item by MJ Rosenberg, this time writing for The Huffington Post. In Does PBS Know That “The Washington Institute” Was Founded by AIPAC?, Rosenberg gives an insider’s view of the history and takes issue with PBS and other media wheeling out WINEP commentators as though they were not part of the Israel lobby.

In Game, set and match to Mr Netanyahu of 24 September 2009 I commented that Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu must be laughing all the way home at the outcome of the meetings on Middle East Peace sponsored by President Obama, and went on to say

One of the big losers out of all of this is President Obama. This is a strategic defeat for him, not a tactical withdrawal. He talked tough to the Israelis, they didn’t budge, and he blinked. So forget about all the brave talk of moving to “final status” negotiations. Mr Netanyahu will turn up for the talks in the second half of October, but he knows that he simply has to insist on unacceptable parameters for the final status and the talks will go nowhere. The Israelis are quite comfortable with the status quo; it is the Palestinians who are desperate for change.

I saw this as a comprehensive victory for Netanyahu at the time, but the more I look at the history of this, the more I am convinced that the Americans were never seriously in the game.

“Centrism” or the rule of law?

In a Friday 14 January post on Salon’s Friday 14 January edition (accessible here) Glenn Greenwald goes to the heart of the tension between certain self-proclaimed “centrist” views and the rule of law.

In it he castigates Benjamin Wittes of The Brookings Institution, and by implication Brookings itself, for a centrism which:

... is devoid of any coherent worldview and instead has one overarching purpose: to defend Beltway elite prerogatives and specifically the bipartisan orthodoxies of the National Security State.

The particular target of Greenwald’s concern is the defence by this “centrist” of the effective immunity from investigation which the Obama Administration has granted to former Bush Administration officials in relation to murder, torture and other acts of criminality.

Wittes claims that this is in accordance with a two-centuries-old tradition of incoming presidents not prosecuting outgoing ones.  Greenwald cites no less a figure than George Washington to challenge this view:

George Washington vowed, in a December, 1795 letter, that there must never be immunity for wrongdoing by high government officials: "The executive branch of this government never has, nor will suffer, while I preside, any improper conduct of its officers to escape with impunity."

He goes on to examine the consequences of a system in which presidents and there retainers know that they will not be pursued for criminal acts perpetrated in the name of national security.

Greenwald’s concern’s resonate with concerns I expressed in May last year in We need to talk about Kevin, about Kevin Rudd’s lack of interest in finding out who knew what when about AWB’s $300 million of kickbacks to Saddam Hussein in violation of United Sanctions; his lack of interest in holding something like the UK’s Chilcot Inquiry to examine events leading up to Australia’s participation in the invasion of Iraq, and who knew what and when regarding the disgraceful treatment of Dr Mohammed Haneef.

I might have added the shocking case of Mamdouh Habib, arrested in Pakistan, flown to Baghram Air Base in Afghanistan, rendered to Egypt for months of interrogation under torture, and then sent to Guantánamo, allegedly with the involvement of Australian officials, a case well described by Sally Neighbour in The Weekend Australian, 15-16 January 2011 (see here) – a matter in which neither the Rudd nor Gillard Governments has displayed any interests until now. The emergence of new evidence has forced the Gillard Government’s hand and the matter is now to be investigated further.

All officials and military personnel of democratic countries need it to be clearly understood that no person is above the law, ever, and no-one can expected to be shielded from investigation when government changes hands when there are grounds to believe they have, or may have, acted outside the law.

In praise of residential universities

The 1947 New England University College Handbook contains a photograph of Booloominbah looking across the Southern Lawn from the rose garden.

Beneath it there is a quote from The Economist:

A place in any long-term policy of university expansion should be definitely reserved for the foundation of a few residential universities. A stately home on the outskirts of a small country town would be an ideal location.

On becoming autonomous the University of New England decided as a matter of policy to be fully residential, with benefits to which the overwhelming majority of its alumni would attest. As Australian university funding became more and more centralised and “one size fits all” – centralised systems need everything to be similar in order to work out their funding priorities – it became impossible to sustain the fully residential model and when the temporary buildings that formed my beloved Wright College reached the end of their useful life they were simply bulldozed.

Maintenance funding for the rest of the colleges has never been a priority for the funding authorities and the university faces a backlog in an area that is one of its great competitive strengths.

We talk incessantly about the virtues of innovation and of pluralism but when it comes down to is it is hard to do anything new or different in this country.

See also What a privilege it was ...

The fate of the Arabists in State

Anyone who wonders why the United States has become so profoundly one-eyed on behalf of Israel, to the point where it seems unable even to conceptualise a Palestinian weltanschauung, will find an entry posted by Jeff Weiss on 9 January on the US blog Mondoweiss: The War of Ideas in the Middle East an interesting read.

Entitled Angry Arab says that after Bill Clinton got in, Arabists were ‘eliminated’ from State Dep’t, it is a commentary on a blog post written by Lebanese American academic As'ad AbuKhalil (“Angry Arab”)in response to a letter to the New York Times by Assistant Secretary of State Jeffrey Feltman.

The comments posted on the Mondoweiss piece are worth reading too.

I commented on some related issues back in March 2009 when the Obama Administration began to make (or fail to make) key Middle East-related appointments – see Got him!, Hillary's envoy: not everyone is cheering and No way to approach Middle East peace.

NASA imagery of Queensland rain cells, 10 January 2011

This link will take you to NASA imagery of the intense rain cells which wrought havoc on Toowoomba and the Lockyer Valley on Monday 10 January 2011.

Not surprising that it was NASA’s “image of the day”.

Stern and Oistrakh play Vivaldi

Some time in the summer of 1961-62, having completed my first year of undergraduate science at the University of New England, I went record hunting and was delighted to discover a recording, on the old Coronet label, of two of my favourite violinists, two of the greatest violinists of the time, Isaac Stern and David Oistrakh, playing four Vivaldi concerti for two violins.

For those who really care, the four concerti are:

-  Concerto in D minor RV 514 (F.1, No. 100)

-  Concerto in G minor RV 517 (F.1, No. 12)

-  Concerto in C minor RV 509 (F.1, No. 98)

-  Concerto in D major RV 512 (F.1, No. 41)

This is joyful music, and the two maestros are clearly enjoying themselves playing together – and I mean playing together, neither trying to dominate. Stern plays first violin in two of them, Oistrakh in the other.

The collaboration between these two artists, both Ukrainian born but Stern a resident of the United States from the age of one, and Oistrakh a citizen of the Soviet Union, was a bigger deal in the circumstances of the day than it might appear in 2011.

The two men had first met in Brussels in 1951, when Isaac Stern attended the Queen Elizabeth of Belgium violin competition. David Oistrakh was one of the judges.

The Cold War kept a tight grip on Oistrakh’s ability to travel to Western Europe and the United States. It was a tense time. The Soviet Union conducted its first atomic test in 1949 and its first thermonuclear test in 1953, the year that Ethel and Julius Rosenberg were executed on charges of passing atomic secrets to the Soviet Union. A nuclear arms race was in full swing, the United States was in the grip of the McCarthy era, and we all lived in the Strangelovian world of nuclear armed bombers being on permanent alert.  Cultural exchanges were not high on the agenda of either side.

Nevertheless, in 1955 Oistrakh gained permission to travel to the United States, and gave a concert at Carnegie Hall that was lauded by American music celebrities not only for the quality of Oistrakh’s musicianship but for being one of the first breaches in the Iron Curtain. Isaac Stern, eleven years Oistrakh’s junior, attended the concert and described Oistrakh as “a musician who did great honour to the violin with his playing.”

It was during this 1955 Oistrakh visit to the United States that the two men collaborated on recording these four Vivaldi concerti, with Eugene Ormandy conducting members of the Philadelphia Orchestra.

My vinyl recording is now almost half a century old, and I have long wondered why it had never been re-released on CD.

Happy to report, this evening while browsing the Presto Classical website I discovered that in December 2010 these marvellous recordings were released on CD by Sony, the heir to the Coronet label. Also on the CD is a recording of The Four Seasons by Anshel Brusilow, who was concertmaster of the Philadelphia Orchestra under Ormandy from 1959-66.

The recording may be accessed here on the Presto Classical website.

United States: the permanent culture of political violence

Salon’s political news and commentary blog, War Room, contains a first class piece about the long history of political violence in America.

Entitled Our permanent culture of political violence, it was posted on Monday 10 January by Glenn W. LaFantasie, the Richard Frockt Family Professor of Civil War History and Director of the Institute for Civil War Studies at Western Kentucky University. His most recent book is Gettysburg Heroes: Perfect Soldiers, Hallowed Ground, Indiana University Press, 2008.

Professor LaFantasie’s article may be accessed here.