← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · Sertorius
Thread ID: 16669 | Posts: 9 | Started: 2005-02-09
2005-02-09 03:11 | User Profile
February 8, 2005 Natan Sharansky and US Israel Policy
by Tom Barry There is little doubt that George W. Bush and Natan Sharansky, a Soviet émigré who is a top political official in Israel, share a similar perspective about international affairs, especially in the Middle East.
Following his inaugural address, the U.S. president said that Sharansky's book The Case for Democracy: The Power of Freedom to Overcome Tyranny and Terror, published last September, confirmed what he already believed. He added that the Israeli author's thinking was "part of my presidential DNA."
Paralleling Bush's own description of international affairs as a divide between good and evil, and those who are fighting terrorism and those who support it, Sharansky writes in his book that the world is "divided between those who are prepared to confront evil and those who are willing to appease it.
The book makes that case that the world's nations are situated in a stark moral universe of "free societies" that foster peace and "fear societies" that breed war and terrorism.
Sharansky and Bush appear to enjoy a mutual admiration society. Sharansky, who is Israel's minister for Jerusalem and Diaspora Affairs, praised Bush's June 24, 2002 speech on his new Middle East policy ââ¬â which aligned Washington with the Likud party's agenda ââ¬â as one of "the two greatest speeches of my lifetime," the other being former U.S. president Ronald Reagan's speech casting the Soviet Union as an "evil empire."
After perusing galleys of Sharansky's book, Bush invited the Israeli minister for a personal meeting at the White House on Nov. 11, 2004. Following his Oval Office meeting with Sharansky, the president said Sharansky's political philosophy would be part of both his state of the union and inaugural speeches.
Elliott Abrams, then special adviser to the president and the National Security Council (NSC) adviser on Near East and North African Affairs, was present at the Bush-Sharansky meeting in November.
Abrams, who has since been promoted to deputy national security adviser in charge of the administration's global democracy policy, holds policy positions that closely reflect those of Sharansky, including an insistence that there can be no peace negotiations or land deals with the Palestinian Authority until certain preconditions are met, including an explicit endorsement of U.S. policy in the Middle East.
In addition to his new position at the NSC and as a special assistant to the president, Abrams will also oversee the NSC's Near East and North Africa directorate.
The November session between Sharansky and the president was not the first time that Bush had met Sharansky. On an official visit to Israel in 1998, Bush, then governor of Texas, met with then Foreign Minister Ariel Sharon, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and Industry Minister Sharansky.
According to Bush, who had dinner with Netanyahu and was personally escorted on a helicopter tour of the occupied territories by Sharon, "Israel has got a tremendous amount of talent ââ¬â smart folks ââ¬â many of whom have immigrated from Russia."
Sharansky, one of those immigrants, gave Bush an overview of the existing U.S.-Israeli business relationships and new opportunities, [u]especially in the defense industry.[/u]
During his stay, Gov. Bush visited weapons-manufacturing plants, defense facilities, antiballistic missile sites, and industries doing business with Texans.
"I saw democracy firsthand in Israel," said Bush, adding that Israel "is short on natural resources in terms of resources you find in the ground, but it's very long on the most natural resource of all, which is brain power."
Sharansky's philosophy of freedom and fear, good and evil, is a projection of his own political activism both in Israel and as a "refusenik" and political prisoner in the Soviet Union.
According to Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in the 1970s Sharansky engaged "in underground Zionist activities" until his 1977 arrest by Soviet authorities on charges of treason and espionage.
Although Sharansky and the U.S. government denied any connection between Sharansky and the CIA, he was sentenced in 1978 to 13 years imprisonment. An international campaign supported by Presidents Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan led to Sharansky's release on Feb. 11, 1986 as part of an East-West spy exchange.
That same night the self-described "Prisoner of Zion" arrived in Israel, where he quickly became the leading voice for the cause of Soviet Jewry.
In Israel and across the Middle East, Sharansky is widely regarded as a right-wing Zionist and hawk, who positions himself to the right of Ariel Sharon.
Shortly after Bush's "axis of evil" address in January 2002, Sharansky spoke at a pro-Israel rally in Washington and commended the president for "waging a global battle against Islamic terrorism." He said that the same countries Bush had included in his axis of evil ââ¬â Iran, Iraq, and North Korea ââ¬â were the ones that constituted an axis of evil confronting Israel.
The coherence between the Likud party's agenda and that of the Bush administration was clearly on display at the December 2004 "Herzliya Conference on National Strength and Security in Israel," which featured Sharansky and Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Sharansky expressed his elation about the prospects for Israel's regional agenda, noting that the reelection of Bush was even more auspicious than the death of Yasser Arafat, whom Sharansky had repeatedly dismissed as a "murderer" and "terrorist."
Sharansky said that Bush shared his own belief that there could be no peace in the Middle East or resolution of the Palestinian issue until the Arab world adopted economic and political reforms in line with those promoted by the Bush administration and the Likud party.
Like Sharansky, Netanyahu endorsed the new Bush doctrine that insisted that democratization must precede peace negotiations in the Middle East ââ¬â a roadmap to peace that the right-wing and neoliberal Likud leader called an antidote to the Oslo peace process.
Like U.S. neoconservatives, Sharansky and Netanyahu frequently liken Bush's plan to end tyranny and promote democracy to the U.S. foreign policy in Japan and Germany following the Allied victory in World War II.
"It will take even longer here," said Netanyahu, a close political ally of Sharansky, "yet it is the same process."
The United States and Israel have much in common, according to Sharansky. One of the links, he said in a speech at a forum sponsored by the American Enterprise Institute, which was the basis for an article in Commentary, the journal of the American Jewish Committee, is the spreading scourge of anti-Semitism.
[B]"Anti-Americanism in the Islamic world and anti-Americanism in Europe are in fact linked," argues Sharansky, because "both bear an uncanny resemblance to anti-Semitism."[/B]
In his essay titled "On Hating Jews," Sharansky writes: "America embodies a different ââ¬â a nonconforming ââ¬â idea of the good, and refuses to abandon its moral clarity about the objective worth of that idea."
Moreover, Minister of Diaspora Affairs Sharansky believes that "Israel and the Jewish people share something essential with the United States."
According to Sharansky, the Jews have long held that they were chosen to play a special role in history, to be what their prophets called "a light unto nations" ââ¬â not unlike the United States, a nation that has long regarded itself as entrusted with a mission to be what John Winthrop in the 17th century called "a city on a hill" and Ronald Reagan in the 20th century parsed as a "shining city on a hill."
(Inter Press Service)
[QUOTE]...Sharansky writes in his book that the world is "divided between those who are prepared to confront evil and those who are willing to appease it.[/QUOTE]
People in glass houses... Sharansky should start with his own country first.
2005-02-09 05:10 | User Profile
The Jewish supremacists clearly wish to firmly entrench in the American psyche the notion that "anti-Americanism" and "anti-Semitism" are one and the same. It's just one more step in the ultimate plan to make Tel Aviv the official capital of the US and eventually, through nuclear blackmail, the world. Once the US has fully degenerated into an incoherent multicultural mess, there won't be any political way of stopping this.
2005-02-09 05:28 | User Profile
Angler,
That reminds me of something that Limbaugh and Hannity used to do a lot before the recent war. Whenever they brought up the U.N. they would [U][I]always[/I][/U] formulate their latest complaint like this. "they're antisemitic and anti American!" Usually "and anti American" was added on in such a way that it sounded like an afterthought, which in my opinion it was so as not to be too obvious.
2005-02-09 05:32 | User Profile
[I][B] - "It's just one more step in the ultimate plan to make Tel Aviv the official capital of the US and eventually, through nuclear blackmail, the world. Once the US has fully degenerated into an incoherent multicultural mess, there won't be any political way of stopping this."[/B][/I]
Methinks you're exaggerating, not to mention being a bit defeatist. In my opinion we are right now living the "high noon" of the Jewish power, and from now on it's only way down for them, and not a moment too soon.
Petr
2005-02-10 02:42 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Sertorius] "Anti-Americanism in the Islamic world and anti-Americanism in Europe are in fact linked," argues Sharansky, because "both bear an uncanny resemblance to anti-Semitism." [/QUOTE] Oh, this is why the Iraqi insurgents call American soldiers "Jews".
2005-02-10 03:03 | User Profile
Jack,
Tom Freidman wrote about this.
October 24, 2004 By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN, New York Times
I was speaking the other day with Scott Pelley of CBS News's "60 Minutes" about the mood in Iraq. He had just returned from filming a piece there and he told me something disturbing. Scott had gone around and asked Iraqis on the streets what they called American troops - wondering if they had nicknames for us in the way we used to call the Nazis "Krauts" or the Vietcong "Charlie." And what did he find? "Many Iraqis have so much distrust for U.S. forces we found they've come up with a nickname for our troops," Scott said. "They call American soldiers 'The Jews,' as in, 'Don't go down that street, the Jews set up a roadblock.' "
I have no idea how widespread this perception is, but it does not surprise me that some Iraqis would talk that way. Our communications in Iraq have been so inept since we arrived, many Iraqis still don't know who America is or why it came. But such talk is also indicative of a trend in the Arab media, after a century of Arab-Jewish strife, where if you want to brand someone as illegitimate, just call him a "Jew." Indeed, this trend has widened since 9/11. Now you find a steadily rising perception across the Arab-Muslim world that the great enemy of Islam is JIA - "Jews, Israel and America," all lumped together in a single threat.
This wider trend has been fanned by Arab satellite TV stations, which deliberately show split-screen images of Israelis bashing Palestinians and U.S. forces bashing the Iraqi insurgents. The trend has also been encouraged by some mosque preachers looking to explain away all the Arab world's ills by wrapping all the Satans together into JIA. This trend has been helped by the Bush team's failed approach to the Arab-Israel problem, which is to tell the truth only to Yasir Arafat, while embracing Ariel Sharon so tightly that it's impossible to know anymore where U.S. policy stops and Mr. Sharon's begins.
This trend of JIA is now metastasizing from the core of the Arab-Israel conflict, across the Muslim world and into Europe. There is no quick fix. One thing that Israel can do is push harder to defuse the conflict with the Palestinians in order to deprive the Arab media of the raw images that help to feed this phenomenon, not because the continuing conflict is all Israel's fault - it is not - but because Israel has such an overriding interest in forging a partnership with a legitimate Palestinian Authority, and getting this poisonous show off the air. A generation of Muslims raised on these images on the Internet is enormously dangerous for Jews, Israel and America.
This brings us to this week's vote in the Israeli Parliament about whether to proceed with Mr. Sharon's plan for a unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip. Mr. Sharon, a man of the right, has finally realized the demographic threat posed by Gaza to Israel and wants to get out. He is being opposed by the Israeli far right - the Jewish Hezbollah. This includes settler rabbis who have urged soldiers to disobey orders and, with winks and nods, have let it be known that if someone were to eliminate Ariel Sharon he would be acting out God's will. In this struggle between Jewish fanatics and Ariel Sharon, we must stand with Mr. Sharon. These settler rabbis are a blot on the Jewish people.
But in the struggle between Mr. Sharon and common sense, America should be with common sense. The late Yitzhak Rabin wanted to get out of Gaza to make peace with the Palestinians, because he understood the danger of "Jews, Israel and America" all getting melded together in the nuclear age. Mr. Rabin knew that no peace deal would resonate in the Arab-Muslim world if it did not have a legitimate Palestinian partner. Mr. Sharon seems to want to get out of Gaza to make peace with the Jews. His aides have made clear that he is getting out of Gaza in order to entrench Israel even more deeply in the West Bank and the Jewish settlements there.
In the face of this plan, the Bush team is silent. This is partly because the Palestinians continue to stick with Arafat as their leader, even though this bum has led them to ruin - so the U.S. has nothing to offer Israel. And it's partly because the Bush team, which is so inept at diplomacy, has never had the energy or creativity to shape a better Palestinian alternative to Arafat. As a result, the Sharon vision of getting out of Gaza in order to take over the West Bank will probably win by default. If that happens, "Jews, Israel and America" will be bound together more tightly than ever as the enemies of Arabs and Muslims. [snip]
[url=http://www.wrmea.com/archives/December_2004/0412024.html]http://www.wrmea.com/archives/December_2004/0412024.html[/url]
Rhetorical question: Now, what was the reason why we never asked Israel to send troops instead of pestering countries that told us "no" in the first place?
2005-02-10 03:15 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Sertorius]Jack,
Tom Freidman wrote about this.
[/QUOTE] Friedman said that it is customary for Arab media to point out if someone is Jewish. He says Arab media will refer to him as " Tom Freidman, the Jew,..." At first I thought this was funny, then I thought this could be helpful in this country (although its pretty easy to spot them-- they breed truer than...).
2005-02-10 03:30 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Petr][I][B] - "It's just one more step in the ultimate plan to make Tel Aviv the official capital of the US and eventually, through nuclear blackmail, the world. Once the US has fully degenerated into an incoherent multicultural mess, there won't be any political way of stopping this."[/B][/I]
Methinks you're exaggerating, not to mention being a bit defeatist. In my opinion we are right now living the "high noon" of the Jewish power, and from now on it's only way down for them, and not a moment too soon.
Petr[/QUOTE]
I certainly hope you're right.
2005-02-10 20:23 | User Profile
[QUOTE]Friedman said that it is customary for Arab media to point out if someone is Jewish. He says Arab media will refer to him as " Tom Freidman, the Jew...." [/QUOTE] That is how healthy immune systems function. Foreign elements are tagged so they can be recognized as "non-self".