U.S. Government Delivers Ultimatum to Netanyahu

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December 8, 1997

Substance of the Message: “The United States will publicly support the establishment of a Palestinian State, if Israel does not carry out the stages which it agreed to in the Oslo Agreement”. The Prime Minister’s Bureau: “It never happened”

The United States has warned Israel that it will publicly support the establishment of a Palestinian State, with the Jordan River as its Eastern border, if Israel does not carry out the three withdrawal stages which it agreed to in the Oslo agreement. This message was delivered yesterday by a senior official in the American administration.

According to the American source, the White House has delivered this ultimatum to Netanyahu’s office, because of difficulties which have arisen in the negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians. In discussions which took place in Washington with Israeli Embassy staff, senior administration officials stated that 1997 was disastrous for the peace process and that during the month of December it will be necessary to make up for all that was not done in the previous 11 months.

The American source stated that senior officials in the United States Administration have reached the conclusion that Netanyahu does not intend to carry out Israel’s commitments in the Oslo Agreement. The United States is attempting to formulate its own initiative, as it feels that the negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians have reached an impasse. According to the view now taking hold in the United States, it will not be possible to reach a final settlement without the establishment of a Palestinian State.

The senior administration official stated that, despite the foregoing, if ultimately the Israelis and Palestinians can reach their own understandings, the United states will moderate its involvement and will not impose a solution.

A senior Israeli Embassy official in Washington expressed concern regarding a possible change in American policy and said: “In the past few days, Arab officials feel that they can expect something very significant as a result of this change in American policy, so they are convinced that if they wait and exert pressure they will receive more.”

Shai Bazak, media adviser to the Prime Minister, denied that any ultimatum was received and stated: “It never happened”. US involvement in the peace process gained further momentum with the appointment of Ned Walker as the new American Ambassador to Israel. Our correspondent, Alex Fishman, reported that Walker, due to begin his term in Israel on December 23, is thought to be a close associate of Madeleine Albright and a supporter of active American involvement in the political arena.

U.S. Pledges $470 Million for Palestinian Refugee Relief

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Center for Near East Policy Research

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December 8, 1997

United Nations — The United States is donating $70 million to the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) for its 1998 programs, according to an announcement made December 2.

Voicing the U.S. “strong support for UNRWA,” U.S. delegate Allen Jury announced the U.S. contribution to the agency’s regular budget during a pledging conference in the General Assembly.

The U.S. contribution “is specifically in support of UNRWA’s core programs of education, health, and social services benefiting the approximately 3.4 million Palestinian refugees registered with UNRWA in Gaza, the West Bank, Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon,” Jury said.

The conference raised pledges totaling $125,677,700, but UNRWA said that the amount is less than 40 percent of what the agency will need to maintain its regular education, health, relief and social services programs in 1998. UNRWA had a deficit of over $50 million in 1997.

The largest pledges were made by the United States, Sweden ($19 million), Norway ($14.2 million) and the Netherlands and Switzerland ($5.5 million each).

Jury said that UNRWA’s ability to make “quick and demonstrable progress” in developing effective strategies for the future programs “will be one factor the U.S. will consider in deciding how much more money beyond the $70 million” Washington will be able to give UNRWA later in the year.

Following is the text of Jury’s remarks:

Mr. Chairman, the United States welcomes the opportunity to again voice our strong support for UNRWA and to acknowledge the critical humanitarian role it plays on a daily basis in the lives of Palestinian refugees. We commend UNRWA as well for the important contribution it makes to the international community’s ongoing efforts to find a just and lasting peace in the Middle East.

I am therefore pleased today to announce a voluntary contribution from the United States of $70 million toward UNRWA’s Regular Program Budget for 1998. This money is specifically in support of UNRWA’s core programs of education, health and social services benefiting the approximately 3.4 million Palestinian refugees registered with UNRWA in Gaza, the West Bank, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon. As we have stressed at previous gatherings, the United States hopes that UNRWA will do all it can to ensure that, in this era of resource limitations, donor contributions are directed to the agency’s highest priority activities, especially those which benefit the most vulnerable members of the refugee population.

It goes without saying that UNRWA continues to face serious financial and budgetary problems, problems which have resulted a now almost predictable cycle of crisis. As UNRWA’s largest donor, the United States has a very real stake in ensuring that UNRWA address the problems it faces in a comprehensive and fair manner which ensures the agency’s future financial stability. It serves neither donor, host government nor refugee interests to see UNRWA continue to experience the financial turmoil which, I am sad to say, has grown so familiar in recent years.

We recognize that breaking the cycle of crisis will not be easy, that divergent points of view inevitably will emerge, and that no one course of action will ever have unanimous support. Nevertheless, the United States believes firmly that very real and sustained progress must be made quickly or we will soon find ourselves in an even more difficult situation than we are now.

In our view, UNRWA’s recurring financial crises are not solely the result of lack of adequate resources provided to the organization. UNRWA itself, in dialogue with its major supporters, should develop a stronger policy planning capacity that articulates an effective strategic vision for the future. Such a vision should inspire confidence among donors and host governments and align the agency’s program priorities and implementation more closely to realistic projections of available resources. UNRWA’s ability to make quick and demonstrable progress in developing such a vision will be one factor the U.S. will consider in deciding how much more money, beyond the $70 million announced today, it will be able to contribute to UNRWA later in the year.

The United States therefore welcomes Commissioner General Hansen’s plan to establish a policy planning unit in UNRWA headquarters. We further welcome his interest, as expressed at the October UNRWA Advisory Committee meeting in Amman, in working with donors and host governments to further augment UNRWA’s staff capacity to address long-term program and budget planning issues. The United States stands ready to provide an expert to further strengthen UNRWA’s planning capacity. We urge the Commissioner-General to provide interested governments as soon as possible a comprehensive proposal as to what expert staff augmentation UNRWA would like so we can all work together cooperatively to try to meet your needs. Only by working together, speaking frankly, making honest evaluations of the choices and opportunities available to us, and, most importantly, taking action when action is needed, can we realistically expect to solve these very real problems which lie before us.

The Other Side of Pollard: Damage, Duplicity – and Justice

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Center for Near East Policy Research

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December 8, 1997

Even in the icy world of international espionage, it is still somewhat startling that “equal justice under law” is little more than a palsied proverb.

Consider these three cases of law and perfidy:

From November 1992 to September 1994, U.S. Navy Lt. Commander Michael Schwartz delivered secret American defense information to Saudi Arabia. Schwartz was indicted for violating various federal statutes as well as the Uniform Code of Military Justice. He pleaded guilty, and was given an “other than honorable” discharge from the Navy. No fine, no prison – and no comment.
In fact the government is remarkably mum about Mr. Schwartz. Neither the Clinton Administration nor the Pentagon will disclose any information concerning his case – nor, apparently, has the Senate Intelligence Committee shown even a modicum of curiosity. Was any formal protest ever lodged against the Saudis? Do they continue to recruit American spies with impunity? Have they returned (or acknowledged) the stolen documents? Inquiring minds may want to know, but they’re not going to find out by asking the Navy or the White House. Or could it be that the United States fears offending its oil-rich ally – much the same way as during the Persian Gulf War when it ordered our soldiers to risk their lives defending the richest Arab monarchy, but not to celebrate Christmas on Saudi soil?
In 1986, Major Yosef Amit, who served in elite intelligence units of the Israel Defense Forces, was arrested at his home in Haifa and charged with providing classified military information to the United States. An Israeli court found him guilty and sentenced him to twelve years in prison. But in October of 1993 Amit was pardoned by Israeli President Ezer Weizman, and set free.
Few Americans would know anything about Amit were it not for the fair-mindedness of Senator David Durenberger. In 1987 the former chairman of the Senate’s Select Committee on Intelligence disclosed that the United States had “changed the rules” by using “an Israeli to spy on Israel, and he got caught.” he was referring to Amit, but nothing ever came of his comment save for a scathing rebuke of Durenberger by then-Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger.

This was not the only recent case of Americans spying on Israel. In the past ten years at least two Americans on academic and industrial exchange programs have also been caught gathering secrets – one from the nuclear research center in Nahal Soreq (south of Tel Aviv), the other at a state-owned weapons development company in Haifa. Israel’s response? Simply to ask both agents to leave the country at once.

Where is Schwartz now? Amit? The American scientists? Neither the American nor Israeli governments seem to know, at least not according to the Pentagon and the IDF.
There is no such problem with Jonathan Pollard, whose whereabouts everyone knows. Pollard is the former Navy intelligence analyst who was arrested in 1985 and charged with passing classified information to Israel. The federal prosecutor engineered a plea agreement under which he would seek leniency in exchange for cooperation – then (after the defendant pleaded guilty) promptly reneged on his promises.
The judge not only ignored the plea agreement, but solicited a secret memorandum from Weinberger that offered up all sorts of speculative evidence and specters of unprecedented treachery. Neither Pollard nor his lawyers were ever able to challenge the last-minute charges proffered against him. Weinberger called him one of the worst traitors in history; the judge sentenced him to life in prison; the duplicitous prosecutor recommended that Pollard never be paroled.

And indeed he hasn’t, already having served thirteen years of by far the harshest sentence ever meted out for a similar offense. Where is Schwartz, who gave American secrets to the Saudis? OrAmit, who gave Israeli secrets to the United States? The U.S. and Israel know the full and precise extent of the damage done by the two of them – and that the damage done by Pollard was paltry in comparison. In thirteen years not one stance has surfaced (or documented in the Victim Impact Statement authored by his prosecutors) of any actual harm caused by Pollard.

Why have these three been treated so differently? All we know is what we’ve seen. The U.S. Government – which expressed official outrage at Israel’s “arrogance” and “ingratitude” in the Pollard case – has handled the Saudi-Schwartz situation with kid gloves and virtual silence. The Government of Israel – which for twelve years had claimed that Pollard was part of a rogue operation, but has now been forced by its own Supreme Court to acknowledge that he was formally and officially an agent of Lakam (an ultra-secret intelligence unit of the Ministry of Defense) – has sent back American spies with barely a slap on their wrists.

Why are these cases different? Because, we can reasonably surmise, of the causes being pursued.

With the Saudis, it’s petro-politics: Oil among allies is a powerful balm for soothing the slights that come with the territory in the world of international intrigue and espionage. With the Israelis, a different standard is at work. There is ample reason to believe that Weinberger and his minions exploited Pollard for two purposes: to call into question the “dual loyalty” of American Jews, and to put Israel in its place as a strategic but beholden ally. Saudi Arabia’s oil, after all, is much more marketable than Israel’s democratic pragmatism; the Jewish State’s chutzpah is somehow deemed more galling than that of the morally bankrupt House of Saud.

What’s the difference between Amit and Schwartz on the one hand, and Pollard (the lone spy of the three who was caught out in the cold, and has been kept there) on the other?

Only that “equal justice under law” does not apply – nor does the damage done matter – when there are greater political “causes” to pursue.

Kenneth Lasson is a law professor at the University of Baltimore.

The Tatiana Soskin Case Critically Examined

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Center for Near East Policy Research

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December 1, 1997

When 26 year old Tatiana Soskin was brought before a judge, he recorded her personal details. No, she has no job, replied the new immigrant from Russia. No, her parents are not in Israel, she is alone. No, she does not even have a telephone.

The Israeli press described Tatiana as tall, thin and pale, “a Barbie doll,” in the words of Israel’s largest daily. But this young woman has been sitting in solitary confinement for four months.

At a time when a Tel Aviv museum is displaying photographs of naked men wrapped in tefilin, and the national Israel Museum in Jerusalem has an erotic exhibit identifying with Eva Braun, Tatiana Soskin is in jail because she insulted not Judaism, but Islam. Tatiana studied art at the Bezalel Academy of Art for three years, after she moved on her own to Israel. Last June Tatiana drew a picture of a hog, labelled Mohamed, writing the Koran. Israeli newspapers and commentators called the pro-Nazi and anti-Jewish exhibits “art” “that makes people think.” Tatiana’s judge said “only a distorted mind could create her drawing” and sent her to prison to await trial.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu apologized to the Mayor of Hebron, declaring that Tatiana’s drawing “contradicts the respect and admiration the Jewish religion has for the Islamic religion and its founder.”

Tatiana was a bit surprised at the whole ruckus. Perhaps she shouldn’t have done the drawing, or distributed it in Hebron, famous as the city whose Arabs attacked and murdered the local Jewish community in the pogrom of 1929, and where Jewish residents and Israeli soldiers today are subject to a neverending stream of stabbings, petrol bombs and shootings. Tatiana is today more concerned over her liver illness and her loneliness, but she nevertheless disagrees with Netanyahu’s apology to the Mayor of Hebron’s Arabs. “If that is the way they act, and their religion allows them to act this way, then they really behave like pigs,” she sighs.

Asked why she drew the by-now infamous caricature, she explains that “Arab leaders used the name of the prophet Mohamed when they called in the mosques to attack Jews. That seems to me a swine-like use of Mohamed’s name, and that is what I tried to say with the drawing. It was my response to the incitement.”

Tatiana’s bright green eyes dim somewhat as she describes her life today. “For 24 hours a day,” she says, “I am alone in a small cell. I am not allowed to talk to anyone, I have no clean air, barely any light. At the corner of the room is a small hole in the floor, where, pardon my language, I take of my needs. Above it is a shower and opposite, a barred window. I cannot even respond to my needs or take a shower without being afraid someone will suddenly look through the window.

“Most of the inmates work and can buy themselves things. I don’t work, so I don’t have money, not even for chocolate. On Friday I asked the jailers to bring me candles so I could light the Sabbath candles, but they didn’t bring any…”

Tatiana’s lawyer, Samuel Casper, says that everyone has the right to express his opinion, and this includes by means of caricatures. He notes that in January 1995 a journal called “Shpitz” published cartoons mocking religious Jews and the government’s legal advisor refused to bring charges, ruling caricatures are protected by free speech. Casper relates how he came to represent Tatiana: “I asked her if she had money to pay for the legal representation. She said, ‘Not now, but I will pay.’ At first I worked for free. A few weeks later she came in, took off her earrings, and said, ‘Please take these, I don’t want you working for nothing.'”

Tatiana says she reads and draws most of the day. She hopes to get out of jail soon, so she can resume studying, and touring throughout the Land of Israel, which she loves to do.

If you would like to help Tatiana, please send a postcard defending the right of free speech and urging leniency for Tatiana, to the Israeli Minister of Justice, Tsachi Hanegbi, at The Knesset, Jerusalem, Israel.

If you would like to help defray Tatiana’s legal costs, please send a check to Mercantile Discount Bank, Branch 064, Account number 40568 and earmark it for Tatiana Soskin.

Press here to see Tatiana’s Cartoon and other cartoons.

40 Minutes in Palestine

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Center for Near East Policy Research

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December 1, 1997

In Jerusalem, about a 10 minute drive north from the Temple Mount, or Haram al-Sharif, lies the only refugee camp in the Holy City. It is called Shofat. Mostly concrete and dust, rundown but teeming with life and a variety of humanitarian outreaches, the “camp” represents to its residents — perhaps on this very spot — the future capital of Palestine.

As with all of Abraham’s offspring, its children are its future stars: among them, 46 teenagers, 9th grade students at the Shofat Basic Girls’ School. The bell rings; this is their English class. Later in the lesson, we will interrupt the teacher and girls to poll them. The results will not be surprising.

Now, however, as the 40-minute period begins, the teacher is calling four of the girls to the front of the class. She asks the quartet to sing a song in English.

“How about ‘We Shall Overcome’? Now let’s not be shy. Good and strong,” says the teacher, a middle-aged woman dressed in black. She is one of some 10,000 Palestinian teachers employed by UNRWA to educate Palestinian refugees in territories and countries surrounding Israel. UNRWA is the acronym for United Nations Relief & Works Agency; the United States is its largest donor.

By now the young women, dressed in brown and white-striped uniforms like their classmates, are facing their peers, giggling with stage fright; a universal “teacher’s look” calms them down.

“We Shall Overcome, we shall overcome…we shall live in peace someday…deep in my heart, I still believe,” they sing, parroting the popular American civil rights theme — but with a personalized touch, a kicker that snaps this former Chicago inner-city English teacher, now a correspondent who is sitting at one of the long desks in the back of the room, observing — snaps him out of ’60’s make love, not war nostalgia and into the ’90’s and beyond:

“Deep in my heart, I still believe, we shall have Palestine some day!” The room is now alive with applause. Maybe we should give it to them. One God, one Messiah, Hatikva, no Right nor Left wing, just peace, Thy most precious gift. Imagine all the people….

The four girls return to their benches and the teacher picks up a piece of chalk.

“So, class, what’s this song about? What do we want?” she asks rhetorically. Peace, they respond; “Pease” one girl writes on the chalkboard, to the left of a map of the world. “Good, very good,” the teacher says, ignoring the spelling. “And why do we want peace?” No more war. “Good, no more war. Wonderful,” she says. The atmosphere is charged and rarefied; the teacher has written, then crossed out the word “war.” Suddenly her tone shifts.

“But class, our people have not yet overcome; they are being killed. Why?” asks the teacher. The class rustles, but there is no response. “In case no one is listening, I’ll ask again: our Palestinian people, why are they being killed?” Still no verbalizing. “Anyone? What is the killing about?”

“Land,” someone responds. “It’s because of land.”

“That’s exactly right. Our land is under occupation,” says the teacher, writing “land” to the right of the map, then shifting back to the class. “And who took our land?”

“The Israeli’s,” 46 girls respond in unison. “Israel” is written under “Occupation.” Meanwhile, sitting next to me and growing increasingly uneasy as I write down the classroom dialogue is the UNRWA public information person who has brought me to the school. Glances are exchanged between the teacher and official, (who wishes not to be identified.)

The teacher continues. “Now for the most important question, the question we’re all concerned about: How do we fight for peace? We have to fight for peace — by education. Okay, please take out your book and turn to the lesson on shopping,” the teacher says. And the practical lesson begins.

The 40-minute period is now half over. Choices must be made: should I check the textbook for bias or…? Suddenly I remember, then extract a form which has been sitting in my briefcase: “Confidential Survey On Middle East Issues.” After perusing the questionnaire, my anonymous UNRWA guide, also bored with the shopping lesson, whispers, “Good idea — let’s try it,” and walks to the front of the classroom where he consults with the teacher.

She sits down and he takes the floor. He reads in English, then in Arabic, each statement on the poll, then counts raised hands and writes the numbers on the sheet. Responses range from “strongly agree” to “unsure” to “strongly disagree.”

The straw poll lasts beyond the bell, then class is dismissed; we exchange awkward, but cordial smiles. The teacher asks to make copies of the survey, then returns with the original. After student-made sugar cookies with the principal, I take one final photograph of the Shofat School; then the UNRWA guide drives me back down through the dusty, narrow, winding streets of the camp: Jerusalem, capital of Palestine to three million refugees.

Of these refugees, 46 (100% of the class) “agree” or “strongly agree” with the following:

There should be a Palestinian state next to Israel. Israel should give the West Bank to the Palestinians. All Palestinian refugees & descendants should have right of return.

All “disagree” that Jews should be able to live in the West Bank and Gaza while all “agree” that Palestinians should be able to live within the borders of Israel.

For some reason, the following statement was also polled, hands were raised and counted, but the response was left unrecorded:

Based on religious traditions, both Palestinians and Jews have a legitimate claim to some of the Middle East lands.

Michael Cohen
4/94 El Al St,
Herzliya Bet 46588 Israel
Tel: (972-9) 955-7401
e-mail: nu@netvision.net.il

Henry Kissinger, The Real Prime Minister of Israel?

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Center for Near East Policy Research

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December 1, 1997

Henry Kissinger’s involvement with the Council on Foreign Relations and the New World Order has been well documented for many years. However, little is known to Americans of his role in the Middle East and how he has influenced the events there to help the New World Order gain control over this area of the world.

The late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin met Kissinger when he was the U.S. secretary of state and Rabin served as the Israeli ambassador to the U.S. from 1968-1972. Later, Rabin stated that Kissinger was his role model.

During the Yom Kippur War, Kissinger refused to supply much-needed arms to Israel unless Golda Meir resigned as prime minister and supported Rabin as the next Labor Party candidate for the post. At that time, Rabin had never even been a Knesset member and was listed far down on Labor’s Knesset list.

After the war, Meir appointed Rabin as Minister of Labor and supported his candidacy for party chairman, paving his way to become prime minister in 1974.

While Rabin was prime minister, Kissinger presented his “Gaza-Jericho First” plan in 1976 which called upon Israel to withdraw from the Gaza Strip and the city of Jericho first in any overall peace plan with the PLO. It was this plan that was incorporated into the Oslo Agreements which Israel and the PLO signed in 1993; the first Israeli redeployment under Oslo was from the Gaza Strip and Jericho.

During his first term as premier, Rabin and Kissinger redrew the map of the Middle East, which included Lebanon being absorbed by Syria. (It was this plan which reportedly caused Ariel Sharon to resign as an advisor to Rabin’s first government.) Kissinger then instigated the Levanese civil war in order to accomplish this goal. He succeeded when Syria annexed Lebanon during the 1991 Persian Gulf War.

During Menachem Begin’s tenure as premier, Kissinger’s influence in Israel was considerably reduced. Begin tried to reverse the Kissinger plan through the Peace for Galilee War in the 1980’s (also known as the Lebanon War.) It wasn’t until the Labor Party regained power in the 1992 elections with Rabin as prime minister that Kissinger could truly reassert his influence in Israel.

Kissinger seems to have a great deal of power over other individuals as well. In 1994, Foreign Minister Shimon Peres was on his way to South Africa when, summoned by Kissinger, he made a 5,000 mile detour to meet Kissinger for two hours in a Manhattan restaurant.

Ariel Sharon, former defense minister and now national infrastructure minister, alson met privately with Kissinger at the Sheraton Hotel in Manhattan on October 17, 1996; they were spotted by reporters. The Jerusalem Post also published a picture from the Associated Press of the two men shaking hands in its October 18, 1996, edition. Sharon, supposedly in New York for an Israel-North America Business Conference, told reporters at a press conference after the meeting with Kissinger, “There must be sacrifices for peace. Peace, like war, is cruel. It requires concessions.”

Sharon’s spokesman, Raanan Gissin, later played down the entire affair. “I don’t know why everyone is making such a fuss about it,” Giffin said. “Mr. Sharon has met Dr. Kissinger every time he’s flown to America over the past twenty five years… Dr. Kissinger and Mr. Sharon have shared a deep friendship that began after the Yom Kippur War.”

Gissin refused to give details about what Sharon and Kissinger discussed, saying that only the peace process and “regional details” were involved.

Kissinger continues to control Israel through the latest prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.

Netanyahu’s contacts with individuals from the Council of Foreign Relations can be traced to an anti-terrorism conference which Netanyahu organized in memory of his dead brother, Yonatan, who died during the raid on Entebbe, Uganda.

Netanyahu returned to Israel after quitting a $100,000 a year job in the U.S. with the Boston Group, owned by Ira Magarzina, a well-known New World Order insider and the person behind the failed Clinton health plan. Netanyahu worked for the Boston Group only eight months, deciding to take a position with a furniture firm in Israel which paid only $25,000. When he held the anti-terrorism conference, the CFR sent its most influential members at the time including George Schultz and George Bush from the Trilateral Commission. It is strange that the CFR would be interested in a conference organized by an unknown, even if it was in memory of an Israeli war hero.

After the anti-terrorism conference, Moshe Arens asked Netanyahu to be his aid in Washington, D.C. when Arens served as Israeli ambassador to the U.S. After a two-year stint working for Arens, Shimon Peres successfully secured Netanyahu’s appointment as Israel’s U.N. ambassador over Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir’s objections. While U.N. ambassador, Secretary of State George Schultz, a former member of the CFR, visited Netanyahu every time he flew to New York City.

Schultz’s connections with Netanyahu continue to this day. Before he became prime minister, Netanyahu was opposed to the establishment of a regional branch of the World Bank in the Middle East. According to an article in the August 1, 1996 edition of The Jerusalem Post, Netanyahu changed his mind after meeting with Schultz in the U.S. on his first visit there after his election victory.

Before his death, Rabin related what he thought was a funny story in an interview on Israeli television.

Kissinger told Rabin that Netanyahu had called him in New York and requested he issue a proclamation against stationing foreign troops on the Golan Heights as part of any peace treaty with Syria. According to Rabin, Kissinger told Netanyahu, “Oh, Bibi, stop bothering me with your nonsense, I don’t have time.”

The next day, Netanyahu confirmed the phone call to Kissinger. However, Netanyahu said that Kissinger did not laugh at him but said he would consider Netanyahu’s request.

In spite of Netanyahu’s various connections with the CFR and the New World Order insiders, it is clear that he did not know exactly what he was getting involved in until after he was elected prime minister in May, 1996.

On Friday, July 5, 1996, an economic “International Forum for the Middle East” was held in Amman, Jordan. Some of the attendees included Simon Weil, first president of the European Union, Henry Kissinger, and Conrad Black, CEO of Hollinger International and owner of The Jerusalem Post. It is somewhat odd that these men would fly from halfway acrosse the world to Amman, Jordan for a simple economic conference.

The Jerusalem Post described the conference in its July 10, 1996, edition. “The 30 politicians, economists and academics in the forum, including Henry Kissinger, Simon Weil, and Lord Weidenfeld, will monitor the effects of important events on the region and make appropriate recommendations.”

Some important questions need to be asked about this conference. First, what authority do Henry Kissinger and these other men have to monitor events in the Middle East and make “appropriate recommendations”? What kind of recommendations will they be making? And to whom?

After the conference, Kissinger flew to Jerusalem with Conrad Black in Black’s private plane. While in Jerusalem, Kissinger held two meetings: one with newly-elected Prime Minister Netanyahu and another with Yehuda Levy, president of The Jerusalem Post.

On July 8, 1996, The Jerusalem Post carried a story about Kissinger’s visits to both men, complete with a picture of Kissinger, Conrad Black, and Yehuda Levy together at the Post building. The article was entitled: “Kissinger: PM will learn peace is in Israel’s interests.”

“Furthering the Middle East process is necessary for Israel and Benyamin Netanyahu will soon realize this, former US secretary of state Henry Kissinger said yesterday.

Speaking to reporters after visiting the grave of Yitzhak Rabin, Kissinger said, ‘What he [Rabin] has started grew out of Israel’s necessities, and I think any prime minister will come to the conclusion that the [peace] process has to be continued. Of course, each leader has his own ideas.’

“Kissinger, in Israel to visit Rabin’s family, met Netanyahu earlier at the prime minister’s residence. He said he is confident Netanyahu would take a ‘constructive’ message to Washington on his maiden visit starting tomorrow.

“Israel and the United States have a common destiny, and their leaders have come to express that common destiny’ Kissinger added.

“Kissinger and Conrad Black, CEO of The Jerusalem Post’s parent company, Hollinger International, also paid a visit to The Jerusalem Post building for a short, unplanned meeting with the President and Publisher Yehuda Levy.

“Levy updated them on the situation at the Post, focusing on the departure of executive editor David Bar-Illan.”

Kissinger held a two-hour private meeting with Netanyahu. According to those who were present, Netanyahu emerged from the meeting white and pale, refusing to repeat what Kissinger had said to him.

It is not too hard to deduce who is behind Netanyahu’s meetings with Arafat, his caving in to Arab demands on the Hebron agreement, and the continuing building freeze of Jewish settlements in the territories.

Jibril Rajoub’s security men will continue to roam Jerusalem unhindered. Under Netanyahu, Orient House and other PA institutions in the city have not only remained open, they have flourished. According to the February 12, 1997 edition of Ha’aretz, twenty PA institutions and offices are now operating openly in East Jerusalem. Netanyahu claimed only four PA institutions were found in Jerusalem. However, Ha’aretz listed all twenty PA institutions, describing their functions.

It will be amazing if the apartment buildings of Jerusalem’s Har Homa are ever built. Netanyahy refused to authorize building the apartments before he left for Washington, D.C. in February, to the great disappointment of Jerusalem Mayor Ehud Olmert and a delegation of coalition members. Although construction on Har Homa was authorized by the cabinet after he returned to Israel, Netanyahu ordered it delayed he says for “technical reasons.” These same “technical reasons” were stated when construction for settlements in Judea and Samaria (West Bank) were authorized and stalled.

The amount of control Kissinger now wields over Netanyahu was never more clear than during the prime minister’s trip to the U.S. in February. After meeting with Clinton, Netanyahu planned a short visit in New York City, planning to leave on Saturday night after Shabbat was over. But while he was in Washington, he suddenly announced he would stay in New York for an additional 24 hours.

An article in Ha’aretz on Friday, February 14, 1997 reported that Netanyahu had decided to spend an extra day there in order to meet with various Jewish leaders on Saturday night and hold press conferences on Sunday. Among the additional meetings Netanyahu scheduled was one with former secretary of state Henry Kissinger.

Netanyahu did not suddenly “decide” to stay in New York an extra 24 hours; he was ordered to do so by Kissinger.

When Yasser Arafat declares a Palestinian state, Netanyahu will not say or do anything to prevent it, no matter how much he protests to the contrary right now. Indeed, he cannot do anything, for he is powerless.

Israel has a hidden leader that they did not choose or vote for, and one they do not know anything about.

Henry Kissinger is the real prime minister of Israel.

Joseph Alsop, a noted columnist who witnessed Dr. Kissinger’s rise to political prominence, wrote in his editorial column:

As secretary of state, Kissinger will be acting upon a view of the political historical process so somber that it is close to anti-American.

The American view is all optimism and all morality….

That is not the way Henry Kissinger thinks. He never expects any nation to put morality above the chance of great gain….“

(Daily Oklahoman 9/10/73 — emphasis added).

Dr. Henry Kissinger is a political survivor. Her continues on to pursue the “cruel road to peace” at the expense of singular nationalism, biblical morality; and God’s standard for human government. The odds are fantastically high as to preclude his present status as having been arrived at through chance.

Therefore, if not by chance, it must be by design. Whose design? The CFR has a plan for a One World Order. The Devil pursued his plan to exalt his throne above the stars of God. God has a plan to bring all nations into Israel at the battle of Armageddon. God’s plan includes ruling “… in the kingdom of men, and giveth it to whomsoever he will, and setteth over it the basest of men” (Daniel 4:17).

Is Spying For A Democratic Ally The Same As Spying For A Totalitarian Regime?

By

Center for Near East Policy Research

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December 1, 1997

Imagine it is 1940, and Great Britain is fighting Hitler’s Nazi Germany almost alone. Imagine further that an American who loved both America and England and hated the Nazis worked in American Intelligence and had access to secret files concerning Germany that, for whatever reason, the United States had not shared with Great Britain. This American gave the secrets to England and was caught.

This spy had, of course, violated both American law and the trust that its intelligence agencies had placed in him. Now, the question is what should be done to him? Specifically, should we regard him morally or legally as the same as an American who spied for Germany?

The answer is so obvious that only in a morally confused age such as ours would the question even be entertained. Yet this is precisely the question to be asked with regard to Jonathan Pollard, the American who spied for Israel.

Let us review the parallels to the imaginary situation outlined earlier. Israel has been at perpetual war for its survival (a threat that England never faced against Germany, which wanted to vanquish, not end, its existence). An American who loved both America and Israel, used his access to American intelligence on those Arab regimes and passed it on to Israel. He spied on behalf of America’s most loyal allies, not on behalf of any of America’s enemies, and he gave away secrets about Arab regimes devoted to Israel’s destruction not, to the best of our knowledge, about America. And, unlike spies whose espionage cost the lives of American and pro-American foreign agents, we know of no American and pro-American foreigner who lost his life because of Pollard.

Yet Jonathan Pollard was given a life sentence in prison – more punishment than some Americans who have spied on behalf of America’s enemies, and certainly more punishment that nearly all the murderers in America; and he has now languished in prison, often in solitary confinement, for 12 years.

The argument that Pollard was a spy, and that is all that matters, may be legally valid, but it is not morally valid. The argument that “spying is spying” is no more moral than “killing is killing”. Circumstances always determine the morality of an act. Just as most of us distinguish morally between terrorists killing innocents and anti-terrorists killing terrorists, most of us morally distinguish between spying on a democratic ally, especially one fighting for its existence, and spying for an anti-democratic enemy such as the Soviet Union. Furthermore, the United States spies on Israel and probably on most of its other allies.

Last year, for example, Germany expelled an American for spying on Germany.

None of this is meant to defend what Jonathan Pollard did. Unless he actually saved Israel from something as awful as an Iraqi biological or nuclear attack what he did is unjustifiable. As Rabbi Irving Greenberg recently wrote, “Pollard’s good intentions paved the way to political hell.” I am writing only to morally evaluate what he did in light of the suffering he has endured, and to compare his punishments with those given to other American spies and to violent criminals.

He is largely a broken man who suffers alone, and who, for reasons that are not our business but that compel our compassion, has also suffered family crises. His continued suffering serves no good purpose. Again as Rabbi Greenberg, one of the most credible voices in American Jewry, and someone for who, in his own words, “was not one of those who expressed sympathy for him when the case first broke,” wrote, “I have come to the conclusion that enough is enough…It is time to extend mercy to Jonathan Pollard…. (There has been a) relentless parade of parallel cases in which far more damaging and dangerous spies received milder sentences.”

We quickly learn of the damage done to America by those who have spied on behalf of America’s enemies, and no damage has been revealed in Jonathan Pollard’s case. It makes one wonder why former Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger so vociferously sought to keep Pollard in prison. Two reasons suggest themselves. One is that, for whatever reason, Mr.Weinberger has a particular loathing for Pollard; the other is that he may fear that if Pollard is released, Pollard will reveal how much sensitive data about Israel’s enemies the Weinberger Defense Department kept from Israel. I have no proof for either claim – I hope they are untrue. But neither Mr. Weinberger nor anyone else, including the entire American Media has offered any data that argue for the treatment Pollard has received.

Enough is enough. As I watch America release thousands of murderers and child molesters after a few years in prison, and give a spy for Saudi Arabia no prison term at all, I get progressively more disturbed and curious as to why Jonathan Pollard is still in prison.

Justice for Jonathan Pollard
Tel: (416) 781-3571
Fax: (416) 781-3166
Email: http://www.interlog.com/~abrooke/jp

Did Rabin Know?

By

Center for Near East Policy Research

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November 17, 1997

With the publication of the secret appendix of the Shamgar Commission report on the murder of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin providing the backdrop to the shameful spectacle of the Likud Central Committee convention, Ehud Barak, who now leads the Labor Party, can chalk up one success to his credit. In recent weeks, he has made a conspicuous effort to hold Benjamin Netanyahu responsible for the atmosphere of incitement that led to the murder. Barak’s incessant pestering helped to jog the memories of several right-wing leaders, who in turn pressed the prime minister to study the secret appendix. The ultimate result was yesterday’s publication of the document. The Shamgar Commission findings provide Likud leaders with a pretext for asking some very painful questions regarding the actions of the Shin Bet. The most difficult questions of all are: Did Rabin himself sanction Avishai Raviv’s employment as a Shin Bet informer? To what extent was the prime minister aware of the double agent’s incitement against him?

The key sentence in the secret appendix is: “His (Raviv’s) incitement, especially where it involved physical acts of violence against Arabs, and where it drew the public’s attention to the existence of violent and extremist political groups, was indirectly damaging to well-known legal political groups. His operators could not have overlooked this fact.” What this means is that Raviv’s acts of extremist incitement affected the public perception of the entire right-wing camp, including the Likud, and also furnished fuel for the left-wing counterattack before Rabin’s murder.

This conclusion leads one to ask a question that is so horrific that it is in fact difficult to put down on paper. Was Yitzhak Rabin, who paid with his own life for the brave peace policy he pursued, a victim of his own actions? In the past, his close associates used to rail against the disdain with which he entertained their warnings of possible risks to his physical safety, but now a different question arises. Was he a party, knowingly or not, to Raviv’s incitement activities? Did he continue to respond to incitement from the right even when he knew that it was stoked, or at least partially so, by the provocative acts of undercover agent Avishai Raviv? And if this is the case, did Rabin do so because it gave him a casus belli to flay his political adversaries?

On Wednesday, I asked Yaakov Peri, who headed the Shin Bet when Avishai Raviv was recruited, whether he had told Rabin about Raviv’s double-agent role. Peri says he does not remember. I then asked him if the director of Shin Bet routinely reports to the prime minister on the recruitment of such an agent, and Peri replied that it would not necessarily be reported, except in a case where it meant that criminal charges against the said agent would be dropped. In the case of Raviv, quite a few such charges were dropped. Does that mean that Rabin in fact knew of Raviv’s dual identity? We do not know.

There is a macabre aspect to the entire discussion. A great man was killed by an assassin, and the country is now being asked to ponder the questions of how responsible he was for his own death, and to what degree he treated his political adversaries – who allegedly created the atmosphere that led to his assassination – fairly. The questions will not die down, at least until the next political scandal comes along.

Yaakov Peri said Wednesday night that it would be wrong to place the blame for the entire right-wing attack on Rabin and his policies on Avishai Raviv. He pointed out that the incidents in which Raviv was involved took place against a background of daily anti-Arab attacks perpetrated by extremist Jews against Arabs. The Shamgar Commission report specifies several instances, some of which were criminal activities, in which Raviv took part: attacks against Arabs and against Tamar Guzinsky MK, damage to property, racist incitement against the Druse chairman of the student union at Tel Aviv University, violent attacks against Arabs and spraying slogans against peace. These actions did not directly affect the incitement campaign against Rabin and it is therefore unrealistic to attach any real influence to them – neither on the anti-Rabin political climate that was the handiwork of the right, nor on the response of the left. The problem, of course, is that Raviv also played a part in the direct incitement against Rabin.The secret appendix mentions three roles that Raviv played, all of which without a doubt were instances of dangerous incitement against the then prime minister. The first was the characterization of Rabin as a “rodef,” a biblical term for someone who is about to kill, and should be killed before he can do so; the implication being that it was all right to attack him. The second was the close cooperation between him and assassin Yigal Amir in organizing student demonstrations and Sabbath retreats for students in settlements in Judea and Samaria. The third was the distribution of the poster in which Rabin was photomontaged into an SS officer. The report also claims that at the request of his Shin Bet operators, Raviv painted graffiti slogans opposed to the peace process.

Raviv was, then, a double agent who overstepped the limits, who did not differentiate between his function of supplying information to those who sent him and his efforts to ingratiate himself with those whose trust he was supposed to secure. Leaders of the right will in the next few days make widespread use of the findings of the Shamgar Commission to prove their claim that the left was spreading foul libels when it accused them, and especially Benjamin Netanyahu, of creating the atmosphere that led Yigal Amir to pull the trigger. The right will claim that the more extremist demonstrations against Rabin were initiated by Raviv. The left will assert that although Raviv’s employment as a Shin Bet agent left much to be desired, the Shamgar Commission did not find any evidence that might diminish the role played by Netanyahu in the heated atmosphere that led to Rabin’s murder.

Yossi Sarid MK said on Wednesday that the secret appendix did not contain anything that might cause him to reassess his opinions regarding Netanyahu’s part in the incitement. Benny Begin MK said that in their propaganda campaign against the Likud and the current prime minister, Labor and Meretz have made use of slogans that we now know were instigated by Avishai Raviv. Begin added that Yossi Sarid needs to do a little soul-searching of his own. When Arabs were murdered in Halhoul three years ago, the Eyal group, of which Raviv was the head, boasted that it was behind the deed. Sarid called for the expulsion of the entire population of Kiryat Arba. When it later turned out that the murders were committed by Palestinian neighbors of the victims, Sarid did not apologize, and declared: “I did not cast aspersions on upstanding people. In Kiryat Arba, there are no upstanding people.” Begin summed it up on Wednesday night: Sarid was a member of the ministerial committee responsible for the Shin Bet; his response at the time was a blatantly cynical act.

Uzi Benziman is a senior columnist at Haaretz. He is strongly identified with the Israeli Left.

The CIA and Friends?

By

Center for Near East Policy Research

-

November 17, 1997

During the week another Washington conference about the “Peace Process” took place — this one keynoted by the new Assistant Secretary of State for the Middle East, Martin Indyk, a long-time protege of the Israeli/Jewish lobby.

The conference was sponsored by a magazine known as “Middle East Insight” — headed by George Nader — and by an international affairs center at the College of William & Mary — headed by James Bill. It was featured on C-Span and attended by the usual Washington press corps, top-heavy these days with mediocre Arab journalists always eager it seems to be used by anyone who will give them free food and easy quotes.

For years the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, VA, has been a favorite for the CIA and other government-connected foreign policy types. Jim Bill has furthered those connections since he came to set up the Center for International Affairs about a decade ago; so much so that his own independence as a scholar is very much in doubt.

As for Nader’s “Middle East Insight” publication…it has long been suspected of having very close ties to the Zionist lobby along with the CIA and Mossad. And indeed it is believed that many of Nader’s visits to the Middle East region have much more to do with intelligence collection than journalism.

In short, beware of anything that “Middle East Insight” or the College of William and Mary is involved in when it comes to the Middle East.

MID-EAST REALITIES is published a number of times weekly on the Internet. Email to infomer@middleeast.org for details how to receive MER regularly. For detailed information about the weekly MER-TV program email to infomertv@middleeast.org.

e-mail: MER@MiddleEast.Org
Fax: (202) 362-6965
Phone: (202) 362-5266, Ext 638
Internet: www.MiddleEast.Org.

The Panama Syndrome

By

David Bedein

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November 17, 1997

The time has come to view matters of government media policy management outside of the parochial circles that we all live in and report about, when too many people fall into a political position and suspend their natural ability for independen judgement.

Let us recall what happened when the US invaded Panama, in OPERATION JUST CAUSE, in December, 1989. The marines landed, accompanied by fifteen American news crews. The American government was determined not to make the mistake that they made back in Vietnam when reporters freely reported American atrocities against civilians and thereby undermined American home fron support for the war effort.

The marines made a gentleman’s agreement with the reporters who accompanied them to clear” their news reports with them. One day into the operation, the marines massacrd two neighborhoods where they were meeting resistance. The news agencies were asked to embargo the story. They did so for three years, until Bush’s defeat in 1992, when PBS sent a TV crew to Panama city and recovered its self-censored footage of the massacre, the mass burial, and eyewitness testimony recorded at the time.

The impact? Zilch. Were there any judicial inquiries? Indictments? No justice for of hat had happened to 6,500 civilians who were dumped into a mass grave…next to the Jewish cemetery in Panama City. I, for one, left America twenty seven years ago today, declaring myself to be a willing draft resister to the Vietnam war and hoping that the standard of the new country that I would come to would be different. They are.

Many media consumers suffer from what we may refer to as Panama Syndrome, which causes them to assume that media coverage from abroad reflects reality and forget the crimes of their military. In Israel, we hold ourselves to another standard. If one individual civilian dies as a result of a military opertion, it is the concern of the country and gets the attention of the world. In Israeli military law, we have the only nation in the world that has legislated that you can never say that “I was following orders” as as reason for carrying out an order that is repugnant to your moral standards. Israel has legislated the lesson of the Nuremberg trials.

Our fight in the professional world of media coverage of Israel is for a free media that will not cover up anything, let alone a mass grave of 6,500 civilans who were mowed down by American marines. Just as the major American media reached their “gentleman’s agreement” with the marines en route to Panama City, so did many Israeli and foreign editors and producers reached similar agreements concerning matters such as the Oslo process.

Arafat declared, openly and without censorship on his part, that anyone who ran against him in the 1996 Palestine Authority elections would be arrested and face summary execution. The UN observer team reported it. Yet the Israeli and foreign media covering the Palestinian election crown him a “democratically elected” leader. And throughout 1995 and 1996 and 1997, Arafat has conveyed a consistent message to his people in the Arabic language, for the world media to hear him, that he will not keep any agreement with Israel and that his war on Zionism remains intact. And when videos of Arafat’s speeches were screened before the US House International Relations Committee in September, 1995, the state department asked the nine news crews present not to cover the hearings and the reporters complied.

It reminds me of how the South Vietnamese elections were covered by major American media, until Dave Dellinger and a few other opponents to the Vietnam War uncovered the truth of summary executions conducted by South Vietnamese American puppets. The context of American government media policy in Vietnam and Panama places the situation in Israel with the media in context.

And now, in November 1997, a classified section of the Israel Shamgar commission report shows that the Israeli settler viglilante group known as the “committee for road safety” that began to operate in December, 1987 at the beginning of the Intifada was actually orchestrated as an operation of Israeli intelligence inside the Israeli right wing. The “committee for road safety” remained the prime source for Israeli and foreign media coverage of Israel’s settlements in the first years of the Intifada, as the “committee” offered daily “briefings” of Israeli settlements for the foreign and local media based in Jerusalem and the west bank. The direct result: The demonization of Israel’s settlement movement, whose image was transformed from a yuppie group of suburban life-seekers into a monstrous group of vigilantes who would attack Arabs without warning.

The question remains: Will media consumers or reporters themselves take the opportunity to examine their exposure to Panama Syndrome?

Israel Behind the News

U.S. Government Delivers Ultimatum to Netanyahu

U.S. Pledges $470 Million for Palestinian Refugee Relief

The Other Side of Pollard: Damage, Duplicity – and Justice

The Tatiana Soskin Case Critically Examined

40 Minutes in Palestine

Henry Kissinger, The Real Prime Minister of Israel?

Is Spying For A Democratic Ally The Same As Spying For A Totalitarian Regime?

Did Rabin Know?

The CIA and Friends?

The Panama Syndrome

Column from the Director