HARPER’S REMARKABLE VISIT TO ISRAEL THROWS U.S. POST-GENEVA ACCORD POLICY INTO HIGH RELIEF

Harper’s Knesset Speech Was Passionate, Sincere, and — For the Most Part — Right: Andrew Coyne, National Post, Jan. 20, 2014— After Stephen Harper’s speech to the Knesset, we can perhaps put one idea to rest: the notion that his government’s unwavering support for the state of Israel is mere politics, aimed at sewing up the Jewish vote and little else.

Our Glory Days as ‘Honest Broker’: Chris Selley, National Post, Jan. 23, 2014 — Stephen Harper’s visit to Israel, and his effusively pro-Israeli rhetoric there, has reinvigorated one of the standard criticisms against him — that he has forsaken Canada’s “honest broker” role in Middle Eastern affairs for a doggie bed at the foot of Benjamin Netanyahu’s favourite armchair.

As Iran Declares Victory, the West Averts Its Eyes: Clifford D. May, National Post, Jan. 23, 2014 — Iranian president Hassan Rouhani last week tweeted a declaration of diplomatic victory: “In #Geneva agreement world powers surrendered to Iran’s national will.”

On Topic Links

Stop Jerking Canada Around: Charles Krauthammer, Washington Post, Jan. 23, 2014

The Internal Iranian Struggle in the Aftermath of the Geneva Nuclear Agreement: Lt. Col. (ret.) Michael Segall, Jerusalem Center For Public Affairs, Jan. 14, 2014 

French Society Views Jews through the Prism of Shoah: Manfred Gerstenfeld, Arutz Sheva, Jan. 23, 2014

Big Sell at Sotheby’s for Painting of Boy at the Center of Notorious Historical Case: Maya Benton

, Tablet, Dec. 18, 2013

HARPER’S KNESSET SPEECH WAS PASSIONATE, SINCERE,

AND — FOR THE MOST PART — RIGHT                                              

Andrew Coyne

National Post, Jan. 20, 2014

After Stephen Harper’s speech to the Knesset, we can perhaps put one idea to rest: the notion that his government’s unwavering support for the state of Israel is mere politics, aimed at sewing up the Jewish vote and little else. I have been watching Harper for 20 years. This was Harper to the core, as passionate, sincere and unequivocal as I’ve ever seen him. He said it because he meant it. And, by and large, he was right.

Which part of the speech, bluntly worded as it was, would his critics like him to take back? That “Israel is the only country in the Middle East which has long anchored itself in the ideals of freedom, democracy and the rule of law”? That “Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state is absolute and non-negotiable”? That “many of the hostile forces Israel faces are faced by all Western nations”? That “a Palestinian state will come … when the regimes that bankroll terrorism realize that the path to peace is accommodation, not violence”?

And yet the canard is still repeated: that Harper is “too close” to Israel, that he has forsaken Canada’s “traditional balanced approach” to the Middle East in favour of a one-sided, Israel-right-or-wrong position, that indeed he has made Israel’s foreign policy our own — or if that were not nasty enough, Likud’s. The evidentiary basis for this charge has always seemed thin, unless it is supposed that “support” for Israel necessarily implies unquestioning, uncritical support. But that is no more true than the reverse: that it is possible to equivocate when Israel is under attack — not just the one-sided, Israel-wrong-or-wronger rhetorical sallies of countless UN resolutions, but attacks of the armed, missile-based, children-blown-up-in-pizzerias kind — and still “support” it.

It was on precisely these distinctions — between support and unquestioning support, between legitimate criticism and disproportionate piling on — that Harper framed his speech. “Support,” he noted, “even firm support, doesn’t mean that allies and friends will agree on all issues all of the time.” In the same vein, he did not say “we refuse to criticize Israel.” He said “we refuse to single out Israel for criticism,” as so many do: as if, in all the catalogue of human rights offenders, it were the only entry, or the worst, or even remotely comparable to its neighbours. And yet, substantively, Canada’s policy on the Middle East, laid out in a Foreign Affairs statement issued shortly before the Prime Minister’s trip, does not differ greatly from what went before, or from the international consensus: a two-state solution, recognizing both Israel’s “right to live in peace with its neighbours within secure boundaries” and the Palestinian’s “right to self-determination and … a sovereign, independent, viable, democratic and territorially contiguous Palestinian state.”

Moreover, the statement is clear that “Canada does not recognize permanent Israeli control over territories occupied in 1967” and that “Israeli settlements in the occupied territories are a violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention” as well as “a serious obstacle to achieving a comprehensive, just and lasting peace.”

The differences crop up over how to get there: whether, for example, to immediately offer the Palestinian Authority recognition as a “non-member observer state” at the UN, or whether, as Canada objected, this presupposes the outcome of any peace settlement, in advance of the kinds of security guarantees on which Israel quite rightly insists. And, of course, they come up over Israel’s right to defend itself against the attacks to which it is so regularly subject. For example, in 2006, after Israel had come under sustained rocket attacks from Hezbollah forces in south Lebanon, it was only when it responded with military strikes of its own that critics in this country began demanding an “immediate and unconditional ceasefire.” The NDP raged against Israel’s “disproportionate response,” while the Liberals, in their fashion, were careful to acknowledge “Israel has a right to defend itself” before insisting it stop doing so. I suppose, from those vantage points, a policy that supports Israel’s right to defend itself even with its army might look one-sided, but that doesn’t make it so.

Does the opposite charge apply? Does any criticism of Israel betray an anti-Israel, indeed an anti-Semitic bias? No, of course not — and here I might part company with the Prime Minister slightly. Not that he made any such suggestion: As he said, “no state is beyond legitimate questioning or criticism,” nor is “criticism of Israeli government policy … necessarily anti-Semitic.” But some of it is. The question is how much. As a matter of observation, there seems little doubt “anti-Zionism” can stem from, or turn into, anti-Semitism. Concern for the plight of the Palestinians too often congeals into hatred for their Jewish “oppressors,” and the more fevered and intemperate the criticism, the more one suspects this is the case.

But I think much criticism of Israel has a different source: not so much hatred of Israel, or of Jews, but of the West, of “us.” For some critics of Israel, heavily represented on university campuses, it is precisely what commends it to most of us — its status as a Western-oriented, liberal democracy — that most inspires their loathing. In this it is no different that any other symbol of Western democracy, the opposition it arouses merely a substratum of the heady undergraduate experience of discovering that, hey, we’re the bad guys. Is that anti-Semitism? No. Does it result in criticism that is unjust, offensive, even “sickening”? Yes, and the Prime Minister was right to call them out on it.                                                                          

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OUR GLORY DAYS AS ‘HONEST BROKER’                   

Chris Selley                  

National Post, Jan. 23, 2014 

Stephen Harper’s visit to Israel, and his effusively pro-Israeli rhetoric there, has reinvigorated one of the standard criticisms against him — that he has forsaken Canada’s “honest broker” role in Middle Eastern affairs for a doggie bed at the foot of Benjamin Netanyahu’s favourite armchair. Jean Chrétien, among many other critics, pops up every now and again with such complaints. “I’m travelling the world. The image of Canada today is not what it was,” he recently told Global News. When Justin Trudeau becomes prime minister, Mr. Trudeau predicted he would “want Canada to be what we were in the world under Pearson, under his father and under myself.” Mr. Chrétien was basking in plaudits on Tuesday in Toronto, where scores of variously partisan worthies gathered to sing his praises on the occasion of his 80th birthday. In light of Mr. Harper’s divisive trip, it might also be a good time to reflect on Mr. Chrétien’s own visit to Israel in 2000 — back in the glory days of Canadian diplomacy.

Day One: Mr. Chrétien meets with Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak in West Jerusalem, but doesn’t visit Arab East Jerusalem. The Palestinian Liberation Organization is not pleased; a spokesperson calls it “an insult to the peace process.” Mr. Chrétien’s lighthearted response, at a news conference, is to say: “I don’t know if I am in West, South, North or East Jerusalem now.”

Day Two: With Mr. Barak jetting off to Washington to talk peace with President Clinton, Mr. Chrétien goes off-script at a joint news conference with Yasser Arafat and says Canada might support a unilateral declaration of independence by the Palestinians. “I believe, personally, it is better to keep it as a pressure point for the negotiations and that is the position of Canada,” he says.

Nonplussed Israeli officials respond that Mr. Chrétien is welcome to his “inaccurate” opinion, even though such an idea would jeopardize the peace process. At some point, Mr. Chrétien realizes his position is spectacularly misguided in light of Quebec’s sovereignty movement and his government’s soon-to-be-passed Clarity Act. His communications director is eventually reduced to explaining to reporters that whatever Mr. Chrétien said, that was not what he meant.

Day Three: At a news conference in Nazareth with Shimon Peres, Mr. Chrétien endorses Israel’s claim to the Sea of Galilee — a sticking point in peace negotiations between Israel and Syria, where Mr. Chrétien was due to travel on the same trip. His statesmanlike reasoning follows: “Apparently there was a border that was occupied a long time ago and there was war and so on. For a Canadian, we have 30 million lakes so we don’t see it in the same perspective but I can understand the need for Israel to keep the only lake they got.”

Day Four: Reports say Mr. Chrétien, in conversation with Mr. Barak, has offered to resettle as many as 15,000 Palestinian refugees in Canada. Jaws drop, as Canada had been officially neutral on refugee issues such as the right of return. Liberal staffers frantically try to spin the conversation out of existence, while the

Day Five: Having managed to anger the Palestinians somewhat more than the Israelis, Mr. Chrétien is accused by a Syrian cabinet minister and a Lebanese newspaper of — of all things — abandoning Canada’s “honest broker” tradition. Nevertheless, his visit to Damascus goes ahead as planned.

In short, Mr. Chrétien’s trip was a thoroughgoing disaster in which he came off as a poorly briefed bumpkin. “If we needed further evidence that Mr. Chrétien’s self-image as le petit gars from Shawinigan excludes even the appearance of worldliness and the discipline of thinking ahead, this trip is providing it,” the Globe wrote in a scathing editorial. (“You can’t take Jean Chrétien anywhere,” was the lede.)

Liberal MP John Bryden was so confounded by Mr. Chrétien’s performance that he hatched a conspiracy theory. “I believe the prime minister’s visit and the remarks he made were a setup,” he wrote in an op-ed. “He was working from a prepared script on behalf of the parties to the peace process. … If Canada floats these bargaining positions — as Mr. Chrétien did — then they are put on the table without giving offence to the rival governments.” Mr. Bryden predicted “the truth of this will emerge after the peace process is finished.” Still we wait.

Canadians seem to enjoy letting Mr. Chrétien off the hook. At his birthday bash he was feted for signing the Kyoto Accord, about which his government then did sweet bugger all, and for not committing Canadian troops to Iraq — a last-minute decision that could easily have gone the other way, which was based on public opinion more than anything else and that resulted in a much greater troop commitment to Afghanistan. Curiously, no one ever congratulates Mr. Chrétien on that decision. Canadians also love to exaggerate the significance of small differences between their politicians. It’s likely that neither Mr. Chrétien nor Mr. Harper did any significant harm, or any significant good, to the Middle East peace process while visiting the Holy Land. But Mr. Harper can at least claim to have known his brief, to have stuck to his guns, and not to have been laughed at repeatedly — something to keep in mind while people pine for the “good old days.”

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AS IRAN DECLARES VICTORY, THE WEST AVERTS ITS EYES                  

Clifford D. May                                                              

National Post, Jan. 23, 2014

Iranian president Hassan Rouhani last week tweeted a declaration of diplomatic victory: “In #Geneva agreement world powers surrendered to Iran’s national will.” In response, White House press secretary Jay Carney said not to worry: “It doesn’t matter what they say. It matters what they do.” Okay, so what are they doing? Abbas Araghchi, Iran’s chief negotiator, has provided the answer. “No facility will be closed; enrichment will continue, and qualitative nuclear research will be expanded,” he said. “All research into a new generation of centrifuges will continue.” Iran also is sending warships into the Atlantic Ocean for the first time in history — a not-so-subtle message, perhaps?

The Geneva agreement does slow Iran’s timeline for the development of nuclear weapons — by a month. Yes, that’s right: If Iran’s rulers faithfully comply with every commitment they have so far made, at the end of this six-month period, they will be about three months — instead of two months — away from breakout capacity. In exchange, the United States and other “world powers” have given the revolutionary regime, long the world’s leading sponsor of terrorism, additional time — perhaps as much as a year — to continue developing nuclear warheads, triggers and ballistic missiles. Plus there is sanctions relief sufficient to remove the threat of an impending Iranian economic crisis. Iran’s economy already is recovering.

If such “doing,” in addition to “saying,” does not justify Rouhani’s claim of a “surrender” to Iran, what would? Perhaps this: The same day Rouhani was using social media to announce Iran’s defeat of the West, Reuters was publishing photos of Iran’s foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, laying a wreath at the Beirut grave of Imad Mughniyeh. History has cheated Mughniyeh of the infamy he deserves. No self-proclaimed jihadist other than Osama bin Laden has murdered more Americans than he. A commander of Hezbollah, Iran’s Lebanon-based terrorist militia, Mughniyeh was the mastermind behind the attacks on the U.S. embassy (63 people murdered) and Marine barracks (241 killed) in Beirut in 1983, as well as the truck bombing of a building housing French paratroopers (58 killed). He was also indicted for the 1985 hijacking of TWA Flight 847, during which U.S. Navy diver Robert Stetham was murdered. Kidnapping was another of Mughniyeh’s specialties. William Buckley, the CIA station chief in Beirut, was abducted in 1984. For 15 months, he was brutally tortured before finally being murdered.

Through these and many other atrocities, according to former deputy secretary of state Richard Armitage, Hezbollah incurred a “blood debt” to America. But neither Republican nor Democratic administrations have ever made a serious effort to collect. On February 12, 2008, Mughniyeh was assassinated. Two days later, The Washington Institute’s Matthew Levitt and David Schencker wrote a paper describing him as a “brilliant military tactician” who served as Hezbollah’s “primary liaison to Iran’s security and intelligence services.” Born in southern Lebanon in 1962, Mughniyeh “became a sniper in Yasser Arafat’s forces” at the age of 14. His “first major operation outside Lebanon was the March 1992 bombing of the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires that killed 29 people. Two years later, he directed the bombing of the Asociacion Mutual Israelita Argentina (AMIA) in the same city, killing 85. Although Hezbollah carried out the attack, Argentinian court documents allege that Mughniyeh’s impetus came from a fatwa issued by Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei.

Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, Iran’s loyal client, provided Mughniyeh with safe harbor — until it wasn’t safe. On February 12, 2008, in a fashionable Damascus neighborhood, Mughniyeh attended a reception marking the 29th anniversary of the Iranian Revolution. He left the party around 10:30 p.m. and walked to his car. He didn’t notice that the headrest on the driver’s seat had been replaced. The new one contained an explosive. It detonated, killing him and no one else. Nearby buildings suffered only minor damage. It was a very professional hit. There is no proof that Israel was responsible. The key point is this: Zarif’s homage to Mughniyeh, combined with Araghchi’s boast that Iran’s nuclear activities are continuing, combined with Rouhani’s announcement that America and other world powers have “surrendered,” speaks volumes. It says that for the Iranian side, “Negotiations do not require concessions. Negotiations are a tool for us to receive concessions.” Actually, Iranian parliamentarian Ali Motahari said exactly that.

Many of the most influential members of “the foreign-policy community” are convinced that such rhetoric is without significance — that it’s just for “domestic consumption.” Within Iran, they believe, a great debate is taking place between “hardliners” and “moderates.” They see Rouhani as the latter. They don’t grasp that the Supreme Leader is called the Supreme Leader for a reason. During the popular upheaval that followed Iran’s fraudulent elections in 2009, tens of thousands protested in the streets, yelling “Death to the dictator!” They knew what they were talking about — even if many in the West did not. And so, despite abundant evidence to the contrary, the dominant narrative has become that the negotiations now underway offer “a once-in-a-generation opportunity to keep Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.” Those of us who dissent from that view are denounced as “warmongers.”

Or, as news analyst-cum-humorist Jon Stewart told his millions of fans last week, “for the first time in decades” the U.S. is on the verge of reestablishing “diplomatic relations with Iran and a means of ensuring that they would not have a nuclear weapon. Just so long as nobody comes in and figuratively throws eggs at the entire thing.” Stewart went on to accuse Democrats and Republicans in Congress — at least 59 senators and a clear majority in the House — of doing exactly that by attempting to pass a bill that would put Iran’s rulers on notice that tough new sanctions will be imposed if they fail to make significant concessions over the next six months — if they refuse to dismantle their nuclear-weapons programs in exchange for the sanctions relief the U.S. has already begun providing.

At this critical juncture, you might expect Iran’s rulers to do all they can to make this spin more credible, to at least give American leaders a face-saving way to “surrender.” Apparently, they see no need. They figure they can tell the truth about American retreat and do pretty much as they please on the nuclear portfolio. They are confident that American and other Western diplomats, politicians, and pundits will continue to place their faith in the ability of international inspectors to stop a regime that has spent decades engaging in nuclear mendacity and the slaughter of Americans. No compelling evidence contradicts their thesis.

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CIJR wishes all its friends and supporters Shabbat Shalom!

Stop Jerking Canada Around: Charles Krauthammer, Washington Post, Jan. 23, 2014 —Fixated as we Americans are on Canada’s three most attention-getting exports — polar vortexes, Alberta clippers and the antics of Toronto’s addled mayor — we’ve somewhat overlooked a major feature of Canada’s current relations with the United States: extreme annoyance.

The Internal Iranian Struggle in the Aftermath of the Geneva Nuclear Agreement: Lt. Col. (ret.) Michael Segall, Jerusalem Center For Public Affairs, Jan. 14, 2014 — he Geneva nuclear agreement between Iran and the P5+1 has become a focus of growing domestic controversy in Iran between the conservatives and Revolutionary Guard on one side, and President Hassan Rouhani, the nuclear negotiating team, and those considered the reformist camp on the other

French Society Views Jews through the Prism of Shoah: Manfred Gerstenfeld, Arutz Sheva, Jan. 23, 2014 —The position of the Jews in a country is largely determined by how its general population views them.

Big Sell at Sotheby’s for Painting of Boy at the Center of Notorious Historical Case: Maya Benton, Tablet, Dec. 18, 2013 —

Fifty years ago, in 1962, a Catholic woman in Liverpool with a penchant for antiquing went on a hunt for a handsome 60th birthday gift for her husband.