We welcome your comments to this and any other CIJR publication. Please address your response to: Rob Coles, Publications Chairman, Canadian Institute for Jewish Research, PO Box 175, Station H, Montreal QC H3G 2K7 – Tel: (514) 486-5544 – Fax:(514) 486-8284; E-mail: rob@isranet.wpsitie.com
Amb. Alan Baker’s Letter to Secretary John Kerry: Nov. 8, 2013
No Deal Is Better Than a Bad Deal: William Kristol, Gary Bauer, Noah Pollak, Michael Goldfarb, Emergency Committee for Israel, Nov. 9, 2013 — Today the Emergency Committee for Israel released the following statement on the reported nuclear deal in Geneva.
Kerry: Stay Home: Prof. Efraim Inbar, Besa Center, Nov. 10, 2013— US Secretary of State John Kerry warned of a return to Palestinian violence and Israel’s isolation if the faltering peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians ultimately fail.
Lieutenant MacCohen’s Memorial: John Kalbfleisch, Montreal Gazette, Nov. 2, 2013— He was but one of 3,042 Canadian soldiers who died in the Second Battle of Passchendaele in 1917, just one of the 60,661 our nation lost in First World War. [On] Remembrance Day… his sacrifice and all the others should not be forgotten.
Vive La France on Iran: Editorial, Wall Street Journal, Nov. 10, 2013
The U.S. Saudi Royal Rumble: Simon Henderson, Foreign Policy, Nov. 1, 2013
No Illusions Concerning the Obama Administration: Isi Leibler, Jerusalem Post, Nov. 11, 2013
Obama Accused of “Crimes Against Humanity” at International Criminal Court: Raymond Ibrahim, Frontpage Magazine, Nov. 8, 2013
Kerry’s Words Not Enough to Recast U.S. Egypt Ties: Wael Nawara, Al-Monitor, Nov. 7, 2013
AMB. ALAN BAKER’S LETTER TO SECRETARY JOHN KERRY
Amb. Alan Baker
Nov. 8, 2013
The Hon. James Kerry, U.S. Secretary of State, November 8, 2013,
After listening to you declare repeatedly over the past weeks that “Israel’s settlements are illegitimate”, I respectfully wish to state, unequivocally, that you are mistaken and ill advised, both in law and in fact. Pursuant to the “Oslo Accords”, and specifically the Israel-Palestinian Interim Agreement (1995), the “issue of settlements” is one of subjects to be negotiated in the permanent status negotiations. President Bill Clinton on behalf of the US, is signatory as witness to that agreement, together with the leaders of the EU, Russia, Egypt, Jordan and Norway. Your statements serve to not only to prejudge this negotiating issue, but also to undermine the integrity of that agreement, as well as the very negotiations that you so enthusiastically advocate. Your determination that Israel’s settlements are illegitimate cannot be legally substantiated. The oft-quoted prohibition on transferring population into occupied territory (Art. 49 of the 4th Geneva Convention) was, according to the International Committee Red Cross’s own official commentary of that convention, drafted in 1949 to prevent the forced, mass transfer of populations carried out by the Nazis in the Second World War. It was never intended to apply to Israel’s settlement activity. Attempts by the international community to attribute this article to Israel emanate from clear partisan motives, with which you, and the US are now identifying.
The formal applicability of that convention to the disputed territories cannot be claimed since they were not occupied from a prior, legitimate sovereign power. The territories cannot be defined as “Palestinian territories” or, as you yourself frequently state, as “Palestine”. No such entity exists, and the whole purpose of the permanent status negotiation is to determine, by agreement, the status of the territory, to which Israel has a legitimate claim, backed by international legal and historic rights. How can you presume to undermine this negotiation?
There is no requirement in any of the signed agreements between Israel and the Palestinians that Israel cease, or freeze settlement activity. The opposite is in fact the case. The above-noted 1995 interim agreement enables each party to plan, zone and build in the areas under its respective control.
Israel’s settlement policy neither prejudices the outcome of the negotiations nor does it involve displacement of local Palestinian residents from their private property. Israel is indeed duly committed to negotiate the issue of settlements, and thus there is no room for any predetermination by you intended to prejudge the outcome of that negotiation.
By your repeating this ill-advised determination that Israel’s settlements are illegitimate, and by your threatening Israel with a “third Palestinian intifada” and international isolation and delegitimization, you are in fact buying into, and even fueling the Palestinian propaganda narrative, and exerting unfair pressure on Israel. This is equally the case with your insistence on a false and unrealistic time limit to the negotiation.
As such you are taking sides, thereby prejudicing your own personal credibility, as well as that of the US.
With a view to restoring your own and the US’s credibility, and to come with clean hands to the negotiation, you are respectfully requested to publicly and formally retract your determination as to the illegitimate nature of Israel’s settlements and to cease your pressure on Israel.
NO DEAL IS BETTER THAN A BAD DEAL
William Kristol, Gary Bauer, Noah Pollak, Michael Goldfarb
Emergency Committee for Israel, Nov. 9, 2013
Today [Nov. 9] the Emergency Committee for Israel released the following statement on the reported nuclear deal in Geneva:
This looks to be a very bad deal. The Iranian regime would obtain major sanctions relief in exchange for token and superficial concessions that neither freeze nor set back its nuclear weapons program. The deal would vitiate nearly a decade of UN Security Council resolutions demanding the full cessation of enrichment by Iran. The deal would allow Iran to continue enrichment, to continue construction of its plutonium reactor, and to continue building centrifuges that will shorten the regime's breakout time to becoming a nuclear weapons state. Furthermore, such an interim deal would invite Iran to drag out talks while enrichment proceeds, which is something President Rouhani has boasted of doing in the past.
We oppose such a deal, which would make war and nuclear proliferation in the Middle East more likely and would undermine U.S. security by making the world a more dangerous place. Friends and enemies alike would now be convinced that the administration’s past guarantees were empty promises, its past red lines written in disappearing ink. If the administration announces such a deal, Congress should take all appropriate measures to oppose it and ratchet up sanctions. And Congress should also make it clear that the United States will stand with our ally, Israel, if she judges it necessary to act to prevent the Iranian regime from acquiring nuclear weapons.
KERRY: STAY HOME
Prof. Efraim Inbar
Besa Center, Nov. 10, 2013
US Secretary of State John Kerry warned of a return to Palestinian violence and Israel’s isolation if the faltering peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians ultimately fail. This is a typical leftist Pavlovian response to the impasse in Israeli-Palestinian negotiations that is now over a decade old. Such thinking primarily reflects the frustration that the optimistic evaluations that the conflict can be ended quickly remain unfulfilled. Unfortunately, Kerry’s remarks tell the Palestinians to hold on to their maximalist positions. This reflects an inability to grasp the intricacies of protracted intractable ethnic conflict and a misguided American policy.
There is definitely a possibility that the Palestinians, in particular the radical forces, will recur to violence. In reality these forces try to kill Israelis all the time, and a dearth of terrorist attacks in recent years can only be attributed to the work of the Israeli security forces. Yet the likelihood of massive organized violence by the Palestinian Authority (PA) is small. Rocking the boat endangers too many vested interests of the Palestinian ruling class. The PA leadership has probably registered the heavy price paid by the Palestinians during their terrorist campaign at the beginning of the twenty-first century, as a result of Israeli countermeasures.
Moreover, even if the Palestinians miscalculate once again and go for a “third Intifada,” Israel’s capability to contain terrorism and other modes of civilian struggle is high. The Israeli army can be trusted to meet all challenges successfully. Most important, a large majority of Israelis believe that the Palestinian demands, such as Jerusalem and the “Right of Return,” are the real obstacles to peace. This large consensus about Palestinian intransigence allows for significant social mobilization and resilience in protracted conflict. Israelis will go once more to war with a feeling of “Ein Breira” (no choice) and are likely to win that engagement as well.
Large parts of the hypocritical world may indeed see Israel as the culprit for the failure of the negotiations and for a new round of Israeli-Palestinian violence. But such negative attitudes do not necessarily lead to international isolation. Public statements and the voting record of states at the UN – an ineffective, morally bankrupt organization – are not indicative of the true nature of interstate relations.
National interests dictate state actions, and in most cases bilateral relations with Israel are hardly affected by the ups and downs in the peace talks with the Palestinians. For example, the rising powers India and China have expanded their bilateral ties with Jerusalem because it is in their interest to engage a successful state such as Israel. Nowadays, when the Iranian threat dominates the region, Arab Sunni states such as Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia, who are exasperated with American behavior, are in the same strategic boat as Israel. Generally, the Middle East – especially today, while in the throes of a colossal political, social, and economic crisis – is hardly paying attention to the Palestinian issue. In the Caucasus and in Central Asia, Muslim Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan are friendly to Israel.
Moreover, isolation of Israel is unlikely because of the large existing reservoirs of support for Israel in many quarters. Canada and Australia are ruled by governments most responsive to Israeli concerns. Even in Western Europe, concerns about Muslim immigration and foreign aid place the Palestinians in a problematic spot. Above all, two-thirds of Americans have consistently favored Israel over the past two decades, which translates into Congressional support. The US is Israel’s most important ally and even the Obama administration has maintained the strong support and cooperation in the military sphere.
But the prism of the Obama administration on the Middle East and global affairs is fundamentally flawed. An American foreign policy that supports the Muslim Brotherhood, estranges its traditional Arab allies such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia, allows Iran to get closer to the bomb, sees in Turkey’s Erdoğan a great friend of the West, and insists that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict can be ended in nine months is dangerous and does more damage that good. Similar complaints about poor US political judgment are abundantly voiced by America’s friends in Asian and Eastern European capitals.
It is the enemies of the US who rejoice in President Barack Obama’s foreign policy, and who relish in America’s perceived decline in world affairs. Ironically, at this historic juncture, even an isolationist America would be a better alternative for those that want the good guys to win. Therefore, dear President Obama, please do us a favor: save some money and keep Kerry at home.
LIEUTENANT MACCOHEN’S MEMORIAL
John Kalbfleisch
Montreal Gazette, Nov. 2, 2013
He was but one of 3,042 Canadian soldiers who died in the Second Battle of Passchendaele in 1917, just one of the 60,661 our nation lost in First World War. As Remembrance Day approaches, his sacrifice and all the others should not be forgotten. His name was Myer Tutzer Cohen, a lieutenant with the Montrealbased Black Watch, then known as the Royal Highlanders of Canada. The regiment is strongly identified with various links to Scotland and the Presbyterian faith, but from all accounts Cohen, a Jew, fitted in admirably.
He was just 20 years old when, in 1915, he attested for overseas service. He listed his occupation as "gentleman" and apparently didn't balk at a line asking for his "Christian names." His application to his duties and his sunny disposition when posted overseas with the regiment's 42nd Battalion made him popular with his comrades. But he seems to have had one conspicuous failing: the sloppy way he wore the kilt.
This has given rise to a story with several versions differing in detail but not substance. In the fullest version, the brigade commander, Brigadier Archibald Macdonell, figures prominently. "I can never let you call yourself MacCohen until you learn to wear your kilt properly," Macdonell said, perhaps with as much amusement as chagrin.
Then, on the night of Sept. 29, 1917, Cohen led a patrol into no man's land near Méricourt, in northern France. They surprised a party of Germans, killing three and capturing three more. Later, they captured another three Germans. In addition to the prisoners, Cohen brought back all his men without suffering a casualty.
For this he received the Military Cross. "Well done, old Cohen," signalled Macdonell, by then a major- general. "I herewith and hereby confer on him the brevet rank of 'Mac' to be used whenever and wherever he likes, but he must always be MacCohen in the kilt. I am generally pleased with and proud of MacCohen, and not for the first time." A month later, the Black Watch was part of the Canadian Corp's two-week assault on Passchendaele, about 40 kilometres north in Belgium. Progress through the mud was slow, and made even more difficult by the tenacious German defence of the shattered Graf House, beside a small creek.
During the night of Nov. 2-3, a party led by Lt. Cohen was sent to probe toward the house. When dawn broke he was dead. "His body … was found on the highest point of the ruins of the Graf House," the 42nd Battalion's war diary records. "He had been shot in a number of places and had apparently fallen in attempting to organize the remnants of his party for the defence of the position he had captured."
On Nov. 13, 1921, the Black Watch paraded to the Church of St. Andrew and St. Paul, then on Dorchester St. where the Fairmount Queen Elizabeth Hotel now stands. Then, as now, the "A&P" was the regimental church of the Black Watch. That Sunday, Sir Arthur Currie, former commander of the Canadian Corps, unveiled a stained-glass window in memory of the officers and men of the 42nd Battalion who had died in the Great War. The window is dominated by a figure of Christ flanked on one side by smaller images of David holding the head of Goliath and of a medieval crusader in armour and, on the other, of St. Andrew of Scotland and of a Black Watch private in full First World War battle array.
Just above David's right shoulder can be seen a small, six-pointed Star of David. "It was realized," writes Colonel Paul Hutchison in his history of the regiment, "that, without some special symbol, a Christian memorial could hardly be considered as perpetuating the memory of such a member of the Jewish faith as the gallant young Lieutenant Cohen." The congregation moved to the edifice it now occupies on Sherbrooke St. in 1932, and the memorial window moved with it. In 1962, the Scottish-born Elizabeth the Queen Mother, the regiment's colonel in chief, was visiting the church and was especially interested in the Black Watch window. When she was told the story behind its Star of David, her eyes were seen to mist over.
On Topic
Vive La France on Iran: Editorial, Wall Street Journal, Nov. 10, 2013— We never thought we'd say this, but thank heaven for French foreign-policy exceptionalism. At least for the time being, François Hollande's Socialist government has saved the West from a deal that would all but guarantee that Iran becomes a nuclear power.
Obama Accused of “Crimes Against Humanity” at International Criminal Court: Raymond Ibrahim, Frontpage Magazine, Nov. 8, 2013— According to Egyptian newspaper El Watan, a group of Egyptian lawyers has submitted a complaint charging U.S. president Barrack Hussein Obama with crimes against humanity at the International Criminal Court.
No Illusions Concerning the Obama Administration: Isi Leibler, Jerusalem Post, Nov. 11, 2013— Israel is heading for what could be its most severe confrontation with the United States, despite reassuring words from the Obama administration to the contrary.
Kerry’s Words Not Enough to Recast U.S. Egypt Ties: Wael Nawara, Al-Monitor, Nov. 7, 2013 — Two days before ousted President Mohammed Morsi’s trial, US Secretary of State John Kerry paid a visit to Egypt in what seemed an attempt to prevent further deterioration in the ties between the two former allies.
The U.S. Saudi Royal Rumble: Simon Henderson, Foreign Policy, Nov. 1, 2013— What is happening to the U.S. relationship with Saudi Arabia? Even after loud complaints from top Saudi officials that the longtime alliance was on the rocks, the response of official Washington, outside the punditocracy, was an almost audible yawn.
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