Daniel Pipes, a new kind of Israel-basher

[RPankn]

I've been noticing a similar sentiment among the rightwing in the US, although in a different context -- a frustration and growing disillusion with neocon policies, and a certain degree of animus toward Bush. Some are even expressing doubt of, and questioning, the "official" version of Sept. 11th. Where that's going, I'm not sure. But I think we're being prepped for a change of faces.

By Bradley Burston

Friday, 31 March, End of the Spin Cycle

I used to be an American Jew. And then I read Daniel Pipes.

"As Israelis go to the polls," Dr. Pipes wrote this week in an article that originally appeared in the New York Sun, "not one of the leading parties offers the option of winning the war against the Palestinian Arabs."

Dr. Pipes goes on to admit "a certain frustration" with the apparent unwillingness of Israelis to go out there and do the right thing: bring the Arabs to heel, by use of overwhelming force.

The article, entitled "Israel Shuns Victory," sets out a kind of self-test for us, listing nine different options by which Israelis from far left to far right, and moderates in between, all "manage the conflict without resolving it," "ignore the need to defeat Palestinian rejectionism." and "seek to finesse war rather than win it."

This is not the first time Dr. Pipes has let Israelis have it for letting him down. In a 2003 speech to college students, cited on his Website www.DanielPipes.org, he suggested that Arabs will not truly accept Israel's existence until Israel "punishes violence so hard that its enemies will eventually feel so deep a sense of futility that they will despair of further conflict."

Where did we go wrong? "Wars are won, the historical record shows, when one side feels compelled to give up on its goals," Dr. Pipes writes, indicating that Israel will win only when Arabs are forced to give up their goal of eliminating a Jewish state.

He notes, by way of inference, that the wars in 1948-49, 1956, 1967, 1973, and 1982 failed to persuade them. I guess we didn't fight hard enough, or well enough.

I suppose if I were living in, say, Philadelphia, Dr. Pipes' frustration, disappointment, and prescription for setting things right, might make perfect sense.

In fact, a number of our readers who live in North America, some of whom regularly use the word coward to describe Israeli moderates, have any number of suggestions for us as well, up to and including the use of weapons of mass destruction on Palestinians, apparently in an effort to change their minds about us.

That said, I have a couple of questions. The first concerns people like Mahmoud Masharka, 24, of Hebron. Masharka was apparently disguised as an Orthodox Jew when he set out hitchhiking late on Thursday and was picked up by a car in which four Israelis were travelling.

He then detonated the bomb belt he was wearing, incinerating the car and killing everyone inside.

Does Dr. Pipes really believe that people who crave a violent, Jew-murdering death are really going to accept Israel if only enough military force is applied?

Is Dr. Pipes telling us that people who celebrate the sacrament of suicide are going to think differently of us if we send in more tanks, bigger bombs, more F-16s, more Apaches, more infantry brigades, more commandos, demolish more homes, demolish more olive trees, demolish what little is left of the Palestinian Authority?

I understand that we have disappointed the analyst with the Harvard pedigree. But if he'll allow me one more question:

Since when did we become mercenaries for Daniel Pipes?

After reading Dr. Pipes, I'm not sure I can be an American Jew anymore. I guess, at long last, I've become an Israeli. Unlike Dr. Pipes, I can't bring myself to win the war against the Palestinians. At least not the way Dr. Pipes would have me do so. I guess the guy's right. My friends in my IDF battalion couldn't do it either.

Of course, there might be another explanation. One that might fit a guy who lives 6,000 miles away and lets us know we don't have the Right Stuff to show these Arabs what for.

Daniel Pipes is a new kind of Israel-basher. He is an equal-opportunity hater of Israelis. None of us is good enough for him. We lack the will to fight like the man he quotes as a role model for us, Douglas MacArthur. From unilateralism to transfer, nothing we come up with is good enough for him.

Try as we might, we just can't seem to win his war for him.

I guess he'll just have to do it by himself.


www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=700807&contrassID=2

[Moses]

Pipes calls war a success

By Bill Steigerwald
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Saturday, April 1, 2006

It's no surprise Middle East scholar Daniel Pipes has made so many political friends and enemies. A conservative columnist, counter-terrorism analyst and author or co-author of 18 books, he's a staunch supporter of Israel and a harsh critic of radical Islam.

Praised as an "authoritative commentator on the Middle East" by his allies at the Wall Street Journal, he's been branded "an anti-Islamist extremist" by some Arab-American groups. He's also the founder of the Middle East Forum (www.meforum.org), which, among other things, has a Web site called Campus Watch that monitors how Middle East studies are taught at U.S. colleges.

Pipes will be a keynote speaker Thursday night at Grove City College's star-studded conference on the prospects of spreading democracy in the Arab world, "Mr. Jefferson Goes to the Middle East," [?!!!] April 5-6 (Info: 724-458-3302). I talked to Pipes by phone Tuesday from Sydney, Australia.

Q: Were you in favor of going to war in Iraq, and how do you think it's progressing or regressing?



A: I was in favor. I continue to be in favor of the campaign to eliminate the rule of Saddam Hussein, with all the dangers to the Iraqis, to the region and to ourselves. From April 2003 on, I have argued that the U.S. government and its allies should have lower expectations than actually is the case. That we should treat the Iraqis like adults; that we should understand that they are going to run their own future, their own destiny, not us; that our role there is at best advisory, and that we should be patient. So lower expectations and a longer time horizon.

Q: Does that mean a significant change in what we are doing now, in terms of policy. Should we announce withdrawals?

A: The number of troops is not my issue. It's the placement and role of the troops. For three years now I have been protesting the use of American troops to mediate between tribes, help rebuild electricity grids, oversee school construction, which seems to me to be a wrong use of our forces, of our money. The Iraqis should be in charge of that. We should keep the troops there, in the desert, looking after the international boundaries, making sure there are no atrocities, making sure oil and gas goes out, otherwise leaving Iraq to the Iraqis.

Q: How do you define your politics?

A: Conservative.

Q: You're not one of those neocons who allegedly talked President Bush into going to war in the Middle East?

A: I have been called a neoconservative. I don't exactly know how a neoconservative differs from a conservative.

Q: Do you generally agree with President Bush's Middle East policy -- its goals and its methods?

A: I agree with the goals much more than the methods. I just gave an example of Iraq, where I believe the goal of getting rid of Saddam Hussein and trying to have a free and prosperous Iraq are worthy goals. I criticize the implementation. The same goes with democracy. I think democracy is a great goal for the region. I criticize the implementation; I think it's too fast, too American, too get-it-done yesterday.

Q: Is there anything major that the Bush administration should do now to make things go smoother?

A: We did something good in getting rid of the Taliban and getting rid of Saddam Hussein. That is really the extent of our role, to get rid of the hideous totalitarian regimes.

Let me add that I see these issues as basically sidelines. We are engaged in a war, a profound war and long-term war, in which Afghanistan and Iraq are sideshows. The real issue is the war that radical Islam, a global phenomenon, has declared on us and that has already been underway for many years, and we're still at the beginning of it. That's the really major issue.

Q: Recently I talked to Peter Galbraith and Ivan Eland, foreign policy experts who both favor a three-part partition of Iraq as a way to forestall or make a civil war in Iraq go away. Any thoughts on that?

A: Well, the neighborhood is unanimously against it and Iraqis are fearful of it, so I don't think there is much of a chance.

Q: What should U.S. policy be in the Middle East?

A: Well, I endorse the president's vision of a Middle East that is no longer under the control of tyrants, as it is today, or despots -- unelected officials, at best. But it is a long-term project that's going to take decades, not months, and has to be approached with that in mind.

Secondly, if we go too fast, as is the case, we bring our most fervent enemies to power, as we've seen most dramatically in the Palestinian territories, where a terrorist organization (Hamas) won a majority of Palestinian support. One can see that also in Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Egypt, Algeria.

We have to be very cautious about pushing a process before the people of the area are really quite ready for it -- until they've gone beyond what I call the "totalitarian temptation," so that they have a more balanced, moderate view of the world than they do at this time.

Q: Do they have a lot of catching up to do?

A: To give an imperfect analogy: Germany went through a hideous period between 1933 and 1945. The condition of the Muslim world is not that bad but it's comparable. It's going through a particularly bad time. ... Our goal is to help the Muslim world move beyond this war through educational programs and other means. Fundamentally, we're at war with a substantial minority of the Muslim world and we are at war with them because they have declared war on us and we have to answer that. [This guy got a history degree from Harvard?!]

Q: What is the biggest lesson you have learned from the Iraq war?

A: The ingratitude of the Iraqis for the extraordinary favor we gave them -- to release them from the bondage of Saddam Hussein's tyranny. They have rapidly interpreted it as something they did and that we were incidental to it. They've more or less written us out of the picture. [Such is the ilk of those running US foreign policy now]

Q: How will we know when the occupation or the invasion of Iraq was a success or a failure?

A: Oh, it was a success. We got rid of Saddam Hussein. Beyond that is icing. [So you parents, children and siblings of those killed or injured in this war-- this is what your loved ones suffered and died for and the rest who die-- icing]

Bill Steigerwald can be reached at [phone] or [e-mail].

[Moses]

Here we have the integration of Israeli interests with those of the US-- and a pipesian redefinition of the Israeli invasion and occupation of Arab lands into a defense against an "evil empire".



Interesting Times: Converging on containment
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Saul Singer, THE JERUSALEM POST Mar. 30, 2006
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What a mess. This, I admit, is my gut reaction to the long list of parties produced by this election, none of which topped 30 Knesset seats. Just before Ariel Sharon's illness less than three months ago, Israelis seemed to want stability and continuity and were ready to hand him 40 seats. What happened?

What the public seems to be saying is that it favors Ehud Olmert's path over the alternatives, but is telling him: "We don't completely trust you, so not too fast."

The most straightforward explanation of Kadima's loss of one-quarter of its expected strength is that Olmert pledged to forge ahead with a large unilateral withdrawal, while Sharon had taken an opposite tone: "no plans" for further withdrawals

Olmert's shifting of his withdrawal plan into high gear after the Hamas election victory had an internal logic in that it reenforced the "no partner" situation that is disengagement's foundation. But Olmert's seeming enthusiasm for withdrawal, coupled with his anti-settler iron fist at Amona, must have been somewhat rattling to voters, compared to Sharon's more ambiguous approach.

Yet it cannot be argued that even Olmert's rush to "converge" overly disturbed the public. If it had, the parties that fought to block Olmert's plan, Likud and National Union-NRP, would have received much more than 11 and 9 seats, respectively. Even if you throw in Avigdor Lieberman's Israel Beiteinu, which did not make its position against disengagement the centerpeice of its campaign, the total is 32 seats. By contrast, the most pro-withdrawal Jewish parties - Kadima, Labor, and Meretz - received 52 seats.

Accordingly, this election must be regarded as the first to ratify Ariel Sharon's radical new Israeli strategy toward its existential challenge: unilateralism.

On Wednesday in this newspaper, Daniel Pipes argued that as a result of this revolution in Israeli thinking, "not one of the leading parties offered the option of winning the war against the Palestinians. It's a striking and dangerous lacuna."

Pipes rightly noted that wars are won "when one side is forced to give up on its goals" - in the Arab case, destroying Israel. But few Israelis "still worry about the unfinished business of getting the Arabs to accept the permanence of the Jewish state." Instead, Pipes observed, Israelis have chosen various forms of conflict management, of which unilateralism is one.

SOMETHING STRANGE, indeed, has happened. Until Sharon's revolution both Right and Left embraced victory strategies that envisioned a full peace as the end point. The Left pretended that the Arab world had already given up its war goals and was just waiting to put that result on paper. The Right may have thought that peace was only possible in the indefinite future, but saw victory in more Pipesian terms: peace through patience and strength.

Left and Right still hold these views, but the new government will now have a solid Knesset majority for Sharon's third approach, which might also be given a name from another time, place and war: containment.

Containment, the Cold War strategy forged by Harry Truman against the Soviet Union that held until Ronald Reagan, was also not a victory strategy. It ruled out capitulation, but it also did not envision a Soviet collapse. It was classic "conflict management."

Reagan brought a different approach. He spoke about consigning the Soviets to "the ashheap of history" and branded them the "evil empire." Nine years after his election in 1980, the Berlin Wall fell.

We here seem to have reversed the sequence; after pursuing victory for decades, we have reverted to containment. My hope, however, is that our current containment phase will lay the groundwork for a more realistic victory strategy in the not too distant future.

UNLIKE REAGAN'S victory strategy, Israel's either assumed that victory had already been achieved, or saw the Arab world as an immutable enemy against which Jabotinsky's "iron wall" must be built. No one seemed to advocate, let alone envision, the Arab transformation that a more classic victory could produce, such as occurred in Germany and Japan.

The Left's "assumed victory" strategy, as embodied in Oslo, proved disastrous; containment is, in comparison, a step in the right direction. But the Right also does not generally think of victory in Reaganesqe, transformative terms.

The fact that even the Right has trouble conceiving of a total defeat of the Arab world is understandable. Though militarily and economically strong in regional terms, we are not a superpower of American proportions, and the Arab world we face can seem demographically and diplomatically overwhelming.

The world, however, is not the same as it was before September 11, 2001. The Islamist attempt to envelope it in jihad revives, on the one hand, the existential threat against Israel. But on the other it creates a binary situation more like the US versus the Soviet Union, in which one side will ultimately collapse, defeated.

Writing about the relative apathy and low turnout in these elections, Yossi Klein Halevi noted that "these are Israel's saddest elections, the first with barely a mention of peace." In past elections, both sides would promise peace; now, as befits the new containment strategy, no one bothers.

The truth, however, is that neither a containment strategy nor a more realistic victory strategy makes sense outside the context of the West's global war to defeat the Islamist jihad. If America is losing its war, our containment won't work; if America is winning, containment is not ambitious enough.

If there is a sadness to this election, it is because of the sense of impotence that Israel's new strategy brings when stripped of its global context. It is uncomfortable to admit that we are part of a war that is wider than our own, and that our fate is not entirely in our hands; unilateralism may be an attempt to regain a sense of autonomy.

Our challenge now is to work to integrate our private containment approach with a global victory strategy that provides a realistic basis for hope and peace.

[e-mail]
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This article can also be read at www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1143498769285&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull


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Copyright 1995-2006 The Jerusalem Post - www.jpost.com/

[Moses]

More Israeli viewpoints-- this one in service of Sharon's "middle way" solution. This actually appears in a Pipes-connected (Horowitz) Israeli front org site, "Frontpagemagazine" which adopted a name to sound like "Forward"' which used to be a mainstream Jewish publication, until the Likudniks purged it, nazi-style.


Israel's End of Ideology
By Sol Stern
FrontPageMagazine.com | March 31, 2006
According to the conventional journalistic wisdom, this week’s election in Israel was so dull that it caused the lowest voter turnout – 63 percent – in the nation’s history. Dull? Perhaps – although one wonders how dull it could have been for Israelis to enter the voting booths and be presented with a choice of 31 political flavors, including three Arab parties, four Orthodox Jewish parties, a Russian Party, a Green Party of environmentalists) a Green Leaf Party (pro-marijuana) and a Pensioners Party led by a 78 year old ex-head of Mossad (Israel’s CIA) who captured Adolph Eichmann, was Jonathan Pollard’s spymaster, and more recently, as a private citizen, made millions of dollars doing business in Castro’s Cuba.
 
But whatever else it was or wasn’t, the election was definitely not inconsequential. Indeed, it is likely to go down as a historic turning point in Israel’s politics. For this was the election campaign that put an end to the intra-Zionist ideological wars that began in the 1920s and continued to haunt the new state of Israel’s political system for at least another half-century. The ghosts of Jabotinsky and Ben Gurion, of Revisionist Zionism versus Labor Zionism, have finally been exorcized. And, notwithstanding the greatness of these towering historical figures, this is a good thing for Israel.
 
Just consider the two top leaders of the victorious Kadima Party: Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni. Both came up through the ranks of Likud and had parents who were important figures in the Irgun Zvai Leumi, the pre-state military arm of Jabotinsky’s Revisionist movement. Olmert and Livni were nurtured almost from the cradle in what has been called the Irgun’s “fighting family” and in an ideologically homogeneous and maximalist Zionism. Yet in the past year both have made startling statements that would seem to be out and out heresies to the traditional Revisionist perspective. Olmert shocked a liberal American audience by conceding that Israelis are “tired of winning wars,” that they much preferred peace – even if that peace came without the complete Land of Israel. Livni has spoken of the need for Israel to try to win over international opinion by moderating some of its policies towards the Palestinians. Both leaders are for the creation of a Palestinian state on territory that their ideological forbearers considered the historic and eternal heartland of Eretz Israel.
 
The Labor Party, likely to be Kadima’s junior partner in the next government, is now also in retreat from its own historic Zionist roots. Labor’s new leader, the populist Amir Peretz, seems to be more inspired by the bread and butter concerns of a European trade union boss than by David Ben Gurion’s pioneering Zionism and the old labor movement’s vision of settling the land. Even the diminished Likud party (finishing out of the money in fifth place) seems to have walked away from its ideological and historic roots. Likud’s leader Bibi Netanyahu, also a scion of a distinguished Revisionist family, had previously opposed Olmert’s and Ariel Sharon’s unilateral disengagement from the Gaza strip, but only on tactical grounds (some would say opportunistic political grounds) and not because of principled opposition to ceding any part of historic Eretz Israel. Uzi Landau, the only prominent Likud leader who still supports the priority of defending the whole land of Israel, was placed 14th on the party’s Knesset list. But because Likud was thoroughly trounced in these elections, winning only 11 seats, Mr. Landau won’t even be in the next Knesset.
 
Admittedly, there are supporters of Israel who see these developments, this casting off of historical Zionist baggage, as an unmitigated catastrophe, a weakening of Israel’s will that leads inevitably to further appeasement of Palestinian terror. The astute Middle East analyst Daniel Pipes thus bemoans the fact that in this election none of Israel’s political parties stood for a strategy of “winning the war against the Palestinians.” Citing General Douglas MacArthur’s classic dictum that “there’s no substitute for victory,” Pipes says all the current Israeli substitutes, including Sharon and Olmert’s unilateralism, merely encourage Palestinian aggression.
 
The problem with MacArthur’s insight is that this is the Middle East, not the Pacific theater during World War II. Without having to deal with outside restraints, MacArthur could bring Japan to its knees and remake Japanese society. But Israel, because of the realities of big power politics in the postwar era, has been denied total victory in each of its wars against the Arabs. Even when attacked, it has never been allowed to occupy an Arab capital. Thus, unlike MacArthur’s “total victory” model for ending a war, the Arabs never had to sue for peace.
 
So it’s not clear what kind of “victory” Pipes contemplates against the Palestinians. Is it a new military occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza strip and the destruction of the Palestine government? Can anyone believe that the Bush administration, or any American government, would allow that? It’s also odd that Pipes, a total pessimist about the U.S. military ever being able to pacify Iraq and turn that country into a democracy, somehow believes Israel can fundamentally change Palestinian political culture and behavior through military means.


Actually, Ariel Sharon’s historic accomplishment was that he did find the means of defeating the second Palestinian intifada – not by reconquest or “total victory,” but through a measured combination of the separation wall, the military check points, and by targeted assassinations of the operational leaders of the Palestinian suicide bombing campaign. That “limited” victory, in turn, has given Sharon’s successor the political space to realistically contemplate a total separation from the Palestinians. While that solution wouldn't yet be “peace” or a perfect solution, it might just bring some much needed respite to a brave people who year after year have been on the front lines of the war on terror. Friends of Israel can only wish its new non-ideological government well in this quest.

[Moses]

Zionism is as Fascist and Racist as Ever

a Reply to Uri Avnery By Adib Kawar

Al-Jazeerah, April 1, 2006

Uri Avnery wrote: "This is a turning point. The dream of a Greater Israel, stretching from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River, is dead." But how wrong he is. He is in our humble opinion is also wrong in saying: "The main result of these elections is that the hold of the nationalistic-religious bloc, which has dominated Israel for more than a generation, has been broken."                              

It all depends from what angle Avnery looks at what is left and what is right in the Zionist perspective. Is it in theory or in practice? When Amir Peretz won the Labor Party elections and out seated Shimon Peres, some Arab "rulers" applauded him as the savior of the peace process, and he declared his support to return to the 1967 borders with minor alterations!

But now after achieving the runner up position in this week's elections, and is supposed to be the number two man in the new Olmert cabinet, and finding out that the Zionist public is as rightist as ever and wants to imprison the indigenous Palestinian Arabs in walled open air prisons he endorsed with enthusiasm Ehud Olmert's unilateral disengagement plan and Israel's permanent borders.

He with Olmert shall form the new Zionist cabinet, the policy of which will be to enforce the Sharon/Olmert plan. This means confiscating the whole rich Jordan valley low lands with the eastern slopes, the large blocks of illegal settlements, all Jerusalem (not to forget the Golan Heights in which he wants to extend its colonization and at least double the number of its Zionist colonizers).

Palestinian cities and villages in Zone "A" with an area of about 42% of the West Bank and less than 9% of historic Palestine will be walled in unconnected open air prisons. Palestinian passages to the outside world and between cities, airspace, and water supplies are all controlled by the Zionist state.

All Palestinian water basins shall fall outside the apartheid walls surrounding them from all sides, and could be possibly covered with concrete roofs too!!! who knows, till they suffocate. 

Avnery added: “Netanyahu declared that the elections were going to be a "national referendum" on the withdrawal from the West Bank. Well. It was - and the public overwhelmingly voted "Yes". Here too he is simply mistaken, what better plan could suite both Netanyahu and Avigdor Lieberman’s hopes to achieve than this plan, which is designed to lead in the long run to the fulfillment of, as they hope in the future, “the dream of a Greater Israel, stretching from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River”.   

Avnery may also be mistaken when saying: “…the settlers remain as unpopular as ever. They have lost the decisive battle for public opinion.” What do Zionists want, at least for the time being? They want to confiscate at least 60% of the West Bank. But what for? Of course to settle more illegal settlers (in the annexed Palestinian lands), then how could the settlers remain unpopular if Zionists from the extreme right to the extreme left are working hard to achieve their goals? 

Avnery is also mistaken when saying: “The heartfelt joy about this rout of the Right is tempered by a very dangerous development: the rise of Avigdor Lieberman's "Israel our Home" party, a mutation of the Right with openly fascist tendencies.” But what is Zionism if it is not fascism and racism?