ISRAEL UPDATE

NUDGE ON ARMS FURTHER DIVIDES U.S. AND ISRAEL

The New York Times, 7/4/10
WASHINGTON — It was only one paragraph buried deep in the most plain-vanilla kind of diplomatic document, 40 pages of dry language committing 189 nations to a world free of nuclear weapons. But it has become the latest source of friction between Israel and the United States in a relationship that has lurched from crisis to crisis over the last few months.

At a meeting to review the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty in May, the United States yielded to demands by Arab nations that the final document urge Israel to sign the treaty — a way of spotlighting its historically undeclared nuclear weapons.
Israel believed it had assurances from the Obama administration that it would reject efforts to include such a reference, an Israeli official said, and it saw this as another sign of unreliability by its most important ally. In a recent visit to Washington, Israel’s defense minister, Ehud Barak, raised the issue in meetings with senior American officials.
With Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu scheduled to meet President Obama on Tuesday at the White House, the flap may introduce a discordant note into a meeting that both sides are eager to portray as a chance for Israel and the United States to turn the page after a rocky period.
Other things have changed notably for the better in American-Israeli relations since Mr. Netanyahu called off his last visit to the White House to rush home to deal with the crisis after Israel’s deadly attack on a humanitarian aid flotilla sailing to Gaza in late May. His agreement to ease the land blockade on Gaza, which came at the request of the United States, has helped thaw the chill between the governments, American and Israeli officials said.
Meanwhile, the raft of new sanctions against Iran over its nuclear program, after the passage of the United Nations resolution, has reassured Israelis, who viewed Mr. Obama’s attempts to engage Iran with unease. Mr. Obama signed the American sanctions into law on Thursday.
“The overall tone is more of a feel-good visit than we’ve seen in the past,” said David Makovsky, director of the Project on the Middle East Peace Process at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “It has been more focused on making sure that the Ides of March have passed.”
He was referring to the dispute during a visit to Israel by Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. in March, when Israel approved plans for Jewish housing in East Jerusalem. Mr. Obama was enraged by what he perceived as a slight to Mr. Biden, and when Mr. Netanyahu visited a few weeks later, the White House showed its displeasure by banning cameras from recording the visit.
But despite the better atmospherics, some analysts said the nuclear nonproliferation issue symbolizes why Israel remains insecure about the intentions of the Obama administration. In addition to singling out Israel, the document, which has captured relatively little public attention, calls for a regional conference in 2012 to lay the groundwork for a nuclear-free zone in the Middle East. Israel, whose nuclear arsenal is one of the world’s worst-kept secrets, would be on the hot seat at such a meeting.
At the last review conference, in 2005, the Bush administration refused to go along with any references to Israel, one of several reasons the meeting ended in acrimony, without any statement.
This time, Israel believed the Obama administration would again take up its cause. As a non-signatory to the treaty, Israel did not attend the meeting. But American officials consulted the Israelis on a text in advance, which they found acceptable, a person familiar with those discussions said. That deepened their surprise at the end.
Administration officials said the United States negotiated for months with Egypt, on behalf of the Arab states, to leave out the reference to Israel. While the United States supports the goal of a nuclear-free Middle East, it stipulated that any conference would be only a discussion, not the beginning of a negotiation to compel Israel to sign on to the treaty.
The United States practices a policy of ambiguity with respect to Israel’s nuclear stockpile, neither publicly discussing it nor forcing the Israeli government to acknowledge its existence.
The United States, recognizing that the document would upset the Israelis, sought to distance itself even as it signed it.
In a statement released after the conference ended, the national security adviser, Gen. James L. Jones, said, “The United States deplores the decision to single out Israel in the Middle East section of the NPT document.” He said it was “equally deplorable” that the document did not single out Iran for its nuclear ambitions. Any conference on a nuclear-free Middle East, General Jones said, could only come after Israel and its neighbors had made peace.
The United States, American officials said, faced a hard choice: refusing to compromise with the Arab states on Israel would have sunk the entire review conference. Given the emphasis Mr. Obama has placed on nonproliferation, the United States could not accept such an outcome.
It also would complicate the administration’s attempts to build bridges to the Arab world, an effort that is at the heart of some of the disagreements between the United States and Israel.
Mr. Netanyahu and Mr. Obama will have plenty of other things to discuss this week. After several rounds of indirect talks, brokered by the administration’s special envoy, George J. Mitchell, the United States is pushing the Israelis and the Palestinians to begin direct negotiations.
A central question, analysts said, is whether Mr. Netanyahu will extend Israel’s self-imposed moratorium on new residential construction in West Bank settlements, which expires in September. He is unlikely to take such a step unless the Palestinians agree to face-to-face talks, they said.
For Mr. Obama and Mr. Netanyahu, the most basic priority may be establishing trust between them — which is why the flap over the nuclear conference, though small, is potentially troublesome.
“Most American presidents who end up being successful on Israel manage to create, even amid great mistrust and suspicion, a pretty good working relationship,” said Aaron David Miller, a longtime Middle East peace negotiator. “This has been a real crisis of confidence, which cuts to the core of how each leader sees his respective world.”

Klein: Ayers, Dohrn top activists in Gaza flotilla group

May 31, 2010 by Brenda J. Elliott

^{Aaron Klein, Jerusalem bureau chief for World Net Daily, reports from New York:}

^{Bill Ayers, Bernardine Dohrn, Gaza, 12/31/09}

The group behind the Gaza flotilla that engaged in deadly clashes with Israeli commandoes today counts among its top activists Weather Underground terrorist founders William Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn as well as Jodie Evans, the leader of the radical activist organization Code Pink.

Ayers and Dohrn were close associates for years with President Obama, while Evans was a fundraiser and financial bundler for Obama’s presidential campaign.

Earlier today, Israeli navy commandos raided the six-ship flotilla, encountering heavy resistance and live fire from the activists. Nine activists were killed and dozens of others were reportedly injured, as were several of the Israeli commandoes.

The flotilla was organized by the Free Gaza Movement, a coalition of leftist human rights activists and pro-Palestinian groups engaged in attempts to break a blockade imposed by Israel on the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip.

Ayers, Dohrn and Evans’ Code Pink have led several recent Free Gaza Movement initiatives, including attempted marches into the Gaza Strip. Dorhn was in the Middle East just last month on behalf of the movement.

In January, WND reported Ayers, Dohrn and Evans were involved in provoking chaos on the streets of Egypt in an attempt to enter Gaza with the Free Gaza Movement to join in solidarity with the territory’s population and leadership.

The three helped to stir riots after the Egyptian government refused to allow a large number of protesters to enter neighboring Gaza. Eventually, the protesters accepted an Egyptian offer of allowing about 100 marchers into Gaza. Once in the territory, those marchers were reportedly met on the Gaza side by Hamas’ former Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh.

During the time of the January march, Sen. John Kerry wrote a letter in support of a “humanitarian delegation from Massachusetts” to Gaza.

Members of the Ayers, Dohrn and Evans group documented on their blogs how Kerry’s letter was used at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo while attempting to pressure Egypt to let their group into Gaza,

Images of the letter were posted on the Electronic Intifada website run by Ali Abunimah, who was with Evans group in Egypt. WND previously reported Obama spoke at pro-Palestinian events in the 1990s alongside Abunimah. In one such event, a 1999 fundraiser for Palestinian “refugees,” Abunimah recalls introducing Obama on stage.

Kerry’s office previously met with Code Pink members, WND has learned. Sarah Roche-Mahdi of Code Pink also is a member of the United for Peace and Justice Palestine Task Force, which met with Kerry’s staffers.

Kerry last year became the most senior U.S. politician to visit the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip, although at the time he did not meet with Hamas leaders.

Dohrn later wrote on a blog that she was briefly detained at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo following the January protests there by her group.

“Bill and I went to the American Embassy at 10 a.m. and asked to see the Ambassador. We were ushered into a holding pen a block away from the embassy building where we joined 35 people already there, surrounded by Egyptian soldiers,” she wrote.

Deadly clashes

Israeli Naval Forces intercepted the flotilla today attempting to break the maritime closure of the Gaza Strip.

An Israel Defense Forces spokesperson told WND commandoes boarded the ships after numerous warnings from Israel requested the ships redirect toward the Israeli port of Ashdod where they would be able to unload their aid supplies, which could then be transferred to the Gaza Strip after undergoing security inspections.

During the boarding of one of the ships, the Marmara, activists onboard attacked IDF Naval personnel with live fire and light weaponry including knives and clubs, the IDF spokesperson said.

“The demonstrators had clearly prepared their weapons in advance for this specific purpose,” said the spokesperson.

“As a result of this life-threatening and violent activity, naval forces first employed riot dispersal means, followed by live fire,” the spokesperson said.

“IDF naval personnel encountered severe violence, including use of weaponry prepared in advance in order to attack them,” said the IDF spokesperson.

The IDF released a YouTube (see right column for video) clearly showing activists attacking Israeli commandoes, including with live fire.

Close Obama associates

Evans formed Code Pink, a far-left activist organization, in 2002 to protest America’s war in Iraq. The group previously met with Hamas and with leaders of the Taliban. Evans was a fundraiser and financial bundler for Obama’s presidential campaign.

Abunimah traveled in some of the same political circles as Obama in the 1990s. Abunimah previously described meeting with Obama at a fundraiser at the home of Columbia University professor Rashid Khalidi, reportedly a former PLO activist. Khalidi was also a close associate of Obama.

“[Obama] came with his wife. That’s where I had a chance to really talk to him,” Abunimah recalled. “It was an intimate setting. He convinced me he was very aware of the issues [and] critical of U.S. bias toward Israel and lack of sensitivity to Arabs. … He was very supportive of U.S. pressure on Israel.

According to quotes obtained by Gulf News, Abunimah recalled a 2004 meeting in a Chicago neighborhood while Obama was running for his Senate seat. Abunimah quoted Obama telling him “warmly” he was sorry that “I haven’t said more about Palestine right now, but we are in a tough primary race.”

“I’m hoping when things calm down, I can be more up front,” Abunimah reportedly quoted the senator as saying.

Abunimah said Obama urged him to “keep up the good work” at the Chicago Tribune, where Abunimah contributed guest columns that were highly critical of Israel.

Ayers, meanwhile, became a name in last year’s presidential campaign when it was disclosed the radical worked closely with Obama for years.

Ayers helped launch Obama’s political career with a fundraiser in his home. Obama served on the board of a Chicago nonprofit alongside Ayers. The terrorist later hired Obama to serve as chairman of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, a job Obama later cited as experience that helped qualify him to run for public office.

While at the CAC, Obama and Ayers both granted funds to the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN.

WND columnist Jack Cashill has produced a series of persuasive arguments that it was Ayers who ghostwrote Obama’s award-winning autobiography, “Dreams from My Father.”

Ayers and Dohrn were two of the main founders of the Weather Underground, which bombed the New York City Police headquarters in 1970, the Capitol in 1971 and the Pentagon in 1972. The group was responsible for some 30 bombings aimed at destroying the defense and security infrastructures of the U.S.

Characterizing the Weather Underground as “an American Red Army,” Ayers summed up the organization’s ideology: “Kill all the rich people. Break up their cars and apartments. Bring the revolution home, Kill your parents.”

“Everything was absolutely ideal on the day I bombed the Pentagon,” Ayers recalled in his 2001 memoir, “Fugitive Days.” “The sky was blue. The birds were singing. And the bastards were finally going to get what was coming to them.”

Ayers brandished his unrepentant radicalism for years to come, as evidenced by his now notorious 2001 interview with the New York Times, published one day after the 9/11 attacks, in which he stated, “I don’t regret setting bombs. I feel we didn’t do enough.”

Ayers posed for a photograph accompanying the New York Times piece that showed him stepping on an American flag. He said of the U.S.: “What a country. It makes me want to puke.”

With additional research by Brenda J. Elliott