Will There be a Peace Agreement between Israel and the Palestinians?
An Interview with Daniel Mandel, Director of the Z0A Center for Middle East Policy
by Jerry Gordon with Daniel Mandel (November 2013)
Against this background we held an interview with Dr. Daniel Mandel of the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) concerning the issues and history of US involvement in Israeli-Palestinian peace discussions. Dr. Mandel is a Fellow in History with a PhD from Melbourne University (Australia) and, since 2005, Director of the ZOA Center for Middle East Policy. He is the author of H.V. Evatt and the Establishment of Israel: The Undercover Zionist. Dr. Mandel has warned of the totalitarian nature of radical Islam and its fellow-travelers; the dangerous and widely misunderstood significance of resurgent anti-Semitism</a>; and the perils of forming Middle East policy on the basis of real or imagined Arab and Muslim perceptions of America. His research has appeared in leading scholarly journals, including Middle Eastern Studies (London), Middle East Quarterly (Philadelphia), Australian Historical Studies (Melbourne), Jewish Political Studies Review (Jerusalem), and respected reference works, including the Australian Dictionary of National Biography.
Lebanese Druze Samir Kuntar, who had been in Israeli jails since the late 1970s. Once again, there were enormous, obscene celebrations at his release on the other side. What did Israel obtain? It obtained the corpses of two IDF soldiers who had been kidnapped and murdered. Now, we have a release of 104 Palestinian terrorists. This time, Israelis cannot even take consolation in the fact that they retrieved a live Israeli, or the corpse of an Israeli, or even a videotape of an Israeli –– which was, believe it or not, the only thing Israel obtained in one of the previous deals. Now, the Israelis aren't doing it even to retrieve hostages. It is clear from any reasonable point of view this was not a wise move on Israel’s part. There are many objections to releasing terrorists. It gives the terrorist groups a tremendous boost of morale and authority which is a force multiplier to their aggression. It is, of course, a moral travesty –– murderers should serve out their term in jail. It is a moral travesty also insofar as the relatives, the bereaved of the victims, are concerned. They see the people who murdered their loved ones walk free. But above all, the biggest problem is a proven record of freed terrorists returning to terrorism. The Almagor Terrorist Victims Association in Israel compiles reports on the whereabouts and activities of terrorists who have been freed under these kinds of deals. They issued a report in 2007 in which they showed that 177 Israelis had been killed by terrorists who had been freed in the period 2002 to 2007. If the paramount duty of the Israeli government is the protection of Israeli life and property, then clearly freeing terrorists ought to be inadmissible.
Martin Indyk, and Philip Gordon, National Security Council Coordinator for Middle East and Persian Gulf. Can you tell us about their respective backgrounds and views regarding negotiations between Israel and the PA and frankly some of their more recent exploits which are troubling?
put it, I thought very eloquently, “we became so preoccupied with this process that the process took on a life of its own. It had self-sustaining justification. Every time there was a behavior, or an incident or an event, that was inconsistent with the process, the impulse was to rationalize it, finesse it, find a way around it and not allow it to break the process.” From all this, Ross concluded that the U.S. should abandon peace-making for conflict management. That was in 2001. However, Ross became very voluble in 2008, saying that America under George W. Bush had avoided peace negotiations for six years. So apparently what Mr. Ross believed in 2001 America could no longer do is something he believed in 2008 the US should have been doing for roughly six years. Aaron David Miller was another one of the negotiators involved, who has become disillusioned with the whole peace process racket. Martin Indyk, too, expressed skepticism and doubt about pushing it forward in recent years but now it seems now to be the right policy. There is a good article in the Weekly Standard pointing out very effectively the fact that Martin Indyk has had more positions on this subject than the Kama Sutra.
Peace Through Profits? Inside The Secret Tech Ventures That Are Reshaping The Israeli-Arab-Palestinian World.” One interesting name that surfaced on the margin of that article was George Soros. Where do you think those four billion dollars of funds are likely to come from if they come at all?
Nowruz, in March 2014, will the Iranians have enough enriched uranium to assemble nuclear weapons and the means of delivering them?
Samantha Power. During her Senate confirmation hearings she felt compelled to write off her own words as rambling, incoherent and bizarre. The scheme is of course rambling, incoherent and bizarre if you understand that this would have to be implemented by America. The idea of America, confronted and overburdened, as it is, with serious security threats to itself and its allies across the world, would somehow be able to come up with a massive protection force against the imaginary threat of Israeli aggression against a Palestinian state is ludicrous.
Mearsheimer/Walt thesis and of course the thesis of virtually every anti-Semite who looks at the problem. This is not widely understood abroad. The American public, unlike perhaps the public of virtually any other society in the world, including societies of other free countries, is generally supportive of Israel. It sees in Israel an ally. It wants to support it. It doesn't particularly trust Israel’s enemies and it believes that Israel’s enemies don't wish America well. They saw the scenes of Palestinians dancing in the streets on 9/11. They don't believe Hanan Ashrawi when she said it was a small crowd and that the PA stepped in immediately to send them all home. Repeated polling data shows this behavior in abundance. I could produce for you a list of polls in recent years that show by a margin of 7 to 1, 8 to 1, and 6 to 1, depending on which poll you look at, Americans favor the Israelis over the Palestinians, regard them as an ally, and don’t regard the Palestinians as an ally. They don’t believe Palestinians seek peace with Israel. They show much more clear-mindedness on the subject than politicians in Washington. When I say politicians, I mean the Administration and the State Department, not the Congress which represents them. Congress by and large is deferential to the view of the American public and reflects it. Even Congressmen who may not be friends of Israel have generally felt compelled to support it not because of the insidious power of a Jewish lobby, but because their constituents expect it. Lee Hamilton, one of the least pro-Israel Congressmen in recent times, said as much at a conference in the 1990s. The American public, the House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate represent a massive and not always deeply utilized resource and reservoir of pro-Israeli power in Washington. The Congress, after all, is a co-equal branch of government under the American Constitution. It controls the purse strings. The Senate does have to advise and consent on cabinet level appointments. It is not simply the case that foreign policy is the exclusive preserve of the President. If it is, someone will have to explain to me how Congress failed to ratify Jimmy Carter's SALT Treaty with the Soviets. Someone will also have to explain to me why Congress was able to disagree with Ronald Reagan on the funding and arming of the contras in Nicaragua. Clearly, despite it being a major American interest as understood and defined by the President, the Congress was free to disagree and cut off funding. Congress has a role to play and it can play a role here larger than the one that it has played. As someone who supports Israel, I think Israel should be working more closely with the Congress to see that it gets the support it needs. If you want an example, I'll mention one. Israel is being demonized and isolated, not just in the court of international opinion, but in terms of the perversion of international legal norms by the United Nations and other transnational organizations, which all work by the way not merely to Israeli disadvantage, but to the disadvantage of all Western countries. A serious symptom of the problem is the virtually universally held position that it is supposedly a crime for Jews to build homes and move into communities in the West Bank, in Judea and Samaria. That isn’t the case, but legal norms can take on a life of their own and like a language, it can be perverted and corrupted by continual usage and misusage. I think it would be excellent for Israel to ask the American Congress to come out with an authoritative resolution of its own saying that it doesn't accept this perversion of International legal norms, with reference to the West Bank and reaffirming the actual law. Repudiating the abuse of Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention by which Israeli Jews become war criminals, not for slaughtering civilians or for some other recognized crime, but for merely moving into a house in Judea/Samaria. At the moment, to read a communiqué from European governments about the West Bank is to read a flat-earth assertion to the contrary.
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