WikiLeaks: A weak climax

With every news agency across the world commenting on the WikiLeaks phenomena, The Young Diplomat could not let the opportunity to offer its own perspectives slip by.  Mind you, our main objective is to facilitate more open and communicative political thought and cooperation; however, as we are a blog dedicated to the diplomatic and political world - in Israel and abroad - there is no way we could not give our own commentary on what is definitely the biggest security and diplomatic fiasco over the last century.
In a nutshell, what do these documents portray: cunning and astute bargaining amongst diplomats and heads of states; assessments of terror and nuclear threats; surprising statements by world leaders; quirky wry humor amongst security officials?
Besides giving a more profound look into the Iranian regime's internal conflict and its nuclear development, nothing we did not already know was released.
Skimming through newspapers worldwide, anyone can - on a daily basis - find lengthy articles regarding the wishes of Arab leaders to see the complete destruction of Iran's nuclear program, even if a military strike is the sole way in achieving this goal.  Already back in June, reports were published regarding comments by the U.A.E Ambassador to the United States in which he advocated a US strike on Iranian nuclear facilities.
"I am willing to absorb what takes place at the expense of the security of the U.A.E," he said, referring to the possible destruction and consequences posed by a military strike (for the full audio-interview conducted by the Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg, click here).
When an ambassador expresses such issues as related to security and defense, it can only be assumed that those statements are nothing short of the official stance taken by his or her government - be it a monarchy or a thriving democracy.
Are people really surprised that the United States is responsible for the armament of Yemeni forces in their fight against rebel groups providing refuge to thousands of al-Qaeda and Islamist operatives while vying for control of Yemen?
Are the different Israeli assessments regarding an effective timeline for a strike on Iran's nuclear facilities something new to us?  Isn't there something in the press every five minutes about this?
Is anyone shocked that the US and Pakistan are feuding over that country's internal policies as applies to the War in Afghanistan as well as Pakistan's fragile and unprotected nuclear arsenal?  What would be shocking is if the WikiLeaks reports were to reveal a trusting, mutually beneficial relationship between the two!
For understanding the complicated trickery and deceit inherent in Middle East politics, one does not have to jump on leaked information regarding the US State Departments inner workings within the region. Simply living here is enough to make anyone realize that shifting alliances are nothing more than a way to shape foreign policy on a day to day basis.
The alliances of today will most likely be gone tomorrow.
Besides making for a great novel turned Hollywood feature, the release of the WikiLeaks documents only expands on reports that have been circulating for years.
Embarrassing? Yes. Enough to restructure the world political divide? Not a bit.

The Stranger in Thine Midst

This morning Netanyahu's cabinet approved the construction of a camp by the Egyptian border to reign in and crack down on the "swelling wave threatening Israeli jobs, a wave of illegal migrants that we must stop because of the harsh implications for Israel's character", stated Netanyahu.  The cabinet's decision to crack down on migrant workers by placing them in a detention camp will have various deleterious and far-reaching consequences.   

What Israeli character is Netanyahu talking about?  No longer do Israelis toil in the fields to make the dry earth bloom.  The Israeli in the fields is an antiquated mythos of bygone generations.  Nowadays backbreaking fieldwork is performed overwhelmingly by migrant workers, legal and illegal, and cordoning them off in camps will not change that fact.  What Netanyahu doesn't consider is that the jobs taken by migrant workers are those Israeli refuse to do: laborious, low paying positions in oftentimes difficult conditions.  Sectioning them away, rather than legally inducting them into the workforce, will only hurt the Israeli economy by depriving the agricultural and service industries of desperately needed manpower.  

Perhaps Netanyahu means the exclusively ethnically Jewish nature of the Jewish state, in which case he is again wrongly mistaken.  That has never been a reality, nor was it ever a vision of Israel's founders.  Theodor Herzl wrote of a Jewish state in Altneuland where "we do not ask to what race or religion a man belongs.  If he is a man, that is enough for us."  Is barricading these people off because they washed up on our shores, desperate and destitute, part of Herzl's vision or in Israel's character?  Is it Jewish whatsoever to maltreat foreigners among us thus?  Does it not say in Exodus 22:21 :

"וגר לא תונה ולא תלחצנו כי גרים הייתם בארץ מצרים" 

"Do not mistreat or oppress a foreigner, for you were foreigners in Egypt"? 

How can either side of the religious/secular spectrum find this course of action appropriate or justifiable?  The cabinet's decision to incarcerate refugees is universally morally reprehensible and unjustifiable.  

Too many have already compared this new detention facility to that at Atlit, where some sixty-five years ago the British incarcerated illegal Jewish immigrants seeking a better life, so I shall refrain.  The comparison is nonetheless apt.   This decision is a PR fiasco in the making.  Israel already stands accused of human rights violations that-- legitimate or otherwise-- murky its international standing .  This decision merely adds more (in this case legitimate) fuel to the fire, furthering Israel's rap as a racially discriminatory ethnocracy.  This development can only mar Israel's reputation further.  

Breaking News: Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman Resigns

This afternoon at 4:37 PM Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman handed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu his letter of resignation in what can only be called "pulling a Palin".  Coming as a complete surprise to everyone, Lieberman's ambitious drive to undermine the peace process, continue West Bank construction, and introduce draconian citizenship requirements was beginning to yield fruit.  Peace talks with the Palestinian Authority, restarted a couple of months ago after a multi-year hiatus, have ground to a halt.  Once again the Israeli Foreign Ministry had regained its long-held position as Israel's least productive bureaucratic arm, and Lieberman's party is the Knesset's third largest.  And yet despite it all Avigdor stepped down from his cabinet post.

"My work here is done," Israel's former chief diplomat said at a press conference in Herzliya earlier today.  "I shall now set out to pursue of my greatest joy in life!"  Only when pressed by further questions by the press did he direct the curious pack of reporters to his newly opened falafel and shawarma stand next door:
בשר וכדורי אביגדור: Avigdor's Meat and Balls.  
"Yalla!" He shouted encouragingly at the gathering crowd.  "If you think I can serve up a dish of hot insult at the UN you should try my fried eggplant! Nu? Who wants a falafel in pita?"
When asked (amid mouthfuls of salad and spit-roasted turkey) where funds for his new establishment came from, former Foreign Minister chuckled and said "Ha!  You think the Jerusalem light rail really costs 1.2 billion ₪?"    
Netanyahu announced later that Lieberman's replacement would be little-known United Torah Judaism MK Moshe Gafni (picture at right, for his credentials follow the link).  Gafni is best known for passing gas in the Housing committee, passing water in the main Knesset chamber, and passing out during Vice President Joe Biden's visit last March.  Netanyahu said Gafni is, in fact, "overqualified for the position".  

Gabe Ciuraru contributed to this report.  

Bring on the Dark Ages

Sandwiched between irrelevant and baseless ad hominem attacks on authors, this blog is often criticized for laying into Israel too much with negative criticism.  What I understand from this is that those readers would like a more balanced criticism of Israel (scrutiny of Palestinians).  Well, here it is, criticism of the other side of the Green Line:
The same standards by which I hold Israel should, ideally, be held for our Palestinian neighbors.  Sadly, however, freedom of speech and freedom of religion are even more fleeting on the other side of the partition fence.  A recent headline renewed my concern for those Palestinians (and indeed they exist in no small number) who do not conform to mainstream or radical Islam and who wish to express their views freely and peaceably.  Walid Husayin of Qalqiliya, an anti-theist who criticized Islam, Mohammed, and Allah on Facebook, has been detained and charged with "insulting the divine essence".  He may get away with only life in prison, but some are calling for some good, ol'-fashioned burning at the stake to teach the young man--and others-- a lesson.
What kind of Palestinian state shall come into existence in this sliver of land?  A Salem Witch Trial sharia state that burns dissenters to death or one that embraces Western ideals of free speech, free religion, and tolerance?  This development in the West Bank casts a dark shadow on the Palestinian Authority, an organization that supposedly walks a totally different walk than their Hamas counterparts.  There has been little outcry over the infringement on Walid's free speech-- both in the West Bank, in Israel, or internationally.  The Palestinian judges set to hear his case will hopefully recognize the gravity of their decision: free Walid and he will be lynched by a mad Muslim mob, lock him up and set a malicious precedent in a nascent proto-state striving for secularism.

James Jones: The Ice-Cream Headache

I picked up James Jones' collection of short stories entitled "The Ice-Cream Headache".  He's better known for his war novels The Thin Red Line and From Here to Eternity, but I figured I would give him a shot.  Besides, short stories are the bread and butter of good authors.  They are the yardstick by which a writer should be measured.

In a short story called None Sing So Wildly I ran across a passage that, though written in the wake of WWII and talking about it and its predecessor, is as relevant to the post-Bush world.  His words could have been written today:

"The misconception was in the security.  It had al of it been done for security.  Yet there never had been any security.  Everybody fought and killed and gave up their young dream, for security.  Just as we now were preparing to fight a third war, for security.  But it was not security that was gained, security was never gained, only herding and mechanization, fear was gained, but never security."

Jones' prose speaks across generations.  He reminds his readers of the folly of war and warns of its frequent reincarnation under the poisonous bromide of security.  The language he employs hasn't changed at all in the past sixty years, nor have the justifications and tendencies towards war or its human impact.  Security has been the battle cry of the United States, Israel, Nazi Germany, and everyone in between, because it plays into the deep-rooted human longing for stability.  "We continue to fight the world for security," wrote Jones, in search of this ever-sought tranquility, and shall do so so long as we are gullible enough to kill and die for the false idol of national security.
The futility of it all -- seeing that nothing has changed since the last great war despite supposed safeguards like the UN -- drowns hope for a better world.
More people should read Jones and strive to break this frustrating circle of violence and self-destruction.

The road to Ramallah: toward a dead end

For many years I have attended the annual memorial ceremony for Yitzhak Rabin. I planned to attend this year, too, particularly after hearing that it might be the last one to be held in Tel Aviv’s Rabin Square, which was called Kings of Israel Square when the late prime minister was assassinated there, at a peace rally, in November 1995. I thought I was willing to make a lot of sacrifices in order to be there, but it turned out I was wrong about that.

On the morning of 30 October, the day the memorial was supposed to take place, my mother asked me to join the family in visiting relatives in Ramallah. October 30 is both my father’s birthday and my 8 year old little cousin’s, and the families wanted to celebrate together.

I was a bit disappointed, but the long, tiring debate over whether the rally should be politicized or not ended up being the deciding factor. I always wanted to hear stronger voices for peace rather than the mainstream voices – mainly the voices of politicians – that have taken over the event.

I was listening to the speeches live on Galei Tzahal (Army Radio) as I drove along the crooked roads to Ramallah; and as I was passing all those settlements I heard the echoing voice of renowned artist Yair Garbuzas he said:

“For fifteen years we have gathered to ensure an end to the occupation and its corruption of our society. But not only have we failed to end the control of another people; we have also lost control of ourselves and our country, which has been conquered from within by our so-called leaders.

“So-called leaders that are nothing more than a bunch of Napoleons – egotistical hedonists disconnected from the people. They have no vision and not even a simple practical plan other than their adherence to populist sentiment and destructive pleasures of power. Fifteen years since we swore: enough to bereavement! And we continue to kill and be killed.”

It was striking to hear those words while driving on the road to Ramallah. We all fail to understand the meaning of occupation until we actually observe it. Even a Palestinian-Arab-Israeli citizen like me fails to see it (God, I need to find a one-word self-definition).

The meaning of the occupation starts with Route 443, the Jerusalem-Tel Aviv highway that was built on expropriated land owned by West Bank Palestinians and then restricted to non-Palestinian cars. It continues through the checkpoints, the soldiers, the neglected Palestinian villages, and even the Ramallah bubble (similar to the Tel Aviv bubble in a sense).

We are slowly heading toward a dead end – attacks on democracy and the rule of law are consistent and well organized, murdering any hope for those seeds of peace Rabin sowed to grow. The voices of sanity are suffering serious losses in the parliament, daily life and even in academia. We are failing on a daily basis to see the grim reality.

I guess Robert Allen Zimmerman (Bob Dylan) says it best with ‘A Hard Rain’s a Gonna Fall’:

Oh, what did you see, my blue eyed son ?
And what did you see, my darling young one ?
I saw a newborn baby with wild wolves all around it
I saw a highway of diamonds with nobody on it
I saw a black branch with blood that kept drippin’
I saw a room full of men with their hammers a-bleedin’
I saw a white ladder all covered with water
I saw ten thousand takers whose tongues were all broken
I saw guns and sharp swords in the hands of young children
And it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard, and it’s a hard
It’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall.

Cross-posted from +972 Magazine 

Papers published by Young Diplomat authors

Two contributors, Arik Segal and Ilan Ben Zion, have published papers on The Middle East Post, a Middle East politics blog.  Arik's insightful articles on Syria and Iran were previously published here on the Young Diplomat.  Those of Ilan Ben Zion, one on Israeli constitutionalism and another comparative paper on Israeli and Palestinian radical religious movements, were as of now unpublished.  They can be found at the links above.

The חוק האברכים (chok ha'avrechim) protest in Jerusalem

The demonstration Monday night started slow, a roiling, swirling swarm without direction or objective within the confines of Paris Square, barricaded by armed police and buses.  Three or four epicenters formed within the mass, jumping, flag-waving, shouting youths lead by t-shirt clad megaphoners.  The shrill cries of a thousand whistles tore through the crisp night air above the gathered thousands.  Banner and fliers fluttered in the breeze and the roar of many score unguided voices rose over the policemen, journalists, cameramen, hoteliers, and onlookers.

I was initially disappointed by the turnout, but numbers swelled quickly.  Ha'aretz put the figure at "thousands" (more here) and The Jerusalem Post at ten thousand.  
As if by divine direction, a horde began marching up King George Street towards downtown, towards Mea Shearim.  From the storefronts to the far sidewalk, row upon row strode forward chanting:

"!ביבי תתעורר! הסטודנט שווה יותר: Bibi, wake up! Students are more valuable!"  and "אנחנו לא פרייארים: We are not suckers!"

Others called for social equality and for the return of Gilad Schalit.  Bumper stickers handed out featured a char and a Hebrew play on words: "גם אנחנו לומדום בישיבה: We also learn while sitting (or in yeshiva)."  Some called for the end of the country's captivity at the hands of religious minority parties.
Block upon block, a wad of humanity hundreds strong wended its way to כיכר ציון: Zion Square.  Bewildered tourists and unsuspecting American yeshiva students stood by as legions of Israeli students marched past.  I was somewhat surprised there was no counter-protest by the Haredi community.  They must have been off learning.
Zion Square filled to the brim as Hadag Nachash lyrics blared on loudspeakers: "לא אנחנו לא פרייארים: No, we're not suckers."  Once at the front of the crowd, I found myself engulfed by a tide of tweens and threens chanting against the government's unjust budget allocation and growing injustice against the dwindling mainstream.  I could barely more by the time orators started speaking.  It took as long to get out of Zion Square as it did to march there.
To add insult to injury, a proposal in the Knesset would add a tax to scholarships.  Is the government out to destroy Israel's future middle class?  This Robin Hood government aims to steal from the working classes to give to the poor.  Let's hope democratic action by Israeli youth will bring reason to the Knesset.