He Was An Ambassador

If you want to know how it is that every American President is heavily pressured in relation to Israel, try looking at the State Department.

Here's a recent example, from today's New York Times, a letter to the editor of Theodore H. Kattouf*, a former United States ambassador to the United Arab Emirates and Syria and is president of Amideast, a nonprofit in education:

To the Editor:

Benny Morris long ago earned credit for his serious history of Israel’s War for Independence that repudiates myths about a mass, voluntary Palestinian exodus. To his shame, he later asserted that Israel should have completed the job. I do not doubt that most Israeli Jewish citizens now feel threatened. I also share his disdain for the policies of radical Islamist groups and their patron, Iran. But in cataloguing Israel’s woes, Mr. Morris makes no mention of its aggressive colonization of the West Bank and Greater Jerusalem under every government since 1967.

Nor does he remark on Israel’s early support for Hamas as a counterweight to the Palestine Liberation Organization. While noting that most Jews single out Israeli Arabs as a fifth column, he does not deal with the discriminatory treatment they still experience.

Israel’s best chance of achieving security is to negotiate a United States-sponsored two-state solution that gives the Palestinians a truly viable, independent state with part of Jerusalem as its capital.

and here's a more recent opinion.

Kattouf is your typical State Dept. official. There are 21 or more Arab states, so in any internal in-department discussion about policy, there is an automatic majority of 20:1 against Israel. Many officials pick up Arab-funded jobs at various "institutions", etc. Ed Abington, former Consul-General in Jerusalem, even was a PR hack (and see here too)for Yasser Arafat!

I dealt with this phenomenon four years ago.


As for the above, yes, there is discrimination just like the reality is that the Arab population contributes the smallest proportion of tax income per person and we can't forget their pro-Hamas demos today and all this past week.

Colonization? No Jew can be a colonist in his own country, his own homeland no matter what borders are drawn.

And how much of Jerusalem becomes a part of the capital? The Temple Mount?

Katouff is your fawning lackey of Arab money. Yes, you dear people who always presume it is "Jewish money" that matters but it's the Arab money that is the more dangerous and undermining.


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*

Ambassador Kattouf was born in Altoona, Pennsylvania in 1946. Upon graduating from the Pennsylvania State University, he served for 3-1/2 years in the U.S. Army infantry, attaining the rank of captain. He joined the Foreign Service in 1972. From 1973 to 1975, he served in Kuwait as an economic and commercial officer. Following Kuwait, he attended the Foreign Service Arabic Language Program in Beirut and Tunis before being assigned as a political officer in Damascus. Mr. Kattouf then returned to the United States to serve as a Middle East analyst in the Bureau of Intelligence and Research. From 1980 to 1982, he worked as the International Relations Officer in the Near East Bureau. In 1982-1983, Ambassador Kattouf was a State Department mid-career fellow at Princeton University.

From 1983 to 1986, Mr. Kattouf served in Baghdad as Deputy Chief of Mission. He then served in Sanaa, one year as Deputy Chief of Mission, and one year as Charge d'Affaires, a.i. Mr. Kattouf returned to the United States in 1988 to serve as Deputy Director and subsequently Director of the Office of Arab North Affairs. In 1962, he returned overseas, first as Deputy Chief of Mission in Damascus, then as Deputy Chief of Mission in Riyadh, where he served from 1995 to 1998. President Clinton nominated Mr. Kattouf as Ambassador to the United Arab Emirates and was confirmed by the Senate in September 1998. He was then nominated by President Bush to Syria and confirmed by the Senate in August 2001.