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.

Condi Just Doesn't See It

QUESTION: How worried are you about this notion in the Middle East as well as here that America’s adversaries are on the ascendancy – Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas, radical Islamists, armed groups – challenging the United States and its allies in the region?

SECRETARY RICE: I just don’t see it.

That's taken from an interview with Hisham Melhem of Al Arabiya.

Here's her full remarks in response to her panoramic view of the Middle East:

Well, first, let’s look at the Middle East when this President became President in 2001 and the Middle East now. In 2001, you had a raging intifada after the collapse of the Camp David talks. You had in power in Israel a prime minister who did not come to power talking about bringing peace, and you had Yasser Arafat in power in the Palestinian Territories. You had Lebanon with Syrian forces occupying Lebanon, which they had done for decades. Saddam Hussein was in power in Iraq, threatening his neighbors, as he had done for decades. There really wasn’t very much discussion of democracy in the Middle East.

And you look now and you see that, first and foremost, Saddam Hussein is out of power. And while Iraqis are struggling with their new democracy, they are now a democratic state, a multiconfessional, multiethnic, democratic state. Lebanon has a president. Lebanese forces are throughout the country for the first time in decades; Syrian forces are out. Syria has established proper diplomatic relations with Lebanon.

You have a situation in which throughout the Middle East, people talk about popular rule, women can vote in Kuwait, elections have been held in a number of places, and in the Palestinian-Israeli situation, the two-state solution is now taken for granted that this the only real possibility. And President Bush, who put it on the agenda in 2001, has helped the parties come to a process after Annapolis so that you have the first really robust peace process in a number of years.

And so yes, it’s still a difficult region, but I think a lot has been achieved over the last several years.

QUESTION: How worried are you about this notion in the Middle East as well as here that America’s adversaries are on the ascendancy – Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas, radical Islamists, armed groups – challenging the United States and its allies in the region?

SECRETARY RICE: I just don’t see it. I think that what we have is that yes, the Middle East is seeing extremism exposed in ways that it was undercover preparing for September 11th, but now it’s exposed and it’s being fought across the region by all kinds of states and all kinds of people. You know, I saw an interesting poll the other day. Osama bin Ladin has just been dropping in terms of, quote, “popularity.” Why? Not because of what the United States says, but because decent, honest people in the Middle East, decent, honest Muslims, are saying that is not a message with which we resonate.

We’re seeing al-Qaida defeated. Yes, they’re still dangerous. But in Iraq, they are well on their way to defeat because Iraqis rose up against them. You are seeing that suicide bombing as a technique doesn't have legitimacy throughout the Middle East, and instead you see a Middle East that is looking to women’s education and women’s rights; a Middle East that is looking to technological change – cell phone usage is up, satellite TVs are up; and a Middle East that is increasingly linked to the outside world and determined to live in peace.

On American Support for Israel

U.S. opinion on the Middle East is not monolithic, nor is it frozen in time. Since 1967, it has undergone significant shifts, with some groups becoming more favorable toward Israel and others less so. Considerably fewer African Americans stand with the Likud Party today than stood with the Jewish army in World War II. More changes may come. A Palestinian and Arab leadership more sensitive to the values and political priorities of the American political culture could develop new and more effective tactics designed to weaken, rather than strengthen, American support for the Jewish state. An end to terrorist attacks, for example, coupled with well-organized and disciplined nonviolent civil resistance, might alter Jacksonian perceptions of the Palestinian struggle.

It is entirely possible that over time, evangelical and fundamentalist Americans will retrace Jimmy Carter's steps from a youthful Zionism to what he would call a more balanced position now. But if Israel should face any serious crisis, it seems more likely that opinion will swing the other way. Many of the Americans who today call for a more evenhanded policy toward the Palestinians do so because they believe that Israel is fundamentally secure. Should that assessment change, public opinion polls might well show even higher levels of U.S. support for Israel.

One thing, at least, seems clear. In the future, as in the past, U.S. policy toward the Middle East will, for better or worse, continue to be shaped primarily by the will of the American majority, not the machinations of any minority, however wealthy or engaged in the political process some of its members may be.

Read this article, "The New Israel and the Old: Why Gentile Americans Back the Jewish State" by Walter Russell Mead, here.

(Kippah tip: AJG)

I Just Love It When A "Plan" Comes Together

Now, Bush administration officials are voicing increasing anger at what they say has been Saudi Arabia’s counterproductive role in the Iraq war. They say that beyond regarding Mr. Maliki as an Iranian agent, the Saudis have offered financial support to Sunni groups in Iraq. Of an estimated 60 to 80 foreign fighters who enter Iraq each month, American military and intelligence officials say that nearly half are coming from Saudi Arabia and that the Saudis have not done enough to stem the flow.

One senior administration official says he has seen evidence that Saudi Arabia is providing financial support to opponents of Mr. Maliki. He declined to say whether that support was going to Sunni insurgents because, he said, “That would get into disagreements over who is an insurgent and who is not.”

Source.

And the humor.