Postscript on Rawabi -- Green Competition

Rawabi’s website includes an appeal to “grow a tree in Palestine.” The site “offers the chance to Palestinians and environmentalists worldwide to support our initiative by funding the purchase of a tree to be planted in Palestine in your name or on behalf of another person.” The Rawabi's masterplan "envisions the planting of more than 25,000 trees and the relocation of some 5,000 existing trees."

Sound familiar? In Jewish National Fund fashion, Rawabi tree lovers will also receive a certificate for $20 per tree.

FYI: JNF trees cost $18 or 10 trees for $100. Over the last 100 years, JNF has planted more than 240 million trees in the land of Israel.

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How to Help Palestinians Leave Their Camps

Appears in National Review Online's The Corner, September 23, 2009

Recently announced plans for a new, upscale Palestinian settlement in the West Bank are impressive. The projected town, some six miles north of Ramallah, will one day house some 40,000 people, making it the same size as the Israeli settlement towns of Beitar and Modiin. The settlement is named Rawabi, and Qatar is a primary investor. Details are being negotiated with Israeli authorities on issues such as free access across Israeli-controlled areas.

Rawabi’s slick website promises that the town’s

commercial activity will be launched from a hub of high-tech and research-related businesses in a variety of sectors. These local and international activities will provide rewarding jobs for Palestinians. Rawabi’s commercial components will be seamlessly integrated with modern, comfortable and affordable housing as well as high-quality public services designed for Palestine’s rapidly growing class of young professionals.

Meanwhile, in a pro-peace op-ed in the Washington Post this summer, Crown Prince Salman bin Hamad al-Khalifa of Bahrain (pictured) lamented that “far too many [Palestinians] live in refugee camps in deplorable conditions.” Such camps exist in the West Bank, Gaza, Jordan, and Lebanon, but Khalifa’s contention is particularly true for those living in areas under Hamas and Palestinian Authority control. Why are these Palestinians stuck in teeming refugee camps when new towns like Rawabi could be built for them?

With the help of Gulf countries, led by Qatar and Bahrain, any number of affordable and suitable communities and productive industrial zones could be built on land controlled by the PA and Hamas. Ten Rawabis should be built, including some on the scorched earth in Gaza where Jewish communities once existed. These towns could provide construction jobs and low-cost housing for both local Palestinians and refugee families, many of whom have been on the UNRWA dole for 60 years. In many cases their new homes would be just a few miles from homesteads where their grandparents claimed to have lived.

There are two problems with this plan. First, has any part of Rawabi been set aside for refugees? It’s unlikely; reading between the lines of the marketing spiel, it is apparent that Rawabi was built to serve the housing and employment needs of the grown children of the Palestinian bourgeois and the yuppie offspring of Palestinian Authority officials on the West Bank.

Why is there so little concern among the elite of Palestine for the poorest of their fellow citizens? Because “Palestinian” is a relatively artificial category, and a weakly felt one. The track record dating back to 1947 provides little evidence that the Palestinians’ new-found national identity trumps their clan, religious, political, or class differences. In Israel, we shuddered at the barbarism of the Fatah-Hamas fratricide in Gaza in 2006 -- the Palestinian “wakseh” or humiliation -- when Palestinian families were gunned down by other Palestinians and political opponents were thrown from tall buildings.

During the waves of immigration to Israel of Soviet and Ethiopian Jewry in the 1980s and 1990s, I recall dozens of my neighbors donating furniture to the new immigrants and assigning companions to help settle them in the neighborhood and maneuver through the absorption bureaucracy. Children were happy to tithe from their toys for the new kids on the block who arrived with nothing. If only such a spirit were evident among the Palestinians.

Beyond the Palestinians’ lack of community feeling lies the so-called “right of return.” Palestinian leaders claim that each family has a right to reoccupy the land it held before Israel’s war for independence. Settling refugees comfortably in other areas would weaken their claim to this “right,” while keeping them in camps is a harsh but effective way to maintain pressure against Israel from the international community. What stands in the way of prosperity for Palestinian-controlled areas is the deep brainwashing of Palestinian children that there must be an actual physical return to their ancestral homes, along with an international and Israeli recognition of the “injustice” done to them.

The “right of return” frightens almost every Israeli. Not only would Jewish towns and communities in the West Bank’s “settlement blocs” become targets for a flood of four generations’ worth of refugees, but so would major Israeli cities and towns inside the 1949 armistice line (the “Green Line”). The city of Ashkelon (Majdal, to the Arabs) and the tony neighborhoods of north Tel Aviv (Sheikh Munis), for example, are built on the sites of Palestinian villages, according to both Palestinian and Israeli historians. Neighborhoods in Haifa and Ramla, to name but two, are coveted and claimed by the descendents of Palestinians who left in 1947 and 1948.

Heritage Houses

Sheikh Khalifa’s column considered the “dilemma of justice for Palestine without injustice to Israel.” How can this be resolved? Here’s a proposal, one sure to ignite opposition on both sides: When new communities for the Palestinian refugees are established within the PA- and Hamas-controlled areas -- and not before -- “Palestinian Heritage Houses” will also be constructed inside a number of Israeli communities or regions.

The Heritage Houses would preserve documents, photos, and recorded memories of Palestinians from that area. Supervised and security-assured visits by Palestinian families and school classes could be arranged with Israeli security agencies. The Heritage Houses would also be centers for teaching Israelis and Palestinians about each other and for promoting coexistence between the two peoples. The cost for such Palestinian Heritage Houses could be borne by Arab, Palestinian, Israeli, or foreign sources, as well as U.S. and European NGOs and governments. The massive funds contributed to UNRWA, the UN agency that perpetuates the refugee camps and their anti-Israel culture, could be diverted to the new Palestinian communities and to the Heritage Houses.

The Qatari investors in Rawabi, and Bahrain’s Shaikh Khalifa, deserve credit for kick-starting the imaginations of those who seek a realistic and pragmatic end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, not the perpetuation of a 62-year-old grudge.

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Peeling Off J Street’s Invisibility Cloak: What the NY Times Magazine Won’t Tell You

This story first appeared in Pajamas Media.

There is no street in Washington named for the letter “J,” but that hasn’t stopped a group of critics of Israel from forming the “J Street” lobby. It’s like J. K. Rowling’s invisible Platform 9 ¾ at the King’s Cross Station. Befitting a Harry Potter character, J Street performs acts of illusion and deception such as cooking its polling data and presenting it as scientific truth. The “pro-Israel” J Street PAC has cloaked dozens of PAC contributors as plain citizens, when they are actually Arab-American, Palestinian, Islamic, and pro-Iranian activists. All the while, J Street hides the names of its directors and has never explained who makes its controversial decisions.

The adoring media audience gasps with uncritical wonderment at the amazing show of prestidigitation carried out so far by the upstart lobby. The J Street appreciation society was expanded today with a lengthy piece in the New York Times Magazine.

Breaking out of the media trance, a Jerusalem Post reporter recently revealed that the organization maintains a “finance committee” consisting of “50 members — with a $10,000 contribution threshold.” It’s members include, according to the report, “Lebanese-American businessman Richard Abdoo, a current board member of Amideast and a former board member of the Arab American Institute, and Genevieve Lynch, who is also a member of the National Iranian American Council board.”

The latest conjurer is Zahi Khouri, who contributed to J Street PAC this summer. The unfortunate man is listed in Federal Election Committee records filed by J Street as “not employed” and living in Orlando, Florida.

Open the New York Times of September 9 to the Op-Ed section, however, and learn that he is the “chief executive of the Palestinian National Beverage Co.” The Times could have gone on to describe Khouri as a director of the Palestinian Development and Investment Company (PADICO) and CEO of Paltel, the Palestinian telecommunications company and cellular service provider. He also writes that he lives in the West Bank, [cue violins] having “left a comfortable life on Park Avenue in Manhattan” to open his Coke franchise.

In his New York Times article, Khouri decries Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s attempts to achieve an “economic peace” between the Palestinians and Israel. He dismisses the seven percent growth projected for the West Bank, fails to mention the crippling corruption that has plagued the Palestinian Authority, and ignores the Palestinian terrorism that wracked the West Bank and Gaza economies and forced Israel to build security barriers to protect its citizens. When the previous Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, offered almost all of the West Bank and sections of Jerusalem, the Palestinian Authority’s Abu Abbas rejected the deal. But Khouri the conjurer lays the blame for the stalemate at Netanyahu’s feet.

In all fairness — and presumably with a straight stage face — Khouri told the Jerusalem Post that “he donated to the J Street PAC because ‘I believe that they are sincere about being pro-Israel and they are sincere about being pro-peace. And AIPAC I consider an enemy of Israel rather than a friend of Israel because they’re not helping it to achieve peace.’” Khouri’s definition of peace, of course, is not widely accepted, certainly not by Israelis and friends of Israel in the U.S.

Other JStreet PAC contributors include an “attorney” whom J Street doesn’t reveal as a board member of the hyper-critical-of-Israel Human Rights Watch, a “teacher” who was actually a founder of an Islamic school in Virginia, a “housing specialist” who is the national co-chairman of Middle East Network of United Methodists, another serial defamer of Israel, a Washington lawyer who actually works for the Saudi Embassy, and many more.

Does the Sphinx answer another riddle?

On July 13, J Street was invited to meet with President Obama as part of a delegation of national Jewish organizations. Some eyebrows should have been raised again when it was invited to a small meeting of Jewish organizations with Egypt’s President Hosni Mubarak in Washington on August 17. Perhaps it’s logical that President Obama’s favorite Jewish organization would be invited by an Egyptian leader seeking to score points with the White House.

But a closer look at J Street’s supporters may explain how it got its ticket to the show. The organization has several prominent Egyptophiles on its board of advisors and among its financial supporters.

The Jerusalem Post recent exposé revealed that the head of the Egyptian desk at the State Department, Nicole D. Shampaine at the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, contributed $1,000 to J Street’s political action committee last year.

Sitting on J Street’s advisory council are a couple of former U.S. ambassadors to Egypt, and one of them, Robert Pelletreau, was also registered at the U.S. Justice Department as a foreign agent for Egypt, working for the firm of Afridi, Angel & Pelletreau.

Another J Street advisor, Judith Barnett, once served as the deputy assistant secretary of commerce for the Middle East and Africa. Upon leaving government service, she set up her own consulting firm and affiliated with the international PA Consulting Group where she worked for the Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Trade. In her own words, she “created Egypt, Inc., a major initiative to increase trade and investment for the Ministry … which included a worldwide assessment of Egypt’s commercial services for its companies, a commercial website, and a series of national outreach programs in the U.S.”

After writing a sycophantic piece in the Washington Post in 2004 about the changing role of women in Saudi Arabia [“I found … that the role of Saudi women is changing far more quickly than most in the West realize.”], Ms. Barnett went on to register with the Justice Department as a foreign agent for Saudi Arabia, as well.

So it should be no mystery why J Street was invited to meet with President Mubarak. Would that the organization have such prominent advocates for another Middle East country, one called Israel.

See also:

Arabs, Muslims Among J Street Donors by Hilary Leila Krieger

Why Does J Street Attract the Friends of Saudi Arabia?

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Protecting the Quarterback in the White House -- J Street's Self-Proclaimed Mission

J Street seems to pop up in all the right places lately, buoyed and immunized by indulgent, adoring and uncritical journalists. The upstart lobby was invited to join other Jewish organizations in a July meeting with U.S. President Barack Obama; a month later it attended a meeting with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.

[A possible explanation for the Mubarak invitation appears here.]

Yesterday's New York Times magazine published the latest paean to J Street, portraying it as brash and brave, representative of 92 percent of American Jewry, and a young and open organization willing to take on a monolithic and paleolithic AIPAC and other veteran American Jewish organizations.

Frankly, the Times article is missing so many components and questions about the "pro-Israel" organization that it cannot be viewed as anything other than J Street puffery.

For instance, the writer, James Traub, devotes considerable effort to show how J Street is in touch with American Jewish opinion on issues such as Israeli settlements and American engagement in the peace process. J Street commissioned "an extensive poll of Jewish opinion on Middle East issues," Traub wrote.

But Traub failed to report the recent and shocking exposé, written in Commentary by Noah Pollak, that J Street's poll was conducted by J Street's own former vice president, Jim Gerstein. "J Street not only commissions polls," Pollak wrote, "it writes the questions, conducts them, analyzes the results and then carries out promotional campaigns with the findings. If you were wondering how it was possible that J Street could repeatedly produce 'polling data' that almost perfectly complements the group's political agenda, now we have one important clue."

(Challenged on this and other issues, J Street felt compelled last week to post a "Myths and Facts about J Street" on its Web site. As a founder of the original Myths & Facts, a Factbook on the Arab-Israeli Conflict, published by AIPAC's Near East Report, I am reminded how some critics referred to it as "Myths & More Myths," a title much more appropriate to J Street's new attempt at defending itself.)

THE TIMES' Traub failed to report on the identity of J Street's broader leadership and decision-makers. To whom does director Jeremy Ben-Ami answer or consult? Who sits on the organization's board of directors? Who are the organization's funders? Traub reports on the 50-member finance committee, the existence of which was revealed in a Jerusalem Post article last month. The Post revealed names of some of the members: "The finance committee with a $10,000 contribution threshold," the Post wrote, "includes Lebanese-American businessman Richard Abdoo, a current board member of Amideast and a former board member of the Arab American Institute (AAI), and Genevieve Lynch, who is also a member of the National Iranian American Council (NIAC) board."

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The Battle for Washington

"This is a key moment in the debate," says Stephen Walt, co-author of The Israel Lobby. "It will be important whether Obama gets enough cover from J Street and the Israel Policy Forum so Obama can say, 'AIPAC is not representative of the American Jewish community.'”
-- Mother Jones, September 2009

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J Street's Web site presents its distinguished 170-member "advisory council," a display case of wealthy progressive Jews and former US diplomats to the Middle East, including several who became foreign agents working the halls of Washington for Arab countries. Perhaps J Street's ultimate leaders are among these advisers, but there's no way of knowing who they are.

The Post article revealed that J Street's PAC was the recipient of donations from Arab-, Islamic- and Iranian-Americans, but Traub doesn't mention that controversial fact. The existence of these donations is understandably played down by Ben-Ami, but that information certainly should have been made available to the Times's readers.

J Street's finance committee list only reflects contributors to the PAC as they appear in public records of the Federal Elections Commission. The list of donors to J Street's main organization is secret.

Traub should have asked what role George Soros plays in the organization. A National Journal article written in April 2008 prior to J Street's launch reported that "billionaire and controversial activist George Soros, a party to the early talks about forming a new group, is reportedly no longer involved, in part, sources say, because concerns that his participation might be a lightning rod for critics."

J Street's disturbing alliance with the Iranian lobbying group, the National Iranian American Council, is also ignored by the Times's tribute. J Street and NIAC directors coauthored a Huffington Post article earlier this year arguing against new sanctions on Iran.

When Congress was considering anti-Iranian legislation a year ago, J Street went into action. In the words of one anti-Israel blogger at the time, "J Street played a key role in dealing that astonishing defeat to AIPAC in Congress - in which a coalition of peace groups and religious groups spearheaded by the National Iranian American Council lobbied effectively against a belligerent resolution."

One fact the Times magazine seems to get right: "J Street shares the Obama administration's agenda." But the Times should have gone on to ask the nature of J Street's relationship with senior officials in the Obama administration. The National Journal article on organizational meetings prior to J Street's launch - and at the height of the Democratic primaries - listed advisers including "several activists with ties to Democratic contender Barack Obama of Illinois." At the height of Israel's Gaza operation in December 2008, J Street's evenhanded statement on the fighting was very similar to that of David Axelrod, Obama's senior adviser, who, speaking on NBC's Meet the Press, avoided endorsing Israel's military action.

J STREET just launched an initiative to "bust" anti-Obama smears within the pro-Israel community. Volunteers to the "Obama Smear Busters" must take a pledge that approaches a vassal-like fealty: "Pledge right now to reply-all [sic] to every smear e-mail you receive about President Obama, Jews and Israel with the truth by filling out the form below."

The New York Times article avoided asking the hard questions and failed to examine who was funding, directing and supporting J Street. I have spoken to several senior reporters in Washington who admitted that they wanted to avoid writing J Street exposés. Can it be that news agencies fear that taking on J Street would be viewed as an attack on Obama? Ben-Ami himself, admitted to the Times, "Our No. 1 agenda item is to do whatever we can in Congress to act as the president's blocking back."

This article appeared in the print version of the Jerusalem Post, September 14, 2009

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Contacts with the Kennedys

I never worked on Ted Kennedy's staff when I was on Capitol Hill, and the only contact I had with him was probably at various AIPAC events in Washington, D.C, like this one pictured years ago. My real contact with the Kennedys was with members of Robert's family when I researched Bobby Kennedy's visit to Palestine in April 1948.

But there were two connections with Ted Kennedy worth noting.

By 1979, there was wide-spread dissatisfaction with President Jimmy Carter, especially within the Jewish community over his Israel policy (yes, already then). I must admit that my dear Aunt Louise, of blessed memory, warned me about Carter. "I grew up in the South [Louisiana], and you can't trust that southern cracker," she said in 1976 when I believed anyone would be better than Gerald Ford.

There was a groundswell of support for Ted Kennedy to challenge the incumbent president. (I still have the campaign button, "Roast Jimmy's Nuts.") Winning the Jewish community's vote was vital to Kennedy's chances, especially in the New York and California primaries.

Around that time I was in graduate school in Washington and, as luck would have it, taking a course on "Elections and Campaigns" taught by a Kennedy advisor. My thesis -- all theoretical, of course -- was a campaign plan for an unnamed candidate seeking to garner Jewish voters in a large state.

Kennedy won California, and I got an A.


Mrs. Kennedy and Lebanon

The other occasion was in the late 1990s when I was serving in the Israeli Embassy in Washington. As discretely as possible, Kennedy wanted to know if it were safe for him to visit Lebanon. Few people were aware that Victoria -- "Vicky" -- Reggie, his second wife, is the descendant of Lebanese Maronites on both parents' sides. They wanted to visit the "homeland" and see her family's roots.

My immediate response, confirmed by others I checked with, was that he should definitely not visit Lebanon. He was just too high a profile, a huge prize to various Middle East groups that would want to harm him or abduct him. The fact that his brother Bobby had been assassinated by a Palestinian because of his support for Israel only increased the danger, I explained.

That he turned to someone at the Israeli Embassy for such advice is indicative of the trust and friendship he showed to Israel throughout his career.

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