Israeli Minister: Jews too have behaved like Nazis

jews sans frontieres
AN ANTI-ZIONIST BLOG - BROWSING THE MEDIA

Israeli Minister: Jews too have behaved like Nazis

Amid the news that the UN's new Special Investigator of Israeli Actions to its Human Rights Council, Princeton University international law expert Richard Falk, is being denied entry to Israel for "comparing Israel to Nazis," few probably remember Aharon Cizling. Cizling was the first Israeli Minister of Agriculture, and as quoted by Israeli historian Tom Segev, said in a Nov. 17, 1948 cabinet meeting, "I often disagree when the term Nazi was applied to the British ... even though the British committed Nazi crimes. But now Jews too have behaved like Nazis and my entire being is shaken."

Cizling is quoted today in Electronic Intifada by no less a personage than South Africa's intelligence minister, anti-apartheid resistance hero Ronnie Kasrils (who like Falk, is Jewish), in a piece titled, "Sixty years after Deir Yassin." It was sixty years ago today, April 9, 1948, that Zionist militias in gruesome fashion slaughtered over 100 of Deir Yassin's inhabitants. It was but one of 31 massacres of Arabs by the Zionists that took place between 1947-49, Kasrils notes. Fahimi Zidan, a Palestinian child who survived by hiding under his parents' bodies, recalled:

"The Jews ordered [us] ... to line up against the wall ... started shooting ... all ... were killed: my father ... mother ... grandfather and grandmother ... uncles and aunts and some of their children ... Halim Eid saw a man shoot a bullet into the neck of my sister ... who was ... pregnant. Then he cut her stomach open with a butcher's knife ... In another house, Naaneh Khalil ... saw a man take a ... sword and slash my neighbor ..."

Kasrils also notes:

Despite these sentiments, Cizling agreed that the crimes should be hidden, creating a lasting precedent. That such barbarism was conducted by Jewish people a mere three years after the Holocaust must have been too ghastly to contemplate, as it would constitute a major embarrassment for the state of Israel, held-up as a "light unto nations;" hence the attempts to bury the truth behind a veil of secrecy and disinformation. What better way to silence enquiry than the all-encompassing alibi of Israel's right of self-defense, condoning the use of disproportionate force and collective punishment against any act of resistance.

So Falk should take comfort; his treatment is part of an age-old Zionist tradition. The last word goes to Kasrils:

Israel will soon mark the 60th anniversary of its establishment. In so doing, Israelis and the Zionist supporters would do well to acknowledge the reasons why, for Palestinians and freedom-loving people throughout the world, there will be no cause to celebrate. Indeed, it will be a period of mourning and protest action; a time to recall the countless victims that lie in Israel's wake, as epitomized by the suffering inflicted on the inhabitants of Deir Yassin, the original site of which is ironically located just a stone's throw away from where the present day Holocaust memorial, Yad Vashem, was built.

Deir Yassin Remembered

Deir Yassin Remembered

Early in the morning of April 9, 1948, commandos of the Irgun (headed by Menachem Begin) and the Stern Gang attacked Deir Yassin, a village with about 750 Palestinian residents. The village lay outside of the area to be assigned by the United Nations to the Jewish State; it had a peaceful reputation. But it was located on high ground in the corridor between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. Deir Yassin was slated for occupation under Plan Dalet and the mainstream Jewish defense force, the Haganah, authorized the irregular terrorist forces of the Irgun and the Stern Gang to perform the takeover.

In all over 100 men, women, and children were systematically murdered. Fifty-three orphaned children were literally dumped along the wall of the Old City, where they were found by Miss Hind Husseini and brought behind the American Colony Hotel to her home, which was to become the Dar El-Tifl El-Arabi orphanage. Visit http://www.deiryassin.org/

INTERVIEW WITH INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALIST SEYMOUR HERSH - 'President Bush Accepted Ethnic Cleansing'

Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh has consistently led the way in telling the story of what's really going on in Iraq and Iran. SPIEGEL ONLINE spoke to him about America's Hitler, Bush's Vietnam, and how the US press failed the First Amendment.


Seymour Hersh began his career as a police reporter. But since then, he has risen to become one of the most important investigative journalists in the history of American journalism. Hersh first made a name for himself in 1969 by uncovering the My Lai Massacre during the Vietnam War, for which he won the 1970 Pulitzer Prize. Hersh has worked for the New Yorker since 1992 and in 2004 was instrumental in uncovering the US military's abuses of prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. Hersh was in Berlin this week to accept the Democracy Prize handed out by the political journal "Blätter für Deutsche und Internationale Politik."
Hersh: We have this wonderful capacity in America to Hitlerize people. We had Hitler, and since Hitler we've had about 20 of them. Khrushchev and Mao and of course Stalin, and for a little while Gadhafi was our Hitler. And now we have this guy Ahmadinejad. The reality is, he's not nearly as powerful inside the country as we like to think he is. The Revolutionary Guards have direct control over the missile program and if there is a weapons program, they would be the ones running it. Not Ahmadinejad.


For now, American troops are on the Iraq side of the border with Iran. Might that change?

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was just in New York (more...) for the United Nations General Assembly. Once again, he said that he is only interested in civilian nuclear power instead of atomic weapons. How much does the West really know about the nuclear program in Iran?

Seymour Hersh: A lot. And it's been underestimated how much the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) knows. If you follow what (IAEA head Mohamed) ElBaradei (more...) and the various reports have been saying, the Iranians have claimed to be enriching uranium to higher than a 4 percent purity, which is the amount you need to run a peaceful nuclear reactor. But the IAEA's best guess is that they are at 3.67 percent or something. The Iranians are not even doing what they claim to be doing. The IAEA has been saying all along that they've been making progress but basically, Iran is nowhere. Of course the US and Israel are going to say you have to look at the worst case scenario, but there isn't enough evidence to justify a bombing raid.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Is this just another case of exaggerating the danger in preparation for an invasion like we saw in 2002 and 2003 prior to the Iraq War?


SPIEGEL ONLINE: Where does this feeling of urgency that the US has with Iran come from?

Hersh: Pressure from the White House. That's just their game.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: What interest does the White House have in moving us to the brink with Tehran?

Hersh: You have to ask yourself what interest we had 40 years ago for going to war in Vietnam. You'd think that in this country with so many smart people, that we can't possibly do the same dumb thing again. I have this theory in life that there is no learning. There is no learning curve. Everything is tabula rasa. Everybody has to discover things for themselves.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Even after Iraq? Aren't there strategic reasons for getting so deeply involved in the Middle East?

Hersh: Oh no. We're going to build democracy. The real thing in the mind of this president is he wants to reshape the Middle East and make it a model. He absolutely believes it. I always thought Henry Kissinger was a disaster because he lies like most people breathe and you can't have that in public life. But if it were Kissinger this time around, I'd actually be relieved because I'd know that the madness would be tied to some oil deal. But in this case, what you see is what you get. This guy believes he's doing God's work.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: So what are the options in Iraq?

Hersh: There are two very clear options: Option A) Get everybody out by midnight tonight. Option B) Get everybody out by midnight tomorrow. The fuel that keeps the war going is us.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: A lot of people have been saying that the US presence there is a big part of the problem. Is anyone in the White House listening?

Hersh: No. The president is still talking about the "Surge" (eds. The "Surge" refers to President Bush's commitment of 20,000 additional troops to Iraq in the spring of 2007 in an attempt to improve security in the country.) as if it's going to unite the country. But the Surge was a con game of putting additional troops in there. We've basically Balkanized the place, building walls and walling off Sunnis from Shiites. And in Anbar Province, where there has been success, all of the Shiites are gone. They've simply split.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Is that why there has been a drop in violence there?

Hersh: I think that's a much better reason than the fact that there are a couple more soldiers on the ground.

SPIEGEL ONLINE:So what are the lessons of the Surge (more...)?

Hersh: The Surge means basically that, in some way, the president has accepted ethnic cleansing, whether he's talking about it or not. When he first announced the Surge in January, he described it as a way to bring the parties together. He's not saying that any more. I think he now understands that ethnic cleansing is what is going to happen. You're going to have a Kurdistan. You're going to have a Sunni area that we're going to have to support forever. And you're going to have the Shiites in the South.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: So the US is over four years into a war that is likely going to end in a disaster. How valid are the comparisons with Vietnam?

Hersh: The validity is that the US is fighting a guerrilla war and doesn't know the culture. But the difference is that at a certain point, because of Congressional and public opposition, the Vietnam War was no longer tenable. But these guys now don't care. They see it but they don't care.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: If the Iraq war does end up as a defeat for the US, will it leave as deep a wound as the Vietnam War did?

Hersh: Much worse. Vietnam was a tactical mistake. This is strategic. How do you repair damages with whole cultures? On the home front, though, we'll rationalize it away. Don't worry about that. Again, there's no learning curve. No learning curve at all. We'll be ready to fight another stupid war in another two decades.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Of course, preventing that is partially the job of the media. Have reporters been doing a better job recently than they did in the run-up to the Iraq War?

Hersh: Oh yeah. They've done a better job since. But back then, they blew it. When you have a guy like Bush who's going to move the infamous Doomsday Clock forward, and he's going to put everybody in jeopardy and he's secretive and he doesn't tell Congress anything and he's inured to what we write. In such a case, we (journalists) become more important. The First Amendment failed and the American press failed the Constitution. We were jingoistic. And that was a terrible failing. I'm asked the question all the time: What happened to my old paper, the New York Times? And I now say, they stink. They missed it. They missed the biggest story of the time and they're going to have to live with it.

Interview conducted by Charles Hawley and David Gordon Smith





"IN TIMES OF UNIVERSAL DECEIT, TELLING THE TRUTH WILL BE A REVOLUTIONARY ACT." - George Orwell

Countdown - Iran Must Get Ready to Repel a Nuclear Attack by Léonid Ivashov *

For the general Leonid Ivashov, the former Chief of the Russian armed forces’ Staff, it is doubtless that the Bush administration plans nuclear attacks against Iran and that the Pentagon will be capable to carry them out within the few coming weeks. He is too sure that the United States will not be talked out of it by the other nuclear powers and will have to endure but a conventional counter. The only unknown thing yet is if this project will be approved or refused by the United States’ Congress.


16 FEBRUARY 2007

From
Moscow (Russia)


In the overall flow of information coming from the Middle East, there are increasingly frequent reports indicating that within several months from now the US will deliver nuclear strikes on Iran. For example, citing well-informed but undisclosed sources, the Kuwaiti Arab Times wrote that the US plans to launch a missile and bomb attack on the territory of Iran before the end of April, 2007. The campaign will start from the sea and will be supported by the Patriot missile defense systems in order to let the US forces avoid a ground operation and to reduce the efficiency of the return strike by “any Persian Gulf country”.

“Any country” mostly refers to Iran. The source which supplied the information to the Kuwaiti paper believes that the US forces in Iraq and other countries of the region will be defended from any Iranian missile strikes by the frontier Patriots.

So, the preparations for a new US aggression entered the completion phase. The executions of S. Hussein and his closest associates were a part of these preparations. Their purpose was to serve as a “disguise operation” for the efforts of the US strategists to deliberately escalate the situation both around Iran and in the entire Middle East.

Analyzing the consequences of the move, the US did order to hang the former Iraqi leader and his associates. This shows that the US has adopted irreversibly the plan of partitioning Iraq into three warring pseudo-states – the Shiite, the Sunnite, and the Kurdish ones. Washington reckons that the situation of a controlled chaos will help it to dominate the Persian Gulf oil supplies and other strategically important oil transportation routes.

The most important aspect of the matter is that a zone of an endless bloody conflict will be created at the core of the Middle East, and that the countries neighboring Iraq – Iran, Syria, Turkey (Kurdistan) – will inevitably be getting drawn into it. This will solve the problem of completely destabilizing the region, a task of major importance for the US and especially for Israel. The war in Iraq was just one element in a series of steps in the process of regional destabilization. It was only a phase in the process of getting closer to dealing with Iran and other countries, which the US declared or will declare rouge.

However it is not easy for the US to get involved in yet another military campaign while Iraq and Afghanistan are not “pacified” (the US lacks the resources necessary for the operation). Besides, protests against the politics of the Washington neocons intensify all over the world. Due to all of the above, the US will use nuclear weapon against Iran. This will be the second case of the use of nuclear weapons in combat after the 1945 US attack on Japan.

The Israeli military and political circles had been making statements on the possibility of nuclear and missile strikes on Iran openly since October, 2006, when the idea was immediately supported by G. Bush. Currently it is touted in the form of a “necessity” of nuclear strikes. The public is taught to believe that there is nothing monstrous about such a possibility and that, on the contrary, a nuclear strike is quite feasible. Allegedly, there is no other way to “stop” Iran.

How will other nuclear powers react? As for Russia, at best it will limit itself to condemning the strikes, and at worst – as in the case of the aggression against Yugoslavia – its response will be something like “though by this the US makes a mistake, the victim itself provoked the attack”.

Europe will react in essentially the same way. Possibly, the negative reaction of China and several other countries to the nuclear aggression will be stronger. In any case, there will be no retaliation nuclear strike on the US forces (the US is absolutely sure of this).

The UN means nothing in this context. Having failed to condemn the aggression against Yugoslavia, the UN Security Council effectively shared the responsibility for it. This institution is only capable to adopt resolutions which the Russian and also the French diplomacy understands as banning the use of force, but the US and British ones interpret in exactly the opposite sense – as authorizing their aggression.

Speaking of Israel, it is sure to come under the Iranian missile strikes. Possibly, the Hezbollah and the Palestinian resistance will become more active. Posing as victims, the Israelis will resort to provocations to justify their aggression, suffer some tolerable damage, and then the outraged US will destabilize Iran finally, making it look like a noble mission of retribution.

Some people tend to believe that concerns over the world’s protests can stop the US. I do not think so. The importance of this factor should not be overstated. In the past, I have spent hours talking to Milosevic, trying to convince him that NATO was preparing to attack Yugoslavia. For a long time, he could not believe this and kept telling me: “Just read the UN Charter. What grounds will they have to do it?”

But they did it. They ignored the international law outrageously and did it. What do we have now? Yes, there was a shock, there was indignation. But the result is exactly what the aggressors wanted – Milosevic is dead, Yugoslavia is partitioned, and Serbia is colonized – NATO officers have set up their headquarters in the country’s ministry of defense.

The same things happened to Iraq. There were a shock and indignation. But what matters to the Americans is not how big the shock is, but how high are the revenues of their military-industrial complex.

The information that a second US aircraft-carrier is due to arrive at the Persian Gulf till the end of January makes it possible to analyze the possible evolution of the war situation. Attacking Iran, the US will mostly use air delivery of the nuclear munitions. Cruise missiles (carried by the US aircrafts as well as ships and submarines) and, possibly, ballistic missiles will be used. Probably, nuclear strikes will be followed by air raids from aircraft carriers and by other means of attack.

The US command is trying to exclude a ground operation: Iran has a strong army and the US forces are likely to suffer massive casualties. This is unacceptable for G. Bush who already finds himself in a difficult situation. It does not take a ground operation to destroy infrastructures in Iran, to reverse the development of the country, to cause panic, and to create a political, economic and military chaos. This can be accomplished by using first the nuclear, and subsequently the conventional means of warfare. Such is the purpose of bringing the aircraft carrier group closer to the Iranian coast.

What resources for self-defense does Iran have? They are considerable, but incomparably inferior to the US forces. Iran has 29 Russian Tor systems. Definitely, they are an important reinforcement of the Iranian air defense. However, at present Iran has no guaranteed protection from air raids.

The US tactics will be the same as usual: first, to neutralize the air defense and radars, and then to attack aircrafts in the air and on land, the control installations, and the infrastructure, while taking no risks.

Within weeks from now, we will see the informational warfare machine start working. The public opinion is already under pressure. There will be a growing anti-Iranian militaristic hysteria, new information leaks, disinformation, etc.

At the same time all of the above sends a signal to the pro-Western opposition and to a fraction of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s elite to get ready for the coming developments. The US hopes that an attack on Iran will inevitably result in a chaos in the country, and that it will be possible to bribe some of the Iranian generals and thus to create a fifth column in the country.

Of course, Iran is very different from Iraq. However, if the aggressor succeeds in instigating a conflict between the two branches of the Iranian armed forces – the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps and the army – the country will find itself in a critical situation, especially in case at the very beginning of the campaign the US manages to hit the Iranian leadership and delivers a nuclear strike or a massive one by conventional warfare on the country’s central command.

Today, the probability of a US aggression against Iran is extremely high. It does remain unclear, though, whether the US Congress is going to authorize the war. It may take a provocation to eliminate this obstacle (an attack on Israel or the US targets including military bases). The scale of the provocation may be comparable to the 9-11 attack in NY. Then the Congress will certainly say “Yes” to the US President.


Léonid Ivashov
Le général Léonid Ivashov est ancien chef d’état-major interarmes de la Fédération de Russie. Il est aujourd’hui vice-président de l’Académie russe de géopolitique et membre de la conférence Axis for Peace.



"IN TIMES OF UNIVERSAL DECEIT, TELLING THE TRUTH WILL BE A REVOLUTIONARY ACT." - George Orwell

MUST A Native-American recognize the right of the United States of America to exist? - Facing Mecca by Uri Avnery

MUST A Native-American recognize the right of the United States of America to exist?

Interesting question. The USA was established by Europeans who invaded a continent that did not belong to them, eradicated most of the indigenous population (the "Red Indians") in a prolonged campaign of genocide, and exploited the labor of millions of slaves who had been brutally torn from their lives in Africa. Not to mention what is going on today. Must a Native-American - or indeed anybody at all - recognize the right of such a state to exist?
But nobody raises the question. The United States does not give a damn if anybody recognizes its right to exist or not. It does not demand this from the countries with which it maintains relations.

Why? Because this is a ridiculous demand to start with.

OK, the United States is older than the State of Israel, as well as bigger and more powerful. But countries that are not super-powers do not demand this either. India, for example, is not expected to recognize Pakistan's "right to exist", in spite of the fact that Pakistan was established at the same time as Israel, and - like Israel - on an ethnic/religious basis.

SO WHY is Hamas required to "recognize Israel's right to exist"?

When a state "recognizes" another state, it is a formal recognition, the acknowledgement of an existing fact. It does not imply approval. The Soviet Union was not required to recognize the existence of the USA as a capitalist state. On the contrary, Nikita Khrushchev promised in 1956 to "bury" it. The US certainly did not dream of recognizing at any time the right of the Soviet Union to exist as a communist state.

So why is this weird demand addressed to the Palestinians? Why must they recognize the right of Israel to exist as a Jewish State?

I am an Israeli patriot, and I do not feel that I need anybody's recognition of the right of my state to exist. If somebody is ready to make peace with me, within borders and on conditions agreed upon in negotiations, that is quite enough for me. I am prepared to leave the history, ideology and theology of the matter to the theologians, ideologues and historians.

Perhaps after 60 years of the existence of Israel, and after we have become a regional power, we are still so unsure of ourselves that we crave for constant assurance of our right to exist - and of all people, from those that we have been oppressing for the last 40 years. Perhaps it is the mentality of the Ghetto that is still so deeply ingrained in us.

But the demand addressed now to the Palestinian Unity Government is far from sincere. It has an ulterior political aim, indeed two: (a) to convince the international community not to recognize the Palestinian government that is about to be set up, and (b) to justify the refusal of the Israeli government to enter into peace negotiations with it.

The British call this a "red herring" - a smelly fish that a fugitive drags across the path in order to put the pursuing dogs off the trail.

WHEN I was young, Jewish people in Palestine used to talk about our secret weapon: the Arab refusal. Every time somebody proposed some peace plan, we relied on the Arab side to say "no". True, the Zionist leadership was against any compromise that would have frozen the existing situation and halted the momentum of the Zionist enterprise of expansion and settlement. But the Zionist leaders used to say "yes" and "we extend our hand for peace" - and rely on the Arabs to scuttle the proposal.

That was successful for a hundred years, until Yasser Arafat changed the rules, recognized Israel and signed the Oslo Accords, which stipulated that the negotiations for the final borders between Israel and Palestine must be concluded not later than 1999. To this very day, those negotiations have not even started. Successive Israeli governments have prevented it because they were not ready under any circumstances to fix final borders. (The 2000 Camp David meeting was not a real negotiation - Ehud Barak convened it without any preparation, dictated his terms to the Palestinians and broke the dialogue off when they were refused.)

After the death of Arafat, the refusal became more and more difficult. Arafat was always described as a terrorist, cheat and liar. But Mahmoud Abbas was accepted by everybody as an honest person, who truly wanted to achieve peace. Yet Ariel Sharon succeeded in avoiding any negotiations with him. The "Unilateral Separation" served this end. President Bush supported him with both hands.

Well, Sharon suffered his stroke, and Ehud Olmert took his place. And then something happened that caused great joy in Jerusalem: the Palestinians elected Hamas.

How wonderful! After all, both the US and Europe have designated Hamas as a terrorist organization! Hamas is a part of the Shiite Axis of Evil! (They are not Shiites, but who cares!) Hamas does not recognize Israel! Hamas is trying to eliminate Mahmoud Abbas, the noble man of peace! It is clear that with such a gang there is no need, nor would it make any sense, to conduct negotiations about peace and borders.

And indeed, the US and their European satellites are boycotting the Palestinian government and starving the Palestinian population. They have set three conditions for lifting the blockade: (a) that the Palestinian government and Hamas must recognize the right of the State of Israel to exist, (b) they must stop "terrorism", and (c) they must undertake to fulfill the agreements signed by the PLO.

On the face of it, that makes sense. In reality, none at all. Because all these conditions are completely one-sided:

the Palestinians must recognize the right of Israel to exist (without defining its borders, of course), but the Israeli government is not required to recognize the right of a Palestinian state to exist at all.

The Palestinians must put an end to "terrorism", but the Israeli government is not required to stop its military operations in the Palestinian territories and stop the building of settlements. The "roadmap" does indeed say so, but that has been completely ignored by everybody, including the Americans.

The Palestinians must undertake to fulfill the agreements, but no such undertaking is required from the Israeli government, which has broken almost all provision of the Oslo agreement. Among others: the opening of the "safe passages" between Gaza and the West Bank, the carrying out of the third "redeployment" (withdrawal from Palestinian territories), the treatment of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip as one single territory, etc etc.

Since Hamas came to power, its leaders have understood the need to become more flexible. They are very sensitive to the mood of their people. The Palestinian population is longing for an end to the occupation and for a life of peace. Therefore, step by step, Hamas has come nearer to recognition of Israel. Their religious doctrine does not allow them to declare this publicly (Jewish fundamentalists too cling to the word of God "To your seed I have given this land") but it has been doing so indirectly. Little steps, but a big revolution.

Hamas has announced its support for the establishment of a Palestinian state bounded by the June 1967 borders - meaning: next to Israel and not in place of Israel. (This week, ex-minister Kadura Fares repeated that Hamas leader Khaled Mashal has confirmed this.) Hamas has given Mahmoud Abbas a power of attorney to conduct the negotiations with Israel and has undertaken in advance to accept any agreement ratified in a referendum. Abbas, of course, clearly advocates the setting up of a Palestinian state next to Israel, across the Green Line. There is no doubt whatsoever that if such an agreement is achieved, the huge majority of the Palestinian population will vote for it.

In Jerusalem, worry has set in. If this goes on, the world might even get the impression that Hamas has changed, and then - God forbid - lift the economic blockade on the Palestinian people.

Now the King of Saudi Arabia comes and disturbs Olmert's plans even more.

In an impressive event, facing the holiest site of Islam, the king put an end to the bloody strife between the Palestinian security organs and prepared the ground for a Palestinian government of national unity. Hamas undertook to respect the agreements signed by the PLO, including the Oslo agreement, which is based on the mutual recognition of the State of Israel and the PLO as representative of the Palestinian people.

The king has extracted the Palestinian issue from the embrace of Iran, to which Hamas had turned because it had no alternative, and has returned Hamas to the lap of the Sunni family. Since Saudi Arabia is the main ally of the US in the Arab world, the king has put the Palestinian issue firmly on the table of the Oval Room.

In Jerusalem, near panic broke out. This is the scariest of nightmares: the fear that the unconditional support of the US and Europe for Israeli policy will be reconsidered.

The panic had immediate results: "political circles" in Jerusalem announced that they rejected the Mecca agreement out of hand. Then second thoughts set in. Shimon Peres, long established master of the "yes-but-no" method, convinced Olmert that the brazen "no" must be replaced with a more subtle "no". For this purpose, the red herring was again taken out of the freezer.

It is not enough that Hamas recognize Israel in practice. Israel insists that its "right to exist" must also be recognized. Political recognition does not suffice, ideological recognition is required. By this logic, one could also demand that Khaled Mashal join the Zionist organization.

If one thinks that peace is more important for Israel than expansion and settlements, one must welcome the change in the position of Hamas - as expressed in the Mecca agreement - and encourage it to continue along this road. The king of Saudi Arabia, who has already convinced the leaders of all Arab countries to recognize Israel in exchange for the establishment of the state of Palestine across the Green Line, should be warmly congratulated.

But if one opposes peace because it would fix the final borders of Israel and allow for no more expansion, one will do everything to convince the Americans and Europeans to continue with the boycott on the Palestinian government and the blockade of the Palestinian people.
The day after tomorrow, Condoleezza Rice will convene a meeting of Olmert and Abbas in Jerusalem.

The Americans now have a problem. On one side, they need the Saudi king. Not only does he sit on huge oil reservoirs, but he is also the center-piece of the "moderate Sunni bloc". If the king tells Bush that the solution of the Palestinian problem is needed in order to dam the spread of Iranian influence across the Middle East, his words will carry a lot of weight. If Bush is planning a military attack on Iran, as it seems he is, it is important for him to have the united support of the Sunnis.

On the other side, the pro-Israel lobby - both Jewish and Christian - is very important for Bush. It is vital for him to be able to count on the "Christian base" of the Republican Party, which is composed of fundamentalists who support the extreme Right in Israel, come what may.

So what is to be done? Nothing. For this nothing, Condi found an apt diplomatic slogan, taken from up-to-date American slang: "New Political Horizons".

Clearly, she did not ponder on the meaning of these words. Because the horizon is the symbol of a goal that will never be reached: the more you approach it, the more it recedes.