Ayoon wa Azan ( Before Meeting Him )
Jihad el-Khazen Al-Hayat - 02/04/07//
The April 12, 2007, issue of the magazine the 'New York Review of Books' contains an article entitled "On Israel, America and AIPAC", by George Soros, the world-known businessman. It begins with an accurate and objective analysis of the Palestinian situation, the national unity government and the Arab initiative for peace with Israel. It continues to review the extremism of the official US-Jewish lobby and its dominance of the US policy in the Middle East, with all the harms this has caused to the objective of Middle East peace, and Israel's own interests.
I had heard of Georges Soros before meeting him. While the world of economics did not concern me in the least, I have become interested in his activities because some of his political stances and charity activities. Then I followed up on his participation in the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, and I found that he was as I had heard about him, or even better. Last year, he was standing on the stairs leading to the biggest conference hall at the convention center, and I told him that I did not understand much about economics, but that I supported his political positions and thanked him for them.
Perhaps I'll thank him once again for his article in this influential, classy book review magazine. I would like to share this article with the readers. I claim no credit except the translation and some quick and brief comments.
Soros is not afraid of the situation as the very first line of the article says: "The Bush administration is once again in the process of committing a major policy blunder in the Middle East, one that is liable to have disastrous consequences and is not receiving the attention it should."
The blunder, in the opinion of the writer, is that the administration supports Israel's position in not recognizing the Palestinian national unity government. He adds that the administration's dealing with President Mahmoud Abbas alone in the hope that Hamas will lose the next election, or boycott it if held prematurely, is a hopeless or miserable strategy because no peace is possible without Hamas.
Soros compares the positions of the US and Israel to that of the Saudi government, which invited the Palestinian factions to a meeting in Mecca where the formation of a government of national unity was agreed upon. He then talks about the 2002 Arab peace initiative which will be the focus of the Arab League meeting at the end of March (which has just taken place). But his view is that no progress is possible on this track as long as the Olmert government persists in its position of refusing to recognize the unity government.
Soros ascribes the current impasse to the Ariel Sharon government's unilateral decision to withdraw from the Gaza Strip with no negotiations with the then Fatah-controlled Palestinian Authority (PA). This strengthened the position of Hamas. He also talked about a six-point plan devised by James Wolfensohn, former president of the World Bank, to help the inhabitants of the Gaza Strip. However, Elliott Abrams spoilt this plan.
I add here that Elliot Abrams, the hero of the 'Iran-Contra' scandal, represents Israel, not the US, in the National Security Council. He's a neo-conservative extremist who has played a role in pushing the US into an unjustified war against Iraq in which the best of the US' youth were killed. And just as I hope that the war cabal will be tried one day, I also hope Wolfensohn will write his memoirs. Perhaps he will reveal in them the role of the US State Department in insisting on the extension of the siege on the Palestinians in the occupied territories, to the point of starvation, in the hope that they would eventually surrender and accept what the Israelis had offered them.
Returning to the Soros article, he completes it with a point I have raised over and over in this column. He says "the current policy is not even questioned" in the US, while debate in Israel, by contrast, is very open and vigorous. One reason for this is the harmful influence of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), or the official Jewish lobby, and the impact of the lobby on both the Democratic and Republican parties. I had written previously about my personal preference for the Israeli Knesset over the US Congress as the proportion of moderates in the first is almost half compared to less than 5% in the US House of Representatives and the Senate.
Soros believes that the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians cannot be resolved militarily, referring to the peace process led by Bill Clinton and "rejected by Arafat".
I have a comment on these last words. Abu Ammar did not reject the framework agreement but accepted it in the White House, under pressure from the US President on January 2, 2001, as far as I can remember, and this was the last meeting between the two men. When Abu Ammar returned to Gaza, his senior aides said that the offer needed some modifications or additions. It is most likely that Arafat procrastinated till it was too late, believing that he could get a better peace offer from George W. Bush.
Once again I return to Soros and his article. He firmly rejects the claim that criticism of Israel means anti-Semitism, while he also refutes the claims of Alvin Rosenfeld, of the American Jewish Committee, who takes those Jews who criticize Israel to be advocates of anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism, which he sees as coequal.
Soros complains that anyone who criticizes the Israeli policy becomes the subject of a campaign of defamation. He himself had paid the price. He was attacked by the far right, so much so that Martin Peretz, of The New Republic, linked Soros to Nazism.
I say that Soros is more honest than a thousand Peretzs, who serve a policy that leads to more killings among the Palestinians and Israel. I can do no more here, as there is no room, than compare between two Jewish men who came from Hungary. Soros, who works for peace and has been active in charity work for all people, and Congressman Tom Lantos, the Israeli apologist who encourages murder and represents Israel before he represents the US in the House of Representatives. Perhaps one of these days I will hold a comparison between James Wolfensohn and his successor at the World Bank, Paul Wolfowitz. The former is an advocate of peace par excellence, while the second was a major player in the crime of the war on Iraq.
http://www.j-khazen.blogspot.com/
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