What Obama Should Write Assad

Hon. Bashir Assad
President of Syria
via US Embassy-Damascus

Dear Mr President:
Thank you for your kind invitation to visit your country this year. However, I have concluded that a state visit to Syria must await the resolution of several important issues between your country and ours.
As you know, the United States supports a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Unfortunately, some of the policies and actions of your government are making the achievement of this goal extremely difficult. Most salient is Syrian support for Hamas, which operates openly in Damascus, and receives major supplies of Iranian arms through Syria, including medium and long-range rockets. During my 2008 visit to Sderot, Israel, I vehemently condemned firing these rockets at civilian targets in Israel, particularly Sderot. Israeli co-operation in establishing a Palestinian state is possible only if Israel is secure from attacks such as these.
In addition, your government has been supplying rockets and other arms to Hezbollah, which deliberately provoked a war between Lebanon and Israel in 2006 by crossing an internationally-recognized border to capture Israeli soldiers. Although a cease-fire is in effect, the soldiers have not been repatriated. We are also concerned about the role of Hezbollah in fomenting violence within Lebanon.
The United States supports bi-lateral negotiations aimed at restoring Syrian sovereignty over the Golan Heights. We consider the 1977 settlement between Israel and Egypt a model for attaining this goal. But progress on this issue, too, is not possible while Syria continues to support Hezbollah, whose actions continue to threaten the security of Israel.
We believe that peace and stability in the Middle East are in the interests of your country, as well as that of other states in the region. Accordingly, I have instructed the Department of State to work with your Foreign Ministry to seek areas of common interest between our two countries. However, a significant change in Syrian policy regarding both Hamas and Hezbollah is essential if Syria is to play a positive role in securing a durable and just peace in the Middle East.
If Syria will support our peace efforts with both words and deeds, the United States will co-operate with you. In that case, a presidential visit to your country before the end of my current term in office will be possible.
Aleikum es-salaam.

Yours truly,
/s/ Barack Hussein Obama

Michael's Messages

"Jew me, sue me.....kick me, kike me...."
Lyrics from a 1995 Michael Jackson song

"They're like leeches....the Jews do it on purpose..."
Recorded phone message from Jackson, 2005

These quotations, coupled with the report from Panorama magazine that Jackson had followed the lead of his brother Jermaine and converted to Islam, would seem to indicate that the late singer was essentially hostile to Jews and Judaism.

Yet, equally credible reports indicate that he was a frequent Sabbath guest at the home of Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, who toured with Michael Jackson in 1999 and brought him along to the Carlebach Shul in Manhattan that year. (1) I do not understand the connection between the two men, who had very different outlooks. Perhaps Jackson then felt a need for a rabbi in his life, and Boteach felt the need for a rich homosexual pedophile in his. Go figure!

Most bizarre of the connections between Michael Jackson and the Jewish people is that his second wife Debbie Jean Rowe (Mrs Jackson 1996-1999), the mother of his two older children (Michael Joseph and Paris Michael Katharine), is Jewish ! According to Jewish law, the children are Jewish too, although they may not know it. (2) All three of Jackson's children have been placed with his mother (in accordance with his will), but Rowe may contest the placement in court. Most courts side with the surviving parent in cases like this, such as that of Elian Gonzales. (3)

Although I enjoyed some of Michael's earlier recordings, his later work left me cold, and I am not among the many fans who mourn his passing. He will be remembered both as an innovator in pop music (and dance) and as a very disturbed man who could not establish long-term relationships with other people; the relationship with his pet monkey Bubbles outlasted both of his marriages combined. He was apparently uncomfortable with his identity as an adult black male, and tried to flee from it.

He suffered from insomnia, and reportedly sought drugs that would put him to sleep. Like O J Simpson, he beat the criminal charges against him, despite being guilty. At least Michael Jackson never killed anyone, except maybe himself.
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(1) Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA) 6/30/09 .

(2) Former US Secretary of State Madeline Albright did not learn she was Jewish until she was middle-aged. Her parents lied to her about being Catholic.

(3) The Cuban boy's mother drowned en route to the US, and custody was awarded to his father, who had remained in Cuba.

The Court Reverses Sotomayor

On June 29 the US Supreme Court ruled that the white firefighters in New Haven, CT, who qualified for promotions by taking an exam, were discriminated against when the City discarded the test results since no blacks qualified. This decision reversed the unanimous determination of the Second Circuit of the US Court of Appeals, which had upheld a federal court decision to dismiss the case. This dismissal was an act of judicial restraint, since the judges deferred to the will of local officials.

This case has special salience since Judge Sonia Sotomayor, who served on the three-judge panel that dismissed the appeal, has since been nominated by President Barack Obama to fill the seat on the Supreme Court now held by Justice David Souter, who is retiring.

This decision, correctly predicted in the April 23, 2009, Glazerbeam entitled "White-Out in New Haven," was written by Justice Anthony Kennedy and concurred in by Justices Roberts, Alito, Scalia and Thomas. The Court did not rule that "affirmative action" (a euphemism for preferential treatment) to benefit minority applicants was inherently unconstitutional, but only that an employer who has administered an employment or promotional test can only discard the results if the employer has reason to believe that the test itself was discriminatory. That was not the case with the New Haven test. Ironically, Clarence Thomas, the only black justice on the Court, voted to overturn the pro-affirmative action decision, even though I believe that he benefited from the policy throughout his career. (1)

I believe that in the New Haven case the Supreme Court was right, and Judge Sotomayor and her colleagues on the Second Circuit were wrong. (See the April 23 posting for details) Yet I do not conclude that this decision, nor her judicial record taken as a whole, are just cause to deny her confirmation.

Judge Sonia Sotomayor, although originally appointed to the federal bench by Republican President George H W Bush, is clearly a liberal. In her ten years on the appellate bench, she has published 226 majority opinions and only 21 dissents. Of the dissents, 63 percent were on the liberal side, 5 percent were clearly conservative, and the rest indeterminate. (2) But the fact that she had the support of the majority of her fellow appellate judges in 91 percent of these cases indicates that she is well within the mainstream of judicial philosophy. Even in the New Haven case, 44 percent of the Supreme Court supported her position.

Sotomayor has been widely castigated for her comment that "a wise Latina woman would make a better decision" than a male judge. I consider the remark nothing but fatuous claptrap, but not the kind of thing that justifies rejecting a nominee. The last time the Senate rejected a Supreme Court nominee (Robert Bork), the reason was a lot better. (3)

Of the nine justices, only two (Ginsburg and Breyer) were appointed by a Democratic President (Bill Clinton). In addition, Justices Souter and John Paul Stevens, though appointed by Republican Presidents (Bush Sr and Ford, respectively), usually vote with the two Democratic nominees. The liberal bloc prevails only when joined by Reagan-appointee Anthony Kennedy. The confirmation of Sonia Sotomayor to replace David Souter will merely maintain the strength of the more liberal minority, but will not tip the Court in its direction.

Since Judge Sotomayor is Hispanic, Republican senators may hesitate to oppose her nomination, for fear of antagonizing the nation's largest ethnic minority. My guess is that they will give her a tough grilling on race and affirmative action at her confirmation hearing, then go along with the nomination. Barring some shocking revelation of misconduct, that will be the right thing to do.
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(1) Thomas was appointed by President George H W Bush to succeed the first black justice, Thurgood Marshall. No other black person had ever been nominated for the Supreme Court by a Republican president. His race was probably also a factor in getting several high-level appointments by President Reagan.

(2) "Soto Voce" by Jeffrey Rosen in the July 1, 2009, New Republic.

(3) As Acting Atty. General in October, 1973, Bork fired Watergate Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox, who had subpoenaed White House tapes. The White House had previously promised to allow the Special Prosecutor to pursue all leads. Elliot Richardson and William Ruckelshaus had both resigned rather than carry out President Nixon's order to fire Cox.

The Ayatollah Who Killed the Revolution

Although some street skirmishes continue, the Green Revolution in Iran, highly touted by this blog and CNN, was effectively quashed by Grand Ayatollah Sayyid Ali Hoseyni Khameini on Friday, June 19, when he declared his unqualified support for President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Khameini warned of dire consequences if protests over his re-election continued, and since then police and militia forces have spared no bullets in enforcing his decree. The Shah lost his throne when his soldiers refused to fire on the mobs demanding his ouster; the Besij militia now is only too happy to beat and kill the enemies of the current regime.

Iran is not alone in having a permanent leader who outranks all elected officials: Jordan, Thailand, and Saudi Arabia are ruled by hereditary monarchs; the Vatican State is ruled by a pope, who is elected, but never faces re-election. In the Soviet Union, the General Secretary of the Communist Party held effective control over all government officials. (1)

I was wrong in believing that the Supreme Leader would try to prevent bloodshed by calling for a run-off election between the top two contenders, thus maintaining a spiritual position above politics. By aligning himself and his office with Ahmadinejad, Khameini has forfeited this role, and has incurred the wrath of the millions of Iranians who believe the election has been stolen. In the fractured state of Iranian politics, Khameini is now clearly in the camp of the hardliners (along with Ahmadinejad), leaving former President Hashemi Rafsanjani as effective leader of the relatively moderate politicians. Mir H Mousavi, who still believes he was robbed of the presidency, (like Al Gore in 2000) is already fading as political force.

Khameini has been a restraining influence on the confrontational inclinations of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, but his rhetoric about Israel is every bit as vitriolic. In 2001 Khameini declared that "this cancerous tumor of a state should be removed from the region." When President Ahmadinejad said in 2008 that Iran was not against "the people of Israel" Khameini insisted that it was "nonsense to say we are a friend of the Israeli people." On the other hand, the Supreme Leader said in 2005 that " the Islamic Republic ....will never threaten any country." (2) Perhaps Khameini hates Israel even more than Ahmadinejad, but does not want a war .

Even more important is Ali Khameini's fatwa (or psak, religious decree) that nuclear weapons are forbidden by Islam. According to some reports, the military leaders of Iran are pressing for development of nukes anyway, and Khameini may have caved in to them on this. If so, Israel will attempt to destroy Iran's nuclear facilities and missile launching sites sometime soon, which will mean war between the two countries.

If Mousavi had won, there would have been a chance to prevent this nightmare scenario. Now it appears inevitable.

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(1) Like Iran, the Soviet Union had elections----but all candidates had to be approved by the Communist Party "nomenklatura", the counterpart to the Guardian Council in Iran. Before Leonid Brezhnev, the President of the Soviet Union was a powerless figurehead.

(2) From Ali Khameini's biography in Wikipedia.

The Greening of Iran

"I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it anymore!"
Newscaster Howard Beale in Network.

Very few Iranians have seen Network, but millions of them have taken to the streets to express the same attitude in the wake of the June 12 election there. At first, it was just suspicion that incumbent President Ahmadinejad and his cronies had stolen the election (maybe true), but now that protesters have been killed and communications have been shut down, the real issue has become the Islamic regime itself. The opposition has cleverly chosen the color green as its emblem, since that color also represents Islam.

Have we not seen this all before? The Yellow Revolution in the Philippines, the Orange Revolution in Ukraine, the Rose Revolution in the Georgian Republic, the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia. Who can forget Boris Yeltsin rallying the Russian people from the top of a tank in 1991, only months before the collapse of the Soviet Union? Could the people of Iran be at the brink of grasping freedom from the hands of the Grand Ayatollahs?

The leader of the opposition, Mir Hossein Mousavi, was prime minister of the Islamic Republic during the Iran-Iraq War. While Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was recruiting teenagers to clear minefields with their own bodies (1), Mousavi's government was negotiating with Israel for the purchase of US-made Improved Hawk Missiles. When Israel delivered obsolete Hawks to Tehran (as though the dumb Persians would never notice the difference), Iran returned the weapons. Then Republican President Ronald Reagan authorized the sale of the Hawks and other weapons to Iran in the hope that the Islamic Republic would facilitate the release of American hostages held in Beirut. (2) Mousavi and then-Supreme Leader Ruollah Khomeini were willing to deal with Israel for the sale of Iran's strategic interests. It is hard to even imagine Ahmadinejad making such a pragmatic bargain. For this reason alone, I believe that there is "a dime's worth of difference" between the two presidential contenders.

As this is written, current Supreme Leader Ali Khameini is trying to defuse the crisis by offering a partial recount and investigation of allegations of election fraud. But nothing short of a run-off election between Mousavi and Ahmadinejad, preferably with international observers, would satisfy the opposition. Mousavi has defied the Guardian Council by urging mass demonstrations every day.

Khameini and Ahmadinejad have the support of the Revolutionary Guards and the huge Basij Militia; they could be used to crush the opposition in a "Tiananmen Square" operation, which would infuriate the country and expose the tyrannical nature of the regime. Only the Iranian Army is strong enough to save the opposition from a massacre, but if the Army sides with the opposition, the entire theocratic regime is through.

Since all the parties to the conflict know this, I believe that face-saving compromise (such as a run-off election) will be made. But even that would undermine the monolithic nature of the regime, which will never be the same, even if Ahmadinejad is re-elected.

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(1) Iran first tried to clear the Iraqi landmines with donkeys, but the animals bolted after the first explosion. Iranian children proved much more reliable.

(2) The proceeds of the sale were used to finance the anti-Sandanista "contras" in Nicaragua, so the affair became known as the Iran-Contra scandal. The hostages were released, but Reagan denied that he "traded arms for hostages."

Netanyahu's Palestine

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has given conditional endorsement to the concept of a Palestinian state, advocated by three US Presidents, his own predecessors, and the Quartet (1). But, as always, "the devil is in the details" and the details of Bibi's conditions are deal-killers.

According to Netanyahu, the proposed state must be unarmed and recognize Israel as a Jewish state. The second point is mere rhetoric, since the Palestinians would be recognizing nothing more than the truth that Israel has a Jewish majority and reflects Jewish culture. However, to say so openly would be admitting that Israeli Arabs are living in someone else's country, a very distasteful admission.

But the idea that Palestine would have no army is both essential for Israel and intolerable for the Palestinians. A truly sovereign and independent country would be able to defend itself with its own military, and could even provide military bases for other countries. If Palestine had this right, the new state could arm itself with tanks, fighter jets and rockets. Moreover, it could allow foreign countries, such as Iran, to establish bases on its territory. Of course, Israel cannot tolerate this type of threat, and it is inconceivable that any American government would even try to pressure Israel into accepting such a risk.

But why not have a de-militarized Palestine? Costa Rica gets by without an army, and seems to do OK; why not Palestine? The West Bank borders only on Israel and Jordan, neither of which are likely to attack it. Gaza borders on Egypt, but there is no way that Egypt would invade that parcel (2).

Actually, Palestine Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas might be tempted to accept a de-militarized state, which would still be a vast improvement over his present situation. Such a state would have all the trappings of sovereignty: a flag, a seat in the UN General Assembly, embassies all over the world and the right to issue its own currency and government bonds. The internal checkpoints would be gone. But, as noted in our June 5 posting, Abbas is too weak to accept a settlement without the blessing of Hamas, and Hamas will never give up its rockets. Even if Gaza were severed from Palestine, the power of Hamas and allied hardliners (e.g. Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade) in the West Bank alone would be too strong to permit Abbas to take Netanyahu's deal.

Netanyahu also insisted on keeping Jerusalem, and made no pledge to remove the settlements and their residents, so for the Palestinians there is not much to like about the proposed new state. Obama envoy George Mitchell will find himself in the position of a real estate broker whose buyer's maximum offer is still way below the seller's minimum acceptable price. But, unlike a real estate broker, Mitchell cannot admit the parties are too far apart and walk away. That would be admitting that Obama's effort to establish a Palestinian state had failed, and his promise to do so was empty. Failure is not an option!

And so, the game of shuttle diplomacy, endless negotiations, public pressures, recriminations and frustrations goes on with no end in sight.

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(1) The US, UN, Russia and the European Union.

(2) Egypt was offered Gaza along with the Sinai, and refused to accept the territory.

Hamas to Save Settlements

"Obama called Israel's settlements in the...West Bank illegitimate and said they must stop......he also said that Hamas must put an end to violence, recognize past agreements and recognize Israel's right to exist."
Reports of President Barack Obama's speech in Cairo, June 4, 2009

If Obama could get his way, Israeli soldiers would be dragging thousands of Jews out of their homes in the West Bank before long. But thanks to the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas), that will not happen, nor will there be a State of Palestine.

Like a visiting imam (Muslim preacher), the President quoted selected verses from the Quran that bolster his contention that Islam is a religion of peace, a view previously expressed by then President George W Bush. However, the leaders of Hamas, who not only quote the Quran but actually live it, apparently hear a different imam. In their understanding of Islam, the presence of a Jewish state of any size whatsoever on consecrated Muslim land (the Arabian Penninsula, at the very least) is an intolerable affront to Islam, and it is the duty of all Muslims to eliminate it.

Obama may consider men like Netanyahu and Lieberman to be intransigent, but next to Hamasniks they are pussycats! Despite the President's oratorical skills and popularity in the Muslim world, Hamas is not likely to change its raison d'etre any time soon.

Hamas does not want a peace deal with Israel, and I doubt that Palestinian President Abbas has the moxie to make one without their consent. Even if the Obama Administration prods Israel into making an offer as sweet from the Arab perspective as that presented by Ehud Barak in 2000, Abbas will reject it. The result: more years of settlements, occupation, check-points and conflict.

Meanwhile, Obama is pressuring Israel into halting expansion of existing settlements. But how much of his considerable political capital will the President expend on this? Even though many Israelis agree with Obama on this point, the kind of coercive measures that would be required to make Israel comply would trigger a backlash in Congress. I do not believe that Obama wants another AWACS-type of fight (1) over such a minor issue. More likely, there will be a face-saving compromise along these lines: adding rooms to existing buildings will be OK, but not building new ones. Does peace in the Middle East really turn on such piddling points? Maybe!

Hamas rules over about 1.4 million people in a land about the size of Milwaukee County, a mere one percent of British Palestine (2). Although Hamas has plenty of rockets, it is an insignificant military force, even by Middle East standards. (3) Yet, this fanatic group has an effective veto over the efforts of the world's only remaining superpower to settle the Arab-Israeli conflict. So, every night the settlers should thank God and thank Hamas that they can stay where they are.
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(1) President Ronald Reagan barely won a battle in the Senate to sell advanced surveillance aircraft known as AWACS to Saudi Arabia in 1983.

(2) Based on 1922-1948 borders.

(3) In a month of fighting in Gaza (Dec. 2008-Jan. 2009) Hamas killed a handful of Israeli soldiers, while losing nearly a thousand of their own troops.