Is a war with Iran inevitable? I don’t have the answer to that question. But I do feel a sense of déjà-vu when I scan the headlines. Iran is capable of assembling a bomb within a year, Leon Panetta, the US defence secretary, told CBS News recently. Though not as outlandish, his “warning” carried a chilling reminder of Tony Blair’s claim that Iraq could deploy weapons of mass destruction within 45 minutes.
One especially unsavoury aspect of the debate around Iran is how it is being driven by “public relations” professionals, who try to dress up their bloodlust in respectable clothing. Without exception, these “opinion-formers” are supporters of Israel, a state founded on ethnic cleansing, wedded to apartheid and addicted to war. Followers of Zionism, a racist ideology, are unable to offer objective analysis; yet few in the media bother to question the motives of such people or highlight the egregious double standard of demanding robust action against Iran’s nuclear “ambitions”, while keeping mum about the nuclear warheads that Israel has already amassed.
Moshe Kantor, president of the European Jewish Congress (EJC), issued a comical statement in December last. It referred to “reports” – the source of which went unmentioned – that Iran may be preparing to strike Germany in response to an American attack on Iranian nuclear installations. “Whether or not these reports are valid is beside the point, we know certain facts and they are that Iran sees much of Europe as its enemy,” he added.
Can someone who makes a big hullabaloo about new “reports” and then argues it’s irrelevant if they are accurate be regarded as credible? Of course, he can’t. Yet Kantor enjoys the kind of access to political leaders that most lobbyists can only dream of. His organisation’s website tells of how he has spent years bending the ears of senior figures in all of the European Union’s institutions about the “threat” from Iran.
It should be emphasised that the EJC does not represent all Europe’s Jews, despite how it purports to do so. I have a number of Jewish friends and acquaintances who disagree sharply with its agenda.
Emanuele Ottolenghi is another Zionist hawk who has carved out a niche for himself as an “Iran expert”. Formerly the Brussels director of the American Jewish Committee, he now works for the Foundation for the Defence of Democracies, a neoconservative outfit that includes Richard Perle, a cheerleader for the invasion of Iraq, on its board of advisers.
“Israel might act alone”
In a recent article for Standpoint magazine, Ottolenghi asked: “Is Israel’s air force – the one that bombed the Iraqi nuclear reactor in 1981 and the Syrian one in 2007 – gearing up for the most daring airstrike in aviation history?” He concluded his piece by arguing that the “international community” (translation: the US and its cronies) has until the Spring of 2012 to “stop Iran”. After that, Israel might act alone.
I am tired of reading about how David Cameron risks leaving Britain isolated in Brussels. The truth is that the UK has an unhealthy level of clout in European and international affairs and shows no sign of repenting in any meaningful way for its blood-stained history.
The “experts” who are so adamant that democracy be brought to Iran usually neglect to remind their readers and listeners that it was Britain and the US which destroyed democracy in Iran. In 1953, Mohammed Mossadegh, Iran’s elected prime minister, was overthrown in a coup staged by the West. The reason why he was toppled was simple: Britain felt it owned Iran’s oil and could not tolerate Mossadegh’s decision to nationalise this resource.
Fast forward to December 2011, when George Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, was guest of honour at the Conservative Friends of Israel annual lunch at a plush London hotel. Osborne was interviewed onstage by the right-wing pundit Danny Finkelstein, who asked his views on the “threat” from Iran. “Well, first of all I think Israel is right to identify this as one of the greatest threats to peace and human life in the world at the moment,” Osborne replied, before speaking of “this government’s determination to use all the tools at our disposal to stop Iran getting a nuclear weapon.”
Stop macho posturing
Pause for a moment and consider those lines. Osborne thinks Israel is right to identify Iran as one of the greatest threats to world peace. If he believes his own baloney, he should brush up on world affairs. Iran is not occupying the land of another people. By contrast, Israel occupies the West Bank and Gaza, as well as parts of Lebanon and Syria. Iran’s most recent war was with Iraq in the 1980s. Israel attacked Gaza as recently as the past few weeks.
Iran may be less than candid about its nuclear ambitions but it has signed the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Israel has not.
True, Iran’s human rights record is deplorable. It was the world’s second highest user of the death penalty in 2010. But invoking that as a casus belli would be grossly hypocritical, when one considers that the US was at number five on the global executions table.
My (sadly unrealistic) wish for 2012 is that Europe’s leaders stop their macho posturing towards Tehran and that they address a bigger threat to world peace. The name of that threat is Israel.
●First published by New Europe, 9 January 2012.
Showing posts with label nuclear weapons. Show all posts
Showing posts with label nuclear weapons. Show all posts
Tuesday, January 10, 2012
Wednesday, December 22, 2010
America pulls Europe's strings
Commenting on the state of trans-Atlantic relations in 2008, former American president Jimmy Carter argued that European Union governments are “not our vassals” but “occupy an equal position with the U.S.”. Documents released over the past month appear to offer a different view.
In a report finalised earlier in December, the European Union’s foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton signalled that the EU’s main purpose internationally is to “help” Washington “achieve its global objectives”. By coincidence, a series of secret cables from U.S. embassies around the world – made public by the website WikiLeaks - indicates that America expects Europe to constantly act as its subordinate.
A memo approved by William Leach, then U.S. ambassador to Paris, in 2005 deals with French opposition to the war declared against Iraq two years previously. Leach takes comfort in learning that the anti-war stance of President Jacques Chirac was not supported by some prominent members of Chirac’s own party, the Union for a Popular Majority (known by its French acronym UMP).
The memo summarises a visit which Leach received from Hervé de Charette, a former foreign minister and then head of international relations for the UMP. De Charette, according to the memo, called Chirac’s position on the war “embarrassing”. Giving the impression that he was speaking on behalf of Nicolas Sarkozy, now France’s president and the UMP leader at the time, de Charette identified a sturdy relationship with the U.S. as “the basis for French foreign relations”. De Charette also described the Israel-Palestine conflict as “the key issue” for both the EU and U.S. and suggested that he wished to counter the perception that France was more sympathetic to the Palestinians than to Israel.
Another cable from 2005 pinpoints Britain and the Netherlands as America’s most trusted allies in western Europe. Drafted by Clifford Sobel, who was about to step down as the U.S. envoy to The Hague, it labels the Dutch as “go-to guys” when disagreements arise between the EU and the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO). Sobel says that the Dutch helped “push back” plans by France and Germany to develop a European military capability that could act independently of NATO, a US-dominated alliance. He applauds the Dutch, too, for providing “early logistic support” for the war in Iraq by allowing the U.S. military pass through Rotterdam, when it was unable to use other European ports for that purpose.
Furthermore, the cable celebrates the willingness of Dutch diplomats to act as “eyes and ears” for America. It recommends that – because the Netherlands has a history as a coloniser in the Caribbean- the Dutch should be given a role in countering the rise of left-wing politicians in Latin America. According to Sobel, the Dutch are “deeply concerned” about “meddling” by Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez in the Caribbean. “As a Caribbean power, the Dutch have good reasons to lead an effort to balance traditional Spanish dominance on Latin American issues in the EU, but the U.S. and others will need to push them to take this role,” the cable adds.
Eva Golinger, a New York lawyer who has written several books on Chavez, said that the cables published by WikiLeaks underscore Washington’s “obsession” with relations between Cuba and Venezuela. Claims that Cubans have penetrated every aspect of Venezuelan government and economy are redolent of Cold War warnings about “communist expansion” in the Southern hemisphere, Golinger wrote on her internet publication Postcards from the Revolution. She also accused US diplomats of painting a false picture of Venezuela. Whereas one cable alleges that the quality of hospitals has declined under Chavez, his administration has pumped billions into a public healthcare system which guarantees free treatment to all citizens.
Two decades after the Cold War was widely assumed to have ended, the cables show that at least 200 American nuclear weapons remain on European soil. Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany and Turkey are named as some of the countries hosting these weapons.
In addition, the cables appear to offer proof that NATO is planning for a confrontation with Russia. A document from January 2010 shows that the alliance approved a plan during that month to expand an operation known as Eagle Guardian, under which preparations would be made for fighting with Russia in Poland and the three Baltic states (Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia).
The decision follows NATO’s encroachment into countries surrounding Russia over the past decade. This enlargement occurred despite promises made to Moscow by James Baker, the U.S. secretary of state from 1989 to 1992, that NATO would not expand eastwards. As members of NATO since 2004, the Baltic states have accommodated both military bases for the U.S. and operations training soldiers preparing attacks on Afghanistan.
Writing in September, Rick Rozoff, a blogger with the campaigning website Stop NATO, noted that the warplanes from a variety of NATO members fly “round-the-clock” over the three Baltic countries, all of which adjoin Russia. Rozoff intimated that these operations are bound to increase friction between Russia and the alliance.
“NATO’s new members on the Baltic Sea are delivering on the demands imposed upon them by accession to the alliance,” he added. “They host NATO – particularly U.S. – troops, bases, warplanes, warships and missiles. They provide troops for wars far abroad. They supply training opportunities on the ground and in the air for the war in Afghanistan and for future conflicts with none of the restrictions that exist in North America and Western Europe. And they render those multiple services near Russia’s western border.”
·First published by Inter Press Service (www.ipsnews.net), 22 December 2010
In a report finalised earlier in December, the European Union’s foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton signalled that the EU’s main purpose internationally is to “help” Washington “achieve its global objectives”. By coincidence, a series of secret cables from U.S. embassies around the world – made public by the website WikiLeaks - indicates that America expects Europe to constantly act as its subordinate.
A memo approved by William Leach, then U.S. ambassador to Paris, in 2005 deals with French opposition to the war declared against Iraq two years previously. Leach takes comfort in learning that the anti-war stance of President Jacques Chirac was not supported by some prominent members of Chirac’s own party, the Union for a Popular Majority (known by its French acronym UMP).
The memo summarises a visit which Leach received from Hervé de Charette, a former foreign minister and then head of international relations for the UMP. De Charette, according to the memo, called Chirac’s position on the war “embarrassing”. Giving the impression that he was speaking on behalf of Nicolas Sarkozy, now France’s president and the UMP leader at the time, de Charette identified a sturdy relationship with the U.S. as “the basis for French foreign relations”. De Charette also described the Israel-Palestine conflict as “the key issue” for both the EU and U.S. and suggested that he wished to counter the perception that France was more sympathetic to the Palestinians than to Israel.
Another cable from 2005 pinpoints Britain and the Netherlands as America’s most trusted allies in western Europe. Drafted by Clifford Sobel, who was about to step down as the U.S. envoy to The Hague, it labels the Dutch as “go-to guys” when disagreements arise between the EU and the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO). Sobel says that the Dutch helped “push back” plans by France and Germany to develop a European military capability that could act independently of NATO, a US-dominated alliance. He applauds the Dutch, too, for providing “early logistic support” for the war in Iraq by allowing the U.S. military pass through Rotterdam, when it was unable to use other European ports for that purpose.
Furthermore, the cable celebrates the willingness of Dutch diplomats to act as “eyes and ears” for America. It recommends that – because the Netherlands has a history as a coloniser in the Caribbean- the Dutch should be given a role in countering the rise of left-wing politicians in Latin America. According to Sobel, the Dutch are “deeply concerned” about “meddling” by Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez in the Caribbean. “As a Caribbean power, the Dutch have good reasons to lead an effort to balance traditional Spanish dominance on Latin American issues in the EU, but the U.S. and others will need to push them to take this role,” the cable adds.
Eva Golinger, a New York lawyer who has written several books on Chavez, said that the cables published by WikiLeaks underscore Washington’s “obsession” with relations between Cuba and Venezuela. Claims that Cubans have penetrated every aspect of Venezuelan government and economy are redolent of Cold War warnings about “communist expansion” in the Southern hemisphere, Golinger wrote on her internet publication Postcards from the Revolution. She also accused US diplomats of painting a false picture of Venezuela. Whereas one cable alleges that the quality of hospitals has declined under Chavez, his administration has pumped billions into a public healthcare system which guarantees free treatment to all citizens.
Two decades after the Cold War was widely assumed to have ended, the cables show that at least 200 American nuclear weapons remain on European soil. Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany and Turkey are named as some of the countries hosting these weapons.
In addition, the cables appear to offer proof that NATO is planning for a confrontation with Russia. A document from January 2010 shows that the alliance approved a plan during that month to expand an operation known as Eagle Guardian, under which preparations would be made for fighting with Russia in Poland and the three Baltic states (Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia).
The decision follows NATO’s encroachment into countries surrounding Russia over the past decade. This enlargement occurred despite promises made to Moscow by James Baker, the U.S. secretary of state from 1989 to 1992, that NATO would not expand eastwards. As members of NATO since 2004, the Baltic states have accommodated both military bases for the U.S. and operations training soldiers preparing attacks on Afghanistan.
Writing in September, Rick Rozoff, a blogger with the campaigning website Stop NATO, noted that the warplanes from a variety of NATO members fly “round-the-clock” over the three Baltic countries, all of which adjoin Russia. Rozoff intimated that these operations are bound to increase friction between Russia and the alliance.
“NATO’s new members on the Baltic Sea are delivering on the demands imposed upon them by accession to the alliance,” he added. “They host NATO – particularly U.S. – troops, bases, warplanes, warships and missiles. They provide troops for wars far abroad. They supply training opportunities on the ground and in the air for the war in Afghanistan and for future conflicts with none of the restrictions that exist in North America and Western Europe. And they render those multiple services near Russia’s western border.”
·First published by Inter Press Service (www.ipsnews.net), 22 December 2010
Thursday, June 10, 2010
NATO 'singing Israeli tunes'
Strategists with the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) are eager to maintain the strong bonds they have developed with Israel in recent times, even though its forces last week attacked a ship flagged in Turkey, a steadfast member of the alliance.
Ever since its inception in 1949, NATO has legally been dedicated to the principle of mutual defence. According to this principle, an attack on any one country in the alliance is considered an attack on all of its member states.
Analysts readily concur that Israel posed a fundamental challenge to NATO by storming the Mavi Marmara, a Turkish vessel participating in the Gaza Freedom Flotilla, killing nine peace activists. But while Turkey’s government responded swiftly to the assault by convening an emergency meeting in NATO’s Brussels headquarters, Realpolitik has prevented Ankara from demanding a robust response from its allies.
NATO sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, say there are no discussions foreseen about whether it should review the basis of the cooperation arrangements made between it and Israel over the past few years.
In 2008, Israel’s then foreign minister Tzipi Livni secured an upgrade in the country’s relations with NATO. As part of an “individual cooperation programme”, Israel was given a higher level of access to the computer networks run by the alliance, as well as a greater role in sharing intelligence. It was formally accepted, too, that Israel should take part in some of NATO’s military missions.
Before last week’s attacks, NATO planners had been examining how Israel can be more involved in Operation Active Endeavour, under which ships in the Mediterranean are monitored to detect if they are carrying illegal weapons. One NATO source said that a “lot has been invested” in the past decade in building up closer links with Israel. Among the manifestations of such links were a 2007 exercise, in which six warships – hailing from Germany, Greece, Spain, Turkey and Italy – docked in the Red Sea port of Eilat for joint drills with the Israeli military.
Although top-level Turkish politicians have intimated that the damage caused to their bilateral ties with Israel by the flotilla massacre could be irreparable, a Turkish diplomat said “there is a chance” that Israel’s ties with NATO will remain sturdy.
“NATO finds Israel useful,” said Jeff Halper from the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, a human rights organisation. “Israel has a tremendous role in patrolling the whole Mediterranean and in gathering intelligence.”
Anders Fogh Rasmussen, NATO’s secretary-general, said Jun. 7 that he would be opposed to any reduction of contact between the alliance and Israel. According to Rasmussen, dialogue with Israel is necessary to help ensure peace in the Middle East. “We owe it to the Palestinian people and we owe it to all the people in the Middle East to facilitate the peace process,” he said.
He did not mention that Israel has become an important supplier of the high-tech weaponry – principally pilotless drones – use by the alliance in the war it is fighting in Afghanistan.
Rasmussen also spoke of his ambitions to develop a new missile defence system that, he claimed, would bring greater protection to the 900 million people living in the countries that comprise the alliance. His statement followed the publication of a strategic document by NATO last month, which indicated that Iran’s nuclear programme could present NATO with a major security threat within the coming 10 years. Also last month, a senior NATO official Alan Berry confirmed that the alliance had been examining how missile interceptors already developed in Israel could be incorporated into a NATO defence system.
In yet another development during May, the U.S. House of Representatives approved the allocation of 205 million dollars in finance for Israel’s Iron Dome project. Designed by the Israeli firm Rafael Advanced Defence Systems, the project is said to intercept short-range rockets.
John Jennings, a researcher on how Israel’s occupation of Palestine breaches international law, said there is a “parallel mentality” behind the deepening relationship with Israel and NATO, on one hand, and Israel and the European Union on the other. These moves are “going to be to the detriment of the Palestinians,” he added.
Despite identifying Iran’s uranium enrichment efforts as a threat, NATO has been silent about Israel’s own nuclear programme, with which it is widely believed to have developed up to 300 nuclear bombs. The programme has been developed in secret but a new book by the journalist Sasha Polakow-Suransky – “The Unspoken Alliance: Israel’s Secret Relationship with South Africa” – gives details of documents which appear to prove the existence of Israel’s nuclear weapons.
Jennings argued that NATO is “singing Israeli tunes” by issuing stern warnings against Iran. “Israel chose who the next enemy is,” he said. “Then the U.S. cottoned on to this, then the EU. Everything about this policy against Iran originally came from Israel. This obsession with Israel has gone too far.”
First published by Inter Press Service (www.ipsnews.net)
Ever since its inception in 1949, NATO has legally been dedicated to the principle of mutual defence. According to this principle, an attack on any one country in the alliance is considered an attack on all of its member states.
Analysts readily concur that Israel posed a fundamental challenge to NATO by storming the Mavi Marmara, a Turkish vessel participating in the Gaza Freedom Flotilla, killing nine peace activists. But while Turkey’s government responded swiftly to the assault by convening an emergency meeting in NATO’s Brussels headquarters, Realpolitik has prevented Ankara from demanding a robust response from its allies.
NATO sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, say there are no discussions foreseen about whether it should review the basis of the cooperation arrangements made between it and Israel over the past few years.
In 2008, Israel’s then foreign minister Tzipi Livni secured an upgrade in the country’s relations with NATO. As part of an “individual cooperation programme”, Israel was given a higher level of access to the computer networks run by the alliance, as well as a greater role in sharing intelligence. It was formally accepted, too, that Israel should take part in some of NATO’s military missions.
Before last week’s attacks, NATO planners had been examining how Israel can be more involved in Operation Active Endeavour, under which ships in the Mediterranean are monitored to detect if they are carrying illegal weapons. One NATO source said that a “lot has been invested” in the past decade in building up closer links with Israel. Among the manifestations of such links were a 2007 exercise, in which six warships – hailing from Germany, Greece, Spain, Turkey and Italy – docked in the Red Sea port of Eilat for joint drills with the Israeli military.
Although top-level Turkish politicians have intimated that the damage caused to their bilateral ties with Israel by the flotilla massacre could be irreparable, a Turkish diplomat said “there is a chance” that Israel’s ties with NATO will remain sturdy.
“NATO finds Israel useful,” said Jeff Halper from the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, a human rights organisation. “Israel has a tremendous role in patrolling the whole Mediterranean and in gathering intelligence.”
Anders Fogh Rasmussen, NATO’s secretary-general, said Jun. 7 that he would be opposed to any reduction of contact between the alliance and Israel. According to Rasmussen, dialogue with Israel is necessary to help ensure peace in the Middle East. “We owe it to the Palestinian people and we owe it to all the people in the Middle East to facilitate the peace process,” he said.
He did not mention that Israel has become an important supplier of the high-tech weaponry – principally pilotless drones – use by the alliance in the war it is fighting in Afghanistan.
Rasmussen also spoke of his ambitions to develop a new missile defence system that, he claimed, would bring greater protection to the 900 million people living in the countries that comprise the alliance. His statement followed the publication of a strategic document by NATO last month, which indicated that Iran’s nuclear programme could present NATO with a major security threat within the coming 10 years. Also last month, a senior NATO official Alan Berry confirmed that the alliance had been examining how missile interceptors already developed in Israel could be incorporated into a NATO defence system.
In yet another development during May, the U.S. House of Representatives approved the allocation of 205 million dollars in finance for Israel’s Iron Dome project. Designed by the Israeli firm Rafael Advanced Defence Systems, the project is said to intercept short-range rockets.
John Jennings, a researcher on how Israel’s occupation of Palestine breaches international law, said there is a “parallel mentality” behind the deepening relationship with Israel and NATO, on one hand, and Israel and the European Union on the other. These moves are “going to be to the detriment of the Palestinians,” he added.
Despite identifying Iran’s uranium enrichment efforts as a threat, NATO has been silent about Israel’s own nuclear programme, with which it is widely believed to have developed up to 300 nuclear bombs. The programme has been developed in secret but a new book by the journalist Sasha Polakow-Suransky – “The Unspoken Alliance: Israel’s Secret Relationship with South Africa” – gives details of documents which appear to prove the existence of Israel’s nuclear weapons.
Jennings argued that NATO is “singing Israeli tunes” by issuing stern warnings against Iran. “Israel chose who the next enemy is,” he said. “Then the U.S. cottoned on to this, then the EU. Everything about this policy against Iran originally came from Israel. This obsession with Israel has gone too far.”
First published by Inter Press Service (www.ipsnews.net)
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
Israel: NATO's other member state
Israel’s worst-kept secret has finally been revealed.
Documents published in recent days show that Israel not only has nuclear weapons –- something it has never officially acknowledged -- but that it considered selling them to South Africa’s white minority government in 1975. The evidence – contained in Sasha Polakow-Suransky’s new book “The Unspoken Alliance: Israel’s Secret Relationship with Apartheid South Africa” – appears strong and credible.
But will it cause Europe and America to rethink their relationship with Israel? The truth is that Israel already enjoys such a privileged level of access to their key institutions that any rethink is improbable – at least in the short-term. One of the most important aspects of this relationship relates to how Israel interacts with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).
In December 2008, then-Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni visited the headquarters of NATO in Brussels to sign an "individual cooperation program" with its member states. By hooking up Israel to NATO's computer systems and facilitating its increased participation in the alliance's missions, this agreement has helped give Israel closer ties with NATO and its 28 member states than any other country outside the club.
Within a few weeks of that agreement being signed, Israel launched a brutal offensive against Gaza, killing more than 1,400 Palestinians. The slaughter did not deter then-NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer from making a public gesture of friendship with the Israeli state. While the death toll in Gaza was continuing to mount, he visited Israel in January 2009 to celebrate "the growing depth both of our practical cooperation and of our political dialogue." Even though Israel's armed forces caused almost all of the deaths in that three-week assault and had unilaterally broken off a ceasefire with Hamas by attacking it two months earlier, he repeated the official Israeli narrative of blaming the violence on Hamas.
Over the past week, NATO has published a paper recommending an update to the "strategic concept" that underpins its activities. Partly authored by Madeleine Albright, the US Secretary of State under President Bill Clinton, this report "NATO 2020: Assured Security; Dynamic Engagement," signals that the alliance is mired in a Cold War funk. As well as advocating that the US, Britain and France hold on to their nuclear missiles as long as these weapons "remain a reality in international relations," it identifies the development of a missile defense shield as "an essential military mission." This system is -- if you believe the propaganda -- supposed to protect the member countries against Iran, which is singled out as the state most likely to present a fundamental security challenge in the coming decade. Substitute Iran for the Soviet Union and the case for the system is almost identical to that put forward by US President Ronald Reagan when proposing his "Star Wars" initiative in the 1980s.
NATO has already signaled that Israel will be involved in the development of the defense shield (an Orwellian term, given that the project will probably only ratchet up tensions in the Middle East). Earlier this month, NATO representatives took part in an armaments conference in Airport City, a "business park" near Tel Aviv. Alan Berry, a senior NATO official, confirmed that he and his colleagues were studying Israel's own military interceptors and had helped preliminary discussions about how Israel could take part in the defense shield project.
So far Turkey appears to be the only NATO member to have indicated there is an inherent double standard in seeking Israel's assistance to ward off a perceived threat from Iran. Unlike Iran (and most other nations), Israel has refused to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, with the result that its nuclear weapons program has never been subject to international scrutiny. Ahmet Davutoglu, the Turkish foreign minister, is reported to have raised this anomaly with his NATO peers at a meeting in Tallinn, Estonia, last month, telling them that "no country should be exempted from joining this treaty."
Meanwhile, Israel's reputation for inventing some of the most technologically advanced weapons used in modern warfare is attracting an increasing level of attention from that other powerful club based in Brussels: the European Union.
Sources in the European Defense Agency (EDA) -- a body set up following lobbying by leading arms manufacturers and dedicated to boosting military expenditure by EU governments -- have told this writer they are particularly excited by Israel's pilotless drones or unmanned air vehicles (UAVs). Many officials in the EDA regard the agency's work on drones as its most important activity. In July, the EDA will participate in a major conference here aimed at convincing the public that these sophisticated spy-planes can help achieve such laudable objectives as protecting the environment.
This exercise bears all the hallmarks of what ecologists call "greenwash." Far from being invented to save the planet, drones have been used in numerous attacks by Israel on Palestinian civilians, as well as by NATO forces in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Britain and the Netherlands are among the countries taking part in the war in Afghanistan to have signed contracts to buy or rent Israeli drones in recent months.
A spokeswoman for the EDA explained that while her agency keeps a close eye on Israel's arms industry, there are no plans for a formal cooperation agreement with Israel. The same cannot be said for the EU's multi-annual scientific research program, which has a budget of 53 billion euros ($66.7 billion) for the 2007-13 period. Israel is the largest foreign partner in this program and the country's arms-makers are intimately involved.
To prove that it was committed to former US President George W. Bush's "war on terror," the EU has decided in recent years to include security as a theme within the program. Nearly 60 projects have been financed under this category, with Israel taking part in 12 of them. Motorola Israel, for example, is signed up to a project designed to help the detection of "intruders" to buildings or areas deemed of high economic value. Motorola has ample experience in developing the kind of surveillance equipment that will probably feature in this project: it has installed a "virtual fence" around a network of Israeli settlements in the West Bank. This "fence" uses thermal cameras and other sensory devices to pinpoint anyone -- such as a Palestinian -- who the Israeli authorities believe should not be allowed to enter settlements built illegally on Palestinian land in open violation of international law.
In another example of greenwash, Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) is playing a prominent role in the "Clean Sky" project, which is supposed to encourage the development of less-polluting aircraft engines. Far from being an eco-warrior, IAI is a top supplier of warplanes to the Israeli army.
Earlier this year, Irishwoman Maire Geoghegan-Quinn became the new European commissioner for science and research. When her spokesperson Mark English was asked if she has any ethical concerns about how EU-funded projects have been opened up to Israeli firms who have field tested their weapons against Palestinian civilians, rather than answering that question, he said that all of the EU's research activities "maintain an exclusively civilian orientation." He added: "our rules, however, do not preclude enterprises, which are also active in the defense industry -- be they in the EU or in an associated country like Israel -- from participating."
It is deceptive for EU officials to claim that activities that involve arms companies are entirely civilian, especially when those companies hail from a highly militarized country like Israel and are directly implicated in the occupation and its attendant abuses of international law. As it happens, other officials have acknowledged that the EU institutions are preparing a blueprint for extending the scope of its scientific research programs into more hardcore military research.
Nobody should be surprised if Israel's merchants of death and destruction will gobble up an even greater chunk of the EU's research pie in the coming years. The only positive aspect of this ever-deepening relationship with Israel is that it helps shatter all illusions that the EU is serious when bragging routinely of its commitment to human rights.
•First published by The Electronic Intifada (www.electronicintifada.net)
Documents published in recent days show that Israel not only has nuclear weapons –- something it has never officially acknowledged -- but that it considered selling them to South Africa’s white minority government in 1975. The evidence – contained in Sasha Polakow-Suransky’s new book “The Unspoken Alliance: Israel’s Secret Relationship with Apartheid South Africa” – appears strong and credible.
But will it cause Europe and America to rethink their relationship with Israel? The truth is that Israel already enjoys such a privileged level of access to their key institutions that any rethink is improbable – at least in the short-term. One of the most important aspects of this relationship relates to how Israel interacts with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).
In December 2008, then-Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni visited the headquarters of NATO in Brussels to sign an "individual cooperation program" with its member states. By hooking up Israel to NATO's computer systems and facilitating its increased participation in the alliance's missions, this agreement has helped give Israel closer ties with NATO and its 28 member states than any other country outside the club.
Within a few weeks of that agreement being signed, Israel launched a brutal offensive against Gaza, killing more than 1,400 Palestinians. The slaughter did not deter then-NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer from making a public gesture of friendship with the Israeli state. While the death toll in Gaza was continuing to mount, he visited Israel in January 2009 to celebrate "the growing depth both of our practical cooperation and of our political dialogue." Even though Israel's armed forces caused almost all of the deaths in that three-week assault and had unilaterally broken off a ceasefire with Hamas by attacking it two months earlier, he repeated the official Israeli narrative of blaming the violence on Hamas.
Over the past week, NATO has published a paper recommending an update to the "strategic concept" that underpins its activities. Partly authored by Madeleine Albright, the US Secretary of State under President Bill Clinton, this report "NATO 2020: Assured Security; Dynamic Engagement," signals that the alliance is mired in a Cold War funk. As well as advocating that the US, Britain and France hold on to their nuclear missiles as long as these weapons "remain a reality in international relations," it identifies the development of a missile defense shield as "an essential military mission." This system is -- if you believe the propaganda -- supposed to protect the member countries against Iran, which is singled out as the state most likely to present a fundamental security challenge in the coming decade. Substitute Iran for the Soviet Union and the case for the system is almost identical to that put forward by US President Ronald Reagan when proposing his "Star Wars" initiative in the 1980s.
NATO has already signaled that Israel will be involved in the development of the defense shield (an Orwellian term, given that the project will probably only ratchet up tensions in the Middle East). Earlier this month, NATO representatives took part in an armaments conference in Airport City, a "business park" near Tel Aviv. Alan Berry, a senior NATO official, confirmed that he and his colleagues were studying Israel's own military interceptors and had helped preliminary discussions about how Israel could take part in the defense shield project.
So far Turkey appears to be the only NATO member to have indicated there is an inherent double standard in seeking Israel's assistance to ward off a perceived threat from Iran. Unlike Iran (and most other nations), Israel has refused to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, with the result that its nuclear weapons program has never been subject to international scrutiny. Ahmet Davutoglu, the Turkish foreign minister, is reported to have raised this anomaly with his NATO peers at a meeting in Tallinn, Estonia, last month, telling them that "no country should be exempted from joining this treaty."
Meanwhile, Israel's reputation for inventing some of the most technologically advanced weapons used in modern warfare is attracting an increasing level of attention from that other powerful club based in Brussels: the European Union.
Sources in the European Defense Agency (EDA) -- a body set up following lobbying by leading arms manufacturers and dedicated to boosting military expenditure by EU governments -- have told this writer they are particularly excited by Israel's pilotless drones or unmanned air vehicles (UAVs). Many officials in the EDA regard the agency's work on drones as its most important activity. In July, the EDA will participate in a major conference here aimed at convincing the public that these sophisticated spy-planes can help achieve such laudable objectives as protecting the environment.
This exercise bears all the hallmarks of what ecologists call "greenwash." Far from being invented to save the planet, drones have been used in numerous attacks by Israel on Palestinian civilians, as well as by NATO forces in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Britain and the Netherlands are among the countries taking part in the war in Afghanistan to have signed contracts to buy or rent Israeli drones in recent months.
A spokeswoman for the EDA explained that while her agency keeps a close eye on Israel's arms industry, there are no plans for a formal cooperation agreement with Israel. The same cannot be said for the EU's multi-annual scientific research program, which has a budget of 53 billion euros ($66.7 billion) for the 2007-13 period. Israel is the largest foreign partner in this program and the country's arms-makers are intimately involved.
To prove that it was committed to former US President George W. Bush's "war on terror," the EU has decided in recent years to include security as a theme within the program. Nearly 60 projects have been financed under this category, with Israel taking part in 12 of them. Motorola Israel, for example, is signed up to a project designed to help the detection of "intruders" to buildings or areas deemed of high economic value. Motorola has ample experience in developing the kind of surveillance equipment that will probably feature in this project: it has installed a "virtual fence" around a network of Israeli settlements in the West Bank. This "fence" uses thermal cameras and other sensory devices to pinpoint anyone -- such as a Palestinian -- who the Israeli authorities believe should not be allowed to enter settlements built illegally on Palestinian land in open violation of international law.
In another example of greenwash, Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) is playing a prominent role in the "Clean Sky" project, which is supposed to encourage the development of less-polluting aircraft engines. Far from being an eco-warrior, IAI is a top supplier of warplanes to the Israeli army.
Earlier this year, Irishwoman Maire Geoghegan-Quinn became the new European commissioner for science and research. When her spokesperson Mark English was asked if she has any ethical concerns about how EU-funded projects have been opened up to Israeli firms who have field tested their weapons against Palestinian civilians, rather than answering that question, he said that all of the EU's research activities "maintain an exclusively civilian orientation." He added: "our rules, however, do not preclude enterprises, which are also active in the defense industry -- be they in the EU or in an associated country like Israel -- from participating."
It is deceptive for EU officials to claim that activities that involve arms companies are entirely civilian, especially when those companies hail from a highly militarized country like Israel and are directly implicated in the occupation and its attendant abuses of international law. As it happens, other officials have acknowledged that the EU institutions are preparing a blueprint for extending the scope of its scientific research programs into more hardcore military research.
Nobody should be surprised if Israel's merchants of death and destruction will gobble up an even greater chunk of the EU's research pie in the coming years. The only positive aspect of this ever-deepening relationship with Israel is that it helps shatter all illusions that the EU is serious when bragging routinely of its commitment to human rights.
•First published by The Electronic Intifada (www.electronicintifada.net)
Monday, February 15, 2010
With pacifists like this, who needs warmongers?
Growing up in the deeply uncool Dublin of the early 1980s, I became fascinated by images of rain and mud beamed into my family’s home on BBC news bulletins. Those were the conditions which the women of Greenham Common peace camp endured in their noble quest to remove weapons of mass destruction from British soil and eventually from the entire world.
Almost 30 years later, my admiration for those activists remains undimmed. The intensity of that admiration is surpassed, though, by the anger I feel towards people who used to support the peace camp but have since abandoned their principles for political expediency and personal gain.
Take Catherine Ashton, the European Union’s first foreign minister. During her recent confirmation hearing in the European Parliament, she was quizzed about the job she once held as a treasurer with the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. Faced with unproven claims, made by a particularly vile and reactionary Tory MEP Charles Tannock, that CND was financed by the Soviet Union, Ashton rightly refused to apologise for her past. Nonetheless, she tried to distance herself from it by underscoring how she was young then and implying she has long grown out of that idealistic phase.
As if feeling that some kind of atonement is needed, Ashton’s most important statements in her new role have sent a signal towards Iran. The rank hypocrisy of her position must not be allowed go unchallenged. Her elevation to the House of Lords and her subsequent move to Brussels are due almost entirely to her close links with Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. She has not said one word – in public, at least – that is critical of how Britain is pursuing the Trident renewal programme (albeit with an apparent willingness to scale back its original plans) in flagrant violation of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. So what moral authority does she have to threaten Iran over its nuclear ambitions?
Much has been made of Ashton’s inexperience in international diplomacy. But I regard that inexperience as far less troubling than how she has tried to compensate for it by turning to some of the most elitist figures in the Brussels bureaucracy for counsel.
The team helping her assemble the EU’s new diplomatic service includes Robert Cooper among its members. Now one of the Union’s top politico-military strategists, Cooper was Tony Blair’s chief confidant on foreign policy until 2002.
After helping pave the way for the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq (though Cooper was no longer in London when the latter war was declared, he assisted Blair during its preparatory stages), he explained his worldview in the equally erudite and accessible book The Breaking of Nations. It suggested that a new ethos of imperialism, which emphasises voluntary action over coercion, should be developed for the twenty-first century. Cooper cited the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund as institutions that provide “a limited form of voluntary empire”, without expressing any concern about the misery they have inflicted on the world’s poor by insisting that governments serve the interests of the markets, rather than those of their own citizens.
Cooper has close contacts with some of the more hawkish US representatives in Europe. In 2008, he wrote a pamphlet with Ronald Asmus, Brussels director with the German Marshall Fund of the United States and an inveterate defender of Israeli aggression. Cooper’s contribution to that pamphlet displayed how he is in awe of American hegemony. “What is the point of the Belgian army today?” he asked. “It is not to defend Belgium, since no one is going to attack it. Rather it is to demonstrate a sufficient commitment to ‘the West’ that friends and allies, above all the USA, will be there if ever Belgium should need help.”
By relying on people like Cooper, Ashton is ensuring that the key decisions about European security and foreign policy will be taken in the Pentagon and the White House. The likelihood that she will distinguish the EU from America by stressing that Europe values human rights or social cohesion above economic or military might appears non-existent.
Other members of the team surrounding Ashton have displayed a contempt for democracy. Catherine Day, the Irishwoman who is secretary-general in the European Commission, spent several months last year trying to bludgeon her compatriots into accepting the Lisbon treaty, even though they had previously rejected it in a referendum. And veteran French diplomat Pierre de Boissieu has been instrumental in ushering in a single currency in much of Europe. Conceived by bankers and industrialists, the fiscal discipline demanded by this project has led to austerity measures affecting millions of people – most recently in Greece.
With friends like these guiding her, Ashton could soon have far better reasons to apologise than what she did in her younger days.
Originally published in The Samosa (www.thesamosa.co.uk)
Almost 30 years later, my admiration for those activists remains undimmed. The intensity of that admiration is surpassed, though, by the anger I feel towards people who used to support the peace camp but have since abandoned their principles for political expediency and personal gain.
Take Catherine Ashton, the European Union’s first foreign minister. During her recent confirmation hearing in the European Parliament, she was quizzed about the job she once held as a treasurer with the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. Faced with unproven claims, made by a particularly vile and reactionary Tory MEP Charles Tannock, that CND was financed by the Soviet Union, Ashton rightly refused to apologise for her past. Nonetheless, she tried to distance herself from it by underscoring how she was young then and implying she has long grown out of that idealistic phase.
As if feeling that some kind of atonement is needed, Ashton’s most important statements in her new role have sent a signal towards Iran. The rank hypocrisy of her position must not be allowed go unchallenged. Her elevation to the House of Lords and her subsequent move to Brussels are due almost entirely to her close links with Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. She has not said one word – in public, at least – that is critical of how Britain is pursuing the Trident renewal programme (albeit with an apparent willingness to scale back its original plans) in flagrant violation of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. So what moral authority does she have to threaten Iran over its nuclear ambitions?
Much has been made of Ashton’s inexperience in international diplomacy. But I regard that inexperience as far less troubling than how she has tried to compensate for it by turning to some of the most elitist figures in the Brussels bureaucracy for counsel.
The team helping her assemble the EU’s new diplomatic service includes Robert Cooper among its members. Now one of the Union’s top politico-military strategists, Cooper was Tony Blair’s chief confidant on foreign policy until 2002.
After helping pave the way for the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq (though Cooper was no longer in London when the latter war was declared, he assisted Blair during its preparatory stages), he explained his worldview in the equally erudite and accessible book The Breaking of Nations. It suggested that a new ethos of imperialism, which emphasises voluntary action over coercion, should be developed for the twenty-first century. Cooper cited the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund as institutions that provide “a limited form of voluntary empire”, without expressing any concern about the misery they have inflicted on the world’s poor by insisting that governments serve the interests of the markets, rather than those of their own citizens.
Cooper has close contacts with some of the more hawkish US representatives in Europe. In 2008, he wrote a pamphlet with Ronald Asmus, Brussels director with the German Marshall Fund of the United States and an inveterate defender of Israeli aggression. Cooper’s contribution to that pamphlet displayed how he is in awe of American hegemony. “What is the point of the Belgian army today?” he asked. “It is not to defend Belgium, since no one is going to attack it. Rather it is to demonstrate a sufficient commitment to ‘the West’ that friends and allies, above all the USA, will be there if ever Belgium should need help.”
By relying on people like Cooper, Ashton is ensuring that the key decisions about European security and foreign policy will be taken in the Pentagon and the White House. The likelihood that she will distinguish the EU from America by stressing that Europe values human rights or social cohesion above economic or military might appears non-existent.
Other members of the team surrounding Ashton have displayed a contempt for democracy. Catherine Day, the Irishwoman who is secretary-general in the European Commission, spent several months last year trying to bludgeon her compatriots into accepting the Lisbon treaty, even though they had previously rejected it in a referendum. And veteran French diplomat Pierre de Boissieu has been instrumental in ushering in a single currency in much of Europe. Conceived by bankers and industrialists, the fiscal discipline demanded by this project has led to austerity measures affecting millions of people – most recently in Greece.
With friends like these guiding her, Ashton could soon have far better reasons to apologise than what she did in her younger days.
Originally published in The Samosa (www.thesamosa.co.uk)
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