Palestinians agree to indirect peace talks with Israel

RAMALLAH–Palestinian leaders have given their backing to a round of “proximity” talks with Israel for a period of four months, with US Middle East envoy George Mitchell serving as the intermediary. The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) endorsed the move, already backed by Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, Arab foreign ministers, Israel and the United States. Previously, Palestinian leaders said a complete halt to Israeli settlement building in the West Bank and East Jerusalem was a precondition for resuming peace talks, which broke down early last year.

Yasser Abed Rabbo, a senior PLO official and close aide to President Mahmoud Abbas, said the decision to resume the negotiations did not mean that the Palestinian Authority had abandoned its preconditions. “We will continue to demand a complete cessation of settlement construction,” he said after the meeting of the PLO Executive Committee in Ramallah. “We will insist that all settlement construction be halted, including in Jerusalem, and that Israel stop confiscating land, demolishing houses and changing and assaulting the national and religious heritage of Hebron, Jerusalem and Bethlehem.”

Azzam al-Ahmad, also a senior Palestinian official, was quoted as saying: “We think it is unlikely that these indirect negotiations with the Netanyahu Government will succeed, but we want to give an opportunity to the US administration to continue its efforts.”

Meanwhile, US Vice President Joe Biden is to begin a visit to Israel on Monday, during which he will meet with Israeli leaders.

* Preceding provided by World Jewish Congress.

Maimonides Synagogue in Cairo re-dedicated in presence of foreign dignitaries

 CAIRO–A 19th-century synagogue in Cairo’s ancient Jewish quarter was re-dedicated in the presence of international Jewish leaders and foreign diplomats, following a two-year restoration effort funded by Egyptian authorities. Around 150 people attended the opening of the synagogue, including Israel’s Ambassador to Egypt, Yitzhak Levanon, and US Ambassador Margaret Scobey. About a dozen rabbis from Israel and abroad were also present at the ceremony.

Egyptian officials were absent from the ceremony, and Culture Minister Faruk Hosni said Sunday’s opening was a purely religious ceremony. Zahi Hawass, the head of Egypt’s Antiquities Department, said that a more formal opening next Sunday would be attended by Egyptian officials.

Egypt began restoration of several Jewish sites in the country a few years ago, mainly to attract foreign tourists. The country’s Jewish population, which once numbered up to 80,000, fled Egypt after Cairo and several other Arab governments waged war in 1948 against the newly established state of Israel. Less than 100 Jews still remain in Egypt, and there is currently no active Jewish congregation. The synagogue is named after Rabbi Moses ben Maimon, more widely known as Maimonides or in Egypt as Musa bin Maymun, who was a 12th-century Jewish scholar, philosopher and physician and who died in Egypt in 1204.

The synagogue is built over the site where he was briefly buried before his remains were moved to Tiberias in Israel. Egypt has eleven synagogues. Some of them have already been restored, such as the Ben Ezer synagogue in Old Cairo and the Shaar Hashamayim in downtown Cairo. The restoration of the Maimonides Synagogue cost US$ 2 million and was funded by the Egyptian government.

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Preceding provided by World Jewish Congress

Once again, myth will defeat pragmatism

By Rabbi Dow Marmur

 JERUSALEM–My years as a marriage guidance counsellor helped me to understand many things, perhaps also Middle East politics. In my counseling days I was often approached by either one or both partners in a marriage who weren’t on speaking terms with requests to transmit messages to the other. I invariably refused, for I knew that it wouldn’t work. 

This is one of many differences between Uncle Sam and myself. The Americans seem to be very anxious to get Palestinians and Israelis to communicate in whatever way possible, even indirectly. To put pressure on both parties not only is George Mitchell, President Obama’s special envoy, in the area but Vice President Biden is also arriving.

Like the couples I dealt with in those days, neither side in this dysfunctional relationship seems to want to speak to the other, especially as long as they can find ways of blaming the other for it. Many Israelis, particularly on the right of the political spectrum, say that Israel has no partner because the chairman of the Palestinian Authority has very little authority. Now that even Hamas seems to be losing control over Gaza, negotiations become even more meaningless. A new intifada is more likely than peace.

The Palestinians – here I never know who is right and who is left – say that there’s no point in talking as long as the settlements continue to grow, as do measures to make Jerusalem less and less accessible to them. And Syria says that it’ll only talk once Israel withdraws from the Golan Heights – a most unlikely precondition.

You don’t have to be a sophisticated political analyst to see that both sides seem to prefer the status quo to alternatives because each prefers mythology to pragmatism. The Israeli mythology is that it’s our land and therefore Jews should be entitled to live wherever they want there and that Jerusalem is Israel’s “eternal and undivided” capital.

 The Palestinians live by corresponding myths. They, too, believe that the whole land is theirs and that one day they’ll regain it from the evil Zionists who grabbed it. This may happen in stages, but the first stage cannot be less than a return to the 1967 borders. If the settlements are going to stay, they’ll be in the Palestinian state under Palestinian rule. Pre-67 borders also means that East Jerusalem, including the Old City, is Palestine and that the capital of the new Palestinian state will be established there.

Pragmatism suggests otherwise. There’re numerous plans to that effect. However, politically it seems much easier to hold onto myths than to face reality. That’s why direct negotiations, even when they did take place, didn’t yield results. As soon as a reasonable solution was on the horizon, with compromises and concessions by both sides, the myths intruded and things broke down – of course, each side blaming the other.

If direct negotiations didn’t yield results, it’s quixotic to assume that indirect negotiations will do better. But President Obama needs to show foreign policy “successes,” however ephemeral and unrealistic. Since he has a lot of clout over both Israel and the Palestinians he has managed to arrange this little charade. Unfortunately, it won’t lead to much. He must know it, but perhaps he wants to show that he tried.

These non-negotiations, should they actually start, will provide militants enough cause to stir up things to thwart even imaginary progress. Recent unrest on the Temple Mount and elsewhere in Jerusalem is a sign of things to come. Certain Israeli measures didn’t help either. Those of us who want peace now have every reason to remain worried.

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Rabbi Marmur is spiritual leader emeritus of Holy Blossom Temple in Toronto.  He divides his year between Canada and Israel.

Lemba tribe in southern Africa has Jewish roots, genetic tests reveal

HARARE, Zimbabwe–Genetic tests carried out by British scientists have revealed that many of the Lemba tribesmen in southern Africa have Jewish origins, according to a report by the BBC. The Lemba, a tribe of 70,000 to 80,000 members who live in central Zimbabwe and northern South Africa, have customs which are similar to Jewish ones: Lemba refrain from eating pork or other foods forbidden by the Torah, or forbidden combinations of permitted foods, wear yarmulke-like skull caps, conduct ritual animal slaughter, have a holy day once a week, and even put a Star of David on their gravestones. According to their oral tradition, the Lemba are descended from seven Jewish men who left Israel 2,500 years ago and married African women, according to the BBC. The Lemba prefer their children to marry other Lembas, and marriage to non-Lembas is being discouraged.

Their sacred prayer language is a mixture of Hebrew and Arabic. Their religious artifact is a replica of the Biblical Ark of the Covenant known as the ‘ngoma lungundu’, meaning “the drum that thunders.” The object went on display recently at a museum in Harare, Zimbabwe, and has instilled pride in many of the Lemba. They say the ark was built almost 700 years ago from the remains of the original ark, which according to the Bible was used to store the Ten Commandments. For decades, the ancient vessel was thought to be lost until it was discovered in a storeroom in Harare recently.

Members of the priestly clan of the Lemba, the Buba – which is one of 12 clans – have a genetic element also found among the Jewish priestly line, known as Kohanim. “This was amazing,” Professor Tudor Parfitt from the University of London told the BBC. “It looks as if the Jewish priesthood continued in the West by people called Cohen, and in same way it was continued by the priestly clan of the Lemba.”

Despite their roots, many of the tribe are now Christians or Muslims.

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The preceding provided by World Jewish Congress.

Contrasting an airline that doesn’t care about its passengers with a cruise line that does

Nancy waiting in Fort Lauderdale, not suspecting the time crunch to come

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First in a series

By Donald H. Harrison

LIMA, Peru—Were it not for cruise ships like the one we embarked upon here in the wee hours of Monday, Feb. 22, I believe I’d be ready to consign my leisure travel to the lazy boy chair in front of the television in my home.   I’d much rather go nowhere than to have to subject myself constantly to airlines.

I’ll tell of the Delta Airlines experience by which we arrived in this South American capital and port city—an experience that I believe typifies what happens on airlines today.  The story I will tell is not about some fabulous exception; rather it concerns the low standard of service that is becoming common place. Airlines may try to excuse themselves by saying they have to adopt certain customer-adverse policies and measures because of the difficult economic times, but I believe the problem goes much deeper. 

It seems apparent that airlines no longer value their customers, except as numbers on a chart.  An attitude of contemptuousness has taken hold of the airline industry, an attitude that began in the board room where such policies were approved as all-but-eliminating sufficient leg room in economy class, charging passengers extra for luggage, and nickeling and diming passengers for snacks and beverages, movies and other amenities.  This lack of appreciation for customers eventually was transmitted through middle managers all the way to the service personnel. 

I’ll start my story in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, where Nancy and I had attended a wedding.  We arrived at the airport there, which seemed comparable in size to San Diego’s Lindbergh Field, about two hours prior to our flight.  Because our ultimate destination was an international one rather than a domestic one, we were not able to check our bags curbside but instead were required to do so inside the terminal.  However, the terminal was so crowded that we were not permitted to simply check our bags.  Instead we and other passengers were herded into an area across a corridor from the counters and told to wait there until the time our flight was called.  Then and only then could we proceed to check our baggage.

No one explained why this procedure had been adopted, but by asking questions we were able to ascertain that the baggage belt was working only intermittently, requiring many bags to be ferried by hand. We waited well over an hour with other passengers, who either were standing with their baggage or sitting with it on the floor, until finally we were permitted to proceed to the ticket counter, where there was little or no order.  By the time we actually got to a ticket agent, another twenty minutes had elapsed.  To add insult to injury, once we  arrived at the ticket counter,  an agent curtly told us we should have been at the counter a half hour earlier.  We replied that had been our intention, but her own colleagues had prevented us from doing do.

The counter agent processed our luggage and handed us our boarding passes and quickly moved on to another customer.  We worked our way through lines to a screening area where an employee checked our ticket against our passports.  They didn’t match; the ticket agent somehow had given us the wrong boarding passes, made out in someone else’s name.

Nancy told me to wait with all the carry-on luggage—and she charged back to the ticket desk—explaining what had happened.  “Find the agent who helped you,” she was told.  “She’s not here,” Nancy answered in a panic. “And our flight is about to leave.” 

Grudgingly another ticket agent got onto the computer, and issued proper boarding passes.   Nancy dashed back to where I was waiting, and with the new documents we were allowed to proceed—to security, where we had to go through all the regular procedures of removing everything from our pockets, taking off our shoes, putting my laptop computer in a separate tray, and so forth.  As I gathered up everything, Nancy ran ahead to the gate.  As she turned the corner, she heard an agent say “last call for Donald and Nancy Harrison.” 

“We’re here, wait!” Nancy shouted at a dead run.  

Nancy found that they had reassigned the airplane seats we had reserved—and that the gate agents were completely unaware what was happening in the ticket area.  “Do you want to go without your husband?” they asked Nancy, “because we’re closing the doors.” 

“He’s coming,” Nancy replied.  “He’s at security, just putting his shoes on.”  “Well I don’t see him coming,” the agent said.  “Do you want to board anyway?”  At that point I made my appearance.  They whisked us down the gangway and put us into the seats by the boarding door.

Next, we went to Atlanta where we caught the flight to Peru, thinking that embarkation was blessedly uneventful.  But we were incorrect in our assessment. Although we had no problem boarding the plane, it later developed that one of our two large bags did not.

On the six-and-a-half hour flight to Peru, some of the flight attendants evidently were in a bad mood.  Instead of placing snacks on trays, one flight attendant practically threw them onto the passengers’ trays in economy class, as if she were dealing cards at a poker table.   When Nancy asked another attendant  near the end of the flight, “if you have time, could I please have some water?” he responded in a surly tone, “I don’t have time!”—making several passengers wonder what had prompted him to exhibit such hostility.  He might simply and courteously have responded.  “I’m sorry, I won’t be able to get back to you before we land.”  Evidently he was having a bad day, and decided to take out his pique on passengers.

After arriving in Lima, we sought to retrieve our bags.  It’s a sickening feeling when the bags on the carousel keep repeating themselves—but your bag is not among them.  Eventually, after every other bag was taken off the carousel by passengers, we had to admit the obvious.  Although Nancy’s bag had made it to Lima, somehow mine didn’t.  We reported the problem to a courteous gentleman at the baggage desk, who was able to establish that my bag was still in Atlanta.   Normally, this is not a problem, he said, as the bag could be sent on the next flight and delivered to the person’s home or hotel. The problem was that our cruise ship—the MS Rotterdam—would be leaving Lima Monday afternoon and the next flight from Atlanta wouldn’t arrive until late Monday evening.  “Perhaps,” I suggested, “the bags could be delivered at the next port,” which would be Guayaquil, Ecuador, on Wednesday, February 24.

The baggage agent said that he never had to deal with the problem of reuniting luggage with a passenger on a cruise ship before, and was uncertain what the procedures were.  He asked a colleague to photocopy our passports as well as an information sheet with Holland America’s contact numbers.  He said he would leave a message explaining the situation for Delta’s morning supervisor of luggage in Lima, and gave us that person’s contact number. 

I went with another Delta employee who wanted to photocopy our passports at the Delta office – which was up a floor and down a corridor—only to find that the office had been closed and that she had no key.  So she radioed for assistance, and eventually someone opened the door, and she copied the documents.   Meanwhile,  Nancy dashed ahead to find the driver whom we previously had engaged by long distance phone calls and emails to take us from the airport to the cruise ship terminal.  She was concerned that the driver,  Renato Monteverde of taxilimaperu.com, would have become discouraged after waiting for us for such a long time, but there he was with our name printed on a placard and with a smile on his face. 

Monteverde helped to rehabilitate our image of the travel industry.  He got us quickly, efficiently and politely to the Port of Callao, where MS Rotterdam was docked.  Security guards checked the ship’s manifest against our passports and ran our luggage through an X-Ray machine.  Once aboard, we were escorted to the front desk to report our missing luggage.  Although the problem had been Delta’s, not Holland-America’s, the ship’s personnel did everything they could to help.  Immediately and with a cheerful smile, they presented me with a courtesy kit of toiletries, so that I’d be able to shave and to brush my teeth.  The next day, a loan of a sports shirt was made to me so that I would have something different to wear at the captain’s informal reception for new passengers.   Meanwhile, personnel aboard the ship made contact with Delta Airlines to arrange a rendezvous for the luggage.  They had hoped it would be in Guayaquil, but in fact it did not catch up with us until the following day, Feb. 25, in Manta, Ecuador.

While not having my suitcase was an inconvenience, thanks to Holland America – and to Nancy who volunteered to shop in the Miraflores area for a few more necessities—it was not the serious problem it could have been. 

Holland America proved to be a company adept at solving passenger problems rather than causing them.  This made me feel glad that I would be taking this ship all the way to San Diego, rather than having to fly home by an airline. It was good to be treated like a mensch instead of as a serf.  I was certain that the rest of my vacation would go well, now that I had put myself in the hands of the right segment of the travel industry – the segment that believes that next to safety, service to customers is the highest value.  As I shall describe in part two of this series, Holland-America was soon to find itself facing some tough tests of that philosophy—tests not of the cruise line’s making.

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Harrison is editor of San Diego Jewish World

Iraq’s election–democracy in the making?

By Shoshana Bryen

WASHINGTON, DC–The radio newsreader noted that Sunday marked, “only the second Iraqi general election since the U.S. invaded the country in 2003.” That would be two more real elections than have been placed in a row in any other Arab country.
 
We have long cautioned against calling countries “democratic” or “democracies” just because they run the population through the voting booth every so often-Syria and Egypt just don’t qualify. The sine qua non of a “real” election is that the current ruler can lose.  And in that context, a real election requires that candidates be able to form multiple parties with competing views of the future and have access to an unfettered press/media.  It also requires that the public have the right of free association and safe access to a secret ballot.  

Even then, one real election doesn’t make it; even two is just getting off the ground.  Backsliding is common. We’re already looking toward the next Iraqi election to ratify the trend.
 
But in the meantime, what to make of Iraq in 2010? Anyone who wanted representation in the election could find a party to suit: Sunni, Shi’ite, Kurdish, or mixed-secular or religious. It appears the percentage of voters was high; calm determination and purple fingers were much in evidence.
 
The national table was better set than last time-the Sunnis turned out to vote, despite having a large number of candidates rejected by the election board as “Ba’athist.” And radical Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr urged Iraqis to vote to “pave the way for liberation” from U.S. forces. In 2003, Sadr had fomented anti-American violence among Iraqi Shi’ites and his militias were responsible for a wave of anti-Sunni attacks before being defeated and Sadr slunk off to Tehran. So this is an improvement. [Although Iran spent huge sums of money both "buying" votes for Iranian-supported parties and arming militias.]  The 2005 Sunni boycott fueled the anti-Shi’ite violence that surged in 2006-07, necessitating the American-led counter-surge. 
 
Next will come weeks (months?) of negotiating a governing coalition-no party is likely to have enough votes to govern outright. There is fear that a vacuum will allow violent organizations to try to undermine and/or overthrow the election results and those people had their say Sunday as well. More than 30 Iraqis were killed at the end of weeks of low-level violence intended to intimidate potential voters, or to signal that despite the voters, they intend to take what they want. 
 
This time, however, the Iraqis have a better trained, better equipped and better motivated police and army. As American troops keep largely to their bases, the real test of Iraq’s ability to maintain its fledgling consensual government will be in the hands of the Iraqi guardians of peace and security. Their role as a national force will be tested.
 
We will also be tested. President Obama congratulated the Iraqi people on their vote-and is hoping our combat troops can make a quick exit over the summer. We hope so too, but the Untied States has to be prepared to wait, to help, and to fight if necessary to preserve what now appears to qualify as a fledgling tentative consensual government moving toward an infant democracy (enough qualifiers?). Iraq’s new governing form can no more be expected to survive and thrive without support-including military support where needed-than any other infant could be expected to survive in hostile territory.
 
And Iraq sits in very hostile territory-next to Iran and in the center of the Arab Middle East-where consensual government is a rare bird.
 
A cheer, then, for the American President who didn’t quit when others called the war “lost,” the American troops who held the line, and the Iraqi people who took advantage of the narrow opening.
 
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Bryen is senior director of security policy of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs.  Her column is sponsored by Waxie Sanitary Supply in memory of Morris Wax, longtime JINSA supporter and national board member.

When it’s necessary and desirable to assassinate terrorists

By Barry Rubin

HERZLIYA, Israel–There has been a huge international controversy about the assassination of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, a leading Hamas terrorist, in Dubai on January 19. I have no idea who did it but have some points to make on the subject.

1. Generally speaking, media coverage almost never (in Europe) or only minimally (in the United States) talks about what Mabhouh actually did to merit his end. The New York Times had the following paragraph at the very end of its story:

“Mr. Mabhouh had a role in the 1989 abduction and killing of two Israeli soldiers, and was also involved in smuggling weapons into Gaza, Israel and Hamas have said. Israel officials say the weapons came from Iran.”

It would seem that there would be more discussion of the deeds of such people so they are not portrayed, at least implicitly, as innocent victims. Readers could weigh the assassination against their crimes, which would otherwise go unhindered and unpunished. Mabhouh was probably in Dubai arranging more arms’ shipments from Iran so that Hamas could go to war again, causing deaths on both sides. He was a real war criminal, in contrast to the bogus ones fabricated by the terrorist-sponsoring dictatorships which seem to have so much influence on the “human rights” agenda.

2. As long as Western states do nothing to help bring Hamas or Hizballah terrorists to justice, and since Israel has no way of getting these people before a court, it has no option other than the extra-judicial one. Remember that an Israeli cabinet minister is more likely to face prosecution in the United Kingdom nowadays than a terrorist who has murdered Israeli civilians.

Some European countries–France and Italy have admitted as much regarding past deals–have secret agreements with terrorist groups to allow them to operate freely as long as they don’t do attacks within the country. Other terrorists–like the Palestinians who hijacked the Achille Lauro cruise ship and murdered an American citizen or one of the Libyan masterminds of the Lockerbie plane bombing that killed scores of passengers, mainly Americans–have been released from prison without completing their terms.

This point of international culpability in letting certain terrorists escape or function isn’t brought up, explained, or seriously discussed: What do you do if specific people are attacking you and there’s no other option to stopping them? If the United States could assassinate Usama bin Ladin or other top al-Qaida terrorists whom it could not capture shouldn’t it do so? Of course it should.

3. There is a cliché when talking about counter-terrorism to the effect that getting a specific individual doesn’t matter as there is always someone to replace him. But in terrorism, as in other aspects of life, there are more effective and less effective individuals. Since Israel eliminated Hamas’s master bombmaker-who not only made bombs but trained others–in 1995, less capable people replacing him in that line of work have managed to blow themselves up a lot.

The terrorist Imad Mugniya, who someone killed in Damascus, was a unique individual since he had personally worked with the Palestinians, Hizballah, Syria, and Iran. Given his energy, ability, and connections he was not really replaceable.

Mabhouh was in a similar position, the top Hamas arms’ procurer who enjoyed the trust of the Iranians and who knew how to get lots of rockets and other equipment quickly and consistently.

These are not people who merely carried out a specific attack but those who make possible the staging of dozens of attacks.

Of course, terrorism doesn’t go away–expecting that it will do so is a Western act of wishful thinking–but the point is to reduce the number and effectiveness of attacks, and thus the number of casualties.

There are other advantages to eliminating key terrorist operatives. Often it can spark factional conflicts which make terrorist groups spend more time on internal battles. It also sparks mistrust among terrorist partners. If Mugniya can be assassinated in the neighborhood of Damascus that is the most secure place in all of Syria, can Iran and Hizballah trust Syria? Where did the leak occur? Who is infiltrated by the enemy?

Indeed, though outsiders may understate this reality, there is more than a seed of suspicion planted. Perhaps Iran or Syria or Fatah or some other faction in Hizballah killed Mugniya? Perhaps Fatah or Iran or some other faction of Hamas killed Mabhouh.

By the way, although it doesn’t seem to make the headlines so much, other countries including the United States (certainly in Somalia and Yemen) have taken out specific terrorists. Doing so more would be a good idea, if the cases are carefully selected and in the absence of any option to grab them from some state providing safe haven.

Proposition One: if you truly understand that the terrorist groups are going to try to kill you no matter what you do, it removes the fear of making them angry.

Proposition Two: If you know the world is going to criticize you no matter what you do, it removes the fear of making them angry.

That’s Israel’s situation. It is also the situation of a lot of other countries which admittedly face a lower level of risk but also don’t realize the first proposition. At the same time, though, they have far fewer problems with the second.

But what’s at issue here is not revenge for past attacks but the prevention of future ones, a very careful and well-informed thinking through of what actions would weaken terrorist adversaries and save the lives of the civilians they are aiming to kill.

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Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal.