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Back in 1996, the New York Times had some surprisingly kind words for President Assad of Syria. In Closing Ranks against Terror the editors of the Times fretted that the senior Assad wouldn’t attend the “Summit of the Peacemakers” but that he was still on the right side of history.

President Hafez al-Assad of Syria was conspicuously absent, as he was last fall at the funeral for the slain Israeli Prime Minister, Yitzhak Rabin. But as Prime Minister Shimon Peres noted on Wednesday, at least Syria is engaged in the Middle East peace effort, unlike Iran, Israel’s implacable foe.

“Peace effort?” Please. Assad went to his grave after rejecting 98% of the territory he demanded of Israel, when President Clinton went to Geneva in 2000. As William Safire remembered the elder Assad in “The Rejectionist.’

Wisely, Bill Clinton decided to bypass this chance at wearing his inimitable lip-biting mournful look, and won’t dispatch Vice President Al Gore, his normal substitute, to Damascus. Why? Because three months ago, at a much-touted meeting in Geneva, Clinton presented Assad with the Golan Heights on a silver platter. The Syrian then humiliated the supplicating American by refusing to take yes for an answer, making fresh demands for control of Galilee that embarrassed not only Clinton but even the most appeasement-prone doves in Jerusalem. Assad scuttled negotiations in the most dramatic way possible.

It’s important to remember this bit of history as the editors of the NY Times applaud the inclusion of Syria in …. peace talks.

We welcome President Bush’s decision to include Syria on the list of countries invited to a November Middle East peace meeting. The president’s distaste for such efforts — aides still balk at the term “peace conference” — is only slightly less visceral than his distaste for Syria. We hope this means that Mr. Bush and his aides are finally ready to push all sides to make the compromises essential for moving toward an Israeli-Palestinian peace. If Damascus chooses not to attend the meeting, it would again confirm its role as one of the region’s dangerous spoilers. If it chooses to come, the chances for peace may increase. The invitation will certainly make it easier for Egypt and Saudi Arabia — whose political and economic support for any Israel-Palestinian agreement is crucial — to be there. Mr. Bush will still probably have to twist the arms of the risk-averse Saudis to show up.

“…confirm its role…” How many times does reality have to smack you upside the head before you realize that it’s telling you something? These games have been going on with Syria for more than a decade. It’s the dream of every peace processor to make a comprehensive peace in the Middle East including Syria. But come on, how many times has an Assad rejected importunings to make peace with Israel? How many times has an Assad launched a war against Israel via its proxies? Now that there’s apparent evidence that Syria is up to some greater mischief is not the time to engage the younger Assad (can I call him Dorktator or is that copyrighted?) but to at least consider taking diplomatic action against him. Additionally as Mere Rhetoric points out

When we were taught Israeli-Arab Peace Process 101, it was an ironclad principle that Israel pushes for bilateral talks with each individual Arab enemy and the Arabs push for multilateral talks with Israel. Why? Because when the Arab states combine their negotiating strength they can make demands in unison: “hey Israel, you want this concession from the Palestinians? Well then you’re also going to have to give back the Golan to Syria.” Israel has to give something to every Arab state in order to get anything that it wants. That’s why the Saudis are already setting preconditions for their participation (nice to see major media outlets helping them out with that – teamwork). They understand that the State Department has maneuvered Olmert into an impossible situation, and they’re ready to exploit it after three decades of Israel successfully resisting multilateral talks.

The editorial continues:

As for why this sudden flexibility from the White House? The conventional wisdom is that Mr. Bush’s secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, wants to try and salvage the president’s legacy — and her own — with a peace deal that could help stabilize the region that Mr. Bush’s war in Iraq has so destructively roiled. It will take a lot more creative diplomacy to make that happen. Indeed, six trips into a too-little, too-late peace effort, Ms. Rice is having as much trouble making progress with Israel, America’s close ally, as with Palestinians.

And how successful was the non-stop peace processing of the Clinton administration? Well, not very. As the editors of the New York Times noted at the time:

Mr. Arafat, regrettably, showed no interest in this proposal, holding out for full control of all areas of the city formerly under Jordanian rule. Talks on Jerusalem cannot usefully resume until Mr. Arafat shows a greater willingness to compromise. Mr. Arafat seems to feel he cannot do so. His rigidity reflects his failure to prepare Palestinian opinion for anything less than full sovereignty over East Jerusalem. But it also reflects the vocal opposition of Arab countries like Saudi Arabia to recognizing any Israeli sovereignty there. This Arab opposition must be defused in the weeks ahead.

It’s not the lack of effort or lack of Israeli concessions. It’s the unwillingness of the Palestinians (and most of the Arab world) to make peace with Israel. The editorial continues:

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is insisting that the meeting produce a full declaration on the most sensitive and difficult issues: borders, Jerusalem and when the Palestinians get the independent state that President Bush promised them five years ago. Israel, concerned that Mr. Abbas is too weak to guarantee Israel’s security but unwilling to do more to strengthen him, has made clear it is interested in much smaller steps.

Israel has ceded territory, funded, armed and granted amnesty to Fatah, what hasn’t it done to “strengthen” Abbas? But that’s the crux of the problem Abbas wants everything handed to him and then refuses to live up to his commitments. (Much like Arafat.) Egged on by the likes of the Times he hopes at some point America will diplomatically force Israel to give him what he wants. But that will not bring peace. It will just bring demands for more while chaos likely ensues.

America’s recent record in the Middle East is one of failure — in Iraq, in promoting genuine democracy, in stopping Iran from spreading its brand of militant Islam at odds with the West. The region doesn’t need another failure nor does America’s tattered reputation. All sides need to come away from the November meeting feeling that something concrete has changed in the Middle East — and finally for the better.

This conclusion is simply ludicrous. Do you want blame for the spreading Iranian influence? How about the blind eye turned to Hezbollah from 2000 to 2006? And the importance of doing something concrete? Overrated. Israel withdrew from Southern Lebanon and from Gaza and reaped terror in return. Again it’s not what the United States or Israel do or don’t do that matters. It is if the Arab world changes its belief that Israel is illegitimate. No number of summits or peace conferences or one-sided concessions will change that. As Dore Gold argues

When former U.S. negotiator Dennis Ross sought to understand the failure of the Oslo peace process of the 1990s, in which he was an active participant, he zeroed in on the need to bring about a “transformation” of political attitudes that the Palestinian leadership failed to encourage. Ross pointed to the education that Palestinian children received, concluding “that no negotiation is likely to succeed if there is one environment at the negotiating table and another on the street.”

Actually I’d say that the environment at the negotiating table is the same as the one in the streets as the Palestinian leadership has encouraged the latter. Until those attitudes change, there’s no chance for peace. Or as Elder of Ziyon puts it:

History shows, however, that Palestinian Arabs have not the slightest interest in a state. The could declare a state in Gaza today if they wanted to; they could build all the institutions they want and make a model democratic society in a contiguous area where not a single Jew or Zionist lives. When they were offered a state in 2001 they rejected it, as they did in 1947 when they rejected partition and in 1940 when the West Bankers voluntarily chose to be annexed to Jordan and become Jordanian citizens.

Peace conferences without a change of heart are useless.

Crossposted at Soccer Dad.

israel, peace process.

One of the most fearsome armies in the world is about to get a little more fearsome:

The IDF plans to establish a military academy, a senior army source revealed Monday.

The institution of higher education, to be modeled after the United States Military Academy at West Point, will grant bachelors as well as masters degrees and perhaps even doctorates.

The IDF is hoping to receive permission from the Israel Council for Higher Education to go ahead with the project soon.

Plans for the project were announced at a press meeting held last week to mark the new structure of the IDF Special Staff and Command College.

In wake of lessons learned from the Second Lebanon War last summer, students from the three branches of the IDF—air, land and sea—are studying together in the same course for the first time.

The smartest, toughest Jews in the world are about to work towards making Jews even smarter and tougher. Make us proud, ladies and gentlemen. No. Make us prouder.

via memeorandum Jules Crittenden, Elder of Ziyon and others noted this story from Saudi Arabia.

Members of Khobar’s Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice were the victims of an attack by two Saudi females, Asharq Al-Awsat can reveal. According to the head of the commission in Khobar, two girls pepper sprayed members of the commission after they had tried to offer them advice. Head of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice in the Eastern province Dr. Mohamed bin Marshood al-Marshood, told Asharq Al Awsat that two of the Commission’s employees were verbally insulted and attacked by two inappropriately-dressed females, in the old market in Prince Bandar street, an area usually crowded with shoppers during the month of Ramadan.

“Offer them advice” is likely a euphemism for “threaten them.” But what I find especially interesting about this story is that in occurred in the Eastern Province. Max Singer wrote a fascinating article a few years ago, “Free the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia.”

Before its conquest by Ibn Saud, the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia (EP), which lies along the shore of the Arabian Gulf and which contains all of Saudi Arabia’s oil fields, was populated mostly by two groups of Shiite Muslims who were quite different culturally and religiously from their Najdi conquerors. One group was Bedouins and settled date-growers and farmers living around two groups of oases. The other was pearlers, fishermen, and traders living in coastal villages along the Gulf. Since the vast recent expansion of the oil industry, the population of the EP has multiplied, partly from natural growth of the original local population, but also by migration from other parts of Saudi Arabia and a much larger immigration of foreign Arabs and other Muslims and some professionals and managers from Europe and the U.S., all of whom are excluded from citizenship. Appreciating the predicament of the people of the EP requires some information about the official religion of Saudi Arabia. It is unofficially known as Wahhabism—which is conventionally described as a form of Hanbali Islam—begun by the Najd preacher Mohammed bin Abdul-Wahhab in 1745, who spread his faith by partnership with the local Najd warlord, who became the founder of the Al Saud dynasty. (Some Muslims resentfully say that calling Wahhabism a school of Islam is like calling the Branch Davidians of Waco a school of Christianity.) Wahhabism is an austere desert belief, based more on fanatic intensity than scholarly roots in Islamic writings and teaching. In addition to objecting to any memorials to the dead, and any freedom for women, it holds that most Muslims who are not Wahhabis are “polytheists” who should be treated like infidels, and killed if they refuse to convert to Wahhabism. They specifically deny that Shia Muslims are true Muslims and therefore insist that they have no rights in Saudi Arabia, even in areas where they had been living for many centuries before Saudi Arabia existed. (A newly published book, Wahhabism: A Critical Essay, by Berkeley Professor Hamid Algar calls Wahhabism “a peculiar interpretation of Islamic doctrine” that was “stigmatized as aberrant by the leading Sunni scholars” since it was first put forth.)

So is this (seemingly) minor incident perhaps an indicator of deeper fault lines. Are the indigenous Shi’a of the Eastern Province starting to rebel against their Wahhabi enforcers? Or was this just an isolated incident.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

saudi arabia, wahhabism.

Helene Cooper of the NY Times reports on President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s speech yesterday at Columbia University.

Mr. Bollinger praised himself and Columbia for showing they believed in freedom of speech by inviting the Iranian president, then continued his attack. He said it was “well documented” that Iran was a state sponsor of terrorism, accused Iran of fighting a proxy war against the United States in Iraq and questioned why Iran has refused “to adhere to the international standards” of disclosure for its nuclear program. “I doubt,” Mr. Bollinger concluded, “that you will have the intellectual courage to answer these questions.” Mr. Ahmadinejad did not directly answer the questions, but he did address them. Before doing so though, he said pointedly: “In Iran, tradition requires when you invite a person to be a speaker, we actually respect our students enough to allow them to make their own judgment, and don’t think it’s necessary before the speech is even given to come in with a series of complaints to provide vaccination to the students and faculty.” He added, to some cheers, “Nonetheless, I shall not begin by being affected by this unfriendly treatment.”

Bollinger’s opening taunt came across as gratuitous and more defensive than sincere. I got the impression from Bollinger that he was trying to show that he understood the man whom he had disgraced his institution by inviting. But rather, I think, he played into his hands. He allowed Ahmadinejad to come back with his “we actually respect our students” giving him an excuse to pose as more committed to academic freedom than Bollinger. Later on Cooper reports:

“Do you or your government seek the destruction of the state of Israel?” Mr. Coatsworth asked. “We love all people,” Mr. Ahmadinejad dodged. “We are friends of the Jews. There are many Jews living peacefully in Iran.” He went on to say that the Palestinian “nation” should be allowed a referendum to decide its own future. Mr. Coatsworth persisted: “I think you can answer that question with a simple yes or no.” Mr. Ahmadinejad was having none of it. “You ask the question and then you want the answer the way you want to hear it,” he shot back. “I ask you, is the Palestinian issue not a question of international importance? Please tell me yes or no.” For that, he got a round of applause from the students, who had lined up four hours before the speech to get into the auditorium.

This would have been a perfect point for a serious reporter to add some facts about the current status of Jews in Iran. Instead, Cooper emphasizes Ahmadinejad’s point and adds an approving exclamation point to it. Well actually, Columbia provided him with a platform. Free speech doesn’t demand that everyone get the same platform. As Michael Rubin wrote

they might want to enable those who don’t have it, rather than celebrate the men who have taken it away.

(via Michelle Malkin’s excellent and comprehensive coverage.)

The NY Times editorial, Mr. Ahmadinejad Speaks, of course, gets it wrong. (Interesting, the NY Times editorial describes Ahmadinejad as “bobbing and weaving” and the headline of the news article uses the verb “parries.”)

So we are dismayed by the behavior of some of New York’s democratically elected representatives who denounced and threatened Columbia University for inviting the Iranian leader to speak there yesterday. We can imagine no better way to give hope to opponents of Iran’s repressive state than by showcasing America’s democracy and commitment to free speech. And we can imagine no better way to lay bare the bankruptcy of Mr. Ahmadinejad’s views than to have him speak, and be questioned, at a university forum.

Again, if, say, an Iranian dissident was given the same platform at Columbia as Ahmadinejad, they’d have a point. But despite the jeers of Columbia officials, Ahmadinejad was given a platform that he dominated. One that he didn’t deserve and one that debases the institution that provided it. And of course the Times finds fault with the response to the speech.

Unlike Iran’s citizens, Americans have the right to laugh at leaders, as well as protest Mr. Ahmadinejad’s visit and Columbia’s decision to schedule his speech. The threats of possible sanctions against Columbia were an insult to that freedom. In an interview with The New York Sun, the speaker of New York’s Assembly, Sheldon Silver, warned that legislators might now “take a different view” of capital support provided to Columbia.

Except a private institution has no right to receive public funds. If Columbia has somehow abused the public trust, why shouldn’t the public be able to respond. Punishing Columbia in no way diminishes freedom. In Playing Democrat at Columbia, Anne Applebaum, shows that she gets it.

Ahmadinejad’s agenda, though, differs from that of the traditional autocrat. His goal is not merely to hold power in Iran through sheer force, or even through a standard 20th-century personality cult: His goal is to undermine the American and Western democracy rhetoric that poses an ideological threat to the Iranian regime. Last winter, when he invited a host of dubious Holocaust-deniers to discuss the Holocaust in Tehran, he claimed that it was in order to provide shelter for the West’s “dissidents” — that is, for Western thinkers “who cannot express their views freely in Europe about the Holocaust.” This week, he declared that his visit to New York would help the American people, who have “suffered in diverse ways and have been deprived of access to accurate information.” Thus the speech at Columbia: Here he is, the allegedly undemocratic Ahmadinejad, taking questions from students! At an American university! Look who’s the real democrat now! … All things being equal, Columbia would have done better to ignore him, instead of feeding the media circus that serves his purposes. It’s not as if he is deprived of a platform in this country: Only last week, he ducked and dodged his way through a long interview on “60 Minutes,” and his pronouncements regularly appear in media of all kinds.

(“ducked and dodged!” Those boxing metaphors keep on coming.)

Nevertheless, it would have been wrong, once he’d been invited, to ban Ahmadinejad from speaking: To do so would have granted him far more significance than he deserves and played right into his I’m-the-real-democrat-here rhetoric. Instead, the university should have demanded genuine reciprocity. If the president and dean of Columbia truly believed in an open exchange of ideas, they should have presented a debate between Ahmadinejad and an Iranian dissident or human rights activist — someone from his own culture who could argue with him in his own language — instead of allowing him to be filmed on a podium with important-looking Americans. Perhaps Columbia could even have insisted on an appropriate exchange: Ahmadinejad speaks in New York; Columbia sends a leading Western atheist — Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens or, better still, Ayaan Hirsi Ali — to Qom, the Shiite holy city, to debate the mullahs on their own ground.

While this suggestion is brilliant, I don’t agree that Columbia had to observe any rules of etiquette with Ahmadinejad. Still demanding reciprocity in this fashion, or asking an Iranian dissident to speak at the same forum) would have undermined Ahmadinejad’s pose.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

Ahmadinejad, columbia university.