Antony Loewenstein

Aluf Benn in Haaretz argues that the Israeli Prime Minister frames himself as a saviour of the Jewish people but in fact he only wants to defend occupying the Palestinians forever:

Benjamin Netanyahu’s whole career as a diplomat and politician prepared him for that moment: the moment he, as the Jewish people’s senior lobbyist, stands before the leader of the world and demands him to stop the approaching holocaust.

This is what happened at the meeting with Barack Obama on Friday. The prime minister came to the White House to lecture the U.S. president on 4,000 years of Jewish history, on persecution, expulsions, pogroms and the murder of millions, and to warn him against a peace based on illusions that could lead to another catastrophe. “History will not give the Jewish people another chance,” said Netanyahu, probably imagining himself as a modern-day Moses or Herzl.

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Obama wants to establish an independent Palestine, in recognized borders and with territorial contiguity. He doesn’t strive to resolve the Israeli-Arab conflict or achieve an overall Middle East peace. He buried the Arab peace initiative, which he mentioned in his Cairo speech two years ago but ignored completely on Thursday. By doing so, he took away one of the Israeli left’s most important banners.

The disagreement between Obama and Netanyahu isn’t a personal quarrel. They clearly can’t stand each other, but this is the smaller problem. What matters isn’t the body language, but the values. Obama is a revolutionary who wants to give power to the masses. Netanyahu is a conservative, sticking to the status quo and fearing change.

To Netanyahu, Israel has a right to rule the territories and settle there as much as it likes, and at most it could throw some bones to the Palestinians to satisfy their supporters in the West, who, like Obama, simply don’t understand what it’s all about and blindly support a bunch of inciters and murderers.

To Obama, the Israeli occupation is an ongoing wrong that should be stopped. He’s not ready for a situation in which the settlers in Psagot enjoy every right possible, while their Palestinian neighbors in Ramallah wait at a checkpoint, lacking self-determination. This is what he is fighting for.

He’s right:

Barack Obama gave a major speech on the Middle East on Thursday, May 19, and it is clear from the subsequent commentary that he impressed few people. The main reason for this is that he did not say much new or indicate that there would be any serious changes in US policy in the region. It was essentially more of the same with some tweaking here and there. Nevertheless, he did manage to anger some people. For example, Israel’s hard-line supporters were outraged that he said: “Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps.” For them, the 1967 borders are “Auschwitz borders” and thus can never serve as a basis for negotiations.

Many Palestinians, on the other hand, did not like Obama’s assertion that it made little sense for them to go to the UN General Assembly this September and win recognition for a Palestinian state based on the 1967 borders. Surely they also noticed that shortly after saying “every state has the right to self-defence, and Israel must be able to defend itself,” the president said that the Palestinians would have to be content with “a sovereign non-militarised state,” which means that they would not be able to defend themselves against Israel – or any other state for that matter. Hypocrisy appears to be wired into the DNA of US foreign policy makers.

Obama’s failure to impress and move US Middle East policy in new directions raises the intriguing question: Did he blow an opportunity to give a truly important speech at what appears to be a plastic moment in history? I think not. The sad fact is that Obama has remarkably little manoeuvre room on the foreign policy front. The most important item on his agenda is settling the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and there he knows what has to be done: Push both sides toward a two-state solution, which is the best outcome for all the parties, including the United States. Indeed, he has been trying to do just that since he took office in January 2009. But the remarkably powerful Israel lobby makes it virtually impossible for him to put meaningful pressure on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is committed to creating a Greater Israel in which the Palestinians are restricted to a handful of disconnected and impoverished enclaves. And Obama is certainly not going to buck the lobby – with the 2012 presidential election looming larger every day.

But what kind of pressure will the US really impose on Israel apart from a few stern words? The Arab world is moving, evolving into something far more inclusive and democratic and yet Israel is going in the opposite direction. The Daily Beast:

Something tells me that this time, the pressure will mount more on Bibi than Barack. His behavior these last 48 hours has verged on, if not been, petulant. A foreign leader (no less one of a state whose existence depends on the United States) isn’t supposed to talk like that to a president. Add to the bargain: Obama’s a stronger president now on foreign affairs than he was in 2009, partly because of the bin Laden coup and partly because the speech was generally well received across the American political spectrum. The criticisms of Obama on the borders statement have been entirely partisan, led by Republican presidential candidates. That has had the effect of cheapening the criticism of Obama and making it more dismissible: Do Americans, and Israelis and Palestinians, really care what Tim Pawlenty thinks about the situation? The Anti-Defamation League’s Abe Foxman, never shy about criticizing the administration on these matters, came out Friday to The Washington Post’s Greg Sargent and judged the speech a defense of Israel: “The speech indicated to me that this administration has come a long way in better understanding and appreciating the difficulties facing both parties, but especially Israel in trying to make peace with the Palestinians.” This may be a sign that the usual cordon won’t hold around Bibi this time. Oh, he’ll receive a thunderous welcome from Congress Tuesday, mostly from Republicans who want to embarrass Obama by backing the prime minister. But the applause will only mask temporarily what everyone knows—that he is in total denial about the future.

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Israel, of course, has legitimate security concerns, especially in light of the recent Fatah-Hamas entente. And there’s nothing, really, to prevent Netanyahu from running out the clock if that’s what he wants to do. But things have changed. Two years ago, politically speaking, time was on his side. Now it’s against him. Having thrown this tantrum, it seems unlikely that he can come back in two weeks, or two months, or a year, and say gee, the ’67 borders with swaps is actually a good idea after all. It seems like the peace process will have to wait for a new prime minister. And he may have hastened that day, too.

As if:

President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spent most of the afternoon in discussions on Friday, after which Netanyahu told his staff that he felt better about the U.S.-Israeli relationship than when he went in.

“Look, I went into the meeting with concerns and I came out of the meeting encouraged,” Netanyahu said after emerging from the marathon session at the White House, according to one Israeli official who was part of Netanyahu’s briefing.

The meeting went on so long that the working lunch that Obama and Netanyahu had scheduled with their respective staffs was cancelled; the two leaders had food brought in, and the other officials and staffers went to eat on their own. The U.S. officials present included Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, National Security Advisor Tom Donilon, White House Chief of Staff Bill Daley, NSC Senior Director Dennis Ross, incoming Ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro, and the State Department’s Acting Middle East Envoy David Hale.

But there was some disagreement between the two leaders. In Obama and Netanyahu’s public remarks following the meeting, the Israeli prime minister declared that Israel “cannot go back to the 1967 lines — because these lines are indefensible.” The Israeli official insisted that Netanyahu was not lecturing Obama in his statement, but simply felt it necessary to publicly state clear Israeli positions on major issues.

“This is not a personal issue,” the Israeli official said. “[H]e wanted to go on record in public and state what Israel’s red lines are, what is imperative for Israel’s security needs.”

Those red lines include that Israel cannot accept a return to negotiations based on the 1967 lines, as Obama said was U.S. policy on Thursday; Israel cannot accept the return of Palestinian refugees; and Israel cannot negotiate with any government that includes the participation of Hamas.

Netanyahu called Clinton on Thursday morning, prior to Obama’s address on U.S. policy toward the Middle East, to try to convince her to take the contentious lines out of his speech. The official described it as a “tough conversation.”

But there was also a lot of agreement inside the Obama-Netanyahu meeting. The two leaders talked about Syria, Iran, and Israel’s defense needs. Obama tried to explain to why he decided to make his policy announcement about the 1967 borders on Thursday, and he clarified the U.S. position on Hamas and the Palestinian right of return, where there is largely bilateral agreement.

On a conference call with Jewish leaders on Thursday, a recording of which was provided to The Cable, National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes also tried to clarify Obama’s remarks.

“The president reiterated our support for core principles and he also stated the U.S. position on issues of territory and security that can be the foundation for future negotiations, specifically a Palestinian state based on 1967 lines with swaps,” he said. “It can provide a basis for negotiations as the parties address security and territory as well as the very emotional issues of Jerusalem and refugees.”

Robert Fisk on the oh-so-predictable speech by Barack Obama to inject the US back into relevance in the Arab world. It should fail, as Muslims there know full well what America’s role has always been; repression:

It was the same old story. Palestinians can have a “viable” state, Israel a “secure” one. Israel cannot be de-legitimised. The Palestinians must not attempt to ask the UN for statehood in September. No peace can be imposed on either party. Sometimes yesterday, you could have turned this into Obama’s forthcoming speech to pro-Israeli lobbyists this weekend. Oh yes, and the Palestinian state must have no weapons to defend itself. So that’s what “viable” means!

It was a kind of Second Coming, I suppose, Cairo re-pledged, another crack at the Middle East, as boring and as unfair as all the other ones, with lots of rhetoric about the Arab revolutions which Obama did nothing to help. Some of it was positively delusional. “We have broken the Taliban’s momentum,” the great speechifier said. What? Does he really – really – think that?

A man who understands the Middle East, Nir Rosen, on how the corporate media sees the Middle East:

I’ve spent most of the last eight years working in Iraq and also in Somalia, Afghanistan, Yemen, and other countries in the Muslim world. So all my work has taken place in the shadow of the war on terror and has in fact been thanks to this war, even if I’ve labored to disprove the underlying premises of this war. In a way my work has still served to support the narrative. I once asked my editor at the New York Times Magazine if I could write about a subject outside the Muslim world. He said even if I was fluent in Spanish and an expert on Latin America I wouldn’t be published if it wasn’t about jihad.

Gideon Levy in Haaretz gets it:

Benjamin Netanyahu may as well have canceled his trip to Washington: Barack Obama did the work for him, or most of it. But the prime minister is already on his way, so he should at least send to the White House a big bouquet of flowers.

Netanyahu can sit back and relax. It’s not that Obama didn’t say clear, firm words on the Middle East; it’s just that most, if not all of them could have been said by Netanyahu himself, who would then go on doing as he pleased.

The 1,500 new apartments in Jerusalem will be built, speech or no speech. The real test for that speech, as for any other, is what happens next, and the suspicion is that nothing will happen at all.

Obama didn’t say a word about what will happen if the parties disobey him. This was the king’s speech, but the king already appears a little naked. Considering America’s weakness, and the power of Congress and the Jewish and Christian lobbies working on behalf of the Israeli government, the Israeli right wing can relax and go on doing what it does.

Yesterday, the U.S. president demolished the Palestinian’s only accomplishment so far – the wave of international support for recognition of statehood in September. September died last night. After America, Europe too will have to withdraw its support; hopes have ended for a historically significant declaration at the United Nations.

The Palestinians are left once again with Cuba and Brazil, while we get to keep America. Here’s another reason for a sigh of relief in Jerusalem: No diplomatic tsunami is forthcoming, the United States is sticking with Israel.

Regrettably, the president also voiced reservations about the Palestinian unity government. The United States supports Israel’s demand for the Palestinian state to be demilitarized, it supports postponing discussions on the refugees and Jerusalem, it talks about Israel’s security and Israel’s security alone, saying nothing about security for Palestinians. All these are impressive, even if virtual, achievements for Israel.

The Palestinians yesterday were not listed among the oppressed Arab people of the Middle East who need to be liberated and aided on the way to democracy. Obama spoke impressively about America’s corrupt allies in the region, and provided further enlightened encouragement to the people of the region.

If the first Cairo speech provided the initial inspiration, Cairo 2 provided a more significant push. Obama and his determination on this should be praised. His words were heard not only in Damascus and Benghazi, but also in Jenin and Rafah. Did he mean to praise Majdal Shams as well? Hooray for the unarmed protesters, hoping Obama meant Palestinian ones as well. If he did, it’s a pity he didn’t say so.

When he mentioned the Tunisian vendor who was humiliated by a policewoman who overturned his stall – the vendor who later set himself and the revolution ablaze – was Obama thinking about the hundreds of Palestinian vendors who have suffered the exact same fate at the hands of Israeli soldiers and policemen? When he spoke nobly about the dignity of the oppressed vendors, was he speaking about their Palestinian brethren as well? The speech didn’t show this enough.

The conflict between Israel and the Palestinian was sidelined in Obama’s speech for the most part, more so than it deserved. This conflict still incites great passions in the Arab world, and with all due respect for the new Marshall Plan for Egypt and Tunisia, the Arab masses don’t want to see another Operation Cast Lead and more checkpoints on their TV screens. When it got to us, the tone was different.

Yes, there were stern words about how a Jewish and democratic state is not compatible with an occupation. There was even a proper presidential plan – the ’67 borders with corrections, a Palestinian state and a Jewish state, Israeli security and the demilitarization of Palestine.

But let’s not get too excited. We’ve heard it before, not only from American presidents, but from Israeli prime ministers. And what did we get? Yet another Jewish neighborhood in East Jerusalem.

The heart wants to believe that this time it’s different, but the head – wise from bitter experience after years of shelved peace plans and vacuous speeches – is finding it hard to believe.

The optimists will say that yesterday signaled the end of the Israeli occupation. The pessimists, and I, regrettably, among them, will say that it was just another speech. It changed virtually nothing for the better, virtually nothing for the worse.

The Arab world responds appropriately.

Spot on:

OK, so here’s what President Barack Obama should say today about the Middle East. We will leave Afghanistan tomorrow. We will leave Iraq tomorrow. We will stop giving unconditional, craven support to Israel. Americans will force the Israelis – and the European Union – to end their siege of Gaza. We will withhold all future funding for Israel unless it ends, totally and unconditionally, its building of colonies on Arab land that does not belong to it. We will cease all co-operation and business deals with the vicious dictators of the Arab world – whether they be Saudi or Syrian or Libyan – and we will support democracy even in those countries where we have massive business interests. Oh yes, and we will talk to Hamas.

Of course, President Barack Obama will not say this. A vain and cowardly man, he will talk about the West’s “friends” in the Middle East, about the security of Israel – security not being a word he has ever devoted to Palestinians – and he will waffle on and on about the Arab Spring as if he ever supported it (until, of course, the dictators were on the run), as if – when they desperately needed his support – he had given his moral authority to the people of Egypt; and, no doubt, we will hear him say what a great religion Islam is (but not too great, or Republicans will start recalling the Barack Hussein Obama birth certificate again) and we will be asked – oh, I fear we will – to turn our backs on the Bin Laden past, to seek “closure” and “move on” (which I’m afraid the Taliban don’t quite agree with).

Mr Obama and his equally gutless Secretary of State have no idea what they are facing in the Middle East. The Arabs are no longer afraid. They are tired of our “friends” and sick of our enemies. Very soon, the Palestinians of Gaza will march to the border of Israel and demand to “go home”.

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What Mr Obama doesn’t understand however – and, of course, Mrs Clinton has not the slightest idea – is that, in the new Arab world, there can be no more reliance on dictator-toadies, no more flattery. The CIA may have its cash funds to hand but I suspect few Arabs will want to touch them. The Egyptians will not tolerate the siege of Gaza. Nor, I think, will the Palestinians. Nor the Lebanese, for that matter; and nor the Syrians when they have got rid of the clansmen who rule them. The Europeans will work that out quicker than the Americans – we are, after all, rather closer to the Arab world – and we will not forever let our lives be guided by America’s fawning indifference to Israeli theft of property.

The reality, according to this piece in the New York Times, is that privatising prisons doesn’t save money or bring more accountability or make people’s lives any better. Politicians and commentators who say otherwise are obsessed with “market” solutions. Besides, who feels comfortable making money from the misery of others?

The conviction that private prisons save money helped drive more than 30 states to turn to them for housing inmates. But Arizona shows that popular wisdom might be wrong: Data there suggest that privately operated prisons can cost more to operate than state-run prisons — even though they often steer clear of the sickest, costliest inmates.

The state’s experience has particular relevance now, as many politicians have promised to ease budget problems by trimming state agencies. Florida and Ohio are planning major shifts toward private prisons, and Arizona is expected to sign deals doubling its private-inmate population.

The measures would be a shot in the arm for an industry that has struggled, in some places, to fill prison beds as the number of inmates nationwide has leveled off. But hopes of big taxpayer benefits might end in disappointment, independent experts say.

“There’s a perception that the private sector is always going to do it more efficiently and less costly,” said Russ Van Vleet, a former co-director of the University of Utah Criminal Justice Center. “But there really isn’t much out there that says that’s correct.”

Such has been the case lately in Arizona. Despite a state law stipulating that private prisons must create “cost savings,” the state’s own data indicate that inmates in private prisons can cost as much as $1,600 more per year, while many cost about the same as they do in state-run prisons.

The research, by the Arizona Department of Corrections, also reveals a murky aspect of private prisons that helps them appear less expensive: They often house only relatively healthy inmates.

“It’s cherry-picking,” said State Representative Chad Campbell, leader of the House Democrats. “They leave the most expensive prisoners with taxpayers and take the easy prisoners.”

In the 1980s, soaring violent crime, tougher sentencing and overcrowding led lawmakers to use private prisons to expand. Then, as now, privatization advocates argued that corporations were more efficient. Over time, most states signed contracts, one of the largest transfers of state functions to private industry.

Nationally, the number of state inmates in private prisons grew by a third over the past decade to more than 90,000, but it has stagnated, and some states have reduced total prison populations — shifting nonviolent offenders to treatment programs while bolstering probation. Now, Ohio lawmakers want to privatize prisons with 6,000 inmates, and Florida will transfer institutions with 15,000 inmates to private management. The Arizona plan would add 5,000 private prison beds.

Matthew Benson, spokesman for Gov. Jan Brewer of Arizona, a Republican, did not dispute the state research. But he said officials had a “pretty wide lens” to interpret the cost-savings mandate, like taking into account the ability of private companies to recoup hundreds of millions in construction costs over the life of contracts.

“It is a significant advantage to have a private firm be able to come in and front the costs,” he said.

Privatization advocates play down the data. Leonard Gilroy, director of government reform for the Reason Foundation, a libertarian research organization, questioned whether all costs were included and said the figures were too narrowly drawn, particularly on medium-security prisons, to prompt conclusions. “It is looking at a limited slice,” Mr. Gilroy said.

Competing studies — some financed by the prison industry — have argued over claims of savings. But when a University of Utah team including Mr. Van Vleet reviewed years of research, it concluded in 2007 that “cost savings from privatizing prisons are not guaranteed and appear minimal.”

The Mearsheimer/Walt thesis on America’s (worrying powerful) Israel lobby is proven right time and time again. Today’s Wall Street Journal:

Jewish donors and fund-raisers are warning the Obama re-election campaign that the president is at risk of losing financial support because of concerns about his handling of Israel.

The complaints began early in President Barack Obama’s term, centered on a perception that Mr. Obama has been too tough on Israel.

Some Jewish donors say Mr. Obama has pushed Israeli leaders too hard to halt construction of housing settlements in disputed territory, a longstanding element of U.S. policy. Some also worry that Mr. Obama is putting more pressure on the Israelis than the Palestinians to enter peace negotiations, and say they are disappointed Mr. Obama has not visited Israel yet.

One top Democratic fund-raiser, Miami developer Michael Adler, said he urged Obama campaign manager Jim Messina to be “extremely proactive” in countering the perception in the Jewish community that Mr. Obama is too critical of Israel.

He said his conversations with Mr. Messina were aimed at addressing the problems up front. “This was going around finding out what our weaknesses are so we can run the best campaign,” said Mr. Adler, who hosted a fund-raiser at his home for Mr. Obama earlier this year.

“Good friends tell you how you can improve. They don’t tell you ‘everything’s great’ and then you find out nobody buys the food in your restaurants,” he said.

It is difficult to assess how widespread the complaints are. Many Jews support Mr. Obama’s approach to the Middle East, and his domestic agenda. But Jewish fund-raisers for Mr. Obama say they regularly hear discontent among some supporters.

The Obama campaign has asked Penny Pritzker, Mr. Obama’s 2008 national finance chairwoman, to talk with Jewish leaders about their concerns, Ms. Pritzker said. So far, she said, she’s met with about a half dozen people. She said the campaign is in the process of assembling a larger team for similar outreach.

“I do think there’s an education job to be done, because there’s lots of myths that abound and misunderstandings of the administration’s record,” she said. “The campaign is aggressively getting the information out there.”

Robert Copeland, a Virginia Beach, Va., developer, who has given large donations to many Democrats, has already decided he won’t vote for Mr. Obama in 2012. “I’m very disappointed with him,” he said. “His administration has failed in Israel. They degraded the Israeli people.”