Give and take

When it gets organized the international community can both give or take its support to or from any regime in the world and can either make of break it. This is what is happening with two regimes right now, Myanmar (Burma) that is being rescued from destitution and Iran that is being sanctioned to penury.

For the past 50 years Burma has been ruled by a military dictatorship that has exploited its riches and persecuted its people and driven the country to international isolation. The national elections in 1988 were won by Aung San Suu Kyi, who is the daughter of the assassinated former Burmese national leader. She became his heir apparent, but the military prevented her from attaining power and kept her under house arrest for 20 years. All along she has received the overt support of the western powers and the military leaders stopped short of killing her, although they did kill many of her supporters. Now, after about 10 years of secret negotiations, the military have transferred power to a "civilian" government that is dominated by the Army. But, they have also released Aung San from house arrest and allowed her to speak publicly and to join her party, The League for Freedom and Democracy. Also, she is going to stand in a local election soon that will allow her to represent her district in the national parliament. In exchange for this turn-around the international community has started to remove the sanctions that were applied by the UN and individual countries and Secty of State Hillary Clinton has visited Burma and promised to help Burma rejoin the community of nations and achieve economic improvements. Thus, sanctions can work and their removal can be a great attraction for wayward regimes and dictatorships to change their ways.

Iran has been pursuing nuclear weapons for 10 years and has been the focus of European and American negotiations. But, even the European countries realized finally that this has all been a delaying tactic. In the face of Israeli threats to take military action against Iran unless the western powers get serious about "crippling" sanctions, the EU has finally announced that it will start an embargo on Iranian oil. Since currently 18% of their oil imports come from Iran this is a major step. However, Japan that imports 10% of its oil from Iran has asked to be exempt from this embargo. The sanctioning of Iran's oil exports and the banning of dealing with the Iranian National Bank will severely hit the already weak Iranian economy. The question is why would a relatively economically deprived country with large oil deposits want to spend so much money on developing nuclear weapons. The US has responded to Iranian saber rattling in the Persian Gulf and threats to close the Straits of Hormuz to oil exports by sending another aircraft carrier, the "Abraham Lincoln" into the Gulf. This is only because of the expansionist ideology of the Iranian Shia revolution currently led by PM Ahmedinejad. Although few think that these sanctions will actually deter Iran from continuing to develop nuclear weapons, nevertheless it may cause such economic suffering in Iran that it might trigger another uprising against the regime.

The power of the international community to influence events is great, but not unlimited. Dictatorships such as existed in Nazi Germany and Communist Russia were undeterred by external pressure because of their fanatical ideologies. We expect Iran will follow their example, but only time will tell.

Egyptian election results

The official results of the three-stage Egyptian elections have been announced, and they are worse than expected. The Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) won 38% of the vote and the Al Noor (light) Salafi Party won 29%. Overall this gives the Islamist fundamentalists a huge two thirds majority in Parliament. But, there is a difference between the MB and the Salafists, although both are Islamist in the sense that they are political parties that base their program entirely or mainly on Islam. That means that both of them will want to introduce sharia law into Egypt, the Islamic law that was developed over the centuries by the umah, the collective of Muslim Imams and scholars.

The Moslem Brotherhood was established by Hassan al Bannah in 1928 and his follower Sayyad Qutb wrote an intensely anti-American book after having lived in the US from 1948-50. His response to the US was profoundly antagonistic and the party was heavily influenced by Nazi WWII anti-Jewish propaganda. They intended to protect Egypt and other Muslim countries from what they considered the corrosive effects of westernization and modernization. As such, this movement has its roots in a distinctly anti-western Muslim tradition. The salafi party has its origins in the strict interpretation of Islam fostered by the so-called Wahhabi sect of Islam that was founded by Muhammed al Wahhab in the northern remote Nejd region of Arabia starting in the 18th century. The Wahhabis believed that the Hashemite rulers of Arabia were corrupt because they were dealing with the west and they had strayed from the true path of Islam. The Wahhabis made a deal with Ibn Saud, the ruler of the Nejd and they fought a campaign against the Hashemites and drove them from Mecca and Medina and hence established Saudi Arabia in 1932. Anyone who believes that these movements are of ancient origin is wrong, the Egyptian MB was established in 1928 and the Saudi salafi movement in 1932. Both of them are united by a strong anti-western polemic.

However, things may not be as bad as it seems, there are a few mitigating circumstances. First, the FJP published a list of ca. 1,000 prisoners it would release, that includes a Coptic blogger who has written pro-Israel articles. Second they have chosen a notable Egyptian who will be the speaker of the Parliament who has committted himself to strictly neutral parliamentary procedure. There is also a one third minority opposition of non-Islamic parties, including a secular party that supported the revolution that has 1.5% of the seats. It is said that the FJP is partly pragmatic and interested in social justice and staying in power. However, the FJP has also said that it will work to help Hamas become the only representative of the Palestinian people (ie. they will oppose Fatah and the peace process) and they will help Hamas to overcome the "occupation," in other words to eliminate Israel. This has split Hamas, between those who want to retain ties with Shia Iran while others want to cut ties and rely only on the MB for support. Whatever happens these events do not augur well for Israel.

Does gender matter?

With the current focus in Israel on women in the public sphere, the January lecture at the Netanya Academic College in the series sponsored by AACI-Netanya was topical and entitled "Is there gender bias in the Israeli courts?" given by Rochelle Don-Yehiye, a lawyer. She was born in the US and grew up in Long Beach, NY. She made aliyah in 1969 and studied law at Tel Aviv University. She lectured for 8 years at Bar-Ilan University on Labor Law. As a commercial lawyer she specializes in mediation between companies and couples. She is also on the Management Committee of the Israel Women's Organization and for12 years she has been on the Directorate of the Israel Electric Company and for the past 2 years she has also been on the Directorate of the Channel Two media company. With her co-author Rina Bogoch she co-authored a study published (in Hebrew) in 2000 entitled "Is there gender bias in the Israeli courts?"

There is gender bias all over the world, so why should Israel be any different? Research in all western countries, US, Canada, Europe, shows that husbands who murder their wives receive on average lower sentences than wives who murder their husbands. They set out to answer the question "does gender matter in the Israeli court system?" At first they interviewed Chief Justice of the Supreme Court Shamgar and he said that they would have to prove their contention, so they set out on one of the most detailed such studies ever done that was funded by the Ford Foundation.

In their study they did not rely on questionnaires but used the actual transcripts of trials to compare the results for all cases of violence resulting in a sentence of 5 years or more from 1993-1998. They looked at the effect of the gender of the perpetrator, of the judge and of both prosecuting and defence attorneys. There were fewer cases of serious female violence so the statistics may not be significant in those cases, but they found that if the victim was male ca. 78% of women were convicted and 98% of men while if the victim was female only 6% of women and 26% of men were convicted and on average the sentence was 129 months if the victim was a woman and 165 months if a man. These results indicate that there is a complex gender bias in convictions and sentences.

There were also cases of indirect bias, resulting if the victim and perpetrator knew each other or not. This was sometimes considered to be a mitigating circumstance, however there was great difference between men and women. Of women only 10% were attacked by strangers, while for men the figure was 60% attacked by strangers. Clearly the most dangerous place for women is the home.

They considered what happens in the courtroom, and found that women lawyers are interrupted more and the judgements were less favorable for a female compared to a male lawyer. For comparable cases, a woman prosecutor got on average 37 months sentence while a male prosecutor got 40 months, then as defender the figures were 53 vs. 34 months, quite a big difference (so it pays to have a male defending attorney). They found that the Judges addressed the male and female lawyers differently, showing more deference to the men. In Israel there is no jury system, most courts have one or three judges. When a woman is judging alone she tends to be more lenient than when she is judging with two other men judges.

But, in cases of rape the idea that women judges would be more understanding to the victim does not hold. In comparable cases the average sentence for rape by a female judge was 10 months and for a male judge was 20 months. Psychologically the female judges appear to over-compensate, perhaps to avoid the appearance of gender bias. In regular crimes of violence the sentences are reversed, male judges gave on average 23 months to men and 17 months to females, while female judges gave only 10 or 11 months, so here the female judges are more lenient.

Inside the courtroom they found that in the results of rape cases Judges appeared to have a stereotypical prototype rape case in their minds, i.e. that of a young (virgin) female attacked by a stranger, while actually most cases of rape were "date rape" or rape between people who knew each other. Often the woman was older and dressed what was considered to be provocatively. For example, the lifestyle of the female victim was mentiond 364 times, and in those cases while the district court often found the man not guilty that was usually reversed on appeal to the Supreme Court.

This study confirmed many cases of gender bias in the Israeli court system and its results were used to "educate" lawyers and judges in order to avoid many instances of "unconscious" bias. Certainly the situation is better now than when the study was published 12 years ago, and recently The Israel Project published an article entitled "Women now a majority in the Israeli Justice System."

Ethiopian Jewry and cyber warfare

There have been demonstrations of Ethiopian Jews in Israel against racism. This started in the south at Kiryat Malachi where a building refused to accept an Ethiopian couple as apartment owners because of their color. Then a group of Ethiopians walked all the way to Jerusalem in the cold and demonstrated there outside the Knesset and the PM's office. There is no doubt that there is color racism in Israel, but it is less severe than one might think, especailly compared to the USA. What annoyed the demonstrators is that the Minister of Immigrant Absorption Sofa Landver, who is from the former Soviet Union and belongs to Yisrael Beitanu, told them that they should be grateful that Israel helped them to come here. As a group that has upheld their connection to Judaism for 1,000 years in exile, they feel taht they should be treated more respectfully and who can blame them.

One of the problems is that many of them over hundreds of years were forcibly converted to Christianity. Ethiopia is a Christian country and although it is friendly to Israel, nevertheless there was terrible anti-Semitism directed against the Ethiopian Jews or Falasha. These converts or Falash Mura have mostly been accepted into Israel, although there are still thousands of them who claim to be Jews. Activists do not understand why the Israeli Government is so slow in repatriating them, but the Government points to the economic situation and the difficulty sometimes in confirming their original Jewishness. In any case the Ethiopians are becoming very integrated into Israeli society, in the professions, in the arts and in the military.

On another subject, last week a Saudi Arabian hacker, with the nickname OxOmar, organized a cyber attack from Mexico on several Israeli web-sites, including the Bank of Israel, El Al and the Stock Exchange. They never managed to interfere with the operations of these organizations, but did cause their external web-sites, where people go to get information such as flight schedules, to collapse. This was what is called a "denial-of;service" attack that involves too many users at the same time. However, the Israeli sites soon recovered and introduced more protections. The hackers also published on the web a list of Israeli owners of credit cards, but this was soon rectified. Then a group of Israeli hackers organized a pay-back, that turned out to be more extensive and more serious. They have disrupted the workings of the Bank of Saudi Arabia and published the names of thousands of users of credit cards and so on. The Israeli Government has said it does not believe in tit-for-tat in this area, but the Israeli hackers, who call themselves the "IDF Team," are supposedly acting independently. Their warning is "don't mess with us." Israel is far ahead of most countries in the cyber area.

WWIII?

I have watched thousands of hours of documentaries about WWII. There are series using previously unknown color movies, series about attempts on Hitler's life, about Hitler's early life, about Hitler's last days in the bunker, about Hitler's secret weapons, about the development of the concentration camps and about the roving special murder squads (Einsatzgruppen). I have also seen movies about WWI, such as "War Horse" where the scenes of fighting in the trenches are done with Steven Spielberg's special ability. Also, the movie about Rudyard Kipling's son who died in the trenches. The more I see the more I realize that WWII was a continuation of WWI.

Certainly this was the motivation of Hitler and millions of other Germans, to reverse the defeat of 1918 and make it a victory in 1939. Those 21 years were merely an interlude, a short interval before the ignominy of defeat could be transformed into the glory of victory. Germans of all stripes believed intrinsically that they were superior to all other races/groups, certainly to the Jews, a convenient and powerless minority, and they could not understand nor accept that the Jews were somehow cleverer than them and that the British somehow managed to defeat them. It was all a huge mistake, the kind of mistake that arrogance cannot accept. Hitler was the ersatz Kaiser that the German people yearned for. Back to the past. That was why Hitler insisted on using the very carriage in which the German surrender was signed in 1918 to have the French sign their capitulation in 1940 and in the same place.

Maybe we should rename these world wars WWIa and Ib. Hopefully there will never be a WWIc, because the powers of Europe, Germany, France, Britain, have overcome their inter-European rivalries and moved on to bureaucratic games like the EU and the Eurozone. That should tie them down for a while. But in the wider world the wars have seemed tame, local conflicts such as Korea, Vietnam, Iraq (twice) and the Middle East Wars, the Suez Campaign (1956), the 6 day War (1967), the Yom Kippur War (1973), the Lebanon wars (1982 and 2002) and so on.
These have killed fewer and fewer people as the sophistication of the war increased. Can a war that kills less than 100,000 people be called a real war. Its amazing that the wars of the Arabs against Israel have produced so few casualties (and yet the Arabs call them Nakba and "genocide'). Now the Iran-Iraq war (1980-88), that was a real war with ca. 1 million casualties and little more sophistication than artillery and poison gas.

Will there ever be a WWIII, a real all-out war that includes most of the nations of the world? Probably not, but if there ever is to be one it will probably involve Islamist fundamentalists, trying to take over the West and destroy its culture. The development of Iranian nuclear weapons could be the causative act of that war, especially if the Sunni and Shia join together. But, happily they hate each other more than they hate even Israel, so maybe an attack on Iran won't have such dire consequences. Remember the causative factor of WWII was the arrogance of the Germans over the defeat of Germany in WWI; the casuative factor of WWIII will probably be the arrogance of Islam over their perceived inferiority to the West.

Obama lost Egypt

One of the greatest defeats of US foreign policy in the modern era was the loss of Iran by Pres. Jimmy Carter in 1979. By withdrawing support at a crucial moment from the Shah of Iran, however unpleasant he was as a megalomaniacal dictator, the result of his loss was far worse to the US, to Israel and to the Iranian people. The so-called human rights abuses attributed to his rule were multiplied ten times by those carried out by his successors, the Ayatollahs who took over from him. If the US and France had not allowed Khomenei to travel to Iran, and had supported the Shah in his position, millions of people would have avoided suffering and death, including the victims of the 8 year long Iran-Iraq war as well as the hundreds of thousands who over the past 30 years have suffered in Evian prison as well as having to escape into exile. But, history cannot be predicted or reversed.

So far the outcome in Egypt is unclear, but the enthusiastic liberal-minded attitude of the Obama Adminstration to the overthrow of Mubarak, who was a force for stability in Egypt and the region, has led to an impending take-over by the Muslim Brotherhood, possibly the worst outcome. The US is currently having secret negotiations with them, just as Carter did with the Khomeinists when they took over the US Embassy in Tehran. It's true that the Egyptian Army has not yet released the reins of power, but the fact that the westernized secular candidate El Baradei has dropped out of the Egyptian Presidential race is a harbinger of bad things to come.

Egypt is dependent on US aid and its chief money earner is tourism. A Muslim Brotherhood Government will prefer to be poor than to take money from the US and to have half dressed western tourists traipsing around its pyramids. They will expel most western influences and then their economy will collapse, but Muslim dominated countries aren't known for their economic growth, except those that have westernized such as Dubai and Malaysia. A poor, Islamist Egypt will definitely be a serious threat to Israel, although it will not be a military threat for some time to come.

Obama will be remembered amongst other things as the President who lost Egypt.

Palestinian origins

"A DNA study found genetic evidence in support of historical records that "part, or perhaps the majority" of Muslim Palestinians descend from "local inhabitants, mainly Christians and Jews, who had converted after the Islamic conquest in the seventh century AD". They also found substantial genetic overlap between Muslim Palestinians and Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews, although with some significant differences that might be explainable by the geographical isolation of the Jews or by immigration of Arab tribes in the first millennium."

Today there are a total of 4.6 million Palestinian Arabs (including Gaza 1.2 m, WB 2.4 m, Israeli Arabs 1 m) compared to 5.0 million Jews in Israel and the WB. It's true that this is not much of a difference, but the Arabs are more split than the Jews, with Hamas in Gaza and Fatah in the WB being irreconcilable. There is a small split in Israel between the mainstream in Israel proper and the settlers in the WB, but the latter are split between those who would obey the Israeli Government and those who are currently fighting Israeli Governent orders to leave outposts and smaller settlements.

Suppose the settlers and the Israeli Government had a campaign to try to educate and persuade the Palestinians that they are in fact mainly descended from people who were originally Jews. Of course this would be very difficult, because apostasy is punishable by death under Islam and Muslims believe that everyone is born a Muslim but incorrect (Jewish or Christian) beliefs cause them to be stray from the true path of God. So it would be an uphill battle, but I predict that over time, as Israel is more successful and the Muslims are less successful in building a modern democratic state, that some Palestianin Arabs will become absorbed into Israel and will live as secular Jews. There are already many doing that, including Arabs living as Jews in Netanya and Tel Aviv and often married to Jews (mainly women). They just don't want to be known as such, not because they are afraid of the Jews (that too) but mainly because they are afraid of the Arab Muslims.

Iranian physicists

Position available: "Nuclear physicist wanted, advanced qualifications required, also must be fluent in Farsi. Excellent pay, extra security bonus, apply Iranian National Guard Nuclear Weapons Facility, Qoms, Muslim Republic of Iran. Body repatriation guaranteed."

The current situation with regard to the deaths of nuclear physicists in Iran is reminiscent of the situation that occured in Egypt in the 1950's when rocket scientists had a very high mortality rate. Someone kept bumping off their ballistics experts, who were being trained by Russian scientists. Also, they were sent warning notes that they should leave Egypt immediately. However, the warning notes backfired, from them and other evidence the Egyptian authorities were able to trace the whole Israeli spy ring that had been setting off explosives in Cairo, including the so-called "champagne spy". I suppose the Mossad learnt its lesson, now they concentrate on bumping off the scientists. It is thought unlikely that Israeli agents are actually doing the dirty work, affixing the bombs to the cars, others are probably doing this, including opponents of the regime who might have lost loved ones or friends in the brutal police/army crackdowns on dissent or Baluchis or other minorities who strongly oppose the control of the Iranian Government.

Whoever is doing it they are quite successful, having murdered 4 scientists in 2 years. It is well known that such experts are not easily replaced and the removal of key individuals in an organization can render it inoperable. It can also intimidate other suitable experts from replacing them. All this, and the computer worms that have infected the Iranian computer systems, are delaying tactics to slow down or try to stop the progress of Iran towards obaining the enriched uranium to make a nuclear bomb. Let's hope together with the increased sanctions all this may work. But, if not, as they say, "all options are on the table."

The cancellation of a joint annual US-Israel military excercise this week is most worrying. Does it have anything to do with the fact that Pres. Obama warned PM Netanyahu in a phone call last week that he does not want to be "surprised" by an Israeli unilateral attack on Iran. The US Chief of Staff Adm. Mullen is due in Israel on a pre-scheduled visit this week. Let's hope the US and Israel are on the same page of the same book when it comes to Iran, but unfortunately with Obama facing an election this year this is doubtful.

What is missing?

What is missing in the Middle East?

1. A peace movement in the Arab world. There is NO Arab country that has a public movement that wants to make peace with Israel. On the contrary, the newly "liberated" countries like Egypt are talking about cancelling or changing the Egypt-Israel peace treaty, and most Arab countries are continuing to express their hatred of Israel and their determination to destroy Israel. Meanwhile Israel has a very active peace movement, such as "Peace Now."

2. An Arab refugee resettlement plan. In the Arab world Palestinian refugees are never settled, they always remain "refugees" until the third and fourth generation. Meanwhile the forgotten refugees, the nearly 1 million Jews who fled or were forced out of Arab lands have been re-settled for 50 years in Israel. That is the difference, Israel had a successful re-settlement plan, the Arabs have NO refugee re-settlement plan (except to destroy Israel)!

3. Minority rights. There is NO concept of minority rights under Islam. In Egypt the Coptic Christian minority (ca. 10%) are continually being attacked and their churches burnt down. In Iraq the Chaldean Christians (ca. 2%) are continually being attacked and their churches burnt down. In Gaza and the West Bank the Christian minority (4%) are continually being attacked and their churches burnt down. Question, what can one conclude from this? That wherever there are Muslims, such as in Pakistan, Nigeria, Philippines, there are attacks on Christians and their churches are burnt down. Luckily there are few Jews any more to be targets for the Muslims in these countries.

4. Democracy. There is NO successful Arab democracy in the Middle East, nowithstanding the uprisings that started a year ago. Iraq and Tunisia are closest to becoming democracies, but Egypt and Libya are still struggling, Jordan and Lebanon are far from democracy and Syria is entering a civil war as the Assad regime tries to stem the popular tide by force. The Palestinians are split between Islamist Hamas and radical Fatah, with no hope of a united democracy. No wonder they can't make peace with an actual democracy like Israel.

It is the preponderance of these NO's that makes the Muslim Arabs so intransigent relative to Israel. Those who focus on Israel's policies, such as building houses on the West Bank, are really missing the point!

Immigration loophole

The Israeli Supreme Court ruled by a majority of 5 to 6 that it is not necessary that familes with one spouse abroad be united in Israel. Some on the left immediately called this a racist decision..

But consider the situation: Israel is surrounded by enemies; Muslim men take second or third wives; current law before this ruling would allow any Muslim man who married an Israeli Arab woman to move to Israel without any legal barrier and even become an Israeli citizen. Generally, when a Muslim woman marries she moves to the husband's abode, however, in the case of Israeli Arab women the authorities noticed a reversed trend, that in most cases the husband moved to Israel, the wive's abode. Also, the security forces found that some of these men were using this unification as a simple route to enter Israel in order to carry out terrorism. In fact in the year 2010, over 100,000 such cases took place, of Palestinian or other Muslim men marrying Israeli Arab women and moving to Israel. This became a very disturbing trend and presaged the formation of a "fifth column" within Israel. So the Government introduced a law to prevent this happening, in other words the right of unification of husbands and wives was made secondary to the interests of State security. The law, entitled the Citizenship and Entry into Israel Law, then went to the Supreme Court for adjudication and the majority by a small margin agreed with the law.

In other words, they ruled that the couple could be unified outside Israel, eg. in the West Bank, or they could be unified within Israel subject to checking by the security forces and their unification in Israel could be legally rejected. This is another way of the Jewish State to protect itself, like the security fence that surrounds the West Bank. This fence has resulted in terrorism being reduced by ca. 90%, i.e. it has saved hundreds of lives. Before the fence was in place the Arab terroristsonly had to walk into ISrael, but with the fence in place how could terrorists get into Israel? They found a loophole, marry an Israeli Arab woman. Now that loophole has been closed and the Jewish State can now legally prevent the influx of large numbers of Palestinian Arab men.

All free and open societies have found the need to protect themselves from massive immigration of undesirable aliens. Britain stopped the immigration of East African Asians; Idi Amin deported the Asians (mainly Indians) from Uganda, and Britian accepted them, but then they found that Indians were moving from India to Uganda in order to get into Britain, so the Government closed that loophole. The US prevents the immigration of Mexicans, even if they claim to be married or related to Mexicans legally resident in the US. It is the only way for open societies to protect themselves, they have to selectively close their borders.