It's Almost Supernatural

Interview with Dr. Alon Liel, former Israeli ambassador to South Africa

Amongst the impressive items which populate Dr Liel’s CV, the one that stands out the most is his position as the Israeli ambassador to South Africa during the turbulent post-apartheid years between 1992-1994.

I recently had the opportunity to interview Dr. Liel following some public pronouncements from him supporting Obama’s new vision for the Middle East. I started with a question about how South Africa has changed since his first visit here as a diplomat in 1986.

Liel painted two contrasting pictures of South Africa, one as the diplomat in 1986 and the other as an ordinary visitor in 2004. Liel says that his visits in 1999 and 2004 were like coming to two different counties. The change is immediately apparent at the airports. “The way they look at you, treat you, look at your documents is completely different”. In 1986, even with a diplomatic passport, he still faced a rigid atmosphere with officials that looked like soldiers on alert all of the time. In 2004 he witnessed a different and relaxed atmosphere with young women and men, not necessarily concentrating on what they have to do, taking the place of the once rigid and alert soldiers. He witnessed a country that now saw itself as a part of Africa, with the black population more involved in place of a country whose vision was to become more like Europe.

Dr. Liel has an impressive record in the Foreign Ministry where as director general he led an unofficial negotiation track with the Syrians.

Liel, a strong critic of the Bush Administration, laments the policy of looking at the Middle East as a region of terrorists and allies – “Cowboys and Indians”. Israel were the good guys and Iran, Syria, Hamas and Hizbullah the bad. The approach was to help good guys beat the bad guys.

Dr. Liel doesn’t see Hamas, Hizballah and co. as good guys, but he thinks the Bush administration should have learned from Israel’s historical approach which was to see itself surrounded by enemies where everyone is a bad guy until they will one day become convinced that they are good guys.

Liel thinks it’s essential to have an American administration willing to give everyone a chance and engage, even if he is a terrorist and doesn’t like you. Challenged on this approach he readily admits that he doesn’t know if it will succeed – “but I know the Bush approach failed.”

Perhaps incorrectly awarding credit to Obama when it ought to go to Bush for his drive towards freedom in the Middle East, Liel claims that the recent results of the elections in Lebanon where Hizballah was defeated in parliamentary elections, coupled with the recent protests in Iran, is a result of the impact that Obama is having by helping the moderates.

Gaza evacuation

I asked Dr. Liel if he includes the evacuation of Gaza as part of what he describes as a “movement backwards away from peace” during the Bush era. He candidly replied that, although, technically there was progress, the fact that Hamas took over is indeed a big step backwards. “Having the Palestinian people divided into two geographic entities that don’t see eye-to-eye makes peace more difficult to achieve.”

Dr. Liel concedes that it is difficult to determine who is responsible for what during the Bush era but remains adamant that the US, as the only super-power, was the key player and needs to accept overall responsibility.

Bibi Speech

I explained to Dr. Liel that the Jewish South African community officially backed a two-state solution and the initial rejectionist approach of Netanyahu put us in a position where at best, support for a solution that Israel was rejecting was the most we could hope to extract from the South African government.

Dr. Liel was amused at how things have changed. When he was ambassador, the official Jewish leadership vehemently objected to the Oslo process and tried to convince Israel that what they were doing was wrong. But times have changed. Liel went on... “In the last 15 years since Oslo, every Prime Minister, including those elected by Likud, have supported the 2 state solution, including Netanyahu himself. What Bibi did after he was elected 6 months ago was to change the position of Israel. And he is entitled to do that as the elected Prime Minister. But it was a new thing for the region that Israel went back to objecting to the establishment of a Palestinian state.”

We spoke only a couple of days after Netanyahu’s speech at the Bar Ilan University and Liel was surprisingly upbeat about what he heard. Although he agrees that at a practical level the speech doesn’t change the situation on the ground, he said that he saw in Netanyahu’s speech “Obama’s vision from Bibi’s mouth”. (For those that might not know, in the speech, Netanyahu once again endorsed the creation of a Palestinian state albeit a demilitarized one.)

Analysing Netanyahu’s body language he said that it was easy to see that this was not Netanyahu’s dream. Liel, somewhat morosely, acknowledged that it doesn’t look very promising, or perhaps even possible, to create a Palestinian state in the foreseeable future as long as the Palestinian people are divided. Liel thinks there is a long way to go until the gaps between Israel and a united leadership of the Palestinian people can be breached. “As long as Hamas is such a negative force, I don’t think any Prime Minister in Israel, left or right, can sign a deal with a leadership that represents only half the people.” “No leader”, he continued, “can sign a deal with a state in the West Bank when you have an Iranian proxy in Gaza.” Again, there is some ire for the Bush administration – “the situation is very sad and maybe also the result of the 8 years of Bush when he insisted on deepening the rift between Hamas and Fatah by supporting Fatah and punishing Hamas.”

Responding to my question on whether the Palestinians can ever build the institutions requisite to a fully functioning state, Liel dismissed it and explained that this isn’t just a matter of building institutions; it’s a broader matter of rebuilding nations.

So how, I asked, does Israel work at changing the landscape? Do we continue to isolate Hamas, or do we engage?

Dr. Liel’s response was a yes and a no. “We can never tell what can bring about the change. There certainly has to be a change in attitude from Hamas. They have to recognise Israel. I cannot tell what can bring about a change in the position. Half a year ago we attacked Gaza and it didn’t change their position. We don’t know what will bring about the change but the change will come. It will, most likely, be a combination of pressure and attempts to engage. Everybody will have to change a little bit before this landscape is altered.”

SA and the Palestinians

I asked Dr. Liel about the role South Africa can play in the peace process and he replied, almost instantly, that there is no chance that South Africa can play a role because of their strong ties with the Palestinians. The mediator needs to be as neutral and as balanced as possible. Both sides need a mediator that they can trust and at the moment the Obama administration is the only mediator that can offer carrots, sticks, and most importantly, trust.

Dr. Liel shared a small anecdote from his second visit to South Africa, as Barak’s foreign policy advisor in 1999. The South African elections had just taken place and President Mbeki had just been elected South Africa’s second democratic president. At the time, Liel attended a meeting between former president Nelson Mandela and Prime Minister Ehud Barak. At the meeting, Mandela offered his good services (Liel is not certain whether this offer went beyond his personal effort) but Prime Minister Barak diplomatically responded that if there is a role South Africa can play then it’s between Israel and Syria. Mandela acted on his offer and went to speak to Hafez-al-Assad – but he didn’t get very far. The prevailing attitude in Israel is if we can gain from the South African experience, it’s on the Syrian and not the Palestinian track.

 

Syria

Dr. Liel has a history of involvement in unofficial “track 2” negotiations with the Syrians, particularly when he served as the director general of the foreign affairs ministry. In this unofficial capacity, he has come to believe that the distance between the Israelis and Syrians can be overcome if official talks, with US backing, are to resume.

Liel thinks Syria holds the key to any possible progress towards peace in the near future. He believes that Syria has a stable leadership and wants to rejoin the moderate camp in the Middle East to get closer to the West. “We were speaking to them in the last few years, still there is an alliance with Iran and Syria is very dependent on Iran, but we have the feeling that this dependence worries people in Syria – people in Syria are worried that they are losing their independence. This provides a possibility to move forward.”

Signing a deal with Syria will dramatically affect the situation with the Palestinians and will weaken the Hamas leadership, some of whom sit in Damascus because, Liel explains, “you can’t sign an agreement and continue to host terrorists sitting in your capital city”.

Liel says that Washington is the key to a deal with Syria. “If Washington strengthens the dialogue, if we see an American ambassador in Damascus, then we may see renewed peace talks. The time is right to move on the Syrian track; not the Palestinians one.”

The obvious question was how Israel can be sure that the next generation of Syrian leaders will honour an agreement with Israel. Arab leaders lack legitimacy because they are not elected; they inherit power or win it through violence. Israel is expected to give up something tangible, and we have to live in hope that new Syrian leaders will honour a piece of paper with a peace agreement.

Dr. Liel believes that the Syrians have shown the required stability to gain our trust. “When I was a child, at school we were taught you can’t sign an agreement because in the Arab world, one day you are dealing with one leader and then the next day his cousin stabs him in the back and takes over.”

But Liel continues, “we’ve seen leaders who have been in power for almost 20 years and the Prime Minister, during this time, that was assassinated was our own! So what we say about the lack of stability could be said by Arabs about us.” Liel realised he was pushing this comparison too far and retracted somewhat, but still, sticking to the point, continued, “Look, with us they can know that they are dealing with a real democracy that will honour any official agreements, but they will say, one day you are dealing with an Olmert and the next day you have a guy like Netanyahu who is exactly the opposite.”

Liel argues that the Syrians have a good record of respecting agreements they have signed with Israel and that they look much more stable now than ever before. He emphasised that expectations change, “In Netanyahu’s first term he said ‘no peace with Arabs until they are all democracies.’ But we have given up on that and understand that it’s not for us to decide who the Arab leaders should be. Basher Assad is in his 8th year in office, he is a very experienced president and as far as we can guess he is quite popular. He is much more outspoken, gives more interviews, he is more exposed. We don’t foresee any dangers about the control of his country.”

Zuma Continues Illiberal Foreign Policy

South Africa voted to disband the United Nations Human Rights Council investigation into war crimes in Sudan, last week in Geneva. I really can’t say it’s a surprise. South Africa’s international support for tyrants and their human rights abuses from Zimbabwe to Burma over the last few years are all well documented. But many influential commentators had hoped that Zuma may change course. This is obviously not to be the case.

What is interesting is that not all African countries followed South Africa’s lead. Mauritius and Zambia bravely voted for continued scrutiny of Sudan’s human rights violations, while Angola, Burkina Faso, Gabon, Ghana, Madagascar and Senegal all abstained.

After the resolution was thankfully passed and the investigator retained, the Ugandan representative in a rare display of disunity chastised fellow African countries that had sided with Sudan. He declared “From the Holocaust to the genocide in Rwanda, we are always reminded that never again should we allow these events to happen through inaction or political expediency”. He praised the Council’s resolution on Sudan, saying it “reasserted the credibility of the Council” and thanked Council members who “have acted with courage on their convictions.”

Given our own history it seems unbelievable that it would be necessary, but President Zuma and the ANC would do well to listen to these wise words.

(Hat hit UNWATCH)

Tony Leon’s ‘racism’ — a Jewish pathology?

  Former leader of the Opposition in South Africa Tony Leon has become embroiled in an ugly mud slinging match over the suitability of controversial Western Cape Judge President John Hlophe for a future seat on the constitutional court. Leon, no stranger to being called a racist for his outspoken criticism of ANC policy will probably not be surprised by the latest attack from the Justice for Hlophe Alliance (see Leon should apologise for Hlophe remarks - JHA). But South African Jewry should be outraged.

Leon, on account of being Jewish, is accused of trying to import the racist discourse of the Arab-Israeli conflict into South African society. Absurdly, almost a third of the response issued by the Justice for Hlophe Alliance deals with the views of an extremist fringe in Israel towards its Arab citizens. Not only did Leon not refer to the Middle East or Jewish related issues in his original article, but the issue has nothing even to do with minority rights. Somehow Leon’s use of the term “fifth column” to describe Hlophe and his supporters in relation to the constitution has been deemed to be racist Jewish language common to right wing nationalist parties in Israel. The irony of course, is that Leon began his piece elegantly explaining that the origin of the term is actually the Spanish civil war.

Now love Leon or hate (I personally am in the former camp), agree with his criticism of Hlophe or condemn it, his ethnic-religious affiliation should have no bearing on the debate. The fact that he is Jewish or that the term “fifth column” has been used by people on the political extreme in the Jewish state is just not relevant. So why was it used? For the same reason the Nationalist Party ad nauseum assailed Helen Suzman for her Jewish roots. It is a classic political trick to prey on popularist anti-Jewish sentiments in an attempt to discredit and silence the critic.

The South African Jewish Community, in particular the South African Jewish Board of Deputies, cannot let this incident go unchallenged. We cannot let the Jewish origin of public figures be used as a tool to bash them. Remaining silent would only serve to legitimise this tactic. I understand that the leadership of the community may be nervous to wade into this fiery debate, particularly given the strong support Hlophe seems to have within the ANC. But there is a need to show some backbone here and stand up and defend Jewish rights. Otherwise we will always be de facto second-class citizens in this country.

Official Jewish Community Responds to HSRC Witch Trial

The official Jewish leadership has responded to the brazen misuse of public funds that is the HSRC Report (view details of the report here). The following response has been sent to the Minister of Science and Technology.

Dear Minister Pandor The Human Sciences Research Council, which falls under the Ministry of Science and Technology, has just released a Report entitled “Occupation, Colonialism, Apartheid? A re-assessment of Israel’s practices in the occupied Palestinian territories under international law”. This was carried out under the auspices of the HSRC’s Democracy and Governance Programme Middle East Project. The intention of this research project was to provide “a scholarly resource for the South African government and civil society and the concerned international community”. In this regard, it can unequivocally be said to have failed conclusively. It seems all too clear that the researchers decided beforehand what they wished to establish and thereafter set about selectively compiling evidence and arguments to support this predetermined conclusion. As a result, their report is fundamentally flawed, providing a skewed, unrealistic analysis of the Middle East conflict that certainly will not redound to the credit of the HSRC. At the core of this failure is the fact that the Report adopts throughout an artificial “Actor vs. Acted Upon” paradigm through which to interpret the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The Israeli side is always the ‘acting’ party, whose actions are subjected to the minutest critical scrutiny. The Palestinians, by contrast, are depicted as essentially passive and, it therefore follows, guiltless of any wrongdoing. It is Israel that has multiple obligations; the Palestinians seemingly have none. The Report arrives at the sweeping conclusion that Israel’s “racially discriminatory” policies vis-à-vis the Palestinians “cannot be justified on reasonable security grounds” yet at no stage seeks to grapple with the details of just what those security concerns might be. Just what are the on-the-ground realities of terrorist attacks on its citizens that have motivated Israel to impose the kind of restrictive measures on the Palestinians that the Report continually deplores? Put another way, how many recorded attacks have there been, what form have they taken, who has been targeted, what was the role in all of this of the Palestinian leadership and what would any nation similarly threatened be reasonably expected to do in response to such acts? One would expect responsible, professional researchers to delve very carefully into such questions. There is a vast, and ever growing, body of sobering evidence of Palestinian violence directed against Israel and its citizens, both within the West Bank and Gaza and within Israel proper. Such acts of hostility, in which civilians more often than not were the targets, number in the tens of thousands. All this evidence is readily available. The record shows, amongst many other things, that the Palestinian leadership has been directly responsible for planning and carrying out terrorist attacks, that humanitarian resources have been abused for this purpose (e.g. ambulances used for weapons smuggling) and that the propagation of racial hatred and incitement to violence against Jews permeates every level of Palestinian society. Astonishingly, the HSRC Report has nothing to say about any of this. Nowhere in its more than three hundred pages does one find these crucial aspects of the Israeli-Palestinian dispute being addressed, even to a limited degree. Judging by their approach, we can only conclude that the researchers believe the Palestinian leadership to have no reciprocal obligations to foster an environment in which the two peoples can co-exist in peace and equality. It is, self-evidently, meaningless to level sweeping accusations of colonialism and apartheid against a sovereign State without rigorously examining the context in which those actions take place. That the Report studiedly avoids doing this can only lead to the conclusion that those responsible were motivated by their ideological biases rather than by a genuine desire to unravel the complexities of what all agree is one of the world’s most difficult conflict situations. Examining the backgrounds of the chief editor of the Report, Dr. Virginia Tilley, the principle contributors and the sponsoring organisations, one is not surprised to discover a common thread of intensive anti-Israel sentiment. Virtually all have long records of campaigning against Israel, and as such should be seen as activists rather than neutral scholars. That the Report ultimately produced is decidedly not scholarly as reflected in its clearly biased original terms of reference, its original motivation (by Special Rapporteur to the UNHRC John Dugard, internationally known for his partisan views on the Middle east question) and its selective and partisan researchers and sponsors. Whatever it was intended to achieve, the Report that has emerged serves to obscure rather than clarify, unjustly condemns one side of the conflict while by pointed omission exonerating the other and constitutes a distinctly ones-sided analysis of a complex international issue under the guise of independent scholarship. The SA Jewish Board of Deputies and SA Zionist Federation hereby express our profound regret over what we consider a misuse of public funds by those intent on pursuing a grossly partisan political agenda. This is decidedly not what the Human Sciences Research Council, a scholarly, statutory body of the South African Government, was set up to achieve. Yours respectfully ZEV KRENGEL NATIONAL CHAIRMAN SA JEWISH BOARD OF DEPUTIES AVROM KRENGEL NATIONAL CHAIRMAN SA ZIONIST FEDERATION

Update - Kasrils at the HSRC

Voice of the Cape has the transcript of Former Minister of Intelligence Ronnie Kasrils' speech at the HSRC symposium this past weekend - it's here, if you have the stomach for it.

Guess Who's Coming to SA

Click the clown's nose to find out.

Dept of Foreign Affairs Funds Apartheid Israel Study

Mike Berger from Solar Plexus has compiled a newsletter on a perfectly orchestrated propaganda campaign by the Palestinian lobby in South Africa. In short, they have abused the mandate of the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) to craft a 2 year study answering the insanely partisan and agriculturally selective questions on whether Israel is practicing occupation, colonialism and apartheid.

• You can access the media release, Executive Summary, and full report here

The study has been paid for by South African taxpayers (the HSRC is a Government sponsored and funded organisation) and is being presented to the South African Department of Foreign Affairs in an attempt delete their current support for a two state solution (they don’t say that as such, rather, they claim that the report is available as a ‘scholarly resource’ for the Department). I should note in fact that the 2 year study, rather bizarrely, was actually funded by the Department of Foreign Affairs themselves.

The study sanctimoniously claims that is was forged to test the hypothesis posed by Professor John Dugard, in his capacity as UN Special Rapporteur on the human rights situation in the Palestinian territories occupied by Israel, that elements of the occupation constitute forms of apartheid and colonialism. The editor of the study is none other than Virginia Tilley, author of “the one state solution” who militantly argued that Israel is an apartheid state way before the sheltered income for this study was ever dreamed of.

Would the HSRC use taxpayer’s money to fund a study on the truth about global warming, only to have it led by a partisan researcher already famous for denying that it is taking place? No. So, why then fund a study on Israel, colonialism and apartheid led by a woman whose support for such views is already well-known and documented? This here is not a study that searches for a conclusion. It starts with a conlusion and searches for an argument.

The purpose of the study is not just to influence our foreign policy. It’s far broader objective is to call on the International Court of Justice to intervene with an advisory opinion on whether the policies and practices of Israel within the Occupied Palestinian Territories violate the norms prohibiting apartheid and colonialism, and if so, what of the legal consequences.

Mike Berger explains this wider objective: “[It aims to ]set the stage for global ostracism and punitive action against Israel with the intention of bringing Ahmadinejad's threat to reality, namely, the elimination of Israel as we know it. This is to be accomplished not through nuclear weapons but by the cumulative impact of isolation, sanctions, boycotts and moral opprobrium.”

Although the study focuses on Israel’s policies and practices in the Occupied Territories, the goal of this study is not to end the occupation; it is to end Israel. Its goals can be found in Virginia Tilley’s very own polemic, “The One State Solution”.

For a far more in-depth review and analysis of this study and it’s complementary symposium, which takes place this weekend in Cape Town, please be sure to read Mike Berger’s report. I have posted it in its entirety below. Click the "continue reading link" to view Berger's newsletter.

Side note

Tilley was once included on the panel of a debate on the single state solution which took place at Consitution Hill. Mike (our Mike) asked her where is the debate on the single state solution to the India/Pakistan conflict, to which she famously and snottily replied "that one is taking place down the road!". I think she may have even pointed.

It's a small little memory of Tilley's obfuscation that I will always remember.

Learning to Live with a Likud Government

The new Israeli government headed by Benjamin Netanyahu poses an interesting challenge for South African Jewry. Despite the broad pro-Israel support among the vast majority of South African Jews, there are major internal disagreements over Israeli policy in the territories. This came to the fore in this week’s fiercely critical editorial and opinion piece in the South African Jewish Report.

There is no doubt that a large and influential block exists within South African Jewry that still supports the idea of Greater Israel and the settlement movement. But there are also many who now understand the necessity of a 2 state solution and the painful concessions that entails. Of course this includes traditional leftwing Zionist organizations like Habonim but official umbrella bodies like the South African Jewish Board of Deputies have also, publically at least, adopted this position. So what is the community now to do when the government of Israel refuses to explicitly support the 2 state solution?

When I was formally involved in communal affairs during the Sharon years, it used to be common practice, if not principal, that umbrella Jewish organisations like the South African Zionist Federation, the Jewish Board of Deputies and the South African Union of Jewish Students support the Israeli government of the day. The logic to this position goes something like, if we accept that Israel is a democratic society and the government is a true reflection of the will of the Israeli people, who are we as South African Jewry to argue with their choice? Given that we don’t fight in the army and/or pay taxes we should not be determining Israeli policy.

On the other hand, these organisations are answerable to the entire South African Jewish community. If there is strong and widespread opposition to a certain Israeli policy or even to the entire government among South African Jewry, should democratic organisations not reflect that? Perhaps some sort of poll or even contested political election may be necessary.

But for me, more important is how we as a community respond to each other. I hope we can use this opportunity for some reasoned debate within the community. That means not only that we should be open to providing a forum for criticising Israeli policy as the South African Jewish Report has done this week, but space should also be given to those who would wish to support the current government.

Israel faces many difficult dilemmas. The issues are very emotional for many of us including myself. But I hope that we can carry on a debate based on the facts and not the people. Steve and I have both been extremely busy the last few weeks. But I hopefully will have a bit for time on my hands in the next few months. I hope that IAS, as we have done in the past, can serve as a vehicle for the type of reasoned debate I am talking about.