The Rape of Washington

RETURNING HOME from a very short visit to London, I found the country in thegrip of uncontrollable emotions.

No, it was not about the looming danger of the radical right gaining control.It is now almost certain that the next government will consist of an assortedbunch of settlers, explicit racists and perhaps even outright fascists. But thatdoes not evoke any excitement.

Nor was there much excitement about yet another interrogation of the (still)incumbent Prime Minister in his various corruption affairs. That is hardly newsanymore.

All the excitement was about a "press conference" given by the formerPresident of Israel, Moshe Katsav, after the Attorney General announced that hemight be indicted for rape.

Katsav, it may be remembered by those who remember such things, was accusedby several of his female staff of persistent sexual harassment and at least onecase of rape. He had to resign.

An Iranian-born immigrant and a protégé of Menachem Begin, Katsav had madea career based on a kind of affirmative action. Begin believed that, for thesake of integration, promising young immigrants from Oriental countries shouldbe promoted to positions of responsibility. Katsav, a rather nondescriptright-wing politician with all the customary right-wing opinions, becameMinister of Tourism and then was elected by the Knesset to the ceremonial postof President, mainly to spite the rival candidate, Shimon Peres. Wags said thatthe Knesset was reluctant to spoil Peres’ (then) unbroken record of lostelections.

Since his abdication two years ago, the Katsav affair has dragged on and on,almost to the point of farce. Revelations were leaked by the police, severalwomen disclosed lurid details, the ex-President made a plea agreement admittingto lesser offences, he then revoked the deal, the Attorney Generalprocrastinated and now he seems to have made up his mind about the indictment.

So Katsav called a press-conference in his remote home-town, Kiryat Malakhi(the former Arab village of Qastina, now within reach of the Qassams). It was anunprecedented performance. The ex-President spoke solo for nearly three hours,airing his grievances against the police, the Attorney-General, the media, thepoliticians and almost everybody else. All this was, incredibly, broadcast liveon all three of Israel’s TV channels, as if it had been a State of the Unionaddress. Katsav rambled on and on, repeating himself again and again. Noquestions were allowed. Respected journalists, hungry for scoops, were evictedif they dared to interrupt.

So when I came back yesterday morning, I found this feat dominating the frontpages of all our newspapers. Everything else was banished to the back pages.

BECAUSE OF this, Charles Freeman got hardly a mention. Yet his affair was athousand-fold more important than all the sexual activities of our ex-President.

Freeman was called by Barack Obama’s newly-appointed Chief of NationalIntelligence, Admiral Dennis Blair, to the post of Chairman of the NationalIntelligence Council. In this position, he would have been in charge of theNational intelligence Estimates (NIE), summarizing the reports of all the 16 USintelligence agencies, which employ some 100,000 people at an annual cost of 50billion dollars, and composing the estimates that are put before the President.

In Israel, this is the job of the Directorate of Military Intelligence, andthe officer in charge has a huge influence on government policy. In October1973, the then intelligence chief disregarded all reports to the contrary andinformed the government that there was only a "low probability" of anEgyptian attack. A few days later the Egyptian army crossed the canal.

Throughout the 1990’s, the man in charge of intelligence estimates, AmosGilad, deliberately misled the government into believing that Yasser Arafat wasdeceiving them and was actually plotting the destruction of Israel. Gilad waslater openly accused by his subordinates of suppressing their expert reports andsubmitting estimates of his own, which were not based on any intelligencewhatsoever. Later, as the guru of Prime Minister Ehud Barak, Gilad coined thephrase "We have no Palestinian partner for peace".

In the US, the intelligence chiefs famously supplied President George W. Bushwith the (false) intelligence he needed to justify his invasion of Iraq.

All this shows how vitally important it is to have an estimates chief ofintellectual integrity and wide experience and knowledge. Admiral Blair couldnot have chosen a better person than Charles Freeman, a man of sterlingcharacter and uncontested expertise, especially about China and the Arab world.

And that was his undoing.

AS A former ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Freeman is an expert on the Arabworld and the Israeli-Arab conflict. He has strong opinions about Americanpolicy in the Middle East, and makes no secret of them. In a 2005 speech, hecriticized Israel's "high-handed and self-defeating policies"originating in the "occupation and settlement of Arab lands," which hedescribed as "inherently violent." In a 2007 speech he said that theUS had "embraced Israel’s enemies as our own" and that Arabs had"responded by equating Americans with Israelis as their enemies."Charging the US with backing Israel’s "efforts to pacify its captive andincreasingly ghettoized Arab populations" and to "seize ever more Arabland for its colonists," he added that "Israel no longer even pretendsto seek peace with the Palestinians." Another conclusion is his belief thatthe terrorism the United States confronts is due largely to "the brutaloppression of the Palestinians by an Israeli occupation that has lasted over 40years and shows no signs of ending." Naturally, the appointment of such aperson was viewed with great alarm by the pro-Israel lobby in Washington. Theydecided on an all-out attack. No subtle behind-the-scenes intervention, nodiscreet protestations, but a full-scale demonstration of their might right atthe beginning of the Obama era. Public denunciations were composed, senators andcongressmen pressed into action, media people mobilized. Freeman’s integritywas called into question, shady connections with Arab and Chinese financialinterests "disclosed" by the docile press. Admiral Blair came to hisappointee’s defense, but in vain. Freeman had no choice but to withdraw.

THE FULL meaning of this episode should not escape anyone. It was the firsttest of strength of the lobby in the new Obama era. And in this test, the lobbycame out with flying (blue-and-white) colors. The administration was publiclyhumiliated. The White House did not even try to hide its abject surrender. Itdeclared that the appointment had not been cleared with the President, thatObama had no hand in it and did not even know about it. Meaning: of course hewould have objected to the appointment of any official who was not fullyacceptable to the lobby. The portrayal of the power of the lobby by ProfessorsJohn Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, has been fully vindicated.

THIS HAS a significance which goes far beyond the already far-reachingimplications of the affair itself. Many people in Israel, who view theestablishment of the new rightist government with apprehension, cite as theirmain fear the danger of a clash with the new Obama administration. Such a clash,they believe, could be fatal for Israel’s security. But the rightists deridesuch arguments. They assert that no American president would ever dare toconfront the Israeli lobby. The captive congressmen and senators, as well as thesupporters of the Israeli government in the media and even in the White Houseitself, would sink on sight any American policy opposed by even the most extremeright-wing government in Israel. Now the first skirmish has taken place, and thePresident of the United States has blinked first. Perhaps one should not rush toconclusions, perhaps Obama needs more time to find his bearings, but the signsare ominous for any Israeli interested in peace. It may be too early to callthis episode the Rape of Washington, but it is certainly vastly more importantthan Katsav’s sexual escapades.

BY THE WAY, or not by the way, a word about my trip to London. I went thereto lend support to a group of Jewish personalities, well-known in academic andother circles, who have set up an organization called "Independent JewishVoices". Recently they published a book called  A Time To Speak Out,in which several of them contributed to the debate about Israel, human rightsand Jewish ethics. The views expressed are very close to those current in theIsraeli peace camp. But when they offered their book for presentation in theJewish Book Week, they were rudely rejected. In protest, they convened an eventof their own, and that’s where I spoke. I believe that it is of utmostimportance that such Jewish voices be heard. In several countries, including theUS, groups of brave Jews are trying to stand up to the Jewish establishment thatunconditionally supports the Israeli Right. In the US, several such groups havesprung up, some quite recently. One of them, called "J Street", is trying tocompete with the formidable and notorious AIPAC. It is important for governmentsand peoples to know that the unconditional support for the Israeli Right doesnot represent the majority of Jews in the US, the UK and other countries. TheJewish public is far from monolithic. The majority is liberal and believes inpeace and human rights. Until now this was a silent majority, out of fear of arepressive establishment. It is indeed "a time to speak out". I believe thatit is in the interest of Israel to support these groups – and that theiractivities are somewhat more important than Mr. Katsav’s exploits.