See (http://d.hatena.ne.jp/itunalily2/archive?word=%22Daniel+Pipes%22). (Lily)
1.Tablet (http://www.tabletmag.com)
How Peace Negotiator Martin Indyk Cashed a Big, Fat $14.8 Million Check From Qatar
One Middle Eastern nation does indeed pay to influence U.S. foreign policy. Hint: It’s not Israel, 17 September 2014
by Lee Smith
The New York Times recently published a long investigative report by Eric Lipton, Brooke Williams, and Nicholas Confessore on how foreign countries buy political influence through Washington think tanks. Judging from Twitter and other leading journalistic indicators, the paper’s original reporting appears to have gone almost entirely unread by human beings anywhere on the planet. In part, that’s because the Times’ editors decided to gift their big investigative scoop with the dry-as-dust title “Foreign Powers Buy Influence at Think Tanks,” which sounds like the headline for an article in a D.C. version of The Onion. There is also the fact that the first 10 paragraphs of the Times piece are devoted to that highly controversial global actor, Norway, and its attempts to purchase the favors of The Center for Global Development, which I confess I’d never heard of before, although I live in Washington and attend think-tank events once or twice a week.
Except, buried deep in the Times’ epic snoozer was a world-class scoop related to one of the world’s biggest and most controversial stories—something so startling, and frankly so grotesque, that I have to bring it up again here: Martin Indyk, the man who ran John Kerry’s Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, whose failure in turn set off this summer’s bloody Gaza War, cashed a $14.8 million check from Qatar. Yes, you heard that right: In his capacity as vice president and director of the Foreign Policy Program at the prestigious Brookings Institution, Martin Indyk took an enormous sum of money from a foreign government that, in addition to its well-documented role as a funder of Sunni terror outfits throughout the Middle East, is the main patron of Hamas—which happens to be the mortal enemy of both the State of Israel and Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah party.
But far from trumpeting its big scoop, the Times seems to have missed it entirely, even allowing Indyk to opine that the best way for foreign governments to shape policy is “scholarly, independent research, based on objective criteria.” Really? It is pretty hard to imagine what the words “independent” and “objective” mean coming from a man who while going from Brookings to public service and back to Brookings again pocketed $14.8 million in Qatari cash. At least the Times might have asked Indyk a few follow-up questions, like: Did he cash the check from Qatar before signing on to lead the peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians? Did the check clear while he was in Jerusalem, or Ramallah? Or did the Qatari money land in the Brookings account only after Indyk gave interviews and speeches blaming the Israelis for his failure? We’ll never know now. But whichever way it happened looks pretty awful.
Or maybe the editors decided that it was all on the level, and the money influenced neither Indyk’s government work on the peace process nor Brookings’ analysis of the Middle East. Or maybe journalists just don’t think it’s worth making a big fuss out of obvious conflicts of interest that may affect American foreign policy. Maybe Qatar’s $14.8 million doesn’t affect Brookings’ research projects or what the think tank’s scholars tell the media, including the New York Times, about subjects like Qatar, Hamas, Israel, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and other related areas in which Qatar has key interests at stake. Maybe the think tank’s vaunted objectivity, and Indyk’s personal integrity and his pride in his career as a public servant, trump the large piles of vulgar Qatari natural gas money that keep the lights on and furnish the offices of Brookings scholars and pay their cell-phone bills and foreign travel.
But people in the Middle East may be a little less blasé about this kind of behavior than we are. Officials in the Netanyahu government, likely including the prime minister himself, say they’ll never trust Indyk again, in part due to the article by Israeli journalist Nahum Barnea in which an unnamed U.S. official with intimate knowledge of the talks, believed to be Indyk, blamed Israel for the failure of the peace talks. Certainly Jerusalem has good reason to be wary of an American diplomat who is also, or intermittently, a highly paid employee of Qatar’s ruling family. Among other things, Qatar hosts Hamas’ political chief Khaled Meshaal, the man calling the shots in Hamas’ war against the Jewish state. Moreover, Doha is currently Hamas’ chief financial backer—which means that while Qatar isn’t itself launching missiles on Israeli towns, Hamas wouldn’t be able to do so without Qatari cash.
Of course, Hamas, which Qatar proudly sponsors, is a problem not just for Israel but also the Palestinian Authority. Which means that both sides in the negotiations that Indyk was supposed to oversee had good reason to distrust an American envoy who worked for the sponsor of their mutual enemy. In retrospect, it’s pretty hard to see how either side could have trusted Indyk at all—or why the administration imagined he would make a good go-between in the first place.
Indeed, the notion that Indyk himself was personally responsible for the failure of peace talks is hardly far-fetched in a Middle East wilderness of conspiracy theories. After all, who benefits with an Israeli-PA stalemate? Why, the Islamist movement funded by the Arab emirate whose name starts with the letter “Q” and, according to the New York Times, is Brookings’ biggest donor.
There are lots of other questions that also seem worth asking, in light of this smelly revelation—like why in the midst of Operation Protective Edge this summer did Kerry seek to broker a Qatari- (and Turkish-) sponsored truce that would necessarily come at the expense of U.S. allies, Israel, and the PA, as well as Egypt, while benefiting Hamas, Qatar, and Turkey? Maybe it was just Kerry looking to stay active. Or maybe Indyk whispered something in his former boss’ ear—from his office at Brookings, which is paid for by Qatar.
It’s not clear why Indyk and Brookings seem to be getting a free pass from journalists—or why Qatar does. Yes, as host of the 2022 World Cup and owner of two famous European soccer teams (Barcelona and Paris St. Germain), Doha projects a fair amount of soft power—in Europe, but not America. Sure, Doha hosts U.S. Central Command at Al Udeid air base, but it also hosts Al Jazeera, the world’s most famous anti-American satellite news network. The Saudis hate Doha, as does Egypt and virtually all of America’s Sunni Arab allies. That’s in part because Qataris back not only Hamas, but other Muslim Brotherhood chapters around the region and Islamist movements that threaten the rule of the U.S.’s traditional partners and pride themselves on vehement anti-Americanism.
Which is why, of course, Qatar wisely chose to go over the heads of the American public and appeal to the policy elite—a strategy that began in 2007, when Qatar and Brookings struck a deal to open a branch of the Washington-based organization in Doha. Since then, the relationship has obviously progressed, to the point where it can appear, to suspicious-minded people, like Qatar actually bought and paid for John Kerry’s point man in the Middle East, the same way they paid for the plane that flew U.N. Sec. Gen. Ban Ki-Moon around the region during this summer’s Gaza war.
Indeed, the Doha-Brookings love affair has gotten so hot that it may have pushed aside the previous major benefactor of Brookings’ Middle East program, Israeli-American businessman Haim Saban. The inventor of the Power Rangers will still fund the annual Saban forum, but in the spring Brookings took his name off of what was formerly the Haim Saban Center for Middle East Policy, so that now it’s just Center for Middle East Policy. Maybe the Qatari Center For Middle East Policy didn’t sound objective enough.
Another fact buried deep inside the Times piece is that Israel—the country usually portrayed as the octopus whose tentacles control all foreign policy debate in America—ranks exactly 56th in foreign donations to Washington think tanks. The Israeli government isn’t writing checks or buying dinner because—it doesn’t have to. The curious paradox is that a country that has the widespread support of rich and poor Americans alike—from big urban Jewish donors to tens of millions of heartland Christian voters—is accused of somehow improperly influencing American policy. While a country like Qatar, whose behavior is routinely so vile, and so openly anti-American, that it has no choice but to buy influence—and perhaps individual policymakers—gets off scot free among the opinion-shapers.
It turns out that, in a certain light, critics of U.S. foreign policy like Andrew Sullivan, John J. Mearsheimer, and Stephen Walt were correct: The national interest is vulnerable to the grubby machinations of D.C. insiders—lobbyists, think tank chiefs, and policymakers who cash in on their past and future government posts. But the culprits aren’t who the curator of “The Dish” and the authors of The Israel Lobby say they are. In fact, they got it backwards. And don’t expect others like Martin Indyk to correct the mistake, for they have a vested interest in maintaining the illusion that the problem with America’s Middle East policy is the pro-Israel lobby. In Indyk’s case, we now know exactly how big that interest is.
・Lee Smith is a senior editor at the Weekly Standard and a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute. He is also the author of the recently published The Consequences of Syria.
2.Algemeiner(http://www.algemeiner.com)
3-year Study Charges UCLA Department With ‘Antisemitic Activity and Anti-Israel Bias’ (VIDEO), 17 September 2014
A consortium of American Jewish and civil rights groups are concerned that federal funds are underwriting “one-sided, antisemitic programming that masquerades as scholarship,” at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), according to statements released Wednesday.
In a just-released three-year study (2010-2013) covering “Antisemitic Activity and Anti-Israel Bias At the Center for Near East Studies (CNES)” at UCLA, AMCHA Initiative researchers said they have found “CNES events disproportionately focused on Israel and the Israeli-Arab conflict, with 93% of events on Israel being anti-Israel, and 75% displaying antisemitic discourse.”
AMCHA investigates, documents and fights antisemitism at universities and other institutions of higher education in the US.
CNES, according to AMCHA, is a major federally-designated National Resource Center, and as such, gets most of its funding funding from the Department of Education under Title VI of the Higher Education Act (HEA). The group said the school received $1,383,680 during the period being investigated.
The groups issued a joint statement calling on the U.S. Congress to deny funds to Middle East Studies programs accused of having anti-American and anti-Israel bias, as well as to enact reforms on the funding process.
Congress is currently reconsidering the reauthorization of the HEA, which provides federal funds to 129 international studies and foreign language programs.
According to the 10 organizations that signed the statement- Accuracy in Academia, AMCHA Initiative, American Association of Jewish Lawyers and Jurists, Endowment for Middle East Truth, The Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, Middle East Forum, Scholars for Peace in the Middle East, Simon Wiesenthal Center, Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations, Zionist Organization of America –; the programs “have devolved into hotbeds of anti-American and anti-Israel activity, disseminating falsehoods both in universities and to K-12 teachers and to the general public.”
The organizations call on lawmakers to implement two accountability measures, including requiring Title VI recipients to establish grievance procedures and for the department of education to launch a complaint-resolution process.
“Title VI of the Higher Education Act directs federal dollars to support the intellectually corrupt field of Middle East studies, among the most politicized academic disciplines, filled with professors hostile to America, Israel, and the West. American taxpayers should not fund programs that aim to weaken resolve and thwart policy,” said Middle East Forum President Daniel Pipes.
“CNES is promoting a one-sided, anti-Israel and antisemitic bias to impressionable students. This completely distorts UCLA’s scholarly and educational mission and is a violation of the Higher Education Act,” according to Leila Beckwith, AMCHA co-founder and a UCLA emeritus professor.
According to AMCHA:
CNES Israel-related events had an overwhelmingly anti-Israel bias: Of the 28 Israel-related events, 93% were anti-Israel;
Most CNES Israel-related events contained antisemitic content: Of the 28 events, 75% contained antisemitic content;
CNES had disproportionate focus on Israel: Of all the public events pertaining to significant Middle East political conflicts, 61% focused on the Arab-Israeli conflict, significantly more than any other conflict. In addition, events were held about 14 Middle East countries. Of those countries, 27% of the events were about Israel, four times more than any other country except Iran;
CNES favors speakers who engaged in antisemitic activity prior to speaking at CNES: Of the 31 speakers at the CNES Israel-related events, 84% have engaged in antisemitic activity, including the demonization and deligitimization of Israel, denying Jews the right to self-determination, comparing Israelis to Nazis and condoning terrorism;
Each CNES director had engaged in anti-Israel and antisemitic activity: All three CNES directors from 2010-2013 publicly opposed the UC Israel Abroad Program, despite touting the public abroad program as part of the center’s fulfillment of the Title VI funding requirement. In addition, each of the directors endorsed boycotts of Israel, and one is the founder of the U.S. Campaign for the Academic Boycott of Israel.
CNES supported by Saudi government: Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests revealed CNES received a donation of $10,000 – $20,000 from the Saudi government-owned Arabian American Oil Company. The Saudi website also includes openly anti-Israel and antisemitic discourse.
Meanwhile, in June and mid-August, Jewish shop owners in Westwood, and other neighborhoods close to the campus found anti-Semitic flyers, with Nazi swastikas featuring the words “Wanted,” and “Warning,” under their doors.
In May, UCLA leaders and the University of California (UC) statewide system issued dual statements condemning a pledge organized by several anti-Israel student groups, including Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace, that had called on UCLA student council candidates to promise not to visit Israel on trips sponsored by Jewish organizations.
Watch AMCHA Initiative co-founder, Tammi Rossman-Benjamin, discuss intimidation and civil rights abuses against Jewish students, fostered by the politicization of Middle East Studies made possible by Title VI funds:
3.WorldWide Religious News(http://wwrn.org)
Are Liberal Jewish Voters a Thing of the Past?
by Joseph Berger ("The New York Times," September 13, 2014)
For generations, American Jews, and particularly Jewish New Yorkers, have largely been identified as ardent liberals.
Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe formed a substantial core of early 20th-century progressives and socialists. More recently, 70 percent of Jews voted for President Obama in 2012, about the same as Hispanics, and were exceeded in their enthusiasm mainly by African-Americans.
But that liberal image is poised to change.
A 2012 demographic study by UJA-Federation of New York found that 60 percent of Jewish children in the New York City area — the Jewish center of the United States — live in Orthodox homes, which suggests that in a generation a majority of the city’s one million Jews may be classified as Orthodox. A sizable percentage of those children happen to be Hasidim, the group that has fueled Orthodox growth with its astonishing fecundity. (Seven or eight children per family is common and one Hasidic woman, Yitta Schwartz, had about 2,000 living descendants when she died in 2010.)
Given the far more conservative Hasidic and other Orthodox stances on issues like abortion, the role of women and Middle East politics, that population boom is transforming the traditional Jewish profile in New York.
Most Americans, including most assimilated and secular Jews, know little about the Hasidim and keep their distance from what they see as an anachronistic way of life underscored by the austere and concealing clothes they wear. Yet Hasidim need to be better understood, not just because of their numbers but also because of their tendency to vote in blocs according to the wishes of a sect’s grand rabbi, who often makes his choices based on pragmatic rather than ideological reasons.
Politicians are already paying attention. The top city and state officials have hired Hasidic or other Orthodox advisers, choosing to court that vote more aggressively over the more diffuse traditional Jewish vote. Mayor Bill de Blasio’s deputy director for intergovernmental affairs is Avi Fink, an Orthodox resident of Queens. Letitia James, the public advocate, employs Yoel Lefkowitz, a Satmar Hasid from Williamsburg, Brooklyn, as a community outreach coordinator.
Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s liaison to the Jewish community is David Lobl, an Orthodox Jew; his appointment in 2012 was made following anger at Mr. Cuomo’s veto of a special-education bill that was important to the Hasidic community. Abraham Eisner, an ultra-Orthodox Jew, is an unofficial consultant. Simcha Eichenstein, a Hasid regarded as a political wunderkind, is the senior adviser to State Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli.
More than policy issues, Hasidim seek direct aid for their teeming network of yeshivas for transportation, computers and other technology, as well as for books. And as taxpayers, they want to offset the cost to families of paying tuition for many children, a cost they say public school parents do not incur.
Growing Hasidic influence has already made itself felt. Hasidim, for example, successfully resisted city health officials who wanted to ban a circumcision practice called metzitzah b’peh in which blood is suctioned by mouth, a practice that officials say has led to at least two fatal cases of herpes in newborns. The current and previous mayor have allowed the practice to continue as long as parents sign a letter of consent.
In Hasidic schools, teenage boys are not enrolled in classes like science, mathematics and history, which most Americans take for granted. Some Hasidic yeshivas offer almost no secular instruction for boys after fifth grade, and others after eighth grade. Instead, the boys focus on the 63 volumes of Talmud that contain debates of ancient rabbis on Jewish rituals, laws and ethics. (Girls are not encouraged to study Talmud deeply and so get a more extensive secular education.)
That instructional deficiency may not square with New York State law, which requires private schools to offer “equivalency of instruction.” But when you question a principal of a Hasidic yeshiva, he will explain that students learn geometry when they parse the Talmud passages on the architecture of the Holy Temple, or learn astronomy when they analyze the Talmud’s arguments on what constitutes daybreak for morning prayers. The state has not cracked down, it is widely believed, not just because of constitutional concerns about religious freedom but because the Hasidim are a potent electoral force that politicians do not want to alienate.
The Hasidic faith is all-encompassing, governing nearly every human activity from eating to clothing to sex, and the commandments are ironclad and carried out with remarkable intensity. Hasidim’s 18th-century founders encouraged zeal in prayer and performance of the commandments, known as mitzvoth, and many of today’s Hasidim go the extra mile. For several years now, an organization in Borough Park, Brooklyn, has set up virtual hospital wards in synagogue basements with beds and IV drips so the frail and sick can receive nourishment on Yom Kippur without violating the ritual of fasting.
Hasidim also do not marry, choose an occupation, settle in a neighborhood or undergo surgery or infertility treatments without consulting their rebbe, the grand rabbi, or a leading rabbi. Ultra-Orthodox leaders have insisted that witnesses to sexual abuse get a rabbi’s permission before providing evidence to prosecutors.
Samuel Heilman, a City University of New York sociology professor who has studied Hasidim, said that as Hasidim and other ultra-Orthodox people become more politically influential and gain power in secular realms (as they have done on the East Ramapo school board in Rockland County, for example), there will inevitably be clashes with American values.
“Being in charge of local governments creates tensions with neighbors on such questions as how much of the school budget should go for busing kids in yeshivas and other private schools versus the needs of the larger community,” he said. “They’re not used to being a political power and haven’t accepted the consequence of being a political power. They still think of themselves as an embattled minority.”
・Disclaimer: WWRN does not endorse or adhere to views or opinions expressed in the articles posted. This is purely an information site, to inform interested parties of religious trends.
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