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Jewish World Review Oct. 23, 2009 / 5 Mar-Cheshvan 5770 Stop using limited powers in a way that expands our enemies' advantages over us By Caroline B. Glick
The Palestinians and the Iranians have formidable diplomatic resources at
their disposal. Both the Palestinians and Iran can expect to receive the
support of automatic majorities at the UN for everything they do. And today
most international diplomacy is conducted under the aegis of the UN or its
affiliated bodies. Understanding their strength, the Palestinians and the
Iranians use the UN and its affiliated organs to advance their most
important goals. In the Palestinians' case, UN-based diplomacy is used to
delegitimize Israel. In the Iranian case, UN-based diplomacy is used to
facilitate the mullocracy's acquisition of nuclear weapons. Over the past
week, both the Palestinians and the Iranians enjoyed strategic victories in
their diplomatic campaigns.
Last Friday, the UN Human Rights Council passed a resolution condemning
Israel in every possible way for asserting its sovereignty over its capital
city and for defending its citizens against wanton, massive, unprovoked and
illegal terror from the skies emanating from Hamas-controlled Gaza. The
resolution represented a massive achievement for the Palestinians. It
referred Israel to the Security Council with the recommendation that
Israel's leaders be tried as war criminals before international tribunals.
That is, the UNHRC's resolution effectively delegitimized Israel's right to
exist by denying that it has a right to defend its territory and its people
from illegal aggression carried out by an illegal terrorist organization.
Then on Wednesday, Muhammad elBaradei, the UN's International Atomic Energy
Agency's virulently anti-Israel Chairman announced a deal has been reached
between Iran and the US, Russia and France regarding Iran's nuclear program.
The deal -- which the parties initialized in Geneva after just three days of
talks -- legitimizes Iran's nuclear weapons program and effectively
transforms the US, the EU and Russia into facilitators rather than opponents
of that program.
According to news reports of the accord, the US agreed to send American
personnel to Iran to upgrade a research reactor in Teheran that was provided
to the Shah in the 1960s. Russia agreed to increase enrichment levels of
Iranian uranium from their current level of 3.5% to 19.75%. And France
agreed to transform the higher-enriched uranium into metallic nuclear fuel.
Until Wednesday, in accordance with three binding UN Security Council
resolutions, the US, Russia and the EU refused to accept the legitimacy of
Iran's uranium enrichment activities. Their refusal stemmed from the fact
that by enriching uranium, Iran stands in breach of its commitments to the
Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty. Wednesday's accord ignores this
inconvenient fact and so whitewashes Iran's illicit behavior, effectively
accepting Iran's right to enrich uranium.
And that isn't all. According to Washington Post columnist David Ignatius,
by agreeing to enrich Iran's uranium from 3.5 to 19.75%, the US, Russia and
France have provided Iran with a solution to its technical deficiencies.
Citing a report in Nucleonics Week trade journal, Ignatius wrote last week
that Iran has apparently been unable to enrich uranium beyond 3.5% and its
current "supply of low-enriched uranium …appears to have certain
'impurities' that 'could cause centrifuges to fail' if the Iranians try to
boost it to weapons grade."
Jack Wakeland, an engineer employed in the nuclear power industry expanded
on Ignatius's revelation at The Intellectual Activist Website. Wakeland
explained that the metallic fuel Iran will receive in this deal "can be
converted back to highly purified uranium hexafluoride very, very easily."
That is, the deal allows Iran to surmount the scientific hurdles it
reportedly now faces, clearing the mullahs' path to acquiring the
weapons-grade uranium.
For their part, the Iranians haven't wasted a moment pushing the diplomatic
envelop still further. As the Americans, French and Russians were offering
them more than they could have ever imagined possible - including the
prospect of US personnel serving as human shields against a possible Israeli
airstrike on Iran's nuclear installations -- back in Teheran they ratcheted
up their demands.
On Tuesday, Abdolfazl Zohrehvand, who serves as an advisor to Saeed Jalili,
Iran's chief negotiator at Geneva told Iran's IRNA press agency,
"Circumstances may arise under which Iran will require uranium enriched to
63%."
Then on Thursday Iran said it isn't willing to accept a deal that would take
all of its enriched uranium out of the country. This is not a deal breaker
since the accord the US, France and Russia initialized Wednesday only
foresees removing 80 percent of Iran's known supply of enriched uranium to
Russia. But still, it signals that the Iranians have only begun extracting
concessions from the Americans and their partners.
And the Americans will no doubt be willing to concede still more. After all,
now President Barack Obama can brag that he has an historic, Nobel Peace
Prize-worthy deal with Iran. He cannot be expected to give it up just
because the Iranians use it as a new path for building nuclear bombs.
Until Wednesday, Israel refrained from publically attacking the US's
decision to seek an accommodation with Iran. This made sense. Israel had no
interest in being perceived as pre-judging the outcome of a process on which
the Obama administration staked its prestige. But now that the
administration has agreed to an accord that effectively transforms America
into a facilitator of Iran's nuclear weapons program, the time has come for
Israel to start voicing its objections.
Unlike the Palestinians and the Iranians, Israel has no great diplomatic
assets. It can assume that it will always be condemned by the UN.
The EU, with its member nations' own anti-Jewish baggage, a burgeoning and
radicalized Muslim minority, and an addiction to Arab oil cannot be expected
to stand with Israel.
Western NGOs are largely funded by anti-Israel governments and leftist
philanthropists and so use their resources to advance the causes of Israel's
enemies.
Under the Obama administration, the US is charting a diplomatic course that
places it directly in the anti-Israel camp. Indeed, while the US voted
against the UNHRC's resolution against Israel last week, it made no
significant effort to convince other countries to follow suit and had no
problem with Britain's and France's decision not to cast a vote despite the
dangerous precedent the Goldstone report and the UNHRC's resolution set for
US forces fighting terrorist foes in Iraq, Afghanistan and throughout the
world. Worse still, the US has refused to announce whether it will use its
Security Council veto to block a referral of Israel's military and political
leaders to the International Criminal Court.
In the current climate, Israel's diplomatic resources are limited to popular
opinion in the US, and shared interests on specific issues with a number of
governments throughout the world. In light of Israel's diplomatic assets,
Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman who in recent months has been travelling
the globe to cultivate bilateral ties with countries in South America,
Africa, Central Asia, and Central Europe should be congratulated for his
efforts.
On the public diplomacy front, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, his
cabinet ministers and the Foreign Ministry should use every opportunity to
discredit the latest deal with Iran. They should point out its dangers and
call for an end to this diplomatic catastrophe before more damage is done to
the cause of preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. Such a campaign
would probably fail to derail the current talks. But if successful, it would
prevent the deal from being used as a means to delegitimize Israel's right
to militarily strike Iran's nuclear installations.
As for the Palestinians' diplomatic triumph with the risible Goldstone
report and its attendant UNHRC resolution, Israel's response to date has
been misguided and self-defeating. This week, the government began
considering forming a commission of inquiry into the IDF's handling of
Operation Cast Lead. Judge Richard Goldstone has been claiming that if
Israel conducts an investigation into his allegations that our soldiers
committed war crimes and crimes against humanity, Israel can avoid
prosecution of IDF personnel at the International Criminal Court. Lawyers
like Attorney General Menachem Mazuz have latched onto Goldstone's
statements and the media are atwitter with rumors that Netanyahu may agree
to form such a commission.
That would be a wrong move for several reasons. First of all, Goldstone is
in no position to negotiate. Once he submitted his libelous report to the
UNHRC, Goldstone's writ of authority was a thing of the past. Even if
Goldstone now wants to get Israel off the hook he placed it on, he has no
power to do so. And the officials at the UNHRC who gave Goldstone the
mission of proclaiming that the IDF committed crimes against humanity have
no interest whatsoever in crediting any internal Israeli investigation or
ending the organization's hounding of the Jewish state.
Beyond that, any investigation Israel could launch into the IDF's conduct of
Operation Cast Lead would be perceived internationally as an admission of
guilt. If that commission were to conclude truthfully that the IDF conducted
its operations in full accordance with international law, its findings would
be dismissed as a whitewash.
In response to the UNHRC resolution and the Goldstone report itself, the
government announced this week that it will seek changes in international
law to strengthen the ability of democracies to fight against terrorism.
This move is also deeply misguided. The fact of the matter is that Israel
did not break international law in Operation Cast Lead. It is simply the
victim of its enemies' cynical use of the rhetoric of international law as
part of their diplomatic war against Israel. That is, the problem is not the
law. It is the law's distortion for political purposes by Israel's
diplomatically powerful foes. By announcing that it plans to work to change
the law, the government missed this central point.
Moreover, by ignoring the fact that the problem is not with the law itself
but rather with the distortion of international law by hostile actors for
political gain, the government failed to recognize that even if it succeeds
in changing the law, in all likelihood the new law will be similarly
distorted by its enemies to advance their political war against Israel.
For that matter the government's very announcement that it wishes to change
international law will be pounced upon by its enemies as proof that it broke
the law.
Israel's enemies are making adept use of their vast diplomatic power to
advance their most important goals. Israel should use its meager diplomatic
powers to do the same by going on a public diplomacy offensive against the
criminalization of Israel and against the international community's
surrender to Iran. A good first step in that direction would be to stop
using our limited powers in a manner that expands our enemies' advantages
over us.
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JWR contributor Caroline B. Glick is the senior Middle East Fellow at the Center for Security Policy in Washington, DC and the deputy managing editor of The Jerusalem Post. Comment by clicking here.
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