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TAGS: OPRC KMDR IS
 
SUBJECT: SPECIAL ISRAEL MEDIA REACTION 
 
-------------------------------- 
SUBJECTS COVERED IN THIS REPORT: 
-------------------------------- 
 
¶1.  Mideast 
 
¶2.  U.S.-Israel Relations: 
 
------------------------- 
Key stories in the media: 
------------------------- 
 
The Jerusalem Post quoted GOI officials as saying yesterday that the 
Moscow conference on the Middle East may be in jeopardy as a result 
of Russia's support for the U.N. Human Rights CouncilQs (UNHRC) 
endorsement of the Goldstone Commission report accusing Israel of 
war crimes.  Russia, along with India and China, voted in favor of 
the endorsement at Friday's meeting, sending the report to the U.N. 
General Assembly for further consideration.  The Jerusalem Post 
quoted an Israeli official as saying that the Moscow conference may 
be in peril now, not because Israel is trying to punish Russia, but 
rather because the diplomatic process -- as PM Benjamin Netanyahu 
warned -- would be harmed as a result of the PAQs pushing the 
Goldstone Report forward.  The Jerusalem Post reported that 
following its vote on Friday, Moscow delivered a letter directly 
from FM Sergey Lavrov saying that while it voted for the resolution, 
Russia opposed referring the issue to the Security Council, from 
where it could theoretically be sent to the International Criminal 
Court. 
 
Yesterday The Jerusalem Port quoted the Israeli Foreign Ministry as 
saying that the UNHRC resolution endorsing the Qone-sidedQ Gaza 
report harms regional peace efforts.  The media reported that Jewish 
Knesset members from across IsraelQs political spectrum condemned 
the UNHRCQs endorsement of the Goldstone report.  Major media 
reported that in an interview with the Swiss daily Le Temps, just 
before FridayQs vote, Judge Richard Goldstone himself criticized the 
wording of the resolution, saying it had been wrong to target only 
Israel while failing to condemn Hamas. 
 
Yesterday HaQaretz reported that PM Benjamin Netanyahu does not want 
Ankara serving as mediator in any future diplomatic negotiations 
with Syria, in view of the crisis in relations between Israel and 
Turkey. 
The Jerusalem Post and Israel Radio quoted Intelligence Minister Dan 
Meridor as saying yesterday in Washington that Israel is Qvery 
closeQ to making a deal to restart negotiations with the 
Palestinians.  He was speaking during a keynote address at the 
Washington Institute for Near East PolicyQs fall conference. 
 
HaQaretz (English Ed.) reported that one week before the conference 
in Washington of left-leaning lobby group J Street, Israel's 
ambassador to the U.S., Michael Oren, is still not saying whether he 
will attend or not.  J Street was quoted as saying that President 
Shimon Peres has written a welcoming letter to conference 
participants, with his apologies for not being able to attend. 
 
HaQaretz and other media reported that PM Netanyahu told Spanish PM 
Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero last Thursday that talks between Israel 
and the U.S. over construction in the settlements on the West Bank 
had ended.  Netanyahu was quoted as saying: QWe solved the matter of 
the settlements with the Americans.  I cannot say more than that. If 
you are interested in hearing more details, ask in Washington. 
HaQaretz wrote that it is not clear what Netanyahu meant and what 
the details of the "solution" are, but this is the first time that 
Netanyahu has made such a statement.  HaQaretz quoted sources in 
Jerusalem as saying that Netanyahu spoke about the matter after his 
representatives Mike Herzog and Yitzhak Molcho reached agreements in 
Washington during their talks last week.  HaQaretz reported that 
Zapatero told Netanyahu of his visit to the White House two days 
before his arrival in Jerusalem.  He was quoted as saying that he 
was obsessed with Obama, and that there will never be another chance 
where a man who professes values such as his will be president, and 
that everyone must help him realize his vision. 
 
Yesterday The Jerusalem Post reported that Israeli envoys 
negotiating with the U.S. over a settlement freeze and restarting 
peace talks are set to arrive in Washington in coming days to 
continue discussions with the Obama administration.   The daily also 
reported that U.S. National Security Advisor James Jones called on 
Israel to open the crossings into Gaza and for the bolstering of a 
Palestinian plan to build the institutions of statehood over the 
next two years. 
 
Leading media cited LebanonQs claim that Israel aerially blew up 
spying devices that it had planted in Lebanon.  Other media cited 
HizbullahQs claim that it destroyed the equipment.  HaQaretz and 
other media quoted the IDF SpokesmanQs Office as saying that once 
again Hizbullah is trying to deflect international attention form 
its Qcontinued and increasing violations of U.N. Security Council 
Resolution 1701. 
 
HaQaretz reported that Professor Yoram Tsafrir, one of IsraelQs 
leading archaeologists, has publicly condemned the Israel 
Antiquities Authority's failure to object to a plan to construct a 
building over a site in the Western Wall plaza where a 
well-preserved ancient Roman road was recently excavated.  Tsafrir 
was quoted as saying at a conference that the construction will 
cause Qgenerations of weepingQ over the serious damage to the site. 
 
The Jerusalem Post reported that on Saturday, in an address at an 
Anti-Defamation League (ADL) dinner, U.S. Attorney-General Eric 
Holder decried the continued phenomenon of anti-Semitism in America 
as well as the stigma felt by many Muslim Americans. 
 
Yesterday The Jerusalem Post reported that the ADL is pushing for 
David Tenenbaum, a Jewish engineer for the U.S. Army, to get his day 
in court after being unjustly targeted for alleged ties with 
Israel. 
 
The Jerusalem Post reported on the first days in office of Joel 
Lion, the new spokesman and consul for media affairs at the Israeli 
Consul-General in New York.  Lion, who is also an Orthodox rabbi, 
told the newspaper, QIsrael is something inventive.  Israel is 
something moving.  Israel is something spiritual.  Israel is not 
only conflict. 
 
Yediot reported that Israel, which has not built enough desalination 
plants, intends to import water from Turkey. 
 
The unexplained murder of six members of the Oshrenko family in 
their Rishon Lezion apartment on Saturday morning led the headlines 
over the weekend and into the beginning of the week.  The family 
emigrated from Uzbekistan in the nineties.  Some media said that the 
QRussian or Caucasian mafiasQ could have carried out the slaughter. 
 Media reported that Israel asked Russian and Uzbek law-enforcement 
authorities for assistance. 
 
All media reported on yesterdayQs suicide bombing in southeast Iran 
that killed at least 42 people -- including five senior 
Revolutionary Guard commanders. 
 
The Jerusalem Post described the work of an Israeli aid team in the 
typhoon-stricken Philippines. 
 
------------ 
¶1.  Mideast: 
------------ 
 
Block Quotes: 
------------- 
 
¶I.  "My Mission -- and Motivation" 
 
Judge Richard Goldstone, head of the U.N.-mandated Gaza Fact-Finding 
Mission established to investigate alleged crimes committed during 
Operation Cast Lead earlier this year, wrote in the conservative, 
independent Jerusalem Post (10/19): QI would have been acting 
against those principles and my own convictions and conscience if I 
had refused a request from the United Nations to investigate serious 
allegations of war crimes against both Israel and Hamas in the 
context of Operation Cast Lead.  As a Jew, I felt a greater and not 
a lesser obligation to do so.  It is well documented that as a 
condition of my participation I insisted upon and received an 
evenhanded mandate to investigate all sides and that is what we 
sought to do.  I sincerely believed that because of my own record 
and the terms of the mission's mandate we would receive the 
cooperation of the Israeli government.  Its refusal to cooperate was 
a grave error.... Israel missed a golden opportunity to actually 
have a fair hearing from a UN-sponsored inquiry.  Of course, I was 
aware of and have frequently spoken out against the unfair and 
exceptional treatment of Israel by the UN and especially by the 
Human Rights Council.  I did so again last week. Israel could have 
seized the opportunity provided by the even-handed mandate of our 
mission and used it as a precedent for a new direction by the United 
Nations in the Middle East.  Instead, we were shut out. 
 
 
II.  "Just What Did Goldstone Expect?" 
 
Former Legal Adviser to the Foreign Ministry and former Ambassador 
to Canada Alan Baker, who participated in the negotiation and 
drafting of the Interim Agreement between Israel and the PLO, wrote 
in the Jerusalem Post (10/19): Q[Judge Richard Goldstone] criticizes 
Israel's decision not to cooperate with his Fact-Finding Mission, 
but naively ignores the very one-sided and politically hostile 
mandate of the mission as set out by the United Nations Human Rights 
Council, that determined in advance that Israel had committed war 
crimes.  Any concession towards impartiality that he claims to have 
received from the president of the HRC never materialized into a 
change in the council's mandate, which remained rabidly one-sided 
and politically loaded.  Similarly he strangely ignores the fact 
that one of the senior members of his mission -- Prof. Christine 
Chinkin -- had, during the course of the fighting in Gaza, already 
voiced her opinion in the most public manner through the British 
media, accusing Israel of war crimes.  In such circumstances, how, 
in all logic, could any reasonable observer familiar with the United 
Nations and its inquiry procedures expect Israel to cooperate with 
such a politically prejudiced and gravely flawed inquiry?  In doing 
so, Israel would have been perceived to have accepted the 
substantive elements of the Human Rights Council's initial 
criticism.... Israel must act to control [the] damage [caused by the 
Human Rights Council] by establishing an inquiry manned by a 
prominent retired Supreme Court justice and serious military and 
legal experts.  Such a move would instantly neutralize and deflate 
international criticism; it would provide a viable claim of 
non-admissibility to any attempt to prosecute Israel or Israeli 
leaders before international or national courts and tribunals. 
 
III.  "Hilltop Double-Talk" 
 
The independent, left-leaning Ha'aretz editorialized (10/18): QWhile 
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu tries to battle the Goldstone 
report in the name of Israel's right to self-defense, and his envoys 
and the U.S. administration discuss terms for renewing negotiations 
with the Palestinians, his government is developing infrastructure 
in dozens of West Bank settlements.... The real problem is not the 
breaking of promises to the U.S. administration and Israeli public, 
but the severe damage that construction in the settlements is doing 
to Israel's most important interests.  Every new home or road 
compromises the probability of a partition plan based on forming a 
Palestinian state in the West Bank.  Every hilltop construction 
approved by Netanyahu and Barak perpetuates the occupation and 
accelerates the gallop toward a binational state and the elimination 
of Zionism.  Under the cloak of their double-talk, the Prime 
Minister and Defense Minister are taking steps that ruin trust and 
endanger Israel's future as a Jewish and democratic state. 
 
 
IV.  "ItQs Only the Symptom" 
 
Dov Weisglass, who was former prime minister Ariel Sharon's top 
diplomatic advisor, wrote in the mass-circulation, pluralist Yediot 
Aharonot (10/19): QIsrael erred by believing that it would succeed 
in removing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from the top of the 
global agenda by QexplainingQ -- mainly to the Americans -- that it 
was Qnot important at the momentQ and that [the world] should Qfocus 
on Iran.Q  Israel erred when it believed that it could make people 
forget the political aspect of the conflict by vigorous activity to 
ease the living conditions of the Palestinians in Judea and Samaria 
[i.e. the West Bank] and by advancing an Qeconomic peace.Q  This did 
not work.  Everyone sees the conflict as the cause of most of the 
ills in the diplomatic world, and everyone wants this conflict to 
end as soon as possible.  Therefore, Israel is subjected on all 
quarters to demands for political progress, and the relationship 
between its position on the conflict and its diplomatic standing 
around the world is absolute, direct and immediate.  The 
Palestinians raised allegations of Israeli Qwar crimesQ in the past 
too, but as long as they were perceived as enemies of peace -- 
mainly because of their engagement in terrorQIsrael succeeded in 
fending them off.... Today, matters have changed to an extreme 
degree.  The Palestinian Authority, whose wish to establish and run 
a state met with scorn until a few years ago, appears now more than 
ever as a levelheaded and moderate political entity, and as a fit 
and worthy party to a political arrangement.  The Hamas regime in 
Gaza is not perceived by the world as something that prevents a 
diplomatic process, but rather as an incentive for accelerating it. 
Many believe that an arrangement between Israel and the PA will work 
to curb and weaken Hamas.  The world -- possibly prematurely -- is 
pleased.... [But] the [Israeli GovernmentQs] silence [over the core 
issues of the conflict] worries and annoys the Palestinians and most 
of the countries of the world.  What angers them the most is the 
governmentQs halfhearted and evasive treatment of the continued 
construction of Jewish homes inside Palestinian neighborhoods in 
Jerusalem, and the continued development of Israeli settlements even 
in places that will clearly not be included in Israeli territory in 
any final status arrangement.  The confidence in the seriousness of 
the Israeli government to achieve a political arrangement with the 
Palestinians is dwindling.  And so the phrase Qthe whole world is 
against usQ could become a reality.  The Goldstone report is a very 
bad indication of this. 
 
¶V.  QUnnecessary Duel 
 
Ha'aretz editorialized (10/19): QDefying diplomatic good sense, 
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has announced that he opposes a 
resumption of Turkey's efforts to mediate between Israel and Syria 
in light of the Turks' recent behavior.  In his view, Turkey can no 
longer be described as an Qhonest broker.Q  This is an empty threat, 
mainly because the Netanyahu government has not shown any interest 
in resuming peace talks with Syria, with or without a mediator. 
Thus the real harm done by Netanyahu's words lies in his eagerness 
to repay Turkey, and especially its prime minister, Recep Tayyip 
Erdogan, in double measure for its criticism of Israel.  This is an 
unnecessary duel that both sides, Turkey and Israel, ought to try to 
calm.... I contrast to Israel, Turkey understands the need to 
distinguish between negotiations and rebukes.  And it is not Turkey 
that will suffer if it is removed from the list of honest brokers. 
Rather, it is Israel, which is liable to lose an important channel 
of communications that could facilitate future talks with 
Damascus. 
 
-------------------------- 
¶2.  U.S.-Israel Relations: 
-------------------------- 
 
Block Quotes: 
------------- 
 
QA Bit More Popular than Assad 
 
Columnist Shmuel Rosner, who was HaQaretzQs correspondent in 
Washington, wrote in the popular, pluralist Maariv (10/19): QWhat is 
considered in Jerusalem as natural suspicion from the attitude of 
the incumbent U.S. administration is very worrisome when seen from 
Washington and New York.... How can it be that [in a recent 
Jerusalem Post survey] U.S. President Barack Obama only garners few 
percentile points of support in Israel?  How has a U.S. president 
who keeps reiterating his commitment to IsraelQs security and 
well-being, and to [the United StatesQ] deep friendship with Israel, 
have fallen so low in Israeli public opinion?.... Obama made many 
mistakes in his rapport with the Israeli Government and public.  He 
got bad advice from associates who thought they knew Israel.  True 
in his basic worldview there are elements that create an inherent 
hardship for Israel.  Neither has Obama found the time to take a 
step indicating steadfast friendship.  Thus, is it not surprising to 
find much lower support that for his two predecessors.... The ease 
of the past 16 hours may have been exhausted.... It is possible that 
a pinch of racism somehow added to the uncertainty that Israelis 
feel toward a black president whose middle name is Hussein.  One 
would better return to reality: Bush and Clinton are gone -- never 
to come back.  America is changing and wonQt always elect a 
president endowed with a developed pro-Israel instinct.  At this 
point Obama fails to enthuse Israelis, but he is far from being 
hostile.  Forty -- not four -- percent of support would be a much 
more reasonable amount. 
 
CUNNINGHAM