Foreign Policy In Focus

Ultimately, a vote for the Green Party presidential ticket is a vote for voting.

Voting for a third-party candidate in a presidential election is considered by many to be a waste of their vote. At its worse, as when Ralph Nader supposedly siphoned off votes for Al Gore in 2000, it's blamed for aiding and abetting the victory of a nightmare candidate such as George W. Bush.

On the other hand, justifications exist for voting third party in the 2012 presidential election. At the Daily Beast, Michael Tomasky alludes to one.

Liberals are too nervous to think it, reporters too intent on a “down to the wire” narrative, and conservatives too furious and disbelieving, but it’s shaping up to be true: An extremely close election that on election night itself stands a surprisingly good chance of being not that close at all.

In other words, if Candidate X, who we dread, seems unlikely to win, we can afford to vote for a Candidate Z, about whom we're enthusiastic, rather than Candidate Y, who has the best chance of blocking him or her. The more salient justification, however, presents itself when the extent to which Candidate Y (President Obama, in this case) reflects the interests of the rich and favors an expansionist foreign policy to only a marginally less degree than Candidate X (Romney). When the difference in the threat that the two candidates pose to the republic is negligible we need to find an alternative to both.

After the Green Party convention, where Jill Stein was nominated for president and Cheri Honkala for vice president, Nora Caplan-Bricker of the New Republic reported on yet another reason for voting third party. 

By far the most common answer to my question—“Why vote for a candidate who won’t win?”—is that it’s important to “vote your values.” Greens talk about voting as a form of self-expression, as if it’s irrelevant whether you put someone in office by doing it. … Stein says her campaign is like “political therapy” for people who have had “self-destructive relationships to politics, like being stuck in an abusive relationship.” And her supporters think it will eventually work: Greens between the ages of 27 and 92 told me they think it’s possible they’ll see a president from the party in their lifetimes—that if they keep offering “political therapy,” mainstream voters who are frustrated by politics will start to want it: maybe in four years, maybe in eight, maybe in 50 or more.

At the New York Times, Susan Saulny reported:

A general internist who grew impatient with the social and environmental roots of disease, Ms. Stein said, 'I’m now practicing political medicine because politics is the mother of all illnesses.'"

In other words, shifting the electorate to where it will stop voting out of fear is a long process, but one that needs to begin at some point.

Ms. Stein and Ms. Honkala's key platform, reports Yana Kunichoff at Truthout, "is the Green New Deal, a jobs program which she says will both build on the success of the New Deal in the 1930s and also help move the United States toward a sustainable, green economy." As an example of their foreign policy platform, which fundamentally revolves around drastically cutting military spending, let's examine excerpts from their stance towards Israel and Palestine.

We recognize that Jewish insecurity and fear of non-Jews is understandable in light of Jewish history of horrific oppression in Europe. However, we oppose as both discriminatory and ultimately self-defeating the position that Jews would be fundamentally threatened by the implementation of full rights to Palestinian-Israelis and Palestinian refugees who wish to return to their homes. …. We reaffirm the right and feasibility of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes in Israel. … We reject U.S. unbalanced financial and military support of Israel while Israel occupies Palestinian lands and maintains an apartheid-like system in both the Occupied Palestinian Territories and in Israel toward its non-Jewish citizens. Therefore, we call on the U.S. President and Congress to suspend all military and foreign aid, including loans and grants, to Israel until Israel withdraws from the Occupied Territories, dismantles the separation wall in the Occupied West Bank including East Jerusalem, ends its siege of Gaza and its apart­heid-like system both within the Occupied Palestinian Territories and in Israel toward its non-Jewish citizens.

For those of us who refuse to be guilt-tripped with charges of vote-wasting … for those of us who are tired of dragging ourselves into the polling both with heavy hearts and with only a sense of obligation -- a vote for the Green Party's presidential ticket is not just a vote against two parties that reflect the interests of a small minority of citizens, but a vote against the act of holding your nose while voting.

In other words, a vote for the Green Party is a vote for voting. And a vote for voting is also a vote for democracy.

Give Netanyahu a cubic centimeter of wiggle room, and he will carve out a square mile of new apartments beyond the Green Line.

Cross-posted from Mondoweiss.

On Tuesday evening, Shaul Mofaz, leader of the Israeli political party Kadima, convened his fellow parliamentarians and offered them his rationale for leaving the 94-seat Knesset majority they'd made possible in May when they joined PM Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud-led coalition. In doing so, he has largely sealed Kadima's fate as a political force in Israel.

According to The Jerusalem Post's Lahav Harkov, Mofaz asserted in his defense that "there are red lines I can't cross" and that "there's a difference between compromising and just paying lip service." 

Mofaz's red lines are the military service exemptions for the ultra-Orthodox and Israeli Palestinians. He supports a much more expansive draft program than Netanyahu. Netanyahu prefers a much more gradual course and maintaining a greater percentage of exemptions for ultra-Orthodox men. July 31 is the deadline Israel's High Court set for a reform of the Tal Law, which since 2002 has governed the current exemptions policy. If no compromise is reached, the IDF could begin drafting 18-year-olds in these demographic groups without having the civilian government set quotas for exemptions, and non-military alternative "national service" options that would primarily granted to Israeli Arabs). Only around 1/5 of ultra-Orthodox draft-eligible males currently serve in the IDF.

The main question to ask now is not what the compromise will look like, but "when's the next election?" Whenever it is, it will not be a good one for Kadima. 

Kadima's eleventh-hour deal with Likud back in May postponed emergency elections originally set for September 4. Polls showed that Kadima was likely to lose close to 2/3 of its Knesset seats in the September 4 contest, while Likud would gain seats. Mofaz, in seeking to avert that disaster, broke an earlier promise to never join in a coalition with Netanyahu. Kadima, not Likud, was negotiating from a position of weakness then. 

It would constitute a Herculean feat for Kadima to now dispel the scorn the Israeli right is heaping on it. The "left's" enthusiasm for Mofaz is not exactly a tangible quantity. The scorn felt in the country towards his party is rather aptly exemplified by an Israel Hayom political cartoon portraying Mofaz as a weather vane. Mofaz plainly failed to deliver -- he says he's quitting because there is no compromise on the draft and some of his party's backbenchers are yelling that he gave up too easily on it.

Kadima's withdrawal over the Tal Law is the most visible -- and risible -- issue that it's stepping out on now. Ironically, on Monday, former IDF Chief of Staff Dan Halutz stepped out on Kadima because it didn't go as far he wanted it to on the law -- Halutz wants universal conscription for all, starting at age 1, and Kadima was willing to accept a compromise for gradual enlistment over the next 4 years -- which again makes one wonder as to what Kadima's fate will be in the next election.

Mofaz's defection was apparently triggered by Netanyahu's dissolution of a committee that would have presented a compromise package on the draft. The Times of Israel reports:

Earlier Tuesday, Netanyahu had adopted a proposal put forward by Vice Prime Minister Moshe Ya’alon (Likud), which called for ultra-Orthodox Jews and Arabs to join the army or perform national service, such as serving in police or fire units, by ages 23 to 26. The motion also included incentives for those who enlist at a younger age.

Mofaz blasted the proposal as “disproportionate and contrary to the High Court ruling,” which stated that the burden of serving should be shared by all citizens. He also said it did not meet the principle of equality laid out by the Plesner Committee.

A full-scale draft is the preference of many members of Kadima, and it is preference of the secular-nationalist party Yisrael Beiteinu as well, whose leader, Avigdor Lieberman, is Netanyahu's Foreign Minister. 

Yisrael Beiteinu's national-secular members of Knesset (KMs) have little patience for exemptions to the Palestinian Israelis or the ultra-Orthodox, or arguments from those on the Israeli left castigating the whole exercise as political theater. Kadima, at odds with the national-religious establishment on much else, found a natural ally in Yisrael Beiteinu this time since they do not support special privileges for the ultra-Orthodox or Israeli Arabs. Lieberman's party is Likud's main ally right now, and he opposes further Tal Law extensions in favor of a full-scale national draft -- though his bill to effect this was recently voted down.

That said, it is Likud that has the most to gain from the coming deadline dance over the Tal Law, primarily because its opponents are so politically weak.

This is important to note because the law is one of the most controversial provisions of Israeli life, and one that it is easy to rally support for or against in Israeli domestic politics without having to have an uncomfortable discussion about the Occupation. As Karl Vick notes, "it leaves him [Netanyahu] weaker and more vulnerable to the passions of the factions who remain — nationalists on one hand, and religious parties on the other". 

And this is all true, but only to a certain extent. Netanyahu has to prefer the 19 votes of the national-religious bloc to Kadima's seats because those are the people he broke bread with in 2009, and there is also the matter of the settler bloc in his own party. The dissent of this bloc's leader, Moshe Felgin, over the Tal Law handling is much less threatening to Netanyahu than Lieberman's is.

Kadima is setting out to make the universal draft the issue for the next election -- though if that's your only issue, why vote for the flip-flopping Kadima when you can vote for Yisrael Beiteinu, which actually has weight because of their staying in the government? Netanyahu might indeed be worried over what will happen before July 31, since he has relied so much on, perhaps sometimes without even quite realizing it, the domestic breathing room provided by his fractious partners to undertake his foreign policy program. This breathing room has helped him avoid a serious political confrontation in the Knesset over his Iran policy (this is less so with respect to the Occupation since few on any side of the political spectrum question its sustainability). 

Without that breathing room, Netanyahu really does run risks going into the next elections because an issue as divisive as the Tal Law has the potential to explode Israeli society.

But it is a slim risk for Netanyahu, who is predicted to easily win the premier-ship again in 2013. His response to the current dust-up will likely compare to how he dealt with a "settlement crisis" just as his grand coalition formed. +972's Noam Sheizaf had theorized that Likud's incentive to get the coalition formed was to head off a serious confrontation over the legality of multiple apartments in the Beit El settlement's Ulpana neighborhood: "By postponing the elections, the prime minister has bought himself some time to deal with the crisis," though Sheizaf also noted that the settlers were politically weak. 

But that weakness, Sheizaf concluded, was belied by the "political theater" that the bigger players put on. A compromise on Ulpana, was, in fact, accomplished: the apartments were physically relocated and then the government promised to undertake massively expanded construction, as it so often does when an evacuation occurs. An incident that could have prompted a wider debate of the Occupation was headed off by last-minute compromises. Gone was any talk about the peace process that some hoped Mofaz would re-introduce.

By any measure, Netanyahu won the debate -- such as it was -- over Ulpana, and he did so not by using Kadima's Knesset votes. They simply sat in his tent as his partisans worked out a solution with the furthest-right whose expansionism he sympathizes with. How that episode played out is indicative of Netanyahu's strength as a politician. Give him a cubic centimeter of wiggle room in committee, and he will carve out a square mile of new apartments beyond the Green Line because there is really no strong, organized constituency behind Kadima to match Likud's appeal.

Even as Lieberman thunders on about the universal draft, the Foreign Minister is surely mindful that had those September 4 elections been held, Likud, not his party, stood to gain the most. And for what it's worth given Mofaz's recent performance, Lieberman did announce he would not leave the coalition. It is much easier for Lieberman and Netanyahu to stay together than it is for either man to go over to the smaller national-religious parties like Shas or seek accommodation with the Labor Party. 

Harkov also reported that 3 members of Kadima formally voted to remain in the coalition, and that seven more might prefer to jump ship. Not all that many, but bear in mind that Kadima was expected to hold onto only 10, perhaps 12 seats in the September 4 election, out of the 28 it held in May when it entered the coalition.

Netanyahu may indeed be scared of the ultra-Orthodox, but he's not afraid of Kadima. A few defections on, and who at all will be afraid of Shaul Mofaz in the next general election?

Long story short: the Israeli Border Police's Lebanese listeners have come to Tel Aviv to keep tabs on J14 (July 14 movement) marchers.

Or to paraphrase a paraphrase of Leon Trotsky, "you may not be interested in the Occupation, but the Occupation is interested you."

As our domestic and international readers know, it is common for metropolitan police forces to videotape and photograph demonstrators, as well as journalists at the protests (and then, following standard post-9/11 counterterrorism procedures, match up faces or license plates with police records and other publicly available information in "data centers"). Anyone who had encountered an "Occupy" protest march since last September has surely seen police officers videotaping the march, and knows that the aforementioned data centers can and have been keeping tabs on Occupiers. Surveillance towers, aircraft and vans are deployed as well, most recently in Chicago, Illinois to surveil anti-NATO demonstrators. 

And, it almost goes without saying, the Israeli security services do the same beyond the Green Line and on Israel's borders day in and day out, monitoring the movements of demonstrators, militants, infiltrators, undocumented immigrants, even shepherds. "The Raccoon," more widely known as the Israeli-built STALKER system, is merely one of their many tools. War is a mother to innovation, after all.

So what makes its deployment these past nights so unnerving for J14? Because it is clear now that in addition to the police, the Border Police are videotaping and photographing Israeli demonstrators, as well as Israeli journalists at the protests. Protests that are taking place inside the Green Line not at all focused on the Occupation. And yet Police Commissioner Yohanan Danino has reportedly told his subordinates to "to document every 'involvement of the Arab community in the protests'." 

The already blurred line between the West Bank and Israel proper is getting ever more blurred, +972's Noam Shezaif notes.

Considering Israel's national service policies, I wonder if it would be fairly easy for the military to identify most people there based on file photos in their service records using face recognition software. Not a pleasant thought to have as a protestor in any country. Though certainly not one that will deter them.

Have you ever felt you knew less about a news item after you read an article about it? That's the state in which an article at Haaretz by Oz Rosenberg and Chaim Levenson on June 26 left us. It was bedecked with a title that was puzzling as it was provocative: Three ultra-Orthodox men arrested for vandalizing Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial.

As if that wasn't enough cognitive dissonance, the reporters explained that the three suspects (ages 18, 26, and 27) were not only accused of vandalizing the memorial as well as another in April (Jerusalem's Ammunition Hill memorial site), but their vandalism took the form of anti-Zionist slogans. It's strange enough for ultra-Orthodox Jews to be vandalizing Holocaust memorials, but anti-Zionist, too?

Working backward, since when do ultra-Orthodox Jews (haredim) stand in opposition to the Jewish state? Since 1938, it turns out, if they're part of Neturei Karta. Members of this sect walk like haredim and they talk like haredim, but, according to Neturei Karta International, their view of the Jewish state stands in stark contrast with most haredim.

Neturei Karta followers do not participate in "Israeli" elections nor do they accept any aid from "Bituach Le'Umi" (Social Security), and the educational institutions of the Neturei Karta reject any form of financial support from the [Department of Education].

In fact

Neturei Karta oppose the so-called "State of Israel" not because it operates secularly, but because the entire concept of a sovereign Jewish state is contrary to Jewish Law [and] in direct conflict with a number of Judaism's fundamentals. …  The Talmud … teaches that Jews shall not use human force to bring about the establishment of a Jewish state before the coming of the universally accepted Moshiach [Messiah].

Furthermore, they believe:

Jews are not allowed to dominate, kill, harm or demean another people and [they are] against dispossessing the Arabs of their land and homes. According to the Torah, the land should be returned to them.

Returning to the Haaretz piece:

At least 10 slogans were found on the walls outside the museum, with slogans such as: "Hitler, thank you for the Holocaust", "If Hitler did not exist, the Zionists would have invented him", and "Zionists! You declared war on Hitler in the name of the Jewish people, you brought upon the Holocaust."

In fairness, presumably these young men were "rogue" Neturei Karta. Though Googling the phrases "Neturei Karta condemn Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial vandalism" and "Neturei Karta condemn Ammunition Hill memorial vandalism" returns nothing relevant. Why do they invoke Hitler?

After reading the quotes over a couple of times (okay, about ten), I  finally began to appreciate their sense of irony. The first two quotes are meant to be read from the perspective of Zionists who are supposedly in debt to Hitler because the Holocaust helped them justify the creation of the Jewish state. The third is some variation on that which I was unable to grasp; we'll return to it. Anyway they seem like the extreme end of those who -- foremost among them Norman Finkelstein, author of The Holocaust Industry -- charge Israel with using the Holocaust to win sympathy and justify its aggression and oppression.

A friend who's a veteran Israel watcher agrees and notes that "it's really interesting what they've done."

In rightwing, Zionist discourse, "Hitler" lives, if only as a figure to use to justify negative treatment of the Palestinians.

But, he adds:

The Arab world, in [Zionist] worldview, is ideologically consistent with that of Hitlerian fascism, and its genocidal politics. Therefore Zionism continues to make war on Hitler and Nazism. [For the young men, it's] a sarcastic way of criticizing Bibi and his ilk, but irony is important to Jewish politics.

Regarding the third quote -- "Zionists! You declared war on Hitler in the name of the Jewish people, you brought upon the Holocaust." -- he writes:

Aside from it being a possible criticism of how mired in the 20th century the present government and its supporters are, it's also a potential double entendre, if you take Bibi's sabre rattling against Iran seriously. Any attack by Israel on Iran will result in massive civilian casualties in Israel, as well.

Substitute President Ahmadinejad and Supreme Leader Khameini for Hitler. Thus war with Iran

…may not be another Holocaust, but Israel has never suffered any substantial civilian casualties as a consequence of its military engagements, of that kind. This government risks that with its positioning on Iran. Therefore you could read the "responsibility for the Holocaust" rhetoric as though it were a warning. It would not be out of place.

What's ironic about it is that they're attributing responsibility for the rise of a new fascism and a new holocaust to Bibi, by placing him in the past. [Emphasis added.]

On the surface, Neturei Karta bear a certain resemblance to Reverend Fred Phelps and his Westboro (Kansas) Baptist Church members protesting at the funerals of war veterans with signs bearing slogans such as "Thank God for Dead Soldiers." But Neturei Karta deserves respect for its condemnation of Israeli oppression of Palestine. 

This year has witnessed a rapid escalation of tensions between Iran and Azerbaijan. In February, Baku agreed to buy $1.6 billion of arms from Israel. The order included drones, anti-aircraft missile defense systems, and various other weapons. Shortly thereafter, Azerbaijan reported that Iranian oil rigs had entered contested Azerbaijani waters in the Caspian Sea. A standoff over lucrative offshore petro rights seems imminent. In March, Azerbaijani police arrested 22 people they claimed were planning an Iranian-backed plot to assassinate U.S. and Israeli diplomats. Frequent closings of the Iranian-Azerbaijani border—apparently by Iran—have cut off the supply route to Nakhichevan, a truncated Azerbaijani enclave landlocked between Iran and Armenia. Two weeks ago, Baku refused entry to a senior aide to Iran’s Supreme Leader. Both countries withdrew their ambassadors in the ensuing diplomatic standoff. Most recently, an Azerbaijani court sentenced an Iranian reporter to two years in prison for drug possession, a move widely suspected as being politically motivated. 

Azerbaijan prides itself on its secularism and is discomfited by what it sees as Iran’s attempts to spread Islamic influence in the region. Many Azerbaijani politicians publically refer to their nation as “North Azerbaijan,” insinuating that Azeri-speaking areas of Northern Iran are rightfully part of the Azerbaijani Republic. Azerbaijan’s “bunker mentality” is unsurprising given its history and precarious geopolitical location. A former Soviet republic sandwiched between Russia—who helped Azerbaijan’s western neighbor, Armenia, expel ethnic Azeris from Nagorno-Karabakh during the early 1990s—and Iran, Azerbaijan is a small nation inhabiting a volatile region it experiences as increasingly hostile.

Iran, for its part, sees the existence of a neighboring secular Shia state as a threat to the very integrity of the Islamic Republic. This fear may not be as ludicrous as it sounds. An estimated 20 percent of Iran’s population is Azeri, and they share close cultural and linguistic ties with Turkey, one of Iran’s main regional rivals. Azerbaijan and Israel are also on chummy terms. The secular Shia state is the second leading supplier of oil to Israel. Moreover, since 2001, the United States has frequently used Azerbaijani airspace to access Afghanistan. Iran suspects that the United States is using Azerbaijani intelligence to keep tabs on the region and increasingly fears that Azerbaijan could be the staging ground for an attack by Israel or the United States.      

Speaking in Baku last week, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, addressing growing tensions between Iran and Azerbaijan, said that “there is a danger that it could escalate into a much broader conflict that would be very tragic for everyone concerned.” Conflict would likely draw other nations—such as Armenia, Russia, and/or Turkey, into the fray. Still, Azerbaijan will not likely agree to allow Israel or the United States to use its airstrips to attack Iran. Even with its newly acquired weapons, Azerbaijan is dreadfully ill-prepared to face off against its southern neighbor. One only needs to compare the military budgets of Azerbaijan and Iran: $2.8 billion to $7.5 billion, respectively, to see how perilous it would be for Azerbaijan to provoke Iran directly by military action or indirectly by allowing Israel or the U.S. to use its bases as a staging ground for an attack. Moreover, Iran’s active army is ten times larger than that of Azerbaijan. As a small country bordering Russia, a nation closely allied with the Islamic Republic, Azerbaijan has much more to lose than it does to gain should conflict ensue.

Azerbaijan’s recent weapons purchases should be seen as an attempt to aggrandize itself militarily vis-à-vis neighboring Armenia. Last fall, Armenia reportedly purchased 60 tons of used weapons from Moldova, a move that the Azerbaijani administration decried as having “destabilizing” effects in the region. But even with its most recent arms purchase, Armenia’s military pales in comparison to that of Azerbaijan. Armenia spends approximately $400 million a year on its military, or one-seventh as much as Azerbaijan. Armenia’s army is also substantially smaller.

Azerbaijan’s recent arms purchases are self-defeating. Due to the arguably solid alliance of Iran, Russia, and Armenia, conflict in the region would be dangerous at best—and perilous at worst—for Azerbaijan. Moreover, in addition to being limited geographically and militarily, Azerbaijan lacks allies among its closest neighbors. Even though Azerbaijan wants Armenia out of Nagorno-Karabakh, it is a mistake to think that this outcome—or any outcome desired by Azerbaijan—could be brought about by arms purchases that prepare the nation for a conflict from which it could not benefit.

Gabriel I. Rossman is an intern at Foreign Policy in Focus.