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JERUSALEM by GIL HOFFMAN & HERB KEINON
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French Kiss There is, obviously, much to lament about the European Commission poll which found that 59 percent of Europeans see Israel as a danger to world peace — more of a danger than Iran, North Korea, Syria, or Libya.

But why always see the cup as half empty? Look on the bright side. In France, believed by many Israelis to be the bastion of anti-Israeli sentiment on the Continent, and the country whose president blocked a EU condemnation of Malaysian President Mahathir Mohamad’s recent anti-Semitic diatribe, only 55% of the respondents voted against us. The only countries with fewer respondents damning Israel were Sweden and Italy (Holland, Austria, Luxembourg, and Germany led the Israel-is-a-threat-to-world-peace pack).

But there is more good news. According to a statement released this week by the French embassy, “Recent polls confirm that the French are not anti-Semitic: 80% of young people say they would have no problem living with a Jewish partner, 87% consider anti-Semitic acts disgraceful and believe there should be severe penalties. As of April 2003, 85% of the French said they are sympathetic to the Jews, compared with 82% in 2002 and 72% in February 1990.”

According to this statement — based on figures released by the French Foreign Ministry a couple of days after French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin met an American Jewish Committee delegation in Paris — the number of anti-Semitic incidents in France dropped in the first eight months of 2003 to 72 from 172 for a comparable period the year earlier. Likewise, anti-Semitic threats during this same period dropped from 647 to 247.

So has the time come to give France a break?

“The good news about the French numbers is that they continue to care,” said ADL national director Abraham Foxman. “The bad news is that they set up a straw man and keep knocking him down. We never said France is an anti-Semitic country, we said that France has anti-Semitism, or that the government tolerates it, whitewashes it, and makes excuses for it.”

According to Foxman, author of a new book, Never Again? The Threat of the New Anti-Semitism, the number of anti-Semitic incidents and threats in France is on the decline because the government finally came to the decision that “politically it was no longer expedient to rationalize it away” and began to take serious action. The French realized, Foxman said, that there would be consequences to France if the perception that France is anti-Semitic gained more traction.

Off the map

The names of visitors the foreign ministry is planning to host for the month of November is, well, not exactly the A-list.

It is a far cry from last Spring, right after the war in Iraq, when the foreign ministers of the world were clamoring to visit Israel and the Palestinian Authority. Then you had the likes of US Secretary of State Colin Powell, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, and the foreign ministers of Germany, France, Japan, Hungary, Bulgaria, and others. Israel was on the map.

The biggest names this month are Spanish Foreign Minister Anna Palacio, and the Slovakian Prime Minister, Mikulas Dzurinda. Among other scheduled visitors are the Mongolian and Ethiopian foreign ministers, the Latvian interior minister, and the deputy foreign minister of Poland. Each person is obviously important in their own right, to their own families, and in their own lands, but not exactly of the same stature as Powell, Berlusconi, or Joschka Fischer.

The dearth of heavy hitters, according to diplomatic officials, is due both to the lack of progress on the diplomatic front and Israel’s policy of snubbing leaders who meet Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat. For instance, Norway’s Foreign Minister Jan Petersen met with Arafat last month and now will not be able to meet Prime Minister Ariel Sharon or Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom for the foreseeable future. It is a dilemma foreign diplomats want to stay away from.

The result: both good news and bad.

The good news, from the Sharon government’s perspective, is that the heavy statesmen of the world are not knocking down Arafat’s door to gain an audience. The bad news is that they are not knocking down our door either. The policy was designed to try and isolate Arafat. One of its less-desirable side effects is that it has taken Israel off the must-visit list for the world’s premier statesmen.

Bringing the mountain to Muhammad

If world statesmen are not now coming to Israel, it is important for Israel’s statesmen to go to the world. No sooner did Prime Minister Ariel Sharon return from Russia this week than he has to start thinking about his visit later in the month to Rome. He also has a trip scheduled to Germany in December, and is trying — so far without much success — to squeeze in a visit to Paris.

Despite tensions with Europe, Sharon wants to remain engaged with the Europeans. So does Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom. In two weeks, Shalom will go to Brussels to participate in the annual EU-Association Council meeting, where he will meet with EU foreign ministers.

This doesn’t promise to be the easiest of meetings. After a period of Europe deciding not to link its bilateral ties with Israel to the conflict here, voices in the EU are once again advocating linkage and sanctions.

So, expect the issue of whether products made in the settlements should enjoy duty-free status in Europe to make the headlines again. Also be prepared for calls to take Israel out of the first wave of the Wider Europe initiative or to reassess research and development projects if Jerusalem is not more forthcoming toward the Palestinians.

“There is a great deal of frustration in Europe since Abu Mazen (Mahmoud Abbas) quit,” one senior diplomatic official said. “There are voices in the EU promoting a return to threats of sanctions, but there are also others who say you can’t link ties to Israel to highs and lows in the diplomatic process.”

Shalom’s chore in buttressing the latter camp will not be made any easier by the Sharon government’s boycott of EU special Mideast envoy, Marc Otte, because of a meeting he had in early October with Arafat. Realizing that this is a major bone of contention with the Europeans, Israel signaled a change in policy by enabling Foreign Ministry director-general Yoav Biran to meet Otte this week.

Peretz versus Bibi: preview?

When Finance Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Histadrut Labor Federation chief Amir Peretz battled over pension plans and budget cuts this week, a lot more was at stake than whether a strike would last four hours or a full day.

The skirmish may have been the opening round in a future leadership battle between the two. While it’s a foregone conclusion for many in the Likud that Netanyahu will succeed Prime Minister Ariel Sharon at the helm of the party, more and more Laborites are looking at Peretz as Labor chairman Shimon Peres’s preferred heir.

Peres has been the main force pushing Peretz back into Labor’s ranks, pulling strings behind the scenes to make the deal work at the expense of other future candidates such as Matan Vilnai, Avraham Burg, and Binyamin Ben-Eliezer. The Labor leader called a press conference this week to back up Peretz in his struggle against Netanyahu, in which he made deliberate comparisons between Peretz and Yitzhak Rabin.

“Displaying pictures of Peretz in a Nazi uniform and as Hitler is abominable,” Peres said in the press conference.

In fact, a photo of Peretz with his mustache trimmed to look like Hitler was e-mailed to Peretz’s office this week, but pictures of politicians in Nazi uniforms have not been seen since Shin Bet agent Avishai Raviv’s provocative posters of Rabin eight years ago.

Peretz’s spokesman issued statements connecting Netanyahu’s fight against the strike to the Right’s pre-assassination protests against the Oslo Accords. And just in case the conflict wasn’t personal enough, Peretz sent his wife to defend him in television and radio interviews.

Labor strategists noted this week that Peretz’s background as a Sephardi union leader from a development town with a focus on social issues could make him the ideal candidate against the Ashkenazi son of a professor from Rehavia. Whoever triumphs in the opening round will win a boost in the decisive confrontation ahead.

Municipal races produce strange bedfellows

When the Likud asked Labor Party representatives to consider joining Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s coalition in February, former Labor leader Amram Mitzna responded by ruling out sitting in the same cabinet with the National Religious Party.

But apparently times change quickly in Israeli politics, and political pursuits produce strange bedfellows. Nine months later, Labor is willing to allocate petty cash from its meager budget to assist NRP mayoral candidates in Kiryat Shmona, Safed, and Tirat Hacarmel in next Tuesday’s runoff elections.

“In these races, any enemy of the Likud is a friend of ours,” said Labor’s municipal campaign chairman MK Eitan Cabel.

In those three towns, NRP candidates have a serious chance of unseating incumbent Likud mayors. Cabel ordered local Labor representatives to work on the NRP’s behalf, and make political alliances to give the NRP candidates a boost.

Labor is devoting most of its efforts, however, to five towns where the party will go head-to-head with the Likud: Sderot, Yeroham, Gedera, Yehud, and Kiryat Bialik.

Ramon announces his own death

Labor MK Haim Ramon wandered through the Knesset halls like a walking political zombie on Monday. Wherever he went, Ramon had to tell amazed onlookers that his political career is alive and well and he does not intend to quit politics any time soon.

Yediot Aharonot’s Web site, Ynet, published a report last weekend alleging that Ramon told political confidants that he intends to quit the Knesset and leave political life by the end of the year. The report surprised many of Ramon’s friends and allies, and even Ramon himself.

Ramon responded to the report by informing a group of journalists in the Knesset cafeteria that he will in fact eventually quit politics, but he refused to give a date. The sarcastic MK added that he will also eventually die. Ramon dared the reporters to announce his death in a headline.

No Jacuzzis for Burg

MK Avraham Burg received a scolding last week from his communication’s adviser, Ayellet Frish, for allowing photographers to take pictures of him shirtless walking on a treadmill in the Knesset’s basement health club.

The photos ran in the Hebrew press, informing readers of an awareness day for heart problems in the Knesset. Burg appeared in the pictures with wires connected to his chest to test his heart rate.

While Frish said she received compliments on Burg’s behalf for her boss’s physical fitness, she told him that shirtless pictures are not becoming of a future candidate for prime minister.

But Frish drew the line when a reporter compared Burg’s photo to an infamous magazine display cover two years ago of former Labor secretary-general Ra’anan Cohen sagging in a whirlpool. Cohen’s political career was over shortly thereafter.

“This was nothing like Ra’anan Cohen; Avrum wasn’t in a Jacuzzi,” an exasperated Frish insisted.

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WASHINGTON by JANINE ZACHARIA
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Ministerial visits Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz heads to Washington next week to meet with senior administration officials. He is due to meet Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on Monday, visit Capitol Hill on Wednesday and meet White House and State Department officials on Thursday. Mofaz will discuss Israel’s battle against Palestinian terrorist groups and will face questioning on Israel’s construction of a security barrier. Also due in Washington next Friday is Education Minister Limor Livnat, who will speak at the Hudson Institute on the relationship between education and terrorism.

War over?

In a public appearance on Tuesday, President George Bush, when asked about the deaths of 16 soldiers in the downing of a Chinook helicopter, said the soldiers had died as part of a “noble cause, which is the security of the United States.” Bush, who in May declared an end to major combat in Iraq, then added: “A free and secure Iraq is in our national security interests. We are at war.”

Also this week, Bush welcomed the Senate’s approval of $87 billion in assistance for US-led missions in Iraq and Afghanistan. Bush, whose poll numbers have dipped in recent weeks as American casualties have escalated, said in a statement, “our country is being tested. Those who seek to kill coalition forces and innocent Iraqis want America and its coalition partners to run so the terrorists can reclaim control.”

Holbrooke criticizes administration

Speaking at a luncheon hosted by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy on Monday, Richard Holbrooke, the former US ambassador to the UN and a former US special mediator in Yugoslavia and in Cyprus, sharply criticized the Bush administration’s handling of relations with Turkey. Had the administration “been more engaged” earlier this year, Turkey would never have objected to US troops basing in, or over-flying, Turkish territory during an Iraq invasion, he said.

Holbrooke added, it was “beyond my imagination, that (US) diplomats would ask for a vote to deploy troops without total certainty that troops were deployable.” Holbrooke was referring to US pressure on Turkey to vote October 7 to allow 10,000 troops into Iraq. The US-backed Iraqi Governing Council then objected to the deployment and the US has backed off from the request. “In the annals of American diplomacy this is not America’s finest hour,” he said.

Holbrooke said a Turkish deployment in Iraq “would not change the course of the war,” which he said is ongoing.

’Let Israel remove Arafat’

Forty-eight members of Congress signed a letter, initiated by Rep. Marilyn Musgrave of Colorado, to President Bush last week urging him to lend his “strong support to the people of Israel in their call to remove Yasser Arafat, the chief obstacle to progress in the peace process.”

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NEW YORK by MELISSA RADLER
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On a mission Two new missions will arrive in Israel in the coming months: the first-ever mission of Russian-speaking US Jews, slated to arrive November 12 for a week-long stay, and a birthright israel trip for developmentally disabled young adults through the Orthodox Union’s Yachad program, scheduled for January 2004.

The Russian-speakers mission, organized by the Council of Jewish Émigré Community Organizations, Russian American Jews for Israel, and the Jewish Agency, will visit holy sites, meet with Knesset members, and participate in the United Jewish Communities’ General Assembly. The Yachad mission will feature Israel staples such as swimming in the Dead Sea and praying at the Western Wall, but educational activities will be replaced by “creative education,” such as role-playing Knesset sessions instead of hearing an address by a Knesset member.

Enabling Yachad youth to visit Israel on the free, 10-day visit “will provide yet another opportunity for the developmentally disabled to share experiences enjoyed by the general Jewish population,” said OU program director Batya Jacob.

Cutting the red tape

Hundreds of prospective foreign investors attending the Israel Hi-Tech Venture Capital Conference in New York last week were promised a reduction in red tape and taxes in the Holy Land.

“The more money you make, the more you’ll invest in Israel,” Minister of Industry, Trade and Labor Ehud Olmert told some 600 venture capitalists, hi-tech mavens and lawyers attending the day-long conference on October 28.

Stumping for increased investment to help boost Israel’s lackluster economy, Olmert said that the security situation shouldn’t — and doesn’t — play a major role in investors’ decisions. He also coined a new slogan: “A country one can count on under all political circumstances.”

Hasbara 101

Israel-watchers have noted that the cabinet decision to “remove” Yasser Arafat undermined previous claims that he’s irrelevant, so Ariel Sharon spokesman Ra’anana Gissin tried a different approach in a recent conference call with the America-Israel Friendship League last week, by switching to poetry.

The PA leader is a landmine, he began.

“You try to drive around it/ and it explodes

You step on it/ and it will explode in your face…

As long as he’s there/ there ain’t going to be any Palestinian state.“

Jewish gala watch

Rona Ramon, widow of Israeli astronaut Ilan Ramon, joined the spouses of crewmembers William McCool, Michael Anderson, and Laurel Clark in Boston last Thursday to raise funds for the Israel National Museum of Science, Technology and Space.

The museum’s STARS (Space Technology and Astrophysics Research for Students) Center and mobile lab, named for Ramon, “will allow all of Israel’s children, both Jewish and Arab, to explore and research the universe and reach out to the stars,” Ramon told guests at the Westin Copley Place Hotel.

Meanwhile, over at the St. Regis hotel in New York that same evening, American Associates of Ben-Gurion University awarded an honorary doctorate to Dr. Mathilde Krim for her fight against AIDS. Krim is the founder of the AIDS Medical Foundation and the founding chair of the American Foundation for AIDS Research.