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Jerusalem Washington Diaspora

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JERUSALEM by GIL HOFFMAN, HERB KEINON & NINA GILBERT
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Silence of the hawks
When Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s cabinet met on Sunday for the first time after he outlined his plan for unilateral disengagement from the Palestinians, reporters expected right-wing ministers to slam Sharon.

But the ministers, who know how to pick their battles, were strangely silent.

On Monday, Sharon convened the Likud faction. Apart from a gesture or two from Uzi Landau and Gila Gamliel, Sharon emerged unscathed. The same day, Limor Livnat, who has her own separation plan, hosted 1,000 Likud activists at a Hanukka party, and no one criticized her.

The climax came on Tuesday night when more than 1,500 Likud activists came to Olmert’s Hanukka party at the Tel Aviv fairgrounds and sat silently eating jelly doughnuts while Olmert called for carving the flesh out of Judea and Samaria.

Perhaps the real test will occur on January 5 when the Likud hosts its next party convention.

The convention’s chairman, Agriculture Minister Yisrael Katz, met with many of the Likud’s most vocal troublemakers this week and received a commitment from them to behave at the event.

Asked about their silence, several Likud hawks said it is only temporary and they will be much more vocal when Sharon’s plan comes for a vote in the cabinet and Knesset.

"We will respond when we think it’s fitting and make noise when it really matters," said Natan Engelsman, secretary of the Likud’s Judea, Samaria, and Gaza Strip region and one of the Likud’s most vocal gadflies.

"We are not outsiders who have to scream. We can work from inside to accomplish our goals. With quiet but good work, we think we can stop the weakness and surrendering of Sharon and Olmert. Our aim in life is not to make provocations, it’s to point the Likud in the right direction."

Meanwhile, further to the Right…
In an attempt to unite many movements on the Right, former Kach activist Baruch Marzel recently registered a new party with the Party Registrar called Chayil (Valor), a Hebrew acronym for"Jewish National Front."Marzel, who ran unsuccessfully for the Knesset on the Herut list, said the goal of the party is"to present an alternative to the ideological surrender of the parties on the Right that are still in the government.

"We need a party that says our Arab enemies cannot remain with us in Israel,‘ Marzel said. ’We are planning strategy and demonstrations, going from city to city to raise the cry for keeping the land and the nation together."

Volunteers can join the party by visiting its office at King George 25 in Jerusalem or by calling (02) 622—3078.

Have a party
Are you sick of sitting at home and screaming at the television screen? Looking for a way to become more politically involved? Two very different political parties are currently running membership drives.

The National Religious Party is conducting its first membership drive in some 15 years. The party is looking to replace its aging central committee that includes hundreds who are either dead or in other parties.

Registration forms can be requested by calling the party’s voice mail at 067—666037 24 hours a day or by faxing (09) 792—9841.

The new Yahad party that was formed when Meretz merged with Yossi Beilin’s Shahar Movement began its membership drive last week. Whoever joins the party will have the right to help elect its leader in the race between Yossi Beilin and MK Ran Cohen.

To join Yahad, call (03) 636—0102.

A bunker for Sharon
Meretz MK Yossi Sarid has proposed that PM Ariel Sharon be content with the same conditions that were enjoyed by captured Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein while he was hiding from US forces.

Noting reports that the government is spending millions of shekels to construct a shelter in the Jerusalem hills to serve the prime minister in case of an attack, Sarid said the bunker was "wasteful and superfluous" at a time of severe cuts in the budget.

"Saddam has shown that there are much cheaper ways to build a bunker," Sarid said.

Neighborly praise
In a land flooded with academic conferences, last week’s Herzliya Conference — to much of the Israeli public — must have seemed just another gab-fest, albeit with a much higher profile because of the marquee names it attracted.

Not so in Jordan. There, where this kind of open, free, everything-goes debate, is a rarity, the Herzliya Conference was a source of envy. If you ever questioned the worth of all these conferences, consider an op-ed on the matter by Uraib al-Rantawi written in the Jordanian paper Al-Dustur.

"No Arab conference is similar to that held by the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya every year, not in terms of the type of issues discussed, the quality and number of participants. Not in terms of the open speech or the boldness characterizing the discussion of the challenges facing the Hebrew State," he wrote.

Al-Rantawi praised the conference for raising all the relevant strategic questions facing the country. Then he compared this to the situation in his country.

"The strategic centers here are drowning in superficial discussions about the problems facing our civil society,‘ he wrote. ’Likewise, conferences, studies and workshops take place only to fulfill the requirements of those funding them. Simple ideas repeat themselves every year and the goal is only to ensure assistance and financing and the purchase of more homes and luxury cars. The stench of corruption fills the nose and the important result of this superficial activity is to deepen backwardness and illiteracy."

Al-Rantawi said that if a pundit or academic in Jordan would get close to crossing "red lines" it would cause an outcry.

"There is a frightening intellectual laziness among our political and intellectual elites," he said, adding that the debate is neither critical nor original.

Without intending to do so, al-Rantawi answered those inside Israel who question the utility of this country’s unending, lively and often acerbic political and strategic debate.

"In Israel,‘ he wrote, ’there are no red lines to thought, no red lines to discussion on all sides. Freedom is absolute in terms of idea and thought… As a result the ideas get wide circulation and the Hebrew State turns out elites advancing it generation after generation."

Out of the mouth of a Jordanian pundit comes a perfect promo for next year’s Herzliya Conference.

From Austria: ’Nu?’
Earlier this month the committee in charge of ambassadorial appointments in the foreign ministry named Avraham Toledo Israel’s ambassador to Austria.

Israel recalled its ambassador to Vienna in 2000 to protest the inclusion of Jorg Haider’s Freedom Party in the coalition government. The significance of Toledo’s appointment is that it symbolizes the return — following the ouster of the Freedom Party from the government — to full diplomatic relations with Austria.

The appointment came some five months after Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom promised his Austrian counterpart Benita Ferrero-Waldner on a visit here that an ambassador would be named in the near future.

And then the red tape intervened.

Toledo was indeed appointed by the foreign ministry’s committee, but this needs formal cabinet approval — and that has been long in coming.

But even though Toledo has served as charges d’affaires in the embassy in Vienna since 2001, the formal appointment is pretty important to him and his family. It is also important — it turns out — to the Austrian government as well. Vienna wants closure.

Austrian diplomatic officials have been nudging the foreign ministry for the formal appointment already, wanting the announcement by the end of the calendar year.

Why? Because, one senior Austrian diplomatic official explained, since Shalom made the promise this calendar year, Austria would like to see the commitment fulfilled this year as well. Besides, he said, opposition politicians are asking the Austrian foreign ministry what is taking so long.

The Israeli Foreign Ministry doesn’t have an answer for the delay, beyond blaming the bureaucracy and saying "in Israel these things take time."

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WASHINGTON by JANINE ZACHARIA
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Dean appoints Hoar
Not surprisingly perhaps, Democratic frontrunner, and anti-war candidate Howard Dean, has signed up one of the Bush administration’s most vociferous critics to be one of his national security advisers. Retired Marine General Commander Joseph Hoar’s latest jab came in a Washington Post story on Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz published Tuesday.

"Wolfowitz doesn’t know much about the business he’s in. He knows very little about war fighting. And he knows very little about the Middle East, aside from maybe Israel,‘ the former chief of US Central Command said. Hoar predicted pre-Iraq war that US forces would likely get bogged down in fighting with Republican Guard forces in Baghdad. He criticized the war as strictly ’political."

Kosher campaign
Joe and Hadassah Lieberman are hosting a private Shabbaton in New Hampshire, January 9—10, two weeks before the big Democratic primary there. Participants are being encouraged to volunteer for Lieberman’s presidential campaign Friday before sundown and on Sunday.

Holiday of hope
Morocco’s ambassador to the US, Aziz Mekouar, hosted a Hanukka celebration Monday night for about 60 members of the local Moroccan Jewish community. Officials at the American Jewish Committee, which co-sponsored the unusual event, said they thought it was the first time an ambassador from an Arab country had hosted a Hanukka party. Mekouar described the current situation in the Middle East as "a little bit stuck," but said that perhaps Hanukka, as a holiday of hope, would usher in a period of progress. Among those in attendance was the third-highest ranking official at the Pentagon, Undersecretary of Defense Dov Zakheim.

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DIASPORA by MELISSA RADLER
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Bizarro by the Bay
Just three days after the world awoke to Saddam Hussein’s capture, the United Nations grappled with one of the several anti-Israel items on its agenda: "Armed Israeli aggression against the Iraqi nuclear installations and its grave consequences for the established international system." The agenda item, circa 1981, was neither removed nor ridiculed, but deferred to the General Assembly’s 2004 session.

"I think the UN is bizarro world,‘ said Israeli deputy ambassador Arye Mekel after the session. Bizarro world is an alternate universe, popularized on Seinfeld and the Superman comics, where everything is opposite to what it usually is, and while many goings-on at the UN this year have left Israelis scratching their heads, Mekel called the 23rd annual condemnation of the feted IAF raid ’the ultimate proof of bizarro world."

"Do they think the destruction of Iraq’s nuclear capability was a mistake?‘ Mekel asked. (At the UN, the answer is probably yes.) ’Every time I enter the building, I think I’m on Seinfeld,‘ he noted. ’I always look for George and Kramer."

Hanukka at the UN
For the first time Israeli envoys can remember, Jewish children brought Hanukka cheer to the UN with a medley of holiday songs, opera pieces and Hassidic melodies by the Kiryat Yam Youth Orchestra. Among the 51 students ages 12—21 performing was Ilana Silvan, a 21-year old clarinetist who studies occupational therapy at Tel Aviv University.

"For me, it’s even more special, because I was injured in a terrorist attack," said Silvan, who relearned her craft only recently after recovering from a 2000 bus bombing.

The December 17 concert, which lasted for more than an hour, took place just inside the UN’s visitor’s entrance, and it featured sabras and immigrants from the former Soviet Union and Ethiopia among the musicians, plus Japanese tourists snapping photos and dancing along.

"With difficulty, I didn’t cry,‘ said the Israeli consulate’s director of cultural events, Renee Schreiber. ’To have Hanukka music played in the lobby of the UN!"

Also last week, an Israeli sculpture was dedicated just up the street from UN headquarters. Zigy Ben-Haim’s Splendid Step, a 4-meter, painted aluminum, mesh steel and cast stone sculpture was lauded during a December 15 ceremony at Dag Hammarsjkold Plaza on 47th Street by Guggenheim museum director Thomas Krens.

Ben-Haim, who was born in Baghdad, said his work represents "the small steps that eventually make a difference."