Martin Eisenstadt’s Blog

Can’t get this idea out of my head.  The state of Maryland is geographically bigger than the whole Israel/”Palestine”.  Yet Maryland feels so empty and the Holy Land so crowded.    Friends, we are  living history today.   Annapolis will be remembered like Gdansk, like Helsinki before it, as a place where George Bush, like many Roman emperors before him, used cunning to bring peace to a troubled region.   As any insider will tell you, Olmert and Abbas share one thing in common, they both bow to power.   You heard it here. The true winner of this summit will be…..capitalism.   And what’s good for Wall Street is good for Main Street.

Okay.  I’ll admit.  I had one too many whiskeys at the hotel bar tonight and I’m back in my room bored with the TV options.  But here I said it.  This whole Annapolis gathering is a sham.  The Arabs don’t want peace.  Their hatred, insecurity and paranoia run too deep.

Barak, who I was never a fan of, offered them half of Jerusalem, 97% of the territories and they said no.   So they pretend to want to end suffering.  They pretend to care about roadblocks and unsafe drinking water.  But really what they’re after is the destruction of the Jews, another Holocaust.  In every generation, they rise up against us, teaches the Passover Haggadah, and every time You save us from their designs.   For this we are grateful.  Happy Thanksgiving my fellow Americans!

I’ll be monitoring the upcoming Annapolis Conference closely, and might be participating in some of the peripheral events myself. In the meantime, there have been some early leaks of proposals in play at the conference (see Carl in Jerusalem and the links therein).

On Thursday, Haaretz leaked a draft of the ‘joint declaration’ between Israel and the ‘Palestinians’ that’s still being worked on this evening. The draft had three proposals for just about every paragraph: US, Israel and ‘Palestinians.’ In one paragraph the US proposed:

The parties commit to immediate and parallel implementation of the Roadmap.

The parties agree to form an American, Palestinian and Israeli committee to follow up on the immediate implementation of the Roadmap.

The parties commit themselves to continue the implementation of the ongoing obligations of the Roadmap until they reach a peace treaty.

The US will monitor and judge the fulfillment of the commitments of both sides of the Roadmap.

Unless otherwise agreed by the parties, implementation of the future peace treaty will be subject to the implementation of the Roadmap, as judged by the US.

Not so sure about that. He continues:

Over the weekend, Caroline Glick slammed the highlighted provision:

As the leaked draft document shows, the Americans have sided with the Palestinians against Israel. Specifically, the Americans have taken for themselves the sole right to judge whether or not the Palestinians and the Israelis are abiding by their commitments and whether and at what pace the negotiations will proceed.

But the Americans have shown themselves to be unworthy of Israel’s trust. By refusing to acknowledge Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah party’s direct involvement in terrorism and indeed the direct involvement of his official Fatah “security forces” in terrorism, the Americans have shown that their benchmarks for Palestinian compliance with their commitments to Israel are not necessarily based on the reality on the ground. Then too, the US demands for wide-ranging Israeli security concessions to the Palestinians even before the “peace” conference at Annapolis have shown that Israel’s security is of little concern to the State Department.

If I were Carl, though, I wouldn’t believe every leak you see. Annapolis is a bold move by President Bush and Secretary Rice, and I believe that they are sincere in their goals. Remember, it is a Roadmap to Peace, not a shortcut.

With the current spat between Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney over their respective claims to lowering violent crime rates, there is but one question to ask:

What is a leader?

A man who wasn’t afraid to kick Yasser Arafat out of a crowded symphony hall even when world opinion momentarily and naively sought peace. When conventional wisdom drove city leaders to beg and cow at the feet of minority activists, Rudy ignored them, attacked them, exposed them as hypocrites. The mayor made a habit of never apologizing, even after alleged instances of police brutality, and it served the city well, freeing its streets from the grip of anarchy and minority activists. Where hippies and anarchists once ran wild, squatting private property, multi-million dollar condos and boutique hotels now rise up in their place.

Ours is not a time for abstract ideology. Ours is a time to be practical, to be strong against cynicism and disorder. When Rudy was mayor, protesters mocked his Italian heritage, branding him a fascist. The word fascism has been sullied forever, fairly so, by the National Socialist movement. But in actuality, it is the approach most suitable for turbulent times. Sure, we have to be careful and mindful to avoid the twin traps of anti-semitism and socialism, but in Rudy Giuliani we need not worry.

Rudy Giuliani is not and has never been an anti-semite. His greatest allies are Jewish and he has been a consistent supporter of Israel. And you can’t accuse him of being socialist. He did more for private business and property than any mayor before or after him. So he leads with authority. What exactly is wrong with that? Nobody criticizes a football coach when he believes in his mission to the exclusion of any and all distraction. We should expect at least as much from our leaders.

Kudos to Matthew Continetti on his excellent piece in the Weekly Standard called Rudy Giuliani, Disciplinarian. He concludes thusly:

Just as Giuliani disciplined an anarchic city, so too would he try to discipline a disordered world. “Civilization must stand up and combat the current collapse of governance, the rise of violence, and the spread of chaos and fear in many parts of the world,” he wrote in a much derided, and little-studied, recent essay in Foreign Affairs:

I know from personal experience that when security is reliably established in a troubled part of a city, normal life rapidly reestablishes itself: shops open, people move back in, children start playing ball on the sidewalks again, and soon a decent and law-abiding community returns to life. The same is true in world affairs. Disorder in the world’s bad neighborhoods tends to spread. Tolerating bad behavior breeds more bad behavior. But concerted action to uphold international standards will help people, economies, and states to thrive. Civil society can triumph over chaos if it is backed by determined action.

The boldness of such a metaphor–that the world is nothing more than a really, really big New York City–is unmistakable; a Giuliani presidency would test whether or not the metaphor actually is true. One thing is clear, however. You sometimes hear that Giuliani is a cipher, that he has hidden or downplayed his true self in order to appeal to the Republican primary electorate, and the American electorate more generally. Nothing could be further from the truth. His instincts, his thoughts, his goals, his tactics, his audacity–it is all there in the open, like it or not, as it has been from the beginning.

I saw on Daniel Pipes’ blog that the American University is falling prey to pan-Arabist conspiracy theory.

The American University in Cairo, founded in 1919, has gone through its share of vicissitudes as an American institution in Egypt. Based throughout its existence in a cramped campus in the heart of modern Cairo, at Tahrir Square, the university is currently building a much larger home in a desert location called New Cairo. As can be imagined, the move is not without its stresses. Here is the latest one, as reviewed by the university’s president, David Arnold.

Date: Sun, 11 Nov 2007 14:43:32 +0200
From: AUC President Reply-To: AUC President Subject: Message from President David D. Arnold
To: allauc@aucegypt.edu

November 11, 2007

Dear Members of the AUC Community:

Over the past several months rumors have circulated on campus - and have also been reported in the local media - that have had no basis in fact and may seek to harm the university and its reputation as an independent, apolitical institution.

Last May newspapers reported that the university had sold parts of the Tahrir Square Campus to Israel. This was reported despite the fact that the university had stated unequivocally that it was completely untrue. More recently, rumors have surfaced that the university had fired an Egyptian professor so that it could hire an Israeli professor. Again, these rumors are completely false and seek only to harm the university.

AUC remains unswerving in its support of academic freedom and, at the same time, it remains aware of the cultural and intellectual environment in which it operates, as well as the unique security concerns we face as an institution. The university operates under both Egyptian and US law and, accordingly, the university must comply with the laws of both countries. As a result, while the university operates under US laws prohibiting discrimination, it is also governed by Egyptian laws that govern visa issuance and work restrictions.

For nearly 90 years, AUC has been committed to academic excellence and service to Egypt. As an independent, non-sectarian, apolitical educational institution, the university does not take positions on political or religious issues. AUC, therefore, will continue to resist efforts by any group to use this institution to either further its own political agenda or harm the reputation of the university.

David D. Arnold

Comment: As someone who, off and on, spent three years at AUC in the 1970s, I am acutely aware of the sensitivities that Arnold outlines in his message. And as a student of conspiracy theories, I believe that it is best to grab them by the horns and refute them. That said, there is something pandering and ignoble about Arnold's message, especially given the fact that the U.S. taxpayer picks up a part of the university's tab.

Daniel Pipes is a brilliant scholar and public advocate. I deeply respect his service to the AUC, and having spent time there myself as a visiting fellow, I can concur with his assessment.

Nuts. Since the Institute’s server died, I lost all my postings from the last year. If ANYONE has cached versions of it, please contact me. I guess I’ll have to live in the ‘now’ and move forward. Onward in ‘08!