April 26, 2010

These are not the easiest of days for Benjamin Netanyahu.  The Israeli prime-minister is faced with a growing nuclear threat from Iran, collapsing relations with neighboring Arab countries and the worst crisis in U.S.- Israeli relations since the 1956 Suez War.  And just when he thought things couldn’t get any worse, along comes demands for him to attend a Washington D.C. conference on nuclear security where, he is told, Israel’s supposed best friends in the region are going to demand that Israel sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Someone give this man an aspirin.

It is certainly not the first time the Israeli PM has come under unrelenting pressure from multiple directions.  In November, 1998 during his first prime-ministership, Bill Clinton, pressing the full weight of his presidential office on Netanyahu, instructed him to sign the Wye River Memorandum, which was an updated version of the Oslo Accords, detailing security arrangements, IDF redeployments and economic matters between Israel and the PA.  The Memorandum would never be implemented.  IDF withdrawals from contested areas were not met by the stipulated reciprocal responses from the Palestinians – particularly with regard to the collection of weapons and the cessation of incitement.  Two years later, the outbreak of the Second Intifada made it all but irrelevant.

Yet at that time, Netanyahu was seen largely by his own constituency on the Israeli right, as a dupe.  He had signed an agreement which had given gratuitous concessions to a reprobate Palestinian dictatorship and made Israel seem weak.  His coalition partners had still not forgiven him for surrendering 50% of Hebron to Palestinian control the previous year and within a few weeks, having lost the confidence of his Knesset majority, his government fell.

Netanyahu has spent ten years nursing the bruises received from those encounters and in the interim seems to have learned some important lessons.  The first of them is that his political survival in Israel is dependent on his country’s projection of strength.  When it comes to Israel’s security, he now seems to understand that he should insist on his country’s right to reject any proposal that compromises it.  Second, he now appreciates that U.S. Presidents will place their own priorities before that of Israel’s welfare, in order to accelerate broader policy goals. ( Clinton, we might remember, pegged his chances of earning a coveted Nobel Prize to Middle East peace). Third, peace is not going to come to Israel and the Middle East through Israeli concessions but rather through a demonstration of Israeli power respected by Arab regimes – forcing them to concede that they have no other choice but to come to the table.

Although the summit is intended to focus on nuclear security, leaving other broad topics such as non-proliferation and disarmament to different fora,  there will be an inevitable drift of discussion to those issues.  Netanyahu is aware that demands will be made on Israel by erstwhile friends Egypt and Turkey (who have been given lately to describing Israel as ” the greatest threat to peace in the region”) to sign the Nuclear Non- Proliferation Treaty.  He is also aware of the deep ambivalence of the Obama administration towards his government.  There could be little relish for the idea of being dressed down again by Hilary Clinton.

Netanyahu’s aversion to attending the conference is, however,  more than mere discomfort at the thought of being confronted by Israel’s antagonists.  Perhaps alone among world leaders, he recognizes that his country stands as a hedge against Iran’s acquisition of nuclear weapons – which he rightly regards as the greatest calamity to befall our civilization .  He sees no evidence that the world is seriously tackling this issue and is convinced the United States government is more at ease castigating Israel about building Jerusalem apartments than dealing effectively with the threat.  He recognizes that within a short while Israel will be forced to launch a preemptive strike on Iranian nuclear facilities or else expose Israel and the world to the destabilizing reality of a nuclear Iran.

So Netanyahu’s Israel may soon become the very kind of rogue state that the Nuclear Security Summit will be trying to identify and outlaw.  If and when Israeli planes strike Iran, no world leader will praise Netanyahu.  Instead, he will be excoriated from Whitehall to Foggy Bottom as a lawless provocateur, attempting to instigate World War III.  Secretly, however,  they will all concede that what he authorized had precisely averted such a catastrophe –  even if it takes memoirs written many years into the future to produce such an admission.

Having learned the lessons of Wye then, Benjamin Netanyahu seems to have matured into a world leader who knows how to handle international pressure.  His tacit understanding that Israel must be left to make decisions about its own security and that Middle East peace is illusory without a demonstration of Israeli power, vouchsafe his suspicion that his presence at the conference will only damage Israel’s image and encourage continuing international lassitude on the matter of Iran.

Benjamin Netanyahu is not winning many popularity contest anywhere in the world.  Except, perhaps, in Israel – where he is beginning to demonstrate the way a world leader, in a time of crisis, should act.

Avi Davis is the President of the American Freedom Alliance in Los Angeles.  His writings and blog entries can be found at the The Intermediate Zone and the Los Angeles Jewish Journal’s On The Other Hand.

Comedy Central’s continuing lack of nerve regarding Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s hit show South Park reached a new low last week when it heavily censored an episode that humorously depicted the Prophet Muhammad, the founder of Islam.  The show featured Muhammad disguised in a bear suit.

Corporate executives ordered that all mentions of Muhammad be bleeped from this show, just as some South Park episodes in the past had also been censored.  In 2006 a two-part episode that was written as a response to a Dutch newspaper that had censored a comic strip that portrayed Muhammad in a humorous manner was itself edited by the network.

This time episodes “200” and “201” of South Park included a caricature of Muhammad and caught the attention of a radical Islamic website.  The website promptly issued warnings that could only be interpreted as thinly-veiled death threats directed at South Park’s authors.

The fundamentalist site sent the threats to Parker and Stone saying the two could face retribution because of their “disrespectful” depictions of Muhammad.  The warning of violence was posted on

which also featured a grisly photo of a dead Theo van Gogh. Van Gogh, was the Dutch filmmaker who was brutally butchered by a Muslim radical who was “offended” by the release of a van Gogh’s documentary film which depicted and described Muslim violence against women.

The radical Muslim site claimed “We have to warn Matt and Trey that what they are doing is stupid and they will probably wind up like Theo Van Gogh for airing this show … This is not a threat, but a warning of the reality of what will likely happen to them.”

A spokesman for the website, somebody identifying himself as “Abu Tallah al Amerikee” (actually a Fairfax County resident, Zachary Adam Chesser, who converted to Islam) said the entry was posted to “raise awareness.”  He said there was a possibility that Parker and Stone could be killed because of their perceived slight against Muhammad. 

To make clear what the ideological leanings of this obscure website are, it also features a sermon by Anwar al-Awlaki, the U.S.-born radical cleric thought to be in hiding somewhere in Yemen.

Comedy Central quickly caved-in to the threats, apparently without even knowing whether or not the site represents anyone beyond this al-Amerikee (Chesser) character.

Parker and Stone clearly disagree with the corporate decision to censor their show.  The two issued this statement:

In the 14 years we’ve been doing South Park we have never done a show that we couldn’t stand behind.  We delivered our version of the show to Comedy Central and they made a determination to alter the episode.  It wasn’t some meta-joke on our part. Comedy Central added the bleeps. In fact, Kyle’s customary final speech was about intimidation and fear.  It didn’t mention Muhammad at all but it got bleeped too.  We’ll be back next week with a whole new show about something completely different and we’ll see what happens to it.

Beyond the issue of gutless corporate executives censoring a comedy show is the larger question of what is a much greater danger – the growing tendency to knuckle-under to demands of all sorts coming from radical Islamists.  This has been the generalized response in Western Europe, and it may become America’s response as well – unless we demand a different approach.

Every slice of the population is routinely skewered by America’s pop culture.  Jews, Blacks, “trailer park trash,” bad Asian drivers, gay people, Jesus, and Bible-thumping Christians are consistently the butt of jokes and caricatures.  But Muslims are rarely joked about, and the Prophet Muhammad is almost never treated as the subject of jokes.

The reason is obvious.  People have lost their lives over depictions of Islam or Muhammad.  However, if – as many like to argue – Islam is really the “religion of peace,” then why is “offending Islam” all-too-often something that elicits threats of violence and death.  People living in western societies don’t have fears of Christian fundamentalists, Hindu activists, or Buddhist radicals.  Only Islam, among the world’s great religions, issues warnings of death to those who “offend.”

I’m not a fan of South Park and I don’t watch the show.  I am, however, a staunch advocate and defender of something essential to being an American – the freedom of speech and expression.

While what the bean-counters at Comedy Central did may appear to be the all too predictable weak-kneed and self-serving actions of entertainment industry lawyers, the implications are far-reaching.  Giving in to the voices of radical Islam at any level only emboldens those who want to destroy us and our nation.

Hell, even Jon Stewart, the liberal host of the Daily Show gets it.  He said, “Comedy Central decided to censor the episode.  It’s their right … we all serve at their pleasure.” 

But Stewart went on to play extensive clips of past South Park episodes that showed Parker and Stone making fun of every conceivable religion and ethnic group,

…..point made.