By Ira Sharkansky

JERUSALEM—Reading the announcements of government officials is more of an art than a science. It is appropriate to weigh the use of certain words rather than others, and take note of what a statement does not say. No one, including those involved in its preparation, can claim certainty as to how it should be read, much less what it can lead to as one statement provokes others from allies and antagonists.

Preşedintele Venezuelei, Hugo Chavez, a declarat miercuri că va acţiona “in consecinţă” la declaraţiile preşedintelui israelian Shimon Peres, care a spus că regimul său şi cel al liderului iranian, in vizită la Caracas, vor dispărea in curand, relatează AFP şi NewsIn. “Peres a spus că Hugo Chavez şi Ahmadinejad vor dispărea in curand. Considerăm aceste declaraţii ca fiind o ameninţare şi vom acţiona in consecinţă”, a spus preşedintele venezuelean.

La 16 noiembrie, in Argentina, Peres a preconizat căderea celor doi preşedinţi, “nu pentru că unul dintre ei va fi ucis, ci pentru că popoarele lor s-au săturat de ei şi nu va trece mult pană vor dispărea”.

“Te acuză că eşti agresiv, dar ei sunt agresorii”, a mai spus Chavez. “La fel şi in Columbia. ‘Yankeii’ instalează şapte baze militare, dar eu sunt cel despre care ei spun că merge in război”, a adăugat Chavez.

Chavez şi Ahmadinejad au salutat alianţa lor antiimperialistă, cu ocazia vizitei liderului iranian la Caracas. “Eşti un gladiator al luptei antiimperialiste”, i-a spus Chavez lui Ahmadinejad. “Popoarele iranian şi venezuelean au format un front comun impotriva aroganţelor imperialismului mondial”, a răspuns liderul iranian, aflat in a patra vizită oficială la Caracas.

by Alexei Barrionuevo, for The New York Times, November 22, 2009.

BRASÍLIA — Brazil’s ambitions to be a more important player on the global diplomatic stage are crashing headlong into the efforts of the United States and other Western powers to rein in Iran’s nuclear arms program.

Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Brazil’s president, is set to receive Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, here on Monday in his first state visit to Brazil. The visit is part of a larger push by Mr. da Silva to wade into the seemingly intractable world of Middle East politics, and follows visits in the last two weeks by Israel’s president, Shimon Peres, and Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority.

But the visit is drawing criticism from lawmakers and former diplomats here and in the United States, who say it could undercut Western efforts to press Iran on its nuclear program, and consequently chill Brazil’s relations with the United States and damage its growing reputation as a global power…(continue reading)

CAIRO, Egypt–Hamas may soon agree to release the abducted Israel soldier Gilad Shalit. Israel’s President Shimon Peres told reporters in Cairo that progress had been made toward a prisoner swap with Hamas. “There are negotiations between the two sides. I do not think that I need to elaborate. We all know there is progress. I hope that it will lead to a positive conclusion,” Peres said. Shalit was abducted on Israeli territory in June 2006 by Hamas operatives.
 
The news channel ‘al-Arabiya’ quoted senior Hamas sources as saying a deal could be sealed within days, possibly in time for the Muslim festival of Eid al-Adha. According to a ‘Fox News’ report, Israel has offered to release 1,000 prisoners – including 450 requested by Hamas and several who have been convicted of murder – in exchange for Shalit. Israel had earlier rejected 70 names submitted by Hamas, the report said.

According to Haaretz, Israeli President Shimon Peres announced Yesterday (November 22 2009) after his meeting with Mubarak that once Israeli-Palestinian negotiations restart, Israel will freeze settlements. A closer look revealsthat he is promising something Israel is presently committed to — no new settlements, no land confiscation and evacuation of “outposts”. The headline may, however, may be indicative of a new Israeli messaging strategy — “we will freeze settlements but the Palestinians are refusing resume negotiations” — aimed at moving the ball to Palestinian court.

See this morning’s (November 23 2009) Yediot article below describing how the IDF is preparing for a settlement freeze “as part of Israel’s political preparations for a resumption of the talks with the Palestinians” and that this move “went hand in hand with President Shimon Peres’s statement yesterday in Cairo to the effect that Israel would cease all construction in the settlements upon the resumption of talks with the Palestinians.”

IDF prepares for construction freeze in settlements

Alex Fishman, Yediot, November 23 2009 [page 9]

The Defense Ministry’s legal counsel has recently finalized the preparation of military orders that enjoin a full moratorium on construction everywhere in Judea and Samaria.

The military orders were drafted in coordination with the Prime Minister’s Office as part of Israel’s political preparations for a resumption of the talks with the Palestinians. The orders that were drafted by the Defense Ministry will become “orders by the OC Central Command,” who is the sovereign over the West Bank, immediately upon a decision by the Israeli political echelon to resume talks with the Palestinian Authority.

In the course of their most recent visit to the United States, the defense minister and prime minister apprised senior American officials with whom they met, including President Barack Obama and special US envoy to the Middle East George Mitchell, of the preparations Israel was making in advance of the possibility that talks with the Palestinians would be renewed. In the course of those meetings an Israeli commitment was made to impose a complete moratorium on construction in the settlements.

In the past number of months there has been an unprecedented boom of both legal and illegal construction across Judea and Samaria. The legal construction involves construction work on the basis of old permits that were not acted on, as well as the approximately 3,000 permits that were issued by the Defense Ministry legalizing the completion of buildings that were already in the process of being built. The settlers’ various settlement apparatuses had also prepared well in advance for the possibility of a construction freeze and for the past number of months have been making a concerted effort to build as much as possible before the OC Central Command’s order goes into effect.

Informed sources said that Israel was likely to find itself facing a strongly-worded American protest once the latter realized, by means of aerial photographs and inspections on the ground, that the actual scope of construction in Judea and Samaria exceeded the scope that had been authorized by the Israeli government as it had been reported to the them. Informed sources in the security establishment said that issuing orders enjoining a construction freeze upon the resumption of the political negotiations went hand in hand with President Shimon Peres’s statement yesterday in Cairo to the effect that Israel would cease all construction in the settlements upon the resumption of talks with the Palestinians.

En su reciente visita a la Argentina

Palabras de Shimon Peres

“Israel no tiene grandes extensiones de tierras, no posee mucha agua, no tiene petróleo, no tiene oro. Pero, somos la tierra sagrada y es por ello que no tenemos otra alternativa que vivir de acuerdo a nuestro intelecto…

Israel es hoy uno de los centros científicos más importantes en todo el mundo. No tenemos muchos kilómetros de tierras, pero tenemos más científicos por metro cuadrado que otros países.

Hemos aprendido que de la ciencia se puede hacer pan, no menos que de la tierra.

Hemos multiplicado las producciones, aunque no podemos multiplicar la tierra.

La ventaja está en la ciencia y nosotros proponemos trabajar en sociedad a todo aquel que quiera una sociedad como la nuestra.

Queremos dar cooperación internacional en medicina, agua, aeronáutica, y en las ciencias del espacio.

Yo creo que la ciencia acorta distancias, reduce los límites e incrementa la amistad.

Cambiaremos el mundo no con la fuerza de las armas, sino con la fuerza de la inteligencia y la ciencia“.

Fuente: KKL

Es la primera vez que Peres visita el país en su condición de presidente. En 1994, estuvo en Argentina como ministro de Relaciones Exteriores del entonces primer ministro Yitzhak Rabin.

Peres llamó a “no olvidar” los atentados en Buenos Aires a la embajada de Israel y a la Asociación Mutual Israelita Argentina (AMIA) en 1992 y 1994 respectivamente, en el que fallecieron un total de 107 personas.

El presidente israelí estuvo acompañado de su comitiva y del canciller argentino Jorge Taiana en el seminario “Oportunidad de Negocios, Comercio e Inversiones entre Argentina e Israel”.

El objetivo del seminario era el de “ampliar, potenciar y diversificar el intercambio comercial entre ambos países”, según la Presidencia de Argentina.

Peres también firmará acuerdos económicos con la mandataria argentina como forma de incrementar la cooperación bilateral.

Según el gobierno argentino, “las exportaciones argentinas a Israel se duplicaron desde el 2003 a la fecha” y “durante el año 2008 el intercambio comercial entre los dos países alcanzó los máximos valores históricos”.

Las exportaciones argentinas a Israel totalizaron $ 220 millones de dólares, un crecimiento de 3 por ciento respecto al 2007, informó la Casa Rosada. Las importaciones, en tanto, sumaron $ 152 millones de dólares.

Extraído de: voanoticias.com

Saul Bellow's 1976 journey to Jerusalem makes for memorable reading.

In almost exactly a month, Dunreith, Aidan and I are going to Israel for two weeks.

Thanks to the daughter of dear friend Ava Kadishson Schieber, we will have a place to stay in Tel Aviv, a car to drive and a cell phone to use.

Our plan is to use Tel Aviv as a base and to take a bunch of day trips to Haifa and Golan in the north, to Eilat for scuba diving in the south, and, of course, to Jerusalem.

Dunreith lived on a kibbutz for more than a year in the mid- to late-80s,  and has returned a number of times since then, with her most recent visit being to study at Yad Vashem in 2005.

I have been to Israel once, for just about a month, in the waning days of 1998 and bringing in 1999.  Like Dunreith, I also was studying at Yad Vashem through its relationship with Facing History.

I am very excited about the trip and will be concentrating in the next month on reading more about the country’s history, sights, politics and religion.

This part of my Israel education began yesterday with Chicago native and Nobel Prize winner Saul Bellow.

Bellow spent about three months in Israel in 1976; To Jerusalem and Back is his account of his time, the people he met, and the thoughts it inspired in him.

Raised in an observant home, Bellow brings great familiarity with Orthodox life to his journey.  This is the first book of his that I have read-my brother Mike gave me The Adventures of Augie March several years ago, but I have yet to crack it-and his combination of acute observations, scene setting, and purposeful sentences hooked me from the book’s initial vignette that takes place on the plane from the United States to Israel.

In addition to enjoying individual scenes and the senses of powerful people to which Bellow has access-the reader meets Hubert Humphrey, Yitzhak Rabin, Shimon Peres and Teddy Kollek, among others-Bellow is supremely well read.  The book is filled with references to, and excerpts from, the works of other authors.  The detail of Bellow’s reading is demonstrated by his quoting from Jean-Paul Sartre’s introduction to Franz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth, for example.  This combination of elements makes for a delightful stew and an effective rendering of Israel’s rich diversity, the horrors out of which it was founded, and the precarious position in which it found itself more than three decades.

From Jerusalem and Back is a brief book, and, when Bellows returns homes, one wishes the trip had been even longer.

Cine mustră pe alţii găseşte mai multă bunăvoinţă pe urmă, decât cel cu limba linguşitoare.

[Proverbe 28.23]

Cînd un prieten face o greșeală, prietenul rămîne prieten și greșeala rămîne greșeală.

Shimon Peres

Cuvîntul Meu, care iese din gura Mea, nu se întoarce la Mine fara rod

By Ira Sharkansky

JERUSALEM–Remember George McGovern? His clone is sitting in the Oval Office.

El Presidente israelí Shimon Peres y el líder laborista y Ministro de Defensa Ehud Barak conducen una nueva iniciativa para la reanudación de las negociaciones de paz con los palestinos. De acuerdo con la misma, se creará en primera instancia un estado palestino independiente en fronteras temporarias y Estados Unidos dará a los palestinos garantías de que las negociaciones concluirán en un tiempo preestablecido.
En Jerusalén dicen que se trata de uno de los pasos contemplados en la Hoja de Ruta y que la propuesta tiene por objeto salvar las dificultades de alcanzar un acuerdo definitivo.
Mientras tanto, continúan las protestas internacionales por la decisión de Israel de construir 900 unidades de vivienda en el barrio de Guiló, en el sector oriental de Jerusalén.
Después de las críticas expresadas por el Presidente de Estados Unidos Barack Obama y líderes européos, también el gobierno de China se adhirió éste Jueves a las mismas.
El ex Primer Ministro palestino y miembro del Comité Ejecutivo de la Organización de Liberación Palestina, Ahmad Qureia, dice que “se vá perdiendo la esperanza de alcanzar una solución de dos estados”. Qureia agregó que la decisión israelí de construir es “una falta de respeto” a los esfuerzos del Presidente Obama por reavivar el proceso de paz.
Por su parte el asesor del Presidente Palestino, Nabil Abu Rodeina, dice que a pesar de las críticas, Israel goza del apoyo de Washington.
“Israel dice que no a la exigencia estadounidense de congelar las construcciones, pero goza a pesar de ello de su apoyo”.
Pero el Ministro de Asuntos Exteriores de Francia, Bernard Kushnier, quien visitó ésta semana Israel y la autonomía Palestina, dice que la construcción en Guiló no constituye un obstáculo para la reanudación de las negociaciones de paz.
El Presidente Palestino Mahmud Abbas partió a América del Sur para tratar de reclutar el apoyo de Argentina, Brasil y Chile a una resolución del Consejo de Seguridad de las Naciones Unidas que reconozca las fronteras de 1967 como las fronteras del estado palestino.

RIO DE JANEIRO (WJC)–Three days after hosting Israeli President Shimon Peres, the Brazilian oil and gas giant Petrobras has announced that it is considering closing its operations in Iran. The company’s international director, Jorge Zelada, told the magazine ‘Veja’ that Latin America’s largest company was studying this possibility. Peres had met last Friday with Petrobras President Jose Gabrielli at the company’s world headquarters in Rio de Janeiro.

The reported reason was the frustrated expectations with the drilling of two wells in Iran. Zelada said the drilling results are not commercially interesting and the exploration permit will be returned to the Iranian government. The Petrobras office in Tehran is likely to be closed soon, he added. “It is a strictly technical decision,” Zelada declared, denying political pressure.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is scheduled to visit Brazil next week.
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Preceding provided by World Jewish Congress

BUENOS AIRES (WJC)–Ending his Latin America trip, Israeli President Shimon Peres predicted that the people of Venezuela and Iran would soon get tired of their leaders. Speaking at a forum in Argentina, Peres said both Hugo Chávez and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had gone crazy over oil. He said both leaders are headed for a fall.

“They won’t hold, not because any of us is going to kill them; their own people are getting tired of them,” Peres said. “So if you want good relations with them, consider that they are passing passengers. It’s a short-term relationship. Don’t waste too much on them.”

Peres also noted that approval for Chávez had recently dropped in opinion polls. “I see the latest polls that show most of the people are dissatisfied with him. If I could vote in the poll, I know exactly how I would vote. Because the problem is not just what Venezuela is doing for Chávez but what Chávez is doing for Venezuela. It is not a serious government.”

Peres also accused Ahmadinejad and Chávez of wasting their oil reserves in an attempt to buy political prestige. “Oil makes them think a bit complicated,” he said, twirling his right hand near his head as if to suggest both leaders are crazy. “It’s really dangerous if you swallow it. It’s not bad to sell it but don’t drink it too much. And wherever there is oil, there are problems as well. You lose your sense of proportion. Let’s not forget that oil is not being produced. It’s not the result of human engineering. It’s being discovered. And you don’t know where it is going to be discovered or how long it will last.”

Peres also paid homage to the victims of the terrorist attacks on the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires and the AMIA Jewish center. The president met with the bereaved families and survivors. At the end of the meeting Peres thanked Argentine President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner for her warm reception and her desire to increase cooperation with Israel. He invited her to Jerusalem to participate in next year’s Israeli Presidential Conference. Kirchner welcomed the invitation and said that it would be a great honor for her to come to Israel next year.
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Preceding provided by World Jewish Congress

November 17, 2009

In May 2008, I met a Europe correspondent of the Wall Street Journal on an international conference in Brussels. As we talked about the Turkish politics, he expressed his bafflement at how “biased the intellectuals and secular sections of the Turkish society were” against AKP, the Islamic ruling party which had taken over the government in a landslide victory in 2002. He thought that seculars were a bunch of corrupt elitists, contemptuous of the people and its democratically elected representatives. They were some mean fascist, anti-western bastards who for years prevented democratization of the Turkish politics and deprived the people of their freedoms. AKP, on the other hand, coming from the midst of the people and deeply-routed in Islam, promised to be the Muslim democrat alternative which would salvage this democracy-handicapped country and liberate its people from the autocratic secular yoke.  Or so it seemed.

In the wake of the recent developments in Turkish foreign and domestic politics, I am not sure if that journalist who worshiped AKP as a democratic savior is biting his fingernails, but many others undoubtedly are: under AKP leadership, Turkey has just jumped out of the Western trenches and joined the ranks of anti-western, fundamentalist Islamic regimes.

The first indication of Turkey’s strategic realignment was the shameless bashing of the Israeli president, Shimon Peres, by the prime minister and AKP chairman, Tayyip Erdoğan at Davos. Yelling at President Peres, Erdoğan said “When it comes to killing, you know well how to kill,” trampling upon all decorums, let alone diplomatic norms. Next came the expulsion of Israel by Turkey from a multinational air exercise which was scheduled to be held in Central Turkey. To add insult to the injury, the fundamentalist AKP government lifted visa requirement for Syria, arch enemy of Israel and a known supporter of state-sponsored terrorism, shortly after the joint exercise incident. Turkish and Syrian ministers held a joint cabinet meeting and then symbolically removed the barrier at the border crossing. Turkish foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoğlu, the mastermind of the Islamic realignment, talked about an integration of the two countries, with a prospect of inclusion of Iraq in this alliance in the near future. Shortly thereafter, plans for military cooperation and joint exercises between Syria and Turkey were announced.

If this is not enough to prove a strategic shift in Turkey’s orientation, wait to hear more: Erdoğan expressed staunch support to Iran’s nuclear ambitions on several occasions and accused the West of making Iran a scapegoat. He called the dictator Ahmedinajad a “dear friend,” whom he, along with the Turkish President Gül, also a fellow jihadist, had rushed to congratulate upon his success in rigged June 2009 elections. He said that Iran’s nuclear activities were “totally peaceful,” Iran was “being treated unfairly,” and allegations about a nuclear weapons program were “merely a gossip.” Criticizing the US invasion in Iraq, he added that “a civilization was destroyed there.” Not quite the kind of words you would expect to hear from a key NATO ally. In October of this year, Erdoğan flew to Teheran with a massive diplomatic and trade delegation to strengthen economic and strategic ties with the terrorist regime. In November, Ahmedinajad kindly reciprocated to Erdogan’s visit by attending an Islamic summit in Istanbul.

Pictures above: Brothers in jihad, AKP leaders Erdogan and Gul shaking hands with a mass murderer and a dictator.

AKP’s courtship with terrorist countries has not been confined to Iran and Syria: Erdoğan government speedily invited the leaders of Hamas to Turkey after the 2006 election victory of the radical terror organization in Gaza. Furthermore, Sudanese mass murderer Omar Al-Bashir visited Turkey twice in recent past and was welcomed by Gül at the presidential residence in Ankara. Ridiculing the international community, Erdoğan recently denied the genocide which took place in Sudan, asserting “I did not observe any genocide during my visit in Darfur.” He went on to shamelessly defend Al-Bashir: “A Muslim cannot be a mass murderer,” as in his opinion, murderers can only be Jews and Christians. AKP’s rapprochement to Sudan’s murderous regime has an economic component in addition to the common jihadist ideology: Newspapers report increasing investments in Sudan of Turkish Islamic businessmen with close ties to AKP. Nevertheless, nobody has bothered asking Erdoğan what he thinks about the Holocaust. The answer is obvious: He will most likely deny it. As a radical Islamist, he is anti-Semitic by nature and made public his sentiments about Jews in a speech to college students: “Jews have made significant inventions in history and now they simply sit back and watch their monetary returns from these inventions grow,” which can be translated to plain English as: “Jews are a bunch of blood-sucking leaches.”

Those who are still debating whether Turkey is really changing sides or not are either blind or ignorant:  Turkey, under a jihadist rule, has already joined the global Islamic revolutionary front, while U.S. and EU kept looking on as apathetic bystanders. One of the main external drivers of this realignment has been the continuous rebuttal of Turkey by the European countries in its bid to join the EU, a prospect which had served as a key factor modernizing the Turkish society. I will handle this topic separately in another article. However, no matter what the causes, the West has an enormous problem at hand now. AKP’s policies will have far-reaching and serious implications for the US and the EU on several fronts, including but not limited to national security, war against terrorism, immigration, narcotics trafficking, nuclear proliferation and energy security. Thus, while preparing to face the adverse strategic impact of Turkey’s shift in the long term, Washington and Brussels must also brace themselves for more unpleasant surprises by the radical Islamic AKP regime in the short term.

BUENOS AIRES (WJC)–Israeli President Shimon Peres and Argentinean President Christina Fernández have met in Buenos Aires. “Argentina does not allow anybody to choose its friends, and it doesn’t choose the friends of others,” Fernández told reporters after meeting, referring to the influence of Iran in Latin America and Tehran’s close relations with Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez. 

She reportedly postponed a planned visit by Chavez to Buenos Aires in the wake of the Peres visit. Venezuela broke off diplomatic relations with Israel earlier this year, and Chávez has repeatedly attacked the Israeli government.

Peres’ schedule in Argentina includes a rally at the Luna Park Stadium, meetings with Argentinean politicians, a visit to a Jewish school and tributes to the victims of the terrorist attack against the AMIA center and the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires in the 1990s.

His arrival was met with a protest against Israel opposite Congress that drew hundreds of demonstrators, who marched toward the Israeli Embassy and waved banners bearing slogans calling Peres a murderer, as well as posters of the leader of the Iranian revolution, Ayatollah Khomeini. Iran is suspected of having masterminded the attack on the AMIA Jewish center in 1994, in which 85 people died and hundreds were wounded.

This is Peres’ second trip to Argentina. He visited in 1994 when he served as foreign minister in the government of Yitzhak Rabin. The last Israeli president to visit Argentina was Chaim Herzog in 1989.
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Preceding provided by World Jewish Congress

Me parece bien que alguien del nivel del Presidente israelí visite la argentina para reforzar la influencia del único país serio y en serio de aquella parte del planeta, sobretodo para ver si logra frenar la embestida iraní que propone la basura bolivariana.

No me parece correcta la estrategia de visitar a Lula que con su inacción deja a Chávez hacer lo que quiere, ni de visitar a la puta local que está subvencionada por las valijas voladoras.

Peres debería reforzar vínculos con Colombia, Perú y sobretodo con Honduras que serán los países que se enfrentarán al totalitarismo bolivoislámico.

Otro error de cálculo de Israel fue el de creer que viajar a este pseudo país serviría de algo, pero solamente lograron que su Presidente sufriera los patéticos intentos de hablar de la perra local, además de darle excusas a los parásitos de izquierda (perdón por la redundancia) para quemar, saquear, romper y molestar en la embajada de aquel gran país.

Si está claro que la perra va a elegir a Chávez y la almeja por sobre la civilización, Peres debería haberse reunido con representantes de la oposición y del próximo gobierno, que son los que van a tener que definir el futuro de las relaciones internacionales de la Argentina.

Lo importante es que sepan que no todos los argentinos somos antisemitas ni estúpidos, algunos realmente queremos que la Argentina se relacione con el primer mundo.

I’ll admit that it’s not easy to post about the Middle East, which is why I generally stay away from it, but I felt compelled to say something based on this story, which in part tells us the following…

Thousands of Palestinians turned out Wednesday for a rally here to commemorate the fifth anniversary of the death of the Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and to show support for his successor, President Mahmoud Abbas, who recently expressed an intention to retire.

…

The rally took place in the grounds of the Mukata, the presidential headquarters in this West Bank city where Arafat took ill in 2004. He died in a Paris hospital, but his body was flown back and buried in the compound amid frenzied scenes of adoration and chaos.

I don’t have an issue with Abbas, who will never escape Arafat’s shadow largely because the founder of the Palestine Liberation Organization allowed terrorism to flourish on his watch, to the point where Hamas basically calls the shots in that area of the world. And yes, I’m completely aware of the fact that Israeli intransigence on the Palestinians had a lot to do with Arafat’s ascent.

However, Arafat was, at best, a flawed deliverer of legitimacy (one of the few times I actually agreed with Dubya on anything was when he said Arafat had “failed as a leader” in 2004, though that was hypocritical considering our slavish subservience to Israel under Dubya’s “administration”). And the only reason he won the Nobel Prize along with the late Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres of Israel was because it would have been bad manners to exclude him.

And I think the following is noteworthy about Arafat (from here)…

In August 2002, the Israeli Military Intelligence Chief alleged that Arafat’s personal wealth was in the range of USD $1.3 billion,[92]. In 2003 the International Monetary Fund (IMF) conducted an audit of the PNA and stated that Arafat diverted $900 million in public funds to a special bank account controlled by Arafat and the PNA Chief Economic Financial adviser. However, the IMF did not claim that there were any improprieties, and it specifically stated that most of the funds had been used to invest in Palestinian assets, both internally and abroad.[93][94]

However in 2003, a team of American accountants–hired by Arafat’s own finance ministry–began examining Arafat’s finances; this team reached a different conclusion. The team claimed that part of the Palestinian leader’s wealth was in a secret portfolio worth close to $1 billion, with investments in companies like a Coca-Cola bottling plant in Ramallah, a Tunisian cell phone company and venture capital funds in the US and the Cayman Islands. The head of the investigation stated that “although the money for the portfolio came from public funds like Palestinian taxes, virtually none of it was used for the Palestinian people; it was all controlled by Arafat. And none of these dealings were made public.”[95]

Although Arafat lived a modest lifestyle, Dennis Ross, former Middle East negotiator for Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, stated that Arafat’s “walking-around money” financed a vast patronage system known as neopatrimonialism. According to Salam Fayyad—a former World Bank official whom Arafat appointed Finance Minister of the PNA in 2002—Arafat’s commodity monopolies could accurately be seen as gouging his own people, “especially in Gaza which is poorer, which is something that is totally unacceptable and immoral.” Fayyad claims that Arafat used $20 million from public funds to pay the leadership of the PNA security forces (the Preventive Security Service) alone.[95]

Fuad Shubaki, former financial aide to Arafat, told the Israeli security service Shin Bet that Arafat used several million dollars of aid money to buy weapons and support militant groups.[96] An investigation by the European Union into claims that their funds were misused by the Palestinian Authority found no evidence that funds were diverted to finance terrorist activities.[97]

Also, as noted here…

Arafat, too, must take his share of the blame for the failure of the peace process. Time and again, he failed to make the bold moves that might have broken the logjam. It was never a viable option for the PLO to confront the rejectionists Hamas and Islamic Jihad militarily — that would have meant a full-scale civil war — but he could have marginalized them if he had been a better leader. Unwilling to either rule out the military option or embrace it, he was a master tactician who seemed never capable of delivering the bold strategic stroke. (In that sense, he resembled his ancient nemesis, Ariel Sharon, a brilliant field general who lacks a larger vision.) Danny Rubinstein, the Haaretz correspondent who has covered the Palestinians for years, noted on Thursday that Arafat could not resist the siren song of the Palestinian street: If it called for violence, he delivered violence. “This was his weak side. This is how it came out,” Rubinstein says. “He always felt it necessary to speak to his people such that they would continue to embrace him, to esteem him, to idolize him, and, most importantly, to obey him.”

And Gary Kamiya of Salon.com also tells us the following…

At the end of his life, although he still held all effective Palestinian power in his hands, Arafat had come to serve a purely symbolic function. That function was sentimentally useful: Arafat represented the last hope for the hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees around the world, still holding their yellowing deeds and keys to houses in Jaffa, Haifa and Jerusalem to which they will never return. But practically, it was an encumbrance. He was a statue, a myth, and his larger-than-life stature blocked a new, more pragmatic generation of Palestinian leaders from emerging. Those leaders will make the same demands Arafat did — a contiguous state in most of the West Bank, a Palestinian capital in East Jerusalem, shared sovereignty over the holy sites, some fair resolution of the refugee question that does not spell the end of Israel. But perhaps they will actually be able to achieve them.

I must tell you that I can think of better tributes.

BRASÍLIA (Reuters) – O presidente Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva rejeitou nesta quarta-feira críticas sobre a visita programada do líder do Irã ao país, dizendo que todos os lados devem estar envolvidos para alcançar a paz no Oriente Médio. “Você não constrói a paz necessária de ser construída no Oriente Médio se você não conversar com todas as forças políticas e religiosas que querem paz e que se opõem à paz”, disse Lula a jornalistas durante entrevista coletiva conjunta com o presidente israelense, Shimon Peres.

A visita de Peres ao Brasil acontece duas semanas antes de o presidente iraniano, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, desembarcar no país em 23 de novembro.

Líderes judeus criticaram os planos de o governo receber o presidente iraniano, instando o país a condenar a recusa de Ahmadinejad em admitir que o Holocausto existiu e “seu apoio ao terrorismo internacional”.

Peres instou o Brasil a usar sua voz cada vez mais presente no cenário internacional para ajudar a conter as ambições nucleares do Irã e seu apoio a grupos militantes palestinos. Em um discurso na terça-feira no Congresso, ele descreveu a República Islâmica como um “perigo global” dedicado a destruir Israel.

O Brasil está em campanha para obter uma vaga permanente no Conselho de Segurança da Organização das Nações Unidas (ONU) e adotou uma linha mais conciliatória com o Irã do que os aliados ocidentais, incluindo os Estados Unidos.

Lula instou os líderes ocidentais a parar de desafiar o Irã por seu programa nuclear, escolhendo a via da negociação para alcançar a paz.

Lula também disse que as negociações para adquirir aviões não tripulados de Israel para a proteção das fronteiras brasileiras estavam em estágio avançado, mas não entrou em detalhes.

IG

Rizzolo: É claro que se o governo Lula luta contra o preconceito, contra o racismo, é a favor das minorias, não pode politicamente compactuar com alguém que nega o Holocausto, que prega a destruição de Israel, é antissemita, e que tem em seus ministros alguns elementos procurados pela Interpol. O Irã é mal visto pela comunidade internacional, isso é um fato. Chancelar o acolhimento diante dos interesses comerciais, ou entender que ” dá para conversar com Mahmoud Ahmadinejad ” com seu exultante antissemitismo, deixa a comunidade judaica brasileira e internacional preocupada e perplexa.

Como a visita é inevitável, espero que o presidente Lula contenha Ahmadinejad, e responda energicamente à altura do que a comunidade judaica brasileira e internacional representa e sempre representou na humanidade, na ciência, na história, na literatura, e na política, caso surja as ofensas de praxe e costume. Jamais poderemos ser ultrajados em nossa pátria Brasil, e contamos a esta altura dos acontecimentos, apenas com a pronta eventual resposta de Lula e do governo caso o antissemitismo e o ódio a Israel, se propague dos lábios de Ahmadinejad.

Ainda acredito no bom senso do presidente Lula. Não vou participar de nenhum movimento contra a visita, muito embora tenha sido convidado por várias entidades judaicas, é uma posição pessoal minha. Agora, como judeu jamais aceitaria ser ofendido, constrangido, e não ter ninguém para defender minhas tradições, minha religião, e Israel, aqui no meu país Brasil. Agora depende daqueles que o convidaram, não é ? E se precisar, da pronta resposta à altura por parte do presidente, pessoa que eu prezo e tenho admiração.

El Presidente de Israel, Shimon Peres, este martes en el Congreso brasileño afirmó que se precisa de “una voz  clara frente a la destrucción” y que la voz de Brasil “tiene eco en el mundo entero”.

“Se precisa de una voz contra la destrucción y contra el terror, una voz clara. Yo sé que Brasil niega amenazas, la destrucción,  niega el terror, y la voz clara de Brasil tiene un eco fuerte en el mundo entero”, expresó Peres…

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Brasilia 10 de noviembre

Después de 43 años un presidente de Israel llega a tierra brasileña, en una visita histórica. Shimon Peres, primer mandatario de Israel  inició su gira este martes en Brasilia donde pronunció un discurso ante la cámara de Senadores y Diputados…

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Miles de palestinos se congregaron éste Miércoles frente a la Muqata en Ramallah para conmemorar el quinto aniversario de la muerte de su legendario dirigente, Yaser Arafat.
Arafat, quien dedicó su vida a la lucha contra Israel en nombre de Al Fatah y de la OLP, la Organización de Liberación Palestina, modificó sus posiciones en 1988, al aceptar la resolución 242 del Consejo de Seguridad de las Naciones Unidas que llama a la paz a cambio de los territorios conquistados y firmó un acuerdo de reconciliación con Israel en 1993, haciéndose por ello acreedor al Premio Nobel de la paz, junto a sus socios en el pacto, los israelíes Itzjak Rabin y Shimon Peres.
Pero Arafat regresó a empuñar las armas y desde su muerte, sufren los palestinos rupturas y escisiones. Ante las amenazas del actual líder palestino, Mahmud Abbas se retirarse de la vida política, Al Fatah llama a Hamas a la unidad y la reconciliación, afirmando que el diálogo nacional es la única manera de restaurar la unidad y alcanzar la más antigua de sus aspiraciones, la creación de un Estado Palestino.
Por ese motivo, el acto recordatorio se convirtió en una masiva manifestación de apoyo a Mahmud Abbas.
En un discurso pronunciado ante los congregados, Abbas dijo que el mundo ya habia reconocido al Estado Palestino y ahora sólo restaba establecer sus fronteras definitivas.
Abbas reiteró las posiciones palestina frente a la construcción israelí en los asentamientos y llamó a la comunidad internacional a forzara a Israel a cumplir con los principios de la hoja de ruta.
El Presidente Palestino atacó también a la organización Hamas, que controla la Franja de Gaza y que nuevamente prohibió los actos recordatorios a Yaser Arafat. “La revolucion palestina es la mas dificil y prolongada de la historia”, dijo Abbas, “pero finalmente triunfara”.

BRASÍLIA – O ministro da Defesa, Nelson Jobim, se reuniu por volta do meio-dia desta terça-feira com o presidente de Israel, Shimon Peres. Em discurso, Peres pregou entendimento entre os dois países para combater não mais as guerras clássicas que, segundo ele, acabaram, mas sim um novo tipo de perigo, referindo-se ao terrorismo. O presidente israelense disse que o Brasil é um país grande e que se tornou industrializado, ao passo que Israel é pequeno e não tem como se transformar num país industrial, mas que possui ciência e inteligência.

O ministro Jobim lembrou que já esteve com Peres há 20 anos, quando era ministro do Supremo Tribunal Federal (STF), e agora, que está à frente do ministério da Defesa, pode entender a visão de Peres de que o mundo não é mais de conflitos convencionais, mas de conflitos irregulares e sem uniformes.

Jobim informou que o Brasil está buscando a reorganização das Forças Armadas e entregou para Shimon Peres uma cópia em inglês da Estratégia Nacional de Defesa. Ele disse que há um espaço grande para entendimento com Israel e que os dois países têm condições de evoluir na realização de acordos.

O ministro citou que já se encontra no Ministério da Relações Exteriores de Israel um acordo na área de defesa que está examinando a troca de informações. Ele, no entanto, não detalhou, em seu discurso, que tipo de acordo é esse.

Jobim lembrou que a Estratégia Nacional de Defesa não é só para garantir a soberania do Brasil, mas proteger o País das ameaças não convencionais. O ministro disse que o Brasil está investindo em pesquisa militar. “Saímos de um momento bipolar e fomos para um momento multipolar, que impõe um compromisso mais forte com a paz”, afirmou. O ministro destacou ainda que o País pode evoluir nas relações com Israel e que “podemos caminhar juntos”.

agencia estado

Rizzolo: Israel tem muito a oferecer ao Brasil em termos de tecnologia, inclusive a militar. É pena que neste momento exista uma aproximação do Brasil com o Irã, o que de certa forma atrapalha o avanço das negociações. Acredito que o governo brasileiro saberá conduzir a política com Irã, até porque sabe com quem está lidando. Nesse momento deve prevalecer o bom senso nas relações internacionais.