Brookings hosts an ethnic cleanser

Brookings Hosts an Ethnic Cleanser
Mr. Lieberman Comes to Washington
Will Youmans, December 8, 2006
When far-right leader Avigdor Lieberman and his Yisrael Beiteinu party joined the Israeli government, pro-peace Israelis expressed outrage. The Brookings Institution extended an invitation.

MK Avigdor Lieberman's visit to US
Michael F. Brown, December 14, 2006
Israel's most notorious anti-Arab politician and provocateur, Avigdor Lieberman, spoke at Brookings' Saban Center Forum in Washington, DC this past weekend.

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Robert Fisk Criticizes 'Experts' Cited in Iraq Study Group Report
Wednesday, December 20th, 2006
This past weekend Robert Fisk was invited to deliver the keynote address before hundreds of Muslim Americans gathered in Long Beach, California for the sixth annual convention of the Muslim Public Affairs Council. At the convention, Fisk - who was the keynote speaker - participated in a roundtable discussion on the Iraq Study Group's implications. He took to the podium with a copy of the report in his hand.
The problem, I'm afraid, is that we have grown used to a kind of mild, temperate reporting out of the Middle East in the US media, which is incomprehensible unless you happen to know the region. The "wall" becomes a "security barrier," like the Berlin security barrier, which some of you may remember. "Occupied territory" is "disputed territory." A "colony" becomes a "neighborhood." And thus, of course, the Palestinians, generically violent for opposing this by throwing stones, or worse.

I think, you know, you see the same thing happen with Mearsheimer-Walt report. I interviewed poor old Walt up in Harvard just after he produced his famous report on the Israeli lobby and the power of the Israel lobby, and he was in a state of near catatonic shock. And I said, "Calm down, you know. Join the club. We've been through this before." Anybody who has a reasonable decent criticism of Israel, including Israelis, will be called anti-Semitic. And we respond to this very clearly. In Britain, we threaten to sue when anyone calls us that, because it's a lie. John Malkovich, the actor, who said at the Cambridge Union he wanted to shoot me, followed this up in the Observer by saying he hated me because of my, quote, "vicious anti-Semitism." Our lawyers went into action immediately. The Observer withdrew the story and apologized. You've got to stand up. And journalists have got to stand up when they are falsely accused of racism.

Banality and barefaced lies
Robert Fisk, 23 December 2006
At Detroit airport, I picked up an even slimmer volume, the Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group Report - which doesn't really study Iraq at all but offers a few bleak ways in which George Bush can run away from this disaster without too much blood on his shirt. After chatting to the Iraqis in the green zone of Baghdad - dream zone would be a more accurate title - there are a few worthy suggestions (already predictably rejected by the Israelis): a resumption of serious Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, an Israeli withdrawal from Golan, etc. But it's written in the same tired semantics of right-wing think tanks - the language, in fact, of the discredited Brookings Institution and of my old mate, the messianic New York Times columnist Tom Friedman - full of "porous" borders and admonitions that "time is running out".

The clue to all this nonsense, I discovered, comes at the back of the report where it lists the "experts" consulted by Messrs Baker, Hamilton and the rest. Many of them are pillars of the Brookings Institution and there is Thomas Friedman of The New York Times.

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As'ad Abukhalil : A sample from the language of the Iraq Study Group report: "U.S. military and civilian personnel, and our coalition partners, are making exceptional and dedicated efforts—and sacrifices—to help Iraq." I mean, look how nice. This reminds me of the efforts and sacrifices of the France in Algeria and Belgium in the Congo. Very nice.

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Baker panel's mention of Palestinian "right of return" raises eyebrows
Dec 06 3:43 PM US/Eastern
A reference to Palestinians' "right of return" in the report issued by the high-level Iraq Study Group broke a diplomatic taboo which sparked immediate concern in Israel and surprise among Middle East policy experts. The reference was buried deep inside a 160-page report that urged US President George W. Bush to renew efforts to revive Israel-Palestinian peace talks as part of a region-wide bid to end the chaos in Iraq.

"This report is worrisome for Israel particularly because, for the first time, it mentions the question of the 'right of return' for the Palestinian refugees of 1948," said a senior Israeli official, who was reacting to the US policy report on condition he not be identified.

A Middle East analyst who was involved in the Iraq Study Group discussions but did not participate in drafting the report expressed surprise when the reference was pointed out to him by a reporter.

"It's hard to know whether that language got in there because of carelessness -- I know there were many revisions up to the very last minute -- or whether it was a deliberate attempt to fuse something to the Bush rhetoric which wasn't there before," the analyst said.

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Full text: the Iraq Study Group Report

Executive Summary of the Iraq Study Group report