PEREZ SAID IT BEFORE TRUMP

GREER FAY CASHMAN

SHIMON PERES smiles during the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos in 2013.. (photo credit: REUTERS)

The willingness expressed by US President Donald Trump to meet with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani is not the first time a sitting president opposed to Iranian nuclear power has stated that he had no objection to a meeting with Rouhani. President Shimon Peres, who in December 2013 was interviewed at the opening of the annual Globes Business Conference by CNN’s Richard Quest, was asked inter alia whether he would be prepared to meet with Rouhani, to which he replied: “Why not?”

Peres told Quest that he had no enemies, and that a meeting was not a personal issue, but a matter of policy. “The purpose is to convert enemies into friends,” he said.

Peres clarified that he would feel more assured if such a tête à tête was solely between him and Rouhani, “but there are other structures, other people,” he explained. “The Iranian Revolutionary Guard, half-army and half-organization, spreads terror all over the world, and I’m not so sure they support the president. We have to see the balance of the situation.”

Peres, speaking with the voice of experience, reminded Quest that there was a time when Israel would not meet with Yasser Arafat. Yet in the final analysis, there were many meetings with him, including at the sharing of the Nobel Peace Prize, even though peace is hardly on the horizon. But in bringing up the change in attitude and behavior where Arafat was concerned, Peres hinted that it was not improbable that Israel and Iran might bury the hatchet – though not necessarily in the foreseeable future.

Peres was also asked to voice his opinion on gay marriage. “I am in favor of every human being having the right to breathe fresh air, to eat food, to fall in love with whomever they want,” he said. “According to our tradition, the Lord created each of us in His image. He didn’t give us the right to edit what He did, everyone has the right to be right. I think everyone will take it as a yes.”

A few months later, Quest, who is Jewish and gay, publicly outed himself on his television show Quest Means Business, and subsequently confessed that he wished he had outed himself much sooner than he actually did. He said he had not been open about his sexuality previously, and had spent a good deal of time worrying about it and what his family, friends and colleagues would think. What bothered him most was whether his credibility as a business journalist would be affected by the fact that he was gay.

Would people watch the program differently?

“Thinking like this saps energy, it drains confidence, it takes a toll on productivity, it’s exhausting!” he told the annual meeting of the National Gay and Lesbian Journalists Association. “I realize that everyone has their own road to travel in making this decision about when it’s right to come out. I know that in my case, the worst fears never materialized. All in all, professionally, I know the work I do every day is better because I’m honest about who I am.”

One of the factors that prompted his public declaration of who he is, was the new media environment.

“You can no longer say, ‘That’s private, that’s not for discussion.’”

■ ASIDE FROM banking, punctuality, chocolate, the manufacture of time pieces, and yodeling, the Swiss are well-known for their dairy products, which may explain why just ahead of Swiss National Day this week, Ambassador Jean-Daniel Ruch, accompanied by representatives of the Israel Dairy Board visited the Shfayim Dairy Farm and the Jacob’s Dairy Farm, made friends with the livestock and tasted what Ruch described as “delicious” local cheese. He also tasted the high-quality fresh milk.

As for celebrating Swiss National Day, Ruch did something different in comparison to receptions hosted by his colleagues. He invited guests to Wahat-al Salam, or Neve Shalom as it is known in Hebrew, the village in which Arabs and Jews, or Palestinians and Israelis, have proved that co-existence is not only possible, but desirable. Established in 1970 by Father Bruno Hussar, it is currently home to 70 families who comprise some 300 souls, and who hope to double their number in the near future. The village is entirely free of racism and discrimination and its residents live in an aura of mutual respect, equality and partnership. Many of the residents hope to inspire others in the country and the region to follow their example and are engaged in projects dedicated to peace, reconciliation and justice.

One of them, Mai Shbeta, is the personification of everything that Neve Shalom stands for. She is not only a binational, but a tri-national in that her mother is the Israeli Jewish daughter of a Holocaust survivor and her father is a Palestinian. Thus she is both Jewish and Muslim, in addition to which she also holds Swiss citizenship. Her husband is Arab of mixed Muslim and Christian background.

A peace activist all her life, she is often asked whether she feels more Jewish than Muslim, more Israeli than Palestinian. It’s a question she never came across while growing up in the village, which has a binational, bilingual primary school, but once she went to high school, and later to Bar-Ilan University, it was a question that was frequently put to her and one she doesn’t answer. It’s like being forced to choose between her mother and her father, she explained.

In the village people don’t care about what nationality or religion anyone might have, she said, so long as that person is a decent human being. Over the years, the village has developed and continues to develop. When her parents arrived there 40 years ago, there was no water and no electricity. Today, it has not only water and electricity, but is a model for the rest of Israel and for close-by Palestinian villages. “Most of the second generation want to stay here and live here and create a family,” she said, and expressed the wish that there would be other villages in Israel and the Palestinian Authority, just like hers.

Influential social activist Samah Salaime, who heads the educational institutions at Wahat al-Salam-Neveh Shalom, welcomed the guests on her own behalf and on behalf of Mayor Anwar Daoud and spoke of the village’s three educational institutions – the primary school, which was the first binational, bilingual school in Israel; the School for Peace, whose students are Israeli and Palestinian agents for change, and which boasts 60,000 alumni; and the Spiritual Center, which teaches the beliefs, literature, music and culture of different faiths, and provides space for students to worship, each in accordance with his or her own faith. With regard to the School for Peace, Salaime said that there is no project for shared culture that does not include graduates of the school.

The educational institutions of the village are supported by international friends groups in almost a dozen countries – including Switzerland.

One of the customs in Switzerland on its national day is for children to walk around with red Chinese lanterns on which there is a white cross – the national emblem of Switzerland, and the youngest children of the village were recruited for this purpose and looked absolutely adorable.

Representing the government at the event was Construction and Housing Minister Yoav Gallant who noted that Israel’s connection with Switzerland goes back to August 1897, when Zionist visionary Theodor Herzl convened the first Zionist Congress in Basel.

Ruch noted that there is still a strong connection between Basel and Israel because Swiss Friends of Wahat al-Salam Neve Shalom also started in Basel. Its founder and former president, Peter Dreyfus, passed away in May of this year at age 83.

Aside from the Basel connection, Ruch said that because both Israel and Switzerland are small countries with minimal natural resources, what they have in common is innovation made possible by exceptional human resources.

Given the current political furor in Israel, it would seem that Ruch deliberately planned the venue for his country’s national day celebration as some kind of response to what is happening around him. He denied this, saying that the venue was planned a year ago. It’s not the first time that he’s departed from the diplomatic norm with regard to venues. Last year it was in Kiryat Ye’arim.

■ ACCOMPANIED BY Supreme Court President Esther Hayut, Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked, Southern District Magistrates Court President Abira Ashkeloni and Beersheba Mayor Ruvik Danilovich, President Reuven Rivlin this week visited the Community Court of Beersheba and was impressed by the spirit of care, trust and mutual responsibility that pervades the court. A unique project, the community court, which was established in 2014, is guided by the courts administration, the Justice Ministry, the Ministry for Social Services, the Israel Police and the Joint Distribution Committee. The main purpose of the project is to help people who have committed non-severe crimes to rehabilitate themselves with the help of the community. Following the success of the Beersheba Community Court, which to date has dealt with 480 cases, and has a backlog of more than 1,000 files, plans are afoot for the establishment of additional community courts in Jerusalem and Haifa.

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OBAMA, MORSI’S MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD, AND AMERICAN AID MONEY

IRINA TSUKERMAN

Did the Obama administration support Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood government because of the nuclear deal, not in spite of it?

A poster of deposed Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi 370. (photo credit: REUTERS/Mohamed Abd El Ghany )

The Middle East Forum’s explosive new report highlights the widespread international network of Islamic Relief’s charities and their close connections to the Muslim Brotherhood. That charity, a s sprawling international network, has not changed even after the Islamic Relief’s cofounder, Hany El-Banna, retired from official representation. Through close connections to Hamas-backed charities in Gaza, dedicated transfer of funds to Hamas-led charities, intimate links to other charities known for financing terrorist causes and organizations, and origins with people like Essam El Haddad, a foreign policy adviser to the now-deposed Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood president Mohamed Morsi, Islamic Relief has been deeply enmeshed in promoting Islamist ideology and serving as a seemingly legitimate Western front for Muslim Brotherhood’s agendas.
Haddad, who, despite seemingly retiring from Islamic Relief’s operations, opened an Islamic Relief branch in Cairo while serving as a government official in Morsi’s administration. That branch had support of the Muslim Brotherhood leadership, received a large donation from its parent branch in UK, and was used as a cover to fund the Muslim Brotherhood operations in Egypt, while appearing to engaging in legitimate charity activities.

In 2013, in his official capacity, the report reveals, Haddad met with Iran’s spy chief, Qassem Soleimani in Cairo “to advise the Government on building its own security and intelligence apparatus, independent of the national intelligence services.”
At the same time, then-president Barack Obama, whose administration likewise met with Haddad, adopted policies favoring the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, with then-secretary of state Hillary Clinton openly calling for Morsi’s release after he was arrested by Sisi’s government after the coup. For instance, the administration signed a law that made the allocation of aid to Egypt contingent on progress in human rights. However, when Morsi came to power, there was no evidence of such progress – yet aid continued to flow.

Interestingly, the Obama administration used the language of “moderate Islamists” to describe the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, and he called Iran’s President Rouhani, a “moderate” reformist, despite the rise of human rights violations in Iran on Rouhani’s watch. Muslim Brotherhood, too, on the surface rejected violent jihad, preferring to fund various proxies who either directed these attacks or educated individuals who then went on to carry out acts of terrorism. Reformists in Iran played the same game, and likely learned from one another.

There are two fascinating issues here. First, Morsi was friendly to Iran, as indicated by his visit to Tehran in 2012 – and illustrating an important policy shift. He was later accused of leaking state secrets to Iran’s Revolutionary Guards. In retrospect, given the highlighted meeting between Haddad and Soleimani, that accusation likely had some basis in reality. What is interesting is that prior to coming to power, in Egypt the Muslim Brotherhood and Iran were more likely to be considered ideological competitors rather than friends. Iran, as it now appears, would gladly coopt any group willing to further it ends. As we now know, Iran assisted the September 11 al-Qaeda terrorists, and furthermore gave shelter to al-Qaeda inside Iran as part of a special arrangement, eventually even helping the terrorist organization to rebuild itself.

The Muslim Brotherhood, on the other hand was better known for sponsoring terrorist proxies and ideological movements that reflected its Islamist ideology. Yet at the core, revolutionary Sunni Islamism, despite different religious precepts from Iran’s Shi’a based Khomeinism, was based in similar political principles and methods. The fraternization between Morsi’s Brotherhood and Khamenei-led Iran should have been less of a surprise than it was. The ties between the Muslim Brotherhood and Shi’ite Khomeinists predate the Islamic Revolution. Supreme Leader of Iran, Ayatollah Khamenei translated two of Sayyid Qutb’s – one of the Muslim Brotherhood’s chief ideologists and the intellectual father of al-Qaeda – most important work into Persian. Clearly, Muslim Brotherhood’s ideology influenced the very precepts of the Islamic Revolution in Iran; its founders certainly were inspired by the revolutionary zeal and the methods of spreading the message. These works have been spread far and wide throughout Iran, and are perhaps two of the most widely read Islamic tracts. The two Islamist movements are “similar ideologically, though not theologically.” Indeed, the secretary general of Jamaa Islamiya in Lebanon has been known to say: “There are only three schools of thought when it comes to Islamic Awakening: School of Hassan Al-Banna, School of Sayed Qutb and School of Imam Khomeini.”

Ali Akbar Velayati, adviser to Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei said: “The Brotherhood is closest to Tehran among all Islamic groups.”
Indeed, when then-president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had visited Morsi’s government in Ferbruary 2013, he stated that Egypt is Tehran’s gateway to the region.

The history of coordination of specific operations between Muslim Brotherhood and Iran does not begin or end with Egypt. In the 1990s, Iran backed Hassan al Turabi, a Muslim Brotherhood member who helped orchestrate the military coup in Sudan in 1989. Interestingly, Omar Bashir, the seventh president of Sudan, and one of the leaders of the same coup, has been a loyal Saudi ally until recently. The country is part of the Arab Coalition in Yemen, fighting against the Iran-backed Houthi rebellion. At the same time, however, the Bashir regime has cut military defense deals with Qatar and Turkey, both countries funding or allied with the Muslim Brotherhood. Qatar is also closely aligned with Iran, and hosts Youssef Qaradawi, one of the contemporary spiritual leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood.

In 2016, when Iranians assaulted the Saudi embassy in Tehran, leading to an open rift between the two countries, the Muslim Brotherhood remained silent. The Brotherhood was also receptive to other overtures by Iran.

Iran’s meddling in Africa did not stop with Morsi’s outing, although Tehran shifted its onus of activity to Libya and to other Western African countries, growing its relationships with Mauritania, Algeria, and Tunisia after the attack on the Saudi embassy. Egypt for now, is off limits. However, Muslim Brotherhood proxies scattered throughout Africa may still hold the key towards destabilization of allies hostile to Iran’s hegemonic ascent. Furthermore, Iran continues to invest a lot of money in promoting Shi’ism not just in West Africa and the Maghreb, but in Egypt as well.

Indeed, given the evidence of connection between Islamic Relief figures who were also active in politics and Iran, the political commingling and funding of mutually beneficial causes and groups by the Brotherhood and the Islamic Republic should be investigated and targeted. Both Muslim Brotherhood and Iran support Hamas, but what other terrorist groups and proxies have benefit from the arrangement briefly alluded to by the meeting between Haddad and Soleimani?

The other issue that has not yet been examined was the timing of the events. While Morsi’s officials, such as Haddad, were negotiating the building of a new and separate intelligence apparatus for Iran, the Obama administration was involved in secret nuclear deal negotiations with the Islamic Republic. A discerning reader may conclude a couple of things from this revelation. First, the Iran regime was not negotiation with the United States and others in good faith. It had belligerent motives, and further, was looking towards fostering a clandestine apparatus separate and apart from its powerful national intelligence mechanism. What is the nature of the services that the Muslim Brotherhood was promising to help develop remains unclear; whether Iran was ever successful in creating yet another agency and what purpose it was supposed to serve likewise needs to be examined. But at that time Iran clearly intended to increase its level of covert and clandestine activities far beyond its contemporaneous capabilities, and likely for reasons hostile to Western interests.

Whether or not that had anything to do with covering up clandestine nuclear research remains a mystery worth uncovering. Another view of the issue is that Iran was helping the Muslim Brotherhood build a separate intelligence apparatus in Egypt. If that is the case, questions remain. Was Iran looking to utilize this apparatus inside Egypt for its own illicit activities? Did it pursue the same strategy with other countries? Are there perhaps additional informal intelligence apparati in Turkey or other countries aligned with Tehran in some way? Has Iran created a sub rosa extension network modeled after its own clandestine groups across the world? Second, the issue of the Obama administration’s open support for Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood-led government may not be as much of a contradiction in light of the nuclear deal ambitions as previously thought.
As we now know, Obama’s red line in Syria was nothing but a ruse to please Tehran and ensure the success of the deal. Given that the Muslim Brotherhood appeared to be an important and growing partner for Iran, which viewed Sissi as significantly less interested in cooperation, perhaps the White House pursued the same line in Egypt, as it did in Syria – protect Iranian interests and the potential for the nuclear deal at all costs. How much did the Obama administration know about Muslim Brotherhood’s joint plans with Iran and when did it know it? How strong are the connections between various Muslim Brotherhood proxies, such as the Islamic Relief, and their Iran-funded counterparts? The Islamic Relief report is the first step to finding out.

סטטיק ובן אל תבורי – כביש החוף

טטיק ובן אל תבורי – העמוד הרשמי