When it rains, it pours, and Jeffrey Goldberg, fresh off his Israel-Iran cover article that is perhaps the most talked about foreign affairs article of the year, just wrapped up an exclusive interview with el comandante. Interestingly, Castro took the opportunity to declare his support for Israel's right to exist, and to tell Ahmadinejad to stop his anti-Jewish rants. Take it away, el jefe:

"I remember when I was a boy - a long time ago - when I was five or six years old and I lived in the countryside," he said, "and I remember Good Friday. What was the atmosphere a child breathed? `Be quiet, God is dead.' God died every year between Thursday and Saturday of Holy Week, and it made a profound impression on everyone. What happened? They would say, `The Jews killed God.' They blamed the Jews for killing God! Do you realize this?"

He went on, "Well, I didn't know what a Jew was. I knew of a bird that was a called a 'Jew,' and so for me the Jews were those birds.  These birds had big noses. I don't even know why they were called that. That's what I remember. This is how ignorant the entire population was."

He said the Iranian government should understand the consequences of theological anti-Semitism. "This went on for maybe two thousand years," he said. "I don't think anyone has been slandered more than the Jews. I would say much more than the Muslims. They have been slandered much more than the Muslims because they are blamed and slandered for everything. No one blames the Muslims for anything."

The Iranian government should understand that the Jews "were expelled from their land, persecuted and mistreated all over the world, as the ones who killed God. In my judgment here's what happened to them: Reverse selection. What's reverse selection? Over 2,000 years they were subjected to terrible persecution and then to the pogroms. One might have assumed that they would have disappeared; I think their culture and religion kept them together as a nation." He continued: "The Jews have lived an existence that is much harder than ours. There is nothing that compares to the Holocaust." I asked him if he would tell Ahmadinejad what he was telling me. "I am saying this so you can communicate it," he answered.

There's and old joke that Golda Meir used to like to repeat-- that the Jews wandered in the desert for 40 years, only to find the one piece of land in the Middle East that didn't have oil.

Well, Israel might now become an exporter of another fossil fuel-- natural gas. The finds are of around 120 trillion cubic meters, a little less than half of America's proven recoverable reserves. Only problem is that the gas find is in Israel's territorial waters near Lebanon. The maritime border between the two countries, like everything else in the area, is disputed.

Gas installations off the northern Israeli coast would make a perfect target for Hezbollah's rockets-- nobody is hurt if you miss, and if you ignite the gas on fire, it will make for prime-time TV on al-Manar.

Ohh politics. Israeli PM Netanyahu is in Greece today, smiling with Turkey’s historical enemy in an effort “re-balance” Israeli foreign policy.

Greece, which has a lot more anti-Western, leftist sentiment than most European countries, traditionally sympathizes with Arabs when it comes to the Middle East—only even having recognized Israel’s existence fairly recently. But the enemy of your enemy is your friend, and so now Greece is looking to replace Turkey as Israel’s favorite tourist destination. The Israeli airforce has also been increasingly using Greek airspace for military maneuvers, while Greece, the biggest military spender per capita in the EU (although that looks due for a change), doubtlessly eyes Israeli military technology.

In the end, Greece can’t really fill the space left by Turkey in Israel’s foreign policy, and there is little popular sympathy for Israel in Greece. But every bit helps when the world (minus America) doesn't like you, and this definitely needles the Turks.

*Hat tip to Aris

P.S. The historical irony of this is probably lost on most people. Many know that the Ottoman Sultan welcomed thousands of Jews fleeing the Spanish Inquisition, but fewer know that the Sultan encouraged Jewish emigration to Thessaloniki, now Greece's second city, until it became the center of Jewry for the entire Ottoman Empire. Thessaloniki was a key port in the region, and the Sultan hoped that bringing in Jews would help dilute Greek domination of Turkey's commerce. Jews soon became a majority in the city, perhaps the only major city in the world with a Jewish majority before being wiped out in the Holocaust. Thessaloniki is also the birthplace of Atatürk, the blue-eyed, blond-haired Turk who founded modern Turkey. More than a few conspiracy theorists (especially Islamists who despise the great modernizer) have mused that Atatürk, coming from a Jewish-majority city, must have been Jewish--of a "dönme" family that had converted to Islam but secretly retained the Jewish faith.

Of course, nobody really knows, but it is interesting to read how the gipper reacted to Israel's surprise bombing of Iraq's nuclear reactor in 1981, courtesy of James Bennet:

“I swear I believe Armageddon is near,” Ronald Reagan confided to his diary on June 7, 1981. He had just learned that the Israelis had bombed an Iraqi nuclear reactor at Osirak.

Rather than consult with the Americans in advance, Prime Minister Menachem Begin had informed the United States only “after the fact,” Reagan noted tersely, and was insisting that “the plant was preparing to produce nuclear weapons for use on Israel.” Begin felt he couldn’t risk waiting until the French, who had sold Iraq the reactor, actually shipped uranium to power it, “because of the radiation that would be loosed over Baghdad.”

“I can understand his fear but feel he took the wrong option,” Reagan wrote. “He should have told us & the French, we could have done something to remove the threat.”

But there was no question of condemning the assault. “We are not turning on Israel—that would be an invitation for the Arabs to attack,” Reagan continued. “It’s time to raise Hell world wide for a settlement of the ‘middle-east’ problem. What has happened is the result of fear & suspicion on both sides. We need a real push for a solid peace.”

Finally, a considered take on the subject. The introductory paragraph:

For the Obama administration, the prospect of a nuclearized Iran is dismal to contemplate— it would create major new national-security challenges and crush the president’s dream of ending nuclear proliferation. But the view from Jerusalem is still more dire: a nuclearized Iran represents, among other things, a threat to Israel’s very existence. In the gap between Washington’s and Jerusalem’s views of Iran lies the question: who, if anyone, will stop Iran before it goes nuclear, and how? As Washington and Jerusalem study each other intensely, here’s an inside look at the strategic calculations on both sides—and at how, if things remain on the current course, an Israeli air strike will unfold.

Thinking about the Israeli-Palestinian issue over the past week has reminded me of that famous (but possibly apocryphal) Henry Kissinger quote about European disunity. Israel's detractors don't want to hear this, but Arab disunity is one of the biggest impediments to making peace in the region. Whom should Netanyahu call if/when he wants to make peace?

Based on the vitriol in the press, you could be forgiven for forgetting that Israel has withdrawn twice in the past 10 years from occupied territories, and formed a new party 5 years ago (Kadima) based on a platform of withdrawing from the remaining territories. Kadima was the ruling party in Israel until Netanyahu took over last year. 

Unilateral withdrawal was supposed to address the problem of not being able to dial up the leader of the Arab world. But it didn't--without Arab leadership, the most extreme voices prevailed in response. After Israel pulled out of South Lebanon, there was no peace-- only rockets and kidnappings from a de-facto Hizbullah state. Replacing one "party of God" for another, the withdrawal from Gaza has had the same result.

So the withdrawals from South Lebanon and Gaza, which were supposed to be the templates for withdrawal from the Golan Heights and the West Bank, have instead become fierce arguments for continuing to occupy the West Bank (and keep Gaza under lockdown). 

With rejectionists in control of Gaza, the linchpin of the piece process is now the West Bank. Withdrawing from the West Bank and establishing a Palestinian state under Mahmoud Abbas's leadership could be a masterstroke-- sucking air out of the rejectionist Hamas-Hizbullah-Iran-Syria terror caucus, and putting power back into the hands of pragmatic realists. It could also be a debacle-- opening the population centers around Tel Aviv to insufferable rocket attacks, making Israel's only international airport inoperable, and emboldening the rejectionists to focus on de-legitimizing pre-1967 Israel.

Unfortunately, all recent history points to the latter outcome. Considering the immense political capital involved in withdrawing from the West Bank, Israel's last bargaining chip, and the unprecedented fight with the settler movement necessary to make it happen, it is impossible for any Israeli leader to countenance withdrawal at this point. Sadly, that makes it impossible to see a viable peace in the future. And every day that the status quo endures, the stronger the rejectionist camp becomes.

NYTimes:

Israel is a liberal democracy stuck in the blind alley of a morally corrupting 43-year-old occupation that has made force its reflexive mode of operation. Several factors have nudged the country rightward: religious-settler extremism; obliviousness to the Palestinian plight now concealed behind walls; Russian-imported strands of Arab-baiting intolerance. But it is still a liberal democracy, home to a level of debate and openness unknown elsewhere in the Middle East. This needs broader acknowledgment.

What Israel in turn must realize — before it is too late — is that the real threat it faces today is not one of destruction but of de-legitimization. Its tactical lurches, often violent, do not add up to a strategy; they have resulted in a shocking erosion of Israel’s stature. I was talking the other day to the Israeli ambassador to a West European nation and he complained that he could rarely set foot on a university campus these days. Universities represent the future. 

The only way to re-legitimize Israel and integrate it is an end to the occupation and the achievement of a two-state solution, with Israel as the homeland for the Jewish people and Palestine as the homeland for the Palestinian people. 

Israel cannot do this alone. Feckless Arab powers must step forward. But Israel emphatically cannot do this, ever, by succumbing to a deeper and giddier embrace of those terrible twins, victimhood and force — terrible because at once addictive and blinding.

From Stratfor:

Israel’s actions have generated shifts in public opinion and diplomacy regionally and globally. The Israelis are calculating that these actions will not generate a long-term shift in the strategic posture of the Arab world. If they are wrong about this, recent actions will have been a significant strategic error. If they are right, then this is simply another passing incident. In the end, the profound divisions in the Arab world both protect Israel and make diplomatic solutions to its challenge almost impossible — you don’t need to fight forces that are so divided, but it is very difficult to negotiate comprehensively with a group that lacks anything approaching a unified voice.