RUTHFULLY YOURS

The process of selecting the successor to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei already seems underway.

President Rouhani, government cabinet officers, and deputies of the Majles (consultative assembly/parliament) usually have little to no influence in the vetting process of candidates.

The Revolutionary Guards, ranking intelligence officers, and the regime’s plutocrats do not want to elevate anyone with an independent power base or a charismatic personality.

Whoever is ultimately selected, regime stability at least for the next few years seems assured: anti-regime networks remain shredded after the 2009 nationwide protests were violently suppressed.

While U.S. policymakers, media talking-heads and many think tank pundits are fixated on the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) and Tehran’s nuclear weapons projects, the focus of Iran’s power-brokers is on regime continuity and leadership succession. Iran’s next parliamentary elections are scheduled for February 26, 2016.

The process of selecting the successor to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei already seems underway. Former President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani (1989-1997) hinted as much, according to a Reuters report. The aging first generation of the 1979 Islamic Revolution’s leadership are determined to maintain regime stability during the transition to a new rahbar (leader) upon the retirement or death of Khamenei.

Erdogan repeated on Dec. 11 that Turkey would not pull out its troops out of Iraq. In response, Iraq appealed to the UN Security Council to demand an immediate withdrawal of all Turkish troops from Iraq, calling Turkey’s incursion a “flagrant violation” of international law.

“For centuries, and even since the Mongols, sensible Islam has asked: ‘What went wrong? Why has God forsaken us, and allowed others to reach the moon?'” — Professor Norman Stone, prominent expert on Turkish politics.

With the inferiority complex and megalomania still gripping the country’s Islamist polity, Erdogan’s Islam is not sensible; it is perilous.

It is the same old Middle East story: The Shiite accuse Sunnis of passionately following sectarian policies; Sunnis accuse the Shiite of passionately following sectarian polices; and they are both right. Except that Turkey’s pro-Sunni sectarian policies are taking an increasingly perilous turn as they push Turkey into new confrontations, adding newcomers to an already big list of hostile countries.

Take President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s recent remarks on the centuries-old Shiite-Sunni conflict: they amusingly looked more like a confession than an accusation: “Today we are faced with an absolute sectarianism. Who is doing it? Who are they? Iran and Iraq,” Erdogan said.

Daniel Johnson: Our subject is the Left and the Jews. A famous phrase from the 19th century—I think it came from the German social democrat August Bebel—was that “anti-Semitism is the socialism of fools”. If that was true then, there are still plenty of these fools around today. Just as in the 19th century, when leading figures of the Left such as Karl Marx set a bad example in their writings about the Jewish people, so today we have a problem on the Left. Where does this come from? Why does it exist? For so many years, the Left, if we define it as beginning with the French Revolution, was seen as the friend of the Jewish people, of emancipation, toleration and equality. But the problem, I think, stems from something which Isaac Deutscher, a great icon of the Left, called the “non-Jewish Jew”. The price to be exacted in return for emancipation and full equality was that Jews should give up everything that was distinctive and specifically Jewish. For years, most on the Left did not believe this, but some did. Karl Marx, above all, began the trend towards anti-Semitism on the Left. These leftist thinkers saw thousands of years of Jewish tradition, religion and ritual as in some sense a burden to be sloughed off.

In today’s world that attitude still exists, but it has been hugely exacerbated by the unholy alliance that we have found among elements of the Left-not, by any means, among everyone-and the forces of Islamism. A whole new dimension has been created. We began to see this most visibly in the 1960s after the Six-Day War, when anti-Zionism morphed into the “new anti-Semitism”, as it has often been called. In this country today, and indeed across the West, anti-Semitism is no longer the preserve of the extreme Right. It has become embedded even in the respectable salons and newspaper offices of the Left.

Nick Cohen: This discussion is like wading into a minefield. Because what do you mean by Left? As Daniel suggested, there are all kinds of shades of opinions on the Left, on this as any other issue. It is like saying, “The Right and the Jews”. You can’t debate without generalisations—you can’t write without generalisations—so it is certainly true that there are anti-Semites on the Left. But it is equally true that left-wing thought can lead to conspiracy theorising. The late 20th century saw the collapse of socialism. From the 1880s through to the 1980s, you would have none of my problems of definition about talking to the Left. If you were left-wing, you were a socialist of some sort. Socialism died before the Berlin Wall came down. All over the world, people were giving up on socialism, not least Communists, especially in China and Russia.

PARIS—A year bookended by terror attacks is forcing France to reconsider some of the principles that underpin its national identity.

On Wednesday, the Socialist government of President François Hollande proposed amending the constitution to allow authorities to strip some natural-born citizens of their nationality if they are convicted of terrorism.

Another amendment would shield state-of-emergency police powers, such as to conduct warrantless searches and order house arrests, from court challenges.

The changes, which parliament is expected to approve next year, are a measure of how the French state—founded on the ideals of liberty, equality and fraternity—is adapting to the threat posed by Islamic State and other extremist groups.

‘We are creating two categories of citizens in our constitution.’
—French historian Patrick Weil

“People wonder at times who we are, as French people, as a nation,” Prime Minister Manuel Valls said in introducing the measure, which he said carries great symbolism. “I understand its implications and the debates that may ensue.”

Russia now is far weaker and much less threatening than the once daunting and frightening USSR. Besides, the present friction and clashes with the West over Ukraine and on other fronts are just a pale shadow of the once formidable Cold War.

putinismSimilarly, Russia’s present exposure in Syria and the draining of its resources in the confusing battle lines against Islamic State (IS) are but a vague reminder of the gory and massive conflict the Soviets fought in Afghanistan against IS’ forefathers, the mujahideen, that eventually bled the USSR to death. Then Moscow was caught in the trap of falling oil prices (cutting its main revenue) and growing military expenditures because of costs in Afghanistan and the new arms race with the U.S.

Now, the ongoing fall in oil prices (again cutting Russian income at a time of dire need), Russia’s growing perception as a neo-dictatorship, its military commitment in Ukraine (which destabilizes Kiev and does not help Moscow, either), and its re-entry into the Middle East after some 30 years all bring back old memories.

In this situation, Walter Laqueur’s Putinism: Russia and Its Future in the West makes a compelling read. It is inspiring possibly more than anything about Moscow’s actual predicament.

The Czech Parliament’s lower House – by an overwhelming majority with all parties except the Communists supporting it – has joined fellow European Union (EU) members – Greece and Hungary – in urging the Czech Government to refuse implementing EU racist and discriminatory labelling laws for Jewish goods produced in Judea and Samaria (the West Bank), East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights.

Czech Culture Minister Daniel Herman said that it was:

“absolutely necessary to reject the efforts to discriminate against the only democracy in the Middle East.”

Another Czech politician Frantisek Laudat argued that the guidelines:

“may evoke awkward reminiscence of marking Jewish people during World War II”

The Czech Assembly declared the new EU guidelines were:

“motivated by a political positioning versus the State of Israel”

Israeli-German Relations Polemics Have No Place in True Friendships An Essay by Christoph Schult

“A large share of Germans — perhaps even the majority — offer their one-sided support to the Palestinians, not seldom as a way of trying to relativize Germany’s responsibility for the Holocaust. “At some point we need to get over it,” is one popular refrain. Others, with clear anti-Semitic undertones, say: “The Israelis have learned nothing from history and are doing the same thing to the Palestinians that was done back then by the Nazis to the Jews.”

With dubious Holocaust comparisons, the German Israel lobby is making life difficult for supporters of the Jewish state in Germany. Polemics should have no place in the relationship.

Friendships between nations are similar to those between two people. The first rule is that they have to be tended to. The second is that the affection must be mutual. The third: A true friendship thrives on the courage to give criticism — and on the ability to accept it.

It’s hard enough to live up to this ideal in private relationships, but it’s even harder when it comes to ties between two countries. Particularly the friendship between Germany and Israel.

On the surface, it appears that relations between these two nations are better than they have ever been. This year, Germany and Israel celebrated 50 years of diplomatic relations. Young Israelis are fond of traveling to Berlin or living in the German capital. And German Chancellor Angela Merkel is more popular in Israel than United States President Barack Obama.

Germans, though, have a much tougher time defining their friendship with Israel. Two factors play a decisive role in this: the history of the Holocaust and the serious sense of guilt that Germans still carry with them today; and the current conflict in the Middle East, which has intensified as a result of Israel’s dubious occupation policies. It creates a tense relationship that no small number of Germans would rather not have to put up with. Instead they seek simplistic answers.

Former Knesset member Yinon Magal is no paragon of personal virtue. The rookie lawmaker from the Bayit Yehudi, who left a successful career in journalism to enter politics, resigned his position last month when he found himself drowning in a pool of muck of his own making.

Magal resigned last month after one after another, four women alleged that he had sexually mistreated them in various ways. The media gave the allegations saturation coverage. And Magal walked away from the Knesset and public life, quickly putting an end to the story.

While clearly no personal saint, in resigning from office, Magal acted with public virtue. He owned up to his mistakes and he took responsibility for the consequences of his behavior.

This might not seem like a big deal, but in the toxic environment that has come to characterize Israeli politics over the past 25 years, Magal’s willingness to pay a personal price for his behavior was a very big deal. It was a big deal because it signaled the beginning of the end of a very troubling era in Israeli political life.

For the past 25 years, the role of the politician in politics has become smaller and smaller. Rather than take the initiative and lead the country in the direction they pledged to the voters they would move – whether on issues of war and peace, economics, culture or health policy – for decades politicians have stood behind lawyers and waited to be given permission to make a move.

German authorities are searching for 12 refugees from Syria who entered the country using fake passports from the same source used by the Paris attackers. The passports were reportedly stolen from a passport office in Raqqa, the unofficial capital of Islamic State, in 2013 following the city’s capture.

The news comes a week after two men were arrested at a refugee center on suspicion of having links to the Paris attacks. The men entered the country at the same time as the Paris attackers and were also using false Syrian passports.

But Germany’s problems go far beyond a few potential terrorists with false passports. The German newspaper Bild is reporting that more than 250,000 of the refugees who have entered the country this year cannot be located because the system of registering refugees was so bad.