Islamists gain in Jordan’s election

 Published in the Jerusalem Post, 16 September, 2024

            Jordan went to the polls on September 10.  This parliamentary election marked two significant milestones for the nation.  It resulted in a strengthening of Islamist — and therefore anti-Israel — power within Jordan’s political arena.  And it saw the Hashemite kingdom take its first, hesitant step towards its declared intention of converting itself into a constitutional monarchy within the next decade.  

   When he took over the throne in February 1999, King Abdullah II inherited a royal autocracy.  In line with Arab rulers for centuries past, the monarch had, and still possesses, absolute powers.  He appoints and can dismiss the government, he appoints the members of the upper house of the legislature, he initiates legislation – the lower chamber is limited to approving, rejecting or amending it.

The Arab Spring, starting in 2011, witnessed popular insurrections across the Arab world and the fall of a succession of Arab leaders.  Abdullah’s reaction was to promise his people slow, but steady, movement toward a more democratic constitution for Jordan.  Ten years later there was little evidence of any change, and in April 2021 a shocking conspiracy to replace  Abdullah with his half-brother, the former Crown Prince Hamzah, was revealed.

A relative of Abdullah, together with the king’s former top confidant, were charged with devising a “criminal project” involving Prince Hamzah, once heir to the throne.  Found guilty of sedition and incitement against the crown, the men each received a jail sentence of 15 years with hard labor.  Prince Hamzah was not arrested, and Abdullah announced that the dispute with him would be resolved within the royal family.

            One result was that in June 2021 Abdullah set up a 92-member commission, headed by former Prime Minister Samir Rifai, charged with creating a plan to modernize Jordan’s elections and the laws governing political parties.   The commission decided that within a decade Jordan’s long-established royal autocracy would be converted into a constitutional monarchy.  Governments would no longer be appointed by the king, but would be formed from the nationally elected members of parliament. 

 With that decision as a ground plan, a sub-committee approved an election law that, among other things, provided for gradually increasing political party representation in parliament. This would occur over the following three elections, until finally the sort of democratic arrangement applying in the UK or Sweden would be reached.  The leader of the largest political party emerging from the election would become prime minister and form a government.

The recent election marked the first phase in the planned reform.  It allocated 30% of the 138 parliamentary seats to political parties.  Phase two is scheduled to occur in the 2028 election, when they will occupy 50%.  The process is planned to culminate in the elections in 2032, when political parties will occupy 65% of the seats.

By then, if the current results are any indication, Jordan’s parliament and possibly its government would be in the hands of Islamists.  The Islamic Action Front (IAF), a political offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, has been in the forefront of growing calls in Jordan to repeal the Jordan-Israel peace treaty.  Ever since the Hamas pogrom of October 7  demonstrators have been surrounding the Israeli embassy in Amman, demanding its closure and the repeal of the treaty.

So far these calls have been strongly resisted by the government, representing Abdullah’s view that the treaty is a bulwark against regional instability.  If Abdullah yielded even a fraction of his power to a political leader elected and mandated by popular vote, there would be a real danger of Jordan turning its back on the peace treaty.  Abdullah will be aware that copper-bottomed guarantees safeguarding his ultimate authority will have to be built into Jordan’s planned constitutional reform – if, indeed, it actually proceeds past phase one.

While there is general support for the 10-year reform process, there are opponents who are skeptical of the strength of the will for political reform.

Nedal Mansour, a human rights activist and leader in the country’s civil society movement, is reported as saying there is little reason for Jordanians to believe that change will actually happen.

“People are not convinced that there is a serious will for reform. They feel that they are buying time by talking about gradual reform…Why should we wait another 10 years? The fact is that nothing has happened in terms of reform in the past 20 years; why will the system be any different in the coming years?”

In the event, the September 10 election resulted in Jordan's leading Islamist opposition party, the IAF, winning 31 out of the 138 parliamentary seats.  The party had 10 seats in the previous parliament.  The turnout was only some 32% of the 5 million-plus eligible voters. 

Half the 11 million strong Jordanian population is of Palestinian origin, and during the election campaign the Islamists had capitalized on people’s growing anger over the continuing war in Gaza.  The IAF’s strategy may have fostered unfortunate results.

On the Sunday before the election, September 8, a truck approached the Allenby Bridge from the Jordanian side.  It stopped not far from the crossing into Israel, and video footage shows the driver walking toward the terminal, raising a weapon and firing three times.  Each shot was fatal, and he killed three Israeli civilian guards: Yohanan Shchori, Yuri Birnbaum, and Adrian Marcelo Podzamczer. 

Security personnel returned fire, and the gunman – later identified as Maher Jazi, a Jordanian – was killed.

Hamas officials did not claim responsibility for the attack, but described it as a "natural response" to the war in Gaza.  A  recent news report indicates that the joint Jordanian-Israeli investigation into the shooting is currently focused on whether the perpetrator acted alone or whether some extremist group, operating from within Jordan, has embarked on a series of terrorist attacks against Israel. 

Whatever the truth of the matter, it is clear that Jordan is currently in a febrile state, with the king and the government attempting to prevent widespread pro-Hamas sentiment from boiling over into active protests or worse.  The IAF’s formal access of increased power and influence, following the parliamentary elections, is not calculated to pour oil on the troubled waters.  Meanwhile Jordan’s constitutional and political future looks even more uncertain

Published in the Jerusalem Post, and in the Jerusalem Post online titled: "Jordan's political future looks uncertain as Islamists make gains in recent election", 16 Sep 2024:

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-820239

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Iran’s Axis of Resistance is fundamentally unstable

Published in the Jerusalem Post, 10 September 2024

          As early as December 27, 2023, speaking to the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, defense minister Yoav Gallant said: “We are in a multifront war and coming under attack from seven theaters.” He added that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) were taking action on six of them.

          On July 1, prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu elaborated on this to a group of visiting US leaders. Israel, he told them, is engaged in defending itself on at least seven fronts, all Iranian-inspired and supported.  He listed them:  Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen, militias in Iraq, Syria and the West Bank, and Iran itself.  Iran has dubbed them the Axis of Resistance. 

Yet even though all seven look to the Iranian regime for financial and military support, and act under its guidance, to regard the Axis as anything like a unified or integrated opponent would be to misread the situation. The alliance is, in fact, inherently unstable, and therefore vulnerable. 

 In mounting its bloodthirsty incursion into Israel on October 7, 2023, Hamas certainly did not realize it was biting off more than it could chew.  Its leadership must have calculated that the organization could absorb an inevitable and massive Israeli retaliation.  They certainly never foresaw that they were dealing themselves a death blow.  In the event, Hamas’s military strength has been literally decimated by Israel’s defense forces, and whatever shape a ceasefire deal may take, Hamas will never rule in Gaza again.

 The Iranian regime became interested in Hamas in the early 1990s, when the organization broke with Yasser Arafat for signing the Oslo Accords.  It became clear that Hamas was one hundred percent rejectionist, and spurned Arafat's tactic of winning over world opinion as a preliminary to eventually ousting Israel from the Middle East.

After the first Oslo Accord a conference hosted by Iran in Tehran in support of the Palestinian cause was attended by Hamas but not by Arafat, and afterward Iran began supporting Hamas both militarily and financially.

 But Iran is the leader of the Shia Muslim world, and its founder is on record as describing the followers of the majority Sunni branch of Islam as apostates and heretics. 

Hamas, an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, is Sunni heart and soul.  It is obvious that this Iran-Hamas relationship is a marriage of convenience, destined for divorce at the first suitable opportunity.  Iran will support Hamas just as long as there is something to support, and not a moment longer.

 Then Hezbollah, formed in the early 1980s shortly after Israel invaded Lebanon in order to chase the PLO out of the country. It was Israel’s presence within Lebanese territory that led a group of Shia clerics to create the organization.  The new body modeled itself on the principles established by Ayatollah Khomeini following the Iranian Revolution in 1979, and its clear purpose was to remove the Israeli presence from Lebanon.

Much water has flowed under the bridge since then.  Hezbollah has entrenched itself within the Lebanese body politic, and now forms a significant part of the country’s government.  To retain power, it has to be responsive to some degree to the opinion of the public from which its electorate is drawn.

 Polls show that the Lebanese public has no desire to be drawn into a war with Israel.  The country is at an economic low ebb, and they see no advantage, and much to be feared, in such an enterprise.  Hezbollah will find it difficult to ride roughshod over public opinion.  The tit-for-tat armed exchanges with Israel that grow ever more lethal, have turned into combat for combat’s sake.  Hezbollah’s original purpose – to remove Israel from Lebanon – has long been an anachronism.  Now Hezbollah has nothing to gain for itself, or for Lebanon, from prolonging the conflict.  Its somewhat muted retaliation on August 29 for the assassination of  its military commander Fuad Shukr indicates as much.  It wants to take over southern Lebanon.  The only way is to wind down the conflict with Israel, and get the UN to remove its UNIFIL forces from the border.

 In 2009 the Houthis in Yemen welcomed Iranian assistance in their struggle to take over control of the country from the officially recognized government.  The Iranian regime had its own reasons – it enabled them to gain a foothold on the Arabian peninsula, much to the alarm of Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states.  Ever since 2015 a coalition assembled by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) has been holding the Houthis at bay.

The Houthis, who display “Death to Israel.  A curse on the Jews” on their flag, were

willing enough to put their domestic struggle to one side after October 7, and respond to Iran’s effort to attack Israel on as many fronts as possible.  The group has launched missiles and drones against Israel, as well as attacking commercial shipping. 

But all this extra-mural military activity was never on the Houthis’ agenda.  They have their own fish to fry, and it has nothing to do with Israel or the Palestinian cause.  They seek to gain control of the whole of Yemen, and they will not reman diverted from their main aim for very long. 

As for the Iranian-funded militias in Iraq, Syria and the West Bank, each indulge in harassing tactics that require Israel’s occasional armed military response.  Hamas has had an active presence in the West Bank for years, fomenting action against the Palestinian Authority which it once aimed to replace – an ambition that is now moribund.  On August 28 the IDF took successful action to root out the terrorist militias that had infiltrated the West Bank.

  As for Iran itself, the Supreme Leader and his acolytes, including the IRGC (Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps), rule a population seething with disaffection.  Every now and then open rebellion erupts onto the streets, in protest against the heavy-handed religious observance forced on the population, to say nothing of the privations forced on them by the heavily-sanctioned government.  The danger of a popular uprising is always present.

 On April 13, 2024,  Iran launched its first-ever direct aerial assault against Israel, involving hundreds of drones, cruise and ballistic missiles.  The anticipated military and propaganda triumph turned into a miserable failure.   Israel’s Iron Dome, American and British jet fighters, and Jordan’s refused to allow Iran to use its air space, resulted in about 99% of the aerial armada never reaching Israel.    Iran will certainly think twice, and probably more than that, before attempting a similar operation.

    Seven rather vulnerable military entities, including Iran itself, make up the much touted, but basically unstable, Axis of Resistance.  No wonder Israel’s leaders feel confident they can deal with them all – if necessary at one and the same time.

Published in the Jerusalem Post, and the Jerusalem Post online titled: "The Axis of Resistance may crumble on its own", 10 September 2024:
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-819392

My War

 Published in the Jerusalem Post Weekend Magazine, 6 September 2024

            Sunday September 3, 1939 dawned clear and sunny in the south-west of England, but to me the weather meant nothing.  Aged just 8 and hundreds of miles from home, I felt lost.  I was surrounded by cousins, uncles and aunts, but I wanted my Mum and Dad and the familiar surroundings of home.

At dawn two days before, Germany had launched an unprovoked assault on Poland. An advance force consisting of more than 2,000 tanks crossed the border, supported by nearly 900 bombers and over 400 fighter planes.  To people in Britain the news meant that war was inevitable. 

The government instantly put into effect the plans it had devised months before to protect city children from the anticipated aerial bombing.  It began transferring youngsters in their thousands from cities and towns to rural areas. This evacuation, known as Operation Pied Piper, was the largest movement of people in British history, with over 1.5 million people evacuated, including 800,000 children. 

          The next day, Saturday, the papers were filled with pictures of bewildered boys and girls on crowded railway platforms, all carrying their gas masks and with their names firmly affixed to their coats with string. Mothers in tears waved to their little ones as they steamed out of railway stations bound for unknown destinations.

            My wealthy uncle, who had built up a flourishing manufacturing business from scratch, had taken matters into his own hands.  He had traveled down to Somerset, in the far south-west of the country, and rented a large derelict house.  He then invited his married brothers and sisters, if they wished, to come and join him and his family, or to send their children, until the “emergency”, as it was called, resolved itself.

            My parents earned their living from a grocery store in London, sited within a largely Jewish population.  They did not feel it would be right to close down and flee.  So, in accordance with the posters that had begun to appear, they “stayed calm and carried on”.  But they sent their only child to safety in the country with his close family.

            For most of the 1930s Britain had clung to the trope that the First World War had been “the war to end wars”.  The country persisted in yearning for peace, despite the mounting evidence that peace was not to be had at any price.

Once Adolf Hitler had the reins of power in his hands, he began an ever accelerating program of rearmament.  Much of Britain’s political elite approved, believing that Germany had been treated unfairly under the terms exacted after the First World War in the Treaty of Versailles.  For years the UK government dragged its feet over calls to maintain an arms superiority over Germany.  Only one voice in parliament rang out strong and clear against Hitler and the Nazi regime – Winston Churchill, who was labelled a “warmonger” on all sides.

            Increasingly Hitler’s truly aggressive and expansionist ambitions became clear.  Just ahead of the 1936 Berlin Olympics, German troops, in defiance of Versailles, marched into the Rhineland and annexed it to the Reich.  Hitler proceeded to swallow Austria in March 1938, and immediately begin to demand that the Sudetenland – the German populated borderlands of Czechoslovakia – be “reunited” with the Fatherland.

            In September 1938 the British prime minister, Neville Chamberlain, made a final bid to placate the implacable.  He flew to Hitler’s residence at Berchtesgaden, and in discussions involving the French prime minister, the Italian leader Mussolini and his foreign minister, concluded what is known as the Munich Agreement.  Britain, France, Italy and Germany agreed, without consulting Czechoslovakia, that “The occupation by stages of the predominantly German territory by German troops will begin on 1st October.”  The document was signed on 29 September.

The next day Chamberlain flew back to England, and at the airport waved a flimsy piece of paper in the air.  It was not the Munich agreement, but a separate non-aggression pact that he had induced Hitler to sign before leaving Berchtesgaden.

“This morning,” he announced to the crowd, “I had another talk with the German Chancellor, Herr Hitler, and here is the paper which bears his name upon it as well as mine…I would just like to read it to you:  ‘We regard the agreement signed last night…as symbolic of the desire of our two peoples never to go to war with one another again’.“

Later that day, he stood outside the prime minister’s residence, 10 Downing Street, and told the cheering crowd: “My good friends…a British Prime Minister has returned from Germany bringing peace with honor. I believe it is peace for our time.” 

A few days later the German army marched into the Sudetenland and annexed it.  In March 1939 the Czech prime minister was forced to sign away the rest of the country. The Reich took over and it was ruled by Hitler’s Reichsprotektor. 

That was when the British public began preparing in earnest for the possibility of war.

Hitler’s next demand was for the cession to Germany of Poland’s city port of Danzig. The Treaty of Versailles had declared Danzig to be a free city administered by Poland and the League of Nations. This time Britain and France were determined to thwart Hitler’s insatiable demands.  On March 31, 1939 they formed a military alliance with Poland that guaranteed its sovereignty and independence, and promised to defend it if attacked.

The attack came on September 1, 1939.  Chamberlain sent Hitler a note declaring that if he did not withdraw his forces from Poland, Britain would declare war.

Eight years old I may have been, but I clearly recall standing in the warm sunshine that Sunday morning surrounded by family, listening to the radio placed near an open window.  As Chamberlain uttered the words: “this country is at war with Germany,” everyone reacted and one of the women burst into tears.

My war years had begun.  In the 1930s England was blessed with two major Jewish boarding schools.  My parents chose the one situated in the south coast seaside resort of Hove.  No one had the slightest premonition that, within less than a year, Hitler’s forces would have conquered three quarters of Europe including France, and that Britain faced the very real risk of invasion across the English Channel that I and my schoolmates could see from our dormitory window.       

My headmaster was not one to let the grass grow under his feet.  Selecting the remotest part of west Wales for safety, he located a castle standing in its own extensive grounds that was large enough to accommodate his school.  One morning in the fall of 1940 the whole school crowded into a number of coaches, and we set off on a five- or six-hour journey.

And there I spent the next four years, seeing my parents only briefly.  There is usually a silver lining to the darkest cloud, and with little to distract me I received a solid education, both general and Jewish, and  was thoroughly prepared for my Barmitzvah.

For this I returned home.  It was June 1944.  My first morning back coincided with the arrival over London of what German propaganda had dubbed “Hitler’s secret weapon” – the V1 rocket, or “doodlebug” as it was quickly named.  An unmanned missile, it chugged its way towards its target.  Then its engine cut out, it turned its nose towards the ground, and fell, exploding as it landed.

It was succeeded a few weeks later by the V2, a much more lethal version which flew swiftly and silently, and hit its target with no warning. As allied armies moved further into Germany they overran the V2 launch sites, and the rockets stopped arriving.  Finally, on May 8, 1945 Churchill, who had been prime minister since 1940, broadcast to the nation announcing Victory in Europe day. The country went wild.  London was filled with rejoicing crowds.  It was a heady time to be young and alive. 

The full horror of what the Nazi regime had inflicted on the Jewish people was soon to be revealed, but indications of the Holocaust even then being perpetrated had reached the Allies as early as 1942.  It even reached us in our secluded castle in Wales.

Some time in 1942 a new boy aged about 14 arrived in the school.  He spoke good English, but with a German accent.  We asked him how he had come to join us.  His family had been picked up in a typical  “Aktion”, and he and his father had been separated from his mother and the others.  They had been packed into an over-crowded railway wagon and started on a journey which lasted so long that he and his father were reduced to urinating in his father’s hat.  When they halted briefly and people were allowed out of the wagons for a break, he and his father managed to slip away.  

If I heard how they succeeded in making it over the Swiss border, I have forgotten the details.  But here he was, in our midst, safe and sound, embodying a minor triumph against the evil that had plunged the world into the Second World War.

 

ICC's Khan faces misconduct charges

Published in the Jerusalem Post, 2 September 2024 

On August 30 the UK’s Daily Telegraph reported that an organization called UK Lawyers for Israel (UKLFI) has threatened to charge the International Criminal Court’s (ICC) chief prosecutor, Karim Khan, with professional misconduct.   Khan is a British lawyer, known in the UK’s legal system as a barrister and King’s Counsel.  He is subject to the discipline of the Bar Standards Board. Found guilty of professional misconduct, a barrister in the most serious cases can be disbarred and forbidden to practice law.

In a letter to Khan dated August 27, the UKLFI refute, item by item, his accusations against the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and defense minister, Yoav Gallant, and provide detailed evidence showing that each and every one of his allegations is false.  In addition they cite new information that has come to light subsequent to his application for international arrest warrants which also shows his original charges to be in error.  They say the professional standards he has to adhere to as a member of the English bar oblige him to review his application to the ICC.

If he does not respond, the UKLFI say they will report him to his professional disciplinary body charged with professional misconduct.  They will back their charges with the vidence provided in their letter, and considerably more which they say they have available.

On May 20, 2024 Khan, as the ICC’s chief prosecutor, applied to the court to issue international arrest warrants against three Hamas leaders and also against Netanyahu and Gallant.  His request in respect of the Israeli leaders was backed by a catalog of alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity that he accused them of committing. He states as a fact that Israel indulged in “collective punishment of the civilian population”.  He substantiates this by asserting that Israel deliberately starved the Gaza population, wilfully caused them great suffering, serious injury and death, and intentionally directed attacks against them, murdering and persecuting them.  He makes these assertions without offering any proof that the actions he lists were deliberate, wilful or intentional.

 
          In their letter the UKLFI write: “We are dismayed to read that you intend to rest on the submissions you advanced in the applications, despite our having shown that every allegation against Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant set out in your published summary of them is false, and despite the highly relevant evidence that has emerged since you filed the applications. With all due respect, this seems to us to manifest a serious lack of integrity on your part. We respectfully urge you to reconsider this position in the light of your professional obligations.”

Their letter to Khan is long and very detailed.  It deals scrupulously with each allegation that Khan makes against Israel and its leaders, showing in detail where charges are patently untrue, or where evidence has emerged since Khan submitted his application that reveal the inadequacy of the original accusation.  It deals in this way with his assertions that Israel imposed a “total siege” on Gaza that involved closing all the border crossings; restricted supplies of food and medicine; cut off fresh water; cut off electricity;  obstructed aid delivery by humanitarian agencies; and was responsible for acute famine.  

One by one, by reference to ascertainably reliable evidence, it demonstrates each to be false.  For example, take the charge of an Israel-instigated famine in the Strip.  Khan says in his application:  “Famine is present in some areas of Gaza and is imminent in other areas. As UN Secretary-General António Guterres warned more than two months ago: “1.1 million people in Gaza are facing catastrophic hunger – the highest number of people ever recorded – anywhere, anytime’”.

The UKLFI observe that the quotation of the UN Secretary-General appears to be from a post by him on social media on 18 March 2024. “On that date,” they write to Khan, “reports relating to the situation in the northern part of the Gaza Strip were published…by the Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET).  It appears that the Secretary General based his post on those reports and that you also relied on them.

“On 4 June 2024," they continue, "the Famine Review Committee (FRC) published a Review of the FEWS NET analysis of 18 March 2024 which concluded that “The FRC does not find the FEWS NET analysis plausible for the current period” and “is unable to endorse the IPC Phase 5 (Famine) classification for the projection period”.

“We appreciate that this Review was published after you filed the applications,” write the UKLFI, “but it is now your professional duty to draw it to the attention of the Court, since it contradicts a key allegation on which, according to the Statement, the applications are based.”

  This example may be particularly striking, but the others are equally convincing.  In all, the weight of evidence countering Khan’s accusations against Israel in general, and Netanyahu and Gallant in particular, seems overwhelming.  But Khan has argued that the Court should take no account of submissions that challenge the basis of his application, and that he himself does not intend to amend it.  The UKLFI argue that if Khan does not agree to reconsider the terms of his application he will be guilty of professional misconduct.

According to Wikipedia, 54-year-old Karim Asad Ahmad Khan is a British lawyer specializing in international criminal law and international human rights law.  His father, a consultant dermatologist, was born in Mardan, Pakistan; his mother, a state registered nurse, in the UK.   Khan, married and with two sons, is a member of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community. One of his two brothers was once a Conservative Member of Parliament.

Under the heading: “Your professional obligations” the UKLFI point out that Khan is “registered as a practicing barrister by the Bar Standards Board” and that, as such, “you must comply with the requirements set out in the BSB Handbook.”  They proceed to maintain that if Khan continues to stand by the terms of his original application to the ICC knowing it to contain false information, he is in breach of a number of rules applying to English barristers.

“We believe,” they continue, ”that the material referred to in this letter and its Annex B constitutes only a small portion of the publicly available material refuting the allegations in the Statement. Although we have provided substantial material in this letter…we would respectfully remind you of your obligation to seek out all exonerating material, using the ICC’s substantial resources. It seems to us that you have made no real effort to do so.

“Please let us have your response within 7 days…We are not asking you to deal with the substance within 7 days, but merely to confirm that you will carefully investigate and respond to us substantively on the points we raise within a reasonable time frame.”

Their letter is dated August 27.  So they have given Khan until September 3 to confirm that he is prepared to review his application for international arrest warrants against Netanyahu and Gallant, or they will charge him with professional misconduct.  He is now uneasily balanced on the horns of a dilemma.

Published in the Jerusalem Post, and the Jerusalem Post online titled:"UK lawyers threaten to charge ICC prosecutor Karim Khan with misconduct," 2 Sep 2024:

https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/article-817301