Got this email from him late Sunday:
I took a quick look at http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/us-embassy-cables-documents/191130. It’s interesting that Israel does not appear, only Gaza, West Bank, Lebanon. I found only one entry of any interest, in US Embassy to Clinton: “Soliman brokered a half-year-long truce last year, which Hamas broke in December, leading to the Israeli invasion of Gaza.”
It’s next to inconceivable that the Embassy didn’t know that Israel broke the truce in November, that Hamas was calling for it to be reinstated, and that Israel rejected the offer – almost certainly because Israel (and the US) preferred bombing to ending the rocket threat. Israel of course officially concedes that until they invaded Gaza on Nov. 4, there was not one Hamas rocket (even though Israel violated the truce agreement from day 1, refusing to end the siege). One interesting question is whether they are flat lying, or are getting their information about the world from the NY Times. The latter would not surprise me.
On a related matter, the Sanger-Glanz-Becker article in the NYT is of some interest. The exciting discovery is that Arab dictators want the US to counter the Iranian threat. Unmentioned is the recent poll released by Brookings showing that the Arab public favors Iran obtaining nuclear weapons. The omission is natural in an intellectual culture in which “democracy” is a four-letter word (except for rhetorical flourishes). Also interesting is their statement that Iran cut off negotiations with the EU in 2005. Omitted is the fact that it did so after the EU could not provide the promised security guarantees because the US wouldn’t withdraw the threats.
Noam