A satellite image shows Russian SU-33 fighter planes near Ukraine's border. DigitalGlobe
Nato has released satellite images of the Russian military buildup on Ukraine’s eastern border: a powerful concentration of fighter planes, helicopters, artillery, infantry and special forces which officials say could be ready to move with just 12 hours notice.
The images appear to undermine official suggestions from Moscow that there is nothing unusual about the troop movements, nor any reason to be alarmed.
The pictures show rows of hundreds of tanks and armoured vehicles apparently waiting for orders in fields and other temporary locations around 30 miles (50km) from the frontier. The images, taken in the past two weeks, show some of what Nato said was around 100 staging areas that were almost entirely unoccupied in February.
One of the images showed the previously empty Buturlinovka airbase 90 miles from the border now hosting dozens of fast jets, even though there are no hangars or other infrastructure normally associated with such activity. Another, of Belgorod, 25 miles from the border, showed about 21 helicopters on a greenfield site – again with no hangers or infrastructure – which officials said could be part of a forward operating base.
Russian SU-27/30, SU-24 and MiG-31 fighter jets on the tarmac at Buturlinovka airbase. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images
“This is a capable force, ready to go,” said Brigadier Gary Deakin, who runs Nato’s crisis operations and management centre at the alliance’s military headquarters near Mons, Belgium. “It has the resources to move quickly into Ukraine if it was ordered to do so. It is poised at the moment, and it could move very fast.”
Deakin said between 35,000 and 40,000 Russian troops were “at a state of advanced readiness”, and could deploy “within 12 hours from a decision taken at the highest level”. With many of the troops and tanks currently based within about 30 miles from the border, that could mean crossing into Ukrainian territory within an hour of moving.
According to Nato the images reveal telltale signs of an invading force, and not merely troops on “exercise” as Moscow has claimed. The images apparently show that in Kuzminka, where tanks and infantry fighting vehicles have gathered, there are no proper barracks, significant buildings or even parking. “We just don’t see much infrastructure. There is more here than it was built for,” said Deakin.
Primorko-Akhtarsk airbase in southern Russia. Photograph: AP
Deakin warned that a potential strike force could go further than Ukraine’s eastern regions where pro-Russian elements are currently demanding secession. “Undoubtedly it could strike into eastern Ukraine, but it could also do a land bridge to Crimea, and potentially even down the Black Sea coast to Odessa. The capability is there, but we don’t know the intent,” Deakin said. “That is grounds for concern.” With a total armed personnel of just 130,000, Ukraine would be unlikely to provide much resistance to the invading Russians, officials added.
The images were released as separatist protests in mainly Russian-speaking eastern Ukraine entered their fifth day, with pro-Moscow supporters still out in a standoff in two cities. Kiev has said protesters who seized public buildings in Donetsk, Luhansk and Kharkiv are copying events in Crimea, annexed by Russia last month.
Moscow has denied it is preparing an invading force. The Russian foreign ministry insisted on Wednesday that troops near Ukraine’s border posed no threat and the movements were nothing more than the “everyday activity of Russian troops on its territory”. But the Nato secretary general, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, dismissed these claims. “As I speak, some 40,000 Russian troops are massed along Ukraine’s borders,” Rasmussen said in Prague on Thursday. “Not training, but ready for combat. We have seen the satellite images, day after day.”
A satellite image purporting to show Russian special forces at Yeysk, southern Russia. Photograph: AP
Russian officials have also accused Washington and Nato of fuelling tension in the region, with the foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, claiming in a Guardian article that it the US and EU that are destabilising Ukraine.
Senior Nato officials have warned that the buildup is already having a psychological, destabilising effect, helping stoke up the turmoil in eastern Ukraine. “These masked guys would not be taking over government buildings if there were not 40,000 soldiers just across the border,” said one official.
The revelations come before next week’s meeting of top diplomats from the EU, Russia, Ukraine and the United States to discuss the crisis. The meeting’s venue has still to be decided, but it will gather Lavrov, the US secretary of state, John Kerry, the EU foreign policy chief, Catherine Ashton, and Ukraine’s foreign minister, Andriy Deshchytsia.
At the same time, Nato is drawing up measures to bolster its defences in central and eastern Europe, and is likely to include a tripling of air patrols in the Baltics. Nato’s top military commander, the US air force general Philip Breedlove, will present proposals for air, land and sea reinforcements to Nato ambassadors next week. Britain is among the Nato members offering support, including four Typhoons, while Denmark has offered four F-16s and France has put forward another four, either Rafales or Mirages.
1. One might argue with the power of overwhelming
argument, that the recent clashes between the Ukraine government and the
Russian government (*) are showing us in fact a grim a picture of something in
the order of a rival-ridden confrontation between one mafia like organization
(Russia) and the other (Ukraine).
2. I purposely speak of two opposing, separate
nation-representing mafia-clans, given the immense corruption and criminal
behavior by the governing oligarch-clans on both sides (plus the sufficiently
documented, structural friendly interaction between both governments and a
number of the abusive oligarchs) together with the long tradition for
ultra-nationalism, fascism and theocratism within the two nation-states alike.
3. In that respect I am very glad, that Ukraine is NO
member of the NATO or the EU (yet), because the One for All and All for One
NATO-motto might have already ignited a mini-WWIII by now.
4. In the same context of a developing inter-national
mafia-war there is the renowned / feared Gaz-Prom button - 30& of all EU
oil and gaz is being imported from Russia, as you very well might know - so the
energy related sanctions that has been spoken of the other day by the capo di
tutti capi Putin, most probably will appear to be the first economical war
tactics by the Russian mafia to be employed.
5. I do consider for example a growing
confrontation-scenario like this : The current of Russian gas-supply will first
be slowly but certainly squeezed into the west of Ukraine and then gradually
extended to eastern Europe, until it will reach the energy vulnerable
industrial heartland of the EU.
6. Maybe partly parallel to that economical warfare
blackmail tactics, the contingent of ethnic Russians in the Ukraine will start
to (further) politically destabilize the country (and the Russian fifth column
in the Baltic's and Finland may likewise to be called into sabotage like
action).
7. At least as far as the developments between
"the East and the West" are directing at this moment, we hardly can
do anything else but conclude, that the outbreak of a civil war within the
Ukraine is closer than ever before and in that scenario, the west - given its
beating on the drums of war-rhetoric - might very well "feel obliged"
to intervene in a proxy-mode for the Ukraine mafia, who is fighting the Russian
mafia.
8. So to formulate it a little ironic : The happy cold
war days are here again and in the end will both damage the interests of the
Russian and the European people...
N.B. I can - nor can any other civilian - not judge on
/ determine the authenticity of the USA satellite pictures on the alleged build
up of Russian troops along the Russian-Ukraine border, which in the end might
have been easily produced with a little help from some photo-shopping friend :
Something like "in times of war, the truth always appears to be the first
victim"..
(*) Look for instance at the book "Mafia
State" from the hands of Guardian Russia correspondent Luke
Harding...
Take care Bob you may get drunk on the word "mafia" as you seem
to overindulge in its use. Mafia is a typical Sicilian phenomenon and to keep
on bestowing this label on distant Russia is both ridiculous and plainly
untrue.
1. Although I am not sure yet, from what perspective
of interests you are reacting here, but do not try the old semantic debating
trick on us (in order to plant a diversion from the subject of Russia the
Mafia-State) :
Mafia - in the more general (and publicly accepted)
meaning of the word, stands for (highly sophisticated sometimes nowadays)
ruthlessly and violently operating, organized crime EVRYWHERE IN THE WORLD
2. So the Japanes Yakuza, the Chinese Triads, the
South and Middle American drug-syndicates, the Russian and and Ukranian Olichargh
Mobsters, the well-known US crime syndycats, the Cosa Nostra of Sicily, the
Ndrangheta of Calabria, or the Camorra of Naples, or the Stidda and Sacra
Corona Unita of Puglia etc etc. are legitimately being referred to as
"MAFIA".
3, Given the intimate entanglement between the Russian
and the Ukrainian mafia with their distinctive successive national governments,
one is fully authorized to speak of a (rapidly developing) Mafia war between
Russia and the Ukraine in this ever-escalating confrontation.
4. One also has to take into account in this conflict,
the historically close contacts between the Russian and the Ukrainian
ultra-nationalist extreme-right militants and the distinctive governments of
Russia and Ukraine...
Gen David Petraeus has previously said US online psychological operations are aimed at 'countering extremist ideology and propaganda'. Photograph: Cliff Owen/AP
The US military is developing software that will let it secretly manipulate social media sites by using fake online personas to influence internet conversations and spread pro-American propaganda.
A Californian corporation has been awarded a contract with United States Central Command (Centcom), which oversees US armed operations in the Middle East and Central Asia, to develop what is described as an "online persona management service" that will allow one US serviceman or woman to control up to 10 separate identities based all over the world.
The project has been likened by web experts to China's attempts to control and restrict free speech on the internet. Critics are likely to complain that it will allow the US military to create a false consensus in online conversations, crowd out unwelcome opinions and smother commentaries or reports that do not correspond with its own objectives.
The discovery that the US military is developing false online personalities – known to users of social media as "sock puppets" – could also encourage other governments, private companies and non-government organisations to do the same.
The Centcom contract stipulates that each fake online persona must have a convincing background, history and supporting details, and that up to 50 US-based controllers should be able to operate false identities from their workstations "without fear of being discovered by sophisticated adversaries".
Centcom spokesman Commander Bill Speaks said: "The technology supports classified blogging activities on foreign-language websites to enable Centcom to counter violent extremist and enemy propaganda outside the US."
He said none of the interventions would be in English, as it would be unlawful to "address US audiences" with such technology, and any English-language use of social media by Centcom was always clearly attributed. The languages in which the interventions are conducted include Arabic, Farsi, Urdu and Pashto.
Centcom said it was not targeting any US-based web sites, in English or any other language, and specifically said it was not targeting Facebook or Twitter.
Once developed, the software could allow US service personnel, working around the clock in one location, to respond to emerging online conversations with any number of co-ordinated messages, blogposts, chatroom posts and other interventions. Details of the contract suggest this location would be MacDill air force base near Tampa, Florida, home of US Special Operations Command.
It also calls for "traffic mixing", blending the persona controllers' internet usage with the usage of people outside Centcom in a manner that must offer "excellent cover and powerful deniability".
The multiple persona contract is thought to have been awarded as part of a programme called Operation Earnest Voice (OEV), which was first developed in Iraq as a psychological warfare weapon against the online presence of al-Qaida supporters and others ranged against coalition forces. Since then, OEV is reported to have expanded into a $200m programme and is thought to have been used against jihadists across Pakistan, Afghanistan and the Middle East.
OEV is seen by senior US commanders as a vital counter-terrorism and counter-radicalisation programme. In evidence to the US Senate's armed services committee last year, General David Petraeus, then commander of Centcom, described the operation as an effort to "counter extremist ideology and propaganda and to ensure that credible voices in the region are heard". He said the US military's objective was to be "first with the truth".
Centcom confirmed that the $2.76m contract was awarded to Ntrepid, a newly formed corporation registered in Los Angeles. It would not disclose whether the multiple persona project is already in operation or discuss any related contracts.
Nobody was available for comment at Ntrepid.
In his evidence to the Senate committee, Gen Mattis said: "OEV seeks to disrupt recruitment and training of suicide bombers; deny safe havens for our adversaries; and counter extremist ideology and propaganda." He added that Centcom was working with "our coalition partners" to develop new techniques and tactics the US could use "to counter the adversary in the cyber domain".
Asked whether any UK military personnel had been involved in OEV, Britain's Ministry of Defence said it could find "no evidence". The MoD refused to say whether it had been involved in the development of persona management programmes, saying: "We don't comment on cyber capability."
OEV was discussed last year at a gathering of electronic warfare specialists in Washington DC, where a senior Centcom officer told delegates that its purpose was to "communicate critical messages and to counter the propaganda of our adversaries".
Persona management by the US military would face legal challenges if it were turned against citizens of the US, where a number of people engaged in sock puppetry have faced prosecution.
It is unclear whether a persona management programme would contravene UK law. Legal experts say it could fall foul of the Forgery and Counterfeiting Act 1981, which states that "a person is guilty of forgery if he makes a false instrument, with the intention that he or another shall use it to induce somebody to accept it as genuine, and by reason of so accepting it to do or not to do some act to his own or any other person's prejudice". However, this would apply only if a website or social network could be shown to have suffered "prejudice" as a result.
• This article was amended on 18 March 2011 to remove references to Facebook and Twitter, introduced during the editing process, and to add a comment from Centcom, received after publication, that it is not targeting those sites.
Outside the U.S. Embassy in Amman, Jordan, activists demonstrate against U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and his peace proposal, Jan. 29, 2014. (Khalil Mazraawi/AFP/Getty Images)
As talks between Israel and the Palestinians passed their halfway point, each participant was following a different agenda. With chances of a peace agreement fading, Secretary of State John Kerry tried desperately to maintain a show of optimism; Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu was determined to see that the talks failed and that Palestinians bore the blame; and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas had no illusions about the outcome but was determined to stick it out.
At Camp David in 2000 Prime Minister Ehud Barak offered the Palestinians a mini-state in the West Bank composed of separate enclaves surrounded by Israeli territory. Nearly 14 years later, Netanyahu is offering even less. His stipulations at the start of negotiations included Israeli sovereignty over all of Jerusalem, the stationing of Israeli troops in the Jordan Valley, and no right of return for Palestinian refugees. All run contrary to the Palestinians’ demands for a return to the pre-June 1967 borders, a capital in East Jerusalem, and implementation of U.N. Resolution 194 affirming the Palestinians’ right to return to their homes. Palestinian negotiators led by Saeb Erekat nevertheless remained at the table.
When the talks were well under way, Netanyahu came up with a deal breaker by announcing that Israel’s “minimal requirement” was that the Palestinians recognize Israel as a Jewish state. This was “an essential condition,” he said, although Israel had made no such demand when negotiating peace with Egypt and Jordan. Netanyahu knew no Palestinians could accept this demand, since doing so would mean legitimizing the second-class status of Palestinian Israelis, nullifying the refugees’ right of return, and denying the Palestinians’ long history in Palestine and their unjust expulsion from their land in 1948.
“It’s my narrative, it’s my story,” Erekat said. “I’ve never heard in the history of mankind that others must participate in defining the nature of others. It’s ridiculous.” Even an Israeli cabinet member, Yair Lapid, objected, saying, “My father did not come to Haifa from the Budapest ghetto in order to get recognition from Mr. Abbas.” Jews elsewhere in the world might also object to conflating the Israeli nation with Judaism in view of Israel’s violations of Judaism’s most basic principles, with their emphasis on justice, compassion and respect for law.
These objections seemingly had no effect on Kerry, who suggested that Abbas recognize Israel as a Jewish state in exchange for Israel’s acceptance of the 1967 borders as the basis of future talks. In other words, he was asking Palestinians to trade their historic rights merely for a chance to discuss the 1967 borders as the boundaries of their future state, with no guarantee that Israel would accept those boundaries in the final agreement.
In fact, Israel’s intent was clear. On Jan. 6, four days after Kerry had visited Israel, the government gave final approval to building 272 new apartments deep inside the West Bank in the settlements of Ofra and Karnei Shomron. A week later the government announced plans to build 1,400 new units, including 600 in East Jerusalem, which Israel annexed after the 1967 war, and the rest in the West Bank. “A government that is seeking a two-state solution would not further entrench the conflict by building in the settlements,” Lior Amihai of Peace Now said.
Kerry had lured the Palestinians back to the negotiating table without a settlement freeze but with the promise of future economic benefits and Israel’s agreement to release 104 long-term prisoners. So far there has been no sign of economic benefits, and with each release of prisoners Israel announced plans to construct more settlement housing.
The trade-off angered both sides. Right-wing Israelis complained that linking the release of murderers with settlement construction was immoral, and a furious mob of right-wing protesters surrounded Netanyahu’s office and had to be dispersed by police. As more new construction was announced, the Palestinians renewed their threat to seek redress from U.N. agencies, including the International Criminal Court—and they are likely to do so when the talks end.
All but overlooked in the discussion was Netanyahu’s statement referring to “the protection of settlements in the land of Israel” as a “vital interest.” It was in effect a declaration that the West Bank is an integral part of Israel—and will remain so. The Knesset already is considering a bill to annex the settlements in the Jordan Valley, where 60,000 Jews occupy some of Palestine’s most fertile land. A Labor-backed bill to prohibit the government from annexing West Bank land unless it was authorized in a peace treaty was voted down.
Still Kerry struggled on and came up with a new plan. If there was not to be the comprehensive peace agreement he and President Barack Obama had envisioned at the beginning of the talks, there would at least be what administration officials called a “framework” accord by the end of April. The object, Kerry said, was to achieve enough of “a convergence on core issues that the two sides can make headway toward an agreement leading to an independent state.”
Jewish settlers from the illegal settlement of Maaon take photos of an elderly Palestinian shepherd after they pushed him to the ground near the village of Umm el-Kheir, in the southern Hebron hills, Jan. 25, 2014. (Hazem Bader/AFP/Getty Images)
The framework would not be signed and would contain reservations by both sides. Palestinians could rightly conclude that this meant another set of vague promises, like the Oslo accords and George W. Bush’s “roadmap,” that Israel has no intention of fulfilling. “It is buying time without a solution, extending the negotiations for a year,” said Zakaria al-Qaq of Al Quds University. Hanan Ashrawi, veteran negotiator and official of the Palestinian Liberation Organization, called the proposal a sham. “I can’t believe how naive, or disingenuous and complicit the Americans are,” she said.
As if to underline her words, Vice President Joseph R. Biden delivered an effusive eulogy at former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s funeral on Jan. 13. Sharon, who was knicknamed variously as “Butcher” and “Bulldozer,” and denounced by some human rights groups as a war criminal, was the architect of the rapid expansion of settlements that enabled Israel to cement Israel’s hold on the West Bank (see pp. 22-25). “He left us too soon,” Biden said, and reiterated America’s “unflagging” commitment to Israel.
As hopes for a peace agreement dwindled, Netanyahu and his ministers blamed Palestinian “incitement” as a prime obstacle to peace. When Kerry arrived in Jerusalem on Jan. 2, Netanyahu complained, “In the six months since the start of peace negotiations, the Palestinian Authority continues its unabated incitement against the State of Israel.” Like an antiphonal chorus, Yuval Steinitz, minister of strategic affairs, charged, “They are poisoning Palestinian children with deep hatred of Israel and the Jewish people,” and Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman accused Abbas of “diplomatic terrorism.”
Israel’s accusations would seem ludicrous if they were not backed up by a powerful Washington lobby and a Congress eager to do Israel’s bidding. Common sense suggests that a population suffering under 47 years of oppressive military occupation, theft of their land, and destruction of their economy doesn’t need inciting to arouse their hatred. Children who see their parents humiliated at checkpoints, whose homes are broken into at night and vandalized by soldiers, who themselves have been yanked from their beds, handcuffed and dragged off to jail, and bullied into incriminating their neighbors do not need textbooks to tell them to hate Israel.
During the current round of peace talks, Israeli forces increased their raids on villages and refugee camps, killing more than 23 Palestinians in 2013. Said Jasir, 85, died on Jan. 2 when soldiers fired excessive amounts of tear gas into his home in Kafr Qaddum while they were dispersing a rally commemorating the founding of the Fatah movement.
Palestinians also had to contend with more than 1,100 attacks by armed settlers in 2013. Israeli soldiers seldom intervene. A typical attack reported by B’Tselem on Jan. 8 took place when masked settlers invaded Urif, a village near Nablus, and pelted the local school with stones. When students threw the stones back, soldiers fired tear gas at them. Last year the army was filmed driving through Urif in the middle of the night with sirens blaring, throwing stun grenades and shouting, “Good morning, Urif!” The nightly torment went on for two weeks.
The ordeal that tens of thousands of Palestinians endure every day was illustrated in all its horror on Jan. 4, when Muhammed Yakoub, the father of seven children, was crushed to death in the crowd at the Ephraim/Taybeh checkpoint near Tulkarem. Every morning some 10,000 Palestinian workers are herded into a pen at the checkpoint, where they wait to get to jobs in Israel, and every morning guards process them with deliberate slowness. On the day Yakoub died the treatment of Palestinians like cattle bound for slaughter proved fatal.
In only a few places on earth are the hardships greater than in Gaza, where the people are enduring one of the longest sieges in history. Israel’s frequent closing of the one commercial border crossing means residents often go without heat or light for 18 hours a day because there is no fuel. Meanwhile, Israeli guards continue to shoot and often kill Palestinians who come too close to the border fence, whether to check on their crops or collect gravel for building material.
Perhaps the cruelest aspect of Israel’s occupation policy is that it has forced the formerly self-sufficient territories to depend on foreign aid to survive. The World Bank’s 2013 report concluded that “The most significant impediment to economic viability in Palestinian Territories is the multilayered system of restrictions imposed by the Israeli government.” Border closings prevent farmers from exporting their produce, and import restrictions on building materials and machinery have left 70,000 construction workers without work. Israel recently blocked installation of a high-tech cargo scanner donated by the Netherlands to be installed at the crossing from Gaza into Israel to facilitate exports. Israeli officials gave no explanation.
By now Obama and Kerry must surely have learned what four U.S. presidents and secretaries of state learned before them: that Israel will gladly negotiate forever while building more settlements and refusing to allow the establishment of an independent Palestinian state. After the failure of the Camp David negotiations in 2000, Yasser Arafat was widely accused of not wanting peace because he had turned down Barak’s seemingly generous offer. The response by the late columnist Charley Reese in this magazine is still relevant.
“It was, in fact, an offer that no Palestinian could have accepted,” Reese wrote. “First, Palestinians would have had to kiss goodbye to West Bank and Gaza land already confiscated by the Israelis. They would have had no control over their borders or the water under their feet. They would have had to write off the rights of Palestinian refugees, acknowledge Jewish ownership of the land underneath the third holiest site in Islam, and they would have gotten in return a non-viable country cut into giblets at the mercy of the Israelis.” (See Aug./Sept. 2001 Washington Report, p. 13.)
As for the charge that Palestinians are terrorists, Reese wrote in the same column: “It is not they who have used tanks, advanced war planes and helicopter gunships against civilians; it is not they who use death squads and assassinations; it is not they who imposed collective punishments on innocent human beings.”
In view of recent happenings in the region, it seems all the more remarkable that the Palestinians have remained pro-democratic and free of the religious and tribal conflicts that are plaguing the region. In Egypt, a referendum in mid-January endorsed a constitution that gives added power to a military that has outlawed all dissent, shut down the opposition media, and jailed thousands of members of the Muslim Brotherhood. Anyone who campaigned for a no vote was arrested.
In Syria the rebellion against President Bashar al-Assad has turned into a region-wide war between al-Qaeda and other Sunni factions against Shi’i, with secular groups that originally protested the Assad government’s denial of human rights now outnumbered by militant religious groups.
Sunni militants in Syria have attacked Hezbollah sites in Lebanon and move freely in and out of Iraq, where they have joined forces with Sunnis fighting the government of Shi’i Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. Al-Maliki’s mass arrests of Sunnis, and neglect of Sunni communities, have boosted recruitment by al-Qaeda and contributed to its growing strength in Iraq. The city of Falluja, which was largely destroyed by the Americans, again came under siege, with local tribes as well as al-Qaeda fighting the army. Residents of Fallujah, Ramadi and other Sunni cities are reportedly more sympathetic to al-Qaeda than to the government.
Having invested 4,000 American lives and a trillion dollars in Iraq, the U.S. is reluctant to see the government displaced by extremists, and Obama has accordingly agreed to send the Iraqis Hellfire missiles and other weapons. But the sectarian violence is not likely to end as long as al-Maliki maintains the oppressive policies that provoked it.
Kerry was able to persuade the more moderate rebel groups in Syria to attend a conference in Geneva on Jan. 22 to discuss an orderly transition once Assad is ousted, and Tehran asked to attend the meeting. The request was backed by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and U.N. special envoy Lakhdar Brahimi, but despite Iran’s importance as a regional power, the U.S. said no (see story p. 28). Meanwhile, as Iran complies with its recent agreement to freeze nuclear activities in return for the easing of sanctions, a Congress more responsive to Israel’s wishes than to the White House is threatening to impose new sanctions.
Robert M. Gates, former defense secretary under George W. Bush and Barack Obama, writes in his new book Duty that when Bush was under pressure to take military action against Iran or support an Israeli attack on that country, Gates warned him, “We must not make our vital interests in the entire Middle East, the Persian Gulf and Southwest Asia hostage to another nation’s decisions—no matter how close an ally.” Israel’s obstruction of Kerry’s recent peace efforts and its threats to attack Iran indicate how damaging to America’s interests that alliance is.
Rachelle Marshall is a free-lance editor living in Mill Valley, CA. A member of Jewish Voice for Peace, she writes frequently on the Middle East.
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