This Blog is created to stress the importance of Peace as an environmental directive. “I never give them hell. I just tell the truth and they think it’s hell.” – Harry Truman
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'Mideast peace process poses a strategic threat to Iran' (click title to entry - thank you)
Minority Affairs Minister Avishay Braverman: Cancellation of Iran FM's visit to Cairo is proof of the importance of the peace process.
By Barak Ravid and the Associated Press
Minister of Minority Affairs Professor Avishay Braverman said Saturday that the recently relaunched peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians posed "a strategic threat to Iran."
Speaking at the Shabbat Tarbut event in Haifa, the minister said that "the cancellation of a visit by the Iranian foreign minister to Egypt and the historical events that have occurred in Tehran since the start of peace talks are proof that progress in the talks will lead to an alliance between Israel and the moderate Arab states versus the axis of evil of Iran-Hamas-Hezbollah....
...Egypt has cancelled a visit by Iran's foreign minister to protest comments in which he accused Arab leaders of betrayal for attending the new round of Mideast peace talks in Washington.....
CAIRO -- Egypt has canceled a visit by Iran's foreign minister to protest comments in which he accused Arab leaders of betrayal for attending the new round of Mideast peace talks in Washington.
Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki had been scheduled to visit Cairo Monday for a meeting of Nonaligned Movement members.
Iran has an uneasy relationship with U.S.-allied Arab nations, which have watched Tehran's growing influence in the Middle East with concern because of suspicions over its nuclear program and its support for radical Islamic groups like Hamas and Hezbollah.
Mottaki said Arab leaders who attended the relaunch of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks in Washington this week were "betraying their nations."
"Some leaders ... who follow America's orders must understand that they are betraying their nations," Iran's Fars news agency quoted him as saying on Tuesday.
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Jordanian King Abdullah II attended the talks.
Egypt's Foreign Ministry said it summoned Iran's charge d'affaires in Cairo to notify him it was canceling Monday's visit and postponing the Nonaligned meeting.
Iran severed ties with Egypt after it signed a peace deal with Israel in 1979 and provided asylum to Iran's deposed Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.
A top European official was accused of antisemitism tonight after declaring that there was little point in engaging in rational argument with Jews and suggesting that the latest Middle East peace talks were doomed because of the power of the Jewish lobby in Washington.
Karel De Gucht, the European commissioner for trade, and a former Belgian foreign minister, sparked outrage after voicing his scepticism about the prospects for the negotiations which opened in the US this week. He told a Belgian radio station that most Jews always believed they were right, and questioned the point of talking to them about the Middle East.
De Gucht, who negotiates for Europe on trade with the rest of the world, and is one of the most powerful officials in Brussels, was forced today to issue a statement declaring that the views he expressed were personal.
"Don't underestimate the opinion … of the average Jew outside Israel," he told the radio station. "There is indeed a belief – it's difficult to describe it otherwise – among most Jews that they are right. And a belief is something that's difficult to counter with rational arguments. And it's not so much whether these are religious Jews or not. Lay Jews also share the same belief that they are right. So it is not easy to have, even with moderate Jews, a rational discussion about what is actually happening in the Middle East."
Explaining why he thought the peace talks were probably doomed, he added: "Do not underestimate the Jewish lobby on Capitol Hill. That is the best organised lobby, you shouldn't underestimate the grip it has on American politics – no matter whether it's Republicans or Democrats."
Jewish leaders were incandescent. "This is part of a dangerous trend of incitement against Jews and Israel in Europe that needs to be stamped out immediately," said Moshe Kantor, the head of the European Jewish Congress. "What sort of environment allows such remarks to be made openly by a senior politician? Once again we hear outrageous antisemitism from a senior European official. The libel of Jewish power is apparently acceptable at the highest levels of the EU."
Officials in Brussels stressed the remarks did not represent EU views or policies. De Gucht was forced to issue a statement clarifying his remarks.
"I gave an interview … I gave my personal point of view," he said. "I regret that the comments that I made have been interpreted in a sense that I did not intend.
"I did not mean in any possible way to cause offence or stigmatise the Jewish community. I want to make clear that antisemitism has no place in today's world."...
Can the process go forward not that everyone has VENTED !
Personally, I think we are well on our way to a sustainable peace between Israel and Palestine with a Middle East that has had quite enough of the violence within the Islamic world.
