'Just World News' with Helena Cobban

NATO and Lebanon

For many years now, successive US administrations have been vigorously trying to  persuade as many Arab countries as possible—especially those that are still in a state of war with Israel—to undertake “confidence building measures” in a purported attempt to “entice” Israel into being more forthcoming in the peace diplomacy…

Now, an episode involving the respected Lebanese political scientist Dr Amal Saad-Ghorayeb shows us that the US-dominated NATO alliance has also been part of this campaign.

Unless you’re a particular kind of a military-affairs afficianado you may not be aware that NATO runs its own institute of higher learning, the NATO Defense College (NDC) , in Rome.  Through the work of this college, as well as in other ways, NATO has been trying for some years now to impose its own form of (military-based) normalization on the relations between Israel and several Arab states-- including Lebanon, a country that (a) is still in a formal state of war Israel now, as it has since 1948, (b) has been the victim of numerous acts of Israeli aggression over those decades, including a string of extremely lethal major military invasions, occupations, and assaults, the most recent (and one of the most lethal) being that undertaken in 2006, and (c) continues to this day to be subject to Israeli aggression, including in the form of very frequent military overflights.

In these circumstances, it is scarcely surprising that Lebanon has a law barring its citizens from having any contact with Israeli military personnel. Ah, but now it turns out that NATO—a body that proclaims its support for (a certain version of) the rule of law—has been seeking to tempt Lebanese citizens to skirt or break this law by meeting with Israeli military officials in a clandestine, “off the record” kind of way.

I could digress a bit here and write about the deep problems NATO has been experiencing ever since, with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991-3, it suddenly lost its foundational raison d’etre and had to start inventing “missions” for itself in various places far distant from its originally envisaged Central European battlefields.  (As I’ve blogged quite a few times in recent months, the continuing NATO “mission” in Afghanistan is one that’s particularly ill-suited to NATO’s capabilities, and may well bring about the dissolution of the alliance in its present, neo-imperial form.)

But back to NATO and Lebanon. Sometime this summer, Florence Gaub, who works with something called the NATO Regional Cooperation Course (NRCC), which is run out of the Rome-based NDC, invited Amal Saad-Ghorayeb to give a lecture to the members of this fall’s NRCC course. Saad-Ghorayeb agreed to do it. She also, not surprisingly, sought the assurance of those inviting her that she would not be expected to work with Israeli military personnel while she was there.

This assurance was not forthcoming. On September 8, Gaub wrote to Saad-Ghorayeb noting that Israel was a full partner of NATO’s in the NATO-sponsored “Mediterranean Dialogue”, one of the co-sponsors of the NRCC course. She also wrote that, “I can not ensure that any of the NATO officers present does not by chance hold a second Israeli passport.”

(This latter statement is intriguing. How many of NATO’s member countries allow members of their militaries to have Israeli-- or other—second passports? Or is it only Israeli passports that are permitted? Also, several NATO members have sizeable military units serving in the beefed-up UNIFIL peacekeeping force in south Lebanon. Might some of those soldiers be holders of Israeli passports? An interesting thought, right there… )

In her September 8 email, Florence Gaub added,

here at NATO Defense College we provide a free academic environment under Chatham House rules, meaning that nobody can be quoted from discussions taking place here. We are not under Lebanese law and invite academics in their private capacity.... It is for this reason that we have been able, in the past, to invite scholars from very different backgrounds and to ensure frank discussions, even among Israelis and Arabs, and even among Israelis and Lebanese.
 
If this obstacle is not surmountable to you, I regret that we will not be able to host you as a lecturer here.

Saad-Ghorayeb replied to Gaub (Sept. 9) that,

The main issue for me is not how I can circumvent Lebanese law, with Chatham House rules, but rather, my refusal to violate the laws of my country even if I were able to circumvent them.

While I understand your disinclination to "disinvite" your Israeli guests, I would like to point that you don't seem to have had any reservations about disinviting me, your proposed speaker.

Perhaps it might interest you to know that the organizers of all other events featuring Israeli officers and diplomats, which I have been invited to, have respected my position on this issue. They have always found a way to accommodate my constraints.

Given your clear position on this issue, I have no desire to give this course.

Gaub’s boss, NRCC Director Sandy Guptill, also wrote an email to Saad-Ghorayeb on Sept. 9, which was notably more measured in tone than Gaub’s. Guptill wrote:

I have been kept fully informed of your situation and I fully respect your academic, professional and personal integrity and your observance of the laws of your nation. Ironically I find myself in a similar position. We cannot dis-invite any nation from participation here at this College.  That is a political decision which rests with NATO nations and [is] simply not within our remit. 

Please rest assured that we do not take lightly the loss of the opportunity to hear your thoughts and views.

(I added the emphasis there.) Of course, the biggest single nation in NATO is the US, which is also far and away the greatest supporter of Israel, in every imaginable way. Including—as noted above-- for many years US diplomats have pushed and pushed Arab countries, including Lebanon, to engage in “normal” relations with Israel even before Israel makes any concessions in the negotiations with them…

This approach has been roundly rejected by the vast majority of the Arab governments—including, very recently and decisively, by Saudi Arabia. It is described by many Arab diplomats as “peace for land for peace”: a perversion of the longstanding idea of “land for peace”, and one that, when applied in the past (including at Oslo), has too often allowed Israel to pocket all the concessions the Arab parties made while it continued to hang onto and exploit Arab land and resources.

… Anyway, after receiving Guptill’s email, Saad-Ghorayeb sent him (or her?) a reply in which she expressed appreciation for the tone of his email and the “outrage” she had felt at Gaub’s tone.

Saad-Ghorayeb added:

Implicit in [Gaub’s] words is the suggestion that my invitation only stands if I break Lebanese law… [I]n so doing, she was compromising my standing with the law ; according to Lebanese law, the penalty for any interaction (meeting, discussion etc.) between Lebanese civilians and Israeli military personnel is a prison sentence with hard labor.

But it is not only Gaub's apparent indifference to my fate which I find disturbing, but her clear disrespect for my country's legal system, which she deems violable. I wonder if she would as readily countenance the reverse scenario had I invited her to give a lecture where representatives of some state or non-state actor deemed an "enemy" by her native Germany, and I then attempted to persuade her to break German law by assuring her the utmost secrecy…

Gaub’s behavior, Saad-Ghorayeb wrote, amounted to a particularly crude form of neo-Orientalism.

Saad-Ghorayeb had sent ‘CC’ copies of this email to a number of officials at NDC/NRCC, including NDC’s Dean of Academic Affairs, Dr. Grant T. Hammond. Hammond then made the mistake (who hasn’t, at this point?) of hitting “Reply to all” with his first response to it.

Which, um, sent straight back to Saad-Ghorayeb and a number of other people the following stream-of-consciousness reaction:

While I find this despicable and the most unjust, vitriolic piece of academic claptrap I have ever encountered WE DO NOT RESPOND!  If she makes the effort to write me or the Commandant, we will do so.  But do not get involved in a pissing contest over this. Florence—you did nothing wrong.  But let’s not get into a series of negative e-mail exchanges on [t]his…

And that was the point when a copy of this whole exchange found its way into my in-box.

I wrote Hammond and asked him to clarify a number of points. In particular, I asked these questions,

[I]s it the policy of NDC to demean the legal system of another country to the extent that it asks nationals of that country to break the law?

Did the NDC make any attempt to find a reasonable and legal accommodation of Dr. Saad-Ghorayeb's concerns?

Hammond replied, courteously and at some length, as follows: 

The Faculty Advisor who invited Dr. Saad-Ghorayeb was not aware of the Lebanese law which prohibited her from speaking to an audience in which Israelis were present.  This is regrettable and the initial cause of the misunderstanding.  But there was no intention to, and it certainly is not the policy of the NATO Defense College, to demean Dr. Saad-Ghorayeb or Lebanon.  We would not expect her to break the laws of her nation.  While Dr. Saad-Ghorayeb finds it hard to believe that Dr. Gaub was unaware of the Lebanese law, Dr. Gaub and indeed others here at the College, find it hard to believe that Dr. Saad-Ghorayeb was not aware of the 15 year old relationship between NATO and the Mediterranean Dialog (MD) countries—which include Mauritania, Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, Egypt, Jordan and Israel.  As a NATO body, we were not in a position to prohibit Israeli participants who have been invited by the North Atlantic Council to participate in a NATO sponsored program of large size and duration since 1994.  That being the case, and Dr. Saad-Ghorayeb having legal stricture preventing her participation in the NRCC, Dr. Saad-Ghorayeb in effect, by her nation’s law, had to refuse to participate, and thus, “disinvited” herself.

Dr. Gaub’s reference to a free academic environment at the NATO Defense College and the use of the Chatham House Rule was an effort to describe the interchange that occurs in the discussions held here and that we have scholars from a variety of backgrounds—and course members—who have been able to have frank discussions of very serious issues.  Not knowing the specifics of the Lebanese law, and the circumstances to which it applied, Dr. Gaub indicated that if the exclusion of the Israelis were required, we would not be able to host Dr. Saad-Ghorayeb.

            While the misunderstanding of the legal circumstances involved on both sides is regrettable, the “despicable and most unjust, vitriolic piece of academic claptrap” to which I referred in my e-mail sent to all (unintentionally including Dr. Saad-Ghorayeb) in a previous message—for which I am sincerely sorry—referred not to the legal strictures affecting Dr. Saad-Ghorayeb, or her integrity in following them, but to what I considered a harsh and unnecessary personal attack on Dr. Gaub, who, to my way of thinking, had done nothing wrong, either personally  or professionally in explaining the situation to Dr. Saad-Ghorayeb.  Dr. Gaub’s reply to Dr. Saad-Ghorayeb left the matter to decide about her participation up to her, and she declined to come.  Dr. Saad Ghorayeb appeared to hold her invitation as her paramount concern and not an appreciation for the circumstance of the College, Dr. Gaub or the NATO Alliance in this matter.  In essence, her ignorance of the NATO circumstance mirrored Dr. Gaub’s ignorance of the Lebanese law.

            Dr. Gaub’s tone was neither “discourteous” nor “offensive,” nor “ungracious” and “disrespectful” in explaining the nature of the discussions held here.  While it may well be true that Dr. Saad-Ghorayeb has never spoken to a group where Israelis might be present where others “always found a way to accommodate my constraints,” it was simply not the case here.  The charge that this is a “crude form of neo-Orientalism,” is extreme and unwarranted.  The language used to describe Dr. Gaub’s behavior and imputed intentions was also.

            … While the entire circumstance is regrettable, it is another illustration of different cultural sensitivities and the work we all have to do to better appreciate each other’s social, political and cultural context.

            I can assure you—and Dr. Saad-Ghorayeb—that her academic expertise and reputation were the reason that she was invited to address the NRCC course.  That this is impossible under Lebanese Law and NATO course participation regulations is, under the circumstances, our loss.  But there is no personal slight in her being “disinvited.”  She refused to participate under the circumstances.  She was asked to address the course, a condition of her doing so was to ask the Israeli course members to absent themselves, and this NATO cannot do.   As members of the NRCC course, they are all treated equally.  While this may not be seen as appropriate from a Lebanese point of view, and I am well aware of why this is so, it was not in the power of the NATO defense College to prohibit a particular nationality from participating in its NATO approved course offerings.

Well, it strikes me that no-one at the NDC/NRCC had ever tried to find a legal and reasonable way to meet Saad-Ghorayeb’s concerns.  (A number of possible formulas for doing this suggest themselves to the agile mind.) And Hammond was telling me they had no intention of even trying to find such a formula. He, like Guptill, was simply saying that “this is how NATO insists things be done; take it or leave it.”

“NATO”, of course, is not some abstract, bureaucratic body. It is an alliance between member-states who allegedly uphold the values of democratic accountability and the rule of law. “NATO” as such cannot insist that Israeli officers who are participants in an NRCC course be physically present if a Lebanese lecturer comes into the room. “NATO”, or rather the faculty of the NATO Defense College, could certainly ask those Israeli officers to step into another room in deference to the request of an invited lecturer, whose democratically elected government has criminalized any contact between its citizens and members of Israel’s military.

Who knows, perhaps even a video link might be provided?

But at a broader level, I wonder what is the point of having this inter-military “Mediterranean Dialogue” that NATO has been running for the past 15 years? Especially since, as Hammond indicated, it involves-- along with Israel and the two Arab League states that have made peace with Israel-- four other Arab states that have yet done so?

We could also note that neither Mauritania nor Jordan is actually a Mediterranean state. So this venture is not just “about” Mediterranean-basin concerns.

It does look very much like an attempt to ram a certain sort of inter-military “normalization” down the throats of those Arab states.

Now, maybe this kind of “cooperation” would be worthwhile if, at times of crisis, the democratic countries of NATO and the governments of the Arab countries involved in this “dialogue” could use all the relationships they have built up with Israel’s military in order to restrain Israel from pursuing some of its baser and more belligerent behaviors.

But I guess that didn’t happen in 1996, when Israeli PM Shimon Peres unleashed the IDF into a big and very harmful assault against Lebanon. It didn’t happen in 2002, when Sharon sent the IDF into the West Bank and Gaza to demolish the infrastructure of the (European-funded) Palestinian Authority there. It didn’t happen in 2006 (Olmert; Lebanon), or in 2008 (Olmert; Gaza)… So really, I do wonder, what is the point of this “Mediterranean Dialogue”?

Well, as I noted above, NATO is still floundering around, trying to look for a “mission”; and it is running into deep, deep troubles in Afghanistan…

It truly is time for all the reasonable, equality-loving people of the world to get together and devise a saner approach to restoring security to the world’s troubled regions than that pursued since the end of the Cold War pursued by the pro-Israeli militarists of NATO.