ISRAEL

ISRAEL

Ha’aretz, Tel Aviv, Jan. 30: Not a year has passed since Danny Ayalon completed his term as Israel’s ambassador in Washington, but he has already seen fit to criticize Barack Obama, who may well be the next U.S. president or vice president. In an article published in The Jerusalem Post, Ayalon wrote that during his two meetings with Obama, he got the impression that the Democratic candidate was “not entirely forthright” regarding Israel. Similar and even worse smears can be found in abundance in American blogs and e-mail chain letters.

While Obama was taking advantage of Martin Luther King Day to speak out against anti-Semitism among blacks, Jewish spokesmen were using racist language against him, solely because his father was Muslim. Since it is hard to find so much as a single anti-Jewish statement in Obama’s political record, or even support for anti-Israel policies, his defamers base their arguments on the fact that his positions on the Middle East conflict are “leftist” — solely because he rejects the right’s positions, which are more acceptable to some Jewish-American leaders.

Special relationship

The U.S. elections are important to Israel because of the two countries’ special relationship and America’s support for Israel, whose value cannot be overstated. There is a major contradiction between this fact and a smear campaign against a candidate with a Muslim name, which risks causing many Americans, and especially blacks, to feel alienated from Israel and Jews. Obama is sensitive to Israel’s security needs, and he proved this through his Senate votes, his visit to northern Israel during the Second Lebanon War, and his unequivocal statements against both Hezbollah, which violated Israel’s sovereignty in the North, and Hamas, which violated Israel’s sovereignty in the South.

Great damage has already been caused because Obama announced that an ugly campaign was being waged against him in the Jewish community. That alone ought to be enough at least to make Israel’s leaders say something about Jews who preach against anti-Semitism while employing similar tactics against other minorities.

BRITAIN

The Times, London, Jan. 30: Kofi Annan has rarely been blunter, more heartfelt or more anguished in his appeal. Kenya, he told its leaders yesterday, was in turmoil, its people suffering, its land untilled, its tranquillity rapidly descending into chaos. The former United Nations Secretary-General knows that he is racing against time in his desperate attempt to halt the downward spiral. No one, he said, could stand by and allow the violence and the killings to go unchecked. Kenya’s leaders had to lead, to take charge and to act with urgency.

What he and the world have seen is the terrible example of what happened before, just across Kenya’s borders. At the beginning of April 1994, Rwanda similarly stood at the abyss. Gangs of youths, armed with clubs and machetes, roamed the streets. Families were slaughtered in the streets, burnt alive in churches and refuges, hunted down and clubbed to death. French, Belgian and U.S. troops tried, feebly, to intervene but were overwhelmed.

Bloody history

Kenya does not have the bloody history of Hutu and Tutsi hatred; but in too many chilling ways the descent into violence is as rapid and random as the apocalypse in Rwanda.

Mr. Annan’s warnings are addressed as much to the outside world as they are to President Kibaki and Mr. Odinga. They could not be more urgent. Paralysed by indecision and conflicting interests, Western leaders have done little except urge restraint, hint at a suspension of aid and draw up plans to evacuate their nationals. It is time that George Bush, Gordon Brown and European leaders were more outspoken in their demands, robust in their diplomacy and forthright in their denunciations of the terrible events threatening to ruin not only Kenya but also, by that example, democracy and prosperity in much of Africa.