Finkelstein's back - and so are the lies

Ariel Sharon is growing ever more reminiscent of a tired boxer holding on with the last of his strength in a clinch with his opponent, not letting him escape his grasp. The Labor Party slammed the door on him - Sharon announces that maybe Labor doesn't know it, but it's a matter of minutes and Labor will "come home" to the warm embrace of the unity government.

Labor tosses out Fuad Ben-Eliezer - who said "I"m not sorry for a minute we stayed in the government" - and Sharon announces (not estimates, invites, hopes, but announces) that the next government will also be a unity government. The new chairman of the Labor Party, Amram Mitzna, can swear he won't sit in a government that insists on sitting in Gaza - Sharon doesn't get annoyed: "Mitzna, too, will join the unity government," he promises on Channel One.

The endless repetition of the message, until everyone believes it even if it's not true, is evidence that Arthur Finkelstein is back at work. The polls on Sharon's desk show that there's nothing more unifying than the idea of unity (even if it's entirely virtual). All that's left to do is present himself as the knight of unity.

If Mitzna declares he has no plan to sit at the unity table with Uzi Landau and Effi Eitam, Finkelstein will turn the bemedaled former general into a traitor. On the other hand, if Mitzna can't persuade the voters disappointed with the Likud that he has no intention of working with Sharon, then why should they waste their vote on him?

That trap now is keeping awake the campaign leaders at Labor's Hatikva Quarter headquarters. The best solution they've so far come up with is that Mitzna will henceforth say that if the Likud agrees to bid farewell to Gaza and Hebron, he will happy to get help from defense minister Ariel Sharon's experience dismantling settlements. And what about those who are convinced that the Fuad camp will coerce him into returning to Sharon's bulky embrace or bulldoze over him in their effort to get back to the government? Mitzna hits back mercilessly: "If the party had quit the government a year ago, and didn't stay with Effi Eitam, by now we'd be leading with a large margin in the polls." Even if he doesn't mention the specific name, it's entirely clear whom he's blaming for the sad state of the party as he received it.

"If I don't succeed in being elected prime minister, Sharon will have to form a radical right government, if he's able to do so," says Mitzna. "I'm in this to get the country out of the mud. Period."

Mitzna apparently knows the damaging rumor that if Labor doesn't win more than 20-21 seats, Fuad will help him break the record set by Ehud Barak for the shortest term at the top of the party. In the last two weeks, Mitzna met privately with each of the first 30 candidates on the party list. Ben-Eliezer, Ephraim Sneh, and Dalia Itzik were the only ones who weren't prepared to promise him that they won't try to drag him back by force to Sharon's arms.

Mitzna regards the faction's decision to abstain on the budget as another signal that the membership have begun to get used to the new boy on the block. He investigated and found that if faction chairman MK Effi Oshaya had called a vote, the new chairman would have had the upper hand. Mitzna also found that there's not a single substantial issue, like the unity government question, where the party's central committee voted against the leader. His associates promise that if Fuad tries to break that tradition, his loyalists will be surprised to find a large bloc of people from the north, the kibbutzim and the Arab sectors. And Shalom Simhon has promised to bring the moshavim district, as well.

Arthur for Arik

After a brief period to consider it, Mitzna accepted an invitation by British Prime Minister Tony Blair to visit London. Moderate Jewish organizations in the U.S. are also sending invitations for him to visit America. And there are elements in the U.S. administration, particularly in the State Department, who would like to meet the new star. But without a promise, or at least a hint, that President Bush will peek into the National Security Council offices of Condoleezza Rice while Mitzna is there, to shake Mitzna's hand, the Labor party chairman will postpone his visit until after the elections.

Sharon brags he's met his friend in the White House seven times in 20 months - once every three months. That's an average that makes all the world's international leaders envious. Labor's chairman can't allow himself to make do with a meeting with the secretary of state when the Middle East portfolio has been torn from his hands and given to Elliot Abrams, one of those neoconservatives who regard leftists like Mitzna as nearly traitors.

Forget a Washington visit. At the Labor Party they're frustrated enough by the American silence in light of the use Sharon is making of Bush for the Israeli politician's spins. Mitzna himself is very careful not to be caught criticizing the U.S. He made do this week with the comment that the average Israeli newspaper reader must be convinced that Sharon already received $10 billion from Bush. How many people know that the new Congress - the only body that can approve aid and guarantees - will only convene for the first time after the Israeli elections. The White House also hasn't denied Sharon's "revelation" about a "plan" he and Bush worked out about how to make peace with the Palestinians without asking them. That's also the Finkelstein at work. If you repeat the lie enough times, eventually people believe it.

Tomorrow, the Quartet's "road map" was meant to be published. If there's no last minute surprise, the world will get a statement instead. Only people with very developed imaginations will find any connection between what it says and what the road map says. For example, if Bush doesn't change his mind, the statement will not impose any timetable on the parties and the settlement freeze will continue to be linked to Sharon's satisfaction with Arafat's campaign against terrorism. In other words, instead of a peace plan, as the road map was meant to be, the Quartet will be forced to announce that the preparation work is still not done.

Arthur for George

Bob Simon's report for CBS's show "60 Minutes," which aired Saturday night on Channel One as part of the "See the World" weekly foreign news program, details how the Finkelstein strategy works. Simon brought a series of on-camera interviews proving how the Bush administration, from the party that gives Finkelstein his livelihood, sells the American public lies to buy its support for the planned war against Iraq. It's worth remembering that the opposition in the U.S. also claims the war on terror and against Iraq is a diversionary tactic to direct public opinion away from the worsening economic situation in the U.S.

Simon reports that since 9/11, the administration has been trying to link Saddam Hussein to the terror attacks against the U.S. His people point to a meeting that allegedly took place in Prague between Mohammed Atta, one of the hijacker leaders, and an Iraqi intelligence officer. Bob Baer, who spent 16 years as a secret agent for the CIA in the Middle East and was hired by a law firm suing the Iraqi government, says "there's no entry documents, there's no photographs of him there, there's no witnesses that knew him that said he was there. I reported we couldn't prove it. And there's a lot of CIA people out there trying to help on this case, using old contacts, and we just couldn't, we just couldn't come up with it."

Richard Perle, who heads the Defense Policy Board, which advises Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and is a leading proponent of the war on Iraq, can barely conceal his smile when Simon says "the FBI, the CIA and Czech intelligence have all quietly backed away from the notion that such a meeting took place." Perle, another of the neoconservative Jews in the administration, has very close ties with the Israeli right (In 1996, Perle helped author the 100-day plan for Benjamin Netanyahu, which was extremely critical of the Oslo process). On the show, Perle says, "I don;t think we should over emphasize the importance of that meeting. Everything this administration is doing with respect to Saddam Hussein would be quite right to do even if no such meeting had ever taken place."

However, in his piece, Simon reports how the alleged meeting played a very important role marketing the unproven connection between Iraq and Al Qaida. A poll recently taken by the Council on Foreign Relations found that two-thirds of the people questioned believe Iraq was behind the 9/11 attacks.

That's not a lone case of deception by the Bush administration. The president is seen in the report announcing that "a report came out of the International Atomic Energy Agency, saying [Iraq] was six months away from developing a weapon. I don't know what more evidence we need."

But David Albright, one of the weapons inspectors in Iraq in the 19902, and now head of a Washington think tank called the Institute for Science and International security, says directly to the camera that the IAEA ... nor any other investigative body has ever reported that Iraq was only six months away from the bomb.

Albright also claims the administration published other unconfirmed information in attempt to beef up its proof the Iraqis are growing closer to a bomb. Thus, in September, the New York Times quoted unnamed administration sources as saying that Iraq is trying to import aluminum pipes used only for gas centrifuges to enrich uranium, which is only done to create nuclear weapons. Hours later, Simon showed, the president, his vice president and the NSC boss Rice, appeared on Sunday morning talk shows and directed the audience's attention to the New York Times report.

But Albright reveals that even U.S. government weapons experts think the pipes are more appropriate for conventional weapons development. "They were selectively picking information to bolster a case that the Iraqi nuclear threat was more imminent than it is, and in essence, scare people."

By the way, the same people who leaked the pernicious information to the New York Times are those who are "furious" about the leak to Ha'aretz about the details of their conversations with Israel about the war against Iraq.

Responsive government

The prime minister, like most publicly elected officials, is a very busy person and naturally cannot pay personal attention to all the mail that arrives at his office. Therefore, the taxpayer pays the salaries of aides, assistants, advisers and spokesmen. According to the correspondence between Judith Goldberg and the Prime Minister's Office in Jerusalem, the public servants working for Sharon are making a mockery of their own work.

On December 15, Goldberg sent a brief email to the PMO: She wrote: "I want to protest against the demolition of Arab houses in Hebron for the sake of a promenade."

The response did not take very long to come back: "Many thanks for your letter to the prime minister. You can be certain that the prime minister is aware of your generous support and draws inspiration from it. In these difficult days, while we struggle against terror, it warms the heart to know that many understand Israel's right and responsibility to protect its citizens, and share with us the vision of peace and security in the region and the world. Signed, the Prime Minister's Bureau.

No wonder Judith Goldberg was insulted.

	BUSH: Silent

	MITZNA: Aggressive