MEMORY LOSS

The resolution that the International Atomic Energy Agency (iaea) passed two weeks ago referring Iran's nuclear program to the U.N. Security Council contains a key flaw: At the insistence of Egypt, and with the backing of the European Union, the text has a clause calling for the creation of "a Middle East free of weapons of mass destruction, including their means of delivery"-- a pointed jab at the region's only nuclear power, Israel. The clause gives Iran a powerful rhetorical weapon. It could make a "generous" offer to refrain from developing nuclear weapons if only Israel would unilaterally eliminate its weapons. And, when Israel refuses, Iran can claim that it is Israel standing in the way of a nuclear-free regional utopia.But the clause is not merely bad geopolitical strategy; it is also the height of hypocrisy. It was only a quarter of a century ago, during the battle over missile deployments in Europe, that Great Britain and France found themselves in a situation almost exactly analogous to Israel today. During negotiations with the United States over intermediate-range nuclear forces in the early '80s, Moscow insisted that the nuclear arsenals of Great Britain and France be included--a proposal that London and Paris adamantly opposed. Had British and French weapons been counted, the Soviets could have proposed to dismantle their SS-20 arsenal if only Britain and France would eliminate their own nuclear deterrents. Aware that the slogan of a "nuclear-free Europe" might lead to demands for unilateral disarmament, the British and French governments persistently rejected this Soviet negotiating ploy. Fast-forward to the present. A country sworn to Israel's destruction is moving toward acquiring nuclear weapons, the anti-Semitism of radical Islam is ascendant, and Hamas has just won an election in the Palestinian territories. Now, more than ever, Israel needs a strong deterrent. At such a moment, the Jewish state's nuclear weapons should be just as much a nonissue as Britain and France wanted theirs to be during the early '80s. Two weeks ago, Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Jendayi Frazer signaled a shift in U.S. policy toward Darfur when she refused to say that genocide was currently taking place in the region. Asked twice whether the Darfur genocide was ongoing, she would only say that "a genocide has occurred in Sudan, and we continue to be concerned about the security environment in Darfur." In other words, there was a genocide, but now it's over. Frazer went on to assert that "there isn't large-scale, organized violence taking place today." This is mendacity. Recent reports from South Darfur, for example, make clear that approximately 70,000 civilians have been violently displaced by Janjaweed raids recently. This replicates the basic pattern of the last three years: Khartoum seeks to destroy Darfur's non-Arab or African tribal populations as a means of counterinsurgency warfare. These actions clearly fall under the 1948 U. N. Convention on Genocide, which says that intent to destroy civilian populations based on their ethnicity constitutes genocide. So why has the Bush administration chosen this moment to suggest that genocide is no longer taking place? Some of the answer lies in the awkwardness of having declared Darfur to be the site of genocide--which Colin Powell did in September 2004--but subsequently proving unable to do anything about it. Lacking an effective policy, Bush officials apparently decided simply to rename the crisis. Jeffrey Herf is a professor of modern European history at the University of Maryland at College Park. Eric Reeves is a professor of English Language and Literature at Smith College and has written extensively on Sudan. For complete articles, go to tnr.com

By Jeffrey Herf; Eric Reeves