Can liberal US Jews be more patronizing?

Posted on April 18, 2015 by Victor Rosenthal

Last week I wrote a message for American Jews on the occasion of Yom Hashoah. Now I have another one. It’s this: Can your leaders get any more patronizing?

Here’s the latest from Rabbi Eric Yoffie, former President of the Union for Reform Judaism:

Nonetheless, I have real concerns about Israel’s future. I am concerned about the growing rift between the U.S. and Israel, as well as the likely return of the ultra-Orthodox parties to Israel’s governing coalition. I am concerned about settlement expansion beyond the green line and the fact that liberal Jews cannot be married by Reform rabbis in Israel or pray according to Reform custom at the Western Wall. Souls that for 2000 years have longed for Zion and Jerusalem must not be denied the right see Israel’s holy places as their own. And the Torah, the spiritual legacy of the entire Jewish people, should never become an instrument of coercion, discrimination, or political fanaticism.

Still, as real as these problems are, when it comes to Israel, I remain filled with hope. Israel is a good country in a bad neighborhood where most people, most of the time, care about justice and work for peace.  And our Reform Movement in Israel is Israel at its best. It offers us a glimpse of what Israel is capable of and how we, as Reform Jews, can transform Israel’s reality.

Rabbi Yoffie, it’s 2015, not 1990. There isn’t going to be a “2-state solution,” there is no partner now or in the near (or not so near) future, the Gaza precedent makes it impossible, and the geopolitical situation in the neighborhood is atrocious — in the most literal sense of the word — and getting worse. Did you not notice this?

The “settlement expansion” that people are concerned with here is the explosion of European-financed Arab building that is going on in Area C, the part of the territories that is supposed to be under full Israeli control. Unlike the building within existing settlement blocs and Jewish neighborhoods of eastern Jerusalem, this really is illegal.

The fact that liberal Jews can’t be married by Reform rabbis in Israel is unfair, and the Orthodox authorities that control the Western Wall do give women a hard time when they try to do various things that offend them. I don’t entirely disagree, but this is issue no. 749,563,721 on the list of priorities for 90% of Israelis. They are more concerned with Hizballah’s missile launchers, the imminent Iranian bomb, and the fact that the Russians are supplying Iran with an advanced air defense system to endanger the Israeli pilots who will now have to bomb Iran because the American President has decided that it is entirely acceptable for the crazy mullahs to have nuclear weapons.

They are also concerned with Arabs who run people down at bus stops, stab them in the street, throw rocks at them from moving cars, throw firebombs at them, and so on. I guess these are not the ones that care about justice and work for peace.

And then there is the danger that the Haredi parties will be in the coalition. I too would prefer that they not be. But if the alternative is a unity government with people who think that the national anthem is “racist” and that it’s OK to refuse to serve in the military because of ‘the occupation’, well, then it’s not that simple.

So you want to “transform Israel’s reality?” Liberal Jews, with the support and encouragement of the Obama Administration, tried to do that in the recent election by financing anti-Netanyahu activists. It didn’t work, but there is another way.

The URJ could encourage its members to make aliyah. Then they could do truly transformative things like serving in the army and voting here. They could even learn Hebrew so they wouldn’t be stuck in 1990. Meanwhile, do you realize how offensive your patronizing tone is?

***

I do agree with Rabbi Yoffie that the relationship with the US needs to be repaired. I suggest that he talk to his President, the one that the overwhelming majority of Reform Jews still support, about that.

Posted in American Jews | 3 Comments

A message to American Jews on Yom Hashoah

Posted on April 17, 2015 by Victor Rosenthal

Yom Hashoah

Today is Yom Hashoah, Holocaust remembrance day. It’s a day to honor the Jews who fought their murderers and those who were unable to, and to note the dishonor of those who, while in no danger themselves, failed to act to protect their people.

It’s not enough to have a big emotional catharsis on Yom Hashoah, to cry about the children, mothers, fathers, poets, Torah sages and others who were murdered because of their Jewish blood.

It’s not enough for well-meaning Jewish organizations to put on plays and presentations to bring a sense of the Holocaust to safe and well-fed Jews who otherwise would have little understanding of it.

It’s not enough to present programs about lost shtetl life, Yiddish culture, Jewish food and hazzanut (I guarantee that NPR will broadcast segments full of pathos that will tear out the hearts of their listeners — before they cut to the news program in which they will misrepresent the efforts of today’s Jewish state to keep bloody history from repeating itself).

These things are perhaps necessary, but they are not sufficient. Especially for American Jews, who while refreshing their memories of what happened 75 years ago, need to ask themselves hard questions about how they are responding to what’s happening today. Here are two lessons from the Holocaust and their modern-day applications.

1. You can’t depend on other nations not to endanger themselves for your sake, or even to lift a finger. With a few exceptions (Denmark, Bulgaria) any place that fell under Nazi influence became a furnace for its Jews. Roosevelt didn’t want to be bothered, perhaps, or maybe he thought a few less Jews in the world wouldn’t be a big disaster. The British government made the conscious decision to prioritize the maintenance of colonial control over its route to India over the lives of the Jews that could have been saved had they been allowed to go to Palestine.

2. Listen to your enemies and take them seriously. The Iranian regime talks daily about destroying Israel. It is ‘non-negotiable’, according to an Iranian militia leader. Hamas agrees and so do the supposedly ‘moderate’ elements in Ramallah. Don’t kid yourself. They mean it, just as Hitler meant it.

Today there is a Jewish state, in which about half of the world’s Jews live. It may be the last recourse for European Jews when Europe becomes Eurabia. A few years ago, many would have said that I was being overly dramatic, but not today. But Israel faces growing military threats on every one of its borders, while the modern manifestation of traditional Jew-hatred, anti-Zionism, is tearing at it economically, socially, legally and diplomatically — perhaps not as concrete a threat as the Iranian bomb, but potentially as dangerous.

Do you, American Jew, care about those Israeli and European Jews? If so, you should be fighting your administration’s initiative to ally itself with the Iranian regime and to remove the obstacles to its acquiring nuclear weapons. At the same time, you should be standing up aggressively against the delegitimization and demonization of Israel in your media and universities. Otherwise, you are morally equivalent to those American Jews — including Jewish leaders — who preferred not to rock the boat while the Holocaust was burning in Europe.

Jews in the US have their vision obscured by the thick fog that inundates thinking about Israel, a fog that is pumped out as if by huge machines powered by massive amounts of money, petrodollars from Arab countries, cash from George Soros and his affiliated fund-raising organs (e.g., MoveOn.org), and even money donated to organizations like the New Israel Fund and J Street by naive Jews. The fog is one part Arab narrative, one part vicious lies about Israel’s actions and one part pure Jew-hatred.

Blow away the fog and you find that there really is no hard moral question about whether to support the ‘oppressive, racist apartheid state’ of Israel because it is none of those things. The truth is exactly the opposite: Israel faces hateful, racist, genocidal enemies.

Blow away the fog and look at your president. Look at those he surrounds himself with.  Look at what he does, not what he says. You will see a man who is slandering Israel and its leaders, trying to weaken the state while empowering its enemies. America supports Israel, but the Obama Administration does not, and only the American people and its Congress can hold him back from doing even worse.

Let me close with one more point: don’t be smug in your safety, far from Hizballah’s missiles and the Iranian bomb, without a population of extremist Muslims to make your daily life hell, as is happening in Europe.

American Jews have had it very good since the end of WWII and especially since about 1960. That is unlikely to last. Antisemitic incidents are multiplying, and the university campuses are bubbling with Jew-hatred. Even your physical security is not guaranteed, with the infiltration of ISIS and Hizballah into your hemisphere.

There are signs of decay in your political institutions, your middle-class is under pressure, your family structure is cracking up, your government is becoming more authoritarian. All of these things are not good for the maintenance of a free, open, creative society that will also be tolerant of Jews.

Some day you, too may need a strong Israel to fight for your rights in the international arena. Don’t laugh — things change more rapidly than you may imagine. You may even need a refuge.

Posted in American Jews | Comments Off on A message to American Jews on Yom Hashoah

Putin and Obama destabilize Mideast

Posted on April 14, 2015 by Victor Rosenthal
S-300

The S-300 air defense system

News item:

The Russian president has repealed the ban prohibiting the delivery of S-300 missile air defense systems to Iran, according to the Kremlin’s press service. The ban was introduced by former President Dmitry Medvedev in 2010. …

The decree enters into force upon the president’s signature.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov commented on the decision, saying that Moscow’s voluntary embargo on S-300 deliveries was no longer necessary, due to the progress in Iran’s nuclear talks made in Lausanne on April 2.

The S-300 system is considered a game changer. It can track aircraft, cruise or ballistic missiles at a distance of 300 km (185 miles). It can engage up to six targets at the same time. Its mobile launchers can traverse unimproved roads and launch within five minutes of stopping. The capabilities of the S-300 system would make an Israeli attack on Iranian nuclear facilities much more difficult — and possibly costly in lives and aircraft.

So it seems that the ‘agreement’ which is not an agreement that the Obama Administration has negotiated with Iran on behalf of the P5+1 will not only fail to significantly impede Iran’s development activity, allow it to ignore the several Security Council resolutions against it for violating the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty that it signed, and provide sanctions relief, but has also served as an excuse for Putin to make a few bucks while destabilizing the region.

You may be asking “but aren’t there sanctions against arms sales to Iran that haven’t been lifted yet?” Unfortunately, back in 2010 when UN sanctions were applied, the Obama administration cut a deal with Russia in order to gain its support. The deal lifts sanctions previously applied to various Russian suppliers of arms and material for nuclear and missile development, and includes a “loophole” that specifically exempts the S-300 purchase from the Iran sanctions. In return Russia promised to voluntarily suspend the delivery of the S-300s, which were originally ordered in 2005.

It is reasonable to assume that if Israel is planning to attack Iranian nuclear facilities, it would prefer to do so before the S-300 systems become operational.

Combined with the probability that the non-agreement agreement will quickly clear the path for Iran to become a nuclear weapons state, this development makes it more likely that Israel will take action sooner rather than later.

Such an attack and Iran’s response will be bad for Iran, bad for Israel and absolutely terrible for southern Lebanon where Hizballah’s missiles are ensconced among civilian dwellings.

It’s almost as if this is the outcome desired by our friends in Washington and Moscow!

Posted in Iran, War | 4 Comments

Modern-day Red Guards hound professor

Posted on April 13, 2015 by Victor Rosenthal
Student Red Guards often beat and humiliated formerly respected teachers during the Cultural Revolution

Student Red Guards often beat and humiliated formerly respected teachers during the Cultural Revolution

I was a college freshman in the US in 1960. Most students didn’t even have a stereo in their rooms, and female students had to be inside their (non-coed) dorms by 10:30 on weeknights. There were no personal computers, no Internet, no Hamas, no Islamic State, no Students for Justice in Palestine. I taught college for a year or so in 1971. Teaching wasn’t for me, and I am certain that generations of students benefited from my decision to do something, anything else.

Things were so different then that it’s hard for me to grasp what it must be like today to be a student or faculty member, in these days of safe spaces, trigger warnings, and privilege checkups (all of which sound like suppression of free speech to me). And I know well that it’s always difficult to understand a story like the one I will discuss without being there. But I am really distressed by what’s happening on US campuses.

The bare story is here. A professor of philosophy at Connecticut College, Andrew Pessin, wrote a Facebook post about Gaza in which he used the metaphor of a rabid dog:

Andrew Pessin's original Facebook post

Andrew Pessin’s original Facebook post

Student activists were livid, claiming that Pessin was a racist, comparing Arabs or Muslims to dogs. His response was that he was talking about Hamas:

In an interview with Inside Higher Ed, Pessin said he acknowledges that the post was ambiguous. He posted it after a series of 10 other comments written between July 23 and Aug. 11 about Hamas and the group’s tactics and goals. Reading those preceding posts would have made it clearer that he was using the metaphor of a pit bull to describe Hamas, he said.

“Let me say unequivocally, I am not a racist,” he said. “I am a passionate promoter of equal rights for all peoples. I’m a supporter of a two-state solution.”

Pessin deleted his post. That wasn’t enough for the modern-day Red Guards. His initial attacker, Lamiya Khandaker announced that she did not accept his explanation, was “infuriated, repulsed and depressed” and felt “unsafe.” Two other students wrote

On Wednesday February 25th, in the aftermath of an ironically timed event called the Jerusalem Food Tour celebrating shared humanity, we found our outrage.  We discovered information that put my apathy to rest; it made us sick.  It came to our knowledge that Andrew Pessin wrote on his Facebook page a rant on the nature of Palestinians.  Professor Pessin compared Gazan Palestinians to “rabid pit bulls” who need to be caged.  He described the Palestinian-Israeli conflict as a cycle of letting the “snarling dogs” out of their “cage” and then beating them back into it.  One person named Nicole commented on the post suggesting the “dogs” be put down.  Professor Pessin responded, “I agree.”  Professor Pessin directly condoned the extermination of a people.  A member of our community has called for the systematic abuse, killing, and hate of another people.

It turns out that the Facebook comments clearly and explicitly referred to terrorists, not Palestinians in general, but that apparently didn’t matter to the writers of the above.

Pessin became the subject of a massive barrage of criticism, insults, and threats because of his ‘racism’. It must have been too much for him to bear, because his response can only be called pathetic:

I am truly sorry for the hurt and offense that I have caused via my Facebook post of last summer, to individuals on this campus and now beyond.

It was written last August in the middle of the war between Israel and Hamas, and sat quietly (if publically) [sic] on my Facebook page until a Connecticut College student, displaying courage and integrity, emailed me about it on February 18 and described in no uncertain terms how she felt about it. I acknowledged how much I respected her speaking up, apologized for my language in the post, and removed it that very day. But my initial apology to her, and then to many others since the Voice articles appeared two weeks afterward, was rather defensive in tone. I see now—particularly after a moving conversation with a group of bright, brave, and sincerely wounded Conn students—just how damaging and hurtful the language of that post was. I made a great mistake in writing in the inflammatory manner that I did, and deeply regret the injury that I caused and have now directly witnessed.

It’s essential for me also to remark that I in no way hold and do not condone the terrible racist views that have been ascribed to me on the basis of the language of this post. I hope that my past actions and words already demonstrate that I am not the person some now think I am; I know that my future actions and words will. Let my first such action be the reiteration of my deepest apology for causing such wounds.

Even this wasn’t enough, as students published an online petition demanding that the college condemn his ‘racism’.

The image evoked in me is of China’s Cultural Revolution, when students hounded, beat, humiliated, and even murdered formerly respected teachers for ideological ‘errors’. Pessin has taken a medical leave from the campus.

You’ve seen the original Facebook post, one of the milder personal attacks, and his apologies. If you are like me, you are horrified. But I’ve saved the worst for last. In a letter to the Connecticut College community, president Katherine Bergeron wrote this:

By now, there have been many opinions expressed about the original Facebook post, as well as about subsequent comments on Yik Yak and elsewhere. But one thing has become extremely clear: the level of harm that incendiary language can have on a community. The post caused an outpouring of anger and pain among many different groups of students, faculty, and staff. The groundswell of reaction makes it clear that the issue goes far beyond the effects of a single post. It is about who we are as a community.

Earlier today, as I was writing this letter, I learned of another incident of racist graffiti in the restrooms of Crozier-Williams. We must take action immediately to expose and eradicate this ignorance and hatred. I have decided to cancel tomorrow’s classes to ensure these events receive the proper attention.

Connecticut College is a community that values the dignity of all people. As your president, I will not tolerate forms of racist or hateful speech designed to demean, denigrate, or dehumanize.

So a college president compared Pessin’s Facebook post to a bathroom-wall scrawl in which the word “niggers” appeared! And she leaves no doubt that in her mind, both are examples of speech that should be suppressed.

So much for American ‘higher’ education.

 

Posted in Academia | 1 Comment

The delegitimization industry

Posted on April 10, 2015 by Victor Rosenthal

Arrows

I just listened to an interview with Tuvia Tenenbom, author of Catch a Jew and I Sleep in Hitler’s Room. Although the interviewer talks far too much — I always wish they would just shut up and let the subject talk, especially when it’s someone as engaging as Tenenbom — I strongly recommend it. Be prepared to be upset, angry or depressed (depending on your personality) by what he reports.

Among the truths that Tenenbom discovered in his travels in Europe and Israel in the guise of a non-Jewish German journalist were a) many Europeans are really anti-Jewish and anti-Zionist, b) so are some Jewish Israelis, and c) they are getting together to work towards the replacement of Israel by some kind of non-Zionist state in which Jews will be a minority.

This isn’t news — NGO Monitor has been documenting the massive flow of Euros to anti-Zionist organizations run by left-wing Israeli Jews or Arabs for years — but Tenenbom emphasizes how pervasive the influence is, extending from large organizations like the Red Cross to small operations like the tour guide (a self-described ‘ex-Jew’) who brings groups of Europeans to Yad Vashem, where he explains that this is what the Jews are doing to the Palestinian Arabs.

It’s hard to see how a tiny country, which doesn’t threaten anyone and only wants to be left in peace deserves this. But the NGOs are only a tiny part of it. There is also the phenomenon of the worldwide academic onslaught on Israel, in which critical standards and honesty are thrown to the winds in the production of ‘scholarship’ that is no more than political polemics against Israel and the Jewish people; while, at the same time the professors replace teaching with indoctrination, and use university resources for political activity such as promoting boycott-divestment-sanctions against Israel. Jewish faculty are in the forefront of the effort.

Tenenbom also notes how many of the Jewish Israelis that gnaw away at the state that protects them — one of his interviewees is writer Gideon Levy of Ha’aretz — positively venerate Palestinian Arab Muslim culture. But, he points out, they don’t know a word of Arabic and haven’t read the Qur’an. What can they know about Arab culture or Islam?

Tenenbom uses the expression “self-hating Jews” to describe Jews like Gideon Levy, but I think that’s misleading. They don’t hate themselves — they see themselves as better than the others, the ones that have all the ‘Jewish’ characteristics that they hate (religious belief, for one). They identify with their enemies that want to kill them, even to the point of adopting their anti-Jewish beliefs, because they subconsciously think it will protect them.

Upset, angry or depressed yet? I haven’t even mentioned the United Nations, which spends millions of dollars each year on events, exhibits and production of materials that present the Arab narrative of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (in which Israel is entirely at fault), or the Human Rights Commission which generates more resolutions condemning Israel than those for all other nations combined.

Then there is the multiplicity of smaller groups, trade unions, professional organizations, church groups (the Presbyterian Church USA comes to mind) which allow themselves to be used as vehicles for delegitimizing the Jewish state.

All this, despite the fact that there is no objective basis for it. Most anti-Israel arguments revolve around the alleged mistreatment — even ‘genocide’ — of Palestinian Arabs under Israel’s control. But the Arab population continues to increase, and its levels of health and nutrition are among the highest in the Arab world. More than 95% of the Arabs in Judea and Samaria live in areas controlled by the Palestinian Authority (and of course 100% of Gazans are ruled by Hamas). Even during wars, objective analysis has shown that Israel’s actions to reduce civilian casualties are unmatched by those of any other nation.

At any given time there are numerous wars, rebellions, insurgencies, occupations, massacres, etc. throughout the world which receive far less attention in the media and academia despite hundreds, thousands, or even hundreds of thousands of casualties (the Boko Haram uprising killed almost 11,000 in 2014 and almost 5,000 already this year). Did you know that the Second Congo War (1998-2003) caused more than 350,000 violent deaths, and 2.7-5.4 million excess deaths, with low-level violence still continuing to this day? The Israeli-Arab conflict is comparatively very small potatoes.

And then there are the positives: the remarkable number of scientific and technological advances by Israelis, the almost full-employment economy, the democratic political system, the high degree of personal freedom enjoyed by Jewish and Arab Israelis despite the pressure of wars and terrorism, the degree of equality for women and gay or otherwise unconventional people, the production of art, music and literature, and more.

It’s revealing that the haters object to pro-Israel people mentioning any of this. One is not allowed to say that Israel is the most (the only) LGBT-friendly country in the Middle East, because that is “pinkwashing,” using this undeniable truth to ‘cover up’ the oppression of Arabs. But if no empirical fact can count against the proposition that Israel is an oppressor, then that’s a clue that the proposition is itself not based on empirical facts.

So what is behind the irrational hatred for Israel and the amount of resources — Western, enlightened resources — devoted to an attempt to destroy it and to replace it with another unstable, undemocratic, racist Arab-majority state?

There are lots of reasons. American academic institutions have been infused with Arab oil money, and Arab countries have supplied many of them with activist foreign students. The UN is dominated by the non-aligned movement, which is controlled by the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, which in turn is led by the Arab League. ‘Progressive’ ideology includes a large serving of guilt for Western colonialism, and the Arab narrative that presents Israel as a Western colonialist resonates with the Left.

But I’m afraid that Tenenbom’s experiences in Europe and among Israel’s academic and media elite are the most important indicator. I said the hatred is ‘irrational’, and an irrational attitude has an irrational cause: in this case, pathological Jew-hatred, deeply implanted in so many Europeans, and paradoxically also in the best-educated Israelis.

This could be a lesson for those Jews who can’t decide to stay in Europe or leave. Don’t expect the Europeans to stick up for you if you stay. They don’t like you.

Posted in Jew Hatred | 1 Comment

Why we should oppose the Iran nuclear deal

Posted on April 9, 2015 by Victor Rosenthal

This is going to be a very short and simple post.

Stop worrying about how much uranium they have, how many and what type of centrifuges, or the breakout time. Stop worrying about whether the ‘deal’ makes sufficient provision for verification.

Oh, the intelligence agencies should continue to worry about those things. Military planners need to know them. But from a political point of view there is only one thing to keep in mind:

Iran will have a bomb in the near future if someone doesn’t stop them by force.

Obama Administration policy is that an Iranian bomb is fine, as long as it appears after he leaves office. I wouldn’t even count on the 22 months, but there it is. The chance of the US taking military action is extremely small. We can’t depend on it.

If anyone will stop Iran, it is Israel.

And this is the reason to oppose the deal, because — especially if it receives the imprimatur of the UN Security Council — it will be used as a reason to prevent Israel from acting and a weapon to punish it when it does take the action essential to its survival.

Posted in Iran | 3 Comments

Barack Obama: the worst man for the job

Posted on April 7, 2015 by Victor Rosenthal
Barack Obama explains to Thomas L. Friedman how "personally difficult" it is for him that supporters of Israel don't trust him.

Barack Obama explains to Thomas L. Friedman how “personally difficult” it is for him that supporters of Israel don’t trust him.

This is the same guy that cut off our military supplies during last Gaza war, shut down our international aviation for a day, is trying to force us to go back to indefensible borders, that interfered in our elections, that put the Muslim Brotherhood in power in Egypt, that is backing away from most international commitments for the safety of allies, that pulled US troops out of Iraq, that abandoned Yemen, that partners with Qatar, Turkey and Iran, all enemies of Israel, that didn’t insist on Iran changing or stop threatening or promising to destroy Israel, and on and on and we’re supposed to believe him. Like Golda Meir said to the then President, “by the time you honour your commitment, we’ll be dead”. — Ted Belman

Michael Ledeen and Bret Stephens [$] explain that we can ignore the details of the developing Iranian nuclear deal. They note that there is no ‘agreement’ that the two sides agree on — especially in the area of verification — and Iran has always cheated and will continue to cheat. They will get a weapon. The only question is when.

Does the Obama Administration realize this? I’m sure it does. This deal is not about keeping Iran from getting nuclear weapons. It is about Obama wanting to replace American responsibility for the Middle East with a ‘friendly’ Iranian empire.

Despite the fashionable view that US control of the region is colonialism or imperialism, it is obvious from the behavior of the natives that they are a bunch of bloody barbarians who like to slaughter anyone who doesn’t share their particular religious persuasion. Their own local cultures aren’t anything to write home about either, especially if one is female or gay, a minor criminal, or numerous other things.

There, I said it. I endorse the philosophy of The White Man’s Burden, or more correctly the Western, enlightened Judeo-Christian burden. Yes, I believe that we are (or can be) better than they are, and if we want a peaceful world we need to teach them some decent values — and in the meantime keep a lid on their destructive impulses.

I know, as Barack Obama is fond of pointing out, that the West has been guilty of all kinds of violence and exploitation in the past, as well as sheer stupidity and ignorance in its dealings with the Mideast. But I am convinced that we are able to learn from this; and anyway, if we can’t, civilization is doomed.

Our responsibility has to start with keeping nuclear weapons out of the hands of the Iranians. One reason — here I’m being selfish — is that they want to perpetrate another Holocaust against the Jewish people in Israel. But the murderous behavior of the Shiite militias in Iraq shows that an Iranian empire wouldn’t be a picnic for Sunni Arabs or Christians either.

There’s only one way to do this, and that’s by a credible threat of force. Thanks to the Obama Administration’s continuing demonstration of Western pusillanimity, this probably means that actual military action couldn’t be avoided. Would you believe Obama’s threats?

This is why Barack Obama is absolutely the worst man for the job he is in. His multiculturalist philosophy, his reverence for the inherently violent and expansionist religion of Islam (Ayaan Hirsi Ali explains that here), his apparently sincere belief that the United States and the West have been the main instigators of conflict in the world in recent years, his isolationism and his dislike for the military make him so.

Obama does not want to exert American power beyond US borders (except, it seems, to create a Palestinian state) and is willing to accept an Iranian-dominated Mideast. Unfortunately for Israel, that would be a Mideast without a Jewish state in it.

The Iranian strategy is to use its proxies in Lebanon and Gaza — and it would like to arm the Arabs in Judea and Samaria as well — to fight Israel under its nuclear umbrella. Right now, Iran is assisting Hamas to rebuild its attack tunnels into Israel and its missile forces, as well as continuing to try to smuggle advanced weapons to Hizballah in Lebanon.

Israel’s response has to be directed at these proxies in order to protect its citizens against their rocket barrages and likely incursions. But unless someone “cuts the head off the snake,” as the previous Saudi king suggested, the proxies will be able to keep trying. And it doesn’t help that Obama will inevitably step in to any conflict and try to restrain Israel, as he did in the last Gaza operation.

Obama will not deal with Iran and despite his promises will not protect Israel from the consequences. He’s said that the US is “powerful enough to be able to test these propositions without putting ourselves at risk.” If they are false, then the region goes up in smoke, but that’s apparently not his problem. As always, it is entirely up to Israel to defend herself.

What should Israel do? A start would be to put Iran on notice that it will be held responsible for the actions of its proxies. And if that means that Israel needs to flex its own nuclear muscles, then so be it.

 

 

Posted in Iran | 1 Comment

Israel: stand up for your right

Posted on April 3, 2015 by Victor Rosenthal

Get up, stand up, stand up for your right
Get up, stand up, don’t give up the fight
Get up, stand up. Life is your right
So we can’t give up the fight
Stand up for your right, Lord, Lord
Get up, stand up. Keep on struggling on
Don’t give up the fight — Bob Marley, “Get up, stand up”

I am sure the planners in Israel’s Defense Ministry have given priority 1 to the nuclear threat from Iran. As the ridiculous ‘negotiations’ with Iran pass yet another meaningless ‘deadline’ and Western negotiators, led by the foolish John Kerry, make concession after concession, it must be 100% clear to the folks in the kiriya that if Iran is to be stopped, Israel will have to stop her.

The Iranian question is no longer a political and diplomatic one; it is now a military one. The generals will decide how to do what must be done, and the politicians will decide when is the best time to do it. We can only hope they do their jobs competently. Ordinary Israelis will start cleaning the junk out of our bomb shelters again.

So now I want to turn to the other, somewhat lesser, threat that Israel faces today — also brought to us by courtesy of our ‘friend’ in the White House — which is the diplomatic offensive for the UN Security Council to impose a ‘solution’ in the form of a Palestinian state in Judea and Samaria. Obama, feckless in his second term and armed with the convenient lie that it is Israel’s fault (the multiple Arab rejections of partition proposals notwithstanding) that there isn’t ‘peace’, will likely withhold the US veto of such a resolution.

What happens if a resolution calling for Israeli withdrawal from the territories passes? Most resolutions are only advisory, unless one is passed under Chap. VII of the UN charter, which can be invoked if the UNSC determines that there is a “threat to peace” or “act of aggression.” In that case economic or even military sanctions can be applied if the target doesn’t comply. A precedent could be the sanctions adopted against the Ian Smith regime in Rhodesia in 1966. Of course even an advisory resolution can be used as a reason for a nation or group of nations to independently sanction another nation.

Israel finds itself in this position for several reasons, but it can’t help that over the years we haven’t made our own case for the legitimacy of our control of the territories. Much of the time we have accepted the narrative of our enemies that we are ‘occupiers’ of ‘Arab land’. If this were true, then it only would make sense that we ought to return the land to its ‘owners’ in return for adequate security guarantees.

But in fact it is not true. The Palestine Mandate as finally ratified by the League of Nations in 1922, granted the Jewish people the right of ‘close settlement’ on the land from the Mediterranean to the Jordan. In 1948, Jews were ethnically cleansed from the eastern part of the former Mandate, in a war crime committed by the Jordanian army.

For the 19 years until 1967, a racist occupation was maintained by Jordan. Jews were forbidden to set foot in the so-called ‘West Bank’, including Jewish holy places in eastern Jerusalem, synagogues were made into stables and cemeteries into latrines. It is absurd to say that this illegal act somehow transformed Judea and Samaria into ‘Arab land’ that we now ‘occupy’. As Naftali Bennett has said, you can’t be an occupier in your own land.

But didn’t Israel ethnically cleanse the western part of the former Mandate? Actually, no. With a few exceptions, generally in response to hostile actions by Arab populations, the Arabs who left fled because they feared the coming war or because they expected that the Jews would massacre them in revenge for what they had been doing to Jews since 1920. The Arabs that stayed put and did not engage in hostilities are still here.

Arabs in Palestine began the hostilities of our War of Independence, the Arab nations intervened in support of them, and the Jews prevailed. There certainly were injustices, but there is no comparison to what would have happened to Jews if the Arabs had won. Starting wars and losing them has consequences.

A whole industry of  Israeli ‘revisionist’ historians and journalists has arisen to tell the story from the Arab point of view. Some are simply anti-state propagandists like Ilan Pappé, while others, like Ari Shavit, are Zionists obsessed by pathological feelings of guilt for being on the winning side. Their faults range from deliberate and wholesale invention of Jewish crimes to an exaggerated propensity to believe hostile sources uncritically.

The facts are known and documented by historians like Ephraim Karsh. There is no reason for Israel to adopt the Arab narrative. For example, the concept of ‘pre-67 lines and land swaps’ assumes that all of Judea/Samaria belongs to the Arabs. Therefore, the argument goes, if Israel is allowed to keep settlements over the Green Line then it must transfer an equal amount of land from this side of it to the Arabs. But the only claim that the Arabs have on this land is the illegal Jordanian occupation! And the Green Line, the boundary that is given so much significance, is just the 1949 armistice line — which the agreements made at the time specifically state is not a border and does not have any political significance.

Israel does not owe the ‘Palestinians’, led by the violent Jew-haters of Hamas and the PLO, anything. They have no a priori right to the land over the Green Line, nor do the descendents of Arab refugees have a ‘right of return’ to the Israel that their grandparents left.

It could be that nevertheless it is desirable for Israel to facilitate some kind of demilitarized Palestinian state in some part of the territories. But the starting point for negotiations must be the legitimate right of the Jewish people to the land of Israel, and not the nonexistent ‘occupation’.

The deck may be stacked against us in the international arena. But we certainly won’t get our rights if we don’t stand up for them.

Posted in Iran, Israel and Palestinian Arabs, The UN, War | Comments Off on Israel: stand up for your right