The Camel’s Nose

Posted on November 7, 2021 by Victor Rosenthal

It’s painful, but I have to admit that I was wrong.

I supported the Bennett-Lapid government because I believed that nothing could be worse than the instability of an endless series of elections and caretaker governments. The challenges facing the country were too great, from Hamas to the new American administration which was (and is) poised to try to force us into another series of concessions to the PLO while enabling Iran’s atomic project and holding us back from striking it. I wanted the country to have a budget, which it hadn’t had since 2018. And I felt that it was time for Binyamin Netanyahu to step down (although, unlike some, this was not my primary concern).

I yearned for a real right-wing government without Meretz or Arabs, one that would put an end to the phenomenon of voting right and getting left, in which our leaders talk big but knuckle under to the US and Europe on key issues like building for Jews in Judea and Samaria, stopping illegal Arab construction in Area C, and enforcing the law in Jerusalem. I wanted to see changes in the legal system, a limitation of the apparently boundless powers of the Supreme Court and the Legal Advisor to the government, who is also the Chief Prosecutor and Attorney General all in one.

But I believed that four elections had established that there was no way to manipulate the numbers to yield such a coalition, given the personalities involved. I knew that Lapid was (to be kind) a lightweight, and that having leftist elements in the government would be problematic. I was repelled by the idea of admitting to the government representatives of an anti-Zionist Arab party – whom, according to the basic law governing the Knesset (sec. 7a), should not be permitted to sit in it at all.

Still, I knew that Naftali Bennett and Gideon Sa’ar were ideologically right wing, and Lapid at least a Zionist. The left-wingers would not be strong enough to begin any initiatives toward the PLO or Hamas and would concern themselves with domestic issues, I thought. And regarding Ra’am, the Islamist party led by Mansour Abbas (not to be confused with Mahmud Abbas of the PLO) that would be brought into the government – did not Netanyahu himself try to establish a coalition with their support?

I should have known better. I underestimated the power that would be placed in the hands of Ra’am by the coalition, and I underestimated (as Israelis consistently do) the powerful and unshakeable ideological commitment of the Arabs to their narrative and their opposition to a Jewish state. Bennett and his partners were prepared to pay almost anything to get the votes of Ra’am, which they believed was the only way to avoid another election. Perhaps they thought that Ra’am was “pragmatic” – that is, able to be bought. “It will be expensive,” I can hear them saying, but “you do what you have to do to get a coalition.”

The budget includes some 30 billion shekels (US $9.6 billion) for the Arab sector, much of which will be distributed according to the wishes of Mansour Abbas, someone few people had even heard of before this election, greatly increasing his power and importance. Other Arab politicians will benefit as well. Surely some of that cash will help Israeli Arabs, but just as surely a great deal will flow into the pockets of people connected to Ra’am. And some of it will even go to an NGO close to Hamas.

I admire Mansour Abbas. He will take your money, but he can’t be bought. Writing in Israel Hayom today, Nadav Shragai translated Abbas’ recent words:

Just a few months prior, speaking to Arabic-language media so that Jewish listeners could not understand, Ra’am leader Mansour Abbas spoke about his “civil jihad.”

“When we talk about land, housing and demolitions, are we talking about a civil issue? This is a national issue that forms the base of our struggle for our homeland,” he said in a moment of honesty.

He explained to his listeners that which the Jewish public refuses to hear: “The Islamic Movement started as part of the jihad family. But the political experience has taught us that due to the Israeli reality we cannot say today that we want to take up arms and wage jihad. We aspire and we engage in civil jihad. We maintain our presence in the country. We preserve our identity. We make the best of our existence through knowledge and action.”

Ra’am is not a pragmatic party. It is an ideological party associated with the Muslim Brotherhood that is the parent organization of Hamas. Its long-term objectives are no different than those of the Brotherhood, and include the end of Jewish sovereignty and the establishment of Shari’a throughout the land. In the short term, it calls for

…the establishment of a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital, with an end of the occupation and dismantling of the settlements. It also seeks the release of Palestinian prisoners and the right of return of Palestinian refugees. The party advocates the recognition of Israeli Arabs as a national minority and seeks to ensure their rights in a constitution. (Israel Democracy Institute, summary of party platforms)

Both Bennett and Netanyahu are guilty of placing political considerations above national ones by bringing this enemy of the state into the government and empowering it.

Even if the government were to fall tomorrow, much of the damage is done. One could argue that this government has replaced Haredi extortion with Arab extortion, but the difference is that even anti-Zionist Haredim are not working to erase the Jewish character of the state in preparation for replacing it with an Arab-majority state.

I am not sure what the solution is in detail, but I do know that Israel’s electoral system is failing to reflect the will of the people. The majority of Israelis want a right-wing government. They certainly don’t want Islamists in it! If it weren’t for the split between pro- and anti-Netanyahu factions on the right, there would be a right-wing coalition with some 70-odd mandates. And yet, we have a government including the extreme left-wing, borderline anti-Zionist, Meretz party, and the Islamists of Mansour Abbas.

We are approaching several important tests. Will Israel stick by its designation of six Palestinian NGOs as terror-supporting groups? Will she refuse to permit the US to open its Jerusalem consulate as an “embassy to Palestine?” And will she finally evict the Arab squatters from the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of Jerusalem, after they rejected a court-proposed compromise?

These are minor but symbolic issues that the government will soon face. There is also the existential issue of soon-to-be nuclear Iran, and the perennial question of what to do about Gaza. In particular, many have raised the question of how a government that includes Ra’am will deal with a violent escalation by Hamas.

The camel’s nose is already inside the tent. If we don’t push it out, we’ll soon have its hindquarters as well.

Posted in Israeli Arabs, Israeli Politics | 5 Comments

A Drastic Proposal

Posted on November 4, 2021 by Victor Rosenthal

In my morning paper there is a discussion of the home front defense drill that will be taking place today, simulating an all-out war with Hamas and Hezbollah. Warning sirens will be activated in various places, and note will be taken of whether schoolchildren and others are able to reach shelter in time. My personal situation is good compared to that of most Israelis; there is a shelter on every floor of the apartment building I live in, and we get about a minute’s warning of rockets from Gaza (flight time is 90 seconds). Rockets from Hezbollah will take a bit longer.

Unfortunately, only about 42% of Israelis (according to my newspaper) have shelters in their homes. That means that they can’t possibly make it to the nearest public shelter in time, so they end up spending long hours or even days in them when there are rocket attacks. Or they depend on the somewhat dubious protection of stairwells. Even a shelter in the basement of a multistory building takes too much time to reach.

Iron Dome and other antimissile systems have provided good protection during the small conflicts that we’ve had in recent years, but in a war with Hezbollah, which is said to have some 130,000 rockets aimed at all parts of Israel, including some dozens of rockets with precise guidance systems that will be targeted at airbases, power stations, fuel depots, and other critical infrastructure, there will not be enough systems to protect most civilians.

There is money budgeted to fix this, but nowhere near enough, and the process is slow and (of course) bogged down by bureaucracy.

Meanwhile, the prospect of a conflict with Iran draws ever more likely as the Iranian regime plays for time with the Western powers. Unless something unexpected happens, like a revolution in Iran, the moment is near when Israel will have to decide: do we permit Iran to become a nuclear power or will we go to war? There is no third option.

War with Iran will involve Hezbollah, which has no other reason for existing. It will certainly trigger Hamas, and the other terror providers in Gaza. It will probably include missile and drone attacks on Israel from the territory of Syria and Iraq, and possibly directly from Iran. Estimates are of more than 1,000 rockets per day; the worst damage will be to border communities, which are in range of Hezbollah’s massive mortars. There will be ground incursions in the north, to try to overrun military installations and civilian communities, kill people and take hostages. We can expect a wave of terrorism from Judea and Samaria, and perhaps even the participation of Palestinian Authority “security” forces. Finally, terrorists among Israel’s Arab citizens will certainly join in, as they did in the last small war with Gaza.

Such a war would extremely traumatic for Israel’s home front, maybe worse than any of her previous wars. Nobody would be safe, and the country would not be the same afterwards, even if we win.

At the same time, war, no matter how it starts, would be portrayed in the international media as a vicious attack by Israel on helpless Lebanese, Gazans, and others. The international anti-Israel conspiracy – there is no other expression that adequately describes the coalition of organizations dedicated to the extirpation of the Jewish state from the world – will launch a coordinated antisemitic campaign throughout the world. This isn’t speculation: we’ve seen it in action every time Israel has acted to defend herself against rocket attacks from Gaza. The objective will be to pressure the international community to prevent an Israeli victory and allow our enemies to prepare for the next round.

I expect that the Biden Administration, like that of Barack Obama, will try to embargo shipments of essential weapons and ammunition to Israel. I believe that the overall climate in the administration and Congress is more anti-Israel today than in the days of Obama, although they have tried to avoid direct public confrontations so far.

What, then, is the best strategy for Israel in this situation?

Can we avoid war by appeasement? We can only delay it. The Iranian leaders do not want a conventional war at this time; the regime prefers to wait until it has prepared its nuclear shield. Once it is in place, it can unleash Hezbollah against Israel while deterring us from retaliating directly against them.

But even without war, a nuclear Iran would be disastrous for Israel. Iran would proceed to establish a sphere of influence over the entire region. It would gain economic and political power. The regime could demand concessions from Israel – a Palestinian capital in Jerusalem, prisoner releases, withdrawal from all or part of Judea and Samaria, an airport in Gaza – and Israel, without allies, would be forced to comply. Each time, the alternative would be war; conventional war, but backed by a nuclear threat.

Little by little our sovereignty would evaporate, foreign investment and trade would dry up, Israelis with foreign passports would leave – and then there would be more demands. It would not be as dramatic as nuclear bombs on Tel Aviv, but just as final.

Israel needs to act soon, and with overwhelming force, against both Iran and Hezbollah simultaneously, in order to prevent massive damage on our home front. Their military capabilities and leadership must be destroyed, and very quickly, before they can strike back and before the US and Europe can intervene. I am talking about a few days, not weeks. It might be that the only way to do that is with unconventional weapons. We need to be prepared to use them.

I understand that this is a drastic proposal. Do you have a better one?

Posted in Iran, Terrorism, War | 6 Comments

Another Sovereignty Test

Posted on October 31, 2021 by Victor Rosenthal

On 19 October 2021, Israel’s Minister of Defense, Benny Gantz, designated six Palestinian NGOs as “terrorist organizations” closely linked to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), one of the most vicious and bloody-handed of the numerous terrorist groups at war with the State of Israel. The PFLP has been wholly or partly responsible for some of the most horrific episodes in Israel’s history. These date back to the late 1960s; more recently they include the 2001 murder of Israeli Tourism Minister Rehavam Ze’evi, the 2014 attack on a synagogue in the Har Nof neighborhood of Jerusalem in which four rabbis and a police officer were murdered, and the 2011 murder of five members of the Fogel family. In 2019, the PFLP murdered 17-year old Rina Shnerb with a roadside bomb.

The NGOs “provided a funding ‘lifeline’ for the PFLP, employed PFLP terrorists, and … PFLP terror operatives used NGO offices for meetings,” according to Israeli security officials. In addition to the detailed classified (to protect sources) information behind the decision, there is a great deal of publicly available evidence collected by the NGO Monitor organization for these and seven other NGOs which share members with the PFLP and channel funds to it. Of the 13 organizations mentioned by NGO Monitor, they “identified over 70 staff and board members, as well as other officials who hold positions in both the NGOs and the PFLP.” One of them, Samer Arbid, worked as an accountant for one of the banned NGOs, Adameer. In his spare time he was the leader of the cell that murdered Rina Shnerb.

The organizations get most of their money from individual European governments, the EU, the UN, large “humanitarian” funds like the Rockefeller Brothers Fund in the US and Oxfam in Europe, various Soros-related funds, and so on.

The terrorist designation means that Israeli authorities can close their offices, seize their assets, and prevent them from raising funds. Membership in them becomes illegal.

The announcement brought forth a flood of accusations and denunciations of Israel from every corner, including the European Union, anti-Israel members of the US Congress, the major “human rights” organizations, multiple anti-Israel groups in the US like J Street and Jewish Voice for Peace, some left-wing members of Israel’s Knesset, and numerous others. US State Department spokesperson, Ned Price, said that Israel had not informed the US of its intentions or provided documentation of its charges. He added that “[w]e believe respect for human rights, fundamental freedoms, and a strong civil society are critically important for responsible and responsive governance … [we will] be engaging our Israeli partners for more information regarding the basis for these designations.”

Israel credibly responded that it had informed the State Department, and then sent another delegation to the US to present further evidence.

Leaving aside the question of whether Israel is required to inform the US before it takes any substantive action, even without classified information, the publicly available evidence presented by NGO Monitor should suffice. The reaction of the State Department is a troubling sign of its lack of respect for the Jewish state.

Even if these NGOs weren’t funneling large sums of money to actual terrorist murderers, they are hostile to the state. One of them, Adameer, which receives money from Ireland, Norway, Spain, Switzerland, and the German Heinrich Boll Foundation, “is a leader of campaigns in support of Palestinian prisoners convicted of security offenses, referring to them as ‘political prisoners’ and altogether omitting the context of violence and terror.” Another, Al Haq is a “leader in anti-Israel ‘lawfare’ and BDS … campaigns” as well as having been an “active participant” in the 2001 Durban Conference that promoted “the complete international isolation and demonization of Israel.”

It’s hard to imagine any other country permitting subversive, foreign-funded organizations like these to operate freely in their sovereign territory. But even Israel draws the line when money collected to promote human rights goes directly into the hands of murderers.

One of the reasons for the almost universal condemnation of Gantz’ action was the enormous clout of the funders of these NGOs, who are committed to the idea that they are advancing their political objectives without directly killing anybody. Many Europeans would be happy if Israel would change from the nation-state of the Jewish people into a “state of its citizens,” perhaps with a right of return for the descendants of Arab refugees; but few would admit (at least, out loud) that this would unavoidably be a violent process, and even fewer that they favor such violence. Gantz essentially called them out.

These six NGOs make up a small part of a massive anti-Israel industry, which operates throughout the world. This industry is nourished from several main sources: Arab and other Muslim countries, Europe, and the American and international Left. Its components range from the fake “pro-Israel” J Street, to the terrorists of the PFLP and Hamas. Those who contribute resources or time to it vary in their understanding of the ultimate goal of the enterprise, which is not essentially different from those of Haman or Hitler. But the action taken by Israel rips the veil from not only these six NGOs, but of those behind them, in Europe and elsewhere.

Those who suck at the tit of European funding, for example, include numerous left-wing Israeli groups which, one hopes, at least believe that they want to improve the state rather than destroying it. Nevertheless they must express outrage because otherwise they will have to face up to the fact that they are naught but useful idiots.

The American government, too, especially with the Biden Administration in charge, is riddled with anti-Israel elements. They too vary from the more moderate elements who favor the impossible “2-state solution” but think (illogically) that Israel should still continue to exist, to the Rob Malley types who believe that the Jewish state was a mistake that should be corrected.

The crackdown on these groups was long overdue. Like the reopening of the Jerusalem consulate to the Palestinians, it is an issue that will bring massive pressure on Israel to reverse its correct decision. At the same time, it too is an issue that directly bears on whether Israel is a sovereign state or a banana republic.

Posted in Europe and Israel, Terrorism, US-Israel Relations | 1 Comment

Refuting the Narrative and Winning the Tribal War

Posted on October 28, 2021 by Victor Rosenthal

Last week, Elder of Ziyon described an interesting conjecture on the origin of the word “Palestine”: that it is derived from the Greek word for “wrestler,” which is part of the name taken by Jacob when he wrestled – “isra” – with an angel of God, “El.” So “Palestine” means “Israel.”

Is it true? Who knows? But it is ironic in the light of the assertions of the Palestinian Arabs that they are “natives,” an indigenous people that were “colonized” by the European Jews who, according to them, are not even a people but just a religious sect.

This is the heart of the Palestinian narrative that is presented as a justification for their violent struggle to expel the Jews from Eretz Yisrael. The post-colonial ideology that is current today, especially on the part of European former colonialists, demands that colonists turn control of the lands they exploited over to the indigenous residents. If the colonists refuse to do the right thing, then the natives are – if not entirely justified in turning to violence – at least understood and sympathized with. The Palestinians even make the absurd claim that the UN Charter, which permits victims of aggression to defend themselves, approves.

The oldest indigenous people on the land, and the most legitimate claimants for aboriginal rights, are the Jewish people. The fact that they won their battle – against British and Arab colonists of their ancestral land – does not change that. The fact that Jews may have been a minority in the land on any particular day from biblical times to the present, does not change that. The fact that most of the Jews living in Israel today are descended from Jews that had been living in exile in Muslim countries, Europe, Africa, India, and other places, does not change that.

The Palestinian Arab claim to being an aboriginal people that was invaded and colonized is false in two respects: first, specifically Palestinian peoplehood did not exist to a great extent before the mid-1960s, when it developed in opposition to Zionism. And second, few Palestinian families have a connection to the land that extends more than a couple of generations before the arrival of the Zionists.

Prior to the appearance of Palestinism, which was catalyzed by the KGB-advised PLO in the 1960s, Arabs in the land primarily viewed themselves as members of their extended families or tribes. The land itself was considered “southern Syria,” and there are numerous quotations from Palestinian Arab leaders, as late as 1977, that deny the existence of a Palestinian identity in favor of a pan-Arab one.

There may be Palestinian Arabs that are descended from people that lived in the land during biblical times, or arrived in the Arab conquest of the 7th century. But almost all came no earlier than the invasion of Syria (which included Eretz Yisrael and Lebanon) by Muhammad Ali (not the boxer) around 1830, and many of them migrated from the surrounding countries to take advantage of the economic development of the land by the Zionists and later the British Empire. When the UN defined “Palestinian refugee” in 1948, it included “persons whose normal place of residence was Palestine during the period 1 June 1946 to 15 May 1948…”, to include numerous recent migrants.

The last time Eretz Yisrael was governed by its indigenous inhabitants was during the Hasmonean Dynasty (140-137 BCE), the folks that gave us Hanukah. Since then, it has been ruled by a succession of invaders, including the Romans, Byzantines, Persians, Arabs, Crusaders, Mamelukes, Turks, and British. Until the advent of the Palestinian Authority in 1993 and the Hamas takeover in Gaza, there has been nothing approaching Palestinian sovereignty anywhere.

A recent NY Times hit-job on Israel inadvertently made the oppositional nature of Palestinism clear. Asmaa Azaizeh, an Arab citizen of Israel and an intellectual, was quoted thus:

“Being a Palestinian is a way of resisting injustice,” she said. If there was nothing to resist, “I wouldn’t care if I was Palestinian or Egyptian or Lebanese or Jordanian.”

Palestinians are Arabs and they share the language, religious beliefs, and customs of Arabs in the surrounding countries. What makes them specifically Palestinian, as Ms. Azaizeh says, is their opposition to Zionism and the Jewish state. It doesn’t need to be said that in comparison, the Jewish people have a unique language and religion, as well as a relationship to this particular piece of land that goes back for millennia. As explained in the Torah, this land is inseparable from Jewish identity.

***

As I wrote last week, we are engaged in a conflict of tribes over the land. Regardless of the justice of their position, the tribe that prevails will have the land, and the loser will disappear.

The Arabs that call themselves Palestinians understand the importance of the land to their ideology far better than secular Jews do. That is why, with all the divisions and rivalries among them, they can agree almost single-mindedly on their goal of recovering their land and their honor.

One of the biggest mistakes that Israel makes in dealing with Arabs is in failing to understand the importance of maintaining her own honor. In the Middle East, honor is the greater part of deterrence. There is a Bedouin story about a rich man with many animals, several wives, and a number of sons. One day he sees someone steal a goat, and does nothing. He has many goats; maybe the thief is hungry, he thinks. The thief is emboldened and brings his friends. Little by little they take everything the man has. He has lost his honor, and without honor has no rights. Soon he finds his animals gone, his sons murdered, and his wives raped. He is left sitting outside the tent that used to belong to him.

Every time a Jew is humiliated on the street, every time they steal a car, burn a centimeter of land or make us afraid to walk on it, the Arabs move forward, closer to their goal. Every time a Jew moves away from the periphery of the country because of crime and insecurity, we lose ground. When we allow Arabs to shoot at us, or God forbid, kill us, without taking revenge, they gain and we lose.

There is a strategy for us to win in this conflict. It is to push forward in all parts of Eretz Yisrael to fully control the land, to make the Arabs understand that they have no hope of driving us out. It means increasing Jewish presence and control at the Temple Mount, and not the opposite, as has been happening since 1967. It means ending the no-go zones inside our capital. It means adopting a death penalty for terrorist murderers, and meeting Bedouin banditry in the south with overwhelming force. It means crushing the genocidal regime of Hamas, even if it requires a military occupation of Gaza. It means stopping the flow of money from the EU into illegal Arab building in Judea and Samaria, and encouraging hundreds of thousands of Jews to move there. It will probably also mean targeted killings and expulsions.

Life would not be as easy or pleasant for the Jews of Israel as it is now if they take on this task. It would require more military service, and it would cost money and lives. The state would have to become less open, liberal, and democratic. There would be opposition from the Israeli Left, Europe and America. The special position of the Jewish state as “the Jew of nations” ensures that, even if the nations of the world generally went out of their way to intervene on the side of justice, they would not choose our side.

On the other hand, if we don’t do it, if we allow the Arabs to continue their incremental gains and their erosion of our sovereignty, the day will come that we find ourselves outside our tent with no sons, wives or camels. There isn’t another alternative.

There is no doubt in my mind that we have the resources and the ability to win, to assert Jewish dominance over all of Eretz Yisrael. The harder question is this: how can we develop the will and the unity required to do it?

Posted in Israel and Palestinian Arabs, The Jewish people | Comments Off on Refuting the Narrative and Winning the Tribal War

Understanding Israel-Hatred

Posted on October 24, 2021 by Victor Rosenthal

The state of Israel has been in existence only for 73 years. The Zionist project has been around for somewhat longer, beginning in the 19th century. Since 1860, some 116,000 Jews and Arabs have lost their lives in wars, terrorism, and pogroms related to Arab-Jewish conflict in Eretz Yisrael. In the annals of recent human bloodshed, this doesn’t move the needle; in the Congo Wars of 1996-2001 and the genocides that immediately preceded and followed them, as many as 5.4 million were killed. The Syrian Civil War, still under way, has claimed 500-600,000 victims. And yet, more concentrated diplomatic and media activity surrounds our conflict than any other since the Cold War. Why are we special?

Israel is regularly accused of genocide. According to the UN, her alleged victims, the Arabs of Judea/Samaria/Gaza and eastern Jerusalem, who were about 1.1 million in 1970, now number at 5.2 million. Genocide? Even if this figure is exaggerated, the accusation is simply crazy.

Israel is regularly accused of apartheid, although Israeli Arab and Jewish citizens have equal rights, both de jure and de facto. There are no segregated facilities, no separate beaches, restrooms, or lunch counters (although Jews are forbidden to drink from water faucets on the Temple Mount). The Arabs in the disputed territories, by internationally recognized agreements, are citizens of the Palestinian Authority, and insofar as the PA holds elections, can vote in them. The historical phenomenon of apartheid bears no resemblance to anything found in Israel or the territories, despite the attempts of anti-Israel groups to torture definitions to make it so.

In the few decades of her existence the modern State of Israel has been attacked by soldiers of Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia; other belligerents include Hezbollah, Hamas, the PLO and numerous other terrorist groups like Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). She has been bombarded by missiles, rockets, mortar shells, balloons, and drones from Lebanon, Syria, Gaza, and Iraq. She has been infiltrated by terrorists countless times, including by means of rubber boats and hang gliders. She is currently the target of threats to annihilate her from Iran, which has provided large amounts of money and weapons to proxies in Lebanon, Syria, and Gaza, and which is developing nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them. Iranian leaders have referred to Israel as a “cancer” that must be eliminated from the world. I don’t think there is any other nation in recent history that has its very existence questioned in a similar way.

Hamas, which took control of Gaza in a coup against the Palestinian Authority in 2007, two years after every last Israeli soldier or civilian left the strip, precipitates periodic wars against Israel while waging a continuous terror campaign against residents of southern Israel. Gaza receives millions in aid from the UN and the EU, along with large amounts of cash from Qatar, supposedly for humanitarian purposes. Hamas uses it to prepare for the next war, and to make its kleptocratic leaders fabulously rich, while the rest of the population suffers. But Israel is blamed for “occupying” Gaza and impoverishing its people.

Although the violent attacks have come from her regional enemies, European countries have been waging diplomatic and cognitive war against Israel since the first days of her existence. Britain trained and sent advisors to the Jordanian army, which invaded the brand-new state the day after the British left in 1948. European money supports international, Israeli, and Palestinian NGOs which work to subvert the State of Israel, to propagandize against her, and to engage in “lawfare,” such as attempts to arrest IDF soldiers and government officials for “war crimes” and to prosecute Israel in the International Criminal Court. But there is evidence from impartial observers that the IDF does far more to prevent collateral damage than Western armies do.

In the US, countless organizations dedicated to bringing about the end of the Jewish state exist, from the numerous campus chapters of Students for Justice in Palestine, through professional propaganda outfits like the Foundation for Middle East Peace, to Jewish organizations like IfNotNow and “A Jewish Voice for Peace” (JVP). Large foundations like the Rockefeller Brothers Fund finance numerous groups and initiatives working against the Jewish state around the world. The New Israel Fund provides millions of dollars to hundreds of Israeli “social justice” groups. Some are harmless, but others are subversive or even connected to terrorism.

The progressive Left in America is monolithically anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian, despite the fact that the PLO and Hamas have shown themselves to be racist, misogynist, homophobic, and antisemitic. Organizations like the Movement for Black Lives and other “racial justice” groups consistently line up “for Palestine” and increasingly express explicitly antisemitic beliefs. The ridiculous and illogical proposition that Israel trains American police to abuse blacks (promoted by JVP) is widely accepted, and has encouraged anti-Jewish violence in US cities. Several members of the US Congress have made attacks on Israel – which often shade into antisemitism – their stock in trade.

In the international arena, the UN is shot through with bias against Israel. From the dozens of anti-Israel resolutions passed regularly by the General Assembly, the Human Rights Commission, and various agencies such as WHO and UNESCO, to the 2001 UN-sponsored World Conference against Racism in Durban, South Africa, and the annual “International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People,” the UN seems to do little else than attack Israel.

The large “Human Rights” NGOs, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, falsely accuse Israel of apartheid, war crimes, and numerous acts of oppression; they defend terrorists, engage in lawfare against Israel, and employ many anti-Israel activists and individuals with connections to terrorist groups.

Finally, there is the almost universal contempt for Israel that is found throughout the academic world everywhere, even to a great extent in Israel. Pro-Israel students and faculty find themselves marginalized and punished if they express their beliefs. Some “scholars” and whole departments specialize in producing articles attacking Israel regardless of their actual area of expertise (if any).

Boycotts of Israel are found in every arena: athletes refuse to compete against Israelis, academics are disinvited from conferences, performers and writers who are Israeli or pro-Israel are canceled, Israeli products are boycotted. Ben and Jerry’s would prefer that Israelis don’t eat their ice cream (and not just in the territories). Israel disappears from maps and from the American passports of people born in Jerusalem. Even Israeli ham radio operators’ calls go unanswered. Perhaps they think that if they act as though we don’t exist, we will disappear.

Israel, like any modern state, isn’t perfect. But accusations of genocide, apartheid, oppression, and war crimes are not only false, they are absurd. In many cases they mirror what Israel’s enemies themselves have done, are doing, or would like to do, to Jews and their state. They constitute a Big Lie assault, in which massive repetition of outrageous falsehoods stuns the mind into accepting them.

The obsessive, extreme, and irrational hatred of Israel today is almost without precedent. In fact, there is only one historical phenomenon that can compare to it: the vile treatment of Jews throughout the millennia of recorded history. The persecutions, expulsions, pogroms, blood libels, boycotts, discrimination, and ultimately genocide that befell the Jewish people were no less obsessive, extreme, and irrational than today’s hatred of Israel.

This is not surprising, because the latter is nothing more than a mutation of the former. The State of Israel came about because Zionist thinkers realized that there was no other way for the weak, divided, Jewish people to survive in an increasingly unfriendly world than in a state of their own. In a kind of evolutionary response, Jew-hatred itself then had to become Israel-hatred to survive.

But there is an important difference: the weak, divided Jewish people had no way to fight back. Israel does.

Posted in Academia, Diplomatic warfare, Europe and Israel, Iran, Israeli or Jewish History, Jew Hatred, Terrorism, The Jewish people, War, Zionism | 1 Comment

It’s a Tribal Conflict

Posted on October 21, 2021 by Victor Rosenthal

Humans have always arranged themselves into families, extended families, and tribes. After all, they are primates, and many other primate species act similarly. Sometimes tribes clash over a piece of territory. Maybe the ground is fertile or the hunting is good. When that happens, the tribes fight. If there are other tribes nearby, each side may seek allies to help them win. This is the way human beings behave. We think we are different today. We are not.

Usually one tribe is the aggressor and one is the victim. The goal of the aggressor is to take what the victim has: property and land, and sometimes to enslave the useful members of the victim tribe. Some tribes have been very successful in serial aggressions, even building empires as they sweep across the land, employing techniques of aggression that they improve with successive conquests. The Arab conquests of the 7th century and the Mongols of the 13th come to mind.

Sometimes the aggressor wins, and sometimes the intended victim beats the aggressor off, or even destroys him. Sometimes there are repeated conflicts with no clear winner over a long period.

When one tribe achieves a conclusive victory, the other tribe usually disappears. They are killed, enslaved, expelled, females raped, and their genetic material fades into the background noise. The culture of the aggressor becomes the dominant culture in conquered areas. Their language and their religion replace those of the losing tribe.

In modern times tribes have coalesced into nations. Sometimes – rarely these days – a nation is comprised of primarily one tribe or a group of closely related tribes. Such a nation is Japan. Other nations are dominated by one tribe, but have significant national minorities, like China or Russia. Usually the more stable nations are the ones that are homogeneous or the ones whose dominant tribes are solidly in control, which in part explains why China and Russia sometimes behave in ways that are considered oppressive to their minorities.

An example of what can happen when there are large national minorities is Lebanon. Lebanon was an experiment in modern politics in which political structures were built to balance the power of the multiple Christian, Muslim, and Druze factions (i.e., tribes). Great care was taken to ensure that no tribe would be dominant. This, it turns out, is precisely the formula for instability – which was exploited by outside forces like the PLO, Syria, and Iran. Today the nation has been reduced to failed third-world state status, without a functional currency or electric power grid. Worse, it has been made into one massive remote-controlled missile launcher for Iran, and will be forced to absorb even more blows if (when) war breaks out between Israel and Iran.

Muslim minorities in non-Muslim states are particularly destabilizing. This is because Islamic ideology contains several concepts that lead to conflicts between Muslim and non-Muslim neighbors. Islamic doctrine holds that women and non-Muslims have fewer rights than male Muslims, something that creates friction in modern liberal cultures. And they believe that it is unacceptable for Muslims to live under a non-Islamic regime, which results in noncompliance with laws and rebelliousness. We can see these phenomena in Europe today.

Israel is in a particularly difficult position, with an extremely large national minority of Muslim Arabs (about one in every five Israeli citizens). In addition to the religious factor they have developed a sense of grievance and a narrative of dispossession and loss of honor. This is a formula for trouble, and indeed it has broken out into open insurrection several times; most notably in the two intifadas, and in the “disturbances” (anti-Jewish pogroms) in cities with mixed Jewish and Arab populations this May during the recent war with Hamas in Gaza.

Recently Arab alienation has taken the form of contempt for the laws of the state, with crime rampant in Arab areas – and spreading outside of them. In particular, Israel’s strict laws regulating the possession of firearms are massively flouted, with Arabs obtaining weapons stolen from the army, smuggled across the border from Lebanon, or even manufactured at home. Some illegal weapons also find their way into the hands of terrorists.

Israelis are worried. Even leaving aside the conflict with the Arabs of Judea, Samaria, and Gaza who have been educated by their remarkably evil leaders over the past several generations to incandescently hate Jews, what can be done to preserve the Jewish state with its increasingly restive Arab Muslim minority?

Back in 2006, a group of Arab intellectuals, citizens of the state of Israel, told us what they thought in a document called “The Future Vision of the Palestinian Arabs in Israel.” The writers were academics, politicians, and social activists, people from the intellectual elite of Arab Israeli society, chosen to represent “different political beliefs and thought schools.” It was a serious project, sponsored by the National Committee for the Heads of the Local Arab Councils in Israel. The final product represented their consensus of opinion.

The document affirms the narrative of Israel as a European colonial project, involving the “Judaization” of the land and the “destruction of Palestinian history.” It asserts that Israel is an “ethnocracy” and not a democracy. The writers demanded that the state “acknowledge responsibility for the Palestinian Nakba” of 1948, and recognize its Arab citizens as an “indigenous national minority” and an essential part of the greater “Palestinian people.” They demanded that the State of Israel redefine itself from a Jewish state into a binational one, with equal political representation for Jews and Arabs, including granting Arabs a veto power over state policies. They demanded “corrective justice … in order to compensate for the damage inflicted on the Palestinian Arabs due to the ethnic favoritism policies of the Jews.” And naturally they called for “Guaranteeing the rights of the Palestinian Arabs in issues obliterated in the past such as the present absentees and their right of return.”

Even much of the Israeli Left was shocked. Such a binational state would in short order make Lebanon look like a success story. Despite the language of human rights that suffuses the document, it represents a demand for the Jews to reverse the outcome of the 1948 War of Independence, and submit to what would quickly become Arab domination. And that in turn – as is normal among primates – would end in murder, slavery, expulsion, and rape, and the final end of the Jewish people in the Middle East and perhaps in the world.

The centrist Zionist position is that it is possible to buy the Arabs off by making it possible for them to have the “good things in life,” like nice cars and fast internet service. After all, they already have the highest standard of living of any other Arab population in the Middle East. In some respects they live better than many Jewish Israelis (compare the large mansions in Arab towns to the cramped apartments of the Jews). But there are some things that we are not prepared to give them: land – they want it all – and their honor, which they believe we took from them in the Nakba. Their honor demands that we become subservient to those whom former MK Haneen Zouabi called “the owners of the homeland,” the Palestinian Arabs. Unfortunately, these are the things they really want, not cars and internet service.

There is no middle ground, just as there is no mutually acceptable “two-state solution” for the Arabs of Judea and Samaria, and no prospect of peace with Hamas. This is a struggle between tribes. And although we are a majority in our state, our tribe is a tiny minority in the region and the world, so it is also a struggle for our continued existence.

This is a kind of struggle that liberal societies are not good at. We want to compromise, to find win-win solutions. There aren’t any here. One side has to win and the other lose. And if we lose, we disappear; so we’d better win.

Posted in Israeli Arabs | 1 Comment

Sovereign or Satellite?

Posted on October 17, 2021 by Victor Rosenthal

The Biden Administration has made it clear that it intends to reopen its consulate on Agron St. in Jerusalem.  The consulate, which in the past served as the unofficial US Embassy to the Palestinian Authority (PA), was closed by President Trump when the embassy to Israel was moved to Jerusalem.

The main function of a consulate is to provide services to residents of the country in which it is located and to citizens of the home country, such as issuing visas, renewing passports, and so on. An embassy, on the other hand, is the official representation of one country to another, contains the office of the ambassador, and is responsible for negotiations between countries (here is a comparison between a consulate and an embassy).

In all but exceptional cases, embassies are located in the capital of a country, and constitute recognition of the capital’s status by the home country. This, of course, is why Trump’s moving the US Embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv was such a big deal: it was the concrete manifestation of the 1995 decision by the US Congress to recognize that Jerusalem is the capital of the State of Israel.

It is customary to provide consular services in the host country’s capital at the embassy. Consulates are established in other places for convenience. For example, Israel’s embassy to the US is in Washington, but she has consulates in nine other cities. As far as I know, no country in the world has a separate consulate in addition to its embassy in the capital of another country. When the American Embassy was located in Tel Aviv, it was reasonable for there to be a consulate in Jerusalem to provide services in the area; and it also served unofficially as a conduit to the PA. But when the US embassy moved to Jerusalem, there was no justification for a consulate there as well, and so it was closed.

Both PM Naftali Bennett and Foreign Minister Yair Lapid have publicly expressed their strong opposition to the reopening of the consulate, and say that they made it clear to American officials, including Secretary of State Antony Blinken. Opening a diplomatic mission to the PA in Jerusalem sends a message that the administration views Jerusalem as the PA “capital.” And this interpretation is shared by the PA, as Itamar Marcus of Palestinian Media Watch notes:

Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh stated that the move is “important” for Palestinians because “the message from this [Biden] administration is that Jerusalem is not one [united Israeli] city and that the American administration does not recognize the annexation of Arab Jerusalem by the Israeli side. We want the American Consulate to constitute the seed of a US embassy in the State of Palestine.” [Facebook page, PA PM Muhammad Shtayyeh, Sept. 14, 2021]

Knesset Member and former Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat noted that “[t]here is no other capital where America has a consulate and embassy serving two nations. It would be tantamount to dividing Jerusalem.” In opposition, the Biden Administration wants to promote a version of the “two-state solution” in which Jerusalem would be divided, with the eastern part becoming the capital of “Palestine.”

The official Israeli position is that Jerusalem is only the capital of Israel and no other state, and must not be re-divided, as it was prior to 1967. If the US wants an embassy to the PA, it should be in Ramallah, where the PA has its seat.

The rules that govern the establishment of consulates and their functions are found in the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, to which almost every country in the world is a party, and which constitutes binding international law. Article 4 states that the consent of the host country is required for the establishment of a consulate, or any change in its location or status. A unilateral act to reopen the consulate would therefore be a breach of international law.

It would also arguably violate American law. The Jerusalem Embassy act of 1995 – which was finally implemented in 2018 by President Trump after decades of inaction by three US presidents – states that it is US policy that “… Jerusalem should remain an undivided city in which the rights of every ethnic and religious group are protected [and] Jerusalem should be recognized as the capital of the State of Israel…”

There is a report in Israeli media that Foreign Minister Lapid – although he categorically denies it – promised American Secretary of State Blinken that the US could reopen the consulate. He supposedly received a promise in return that the US would wait until after the somewhat shaky Israeli government had passed its budget. There is a law that a government must pass a budget by 4 November, or it will be automatically dissolved, so its members want to avoid anything potentially destabilizing until then. The report also says that the Americans were “surprised” and “disappointed” when officials representing PM Bennett told them that the government was opposed to the reopening at any time. Blinken indicated that he intended to move forward with the plan.

Public opinion in Israel is strongly opposed to allowing it to happen. I am relatively sure that if the government announced that it had given permission to the US to establish an “Embassy to Palestine” in our capital, that would be the end of that government, before or after the passage of the budget. New elections would shortly follow. But on the other hand, I doubt that the Biden Administration is prepared to blatantly violate international law by doing it in the face of Israeli refusal to grant permission.

So what I expect to happen is that the US will ratchet up pressure on Lapid and Bennett. If they give in, they will try to suggest that it was a unilateral American decision; the Americans will say as little as possible, in order not to embarrass their puppets in Jerusalem. But if Lapid and Bennett continue to stand firm, and both publicly and privately insist that they will not allow this to happen, then I think the Americans will back down, or at least put the idea on the back burner and hope for a more compliant Israeli government the next time.

Sovereign or satellite? We’ll find out in the next month or so.

Posted in Diplomatic warfare, Israel and Palestinian Arabs, US-Israel Relations | 4 Comments

Two Principles

Posted on October 14, 2021 by Victor Rosenthal

All of my writing is informed by two principles. The first, both logically and rhetorically, is that there is no moral principle more important than the value of preserving the Jewish people. This is axiomatic for me: if we don’t agree on this, then there is no point to continue the discussion.

This means that preserving the Jewish people is more important to me than anything else, including democracy or even considerations of human rights. Not that I think that there is a conflict between the continued existence of this people and the legitimate rights of others; I do not. But if, in any particular case, I have to choose between Jewish survival and the good of others, I will choose Jewish survival.

Some say that this disqualifies me as an “objective” observer of events. Actually, it makes me like everyone else. We all have loyalties that override universal obligations to humanity. Who would sacrifice their immediate family in order to protect the rights of others?

The second principle is the necessity of a Jewish state. If the Jewish state were to disappear, so – in short order – would the Jewish people. Unlike the first principle, this is an empirical one. The early Zionists who called for a Jewish state did so to a great degree because the history of the treatment of the Jews in the Christian and Muslim worlds impelled them to the conclusion that a sovereign state was necessary to ensure the continuance of their people despite persecution and assimilation. Subsequent events – the Holocaust among them – provided evidence that they were correct.

So what are the consequences of these principles?

Here is an example: Hezbollah has 130,000 rockets aimed at Israel. If they were to be launched, they would kill thousands in Israel and imperil the continued existence of the state. Therefore I believe that a preemptive attack on the launchers, even if it would kill numerous innocent Lebanese civilians, is morally justified (whether such an action is a good idea from a military or political standpoint is another issue, which I am not discussing at this point).

Another example: the geographic characteristics of the State of Israel require that she maintain control of the high ground of Judea and Samaria and the western ridge of the Jordan Valley in order to have defensible borders. Therefore, regardless of political considerations, these areas cannot be transferred to Arab sovereignty. If you believe that Israel’s holding on to these territories poses a demographic threat to her Jewish majority, then you must find the solution in reducing their Arab population rather than in Israeli withdrawal.

I do not believe that the Arabs who call themselves “Palestinians” have a valid legal claim on the area called Eretz Yisrael. But even if I did, I would be opposed to them realizing it, because it is in direct opposition to the continued existence of the Jewish state. In other words, I am not impartial on this question. I do not give equal weight to Jewish and Arab aspirations in our little land.

That’s enough for many people to declare me a “racist” whose opinions are worthless. But there is no human being who does not privilege some group over others, even if it’s just their immediate family. The ideal of valuing all human beings equally always breaks down at some point. This is unsurprising. We are not abstract entities, we are animals, and like all living creatures we function according to evolutionary rules established by forces far more powerful than our reason (incidentally, this isn’t an anti-religious statement: halacha was developed with this in mind). Family feeling, tribalism, and peoplehood are not things that can be erased.

Here is the reality: it is not Jewish paranoia to think that much of the world opposes Jewish self-determination, and sometimes the existence of Jews themselves. It is not paranoid to notice that Jews living in the diaspora are facing more antisemitism and anti-Jewish discrimination and even violence from day to day. And neither is it paranoid to think that the Palestinian Arabs would kill, enslave, or expel all the Jews from the land if they had the ability to do so. Indeed, they’ll gladly tell you so.

I am not going to argue for the value of the existence of the Jewish people. And we don’t need to convince anybody. What matters, as Ben Gurion said, is not what the nations think, but what the Jews do.

Posted in Jew Hatred, The Jewish people, Zionism | 4 Comments