Israel, Wake Up!

Posted on October 10, 2021 by Victor Rosenthal

Hamas has produced a blueprint for “post-liberation Palestine” which describes how they will create the new state of “Palestine” after the Jewish state is destroyed.

It explains how they will variously slaughter, dispossess, or enslave the Jews of Israel, and acquire their property. “This is an issue that requires deep deliberation and a display of the humanism that has always characterized Islam,” they write. Indeed.

This is not a hoax or a propaganda stunt. It is a serious document which tries to grapple with the very real problems that the new regime will have to solve if it is to inherit the land and the wealth that is in the hands of the despised Jews today. It was created by a committee appointed by Hamas leader Yahya Al-Sinwar. The translation to English that is linked above was carried out by the highly reliable Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), who summarize it as follows:

The conference published a concluding statement listing “ideas and methods of operation [to be implemented] during the liberation of Palestine” after Israel ceases to exist. This list included, inter alia, a call for drafting a document of independence that will be “a direct continuation of the Pact of ‘Umar Bin Al-Khattab” concerning Byzantine Jerusalem’s surrender to the Muslim conquerors which took place apparently in 638; a definition of the leadership of the state until elections are held; recommendations for engagement with the international community and the neighboring states; a call for preparing in advance appropriate legislation for the transition to the new regime; a call for establishing apparatuses to ensure the continuation of economic activity once the Israeli shekel is no longer in use and to preserve the resources that previously belonged to Israel; and a call for compiling a guide for resettling the Palestinian refugees who wish to return to Palestine.

The conference also recommended that rules be drawn up for dealing with “Jews” in the country, including defining which of them will be killed or subjected to legal prosecution and which will be allowed to leave or to remain and be integrated into the new state. It also called for preventing a brain drain of Jewish professionals, and for the retention of “educated Jews and experts in the areas of medicine, engineering, technology, and civilian and military industry… [who] should not be allowed to leave.” Additionally, it recommended obtaining lists of “the agents of the occupation in Palestine, in the region, and [throughout] the world, and… the names of the recruiters, Jewish and non-Jewish, in the country and abroad” in order to “purge Palestine and the Arab and Islamic homeland of this hypocrite scum.”

These are the minutes of a latter-day Wannseekonferenz. And they must be taken seriously, just as Hitler should have been.

I am overreacting, you say. We could turn Gaza into a parking lot in ten minutes. Hamas is a joke and Yahya Sinwar is its punchline.

Well, yes and no. Of course we could turn Gaza into a parking lot; but will we? Sinwar and other Palestinian Arab leaders – like Marwan Barghouti, who is living comfortably today in an Israeli prison, but who could become the next President of the Palestinian Authority – are not expecting that Hamas could successfully conquer Israel by itself. What they are waiting for is the next regional war, when Israel finally confronts Iran and Hezbollah. In the chaos resulting from thousands of rockets falling on Israel from Syria, Lebanon, Gaza, and perhaps Iran and Iraq – including rockets with precision-guidance systems and armed drones – along with a probable invasion by Hezbollah in the North, the situation will be out of control. At that time, uprisings in Judea/Samaria, human wave attacks from Gaza, and an intifada by Arab citizens of Israel, could bring about a military and social collapse.

Israel, they believe, is already suffering a political collapse. Like former PM Ehud Olmert, we don’t want to win. Why else, Arabs think, would our government try to make an “arrangement” with Hamas rather than crushing it? Why have we virtually stopped construction in Judea and Samaria? Why do we allow illegal Arab settlements like Khan al-Ahmar to remain? Why has the government continued to transfer funds to the PA while it pays terrorists to murder Jews? Why do we allow Germany and other EU countries to send hundreds of millions of Euros for Arab construction in the part of Judea and Samaria that is supposed to be under Israeli civil control? Why have we allowed the Wakf free reign to destroy antiquities on the Temple Mount? Why are Jews still not allowed to pray silently there? And why have leftist cabinet members traveled to Ramallah to meet with Mahmoud Abbas?

Our government is a sharply divided coalition which includes an anti-Zionist, Islamist Arab party as well as one that represents the extreme Left. Although the majority of Israelis hold right-of-center ideologies, the right is split over the personality of Binyamin Netanyahu, and there is no popular figure for it to coalesce around.

But the loss of vitality is not only political, it is physical and spiritual. Today, Israelis are fat, with 26% of them obese (although not as fat as Americans, at 36%). Virtually all construction workers are Arabs. Agricultural workers are Thai, Filipino, or Arab; the sunburned kibbutzniks of the early years, who also comprised most of the IDF’s special units, are long gone. Today about 12% of Israel’s population are Haredim, who are in poor physical condition and don’t serve in the army. The word “Zionism” is most commonly used ironically. In the days of Ben Gurion and Rabin, the Zionist Left was well-represented in the fighting units of the IDF. Today’s post-Zionist Left, which dominates our media, academic, and legal arenas, often advises young people to avoid the draft.

Israeli Arabs hold the Jewish state in contempt. In a recent incident several Israeli policemen were beaten by members of a private Arab security company. During the riots (which many called “pogroms”) in mixed Arab/Jewish towns that took place in May during the most recent conflict in Gaza, Jewish homes and businesses were burned, Jews were beaten and even murdered. The police were unable to control the Arabs, and in many cases were nowhere to be found. The foreign and left-leaning Israeli media focused on a small number of Jews that responded violently, and presented the events as “Jewish-Arab clashes.” They were not. They were anti-Jewish riots.

Is there any wonder why Arabs, both in the territories and among our citizens, believe that our days as rulers of this land are numbered?

Hamas and the Palestinian Authority have been preparing their people for conflict since their establishment. Their educational, cultural, and religious systems all send the same message of grievance and loss of honor, as well as vicious antisemitic hatred. The number of young Palestinian Arabs who are prepared to risk death or imprisonment to murder Jews at random is a testament to their success. “Palestinian refugees” in several countries receive similar messages from UNRWA schools.

Israeli Arabs do not receive similar indoctrination, but virtually all of them share a sense of grievance and dispossession that alienates them from the state. As the May riots showed, many of them are prepared to act violently on behalf of their beliefs, even when the country is only involved in a minor military confrontation. What could happen in a regional war?

In the case of simultaneous massive rocket attacks, invasions, and insurrection, IDF ground forces and police would have to protect the Jewish population as well as fight our enemies. But some doubt that they are prepared even for their traditional task of repelling enemy armies. The former IDF ombudsman, Maj. Gen. Yitzhak Brick, produced a report in 2018 that was highly critical of ground force preparedness and capabilities. IDF officials dispute his charges, but the controversy continues.

Israel is a small country. The scenario in which she could be overwhelmed is not impossible, even by technologically inferior enemies. There are plenty of examples in which powerful Western armies have been defeated by determined third-world opponents. And they are determined, while we are conflicted.

Throughout history, there are examples of conflicts between cultures over a particular land. One side always wins; and through dispersal, murder, slavery, absorption, or all of these, the other one disappears. In this case, Hamas has explicitly expressed the will of the regional Arab Muslim culture to displace the Israeli Jewish one. This will is not likely to be dissipated by concessions on the part of the Jewish culture. Such concessions only increase the contempt in which it is held.

The struggle between cultures for Eretz Yisrael has been going on since roughly the beginning of the 20th century. The Arabs have always understood its elemental nature, but many Jews have believed that the conflict can be “solved” so that the cultures can coexist. That would be like “solving” the geological phenomenon of tectonic flow. The struggle will continue until one of the cultures disappears from the land, possibly in a final military confrontation as Yahya Sinwar hopes.

The Arabs have a vision and have never stopped aggressively fighting for it. The Jews, on the other hand, seem to have lost theirs – it was called “Zionism” – because, in part, they do not recognize the struggle for what it is: a zero-sum conflict over every inch of our homeland. They do not understand that it will not be resolved in the UN or Washington or Brussels. It will be decided here, on the land, in Judea, Samaria, the Jordan Valley, Gaza, Tel Aviv, on the Temple Mount, in Sheik Jarrah, Khan al-Ahmar, the Galil, the Negev, Lod, Acco, Yafo, and everywhere else Jews and Arabs face each other over the question “whose land is it?”

Military power is necessary, but not sufficient, for victory in this struggle. First we need to wake up and see it for what it is, in all its savagery; and then we need to start fighting to win, at every point of contact. Our enemies already are.

Posted in Israel and Palestinian Arabs, Israeli Arabs, Israeli Politics, Israeli Society, Post-Zionism, War, Zionism | 6 Comments

Ein Breira

Posted on October 7, 2021 by Victor Rosenthal

Recently I have been hearing that Israel can’t stop Iran’s nuclear program, and America is our only hope. For example, here is Daniel Gordis:

[Former PM Ehud] Barak wrote that Israel no longer has a viable military option for preventing Iran from crossing the nuclear threshold, and that the Mullahs are marching steadily forward on their quest. Israel needs the US to develop military plans to stop Iran (Barak said that not only does the US have no such plans, it also has no interest in developing them); furthermore, he said, Israel is going to have to recognize its increased dependence on the US, and to work hard to deepen its ties to America.

But Barak does not draw the appropriate conclusion from the facts that he presents, and neither does Gordis, who thinks that Israel must “mend fences with American Jews” to help influence the US “to do the right thing” and act against Iran. Barak’s argument (Hebrew link) actually implies that we cannot depend on America.

Barak wrote that Iran’s “breakout time” – the time it will take to produce enough enriched uranium for a bomb once Iran has decided to do so – has been reduced to about 30 days. Of course there are other technological hurdles to pass before that uranium can be made into a deliverable weapon, but still, Israel’s moment of decision is closer than ever.

There is a lot of discussion of whose fault this is, with Barak and others placing the blame on Netanyahu and Trump. I don’t want to expend too many words on this, but I disagree. Trump is accused of precipitously ending the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran (with Netanyahu’s encouragement), which allowed the Iranians to increase their uranium enrichment activities significantly. But Iran was already violating the too-weak deal, and Trump’s policy of “maximum pressure” – both economic and covert, as in the assassination of Qassem Soleimani – was causing the regime great distress. The policy’s failure was assured by its early termination: Trump was not reelected, and Biden chose to scrap it. But it doesn’t matter who’s to blame; the question is what to do about it.

Barak suggests that the Iranian regime intends to develop all of the pieces of a nuclear weapon, starting with the necessary fissionable material, without immediately assembling one. Technically Iran will not be a nuclear state, but it will be able to become one in a very short time, perhaps measured in days or even hours. By remaining a “threshold state” and not assembling or testing a weapon, the regime can protect itself diplomatically, while for all practical purposes having a nuclear capability. And Barak correctly notes that the US Administration does not see this situation as sufficiently threatening to American interests to require a military response.

And here I need to say a few words about America. I’ve said a lot of this before, so I’ll summarize.

First, support for Israel among US elites is waning, due to the success of the campaign of cognitive warfare that has targeted the American educational system since the 1970s, when massive amounts of petrodollars were recycled into contributions to universities and think tanks, departments of Mideast Studies were established, and professorial chairs endowed. Money also flowed from organizations linked to billionaire George Soros and left-leaning foundations like the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, into anti-Israel groups targeting sectors of the population, like Jews and Evangelicals, that had traditionally provided the backbone of support for Israel. More recently, the broad Left, which includes numerous student groups, “racial justice” movements, and left-leaning members of Congress, have universally adopted anti-Israel positions regardless of their relevance to their causes.

Second, the officials responsible for Iran policy, prominently represented by special envoy to the nuclear negotiations Robert Malley, are associated with a policy of appeasement of Iran rather than coercion (either economically or by force). Malley also has a history of taking anti-Israel positions in the Palestinian arena.

Third, especially after the debacle in Afghanistan, the US is wary of becoming involved in any military activity in the Middle East, either unilateral or cooperative. The best that Israel can hope for is that if she decides to take action against Iran, the US will not intervene in some way against Israel, such as by leaking information that might compromise an Israeli attack on nuclear sites.

Fourth, the US has its own problems which are rapidly getting worse. Led by an incompetent president who is incapable of being a unifying personality, the nation is wracked by social conflict (which I believe is to a great extent instigated by cognitive warfare being waged against it by external enemies). The collective mind space of the elites is occupied by mass-psychotic aberrations about gender and race. The media are no longer trusted or trustworthy; people get their news in social-media bubbles where they are easily manipulated. The bubbles, where the more radical an opinion is, the more it is valued, create extremists and amplify outlandish ideas. But reality is out there, and while Gen. Mark Milley, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, worries about “white rage,” China prepares to take Taiwan. And it won’t stop there.

I think it is a foregone conclusion that the US will not take military action against Iran, especially if Iran remains a threshold state. Further, it is clear that the Biden administration will not even follow the path of Trump and impose strong sanctions; it is moving in the direction of appeasement. And the Iranian regime is so close to their nuclear goal that they can taste it.

The diplomatic track followed by the US is counterproductive from Israel’s point of view. No deal that the regime will agree to make with the US will prevent Iran from becoming a threshold state. A deal will simply give it time to continue development while protecting the nuclear program from Israel, who would be cast as a rogue state if she acts. This, I think, is why Netanyahu forbade his government to discuss parameters for a deal with the Americans: no possible deal is a “good deal” for Israel.

Therefore there is no reason for Israel to “recognize its increased dependence on the US, and to work hard to deepen its ties to America” as Barak and Gordis suggest. The opposite is true: Israel must realize that she is almost alone in her struggle with Iran, and she must develop a plan to eliminate the threat by herself, with whatever help she can get from her Arab allies in the Gulf. And it’s painful to say this, but Israel must also be wary of a US effort to sabotage her plans.

Barak describes the difficulties and dangers inherent in an Israeli attack on Iran. They are indeed formidable. But there is no solution to be found in America. The alternative to stopping Iran is to give up the future of the Jewish state, or, in other words, there is no alternative. In Hebrew, ein breira.

David Ben Gurion is not my favorite personality in Israel’s history. If I hadn’t been 5-1/2 years old at the time, I would have preferred to be on the deck of the Altalena than on the shore shooting at her. But unlike Barak, Ben Gurion understood that when there is no alternative, you do what you have to do. He knew that the moment he declared the state, it would be at war. He knew that the new state would be weak and outnumbered. But his approach was to declare the state and find a way to win the ensuing war.

We have some number of months before Iran effectively becomes a nuclear state. Dealing with Iran is a technical problem, and technical problems are soluble. We have no choice but to solve this one. Ein breira.

Posted in American politics, American society, Iran, US-Israel Relations | 9 Comments

The Israeli Arab Murder Epidemic

Posted on October 3, 2021 by Victor Rosenthal

Everyone in Israel is talking about the explosion of violent crime among Arab citizens. As of today there have been 95 murders of Israeli Arabs in 2021. Extrapolated to 12 months and divided by the Arab population of Israel, this comes out to an annual rate of 6 murders per 100,000 people. This does not approach Chicago’s murder rate of 29 per 100,000 (in Chicago’s black community this number rises to 66!), or El Salvador’s 52, but it is still 12 times greater than the 0.5 per 100,000 rate among Israel’s Jews.

It’s also true that the police solve fewer cases in the Arab community. Ha’aretz reported that only 23% of murders with Arab victims were solved, compared to 71% of those in which Jews were murdered. So why are there more murders of Arabs, and why aren’t the police solving them? There are numerous reasons.

Let’s take the number of murders first. One important subgroup consists of women murdered by family members “to preserve family honor,” which means that either they engaged in illicit sexual activity, gave the impression that they did, or disobeyed the family’s instructions regarding marriage or life-style. Many of the 13 Arab women murdered so far this year fall into this category, although it’s not easy to be sure, since it is difficult to find witnesses who will testify in such cases.

Then there is the problem of organized criminals who engage in turf wars, which seems to be a significant problem this year. This is exacerbated by the large number of weapons in their hands. Although Israel has strict gun laws, Arab criminals have homemade “Carlo” automatic rifles or weapons stolen from the IDF in one of the embarrassing break-ins to IDF bases.

The number of murders is multiplied by the tradition that honor requires revenge. So when someone is killed, family members seek revenge, sometimes by murdering family members of the killer if it’s not possible to reach the presumed killer himself.

Some argue that the problem is that neglect of the problem by the police has allowed lawlessness to flourish, but while that might be true to some extent, keep in mind that obedience to the law is only in a small degree due to fear of arrest and punishment. Most of the time citizens obey the laws of their state because they are generally in agreement with them. Many Arab citizens of Israel – certainly not all of them, but a large enough number – are alienated from the state, which they accuse of discriminating against Arabs, and they blame it for their personal misfortunes.

Even successful individuals sometimes have a sense of grievance, abetted by politicians and Arab media pushing the Palestinian Narrative. Even though Israeli Arabs did not become refugees, many still believe that they are the rightful owners of the land, and that Jewish sovereignty is a usurpation of justice. The idea develops that the laws of the state don’t apply to them, because the Jewish regime that stands behind them is illegitimate.

This is true even though most of the victims of Arab criminals are Arabs – although there is plenty of Arab crime against Jews as well, especially in the Negev and Galilee where crime by Bedouins has become endemic. Unfortunately the increased crime, especially if it’s coupled with inefficient enforcement of laws, leads to its normalization in society. More and more, crime is seen as an option by young people in Arab towns. This is what is going on now, and it’s particularly noticeable with regard to the crime of crimes, murder.

One indication that alienation from the state – or outright enmity to it – is a big part of the problem is the way Israeli Arab criminals moved seamlessly from ordinary crime to anti-Jewish pogroms in May, during the most recent small war with Hamas.

Why are the police failing to stop it? One reason is the lack of cooperation they receive. And this in turn has several causes: “good citizens” fear the retaliation of organized gangs, which don’t hesitate to take violent revenge on informers and their families. But most important is a lack of trust in the police, who are seen as enemies since the two intifadas, in which police faced rioting Israeli Arabs. Notably in October 2000, 12 Israeli Arabs were killed by police at riots around Umm el-Fahm. There is also the general distrust of the “Jewish regime.” This manifests itself in numerous ways, such as the disinclination of Arab Israelis to get the coronavirus vaccinations that are available to them in precisely the same way as they are to Jews. As a result, all of the 55 towns and cities in Israel that are considered “red” today – with the highest infection rates – are Arab-majority areas. A few weeks ago I heard an interview on the radio with an Arab, an educated professional man, who had recovered from a severe case of Covid. The interviewer asked him why he hadn’t gotten vaccinated, and he responded that “we [Arabs] don’t trust the government” that was telling them to do so. This, even though many doctors and nurses in Israel are Arabs, and have made public statements about the need to be vaccinated.

Many Arabs choose to blame the police for the prevalence of crime in Arab areas. And until recently there has been an unbalance of resources dedicated to Arab towns. Now the shock created by the wave of murders has prompted a number of initiatives to improve the situation. More officers, including Arab officers, need to be assigned to Arab towns. Police and prosecutors must remove the leaders of the crime families and their more violent members from society. The police have carried out several operations to confiscate illegal weapons, and that has to continue. In the Negev, a large-scale campaign will be required to take back control of the region from the criminals.

Israel has high-tech tools that have been used successfully against terrorists. Now they have to be applied to criminals. We’ve dedicated an enormous amount of our resources to fighting our external enemies. Now we have to stop neglecting the internal ones.

But don’t kid yourself. Nothing will change until the great majority of Arab citizens take the situation in hand themselves. The heads of big clans will have to put on the brakes, and tell the young men of the community to find jobs that do not involve criminal activity. Perhaps Arab women themselves will have to force an end to the tradition of “honor killings.” If Israel’s Arabs don’t want to live in a violent culture, they’ll have to make their culture less violent.

Posted in Israeli Arabs, Israeli Society | Comments Off on The Israeli Arab Murder Epidemic

On Being Self-Sufficient

Posted on September 26, 2021 by Victor Rosenthal

You can talk for a long time about what we learned from the Holocaust, but there is one proposition that stands out as important to the Jewish people today:

In response to an existential threat, we cannot depend on other nations for help. Nor can we simply place our fate in the hands of God. Survival depends on our actions in the temporal sphere.

During the Holocaust, even the most enlightened liberal nations turned away ships full of Jewish refugees. American and British bombers flew past Auschwitz in 1944 to bomb a chemical plant 6 km away. The US did not even fill limited immigration quotas from Germany and German-occupied countries immediately before the war. The British issued the MacDonald White Paper in 1939, when it was more than clear that the Jews had no future in Europe, shutting the door to Mandatory Palestine tight; and even after the end of the war fought tooth and nail to prevent the immigration of Jewish refugees there.

Hundreds of Jewish communities in Europe were destroyed by the Nazis. Haredi (both Hasidic and Mitnagdic) communities were not saved by their piety, and sometimes religious leaders even prevented their people from receiving assistance when it was still possible for them to be saved.

Today the State of Israel is the home of about half the world’s Jews, and for some time has been the intellectual and spiritual center of Jewish life. It is geographically highly vulnerable, surrounded by enemies (even Egypt and Jordan, which have signed “peace treaties” are not reliable), and threatened by Iran and its proxies by conventional and (soon, if not already) nuclear weapons. One would expect that if anyone had learned the lessons of the Holocaust, it would be the Jewish state; but sometimes its behavior seems to indicate otherwise.

In particular, it has adopted a strategy of dependence on the United States, very troubling at a time when America is beleaguered by enemies that are more dangerous than the Americans themselves seem prepared to admit, when it is impossible to ignore the twin specters of social and economic instability there, when antisemitism in the general population is growing, and when a large proportion of American elites have turned against Israel.

The recent panic in Israel when $1 billion in funding for the Iron Dome program was held up (even if only for a few days) by a group of anti-Israel members of the US Congress should stand as a warning. Iron Dome itself – or rather, the way it is employed – is an example of a strategic error caused by the addiction to US help.

Iron Dome is a technological marvel, but it is being used to delay the need for Israel to confront her enemies. By protecting population centers from rocket attack, it allows the Israeli leadership to refrain from acting in more than a very limited way against Hamas and Hezbollah, which are continuously adding to and improving their offensive ability. What was once a threat only to areas close to the borders has now become a threat to the entire country; and the introduction of precision-guided rockets promises to become an existential danger.

The use of Iron Dome undoubtedly saved civilian lives in Israel. It also saved the lives of Arabs in Gaza, who would have been subjected to heavy bombardment to suppress the rocket fire that Iron Dome intercepted. Without Iron Dome, there would probably have been ground invasions to end the threat from mobile and hidden launchers, as well as those protected by human shields. But after each inconclusive round with Hamas, it came back stronger: more rockets, more powerful warheads, longer ranges, and better strategies. There have only been a few incidents of rocket fire from Hezbollah in Lebanon since the 2006 Second Lebanon War, but Israel’s policy of restraint allowed them to build up their stockpile to several times larger than prior to that war. Although Israel has acted to intercept shipments of precision-guidance systems to Hezbollah from Iran, nobody really knows to what extent they have succeeded in upgrading their “dumb” rockets into “smart” ones.

The result of all this is that if – when – all-out war does come, perhaps if Hamas succeeds in overwhelming Iron Dome by massive simultaneous bombardment, or if the number of precision-guided weapons it has makes it practical to attack multiple key infrastructure locations at once, or if some unexpected event triggers it, then the resulting carnage on both sides will certainly be greater than it would have been if Israel had adopted an offensive, rather than defensive, posture earlier.

The use of Iron Dome to protect population centers is economically unsustainable without dependence on massive American aid. Each time Iron Dome is fired to intercept a projectile from Gaza or Lebanon, at least two Tamir interceptors are launched, at a cost of $40,000 each. The projectiles that they destroy may be Gaza-built rockets that cost a few hundred dollars to build, or even mortar shells that may cost less than $50! As I understand it, much of the $1 billion special allocation that was delayed was intended to replenish stocks of interceptor rockets.

A better use for Iron Dome would be to protect key infrastructure like power plants, gas platforms, and military bases. More traditional – and forceful – military means should be used to deter attacks against the civilian population.

This is just one way in which dependence on the US has determined Israel’s defense strategy. There are others. One of them is the weakening of Israel’s home-grown defense industry. Most of the American aid has to be spent on American weapons, which needless to say are extremely expensive. In 2016, Barack Obama’s administration negotiated a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) for the ten years beginning in 2019. At the start, some 26% of the aid could be used to purchase arms outside of the US, which generally meant that they would be made in Israel. But the new MOU includes a clause that gradually phases out this amount, until it reaches zero in 2028. This will greatly affect Israel’s decisions about what type of weapons to deploy. For example, manned aircraft like the fabulously expensive F-35 can be obtained with aid money, while relatively inexpensive Israeli-manufactured drones cannot.

And of course – this should be obvious – for every dollar of aid that we accept, we give up a bit of freedom of action. The Americans expect to be paid back, perhaps in concessions to the Palestinian Arabs, or by tolerance of Iranian nuclear ambitions. I argued in 2016 and 2019 that despite the cost, American military aid should be totally phased out, as soon as is practical. We had a brief respite from American pressure during the Trump Administration, but we can expect it to resume soon.

Survival in a hostile world depends on self-sufficiency, in basic needs like food, water, and fuel, as well as technology and weapons. Israel is doing well in the areas of water and fuel, but recently, the new government has announced financial “reforms” that will increase the amount of imported food products. I have been surprised by the amount of imported products in the markets here already. Food is imported from Turkey, China, the European Union, and other places that someday might not be happy supplying Israel. It is true that food is excessively expensive here, but it isn’t clear that increasing imports will have much effect. On the other hand, it will definitely hurt Israeli farmers, and accelerate the one-way shift of land usage away from agriculture. Agricultural self-sufficiency has a price, but it is well worth paying.

The Jews of Europe on the eve of WWII were precisely the opposite of self-sufficient. The national authorities that they depended on to protect them either were powerless or cooperated with their murderers. Other nations didn’t want anything to do with them. They were alone, and they could not sustain or protect themselves. Now there is a Jewish state, and the responsibility for the Jewish people falls on that state. Its leaders should heed the lessons of the past.

Posted in US-Israel Relations, War | Comments Off on On Being Self-Sufficient

American Liberal Judaism Saws Off the Memetic Branch It’s Sitting On

Posted on September 23, 2021 by Victor Rosenthal

Islam is on track to become the world’s most widespread religious faith and will probably surpass Christianity in number of believers by 2070.

There are many reasons for this. One way to explain the growth or decline of a religious population is to look at the religion as a set of memes, mental entities that spread from one mind to another. These memes reproduce and change like life-forms, struggling with the forces of natural selection in their environment, the 7.9 billion human minds on planet Earth.

For example, here is a somewhat unfriendly answer to the question “why is Islam growing so rapidly?” in memetic terms. The pseudonymous author cites Islam’s built-in features that protect the memes that are part of Islam from changes that might weaken them, and facilitate its spread. Some of these features are common to other religions, but some seem to be unique to Islam. For example,

Islam commands its followers to create a government that supports it. … Other groups of religious people have had political aspirations, but no other major religious group orders its followers — as a religious duty — to create a government that follows its own system of law.

There is also the duty to take part in jihad, the doctrine that lands that have become Islamic must always remain so, the very concrete description of the joys of paradise that await good Muslims (and especially martyrs), and the numerous practical advantages that accrue to Muslims in Islamic lands. And of course, Islam is a veritable Hotel California: it is remarkably easy to join, but the penalty for leaving is death.

Other religions, like Christianity, engage in proselytizing and (at least in the past) facilitated their spread by conquest. Christianity too, in the relatively recent past, enforced disadvantageous conditions on non-Christian residents of Christian countries, including special taxation, limitations on occupations, even persecution and expulsion. Both Islam and Christianity have protected themselves with blasphemy laws and prosecutions, although generally speaking Christianity has been moving in a more moderate direction at the same time that radical Islamic practice has become more common.

Judaism, since the destruction of the Temple and until the reestablishment of the State of Israel, has been a diasporic religion. Its memes became adapted to an environment in which Jews were a minority, and temporal authority was always in the hands of non-Jews who displayed varying degrees of hostility. Since Biblical times, Judaism has not expanded by conquest; and until recently proselytizing has been minimal and conversion to Judaism difficult. Lacking temporal power, Judaism was unable to provide material advantages to converts, even if it had wanted to.

If the memes of Islam and Christianity were adapted to expansionism, Judaism was tuned to self-preservation. It needed to be, because the Christian and Muslim worlds where most Jews found themselves could be cruel and dangerous. Diaspora Judaism did undergo changes and evolved in different directions, but although customs and degrees of observance varied widely, the top priority remained survival, which meant maintaining separation from the non-Jewish majority. Jews are sometimes criticized for being “clannish,” tending to prefer the company of their own, favoring other Jews as employees, choosing Jewish lawyers and doctors, and so on. This is self-protective behavior.

When Reform Judaism appeared in the early 19th century, its de-emphasis of ritual observance (particularly Shabbat and kashrut) and its denial of the divine origin of the Torah was a radical departure from tradition, and indeed it weakened the self-protective nature of Judaism. Nevertheless it was still conservative (small “c”) in its understanding that the Jewish people were set apart from others – even if it was now possible for Jews to have lunch with Germans, they did not want their daughters to marry them.

This began to change with the migration of large numbers of Jews to the United States. After the beginning of the “Golden Age of American Jewry” around the end of WWII, Jews in the US felt less insecure. Little by little, barriers against Jews in housing, education, and employment disappeared. Jews began to take a disproportional part in American culture. Intermarriage increased, although until recently, even the Reform movement officially discouraged mixed marriages. Today it doesn’t take an official position on the question, although it encourages mixed couples to join its congregations and raise their children as Jews. Some Reform rabbis perform mixed marriages and some do not. As far as I know, the movement still requires rabbis to be married to Jews, although this might change.

But another mutation in the memeplex that is Judaism, which has occurred in the American Reform community very recently, has ripped out its “gene” for self-preservation, possibly disastrously for American Jews. To see what has happened, we need to consider the history of the movement.

Until the mid-1960s, early 1970s, American Reform Judaism was dominated by “classical Reform,” which aggressively tried to downplay the spiritual elements of Judaism, which it considered primitive. But American Jews who had been strongly affected by the radical cultural changes of the period found the experience of Reform worship empty and boring, and began to desert Reform Judaism for other streams of Judaism, Eastern religions, or secularism. Some even joined the “Jesus Freaks.” While their parents and grandparents believed it was important to maintain a connection to the Judaism of the past, even if it was attenuated, the boomers and their children didn’t see the point.

Reform Judaism responded in several ways. It tried to reintroduce traditional practices and customs, such as Hebrew prayers and Torah study, although its congregations lacked the Jewish background required or the attention span needed to obtain it. It became more welcoming to intermarried families. And it began to redefine Jewish observance, which previously meant performing the commandments defined in traditional halacha (Jewish law), as liberal social action. This strategy reached its peak with the appointment of politically progressive Rabbi Richard (Rick) Jacobs as URJ President in 2012.

But history moves on and the golden age of American Jewry is coming to an end. The traditionally antisemitic extreme Right hasn’t gone away, but more importantly the newly ascendant progressive Left, imbued with postmodern/postcolonial ideas, and “critical theory” of various kinds, has turned against liberalism, free speech, equality of opportunity, and Israel. And no surprise: they don’t like Jews much, either.

The new Reform Judaism, led by the so-progressive Rabbi Jacobs, has been caught out. Social action no longer means liberalism, which implies tolerance to all religious and ethnic groups, but the support of movements that are explicitly racist, anti-American, and antisemitic. This style of Judaism, which has been adopted by some 90% of affiliated American Jews, no longer functions to protect Jews as a minority within a more and more hostile culture.

Today it seems that American Orthodox Jews are bearing the brunt of antisemitism, because of their greater visibility. But if the “Cultural Revolution” continues in the direction that it has begun to go, then there is no doubt that life for liberal Jews will become far more difficult. Orthodox Jews, who have maintained their traditional self-protective culture, are better prepared to weather the storm. I strongly doubt that Judaism will ever morph into an expansionist religion like Islam or Christianity. But it looks as though the liberal Jews of America may have sawn off the branch they were sitting on.

Posted in American Jews, American society, Islam, Jew Hatred, The Jewish people | Comments Off on American Liberal Judaism Saws Off the Memetic Branch It’s Sitting On

Pulling the Plug on Palestinism

Posted on September 19, 2021 by Victor Rosenthal

One of my readers asked a question, and since many people think as he does, and because the question deserves a more considered response than a quick email reply, I decided to answer in a complete post. Here is his question:

I am responding to the article “Why Does Israel Only Play Defense?”

Essentially [you are] saying that Israel should annex the entire West Bank and Gaza.  But [you do] not tell the reader what would be the status of the roughly four million Arabs in those two areas.  Now, Israel can correctly say that the inhabitants of the West Bank and Gaza are not in Israel and continue to be at war with Israel, so that use of the word apartheid is nonsense.  That would change if the West Bank and Israel are annexed and the four million – most of whom support Hamas – become Israeli residents.

What is [your] solution?  Would the four million still be blocked from freely traveling into the rest of Israel?  Would they be Israeli citizens, with the right to vote?  If the answer is “no” to both questions, would Israel still be a modern democracy?

The first thing I want to say is that Israel is not, and should not be, a “modern democracy,” which means a “state of its citizens” in which ethnicity plays no official role. Israel, like most of its neighbors, is an ethnic nation-state with an established religion. It is actually quite unique, since unlike its neighbors it is a democracy, and also unlike them, its minorities have full civil rights – both de jure and de facto – including the right to vote and to hold office.

In one sense, Israel strives (and I think does not do a bad job of it) to not discriminate against its non-Jewish citizens. Regarding economic and educational opportunities, they are “first-class citizens.” But in another sense – whose importance cannot be minimized – they are different. The Nation-State Law, which is part of the body of “basic laws” that serves Israel for a constitution, asserts that “[t]he actualization of the right of national self-determination in the state of Israel is unique to the Jewish people.” While this does not make a practical difference for the lives of those who are citizens, it justifies the existence of a Law of Return for Jews – and not for anyone else. It has a great deal to do with who will be citizens. And that is a very concrete difference.

Israel was explicitly founded as a Jewish state and a democratic state. What that means precisely has been a subject for debate. Possible explications range from a state in which civil law is derived from halacha, Jewish law, to a state which embodies “Jewish values,” usually universalist ones like “welcoming the stranger” and “loving your neighbor” – although the original text of those probably doesn’t mean what today’s liberal Jews think it does. But Israel is neither a theocracy like Iran nor a liberal-humanistic state like Sweden, although there are Israelis who would prefer one or the other. In any event, the Nation-State Law is the official definition, coming only 70 years after Israel’s Declaration of Independence proclaimed a Jewish state.

One of the most basic principles of Zionism is that the physical and spiritual preservation of the Jewish people depends on their having a state of their own, rather than being forced to live what turned out to be a precarious existence in a very fickle diaspora. That’s another way to get at the meaning of a “Jewish state”: the state that belongs to the Jewish people.

Although it isn’t strictly relevant to this discussion, I’ll point out that those who want Israel to be a state based on “Jewish values” which turn out to be identical to liberal humanistic ones, would like to define the “Jewish” out of “Jewish state.” And they need to ask themselves whether or not they favor the physical and spiritual preservation of the Jewish people, and, if they think they do, do they believe it can be realized in a world without a Jewish state.

Israel cannot avoid the consequences of its geography. It must control Judea, Samaria, and the Jordan Valley in order to have defensible borders, a necessity in a world where religious demands, imperial ambitions, and avarice ensure that she will always have regional enemies. Israel’s present leadership has tried to keep physical control of the territory, including both a military and civilian presence, without annexing it or even applying Israeli law to the Jewish communities in it. Nevertheless, the official position of the state is that the presence of those communities in disputed territories is entirely legal under international law.

If we believe that our survival depends on maintaining control of an area which has not been legitimately part of any state power since the British Mandate, to which we believe we have a valid (although disputed) claim, in which hundreds of thousands of our citizens live, and to which we also have a powerful historical and religious connection, then why haven’t we annexed the area?

There are two reasons: one is fear of the reaction of the US and Europe, where we have lost the propaganda battle with our enemies, and where the “two-state” fantasy – which almost everyone in our region understands as a stepping-stone to the replacement of Israel by an Arab state – is popularly believed. The other is the question my reader asked. What about those Arabs?

Just as there is an overpowering geostrategic reason that we can’t give up control of the territories, there is a similarly overpowering psychological/ideological one for why we can’t simply absorb their Arab residents. That is the Palestinian Narrative: the belief that Arabs are the aboriginal population of Eretz Yisrael, and that we stole it from them. Along with the unshakeable (though untrue) narrative goes an unyielding commitment to get their land, and their honor, back. Now, several generations after what they refer to as the nakba, the disaster, their narrative and their fervent commitment to expelling the Jews (as violently as possible due to considerations of honor), has a stronger hold on them than ever. Like their Muslim faith – with which it dovetails nicely – it is essentially a religious imperative, which I call Palestinism.

Palestinism is a violent ideology which brooks no compromise. Its first real leader, Amin al-Husseini broadcast anti-Jewish propaganda in Arabic from Berlin during the war, and argued that Hitler should establish extermination camps for the Jews of Middle East as soon as it came under his control (thankfully, the battle at El Alamein went against him). Husseini’s heir Yasser Arafat blackmailed the world with terrorism in the service of the Palestinian struggle to end the Jewish state. Arafat and his successor Mahmoud Abbas rejected numerous offers of statehood because they left room for the continued existence of even an attenuated “Israel.” The idea of a Jewish state in what the Arabs believe to be their land infuriates them. Indeed, even if Israel gave up the idea of being a Jewish state and became a state of its citizens, the “modern state” that the Israeli Left and the American Reform Movement desire, they would still be infuriated.

Even the Arab citizens of pre-1967 Israel are wedded to Palestinism, although pragmatism limits their expressions of rage. From time to time it comes out, as it did this May during the Hamas-provoked conflict with Gaza, when Arab citizens of Israel attacked Jews in mixed cities which previously had been proud of their records of coexistence. There’s no doubt in my mind that increasing the percentage of Arabs in Israel over the present 21% would be highly destabilizing. And when you consider that the Arabs in the territories have been the subject of continuing anti-Israel and antisemitic indoctrination by the Palestinian Authority since it was created in 1993, the absorption of this population would be extremely destructive.

Because of this quasi-religious belief and its violent consequences, the only way to end the conflict is to separate the Arabs from the Jews. The two-staters believe that this can be accomplished by Israel withdrawing from the territories, but that would render the state indefensible; and anyway the Arabs wouldn’t be satisfied and would continue to press for an end to the Jewish state. There are various plans that involve giving the Arabs some kind of autonomy in parts of the territories, either as separate emirates as Mordechai Kedar suggests, or as a demilitarized Palestinian entity in non-strategic places such as was described in the Trump plan. The problem with all of these ideas is the same: the only way to satisfy the Palestinist ideology would be for Israel to disappear. Palestinian political entities in the heart of the Jewish state, no matter how limited, would be centers for terrorism and insurgency.

So “what about those Arabs in the territories?” The answer is simple but the execution will be difficult. Most of them must be encouraged, persuaded, or forced to leave Eretz Yisrael for other Arab countries or the West. It’s not unprecedented. Historically, there are numerous cases of populations migrating due to insoluble ethnic conflicts. Keep in mind that the two-staters see no problem with the idea that hundreds of thousands of Jews who live in the territories should be removed from their homes “for the sake of peace.” And the Arabs don’t hesitate to tell Israeli Jews that they should “go back to Poland” (despite the fact that about half of them came from Arab countries from which they were forced to leave, usually without their property).

But it’s not impossible. Instead of trying to come up with ways to provide aid to the Palestinian Authority and Hamas in order to purchase quiet – aid that is used to support terrorism – resources should be made available to relocate the Palestinian Arabs, as suggested by Martin Sherman. And if that doesn’t work, more coercive means must be employed.

Is this an extreme position? I don’t think so. Sometimes there’s no win-win solution to a conflict. This is a conflict that one side must lose, and the Arabs would have lost a long time ago if the international community hadn’t kept Palestinism on life support. It’s time to pull the plug.

Posted in Israel and Palestinian Arabs, Israeli Arabs, War, Zionism | 3 Comments

Our Existential Choice

Posted on September 15, 2021 by Victor Rosenthal

In my previous post I asked why Israel only “plays defense” in recent times. Why do we only bat the rockets away with Iron Dome, instead of ending our enemies’ ability to launch them? Why do we bomb empty Hamas installations in Gaza in response to incendiary balloons and machine-gun fire that are intended to burn and kill? Why did we allow Hezbollah to rearm? Why do we allow Hamas to mount its human wave attacks against the Gaza border? Why do we always let our enemies strike first? When they score a goal, why do we give them back the ball and tell them to try again?

I argued that this was not the case in the pre-state period or during the War of Independence, when our military and diplomatic policy was aggressive and creative, despite our relative military and economic weakness. I suggested that this was because in the past, the nation had a single overriding objective – the establishment of a sovereign state, and there was general agreement that there was no option other than success.

Now the nation has no national objective, such as the one the Palestinian Arabs strive for (our disappearance), or the imperial ambitions of the Iranian, Russian, and Turkish regimes. Israel today wishes only for a quiet time in which its people can cultivate their own gardens. Just let us alone, please, we say.

Unfortunately, that isn’t the way the historical development of nations works. Struggle is necessary for national survival. Complacency is the precursor of death. If you snooze, you lose.

The bloody fighting of WWII paradoxically revitalized American society after the Depression, and the struggle against Soviet communism focused its energies in the 1945-1990 period. It could have become the champion of the Western world against the armies of Islam that almost immediately threw down the gauntlet after the passing of the Soviet Union; but it chose not to do so. Perhaps because it saw itself as a secular nation, it was unable to grasp the meaning of the first WTC attack, the one against the USS Cole, the Khobar Towers bombing, and of course 9/11. It chose to shut its eyes to the challenge, and hasn’t reopened them yet.

I think Americans have a hard time seeing that they are involved (whether they want to be or not) in a long-term historical struggle with the Islamic world in part because their society functions primarily in the short term. Their politics are short-term, with a rapid changing of the guard every eight years or less. Their idea of history is short-term as well; they see the birth of their nation as the beginning of a brand new, even messianic age, and nothing that came before has the power to impinge upon it. Their enemies, though, take a very long view: 9/11 was the 318th anniversary of the Muslim defeat at the Battle of Vienna. They remember.

America’s complacency is enabled by the knowledge that it is massively powerful, protected from invasion by broad oceans, and at least in the past, had an industrial engine that could be turned to military purposes quickly to greatly outproduce its enemies.

On the other hand, Israel is tiny, has limited manpower and little strategic depth, is surrounded by enemies, and is dependent on the US for resupply. Complacency is not an option. But a large and powerful minority in Israeli society has turned to fantasy. This group, which includes the intellectual elite of our country, also shut their eyes: they shut them to the narratives and objectives of our enemies. They believe that our enemies think as we do that the greatest good comes from peaceful economic and social progress. Nothing could be more wrong; and yet, nothing that our enemies say or do can disabuse them of the notion that if only the right formula (always involving our giving up land, control, money, honor, etc.) can be found, then the conflict will be over, and we can all cultivate our gardens.

Most Israelis don’t belong to the deluded minority. But that minority holds a veto power over our politics, as well as a lock on our media, legal system, and culture. And so while they don’t have the ability to precipitate national suicide – though they almost succeeded with the Oslo Accords – the state is paralyzed and can’t act effectively against its enemies.

Because the minority believes that appeasement is the path to peace, they try to ensure that we don’t create permanent hard feelings on the part of our enemies. But the rest of the nation demands action against terrorism or rocket attacks. So as a compromise, we have adopted the strategy of “painless retaliation,” in which something is bombed, while great care is taken that nobody is hurt.

The rest of the nation understands that we are involved in a zero-sum situation. Either we will push our enemies out or they will push us out. Most of us understand the erosion of Jewish sovereignty in Judea/Samaria as well as in the Negev, the Galilee, and Jerusalem, as a sign that we are losing. But the fantasizing minority thinks that the Jewish presence in Judea/Samaria and especially eastern Jerusalem is “an obstacle to peace.” So as a compromise, we allow Jews to live there, but limit the construction of housing for them.

Human societies live or die by struggle. Struggle creates vitality, while lack of struggle breeds weakness. Sooner or later a culture that has stopped fighting is conquered by one that hasn’t. Our defeatist minority wants to stop; indeed, its spokesperson could be former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert,  who said in a 2005 speech to the Israel Policy Forum that “[w]e are tired of fighting, we are tired of being courageous, we are tired of winning, we are tired of defeating our enemies…” He actually said that.

Unlike Iran, Russia, and Turkey, we don’t desire to create a caliphate or an empire. But we are facing an existential choice: we can fight for what is ours, Eretz Yisrael, and at the same time strengthen and revitalize our society. Or, on the other hand, we can give up, like tired Ehud Olmert.

Posted in Israeli Politics, Israeli Society | 3 Comments

Why Does Israel Only Play Defense?

Posted on September 12, 2021 by Victor Rosenthal

Since 1967 the amount of territory under Israeli control has shrunk significantly. At the same time, the threats to the security of Israelis have increased. Terrorism waxes and wanes, but never goes away. Although there are “peace treaties” (actually long-term cease-fire agreements) with Egypt and Jordan, the enmity of the Palestinian Arabs has only deepened. Hamas continues to threaten the inhabitants of southern Israel with rockets, mortar shells, attempts at infiltration, incendiary balloons, and recently machine-gun fire. Israel’s control of Judea, Samaria, and the Jordan Valley, which are essential to the defense of the state, has weakened over time: areas A and B are no-go zones for Jews, and Arab construction in Area C is proliferating. Even within pre-1967 Israel, parts of the Galilee and the Negev are slipping from Israeli control. There are new existential threats that are on the verge of becoming actual: the Iranian nuclear project, and the deployment of precision-guided rockets and drones in the hands of Hezbollah and Hamas.

Not that there aren’t any bright spots. Some examples are the Abraham Accords, which prove that true Jewish-Arab cooperation for a common goal is not impossible, and even more encouraging, that it can take the form of a “warm peace” that is more than merely a cease-fire. But overall the victories of 1967 have failed to translate into a “new Middle East,” in the words of Shimon Peres.

One of the reasons is that there is an ideological conflict based in the essential precepts of Islam that can’t be papered over. This will remain a problem for the foreseeable future and there is little that we, in Israel, can do about it. But given that, there is a pragmatic approach that calls for maintaining the respect of our neighbors, even if it is not accompanied by affection.

Israel has the technological and economic ingredients that will command the respect (and fear and deterrence) that we need to become a regional power – indeed, the preeminent regional power. But in order to make this happen there is a fundamental strategic change that we must make. We need to stop playing defense and go over to offense.

The defensive posture is deeply ingrained in our political and military culture, even when public statements indicate the contrary. Even the 1967 war, when our tactical approach was to take the offensive, was fought in reaction to imminent threats from Egypt and Syria. Since then, almost every military campaign and all of our diplomatic activity has been reactive rather than proactive. Indeed our diplomacy, which even adopted the pernicious idea of “land for peace” for a time (I hope this time is ended), has been worse than reactive – it’s been submissive.

Consider the tactics that we have adopted in response to the various threats from our enemies: rather than respond aggressively to rocket attacks in order to create deterrence, we chose to bat the rockets away with Iron Dome and accept the economic damage that is done by the disproportionate cost (Hamas rockets may cost a few hundred to a few thousand dollars, while the projectiles used by Iron Dome cost $40,000 each and are usually fired in pairs). Retaliation for incendiary balloons is carefully tuned so that nobody is hurt. We try to use minimal force to repel human wave attacks at our Gaza border, and to put down violent riots in Judea and Samaria. We limit expansion of Jewish communities in the territories, while only minimally enforcing building codes against European-funded Arab construction in Area C, and failing to remove illegal Bedouin settlements.

Anti-Israel media makes much of deviations from the do-no-harm rules, but they are exceptions and in opposition to overall policy. Indeed, one of the primary goals of the anti-Israel “scholarship” in left-dominated universities is to try to show that the broad strategy of Israel, both historically and contemporaneously, is to hurt and oppress Arabs. In order to do this, they ignore important context, exaggerate, and even invent “facts.”

So why does Israel fail to “play offense?” Why do we always pass the ball to our enemies and encourage them to try to score again? Why is the most important consideration of the security forces in any situation to avoid wider conflict, to “not heat things up?”

It’s tempting to say that there is some inherent weakness in the Jewish psyche, perhaps learned in our millennia in diaspora, that prevents us from acting aggressively. But that is not so: during the pre-state period and the War of Independence we did take the initiative, militarily and diplomatically. What changed?

I think the problem is that today there is no agreement in Israel over the appropriate long-term objectives that we are striving to obtain. Up until 1948, the goal which the great majority of Jews in the Yishuv supported was the establishment of a sovereign state, even if there was disagreement about the precise nature of that state. Because there was a common goal, there was no hesitancy in embracing the strategies and sacrifices needed to attain it.

Today there is a Jewish state and the disagreements about its nature divide us. Our compromise government perfectly reflects our division. The Nation-State law that tries to explicate what it is to be a “Jewish” state, is controversial. And the opposition to the law is not just composed of Arabs; there are Jews that are embarrassed by the idea of a Jewish state and would prefer a “state of its citizens.”

The nations that have set for themselves ambitious goals – whether we consider them just, moral, beneficial or the opposite – are the ones that pursue aggressive, proactive polices. Iran and Russia come to mind. Where such objectives don’t exist, as often happens in politically divided democratic countries like the USA and the UK, policies are inconsistent and weak. In Israel, this takes the form of the government acting according to the least common denominator of public opinion, which is “keep us safe.”

Unfortunately for Israelis, the defense-only policy is not even effective at keeping the population safe. By allowing the enemy to take the initiative, it permits the development of future existential threats. A continuation of this policy will lead to the further contraction of the Jewish state, until only the People’s Democratic Republic of North Tel Aviv will remain – and it will be a binational state surrounded by Arab states.

But the options are not only expansive empire-building as practiced by Russia and Iran, or the directionless drift into which we have fallen. There is another alternative. That is to return to the goal of some of the earliest Zionists: the Jewish settlement of all of Eretz Yisrael, and the establishment of Jewish sovereignty throughout the land, from the river to the sea, in keeping with the natural geostrategic boundaries of the land (this doesn’t go without saying: it’s easy to forget that as recently as 2007, an Israeli Prime Minister (Olmert) offered to return the Golan Heights to Syria).

This is an objective that the people of Israel would fight for, and one that would enable us to replace the defense-only strategy with a proactive, aggressive one that would guarantee our continued existence.

Posted in Israeli Politics, Terrorism, War, Zionism | 4 Comments