Wake Up, Israel!

Posted on May 21, 2021 by Victor Rosenthal

Wake up, Israel, and smell the burning synagogues and Jewish homes in Lod, Acco, Yafo, and other towns that the fighters of 1948 died for.

Wake up and see that Jews have not been allowed to walk on the Temple Mount for 18 days, the Temple Mount that the fighters of 1967 died for.

Wake up and hear that the roads of the Negev are infested by bandits, and that a Jew who enters an Arab town or an Arab neighborhood of Jerusalem risks being beaten to death.

Wake up and learn that Israel is not a sovereign state. Its laws and court decisions can be overridden by the antisemitic “international community,” and its military campaigns ended by fiats from Washington.

Wake up and understand that we are not in control. Hamas demanded – they demanded! – that Jews be kept from the Temple Mount and from living in the Shimon haTzadik neighborhood of Jerusalem. Our politicians say that the cease-fire with Hamas was unconditional. We will know in the next few weeks whether they were telling the truth, or whether they have given in to the enemy’s demands.

Our enemies are taking our country and our sovereignty from us, bit by bit. They have been trying to force Jews to flee from Judea and Samaria by terrorism since 1967, and now they are using similar tactics in places with mixed Jewish-Arab populations. They are burning our synagogues, homes, and cars in an attempt to take back what they lost in 1948. If Jews flee from Lod, from Acco and Yafo, they will become Arab cities like Ramallah where Jews will be afraid to go.

Israel’s War of Independence did not end in 1949. Israel’s leadership was divided then over the question of whether to expel the Arabs, and despite what the Arabs say, there was no general policy of ethnic cleansing. That was a mistake: there should have been. In 1967, when the Temple Mount was captured, Moshe Dayan said that he didn’t want “all that Vatican.” A “status quo” was established, giving Muslims rights on the mount at the expense of our sovereignty. Jerusalem Arabs expected to be expelled, as the Jordanians had done to every Jew in the territory that they conquered in 1948, because that’s how it’s done in the Middle East. But we didn’t want to be Middle Eastern. We thought we could be a “villa in the jungle.” That was another mistake.

Hamas is trying to drive us from southern Israel with their rockets. They fired more than 4,000 rockets at Jewish towns and cities, killing at least 12 people and injuring dozens, destroying homes and property, supposedly because Jews tried to assert their authority over violent rioters on the Temple Mount, and because Israel tried to evict four Arab families that had refused to pay rent to the Jewish owners of the property for decades. It’s all connected.

Israel’s response was, as always, cut short by a command from the American president. The IDF collapsed some tunnels and killed some of Hamas’ officers and weapons development personnel. It bombed the (empty) houses of Hamas leaders. It destroyed some weapons and some manufacturing facilities. But the infection remains. It will take a while, but it will come back. It always has. With the connivance of our leadership – in the name of maintaining quiet – money will be pumped into the strip, tunnels and weapons factories will be rebuilt. It will take time, but they have patience, and their Iranian patrons will have money. They will come back. They always do.

Israel is many times stronger than Hamas. We control their electricity and water supply. The threat could be ended once and for all, the way it’s done in the Middle East. That would be tough on the residents of Gaza, but the “international community” which is so concerned for them could step up and help them find new homes, in underpopulated Jordan, Europe, and North America. But we prefer to make mistakes, one after another. We prefer to suffer, even die, ourselves if the alternative is to cause suffering to others.

We must stop the incremental loss of our land and sovereignty. The gains of 1967 are being erased as I write, and after them will come what was achieved in 1948 at such great cost. If we don’t act, in the way that a Middle Eastern country must in order to survive, we will lose everything.

We can turn it around. Nobody expected that we would win in 1948 or 1967, but we did. This time it will be a different kind of struggle, a conceptual struggle to confront reality and deal with it. A struggle that will not begin until we wake up.

Posted in Israel and Palestinian Arabs, Israeli Arabs, War | 6 Comments

What’s Next?

Posted on May 20, 2021 by Victor Rosenthal

Unless something unexpected happens – Hezbollah joins in or Hamas succeeds in creating a mass-casualty incident in Israel – the war between Israel and Hamas will be over in a few days at most, ended by a cease-fire encouraged by the US. The “grass will have been mowed,” Hamas will remain in power, licking its wounds and rebuilding its infrastructure and replenishing its stock of rockets. Its leaders will be occupied for some time rebuilding their mansions, swimming pools, and malls, which have been hit hard by the IDF. There will be a next time.

The disturbances on the home front, both in Judea and Samaria and inside the Green Line, that were incited by Hamas supporters and other elements in the Palestinian political firmament, will not fade away so quickly. In Judea and Samaria, the imminent departure of Mahmoud Abbas (he’s 85 years old) has the various factions that would like to replace him, including of course Hamas, positioning themselves for the expected mêlée that will determine his successor. As always, the prize will go to the most ruthless and brutal, but in the contest for popular support, the challengers will each try to demonstrate that they are the best suited to “resist occupation,” which will keep things hopping from our point of view. There have already been several incidents of murderous terrorism.

That struggle will also be reflected within the Green Line, where the Palestinian factions have their auxiliaries. The idea that Jews and Arabs can coexist as “Israelis” has been severely strained by the unprecedented riots in cities with mixed Jewish/Arab populations like Lod, Ramle, Acco, Yafo, and Haifa. I say “unprecedented” because while there have been disturbances by Israeli Arabs before – notably at the start of the Second Intifada in 2000 – today’s riots appear less like spontaneous expressions of rage at Israeli authorities and more like planned antisemitic pogroms.

In the city of Lod, ten synagogues were burned by Arab rioters. I repeat: ten synagogues. Hundreds of cars belonging to Jews and Jewish homes and businesses have been burned or looted. Lod is currently under curfew, and Border Police have been sent to help restore order. Jews who have driven into Arab towns have been dragged from their cars and beaten. Jews have been attacked in the streets, and one man beaten by the rioters has died. In Acco, a firebomb was thrown into a home and a 12-year old boy seriously burned. The boy was an Arab, but so were the perpetrators, who apparently erred, thinking the home was occupied by Jews. There has been a systematic attempt to ethnically cleanse the Old City area of Acco of Jewish residents and businesses.

An Arab politician, Mansour Abbas, visited one of the burned out synagogues in Lod and offered to help rebuild it. He was immediately faced with a wave of criticism from his supporters.

Yesterday there was a general strike by Arab workers:

[The strikers call for] the end of the massacre in the Gaza Strip and aggression against Jerusalem, Al-Aqsa Mosque and Sheikh Jarrah, withdrawal of settler gangs and repressive forces from our cities and villages and solidarity with hundreds of detainees [arrested during the riots]

Most Arab workers honored the strike, although some hospital personnel did not.

From the international media, you will “learn” that what is happening here can be described as “Jewish/Arab clashes.” This is misleading. There have been a handful of Jewish extremists that have beaten up a few Arabs, and a few more cases of Jews defending themselves against attack. There is no comparison to the violent aggression, much of which appears systematic and planned, that is coming from the Arab communities.

These events have shocked Israeli Jews, for whom they are reminiscent of Jewish life in the Arab world or Europe before the founding of the state. About 20% of the citizens of Israel are Arabs, and despite a degree of friction, the ideal of coexistence has seemed attainable. Although there would always be differences, most Arabs were believed to be loyal to the state. Now it seems to many Jews that they may not be.

Right now, Israelis are hoping for a return to normalcy. The Covid epidemic is essentially over (one hopes, for good), and those of us who live south of Netanya would like to stop sleeping with our pants on, ready for a dash to the shelter. We would also very much like an end to the political crisis that has spanned at least two years and four elections (and counting). When we finally get a real government, one of its first priorities must be the development of a coherent strategy to finally end the threats from Hamas, the PLO, Iran – and the hostile elements among our own Arab citizens.

Posted in Israel and Palestinian Arabs, Israeli Arabs, War | Comments Off on What’s Next?

Israel is Stuck

Posted on May 17, 2021 by Victor Rosenthal

In my last post, I wrote that coexistence between Jews and Arabs in the Land of Israel was impossible. Since then, I’ve been told that I’m wrong – it’s necessary. The alternative to coexistence is said to be civil war, a war that will destroy our country. There’s no doubt that such a war would be terrible indeed. But if I’m right, then my critics are looking at it from the wrong direction. Rather than trying and failing to live together with the Arabs, we need to find a way to live apart from the Arabs without precipitating a disastrous war.

Why do I think coexistence is impossible? Because – as has been demonstrated conclusively in the last few weeks – the combination of the nature of Arab culture, combined with the all-pervasive Palestinian narrative, the well-organized and financed anti-Zionist forces, and the effective use of media, especially social media, make it so.

Let me make it clear at the outset that I am talking about all of the Land of Israel, by which I mean all the land between the river and the sea, from the Golan to the border with Egypt. My argument is that if coexistence between Arabs and Jews is failing within the boundaries of pre-1967 Israel, then a fortiori (or kal v’homer) it cannot succeed within the larger boundaries of all the Land of Israel.

Let’s see how the various factors combined to create a perfect storm of conflict.

First, there is in the background the narrative. The narrative says that the Jews have stolen the land from the Arabs, and the state is illegitimate. “The Occupation” means the Jewish sovereignty that was established in 1948, and the narrative says that justice requires that the Arabs get back what the Jews took from them; as a corollary, whatever Arabs have to do to get it is legitimate. They are the “original owners of the land” and the Jews are foreign conquerors. This is believed by close to 100% of the Arabs living in the Land of Israel. Some of them prefer to join organizations like Hamas, Fatah, the PFLP, or Islamic Jihad, and fight. Others tend their own gardens, work and take care of their families. But all of them believe the narrative, and most believe that the Jewish presence in “their” land is only temporary.

The narrative postulates a “Palestinian people” that goes back centuries in the land. That is a fiction. Only a few Palestinians can trace their antecedents before about 1830, not so long before the Zionist “invasion.” But since the mid-1960s, the disparate Arabic-speaking people in the land of Israel have begun to define themselves as a people, analogous (of course) to the Jewish people, whose peoplehood they publicly deny.

In Arab culture, personal, family, tribal, and now national, honor has a very high priority. The restoration of lost honor justifies violence – indeed, if the loss was violent, the response must be also. Loyalty to the group and perseverance in search of justice are important values. Accounts must be settled, and in the ledgers of the Palestinian Arabs, much is owed to them by the Jews.

The narrative has been inculcated in several generations of Arabs already, both in the territories by Hamas, the PA, and UNRWA, and in Israel where the state has decided not to interfere with anything short of explicit antisemitic incitement in the Arab educational system (the PA/Hamas/UNRWA systems, of course, do include such incitement).

The various groups that have an interest in creating disorder in the Land, including the Palestinian terror groups, the European Union and some European governments, the international and Israeli extreme Left, Turkey, Iran, and others, understand, promulgate, and use the narrative effectively. For example, the legal dispute over the eviction of a few non-paying tenants in eastern Jerusalem is presented to the Arab audience as an ongoing attempt to ethnically cleanse Arabs and steal their land. In the framework of the narrative, it goes without saying.

Hamas supporters exploited an annual march by (mostly) religious Jews to mark the 1967 reunification of Jerusalem and a police decision to close the plaza in front of one of the gates to the old city, presenting them as an “attack on al-Aqsa.” This resulted in rioting, which was met with additional actions by police, which were offensive to the religious sensibilities of the Arabs. They responded predictably by escalating violence. At the same time, Hamas came to the “defense of al-Aqsa” by firing rockets, first at Jerusalem and then at the rest of the country. As I write this, almost 3,000 rockets have been launched at Israel by Hamas.

The IDF seems to be on track to destroying much of Hamas’ ability to fight, though the overall strategy seems to be to keep Hamas in place. But the riots in Jerusalem have spread throughout the country to most places where there are mixed Jewish and Arab populations. And the riots, which usually have been  characterized by violence between Arabs and police, have taken on a disturbing character: they are beginning to look like pogroms, in which synagogues are burned, Jewish businesses attacked, Jews beaten or murdered on the streets and in their homes, and a feeling by the victims that the authorities cannot or will not help them. There is a widespread feeling that a line has been crossed. Why do we have a Jewish state, if not to finally put an end to pogroms and persecution?

At this point I want to inject a cautionary remark: if you read the non-Israeli media, or the left-leaning Israeli media like Ha’aretz, you will be told that what is going on are “clashes” between extremist Arabs and Jews. “Both sides” are engaging in violent behavior. This is very misleading. Large groups of Arabs have rampaged in Lod, Haifa, Acco, Yafo, and other places, compared to a handful of Jewish extremists that have attacked Arabs. Some high-profile cases of Jewish violence have been misreported in the media. For example, a 12-year-old Arab boy was badly burned by a Molotov cocktail thrown into his home; this was all over the media as an example of Jewish depravity until it was determined that Arabs had done it, either due to a family dispute or simply by mistake.

The disturbances are fed by “fake news” on Palestinian media – that is, official Palestinian Authority and Hamas media – and of course on social media. Truth about our conflict is often ideological. The shooting of young Mohammad al-Dura in September of 2000, which was clearly shown to be a hoax, is almost universally believed, both in the Muslim Middle East and in Europe. Likewise the “Jenin massacre” in 2002 that never happened, and countless other false accusations. For many people, including Israeli Arabs, what makes something true is whether it fits the narrative, not whether it matches reality. Media provide an unending series of crimes against Arabs that must be avenged, for honor’s sake.

All this has created an environment in which Arab grievances have deepened to the point that they are not reconcilable by compromise. At the same time, they are not afraid to strike out violently, realizing that we can never have enough police to physically restrain 20% of the population, nor do we have the will to become the kind of totalitarian society that would try to restrain them by force.

This hostility has been normalized for a long time among the Arabs of Judea/Samaria, and of course Gaza. The degree to which they dehumanize Jews was evident during the “Stabbing Intifada” of 2015-2016, when almost every other day featured terrorist attacks against random Jews, by Arabs from the territories (and in a few cases, Israeli Arabs). The perpetrators were men and women as young as 13 and as old as middle-age. Now it seems that the propensity to dehumanize us has spread to a larger number of our Arab citizens as well.

This isn’t a trend that we have the power to reverse. Israelis, Jewish and Arab, consume media in “opinion bubbles,” in which opposing viewpoints simply do not appear, and the most extreme views tend to take over. Well-meaning attempts to bring the groups together simply don’t have the emotional power to overcome the sense of grievance and injustice that is continually fed in these bubbles.

We can crush Hamas in Gaza and overthrow the PA in Judea/Samaria (although our leadership doesn’t seem to be interested in doing either). Possibly the riots among our Arab citizens will die down; from an economic point of view, they do great damage to Arab communities. But we can’t fight the narrative – or regain our trust that our Arab neighbors will not get up in the morning tomorrow and decide to stab us.

The dynamics that have brought us to this condition will not go away. The narrative is as strong or stronger than ever, and our enemies are pushing it as hard as they can. Because of the unchangeable geographic features of the Land of Israel, there is no alternative to continued Israeli control of all of it, from the river to the sea. Two-state fantasies remain fantastic, and any withdrawals will be met with further aggression. This isn’t speculation; Gaza is proof. That means that in addition to the hostile Arabs within the Green Line, we face even more radical ones outside of it.

I see the continued existence of a Jewish state of Israel as a fundamental imperative. But if coexistence is impossible, and if divesting of the territories containing most of the Arabs is also impossible, what is the alternative?

Meir Kahane understood this, but perhaps because of the racialist and religious supremacist undertones in his thinking, his ideas were placed beyond the pale, and he and his party were outlawed. But he was right about one thing: in order for the Jewish state to continue to exist, it cannot continue to have a large Arab minority. I am certain that many Israelis agree in their hearts, but are afraid to express agreement from fear of being called “racist” or worse. But race has nothing to do with what is at bottom a national conflict, and indeed it is a profoundly unhelpful concept.

Israel is stuck. It is stuck between Left and Right with no government, it is stuck with Hamas making life unbearable in the southern part of our country and requiring periodic wars to “mow the grass” with no solution, it is stuck with increasing antisemitic violence and crime from its Arab minority, and it is stuck with the need to hold Judea and Samaria but the inability to build in them.

Getting unstuck will require setting explicit national goals and following policies to assert our sovereignty over all of the Land of Israel, to defeat our enemies, and to expel those who act with hostility towards Jews or the Jewish state.

Posted in Israel and Palestinian Arabs, Israeli Arabs, War | 1 Comment

Cobra Kai and the Jewish State

Posted on May 13, 2021 by Victor Rosenthal

My granddaughter, Shai, told my wife that she should make her a “Cobra Kai” shirt. We were mystified, so she told us to watch the video series and we would understand. It turns out to be a continuation of the plot of the movie “The Karate Kid,” in which (as I see it) the yetzer hara and the yetzer hatov are personified by the competing dojos of Cobra Kai and Miyagi Do respectively. Keep that thought – I’ll come back to it.

In the real world, the struggle between Israel and her enemies is far more bitter and bloody. For several months now tensions have risen, with demonstrations and riots in several cities by Palestinians and Arab citizens of Israel over various issues. Violent attacks on Jews by Arabs were followed by violence against Arabs by militant Jewish groups. The conflict reached a peak on Monday, Jerusalem Day, when hundreds of police and Arabs fought each other on and around the Temple Mount, the Arabs throwing rocks and shooting fireworks, while the police responded with teargas and stun grenades. At the same time, Hamas issued an ultimatum that if the police did not leave the Mount by 6:00 PM, they would fire rockets at Jerusalem. The police stayed, and Hamas carried out its threat, launching seven rockets.

Since then the violence has escalated. Israeli Arabs have rioted in various cities and towns in Israel, attacking Jewish citizens and police. In Lod, local Arabs rampaged in Jewish neighborhoods, burning cars and even synagogues, evoking visions of anti-Jewish pogroms. Riots also occurred in Acco, Yafo, and the Arab towns of the “Triangle,” east of Netanya and Haifa. Hamas has been broadcasting incitement for weeks via its imams and social media, including the perennial “Al Aqsa is in danger” line that has been  inflaming Palestinian Muslims against Jews for at least 100 years.

Meanwhile, rocket fire from Gaza has reached unprecedented levels. As of Wednesday morning (as I write) more than 1,000 rockets have been launched at Israel from Gaza, reaching as far north as Hadera. At least 850 of them have reached Israel, with 200 falling short into Gaza (keep this in mind when Hamas blames its civilian casualties on Israeli retaliation). Massive barrages hit Ashkelon, setting a strategic gas facility afire, and keeping inhabitants in shelters all night. Naturally the towns and kibbutzim in the south, the usual targets of Hamas rockets, got their portion too. According to Hamas, 130 rockets were launched toward Tel Aviv. Even here in Rehovot, which is usually spared, we were awakened by sirens several times overnight. As of this moment, five Israeli civilians have been killed by rockets, including two Israeli Arabs whose car took a direct hit in Lod. There have been dozens of injuries and much property damage. The Iron Dome systems have intercepted many of the rockets, but due to their sheer volume it has been impossible to stop all of them.

The IDF – air force, artillery, and navy – has been hitting launchers, weapons factories, underground facilities, and some senior Hamas officials since the rocket fire started. A multi-story building that contained Hamas intelligence services was taken down. Hamas claims several dozen civilian casualties, but the IDF says that most of them are either Hamas operatives who were hit while launching rockets, or victims of their own rockets which fell short.

I think that the events of the past weeks have had a significant effect on the attitudes of many ordinary Israeli Jews. The riots in Lod, and the attacks on Jews in Jerusalem have given rise to a feeling that lines have been crossed. How can it be, they think, when they see a 65-year-old rabbi brutally kicked to the ground by Arab assailants, or Torah scrolls burned, that this can happen in the Jewish state? Although there was large-scale rioting by Israeli Arabs in 2000 at the start of the Second Intifada, the way individual Jews and Jewish shops and institutions were targeted this time was new, and evoked comparisons to the antisemitic violence of the 1930s. Although Arab members of the Knesset talked in ways that verged on subversion, it seemed that most of the Arabs in the street were motivated by economics, not nationalism. Either that has changed, or it was not the case in the first place.

The dimensions of the Hamas rocket attack were worrisome. It is clear that we cannot have enough Iron Dome systems to stop all the rockets that our enemies can launch. In the back of everyone’s mind is the knowledge that Hezbollah has far more rockets and better, more accurate and powerful, ones.

It seems that we always act the same: retaliate in a measured way, being very careful to keep civilian damage to a minimum, after which we are pilloried by the UN, the EU, and the “human rights” NGOs, regardless of that fact. We don’t destroy Hamas, we simply “mow the grass” every few years. We keep supplying Gaza with water and electricity.

There will be other escalations like this one.  Each time, Hamas seems to have more and better capabilities. Meanwhile, Hamas continues to try to take over the Palestinian Authority, and to incite subversion among the Arab citizens of Israel. Soon Mahmoud Abbas will retire or die; it could happen today. Hamas will then move to take over the PA, which would make the present situation seem like a picnic in the park.

Is this the best our government can do, we ask?

The problem is that we have no real strategy. But it’s not hard to see what it should be. The Palestinians of the territories and even our own Arab citizens have shown us: they act in a Middle Eastern way.

We want to live in the Middle East because that’s where we came from. But we don’t want to act Middle Eastern. We want to live in an imaginary world, where nations actually adhere to the UN charter. We want to be “a villa in the jungle” as somebody said. That doesn’t work. In the Middle East, you defend your honor or you lose all of your property and then your life. In the Middle East, when someone challenges you, you destroy them or they destroy you. You don’t give them a break because they are weaker than you and you feel sorry for them. Tomorrow they may be strong enough to kill you – or they may sneak up on you and kill you, even though they are weaker.

The Palestinian Arabs have challenged us for the ownership of this land. For more than a hundred years they have made it clear to us that they will do anything and everything necessary to get it. We, on the other hand, keep trying to compromise with them. And they respond with bemusement, take anything we give them, and then continue trying to get the rest.

If they win, they will kick us out. Ask them. They’ll tell you. And that is what our strategy has to be: to remove the Palestinian Arabs from the Land of Israel. We need to do whatever is necessary to achieve that aim.

If that is offensive to you, then you can live somewhere else where at least they pretend to operate according to a “better” morality. It’s up to you.

Now that we’ve settled the strategy, it’s time to decide on the tactics. And in that connection, I come back to “Cobra Kai.” One of the recurring memes in the show is the motto of the Cobra Kai dojo. I am sure that the writers disapproved of it, but it fits our needs perfectly. Here it is:

STRIKE FIRST
STRIKE HARD
NO MERCY

Posted in Israel and Palestinian Arabs, Israeli Arabs, Middle East politics, War | 3 Comments

Today’s Blood Libel

Posted on May 9, 2021 by Victor Rosenthal

1913 was not so long ago. Two of my grandparents, whom I came to know very well somewhat later, were young then. They emigrated from the Jewish Pale of Settlement in Ukraine the previous year, coming to New York to start a life that they hoped would be free from antisemitic persecution.

That was the year of the trial of Menachem Mendel Beilis in Kiev, not too far from where my grandparents had lived.

Beilis, as you probably know, was a Jew that was chosen as a scapegoat by antisemitic officials who wanted to absolve the incompetent government of Tsar Nicholas II of guilt for economic and social problems by stirring up hatred for the Jews. They took advantage of the murder of a 13-year-old boy, Andrei Yushchinsky, to accuse Beilis of having snatched the boy and drained his blood for ritual purposes. The trial attracted international interest – after all, it was the 20th century already! – and featured the testimony of antisemitic “authorities” versus well-known rabbis and Talmud scholars, who understood that all Am Yisrael were in the dock, not just the unfortunate Beilis.

A Russian police detective, Nikolay Krasovsky (who ultimately lost his job as a result), discovered the real murderers of Yushchinsky, a gang led by a woman named Vera Cheberiak, whose son was a friend of Yushchinsky and had told him about his mother’s criminal activities. Beilis had a good alibi, having been seen by others at work at the time of the murder. The coroner’s report showed that the victim’s blood had not been drained. Nevertheless, the trial was held in October-November of 1913.

Although the jury had been specially selected for antisemitism, the prosecution and its witnesses bungled their case and were made fools of on numerous occasions. One “expert” on Judaism, a Catholic priest named Justinas Pranaitis, who had written an antisemitic book on the Talmud, was asked “Who was Baba Basra and what was her activity?” He responded that he didn’t know who she was, which evoked laughter from the Jews in the courtroom, who knew that Bava Batra was a section of the Talmud.

Ultimately – after two years of pre-trial imprisonment and a month-long trial – Beilis was acquitted. However, the divided jury compromised by rendering the verdict that there had indeed been a bloody ritual murder committed, but some other Jew must have done it.

Why am I telling this story? Because, in the past one hundred years, nothing has changed except for the defendant.

Accusations of ritual murder have been made against Jews since medieval times, and possibly even before. They are still current in Arab countries, and even present-day Russia. The Tsarist officials who orchestrated the scapegoating of Beilis did so to inflame the masses against the Jews of the Russian empire. They wanted to blame them for their failures, and also to discredit the various progressive and leftist movements by association with the Jews. They hoped to incite a wave of pogroms which would bleed off the energy of the anti-monarchic forces by directing them at a safe target.

Today most Jewish communities outside of the US and Israel have dwindled to near-insignificance, and while there is plenty of antisemitic agitation, it comes from marginal players. It does not have the official sanction that Russian Jew-hatred did in 1912. But at the same time, a new scapegoat has been chosen, and this one is being accused by official and quasi-official organs of the international community of crimes worse than ritual murder, of all-encompassing crimes against humanity. The accused is no longer a Jewish individual but the Jewish state; however similarities between the prosecutions abound.

Charges are trumped up and even the crimes themselves are sometimes tailored to this specific defendant. For example, in a recent Human Rights Watch report, Israel is accused of “the crime of apartheid” despite the fact that nothing Israel has done in her conflict with the Palestinians bears the slightest resemblance to actual apartheid. Israel is regularly accused of “settler colonialism,” although there is no colonizing metropole (mother country) to be found, and Jews have lived in the Land of Israel since biblical times. Sometimes there are echoes of the original blood libel, as when the IDF is falsely accused of deliberately targeting Palestinian children.

“Witnesses” and “experts,” often with similar qualifications to those of Justinas Pranaitis, are found to testify against her. Real evidence of actual wrongdoing can’t be found, but that is unimportant because the purpose of the trial is not to determine guilt, which is already assumed by the media and international organizations that are passing judgment in the defendant, but to turn public opinion against her. But why do they want to?

In the Arab and wider Muslim world, deflecting the anger of a dissatisfied and restive populace away from their kleptocratic rulers onto Israel and the Jewish people has been a tried and tested policy for decades, indeed since 1948. The need to “resist” non-existent Israeli expansionism, for example, has sustained Hezbollah and provided cover for the true expansionism and aggression of Iran.

European motivations to convict Israel of crimes against humanity are manifold. Wanting good relations with the resource-rich third world that they formerly colonized and exploited, by attacking Israel they at the same time appease the corrupt leaders that control those resources and assuage their guilt for their behavior during the colonial period. By accusing the Jews of Israel of behaving like Nazis, they can absolve themselves for their almost universal history of cooperation with the real, genocidal Nazis. By displaying their anti-Israel bona fides, politicians vie for the support of their growing populations of Middle-Eastern origin, whom they invited in to compensate for the steep demographic decline of their native populations.

America has been less directly involved in the prosecution until recently; but lately various organizations have developed which are dedicated to the demonization and delegitimization of Israel. They have received funding from a collection of sources, including Iran, Arab countries, Turkey, and international leftist charities such as the Open Society Foundations of George Soros, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, and others. They are working at making “Israel” synonymous with racism and oppression of minorities, which is the hottest of hot-button issues in the US today. There is also a growing Arab and Muslim population in the US, which has contributed both money and political clout to the anti-Israel movement.

In the days of Beilis, much of Western intelligentsia and media were horrified by the atavistic hatred cynically deployed by the elites of the Russian Empire. But today the academic world and media were the first sectors to be suborned by those who wish to criminalize the Jewish state, and now they are in the forefront of the campaign against her. Literally billions of petrodollars went into creating whole academic departments which are little more than factories for anti-Israel propaganda.

Above all, this worldwide epidemic of misoziony – irrational, extreme, obsessive hatred of Israel – fell on fertile ground. It’s almost as if Jew-hatred, tabooed and bottled up since the Holocaust, could not be denied, and had to burst out in some form, like the creature in the movie Alien. The blood libel that ensnared numerous Jewish victims throughout the centuries is apparently alive and well.

Posted in Jew Hatred | 4 Comments

The Meron Tragedy and Israel’s Autonomous Communities

Posted on May 6, 2021 by Victor Rosenthal

Forty-five people attending a festival to celebrate the holiday of Lag b’Omer at the tomb of Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai on Mt. Meron were crushed to death last weekend, in a catastrophic but totally predictable stampede which – one official of a first-responders group said – had only been prevented by annual miracles. This year there was no miracle. The facilities at the site were woefully inadequate to support even a tenth of the 100,000 people that showed up, an agreement to limit the number was ignored due to political pressure, and what had been predicted occurred.

The site had not been improved over the years despite many reports from various bodies including the police and the mevaker hamedina, an independent official who oversees the operations of the government and reports to the Knesset, which is required by law to respond and if needed, act on them.

Why has nothing been done? Because the site, which is officially under control of the government, in practice “belongs” to several Haredi [“ultra-Orthodox”] sects, who object to changes proposed by any of the others, and even more to outsiders telling them what they can do. They have depended on the protection of Hashem, based on the principle that nothing bad can happen to someone who is in the process of performing a mitzvah, an idea which ignores the fact that Hashem gave his human creations brains and expects them to be used.

The authorities, who recently forced an acquaintance of mine to stop using his tiny (and licensed) ham radio transceiver on a deserted beach for “safety reasons,” do not dare interfere with Haredi events. This is a particular case of the partly unwritten principle of Haredi autonomy: although they live in the State of Israel, Haredi communities are not in practice subject to the same laws or expectations as secular, traditional, or national-religious Jews.

At the time of the founding of the State of Israel, in order to obtain the support of the observant community, Ben Gurion and other secular Zionists found it necessary to promise them certain things, such as rabbinical control of family law, observance of Shabbat and Kashrut in all official functions, and freedom to determine the content of their school curricula, as long as certain secular subjects were included.

As time passed, the official “status quo” between secular and observant Israelis grew to include draft exemptions for Torah students, and government funding for educational systems outside of the state system. At the same time, there developed an unofficial hands-off attitude toward the Haredim. Haredi schools reduced or eliminated instruction in secular subjects such as English and Mathematics, in violation of the status quo. Laws to limit exemptions from military or other national service could not be enforced. Tax evasion is common in Haredi communities. During the Covid epidemic, Haredi schools and yeshivot were opened in defiance of the regulations when other schools were closed. Rules established by the Ministry of Health were widely flouted, with high-profile weddings and funerals attended by thousands of tightly-packed people.

Video of such events, while police were harassing non-Haredim for walking maskless in the park, created a great deal of animosity toward Haredim, especially among those whose memories of massive traffic jams caused by Haredi anti-draft demonstrations were fresh. The political interference with the extradition of Malka Leifer to face sex abuse charges in Australia was another flashpoint. It doesn’t matter that the small extremist faction that blocked traffic, or the particular Hasidic group that counts both Malka Leifer and perennial government minister Ya’akov Litzman as a member, do not represent all Haredim; anti-Haredi feeling is widespread.

The other side of the coin is that Haredi communities distrust and disrespect the state. Some are explicitly anti-Zionist, but even those that aren’t believe that “Torah law” – which is whatever their rabbi says it is – overrides the laws of the State of Israel. They believe that secular and non-Haredi religious Jews have no right to criticize them in any way, and in some cases consider such criticism “antisemitic.” They relate to the State of Israel the way their great-grandfathers related to the Tsar or the Porte.

The problem is that the “status quo” has developed into a complete autonomy, a mini-state into which the organs of the larger state don’t reach. The Haredi political parties have been in almost every Israeli government, and they often hold the balance of power. Police and other officials don’t even try to enforce laws when they know they will be countermanded (and possibly punished) by the political connections of the communities.

Haredi leaders have demanded more and more autonomy, and have received it, both officially and in practice. But this disaster has illustrated that it has gone too far. After the deaths, many blamed the police. But it’s clear that the police cannot be blamed for failing to protect people when there are laws for that very purpose that they are prevented from enforcing. Some Haredi rabbis and politicians are beginning to understand this.

The Haredi autonomy is not the only one in the country. Arab citizens of Israel also live in an autonomy that is in many ways similar. They have been granted an exemption from the draft and national service. There is rampant tax evasion in Arab towns. During the epidemic, they persisted in holding large weddings. Today they are suffering from a wave of violent organized crime which has placed law-abiding citizens in fear for their lives. Every week sees new murders. They too, blame the police, which is ironic since – like the Haredim – they previously preferred to keep the police as far away as possible.

There is yet another autonomous group in Israel, and that is the Bedouin tribes of southern Israel. They too have experienced an increase in criminal behavior which has been ignored by the state; but unlike the Arab villages of the North, their banditry victimizes the Jewish residents of the area.

These problems have been shoved under the rug by successive governments, for various reasons. In the case of the Haredim, it’s a combination of factors. The most important, of course, is the political power wielded by this community, which represents about 12% of the population; as well as the mistrust, and dare I say it, dislike on both sides.

The Arab and Bedouin communities have never fully cooperated with the Jewish authorities, and law enforcement is difficult without cooperation. As long as the crime stays within the community, it’s tempting for police officials to concentrate their effort elsewhere. That, however, is wrong, as well as stupid, because the crime will not stay in the communities where it starts.

Israel is not a large country and it can’t afford have several autonomous enclaves that don’t consider themselves part of the state. The lack of respect for the laws made by the national government is corrosive. It wouldn’t hurt to pay more attention to the reports of the mevaker hamedina, and ensure that problems in law enforcement as well as in the allocation of all kinds of resources are dealt with in a reasonable time.

To some extent, Israel is like Russia, a country where everything is illegal but laws are enforced selectively.  The psychological and political issues, for both Arabs and Haredim, are difficult. I don’t know how to change their deeply alienated mindsets, or if it’s possible. But I think the first thing that has to change is that the laws must be enforced, fairly, on all citizens.

Posted in Israeli Politics, Israeli Society | 1 Comment

Stopping Iran

Posted on May 2, 2021 by Victor Rosenthal

There are two ways to stop Iran from getting the bomb.

One is to apply pressure short of war. That would involve squeezing the regime economically, isolating it from as much of the world’s commerce as possible, while at the same time strengthening and supporting its domestic opposition. At the same time, sabotage, assassinations, and other operations could delay the nuclear program and weaken the regime. At some point it will break, or the opposition will become strong enough to break it.

This was the program of Donald Trump’s administration, working together with Israel and other players in the Middle East. But Joe Biden’s administration has scrapped that program, and chosen to try (or to appear to try) to persuade the Iranian regime by removing pressure, rather than increasing it. This strengthens the Iranian regime, allows it to build up the proxy forces that serve as a deterrent against attack from the neighboring countries who are directly threatened by its expansionism, and at best can only slightly delay its progress toward nuclear armament – and even this is doubtful, since the regime showed no compunctions about cheating on the agreements it made with the Obama Administration, long before Trump took the US out of the deal.

The new American policy goes against the basic principles of negotiating. Giving up leverage up front for nothing in return is stupid. And it’s not as if the previous Iran deal doesn’t provide evidence for the failure of this approach. Biden’s administration wasn’t forced to re-make Obama’s mistakes. They could have simply continued the “maximum pressure” campaign. It’s simplistic to say that they were compelled to blindly oppose everything that Trump had done, in every area. They aren’t that dumb.

I won’t try to explain the motives of the Biden Administration. They are a mystery to me. Possibilities range from unbelievable naïveté and ignorance to an explicit desire to see the Middle East dominated by a nuclear Iran. The latter case also implies a desire to see a Middle East without a Jewish state, and there is no doubt that there are those in the administration who favor that. But regardless of the reasons, it is fully clear that the new American policy will not stop Iran.

Despite a notable decline in military strength in recent decades, there is no other country with the economic muscle, the global reach and influence of the USA. The path of “pressure short of war” requires America to be on board. If they aren’t, the only alternative is for Israel to stop Iran herself by military means. The best that can be expected from the US in that case will be non-interference, and even that is doubtful.

But this would not be an “operation” like the attacks on the nuclear reactors in Iraq and Syria. It would be a very serious and involved campaign, which could rise to the level of regional war. Iran has built up proxy forces armed with numerous rockets and missiles in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Gaza. It has missile forces on its own soil. It has been supplying its proxies with accurate missiles and kits to convert unguided rockets into highly accurate ones, despite Israeli interventions to prevent that. It has developed guided drones that were used effectively against Saudi oil facilities in 2019 and in March of this year.

If Israel were to attack the Iranian nuclear installations – and there are numerous, dispersed, and well-defended targets that would have to be hit – it would also be necessary to suppress retaliation from the various proxy forces. The rocket launchers in Lebanon and Gaza are embedded in civilian areas, and are capable of firing very large numbers of weapons in a short time, which can overwhelm anti-missile systems like Iron Dome. There is also a greater number of highly accurate missiles, which are best eliminated before they can be launched.

This combination means that Israel will have no choice but to employ massive firepower, which will be catastrophic for the people in the affected areas. There is expected to be ground warfare in southern Lebanon and even northern Israel. Hezbollah intends to make incursions into Israeli territory and to take civilian hostages. An insurrection in Judea and Samaria is also a possibility. Such a three or four front war would be very costly, both for Israel and for the countries that Iran has used as proxies, especially Lebanon, which is already failing as a state as a result of being parasitized by Hezbollah.

At the same time, there would be a massive propaganda assault against Israel, similar that which was waged against us at the time of the last Gaza conflict. The UN, the EU, countless NGOs, the international Left, and much of the academic and media world will line  up to provide a stream of atrocity stories, exaggerations, and context-free accusations, all intended to justify intervention by the international community, the embargo of weapons shipments, and so forth.

What would the US do? Judging by the cast of characters in the Biden Administration, I doubt that we could expect even a pretense of support, despite the fact that we would be doing America and the rest of the civilized world a favor.

It’s easy to say – I’ve said it myself – that war is inevitable and we should get it over with as soon as possible, at a time and in a fashion of our choosing. But that doesn’t change the fact that we would certainly lose people, soldiers and civilians, and have to absorb a great deal of infrastructure damage even if everything goes according to plan. If we go to war it will probably be one of our most painful wars, especially on the home front. It’s easy to see why our decision-makers have chosen to defer acting until the last possible moment, when there is absolutely no other option.

In the meantime, our PM has told the Chief of Staff to develop plans for carrying out an attack on the Iranian nuclear project, including the suppression of rocket and missile fire from our neighbors. I am sure they will be characterized by unconventional tactics and maybe new weapons.

One wonders why Biden’s people can’t see that what they are doing is promoting precisely the opposite of the peace and stability that they claim to want – or if they do see that, why they are doing it.

Posted in American politics, Iran, War | 2 Comments

Our Enemies Deploy the Cognitive Bomb

Posted on April 29, 2021 by Victor Rosenthal

The first thing you need to know about the Human Rights Watch (HRW) report that was released on 27 April accusing Israel of “apartheid” is that the accusation has nothing to do with apartheid as most people understand it, the racially-based system of oppression that was in place in South Africa before roughly 1991.

HRW is accusing Israel of “crimes against humanity of apartheid and persecution,” which are defined by a treaty called the “International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid,” based on a UN General Assembly resolution passed in 1973, and the 1998 Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.

It should be noted that neither Israel nor the USA are parties to either treaty. The 1973 convention was signed by 109 countries, which do not include Israel, the USA, Canada, Australia, or any of the developed countries of Western Europe.

Here is the definition of the crime of apartheid as understood by HRW:

  1. An intent to maintain domination by one racial group over another.
  2. A context of systematic oppression by the dominant group over the marginalized group.
  3. Inhumane acts.

The “inhumane acts” referred to by the definition include such things as murder, torture, “arbitrary arrest and illegal imprisonment,” forced labor, “deliberate imposition on a racial group or groups of living conditions calculated to cause its or their physical destruction in whole or in part,” all on the basis of race or ethnicity. While Palestinians often claim such mistreatment, their claims – often amplified and lent authority (the “halo effect”) by HRW and similar NGOs – are overwhelmingly false, exaggerated, or lacking in context (e.g., the claim is commonly made that a Palestinian was “executed” when he was shot in the act of stabbing a Jew or running one down with a car).

HRW also adds that

The reference to a racial group is understood today to address not only treatment on the basis of genetic traits but also treatment on the basis of descent and national or ethnic origin, as defined in the International Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination. Human Rights Watch applies this broader understanding of race.

In other words, apartheid doesn’t have to involve “race.” Any alleged discrimination against a national group can be considered apartheid. And given that “Palestinians” have diverse origins, including Egypt, Syria, Arabia, Jordan, Turkey, and even the same Canaanite tribes as the forbears of the Jewish people, they don’t even fit this broader definition.

When I hear “apartheid” I think of white, black, and colored beaches and restrooms, laws against interracial marriage or even sexual relationships, laws establishing segregated housing, employment, and public transportation, denial of the right to vote or hold office, and so forth. I think of official classification of people by color. It is not an exaggeration to say that such a system, brutally imposed by force (as it was in South Africa), is a crime against humanity.

And that, of course, is why HRW, an organization that has changed over the years from a legitimate human rights watchdog into part of the well-oiled (and thickly greased with dollars and euros) machine for the delegitimization and demonization of Israel, wishes to accuse the Jewish state of apartheid, a crime that today evokes revulsion throughout the world – and which, following the precedent set by the treatment of the Republic of South Africa, justifies the boycotting, sanctioning, and total expulsion from the international order of Israel.

As the Kohelet Forum notes in its response to the report, no country other than South Africa has ever been deemed an “apartheid state” by a majority of the international community, including China, Sudan, and others that have engaged in massive systematic oppression of minorities.

None of the characteristics of South African apartheid can reasonably be applied to Israel. Everyone who knows anything about apartheid South Africa and Israel knows that. There is simply no resemblance, and HRW’s abstraction of the crime of apartheid and application of the word to Israel is dishonest and is part of the cognitive war that is being waged against her as a prelude to her hoped for physical destruction.

But never mind. Israel is being accused of seriously mistreating Palestinian Arabs, both its Arab citizens and the residents of the Palestinian Authority and Gaza, simply because they are Palestinians. If that is true, it is certainly reprehensible. So we should consider if the report even succeeds in making that case.

The report is 213 pages long, so it is impossible for me to critique it in detail in a short blog. But here are some things that I noticed in the first few pages (see the Kohelet response to HRW for more):

The report says that

From 1967 until the present, [Israel] has militarily ruled over Palestinians in the OPT, excluding East Jerusalem. By contrast, it has since its founding governed all Jewish Israelis, including settlers in the OPT since the beginning of the occupation in 1967, under its more rights-respecting civil law.

This is untrue. There is no military government in Gaza – there is zero Israeli presence there at all – and areas A and B of Judea and Samaria are ruled by the PA. There is a military administration of Area C, the territory that is under full Israeli control according to the Oslo Accords, but that administration governs both Israeli communities and Palestinian ones. There is no “separate law” for the two populations.

In general, the report ignores the existence of the PA and the Hamas government of Gaza. It’s true that Israel controls the borders and airspace between the river and the sea (with the exception of the border between Gaza and Egypt). But it does not control the daily lives of all of the residents of those areas as the report asserts.

HRW criticizes Israel for not allowing free movement of Palestinian Arabs from the territories into pre-1967 Israel, and for not allowing those Arabs outside of Israel recognized by the UN as “Palestinian refugees” to enter the territories or pre-1967 Israel. It dismisses Israeli explanations that this is a consequence of the amply-demonstrated Palestinian propensity to commit murderous terrorist acts against Israelis, saying “[e]ven when security forms part of the motivation, it no more justifies apartheid and persecution than it would excessive force or torture.” Tell it to those thousands of Israelis who have lost friends and family members to Palestinian terrorists.

There is almost no mention of Palestinian terrorism throughout the full report, even though most restrictions placed on Palestinian movement, such as the Judea/Samaria security barrier, were instituted after the murderous Second Intifada, in which more than 1,000 Israelis were murdered by terrorists. The selective blockade of Gaza is criticized without reference to the thousands of rockets that have been fired into Israeli towns, or the numerous tunnels intended to infiltrate terrorists into Israel. There is no mention of the 2015-2018 “stabbing intifada” which took the lives of dozens of Israelis.

The report claims that within pre-1967 Israel, “Palestinian [sic] citizens [have] a status inferior to Jewish citizens by law” as a result of the Nation-State Law, which in fact does not restrict them in any way, and which is similar to constitutional provisions in other ethnic nation-states, including the proposed constitution for the State of Palestine. It also invents or misrepresents other laws, including those concerning citizenship and residence.

The report will probably be a prime exhibit in the upcoming “Durban IV” conference on racism which will be held this September at the UN in New York, on the 20th anniversary of the first Durban conference, which devolved into an “anti-Israel hate-fest.”

Accusations of apartheid and persecution are tremendously powerful, especially in the US in today’s climate of racial antagonisms. But the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is actually a national/political one, and not a racial one (although antisemitism plays an important role). It has little in common with pre-1991 South Africa or the racial problems of the USA. It is also a small part of a much larger project by a group of nations, international institutions, NGOs, and others to eliminate the Jewish state. These antagonists are motivated by geopolitics, religion, ideology, antisemitism, or all of these. By focusing only on the Palestinians, the HRW report has the effect of hiding this broader context.

Israel’s domestic political paralysis, which has been ongoing for at least two years, makes it hard enough to respond to the military challenges it faces from its enemies. But it is impossible for an essentially leaderless nation to properly fight a cognitive war. Fixing this has to be Israel’s top priority today.

Posted in Information war, Israel and Palestinian Arabs, Israeli Arabs, The UN | 2 Comments