Good Morning, Here is the News from Israel

Posted on December 10, 2020 by Victor Rosenthal

The first batch of Pfizer Corona-virus vaccine landed in Israel yesterday. PM Netanyahu announced that he will be the first to get it, live on television, in order to build public confidence. Although it’s impossible to get Covid from it, there is still a possibility of other side effects, and many people would prefer to let others be the pioneers with the arrows in their backs. Even the Israeli Doctors’ Union has insisted on reviewing the research data (Hebrew link) on the vaccines before medical staffs receive it. “We don’t want to be guinea pigs,” said a spokesperson (literally, “experimental rabbits”). The plan is – assuming the doctors are satisfied – is to immunize them first, followed by older citizens. I suggested that bus and taxi drivers, who are both at risk to catch the disease and to infect others, should be included, but apparently they didn’t listen to me.

This first shipment is small, only about 3,000 – 4,000 doses, intended to test the methods of shipment and distribution. Later this month there will be a larger shipments, up to 4 million doses. By the Spring, there should be enough for all of Israel’s population. The Health Ministry was waiting for the American FDA to approve it before giving the final go-ahead, and that occurred yesterday.

Meanwhile, people are still getting sick, some are dying, and the dysfunctional government is still flailing ineffectually as we approach our third wave. A nighttime lockdown was supposed to go into effect today, but at the last moment the Justice Ministry announced that such a lockdown would have “legal problems” because it would “limit the motion of citizens.”

This encapsulates the absurd situation perfectly: a nighttime lockdown would have minimal effect on the epidemic, because people have nowhere to go at night anyway, with restaurants and bars closed. But it would be an obstacle to the continued anti-Netanyahu demonstrations in front of his residences in Jerusalem and Caesarea, so Bibi’s government wants it. On the other hand, the Minister of Justice, who is the former head of the Histadrut labor federation and a bitter foe of Netanyahu, wants the demonstrations to continue. No lockdown. Such dedication on both sides!

I wasn’t going to write about politics, but I should note that the process of dissolving the Knesset and calling new elections is proceeding apace. A preliminary motion to do so passed last week, and a Knesset Committee set the next vote (there need to be three more) for this coming Monday. At the same time, Netanyahu’s biggest rival in the Likud, Gideon Sa’ar, announced yesterday that he is quitting the Likud and starting a new center-right party, which has already attracted several heavy hitters from the opposition. A snap poll showed that Sa’ar’s party would get the third greatest number of seats if the election were today. Most of his support would come from Netanyahu’s party.

A sidelight: the party may be named “New Hope,” which immediately brought up comparisons to Star Wars and the appropriate campaign music (video) for the new party.

This has completely upended everyone’s calculations, since that kind of performance in the election would mean that Netanyahu and the Haredi parties would not come close to the 61 seats needed to form a government. There will now be a huge amount of maneuvering and dealing both before and after the election, which will make it even less likely that the parasites government ministers will be able to spend time on their actual jobs, for which they are very well paid by the citizens. It’s too early to predict, but I am hoping that this will break the deadlock and we will get a real government, instead of this “unity” government in which the various members are more interested in cutting each other’s throats and not being jailed than governing.

In other news, an Emirati billionaire has bought 50% of the Beitar Jerusalem Football [soccer] Club, which has a fan base that includes a sometimes violent anti-Arab group called “La Familia” which insults Arab players on opposing teams and has made it impossible for Arabs to play on the team (even non-Arab Muslims didn’t last). I’m making no predictions here, either.

Finally, speaking of Star Wars, a well-respected Israeli scientist who was head of Israel’s space security program for many years has published a book in which he says that aliens have a contract with the US government and an underground base on Mars, where they are working with American astronauts. According to Prof. Haim Eshed, they have not revealed themselves to us yet because “humanity is not ready.”

He got that part right.

Posted in Israeli Politics | Comments Off on Good Morning, Here is the News from Israel

Is the US Choking on Ideological Miasma?

Posted on December 6, 2020 by Victor Rosenthal

What is happening to my former home?

You Americans don’t notice it, because you are the frogs being boiled (yes, I know that this is not really true about frogs). But you can see it from a distance. The temperature in the pot you call home is going up. And only a few of you – and even fewer among those who are doing well – feel the need to jump out.

The problem is one of disconnection from reality.

Here is an example: On 17 September 2001, President Bush, a good-hearted man and a Republican, said that “Islam is peace.” Actually, Islam is submission, and I suppose that is a form of peace, if you agree to submit to it. But otherwise it is relentless jihad.

While President Bush at least opposed radical Islam, President Obama supported the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and even the revolutionary regime in Iran, which he enriched and enabled by the JCPOA, the agreement that he made with them to short-circuit the attempts of the US and some elements of the international community to enforce the nuclear non-proliferation treaty that Iran had signed and was violating. The Obama administration also tried to suppress language that it considered “islamophobic,” and removed phrases like “Islamic terrorism” from public documents. Terrorist incidents motivated by Islam were sometimes placed in the category of “workplace violence” or treated as crimes committed by disturbed individuals. Truth was sacrificed for political correctness. And the danger from real Islamic terrorism increased as a result of these attitudes.

There are other ways in which reality has been denied; in particular, the realities of the relations between racial and other groups. In the universities, the postcolonialist doctrine that divides all peoples into the categories of oppressor and oppressed, white and “of color,” Western and Eastern, was joined by that of intersectionality, which insists that morality demands supporting the “oppressed,” and taking sides on every conflict on the basis of the party line. So on one side are found straight, “cis gendered,” white Western men, and on the other, people of color, sexual or gender nonconformists, women, people with disabilities, fat people, and countless other groups that are allegedly victimized by the former group. Naturally, Jews – despite their history of victimization and their Middle Eastern provenance – were placed on the “oppressor” side, and Muslims (especially Palestinians) are considered oppressed.

This conceptual scheme is incoherent because it can’t account for the observable facts of anti-white racism, the oppression of Jews, the conflicts between oppressed groups, or even the existence of right-wing homosexuals. It is totalitarian because it requires its adherents to sign on to all of its positions or be expelled from its fraternity, which has come to dominate every aspect of life on college campuses, and has now expanded throughout the urban part of the nation, including business and even the military. It also seems to have been adopted by the tech companies that operate the social media platforms that have replaced more traditional sources of news and interpersonal contact.

There is more. The traditional American belief in radical freedom of speech has been eroded, with considerations of possible “psychic harm” to the hearer of certain discourse overriding the right to speak. The likelihood of harm is determined by irrefutable – because they are private to the one complaining – feelings of danger, so there is no appeal. For example, if I were to try to publish this essay in a major magazine or deliver it as a lecture at most universities, it would be rejected (or I would be mobbed) because it would cause Muslims and people of color to feel “unsafe.”

There are taboos against certain ideas, things that one is absolutely forbidden to say. Is it possible that on the average, some genetically related groups of people are better at some things (sports, mathematics, music) than others? Could there even be differences of average intelligence between groups? How could there not be such differences? But don’t dare suggest this if you are a professor or writer, because you will classified as another Hitler if you do.

Finally, more and more the difference between facts and wishes, between reality and narrative, have become blurred. Again, this began in the universities, where intellectuals – in accordance with Orwell’s adage that some ideas are so absurd that only an intellectual could believe them – were charmed by postmodern theories of truth, in which every culture, and perhaps even every individual, has a narrative, a socially or personally constructed reality, that is more “true” than the old-fashioned common reality. And it too has spread to the urban and social-media realms. This is why anti-Israel media claimed – and in some cases continues to claim – that Israel perpetrated a massacre of hundreds of Palestinians in Jenin in 2003, when no such thing happened.

A yawning ideological gulf has opened in the US, more based on social and cultural issues than traditional politics. At the same time, the combination of a one-sided mainstream media (highly recommended link) and an insulated “bubble” for those outside of the mainstream has made the two sides experience the same events in entirely different ways. Needless to say, this has increased the disconnect and created hostility between the sides. Trust in media, local and national government, and other institutions has fallen to perhaps a historical low point.

There are also external threats, from potential enemies like China, Iran, or even North Korea. There are serious vulnerabilities to unconventional warfare in technology-dependent societies, where large populations are fed by monocrop agriculture and imported food, where critical control of utilities depends on interconnected computers and networks, where just-in-time inventory systems mean that there is no cushion against shortages in emergencies, as happened with personal protective equipment when the Covid-19 epidemic struck. Today, a determined enemy can do a large amount of damage without a large, expensive military.

Should one be more worried about dangers from within or without? I think that the fragmentation of the country and the destruction of its traditional pragmatic, reality-based world-view is more serious, because is not only dangerous in itself, but also weakens the ability of the nation to withstand attacks from outside.

The American republic had some good years. If it doesn’t get free of the ideological miasma that’s enveloping it, it won’t have many more.

Posted in American politics, American society, Terrorism, Wokeness | 2 Comments

Wokeism, Jew-hatred, and Misoziony

Posted on December 3, 2020 by Victor Rosenthal

You hear about it, but you don’t really believe it.

What is happening in American universities to Jewish students, and particularly those who support Israel even to a small degree, is appalling, and it hasn’t diminished as courses have moved online during the pandemic. Misoziony, “new antisemitism,” and plain old Jew-hatred that doesn’t even try to disguise itself have become part of the everyday experience of Jewish students in a way that would have been unimaginable for me or for my children when we were students. Read Blake Flayton’s article at the link above. You can say that it’s just a collection of anecdotes, but they are characteristic of the atmosphere at most universities.

One of the more distressing aspects of it is that it is not just coming from other students, but often from faculty and administrators. The adult authority that is expected to protect students goes missing when the victims are Jewish. Administrators that are exquisitely sensitive to reports of microaggressions against “people of color” or sex/gender minorities, often act as though Jewish students do not deserve protection, because after all they are the most privileged of the privileged. In the event that they are not properly anti-Israel – they don’t even have to identify as Zionists – they are vilified and discriminated against in multiple ways for supporting a “racist apartheid state” that can only be repaired by allowing its enemies to overrun it. Those staff members that do sympathize with Jewish concerns or Israel are often afraid that they will be targeted if they don’t stay quiet (see here, here, here, here, etc.)

Campuses are pervaded by a postmodern ideology, which permits free speech only for those that support it, and a postcolonial one that institutionalizes racist attitudes against “whites,” by which they mean (somewhat incoherently) anyone that does not belong to one of a variable collection of “oppressed” groups. Jews, despite a history of millennia of pogroms, expulsions, and genocides, are never included.

Unfortunately, the postmodern/postcolonial ideology (“wokeism”) is not limited to the universities anymore. The so-called “cancel culture” that pervades progressive media is derived from postmodern ideas like truth being a social construct while feelings are a priori valid. The willingness of both the Left and the Right to simply invent “facts” – because the irrefutable “truth” of their narrative overrides any possible falsification by reality – comes from the same place. The ideology has spread to k-12 education, too. And, surprisingly, even the corporate world is becoming suffused with it, as shown by the obsession with various forms of sensitivity training and “anti-racism education.”

This is not surprising, because the woke penetration in the universities has been going on for at least two decades, and graduates now work for the biggest corporations, media, law firms, ad agencies, local and national government, and public and private education. One misses the 19th century robber barons who were interested primarily in money, and didn’t have social objectives like the management of Google or Twitter.

Elements in the black community also seem to find wokeism congenial, because the idea that they are a colonized population makes it possible to argue that all the problems that they face in the larger American society are due to the structural racism inherent in it. That implies that they are owed something in addition to equality of opportunity, because of what was taken from their ancestors by slavery and continues to be taken from them by institutional racism. Unfortunately, the anti-Jewish aspects of woke culture fit in with the historical antisemitic bias of the black community, which was introduced by the Nation of Islam as early as the 1930s, and today is represented by Louis Farrakhan. The racial disturbances and controversies of the 1960s (like the New York teachers’ strike) sharpened the differences between blacks and Jews in urban areas.

Other groups in American society, such as the non-Evangelical Protestant Churches have also adopted a great deal of the woke ideology. Evangelicals, with their belief in absolute biblical truth, and traditional Catholics and Orthodox Jews who also reject the idea of the relativity of truth, have rejected it.

The woke generation adopts various causes that they believe oppose injustice. They are somewhat arbitrary in their choices: although they devote a lot of attention to racism against black people in the US, they almost entirely ignore the phenomenon of black slavery in Muslim countries, which seems to primarily interest conservatives. Of course one of the most prominent causes – far more prominent than is justified by the number of “victims” of oppression and the degree to which they are oppressed – is the Palestinian one.

I would argue that the Palestinian cause, which might better be called “the anti-Jewish sovereignty movement,” actually favors injustice, as its pretense of promoting Palestinian self-determination is easily shown to be a smokescreen for ending Jewish autonomy. Such things as the violence of the Palestinian side compared to the defensive actions of the Jewish side; the vicious racism and religious prejudice of the Palestinians; their poor treatment of women and LGBT people; economic inequality; cruelty to animals; neglect of the environment; oppressive, undemocratic government; and other characteristics that are normally anathema to the woke are completely acceptable when the perpetrators are Palestinian.

One reason for the popularity of their cause is the large number of Arab and Palestinian students in American universities. Google “scholarships for Palestinian students in the USA” and you get a surprising number of results. There are numerous organizations (including the US State Department) that offer them, and some like the FMEP and AMIDEAST, which would be expected to seek out political activists. Many of these students are activists, and they tend to be highly focused on their goals. Many lead chapters of Students for Justice in Palestine and similar groups.

Since the 1970s, Arab countries pumped millions into American universities to establish departments and endow chairs of Middle East Studies – by which they meant Arab/Muslim studies – which often became centers for political activism.

Devotees of the Palestinian cause are found throughout American society, among the woke population as well as more traditional liberal segments. The degree of misinformation that these people have absorbed can be stunning. Recently, liberal/progressive icon Barack Obama published a book in which he presented a short discussion of the Israeli-Arab conflict and its history. It was remarkable for the number of falsehoods and biased statements it contained, clearly aimed to justify aggression against Israel and to damage the legitimacy of the Jewish state. Did he honestly believe this tissue of lies for the eight years that he was President of the US? Or did he simply write them into his book to justify his anti-Israel policies and to influence his successors? I’m not sure it matters.

American Jews are in a difficult position today. The traditional violent Jew-hatred that was mostly expressed by uneducated people is still there, and social media has given it a new life, resulting in several murderous incidents. At the same time, the misoziony of the overeducated class, which is trickling down to the average American, often spills over into antisemitism. Jews in urban areas (that’s most of them) also have to face hostility from many of their black neighbors as well.

Finally, Israelis need to realize that the pendulum of public opinion in the US, especially among the decision-making class, is swinging against the Jewish state. The Arab and Iranian strategy of introducing money and activists into Western universities has been hugely effective in changing the national perception of Israel for the worse. The change took some years, but with the help of other social and political trends, is now rapidly accelerating.

We had a brief respite with the Trump Administration, which strongly opposed wokeism and also was truly pro-Israel in a way that few previous ones were. But that was an anomaly. In the past, an anti-Israel president had to contend with a generally pro-Israel public, and a Congress that reflected that view.

The future will be different.

Posted in Academia, American politics, American society, Jew Hatred, Wokeness | 4 Comments

The Return of the Echo Chamber

Posted on November 29, 2020 by Victor Rosenthal

Can any moral person seriously support the revolutionary Islamic regime in Iran?

It murders dissidents, takes westerners hostage for cash or in order to free imprisoned terrorists, hangs homosexuals, imprisons women for failing to wear the hijab, and condones their public beating. Iran sacrifices its own people’s well-being for the sake of exporting violence throughout the world, spending massive amounts of money arming Hezbollah and militias in Iraq, Syria, and Yemen, and of course pursuing the development of nuclear weapons and long-range missiles. The government is also massively corrupt, making the lives of Iranians even harder.

One particular aspect of this evil regime that understandably attracts my attention is its explicitly articulated intention to destroy the Jewish state in which I live, and commit another genocide against the Jewish people. The repetition of “death to Israel,” “Israel is a cancer,” and threats to “wipe [Israel] off the map,” the encirclement of our country by heavily armed proxy militias, and the development of weapons of mass destruction, are signals that we ignore at our peril. If there is any meaning to the slogan “never again,” this is it.

Two important lessons from recent Jewish history guide Israeli policy toward Iran: a) when they say they are going to kill you, believe them; and b) when they actually do try to kill you, almost nobody will come to your aid.

The international community, led by the US, acted to sanction Iran in the framework of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT) that Iran had signed and then violated. Later, under President Obama, the US and several other Western countries negotiated the JCPOA, an agreement that removed sanctions in return for the Iranian regime’s promise to abide by rules that were intended to delay their acquisition of nuclear weapons. The Iranian negotiators exploited the Western desire to obtain an agreement to ensure that the end product was weak, unenforceable, and in the end would legitimize Iranian nuclear armament rather than preventing it. At the same time, the Obama Administration released $1.3 billion in cash to Iran. $400 million of it was delivered on pallets loaded with Swiss Francs and Euros, and used to fund Hezbollah and other terrorist proxies.

Israel had opposed the JCPOA from the beginning, and PM Netanyahu even braved Obama’s anger by speaking against it at a joint session of Congress. Later, President Trump took the US out of the JCPOA and re-imposed sanctions. His strategy of “maximum pressure” on the Iranian regime might have ultimately brought about the surrender of the regime on the nuclear issue, or even its collapse. But Joe Biden has indicated his intention to return to the less confrontational approach of the Obama Administration – appeasement of Iran at Israel’s expense. This is unfortunate, for given the attitude of the Iranian regime, the only form of diplomacy that can succeed is that which is carried out at economic or literal gunpoint.

The opinion in Israel, held almost unanimously across the responsible part of her political spectrum, is that it will not be possible to live with a nuclear Iran, and that it will ultimately be up to Israel to prevent it. And that is why it is reasonable to assume that Israel was behind the targeted killing of the head of Iran’s military nuclear program, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh. Israel’s policy for at least a decade has been to employ means short of war, such as cyberattacks, sabotage, and targeted killing of key individuals, to prevent Iran from getting nuclear weapons.

I find it somewhat ironic that opponents of Netanyahu’s and Trump’s policies toward Iran often accuse them of wanting war. It should be obvious that allowing Iran to come within striking distance of a nuclear weapon would guarantee military action by Israel against Iran; if it can be prevented by clandestine actions and economic pressure, so much the better.

This is why I wonder at the motives of some of the critics of Israel’s actions, who favor a return to the failed appeasement policy of the Obama Administration. For example, Peter Beinart tweeted that Fakhrizadeh was killed to “sabotage [Biden’s] top foreign policy initiative in the Middle East.” Ben Rhodes, Obama’s advisor, called it “an outrageous action aimed at undermining diplomacy between an incoming US administration and Iran.” J Street’s president Jeremy Ben-Ami said that it was “an attempt to sabotage the ability of the incoming Biden administration to re-enter the [JCPOA] as well as the chances of further diplomacy…”

My first response is to tell them “not everything is about you.” Israel doesn’t care about Biden’s desire to distinguish himself by reversing Trump’s Mideast policy, and to mollify the AOC-Tlaib-Omar left wing of his party, which wants to see Israeli blood even at the expense of strengthening an enemy of the US. We don’t care that Rhodes, one of the architects of the Obama appeasement plan, is again outraged by Israel’s attempts at self-defense, as he and his boss were throughout their eight years in power. These things are of domestic American concern and irrelevant to Israel.

One does wonder why they all (and many others) seem to have adopted the same talking points. One remembers Rhodes’ “echo chamber” when the Iran deal was first brought up. And one begins to suspect that there is a hidden hand – that of Barack Obama? – behind them. Perhaps that’s best left for another post.

Regardless, the objective of Israel’s actions remains the same as it has been for decades: to prevent Iran from getting nuclear weapons. And I expect that we will take advantage of the time left before the change of administrations to continue to advance toward that objective.

Posted in American politics, Iran, Terrorism, US-Israel Relations | 2 Comments

Biden Brings Back Cognitive Dissonance Over Israel

Posted on November 26, 2020 by Victor Rosenthal

Binyamin Netanyahu and Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed have been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by prize recipient Lord David Trimble, who got it in 1998. Trimble was honored for his part in negotiations leading to the Good Friday Agreement that brought relative peace to Northern Ireland.

In my opinion, the Abraham Accords represent the first ray of light in the darkness of the Arab-Israeli conflict since 1948, and if I were a Nobel recipient I would have nominated Donald Trump and Jared Kushner as well.

Of course the chances of Netanyahu receiving anything but abuse from the “international community” of which the Nobel committee is a pillar, are close to zero. The United Nations and the human rights industry, much of it set up in direct response to the industrial murder of European Jewry by the Nazis and their enthusiastic helpers over almost all of Europe, have ironically embraced the would-be genocidaires of the PLO, the Muslim Brotherhood, and the revolutionary Iranian regime. Especially since the year 2000 (see this brilliant analysis by Mark Pickles and Richard Landes), international institutions and NGOs have picked up and carried the flags of misoziony and Judenhass relinquished by the Soviets and the Nazis.

The USA was more or less neutral with respect to Israel (although its Jewish community strongly supported her) until the 1973 war, when it adopted Israel as its Cold War proxy. But soon after, thanks to OPEC’s devastatingly effective “oil weapon,” US policy became ambivalent. Henry Kissinger negotiated multifaceted agreements with the Arabs which resulted in ending the oil boycott; but one of the conditions was that the US would work to restore all territory conquered by Israel in 1967 to Arab control. Until Trump’s presidency, this was firm American policy, followed by relatively pro-Israel presidents like Clinton and Bush II, less friendly ones like Bush I, and anti-Israel ones like Carter and Obama alike.

The policy required a certain degree of cognitive dissonance from American politicians (not to mention the liberal Jews that supported them). It was necessary for them to advocate the transfer of strategically essential territory from Israeli to Arab control, while still at least appearing to support Israel’s continued survival. This they did by providing military aid. A master stroke, the massive aid package for Israel and Egypt that began with the Camp David agreement got Israel out of the Sinai, provided the US with leverage to control Israel’s behavior, and enriched American defense contractors. Later, it served as a fig leaf to hide the dangers of withdrawal inherent in demands for Israel to leave Gaza, the Golan, and Judea and Samaria.

Anti-Israel politicians like Barack Obama had less of an internal struggle than friendly ones. With the help of the Israeli Left, he argued counterfactually that security would come from territorial concessions. His policy was to weaken Israel while pretending to help her, for example by phasing out the portion of the military aid that could be used to buy from Israel’s own military industry. No matter what he did to damage Israel’s strategic position, he could always point to those billions of dollars in military hardware as proof of his support for the Jewish state. But whether an administration was friendly or not, the policy was always fundamentally incoherent. It also distorted internal Israeli politics, leading to disasters like the Oslo Accords.

Trump turned everything upside down. New technology that increased oil production in North America and various other developments had defused the oil weapon. In addition, some of the important Middle Eastern oil producers were worried about Iranian expansionism and its nuclear program, and realized that Israel could be an indispensable ally in opposing it. American interests were now seen to lie with a strong Israel, in truth and not just in rhetoric.

So for the first time since 1973, Trump’s administration was able to introduce a reality-based policy, affirming the rationality of Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights and Jerusalem, and ending the obsequious treatment of the frankly terrorist PLO and its dictatorial Palestinian Authority. Under the Trump plan, the Palestinians would be required to give up their maximalist demands and make real compromises, if they wanted a state of any kind.

But as almost everyone finally admits, the clock has run out. There will not be a second Trump Administration. The new one, depressingly, seems firmly wedded to the old paradigm. Although most (not all!) of his appointments do not appear to be overt enemies of the Jewish state, Biden seems likely to restore the traditional deference (and funding) to the Palestinians, as well as to try to reopen negotiations about the JCPOA with Iran, which at the very least implies that sanctions on Iran will be reduced.

This is not because Biden and his people are idiots. They are fully aware that things have changed, and that the oil weapon no longer threatens America. But now the pressure comes from the home front. They can’t afford to alienate the misozionist left wing of the Democratic party, which has grown stronger in Congress. They don’t worry about American Jews, for whom Israel has little weight when they vote. They can ignore the Evangelicals, who will support Republicans anyway over social issues like abortion and LGBTx rights. And of course, they want to wipe out any traces of Trumpism. Staying in power and achieving domestic objectives is more important to them than logical consistency, or the negative consequences for America’s allies in the Middle East.

So we will go back to hearing platitudes about the “unbreakable” US-Israel relationship, while the administration complains about Israel building apartments in Jewish neighborhoods of eastern Jerusalem. What appeared to be a real possibility that Israel would extend sovereignty to the Jordan Valley – an area of extreme strategic importance – will fade away. We’ll watch as the US goes back to pretending that the failed and antisemitic United Nations can play a positive role in any sphere, and that the PLO can be made into a peace partner. Sanctions on Iran will be relaxed, emboldening the regime to push ahead on the ground and with its nuclear and missile programs.

A dark picture. Israel has a difficult time ahead of her. Netanyahu, bin Zayed, Trump, and Kushner should get the Nobel. Instead we will all get four or eight years of small minds and their cynical politics.

Posted in American politics, Middle East politics, US-Israel Relations | 1 Comment

Taking the Knee

Posted on November 22, 2020 by Victor Rosenthal

Here we see Mr. Biden kneeling. The photo was taken on 1 June 2020 at the Bethel AME Church in Wilmington, Delaware, about a week after the death of George Floyd focused attention on the treatment of black Americans by police, and triggered massive demonstrations and riots across the country.

Biden didn’t explain the precise meaning of the gesture. One can assume that if he were asked, he would say that it was a statement of identification with victims of police brutality and of his intent (as he indicated in a speech the Friday before) to “root out systemic racism,” which he implied was “[t]he original sin of this country [that] still stains our nation today.”

“Taking the knee” was popularized by former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick, who began to kneel during the playing of the National Anthem at the beginning of the 2016 season, because, he said, “I’m not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color.”

Gestures, like texts, may have various levels of meaning. The above are the most obvious interpretations of Biden’s and Kaepernick’s gestures. And in my opinion, it is appalling that an American president would take such positions.

Not that there isn’t unnecessary police violence and injustice perpetrated against blacks in America. That should go without saying, and it should also go without saying that it is essential to repair what Biden referred to as an “open wound” in American society (although there is great disagreement about who or what ripped the wound into its flesh). But the position that the country is “systemically” flawed as a result of an “original sin” is an obnoxious one for a president to take.

If the problem is systemic, that means that it is built into the very fabric of society; it isn’t caused by a few bad apples in the barrel, but by the whole idea of a barrel. “Original sin” is a sin that everyone commits simply by being born; its use here implies that white Americans are racists, simply because they are white. There is nothing they can do about as long as the society remains as it is. The society has to be ripped apart or turned upside down to fix it.

In other words, only a revolutionary solution can fix a systemic problem. And history tells us that revolutions are invariably bloody, and the ones who come out on top afterwards are not the most just and deserving, but rather the most ruthless and brutal. Biden claims that he wants to be a healer and to bring normalcy to American life, but the way to do that is the opposite of embracing revolution. Of course Biden didn’t write that speech himself, and he isn’t a deep thinker. But those were the words that came from his mouth.

That is one implication of the gesture. It’s bad enough. But look at the photo again. Colin Kaepernick kneeled to show disrespect; you are supposed to stand for the national anthem. What Kaepernick did was a form of aggression, and many people strongly objected. But kneeling can also be a submissive posture. You kneel before a king or other noble, or God. When a white person “takes the knee,” he is in a submissive mode, as if taking on the burden of his guilt. Even if he believes that he doesn’t personally oppress anyone, he abases himself because of his inherent sinfulness and therefore his overwhelming feeling of guilt as a white person who benefits from the systemic racism of society.

Guilt for “white privilege” is fundamental to so-called “Critical Race Theory,” a postmodernist ideology that applies concepts like the primacy of identity and narrative over objective reality and truth to the discussion of race. “Whites” do not have a part in the discussion, except to be silent and scourge themselves by agreeing to reparations and preferential treatment for “people of color.” Liberal concepts like meritocracy and equality of opportunity that were the basis of the American Civil Rights movement and the ideas of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. go out the window in favor of a revolutionary change in the color of the power structure in America.

Needless to say, if normalcy, moderation, and healing are your goals, this isn’t the way to attain them. And yet, this is the message that Mr. Biden sent, albeit without thinking about it.

Dr. King stood for liberalism. Critical race theorists propose a form of irrational authoritarianism that, in connection with modern technology, could transform the US into a totalitarian state the likes of which has never been seen – or alternatively, could bring about its disintegration in civil war.

Most Democrats are liberals, and they thought they were voting for a liberal administration. I hope they get one.

Posted in American politics, American society, Wokeness | 3 Comments

The Clock Ticks on the Iranian Nuclear Project

Posted on November 19, 2020 by Victor Rosenthal

A recent IAEA report showed that Iran has considerably more low-enriched uranium than was permitted by the JCPOA and is installing advanced centrifuges at Natanz, also in contravention of the agreement, to further increase production. In addition, the uranium is being enriched to a higher degree than before. If they want to, the Iranians could have nuclear weapons sometime in 2021.

Apparently in response to the report, President Trump reportedly asked advisors for options to take action against Iran’s nuclear program. Those options could include anything from increased economic pressure, to cyber-attacks, and even military action. The NY Times said he had been “dissuaded” by advisors from a military strike because it “could easily escalate into a broader conflict in the last weeks of Mr. Trump’s presidency.” But Trump is nothing if not independent.

When Donald Trump took over from Barack Obama, one of the first things he did was reverse Obama’s disastrous Iran policy (I highly recommend this link), which was one of appeasement and acquiescence to extortion, motivated in part by Obama’s desire to see the end of the sovereign Jewish state. I’m convinced that Trump’s “maximum pressure” policy on Iran is the only approach short of war that might have any chance of modifying the behavior of the Iranian regime, which sees its nuclear program as a top priority. While the Iranian regime has responded to the pressure with increased aggressiveness, the US has – or would have, if the policy were to be continued – far more staying power.

The Iranian regime’s strategy has been to keep a low profile. It didn’t retaliate after the American killing of its most valuable terror operative, Qassem Soleimani. It didn’t construct a nuclear weapon. It has contented itself with strengthening its assets in Iraq and Syria, and gradually ramping up its nuclear program without taking any major visible steps. Despite its claims that the US is weak, the regime knows that it would be no match for what is still the world’s greatest military power. And it fears Trump because of his unpredictability.

Unsurprisingly, the major media are full of claims that “maximum pressure has failed.” That is not precisely true: it simply needs more time.

It may not get it. All the evidence seems to point to a Biden Administration returning to the Obama policy in some form, although the particular animus of Obama toward Israel seems to be lacking in Biden himself. The history of negotiations with the regime over its nuclear program shows that it will not give up anything that it is not forced to, and it will demand the relaxation of sanctions as a condition for negotiations. The regime has already indicated that it is happy with the (apparent) result of the American election, and is looking forward to dealing with a Biden Administration.

Whatever happens, Israel will be deeply involved. Part of Iran’s response to an attack, whether by Israel or the US, would be to unleash Hezbollah and Hamas against Israel’s home front. It would also attack US assets in Iraq, and American warships (and maybe commercial shipping) in the Gulf. It would probably hit Saudi Arabia too. These points were certainly made to Trump by his advisors.

While one conclusion could be that it is best not to act, there is another interpretation: rather than a minimalist operation to take out specific nuclear facilities, a larger operation that would also destroy Iran’s overall military capability is indicated. Probably an American attack on Iran would be accompanied by Israeli preemptive strikes against Hezbollah, in order to prevent the damage that would be done to Israel by the massive rocket barrage that would follow a blow against Iran.

PM Netanyahu has been averse to preemptive action against Hezbollah, partly because he wants to avoid the international condemnation that would follow. And because life is unpredictable, he will delay until the last moment; who knows what might happen to make war unnecessary? Finally, he may believe that an ultra-fast response to a Hezbollah attack plus Israel’s anti-missile systems would mitigate the disadvantages of allowing them to strike first.

On the other hand, he is a strong proponent of the Begin Doctrine, which says that Israel will not – must not – allow hostile states in the region to obtain nuclear weapons, especially Iran, which he views as having an antisemitic and genocidal regime. He knows that if Iran gets nuclear weapons, they will serve as an umbrella to protect Hezbollah, greatly multiplying the danger to Israel. I’m convinced he would go along with an American plan.

If Trump wants to achieve his original objective of precluding a nuclear-armed revolutionary Islamic regime in Iran, he has only about two months to act – and his ability to do so will weaken as the lame duck period progresses.

The clock is ticking.

Posted in American politics, Iran, War | 3 Comments

Israel Bashed for Resisting Arab Colonization

Posted on November 15, 2020 by Victor Rosenthal

According to Ha’aretz, NBC, CBS, NPR, BBC, the EU, the UN, and countless denizens of social media, a whole Palestinian village was allegedly demolished and its entire population made homeless on 4 November of this year. Ilhan Omar accused Israel of “a grave crime … ethnic cleansing,” and called for “defunding” Israel. The story is that it was done “under cover of the US elections,” in order to allow for the replacement of Palestinians in the territories by Jewish “settlers.” The act was called “illegal,” “unlawful,” “inhumane,” and worse.

Here are the facts.

Khirbet Humsa is located in the Jordan Valley, part of “Area C” which, according to the Oslo Accords is under full Israeli civil and security control. It was a Bedouin encampment which consisted of seven tents and eight pens for animals. Bedouins camped there starting in 2010, but it was not a permanent settlement: aerial photographs from 2013 show only vacant land, proving that claims that the residents “lived there all their lives” are false. According to the NGO Regavim, new structures were built with money from the European Union in 2019, and it was these that were demolished on 4 November.

The area has been an IDF firing range since 1972, and is used regularly by the IDF for exercises. Bedouins who have encamped there to graze their animals have been required to move from time to time for their own safety.

Under international law, which recognizes the Oslo Accords as binding, construction in Area C requires permission from Israeli authorities. The Bedouins who now claim the area for a permanent settlement have no title to the land and no building permits. They are simply squatters. Even the left-leaning Israeli Supreme Court turned down three petitions on their behalf.

The European Union and the Palestinian Authority (PA) who encourage them and provide them with money for construction claim that all the land beyond the “Green Line,” the 1949 armistice line, is “Palestinian land” according to their interpretation of international law. How they square this with their recognition of the Palestinian Authority, which was created by the Oslo Accords, is not clear to me. But they continue to pay for illegal construction there as “humanitarian aid.”

The Bedouins who were evicted immediately received new tents from the EU, and have returned to the area. Incidentally, one of the more tear-jerking articles (by Amira Haas in Ha’aretz) about this incident refers to the IDF taking a car “belonging” to one of the families. I am willing to bet 1000 shekels that the car was confiscated because it had been stolen; car theft by Bedouins – including hijacking (Heb. link) – is common.

This is a skirmish in a larger war that the Israeli government has been ignoring, as it loses battle after battle. Since 2009, when then PA Prime Minister Salaam Fayyad published a plan for “Palestine: Ending the Occupation, Establishing the State,” the PA – with money provided by Israel’s “soft enemy,” the European Union – the PA has been engaged in a program of illegal building and settlement throughout Area C. Millions of Euros are used to build structures, often “schools” and “hospitals” to serve as nuclei for illegal Palestinian settlements in Area C.

This is a win-win situation for the Palestinians. If Israel allows them to remain, then they create facts on the ground that make it impractical for Israel to ultimately annex the areas in which they are located. If they are demolished, then they provide grist for the international media propaganda mill, which grinds out stories of Israeli inhumanity.

It’s ironic that despite the continuous complaining by all the usual suspects about “illegal” Israeli “settlement construction,” there is far more truly illegal Arab construction underway. And there have been far more cases in which Jewish residents have been removed by force from illegally built settlements, than Arabs.

Recently European countries have even demanded that Israel compensate them for their investment in illegal buildings that have been demolished! The chutzpah of that request is only matched by that of the Egyptians who are suing the Jewish people for gold allegedly stolen at the time of the Exodus.

Israel has recently begun to step up the demolition of illegal European-funded construction in Area C. I would go farther, and expel EU representatives from the territories. One wonders what the Belgian government would do if Israel sent money and advisors to the Flemish separatist movement (Dutch link).

What other sovereign state would allow agents from hostile nations to openly engage in subversive activities inside the country?

Posted in Europe and Israel, Israel and Palestinian Arabs | 2 Comments