Plan Z

Posted on November 12, 2020 by Victor Rosenthal

In the Fall of 2012, Bibi Netanyahu and then Minister of Defense Ehud Barak had a plan to destroy Iran’s capability to make nuclear weapons. The plan was not executed because of opposition from the Cabinet, the Israeli security establishment, and of course the Obama Administration, which was facing an election and secretly negotiating with Iran toward what would become the JCPOA.

The “nuclear deal” that was ultimately signed in 2015 provided Iran with cash for its Hezbollah terrorists and its expansion into Iraq and Syria, as well as fully legitimizing Iran’s nuclear project in 10-15 years. Even before then, the JCPOA lacked adequate safeguards to prevent cheating, and Iran took advantage of the loopholes to pursue development of uranium and plutonium bombs.

The Obama Administration was following a playbook developed – in part by advisor Ben Rhodes – in the 2006 Iraq Study Report, which intended to extricate the US from Iraq and bring about overall stability in the region by appeasing and empowering Iran and Syria (there was still an independent Syria then) at Israel’s expense. It seemed to me then, and still does today, that the negative consequences for Israel from the plan were not simply an unfortunate byproduct of it, but rather a desired outcome.

President Trump took the opposite tack, choosing to weaken Iran and empower America’s traditional allies in the region, Israel and the Sunni Arab states. He took the US out of the JCPOA, re-imposed sanctions on Iran, recognized Israel’s sovereignty in the Golan and Jerusalem (the 2006 plan envisioned Israel transferring the Golan to Syria), and encouraged an alliance between Israel and the Sunni Arab states.

If Trump’s policy to build up a strong countervailing power while weakening and isolating Iran would continue, then it might be possible to force Iran to give up its nuclear dreams without military action. But if, as seems likely, Joe Biden takes office as President of the US on 20 January 2021, then everything may change.

The following is sheer fantasy. I don’t know what the PM of Israel is thinking, I am not acquainted with anyone in the Trump Administration, the Biden team, or Israel’s defense establishment, and I have no insider knowledge about anything.

By Chanukah 5781 [10 December 2020], it became clear to the Prime Minister of Israel that President-elect Biden, although personally not particularly anti-Israel, was assembling a team heavy with individuals that were less than sympathetic to our point of view, like Susan Rice, Jake Sullivan, and Daniel Benaim. Biden had also made appointments that were concessions to the extreme left wing of the Democratic party that had almost defeated him in the race for the nomination. Intelligence reports showed a continuous flow of communications between Biden and the headquarters of the group led by Barack Obama, located only about 3 km. from the White House.

The PM of Israel was worried. Biden had already announced his intention to re-engage with Iran, which would probably mean a loosening of sanctions. The PM knew that the Iranians had recently made significant progress toward the development of a nuclear arsenal. He had no confidence that the Biden Administration would have the will to stop them; he could imagine a repeat of the JCPOA process, in which Iran made a fool of US negotiators.

Israel would have to stop Iran, or nobody would.

The PM knew that during the Obama Administration the Americans considered Israel a prime target for intelligence-gathering. The Americans had been operating a radar installation in Israel since 2008 that could spot air activity anywhere in the country, even small drones. Electronic communications in Israel’s defense headquarters, the Kiriya in Tel Aviv, have been tapped for some time. It would be very hard to take almost any kind of military action against Iran without the Americans finding out.

The PM decided that if Israel were to take action, it would have to be before 20 January, when Biden would be inaugurated. Indeed, considering the precedent of the incoming Obama team which aborted the ground invasion of Gaza in January 2009, it would have to be before Biden’s people got themselves organized. Otherwise, he was sure the Americans would act, diplomatically or even kinetically, to prevent Israel from striking the Iranian nuclear program.

Such an operation would not be simple or easy. The Iranian assets that would need to be destroyed are buried deeply underground and defended by surface-to-air missile batteries. The moment Israel attacked, the Iranians would unleash Hezbollah in Lebanon, which had some 130,000 short range rockets and longer range missiles, some with precision guidance. They are fitted on mobile launchers and ensconced in the homes of civilians. Hezbollah has plans to invade across the northern border, and kill Israelis and take hostages.

But the IDF has been preparing for this for some time. There is a plan called tochnit zayin [Plan Z]. The Prime Minister convened his mini-security cabinet, a subset of a subset of the cabinet, including the Minister of Defense and several others, together with the IDF Chief of Staff and a few key officers, including the Air Force and Navy commanders. The meeting took all of 15 minutes. The clock began to tick on tochnit zayin.

The IDF announced that it would carry out a defensive exercise on our northern border. It was not a massive exercise, and only a small number of reserve units were called up. Several days later an Israeli submarine moved into position in the Persian Gulf (or, if you prefer, the Arabian Gulf). At 0200 on the 4th day of Hanukah, the submarine fired a missile almost straight up. The missile contained a small nuclear bomb designed to maximize the production of gamma rays, and it exploded high in the stratosphere at an altitude of about 100 km. A person on the ground might see a small dot of light if he knew where to look; he would not be injured or even feel anything.

Most of the gamma radiation from the explosion was absorbed by the air. The gamma rays ripped electrons from atoms in the air, and the electrons spun downward; their motion in the Earth’s magnetic field produced a powerful pulse of electromagnetic radiation, lasting only one millionth of a second but containing an enormous amount of energy. Much of Iran was blanketed by this pulse. Electrical conductors that it passed over had high voltages induced in them, and semiconductor devices, especially those connected to power lines or antennas, were reduced to inert lumps of silicon. Telephone and cellular networks, broadcasting equipment, internet routers, the power grid, and countless other things became inoperative. Even emergency generators, with their solid-state controls, didn’t start.

When Israeli aircraft arrived to bomb the nuclear sites with multiple bunker-busters, Iranian radar was dark. When eyewitnesses tried to alert their commanders, they were unable to do so. When they finally drove to Teheran to inform their leaders (most vehicles were still operative, especially older ones), their leaders could not communicate with each other, or, importantly, with Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Lebanon is too close to Israel to receive the same treatment, but units of Israeli special forces penetrated its borders and destroyed communications infrastructure and cut cables at key points. A bombing campaign followed, aimed primarily at the nervous system of the country – the power grid and communications systems. In 2006, the IDF was surprised by its inability to intercept and interrupt communications over Hezbollah’s fiber optic network. Since then, it’s been documented and mapped. It was quickly destroyed. Since 2006 the IDF has collected good intelligence about Hezbollah’s installations, including the hiding places of mobile rocket launchers and weapons depots. Many of them were destroyed almost immediately.

The Hezbollah leadership was targeted; unlike in 2006, the IDF knew where they were and was able to kill them. Without a head and a nervous system, and without support from Iran, Hezbollah was demoralized, and was unable to sustain a massive rocket attack. There was some damage to Israel’s home front, but Iron Dome and Arrow antimissile systems significantly reduced it.

All this happened in a couple of days. By the time Hanukah was over, the Lebanese government – less Hezbollah – was suing for peace. In Iran, economic paralysis had begun to set in.

The US and the Russians, who had been informed only an hour before the operation, offered to help Iran and Lebanon to rebuild, as did Israel and the Gulf states – on condition that the mullahs in Iran and what was left of Hezbollah in Lebanon would have no role in the government. They accepted.

By the time Joe Biden became president, he faced a whole new Middle East.

Posted in Iran, The Future, US-Israel Relations, War | 5 Comments

The Biden Administration and Israel

Posted on November 8, 2020 by Victor Rosenthal

The election is over. Or not. There are anomalies in the vote counting process in several key states that seemingly can’t be explained. There are lawsuits filed, dismissed, pending. Are there serious investigations into the anomalies? Is there anyone sufficiently competent and free of bias to investigate them? Is there the will and the focus to do so before evidence, if any, is destroyed? If someone asks me if America had a fair election, I have to say that I have my doubts, but there isn’t a smoking gun (please don’t send me links to smoking guns; I’ve seen most of them and I still am not prepared to bet more than 10 shekels (US $2.96) either way).

Joe Biden got more votes than Barack Obama did in 2008, the previous record for the popular vote in US history. And this is despite the fact that Biden – never inspiring, a liar and plagiarist, no less a narcissist than Trump – is clearly suffering from age-related decreasing mental capacity. These votes (unless they really are fraudulent) are anti-Trump votes. Nobody but Biden himself thinks he should be president.

Biden is at best an empty suit, which raises the question of who will be animating him, especially on foreign policy, the area in which the president has the most latitude for action independent of Congress and the courts. His foreign policy advisors include Daniel Benaim and Ely Ratner, both of whom are connected to think-tanks closely associated with Barack Obama. Benaim was a speechwriter and Middle East advisor for Biden during his stint as vice president; Ratner was Biden’s East Asia expert. Another is Jake Sullivan, who was Biden’s national security advisor in the Obama Administration, and a campaign advisor to Hillary Clinton. He also was part of Obama’s negotiating team that gave birth to the JCPOA, the horrendous nuclear agreement with Iran. Probably Tony Blinken, a former official in the Obama and Clinton Administrations, will have an important post in Biden’s White House. There are numerous others with similar backgrounds.

It appears, then, that Biden’s foreign policy, particularly in the Middle East will echo that of the Obama Administration – with the proviso that the extreme Left of the Democratic party, which has gained increasing influence since the 2018 midterm elections and the surprisingly good showing of Bernie Sanders in Democratic primary contests, will likely make its weight felt. There is also Obama’s own organization, sitting in Washington only 2.93 km from the White House, loaded with cash and influence and doubtless ready to direct Biden in whatever direction it finds appropriate.

One factor whose impact is mostly unknown is Biden’s VP, Kamala Harris. Although she has been accused of being far-left, at least in connection with Israel she is much closer to the center. She opposes BDS and has said that Israel “meets international standards of human rights.” But like Biden, she wants to restart the Iran deal.

The problem in predicting the behavior of an administration like this is that the personalities are not strongly ideological. Their actions will not be guided by a long-term vision; they will respond to external events. For all his supposed lack of focus, Trump and his administration have been remarkably consistent in their treatment of the Israeli-Arab conflict, and have been responsible for the first actual progress toward a solution since 1948. I don’t expect this from Biden-Harris.

The most important consequence of Donald Trump’s policies have been the “Abraham Accords.” Whether you see them as the dawning of a new age of Arab-Israeli cooperation or as a temporary alliance against the threat of Iran, they represent the creation of a new power bloc in the region which could be a force for stability against pyromaniacs like Khamenei, Assad, Erdoğan, and the leadership of Hamas and the PLO. It is essential to nurture and develop this relationship.

Obama’s plan was the opposite. His administration tried to weaken Israel, shrink its borders, and empower Iran to become the “enforcer” in the region. Although his motives are hidden from view, it seems to me that in addition to reducing conflict – which he would accomplish, in theory, by supporting an Iranian hegemony – Obama had other goals. He was very sympathetic to the Palestinian movement, likening it in his mind to the struggle of African-Americans with whom he identified. His post-colonial outlook caused him to relate strongly to the idea that Israel was an outpost of European settler-colonialism in a region of “indigenous” Arab “natives.” Justice, he thought, would be served by acceding to Palestinian demands. Did he go so far as to realize that this meant the destruction of the Jewish state? I think he did.

Joe Biden has said that he supports the traditional “two-state solution” based on pre-1967 lines, and a Palestinian capital in Jerusalem, the same bad idea that has been around since Jimmy Carter. Bill Clinton took it as far as it would go, until it exploded into the Second Intifada. Clinton, unlike Obama, wanted an agreement that would create a sovereign Palestine while still protecting Israel’s security. Biden seems to share this conception. Does he have the flexibility to understand that it didn’t work because it was oxymoronic? I am not sure.

A frequent Obama tactic against Israel was to express anger toward her as though she were a misbehaving child, and suggest that the relationship between the nations had been damaged by her actions. Afterwards, he would demand concessions to restore the relationship, which Israel would hurry to provide. This also had the desired effect of reducing American popular support for Israel. One of the more serious incidents of this kind happened in 2010, and involved Biden.

Lenny Ben-David, writing in the Times of Israel, reminds us what happened. Biden was visiting Israel when Peace Now informed the Americans that an Israeli official had announced the completion of a step in the approval process for some 1600 apartments in eastern Jerusalem. The White House and the State Department responded with angry condemnations, and Israel apologized obsequiously in response. After several days Biden and Netanyahu spoke and “agreed that the crisis was behind them.”

But the next day, and for some time after, the White House, State Department, and friendly media attacked Israel and Netanyahu over and over, including a famous 43-minute telephone call from Hillary Clinton in which she ranted to Bibi against the “affront.” Obama surrogate Martin Indyk said that Biden had been deliberately “humiliated.” J Street got into the act, demanding to “turn this crisis into an opportunity for progress on two states.”

Biden was not insulted and didn’t want a crisis. But Obama did. And this may be the paradigm for American-Israeli relations in the next Administration. It may not matter what, if anything, Biden thinks, because he will be guided by unseen hands.

If they are Obama’s, as appears likely, we can expect a rocky four years.

Posted in 'Peace' Process, American politics, Middle East politics, US-Israel Relations | 3 Comments

The Day After Election Day

Posted on November 5, 2020 by Victor Rosenthal

It’s a rainy Wednesday morning in Rehovot, and the US election is undecided.

I have made my preference for Donald Trump clear. I understand the reasons that many Americans oppose him, but they are focusing on the media-amplified and distorted trees and ignoring the forest that is the worldwide struggle between competing hegemonies: the West (which mostly means the US today, when much of Europe is in decline), Islam, and China.

Yes, despite his sometimes ignorant pronouncements about scientific issues that he doesn’t understand, despite everything they don’t like about his personality, and even despite his undeniable dishonesty (not that his opponents are better in this respect), Trump is on the right side in the game that will determine how history will look for the next century or so.

What will be important in the very near future will be to stand against the Iranian attempt to establish a Shiite caliphate across the Middle East, against the further expansion of Chinese influence in East Asia and its extension into the rest of the world, against the Islamization of the US, and against the creation of a new Ottoman Empire. Trump has made his positions clear on the first three, although the jury is still out with respect to the last.

The pronouncements made by Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, as well as their choice of advisors, have indicated that they would return to the Mideast policy of the Obama Administration, including its tilt toward Iran, away from Israel and the Sunni Arab states. This would weaken the developing Israel-Sunni alliance, which represents the best hope for stability in the region.

Trump would be more likely to oppose immigration of unassimilable Muslims to the US, the phenomenon that has brought Western Europe to its knees. His determination to control America’s borders is laudable.

I devoutly hope the decision will be quick and unambiguous, but ultimately someone will win this election. So here is my advice to Americans about the aftermath:

Understand that there is a Constitution and there was an election. There will be a winner and a loser. Understand that your political opponents aren’t monsters. Mostly they are human beings who see things differently.

If Trump wins, deal with it. Don’t style yourselves “the resistance” and don’t try to remove him with extra-democratic measures. I would hope, but can’t imagine, that the mainstream media would stop the exaggerated attacks on him, the false accusations of racism, fascism, even antisemitism, and the repetition of outright lies like the “fine people” hoax. Unfortunately there is a real possibility of civil disturbances if Trump wins and widespread “Trump Derangement Syndrome” prevails.

If Biden wins – well, if Biden wins, I and others will continue our efforts to politely explain why the Obama-style foreign policy that he will doubtless adopt is dangerous to peace and liberty throughout the world. We will argue that America has real enemies that should be confronted and not appeased. Please listen.

There are those who think that red or blue states and regions should consider secession from the US if the wrong side wins. This is a terrible idea, which could only increase extremism on both sides, and weaken the nation in the face of its external enemies. In the worst case it could lead to civil war.

American Jews will be facing a difficult situation in the future, especially if Biden wins. Expressions of Jew-hatred have recently been increasing, from “traditional” antisemites like neo-Nazis, from Farrakhanists and Black Hebrews, from Muslim antisemites, and from the misozionists of the intersectional Left, whose hatred of Israel seamlessly flows into hatred of individual Jews. Biden and the Democrats seem to recognize only the traditional types, rendering invisible the black, Muslim, and extreme leftist Jew-haters (who vote Democratic). Moving closer to the Left is not a good survival strategy for Jews, who will find little sympathy there, no matter how loudly they curse Israel.

It’s interesting that while most British Jews dropped Labour like a hot potato thanks to Jeremy Corbyn, American Jews have stuck with the Democratic party despite the antisemitism of some of its members, and the decision by the leadership to pretend it doesn’t exist. The so-called squad of four BDS-supporting members of Congress have all been re-elected, and another BDS proponent, Cori Bush of Missouri, has joined them.

Trump – contrary to a determined misinformation campaign by his opponents – is not sympathetic to “right-wing” antisemitism, even if he doesn’t denounce it loudly and often enough to satisfy Democrats. And he has certainly demonstrated his pro-Israel credentials. A Trump win would be better for American Jews, despite what they think.

Just one more observation, this one for Israelis, including our General Staff:

With a Biden administration, Israel can expect that any military campaign – be it against Hezbollah, Hamas, or Iranian nuclear installations – will be much more difficult. The US, under the Obama administration, was quick to intervene diplomatically to pressure Israel to accept disadvantageous cease-fires, or even to prevent Israel from taking action at all. It is a reasonable assumption that Biden’s policy would be similar, especially in the case of Iran, with whom he wants to deal.

If Biden wins, the rational thing for Israel to do would be to take out the Iranian nuclear capability before it’s too late.

Capiche?

Posted in American Jews, American politics, Iran, Jew Hatred, Middle East politics | 6 Comments

The Siege of France, 2020

Posted on November 2, 2020 by Victor Rosenthal

Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. – Voltaire

When I think of human rights, democratic governance, Enlightenment values, and the idea that reason and scientific method are superior to superstition, I think of France. The Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen of 1789, written by Emmanuel-Joseph Sieyès, the Marquis de Lafayette, and Honoré Mirabeau, in consultation with Thomas Jefferson, is referenced in the very first sentence of the Constitution of the Fifth Republic of France.

And in recent days, when I think of the struggle to maintain those concepts in the face of an exceptionally vicious assault by the forces of darkness, I also think of France.

Islam has always been the enemy of human rights. Apostasy and blasphemy, which should not be crimes at all, are punishable in Islam by death. Islam denies the basic idea of natural rights, dictating that Muslims are superior to non-Muslims, who have fewer rights in law and in everyday life. And infidels that nevertheless have the chutzpah to see themselves as equals invite horrific violence.

We know this very well in Israel. The martyrs of Hamas that explode in our buses and pizzerias and Passover seders do so in the name of Islam, because Jewish sovereignty is anathema to it. They can’t be stopped by persuasion, negotiation, or – except temporarily – by paying ransom. Only by force.

The Muslim population of France is generally agreed to be the largest in Europe, but precise numbers are difficult to obtain because, thanks to the French commitment to non-discrimination, the state does not collect statistics by religion. But it seems that 7-9% of the population is Muslim.

Few countries with a large Muslim population seem to be able to avoid conflict between Muslims and other groups. The relatively good relationship between Jewish and Muslim citizens in Israel, where one out of five citizens is Arab, is remarkable (of course there are the Arabs of the Palestinian Authority and Gaza to provide an ample supply of terrorists).

The distinction is often drawn between radical Muslims or “Islamists,” and other Muslims. But there aren’t “orthodox” and “reform” Islams. The basic principles of Islam, including the idea that blasphemy is a crime deserving of death, do not change. There are just Muslims that are prepared to act on those of their beliefs that call for violent action, and those that are not.

France has seen its share of horrendous Islamic terrorism, including the Charlie Hebdo and Bataclan Theatre massacres, and several vicious attacks on Jews, both individually and in groups. But in the last few weeks, there has been a series of bloody murders, including two beheadings. The first one, in which teacher Samuel Paty was slaughtered for the “crime” of insulting Islam by showing his class the Mohammad cartoons (the spark for the Charlie Hebdo massacre), prompted a reaction by French President Macron that apparently triggered a worldwide fury by Muslims (encouraged by Turkey’s arsonist President), a call to boycott French goods, and additional murders. Here is what Macron said, in part:

Samuel Paty was the victim of a fatal conspiracy of folly, lies, conflation, hatred of the other, hatred of what we are deep down, existentially.

On Friday, Samuel Paty became the face of the Republic, of our determination to disrupt terrorists, to curtail Islamists, to live as a community of free citizens in our country; he became the face of our determination to understand, to learn, to continue to teach, to be free, because we will continue to do so, sir.

We will defend the freedom that you taught so well, and we will strongly proclaim the concept of laïcité [secularism]. We will not disavow the cartoons, the drawings, even if others recoil. We will provide all the opportunities that the Republic owes all its young people, without any discrimination.

Macron thus threw down the gauntlet: We will not disavow the cartoons. It doesn’t matter if Muslims are offended. The values of the Republic will prevail. Although he later said that he could “understand” that Muslims might be offended by the cartoons, he added that “I will always defend in my country the freedom to speak, to write, to think, to draw.”

I wish him luck. Muslims throughout the world have gotten used to Western institutions ideologically buckling in the face of atrocious violence. For example, a few days after 9/11, President Bush obsequiously insisted that “Islam is peace,” and even after continued acts of Islamic terror in Europe, in 2008 the UK government – in a remarkable example of Orwellian Newspeak – announced that Islamic terrorism was actually “anti-Islamic activity.” In the US, the Obama Administration banished the expression “Islamic terrorism” and others deemed insulting to Muslims from training manuals for law enforcement agencies. Last week, Canadian PM Justin Trudeau remarked that the terrorists responsible for the atrocities in France “did not represent Islam,” and later compared displaying the Mohammad cartoons to “shouting ‘fire’ in a crowded theater.”

Islam was in direct conflict with the then-Christian West for several hundred years, until the 17th century when the Turks were repelled from Vienna for the last time. Western military technology held Islamic expansionism at bay until recently, when Europe was successfully invaded by waves of migrants, a demographic assault that has been far more successful than Kara Mustafa Pasha’s military one in 1683. Except perhaps in the case of Israel, the forces of Islam have for now replaced direct military attacks against the West with a combination of terrorism, subversion, and demographic and cultural conquest. But anyone who thinks there is no conflict under way is blind.

Macron has called for concrete steps to fight terror as well as taking a clear-cut ideological stance for traditional (at least since 1789) French values. I expect that he will have his hands full as Muslim extremists within and outside the country fight back. There will be more violence, as well as considerable pressure to submit to their demands to back down from his commitment to free expression. The conflict is not yet over, by far.

Posted in Europe, Islam | 1 Comment

Want Peace in the Middle East? Vote for Trump!

Posted on October 29, 2020 by Victor Rosenthal

The end of the historic “Arab-Israeli conflict” may be on the horizon, depending on the outcome of the US presidential election.

Oh, It wouldn’t mean that the Palestinian Arabs will soon give up on the idea that they can flood Israel with the descendants of 1948 refugees and reverse the result of the War of Independence. It wouldn’t mean that the antisemitism and misoziony that are rife in our neighbors Egypt, Jordan, and Lebanon, are likely to end in our lifetimes. It wouldn’t mean that Recep Tayyip Erdoğan will stop trying to re-establish the Ottoman Empire, including Jerusalem, or that the revolutionary regime in Iran will stop planning to wipe Israel off the map and establish a Shiite caliphate in the region. ISIS, Hamas, and the Muslim Brotherhood will not be normalizing relations with the Jewish state no matter what. There will be plenty of conflict and terrorism in our region for the foreseeable future.

But the classical Arab-Israeli conflict, as expressed by the Three No’s of 1967 may soon be history. The idea that no Arab nation can accept the existence of the Jewish state – or even mention it by name – until all of the extreme demands of the Palestinian Arabs have been met has already fallen by the wayside. It is becoming obvious to any honest observer that the reason the Palestinian issue has festered for so many years is that the Palestinians, encouraged by the Arab nations and European antisemites, have never entertained any possibility short of total victory. Now Arab support for their intransigence and rejectionism is falling away.

The UAE, Bahrain, and Sudan have already made normalization agreements with Israel. Others are expected to follow. The most important of those would be Saudi Arabia, the leader of the Sunni Muslim world, the custodian of the Holy Mosques, and the source of funds for countless Islamic institutions around the world. There are reliable reports that the Saudi regime, which is increasingly under the control of Crown Prince, Deputy Prime Minister, and Minister of Defense, Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), will normalize relations after the US election – if Donald Trump wins.

It’s hard to imagine that any of this would have happened if not for the change in US policy initiated by the Trump Administration. The recognition of Israeli rights in Jerusalem and sovereignty over the Golan, and the downgrading of relations with the PLO, sent an unmistakable message that America did not support the Palestinian program to replace Israel with an Arab state. Trump’s peace plan, unlike those proposed during the previous administration, is not based on the transformation of the 1949 cease-fire lines into borders, but respects the concept of “secure and recognized boundaries” as expressed in UNSC resolution 242.

In order to truly appreciate the change in policy, compare it to that of the previous administration. Even before his inauguration in January 2009, Barack Obama forced Israel to abandon its campaign to oust Hamas from Gaza, probably the last practical opportunity to do so. In June of that year he visited Cairo and made a speech in which he directly compared the Holocaust to Palestinian “suffer[ing] in pursuit of a homeland” (he didn’t visit Israel until 2013, and then chose not to speak to the Knesset in Jerusalem but rather informally to students). Obama deliberately refrained from helping Iranian dissidents in Iran’s failed Green Revolution. He supported the Muslim Brotherhood in Arab Spring conflicts in Egypt, endangering Israeli-Egyptian relations. He demanded a freeze on all “settlement activity” which was used by the Palestinians as an excuse to refuse to talk. He deliberately humiliated PM Netanyahu when he visited the White House in 2011. He stopped a shipment of missiles to Israel during the 2014 conflict with Hamas in Gaza. At the same time the FAA ordered flights to Israel canceled, in an action that many thought was ordered by the administration.

Obama rammed through the Iran deal over the objections of a majority in Congress, including huge cash payments that the regime used to finance terrorism and Hezbollah’s military buildup. In 2013, his administration leaked information to the press about Israeli attacks against Iranian weapons shipments in Syria, making a wider conflict more likely. Finally, as a lame-duck parting shot at Israel in 2016, he encouraged the introduction of an anti-Israel Security Council resolution, and instructed his ambassador to abstain, ensuring its passage. And there is much more.

One can understand why Arab leaders might have thought that there was no percentage in improving relations with Israel while the US was kicking her to the curb.

Joe Biden was deeply involved in the Obama Administration’s relationship with Israel. You may recall that Biden was “furious” after an Israeli official announced the completion of a step in the process of approval for the construction of apartments in eastern Jerusalem while he was visiting Israel, precipitating a 45-minute angry phone call full of demands from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to PM Netanyahu.

Biden has said that he would “rejoin the [nuclear deal with Iran] … as a starting point for follow-on negotiations.” He opposes Trump’s “maximum pressure” approach and even blames it for Iranian progress toward nuclear weapons. He is likely to reopen the American consulate in eastern Jerusalem that was the unofficial “US Embassy in Palestine,” and the PLO office in Washington that were closed by Trump. He will restore financial aid to the Palestinian Authority that was cut off by Trump because the PA would not agree to stop payments to convicted terrorists (“pay to slay”). He will probably restore payments to UNRWA, which supports the descendants of 1948 refugees and is closely aligned with Hamas in Gaza. And he will bring back the tired rhetoric of the impossible “two-state solution” based on 1949 lines. It’s doubtful that he would be as hostile to Israel as Barack Obama, but he would undo much of the progress made by Trump.

This explains the statement by MBS that he would not normalize relations with Israel immediately if Biden becomes president. There is plenty of opposition in Saudi Arabia to such a bold step, which could even express itself violently. MBS is willing to take the risk if it will lead to the development of a powerful, US-supported Sunni-Israel bloc which could challenge Iran for regional leadership. Why should he do so if the US returns to the Obama-era policy of appeasement of Iran? And the same applies to other Arab countries that are waiting in the wings.

The development of a Sunni-Israel bloc in the region would be a breakthrough that would fundamentally alter the balance of power, and reduce the need for the US to physically intervene to keep the peace. It might set the stage for greater regional independence, so that outside players like Russia, the US, and Turkey would be less able to use its nations as pawns in their power struggles. It might lead to the Iranian people finally throwing off the corrupt and oppressive regime of the Mullahs. It might even bring a solution to the Palestinian problem somewhat closer. It would not fix all of the region’s problems, but it would be a good start.

But all of this depends on continuing Trump’s sharp turn towards rationality in Middle East policy. And Joe Biden is not the guy to do it, especially since he has already adopted some of the same advisers and former officials of the Obama Administration that were responsible for its destructive policies, including several architects of the Iran deal. Biden’s mental condition is a matter of dispute, but the specter of the enormous power of the US president in the hands of unelected and unaccountable operatives who have demonstrated their hostility to Israel and their approval of Iranian regional hegemony is truly frightening.

Posted in 'Peace' Process, American politics, Iran, Israel and Palestinian Arabs, Middle East politics | 2 Comments

Which is Worse, Influenza or Affluenza?

Posted on October 25, 2020 by Victor Rosenthal

What do I read during an epidemic? What else but books about epidemics, like John M. Barry’s “The Great Influenza,” about the catastrophic 1918 pandemic that killed an estimated 50 million people worldwide.

The 1918 disease, incorrectly called “Spanish flu,” probably first jumped from pigs to humans in the American Midwest, and then spread all over the world. It was both more contagious and more deadly than today’s Coronavirus; and medicine at that time – especially in the US – was surprisingly primitive. Some American doctors in 1918 still believed in bleeding as an effective treatment for various illnesses. Viruses had been known to cause disease – Polio for example – for some time, but most doctors and researchers believed that influenza was caused by a bacillus. There was no preventative medication and no treatment that had a significant effect on the course of the disease.

Epidemics test societies and their institutions, particularly their governments. They exacerbate divisions between groups, expose incompetence and venality among officials, and exact a price for ignorance or stupidity in the population. This was the case in 1918, where, for example, military authorities in the US transferred troops from camps where the virus was active to ones that were as yet free of it, against the advice of their own medical officers. They shipped thousands overseas in crowded troopships, where the majority of the occupants – who appeared healthy when boarding – fell ill during the voyage. Death rates on some ships exceeded 10% of the sick. Hidden incompetence became suddenly visible.

Everyone is familiar with products that look like functional items but are not. For example, you can buy a shiny wrench and find, the first time you try to loosen a tight bolt with it, that it is not properly sized and made of soft metal. You end up with scraped knuckles and possibly a rounded-off bolt that is even harder to remove. In Hebrew, something like that is called “an as-if product” (mutzar ca-ilu). There are also as-if public officials, as-if generals, and even as-if presidents and prime ministers. These are people who are sufficiently skilled in politics (or perhaps related to someone who is) to obtain a public position, but cannot or will not do the job associated with it.

Like the as-if wrench which might look good in your toolbox and even work if the job is not too difficult, as-if public officials can stay in place harmlessly for years in easy times. But when they are tested, as by a war or epidemic, their worthlessness is made manifest. Such was the American Surgeon General in 1918, Rupert Blue, and many military officers. And such are many of the members of the Knesset and cabinet ministers in today’s Israeli government.

When a society is successful – prosperous, relatively at peace, politically stable – there are negative effects on both the institutions and the general population. The longer the period of success lasts, the more serious is the decay. The effect of success is a general decline in fitness to survive; but until something comes along to test that fitness, the decline isn’t easily noticeable. But there are some early warning signs.

One is the increase in the number of as-if officials in various institutions and government. A bloated government (like the Israeli government with its 36 ministers, half of whom are unnecessary) is a warning: many of those are as-if ministers. Sadly, Israel’s Prime Minister, formerly one of the very best, has recently become an as-if Prime Minister.

Another is a continuous increase in the proportion of resources consumed by the public sector. More is not necessarily better, if the “more” just goes to increase the size of bureaucracies without improving service. It’s true that increasing populations require increased expenditures to provide the protection and services they need; but the increase should be in proportion to the population.

Some institutions are grotesquely out of balance. In the US, for example, the cost of a university education has skyrocketed along with the proportion of administrators (many of whom are as-if workers) to teaching faculty. As the cost has increased, the quality has decreased. The system is producing large numbers of poorly educated, frustrated young people who are unqualified for productive work.

Until an epidemic comes along, who cares if the head of your public health service is an idiot? Until your army has to fight, it doesn’t matter if the generals ignore such things as the condition of vehicles and aircraft, equipment stored for the use of reserve units, and the quality of their training. Until there is an economic crunch, so what if the majority of your public officials spend their workdays doing little more than consuming resources and sexually harassing their subordinates?

The general population is also not spared the deleterious effects of sustained peace and prosperity. Often called “affluenza,” one symptom is an ever-increasing desire for material goods coupled with anomie and anxiety, a difficulty in establishing long-term relationships, and an inability to defer gratification of wants.

Israel, despite her precarious location, has been spared real adversity at least since the Second Lebanon War, although the need to maintain a citizen army and repeated skirmishes with our neighbors does add a certain amount of tension. The US, because of its geographical isolation and professional military, lacks this irritant. On the surface, that’s good; but it is damaging to the psychological health of the citizens.

If affluenza continues for a long enough time, the decay in functionality of a society’s institutions plus the built-up pressure in the population, in which all but the top strata of society are frustrated from their inability to get what they want, in material and psychological terms, leads to civil disturbances and perhaps even a general breakdown in order. This appears to be what is happening today in the US. In particular, young people – who are always the point of the spear in any revolution – have been massively frustrated by the failure of the American educational system to provide the promised economic or psychic benefits.

In Israel, we see similar problems, but to a lesser degree. On the other hand, it has become clear that our political system is fundamentally broken – we have an as-if government – and because of this we could be unable to respond to the next serious crisis.

Whether either Israel or the US will make the real and fundamental changes to their institutions, governmental and otherwise, that are necessary to their survival as strong, democratic nations, is beyond my ability to predict.

Posted in American society, Israeli Politics, Israeli Society, The Future | 1 Comment

Why is There Still a World Zionist Organization?

Posted on October 22, 2020 by Victor Rosenthal

The Zionist Organization and its parliament, the Zionist Congress, were established by Theodor Herzl in 1897 (the “World” was added to their names later). Their function was to develop and implement a program of Jewish settlement in Eretz Yisrael. The Zionist Congress included delegates from a wide range of ideological streams; the bottom line was a Jewish home in our historic homeland (although other locations were considered in the early years), but the nature of that home – even whether it should be a sovereign state – was subject to dispute.

Today’s World Zionist Congress (WZC) appoints the heads of several organizations that control large amounts of property and funds that come from Jewish charities abroad and the Israeli taxpayer. These include the Jewish National Fund (JNF) which manages most of the land in Israel, the Jewish Agency which facilitates Jewish immigration to Israel, the United Israel Appeal which raises funds, and others.

These organizations are closely connected to the government of Israel, but they are independent bodies. This can be confusing. For example, someone applying to make aliyah to Israel must deal with both the Jewish Agency (the sochnut) and the Israeli consulate.

The most important fact about the WZC is that its sub-organizations spend about $1 billion annually. These organizations, whose utility ended on 14 May 1948, have hundreds of employees (many of whom are politically connected individuals), and hundreds of contractors and programs are supported by them. To the extent that they perform useful functions, they could and should be done by the government of Israel. The waste of funds that come from the high taxes paid by Israelis and the generous donations of diaspora Jews is colossal. Many highly-paid functionaries do essentially nothing, and are there because somebody important owed them a favor.

But in addition to being wasteful, these organizations are dangerous, because they represent an easily-opened door to infiltration by those who not only want to benefit from the fruits of the Jewish state, but to attack it in the process.

Recently many diaspora organizations, particularly in the US, which were originally established to benefit the Jewish people as a whole, the State of Israel, or individual Jews, have been pressured to include representatives of anti-Zionist groups like J Street. In 2012, “Open Hillel” was formed in order to try to change the guidelines of college Hillel houses for acceptable programs, in the words of one reporter, to “legitimize and include groups that advance anti-Israel (and sometimes anti-Semitic) agendas in mainstream Jewish campus life.”

In 2014, J Street applied to become a member of the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations, and was turned down after an acrimonious debate. Last week, a guy that previously worked for Bernie Sanders, and previously was the State Department’s liaison to Congress to promote Obama’s Iran deal, became Executive Director of the American Jewish Congress.

The WZC has also become a focus of conflict between right-wing and left-wing factions. Delegates from the Diaspora are chosen by elections, while Israelis are apportioned according to the parties in the Knesset. Although the Left was battering at the gates here as well, a new group of American delegates has recently been added, a slate called “Eretz Hakodesh” that appealed to non-Zionist Haredim. It’s platform did not include the words “State of Israel” or “Zionist.” A campaign in the Orthodox and Haredi communities gave the religious and right-wing bloc a slight edge over the Reform/Conservative/Left bloc among the total of 521 delegates (complete results by country are here, in Hebrew).

It’s possible to take comfort in the fact that the American Hatikvah slate, which included such “Zionists” as Peter Beinart, got only ten seats. It’s absurd that they or anti-Zionist Haredim should be represented at all.

The largest delegation from the US is the one representing the Reform movement, with 39 seats. Together with Reform delegates from other countries, they hold a total of 63 seats. Considering that “Reform Zionism” means misinformed American Jews telling Israelis how to run their country (because the US is doing such a good job at home), they too are not in the “helpful” category.

72 years after the founding of the state, Zionism as an ideology is still relevant. But the World Zionist Organization is not.

Indeed, it’s long past time to end this jobs program for shady politicians that didn’t make it into the Knesset, former mayors that were not re-elected, and so forth. The unnecessary bureaucracy only makes life harder for people who must interact with it, like prospective olim. And just like Israel’s bloated unity government with its 36 ministers – at least 18 of which are unnecessary – it is obscene to shovel cash into a black hole when Israelis and diaspora Jews are struggling in a wretched economic environment.

Posted in Zionism | 1 Comment

Roosevelt and the Jews

Posted on October 18, 2020 by Victor Rosenthal

My grandparents adored Franklin D. Roosevelt. If he had lived to run, they would have voted for a fifth term. They came to America from Russia around 1910, and worked as sewing machine operators in the NY garment district. My grandmother was 17 when she arrived, and could not read or write, but she was the fastest operator in the shop. A tiny picture of my grandfather appeared in the “Forverts” when he was elected secretary of his union local. They judged politicians by two criteria: are they for the workers or the bosses? And are they good for the Jews? Roosevelt, they believed, passed both of those tests with flying colors. He had gotten the country through the Depression, and he had stopped Hitler.

My parents inherited this attitude. Their politics were similar to most other secular first-generation American Jews. They always voted the straight Democratic ticket for the same reasons, although at some point (after I left home!) my father joined the ranks of “the bosses.” And they always spoke warmly about FDR.

But for some time questions have been raised about whether the US could have done more to rescue Jewish refugees from Europe before and during the war, especially by mid-1942 when the truth about the mass murder being perpetrated by the Germans became undeniable. Why didn’t we bomb the gas chambers and crematoria of Auschwitz, or the railroad tracks that fed them? To what extent was Roosevelt, who had almost dictatorial power during the war, responsible for the almost total failure to take any action to save the Jews of Europe, including the brothers and sisters of my grandparents that remained there?

These questions are no longer difficult. The answers can be found in a recent (2019) book by historian Rafael Medoff, The Jews Should Keep Quiet: Franklin Roosevelt, Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, and the Holocaust. And they are damning.

Medoff’s book covers the period from Hitler’s accession to power in 1933 to Roosevelt’s death in 1945. It is meticulously documented with 47 pages of notes, a 10 page bibliography, and a comprehensive index. It is a sober historical analysis based on primary sources, not a polemic. And what it establishes, beyond reasonable doubt, is that Roosevelt was well-informed about the persecution, and then the mass murder, of European Jews; he had the means to rescue a great number of them without paying a political price or impacting the war effort; and he chose not to do so.

Not only did Roosevelt fail to do anything, he deflected appeals to act by dissembling, inventing difficulties that did not exist, failing to keep promises, blaming others, temporizing, handing off decisions to the antisemitic State Department, and manipulating the leadership of American Jewry – particularly Rabbi Stephen S. Wise – to damp down protests and demands for action from the community.

Although there were tens of thousands of unfilled slots in immigration quotas before the war, State Department officials put administrative hurdles in the path of Jewish immigrants. Medoff notes that in 1934, Labor Secretary Frances Perkins proposed a system to guarantee support for refugee immigrants to simplify the process, but when State opposed it, FDR took their side.

Later, Roosevelt claimed that there were no ships to carry refugees from Europe, when Liberty Ships that transported troops and material there were returning empty, and indeed had difficulty finding ballast for their return trips. Portuguese passenger ships traveled regularly from Lisbon to New York, and there were other neutral ships available. Ships were found to transport “tens of thousands of Polish refugees to Iran, Uganda, and Mexico” in 1943 but none could take Jewish refugees. The Allies even took 20,000 Muslims from Egypt to Arabia for the Haj in 1944. American immigration quotas from the relevant countries went unfilled year after year, while Jews were first persecuted, and then murdered en masse. Although it might have been possible to argue that antisemitism and anti-immigrant feeling in the US might have put a political price on rescuing Jews during the 1930s, by 1943 public opinion in the US strongly favored helping them.

The most egregious example of Roosevelt’s resistance to doing anything to save Jews was his saying ‘no’ to numerous requests to bomb Auschwitz in 1944, when the Germans were preparing to deport and murder the 800,000 Jews of Hungary. Although planes were found for a strategically worthless (but politically advantageous) air drop of supplies to the Polish underground, nothing could be done about Auschwitz, despite the fact that the Allies had total air superiority in the region, and were bombing oil installations a few miles from Auschwitz! Indeed, Medoff notes that Elie Wiesel, a member of a slave labor battalion near the camp, witnessed such an attack.

What was Roosevelt’s motivation? Medoff examines his documented attitudes toward Jews and race in general, and finds both the antisemitism that was common in the American upper classes at the time, plus a belief in the superiority of the “Aryan” races (yes, Roosevelt used that word). He believed that the US should be primarily a white, protestant nation and that the numbers of Jews (and Catholics) should be kept low, and that they should be “diluted” geographically so that they would be more quickly assimilated. He said that Asians were inferior and “not capable of assimilation” and that “the mingling of Asiatic blood with European or American blood produces…the most unfortunate results.”

Roosevelt was also anti-Zionist, probably because of Arab oil reserves discovered in the 1930s which were beginning to be developed. And he didn’t want trouble with his British allies, who were adamant that no additional Jew should be allowed to enter Palestine under any circumstances. He made only the mildest objection to the White Paper of 1939, which closed the doors of Palestine to Jews.

Rabbi Stephen S. Wise was the most august personage of American Jewry, the head of several major Jewish and Zionist organizations, and represented the community before the President. He was, in other words, a shtadlan, or – an unflattering term – a “court Jew.” Although a brilliant man, Wise was far inferior to Roosevelt in his understanding of practical psychology, and he was manipulated by Roosevelt time and again. Awed to the point of sycophancy by the man he called “The Chief,” and hungry for the crumbs of friendship Roosevelt threw in his direction, he always put the best possible interpretation on Roosevelt’s ambiguous statements and vague promises. He allowed himself to be used to prevent protests, intemperate newspaper advertisements, expressions of dissatisfaction with the administration, and – most of all – possible defections from the Democratic party, by Jews upset about the refusal of the US to do anything to help the Jews of Europe. Thus the title of the book.

In contrast to his obsequious behavior toward Roosevelt, Wise aggressively fought his rivals like Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver, and upstarts like Hillel Kook (known as Peter Bergson) who didn’t share his admiration for Roosevelt. Medoff notes that sometimes Wise invested so much energy into his intramural struggles, that he neglected his main job of trying to influence the administration. Wise has been severely criticized. But although his personality made him the wrong man for the job, it’s not clear that any Jew could have done significantly better.

Medoff, an academic historian, writes with an even tone. Although the facts he presents leave no doubt about the judgment history should render on Roosevelt, he is more polite than I need to be:

Franklin D. Roosevelt was an antisemite and a racist. His actions, especially his refusal to bomb Auschwitz, make it clear that he preferred for Jews to be murdered, rather than to come to the US. His motivations were not political or strategic; they were primarily antisemitic.

So why did my family and so many other Jews venerate him? The answer is complicated. Roosevelt often publicly expressed sympathy for the European Jews, even while in practice he did nothing to help them. He relied on antisemitic subordinates like Assistant Secretary of State Breckinridge Long and Secretary of War Henry Stimson to take the heat for unpopular decisions, though he made no attempt to influence them. Rabbi Wise was his best publicist, deflecting criticism and hiding his own frustration. Most important, as is the case today, left-leaning Jews consumed left-leaning media, where criticism of Roosevelt was unthinkable.

Posted in American Jews, American politics, Jew Hatred, War | 4 Comments