A Page a Day

Posted on August 20, 2020 by Victor Rosenthal

Since January, I’ve been participating in a daf yomi program. That means that every day, 7 days a week, I study a page (actually, two facing pages), of Talmud.

The fact that someone like me, who grew up in a secular home and did not have a Jewish education, has the opportunity to do this is a new development. The Talmud itself, for those who don’t know, consists of passages from the Mishna, the Oral Law first written down around 200 CE in Hebrew, and the Gemara, a much larger body of commentary on the Mishna that was compiled over a period of several hundred years afterwards. The Gemara is written in Aramaic, a language close to Hebrew, but the writing is condensed and elliptical. It also includes notes by Rashi and others commenting on and explaining the text. Until recently there was simply no way a modern reader could approach this without a great deal of preliminary study with knowledgeable teachers.

But in the last three decades, scholars have produced translations of the Aramaic texts along with detailed commentary to fill in the gaps for ignoramuses like me. In particular, Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz, z”l, who died earlier this month, created a monumental translation of the entire Babylonian Talmud (there is also a Jerusalem Talmud, but the one compiled in Babylonia is considered more authoritative) into modern Hebrew, which in turn has been translated into English. More than just a translation, Rabbi Steinsaltz interpolated explanations and context into the text, so that it’s possible to read it almost like a novel. There are even diagrams, which my wife says remind her of computer games.

The Talmud is not an orderly exposition of Jewish law. Rather it is a record of the deliberations and conversations of generations of sages, in which arguments are given for multiple interpretations of the Mishnaic texts, which themselves are an attempt to elucidate the commandments of the Torah and apply them to everyday life. Sometimes the Gemara will say “the halacha is such-and-such” but most of the time, all you have are the arguments. There are also stories, ridiculous medical advice, superstitions, insults – including some passages that have been used by Jew haters throughout the years as evidence for our evil ways. During the Middle Ages, non-Jewish authorities sometimes ordered printed copies of the Talmud to be censored or even burned.

The seven years it takes read the whole thing are daunting. When I started the daf yomi program, I didn’t believe that I would last more than a few weeks. But I’ve become more and more interested and involved as time goes by. I have even learned a few useful expressions in Aramaic, for example in yesterday’s daf, pok t’nei l’vara! (“go, take that teaching outside”). I’m convinced that if I live long enough (b”h), I will finish the project. I will never be either a scholar or very observant, but this study brings me closer to Judaism and Jewish history.

I think that this would not have happened if I still lived in a non-Orthodox community in the USA. In Israel, Judaism and Jewish history are in the air. I am continuously made aware of who I am, by the language, the holidays, the symbols of the state, the biblical geography, and the fact that I am surrounded by Jews. There are neighborhoods in Brooklyn in which I would also be surrounded by Jews; but even there, the consciousness of living as a small minority in someone else’s country is inescapable (not to mention the reminders provided by the growing number of antisemitic incidents). And I would miss the diversity of Israeli Jews, Jews of every color and culture.

But don’t I know that one of five Israelis is an Arab? Of course. There is room for an Arab minority. Nevertheless, there are also dangers – not directly from the presence of the Arabs, but from those that want to use their presence as a reason to weaken the Jewish state. Meir Kahane believed that the Arab citizens of Israel posed a demographic threat. Their birthrate was higher than that of the Jews, and so he predicted that the Jewish majority would ultimately be eroded. Today the birthrates of Jewish and Arab citizens are not far apart (I think the high Haredi birthrate is a greater threat to a functional state).

The real problem is an ideological one, posed by those (Jews and Arabs) who want to replace the state of the Jewish people with a state of its citizens. 62 members of the Knesset understood this when they passed the Nation-State Law to guarantee the continued Jewish character of the state. Right now there are attempts to weaken the law by inserting language to guarantee “equal rights.” We should be aware that the Basic Law: Human Dignity and Liberty is already interpreted to guarantee equal civil rights to individual Jews and Arabs; and it is not necessary or desirable to weaken the provision of national rights that is made by the Nation-State Law to the Jewish people alone.

I am also not at all diffident about calling for Jews everywhere to make aliyah, despite the difficulties. You can certainly study Talmud in the diaspora, whether by subscribing to the daf yomi or by studying at one of the numerous yeshivot or other institutions of Jewish learning there. But you cannot, even in deepest Brooklyn, breathe Jewishness with every breath, as you can in the Jewish state.

Posted in The Jewish people | 3 Comments

The Downside of the UAE Deal

Posted on August 16, 2020 by Victor Rosenthal

The announcement that Israel and the United Arab Emirates would be negotiating an agreement to normalize relations was greeted with cheers from most friends of the Jewish state, and boos from the Palestinians, Turkey, Iran and its satellites, and the anti-Israel Left. Until an actual agreement is signed, though, it’s impossible to say what its real significance will be.

My immediate reaction was that I am happy to see normalization of relations with the anti-Iranian faction of the Arab world. Anything that facilitates cooperation against Iran is a good thing, although I have no illusions that there is any fundamental change in the Arab consciousness. It is still Islamic doctrine that Jewish sovereignty over what they believe is rightly Muslim land is unacceptable. Islam, however, permits temporary alliances – even with Jews – when they are expedient, and certainly the situation in the Middle East today makes it highly expedient. But Islamic antisemitism, as well as the overlay of Nazi Jew-hatred imported from Europe, won’t go away so easily (just at look at our “peaceful” relations with the Kingdom of Jordan for an example of de jure peace and de facto hatred).

On the other hand, we have to start somewhere, and Israelis really like the idea of visiting those fancy hotels.

But – you were waiting for this – I have one big concern about the process, and that is the suspension of plans for extension of civil law or sovereignty to the Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria, as well as the Jordan Valley.

It was already unlikely that this would have happened, despite the promises made by PM Binyamin Netanyahu. I believe Trump Administration officials wavered in the face of pressure from opponents of sovereignty, and Netanyahu – no Menachem Begin or David Ben-Gurion he – did not dare to go against American wishes. Perhaps it would have been possible if Israel had acted quickly when the idea was first mooted, but our endless series of elections and concomitant governmental paralysis stretched out for long months, during which the Europeans, Arabs, and Israeli opponents of the plan all had time to persuade Trump advisor Jared Kushner to torpedo it.

Although the Americans have said that the plan is only suspended, not canceled, it is difficult to imagine that it will be realized. Once we’ve committed to establishing relations with the Emirates, taking action on sovereignty would be portrayed as a betrayal of our new peace partner. Anyway, if the Democrats win the election (which will be closer than you may think), we can forget about any possible American support for this move, and probably a return to the Obama-era pressure for concessions to the Palestinians.

Many observers suggest that since there was already no chance to implement sovereignty, then Israel gave up nothing by agreeing to the demand to suspend it. But this ignores the very important political significance of the decision.

The official Israeli position is that the territories belong to Israel by international law. But Israeli officials have always been ambivalent about this. The decision to treat the Arab population in accordance with the law of belligerent occupation, as though the land were occupied, seems to sometimes have been understood by elements in Israel’s government, Foreign Ministry, and judicial system as implying that the status of the territories in fact is that they are under occupation.

This is the significance of the almost universal use outside of Israel and by the Israeli Left of the term “annexation,” which implies taking something that doesn’t belong to one. And this is why the Israeli Right calls it “application of civil law” to territory that is already part of our country. The implication of the latter terminology is that the action is entirely an internal Israeli matter. Making an agreement with a foreign state not to extend civil law to the territories implies that their status is a legitimate question for international debate.

And don’t think that the Emiratis don’t see it this way. Listen to Hend al Otaiba, Director of Strategic Communication for the UAE Ministry of Foreign Affairs, when asked “why now?”

Annexation was our immediate concern. We felt it would kill the prospects for a two-state solution, which has been the basis of almost all past peace-making efforts, and set prospects for regional peace back decades.

Most everyone – and that unfortunately includes the US Democratic presidential and vice-presidential candidates – that talks about a “two-state solution” means at least an Israeli withdrawal from most of the area east of the Green Line, including the dismantling of Jewish communities with the exception of those right next to the new “border,” with the Palestinians being compensated with equivalent land elsewhere. The Palestinians and many others go farther, and include a right of “return” to Israel for the descendants of Arab refugees. Implicit in these plans is the idea that everything across the line is “occupied Palestinian land.”

Israeli public diplomacy should push back against this idea. It should stress that the land belongs to us, and while we might under some conditions cede some of it for a Palestinian entity (something less than a state!), there is no a priori Palestinian right to it.

That is why agreeing to suspend the application of civil law indefinitely (which really means forever) is a big deal.

Our relations with the Emirates have been warm for quite some time, although unofficial. They could become warmer yet and still remain unofficial. Anyway, it isn’t clear that we’ll get so much from the official deal. When al Otaiba was asked if the agreement would be likely to lead to a UAE embassy in Jerusalem, she replied, “We’re bound by international resolutions as well as an Arab position that wants an independent Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital.” So much for that.

I believe that Israelis care too much about (I might say “are obsessed with”) gaining international approval, especially by Arab and Muslim nations. So an official treaty of normalization of relations is almost impossible to resist. I expect the negotiations will be interesting, with the Emiratis pushing to weaken Israel’s case for sovereignty over Judea and Samaria and especially Jerusalem, while Israel will make concessions (which it will describe as “only symbolic”) in order to obtain practical benefits. In the context of a possible new US administration that will be pressuring Israel vis-à-vis the Palestinians, these “symbolic” compromises might end up having unpleasant results on the ground.

It remains to be seen whether those concessions will be justified, considering that most of the practical benefits for both sides could be obtained without making them. I’m guessing that the answer is “no.”

Posted in Middle East politics | 2 Comments

After Five years, the Duma Saga Approaches Conclusion

Posted on August 13, 2020 by Victor Rosenthal

On the night of 31 July 2015, someone firebombed two homes in the Palestinian village of Duma, in the northern part of Judea, about 55 km. east of Tel Aviv. One of the buildings was empty, but sleeping in the other were Saed and Riham Dawabshe, and their children Ali (18 months) and Ahmad (5). Ali died in the fire, and the parents succumbed to their injuries a short time later. Ahmad was carried out by his father or grandfather and survived, though he was severely burned.

Almost immediately, government officials, including President Ruben Rivlin, let it be known that the attack was likely “Jewish terrorism” and the culprits would be found among “extremist settlers,” specifically the “hilltop youth,” religious teenagers and young adults who lived independently of their parents in Judea and Samaria, and who wanted to replace the democratic state with one governed by Jewish law. The nation was gripped by a paroxysm of guilt and self-flagellation over the allegation that Jews had done such an awful thing, although there were as yet no suspects. This happened at about the same time a religious fanatic stabbed several people, one fatally, at a gay pride parade in Jerusalem, and left-wing elements connected the events and blamed “settlers,” religious Jews, and PM Netanyahu for the “outbreak of Jewish terrorism.”

The Shabak (Internal Security Service) arrested several suspects in early August. They were held in administrative detention – that is, without being charged – and subjected to “enhanced interrogation techniques,” a euphemism for torture that may or may not fall short of the acts that are prohibited by customary international law.

Even at this point, there were good reasons to wonder if the official account that Jewish extremists had done it fit the evidence. On August 21, then-Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon said he was “confident” that the murderers were Jewish extremists, and that the exceptional measures taken against the suspects were justified. But there was a very good alternative explanation, which was that the firebombs were thrown by Arabs involved in an ongoing feud with the Dawabshe family. There were several other suspicious fires in property owned by the Dawabshes before and after the murderous attack. And the Shabak was unable to provide a sensible explanation (Hebrew link) for why this line of investigation hadn’t been pursued.

By December the Shabak had not succeeded in getting a confession out of the various suspects in its custody, and the best that Ya’alon could do was say that their actions (presumably “price-tag” vandalism of Arab property) “led to [הובילו], among others, the murder of three innocent Palestinians, and as a result, contributed to instability in the region, and worsened the security situation.” But “led to” is not the same as “committed.” Although there was still no proof that Jews were responsible for this atrocity, it became part of the accepted narrative in almost all segments of Israeli society.

In January 2016, one of the initial suspects was released (ultimately, they all would be), and two additional suspects arrested: Amiram ben Uliel (21), and an additional minor. Ben Uliel was charged with murder – the first time anyone had been charged in connection with the crime. He too was subjected to “enhanced interrogation,” and by 2018 he produced a “confession” and “reenactment of the crime.” While the other (minor) suspect also “confessed,” he was alleged only to have participated in the planning of the crime and was not accused of being present at the scene. Ben Uliel was accused of having perpetrated the firebombing by himself. Some confessions were thrown out after attorneys argued successfully that they were obtained by torture, but some of ben Uliel’s statements, plus the reenactment, were allowed to stand.

On 18 May 2020, Amiram ben Uliel was convicted by a three-judge panel (there is no jury trial in Israel) of murder, attempted murder, arson and “conspiracy to commit a crime motivated by racism.” His wife testified that he was at home with her all night, but the judges did not believe her. The prosecution asked for three life sentences, and he was to have been sentenced on 12 July. But in a dramatic development, lawyers for ben Uliel convinced the judges to delay sentencing in the light of new evidence (see also Hebrew link here).

Apparently, the one survivor of that terrible night, Ahmad Dawabshe, now ten years old, was interviewed in Arab media and described the events that occurred five years ago in detail; in particular, he said that there were several attackers and they came into the house and struggled with family members. This contradicts the official version that ben Uliel was alone and threw firebombs through the windows. It also agrees with other testimonies of Arab witnesses who said at the time that there was more than one attacker (of course the Arabs say it was a group of “settlers”).

The court agreed to consider the evidence and pass sentence next month (ben Uliel could be acquitted of murder and convicted of other offenses).

Can a 5-year old be a reliable witness? Maybe yes and maybe no. Certainly the events he witnessed were likely to be engraved in his mind. “If he saw what he said he saw, ben Uliel is innocent” says ben Uliel’s lawyer. But memory is a tricky thing, and who knows if he is capable of reporting events without interpretation.

This has been a long road. The state does not come out looking good, no matter what the outcome. In the best case, the Shabak is guilty of mistreatment of numerous suspects, most of whom were guilty of nothing more serious than vandalism and adolescent fantasizing. It is likely that the agency engaged in a theatrical provocation intended to slander the hilltop youth as vicious murderers taunting their victims. Many public officials – including President Rivlin and right-wingers like Naftali Bennett – jumped to conclusions when they should have kept quiet. The worst case has the Shabak deliberately ignoring evidence that the arson/murders were carried out by Arab enemies of the Dawabshe family, and using the case to crush and discredit the admittedly extremist, and to some extent criminal, underground Jewish movement.

For what it’s worth (nothing, really) my personal opinion is that Amiram ben Uliel is innocent, perhaps guilty only of having grandiose plans for revenge. But of course I am only privy to the details that I can read in the media. In any case, the court will decide next month if he will be freed or spend the rest of his life in prison.

Posted in Duma arson-murder | Comments Off on After Five years, the Duma Saga Approaches Conclusion

The Coming Political Crisis in the USA

Posted on August 9, 2020 by Victor Rosenthal

I think the USA today is facing a crisis matched only by those that took place at the time of the Civil War and the period of the Great Depression and WWII. Those events led to big changes in the nature of the Republic, and I see that happening again. Radical change is coming. But what form will it take?

A couple of weeks ago I wrote a post about the French Revolution. I suppose I was “triggered” by the rhetoric coming from the Left in the US, and especially old friends who seemed to think that if the coming election did not go the way they hoped, they would support (they are in general too old to participate in) a violent change of the government. I made two main points: 1) that revolutions are often bloody beyond belief, and 2) the ones who come out on top are usually not the ones with the most liberal ideas, but those that are the most ruthless and brutal in the use of force.

During the French Revolution, heads rolled like Bocce balls (or the French equivalent thereof). Today the  guillotine is the subject of humorous cartoons, but its heyday wasn’t called “The Terror” for nothing. And the Russian Revolution of 1917 ushered in a vicious civil war (and foreign intervention) resulting in 7-10 million casualties, most of whom were civilians. Neither revolution produced a liberal regime: the French got a dictatorship imposed by Napoleon, benevolent as it may have been, and the Russians got one of the most murderous regimes in recent history.

There are also radical changes of the form of government that are usually not called “revolutions,” but which have revolutionary consequences. I’m thinking of the accession of Hitler to power in 1933, and the collapse of the Soviet Union that culminated in 1991. Neither of these events was bloody in comparison to the revolutions of 1789 and 1917, although of course the consequences of Hitler’s rise were disastrous. Again, few such changes usher in liberal regimes.

A radical change, whether revolutionary or not, usually has precursors like military defeats; economic crises; weak, corrupt, or incompetent governments; inability to effect an orderly change; or all of the above. They are often associated with foreign interventions, overt or covert.

What else can we say about such changes? One is that the successful claimant of power does not need a majority of the population, but it does need an organized, disciplined faction. And what comes out of the process may be very surprising to its supporters. When the Shah of Iran, cancer-ridden and almost unable to function, was overthrown by a broad coalition including liberals, leftists, and of course Islamists, the leader of the Islamists, Ruhollah Khomeini, “presented himself as a moderate able to bring together all the different factions leading the revolution.” That isn’t how it turned out, to say the least.

I believe that today the USA is a candidate for a radical change away from the republic that was created when its constitution became effective in 1789, and which gradually evolved into what it is today.

Consider the conditions that hold today:

  • The present government is weak, incompetent, and corrupt.
  • There is very low confidence in the integrity of the electoral system.
  • There is very low confidence in the media, the police, the health-care system, the educational system, and other institutions.
  • Both presidential candidates are suffering from diminished mental capacity due to age-related deterioration, and are unlikely to be capable of functioning effectively in the future.
  • An uncontrolled epidemic will get worse before it gets better, and the effects on the economy will become far worse. The lower and middle classes will be hurt the most.
  • Political polarization is as bad or worse than it’s ever been, and media compartmentalization (“bubbles”) ensure that it will only become deeper. Irrational conspiracy theories are popular.
  • A large segment of society believes that the nation is irremediably unjust, and the only remedy is to destroy it and rebuild it from the ground up. This includes rejection of the traditional values of free expression, meritocracy, and equality of opportunity, and their replacement by racial identity politics.
  • Foreign elements have been waging psychological warfare against the US for some time, but social media has multiplied its effectiveness many times over. The intent is to intensify internal divisions and to create strife by encouraging extremism on both sides.
  • The US has still not come to terms with the attack perpetrated against it on 9/11, and its military – which is too powerful to be defeated in traditional terms – has been unable to achieve its objectives since then.

The circumstances above will continue to destroy trust in the national project; the well-known words of President Kennedy (“Ask not…”)  are less descriptive of the national mood today than at any time since he spoke them in 1961.

Radical change in the US is more likely to resemble the collapse of the Soviet Union than the French or Russian revolutions. I expect that the instability that will be brought to the boiling point by the election will take the form of localities, possibly even whole states, which declare themselves not subject to the authority of the central government, whose president they find unacceptable. We have already seen a small-scale and very childish attempt at local autonomy by the Left in Seattle, but it’s easy to envision more serious secessions. Some will provoke state or federal intervention, but in most cases authorities will choose negotiation and compromise over intervention in order to prevent bloodshed.

If Mr. Biden nominally wins the election (I view this outcome as somewhat more probable), he is unlikely to be more than a figurehead. Although Biden himself is considered a moderate, power in the new administration will be in the hands of the more radical former Obama Administration officials – the “Obamists” – who have been waiting in the wings since 2016, and who will be advisors to and appointees of the new “president.” His vice president will be particularly important, and the choice will be an early indication of the direction that his administration will take. I expect that it will be someone close to the former president.

An Obamist administration will try to cement its control by continuing the process of tuning the educational system to inculcate “progressive” values from the earliest age; it will encourage immigration and naturalization of Muslims and others that will be likely to become reliable supporters; it will ally itself with the Black Lives Matter movement, and it will adopt “progressive” policies on issues like abortion, transgender rights, diversity, and other issues that will alienate the socially conservative segment of the population. It will lean toward identity politics.

If President Trump is re-elected, he will likely continue to try to hold the reins himself, although he will be strongly influenced by his advisors. There is the possibility of opportunists taking advantage of their closeness to the President to push personal agendas. I expect Trump himself to become less capable of holding onto control as time goes by. I also expect that the Obamists will take off the gloves and foment widespread unrest in an attempt to weaken him. Trump will find himself under fire from day one, and be forced to resort to more and more aggressive policies to keep order, which of course will be used by his enemies to paint him as a dangerous totalitarian. Popular right-wing opposition to a Biden Administration would be strong, but I think the Obamists are  better organized and very well-funded.

Neither administration will be able to bring the sides together, especially since the factors contributing to the present instability are unlikely to disappear. In either case, ideological fragmentation will lead to physical fragmentation of the nation – which will be aggressively encouraged by the foreign bots and social media farms.

The roots of the present situation are firmly planted in the 1960s. Democrats and Republicans are both to blame, but it is the apolitical Corona that is going to push the nation off the cliff.

Posted in American politics, American society, The Future | 3 Comments

Who on Earth is Dana Ron, and the Beirut Explosion

Posted on August 6, 2020 by Victor Rosenthal

The longer I live here, the more I understand how different Israel is from my former home, the USA.

There are elements of Middle East culture, unsurprising since about half of all Jewish Israelis are descended from immigrants from the Jewish communities of the Mideast and North Africa. The more recent immigrants from the former Soviet Union and Ethiopia are beginning to have an influence. Social intercourse between Jews and Arabs is strong in some places and weak in others, but one out of every five Israeli citizens is an Arab (I suspect the Arabs are more influenced by the Jews, but that’s another story). And there are more than a few remnants of the Eastern and Central European origins of the founders of the state.

The founders were primarily socialists (and they worked very hard to keep non-socialists from gaining influence in the new state). They left us with the somewhat contrary traditions of a strong central government that tends to behave coercively – Israel still has media censorship (which is often bypassed by social media), people accused of crimes have far fewer rights than in the US, and there is no jury trial. Another tradition is excessive and self-serving bureaucracy, both in government and private businesses.

Over the years an economy dominated by government-owned enterprises has been replaced by one that is mostly private; this has greatly improved the economic performance of the country (but also has created a small class of super-rich Israelis with excessive economic and political clout).

Americans care very much – or at least they used to care – about freedom of speech. There’s less emphasis on that here. What we have as a gift from our founders, who continued to believe very strongly in the right of the proletariat to strike and demonstrate even after they became the bosses, is an obsession with the right to protest. Sometimes it seems that Israelis believe that democracy means the right to block traffic. Haredim, disabled people, Ethiopians, and others have taken to the streets and junctions in recent months to press their demands. Workers in government-subsidized or regulated industries who have a dispute with the Treasury often express their frustrations by torturing ordinary citizens who have absolutely no influence on the government.

In a way, this is understandable, because despite what seems like an excess of democracy (an election every few months), the behavior of our politicians and their bureaucracy is very little influenced by the wishes of the people. Hence demonstrations.

For at least a month there have been nightly demonstrations in front of the Prime Minister’s residence in Jerusalem; recently they started demonstrating in front of his home in Caesarea as well. Before his indictment on corruption charges, there were daily demonstrations in front of the home of the Attorney General, demanding his indictment. Recently there have been violent clashes between pro- and anti-Netanyahu demonstrators, and between demonstrators and the police.

There are several different groups involved. With the advent of Corona and the limitations that the government has placed on some industries, independent business owners and tradespeople, who are not eligible for unemployment compensation, took a big hit (my son is one of them). There are also artists and performers, also independent, whose venues have been shut down. There is the ridiculously exaggerated wedding and events industry – that’s worth another blog post – which employs many, also shut down by the limitations on the number of people who can gather in one place. There is everything to do with tourism. Their frustrations are real, and they are demanding that the government remove restrictions or compensate them in some way.

But the “independents” were joined by the radically anti-Bibi crowd, who – despite the fact that he is legally allowed to remain in his position until he is convicted of a serious crime – insist that he must step down immediately. And there are some anarchists and hard-left people for whom chaos is their bread and butter, as well as those who are non-political but enjoy the excitement and danger of borderline violence (and the possibility that a woman might take off her shirt). It’s ironic that the complaint of those who want to depose the PM by force of demonstrations is that he is “destroying democracy.”

As usual, the overheated atmosphere is fed by social media. Recently, the PM complained to the police about a Facebook post from an account named “Dana Ron” which called for his removal by a “bullet to the head.” In a country which has the murder of a Prime Minister in its recent memory, this is pouring gasoline on the flames that are already too high. Facebook responded that the profile was “fake” and removed it; the police cybercrimes unit determined that the account belonged to an Israeli woman living abroad. The anti-Netanyahu people claim that the threats were actually posted by Netanyahu’s media advisors. Interestingly, other fake profiles that posted pro-Netanyahu content were found that were connected with this one.

Would Bibi be dumb enough to fake a threat on Facebook? Certainly not. Would he hire someone dumb enough to do that? Very possible. Tune in tomorrow.

***

On Tuesday there was a massive explosion in the port of Beirut, Lebanon. It seems – and there will probably be more information available by the time this article is posted tomorrow – that a warehouse containing some 2750 tons of a nitrate compound exploded. Before the main blast, there were smaller explosions that may have been fireworks or small arms ammunition. There was speculation that the explosive material was some form of rocket fuel, but now it seems that the material was ammonium nitrate that had been left there by a Georgian ship that broke down in 2013 on its way to Mozambique. What set it off is still not clear. More details about this event are here.

Naturally, the usual suspects are blaming Israel. Israeli officials said that we had no connection to it. It would be very surprising if we did, because Israel bends over backwards to avoid hurting civilians (sometimes excessively, in my opinion). Really, the only thing that might tempt Israel to do that kind of damage would be the presence of a nuclear weapon – and even then, I believe the IDF would have found some other way to destroy it.

This comes after several incidents in which Hezbollah has attempted to get even for Israel’s killing one of their operatives in Syria.

Lebanon is in the worst financial condition in its history, and a good part of the reason is Hezbollah. First the Corona, and now this explosion (which, incidentally, wrecked the structure in which 80% of Lebanon’s grain was stored) may push the country completely over the edge. I don’t know what is likely to happen now, but the best option – for Lebanon, for Israel, and for world peace – would be for Hezbollah to be pushed out. It is absolutely criminal that the resources of the country are squandered on being the point of the spear for the Iranian war on Israel. But how do you get out from under the thumb of a terrorist organization that has more military capability than your official army?

If the story about the ammonium nitrate is correct, then the government officials who allowed it to sit for years in a dilapidated warehouse near a highly populated area are guilty of criminal negligence. What brought Lebanon to the state it was in before the explosion was the less dramatic, but equally criminal, failure of those in whom the inhabitants of the country placed their trust.

Now let us come back to Israel, where there hasn’t been a cataclysmic explosion, but where a bloated, selfish, childish, and venal political establishment is failing to carry out its responsibilities to the public. Can we get our house in order before we find ourselves in a place similar to that of our northern neighbor?

Posted in Israeli Politics, Israeli Society | 1 Comment

Who Owns the Land?

Posted on August 2, 2020 by Victor Rosenthal

It never stops: Europeans complain about Israel building things, or rather, about Israelis planning to build things. Such activities, they claim are illegal, because according to them nothing east of the 1949 armistice line belongs to Israel.

But to whom does it really belong? A starting point is the question that the blogger who calls himself Elder of Ziyon asked in a tweet the other day: “what country was legitimately sovereign in Judea and Samaria on the day prior to the start of the 1967 war?”

Jordan illegally occupied the territory in 1948, when it was one of five Arab countries that invaded the area of the former British Mandate in order to try to prevent the Jews from creating a sovereign state there (and indeed, to try to kill and drive out the Jews from the land). In 1950 it (again illegally) annexed the area and named it the “West Bank.”

This aggression clearly violated the UN charter, and in the 19 years that Jordan held it, only two nations (Britain and Pakistan) recognized its purported ownership. Incidentally, the Jordanians committed numerous war crimes during their conquest and occupation, starting with the violent ethnic cleansing of its Jewish inhabitants, and including the deliberate destruction of synagogues and the refusal to allow Jews and Christians to visit their holy sites in Jerusalem – something Jordan had agreed to in the cease-fire agreements.

For several reasons, Israel’s claim in 1967 was stronger than that of Jordan’s. One is that the beneficiary of the Mandate is the Jewish people; it refers to the creation of a “Jewish Home” and not an Arab one. It is also reasonable to understand the “home” as being a state, although probably the British envisioned it as more like a protectorate within their empire. And an Arab state (Jordan) had already been created in part of it.

Another argument is the doctrine of uti possidetis juris, which holds that new sovereign states resulting from decolonization get the same boundaries as the former colonial entities (an article explaining the application to Israel is here). The doctrine is intended to prevent the creation of “no-man’s lands” which could become the source of conflict – as indeed this area has!

I haven’t mentioned the 1947 UN partition resolution for an important reason: it is irrelevant to international law. As a General Assembly resolution, it was only a recommendation; and since the Arabs immediately rejected it, it was never implemented. It did express the will of the majority of UN members at the time that a Jewish (and Arab) state could be created in the area between the Jordan and the Mediterranean, but it had no binding force.

Finally, there is the argument for the rights of the oldest extant indigenous people – the aboriginal inhabitants.

The Ottomans controlled the land for 400 years. Before that there was a succession of foreign rulers all the way back to the last Jewish commonwealth in Judea, the Hasmonean Dynasty which lasted for about 80 years around 100 BCE. Prior to that there were periods of Greek and Babylonian rule after the destruction of the biblical kingdoms of Judea and Israel. Note that the only indigenous regimes in the land of Israel from then until the modern day were Jewish. All the rest were imposed by conquest, including an Arab conquest in the 7th century which brought Islam to the region.

Although some Jews remained in their homeland, many were scattered around the world, particularly after the Romans crushed the Jewish rebellion of Bar Kochba in 135 CE. In the diaspora, these Jews retained their connection to their homeland, which was an essential part of Judaism.

This history was recognized by the international community in 1920 in the San Remo Resolution, which established the Palestine Mandate, in which Britain agreed to hold the land in trust for “a national home for the Jewish people.” The obligation to honor the Mandate as adopted by the League of Nations was transferred to the UN by Article 80 of its charter.

What about the Palestinians? There is not and never has been an Arab country called “Palestine.” Prior to 1967, few Palestinian Arabs even considered themselves part of a “Palestinian people” but as belonging to their particular clan, or for Arab nationalists, part of the “Arab Nation,” and for others, members of the Muslim ummah. However, since then they have claimed that they are a distinct people, and the aboriginal inhabitants of the land; and on the basis of that, they make a claim to sovereignty.

Since this claim is in opposition to that of the Jewish people, it is popular among other Muslims and Europeans, all of whom would prefer that the Jewish Luftmenschen turn into Luft, in the memorable words of André Schwarz-Bart. But the fact is that most of the families that call themselves “Palestinian” have a short history in the land. A very few of them may be descended from Jews and others that lived here in Biblical times, and some may have roots that go back to the Arab conquest. Almost all the rest date from no earlier than 1830, the time of the Muhammad Ali conquest of the region. A very large number came after the Zionist influx and the British presence began to create economic opportunities better than those to be found where they lived in Syria, Egypt, Jordan, and other places. Evidence of this is found in the many Palestinian names that refer to places of origin, like al-Haurani (Syria) and al-Masri (Egypt).

A unique people that has been together for hundreds or thousands of years, like the Jewish people, develops a unique language, religion, and culture. The Palestinians are a new people, who have very little specifically Palestinian – as opposed to Arab – culture, except perhaps for their violent opposition to Jewish sovereignty and hatred of Jews, which has been nurtured by their leaders since Amin al-Husseini in the 1930s.

There is no archaeological or historical evidence of ancient cultures that can be connected to today’s Palestinians. The Jews, on the other hand, can point to a wealth of such evidence, probably more than any other extant culture today. If anyone can claim to be the aboriginal people of the Land of Israel, it is the Jews.

The arguments that settlement activity is illegal usually are drawn from the Geneva Conventions about belligerent occupation, which occurs when in the course of war or aggression, one country takes physical control of part of another one. But since the territory in question does not belong to another country, the presence of Israeli forces or settlers cannot be belligerent occupation. Even if it were, the original intent of the section of the Fourth Geneva Convention that forbids a nation from resettling its population in occupied territory was to prevent mass expulsions and exiles, such as the Nazi deportation of German Jews to occupied Poland, which is nothing like the voluntary migration of Israelis to Judea and Samaria and the Jordan Valley.

But doesn’t Israel herself consider that it’s a belligerent occupation? Not exactly. In 1971, Meir Shamgar, Israel’s Attorney General, ruled that although the territories were not strictly occupied, Israel would follow the Hague and Geneva Conventions for the protection of civilians in occupied territories, so as to smooth the way for the ultimate return to Arab control of some of the territories in return for peace treaties, and to forestall international criticism. In other words, we would behave as if the territories were occupied.

In 2004, in a decision concerning the security barrier, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court Aharon Barak, wrote that “the point of departure for all parties” is that the territories are held in belligerent occupation. But this was merely a working definition and an expression of his opinion; the Court never actually ruled on the question of occupation.

To answer the question posed by Elder of Ziyon, the land belonged to the State of Israel in 1967, and indeed in 1948. It belongs to us today. We are the aboriginal inhabitants of the land, we have never lost our connection to it, we have the imprimatur of international law, and we have (so far) successfully defended it. One of our greatest mistakes in the struggle for world opinion is not stressing this strongly or frequently enough.

Posted in Europe and Israel, Israel and Palestinian Arabs, Israeli or Jewish History | 5 Comments

Incident at Har Dov

Posted on July 30, 2020 by Victor Rosenthal

On Monday there was a “security incident” on our northern border. I am not going to try to explain it, because I have no idea of what actually happened. First reports were that Hezbollah fighters had crossed the border in the Shebaa Farms area at the foot of Har Dov, and fired an antitank missile at a Merkava tank. The missile was said to have missed, and IDF soldiers returned fire, killing four of the enemy. Lebanese sources, on the other hand, said that that several Israelis were killed.

Then it was reported that none of the Hezbollah fighters had been hit, and that no missile was fired. The story was that they had infiltrated into Israel (apparently the border fence is not continuous in the area), were detected, and driven back by IDF fire. Artillery fire and Israeli aircraft, as well as explosions, were seen in the area.

There were credible reports that the IDF deliberately did not aim directly at the Hezbollah fighters, in order to drive them back without killing them.

Hezbollah claimed that they had not crossed the border and had not fired any missile.

The background is that a couple of weeks ago a Hezbollah operative was killed when Israel bombed an ammunition dump some 15 km. south of Damascus. Several Iranian and Syrian personnel were killed as well. Israel sent a message to Hassan Nasrallah saying that the Hezbollah operative’s killing was unintentional. But Nasrallah has promised that every Hezbollah casualty, wherever it occurs, will be avenged. So the IDF has been expecting and preparing for Hezbollah to retaliate.

Monday’s incident was supposed to be that retaliation. But Nasrallah has said no, the debt is still unpaid (though the mother of the man killed in Syria gave out sweets in honor of the operation).

Another similar incident happened on the border last August. Again Hezbollah owed the IDF a debt of violence after its personnel had been killed by an Israeli strike in Syria. Several antitank missiles were fired at an IDF APC, and troops were seen evacuating apparently wounded soldiers from it. But it turned out that the vehicle had been empty. Apparently the idea was to convince Hezbollah that they had succeeded in getting their revenge.

All this makes me uneasy. It seems as though we are trying to prevent escalation by exhibiting weakness, rather than strength. Think about the statement that the death of the Hezbollah fighter in Syria was “unintentional.” That ammunition dump was most likely bombed because it contained equipment being sent from Iran to Lebanon to enable Hezbollah to convert its tens of thousands of rockets to precision-guided munitions, able to strike within a few meters of a selected target. Everyone understands that such weapons are game-changers. The goal of Hezbollah’s buildup, financed and supplied from Iran, is to kill Jews and destroy our state. Does it make sense that we should in effect apologize for killing someone involved in that project?

The same strategy seems to be applied in Gaza. Hamas is allowed to fire barrages of hundreds of rockets at towns and cities in Israel; we try to knock them away (so far, pretty successfully) with our anti-missile systems. Then we punish Hamas by carefully targeting empty Hamas facilities in the Strip. If we killed anyone, then they would need to retaliate, and this way we prevent escalation while at the same time make them pay a price.

There is a problem on several levels here, which should be evident to anyone:

On the level of deterrence, the message we are sending is, “go ahead, try to hurt us, nothing much will happen if you fail.” And the natural result of this is that they are encouraged to keep trying.

On the psychological level, we are telling them – and ourselves – that we are targets. Shooting at Jews is acceptable. We have come to believe this ourselves. If we didn’t, we would respond more strongly.

Finally, on the level of honor, our failure to respond harshly to attempted murder is a sign that we are too weak to defend our own lives and property. In a Mideastern culture in which personal, family, clan, and national honor are almost tangible, someone who can’t defend what he has doesn’t deserve to keep it.

The appropriate response to maximize deterrence, self-respect, and honor is to always respond to attempts to hurt you with greater, even disproportionately greater, force. This is an elementary schoolyard lesson for dealing with bullies that kids of my generation learned quickly.

The youthful Ariel Sharon understood this when he commanded Unit 101. Today, our leaders seem to have forgotten.

The strategy our leaders have chosen is to avoid escalation at all costs, even when it damages deterrence. They continue to kick the can down the road, perhaps in the hopes that war can be avoided until Iran self-destructs and Hezbollah withers away. In any case, they hope that whatever bad things might happen, it will be after their term as PM or Chief of Staff is finished.

Unfortunately, the long term application of this strategy has left us in a situation in which we are deterred by Hezbollah, rather than the opposite. They have the initiative, and can turn the pressure on and off at will. We are demoralized, despite the fact that we are objectively stronger than our enemies. And as a nation without national honor, we are held in contempt by allies and enemies alike.

This is not an easy thing to turn around. Our enemies have been conditioned to expect certain behavior. We need to teach them otherwise, which won’t happen overnight. But we have to try. Miscalculations on either side might lead us into war; but continued weakness will almost certainly do so.

Posted in War | 2 Comments

You Say You Want a Revolution

Posted on July 26, 2020 by Victor Rosenthal

You say you’ll change the constitution
Well, you know
We all want to change your head
You tell me it’s the institution
Well, you know
You better free your mind instead
But if you go carrying pictures of Chairman Mao
You ain’t going to make it with anyone anyhow – The Beatles

About two weeks and 231 years ago, on 14 July 1789, Parisians fearing a military coup that would disrupt progress toward the democratization of the regime being made in the new National Assembly, forced their way into the Bastille in search of gunpowder. Violence rapidly escalated (the commander of the garrison ended up with his head on a pike), and what we know as the French Revolution began that day.

The National Assembly was a more-or-less representative body – the “Third Estate” of the French middle class was no longer denied influence as in the old États Généraux – and the regime, dominated by the noble class, was beginning to worry that the constitution the Assembly had vowed to produce would limit their power.

France was in absolutely terrible shape. There were shortages of food, caused by the combination of the incompetent regime led by the decadent, lazy, and stupid Louis XVI, and various natural disasters (drought and cattle disease), the country was almost bankrupt, and the royal court and other nobles guzzled what was left. Marie Antoinette didn’t actually say that protesters screaming for bread should eat cake, but the attitude expressed in that famous misquotation accurately characterized the attitude of those on top.

There is no doubt that the regime – the whole class system – had to go.

What happened next was the violent dispossession of the rural nobility and those who supported the feudal order, tax collectors, sheriffs, and others. Most of the nobles fled and the Assembly abolished feudalism. This was certainly a painful process, but probably necessary. As the Left is fond of pointing out, those who hold power and property don’t willingly give it up.

In August, the Assembly promulgated the Declaration of the Rights of Man, the quintessential expression of Enlightenment political liberalism. If you haven’t read it, you should. No more beautiful expression of the ideals of a secular (but tolerant) civilization has ever been written. That was the high point. From here on, it was downhill all the way.

In September 1791, the Assembly finished writing a constitution. It called for a constitutional monarchy in which the King retained some power. Although it didn’t live up to the Declaration of the Rights of Man, it was a step in the right direction.  In England, the process of moving from a feudal absolute monarchy to a democratic constitutional one worked itself out gradually over several hundred years. France was already on this path and could have continued on it.

But the inexorable dynamics of revolution asserted themselves. The King did his best to sabotage the idea of a true constitutional monarchy, and conspired against the revolution with foreign powers and expatriate nobles. In June 1791 he tried to flee the country, and was caught and returned. Worried that foreign powers were plotting mischief and wanting to export its revolution, the Assembly declared war on Austria and Prussia in April 1792. In August, when the Prussian commander threatened to burn Paris if the King were harmed, Parisian radicals (the Commune of Paris) decided to act. They stormed the Palace of the Tuileries where Louis was confined, and arrested him (he would be executed in January 1793). In September 1792, the constitutional monarchy was replaced by the more democratic First Republic, and the National Assembly replaced by a new popularly-elected parliament called the National Convention.

In early June 1793, an extreme left-wing faction of the Jacobin Society led by the lawyer Maximillian Robespierre – the extremists came from the middle classes, as usual – seized control of the Convention with the help of the Paris Commune. On 17 September, the Convention passed the “Law of Suspects,” which provided for the speedy arrest and trial of anyone suspected of opposing the revolution. This marked the start of the Reign of Terror.

Marie Antoinette and some 21 Deputies of the Convention who belonged to a (slightly) more moderate faction than Robespierre’s were guillotined in October. One after another, political figures like feminist Olympe De Gouge and astronomer and former Paris mayor Jean Sylvain Bailly also lost their heads. Until Robespierre himself was decapitated in August 1794, more than 16,000 death sentences were carried out against anyone opposed to Robespierre, nobles, clerics, anti-draft protesters, scientists, philosophers and mathematicians, bankers, alleged spies or enemy sympathizers, and many, many others. Approximately 10,000 more died in prison without being tried. From 11 June 1794 to 26 July, 1376 people were sentenced to death, with no acquittals. In Nantes, some 10,000 more prisoners were drowned when they were placed on barges that were deliberately sunk. The husband of Joséphine de Beauharnais, who would later marry Napoleon, was executed.

The extremists did many things in addition to guillotining. They engaged in a campaign of “dechristianization” in which the Cathedral of Notre Dame was re-dedicated as a Temple of Reason. All places of worship in Paris were closed by the Paris Commune; but Robespierre declared a new religion based on belief in a “supreme being.” Meanwhile, war was ongoing at various times against Britain, Austria, Spain, Italy, and Prussia.

In 1795 yet another constitution came into force. France was now ruled by a five-member Directory along with the Convention. Napoleon continued his conquests in Europe and the Mideast. Finally, in 1799, he returned to France, and on 9 November executed a coup d’état making him in effect an absolute dictator.

So much for the Rights of Man.

Of course history never repeats itself exactly. The revolution that brought the Bolsheviks into power in 1917 was different, although in the long run the results were much bloodier. What is common to both of these revolutions is this:

A bad – repressive, incompetent, larcenous – regime behaves in a way that is intolerable. Ideological leaders obtain popular support in the name of justice and human rights. A multisided conflict, even a civil war, develops between parties and factions, marked by extreme hatred and violence. One faction comes out on top: the one that is prepared to act in the most ruthless and brutal way, often led by a psychopath like Robespierre or Stalin. In the former case, the chaos he nurtured ultimately caught up with him. In the latter, he built an empire that was one of the worst actors in modern history if measured by the amount of misery and premature death it fostered. Either way, the goals of justice and human rights of the initial visionaries were not achieved.

Remember the popular uprisings of the Arab spring? In Egypt, a repressive military dictatorship was overthrown, leading to a short-lived Muslim Brotherhood regime, which was replaced by another repressive military dictatorship. The initial pro-democracy activists that triggered it were swallowed up without a sound.

Successful social change is almost always gradual, like the development of democracy in the UK or the progress – yes, there is some, actually quite a lot – in race relations in the US since its inception. The American Revolution is an interesting case, but it was actually more like an anticolonial war than a true revolution.

There are many in both the USA and Israel who think that their existing governments are intolerable. There are persuasive arguments that in both cases the regimes are incompetent to deal with the challenges their nations face (although they do not fall to the level of Louis XVI or Czar Nicholas II). And some believe that the best strategy to fix that is a revolutionary one – destroy the system and rebuild it from scratch. Unfortunately, most of those revolutionaries do not even have a clear idea of what they would like to build, not to mention how to build it once the existing government is destroyed.

Even if they do, how do they know that they will be the ones left standing at the end – and not the Stalins or the Maos?

Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment