Ending the Occupation Without Destroying the Jewish State

Posted on November 18, 2019 by Victor Rosenthal

Daniel Gordis’ latest article, provocatively titled “Occupation Über Alles,” quite correctly explains one of the main issues dividing Israel from progressive American Jews: the Americans’ obsessive preoccupation (so to speak) with “The Occupation.” But although he is skilled at dissecting the problem, he draws back from the inescapable conclusion.

He writes,

First, Israel’s occupation of the West Bank is humiliating for the Palestinians and it is callousing of Israel’s soul. No matter what one’s theological viewpoint — God gave us the land, God did not give us the land, God is not part of this equation — there can be no doubt: the current situation demeans the Palestinians and challenges our morality. Just ask lots of the soldiers who have served there, even those who did not witness anything particularly terrible: you can smell the humiliation everywhere. Not a single one of Zionism’s great thinkers ever envisioned or sought anything like the situation in which we find ourselves. We should end this, and separate from the Palestinians, as soon as we can.

He goes on to argue that Israelis understand that the security consequences of withdrawing from Judea and Samaria – I wish nobody would use the expression “West Bank,” which the Jordanians invented in 1950 after their illegal annexation of the area – would be disastrous, another Gaza next-door to Tel Aviv. Even most left-of-center Israelis realize that the best they can do is to try to mitigate the security, moral, psychological, and economic problems that come from “The Occupation” until at some unspecified time in the far future the situation will change so that there can be a “separation” from the Palestinians. “End The Occupation” was not a slogan of the main opposition in recent Israeli elections, because only an extreme fringe think it’s a practical choice.

Progressive Americans, especially Jewish ones, don’t agree for a complex of political, psychological, and ideological reasons. In particular, they do not deeply feel the force of the security problem, the way Israelis who were putting their children to sleep in bomb shelters a few days ago do. For the folks in J Street, for example, it’s all about the occupation. And this is one of the reasons, Gordis thinks, that the dialogue between American and Israeli Jews is difficult.

But he misses the most important implication of the dilemma posed by the territories. He continues,

Second, we’re asking the wrong question about the occupation. “When will Israel end the occupation,” or more commonly among many American Jewish progressives, “What can we do to pressure Israel to end the occupation?” are the wrong questions. The right question lies emblazoned on the other side of that same coin: “When will the Palestinians declare an end to their desire to destroy Israel, so Israelis might be more willing to consider making territorial and security concessions?”

Well, we can try to answer that question, and probably the answer is “never.” But even if there were a chance that the Palestinians would give up what has become the central piece of their national identity and become more concerned with developing a Palestinian state than with getting their hands on ours, there is no guarantee that they would stay that way. And that illustrates the fundamental flaw in the idea that “separation,” conceived as withdrawal, can be consistent with security.

It’s not a question of whether today’s inhabitants of the territories can stop being enemies. Rather, it is a brute fact of topography. As Maj. Gen. (res.) Uzi Dayan explains in detail here, if Israel were to give up control of the strategic highlands of Judea and Samaria and the western slope of the Jordan Valley, then she would be at the mercy of whoever did control that territory, as well as being open to invasion from the east (similar things can be said about the Golan Heights). Unless it can be established that someday Israel will have no more regional enemies, she cannot withdraw.

And therefore the argument for separation from the Palestinians does not imply that Israel must be “willing to consider making territorial and security concessions.” On the contrary, it implies that since Israel cannot make such concessions, there is only one way to “separate:” the Palestinians, or at least most of them, must leave!

The Left, and even centrists like Daniel Gordis, really ought to think more carefully about their insistence that separation is essential. If they are convinced that “The Occupation” is so bad that it must be ended posthaste, then they either need to give up the idea of a defensible Jewish state (in truth, the extreme Left does hate the state, so it might take that position) or consider the ideas presented (here and here) by Martin Sherman about incentivized emigration of the Arab population of Gaza, Judea, and Samaria.

Questions immediately arise about where they would go, where the money will come from, etc. Martin Sherman deals with these questions at length in his numerous articles about incentivized emigration, two of which are linked above. He calls it “The Humanitarian Paradigm” (a two-part article is here and here)  to emphasize that he is not advocating forced ethnic cleansing, but rather providing the resources to permit Palestinians to leave the dysfunctional societies of Gaza and the Palestinian Authority, and to live independently, off the international dole. This would not only be a great benefit to the Palestinians themselves and to Israel, but would take an exponentially increasing financial burden off donor nations, allowing them to help the large and growing number of real refugees in the world.

Alternatively one might think that “The Occupation” could be turned into a benign coexistence of two peoples, such as has been achieved with the 20% of the citizens of the State of Israel that are Arabs. But that relationship is also somewhat fraught, and it is hard to tell if it is moving in the direction of better relations or a severe fracture. Time will tell, but the Arabs of Judea and Samaria – who have lived for more than a generation under the vicious “educational” system of Yasser Arafat which teaches children that murdering Jews is an honorable and praiseworthy act – are far less likely to want to coexist. When multi-ethnic states have been tried in the Middle East, they have not worked out well, and often have been mired in vicious conflicts. The sectarian wars in Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq are examples.

The traditional “solutions” to the conflict with the Palestinians have almost always assumed that Jews would move to make way for Palestinian autonomy or sovereignty. But this ignores the geographic realities of the region. Instead of searching for ways to force Israel to tie the noose to hang herself with, or even, as Gordis seems to suggest, to wait for midnight when the Palestinians will turn into harmless pumpkins, an effort should be made now to begin developing a humane and effective program of financial incentives to encourage Palestinians to leave Judea, Samaria, and Gaza.

Gordis would do much toward improving Israel’s relationship with American Jews if he could convince them that a two-state solution isn’t in the cards in the near future. He would be doing even more if he could get them to understand that it will never be.

Posted in 'Peace' Process, American Jews, Israel and Palestinian Arabs | 2 Comments

Palestinism and the Hurt/Help Principle

Posted on November 14, 2019 by Victor Rosenthal

After Israel killed a military commander of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) organization in Gaza, PIJ responded with (as of 18:00 Wednesday afternoon), 400 rockets aimed at Israeli civilians. This skirmish in the hundred year war against Jewish sovereignty in Eretz Yisrael will certainly not be the last. If you are wondering why they do this, knowing that the IDF will strike back painfully, destroying infrastructure and killing their people, and knowing that there is zero chance that it will cause the Jews to abandon their homeland, there is an answer. It is an answer that explains much in the history of the conflict, as well as many otherwise inexplicable events.

The answer is to be found in one of the first principles of Palestinism and its corollaries.

But first, what is Palestinism? It is the belief that the Palestinian Arabs were unfairly victimized, dispossessed, colonized, raped, punished, expelled, murdered, degraded, castrated, etc. by the Zionist Jews who created the State of Israel, which continues to do all these things to them. Palestinism holds that this is the single greatest injustice in the world today, and only the replacement of the world’s only Jewish state by an Arab state can rectify it.

I can’t prove it, but I’m sure that although most Palestinists would demand that Israel be replaced by a Palestinian state, if Israel were to disappear, the Palestinian Cause itself would fade away. That is, it is not actually about obtaining justice for this particular group of Arabs as much as it is about getting rid of the Jewish state.

Since it is impossible to establish the truth of Palestinism by historical analysis (because it is not true), it must be accepted on faith. It is therefore more like a religion than a hypothesis.

So what is the principle of Palestinism that causes them to fight pointless battles? I like to state it this way: for Palestinists, it is always preferable to hurt Jews than to help Arabs. Ironically, Jews are more important to them than Palestinians, in a negative way of course.

There is no end to examples.  For example, economic resources in the hands of Hamas – even aid specifically intended to improve the conditions of life in Gaza – are always redirected toward offensive weapons to use against Israel. Instead of providing clean water, electricity, or waste treatment facilities, Hamas prefers to dig attack tunnels, manufacture rockets, and raise armies. Back in 2007, six people were killed when the bank of a lagoon full of human waste collapsed. But on the same day, Qassam rockets were fired at Israel.

Historically, the hurt/help principle explains why Palestinian Arab leaders did not accept any of the several offers of statehood they received, starting with the Peel Commission in 1937. It explains why the Arab states (more Palestinist than the Palestinians themselves) forced the 1948 refugees into camps and refused to allow any solution other than reentry into Israel, even for the great grandchildren of the original refugees. It explains why the PLO and the UN refused to allow refugees in Gaza to move into new neighborhoods built for them by Israel after 1967. It explains the persistence of UNRWA and the whole massive edifice of Palestinist institutions created by the UN. Of course, the ultimate expression of the principle is suicide terrorism, where the terrorist sacrifices him or herself in order to murder Jews.

One corollary is that any action or policy that hurts Jews is good, even if it will also hurt Arabs. So Palestinians cheered when Saddam’s scuds or Hezbollah’s rockets hit Israel, even though they could not be aimed precisely enough to kill only Jews.

Another corollary is that the more unhappy, angry, and unfree Palestinians are, the better it is, at least as long as the anger can be directed at the Jews and Israel.

As you have probably noticed, you don’t have to be a Palestinian or even an Arab to be a Palestinist. In fact, it’s better not to be, since then you don’t have to suffer the consequences yourself. You can call for a two-state or even one-state solution from your home in Berkeley or North Tel Aviv while enjoying the benefits of living in a free society, when – if you got your way – Palestinians would live under a corrupt, oppressive, dictatorship run by the PLO, Hamas, or some even worse regime. Ask the Arab citizens of Israel whether they prefer living as a minority in the Zionist entity that they constantly criticize for being “racist” or to join their relatives in the PA areas or Gaza Strip; the great majority are satisfied with their lives in Israel.

Nevertheless, Palestinism is the religion of the UN, the EU, the human rights establishment, most academics in the humanities and social sciences, Jeremy Corbyn and Bernie Sanders, and many of those who call themselves “progressives.”

Failure to understand the hurt/help principle has led to well-meaning attempts to end the conflict ending in massive debacles. The most egregious example is the Oslo accords, where there was an expectation that legitimization and massive amounts of aid would improve the economic condition of the Palestinians, and that they would then concentrate on building their own state instead of attacking ours. Of course, the opposite happened. To this day, there are proposals to end the simmering war with Gaza by improving the economy there, all of which ignore the fact that their economy is a disaster because they insist on keeping the war simmering (and sometimes, like today, boiling).

But it is a mistake that we keep making, over and over. Shimon Peres imagined a New Middle East, where economic cooperation overrode political conflict; but without ending Palestinism, economic improvements – if they are possible – simply translate into weapons for more conflict.

If the conflict will ever end – and it’s hard to be optimistic – Palestinism, with its phony history and promise of sweet revenge for the eternally aggrieved, will have to be discredited, and the mechanisms created to perpetuate it will have to be dismantled.

There is one bright spot: for the first time in decades, an American administration has taken steps to defund UNRWA, the UN machinery that nurtures Palestinism while stimulating the growth of the “refugee” population (its soldiers) geometrically. This structure, created by antisemitic European hypocrites and Israel’s Arab enemies, is astronomically expensive and only the participation of the US, the world’s largest economy, has made it possible.

It could be that Donald Trump’s greatest contribution to the survival of the State of Israel could be in killing UNRWA, something far more important in the long run than the location of the US Embassy.

Posted in Israel and Palestinian Arabs, Middle East politics, US-Israel Relations, War | Comments Off on Palestinism and the Hurt/Help Principle

“Strangers,” in Israel and America

Posted on November 10, 2019 by Victor Rosenthal

We had a guest from America in our shul this week who discussed the week’s portion, lech lecha. She focused on the question of the treatment of the ger, the person who is a non-Jew in Eretz Yisrael and (variously) a stranger, immigrant, foreign resident, convert, etc. Our speaker interpreted the word ger to mean “immigrant,” and noted that both Sarai (later, Hashem would change her name to Sarah) and Hagar were powerless immigrants. Sarai was exploited sexually by Pharaoh when she was in Egypt during a famine (well, at least he tried to exploit her), while Hagar and her son were expelled from the family in Canaan by a jealous Sarai.

The speaker correctly noted that in multiple places the Torah calls for Jews to treat gerim well. For example, Leviticus 19.33-34 says

33 And if a [ger] sojourn with thee in your land, ye shall not do him wrong.

34 The [ger] that sojourneth with you shall be unto you as the home-born among you, and thou shalt love him as thyself; for ye were [gerim] in the land of Egypt: I am the LORD your God.

She stopped short of explicitly drawing political conclusions, but it is clear that she was thinking of the controversy surrounding the treatment of undocumented immigrants in the contemporary USA, and perhaps also of non-Jews in today’s Israel. Indeed, liberal American Jews have often chosen to chastise Israel for her treatment of non-Jewish residents.

But the political consequences depend a great deal on how you understand the meaning of “ger.” And naturally it isn’t simple.

Linguistically, a ger is simply someone who lives or sojourns (that is, lives temporarily) in a place different from his homeland. Rabbinic authorities have historically discussed the ger toshav, a non-Jewish resident of Eretz Yisrael who obeys the Noachide Laws, and the ger tzedek, the convert to Judaism.

I am far from an expert in the Hebrew language or biblical exegesis, but there are some conclusions that can be drawn by simple logic.

For one thing, the ger that we are commanded to love as ourselves cannot be any non-Jew that happens to live in or travel through Eretz Yisrael. For example, King Shaul lost his kingdom because he took pity on King Agag of the Amalekites (and Agag’s animals and property). Whether you find the command to wipe out an entire people, men, women, children, and animals as repugnant or not, it’s clear that your local neighborhood Amalekites are not included among the gerim that you are commanded to treat well!

The rabbinical idea of ger toshav provides a way to resolve this. The Noachide Laws, which forbid idolatry, murder, theft, etc., constitute a simple bottom line for the degree of civilization required from a foreign people in order for them to live alongside the Jewish people in Eretz Yisrael – and to be treated as in Lev. 19.33-34.

From a secular Zionist point of view, a ger toshav might be a non-Jew who lives in the Jewish state, obeys its laws and doesn’t attempt to subvert it. The majority of Arab citizens of Israel fall into this category (although the members of the Knesset that represent them often do not). Clearly the Palestinian Authority, which pays terrorists to murder Jews, violates both the Noachide Laws and the temporal laws of the State of Israel. We are not required by the Torah to love the members of Fatah and Hamas.

Note that the Torah cannot mean that there is no difference between the ger toshav and the Jewish resident, because of the covenant that connects the Jewish people to Eretz Yisrael, and because there are obligations that the Jew has that the ger does not. I interpret the commandment as saying that Jews must treat gerim fairly in legal and business matters, and also that one must make an effort to understand them and put oneself in their place (because we were ourselves gerim…).

Again from a secular Zionist point of view, there is a difference between the Jew in Eretz Yisrael and the ger toshav, no matter how loyal the ger may be. This is expressed in the Nation-State Law, which explicates the concept of “Jewish” in “Jewish and Democratic State.” The Jewish people are the only ones that have national rights, including a right of return, to the state. On the other hand, non-Jewish citizens must have all the civil and political rights of Jewish ones.

Non-citizens, especially those who have entered the country illegally, like the almost 40,000 African migrants that crossed the Egyptian border into Israel in the early 2000s, or the several tens of thousands of tourists and foreign workers from all over who have overstayed their visas, are different. Beyond basic human rights guaranteed by international law, including the right to petition for asylum under certain conditions, they have no legal rights in Israel.

I think, however, that we must agree that we are obligated by Torah principles, to treat them well as long as they are here. Insofar as they obey the Noachide Laws (in secular terms, avoid criminal behavior), they can be considered gerim toshavim. This especially applies to foreign workers who were invited to live here for a limited period that they overstayed, and have had children who have grown up in Israel and may not be familiar with their parents’ home culture.

There is, however, a further consideration. It is vital for a Jewish state to maintain a healthy Jewish majority. Because she has an excellent economy and generous social benefits, Israel is very attractive to people living in countless dysfunctional countries throughout the world. Israel is a small country with a relatively small population, and cannot absorb a large number of non-Jewish immigrants without endangering that majority. She is compelled to prevent illegal immigration and to deport those who are not entitled to stay in order to protect herself as a Jewish state. The tension between protecting the majority and at the same time providing for the welfare of the individuals involved is real.

Turning to the US, the situation is different. The US is a state of its citizens, in which no ethnicity is different from any other in any respect, not only in terms of political and civil rights, but also in national rights. There is no need to maintain a national majority of any ethnicity in the US. It also has massive absorptive capacity, and the economic and demographic resiliency to deal with social problems far beyond that of Israel.

But the US still has the right to defined borders and to make and enforce laws about who may come in to the country. These are basic rights of a sovereign state, whether it is an ethnic nation-state like Israel or a state of its citizens like the US. The US has borders that are long and difficult to secure, and half the world would like to live there. There are tens of millions of undocumented residents there already, enough to effect the employment opportunities of legal residents. The problems are real, but they are not the same as Israel’s problems.

People tend to try to understand unfamiliar situations by making analogies to more familiar ones. One of the most egregious examples of bad analogies is the equation of the Palestinian Arabs to African-Americans, an analogy that is popular in progressive circles in America, and has even been made by such public personalities as Condoleezza Rice and Barack Obama. But even the most cursory examination of the history of both groups, their geographical situation, the religion and ideologies that characterize them, and countless other features, shows that there is almost no similarity between them – except perhaps that the Left wants to portray them both as “people of color oppressed by white Europeans.”

The question of immigration, too, is something that is very different in an American or Israeli context. Maybe the best approach is for Americans to work on fixing things there, while allowing Israelis to concentrate on solving their unique problems here.

Posted in American society, Israel and Palestinian Arabs, Israeli Arabs, Israeli Society, The Jewish people, Zionism | 2 Comments

Israel’s Excessive “Democracy”

Posted on November 7, 2019 by Victor Rosenthal

Israel is a democracy. We keep hearing this. It is “the only democracy in the Middle East,” as many of us are fond of saying. Lately, it is beginning to seem as though we would be better off with a little less “democracy.”

One election wasn’t democratic enough, so we had another. Now we are headed for the disaster of a third one. But we are very democratic, so apparently we will keep having elections until the “democrats” (small ‘d’) who want to have a government without Benjamin Netanyahu finally get their way.

I am absolutely certain that if it weren’t for the endless investigations against the PM and the associated leaks to the media, we would have a normal government, with Bibi at its head. A government that would not be perfect, but what coalition is?

But we are democratic. Everyone gets to have their say. The police, who – it has just been disclosed – threatened to ruin the life of one of the key witnesses against Netanyahu if he didn’t agree to turn state’s witness and say what they told him to. The Attorney General, who when asked to investigate the continuous leaks to the media over a period of years concerning the allegations against Netanyahu, as well as the content of confidential police interviews, responded that there was no place (ain makom) to investigate the leakage and punish the leakers. And of course, 90% of the media, which express their opinion that Netanyahu is the illegitimate son of the devil every day – they too, have their democratic rights.

There is plenty to criticize about Netanyahu, especially the fact that he crushes anyone who might be competition for him in his party. His wife is volatile and possibly (although this could just be more slander) has too much influence over his political decisions. His son should keep his mouth shut, both in the presence of disloyal drivers and on Twitter. His security policy, in which Hamas is allowed unlimited liberty to destroy property in the south of the country, has been criticized by many. And Bibi’s been PM long enough.

But what has been done to him by his enemies (mostly his unelected ones) is outrageous. The police and prosecution went on fishing expedition after fishing expedition, and the media gleefully reported every one. “This time he’s going down,” they implied. But he didn’t – and he may not yet, if it turns out that the investigations are poisoned by police and prosecutorial misconduct.

Polls consistently show that more Israelis believe that Bibi should be Prime Minister than his main opponent, Benny Gantz (the most recent one, right before the election, came out 46% vs. 31% for Bibi), and even 25% of Arab citizens prefer him. His right-wing bloc has one more seat in the Knesset than the opposition, and if you don’t count the declaredly anti-Zionist Arab parties, 14 more. But this is a democracy, and most of the TV stations and newspapers don’t like him, nor does the Bar Association (which provides the PM with a list of acceptable candidates for Attorney General, and has a controlling influence on the selection of Supreme Court justices), nor does a majority of academics, artists, and media personalities. They all seem to have votes in addition to the ones they put in the ballot box.

They don’t like him, and this is a democracy, so we need to democratically pick someone else. And we’ll keep democratically trying until they we succeed.

Posted in Israeli Politics | 1 Comment

The Briar Patch, or Phasing Out Military Aid

Posted on November 4, 2019 by Victor Rosenthal

See, you trust in the staff of this broken reed, on Egypt; where on if a man lean, it will go into his hand, and pierce it: so is Pharaoh king of Egypt to all that trust in him. – Isaiah 36:6

I see that several of the Democratic candidates for the US presidency have announced that if elected they would leverage military aid to Israel in order to force us to “fundamentally change” our relationship to the Gaza strip (Sanders), or stop our “problematic behavior” (Warren), or to avoid annexing any part of Judea/Samaria (Buttigieg). So let me respond:

Please, please, don’t throw us into that briar patch!

Like the briar patch for Br’er Rabbit, nothing would be better for us than a phase-out of US military aid. And if we made it easy for the new president, perhaps we could negotiate terms for the phase out that would be advantageous: in particular, a restoration of permission to spend some of it here instead of all of it in the US (a condition imposed by our “friend,” President Obama, who well understood that providing military aid was not doing us a favor).

Reactions to the signing of a 10-year $38 billion memorandum of understanding (MOU) for American military aid to Israel in 2016 were quick and predictable. The man Netanyahu called Israel’s “worst Prime Minister ever”, Ehud Barak, claimed that Netanyahu could have obtained another $7 billion a year if only he hadn’t opposed Obama’s Iran deal so strongly. Similar remarks came from the parliamentary opposition. Others thanked America for its commitment to Israel at a time that its own military budgets were being slashed. And still others cursed it for helping Israel with its alleged “genocide of the Palestinians” (who have tripled in number since 1970).

The truth is that Israel does not need and should phase out military aid from the US. It is bad for Israel and bad for the US.*

Israel doesn’t need it. The $3.8 billion per year that comes from the US is about a fifth of Israel’s 2018-2019 defense budget of $18.5 billion. This is a lot of money, but consider that the government’s overall budget is about $116 billion, and Israel’s gross domestic product today is close to $400 billion, almost double what it was 10 years ago.

In addition, the new agreement began the phasing out of Israel’s ability to spend any of the aid outside of the US. In the past, up to about a quarter of the aid could be spent in Israel. Does anyone doubt that many items can be procured here or elsewhere, at lower cost? The F-35 alone costs about $200 million per aircraft. Are there alternatives? We might be able to find out if we went shopping with our own money (possibly more F-15I’s would be a better choice).

Finally, increased investment in our military industries would improve our ability to sell our products to other countries, helping to offset the loss of US aid.

Aid gives the US administration too much leverage over Israeli policies and actions. US Democratic presidential candidates have demonstrated remarkable ignorance about the situation in our region, and a tendency to accept our enemies’ point of view, as demonstrated by their remarks at the recent J Street convention. Donald Trump has been supportive of Israel, but he will not be president forever, and a Democrat or even a different Republican could be quite the opposite.

Israel needs freedom of action to respond to threats. The aid comes with strings attached, such as rules that American weapons can’t be used in ways that violate human rights. During the Gaza War in 2014, Obama cut off the supply of Hellfire missiles and other items in response to (false) complaints that Israel had deliberately shelled a UN school. Israel is continually the target of similar accusations.

Aid distorts our military purchase decisions. If you can get your army boots – or fighter aircraft – “for free” then maybe you settle for something that doesn’t meet your needs quite as well as a product you have to pay for.  The decisions about what we can spend our aid dollars on are based in part on US policy objectives and, since the aid is in effect a direct subsidy to the US defense industry, on domestic American considerations – not on what’s best for Israel.

For example, it has been suggested that manned fighter aircraft will be much less important in future warfare than drones and surface-to-surface missiles; but we get “free” fighter planes from America and build our own drones and missiles, so we have lots and lots of manned fighter planes – maybe more than we need.

The F-35, with its high cost and all its troubles, stands out as problematic. Would Israel even have considered replacing its F-16 fleet with F-35’s if the first batch weren’t “free”?

Aid corrupts our military decision-makers. The word ‘corrupts’ is a strong word, but may not be out of place. If you are in charge of the IDF and a quarter of your budget comes from America, wouldn’t you take the US administration’s wishes into account when considering whether or not to take some particular action? Israel came close to bombing Iran in 2012. One of the reasons it did not do so was opposition from security officials, including Chiefs of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi and Benny Gantz (who are now Netanyahu’s political opponents). It is reasonable to assume that their Pentagon counterparts let them know that disobedience could have unpleasant consequences.

Aid cripples the development of our own military industries. This may be the most important consideration of all. Although the new MOU represented an increase from the previous $3.1 billion a year, it phased out over five years the ability to spend up to about a quarter of it for locally-produced goods. If we don’t produce our own weapons, our dependence on the US becomes even greater, and we lose the jobs and technical know-how that come from it. Buying our own would pump additional money into our economy, which helps offset the loss of American aid. Even the IDF’s boots, formerly made in Israel, are now ordered from the US.

Aid doesn’t necessarily guarantee a qualitative edge. One of the rationales for US military aid was that the US promised to maintain our “qualitative military edge” (QME) over our enemies, as a way of counteracting their numerical superiority. But the US has more and more been selling its best weapons to anyone who can pay for them. The way to maintain the QME, then, is for Israel to use her technological abilities to develop weapons and countermeasures for her own use that will not be available to her enemies.

Aid damages Israel’s standing as a sovereign state. A nation that is dependent on another for its defense is a satellite, not an ally. In order to maintain her national self-respect, Israel should pay for her own defense. In addition, Israel’s accepting aid provides ammunition for anti-Israel and anti-Jewish propaganda in America. Ask Ilhan Omar.

Phasing out aid is better for America. The US is burdened by a large and growing debt. The end of military aid to Israel can only help America meet her own civilian and military needs.

***

Naturally, there will be objections.

Israel can’t afford expensive systems like the F-35 without aid. First, it’s not true, and second, maybe we don’t need such expensive systems, or so many of them.

But the US makes the world’s best weapons. Perhaps. If so, we should buy them with our own money. I’m not suggesting we break relations with the US. And who is to say that our home-made products won’t fit our unique needs better?

But it takes time to build up our industries. True, which is why I want to phase out the aid over a period of years rather than cutting it off sharply.

But what about the close cooperation between Israeli and the US defense industries? I’m not suggesting that such cooperation couldn’t continue, but in a framework of mutually beneficial business deals when indicated, as partners rather than clients.

But AIPAC works so hard making it possible. Yes, and Israel should be grateful to AIPAC and to its friends in the US Congress that for decades have made it possible for Israel to survive in its dangerous neighborhood against great odds. But the situation has changed. What used to be a necessity became a luxury, and then changed into a dangerous overindulgence. It’s not like there aren’t other critical issues that AIPAC could focus on.

***

In recent years much has changed in the world and in the Middle East. Israel, which was a third-rate power that managed to win her wars against great odds, became a first-rate power that nevertheless seems to be stymied and incapable of decisively prevailing over much weaker opponents. Although there are several reasons for this, one of the main ones is the increasing influence and control over Israeli decision-making by the US.

I’m sorry to say that I believe the US is in serious economic, social, political and even security trouble today – truly a broken reed. I hope it will repair itself. But like Isaiah’s Egypt, it is not a staff to lean upon.

__________________
* This post is based on one I wrote in September 2016. Despite the respite from US pressure provided by the friendly President Trump, the problem of overdependence on the US hasn’t gone away, and will probably get worse after Trump leaves office.

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

Hey America: Israel is Losing It Too!

Posted on October 31, 2019 by Victor Rosenthal

I know that I sound like a broken record. OK, none of you are old enough to know what that sounds like. How about a scratched CD, one that plays the same phrase over and over and over: Bibi, Gantz, Lieberman, Lapid: get your acts together. It is a matter of life and death.

I have sometimes sounded smug when I criticize the USA, my former home, for descending into madness. On the one hand you have the spitting and cursing leftist “resistance” to Trump, who find an angle to criticize everything that he does, accuse him of every imaginable crime, boo him at baseball games, and would certainly murder him if they could. On the other side are his partisans, to whom every action he takes, no matter how ill-considered, is portrayed as a stroke of genius. Normal mortals may not be able to see it, but there is a Plan.

That’s just the politics. Culturally, people are obsessed with race and gender in ways that defy reason, there is a strong current to throw away the idea of free speech, and – yes – they are beating up and shooting Jews there, too.

Israel, I used to suggest, is different. We aren’t crazy. We are a small country that makes the best of its opportunities, with competent leaders. We can’t afford an army like the US has, but ours is still the best in the region, because Jews are smart and know how to innovate. Aren’t we the “startup nation?” Haven’t we found a way to be both a Jewish state, a refuge for persecuted Jews the world over, while still maintaining halfway decent relations with the 20% of our population that are Arabs? Aren’t we, despite all the challenges, a democratic state?

Well, boker tov [good morning] Eliyahu as they like to say here to someone who finally understands the obvious. We are just as crazy as America. Our political and social fabric is tearing here just as badly as it is over there, and we seem to be just as clueless about how to mend it.

The behavior of Bibi, Gantz, Lieberman, and Lapid, whose almost unbelievable selfishness, egotism, and stubbornness has prevented the establishment of a government after two elections, and which threatens to produce a third (and probably equally inconclusive) one is deplorable – and intolerable. Israel is on the verge of war with Iran and its proxies, a multi-front, complicated war with an intelligent and creative enemy, one which will certainly exact a high price in blood from us. We are, it seems, unprepared, and it will take a supreme effort and expense to get prepared in time. And yet, the squabbling continues! How can they not understand this?

To the Left, it is all about Bibi’s alleged criminal activities and the Right’s “attack on democracy,” which means an attack on those unelected elements that lean Left and have so much influence, including foreign-funded lobbyists. But Bibi has been subjected to a campaign of fishing expeditions and illegal leaks to the media about them almost since he took office; something that played a large role in bringing about the current stalemate.

Today, Minister of Justice Amir Ohana referred to the “symbiosis” between the police investigators, the prosecution, and the media in connection with the leaks, which have never been investigated. Ohana is a Netanyahu appointee, but he’s quite right. Whether or not Bibi turns out to be a witch, he has been and continues to be the subject of a witch hunt (an interesting analysis of the charges against him is here).

On the other hand, Bibi has used more force to crush opposition to him in his party than he has to stop Hamas from setting wildfires in the area adjacent to our border. I can’t count all the ministerial portfolios that he is holding at once. Once perhaps the most competent Prime Minister in Israel’s history, his obsession with his legal problems and his inability to delegate responsibility seems to have neutralized him.

Yesterday’s big news was that a couple of Netanyahu’s aides allegedly paid a Bratslaver sound truck, one of those that drives around playing joyous music, stopping from time to time to allow the occupants to come out and dance in the street, to park in front of the house of Shlomo Filber, a State’s Witnesses in one of Bibi’s criminal cases. Instead of joyous music, they broadcast accusations that Filber was a liar. The police, investigating the incident, are alleged to have improperly taken the telephones of the perpetrators, and downloaded their content. The USA has nothing on us for craziness.

Social problems are multiplying. Young people still can’t afford apartments. The Haredi Rabbinut continues to embitter the lives of thousands of Israelis. The healthcare system is falling apart from a shortage of doctors, nurses, and money. Arab citizens of Israel elect politicians to the Knesset who oppose the existence of a Jewish state. Nothing is done to remove the infiltrators from South Tel Aviv. Nothing is done to prepare for the inevitable powerful earthquake. As happens in third world countries, money flows into the pockets of the elite, while public needs receive less and less attention.

I’d call for a military coup if the worthless opposition party weren’t already heavily laden with former Chiefs of Staff. Or a revolution, if I didn’t know that historically revolutions tend to end up with the most extreme, brutal factions in charge.

Really, all we need is a competent government, made up of people who put the needs of the state and its people first. Is that too much to ask?

Posted in Israeli Politics, Israeli Society | Comments Off on Hey America: Israel is Losing It Too!

Kahane was Both Right and Wrong

Posted on October 27, 2019 by Victor Rosenthal

Last week I wrote a post entitled “Kahane was Right.” Apparently, the name “Kahane” has great power. One publication republished my article, and then tried to post it on its Facebook page, only to have it blocked, presumably because saying anything positive about Rabbi Meir Kahane constitutes “racism.” Another editor felt that he could not in good conscience publish it – because of parts that were critical of Kahane!

Facebook’s action, whether an algorithmic response to the title or the decision of a human who probably didn’t bother to read past it, is not worth bothering about. But I would like to talk a bit more about Kahane and reactions to him.

Kahane is important because he is one of the few thinkers who have faced head-on the very uncomfortable (and yet undeniable) fact that – for cultural, religious, and political reasons that are unlikely to change – Jews cannot coexist with more than minimal numbers of Muslim Arabs in Eretz Yisrael.

Keep in mind that individual Jews and Arabs often work well together, and can treat each other with respect and even form friendships. I know this as a fact from personal experience. But events during the 70 years of Jewish sovereignty here – and the Jewish presence prior to that – have shown that the ideal of coexistence is chimerical.

A major problem, perhaps the ultimate source of all of the problems from the beginning, is that Islam does not countenance non-Muslim – especially Jewish – sovereignty in a place where Muslims live. Another issue, since 1948, is that the Arab narrative of dispossession, along with shame from repeated military defeats, evokes fury in the honor-based Arab culture. Finally, the Arab leadership, starting with Amin al-Husseini, has always tried to exacerbate these feelings. Yasser Arafat, especially, created an educational system that transformed Arab boys and girls into vicious killers as a political tool.

Thanks to leaders like Arafat as well as interference from external antisemitic powers – the KGB’s embrace of the PLO comes to mind – the situation has only gotten worse. A “Palestinian” culture, which did not exist before the 1960s has come into being which is essentially (and murderously) oppositional to the Jewish presence in Eretz Yisrael.

Meir Kahane, sadly, was assassinated before the disaster of Oslo, but in “They Must Go,” written while he was imprisoned in Israel in the 1970s, he exhaustively documents the Arab hostility to the Jewish presence in Eretz Yisrael back to long before the founding of the state.

The conflict will not be solved by well-meaning attempts at dialogue. If the political aspects of the conflict that have developed over the years weren’t enough to make it insoluble, the religious side would be more than enough.

If you combine this with the simple geostrategic fact (just look at a topographic map) that an Israel without military control of Judea and Samaria would be indefensible, you arrive at what Micah Goodman called “Catch 67,” the dilemma which seems to force us to choose between military and demographic insecurity.

It’s even worse than this, because the problem is not only with the Arabs of Judea and Samaria. The relationship between Israeli Jews and the close to 20% of its citizens within the Green Line who are Muslim Arabs is also tense. A recent poll shows that two-thirds of Arab citizens of Israel do not believe that Israel has the right to be defined as the national home of the Jewish people. Arab members of the Knesset display varying degrees of hostility to the Jewish state, all the way up to calling for “resistance” against it, which is understood to mean terrorism. I can’t think of another country with even a 10% proportion of Muslims in its population that doesn’t suffer from serious instability, terrorism or insurrection connected to Muslims.

Kahane argued that higher birthrates among Arabs than Jews would inevitably lead to a Muslim majority, which of course would be the end of Jewish sovereignty. But time has proven him wrong – at least in the pre-1967 area of Israel – as the Jewish birthrate has increased while that of Arabs declined; and Israel received a surprise bonus of almost a million former Soviet Jews. Nevertheless, the tipping point for political instability may be well below the numbers needed for a Muslim majority.

Kahane’s conclusion was that Jewish survival demanded the emigration of most of the Arabs from the area between the Jordan and the Mediterranean. And I believe that he was right about this. That doesn’t mean that they should be expelled violently (as the Jordanians did to the Jews in the areas they occupied in 1948, and as the Turks are doing right now to the Kurds in the areas of Syria that they have invaded). Perhaps voluntary, incentivized, emigration is possible (see Martin Sherman’s comments about Gaza here).

But I cannot agree with everything he believed.  For one, he wanted a state whose laws would be the laws of Halacha. I think, on the other hand, that observance of the commandments by Jews should be a personal matter, not one enforced by the state. The state of the Jewish people must respect Judaism, but it must also respect its Jews; and many of them are only partly observant or not at all.

The other difficulty I have is more philosophical. In his view there is something essentially different between Jews and non-Jews. Kahane sees the “chosen-ness” of the Jewish people as a concrete property that connects them to Hashem in a way that no other people can be connected:

There is only one reason why Jews should be different, and that is the very special difference, the uniqueness that makes them separate and different from all other peoples. ONLY the election of Israel, only the concept of a Chosen people, a kingdom of priests and a holy nation; only the “Ata b’chartanu, You have chosen us from all the nations”: only the “hamavdil beyn kodesh l’chol, He who differentiates between and separates between holy and profane, between Israel and the nations”; only the need to be different, apart and separate NOT BECAUSE OF SOME VAGUE LANGUAGE OR HISTORICAL DIFFERNCE [sic] but because of the distinct uniqueness of Torah and the commandments as a DIVINE decree – only this gives any validity to the Jew remaining alive as a distinct entity. – Meir Kahane, Letter to a secular Jewish nationalist, 1973

Although I go to synagogue every Shabbat, apparently I am a “secular Jewish nationalist.” I see the “election” as the imposition and acceptance of the burden of Hashem’s mitzvot, not a metaphysical property that places me higher in the chain of being than an Arab. Indeed, I admit that I find the idea repugnant.

I don’t insist that the Arab and Jewish cultures are equally good or valuable. But my problem with the Arabs isn’t metaphysical, it’s concrete, based on their behavior.

For Kahane, the only kind of Zionism that’s worth having is a strict religious Zionism, one that doesn’t see its task complete until the State of Israel is a Jewish kingdom modeled on an idealized ancient Judea. Of course, if you think about our history as described in the Tanach, you’ll realize that everything wasn’t ideal back then either. Kahane’s belief is analogous to that of the Islamists who believe that “Islam is the answer” to all the problems of Muslim societies. That didn’t work for them, and I don’t think a similar approach will work for us. Just read the Book of Kings.

While I believe that Kahane was correct in his analysis of the Jewish-Arab conflict, and agree with him that the only acceptable solution to it is the emigration of most Arabs from Eretz Yisrael, I also think it is necessary for our survival that Israel be at the same time a modern, democratic state and one that is based on Jewish principles (and I don’t mean the “Tikkunist” principles of liberal Judaism).

Do you see the tension there? Certainly there is one. And I see my personal job as trying to understand how it’s possible to have a Zionism that can be justified on wholly secular grounds without losing its spiritual truth.

When I think about the difficulties, though, I am reminded of a remark made by the very liberal (but very smart and knowledgeable) Rabbi Arthur Hertzberg, z”l. When someone asked him how he could both study biblical criticism and yet believe that every word of the Torah was given to Moshe at Sinai, he simply said that he was “a crazy Chosid who could hold several contradictory ideas in his head before breakfast.”

Maybe we all need to learn to do that.

Posted in Israel and Palestinian Arabs, Israeli Arabs, Israeli Politics, Israeli Society, Zionism | 1 Comment

Keeping Our Honor in the Middle East

Posted on October 24, 2019 by Victor Rosenthal

What I’m about to write will probably be off-putting, even offensive to some Western readers. But it’s a subject that is extremely relevant to life in much of the rest of the world, especially in the Middle East. Everyone knows that tribal identity plays an important role here, more so than in the West. And there is a related idea that is no less important.

I’m talking about honor, and what I believe to be the moral imperative to maintain one’s honor and the honor of one’s tribe or nation.

Right now, the Tikkunists of liberal Judaism (and liberal Christianity as well) are running for the exits. According to the philosophy espoused by liberal, humanistic Westerners, the only moral considerations are those that relate to not hurting others and being fair to all. Indeed, many believe that tribalism and nationalism are actually immoral, because they imply treating outsiders and insiders differently.

But in other cultures, there are other principles that are important, in many cases important enough to die – or kill – for. One of them is honor, which refers to the public reputation of a person or tribe for the willingness to do whatever is necessary to defend its property and interests. In the Middle East, a person (or nation) that will not fight to protect their property deserves to lose it.

This is at variance with Western usage of the word. In the West, honor is an objective characteristic of an individual. In the Middle East, it refers to the subjective beliefs of others about an individual, a family, a tribe, or a nation. In the West, honesty is the most important component of honor. In the Middle East, toughness and the willingness to do what you must to protect yourself or your group are what determine the degree of honor you possess.

When you lose honor, which you do by not defending yourself when someone takes something of yours or hurts you in some other way, you put the world at large on notice that it is permissible to hurt you. The consequences of losing your honor include losing your property or your life.

In some Arab societies the concept has expanded to a pathological degree. Insofar as women are considered property, even a hint that the “ownership” of a woman by her own or her husband’s family is compromised is enough to damage the honor of her family. Such cases often have tragic endings, when the woman is murdered by close family members in order to restore the family’s honor. This happens even among well-off, educated Arab citizens of Israel.

I do not suggest that we adopt the hateful pathologies of Arab societies. But many Israelis, particularly the Ashkenazi elite that comprise our decision-making classes, are too quick to trade honor for peace and quiet. Our enemies value honor more than we do. There are countless examples of damaging compromises: we don’t punish terrorists in a manner commensurate with their crimes (i.e., we don’t kill them, and sometimes we even punish our own soldiers for killing them). We don’t retaliate for arson balloons, or sometimes even for rocket attacks.

We allow Arab members of the Knesset to literally call for the destruction of the state, despite a law that says that anyone who does that may not sit in the Knesset (we disqualify right-wing Jewish candidates for less). We selectively enforce laws, tax regulations, etc., in favor of Arab citizens to avoid trouble. We allow our enemies to hold our citizens, dead and alive, captive. And, disgracefully, we have allowed the piecemeal takeover of the Temple Mount and most of the Old City of Jerusalem by the Palestinian Arabs, after the high price in blood that we paid to take them back in 1967.

I could go on and on, but it is always the same: it would be hard, expensive, dangerous, or – very important – make us look bad in the eyes of the West, if we were to protect our honor; and since honor is only subjective, why bother?

But honor is not “only subjective.” In the Middle East, deterrence is not determined only by the size of your army and whether you have nuclear weapons (not that these aren’t important); honor is a big part of it. Why is it possible for Hamas to keep throwing thousands of terrorists at our border fence every Friday, and to burn our fields and forests with impunity? Could it be that the repetition of rocket attacks is due to our policy of attacking empty buildings? When we don’t kill those who are trying to kill us, the message is sent that they should keep trying.

While Israel has great military power at hand, it keeps squandering its honor. When Hillel said, “If I am not for myself, who will be for me?” he was saying that it is morally required to act in one’s own interest, no less so than it is morally wrong to be “for myself alone.” One of the characteristics of moral situations is that moral principles sometimes conflict, and that makes it hard to take decisions in particular cases. In Israel, it often happens that our Western moral sensibility conflicts with Middle Eastern imperatives. Unfortunately, the Western sensibility usually pushes the Middle Eastern one aside. We need to learn to balance these principles before our honor deficit becomes so great that we completely lose the ability to defend ourselves.

We can start by removing those members of the Knesset who despise and incite against the Jewish state, by ensuring that terrorists do not survive to enjoy the benefits paid to them by the Palestinian Authority, by taking back sovereignty over the Temple Mount and the Old City, by making Hamas pay in blood for burning our fields, and so on.

Some will say that this is unjust or illiberal, and perhaps by Western standards – standards growing out of Hellenistic and Christian traditions, which do not factor in honor – they may be correct. But we live in the Middle East, not Seattle or Berkeley, and in this neighborhood you can’t ignore tribe, nationality, or religion – and above all, honor.

Posted in Middle East politics, Terrorism, War | 6 Comments