“Everyone knows” … but everyone’s wrong

Posted on April 12, 2019 by Victor Rosenthal

I don’t know how many times I’ve seen Judea and Samaria referred to as “occupied Palestinian territories,” and Jewish settlements there called “illegal under international law.” But the territories are not “Palestinian,” they are not “occupied,” Jewish communities there are not illegal, and Israel is not oppressing millions of Palestinians who also live there.

PM Netanyahu’s promise to extend Israeli sovereignty to the settlements – and not, by the way, “to annex the West Bank” as so many headlines have it – has re-ignited debate about these issues. But nothing’s changed. Here are some popular but false statements about Judea/Samaria and the Jewish communities that have been established there:

  1. The “West Bank” is “Palestinian land” which Israel is occupying

Judea and Samaria, like the rest of Israel and Jordan, were part of the Ottoman Empire from the 16th Century until the end of WWI. After the war, the League of Nations agreed to set aside this portion of the former Ottoman territory to be held in trust by Britain to become a national home for the Jewish people. Britain gave the eastern portion to Abdullah bin Hussein as a reward for his help and that of his father, Sharif Hussein of Hejaz, in the war; this would ultimately become Jordan. The land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean, including what would become the State of Israel and Judea/Samaria and Gaza became the Mandate for Palestine.

The Arabs living in the Mandate were strongly opposed to Jewish sovereignty, and the British, from a combination of the desire to appease the Arabs to reduce their violence (which expressed itself against both Jews and the British rulers), the desire to keep “Palestine” under their control for strategic purposes, and sheer antisemitism, abandoned their responsibility to the Jewish people and tried to throttle Jewish immigration, while allowing Arabs from surrounding areas to enter.

In November 1947, the UN – which had assumed the obligations of the League of Nations – passed a resolution (UNGA 181) recommending the partition of the Mandate into a Jewish and Arab state. The Palestinian Jews were prepared to accept a truncated state (it would be the second truncation of the land originally set aside for the Jews), but the Palestinian Arabs and the Arab nations wanted all the territory to be under Arab sovereignty, and rejected the resolution.

It is important to note two things: first, the resolution, because it was passed by the General Assembly and not by the Security Council under Chapter VII of the UN Charter, was advisory, not mandatory. And second, because the recommendations were never implemented, they became moot.

The British, exhausted after WWII and tired of the attacks against their occupation forces by both Jews and Arabs, ended the Mandate in May, 1948, and went home. The Jews, who had used the Mandate period to build all the institutions required for a state – an army, an educational system, a labor federation, various state enterprises, and more – declared the State of Israel in the area assigned to them by the partition resolution. The Arabs, who could have done the same, did not do so. They redoubled their violent attacks on Jews. At the same time, the armies of five Arab nations invaded the area, intending to destroy the new state of Israel and take the land for themselves (and not to establish a state for the Palestinian Arabs!)

The war that followed ended with a cease-fire in 1949. The Arab nations would not agree to make a permanent peace or recognize the Jewish state, but they signed cease-fire agreements that demarcated the positions of their troops. These agreements explicitly stipulated that the cease-fire lines were not national borders. The areas of Judea/Samaria and Gaza were occupied by Jordan and Egypt respectively, and in 1950 Jordan formally annexed the territory it had occupied and named it the “West Bank.” This is the first time that name was used to refer to what had previously been called “Judea and Samaria.”

The Arab invasion clearly violated the UN Charter, being a “use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence” of the State of Israel, and therefore the annexation of Judea and Samaria was also illegal. Only Britain (and possibly Pakistan) recognized it. During the war and afterwards, Jordan regularly committed war crimes, violating the Geneva Conventions by ethnically cleansing the Jewish population from the territories they occupied, destroying Jewish synagogues and cemeteries, and not allowing access to Jewish and Christian holy sites during the entire 19-year occupation.

In 1967 the Arabs again planned to destroy Israel, and some Arab leaders even made genocidal statements. Although it is true that Israel fired the first shots, it is generally accepted that this was a case of legitimate military preemption of an imminent attack, and that Israel’s actions were justified self-defense. The war ended with Israel in possession of Judea and Samaria, as well as Gaza.

The argument is made that the UN charter forbids acquisition of territory by force. That is not correct. It says that

All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations. (Art. 2, Sec. 4)

But it also says that

Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defence if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations, until the Security Council has taken measures necessary to maintain international peace and security. … (Art. 51)

If Israel’s actions in 1967 were legal, what is the status of Judea and Samaria? Many people say that it is a “belligerent occupation.” If so, it would still be entirely legal, just as the allied occupation of Germany after WWII was legal. But if it is an occupation, whose territory is being occupied? Not Jordan’s, whose possession of it was illegal from the start!

The last entity in legitimate possession of Judea/Samaria was the British Mandate, which no longer exists. But the only national entity that could reasonably have been considered the inheritor of the Mandate’s boundaries is the State of Israel. Given also that the Mandate was intended for the purpose of establishing a national home for the Jewish people, and considering the well-documented claim of the Jewish people to be the aboriginal inhabitants of the land, it is reasonable to see the events of 1967 as the liberation of territory that was illegally occupied, and its return to the legitimate owner, Israel.

In 1988, King Hussein of Jordan relinquished his claim to Judea and Samaria, in favor of the PLO. But since Jordan had no legitimate rights to the territory to begin with, the gesture was meaningless.

It is true that the Palestinian Arabs wish to possess Judea and Samaria (not to mention Haifa and Tel Aviv), and there are numerous members of the UN that agree with them for religious, cultural, economic, and yes – antisemitic – reasons. But wishing will not make the 1949 armistice lines a border, and wishing will not make Palestinian Arabs the legitimate heirs of the British Mandate, nor – despite their creative approach to history – the aboriginal inhabitants of the Land of Israel.

  1. Settlements are illegal under international law

This is a favorite of many news media and European governments, who feel a compulsion to add “which are illegal under international law” after any mention of Israeli settlements. But even if you accept (as I do not) that Israel’s possession of Judea and Samaria constitutes belligerent occupation, the usual argument that settlements constitute a violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention provision against population transfer into an occupied territory is very weak. This protocol was established after WWII with the intent of criminalizing actions such as Germany’s deportation of its Jewish residents to occupied Poland, and not to prohibit voluntary settlement on public lands (a more complete treatment of this subject is here). It should be noted that there have been additions made (e.g., the 1977 “Additional Protocol I”) to the Geneva convention specifically aimed at Israeli policy, but Israel and other nations, including the US, have not ratified them.

  1. Israel is oppressing millions of Palestinians in Judea and Samaria

When Israel and the PLO signed the Oslo Accords in 1993-5, they agreed to divide Judea and Samaria into Areas A, B and C. Area A was under Palestinian security control and civil control, Area B (much smaller) under Palestinian civil control and Israeli security control, and Area C under full Israeli control. Area C contains all Jewish settlements. More than 95% of the Palestinian population lives in areas A and B, where they are governed by the Palestinian Authority (PA). While it is true that Israel’s security forces reserve the right to enter area A to arrest wanted terrorists, Palestinians have civil and political rights granted by the Palestinian Authority to vote and hold political office. There are Palestinian courts and Palestinian police, Palestinian ministries of health, finance, labor, etc. It’s hardly fair to  blame Israel for the fact that the PA is corrupt and dictatorial, and hasn’t held an election for years.

Conclusion

PM Netanyahu’s decision to extend Israeli law to the settlements in Area C would not have any effect whatever on Palestinians living under the control of the Palestinian authority, and it does not change the status of the territories in which they are located. Israel will never abandon Judea and Samaria entirely, although it is possible that some part of them could become an autonomous Palestinian entity. But – for security, if for no other reason – Israel could never agree to a sovereign Arab state west of the Jordan, nor could it agree to the kind of massive withdrawal and dismantling of settlements that was envisioned in the Obama period. So the idea that “Netanyahu has killed the two-state solution” is silly. The two-state solution was never alive because of simple geostrategic facts.

Isn’t it nice that international law agrees.

Posted in Israel and Palestinian Arabs, Middle East politics, War | Comments Off on “Everyone knows” … but everyone’s wrong

Israel loves its army

Posted on April 7, 2019 by Victor Rosenthal

When the body of Sgt. Zachary Baumel, missing for 37 years since the battle of Sultan Yacoub in the First Lebanon War, was returned to Israel, I first heard it on the hourly radio newscast.

Almost the entire newscast was devoted to this one story. The next day it was in the headlines of all the papers. Every Israeli politician, newspaper columnist, or TV/radio personality had something to say about it. When he was buried Thursday night at the military cemetery on Mount Herzl in Jerusalem, thousands of people attended his funeral. The President and Prime Minister, among others, delivered eulogies there. Army commanders, from the Chief of Staff on down, were present.

One soldier, or to be precise, the body of one soldier. 37 years. Yet, the reaction was national in scope.

A few months ago, a soldier named Ronen Lubarsky was murdered when a terrorist dropped a huge stone slab on his head from a rooftop. It turned out that he lived here in Rehovot. Someone forwarded a WhatsApp message to me one evening, saying that his parents were having a minyan at their home in the morning. I should go, I thought, people have to work and they might not get a minyan. It was only a couple of blocks away, and as I got closer I saw that every parking spot, legal or not, was occupied. I shouldn’t have worried: there were hundreds of people there, old and young, soldiers and civilians, religious and not-so-religious, who came to support Ronen’s parents and siblings.

The next story is different in some ways, but also the same. A young man came to Israel from America by himself to volunteer for the IDF, to be a “lone soldier.” Alex Sasaki was a member of the Golani Brigade, which is difficult to get into and has a tough training period. He didn’t die from enemy fire, but rather from an apparent drug overdose. He too had thousands come to his funeral, and his death gave rise to an outcry that the army doesn’t provide sufficient support for lone soldiers, who can’t go home to the warmth of their parents and friends when they get leave from the army. Two of my children were lone soldiers and I think the experience changed them from children into adults, even more sharply than it does for native Israelis. They won’t say, but it couldn’t have been easy.

Israel loves its soldiers, not only because they are everybody’s kids, but because everybody was in their shoes (actually, boots) and can identify with them. Everybody has personal experience with the feelings of loneliness, along with the camaraderie with one’s peers, that characterize military service. From the point of view of a parent, as well, there is nothing like knowing your child is a combat soldier, uncomfortable, in harm’s way, in some inhospitable place, maybe under a mortar barrage like the one he described the last time he talked to you.

My son’s army unit was stationed in South Lebanon before the withdrawal in 2000, and they often came into contact with Hizballah. It wasn’t exactly a big war, but there was plenty of shooting – and some casualties. When he and his friends had time off, they would go to a well-known steak restaurant in Jerusalem. The owner gave every one of them what they wanted at no charge, which was usually steaks all around. Not hamburgers, and not the cheap stuff. I can’t imagine how much it cost. I don’t know if the restaurant or its owner are still around, but the former soldiers won’t forget him.

We take enormous care that our soldiers aren’t captured, lest they be held as hostages like Gilad Shalit, who was imprisoned by Hamas in a booby-trapped underground bunker for more than five years, until he was freed in a foolish and irrational “prisoner exchange,” in which 1027 Hamas terrorists held by Israel – terrorists responsible of the deaths of over 500 Israelis – were exchanged for him. Many of those released immediately went back to their murderous ways, and several committed additional murders. The government has said that it will never make a deal like that again, but the pressure to ransom a captured soldier – someone’s child that could be anyone’s child – is tremendous.

Ahlam Tamimi, the woman responsible for the murderous Sbarro Pizza bombing in Jerusalem in 2001 (and who, by the way, was released in the Gilad Shalit exchange), was greatly pleased when she found out that she had murdered more children than she had previously believed. From the very earliest days of Arab terrorism against Israel, children have been disproportionately targeted – think also of the Ma’alot massacre, the Bus of Blood, the Misgav Am attack, the Dolphinarium bombing, and many more – because our enemies understand that nothing is more painful for us (in a classic case of Palestinian reality inversion or psychological projection, they like to claim that the IDF deliberately targets Arab children, a vicious lie).

One might wonder if there is any other country in the world that relates to its soldiers like Israel does. I certainly don’t know of any. Our enemies see it as a weakness to be exploited, and do so whenever they can. But it is also a strength, a motivation the leads Israeli young people to volunteer to take risks, knowing that they are not alone. The nation stands behind them.

There are those that suggest that Israel would be better off with a professional army. There is much that can be said for that in terms of efficiency and maybe even fighting ability. But we should tread very carefully if we go in that direction. There is something very special, although intangible, about the relationship of Israelis to their army that should be preserved.

When you love someone, you do things for them that are entirely for them, that return to you nothing but the feeling that you have made the life of the one you love better in some sense. Israel depends on the IDF to protect it. But it’s also true that Israel loves the IDF, collectively and individually, in the strongest sense of that word.

Posted in Israeli Society, War | 2 Comments

Don’t apologize

Posted on April 4, 2019 by Victor Rosenthal

Often I read “pro-Israel” articles, usually by American Jews, which include a statement like this: “Of course I disagree with many of Israel’s policies, but…” Or, “Of course, Israel treats the Palestinians badly, but…” Or, “Of course the occupation is immoral, but…”

I appreciate the “but,” and usually the article goes on to explain that the state really does have a right to exist, that Israel really isn’t guilty of genocide, or that people should be nicer to Jewish college students, who aren’t responsible for Israel’s policies.

But the apologetic prelude, an attempt to establish bona fides among an audience already marinated in anti-Israel propaganda, is cowardly and wrong.

Israel is doing the best she can, and much better than most Western democracies in the moral behavior department (I won’t even dream of comparing her to the various murderous dictatorships in the region).

Yes, a few Arabs have gotten shot to death while trying to do a World War Z number (video, 4:27) on our southern border fence. We should have invited them into our homes? If someone were climbing your back fence with a knife in his teeth, what would you do?

We tried, over and over, to give them a state. It was stupid, and we’re lucky they wouldn’t take it. Now they are refusing to talk. Good. They’ve demonstrated in Gaza what happens when we give up control of territory. So, what, exactly, are we doing wrong when we don’t unilaterally leave the high ground near our center of population?

Yes, there are checkpoints that Arabs from the territories have to pass through to get into Israel. Several times a week, someone is stopped with a knife or worse. Often, terrorists sneak into Israel around the unfinished (why is that?) security barrier, and murder people. The checkpoints are a real pain in the ass for Arabs that work in Israel. How racist we must be to have them!

Yes, we arrest “children” (some as old as 17) for throwing rocks and firebombs at cars containing Jews. Sometimes the Jews in the cars are killed or maimed. How cruel we are, to children! And before you say it, it’s true that sometimes (much more rarely) Jewish kids throw rocks at Arabs. We arrest them too.

Arab terrorists stab Jews on the street or try to hit them with their cars. They incite their kids to murder.

The Gazans are setting fire to the southern part of our country with their balloons and kites, like last year, as soon as the weather has started to dry out. They threaten to tear down the border and “rip out the hearts” (video, 0:51) of the Jews who live nearby. A rocket from the Gaza Strip destroyed a house in central Israel the other day, and injured several people – only the fact that we require a reinforced concrete “safe room” in all new construction prevented a worse tragedy. We shoot down their rockets in the area around Gaza with the Iron Dome system, whose every launch costs us tens of thousands of dollars. Sometimes we don’t succeed, and the residents have 15 seconds or less to scramble into their safe rooms.

But there is so much to criticize in our “treatment of the Palestinians!” For example, we block the import of metal pipes (used to make rockets) and cement (to line tunnels under the border) to Gaza. After the most recent outbreak of rockets, incendiary devices, riots next to the border fence, and explosives thrown at our soldiers, we have promised to make life easier for Gazans by increasing the number of trucks carrying food, medicines and other goods into the Strip, increasing the amount of electricity we give it (what other country supplies her enemies?), and more. In return, they just have to stop trying to kill us.

This is apparently not good enough for our critics, who think there should be no blockade at all. Let the Gazans have all the pipes and cement they want. The critics should try living in Sderot or one of the smaller communities near Gaza.

Even historically, Israel looks pretty good. Yes, there was the nakba, in which between 500-700 thousand Arabs fled the 1948 War of Independence. A small number, particularly in villages that were hostile and fought alongside the troops from the Arab countries that had invaded our country, were actually kicked out. And after the war, we didn’t let them come back (had we done so, we would not have had a state). We still ended up with some 150,000 Arabs in our country, who ultimately got the right to vote. The Arabs who left for whatever reason were kept in camps by the Arab states, and they and their descendants made into perpetual refugees living under conditions of apartheid, by the Arab states and the cowardly UN. But as expiation for our guilt, we are expected – by the Palestinians and BDS supporters worldwide – to invite all 5 million of them to live in our country, thus ending it.

Should I mention that the Jordanians kicked out or killed every single Jew in the area that they conquered in 1948? That they broke the cease-fire agreement that called for all religious groups to be allowed to visit their holy sites? That some 800,000 Jews were forced to leave Arab countries, and most were absorbed by Israel? Now that’s ethnic cleansing. Let’s also not forget the genocidal threats made by Arab leaders in 1967.

I could go on, and on, and on. Israel has never committed genocide like the US or Germany, or mass murder like Russia. It has never nuked anyone, like the US. The number of Arabs living between the river and the sea has tripled since 1970. We have never had slavery. Our ratio of civilian to military deaths in urban warfare is the lowest in recent history. We use the “knock on the roof” technique and cellphone calls to warn civilians that a building will be bombed. We send soldiers in when artillery or air strikes would be safer for us. We do not engage in wars of conquest; indeed, we tend to (stupidly) give territory back to our defeated enemies.

Israel is a democracy, it is increasingly tolerant of alternative lifestyles, and increasingly intolerant of mistreatment of women. It does not persecute religious minorities. It has a relatively free press and permits free speech.

And yet, even our defenders find it necessary to insert a disclaimer.

Why? The Jewish people should be proud of its homeland, which has survived – and is surviving – repeated assaults from her neighbors, as well as viciously bigoted treatment from many other nations and institutions – while still doing a good job of maintaining freedom and protecting her citizens.

No, she isn’t perfect. No nation is. But don’t apologize; it’s not necessary, and anyway nothing short of national suicide will satisfy her critics.

Posted in Israel and Palestinian Arabs, Israeli or Jewish History, Israeli Society | Comments Off on Don’t apologize

The Nation-State Law under attack

Posted on March 31, 2019 by Victor Rosenthal

Amos Schocken is the publisher of Ha’aretz, the employer of Gideon Levy and Amira Hass, of Rogel Alpher and B. Michael, and other writers who pour out their hatred of the Jewish state both in Hebrew and English translation. To someone like me who believes that the battle to defend Israel in the information sphere is as important as the kinetic conflict on the battlefields, Amos Schocken is the devil.

Schocken and the rest of the Israeli Left passionately hate the recently passed Nation-State Law. To them, the statement that “Israel is the nation-state of the Jewish people” is anathema. It is a statement of Zionism, which is Jewish nationalism. And they don’t care very much for either nationalism (except perhaps Palestinian nationalism) or anything connected with Jewishness. In fact, I suspect that they don’t care much for Jews either; but that’s another blog.

For those who don’t know, Israel does not have a constitution as such. When the state was declared in May 1948, there was no time to create one in the midst of a war. The Declaration of Independence optimistically set a date five months in the future at which a constitution would be adopted. But the differences of opinion about the nature of the state, between religious and secular, socialist and capitalist, were so great that it was – and still is – impossible to develop a comprehensive document that everyone can agree on. Instead, it was decided on an incremental approach: to pass a series of Basic Laws that, taken together, would fully define the state. This task is still incomplete.

The Declaration of Independence refers to the state that is coming into existence as a “Jewish state,” asserts “the natural right of the Jewish people to be masters of their own fate, like all other nations, in their own sovereign State” [my italics] and adds that

The State of Israel will be open for Jewish immigration and for the Ingathering of the Exiles; it will foster the development of the country for the benefit of all its inhabitants; it will be based on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel; it will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex; it will guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture; it will safeguard the Holy Places of all religions; and it will be faithful to the principles of the Charter of the United Nations.

Since then, several Basic Laws have been passed that define how all the citizens of the state can exercise their rights to vote and hold office. There are also a Basic Law: Human Dignity and Liberty, and a Basic Law: Freedom of Occupation, which have been very broadly interpreted by the courts to guarantee many other rights and freedoms to all Israeli citizens.

These laws contains the formulation “Jewish and democratic state” which, while it doesn’t occur verbatim in the Declaration of Independence, is generally considered to be an accurate description of what the founders had in mind for the nature of the state. The problem is that it is not at all clear what “Jewish” means in this context.

It is pretty clear what “democratic” means: there will be a democratic process for determining the nation’s policies and choosing its leaders, there will be democratic institutions, a rule of law, and citizens will have equal “social and political rights.”

But “Jewish” could mean anything between a state whose laws are identical with Jewish law (a halachic state) to a state with a Jewish majority but no other special features. Nevertheless, it is clear that the founders intended more than just the latter when they said “their own sovereign state.”

There have been pressures from some non-Jewish citizens and left-wing Jews like Schocken to redefine the state as “a state of all its citizens.” Some want to eliminate all specifically Jewish content from the symbols of the state like the flag and the national anthem, and repeal the Law of Return for Jews. In response to this, the Knesset considered – for a period of years – and finally passed, the Basic Law: Israel as the Nation-State of the Jewish People, which explicates the meaning of “Jewish state.” The most important part of it is this:

The State of Israel is the nation state of the Jewish People, in which it realizes its natural, cultural, religious and historical right to self-determination.

The exercise of the right to national self-determination in the State of Israel is unique to the Jewish People.

Amos Schocken would like to see the law overthrown by Israel’s Supreme Court. He asserts that the Court has the power to do this, even though the law itself, as a Basic Law, has constitutional force. This is because of a clause inserted in two basic laws passed in 1992, which can be interpreted as making the Declaration of Independence a “fundamental principle” or source of “supreme values” against which all laws – even constitution-like Basic Laws – can be measured.

This assumption presents significant problems. The Declaration of Independence wasn’t intended to be a constitution, as shown by the provision it contains that a constitution for the new state be adopted within five months. And anyway, even if the Court’s authority to annul a Basic Law on the basis of the Declaration of Independence were granted, the whole issue rests on the interpretation of terms (e.g., “Jewish State”) that are used but not defined in the Declaration.

Schocken argues that the Declaration promises Arabs full “social and political” rights. And he is correct. But then he conflates these rights with the right to a national home in Israel for Palestinian Arabs, which it clearly does not grant them. He writes:

How is this [the Nation-State Law] at all conceivable given the explicit statement in the Declaration of Independence that Israel “will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex”? The nation-state law clearly cannot be reconciled with the value of equality as stated in the Declaration.

Of course it can be reconciled, if we maintain the distinction between “social and political” rights – what Americans might call “civil rights” – and “national rights,” including the “right to national self-determination” asserted in the Nation-State Law.

So what are these national rights guaranteed by the new law? Some are “only” symbolic, like the flag, the national anthem, the symbol of the state, holidays, and so on. But some are supremely practical and a matter of life and death: the Law of Return for Jews and the commitment to encourage the ingathering of exiles, Jews from around the world. These rights are what make it possible for Israel to be a place of refuge for persecuted Jews everywhere; the victims of the Nazis, the Jews expelled from Muslim countries, the Soviet Jews, and the growing number of Jews fleeing from violent antisemitism in Europe.

Those who oppose the Nation-State Law say that it takes away rights from non-Jews. But the only “right” it reserves to the Jews is the right to self-determination in their national home, Israel. And this is not a right we wish to grant to anyone else.

In truth, it isn’t a question of democracy. Schocken and his friends are embarrassed by the fact that Israel is still an ethnic nation-state as its founders intended, and they want it to follow the model of European and North American democracies and become a “state of all its citizens.” The Israeli Arab intellectuals who wrote the “Future Vision” document several years ago go farther, and say that they want it to become a binational state, with “Palestinian Arabs” (they define themselves as an “inseparable part of the Palestinian people”) having an equal role with the Jewish majority in the state’s decision-making. Indeed, they also demand a right of return for Arab “refugees,” so even the Jewish majority would be short-lived.

There is good reason to worry, from past behavior, that Israel’s left-leaning Supreme Court will adopt the view that it can adjudicate Basic Laws as Schocken describes, and go on to invalidate the Nation-State Law on spurious grounds. This would create a constitutional crisis that would set the Court directly against the majority of the Knesset, the PM and cabinet, and the majority of Israeli citizens. Most likely the Court would lose, and end up with its power severely circumscribed – and its reputation even worse than it is now. I believe that only the imminence of the election keeps this from erupting now.

An alternative would be for the legal establishment, the Justice Minister (who I hope will be Ayelet Shaked again after the election), and the Knesset to work together to formalize the relationship of the Court to the rest of the government, and clearly define its areas of jurisdiction and the limits of its power.

That would be the adult way to handle it. We’ll find out after the election if our leaders are capable of behaving like adults.

Posted in Israeli Arabs, Israeli Politics, Post-Zionism, The Jewish people | Comments Off on The Nation-State Law under attack

What to do about Gaza

Posted on March 29, 2019 by Victor Rosenthal

Moshav Mishmeret is an agricultural community about 21 km. north and slightly east of Tel Aviv. It is about 125 km. north of Rafah, which is at the southern tip of the Gaza Strip, on a line that passes almost directly over Tel Aviv. The moshav was founded in 1946 by demobilized British soldiers and workers from the Ashdod port.

At 5:20 in the morning this Monday, a rocket fired from Rafah by terrorists associated with Palestinian Islamic Jihad made a direct hit on a house in Mishmeret, destroying it, and injuring eight people. They were saved by the mamad, the reinforced concrete safe room now required in all Israeli construction.  The most seriously injured person did not get to it in time, and the others had left the door open for her. Several dogs that were in or around the house were killed, and if not for the safe room, probably the human residents would have been seriously injured or killed as well.

I made a mental note on reading this: always make sure to close the door of the mamad. Rehovot, where I live, is only about 85 km. from the launch point of this rocket, and half that from the northern tip of the strip. They have only to turn their dial a couple of clicks to the east.

Initially, Hamas claimed that the firing was a “mistake,” but later on a Hamas official said that the attack was ordered by Iran and carried out by its Islamic Jihad proxy. Israel holds Hamas responsible for any attacks from Gaza, and responded with the usual bombing of military targets, after waiting for Hamas to evacuate so as to not hurt anybody. Hamas then fired some 85 rockets at the Gaza Envelope area, which were intercepted by Iron Dome or landed harmlessly in open areas. Sometime early Tuesday morning, the shooting on both sides stopped; but on Tuesday evening Hamas went back to sending balloons carrying explosive and incendiary payloads over the border fence. And firing rockets.

The claim that the rocket that hit Mishmeret was fired on Iran’s instructions is believable. It’s not impossible that it was aimed at Tel Aviv. Rockets fired from Gaza are notoriously inaccurate, often falling short and landing inside the strip itself. Given the amount of damage done by the blast, the fact that the rocket hit a single-family home in a moshav and not an apartment building in Tel Aviv, Ramat Gan, or Herzliya, can be considered very good luck.

Incidentally, for once and for all we can put aside the ridiculous statements by Hamas supporters that the rockets fired from Gaza aren’t dangerous. The number of Israelis killed by these weapons is relatively small because of the huge investment Israel has made in shelters and the Iron Dome antimissile system. I don’t know if the rocket that struck Mishmeret was built by the industrious Orcs of Gaza, or if it was made in Iran and smuggled into Gaza in pieces; regardless, it is only a matter of luck that this rocket didn’t kill dozens of people.

Which raises the following questions: what are Iran and Hamas thinking, and what do we do now?

My guess is that Iran, which has been greatly hurt by Netanyahu in Syria, wants to see him defeated in the election. Rocket attacks against the center of the country demand a response, and they calculate that whatever he does now will damage him. Although some say that the government values citizens in the center more than the periphery, the truth is that the population density in the center is so much greater that the potential for mass casualty events is higher. For that reason, the recent attacks cross a red line.

PM Netanyahu cut short his visit to the US, where he was present as President Trump signed an order recognizing Israel’s sovereignty in the Golan Heights. He returned Tuesday morning, exactly two weeks before the hard-fought election that will determine whether he will continue as PM. This attack and the previous “mistake,” in which two rockets fell in open areas near Tel Aviv, have put him between a rock and a hard place.

On the one hand, if he doesn’t respond aggressively enough he will be pilloried for not protecting the population, his most basic job. Israelis are rightly sick of the daily and nightly riots and incursions at the border with Gaza, the incendiary and explosive balloons and kites, and of course the rockets and mortars that drive the inhabitants of the northern Negev into shelters over and over again.

We are also sick of terrorism carried out by Hamas operatives in Judea and Samaria, and of security prisoners rioting and stabbing jailers because Israel has blocked their illegal cell phones. We are tired of Hamas, period. Netanyahu’s political opponents, some of whom are former Defense Ministers and Chiefs of Staff who understand precisely the dilemma he’s facing, happily suggest that he’s a weakling and they would know how to deal with Hamas.

On the other hand, if he launches an operation to take down Hamas and destroy the Islamic Jihad organization, he risks escalation into a war in which IDF soldiers could be killed, wounded, or (perhaps worse) captured, and the civilian population placed at risk from the expected rocket barrage. It could even expand into a multi-front war including Hezbollah and its massive rocket arsenal. Such a war would entail many more casualties and a great deal of destruction on our home front. Israel would not be the same for many years.

Even if the worst could be avoided, Netanyahu would be accused of starting a war to divert attention from his legal issues, to improve his chances for reelection, and so on. And then there would be the atrocity propaganda and the coordinated diplomatic attacks by the “human rights” industry, the UN, hostile governments in Europe and elsewhere, and the international Left. And of course, if we did get rid of Hamas and the others, what then? Who would rule Gaza? The IDF?

The temptation to practice restraint and respond with minimal force is great. On a national scale, the danger from Hamas rockets and terrorism is small, even if on a personal scale – if your house is hit by a rocket – it can be enormous. There is an element in Israeli character which is highly pragmatic and responds to the argument that we can afford to accept a certain amount of terrorism, a teeftoof (drizzle) of rockets, a few stabbings every other week, and a few fires in our agricultural fields and nature preserves. Meanwhile, we put out the fires, develop anti-rocket and anti-balloon systems, and find more ways to defend ourselves without hurting anyone.

The danger of this approach is twofold. First, our frog is slowly being boiled. Our deterrence is evaporating. This is what happened in the north, where we treated Hezbollah with restraint since the Second Lebanon War in 2006, and then suddenly woke up and found that its deployment of more than 100,000 rockets in civilian areas had deterred us from taking action against it, almost no matter what it does. We don’t have an answer for its rockets other than to incinerate much of southern Lebanon, along with whatever part of the population that doesn’t succeed (or isn’t allowed) to flee. Not that we won’t do it if we have to, but meanwhile we have no leverage to prevent the introduction even more dangerous weapons, to the point of Hezbollah becoming, if it is not already, an existential threat.

Second is the psychological dimension. It becomes understood throughout the world that anyone is permitted to strike at Jews. We’ll try to ward off the blows, but we won’t respond aggressively. We won’t do anything disproportionate. We won’t punish our enemies as they deserve. We’ll show ourselves as a people without honor. And we’ll come to believe that our enemies are right. Maybe we deserve to be shot at; because if we didn’t, wouldn’t we hit back? Maybe the endless contempt that is heaped on us in international forums is justified?

As I’ve written before, honor is of utmost importance in the Middle East. Deterrence is important everywhere; and self-respect is especially essential here in Israel. In the past several years, all these have been eroding. Netanyahu must find a way to protect his people, and to reverse the trend. Of course there are risks. But what else is new?

I still have faith that he understands this. Now, just before the election, is a great time to find out.

Posted in Israeli Politics, War | Comments Off on What to do about Gaza

Trumping the Golan

Posted on March 24, 2019 by Victor Rosenthal

By recognizing Israeli sovereignty in the Golan Heights, President Trump struck a blow against the idiotic principle of “land for peace,” when he tweeted,

After 52 years it is time for the United States to fully recognize Israel’s Sovereignty over the Golan Heights, which is of critical strategic and security importance to the State of Israel and Regional Stability!

Restoring land to the previous owner, in this case, would work against the possibility of peace, he implied. And of course he’s right.

But doesn’t annexation violate international law? Opinions differ. It’s true that it is illegal under the UN charter to obtain land by attacking or threatening to attack another country. Art. 2, Sect. 4, says,

All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.

At the same time, the right of all nations, even Jewish ones, to defend themselves is also clear (Art. 51):

Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defence if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations, until the Security Council has taken measures necessary to maintain international peace and security. …

Although the first shots in the 1967 war were fired by Israel, even the US State Department considered it a “clear-cut case of military preemption” [of an imminent attack], which is tantamount to self-defense. Hence Israel’s occupation of the Golan was legal.

In 1981, Israel went a step further and passed a law to applying Israeli law and jurisdiction to the Golan. In response, the UN Security Council passed its Resolution 497, calling the decision “null and void” and “demanding” that Israel continue to treat the area as occupied territory. This resolution was not explicitly passed under Chapter VII of the UN Charter, and so is not considered binding. Israel ignored it.

So what is the status today? The 1981 Golan Law deliberately did not use the word “sovereignty” or its equivalent, and the Foreign Ministry stressed that fact at the time, perhaps worried that the UN would act more strongly against Israel if it did. No other countries recognized a change in the status of the area. In 2016, PM Netanyahu announced that “Israel will never come down from the Golan Heights.”

Although as we’ve seen, the right of self-defense is enshrined in international law, it comes from the most fundamental concept of human rights, what traditionally has been called natural law. No one or no nation is obliged to sit quietly while being attacked. And I think that this principle overrides any other rules or laws. The geostrategic significance of the Golan makes it essential. We are not obligated to voluntarily give up our lives or our nation, and we are not obligated to leave the Golan.

Nevertheless, Israel hasn’t yet officially claimed sovereignty, and probably few if any nations other than the US would recognize it if she did. On the other hand, Israel will not give it up, so it makes no sense to continue pretending that it is not an integral part of the country. Formal annexation, followed by official recognition from the US and maybe a few other countries will have little practical significance today, but it will set the stage for the future.

And one of the future events that we should be trying very hard to make a reality is the demise of the “land for peace” concept. Possibly we are so used to it that we don’t find it exceptional, but consider the history: several aggressor nations attempt to destroy another country, but are soundly defeated. In times past – you don’t have to go farther back than 1945 – their military capabilities would have been destroyed, their assets stripped, and their capitals ravaged. Instead, after 1967 (and again after the Arabs had their second go at Israel in 1973), the international community stepped in, saved the losers from total defeat, forced the winner to retreat, and began a “peace process” to return the situation to the status quo ante that is still going on, 52 years later. And the slogan of that process is “land for peace,” or, in other words, the territory gained by the blood of the victims of aggression is to be given back to the aggressors, in return for an easily broken promise that is impossible to guarantee!

The international community took the side of the aggressors for several reasons. One of them was their possession of much of the world’s energy supply and the efficacy of the Arab oil weapon. Today the situation has changed, with much more oil available in North America, and even natural gas in the hands of Israel. Another important factor was the Cold War, with the Soviet Union and the US lining up behind the Arabs and Israel, respectively. The Cold War has ended, although the rivalry between the US and Russia still exists, albeit in a much more complicated reality.

So why is the “process” still going on? It has to do with the identity of the small state that defeated the aggressors. The small Jewish state. There is a confluence of interests, based on a combination of Muslim opposition to a corner of Dar-al-Islam being ruled by non-Muslims, and European antipathy to its oldest enemy, the Jewish people. Both of these themes – Muslim and European antisemitism – were carefully nurtured by Soviet psychological warfare experts. The concept of the oppressed “Palestinian people” was invented, which worked in both the eastern and western theaters. In the West, Palestinian human rights were stressed, and in the East, Arab/Muslim honor.

The Western Left, still animated by the ancient strings put in place by Stalin’s experts, didn’t disappoint. European Jew-hatred, undercover since the Holocaust, came out again in the form of anti-Zionism. In America (and even Israel), academics pointlessly employed in scam fake-academic disciplines like Gender Studies found a cause that they could sink their teeth into. A whole religion of anti-Israelism emerged, with every university establishing its church of Palestine solidarity and observing Apartheid Week, passing BDS resolutions, and other manifestations of zeal.

In larger society, governments, politicians, religious and cultural organizations, and of course media, relentlessly pushed ideas like the “two-state solution,” “land for peace,” “disengagement,” and “separation,” concepts which sugar-coated their actual content: forcing Israel – the victorious party, remember – to concede land to her enemies so that the result of the 1967 war could be reversed, and ultimately the state destroyed.

In the US, the most anti-Israel administration ever, headed by Muslim Brotherhood fan Barack Obama came into power, and worked relentlessly to weaken the Jewish state in practical terms and to damage her image throughout the world. For the first time, the US purposely abstained on a significant anti-Israel resolution in the UN, and did its best to enable Israel’s greatest enemy, Iran, to ultimately achieve nuclear weapons. At the same time, it acted to restrain Israel from preemptively destroying Iran’s nuclear project, and provided an influx of cash, which Iran used to bolster its effective conquest of Iraq and Syria.

With the election of Donald Trump, and (ultimately) Trump’s appointment of pro-Israel officials to important positions in his administration, the situation has changed radically. While Israel’s enemies in the Muslim world continue to be hostile – although some of her traditional enemies have dialed back their hostility for pragmatic reasons – the US is finally firmly in Israel’s corner. Trump’s decision to recognize Israel’s sovereignty in the Golan is just the most recent of a series of actions to recognize the reality in the region: that Israel is here to stay, her capital is Jerusalem, and – most importantly – that the paradigm of “land for peace” will no longer be pursued.

Posted in 'Peace' Process, Middle East politics, The UN, US-Israel Relations, War | 2 Comments

J Street uncovers a secret about Netanyahu and Trump

Posted on March 22, 2019 by Victor Rosenthal

I think my interest in J Street could once have been called “obsessive.” I wrote numerous blog posts a few years ago, pointing out that the supposedly “pro-Israel, pro-peace” organization received financing from George Soros, mysterious billionaires in Hong Kong, and people associated with Iran, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and the Arab-American Institute. I noted – along with then Ambassador Michael Oren – that it consistently (one could say always) took positions opposed to almost any reasonable interpretation of Israel’s interests. I objected to its guiding principle, which seemed to be that it knew what was good for Israel far better than Israelis did, especially since following its recommendations would negatively impact Israel’s security. I wondered at the close coordination between J Street and the Obama Administration, which tried to anoint it as the voice of American Jewry toward Israel. And more.

Since I moved back to Israel in 2014, I’ve been less concerned with J Street, which is, after all, an American phenomenon. We have plenty of “interesting” politics right here. But recently I became aware of  a new J Street initiative, targeting PM Netanyahu, just before the election:

WASHINGTON, DC — The pro-Israel, pro-peace group J Street launched a new series of videos today highlighting the dangerously similar rhetoric and ideology shared by President Trump and Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu. Released as targeted digital ads just a week before the two leaders are expected to meet in Washington, DC on the sidelines of the AIPAC conference, the videos urge pro-Israel Americans who are opposed to Trump to also speak out against Netanyahu’s similar bigotry and anti-democratic tendencies.

“By attacking democratic institutions and targeting vulnerable minorities, Trump and Netanyahu are borrowing from the same far-right playbook — undermining the core values and interests of both the US and Israel,” said J Street’s president Jeremy Ben-Ami. “Patriotic Americans have mobilized impressively against Trump here at home. Those of us who care about Israel’s future need to speak out against Netanyahu’s destructive leadership as well.”

Over the past two years, both the president and the prime minister have incited against vulnerable minorities, attacked the free press and de-legitimized the judiciary and the rule of law. Both face serious investigations into alleged criminal conduct. …

There’s no doubt that liberal and progressive American Jews hate Trump passionately, and there’s no better way to attack Netanyahu among that group than by associating him with their bête noire. The first J Street video is here. It’s very professional and probably didn’t come cheap. The question is, why did J Street spend a considerable sum of money on such a campaign? Americans don’t vote in Israeli elections (although J Street probably wishes they did). Why attack Netanyahu in the USA?

It’s not a simple question and I don’t have a simple answer. Unfortunately, the position papers of J Street’s psychological warfare experts aren’t public. But I have some ideas.

J Street’s primary goal, like that of the numerous other anti-Israel organizations in the US, including the nominally “Jewish” If Not Now and Jewish Voice for Peace, as well as explicitly antisemitic ones like If America Knew, is to create antipathy and distrust for Israel, so that Americans will oppose pro-Israel actions by the US government – for example, the recognition of Israel’s possession of the Golan Heights that is rumored to be on the table now.

In the event of war, they want to prime Americans to believe Palestinian atrocity propaganda against Israel, to make it more difficult for a pro-Israel administration to support Israel, or easier for an anti-Israel one to criticize her or even cut off critical supplies – as Obama did during the 2014 Gaza war.

How does attacking PM Netanyahu accomplish this? The answer has several parts.

First, J Street presents Netanyahu as anti-democratic and dictatorial, as if he is entirely responsible for Israeli policy; so it becomes possible for an American Jew who still feels some loyalty to Israel to separate the country from its Prime Minister, and blame him for supposedly anti-democratic or racist policies, without being forced to make the jump to disliking Israel the nation.

Second, and conversely, Netanyahu has been PM since 2009 and – at least as of today – it is likely that he will receive yet another term. He is Israel in the minds of many Americans. An attack on Netanyahu as racist and anti-minority, and in other ways that particularly resonate in America, also creates negative perceptions of the state of Israel herself.

Third, attitudes in America, as expressed in the media, do have some influence on Israeli elections. There is no doubt that the forces behind J Street would like to see Netanyahu defeated in the coming election. Netanyahu’s political opponents can point to anti-Netanyahu expressions in the US and say, “look, Netanyahu has wrecked our relationship with the US.” J Street’s theme that Netanyahu and Trump are both corrupt, anti-democratic racists will find a fertile field in the progressive media such as NPR and the NY Times that are favored by J Street’s constituency. Because the campaign bashes both Trump and Netanyahu, it will certainly be amplified in those media, which are always ready to take a swipe at Trump.

Fourth, closely associating Trump with Netanyahu minimizes the significance of Trump’s pro-Israel actions like moving the US Embassy to Jerusalem, cutting funds to the Palestinian Authority, downgrading the East Jerusalem consulate, and – I devoutly hope – recognizing Israel’s annexation of the Golan Heights.

J Street’s attack on both Trump and Netanyahu is couched in the universalist, anti-nationalistic (and therefore anti-Zionist) language that finds favor with the progressive Left:

The politics of these two leaders is part of a broader global challenge to liberal democracies rooted in respect for civil society and tolerance of ethnic diversity. Now, the world faces a wave of rising right-wing ethnonationalism with anti-democratic tendencies.

The xenophobia and authoritarianism that the two leaders are fanning is anathema to millions of Americans and American Jews. “While Netanyahu, Trump and their allies may get standing ovations at AIPAC, their views and actions couldn’t be more out of touch with most of the American Jewish community,” Ben-Ami said.

This exposes the true agenda behind J Street, which is actually only one piece of a much larger enterprise opposing nationalism and ethnic particularism, favoring open borders and multiculturalism, and proudly trumpeting extreme cultural relativism. If you think that agenda is a positive one for civilization, look at the ongoing destruction of native European societies like Sweden, for example.

Netanyahu – and Israel, an ethnic nation-state – represent the precise opposite of the agenda, and as such have drawn down upon themselves the wrath of J Street and other such groups, which tendentiously accuse them of being “undemocratic,” “authoritarian,” “racist,” and more. But in fact the “ethnonationalism” that J Street so decries stands opposed to a non-ethnic but much more vicious Islamofascism, which is far less democratic, more authoritarian, and viciously bigoted along religious lines.

The “global challenge to liberal democracies” does not come from nationalism, either in Israel or Eastern Europe, or from Americans who support Trump. It comes from Iran, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, the Muslim Brotherhood, and so on. Netanyahu has a sense of history, and understands all this. And I think that Trump, for all his flaws, does too.

Posted in American Jews, American politics, Islam, Israeli Politics | 1 Comment

Does Ofer Cassif belong in the Knesset?

Posted on March 18, 2019 by Victor Rosenthal

You shall do no injustice in judgment: you shall not be partial to the poor, nor show favoritism to the great; but you shall judge your neighbor in righteousness. – Lev. 19:15

From Israel’s Basic Law: The Knesset,

  1. A candidates’ list shall not participate in elections to the Knesset, and a person shall not be a candidate for election to the Knesset, if the objects or actions of the list or the actions of the person, expressly or by implication, include one of the following:
  2. negation of the existence of the State of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state;
  3. incitement to racism;
  4. support of armed struggle, by a hostile state or a terrorist organization, against the State of Israel.

a1. For the purposes of this section, a candidate that was at a hostile state unlawfully within the seven years preceding the date for submitting the candidates’ list, is deemed a person whose actions express support of armed struggle against the State of Israel, as long as he has not proven otherwise.

b. The decision of the Central Elections Committee that a candidate is prevented from participating in the elections requires the affirmation of the Supreme Court of Israel.  …

The Elections Committee ruled on several petitions prior to the upcoming election. It rejected a petition against the Otzma Yehudit (Jewish Power) party which accused its members of anti-Arab racism, and it disqualified the Balad-Ra’am party, a joint list composed of the Balad (land) party and several other Arab parties. It also ruled against the candidacy of Ofer Cassif, a Jewish member of the mostly Arab Hadash (Communist) party.

To nobody’s surprise, the Supreme Court reversed the decision of the committee. It decided to disqualify Michael Ben Ari of Otzma Yehudit, and to reinstate Balad-Ra’am and Cassif.

The Supreme Court has always been loath to allow the disqualification of candidates, and has always reversed such decisions, with only a few exceptions. In 1988, Meir Kahane’s Kach party was disqualified for racism (as well as its successor, Kahane Chai in 1992), and in 1965 a far-left Arab party was ruled out for negating the State of Israel. On several other occasions, the Election Committee tried to disqualify various Arab or right-wing Jewish parties, but it was always overruled.

I’m not going to discuss the case of Michael Ben Ari in detail. He has certainly made anti-Arab statements, as Arabs often make anti-Jewish ones. But I believe the concept of “racism” is vague and unclear, especially in the context of the conflict between Israel and the Arabs (and I would have said the same about Meir Kahane, whose ideas Ben Ari embraces), and it’s unfortunate that it is included in the law.

I am also going to leave aside the case of the Arab parties, which do their best to skirt the letter of the law while at the same time vying with each other to present themselves to the Arab public as the most anti-Zionist. Balad, in my opinion, has crossed very far over the line, including having members of the Knesset who engaged in criminally subversive activities (and have even been imprisoned for it).

But I do want to talk about the Jewish communist, Ofer Cassif.

Cassif is a teacher at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, who also lectures at several other Israeli colleges and universities. He enjoys insulting his political enemies:

Cassif, who was one of the first Israeli soldiers to refuse to serve in the territories, in 1987, gained fame thanks to a number of provocative statements. The best known is his branding of Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked as “neo-Nazi scum.” On another occasion, he characterized Jews who visit the Temple Mount as “cancer with metastases that have to be eradicated.”

On his alternate Facebook page, launched after repeated blockages of his original account by a blitz of posts from right-wing activists, he asserted that Culture Minister Miri Regev is “repulsive gutter contamination,” that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is an “arch-murderer” and that the new Israel Defense Forces chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Aviv Kochavi, is a “war criminal.”

His insults may rise to the level of incitement to violence, which warrants criminal prosecution.

An anti-Zionist, he considers Zionism a “racist” and “colonialist” movement. He compares Israel to Nazi Germany on a regular basis, and accuses it of genocide and ethnic cleansing. “Israel commits murder on a daily basis,” he says. He favors the “return” of Palestinian Arab “refugees” – that is, those approximately 5 million Arabs recognized by the UN as descendants of those who lived in the area that became Israel for at least 2 years prior to 1948, and fled before and during the war – to “their homes” in what is today Israel, even if it means that Jews will have to leave. He favors the division of the land between the Mediterranean and the Jordan into two states, one a Palestinian Arab state (which would be Jew-free), and the other a “state of all its citizens,” with a right of return for millions of Arabs.

He is not opposed to the existence of the state called Israel, but he is opposed to its character as the nation-state of the Jewish people. He would annul the Law of Return for Jews, but favors such a law for Arabs, whom he sees as the true “natives” of the place, the ones whose homeland it is. He would change the national anthem, the flag, and other symbols, “to belong to all the state’s residents.” Chances are it wouldn’t continue to be called “Israel” for long.

Cassif opposes terrorism against civilians, but calls attacks on Israeli soldiers by Palestinian Arabs legitimate “guerrilla warfare.” When an interviewer asked him if “today’s Hamas commanders who are carrying out attacks on soldiers will be heroes of the future Palestinian state,” his answer was “of course.”

At the Supreme Court hearing, several justices questioned him about this. His lawyer – Hassan Jabareen, the director of Adalah, an NGO concerned with the rights of Arabs in Israel – said “that Kassif was explaining the academic debate about whether attacking soldiers is terrorism or part of armed conflict between two warring sides, but that on a personal level, Kassif opposes all violence.” His statements, however, were not in the context of an academic debate, but rather an interview with Ha’aretz.

Does Cassif meet the criteria for disqualification? It seems incontrovertible. He explicitly opposes the Jewish nature of the state, and the implications of his support of a right of return for Arab “refugees” cannot be imagined as anything but a call for the “negation of the existence” of the state. He supports terrorism directed at soldiers in the territories, which certainly counts as “armed struggle” by an enemy of the state. And yet, the Supreme Court – by a majority of 8 to 1 – does not feel that there is sufficient evidence to keep him out of the Knesset!

I see these events as a manifestation of the Oslo Syndrome, the Jewish internalization of our antisemitic enemies’ representation of our nature and our motives. In particular, left-leaning Israelis act as though the moral high ground is held by the Palestinian Arabs, that – even though objective historical accounts show that our narrative of the founding of the state is far closer to reality than that of the Arabs – we are guilty, guilty of the horrible nakba, almost as bad as the Holocaust, and that in fact we are today’s Nazis. In order to expiate their feelings of guilt, syndrome sufferers like the judges of the Supreme Court bend over backwards to give the Arabs more than true justice demands. At the same time, the harshest treatment is reserved for Jews.

Our legal system, and especially the Supreme Court, applies a double standard to Jews and Arabs. Precisely as is forbidden in the Torah, our judges lean toward those that they (wrongly) believe to be oppressed.

Posted in Israeli Arabs, Israeli Politics | 1 Comment