Hang Arafat Irfaiya!

Posted on February 15, 2019 by Victor Rosenthal

Arafat Irfayia

Arafat Irfaiya is the monster that raped, murdered and mutilated a beautiful 19-year old girl last week because she was a Jew living in Eretz Yisrael. He is guilty of crimes against the Jewish people, and he should be executed for them.

There is a law in Israel that prescribes the death penalty for crimes against the Jewish people committed during WWII or “the period of the Nazi regime.” The limitation to the Nazi period is illogical and should be removed. Murdering Jews, qua Jews, in 2019 is not different than doing it in 1943. Murdering them in order to try to destroy the Jewish state is a crime against the Jewish people no less than deporting them to Auschwitz.

Military courts can impose a death penalty for crimes committed in the territories, but unfortunately the site of the murder was just inside the Green Line, so the trial will be in a civilian court.

The leniency shown by the Jewish state to murderers motivated by “nationalism” – Palestinian Arab Jew-hatred – is remarkable, including almost Scandinavian-style prison conditions, regular salaries paid by the Palestinian authority, and often early release as part of political deals or as blackmail for hostages.

This is stupid. The smiles often displayed by Palestinian Arab terrorists like Irfaiya as they are sentenced testify to the fact that they see themselves as victorious despite their conviction.

Keeping these creatures in prison is expensive, provides an incentive for hostage-taking – you may recall that in 2011 one Jewish soldier, Gilad Shalit, was exchanged for 1027 terrorists, many of whom were guilty of murder – and, thanks to the Palestinian Authority’s payment system and the adulation they receive in Palestinian society, probably encourages further terrorism rather than deterring it. When they are released, they often return to terrorism. In 2015 it was reported that six additional Israelis had been murdered by prisoners released in the Shalit deal.

Every time – and there have been many times – that a Palestinian Arab terrorist commits a particularly horrible murder, there are calls for the imposition of the death penalty. And every time, it doesn’t happen.

There are numerous objections to the death penalty in general. But in this case, and in most cases of Palestinian terrorism, they don’t apply. There is no doubt of Arafat Irfaiya’s guilt; there is physical evidence, including DNA, plus a confession and reenactment of the crime.

It is often said that the death penalty is not a deterrent, and this may be true in the West, especially in places like California, where the probability of a death sentence being carried out in a reasonable time is almost zero. In the Middle East, however, there are cultural factors that have the opposite effect. In our region, not executing a murderer is a sign of weakness, a signal that the victim’s family or tribe is too weak to preserve its honor. And a tribe without honor is a tribe whose members can be murdered with impunity. Failing to impose the death penalty actually has the opposite of a deterrent effect – it encourages murdering Jews.

Since 1967, Israel and the Jewish people have undergone a continuous loss of honor relative to their enemies, as they have made a series of unrequited concessions (starting with the surrender of sovereignty over the Temple Mount). With Oslo the pace of the concessions – and the concomitant terrorism against Israel – accelerated greatly, and there are beginning to be murmurs that still more is about to be expected of us.

If we wish to survive as a Jewish state, the pendulum must be forced to swing back the other way. I believe that a comprehensive policy to regain the initiative – and our honor – is needed. A small part of it would be to actually punish terrorists in proportion to their crimes. Executing Arafat Irfaiya would be a start.

But only a start. How did it come about that there are so many like Irfaiya? Why did two young Palestinian Arabs viciously slaughter five members of the Fogel family including a 3-month old baby girl?  Why did another Palestinian Arab teenager climb through a window and stab Hallel Yaffe Ariel to death in her bed? Why have there been hundreds of terror attacks against Jews by Palestinians in the past four years, many by perpetrators who are not known to be directly associated with traditional terrorist groups?

The answer is not complicated. When Israel invited Yasser Arafat back from exile and allowed the establishment of the Palestinian Authority as part of the Oslo accords, one of Arafat’s first actions was to decree that every institution in the territories under his control – schools, mosques, summer camps, newspapers, radio and TV – would teach violent hatred of Jews and Israel. Every anti-Jewish trope was included, from traditional Muslim “apes and pigs” slanders to memes borrowed from European antisemitism. Terrorists who murder Jewish women and children are treated as military heroes who have carried out successful “operations.” The project was continued by Mahmoud Abbas after Arafat’s death, and in Gaza after the Hamas takeover. Its effect has been to paint Jews as vermin that it is not only permissible, but laudable, to kill.

At some point, Abbas introduced the policy of paying salaries to terrorists in Israeli prisons (if they should be killed during their attacks, the stipend is given to the family). Despite threats from the US and Israel to cut payments to the PA (the US has already reduced aid to the PA in accordance with the Taylor Force Act and PM Netanyahu has promised to start deducting equivalent funds from import duties collected on behalf of the PA), the PA continues to pay terrorists, which Abbas has called his top priority. Salaries are proportional to the length of prison sentences, which means that they are proportional to the severity of the crime.

The combination of the coordinated program of indoctrination, plus financial incentives for terrorist acts, has bred several generations of monsters like Arafat Irfaiya.

What this means is that the leaders of the PLO and Hamas, who have programmed the murderers and who pay them, are also guilty of murder. Indeed Irfaiya and the other monsters are no more than hitmen. The root of the problem is planted higher up.

We have a long road to travel to recover from the errors we’ve made since 1967 and since Oslo. But we have to start small.

As a first step, let’s hang Arafat Irfaiya and go on from there.

Posted in Israel and Palestinian Arabs, Jew Hatred, Terrorism | 4 Comments

A reminder of Amalek

Posted on February 10, 2019 by Victor Rosenthal

Here we are again. A whole country is suffused with feelings of excruciating sorrow, anger, and impotence. Here I am again, writing that another “Palestinian” creature has brutally violated and murdered a beautiful young girl, a 19-year old who had a bright future, who now has none. Her mutilated body lies in the ground, and her family has only memories.

The perpetrator, a 29-year old named Arafat Irfaiya, “left his home in Hebron with a knife and made his way to the village of Beit Jala, walked to the forest, where he saw Ori [Ansbacher], attacked and murdered her,” according to the General Security Service (Shabak). The creature was arrested by the Israel Police’s YAMAM counter-terrorism unit in Ramallah two days after the murder.

The rapist-murderer-mutilator does have a future, unfortunately. If only he’d aimed a gun at the policemen who came to arrest him! But he was too smart for that. His house, or part of it, or none of it, may be demolished – that will depend on our Supreme Court – but he will receive a salary in prison, the Palestinian Authority will give his family a new house, and he will be a hero, honored by his community, candy passed out on his behalf. And some day he will be released from prison, maybe even on a day not so far off if there is some kind of deal or “prisoner exchange” (in other words, if he is freed in exchange for an Israeli held hostage).

The Prime Minister said that “…we will bring the matter to justice.” But we won’t. There would have been justice, perhaps, if the creature had been shot when he was caught, but that didn’t happen. We don’t have justice, we have what Tuvia Tenenbom called “a very complicated Talmudic thing, nobody knows, even the Jews cannot figure it out.”

The “Palestinians,” a nationality invented by the KGB in the 1960s and applied to the regional Arabs who claim the territory set aside for Israel by the international community as the Palestine Mandate after WWI, are the spiritual and practical descendants of the biblical tribe of Amalek, an enemy hated and feared by the people of Israel because of their penchant for attacking from the rear, killing the weakest and the slowest of the Israelites.

This has always been the strategy of the “Palestinians,” who especially seek out Jewish women and children to act out their perpetual rage upon (in a textbook case of psychological projection, they accuse the IDF of targeting “Palestinian” children).

The Jewish people are commanded (Deut. 25:19) “blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven. Do not forget.” This is generally understood to mean to completely destroy the tribe (see also I Samuel 15:3), but the rabbis decided that because of the way the various nations were scattered in history, it is impossible to determine who, if anyone, is a blood descendant of Amalek today. Nevertheless that commandment still has meaning. I would not go as far as the prophet Samuel and insist that we are required to kill every living creature in Amalek’s camp, but I understand it to mean that when faced with an antisemitic enemy, we are required to achieve full victory over it, to obtain what was called unconditional surrender after WWII.

We have been trying to do the “complicated Talmudic thing” since 1967, perhaps since 1948, and it hasn’t worked. Today we know that there can’t be coexistence, that Jews and “Palestinians” can’t live together (the jury is still out about the Arab citizens of Israel). Yasser Arafat’s educational system, perpetuated by his successor Mahmoud Abbas, and the similar system in the Gaza Strip controlled by Hamas and paid for by the UN, have guaranteed that. They have bred possibly the first complete generations of youthful Jew-haters vicious enough to cut the heads off of three-month old babies and to stab 75-year old grandmothers in the street. First, almost from birth, they inculcate in them white-hot hatred against Jews, and then they provide financial and psychological incentives for them to act on their hatred.

Arafat Irfaiya is a perfect example of the new breed of terrorist made possible by this system. A “lone wolf” who (as far as we know) didn’t receive direct instructions from the terror groups, found a victim by chance and murdered her with extreme brutality. He was a robot, programmed for murder, and triggered by some seemingly insignificant event.

Perhaps decades ago we could have simply wiped out the PLO and reached some kind of understanding with traditional leaders among the Palestinian Arabs. Perhaps not. But today the “Palestinians” have taken on the mantle of Amalek. They must be defeated and disarmed, and those who see themselves as our enemies must be permanently expelled from the land of Israel. A policy to encourage Arabs to emigrate from the area between the Jordan and the Mediterranean should be implemented. Jewish sovereignty should be imposed over all of Eretz Yisrael.

We are not moving in that direction. In today’s Jewish state, “Palestinians” have as many, or more, rights than Jews. Our Supreme Court grants them the ability to bring about the demolition of Jewish homes in Judea and Samaria, but in many cases prevents the IDF from demolishing homes of “Palestinian” murderers. Between 2012 and 2018, Israel has facilitated the transfer of over $1 billion from Qatar to the Amalekites of Hamas. Israel also provides Hamas with electricity and water, and allows Hamas to collect taxes on these.

Israel also collects import duties for the Palestinian Authority and transfers the money to it. At long last, the Knesset passed a law allowing Israel to deduct the amounts the PA pays to terrorists like Arafat Irfaiya from this sum (in 2017 and 2018, the PA’s budget for such payments was $320 million each year). The PM promises to enforce the law. We’ll see if he has the will to do so, and if the legal establishment will let him.

Instead of destroying our enemies, we are trying to make their lives better, in the hope that they will like us better. It strengthens them and makes them despise us more.

When King Shaul was ordered by Hashem (via the prophet Samuel) to completely destroy Amalek and all his possessions, he waffled, leaving King Agag alive and keeping the best of Amalek’s animals. Because he disobeyed Hashem’s command, Samuel ordered that his kingship should be taken away and given to someone “worthier than you.”

I am not suggesting that we are commanded to destroy all the “Palestinians” and their livestock, although terrorists like Arafat Irfaiya should be executed with all possible dispatch. But I do think that the decision to pay tribute to the Palestinian Amalek instead of defeating, disarming, and dispersing it contravenes reason, in both secular and religious forms.

Maybe the time has come to take away the “kingship” from our present leadership and give it to someone “worthier?”

Posted in Israel and Palestinian Arabs, Jew Hatred, Terrorism | 8 Comments

Sixty-three Days of Madness

Posted on February 8, 2019 by Victor Rosenthal

Israel has dived head on into pre-election madness, with commercials on social media (TV and radio commercials are not allowed until 26 March, thank goodness), text messages, wild and not-so-wild accusations and allegations, and – until the deadline for presenting party lists in two weeks – rumors of shifting alliances between parties and factions. It is hard to believe that on 9 April this will be over.

The actual contest is between the blocs of parties representing the Left and the Right. The Left continues to chant its mantra of democracy in danger, while the Right warns of a left-wing government that will repeat the errors of Oslo and the withdrawal from Gaza. While the poll numbers of the individual parties go up and down, the totals for the competing blocs change very little.

The fact is, there is a right-wing majority in Israel, for the very good reason that the twin traumas of Oslo and Gaza taught most of us a serious lesson. The Left pretends that its ideas today are more sophisticated than they were in 1993, but nobody is fooled. Even if the Left should propose to take the Arabs into the coalition – something that has never occurred before – barring the very unexpected, we will have another right-wing coalition.

Incidentally, the indictment of PM Binyamin Netanyahu for alleged corruption is not “unexpected.” It will happen, because the legal establishment, which leans leftward, wants it, and the similarly-biased media have been clamoring for it. Netanyahu and the Right have tried to weaken the power of the unelected establishment in media and the legal system, and the elites are fighting back with everything they have. But most voters who prefer Bibi believe that the things he is accused of are either small enough to be ignored, or constitute politics as usual. The probable indictment is already “priced into” the polls.

The major threat to the Right is the new Hosen l’Yisrael party (Resilience for Israel) party led by former Chief of Staff Benny Gantz, and including Moshe Ya’alon, a former Defense Minister and COS himself, probably along with yet another former COS, Gabi Ashkenazi. One would think that all this brass in one place would produce a right-wing party, but in Israel, ex-generals are often lefties (this is for historical reasons, and probably won’t be true in the future as more religious and Mizrachi officers are promoted). Gantz seems like a pleasant, honest, and dignified person, and some claim that he has the charisma that previous opposition figures lacked.

The party defines itself as “centrist” – Gantz claimed to be “neither Left nor Right,” but even in his initial speech, which was heavy on platitudes and vague promises, there were hints of a willingness to surrender parts of Judea and Samaria to the Arabs. He referred to the Jordan Valley as the “security border” of the state, something which leaves the door open to arrangements in which it would not be under full Israeli sovereignty. Apparently lacking political sense, he even praised the “disengagement” from Gaza in an interview published Wednesday. His party did well in initial polls after its launch, and may gain strength if Ashkenazi joins; it may even absorb Yair Lapid’s centrist Yesh Atid (There is a Future) party. But I don’t think it will ultimately take any right-of-center votes. The blocs are solid.

The Left argues somewhat shrilly that Netanyahu is destroying Israeli democracy and introducing fascism, citing his attacks on the media, and the legal establishment; his support for the Nation-State Law, and what they consider his populist style. None of this really hits the mark, except with those who are already opposed to him. The media and the legal establishment are biased against him, and shouldn’t be surprised when he hits back.

The accusations that Netanyahu is destroying democracy are not convincing, either. Polls consistently show that Netanyahu is the person that more people consider suitable to be Prime Minister than anyone else, which is prima facie evidence that democracy is functional. What his opponents mean, of course, is that Bibi opposes the unelected “gatekeepers” of liberalism in the form of the media and the legal and academic-cultural elites, who wish to turn the clock back to before 1977, when they controlled the political system. The public intuitively understands this, and likes the clock where it is today, thank you.

The Right has its problems, too. It has been unable to form a coalition without the Haredi parties, a real irritant for Israel’s secular majority, particularly the nearly 1 million from the former USSR, many of whom can’t satisfy the Haredi Chief Rabbinate that they are Jewish enough to get married in Israel. They would prefer to let localities make up their own minds about whether or not to allow stores and public transportation to operate on Shabbat.

Both sides promise to reduce the cost of living and especially the cost of housing, which has skyrocketed in recent years. I am not sure of the explanation, but here in Rehovot, there are new buildings under construction everywhere, and they are filling up. Enough people seem to be able to afford the expensive new apartments to keep the developers busy. Food and clothing are also expensive. The health-care system is stretched very thin: emergency rooms in some parts of the country are overflowing, there is a shortage of doctors and nurses, there are long waits for some procedures, and other problems. It’s not clear that anyone has a serious program to improve these things.

But nothing is more important than security. Israel will not forget Oslo and the consequences of it. The country was dragged by the delusional Left, into a situation in which we introduced our deadliest enemies into our midst, provided them with weapons and money, and watched them kill us. More than a thousand of our relatives, neighbors and friends, were murdered while riding buses, eating pizza, or attending Passover seders, as a direct result of the Oslo accords; and today, sixteen years after, we are still paying a price in terrorism. Instead of being honored, Shimon Peres and the others who let this happen – who made this happen – should have been prosecuted, or at least permanently banished from public life.

There is a good reason that the majority of Jewish Israelis simply don’t trust anyone to the left of the Likud, and this is it. Many Israelis would sooner have a picnic on the grass inside the lion exhibit at the Ramat Gan Safari park than put their lives in the hands of the ideological heirs of these criminally incompetent egotists.

I don’t think there is a harder job in the world than being Prime Minister of Israel. There’s no room for mistakes, and the consequences of making one follow quickly. If he screws up, he – and the nation – pay the price right away. At the same time, the constraints placed on the PM by the exigencies of the coalition system, the too-powerful Supreme Court and Attorney General, and the intrusive and hostile media, limit what he can do. He bears all the responsibility, but has insufficient authority to do his job.

Although military experience is a necessity for a Prime Minister or a Defense Minister, in order to understand the soldiers, and to be able to respond in their language. I think, though, that a professional soldier with no civilian political experience is rarely a good candidate for PM. Military politics are not the same as civilian politics, and international politics are another world entirely. Armies have interests, and they are not always identical to the nation’s interests. This is why civilian control of the military is necessary, and why someone who has recently stepped down from the role of Chief of Staff may not have the broad perspective necessary for a Prime Minister. The three former chiefs who became PMs (Rabin, Barak, and Sharon) were, in my estimation, poor Prime Ministers.

As I write, there are 63 days remaining until I exercise my right and responsibility again, to place a small piece of paper in a box to help choose the next Knesset and Prime Minister.

I can hardly wait!

Posted in Israeli Politics | 3 Comments

Ban Balad

Posted on February 3, 2019 by Victor Rosenthal

Twenty-one per cent of Israel’s citizens are Arabs.

Most of them resent living in a Jewish state. At the same time, most of them are certain that they have more freedom and are better off – economically, physically, educationally – than in any Arab state, including the proposed “Palestinian” one. Some are happy to live together with Jews, but most live in Arab-only towns and prefer that. Most have no problem working side by side with Jews.

As citizens of Israel they have the right to vote and hold office. Most of them vote, and most of those vote for one of the Arab parties, although many choose the more liberal Jewish parties. Some even vote for the Likud.

Their representatives in the Knesset are more militant about Jewish-Arab issues than the general population. Some favor cooperation with the Jewish state, but some openly favor its liquidation. It is not against the law in Israel to hate the Jewish state, as long as you don’t support terrorism or incite it.

But still, imagine what it would be like for your country to have a party in its legislature whose platform directly calls for your state to be dissolved and replaced by one governed by its enemies. Israel has at least one, Balad.

Jamal Zahalka, the chairman of the Balad Party, one of the Arab parties making up the Joint List which today holds thirteen seats in Israel’s Knesset, recently said that his party is “not part of the Israeli left, but is an inseparable part of the Palestinian national movement.”

Zahalka is retiring from the Knesset, but he remains chairman of the party. His top position on Balad’s list for election was taken by Mtanes Shihadeh, who agreed with Zahalka’s formulation.

Among the Joint List’s thirteen are three members of Balad. At present they are Zahalka, Hanin Zoabi (who is also retiring, and who is notorious for being on the Mavi Marmara, a Turkish ship that tried to break the Gaza blockade and whose passengers engaged in a deadly confrontation with Israeli naval commandos), and Basel Ghattas, who is serving a two-year prison sentence for smuggling cell phones and SIM cards to security prisoners in Israeli jails.

Balad’s founder, Azmi Bishara, is currently in Doha, Qatar, where he fled to avoid prosecution for aiding Hezbollah during the 2006 Second Lebanon War.

Balad’s official position is that they favor the division of Israel into two states: one would be an Palestinian Arab state, and the other a binational “democratic state of all its citizens,” including, of course, a right of return for the millions of Arabs holding refugee status. There would be no specifically Jewish state.

The “Palestinian National Movement” of course is not a concretely existing institution. However, it can be assumed to be an amalgam of the PLO, Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and so on – all of which explicitly advocate the violent replacement of Israel by an Arab state.

By now you are probably asking, how can a party that opposes the existence of a Jewish state and – by associating itself with the Palestinian National Movement – supports violent “resistance” against Israel, be allowed to run candidates for Israel’s parliament?

The answer is that according to the law, it can’t. Israel’s Basic Law: The Knesset, says

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:

  1. negation of the existence of the State of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state;
  2. incitement to racism;
  3. support of armed struggle, by a hostile state or a terrorist organization, against the State of Israel.

An earlier version of this law, incidentally, was used to disqualify Meir Kahane from the Knesset in 1988 on the grounds of racism. He is the only candidate that has ever been banned under this law whose ban was not overturned by the Supreme Court.

Balad explicitly and clearly falls into the first category, and probably the third. Indeed, in 2003 and 2009, Israel’s Central Elections Committee disqualified Balad and another party on precisely these grounds. But both times, Israel’s Supreme Court overturned the ban. The Court ruled (2009 decision is here, in Hebrew) that the committee hadn’t “met the evidentiary burden” of proving that the parties had violated the law, although in the case of Balad in 2009, one of nine justices dissented, saying that Balad’s position did negate the idea of Israel as a Jewish state.

Israel’s Supreme Court is a problem (read this excellent review by Evelyn Gordon of a book on the subject by Daniel Friedmann). They explain that the Court has neutered Israel’s elected Knesset and government in a process that has been going on for several decades, by arrogating more and more power to itself, bit by bit. Today the Supreme Court has no effective checks and balances to keep it from intervening anywhere in Israel’s political, social or economic spheres. Decisions are not made on constitutional principles (there is no constitution and the Court is very creative about interpreting basic laws), but simply by what appeals to the justices’ liberal sensibilities.

Although the left-leaning media and legal elites that currently use the Court to exert their influence over the state will scream “democracy in danger!” when anyone suggests limiting the Court’s power, the real threat to democracy is the judicial dictatorship that has wrapped its tentacles around the country.

Gordon notes that the text in the Basic Law: The Knesset regarding disqualification of a party was rewritten several times in an attempt to find a version that could be applied to anti-state parties and survive a Supreme Court challenge; but apparently, there can never be enough evidence for these justices. At least, not if the complaint is against an Arab party.

She also presents Friedmann’s persuasive argument that by not disqualifying Balad, the Court accomplished the opposite of its objective of benefiting Israeli Arabs, due to the inevitable backlash to the incitement and provocation carried out by Arab extremists in the Knesset – incitement that has led to actual violence on more than one occasion.

There is also the question of self-respect. The Jewish state of Israel does not withhold full political rights from Arabs. Should we also grant them a right to call for the destruction of said state in the halls of our parliament?

In retrospect, the decision to effectively allow unlimited anti-state speech by Arab members of Israel’s parliament has been a poor one. The Supreme Court, like all unelected rulers, whether kings, dictators, or juntas, believes itself to have better judgment than those unwashed multitudes that constitute the electorate, and their slightly better-groomed representatives. But there is a reason that Churchill called democracy the worst form of government, except for all those others. The elites claim to be for democracy, but as Gordon notes, they have a tendency to confuse the democratic system of government with the “all-encompassing set of social and moral values known today as liberalism.”

Events may give the Supreme Court, now perhaps improved by four years of Ayelet Shaked as Justice Minister, another chance to prove itself a champion of justice rather than of the Meretz party line. Zahalka’s remarks may provoke the Central Elections Committee to invoke the law and complain yet again about Balad. And maybe this time the disqualification will stick.

Posted in Israeli Arabs, Israeli Politics | 4 Comments

Divorcing the Palestinians

Posted on February 1, 2019 by Victor Rosenthal

One of the favorite lines heard from Israel’s Left is that they want to “separate” from the Palestinians, or, lately, to “divorce” them. This may sound like a good idea, but it is a poor analogy. In the usual divorce, one of the former partners moves away. They don’t try to continue living in the same house.

The separation or divorce that they are talking about is the same old thing: they want Israel to withdraw from most or all of Judea and Samaria, and allow the creation of a Palestinian state. Whatever you call it, the consequences will be the same: the advancement to the next stage of Yasser Arafat’s “Phased Plan” for the destruction of Israel, and a return to what Abba Eban called “Auschwitz borders.”

The plan calls for the establishment of an “independent combatant national authority” that will control any territory “liberated” from the Zionists; then this authority will unify all the “Arab liberation movements” and ultimately coordinate attacks from a “union of confrontation countries” to complete the “liberation of all Palestinian territory.”

The phased plan, from 1974, sounds quaint today. There is no mention of Hamas, Hezbollah, or Iran. Indeed, Iran – ruled by the Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlevi – had good relations with Israel back then. It includes a gesture to Jordan, which still maintained claims on Judea and Samaria at that time.

But the physical geography of our country and its strategic significance haven’t changed. There is still high ground overlooking our population centers from Judea and Samaria. There is still the Jordan valley, whose western slope guards our eastern border. The players have changed somewhat, and the military threats have become more sophisticated. Although the IDF has improved its capabilities, so have our enemies improved theirs. But the land is still the land. Hills are still hills; passes between them are still strategic.

The “international community,” whose will is expressed by the UN, is stuck in 1974, still wanting to reverse the outcome of the 1967 war. Maybe some of the practical reasons are different – a little less Arab oil blackmail and a little more desire to enter the Iranian market – but its hypocritical concern for the welfare of the Palestinian Arabs still hides its fundamental belief that a sovereign Jewish state should not exist.

It wasn’t always thus. Right after the First World War, the victorious Western powers for a short time were prepared to set aside a portion of the former Ottoman Empire that had already been developed by Zionist immigration, and which just happened to be the historic home of the Jewish people, for settlement by the exiled remnants of those people. This was seen as a win-win situation for everyone involved: the Zionists would get their homeland, the Europeans would (ultimately) get rid of their Jews, and the British – who would hold the Mandate for the sake of the Jews – would get a convenient place to stand to protect the flank of the Suez Canal, and maybe to build a railroad from the port of Haifa to the Jewel in the Crown of the British Empire, India.

Almost immediately, the British began reneging on their responsibilities toward the Jews, limiting Jewish immigration and encouraging local Arabs in their desire to see the whole Mandate become an Arab state. Maybe they thought an Arab state would be easier to control, or maybe they just liked the Arabs better than the Jews. Later, as the gates of Europe began closing for Jews trying to escape Hitler, their increasingly ferocious efforts to prevent Jewish immigration to Eretz Yisrael became one of the moral low points in the dark history of the period.

The 1948 War of independence and the 1967 Six Days war – a war of aggression intended to destroy the Jewish state – finally established Jewish control of the all the land between the Mediterranean and the Jordan. The 1973 Yom Kippur war proved that even under the worst conditions, the newly expanded state was defensible.

The Arab nations were soundly defeated, but unfortunately the conflict became a proxy for the Cold War between the West and the USSR. Under the tutelage of the Soviet KGB, the Arabs developed a multi-faceted approach including terrorism, Soviet-supported diplomacy, and a sophisticated propaganda effort using revolutionary third-world rhetoric. After the Yom Kippur War, the Saudi-controlled oil weapon was deployed, and as a result the formerly apolitical (but very powerful) international corporate community quietly joined the vociferous Left in its embrace of the “Palestinian cause” (i.e., the replacement of Israel with an Arab state).

Still, after its 1982 defeat in Lebanon, Arafat’s PLO – the ideological heir of the British-appointed Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, who collaborated with Hitler – should have faded into obscurity. But then Israel, under the guidance of the same Left that today claims to want a divorce from the Palestinians, fired a nuclear cannon into its own foot – the Oslo Accords.

Suddenly, the Phased Plan came back to life, with the creation – by Israel – of the very “Palestinian National Authority” called for in Arafat’s original plan!

Today Soviet Communism is gone, replaced by the more pragmatic and flexible (but still dangerous) Putinism, the Saudis are moderating their attacks on Israel in the hope that Israel will deal with Iran for them, and the Arab nations are in no condition to wage war. The center of anti-Zionism has moved to Tehran, from where it operates an octopus of terrorist proxies to fight the Jewish state.

But despite all the changes, what should have been settled in 1967 is still questioned today.

The international community is still pressuring us to reverse the results of the 1967 war. And thanks to the deluded, gulled, pressured, or traitorous architects of Oslo – take your pick – we are on our way to doing that. The vicious PLO is back, ruling the Palestinian Authority. The first phase of Arafat’s plan to finally liquidate the Jewish state is complete.

There are spiritual and historical reasons that Judea and Samaria should be in Jewish hands. But whether or not they are important to you, there are also brute facts of geography: without control of the high ground of Judea and Samaria and the Jordan Valley, the state cannot be defended. We must not go back to Auschwitz borders.

I think a divorce from the Palestinians is a good idea. But I have a different property settlement in mind: we keep the house and they move out.

Posted in 'Peace' Process, Israel and Palestinian Arabs, Israeli or Jewish History | 2 Comments

The Doctrine of the Strong Jew

Posted on January 27, 2019 by Victor Rosenthal

Today is International Holocaust Remembrance Day. It was established by the United Nations, the most important representative of the enemies of the Jewish people in the world. In its 2005 declaration to establish the annual event, the UN condemned “all manifestations of religious intolerance, incitement, harassment or violence against persons or communities based on ethnic origin or religious belief, wherever they occur.” The hypocrisy of the UN, which has engaged in intolerance and incitement against Israel and condoned violence against her since her victory in the 1967 war – an attempt by the Arabs to repeat the Nazi genocide against the Jews –  needs no elaboration.

Historian Benny Morris says that the Turks perpetrated a “30-year genocide” against Christians – Armenians, Assyrians, and Greeks – murdering between 1.5 and 2.5 million between 1894 and 1924. If the UN were consistent, there would be an international day marking this genocide as well. But of course it wouldn’t do this, nor would it take action against the increasing persecution of Christians and other non-Muslims in the Middle East.

Israel, where the majority of the survivors of the Holocaust and their descendants live, has Yom haShoah on 27 Nissan, which falls in April or May on the civil calendar. We don’t need another day of remembrance, and especially not one established by the UN.

I am sure that whoever had the idea to do this had only good intentions. But it serves no worthwhile purpose.

As I’ve written, Holocaust education for Jew-haters just tends to encourage them. It provides ideas and examples, as well as vicarious satisfaction. And for those who don’t hate us, the emotional catharsis provided by crying over the horrors of 75 years ago helps them keep their eyes shut to what is happening today.

We are not going to bring back our murdered grandparents (and great-grandparents, by now), with international observances. We are also unlikely to reduce antisemitism, particularly the kind that comes dressed up as anti-Zionism, by explaining that any kind of racial or religious hatred is reprehensible. Everyone knows this by now, except that their particular hatred is justified.

It doesn’t help improve the worldwide situation of the Jews or other persecuted minorities. The message transmitted by most international observances is that the Nazis killed a lot of people for bad reasons. They murdered Jews for racial reasons, and several million Poles and other Slavs for what could be called “national” reasons, and massacred Russian POWs because they were Russians. They also “euthanized” disabled and mentally ill people, and murdered thousands of Roma, homosexuals, and others. Killing people for reasons like these, says the UN, is wrong. Don’t do it, says the UN.

But the connection to current events seems to be missing. Antisemitism and anti-Zionism everywhere are as bad or worse than they were at any time since the end of WWII. The Iranian regime continues to make genocidal threats on an almost daily basis. The Palestinian Arabs, are taught by their dual regimes in Gaza and the Palestinian Authority that murdering Jews is not just permissible, it’s admirable. The PA in effect pays a bounty for dead Jewish civilians, and refuses to stop doing so even when threatened by its largest donor.

In Continental Europe and Britain, anti-Jewish attitudes – especially centered on Israel – are more pervasive than ever, while a study of antisemitic violence from 2005-2015 found that violent incidents are most likely to be perpetrated by Muslims. In the US, serious violence is more likely to come from neo-Nazis or “white nationalists” like the one who invaded a Pittsburgh synagogue and murdered eleven people inside. But especially on college campuses, increasing Jew-hatred tends to be linked to anti-Israel attitudes popular with Muslim or extreme left-wing students and faculty. There also seems to be a greater prevalence of black antisemitism, including violent incidents, although it might just be that it has been noticed more by the media in recent months.

I have a theory about Jew-hatred. An important component of it is contempt for Jews as physical beings. Antisemites think of Jews as powerful in occult ways, but they also see us as weak, not capable of asserting ourselves physically and fighting back. The more a Jew tries to behave in an ingratiating way, the weaker he looks, and the more the antisemite hates him. So a good way to reduce antisemitism is to fight the enemies of the Jewish people aggressively. This works in the schoolyard with antisemitic bullies, but it also works in the realm of geopolitics, where it is called “establishing deterrence by disproportionate response,” or The Doctrine of the Strong Jew.

Recent history shows that when the doctrine has been properly applied, it’s been successful. Other approaches, such as restraint, appeals to common interests (we really don’t have any with our enemies), payment of tribute, or appeasement are certain to fail, with unpleasant practical consequences, as well as bringing about an increase in antisemitism. One advantage of applying the doctrine is that not only does it teach your immediate enemy a lesson, not only does it broadcast to the world in general that acting on one’s Jew-hatred doesn’t pay, but it strikes a blow against one of the ideological pillars of Jew-hatred, the image of the weak Jew.

Of course you need to win your battles. Starting fights that you will lose is not a good idea, as Ehud Olmert found out in Lebanon in 2006. But the alternative approach – taking the stance of the Weak Jew – is guaranteed to make the situation worse. Oslo, the withdrawal from South Lebanon, the withdrawal from Gaza, the policy of restraint in the face of Hamas’ arson balloons – all of these are examples of the Weak Jew. On the other hand, Netanyahu seems to have adopted the Strong Jew Doctrine toward Iran.

So let’s go back to International Holocaust Remembrance Day. Although I doubt it, supposing that the idea was to actually reduce antisemitism, and make another Holocaust less likely. Then I can think of a much better use to put all the money that will be expended on this exercise.

Give it to the one organization that, over the years, has been the most effective of all in fighting antisemitism: the Israel Defense Force.

Posted in Jew Hatred, The UN | 5 Comments

Friedman’s Lens and Sisyphean Mud

Posted on January 25, 2019 by Victor Rosenthal

Matti Friedman explains what should be obvious when he says that there is no Israeli-Palestinian conflict:

There isn’t an Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the way that many outsiders seem to think, and this perception gap is worth spelling out. It has nothing to do with being right-wing or left-wing in the American sense. To borrow a term from the world of photography, the problem is one of zoom. Simply put, outsiders are zoomed in, and people here in Israel are zoomed out. Understanding this will make events here easier to grasp.

Zoom out and you will see, Friedman explains, that only a minority of Israel’s enemies, historically and currently, are Palestinian Arabs. Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Iraq, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and even Yemen joined with the Palestinians in an attempt to snuff out the newly-declared State of Israel in 1948. Today Iran and her Shiite proxies – Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Iraqi militias entrenching themselves in Syria are Israel’s most formidable enemies, with Hamas, the Qatari-financed offshoot of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, playing a secondary role.

Compared to the Palestinians, Israel looks strong, Goliath to their David. But in the context of the overall Muslim Middle East, Israel, with its relatively small population and lack of strategic depth, is threatened.

And this, says Friedman, is why the peace processors don’t get it. Clinton, Bush, and Obama were all “Zoomed in” on Israel and the Palestinians, while not understanding the broader context. Although we haven’t heard Trump’s proposal yet, it will likely have the same defect.

Friedman is right, as far as he goes. He doesn’t mention the reason that five Arab armies invaded the new state of Israel in 1948, or the reason the “peace” agreements with Egypt and Jordan are cold, pragmatic deals that greatly benefit the autocratic regimes of those countries, while not moving a centimeter in the direction of the normalization of everyday relations between the nations that was supposed to follow. It certainly isn’t because these countries care about the welfare of Palestinians. The invaders of 1948 did not turn over the areas that they controlled to Palestinian Arabs, and indeed treated them quite cruelly. It was Israel, not Jordan, that created the autonomous Palestinian Authority, and it was Israel, not Egypt, that turned over control of Gaza to the Palestinians.

Of course there are the usual geopolitical explanations for the broader conflict, but they are not sufficient to explain its persistence or its virulence. While it’s clear that Iran is hostile toward Israel for geopolitical reasons – Israel is seen as an outpost of American power in the region that Iran wishes to dominate – there is also a special degree of hatred that is reserved for Israel above other Iranian opponents. Iran does not threaten to destroy Saudi Arabia, a closer and more immediate rival. Iranian demonstrators rarely if ever chant “death to Saudia.”

I believe that the ultimate source of this enmity is the principle – literally an “article of faith” in the Muslim Middle East – that a sovereign Jewish state in the region is an abomination to Allah, and it is their religious duty to destroy it. This religious/racial principle is sometimes expressed verbally by saying “Israel is a cancer” that must be excised from the Middle East, a sentiment expressed both by the Iranian regime and in Palestinian Authority media. This is Muslim rejectionism.

But I think even this analysis doesn’t go far enough. Resentment and hatred of Jews, deeply ensconced in Christian tradition, is found throughout post-Christian Europe. While in most of Europe the moral principles of Christianity have been transmuted into a kind of universalist humanism (much like Reform Judaism), the visceral hatred of the Jew that “killed their God” hasn’t disappeared; it’s just been turned toward the Jewish state, today the bearer of the guilt of Judas, with the suffering Palestinians taking on the role of the crucified Savior. Of course the irony in this is that the Muslims that are besieging Europe today are as almost as hostile to non-Muslim sovereignty there as they are against the Jewish variety in the Middle East (ordinary Europeans are beginning to understand this, although many of their leaders don’t seem to get it yet).

I suggest that to really understand the conflicts surrounding Israel since its coming into being, one needs to zoom out even further than Friedman does. One needs to take into account that not only Arabs and Muslims are viscerally opposed to the concept of Jewish sovereignty, many Europeans and even some circles in America are too. Although they might not go as far as to compare Israel to a malignant tumor, they are quite comfortable saying that the creation of Israel was a mistake. Friedman’s lens must be widened to include not just the greater Middle East, but much of the Western world.

And this enables us to understand why the “peace” proposals based on Israeli concessions to the Palestinians keep coming, despite the fact that they have repeatedly been shown incapable of ameliorating the real problem, Muslim rejectionism of Jewish sovereignty. Even those in the West who do not completely reject the right of the Jewish people to self-determination in a sovereign state, adhere to a milder form of rejectionism: they may accept the idea of a Jewish state, but they firmly believe that the conflict surrounding it is a result of its being an alien element that doesn’t belong in its neighborhood. Therefore the solutions they choose always involve Israel adapting herself to the region and not the opposite. And this always means Israel meeting the demands of her neighbors. Of course, those demands will never end until there is no more Israel.

I can’t leave Friedman’s article without noting one jarring paragraph, possibly written as it was at the request of his NY Times editor:

When I look at the West Bank as an Israeli, I see 2.5 million Palestinian civilians living under military rule, with all the misery that entails. I’m seeing the many grave errors our governments have made in handling the territory and its residents, the construction of civilian settlements chief among them.

Suddenly we are back to “settlements” and “military rule” (actually, this is incorrect, since around 95% of the Palestinians in Judea/Samaria live in areas controlled by the Palestinian Authority). Friedman, who has shown himself capable of understanding the strategic imperatives of Israel’s military control of the land, is nevertheless still stuck in the Sisyphean mud of the “2-state solution” (just like my fictitious Uncle Max two Passovers ago). Is Friedman himself guilty of the mild rejectionism that demands that Israel should pay the price for her neighbors’ violent racism?

Despite this – the obligatory mea culpa of every Jewish liberal or centrist writer on the subject – we should take Friedman’s advice and zoom out to see the conflict in its true, worldwide and historical context. And stay out of the mud.

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

Sex, Lies, and Judicial Appointments

Posted on January 20, 2019 by Victor Rosenthal

A sex scandal juicy enough to be the plot of a Hollywood movie is currently roiling the Israeli justice system. A powerful man, multiple women, possible involvement in the highest places, and it all came crashing down. It could end well or badly for the nation, although it is definitely going to go badly for those involved. First, some background:

In most democratic countries, judges are appointed by the elected representatives of the people, or even elected directly. Supreme Court Justices in the US are appointed by the President and then confirmed by the Senate. But in Israel, almost every judge from the lowest local magistrate to the Justices of the Supreme Court, are picked by a nine-member Judicial Selection Committee. The committee consists of:

  • The Justice Minister (currently Ayelet Shaked), and one additional minister, chosen by the cabinet members.
  • Two members of the Knesset, customarily one each from the coalition and the opposition, chosen by the Knesset.
  • Two members of the Israel Bar Association, chosen by a vote of the Association’s national council.
  • The President of the Supreme Court, plus two other Justices of the Court.

The Justice Minister chairs the committee. Since 2014, at least one in each of the four categories must be a woman.

The first thing one notices is that there are five members of the legal profession and four politicians. The second thing is that the largest bloc is that of the Supreme Court members. The result has been what is often described as “the Supreme Court appointing itself.” Since legal establishment tends to lean Left, the makeup of the Court has also tended leftward.

Israel doesn’t have a constitution, and in place of one has several Basic Laws. Some of them – in particular the Basic Law: Human Dignity and Liberty – are relatively broad (compared, for example, to the American Bill of Rights), and have been interpreted quite creatively by the Supreme Court. In fact, the court has interpreted the Basic Laws to give itself the power to cancel laws passed by the Knesset, and to intervene in almost every area of Israeli life.

Many Israelis on the right side of the spectrum, including myself, find this extremely worrying. Where is democracy, if an unelected elite, especially one that is diametrically opposed to the will of the electorate, is given almost unlimited power to run the affairs of the nation?

Of course, if you ask them they will say that real democracy means following their instructions. It’s that redneck (whatever the Israeli equivalent is) Knesset which is anti-democratic. As philosopher-princes (and princesses), they know better.

Since becoming Justice Minister in 2015, Ayelet Shaked has tried to restore balance in the judicial system in general and on the Supreme Court in particular. Unable to change the system of selection, or (so far) to get a law passed that will enable the Knesset to override the court in some circumstances, she has worked to have somewhat more conservative Justices appointed to the Supreme Court.

But the real problem is the selection system. Not only is it undemocratic and heavily biased in favor of the existing judicial system, but there is a built-in conflict of interest: lawyers have great influence in choosing the judges that hear their cases.

Now for the juicy part. In the past week a scandal has erupted in which the (former) chairman of the Israel Bar Association, Efraim (Effi) Naveh, has been accused of arranging for the promotion of a female judge from a Magistrate’s Court to a District Court in return for sex with her; and also of trying to obtain a promotion for a male judge with whose wife – also a practicing lawyer – he was having an affair. Naveh also allegedly advanced the career of legal interns in return for sex.

Until last December, when Naveh was indicted for smuggling a woman in and out of the country without proper documentation – a story in itself rife with cinematic possibilities – he was a member of the Judicial Selection Committee. Of course, even if he had not been a member, as Chairman of the Bar Association, he had great power to influence it.

Although few details have come out – the police have hobbled the feverish Israeli media with an order not to publish the names of the women involved and other facts (although anyone with access to Google can quickly find out) – it’s beginning to look like these cases are the tip of a very disturbing iceberg, which can destroy confidence in the entire judicial system. Radical surgery will be necessary to rip out every trace of corruption, and we don’t know how deep it goes.

Naveh was a friend of the Attorney General (who had to recuse himself from this case). Worse, he worked closely with Justice Minister Shaked in her project to see fewer activist judges appointed to the Supreme Court. The Left is jumping up and down with glee trying to tar the previously squeaky-clean Shaked with Naveh’s brush. It is inconceivable to me that she could have known about his corruption without taking action, but everyone who could have any information is being called to give information to the police, including Shaked, the President of the Supreme Court, Esther Hayut, and every other member of the Judicial Selection Committee.

Naveh himself is probably going down, although his lawyer claims credibly that his cell phone, which contains incriminating text messages, was stolen and hacked. The female judge involved will likely argue that she was coerced by the powerful Naveh. If she can be convincing enough, she may escape bribery charges. Either way, her career is almost certainly over. The other woman, the male judge’s wife, has noted that her husband in fact was not promoted, despite her affair; hence, there was no crime committed. We’ll see.

The Bar Association, which also provides the Prime Minister with a short list of choices for Attorney General, has far too much power. The Attorney General, for that matter, has too much power and too much independence. These things should change.

It will be a disaster if Ayelet Shaked, who has been considered by some as a possible future Prime Minister, will turn out to have been aware of any of this. Naturally, her enemies – the unelected left-wing elite in the legal establishment and the media – already have their knives out.

But there could be a happy ending to the movie. That would be if the undemocratic selection committee could be abolished for once and for all, and a system for appointing judges that would be more responsive to the will of the Israeli people introduced. It would be a change long past due.

Posted in Israeli Politics | Comments Off on Sex, Lies, and Judicial Appointments