American Jews and Israel: Can this marriage be saved?

Posted on January 18, 2019 by Victor Rosenthal

A great deal has been written lately about the problematic relationship between American Jews (the non-Orthodox majority) and Israel. Everyone wants to get into the act.

I don’t have any magic bullets. But as an American-Israeli I can’t help thinking about it.

From an Israeli perspective, American Jews don’t meet our expectations as Jews. We shouldn’t be surprised. This is because most non-Orthodox American Jews are politically either liberals, progressives, or extreme leftists. For most of them their Judaism is either a very small part of their lives, or is a version of Judaism that barely exists in Israel, Tikkun-Olam Judaism.

When American members of If Not Now or Jewish Voice for Peace seem to echo the propaganda of Israel’s deadly enemies, Israelis are shocked that Jews could speak that way about the only Jewish state. But note that while anti-Israel Jews may add “as a Jew…” to their attacks, for rhetorical purposes, either they are really speaking “as progressives,” or worse, “as Tikkun-Olam Jews,” secular humanists with some vestigial trappings of Judaism.

There are strong political pressures driving American Jews away from Israel as well. Most Jews are Democrats, and strongly supported Barack Obama. Israel began to become a partisan issue in America when the Obama Administration made it so in the fight over the Iran deal. Obama quite deliberately introduced an element of anti-Israel ideology into the conversation, and his surrogates directly accused Jewish lawmakers that opposed it of dual loyalty or warmongering.

Anti-Israel attitudes in the Democratic Party also received a strong boost in 2018 from the election of several new Muslim and far-left members of Congress who are outspokenly anti-Israel.

Republican President Donald Trump has adopted some high-profile pro-Israel policies, such as moving the US Embassy to Jerusalem, cutting funding to UNRWA and the Palestinian Authority, and most importantly, taking the US out of the Iranian nuclear deal. For Democrats today, whatever Trump is for, they must oppose, and that, too, is having an effect.

Liberal American Jews are sticking with the Democratic Party, and moving leftward – and away from Israel – along with it. It’s not just politics. Assimilation and intermarriage is increasing, and Jewish identification is decreasing. There is no special reason to oppose the drift of their party. These changes make it likely that the trend pushing American Jews away from Israel will intensify.

Our expectation as Israelis is that as Jews they should feel some connection to Israel. But the reality is that they are no different in this regard from other American liberals, progressives, or extreme leftists. And why should they be?

Just as we don’t know who they are, they don’t know us. Most of their information comes through American media, much of which – for example, the NY Times and NPR, both favorites of liberal-to-leftist Jews – is biased to the point of complete disconnection from reality. They present an image of a powerful nation almost gleefully exploiting and punishing a weak, victimized minority, while ignoring the broader context of threats against Israel. They often reproduce charges made against Israel by her enemies without verification, and don’t make corrections when their stories are proven false.

American Jews are also targeted with disinformation from their own institutions: the Reform Movement in particular has pushed the Israeli Left’s position that Israel is becoming illiberal and theocratic, and has magnified and even provoked crises over issues like mixed-gender prayer at the Western Wall and non-Orthodox conversion, in order to pressure the Israeli government into fully recognizing and supporting their movement – something impossible in Israel’s political climate. Nevertheless, the campaign has damaged Israel’s image as a free and liberal society (which it mostly is).

Israel is not America. The language, the security situation, the population (containing 12% Haredim and 20% Arabs), the legal system, and the culture – as much Middle Eastern and African as European, and certainly not North American – mean that many aspects of our society will be unfamiliar to them. Americans who expect, for example, that Israel will provide the degree of freedom of expression to citizens that they have in the USA will be disappointed.

It’s very unlikely that American Jews will abandon the Democratic Party. And it’s equally unlikely that they will make the effort to get to know the state that claims to be their homeland, but that they don’t like very much.

There is one thing that could change all of this. The earthquake that could propel the American Jews into our arms would be the mushrooming of anti-Jewish attitudes in the Democratic party and the broader society. Could it happen? Something similar seems to have occurred in the UK with Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party. The expression of antisemitism and outright Jew-hatred promoted by Labour-linked political operatives has become worrisome enough that some British Jews have decided to leave the country. Could this happen in the US? I’ve been away too long to feel confident enough to predict that.

Short of that – and I devoutly hope it will remain short of that – we can expect the disconnect, divide, whatever you want to call it, to get worse, not better.

“Can this marriage be saved?” was a popular column in the “Ladies Home Journal” until the magazine’s demise in 2014. It was based on true stories from a family counseling practice. Both sides presented their stories, a counselor made suggestions, and there was a follow-up. My wife says that usually the marriage could be saved by improved communication, but I remember that sometimes the answer was no, it could not.

So I will play the counselor, and here’s my advice: stop criticizing each other so much. Live with your differences. And stay together for the sake of the children.

Posted in American Jews, Israeli Society, US-Israel Relations | 1 Comment

Ben-Gurion, Zionism, and democracy

Posted on January 13, 2019 by Victor Rosenthal

During the acrimonious debate over the Basic Law: Israel as the Nation-State of the Jewish People, opponents claimed it was defective because it didn’t mention “democracy” or “equality,” concepts that are found implicitly or explicitly in Israel’s Declaration of Independence, proclaimed by David Ben-Gurion on May 14, 1948. Here is the relevant passage from that Declaration:

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.

“What the hell,” stormed Tzipi Livni, “has Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu got against the Declaration of Independence?” Members of what was then her party waved copies of the Declaration for emphasis.

Supporters of the law argued that it was not necessary to add such a reference to the new Basic Law, because the concepts were enshrined in other Basic Laws, and this law was intended to explicate the idea of a Jewish state – something that also appears explicitly in the Declaration.

The tension between the Jewishness of the state and the commitment to democratic governance and equal rights for all its citizens, some 21% of whom today are not Jewish, is a tightrope that Israel has been walking since 1948. It isn’t made easier by those who oppose the very idea of a Jewish state, like the Arab intellectuals who want to convert it into a binational state, the secular Left that would like it to become a democratic “state of all its citizens” like the US, or former Supreme Court President Aharon Barak, who thinks that the meaning of “Jewish state” is just “democratic state.” The Nation-State Law can be seen as an attempt to maintain the balance that these forces would destroy.

In my opinion, there has to be a priority assigned to the concept of “Jewish state” to prevent it from disappearing under the waves of equality and democracy. And to my surprise, apparently the man who proclaimed the independence of the State of Israel in 1948 agreed with me (h/t: Lise Rosenthal).

In 1929, David Ben-Gurion made an agreement between his Zionist and socialist Histadrut Hatzionit (Zionist Union) and various non-Zionist and non-socialist Jewish organizations, particularly in the US, to form the Sochnut Hayehudit, the Jewish Agency that would represent the Jewish people of the world in the creation of the Jewish state. He was not at all happy about the compromises that were required, but he needed the money, particularly from the American capitalists – his bitter ideological enemies. Left-leaning but careful historian Tom Segev, in his book David Ben-Gurion: A State At All Costs (Keter, 2018 – Hebrew, pp. 219-220), wrote:

Ben-Gurion declared: “My heart isn’t at peace with the [Jewish] Agency […] but regardless, we accept the Agency because we believe that Eretz Yisrael will be built by a partnership of all the Jewish forces. Democracy for us isn’t an empty phrase, but we have a principle more holy than democracy, and that is the building of Eretz Yisrael by Jews.” Thus, democracy joined socialism and peace: in the ideological world of Ben-Gurion, like them it was graded below the objectives of Zionism [my translation and emphasis. The quotation is from Ben-Gurion’s diary, 26 December 1930].

Some people might find this surprising, just like they find Rabin’s real opinion about a sovereign Palestinian state surprising (he was opposed to it). But that’s the way political winners write history: they put their words in the mouths of a people’s heroes.

There is only one Jewish state. There are numerous versions of the democratic “state of all its citizens” in the world, but as time goes by and it becomes harder and harder for Jews to live in them, we are finding that Herzl, Ben-Gurion, and other Zionists were correct: a Jewish state is essential for the survival of the Jewish people. It was essential to create it then, and it is essential to preserve it now.

Ben-Gurion was single-minded and ruthless toward all of his opponents. I’ve criticized him harshly for his actions toward his right-wing rivals before and after the founding of the state; it was unfortunate that dedicated Jewish patriots like Begin were cut out of political life in this country for so long. I would have preferred that the state had been built according to the principles of Jabotinsky, rather than Marx.

Nevertheless, I couldn’t agree with Ben-Gurion more about the importance of “the principle more holy than democracy.” Today that’s the preservation of the state – as a Jewish state.

Posted in Israeli or Jewish History, Israeli Politics, Zionism | 1 Comment

Silent Ben and Pragmatic Bibi

Posted on January 11, 2019 by Victor Rosenthal

Benny Gantz wants to negotiate a two-state solution with the PLO and divide Jerusalem. No, wait, he wants to annex Area C and offer the Palestinians autonomy in less-than-a-state enclaves. Who knows? Nobody, because Gantz won’t say. But more important, nobody seems to care what Silent Ben’s actual positions on anything are. A recent poll shows that in a contest between Gantz and PM Netanyahu, Gantz came in a close second with 38% of respondents favoring him to Netanyahu’s 41%. Apparently, Gantz’s experience as a former IDF Chief of Staff plus his prime ministerial appearance is enough to make him a viable alternative to Netanyahu, who is certainly one of the most successful Israeli prime ministers in history.

But maybe that’s because Netanyahu’s legal problems are deterring voters? Nope, polls show that, like Gantz’s extreme reticence, Bibi’s possible indictment on several counts of corruption simply doesn’t matter. Those who like him believe that the accusations are either stupid – I mean, after all, so what if someone gave him expensive cigars and champagne? – or criminalization of politics as usual, such as the government’s granting benefits to the Bezek communications conglomerate and its owner, Shaul Elovitch, in return for favorable coverage of the Prime Minister on its Walla website. Supposedly, the personal benefit for Elovitch was in the millions of shekels. The cases against Bibi are based on evidence provided by state’s witnesses, or, if you prefer, rats who will say anything to save their own skins.

There seem to be two kinds of people that dislike him. There are those who hate him for being instrumental in keeping the Left from realizing what it believes is its natural right to rule the country, all the more so insofar as he has been far more successful than they were in avoiding war and guiding the economy to its best condition ever. And there are those who simply dislike his personality, seeing him as shady and manipulative. One day I was waiting to cross the street when several people crossed against the traffic light. A man was standing next to me with a small boy:

Man: “We don’t cross on red. We are not Bibi.”
Boy: “Who is Bibi, grandpa?”
Man: “Bibi is one who always crosses on red. Don’t be like him.”

Monday night Bibi  made what he had said was going to be a dramatic announcement. Speculation ranged from “he is going to resign” to “he is going to invade Syria,” but it turned out that he wanted to demand the right to confront his accusers publicly. The speech was treated very negatively in most of the media, and I don’t think it especially helped (or hurt) him, but he has a point. For – literally – years, there have been almost continuous leaks to the media about how any minute now there will be stunning revelations of corruption that will bring down the Prime Minister; but in fact, until recently none of it amounted to a hill of beans. For example, who remembers the “deposit bottle scandal” in which Sara Netanyahu was accused of – can you imagine? – returning empty bottles that had been bought for official functions and keeping the money!

Every time – and there were dozens of times – that Netanyahu or his wife were questioned by the police, illegally leaked stories about what had transpired appeared on the evening news. Nobody in the police seems to have been punished, or as far as I know, even investigated about the leaks.

Nevertheless, there seems to be a general feeling that Bibi “has been Prime Minister long enough.” At age 69, he is possibly a little tired. If he isn’t ready to retire today, he certainly will be in a few years. One of his foibles is that he has never been able to abide anyone in his party that he suspects could challenge him, which means that there are few natural successors. The danger is that when he does step down, the majority of Israelis who have supported a right-wing coalition in recent years will fragment and the result will be that the Left will return to power. This could be facilitated by so-called “centrist” parties who lean to the right during the campaign, but when elected implement left-wing principles. This is the approach taken by Yitzhak Rabin in 1992, who promised during his campaign that there would be no direct talks with the PLO, no return to the pre-1967 lines, and no additional state between Israel and Jordan. As everyone knows, a year later he was shaking hands with Arafat on the White House lawn. So when Bibi says of Gantz – another former soldier like Rabin – that someone who won’t say whether he is left or right is probably left, right-wing Israelis are understandably worried.

Bibi himself has sometimes taken actions that can’t be understood from a right-wing perspective. For example, the illegal Bedouin settlement of Khan al-Ahmar, which can fairly be described as a joint provocation by the European Union and the Palestinian authority, and which the Supreme Court has (surprisingly) agreed ought to be demolished, still stands. Why? Perhaps Bibi has been threatened by the UK or other European countries, but it seems to me that a strong stand on this issue would be both good policy and good politics. Bibi doesn’t see it that way.

Naftali Bennett and Ayelet Shaked, who have recently separated from Beit Yehudi to form a new party called Hayamin Hehadash (The New Right) have sharply attacked him over his extended delay in removing the settlement. They have contrasted it to the recent violent removal of right-wing squatters from the wreckage of the community of Amona that was dismantled in 2017 by order of the Supreme Court over controversial Palestinian claims of ownership of part of the land.

In addition to the security concern posed by the location of Khan al-Ahmar, next to the strategic Route 1, there is the aspect of honor/humiliation/deterrence that I’ve written about so many times. From Israel’s point of view, it has a perfect right and a legitimate reason to enforce its building regulations in Area C. By allowing the Arabs and their European backers to thumb their noses at our sovereignty, we yield it to them, sending a message that we are too weak to defend our land, and therefore don’t have the right to keep it. Or perhaps Bibi doesn’t think that Judea and Samaria, even Area C with its Jewish majority, should be part of Israel. It’s hard to know what he thinks, which is one of the reasons many Israelis have a problem with him. If you hide your principles under a rock, people think that you are ashamed of them.

This is why I am disappointed with him. He is a pragmatist who tends to ignore the psychological and spiritual dimensions of power, which, especially in the Middle East, can be as important as the power of your air force or the number of tanks you can deploy. I see Bibi accepting too much humiliation, losing too much status, and not fighting the information war at all. He would say that our military and economic power has never been greater, and he would be right. But the degree of respect that we can command, both from our friends and our enemies, has declined in recent years.

I’ve always supported Bibi and Likud. But this April, I might vote for a party with more clearly articulated principles – and one that is likely to stand up for them.

Posted in Israeli Politics | Comments Off on Silent Ben and Pragmatic Bibi

The first Palestinian-American in Congress

Posted on January 10, 2019 by Victor Rosenthal

Rashida Tlaib is being called the first Palestinian-American woman elected to Congress. There have also been several congressmen claiming Palestinian descent: Justin Amash who represents Michigan’s 3rd Congressional District, and John E. Sununu, who served in the House from 1997-2003.

But did you know that there was a Palestinian-American in the House long before any of them, who was in fact the only one who was actually a citizen of “Palestine,” and who had a Palestinian passport? And that he was Jewish?

A word about what “Palestinian” means. There have been between three political entities that could be called “Palestine:” the first was a Roman province created when the Romans joined what was formerly called Judea to Roman Syria and called it “Syria Palaestina,” in order to irritate the Jews left alive after they sacked Jerusalem. That didn’t stick, and Judea went back to being called Judea. Then there was the British Mandate for Palestine, which existed from 1923 to 1948, and encompassed several provinces of the former Ottoman Empire. It was replaced by the State of Israel. Finally there is today’s Palestinian Authority, which was created by the Oslo Accords, and governs some 95% of the Arabs in Judea and Samaria, and theoretically all of Gaza. It is not a state and cannot issue legal passports.

John Krebs’ photo from his Palestinian passport (courtesy of Hanna Krebs).

John Hans Krebs z”l (born Hans Joachim Krebs in Berlin, Germany, in 1927) moved to Mandate Palestine with his parents in 1933. As a young man he served in the pre-state Hagana, and then came to the US to study law at the University of California at Berkeley in 1946, when he was almost 20. He got his law degree in 1950, served in the US Army from 1952-54, and received US citizenship in 1954. He also married his wife, Hanna in that year.

John’s Palestinian passport. Note stamp near the bottom indicating that he was a Palestinian citizen (courtesy of Hanna Krebs).

John held several political jobs in Fresno, California in 1965-74. He was elected to Congress from California’s 17th district as a Democrat in 1974, and served until 1979.

John was simply the nicest guy you could ever meet, soft-spoken, but very intelligent and knowledgeable; not at all a typical politician. I can’t imagine what he would have thought about Rashida Tlaib’s vulgar remark about the president. Although I suspect John thought I was a bit extreme politically, he always had a big smile for me.

And he was the first Palestinian-American member of Congress.

_____________________________________
Thanks to Yisrael Medad and of course Hanna Krebs.

Posted in American politics, Israeli or Jewish History | Comments Off on The first Palestinian-American in Congress

To our Arab citizens

Posted on January 6, 2019 by Victor Rosenthal

Dear Arab citizens of Israel (or “Israeli Arabs” or “Palestinian citizens of Israel,” if you must):

Zionism is a problem for you.

I understand that. Zionism implies that all or part (I admit to being one of those who believe that “all” is correct) of the land between the river and the sea belongs to the Jewish people, while you believe that it is yours. We believe that we are the aboriginal tribes of the land of Israel; you say that you are.

This isn’t about that question. This isn’t about archaeology or history. I’ve written about those things countless times. I don’t think I could convince you that my point of view is correct, even though I’m certain that all the evidence shows that it is.

Rather, this is about today’s reality and how to live in it.

The reality is that Israel is a nation-state, the nation-state of the Jewish people. This is the most important statement made by our Declaration of Independence. Israel also does its best to be democratic (given the fact that half the world wants it destroyed), granting civil, political, and religious rights to all of its citizens. But there are other rights, which are called “national rights,” which include both symbolic and practical matters. There are symbols like the flag, the national anthem and the holidays, and there are practical principles like the Law of Return for Jews, not Arabs, the ingathering of the exiles, and the commitment to maintaining a Jewish majority.

The State of Israel is also committed to ensuring the rights of minorities. But those rights must not compromise the national rights of the Jewish people. This is why the Knesset saw fit to pass the Basic Law: Israel as the Nation-State of the Jewish People. There is sometimes a tension between these different kinds of rights, and the state must walk a fine line to ensure a balance. It may not be easy, but keeping it is precisely the vision of Zionism.

Not every country is a nation-state of a particular people. The USA belongs to all American citizens. No single ethnic group can claim national rights in it. Unlike dozens of Muslim nations, no religion is privileged in it either. Although a majority of Americans are Christian, there are no special rights for Christians. There is no Christian cross in the American flag.

Today, ethnic nation-states are somewhat out of favor, especially in Western Europe and North America. Many people living in those places have a hard time understanding or accepting the idea that a people’s self-determination can include choosing to establish an ethnic nation-state – particularly if that people happens to be the Jewish people. Perhaps this is because the Jewish people, for thousands of years, were not allowed self-determination. They were required to live in somebody else’s nation-state, and these states generally did not even try to provide human, civil, political, or religious rights to all of their citizens (if indeed Jews were even counted as citizens).

There is one and only one Jewish state in the world, compared to 22 Arab states. Even if you accept the contention that there is a historic Palestinian people – and not just a group of Arabs of various origins that recently coalesced in opposition to the establishment of Israel – there is a state that was created from the ruins of the Ottoman Empire and the partition of the Palestine Mandate that arguably is rightfully theirs, and that is Jordan.

Israel was established in a costly and terrible war. The war never truly ended, with outbursts of great violence interspersed with periods of “peace” characterized by small wars and terrorism against us. The stated goals of our various enemies have varied, from Nasser to Arafat to the Iranian mullahs and even including our self-designated moral superiors in the EU, but the intent has always been the same: to end Jewish self-determination. And our reaction, because Zionism tells us that self-determination is worth fighting for, has been and will continue to be to fight for it.

So here is what I want to tell you, Arab citizens of Israel:

For many of you, living in a Jewish state is uncomfortable. I understand. We Jews lived in other people’s nation-states for 2000 years, and it was often far more uncomfortable for us than it is for you in today’s Israel.

You have at least these alternatives:

  1. You can continue to live in the Jewish state with full political and civil rights – and if you feel that you don’t have those rights to the degree that you ought to, you can demand them. But don’t ask for national rights, because you won’t get them.
  2. You can move to a country like the USA or Canada, which are states of all their citizens, and become citizens yourselves.
  3. You can try to establish a Palestinian nation-state in Jordan, in which a majority of the population identifies as Palestinian, and which currently has a non-representative government.

I would prefer to cooperate than to fight. But our self-determination in the nation-state of the Jewish people is not negotiable.

Sincerely,

Abu Yehuda

Posted in Israeli Arabs, Zionism | 2 Comments

It’s my party…

Posted on January 4, 2019 by Victor Rosenthal

As everyone knows, Israel has way too many political parties. In the last election, ten parties made it past the 3.25% cutoff into the Knesset. In all, twenty-five parties contended for the 120 seats in our parliament, and some of those were alliances of multiple parties pooling their votes to keep from falling below the cutoff (the Joint List, for example, is composed of four primarily Arab parties).

There is a party called Ale Yarok (Green Leaf) which calls for legalization of marijuana and managed to get more than 47,000 votes from members who were not too stoned to find the polls. There is a party called Hapiratim (The Pirates), which belongs to an international movement favoring extremely democratic and open government, and which garnered 895 votes, or 0.02% of the electorate. Arghh! The party with the least amount of votes was the Manhigut Hevratit (Social Leadership) party, which consists of a convicted felon named Yosef Ba-Gad. Apparently he has enough friends and relatives to obtain 223 votes.

In fact, Israel does not need anywhere near this number of parties. I would like to propose a simpler arrangement of only six parties. Here they are, with their platforms:

  1. The Really Religious Party: God is on our side, so give us money, don’t draft us, and keep your immodest women away from us and their pictures off our bus shelters.
  2. The Very Right-Wing Party: Send the Arabs to Jordan and annex the historic homeland of the Jewish people.
  3. The Bibi Party: He knows best. Just be quiet and do what he tells you.
  4. The Cheap Apartments Party: Apartments are too expensive. In fact, everything is too expensive. Make everything cheaper. We are not interested in security and stuff.
  5. The Very Left-Wing Party: End The Occupation. This will bring Peace. The state will use the money it saves on the IDF and Shabak to provide cheap apartments and a free subscription to Ha’aretz for one and all.
  6. The Arab Party: End Zionism. Put us in charge, admit that everything is your fault and apologize for the Nakba and maybe we’ll let you live, which you actually don’t deserve, you dogs.

Right now many of you are saying that it’s impossible to live without Ashkenazic and Sephardic Haredi parties, and indeed without Hassidic and Mitnagdic Ashkenazi Haredi parties. And others are saying that there is a big difference between religious and secular right-wing Zionism, or that we can’t forget the historic difference between Etzel and Lechi, or Mapai and Mapam, Ichud and Meuchad, Betar and B’nai Akiva.

Get a grip.

I am still angry about the Altalena, but I’m willing to be in the same party as anyone who understands the importance of a Jewish state for the Jewish people, who is capable of understanding that the Arabs are not just Jews that go to shul on Fridays, and that someone who wants to kill you or your people is an enemy. My heroes are Jabotinsky and Begin, but I could work with Rabin, despite his big mistake (I’m sure if he were here today, he’d admit that he shouldn’t have allowed himself to be pushed into Oslo).

Right now, in the run-up to the election to be held on April 9, we are watching a depressing spectacle of various public personalities maneuvering here and there in the political spectrum, making and breaking alliances, and positioning themselves to feast on what they think will soon be the political corpse of Binyamin Netanyahu. We have the unpopular Avi Gabbai publically kicking the equally unpopular Tzipi Livni out of his “Zionist Union” movement, which went from 24 Knesset seats in the 2015 election, to 8 or 9 projected seats if the election were today. We have Benny Gantz, whose qualifications are that he was IDF Chief of Staff and is very tall, and who refuses to say anything about his position on any important issue, with 14 projected seats (Netanyahu said, and I agree, that “anyone who won’t say whether he is Left or Right is Left”).

One interesting development is the defection of Naftali Bennett and Ayelet Shaked from the religious Zionist Beit Hayehudi (Jewish Home) party to create a right-wing party that would truly be a home for both religious and secular people, called Haymin Hehadash (The New Right). I think the name is a little cheesy, but ideologically it’s a good fit for me and many others who found the Zionism of Jewish Home appealing, but were uncomfortable with the degree of social conservatism of some of its members. I’m sure also that Bennett and Shaked understand that an explicitly religious party would never have a chance to lead the government.

Today there is already a party that purports to be right-wing and welcoming to both secular and religious Jews, and that is Netanyahu’s Likud. So probably The New Right will draw its votes from the old Jewish Home and from the Likud, and will cooperate in a coalition with them as well. As long as Netanyahu is more popular than Bennett/Shaked, and the Right maintains its present edge over the Center plus the Left, the governing coalition after the next election will end up looking more or less as it does today.

However, if Netanyahu steps down for any reason, the Likud is likely to lose much of its appeal to security-minded voters (and most Israelis fall into this category). The balance of power on the right might then move to the New Right, and one could imagine a government led by Bennett or Shaked. Bibi certainly doesn’t intend to quit now, but we’ll see what impact the possible criminal indictments (which, in my opinion, are simply political warfare by legal means) will have. And Bennett and Shaked are young, 46 and 42 respectively, while Netanyahu is 69. Their day will come no matter what.

The as-yet undefined party of Benny Gantz, Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid (There is a Future) party, and other centrists will try to present themselves as hawkish on security to prevent this. The danger is that they might succeed, and we could end up with a Center-Left coalition. Naturally, Bibi is making sure to remind us of this at every opportunity. And I agree with him that letting the Left within 100 km of power would be a disaster. Look what the two Ehuds, Barak and Olmert, almost did when each was Prime Minister.

It’s not possible to reduce the number of parties to six today. Founding political parties seems to be a national pastime here, and the inflated egos of politicians, each one of whom believes that only he or  she is qualified to lead a party or the nation, prevents the system from becoming more rational.

Today I am leaning toward voting for The New Right, despite the silly name – unless Bibi convinces me that this will empower the Left. So far, I don’t see it.

Or unless my brother-in-law starts his own party. Then I’d have to vote for him.

Posted in Israeli Politics | 3 Comments

Israeli politics just got more complicated

Posted on December 30, 2018 by Victor Rosenthal

Two Israeli politicians, Ayelet Shaked and Naftali Bennett, announced yesterday that they will leave the party they have led for the past six years and form a new party, called Hayamin Hehadash (The New Right).

Recent polls say Shaked, who is Justice Minister in the present Likud-led coalition, is by far the most popular minister (Hebrew link) in the government, while Bennett, the Education Minister, comes in second.

Shaked and Bennett were formerly members of PM Binyamin Netanyahu’s Likud party, but joined with what was then called the National Religious Party to create the Beit Hayehudi (Jewish Home). The idea was to build a party that would appeal to both secular and religious Israelis on the right side of the spectrum: those who favor Jewish settlement in the territories, oppose a Palestinian state, and are hawkish on security issues.

They didn’t succeed. Although in 2013 Jewish Home got a respectable 12 seats in the Knesset, it dropped to only 8 in 2015. Bennett and Shaked did not succeed in broadening their base in the secular community, and it became clear that they would never have a chance to lead a government as representatives of a purely “religious” party. And as a small minority in Netanyahu’s government, they felt that they had little or no influence on its decisions.

Israeli coalition politics are more complicated than they may look, because a party has to get 3.25% of the vote in order to get into the Knesset at all (if they receive less, the votes may be distributed according to preexisting agreements, or they may simply be lost). There are always parties on the extreme right and left, as well as special-interest parties, which do not pass the threshold.

Ayelet Shaked has distinguished herself as Justice Minister, by working to reduce the extreme left-wing bias of the legal establishment, especially the Supreme Court. Israel does not have a constitution. It does have a series of Basic Laws, one of which deals with the judiciary system. However, the Basic Laws are broad, and interpreted according to legal precedent, often established by the Supreme Court; and I and many others believe the Court has taken for itself far more power than is healthy in a democracy. Naftali Bennett has been very critical of PM Netanyahu on security matters, calling for stronger measures against the rocket and arson attacks from Gaza. He also criticized the government’s failure to deal with the threat from Hamas’ cross-border tunnels prior to the 2014 war.

They will certainly draw votes from those who previously voted for Jewish Home, but their main source of support will have to be from Likud voters. There are some who simply dislike Netanyahu for various reasons but see no reasonable alternative. Some lean right, and would vote for a party to the right of the Likud, but have not wanted to vote for an explicitly religious party. Personally I like the idea of a party that is firmly right-wing on security matters and which can walk the sometimes fine line between respect for Jewish tradition and religious coercion.

Until now Netanyahu’s poll numbers have been solid, but he faces a concerted media and legal campaign against him. He is accused of corruption on four separate matters (which, in my opinion, are either picayune or politics as usual). The police and state prosecutor have recommended that he be indicted on three of them, and the decision is in the hands of Israel’s Attorney General, Avichai Mandelblit. Every time Netanyahu or his wife is interrogated by the police, the subject matter of the interrogation is leaked to the media, which gleefully reports it. There are demonstrations in front of the home of the Attorney General, calling on him to indict Netanyahu, and a demonstrator even followed Mandelblit to a synagogue where he was saying Kaddish for his mother.

The PM says that even if he is indicted, he will not resign, and that the law does not require him to. On the other hand, there is no doubt that if it happens, his opponents will challenge his right to keep his job in court. It is impossible to predict exactly what will happen, but the idea that somehow Netanyahu could be knocked out, leaving an opening for the Left to come in, is frightening for the majority of Israelis – who believe that the Left is not only incompetent but positively dangerous.

Some who are critical of the decision of Bennett and Shaked to start a new party raise the specter of 1992. In 1992, a very close election ended up with a coalition of the Left in power, after several small right-wing parties did not make the cut to enter the Knesset (at that time, the cutoff was 1.5% of the vote). Both the technical issue of the cutoff and the political problems caused by dissention on the Right led to Rabin’s left-wing coalition and the Oslo accords – a disaster from which the nation has yet to recover.

Netanyahu effectively used the fear of another 1992 to convince voters in the last election (2015) to vote for the Likud rather than Jewish Home, despite the fact that Bennett promised to support Netanyahu in coalition negotiations, and despite surplus vote sharing arrangements that keep votes for marginal parties from being lost. Regardless, a unified Right is more likely to succeed than a fragmented one, and I know several people who voted for Netanyahu while preferring Bennett in their hearts.

Where Bennett and Shaked’s new party could change the equation is if it can draw voters from the center – from parties like Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid, Moshe Kahlon’s Kulanu, or the new centrist parties started by Orly Levy-Abekasis or former chiefs of staff Benny Gantz and Moshe Ya’alon.

The constellation of parties is still fluid, and I’m sure the pollsters are feverishly trying out all of the combinations. My dream is a strong coalition, firmly on the right on matters of security, but without the Haredi (“ultra-Orthodox”) parties. Although it is true that around 12% of Israelis identify as Haredim and certainly deserve a voice in governance, in my opinion the Haredi parties have proven to be excessively narrowly focused on immediate benefits for their constituents, and too ready to sacrifice the good of the nation for those interests. The recent struggle over national service for Haredim is an example.

But at this point nothing is certain, except that on April 9, I and my fellow citizens will go to the polling place (it’s an official holiday), show our national ID card, and place a pre-printed paper ballot in a box. Humans will count the ballots. There won’t be any chads, hanging or otherwise. And in 2015, about 76.1% of voting-age Israelis voted in national elections.

It could be better, but compared to the US, where turnout was only 55.7% in the hard-fought 2016 contest, that’s not bad at all.

Posted in Israeli Politics | 3 Comments

Our Iranian War

Posted on December 27, 2018 by Victor Rosenthal

Tuesday night Israel hit several locations in Syria, assumed to be weapons depots which possibly contained a shipment of Fajr-5 rockets from Iran. But it’s also being reported that “senior Hezbollah personnel” were hit, shortly after boarding a plane for Tehran, where they were planning to attend a funeral for an Iranian ayatollah. There is even a rumor – probably not true – that Iranian General Qasem Soleimani, commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard’s “Quds Force,” was present and was killed in the attack. If only!

Soleimani is a legendary figure in Iran, and the Quds Force is responsible for extraterritorial activities of the IRGC, including aiding terrorist groups like Hezbollah and various Iraqi militias, as well as carrying out terrorist operations all over the world. The Quds Force has been accused of providing the explosively formed penetrators used in IEDs with deadly effectiveness against US troops in Iraq. As a strategist and commander, he is highly competent and dangerous, and should be a prime target in an Israel-Iran war.

The beginning stages of the war are already underway. The Iranian regime’s strategy seems to be to first improve its strategic position as much as possible without triggering open hostilities: it has built up Hezbollah’s rocket arsenal – and continues to try to improve it by retrofitting accurate guidance systems. It is preparing to manufacture guidance systems and/or rockets on Lebanese soil. It dug attack tunnels under the Lebanese border with Israel, which the IDF is exploding or filling with concrete as I write. It is working to improve its supply systems to Hezbollah via its newly secured land bridge through Iraq and Syria (the small American force that Trump has promised to withdraw served as a partial deterrent to the use of this route, which is one reason Israel sees the withdrawal as a problem). The regime supports Hamas and other terrorist groups in the territories. And it is continuing to prepare for the day that it can openly deploy nuclear weapons. Ultimately, its goal is to see Israel destroyed by its proxies, underneath its own nuclear umbrella.

Israel’s approach so far has been to try to interdict the shipment of advanced weapons, destroy attack tunnels, and to keep up pressure on Iranian attempts to establish herself militarily in Syria. Israel is aggressively collecting intelligence on the location of Iran’s and Hezbollah’s assets in Lebanon and Syria, so that in the event of war she could quickly destroy rocket launchers and other targets. Probably there are also targets in Iran herself, such as nuclear facilities.

I hope so. Iran would like to see the next war fought on Israel’s territory. It would like to see the casualties on its side being Lebanese, Palestinian, and Iraqi, not Iranian. It would like to see Israel wounded, but itself come out unscathed. It is up to Israel to ensure that this doesn’t happen.

Israel’s greatest weakness is her lack of strategic depth. There is nowhere to fall back to, and an invasion from Lebanon or Syria would quickly reach populated areas. Israel is no Russia, which on several occasions has been able to count her enormous size and bitter winters as her greatest allies.

This is one reason why “2-state solutions” are unacceptable, even if the Palestinian Arabs were trustworthy (which they are not). I have a relief map on my wall that I point to when anyone talks about the various 2-state ideas. It shows how the Golan Heights and the Jordan Valley (more precisely, the hills on our side of it) are natural barriers to invasion, and provide a strategic advantage to whoever controls them. It also shows the importance of the hills in Judea and Samaria, which overlook the most heavily populated parts of Israel.

The Golan Heights are particularly important. Had Israel not been in possession of them at the start of the Yom Kippur War, Syrian tanks would have rolled through Israeli cities and towns, with murderous results. More recently we would have had to deal with raids by ISIS and similar groups.

There is currently talk of a Munich-like Syrian peace deal in which part of the arrangement would include the return of the Golan to Assad’s Syria! In order to prevent this, Israel and some American politicians would like to see the US recognize Israel’s permanent ownership of the Golan. In the final analysis, only Israel’s steadfastness and willingness to fight can protect her, but it would certainly help to have the diplomatic backing of the US.

When the war finally does heat up, Israel must bring it to Iran’s homeland. But Iran is a big and populous country, and Israel does not have the ground forces to invade it. We are certainly capable of launching a full-scale nuclear assault, but this would contradict our strategic doctrine, which calls for the use of nuclear weapons only in retaliation for an attack against Israel with nuclear or other WMD, or as a last resort when the country is in danger of being overrun. There would be moral concerns about killing 28 million Iranians. One can also guess the likely response of the international community.

However there is another option, which is an attack aimed to destroy infrastructure, such as electrical grids, industrial plants, government offices, financial centers, oil fields, pipelines, refineries, transportation and communications facilities, and so on. Bombing of key targets could be combined with cyberattacks and an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack. If done carefully, such a campaign would directly kill few people, but could create chaos and effectively destroy the Iranian economy to the extent that it would take decades to recover. I believe that Iraq is still suffering the effects of infrastructure bombing carried out in the first days of the US-Iraq war in 2003.

Israel is quite capable of carrying out such an attack, and this capability could serve as an effective deterrent, one which is much more likely to be employed than a massive nuclear attack. Iran directly controls Hezbollah, and the regime must be made to understand that an attack by its proxy against our homeland would result in an immediate response against its own.

In the meantime, I hope we are carefully tracking the movements of Qassem Soleimani. He has plenty of American, Israeli, and other blood on his hands. It would be a shame (for the regime) if anything happened to him.

Posted in Iran, Terrorism, War | 3 Comments