Are there judges in Tel Aviv?

Posted on February 26, 2018 by Victor Rosenthal

Today in Israel the media are focused on a shocking revelation: an investigator for the Israel Securities Authority, who is in charge of the investigation of the telecommunications giant Bezeq, was discovered colluding with the judge of the Tel Aviv Magistrate’s court to predetermine the outcome of a hearing to extend (or not) the custody of some of the suspects who are now being interrogated by the police.

There are at least four criminal cases being pursued that may include the Prime Minister as a defendant, with varying degrees of believability and seriousness. The Bezeq case, called “teek (case) 4000” recently got fresh impetus with the defection of a former Netanyahu adviser and confidant, Shlomo Filber, to the prosecution. This scheme is precisely the kind of conspiracy that pro-Netanyahu partisans have been claiming is going on against him.

Imagine that you are a defense lawyer who goes to court to try to get your client released. Suppose he has already been held for almost a week in a cell infested with fleas, has been allowed little sleep and interrogated for hours at a time. You expect to present his case and have the judge listen to you, as well as to the prosecutor who wants to hold him longer, before making a decision.

Then imagine that you find out that the judge and the head investigator have been exchanging text messages and have already decided how long he will be held! “Try and act surprised,” the investigator tells the judge. “I’m practicing my surprised face,” she responds.

It somewhat weakens the feelings of outrage that in this particular case the judge and investigator seem to have conspired to release the suspects sooner than the police wanted, rather than to keep them in custody longer. Nevertheless, the misconduct is clear. A judge must not discuss a case outside of the hearing room.

The judge, Ronit Poznansky-Katz, and the investigator, Eran Shacham-Shavit, have been removed from the case and face disciplinary action, maybe even criminal charges. But this scandal has echoed throughout Israel’s political and judicial systems, with condemnation coming from all sides.

The rights of criminal suspects or defendants, from the beginning of the process to the end are in the hands of the judges. They are the ones that determine how long the police can hold a suspect, whether he or she will be released on house arrest or kept in jail while awaiting trial. And since Israel does not have a jury system, they will decide guilt or innocence and impose a sentence. A judge secretly conspiring with a representative of the prosecution constitutes a severe violation of individual rights.

Naturally, attorneys for the jailed suspects in the Bezeq case say that the case against their clients has been tainted, and they should be released immediately. They have a point, but probably it won’t happen. A new judge has been appointed to handle the case.

The importance of popular trust in the judicial system can’t be overemphasized, especially in a country which does not have a written constitution. “There are judges in Jerusalem,” Menachem Begin famously said, after a Supreme Court decision went against his wishes. Many Israelis on the Right have felt that the Supreme Court has been biased too much toward individual rights, especially those of minorities, and has neglected the national interest. Education Minister Naftali Bennett recently remarked that “there are judges in Jerusalem who have forgotten that there is also a government in Jerusalem.” But until now it’s been thought that outright misconduct of the kind that Poznansky-Katz is accused of was rare.

This comes at a very interesting time for the Prime Minister, as well as the police, the judicial and legal systems and the media; interesting because the PM is accusing the others of running an extra-electoral campaign to get him with trumped-up charges of corruption. They can’t beat him at the ballot box, he says (correctly), so they are trying to force him to resign, to be rejected by his coalition partners, or even – if he can be convicted of something  serious – to be removed from office.

The police have recommended that Netanyahu be indicted for cases unrelated to the Bezeq case, and it looks like they are moving toward a similar recommendation in this case. Then it will be up to the Attorney General to decide whether to indict him.

The law is not clear about what would happen if Netanyahu were convicted of a crime. But it seems almost a foregone conclusion that if it happens, and if his coalition stands behind him, it will be the Supreme Court that will decide whether he can stay in office.

Judges in Israel, including Supreme Court justices, are selected by a nine-member committee which includes two members of the Bar Association, the President of the Supreme Court, and two additional Supreme Court justices. It is chaired by the Justice Minister, and also includes two Knesset members one each from the coalition and the opposition. There is therefore an automatic majority to the legal establishment.

When this is combined with the fact that the Attorney General, supposedly the government’s lawyer, must be selected by the Prime Minister from several candidates approved by the Supreme Court, you can see why a government – or a Prime Minister – whose philosophy differs from that of the legal establishment may have difficulties. Despite Netanyahu’s popular support, he is in a very tough spot. Today’s judicial scandal is only a bump in the road for the legal convoy which wants to destroy him.

Israel, it seems to me, has a permanent constitutional crisis, or to put it more correctly, a crisis due to lack of a constitution. The balance of powers between the government, the Knesset and the courts is undefined, and the vacuum tends to be filled by whoever has the power or audacity to jump in and fill it. At the same time, it is impossible to imagine the various factions – the religious, the non-religious, the Arabs – agreeing on the content of a permanent constitution.

Probably the best we can expect is to pass a few key basic laws. I would like to start with a law defining the powers – and the limits of power – of the Supreme Court. Once that is settled, we can move on to a nation-state law, one that would give full meaning to the “Jewish” part of the “Jewish and democratic state” that most of us agree that we want.

Posted in Israeli Politics, Israeli Society | 1 Comment

A great Prime Minister – despite everything

Posted on February 22, 2018 by Victor Rosenthal

I was talking with a friend yesterday. He is very well-informed and concerned about Israel and the Jewish people, and the prospects for our survival. But he does not live in Israel, so he asked me “what about the legal problems facing the Prime Minister? Would he provoke an international crisis to distract attention from them?”

Well, what about them? It’s something I generally avoid talking about, probably for the same reason that I avoid talking about the US President. I just don’t want to hear, yet again, the talking points of both sides. But since this blog can be a one-way conversation – I can choose to ignore comments if I wish – I am going to say a few words about Mr. Netanyahu.

Let me get this out of the way: I voted for him in 2015 and I would vote for him again if an election were held today. Of course he has his flaws, but I think I join many Israelis who do not see among the potential candidates to lead the nation one that could better ensure our security. And that is the issue, light years ahead of the price of apartments and his wife’s taste in champagne.

Not that I think that all of his policies are optimal. I would like a Prime Minister who pushed harder to settle Jews in all of the Land of Israel (my friend and I also talked a lot about this), because I think that – after dealing with the Iranian threat – is the single most important thing we can do to ensure the survival of the Jewish people.

I would like a Prime Minister who is a little less obsequious toward the US, and who does more to reduce our dependence on it (although Netanyahu has made some very significant accomplishments in improving our relationship with other nations, like India, China, Russia, and some Eastern European and African countries).

Personally, he is arrogant, he holds his cards very close to his vest, does not delegate authority well, and tries too hard to prevent potential rivals from gaining strength. Sometimes he makes enemies out of those who should be allies, because he’s threatened by their potential as possible challengers.

In order to understand the PM’s legal troubles it’s necessary to understand something about the social and political ocean that he swims in. Netanyahu represents the continuation of Menachem Begin’s revolt against the domination of Israeli politics, culture and economy by the Ashkenazi socialist Left. But Israel is a democratic country and not a fascist dictatorship, so the revolution (some might say unfortunately) did not include a purge of the old guard in politics, the legal system, academics, culture and – definitely not least – the media.

The disasters wrought by the Oslo accords and the resulting Second Intifada (some call it the “Oslo war”) and the withdrawal from Gaza sealed the demise of the Left as a political bloc. The Left keeps trying, but Israelis haven’t forgotten what was done to them in the name of ‘peace’, and won’t vote for them. But even though polls show that the right-wing parties are much more likely to come out on top in an election, the media and other unelected elites are strongly in the camp of the left. And their attitude toward PM Netanyahu is much like that of the Democrats in America toward Donald Trump: they hate him passionately.

There are at present at least four police investigations that to some extent relate to the PM and, naturally, his wife, who is also a prime target for his enemies. He is accused of 1) providing favors in return for cigars, champagne and other presents, of 2) making a deal with the publisher of the Yediot Aharonot newspaper to receive favorable coverage in return for acting to suppress the circulation of Yediot’s competitor, the free Israel Hayom newspaper, of 3) being somehow connected to a kickback scheme in connection with the purchase of submarines from a German company, and of 4) providing favors to the management and important shareholders of telecommunications company Bezeq in return for favorable coverage on a Bezeq-owned news website). Sara Netanyahu is accused of using public funds for her private benefit.

Overall, some of this is invented, much of it is exaggerated, some is probably true, some is politics as usual, and most comes from informants that the police have put the squeeze on. The police have recommended to the Attorney General that the PM be indicted on charges related to 1) and 2) above, and that his wife be indicted for her actions as well. In my opinion, even if the worst accusations are true, none of them move the needle for corruption by a head of state by world standards. Nevertheless, the law is the law. It is up to the Attorney General to decide whether to indict Netanyahu or drop the charges.

What is outrageous here – and Netanyahu is perfectly right in calling this out – is the behavior of the police and news media (did I mention that the media, especially the broadcast media, are almost 100% on the side of Netanyahu’s political foes?).

The investigations have been going on for at least a year, with Netanyahu or his wife being interrogated by the police multiple times for hours at a time. Every time he or one of numerous others is questioned, including those who have agreed to be state’s witnesses in order to avoid possible prosecution themselves (among them his main political rival Yair Lapid), the nightly “Hadashot” newscast that most Israelis watch leads with a story based on unsourced leaks from the police and other parties involved in the cases against Netanyahu. Newspapers echo the accusations the following day. It’s hard to imagine a clearer case of the media appointing itself judge, jury and executioner.

Note that most of this took place before the investigations were complete and the police had transmitted their recommendations to the Attorney General, who of course has not yet decided whether to indict the PM (there have been weekly demonstrations calling for him to do so led by Netanyahu’s opponents in front of the Attorney General’s home, and demonstrators even entered a synagogue where the AG was saying kaddish for his mother).

Netanyahu  likes to say that his opponents, unable to beat him at the ballot box, are trying to force him out undemocratically. It’s hard to disagree with this assessment. He is not required by law to resign even if he is indicted and possibly not even if he is convicted of a crime, but practically speaking, an indictment would put him in hot water with his own coalition. It could also bring about a constitutional crisis between the government and the Supreme Court.

One can understand why the Americans require a process of impeachment to remove a sitting president. There is an overwhelmingly political aspect to the prosecution of a head of state which cannot be ignored; the American system makes it explicit, while the Israeli system tries to shut its eyes to it. There was an attempt to pass a law that exempts a sitting PM from prosecution for certain kinds of crimes, but it didn’t get off the ground. A law did pass that will prevent the police from making public their recommendations to the Attorney General, but it will not apply retroactively to Netanyahu’s cases.

As I said, Netanyahu has his flaws; but his claim to have dedicated his career and his life to the security of the state of Israel is indisputable. So when my friend asked me if I thought Netanyahu would provoke a crisis in order to draw attention from his legal issues, my answer was “absolutely not.” Although his enemies like to attribute every imaginable moral defect to him, there isn’t the slightest doubt that he puts the state and the Jewish people ahead of his personal interests.

I think a plurality of Israelis agree. A new poll, taken immediately after the latest “revelations” of possible misconduct in the Bezeq affair shows the Likud winning 34 seats in the Knesset, as opposed to the 30 that it holds today.

Hashem and history will ultimately pass a final judgment on Benjamin Netanyahu, regardless of what the temporal courts here decide. I believe that judgment will be that he was one of our greatest Prime Ministers.

Despite everything.

Posted in Israeli Politics | 1 Comment

A threat and an ultimatum

Posted on February 19, 2018 by Victor Rosenthal

Israel seems to have hopes that diplomatic action by the US or Russia or even the UN can or will restrain Iranian expansionism and threats against Israel. This is pointless, and indeed works in Iran’s favor by giving her time to build up her offensive capabilities, ultimately including nuclear ones.

Every day that goes by marks an improvement in Iran’s strategic position. The time for Israel to act is now.

Dear Mullahs,

In response to the various threats that you have made directly and via Hezbollah, be aware that:

  1. We see Hezbollah as a military arm of your regime, and hold you fully responsible for its actions.
  2. Our evaluation of your capabilities is that even if you activated all of your ground, missile and other forces in your country, Syria, and Lebanon in a first strike against us, you would not succeed in destroying our country or ending our ability to fight. Nevertheless, the cost to us from such an attack would be high, and we will not permit it to happen. We issue the following warning to deter you from the attempt:
  3. As has been made clear, the actions we would be forced to take against your military infrastructure in Lebanon would result in massive destruction and a great number of civilian casualties there (possibly in the tens of thousands). But we understand that you are courageous enough to fight to the last Lebanese or Syrian, so:
    In addition to the necessary tactical actions to destroy your rocket launchers, tunnels, etc. on our northern borders, an attack on us will trigger a strategic response against your homeland, including military installations, nuclear facilities, major cities and national infrastructure. Not only would you lose your chance of establishing a Shia caliphate across the region, your country would essentially cease to exist as a modern nation.
    You would be personally responsible for the worst thing that happened to the Persian people since the Mongol invasion of the 13th Century. And you would be dead, along with tens of millions of others.
  4. We believe the situation today is unstable and must be deescalated in order to avoid the horrific consequences that could result from further aggression. Therefore, we are presenting you with an ultimatum:
  5. We will offer you the chance to dismantle your military infrastructure on our northern borders. If you adhere to the timetable that will be presented, we will take no further action. But if not, we will systematically begin destroying those capabilities that we believe present a threat to our country, in Lebanon, Syria and Iran herself. The choice is up to you.
  6. Our people will be calling your people to inform you of the steps that you will need to take to deescalate the situation. They are all professionals, so I’m sure everything will go smoothly.

In all seriousness,
Bibi

Posted in Iran, War | Comments Off on A threat and an ultimatum

What happened to my home town

Posted on February 15, 2018 by Victor Rosenthal

Now a few words about my home town, Fresno California, butt of countless jokes and YouTubes full of mostly derogatory references to it from films and TV shows made in sophisticated Los Angeles. With a population of about 525,000, it boasts a California State University campus and several other major educational institutions. It is the center of one of the most productive agricultural areas in the US, which produces more than half of all the fruits, nuts and vegetables grown in the US.

Reliable estimates of the Jewish population are hard to come by, but probably there are fewer than 1000 Jewish families there. Jews arrived there in the 19th century and made their living in farming, lumbering and ranching, and of course commerce. After WWII, a number of Jewish GIs who had been stationed at Hammer Field (now Fresno Yosemite International Airport) married local girls and stayed on. There are a few Israelis working in agricultural technology. But for whatever reason, a large Jewish community never developed.

There is a Reform Temple with about 300 families, a now-tiny Conservative synagogue, and a Chabad house. The Jewish Federation of Central California is based there. There is no local source for kosher meat, with the exception of poultry products sporadically carried by Trader Joe’s or Whole Foods.

I wasn’t born there, but it was the place I spent the greatest part of my life, the place I met my wife shortly before making aliyah, and the place I to which I returned in 1988 after almost a decade in Israel. Probably because I knew in my heart (and because my wife and kids never stopped reminding me) that I should have stayed in Israel, I became active in Jewish and Zionist affairs, such as they were. I spent 26 years there, always in touch with what was happening in Israel and with my kids, who moved back as soon as they were old enough to become “lone soldiers” in the IDF.

I did my best to counteract the always-growing stream of propaganda aimed to demonize and delegitimize Israel, as it flowed from the media, the local “peace” organizations and a few anti-Israel activists at the university who regularly organized offensive films and speakers. In 2007, the university received a large grant from an Iranian-connected organization and established a Middle East Studies Department. Like virtually all such departments, it related to Israel only as a foreign body in the Muslim Middle East (you can read here about how I got kicked out of a conference held by that department).

During and after the Second Lebanon War of 2006 and the mini-wars in Gaza, there were anti-Israel demonstrations at an important intersection in town, organized at first by the “peace” groups. Led by activists associated with the Islamic Cultural Center of Fresno, more and more Muslims began taking part, sometimes leading to near-confrontations with greatly outnumbered pro-Israel demonstrators.

All this time I struggled to try to get positive coverage of Israel in the local media, which were mostly ignorant about the issues or hostile. And I tried to develop Zionist consciousness in the Jewish community.

I almost completely failed at the latter task. Although there was a small nucleus of pro-Israel people (some of whom were transplants from Israel), the larger community was apathetic. As time went by, more and more of them seemed to be actively anti-Israel, especially after the election of Barak Obama, whom the Jewish community supported heavily.

In particular, the Reform temple became less and less hospitable to pro-Israel presentations. A new rabbi took over in 2011, and on several occasions he decided that speakers or films that presented a Zionist point of view would be “divisive,” and did not permit events to be held at the temple.

He particularly emphasized interfaith activities, but the other faith groups included only the Islamic Center and liberal denominations. He is quite proud of his “friendship” with the Imam of the Islamic Center, and appeared together with him on TV to denounce alleged “Islamophobia,” but he did not reach out to Fresno’s large Evangelical community – who, by the way, had been extremely supportive of pro-Israel activities, even hosting speakers for us that the rabbi had rejected as divisive!

The Jewish Federation remained helpful, although I could see beads of sweat breaking out on foreheads when I suggested sponsoring an event that some donors might find a little too pro-Israel for comfort. But one constant was that every year the Federation and the synagogues all got together to organize an Israel Independence Day event, held at the Reform Temple, the largest facility available.

Although I haven’t been back to the US in three and a half years, I’m in contact with my old friends there. And what they told me this year was shocking.

It seems that the theme suggested by the chairperson from the Federation was “A Free People in Our Land,” from Israel’s anthem “Hatikva.” But this was unacceptable to the Reform rabbi. He reportedly said that many in Israel were not free, most importantly himself as a “second class” Jew who is “not free” to practice his religion in Israel. This is absurd, since he can walk into any one of numerous Reform synagogues in Israel and practice his religion.

But worse, he added that “A Free People in Our Land” would “upset” his interfaith group – I presume they would not like the implication that the Land of Israel belongs to the Jewish people – and that it would lead to a “huge outcry” in Fresno and possibly protests at the gate of the Temple! And he, as the leader of the Jewish community, would be blamed.

Rather than let him take his Temple and go home, it was decided that the theme would be “People in Our Land,” thus converting a proud Zionist statement into a celebration of multi-cultural kumbaya.

The idea of observing Israel’s Independence Day without mentioning freedom or suggesting that the land belongs to the Jewish people is certainly original. This particular rabbi was always on the liberal end of the spectrum, but I can’t imagine him saying something like this even a few years ago. This illustrates the danger of the “interfaith engagement” that the rabbi made such an important element in his job. He seems to have abdicated his own volition as a Jew to a group that is implacably hostile to the Jewish state. He has let them dictate what Jews are allowed to say about the Jewish state.

The well-meaning “Jewish leader” who, while actually powerless, serves as a tool for the gentile regime and facilitates their control of the Jewish population is a well-known figure in Diaspora history. Such individuals sometimes were merely targets for contempt, but other times – such as during the Holocaust – played more sinister roles.

This is a classic Diaspora story, and actually serves as a lesson in Zionism. The Jewish people need a sovereign state because they need to live somewhere that they can actually be a free people, where they don’t have to worry about what an “Interfaith Alliance” of ultra-liberal Protestants, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Catholics and other non-Jews think about the theme of their Independence Day event.

A very few members of my former community tried to stand up against this abysmal failure to protect Jewish honor and dignity, but without success. Most don’t see the problem. So it will be a celebration of “People in Our Land.” I am embarrassed for them, and saddened by what happened to the community that I lived in and cared about for so long.

Posted in American Jews, American society, Zionism | 2 Comments

The Dawabshe Horror show

Posted on February 12, 2018 by Victor Rosenthal

The treatment of the suspects in the arson murder of three members of the Dawabshe family in the Arab town of Duma is deeply disturbing. It is reminiscent of the behavior of tyrannical fascist or communist regimes, not an advanced first-world nation. That is not to take away from the horrific nature of the crime, but to put a not-too-fine point on it, the suspects probably did not commit the crime, were arrested for political reasons, and were tortured to obtain confessions. This in the State of Israel in the 21st century.

I have written several posts about the Duma murders, which took place in July of 2015, and the attempt by our General Security Service (“Shabak”) to pin the blame on Jewish extremists.

The beginning of the horror was the firebombing of the home of the family of Sa’ad and Riham Dawabshe while they and their children slept. 18 month old Ali died in the fire and the parents succumbed to their injuries shortly afterwards.

Immediately after the arson, then Minister of Defense Moshe Ya’alon, President Reuven Rivlin, Jewish Home Party leader Naftali Bennett, and others denounced “Jewish terrorists,” even though no investigation had had time to begin. There are good reasons to think that the attack was part of a feud between members of the extended Dawabshe clan in the village, but that line of investigation was not followed up, even when other arsons of property belonging to the Dawabshe family occurred. By now it is probably too late. Justice for the Dawabshes will probably never arrive, since investigative trails in the village have gone cold.

Public figures on both the Right and the Left seemed to accept the “Jewish terrorism” explanation with very little questioning. It almost seemed that many of us, including politicians and journalists, were thirsty for stories that Jews could be as vicious as Arabs, and we lapped it up. And the Shabak, embarrassed by its failure to deal with “Jewish extremism” in Judea and Samaria – which was until then mostly confined to vandalism, graffiti and other relatively minor infractions – arrested numerous young members of the “hilltop youth” in connection with the case.

But despite their best efforts, normal investigative techniques did not yield results. Convinced that nevertheless the Duma murderers would be found among the disaffected right-wing youth, the Shabak asked for and got permission from then Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein to use “enhanced interrogation techniques,” i.e., torture.

Two suspects are still imprisoned without being tried almost three years after the events: Amiram Ben Uliel (23) and a 19-year old whose name has not been released. Ben Uliel was indicted for murder; his trial was to have begun but was postponed. The 19-year old was released at one point, but was then re-arrested. A hearing is scheduled for today to determine if he will be tried. They have been under continuous psychic and intermittent physical pressure.

Both suspects have supposedly “confessed,” but the confessions were obtained by torture and are not very convincing, riddled with inconsistencies. An account published in the Jewish Press, based on an interview with the father of the younger one, is shocking. For example:

Hands and legs cuffed, E is thrown on a short chair without back support. An interrogator pushes his chest at 45 degrees so that the exhausted youth collapses back in an arc, his head hits the floor, and for the next eight to nine hours, he is kicked and slapped, and screamed at incessantly: confess or you’ll never get out of here alive.

He weeps in pain, but his cries of anguish have no effect: his tormentors show no mercy. This goes on for three days. At one point, he confesses to everything: I did it, he screams, I did everything you’re saying I did. But when they ask him to describe in detail what he had done, he can’t. Tell me what I did and I’ll confess to it, he begs in tears, head back against the cement floor, body arched in mid air, arms and legs cuffed.

Yes, the crime that they are suspected of committing was heinous, but it would seem that after three years a professional organization like the Shabak, which has penetrated countless Arab terrorist cells, solved numerous murders, and no doubt saved thousands of lives, could come up with more than inconsistent and uncorroborated confessions obtained under extreme duress from a couple of unsophisticated young people.

There are two important related legal points raised in the Jewish Press article, and although I am not a lawyer it seems to me that the judge that presides over the hearing today will have to deal with them. One is that torture is not permissible unless it is undertaken in order to defuse a “ticking bomb.” The Shabak had to convince the Attorney General that the suspects could reasonably be expected to have information about other planned attacks, and this was quite a stretch when there was zero physical evidence against them for the one attack. Second, and more directly relevant to the fate of the suspects, is that

…the most crucial problem with the Duma arson/murder case is that a conviction in a case based on a confession, must offer a confession that was given willingly.

Haim Levinson, who writes about clandestine services for Ha’aretz, noted the 2011 appeal of the Arab terrorist who led the 2002 massacre at the Park hotel in Netanya. His attorney argued that while it may have been proper to use torture on his client under the ticking bomb theory, the confession he gave under torture could not by definition be used to convict him. The judge reluctantly accepted this argument and upheld his conviction based on other evidence.

This case is indeed a horror story, horrible not only for what happened to the Dawabshes and what was done to the suspects, but for what it suggests about Ya’alon, the former Defense Minister, then-Attorney General Weinstein, and countless other officials who either pushed the Jewish terrorism hypothesis with zero evidence, gave unjustified permission for the use of torture, or simply averted their eyes – and they have remained averted three years later.

Maybe they think that the struggle against Jewish extremism justifies what was done. Maybe they think that the suspects were certainly guilty of something  if not murder, perhaps embarrassing the state in front of the Americans and Europeans by taking part in “price tag” vandalism. But maybe it will help them think again to consider that the father of the 19-year old suspect was born in America, and his son happens to be an American citizen. That could become embarrassing, too.

The director of the Shabak was replaced in 2016, and Ya’alon and Weinstein are gone too. Why doesn’t the government cut its losses, blame the previous officials for “mistakes that were made,” and – unless it has real evidence for the guilt of the suspects – let them go?

It can’t undo the damage that the story has done to Israel’s image, the ammunition it gave to those who like to accuse us of racism and even genocide. It can’t fix the damage done to the suspects by the trauma caused by years of psychic and physical torture.

All it can do is end the horror show.

Posted in Duma arson-murder, Israeli Society | Comments Off on The Dawabshe Horror show

Our conflict as multiplayer 3-D chess

Posted on February 9, 2018 by Victor Rosenthal

The conflict between Israel and her enemies is both like and unlike the game of chess.

In ordinary chess there are only two players, and their objectives are identical: to checkmate the opposing king. In the Jewish/Muslim conflict in the Middle East there are a multitude of players, each with its own objective. For example, Israel’s goal is to establish herself as a stable, peaceful country. The Palestinian goal is to replace Israel with an Arab state and remove the Jews from the land between the river and the sea. The Iranian goal is to eliminate an obstacle to expanding Iran’s area of influence throughout the region, and to become a hero to the Muslim world by defeating the Jews. And there are also Russians, Americans, Turks, and others playing.

Nevertheless, chess is a game of strategy based on war – simpler than reality although complicated enough –  so there are analogies that can be drawn.

For example, in the opening part of a game of chess, both sides jockey for position. Conflict is muted – a pawn here or there is traded, but the object is to arrange one’s pieces so that after the “middlegame” when the more powerful ones clash, the other side will be at a disadvantage, perhaps with holes blasted in the defenses surrounding its king, with parts of its army destroyed, and forced to constantly defend itself with no respite to develop a counterattack.

Israel and Iran are currently in the positional phase, “developing their pieces” in chess terminology, but make no mistake, what happens today is preparatory to a more violent confrontation. Iran (which did not invent chess but has been playing it since at least 600 CE) is acting systematically to prepare for the more violent middlegame. The Iranian regime is a better than average player.

Israel and the Palestinians are mediocre players, making many “rookie mistakes,” although the Palestinians play somewhat more competently than Israel. Both sides often act without sufficient consideration of the obvious moves that the other side will make in response. For example, in December of 1992 Israel expelled 400 Palestinians , mostly associated with Hamas, to Lebanon. Unfortunately, Lebanon refused to take them, and within a year all of the deported Palestinians had been permitted to return.

But that was a small mistake. The biggest and most damaging error made by Israel was the massive sacrifice offered in the Oslo Accords. It is sometimes advantageous to make an unbalanced exchange in chess, to give up an important piece in return for a great positional advantage or to make possible a “combination” in which the opponent can be forced to choose between unacceptable alternatives. Israel gave up an important piece when she allowed the dying, irrelevant PLO to come back to life, and to insert its cancerous cells into her body.

The sacrifice was supposed to bring about a change in the PLO’s objectives and to make peace possible. But it was based on a complete misunderstanding of the nature and motivations of Arafat and the PLO. The Palestinians accepted the sacrifice and ramped up terrorism and diplomatic warfare against Israel. At the same time, the PLO began its educational project which has borne fruit in today’s young “lone wolf” terrorists.

The biggest Palestinian mistake has been to never accept Israeli offers of a state, even with restrictions on militarization and lack of a “right of return” for the descendants of 1948 Arab refugees. A Palestinian state, no matter how limited, would have greatly improved their strategic and diplomatic positions, and given them time and space to prepare to strike at the heart of the Jewish state. Their ideological dogmatism prevents them from playing an innovative game.

In chess, both sides start almost even (White has a slight advantage from moving first). By 1993, Israel had developed a great advantage over most of its opponents. But much has been lost from a series of blunders, particularly Oslo and the withdrawals from South Lebanon and Gaza. And as Israel has played more and more poorly, the Palestinians have improved. They have taken advantage of the UN and the historic anti-Jewish attitudes in Europe to make significant diplomatic gains. They have not been so successful with the terrorism gambit, as Israel’s security forces have become better at counteracting it.

Iran, busy with her war against Iraq, was mostly out of the game against Israel until the 1990s. But she has recently started to demonstrate her skill. She leveraged the US to end sanctions, prevent financial collapse and provide funding for her military plans, while keeping her nuclear program and even legitimizing it. She exploited the chaos in Iraq and Syria to expand her influence in the region, and to prepare new fronts for the coming war with Israel. She even got the US and Russia to do some of the fighting for her.

Israel is hampered by the lack of a consistent strategy against any of her opponents, possibly because of her internal divisions and democratic tradition. Even when there is a strategy, there is often poor execution. Israel’s pieces, to continue the analogy, sometimes don’t move where they are supposed to! This is less of a problem for the Palestinian, Iranian and Russian players, where there is more or less dictatorial control.

The game continues, in its three (or more) dimensional, multiplayer form. Israel’s most dangerous enemy, Iran, is biding her time until she feels that she is strong enough to come out of the slashing violence of the middlegame with a winning advantage. But this phase will not continue forever.

The middlegame is preparation for the endgame, the systematic pursuit of the enemy that will result in the players realizing or not realizing their often inconsistent goals. That’s in the future. We can’t get there except through the violent middlegame. Let’s hope we have a good strategy and competent leaders to execute it.

But life isn’t chess. Life is more complicated and beset by unexpected events. And if you lose, you don’t get another chance.

Posted in Middle East politics, War | Comments Off on Our conflict as multiplayer 3-D chess

Europeans, Jews and the Holocaust

Posted on February 5, 2018 by Victor Rosenthal

The story of Jews, Poles and the Holocaust is not simple.

Of course some Poles cooperated with the Nazis in murdering Jews. Some even murdered Jews by themselves, sometimes even after the Germans were gone. On the other hand, the Poles themselves suffered tremendously from Nazi brutality. Certainly, some Poles saved Jews from the Nazis. And some hunted them down or turned them in. In different ways, Poland’s behavior during the war was both better and worse than that of other countries occupied by the Nazis.

The Nazis tried to erase the Jewish people from the world. They also tried to cripple the Polish nation by murdering  everyone of even the smallest intellectual, cultural or political importance. It was a less ambitious crime than what they did to the Jews, but it was bad enough.

It is true that Polish people were highly antisemitic before, during and after the war, and the reaction by some Poles to criticism of the law recently passed by the Polish parliament criminalizing certain kinds of speech about the period shows that Jew-hatred isn’t gone (even though most of the Jews are: Poland has about 8,000 Jews, 0.02% of its population).

The law criminalizes the use of the expression “Polish death camps.” I can see how this is annoying to Poles, but there is hardly a need for a law to enforce the common knowledge that the camps in Poland were built by the Nazis. Unfortunately, it tries to do more. It forbids anyone (with exceptions for scientific research or art) from saying that “the Polish Nation and/or the Polish State” were “responsible or complicit in the Nazi crimes committed by the Third German Reich.”

The law is stupid, and probably impossible to enforce fairly (what counts as “art?”). You can’t legislate history. What happened, happened. It’s important to know what and how so perhaps it will be possible to keep it from happening again.

But while it is ill-advised, the law is important as an expression of nationalist feeling in Poland, like the nationalism that has been growing in other European countries, reflected in the newfound strength of right-of-center parties in many of them, including France, Austria, Germany, Hungary, the Czech Republic, and others.

Probably the single most important reason for the shift toward nationalism in formerly universalist Europe is the wave of immigration by non-Europeans, particularly Muslims. The threat from outsiders, with their unfamiliar and often objectionable cultures is met with a heightened appreciation of one’s own country, people, culture, religion, attitudes, and so on. Depending on your point of view, this is either healthy patriotism or racist xenophobia.

Given the hostility of many of the migrants to European/Western norms, hostility which sometimes takes the form of terrorism, it is entirely understandable that native Europeans want to shut their doors and strengthen the connections between themselves and their nation. Nationalism is a tool for national self-preservation.

Naturally, the Jew in Europe, always an outsider – indeed, the paradigm case of the outsider within a nation not his own – is not included as part of the native group, even if his people had been living there for hundreds of years. So in countries with a tradition of Jew-hatred – that is, most European countries – increased nationalism is often associated with antisemitism. This leads to a paradoxical and decidedly unpleasant situation for Jews in countries like France, where there are a significant number of violently antisemitic Muslim immigrants, and the Jews who are their targets find themselves dependent on the “natives,” who aren’t always sympathetic.

But could Herzl have been right in his belief that the transformation of the Jews into a “normal” people, living in their own state, would eliminate antisemitism?

Today, for the first time in millennia, more of the world’s Jews live in Israel than anyplace else. This concentration will probably become stronger in the future, as persecution drives Jews out of places like Europe and assimilation reduces their numbers in North America. The status of the Jew in the world is therefore changing from that of an (unwanted) outsider trying to preserve his heritage in a foreign culture, to a citizen of a legitimate state, a nation among nations. He may be an expatriate, but he nevertheless has a patria.

This conception is opposed by the enemies of Israel, who believe that the Jewish state is illegitimate, and by those Jews who believe that they can both assimilate to the cultures of their “homes” in the Diaspora and still remain fully Jewish. Often they too are hostile to the Jewish state. But the trend will continue. Like it or not, most Jews in the Diaspora will soon see themselves either as expatriate Israelis or merely “persons of Jewish extraction” with ethnic food preferences.

While Muslim/left-wing anti-Zionism (the “red-green alliance”) is becoming the most common and serious manifestation of Jew-hatred in the world, traditional “right-wing” antisemitism is becoming more and more the province of the mentally disturbed fringe, both in Europe and North America. The nationalist movements in Europe are beginning to see that they have more interests in common with Israel than with her enemies, while the Israeli government is less ready to condemn them when, for example, they venerate historically antisemitic figures as heroes. The Polish government is clearly not interested in having a diplomatic crisis with Israel over the Holocaust speech law, and Israel isn’t pushing it.

The presence of anti-Jewish elements in Polish (and other European) nationalism isn’t a permanent obstacle to relations with Israel. Both sides see it as a bump in the road that can and will be overcome.

Perhaps in the long term, the enemies of Diaspora Jewish culture, antisemitism and assimilation, will reduce the population of “persons of Jewish extraction” outside of Israel to irrelevance, and then national interests alone will determine attitudes toward the Jews and their state.

I can think of worse outcomes.

Update [6 Feb 0620 IST]: Changed the description of the law passed by the Polish Parliament to be more faithful to the original Polish text (h/t JC).

Posted in Europe and Israel, Jew Hatred, The Jewish people, Zionism | 2 Comments

How not to remember the Holocaust

Posted on February 2, 2018 by Victor Rosenthal

International Holocaust Remembrance day was observed this week. I suppose it is a good idea to have such a day, if simply to counteract the increasing popularity of Holocaust denial. But some aspects of it are disturbing.

There is the continuing phenomenon of Americans and Europeans who are moved to tears when they contemplate the horrific murders of the Jews of 75 years ago, while at the same time supporting the true heirs of Nazi ideology, the Palestinian Arabs and the Iranian regime (not to mention the crocodile tears shed by politicians like Barack Obama, a true enemy of the Jewish people, who recently had the chutzpah to call himself a “liberal Jew”).

The Germans, who provide massive funding for NGOs working against Israel’s interests everywhere, might behave better if they could forget about the Holocaust. The preferred outlet for their feelings of shame seems to be to try to get people to believe that Israel is worse than their grandfathers who served in the SS.

There are also those who see in the Holocaust a “lesson” that “Jews should not behave like Nazis” and criticize the arrest of terror sympathizer and provocateur Ahed Tamimi as Nazi-like behavior. Some have even compared her to Jewish heroes who were murdered by the Nazis.

This past Shabbat I listened to an Israeli rabbi say in front of his congregation that the arrest and deportation of illegal migrants from Israel is similar to the way the Gestapo rounded up Jews for deportation to extermination camps. “Of course, I am not making a comparison…” he said. But of course he did make the comparison.

We shouldn’t need to denounce this vile inversion of history. It’s odious to compare the besieged Jewish state’s response to the endeavor to destroy her with the almost-successful attempt by the Germans to exterminate the Jews of Europe. It is so wrong, so backwards, that our trying to survive as a people should be compared to that. But apparently, this isn’t obvious to many people, even Jews. Even rabbis.

Then there is the universalization of the Holocaust. I once attended a memorial service in which 11 candles were lit for the “11 million victims of the Holocaust.” I believe the 11 million number came out of thin air, but it is supposed to represent the Jews plus Roma, homosexuals, disabled and mentally ill people, and so forth that were murdered by the Nazis.

But why stop there? The Nazis murdered 100,000 Polish intellectuals, doctors, teachers, officers, members of the upper classes and so forth in order to destroy Polish culture so they could Germanize the parts of Poland that they intended to annex to the Reich. They, too, should be added. And what about the roughly 24 million Soviet citizens (civilians and military) who died in the war? Hitler was responsible for killing them, too.

The uniqueness of the Holocaust is that the Jews were targeted for extermination for their genetic content. The Nazis saw the Jewish people as a species, like the polio virus, and wanted to eradicate us. Their goal was that there would be no more Jews in the world, ever. The thoroughness with which they approached this task was remarkable. Nobody else got that treatment. Not the Poles and not the Roma (among whom the Nazis pardoned individuals of “pure blood” or who “didn’t act like Gypsies” or who had honorable war records). No such exceptions were made for Jews.

I am ambivalent, therefore, about the utility of an international day to remember the Holocaust. But especially for Jews there are clear lessons that can be drawn from history (and one of them is not that Israelis are in danger of becoming Nazis):

The most important lesson is about self-reliance: the world community, even those parts of it that understood what the Nazis were doing and the degree of evil involved, was unwilling to take even small steps – absorbing Jewish refugees fleeing Europe, bombing the tracks to the death camps, allowing Jews to enter the British Mandate of Palestine – that would have made a great difference in the outcome for the Jews of Europe. The Jewish people – and other peoples, like the Kurds today – must understand that their survival depends upon obtaining and deploying the means to protect themselves. They cannot rely on anyone else.

A corollary to that principle is that one needs to have a consciousness of oneself as a member of a people. Don’t think that when they come for you, you can say that you are a “citizen of the world.” Your enemies know what you are, and if you want to defend yourself, you better know too.

Another corollary: know the enemies of your people. They will usually tell you who they are themselves. Understand them and never turn your back on them.

Do not think that the world has progressed morally since 1940. It hasn’t.

Finally, understand  that war is not only fought with guns and bombs. The Nazis prepared the way for the Holocaust far in advance by the use of propaganda. They employed the Big Lie technique to demonize and delegitimize a people, just as the enemies of the Jewish state are doing today. Self-defense starts by fighting back against the lies.

Today it seems that the real lessons of the Holocaust have not been learned, even by Jews, despite all the emotional catharsis that takes place on the various Holocaust memorial days.

That is unfortunate, because the consequence of not learning something easily from history is learning it the hard way from current events.

Posted in Jew Hatred, The Jewish people | Comments Off on How not to remember the Holocaust