Why they hate us

Posted on January 16, 2017 by Victor Rosenthal

But the goat, on which the lot fell to be the scapegoat, shall be presented alive before the LORD, to make an atonement with him, and to let him go for a scapegoat into the wilderness. – Lev. 16:10

He Himself is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not for ours alone, but also for the sins of the whole world. – 1 John 2:2

The perennial question, “why do they hate us?” has come up again with the most recent Obama/European/Palestinian diplomatic onslaught, marked by UNSC resolution 2334, the Paris “peace” conference, and the possibility of yet another UN resolution.

The Europeans, whom Alex Grobman discusses here, may be as much an implacable enemy of the Jewish state as the Palestinian Arabs. It’s often noted that the alleged reasons for their anti-Israel activities – support for the rights of the Palestinians, international law, even the desire to placate their Muslim populations – can’t possibly explain the severe double standards, the demonization, the BDS and the obsessive focus that our little country is favored with.

It’s not hard to understand why: Europe, especially Western Europe, has enormous feelings of guilt for the bloodbath of WWII (this is less true of Eastern Europe and Russia, who see themselves as primarily victims). Their response was to blame nationalism – both the psychological attitudes like pride in one’s own people, which they conflated with the racism of the Nazis, and political nationalism.

The ideological remedy was to try to crush out particularist feelings and ideas and replace them with the kumbaya-ism that we are so familiar with today. Politically, sovereign governments have been denigrated and are expected to wither away in favor of multinational organizations like the UN and the EU, which it was hoped would ultimately replace them. Borders are bad, and military strength is looked down upon as atavistic – after all, the UN has outlawed war, and disagreements between nations, while they still exist as such, can and should be solved by talking.

Now along comes Israel, an unabashedly nationalist entity, which at least professes an allegiance to Zionism, an ideology that argues that the Jewish people should have a state, and that the state should have the ability to use force to defend herself. Naturally, this goes against the beliefs of the new world order, but it is much more than a philosophical dispute.

The Jews, as a people, were among the greatest victims of WWII, and by embracing a form of nationalism, building a state and an army and successfully defending themselves, they have thrown the European guilt back in their faces. We have reminded the Europeans that they allowed the murder of our grandparents to happen, that in many cases they were complicit with the Nazis in perpetrating it and even those that weren’t complicit didn’t lift a finger to prevent it.

The Europeans responded by projecting their guilt upon us: they know that their grandfathers were racists and murderers and accomplices of murderers and it’s too painful to deal with, so they make the ill feeling go away by insisting that it is we, the Jews, who are in fact  the racists and murderers. It is us, not them, who are the Nazis. It is an application of the principle of the goat for Azazel, placing the unbearable burden of one’s sins on another creature, which you then make disappear.

They want us to adopt their universalistic attitude, open our borders, stop fighting and try to solve our problems by talking. Needless to say – and of course it is obvious to the Europeans – then we would disappear. And that would solve their problem, wouldn’t it?

The Palestinian Arabs hate us for a different reason. Arab culture is highly infused with the concept of honor, and honor lost must be regained. It’s important to understand that the honor of a person or a family or even a nation (to the extent that one is recognized) does not depend on the truth; it depends upon how it looks to others. If the honor lost is great enough, then it has to be regained by blood. Men kill their sisters and daughters on a regular basis, because it is not acceptable to the family that someone might think – whether it is true or not – that a woman has engaged in prohibited sexual behavior.

According to the Palestinian narrative, the Palestinian Arabs suffered an enormous loss of honor when they were defeated militarily – not only by non-Muslims, but Jews of all people! – and suffered the indignities of the nakba. This honor cannot be gotten back by talking. It cannot be gotten back by Palestinian statehood. It can only be regained by the (preferably bloody) expulsion of the Jews from every inch of “Palestinian land.” The actual circumstances of the events of 1948 – who started the war, who expelled whom, who massacred whom – don’t matter any more than the circumstances under which a young woman got pregnant. Honor must be regained.

An interesting analogy is provided by Anwar Sadat. Sadat launched the Yom Kippur war to recover the territory lost by Egypt in 1967, but more importantly, to recover the honor of Egypt (defeated by Jews! How it must have stung the proud Muslim Egyptians). Thanks to the intervention of the international community, he was saved from a defeat that would have been impossible to hide. He presented the 1973 war to his people as a victory, but they weren’t fooled. A real victory that could have brought back Egyptian honor would have had to fulfill Nasser’s promise that “We shall not enter Palestine with its soil covered in sand; we shall enter it with its soil saturated in blood.” Sadat ultimately did succeed in getting back every inch of the land that he lost to Israel, but he did it by talking; and talking couldn’t restore Egypt’s honor. Only blood could do that, and ultimately it was Sadat’s blood.

The lesson should be obvious. The Palestinian Arabs are not, cannot be, a partner for negotiation. Only strength can deter them from violence. That’s the easy part.

The Europeans, in the grip of a massive continental neurosis, may not be able to listen to reason. I understand that the burden of their sins is too great to bear. But perhaps we can explain that we are prepared to forgive their grandparents – if only they would stop making us their sacrificial offering, their goat for Azazel. We can remind them that they already have one Jew that went to the cross for them, and that should be enough.

Posted in Europe and Israel, Israel and Palestinian Arabs, Jew Hatred, Zionism | 3 Comments

To whom does the land belong?

Posted on January 13, 2017 by Victor Rosenthal

All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations. – Charter of the United Nations, chap. 1, art. 2, p. 4

In May 1948, with the end of the British Mandate, various Arab nations invaded Palestine with the encouragement of their patron, Britain, with the intention of seizing the territory for themselves. In particular, Jordan (then called Transjordan) occupied Judea, Samaria and eastern Jerusalem, killing or driving out the Jewish population of these areas.

The Mandate, which was established for the benefit of the Jewish people and which called for settlement of Jews in what was then called Palestine, echoed the language of the Balfour declaration, which referred to a “national home” for the Jewish people. The Zionist leadership of the yishuv (the pre-state entity in the land of Israel) quite reasonably interpreted this as a sovereign state. But the British preferred to see it become part of its Arab client states or at least ruled by Arabs.  They had gotten used to “Palestine” as part of their empire, and didn’t trust the Zionists. They also feared Soviet influence over a Jewish state, since the leadership of the yishuv represented the left wing of Zionism. And of course the usual anti-Jewish attitudes played a role.

So Britain subverted the Mandate by being partial to the Arabs throughout its existence, encouraged Arabs from the region to immigrate to Palestine, fought against Jewish immigration – even for Jews fleeing the Holocaust – tried to prevent the declaration of the Jewish state in 1948, and supported the Arab invaders with arms and even British officers.

In 1949, the new state of Israel and Jordan signed a ceasefire agreement which delineated the boundary between the Israeli- and Jordanian-controlled areas. Moshe Dayan drew a line on a map with a green pencil, and this boundary henceforth was called the Green Line. The cease-fire agreement very clearly stated that the Green Line was not a border; it had no political significance and only marked the locations of the opposing forces at the time of their disengagement. The Jordanians were adamant about this, because they viewed the situation as unsatisfactory and temporary: they did not accept the existence of any Jewish state in “Palestine” and intended to eliminate it in the future. In 1950, Jordan violated the UN Charter and annexed the territory it had acquired by aggression, calling it the “West Bank.” Only Britain and its client Pakistan recognized the annexation.

In 1967, Jordan again attacked Israel, and as a result Israel conquered the area that Jordan had been illegally occupying.

To whom does this land belong?

Israel, the state of the Jewish people who were the intended beneficiary of the Mandate, would seem to have the strongest claim. But at this point another claimant arose, the PLO. The PLO, with Soviet help, jumped on the bandwagon of decolonization and fraudulently claimed to represent an indigenous “Palestinian people” that had been dispossessed by Jewish colonists. It received great support at the UN and throughout the “international community” as a result of the influence of Arab oil-producers, by terrorist blackmail of European nations, and again because of anti-Jewish attitudes. Its narrative fit in quite well with fashionable “third-worldism” and anti-racism (despite the fact that its own ideology was itself highly racist).

During the period of 1967-1988, Jordan maintained significant influence in the territories, paying salaries and pensions to civil servants and providing other benefits to inhabitants. Israel did not object to this and allowed the continuation of Jordanian law for such things as land transfers. Israel acted as a military occupier even though the land she was “occupying” did not belong to any other state. But she hoped that at some point there would be a peace agreement in which part of the territory would be given to Jordan and the rest annexed to Israel.

In hindsight this was a bad idea, since it weakened Israel’s claim to having liberated land that originally belonged to her. It made room for the unsound Geneva Convention arguments for the illegality of Jewish settlements.

In 1988, Jordan renounced all claims to Judea, Samaria and eastern Jerusalem in favor of the PLO. It should be obvious that King Hussein did not have the right to give away what he did not own – not the parcels of land that he had used to bribe local sheikhs prior to 1967 and which so bedevil Israel’s settlement enterprise today, and not the totality of Judea, Samaria and eastern Jerusalem to the PLO.

In 1993, Israel made a further mistake, this one disastrous for the prospect of peace and Israel’s security, when she signed Oslo I and recognized the PLO as the sole representative of the “Palestinian people.” This validated the fraud which elevated the descendants of recent Arab migrants to a “people” with an equal or greater claim on the land than the Jews, and which gave new life to the moribund PLO – which was and still is a corrupt band of gangsters and terrorists who extort and exploit the Arabs under its control, while it indoctrinates them to extreme hatred and incites murder.

But after all this, the question remains: to whom does the land belong?

The American position on this has evolved over the years, in my opinion in the wrong direction. UNSC resolution 242 was passed after the 1967 war, and it was interpreted by the West (but not by the Soviets or Arabs) to mean that Israel would return some of the territory it had conquered to Jordan, Egypt and Syria in return for agreements to end the conflict. How much and which land would be returned would depend on what was needed for “secure and recognized boundaries.” There was no suggestion that Israel had to compensate anyone if she did not return 100% of the territory. There was no implication that the land across the Green Line was prima facie the property of the Arabs.

In discussions between Israel and the PLO during the 1990s, the idea of land swaps was raised. After all, Israel had given Egypt 100% of the Sinai in return for peace; weren’t the Palestinians also entitled to 100%? And if Israel kept settlement blocs, then shouldn’t she give the Palestinians an equal amount of land from somewhere else so they wouldn’t be “cheated?” Land swaps were discussed in President Clinton’s negotiations in 2000-1, and also proposed by Ehud Olmert in 2008, but in both cases no agreement was reached. The swap idea was just a proposal to make the deal more attractive.

President Obama, however, introduced the idea of “1967 lines with mutually-agreed swaps” as a firm basis for negotiation in 2011. This represents a significant shift away from UNSC 242, by requiring compensation for land across the Green Line that becomes part of Israel. It implies that the PLO has title to this land now, and must be paid for whatever Israel takes. But this is sheer nonsense: Jordan could not bequeath to the PLO what it didn’t possess, either de facto or de jure.

Obama, unfortunately, is not a student of history but an ideologue; and the ideology that appeals to him is that of the “plight of the Palestinian people,” about which he has been talking since his Cairo speech in 2009. And he has chosen to take action in the last days of his administration to make the diplomatic landscape fit that ideology.

The position that all land across the Green Line is “Palestinian land” has now been formalized in UNSC resolution 2334, passed in December when the US did not veto it, and which the Israeli government believes was actually “created” by the Obama Administration. Note that while the resolution affirms UNSC 242, it goes on to contradict the long-held Western interpretation of it.

Much of the erosion of Israel’s position can be laid at her own feet. She should have been more aggressive about claiming her rights early on. But I think that today – before the second shoe of the pair that includes UNSC 2334 drops – Israel should make a clear statement of her rights to the land, something like this:

Israel believes that her claim to Judea, Samaria and eastern Jerusalem, based on the Mandate for Palestine and her historical claim of aboriginal rights [explicated here by Allen Hertz] to the Land of Israel, is stronger than that of any other claimant. Israel would be within her rights to annex these areas today.

Israel categorically rejects UNSC 2334 and the idea that she does not hold title to all of the land in question.

Nevertheless, Israel has on several occasions been willing to cede some of the land in return for a real peace agreement that ends the conflict and cancels all Arab claims (including right of return) against Israel.

However, any such agreement must, in the words of UNSC 242, provide for “secure and recognized boundaries,” which include continued Israeli possession of certain strategic areas like the Jordan Valley and the hill country adjacent to Israel’s population centers.

Israel’s security is also not consistent with a fully sovereign Palestinian entity. Such an entity must be demilitarized and Israel must retain control of airspace and other strategic features of the territory.

The PLO would never agree, since this directly contradicts its narrative. But it’s the truth.

Go for it, Bibi.

Posted in 'Peace' Process, Diplomatic warfare, The UN | Comments Off on To whom does the land belong?

Resolution 2334 and the Women of the Wall

Posted on January 10, 2017 by Victor Rosenthal

I watched the Israeli TV news last night, which showed excerpts from the funerals of the four young people who were run down by a terrorist (a Jerusalem Arab) driving a large truck, who then turned around and took another run at them before being shot. It was hard to bear. So I am not at all in a pleasant mood.

The Palestinian strategy aims to drive the Jews out of the land of Israel by a combination of violence and diplomatic pressure. Lately, a diplomatic offensive has coincided with both official and unofficial Palestinian incitement to terrorism.

Two weeks ago UN Security Council resolution 2334 was passed, calling Jewish communities in Judea, Samaria and eastern Jerusalem illegal, and defining all the land outside the 1949 armistice line as “occupied Palestinian land.” 2334 is certainly the most anti-Israel resolution that has ever come out of the Security Council, and one of the worst products of the UN since the General Assembly declared Zionism racism in 1975.

Instead of vetoing it, as it has previous anti-Israel resolutions, the Obama Administration abstained and allowed it to pass. Indeed, the Israeli government believes that the administration even helped create it. The administration insists that there is nothing new in the resolution. But actually it upends other critical UN resolutions and marks a very significant shift in American policy.

Resolution 2334 was criticized by almost every legitimate Jewish institution in the US and Israel (that is, every one to the right of J Street, the phony “pro-Israel” group set up by George Soros to challenge AIPAC). Even the Union for Reform Judaism’s Rick Jacobs had to admit that the UN “has disqualified itself from playing a constructive role” in dealing with the conflict, although he seems to agree with most of the resolution’s content.

One of the many serious implications of the resolution was that virtually all the important holy places of Judaism were placed on “Palestinian land,” including of course the Temple Mount and the Western Wall (the Kotel hama’aravi).

So I was surprised and even shocked when I saw this news item:

Israeli NGO Mattot Arim reports that Women of the Wall refuses to take part in the efforts to oppose the recent anti-Kotel UN resolution. …

Mattot Arim said it turned to Women of the Wall for help in opposing the resolution because the latter’s website places the Western Wall very high on its pedestal. The site states the Western Wall is “the principal symbol of Jewish peoplehood and sovereignty.” It also refers positively to “the Jewish people’s return to Jerusalem in 1967.”

Mattot Arim pointed out to WoW that the new UNSC Resolution states precisely the opposite – namely, “the Security Council does not recognize any changes to the 4 June 1967 lines, including with regard to Jerusalem.” This means not only Judea and Samaria, but also all of eastern Jerusalem, the Western Wall and the Old City, is territory “illegally occupied” by Israel.

WoW said in response that it would not take a stance on the resolution nor join the effort to rescind it. The Women wrote to Mattot Arim that their struggle is “to achieve equality for women” at the Kotel. They said they “choose not to comment on issues which are outside the purview of our struggle” because “our group comprises women of many different political persuasions.”

Mattot Arim is a politically right-wing organization, and the WoW are mostly left-wingers. But it would certainly seem that on this issue they would have common ground. Ironically, if resolution 2334 were implemented and the Temple complex turned over to the Arabs, most likely there would be perfect equality between Jewish men and women at the Kotel – neither group would be allowed to pray there!

Many WoW members support the extreme left-wing Meretz party, which – except for the Arab parties – is the only one in the Knesset that applauded the passage of 2334. For Meretz, there’s no greater evil than “settlements” and “occupation.” These are the ones whose “political persuasions” present a problem.

But then why bother to demonstrate against Israeli policies that discriminate against women at the Kotel if you think the site shouldn’t be part of Israel at all?

Maybe they should think about the conflict between their Jewish spirituality and their politics.

Posted in Diplomatic warfare, Israeli Politics, Israeli Society | 1 Comment

The Azaria verdict

Posted on January 6, 2017 by Victor Rosenthal

At 10 AM on Wednesday, a military court handed down the verdict in the manslaughter trial of Sgt. Elor Azaria, called by the media “the soldier who shot in Hevron.”

10 months ago, Azaria shot and killed an Arab terrorist who was lying on the pavement, several minutes after the terrorist was shot and wounded while stabbing another soldier, who was lightly injured.

The IDFs rules of engagement stipulate that deadly force should not be used in such circumstances (considered “law enforcement” rather than war) unless there is an “immediate threat to life.” Azaria said that he thought there was such a threat, that the terrorist could have been wearing an explosive vest under his jacket.

He was initially charged with murder, but the prosecution decided that it would be difficult to prove premeditation. The manslaughter charge only requires a deliberate, wrongful killing. He could be sentenced to as much as 20 years in prison, but he will probably get much less than that.

In Israeli military court there are three judges, one of whom is the head judge, a professional who is appointed by the President of the state, on recommendation of the Judicial Selection Committee, like civilian judges. The other two can be officers who may not have a legal background. In this case there were two professionals and a field commander. Cases are decided by a majority vote. There are no juries.

The verdict and the penalty turn on whether the judges believe Azaria’s testimony. They could have decided that he lied, or that he was telling the truth but should have acted differently, based on the information available to him. Or they could decide that he told the truth and that his action was justified.

The trial has been the  biggest thing in the media for the past months, bigger than all the countless sexual harassment scandals put together. The country is strongly divided about the appropriate response to Azaria’s act, ranging from jail time to a medal. Before the verdict was announced, there were rowdy demonstrations in his favor outside the courtroom (which had been moved to a more secure location and closed to the public).

It’s important in this connection to note why the incident became a media circus. The shooting was videotaped by an activist for the left-wing NGO B’tselem and the tape shown over and over by the media. What would probably have been a simple matter – one way or the other – became a national affair.

I’m not going to discuss all the evidence that has been presented, such as whether he heard a paramedic at the scene call out “watch out, he has a suicide vest,” whether shooting might detonate the vest, whether the terrorist had already been checked, and more. The trial went on for 6 months, and a great deal of testimony was presented. The court’s opinion will cite the facts that the judges found important in reaching their decision.

My guess before the announcement was that he would be convicted – that the judges would decide that a reasonable soldier would not have fired, given the facts and the rules of engagement. I also thought that the sentence will be relatively light, in consideration of the pressures on the soldier.

***

At exactly 10 AM, I turned on the radio. Israel Radio’s reporters repeated the words of the head judge, Maya Heller, as she read the verdict (the court did not permit the proceedings to be broadcast, so a reporter inside transmitted her words by WhatsApp to the broadcasters outside). Because there is a requirement that an innocent defendant must be informed immediately, the fact that there was no such announcement at the beginning – the whole judgment took 2-1/2 hours to read – told the story.

Elor Azaria was found guilty of manslaughter and conduct unbecoming of an IDF soldier.

The judges did not believe him, and the judgment was unrelievedly harsh. They rejected every one of his points of defense. They did not accept his explanation that he was afraid the terrorist had an explosive vest or that he was reaching for a knife. They found contradictions between various versions of Azaria’s story, and said that he appeared to be changing his story as he went along in order to improve his case. They gave significant weight to testimony that Azaria said “he stabbed my friend, he deserves to die” to another soldier immediately before the shooting. They did not accept arguments from a psychiatric panel that he suffered from PTSD or that he was significantly impaired by lack of sleep or other factors. They accepted the autopsy data that it was Azaria’s bullet that caused the terrorist’s death (and rejected the opposing view of former chief pathologist Yehuda Hiss, who did not examine the body). They did not credit the statements of several reserve generals who testified on Azaria’s behalf. Finally, they decided that the shooting was not merely an error,  but demonstrated “criminal intent.” Criminal intent!

I didn’t hear a word of excuse or understanding. The judges agreed with Chief of Staff Eisenkot and former Minister of Defense Ya’alon that the shooting was entirely unjustified. Had he been accused of murder, I believe that Azaria would have been convicted of that as well.

The punishment will be determined by the court and announced in about ten days. From what I heard from the judge, I suspect that I was mistaken in thinking that he will get a light sentence.

***

Something here is wrong.

Of course, the IDF’s judges had no alternative. An army has rules, and Azaria broke an important one. His explanation that he felt endangered didn’t hold water, no matter how much one wants to support him. He knew what he was doing: killing a terrorist. The court was right about that and the best explanation for his motive was provided by his comment that the terrorist deserved to die. But it didn’t have to come to this.

Explaining his tough stance last April, Moshe Ya’alon said “Part of the power [of the IDF], as many have described it — Ben-Gurion, Menachem Begin and others — is our ethical strength. We aren’t Daesh.”

We aren’t. But we also aren’t a people who would send a soldier to prison for killing a terrorist. There is a feeling in Israel that has become sort of a slogan in this case, that our soldiers are everyone’s children. How can we abandon our children? Chief of Staff Eisenkot disagrees. Yesterday he said this:

An 18-year-old man serving in the army is not “everyone’s child.” He is a fighter, a soldier, who must dedicate his life to carry out the tasks we give him. We cannot be confused about this.

He’s both right and wrong. A young man who is a soldier does have to dedicate his life to – and sometimes lose it for – his country and his people, at least for the 32 months of his service. But he is still “everyone’s child.” Ya’alon said that part of our power comes from our “ethical strength,” but it also comes from the way we love our soldiers – and our army. There are many who would like Israel to have a professional army, but this hasn’t happened yet (and I think it would be a disaster).

Among the most troubling aspects of this case were the statements condemning Azaria’s act made by Eisenkot, Ya’alon, other officers, and even PM Netanyahu (who later changed his tune) immediately after the B’tselem video was made public. Eisenkot and Ya’alon later said that it wasn’t the video that convinced them, that they already had received evidence from the chain of command – but surely it had something to do with their making public statements of this sort (in the US, this would be grounds for appeal).

Indeed, this is where everything went off the rails. Elor Azaria should have had a hearing with his commanding officer, and maybe gotten a weekend of guard duty and an explanation of the rules. Instead, thanks to a video camera probably bought with European money, another kind of soldier, one fighting the cognitive war against Israel, threw the nation into chaos. As usual, we walked right into this.

The distinction between law enforcement and war becomes blurred when terrorists are stalking us – and especially our soldiers and police – in the streets, with every day bringing reports of stabbings and vehicular attacks, as was the case when Azaria killed his terrorist. No, Azaria’s wasn’t a split-second decision where hesitation could be fatal, as the court noted, but our soldiers and police do face such decisions on a daily basis. Could not this verdict deter them from taking action in a situation that isn’t so clear-cut?

Soldiers don’t make good policemen anyway. They are trained to kill the enemy, not to detain suspects who have rights. Enemy soldiers in a firefight don’t have rights.

And we mustn’t forget that in the eyes of our enemies in today’s asymmetric war, no Jew in the Land of Israel, from a baby to an 80-year old grandmother, has a right to live. Possibly if the nation had an official death penalty for terrorism, soldiers wouldn’t feel the need to take the law into their own hands.

In this kind of war, is the principle that a terrorist deserves to die a bad one?

Posted in Israeli Society, Terrorism | Comments Off on The Azaria verdict

Skirmishes in the cognitive war

Posted on January 3, 2017 by Victor Rosenthal

The struggle against Jewish sovereignty in the Middle East, which has been going on for at least 100 years, has lately been characterized by alternating diplomatic/psychological assaults with violence in the form of small wars and terrorism.

The past year marked a violent phase, characterized by decentralized terrorism. We are presently engaged in a diplomatic battle, or more correctly, we are being attacked diplomatically. Security Council resolution 2334 represents a skirmish that we lost, and there are several other engagements scheduled for the near future, such as the Paris conference (that Israel will not attend) planned for January 15, and a possible follow-up Security Council resolution that will be voted on before January 20th, when a new American administration will take over.

At some point after the last “big” war in 1973, it became clear to our enemies that it would be hard or impossible to beat us militarily.  But Israel’s greatest weakness, as its enemies well understand, lies in its susceptibility to cognitive warfare, a combination of small wars, terrorism, diplomatic, legal and academic warfare, and long-term psychological and propaganda operations designed to make Israel defeat herself.

By creating misperceptions of guilt, Stockholm syndrome effects, internalization of anti-Jewish memes, impossible-to-satisfy desires for approval by both “hard” enemies (e.g., Arabs) and “soft” enemies (e.g., Europeans), and by encouraging our own Jewish “useful idiots” and traitors, our enemies attempt to cause us to make deadly strategic mistakes in our responses to their pressure.

Their goal is to weaken us bit by bit, to obtain concessions in territory and our responses to terrorism, to weaken our society and our army, to undermine trust in our leadership, to prevent us from preempting military buildups on our borders or the acquisition of game-changing weapons by our enemies, and to paralyze us and ultimately prevent the full deployment of our military capability when it is necessary to defend the country against attack. Ultimately, when the time is ripe, traditional military force will be used to finally achieve their long-term goal of eliminating the Jewish state.

Here are some of the examples of our enemies’ accomplishments:

  • The Oslo Accords, which reintroduced the murderous PLO into our country and as a diplomatic factor, which allowed Arafat to implement his “education for murder” system to turn the population of the territories into a hostile force.
  • The retreat from South Lebanon, which allowed Hezbollah to gain influence and set the stage for the Second Lebanon War.
  • The withdrawal from Gaza, which created a new permanent front for war against Israel, and at the same time gave rise to a multiplicity of diplomatic, legal and propaganda opportunities for our enemies.
  • The diplomatic failure after the Second Lebanon War that allowed Hezbollah to build the infrastructure for the next war with little interference, and Israel’s failure to preempt the threat.
  • Israel’s allowing the rise of the subversive European-funded NGO system, which has acted and is acting in countless ways to delegitimize the IDF and the state; which has turned our own legal system into a tool to weaken the nation; and which is so well-entrenched now as to have blunted efforts in the Knesset to rein it in.
  • The successes of the anti-Israel movement in almost totally taking over the discourse in the academic world in the West – including Israel – both among students and faculty.
  • The empowerment of the suicidal Israeli Left in media and the arts.

Most of these are examples of cognitive pressure causing Israel to act against its own interests.

In some areas there is little to be done. We can repudiate the Oslo Accords, but we can’t easily undo the damage done in the PA areas by Arafat’s educational system. On the other hand, we can push back against the pernicious memes that our enemies have introduced into our own culture.

This is a Jewish state, the state of the Jewish people. It isn’t “undemocratic” to believe this. We don’t need to feel guilty about it. The Arabs tried to kill us and prevent the establishment of our state. They failed. This was their nakba. They did it to themselves. The Arab nations screwed them, and are still screwing them. Why do we blame ourselves?

We have to understand that we belong here, we are not colonialists but the one people with the closest historical ties to this land. Do our schoolchildren learn about the history of the Jewish people in this land? Do they also learn that most “Palestinians” are descended from migrants that arrived here in the later 19th and 20th centuries?

Do we know who and what the PLO and Hamas are? Do our kids read their founding documents (here and here) in school?

The media are full of accounts of the “stubborn settlers” who insist on living in the “Arab city” of Hevron. Everyone knows that Baruch Goldstein was a terrorist who shot a bunch of Arabs there in 1994. Do they also know that Jews lived in Hevron until they were murdered and driven out in an Arab pogrom encouraged by Palestinian leader al-Husseini in 1929? Do they know that the PLO is a direct ideological descendant of Hitler, via al-Husseini and Arafat?

Do our young people learn about the Jews of the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem who were murdered and expelled in 1948? Do they know about Kibbutz Kfar Etzion, whose defenders were massacred by Arabs? If they knew these things they might be as outraged as I am when I hear “Arab East Jerusalem” or “West Bank.” We need to make sure that every Israeli Jew knows our history. Then maybe there will be fewer deadly mistakes like Oslo.

The European funding for anti-state NGOs has to stop. Transparency isn’t enough: the money flow has to be shut down, just as we would shut down the flow of mortar shells to terrorists. It is a scandal that this hasn’t been done yet. Are we crazy that we allow this?

Minister of Culture Miri Regev is correct when she opposes state funding of “cultural” activities that are actually anti-state propaganda. We can’t pay people to be patriotic, but we can certainly stop paying them for being subversive.

What about Ha’aretz, what about Gideon Levy, what about pro-BDS Neve Gordon and the Political Science Department of Ben-Gurion University, and the rest? What they are doing is sedition and possibly treason. Is this OK? Does “democracy” demand that we let them strike out against the Jewish state? Even if they can do real damage? These are questions that we have to allow ourselves to ask. We aren’t the US, with its enormous strategic depth in both the physical and cultural sense. We need to protect ourselves against those of our own people who would help our enemies destroy us, for whatever reason.

We’re not fighting the cognitive war. The opposite! We act aggressively enough against teenage “Jewish extremists” who embarrass us. We even trump up – yes, I am convinced of this – charges of horrible murder against them. We torture them. But we don’t try to stop the Left that day after day, year after year, does the work of our enemies.

We prepare for the next rocket barrages from Hamas and Hezbollah, we procure new aircraft and submarines, we build army units to specialize in cyber-warfare, we react to diplomatic attacks by recalling ambassadors and ending aid programs, but we spend almost nothing on public diplomacy, on fighting the lies and telling our true story to the world.

You can’t win a cognitive war by ignoring the most important parts of it. We need to aggressively attack the Palestinian narrative, to support our story as the legitimate owners of the land – historically, legally and morally – and we need to do all this both toward the outside world and for our own people.

You can’t win the war you don’t fight.

Posted in Diplomatic warfare, Information war, Israeli Society, Terrorism, War | Comments Off on Skirmishes in the cognitive war

The “international community” and its Israel problem

Posted on December 29, 2016 by Victor Rosenthal

I am writing on Wednesday, after the passage of UNSC resolution 2334 and John Kerry’s speech laying out his parameters for ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. And after that, there will or will not be another Security Council resolution, in which the so-called “international community” will continue on its path to making Israel indefensible and ultimately seeing her disappear.

Today I’m going to take a longer view and ask a more fundamental question than “how are they going to try to stick it to us tomorrow?” Today I want to know “what’s in it for them in sticking it to us?”

This is interesting, because the obvious answer seems to be “nothing.” Look at this objectively: Israel is a tiny country which actually contributes a lot to civilization in science, technology, medicine and more. The Palestinians (PLO and Hamas varieties) basically have one interest, and that is destroying Israel and taking over their tiny piece of land. Their major contribution to civilization seems to be the popularization of airline hijacking and suicide bombing. Israel tried several times to give away large chunks of its country – which it is fully entitled to keep – in order to end the conflict, but the Palestinians have refused every time. Lucky for us.

Most of the nations, if asked, would say that it has to do with the human rights of the Palestinians. This is interesting too, because the Palestinians seem to think they have a right to kill anyone Jewish they come across. Israel argues persuasively that it really has to take security measures that affect the Palestinians, because otherwise they would exercise their “right” to murder us. How do we know? Experience: the withdrawal from Gaza and the various prisoner releases. Give them  a chance, and they try to kill us. It happens every time.

It’s even more interesting that for all the people deprived of their human rights around the world – often much more severely than the Palestinians, who have more rights than Arabs living in Arab countries – the international community expends far more money and energy on the Palestinians than on anyone else.

So let’s try to figure this out. Who would benefit if the Palestinians got their wish and we disappeared? Possibly only the Palestinians themselves and Iran, which wants to become the regional hegemon and sees us as an obstacle. But how does that explain the anti-Israel activity in almost all the European countries, especially the most “progressive” ones like the Scandinavian countries, France, Germany, Britain and others? How does it explain that other pole of the Axis of anti-Israelness, the White House? And how does it explain the particular passion with which they have taken sides?

Interests are insufficient to explain this. We need to look at psychology.

The Palestinians got their start from the Soviet KGB as a weapon against American influence in the Middle East. The Soviet psychological warfare experts melded third-world anti-imperialism with traditional Jew-hatred to create the meme of an oppressed “Palestinian people” whose human rights were being denied them by vicious European Jewish colonists. This powerful but totally false story, convincingly told, found its way into leftist dogma. It was eagerly lapped up by the affluenza-sufferers of the New Left, many of them Jewish, who were looking for a connection to the “Wretched of the Earth,” in the words of Frantz Fanon.

People are fond of saying that they are critical of Israeli policy but they don’t hate Jews. But passionate anti-Zionism is never pure. A natural question to ask is, “if Israel is so evil, what makes it so?” And the obvious answer is “because the Jews are evil.” Anti-Zionism and Jew-hatred go together. One gives rise to the other. The Palestinians’ made-up history only works if you believe Israeli Jews capable of deliberate ethnic cleansing and murder; if you believe that they are like Nazis. And if Jews are like Nazis, then their state is a Nazi state.

When the New Lefties of 1960s Europe grew up, many of them became Social Democrats. While they may have grown away from anarchism and created its opposite in the European Union, they kept their ideas about Israel and the Palestinians. It was a satisfying relief for Europeans, embarrassed by their fathers’ crimes during the Holocaust, to “realize” that the Jews themselves were actually Nazis.

In America, the New Left virtually conquered academia, where terrorists like Bill Ayres and Bernardine Dohrn became respected members of the academic community. Big grants to universities from Saudi Arabia and other oil states ensured that there would be “Middle East Studies” departments to promote the correct line on Israel.

The Left in America was very fertile ground for Jew hatred. It was politically incorrect to say that you hated Jews, but you could say anything you wanted about Israel. And what about the “Israel Lobby?” And little by little, like in the Occupy movement, it became OK to suggest that maybe Jews had too much influence in the media, Hollywood and banking.

The black community in America was infected with anti-Jewish attitudes as well, probably originally traceable to the Nation of Islam, later amplified by conflicts with Jewish landlords, teachers and shop-owners, and fertilized by the influence of the radical Left on the Black Power movement.

Barack Obama’s ideas about Israel and the Palestinians probably developed from multiple sources: his early Muslim background; the influence of friends like Ayres and Dohrn, anti-Israel blogger Ali Abunimah, Columbia professor and PLO operative Rashid Khalidi, and academics like Edward Said; and the anti-Jewish climate in the black community. Obama chose advisors that shared his point of view, like Susan Rice, Ben Rhodes and Rob Malley.

The Muslim world quite naturally cleaved to the side of the Palestinians, because, after all, most Palestinians are Muslims. But there was also a sinister cross-pollination from ancient European Jew-hatred that was introduced by Hitler’s associate Haj Amin al-Husseini, as well as the numerous Nazi war criminals that found asylum in places like Egypt and Syria after the war. Egypt has virtually no Jews left, and yet a common insult there is to call someone a Jew. When Mubarak was deposed, cartoons and posters showed him with a star of David on his forehead.

It is now possible to understand the automatic majority votes against Israel in the UN, or, more to the point, the obsessive focus of the UN on Israel, and why real atrocities that occur elsewhere in the world are comparatively barely noticed. We can see why the terrorism committed on a regular basis by Palestinians against Jews for at least a hundred years receives only lip service, while Jewish building in Jerusalem makes Obama “furious.” We can understand why the outcome of the vote for Security Council resolution 2334 was greeted with “sustained applause.” We can see why the European nations and the EU spend millions of Euros every year supporting subversive anti-state NGOs in Israel, and why the human rights of Palestinians are more important to them than those of anyone else. And we can see why Barack Obama has consistently worked against Israel over his entire term, winding up with a still-unfolding diplomatic strike.

Even though national interest is cited – Kerry even argued in his speech that American interests were served by destabilizing Israel! – the real motivation for these policies is deep, irrational, and unfortunately, very familiar.

Posted in Israel and Palestinian Arabs, The UN, US-Israel Relations | 1 Comment

Questions and answers about UN Security Council resolution 2334

Posted on December 26, 2016 by Victor Rosenthal
A cartoon posted by Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah party, which bloodily thanks the 14 nations that voted for UNSC resolution 2334.

A cartoon posted by Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah party, which bloodily thanks the 14 nations that voted for UNSC resolution 2334. Courtesy Palestinian Media Watch.

On Friday, December 23, 2016, the UN Security Council passed Resolution 2334 with a vote of 14 in favor and one abstention – the US.

What does the resolution say? A lot of things (full text is here), but some of the important ones are

  • The statement that Israel’s establishment of settlements across the Green Line (including eastern Jerusalem) “has no legal validity and constitutes a flagrant violation under international law and a major obstacle to the achievement of the two-State solution and a just, lasting and comprehensive peace,” and the demand that Israel “cease all settlement activities in the occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem.”
  • The condemnation of attempts to change the “demographic composition, character and status of the Palestinian Territory occupied since 1967.”
  • The statement that the UN will recognize no changes in the pre-1967 lines except those agreed upon by both sides.
  • The call for “all States … to distinguish, in their relevant dealings, between the territory of the State of Israel and the territories occupied since 1967.”
  • The condemnation of violence, terrorism, incitement, etc. (The “fig leaf” that allowed the US to abstain on what was originally a 100% anti-Israel resolution).
  • The request that the UN Secretary-General report on the progress of implementing the resolution every three months.

Is the resolution binding? No. It is a Chapter VI resolution, which is defined as a “recommendation.” So the UN can’t impose sanctions on Israel for violating its provisions. Only a Chapter VII resolution would be binding and would allow the imposition of economic sanctions or even the use of military force.

That makes settlements, illegal, right? No. It just asserts that they are. It refers to the 4th Geneva Convention (art. 49), but the legal argument based on this is particularly weak. A discussion of the basis for Israeli sovereignty over all the land from the Jordan to the Mediterranean is here. It’s important to understand that this resolution does not create international law, it only expresses the UN’s opinion about it.

Does this mean that Israel is “occupying Palestinian territory?” No. It means that that is what the UN wants to call it. But there is no such thing as “Palestine” for Israel to occupy, and declarations by the UN can’t make it so. Incidentally, the US never accepted this formulation before (see below).

What about the pre-1967 lines? The cease-fire agreements of 1949 that delimited them explicitly say that they are just the lines marking the locations of the armies when the shooting stopped, and they are not borders. They have no political significance. The Arabs particularly insisted on this, because they hoped to push Israel back even further. So the resolution says that the UN will not accept any changes in lines that are meaningless anyway.

Can it be construed as a call for BDS? It will doubtless be seen as a justification for the EU labeling of products from settlements. It will encourage unofficial or official boycotts of settlement products or even Israeli products, academics, artists, sports teams and more, on the basis of the claim that Israel is violating international law. There is no doubt that it will be cited as providing a “legal” basis for BDS activity, even though it has no legal significance.

Can Israelis be charged in the International Criminal Court on the basis of this resolution? Unclear. The ICC has jurisdiction over crimes committed by a national of a “state party” to the Rome Statute or in the territory of a state party. Israel (and the US and Russia!) did not accept the Rome Statute. “Palestine” while not a sovereign state, managed to get the ICC’s prosecutor to accept it as a state party anyway. The legal validity of this is questionable, but in the fantasy world of international politics, who cares?

The ICC can also take cases when directly referred by the Security Council under Chapter VII. This is not the case with this resolution.

Is the resolution balanced? Absolutely not. It affirms the Palestinians’ public position, which is that all the land beyond the Green Line belongs to them. If anything presupposes the outcome of negotiations, this is it! Israel’s stance in negotiations has been that it will cede some land to the Palestinians in return for recognition of Israel as the state of the Jewish people, demilitarization of the Palestinian state and an end to further claims (including the ‘right of return’). But if the land is recognized as belonging to the Palestinians from the start, then Israel has no right to demand anything in return.

But doesn’t it also criticize the Palestinians? They don’t see it that way. The resolution condemns “all acts of violence against civilians, including acts of terror, as well as all acts of provocation, incitement and destruction.” But the official position of the PLO and Hamas is that their “terrorism, provocation, incitement and destruction” is actually not “violence,” but legitimate resistance to occupation. Israel, in their view, is guilty of all of the above.

Does it encourage terrorism? See the cartoon tweeted by Fatah (Mahmoud Abbas’ party) at the head of this post.

What is its relationship to previous resolutions and agreements? Although it mentions UNSC resolutions 242 and 336, it contradicts them, as well as the Oslo accords, by referring to “occupied Palestinian land” (the clause about accepting changes in the lines that are negotiated by the parties is a weak attempt to sidestep this argument). There is no recognition of Palestinian ownership anywhere in international law, and in fact there are good reasons to believe that Israel holds title to it.

How does this represent a significant change in US policy? The US has always insisted that the UN is no place to decide the issues that divide Israel and the Arabs, and that all issues such as borders, settlements, Jerusalem, refugees, and others must be decided by the parties. While it has  said that “settlement activity is illegitimate” it has not previously used the expression “illegal.” And it has never taken the position that any of the territories is “occupied Palestinian land.”

In 1994, the UNSC passed a resolution condemning the mass shooting in Hevron by Baruch Goldstein. Here are some of the remarks by US Ambassador Madeline Albright in the discussion following its passage (H/T Jim Wald):

The United States supports the operative paragraphs of the resolution that the Council has just adopted. However, we sought a paragraph-by-paragraph vote on this resolution because we wanted to record our objections to language introduced there. Had this language appeared in the operative paragraphs of the resolution, let me be clear: we would have exercised our veto. In fact, we are today voting against a resolution in the Commission on the Status of Women precisely because it implies that Jerusalem is “occupied Palestinian territory”.

We simply do not support the description of the territories occupied by Israel in the 1967 war as “occupied Palestinian territory”. In the view of my Government, this language could be taken to indicate sovereignty, a matter which both Israel and the PLO have agreed must be decided in negotiations on the final status of the territories. As agreed between them, those negotiations will begin not later than two years after the implementation of the Declaration of Principles.

How much responsibility does the Obama Administration bear for this resolution? A Palestinian delegation met with administration officials earlier this month to discuss a draft of the resolution that they intended to introduce. At that time, Western diplomatic sources suggested that the administration might go along with it if some of the clauses were toned down, which was done. The resolution was introduced by Egypt in a surprise move; and after Israeli pressure and a statement by President-elect Trump influenced Egypt to delay the vote, it was re-introduced by four other non-permanent Security Council members (New Zealand, Malaysia, Senegal and Venezuela) and quickly passed.

PM Netanyahu has credibly accused the Obama Administration of “colluding” to push the resolution through, saying that it “initiated [the resolution], stood behind it, coordinated on the wording and demanded that it be passed,” although the administration denies this. Israeli sources claim that Joe Biden called the president of Ukraine and pressured him to vote for it.

It is true that the US has abstained on anti-Israel resolutions in the past, and even voted affirmatively on some. For example, the Carter Administration voted for UNSC resolution 465 in 1980, which contained some similar language to the present resolution (although President Carter claimed the vote was an unintentional “foul-up”). Most of these resolutions condemned specific actions of Israel, such as the abduction of Adolf Eichmann in 1960 or the bombing of the Iraqi nuclear reactor in 1981. But in today’s climate of vituperation, hatred and threats against Israel by so many actors in so many different venues, the support of the US for Israel at the Security Council has come to have greater significance. Obama’s action is therefore perceived as a serious withdrawal of support.

Does it matter that the US abstained rather than voting for the resolution? After the vote, Ambassador Samantha Power said (at length) that she abstained rather than voting for the resolution because of the well-known anti-Israel bias of the UN, and because “it was too narrowly focused on settlements” and didn’t give enough emphasis to Palestinian terrorism. She indicated that she would have vetoed it if it had not contained what I called the “fig leaf” provision condemning terrorism and incitement.

The fact is that the abstention and  the long, relatively friendly to Israel speech made by Ms Power will have absolutely zero effect on the consequences of this resolution. The speech will be forgotten, but the content of the resolution will not.

Practically, how bad is this for Israel? It doesn’t appear to have any immediate, direct effects. It has no significance in international law. It will not cause Israel to withdraw from the territories and it might even spur Israel to build more in the territories and Jerusalem or even extend Israeli law to parts of Judea and Samaria.

But it may be only the opening volley in a diplomatic campaign, which could play out before January 20. It sets the stage for follow-on resolutions under Chapter VII that could call for real sanctions against Israel or ICC prosecutions of its leaders, and the requirement for the Secretary General to report every three months will generate even more anti-Israel activity at the UN. It might be cited as a reason for arrest and harassment of Israelis abroad under the principle of “universal jurisdiction,” or even an ICC prosecution without a Chapter VII resolution. It will be used to justify boycotts, and even terrorism.

And – perhaps most important in the short term – at a time that worldwide hatred and threats against the Jewish people and the “Jew among nations” are greater than ever before, it will encourage Israel’s enemies, who will take it as a sign that the international community, including the US, is behind them.

Posted in Diplomatic warfare, The UN, US-Israel Relations | 4 Comments

The terrorist veto

Posted on December 23, 2016 by Victor Rosenthal

Dear Mr. President-Elect and Mr. Prime Minister,

You understand that you are being tested, do you not?

Mr. Trump, they want to know if you are as tough as you say you are and if you will live up to your promises. And Mr. Netanyahu, will you for once confront an issue head-on instead of finding a way to deflect it?

I’m talking about the embassy.

Jerusalem has been Israel’s capital since the cease-fire agreements were signed in 1949. The Knesset, the seat of Israel’s government, has been there ever since except for a few months in 1949, when it met  in a Tel Aviv theater while a more permanent location was prepared. Jerusalem was also the capital of the Kingdom of Judah under King David around 1000 BCE. Israel has never had another capital.

When the city was divided and part of it was occupied by Jordan, it remained the capital of Israel. Even if under some hypothetical “peace” agreement the city were to be re-divided, it would still be the capital of Israel. The argument that recognition of this fact somehow presupposes the outcome of negotiations or is an obstacle to peace is ludicrous. Nobody is talking about putting the embassy in a disputed part of the city. It would be no different than the Knesset.

Some point to the 1947 UN partition resolution (UNGA 181), which called for all of Jerusalem to be placed under international control, as a justification for denying Israel’s clear title. But this resolution was a non-binding recommendation and it was never implemented, since the Arabs chose to try to settle the question of a Jewish state by war. If the US Administration and State Department insist on this, then they should also insist that much of the Galil and a chunk of the Negev also don’t belong to Israel, following the map of resolution 181. They don’t, because they realize that it would be insane to do so.

The non-recognition of Israel’s capital is no less than a denial of Israel’s sovereignty. What else does it mean to say that a state can’t choose its own capital city on its own territory?

Mr. Trump and Mr. Netanyahu, if you do not proceed with the transfer of the embassy, you will be allowing the gang of murderers and thieves that the international community – and the Israeli government – has cravenly anointed as the leadership of the Palestinian Arabs, to exercise a “terrorist’s veto” over this overdue recognition of Israel’s sovereignty.

PLO negotiator Saeb Erekat recently said that such a move would create “chaos, lawlessness and extremism.” He also promised that “the infuriated Arab public” around the world would force US embassies in their countries to close (presumably by means of rocks and firebombs). Erekat said that moving the embassy would legitimize “Israel’s illegal annexation of eastern Jerusalem.” I hate to repeat myself, but how does moving it to western Jerusalem do that?

Erekat’s comments are meant as a threat that he will invoke the terrorist’s veto. He knows that you, Mr. Trump, don’t want to see US embassies worldwide under siege, and that you, Mr. Netanyahu, don’t want to be blamed for yet another intifada in which Israelis, Jewish and Arab, will die. The gangsters of the PLO are confident that this technique – that they have employed countless times – will be successful yet again.

But appeasement is not the way to respond to terrorism. Surely we’ve all learned that by now! If the US embassy may not be located in Jerusalem, then why should the Knesset and the Prime Minister’s office be there? If Jerusalem isn’t part of Israel, why is Tel Aviv? Maybe the Jews should all move “back” to Poland, Iraq and Russia?

Giving in to blackmail seems like the easy way out, but in the end you will pay ten times as much.

This is a test, Mr. Trump and Mr. Netanyahu. Please don’t fail it.

Sincerely,

Vic Rosenthal
Abu Yehuda

Posted in Terrorism, US-Israel Relations | 5 Comments