Jabotinsky, Netanyahu, and the American debates

Posted on September 27, 2016 by Victor Rosenthal

When I arose at 0330 this morning to watch the American presidential debates, I couldn’t help but think about the concept of leadership – what makes a good leader and why it’s rare to find one who is also a good politician. So I was pleased to run into this very interesting article by Elliott Jager about a man who was a great leader of the Jewish people, although he was not successful as a politician and unfortunately died far too soon.

The man, of course, was Ze’ev Jabotinsky, whom generations of left-leaning politicians dismissed as a fascist and an extremist, and whom many still think of as a footnote in Zionist history that is best kept at the bottom of the page.

But Jager points out that Jabotinsky’s positions were more nuanced than many think today. As a classical liberal, he was absolutely committed to the protection of individual rights (something that the Left likes to talk about a great deal while doing the precise opposite).

This includes the rights of Arabs in the Jewish state. Jabotinsky clearly saw the distinction between civil rights, such as those enumerated in the American Bill of Rights, and national or collective rights, the most obvious example of which is the Law of Return for Jews alone. Those who insist that the Jewishness of the state is essentially undemocratic elide this distinction. Jabotinsky’s demand for a state with national rights for the Jewish people was uncompromising, but he would never have accepted discrimination against minorities within the state.

Jabotinsky would not have agreed to limitations on where any citizen could live, but he would also have rejected Arab demands to change the flag and the national anthem, which are clearly national issues. And while he lived a secular life and was opposed to any kind of religious coercion, he nevertheless respected Judaism. Jager notes that the food at his Betar youth movement camps was kosher and “Shabbat was respected.”

One of the themes that Jabotinsky returned to throughout his life was the centrality of Jewish self-sufficiency and self-defense, and the importance of military power in the survival of a state. I suspect that he would be as uncomfortable with Israel’s degree of dependence on the US as I am. Jager quotes him saying,

For centuries, the nations of the world had been used to hearing that Jews were defeated here, and Jews were protected there ‒ you either defeated or protected us ‒ and it is difficult to decide what was more humiliating: the defeats or being protected. It is time to show the world a Jewish rifle with a Jewish bayonet.

Jabotinsky died at 59 in 1940, but he was the ideological father of Begin’s Herut party, the secular Right in Israeli politics. As everyone knows, Begin lost out in the struggle with the socialists of David Ben-Gurion, and – as happens when an ideological group gains power – the personalities and ideas of the out-group are denigrated and even written out of history. Ben-Gurion didn’t even permit Jabotinsky’s remains to be interred in Israel, and he wasn’t reburied here until the next PM, Levi Eshkol, ordered it in 1964. Even though the Labor monopoly ended in 1977, Jabotinsky still, in my opinion, doesn’t get the credit he deserves as one of the fathers of the Jewish state.

Jager suggests that today’s Right is more religious and “populist” (whatever that means) than Jabotinsky would have liked. “One would be hard pressed to find anything more than trace elements of his legacy in Netanyahu government policies or in the views of rank-and-file Likud members,” he writes. And,

In contrast, today’s more religious and populist Right has been pursuing legislation that would hamstring Israel’s admittedly hyper-activist Supreme Court so as to bend it to popular will. On civil liberties too, the Right has no interest in limiting the power of the state-established ultra-Orthodox (and non-Zionist) rabbinate. Netanyahu, though personally not observant, has allowed Jerusalem’s Western Wall plaza to be administered as if it were an ultra-Orthodox shtiebel.

I would argue that the Supreme Court needs to be reined in not to make it agree with the “popular will,” but rather because it has elevated its concept of “democracy” – which blurs the distinction between national and civil rights – above Zionism. Jabotinsky would explain this distinction to the honorable justices, as well as the absolutely essential Jewish component in the concept “Jewish and democratic state.” Indeed, Netanyahu, in pushing for a Jewish State Basic Law that would explicate the meaning of “Jewish State” in Israel’s effective constitution, is faithfully following Jabotinsky.

As far as the Haredi influence over the government and its takeover of the Rabbinate, this is indeed a problem. It was a problem for Labor governments also, and is an artifact of Israel’s coalition system in which the Haredi parties often hold the balance of power. I don’t think it represents Netanyahu’s divergence from Jabotinsky’s principles as much as practical politics. There’s no doubt that Jabotinsky would oppose it, but unlike Jabotinsky, who led a movement, Netanyahu needs to make and keep a coalition.

On the other hand, the growing influence of Judaism in popular culture, the army and politics is not at all a bad thing, and as long as it is not coercive, I doubt that Jabotinsky would object. He certainly understood the need for a spiritual component to Zionism, if not a traditional “religious” one.

Jabotinsky also stressed the importance for a leader to display hadar, a difficult word to translate, but it connotes dignity, gravitas, self-respect, and maybe honesty too. My own opinion is that Netanyahu, despite his faults, is a pretty good heir to the Jabotinsky tradition, and I think he is aware of the history and the responsibility that this places on his shoulders.

I watched the debate. There were no big surprises. Donald was Donald and Hillary put on a polished, empty performance. Two “leaders” without a sense of history, without responsibility to anyone but themselves. Without hadar.

Posted in American politics, Israeli Politics, Zionism | Comments Off on Jabotinsky, Netanyahu, and the American debates

A war between peoples

Posted on September 23, 2016 by Victor Rosenthal

There were eight stabbing attacks by Arabs against Jews in the last four days (as of Tuesday).

News item:

Speaking to students of Palestinian origin in Venezuela, Abbas explained that incitement was not behind the decision to carry out attacks, “rather, they [young Palestinians] have lost hope.”

He added that he is prepared to return to the negotiation table if Israel halts settlement construction and releases additional prisoners. Abbas went on to say that the Palestinians would not compromise on the right of return, stressing that 6 million Palestinian refugees were waiting to come home.

So this is what we are dealing with. We are in the midst of a war between peoples, a war different from most wars, where there may be various objectives like control of resources or access to transport or markets, expansion of empires, and countless others. Here there is only one simple objective: our enemies want to end our state and kill or disperse our people, while we want to survive as a sovereign state.

There aren’t many modern examples of wars between peoples, other than the wars of Israel (perhaps the 1971 Bangladesh War is one). The wars of 1948, 1967 and the ongoing Palestinian War all fit this description. The major world wars, although they may have been associated with genocides, did not have genocide as their major objective. The American Civil War and the Korean and Vietnam wars were fought for political control, but not to replace one people with another.

When WWII ended, the Allies received unconditional surrender from their enemies and occupied their lands temporarily, in order to ensure that the previous leaders and ideology would not return. Despite the horrendous violence during the war, there was no attempt to kill or disperse the Japanese or German people. Some territory changed hands, a few individuals who were judged to be guilty of war crimes were punished, and new political structures set up. But the victors did not kill, deport or enslave the vanquished populations en masse.

The Palestinians are a people, a people that was created in very recent times and one that was created as the negation of another people, but despite all that, still a people. They will not go back to being Egyptians or Syrians or Jordanians as most of them would have called themselves just a few years ago. And the thing that unifies them, the main ideological principle that makes them not just Arabs but Palestinian is that they want our land, all of it, and they want us gone one way or another. That is the overriding national goal to which all the rest – economics, politics, culture, education, technology, sport – every human enterprise in which they participate – is subordinated.

I am not going to go into why they are wrong and how they got where they are or who did what to whom. I am satisfied with our moral position as Zionists. I accept the challenge of my left-wing friends who always say that they don’t want to talk about history, they want to know how to fix the situation today. Fine, let’s discuss that.

For the purpose of this discussion, it’s enough to understand that the Palestinians are our enemy in a war between peoples, like the biblical people of Israel and Amalek. Today, they have taken up the banner of Amalek. They have defined themselves as the archenemy of the Jewish people.

Have the Jews forgotten Amalek? It seems so. You can’t compromise with such an enemy because the question at issue is whether or not your people will continue to exist. He says no, you say yes. There is no common ground: the logical intersection of what he wants and what you can accept is empty. The only law that provides an answer is the Law of the Jungle.

One of the favorite plans of those who have forgotten Amalek is to divide the land. “Then they will have their own country and they will live peacefully alongside us.” But why would they, when their goal is not to live peacefully with us, but to end our existence? Dividing the land (especially given the geography of the Middle East) just makes it easier for them. Have they ever done anything with land they control than use it to make war on us? Dividing the land is the most irrational thing we could do!

If you succeed in driving Amalek out of your land, you don’t let him come back because he promises to consider living at peace with you. Of course he lies – he wants to kill you, why do you expect him to tell you the truth? You don’t sign papers or shake hands with him. You crush him.

It isn’t true that peace is made between enemies, as Rabin famously said. It is made between former enemies, when one is beaten so badly that he prefers unconditional surrender to death. If you want peace, plan to be the winner, the overwhelming winner, or it will not be the kind of peace you want.

Amalek is someone who tries to kill you however he can. He is not someone to whom you give a “political horizon.” He is not someone whose economy you try to improve, or to whom you sell electricity or water. He is not someone that you provide with food and medicines. If you take prisoners – and the fewer you take, the better – you don’t free them so they can fight again. You certainly don’t provide medical treatment for the relatives of his leaders. And above all, you don’t abandon the land and expel your own people from it.

Is it immoral to blockade civilians? What if they support the fighters? Unfortunately, this is part of war. Never forget that Amalek started the war and could choose to end it. Remember what his objective is and what ours is. Is it immoral to shoot a wounded prisoner? What if he tried to kill you and will try again if he recovers? It isn’t moral to be merciful to Amalek. It doesn’t make you a better person. It isn’t going to make him like you and it gives him another chance to kill you.

***

Our war is special. Today’s Palestinian War (we could call it a continuation of the Oslo War as well, a name given to the Second Intifada), is a war between peoples where one side exists as a people only as an antithesis to the other. And this, in a nutshell, is why there is no compromise solution. A compromise would require that the Palestinians, as a nation, had other interests, other areas in which they could gain while giving up their hope of getting rid of us. But they don’t. Amalek is all they are.

Therefore, there is only one way to end the conflict, and it is for one side to be victorious over the other. May it be us.

Posted in Israel and Palestinian Arabs, War | 4 Comments

American military aid: bad for America, worse for Israel

Posted on September 19, 2016 by Victor Rosenthal

See, you trust in the staff of this broken reed, on Egypt; where on if a man lean, it will go into his hand, and pierce it: so is Pharaoh king of Egypt to all that trust in him. – Isaiah 36:6

Reactions to the signing of a 10-year $38 billion memorandum of understanding (MOU) for American military aid to Israel are coming in, as predictable as the moon and the tides. The man Netanyahu calls Israel’s “worst Prime Minister ever”, Ehud Barak, claims that Netanyahu could have obtained another $7 billion a year if only he hadn’t opposed Obama’s Iran deal so strongly. Similar remarks have come from the parliamentary opposition, unsurprisingly. Others thank America for its commitment at a time that its own military budgets are being slashed. Still others curse it for helping Israel with its continued ‘genocide’ against the ‘Palestinians’, who have tripled in number since 1970.

The truth is that Israel does not need and should phase out military aid from the US. It is bad for Israel and bad for the US.

Israel doesn’t need it. The $3.8 billion per year that will come from the US is about a quarter of Israel’s 2015-16 defense budget of $15.47 billion. This is a lot of money, but consider that the government’s overall budget is about $89 billion, and Israel’s gross domestic product today is close to $300 billion, almost double what it was 10 years ago.

In addition, the new agreement phases out Israel’s ability to spend any of it outside of the US. In the past, up to about a quarter of the aid could be spent in Israel. Does anyone doubt that many items can be procured here or elsewhere, at lower cost? I don’t. The F-35 alone costs about $200 million per aircraft. Are there alternatives? We might be able to find out if we went shopping with our own money (possibly the F-15SE would become available).

Finally, increased investment in our military industries would improve our ability to sell our products to other countries, helping to offset the loss of US aid.

Aid gives the US administration too much leverage over Israeli policies and actions. PM Netanyahu will be meeting with Barack Obama next week at the UN. Obama will certainly make demands about Israeli-PA relations, the blockade of Gaza, and more. Do we want to give him a club to hold over our heads?

During the Gaza War in 2014, Obama cut off the supply of Hellfire missiles and other items in response to (tendentious) complaints that Israel had deliberately shelled a UN school. The more we can reduce our dependence on aid, the more equipment like this can be manufactured at home.

Israel needs freedom of action to respond to threats. The aid comes with too many strings attached.

Aid distorts our military purchase decisions. If you can get your army boots – or fighter aircraft – “for free” then maybe you settle for something that doesn’t meet your needs quite as well as a product  you have to pay for.  The decisions about what we will be given are based in part on US policy objectives and, since the aid is in effect a direct subsidy to the US defense industry, domestic American considerations – not what’s best for Israel.

For example, it has been suggested that manned fighter aircraft will be much less important in future warfare than drones, but we get ‘free’ fighter planes from America and build our own drones; so we have lots and lots of manned fighter planes – maybe more than we need.

The F-35, with its cost and all its problems, stands out. As I wrote a few weeks ago, would Israel even have considered replacing its F-16 fleet with F-35s if the first batch weren’t ‘free’?

Aid corrupts our military decision-makers. The word ‘corrupts’ is a strong word, but may not be out of place. If you are a Chief of Staff, and a quarter of your budget comes from America, wouldn’t you take the US administration’s wishes into account when considering whether or not to take some particular action (say, bombing Iranian nuclear installations)? How could you not do so? Enough said.

Aid cripples the development of our own military industries. This may be the most important consideration of all. Although the new MOU represents an increase from the previous $3.1 billion a year, it phases out over five years the ability to spend up to about a quarter of it for locally-produced goods. If we don’t have the capability to produce our own weapons, our dependence on the US becomes even greater, and we lose the jobs and technical know-how that come from it. Buying our own would pump additional money into our economy, which helps offset the loss of American aid. Even the IDF’s boots, formerly made in Israel, are now ordered from the US.

Aid doesn’t necessarily guarantee a qualitative edge. One of the rationales for US military aid was that the US promised to maintain our “qualitative military edge” (QME) over our enemies, as a way of counteracting their numerical superiority. But the US has more and more been selling its best weapons to anyone who can pay for them. The way to maintain the QME, then, is for Israel to use her technological abilities to develop weapons and countermeasures for her own use that will not be available to her enemies.

Aid damages Israel’s standing as a sovereign state. A nation that is dependent on another for its defense is a satellite, not an ally. In order to maintain her national self-respect, Israel should pay for her own defense. In addition, Israel’s accepting aid provides ammunition for anti-Israel and anti-Jewish propaganda in America.

Phasing out aid is better for America. The US is burdened by a large and growing debt. The end of military aid to Israel can only help America meet her own civilian and military needs.

***

Naturally, there will be objections.

Israel can’t afford expensive systems like the F-35 without aid. First, it’s not true, and second, maybe we don’t need such expensive systems, or so many of them.

But the US makes the world’s best weapons. Perhaps. If so, we should buy them with our own money. I’m not suggesting we break relations with the US. And who is to say that our home-made products won’t fit our unique needs better?

But it takes time to build up our industries. True, which is why I want to phase out the aid over a period of years rather than cutting it off sharply.

But what about the close cooperation between Israeli and the US defense industries? I’m not suggesting that such cooperation couldn’t continue, but in a framework of mutually beneficial business deals when indicated, as partners rather than clients.

But AIPAC works so hard making it possible. Yes, and Israel should be grateful to AIPAC and to its friends in the US Congress that for decades have made it possible for Israel to survive in its dangerous neighborhood against great odds. But the situation has changed. What used to be a necessity became a luxury, and then changed into a dangerous overindulgence. It’s not like there aren’t other critical issues that AIPAC could focus on.

***

In recent years much has changed in the world and in the Middle East. Israel, which was a third-rate power that managed to win her wars against great odds, became a first-rate power that nevertheless seems to be stymied and incapable of decisively prevailing over much weaker opponents. Although there are several reasons for this, one of the main ones is the increasing influence and control over Israeli decision-making by the US – whose government, at the same time, has become less and less supportive.

I’m sorry to say that I believe the US is in serious economic, social, political and even security trouble today – truly a broken reed. I hope it will repair itself. But like Isaiah’s Egypt, it is not a staff to lean upon.

Posted in US-Israel Relations | 2 Comments

Shimon Peres

Posted on September 16, 2016 by Victor Rosenthal

On Tuesday afternoon, Shimon Peres, 93, suffered a mild stroke. Later that evening his condition worsened, and now (Wednesday morning) he is fighting for his life.

I was surprised at how sad I felt. After all, Shimon Peres is a man that I have bitterly criticized time after time. He was one of the so-called “architects of Oslo,” the men who secretly violated the law to negotiate with the PLO, and then presented their deal as a fait accompli to PM Rabin, who had no choice but to go along. How could an Israeli PM reject an offer of peace? Rabin thought he could manage the process, but the pressure that was immediately applied to him by the US placed him in the position of someone stuck on the back of an angry bull and told to ride. And then, ironically enough, he was assassinated by a right-wing extremist.

Coincidentally, Tuesday was the 23rd anniversary of the festive signing of the Oslo Accord on the White House Lawn. I wouldn’t have known – it is not a ‘festive’ day in Israel, not at all.

I wrote that the actions of Peres, Yossi Beilin and others bordered on treason. I wrote that Beilin and the ones who went to Oslo for secret talks with PLO representatives should be prosecuted, and that Peres, who as Foreign Minister directed the negotiations without informing Rabin, should be forced to retire from public life.

I opposed Peres’ candidacy for President of the State of Israel. He never repudiated Oslo, even after the Second Intifada that took the lives of more than 1000 innocent Israelis, even after it became clear that bringing Arafat and the PLO back from exile was the single worst mistake made by any Israeli government since 1948, even after PLO incitement gave us the “Stabbing Intifada.” An arrogant man, he never said “we were wrong,” he never apologized for his role (as far as I know, neither did Beilin).

His arrogance is the arrogance of the Left, the unwavering belief that they know better than the rest of us, and that the end justifies the means. Every time he opened his mouth I was annoyed.

I wanted to yell at him “Admit it! Admit you were wrong!” But he wouldn’t.

As President, he lived like Louis XIV. His maintenance cost Israel almost $16.5 million between 2012 and 2014.

And yet, I find myself feeling remarkably sorrowful. Because this man loves his country and loves the Jewish people in a way that very few of our politicians do. He came to Israel in 1934 at the age of 11, and as a young man he became involved in the politics of the yishuv. He took on many military and political responsibilities over the years, including numerous ministries and three terms as PM.

Some say that he was responsible for Israel’s obtaining its nuclear deterrent. I don’t know, but he did play a key role in building the nuclear reactor in Dimona.

Peres has always been a Zionist. Unlike some Ha’aretz writers, he never said that if the Jewish state failed to conform to his model, he would move to Europe. He does not believe that there is an irreconcilable conflict between the Jewishness of the state and democracy, nor that the former should be sacrificed in the name of the latter. A symbol of the Ashkenazi establishment, he nevertheless didn’t call anyone “chachchachim.”

Just hours before his stroke, Peres posted a video on Facebook (Hebrew), calling on Israelis to buy Israeli-made products, “not just because it’s more patriotic, but simply because they are better.”

May Shimon ben Sara have a full and speedy recovery.

Posted in Israeli Politics | 1 Comment

Aftershocks of 9/11

Posted on September 12, 2016 by Victor Rosenthal

Fifteen years ago, America took a punishing blow to the jaw, a strike aimed at its business, military and political centers of power. It was both a military and psychological blow, but above all it was a financial one.

The quality of American response was mixed. President Bush promised that anyone who wasn’t with us was against us, and crushed the Taliban. But then he depended on Afghans to fight and on Pakistanis to guard the Afghan border east of Tora Bora, and despite the deployment of massive firepower, Bin Laden escaped.

In 2003, the US invaded Iraq , which had no connection with 9/11, and managed the aftermath of Saddam’s quick defeat so badly that his deadly enemy, Iran – which was implicated in the attack – was enabled to ultimately gain control of much of that country. Elements in Saudi Arabia, including members of the royal family that were involved, also got off scot-free.

The US financial industry recovered from the destruction almost in its epicenter, although a minor recession occurred afterwards (the Big One hit in 2008, unrelated to 9/11). The Pentagon was repaired and the WTC was finally rebuilt.

Americans were angry and united immediately after the attacks. They wanted to use their massive military power to crush the terrorists and teach them a lesson that would end Islamic terrorism for 400 years, if not forever. But that didn’t happen. Instead, a massive quantity of human and financial resources were wasted in Iraq. The “spirit of 9/12” soon dissipated and political and business leaders became even more self-serving and corrupt than before.

President Bush took the line that the terrorists had “hijacked Islam” and tried to “build bridges” to American Muslims, who almost immediately began to make demands and complained about “islamophobia,” although there were remarkably few actual incidents of anti-Muslim prejudice. The groups chosen to represent Muslim opinion tended to be sympathetic with the goals, if not the methods, of radical Islamists.

But if Bush did not succeed in confronting the Islamic challenge to the West, Obama tried to make allies of the hostile Muslim world. For Obama there was no Islamic jihad against the West, only a few “extremists.” If Bush invaded the wrong country, Obama took the wrong side in the war.

Raised as a Muslim, Obama may not practice the faith today but he is so sympathetic to Islam and Muslims that it doesn’t matter. One of his first acts as president was to go to Cairo where he gave a speech promising to drastically change course after the confrontations since 2001. He made the well-known (and absurd) statement that “Islam has always been a part of America’s story,” promised to remove all US troops from Iraq by 2012 (thus giving the go-ahead to Iran and the forces that would become Da’esh), and equated Palestinian suffering “in pursuit of a homeland” to the Jewish Holocaust. He helped precipitate the downfall of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt, and he supported (and still supports) the jihadist Muslim Brotherhood against the pro-Western Abdel Fattah al-Sisi.

In the US, he decreed that it is forbidden to mention “Islamic terrorism” or to use the word “jihad” to describe it. He moved the American position on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict closer to that of the Arabs, rejecting the Bush-Sharon understandings that construction in settlement blocs was acceptable and that a Palestinian right of return was off the table. He pushed Israel hard on settlement freezes and prisoner releases. During the 2014 war with Hamas, his administration called for Hamas allies Turkey and Qatar to be cease-fire mediators, cut off supplies to Israel of critical weapons, and even had the FAA embargo flights to Israel’s Ben-Gurion airport after one Hamas rocket landed in a nearby town.

But Obama’s signature foreign-policy “achievement” has been the nuclear deal with Iran, which not only guarantees Iran the right to produce nuclear weapons after its expiration, but has inadequate safeguards to prevent cheating that will allow the regime to go nuclear even sooner. If that wasn’t enough, it turns out that there are side agreements that loosen the already loose restrictions on Iran’s nuclear activities.

The administration has also taken the position that the UN Security Council resolution intended to limit Iran’s ballistic missile development is not binding, after supporting the cancellation of tougher resolutions as part of the deal. And finally, it has recently been revealed that the Obama Administration may have transferred as much as $33.6 billion in cash, on pallets to the Iranian regime.

Iran, which is the greatest supporter of terrorism today by virtue of its sponsorship of Hezbollah and other terror organizations, which has kept the Assad regime in business to the tune of half a million casualties and millions of refugees, now has the means to pay for almost unlimited terror attacks, worldwide. The 9/11 attacks only cost al-Qaeda about $500,000. Imagine what terrorists can do – will do – with $33.6 billion.

The 9/11 attacks were a great success. One estimate put the cost to the US at $3.3 trillion (a trillion is 1000 billion, 1×1012), including the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Even if the Iraq war ($860 billion, including veterans’ benefits) is subtracted, it is still a remarkable return on investment: each dollar invested by al-Qaeda cost America $4.8 million. America is still suffering the crippling effects of this blow.

The money had to come from somewhere. It came from the government, whose domestic programs and military preparedness have both been seriously impacted, but it also came directly from the pockets of businesses and individuals. Much greater suffering may be yet to come if the massive government debts that were incurred are made to evaporate by printing money.

It’s hard to distinguish the causes of the negative social and psychological trends that followed the attacks. Some may have no connection to it, but others clearly hark back to it. One is what could be called the 9/11 guilt complex: the feeling that “such a horrible thing would not have been done to us if we hadn’t deserved it.”

Bin Laden made much of the guilt of the US for “colonialism” (although Western colonialism in the Arab world was short-lived and mostly perpetrated by the French and British), as well as for its support for Israel. In America, the remark that 9/11 was payback for the nation’s “crimes” was sometimes heard, and indeed Barack Obama hinted on several occasions that Americans are as responsible for terrorist mass murders as the terrorists who pulled the triggers. Of course, after the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Muslim world has an almost unlimited supply of grievances against the US to “pay back.”

There is also the frustration that Americans feel because they know that although Bin Laden himself was finally killed, the forces that he represented are stronger than ever. They feel the humiliation and the weakness of their country. American sailors are captured and mistreated, and instead of punishing the Iranians, their government meekly apologizes. It pays ransom for hostages. A jihadist murders 49 in a nightclub and their president lectures them on gun control and tolerance for LGBT people. The enemy is primitive and contemptible, and yet for some reason their leaders can’t or won’t confront it. They feel like animals waiting to be slaughtered by the next terrorist outrage, and they don’t like the feeling. Perhaps this is behind some of the conspiracy theories about 9/11 that are so popular.

It seems to me that the US has gone rapidly downhill, economically, socially and politically, since 2001. 9/11 was a historical inflection point, a watershed moment, a date that will certainly be in future history books. Osama Bin Laden didn’t end the Age of America by knocking down a couple of buildings and making a hole in a third, and even by killing almost 3000 innocents and heroic first responders – there is no way he could have done that. But his blow destabilized an already wobbly nation. And the Islamic jihad, as embodied by the soon-to-be-nuclear Iran and the less-confrontational but equally patient Muslim Brotherhood, is waiting for its chance to step in and deliver an even worse blow.

The US has historically had the ability to make big mistakes and its large area, relative isolation and plentiful natural resources gave it the resilience to recover. I suspect that now it has less leeway, less ‘strategic depth’ in the broadest sense, than ever before. America now needs leadership that will not make any more big mistakes, will understand the threat, and will enunciate an ideology that will inspire its people to pull together in a way that they are not accustomed to doing. He or she will have to restore national pride in its citizens as well as respect and deterrence among the nations.

If America goes down, so does that thing called Western civilization. Unfortunately, the American political system has failed: there is no such leader anywhere near the horizon. America needs a Winston Churchill, but at least in this coming election, it isn’t even going to get a Warren Harding.

Posted in American politics, American society, Terrorism | 4 Comments

Don’t worry, it will be OK

Posted on September 9, 2016 by Victor Rosenthal

On Monday morning, an underground parking lot being constructed in Tel Aviv collapsed into itself, killing at least three workers and injuring some 20-odd others. As I write (Wednesday) there are still several workers unaccounted for, probably buried underneath piles of concrete and steel.

Since the collapse, literally hundreds of rescuers – Homefront Command soldiers, firefighters, MDA and Hatzalah workers, special rescue teams with dogs and high-tech equipment to seek weak signals from mobile phones, and others have been working nonstop to try to get to the remaining trapped workers. Some have been pulled out of the rubble, but as time passes it becomes less likely that they will come out alive. Rescue workers say they will not stop until everyone is accounted for. The Prime Minister and the IDF Chief of Staff have visited the scene.

Most construction workers in Israel are Arabs – Israeli citizens or from the territories – or foreign workers. One still missing is Mohammad Dawabshe, a member of the extended family from Duma in Samaria that was a victim of a murderous arson that has been controversially blamed on Jewish extremists.

So what can we say about this?

I don’t mind saying that Israelis care about human life, including non-Jewish human life. You might not believe this if you get your knowledge about us from the subversive, lying Ha’aretz newspaper or the biased foreign press, but they do.

We went to Haiti, to Turkey, to Nepal and to other scenes of natural disasters in order to save lives, which we did, even though Ha’aretz will say that we were just trying to hide the fact that we are committing ‘genocide’ against the Palestinians. We have been systematically providing care for Syrians wounded in the civil war that is taking place next door. Sick Gazans are able to come to Israel for treatment (the obstacles in their way are primarily placed by Hamas, despite what is written in Ha’aretz). Even relatives of Hamas and PLO leaders are treated in hospitals in Israel.

Our army really does try to avoid hurting non-combatants when we defend ourselves against murderous attacks. International military experts say so, despite the flood of propaganda from anti-Israel sources.

Every day Amira Hass writes in Ha’aretz that Israeli security forces and ‘settlers’ practice deliberate cruelty against Arabs. But every day Amira Hass puts on her one-way glasses, the ones that block Arab terrorism and Jew hatred, and magnify accusations against Israel. This is how a conflict looks when you see only one side. And the more ‘information’ that you get that comes through filters like Hass, the more you become incapable of seeing things differently.

Although the PLO and Hamas are obsessed with death, there are Arabs that care about life too. An example of a real-life situation here was the murder of Rabbi Miki Mark in June. The car in which he was travelling with his wife and several of his children was riddled with bullets by Hamas terrorists. Rabbi Mark was killed, his wife seriously wounded and two children also injured. But the first car that stopped to help was occupied by an Arab man and his doctor wife, who got them out of the car and provided first aid. It becomes still more complicated when you note that these Arabs protected them from other passers-by who were not so benign, and that one of the rescuers lost his job because of the incident. Because he saved the lives of Jews.

But to return to the construction site, isn’t it the case that safety rules and practices in the construction industry are outrageously lax, and many workers are killed every year in avoidable accidents? And isn’t this because the workers are non-Jews and we don’t care about them?

The answer to these questions are ‘yes’ and ‘no’. Construction in the US is much safer. More money and time is invested in worker safety. But the lack of attention to safety in Israel does not only affect non-Jewish workers. As I found in my years working on two kibbutzim and in my army service, there are cultural attitudes that express themselves as carelessness, attitudes that are shared to a great extent by both Jews and Arabs. My wife says it’s a Middle Eastern macho thing: we don’t need no stinkin’ hard hats, ear plugs, or dust masks.

In this incident, as in the collapse of the “Versailles” wedding hall 15 years ago when 23 lost their lives and 380 were injured, it’s obvious that there was negligence, and heads will probably roll. There has already been one person placed under house arrest by the police in connection with this incident.

As always, after a particularly bad accident or terror attack everyone says “well, now things will have to be different.” But most of the time they go back to being more or less the way they were. The Versailles disaster was much worse and changes were made, but apparently the procedures for ensuring that sound design and construction practices are followed still need improvement.

It’s hard to change deeply embedded cultural attitudes, and the Israeli attitude is to distrust rules and regulations and improvise as the situation demands. As I have been told countless times in this country, “don’t worry, it will be OK.”

But not everything can be flown by the seat of your pants or fixed in the field with duct tape. The air force learned this a long time ago, and the army learned it from the Second Lebanon War. Maybe it’s time the construction industry learned it too.

Posted in Israeli Society | Comments Off on Don’t worry, it will be OK

How a white Jewish guy lost his guilt and found redemption

Posted on September 5, 2016 by Victor Rosenthal

The recent release of the platform of the Movement for Black Lives (M4BL), which accused Israel of genocide and apartheid against the Palestinians (it has since been toned down slightly), gave rise to a spate of mostly predictable reactions: fury from Zionists, cheers from Palestinians, and a particularly emetic genre of “of course you are right that Israel is an oppressor, and I would never criticize a black person, but maybe you went too far, just saying” literature from guilt-ridden left-wing Jews.

Yotam Marom, 30, is a Jewish “political organizer, educator and writer” who was active in Occupy Wall Street and numerous other causes. He has lived in Israel and has a grandmother who survived the Holocaust. He was arrested in 2014 at the offices of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations where he was protesting Israel’s operation in Gaza. The M4BL platform, which he called “brilliant and powerful” nevertheless made him think about the place of Jews in a Left that some say is more and more anti-Jewish.

Marom, who has totally devoted himself to The Movement, and who spends his days demonstrating for “Palestinians in Gaza, or the Black folks being shot down in the streets,” wrote a long confessional article about how he finally came to the realization that the Left that he is so much a part of, hates Jews:

But this march is alive — people weaving in and out of the police barricades, folks dancing and singing, banners waving in the Midtown wind tunnels. It’s led by young people, but I notice, to my surprise, that it is also full of families — mothers in hijabs pushing strollers, kids waving Palestinian flags, teenagers climbing trash cans on the way downtown. There is a palpable feeling of warmth and hope and resilience, even despite the heartbreak and mourning and fury. I’m glad I’m here, with these people.

Then I see a poster that shows the Jewish Star of David, with an equal sign next to a Nazi swastika. I see the Neturei Karta (an Orthodox Jewish sect) in their black coats and hats and beards, paraded at the front of the demonstrations — as if to say, look, even the Jews hate Israel — even though they are right wingers who are anti-Zionists merely because they believe the land of Israel should be settled only after the Messiah comes. Another sign says “Good job Israel, Hitler would be proud,” and a poster shows Israeli soldiers alongside black and white photos of the SS. No one says anything about it.

There’s more. He notes his comrades talking about how the Jews control the media and the banks. He hears about “Jew landlords,” and a friend who gives a talk about constitutional rights is called a “Jew lawyer.” He sees that his friends, so ready to accuse Israel of genocide against Palestinians, don’t seem to notice violent terrorism against Jews by Arabs or mass murder of Syrians by Syrians. He is upset to be told that Jews, even good leftist anti-Zionist ones like Yotam Marom, are responsible for the purportedly evil actions of the IDF. In a moment of profound and troubling insight, he realizes that his friends really are Jew-haters (I abhor Wilhelm Marr’s solecism “anti-Semites”).

What should come next is the understanding that he’s on the wrong side of the struggle. But it doesn’t. He does not understand that he has been toiling in the very belly of the beast all along. That would be too great a leap, too radical a destruction of his conceptual scheme. Of course his friends hate Jews, because the ruling class uses Jew-hatred to divide the oppressed.  Of course they are right about Israel being a settler-colonial oppressor, but it is only doing the work of the “Anglo-European elites,” who created it in the first place. The truth, he sees now, is that Jews are oppressed too, by a white ruling class that uses them to keep even more oppressed people down.

For Marom, Jew-hatred is not a highly contagious cancer in human souls, it is an ephemeral side effect of the economic forces that drive history. It’s just another tactic of the ruling class. It can be dealt with rationally, and he intends to deal with it:

Yes, my friends are anti-Semitic. Now the challenge: To convince them that anti-Semitism even still exists, that it is hurting all of us, and that it can be undone.

Good luck, Yotam. You’ll find that it’s not so easy. The folks that are all too ready to abase and flagellate themselves because of their essential racism, sexism, patriarchy and cis-ism will find it harder to recognize and purge their Jew-hatred. In fact, you will find that they are only capable of displacing it from individual Jews to the Jew among nations, which they will hate even more passionately. Look, even you are taking this line:

And as we [Jews] become whole, we can play an even more grounded role as partners in the struggle for a free Palestine by refusing to allow Israel and the US to shed blood in our name.

But there is one great benefit from Jew-hatred for leftist Jews like Marom. In the history of the Jewish people, he finds and is cheered by examples of Jews fighting back, as an oppressed and rebellious people. Once he begins to see Jews as oppressed rather than oppressors, a great weight is lifted. He undergoes an epiphany of a sort and in an especially revealing statement, writes,

How strange, I think to myself, that in the fifteen years I’ve spent doing political work, I’ve always thought of myself as being in the movement despite my people — my people being white, class-privileged, straight men. I had always, it now occurs to me, thought of myself as a traitor, and even been proud of it. It is only now, as my mind scans the faces of the fighters and dreamers and martyrs and prophets behind me that I realize that it’s not in spite of my people that I am here, but because of them. We all, I remember now, choose our origin stories. It is the first time my back has felt straight and broad, my chest open and powerful.

So in the name of Jewish “fighters and dreamers and martyrs and prophets,” he will struggle for “a free Palestine,” or in other words, the end of Jewish self-determination. Well, no one said he had to be consistent.

I congratulate you, Yotam, on the success of your dialectical process. You have achieved that goal toward which many like you have struggled unsuccessfully. No longer do you need to feel inferior to your black, brown, female, gay, trans and Palestinian friends. You realize at last that you, too, are oppressed. You too are an enemy of the “white, class-privileged straight [male]” establishment. You too are a Person of Color.

You no longer have to bear the burden of white guilt. Now go, with your straight back, and try to explain this to your Jew-hating friends.

Posted in American Jews, Jew Hatred | 1 Comment

It’s the narrative, stupid

Posted on September 2, 2016 by Victor Rosenthal

How do you characterize a population as a people? Most of us would say that a people has some combination of language, religion, culture, place of origin, and genetic makeup, and that its members identify with a historical narrative that describes how they came to be.

The Jewish people is a paradigm case of a people, with a unique language and religion, a definite origin, clearly distinguishable genetics, and a historical narrative spanning thousands of years that is probably the most powerful story in much of the civilized world. This is why it is so typically chutzpadik for Palestinians to argue that there is only a Jewish religion and not a Jewish people.

The Palestinians do not have a unique religion, language, genetic identity, or place of origin – unless you count having an ancestor who lived in Mandate Palestine for at least two years as establishing rootedness there. But they have a historical narrative with which they very strongly identify.

It is a relatively new narrative, having originated in the mid-20th century as a reaction to the establishment of the Jewish state. It is to a great extent false – there is no long-term ‘Palestinian’ presence in the land of Israel (claims going back to biblical times are ludicrous, and few ‘Palestinians’ can trace their lineage in the land prior to about 1830; most are descended from 20th century migrants). Their story about their dispossession by the Zionists is also to a great extent false and self-serving. But none of this matters.

What does matter is that virtually all Palestinians believe the narrative, and it is perfectly designed to combine with the features of the Arab and Muslim culture of the Palestinians in such a way as to create endless, insoluble conflict with the Jewish state.

The narrative tells of a proud culture rooted in the land, dispossessed by foreign invaders who have no connection with it. It tells about humiliation of the Palestinian people, their wealth and property taken from them. It tells about a Muslim land being ruled by infidels, or almost worse, by Jews, Mohammad’s historic enemies whose inferior role is demanded by the Qur’an. It tells about Arab manhood being insulted by repeated military defeats by the children of pigs and monkeys.

The narrative tells about an intolerable condition, and its collision with Arab culture and Islam can’t be resolved by a compromise which permits the continuation of Jewish sovereignty in any real sense. Any solution acceptable to the Palestinians must include the return of their ‘property’ – that is, the ‘return’ of the descendents of Arab refugees to ‘their homes’. For Muslims, there is also the fact that the entire land, having been ruled at one time by Muslims, is a part of dar al islam and must return to Muslim rule. And of course, no situation in which a Jew is superior to a Muslim in any way is acceptable.

Worse, Arab honor, which was stolen by military defeat and which continues to be taken by the daily humiliations of Israeli security measures, must be regained. This requires equal humiliation and violence against the Jews.

But why can’t the Jews make a similar argument on the grounds that the rights of the Jewish people were abrogated by the Arab conquest of the 7th century? The Palestinians take this threat quite seriously, which is why they insist that there is a Jewish religion but no Jewish people. And it is why they make ridiculous statements like “Palestinians are descended from ancient Canaanites,” “There was no Jewish Temple in Jerusalem,” or “Jesus was a Palestinian.” It is why they are working assiduously to get UNESCO to declare all Jewish historical sites to be Arab or Muslim.

As long as the Palestinian narrative is believed there will be no peaceful two-state solution or any other compromise that allows a Jewish state to continue existing. And as long as Arabs understand that their lost honor needs to be regained there will be no end to murderous outbursts of violence against Jews by Arabs.

These are not things that are in our power to change. There is no way we can educate the Arabs to stop believing their narrative and to start believing ours. No matter how kind we are, how conciliatory, how fair, how just, how many concessions we make, how much economic opportunity we provide, the fundamental problem remains. If you think I’m exaggerating, read this about Palestinians in general, and this about Arab citizens of Israel. If anything, as time goes by, the narrative gets embedded more firmly in the Palestinian psyche.

So does this imply that there is no hope?

Not exactly. There is no hope for a peaceful compromise, true. But there are other ways a conflict between peoples – yes, I think their narrative makes them a people, if not an ancient one – can end. One side or other can prevail, can overpower its enemy to the extent that it gives up the idea that it can win, and stops fighting.

The usual example of this is WWII in which the losers were crushed so badly that they gave up, accepted occupation, and even changed their ways of thinking so as to reject militarism and ultimately became allies of their erstwhile enemies. But there is another example that is much closer to home and might provide a model for a solution that requires somewhat less death and devastation than that wrought by the bombing of Dresden or Hiroshima.

That is the example of the Arab citizens of Israel.

They are not any less committed to the Palestinian narrative. But most of them have come to understand that they are not capable of overthrowing the Jewish state. They lived under military rule from 1948-68, but since then have had the same rights (if not responsibilities) of Israel’s Jewish citizens. The combination of the perception of an overwhelming imbalance of power plus the availability of economic options has not canceled the Palestinian narrative, but has made it possible for them to live peacefully in a Jewish state. What other country in the world can say that it has a 20% Muslim minority that is not a source of violent instability?

The continued docility of our Arab citizens isn’t guaranteed. In order for it to continue, there are several things that are important: they must continue to understand that they will not obtain national rights in the Jewish state, either by violence or political means, although their civil rights will be protected. Israel will remain a Jewish state, not a binational one. The flag and national anthem will not be changed, and there will always be a Jewish right of return, and never an Arab one. The overwhelming imbalance of power must be maintained. But at the same time their rights to equal treatment under the law and their economic opportunities must not be foreclosed.

The same principles apply to the Arabs of the territories, although it is probably not a good idea to suddenly grant them citizenship and hope that they will behave like the Arab citizens from 1948. But we are presently far from establishing the necessary imbalance of power as long as the Fatah and Hamas organizations are operating. They and similar enemies of Israel must be defeated and destroyed as a first step. We wouldn’t tolerate Fatah operating in Tel Aviv, so we should not tolerate it in Ramallah either.

The strategic geography of the land of Israel implies that we cannot give up control of Judea and Samaria and still be capable of defending our nation. That in turn means that we have to deal somehow with its Arab inhabitants. Their dedication to the pernicious Palestinian narrative precludes a Western-style compromise, but if we can decisively end their ability to make war, then maybe their only remaining option – as in the case of the Arab citizens of Israel – will be to live in peace.

Posted in Israel and Palestinian Arabs, Israeli Arabs, The Jewish people | 3 Comments