Defending Israel against the EU’s ‘soft weapon’

Posted on January 15, 2016 by Victor Rosenthal

When Israel built its security barrier back in 2003, the Palestinian Arabs and their supporters squealed like pigs. Despite numerous changes to its path to accommodate Arab complaints, some ordered by Israel’s Supreme Court, it became a cause célèbre for them, a symbol of alleged ‘apartheid’ and the focus of often violent demonstrations that continue to this day.

The reason is simple. The barrier stymied one of their best weapons, the suicide bombing. It’s often said that the Second Intifada was ended by Operation Defensive Shield, in which the IDF (despite the name) went on the offense against terrorist nests in places like Jenin and cleaned them out. But according to a member of the security forces who spent those dark months frantically racing from place to place to intercept human bombs before they could explode in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, the fence, while not impermeable, greatly reduced the number of possible entry points and made it much easier to stop them.

A similar situation exists today, as Israel moves to render one of our enemies’ most important ‘soft weapons’ impotent. I refer to the Transparency Law that is presently being considered in the Knesset to limit the ability of hostile foreign powers to conduct stealth delegitimization and demonization of Israel by funding Israeli non-governmental organizations. These NGOs, usually claiming to be ‘human rights’ groups, develop and disseminate tendentious data accusing Israel and the IDF of violations of international law and generally atrocious and ugly behavior.

For example, Breaking the Silence collects anecdotes from soldiers accusing the IDF of war crimes. But these stories often cannot be corroborated, are hearsay, exaggerated, or lack context. BTS refuses to give details to the IDF so they can be checked out and actual violations prosecuted. B’Tselem does the same with accusations that Israel violates the rights of Arabs in the territories, relying on one-sided testimony from Arabs and anti-Israel activists.

This material is then used as ‘evidence’ in dishonest legal proceedings against IDF soldiers and officers, and in UN reports and resolutions condemning Israel. It is used to turn popular opinion against her, so that the ‘international community’ and the US can pressure her for concessions to the Arabs and against muscular responses to terrorism and aggression. It is used as a justification for sanctions on Israel, such as the labeling of settlement products.

Every group that wants to attack Israel, from Students for Justice in Palestine to the Obama Administration, partakes of the false, exaggerated and context-free ‘facts’ created by these NGOs. In addition, the large anti-state community that is supported by this massive pot of foreign money is an internal political danger, and a challenge to Israel’s sovereignty.

Israel has only recently awakened to the damage that is being done to it on a daily basis. The dimensions of the enterprise are massive. Prof. Gerald Steinberg of NGO Monitor, which tracks foreign money in Israeli NGOs, notes that

…in the past fifteen years, a network of about 30 groups claiming to promote human rights and peace have received large grants from the European Union and individual governments. The scale of this funding, with annual budgets upwards of $1 million, as well as the extreme secrecy and impact, are unique; there are no parallels in relations between democracies. Although the EU has funded a few U.S.-based groups that oppose the death penalty, and there are some other isolated examples, Israeli NGOs are specifically and intentionally targeted. Imagine the response if Europe were to provide $2 billion–the per capita equivalent–to fringe American NGOs focusing on controversial issues, such as abortion or immigration. [my emphasis]

While the groups claim to be impartial, they almost entirely focus on alleged Israeli misbehavior toward Arabs and ignore violations of the human rights of Jews. Recently, grants to Breaking the Silence were made conditional on their finding a minimum number of cases of IDF misconduct. The NGOs are happy to give their bosses what they want.

This is big bucks, and nobody spends this kind of money for an extended period unless they believe they are getting something for it. And of course it is a meal ticket for the large group of activists that directly benefit from it.

So when Israel threatened to pass a law that will require NGOs that receive more than half of their funding from foreign governmental sources to document this fact on all material that they produce, the Israeli Left and their allies abroad went bonkers, pulling out all the stops in their attacks on the law. Here is one example at random, from journalist Mazal Muallem:

Since [Justice Minister Ayelet] Shaked wants to brand left-wing groups with a “mark of Cain” of sorts, a far more appropriate name for her proposed piece of populist legislation could be the “Selection Law,” a reference to the way Jews were marked to distinguish them from other Europeans during World War II in Nazi camps. The justice minister never even considered postponing her efforts to advance this provocative and divisive piece of legislation so that it would not coincide with the 20th anniversary of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin’s assassination on Nov. 4, 1995. Instead, she decided to fire it off like a poison dart, right at the heart of Israeli democracy.

Opponents of the law note that it only applies to funding from foreign governments, whereas right-wing groups receive funds primarily from private individuals like Sheldon Adelson. But other than Adelson’s ownership of the Israel Hayom newspaper and his generous contributions to Birthright Israel, both of which are matters of public record, there is very little right-wing money going for propaganda purposes in Israel. And note that the so-called ‘human rights’ industry receives plenty of private money itself in addition to its subsidies from hostile governments.

This law, which Muallem called “a McCarthy-style brutal, ugly and wild persecution that is reminiscent of regimes best forgotten,” does not prevent anyone from speaking their mind and does not punish anyone for doing so. The argument that it is “anti-democratic” is an inversion of reality: what is profoundly undemocratic is hidden foreign funding of organizations which try to influence opinion and policy in ways which are contrary to the general will of the citizens of a country.

It can be argued that Israel has actually been at war with much of the Muslim world since its founding in 1948, with periods of extreme violence interspersed with cold war, all against a background of terrorism such as the flareup we are now experiencing. Despite this, Israel has maintained a very permissive public culture, in which Israelis are permitted to say and write almost anything with impunity – numerous Ha’aretz writers call Israel an “apartheid state” and accuse it of genocide on a regular basis, and the authorities do not punish them or the newspaper in any way.

During its quiet times, Israel’s long-term war is reminiscent of the cold war between the US and the Soviet Union, in which proxy conflicts predominate, and in which the world’s nations take sides with the powers in conflict. Despite public statements to the contrary, it’s clear that the European Union and many of its members are firmly on the anti-Israel side.

The Israelis who have chosen to become paid agents of foreign powers on the other side of the conflict are skating very close to treason, usually defined as “aiding the enemy in time of war.” It is a testament to Israel’s commitment to an open society that they are not treated as traitors, and now may merely be required to tell whose payrolls they are on. Benedict Arnold, Guy Fawkes and Vidkun Quisling would have welcomed such an opportunity!

The NGOs have called upon all of their friends abroad to help fight the ‘menace’ of transparency. Even the Obama Administration has stepped in, with US Ambassador Dan Shapiro meeting with Justice Minister Shaked and expressing his administration’s concern that the law would impact “free expression and peaceful dissent.” Shaked responded that she appreciated his concern, but as Israel’s democracy is in fine shape, there is “no need for other nations to intervene in internal legislation” (she might have added “…like you tried to intervene in our last election”).

Along with the big gun, some others (Mao would have called them ‘running dogs’) close to the administration have chimed in. For example, the Union for Reform Judaism, the Anti-Defamation League and the American Jewish Congress have all opposed it, using similar – and equally unpersuasive – language.

Possibly an indication of how important this issue is to the EU is the fact that B’Tselem received a 30,000 Euro grant from a group associated with it, specifically to fight the law in Israel.

It’s not surprising that the recipients of tens of millions of Euros every year are upset about anything that might threaten their gigs. Indeed, if it were possible to somehow stop the flow – which the proposed law unfortunately does not do – the government would have to create a new poverty program for the legions of activists, some of whom have never held actual jobs, who would become unemployed.

The ‘soft weapon’ of NGO money is wounding Israel no less than the suicide bombings of the Second Intifada. Like the security fence that stopped terrorist infiltration, we can build a legal fence against it. The squeals of those feeding at the trough of EU money must be ignored, and the Transparency Law passed by the Knesset.

Posted in Europe and Israel, Information war, Israeli Politics | Comments Off on Defending Israel against the EU’s ‘soft weapon’

Anti-Israel NGOs — not transparency — are the real threat to democracy

Posted on January 11, 2016 by Victor Rosenthal
Israeli firefighters extinguish fire at the Jerusalem offices of B'Tselem

Israeli firefighters extinguish fire at the Jerusalem offices of B’Tselem

Last night a suspicious fire occurred at the offices of B’Tselem, an Israeli NGO concerned with “human rights in the occupied territories” (in other words, yet another foreign-funded operation working to delegitimize the Jewish state and sabotage its ability to defend itself).

B’Tselem is probably one of the biggest such enterprises, receiving millions of dollars (2014 budget: about $2.4 million) a year from the European Union, European governments and the American New Israel Fund.

NGO Monitor wrote that B’Tselem

B’Tselem’s reports on IDF behavior have been used as ‘evidence’ for legal proceedings against IDF officers abroad as well as UN resolutions targeting Israel. But the statistics they cite are obtained directly from Hamas sources. B’Tselem staffers have compared Israel to Nazi Germany and regularly call it an “apartheid state.”

In the past week, B’Tselem has been connected with a remarkably ugly affair, in which one of its activists, Nasser Nawaj’ah, an Arab from the village of Yatta near Hevron, worked with Ezra Nawi, a Jewish operative of another “anti-occupation” group called Ta’ayush, to inform the Palestinian Authority of Palestinians intending to sell land to Jews — a capital crime in the PA. PA security forces then tortured and killed them. Nawi was actually caught on videotape bragging about it.

Ta’ayush, by the way, claims to be a group of “Israelis & Palestinians striving together to end the Israeli occupation and to achieve full civil equality through daily non-violent direct-action.” Apparently the land-dealer entrapment was an example of this cooperation.

So there are many – Jews and Arabs among them – who will not shed a tear for this bunch of paid traitors who can now add murder to their accomplishments.

I shouldn’t need to add that no responsible person, myself included, approves of arson (assuming this fire turns out to be deliberate) as a political act. I not only condemn it, I don’t even ‘understand’ it in any sense at all. But I do understand the need to do something to limit the activities of these foreign-funded anti-state groups. And that means that it is necessary to pass the transparency law that is presently before the Knesset.

The law will require that representatives any organization that receives more than half of its funding from foreign governments must report their sources of funding, and must have this information on the identifying badges that they must wear when visiting the Knesset. It will also require that their reports and documents bear a notice with this information as well.

Personally, I would like to see a much stronger law, one that would actually forbid foreign financing of these ‘activist’ groups. But that is unlikely. This law will not stop hostile nations from financing subversion in our country, but it will at least require that their agents and the material they distribute be identified as what they are.

The European anti-Zionists are running scared, and even gave their agent, B’Tselem, 30,000 Euros in December to fight the bill. They claim somewhat surreally that transparency in funding is a “threat to democracy.” This implies that democracy would be served by foreign powers pumping huge amounts of money into a country in order to influence the decisions of its government, even when it means going against the wishes of its citizens! Some democracy.

Posted in Europe and Israel, Information war, Israeli Politics | Comments Off on Anti-Israel NGOs — not transparency — are the real threat to democracy

Can the Palestinian Authority become a good neighbor?

Posted on January 8, 2016 by Victor Rosenthal

Last Friday saw a spate of rumors that Mahmoud Abbas had suffered a stroke or other serious health crisis. On Tuesday it was announced that he would make a “major speech” Wednesday. There was speculation that he would say that he plans to step down, which would immediately set off a possibly violent struggle to be his successor. He finally made the speech, and said nothing interesting.

There are warnings of serious instability in the PA. What about the possibility, raised by PM Netanyahu on Monday, that the Palestinian Authority might “collapse?” What should Israel do if Abbas were really to die or become incapacitated?

Netanyahu and IDF officials seem to think a PA collapse would be bad for Israel. Suddenly, Israel would be responsible for seeing to it that Arabs living in Areas A and B – populous urban areas in Judea and Samaria – continue to receive services like health care and garbage collection, that they don’t engage in riot and insurrection, and that Hamas or even the Islamic State don’t take over. The US and the EU together fund most of the PA budget. Would they be prepared to continue to do so if Israel were running it? The PA’s massive ‘security’ establishment would have to be disarmed or somehow controlled. If the PA falls, there will be an immediate struggle for power between the various factions.

Netanyahu understands that there will be no two-state solution because a sovereign Arab state in Judea and Samaria would render Israel impossible to defend. He also understands that raising the percentage of Arab citizens of Israel by simply annexing the territories would be destabilizing for an Israel that already has a population that is 21% Arab. And he is not prepared to annex the territories and encourage (coercively or not) most of the Arabs to leave, in some ways the best solution of all.

It appears that they are taking another approach: to somehow turn the PA into a good neighbor. What’s needed is something less than a sovereign state which could maintain an army or invite neighboring armies into it. The ideal PA would be as Rabin envisaged it in his last Knesset speech, an entity that could police its citizens, manage its economy and build infrastructure, without being a threat to the Jewish state. Thus we would try to keep the PA alive and encourage it to evolve into such an autonomous entity.

For this reason, Israel’s moderate leaders support the PA and advise Western allies to continue to fund it, despite the fact that huge amounts of money are stolen or diverted to terrorism against Israel, and despite the PA’s refusal to stop the vicious incitement that has led directly to the present situation in which Israeli Jews (and some Arabs) are stabbed, shot and run over in the streets.

This strategy cannot work as long as the PA is the PLO. The PA as it is constituted will never be the good neighbor Bibi would like to have. Its ideology has not changed significantly since it was formed in 1964, and that ideology calls for the destruction of the Jewish state and its replacement by an Arab state. Despite pressure from the US and Israel and repeated promises, the offensive parts of the PLO charter were never removed. The comprehensive system of education for hate and violence established by Arafat, which the PLO also promised to change, has remained. And the incitement in PA media, schools, mosques, and more continues as well.

Abbas, while he is careful not to explicitly call for violence, nevertheless doesn’t hide his (and the PLO’s) intention to reverse the nakba of 1948. There is no room in PLO ideology for a Jewish state between the Jordan and the Mediterranean.

The PLO-constituted PA is a hostile entity which, if it is too weak to confront Israel militarily, will nevertheless do so via diplomatic maneuvers, lawfare, plausibly deniable terrorism and subversion. It is not evolving in the direction of becoming a peaceful neighbor; rather, with the help of the EU it is trying to become a confrontation state. Indeed, it’s probably correct that the EU wants to prop up the PA for the opposite reason from that of Netanyahu: they want to use it as a weapon against Israel.

But time may be running out. The popular insurrection that was started by PA incitement has taken on a life of its own and may not be controllable by the PA. Israel cannot be expected to sit still while its citizens are murdered. The financial problems caused by the theft of funds intended for development and infrastructure are becoming acute, and the struggling West may not be able to continue to pump Euros and dollars into the failing enterprise. Finally, Mahmoud Abbas is 81, and even if he turns out to be in good health, the pretenders to his throne won’t wait much longer. The PA’s crisis is imminent.

What should Israel do?

I think the policy of propping up a PLO-based PA and waiting for the moderation beam from the planet Venus to come along and make an ally out of it has proven to be a failure, just like its father, the Oslo accords. But I also understand why Israel would prefer not to take over full control of all the territories in the near future, particularly because it would then have to replace much of the millions presently paid by the US and EU to support the welfare-based ‘Palestinian economy’.

I would like to see Israel present the PA with an ultimatum:

“The PLO is a terrorist organization whose reason for being is to destroy our state.”

“We are not interested in governing or controlling the lives of Palestinians. Hence we support the existence of a Palestinian Authority. But we do not support its control by the PLO, or any group that does not accept the legitimacy of the state of Israel. This is our bottom line.”

“Therefore we will support the continuation of the Palestinian Authority on the condition that the President of the PA and other top officials be replaced by non-members of terrorist organizations. We demand an end to incitement and support for terrorism and terrorists. We demand that the PA ‘security’ forces give allegiance to the new non-terrorist leadership of the PA. In return, we will commit to supporting such a PA administration militarily, as well as transferring customs funds as usual.”

“If the PA does not reconfigure itself according to our demand, we will consider it a hostile entity. We will not cooperate with it in any way, will not participate in funding it, and will intervene militarily when necessary. This might include arresting PA officials, disarming PA security forces or even engaging them in combat.”

Naturally the PA/PLO will reject the ultimatum, which will probably lead to violent clashes. But if the PLO leadership is arrested or exiled, perhaps cooler heads will choose cooperation over chaos. Israel’s official position toward the international community should be that it favors self-government for the Palestinian Arabs, but does not accept their leadership by a terrorist group like the PLO.

The greatest single mistake made by any Israeli government since 1948 was signing the Oslo Accords, and by far the most damaging part of Oslo was to accept the PLO as the representative of the Palestinian Arabs and to permit it to establish the PA. The PLO is no less a terrorist organization than Hamas, and should not be granted legitimacy.

It’s rare that one gets the opportunity to unmake a historic mistake. Perhaps the collapse of the PA will be such an opportunity.

Posted in Israel and Palestinian Arabs, Terrorism | 5 Comments

How to stop the lone wolves

Posted on January 3, 2016 by Victor Rosenthal
Police comb North Tel Aviv for terrorist who killed at least two on Friday

Police comb North Tel Aviv for terrorist who killed at least two on Friday

As I write, the man who murdered two young Jewish men on Dizengoff Street in Tel Aviv, and possibly also an Arab taxi driver, is still at large.

While the police are saying that this attack didn’t quite fit the profile of the Arab terrorism with which we have unfortunately become familiar in recent months, it made me think about how to stop the wave of murderous lone-wolf terrorism that has been washing over us since the beginning of October.

Typically the perpetrators have been young people (teens and early twenties) from eastern Jerusalem or Judea/Samaria, male and female, who act out of fury in response to perceived Israeli actions. Justifications for terrorism might include insults to Islam like the alleged attempt to change the status quo on the Temple Mount, or the claimed ‘executions’ of Arabs by Israeli soldiers or police. A post on social media may spur the terrorist into action, and he or she will take a knife from the kitchen drawer and go out to stab a Jew. In many cases they don’t try to escape, prepared to die as martyrs.

This happens against the background of the Palestinian Authority educational system, which has indoctrinated Arab children since Oslo to believe that Jews are evil, subhuman creatures, and that those who murder them are heroes, celebrated as exemplars for Palestinian Arab youth. In many cases their religious education has taught them — and they believe quite literally — that martyrs will go to paradise where they will obtain all the pleasures of the flesh that are denied to them in repressive Arab society.

These attacks are extremely difficult to stop because they are usually not directly ordered by a terrorist group and are carried out with a minimum of planning and preparation. The perpetrators are usually not known to security forces. Sometimes there are warning signs, such as a person becoming extremely religious, losing interest in everything not connected with Islam, even saying goodbye to family members.

Only a few of the tens of terrorists that have struck in the last few months have been Arab citizens of pre-1967 Israel like the Tel Aviv shooter, who was from the Wadi Ara region. Israeli Arabs tend to be better educated – and not by the PA – and less likely to believe some of the more outrageous stories in social media. They may also have had more encounters with Jews and, even if they feel some animosity toward them, at least see them as human beings. They may be more invested in careers and studies than the Arabs of the territories.

What is interesting about this case is that the shooter’s identity became known after his father saw widely publicized security videos of the attack and recognized his son. The weapon belonged to the father, a volunteer police officer and a security guard, who kept it in a safe at home. After seeing the video and finding his semi-automatic weapon missing, he informed the police.

I won’t speculate about the father’s motives. He said that he wanted his son to be caught before he killed anyone else. Cynics will say that he realized that his son would have been identified from the video in any case, and that information he provided might help the police capture him alive, or even that he wanted to avoid having the family home demolished.

The family’s situation is tragic. In addition to the pain of turning his own son over to the police, the father may lose his job because he allowed his weapon to be taken. But it isn’t the first time a terror suspect was turned in by family members. In the case of the murder of Rabbi Ya’akov Litman and his son Netanel in November, the identity of the murderer was not known until his family informed police.

Neither of these cases was a typical lone-wolf attack. The Litman murderer was a member of Islamic Jihad, and the Tel Aviv shooter seems to have planned his attack and his escape more carefully than most – and didn’t want to get caught. But the family connection has made me think that perhaps there is an approach that can work to stop some of these terror attacks.

I’m sure some will say that it is immoral. But understand that at least 27 Israelis have been murdered in terrorist attacks since October 1, and many more seriously wounded. An even larger number of Arabs have been killed while trying to kill Jews. This simply can’t be allowed to continue. Israelis can’t be expected to walk around their neighborhoods with targets on their backs.

In traditional Arab society the family hierarchy is very powerful. Sometimes, as in the case of so-called “honor killings” in which a woman is murdered by family members because she is suspected of embarrassing the family by having inappropriate sexual relations, or even because she doesn’t accept the family’s decision about whom she will marry, this in itself leads to tragedy.

I suggest that the way to stop ‘lone wolf’ terrorism is to make it worthwhile for the family to nip it in the bud. This can be accomplished by collectively punishing the families of terrorists. Fines, home demolitions, and expulsion of the immediate family or even larger extended families should be employed. It should be made very clear what the consequences will be when a family member engages in terrorism, and the punishment should be swift and sure.

I can hear the ‘human rights’ NGOs objecting that collective punishment violates international law, is unfair and immoral, and so on. But terrorist murder is all of those things too, and the decision to engage in it is made by the terrorist and not the security forces. The responsibility for what happens to the family thus falls on the terrorist.

Traditional counter-terrorism methods have a hard time stopping totally random terrorism. But even ‘lone wolves’ have families.

Posted in Terrorism | 2 Comments

Ticking bombs or a shanda fur die goyim?

Posted on January 1, 2016 by Victor Rosenthal

In a dramatic development, a district judge ordered the police and Shabak to release a suspected Jewish extremist who had been held in administrative detention for a month, not allowed to speak to a lawyer for almost three weeks, and who claimed (persuasively) to have been tortured. The police and State Prosecutor refused to obey the court order to release him for several hours, saying that they would appeal the district court’s decision to the Supreme Court, but finally relented. The youth was let go to house arrest on bail.

The detainee (his name is apparently still under gag order) was detained as a suspect in the triple arson murder in the Arab village of Kfar Duma (previous Abu Yehuda posts on this incident are here). But after the authorities finally admitted that they had no evidence of his connection to this crime, they decided to charge him for an assault on a Bedouin that he had allegedly committed two years ago (he says it was in self-defense). The district court decided that this didn’t justify continuing to hold him.

The hysteria – it’s the only possible description – over so-called “Jewish terrorists” that’s overtaken the political Left, Right and Center in Israel and their associates abroad is puzzling. Keep in mind that the arson/murder is unsolved, even after the Jewish suspects, members of the so-called “hilltop youth” have undergone very heavy pressure. There is a hypothesis that Arabs feuding with the Dawabshe clan were responsible, but this line of inquiry has not been followed up.

Yes, a truly horrifying murder was committed in which three members of an Arab family including an 18-month-old baby died. And some people danced at a hilltop youth wedding with weapons and photographs of the murdered child (but it still isn’t clear how the pictures got there). The wedding was reportedly crawling with agents of the security forces, and the Shabak has used agents provocateurs before. The bride’s father, Lenny Goldberg, said,

I really don’t know who brought those pictures anyway. Knowing the hilltop youth, I can tell you that photographing pictures and mounting them on signs is not their specialty. If you look closely, everyone dancing is wearing white shirts, but the guys holding the signs are wearing jackets and their faces are blurred.

The official story is that one of the hilltop youth – there may or may not be several hundred in this category – wrote a manifesto in which he expressed a desire to commit terrorist acts against Arabs in a Charles-Manson-like attempt to destabilize the country, so that they could replace the government with one operating according to (their idea of) Jewish law and governed by a king.

A king?

According to almost everyone in the government and media including the religious-rightish Naftali Bennett, the Shabak was entirely justified in using exceptional measures including administrative detention and “aggressive interrogation techniques” which may or may not constitute torture, to eliminate this threat. Isi Liebler, usually a voice of moderate Zionism, said the radicals were “like a cancer,” “religious lunatics” and “fanatical thugs,” and, calling for the government to use an “iron fist” against them, wrote that

Despite the appalling disgrace and besmirching of our name by such demonic behavior, this ‎pales in significance to the impact that such horrific acts can have on our society if not ‎ruthlessly expunged.

I’m not so sure. Arcane cult murders are bad things, but they tend to be isolated, not metastatic, like for example the suicidal stabbings of Jews because “Al Aqsa is in danger” which seem to have turned all of Palestinian society into a murderous cult.

Eric Yoffie, former head of the Union for Reform Judaism and a reliable indicator of liberal American Jewish opinion (at least, among liberal American Jews that still have an interest in events in Israel), wrote this:

Suspected Jewish terrorists — in particular, those involved in the killings of the Dawabsheh family in Duma — are now being defended by those who claim that the civil rights of the suspects are being violated by Israel’s security services. As a left of center American Jew, I would like to say plainly: There are times when human rights and civil liberties are not the most important thing for a democratic country that is fighting for her very survival. For Israel, now is such a time.

The question is not: Is Israel violating the human rights of the Jewish terrorists and their supporters who exult in the murder of babies? The question is: Why have the security services not already put an end to this network of murderers and monsters who threaten the very foundations of Zionism?

Leaving aside his unjustified certainty that the suspects “were involved” in the murder, I wonder if Yoffie would have written this if Americans – particularly blacks or Muslims – were being ‘aggressively interrogated’ by the police and FBI? I think we know the answer to this question. Indeed, Daniel Greenfield notes that Yoffie opposed torture of al Qaeda terrorists in Guantanamo.

Yoffie’s sudden lack of concern for democracy and civil rights in Israel is in contrast to the view he expressed several years ago when the question of limiting and documenting the flow of foreign money into left-wing NGOs was first raised:

When rabbis and Jewish leaders speak in communities and synagogues about the Jewish state, what they emphasize, with great pride, is Israel’s democratic character. But what will they say if these anti-democratic laws are approved in the Knesset?

What will (American) rabbis and Jewish leaders say about the Israeli democracy that imprisons suspects without charging them, denies them legal counsel and applies “aggressive interrogation techniques?” I presume the ‘progressive’ ones like Yoffie will be on board as long as the suspects are right-wing extremists. But just as free speech in a democratic state is not only for speech with which you agree, civil rights are particularly important for those suspected of having committed crimes.

I may be under-reacting, but the threat of a small group of extremists imposing a theocratic monarchy is not high on my list of scary scenarios. I don’t know a lot of Israelis who would sit still for a coronation. Although three innocent people were murdered at Duma in July, 25 Jews have been slaughtered in Israel since October 1 by Arab terrorists. This doesn’t make it acceptable, but it does put the magnitude of the danger in perspective. And I don’t see how they threaten the “foundations of Zionism” when 99.98% of Zionists (assuming 6 million Zionists and 1000 hilltop youth) reject their goals and their methods.

To those like Liebler who insist that the damage to Israel’s image done by “Jewish terrorists” is enormous, I can only say that far more damage is done by the massive anti-Zionist industry in every Muslim nation, in Europe and in universities everywhere, which is dedicated to besmirching Israel’s image. Here is where the limitations on foreign money feeding the anti-state NGOs that Yoffie opposes would do a lot more to improve Israel’s image than beating up extremists.

So why the hysteria? In my opinion, the cause is an atavistic Diaspora-Jewish reaction to extirpate the source of the shanda fur die goyim [disgrace before non-Jews]. But haven’t we learned yet that self-flagellation just provides more material for the anti-Zionists to use against us?

Let’s calm down. Let’s keep the rule of law, obey court orders and ensure that everyone’s rights, even those of suspected theocratic monarchists, are preserved. Let’s employ careful forensic police work, solve the Duma murders and punish the murderers. Punish the theocratic monarchists too, if they have committed crimes from vandalism to assault to arson and murder. But these people are not ‘ticking bombs’ and there is no need or justification to beat confessions out of them.

Just to forestall the inevitable question: yes, everything I said applies to Arabs too. Although there are a lot more ticking bombs there.

If we are going to tell everyone that we are the only democracy in the Middle East, we ought to be one.

Posted in Duma arson-murder, Israeli Society, Terrorism | Comments Off on Ticking bombs or a shanda fur die goyim?

Duma and the ‘Wedding of Hate’

Posted on December 27, 2015 by Victor Rosenthal
The wedding (video screenshot from Channel 2/Ha'aretz)

The wedding (video screenshot from Channel 2/Ha’aretz)

Yes, another post on the Duma murders (see all of them here).

I’ve argued all along that the hypothesis that the crime was committed by Arabs in conflict with the Dawabshes is at least worthy of consideration. Much about the “Jews did it” theory didn’t hang together, and the “Arabs did it” one was not followed up by investigators.

Although public figures and security officials said that they were on the verge of breaking the case, it did not appear that real progress had been made. In addition, there were claims that right-wing youths arrested in connection with the crime, some of them minors, were tortured – or at least subjected to exceptional pressure.

Although my public position has been simply to oppose the rush to judgment, in my heart I did not believe that Jews were responsible. I was convinced that the security services had ‘not allowed a crisis to go to waste’ and were using this crime to once and for all put an end to the “price-tag” phenomenon and to break the anti-Zionist right-wing extremist groups responsible for it. Vandals, I thought, dangerous political idiots, I thought, but not capable of deliberately burning a baby to death.

Then this week came the so-called “wedding of hate.” A video was shown on Israeli TV in which wedding guests danced with weapons, like our Arab neighbors do, and also waved a photograph of the murdered 18-month old Ali Dawabshe, with a knife stuck through it.

Correct – they celebrated the act of burning a baby to death. I saw it on video. One of the attorneys for the detained youths, Itamar ben-Gvir was present and he saw it with his eyes. It was real.

This was received by the country like a punch in the stomach. Suddenly, all doubts seemed to be erased. If they could celebrate it, they could have done it. Or at least they approved of it.

And yet, if there is one thing about this affair that has remained constant, it is that nothing about it seems to add up. The immediate pronouncements of “Jewish terrorism” on the morning after the murders, details about the fire itself, evidence of existing intra-Arab conflicts and other arsons in the village that was ignored, the apparent inability of the security services to get hard evidence – all of this and more was problematic.

Maybe I am simply incapable of accepting what should be self-evident, but there is something incongruent about the display of the photo of Ali Dawabshe at the wedding. Who would do such a thing? Even Arabs, who have murdered plenty of Jewish children, usually wave pictures of their martyrs, not their child victims.

Who brought the picture to the wedding? We don’t know. We do know that the extreme right-wing groups are thoroughly infiltrated by the Shabak. The owner of the hall where the wedding took place said that a number of ‘guests’ identified themselves to guards at the door as officials of the security services and showed IDs – apparently they didn’t have invitations. It is not unthinkable that the picture was introduced by someone associated with the security forces, in order to incriminate the people there.

I watched an interview with attorney ben-Gvir. He said that he couldn’t see at first who was in the photo, but that when it became clear to him that it was the child he rushed over and told the dancers to stop. “What if the media get hold of this?” he asked. Of course the interviewers immediately jumped on him to say “is that what you care about?” and of course he insisted that he was horrified, and only secondarily worried about the trouble it would make for his client. But there was absolutely no doubt that the media would get it, since the room was crawling with Shabak agents. And it had precisely the effect on the nation that he had feared.

The video that was shown on TV Channel 10 alternated between scenes of revelry, with guns, knives and the skewered photo of the child, and pictures of the Arab family that had lost three of its members (one other child remains in a hospital with serious burns). A horrible crime and a terrible celebration, but a professional and emotionally powerful video.

I am not in general a believer in conspiracies, frame-ups, and so on. But this would not be the first time that the Shabak mounted an operation to discredit the extreme (or even the not-so-extreme) right wing. Carmi Gillon, who was the head of the Shabak when Yitzhak Rabin was murdered, recently said that right-wing extremism was more dangerous now than at that time.

It’s ironic that Gillon was the one who was responsible for operating agent provocateur Avishai Raviv, who created a fake right-wing organization to discredit opposition to the Oslo process. In fact – in an action intended to create outrage not unlike the “wedding of hate” Raviv displayed a picture of Rabin in an SS uniform at a public rally.

Raviv has been accused of a lot more, such as knowing about Yigal Amir’s plan to murder Rabin and not taking action (he was tried and acquitted on this charge), and even worse things. But it’s a fact that the Shabak is no stranger to false-flag operations, and could have introduced the photo of Ali Dawabshe into the wedding and then ensured that everyone in Israel would see it.

I don’t know the whole truth. I don’t even know the very basic truth that is at the bottom of this affair, which is “who threw the firebomb that killed three members of the Dawabshe family?”

And I don’t think the Shabak does either.

Posted in Duma arson-murder | 4 Comments

Defensive weapons and the strategy of preemption

Posted on December 25, 2015 by Victor Rosenthal
A test launch of the Arrow-3

A test launch of the Arrow-3

This week the new medium-range anti-missile system called “David’s Sling” was declared operational, and is expected to be deployed in 2016. It will join the existing Iron Dome systems for short-range rockets and the Arrow 3 system for intercepting ballistic missiles and satellites in space, to provide a multi-tiered missile defense for the country.

It’s great that we will have these systems. But it’s important to understand what they can and cannot do. In particular, they cannot allow Israel to replace its traditional doctrine of preemption with passive defense.

The systems themselves are astronomically expensive. Each Iron Dome system costs from $50-100 million; I expect that the other systems will prove to be at least equal in cost. The interceptors that they fire are also expensive: The tamir missiles used by Iron Dome cost around $50,000 each, and two are usually fired at a time. The ‘Stunner’ interceptor fired by David’s Sling costs about $2.7 million, and the ones used by the Arrow 3 go for ‘only’ $2.2 million each.

In comparison, Hamas’ short-range Qassams are estimated to cost up to $800 each. Hamas’ rocket warfare therefore has an economic dimension as well.

The greatest weakness of these systems is that they can’t be everywhere at once, and Hezbollah, Iran and Hamas have a massive quantity of rockets. It was estimated in 2013 that Hezbollah could launch “as many as 1,500 short- to mid-range rockets” every day for a month. Given the improvements in accuracy that Hezbollah has made to its rocket arsenal since 2006, it would be difficult to defend all of northern Israel with the 10 Iron Dome systems it presently has (15 are planned), especially if Hamas is firing rockets at the same time.

Israel’s enemies have fewer longer-range missiles, but their range means that there are a greater number of possible targets that need to be defended. Hezbollah has improved its concealment and fortifications for these weapons, so it will be harder to destroy most or all of them before they can be used, as was done in 2006. Hamas, too, has not been standing still.

A further ramification is that Hezbollah’s more accurate weapons will be directed at important military and industrial targets, like airfields, power stations and substations, oil refineries, military bases, radar and communications installations and command centers. These will need to be defended by antimissile systems, leaving civilian areas unprotected. Certainly Ben-Gurion Airport, the Kiriya in Tel Aviv, the nuclear installation in Dimona, and numerous other locations cannot be left unprotected.

It is probably not an exaggeration to say that the majority of our antimissile systems will be dedicated to protecting non-civilian targets. The population will need to depend on shelters for protection. In many areas shelters are inadequate, especially given the high density of fire that is expected. Property and infrastructure damage will also be extremely high.

These defensive weapons are not an unmixed blessing. One reason is that decision-makers could depend too strongly on them and reject (or postpone) the offensive or preemptive strategies that Israel has traditionally chosen. We could end up responding to an attack after it happens as in 1973, instead of preempting one as in 1967.

Another more subtle issue is that a tolerance develops, both in Israel and outside of it, for the provocations of our enemies. It’s often said that “no other country would accept” a rocket bombardment like southern Israel has absorbed from Hamas, but one of the reasons that Hamas has not yet been crushed is that Israel is able to manage its rocket bombardments.

Further, if Israel had not had Iron dome, then retaliation for Hamas rocket attacks – now pro forma – would have been made far more painful. Hamas is therefore encouraged to continue developing, stockpiling and even launching its rockets at Israel. It has little to lose from doing so. So in a sense, Iron Dome degrades our deterrent power instead of enhancing it.

Finally there are psychological effects from allowing bombardments to continue. For our citizens in the target areas, the stress and psychological damage is a serious problem even if all the rockets are intercepted. For the outside world, shooting at Jews becomes the everyday normal – it is nothing to get upset about, or even to report in their media.

The US has been generous in assisting Israel with the development of these antimissile systems, something which President Obama never fails to mention when talking about his “unshakable commitment” to Israel’s security. But he has been less forthcoming when Israel has asked for offensive weapons, particularly those that could be employed against Iran. Of course he has policy reasons for this, but I also believe this is a continuation of the historical tradition – and I mean the one that has persisted for millennia in both the Christian and the Muslim worlds – that a Jew does not have the right to actively defend himself.

I am not suggesting that Israel should not pursue development and further deployment of antimissile systems. Because of the country’s lack of strategic depth, they are absolutely necessary to protect its ability to fight. They can also provide a certain amount of protection for the population, especially in situations short of all-out war. They are an essential part of our strategic posture.

But Israel’s primary defense strategy should continue to be preemption. Because the IDF is numerically weaker and the country physically smaller than its enemies, the element of surprise and the ability to choose a time to fight when the enemy is unprepared are paramount in avoiding casualties among our forces and on the home front. Surprise is also important to provide enough time to achieve our objectives before our ‘allies’ can step in to end the conflict to our disadvantage.

The downside of preemption is that the world, including the aforementioned ‘allies’, will interpret it as ‘aggression’, and try to prevent Israel from obtaining military victory and even penalize us. Much of the world considers Israel’s preemptive attack in June of 1967 to be aggression, despite the blatantly offensive nature of the Egyptian buildup, the expulsion of UN peacekeepers and closing of the Straits of Tiran. And Golda Meir’s failure to preempt in 1973 – because of her fear of US reaction – almost resulted in Israel’s defeat in that war.

I view this, however, not as an argument against the strategy of preemption, which is still the best strategy from a military perspective, but as a reason to accelerate Israel’s efforts to reduce dependence upon the US. That is something that we should do anyway, for a multitude of political and strategic reasons.

In the specific case of Hezbollah, the decision to preempt will not be easy. Hezbollah has embedded its rockets and other targets in the civilian areas of Lebanon, a war crime. An attack on them without warning will doubtless kill many noncombatants. From a humanitarian point of view this would be tragic, and practically would result in worldwide condemnation, even though from a legal point of view these casualties would be Hezbollah’s responsibility.

On the other hand, if we wait for Hezbollah to attack, we will still have to bomb these targets, and in addition we will suffer our own casualties. It’s generally thought that Hezbollah will launch ground incursions (perhaps underground ones as well) as well as rocket and drone attacks, and who knows what else. A preemptive strike may defuse many of these and provide us a great advantage.

I understand that Hezbollah today is in trouble in Syria and does not desire a war with Israel. So maybe now would be a good time to give them one. Or should we wait until Iran’s financial windfall from the nuclear deal allows them to rebuild Hezbollah’s forces? Or until Iran has usable nuclear weapons?

The initial question that we must ask today is “is war with Hezbollah inevitable?”

If the answer is yes, then I think the only thing left to decide is when and how to strike first.

Posted in War | 2 Comments

How not to make political friends

Posted on December 22, 2015 by Victor Rosenthal
Well-fed Histadrut delegates vote to screw the public by calling a general strike

Well-fed Histadrut delegates vote to screw the public by calling a general strike

This week, Yitzhak Herzog, the leader of Israel’s Labor Party (now euphemistically known as the ‘Zionist Union’) announced that the time had come for a change in government and he was preparing his party for elections in 2016.

Most Israelis had more than enough of the political campaigning that precedes an election as well as the paralysis that characterizes the coalition-forming period that follows one in the days surrounding the election in February of this year.

But Herzog, having lost that one, is anxious for a rematch. Perhaps he wants it to happen before Obama leaves office, so that he can count on help from across the pond. The mostly American-funded V15 organization, which carried on an “anyone but Bibi” campaign in the previous election has re-emerged with a new name (darkenu, “Our Way”), and will no doubt be ready to canvass potential voters again on his behalf.

Herzog and his Labor colleagues have always cast themselves as the champions of the ordinary Israeli, the less-advantaged socioeconomic groups, the people that struggle to finish the month; and they criticize Likud policies for increasing income inequality and favoring the elites.

But tomorrow, the Histadrut – the massive labor federation that is the heart and soul of Herzog’s party – has threatened a general strike.

That means that schools and preschools will be closed, buses and trains will not run, all government offices will be closed (including the National Insurance Institute which is responsible for Israel’s equivalent of Social Security, health insurance and welfare), the usual execrable postal service will be replaced with no service at all, government hospitals will be on strike, and Ben Gurion airport may be closed.

El Al has already cancelled flights because pilots are not showing up for work, and well-paid port workers are working half normal hours. In addition, Bezeq (the telephone and Internet company) will not be working.

Ironically, the sticking point is that the Finance Ministry wants to give lower-paid government workers a larger percentage increase than better-paid ones. But this is unacceptable to the union!

If the strike takes place, the Finance Minister with whom they are negotiating will not be particularly discomfited. But the average Israeli, who will be scrambling to find a child care solution and a way to get to work without public transit, who will not be able to transfer automobile registrations, whose medical procedures will be delayed, who will not receive various local government services or get the package that has been sitting in Customs for two weeks already – will suffer.

This is standard procedure for the Histadrut, whose reaction to resistance to its public-sector demands is always the same: punish the public, who have little or no control over the decision-making process.

The Histadrut is one of the vestiges of Israel’s socialist past, as are some of the government-operated businesses like the postal service, electric company, water company, railway system, arms industries, and the Ashdod and Haifa ports.

Some of these make money (Israel Aerospace Industries) and some (Israel Electric Corporation) don’t. Some provide good service (Israel Railways) and others (Israel Post) do not. But all of them, as well as the health-care systems and the educational system and many private businesses are hostages to the Histadrut.

Herzog and the ‘Zionist Union’ have no better solutions for issues of security and terrorism than the Likud, and their cozying up to the Obama Administration is scary. But when they ask for your vote on the grounds that they care about the welfare of the ordinary Israeli, ask them about the Histadrut.

Update [2050 IST]: Although it is still not known if there will be a strike, here is a list of public institutions that will be closed if the strike happens (courtesy Times of Israel):

Teachers’ Union
Teachers’ organization
All local councils and municipalities
Knesset
All government ministries
Israel Tax Authority
Bank of Israel
Israel Lands’ Authority
Central Bureau of Statistics
National Insurance Institute
Employment Service
Israel Equities
Government-funded hospitals
Health funds
Israel Broadcasting Authority
Universities and colleges
Magen David Adom
Israel Antiquities Authority
Israel Airport Authority
Jewish National Fund
Israel Ports
Israel Electric Company
Israel Post
Ayalon Highways
Israel Roads
Israel Railway
Most larger museums
Bezeq
Egged

I have no idea if this means that calling Magen David Adom for an ambulance will bring one or not. I doubt the electricity will be turned off, but nothing would surprise me.

Update [22 Dec 1010 IST]: An agreement was reached around midnight to avert the strike. Isn’t there a better way to do these things?

Posted in Israeli Politics | 1 Comment