You can’t win the war you don’t fight

Posted on November 23, 2015 by Victor Rosenthal

This can’t be allowed to continue.

Yesterday there was another fatal stabbing at Etzion junction, a place which has seen several murders and countless terror attacks. A beautiful young woman, Hadar Buchris, was murdered for the crime of being Jewish in the land of Israel.

Between October 1 and November 22, 20 people have been killed (19 Jews and one Palestinian murdered by mistake), and 180 injured in a total of 91 attacks.

These terror attacks have been encouraged and praised by Palestinian Authority officials and media, although they are not organized or specifically commanded by them. This is the strategy they call ‘popular resistance’. The most popular weapon has been the knife, followed by the automobile. Firebombs and rocks are also used. It is sometimes even called “nonviolent” because only rarely are firearms used, although shooting attacks are becoming more and more common lately.

Recent polls show that a majority of Palestinians favor “armed resistance” and are more militant than the very unpopular PA, which seems to be taking its cues from the “street” rather than the reverse.

Before I discuss what should be done to stop the terrorism, it should be pretty obvious what should not be done: the response to a wave of murders should not be to reward the murderers for their enterprise.

Unfortunately, this is almost certainly what John Kerry will do on his upcoming visit, in which he intends to make suggestions on how “both sides” can take steps to restore calm. Since the US has been suggesting to the Palestinians that they stop incitement since the days of President Bill Clinton without effect, what’s left is that Kerry will try to get Netanyahu to give something to the Palestinians to show his good will. I’ve heard speculation that this might include transferring some land that is under full Israeli control today (Area C) to Palestinian civil control (Area B).

I’m sure that there will be other creative ideas, all based on the principle that the way to stop the murder is to improve the conditions for the Palestinian Arabs or to strengthen their leadership – thus proving to them that the way to obtain concessions is to kill Jews. This is an approach that can only make things worse.

The army will be installing more barricades and checkpoints at critical junctions. They will try to stop infiltration of Palestinians across the Green Line (illegal residents have committed some of the recent murders). These are steps that should be taken, but they aren’t solutions. A solution needs an overall strategy.

I think the truth is that we are at war with them – the PA, Hamas and also the “Palestinian people.” We did not want war. We wanted to live side by side. There is enough room for that. But you can’t live side by side with someone who wants to kill you. You can’t share the land with someone who thinks it all belongs to him and that you can leave or die.

The Arabs don’t accept our moral, historical or legal rights to any of the land. Their response to our ill-advised attempts at compromise has been to try harder to murder us. They couldn’t do it en masse in 1948 and 1967, so they are trying to do it one by one today. It’s a different kind of war but war nevertheless.

You win a war by hurting the enemy, not helping him. If it’s a war for territory, you occupy and control the territory. Our strategy has to be to occupy and control Judea and Samaria, cooperate with those Arabs that want to live alongside us peacefully, expel the ones who do not, and kill the ones who try to kill us.

That’s it. It’s really simple. The rest is tactics.

But, but, but. No, there aren’t any buts. True, war is brutal and ugly and innocent people are hurt. The fact is we are already in a brutal, ugly war and innocent people are being hurt, every day. The war has been going on, waxing and waning, since 1948, for 100 years, or for 2000 years – depending on how you want to count.

The Muslims have always taken the long view, the historical view. They remember the battles of the 7th century, the ‘setbacks’ of the Crusades, and the ultimate expulsion of the Crusaders from the lands they occupied. We should take the long view as well. What’s happening at Etzion junction is an extension of what has been happening all over the land for tens, hundreds, thousands of years.

The enemies have been various. There have been victories, and as Obama would say, “setbacks.” History tells us that victories will be temporary, and we’ll need to fight again and again.

Unhappily for us, this is one of those times. We are already in the midst of a war with the Palestinian Arabs, and losing it isn’t an option. But we can’t win the war we don’t fight.

Posted in Israel and Palestinian Arabs, Terrorism, War | 4 Comments

Israel is a safe space

Posted on November 20, 2015 by Victor Rosenthal

Lately there is a controversy in the US about demands by students for “safe spaces,” which apparently are places where like-minded folks can vent their prejudices without having to worry about hearing dissenting opinions. It made me think about a different kind of safe space, a place where a Jew doesn’t have to constantly look over his or her shoulder.

In California, where the Muslim population is less than 1%, the thought that my pro-Israel activities might endanger me or my family was never far from the surface. I was comforted by the thought that I was so ineffective in combating the anti-Israel propaganda flowing from multiple directions that they wouldn’t bother to beat me up, but I still always looked around carefully after pulling into my driveway. I don’t think I could have imagined what it is like for Jews today in France.

In France, Jew hatred is at unprecedented levels. Apart from the major terror attacks, many Jews have personal stories about harassment and beatings in the street, in schools, and elsewhere, which have increased “exponentially” since the attack on the Hyper Cacher supermarket in January. Although last week’s attacks didn’t specifically target Jews like the Ozar Hatorah or Hyper Cacher shootings, it would be natural for someone to think “if they can’t even protect themselves, how will they protect us?”

In Israel, despite the terrorism and constant threat of war, a Jew has a sense of security that exists nowhere else, even in the Jewish paradise of America.

It’s paradoxical. Here we are surrounded by Palestinian Arabs, presently in the middle of what has been called the 3rd intifada, and there are daily incidents of terrorism against Jews. From October 1 to November 13, 14 Israeli Jews have been murdered by Arab terrorists and 167 wounded.

Hezbollah has more than 100,000 rockets aimed at the country, and Hamas has tens of thousands. I have heard the booms of rockets blown up in the air over my head by Iron Dome, and when I go to Jerusalem or even Tel Aviv, I am very careful crossing the street or waiting at bus stops (probably a good idea in any event). And yet I’m less tense than I was in California.

One obvious reason is that Israel is much better prepared to deal with war and terrorism than the rest of the world. It has one of the world’s best air forces, and a nuclear deterrent with second strike capability. Security checks at the airports and bus and train stations are better. Even shopping malls have guards; every car trunk is looked into at the entrance to the parking lot. But it still doesn’t fully justify the feeling of safety.

Having done reserve duty, I know that the army is not always what it is cracked up to be. The police are like police anywhere, some competent, some not. Security guards, well, let’s just say that they tend not to be highly paid former commandos.

But there are psychological factors. Israel’s Jews mostly see themselves as in it together. They are each as much targets as the next one, and they look out for one another. It’s their state, their imperfect state with its imperfect army and imperfect police that is charged with protecting them. This is comforting in a way that similar institutions in the Diaspora cannot be.

When I lived in the US, the strenuous efforts of the Obama Administration to define Islamic terrorism as anything other than what it is created feelings of helplessness and frustration in those who saw themselves as possible targets of it. In France, there is the simple fact that, although they appear to be trying, the authorities are unable to get ahead of the rising tide of Jew hatred.

Here in Israel the government is taking strong action (see Naftali Bennett’s Facebook post) against incitement and terrorism, including destroying the houses of terrorist murderers, outlawing the Northern Branch of the Islamic movement (which has been responsible for promulgating the very dangerous lie that Israel intends to destroy the al-Aqsa mosque), and other steps. Perhaps a little late, but moving in the right direction. The latest wave of terrorism isn’t over, but it seems to have crested.

It’s possible for an Israeli to appear very cynical about the motivations of politicians and other officials. There is a small subset of the population that despises the whole enterprise, many of whom are media personalities, academics and journalists, that makes an outsize impression to observers outside of the country. But this segment is taken much less seriously by the people that live here. Most Israeli Jews do identify with the state and its institutions, especially the army. And that makes them feel secure.

On the other hand, news reports suggest that French Jews are made to feel more anxious rather than less by the armed police posted outside synagogues, because they are reminded that at any moment they could be under terrorist attack.

By far the greatest number of Western Europeans emigrating to Israel in recent years have come from France. In 2014, some 7,000 French Jews made aliyah to Israel, while 3-5,000 went to other places, like Canada. One of the reasons is that the immigration process to Canada is slower and more complicated. It’s not a simple decision, because professionals face difficulties getting comparable jobs in Israel, and housing is expensive here also.

But I suggest that European Jews who chose to leave Europe take into account not only their physical security – although it is likely to be as well-protected in Israel as anywhere else in the world – but the psychological security that comes from living in the Jewish state.

Israel will emphatically never be the kind of “safe space” that the American students are looking for, a place in which they will not have to listen to anyone that disagrees with them. The opposite is true; in Israel disagreements are ubiquitous and eloquent. But maybe it is the kind of safe space that European Jews need today.

Posted in Israeli Society, Jew Hatred, Terrorism | 3 Comments

Moderate Islam doesn’t exist (and neither does radical Islam)

Posted on November 17, 2015 by Victor Rosenthal

I received lots of feedback on my last post, What Is To Be Done (apologies to Lenin). Some correspondents said that I should have distinguished between ‘radical Islam’ and plain old Islam. The radical kind is our enemy, they suggest, and I damage my case by attacking Islam in general. Some said that I was crazy to call for the West to fight 1.4 billion Muslims.

I have been writing this blog and its predecessor since 2006, and while I’ve been critical of Islam before, I’ve always drawn the distinction between radical Islam and the theoretical moderate or reformed Islam. My decision to stop making this distinction was a considered one.

Although there are those who would reform Islam (here for example) the public face of Islam is that it is what it is. With small exceptions (whose adherents are considered apostates by mainline Muslims) there are no counterparts to Reform or Conservative Judaism. The leading Islamic universities and madrasas all teach what they see as an orthodox Islam. Obviously there are differences between Sunni and Shia Islam and less important divisions, but in any particular case (both Sunni and Shia) there is no room for ideological divergence. And in many cases, the penalty for it is death.

Islam will not reform itself in the near future, and it goes without saying that non-Muslims are not able to reform it. There really is no such thing as ‘moderate Islam’. What there are are moderate Muslims who for whatever reason don’t strictly follow the dictates of their particular branch of Islam. While they may behave in a more civilized manner than their more ‘religious’ brothers, they don’t represent an ideological movement.

In other words, there is no such thing as ‘radical Islam’ either, just radical Muslims. This explains why radicals so often get support from the supposedly more moderate community. The community doesn’t disagree with the radicals in a theoretical sense; they just aren’t comfortable going out and blowing people away.

I don’t believe that we need to fight 1.4 billion Muslims. Clearly we need to fight the radicals, who are somewhat fewer. But we also need to fight the ideology of Islam, to establish that Western culture is superior and deserving of emulation. And one thing that stands in the way of doing that is multiculturalism and its partner cultural relativism, the view that no culture is any better than another.

Western culture has certainly made moral mistakes. Where were the vaunted values of the Enlightenment when the American continent was colonized? When black slavery was considered acceptable? In Nazi Germany? But unlike Islam, it is capable of learning from them.

There are about 7.3 billion humans living on Earth today. I’m convinced that only classical Western culture, with its tradition of moral contemplation and its ability to foster scientific and technological progress, can prevent the descent of this population – via a process accompanied by unimaginable misery and death – into a new dark age. Certainly its proposed solutions to humankind’s problems are far superior to those of Islam.

It is being challenged for supremacy on the planet today, precisely by Islam. At the same time, it is being corrupted from within by the cultural diseases of affluence – postmodernism, lack of intellectual rigor, narcissism, greed, and more.

But there’s no alternative. Either we get our culture back on track and defeat our enemies or we lose. And if we lose, all humanity loses.

Posted in Islam | 2 Comments

What Is To Be Done (apologies to Lenin)

Posted on November 15, 2015 by Victor Rosenthal

After the recent terrorist outrages in Paris and Beirut, there are many voices calling for Something To Be Done.

It’s not as easy as it sounds. But before talking about Daesh (IS, ISIS, ISIL, etc.) and how to deal with it, there is another issue that we need to get clear about, and that is the identity of our enemy.

President George W. Bush got it spectacularly wrong on September 20, 2001, when he said,

The terrorists practice a fringe form of Islamic extremism that has been rejected by Muslim scholars and the vast majority of Muslim clerics; a fringe movement that perverts the peaceful teachings of Islam.

And added,

I also want to speak tonight directly to Muslims throughout the world. We respect your faith. It’s practiced freely by many millions of Americans and by millions more in countries that America counts as friends. Its teachings are good and peaceful, and those who commit evil in the name of Allah blaspheme the name of Allah.

Bush was not alone, and there are still many, including the current president of the US, who are wedded to the idea that there is somewhere a religion of peace that is ‘hijacked’ by ‘extremists’.

President Bush didn’t know a lot about Islam, but he knew that he didn’t want to antagonize American ‘allies’ like Saudi Arabia (President Obama, who does know quite a lot, has other reasons which I am not discussing today).

What’s relevant is that the ‘hijack’ theory implies that the enemy is either ‘extremism’ – which is ridiculous, since it is an attitude and not an enemy – or some group or groups of extremists. So Bush declared war on “terror” and Obama chose al-Qaeda as the enemy. He has now added Daesh, but – in deference to the theory – will not use the phrase “Islamic terrorism.” In his remarks on the Paris attacks, he said that “we stand together with [the French people] in the fight against terrorism and extremism” and that “this is an attack on all of humanity and the universal values that we share.” [my italics]

As usual, Obama did not use the words ‘Islam’ or ‘Muslim’, despite the fact that the terrorists at the Bataclan theater were reported to have shouted “allahu akbar.” And the implication that we share universal values with Muslims is very misleading.

Daesh has released a statement taking credit for the attacks. They quote Islamic sources, and write,

In a blessed attack for which Allah facilitated the causes for success, a faithful group of the soldiers of the Caliphate, may Allah dignify it and make it victorious, launched out, targeting the capital of prostitution and obscenity, the carrier of the banner of the Cross in Europe, Paris …

[They also targeted] the Bataclan Conference Center, where hundreds of apostates had gathered in a profligate prostitution party …

Let France and those who walk in its path know that they will remain on the top of the list of targets of the Islamic State, and that the smell of death will never leave their noses as long as they lead the convoy of the Crusader campaign, and dare to curse our Prophet, Allah’s peace and blessings be upon him, and are proud of fighting Islam in France and striking the Muslims in the land of the Caliphate with their planes, which did not help them at all in the streets of Paris and its rotten alleys. This attack is the first of the storm and a warning to those who wish to learn.

There’s more, but the statement makes their reasons for the attack clear: in part it gets revenge for France’s participation in a coalition that has fought Daesh in Iraq and Syria, but it is also an expression of their outrage at what they consider the moral turpitude of France and the West, particularly their sexual freedom. And importantly, it alludes to the historical struggle between Islam and Christianity, which Daesh sees itself as having taken up after centuries of humiliation by the “Crusaders.”

In other words, they did it for Islam.

Bin Laden’s 2002 “Letter to America” also makes similar points, although he threw in everything but the kitchen sink (Palestine of course, and even criticism of the US for not signing the Kyoto Protocol on greenhouse gases).

There is nothing ‘extremist’ in an Islamic sense about these concerns. Their moral principles (yes, it’s strange to write this about the people who rape their female captives and sell them) are mainstream Islam and supported by their texts, as is the imperative to promulgate Islam by Jihad. Violence and terrorism against unbelievers has Quranic sanction. What is extreme is the ferocity with which Daesh and other radical Islamists put these basic Islamic views into practice.

This is why it is difficult to get ‘moderate’ Muslims to disavow the radical groups completely. Even if they don’t approve of murder, they see the objectives of the extremists as laudable – Islamic morality and Islamic rule, an end to Crusader domination and the restoration of the correct world order with Muslims on top.

And this is why a military-only solution doesn’t exist. If you damage al-Qaeda, Daesh appears. If you kill members of Daesh there are always new ones waiting in the wings.

Don’t get me wrong – it is absolutely necessary to crush these organizations: they must be disarmed and the logistical systems that keep them alive (in the case of Daesh, their oil revenues) must be interdicted. Leaders, strategic planners and technicians have to be killed. But that isn’t enough to win the war that they are spearheading against the West.

I said spearheading because the West is not fighting either ‘terrorism’ or Daesh or any other group that uses terrorism as a tactic. The truth is that we are fighting Islam, and these are its soldiers today. And they are not its only soldiers. Although a deadly enemy of Daesh, the Iranian regime also seeks to carry the banner of Islam against the West.

This concept – that we must fight Islam itself – is very uncomfortable for an enlightened Westerner, who is used to thinking of religious war as an artifact of the past, a stupid and pointless endeavor. We feel so superior to the 17th century Europeans who wrecked an entire continent with the 30 Years War! Today we have adopted the view that religion isn’t worth fighting over, that only arguments over geopolitics and economics can supply a legitimate casus belli.

Well, unfortunately our Muslim enemy doesn’t see it that way. They don’t think that religious differences end with your choice of day of the week to worship, or what you call the building you do it in. And they don’t think that the appropriate reaction to these differences is ‘live and let live’. Not at all.

As a result, we need to take these differences seriously as well. And we have to understand that Islam has declared religious war on us, with the intent to make us all Muslims, to destroy our churches and synagogues, and to replace our secular constitutions with shari’a, our parliaments with religious councils. Or, if we refuse, to make us die.

We can’t explain to them that they should read Locke and Rousseau, or treat the words of the Qur’an as metaphor. War isn’t a game that one side can refuse to play. If they win, we lose, whether we knew we were playing or not.

Therefore, the way to win is not just to wipe out the shock troops of Daesh (although we need to do that too).

We need to take down Islam, ban it in the West, close its schools and mosques, humiliate its believers, even destroy its symbols, as they would like to do to us. We need to fight them physically and psychologically as well. We need to teach the lesson that as a matter of fact Muslims are not superior to non-Muslims, and that’s why they are losing this war.

If we don’t do this, there will be no end to the war — at least not until they get nuclear weapons, which they would not hesitate to use.

If it’s hard for you to accept this, then don’t think of Islam as a religion like Reform Judaism or Episcopalianism. Think of it as an ideology, like communism or Nazism, because it is that as well.

Right now, some of you are saying “we mustn’t descend to their level.” But this is one way they are using our own values against us, one way they are using asymmetric warfare.

Whether we like it or not, we are on their level, and engaged in a struggle to keep a world in which the values that we learned from Locke and Rousseau inform our social and political systems – not shari’a.

This war has been going on since at least the 1990s. The enemy isn’t hiding his plans or his objectives. Time to wake up and fight for the life of our civilization.

Posted in Islam, Terrorism | 5 Comments

Terror children, the latest Palestinian innovation

Posted on November 13, 2015 by Victor Rosenthal

I opened my newspaper Wednesday morning to read that two Palestinian terrorists had attacked a security guard in a car on the oft-targeted Jerusalem light rail. The guard was stabbed twice; one of the terrorists was shot and the other overpowered by passengers.

The thing is that the terrorists were cousins, 11 and 14 years old.

The 11-year old, who was shot by the guard he or his cousin had stabbed, was taken to Hadassah Hospital, where – as I find myself writing yet again – he will receive the best medical care available in the Middle East. Because of his age, he will then go home to his parents. Israeli law makes no provision for attempted murderers below the age of 12.

When I was 11, I was a Cub Scout. Not even a Boy Scout, for which you had to be 12. I built model airplanes and crystal radios, played ball in the street and rode my bike to the swimming pool in the summer. The greatest violence I had experienced in my life was a fight with a boy my age that resulted in a bloody nose.

It’s been a long time, but I can’t begin to imagine myself or any of my friends or acquaintances planning and carrying out an attack intended to cause the death of a stranger, simply because he was a member of a group defined as an enemy.

To plunge a knife into the flesh of a human being. Think about it. Think about how you would need to feel in order to do it. Most of us would have a hard time killing an animal, even a chicken we intended to eat. Then think about planning to do it in advance, sharpening a knife and hiding it in your school backpack so that you could go out and stab Jews after school. Think about doing this when you were a kid.

There are cases of children committing murder in the US, but they are rare and usually the child is in some way psychologically defective. But there are numerous cases of Palestinian teenagers, girls as well as boys, committing stabbing attacks. A few weeks ago, another pair of cousins aged 13 and 17 seriously wounded two Jews, one of whom was also a 13-year old, in a stabbing spree that ended when the older assailant was shot by police and the younger one hit by a car.

One reason it’s hard for us to comprehend their behavior is that most Westerners really don’t get the concept of an enemy. You belong to a tribe, and there is an enemy tribe. When you meet a member of the enemy tribe, you fight. If you can kill him you do. Often killing an enemy is justified as revenge for a series of crimes committed by the enemy tribe. It doesn’t matter who he is as an individual.

The other difficult concept is hate. We use the word loosely: not wanting to sit next to a person of a particular race on a bus isn’t hate, regardless of how reprehensible it may be. Hate is the emotion that makes you want to plunge a knife deep into the neck of the hated person. Most 11-year old children haven’t experienced real hate. Most grown-ups in Israel and the West may have felt it a few times and certainly only a very small number have acted on it.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is asymmetrical because most of the hate and the enmity is on one side. A US State Department spokesperson will say “both sides need to exercise restraint” as if both sides are doing the same, unrestrained violent thing. Jeffrey Goldberg referred to Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs as “two warring tribes” as if both tribes treat the other as an enemy. These expressions are misleading, because in this conflict Jews are primarily defending themselves out of necessity while Palestinian Arabs are attacking them out of tribal hatred.

Of course there are exceptions. The Jews that burned Muhammad Abu Khdeir to death saw him as a representative of a hated enemy. His murder was a classic case of revenge against a member of an enemy tribe.

But note that Jews are in the majority, have access to more and better weapons and have an organized fighting force. If they were as suffused with hatred for Arabs as Arabs are for Jews, there would be no Arabs left from the river to the sea. And if Arabs had the means that the Jews have, there would be no more Jews.

There are several reasons for the Palestinian Arabs’ hate, and they seem to have combined to create a perfect storm of murder.

  • The honor-shame character of the Arab culture calls for humiliation to be extirpated by blood.
  • The violation by Jewish sovereignty of the Islamic hierarchy which places Jews several steps down from male Muslims is an endless source of humiliation for them.
  • The idea that Jews are lower than Muslims, close to animals, makes it easier to consider killing them. And Arabs, even children, are familiar with the slaughter of animals.
  • The essential aspect of Palestinian – not just Arab – culture, the fact that it’s defined in opposition to Jews and Jewish sovereignty, makes Jews blamable for everything bad that has happened to Palestinian Arabs.
  • The flood of hateful indoctrination that Palestinian Arabs receive from the Palestinian Authority and Hamas makes them furious and gives their fury an object – the Jews. Any Jews.
  • The approval their society gives terrorists validates their behavior as not only normal but laudable.
  • Incitement on children’s programs on regular media plus social media is aimed directly at children.

There is nothing remotely similar to any of these in mainstream Jewish culture. So while we may fight Hamas on a regular basis and push back at the violent ‘demonstrations’ incited by the PLO, we don’t systematically or sporadically try to kill Arabs. And we certainly don’t encourage our children to do so.

All of these strong emotional motivators act on children as well of adults, but in children the safety mechanisms that might make an adult pull back from actual murder aren’t well-developed. Emotions go straight to action, hate straight to stabbing.

The encouragement of children to become terrorists is not an accident. The Palestinian educational system is designed to do it. Child soldiers are nothing new, but their use as self-guided terrorist missiles is a Palestinian innovation. It can be counted along with the other Palestinian contributions to humanity, like the popularization of airplane hijacking, the Qassam rocket, and automotive terrorism.

The Palestinians have tried to appropriate Jewish history in the land of Israel, to create a ‘holocaust’ for themselves, to claim our holy city and our holy sites, even to claim the Jewish founder of Christianity for themselves. But one thing that they did not copy was our love and concern for our children. Instead they cynically and cruelly use them, as soldiers, human shields, human bombs and terrorists. They have created a generation of haters and killers. Karma is not a Jewish concept, but I expect that they will pay dearly in the future for what they are doing today.

Posted in Israel and Palestinian Arabs, Terrorism | 1 Comment

Jeffrey Goldberg finally gets it, then quickly loses it again

Posted on November 10, 2015 by Victor Rosenthal

It’s not enough to start thinking clearly. You need to finish as well. You need to follow your logic to where it goes, even if it is uncomfortable. Apparently Jeffrey Goldberg hasn’t done that yet:

Unlike Obama, several of his predecessors, and most American diplomats who specialize in the Middle East, I no longer believe that a reversal of the settlement project would necessarily set in motion a process that culminates in the conflict’s end. The 100-year conflict between Arab and Jew was not initiated by the 48-year-old occupation of the West Bank. As the latest round of Palestinian terrorism directed at Israelis suggests, the conflict is about something more than settlements. For many Palestinians, and certainly for many Palestinian leaders, Israel is an illegitimate state, and the Jews are not a people. There will be no permanent end of the conflict until Palestinians bring their understanding of Jewish history into line with reality.

But: There will certainly be no progress toward a possible two-state solution—there will certainly be no chance that the Palestinian narrative will ever soften—if the settlement movement continues apace. And more to the point: There will be no hope for Israel as a democratic state that is home to a Jewish majority—the one place in the world in which Jews, after 2,000 years of exile and persecution at the hands of Christians and Muslims and fascists and communists, can take control of their own destiny—if the West Bank is absorbed into Israel proper. The separation of two warring tribes is the actual goal of “peace” negotiations; a reversal of the settlement project is a necessary step in these divorce proceedings.

The first paragraph correctly recognizes that the conflict cannot be about settlements because it preceded them and because of the implacable “Palestinian narrative” that insists that Jews have no place in the land of Israel.

The second then says that the way to change this – to ‘soften’ the narrative – is to surrender a piece of the land (which just happens to be the traditional heart of the land of Israel) to these ‘Palestinians’ who do not accept any Jewish presence between the Jordan and the Mediterranean.

There are three reasons that this analysis is wrong.

  • Such a surrender would be seen as a victory for the violent tactics of the Arabs, an expression of weakness by the Jews, and an encouragement to press for a complete victory. The idea that it would ‘soften’ anything is sheer wishful thinking. It would do the opposite.
  • The loss of the biblical heartland of the land of Israel would be a huge psychological and spiritual blow to Zionism.
  • Simple geostrategic considerations imply that the Jewish state could not survive with a hostile entity in control of Judea and Samaria. Historical precedent tells us that a Palestinian state would be or quickly become hostile.

Goldberg adds that peace requires a ‘divorce’ between the Jews and the Arabs, and he is correct again. But he is unable to take the next logical step, necessitated by the Palestinian narrative and the abusive behavior of the Palestinian partner.

In any divorce, one of the ex-spouses has to move out. Goldberg, like Obama and like other American and European diplomats, can’t shake the idea that it should be the Jews – possibly because he thinks they can be more easily pushed around.

But that is unjust as well as impossible. The Jews hold the deed to all the property, in moral, historical and legal senses. And the abusive partner can’t be trusted to continue living in the next room. The Arabs – at least those that cannot give up the rejectionist narrative – are the ones that should move out.

Goldberg, Obama, and company think the problem is to find a way for the Jews to evacuate Judea and Samaria and still be secure. But they are wasting their time because there is no solution to this problem.

The real problem they need to solve is how to arrange for the abusers to leave.

Posted in 'Peace' Process, Israel and Palestinian Arabs | 6 Comments

What to expect from the Netanyahu/Obama meeting

Posted on November 9, 2015 by Victor Rosenthal

As I write this, PM Netanyahu is in Washington, preparing for his scheduled meeting with President Obama today. The Washington Post reports that

The leaders plan to discuss how to counter Iranian aid to Hezbollah and Hamas; the Russian and Iranian efforts to prop up Syrian President Bashar ­al-Assad; and steps that might demonstrate Netanyahu’s commitment to a two-state solution even in the absence of negotiations with the Palestinian Authority.

The most tangible piece of the agenda, however, is a 10-year memorandum of understanding on military cooperation between the two countries that would budget aid and lock in a plan for new weaponry to deal with what the administration agrees is a “dangerous neighborhood.”

Most media sources also say that the PM and president want to improve their reportedly poor personal relationship.

I hope I’m wrong, but I don’t expect this meeting to go well – and I don’t think it will be because of  the personal chemistry or lack thereof between the two. Rather, there are real differences in worldview and perception of national interest between Netanyahu and Obama and his team. The administration’s position is much closer to that of the Europeans than previous administrations, or indeed to that of most Americans or members of the US Congress.

Obama accepts much of the Palestinian narrative, in which they are an oppressed people and by which their violent behavior is caused by their oppression and their lack of a ‘horizon’ – a hope that at some point they will obtain a sovereign state. Therefore, on the Palestinian issue he will be expected to push for Netanyahu to make concessions in the form of construction freezes, prisoner releases, and loosening security measures (checkpoints, etc.). Obama may also call for ‘humanitarian’ assistance to Gaza or for weakening the blockade on materials that can be used for military purposes.

Netanyahu (correctly) understands that the ‘horizon’ the Palestinians yearn for is a view from the Jordan to the Mediterranean that is not defiled by the presence of Jews. He understands that concessions are perceived as weakness and will be pocketed and followed by demands for more. He believes that responding to Arab violence calls for tightening, not loosening, security measures. He notes that Hamas continues to dedicate resources to preparations for war and not ameliorating the condition of the population.

Obama is personally sympathetic to Muslim Brotherhood style Islamism, as illustrated by his support of Morsi over al-Sisi in Egypt. He doesn’t seem prepared to invest much in the effort to prevent the establishment of Daesh’s Sunni caliphate. He might even be reconciled to the permanent establishment of such a state, in the hopes that its behavior will someday become more moderate. And of course he seems committed to making an ally of Iran, despite its continued ‘death to America’ hostility. Netanyahu sees threats from all of these, particularly Iran.

Netanyahu realizes that no one will stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons except Israel, and remains committed to the principle that no hostile state in the region – particularly one that has made no bones about wanting to destroy Israel – will be allowed to do so. Obama still considers an Israeli attack on Iran a worse outcome than an Iranian nuclear test.

I expect, therefore, that Obama will not look favorably on Netanyahu’s requests for offensive weapons, particularly those that can be used to attack Iran. I think that he will condition the provision of any weapons on what Netanyahu is willing to do on the Palestinian front. Netanyahu is under heavy pressure to improve the security situation at home and will not want to make significant concessions.

Those are just some of the reasons for the ‘daylight’ between Israel and the Obama Administration. There is also a strong ideological bias on the part of Obama and many of his key advisers – Kerry, Rhodes, Rice, Malley, etc. – toward the Palestinians. This was evidenced during the last Gaza war, when Obama (and Kerry) strongly and unfairly criticized Israel for ‘disproportionate’ civilian casualties, and even cut off deliveries of weapons.

But leaving all this aside, there is independent evidence that the administration does not want the meeting to go well for Israel. On Saturday night, Joe Biden spoke at the biennial convention of the Union for Reform Judaism, where he very sharply rebuked PM Netanyahu’s nominee for media adviser, Ron Baratz, for comments he made about Obama and Kerry.

Baratz made these remarks on his personal Facebook page before he was nominated for the position, and the appointment is an internal one and not, for example, an ambassadorship. This is really none of the Americans’ business. One could compare it to the insulting and even scatological remarks made to reporter Jeffrey Goldberg about Netanyahu by an unnamed White House official, but in that case the insults were made to the media and in the performance of the official’s duties.

This is not the first time Biden delivered a message by deliberately overreacting to a perceived ‘insult’. Early in the Obama Administration, he was ‘insulted’ by an announcement of tenders for construction of some homes in an existing Jewish neighborhood of eastern Jerusalem. Then the message was that although there was no agreement not to build in Jerusalem, Israel would pay dearly for disobedience to the administration.

Biden also said Saturday night that “both sides need to demonstrate restraint and avoid incitement.” I think the message he delivered (to applause from the administration’s liberal Jewish supporters) had two parts: 1) Netanyahu shouldn’t forget that Obama is the boss and he is the underling, and 2) Israel is responsible for causing the terrorism it experiences and will be expected to take steps to conciliate the Palestinians. Needless to say, neither of these messages will make Netanyahu happy.

Obama has no reason to hide his antipathy for Israel or his sympathy for the Palestinians. He faces no more elections, while he still has more than a year to implement his policies. He’s succeeded in breaking the sanctions regime on Iran without even losing the support of liberal Jews, who apparently accept his protestations that he cares for the security of Israel, regardless of his actions.

My prediction is that Netanyahu will come out of this meeting with much less military aid than he had hoped for, and far more obligations than he would prefer.

Posted in US-Israel Relations | 2 Comments

Has the URJ become an enemy of the Jewish people?

Posted on November 8, 2015 by Victor Rosenthal

Reform Judaism, represented by the Union for Reform Judaism (URJ), is now the largest Jewish denomination in the US and Canada, claiming 2.2 million members out of the estimated total of 6.5 million Jews in those countries.

You would expect that the organization would be a powerful pro-Israel force to combat the increasingly anti-Israel policies of the Obama Administration, the anti-Zionist indoctrination in American and Canadian universities, and the unbalanced media coverage of Israel and its conflicts.

You would expect that there would be solidarity between the largest North American Jewish organization and Israel, whose continued existence is essential to the survival of the Jewish people as a whole.

You would be wrong.

The URJ has chosen to focus much of its positive energy on an issue whose specifically Jewish relevance is marginal: LGBT rights. I don’t doubt their sincerity, but for an organization operating in the overwhelmingly socially liberal atmosphere of American Jewry, this is the safest possible area for political action. It is an opportunity to score points without taking risks.

I am not expressing an opinion here about whether their positions on, for example, transgender restrooms, are justified. I am simply saying that it is astonishing that a major Jewish denomination places emphasis on these issues when the Jewish people’s self-determination in their homeland – indeed, the physical survival of that homeland – is under worldwide attack.

When the URJ does relate to Israel, it is to criticize, patronize and even take positions inimical to Israel’s interests. Its idea of ‘Zionism’ is to arrogantly try to force her to change her primarily Middle Eastern and Eastern European culture to that of a liberal utopia that exists only in its collective mind. It consistently expresses disdain for both the national-religious and haredi elements that make up the so-called ‘religious’ sector in Israel, and completely ignores the Mizrachi Jews that constitute about half of our population.

In an act of remarkable cowardice reminiscent of the behavior of the liberal Jewish establishment under Stephen J. Wise during the Holocaust, the URJ chose to take no position on the nuclear deal with Iran pushed through by President Obama. This deal, which was opposed by majorities in both houses of Congress and by both the Government and Opposition in Israel, will empower Iran to increase its support of terrorism against Jews and others, and will accelerate its rush to nuclear weapons. Its ‘safeguards’ are already beginning to unravel.

The head of the URJ, Rabbi Rick Jacobs, was a board member of the left-wing New Israel Fund and a member of J Street’s Rabbinic Cabinet. His ideology places him on the left, even among Reform rabbis. His speech to the URJ’s biennial convention last week had a critical and arrogant tone. For example,

Many Jews, especially younger ones, feel that Israel has become too intolerant, not only of Arab citizens of Israel, but also of non-Orthodox Jews, Ethiopian Jews, LGBT Jews, asylum seekers, and others. Even as they may grieve for Israeli victims of terror, many cannot relate to the continued growth of settlements in the West Bank, or the weakening of democratic institutions like Israel’s Supreme Court as a result of the constant attacks from some ultra-Orthodox and far right circles. …

We teach our children to repair the world by healing brokenness wherever they find it. But Jews who see brokenness in the treatment of Israel’s minorities, or in the way ultra-Orthodox views of Judaism are being enshrined in secular law, are being told that, when it comes to Israel, you should check your commitment to tikkun olam at the door. We will not.

The patronizing message that American Reform Jews are morally superior to Israelis because of their commitment to a universalist “tikkun olam” as opposed to Israeli “ethnocentrism,” know how to solve Israel’s problems, and will do so coercively is highly unattractive in Israel where grandmothers are stabbed for the crime of being Jewish in the Jewish homeland.

Rabbi Jacobs spoke about “courage” and “boldness” while his movement has taken precisely the opposite path.

In my (not inconsiderable) experience, most American Reform Jews are abysmally uninformed about Israel, its society, and its unending conflict. But Jacobs should not be unaware of the historical and geopolitical facts about the Jewish state. He has visited Israel numerous times, and even has an apartment in Jerusalem. He should know better, and should use his position to educate, rather than misinform. Without engaging in too much amateur psychology, I suggest that the arrogant and morally superior – even narcissistic – attitude so prominent in his speech in part explains his inability to see the reality in front of his face.

Reform Judaism began as an anti-Zionist movement, and over the years became more supportive of Zionism. Recently it has begun to adopt the strange formulations of J Street and President Obama, which assert a love for Israel and a concern for its security while favoring policies that promote its destruction.

At this difficult and dangerous time, an organization concerned with the survival of the Jewish state and the Jewish people should vehemently oppose anti-Israel policies and politicians, rather than distract its constituency with feel-good resolutions about “gender non-conforming people.”

But apparently the URJ is not concerned.

Posted in American Jews | 2 Comments