Obama...idealist or pragmatist?

Friday & Saturday - The president abroad

This is day 81 in the countdown toward the 100th day of Barack Obama's presidency. The benchmark probably dates back to Franklin D. Roosevelt, who came into office with no particular ideology but promising "action, and action now" - and a readiness to pursue pragmatic policies.

Obama has returned to Washington after his most significant trip abroad since taking office. The president enjoys strong support from the majority of Americans who voted for him (Democrats give him an 88 percent approval rating) though he has made few strides in winning over John McCain's supporters (only 27% of Republicans think he's doing a good job). Obama's critics complain he spent too much time overseas in "excuse me, excuse my predecessor, or excuse my country" mode.

Still, Obama's message - "I'm personally committed to a new chapter of American engagement" - set a new tone for US foreign policy among Washington's ostensible allies in Europe, Turkey and Iraq.

•On the issues that most concern Israelis, paramount among them Teheran's nuclear ambitions, Obama reiterated that he had "made it clear to the people and leaders" of Iran "that the United States seeks engagement based upon mutual interests and mutual respect. Now, Iran's leaders must choose whether they will try to build a weapon or build a better future for their people."

•As the Netanyahu government conducts a policy review on Arab-Israel peacemaking, Obama said: "Let me be clear: The United States strongly supports the goal of two states, Israel and Palestine, living side by side in peace and security." And Obama had a message for Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman: "That is a goal that the parties agreed to in the road map and at Annapolis. That is a goal that I will actively pursue as president."

•Finally, as the West's top "emissary" to a Muslim world where visceral loathing of Israel knows no bounds, the US president told students in Istanbul: "This notion that somehow everything is the fault of the Israelis lacks balance - because there's two sides to every question."

Obama made an unannounced (but not unanticipated) five-hour trip to Iraq where he was warmly received by US troops. He said combat forces would be pulled out by August 2010, and all US troops by the end of 2011. He told Sunnis and Shi'ites, who've lately ratcheted-up their intramural slaughter, to take responsibility for their country because America needs to focus on battling al-Qaida and the Taliban in Afghanistan-Pakistan.

In Ankara, he paid his respects at the mausoleum of Kemal Ataturk, the secularist founder of modern Turkey. Whatever Obama may think of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whose politics are rooted in political Islam, he urged the EU to make room for Turkey.

He told the Turkish parliament and the wider Muslim world that the United States "is not and will never be at war with Islam. America's relationship with the Muslim community, the Muslim world, cannot and will not just be based upon opposition to terrorism," he said. "We seek broader engagement based upon mutual interest and mutual respect."

Obama has been convinced - partly by venerable cold warriors such as Sam Nunn and Henry Kissinger - that it might be easier to garner international support for stopping pariah states from going nuclear if the US shows a willingness to sharply reduce its own atomic arsenal.

So he parlayed news that North Korea had launched a ballistic missile into a far-reaching call for worldwide nuclear disarmament. "In a strange turn of history, the threat of global nuclear war has gone down, but the risk of a nuclear attack has gone up… Terrorists are determined to buy, build or steal [a nuclear weapon]," he said.

THUS FAR into his presidency, it's already apparent that Obama seeks to harness idealism with pragmatism. Yet if the G-20 (on the economic crisis), NATO (on Afghanistan-Pakistan) and Russia (on Iran) remain unmoved by appeals to multilateralism, expect Obama, like Roosevelt, to go with whatever works.

What this means for Israel in pursuit of its highest national interest, blocking Iran from fielding a nuclear bomb, is that Binyamin Netanyahu needs to convince Obama that doing anything short of stopping the mullahs would be dangerously reckless.

Passover in Israel

Wed & Thursday - Pessah illuminated

Count on matza being brittle, on maror being bitter, and on the Chief Rabbinate to exploit the most widely and lovingly observed festival to create a pointless controversy.

Were the rabbinate a bastion of probity and spirituality, a relentless campaigner for Jewish unity and Ahavat Yisrael, we might be inclined to forgive its occasional dalliance with religious coercion. But it is none of these things. So its declaration that it will "out" stores selling leavened products on Pessah is just the latest instance of this country's established church getting its Judaism precisely wrong.

The eating of bread and other leaven known as hametz is forbidden by Halacha. Observant Jews of all streams, and many secular Jews too, willingly honor this ancient tradition; 70 percent of Israelis won't go near bread during the festival.

The rabbinate, however - with little success - has been pressuring supermarket chains (most of whom anyway do not sell hametz) to fiddle with their checkout bar code readers so hametz items can't be processed. How superfluous - as if supermarkets were inundated with tactless customers surreptitiously grabbing from inaccessible shelves and trying to sneak their purchases past the checkout clerks.

The law of the state is clear and just: Hametz may not be displayed during the festival. At the same time, however, it is not illegal to sell hametz. Muslims, Christians and wayward Jews can purchase bread products from stores not certified as kosher. This nicely balances civil liberties with societal values.

The rabbinate's coercive agenda is echoed by the Orthodox nationalist "Legal Forum for the Land of Israel." Better known for championing the settler agenda in the courts, the group reportedly plans to spot-check stores during the intermediate days of the festival and press the authorities to penalize businesses found displaying hametz.

Rabbi Ya'acov Meidan of the Har Etzion hesder yeshiva in Alon Shvut - no liberal theologian he - has wisely argued that coercion is counterproductive, and not the way to bring Jews closer to observance.

FOR THOSE driven nevertheless to impose Jewish values on the public, here are some better ideas:

• The supermarkets that deserve to be "outed" are those that don't pay their Jewish or Arab workers a living wage.

• If anyone's kashrut certificate deserves to be jeopardized, let it be hotels that serve strictly kosher food yet impose a penalty on Sabbath-observing guests who don't check out during Shabbat.

• The Ministry of Interior should be picketed until it stops making the lives of converts miserable. Its latest outrage: A pregnant Italian (Orthodox) convert married to a kashrut supervisor isn't deemed Jewish enough to receive Israeli citizenship.

• Embrace the 300,000 Israelis who immigrated to Israel under the Law of Return but have not been allowed to convert to Judaism because they will not commit to leading Orthodox life-styles; lobby for the belated implementation of the Ne'eman Committee findings.

• Pressure local burial societies to allow women to deliver eulogies at the funerals of their loved ones.

• Isolate those who would desecrate God's name by disrespecting the leaders of other faiths. And welcome Pope Benedict with respect when he visits the Western Wall.

• If you are a revered rabbi, tell your flock to follow their consciences in deciding how to vote; add that there is neither sin nor merit in casting a ballot, only civic responsibility.

• Denounce rabbis who pervert the holy texts by allowing husbands to keep their wives chained as agunot in order to extract concessions in divorce settlements.

• There are 10,000 divorces a year. Re-direct part of the "religious" budget to preparing couples for the real challenges of marriage.

• Lament that for some secular people, rumors that a ritual immersion bath (mikve) will be built in their neighborhood evoke fears of haredi coercion rather than joy over this unifying link to an ancient practice.

ONCE every 28 years, our tradition teaches, the sun returns to the position it occupied on the fourth day of creation. That anniversary came around this morning, prompting observant Jews to recite the Birkat Hahama prayer at sunrise. It arrived just in time to remind us what Judaism is about: enlightenment and illumination.

Israel's economy

Tuesday -- Jobs over dogma


Back in 1934, US president Calvin Coolidge remarked, "When a great many people are unable to find work, unemployment results." Though economics continues to make great analytical strides, the current global economic crisis leaves us Israelis with more questions - and fears - than answers.

There's been a 70-percent surge in applications for unemployment benefits compared to last year at this time. A record 20,000 workers joined the unemployment rolls in March. From well-paid electrical engineers living along the coastal plain to warehouse workers in the periphery, more than 100,000 men and women have lost their jobs in the past six months. Unemployment stands at 6.8 percent. Thousands more jobs in manufacturing are at risk. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu cautions there may be worse to come.

And yet, a ray of hope: Some 12,000 unemployed have found new work, while the average gross salary has held steady at NIS 8,197.

The Kadima government was unable to get the Knesset to pass a budget, and that will hamper Netanyahu's efforts to tackle unemployment promptly. However, he and Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz have decided to make lemonade out of lemons by pushing the Knesset to agree on a two-year budget, combining 2009 and 2010, in order to stabilize the situation. The catch is that it will take until mid-July to develop a biannual financial plan - and critics, including Bank of Israel Governor Stanley Fischer, argue Israel doesn't have that kind of time. The new government counters that, with the Pessah holidays and the legislature's recess in the offing, there is insufficient time for the Finance Ministry and Knesset to complete the necessary work for a two-year budget any sooner.

While we have great respect for Fischer - as does Netanyahu, his former pupil - it strikes us that a two-year budget, serving more as template than straitjacket, will enhance the country's economic stability and restrict the proclivity of politicians for impromptu, questionable expenditures. A multi-year budget also gives permanent Treasury professionals added influence - a generally good thing so long as someone as economically savvy as Netanyahu is at the helm. In short, it may be worth the wait.

NETANYAHU wants to use the budget as a tool for cushioning the impact on Israelis of the global economic crisis; to do that he will be looking to cut NIS 10 billion in government expenditures in order to augment the National Insurance Institute and provide monies to meet rising unemployment benefit demands. He intends to spend on infrastructure, and bolster businesses in the periphery. He reportedly wants to cancel certain tax exemptions, while freezing public-sector salaries. He's promised to coordinate such moves with the Histadrut Labor Federation.

He also wants to shift more public land into the private domain.

Netanyahu and Steinitz want to lower taxes even though the Bank of Israel opposes such a move. With the budget deficit at NIS 3.3 billion and projected to rise to NIS 40 billion by year's end, Bank officials argue that with revenues down, now is not the time to cut taxes.

While, in the main, we support the premise of shrinking government expenditures and lowering taxes, timing is everything. Netanyahu will want to bring Fischer on board before making such a move.

In a conversation with the Post and in a recent Wall Street Journal article, Amotz Asa-El argued that Netanyahu has not necessarily abandoned his fundamental free-market economic ideology, but sees his most pressing task as buying time until the global economy recovers. By meanwhile collecting allies and co-opting rivals, he hopes to soften the blows that await thousands of workers as jobs, salaries and purchasing power all shrink. The emerging zeitgeist worldwide, Asa-El explains, is to put economic dogma on hold and go with what works.

Stung by critics of his tough-minded 2003 tenure at Finance, Netanyahu needs to find a middle ground that discourages a culture of dependency while guaranteeing a safety net especially for those least able to withstand the current economic turbulence.

In the words of Franklin D. Roosevelt: "In our personal ambitions, we are individualists. But in our seeking for economic and political progress as a nation, we all go up - or else all go down as one people."

That North Korean missile

Monday - Learning from Pyongyang


There's a lesson to be learned about North Korea's launching over the weekend of a Taepodong II rocket - and it isn't just that the more treacherous the crisis, the less likely it is that multilateralism will provide a solution.

The launching was yet another step in North Korea's march toward building and perfecting a nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic missile.

World leaders were as worried as they were impotent while North Korean technicians pumped fuel into the rocket, which can hit Japan and possibly Alaska and Hawaii as well.

In launching the missile, North Korea violated UN Security Council Resolution 1718, passed after the regime's October 9, 2006 test detonation of a nuclear device which violated the Non-Proliferation Treaty. The council demanded that "the DPRK not conduct any further nuclear test or launch of a ballistic missile."

The Democratic People's Republic of Korea - which is neither democratic, nor run by its people, nor a republic - claimed it had launched a "communications satellite," and not a ballistic missile. That's a distinction without a difference. In any event, the North American Aerospace Defense Command said the satellite did not make it into orbit.

At Japan's behest, the Security Council was scheduled to hold an emergency session on Sunday evening. But little more than a strongly worded statement was expected to come out of it. China and Russia would use their veto should tougher sanctions be proposed - and, anyway, analysts argue that economic leverage has negligible impact. What matters is that China is opposed to regime change, even were it possible.

Though we live in a multi-polar world where Pax America is passé, the West, Japan and South Korea appear to take their lead from Washington. The Obama administration says that North Korea's behavior will be punished appropriately. Well, whatever that means, it does not include a frontal confrontation. Not with the US economy in a tailspin and America's volunteer army stretched in Iraq and Afghanistan-Pakistan.

Every despotic regime is despotic in its own way. B.R. Myers, who teaches North Korean studies in South Korea, says that the DPRK leadership, appealing to the emotions of a "systematically infantilized" population, exploits a fountainhead of xenophobia to rally its masses around the leader. Myers says the message is: "Foreigners bad, Koreans good, Leader best." Koreans have been brainwashed to feel unrestrained compassion, even pity, for the Leader's burden.

North Korea's behavior is of particular interest to Israel. Pyongyang has proliferated nuclear knowhow to Iran, Syria and Pakistan. Iranian experts attend all major North Korean launchings, and there is cross-pollination of Iranian money and DPRK technology.

NORTH KOREA is a unique case. But beyond Korea's benighted borders, the overarching lesson to Western leaders is: Don't threaten what you can't deliver.

This is because despotic regimes like North Korea - but also Iran and Hamas in Gaza - use Western failure to follow through to bolster their position. More than that: North Korea, Iran and Hamas relish crises because they invariably demonstrate (a) that their people are under siege by pitiless foreigners; and (b) that only their leadership and the people's willingness to sacrifice can ultimately protect them from the alien threat.

Another lesson from B.R. Myers: Do not presume to put yourself in the shoes of the leaders of alien societies. The rational-decision-making model has its limitations when dealing with tyrannical, dogmatic and ideologically mobilized polities. For example, preventing the suffering of ordinary people is, for these polities, largely irrelevant. They focus not on the punishments (airstrikes, sanctions, etc.) they have endured, but on the punishments they have withstood and, especially, on the bad behavior (terrorism, kidnapping) their respective regimes have gotten away with.

The people of North Korea, Gaza and, arguably, Iran, know they would be economically better off if their leaders played by civilized rules. And yet there is every reason to believe - certainly in the case of Gaza and North Korea - that given a genuinely free choice, the masses would still opt for the current leadership.

The lesson, therefore, is: North Korea, Hamas and Iran cannot exchange their belligerency for normalcy. Why? Because, paradoxically, they derive their legitimacy from a constant state of confrontation and threat.