Observing Egypt's current upheaval, reporter Ariel Kahane writing in the Hebrew daily Mekor Rishon opines: "Regardless of whether Mubarak falls or survives, whether the Islamists or the liberals take power, whether the riots die out or continue to rage, the lesson for Israel is clear: Arab regimes cannot be trusted." Kahane concludes that it is futile to pursue a modus vivendi with the Arabs based on Israeli territorial withdrawals.
Is he right? Should the peace treaty between Israel and Egypt, signed in Washington by Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat on March 26, 1979 -- sixteen months after Sadat's extraordinary visit to Jerusalem -- be construed as a mistake?
On the eve of its signing, only two members of Begin's Likud-led cabinet, Haim Landau (1916-1981), an underground comrade of the premier's, and Ariel Sharon opposed the treaty. In a subsequent Knesset vote, Speaker Yitzhak Shamir, another Likud stalwart, abstained. These hard-liners would have preferred "peace for peace" and worried – it turns out presciently – that trading land would set a precedent in regards to the strategic Jewish heartland of Judea and Samaria (the West Bank).
In any event, their objections seemed besides the point as Israel's border with Egypt was opened, direct air-links between Tel Aviv and Cairo established and Begin left to tour the pyramids. Still, in October 1979 dissident members of his Likud, Geʾula Cohen and Moshe Shamir broke away to establish the Techiya or Renaissance party.
These secular hawks, bolstered by the theoretician Shmuel Katz (1914-2008), who in 1978 had quit the cabinet largely over Begin's peace policies, championed the Land of Israel ideology of Gush Emunim, the mostly Orthodox-led West Bank settlement movement. Techiya won three seats in the July 1981 elections and in 1982 vociferously opposed turning over the northern Sinai settlement of Yamit to Egyptian sovereignty. The party briefly realigned with Likud, went on to win five seats in the 1984 elections, before being supplanted in 1992 by a like-minded secular party, Tzomet.
As the fate of Hosni Mubarak's regime hung in the balance, came the news that Herb Zweibon, age 84, Katz's leading American disciple who had led opposition to the Egypt-Israel treaty in the US had died. Now, the old arguments raised by the Katz-Zweibon-Techiya camp against trading land for peace seem to have gained added resonance.
In truth, Israeli officials had few illusions about the nature of peace with Egypt, especially after Sadat's assassination and Mubarak's ascendency. He in effect gave Israel an ultimatum: Make "peace" on Palestinian terms or live with an Egyptian cold peace. Though wary of Egypt's profligate military build-up (fueled partly by U.S. aid), war games that could only have been intended against Israel, Mubarak’s debilitating intrigues against Israel at the United Nations, his duplicitous campaigning against Israel’s nuclear capacity, and his unwillingness or inability to stop the arms smuggling into Hamas-ruled Gaza, Israeli policymakers nevertheless preferred the cold peace to capitulation on the Palestinian front.
No wonder. For the past 30 years Egypt had been neutralized as a confrontation state. While Israel defended itself against two violent Palestinian uprisings, two Lebanon wars, against Hamas's aggression from Gaza and Iran's drive for the atomic bomb, Jerusalem did not have to divert resources to the southern front. To be sure there were also diplomatic and economic positives to the relationship, one being that fact that forty percent of the natural gas used by Israel is imported from Egypt.
Israelis are more anxious than most about Mubarak's fate. Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman has reportedly instructed the country's emissaries to make the case that while democratic change in Egypt is desirable violent revolutionary mayhem undermines the security of the region. Maintaining the peace – with all its flaws – between Israel and Egypt is Jerusalem's paramount goal. As President Shimon Peres forthrightly put it, having a fanatic Islamist regime in Egypt would not be better than the current lack of democracy.
In his previous incarnation, Peres had proclaimed a new Middle East modeled after Scandinavia. And Israeli doves, including late-in-life converts such as Ehud Olmert, not to mention an assortment of Palestinian leaders and European diplomats have preached that "peace brings security." Clearly, events in Egypt show this is not the case.
Providentially, Begin's treaty with Egypt was emphatically anchored in the strategic depth and demilitarization of the Sinai Peninsula, not in Egypt's hoped for durable good intentions. It was designed for the possibility "a new king would arise in Egypt who knew not Begin."
No matter who will rule Egypt – Mubarak until new elections, Omar Suleiman, Mohamed ElBarade or, perish the thought, the benighted Muslim Brotherhood, the treaty with Egypt was designed precisely for worst case scenarios.
So the lesson is not that Israeli leaders should abandon the possibility of reaching an accommodation with the Palestinians or Syrians. Instead, it is that the cornerstones of any deal needs to take into account the possibility that their successors might reject peace with Israel.
For now, Mahmoud Abbas's intransigence along with the fractious nature of Palestinian politics and Syria's Bashar Assad's fidelity to the Iranian-led axis mean that Israel has no genuine peace partner. Yet the Egypt-Israel treaty, providing demilitarization, strategic depth, and early warning plus verification procedures remains the template for future accords.
That Arab commitments to peace could be rickety was hardly lost on Begin. It has, however, been blatantly, serially, and irresponsibly disregarded by critics of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Bar-Ilan peace proposal which emphasized precisely the security parameters essential for peace. As a result, too little serious thinking has been devoted to the complex security arrangements Israel will need in the West Bank and on the Golan should genuine Arab peace partners emerge Sadat-like.
###
--Feb 1
Tuesday, February 01, 2011
Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty -- A Mistake?
I am an Israel briefer and analyst, a political scientist, and a speaker on Jewish civilization. I'm also a rewrite guy & fact-checker, who can make your writing clear and compelling & help you contextualize.
Monday, January 31, 2011
IN MEMORY OF HERBERT ZWEIBON
A true freedom fighter for Israel.
We did not always agree, yet I never questioned his sincerity, commitment and loyalty to Eretz Israel.
May his memory be for a blessing.
See:
http://shmuelkatz.com/wordpress/?p=558#comment-4701
http://www.afsi.org/index.shtml
We did not always agree, yet I never questioned his sincerity, commitment and loyalty to Eretz Israel.
May his memory be for a blessing.
See:
http://shmuelkatz.com/wordpress/?p=558#comment-4701
http://www.afsi.org/index.shtml
I am an Israel briefer and analyst, a political scientist, and a speaker on Jewish civilization. I'm also a rewrite guy & fact-checker, who can make your writing clear and compelling & help you contextualize.
Thursday, January 27, 2011
My Two cents on PaliLeak
1. The theoretical concessions made – and none are real since the deal was/is that "nothing is agreed until everything is agreed" – by the Palestinians led by Mahmoud Abbas, fall far short of any deal acceptable to the Israeli mainstream.
Yet the liberal media paints any semblance of negotiating reasonableness as if Abbas gave away the store.
2. Though Israelis tended to yawn at Palestinian/Al-Jazeera/Guardian intrigues and dissimulations, what fascinates nonetheless is that positions Israelis assumed had been agreed to, namely strategic settlements blocs including Ma'ale Adummim have not been agreed to at all.
Wonder why it took PaliLeaks for us to know this…
3. Key for me is what happened afterwards.
Abu Mazen denied making any concessions. He simply lied to his people – again. He led them in chants about shaids and Jerusalem outside his Ramallah palace.
So long as "moderate" Pal leaders don't prepare their people for the idea that painful concessions will be needed on both sides – negotiations remain a farce and there is no Palestinian partner.
Have a look at this summary:
http://us.mg6.mail.yahoo.com/dc/launch?.gx=1&.rand=4tbv5fuhh1itg
Yet the liberal media paints any semblance of negotiating reasonableness as if Abbas gave away the store.
2. Though Israelis tended to yawn at Palestinian/Al-Jazeera/Guardian intrigues and dissimulations, what fascinates nonetheless is that positions Israelis assumed had been agreed to, namely strategic settlements blocs including Ma'ale Adummim have not been agreed to at all.
Wonder why it took PaliLeaks for us to know this…
3. Key for me is what happened afterwards.
Abu Mazen denied making any concessions. He simply lied to his people – again. He led them in chants about shaids and Jerusalem outside his Ramallah palace.
So long as "moderate" Pal leaders don't prepare their people for the idea that painful concessions will be needed on both sides – negotiations remain a farce and there is no Palestinian partner.
Have a look at this summary:
http://us.mg6.mail.yahoo.com/dc/launch?.gx=1&.rand=4tbv5fuhh1itg
I am an Israel briefer and analyst, a political scientist, and a speaker on Jewish civilization. I'm also a rewrite guy & fact-checker, who can make your writing clear and compelling & help you contextualize.
Drama in the Maghreb
On Jan. 14 the panicked strongman of Tunisia, Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali, fled to Saudi Arabia after the astonishingly spontaneous Facebook-driven crumbling of his corrupt regime. History will record that the incredible impetus was the December 17 self-immolation of Mohamed Bouazizi, a harassed and despondent 26-year-old fruit vendor, in the rough interior of the country.
With copycat suicides in Cairo and Algiers, and protests taking place in Jordan and Morocco, the Palestinian Authority barred West Bankers from rallying in support of the overthrow. Ayman Nour, the reformist Egyptian opposition politician, wondered aloud whether Egypt might follow the Tunisian model. And Arab League chief Amr Musa frankly acknowledged that events in Tunisia had exposed “the Arab soul" as broken by poverty, unemployment and frustration.
Though the situation remains volatile and unpredictable, Tunisians and foreigners alike have been contemplating whether the upheaval might possibly herald a Jasmine Revolution and the emergence of genuine democracy – not one man, one vote, one time – but a kind of political institution building that would ensure pluralism, civil liberties and tolerance.
Popular will among the Arab masses has found occasional, albeit, reactionary expression: Hamas's lopsided victory in the 2006 Palestinian elections; Hezbollah's capture of 88 percent of the Shi'ite vote in 2009 Lebanese balloting.
Could events in Tunisia lead to a genuinely democratic outcome that might have a domino effect on the rest of the Arab world?
Caution is in order.
For one, there is no coherent opposition much less one led by democrats in Tunisia. For another, it is still too soon to know what role, if any, Islamists will play. For now Muslim extremists are not in the vanguard of the struggle. Those who have come out into the sunshine after decades of government persecution claim feebly to stand for a distinctively moderate strain of Islamism not opposed to modernity.
We will all be wiser after Rachid El Gannushi, the 70 year-old Muslim Brotherhood chief returns to Tunis from his London exile and the extent of his group's malevolent influence can be gauged. Gannushi, with ties to Iran, is violently opposed to Israel's existence.
Each Arab country has its own unique circumstances and it's a mistake to treat them as one undifferentiated mass. Prof. Michael Laskier, a North Africa specialist at Bar-Ilan University, insists that nothing in the DNA of the Arab polity prevents democracy from eventually breaking out and that global democratic influences are filtering in. Preferring evolutionary change to revolutionary upheaval, Laskier argued that events in Tunisia send a warning signal to Iran and Syria "that they could be next in line." On the other hand, radical change in Egypt and Jordan could bring Islamist regimes to power.
So far, no Arab land has shown itself to be fertile ground for Western-style democracy. Perhaps that's because traditionalist Arab society has placed the interests of the individual lower than those of the family, clan and sect. Men and women are not free to choose who they may marry much less who will lead them, veteran journalist Danny Rubinstein has pointed out. Moreover, in so much of the Arab world, voices calling for democratic reform and groups championing civil society are weak. Autocratic leaders have snuffed out freedom-minded dissent perhaps even more aggressively than challenges from the Islamists.
Even so, could Tunisia, relatively well-off and demographically cohesive with its educated elites be the democratic exception to the Arab rule? Could it switch from the "not free" to "free" camp? True the country's interior is depressed and religiously devout, but the coast has experienced sustained economic growth and is cosmopolitan. Consummate foreign correspondent Robert D. Kaplan has emphasized that Tunisia has a history of prosperity and stability, a post-colonial political culture of secularism and a legacy of political moderation shaped by its founder Habib Bourguiba. Kaplan paradoxically ascribes Tunisia's current troubles to the flip side of its comparative achievements – the failure to meet rising expectations among its population (whose median age is 29). Still, Kaplan concludes that, "Despite all these advantages of history, prosperity and stability, Tunisia’s path forward is treacherous."
The Tunisian revolution – if it is that – could yet be hijacked by old guard politicians, returning Islamists or fizzle out as army generals seek to restore order. Iran and Libya, which have previously sought to shape events in Tunisia, could exploit the turmoil.
Watching from afar, Israelis cannot easily allow themselves to indulge in wishful thinking. They may nostalgically recall that Bourguiba was among those who early on favored Arab-Israel peace – though he also provided sanctuary to Yasser Arafat after his 1982 ouster from Lebanon – and that Bourguiba allowed his country's 100,000 Jews to leave for France and Israel (perhaps 1,200 remain). Under Ben Ali, Israelis have been able to travel to Tunisia on their Israeli passports. So no nation would be happier to see Arab democracy take root in moderate Tunisia and for it to serve as a beacon for the entire region.
-- Jan 25, 2011
With copycat suicides in Cairo and Algiers, and protests taking place in Jordan and Morocco, the Palestinian Authority barred West Bankers from rallying in support of the overthrow. Ayman Nour, the reformist Egyptian opposition politician, wondered aloud whether Egypt might follow the Tunisian model. And Arab League chief Amr Musa frankly acknowledged that events in Tunisia had exposed “the Arab soul" as broken by poverty, unemployment and frustration.
Though the situation remains volatile and unpredictable, Tunisians and foreigners alike have been contemplating whether the upheaval might possibly herald a Jasmine Revolution and the emergence of genuine democracy – not one man, one vote, one time – but a kind of political institution building that would ensure pluralism, civil liberties and tolerance.
Popular will among the Arab masses has found occasional, albeit, reactionary expression: Hamas's lopsided victory in the 2006 Palestinian elections; Hezbollah's capture of 88 percent of the Shi'ite vote in 2009 Lebanese balloting.
Could events in Tunisia lead to a genuinely democratic outcome that might have a domino effect on the rest of the Arab world?
Caution is in order.
For one, there is no coherent opposition much less one led by democrats in Tunisia. For another, it is still too soon to know what role, if any, Islamists will play. For now Muslim extremists are not in the vanguard of the struggle. Those who have come out into the sunshine after decades of government persecution claim feebly to stand for a distinctively moderate strain of Islamism not opposed to modernity.
We will all be wiser after Rachid El Gannushi, the 70 year-old Muslim Brotherhood chief returns to Tunis from his London exile and the extent of his group's malevolent influence can be gauged. Gannushi, with ties to Iran, is violently opposed to Israel's existence.
Each Arab country has its own unique circumstances and it's a mistake to treat them as one undifferentiated mass. Prof. Michael Laskier, a North Africa specialist at Bar-Ilan University, insists that nothing in the DNA of the Arab polity prevents democracy from eventually breaking out and that global democratic influences are filtering in. Preferring evolutionary change to revolutionary upheaval, Laskier argued that events in Tunisia send a warning signal to Iran and Syria "that they could be next in line." On the other hand, radical change in Egypt and Jordan could bring Islamist regimes to power.
So far, no Arab land has shown itself to be fertile ground for Western-style democracy. Perhaps that's because traditionalist Arab society has placed the interests of the individual lower than those of the family, clan and sect. Men and women are not free to choose who they may marry much less who will lead them, veteran journalist Danny Rubinstein has pointed out. Moreover, in so much of the Arab world, voices calling for democratic reform and groups championing civil society are weak. Autocratic leaders have snuffed out freedom-minded dissent perhaps even more aggressively than challenges from the Islamists.
Even so, could Tunisia, relatively well-off and demographically cohesive with its educated elites be the democratic exception to the Arab rule? Could it switch from the "not free" to "free" camp? True the country's interior is depressed and religiously devout, but the coast has experienced sustained economic growth and is cosmopolitan. Consummate foreign correspondent Robert D. Kaplan has emphasized that Tunisia has a history of prosperity and stability, a post-colonial political culture of secularism and a legacy of political moderation shaped by its founder Habib Bourguiba. Kaplan paradoxically ascribes Tunisia's current troubles to the flip side of its comparative achievements – the failure to meet rising expectations among its population (whose median age is 29). Still, Kaplan concludes that, "Despite all these advantages of history, prosperity and stability, Tunisia’s path forward is treacherous."
The Tunisian revolution – if it is that – could yet be hijacked by old guard politicians, returning Islamists or fizzle out as army generals seek to restore order. Iran and Libya, which have previously sought to shape events in Tunisia, could exploit the turmoil.
Watching from afar, Israelis cannot easily allow themselves to indulge in wishful thinking. They may nostalgically recall that Bourguiba was among those who early on favored Arab-Israel peace – though he also provided sanctuary to Yasser Arafat after his 1982 ouster from Lebanon – and that Bourguiba allowed his country's 100,000 Jews to leave for France and Israel (perhaps 1,200 remain). Under Ben Ali, Israelis have been able to travel to Tunisia on their Israeli passports. So no nation would be happier to see Arab democracy take root in moderate Tunisia and for it to serve as a beacon for the entire region.
-- Jan 25, 2011
I am an Israel briefer and analyst, a political scientist, and a speaker on Jewish civilization. I'm also a rewrite guy & fact-checker, who can make your writing clear and compelling & help you contextualize.
No Sulha for Hamas and Fatah
The singular inconvenient truth that advocates of unilateral Palestinian statehood and an imposed solution to the Arab-Israel conflict labor intensively to play down is the spoiler role of Hamas and the crippling divisions within the Palestinian polity.
To focus attention elsewhere they industriously campaign to delegitimize Israel's
presence beyond the 1949 Armistice Lines and to "expose" the so-called Judaization of Jerusalem. Indeed, practically any Israeli measure from the mundane to the imprudent is skewered as heralding the death knell of the two-state solution – anything to deflect attention from Fatah's mulish refusal to negotiate with the Israeli government and Hamas's chronic rejectionism.
The Westerners and Israeli leftists who unfairly place the onus for the diplomatic deadlock entirely on the Jewish state, refusing to call on Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority to meet Israel half-way, have no sympathy for Hamas.
Yet by removing Fatah's incentive for indispensable compromises on boundaries, security, indeed the very nature of what peace should mean has meant that the Palestinian polity can avoid the tough choice: either the path of Hamas, or ending the conflict once and for all. With this left up in the air, the Fatah-Hamas rivalry continues to fester as both movements compete for the allegiance of the fickle Palestinian street, Arab and international legitimacy, and over which "resistance" movement is top dog.
Perhaps this is a good time to remind ourselves about what divides Fatah and Hamas. Hamas is an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood and came into its own in 1987. It considers Palestine a Muslim trust and sees Islam as engaged in a zero-sum religious war with the Jews. Fatah was founded in the 1950s – when the Arabs controlled the West Bank, Gaza and east Jerusalem – with the straightforward nonsectarian goal of destroying Israel via "armed struggle." Under the mercurial Yasser Arafat, Fatah came to dominate Palestinian politics. In 1993, abandoning the immediate full liberation of Palestine for a nebulous alternative strategy, Arafat signed the Oslo Accords.
Hamas viewed Arafat's prevarications on Israel, his rumored personal decadence and the Palestinian Authority's endemic corruption with contempt.
Hamas overwhelmingly defeated Fatah in the Palestinian Authority elections held in January 2006. A Saudi-engineered unity government crashed and burned when Hamas expelled Fatah from Gaza in June 2007. Since then Fatah has continued to arrest Hamas men in the West Bank while Hamas persecuted Fatah followers in Gaza. Efforts at a sulha or reconciliation of the two camps have failed.
Fatah is hardly secular in the Western sense yet neither does it want Islam enveloping all of public and private life as demanded by the Islamists. The two camps also have opposing patrons with Fatah relying on the ostensible moderate Arab states and Hamas getting its main backing from Persian Iran. Moreover, both camps suffer from internal schisms. Cleavages within Fatah are many including along generational lines. Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas expelled his former Gaza strongman Mohamed Dahlan from the West Bank fearing a putsch. For its part, Hamas inside Gaza is at odds with the Damascus-based leadership. Even within the Strip, "Prime Minister" Ismail Haniyeh holds little sway over Izzad-Din al-Qassam gunmen.
Episodically, come signs of rapprochement between Fatah and Hamas. Intermediaries continue to work toward a meeting between senior figures in the opposing camps. Haniyeh and Hamas co-founder Mahmoud Zahar recently telephoned Abbas -- and a local Hamas delegation visited his Ramallah offices -- to offer condolences on the death of his older brother Ata in Damascus.
Responding to internal pressure from the popular Marwan Barghouti (incarcerated in an Israeli prison for murder) for a Fatah-Hamas reconciliation, and external demands from the Emir of Qatar (whose influential Al Jazeera's Arabic service leans toward Hamas over Fatah), Abbas recently ordered the release of several hunger striking Hamas prisoners from his "protective" custody. Among those set free was Wael al-Bitar involved in the killings of four Israelis. (He was swiftly taken into custody in Hebron by Israeli commandos.) Funnily enough, it is the IDF's presence in the West Bank that helps secure Abbas against the possibility of a Hamas-led overthrow.
Rank-and-file Palestinians know there can be no "Palestine" without reconciliation and hold both factions jointly responsible for the split. That the price of burying the hatchet would likely be an even more obdurate policy on Israel appears not to phase the Palestinian consciousness. In the meantime, Hamas and Fatah leaders pay lip-service to unity. But as Mkhaimar Abusada, a Gaza-based political scientist told the Christian Science Monitor, Hamas gunmen in the Strip remain unalterably opposed to reconciliation with Fatah even if the Damascus-based leadership is tempted to pursue the idea.
At stake is who will lead the Palestinian Arabs where and how. The betting is that the Hamas-Fatah divide will last a very long time. Meanwhile, apologists for the Palestinians will continue to cover-up one of the foremost obstacles to peace.
###
Jan 2011
To focus attention elsewhere they industriously campaign to delegitimize Israel's
presence beyond the 1949 Armistice Lines and to "expose" the so-called Judaization of Jerusalem. Indeed, practically any Israeli measure from the mundane to the imprudent is skewered as heralding the death knell of the two-state solution – anything to deflect attention from Fatah's mulish refusal to negotiate with the Israeli government and Hamas's chronic rejectionism.
The Westerners and Israeli leftists who unfairly place the onus for the diplomatic deadlock entirely on the Jewish state, refusing to call on Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority to meet Israel half-way, have no sympathy for Hamas.
Yet by removing Fatah's incentive for indispensable compromises on boundaries, security, indeed the very nature of what peace should mean has meant that the Palestinian polity can avoid the tough choice: either the path of Hamas, or ending the conflict once and for all. With this left up in the air, the Fatah-Hamas rivalry continues to fester as both movements compete for the allegiance of the fickle Palestinian street, Arab and international legitimacy, and over which "resistance" movement is top dog.
Perhaps this is a good time to remind ourselves about what divides Fatah and Hamas. Hamas is an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood and came into its own in 1987. It considers Palestine a Muslim trust and sees Islam as engaged in a zero-sum religious war with the Jews. Fatah was founded in the 1950s – when the Arabs controlled the West Bank, Gaza and east Jerusalem – with the straightforward nonsectarian goal of destroying Israel via "armed struggle." Under the mercurial Yasser Arafat, Fatah came to dominate Palestinian politics. In 1993, abandoning the immediate full liberation of Palestine for a nebulous alternative strategy, Arafat signed the Oslo Accords.
Hamas viewed Arafat's prevarications on Israel, his rumored personal decadence and the Palestinian Authority's endemic corruption with contempt.
Hamas overwhelmingly defeated Fatah in the Palestinian Authority elections held in January 2006. A Saudi-engineered unity government crashed and burned when Hamas expelled Fatah from Gaza in June 2007. Since then Fatah has continued to arrest Hamas men in the West Bank while Hamas persecuted Fatah followers in Gaza. Efforts at a sulha or reconciliation of the two camps have failed.
Fatah is hardly secular in the Western sense yet neither does it want Islam enveloping all of public and private life as demanded by the Islamists. The two camps also have opposing patrons with Fatah relying on the ostensible moderate Arab states and Hamas getting its main backing from Persian Iran. Moreover, both camps suffer from internal schisms. Cleavages within Fatah are many including along generational lines. Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas expelled his former Gaza strongman Mohamed Dahlan from the West Bank fearing a putsch. For its part, Hamas inside Gaza is at odds with the Damascus-based leadership. Even within the Strip, "Prime Minister" Ismail Haniyeh holds little sway over Izzad-Din al-Qassam gunmen.
Episodically, come signs of rapprochement between Fatah and Hamas. Intermediaries continue to work toward a meeting between senior figures in the opposing camps. Haniyeh and Hamas co-founder Mahmoud Zahar recently telephoned Abbas -- and a local Hamas delegation visited his Ramallah offices -- to offer condolences on the death of his older brother Ata in Damascus.
Responding to internal pressure from the popular Marwan Barghouti (incarcerated in an Israeli prison for murder) for a Fatah-Hamas reconciliation, and external demands from the Emir of Qatar (whose influential Al Jazeera's Arabic service leans toward Hamas over Fatah), Abbas recently ordered the release of several hunger striking Hamas prisoners from his "protective" custody. Among those set free was Wael al-Bitar involved in the killings of four Israelis. (He was swiftly taken into custody in Hebron by Israeli commandos.) Funnily enough, it is the IDF's presence in the West Bank that helps secure Abbas against the possibility of a Hamas-led overthrow.
Rank-and-file Palestinians know there can be no "Palestine" without reconciliation and hold both factions jointly responsible for the split. That the price of burying the hatchet would likely be an even more obdurate policy on Israel appears not to phase the Palestinian consciousness. In the meantime, Hamas and Fatah leaders pay lip-service to unity. But as Mkhaimar Abusada, a Gaza-based political scientist told the Christian Science Monitor, Hamas gunmen in the Strip remain unalterably opposed to reconciliation with Fatah even if the Damascus-based leadership is tempted to pursue the idea.
At stake is who will lead the Palestinian Arabs where and how. The betting is that the Hamas-Fatah divide will last a very long time. Meanwhile, apologists for the Palestinians will continue to cover-up one of the foremost obstacles to peace.
###
Jan 2011
I am an Israel briefer and analyst, a political scientist, and a speaker on Jewish civilization. I'm also a rewrite guy & fact-checker, who can make your writing clear and compelling & help you contextualize.
Sunday, January 09, 2011
Survey of the Hebrew Press in Israel
If as Walter Lippmann wrote the newspaper is the bible of democracy, what are we to make of Israel's Hebrew-language dailies? For a start, they have little in common with American broadsheets or tabloids and are more in the British mold in that the demarcation between news and views is difficult to discern. Also, Israeli papers are less driven by a coherent set of views about politics then by the personal pique of their owners and brutal competition for circulation.
The paper with the most readers (35.2 percent) is the centrist Zionist Israel HaYom which burst on the scene in 2007 backed by Las Vegas businessman Sheldon Adelson. Copies are distributed free by legions of red jumpsuit-clad newsboys; a digital version is available gratis to email subscribers. Politically, the paper has been criticized for the broad support it gives to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. It neither opposed his original 10-month moratorium on West Bank settlement construction nor broke with him to support its extension. And its star columnist Dan Margalit atypically puts the onus for the stalled peace process on Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas.
Yediot, dislodged from the top spot by Israel HaYom, now has a 34.9% share of circulation. Owner Arnon Mozes is very much involved in running the paper. To recapture the number one spot, Yediot has been discounting its cover price and distributing some editions free. While ideologically erratic, the paper is sharply, consistently and relentlessly critical of Netanyahu. The team of diplomatic correspondent Shimon Shiffer and Nahum Barnea, doyen of Israel's print punditocracy, do not disguise their loathing of Netanyahu purportedly for missing what they see as a window of opportunity to make peace with the Palestinians and Syria.
Number three in circulation is Ma'ariv whose owners, the Nimrodi family, were forced to cede operating control to businessman Zachi Rachiv as the paper struggles to climb from its 12.5% market share. Rachiv wants to deemphasize the print edition to build-up a digital readership. Ma'ariv also began distributing free or heavily discounted copies to chip away at Israel Ha Yom's lead. Its star columnist Ben Caspit despises Netanyahu no less than his colleagues at Yediot, portraying a mendacious premier prepared to reject sensible Palestinian overtures that could end the 100-year conflict out of crass political motives. Nevertheless, some media watchers discern
Ma'ariv shifting toward the political center. They cite the arrival of columnist Ben-Dror Yemini who has attracted a following by campaigning against the left's domination of Israeli academia even as he lambastes urban settlers for implanting themselves in heavily Palestinian neighborhoods in east Jerusalem.
Haaretz comes next with its 6.4% circulation share and a hugely disproportionate level of influence owning to its elite readership, the breadth of its coverage, and the inclusion of translated content from world-class foreign newspapers. Owned by the Schocken family and propped up by the German publisher M. DuMont Schauberg, critics see Haaretz as often crossing the line between unthinking criticism of Israeli policies to outright promulgation of the post-Zionist agenda. (The paper also publishes a 12-page daily English edition, mostly translated from the Hebrew, in collaboration with the global edition of The New York Times.)
Add to this mix Mekor Rishon whose original incarnation was the brainchild of Amnon Lord, a secular left-winger mugged by Oslo who targeted an expansive right-wing readership. In 2003, the paper was reconstituted under the ownership of Shlomo Ben-Tzvi, formerly a London businessman, who integrated it with the waning Orthodox Zionist HaZofeh and oriented the new product on a more hard-line religious and political path. The free weekday emailed digital edition and the Friday hardcopy paper have garnered a loyal constituency.
Any survey of the Hebrew press would be incomplete without reference to the ultra-Orthodox Hamodia (mouthpiece of the hassidic-oriented Agudat Israel party) and its competition the even more puritanical Yated Neeman, voice of "Lithuanian" ultra-Orthodoxy, and organ of the Degel Hatorah party. Neither paper has a Zionist orientation though Hamodia is more sympathetic. Sephardi ultra-Orthodox readers are served by the Shas party daily Yom L'Yom. A feature of all three papers is their policy of not covering stories at variance with "Torah values." Hence there has been no reportage in the haredi press of former president Moshe Katsav's trial and conviction of rape.
As a "bible of democracy" – and unique in the Middle East – Israeli newspapers emphatically offer a cacophony of uncensored views and news all competing to set the political agenda. As for probity, objectivity and placing the collective good over narrow interests – that is entirely another matter.
###
The paper with the most readers (35.2 percent) is the centrist Zionist Israel HaYom which burst on the scene in 2007 backed by Las Vegas businessman Sheldon Adelson. Copies are distributed free by legions of red jumpsuit-clad newsboys; a digital version is available gratis to email subscribers. Politically, the paper has been criticized for the broad support it gives to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. It neither opposed his original 10-month moratorium on West Bank settlement construction nor broke with him to support its extension. And its star columnist Dan Margalit atypically puts the onus for the stalled peace process on Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas.
Yediot, dislodged from the top spot by Israel HaYom, now has a 34.9% share of circulation. Owner Arnon Mozes is very much involved in running the paper. To recapture the number one spot, Yediot has been discounting its cover price and distributing some editions free. While ideologically erratic, the paper is sharply, consistently and relentlessly critical of Netanyahu. The team of diplomatic correspondent Shimon Shiffer and Nahum Barnea, doyen of Israel's print punditocracy, do not disguise their loathing of Netanyahu purportedly for missing what they see as a window of opportunity to make peace with the Palestinians and Syria.
Number three in circulation is Ma'ariv whose owners, the Nimrodi family, were forced to cede operating control to businessman Zachi Rachiv as the paper struggles to climb from its 12.5% market share. Rachiv wants to deemphasize the print edition to build-up a digital readership. Ma'ariv also began distributing free or heavily discounted copies to chip away at Israel Ha Yom's lead. Its star columnist Ben Caspit despises Netanyahu no less than his colleagues at Yediot, portraying a mendacious premier prepared to reject sensible Palestinian overtures that could end the 100-year conflict out of crass political motives. Nevertheless, some media watchers discern
Ma'ariv shifting toward the political center. They cite the arrival of columnist Ben-Dror Yemini who has attracted a following by campaigning against the left's domination of Israeli academia even as he lambastes urban settlers for implanting themselves in heavily Palestinian neighborhoods in east Jerusalem.
Haaretz comes next with its 6.4% circulation share and a hugely disproportionate level of influence owning to its elite readership, the breadth of its coverage, and the inclusion of translated content from world-class foreign newspapers. Owned by the Schocken family and propped up by the German publisher M. DuMont Schauberg, critics see Haaretz as often crossing the line between unthinking criticism of Israeli policies to outright promulgation of the post-Zionist agenda. (The paper also publishes a 12-page daily English edition, mostly translated from the Hebrew, in collaboration with the global edition of The New York Times.)
Add to this mix Mekor Rishon whose original incarnation was the brainchild of Amnon Lord, a secular left-winger mugged by Oslo who targeted an expansive right-wing readership. In 2003, the paper was reconstituted under the ownership of Shlomo Ben-Tzvi, formerly a London businessman, who integrated it with the waning Orthodox Zionist HaZofeh and oriented the new product on a more hard-line religious and political path. The free weekday emailed digital edition and the Friday hardcopy paper have garnered a loyal constituency.
Any survey of the Hebrew press would be incomplete without reference to the ultra-Orthodox Hamodia (mouthpiece of the hassidic-oriented Agudat Israel party) and its competition the even more puritanical Yated Neeman, voice of "Lithuanian" ultra-Orthodoxy, and organ of the Degel Hatorah party. Neither paper has a Zionist orientation though Hamodia is more sympathetic. Sephardi ultra-Orthodox readers are served by the Shas party daily Yom L'Yom. A feature of all three papers is their policy of not covering stories at variance with "Torah values." Hence there has been no reportage in the haredi press of former president Moshe Katsav's trial and conviction of rape.
As a "bible of democracy" – and unique in the Middle East – Israeli newspapers emphatically offer a cacophony of uncensored views and news all competing to set the political agenda. As for probity, objectivity and placing the collective good over narrow interests – that is entirely another matter.
###
I am an Israel briefer and analyst, a political scientist, and a speaker on Jewish civilization. I'm also a rewrite guy & fact-checker, who can make your writing clear and compelling & help you contextualize.
There goes 'The Economist' Again
The headline beseeches: "Please, Not Again: The Threat of War in the Middle East." The magazine's cover shows a worried looking President Barack Obama, an Israeli tank rumbling by in the background. Welcome to the Economist's first issue of 2011 devoted to Israel and to America's role in the Mideast. Its theme, in effect, is how to rein-in the Jewish state and preserve the peace.
Published in London, the Economist is hardly the only international newspaper – it resents being called a magazine – to heap lopsided responsibility on Israel for the perpetuation of the conflict. However, unlike moribund Time and Newsweek, the stylishly written and often droll Economist (worldwide circulation 1.6 million including over 800,000 in the U.S.) is must reading in government and academia. Owned partly by the parent company of the Financial Times – itself a bastion of British animus toward Zionism – and by among others, reportedly, some members of the British Rothschild's (who in the main are no longer Jewish), the Economist loses its facade of cool detachment when it comes to Israel.
In The Economist's view Israel suffers from a siege mentality, perpetually, lethally and disproportionately bungling even theoretically legitimate security threats, obdurately "colonizing" the "Palestinian side of the 1967 border," even going to the extreme of setting traffic lights to flick green only briefly to vex harassed Jerusalem's Arabs.
In its January 1 issue, the Economist says it fears war could break out this year over Iran's "apparent" desire to build atomic bombs, the arms race "between" Israel and Hezbollah or over "miscalculations" on the Gaza border. Its non sequitur solution to these disquieting possibilities would have Obama exert "tough love" on Israel by imposing a solution on the "feuding parties." The newspaper reasons that with a Fatah-led Palestine fashioned in the West Bank, Iran, Hizbollah and Hamas (in Gaza) will all find it "much harder" to attack Israel.
The fatal flaw with the Economist's argument is that the last time Fatah so much as feigned at peacemaking, at the start of the Oslo process, Hamas reacted violently by carrying out some twenty fatal terror attacks on Israelis between the September 1993 White House signing ceremony and mid-February 1994. Similarly, Hezbollah's aggression doubled in Oslo's wake. The implication is clear: Unless the international community first tackles the rejectionists, moderates will be afraid to make the compromises necessary for peace. Right now Mahmoud Abbas has latched onto any pretext not to negotiate with Benjamin Netanyahu's government. First he claimed settlement construction was suddenly keeping him from the bargaining table; though he did not deign to acknowledge Israel's ten-month moratorium until it was almost over. Next he insisted that Netanyahu stand behind a peace plan put forth by former premier Ehud Olmert, despite the fact that Abbas had walked away from this very offer. But it's no wonder relative moderates like Abbas are afraid to take risks for peace. Iran may soon provide the rejectionists with a nuclear umbrella; coddled by the international community, Hamas is solidifying its fanatical grip on Gaza, and with Syria's support Hezbollah has for all intents and purposes usurped Lebanese sovereignty. In this political ambiance Abbas would be pilloried by the rejectionists if he to negotiate in earnest with Netanyahu.
Economist editorials and features are customarily unsigned though the newspaper's Israel correspondent, former Haaretz editor David Landau, would likely have contributed to the latest barrage. Landau is on record as imagining that Israel "wants to be raped" by the U.S." and is begging for "more vigorous U.S. intervention." This week's feature has an unappreciative Israel pocketing billions in American aid even as it rebuffs pleas "backed by offers of yet more aid" to "pause in its building of illegal Jewish settlements." The reasons given for this supposed obstinacy are Israel's "thriving economy" and "America's pro-Israel lobby." The possibility that disputed territory deeply rooted in Jewish civilization, captured in a war of self-defense, and of immense strategic value to Israel's survival ought to be the subject of direct negotiations between the parties is, plainly, anathema at the Economist.
Instead, surveying the region from Afghanistan to Iran to Iraq, the "biggest headache" Economist editors put their finger on is not the metastasizing evil that inspired, in the latest incarnation, the bombing of a New Year's Eve Mass at a Coptic Christian church in Egypt, but "Jewish colonization in the West Bank." The Economist prefers to uncritically echo Muslim and Arab "objections" to America's presence in the Middle East and its support for Israel. One implication being: if only the Jewish state would just go away. In truth, Israel or no Israel, jihad is the pathological reaction of a dysfunctional civilization unable to cope with the demands of tolerance and pluralism emblematic of modernity.
###
Jan 2011
Published in London, the Economist is hardly the only international newspaper – it resents being called a magazine – to heap lopsided responsibility on Israel for the perpetuation of the conflict. However, unlike moribund Time and Newsweek, the stylishly written and often droll Economist (worldwide circulation 1.6 million including over 800,000 in the U.S.) is must reading in government and academia. Owned partly by the parent company of the Financial Times – itself a bastion of British animus toward Zionism – and by among others, reportedly, some members of the British Rothschild's (who in the main are no longer Jewish), the Economist loses its facade of cool detachment when it comes to Israel.
In The Economist's view Israel suffers from a siege mentality, perpetually, lethally and disproportionately bungling even theoretically legitimate security threats, obdurately "colonizing" the "Palestinian side of the 1967 border," even going to the extreme of setting traffic lights to flick green only briefly to vex harassed Jerusalem's Arabs.
In its January 1 issue, the Economist says it fears war could break out this year over Iran's "apparent" desire to build atomic bombs, the arms race "between" Israel and Hezbollah or over "miscalculations" on the Gaza border. Its non sequitur solution to these disquieting possibilities would have Obama exert "tough love" on Israel by imposing a solution on the "feuding parties." The newspaper reasons that with a Fatah-led Palestine fashioned in the West Bank, Iran, Hizbollah and Hamas (in Gaza) will all find it "much harder" to attack Israel.
The fatal flaw with the Economist's argument is that the last time Fatah so much as feigned at peacemaking, at the start of the Oslo process, Hamas reacted violently by carrying out some twenty fatal terror attacks on Israelis between the September 1993 White House signing ceremony and mid-February 1994. Similarly, Hezbollah's aggression doubled in Oslo's wake. The implication is clear: Unless the international community first tackles the rejectionists, moderates will be afraid to make the compromises necessary for peace. Right now Mahmoud Abbas has latched onto any pretext not to negotiate with Benjamin Netanyahu's government. First he claimed settlement construction was suddenly keeping him from the bargaining table; though he did not deign to acknowledge Israel's ten-month moratorium until it was almost over. Next he insisted that Netanyahu stand behind a peace plan put forth by former premier Ehud Olmert, despite the fact that Abbas had walked away from this very offer. But it's no wonder relative moderates like Abbas are afraid to take risks for peace. Iran may soon provide the rejectionists with a nuclear umbrella; coddled by the international community, Hamas is solidifying its fanatical grip on Gaza, and with Syria's support Hezbollah has for all intents and purposes usurped Lebanese sovereignty. In this political ambiance Abbas would be pilloried by the rejectionists if he to negotiate in earnest with Netanyahu.
Economist editorials and features are customarily unsigned though the newspaper's Israel correspondent, former Haaretz editor David Landau, would likely have contributed to the latest barrage. Landau is on record as imagining that Israel "wants to be raped" by the U.S." and is begging for "more vigorous U.S. intervention." This week's feature has an unappreciative Israel pocketing billions in American aid even as it rebuffs pleas "backed by offers of yet more aid" to "pause in its building of illegal Jewish settlements." The reasons given for this supposed obstinacy are Israel's "thriving economy" and "America's pro-Israel lobby." The possibility that disputed territory deeply rooted in Jewish civilization, captured in a war of self-defense, and of immense strategic value to Israel's survival ought to be the subject of direct negotiations between the parties is, plainly, anathema at the Economist.
Instead, surveying the region from Afghanistan to Iran to Iraq, the "biggest headache" Economist editors put their finger on is not the metastasizing evil that inspired, in the latest incarnation, the bombing of a New Year's Eve Mass at a Coptic Christian church in Egypt, but "Jewish colonization in the West Bank." The Economist prefers to uncritically echo Muslim and Arab "objections" to America's presence in the Middle East and its support for Israel. One implication being: if only the Jewish state would just go away. In truth, Israel or no Israel, jihad is the pathological reaction of a dysfunctional civilization unable to cope with the demands of tolerance and pluralism emblematic of modernity.
###
Jan 2011
I am an Israel briefer and analyst, a political scientist, and a speaker on Jewish civilization. I'm also a rewrite guy & fact-checker, who can make your writing clear and compelling & help you contextualize.
Return Ticket For Two? Amram Mitzna & Aryeh Deri
Amram Mitzna is the Benny Begin of the Zionist left: upright, abstentious and unlikely to ever lead his ideological camp to political victory. The kibbutz-born Mitzna is a dovish ex-general who once clashed with defense minister Ariel Sharon over his reaction to the Lebanese Christian massacre of Palestinians during the 1982 Lebanon War. In 1987, Mitzna found himself the IDF's commanding officer in the West Bank at outbreak of the first intifada. Convinced that "force was not the answer," Mitzna took a leave of absence to study abroad. By 1993, post-army, he was elected mayor of Haifa.
As head of the Labor Party during the second intifada, Mitzna was vanquished by Sharon in the 2003 Knesset elections. He quit national politics in 2005 and soon accepted appointment as mayor of Yeruham, a beleaguered Negev development town, whose elected chief executive had been removed by authorities for corruption. The city's subsequent renewal is credited to Mitzna's hard work and talent for public administration. Now, at 65, Mitzna says he has "a burning urge to bring a change" to the country and is weighing a fresh run for the Labor party leadership.
In the meantime, another politician is making a comeback though not in his original party. Aryeh Deri, going on 52, came to Israel from Morocco at age nine, went on to learn Talmud at a prestigious Ashkenazi academy, and unlike many ultra-Orthodox youths went to the army. In 1986, Sephardic ex-chief rabbi Ovadia Yosef tapped Deri to head his fledgling Shas party where Deri honed his skills as a powerbroker. His career abruptly ended when he was convicted in 1999 of channeling tax money to party institutions.
Chastened and changed, Deri is poised to reenter politics, nowadays studying English and French to burnish his cosmopolitan credentials. Estranged from his nonagenarian mentor and despised by his successor Eli Yishai, Deri plans to form a new, populist, cross-sectoral and ideologically moderate party.
The men are a study in contrasts. Mitzna abandoned the Knesset to take personal responsibility for Labor's rout. Deri left kicking and screaming only because he was sent to prison. Mitzna is from the Ashkenazi elite; Deri from the Sephardi underclass. Deri is a political animal; Mitzna lacks the killer instinct. Deri is charismatic; Mitzna is humorless. Deri has the potential of capturing support well beyond his own ultra-Orthodox base and keeps his innate dovishness understated. His knack for friendships across the political spectrum adds to his appeal. Mitzna, in contrast, has embraced the far-fetched Geneva Initiative as his platform on the Palestinian issue and is unlikely to win over many not predisposed to his views.
Though Israeli elections are far off, Mitzna's return could still be a boon to the leaderless and rudderless Zionist left, while Deri's second coming could, ironically, undercut the very ethno-politics he practiced so well. Shas is going through an identity crisis with one dissident Knesset member, Haim Amsalam – who hopes to join forces with Deri -- asking how the party came to champion "distorted" ultra-Orthodox insularity at the expense of its original social mandate.
Labor is experiencing its own identity crisis. Critics complain party leader Ehud Barak has sold out by partnering with the Netanyahu government. Yet the welcome mat is not being rolled out for Mitzna. Avishay Braverman and Isaac Herzog, Labor moderates who want to replace Barak as party leader say Mitzna's dovishness will drive Labor voters to the center-left Kadima party. Inscrutable as he is unpopular, Barak has invited Mitzna to run for the party leadership. Does this mean Barak has abandoned the idea of running again? Or will he, ultimately, try to elbow out Braverman and Herzog before tackling Mitzna's challenge?
Yossi Kucik, a political strategist and former aide to Barak when he was premier, is working to create a left-wing amalgamation that would include Labor, the atrophied Meretz party and various engaging personalities to improve the left's prospects in the next election. That may prove a mission impossible. Would Mitzna be willing to campaign as a good government candidate with demonstrated implementation skills and downplay his discredited views on the "peace process?" Can Labor, which has essentially embraced neo-liberal economics, run in tandem with social-democratic Meretz? With Mitzna at the helm, polls show Labor capturing no more than the 13 seats it currently holds. Still, if next time out Mitzna is prepared to stay the course he could keep Labor in the opposition and mold it in his own image: principled, respected, and perennially out of power.
As for the repackaged Deri, he has no interest in remaining on the opposition benches. Polls show his new party would win at least eight Knesset seats at Shas's expense. Were he to succeed in building a truly broad-based party, odds are he could do considerably better yet and parlay his mandates into a strong presence around the cabinet table.
-- December 2010
As head of the Labor Party during the second intifada, Mitzna was vanquished by Sharon in the 2003 Knesset elections. He quit national politics in 2005 and soon accepted appointment as mayor of Yeruham, a beleaguered Negev development town, whose elected chief executive had been removed by authorities for corruption. The city's subsequent renewal is credited to Mitzna's hard work and talent for public administration. Now, at 65, Mitzna says he has "a burning urge to bring a change" to the country and is weighing a fresh run for the Labor party leadership.
In the meantime, another politician is making a comeback though not in his original party. Aryeh Deri, going on 52, came to Israel from Morocco at age nine, went on to learn Talmud at a prestigious Ashkenazi academy, and unlike many ultra-Orthodox youths went to the army. In 1986, Sephardic ex-chief rabbi Ovadia Yosef tapped Deri to head his fledgling Shas party where Deri honed his skills as a powerbroker. His career abruptly ended when he was convicted in 1999 of channeling tax money to party institutions.
Chastened and changed, Deri is poised to reenter politics, nowadays studying English and French to burnish his cosmopolitan credentials. Estranged from his nonagenarian mentor and despised by his successor Eli Yishai, Deri plans to form a new, populist, cross-sectoral and ideologically moderate party.
The men are a study in contrasts. Mitzna abandoned the Knesset to take personal responsibility for Labor's rout. Deri left kicking and screaming only because he was sent to prison. Mitzna is from the Ashkenazi elite; Deri from the Sephardi underclass. Deri is a political animal; Mitzna lacks the killer instinct. Deri is charismatic; Mitzna is humorless. Deri has the potential of capturing support well beyond his own ultra-Orthodox base and keeps his innate dovishness understated. His knack for friendships across the political spectrum adds to his appeal. Mitzna, in contrast, has embraced the far-fetched Geneva Initiative as his platform on the Palestinian issue and is unlikely to win over many not predisposed to his views.
Though Israeli elections are far off, Mitzna's return could still be a boon to the leaderless and rudderless Zionist left, while Deri's second coming could, ironically, undercut the very ethno-politics he practiced so well. Shas is going through an identity crisis with one dissident Knesset member, Haim Amsalam – who hopes to join forces with Deri -- asking how the party came to champion "distorted" ultra-Orthodox insularity at the expense of its original social mandate.
Labor is experiencing its own identity crisis. Critics complain party leader Ehud Barak has sold out by partnering with the Netanyahu government. Yet the welcome mat is not being rolled out for Mitzna. Avishay Braverman and Isaac Herzog, Labor moderates who want to replace Barak as party leader say Mitzna's dovishness will drive Labor voters to the center-left Kadima party. Inscrutable as he is unpopular, Barak has invited Mitzna to run for the party leadership. Does this mean Barak has abandoned the idea of running again? Or will he, ultimately, try to elbow out Braverman and Herzog before tackling Mitzna's challenge?
Yossi Kucik, a political strategist and former aide to Barak when he was premier, is working to create a left-wing amalgamation that would include Labor, the atrophied Meretz party and various engaging personalities to improve the left's prospects in the next election. That may prove a mission impossible. Would Mitzna be willing to campaign as a good government candidate with demonstrated implementation skills and downplay his discredited views on the "peace process?" Can Labor, which has essentially embraced neo-liberal economics, run in tandem with social-democratic Meretz? With Mitzna at the helm, polls show Labor capturing no more than the 13 seats it currently holds. Still, if next time out Mitzna is prepared to stay the course he could keep Labor in the opposition and mold it in his own image: principled, respected, and perennially out of power.
As for the repackaged Deri, he has no interest in remaining on the opposition benches. Polls show his new party would win at least eight Knesset seats at Shas's expense. Were he to succeed in building a truly broad-based party, odds are he could do considerably better yet and parlay his mandates into a strong presence around the cabinet table.
-- December 2010
I am an Israel briefer and analyst, a political scientist, and a speaker on Jewish civilization. I'm also a rewrite guy & fact-checker, who can make your writing clear and compelling & help you contextualize.
Tuesday, December 28, 2010
Hard to figure? Not really
The JTA is reporting that even larger numbers of Israelis are living in America than previously thought: Some 140,323 Israelis reside in the US, though many observers believe the true figure is much, much higher.
Meanwhile, the Jewish Agency has just released figures that show 3,980 U.S. Jews have made aliya in 2010.
There are no simple explanations for this ratio.
It is what it is...
Meanwhile, the Jewish Agency has just released figures that show 3,980 U.S. Jews have made aliya in 2010.
There are no simple explanations for this ratio.
It is what it is...
I am an Israel briefer and analyst, a political scientist, and a speaker on Jewish civilization. I'm also a rewrite guy & fact-checker, who can make your writing clear and compelling & help you contextualize.
Palestina Si? No!
What's behind the rush of South American countries to recognize "Palestine?" A myriad of disheartening factors – outlined below – combine to provide perspective. Overriding them all, though, is the pervasive left-wing Latin American political culture that sees the Palestinians, particularly those led by Fatah's Mahmoud Abbas, through rose-tinted glasses – as progressive underdogs ready to compromise for peace, confronting an unyielding right-wing Israeli government, not to mention the nuisance of Hamas's control of Gaza. Fatah has traduced Israel while putting its own, ostensibly moderate, best foot forward. In such a climate, it would be unthinkable – notions of traditional international law and sovereignty notwithstanding – to say "no" to the Palestinians.
In matters of foreign policy, much of South America follows the lead of Brazil whose regional influence nowadays far exceeds that of the United States. When outgoing President Lula da Silva (his protégée Dilma Roussef replaces him in January) recognized the "legitimate aspiration of the Palestinian people for a secure, united, democratic and economically viable state coexisting peacefully with Israel" it was predictable that Argentina, Uruguay and Ecuador also countries considered "friendly" toward Israel, would follow suit. A delighted Jimmy Carter, speaking in Sao Paolo, lauded Brazil for facilitating the peace process.
While Brazilian fire-brand essayist Olavo de Carvalho maintains that there is no politician left in his former homeland who is openly pro-Israel, in the Latin American context Brazil is still considered friendly toward the Jewish state. In March 2010, "Lula" became his country's first head of state to visit Jerusalem. But in May Lula travelled to Iran reciprocating Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's visit to Brazil in November 2009. With Brasília's encouragement, Israel was the first state outside the region to sign a free trade agreement with the Mercosur group of Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Uruguay and Paraguay. Indeed, over half of Israel's exports to Latin America go to Brazil. Now, however, this has been offset by a virtual trade deal between Mercosur and sham-Palestine. Uruguay, one of continent's more enlightened countries, is adding insult to injury by sending a parliamentary delegation to Iran.
In the face of all this, Israel can do little more than pursue good bilateral relations with its friends while holding out small expectation of being able to influence their attitudes on the Arab-Israel conflict. All the more discouraging is the fact that these setbacks come despite concerted efforts in 2009 by Israel's Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman to resuscitate Jerusalem's largely dormant diplomacy in South America. Lieberman visited the region, the ministry hosted a Conference of Latin American Parliamentarians at the Knesset, and Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon participated in an annual Organization of American States conference in Honduras.
In connection with Hugo Chavez's Venezuela and Evo Morales's Bolivia, Israel can allow itself no delusions; their hostility toward Israel and alliance with Iran is unambiguous. Morales has not only recognized Palestine but thrown in the charge of "genocide" against Israel. In 2009, during Israel's war to stop Hamas's cross-border aggression, Morales broke diplomatic ties with Israel and tarred its leaders as war criminals. Venezuela, too, broke relations with Israel over invented "massacres" in Gaza.
In a region intrinsically hospitable to the Arab cause – even in 1947, only 13 of the then 20 Latin American member nations voted in favor of partitioning Palestine, though Uruguay and Guatemala were instrumental in pushing for passage – Abbas's envoys have pursued a discreet diplomatic blitz, part of a larger strategy aimed at gaining European Union, UN General Assembly, and ultimately UN Security Council endorsement for the creation of a Fatah-led Palestine in the West Bank and Gaza without having to engage in bargaining with Israel. In this way, Fatah would have to make no compromises on refugees nor be obliged to recognize Israel's legitimacy as a Jewish state. If successful, Abbas's approach would be a vindication of Yasir Arafat's analysis adopted by the Palestinian National Council in 1974 that Israel could only be destroyed in phases.
Of course, it cannot help that Washington's influence in the region has been waning while Teheran's clout is growing. In the final analysis, however, Israel-based Brazilian journalist Michel Gawendo posits, perhaps the determinative factor to Israel's Latin America quandary is the homogenous thinking of the continent's leaders. Their political socialization has come under inordinate influence from the Sao Paulo Forum, founded jointly by Lula and Fidel Castro. This little-known amalgamation of left-leaning elites has developed a coherent set of values about politics and policy that is inherently anti-Western and essentially unsympathetic to Israel's cause. Most leaders now in power, Lula himself has noted, are forum alumni.
In matters of foreign policy, much of South America follows the lead of Brazil whose regional influence nowadays far exceeds that of the United States. When outgoing President Lula da Silva (his protégée Dilma Roussef replaces him in January) recognized the "legitimate aspiration of the Palestinian people for a secure, united, democratic and economically viable state coexisting peacefully with Israel" it was predictable that Argentina, Uruguay and Ecuador also countries considered "friendly" toward Israel, would follow suit. A delighted Jimmy Carter, speaking in Sao Paolo, lauded Brazil for facilitating the peace process.
While Brazilian fire-brand essayist Olavo de Carvalho maintains that there is no politician left in his former homeland who is openly pro-Israel, in the Latin American context Brazil is still considered friendly toward the Jewish state. In March 2010, "Lula" became his country's first head of state to visit Jerusalem. But in May Lula travelled to Iran reciprocating Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's visit to Brazil in November 2009. With Brasília's encouragement, Israel was the first state outside the region to sign a free trade agreement with the Mercosur group of Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Uruguay and Paraguay. Indeed, over half of Israel's exports to Latin America go to Brazil. Now, however, this has been offset by a virtual trade deal between Mercosur and sham-Palestine. Uruguay, one of continent's more enlightened countries, is adding insult to injury by sending a parliamentary delegation to Iran.
In the face of all this, Israel can do little more than pursue good bilateral relations with its friends while holding out small expectation of being able to influence their attitudes on the Arab-Israel conflict. All the more discouraging is the fact that these setbacks come despite concerted efforts in 2009 by Israel's Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman to resuscitate Jerusalem's largely dormant diplomacy in South America. Lieberman visited the region, the ministry hosted a Conference of Latin American Parliamentarians at the Knesset, and Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon participated in an annual Organization of American States conference in Honduras.
In connection with Hugo Chavez's Venezuela and Evo Morales's Bolivia, Israel can allow itself no delusions; their hostility toward Israel and alliance with Iran is unambiguous. Morales has not only recognized Palestine but thrown in the charge of "genocide" against Israel. In 2009, during Israel's war to stop Hamas's cross-border aggression, Morales broke diplomatic ties with Israel and tarred its leaders as war criminals. Venezuela, too, broke relations with Israel over invented "massacres" in Gaza.
In a region intrinsically hospitable to the Arab cause – even in 1947, only 13 of the then 20 Latin American member nations voted in favor of partitioning Palestine, though Uruguay and Guatemala were instrumental in pushing for passage – Abbas's envoys have pursued a discreet diplomatic blitz, part of a larger strategy aimed at gaining European Union, UN General Assembly, and ultimately UN Security Council endorsement for the creation of a Fatah-led Palestine in the West Bank and Gaza without having to engage in bargaining with Israel. In this way, Fatah would have to make no compromises on refugees nor be obliged to recognize Israel's legitimacy as a Jewish state. If successful, Abbas's approach would be a vindication of Yasir Arafat's analysis adopted by the Palestinian National Council in 1974 that Israel could only be destroyed in phases.
Of course, it cannot help that Washington's influence in the region has been waning while Teheran's clout is growing. In the final analysis, however, Israel-based Brazilian journalist Michel Gawendo posits, perhaps the determinative factor to Israel's Latin America quandary is the homogenous thinking of the continent's leaders. Their political socialization has come under inordinate influence from the Sao Paulo Forum, founded jointly by Lula and Fidel Castro. This little-known amalgamation of left-leaning elites has developed a coherent set of values about politics and policy that is inherently anti-Western and essentially unsympathetic to Israel's cause. Most leaders now in power, Lula himself has noted, are forum alumni.
I am an Israel briefer and analyst, a political scientist, and a speaker on Jewish civilization. I'm also a rewrite guy & fact-checker, who can make your writing clear and compelling & help you contextualize.
Tuesday, December 21, 2010
Stockholm Gets Drawn into the War of Civilizations
A Baghdad-born, British-educated Islamist suicide bomber holding Swedish citizenship killed only himself after apparently stumbling on an icy patch and accidentally detonating two of the three explosive devices he had brought to a bustling Stockholm shopping district. Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt leader of the Moderate Party reacted placidly to the attempted mass murder saying that Taimour Abdulwahab al-Abdaly's behavior was "unacceptable" and urging Swedes not to jump to conclusions about any jihadist connection.
That may prove tricky. Before the attack al-Abdaly emailed an audio recording to the media in which he declared himself a jihadi. While admitting that it was unaware of al-Abdaly, the Swedish domestic security agency SÄPO estimated that there are some 200 violent Islamists in the country.
Sweden has been neutral since the early 1800s managing to sit out both world wars that ravaged Europe. Yet, paradoxically, it appears destined to be inexorably drawn into the Islamist war against Western civilization. Even during the Holocaust Sweden sought to avoid entanglement though, ultimately, in 1943, it offered itself as a haven to Jews fleeing Nazi-occupied Denmark. Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg stationed in Budapest rescued many Jews from Hitler's clutches only to disappear when the Soviets liberated the city.
It was another Swede, Emil Sandstrom, who in 1947 headed the UN committee which recommended the partition of Palestine into two states, one Arab, one Jewish. The Arabs said "no" and tried to strangle Israel at its birth. So Swedish Count Folke Bernadotte, the UN envoy to the Mideast, offered a peace plan that would have rolled back Israel's newly gained sovereignty. He was assassinated in 1948 by Zionist militants. Later, Swedish diplomats Dag Hammarskjold and Gunnar Jarring also sought to mediate between Arabs and Israelis.
Many Swedes are sympathetic to Israel, according to Manfred Gerstenfeld a Jerusalem-based analyst of Scandinavian affairs, citing the example of Hokmark Gunnar, a Moderate Party member of the European Parliament and chair of the Sweden-Israel Friendship Association. Since the 1960s, however, the Swedish left has been hostile. The late Social Democrat prime minister Olof Palme even compared Israel’s policies to those of the Nazis. The left dominates the diplomatic corps, the Lutheran church, most newspapers and non-governmental organizations even though a center-right coalition narrowly holds power.
Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt is mostly indifferent toward Israel, while Foreign Minister Carl Bildt (a former Moderate Party premier) is frequently antagonistic castigating every Israeli self-defense measures as counterproductive. In Istanbul, Bildt brazenly visited Swedish extremists who had taken part in the Turkish flotilla to Hamas-controlled Gaza. Sweden has also been an unhelpful voice against Israel in the EU, pushing for recognition of east Jerusalem as the capital of Palestine. While the latest EU foreign minister's declaration did not -- as threatened -- give the Jewish state just a year to yield to Arab demands or face recognition of "Palestine" along the 1949 Armistice Lines, the tone of the announcement left little doubt which side the EU blamed for the current stalemate. Doubtlessly, Sweden would have been pushing for an even harder-line on Israel.
When in 2009, the country's largest tabloid Aftonbladet carried a contemptible calumny about Israeli soldiers harvesting the organs of Palestinian youths, the Sweden's political leaders obstinately refused to distance themselves from the accusations evoking the excuse of freedom of the press.
And what of the 15,000 Jews today living in the country? Those who are identifiably Jewish have not had an easy time due to anti-Semitism so prevalent among the 500,000 Muslims in the country (population 9 million). Approximately half of Swedish Muslims live in Stockholm with Malmö, in the south, one-quarter Muslim. Malmö's Social Democrat mayor Ilmar Reepalu insinuated that Jews deserved to be attacked for not distancing themselves from Israel. Many Jews have decided to abandon the city. And the Simon Wiesenthal Center has recommended Jews altogether avoid travel to Sweden.
Gerstenfeld goes so far as to argue that by opening its gates to a population coming from countries with discriminatory and anti-Semitic cultures, the Swedes have made an implicit decision to "promote" anti-Semitism.
Sweden has certainly embraced multiculturalism with gusto; critics scorn its immigration policy as suicidal. Stockholm is diplomatically predisposed to the Palestinian cause; domestically it has responded to violent Muslim anti-Semitism with appalling political correctness. What, then, could Sweden have possibly done to bring forth an Islamist suicide bombing?
Al-Abdaly's recording blamed the war in Afghanistan and a 2007 cartoon depicting the Muslim prophet Muhammad as a dog. Is this credible? Sweden has a mere 500 soldiers in increasingly turbulent northern Afghanistan but they are involved mostly in reconstruction work and even training midwives. As for Lars Vilks, the Swedish artist, his caricatures in a regional newspaper were intended to protest widespread self-censorship that followed in the wake of the 2005 Muhammad cartoons published by a Danish newspaper.
More plausibly, Islamists will continue to strike at tolerant Sweden not in retribution for any particular "transgression," but simply because the "Land of the Midnight Sun" is part of the fabric of Western civilization.
That may prove tricky. Before the attack al-Abdaly emailed an audio recording to the media in which he declared himself a jihadi. While admitting that it was unaware of al-Abdaly, the Swedish domestic security agency SÄPO estimated that there are some 200 violent Islamists in the country.
Sweden has been neutral since the early 1800s managing to sit out both world wars that ravaged Europe. Yet, paradoxically, it appears destined to be inexorably drawn into the Islamist war against Western civilization. Even during the Holocaust Sweden sought to avoid entanglement though, ultimately, in 1943, it offered itself as a haven to Jews fleeing Nazi-occupied Denmark. Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg stationed in Budapest rescued many Jews from Hitler's clutches only to disappear when the Soviets liberated the city.
It was another Swede, Emil Sandstrom, who in 1947 headed the UN committee which recommended the partition of Palestine into two states, one Arab, one Jewish. The Arabs said "no" and tried to strangle Israel at its birth. So Swedish Count Folke Bernadotte, the UN envoy to the Mideast, offered a peace plan that would have rolled back Israel's newly gained sovereignty. He was assassinated in 1948 by Zionist militants. Later, Swedish diplomats Dag Hammarskjold and Gunnar Jarring also sought to mediate between Arabs and Israelis.
Many Swedes are sympathetic to Israel, according to Manfred Gerstenfeld a Jerusalem-based analyst of Scandinavian affairs, citing the example of Hokmark Gunnar, a Moderate Party member of the European Parliament and chair of the Sweden-Israel Friendship Association. Since the 1960s, however, the Swedish left has been hostile. The late Social Democrat prime minister Olof Palme even compared Israel’s policies to those of the Nazis. The left dominates the diplomatic corps, the Lutheran church, most newspapers and non-governmental organizations even though a center-right coalition narrowly holds power.
Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt is mostly indifferent toward Israel, while Foreign Minister Carl Bildt (a former Moderate Party premier) is frequently antagonistic castigating every Israeli self-defense measures as counterproductive. In Istanbul, Bildt brazenly visited Swedish extremists who had taken part in the Turkish flotilla to Hamas-controlled Gaza. Sweden has also been an unhelpful voice against Israel in the EU, pushing for recognition of east Jerusalem as the capital of Palestine. While the latest EU foreign minister's declaration did not -- as threatened -- give the Jewish state just a year to yield to Arab demands or face recognition of "Palestine" along the 1949 Armistice Lines, the tone of the announcement left little doubt which side the EU blamed for the current stalemate. Doubtlessly, Sweden would have been pushing for an even harder-line on Israel.
When in 2009, the country's largest tabloid Aftonbladet carried a contemptible calumny about Israeli soldiers harvesting the organs of Palestinian youths, the Sweden's political leaders obstinately refused to distance themselves from the accusations evoking the excuse of freedom of the press.
And what of the 15,000 Jews today living in the country? Those who are identifiably Jewish have not had an easy time due to anti-Semitism so prevalent among the 500,000 Muslims in the country (population 9 million). Approximately half of Swedish Muslims live in Stockholm with Malmö, in the south, one-quarter Muslim. Malmö's Social Democrat mayor Ilmar Reepalu insinuated that Jews deserved to be attacked for not distancing themselves from Israel. Many Jews have decided to abandon the city. And the Simon Wiesenthal Center has recommended Jews altogether avoid travel to Sweden.
Gerstenfeld goes so far as to argue that by opening its gates to a population coming from countries with discriminatory and anti-Semitic cultures, the Swedes have made an implicit decision to "promote" anti-Semitism.
Sweden has certainly embraced multiculturalism with gusto; critics scorn its immigration policy as suicidal. Stockholm is diplomatically predisposed to the Palestinian cause; domestically it has responded to violent Muslim anti-Semitism with appalling political correctness. What, then, could Sweden have possibly done to bring forth an Islamist suicide bombing?
Al-Abdaly's recording blamed the war in Afghanistan and a 2007 cartoon depicting the Muslim prophet Muhammad as a dog. Is this credible? Sweden has a mere 500 soldiers in increasingly turbulent northern Afghanistan but they are involved mostly in reconstruction work and even training midwives. As for Lars Vilks, the Swedish artist, his caricatures in a regional newspaper were intended to protest widespread self-censorship that followed in the wake of the 2005 Muhammad cartoons published by a Danish newspaper.
More plausibly, Islamists will continue to strike at tolerant Sweden not in retribution for any particular "transgression," but simply because the "Land of the Midnight Sun" is part of the fabric of Western civilization.
I am an Israel briefer and analyst, a political scientist, and a speaker on Jewish civilization. I'm also a rewrite guy & fact-checker, who can make your writing clear and compelling & help you contextualize.
Tuesday, December 14, 2010
Ehud Barak in Washington
According to the 8 AM news on Reshet Bet, Defense Minister Ehud Barak warned that without an agreement with the Palestinians, Israel’s position in the international community would deteriorate and that efforts to de-legitimize Israel’s existence will intensify.
This is news?
Barak is the grand chest master from Chelm.
He always manages to outmaneuver himself – tripping up even before he sets out.
His political and diplomatic ineptitude amazes given his early military career.
Obviously Barak is trying to placate the fading Labor Party about the stagnant "peace process."
Industry, Trade and Labor Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer (not a Barak enemy) has given PM Netanyahu a two-month window of opportunity to make "progress on the diplomatic front."
What is the point of putting pressure on your own side when the real obstacle continues to be Palestinian Arab intransigence? Why not give Mahmoud Abbas a two month window?
We Israelis know we need peace and acceptance. The Arabs do too.
That is why the Arabs won't give it to us.
Making it appear as if we are the ones holding things up -- something the world already believes either because of lack of understanding or something more sinister does not help.
This is news?
Barak is the grand chest master from Chelm.
He always manages to outmaneuver himself – tripping up even before he sets out.
His political and diplomatic ineptitude amazes given his early military career.
Obviously Barak is trying to placate the fading Labor Party about the stagnant "peace process."
Industry, Trade and Labor Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer (not a Barak enemy) has given PM Netanyahu a two-month window of opportunity to make "progress on the diplomatic front."
What is the point of putting pressure on your own side when the real obstacle continues to be Palestinian Arab intransigence? Why not give Mahmoud Abbas a two month window?
We Israelis know we need peace and acceptance. The Arabs do too.
That is why the Arabs won't give it to us.
Making it appear as if we are the ones holding things up -- something the world already believes either because of lack of understanding or something more sinister does not help.
I am an Israel briefer and analyst, a political scientist, and a speaker on Jewish civilization. I'm also a rewrite guy & fact-checker, who can make your writing clear and compelling & help you contextualize.
Sunday, December 12, 2010
History Book Modern Israel
Short English-language histories of Israel are few and far between, and good ones even fewer and farther. For that reason the publication of Martin Van Creveld's The Land of Blood and Honey: The Rise of Modern Israel (St. Martin'; 320 pages) raised hopes that here at last, is the book to recommend to the person seeking a definitive, concise, sensibly compassionate and elegantly-written account of modern Israel.
Van Creveld is a Dutch-born professor emeritus of history at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem whose specialty is military strategy. In this book, one of 17 he has authored, he sets out to provide a "brief but comprehensive outline" of Israel with "a feel for what life is like" in "perhaps the greatest success story of the entire twentieth century." Blood and Honey is intended as a synthesis of what is already known.
Unfortunately, it also turns out to be a petulant, puzzling meditation, at times bragging of Israeli accomplishments, though just as often hammering away mercilessly at the country's imperfections. It employs odd nomenclature: Van Creveld is loath to use "Torah" or "Hebrew Bible" when "Old Testament" can serve his purposes; "the so-called First Migration" supplants the First Aliya; it's "Wailing Wall" not Western Wall. And, ad nauseam, it's the "occupied" West Bank -- never Judea and Samaria.
The narrative starts with "Forged in Fury," covering the period from the first Zionist Congress convened by Theodor Herzl in 1897 until the end of the War of Independence in 1949. Van Creveld accurately portrays pre-Zionist Palestine as a backwater lacking in infrastructure – no ports, roads or rail system. The British would remedy that. Under Ottoman rule the Arabs – there were no "Palestinians" at the time – were mostly illiterate while the indigent Jews, not permitted to purchase land, lived off charity supplied by their co-religionists abroad.
Political Zionism was spurred by the failure of Europe's Enlightenment to solve the Jewish question in the liberal West and by continued violent persecution in the reactionary East. The Zionists were divided between practical settlers eager to create facts on the ground and those, like Herzl, who wanted to first set the diplomatic stage for the Jews' return. Britain's Balfour Declaration offered the Jews a homeland though not a state. Soon Winston Churchill lopped off most of the Promised Land to create Transjordan. The Jewish Agency, meanwhile, provided the framework of a Zionist governing authority that would evolve into a state. In 1947, the Arabs rejected the creation of an Arab Palestine alongside a Jewish Israel and attacked. Though vastly outnumbered, the (now) Israelis were better organized and overcame the Arab onslaught. Still, a staggering one percent of Israel's population perished in the war. So far, so good.
In "Full Steam Ahead" Van Creveld covers the 1949-1967 period summarizing Israel's political system, taking the trouble to note that Israel's hyperactive high-court does not require a litigant to show they have any stake in a matter before filing suit. He maps out the ideological divide between the political parties, emphasizes the hegemony of David Ben-Gurion's Histadrut labor federation which both much of the means of production and represented the workers.
Van Creveld also sagaciously takes cognizance of an early dilemma still unresolved: Whether Israel was to be a Jewish state or simply a state of the Jews? Overcoming formidable obstacles, he tells us, Israel absorbed enormous numbers of Holocaust survivors and other immigrants. Youth movements were created in which, quite distinctively, young people not adults were mostly in charge. Van Creveld makes a strong case in support of Ben-Gurion wrenching decision to accept Holocaust reparations from West Germany. It proved essential to Israel's economic development. The chapter finishes with Van Creveld praising the sound of Israeli artillery retaliating against unprovoked Jordanian shelling of Jerusalem in June 1967 as "the sweetest" "he ever heard."
In "The Nightmare Years" Van Creveld speedily covers the 1967-1980 era which included the 1970 War of Attrition and the 1973 Yom Kippur War, noting Dayan's haunting warning that "the Third Temple [was] in danger." The war, writes Van Creveld, left Israel's economy devastated. Finally, he deplores the settlement of the West Bank though he documents the Arabs' rejection of peace, recognition and negotiations.
Throughout his, at times, awkward prose, Van Creveld uses flashes of color to great effect. Herzl, he records, received a 15-minute standing ovation at the First Congress. Chaim Weizmann was prescient in urging Zionists to be ready with their demands when the Great War ended.
"New Challenges" the chapter covering 1981-1995 bemoans the change in Israel's "ethnic make-up." Under growing Sephardi influence, the mores of the secular, socialist and Ashkenazi elite were being supplanted. Israel had become too nationalist, too Jewish, as exemplified by Likud premier Menachem Begin who -- gasp -- ate only kosher food "even in private."
Shimon Peres is rightly credited with saving the economy from hyperinflation. Van Creveld is enthusiastic about Israel's high-tech industry whose rise he properly credits to skills gained by its founders in the IDF. He absurdly reports the mind-boggling claim that Israelis prefer theater to soccer.
We learn that the first intifada broke out in December 1987 after a traffic accident in Gaza ignited rioting. At a time there were few IDF troops in the West Bank and Gaza. The "occupation," it seems, was rather unobtrusive. Van Creveld does not tell us that during the ensuing blood-letting more Palestinians were killed by their compatriots than by Israel. Later, he neglects to mention that five separate deadly terror attacks took place in the weeks preceding Baruch Goldstein's notorious massacre of Arabs in Hebron's Cave of the Patriarchs.
Indeed, some readers will find Van Creveld tendency toward moral relativism, sophistry and even dubious history-telling off-putting. The 1929 Arab uprising was, we're told, preceded by mutual "bickering." At Deir Yassin, the Irgun "massacred about a hundred Arab civilians." Menachem Begin offers a very different and more convincing account in The Revolt. The only time Israel's survival was ever actually in jeopardy was during the 1948 War, Van Creveld claims. Adolph Eichmann "himself had never killed anybody." While Arab villages fit naturally into the terrain, Israeli towns look outlandishly European and out of place. The Chief Rabbinate's headquarters could have been designed by Albert Speer. Arab refugees sought to infiltrate the country's boundaries in the 1950s "in the absence of peace." The concept of "defensible" borders was "invented" by Yigal Allon. As president, Jimmy Carter was a real supporter of Israel. Jewish religious claims to the land are "pretty close" to racist. The image of Israelis in sealed rooms waiting out Iraqi missile attacks in the First Gulf War is "vastly exaggerated." And, today's Israeli children are "barred from the public sphere" a problem "imported from the United States."
In "Tragedy, Triumph, and Struggle," the final chapter, Van Creveld asserts that the 1993 Oslo Accords were "well worth making" and "certainly" did "nothing to harm Israel's security." Anyway, "if it did fail" the blame belongs equally to Israel and the Palestinians. Premier Ehud Barak's midnight withdrawal from south Lebanon in 2000 (which may have set the stage for the second intifada and paved the way for Hezbollah's takeover of the south) is adjudged "a minor masterpiece." Ariel Sharon not Yasser Arafat was largely to blame for the outbreak of the second intifada. Arafat's rejection of Barak's Camp David offer was understandable "since Jewish neighborhoods in East Jerusalem were to remain in Israeli hands." As prime minister during the second intifada, Sharon did not know how to cope. The number of Israeli casualties "was never very large" just over 1,100 dead, actually. Van Creveld allows that the security barrier was not a bad idea, but that constructing it beyond the Green Line was. Of course, Sharon's purpose was not to reward enemy violence and to take topography into account. Not one suicide bomber, writes Van Creveld, entered Israel from Gaza since disengagement. Not exactly. The Eilat bakery bombing occurred on January 29, 2007. The trauma suffered by the people of Sderot? Van Creveld claims that the IDF pullout from Gaza was unconnected to the increased bombardment of Israel's south.
There are a few Zionist heroes in Van Creveld's telling. Socialist David Ben-Gurion is described as a "tin-pot dictator. Remarkably, Ben-Gurion's nemesis, Ze'ev Jabotinsky, a liberal democrat and advocate of free enterprise, gets fair treatment. Ben-Gurion, we learn, referred to Jabotinsky's followers as "Jewish Nazis" and a "bubonic plague." Yet Van Creveld is perpetually disparaging of Menachem Begin. He was a "demagogue first and foremost" though Van Creveld undermines his own assertion by lauding Begin's decision not to retaliate against the Haganah's unprovoked attack (ordered by Ben-Gurion) on the Irgun arms-ship Altalena thereby avoiding a civil war; Begin's decision not to purge Laborites from positions of influence after his 1977 electoral victory showed him to be a true democrat, and his covert outreach to Anwar Sadat before the Egyptian president's historic journey to Jerusalem enabled peace with Egypt. Van Creveld does seem to have a soft spot for the "Russian-accented" Moshe Dayan. But only playwright Hanoh Levin emerges as a true Van Creveld idol. Levin's sour, nihilistic work, exposing Israelis' "unfathomable narrow-mindedness" is, we are told, popular all over the world.
In Van Creveld telling (though not Michael Oren's) then-U.S. defense secretary Robert McNamara belatedly gave Israel a green light to launch its preemptive attack in the 1967 War; Yitzhak Rabin got along famously with Gerald Ford. (Oren said they were an "infelicitous" pair.) Youth movements such as the Scouts are no longer popular (hardly true) except for B'nei Akiva, whose main task is (supposedly) to boost the "occupation." Begin is excoriated for calling Palestinian terrorists "two-legged beasts" however Van Creveld does not tell us the context: the killing of 18 Israelis by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine General Command in Kiryat Shmona.
Van Creveld's characterization of the Kulturkampf between ultra-Orthodox and secular Israelis is not so much wrong as completely lacking in nuance. He pitilessly denigrates the observant as if all Sabbath observers are rock-throwing fanatics; he misses the heterogeneity among Israel's Orthodox. Other streams get no mention. A description of the overflowing Friday night services at the Reform movement's flagship synagogue in Jerusalem would have done wonders to round out the picture. Of course, he is right about the ultra-Orthodox stranglehold on a structurally dysfunctional political system. True ultra-Orthodox religious coercion has alienated many Israelis from Judaism. However, his passing remark that "but for Judaism" Israel's "raison d'être would disappear" does not salvage a chronically injudicious treatment of a very complex topic.
Considering this is a book published toward the end of 2010, it is odd that there is barely an allusion to Iran's nuclear threat; nary a reference to the Second Lebanon War; and scant mention of Operation Cast Lead against Hamas in Gaza. Debilitating political corruption is treated as a minor nuisance. Instead, of illuminating these topics, Van Creveld goes off on a meandering discussion of Israeli feminism that will leave some readers confused whether the author is a misogynist or a radical pro-feminist. Lurching to a conclusion, Van Creveld sums up that while Israel is not perfect, no country is. If so, why did the author allow so much bile to overshadow his narrative?
While bookshelves sag under the weight of pro-Arab and post-Zionist tomes, the wait for a succinct, definitive and stylishly-composed history of Israel will have to continue.
####
What then?
Here are several classic histories worth turning to...
The Siege by Conor Cruise O'Brien (1986)
Israel: A History by Martin Gilbert (updated in 2008)
A History of Modern Israel by Colin Shindler (2008)
###
Van Creveld is a Dutch-born professor emeritus of history at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem whose specialty is military strategy. In this book, one of 17 he has authored, he sets out to provide a "brief but comprehensive outline" of Israel with "a feel for what life is like" in "perhaps the greatest success story of the entire twentieth century." Blood and Honey is intended as a synthesis of what is already known.
Unfortunately, it also turns out to be a petulant, puzzling meditation, at times bragging of Israeli accomplishments, though just as often hammering away mercilessly at the country's imperfections. It employs odd nomenclature: Van Creveld is loath to use "Torah" or "Hebrew Bible" when "Old Testament" can serve his purposes; "the so-called First Migration" supplants the First Aliya; it's "Wailing Wall" not Western Wall. And, ad nauseam, it's the "occupied" West Bank -- never Judea and Samaria.
The narrative starts with "Forged in Fury," covering the period from the first Zionist Congress convened by Theodor Herzl in 1897 until the end of the War of Independence in 1949. Van Creveld accurately portrays pre-Zionist Palestine as a backwater lacking in infrastructure – no ports, roads or rail system. The British would remedy that. Under Ottoman rule the Arabs – there were no "Palestinians" at the time – were mostly illiterate while the indigent Jews, not permitted to purchase land, lived off charity supplied by their co-religionists abroad.
Political Zionism was spurred by the failure of Europe's Enlightenment to solve the Jewish question in the liberal West and by continued violent persecution in the reactionary East. The Zionists were divided between practical settlers eager to create facts on the ground and those, like Herzl, who wanted to first set the diplomatic stage for the Jews' return. Britain's Balfour Declaration offered the Jews a homeland though not a state. Soon Winston Churchill lopped off most of the Promised Land to create Transjordan. The Jewish Agency, meanwhile, provided the framework of a Zionist governing authority that would evolve into a state. In 1947, the Arabs rejected the creation of an Arab Palestine alongside a Jewish Israel and attacked. Though vastly outnumbered, the (now) Israelis were better organized and overcame the Arab onslaught. Still, a staggering one percent of Israel's population perished in the war. So far, so good.
In "Full Steam Ahead" Van Creveld covers the 1949-1967 period summarizing Israel's political system, taking the trouble to note that Israel's hyperactive high-court does not require a litigant to show they have any stake in a matter before filing suit. He maps out the ideological divide between the political parties, emphasizes the hegemony of David Ben-Gurion's Histadrut labor federation which both much of the means of production and represented the workers.
Van Creveld also sagaciously takes cognizance of an early dilemma still unresolved: Whether Israel was to be a Jewish state or simply a state of the Jews? Overcoming formidable obstacles, he tells us, Israel absorbed enormous numbers of Holocaust survivors and other immigrants. Youth movements were created in which, quite distinctively, young people not adults were mostly in charge. Van Creveld makes a strong case in support of Ben-Gurion wrenching decision to accept Holocaust reparations from West Germany. It proved essential to Israel's economic development. The chapter finishes with Van Creveld praising the sound of Israeli artillery retaliating against unprovoked Jordanian shelling of Jerusalem in June 1967 as "the sweetest" "he ever heard."
In "The Nightmare Years" Van Creveld speedily covers the 1967-1980 era which included the 1970 War of Attrition and the 1973 Yom Kippur War, noting Dayan's haunting warning that "the Third Temple [was] in danger." The war, writes Van Creveld, left Israel's economy devastated. Finally, he deplores the settlement of the West Bank though he documents the Arabs' rejection of peace, recognition and negotiations.
Throughout his, at times, awkward prose, Van Creveld uses flashes of color to great effect. Herzl, he records, received a 15-minute standing ovation at the First Congress. Chaim Weizmann was prescient in urging Zionists to be ready with their demands when the Great War ended.
"New Challenges" the chapter covering 1981-1995 bemoans the change in Israel's "ethnic make-up." Under growing Sephardi influence, the mores of the secular, socialist and Ashkenazi elite were being supplanted. Israel had become too nationalist, too Jewish, as exemplified by Likud premier Menachem Begin who -- gasp -- ate only kosher food "even in private."
Shimon Peres is rightly credited with saving the economy from hyperinflation. Van Creveld is enthusiastic about Israel's high-tech industry whose rise he properly credits to skills gained by its founders in the IDF. He absurdly reports the mind-boggling claim that Israelis prefer theater to soccer.
We learn that the first intifada broke out in December 1987 after a traffic accident in Gaza ignited rioting. At a time there were few IDF troops in the West Bank and Gaza. The "occupation," it seems, was rather unobtrusive. Van Creveld does not tell us that during the ensuing blood-letting more Palestinians were killed by their compatriots than by Israel. Later, he neglects to mention that five separate deadly terror attacks took place in the weeks preceding Baruch Goldstein's notorious massacre of Arabs in Hebron's Cave of the Patriarchs.
Indeed, some readers will find Van Creveld tendency toward moral relativism, sophistry and even dubious history-telling off-putting. The 1929 Arab uprising was, we're told, preceded by mutual "bickering." At Deir Yassin, the Irgun "massacred about a hundred Arab civilians." Menachem Begin offers a very different and more convincing account in The Revolt. The only time Israel's survival was ever actually in jeopardy was during the 1948 War, Van Creveld claims. Adolph Eichmann "himself had never killed anybody." While Arab villages fit naturally into the terrain, Israeli towns look outlandishly European and out of place. The Chief Rabbinate's headquarters could have been designed by Albert Speer. Arab refugees sought to infiltrate the country's boundaries in the 1950s "in the absence of peace." The concept of "defensible" borders was "invented" by Yigal Allon. As president, Jimmy Carter was a real supporter of Israel. Jewish religious claims to the land are "pretty close" to racist. The image of Israelis in sealed rooms waiting out Iraqi missile attacks in the First Gulf War is "vastly exaggerated." And, today's Israeli children are "barred from the public sphere" a problem "imported from the United States."
In "Tragedy, Triumph, and Struggle," the final chapter, Van Creveld asserts that the 1993 Oslo Accords were "well worth making" and "certainly" did "nothing to harm Israel's security." Anyway, "if it did fail" the blame belongs equally to Israel and the Palestinians. Premier Ehud Barak's midnight withdrawal from south Lebanon in 2000 (which may have set the stage for the second intifada and paved the way for Hezbollah's takeover of the south) is adjudged "a minor masterpiece." Ariel Sharon not Yasser Arafat was largely to blame for the outbreak of the second intifada. Arafat's rejection of Barak's Camp David offer was understandable "since Jewish neighborhoods in East Jerusalem were to remain in Israeli hands." As prime minister during the second intifada, Sharon did not know how to cope. The number of Israeli casualties "was never very large" just over 1,100 dead, actually. Van Creveld allows that the security barrier was not a bad idea, but that constructing it beyond the Green Line was. Of course, Sharon's purpose was not to reward enemy violence and to take topography into account. Not one suicide bomber, writes Van Creveld, entered Israel from Gaza since disengagement. Not exactly. The Eilat bakery bombing occurred on January 29, 2007. The trauma suffered by the people of Sderot? Van Creveld claims that the IDF pullout from Gaza was unconnected to the increased bombardment of Israel's south.
There are a few Zionist heroes in Van Creveld's telling. Socialist David Ben-Gurion is described as a "tin-pot dictator. Remarkably, Ben-Gurion's nemesis, Ze'ev Jabotinsky, a liberal democrat and advocate of free enterprise, gets fair treatment. Ben-Gurion, we learn, referred to Jabotinsky's followers as "Jewish Nazis" and a "bubonic plague." Yet Van Creveld is perpetually disparaging of Menachem Begin. He was a "demagogue first and foremost" though Van Creveld undermines his own assertion by lauding Begin's decision not to retaliate against the Haganah's unprovoked attack (ordered by Ben-Gurion) on the Irgun arms-ship Altalena thereby avoiding a civil war; Begin's decision not to purge Laborites from positions of influence after his 1977 electoral victory showed him to be a true democrat, and his covert outreach to Anwar Sadat before the Egyptian president's historic journey to Jerusalem enabled peace with Egypt. Van Creveld does seem to have a soft spot for the "Russian-accented" Moshe Dayan. But only playwright Hanoh Levin emerges as a true Van Creveld idol. Levin's sour, nihilistic work, exposing Israelis' "unfathomable narrow-mindedness" is, we are told, popular all over the world.
In Van Creveld telling (though not Michael Oren's) then-U.S. defense secretary Robert McNamara belatedly gave Israel a green light to launch its preemptive attack in the 1967 War; Yitzhak Rabin got along famously with Gerald Ford. (Oren said they were an "infelicitous" pair.) Youth movements such as the Scouts are no longer popular (hardly true) except for B'nei Akiva, whose main task is (supposedly) to boost the "occupation." Begin is excoriated for calling Palestinian terrorists "two-legged beasts" however Van Creveld does not tell us the context: the killing of 18 Israelis by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine General Command in Kiryat Shmona.
Van Creveld's characterization of the Kulturkampf between ultra-Orthodox and secular Israelis is not so much wrong as completely lacking in nuance. He pitilessly denigrates the observant as if all Sabbath observers are rock-throwing fanatics; he misses the heterogeneity among Israel's Orthodox. Other streams get no mention. A description of the overflowing Friday night services at the Reform movement's flagship synagogue in Jerusalem would have done wonders to round out the picture. Of course, he is right about the ultra-Orthodox stranglehold on a structurally dysfunctional political system. True ultra-Orthodox religious coercion has alienated many Israelis from Judaism. However, his passing remark that "but for Judaism" Israel's "raison d'être would disappear" does not salvage a chronically injudicious treatment of a very complex topic.
Considering this is a book published toward the end of 2010, it is odd that there is barely an allusion to Iran's nuclear threat; nary a reference to the Second Lebanon War; and scant mention of Operation Cast Lead against Hamas in Gaza. Debilitating political corruption is treated as a minor nuisance. Instead, of illuminating these topics, Van Creveld goes off on a meandering discussion of Israeli feminism that will leave some readers confused whether the author is a misogynist or a radical pro-feminist. Lurching to a conclusion, Van Creveld sums up that while Israel is not perfect, no country is. If so, why did the author allow so much bile to overshadow his narrative?
While bookshelves sag under the weight of pro-Arab and post-Zionist tomes, the wait for a succinct, definitive and stylishly-composed history of Israel will have to continue.
####
What then?
Here are several classic histories worth turning to...
The Siege by Conor Cruise O'Brien (1986)
Israel: A History by Martin Gilbert (updated in 2008)
A History of Modern Israel by Colin Shindler (2008)
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I am an Israel briefer and analyst, a political scientist, and a speaker on Jewish civilization. I'm also a rewrite guy & fact-checker, who can make your writing clear and compelling & help you contextualize.
Beyond WikiLeaks
The damaging drip-by-drip disclosures of sensitive American diplomatic communications by WikiLeaks have been receiving saturation media coverage. Too few are asking why Julian Assange's website is preoccupied with confidential American cables while displaying no interest in, say, Iranian secrets. Still, there is no denying that reading other peoples clandestine communications offers heretofore unavailable insights.
Jerusalem has long argued that Iran’s march toward nuclear weapons is not Israel's problem alone. That there was an enormous disconnect between what Arab leaders said publicly and what they said privately about Iran is no revelation. Yet the intensity and uniformity with which Arab leaders have been pleading with the Obama administration to “take out” Iran's nascent capacity is illuminating.
Firstly, it debunks malicious insinuations by the Walt, Mearsheimer, Brzezinski crowd that the "Israel lobby" has been perfidiously goading the U.S. into a war with Iran against Washington's own interests, one that would cripple America's standing with Arab "moderates." We now know that virtually every Arab leader from Lebanon to Bahrain had been exhorting the U.S. to strike at Iran.
Secondly, it exposes the duplicity of the Obama administration toward Jerusalem. The president's insistence that Israeli concessions to the Palestinian faction led by Mahmoud Abbas were a prerequisite for garnering Arab support against Iran has been shown to be plain dishonest. Barack Obama knew full well that America's Arab allies wanted Iran dealt with regardless of "progress" on the Palestinian-Israeli front, as Herb Keinon of the Jerusalem Post has pointed out. And yet Obama "continued to propagate what he must have known to be a falsehood" that lack of progress on Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking was an obstacle to wide Arab backing on Iran. Obama chose to play the Iran card as a Machiavellian tactic against Israel.
In any event, the torrent of WikiLeaks revelations ought not to obscure what is really important beyond the obvious point that basically everyone in the Middle East agrees it would be catastrophic if Iran obtained the atom bomb. Is it not intriguing that Arab autocrats, presumably adept at manipulating public opinion to stay in power, have been so shy about trying to shape the views of the Arab street on Iran?
Why not let their people know that an imperial Iran threatens Sunni Arab interests?
On the Palestinian front, is it not equally interesting that Abbas often sounds conciliatory in closed door meetings with Israeli and American leaders but intransigent when publicly addressing his followers? Why would Abbas not want to prepare his Fatah faction, indeed all Palestinians for the absolute need to make concessions on refugees, land swaps and recognition of Israel as a Jewish state as the only way the conflict can be brought to an end?
Daoud Kuttab, an Amman-based Palestinian journalist maintains that Arab leaders do not actually depend on public opinion at all to retain power. They will seek regional and international alliances and do whatever it takes domestically to stay in power, but trying to change popular attitudes toward Israel or Iran would, if anything, be counterproductive. Indeed, scapegoating Israel for the failures of their regimes helps them stay in power, explains Professor Prof. Efraim Inbar of the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies.
If anything says Danny Rubinstein, a veteran Israeli analyst of Arab affairs, Arab rulers are afraid of public opinion because they know what the masses really think of them. The Arab street admires leaders like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for standing up against the West and Israel. The masses perceive their rulers are being propped up by the West. That is why any attempt by the autocrats to constructively realign perceptions on such core issues as Iran and Israel is simply too dangerous. For this reason, too, no amount of WikiLeaks exposure will impel Arab "moderates" to bring their public utterances and private stances into harmony.
The dysfunctional way in which ideologically indoctrinated Arab masses acquire their ideological orientations and their basic assumptions about political life has gravely warped Arab political culture. No wonder, then, that Israelis are dubious about the prospects of genuine peace with the Palestinians and apprehensive about the durability of existing peace treaties reached with unpopular autocrats.
The more profound lessons of the WikiLeaks revelations are sobering in ways, perhaps, unintended.
###
Jerusalem has long argued that Iran’s march toward nuclear weapons is not Israel's problem alone. That there was an enormous disconnect between what Arab leaders said publicly and what they said privately about Iran is no revelation. Yet the intensity and uniformity with which Arab leaders have been pleading with the Obama administration to “take out” Iran's nascent capacity is illuminating.
Firstly, it debunks malicious insinuations by the Walt, Mearsheimer, Brzezinski crowd that the "Israel lobby" has been perfidiously goading the U.S. into a war with Iran against Washington's own interests, one that would cripple America's standing with Arab "moderates." We now know that virtually every Arab leader from Lebanon to Bahrain had been exhorting the U.S. to strike at Iran.
Secondly, it exposes the duplicity of the Obama administration toward Jerusalem. The president's insistence that Israeli concessions to the Palestinian faction led by Mahmoud Abbas were a prerequisite for garnering Arab support against Iran has been shown to be plain dishonest. Barack Obama knew full well that America's Arab allies wanted Iran dealt with regardless of "progress" on the Palestinian-Israeli front, as Herb Keinon of the Jerusalem Post has pointed out. And yet Obama "continued to propagate what he must have known to be a falsehood" that lack of progress on Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking was an obstacle to wide Arab backing on Iran. Obama chose to play the Iran card as a Machiavellian tactic against Israel.
In any event, the torrent of WikiLeaks revelations ought not to obscure what is really important beyond the obvious point that basically everyone in the Middle East agrees it would be catastrophic if Iran obtained the atom bomb. Is it not intriguing that Arab autocrats, presumably adept at manipulating public opinion to stay in power, have been so shy about trying to shape the views of the Arab street on Iran?
Why not let their people know that an imperial Iran threatens Sunni Arab interests?
On the Palestinian front, is it not equally interesting that Abbas often sounds conciliatory in closed door meetings with Israeli and American leaders but intransigent when publicly addressing his followers? Why would Abbas not want to prepare his Fatah faction, indeed all Palestinians for the absolute need to make concessions on refugees, land swaps and recognition of Israel as a Jewish state as the only way the conflict can be brought to an end?
Daoud Kuttab, an Amman-based Palestinian journalist maintains that Arab leaders do not actually depend on public opinion at all to retain power. They will seek regional and international alliances and do whatever it takes domestically to stay in power, but trying to change popular attitudes toward Israel or Iran would, if anything, be counterproductive. Indeed, scapegoating Israel for the failures of their regimes helps them stay in power, explains Professor Prof. Efraim Inbar of the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies.
If anything says Danny Rubinstein, a veteran Israeli analyst of Arab affairs, Arab rulers are afraid of public opinion because they know what the masses really think of them. The Arab street admires leaders like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for standing up against the West and Israel. The masses perceive their rulers are being propped up by the West. That is why any attempt by the autocrats to constructively realign perceptions on such core issues as Iran and Israel is simply too dangerous. For this reason, too, no amount of WikiLeaks exposure will impel Arab "moderates" to bring their public utterances and private stances into harmony.
The dysfunctional way in which ideologically indoctrinated Arab masses acquire their ideological orientations and their basic assumptions about political life has gravely warped Arab political culture. No wonder, then, that Israelis are dubious about the prospects of genuine peace with the Palestinians and apprehensive about the durability of existing peace treaties reached with unpopular autocrats.
The more profound lessons of the WikiLeaks revelations are sobering in ways, perhaps, unintended.
###
I am an Israel briefer and analyst, a political scientist, and a speaker on Jewish civilization. I'm also a rewrite guy & fact-checker, who can make your writing clear and compelling & help you contextualize.
Thursday, December 09, 2010
Don't Apologize to Turkey
Don't Apologize to Turkey!
Word that Israel and Turkey are working out the nitty-gritty of an Israeli apology for having lawfully intercepted the Turkish ship bound for Hamas-controlled Gaza has many Israelis – me included -- befuddled.
Why would the Netanyahu government apologize for something the Turks need to apologize for?
Moreover, Israel has nothing to "regret" except that Turkey has shifted away from the West and embraced the Islamist camp. It really is too bad.
It was good of the Turks to send planes to help Israel fight the Carmel fires. I was caught by surprise. We have thanked them and we really do appreciate the assistance.
We would do the same for them.
But the Israeli soldier whose skull was cracked open by the "peace activists" aboard the ship is still not fully recovered. It is an insult to him and our troops sent to board the ship to apologize enforcing a necessary blockade against Gaza.
Don't do it PM Netanyahu. Don't apologize.
Word that Israel and Turkey are working out the nitty-gritty of an Israeli apology for having lawfully intercepted the Turkish ship bound for Hamas-controlled Gaza has many Israelis – me included -- befuddled.
Why would the Netanyahu government apologize for something the Turks need to apologize for?
Moreover, Israel has nothing to "regret" except that Turkey has shifted away from the West and embraced the Islamist camp. It really is too bad.
It was good of the Turks to send planes to help Israel fight the Carmel fires. I was caught by surprise. We have thanked them and we really do appreciate the assistance.
We would do the same for them.
But the Israeli soldier whose skull was cracked open by the "peace activists" aboard the ship is still not fully recovered. It is an insult to him and our troops sent to board the ship to apologize enforcing a necessary blockade against Gaza.
Don't do it PM Netanyahu. Don't apologize.
I am an Israel briefer and analyst, a political scientist, and a speaker on Jewish civilization. I'm also a rewrite guy & fact-checker, who can make your writing clear and compelling & help you contextualize.
Wednesday, December 01, 2010
Latest Writings
Political Demography
The newly-released North American Jewish Data Bank's 2010 World Jewish Population Report, edited by professors Sergio DellaPergola, Arnold Dashefsky and Ira Sheskin has been making waves. Critics on the right are charging that in claiming a non-Jewish majority exists between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, the report is slanted and unduly pessimistic. Critics on the left in the Diaspora will complain that the authors were too "old school" in defining what Jewish means.
There are, says the report, about 13 million Jews in the world with the largest concentration (5.7 million), as determined by Orthodox standards of religious law, living in Israel. Of the Diaspora's 7.7 million, most (5,275,000) "core" Jews -- meaning people who identify themselves as Jews, or who are identified as Jews by those they residing with, and who have no other monotheistic religion -- live in the United States. Eighty-two percent of all Jews live in either Israel or the America. Other countries with 100,000 or more Jews are France (483,500), Canada (375,000), United Kingdom (292,000), Russian Federation, (205,000), Argentina (182,300), Germany (119,000) and Australia (107,500).
With the singular exception of Israel, Jewish fertility continued to be low, the population continued to age, intermarriage continued to increase, and relatively few children of intermarried couples were being raised as Jews, according to DellaPergola. Consider, too, that roughly 42% of all recently married Jews outside of Israel have married out.
Zionists take satisfaction that Israel is not only the center of Jewish civilization but has become home to the world's largest Jewish population. Israel’s 5,703,700 Jews when combined with 312,800 halakhically non-Jewish members of Jewish households (mostly from the former Soviet Union) forms a combined population of 6 million. More Jews now live in Greater Tel Aviv than in Metro New York.
What worries many Zionists however is Israel's shrinking Jewish majority. The number of Arabs in pre-1967 Israel is 1,238,000. The combined Jewish and Arab population in sovereign Israel plus the West Bank and Gaza is 11,222,100 leaving the total core Jewish population between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River at just 50.8%; 49.8% counting 222,000 foreign workers. If the non-halakhically Jewish population is counted, the Jewish percentage climbs to 53.6 of the total in Israel and the territories; 58.5% after subtracting Gaza.
No matter how the data is juggled, insists DellaPergola, "The Jewish majority is constantly decreasing — if extant at all — over the whole territory between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, and more particularly within the State of Israel."
DellaPergola has been challenged in the past for taking census numbers from the Palestinian Authority at face value. He has strongly defended the integrity of his data, though in this report DellaPergola appears to acknowledge that Palestinian figures had originally been "overestimated." Nevertheless, he concludes that the Palestinian Arab population in January 2010 stood at 3,670,000 about 2,200,000 in Judea and Samaria and 1,470,000 in Gaza. At the same time, he acknowledges that the Arab birthrate inside Israel proper and in the West Bank is slowly decreasing.
To complicate matters, not all of the halakhically Jewish numbers can necessarily be counted on by the Zionist enterprise. The ultra-Orthodox comprise about 8.5 percent of Israel's total population and are projected to grow to 17.5 percent within two decades. By 2020, 60% of Israeli youths eligible to serve in the IDF will be sitting on the sidelines because of draft exemptions granted to ultra-Orthodox youth.
Population surveys are intrinsically political documents. Experts with agendas will clash over methodology, data collection, definitions and interpretation. Diaspora liberals will lobby for a more "inclusive" criteria in defining Jews and a rosier interpretation of the Jewish predicament. DellaPergola admits that the U.S. Jewish population would jump to at least 6.7 million if the non-halachic criteria for defining Jews under Israel's Law of Return were applied in the American setting. Dismissing evidence to the contrary as tendentious, DellaPergola's Israeli critics and their American allies will argue that talk of Arabs outnumbering Jews is alarmist, that in any case, Israel's political system can be tweaked so that even an outsized Arab minority would be neither disenfranchised nor dominant.
On one point there is no dispute: DellaPergola's figures generate such visceral reactions because at stake is nothing less than Jewish continuity in the Diaspora and sovereignty in Israel.
Islam and Interfaith Relations
Old-fashioned anti-Semitism needs to be factored into the equation if Westerners are to comprehend the zero-sum nature of the Arab-Israel conflict. But the good news out of an ecumenical conclave held in the House of Lords [November 23] by the Children of Abraham organization and a British affiliate of Cairo's Al Azhar University is that a long-standing ban on Muslim-Jewish interfaith relations has been lifted. The fly in the ointment is that the decision did not explicitly mention Judaism by name. A spokesman for London-based Grand Mufti Sheikh Fawzi Al-Zifzaf, who drafted the ruling, explained that "the people who have taken the document forward have done so at great risk." No doubt.
A recent BBC Panorama program revealed that even today certain Muslim parochial schools providing part-time instruction to 5,000 children at 40 different locations in the UK have been using a curriculum of hate supplied by Saudi Arabia that among other things refer to Jews as looking like "monkeys and pigs." Pupils are further taught that Jews seek world domination. The Saudi ambassador in the U.S. reportedly told a Children of Abraham official that the texts did not truly represent the values of his country. Of course, youngsters educated outside the West, especially in fanatical Islamist regimes, are at even greater risk of being inculcated into the oldest hatred.
Speaking on his movement's Gaza-based television station recently [November 5] senior Hamas leader Mahmoud Zahar offered viewers a twisted capsule history of the Jews from Pharaonic times to medieval Europe in order to demonstrate that anti-Semitism was the fault of the Jews themselves. Jews have faced a series of expulsions Zahar lectured, for sucking the blood of, and stealing from, non-Jews. One day, he declared, the Jews would be expelled "from the entire territory of Palestine, Allah willing." He cited the Koran as justifying the murder of Jews and to reiterate a recurring genocidal theme, developed in his [2008] book, that the Jewish people had “no future between nations." There is no place for Jews anywhere in the Middle East, he said. "You are about to disappear." As a founding leader of Hamas and its former foreign minister, Zahar is merely mirroring the visceral Jew-hatred manifested in the movement's 1988 charter.
Plainly, Hamas's problem with a Jewish state is not rooted in politics, but in religious chauvinism. In more genteel form the comparatively moderate Palestinian camp headed by Mahmoud Abbas is no less invested in invalidating Jewish rights. Take a new study carried out on behalf of the Palestinian Authority which found that Jewish people have no authentic connection to the Western Wall. That makes Jews interlopers in the Mideast. No wonder that a recent poll conducted for The Israel Project found sixty percent of Palestinian Arabs felt that a "two state solution" should be a precursor to the phased destruction of Israel. A Pew survey earlier this year found more than 90% of Egyptians, Jordanians, Lebanese and Palestinians held hateful views toward Jews, while even 74% of non-Arab Muslims in Indonesia were hostile. Antagonism toward Jews is so widespread that one London newspaper eulogized Al-Azhar's Sheikh Mohammed Sayyid Tantawi who died in March, for his moderation – he had denounced the 9/11 attacks -- his description of Jews as "enemies of Allah" and "descendants of apes and pigs" notwithstanding.
Apologists for Muslim anti-Semitism argue that Islamic attitudes toward Jews had been benign even tolerant until the establishment of modern Israel – the Zionists' "original sin." In fact, the Jewish condition under Muslim rule ranged from one of peaceful inferiority to that of persecution and humiliation, in the assessment of Bernard Lewis's The Jews of Islam. Martin Gilbert has recently provided fresh historical evidence for Lewis's appraisal. Islamic civilization assigned Jews an institutionally inferior societal place as dhimmis and the Koran makes a number of disparaging references to Jews (though also a few positive ones).
It would be comforting to think that contemporary Muslim civilization is at least grappling with how to relate to Jews outside the framework of dhimmitude. If only the laudable, albeit, faint efforts of a relatively unknown Grand Mufti in Britain to explore a new relationship were not held in contempt by Islam's more influential holy men such as Sheikh Yousuf Al-Qaradhawi whose broadcast on Al Jazeera, reach 40 million believers worldwide and who takes pride in boycotting interfaith conferences with Jews.
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Referendum for Peace
Britons will be holding a national referendum early next year on electoral reform. The Arab League is supporting a referendum in war torn Sudan over independence for the south. When the Turkish parliament failed to amend the constitution by a sufficient majority the nation held a referendum in September to do so. And while the United States does not hold national referendums state "propositions" are not uncommon.
Yet the 65-33 vote in Israel's Knesset [on Monday, November 24] to require a referendum before ceding east Jerusalem, the Golan Heights or any other part of sovereign Israel should a peace deal with the Palestinian Authority or Syria be struck has kicked up a ruckus. The plebiscite would be held if the government was unable to muster 80 of parliament's 120 lawmakers to approve a withdrawal. In promoting the referendum, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu argued that it would prevent an irresponsible agreement, while facilitating strong public backing for one that satisfied Israel's national interests.
Arab reaction has been unenthusiastic. The Syrian Foreign Ministry found the law to be further proof that Israel was not interested in peace. Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said that "ending the occupation" could not be put to a referendum. A curious stance in that Mahmoud Abbas has repeatedly raised the possibility of a Palestinian referendum and been lauded for doing so by Arabists in the American foreign policy community.
Israeli reactions have run along political lines. Both left and right saw passage as an impediment to the emergence of a Palestinian state. Technically, no referendum would be required for a West Bank pullback since Judea and Samaria have never been annexed to Israel. But settler leaders said the law was "very good news" in that any deal would likely be linked to land swaps in sovereign Israel. Haaretz editorialized that the law spit in the face of the international community. Peace Now threatened to challenge the constitutionality of the law. Kadima leader Tzipi Livni and 15 of her 28-member faction voted against the bill; Shaul Mofaz, who has announced plans to unseat her, was joined by 11 other party lawmakers in being conspicuously absent. Kadima's Otniel Schneller and Eli Aflalo voted for the bill. Labor leader Ehud Barak issued a strong statement against the bill, but also absented himself rather than vote with most of his faction against it. Likud, Yisrael Beitenu, Shas, and Habayit Hayehudi voted unanimously in favor; Meretz and the Arab parties voted unanimously against. The left's opposition is also somewhat curious in that it was Yitzhak Rabin who first raised the idea of a withdrawal referendum.
Whether referendums are generally a good idea is a matter for debate. They certainly provide the demos (people) kratos (rule) – direct power to legislate without intermediaries. America's political system is, of course, designed to keep unrefined power out of the hands of the masses for fear of the tyranny of the majority. Authoritarian leaders have been known to conduct and manipulate referendums to solidify their power. For example, in 1979 Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini legitimized the establishment of Iran's imperial theocracy by holding a popular plebiscite.
What does the referendum decision signify in the Israeli instance? Whether to withdraw to something approximating the 1949 Armistice Lines in exchange for an Arab commitment of, at best, a cold peace presents Israelis with an immense dilemma. Such boundaries would be very hard to defend especially if the West Bank falls to Hamas. A pullout ratified by a razor thin Knesset majority lubricated by political horse-trading would lack legitimacy and tear the fabric of Israel's society asunder. It's happened in the past: The 1993 Oslo Accords were approved with 61 MKs in favor 50 against and 8 abstentions. Oslo II, a follow-up agreement, passed 61-59 only after three neophyte opposition members were enticed to join Rabin's government in exchange for patronage appointments.
Of course, a referendum would be less imperative were Israel's political system less dysfunctional (all major parties agree on the need for fundamental electoral reform). Netanyahu, who was opposition leader at the time Rabin railroaded Oslo through the Knesset, clearly recognizes that any deal he signs with the Palestinians or Syrians would equally lack authenticity unless it achieved massive Knesset backing or popular support in a referendum.
For all the hoopla raised by the referendum law the reality is that Abbas still refuses to return to the negotiating table and Hamas makes no pretense about wanting peace altogether. The role Israeli Arabs (20 percent of the population) would have in a referendum is unclear. Israel's High Court could still decide that the referendum is unconstitutional. And of course, the Knesset could vote at anytime repeal to repeal the law by a simple majority. In short, champions of peace have little to fear and much to embrace in this law.
Gas Cornucopia
The blessing for the Promised Land was that it would flow with milk and honey, not abundant rainfall or copious petro-carbon deposits. Fortunately, within the next several years a series of desalination plants will help alleviate Israel's chronic water shortage while continued exploitation of off-shore gas fields should make the Jewish state energy independent – and more.
Since 2004, Israel has been tapping billions of cubic meters of gas from two deep-sea fields, Mari-B and Marine, just off its southern coast. But it is the still untapped fields off the country's northern coast, and so deep below the Mediterranean that robots will be needed to exploit them, that has truly captured the Israeli imagination. Leviathan, which is far out to sea, could come on-line in 2016, though Tamar and Dalit, smaller fields closer to the coast, could begin production in 2014.
These subterranean gas deposits have the potential of transforming Israel from a country completely dependent on foreign energy sources to a major global energy supplier. An Israeli pipeline could run via Cyprus to Greece providing Europe with gas for its winters and lessening the continent's dependency on Russia. Israeli liquefied gas could be shipped to India and China making them less dependent on Iran. At home, electrical plants could be retooled to operate on gas; electric (or hybrid) cars might supplant those running exclusively on petrol.
For now, however, Israel still imports $2 billion worth of gas annually from a privately owned Egyptian company. Coal needs to be imported to generate electricity; and petroleum is purchased on the world market. Until the mullahs came to power in 1979, Israel enjoyed a reliable supply of Iranian oil. Later, the Alma oil field in the Sinai, discovered and developed by Israel, could have provided energy independence, but was given up in the 1982 peace treaty with Egypt. Fortunately, most Israeli households use solar power to heat water.
Israel's foes have reacted predictably to its off-shore gas finds. Hezbollah, the hegemon of Lebanon, has been making threatening noises about the northern fields, while Palestinian advocates have claimed the southern fields as the patrimony of Hamas-dominated Gaza.
For Israel, striking gas is like winning the lottery – attendant with political, social and economic opportunities as well as pitfalls. The Tel Aviv stock market reacted euphorically as investors pondered the fortunes to be made. That led to a massive debate about who actually owned the gas cornucopia, the consortium of Israeli and American partners spearheaded by Yitzhak Teshuva who risked their capital (on searches that had for decades proved futile), or the "people." Back in 1952 the Knesset had legislated royalties of 12.5% on mining. The American government has been assessing royalties of 18.75% on off-shore oil and gas; in Norway the government takes a whopping 67 percent. Social campaigners demanded that the royalties be drastically hiked. Free marketers complained it was unfair to retroactively change the rules.
To sort out the division of spoils the Netanyahu government appointed a committee headed by economist Eytan Sheshinski. After seven months, and without inviting Teshuva to present his case, his panel decided that royalties should stay at 12.5%; that the tax exemption depletion allowance should be abolished; and that profits should not be taxed until investors had recovered 150% of their outlays.
These recommendations, which await a public hearing, cabinet debate and Knesset approval, have been lauded across the political spectrum from Bank of Israel Governor Stanley Fischer to Labor's Shelly Yachimovich, a neo-socialist. So far Avigdor Lieberman's Yisrael Beitenu party has been most vocal in expressing concern that the recommendations may discourage future energy exploration.
Even if a formula can be found that balances the rational need to provide incentives for entrepreneurs with the desires of ordinary citizens to benefit from the gas windfall there is still the question of precisely what the state will do with the money. Former Knesset member Michael Melchior has been lobbying for the revenues be channeled into a sovereign fund invested and earmarked to enhance the country's human potential. Anything would be better than dumping it into the general budget. There is, fortunately, time for considered judgment. Revenues from the northern fields will not begin flowing into the state's coffers for another 8-15 years, at the earliest.
Kadima in the Wings
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's apparent about-face capitulation to Obama administration pressure for an extension of the moratorium on West Bank settlement construction has resulted in roiling dissension within his Likud party and a sense of déjà vu. The possibility of another split within the party cannot be discounted.
The previous Likud schism occurred in November 2005 when Ariel Sharon founded the Kadima party as a political workaround after Likud members rejected his plan for a unilateral pullout from Gaza. After Sharon became incapacitated by a stroke, Ehud Olmert led Kadima in winning the 2006 elections by campaigning for a further unilateral separation this time from the Palestinians in the West Bank. However, aggression from Gaza and Lebanon (where Israel had in 2000 unilaterally withdrawn from a security zone) undermined the attraction of unilateralism and the policy was discarded.
Curiously, despite having lost its charismatic founder in Sharon and philosophical underpinning – unilateralism – the party has consolidated itself as a viable "third- way" alignment of pragmatists; basically a vehicle for running for office that has attracted politicians from Likud, Labor and beyond. Its Knesset line-up includes a West Bank settler and a Peace Now proponent. The New York Times has variously called Kadima "center-right" and "center-left."
It is widely understood that President Barack Obama would have preferred Israel's 2009 elections to have resulted in a Kadima-led government with Tzipi Livni (formerly of the Likud) at the helm. Washington is reportedly pressing Netanyahu to jettison right-wing coalition partners Yisrael Beitenu and Habayit Hayehudi and replace them with Kadima. This would presumably make Israel's negotiating stance more malleable. The flaw with this line of reasoning is that the previous Kadima government led by Olmert and Livni failed to close a deal with the Palestinian faction led by Mahmoud Abbas despite offering unprecedented territorial concessions on the grounds these were still insufficient.
What now for Kadima? Unlike other third-way parties that have come and gone, Kadima has demonstrated remarkable staying power. Partly this is because its leaders are no political novices, but in addition Kadima's arrival on the scene coincided with the evolution of a post-second intifada Israeli consensus that ending the conflict with the Palestinian Arabs was a vital national interest even if it resulted in the establishment of a "Palestine" alongside Israel.
Livni as opposition leader though photogenic has not emerged as a strong presence, furthering a reputation for indecisiveness established when she repeatedly hesitated to call for Olmert's resignation while he was enmeshed in a series of scandals and discredited by his handling of the Second Lebanon War. She also failed to form a government though Kadima won one more seat than Likud in the past election. And in a recent Knesset speech Livni took Netanyahu to task for his craven patronage of the ultra-Orthodox parties, only to have a haredi leader produce a draft agreement showing she had been equally ready to kowtow to their demands.
Livni is now being challenged by Shaul Mofaz, a former top general, whom she barely defeated for the party leadership in 2008. While her reputation for integrity is not an issue, Kadima is hardly a bastion of good-government reformists. Sharon had been investigated for wrongdoing on multiple occasions; Olmert is now on trial for corruption; policy chairman Haim Ramon was convicted of indecent behavior; Avraham Hirchson, a finance minister, went to prison for corruption. And in the latest incident, Tzahi Hanegbi, a party powerbroker, was forced to quit the Knesset this month having being found guilty of moral turpitude.
In spite of all this and the failure to articulate a coherent platform to replace unilateralism, Kadima and Likud continue to run neck and neck in public opinion surveys. Livni's confidantes have accused Netanyahu of spreading false rumors that Kadima is poised to join a unity government. She said that would not happen until Netanyahu accepted her conditions, though these have never been enunciated with much specificity. Still, Livni has pledged to give Netanyahu a political safety net if he goes ahead and extends the settlement freeze.
Strangely enough, Kadima's political nimbleness makes it attractive for disgruntled voters from left, center and right. Its success reflects the diminished expectations Israelis have of their elected officials. Ideological consistency, adherence to solemn campaign pledges, upstanding ethical behavior, even leadership excellence is no longer paramount. What seems to matter most is Kadima's ability to offer "pragmatism" -- whatever that may mean at any particular time.
The Brothers Lurk
November is a time for elections not just in the United States but also in Jordan and Egypt. Jordanians voted on November 9 to overwhelmingly fill the Chamber of Deputies with loyalists of King Abdullah II. Egyptians will go to the polls on November 28 to elect the People’s Assembly and there is little doubt that Hosni Mubarak's ruling National Democratic Party will remain in control. As a result of short-sighted policies that have sidelined comparatively liberal reformist elements, the only viable opposition the Abdullah and Mubarak dynasties face comes from the benighted Moslem Brotherhood whose role in politics is severely restricted. Both leaders are mindful that Hamas, the Palestinian branch of the brotherhood, won 58% of the vote in free 2006 Palestinian Authority elections.
Founded in Egypt by Hasan al-Banna in 1928, the brotherhood preaches pan-Islam, a worldwide Caliphate, the application of Sharia law to daily life and politics and – jihad. In 1950s and 60s Sayyid Qutb fine-tuned the brotherhood's Sunni ideology to emphasize opposition to Western values. Naturally, anti-Zionism has been integral to the movement since the 1930s and remains a rallying cry.
The 21st century brotherhood aims for a legitimate persona, playing down calls to violence and dissociating from the movement's most infamous devotees, al-Qaida's Ayman al-Zawahiri and Osama bin-Laden. The Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood while frank about Sharia law insists that "under current circumstances" it has no ambitions to rule the country.
On Election Day in Jordan, a national holiday, candidate posters were plastered around providing the facade of widespread political activity. Jordanian authorities in point of fact encouraged brotherhood candidates to participate. But the Islamic Action Front, the local brotherhood affiliate, declared an election boycott on the grounds that new rules favoring directly elected candidates over blocs and freshly gerrymandered districts limited the movement's electoral possibilities. Violence was low. Authorities welcomed outside election observers. Turnout was a credible 53 percent nationally though much lower in urban and heavily Palestinian areas that are brotherhood strongholds. The only missing elements were a genuine opposition and the prospect that the newly-elected parliament could exercise authority independent of the monarchy.
Despite facing internal censure a single brotherhood contender ignored the boycott to run and win. Notably, candidates across the political spectrum campaigned against the 1994 Jordan-Israel peace treaty and in support of resistance to "the Zionist entity." Jordan, Israel, the West Bank and Gaza comprise the original British Mandate for Palestine and most Jordanians are Palestinian Arabs. The king's backing comes mostly from tribal elements in the hinterlands.
In Egypt the brotherhood prefers participation to boycott. Independent candidates tied to the brotherhood have successfully filed paperwork to contest thirty percent of the seats in the assembly. In contrast to Jordan's more subtle strategy to the challenge posed by the brotherhood, Egyptian authorities have incarcerated brotherhood leaders and unleashed their heavies to beat-up brotherhood activists as they hang campaign posters. Foreign monitoring of the Egyptian polling will not be tolerated. This year, however, the ruling party is allowing intramural contests for the same constituency to create a semblance of competition. Despite similar obstacles in 2005, the brotherhood managed to capture 20 percent of the legislature.
Egypt's brotherhood has not been shy in playing the Israel card. Members have gotten themselves arrested in Port Said protesting Cairo's complicity in the quarantine of Hamas-controlled Gaza. Equally important, in both Egypt and Jordan the brotherhood mines for support among the great masses of economically downtrodden.
Neither regime appears in imminent danger of being destabilized by the brotherhood. At the same time, it is the pragmatism and patience of the Islamists that is most disquieting. One manifestation of its common sense approach: Islamist ecumenism best reflected in Hamas's theological justification for a Sunni-Shi'ite axis and alliance with Iran. Far from treating the Shi'ite Persian regime as schismatic, the Palestinian brothers have been emphasizing that Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei had himself translated the writings of Qutb into Persian.
What does all this mean? Unless Mideast autocrats can find the way and the wisdom to foster political institution-building, genuine republican government, and empower reformist elements prepared to reach an accommodation with modernity, sooner or later the fanatics will come to power. For Israel it would be preferable to face hard-hearted reformists across the bargaining table than jihadist across the battlefield. The other implication is that Iranian imperial ambitions, now dangerously melding with those of the brotherhood, need to be thwarted by the civilized world sooner rather than later.
Artful boycott
With the cocktail hour over the audience settled into their plush chairs to enjoy a performance of the musical Piaf inaugurating the new cultural center in Ariel earlier this month [November 8]. This was no ordinary opening night however, because in a move that ignited a political firestorm in Israel, some of the country's top artists and intellectuals had signed a petition pledging to boycott the center because it is located in the West Bank 25 miles east of Tel Aviv.
The big name boycotters included novelists David Grossman, A. B. Yehoshua, Amos Oz, and Aharon Appelfeld, celebrated actress Hanna Maron, Batsheva dance company choreographer Ohad Naharin and film director Eytan Fox of Yossi & Jagger fame. They had all signed a statement terming Ariel "an illegal settlement" whose existence made peace impossible and fostered "apartheid."
Though the big names drew media coverage, the campaign was actually spearheaded by the minor playwright Vardit Shalfi. Her goal, she said, was to raise questions about "the legitimacy of the settlements." Shalfi told an interviewer that she would never set foot in Ariel though she would have no compunctions about appearing at a Jenin theater operated by a former Palestinian gunman. Why? One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter, she explained.
The campaign quickly drew the support of radical academics such as Ben-Gurion University's Neve Gordon, an advocate of the international campaign of boycott and divestment of Israel. Indeed, the Campaign for the Academic & Cultural Boycott of Israel encouraged the Ariel boycotters while the San Francisco-based Jewish Voice for Peace jumped on the bandwagon by soliciting supporting signatures of stalwart Israel-bashers Ed Asner, Venessa Redgrave and Tony Kushner.
While it's no secret where Israel's arts community leans politically it is doubtful the big names on the Zionist left would be comfortable shunning Ariel in the company of the Jewish Voice for Peace crowd which cannot bring itself to support Israel's existence within any boundaries. For even more extreme advocates of the Arab cause the Ariel boycott is "bogus" because the "focus on settlements" obscures the "complicity" of all "Israeli academic and cultural institutions" in a system of "colonial control and apartheid" endured by the endlessly suffering Palestinians.
Predictably, given negligible support for a settlement boycott among mainstream Israelis, Shalfi's campaign raised as much debate about the role of artists in society as it did about settlements. Culture minister Limor Livnat has announced plans for a new prize to be awarded for Zionist contributions to art. And some Knesset members have threatened legislation that would withhold state financing of projects associated with the boycotters. To which Yossi Beilin, a leading proponent of the "peace process," retorted that in a democracy artists deserved the largesse of government even when they expressed unpopular views.
Why launch the boycott now? The impending completion of the cultural center was one obvious reason. Moreover, settlement opponents find places such as Ariel (and Ma'ale Adummim, outside Jerusalem) particularly vexing. With a mixed secular-Orthodox population of 20,000, plus an additional 10,000 students including Arabs enrolled in the town's college, Ariel is not easily denigrated as far away, alien and inhabited by settler crazies. Indeed, its strategic location means that Israel would likely push hard to retain the town in any peace treaty. Thus the boycotter's aim was to chip away at Ariel's image as part of normative Israel.
With the left-in-politics unpopular, fragmented, leaderless and out of ideas, its prospects for a return to governmental power next to nil, settlement opponents sought to exert their influence via a sector of Israel's population seemingly impervious to the slings and arrows wrought by Palestinian intransigence.
Indeed, while the Ariel boycott kerfuffle raised tempers within the Israeli body politic it seemed almost beside the point in the larger scheme of things. Top Hamas leader Mahmoud Zahar this week reiterated that for his organization settlements were hardly the issue. The Palestinian goal, he declared, must be the expulsion of the Jews from all the land. Meanwhile, the comparatively moderate Palestinian faction headed by Mahmoud Abbas again insisted that the Palestinians would never abandon their demand for the "right" of millions of Arab refugees and their descendants to "return" to the pre-1967 boundaries of Israel nor would they ever recognize Israel as a Jewish state.
The reason the curtain has come down on the boycotters is that ordinary Israelis simply don't accept the premise that Ariel – and settlements like it – are what's really keeping the Palestinians from making peace.
What's not Right
The twenty-five Jewish fanatics who last month paraded provocatively in the Israeli Arab town of Umm al-Fahm have been described as "right wing activists" and "far-right Israelis." Yet where – or whether – they belong on the Zionist political spectrum is not clear.
In pre-State days, the right embodied in the Jabotinsky movement was defined by its loyalty to Eretz Israel – as defined in the British Mandate for Palestine – and rooted Jewish civilizational values and nationalism. The movement has been unenthusiastic but not unwilling to sacrifice parts of the Jewish heartland for an accommodation with the Arabs.
In 1982 Menachem Begin withdrew from Sinai for a peace treaty with Egypt; in 2005 Ariel Sharon unilaterally pulled back from Gaza; and in his seminal 2009 Bar-Ilan speech Benjamin Netanyahu declared that Israel did not want to rule over the Palestinian Arabs in Judea and Samaria.
Why the break with Jabotinsky's original doctrine? Until 1977 the right-wing never led an Israeli government and enjoyed the luxury of ideologically purity. But as Sharon told intimates when he became the country's top decision maker, there are "things you see from here that you don't see from there." Such as the troubling demographic balance of Arabs and Jews west of the River Jordan; Israel's deepening diplomatic isolation; the emphatic need for foreign support in overcoming the existential threats posed by Iran and, not least, healing the deep cleavages within
Israel's body politic over the settlement enterprise. As the Jabotinsky right, founded, after all, by a 19th century classical liberal, was pulled toward pragmatism the political vacuum this created was filled largely by fervently Orthodox supporters of the slain Rabbi Meir Kahane. The youthful Kahane had begun his activism as a member of the Jabotinsky youth movement Betar. However, rigorous Orthodoxy and Zionist nationalism were never a natural fit. Many ultra-Orthodox Jews were and remain either non-Zionist or fervently anti-Zionist. The modern Orthodox were open to Zionism yet many of their old guard, such as Haim-Moshe Shapira, were unenthusiastic about settling the West Bank when the opportunity presented itself after the 1967 Six Day War.
When the U.S. born, originally modern Orthodox, Kahane moved to Israel in the early 1970s he sought an ideological home in the Jabotinsky camp led by Menachem Begin. When Begin declined Kahane formed the Kach party and ultimately won a single seat in the 1984 Knesset elections.
Kahane, whose platform called for the expulsion of the Arabs from Israel, charged Baruch Marzal, his parliamentary aide, with drawing ultra-Orthodox elements into his movement. Marzel's efforts helped spawn a novel messianic apocalyptic political concoction. Where left and right-wing Zionists historically saw the state as an instrument of Jewish self-determination, Kahaneists see it as an obstacle to the establishment of an anti-modern theocratic Jewish commonwealth. Thus what places Kahaneists outside the standard Zionist framework is not the vehemence with which they oppose government policy but their commitment to regime change.
Like all political movements, Kahaneists are not monolithic. Moshe Feiglin prefers working peacefully within the establishment in the belief that the Israeli electorate can be persuaded to embrace regime change if the impetus comes from within the Likud party. Daniella Weiss, on the other hand, has become an organizer of the "hilltop youth" some of whom have bizarrely embraced the anthem of the virulently anti-state Satmar hassidic sect.
In the Knesset, Kahane's legacy is carried forward singly by Michael Ben Ari of the Ichud Leumi. The splinter party's three other parliamentarians are not Kahaneists. How many of Ichud Leumi's 112,570 votes can be credited to Ben Ari is impossible to gauge. But in 2006 when Marzel himself ran unsuccessfully for the Knesset he garnered 25,000 votes.
Other right-wing Knesset parties including the modern Orthodox Habayit Hayehudi and the largely secular Russian Yisrael Beitenu stuck with Netanyahu after his Bar-Ilan address. Neither has much use for the Kahaneists. Habayit Hayehudi has attacked Marzel for "desecrating religious Zionism" while Marzel and Lieberman hold each other in disdain. Settler elder Elyakim Haetzni has condemned the kind of violence associated with the Kahaneists.
Today's Zionist right is hawkish on security issues, steadfastly opposes a return to the 1949 Armistice Lines and is dubious about Palestinian intentions. In contrast, those who would upend rather than reform Israel's dysfunctional political system, oppose territorial concessions on the basis of God's will, are violence-prone and seek to supplant modern Israel with a theocracy fit elsewhere on Israel's political spectrum.
The newly-released North American Jewish Data Bank's 2010 World Jewish Population Report, edited by professors Sergio DellaPergola, Arnold Dashefsky and Ira Sheskin has been making waves. Critics on the right are charging that in claiming a non-Jewish majority exists between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, the report is slanted and unduly pessimistic. Critics on the left in the Diaspora will complain that the authors were too "old school" in defining what Jewish means.
There are, says the report, about 13 million Jews in the world with the largest concentration (5.7 million), as determined by Orthodox standards of religious law, living in Israel. Of the Diaspora's 7.7 million, most (5,275,000) "core" Jews -- meaning people who identify themselves as Jews, or who are identified as Jews by those they residing with, and who have no other monotheistic religion -- live in the United States. Eighty-two percent of all Jews live in either Israel or the America. Other countries with 100,000 or more Jews are France (483,500), Canada (375,000), United Kingdom (292,000), Russian Federation, (205,000), Argentina (182,300), Germany (119,000) and Australia (107,500).
With the singular exception of Israel, Jewish fertility continued to be low, the population continued to age, intermarriage continued to increase, and relatively few children of intermarried couples were being raised as Jews, according to DellaPergola. Consider, too, that roughly 42% of all recently married Jews outside of Israel have married out.
Zionists take satisfaction that Israel is not only the center of Jewish civilization but has become home to the world's largest Jewish population. Israel’s 5,703,700 Jews when combined with 312,800 halakhically non-Jewish members of Jewish households (mostly from the former Soviet Union) forms a combined population of 6 million. More Jews now live in Greater Tel Aviv than in Metro New York.
What worries many Zionists however is Israel's shrinking Jewish majority. The number of Arabs in pre-1967 Israel is 1,238,000. The combined Jewish and Arab population in sovereign Israel plus the West Bank and Gaza is 11,222,100 leaving the total core Jewish population between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River at just 50.8%; 49.8% counting 222,000 foreign workers. If the non-halakhically Jewish population is counted, the Jewish percentage climbs to 53.6 of the total in Israel and the territories; 58.5% after subtracting Gaza.
No matter how the data is juggled, insists DellaPergola, "The Jewish majority is constantly decreasing — if extant at all — over the whole territory between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, and more particularly within the State of Israel."
DellaPergola has been challenged in the past for taking census numbers from the Palestinian Authority at face value. He has strongly defended the integrity of his data, though in this report DellaPergola appears to acknowledge that Palestinian figures had originally been "overestimated." Nevertheless, he concludes that the Palestinian Arab population in January 2010 stood at 3,670,000 about 2,200,000 in Judea and Samaria and 1,470,000 in Gaza. At the same time, he acknowledges that the Arab birthrate inside Israel proper and in the West Bank is slowly decreasing.
To complicate matters, not all of the halakhically Jewish numbers can necessarily be counted on by the Zionist enterprise. The ultra-Orthodox comprise about 8.5 percent of Israel's total population and are projected to grow to 17.5 percent within two decades. By 2020, 60% of Israeli youths eligible to serve in the IDF will be sitting on the sidelines because of draft exemptions granted to ultra-Orthodox youth.
Population surveys are intrinsically political documents. Experts with agendas will clash over methodology, data collection, definitions and interpretation. Diaspora liberals will lobby for a more "inclusive" criteria in defining Jews and a rosier interpretation of the Jewish predicament. DellaPergola admits that the U.S. Jewish population would jump to at least 6.7 million if the non-halachic criteria for defining Jews under Israel's Law of Return were applied in the American setting. Dismissing evidence to the contrary as tendentious, DellaPergola's Israeli critics and their American allies will argue that talk of Arabs outnumbering Jews is alarmist, that in any case, Israel's political system can be tweaked so that even an outsized Arab minority would be neither disenfranchised nor dominant.
On one point there is no dispute: DellaPergola's figures generate such visceral reactions because at stake is nothing less than Jewish continuity in the Diaspora and sovereignty in Israel.
Islam and Interfaith Relations
Old-fashioned anti-Semitism needs to be factored into the equation if Westerners are to comprehend the zero-sum nature of the Arab-Israel conflict. But the good news out of an ecumenical conclave held in the House of Lords [November 23] by the Children of Abraham organization and a British affiliate of Cairo's Al Azhar University is that a long-standing ban on Muslim-Jewish interfaith relations has been lifted. The fly in the ointment is that the decision did not explicitly mention Judaism by name. A spokesman for London-based Grand Mufti Sheikh Fawzi Al-Zifzaf, who drafted the ruling, explained that "the people who have taken the document forward have done so at great risk." No doubt.
A recent BBC Panorama program revealed that even today certain Muslim parochial schools providing part-time instruction to 5,000 children at 40 different locations in the UK have been using a curriculum of hate supplied by Saudi Arabia that among other things refer to Jews as looking like "monkeys and pigs." Pupils are further taught that Jews seek world domination. The Saudi ambassador in the U.S. reportedly told a Children of Abraham official that the texts did not truly represent the values of his country. Of course, youngsters educated outside the West, especially in fanatical Islamist regimes, are at even greater risk of being inculcated into the oldest hatred.
Speaking on his movement's Gaza-based television station recently [November 5] senior Hamas leader Mahmoud Zahar offered viewers a twisted capsule history of the Jews from Pharaonic times to medieval Europe in order to demonstrate that anti-Semitism was the fault of the Jews themselves. Jews have faced a series of expulsions Zahar lectured, for sucking the blood of, and stealing from, non-Jews. One day, he declared, the Jews would be expelled "from the entire territory of Palestine, Allah willing." He cited the Koran as justifying the murder of Jews and to reiterate a recurring genocidal theme, developed in his [2008] book, that the Jewish people had “no future between nations." There is no place for Jews anywhere in the Middle East, he said. "You are about to disappear." As a founding leader of Hamas and its former foreign minister, Zahar is merely mirroring the visceral Jew-hatred manifested in the movement's 1988 charter.
Plainly, Hamas's problem with a Jewish state is not rooted in politics, but in religious chauvinism. In more genteel form the comparatively moderate Palestinian camp headed by Mahmoud Abbas is no less invested in invalidating Jewish rights. Take a new study carried out on behalf of the Palestinian Authority which found that Jewish people have no authentic connection to the Western Wall. That makes Jews interlopers in the Mideast. No wonder that a recent poll conducted for The Israel Project found sixty percent of Palestinian Arabs felt that a "two state solution" should be a precursor to the phased destruction of Israel. A Pew survey earlier this year found more than 90% of Egyptians, Jordanians, Lebanese and Palestinians held hateful views toward Jews, while even 74% of non-Arab Muslims in Indonesia were hostile. Antagonism toward Jews is so widespread that one London newspaper eulogized Al-Azhar's Sheikh Mohammed Sayyid Tantawi who died in March, for his moderation – he had denounced the 9/11 attacks -- his description of Jews as "enemies of Allah" and "descendants of apes and pigs" notwithstanding.
Apologists for Muslim anti-Semitism argue that Islamic attitudes toward Jews had been benign even tolerant until the establishment of modern Israel – the Zionists' "original sin." In fact, the Jewish condition under Muslim rule ranged from one of peaceful inferiority to that of persecution and humiliation, in the assessment of Bernard Lewis's The Jews of Islam. Martin Gilbert has recently provided fresh historical evidence for Lewis's appraisal. Islamic civilization assigned Jews an institutionally inferior societal place as dhimmis and the Koran makes a number of disparaging references to Jews (though also a few positive ones).
It would be comforting to think that contemporary Muslim civilization is at least grappling with how to relate to Jews outside the framework of dhimmitude. If only the laudable, albeit, faint efforts of a relatively unknown Grand Mufti in Britain to explore a new relationship were not held in contempt by Islam's more influential holy men such as Sheikh Yousuf Al-Qaradhawi whose broadcast on Al Jazeera, reach 40 million believers worldwide and who takes pride in boycotting interfaith conferences with Jews.
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Referendum for Peace
Britons will be holding a national referendum early next year on electoral reform. The Arab League is supporting a referendum in war torn Sudan over independence for the south. When the Turkish parliament failed to amend the constitution by a sufficient majority the nation held a referendum in September to do so. And while the United States does not hold national referendums state "propositions" are not uncommon.
Yet the 65-33 vote in Israel's Knesset [on Monday, November 24] to require a referendum before ceding east Jerusalem, the Golan Heights or any other part of sovereign Israel should a peace deal with the Palestinian Authority or Syria be struck has kicked up a ruckus. The plebiscite would be held if the government was unable to muster 80 of parliament's 120 lawmakers to approve a withdrawal. In promoting the referendum, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu argued that it would prevent an irresponsible agreement, while facilitating strong public backing for one that satisfied Israel's national interests.
Arab reaction has been unenthusiastic. The Syrian Foreign Ministry found the law to be further proof that Israel was not interested in peace. Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said that "ending the occupation" could not be put to a referendum. A curious stance in that Mahmoud Abbas has repeatedly raised the possibility of a Palestinian referendum and been lauded for doing so by Arabists in the American foreign policy community.
Israeli reactions have run along political lines. Both left and right saw passage as an impediment to the emergence of a Palestinian state. Technically, no referendum would be required for a West Bank pullback since Judea and Samaria have never been annexed to Israel. But settler leaders said the law was "very good news" in that any deal would likely be linked to land swaps in sovereign Israel. Haaretz editorialized that the law spit in the face of the international community. Peace Now threatened to challenge the constitutionality of the law. Kadima leader Tzipi Livni and 15 of her 28-member faction voted against the bill; Shaul Mofaz, who has announced plans to unseat her, was joined by 11 other party lawmakers in being conspicuously absent. Kadima's Otniel Schneller and Eli Aflalo voted for the bill. Labor leader Ehud Barak issued a strong statement against the bill, but also absented himself rather than vote with most of his faction against it. Likud, Yisrael Beitenu, Shas, and Habayit Hayehudi voted unanimously in favor; Meretz and the Arab parties voted unanimously against. The left's opposition is also somewhat curious in that it was Yitzhak Rabin who first raised the idea of a withdrawal referendum.
Whether referendums are generally a good idea is a matter for debate. They certainly provide the demos (people) kratos (rule) – direct power to legislate without intermediaries. America's political system is, of course, designed to keep unrefined power out of the hands of the masses for fear of the tyranny of the majority. Authoritarian leaders have been known to conduct and manipulate referendums to solidify their power. For example, in 1979 Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini legitimized the establishment of Iran's imperial theocracy by holding a popular plebiscite.
What does the referendum decision signify in the Israeli instance? Whether to withdraw to something approximating the 1949 Armistice Lines in exchange for an Arab commitment of, at best, a cold peace presents Israelis with an immense dilemma. Such boundaries would be very hard to defend especially if the West Bank falls to Hamas. A pullout ratified by a razor thin Knesset majority lubricated by political horse-trading would lack legitimacy and tear the fabric of Israel's society asunder. It's happened in the past: The 1993 Oslo Accords were approved with 61 MKs in favor 50 against and 8 abstentions. Oslo II, a follow-up agreement, passed 61-59 only after three neophyte opposition members were enticed to join Rabin's government in exchange for patronage appointments.
Of course, a referendum would be less imperative were Israel's political system less dysfunctional (all major parties agree on the need for fundamental electoral reform). Netanyahu, who was opposition leader at the time Rabin railroaded Oslo through the Knesset, clearly recognizes that any deal he signs with the Palestinians or Syrians would equally lack authenticity unless it achieved massive Knesset backing or popular support in a referendum.
For all the hoopla raised by the referendum law the reality is that Abbas still refuses to return to the negotiating table and Hamas makes no pretense about wanting peace altogether. The role Israeli Arabs (20 percent of the population) would have in a referendum is unclear. Israel's High Court could still decide that the referendum is unconstitutional. And of course, the Knesset could vote at anytime repeal to repeal the law by a simple majority. In short, champions of peace have little to fear and much to embrace in this law.
Gas Cornucopia
The blessing for the Promised Land was that it would flow with milk and honey, not abundant rainfall or copious petro-carbon deposits. Fortunately, within the next several years a series of desalination plants will help alleviate Israel's chronic water shortage while continued exploitation of off-shore gas fields should make the Jewish state energy independent – and more.
Since 2004, Israel has been tapping billions of cubic meters of gas from two deep-sea fields, Mari-B and Marine, just off its southern coast. But it is the still untapped fields off the country's northern coast, and so deep below the Mediterranean that robots will be needed to exploit them, that has truly captured the Israeli imagination. Leviathan, which is far out to sea, could come on-line in 2016, though Tamar and Dalit, smaller fields closer to the coast, could begin production in 2014.
These subterranean gas deposits have the potential of transforming Israel from a country completely dependent on foreign energy sources to a major global energy supplier. An Israeli pipeline could run via Cyprus to Greece providing Europe with gas for its winters and lessening the continent's dependency on Russia. Israeli liquefied gas could be shipped to India and China making them less dependent on Iran. At home, electrical plants could be retooled to operate on gas; electric (or hybrid) cars might supplant those running exclusively on petrol.
For now, however, Israel still imports $2 billion worth of gas annually from a privately owned Egyptian company. Coal needs to be imported to generate electricity; and petroleum is purchased on the world market. Until the mullahs came to power in 1979, Israel enjoyed a reliable supply of Iranian oil. Later, the Alma oil field in the Sinai, discovered and developed by Israel, could have provided energy independence, but was given up in the 1982 peace treaty with Egypt. Fortunately, most Israeli households use solar power to heat water.
Israel's foes have reacted predictably to its off-shore gas finds. Hezbollah, the hegemon of Lebanon, has been making threatening noises about the northern fields, while Palestinian advocates have claimed the southern fields as the patrimony of Hamas-dominated Gaza.
For Israel, striking gas is like winning the lottery – attendant with political, social and economic opportunities as well as pitfalls. The Tel Aviv stock market reacted euphorically as investors pondered the fortunes to be made. That led to a massive debate about who actually owned the gas cornucopia, the consortium of Israeli and American partners spearheaded by Yitzhak Teshuva who risked their capital (on searches that had for decades proved futile), or the "people." Back in 1952 the Knesset had legislated royalties of 12.5% on mining. The American government has been assessing royalties of 18.75% on off-shore oil and gas; in Norway the government takes a whopping 67 percent. Social campaigners demanded that the royalties be drastically hiked. Free marketers complained it was unfair to retroactively change the rules.
To sort out the division of spoils the Netanyahu government appointed a committee headed by economist Eytan Sheshinski. After seven months, and without inviting Teshuva to present his case, his panel decided that royalties should stay at 12.5%; that the tax exemption depletion allowance should be abolished; and that profits should not be taxed until investors had recovered 150% of their outlays.
These recommendations, which await a public hearing, cabinet debate and Knesset approval, have been lauded across the political spectrum from Bank of Israel Governor Stanley Fischer to Labor's Shelly Yachimovich, a neo-socialist. So far Avigdor Lieberman's Yisrael Beitenu party has been most vocal in expressing concern that the recommendations may discourage future energy exploration.
Even if a formula can be found that balances the rational need to provide incentives for entrepreneurs with the desires of ordinary citizens to benefit from the gas windfall there is still the question of precisely what the state will do with the money. Former Knesset member Michael Melchior has been lobbying for the revenues be channeled into a sovereign fund invested and earmarked to enhance the country's human potential. Anything would be better than dumping it into the general budget. There is, fortunately, time for considered judgment. Revenues from the northern fields will not begin flowing into the state's coffers for another 8-15 years, at the earliest.
Kadima in the Wings
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's apparent about-face capitulation to Obama administration pressure for an extension of the moratorium on West Bank settlement construction has resulted in roiling dissension within his Likud party and a sense of déjà vu. The possibility of another split within the party cannot be discounted.
The previous Likud schism occurred in November 2005 when Ariel Sharon founded the Kadima party as a political workaround after Likud members rejected his plan for a unilateral pullout from Gaza. After Sharon became incapacitated by a stroke, Ehud Olmert led Kadima in winning the 2006 elections by campaigning for a further unilateral separation this time from the Palestinians in the West Bank. However, aggression from Gaza and Lebanon (where Israel had in 2000 unilaterally withdrawn from a security zone) undermined the attraction of unilateralism and the policy was discarded.
Curiously, despite having lost its charismatic founder in Sharon and philosophical underpinning – unilateralism – the party has consolidated itself as a viable "third- way" alignment of pragmatists; basically a vehicle for running for office that has attracted politicians from Likud, Labor and beyond. Its Knesset line-up includes a West Bank settler and a Peace Now proponent. The New York Times has variously called Kadima "center-right" and "center-left."
It is widely understood that President Barack Obama would have preferred Israel's 2009 elections to have resulted in a Kadima-led government with Tzipi Livni (formerly of the Likud) at the helm. Washington is reportedly pressing Netanyahu to jettison right-wing coalition partners Yisrael Beitenu and Habayit Hayehudi and replace them with Kadima. This would presumably make Israel's negotiating stance more malleable. The flaw with this line of reasoning is that the previous Kadima government led by Olmert and Livni failed to close a deal with the Palestinian faction led by Mahmoud Abbas despite offering unprecedented territorial concessions on the grounds these were still insufficient.
What now for Kadima? Unlike other third-way parties that have come and gone, Kadima has demonstrated remarkable staying power. Partly this is because its leaders are no political novices, but in addition Kadima's arrival on the scene coincided with the evolution of a post-second intifada Israeli consensus that ending the conflict with the Palestinian Arabs was a vital national interest even if it resulted in the establishment of a "Palestine" alongside Israel.
Livni as opposition leader though photogenic has not emerged as a strong presence, furthering a reputation for indecisiveness established when she repeatedly hesitated to call for Olmert's resignation while he was enmeshed in a series of scandals and discredited by his handling of the Second Lebanon War. She also failed to form a government though Kadima won one more seat than Likud in the past election. And in a recent Knesset speech Livni took Netanyahu to task for his craven patronage of the ultra-Orthodox parties, only to have a haredi leader produce a draft agreement showing she had been equally ready to kowtow to their demands.
Livni is now being challenged by Shaul Mofaz, a former top general, whom she barely defeated for the party leadership in 2008. While her reputation for integrity is not an issue, Kadima is hardly a bastion of good-government reformists. Sharon had been investigated for wrongdoing on multiple occasions; Olmert is now on trial for corruption; policy chairman Haim Ramon was convicted of indecent behavior; Avraham Hirchson, a finance minister, went to prison for corruption. And in the latest incident, Tzahi Hanegbi, a party powerbroker, was forced to quit the Knesset this month having being found guilty of moral turpitude.
In spite of all this and the failure to articulate a coherent platform to replace unilateralism, Kadima and Likud continue to run neck and neck in public opinion surveys. Livni's confidantes have accused Netanyahu of spreading false rumors that Kadima is poised to join a unity government. She said that would not happen until Netanyahu accepted her conditions, though these have never been enunciated with much specificity. Still, Livni has pledged to give Netanyahu a political safety net if he goes ahead and extends the settlement freeze.
Strangely enough, Kadima's political nimbleness makes it attractive for disgruntled voters from left, center and right. Its success reflects the diminished expectations Israelis have of their elected officials. Ideological consistency, adherence to solemn campaign pledges, upstanding ethical behavior, even leadership excellence is no longer paramount. What seems to matter most is Kadima's ability to offer "pragmatism" -- whatever that may mean at any particular time.
The Brothers Lurk
November is a time for elections not just in the United States but also in Jordan and Egypt. Jordanians voted on November 9 to overwhelmingly fill the Chamber of Deputies with loyalists of King Abdullah II. Egyptians will go to the polls on November 28 to elect the People’s Assembly and there is little doubt that Hosni Mubarak's ruling National Democratic Party will remain in control. As a result of short-sighted policies that have sidelined comparatively liberal reformist elements, the only viable opposition the Abdullah and Mubarak dynasties face comes from the benighted Moslem Brotherhood whose role in politics is severely restricted. Both leaders are mindful that Hamas, the Palestinian branch of the brotherhood, won 58% of the vote in free 2006 Palestinian Authority elections.
Founded in Egypt by Hasan al-Banna in 1928, the brotherhood preaches pan-Islam, a worldwide Caliphate, the application of Sharia law to daily life and politics and – jihad. In 1950s and 60s Sayyid Qutb fine-tuned the brotherhood's Sunni ideology to emphasize opposition to Western values. Naturally, anti-Zionism has been integral to the movement since the 1930s and remains a rallying cry.
The 21st century brotherhood aims for a legitimate persona, playing down calls to violence and dissociating from the movement's most infamous devotees, al-Qaida's Ayman al-Zawahiri and Osama bin-Laden. The Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood while frank about Sharia law insists that "under current circumstances" it has no ambitions to rule the country.
On Election Day in Jordan, a national holiday, candidate posters were plastered around providing the facade of widespread political activity. Jordanian authorities in point of fact encouraged brotherhood candidates to participate. But the Islamic Action Front, the local brotherhood affiliate, declared an election boycott on the grounds that new rules favoring directly elected candidates over blocs and freshly gerrymandered districts limited the movement's electoral possibilities. Violence was low. Authorities welcomed outside election observers. Turnout was a credible 53 percent nationally though much lower in urban and heavily Palestinian areas that are brotherhood strongholds. The only missing elements were a genuine opposition and the prospect that the newly-elected parliament could exercise authority independent of the monarchy.
Despite facing internal censure a single brotherhood contender ignored the boycott to run and win. Notably, candidates across the political spectrum campaigned against the 1994 Jordan-Israel peace treaty and in support of resistance to "the Zionist entity." Jordan, Israel, the West Bank and Gaza comprise the original British Mandate for Palestine and most Jordanians are Palestinian Arabs. The king's backing comes mostly from tribal elements in the hinterlands.
In Egypt the brotherhood prefers participation to boycott. Independent candidates tied to the brotherhood have successfully filed paperwork to contest thirty percent of the seats in the assembly. In contrast to Jordan's more subtle strategy to the challenge posed by the brotherhood, Egyptian authorities have incarcerated brotherhood leaders and unleashed their heavies to beat-up brotherhood activists as they hang campaign posters. Foreign monitoring of the Egyptian polling will not be tolerated. This year, however, the ruling party is allowing intramural contests for the same constituency to create a semblance of competition. Despite similar obstacles in 2005, the brotherhood managed to capture 20 percent of the legislature.
Egypt's brotherhood has not been shy in playing the Israel card. Members have gotten themselves arrested in Port Said protesting Cairo's complicity in the quarantine of Hamas-controlled Gaza. Equally important, in both Egypt and Jordan the brotherhood mines for support among the great masses of economically downtrodden.
Neither regime appears in imminent danger of being destabilized by the brotherhood. At the same time, it is the pragmatism and patience of the Islamists that is most disquieting. One manifestation of its common sense approach: Islamist ecumenism best reflected in Hamas's theological justification for a Sunni-Shi'ite axis and alliance with Iran. Far from treating the Shi'ite Persian regime as schismatic, the Palestinian brothers have been emphasizing that Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei had himself translated the writings of Qutb into Persian.
What does all this mean? Unless Mideast autocrats can find the way and the wisdom to foster political institution-building, genuine republican government, and empower reformist elements prepared to reach an accommodation with modernity, sooner or later the fanatics will come to power. For Israel it would be preferable to face hard-hearted reformists across the bargaining table than jihadist across the battlefield. The other implication is that Iranian imperial ambitions, now dangerously melding with those of the brotherhood, need to be thwarted by the civilized world sooner rather than later.
Artful boycott
With the cocktail hour over the audience settled into their plush chairs to enjoy a performance of the musical Piaf inaugurating the new cultural center in Ariel earlier this month [November 8]. This was no ordinary opening night however, because in a move that ignited a political firestorm in Israel, some of the country's top artists and intellectuals had signed a petition pledging to boycott the center because it is located in the West Bank 25 miles east of Tel Aviv.
The big name boycotters included novelists David Grossman, A. B. Yehoshua, Amos Oz, and Aharon Appelfeld, celebrated actress Hanna Maron, Batsheva dance company choreographer Ohad Naharin and film director Eytan Fox of Yossi & Jagger fame. They had all signed a statement terming Ariel "an illegal settlement" whose existence made peace impossible and fostered "apartheid."
Though the big names drew media coverage, the campaign was actually spearheaded by the minor playwright Vardit Shalfi. Her goal, she said, was to raise questions about "the legitimacy of the settlements." Shalfi told an interviewer that she would never set foot in Ariel though she would have no compunctions about appearing at a Jenin theater operated by a former Palestinian gunman. Why? One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter, she explained.
The campaign quickly drew the support of radical academics such as Ben-Gurion University's Neve Gordon, an advocate of the international campaign of boycott and divestment of Israel. Indeed, the Campaign for the Academic & Cultural Boycott of Israel encouraged the Ariel boycotters while the San Francisco-based Jewish Voice for Peace jumped on the bandwagon by soliciting supporting signatures of stalwart Israel-bashers Ed Asner, Venessa Redgrave and Tony Kushner.
While it's no secret where Israel's arts community leans politically it is doubtful the big names on the Zionist left would be comfortable shunning Ariel in the company of the Jewish Voice for Peace crowd which cannot bring itself to support Israel's existence within any boundaries. For even more extreme advocates of the Arab cause the Ariel boycott is "bogus" because the "focus on settlements" obscures the "complicity" of all "Israeli academic and cultural institutions" in a system of "colonial control and apartheid" endured by the endlessly suffering Palestinians.
Predictably, given negligible support for a settlement boycott among mainstream Israelis, Shalfi's campaign raised as much debate about the role of artists in society as it did about settlements. Culture minister Limor Livnat has announced plans for a new prize to be awarded for Zionist contributions to art. And some Knesset members have threatened legislation that would withhold state financing of projects associated with the boycotters. To which Yossi Beilin, a leading proponent of the "peace process," retorted that in a democracy artists deserved the largesse of government even when they expressed unpopular views.
Why launch the boycott now? The impending completion of the cultural center was one obvious reason. Moreover, settlement opponents find places such as Ariel (and Ma'ale Adummim, outside Jerusalem) particularly vexing. With a mixed secular-Orthodox population of 20,000, plus an additional 10,000 students including Arabs enrolled in the town's college, Ariel is not easily denigrated as far away, alien and inhabited by settler crazies. Indeed, its strategic location means that Israel would likely push hard to retain the town in any peace treaty. Thus the boycotter's aim was to chip away at Ariel's image as part of normative Israel.
With the left-in-politics unpopular, fragmented, leaderless and out of ideas, its prospects for a return to governmental power next to nil, settlement opponents sought to exert their influence via a sector of Israel's population seemingly impervious to the slings and arrows wrought by Palestinian intransigence.
Indeed, while the Ariel boycott kerfuffle raised tempers within the Israeli body politic it seemed almost beside the point in the larger scheme of things. Top Hamas leader Mahmoud Zahar this week reiterated that for his organization settlements were hardly the issue. The Palestinian goal, he declared, must be the expulsion of the Jews from all the land. Meanwhile, the comparatively moderate Palestinian faction headed by Mahmoud Abbas again insisted that the Palestinians would never abandon their demand for the "right" of millions of Arab refugees and their descendants to "return" to the pre-1967 boundaries of Israel nor would they ever recognize Israel as a Jewish state.
The reason the curtain has come down on the boycotters is that ordinary Israelis simply don't accept the premise that Ariel – and settlements like it – are what's really keeping the Palestinians from making peace.
What's not Right
The twenty-five Jewish fanatics who last month paraded provocatively in the Israeli Arab town of Umm al-Fahm have been described as "right wing activists" and "far-right Israelis." Yet where – or whether – they belong on the Zionist political spectrum is not clear.
In pre-State days, the right embodied in the Jabotinsky movement was defined by its loyalty to Eretz Israel – as defined in the British Mandate for Palestine – and rooted Jewish civilizational values and nationalism. The movement has been unenthusiastic but not unwilling to sacrifice parts of the Jewish heartland for an accommodation with the Arabs.
In 1982 Menachem Begin withdrew from Sinai for a peace treaty with Egypt; in 2005 Ariel Sharon unilaterally pulled back from Gaza; and in his seminal 2009 Bar-Ilan speech Benjamin Netanyahu declared that Israel did not want to rule over the Palestinian Arabs in Judea and Samaria.
Why the break with Jabotinsky's original doctrine? Until 1977 the right-wing never led an Israeli government and enjoyed the luxury of ideologically purity. But as Sharon told intimates when he became the country's top decision maker, there are "things you see from here that you don't see from there." Such as the troubling demographic balance of Arabs and Jews west of the River Jordan; Israel's deepening diplomatic isolation; the emphatic need for foreign support in overcoming the existential threats posed by Iran and, not least, healing the deep cleavages within
Israel's body politic over the settlement enterprise. As the Jabotinsky right, founded, after all, by a 19th century classical liberal, was pulled toward pragmatism the political vacuum this created was filled largely by fervently Orthodox supporters of the slain Rabbi Meir Kahane. The youthful Kahane had begun his activism as a member of the Jabotinsky youth movement Betar. However, rigorous Orthodoxy and Zionist nationalism were never a natural fit. Many ultra-Orthodox Jews were and remain either non-Zionist or fervently anti-Zionist. The modern Orthodox were open to Zionism yet many of their old guard, such as Haim-Moshe Shapira, were unenthusiastic about settling the West Bank when the opportunity presented itself after the 1967 Six Day War.
When the U.S. born, originally modern Orthodox, Kahane moved to Israel in the early 1970s he sought an ideological home in the Jabotinsky camp led by Menachem Begin. When Begin declined Kahane formed the Kach party and ultimately won a single seat in the 1984 Knesset elections.
Kahane, whose platform called for the expulsion of the Arabs from Israel, charged Baruch Marzal, his parliamentary aide, with drawing ultra-Orthodox elements into his movement. Marzel's efforts helped spawn a novel messianic apocalyptic political concoction. Where left and right-wing Zionists historically saw the state as an instrument of Jewish self-determination, Kahaneists see it as an obstacle to the establishment of an anti-modern theocratic Jewish commonwealth. Thus what places Kahaneists outside the standard Zionist framework is not the vehemence with which they oppose government policy but their commitment to regime change.
Like all political movements, Kahaneists are not monolithic. Moshe Feiglin prefers working peacefully within the establishment in the belief that the Israeli electorate can be persuaded to embrace regime change if the impetus comes from within the Likud party. Daniella Weiss, on the other hand, has become an organizer of the "hilltop youth" some of whom have bizarrely embraced the anthem of the virulently anti-state Satmar hassidic sect.
In the Knesset, Kahane's legacy is carried forward singly by Michael Ben Ari of the Ichud Leumi. The splinter party's three other parliamentarians are not Kahaneists. How many of Ichud Leumi's 112,570 votes can be credited to Ben Ari is impossible to gauge. But in 2006 when Marzel himself ran unsuccessfully for the Knesset he garnered 25,000 votes.
Other right-wing Knesset parties including the modern Orthodox Habayit Hayehudi and the largely secular Russian Yisrael Beitenu stuck with Netanyahu after his Bar-Ilan address. Neither has much use for the Kahaneists. Habayit Hayehudi has attacked Marzel for "desecrating religious Zionism" while Marzel and Lieberman hold each other in disdain. Settler elder Elyakim Haetzni has condemned the kind of violence associated with the Kahaneists.
Today's Zionist right is hawkish on security issues, steadfastly opposes a return to the 1949 Armistice Lines and is dubious about Palestinian intentions. In contrast, those who would upend rather than reform Israel's dysfunctional political system, oppose territorial concessions on the basis of God's will, are violence-prone and seek to supplant modern Israel with a theocracy fit elsewhere on Israel's political spectrum.
I am an Israel briefer and analyst, a political scientist, and a speaker on Jewish civilization. I'm also a rewrite guy & fact-checker, who can make your writing clear and compelling & help you contextualize.
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