Herzl vs Hobbes
On Sunday, the Associated Press disseminated worldwide a photo of "a Jewish settler" confronting unseen Palestinians in northern Samaria. If a picture is worth 1,000 words, what to make of this: a bare-chested, pipe-wielding teen, ski-mask drawn over his face, goth T-shirt tied to a belt holding up camouflage trousers.
Move over, Peace Now. You've met your match. No group could better undermine the case for Jewish rights in the West Bank than settler radicals. In a world predisposed to see all of Judea and Samaria, and east Jerusalem, as Palestinian; at a time when our government, such as it is, remains incapable of articulating where our boundaries should be drawn - Israel can ill afford settlers behaving badly.
The phenomenon is nothing new; but lately it has spiked, serving to close minds and harden hearts to Israel's legitimate security concerns and historic civilizational tie to the West Bank. This behavior bolsters the notion that peace can be achieved only by a full Israeli withdrawal to the 1949 armistice lines.
TAKE WHAT happened outside Otniel, south of Hebron, on Wednesday, when Palestinian Arabs came to harvest their olives in coordination with the IDF. Suddenly, a group of 10 masked far-right youths appeared and instigated a confrontation. One soldier was hit on the head with a club. Another rowdy tried to grab a soldier's weapon, and was himself injured.
Or take what happened Saturday in the Tel Rumeida area of Hebron. Four Jewish youths were captured on camera - in footage broadcast incessantly on Arab stations - beating Abed Hashalmoun, a news agency photographer, as well as a foreign volunteer who had come to help local Palestinians pick olives.
The olive pickers had made no effort to liaison with the authorities, even though they were operating near a Jewish enclave, on Shabbat, in the heart of a tinderbox. It doesn't take a suspicious mind to surmise that their presence was something of a set-up, and that the settlers should have had the wisdom to stay away. The confrontation will now no doubt join other voluminous footage of "settlers behaving badly" already flooding the Web.
Also this week, radicals, many of them minors, protested outside the home of OC Central Command Maj.-Gen. Gadi Shamni. The message was explicit: "You try bringing your law to our turf, and we'll make you miserable."
Some settler leaders - think of them as "adult hilltop youth" - have been sending another not-so-subtle message: The more proponents of a deal with the Palestinians push their policies, the more settlers will react with violence on the ground. It's a tactic as brilliant as it is indefensible. Because we do not live in a Hobbesian state of nature.
Let's be clear. Only a small number of Israelis living over the Green Line are extremists. And in some areas, olive harvests really do pose a genuine security dilemma - with trees growing in proximity to schools, for instance. The possibility of terrorists exploiting the harvest season to infiltrate a settlement is not far-fetched; nor that farmers might pass on settlement security information.
Also, while kindhearted Israelis with pure motives have aided Palestinian harvesting, not a few foreign and Israeli "peace activists" have come on the scene to exacerbate tensions and provoke confrontation.
SETTLER leaders recently launched an advertising campaign to tell Israelis why we should feel connected to Judea and Samaria. But radicals running wild in the hills of Judea and Samaria achieve the opposite. How sad that a relatively small group of fanatics has been able to divert the spotlight onto their misbehavior.
As he helped pick olives north of Ramallah on Wednesday, reporters in tow, Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salaam Fayad declared, in a sly juxtaposition: "The settlers being here [in the West Bank] is in itself illegitimate. And, on top of that, they engage in acts of violence..."
Meanwhile, in its long tradition of loaded questions, last week's Economist wondered: "Will the settlers stymie a two-state solution?"
Of course it is Palestinian intransigence that is torpedoing such a solution. But with everyone focused on settlers behaving badly, the Palestinians are getting a free ride.
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Iwo Jima redux
At dawn 25 years ago today, a lumbering, yellow Mercedes truck smashed into US Marine headquarters near Beirut airport, detonating a gargantuan bomb that killed 241 peace-keepers. It was the Marines' biggest single-battle death toll since Iwo Jima.
A short while later, a car-bomb killed 74 French peace-keepers not far away.
Imagine this anniversary being celebrated by Iran's Supreme "spiritual" leader, Ayatollah Ali Khameni, in the company of Revolutionary Guard commandant Mohammad Ali Jafari and intelligence chief Gholam-Hussein Mohseni-Ejei. Khameni might make a toast - non-alcoholic - to the memory of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini; Jafari might boast that their predecessors pulled off the killings in secrecy. Mohseni-Ejei, in all his vainglory, might remark that the entire operation was accomplished when the regime was but six years old.
Today will surely also not go unmarked by Hizbullah, founded by Iran in summer 1982 to propagate Khomeini's ideas among Lebanon's Arab Shi'ites.
Sheikh Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah, now in his 70s, is said to have blessed the truck and car bombers. Will he get an anniversary call from Hassan Nasrallah? Will they recall Abbas Musawi, Nasrallah's immediate predecessor as Hizbullah chief, who supervised the attacks? He was liquidated by the IDF in 1992.
There would also have to be warm thoughts for Imad Mughniyeh, once Fadlallah's bodyguard, later Nasrallah's operations chief. Mughniyeh, who was secretly indicted for the Marine bombing and also plotted the 1996 Khobar Towers atrocity in Saudi Arabia, was himself mysteriously removed from the scene in a February 2008 Damascus car-bombing.
One need not be predisposed to gloominess to raise the concern of Iran-Hizbullah selecting today as an auspicious occasion to attack an Israeli or Jewish target.
Extra vigilance is called for.
THE MARINES were sent to Lebanon as part of a multinational peace-keeping force after the IDF expelled the PLO leadership from Lebanon on August 30, 1982, and Christian militias massacred scores of Palestinians at the Sabra and Shatilla refugee camps on September 17.
President Ronald Reagan ordered the Marines not to engage in combat; they were to be a stabilizing influence.
Iran and Hizbullah, however, wanted to promote anarchy, not stability. They carried out scores of attacks on IDF forces in 1982 - two of them particularly horrendous, killing 36 in Sidon on November 4, and 75 in Tyre, November 11.
Local Shi'ites first welcomed Israel's bid to rid Lebanon of the PLO. Then, egged on by Iran, they violently opposed the newly-created IDF security zone in the South.
Next it was America's turn. On April 18, 1983, Iran ordered Hizbullah to car-bomb the US embassy in Beirut: 61 lives were lost. "Shadowy" Muslim extremists were blamed. Reagan declared that America would not be deterred.
Then came the simultaneous attacks this day 25 years ago. Reagan again declared that the US would not cut and run. Four months later, he pulled US forces out.
And still, Iran and Hizbullah, working as the "Islamic Jihad" or the "Revolutionary Justice Organization," kept up the pressure. The US embassy annex in Beirut was bombed on September 9, 1984. Next, TWA Flight 847 was hijacked; Western clergymen, academics and journalists were kidnaped. The world waited to see what America would do.
On October 5, 1984, The New York Times reported that the administration had decided: "A retaliatory strike against the Party of God or Iran would only produce an escalation in terrorist attacks against the United States."
IN THE intervening quarter-century, America, and especially Europe, have sought to avoid an unpleasant, even painful confrontation with Iran. And anyway, there was business to be done. There was, moreover, the delusion that the mullahs, once "engaged," could be cajoled into being good world citizens.
Consequently, both Iran and Hizbullah have grown ever more assertive. One works to build nuclear weapons; the other dominates Lebanon's polity.
Offstage, meanwhile, a little-known Sunni fanatic, Osama bin Laden, watched America's feeble response to Iranian and Hizbullah aggression. In a telling interview three years before September 11, 2001, he observed that, clearly, America had lost the will to fight.
It has since costs thousands of American lives to disabuse him of this notion. Would it not have been better to do so from the start?
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Cui bono?
For having failed to speak out against the Nazis during World War II, the moniker "Hitler's Pope" has stuck to Eugenio Pacelli, later Pius XII. Yet every pope since he died, 50 years ago this month, has been a champion of his reputation and "sanctity."
Factions within the Church are pushing hard to have Pacelli beatified, a process that would lead to canonization - retroactively acknowledging him as a saint.
This momentum, however, has been temporarily halted, and the Vatican has asked those supporting and opposing the beatification to stop pressuring Pope Benedict XVI on the issue.
JEWS CANNOT help but think of Pius as a fatally flawed figure who managed to safeguard the Church's political and worldly interests from the Nazis, but only at the steepest of moral costs.
It was Pacelli, who as secretary of state in 1933, signed the Vatican Concordat with Germany. Hitler interpreted this treaty to mean that he had won the Church's approval "in the developing struggle against international Jewry."
On January 17, 1941, with the war against the Jews well under way, Berlin's Bishop Konrad Preysing - whose moral compass remained intact - wrote Pacelli, by then Pius XII, asking "whether the Holy See couldn't do something… issue an appeal in favor of these unfortunate [Jewish] people?"
No answer ever came.
At the height of the killing, in a letter dated June 22, 1943, the pope's representative reportedly wrote to US president Franklin D. Roosevelt, warning against the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine.
Even in October 1944, when the Jews of Rome were rounded up under his very window and sent to the gas chambers, the pope said nothing.
WHO BENEFITS, cui bono, from identifying Pius as a saint?
Perhaps those who want to quash the indictment, once and for all, that the Church's behavior during the Shoah was sinful. Perhaps it is simply Catholic traditionalists who want to honor Pius for strengthening the Church by having centralized ecclesiastical and political power within the Vatican at the expense of dioceses around the world.
His defenders argue, not unreasonably, that even if the pope had openly condemned the Nazis for their atrocities, they would have carried on anyway.
Far less convincingly, they say Pius feared the Germans would have retaliated against Jewish converts to Christianity; or even occupied the Vatican and expropriated its wealth. They say Pius was working "secretly" to help the Jews.
One thing is clear: Pius feared Bolshevism - which he may have associated with Jewry - as a menace even greater than Hitlerism.
Holocaust historian Saul Friedlander describes Pius as "distant, autocratic, and imbued with a sense of his own intellectual and spiritual superiority."
His measured assessment of Pacelli: "There is no specific indication that the pope was anti-Semitic or that his decisions during the war stemmed, be it in part, from some particular hostility toward Jews."
NO ONE benefits, however, from heightening enmity between Catholics and Jews.
Peter Gumpel, a Jesuit priest and Pacelli-canonization activist, has been exacerbating tensions by demanding that Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority in Jerusalem, "revise" its exhibit, which accurately depicts Pius's failure to rescue. Gumpel threatens that not doing so will keep Pope Benedict from visiting the Jewish state.
But another Vatican spokesman, backtracking from Gumpel's hard line, says that the row with Yad Vashem will not be "the deciding factor" in any papal visit.
We claim no standing in telling Catholics whom to honor as a saint. For us, however, and for many Catholics as well, the undeniable legacy of Eugenio Pacelli is moral failure - his deafening silence as millions of Jews were persecuted, brutalized and finally murdered on an industrial scale.
If the Church wants historians to reevaluate pope Pius XII's wartime record, let it open the Vatican's archives to outside historians.
Let us recall the words spoken by Pope John Paul II in his March 2000 visit to Yad Vashem: "We remember, but not...as an incentive to hatred."
In recent days, President Shimon Peres extended an invitation to Pope Benedict to visit the Holy Land. We respectfully urge him to make the journey and to continue the work of improving Catholic-Jewish relations.
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The wrong target
Yesterday, scores of Israelis took part in a "Free Gilad Schalit" rally and motorcade near the Kerem Shalom crossing point, a porthole for Israeli-funneled humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip.
On Sunday afternoon, Israel Radio broadcast a new song which expressed the collective longing of all Israelis to see our soldier return home after some 850 days in captivity.
One rally organizer said that "Hamas's demands are well-known and firm," implying that Israeli decision-makers should be more forthcoming.
Since the start of the holidays here, a number of "free Gilad Schalit" events have been held; more are scheduled through November.
"We are all Gilad Schalit" has become the battle cry of those who seek to keep the issue of his captivity high on the public agenda. But paradoxically, if domestic pressure forces the government to make dangerous concessions, there are likely to be many more Gilad Schalits.
Our hearts go out to Schalit's parents. With their son's life on the line, we do not presume to tell them to focus on the collective good. But the rest of us have precisely that obligation.
To Hamas, Schalit is a commodity in a Levantine bazaar. And the more Israelis pressure their own government to "bring Gilad home," regardless of the price, the more valuable an article of "merchandise" he becomes, and the less likely Hamas will be to cut a "reasonable" deal.
Yesterday, however, some protesters burned tires and sought to block the delivery of goods from Israel into Gaza until Schalit is set free - suggesting that the campaigners are not a monolithic group. While some want Israel to be more forthcoming, others appreciate where the difficulty really lies: with Schalit's captors.
The Hamas line is that no amount of pressure - not even the complete closing of the crossing points - will sway it into releasing our soldier. It wants its prisoners let loose - including the terrorist masterminds and facilitators of some of the most heinous bloodbaths of the second intifada, the Dolphinarium, Sbarro and Netanya Seder massacres.
THE BIGGEST mistake the Free Gilad Schalit movement could make would be to continue directing its energies against the government. Our democratic society has responsibilities that go beyond the welfare of a single Israeli hostage. We cannot allow either emotional blackmail - no matter how understandable its source - or media frenzy amid a political leadership vacuum to stampede the country into a bad bargain.
The demonstrations could play a positive role if they called attention to the fact that the terrorists on Hamas's ransom list are allowed visitors, while Schalit is denied all contact with the outside world. Buses from Gaza transport family members regularly to Israeli penitentiaries. Naturally, the International Red Cross and other NGOs have routine access.
Schalit enjoys none of these, none of the protections guaranteed by international human rights law or accepted civilized behavior.
Complicating efforts to free Schalit is Israel's recent history of having released terrorists to Hizbullah, and other prisoners to Mahmoud Abbas. Hamas no doubt feels the need to show its constituency it can do even better. One concession invites the next, leading to ever more intransigent ransom demands.
ANY APPEARANCE of further weakness and indecisiveness on the part of the Israeli leadership will magnify the enemy's incentive to carry out more abductions. So it is essential that those who campaign for Schalit's freedom hone their message, directing it at Hamas and not at Israel.
The approach some of the protest leaders have taken - pressuring our decision-makers - actually distances the prospect of a compromise Israel can safely live with.
One argument voiced by those active in the Free Gilad movement is that they do not want to see a repeat of the drawn-out, emotionally draining Ron Arad affair. Of course, there is no evidence that ongoing demonstrations in Israel would have saved Arad. It is Iran and Hizbullah who remain culpable for his fate - not the Israeli government.
We all join together in insisting that Gilad Schalit be freed. But the target of our anger and frustration needs to be Hamas - where it belongs.
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In praise of Joe the plumber
The process of forming a new government in Israel is expected to take several more weeks - though success is hardly guaranteed. The United States, meanwhile, will be electing a new president and congress on November 4.
The contrast in how the two political systems choose their leaders underscores the need to reform the way Israel elects its representatives and to change the political culture of our campaigns.
In order to win, America's two parties vie for the middle ground because that's where most voters are. Israelis, by comparison, chose from over 30 mostly single-issue ideological parties in the February 2006 Knesset race. No party in history has ever achieved a majority which would enable it to pursue a coherent agenda. Kadima, which "won" the last elections with 29 seats, cobbled together yet another government of strange bedfellows.
No one would suggest that the American system is without fault. For one thing, electing a president takes too long and costs too much. Barack Obama declared his candidacy in February 2007; John McCain announced in April 2007. Together the campaigns have raised $1 billion.
America's system also has its quirks, as observers around the world discovered eight years ago when Al Gore won more popular votes (50,999,897) than George W. Bush (50,456,002), but lost the election because Bush captured the electoral college (271-266). The more people a state has, the more clout in the electoral college, but the paradoxical result is to dilute majority rule.
The US is a representative, not a "pure" democracy. Its constitutional framers created a system in which power was kept diffuse. Fearing tyranny above all else, they designed a system that does not permit power to be concentrated in any single body - not with the president, judiciary or congress (which they split in two).
Israel's founders, in contrast, fearing various groups would feel disenfranchised, created an unwieldily hyper-democratic system.
DESPITE being a nation of 300 million people, US voters can personally encounter presidential candidates with relative ease. Take Joe "the Plumber" Wurzelbacher from Ohio. He's been thinking about expanding his business, but worries that Obama's tax plan would rob him of incentives to invest in his company. Joe challenged Obama face-to-face on the campaign trail: "Your new tax plan is going to tax me more, isn't it?"
Obama readily acknowledged that he'd be raising Joe's taxes if he earned more than $250,000 a year. It was the equitable thing to do, Obama argued, to help people making less. In Israel, there's little chance "Yossi the instalator" would ever get close enough to a candidate for premier to engage in that kind of back-and-forth.
During the US campaign, voters have had ample opportunity to watch McCain and Obama and hear their views. The prospect that one of them would, upon election, pursue a totally unexpected policy on a fundamental issue is remote. For instance, Obama would never appoint a jurist to the Supreme Court pledged to overturning Roe v. Wade and re-criminalizing abortion.
In Israel, by contrast, any number of prime ministers have turned their backs on cardinal campaign promises.
America's two candidates have debated face-to-face. They met for a third and final time Wednesday and argued about the economy, negative campaign ads, judicial appointments character, abortion and taxes. In fact, Joe the Plumber's name came up - 26 times. "It's pretty surreal, man, my name being mentioned in a presidential campaign," Wurzelbacher told the AP.
In contrast, during Israel's last Knesset campaign, Kadima's Ehud Olmert simply refused to debate the Likud's Binyamin Netanyahu and Labor's Amir Peretz.
WE CAN only look on, dejectedly, as Tzipi Livni now tries to build a coalition. So far she's had to promise Labor's Ehud Barak that he will be "senior deputy prime minister, second only to the prime minister." She's made an opening offer to the Shas Party of NIS 1 billion (for child allowances). She needs to woo the collection of bickering curmudgeons known as the Gil Pensioners Party. And she needs to mollify the 98 year-old godfather of the United Torah Judaism Party who doesn't want his followers serving in a government led by a woman.
America has had 230 years to perfect its electoral system. Israel doesn't have that kind of time.
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on Iran
Oct. 15, 2008
, THE JERUSALEM POST
In a September 26 editorial, this is how Britain's Guardian judged Israel's efforts to convince the world that Iran's nuclear program poses an existential threat to the Jewish state, and that military action might be the lesser of two evils: "Israel has lost the argument, and we should all breathe a sigh of relief [that] pragmatism... has prevailed."
Beyond its left-liberal readership, the newspaper's stance reflects a wide swath of Western thinking.
The problem is that this view confuses pragmatism with appeasement. It is a "pragmatism" that does not demand the kind of biting sanctions that would force the mullahs to their knees - precisely in order to obviate the need for a military strike.
It's a pragmatism that does not mean, for instance, cutting virtually all trade with the Islamic Republic; or ensuring that no Western airliner lands in Teheran. These "pragmatists" support engaging Iran because there is profit to be made under the cover of a diplomatic minuet that pays lip-service to sanctions.
They paint Israelis as unreasonably hawkish, seeing an existential threat where none exists.
Yet these pragmatists heard President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad deliver the same September 23 speech to the UN General Assembly as we did.
Is it really pragmatic to look the other way as Ahmadinejad blames "underhanded Zionists" for stirring up trouble in Georgia and Ossetia? When he places responsibility for the global financial crisis on "a small but deceitful number of people called Zionists" who dominate "financial" and "political decision-making" worldwide?
Are not even these pragmatists discomfited to hear "Zionists" characterized as an "acquisitive and invasive people"?
Presumably, the pragmatists don't deny that Iran is scrambling to build nuclear weapons - even if one might quibble over precisely when Teheran will achieve its goals. Nor would they reasonably dispute that Iran is perfecting its capabilities to deliver nuclear warheads to Europe, and beyond.
They see, just as we do, that Iran fluctuates between denying the Holocaust outright, minimizing the number of Jews murdered, and cynically claiming that even - for argument's sake - if Hitler really killed six million Jews, the Palestinian Arabs should not have to pay for Europe's sins. In reality, of course, the sins the Palestinians are paying for are mostly self-inflicted: intransigence and bellicosity.
The pragmatists know, as we do, that Iranian diplomats have organized terrorist attacks against Western and Jewish targets; that Iranian intelligence co-directs Hizbullah; that Iran bankrolls Hamas and provides it with training, funds and diplomatic cover. And they well know that Hizbullah and Hamas are standard-bearers for anti-civilian warfare, fanaticism and an unalterable rejection of Israel's right to exist - within any boundaries.
IN FACT, there's nothing pragmatic about sweeping the Iranian problem under the rug. Just the opposite. By taking - for all intents and purposes - robust sanctions off the table, those who profess to being pragmatic are in fact being shortsighted. The unintended consequence of such false pragmatism is to bolster the most radical elements within Iran.
And of all the pragmatic countries in Europe talking sanctions while stoking the Iranian economy, none disappoints more than Germany. We could have sworn we heard Chancellor Angela Merkel tell the Knesset on March 18 that Berlin felt a special responsibility for Israel's security, and that it would be disastrous if Iran were to obtain nuclear weapons. And that "We have to prevent this."
Yet Germany remains Iran's main European trading partner.
Now comes the news that last month, the German ambassador to Iran, Herbert Honsowitz, in contravention of EU guidelines, sent his military attache to an Iranian military parade. Honsowitz, ever the pragmatist, is a strong booster of German-Iranian relations, including trade.
This newspaper takes at face value Ahmadinejad's October 26, 2005 pledge, before the ominously named World Without Zionism Conference, that "Israel must be wiped off the map."
We do not beat the drums of war. But if conflict comes, heaven forbid, the responsibility will fall on those who denigrated the dangers; removed the option of force from the international negotiating agenda, and undermined sanctions.
It will fall most heavily on those who fueled Iran's economy and were comfortable being spectators at the parade as the Shihab missiles rolled by.
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Panic vs self-interest
If only Israelis had the luxury of addressing one crisis at a time - the turmoil in Acre, for instance, or the failure to form a new government; or signs that Fatah and Hamas are burying the hatchet, or freeing Gilad Schalit. That's even harder to do when the worst worldwide financial crisis in generations insists on monopolizing the headlines.
Israel is not immune to the economic tremors shaking the rest of the world. After a four-day holiday weekend, the Tel Aviv Stock Market opened an hour late Sunday to give traders time to take a deep breath. Even so, the market still suffered its biggest drop since 1997. Though closing steeply down, it managed to stabilize during the day as sellers discovered - lo and behold! - that there were still buyers out there.
MUCH HAPPENED while our markets were closed over Yom Kippur. Stocks worldwide plunged, with the Dow Jones industrial average falling 18 percent. Companies were hard-pressed to find lenders. Having expended its dwindling political capital on persuading a reluctant Congress to allocate $700 billion for the purchase of stocks tied to bad mortgages, the US Treasury seemed to radically revise its approach: The US government is now poised to, in effect, partially nationalize certain banks to "unfreeze" the credit markets.
Meanwhile, Iceland practically went bankrupt; its government said it would protect the deposits of its own citizens, but not those held by foreigners, including a number of local authorities in London which found themselves out in the cold.
While Israel enjoyed its trading hiatus, the Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank and the Bank of England finally managed to coordinate an interest-rate cut. And British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, whose popularity is as low as the market itself, found himself widely applauded for producing a genuinely systematic plan to address the crisis. Basically, it promises to guarantee new loans, in addition to providing cash to British banks. This could serve as a model for other nations.
Speaking in the Rose Garden on Saturday as finance ministers and central bankers from the G-7 nations stood stony-faced behind him, President George W. Bush declared: "All of us recognize that this is a serious global crisis, [which] therefore requires a serious global response." Those gathered around him generally agreed to coordinate their efforts to find a way out of the crisis since actions taken unilaterally - a la Iceland's - will only make a bad situation worse.
With 20/20 hindsight, we can speculate that America's failure to bail out Lehman Brothers catalyzed the current crisis. Looking back further, a convincing argument is being made that the American financial establishment's love affair with the poorly understood and grossly under-regulated tools known as "derivatives" contributed to the meltdown.
AS TO the here and now, Industry, Trade and Labor Minister Eli Yishai wanted Sunday's cabinet meeting to consider creating an "economic kitchen cabinet" that would address how to guarantee the safety of savings in our banks and the need to raise yields on government bonds. But, ridiculously, Cabinet Secretary Ovad Yehezkel pointed to a rule that requires agenda items to be submitted three days in advance.
To be fair, the government has been effectively grappling with how to steer Israel through this crisis emanating from beyond our shores. And analysts agree our economy's exposure to mortgage-related debt and derivatives is minimal, and that the biggest dangers are psychological.
To that end, Finance Minister Ronnie Bar-On reassured Israelis that his ministry and the Bank of Israel would intervene as necessary. They are reportedly indeed weighing plans to offer deposit insurance and, if necessary, inject capital into the banking system.
If anything makes people nervous, it is being told not to panic. And yet, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is quite correct to tell the public just that.
If, rather than letting fear prevail, Israelis adhere to the "buy low and sell high" mantra, chances are we will all emerge to trade again another day.
Authorities here are doing their utmost to stem panic by making it clear that if necessary, they stand ready to intervene in a timely fashion. The rest of us can help by not getting caught up in the hysteria swirling around us.
Friday, October 24, 2008
Wrap: Settlers, Beirut, 1983, Saint Pius?, Gilad Schalit, Joe the P., Iran, and economic panic
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, October 12, 2008
Acre riots
While most Israeli Jews spent Yom Kippur in prayer, contemplation or communing with their bicycles, a troublesome minority exploited the Day of Atonement to sin against public order.
In Kiryat Motzkin, Haifa, Beersheba, Holon, Rehovot and Jerusalem, loutish Jewish youths - overwhelmingly not haredi - stoned MDA ambulances in displays of juvenile delinquency that have become all too common in recent years.
Violence of a different order broke out in the northern town of Acre, where the population of 50,000 is about one-third Arab. Here, at about 11:30 p.m., Jewish youths hanging out on Yom Kippur took umbrage when Tawfik Jamal, an Arab resident of Acre's Old City, drove his car along Avraham Ben Shoshan Street in the Jewish part of town. Some of the youths claimed they feared he was about to carry out a vehicular terrorist attack - similar to those recently committed in Jerusalem.
Just what Jamal was doing on Yom Kippur eve in a Jewish neighborhood - where virtually no cars except emergency vehicles are on the road - is in dispute. His claim is that, accompanied by his son and the son's friend, he was picking up his daughter from her fiancé's place. The Jewish youths say he was blasting music and smoking a nargila in an act of ostentatious provocation. The initial police report backed the youths' version and suggested that Jamal was also intoxicated.
A verbal confrontation quickly deteriorated, with the Jews throwing stones and bottles at the Jamal party, which was eventually rescued by police.
An Arab who saw the altercation contacted a local sheikh and, within minutes, calls were made from mosque loudspeakers: "The Jews are attacking us!" Up to 2,000 rioting Arabs chanting "Death to the Jews" then converged on the Jewish part of town, rioting and looting. Hundreds of cars were damaged; scores of shops vandalized. The disturbances petered out with daybreak.
However, on Thursday night after the fast, sporadic violence reignited in areas where Jewish and Arabs neighborhoods abut. All told, about eight people were injured.
Several hours after Yom Kippur, the country's top cops were on the scene and taking charge. Some 700 specially-equipped police, outfitted for riot duty, were deployed. Israel Police Insp.-Gen. David Cohen ordered that no live fire be used in quelling any further disturbances.
Everyone recalls the October 2000 Arab riots which erupted simultaneously with the outbreak of the Aksa intifada. Jewish Israelis felt under siege then and the police reacted to the bloodshed as if it were a full-scale rebellion. A state commission of inquiry later criticized their handling of the violence in which 13 Arab citizens were killed.
What is essential now is that the violence, which has continued to flare intermittently over the weekend, not spread to other areas where Jews and Arabs live in close proximity. Constructively, over Shabbat, moderate Arab leaders publicly criticized Jamal for his insensitivity. Still, all eyes remain on Acre, where tensions have long been simmering between the mostly working-class populations, with the Arabs insisting that they're not getting a fair share of municipal services.
I have no sympathy with the band of Jewish youths who resorted to rioting when Jamal made his appearance. What they should have done was to call the police while seeking safety if they felt genuinely threatened. The behavior of the Arabs involved, many screaming "Itbah al-Yahud" [death to the Jews], disgusts me and is a reminder of how dangerously radicalized segments of the community have become. The police need to identify the lawbreakers and bring them to justice.
Sadly, the usual political arsonists played their predictable roles. MK Ahmed Tibi termed the Acre events a "Jewish pogrom," while MK Arieh Eldad also played the "pogrom" card. Eldad further fanned the flames: "One should not be surprised if Jews take up arms to defend themselves while the police does nothing to protect them."
Tibi and Eldad, predictably, got it wrong - as did local TV reports and several of the Friday Hebrew newspapers. Using the term "pogrom" in connection with Acre is an insult to the memories of the many Jews murdered in state-sponsored pogroms such as those organized by the Russian government in the 1880s.
A correct Zionist response is to insist that Arab and Jewish citizens live by the same rules and obligations. Anyone who advocates vigilantism undermines the Jewish state and should be shunned.
In Kiryat Motzkin, Haifa, Beersheba, Holon, Rehovot and Jerusalem, loutish Jewish youths - overwhelmingly not haredi - stoned MDA ambulances in displays of juvenile delinquency that have become all too common in recent years.
Violence of a different order broke out in the northern town of Acre, where the population of 50,000 is about one-third Arab. Here, at about 11:30 p.m., Jewish youths hanging out on Yom Kippur took umbrage when Tawfik Jamal, an Arab resident of Acre's Old City, drove his car along Avraham Ben Shoshan Street in the Jewish part of town. Some of the youths claimed they feared he was about to carry out a vehicular terrorist attack - similar to those recently committed in Jerusalem.
Just what Jamal was doing on Yom Kippur eve in a Jewish neighborhood - where virtually no cars except emergency vehicles are on the road - is in dispute. His claim is that, accompanied by his son and the son's friend, he was picking up his daughter from her fiancé's place. The Jewish youths say he was blasting music and smoking a nargila in an act of ostentatious provocation. The initial police report backed the youths' version and suggested that Jamal was also intoxicated.
A verbal confrontation quickly deteriorated, with the Jews throwing stones and bottles at the Jamal party, which was eventually rescued by police.
An Arab who saw the altercation contacted a local sheikh and, within minutes, calls were made from mosque loudspeakers: "The Jews are attacking us!" Up to 2,000 rioting Arabs chanting "Death to the Jews" then converged on the Jewish part of town, rioting and looting. Hundreds of cars were damaged; scores of shops vandalized. The disturbances petered out with daybreak.
However, on Thursday night after the fast, sporadic violence reignited in areas where Jewish and Arabs neighborhoods abut. All told, about eight people were injured.
Several hours after Yom Kippur, the country's top cops were on the scene and taking charge. Some 700 specially-equipped police, outfitted for riot duty, were deployed. Israel Police Insp.-Gen. David Cohen ordered that no live fire be used in quelling any further disturbances.
Everyone recalls the October 2000 Arab riots which erupted simultaneously with the outbreak of the Aksa intifada. Jewish Israelis felt under siege then and the police reacted to the bloodshed as if it were a full-scale rebellion. A state commission of inquiry later criticized their handling of the violence in which 13 Arab citizens were killed.
What is essential now is that the violence, which has continued to flare intermittently over the weekend, not spread to other areas where Jews and Arabs live in close proximity. Constructively, over Shabbat, moderate Arab leaders publicly criticized Jamal for his insensitivity. Still, all eyes remain on Acre, where tensions have long been simmering between the mostly working-class populations, with the Arabs insisting that they're not getting a fair share of municipal services.
I have no sympathy with the band of Jewish youths who resorted to rioting when Jamal made his appearance. What they should have done was to call the police while seeking safety if they felt genuinely threatened. The behavior of the Arabs involved, many screaming "Itbah al-Yahud" [death to the Jews], disgusts me and is a reminder of how dangerously radicalized segments of the community have become. The police need to identify the lawbreakers and bring them to justice.
Sadly, the usual political arsonists played their predictable roles. MK Ahmed Tibi termed the Acre events a "Jewish pogrom," while MK Arieh Eldad also played the "pogrom" card. Eldad further fanned the flames: "One should not be surprised if Jews take up arms to defend themselves while the police does nothing to protect them."
Tibi and Eldad, predictably, got it wrong - as did local TV reports and several of the Friday Hebrew newspapers. Using the term "pogrom" in connection with Acre is an insult to the memories of the many Jews murdered in state-sponsored pogroms such as those organized by the Russian government in the 1880s.
A correct Zionist response is to insist that Arab and Jewish citizens live by the same rules and obligations. Anyone who advocates vigilantism undermines the Jewish state and should be shunned.
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.
Edgy markets
Edgy markets
Oct. 6, 2008
Don't just do something - stand there. That's probably still the best advice economists can offer policymakers as Israel navigates its way through the global credit crisis.
Some of the uncertainty Israelis are experiencing is attributable to the country's political vacuum. A deeply unpopular prime minister has resigned and no successor is yet in place. Nor is there a figure of stature who can reassure the country, FDR-like, that "there is nothing to fear but fear itself."
This past Sunday's cabinet meeting addressed the economic crisis perfunctorily. On his way to Moscow, the premier allowed that the source of the problem was external. In a globalized world, however, this "insight" is small comfort.
Meanwhile, economists can't agree whether government spending next year should be increased beyond the planned 1.7 percent. If it is, the times demand that the additional monies contribute to growth and not be squandered on political payoffs.
Some of the uncertainty is psychological. With the word "panic" dominating US and European media coverage of the banking and credit crisis, Israelis can't help feeling a sense of spillover queasiness.
We went into Rosh Hashana with tabloid headlines screaming about how much the country's richest personalities - Shari Arison, Lev Leviev, Nochi Danker, Yitzhak Tshuva and the Offer brothers - had lost on their global investments. Implication: Their pain would trickle down.
So it was predictable that shares would take a beating when trading resumed Sunday on the Tel Aviv Stock Market. Yesterday the market also closed down across the board.
Sunday's losses were the worst in close to a decade. In fact, since January 2008 real estate shares have lost 67% of their value. Market gains elsewhere achieved over the past two years were largely wiped out.
GRANTED, it is hard for local policymakers to address the effects of the worldwide crisis on Israel when no one can yet fathom its scope.
But if the current global crisis has taught us anything, it is that calling for complete governmental noninterference with business is just as dopey as advocating a centrally planned economy.
Crucially, those charged with making economic decisions for the country need to do a better job of agreeing among themselves and communicating a coherent message - not just to big business, finance and the stock market, but to average Israelis as well.
We need to be hearing more from the top professional echelon at the Finance Ministry, the Israel Securities Authority and the Bank of Israel, among others. The media must resist the temptation to sensationalize the situation even as they keep Israelis abreast of developments. Finance Ministry Director-General Yarom Ariav's reassuring interview Monday morning on Army Radio is an example of the responsible coverage needed.
Israelis everywhere are watching developments. Those who run small businesses worry that it will be harder to obtain bank loans; those about to buy new homes hope mortgages will remain within reach. From builders to hoteliers, sectors dependent on overseas customers are watching to see how the crisis in Europe and America will affect them.
Israeli employers pay into a tax-exempt keren hishtalmut account - a sort of rainy day fund maintained for their employees. This money is invested until tapped cyclically. With the market down, so too is the value of these keren hishtalmut accounts, as consumer spending will probably soon reflect.
Many Israelis also belong to a pension scheme - kupat gemel - to which both they and their employers contribute. These funds, too, are invested in the market. Nine percent of pension savings have reportedly been lost since the beginning of the year.
Just about every Israeli has a bank account. But unlike in the US where the FDIC insures deposits - Israelis have no such insurance. Fortunately, Bank of Israel Governor Stanley Fischer assures us that the country's banks are stable - that no one expects a run on the banks.
Nevertheless, developing a plan to protect the deposits of average Israelis should figure high on the agenda of the next government.
Israelis need reassuring that those charged with regulating the country's business, finance, markets and economy are effectively looking out for their interests, even as they encourage efficient growth and investment.
Oct. 6, 2008
Don't just do something - stand there. That's probably still the best advice economists can offer policymakers as Israel navigates its way through the global credit crisis.
Some of the uncertainty Israelis are experiencing is attributable to the country's political vacuum. A deeply unpopular prime minister has resigned and no successor is yet in place. Nor is there a figure of stature who can reassure the country, FDR-like, that "there is nothing to fear but fear itself."
This past Sunday's cabinet meeting addressed the economic crisis perfunctorily. On his way to Moscow, the premier allowed that the source of the problem was external. In a globalized world, however, this "insight" is small comfort.
Meanwhile, economists can't agree whether government spending next year should be increased beyond the planned 1.7 percent. If it is, the times demand that the additional monies contribute to growth and not be squandered on political payoffs.
Some of the uncertainty is psychological. With the word "panic" dominating US and European media coverage of the banking and credit crisis, Israelis can't help feeling a sense of spillover queasiness.
We went into Rosh Hashana with tabloid headlines screaming about how much the country's richest personalities - Shari Arison, Lev Leviev, Nochi Danker, Yitzhak Tshuva and the Offer brothers - had lost on their global investments. Implication: Their pain would trickle down.
So it was predictable that shares would take a beating when trading resumed Sunday on the Tel Aviv Stock Market. Yesterday the market also closed down across the board.
Sunday's losses were the worst in close to a decade. In fact, since January 2008 real estate shares have lost 67% of their value. Market gains elsewhere achieved over the past two years were largely wiped out.
GRANTED, it is hard for local policymakers to address the effects of the worldwide crisis on Israel when no one can yet fathom its scope.
But if the current global crisis has taught us anything, it is that calling for complete governmental noninterference with business is just as dopey as advocating a centrally planned economy.
Crucially, those charged with making economic decisions for the country need to do a better job of agreeing among themselves and communicating a coherent message - not just to big business, finance and the stock market, but to average Israelis as well.
We need to be hearing more from the top professional echelon at the Finance Ministry, the Israel Securities Authority and the Bank of Israel, among others. The media must resist the temptation to sensationalize the situation even as they keep Israelis abreast of developments. Finance Ministry Director-General Yarom Ariav's reassuring interview Monday morning on Army Radio is an example of the responsible coverage needed.
Israelis everywhere are watching developments. Those who run small businesses worry that it will be harder to obtain bank loans; those about to buy new homes hope mortgages will remain within reach. From builders to hoteliers, sectors dependent on overseas customers are watching to see how the crisis in Europe and America will affect them.
Israeli employers pay into a tax-exempt keren hishtalmut account - a sort of rainy day fund maintained for their employees. This money is invested until tapped cyclically. With the market down, so too is the value of these keren hishtalmut accounts, as consumer spending will probably soon reflect.
Many Israelis also belong to a pension scheme - kupat gemel - to which both they and their employers contribute. These funds, too, are invested in the market. Nine percent of pension savings have reportedly been lost since the beginning of the year.
Just about every Israeli has a bank account. But unlike in the US where the FDIC insures deposits - Israelis have no such insurance. Fortunately, Bank of Israel Governor Stanley Fischer assures us that the country's banks are stable - that no one expects a run on the banks.
Nevertheless, developing a plan to protect the deposits of average Israelis should figure high on the agenda of the next government.
Israelis need reassuring that those charged with regulating the country's business, finance, markets and economy are effectively looking out for their interests, even as they encourage efficient growth and investment.
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.
And the winner is...
Oct. 7, 2008
I do hope you are right.
- Winston Churchill accepting the Nobel Prize for Literature, 1953
The Nobel Prize in Medicine was awarded this week to Francoise Barre-Sinoussi and Luc Montagnier "for their discovery of human immunodeficiency virus," and to Harald zur Hausen "for his discovery of human papilloma viruses causing cervical cancer."
Hausen, from the Cancer Research Center in Heidelberg, gets half the prize; while Mme Barré-Sinoussi, from the Pasteur Institute, and Montagnier, from the World Foundation for AIDS Research, share a quarter each.
No one questions the wisdom of awarding the prize to these virologists. Since 1981, when AIDS was first identified, 25 million people have died; 33 million live with this incurable disease. Roughly 5,000 AIDS cases have been diagnosed in Israel.
Barre-Sinoussi and Montagnier have made it possible not only to manage the illness, but to screen for HIV in the blood supply. Hausen's work will one day allow scientists to overcome the number two cancer killer among women. It is too bad, however, that the Nobel medical jury - Stockholm's Karolinska Institute - did not see fit to also recognize the contribution of Dr. Robert Gallo, an American virologist widely co-credited with discovering HIV. It's true that the jury was limited to three choices; still, Gallo's exclusion proves that the Nobel awarders don't always get it right.
Nobel, the Swedish inventor of dynamite, died in 1896 and left his fortune to endow the prize named after him. Nobel committees in various fields solicit nominations from academics, scientists, previous laureates and others.
Most of us will have to rely on the wisdom of the physics jury in selecting Yoichiro Nambu, Makoto Kobayashi and Toshihide Maskawa yesterday: Nambu for discovering the "mechanism of spontaneous broken symmetry in subatomic physics" and Maskawa, with Kobayashi, "for the discovery of the origin of the broken symmetry which predicts the existence of at least three families of quarks in nature."
The chemistry award will be announced today; literature follows on Thursday. The peace prize will be revealed Friday, and economics on October 13.
While many Nobel decisions are universally respected, others generate controversy.
For instance, PLO leader Yasser Arafat was awarded one-third of the 1994 prize, along with Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres, for "efforts to create peace in the Middle East" - though he really specialized in creating chaos. Henry Kissinger and Le Duc Tho shared the 1973 prize for helping South Vietnam trade land for peace. Sometimes a peace prize, like the 1929 award to Frank Billings Kellogg, a US secretary of state, reflects the triumph of hope over experience. Kellogg crafted a treaty, ratified by scores of countries including Germany and Japan, which outlawed the use of force in international relations.
So who - of the 33 groups and 164 individuals nominated - will the International Peace Research Institute, the Nobel peace jury, tap this year? Among the leading candidates are two "disappeared" Chinese dissidents, Gao Zhisheng of the Falun Gong and environmental campaigner Hu Jia.
In literature, London bookies are betting on relative unknowns: Claudio Magris, Adonis - said to be one of the Arab world's greatest living poets - and Jean-Marie Gustave Clezio. Dark-horse contenders include Israel's Amoz Oz and Jewish American novelist Philip Roth. It's been 15 years since a US author won. Professor Horace Engdahl, a Scandinavian literature professor and Nobel juror, claims that "The US is too isolated, too insular" to generate world-class fiction.
Jews have done rather well in the Nobel, capturing 19% of the chemistry awards; 41% in economics; 13% in literature; 9% of the peace prizes; 26% in physics and 28% in medicine. Israelis have made their mark too: Robert Aumann for economics (2005); Aaron Ciechanover and Avram Hershko for chemistry (2004); Daniel Kahneman, economics (2002); Rabin and Peres for peace (1994); Menachem Begin, peace (1978); and Shmuel Yosef Agnon for literature (1966).
WHAT THIS suggests, simply, is that in the roster of some 780 prizes given to individuals (and 20 awarded to organizations) since 1901, Nobel jurors have made laudable decisions as well as egregiously foolish ones.
Isn't it good to know that some of the smartest people around are as fallible as the rest of us?
I do hope you are right.
- Winston Churchill accepting the Nobel Prize for Literature, 1953
The Nobel Prize in Medicine was awarded this week to Francoise Barre-Sinoussi and Luc Montagnier "for their discovery of human immunodeficiency virus," and to Harald zur Hausen "for his discovery of human papilloma viruses causing cervical cancer."
Hausen, from the Cancer Research Center in Heidelberg, gets half the prize; while Mme Barré-Sinoussi, from the Pasteur Institute, and Montagnier, from the World Foundation for AIDS Research, share a quarter each.
No one questions the wisdom of awarding the prize to these virologists. Since 1981, when AIDS was first identified, 25 million people have died; 33 million live with this incurable disease. Roughly 5,000 AIDS cases have been diagnosed in Israel.
Barre-Sinoussi and Montagnier have made it possible not only to manage the illness, but to screen for HIV in the blood supply. Hausen's work will one day allow scientists to overcome the number two cancer killer among women. It is too bad, however, that the Nobel medical jury - Stockholm's Karolinska Institute - did not see fit to also recognize the contribution of Dr. Robert Gallo, an American virologist widely co-credited with discovering HIV. It's true that the jury was limited to three choices; still, Gallo's exclusion proves that the Nobel awarders don't always get it right.
Nobel, the Swedish inventor of dynamite, died in 1896 and left his fortune to endow the prize named after him. Nobel committees in various fields solicit nominations from academics, scientists, previous laureates and others.
Most of us will have to rely on the wisdom of the physics jury in selecting Yoichiro Nambu, Makoto Kobayashi and Toshihide Maskawa yesterday: Nambu for discovering the "mechanism of spontaneous broken symmetry in subatomic physics" and Maskawa, with Kobayashi, "for the discovery of the origin of the broken symmetry which predicts the existence of at least three families of quarks in nature."
The chemistry award will be announced today; literature follows on Thursday. The peace prize will be revealed Friday, and economics on October 13.
While many Nobel decisions are universally respected, others generate controversy.
For instance, PLO leader Yasser Arafat was awarded one-third of the 1994 prize, along with Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres, for "efforts to create peace in the Middle East" - though he really specialized in creating chaos. Henry Kissinger and Le Duc Tho shared the 1973 prize for helping South Vietnam trade land for peace. Sometimes a peace prize, like the 1929 award to Frank Billings Kellogg, a US secretary of state, reflects the triumph of hope over experience. Kellogg crafted a treaty, ratified by scores of countries including Germany and Japan, which outlawed the use of force in international relations.
So who - of the 33 groups and 164 individuals nominated - will the International Peace Research Institute, the Nobel peace jury, tap this year? Among the leading candidates are two "disappeared" Chinese dissidents, Gao Zhisheng of the Falun Gong and environmental campaigner Hu Jia.
In literature, London bookies are betting on relative unknowns: Claudio Magris, Adonis - said to be one of the Arab world's greatest living poets - and Jean-Marie Gustave Clezio. Dark-horse contenders include Israel's Amoz Oz and Jewish American novelist Philip Roth. It's been 15 years since a US author won. Professor Horace Engdahl, a Scandinavian literature professor and Nobel juror, claims that "The US is too isolated, too insular" to generate world-class fiction.
Jews have done rather well in the Nobel, capturing 19% of the chemistry awards; 41% in economics; 13% in literature; 9% of the peace prizes; 26% in physics and 28% in medicine. Israelis have made their mark too: Robert Aumann for economics (2005); Aaron Ciechanover and Avram Hershko for chemistry (2004); Daniel Kahneman, economics (2002); Rabin and Peres for peace (1994); Menachem Begin, peace (1978); and Shmuel Yosef Agnon for literature (1966).
WHAT THIS suggests, simply, is that in the roster of some 780 prizes given to individuals (and 20 awarded to organizations) since 1901, Nobel jurors have made laudable decisions as well as egregiously foolish ones.
Isn't it good to know that some of the smartest people around are as fallible as the rest of us?
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.
Four more weeks
Four more weeks
Oct. 10, 2008
Not surprisingly, on a day when the New York stock market dropped more than 500 points, the second presidential debate on Tuesday between Republican nominee Sen. John McCain and his Democratic rival Sen. Barack Obama in Nashville, Tennessee focused largely on the economy.
Obama tied the financial crisis to government deregulation and the Bush administration's lack of fiscal discipline, while McCain painted his opponent as a tax-and-spend liberal. He says he would have the federal government buy up bad mortgage debts to bring relief to regular Americans; the Obama campaign counters that such a plan is basically already in place.
On Tuesday, Obama declared: "A year ago, I went to Wall Street and said we've got to re-regulate. And nothing happened. And Sen. McCain during that period said that we should keep on deregulating because that's how the free enterprise system works."
But McCain says he has all along been advocating tighter controls over the sub-prime housing market and that it was Obama who thought such loans were a good idea.
The race remains close; surveys show Obama leading McCain by roughly 49 to 44 points.
The campaign is also getting personal. McCain's running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, accused Obama of "palling around with terrorists who would target their own country," pointing to Obama's links with 1960s-era radical William Ayers. Palin says she's "just so fearful that this is a man who does not see America as you and I see it." McCain asks: "Who is the real Barack Obama?"
Anti-Obama bloggers continue to promote the ludicrous idea that he is a secret Muslim or - in the latest fantasy - a closet communist. Andy Martin, the blogger who first promoted the secret Muslim canard, has now been revealed to have had ties to a political action committee whose stated goal was "to exterminate Jew power in America..."
For its part, the Obama campaign is trying to undermine McCain's image as a maverick Washington outsider by reminding voters of his involvement in the 1989 Keating Five corruption scandal for which a Senate panel criticized his "poor judgment." Keating was convicted of securities fraud.
NOT MUCH foreign policy ground was covered in Tuesday's debate. McCain again took Obama to task for his willingness to "negotiate with [Iran] without preconditions," telling a questioner that "we can never allow a second Holocaust to take place."
Obama responded that it was "true... that I believe that we should have direct talks - not just with our friends, but also with our enemies - to deliver a tough, direct message to Iran that, if you don't change your behavior, then there will be dire consequences." He reiterated that he would "never take military options off the table," or give the UN veto power over US policy.
THIS AMERICAN election was always bound to hinge on domestic, not foreign policy, issues. A Pew Research Center survey found that US voters are taking an unprecedented interest in news about the economy. Barring some unforeseen calamity, the likely victor on November 4 will be the candidate who instills the most confidence among ordinary voters in his ability to rescue the ailing economy.
That said, it remains hugely important to all Israelis that the next American president be personally empathetic and diplomatically supportive to our cause. The Bush administration has requested $2.55 billion in security assistance for Israel - part of a new 10-year $30 billion security package. Whatever the issue - Iran, Hamas, or Hizbullah - Jerusalem needs a friend in the White House.
Fortunately, both candidates define themselves as pro-Israel. Frankly, we hope Obama clarifies his attitude toward borders and settlements to reassure us that an Obama administration would never pressure Israel back to the 1949 Armistice Lines. We'd also value hearing a similar message from John McCain.
Of course, we can't ask more of Obama or McCain than from our own government. The world knows where the Palestinian Authority stands - intransigently in our view - on the issues of borders, refugees and Jerusalem. So the most constructive step the next Israeli government can take - once it is finally in place, and preferably before the next president is inaugurated - would be to announce where Israel draws its "red lines."
Oct. 10, 2008
Not surprisingly, on a day when the New York stock market dropped more than 500 points, the second presidential debate on Tuesday between Republican nominee Sen. John McCain and his Democratic rival Sen. Barack Obama in Nashville, Tennessee focused largely on the economy.
Obama tied the financial crisis to government deregulation and the Bush administration's lack of fiscal discipline, while McCain painted his opponent as a tax-and-spend liberal. He says he would have the federal government buy up bad mortgage debts to bring relief to regular Americans; the Obama campaign counters that such a plan is basically already in place.
On Tuesday, Obama declared: "A year ago, I went to Wall Street and said we've got to re-regulate. And nothing happened. And Sen. McCain during that period said that we should keep on deregulating because that's how the free enterprise system works."
But McCain says he has all along been advocating tighter controls over the sub-prime housing market and that it was Obama who thought such loans were a good idea.
The race remains close; surveys show Obama leading McCain by roughly 49 to 44 points.
The campaign is also getting personal. McCain's running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, accused Obama of "palling around with terrorists who would target their own country," pointing to Obama's links with 1960s-era radical William Ayers. Palin says she's "just so fearful that this is a man who does not see America as you and I see it." McCain asks: "Who is the real Barack Obama?"
Anti-Obama bloggers continue to promote the ludicrous idea that he is a secret Muslim or - in the latest fantasy - a closet communist. Andy Martin, the blogger who first promoted the secret Muslim canard, has now been revealed to have had ties to a political action committee whose stated goal was "to exterminate Jew power in America..."
For its part, the Obama campaign is trying to undermine McCain's image as a maverick Washington outsider by reminding voters of his involvement in the 1989 Keating Five corruption scandal for which a Senate panel criticized his "poor judgment." Keating was convicted of securities fraud.
NOT MUCH foreign policy ground was covered in Tuesday's debate. McCain again took Obama to task for his willingness to "negotiate with [Iran] without preconditions," telling a questioner that "we can never allow a second Holocaust to take place."
Obama responded that it was "true... that I believe that we should have direct talks - not just with our friends, but also with our enemies - to deliver a tough, direct message to Iran that, if you don't change your behavior, then there will be dire consequences." He reiterated that he would "never take military options off the table," or give the UN veto power over US policy.
THIS AMERICAN election was always bound to hinge on domestic, not foreign policy, issues. A Pew Research Center survey found that US voters are taking an unprecedented interest in news about the economy. Barring some unforeseen calamity, the likely victor on November 4 will be the candidate who instills the most confidence among ordinary voters in his ability to rescue the ailing economy.
That said, it remains hugely important to all Israelis that the next American president be personally empathetic and diplomatically supportive to our cause. The Bush administration has requested $2.55 billion in security assistance for Israel - part of a new 10-year $30 billion security package. Whatever the issue - Iran, Hamas, or Hizbullah - Jerusalem needs a friend in the White House.
Fortunately, both candidates define themselves as pro-Israel. Frankly, we hope Obama clarifies his attitude toward borders and settlements to reassure us that an Obama administration would never pressure Israel back to the 1949 Armistice Lines. We'd also value hearing a similar message from John McCain.
Of course, we can't ask more of Obama or McCain than from our own government. The world knows where the Palestinian Authority stands - intransigently in our view - on the issues of borders, refugees and Jerusalem. So the most constructive step the next Israeli government can take - once it is finally in place, and preferably before the next president is inaugurated - would be to announce where Israel draws its "red lines."
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.
Friday, September 12, 2008
WRAP: Pakistan/Incident in Paris/Sept. 11 (+7)/Oi, Jereusalem
Oi, Jerusalem
For political junkies, there's fodder aplenty in the cast of characters and machinations surrounding Jerusalem's November 11 mayoral election.
Let's begin with the super-charismatic, ultra-Orthodox Sephardi politician, former Shas leader Aryeh Deri. Can he circumvent the statute barring some ex-cons from running for local office within seven years of their release? Deri used his tenure at the Interior Ministry to funnel money to a project headed by his brother.
Victory would probably mean what he most wants - a return to the national arena.
Can Meir Porush, a Boyaner hassid and scion of one of the wealthiest and most well-connected haredi clans, solidify his position as "official" candidate of the Ashkenazi ultra-Orthodox community?
Polls show he'd have trouble winning. But victory would mean continued patronage to the haredi sector.
Should Mayor Uri Lupolianski, the likable ultra-Orthodox Ashkenazi hailing from the Lithuanian camp, give up hope of retaining the job? Among the fervently Orthodox, Lupolianski is tarred as "haredi-lite." He's been known to attend state ceremonies where (gasp) "Hatikva" has been sung.
Is it curtains for Israeli-Russian billionaire tycoon Arkadi Gaydamak? He's supposedly been liquidating assets. For the campaign?
Then there's the wily Ya'acov Litzman, a Ger hassid and chairman of the United Torah Judaism Party. It was UTJ's rotation deal between its Degel Hatorah Lithuanians and the hassidim of Agudat Israel that forced Lupolianski to bow out in favor of Porush.
But there's bad blood between Litzman and Porush.
Maybe this will be Nir Barkat's lucky year, after all. He's the so-called secular candidate, a successful hi-tech entrepreneur who garnered 43 percent of the votes five years ago and stuck around to serve in the thankless role of municipal council opposition leader.
Barkat has made up with popular former Jerusalem police chief Mickey Levy. All has been forgiven over that nasty incident in which someone hired a private eye to dig up dirt on Levy at the time the ex-cop was thinking about making his own mayoral run.
Is former chief rabbi Mordechai Eliyahu, a venerated figure in the national-religious camp, now hospitalized, really backing the non-observant Barkat? Or is the rabbi's "blessing" a gracious gesture, rather than a political endorsement?
ALL THIS leads to the question of whether the haredi political machine that controls politics in the capital, doling out jobs and patronage in return for votes, can unite to overcome the threat of Barkat. But such a focus misses the most stunning question about this local election: Can a Zionist be elected mayor of Israel's capital?
Jerusalem residents - there are 746,300 - have their heartfelt day-to-day concerns such as not enough jobs being created, ever more unaffordable housing, and sky-high rents. And everyone's upset about the excavation work on a light rail system, now years behind schedule, that makes travel within the city a nightmare.
Modern Orthodox and secular Jewish parents see the education system tilting in favor of haredi pupils, who already comprise 58% of Jewish enrollment. Zionists are troubled about a migration of thousands of Jews annually from a city that is 33% Arab. Arabs, while refusing to vote out of opposition to Israel's control of Jerusalem, worry about atrocious city services.
Jerusalem desperately needs a mayor who can, without favoritism, minister to this complex mosaic. The capital of Israel begs for a Zionist mayor who understands that talk of an undivided Jerusalem is hypocritical when services and infrastructure in Arab neighborhoods are scandalously inferior.
In theory, such a mayor can easily be elected because the ultra-Orthodox comprise just 20% of the city's population and 30% of its Jews.
The haredim's advantage is that practically 100% of their eligible voters turn out to vote for the candidates endorsed by their spiritual leaders. In contrast, less than half of the non-haredi voters bestir themselves to cast a ballot, and often split their vote.
It is intolerable that our capital be administered by anyone who does not wholeheartedly embrace the ethos of Israeli society. Jerusalem deserves a mayor who embodies tolerance and a respect for tradition, someone who will distribute resources on the basis of fairness and pluralism.
Someone who won't feel uneasy when the national anthem is sung.
The majority rules - but only if it bothers to vote.
Al-Qaida lives, kill it
Make no mistake: The United States will hunt down and punish those responsible for these cowardly acts.
- President George W. Bush, in his first public remarks after the 9/11 attacks, Barksdale Air Force Base, Louisiana, Sept. 11, 2001
Today marks the seventh anniversary of al-Qaida's sneak attack against the United States.
Over the years, America has managed to kill or capture many of the organization's key figures, but Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri "continue to maintain al-Qaida unity and its focus on their strategic vision and operational priorities," according to Ted Gistaro, the US government's top al-Qaida watcher.
How did Bin Laden and al-Zawahiri manage not only to avoid retribution but to rebuild al-Qaida? Part of the answer: The Bush administration became distracted.
In October 2001, the US struck at al-Qaida training camps and Taliban military installations. Within a month, the Taliban were in flight and Bin Laden and al-Zawahiri lost their protectors. US forces cornered them in the battle of Tora Bora; but somehow they escaped toward the nearby Afghanistan-Pakistan border where, around December 10, they found sanctuary.
The view in Washington was that the two men were either dead or hiding scared, and no longer a threat.
The Bush administration, meantime, had become increasingly convinced that Iraq's Saddam Hussein was amassing weapons of mass destruction and that there was a relationship between him and al-Qaida. So in March 2003, America invaded Iraq - hoping, in addition, to spread democracy.
No weapons of mass destruction were unearthed, however; and the 9/11 Commission Report asserted there was no collaborative relationship between Iraq and al-Qaida. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi aligned his Iraqi jihadists with al-Qaida only in July 2005: In other words, the war began before "al-Qaida" arrived on the scene. Only the future will tell whether Iraq will evolve into the Arab world's first pro-Western democracy.
As the war dragged on, al-Qaida continued to export terrorism. Authorities suspect that the July 7, 2005 London bombings - three trains and a bus - in which at least 52 were killed and 700 injured, was al-Qaida's handiwork and not that of disaffected British Muslims acting on their own initiative. The same holds true for other plots, including the August 2006 conspiracy to blow up airliners en route to North America.
Bush's pledge to hunt down the 9/11 perpetrators thus went partly unfulfilled because America became sidetracked in Iraq. "Officials with the CIA and the US military said they began shifting resources out of Afghanistan [to Iraq] in 'early 2002 and still haven't recovered from that mistake,'" the Washington Post reported yesterday.
AL-QAIDA, along with the Taliban in which it incubates, has been rejuvenated. What to do?
Let's bear in mind what al-Qaida is, and isn't.
This is a small organization that specializes in terrorist attacks of staggering scope. It's a sort of venture-capital outfit for anti-civilian warfare; and perhaps the paramount Islamist think-tank. It's the home of the motivating icons of the Islamist struggle, Bin-Laden and al-Zawahiri.
Al-Qaida is not a synonym for every Islamist menace. It is not Iran (with which it has a multitude of theological and political differences); nor is it Hizbullah or Hamas. Conflating Islamist threats undermines our ability to confront each unique danger as needed.
The war against Western civilization is real, but the enemy is not a conveniently homogeneous body. Putting al-Qaida out of commission will not achieve victory against a metastasized Islamist threat.
Seven years on, the good news, according to the US Department of Homeland Security, is that America does not face imminent attack. Still, many analysts are concerned that al-Qaida will strike again on or around Election Day, November 4.
But the true nightmare scenario prognosticates that al-Qaida's terror-masters are devoting their efforts to obtaining a nuclear device; one that would be detonated in New York or Washington, perhaps, with results too ghastly to contemplate.
On this meaningful day, let us recall that the West is engaged in a war not against "terror," but against violent, expansionist Muslim extremism. The prospect of the forces of enlightenment prevailing will be immeasurably enhanced if the heteromorphic essence of the enemy is understood - and if that enemy is confronted judiciously, and with perseverance.
Incident in Paris
Though it boasts a popular science museum, a pleasant park and crisscrossing canals, relatively few casual tourists make it to the 19th arrondissement in northeast Paris.
This mostly working-class district of 180,000 has seen an influx of North African and sub-Saharan Africans who now live alongside a community of roughly 15,000 Jews.
In the past 10 years, petty harassment has become so frequent as to be almost unremarkable. Jewish schoolchildren have learned which streets - dominated by Muslim anti-Semites - to avoid.
But when the hooligans go on the prowl, trouble is unavoidable. Toward the end of this past Shabbat, three kippa-wearing boys 17 or 18 years old, Dan Nebet, Kevin Bitan and David Boaziz, were attacked by one such group of mostly Muslim Africans. Four or five assailants threw walnuts at Kevin. When he asked why they were hassling him, he was knocked down. The Jewish youths were then surrounded by a larger group of 10 to 12 louts and beaten with fists, chains and brass knuckles.
One of the boys suffered a broken nose and injured jaw. All were left bruised and traumatized.
In June, another kippa-wearing 17-year-old was attacked nearby by another mob of African youths. And recently a neighborhood store drew attention for selling T-shirts with the slogan "Jews are forbidden to enter the park" in German and Polish.
The revolting reference was to a prohibition imposed on Jews in Lodz, Poland, in the early 1940s against visiting a public park. Young Jews in the arrondissement got the hint: Muslim and African gangs were warning them to stay away from the neighborhood's Belleville Park.
WHAT ARE those of us outside France to make of this latest incident?
Not that life for the 350,000 Jews of metropolitan Paris - and, indeed, for the 600,000 Jews of France as a whole - is becoming increasingly untenable, says Dr. Richard Prasquier, president of the Representative Council of French Jewish Institutions known as CRIF. He and others familiar with the French Jewish predicament describe a "complicated" situation in which, for example, sections of the 19th and 10th arrondissements, as well certain suburbs, have become places where it is unpleasant to be a Jew.
The brutal killing of young Ilan Halimi outside Paris in 2006 comes to mind.
The tough areas, not all of them slums, are where Arab and African gangs are active, unemployment is high, and social and economic problems are endemic. Working-class Jews forced to share this turf all too often make convenient scapegoats for the youthful bigots.
Prasquier does not want Saturday's patently anti-Semitic incident to be swept under the rug, however. A number of Paris radio stations sought, absurdly, to portray it as an altercation between Jewish and Muslim gangs.
Prasquier's message is that violent anti-Semitism and ongoing harassment are all too real, but restricted to specific locales. The scourge, he says, does not typify Paris as a whole, let alone France.
As soon as the incident hit the news, high-level police and municipal officials contacted the French Jewish leadership to offer reassurances. Interior Minister Michèle Alliot-Marie called Prasquier to discuss the attack and later issued a strong condemnation of "the anti-Semitic violence against young Jews going to the synagogue."
Police saturation of the area, especially during the High Holy Days, would bring a measure of comfort. But security is already high - a police cruiser was a block from the scene when the boys were set upon. They were not carrying mobile phones because of Shabbat; and passerby made no effort to alert police.
AFFLUENT, acculturated French Jews, those not easily marked by their ethnicity or religion, denizens of more upscale districts, have few personal fears. They neither want the impression to go out that France is seething with violent Jew-hatred, nor that they're unmoved by the plight of their co-religionists in the turbulent neighborhoods.
At a time like this, we in Israel should not be sowing panic. Instead, a fitting Zionist message to our French Jewish brethren is that they are not alone; that Israel was founded not only as a haven from anti-Semitism, but as a homeland where - when we Israelis are at our best - Jewish life can be lived to its fullest.
Pakistan's new president
The world's only nuclear-armed Islamic state has a new president. Asif Ali Zardari, 53, the widower of Benazir Bhutto, was chosen by Pakistan's electoral college on Saturday to succeed Pervez Musharraf, who was forced to resign August 19.
Zardari spent more than a decade, on and off, in prison on charges of murder, influence-peddling and money laundering. His moniker is "Mr. 10 Percent" - though others insist it is 30% - for the kickbacks he reportedly demanded from those wanting to do business with his wife's government.
In a country where fully two-thirds of the population survives on $2 a day, Zardari's personal fortune is estimated variously at $30 million to $1 billion. In a 2006 case involving how he came to own a 355-acre property in the English countryside, his own psychiatrists attested to the fact that was demented and thus could not participate in his own defense.
Zardari is an unlikely figure to stabilize the country or give average Pakistanis a reason not to side with its fanatics.
Under Musharraf, the economy expanded by 5.8 percent. With him gone, inflation is up, the stock markets and foreign exchange reserves are down and the country is deemed among the riskiest in the world for investors.
When treasury officials recently challenged pressure from Zardari to bust the budget so he could subsidize Punjabi farmers, whose support he courts, he told them: Print more money.
WHAT HAPPENS in Pakistan is of more than passing interest to Israelis given that Islamabad may have 150 nuclear warheads and has a history of nuclear proliferation to pariah states, including Iran. So our security establishment is monitoring Pakistani events from every angle.
The integrity of Pakistan's nuclear arsenal is, in fact, the world's number one concern. An 18-member National Command Authority, led by Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, reportedly has control over Pakistan's nuclear bombs. Zardari now sits, at least nominally, as chair of that authority.
Pakistan is a violently fragmented polity. Suicide bombings - like the one in its northwest province that claimed 33 lives Saturday - occur with numbing frequency. The toll so far this year is 2,000 lives lost.
As Dexter Filkins explained in Sunday's New York Times Magazine, Pakistan has long been playing a double game - supporting both the war on terror and the terrorists. Islamabad wanted to influence events in Afghanistan by championing the Taliban. In the process, it created an Islamist Frankenstein: Indigenous Taliban grew strong enough to challenge the central government's authority.
The penny may finally have dropped for the country's shadowy Inter-Services Intelligence Agency and the military, which explains why they've lately been cracking down on the fundamentalists. At the same time, because they may not have the capacity to defeat the monster they created, the authorities have been quick to reconstitute the old arrangement: So long as the fundamentalists focus their violence outside Pakistan's border, it's "Live and let live."
American security officials have become increasingly convinced that despite the $10 billion Washington has transferred to Islamabad since September 11, 2001, Pakistan is as much part of the problem as it is the solution. Exasperated by Pakistani duplicity, US forces have begun operating more openly within the borders of Pakistan - drawing the ire of Pakistani masses and officials.
SEVERAL lessons may be drawn from the Pakistan experience:
By definition, religious fanatics feel impelled to impose their way of life on others. If you try to buy them off - in Pakistan, Iran, Gaza or elsewhere - they will only come after you, with devastating consequences.
The forces of chaos exploit, yet do not respect, sovereignty. Never grant terrorists immunity from preemptive attack out of a misguided concern over a country's boundaries.
The real al-Qaida has gone undefeated as America's resources and energies are diverted in Iraq. Liquidating this threat, albeit belatedly, is therefore the highest priority - before Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri can engineer a spectacular attack, perhaps to coincide with the US elections.
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, fresh from her Friday tete-a-tete with Muammar Gaddafi, described Zardari's election as a "good way forward."
Her successor may well wonder what she was talking about.
For political junkies, there's fodder aplenty in the cast of characters and machinations surrounding Jerusalem's November 11 mayoral election.
Let's begin with the super-charismatic, ultra-Orthodox Sephardi politician, former Shas leader Aryeh Deri. Can he circumvent the statute barring some ex-cons from running for local office within seven years of their release? Deri used his tenure at the Interior Ministry to funnel money to a project headed by his brother.
Victory would probably mean what he most wants - a return to the national arena.
Can Meir Porush, a Boyaner hassid and scion of one of the wealthiest and most well-connected haredi clans, solidify his position as "official" candidate of the Ashkenazi ultra-Orthodox community?
Polls show he'd have trouble winning. But victory would mean continued patronage to the haredi sector.
Should Mayor Uri Lupolianski, the likable ultra-Orthodox Ashkenazi hailing from the Lithuanian camp, give up hope of retaining the job? Among the fervently Orthodox, Lupolianski is tarred as "haredi-lite." He's been known to attend state ceremonies where (gasp) "Hatikva" has been sung.
Is it curtains for Israeli-Russian billionaire tycoon Arkadi Gaydamak? He's supposedly been liquidating assets. For the campaign?
Then there's the wily Ya'acov Litzman, a Ger hassid and chairman of the United Torah Judaism Party. It was UTJ's rotation deal between its Degel Hatorah Lithuanians and the hassidim of Agudat Israel that forced Lupolianski to bow out in favor of Porush.
But there's bad blood between Litzman and Porush.
Maybe this will be Nir Barkat's lucky year, after all. He's the so-called secular candidate, a successful hi-tech entrepreneur who garnered 43 percent of the votes five years ago and stuck around to serve in the thankless role of municipal council opposition leader.
Barkat has made up with popular former Jerusalem police chief Mickey Levy. All has been forgiven over that nasty incident in which someone hired a private eye to dig up dirt on Levy at the time the ex-cop was thinking about making his own mayoral run.
Is former chief rabbi Mordechai Eliyahu, a venerated figure in the national-religious camp, now hospitalized, really backing the non-observant Barkat? Or is the rabbi's "blessing" a gracious gesture, rather than a political endorsement?
ALL THIS leads to the question of whether the haredi political machine that controls politics in the capital, doling out jobs and patronage in return for votes, can unite to overcome the threat of Barkat. But such a focus misses the most stunning question about this local election: Can a Zionist be elected mayor of Israel's capital?
Jerusalem residents - there are 746,300 - have their heartfelt day-to-day concerns such as not enough jobs being created, ever more unaffordable housing, and sky-high rents. And everyone's upset about the excavation work on a light rail system, now years behind schedule, that makes travel within the city a nightmare.
Modern Orthodox and secular Jewish parents see the education system tilting in favor of haredi pupils, who already comprise 58% of Jewish enrollment. Zionists are troubled about a migration of thousands of Jews annually from a city that is 33% Arab. Arabs, while refusing to vote out of opposition to Israel's control of Jerusalem, worry about atrocious city services.
Jerusalem desperately needs a mayor who can, without favoritism, minister to this complex mosaic. The capital of Israel begs for a Zionist mayor who understands that talk of an undivided Jerusalem is hypocritical when services and infrastructure in Arab neighborhoods are scandalously inferior.
In theory, such a mayor can easily be elected because the ultra-Orthodox comprise just 20% of the city's population and 30% of its Jews.
The haredim's advantage is that practically 100% of their eligible voters turn out to vote for the candidates endorsed by their spiritual leaders. In contrast, less than half of the non-haredi voters bestir themselves to cast a ballot, and often split their vote.
It is intolerable that our capital be administered by anyone who does not wholeheartedly embrace the ethos of Israeli society. Jerusalem deserves a mayor who embodies tolerance and a respect for tradition, someone who will distribute resources on the basis of fairness and pluralism.
Someone who won't feel uneasy when the national anthem is sung.
The majority rules - but only if it bothers to vote.
Al-Qaida lives, kill it
Make no mistake: The United States will hunt down and punish those responsible for these cowardly acts.
- President George W. Bush, in his first public remarks after the 9/11 attacks, Barksdale Air Force Base, Louisiana, Sept. 11, 2001
Today marks the seventh anniversary of al-Qaida's sneak attack against the United States.
Over the years, America has managed to kill or capture many of the organization's key figures, but Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri "continue to maintain al-Qaida unity and its focus on their strategic vision and operational priorities," according to Ted Gistaro, the US government's top al-Qaida watcher.
How did Bin Laden and al-Zawahiri manage not only to avoid retribution but to rebuild al-Qaida? Part of the answer: The Bush administration became distracted.
In October 2001, the US struck at al-Qaida training camps and Taliban military installations. Within a month, the Taliban were in flight and Bin Laden and al-Zawahiri lost their protectors. US forces cornered them in the battle of Tora Bora; but somehow they escaped toward the nearby Afghanistan-Pakistan border where, around December 10, they found sanctuary.
The view in Washington was that the two men were either dead or hiding scared, and no longer a threat.
The Bush administration, meantime, had become increasingly convinced that Iraq's Saddam Hussein was amassing weapons of mass destruction and that there was a relationship between him and al-Qaida. So in March 2003, America invaded Iraq - hoping, in addition, to spread democracy.
No weapons of mass destruction were unearthed, however; and the 9/11 Commission Report asserted there was no collaborative relationship between Iraq and al-Qaida. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi aligned his Iraqi jihadists with al-Qaida only in July 2005: In other words, the war began before "al-Qaida" arrived on the scene. Only the future will tell whether Iraq will evolve into the Arab world's first pro-Western democracy.
As the war dragged on, al-Qaida continued to export terrorism. Authorities suspect that the July 7, 2005 London bombings - three trains and a bus - in which at least 52 were killed and 700 injured, was al-Qaida's handiwork and not that of disaffected British Muslims acting on their own initiative. The same holds true for other plots, including the August 2006 conspiracy to blow up airliners en route to North America.
Bush's pledge to hunt down the 9/11 perpetrators thus went partly unfulfilled because America became sidetracked in Iraq. "Officials with the CIA and the US military said they began shifting resources out of Afghanistan [to Iraq] in 'early 2002 and still haven't recovered from that mistake,'" the Washington Post reported yesterday.
AL-QAIDA, along with the Taliban in which it incubates, has been rejuvenated. What to do?
Let's bear in mind what al-Qaida is, and isn't.
This is a small organization that specializes in terrorist attacks of staggering scope. It's a sort of venture-capital outfit for anti-civilian warfare; and perhaps the paramount Islamist think-tank. It's the home of the motivating icons of the Islamist struggle, Bin-Laden and al-Zawahiri.
Al-Qaida is not a synonym for every Islamist menace. It is not Iran (with which it has a multitude of theological and political differences); nor is it Hizbullah or Hamas. Conflating Islamist threats undermines our ability to confront each unique danger as needed.
The war against Western civilization is real, but the enemy is not a conveniently homogeneous body. Putting al-Qaida out of commission will not achieve victory against a metastasized Islamist threat.
Seven years on, the good news, according to the US Department of Homeland Security, is that America does not face imminent attack. Still, many analysts are concerned that al-Qaida will strike again on or around Election Day, November 4.
But the true nightmare scenario prognosticates that al-Qaida's terror-masters are devoting their efforts to obtaining a nuclear device; one that would be detonated in New York or Washington, perhaps, with results too ghastly to contemplate.
On this meaningful day, let us recall that the West is engaged in a war not against "terror," but against violent, expansionist Muslim extremism. The prospect of the forces of enlightenment prevailing will be immeasurably enhanced if the heteromorphic essence of the enemy is understood - and if that enemy is confronted judiciously, and with perseverance.
Incident in Paris
Though it boasts a popular science museum, a pleasant park and crisscrossing canals, relatively few casual tourists make it to the 19th arrondissement in northeast Paris.
This mostly working-class district of 180,000 has seen an influx of North African and sub-Saharan Africans who now live alongside a community of roughly 15,000 Jews.
In the past 10 years, petty harassment has become so frequent as to be almost unremarkable. Jewish schoolchildren have learned which streets - dominated by Muslim anti-Semites - to avoid.
But when the hooligans go on the prowl, trouble is unavoidable. Toward the end of this past Shabbat, three kippa-wearing boys 17 or 18 years old, Dan Nebet, Kevin Bitan and David Boaziz, were attacked by one such group of mostly Muslim Africans. Four or five assailants threw walnuts at Kevin. When he asked why they were hassling him, he was knocked down. The Jewish youths were then surrounded by a larger group of 10 to 12 louts and beaten with fists, chains and brass knuckles.
One of the boys suffered a broken nose and injured jaw. All were left bruised and traumatized.
In June, another kippa-wearing 17-year-old was attacked nearby by another mob of African youths. And recently a neighborhood store drew attention for selling T-shirts with the slogan "Jews are forbidden to enter the park" in German and Polish.
The revolting reference was to a prohibition imposed on Jews in Lodz, Poland, in the early 1940s against visiting a public park. Young Jews in the arrondissement got the hint: Muslim and African gangs were warning them to stay away from the neighborhood's Belleville Park.
WHAT ARE those of us outside France to make of this latest incident?
Not that life for the 350,000 Jews of metropolitan Paris - and, indeed, for the 600,000 Jews of France as a whole - is becoming increasingly untenable, says Dr. Richard Prasquier, president of the Representative Council of French Jewish Institutions known as CRIF. He and others familiar with the French Jewish predicament describe a "complicated" situation in which, for example, sections of the 19th and 10th arrondissements, as well certain suburbs, have become places where it is unpleasant to be a Jew.
The brutal killing of young Ilan Halimi outside Paris in 2006 comes to mind.
The tough areas, not all of them slums, are where Arab and African gangs are active, unemployment is high, and social and economic problems are endemic. Working-class Jews forced to share this turf all too often make convenient scapegoats for the youthful bigots.
Prasquier does not want Saturday's patently anti-Semitic incident to be swept under the rug, however. A number of Paris radio stations sought, absurdly, to portray it as an altercation between Jewish and Muslim gangs.
Prasquier's message is that violent anti-Semitism and ongoing harassment are all too real, but restricted to specific locales. The scourge, he says, does not typify Paris as a whole, let alone France.
As soon as the incident hit the news, high-level police and municipal officials contacted the French Jewish leadership to offer reassurances. Interior Minister Michèle Alliot-Marie called Prasquier to discuss the attack and later issued a strong condemnation of "the anti-Semitic violence against young Jews going to the synagogue."
Police saturation of the area, especially during the High Holy Days, would bring a measure of comfort. But security is already high - a police cruiser was a block from the scene when the boys were set upon. They were not carrying mobile phones because of Shabbat; and passerby made no effort to alert police.
AFFLUENT, acculturated French Jews, those not easily marked by their ethnicity or religion, denizens of more upscale districts, have few personal fears. They neither want the impression to go out that France is seething with violent Jew-hatred, nor that they're unmoved by the plight of their co-religionists in the turbulent neighborhoods.
At a time like this, we in Israel should not be sowing panic. Instead, a fitting Zionist message to our French Jewish brethren is that they are not alone; that Israel was founded not only as a haven from anti-Semitism, but as a homeland where - when we Israelis are at our best - Jewish life can be lived to its fullest.
Pakistan's new president
The world's only nuclear-armed Islamic state has a new president. Asif Ali Zardari, 53, the widower of Benazir Bhutto, was chosen by Pakistan's electoral college on Saturday to succeed Pervez Musharraf, who was forced to resign August 19.
Zardari spent more than a decade, on and off, in prison on charges of murder, influence-peddling and money laundering. His moniker is "Mr. 10 Percent" - though others insist it is 30% - for the kickbacks he reportedly demanded from those wanting to do business with his wife's government.
In a country where fully two-thirds of the population survives on $2 a day, Zardari's personal fortune is estimated variously at $30 million to $1 billion. In a 2006 case involving how he came to own a 355-acre property in the English countryside, his own psychiatrists attested to the fact that was demented and thus could not participate in his own defense.
Zardari is an unlikely figure to stabilize the country or give average Pakistanis a reason not to side with its fanatics.
Under Musharraf, the economy expanded by 5.8 percent. With him gone, inflation is up, the stock markets and foreign exchange reserves are down and the country is deemed among the riskiest in the world for investors.
When treasury officials recently challenged pressure from Zardari to bust the budget so he could subsidize Punjabi farmers, whose support he courts, he told them: Print more money.
WHAT HAPPENS in Pakistan is of more than passing interest to Israelis given that Islamabad may have 150 nuclear warheads and has a history of nuclear proliferation to pariah states, including Iran. So our security establishment is monitoring Pakistani events from every angle.
The integrity of Pakistan's nuclear arsenal is, in fact, the world's number one concern. An 18-member National Command Authority, led by Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, reportedly has control over Pakistan's nuclear bombs. Zardari now sits, at least nominally, as chair of that authority.
Pakistan is a violently fragmented polity. Suicide bombings - like the one in its northwest province that claimed 33 lives Saturday - occur with numbing frequency. The toll so far this year is 2,000 lives lost.
As Dexter Filkins explained in Sunday's New York Times Magazine, Pakistan has long been playing a double game - supporting both the war on terror and the terrorists. Islamabad wanted to influence events in Afghanistan by championing the Taliban. In the process, it created an Islamist Frankenstein: Indigenous Taliban grew strong enough to challenge the central government's authority.
The penny may finally have dropped for the country's shadowy Inter-Services Intelligence Agency and the military, which explains why they've lately been cracking down on the fundamentalists. At the same time, because they may not have the capacity to defeat the monster they created, the authorities have been quick to reconstitute the old arrangement: So long as the fundamentalists focus their violence outside Pakistan's border, it's "Live and let live."
American security officials have become increasingly convinced that despite the $10 billion Washington has transferred to Islamabad since September 11, 2001, Pakistan is as much part of the problem as it is the solution. Exasperated by Pakistani duplicity, US forces have begun operating more openly within the borders of Pakistan - drawing the ire of Pakistani masses and officials.
SEVERAL lessons may be drawn from the Pakistan experience:
By definition, religious fanatics feel impelled to impose their way of life on others. If you try to buy them off - in Pakistan, Iran, Gaza or elsewhere - they will only come after you, with devastating consequences.
The forces of chaos exploit, yet do not respect, sovereignty. Never grant terrorists immunity from preemptive attack out of a misguided concern over a country's boundaries.
The real al-Qaida has gone undefeated as America's resources and energies are diverted in Iraq. Liquidating this threat, albeit belatedly, is therefore the highest priority - before Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri can engineer a spectacular attack, perhaps to coincide with the US elections.
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, fresh from her Friday tete-a-tete with Muammar Gaddafi, described Zardari's election as a "good way forward."
Her successor may well wonder what she was talking about.
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.
Friday, September 05, 2008
The race begins
John McCain accepted the presidential nomination of the Republican Party last night in St. Paul, Minnesota. But it was Sarah Palin, the Alaska governor who came out of nowhere to become his vice presidential running mate, whose galvanizing speech was received on Wednesday with the kind of euphoria once reserved for Ronald Reagan.
Meticulously crafted, Palin's oration enchanted the delegates and reinvigorated the campaign. McCain might not be able to outtalk Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama, but he now has someone on his team who has that potential.
Without overtly running against the incumbent of his own party, McCain wants voters to know he's no George W. Bush; that he'll rebrand the GOP and bring change - the catchphrase of the 2008 campaign - to Washington.
Party conventions were created to broaden political participation, even though traditionally the nominees were chosen by bosses in smoke-filled rooms. A series of reforms democratized the way in which delegates, committed to particular candidates, were selected. These days the nominee is known even before the convention. Still, to unite the party faithful and promote their candidate before the rest of America, the spectacle remains essential.
With both conventions over, there are now just eight weeks before Election Day. Strikingly, only 44 percent of Americans say they have been following news about the campaign - in what is shaping up to be a close race.
IT WOULD be sensible for Israelis to bear in mind that foreign policy does not drive American electoral politics. The big issue is the economy and jobs, with the war in Iraq a distant second. On that, Americans are evenly divided over who is "winning."
It is a salutary fact that the US-Israel relationship is rock-hard and bipartisan; that both Barack Obama and John McCain describe themselves as friends of Israel. Both party platforms are committed to maintaining Israel's qualitative military edge; both take cognizance of the danger a nuclear-armed Iran would pose, and both favor stronger diplomatic and financial sanctions against the Islamic Republic. Democrats and Republicans also agree that Jerusalem should remain the undivided capital of Israel.
But where the rubber hits the road is how these generalities are to be transformed operationally. It is worth reiterating that every Israeli government and every US administration have had disagreements. The interests of the Jewish state and those of the United States are not always in harmony.
Still, by urging Barack Obama and John McCain to move from sweeping statements to specifics, the pro-Israel community needs to assess which of the candidates is the better deal.
Iran: Which man best understands that this is not Israel's problem alone; that the mullahs threaten regional stability and even have imperial ambitions beyond the Mideast? Which one can best restore America's standing in the world and spearhead an accelerated drive to get Europe behind biting sanctions against Teheran? And which - if push came to shove - would be more likely to lead the free world against Iran, rather than wait for Israel to do the dirty work?
Peace: Which man best understands that Israel does not need to be "catalyzed" into peace-making, that it is Palestinian intransigence that has left the negotiations stalemated? Which one is likely to stand by Israel as it resists pressure to withdraw to the 1949 Armistice Lines? Support "1967-plus" - meaning the inclusion of strategic settlement blocs in any final peace deal? Call on Palestinian leaders to abandon demands for millions of Arab refugees and their descendants to "return" Israel proper? Which one will tell Syria to negotiate directly with Israel, without preconditions?
Islamism: Which man would defuse, where possible - but face down, where necessary - the Islamist threat to Western civilization? Which one best comprehends that Hizbullah, Hamas and al-Qaida are embarked on a winner-take-all jihad against freedom and tolerance - and that they must be routed?
For America, foremost, but also for all of us whose reality America so significantly influences, it would be well if, on November 3, Barack Obama and John McCain echoed the sentiments of Adlai Stevenson on the eve of Election Day, 1952: "Looking back, I am content. Win or lose, I have told you the truth as I see it. I have said what I meant, and meant what I said."
Meticulously crafted, Palin's oration enchanted the delegates and reinvigorated the campaign. McCain might not be able to outtalk Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama, but he now has someone on his team who has that potential.
Without overtly running against the incumbent of his own party, McCain wants voters to know he's no George W. Bush; that he'll rebrand the GOP and bring change - the catchphrase of the 2008 campaign - to Washington.
Party conventions were created to broaden political participation, even though traditionally the nominees were chosen by bosses in smoke-filled rooms. A series of reforms democratized the way in which delegates, committed to particular candidates, were selected. These days the nominee is known even before the convention. Still, to unite the party faithful and promote their candidate before the rest of America, the spectacle remains essential.
With both conventions over, there are now just eight weeks before Election Day. Strikingly, only 44 percent of Americans say they have been following news about the campaign - in what is shaping up to be a close race.
IT WOULD be sensible for Israelis to bear in mind that foreign policy does not drive American electoral politics. The big issue is the economy and jobs, with the war in Iraq a distant second. On that, Americans are evenly divided over who is "winning."
It is a salutary fact that the US-Israel relationship is rock-hard and bipartisan; that both Barack Obama and John McCain describe themselves as friends of Israel. Both party platforms are committed to maintaining Israel's qualitative military edge; both take cognizance of the danger a nuclear-armed Iran would pose, and both favor stronger diplomatic and financial sanctions against the Islamic Republic. Democrats and Republicans also agree that Jerusalem should remain the undivided capital of Israel.
But where the rubber hits the road is how these generalities are to be transformed operationally. It is worth reiterating that every Israeli government and every US administration have had disagreements. The interests of the Jewish state and those of the United States are not always in harmony.
Still, by urging Barack Obama and John McCain to move from sweeping statements to specifics, the pro-Israel community needs to assess which of the candidates is the better deal.
Iran: Which man best understands that this is not Israel's problem alone; that the mullahs threaten regional stability and even have imperial ambitions beyond the Mideast? Which one can best restore America's standing in the world and spearhead an accelerated drive to get Europe behind biting sanctions against Teheran? And which - if push came to shove - would be more likely to lead the free world against Iran, rather than wait for Israel to do the dirty work?
Peace: Which man best understands that Israel does not need to be "catalyzed" into peace-making, that it is Palestinian intransigence that has left the negotiations stalemated? Which one is likely to stand by Israel as it resists pressure to withdraw to the 1949 Armistice Lines? Support "1967-plus" - meaning the inclusion of strategic settlement blocs in any final peace deal? Call on Palestinian leaders to abandon demands for millions of Arab refugees and their descendants to "return" Israel proper? Which one will tell Syria to negotiate directly with Israel, without preconditions?
Islamism: Which man would defuse, where possible - but face down, where necessary - the Islamist threat to Western civilization? Which one best comprehends that Hizbullah, Hamas and al-Qaida are embarked on a winner-take-all jihad against freedom and tolerance - and that they must be routed?
For America, foremost, but also for all of us whose reality America so significantly influences, it would be well if, on November 3, Barack Obama and John McCain echoed the sentiments of Adlai Stevenson on the eve of Election Day, 1952: "Looking back, I am content. Win or lose, I have told you the truth as I see it. I have said what I meant, and meant what I said."
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, September 03, 2008
The Sarah Palin shocker
Wasn't it impressive how Republican presidential candidate Senator John McCain was able to keep the selection of his running mate, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, 44, a secret until an hour before the official announcement last Friday?
Sen. Barack Obama had earlier done a good job of keeping the Democratic vice-presidential choice, Sen. Joseph Biden, a surprise.
It's reassuring that there are still some politicians who can keep a secret.
Less classy, however, was how Palin diverted attention - when she was introduced to the media - from the out-of-wedlock pregnancy of her 17-year-old daughter, Bristol, by having the girl hold the governor's new baby. More on this later.
OBAMA'S CHOICE of Biden left me unmoved. Obama should have swallowed his pride and begged Hillary to be his running mate. She would have jumped at the chance - and old Bill could have been shut up with an appointment to the Supreme Court. An Obama-Clinton ticket would have been pretty unbeatable.
Biden first captured my attention in the 1970s because of the publicity he got over a series of partially successful hair transplants - let's just say it's an issue I track.
Since 1988, Biden's been a perennial presidential candidate. He roots for Israel when we're under attack, but probably won't support Israel's quest for safer boundaries. He's long opposed the presence of Jews in Judea and Samaria. And it's unlikely he'll be leading the charge against keeping Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons.
Still, in picking another liberal senator, one with a strong Washington and foreign policy resume, Obama has done himself no harm.
WHEN YOU apply the "above all, do not harm" yardstick to McCain's selection, the results are far less straightforward. Sarah Palin's trajectory runs from her PTA to the Wasilla city council and mayoralty - Wasilla is 50 km. north of Anchorage - to, in December 2006, the governor's mansion.
John McCain reportedly met Palin just once, six months ago, before summoning her last week and offering her the job. She must have made a good first impression.
There's little question that in selecting Palin, McCain was focusing more on his electoral strategy than on what might happen after inauguration day. In that sense he reminds me of Ariel Sharon, who assumed he'd be around to manage politico-security affairs for years to come.
Politically, the choice of Palin seemed smart - at least until the story about Bristol's pregnancy broke.
McCain is distrusted by social conservatives. Palin's credentials as a reform-minded, pro-life, pro-gun, family values, frum Christian - someone who didn't hesitate to tax big oil or challenge the country-club wing of the Republican Party - certainly help shore up this important Republican constituency, which might otherwise have stayed home on election day.
Selecting what everyone assumed was a super-mom with charm - a mother of five, the youngest a Down syndrome child - has its appeal. Her main concerns, like those of most Americans, are domestic. If Biden tries to embarrass her in a debate by asking about the capital of Tajikistan (Dushanbe), he'll only make himself look smug. Most regular Americans don't know it, either.
At first the only controversy surrounding Palin involved her attempt to get her former brother-in-law fired from his job as a state trooper. She's said her sister's ex threatened to kill their father.
But Bristol's pregnancy generates lots of questions: How can we believe that McCain knew about the 17-year-old's condition yet still selected Palin? My bet is he didn't know. And if he didn't, what does that tell you about the people McCain turns to for advice?
On the other hand, more than a third of births in America are to unmarried mothers. In places like New York City, a majority are out of wedlock. It's not the pregnancy that's such a big deal, it's the sense that Palin is a hypocrite. But maybe that's not the way Christians will see it. After all, didn't Jesus teach: "He that is without sin among you, let him cast the first stone..."
PALIN'S LACK of experience outside Alaska is very troubling. But I'm hoping that if he wins, McCain, 72, is going to be around long enough to mentor her.
In truth, as the Democrats correctly pointed out when Obama was being criticized for lack of experience, the Bush II administration was top-heavy with seasoned national security types: Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney - and they managed to lead America into a pointless war in Iraq.
Speaking of Iraq, let's pray that McCain will do an about-face, decide that the government of Iraq is "capable of governing itself" and honor Baghdad's request for a troop withdrawal by 2011. He'd also be wise to rethink his commitment to keep US troops on the ground until the first Jeffersonian democracy in the Arab world takes shape.
But what if Palin does have to become the commander-in-chief sooner rather than later?
The Obama campaign is dismissive: "John McCain put the former mayor of a town of 9,000 with zero foreign policy experience a heartbeat away from the presidency." I'm not going to make believe they don't have a point. But for me, the even bigger question is whether Palin has the temperament, judgment and wisdom to be president. She doesn't have much executive experience - Alaska has only 700,000 people. Obama, of course, has no executive experience at all.
It's OK with me if she believes God created the world, and that maybe the threat of global warming is not quite as dire as Al Gore would have us believe. I'm more concerned about her character. Can she keep an open mind, can she analyze situations on a case-by-case basis - or will theology and ideology predetermine her decisions? Can she - for example - accept that abortion is a personal choice and should not be criminalized?
As for the Jewish angle, I'm relieved that McCain passed over two Jewish politicians - Congressman Eric Cantor and Senator Joe Lieberman. He also passed over a Mormon, and you don't see them getting their knickers in a twist. I live in a country where practically the entire government is Jewish - and, let me tell you, I sometimes long for a sympathetic Alaskan or Mormon to set matters right.
Something also tells me that Palin will be a powerful voice for making the US less dependent on Arab oil.
Am I bothered that Palin - like a majority of US Jews - has never been to Israel?
If only visiting here inoculated politicians from leaning on Israel to make dangerous concessions. Sometimes it does work out that way. But while Jimmy Carter could draw a topographical map of Israel blindfold, he's become an apologist for Arab intransigence. Bill Clinton was no stranger here, and yet he helped bring about Oslo.
Still, it's too bad that Palin was not on the radar of any major pro-Israel group, and that we know little about her attitude toward Israel, except that she has a tiny Israeli flag in her office.
OF COURSE, Israel isn't at the top of the agenda for most US Jews either. If it were, they'd be pressing Obama-Biden and McCain-Palin to oppose an Israeli withdrawal to the 1949 Armistice Lines; to support the inclusion of strategic settlement blocs in any final peace deal. US Jews would be demanding that the candidates denounce Mahmoud Abbas every time he openly demands the "right of return" for millions of Palestinian refugees and their descendants to Israel proper; and they'd want the candidates to say whether they consider the Jerusalem neighborhoods of East Talpiot, Pisgat Ze'ev and Har Homa to be part of Israel's capital or not.
PALIN reportedly wore a "Pat Buchanan in 2000" button. She claims she really didn't endorse the affable anti-Semite. Whatever. I doubt she has a clue about Buchanan's attitude toward Jews. No one has suggested that her brief encounter with Buchanan is akin to Obama's long-term relationship with Rev. Jeremiah Wright.
Like I said, most Jews won't be voting on the basis of what's best for Israel. And the last time I checked, Moses hadn't returned to say that Judaism and the liberalism of West Side Manhattan were one and the same. So it's outrageous to discount Palin because, in the words of one Jewish political operative quoted in the Post, "There is no Jew outside of Alaska who has had a relationship with her."
Excuse me? We're going to demonize Palin because she doesn't know from knishes?
Palin's husband, Todd, is part-Eskimo. I'd venture to say that, outside Michael Chabon's The Yiddish Policemen's Union, few liberal Jews have met many Eskimos. That's probably because for all these folks' cosmopolitan pretenses, if you don't shop at Zabar's, you don't count. Talk about being parochial.
THE PALIN pregnancy business erupted as I was writing this column - the latest twist in an extraordinary campaign. It's shaping up to be the most fascinating presidential race since I moved to Israel - and stopped voting in US elections.
Sen. Barack Obama had earlier done a good job of keeping the Democratic vice-presidential choice, Sen. Joseph Biden, a surprise.
It's reassuring that there are still some politicians who can keep a secret.
Less classy, however, was how Palin diverted attention - when she was introduced to the media - from the out-of-wedlock pregnancy of her 17-year-old daughter, Bristol, by having the girl hold the governor's new baby. More on this later.
OBAMA'S CHOICE of Biden left me unmoved. Obama should have swallowed his pride and begged Hillary to be his running mate. She would have jumped at the chance - and old Bill could have been shut up with an appointment to the Supreme Court. An Obama-Clinton ticket would have been pretty unbeatable.
Biden first captured my attention in the 1970s because of the publicity he got over a series of partially successful hair transplants - let's just say it's an issue I track.
Since 1988, Biden's been a perennial presidential candidate. He roots for Israel when we're under attack, but probably won't support Israel's quest for safer boundaries. He's long opposed the presence of Jews in Judea and Samaria. And it's unlikely he'll be leading the charge against keeping Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons.
Still, in picking another liberal senator, one with a strong Washington and foreign policy resume, Obama has done himself no harm.
WHEN YOU apply the "above all, do not harm" yardstick to McCain's selection, the results are far less straightforward. Sarah Palin's trajectory runs from her PTA to the Wasilla city council and mayoralty - Wasilla is 50 km. north of Anchorage - to, in December 2006, the governor's mansion.
John McCain reportedly met Palin just once, six months ago, before summoning her last week and offering her the job. She must have made a good first impression.
There's little question that in selecting Palin, McCain was focusing more on his electoral strategy than on what might happen after inauguration day. In that sense he reminds me of Ariel Sharon, who assumed he'd be around to manage politico-security affairs for years to come.
Politically, the choice of Palin seemed smart - at least until the story about Bristol's pregnancy broke.
McCain is distrusted by social conservatives. Palin's credentials as a reform-minded, pro-life, pro-gun, family values, frum Christian - someone who didn't hesitate to tax big oil or challenge the country-club wing of the Republican Party - certainly help shore up this important Republican constituency, which might otherwise have stayed home on election day.
Selecting what everyone assumed was a super-mom with charm - a mother of five, the youngest a Down syndrome child - has its appeal. Her main concerns, like those of most Americans, are domestic. If Biden tries to embarrass her in a debate by asking about the capital of Tajikistan (Dushanbe), he'll only make himself look smug. Most regular Americans don't know it, either.
At first the only controversy surrounding Palin involved her attempt to get her former brother-in-law fired from his job as a state trooper. She's said her sister's ex threatened to kill their father.
But Bristol's pregnancy generates lots of questions: How can we believe that McCain knew about the 17-year-old's condition yet still selected Palin? My bet is he didn't know. And if he didn't, what does that tell you about the people McCain turns to for advice?
On the other hand, more than a third of births in America are to unmarried mothers. In places like New York City, a majority are out of wedlock. It's not the pregnancy that's such a big deal, it's the sense that Palin is a hypocrite. But maybe that's not the way Christians will see it. After all, didn't Jesus teach: "He that is without sin among you, let him cast the first stone..."
PALIN'S LACK of experience outside Alaska is very troubling. But I'm hoping that if he wins, McCain, 72, is going to be around long enough to mentor her.
In truth, as the Democrats correctly pointed out when Obama was being criticized for lack of experience, the Bush II administration was top-heavy with seasoned national security types: Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney - and they managed to lead America into a pointless war in Iraq.
Speaking of Iraq, let's pray that McCain will do an about-face, decide that the government of Iraq is "capable of governing itself" and honor Baghdad's request for a troop withdrawal by 2011. He'd also be wise to rethink his commitment to keep US troops on the ground until the first Jeffersonian democracy in the Arab world takes shape.
But what if Palin does have to become the commander-in-chief sooner rather than later?
The Obama campaign is dismissive: "John McCain put the former mayor of a town of 9,000 with zero foreign policy experience a heartbeat away from the presidency." I'm not going to make believe they don't have a point. But for me, the even bigger question is whether Palin has the temperament, judgment and wisdom to be president. She doesn't have much executive experience - Alaska has only 700,000 people. Obama, of course, has no executive experience at all.
It's OK with me if she believes God created the world, and that maybe the threat of global warming is not quite as dire as Al Gore would have us believe. I'm more concerned about her character. Can she keep an open mind, can she analyze situations on a case-by-case basis - or will theology and ideology predetermine her decisions? Can she - for example - accept that abortion is a personal choice and should not be criminalized?
As for the Jewish angle, I'm relieved that McCain passed over two Jewish politicians - Congressman Eric Cantor and Senator Joe Lieberman. He also passed over a Mormon, and you don't see them getting their knickers in a twist. I live in a country where practically the entire government is Jewish - and, let me tell you, I sometimes long for a sympathetic Alaskan or Mormon to set matters right.
Something also tells me that Palin will be a powerful voice for making the US less dependent on Arab oil.
Am I bothered that Palin - like a majority of US Jews - has never been to Israel?
If only visiting here inoculated politicians from leaning on Israel to make dangerous concessions. Sometimes it does work out that way. But while Jimmy Carter could draw a topographical map of Israel blindfold, he's become an apologist for Arab intransigence. Bill Clinton was no stranger here, and yet he helped bring about Oslo.
Still, it's too bad that Palin was not on the radar of any major pro-Israel group, and that we know little about her attitude toward Israel, except that she has a tiny Israeli flag in her office.
OF COURSE, Israel isn't at the top of the agenda for most US Jews either. If it were, they'd be pressing Obama-Biden and McCain-Palin to oppose an Israeli withdrawal to the 1949 Armistice Lines; to support the inclusion of strategic settlement blocs in any final peace deal. US Jews would be demanding that the candidates denounce Mahmoud Abbas every time he openly demands the "right of return" for millions of Palestinian refugees and their descendants to Israel proper; and they'd want the candidates to say whether they consider the Jerusalem neighborhoods of East Talpiot, Pisgat Ze'ev and Har Homa to be part of Israel's capital or not.
PALIN reportedly wore a "Pat Buchanan in 2000" button. She claims she really didn't endorse the affable anti-Semite. Whatever. I doubt she has a clue about Buchanan's attitude toward Jews. No one has suggested that her brief encounter with Buchanan is akin to Obama's long-term relationship with Rev. Jeremiah Wright.
Like I said, most Jews won't be voting on the basis of what's best for Israel. And the last time I checked, Moses hadn't returned to say that Judaism and the liberalism of West Side Manhattan were one and the same. So it's outrageous to discount Palin because, in the words of one Jewish political operative quoted in the Post, "There is no Jew outside of Alaska who has had a relationship with her."
Excuse me? We're going to demonize Palin because she doesn't know from knishes?
Palin's husband, Todd, is part-Eskimo. I'd venture to say that, outside Michael Chabon's The Yiddish Policemen's Union, few liberal Jews have met many Eskimos. That's probably because for all these folks' cosmopolitan pretenses, if you don't shop at Zabar's, you don't count. Talk about being parochial.
THE PALIN pregnancy business erupted as I was writing this column - the latest twist in an extraordinary campaign. It's shaping up to be the most fascinating presidential race since I moved to Israel - and stopped voting in US elections.
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.
Protecting Israel's home front
Unlike apartment buildings in New York, London or Melbourne, most homes in Israel come equipped with bomb shelters. Newer dwellings have reinforced concrete "safe rooms," while older buildings rely on communal shelters.
Though they are ubiquitous, Israelis seldom give shelters much thought. Maybe we ought to - given recent statements by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert that in any future war, life will not go on as usual. The next conflagration could well "reach the cities and homes of Israeli citizens."
Some, including former defense minister Moshe Arens, argue that such talk moves Israel perilously close to accepting the proposition that nothing can be done to protect the home front. In an interview with the Post, he decried what he sees as the abandonment of Israel's long-standing determination to make the protection of its civilian population the highest imperative.
THE HOME front first came under assault in the 1948 War of Independence, when the Egyptian air force bombed Tel Aviv. Once the IAF came into its own, the skies above were secured and the main threat facing civilians stemmed from terrorism.
Israeli strategists emphasized engaging the enemy on its territory. But, unfortunately, as the instruments of war available to our foes became more varied, shielding the home front wasn't always possible.
In the 1981 Gulf War, 39 crude (in terms of accuracy) SCUD missiles launched by Saddam Hussein's Iraq exploded in metropolitan Tel Aviv, causing damage but relatively little loss of life.
In May 1982 Palestinian terrorists, who then reigned supreme in south Lebanon, unleashed a barrage of 100 Katyushas on northern Galilee. Then, on June 3, Israel's ambassador in Britain, Shlomo Argov, was gravely wounded in an assassination attempt. Israel responded to these Palestinian provocations by launching Operation Peace for Galilee, whose immediate goal was to remove the rocket threat.
On average, two IDF soldiers lost their lives each month in the buffer zone Israel subsequently established in south Lebanon to protect the home front. Yet Israel's new enemy, Hizbullah, nevertheless managed - in April 1996 for example - to send rockets our way. While Israel's tough retaliation helped deliver a period of relative quiet to the civilian population, its stationing of troops on Lebanese soil proved unpopular. It was also a militarily dubious approach, prime minister Ehud Barak claimed.
Barak's abrupt pullout from Lebanon in 2000 allowed Hizbullah to set up shop flush against the border with Israel.
During the Second Lebanon War in summer 2006, Hizbullah's onslaught of 4,000 rockets and mortars reached practically as far south as Netanya, forcing a third of the population into shelters. Forty-three citizens were killed, including seven children. Hundreds were wounded.
In the south, meanwhile, following Israel's 1994 post-Oslo withdrawal from Gaza's Palestinian population centers, terrorists launched thousands of rockets and mortars against Israeli civilians. The situation deteriorated further after disengagement in 2005, when all Israeli citizens and soldiers pulled out of Gaza entirely.
The temporary cease-fire now in place, episodically violated by the Palestinians, is likely to end in grief.
The threats facing Israel's population from enemy projectiles - short- and long-range - are daunting: Iran has recently provided Hizbullah with missiles capable of hitting just about every part of Israel, reports say.
The strategic threats emanating from the arsenals of Iran and Syria, and the more tactical menace posed by Hizbullah and Hamas, demand individual assessment and appropriate counter-measures.
AS RECENTLY enunciated by Olmert, Israel's war strategy is "to bring about a quick victory at minimum cost" without conquering enemy territory yet without showing the kind of restraint the IDF manifested in Lebanon.
For Arens, the failure to conquer and hold enemy territory to put the guns out of range is anathema. He would employ ground action to promptly "eliminate" the "insufferable" threat of rockets in Gaza. He'd do the same with regard to short-range Hizbullah rockets, employing the IAF to handle their longer-range weaponry.
Jews did not return to Zion to sit in shelters, he says.
We urge current policymakers - whatever their chosen strategy - to discard any approach that embraces the irresponsible proposition that Israel's population cannot be protected. The mistakes of the Second Lebanon War must not be repeated, on any front.
Though they are ubiquitous, Israelis seldom give shelters much thought. Maybe we ought to - given recent statements by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert that in any future war, life will not go on as usual. The next conflagration could well "reach the cities and homes of Israeli citizens."
Some, including former defense minister Moshe Arens, argue that such talk moves Israel perilously close to accepting the proposition that nothing can be done to protect the home front. In an interview with the Post, he decried what he sees as the abandonment of Israel's long-standing determination to make the protection of its civilian population the highest imperative.
THE HOME front first came under assault in the 1948 War of Independence, when the Egyptian air force bombed Tel Aviv. Once the IAF came into its own, the skies above were secured and the main threat facing civilians stemmed from terrorism.
Israeli strategists emphasized engaging the enemy on its territory. But, unfortunately, as the instruments of war available to our foes became more varied, shielding the home front wasn't always possible.
In the 1981 Gulf War, 39 crude (in terms of accuracy) SCUD missiles launched by Saddam Hussein's Iraq exploded in metropolitan Tel Aviv, causing damage but relatively little loss of life.
In May 1982 Palestinian terrorists, who then reigned supreme in south Lebanon, unleashed a barrage of 100 Katyushas on northern Galilee. Then, on June 3, Israel's ambassador in Britain, Shlomo Argov, was gravely wounded in an assassination attempt. Israel responded to these Palestinian provocations by launching Operation Peace for Galilee, whose immediate goal was to remove the rocket threat.
On average, two IDF soldiers lost their lives each month in the buffer zone Israel subsequently established in south Lebanon to protect the home front. Yet Israel's new enemy, Hizbullah, nevertheless managed - in April 1996 for example - to send rockets our way. While Israel's tough retaliation helped deliver a period of relative quiet to the civilian population, its stationing of troops on Lebanese soil proved unpopular. It was also a militarily dubious approach, prime minister Ehud Barak claimed.
Barak's abrupt pullout from Lebanon in 2000 allowed Hizbullah to set up shop flush against the border with Israel.
During the Second Lebanon War in summer 2006, Hizbullah's onslaught of 4,000 rockets and mortars reached practically as far south as Netanya, forcing a third of the population into shelters. Forty-three citizens were killed, including seven children. Hundreds were wounded.
In the south, meanwhile, following Israel's 1994 post-Oslo withdrawal from Gaza's Palestinian population centers, terrorists launched thousands of rockets and mortars against Israeli civilians. The situation deteriorated further after disengagement in 2005, when all Israeli citizens and soldiers pulled out of Gaza entirely.
The temporary cease-fire now in place, episodically violated by the Palestinians, is likely to end in grief.
The threats facing Israel's population from enemy projectiles - short- and long-range - are daunting: Iran has recently provided Hizbullah with missiles capable of hitting just about every part of Israel, reports say.
The strategic threats emanating from the arsenals of Iran and Syria, and the more tactical menace posed by Hizbullah and Hamas, demand individual assessment and appropriate counter-measures.
AS RECENTLY enunciated by Olmert, Israel's war strategy is "to bring about a quick victory at minimum cost" without conquering enemy territory yet without showing the kind of restraint the IDF manifested in Lebanon.
For Arens, the failure to conquer and hold enemy territory to put the guns out of range is anathema. He would employ ground action to promptly "eliminate" the "insufferable" threat of rockets in Gaza. He'd do the same with regard to short-range Hizbullah rockets, employing the IAF to handle their longer-range weaponry.
Jews did not return to Zion to sit in shelters, he says.
We urge current policymakers - whatever their chosen strategy - to discard any approach that embraces the irresponsible proposition that Israel's population cannot be protected. The mistakes of the Second Lebanon War must not be repeated, on any front.
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.
Ramadan, 1429
From Granada in Spain and Aubervilliers in France, to Cairo and Jakarta, more than a billion Muslims are this month marking the "handing down" of the Koran. Through daytime fasting, Ramadan, which this year falls September 1-30, is a time to subjugate the body to the spirit.
The advent of Ramadan, which most Westerners would hardly have noticed a decade ago, now merits coverage in such disparate media as the Dallas News and London's Times.
In a passage that Jews who observe communal and personal fast days can identify with, a Muslim contributor to the Times explained that "The late afternoon is always the hardest part of the fast." The Los Angeles Daily News tells its readers that the fast is over only when the "crescent of the moon has been sighted," while The Iowa City Press Citizen empathizes with how difficult it must be to keep the holiday in a place where Muslims are a small minority.
This is also the period when the faithful try to resolve their differences peaceably.
The Pakistani military said it would suspend offensive operations against the Taliban.
As a Ramadan goodwill gesture, Egypt opened the Rafah crossing between Sinai and Gaza.
And Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah movement announced it is committed to negotiating with Hamas rather than fighting - even though the two sides can't even agree on the time of day. Daylight Savings Time in Gaza ended Saturday, but will last for several more days in the West Bank. Also in Gaza, thousands of government employees, among them teachers and medical workers associated with Fatah, are on strike against the Hamas government.
Curiously, this is also a time when some non-Muslims are prone to blame anyone but Muslims for the violence and frustration so prevalent in Islamic civilization.
For instance, an Agence France-Presse dispatch begins: "As most of the rest of the Islamic world welcomes Ramadan... Palestinians in the Gaza Strip warily brace for another holiday under a crippling [Israeli] blockade."
No mention is made of Hamas's adamant refusal to recognize previous Palestinian agreements, end violence against non-combatants, or even accept the right of the Jewish state to exist. There's nothing about Gilad Schalit; or about tons of humanitarian aid Israel has allowed in; or about the 200 Hamas-authorized (and revenue-producing) tunnels between Sinai and Gaza which funnel, among other commodities, arms, missiles and explosives; or about concerted preparations for further aggression. AFP notes only that "Israel has kept the sanctions in place despite a two-month-old truce with Palestinian militants which has mostly halted rocket fire on southern Israel."
DESPITE the fact that the second intifada was launched from the Temple Mount in September 2000, Israel is going to great lengths to accommodate Muslims from Judea and Samaria who wish to attend Friday prayers on the Mount. Married men between 45 and 50 and married women 30-45 can request entry permission, with the expectation that it will be granted. Men over 50 and women over 45 can enter freely.
In addition, for this month the opening hours of checkpoints between the West Bank and Israel proper are being extended. Palestinian inmates in Israeli prisons will be allowed to receive special Ramadan packages from their loved ones. And Arab citizens of Israel will be permitted to enter PA-controlled Area A, from where all Israeli citizens are normally barred.
To sensitize Israeli soldiers who come into contact with Palestinian Arab civilians during the holiday, the Civil Administration has distributed leaflets explaining the times, dates and customs of Ramadan: "Soldiers [are] directed to show consideration for the population and instructed to avoid eating, drinking and smoking in populated areas, with an emphasis on the crossing points."
RAMADAN may be an appropriate time for Muslims to reflect on the challenges of faith and modernity. Much of the bloodletting in the Mideast and other Muslim population centers takes place among believers themselves - between those who appear ascendant, who want to return Islam to its most bellicose and imperialistic path, and those who seek coexistence with the "other."
Only when Muslims who aspire to live in harmony with those who do not share their faith are able to triumph over the fanatics will peace between civilizations become a reality.
For this, we too pray.
The advent of Ramadan, which most Westerners would hardly have noticed a decade ago, now merits coverage in such disparate media as the Dallas News and London's Times.
In a passage that Jews who observe communal and personal fast days can identify with, a Muslim contributor to the Times explained that "The late afternoon is always the hardest part of the fast." The Los Angeles Daily News tells its readers that the fast is over only when the "crescent of the moon has been sighted," while The Iowa City Press Citizen empathizes with how difficult it must be to keep the holiday in a place where Muslims are a small minority.
This is also the period when the faithful try to resolve their differences peaceably.
The Pakistani military said it would suspend offensive operations against the Taliban.
As a Ramadan goodwill gesture, Egypt opened the Rafah crossing between Sinai and Gaza.
And Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah movement announced it is committed to negotiating with Hamas rather than fighting - even though the two sides can't even agree on the time of day. Daylight Savings Time in Gaza ended Saturday, but will last for several more days in the West Bank. Also in Gaza, thousands of government employees, among them teachers and medical workers associated with Fatah, are on strike against the Hamas government.
Curiously, this is also a time when some non-Muslims are prone to blame anyone but Muslims for the violence and frustration so prevalent in Islamic civilization.
For instance, an Agence France-Presse dispatch begins: "As most of the rest of the Islamic world welcomes Ramadan... Palestinians in the Gaza Strip warily brace for another holiday under a crippling [Israeli] blockade."
No mention is made of Hamas's adamant refusal to recognize previous Palestinian agreements, end violence against non-combatants, or even accept the right of the Jewish state to exist. There's nothing about Gilad Schalit; or about tons of humanitarian aid Israel has allowed in; or about the 200 Hamas-authorized (and revenue-producing) tunnels between Sinai and Gaza which funnel, among other commodities, arms, missiles and explosives; or about concerted preparations for further aggression. AFP notes only that "Israel has kept the sanctions in place despite a two-month-old truce with Palestinian militants which has mostly halted rocket fire on southern Israel."
DESPITE the fact that the second intifada was launched from the Temple Mount in September 2000, Israel is going to great lengths to accommodate Muslims from Judea and Samaria who wish to attend Friday prayers on the Mount. Married men between 45 and 50 and married women 30-45 can request entry permission, with the expectation that it will be granted. Men over 50 and women over 45 can enter freely.
In addition, for this month the opening hours of checkpoints between the West Bank and Israel proper are being extended. Palestinian inmates in Israeli prisons will be allowed to receive special Ramadan packages from their loved ones. And Arab citizens of Israel will be permitted to enter PA-controlled Area A, from where all Israeli citizens are normally barred.
To sensitize Israeli soldiers who come into contact with Palestinian Arab civilians during the holiday, the Civil Administration has distributed leaflets explaining the times, dates and customs of Ramadan: "Soldiers [are] directed to show consideration for the population and instructed to avoid eating, drinking and smoking in populated areas, with an emphasis on the crossing points."
RAMADAN may be an appropriate time for Muslims to reflect on the challenges of faith and modernity. Much of the bloodletting in the Mideast and other Muslim population centers takes place among believers themselves - between those who appear ascendant, who want to return Islam to its most bellicose and imperialistic path, and those who seek coexistence with the "other."
Only when Muslims who aspire to live in harmony with those who do not share their faith are able to triumph over the fanatics will peace between civilizations become a reality.
For this, we too pray.
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.
Friday, August 29, 2008
From Humphrey to Obama
On this day 40 years ago, Hubert H. Humphrey accepted the nomination of the Democratic Party for the presidency of the United States. As rioting raged outside the Chicago convention hall, he began his stirring oratory by citing St. Francis of Assisi: "Where there is hatred, let me sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light."
Humphrey, who ultimately lost to Richard M. Nixon, may have been the last instinctive friend of Israel to seek the presidency. It was uncomplicated to be a friend of Israel in 1968, even though Robert F. Kennedy had been assassinated by Sirhan Sirhan, a Palestinian Arab, only weeks earlier.
It was clear in those days that Israel faced an Arab world that refused to accept a Jewish state anywhere in the Middle East; that whatever its blunders, Israel was fundamentally in the right; that Arab diplomacy from the 1917 Balfour Declaration through to the 1967 Arab Summit in Khartoum was nothing but a litany of rejectionism.
On the night Humphrey accepted the nomination, Barack Obama, born August 4, 1961, was seven years old. For Obama's generation, and even more for the ones following it, political, moral or theological certainties about Israel - or about anything else - are passé.
LAST NIGHT, as this newspaper was going to press, it was Obama's turn to accept the Democratic presidential nomination in Denver. Delegates had decamped to the Invesco Field at Mile High stadium so that Obama could speak in front of 75,000 enthusiastic supporters. Sen. Hillary Clinton had earlier moved that the nomination be offered to Obama by acclimation.
In the course of the convention, delegates heard vice presidential nominee Sen. Joe Biden declare that the Bush administration had failed to defeat al-Qaida and the Taliban, "the people who actually attacked us on 9/11," while getting bogged down in the war in Iraq.
They applauded as Bill Clinton declared: "Hillary told us in no uncertain terms that she'll do everything she can to elect Barack Obama. That makes two of us."
The Obama-McCain campaign kicks off in earnest after next week's Republican National Convention, and Israelis have been watching the presidential race with fascination. While the Israel-America relationship is fundamentally solid and bipartisan, Washington and Jerusalem have had their ups and downs in every administration from Harry S Truman to George W. Bush.
We do not take it for granted that both candidates define themselves as friends of Israel - yet friendship has to be backed by substance.
• On Iran, Obama says he does not want Israel to feel as if its "back is against the wall," and wants America "to act much more forcefully." Yet he would also try to talk the mullahs into being better global citizens. What specific steps on Iran would an Obama-Biden administration take in its first six weeks?
• On borders and settlements, this is what Obama told the Post in a July interview here: "Israel may seek '67-plus' and justify it in terms of the buffer that they need for security purposes. They've got to consider whether getting that buffer is worth the antagonism of the other party."
Biden once warned premier Menachem Begin that if Israel did not cease settlement in Judea and Samaria, the US would have to cut economic aid to Israel.
Do Obama and Biden think it is possible to be "pro-Israel" in 2008 while being sanguine over an Israeli withdrawal to the 1949 Armistice Lines? Where does the campaign stand on strategic settlement blocs and a Jewish presence in such Jerusalem neighborhoods as Gilo, East Talpiot and Har Homa?
• On Palestinian refugees, Mahmoud Abbas has called for the "right of return" to Israel proper for the refugees and their descendents. What's the campaign's position?
IT MAY be unrealistic for Israelis to expect that an administration taking office in January 2009 will empathize with Israel the way a 1969 Humphrey White House might have.
But what the Obama-Biden ticket needs to demonstrate is that backing for a secure Israel living within defensible boundaries is as integral to Democrats today as it was when Hubert Humphrey was their standard-bearer.
Humphrey, who ultimately lost to Richard M. Nixon, may have been the last instinctive friend of Israel to seek the presidency. It was uncomplicated to be a friend of Israel in 1968, even though Robert F. Kennedy had been assassinated by Sirhan Sirhan, a Palestinian Arab, only weeks earlier.
It was clear in those days that Israel faced an Arab world that refused to accept a Jewish state anywhere in the Middle East; that whatever its blunders, Israel was fundamentally in the right; that Arab diplomacy from the 1917 Balfour Declaration through to the 1967 Arab Summit in Khartoum was nothing but a litany of rejectionism.
On the night Humphrey accepted the nomination, Barack Obama, born August 4, 1961, was seven years old. For Obama's generation, and even more for the ones following it, political, moral or theological certainties about Israel - or about anything else - are passé.
LAST NIGHT, as this newspaper was going to press, it was Obama's turn to accept the Democratic presidential nomination in Denver. Delegates had decamped to the Invesco Field at Mile High stadium so that Obama could speak in front of 75,000 enthusiastic supporters. Sen. Hillary Clinton had earlier moved that the nomination be offered to Obama by acclimation.
In the course of the convention, delegates heard vice presidential nominee Sen. Joe Biden declare that the Bush administration had failed to defeat al-Qaida and the Taliban, "the people who actually attacked us on 9/11," while getting bogged down in the war in Iraq.
They applauded as Bill Clinton declared: "Hillary told us in no uncertain terms that she'll do everything she can to elect Barack Obama. That makes two of us."
The Obama-McCain campaign kicks off in earnest after next week's Republican National Convention, and Israelis have been watching the presidential race with fascination. While the Israel-America relationship is fundamentally solid and bipartisan, Washington and Jerusalem have had their ups and downs in every administration from Harry S Truman to George W. Bush.
We do not take it for granted that both candidates define themselves as friends of Israel - yet friendship has to be backed by substance.
• On Iran, Obama says he does not want Israel to feel as if its "back is against the wall," and wants America "to act much more forcefully." Yet he would also try to talk the mullahs into being better global citizens. What specific steps on Iran would an Obama-Biden administration take in its first six weeks?
• On borders and settlements, this is what Obama told the Post in a July interview here: "Israel may seek '67-plus' and justify it in terms of the buffer that they need for security purposes. They've got to consider whether getting that buffer is worth the antagonism of the other party."
Biden once warned premier Menachem Begin that if Israel did not cease settlement in Judea and Samaria, the US would have to cut economic aid to Israel.
Do Obama and Biden think it is possible to be "pro-Israel" in 2008 while being sanguine over an Israeli withdrawal to the 1949 Armistice Lines? Where does the campaign stand on strategic settlement blocs and a Jewish presence in such Jerusalem neighborhoods as Gilo, East Talpiot and Har Homa?
• On Palestinian refugees, Mahmoud Abbas has called for the "right of return" to Israel proper for the refugees and their descendents. What's the campaign's position?
IT MAY be unrealistic for Israelis to expect that an administration taking office in January 2009 will empathize with Israel the way a 1969 Humphrey White House might have.
But what the Obama-Biden ticket needs to demonstrate is that backing for a secure Israel living within defensible boundaries is as integral to Democrats today as it was when Hubert Humphrey was their standard-bearer.
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.
WRAP -- Gilad Schalit and Little Rose
Police Blues
Aug. 26, 2008
Lurid details are now emerging about the murder of four-year-old Rose Ron - allegedly by her grandfather, with the complicity of her mother (the two were married). Police suspect Rose's body was placed in a suitcase and dumped in the Yarkon River.
Since the story of her disappearance first broke on Sunday and her haunting portrait seared itself into the public consciousness, we all feared something evil had happened to her. Now we know it did.
Meanwhile, two alleged organized crime figures, brothers Itzik and Meir Abergil, are facing extradition to the United States over their reputed involvement in the 2003 murder of an Israeli drug dealer in Los Angeles. Their syndicate is also reportedly implicated in the botched mob hit on a Bat Yam beach last month that saw an innocent bystander, Marguerita Lautin, shot dead in front of her children and husband.
Chaim Nachman Bialik, the legendary Hebrew poet, was said to have coined the Zionist credo: "When the first Jewish prostitute is arrested by the first Jewish policeman and sentenced by the first Jewish judge, we can consider ourselves a sovereign state."
Israel has achieved this, and more.
Protecting law-abiding citizens from evil and the criminal falls mostly to the guardians of civilized society, the police. Yet as the Post has been reporting since Monday, the police itself is under criticism: Key field assignments, set to take effect next year, have apparently been made on the basis of cronyism. Even the appearance of favoritism, let alone the reality, shakes the already wobbly faith of Israelis in their political and legal systems.
WHEN ISRAEL'S top cop, Insp.-Gen. David Cohen, decided to transfer his number two, Deputy Insp.-Gen. Shahar Ayalon, to the post of Tel Aviv police chief and replace him with the current head of the Tel Aviv district, Cmdr. Ilan Franco, he created at least the appearance of impropriety, casting himself and Avi Dichter the minister for internal security, in a dismal light.
Franco would be positioned to replace Cohen as Israel's top cop, even though a 2007 panel headed by former District Court Judge Vardi Zeiler specifically recommended against giving Franco the country's top police post. The Zeiler Committee was set up to examine the police command's questionable handling of suspicions that a rogue cop had maintained ties with underworld figures Oded and Sharon Perinian.
Besides his plan to promote Franco, Cohen also embarked on a series of appointments intended to help old friends (Dep.-Cmdr. Jackie Bray and Cmdr. Shai Amihai, for instance) and hinder those who aren't - specifically, Cmdr. Uri Bar-Lev, a reform-minded manager credited with a huge drop in crime in the southern district.
Rather than advance him through the ranks, Cohen allowed personal animosities to rule and ordered Bar-Lev to take paid educational leave. Bar-Lev, a decorated veteran of an elite IDF unit, already holds two undergraduate degrees and refused to waste public funds on unnecessary study or be put out to pasture. Cohen then released a bogus statement announcing that Bar-Lev had decided to quit, to which Bar-Lev responded: "I have no plans to resign for the next 10 years."
Bar-Lev is precisely the kind of policeman a good boss should be nurturing, and a chorus of universal outrage has rightly erupted over Cohen's abysmal treatment of him, and Dichter's failure to date to decisively rectify it.
CAN A force plagued by a lack of professionalism and a leadership vacuum afford to lose a commander of Bar-Lev's caliber? And for what? To make room for more of the commissioner's good ole' boys?
Israelis cannot help but wonder how we got saddled with the apparently mendacious Cohen and, in Dichter, a minister who seems more concerned with respecting "the organizational culture" of the police than its effectiveness.
This episode is not only about an honest, dedicated and charismatic cop being unwarrantedly shunted aside, but, most fundamentally, about a law enforcement organization begging for upstanding leadership, adequate resources and competent ministerial oversight - and, so far anyway, getting none of these.
The buck stops with Dichter, a former Shin Bet head and now a candidate for Kadima's leadership. The minister of internal security, who appointed Cohen to the commissioner's job, is failing the public, and should get a grip or hand over to someone who can.
'Unparalleled cruelty'
Aug. 26, 2008
There are an estimated 8,500 Palestinian Arab prisoners from the West Bank and Gaza in Israeli custody. Over 5,000 of them are serving out sentences; 2,300 are awaiting trial, the remainder are in administrative detention.
No one would suggest that Israeli prisons are fun places. Each inmate has loved ones who presumably miss them dearly. That said, the incarcerated are menacing figures in the Palestinian "resistance," many having planned, executed or enabled attacks aimed at murdering or maiming Israelis in buses, cafes, nightclubs and hotel banquet rooms.
Recently, prisoners in a high-security wing of the Sharon penitentiary - killers mostly - complained to a visiting delegation from the Israel Bar Association of mistreatment: stuffy rooms, poor lighting and such. A more serious allegation, which requires a response from Prison Services Commissioner Lt-Gen. Benny Kaniak, is that members of the elite Nachshon Unit have used dogs to "humiliate" the inmates.
The lawyers also questioned the continued incarceration of Mahmoud Azan, who reached Israel from Afghanistan and has been held in administrative detention for 10 years. Israel is reportedly prepared to deport Azan, but no country will have him. Bar Association chair Yuri Guy-Ron declared that the lawyers' subsequent report shows the importance of "having objective professional representatives of the bar continuing to visit prisons in order to view prison conditions."
It certainly does. Which is why we are gratified that, on any given day, Israeli prisons are hosting Red Cross representatives, journalists, lawyers and prisoners' advocates, as well as family members. Prisoners are even permitted conjugal visits.
WITH THESE thousands of prisoners in Israeli custody, Palestinian society cannot fathom - yet is delighted to exploit - Israelis' fretting over Gilad Schalit, their lone Israeli prisoner, who will mark his third birthday in captivity this Thursday.
Putting aside the fact that Schalit is not a terrorist but a simple soldier who was guarding sovereign Israeli soil when he was abducted on June 25, 2006; and that he had done no Arab any harm, probably never having fired his weapon except in training, the biggest distinction between him and the thousands of Arab prisoners Israel holds is that not one of them would want to switch places with the Israeli captive for even a day.
Why? The IDF soldier - who under international law should be treated as a POW - is not allowed to see Red Cross representatives or consular officials (Schalit also holds French citizenship). Hamas boasts that he is not permitted to exercise in the sunshine. Not only are his parents forbidden to visit him, only rarely has even a letter or video reached them - and any that did were intended to serve the enemy propaganda machine.
Insight into the heartless environment in which Schalit is being held can be gleaned from the popularity of a mock recording of the soldier's mother addressing her son. Gazans by the thousands have downloaded the sound file onto mobile phones and computers.
Yesterday, meanwhile, Israel released 198 long-serving Palestinian prisoners, including several killers, in a misguided gesture intended to boost PA President Mahmoud Abbas's standing among his people.
Abbas could have used a Ramallah ceremony welcoming the men to talk about reconciliation; to say that the sooner the 60-year-plus war against the Zionist enterprise was halted and a two-state solution accepted by the Arabs, the sooner many more prisoners would be released. He could have mentioned Schalit, if only on humanitarian grounds.
Instead Abbas told the crowd: "We will not rest until [all] the prisoners are freed and the jails are empty," specifically citing Marwan Barghouti, serving five consecutive life terms for murder; Ahmed Saadat, imprisoned for the assassination of cabinet minister Rehavam Ze'evi; and Aziz Duaik, a Hamas politician taken into custody in response to Schalit's abduction.
It is sobering to remind ourselves that Abbas reflects the most moderate of Palestinian opinion.
Writing in Yediot Aharonot on Monday, novelist and playwright Yoram Kaniuk, a government critic who has long expressed compassion for Palestinian suffering, did what Abbas should have done. He urged ordinary Palestinians to call for better treatment of Schalit, and say: "Keeping a young person imprisoned without trial, without his parents being able to visit him, is unparalleled cruelty."
It is.
Aug. 26, 2008
Lurid details are now emerging about the murder of four-year-old Rose Ron - allegedly by her grandfather, with the complicity of her mother (the two were married). Police suspect Rose's body was placed in a suitcase and dumped in the Yarkon River.
Since the story of her disappearance first broke on Sunday and her haunting portrait seared itself into the public consciousness, we all feared something evil had happened to her. Now we know it did.
Meanwhile, two alleged organized crime figures, brothers Itzik and Meir Abergil, are facing extradition to the United States over their reputed involvement in the 2003 murder of an Israeli drug dealer in Los Angeles. Their syndicate is also reportedly implicated in the botched mob hit on a Bat Yam beach last month that saw an innocent bystander, Marguerita Lautin, shot dead in front of her children and husband.
Chaim Nachman Bialik, the legendary Hebrew poet, was said to have coined the Zionist credo: "When the first Jewish prostitute is arrested by the first Jewish policeman and sentenced by the first Jewish judge, we can consider ourselves a sovereign state."
Israel has achieved this, and more.
Protecting law-abiding citizens from evil and the criminal falls mostly to the guardians of civilized society, the police. Yet as the Post has been reporting since Monday, the police itself is under criticism: Key field assignments, set to take effect next year, have apparently been made on the basis of cronyism. Even the appearance of favoritism, let alone the reality, shakes the already wobbly faith of Israelis in their political and legal systems.
WHEN ISRAEL'S top cop, Insp.-Gen. David Cohen, decided to transfer his number two, Deputy Insp.-Gen. Shahar Ayalon, to the post of Tel Aviv police chief and replace him with the current head of the Tel Aviv district, Cmdr. Ilan Franco, he created at least the appearance of impropriety, casting himself and Avi Dichter the minister for internal security, in a dismal light.
Franco would be positioned to replace Cohen as Israel's top cop, even though a 2007 panel headed by former District Court Judge Vardi Zeiler specifically recommended against giving Franco the country's top police post. The Zeiler Committee was set up to examine the police command's questionable handling of suspicions that a rogue cop had maintained ties with underworld figures Oded and Sharon Perinian.
Besides his plan to promote Franco, Cohen also embarked on a series of appointments intended to help old friends (Dep.-Cmdr. Jackie Bray and Cmdr. Shai Amihai, for instance) and hinder those who aren't - specifically, Cmdr. Uri Bar-Lev, a reform-minded manager credited with a huge drop in crime in the southern district.
Rather than advance him through the ranks, Cohen allowed personal animosities to rule and ordered Bar-Lev to take paid educational leave. Bar-Lev, a decorated veteran of an elite IDF unit, already holds two undergraduate degrees and refused to waste public funds on unnecessary study or be put out to pasture. Cohen then released a bogus statement announcing that Bar-Lev had decided to quit, to which Bar-Lev responded: "I have no plans to resign for the next 10 years."
Bar-Lev is precisely the kind of policeman a good boss should be nurturing, and a chorus of universal outrage has rightly erupted over Cohen's abysmal treatment of him, and Dichter's failure to date to decisively rectify it.
CAN A force plagued by a lack of professionalism and a leadership vacuum afford to lose a commander of Bar-Lev's caliber? And for what? To make room for more of the commissioner's good ole' boys?
Israelis cannot help but wonder how we got saddled with the apparently mendacious Cohen and, in Dichter, a minister who seems more concerned with respecting "the organizational culture" of the police than its effectiveness.
This episode is not only about an honest, dedicated and charismatic cop being unwarrantedly shunted aside, but, most fundamentally, about a law enforcement organization begging for upstanding leadership, adequate resources and competent ministerial oversight - and, so far anyway, getting none of these.
The buck stops with Dichter, a former Shin Bet head and now a candidate for Kadima's leadership. The minister of internal security, who appointed Cohen to the commissioner's job, is failing the public, and should get a grip or hand over to someone who can.
'Unparalleled cruelty'
Aug. 26, 2008
There are an estimated 8,500 Palestinian Arab prisoners from the West Bank and Gaza in Israeli custody. Over 5,000 of them are serving out sentences; 2,300 are awaiting trial, the remainder are in administrative detention.
No one would suggest that Israeli prisons are fun places. Each inmate has loved ones who presumably miss them dearly. That said, the incarcerated are menacing figures in the Palestinian "resistance," many having planned, executed or enabled attacks aimed at murdering or maiming Israelis in buses, cafes, nightclubs and hotel banquet rooms.
Recently, prisoners in a high-security wing of the Sharon penitentiary - killers mostly - complained to a visiting delegation from the Israel Bar Association of mistreatment: stuffy rooms, poor lighting and such. A more serious allegation, which requires a response from Prison Services Commissioner Lt-Gen. Benny Kaniak, is that members of the elite Nachshon Unit have used dogs to "humiliate" the inmates.
The lawyers also questioned the continued incarceration of Mahmoud Azan, who reached Israel from Afghanistan and has been held in administrative detention for 10 years. Israel is reportedly prepared to deport Azan, but no country will have him. Bar Association chair Yuri Guy-Ron declared that the lawyers' subsequent report shows the importance of "having objective professional representatives of the bar continuing to visit prisons in order to view prison conditions."
It certainly does. Which is why we are gratified that, on any given day, Israeli prisons are hosting Red Cross representatives, journalists, lawyers and prisoners' advocates, as well as family members. Prisoners are even permitted conjugal visits.
WITH THESE thousands of prisoners in Israeli custody, Palestinian society cannot fathom - yet is delighted to exploit - Israelis' fretting over Gilad Schalit, their lone Israeli prisoner, who will mark his third birthday in captivity this Thursday.
Putting aside the fact that Schalit is not a terrorist but a simple soldier who was guarding sovereign Israeli soil when he was abducted on June 25, 2006; and that he had done no Arab any harm, probably never having fired his weapon except in training, the biggest distinction between him and the thousands of Arab prisoners Israel holds is that not one of them would want to switch places with the Israeli captive for even a day.
Why? The IDF soldier - who under international law should be treated as a POW - is not allowed to see Red Cross representatives or consular officials (Schalit also holds French citizenship). Hamas boasts that he is not permitted to exercise in the sunshine. Not only are his parents forbidden to visit him, only rarely has even a letter or video reached them - and any that did were intended to serve the enemy propaganda machine.
Insight into the heartless environment in which Schalit is being held can be gleaned from the popularity of a mock recording of the soldier's mother addressing her son. Gazans by the thousands have downloaded the sound file onto mobile phones and computers.
Yesterday, meanwhile, Israel released 198 long-serving Palestinian prisoners, including several killers, in a misguided gesture intended to boost PA President Mahmoud Abbas's standing among his people.
Abbas could have used a Ramallah ceremony welcoming the men to talk about reconciliation; to say that the sooner the 60-year-plus war against the Zionist enterprise was halted and a two-state solution accepted by the Arabs, the sooner many more prisoners would be released. He could have mentioned Schalit, if only on humanitarian grounds.
Instead Abbas told the crowd: "We will not rest until [all] the prisoners are freed and the jails are empty," specifically citing Marwan Barghouti, serving five consecutive life terms for murder; Ahmed Saadat, imprisoned for the assassination of cabinet minister Rehavam Ze'evi; and Aziz Duaik, a Hamas politician taken into custody in response to Schalit's abduction.
It is sobering to remind ourselves that Abbas reflects the most moderate of Palestinian opinion.
Writing in Yediot Aharonot on Monday, novelist and playwright Yoram Kaniuk, a government critic who has long expressed compassion for Palestinian suffering, did what Abbas should have done. He urged ordinary Palestinians to call for better treatment of Schalit, and say: "Keeping a young person imprisoned without trial, without his parents being able to visit him, is unparalleled cruelty."
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.
Monday, August 25, 2008
Tribes and tribulations
What if 300,000 members of a heretofore unknown ethno-European tribe claiming descent from Jewish ancestors were suddenly discovered? And what if, given the right circumstances, they were willing to affiliate with Jewish civilization, learn Hebrew, serve in the IDF and imbue their lives with traditional Jewish values?
The good news is these potential Jews do not have to be airlifted to Israel - they are here from the former Soviet Union, under the Law of Return. Moreover, they serve in the army, pay taxes and have already enriched our society.
The bad news is the state has done precious little to absorb them into the Jewish people. Once it became clear that this "ethno-European tribe" would not jump through every hoop demanded by the religious establishment and that most were unwilling to lead Orthodox lifestyles, Israel's ultra-Orthodox, non-Zionist state rabbinate callously turned its back on them.
Not unlike their African, Indian and South American counterparts, these "lost" Jews of the former Soviet Union had long been cut off from their heritage. Over some 70 years, when not overtly oppressed, they were strongly discouraged from studying Torah and observing the festivals. Rampant intermarriage ensued and, as a consequence, many are not halachically Jewish.
Successive governments abdicated their responsibility to exhort the rabbinate to reconnect these newcomers with their Jewish brethren.
To be sure, broadminded, Zionist-oriented, Orthodox rabbis exist who would be willing to convert potential Jews even if they do not commit to Orthodoxy. But they are held in disdain by the religious establishment.
IT IS in this context that we must consider efforts to bring to Israel all 7,232 members of the lost tribe of Bnei Menashe from northeastern India. Interior Minister Meir Sheetrit is not keen on facilitating their aliya, though consultations are continuing between his ministry, the Prime Minister's Office, the Absorption Ministry and the Jewish Agency. Officials are also considering the sensitivities of the Indian government and relations between Jerusalem and New Delhi.
This newspaper would like to see the Bnei Menashe brought to Israel as swiftly as possible. We applaud the indefatigable efforts of Post columnist Michael Freund and his Shavei Israel group, which assists "lost Jews" seeking to return to the Jewish people. That the Bnei Menashe will have to undergo Orthodox conversion presents no problem; they will not hesitate to meet whatever religious demands the rabbinate places on them.
Meanwhile, last week thousands of Ethiopian immigrants demonstrated outside the Knesset demanding that 8,700 Falash Mura - descendants of the community who converted under duress to Christianity - be brought to Israel. The official rabbinate supports their cause and stands ready to convert them because they too are willing to commit to Orthodoxy.
We concur with the government's approach on the Falash Mura - namely, that individuals who qualify for aliya under the Law of Return should be brought to Israel on a case-by-case basis, noting that the 120,000-strong Ethiopian community itself and a number of its spiritual leaders have reservations about bringing the Falash Mura over en masse.
The absorption of the Beta Israel has not been an unmitigated success. Some are college graduates, IDF heroes, even diplomats and Knesset members. Still, there are serious problems, especially among the youth, with truancy, alcoholism and drugs. Sixty-five percent of Ethiopian families remain dependent on the welfare system.
This being the case, we invite the advocacy groups now calling for additional Ethiopian immigration to commit themselves to a similar passionate involvement in the community's ongoing absorption. (The same need for an ongoing commitment applies to the Bnei Menashe too.)
AS A staunchly Zionist newspaper, we want to see ever-increasing numbers of Jews making Israel their home. Yet it is disingenuous for the Orthodox establishment to encourage aliya from Africa, Asia and South America because immigrants from those places are more theologically pliable while tens of thousands of potential Jews already here from the former Soviet Union get the rabbinate's cold shoulder.
At the end of the day, all potential Jews need to be given the necessary tools and encouragement to make an affiliation with Jewish civilization inviting. And those desirous of making a formal commitment to Judaism need the appropriate options for conversion - Orthodox, traditional or progressive.
The good news is these potential Jews do not have to be airlifted to Israel - they are here from the former Soviet Union, under the Law of Return. Moreover, they serve in the army, pay taxes and have already enriched our society.
The bad news is the state has done precious little to absorb them into the Jewish people. Once it became clear that this "ethno-European tribe" would not jump through every hoop demanded by the religious establishment and that most were unwilling to lead Orthodox lifestyles, Israel's ultra-Orthodox, non-Zionist state rabbinate callously turned its back on them.
Not unlike their African, Indian and South American counterparts, these "lost" Jews of the former Soviet Union had long been cut off from their heritage. Over some 70 years, when not overtly oppressed, they were strongly discouraged from studying Torah and observing the festivals. Rampant intermarriage ensued and, as a consequence, many are not halachically Jewish.
Successive governments abdicated their responsibility to exhort the rabbinate to reconnect these newcomers with their Jewish brethren.
To be sure, broadminded, Zionist-oriented, Orthodox rabbis exist who would be willing to convert potential Jews even if they do not commit to Orthodoxy. But they are held in disdain by the religious establishment.
IT IS in this context that we must consider efforts to bring to Israel all 7,232 members of the lost tribe of Bnei Menashe from northeastern India. Interior Minister Meir Sheetrit is not keen on facilitating their aliya, though consultations are continuing between his ministry, the Prime Minister's Office, the Absorption Ministry and the Jewish Agency. Officials are also considering the sensitivities of the Indian government and relations between Jerusalem and New Delhi.
This newspaper would like to see the Bnei Menashe brought to Israel as swiftly as possible. We applaud the indefatigable efforts of Post columnist Michael Freund and his Shavei Israel group, which assists "lost Jews" seeking to return to the Jewish people. That the Bnei Menashe will have to undergo Orthodox conversion presents no problem; they will not hesitate to meet whatever religious demands the rabbinate places on them.
Meanwhile, last week thousands of Ethiopian immigrants demonstrated outside the Knesset demanding that 8,700 Falash Mura - descendants of the community who converted under duress to Christianity - be brought to Israel. The official rabbinate supports their cause and stands ready to convert them because they too are willing to commit to Orthodoxy.
We concur with the government's approach on the Falash Mura - namely, that individuals who qualify for aliya under the Law of Return should be brought to Israel on a case-by-case basis, noting that the 120,000-strong Ethiopian community itself and a number of its spiritual leaders have reservations about bringing the Falash Mura over en masse.
The absorption of the Beta Israel has not been an unmitigated success. Some are college graduates, IDF heroes, even diplomats and Knesset members. Still, there are serious problems, especially among the youth, with truancy, alcoholism and drugs. Sixty-five percent of Ethiopian families remain dependent on the welfare system.
This being the case, we invite the advocacy groups now calling for additional Ethiopian immigration to commit themselves to a similar passionate involvement in the community's ongoing absorption. (The same need for an ongoing commitment applies to the Bnei Menashe too.)
AS A staunchly Zionist newspaper, we want to see ever-increasing numbers of Jews making Israel their home. Yet it is disingenuous for the Orthodox establishment to encourage aliya from Africa, Asia and South America because immigrants from those places are more theologically pliable while tens of thousands of potential Jews already here from the former Soviet Union get the rabbinate's cold shoulder.
At the end of the day, all potential Jews need to be given the necessary tools and encouragement to make an affiliation with Jewish civilization inviting. And those desirous of making a formal commitment to Judaism need the appropriate options for conversion - Orthodox, traditional or progressive.
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, August 20, 2008
In the year 2050
When the film 2001: A Space Odyssey made its first appearance in 1968, I was just starting high school and the 21st century seemed pretty intangible.
Nowadays, when I hear about something that's supposed to happen in 2050, it's not hard for me to get my head around the chronology of it. We're talking 42 years from now, when, with considerable luck, I'll still be bearing down on Methuselah.
What got me thinking about the future was a striking demographic forecast issued by the US Census Bureau: America is set to evolve from being a mostly Caucasian country whose ethnic stock and cultural ties are largely rooted in Europe to one that will be predominantly Hispanic and Asian. The African American proportion of the population is to remain roughly static at 14 percent to 15%.
Minorities, now roughly 33% of the population, are projected to become 54% in 2050. The tipping point will actually come in 2042, when the combined non-white population will outnumber whites.
The white population is projected to be only slightly larger in 2050 than it is today, while the Hispanic population - regardless of color - is expected to practically triple, so that nearly one in three US residents will be Hispanic.
The Asian population is predicted to rise from 5.1% to 9.2%. And the number of people who identify themselves as being of two or more races is projected to more than triple, from 5.2 million to 16.2 million.
Two other highlights: In 2050, 62% of America's children will be of non-European stock, compared to 44% today. And the working-age population is projected to become 55% "minority" by 2050 (up from 34% in 2008).
THE MAIN news in all this is that the transformation is taking place at a rate faster than was projected just a few years ago; the reason being higher birthrates among non-whites and laissez-faire immigration policies. Texas and California are today already majority "minority."
And so, in a space of about 100 years, the United States will have gone from a country that was something like 90% white to one where Americans of European stock will be the minority population. The census folks also estimate that by 2050 there will be 439 million Americans, compared to around 300 million today.
THIS TREND has long preoccupied America's radical right. In State of Emergency, Pat Buchanan's latest book, the ultra-conservative firebrand warned: "If we do not solve our civilizational crisis - a disintegrating culture, dying populations, and invasions unresisted - the children born [today] will witness in their lifetimes the death of the West. In our hearts we know what must be done. We must stop the invasion. But do our leaders have the vision and will to do it?"
Buchanan is too shrewd a polemicist to oppose the tinting of America purely on the basis of race. He argues instead, and not unpersuasively, that what is at stake is America's civilization; that the coming new majority will fail to embrace the values that made America the greatest nation on earth.
Laissez-faire conservatives like The Wall Street Journal crowd basically side with liberals in arguing that, overall, immigrants contribute more to America than they extract in public benefits.
But as the Journal has argued, the Left does the cause of immigration no service when it pushes for multiculturalism, bilingualism and racial quotas. For the best way to ensure the survival of American civilization - and with it, pluralism, respect for minority opinion, economic bounty and social tolerance - is if today's heterogeneous minorities are successfully co-opted into both the political system and the sociological melting pot.
An America where people of color outnumber white people is neither a good or bad thing. A negative outcome would be if an American majority were to abandon the values we've come to associate with the US. If American liberals, Jews included, want to prove Buchanan wrong, they should work to jettison multiculturalism, which fosters the Balkanization of America. Of all people, Jews can appreciate the benefits of acculturation over multiculturalism. Where would we be today if places like the Henry Street Settlement and the Educational Alliance had been unavailable to our grandparents and great-grandparents?
POLITICAL SCIENTIST Samuel P. Huntington, writing in Who Are We? The Challenges to America's National Identity, warns that Latino immigrants to the US are not embracing the American creed.
Huntington - like Buchanan - warns that the inflow of Hispanic immigrants to the US is different from previous migrations because rather than join the melting pot, they reject the Anglo-Protestant ideas which mobilized the American dream. Instead, they maintain their own parochial political and linguistic values.
Liberal writers, such as Post contributor Samuel G. Freedman, argue that Latinos are expedient targets for "bigotry under the guise of opposing illegal immigration." Fears that "the most recent arrivals have neither the will nor the skill to Americanize" are "a passionate delusion." Hispanic, Asian and African immigrants will no doubt turn out to be as genuinely faithful to America as were the progeny of late 19th- and early 20th-century Jewish immigrants, says Freedman.
I HAVE no way of judging which prognostication will prove the most prescient.
Previous American generations could be reasonably optimistic that their children's future would be part of a continuum of progress, enlightenment, prosperity and values. Liberals and, I suppose, free-market conservatives too, still seem to hold fast to such optimism.
From 6,000 miles away, it's hard to see where this optimism is rooted. America's coming majority needs to be socialized to embrace the American ethos. The argument that this socialization is already taking place is unconvincing.
Perhaps the greater challenge - putting aside the demographic issue - is how to foster the American Idea when modernity and technology actively discourage individuals from thinking about a broader collective.
The future, therefore, may be more like the one visualized by Atlantic magazine writer Robert D. Kaplan. In An Empire Wilderness, he imagines "isolated suburban pods and enclaves of races and classes unrelated to each other" in which bright, analytically literate people around the globe reside in autonomous "city-states" and are more connected with each other than with folks just outside their gated communities.
It should be interesting to see how things play out - assuming I remain, in the words of HAL from 2001, "completely operational and all my circuits are functioning properly."
Nowadays, when I hear about something that's supposed to happen in 2050, it's not hard for me to get my head around the chronology of it. We're talking 42 years from now, when, with considerable luck, I'll still be bearing down on Methuselah.
What got me thinking about the future was a striking demographic forecast issued by the US Census Bureau: America is set to evolve from being a mostly Caucasian country whose ethnic stock and cultural ties are largely rooted in Europe to one that will be predominantly Hispanic and Asian. The African American proportion of the population is to remain roughly static at 14 percent to 15%.
Minorities, now roughly 33% of the population, are projected to become 54% in 2050. The tipping point will actually come in 2042, when the combined non-white population will outnumber whites.
The white population is projected to be only slightly larger in 2050 than it is today, while the Hispanic population - regardless of color - is expected to practically triple, so that nearly one in three US residents will be Hispanic.
The Asian population is predicted to rise from 5.1% to 9.2%. And the number of people who identify themselves as being of two or more races is projected to more than triple, from 5.2 million to 16.2 million.
Two other highlights: In 2050, 62% of America's children will be of non-European stock, compared to 44% today. And the working-age population is projected to become 55% "minority" by 2050 (up from 34% in 2008).
THE MAIN news in all this is that the transformation is taking place at a rate faster than was projected just a few years ago; the reason being higher birthrates among non-whites and laissez-faire immigration policies. Texas and California are today already majority "minority."
And so, in a space of about 100 years, the United States will have gone from a country that was something like 90% white to one where Americans of European stock will be the minority population. The census folks also estimate that by 2050 there will be 439 million Americans, compared to around 300 million today.
THIS TREND has long preoccupied America's radical right. In State of Emergency, Pat Buchanan's latest book, the ultra-conservative firebrand warned: "If we do not solve our civilizational crisis - a disintegrating culture, dying populations, and invasions unresisted - the children born [today] will witness in their lifetimes the death of the West. In our hearts we know what must be done. We must stop the invasion. But do our leaders have the vision and will to do it?"
Buchanan is too shrewd a polemicist to oppose the tinting of America purely on the basis of race. He argues instead, and not unpersuasively, that what is at stake is America's civilization; that the coming new majority will fail to embrace the values that made America the greatest nation on earth.
Laissez-faire conservatives like The Wall Street Journal crowd basically side with liberals in arguing that, overall, immigrants contribute more to America than they extract in public benefits.
But as the Journal has argued, the Left does the cause of immigration no service when it pushes for multiculturalism, bilingualism and racial quotas. For the best way to ensure the survival of American civilization - and with it, pluralism, respect for minority opinion, economic bounty and social tolerance - is if today's heterogeneous minorities are successfully co-opted into both the political system and the sociological melting pot.
An America where people of color outnumber white people is neither a good or bad thing. A negative outcome would be if an American majority were to abandon the values we've come to associate with the US. If American liberals, Jews included, want to prove Buchanan wrong, they should work to jettison multiculturalism, which fosters the Balkanization of America. Of all people, Jews can appreciate the benefits of acculturation over multiculturalism. Where would we be today if places like the Henry Street Settlement and the Educational Alliance had been unavailable to our grandparents and great-grandparents?
POLITICAL SCIENTIST Samuel P. Huntington, writing in Who Are We? The Challenges to America's National Identity, warns that Latino immigrants to the US are not embracing the American creed.
Huntington - like Buchanan - warns that the inflow of Hispanic immigrants to the US is different from previous migrations because rather than join the melting pot, they reject the Anglo-Protestant ideas which mobilized the American dream. Instead, they maintain their own parochial political and linguistic values.
Liberal writers, such as Post contributor Samuel G. Freedman, argue that Latinos are expedient targets for "bigotry under the guise of opposing illegal immigration." Fears that "the most recent arrivals have neither the will nor the skill to Americanize" are "a passionate delusion." Hispanic, Asian and African immigrants will no doubt turn out to be as genuinely faithful to America as were the progeny of late 19th- and early 20th-century Jewish immigrants, says Freedman.
I HAVE no way of judging which prognostication will prove the most prescient.
Previous American generations could be reasonably optimistic that their children's future would be part of a continuum of progress, enlightenment, prosperity and values. Liberals and, I suppose, free-market conservatives too, still seem to hold fast to such optimism.
From 6,000 miles away, it's hard to see where this optimism is rooted. America's coming majority needs to be socialized to embrace the American ethos. The argument that this socialization is already taking place is unconvincing.
Perhaps the greater challenge - putting aside the demographic issue - is how to foster the American Idea when modernity and technology actively discourage individuals from thinking about a broader collective.
The future, therefore, may be more like the one visualized by Atlantic magazine writer Robert D. Kaplan. In An Empire Wilderness, he imagines "isolated suburban pods and enclaves of races and classes unrelated to each other" in which bright, analytically literate people around the globe reside in autonomous "city-states" and are more connected with each other than with folks just outside their gated communities.
It should be interesting to see how things play out - assuming I remain, in the words of HAL from 2001, "completely operational and all my circuits are functioning properly."
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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