Gaza , Egypt & the EU – Time for some answers

I supported Israel’s disengagement from Gaza for reasons that need not be re-hashed.

The chaos that prevails inside Gaza was predicable. No one realistically expected the Palestinian Arabs to turn Gaza into a peaceful oasis along the Mediterranean – a prototype and a harbinger for a Palestinian state that would be connected to the West Bank.

Now it is official. Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal declares from Damascus: “We do not promise our people to turn Gaza into Hong Kong or Taiwan, but we promise them a dignified and proud life behind the resistance in defense of their honor...”

“Resistance” – a sterile euphemism for more slaughter, killing, and suffering.

So Gaza’s lovely Mediterranean coastline and its environs will remain brooding and broiling with Islamic fervor, a wellspring of hatred for modernity, Jews, and Western notions of liberty.

That is the prerogative of the democratically elected representatives of their benighted people.

But what we ought not ignore is the increasing military danger that Gaza has become.

Arms, rockets, and bullets are flowing into Gaza from the Egyptian Sinai unhindered. So too, we are told, are experts in the use of explosives and irregular warfare.

It is just a matter of time until the weapons – and the expertise – become good enough to do serious damage to Israel. For now, the Katyushas are missing their targets, and the kassams fall mostly in open fields.

When the enemy get luckier (and better), they will hit a strategic installation (the power plant in Ashkelon, for instance), or – God forbid – a kindergarten.

Then there will be a price to pay. For them and for us.

No one doubts that the IDF will be forced to launch a land invasion of the Strip – an Operation Defense Shield for Gaza.

All this begs the question: Why is Jerusalem not pressing the Egyptians to do more to control the border? And if the Egyptians are doing the best they can (as some Israeli analysts insists) and that is not good enough, why don’t we find a mechanism that would enable them to do better?

And what of the EU observers?

Are they sitting around making spaghetti or are they endeavoring to screen who comes and who goes?

And if they are not doing an adequate job – and (again) the reports are contradictory – why don’t we hear official Israel complaining?

Moreover, where is Washington which pressed Israel into signing the ill-conceived arrangements along in Rafah?

Do we really have the luxury of sitting back and saying that we can’t expect more from the Egyptians? Or that we don’t want to alienate the EU at a time when we need their support for efforts to isolate the Hamas government? Or that Condoleezza Rice has enough tzuris and we don’t want to add to them?

If so, our cost-benefit analysis is incredibly myopic.

It may make sense in the short-term not to rock the boat, to make believe Gaza is someone else’s problem, but in the long term (say a year from now) we may be setting ourselves up for a military incursion that -- by the time it comes -- will be frightfully expensive for us and well as for the enemy.

The Egyptians need to understand that Gaza can’t reasonably serve as a safe outlet for the Islamist menace that threatens Hosi Mubarak.

The EU should realize that how their observers conduct themselves on this crucial front – in the context of the dangers they face – is as a test case for future EU involvement on the ground in the region.

And Washington should make its own inquiries with Cairo and Brussels about just what is happening at the Rafah crossing.

But the ultimate responsibility rests with Ehud Olmert and Israel's security establishment.

Among its first priorities, the new government must clarify the situation along the Gaza-Sinai border and determine what – if anything – needs to be done.

We need to identify what went right – and what is going wrong – in trying to draw the proper lessons from disengagement.

In a sense, disengagement was an experiment.

To be useful experiments require careful observation.

Israeli Elections - The Wrap

This is it.

Well, you never know. Labor and one of the Arab parties are contesting a number of election districts, so the absolutely, positively final results may not be confirmed for a while.

But here's how my March 26 predictions contrast against the actual totals

KADIMA 27 (29) [690,095 votes]
LABOR 23 (20) [473,746]
LIKUD 15 (12) 282,070]
NU/NRP 14 (9) [223,083]
YISRAEL BEITEINU 11 (11) [281,850]
SHAS 13 (12) [299,130]
ARAB PARTIES 8 (9) [94,460 * there is a recount *
UTJ 5 (6) [146,958]
MERETZ 4 (5) [118,356]
PENSIONERS 0 (7) [185,790]

THE RESULTS, regrettably, provided neither a referendum on disengagement nor a mandate for further unilateralism.

At the same time, the only party unconditionally opposed to any withdrawals, whatsoever – NU/NRP – received only 9 mandates.

All the other right-wing, or quasi right-wing parties, are far more malleable.

Bottom line: Israel remains a fragmented society whose electoral system encourages hyperpluralism. Everyone gets something, and everyone is left unsatisfied.

The saddest part of the election results is the protest vote that propelled a bunch of grumpy, self-interested (and not financially uncomfortable) old codgers into the Knesset under the rubric of the Pensioners Party.

It’s also interesting to note which parties didn’t make it:

Baruch Marzel’s ultra right-wing party received about 25,000 votes. Michael Kleiner’s ultra right-wing party received less than 3,000 votes.

The virulently “anti-religious” (really self-hating) secular parties whose campaign ads were particularly tasteless polled less than 15,000 combined.

And 40,000 Israelis place smoking dope at the top of their agenda.

Israeli elections - How I did

My March 26 predictions versus the actual totals [as of Wed. morning]

KADIMA 27 (28)
LABOR 23 (20)
LIKUD 15 (11)
NU/NRP 14 (8)
YISRAEL BEITEINU 11 (12)
SHAS 13 (13)
ARAB PARTIES 8 (10)
UTJ 5 (6)
MERETZ 4 (4)
PENSIONERS 0 (7)

So my hunch that Kadima would not break 30 mandates was (sadly) correct.

I was close on Labor.

Way off on Likud and NU/NRP. I guess lots of right-wingers sulked at home or wasted their votes on the ultra-Right.

But I was spot on regarding Meretz and Shas.

I had no inkling that the Pensioners Party would even cross the threshold.

Each day is a new reminder that the masses are -- indeed --- asses.

Pass me the humble pie.

Israeli Elections - Some Predictions

On the way to work today, I took the #21 bus from Talpiot to Marcel’s Barber Shop in town.

Based on what I thought I heard the driver say to one of the passengers, and some of the conversation among the waiting patrons at Marcel’s – plus my own gut feeling that Kadima will not do as well as people think, here is the way I see the Tuesday’s Israeli elections shaping up.


KADIMA 27
LABOR 23
LIKUD 15
NU/NRP 14
SHAS 13
YISRAEL BEITEINU 11
ARAB PARTIES 8
UTJ 5
MERETZ 4

Always prepared to eat humble pie... indeed, hoping to.


HERE ARE the predictions of Avi Hoffmann, former managing editor of The Jerusalem Post:


KADIMA 32
LABOR 23
LIKUD 15
NU/NRP 12
SHAS 12
YISRAEL BEITEINU 10
ARAB PARTIES 7
UTJ 4
MERETZ 5


AND HERE are the predictions of Rev. Elwood McQuaid, one of the leaders of the Christian Zionst movement and a longtime analyst of the Israel scene:

"Never doubt the wisdom of barber shop philosopher/political pundits! However, from a distance: Kadima will, as you forecast, not do as well as the polls suggest: 24/25. Labor will not do as well either: 19/20. Likud will do better: 18/19. Olmert will have rough sledding putting a coalition together."

AMERICAN JEWISH COMMITTEE at 100

Where there are two Jews, there are three different opinions. And where there are 5.3 million American Jews, there are countless organizations claiming to represent, defend and articulate Jewish interests. The Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations alone boasts 52 member groups.

That is both too many and too few. Too many organizations have lost their raison d’être. They duplicate the work of others and survive on “life support” provided by self-interested benefactors. At the same time, too few organizations, evidently, are meeting the needs of those American Jews who feel estranged from the community.

One organization whose value is worth highlighting is the American Jewish Committee, which marks its 100th anniversary this month. Its leadership is now in Israel to celebrate the occasion.

Sixty leading “uptown” Jews, mostly of German origin, established the New York-based AJC in the wake of a series of state-sponsored anti-Jewish riots in Czarist Russia, in particular the Kishinev pogroms of 1903 and 1905.

That well-connected communal leaders would intercede with the authorities as shtadlanim (court Jews) was not a new idea. But by constituting themselves as a committee, they gave an organizational framework to earlier ad-hoc efforts.

The group was elitist. Its founders included tycoon Jacob Schiff; Oscar Straus, the first Jew to hold a cabinet post; and philanthropist Cyrus L. Sulzberger.

The organization’s driving force was attorney Louis Marshall, president of Temple Emmanuel, the flagship of the Reform movement.

Under Marshall’s leadership the AJC sought to use Russia’s desire for trade with the US as leverage in trying to win better treatment for Russian Jews. The committee also worked indefatigably against immigration quotas that kept the Jews of Europe from reaching Ellis Island.

In a sense, the creation of the committee was also intended to discourage “downtown” Eastern European activists from galvanizing the immigrant masses. The AJC approach, then and now, is that complex issues require more than “simplistic solutions, sloganeering and ‘shoot from the hip’ rhetoric.”

Prior to 1948 the AJC was the leading non-Zionist (often anti-Zionist) group on the US scene. Its leaders viewed Judaism as a religious or cultural movement and opposed the idea of “Diaspora nationalism.” If Jews pursued peoplehood, what would become of their status in a pluralistic United States? And yet the committee endorsed the 1917 Balfour Declaration.

In 1942, however, the AJC opposed the Biltmore Program, which broke with Zionist gradualism by demanding a sovereign Jewish commonwealth in all of Palestine.

Only after the Holocaust did the committee, hesitatingly, support the creation of Israel.

From the vantage point of 2006, the group’s failure to embrace the Zionist cause seems tragically misguided. Still, it is worth bearing in mind that American Jewry in the first half of the 20th century was a fearful and insecure body politic – and for many good reasons.

Only after the 1967 Six Day War, when support for Israel became a defining characteristic of US Jewish identity, did the AJC put Israel at the top of its agenda. Once it had adapted, it quickly became the first group to establish offices in Israel.

Today it is among the most significant mainstream organizational champions of Israel. For instance, Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen’s efforts to have strict limits imposed on US aid to a Hamas-led Palestinian Authority has strong AJC backing.

The AJC, its leaders say, strives to balance private diplomacy with public advocacy. It believes that the best defense against anti-Semitism is strengthening pluralism and democracy worldwide. The quintessential establishment organization, it argues that Jewish interests can best be secured by framing them in a global context that resonates with non-Jews.

The committee funds, among other institutions, the work of UN Watch. It also operates effectively behind the scenes: It was the AJC that helped make it possible for Prof. Deborah Lipstadt to successfully pursue her legal case in London against Holocaust denier David Irving.

Amid the “alphabet soup” of Diaspora organizational life, the AJC remains on the short list of groups that matter. With 33 chapters, 150,000 members, eight international bureaus, and a presence in 17 other overseas locations, the AJC has what to celebrate on its centenary.