What 9/11 was About

In an erev Shabbat email, a friend in metro-NY commented that he was surprised that al-Qaida’s 9/11/2001 attack on the US homeland had not been repeated.

That got me thinking. Why was that?

I mean, besides the fact that the terrorists who planned it – having lost their safe havens in Afghanistan and Pakistan – were being hunted down and systematically eliminated. And because America repaired the intelligence holes that enabled 9/11 in the first place.

Yet, in a sense, a mega attack did not need to be repeated because the damage done that day 21 years ago achieved its purpose beyond the wildest dreams of its despicable perpetrators.

Who would have imagined the ease with which 19 Jihadist terrorists could hijack four American airliners? And while Islamist suicide bombers had struck many times previously – who would have guessed that they would use civilian planes like bomb-laden dump trucks?

Who would have dreamt that both NYC WTC Towers would collapse in the resulting infernos?

Who would have thought that the Pentagon was so vulnerable? Who could have imagined that America would suffer nearly 3,000 fatalities in one day?

Who could have predicted that the attacks would forever alter the entire experience of air travel?

9/11 still boggles the imagination.

A comparatively small band of Muslim fanatics were able to plot and implement an attack that ensnared the US in two dead-end wars.

So, beyond the initial shock and destruction of the day itself, America was stampeded into occupying two Muslim countries, Afghanistan (starting on October 7, 2001) and Iraq (March 20, 2003).

Occupations that only added fuel to Muslim ire, victimization, and grievance.

The long wars in these lands sapped American willpower and confidence once and for all.

Victory might have been an option had the US been capable of making a WWII-like investment – in personnel (reinstating the military draft), material, treasure, and a willingness to stay for as many decades as it would take to reshape these fragmented Islamic polities into Western democracies. In other words, victory was never an option.

At least in Afghanistan-Pakistan, al-Qaida 1.0 was destroyed.

However, the invasion of Iraq proved to be a strategic blunder of historic proportions. Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. It had no weapons of mass destruction. Washington’s presence empowered Shi’ite Persian Iran to flourish and pursue its imperialist designs in the Middle East. As a consequence of the Iraq debacle, the US is psychically powerless to stop Iran from fielding nuclear weapons when it chooses to do so.

Iraq/Afghanistan-Pakistan exposed the desperation of both the Obama and Trump administrations to withdraw America from the quagmire of endless unwinnable (on the cheap) wars (undeclared) in the Near East.

***

What motivated the 9/11 attacks was Osama bin Laden’s anger that Saudi Arabia had allowed debased Westerners to set up militarily in his adopted country. What made the attacks achievable were the skills of Ayman al-Zawahiri. What united the two was the decision to take the war for Islam’s soul to the West.

The Islamist war against the West did not begin on 9/11 but with the first WTC bombing in February 1993, accelerating with the East African embassy bombings of August 1998.

Al-Qaida has served as a terror incubator – others like ISIS, regional spinoffs, and freelancers took up the banner of jihadist imperialism, among them the July 2005 London attackers and the May 2017 Manchester fanatics, plus those who carried out smaller-scale explosions and stabbings in the UK, Europe and around the world. Let us not forget that British authorities thwarted scores of other attacks, such as the planned blowing up of St Paul’s Cathedral in 2020. 

Meanwhile, in America, while there have been “no more 9/11’s,” there have been many jihadist attacks in the US since 2001. Here is a partial list https://www.newamerica.org/international-security/reports/terrorism-in-america/who-are-the-terrorists/

***

The danger will continue because the threat of violence is largely the result of an internal struggle within Islam over coming to grips with modernity. By that, I mean the notions of tolerance, respect for minorities, and democracy. Islam has yet to experience civilizational reform (like Christianity and Judaism). 

But let us allow ourselves to imagine what a reformed Islam might look like: It would be comfortable sharing space with other peoples and faith traditions literally, spiritually, and symbolically. It would no longer seek to spread Dār al-Islam over what it considers Dār al-Ḥarb (the West and Israel).

We are not there yet.

 

 

Further Reading

Partial Listing of Muslim Terror Attacks

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Islamist_terrorist_attacks

 

The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11, by Lawrence Wright

https://www.pulitzer.org/winners/lawrence-wright

 

 

 

Et Tu Ernest? Discovering (belatedly) that Hemingway didn't like Jews

I’d meant to give Ernest Hemmingway (1898-1961) another shot. I read For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940) in an edition I inherited from my mother for my all-men’s book club in Jerusalem and found the narrative about the pre-WWII Spanish Civil War slow-going. 

Yet I knew that Hemmingway, known for his spare old-school newspaper writing style, is considered one of the great authors of the 20^th century. He won the Pulitzer Prize in 1953. 

When I stumbled upon a copy of The Sun Also Rises (1926) at one of our free neighborhood book libraries, I decided to give him another try. The story is about a group of mostly Paris-based literary types, American ex-pats, who go to Madrid to watch the bullfights.

One set member is the character Robert Cohn – his name is the only thing Jewish about him. Cohn is the ex-lover of Lady Brett Ashley, the only woman in the group over whom he continued to pine after. The narrator, Jake Barnes (Hemmingway’s alter ego), loves her too but can’t consummate the relationship because of impotence. Everybody hates Cohn outright or just about tolerates him. The word “kike” and "Jew" is bandied around. It all shocked me as I had no idea that Hemmingway loathed Jews. בוקר טוב אליהו

It put me off. Later, I learned that his Paris ex-pat circle of mentors included the self-hating Jewess Gertrude Stein, the certified antisemite Ezra Pound, and the prejudiced Ford Madox Ford. That may be where he caught his case of antisemitism that existed alongside friendships with Jews.

Hemmingway was a super-masculine womanizer who routinely slurred gay people. Some scholars presume he was a latent homosexual. He killed himself at age 61.

Hemmingway wasn’t born an antisemite; scholars suggest he may not have died as one. I suppose his antisemitism was rooted in his social milieu, not racialism or theology. If he weren’t a writer, it might have expressed itself more subtlety as mere prejudice. No human is without bias; it is something we can work to overcome. In contrast, hatred rooted in racial or religious contempt is far more potent and pernicious; a matter of identity and belief system. 

Jew-hating was apparently not essential to Hemmingway’s personality, as far as I can tell. He did not embrace it as a meta-conspiracy theory that explained the entire world.

In other words, he's the kind of antisemite we need not get overly exercised over. 

Book Review: An Alternative Scenario for World War II

On December 8, 1941, the day after Japan's surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, it was not self-evident that the US would enter the war in Europe being fought between Britain and Nazi Germany.

The potent isolationist "America First" camp was reluctantly reconciled to battling Japan. They were not pacifists, and this was a war of no choice. However, nowhere was it foreordained that the US needed to go to war with Hitler. Indeed, who needed a two-front war?

British prime minister Winston Churchill was praying and lobbying for America to enter the European war because Britain was barely holding on against the Hitlerian onslaught. Recall the war began in September 1939. London and the British islands were mercilessly bombed by the Luftwaffe between July 10, 1940 – and October 31, 1940.

Despite strong isolationist opposition, since March 11, 1941, the US had been formally providing a near-bankrupt Britain with weapons. Some of which were channeled to the USSR, which since June 22, 1941, was also fighting Hitler. None of this would have been enough to turn the tide in Europe, and all sides knew this. The December 7, 1941, attack on Pearl Harbor by Japan put Lend-Lease into doubt, at least temporarily, because the US would need to focus its energies on Japan. London and Moscow would have to tread water.

As Brendan Simms and Charlie Laderman remind us in their riveting Hitler's American Gamble: Pearl Harbor and the German March to Global War, it was Hitler who declared war on the US, not the other way around.

Therefore, the day that arguably deserves to go down in history is December 11, 1941, when the Nazi dictator – seeing a brief window of opportunity – made his fateful miscalculation. Only the American economic engine and the manpower of the American armed forces ensured Hitler's (and Japan's) defeat.

"The Fuhrer was convinced that 'the Jews' had suborned Roosevelt, who had manipulated the United States into such a hostile attitude toward the Reich that Germany had no choice but to declare a preemptive war," the authors argue.

By December 7, 1941, the Nazis had been waging frenzied war against the Jewish population of occupied Russia. With Hitler's declaration of war against the US, the Holocaust would now go into high gear to annihilate the Jews of western and central Europe as well. The authors remind us that on Pearl Harbor Day most European Jews were still alive. "The world war is here, and the extermination of the Jews must be the necessary consequence," Hitler told his subordinates after his December 11, 1941, declaration of war on the US.

That is the context in which the Wannsee Conference of January 20, 1942, is best understood. This was the crucial bureaucratic planning meeting addressing the nuts and bolts details of the systematic industrial destruction of Europe's Jewish people

This book is not primarily about the Shoah, but the authors so effectively weave Hitler's twisted motivations showing how central his obsessive hatred of the Jews was to his reason for going to war and how he waged it. All his economic and diplomatic grievances against Britain and the US interlocked with his warped belief in a worldwide Jewish conspiracy.

History is not linear, and nothing is foretold – it only appears orderly or sensible after the fact. Had Hitler not declared war on the US, the Roosevelt administration might not have found the political nerve to come to Britain's aid in WWII with boots on the ground.

Hitler's American Gamble focuses on five crucial days in the history of WWII – practically hour by hour. The book's pace is gripping, and the angle the authors take is distinctive. Highly recommended.

 

The Forces of intolerance, coarseness, and incivility react to Bennett’s Departure with … (surprise) ... churlishness

The disagreements in Israel’s polity are mainly over ethos and values, not borders, security, faith, or economics.

The forces of civility and tolerance are in the minority. 

The dominant camp (if we can trust the polls) is the one that thinks it knows the Truth, that its political adversaries must be crushed, and that those who disagree with them are “leftists,” “Reform,” and collaborators with the Muslim Brotherhood.

When Naftali Bennett turned over the running of the government to Yair Lapid, he talked about how hurt he was that so many Israelis aligned with the Netanyahu-led Opposition felt that their world had been gutted when he formed a broad-based left-right government with backing from one of the Arab parties. He said that he heard their voices and respected their feelings. If Israeli citizens are troubled, so is he. Every sector of the country will sometimes find itself in power and sometimes in opposition. It was just not acceptable that a considerable chunk of the population went into mourning when the other half formed the government – and that it would be best if the two halves could unite to create a big tent government.

In other words, Bennett called for reconciliation and healing. He said we are a divided country and the only way to move ahead is to work together.

The Likud-Hardal-Haredi Netanyahu-led Opposition’s response was disdain.

Despite achieving the fall of the government, generosity is not in the Likud-Hardal-Haredi Netanyahu-led Opposition’s vocabulary.  Forget Churchill's remark, “In War, Resolution; In Defeat, Defiance; In Victory, Magnanimity…”

Having employed a scorched earth approach to drive Bennett from office, including blocking crucial legislation in the national interest to bring him down, the Likud-Hardal-Haredi axis responded to Bennett’s departure in the meanest of spirits.

Hardal ultra-Orthodox and hyper-nationalist chief Bezalel Smotrich "explained" that Bennett’s decision to quit political life was not made of his own volition but was the result of a public so fed up with him that it vomited him out.  Vomited. 

And Sephardi Shas Party boss Aryeh Deri (an ex-con who only recently copped another plea) mocked Bennett, the first Orthodox prime minister, for forming a government that was, he claimed, the most damaging for Jewish identity in Israel’s history. 

Just the opposite was true.

Moshe Gafni, the Degel HaTorah Lithuanian boss, said that God had punished Bennett for going to Moscow to see Putin on a Saturday. Bennett was trying to broker peace between Russia and Ukraine. We have seen the bloody cost and dislocation of their fighting. For this, said Gafni, God gave Bennett his comeuppance.

Gafni’s understanding of the Creator is not my understanding of the Holy One. 

Netanyahu’s idea of what Jabotinsky would have done in these times is the anthesis of how I understand what Jabotinsky stood for.

The Bibi-led Likud-Hardal-Haredi axis must create an illiberal ecosystem of anxiety, demagoguery, disorder, and disruption. It can't afford to give Lapid a day of grace. 

Let them pursue their values. I will stick with mine. Even if I am in a permanent minority.

Last night, Prime Minister Lapid gave a heartfelt address to the nation. For more than half the country – those associated with the Bibi-led Likud-Hardal-Haredi axis his remarks fell on deaf ears and closed minds.

Whereas the rest of us have a prime minister we can be proud of.

***

 

Prime Minister Yair Lapid gave the following speech this evening (Saturday, 2 July 2022):

“I want to start by thanking the 13th Prime Minister of the State of Israel, Naftali Bennett. For your decency, for your friendship and for leading the government this past year to economic and security achievements not seen here for years. A special thank you for allowing the citizens of Israel to see this week an orderly transition between people who keep agreements and believe in one another.

The State of Israel is bigger than all of us. More important than any of us. It was here before us, and will be here long after us. It doesn’t belong only to us. It belongs to those who dreamed of it for thousands of years in the Diaspora, and also to those yet to be born, to future generations.

 

 

 

For them and for us, we must choose the common good; that which unites us. There will always be disagreements, the question is how we manage them, and how we make sure they don’t manage us.

Disagreement isn’t necessarily a bad thing so long as it doesn’t undermine the stability of the government and damage our internal resilience. So long as we remember that we all have the same goal: a Jewish, democratic, liberal, strong, advanced, and prosperous Israel.

The deep Israeli Truth is that on most of the truly important topics - we believe in the same things.

We believe that Israel is the nation-state of the Jewish people. Its establishment didn’t begin in 1948, but rather on the day Joshua crossed the Jordan and forever connected the people of Israel with the land of Israel, between the Jewish nation and its Israeli homeland.

We believe that Israel must be a liberal democracy in which every citizen has the right to change the government and set the course of their life. Nobody can be denied their fundamental rights: respect, liberty, freedom of employment, and the right to personal security.

 

 

 

We believe we must always preserve our military might. Without it, there’s no security. I am the son of a Holocaust survivor. A 13-year-old Jewish boy who they wanted to kill and who had no one to protect him. We will defend ourselves, by ourselves. We will make sure we always have the Israel Defense Forces, an army with undeniable strength, that our enemies fear.

One night in the winter of 1944, in the Budapest Ghetto, my grandmother called out to my father, and told him: ‘My child, you don’t know it, but today is your Bar Mitzvah. I can’t bake a cake, your father won’t return.’ My grandfather perished in the Mauthausen Concentration Camp.

‘But there’s one thing I can do.’ And she took out a small bottle of perfume, Chanel 5, which was the perfume of elegant ladies before the war. We’ll never know how she kept it all that time. She shattered it on the floor and said ’at least it won’t stink at my son’s bar mitzvah.

We believe that Israel is a Jewish state. Its character is Jewish. Its identity is Jewish. Its relations with its non-Jewish citizens are also Jewish. The book of Leviticus says, ‘But the stranger who dwells with you shall be unto you as one born among you, and thou shalt love him as thyself.’

 

 

 

We believe that so long as Israel’s security needs are met, Israel is a country that seeks peace. Israel stretches out its hand to all the peoples of the Middle East, including the Palestinians, and says: the time has come for you to recognize that we’ll never move from here, let’s learn to live together.

We believe there is a great blessing in the Abraham Accords, a great blessing in the security and economic momentum created at the Negev Summit with the UAE, Bahrain, Egypt, and Morocco and that there will be a great blessing in the agreements yet to come.

The people of Israel won’t dwell alone. It is our job to continue to strengthen our position in the world, our relations with our greatest friend and ally, the United States, and to harness the international community in the struggle against antisemitism and the delegitimization of Israel.

We believe that it’s the job of the government to uphold the law, and the job of the law to uphold the standards of government. The law is what protects us from corruption and violence. A court is what protects the weak from the strong. The law is the basis for our lives together.

We believe that the Israeli economy must be based on free market principles, on the creativity and dynamism of Israeli technology, and that our job is to protect those who have nothing. To provide a fair opportunity for every child, everywhere.

 

 

 

We believe that the Iranian threat is the gravest threat facing Israel. We’ll do whatever we must to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear capability, or entrenching itself on our borders.

I stand before you at this moment and say to everyone seeking our demise, from Gaza to Tehran, from the shores of Lebanon to Syria: don’t test us. Israel knows how to use its strength against every threat, against every enemy.

We believe in, and pray for the well-being of our soldiers and police officers, in the air, at sea, and on land. As it’s written in the prayer for the well-being of IDF soldiers, ‘May the Almighty cause the enemies who rise up against us to be struck down before them.’ We won’t be quiet and won’t rest until our sons are returned: Hadar Goldin and Oron Shaul of blessed memory, Avera Mengistu and Hisham al-Sayed.

There’s something else that we believe in: that we’re allowed to disagree. Freedom of expression is a fundamental principle. Freedom of the press is a component without which democracy cannot survive. It’s incumbent upon us to put effort into revealing the facts and understanding the Truth.

The great Israeli question is actually why in a period in which we have wide national agreement on all the important topics, the levels of hate and anxiety within Israeli society are so high? Why is polarization more threatening than ever?

 

 

 

The answer is - politics. In Israel, extremism doesn’t come from the streets to politics. It’s the opposite. It flows like lava from politics to the streets. The political sphere has become more and more extreme, violent and vicious, and it’s dragging Israeli society along with it. This we must stop. This is our challenge.

The State of Israel — Israelis — are better than this. Here, there’s brainpower, imagination, and strength that can’t be found anywhere else. The Israeli economy is a pilgrimage destination for the entire world. Precisely in a time of global crisis, our potential grew. We know how to change, to improve — we just need to do it together.

There are two photos hanging in my office in the Knesset, one alongside the other: David Ben-Gurion and Menachem Begin. Two political rivals, but also the two most important Prime Ministers we’ve had. They often argued, but they also always remembered they had the same goal: building the strength and moral character of the State of Israel.

This goal is greater than all that divides us. Our test is not whether or not we win the argument, but rather, if we learned to find a way to work together with those who don’t agree with us.

Many people who didn’t vote for this government are listening to this speech, many people who don’t and won’t support it. I thank you for your willingness to listen. I ask to work together with you for the good of our country. I’m committed to serving you as well. I embrace the words of my predecessor, and want to repeat them: we are brothers.

The challenges before us are immense. The struggle against Iran, terror at home, the Israeli education crisis, the cost of living, strengthening personal security. When the challenges are so great, we can’t let disagreements consume all our strength. In order to create a common good here, we need one another.

Our children are watching us. What do we want them to see? We want our children to see that we did everything to build a Jewish and democratic, strong and advanced, benevolent and good Israel.

Only together will we prevail.

Thank you.”

An Intolerant Court Decides Intolerantly

The Supreme Court, whether in the US or Israel, should serve as the most enlightened and elitist branch of government -- as an explicit stopgap against the popular will. The Court should interpret the Constitution to achieve this elitist objective in the American setting. In the Israeli context, it should fall back on the Basic Laws.

Over the years, the US Court has often been in the hands of intolerant counter-elites. Hence in interpreting the Constitution, the Court found ways to justify slavery in Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857) or after the Civil War to uphold anti-miscegenation laws in Pace v. Alabama (1883) and to safeguard Jim Crow in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896).

So, much depends NOT on what is written in the Constitution but on WHO sits on the Court. Reactionary justices will read the same Constitution to defend backward-looking positions. Open-minded majorities will employ the Constitution to achieve tolerant ends.

Nor does it matter to me that a plurality of Americans say abortion should be legal.[1] The rights of the individual should not be contingent on raw majority rule. Since the masses – which are inherently the most intolerant element in any polity – have the most influence at the local and state levels, the Court ought not to relegate human rights to the legislatures of the various states.

This brings me to one of the most fraught issues in American politics though practically a non-issue in the UK and Israel.[2] When on June 24, 2022, the US Supreme Court’s Trumpian majority used the Mississippi case, Dobbs v. Jackson (2021), to overturn Roe v Wade (1973), Israelis who share my values were incredulous.[3] 

Roe had not only decriminalized abortion but made a woman’s choice to terminate her pregnancy during the first trimester a constitutionally protected right, with increasingly stringent restrictions kicking in further along in gestation riding on the fetus’s viability outside the womb. 

As had been feared, Trump appointed justices – Brett Kavanaugh, Amy Coney Barrett, and Neil Gorsuch aligned with Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, the Court’s staunch conservative bloc, and conservative-leaning Chief Justice John Roberts to overturn Roe v. Wade.[4] Roberts did so reluctantly; the Trumpians zealously. 

There was little the Court’s diminished tolerant camp comprised of justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan could do but dissent. Breyer and Kagan, it is worth noting, are Jewish.[5] Upon Breyer’s retirement in July 2022, he will be replaced by Biden-nominee Associate Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson.[6] 

The forces of intolerance will remain in the majority. In fact, Thomas hinted that he saw Dobbs v. Jackson as a first step and that were it up to him, other federal protections would be removed. These could include the right to purchase condoms and other contraceptive devices, homosexual marriage, indeed consensual homosexual sex, and employment and housing protections gays now enjoy nationwide.

Some say that abortion should be treated uniquely. Peggy Noonan, one of my favorite columnists, argues in The Wall Street Journal that of all hot button issues, abortion should, on an exceptional basis, be left to the states and their varying moral values. [7] That sounds reasonable, but you would need to be prepared to live with the idea that basic protections apply only to Americans who live in blue or Democratic-dominated states.

To my mind, Roe v Wade had struck the right balance between fetus (as a potential life) and mother. Naturally, like many people who are pro-abortion or pro-choice, I would prefer pregnancies be terminated only rarely and not as a form of birth control. But that reflects my personal values. Regardless, it is too bad that abortion will now be re-criminalized in many red or Republican-dominated states.

Whether on abortion or guns,[8] the US Supreme Court is once again in the hands of counter-elites. Gloating Trumpians might want to consider that the Court could one day fall into the hands of woke counter-elites attentive to the will of their electorate. 

That is why I am saying the Court should not cater to the popular will -- but to the highest (if unpopular values) of tolerance and forbearance.

 

 

 

 

---

[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2022/06/13/about-six-in-ten-americans-say-abortion-should-be-legal-in-all-or-most-cases-2/

[2] Abortion is available legally in the UK and in Israel. In Israel, vetting committees must approve abortions on a case-by-case basis. Disapprovals are extremely rare.

[3] Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization is a case that involves a Mississippi statute that banned abortion after 15 weeks ignoring the viability standard of 23-24 weeks set by Roe. https://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/dobbs-v-jackson-womens-health-organization/

[4] Kavanaugh had told the US Senate during his confirmation hearing that Roe v. Wade was “settled as precedent.” Barrett was more circumspect in public testimony.  Gorsuch emphasized that it was worthy to be treated as a precedent.

[5] Breyer, who announced in January 2022 his intention to retire, has attended Jewish communal fundraising dinners and is married to a non-Jewish upper-crust British woman https://www.jta.org/archive/clinton-nominee-for-high-court-seen-as-sharing-jewish-concerns He has attended Yom Kippur services https://www.jta.org/archive/clinton-nominee-for-high-court-seen-as-sharing-jewish-concerns  Kagan practices Conservative Judaism. https://www.timesofisrael.com/supreme-court-justice-elena-kagan-talks-of-her-very-strange-jewish-upbringing/  Sotomayor is of Catholic heritage but is discreet about her religiosity perhaps because she is divorced. Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Scalia, Thomas, Alito, Kavanaugh and Barrett are all mass-attending Catholics. Gorsuch was raised Catholic but has attended Episcopalian services.

[6] https://www.thewrap.com/supreme-court-nominee-ketanji-brown-jackson/  

[7] https://www.wsj.com/articles/will-the-justices-let-go-of-abortion-roe-wade-jackson-mississipi-fifteen-weeks-dobbs-11638487513?st=lk10t4v48dv8yal&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink

[8] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/supreme-court-gun-law-new-york-second-amendment/#:~:text=Washington%20%E2%80%94%20The%20Supreme%20Court%20on,for%20self%2Ddefense%20is%20unconstitutional.