A unifying doctrine

If only citizens of Israel living near the Gaza Strip border could be magically granted 24 hours of tranquility for every day Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Defense Minister Ehud Barak have leveled worthless threats at the Hamas regime in Gaza. If only the Iranian menace could be banished by Transportation Minister Shaul Mofaz's bellicose babble.

If only Israel could bluff its way out of its security conundrums.

Last Thursday, after a 120-mm mortar shell carrying 4.5 kilograms of explosives slammed into a factory at Kibbutz Nahal Oz and killed 51-year-old Amnon Rozenberg, Israeli policymakers unleashed another barrage of rhetoric. Barak cautioned "the sand of the hourglass is running out" and Olmert warned about "the pendulum" swinging toward "a harsh operation" instead of a cease-fire with Hamas.

TODAY, A three-way meeting among Olmert, Barak and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni is scheduled to discuss what to do about Gaza. The cabinet has been procrastinating since January as almost 1,000 rockets and over 1,000 mortars have struck the south. Eight people have been killed (compared to 10 last year) and innumerable citizens traumatized.

It is not as if the IDF has been sitting on its hands. Israel regularly sends aircraft, tanks and ground troops into the Strip. Hundreds of enemy targets have been hit and many hundreds of gunmen killed. Still, at the end of the day, the army has been unable to protect Israel's civilian population from attack.

Jerusalem is understandably not keen on launching a massive retaliatory operation in the Strip. Its goal is far from clear; there is trepidation over casualties (on both sides); and media coverage of Israeli tanks rumbling through the squalid and congested streets of Gaza would be nasty. Finally, there is a real prospect that, sooner or later, it will all have to be repeated.

So first, Israelis were told nothing would happen while the country was celebrating its 60th anniversary and world leaders were here. Then there were hints that Defense Ministry bureau director Amos Gilad, working via Egyptian intermediaries, had gotten as good a cease-fire deal as could be had with Hamas, and that Olmert, Barak and Livni were weighing whether to take it.
Now, with Shavuot over, our procrastinating decision-makers will have to choose either military action or a problematic cease-fire - and it looks like they will say "yes" to both options: first a military strike "to teach Hamas a lesson," then a temporary cease-fire which would presumably bring about the freeing of Gilad Schalit in exchange for untold numbers of hardened terrorists from Israeli prisons, but would also give Hamas time to rebuild its forces and solidify its hold.
This apparent combination of massive retaliation plus a cease-fire interlude, along with caving in to kidnappers' blackmail, strikes us as deeply flawed. There may be a better way.

ISRAELI policymakers need to enunciate a "River-to-Sea Doctrine" declaring that this country will not tolerate on territory between the Mediterranean and the Jordan any foreign power that threatens the security of the Jewish state. Once approved by the cabinet, this principled national policy statement would be brought to the Knesset for bipartisan ratification and enshrined not as the policy of a particular prime minister, but as state policy.

Fulfilling this doctrine, the IDF could then be directed to topple the Hamas regime by whatever stratagem works best. And an exit strategy? Once the top echelon of the Islamist leadership is eliminated, its forces decimated and the structures associated with it razed, the way would be paved for the Palestinian Authority to resume control over the area; for international aid to flow more smoothly and, with any luck, for the process of rebuilding and rehabilitation to begin.

The chances of a deal with Palestinian relative moderates led by Mahmoud Abbas would, if anything, be enhanced by such a doctrine executed as bipartisan Israeli policy. More importantly, should the West Bank fall under Islamist control after Israel and the Palestinians sign a peace accord, the "River-to-Sea Doctrine" would automatically become operative.

In pursuit of war or peace, a doctrine like this would harmonize the will of the people, the policies of the government and the strategy of the military. And it would send an important message to the international community about where Israel draws its red lines.

The growth of Shavuot

One of the most affecting biblical stories is the Book of Ruth, set in ancient Israel during the period of the Judges. Ruth's character embodies all the virtues delineated by political philosopher William J. Bennett: self-discipline, compassion, responsibility, friendship, work, courage, perseverance, honesty, loyalty and faith.

A family - Naomi, Elimelech and their two sons - is forced to abandon Judah for Moab to escape famine. The sons take Moabite wives, but before long the men all die and Naomi finds herself left alone with her daughters-in-law Orpah and Ruth. By now the famine is over and Naomi sets out on a return journey to Judah accompanied by the two young women. Knowing that she faces an uncertain future back home, Naomi pleads with them to remain in their own homeland. Orpah tearfully agrees.

Ruth's response captures our hearts: "Do not urge me to leave you, to turn back and not follow you. For wherever you go, I will go; wherever you lodge, I will lodge; your people shall be my people; and your God my God. Where you die, I will die, and there I will be buried."

We won't give away all that happens next - the full account is recited on Shavuot, marked on the 6th day of the Hebrew month of Sivan, which falls this year on Monday (and extends to the 7th of Sivan, Tuesday, in the Diaspora). Suffice to say that Ruth the convert becomes a forbearer of King David. And her tribulations become symbolic of the sacrifices the Jewish faith demands. Tradition also has it that King David's yarhzeit - the anniversary of his death - falls on Shavuot.
Shavout is one of Judaism's three pilgrimage festivals. It is observed at the end of the counting of the Omer - seven weeks from the first day of Pessah. In Temple times, the cycle began with a barley offering and concluded with a wheat offering.
WHAT fascinates is Judaism's vibrancy and adaptability,
how its traditions and customs evolved over thousands of years to accommodate changing circumstances in order to preserve continuity and cohesion. And so, what began as an agricultural festival was transformed.

After the destruction of the Second Temple, with the Jews cut off from their land, the Sanhedrin (circa 140 CE) introduced an additional motif for the holiday - commemoration of the giving of the Torah on Mount Sinai. Hence the Decalogue, or Ten Commandments, is recited in the synagogue on Shavuot.

Cut off from the soil during their dispersion, Jews nevertheless recited the Torah portion pertaining to the Temple's agricultural sacrifices and decorated their synagogues with greenery for the holiday. In this way, they never lost sight of the bond between the Land, God and religion of Israel.

Each generation and locale added something to the accumulation of practices today associated with Shavuot. Mystics urged staying up all night learning so as to be wakeful at the precise anniversary of the giving of the Ten Commandments. The Kaballah teaches that those who remain awake studying will come to no harm for an entire year.

During the morning synagogue service, many Ashkanazi congregations recite Akdamot, an Aramaic rhyme of tribute to God for giving the Torah to the Jews. Aramaic was once the language spoken by most people and the rabbis wanted congregants to feel connected to the services. Though familiarity with Aramaic has fallen by the wayside, the melodic recitation of the poem survives as part of the liturgy.

As on other holidays, food plays a not insignificant pedagogical role. In medieval times, the practice of eating dairy foods was adopted to symbolize the Torah's association with milk and honey.

WITH THE return to Zion, the Jewish calendar took on added relevance. Even non-observant Israelis often maintain some of the holiday's traditions. For instance, kibbutzim hold ceremonies and parades on Shavuot displaying their produce. And younger school children craft and wear garlands of fresh flowers.

As Shavuot demonstrates, tradition does not mean standing still; it can denote redefining ancient practices to make them contemporary and ever meaningful. Tradition is an expression of respect for continuity, for connecting us with a shared past and - let us hope - a common future.

America at its best

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) 2008 Policy Conference which concluded Wednesday in Washington is an expression of all that is wonderful about America and about the US-Israel relationship. For AIPAC is not Israel's lobby in the US - it is the central address of pro-Israel Americans from across the political spectrum.

As Israelis watched in admiration from the other side of the globe, 7,000 US citizens - from the most powerful practitioners of politics to undergraduates taking their first politics course - gathered under the auspices of a body that is neither conservative nor liberal, Republican or Democratic, but quintessentially American.

And because this is an election year, the presumptive Republican and Democratic presidential candidates both gave defining speeches at the conference.

They knew their words would be deconstructed, analyzed and archived as the best, straight-from-the-horse's-mouth indicator of their respective stances on issues of concern to the pro-Israel community.

And by that criteria, the news is good.

A BLEARY-EYED Barack Obama was warmly greeted by an audience that knew he had just made the historic journey to becoming the first African American nominated by a major party. He began by both acknowledging, then deriding a negative e-mail campaign about him circulating within the Jewish community. Then, "speaking from the heart," Obama offered a stirring oration that repeatedly brought the audience to its feet.

"I will never compromise when it comes to Israel's security," he declared.

He argued that by pressuring Israel to allow Palestinian elections with Hamas participation, and by going to war against Iraq when "Iran was always the greater threat," administration foreign policy had made Israel less secure.

Obama dismissed the notion that the Palestinian-Israeli conflict was at the root of Mideast instability; he said Israel's qualitative military superiority had to be preserved, and that Hamas must be kept isolated. He was committed to "two states, a Jewish state of Israel and a Palestinian state," but would not force concessions on the parties, only work to avoid stalemate. And he affirmed that "Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided."

On Iran, Obama said he would "do everything" - everything - to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. "I have no interest in sitting down with men like Ahmadinejad just for the sake of talking. But as president of the United States, I would be willing to lead tough and principled diplomacy... at a time and place of my choosing - if, and only if it can advance the interests of the United States."

One speech does not allay all Israeli concerns, certainly not when so many of Obama's pro-Israel advisers are associated with the failed Oslo policies. Still, the senator is to be applauded for his forthrightness. And Israelis need to remember that Oslo was largely a homegrown concept.

JOHN McCAIN came to AIPAC with far less political baggage, yet aware that no matter what he said, most US Jews would maintain their historic allegiance to the Democratic Party. A recent Gallop poll shows that 61 percent of Jewish voters intend to vote for Obama.

The senator from Arizona and former POW was welcomed warmly by the AIPAC audience, which included his friend Sen. Joseph Lieberman. Looking relaxed and confident, McCain identified himself with the legacy of senator Henry "Scoop" Jackson, beloved in the Jewish world, noting that he made his first trip to Israel with Jackson in 1979.

In a far less policy-specific address, McCain too pledged to maintain Israel's qualitative military edge; said America's ties with Israel were unbreakable, and that the two countries were natural allies. He added that the Palestinians were badly led, and that the US ought not to confer approval on Hamas. Stating that "Teheran's continued pursuit of nuclear weapons poses an unacceptable risk, a danger we cannot allow," he criticized Obama's willingness to meet Iranian leaders. He advocated an escalating ladder of international pressure to "peacefully but decisively" change Iran's path.

McCain passionately argued that a withdrawal of US forces from Iraq would profoundly affect Israeli security and be catastrophic for the region.

The campaigns will now be shifting into lower gear until the respective party conventions at the end of the summer. Meanwhile, for the Jewish state - and its neighbors - this year's policy conference underscored that the America-Israel relationship is a bipartisan affair.

Yes: Urgency on Iran

Imagine how dangerous, how potentially destabilizing a military strike against Iranian nuclear facilities could be to the region and the world. And yet any such attack would be infinitely less dangerous and less destabilizing than allowing nuclear bombs to fall into the mullahs' hands.
Now, with the civilized world at a crossroads, imagine being able to prevent both such chilling scenarios by making tough yet wise decisions in the next weeks and months.

That was the message Prime Minister Ehud Olmert brought to the annual policy conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee on Tuesday: "We must stop the Iranian threat by all possible means. Each and every country must understand that the long-term cost of a nuclear Iran greatly outweighs the short-term benefits of doing business with Iran."
The urgency of Iran was probably the reason Olmert travelled to Washington to meet with President George W. Bush so soon after seeing him in Jerusalem, and despite his political travails at home.

LAST WEEK the International Atomic Energy Agency essentially announced that Teheran was stonewalling the agency. And still Mahmoud Ahmadinejad continues to travel around the world - on Tuesday he was in Rome for a UN food summit - spewing hatred and talking genocide. Israel, he said, is "doomed to go." This from a leader who has repeatedly threatened to wipe Israel off the map, and who last month referred to the Jewish state as a "stinking corpse... on its way to annihilation," which has "reached the end like a dead rat."

To their credit, both Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi and Pope Benedict XVI refused to meet Ahmadinejad.

THE IRANIANS know they are playing with fire. Defense Minister Mostafa Mohammad Najjar has warned that "any attack on Iran would... result in painful consequences for the attacker... I believe the Zionist regime degraded itself when it proved powerless against Hizbullah - to such an extent that it would never be able to bear the first response of Iran."

Such saber-rattling accompanies Iran's gloating in the knowledge that it will very soon reach the point of no return in its acquisition of nuclear weapons.

Teheran continues unabated to build centrifuges (Ahmadinejad has boasted of 3,000 already in operation), enrich uranium, test high-explosive triggers for nuclear devices and redesign the nose-cone of the Shahab-3 rocket to accommodate nuclear warheads.

At this critical juncture, as time runs out, the reasons why the Iranians must not get the bomb bear repeating.
• Iran acts as a leading sponsor of terrorism in the world. It trains, finances, and equips Hamas, Hizbullah and extremists in Iraq.
• Iranian proliferation of nuclear technology to terrorist groups is a terrifyingly real possibility.
• Iran is not like the former Soviet Union. It is a fundamentally unstable regime. There are power struggles between the presidency, the parliament, the Revolutionary Guards and the office of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei. The country's foreign polices are often dangerously erratic.
• Finally, even the doctrine of mutual assured destruction (MAD) that governed the Cold War does not necessarily apply to a regime ruled by religious fanatics for whom martyrdom may well be not a deterrent, but an inducement.

WHAT THEN is the civilized world to do?

It must pressure the Iranian leadership - relentlessly - by imposing severe political, social and economic sanctions. It must freeze assets and outlaw business with the Central Bank of Iran. It must bar Iranian airliners from landing at major airports. Iranian leaders must be made personae non grata at international forums.

The commonwealth of nations has to know that if it does not change course and continues with the modest sanctions now in place, Iran is on track toward nuclearization.

Brazenly, Teheran has defied successive Security Council resolutions calling on it to suspend its uranium enrichment - including a round of sanctions approved by the council in December 2006, and a "tougher" round authorized three months later. It has rejected European offers of generous economic incentives, including support for a civilian nuclear energy program.

In his AIPAC address the premier spoke for all Israelis, when he declared: "The international community has a duty and responsibility to clarify to Iran, through drastic measures, that the repercussions of its continued pursuit of nuclear weapons will be devastating."