Israeli Radio's morning news anchor Aryeh Golan summed up the feelings of Israelis on Sunday when he said, "In Turkey, the government is against us, in Egypt the mob is against us and at the UN the majority is against us."
Israel's international isolation is ever more palpable. Turkey, led by its Islamist Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has frozen diplomatic relations. On the Palestinian front, it is hard to conceive of a scenario in which the UN General Assembly's automatic majority would not rubber stamp Mahmoud Abbas's unilateral declaration of Palestinian statehood. In increasingly anarchic Egypt, a bad situation turned dramatically worse over the weekend requiring the rescue of six besieged Israeli Embassy security guards from a Cairo lynch mob.
Against the background of roiling Arab uprisings from Damascus to Cairo and from North Africa to the Arabian Gulf – none of which has anything to do with Israel – censorious voices continued to fault the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for Israel's increasing isolation. The critics range from a habitually unsympathetic global media, to wobbly friends in the U.S. and EU, to domestic Israeli pundits and opposition politicians.
Why, critics ask, doesn't Israel take "bold conciliatory" steps toward the Palestinians? Why does it adhere to its demand that Abbas recognize Israel as a Jewish state? Why won't Jerusalem prostrate itself before Ankara, lift the blockade of Gaza and thereby allow Hamas to solidify its control of the Strip unhindered? Why must Jerusalem carp so persistently about Iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons when so many European countries not to mention China, Russia and India enjoy a robust commerce with the mullahs?
The critics' disparate voices agree that Israel needs to stop being such a nuisance, such an ingrate in the assessment of former US secretary of defense Robert Gates. In that regard, Jerusalem's diplomatic dependency on Washington during the cascading crises with Turkey, Egypt and the Palestinian Authority has undoubtedly been awkward for all concerned in light of the prime minister's "tense relationship" with President Barack Obama.
For some Euro-left critics, however, Israel is simply irredeemable. David Hearst, an editorial writer at Britain's anti-Zionist Guardian implies that Israel is "a supremacist state" and that, maybe, the Jews deserve to lose their country.
But the voices heard most incessantly by Israelis themselves are those of Netanyahu's domestic critics. Shimon Shiffer, a leading columnist at Yediot Aharanot sounded oddly forbearing of the Egyptian lynch mob noting that, after all, Menachem Begin's pledge to grant Palestinian Arabs autonomous rule never fully transitioned into statehood. Never mind that the PLO torpedoed Begin's autonomy efforts every step of the way and that statehood wasn't the goal.
For Netanyahu critics, it is axiomatic that the Arab street needs to express its frustration. Ben Caspit at Ma'ariv allows that Israel’s erstwhile EU and American friends have a point in claiming that Netanyahu is leading the country toward an "abyss." Gideon Levy at Haaretz nobly acknowledges that "Not everything was Israel's fault" though, ultimately it really is because Israeli "arrogance" is to blame for the deterioration of relations with Turkey and Egypt. Yoel Marcus, also at Haaretz, moans that Netanyahu "is getting on the nerves of the entire world."
On Israel's Channel 2, diplomatic reporter Udi Segal not-so-obliquely blamed Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman (just minutes after interviewing him live Saturday night) for the siege at the Cairo embassy citing "lack of momentum" on the Palestinian track.
Indeed, government critics uniformly agree that the absence of "momentum" on the Palestinian track – not necessarily genuine progress toward a sustainable peace, but the absence of the heretofore ubiquitous illusion of momentum embodied in the "peace process" – is responsible for Israel's diplomatic isolation. Following this line of thinking, Netanyahu's failure to maintain the "momentum" at any cost has caused Israel's isolation problem.
On the political front, Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, the new elder statesman of the Labor Party declared, “If I were Bibi Netanyahu, I would recognize a Palestinian state. We would then negotiate borders and security." And Kadima Leader Tzipi Livni was on the radio to say that were she in-charge Israel would be enjoying fruitful negotiations with the Palestinians because she would not adhere to the requirement that Abbas recognize Israel as a Jewish state; moreover, she would also know better how to finesse the Turks.
This indulgence by Netanyahu's domestic opponents in blaming Israel first may offer them emotional catharsis, but it hardly reflects the view of the general public. A survey conducted for Israel Radio's Reshet Bet (and broadcast on September 1) indicated that in any new elections, Netanyahu's Likud Party would be trump Livni's Kadima (27 Knesset seats to 18). Parenthetically, recent polling of Palestinian Arab opinion suggests an element of ambivalence about Abbas's unilateralist U.N. approach with 59.3% of West Bank, Gaza and Jerusalem Arabs wanting to see a resumption of negotiations with Israel.
Anyhow, the critics' policy prescriptions appear strikingly half-baked. Netanyahu's insistence on Palestinian recognition of Israel as a Jewish state is rooted not in semantics but in the idea that only such acknowledgment of Israel's legitimacy would connote a true end to the conflict and negate further claims on Israeli territory. For that very reason, Abbas continues to withhold recognition while insisting on the right to "return" Palestinian refugees from the 1948 war and millions of their descendents to Israel proper. Half the Knesset members of Livni's own party, catalyzed by former Shin Bet chief Avi Dichter, have backed Netanyahu's stance.
As for Ben-Eliezer's risible suggestion that Israel back Palestinian statehood along the vulnerable 1949 Armistice Lines and afterwards negotiate permanent borders and demilitarization, what possible incentive would the already intransigent West Bank Palestinians – who sat cooling their heels during a ten-month long settlement freeze – have for accommodating Israeli security interests? And what sway would Abbas have over Hamas which continues to block "the president of Palestine" from even visiting Gaza?
If Labor's new leader turns out to be Shelly Yachimovich she will likely maneuver the party away from Ben-Eliezer's politically poisonous security positions. So the critics' counsel to "don't just stand there, do something" strikes many Israelis as reckless.
What is more, far from "isolating itself," as Netanyahu's critics claim, Israel's current predicament is largely the product of an unremitting and decades-long onslaught by the Arab camp and its amen corner to divide, isolate and ultimately wipe out the Zionist enterprise. That makes overcoming Israel's isolation problem a moral imperative for all those who champion the values of Western civilization.
###
Friday, September 16, 2011
Israel's Isolation Problem -- Turkey, Egypt, the UN... Just What is Going On?
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 14, 2011
Treaty Trouble - Egypt Wants to Amend the 1979 Peace Treaty
Tension along the 150-mile (230-kilometer) Israeli-Egyptian border remains high in light of intelligence information that Gaza-based Palestinian Arab Islamists plan further cross-border attacks from Sinai into the Negev.
An August 18 incursion near Eilat claimed eight Israeli lives and has generated recriminations within Israel's defense establishment over why the dispatchers were eliminated only after the attack.
Israel relied on Cairo to prevent the incursion. While Egyptian border guards spotted the terrorists they did not intercept them. Later in hot pursuit of the attackers three Egyptian guards were killed either by accidental IDF gunfire or when an explosive belt worn by one of the fleeing gunmen detonated. Three of the infiltrators turned out to have been Egyptian citizens. In response, the Cairo Street erupted in renewed anti-Israel frenzy. Young men competed for adulation with rival claims over who scaled the Israeli Embassy building to tear down its flag for burning.
Rather than take Cairo to task for allowing the cross-border incursion in the first place, Defense Minister Ehud Barak and President Shimon Peres apologized for the loss of Egyptian life. Planning by Gaza's Popular Resistance Committees for so sizable an attack is unlikely to have escaped Hamas's notice. But concern over deteriorating relations with post-Mubarak Egypt apparently inhibited an Israeli retaliation against Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh.
The 1979 Peace Treaty obligates Egypt to secure Sinai with a limited troop presence while keeping it demilitarized. After Operation Cast Lead in January 2009, Israel agreed to permit Egypt to move more troops into the Peninsula to contain jihadi elements, Palestinian Islamists and Bedouin gangs responsible for repeated attacks on a pipeline supplying natural gas to Israel (and Jordan). Since the Mubarak regime was toppled, Israel has twice agreed to allow Cairo to deploy more troops. Egypt now has 10,000 troops in the Peninsula with about 4,000 stationed along the Israeli border. It is unclear whether these ad hoc increases are reversible or whether the security vacuum -- a record 2,000 infiltrators mostly illegal refugees managed to cross the Egypt-Israel border last month -- is the result of weak policing in a difficult terrain or a persistent lack of will carried over from the Mubarak era. Not surprisingly, the flow of ever more lethal weaponry making its way through Sinai to Hamas-controlled Gaza has been increasing notwithstanding episodic Egyptian containment efforts.
Egyptians say they view the need to obtain Israeli approval for shifting troops into Sinai an affront to their national pride and their country's sovereignty. Egypt's Supreme Military Council has been pushing hard to amend the treaty arguing that new security threats demand permanently lifting the ceiling on the number of troops allowed into the Peninsula. The treaty does contain a clause that allows security arrangements to be amended by mutual agreement. Both Cairo and Jerusalem agree that ad hoc solutions have been exhausted. Israel's Haaretz newspaper supports official Egyptian demands to amend the treaty; Egypt's Al Ahram said what Egyptians really want is to have it abrogated altogether. Indeed, leading Egyptian figures have repeatedly emphasized that the peace treaty is not "sacrosanct."
With Turkish-Israel relations at a nadir, ties with Jordan practically on life-support, the EU wavering over whether to back Mahmoud Abbas's unilateral push for UN recognition of a Palestinian state along the 1949 Armistice Lines, and the Jewish state facing a range of security threats stemming from Iran and its proxies, it's no wonder that Jerusalem has been considering taking exceptional steps to preserve the cold peace with Cairo.
Barak has been floating the idea, in advance of anticipated presidential elections in Egypt this winter, of holding a strategic dialogue with Cairo in search of ways to make the treaty more palatable to Egyptian voters long inculcated by venomous anti-Israel cant in their media. Barak hopes amending the demilitarization clauses can salvage the treaty. The probable consequence would be abandoning Israel's veto over how many Egyptian troops could be stationed in Sinai. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is opposed to changing the treaty but has implied that if formerly offered he'd bring Barak's proposal to the Cabinet.
Hosni Mubarak did nothing to foster support for the peace treaty and occasionally diverted domestic attention by playing the anti-Israel card. Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi, Egypt's de-facto ruler, has followed a similar line as illustrated by the continued incarceration of Ilan Grapel on trumped-up espionage charges. Still, if Tantawi (perhaps from behind the scenes) or one of his henchmen continue to rule, the bare bones of the treaty is likely to be preserved in return for continued U.S. military aid ($40 billion since the 1970s). On the other hand, virtually all the declared presidential candidates from across the political spectrum have staked out positions that put into question the long-term viability of the treaty.
Modifying the treaty to appease popular anti-Israel sentiment could open a Pandora's box. If today's limit on the number of soldiers is an "affront" to Egyptian sensibilities who's to say forbidding the Egyptian Air Force from holding maneuvers over Sinai won't be the next "affront" to be overcome? The Jordan-Israel peace treaty is no less unpopular. Would not amending the treaty with Egypt put pressure on King Abdullah II? Moreover, any viable Israeli deal with the Palestinian faction led by Mahmoud Abbas would require demilitarization of the West Bank. What signal would backtracking on the demilitarization of Sinai send to the Palestinians?
If the treaty with Egypt needs to be gutted in order to save it, something may be terribly wrong with the underlying land-for-peace approach.
###
An August 18 incursion near Eilat claimed eight Israeli lives and has generated recriminations within Israel's defense establishment over why the dispatchers were eliminated only after the attack.
Israel relied on Cairo to prevent the incursion. While Egyptian border guards spotted the terrorists they did not intercept them. Later in hot pursuit of the attackers three Egyptian guards were killed either by accidental IDF gunfire or when an explosive belt worn by one of the fleeing gunmen detonated. Three of the infiltrators turned out to have been Egyptian citizens. In response, the Cairo Street erupted in renewed anti-Israel frenzy. Young men competed for adulation with rival claims over who scaled the Israeli Embassy building to tear down its flag for burning.
Rather than take Cairo to task for allowing the cross-border incursion in the first place, Defense Minister Ehud Barak and President Shimon Peres apologized for the loss of Egyptian life. Planning by Gaza's Popular Resistance Committees for so sizable an attack is unlikely to have escaped Hamas's notice. But concern over deteriorating relations with post-Mubarak Egypt apparently inhibited an Israeli retaliation against Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh.
The 1979 Peace Treaty obligates Egypt to secure Sinai with a limited troop presence while keeping it demilitarized. After Operation Cast Lead in January 2009, Israel agreed to permit Egypt to move more troops into the Peninsula to contain jihadi elements, Palestinian Islamists and Bedouin gangs responsible for repeated attacks on a pipeline supplying natural gas to Israel (and Jordan). Since the Mubarak regime was toppled, Israel has twice agreed to allow Cairo to deploy more troops. Egypt now has 10,000 troops in the Peninsula with about 4,000 stationed along the Israeli border. It is unclear whether these ad hoc increases are reversible or whether the security vacuum -- a record 2,000 infiltrators mostly illegal refugees managed to cross the Egypt-Israel border last month -- is the result of weak policing in a difficult terrain or a persistent lack of will carried over from the Mubarak era. Not surprisingly, the flow of ever more lethal weaponry making its way through Sinai to Hamas-controlled Gaza has been increasing notwithstanding episodic Egyptian containment efforts.
Egyptians say they view the need to obtain Israeli approval for shifting troops into Sinai an affront to their national pride and their country's sovereignty. Egypt's Supreme Military Council has been pushing hard to amend the treaty arguing that new security threats demand permanently lifting the ceiling on the number of troops allowed into the Peninsula. The treaty does contain a clause that allows security arrangements to be amended by mutual agreement. Both Cairo and Jerusalem agree that ad hoc solutions have been exhausted. Israel's Haaretz newspaper supports official Egyptian demands to amend the treaty; Egypt's Al Ahram said what Egyptians really want is to have it abrogated altogether. Indeed, leading Egyptian figures have repeatedly emphasized that the peace treaty is not "sacrosanct."
With Turkish-Israel relations at a nadir, ties with Jordan practically on life-support, the EU wavering over whether to back Mahmoud Abbas's unilateral push for UN recognition of a Palestinian state along the 1949 Armistice Lines, and the Jewish state facing a range of security threats stemming from Iran and its proxies, it's no wonder that Jerusalem has been considering taking exceptional steps to preserve the cold peace with Cairo.
Barak has been floating the idea, in advance of anticipated presidential elections in Egypt this winter, of holding a strategic dialogue with Cairo in search of ways to make the treaty more palatable to Egyptian voters long inculcated by venomous anti-Israel cant in their media. Barak hopes amending the demilitarization clauses can salvage the treaty. The probable consequence would be abandoning Israel's veto over how many Egyptian troops could be stationed in Sinai. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is opposed to changing the treaty but has implied that if formerly offered he'd bring Barak's proposal to the Cabinet.
Hosni Mubarak did nothing to foster support for the peace treaty and occasionally diverted domestic attention by playing the anti-Israel card. Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi, Egypt's de-facto ruler, has followed a similar line as illustrated by the continued incarceration of Ilan Grapel on trumped-up espionage charges. Still, if Tantawi (perhaps from behind the scenes) or one of his henchmen continue to rule, the bare bones of the treaty is likely to be preserved in return for continued U.S. military aid ($40 billion since the 1970s). On the other hand, virtually all the declared presidential candidates from across the political spectrum have staked out positions that put into question the long-term viability of the treaty.
Modifying the treaty to appease popular anti-Israel sentiment could open a Pandora's box. If today's limit on the number of soldiers is an "affront" to Egyptian sensibilities who's to say forbidding the Egyptian Air Force from holding maneuvers over Sinai won't be the next "affront" to be overcome? The Jordan-Israel peace treaty is no less unpopular. Would not amending the treaty with Egypt put pressure on King Abdullah II? Moreover, any viable Israeli deal with the Palestinian faction led by Mahmoud Abbas would require demilitarization of the West Bank. What signal would backtracking on the demilitarization of Sinai send to the Palestinians?
If the treaty with Egypt needs to be gutted in order to save it, something may be terribly wrong with the underlying land-for-peace approach.
###
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, July 27, 2011
The Forgotten Palestinians: A History of the Palestinians in Israel
Pappe Makes History
Historians writing about Israel's 1948 fight for independence have placed heavy responsibility for the Palestinian Arab refugee problem on the Arab leaders who urged their people to flee Palestine temporarily while the Zionists were to be pushed into the sea. Of course, well before then hundreds of Palestinian Arab moderates who opposed the policies of intransigence, bellicosity and rejectionism had been murdered by the militants.
In the late 1980s a revisionist school of New Historians in Israel, with fresh access to archival material and politicized by their opposition to Israeli settlement policies, put forward a more critical view – which ranged from nuanced to hysterical – that argued Israel's founders had also been culpable for the refugees flight. Such self-criticism and soul-searching, while exasperating to Israel's mainstream, was nevertheless contextualized as an immutable characteristic of the Jewish psyche.
For Ilan Pappe all this is beside the point. The inflammatory author of The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine is out with a new book The Forgotten Palestinians: A History of the Palestinians in Israel. It regurgitates his creed that the Jewish state was born in sin and that this stain, this moral deformity, is ineradicable. The Haifa-born history professor, self-exiled to Britain, nowadays invests his energies in promoting the Arab cause in general and the academic boycott of his former university in particular.
Pappe's latest polemic focuses on Israel's Arab population, namely those who headed Jewish urgings and did not flee their villages. Never mind. Pappe's premise is that the Jews simply had no moral right to assert their case for national self-determination in Palestine because there were Arabs living there. The Arabs were justified in rejecting every compromise offered including the 1947 UN partition plan which would have created two states – one for them and one for the Jews – because the Jews were "newcomers."
In the course of defeating the invading Arab armies, the Arab Legion and the Palestinian Arab irregulars, the Jews in Pappe's version of history "expelled" over 700,000 refugees and, then, oddly, would not let them return as a state of war between the Arab world and Israel continued.
Pappe is galled "that those who stayed became the 'Arab minority of Israel.'" As soon as the war that claimed one percent of the Jewish population (and ended with a tenuous armistice) was over the Arabs were given citizenship and the right to vote. Were they treated just like the Jews? No. Pappe cannot fathom why their ID cards listed them as "members of the minority community" or why those who abandoned land during the war were prevented from reclaiming it. Or why Israeli Arabs in rural and border areas continued to live under military rule until 1966.
There were dark episodes. Pappe seems to relish retelling the painful calamity of "Kafr Qassem" which took place on the eve of another war, the 1956 Sinai Campaign and in an atmosphere accompanied by heightened fears of Arab fedayeen activity. An awful miscommunication over wartime curfew orders led to the killing by Israeli soldiers of 47 innocent Arabs. A number of those responsible were punished.
Throughout the narrative, Pappe's single-minded devotion to Palestinian victimization sets the tone. His account of the 1976 communist-instigated Land Day rioting, which left six Israeli Arabs dead, therefore misses some salient facts -- notably that the 6, 000 dunams of supposedly "Arab land" expropriated was considerably less than Jewish or state lands also earmarked for development at the time and intended to benefit both Jews and Arabs. Essentially, the Arabs' purpose in that and subsequent annual land day protests is to keep the Galilee a Jew-free zone.
Pappe seems to want it both ways. He tells readers that the Jews had absolutely no reason to imagine that the Arabs among them could conceivably pose a security risk – because "Palestinians by and large accepted Israel as a fait accompli" – yet challenges outside Arab critics for besmirching the community as being too docile. To the contrary, he reports some Israeli Arabs allegedly contemplated "an Algerian-like struggle." He even cites "as a famous case" (without a hint of disapproval) the 1969 bombing of a Hebrew University cafeteria by Arabs from the Galilee. Moreover, he credits the PLO for being considerate of the Israeli Arab predicament in not insisting they engage in systematic violence. He lauds the total solidarity, post-1967, between Israeli Arabs and their West Bank and Gaza cousins. Today, he notes, two increasingly popular Islamist movements compete for Israeli Arab affections; one of which, led by Raid Salah, rejects voting in national elections as conferring legitimacy upon the Jewish state. Tellingly, a reason Pappe opposed the 1993 Oslo Accords was because the national rights of Israeli Arabs as Palestinians had not been protected.
He describes Ehud Barak's recklessly munificent concessions, rejected by Yasir Arafat at Camp David in 2000, as little more than a Zionist diktat. As for the frightening Arab riots of October 2000, unleashed in solidarity with the outbreak of the second intifada in the West Bank and Gaza, and which briefly severed the main north-south Israeli road system – it was a mere "gathering of youths" who were cold-bloodily picked off by "police snipers. Pappe is incensed that an unfeeling Hebrew press didn't bother to provide capsule obituaries for the Israeli Arab rioters even though it did for their Jewish victims.
Not surprisingly, Pappe sees no justification for granting preferential treatment to Israelis who serve in the IDF or do other forms of national service between ages 18-21. Most Israeli Arabs do neither. Instead, he finds it contemptible that there may be colleges that make some Arab high-school graduates wait until age 20 before admitting them into Israeli universities. In fact, most universities offer remedial programs to prepare Arab youths socially and scholastically for success in college. He does not deny that "Palestinian citizens of Israel" – he abhors the terms Israeli Arabs – have achieved successes in a wide range of fields. It's simply irrefutable despite an unbelievably complicated political environment. Pappe himself points out that 25 percent of medical students are Israeli Arabs despite his imaginary "latent apartheid." Yes there are 10 or so Arab members of the 120-member Knesset, but Pappe's complaint is that none sit on its intelligence subcommittee. Go figure. Just speaking Arabic in a shopping mall can open one up to attack by Jewish ruffians, he says. No doubt there are such cases, but he and I plainly do not frequent the same malls.
Even in Pappe's Israel, life is not entirely hellish for the Arab minority. He credits Adalah, an advocacy group funded by the New Israel Fund, for doing a good job at advocating for the "collective rights" of Palestinian Israelis. He is buoyed by the fact that "there are growing spaces of leisure and pastime" where Arabs and Jews enjoy restaurants, coffee houses, and parks together – as if this is really something new. And in perhaps the most condescending aside in the book, he lauds the absence of segregation in public transportation!
Arabs may legitimately control 22 nation states rooted in Arab ethnicity; Muslims may legitimately reign over 56 countries in which religion and citizenship are symbiotically linked. Only the existence of one Jewish state founded on basis of a 2,000 year-old civilizational connection between the Jewish people and Zion is, according to Pappe's analysis, illegitimate.
Even in the pantheon of Blame-Israel-First revisionist historians, Pappe's stands beyond the pale.
His friend and mentor, Avi Shlaim, author of Collusion Across the Jordan: King Abdullah and the Zionist Movement, has claimed that Jordan never actually planned to help push Israel into the sea when it invaded in 1948, and that afterwards David Ben-Gurion supposedly had ample opportunity to find a way to make peace with Abdullah before the monarch was assassinated in 1951, but didn't. Shlaim places exclusive blame on Ben-Gurion and on every Israeli prime minister since him, for perpetuating the conflict. He sees Zionism as having been hijacked by Israel's right-wing to perpetuate the "illegal occupation." Yet Shlaim opposes anti-Israel academic boycotts and has described Zionism, presumably in its liberal manifestation, as the national liberation movement of the Jewish people.
Similarly, the late Simha Flapan may have recklessly damaged Israel's image with The Birth of Israel: Myths and Realities by charging that the Zionists were somehow morally responsible for the Palestinian flight because, deep down, they did not really want them to stay. Still, Flapan, a life-long socialist, maintained that he never questioned "the moral justification and historical necessity of Zionism."
If Pappe is a prisoner of his own ideology, the trajectory of Benny Morris shows that at least one of the original revisionist historians has been capable of reevaluating his position even if he can't quite bring himself to explicitly recant.
In The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947-1949, Morris held both Israel and the Arabs culpable for the refugees' flight. One can almost commiserate with Morris's desire to somehow split the difference. If only those who promulgated the Palestinian Arab narrative were similarly inclined. But in the final analysis, the onus must rest with the Arabs; their leaders miscalculated and the masses paid the price.
Morris now claims his egregious 1987 account of Zionism as a "colonizing and expansionist ideology and movement ... intent on politically, and even physically, dispossessing and supplanting the Arabs," referred to the 1930s before Zionist leaders embraced multiple plans for partition of Palestine. Morris has turned out to be a passionate Zionist; a liberal critic of Israeli settlement policies, but a defender of the country in the court of world opinion. His recent work, One State, Two States placed decisive responsibility for the continuation of the conflict squarely on the Arabs – a stance that has earned him excommunication by the remaining revisionists.
There is little prospect, however, that Pappe will allow facts to dent his pathological loathing of Israel. History works in mysterious ways. Pappe lost his bid for a Knesset seat in 1996 on the communist ticket. The Knesset's gain is the academy's loss. Pity the student assigned this book and shame on any professor for assigning it.
###
Historians writing about Israel's 1948 fight for independence have placed heavy responsibility for the Palestinian Arab refugee problem on the Arab leaders who urged their people to flee Palestine temporarily while the Zionists were to be pushed into the sea. Of course, well before then hundreds of Palestinian Arab moderates who opposed the policies of intransigence, bellicosity and rejectionism had been murdered by the militants.
In the late 1980s a revisionist school of New Historians in Israel, with fresh access to archival material and politicized by their opposition to Israeli settlement policies, put forward a more critical view – which ranged from nuanced to hysterical – that argued Israel's founders had also been culpable for the refugees flight. Such self-criticism and soul-searching, while exasperating to Israel's mainstream, was nevertheless contextualized as an immutable characteristic of the Jewish psyche.
For Ilan Pappe all this is beside the point. The inflammatory author of The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine is out with a new book The Forgotten Palestinians: A History of the Palestinians in Israel. It regurgitates his creed that the Jewish state was born in sin and that this stain, this moral deformity, is ineradicable. The Haifa-born history professor, self-exiled to Britain, nowadays invests his energies in promoting the Arab cause in general and the academic boycott of his former university in particular.
Pappe's latest polemic focuses on Israel's Arab population, namely those who headed Jewish urgings and did not flee their villages. Never mind. Pappe's premise is that the Jews simply had no moral right to assert their case for national self-determination in Palestine because there were Arabs living there. The Arabs were justified in rejecting every compromise offered including the 1947 UN partition plan which would have created two states – one for them and one for the Jews – because the Jews were "newcomers."
In the course of defeating the invading Arab armies, the Arab Legion and the Palestinian Arab irregulars, the Jews in Pappe's version of history "expelled" over 700,000 refugees and, then, oddly, would not let them return as a state of war between the Arab world and Israel continued.
Pappe is galled "that those who stayed became the 'Arab minority of Israel.'" As soon as the war that claimed one percent of the Jewish population (and ended with a tenuous armistice) was over the Arabs were given citizenship and the right to vote. Were they treated just like the Jews? No. Pappe cannot fathom why their ID cards listed them as "members of the minority community" or why those who abandoned land during the war were prevented from reclaiming it. Or why Israeli Arabs in rural and border areas continued to live under military rule until 1966.
There were dark episodes. Pappe seems to relish retelling the painful calamity of "Kafr Qassem" which took place on the eve of another war, the 1956 Sinai Campaign and in an atmosphere accompanied by heightened fears of Arab fedayeen activity. An awful miscommunication over wartime curfew orders led to the killing by Israeli soldiers of 47 innocent Arabs. A number of those responsible were punished.
Throughout the narrative, Pappe's single-minded devotion to Palestinian victimization sets the tone. His account of the 1976 communist-instigated Land Day rioting, which left six Israeli Arabs dead, therefore misses some salient facts -- notably that the 6, 000 dunams of supposedly "Arab land" expropriated was considerably less than Jewish or state lands also earmarked for development at the time and intended to benefit both Jews and Arabs. Essentially, the Arabs' purpose in that and subsequent annual land day protests is to keep the Galilee a Jew-free zone.
Pappe seems to want it both ways. He tells readers that the Jews had absolutely no reason to imagine that the Arabs among them could conceivably pose a security risk – because "Palestinians by and large accepted Israel as a fait accompli" – yet challenges outside Arab critics for besmirching the community as being too docile. To the contrary, he reports some Israeli Arabs allegedly contemplated "an Algerian-like struggle." He even cites "as a famous case" (without a hint of disapproval) the 1969 bombing of a Hebrew University cafeteria by Arabs from the Galilee. Moreover, he credits the PLO for being considerate of the Israeli Arab predicament in not insisting they engage in systematic violence. He lauds the total solidarity, post-1967, between Israeli Arabs and their West Bank and Gaza cousins. Today, he notes, two increasingly popular Islamist movements compete for Israeli Arab affections; one of which, led by Raid Salah, rejects voting in national elections as conferring legitimacy upon the Jewish state. Tellingly, a reason Pappe opposed the 1993 Oslo Accords was because the national rights of Israeli Arabs as Palestinians had not been protected.
He describes Ehud Barak's recklessly munificent concessions, rejected by Yasir Arafat at Camp David in 2000, as little more than a Zionist diktat. As for the frightening Arab riots of October 2000, unleashed in solidarity with the outbreak of the second intifada in the West Bank and Gaza, and which briefly severed the main north-south Israeli road system – it was a mere "gathering of youths" who were cold-bloodily picked off by "police snipers. Pappe is incensed that an unfeeling Hebrew press didn't bother to provide capsule obituaries for the Israeli Arab rioters even though it did for their Jewish victims.
Not surprisingly, Pappe sees no justification for granting preferential treatment to Israelis who serve in the IDF or do other forms of national service between ages 18-21. Most Israeli Arabs do neither. Instead, he finds it contemptible that there may be colleges that make some Arab high-school graduates wait until age 20 before admitting them into Israeli universities. In fact, most universities offer remedial programs to prepare Arab youths socially and scholastically for success in college. He does not deny that "Palestinian citizens of Israel" – he abhors the terms Israeli Arabs – have achieved successes in a wide range of fields. It's simply irrefutable despite an unbelievably complicated political environment. Pappe himself points out that 25 percent of medical students are Israeli Arabs despite his imaginary "latent apartheid." Yes there are 10 or so Arab members of the 120-member Knesset, but Pappe's complaint is that none sit on its intelligence subcommittee. Go figure. Just speaking Arabic in a shopping mall can open one up to attack by Jewish ruffians, he says. No doubt there are such cases, but he and I plainly do not frequent the same malls.
Even in Pappe's Israel, life is not entirely hellish for the Arab minority. He credits Adalah, an advocacy group funded by the New Israel Fund, for doing a good job at advocating for the "collective rights" of Palestinian Israelis. He is buoyed by the fact that "there are growing spaces of leisure and pastime" where Arabs and Jews enjoy restaurants, coffee houses, and parks together – as if this is really something new. And in perhaps the most condescending aside in the book, he lauds the absence of segregation in public transportation!
Arabs may legitimately control 22 nation states rooted in Arab ethnicity; Muslims may legitimately reign over 56 countries in which religion and citizenship are symbiotically linked. Only the existence of one Jewish state founded on basis of a 2,000 year-old civilizational connection between the Jewish people and Zion is, according to Pappe's analysis, illegitimate.
Even in the pantheon of Blame-Israel-First revisionist historians, Pappe's stands beyond the pale.
His friend and mentor, Avi Shlaim, author of Collusion Across the Jordan: King Abdullah and the Zionist Movement, has claimed that Jordan never actually planned to help push Israel into the sea when it invaded in 1948, and that afterwards David Ben-Gurion supposedly had ample opportunity to find a way to make peace with Abdullah before the monarch was assassinated in 1951, but didn't. Shlaim places exclusive blame on Ben-Gurion and on every Israeli prime minister since him, for perpetuating the conflict. He sees Zionism as having been hijacked by Israel's right-wing to perpetuate the "illegal occupation." Yet Shlaim opposes anti-Israel academic boycotts and has described Zionism, presumably in its liberal manifestation, as the national liberation movement of the Jewish people.
Similarly, the late Simha Flapan may have recklessly damaged Israel's image with The Birth of Israel: Myths and Realities by charging that the Zionists were somehow morally responsible for the Palestinian flight because, deep down, they did not really want them to stay. Still, Flapan, a life-long socialist, maintained that he never questioned "the moral justification and historical necessity of Zionism."
If Pappe is a prisoner of his own ideology, the trajectory of Benny Morris shows that at least one of the original revisionist historians has been capable of reevaluating his position even if he can't quite bring himself to explicitly recant.
In The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947-1949, Morris held both Israel and the Arabs culpable for the refugees' flight. One can almost commiserate with Morris's desire to somehow split the difference. If only those who promulgated the Palestinian Arab narrative were similarly inclined. But in the final analysis, the onus must rest with the Arabs; their leaders miscalculated and the masses paid the price.
Morris now claims his egregious 1987 account of Zionism as a "colonizing and expansionist ideology and movement ... intent on politically, and even physically, dispossessing and supplanting the Arabs," referred to the 1930s before Zionist leaders embraced multiple plans for partition of Palestine. Morris has turned out to be a passionate Zionist; a liberal critic of Israeli settlement policies, but a defender of the country in the court of world opinion. His recent work, One State, Two States placed decisive responsibility for the continuation of the conflict squarely on the Arabs – a stance that has earned him excommunication by the remaining revisionists.
There is little prospect, however, that Pappe will allow facts to dent his pathological loathing of Israel. History works in mysterious ways. Pappe lost his bid for a Knesset seat in 1996 on the communist ticket. The Knesset's gain is the academy's loss. Pity the student assigned this book and shame on any professor for assigning it.
###
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, July 25, 2011
The Barghouti - Mandala Analogy
Seeing Barghouti Plain
That Fatah leader Marwan Barghouti is culpable in the murder of tens of Israelis -- and a Greek Orthodox monk mistaken for a Jew -- is not in dispute. In collaboration with Palestinian Authority chairman Yasir Arafat, Barghouti provided West Bank terror gangs with cash and guns to stoke the second intifada. Convicted on five counts of murder by a Tel Aviv court, he is now serving a life sentence in an Israeli penitentiary.
The 52 year-old Barghouti's Israeli backers -- Uri Avnery's post-Zionist Gush Shalom, the Haaretz newspaper, novelist Amos Oz, former Meretz Party head Haim Oron, past Labor Party leader Benjamin Ben Eliezer and current Labor leadership contender Amir Peretz --- have anointed him the "Palestinian Mandela." That conjures up images of a principled, graying freedom fighter with the courage to move his people toward reconciliation. They say that when Mahmoud Abbas leaves the scene, Barghouti is the redeemer to lead "Palestine" to peace with Israel.
Indeed, in The Long Walk to Freedom, South African leader Nelson Mandela wrote that, "If you want to make peace with your enemy, you have to work with your enemy. Then he becomes your partner." But those who claim Barghouti walks in the footsteps of Mandela either think too much of the former or too little of the latter.
Who is Barghouti?
He belongs to a prominent Palestinian clan and was a youthful activist in the first intifada which sought to compel Israel out of Judea, Samaria and Gaza and claimed nearly 200 Israeli and over 1,300 Palestinian Arab lives. Israel jailed and deported Barghouti twice in the 1980s, only to see him returned as a senior Fatah leader after the 1993 Oslo Accords were signed. Fluent in Hebrew – The New York Times once described him as "charming, articulate and intelligent, even if a bit of a showboat" – he was a favorite participant at Israeli "peace camp" events.
Even as he proclaimed his commitment to peaceful coexistence – contingent on an Israeli withdrawal to the vulnerable 1949 Armistice Lines – he led openly violent demonstrations against the "occupation" and clandestinely co-founded Tanzim, a new Fatah-aligned terror faction.
During the second intifada, Barghouti served a ranking member of the Aksa Martyrs Brigades which carried out murderous attacks against Israeli civilians on both sides of the Green Line. Still, Barghouti has never stopped insisting that he opposes terrorism especially in pre-1967 Israel.
In prison, Barghouti has honed his gift for dissimulation outsmarting journalists, prison authorities and the Shin Bet intelligence agency which had granted him unparalleled perks including use of the warden's office to conduct media interviews. He swiftly reinvented himself as a "dissident" and scholar. Some Arabists worried, quite needlessly it turned out, that the Shin Bet had succeeded in swaying Barghouti toward genuine moderation.
In a recent interview with Time magazine [July 17, 2011] Barghouti, master of the oxymoron, called for "peaceful resistance…at this point in time." For Time's Karl Vick – who corresponded with Barghouti through his lawyers -- the "setting" (which the reporter could only conjure up) recalled Robben Island in apartheid South Africa. Having disingenuously smeared Israel with the insulting analogy, Vick promptly backpedaled: "Comparisons with Arafat are more apt."
Unsurprisingly, prison has made the charismatic Barghouti ever more popular with the Palestinian street which –like him – is ambivalent about the utility of yet another paroxysm of intifada violence. Barghouti is strong advocate of reconciliation between Hamas and Fatah and would defeat Hamas's Ismail Haniyeh (61-33 percent) in any Palestinian leadership contest. Following the "there go the people; I must follow them" style of leadership, Barghouti tells Palestinians what they want to hear: They are the "generators of the longest armed revolution in modern history" facing a colonialist enemy whose cruelty "is unparalleled." [Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Sept. 28, 2010]. Peace talks are futile in the quest to push Israel back to the old armistice lines; Palestinians should march in the millions this September to demand the UN unilaterally declare a Palestinian state on the PLOs terms.
The penny may have finally dropped at Shin Bet headquarters; prison authorities lately isolated Barghouti for unauthorized possession of a mobile phone.
In point of fact, there was never much evidence to substantiate the notion that the Palestinian Arabs want a Mandela-like leader. Certainly, their xenophobic war against Zionism is no parallel to the African struggle against apartheid. As for the straw man argument that Israelis reject Barghouti because of his violent history, it's worth recalling that Yitzhak Shamir, who was not squeamish about legitimate armed struggle, refused to talk to the PLO because he was convinced that the "peace" it offered was "the peace of the cemetery." [page 198 autobiography] And in shaking hands with the insalubrious Arafat, Yitzhak Rabin calculated – wrongly in turned out – that “You make peace with your enemies — not the Queen of Holland.”
Barghouti has shown no capacity for being able to move from enemy to real peace partner. Two years after his capture, Oslo architect Yossi Beilin blamed Arafat for leading his former interlocutor astray. Beilin recounted Barghouti telling him that his purpose in unleashing an orgy of violence against Israel was to finesse the Palestinian street which would otherwise fall to Hamas. Beilin found Barghouti's explanation "cynical" and "frightening."
True to form, Beilin got over his sense of betrayal and has joined other leftists in advocating Barghouti's release.
For Israelis not enamored with his charisma, what disqualifies Barghouti from the "Palestinian Mandela" moniker is not his history of malice, but his continuing refusal to abandon it. Barghouti two-state solution today is ominously reminiscent of Arafat's 1974 scheme for the phased destruction of Israel – which underpinned his approach to Oslo.
This Palestinian redeemer lacks the courage to tell his people that they can't have peace with Israel while insisting on the "right" of hundreds of thousands of Arab refugees from the 1948 War, plus millions of their progeny, to "return" to what is today Israel. Nor will he tell Palestinian Arabs that the Jewish people have a legitimate historical, cultural and political connection to the land of Israel. Is he the Palestinian peacemaker to make the gutsy case that a single Jewish state, surrounded by 22 unfriendly Arab states will need security arrangements, including Palestinian demilitarization and defensible boundaries, before it can withdraw from most of its heartland.
The Palestinian Arabs have no realistic plan forward – beyond exploiting their automatic majority in the UN General assembly – and Barghouti is no Mandela because he's incapable of providing them with one. Rather than lead his people to a sustainable two-state solution, coexistence with Israel and, ultimately, healing and reconciliation he simply trails behind them toward one more dead end.
###
That Fatah leader Marwan Barghouti is culpable in the murder of tens of Israelis -- and a Greek Orthodox monk mistaken for a Jew -- is not in dispute. In collaboration with Palestinian Authority chairman Yasir Arafat, Barghouti provided West Bank terror gangs with cash and guns to stoke the second intifada. Convicted on five counts of murder by a Tel Aviv court, he is now serving a life sentence in an Israeli penitentiary.
The 52 year-old Barghouti's Israeli backers -- Uri Avnery's post-Zionist Gush Shalom, the Haaretz newspaper, novelist Amos Oz, former Meretz Party head Haim Oron, past Labor Party leader Benjamin Ben Eliezer and current Labor leadership contender Amir Peretz --- have anointed him the "Palestinian Mandela." That conjures up images of a principled, graying freedom fighter with the courage to move his people toward reconciliation. They say that when Mahmoud Abbas leaves the scene, Barghouti is the redeemer to lead "Palestine" to peace with Israel.
Indeed, in The Long Walk to Freedom, South African leader Nelson Mandela wrote that, "If you want to make peace with your enemy, you have to work with your enemy. Then he becomes your partner." But those who claim Barghouti walks in the footsteps of Mandela either think too much of the former or too little of the latter.
Who is Barghouti?
He belongs to a prominent Palestinian clan and was a youthful activist in the first intifada which sought to compel Israel out of Judea, Samaria and Gaza and claimed nearly 200 Israeli and over 1,300 Palestinian Arab lives. Israel jailed and deported Barghouti twice in the 1980s, only to see him returned as a senior Fatah leader after the 1993 Oslo Accords were signed. Fluent in Hebrew – The New York Times once described him as "charming, articulate and intelligent, even if a bit of a showboat" – he was a favorite participant at Israeli "peace camp" events.
Even as he proclaimed his commitment to peaceful coexistence – contingent on an Israeli withdrawal to the vulnerable 1949 Armistice Lines – he led openly violent demonstrations against the "occupation" and clandestinely co-founded Tanzim, a new Fatah-aligned terror faction.
During the second intifada, Barghouti served a ranking member of the Aksa Martyrs Brigades which carried out murderous attacks against Israeli civilians on both sides of the Green Line. Still, Barghouti has never stopped insisting that he opposes terrorism especially in pre-1967 Israel.
In prison, Barghouti has honed his gift for dissimulation outsmarting journalists, prison authorities and the Shin Bet intelligence agency which had granted him unparalleled perks including use of the warden's office to conduct media interviews. He swiftly reinvented himself as a "dissident" and scholar. Some Arabists worried, quite needlessly it turned out, that the Shin Bet had succeeded in swaying Barghouti toward genuine moderation.
In a recent interview with Time magazine [July 17, 2011] Barghouti, master of the oxymoron, called for "peaceful resistance…at this point in time." For Time's Karl Vick – who corresponded with Barghouti through his lawyers -- the "setting" (which the reporter could only conjure up) recalled Robben Island in apartheid South Africa. Having disingenuously smeared Israel with the insulting analogy, Vick promptly backpedaled: "Comparisons with Arafat are more apt."
Unsurprisingly, prison has made the charismatic Barghouti ever more popular with the Palestinian street which –like him – is ambivalent about the utility of yet another paroxysm of intifada violence. Barghouti is strong advocate of reconciliation between Hamas and Fatah and would defeat Hamas's Ismail Haniyeh (61-33 percent) in any Palestinian leadership contest. Following the "there go the people; I must follow them" style of leadership, Barghouti tells Palestinians what they want to hear: They are the "generators of the longest armed revolution in modern history" facing a colonialist enemy whose cruelty "is unparalleled." [Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Sept. 28, 2010]. Peace talks are futile in the quest to push Israel back to the old armistice lines; Palestinians should march in the millions this September to demand the UN unilaterally declare a Palestinian state on the PLOs terms.
The penny may have finally dropped at Shin Bet headquarters; prison authorities lately isolated Barghouti for unauthorized possession of a mobile phone.
In point of fact, there was never much evidence to substantiate the notion that the Palestinian Arabs want a Mandela-like leader. Certainly, their xenophobic war against Zionism is no parallel to the African struggle against apartheid. As for the straw man argument that Israelis reject Barghouti because of his violent history, it's worth recalling that Yitzhak Shamir, who was not squeamish about legitimate armed struggle, refused to talk to the PLO because he was convinced that the "peace" it offered was "the peace of the cemetery." [page 198 autobiography] And in shaking hands with the insalubrious Arafat, Yitzhak Rabin calculated – wrongly in turned out – that “You make peace with your enemies — not the Queen of Holland.”
Barghouti has shown no capacity for being able to move from enemy to real peace partner. Two years after his capture, Oslo architect Yossi Beilin blamed Arafat for leading his former interlocutor astray. Beilin recounted Barghouti telling him that his purpose in unleashing an orgy of violence against Israel was to finesse the Palestinian street which would otherwise fall to Hamas. Beilin found Barghouti's explanation "cynical" and "frightening."
True to form, Beilin got over his sense of betrayal and has joined other leftists in advocating Barghouti's release.
For Israelis not enamored with his charisma, what disqualifies Barghouti from the "Palestinian Mandela" moniker is not his history of malice, but his continuing refusal to abandon it. Barghouti two-state solution today is ominously reminiscent of Arafat's 1974 scheme for the phased destruction of Israel – which underpinned his approach to Oslo.
This Palestinian redeemer lacks the courage to tell his people that they can't have peace with Israel while insisting on the "right" of hundreds of thousands of Arab refugees from the 1948 War, plus millions of their progeny, to "return" to what is today Israel. Nor will he tell Palestinian Arabs that the Jewish people have a legitimate historical, cultural and political connection to the land of Israel. Is he the Palestinian peacemaker to make the gutsy case that a single Jewish state, surrounded by 22 unfriendly Arab states will need security arrangements, including Palestinian demilitarization and defensible boundaries, before it can withdraw from most of its heartland.
The Palestinian Arabs have no realistic plan forward – beyond exploiting their automatic majority in the UN General assembly – and Barghouti is no Mandela because he's incapable of providing them with one. Rather than lead his people to a sustainable two-state solution, coexistence with Israel and, ultimately, healing and reconciliation he simply trails behind them toward one more dead end.
###
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, July 20, 2011
EILAT
A More Than Peripheral Challenge
In a country where the sky is mostly blue and the sun mostly shines the southernmost city of Eilat has nonetheless laid claim – with justification – to being Israel's sun capital. Reliable good weather does not, however, solve all problems. Eilat has been inundated with illegal, mostly Eritrean and Sudanese, immigrants. Its airport is antiquated; there is no rail service, and many of its young people can't wait to move out.
In July, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu convened a high-powered committee charged with finding ways to rehabilitate Eilat's transportation, education, tourism and cultural infrastructure. This committee has all the right players: the premier's loyal cabinet secretary; ministers of Education and Finance, as well as the ministers of Negev & Galilee Development, Transportation, Tourism, Interior and Culture & Sports. They are joined by Eilat Mayor Meir Yitzhak Halevy and Prof. Eugene Kandel, chairman of the National Economic Council.
When in 1947 the UN voted to create an Arab and a Jewish state in Palestine it gave Eilat to nascent Israel. The Arabs rejected partition so Israeli forces had to capture, on March 10, 1949, the desolate though strategic spot. Settled out of Negev badlands, Eilat was incorporated as a municipality in 1952 for just several thousand souls. Commuter buses serving Eilat were murderously set upon by Fedayeen gangs from Gaza and Jordan. Water had to be piped in though by the 1960s revolutionary desalination plants began providing for the bulk of the city's water needs.
A less than picturesque port was developed which became crucial to Israel's trade with Africa and Asia and for oil imports from Iran. In 1956 and again in 1967 Egypt closed the Straits of Tiran (where the Gulf of Eilat opens into the Red Sea) to Israeli shipping. This unlawful blockade contributed to the outbreak of both the Sinai Campaign and the Six Day War.
Eilat's port now handles about six percent of Israel's maritime trade. By government fiat, cars produced in the Far East must enter Israel via Port Eilat making this commerce the facility's main source of income and providing jobs for 130 longshoremen. The Finance Ministry is in the process of privatizing the port while the Eilat committee is weighing a plan to relocate the docks in order to expand the hotel district. Meantime, pollution from the port has repeatedly closed area beaches. A not well maintained oil pipeline that connects Eilat to Haifa recently punctured causing substantial environmental damage north of the city.
Eilat's early bad rap as an "ill-planned honky-tonk" town notwithstanding, the city has blossomed over the decades. Branding itself as the place where the sun, desert and sea meet, Eilat has been thriving as an ideal vacation destination offering a wide range of hotels (12,000 rooms) and an assortment of recreational activities from diving and snorkeling to parasailing and duty-free shopping. Budget conscious Israelis may complain that it is cheaper to take a packaged vacation abroad but Europeans, especially, find the city a good value. Geographically, Eilat is only 170 miles (280 kilometers) from Tel Aviv. Looking out from the Gulf of Eilat and the Red Sea a visitor can glance simultaneously at the Egyptian Sinai, Jordan and Saudi Arabia. Tel Aviv's humidity is replaced by Eilat's dry desert climate. The area is just far enough away from the country's center to be designated as a wartime evacuation point in the event of an all-out war. In the main, the city has been spared wartime violence even during the gruesome second intifada. That said three Israelis were murdered in 2007 in a suicide bombing of a bakery and the city has also been the occasional target of rocket attacks.
Eilat has a small modern pier terminal which accommodates about 10,000 passenger arrivals a year. It's the southern terminus of the 580-mile long Israel Trail, but most visitors come by land transportation. Tens of thousands of European tourists arrive on charter flights to Ovda Airport, part of a military airbase north of the city; others arrive on shuttle flights to Eilat Airport from Ben-Gurion Airport. The IDF is not thrilled to share its airspace with commercial planes and the downtown Eilat field has outgrown its location. So Netanyahu has approved building new airport – to be named after Ilan Ramon – just north of Eilat in the copper mining Timna Valley district, to accommodate both domestic and international arrivals.
Still, even a casual visitor will notice what permanent residents cannot escape. There are an estimated 8,000 illegal immigrants among Eilat's population of 56,000 (7,500 of whom are new immigrants). Hundreds more African workers have been legalized for employment in the hotel industry. One has just become South Sudan's consul in Israel.
To be clear: Most serious crimes in Eilat are committed by Israelis, but with 14 percent of the total population consisting of poverty-stricken Africans, and 80% of the citizenry employed by the tourist industry, Eilat can't afford losing its image as a carefree vacation destination. The municipality is now under criticism from leftwing campaigners for having set up special school for foreign pupils rather than absorbing them somehow in the municipal system. In this context, Eilat's citizens are hoping Netanyahu fulfils his pledge to accelerate construction of a fence along the Negev-Sinai border to block illegal immigration and terrorist infiltration.
Locals will be watching to see what tangible steps the government takes to upgrade roads leading to the city. What is most needed is the government's promised rail link to Eilat via Beersheba from Tel Aviv. Netanyahu has also spoken of a rail link to Ashdod which would mean that passengers (and freight) could move between Israel's Red Sea and Mediterranean ports. "That will change Israel forever," Netanyahu said.
The city has been fortunate to have the support of the organized North American Jewish community which has invested in its school system. Now, 72% of high school students have passed their higher education matriculation exams (up from 27%). In 2002, Ben-Gurion University of Beersheba began operating a local campus serving 700 students with dorm facilities funded by the UJA. Locals who have completed their IDF service are eligible for tuition-free study. Philanthropic support has also enabled Josephtal Hospital to provide state-of-the-art emergency services.
Of course, Eilat is no newcomer to Jewish history. It is mentioned in the Bible (Deut. 2:8) in connection with the wonderings of the Israelites out of Egypt and Solomon's creation of a "navy of ships" (I Kings 9:26;). Jews held on to a hardscrabble existence there possibly until Crusader times.
Netanyahu has pledged to "jump Eilat forward." Not only Eilat, but other development towns settled in the 1950s in border and rural areas up and down Israel are hoping this promise is not made to be broken. At stake is meeting the perennial Zionist challenge of linking, finally, the center to the periphery.
###
In a country where the sky is mostly blue and the sun mostly shines the southernmost city of Eilat has nonetheless laid claim – with justification – to being Israel's sun capital. Reliable good weather does not, however, solve all problems. Eilat has been inundated with illegal, mostly Eritrean and Sudanese, immigrants. Its airport is antiquated; there is no rail service, and many of its young people can't wait to move out.
In July, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu convened a high-powered committee charged with finding ways to rehabilitate Eilat's transportation, education, tourism and cultural infrastructure. This committee has all the right players: the premier's loyal cabinet secretary; ministers of Education and Finance, as well as the ministers of Negev & Galilee Development, Transportation, Tourism, Interior and Culture & Sports. They are joined by Eilat Mayor Meir Yitzhak Halevy and Prof. Eugene Kandel, chairman of the National Economic Council.
When in 1947 the UN voted to create an Arab and a Jewish state in Palestine it gave Eilat to nascent Israel. The Arabs rejected partition so Israeli forces had to capture, on March 10, 1949, the desolate though strategic spot. Settled out of Negev badlands, Eilat was incorporated as a municipality in 1952 for just several thousand souls. Commuter buses serving Eilat were murderously set upon by Fedayeen gangs from Gaza and Jordan. Water had to be piped in though by the 1960s revolutionary desalination plants began providing for the bulk of the city's water needs.
A less than picturesque port was developed which became crucial to Israel's trade with Africa and Asia and for oil imports from Iran. In 1956 and again in 1967 Egypt closed the Straits of Tiran (where the Gulf of Eilat opens into the Red Sea) to Israeli shipping. This unlawful blockade contributed to the outbreak of both the Sinai Campaign and the Six Day War.
Eilat's port now handles about six percent of Israel's maritime trade. By government fiat, cars produced in the Far East must enter Israel via Port Eilat making this commerce the facility's main source of income and providing jobs for 130 longshoremen. The Finance Ministry is in the process of privatizing the port while the Eilat committee is weighing a plan to relocate the docks in order to expand the hotel district. Meantime, pollution from the port has repeatedly closed area beaches. A not well maintained oil pipeline that connects Eilat to Haifa recently punctured causing substantial environmental damage north of the city.
Eilat's early bad rap as an "ill-planned honky-tonk" town notwithstanding, the city has blossomed over the decades. Branding itself as the place where the sun, desert and sea meet, Eilat has been thriving as an ideal vacation destination offering a wide range of hotels (12,000 rooms) and an assortment of recreational activities from diving and snorkeling to parasailing and duty-free shopping. Budget conscious Israelis may complain that it is cheaper to take a packaged vacation abroad but Europeans, especially, find the city a good value. Geographically, Eilat is only 170 miles (280 kilometers) from Tel Aviv. Looking out from the Gulf of Eilat and the Red Sea a visitor can glance simultaneously at the Egyptian Sinai, Jordan and Saudi Arabia. Tel Aviv's humidity is replaced by Eilat's dry desert climate. The area is just far enough away from the country's center to be designated as a wartime evacuation point in the event of an all-out war. In the main, the city has been spared wartime violence even during the gruesome second intifada. That said three Israelis were murdered in 2007 in a suicide bombing of a bakery and the city has also been the occasional target of rocket attacks.
Eilat has a small modern pier terminal which accommodates about 10,000 passenger arrivals a year. It's the southern terminus of the 580-mile long Israel Trail, but most visitors come by land transportation. Tens of thousands of European tourists arrive on charter flights to Ovda Airport, part of a military airbase north of the city; others arrive on shuttle flights to Eilat Airport from Ben-Gurion Airport. The IDF is not thrilled to share its airspace with commercial planes and the downtown Eilat field has outgrown its location. So Netanyahu has approved building new airport – to be named after Ilan Ramon – just north of Eilat in the copper mining Timna Valley district, to accommodate both domestic and international arrivals.
Still, even a casual visitor will notice what permanent residents cannot escape. There are an estimated 8,000 illegal immigrants among Eilat's population of 56,000 (7,500 of whom are new immigrants). Hundreds more African workers have been legalized for employment in the hotel industry. One has just become South Sudan's consul in Israel.
To be clear: Most serious crimes in Eilat are committed by Israelis, but with 14 percent of the total population consisting of poverty-stricken Africans, and 80% of the citizenry employed by the tourist industry, Eilat can't afford losing its image as a carefree vacation destination. The municipality is now under criticism from leftwing campaigners for having set up special school for foreign pupils rather than absorbing them somehow in the municipal system. In this context, Eilat's citizens are hoping Netanyahu fulfils his pledge to accelerate construction of a fence along the Negev-Sinai border to block illegal immigration and terrorist infiltration.
Locals will be watching to see what tangible steps the government takes to upgrade roads leading to the city. What is most needed is the government's promised rail link to Eilat via Beersheba from Tel Aviv. Netanyahu has also spoken of a rail link to Ashdod which would mean that passengers (and freight) could move between Israel's Red Sea and Mediterranean ports. "That will change Israel forever," Netanyahu said.
The city has been fortunate to have the support of the organized North American Jewish community which has invested in its school system. Now, 72% of high school students have passed their higher education matriculation exams (up from 27%). In 2002, Ben-Gurion University of Beersheba began operating a local campus serving 700 students with dorm facilities funded by the UJA. Locals who have completed their IDF service are eligible for tuition-free study. Philanthropic support has also enabled Josephtal Hospital to provide state-of-the-art emergency services.
Of course, Eilat is no newcomer to Jewish history. It is mentioned in the Bible (Deut. 2:8) in connection with the wonderings of the Israelites out of Egypt and Solomon's creation of a "navy of ships" (I Kings 9:26;). Jews held on to a hardscrabble existence there possibly until Crusader times.
Netanyahu has pledged to "jump Eilat forward." Not only Eilat, but other development towns settled in the 1950s in border and rural areas up and down Israel are hoping this promise is not made to be broken. At stake is meeting the perennial Zionist challenge of linking, finally, the center to the periphery.
###
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, July 18, 2011
The state of the Arab state - Legitimacy - The Arab Spring & the Lesson of the collapse of the UAR 50 Years Ago
As Arabs from the Mashriq to the Maghreb – one end of the Arab world to the other – contemplate where the six month-long upheavals that began with the Arab Spring are fated to deliver them those with longer memories may recall the dramatic summer 50 years ago when an earlier experiment at reshaping the political contours of Arab governance came unraveled: The 1961 breakup of the United Arab Republic (UAR) as the union of Syria and Egypt was known.
Declared in February 1958, the unification came in response to Syrian lobbying of Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser for a fusion and was popularly backed in both countries. The ideal of pan- Arab unity was all the rage and the hope was that other states beginning with Iraq would join.
Pan-Arabism was seen as a workaround for the lack of legitimacy that affected most Arab leaders as well as the political systems they oversaw. But Nasser, by dint of his personality and charisma, had enjoyed an almost mystical sense of God-given grace which Muslims term Baraka. However, the rulers of Saudi Arabia and Jordan perceived the pan-Arab model as a threat to their own religious-based claims for legitimacy; and even a new Iraqi government, purportedly favorable to pan-Arabism, found reasons not to join.
In short order, the experiment came undone. Nasser's idea of unity was for him to be the political and economic overlord of the UAR. Promises to protect private property fell by the wayside; as did pledges of bread and liberty. Syrian landowners resented Cairo's land reform policies; Syrian military officers bristled at taking orders from Egyptians; the business class took umbrage at nationalizations schemes, and the inherent inefficiencies of Nasser-style central economic planning soon became apparent.
The Syrian's broke away. Nasser prudently decided not to force the issue ("Arabs should not shed the blood of Arabs") and by August-September 1961 the union had been junked. A magnanimous Nasser allowed the Cairo-based Arab League to readmit Syria as an independent member. Still, the idea of Pan-Arabism survived for decades. In 1958, the monarchies of Jordan and Iraq attempted federation; later Egypt and Syria tried again, once with Libya and another time with Iraq; North Yemen twice sought to federate with Egypt (1958 and 1963); in 1961, Iraq sought to "merge" with Kuwait claiming the sheikdom as a province of its own; there was talk of merging Libya and Egypt (1973); Tunisia and Libya (1974) and a confederation of the West Bank and Jordan.
With neither Arab nationalism nor pan-Arabism having provided an authentic way forward, the quandary of political legitimacy remains unresolved. Some, including The Economist, are sanguine that the Arab Spring will ultimately deliver democratization and solve the problem. Yet for that to happen today's messy popular struggle for liberty will somehow need to be transformed into a concerted effort for genuine democratization in which regimes emerge that are capable of supporting modernity-embracing representative government and providing institutional protections for minority viewpoints.
But from the vantage point of 50 years since the breakdown of the UAR and its promise of legitimacy through pan-Arabism, the failure of Arab nationalist movements such as the Ba'ath in Syria and Iraq and now the ascendency of national-based Islamist parties (themselves fragmented over tactics and strategy) the prospect of democratization panning out seems improbable. Which raises the distinct possibility that the Arabs might entirely abandon the Western nation-state model as an artificial construct of colonial mapmakers unsuitable for Moslem civilization, opting instead for the pan-Islamist alternative.
Certainly, the state of the Arab state is hardly encouraging. Despite a brave front put up by the Arab League – inviting South Sudan to join after it broke away from Khartoum, for instance – Arab countries are foundering. To cite only the most obvious examples: Lebanon is a failed state under Hezbollah domination. In Libya and Yemen chaos has called attention to the intrinsic weakness of those states as viable political entities; the fragility of Bahrain has been exposed; in Egypt and Tunisia elections have had to be postponed out of sensible concerns that doing otherwise would result in a "democratic" victory for Islamist forces out to reshape the national character of those states; the Syrian regime may be in its death throes; Jordan's monarch is facing unprecedented challenges.
Obfuscating this reality, the Arab League has demanded the UN grant "Palestine" full membership even as the two contending Palestinian Arab regimes remain incapable of even the pretense of union.
If the nation-state paradigm in the Arab world is supplanted by the pan-Islamist alternative the challenge to the international order would be immense, as Charles T. Hill has pointed out in his recent monograph Trial of a Thousand Years: World Order and Islamism. For Islamists reject the state system embodied in the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia which had resolved that religious differences ought no longer to justify international wars. They moreover reject the boundaries, responsibilities, indeed the very premises upon which international order is anchored.
If the thesis that the state model in the Arab world is today facing its most critical test, than Western policymakers can have no higher interest than to ensure that the Arab Spring does lead to democratic reformation, that the Arabs become convinced that the state is compatible with Islam, and that Islam join other religions in what Hill calls the "debate over how far religion should go beyond private practice to display itself in the public square."
Failure would have consequences for both the Arabs and Western civilization too devastating to contemplate.
###
Declared in February 1958, the unification came in response to Syrian lobbying of Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser for a fusion and was popularly backed in both countries. The ideal of pan- Arab unity was all the rage and the hope was that other states beginning with Iraq would join.
Pan-Arabism was seen as a workaround for the lack of legitimacy that affected most Arab leaders as well as the political systems they oversaw. But Nasser, by dint of his personality and charisma, had enjoyed an almost mystical sense of God-given grace which Muslims term Baraka. However, the rulers of Saudi Arabia and Jordan perceived the pan-Arab model as a threat to their own religious-based claims for legitimacy; and even a new Iraqi government, purportedly favorable to pan-Arabism, found reasons not to join.
In short order, the experiment came undone. Nasser's idea of unity was for him to be the political and economic overlord of the UAR. Promises to protect private property fell by the wayside; as did pledges of bread and liberty. Syrian landowners resented Cairo's land reform policies; Syrian military officers bristled at taking orders from Egyptians; the business class took umbrage at nationalizations schemes, and the inherent inefficiencies of Nasser-style central economic planning soon became apparent.
The Syrian's broke away. Nasser prudently decided not to force the issue ("Arabs should not shed the blood of Arabs") and by August-September 1961 the union had been junked. A magnanimous Nasser allowed the Cairo-based Arab League to readmit Syria as an independent member. Still, the idea of Pan-Arabism survived for decades. In 1958, the monarchies of Jordan and Iraq attempted federation; later Egypt and Syria tried again, once with Libya and another time with Iraq; North Yemen twice sought to federate with Egypt (1958 and 1963); in 1961, Iraq sought to "merge" with Kuwait claiming the sheikdom as a province of its own; there was talk of merging Libya and Egypt (1973); Tunisia and Libya (1974) and a confederation of the West Bank and Jordan.
With neither Arab nationalism nor pan-Arabism having provided an authentic way forward, the quandary of political legitimacy remains unresolved. Some, including The Economist, are sanguine that the Arab Spring will ultimately deliver democratization and solve the problem. Yet for that to happen today's messy popular struggle for liberty will somehow need to be transformed into a concerted effort for genuine democratization in which regimes emerge that are capable of supporting modernity-embracing representative government and providing institutional protections for minority viewpoints.
But from the vantage point of 50 years since the breakdown of the UAR and its promise of legitimacy through pan-Arabism, the failure of Arab nationalist movements such as the Ba'ath in Syria and Iraq and now the ascendency of national-based Islamist parties (themselves fragmented over tactics and strategy) the prospect of democratization panning out seems improbable. Which raises the distinct possibility that the Arabs might entirely abandon the Western nation-state model as an artificial construct of colonial mapmakers unsuitable for Moslem civilization, opting instead for the pan-Islamist alternative.
Certainly, the state of the Arab state is hardly encouraging. Despite a brave front put up by the Arab League – inviting South Sudan to join after it broke away from Khartoum, for instance – Arab countries are foundering. To cite only the most obvious examples: Lebanon is a failed state under Hezbollah domination. In Libya and Yemen chaos has called attention to the intrinsic weakness of those states as viable political entities; the fragility of Bahrain has been exposed; in Egypt and Tunisia elections have had to be postponed out of sensible concerns that doing otherwise would result in a "democratic" victory for Islamist forces out to reshape the national character of those states; the Syrian regime may be in its death throes; Jordan's monarch is facing unprecedented challenges.
Obfuscating this reality, the Arab League has demanded the UN grant "Palestine" full membership even as the two contending Palestinian Arab regimes remain incapable of even the pretense of union.
If the nation-state paradigm in the Arab world is supplanted by the pan-Islamist alternative the challenge to the international order would be immense, as Charles T. Hill has pointed out in his recent monograph Trial of a Thousand Years: World Order and Islamism. For Islamists reject the state system embodied in the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia which had resolved that religious differences ought no longer to justify international wars. They moreover reject the boundaries, responsibilities, indeed the very premises upon which international order is anchored.
If the thesis that the state model in the Arab world is today facing its most critical test, than Western policymakers can have no higher interest than to ensure that the Arab Spring does lead to democratic reformation, that the Arabs become convinced that the state is compatible with Islam, and that Islam join other religions in what Hill calls the "debate over how far religion should go beyond private practice to display itself in the public square."
Failure would have consequences for both the Arabs and Western civilization too devastating to contemplate.
###
I am an Israel briefer and analyst, a political scientist, and a speaker on Jewish civilization. I'm also a rewrite guy & fact-checker, who can make your writing clear and compelling & help you contextualize.
Thursday, July 14, 2011
WHAT'S HOLDING UP COMPLETION OF ISRAEL'S SECURITY BARRIER?
The Good Fence
Just about anything that makes Israel more secure is opposed by its enemies and their enablers, as well as by its fair-weather friends in the international arena and by dissident elements within the Jewish community. A case in point is Israel's West Bank security barrier.
Yet what is most striking is that nine years after Prime Minister Ariel Sharon ordered the construction of the life-saving fence, critical swaths of the proposed 760 kilometer barricade have yet to be completed.
Why? Because finishing the fence would force Israel's polity to make tough decisions that it would rather postpone about de facto boundaries; because details about its precise route, in a very few locations, are being challenged in the Israeli courts, but mostly because of habitual budgetary and bureaucratic foot-dragging.
Paradoxically, the success of the fence has removed much of the incentive – public pressure on politicians -- to complete it.
And yet gaps in the barrier made it easy for West Bank Palestinians to stab Christine Logan to death in the Jerusalem forest late last year and to wound two Israelis in a downtown Beersheba axe-wielding attack last month [June].
The original concept of a security fence had many boosters from former Knesset member Haim Ramon, and former national security adviser Uzi Dayan to the late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. Reacting to Palestinian Arab violence in 1992, Rabin argued that a barrier running where it was most effective -- and not necessarily along the hard-to-defend 1949 Armistice Lines – needed to separate West Bank Palestinians from Israeli population centers. Later, Ehud Barak as premier also picked up the scheme.
But the real impetus came in the wake of the second intifada unleashed by Yasir Arafat in September 2000. Dozens of Palestinian suicide bombings claimed scores of Israeli lives. Between 2000 and 2005, the height of the Palestinians' blood-soaked frenzy, a staggering 26,000 terror attacks were launched against Israelis including 144 by suicide bombers; over 1,000 Israelis were murdered, 6,000 wounded. In one hideous June 2001 instance, a suicide bomber slaughtered 21 teenagers on a Friday night at the Dolphinarium dance club in Tel Aviv.
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon came under intense grass-roots pressure to finally build the fence that would protect Israelis from the Palestinian onslaught. But Sharon worried that not enough thought had been given to what putting up such a fortification might signal about Israel's ancestral and geo-strategic claims to the land on the other side. He wanted time to overcome Palestinian terror through conventional military means.
Ordinary Israelis, however, did not want to wait any longer. When local authorities began taking matters into their own hands by building makeshift fences Sharon reluctantly reversed himself. The barrier's first continuous segment, opposite the northern West Bank, was completed at the end of July 2003; residents of the capital could also see signs of a protective "envelope" rising around Jerusalem. Finally, in 2005 the cabinet formally approved the route of the barrier as proposed by Sharon. It was a pricy decision; approximately $2 million per kilometer, but with Israel's economy stagnating under merciless Palestinian battering there was little alternative.
The fence alone would not have defeated the intifada, though demoralized terror leaders admitted that it appreciably complicated their "resistance" efforts. By March 2002 Sharon had ordered Operation Defense Shield which reversed the IDF's withdrawal from much of the West Bank that had taken place under the 1993 Oslo Accords. This campaign and other security measures together with the barrier essentially defanged Palestinian offensive capabilities in the West Bank.
An unforeseen positive consequence of the security barrier -- actually a multifaceted defense system that in very few places is a concrete wall (along highways to protect against Palestinian snipers) and elsewhere is mostly a combination of trenches, metal fencing and electronic sensors -- has been that it has made it possible to dramatically reduce the number of IDF checkpoints within the West Bank to less than 50.
Clearly, as the Gaza barrier demonstrates, gunmen can lob rockets over or -- as in the Gilad Schalit case -- tunnel beneath any barrier. In 2003, two British nationals managed to legally exit Gaza to bomb "Mike's Place" in Tel Aviv; and in 2005 terrorists launched a deadly attack at the Karni Truck Crossing. But since the Gaza perimeter was secured in 1999 no terror attacks have emanated from the Strip.
The West Bank fence has already proven to be a life-saver. In 2010, there were "only" seven fatalities attributable to Palestinian terror emanating in the West Bank. Even the still-incomplete security fence has made harder for enemy operatives to deliver car bombs or suicide bombers into Israeli population centers.
No doubt because of this success, the fence has served as a lightning-rod for Israel's radical de-legitimizers who have nonsensically labeled is an "apartheid" wall. As part of their lawfare campaign against Israel, Palestinians turned to the International Court at The Hague which predictably ruled -- exactly four years ago this month [July] -- that the barrier was "illegal."
Characteristic of those who have coalesced around this issue is the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) which, in keeping with its nuanced stance on suicide bombing, helps organize "direct-action" -- a euphemism for weekly riots -- at the fence. ISM, which professes to be Palestinian-led, was founded by Brooklyn-born Adam Shapiro and his wife Huwaida Arraf (an American citizen).
In contrast, "pro-peace" J-Street takes a more disingenuous line holding that if a barrier is necessary it should be constructed on the Israeli side of the 1949 Armistice Lines. In fact, over 80% of the route is within three miles of the Green Line. But given topography and demographics placing the barrier wholly on those lines – rather than where it can be most effective -- would be strategically self-defeating.
Israel's Supreme Court has upheld the legality of the barrier and where the fence veers east the court has at times ruled in favor of Palestinian claimants with regard to its precise route most notably in the Bil'in- Modi'in area.
The barrier was foisted on Israel by Palestinian aggression so its political implications cannot be entirely discounted. The current line demarcates the minimal depth necessary to separate as many Israeli civilians as possible from Palestinian attacks. Only some 8.5 percent of the barrier is situated east of the old porous armistice lines. Sharon had intended to retain geo-strategically vital territory – consensus settlement blocs -- on the Israeli side of the fence. And in Jerusalem the fence is being erected along the municipal boundaries so as not to divide the capital. That still leaves too many Israelis on the "wrong side" of the fence feeling isolated and worried that its placement is a precursor to the abandonment of Jewish rights in Judea and Samaria.
Whatever its location, the fence is a blight symbolizing a "victory" for Palestinian obduracy. But placing it ineffectually along the old seam line would only add insult to injury especially as even the comparatively moderate Palestinian Authority does accept the existence of Israel as a Jewish state.
Yet it is not foreign opposition but Israeli political lethargy that emphatically has been holding up completion of the barrier. Marc Luria, a founding member of Security Fence for Israel pointed out that Israel's Defense Ministry budget does not contain a line item for the barrier so funds are constantly redirected elsewhere. He argued that neglect of Israel's barrier along the Lebanese border emboldened Hezbollah to launch the attack that ignited the 2006 Second Lebanon War. In the south, Luria said, despite the deteriorating situation in Egypt, improved relations between Cairo and Hamas-controlled Gaza, the influx of thousands African asylum seekers into Israel, and notwithstanding the government's decision to construct a Negev-Sinai barrier – "Little has been done and progress is painfully slow."
So while the good news is that about 90 percent of the West Bank fence has been completed, without pressure from ordinary Israelis it will take another gory wave of Palestinian violence to prompt Israel's government to complete the crucial 10% gap (about 100 kilometers). Meanwhile, Israelis who live in Jerusalem, the Negev, Ariel, Gush Etzion and the Tzur Hadassah- Bet Shemesh corridor can only hope the Palestinian leadership decides not to launch a third intifada in the fall.
Good fences make good neighbors. Bad neighbors make good fences imperative.
Just about anything that makes Israel more secure is opposed by its enemies and their enablers, as well as by its fair-weather friends in the international arena and by dissident elements within the Jewish community. A case in point is Israel's West Bank security barrier.
Yet what is most striking is that nine years after Prime Minister Ariel Sharon ordered the construction of the life-saving fence, critical swaths of the proposed 760 kilometer barricade have yet to be completed.
Why? Because finishing the fence would force Israel's polity to make tough decisions that it would rather postpone about de facto boundaries; because details about its precise route, in a very few locations, are being challenged in the Israeli courts, but mostly because of habitual budgetary and bureaucratic foot-dragging.
Paradoxically, the success of the fence has removed much of the incentive – public pressure on politicians -- to complete it.
And yet gaps in the barrier made it easy for West Bank Palestinians to stab Christine Logan to death in the Jerusalem forest late last year and to wound two Israelis in a downtown Beersheba axe-wielding attack last month [June].
The original concept of a security fence had many boosters from former Knesset member Haim Ramon, and former national security adviser Uzi Dayan to the late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. Reacting to Palestinian Arab violence in 1992, Rabin argued that a barrier running where it was most effective -- and not necessarily along the hard-to-defend 1949 Armistice Lines – needed to separate West Bank Palestinians from Israeli population centers. Later, Ehud Barak as premier also picked up the scheme.
But the real impetus came in the wake of the second intifada unleashed by Yasir Arafat in September 2000. Dozens of Palestinian suicide bombings claimed scores of Israeli lives. Between 2000 and 2005, the height of the Palestinians' blood-soaked frenzy, a staggering 26,000 terror attacks were launched against Israelis including 144 by suicide bombers; over 1,000 Israelis were murdered, 6,000 wounded. In one hideous June 2001 instance, a suicide bomber slaughtered 21 teenagers on a Friday night at the Dolphinarium dance club in Tel Aviv.
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon came under intense grass-roots pressure to finally build the fence that would protect Israelis from the Palestinian onslaught. But Sharon worried that not enough thought had been given to what putting up such a fortification might signal about Israel's ancestral and geo-strategic claims to the land on the other side. He wanted time to overcome Palestinian terror through conventional military means.
Ordinary Israelis, however, did not want to wait any longer. When local authorities began taking matters into their own hands by building makeshift fences Sharon reluctantly reversed himself. The barrier's first continuous segment, opposite the northern West Bank, was completed at the end of July 2003; residents of the capital could also see signs of a protective "envelope" rising around Jerusalem. Finally, in 2005 the cabinet formally approved the route of the barrier as proposed by Sharon. It was a pricy decision; approximately $2 million per kilometer, but with Israel's economy stagnating under merciless Palestinian battering there was little alternative.
The fence alone would not have defeated the intifada, though demoralized terror leaders admitted that it appreciably complicated their "resistance" efforts. By March 2002 Sharon had ordered Operation Defense Shield which reversed the IDF's withdrawal from much of the West Bank that had taken place under the 1993 Oslo Accords. This campaign and other security measures together with the barrier essentially defanged Palestinian offensive capabilities in the West Bank.
An unforeseen positive consequence of the security barrier -- actually a multifaceted defense system that in very few places is a concrete wall (along highways to protect against Palestinian snipers) and elsewhere is mostly a combination of trenches, metal fencing and electronic sensors -- has been that it has made it possible to dramatically reduce the number of IDF checkpoints within the West Bank to less than 50.
Clearly, as the Gaza barrier demonstrates, gunmen can lob rockets over or -- as in the Gilad Schalit case -- tunnel beneath any barrier. In 2003, two British nationals managed to legally exit Gaza to bomb "Mike's Place" in Tel Aviv; and in 2005 terrorists launched a deadly attack at the Karni Truck Crossing. But since the Gaza perimeter was secured in 1999 no terror attacks have emanated from the Strip.
The West Bank fence has already proven to be a life-saver. In 2010, there were "only" seven fatalities attributable to Palestinian terror emanating in the West Bank. Even the still-incomplete security fence has made harder for enemy operatives to deliver car bombs or suicide bombers into Israeli population centers.
No doubt because of this success, the fence has served as a lightning-rod for Israel's radical de-legitimizers who have nonsensically labeled is an "apartheid" wall. As part of their lawfare campaign against Israel, Palestinians turned to the International Court at The Hague which predictably ruled -- exactly four years ago this month [July] -- that the barrier was "illegal."
Characteristic of those who have coalesced around this issue is the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) which, in keeping with its nuanced stance on suicide bombing, helps organize "direct-action" -- a euphemism for weekly riots -- at the fence. ISM, which professes to be Palestinian-led, was founded by Brooklyn-born Adam Shapiro and his wife Huwaida Arraf (an American citizen).
In contrast, "pro-peace" J-Street takes a more disingenuous line holding that if a barrier is necessary it should be constructed on the Israeli side of the 1949 Armistice Lines. In fact, over 80% of the route is within three miles of the Green Line. But given topography and demographics placing the barrier wholly on those lines – rather than where it can be most effective -- would be strategically self-defeating.
Israel's Supreme Court has upheld the legality of the barrier and where the fence veers east the court has at times ruled in favor of Palestinian claimants with regard to its precise route most notably in the Bil'in- Modi'in area.
The barrier was foisted on Israel by Palestinian aggression so its political implications cannot be entirely discounted. The current line demarcates the minimal depth necessary to separate as many Israeli civilians as possible from Palestinian attacks. Only some 8.5 percent of the barrier is situated east of the old porous armistice lines. Sharon had intended to retain geo-strategically vital territory – consensus settlement blocs -- on the Israeli side of the fence. And in Jerusalem the fence is being erected along the municipal boundaries so as not to divide the capital. That still leaves too many Israelis on the "wrong side" of the fence feeling isolated and worried that its placement is a precursor to the abandonment of Jewish rights in Judea and Samaria.
Whatever its location, the fence is a blight symbolizing a "victory" for Palestinian obduracy. But placing it ineffectually along the old seam line would only add insult to injury especially as even the comparatively moderate Palestinian Authority does accept the existence of Israel as a Jewish state.
Yet it is not foreign opposition but Israeli political lethargy that emphatically has been holding up completion of the barrier. Marc Luria, a founding member of Security Fence for Israel pointed out that Israel's Defense Ministry budget does not contain a line item for the barrier so funds are constantly redirected elsewhere. He argued that neglect of Israel's barrier along the Lebanese border emboldened Hezbollah to launch the attack that ignited the 2006 Second Lebanon War. In the south, Luria said, despite the deteriorating situation in Egypt, improved relations between Cairo and Hamas-controlled Gaza, the influx of thousands African asylum seekers into Israel, and notwithstanding the government's decision to construct a Negev-Sinai barrier – "Little has been done and progress is painfully slow."
So while the good news is that about 90 percent of the West Bank fence has been completed, without pressure from ordinary Israelis it will take another gory wave of Palestinian violence to prompt Israel's government to complete the crucial 10% gap (about 100 kilometers). Meanwhile, Israelis who live in Jerusalem, the Negev, Ariel, Gush Etzion and the Tzur Hadassah- Bet Shemesh corridor can only hope the Palestinian leadership decides not to launch a third intifada in the fall.
Good fences make good neighbors. Bad neighbors make good fences imperative.
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.
Rabbi Louis Jacobs Reluctant Renegade
Unlike the Conservative movement in the United States which broke away from Reform Judaism to pursue a more religiously centrist and Zionist middle course, the British Masorti branch was born as a secession movement from Orthodoxy, inspired by the writings of theologian Louis Jacobs whose fifth yahrzeit is being marked this month [July 1; 8 Tamuz].
Jacobs was practically "tenure track" to becoming Britain's Chief Rabbi, a post that was and remains under the auspices of the (Orthodox) United Synagogue. Jacobs' ascent was stymied in the early 1960s over his heterodox views about the divine origins of the Pentateuch. At the time of his death in 2006, at age 85 in London, he had been the mostly unwitting founder of Britain's fledgling Masorti movement.
He would have preferred a reformation of modern Orthodoxy.
An only child, described as an "illui, a prodigy and a Gaon," Jacobs was born in Manchester, educated at the Gateshead Talmudic Academy, and once ordained held various pulpits before becoming a lecturer at Jews' College (today the London School of Jewish Studies) where he trained rabbinical students. As his reputation soared, his writings, beginning with We Have Reason to Believe (1957), drew critical notice for their deviation from Orthodox norms. Jacobs softly embraced the idea that the Torah was not literally dictated by God and recorded verbatim by Moses at Mt. Sinai; that a "human element" was involved in its composition. In 1961, Jacobs' advancement to college principal, considered a stepping stone for the chief's office, was blocked by then-Chief Rabbi Israel Brodie.
That was the beginning of what came to be known as the Jacobs Affair. He was labeled a heretic (apikoras) by the Orthodox establishment, though he had his supporters in the pews. Not a few rank-and-file United Synagogue members were non-practicing Orthodox. Regardless of levels of observance, still more shared Jacobs' progressive theological bent and were not scandalized by historical biblical criticism notwithstanding its conclusion that the Five Books of Moses was not the work of one author. The Jewish Chronicle newspaper – where for many years he wrote the "Ask the Rabbi" column -- championed his elevation at Jews' College and kept the affair in the spotlight.
In 1963, the grandees at London's New West End Synagogue invited Jacobs to become their "minister." Brodie said no and the stage was set for a final schism. By chance, the congregation was anyway set to relocate, and the building was quietly purchased by Jacobs' admirers and he was given the pulpit. Thus was born the New London Synagogue in the St. John's Wood neighborhood of London, today the flagship of nine Masorti synagogues in the country.
Truth be told, Jacobs failed to exploit his popularity to create an alternative to the United Synagogue. He was foremost a scholar -- not a rebel -- and devoted himself to his writings. These showed him to be a traditionalist who rejected fundamentalism; a believer who sought a middle course between what he saw as Orthodoxy's anthropomorphism of God, and the "de-personalization" of the Deity propagated by the progressives. He believed that "we hear the authentic voice of God speaking to us through the pages of the Bible…and its truth is in no way affected in that we can only hear that voice through the medium of human beings…"
He held Revelation to be real. Still, he thought the creed of Torah Min Ha-Shamayyin (literally from the heavens) needed to be synthesized – not abandoned – so that it could remain tenable to moderns. The problem wasn't "Torah" or "Heaven" but how to understand "from." Even when it came to the After-life Jacobs sought to steer a middle course, opposing atheistic denial while preferring a Judaism that was anchored in worldliness.
In Beyond Reasonable Doubt (1999) he described his approach as "liberal supernaturalism," that is, adhering to traditional ritual practice and belief in revelation, yet open to what secular learning has to teach on the historicity of the bible. On this point Jacobs parted company with modern Orthodoxy. His research had revealed that normative Judaism was the product of rabbis' astutely adjusting Jewish law to the ages. That meant there was no basis in believing rabbinic rulings needed to be understood as sacred or that they emanated as Oral Law at Mt Sinai. That is why in Tree of Life (1984) he had earlier promoted "a non-fundamentalist Halakah" that interpreted law as "a living corpus" which had evolved according to the needs of the age.
While Jacobs was foremost a critic of the house from which he came, in Beyond Reasonable Doubt (1999) he described his aversion to Reform Judaism as "partly emotional and partly aesthetic" – it lacked neshama. A Talmudist, he found Reform's attitude toward that great work condescending. He also expressed "unease" at modeling Britain's Masorti movement on the American Conservative model because, as noted, theirs was above all a reaction to Reform and his retort was to Orthodoxy. In Beyond Reasonable Doubt he summed up his dilemma with a story about a professor friend who could daven with the Orthodox but not talk to them; talk to the Reform but not daven with them; and so by default was most at home with observant Conservatives.
Of course, we can only guess at what Jacobs and his friend would have to say about the unremitting left-wing theological drift of U.S. Conservatives which has made the stream increasingly hard to differentiate from Reform.
As for Jacobs' lasting impact? On the ground the results are modest. As his chief eulogizer, Rabbi Jonathan Wittenberg noted, "He never wanted to establish a new movement." According to a 2011 report by the Board of Deputies of British Jews and the Institute for Jewish Policy Research, 73 percent of British Jewish households (population 300,000) register a synagogue affiliation: 66% belong to United Synagogue or still more rigorously Orthodox streams; most of the remainder belongs to the Liberal and Reform branches; a miniscule 2.7% are Masorti. The best that can be said is that Jacobs' movement has almost doubled its total membership over the past 10 years, and that synagogues like Wittenberg's New North London are vibrant and bustling.
Having been ruled an apikoras, Jacobs was excluded, including by the current Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, from receiving honors on those occasions when he attended Orthodox services. Yet in 2005, readers of the Chronicle voted him as "the greatest British Jew of all time." Jonathan Romain, a Reform rabbi, captured the popular sentiment in his eulogy: "Louis Jacobs was often described as the greatest chief rabbi that British Jewry never had."
Jacobs was practically "tenure track" to becoming Britain's Chief Rabbi, a post that was and remains under the auspices of the (Orthodox) United Synagogue. Jacobs' ascent was stymied in the early 1960s over his heterodox views about the divine origins of the Pentateuch. At the time of his death in 2006, at age 85 in London, he had been the mostly unwitting founder of Britain's fledgling Masorti movement.
He would have preferred a reformation of modern Orthodoxy.
An only child, described as an "illui, a prodigy and a Gaon," Jacobs was born in Manchester, educated at the Gateshead Talmudic Academy, and once ordained held various pulpits before becoming a lecturer at Jews' College (today the London School of Jewish Studies) where he trained rabbinical students. As his reputation soared, his writings, beginning with We Have Reason to Believe (1957), drew critical notice for their deviation from Orthodox norms. Jacobs softly embraced the idea that the Torah was not literally dictated by God and recorded verbatim by Moses at Mt. Sinai; that a "human element" was involved in its composition. In 1961, Jacobs' advancement to college principal, considered a stepping stone for the chief's office, was blocked by then-Chief Rabbi Israel Brodie.
That was the beginning of what came to be known as the Jacobs Affair. He was labeled a heretic (apikoras) by the Orthodox establishment, though he had his supporters in the pews. Not a few rank-and-file United Synagogue members were non-practicing Orthodox. Regardless of levels of observance, still more shared Jacobs' progressive theological bent and were not scandalized by historical biblical criticism notwithstanding its conclusion that the Five Books of Moses was not the work of one author. The Jewish Chronicle newspaper – where for many years he wrote the "Ask the Rabbi" column -- championed his elevation at Jews' College and kept the affair in the spotlight.
In 1963, the grandees at London's New West End Synagogue invited Jacobs to become their "minister." Brodie said no and the stage was set for a final schism. By chance, the congregation was anyway set to relocate, and the building was quietly purchased by Jacobs' admirers and he was given the pulpit. Thus was born the New London Synagogue in the St. John's Wood neighborhood of London, today the flagship of nine Masorti synagogues in the country.
Truth be told, Jacobs failed to exploit his popularity to create an alternative to the United Synagogue. He was foremost a scholar -- not a rebel -- and devoted himself to his writings. These showed him to be a traditionalist who rejected fundamentalism; a believer who sought a middle course between what he saw as Orthodoxy's anthropomorphism of God, and the "de-personalization" of the Deity propagated by the progressives. He believed that "we hear the authentic voice of God speaking to us through the pages of the Bible…and its truth is in no way affected in that we can only hear that voice through the medium of human beings…"
He held Revelation to be real. Still, he thought the creed of Torah Min Ha-Shamayyin (literally from the heavens) needed to be synthesized – not abandoned – so that it could remain tenable to moderns. The problem wasn't "Torah" or "Heaven" but how to understand "from." Even when it came to the After-life Jacobs sought to steer a middle course, opposing atheistic denial while preferring a Judaism that was anchored in worldliness.
In Beyond Reasonable Doubt (1999) he described his approach as "liberal supernaturalism," that is, adhering to traditional ritual practice and belief in revelation, yet open to what secular learning has to teach on the historicity of the bible. On this point Jacobs parted company with modern Orthodoxy. His research had revealed that normative Judaism was the product of rabbis' astutely adjusting Jewish law to the ages. That meant there was no basis in believing rabbinic rulings needed to be understood as sacred or that they emanated as Oral Law at Mt Sinai. That is why in Tree of Life (1984) he had earlier promoted "a non-fundamentalist Halakah" that interpreted law as "a living corpus" which had evolved according to the needs of the age.
While Jacobs was foremost a critic of the house from which he came, in Beyond Reasonable Doubt (1999) he described his aversion to Reform Judaism as "partly emotional and partly aesthetic" – it lacked neshama. A Talmudist, he found Reform's attitude toward that great work condescending. He also expressed "unease" at modeling Britain's Masorti movement on the American Conservative model because, as noted, theirs was above all a reaction to Reform and his retort was to Orthodoxy. In Beyond Reasonable Doubt he summed up his dilemma with a story about a professor friend who could daven with the Orthodox but not talk to them; talk to the Reform but not daven with them; and so by default was most at home with observant Conservatives.
Of course, we can only guess at what Jacobs and his friend would have to say about the unremitting left-wing theological drift of U.S. Conservatives which has made the stream increasingly hard to differentiate from Reform.
As for Jacobs' lasting impact? On the ground the results are modest. As his chief eulogizer, Rabbi Jonathan Wittenberg noted, "He never wanted to establish a new movement." According to a 2011 report by the Board of Deputies of British Jews and the Institute for Jewish Policy Research, 73 percent of British Jewish households (population 300,000) register a synagogue affiliation: 66% belong to United Synagogue or still more rigorously Orthodox streams; most of the remainder belongs to the Liberal and Reform branches; a miniscule 2.7% are Masorti. The best that can be said is that Jacobs' movement has almost doubled its total membership over the past 10 years, and that synagogues like Wittenberg's New North London are vibrant and bustling.
Having been ruled an apikoras, Jacobs was excluded, including by the current Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, from receiving honors on those occasions when he attended Orthodox services. Yet in 2005, readers of the Chronicle voted him as "the greatest British Jew of all time." Jonathan Romain, a Reform rabbi, captured the popular sentiment in his eulogy: "Louis Jacobs was often described as the greatest chief rabbi that British Jewry never had."
I am an Israel briefer and analyst, a political scientist, and a speaker on Jewish civilization. I'm also a rewrite guy & fact-checker, who can make your writing clear and compelling & help you contextualize.
Thursday, July 07, 2011
Sunday & the 5-day workweek in Israel
Enjoy Your Weekend
With July 4th behind them, Americans can look forward to closing out the summer season with Labor Day on September 5th. All told, they will enjoy ten national holidays; New Yorkers get an additional three days off. Across the Atlantic, Britons will have nine "bank holiday" days in 2012; Germans 11; French 10 and Italians 12. And of course, in each of these countries, people have the leisure of weekends from the close of business on Friday until Monday morning.
In Israel, however, Sunday is the start of the work week. On the face of it, Israelis otherwise enjoy an almost equally bountiful number of off days: eight. On closer inspection, however, it turns out that all but one of these are religious holidays -- Yom Kippur, Rosh Hashanah and so on – the singular exception being Independence Day.
Ask new immigrants to Israel from Western countries, particularly those who are observant, and they are likely to confess that the absence of Sundays – and having only one non-religious bank holiday – has made for a difficult cultural adjustment.
But Israelis are not obliged to work on Fridays, so isn't that like having a Sunday? Not really. For one, it's a regular school day. Banks are open; so is the post office; building goes on at construction sites and sanitation workers are collecting garbage. There are no reliable figures for how many Israelis have Fridays off, but even for those fortunate enough to have the day to themselves, Fridays can still feel frenetic with sidurim (chores) like supermarket shopping, running errands, and preparing for Shabbat before the shops close early.
For those who take Shabbat in earnest the "day of rest" can take on its own hectic quality with morning and afternoon synagogue services, family meals and lots of socializing. While observant Jews do not travel, secular Israelis without automobiles must make do with taxis or stay close to home because in most places there is little in the way of public transportation; most shops, restaurants and places of entertainment are closed.
Not surprisingly, many Anglo-Israelis along with immigrants from the former Soviet Union, would gladly work part of Fridays, just as they did in the "Old Country," in order to get a breather on Sunday. Jewish Agency chairman Natan Sharansky has long campaigned to make Sunday a day of leisure. His thought is that sharing Sundays off would reduce social and religious tensions and create opportunities for positive interaction between observant and secular Israelis.
Likud Party powerbroker, Silvan Shalom, the vice premier and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's arch political rival has also long been committed to the 5-day workweek with Sundays off. Shalom has argued that Israel needs to be in synch with the global economy. Why have Tel Aviv's stock market closed when everyone else's is trading (on Friday) and open (on Sunday) when world markets are closed? His plan would have Israelis work until noon on Fridays and make up the difference with slightly longer hours Monday through Thursday. There would be a five-day school week with longer hours. The result would be a calmer more harmonious country, Shalom promises.
Now, two Likud Knesset members, Ze'ev Elkin, and Yariv Levin, have introduced legislation along the lines proposed by Shalom. Their angle is that changing demographics – increasing numbers of religiously observant Israelis – has provided a fresh economic incentive for a Sunday that would encourage this sector to spend money on cultural activities, sporting events and at the malls.
Many but plainly not all native-born Israelis would be willing to go along with the idea. Israel's secular majority prefers not working on Shabbat. On the other hand, younger secular people feel as though they already have a normal two-day weekend and have no great desire to exchange Friday for Sunday. Some worry they might lose benefits they now enjoy on Saturday (sporting events, culture, and limited shopping) in exchange for Sundays off. They've anyway found workarounds to mandated Shabbat closings. Many Tel Aviv nightspots are open; 12 percent of Israelis choose to work on Shabbat, and 44% enjoy limited shopping.
While some in the national religious sector have long favored the Sunday option, others are more wary. They like the idea of having a day off to do some of the same things their secular family and friends do, but worry that they will not have enough time, after working a shortened Friday, to prepare for Shabbat or travel to distant family before sundown. Others are dubious that having Sundays off will actually reduce desecration of the Sabbath. And the more insular ultra-Orthodox are vehemently opposed to Sundays on the grounds that it is a Christian rest day. Last but not least, Moslem citizens (some 16% of the population) are also less than keen to have to work on Fridays since it is the only day when believers are obligated to offer midday prayers communally in a mosque.
The economic impact of making the switch will likely carry the greatest weight. Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz worries that a 5-day work week, with Sunday off, would result in Fridays being fretted away, especially in the short days of the winter months. In effect, Israel would be transitioning unthinkingly to a four-day workweek. Better to transform, officially, Fridays as the start of a two-day weekend, says Steinitz. On the other hand, the country's hoteliers support the Sunday scheme, as does the Manufacturers Association, Chamber of Commerce and teachers unions. Bank of Israel Governor Stanley Fischer has not come out publicly on the issue but is reportedly sympathetic. The same is said of Histadrut Labor Federation chief Ofer Eini.
Following the old adage "when in doubt form a committee," Netanyahu has appointed Eugene Kandel, head of his National Economic Council to chair a panel that is to look into the matter.
No one doubts that frazzled Israelis could use the down time of a real Sunday. Who would not savor sunset on Shabbat knowing that they had the next day off? But creating a real Sunday weekend would require radical cultural adaptations, major revamping of the school calendar and tortuous amending of the nation's labor laws.
The "peace process" seems like an easier undertaking.
###
With July 4th behind them, Americans can look forward to closing out the summer season with Labor Day on September 5th. All told, they will enjoy ten national holidays; New Yorkers get an additional three days off. Across the Atlantic, Britons will have nine "bank holiday" days in 2012; Germans 11; French 10 and Italians 12. And of course, in each of these countries, people have the leisure of weekends from the close of business on Friday until Monday morning.
In Israel, however, Sunday is the start of the work week. On the face of it, Israelis otherwise enjoy an almost equally bountiful number of off days: eight. On closer inspection, however, it turns out that all but one of these are religious holidays -- Yom Kippur, Rosh Hashanah and so on – the singular exception being Independence Day.
Ask new immigrants to Israel from Western countries, particularly those who are observant, and they are likely to confess that the absence of Sundays – and having only one non-religious bank holiday – has made for a difficult cultural adjustment.
But Israelis are not obliged to work on Fridays, so isn't that like having a Sunday? Not really. For one, it's a regular school day. Banks are open; so is the post office; building goes on at construction sites and sanitation workers are collecting garbage. There are no reliable figures for how many Israelis have Fridays off, but even for those fortunate enough to have the day to themselves, Fridays can still feel frenetic with sidurim (chores) like supermarket shopping, running errands, and preparing for Shabbat before the shops close early.
For those who take Shabbat in earnest the "day of rest" can take on its own hectic quality with morning and afternoon synagogue services, family meals and lots of socializing. While observant Jews do not travel, secular Israelis without automobiles must make do with taxis or stay close to home because in most places there is little in the way of public transportation; most shops, restaurants and places of entertainment are closed.
Not surprisingly, many Anglo-Israelis along with immigrants from the former Soviet Union, would gladly work part of Fridays, just as they did in the "Old Country," in order to get a breather on Sunday. Jewish Agency chairman Natan Sharansky has long campaigned to make Sunday a day of leisure. His thought is that sharing Sundays off would reduce social and religious tensions and create opportunities for positive interaction between observant and secular Israelis.
Likud Party powerbroker, Silvan Shalom, the vice premier and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's arch political rival has also long been committed to the 5-day workweek with Sundays off. Shalom has argued that Israel needs to be in synch with the global economy. Why have Tel Aviv's stock market closed when everyone else's is trading (on Friday) and open (on Sunday) when world markets are closed? His plan would have Israelis work until noon on Fridays and make up the difference with slightly longer hours Monday through Thursday. There would be a five-day school week with longer hours. The result would be a calmer more harmonious country, Shalom promises.
Now, two Likud Knesset members, Ze'ev Elkin, and Yariv Levin, have introduced legislation along the lines proposed by Shalom. Their angle is that changing demographics – increasing numbers of religiously observant Israelis – has provided a fresh economic incentive for a Sunday that would encourage this sector to spend money on cultural activities, sporting events and at the malls.
Many but plainly not all native-born Israelis would be willing to go along with the idea. Israel's secular majority prefers not working on Shabbat. On the other hand, younger secular people feel as though they already have a normal two-day weekend and have no great desire to exchange Friday for Sunday. Some worry they might lose benefits they now enjoy on Saturday (sporting events, culture, and limited shopping) in exchange for Sundays off. They've anyway found workarounds to mandated Shabbat closings. Many Tel Aviv nightspots are open; 12 percent of Israelis choose to work on Shabbat, and 44% enjoy limited shopping.
While some in the national religious sector have long favored the Sunday option, others are more wary. They like the idea of having a day off to do some of the same things their secular family and friends do, but worry that they will not have enough time, after working a shortened Friday, to prepare for Shabbat or travel to distant family before sundown. Others are dubious that having Sundays off will actually reduce desecration of the Sabbath. And the more insular ultra-Orthodox are vehemently opposed to Sundays on the grounds that it is a Christian rest day. Last but not least, Moslem citizens (some 16% of the population) are also less than keen to have to work on Fridays since it is the only day when believers are obligated to offer midday prayers communally in a mosque.
The economic impact of making the switch will likely carry the greatest weight. Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz worries that a 5-day work week, with Sunday off, would result in Fridays being fretted away, especially in the short days of the winter months. In effect, Israel would be transitioning unthinkingly to a four-day workweek. Better to transform, officially, Fridays as the start of a two-day weekend, says Steinitz. On the other hand, the country's hoteliers support the Sunday scheme, as does the Manufacturers Association, Chamber of Commerce and teachers unions. Bank of Israel Governor Stanley Fischer has not come out publicly on the issue but is reportedly sympathetic. The same is said of Histadrut Labor Federation chief Ofer Eini.
Following the old adage "when in doubt form a committee," Netanyahu has appointed Eugene Kandel, head of his National Economic Council to chair a panel that is to look into the matter.
No one doubts that frazzled Israelis could use the down time of a real Sunday. Who would not savor sunset on Shabbat knowing that they had the next day off? But creating a real Sunday weekend would require radical cultural adaptations, major revamping of the school calendar and tortuous amending of the nation's labor laws.
The "peace process" seems like an easier undertaking.
###
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, July 04, 2011
Israel Army Radio Galatz
Radio Waves
Radio in Israel is as ubiquitous as hummus, falafel and politics. During their morning and evening commutes, motorists as well as bus passengers (captive to the listening tastes of their drivers) are likely to be hearing one of seven Israel Broadcasting Authority (IBA) affiliated stations or one of two Army Radio outlets. The airwaves are further cluttered (or enriched, depending on one's viewpoint) by almost two dozen other stations catering to varied tastes from Tel Aviv chic to ethnic Mizrahi. This diverse menu of regional, musical, programmatic and language options does not include Arutz-7, whose broadcasts of news, talk and religious music, aimed primarily at residents of Judea and Samaria, have been restricted by government regulators to the Internet.
IBA public broadcasting is supported by a mandatory license fee bolstered by commercial advertising; Army Radio is funded out of the Defense Ministry budget though also complemented by ads. While both networks have come in for criticism over their perceived liberal bias the complaints against Army Radio seem – as we shall see – more egregious.
In May, Israel's cabinet extended Army Radio's right to sell advertising without which it would have been forced to gut its broadcast schedule. Only, however, after Defense Minister Ehud Barak was directed to come up with the beginnings of an oversight plan and to find a new station director. For now, there is no public oversight whatsoever. In fact, the only leverage elected officials presently have over Army Radio is to threaten its right to sell commercial airtime.
Army Radio (known by the Hebrew acronym GALATZ which stands for Galei Tzahal or "IDF waves") was founded in 1951 aimed at conscripts and reservists. The schedule was expanded and a much wider audience sought after the 1967 Six Day War. Broadcasting primarily from Jaffa, the station (like its IBA counterpart) begins its broadcast day with a nod to Jewish civilizational values: IBA starts with a superbly done vintage recording of "Here O, Israel" (Deuteronomy Chapter 6:4-9) while Army Radio currently opens with a three-minute reading from Ethics of Our Fathers.
GALATZ maintains its own independent news operation – it is by no means the voice of the army – in addition to offering current events, economics, music and cultural programming, it is also a platform for Open University academic lectures.
But it is mostly known for its three back-to-back A.M. programs, Boker Tov Israel, Nachon L'HaBoker, hosted by Niv Raskin and Ma Bo'er? with Razi Barkei. Together, they help to reinforce or frame the political and news agenda for the day. These on-air personalities, as well as noontime magazine host Yael Dayan and evening drive time anchor Yaron Wilinski are all civilians though field reporters, technicians, some producers and most off-hours news readers are uniformed recruits. Indeed, many of Israel's best known media personalities got their professional start at Army Radio.
GALGALATZ, GALATZ's enormously popular sister station, was established in 1993. Targeted at a younger, trendier, audience -- soldiers SMS requests for the latest Western and Hebrew pop music -- the station is also known for streaming traffic reports and public service announcements promoting safe driving.
As for its liberal slant, GALATZ is arguably no worse than any other Israeli radio or television outlet except for the fact that it is, after all, "the home of the soldiers" which might imply bipartisanship. However, according to Dror Eydar, a columnist for the centrist tabloid Israel HaYom, the bias is endemic; manifested by the choice of topics debated, questions asked, semantics employed and interviewees invited.
Even news bulletins are occasionally slanted. For instance, in February 2011, the headlines on two different mornings led with criticisms leveled against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu by New York Times op-ed columnist Thomas Friedman – as if the views of this inveterate Netanyahu critic were somehow remarkable. Nor has it been uncommon for Army Radio to invite, day-after-day, the same panel of advocacy journalists from Haaretz to provide their analysis of the news. Recently, when the European-funded pressure group "Peace Now" hawked as scandalous a government decision to construct apartments beyond the 1949 Armistice Lines, though well inside metropolitan Jerusalem, GALATZ presenter Micah Friedman framed the issue thusly: “Will the American government soon have a thousand and four hundred new reasons for tension with Israel?” One quantitative study that examined Army Radio bias found that for every right-wing voice aired, there were 1.3 left-wing voices; for every minute allocated right-wing ideas, leftist ideas were allocated 1.37 minutes.
It's not just right-wingers who are uncomfortable with Army Radio's partisanship. Amit Segal, an Army Radio "graduate" now with Channel 2 commercial television news, wondered how GALATZ became so out of touch with the Israeli consensus. And Yediot Aharonot's Nahum Barnea, doyen of liberal tabloid columnists, while lauding the station's "quality programming" in a recent (July 1) Friday piece, argued that GALATZ's connection to the army seemed "anachronistic." You don't have to be a rightist, Barnea granted, to concede that providing Hamas spokesman with freedom of expression in the midst of the Gaza war was "problematic." If nothing else, Barnea concluded, broadcasting enemy views "confuses" IDF soldiers on the battlefield. He also took GALATZ to task for cultivating a journalistic culture that left recruits assigned to the station largely cut-off from the reality under which the rest of the army operates.
Barnea's criticism demolished the notion that discontent with Army Radio is a right-wing affair, but his solution -- delinking the station from the defense establishment – would not necessarily result in a more politically balanced broadcast band. Instead, why not insist that public broadcasting aim for bipartisanship? A properly regulated GALATZ could yet promote societal cohesion, give voice to mainstream Israeli values, while taking care to provide expression for minority views at both ends of the political spectrum.
###
Radio in Israel is as ubiquitous as hummus, falafel and politics. During their morning and evening commutes, motorists as well as bus passengers (captive to the listening tastes of their drivers) are likely to be hearing one of seven Israel Broadcasting Authority (IBA) affiliated stations or one of two Army Radio outlets. The airwaves are further cluttered (or enriched, depending on one's viewpoint) by almost two dozen other stations catering to varied tastes from Tel Aviv chic to ethnic Mizrahi. This diverse menu of regional, musical, programmatic and language options does not include Arutz-7, whose broadcasts of news, talk and religious music, aimed primarily at residents of Judea and Samaria, have been restricted by government regulators to the Internet.
IBA public broadcasting is supported by a mandatory license fee bolstered by commercial advertising; Army Radio is funded out of the Defense Ministry budget though also complemented by ads. While both networks have come in for criticism over their perceived liberal bias the complaints against Army Radio seem – as we shall see – more egregious.
In May, Israel's cabinet extended Army Radio's right to sell advertising without which it would have been forced to gut its broadcast schedule. Only, however, after Defense Minister Ehud Barak was directed to come up with the beginnings of an oversight plan and to find a new station director. For now, there is no public oversight whatsoever. In fact, the only leverage elected officials presently have over Army Radio is to threaten its right to sell commercial airtime.
Army Radio (known by the Hebrew acronym GALATZ which stands for Galei Tzahal or "IDF waves") was founded in 1951 aimed at conscripts and reservists. The schedule was expanded and a much wider audience sought after the 1967 Six Day War. Broadcasting primarily from Jaffa, the station (like its IBA counterpart) begins its broadcast day with a nod to Jewish civilizational values: IBA starts with a superbly done vintage recording of "Here O, Israel" (Deuteronomy Chapter 6:4-9) while Army Radio currently opens with a three-minute reading from Ethics of Our Fathers.
GALATZ maintains its own independent news operation – it is by no means the voice of the army – in addition to offering current events, economics, music and cultural programming, it is also a platform for Open University academic lectures.
But it is mostly known for its three back-to-back A.M. programs, Boker Tov Israel, Nachon L'HaBoker, hosted by Niv Raskin and Ma Bo'er? with Razi Barkei. Together, they help to reinforce or frame the political and news agenda for the day. These on-air personalities, as well as noontime magazine host Yael Dayan and evening drive time anchor Yaron Wilinski are all civilians though field reporters, technicians, some producers and most off-hours news readers are uniformed recruits. Indeed, many of Israel's best known media personalities got their professional start at Army Radio.
GALGALATZ, GALATZ's enormously popular sister station, was established in 1993. Targeted at a younger, trendier, audience -- soldiers SMS requests for the latest Western and Hebrew pop music -- the station is also known for streaming traffic reports and public service announcements promoting safe driving.
As for its liberal slant, GALATZ is arguably no worse than any other Israeli radio or television outlet except for the fact that it is, after all, "the home of the soldiers" which might imply bipartisanship. However, according to Dror Eydar, a columnist for the centrist tabloid Israel HaYom, the bias is endemic; manifested by the choice of topics debated, questions asked, semantics employed and interviewees invited.
Even news bulletins are occasionally slanted. For instance, in February 2011, the headlines on two different mornings led with criticisms leveled against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu by New York Times op-ed columnist Thomas Friedman – as if the views of this inveterate Netanyahu critic were somehow remarkable. Nor has it been uncommon for Army Radio to invite, day-after-day, the same panel of advocacy journalists from Haaretz to provide their analysis of the news. Recently, when the European-funded pressure group "Peace Now" hawked as scandalous a government decision to construct apartments beyond the 1949 Armistice Lines, though well inside metropolitan Jerusalem, GALATZ presenter Micah Friedman framed the issue thusly: “Will the American government soon have a thousand and four hundred new reasons for tension with Israel?” One quantitative study that examined Army Radio bias found that for every right-wing voice aired, there were 1.3 left-wing voices; for every minute allocated right-wing ideas, leftist ideas were allocated 1.37 minutes.
It's not just right-wingers who are uncomfortable with Army Radio's partisanship. Amit Segal, an Army Radio "graduate" now with Channel 2 commercial television news, wondered how GALATZ became so out of touch with the Israeli consensus. And Yediot Aharonot's Nahum Barnea, doyen of liberal tabloid columnists, while lauding the station's "quality programming" in a recent (July 1) Friday piece, argued that GALATZ's connection to the army seemed "anachronistic." You don't have to be a rightist, Barnea granted, to concede that providing Hamas spokesman with freedom of expression in the midst of the Gaza war was "problematic." If nothing else, Barnea concluded, broadcasting enemy views "confuses" IDF soldiers on the battlefield. He also took GALATZ to task for cultivating a journalistic culture that left recruits assigned to the station largely cut-off from the reality under which the rest of the army operates.
Barnea's criticism demolished the notion that discontent with Army Radio is a right-wing affair, but his solution -- delinking the station from the defense establishment – would not necessarily result in a more politically balanced broadcast band. Instead, why not insist that public broadcasting aim for bipartisanship? A properly regulated GALATZ could yet promote societal cohesion, give voice to mainstream Israeli values, while taking care to provide expression for minority views at both ends of the political spectrum.
###
I am an Israel briefer and analyst, a political scientist, and a speaker on Jewish civilization. I'm also a rewrite guy & fact-checker, who can make your writing clear and compelling & help you contextualize.
Monday, June 27, 2011
Altalena, Irgun and Ben-Gurion --
Ships, their comings and goings, have lately been a fixation over at Israel's flagship left-wing (sporadically post-Zionist) Haaretz newspaper. Adding a new twist to what it means to be "embedded" with the enemy, one of the paper's stable of advocacy journalists, Amira Hass, has been writing adoringly about hooking-up with a pro-Palestinian flotilla that intends to smash Israel's naval blockade of the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip.
No less earnestly, the paper's front pages have been devoted to beating back challenges to the left's narrative about how the Irgun arms ship Altalena came to be sunk off the coast of Tel-Aviv 63 years ago this month (June 21, 1948) on orders from David Ben-Gurion. Haaretz has been incensed, too, by an Israel Defense Ministry reference to the fallen Irgun members as having been "murdered."
Now, historian Jerold S. Auerbach, author of Hebron Jews: Memory and Conflict in the Land of Israel (2009) has further undermined the leftist canon with Brothers At War, a succinct, emotive, and levelheaded summation of the Altalena tragedy.
Auerbach frames his Altalena account in terms of what he sees as Israel's ongoing identity struggle – "Jewish state, secular state, democratic state, democratic Jewish state, state of the Jewish people" – and the constraints this lack of clarity places on the legitimacy of massively consequential government decisions.
He asserts that this conundrum actually has ancient origins traceable to Josephus whose laments about the "seditious temper" of the Jewish people erroneously framed history's understanding of Rome's victory over the Jews for the past 2,000 years. In modern times, this dilemma manifested itself in the Altalena; in the 1952 Knesset clash over whether to accept German government reparations for the Holocaust; in the 1993 Oslo Accords, and has yet to find resolution notwithstanding the dreadful assassination of Yitzhak Rabin.
It persists still over whether left-wing IDF reservists should be required to serve over the Green Line and whether right-wing Orthodox conscripts ought to be required, contrary to the wishes of their rabbis, to obey orders to dismantle unsanctioned West Bank outposts.
Put another way: Is the bigger threat to the Jewish commonwealth zealous Jews who reject disputed governmental decisions on divisive issues or the chronic failure of successive Israeli governments to foster consensus positions?
Where to begin the telling of Altalena calamity? Auerbach reasonably starts by differentiating the two Zionist camps; one led by Ben-Gurion which controlled Zionist officialdom and was inspired by a Jewish national renewal rooted in notions of socialist utopia; the other motivated by Ze'ev Jabotinsky and carried forth by his disciple Menachem Begin whose vision was one of a society based on middle-class entrepreneurial values. Long before the Altalena, Auerbach points out, there was a record of bad blood between the two camps exacerbated by the mysterious murder of Chaim Arlosoroff, bitter disputes over whether and how to confront the heartless British policy of closing the gates of Palestine prior to and during the Holocaust and over how best to respond to Arab brutality against Palestinian Jewry in the years before Israel's independence.
The Altalena (Jabotinsky's pen name) was purchased in America by Irgun operatives and, ultimately, loaded at Marseilles, France with desperately needed weapons and munitions along with a "melting pot" of 940 recruits for the nascent Hebrew fighting force in Palestine. As far as its American Jewish captain knew, his mission had the "acquiescence of the Israeli government."
Begin had indeed been negotiating directly with Ben-Gurion's man, Israel Galili, over how to disburse the ships weapons and troops. The Altalena's mission was unfortunately tracked from the start by various intelligence agencies and its secrecy blatantly exposed in a BBC news broadcast.
A series of disastrous miscommunications, logistical blunders and lack of internal Irgun discipline led to the ship's arrival seemingly at the wrong place and at the wrong time while the Begin-Galili talks were still in progress. In fact, Auerbach writes, Galili informed Begin on June 16: "We [i.e. Ben-Gurion] agree to the arrival of the vessel. As quickly as possible." And in his diary entry that day Ben-Gurion wrote: "Tomorrow or the next day their ship is due to arrive." So it was Ben-Gurion himself who ordered the ship to land at Kfar Vitkin (near Netanya) to avoid UN aerial surveillance.
As the Begin-Galili talks proceeded, some of the weapons and almost all of the personnel on board were unloaded near Netanya. By then, Ben-Gurion had allowed himself to be convinced that Begin was planning a putsch against his authority even as the Irgun leader – perhaps naively – felt certain the weapons negotiations would succeed in the fullness of time. But there was no time. Ben-Gurion edgily ordered the Haganah (now the IDF) to start shooting. Six Irgun men and two soldiers were killed before the ship fled Netanya south and ran aground off the Tel Aviv coast not far from Palmach headquarters!
Ben-Gurion insisted on unconditional surrender or else. Yitzhak Rabin, age 26, was appointed on the spot to command the beach fighting. When the Altalena crew hesitated perhaps because of poor communications with Irgun headquarters, Palmach commanders ordered an all out attack on the ship. Even though the crew raised a white flag, Rabin's snipers continued to pick off targets bobbing in the waters. Begin, who had earlier boarded the ship expecting a deal with Galili, barely escaped with his life. The ship went down along with 300 Bren guns, 500 anti-tank guns, 1,000 grenades and millions of bullets that could have been used during the War of Independence.
Auerbach's conclusion, citing historian Ehud Sprinzak, was that there had been no "mutiny on the right" no intention to defy the legitimate authority of the land and certainly no intention by Begin to challenge Ben-Gurion militarily with a putsch. Begin had only wanted enough men and guns earmarked to carry on the fight for Jerusalem's Old City (which Ben-Gurion had abandoned) and thought he had Galili's tacit approval.
Begin abhorred the idea of a Jewish civil war and ultimately, swallowing his pride, ordered his Irgun men into the IDF on September 20, 1948. It was Ben-Gurion's "quasi-totalitarian" personality that led the socialist leader to "a reprehensible abuse of state power," as Begin later plausibly asserted.
Auerbach's sensitive re-telling of this tragic chapter in Israel's early history concludes with the unhappy, though sadly correct, assertion that Israel's "problem of legitimacy" remains unresolved.
How can Israeli decision makers emphatically steer clear of future Altalena's in implementing wrenching policies that have monumental consequences for the country's survival and character? Auerbach argues simply that they can't. In connection with dismantling settlements, my reading is that he believes the right to disobey orders is scared.
Yet surely for most Israelis, in the unlikely event that a Palestinian leadership emerges ready to make genuine peace, the legitimacy of the deal could be appreciably bolstered and the moral justification of violent disobedience diminished by some combination of Knesset vote plus national referendum.
###
No less earnestly, the paper's front pages have been devoted to beating back challenges to the left's narrative about how the Irgun arms ship Altalena came to be sunk off the coast of Tel-Aviv 63 years ago this month (June 21, 1948) on orders from David Ben-Gurion. Haaretz has been incensed, too, by an Israel Defense Ministry reference to the fallen Irgun members as having been "murdered."
Now, historian Jerold S. Auerbach, author of Hebron Jews: Memory and Conflict in the Land of Israel (2009) has further undermined the leftist canon with Brothers At War, a succinct, emotive, and levelheaded summation of the Altalena tragedy.
Auerbach frames his Altalena account in terms of what he sees as Israel's ongoing identity struggle – "Jewish state, secular state, democratic state, democratic Jewish state, state of the Jewish people" – and the constraints this lack of clarity places on the legitimacy of massively consequential government decisions.
He asserts that this conundrum actually has ancient origins traceable to Josephus whose laments about the "seditious temper" of the Jewish people erroneously framed history's understanding of Rome's victory over the Jews for the past 2,000 years. In modern times, this dilemma manifested itself in the Altalena; in the 1952 Knesset clash over whether to accept German government reparations for the Holocaust; in the 1993 Oslo Accords, and has yet to find resolution notwithstanding the dreadful assassination of Yitzhak Rabin.
It persists still over whether left-wing IDF reservists should be required to serve over the Green Line and whether right-wing Orthodox conscripts ought to be required, contrary to the wishes of their rabbis, to obey orders to dismantle unsanctioned West Bank outposts.
Put another way: Is the bigger threat to the Jewish commonwealth zealous Jews who reject disputed governmental decisions on divisive issues or the chronic failure of successive Israeli governments to foster consensus positions?
Where to begin the telling of Altalena calamity? Auerbach reasonably starts by differentiating the two Zionist camps; one led by Ben-Gurion which controlled Zionist officialdom and was inspired by a Jewish national renewal rooted in notions of socialist utopia; the other motivated by Ze'ev Jabotinsky and carried forth by his disciple Menachem Begin whose vision was one of a society based on middle-class entrepreneurial values. Long before the Altalena, Auerbach points out, there was a record of bad blood between the two camps exacerbated by the mysterious murder of Chaim Arlosoroff, bitter disputes over whether and how to confront the heartless British policy of closing the gates of Palestine prior to and during the Holocaust and over how best to respond to Arab brutality against Palestinian Jewry in the years before Israel's independence.
The Altalena (Jabotinsky's pen name) was purchased in America by Irgun operatives and, ultimately, loaded at Marseilles, France with desperately needed weapons and munitions along with a "melting pot" of 940 recruits for the nascent Hebrew fighting force in Palestine. As far as its American Jewish captain knew, his mission had the "acquiescence of the Israeli government."
Begin had indeed been negotiating directly with Ben-Gurion's man, Israel Galili, over how to disburse the ships weapons and troops. The Altalena's mission was unfortunately tracked from the start by various intelligence agencies and its secrecy blatantly exposed in a BBC news broadcast.
A series of disastrous miscommunications, logistical blunders and lack of internal Irgun discipline led to the ship's arrival seemingly at the wrong place and at the wrong time while the Begin-Galili talks were still in progress. In fact, Auerbach writes, Galili informed Begin on June 16: "We [i.e. Ben-Gurion] agree to the arrival of the vessel. As quickly as possible." And in his diary entry that day Ben-Gurion wrote: "Tomorrow or the next day their ship is due to arrive." So it was Ben-Gurion himself who ordered the ship to land at Kfar Vitkin (near Netanya) to avoid UN aerial surveillance.
As the Begin-Galili talks proceeded, some of the weapons and almost all of the personnel on board were unloaded near Netanya. By then, Ben-Gurion had allowed himself to be convinced that Begin was planning a putsch against his authority even as the Irgun leader – perhaps naively – felt certain the weapons negotiations would succeed in the fullness of time. But there was no time. Ben-Gurion edgily ordered the Haganah (now the IDF) to start shooting. Six Irgun men and two soldiers were killed before the ship fled Netanya south and ran aground off the Tel Aviv coast not far from Palmach headquarters!
Ben-Gurion insisted on unconditional surrender or else. Yitzhak Rabin, age 26, was appointed on the spot to command the beach fighting. When the Altalena crew hesitated perhaps because of poor communications with Irgun headquarters, Palmach commanders ordered an all out attack on the ship. Even though the crew raised a white flag, Rabin's snipers continued to pick off targets bobbing in the waters. Begin, who had earlier boarded the ship expecting a deal with Galili, barely escaped with his life. The ship went down along with 300 Bren guns, 500 anti-tank guns, 1,000 grenades and millions of bullets that could have been used during the War of Independence.
Auerbach's conclusion, citing historian Ehud Sprinzak, was that there had been no "mutiny on the right" no intention to defy the legitimate authority of the land and certainly no intention by Begin to challenge Ben-Gurion militarily with a putsch. Begin had only wanted enough men and guns earmarked to carry on the fight for Jerusalem's Old City (which Ben-Gurion had abandoned) and thought he had Galili's tacit approval.
Begin abhorred the idea of a Jewish civil war and ultimately, swallowing his pride, ordered his Irgun men into the IDF on September 20, 1948. It was Ben-Gurion's "quasi-totalitarian" personality that led the socialist leader to "a reprehensible abuse of state power," as Begin later plausibly asserted.
Auerbach's sensitive re-telling of this tragic chapter in Israel's early history concludes with the unhappy, though sadly correct, assertion that Israel's "problem of legitimacy" remains unresolved.
How can Israeli decision makers emphatically steer clear of future Altalena's in implementing wrenching policies that have monumental consequences for the country's survival and character? Auerbach argues simply that they can't. In connection with dismantling settlements, my reading is that he believes the right to disobey orders is scared.
Yet surely for most Israelis, in the unlikely event that a Palestinian leadership emerges ready to make genuine peace, the legitimacy of the deal could be appreciably bolstered and the moral justification of violent disobedience diminished by some combination of Knesset vote plus national referendum.
###
I am an Israel briefer and analyst, a political scientist, and a speaker on Jewish civilization. I'm also a rewrite guy & fact-checker, who can make your writing clear and compelling & help you contextualize.
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
Druse (Druze) in the Arab-Israel Context
A Druse physician from the Golan Heights, who works at an Israeli hospital, was one of 24 members of his community arrested for pummeling IDF troops with rocks during so-called Naksa Day protests. Just a few miles south in Daliyat El-Carmel, located on the slopes of Mt. Carmel, the Israeli Druse community is planning a memorial museum that will tell the stories of the 400 Druse soldiers who fell in defense of the State of Israel. In Lebanon, meanwhile, the Druse leadership has become an essential constituent in the Hezbollah-dominated government.
Just where do Druse loyalties lay?
An understanding of their history can help answer that question. The Druse are a breakaway stream of the Ismaili strain of Shi'ite Islam, followers of an ascetic Egyptian ruler named Al-Hakim (996-1021) in whom they see manifestations of the divine. (Al-Hakim was a descendant of Muhammad's son-in-law Ali revered by the Shi'ites.) Influenced in part by Greek ideas, Al-Hakim's persecuted followers broke away from orthodox Islam and eventually coalesced in the mountainous regions of Lebanon, Syria and Israel awaiting his messianic return and salvation (reincarnation being fundamental to their dogma).
Druse keep their religious practices mostly mysterious. Unlike Muslims, Druse Arabs do not observe Ramadan nor make pilgrimages to Mecca and do not proselytize. They venerate Jethro, the father-in-law of Moses as a main prophet. Marrying-out is considered an unforgivable breach of communal solidarity. Indeed, strong ethnic identity, martial skills and mutual aid are part of the Druse canon. Today, there are perhaps 2.5 million Druse living mostly in Syria, Lebanon and northern Israel with smaller communities dispersed as far away as North America and Australia.
In predominantly Sunni Syria, the Druse are mostly concentrated in the southwest abutting Jordan and between Aleppo and Antioch in the north-west. They comprise perhaps four percent of the population. After the First World War with the arrival of the French, the Druse were encouraged to maintain their own autonomous region. Druse attitudes toward the French were conflicted though the community ultimately embraced emergent Arab nationalism.
Syrian independence in 1946 was accompanied by long decades of political convulsions. During the early 1950s for instance, Adib ibn Hasan Shishakli, the military dictator, pursued a Syrian nationalist line yet violently persecuted the Druse whom he perceived as a threat. Shishakli's overthrow paved the way for yet more turmoil during which factions within the Ba'ath Party competed violently for control.
By the time Hafez al-Assad (Basher's father) took power in 1970, the Druse had been purged from positions of influence in the party, army and security services. However, the Assad dynasty, itself rooted in the Alawite minority, relied on the Druse, and true to form, the Druse displayed remarkable loyalty to the regime. In recent years Bashar may have become more distant from them, perhaps because he wanted to draw closer to the Sunni majority, according to Mordechai Kedar of Bar-Ilan University. Druse fidelity has begun to crack only as anti-Assad demonstrations have gained inexorable momentum and security forces have targeted the Druse. Kedar speculates that if Syria does disintegrate, the Druse could seek to restore their earlier autonomy.
Watching from the other side of the border, Israeli Druse parliamentarian, Deputy Galilee and Negev Development Minister Ayoub Kara (Likud) has tried to muster Jerusalem's support for some kind of intervention on behalf of the Syrian opposition only to be rebuffed. Lately, he's turned to the Turkish authorities asking to be allowed to lead an Israeli aid mission to the Turkish-Syrian border.
On the Golan Heights, a very small number of Druse accepted Israeli citizenship when the Knesset applied Israeli law to the territory in 1981, while most remained loyal to the Assad regime. On the whole, though some Druse have been arrested for spying for Syria, most have simply sought not to fall afoul of either Jerusalem or Damascus knowing that control of the Heights could flip in any peace deal. Israel has been generally sensitive to the Druse predicament. In mid-February, for instance, 12,000 tons of apples grown by Druse farmers near Majdal Shams were exported to Syria despite the de facto state of war between the two countries. At the start of the anti-government protests in Syria, some Golan residents demonstrated in support of Assad. But as the demonstrations gained traction more Golan Druse have turned against Assad and expressed solidarity for the opposition.
The Druse need to coldly calibrate their alliances is nowhere more pronounced than in the failed state of Lebanon. There's been no verifiable census there in decades, but there are believed to be hundreds of thousands of Druse in Lebanon with a stronghold in the Chouf Mountains. After his father Kamal was assassinated (in all likelihood by the Assads), Druse leader Walid Jumblat actually drew closer to Syria. Over the years he has switched sides intermittently most recently in March 2010. Nowadays he backs Lebanon's new hegemon, the Shi'ite Islamist movement Hezbollah, clients of the Assad dynasty though ultimately beholden to Iran.
Emphasizing his Arab credentials, Jumblat has aligned the Druse with Arab "leftists" -- essentially nationalist secularists – through his Progressive Socialist Party. His anti-Israel rhetoric has been unwavering. The Druse have been sympathetic to the Palestinian Arabs, permanent "refugees" in Lebanon, and have advocated for them being granted the right to own property. This has not guaranteed the Druse immunity from attack by uncompromising Palestinian Islamists.
All the same, earlier this month Jumblat lauded the Golan Druse who collaborated in Syrian-inspired Palestinian efforts to storm across the Golan boundary with Israel. He has long urged his coreligionists in Israel not to serve in the IDF. Yet as the Assad regime wobbles, possibly weakening Hezbollah, the Lebanese Druse are becoming more assertive. A Druse member of the Hezbollah-dominated new cabinet recently resigned to protest the dearth of patronage posts allocated to his community.
Which brings us back to the 127,000-strong, overwhelmingly loyal, Druse citizens of Israel. Their young men have long been conscripted into the army where many have served with distinction. A Druse journalist, Rafik Halabi, was news director for Israel's Channel 1 during the 1990s. By 2001 a Druse had been named to Israel's cabinet (by Ariel Sharon). Patronage delivered by the Likud to the Druse town of Daliat el-Carmel has encouraged many locals to join the party. However, the acculturation process has not been effortless. Since many Druse schools teach the sciences in Arabic, Israel’s education ministry has been trying to encourage a shift to Hebrew so that graduates can better integrate into Israeli higher education. The Netanyahu has (belatedly) budgeted substantial sums for the socio-economic developing of the community. Efforts are also underway to prepare Druse young people for jobs in Israel's hi-tech sector.
This is not to suggest that Israel could not do much more to reward Druse loyalty or demonstrate greater cultural sensitivity. Earlier this year, the government defused simmering tensions by reaching a compensation deal with Druse landowners whose properties had been confiscated for a planned natural gas pipeline.
The seemingly Machiavellian character of Druse loyalties reflects what it means to be a minority people in a mostly intolerant Muslim Middle East. Just as the Druse have found it strategically prudent to concentrate mostly on high ground away from urban areas, their political strategy toward outside powers has been one of "adaptability and fluidity" according to the University of Haifa's Gabriel Ben-Dor. The Druse prefer to be loyal to the country in which they reside. At the same time, their survival depends on a knack for aligning with what Lee Smith has called the Strong Horse, offering an artful political barometer for gauging the ever-shifting balance of power in the region.
Just where do Druse loyalties lay?
An understanding of their history can help answer that question. The Druse are a breakaway stream of the Ismaili strain of Shi'ite Islam, followers of an ascetic Egyptian ruler named Al-Hakim (996-1021) in whom they see manifestations of the divine. (Al-Hakim was a descendant of Muhammad's son-in-law Ali revered by the Shi'ites.) Influenced in part by Greek ideas, Al-Hakim's persecuted followers broke away from orthodox Islam and eventually coalesced in the mountainous regions of Lebanon, Syria and Israel awaiting his messianic return and salvation (reincarnation being fundamental to their dogma).
Druse keep their religious practices mostly mysterious. Unlike Muslims, Druse Arabs do not observe Ramadan nor make pilgrimages to Mecca and do not proselytize. They venerate Jethro, the father-in-law of Moses as a main prophet. Marrying-out is considered an unforgivable breach of communal solidarity. Indeed, strong ethnic identity, martial skills and mutual aid are part of the Druse canon. Today, there are perhaps 2.5 million Druse living mostly in Syria, Lebanon and northern Israel with smaller communities dispersed as far away as North America and Australia.
In predominantly Sunni Syria, the Druse are mostly concentrated in the southwest abutting Jordan and between Aleppo and Antioch in the north-west. They comprise perhaps four percent of the population. After the First World War with the arrival of the French, the Druse were encouraged to maintain their own autonomous region. Druse attitudes toward the French were conflicted though the community ultimately embraced emergent Arab nationalism.
Syrian independence in 1946 was accompanied by long decades of political convulsions. During the early 1950s for instance, Adib ibn Hasan Shishakli, the military dictator, pursued a Syrian nationalist line yet violently persecuted the Druse whom he perceived as a threat. Shishakli's overthrow paved the way for yet more turmoil during which factions within the Ba'ath Party competed violently for control.
By the time Hafez al-Assad (Basher's father) took power in 1970, the Druse had been purged from positions of influence in the party, army and security services. However, the Assad dynasty, itself rooted in the Alawite minority, relied on the Druse, and true to form, the Druse displayed remarkable loyalty to the regime. In recent years Bashar may have become more distant from them, perhaps because he wanted to draw closer to the Sunni majority, according to Mordechai Kedar of Bar-Ilan University. Druse fidelity has begun to crack only as anti-Assad demonstrations have gained inexorable momentum and security forces have targeted the Druse. Kedar speculates that if Syria does disintegrate, the Druse could seek to restore their earlier autonomy.
Watching from the other side of the border, Israeli Druse parliamentarian, Deputy Galilee and Negev Development Minister Ayoub Kara (Likud) has tried to muster Jerusalem's support for some kind of intervention on behalf of the Syrian opposition only to be rebuffed. Lately, he's turned to the Turkish authorities asking to be allowed to lead an Israeli aid mission to the Turkish-Syrian border.
On the Golan Heights, a very small number of Druse accepted Israeli citizenship when the Knesset applied Israeli law to the territory in 1981, while most remained loyal to the Assad regime. On the whole, though some Druse have been arrested for spying for Syria, most have simply sought not to fall afoul of either Jerusalem or Damascus knowing that control of the Heights could flip in any peace deal. Israel has been generally sensitive to the Druse predicament. In mid-February, for instance, 12,000 tons of apples grown by Druse farmers near Majdal Shams were exported to Syria despite the de facto state of war between the two countries. At the start of the anti-government protests in Syria, some Golan residents demonstrated in support of Assad. But as the demonstrations gained traction more Golan Druse have turned against Assad and expressed solidarity for the opposition.
The Druse need to coldly calibrate their alliances is nowhere more pronounced than in the failed state of Lebanon. There's been no verifiable census there in decades, but there are believed to be hundreds of thousands of Druse in Lebanon with a stronghold in the Chouf Mountains. After his father Kamal was assassinated (in all likelihood by the Assads), Druse leader Walid Jumblat actually drew closer to Syria. Over the years he has switched sides intermittently most recently in March 2010. Nowadays he backs Lebanon's new hegemon, the Shi'ite Islamist movement Hezbollah, clients of the Assad dynasty though ultimately beholden to Iran.
Emphasizing his Arab credentials, Jumblat has aligned the Druse with Arab "leftists" -- essentially nationalist secularists – through his Progressive Socialist Party. His anti-Israel rhetoric has been unwavering. The Druse have been sympathetic to the Palestinian Arabs, permanent "refugees" in Lebanon, and have advocated for them being granted the right to own property. This has not guaranteed the Druse immunity from attack by uncompromising Palestinian Islamists.
All the same, earlier this month Jumblat lauded the Golan Druse who collaborated in Syrian-inspired Palestinian efforts to storm across the Golan boundary with Israel. He has long urged his coreligionists in Israel not to serve in the IDF. Yet as the Assad regime wobbles, possibly weakening Hezbollah, the Lebanese Druse are becoming more assertive. A Druse member of the Hezbollah-dominated new cabinet recently resigned to protest the dearth of patronage posts allocated to his community.
Which brings us back to the 127,000-strong, overwhelmingly loyal, Druse citizens of Israel. Their young men have long been conscripted into the army where many have served with distinction. A Druse journalist, Rafik Halabi, was news director for Israel's Channel 1 during the 1990s. By 2001 a Druse had been named to Israel's cabinet (by Ariel Sharon). Patronage delivered by the Likud to the Druse town of Daliat el-Carmel has encouraged many locals to join the party. However, the acculturation process has not been effortless. Since many Druse schools teach the sciences in Arabic, Israel’s education ministry has been trying to encourage a shift to Hebrew so that graduates can better integrate into Israeli higher education. The Netanyahu has (belatedly) budgeted substantial sums for the socio-economic developing of the community. Efforts are also underway to prepare Druse young people for jobs in Israel's hi-tech sector.
This is not to suggest that Israel could not do much more to reward Druse loyalty or demonstrate greater cultural sensitivity. Earlier this year, the government defused simmering tensions by reaching a compensation deal with Druse landowners whose properties had been confiscated for a planned natural gas pipeline.
The seemingly Machiavellian character of Druse loyalties reflects what it means to be a minority people in a mostly intolerant Muslim Middle East. Just as the Druse have found it strategically prudent to concentrate mostly on high ground away from urban areas, their political strategy toward outside powers has been one of "adaptability and fluidity" according to the University of Haifa's Gabriel Ben-Dor. The Druse prefer to be loyal to the country in which they reside. At the same time, their survival depends on a knack for aligning with what Lee Smith has called the Strong Horse, offering an artful political barometer for gauging the ever-shifting balance of power in the region.
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, June 13, 2011
Does Israel's Labor Party Still Live?
Laboring On
Whatever became of Israel's Labor Party some five months after its leader Defense Minister Ehud Barak abruptly quit to establish his breakaway Atzmaut (Independence) Knesset faction?
Wracked by infighting, fuming over being tethered to the diplomatic policies of the Netanyahu government, and headed by one of the least popular politicians on the scene, the once-dominant Labor Party seemed moribund. Barak had surprised colleagues in January 2010 by pulling out before they could oust him; taking along four comparatively right-leaning loyalists. Barak got to retain his cabinet seat while Labor ministers Yitzhak Herzog, Avishay Braverman and Binyamin Ben-Eliezer had no choice but to go into the opposition. In 2006, Labor lost several luminaries including Shimon Peres, Haim Ramon and Dalia Itzik to Kadima.
Now, tabloid pundits were quick to write Labor's obituary. Yediot's Nahum Barnea, doyen of left-leaning columnists, said the party had actually "died" during Barak's short failed term as prime minister in 2000 but had only now been buried. His colleague Sima Kadmon wrote that "the public doesn't believe the Labor Party can be revived." The perennially caustic Ben Caspit at Ma'ariv adjudged Labor to be "a pile of rubble." Barak had dealt Labor "the final blow" wrote another anti-Netanyahu Ma'ariv columnist Shalom Yerushalmi.
These writers had captured the popular sentiment: A poll in Yediot the day after Barak's exit found 53% of Israeli voters thought it heralded "the end of the Labor Party." Yet even then there was a glimmer of hope: the same poll revealed that Labor would manage to retain 8 of its 13 Knesset seats were immediate elections held.
Forecasts of Labor's demise appear to have been exaggerated. Since Barak's leaving the party brought back former general-secretary Micha Harish to be its temporary chairman and tasked him with overseeing Labor's revival. Tens of thousands of new members have been recruited as part of a dynamic race on for the party's leadership. David Ben-Gurion's grandchildren, Orit Etzioni and Moshe Ben-Eliezer, have publicly invested in the movement he once led. Even rudderless, recent polls continue to show the party capturing at least eight seats.
Of course, how Labor will ultimately fare in national elections (expected before 2013 when the current Knesset's term expires) will depend on what position it stakes out on the political spectrum and that, in term, very much depends on who becomes the party's new leader. The field includes MK Isaac Herzog, son of Israel's sixth president Chaim Herzog; MK Shelly Yachimovich, a former left-oriented journalist; Amram Mitzna, a rehabilitated previous party leader; millionaire entrepreneur Erel Margalit; MK Amir Peretz, another renewed former party leader and Shlomo Buhbut, a local government politician.
Labor is hardly likely to ever again become a ruling party. One reason is that its leaders and functionaries continue to shill for Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas in promoting the message that no diplomatic progress can be made because of the Netanyahu government, and not – as most Israelis believe – through any fault of the Palestinian Arabs.
Each of the leadership contenders claimed to have signed-up thousands of new members ostensibly pledged to vote for them in the September 12th party primary and subsequent run-off contest. By that yardstick, Peretz claims to have brought in the most signatures followed by Herzog and Yachimovich. Assuming the petition claims are true, Labor's membership base could emerge as the second biggest behind Likud.
With a leader – Mitzna, Herzog, Yachimovich or Perez – preliminary polling suggests that Labor could, at least hypothetically, capture 17-19 mandates. Yet when the dust settles much depends on whether the party, which still defines itself as social-democratic, can be positioned at least within shouting distance of the center-left enabling it to pick up votes from Kadima. That will not be easy.
Mitzna says outright that he's returned to politics to mobilize the "peace camp." Perez professes that he would not require the Palestinians to recognize Israel as a Jewish state; Yachimovich prefers to take vague stands on security issues and to focus instead on promoting greater government involvement in the economy. Margalit supports an interim Palestinian state now along the parameters of the security barrier. Herzog has been arguably more judicious while still calling for Israeli concessions to the Palestinians. All these positions are essentially out of kilter with public sentiment.
So while the obituaries were premature, for Labor to avoid being permanently relegated to the margins of party politics alongside Meretz whoever wins its September primary would be wise to navigate toward Israel's post-Oslo center.
As for Barak's new party, were elections held today, Atzmaut would not to cross the electoral threshold.
###
Whatever became of Israel's Labor Party some five months after its leader Defense Minister Ehud Barak abruptly quit to establish his breakaway Atzmaut (Independence) Knesset faction?
Wracked by infighting, fuming over being tethered to the diplomatic policies of the Netanyahu government, and headed by one of the least popular politicians on the scene, the once-dominant Labor Party seemed moribund. Barak had surprised colleagues in January 2010 by pulling out before they could oust him; taking along four comparatively right-leaning loyalists. Barak got to retain his cabinet seat while Labor ministers Yitzhak Herzog, Avishay Braverman and Binyamin Ben-Eliezer had no choice but to go into the opposition. In 2006, Labor lost several luminaries including Shimon Peres, Haim Ramon and Dalia Itzik to Kadima.
Now, tabloid pundits were quick to write Labor's obituary. Yediot's Nahum Barnea, doyen of left-leaning columnists, said the party had actually "died" during Barak's short failed term as prime minister in 2000 but had only now been buried. His colleague Sima Kadmon wrote that "the public doesn't believe the Labor Party can be revived." The perennially caustic Ben Caspit at Ma'ariv adjudged Labor to be "a pile of rubble." Barak had dealt Labor "the final blow" wrote another anti-Netanyahu Ma'ariv columnist Shalom Yerushalmi.
These writers had captured the popular sentiment: A poll in Yediot the day after Barak's exit found 53% of Israeli voters thought it heralded "the end of the Labor Party." Yet even then there was a glimmer of hope: the same poll revealed that Labor would manage to retain 8 of its 13 Knesset seats were immediate elections held.
Forecasts of Labor's demise appear to have been exaggerated. Since Barak's leaving the party brought back former general-secretary Micha Harish to be its temporary chairman and tasked him with overseeing Labor's revival. Tens of thousands of new members have been recruited as part of a dynamic race on for the party's leadership. David Ben-Gurion's grandchildren, Orit Etzioni and Moshe Ben-Eliezer, have publicly invested in the movement he once led. Even rudderless, recent polls continue to show the party capturing at least eight seats.
Of course, how Labor will ultimately fare in national elections (expected before 2013 when the current Knesset's term expires) will depend on what position it stakes out on the political spectrum and that, in term, very much depends on who becomes the party's new leader. The field includes MK Isaac Herzog, son of Israel's sixth president Chaim Herzog; MK Shelly Yachimovich, a former left-oriented journalist; Amram Mitzna, a rehabilitated previous party leader; millionaire entrepreneur Erel Margalit; MK Amir Peretz, another renewed former party leader and Shlomo Buhbut, a local government politician.
Labor is hardly likely to ever again become a ruling party. One reason is that its leaders and functionaries continue to shill for Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas in promoting the message that no diplomatic progress can be made because of the Netanyahu government, and not – as most Israelis believe – through any fault of the Palestinian Arabs.
Each of the leadership contenders claimed to have signed-up thousands of new members ostensibly pledged to vote for them in the September 12th party primary and subsequent run-off contest. By that yardstick, Peretz claims to have brought in the most signatures followed by Herzog and Yachimovich. Assuming the petition claims are true, Labor's membership base could emerge as the second biggest behind Likud.
With a leader – Mitzna, Herzog, Yachimovich or Perez – preliminary polling suggests that Labor could, at least hypothetically, capture 17-19 mandates. Yet when the dust settles much depends on whether the party, which still defines itself as social-democratic, can be positioned at least within shouting distance of the center-left enabling it to pick up votes from Kadima. That will not be easy.
Mitzna says outright that he's returned to politics to mobilize the "peace camp." Perez professes that he would not require the Palestinians to recognize Israel as a Jewish state; Yachimovich prefers to take vague stands on security issues and to focus instead on promoting greater government involvement in the economy. Margalit supports an interim Palestinian state now along the parameters of the security barrier. Herzog has been arguably more judicious while still calling for Israeli concessions to the Palestinians. All these positions are essentially out of kilter with public sentiment.
So while the obituaries were premature, for Labor to avoid being permanently relegated to the margins of party politics alongside Meretz whoever wins its September primary would be wise to navigate toward Israel's post-Oslo center.
As for Barak's new party, were elections held today, Atzmaut would not to cross the electoral threshold.
###
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, June 06, 2011
Public Opinion & the US - Israel Relationship
Liking Israel
The depth of empathy for the Jewish state among ordinary Americans -- persistently critical media coverage of Israel's West Bank, settlement and security policies notwithstanding – ought to be cause for positive amazement.
In stark contrast to strikingly negative European attitudes, a far-reaching CNN poll released May 31 presents an uplifting picture on American public opinion toward Israel: 65 percent of those surveyed had a generally favorable attitude. Equally heartening is a recent Rasmussen poll which found that 71% of Americans want the Palestinian Arabs to acknowledge Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state.
What regular folks think about foreign policy has often been disparaged. Winston Churchill warned politicians against keeping their ears to the ground because it would be hard for the public "to look up to leaders who are detected in that somewhat ungainly posture." Moreover, a vast swath of the American public remains blissfully ignorant about current affairs.
Be that as it may, the 24/7 news cycle and a ubiquitous Internet means that foreign affairs can hardly be conducted beyond the purview of public scrutiny as it would have been in the Victorian era.
Mass attitudes on foreign policy tend to be malleable, shaped – rather than followed – by opinion "mobilizers" in the government, media and academia. Plainly, there is a connection between what is covered and what people become interested in. But whether they are interested or not, the American public is fed a heavy diet of Middle East and Palestinian-Israeli conflict news.
In the last week of May, for example, a whopping 10 percent of all coverage was Mideast related compared to 12 percent for the troubled U.S. economy. No surprise then that nearly 18% of Americans say they follow the Arab-Israel conflict "very closely." That's only two percent less than those who say they are tracking the 2012 presidential election campaign.
Positive attitudes toward Israel have held steady through the second intifada and wars in Lebanon and Gaza. In the CNN survey, 44% of respondents identified Israel as an ally, only Britain (at 64%) scored higher. Asked where their sympathies lay 67% said Israel against 16% with the Palestinian Arabs; contrast this to 1988 when 37% were sympathetic toward Israel.
This increased level support was roughly the same across educational background, income and political affiliation though backing among those who define themselves as conservative was more robust at 83%. Within the Tea Party movement, 36% identified themselves as "very favorable" against just 6% who were "very unfavorable." Separately, we also know that there is a well-spring of support for Israel among believing Christians.
That said, most Americans (65%) would rather Washington not take sides at all. This reflects an always present and now growing trend in favor of U.S. isolationism in world affairs.
Moreover, despite near-saturation coverage ignorance about the conflict remains deep-seated as evidenced by a survey conducted by Arab-American pollster John Zogby which found "a plurality" for the so-called Palestinian "the right of return" to what is today Israel and for dismantling "settlements."
On the other hand, lack of knowledge probably doesn't explain why 51% of the "political class" (those who take strong and active interest in politics and often exercise power) in the Rasmussen survey were optimistic about the peace process in contrast to 87% of the presumably less informed "mainstream" who thought progress unlikely.
No less important is the backing Israel has within the heterogeneous U.S. Jewish community. A recent Frank Luntz poll found strong (61%) support for a united Jerusalem under Israeli jurisdiction and implied solid support for the retention of consensus or strategic settlement blocs in any peace deal.
Despite intensified campaigns by subversive groups within the community to redefine the essence of the conflict and what it means to be pro-Israel, fully 75% of U.S. Jews recognized that the ultimate Arab goal is the destruction of Israel; 94% wanted the Palestinians to recognize Israel as a Jewish state thereby signaling an end to further claims. On the political front, a massive 85% thought that under President Barack Obama US-Israel relations were not going well. Which makes the next series of findings as disconcerting as they are seemingly incoherent: 55% of U.S. Jews sided with the administration even though 57% approved of the Netanyahu government's handling of relations; and 48% favor a Palestinian state "in the current situation."
The Luntz poll also illuminated the character of the community: more Democratic (50%) and independent (32%) than Republican (15%); heavily identified with the liberal streams of Judaism (52%) or "just Jewish" (37%) – whatever that means – than Orthodox (10%). Yet regardless of these distinctions, just 15% said Israel was not very important in their lives.
What does all this add up to? When it comes to the perpetual Palestinian war against Israel, rank-and-file Americans may have only a slim grasp of the complexities, yet they display an innate appreciation for the justice of Israel's cause. This is providential because no other nation is more dependent on the goodwill of Americans than Israel. The more solid that support, the greater the political constraints on any president whose pro-Israel sentiments are ambivalent. And the more apt is an Israel-friendly Congress to dispute White House pressure on Israel.
George Marshall, the U.S. Secretary of State in the late 1940s, observed that, "No policy -- foreign or domestic – can succeed without public support."
In the face of encouraging polling data, it behooves Israeli policymakers to shun complacency and to never, never, take the benevolence of the American people for granted.
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The depth of empathy for the Jewish state among ordinary Americans -- persistently critical media coverage of Israel's West Bank, settlement and security policies notwithstanding – ought to be cause for positive amazement.
In stark contrast to strikingly negative European attitudes, a far-reaching CNN poll released May 31 presents an uplifting picture on American public opinion toward Israel: 65 percent of those surveyed had a generally favorable attitude. Equally heartening is a recent Rasmussen poll which found that 71% of Americans want the Palestinian Arabs to acknowledge Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state.
What regular folks think about foreign policy has often been disparaged. Winston Churchill warned politicians against keeping their ears to the ground because it would be hard for the public "to look up to leaders who are detected in that somewhat ungainly posture." Moreover, a vast swath of the American public remains blissfully ignorant about current affairs.
Be that as it may, the 24/7 news cycle and a ubiquitous Internet means that foreign affairs can hardly be conducted beyond the purview of public scrutiny as it would have been in the Victorian era.
Mass attitudes on foreign policy tend to be malleable, shaped – rather than followed – by opinion "mobilizers" in the government, media and academia. Plainly, there is a connection between what is covered and what people become interested in. But whether they are interested or not, the American public is fed a heavy diet of Middle East and Palestinian-Israeli conflict news.
In the last week of May, for example, a whopping 10 percent of all coverage was Mideast related compared to 12 percent for the troubled U.S. economy. No surprise then that nearly 18% of Americans say they follow the Arab-Israel conflict "very closely." That's only two percent less than those who say they are tracking the 2012 presidential election campaign.
Positive attitudes toward Israel have held steady through the second intifada and wars in Lebanon and Gaza. In the CNN survey, 44% of respondents identified Israel as an ally, only Britain (at 64%) scored higher. Asked where their sympathies lay 67% said Israel against 16% with the Palestinian Arabs; contrast this to 1988 when 37% were sympathetic toward Israel.
This increased level support was roughly the same across educational background, income and political affiliation though backing among those who define themselves as conservative was more robust at 83%. Within the Tea Party movement, 36% identified themselves as "very favorable" against just 6% who were "very unfavorable." Separately, we also know that there is a well-spring of support for Israel among believing Christians.
That said, most Americans (65%) would rather Washington not take sides at all. This reflects an always present and now growing trend in favor of U.S. isolationism in world affairs.
Moreover, despite near-saturation coverage ignorance about the conflict remains deep-seated as evidenced by a survey conducted by Arab-American pollster John Zogby which found "a plurality" for the so-called Palestinian "the right of return" to what is today Israel and for dismantling "settlements."
On the other hand, lack of knowledge probably doesn't explain why 51% of the "political class" (those who take strong and active interest in politics and often exercise power) in the Rasmussen survey were optimistic about the peace process in contrast to 87% of the presumably less informed "mainstream" who thought progress unlikely.
No less important is the backing Israel has within the heterogeneous U.S. Jewish community. A recent Frank Luntz poll found strong (61%) support for a united Jerusalem under Israeli jurisdiction and implied solid support for the retention of consensus or strategic settlement blocs in any peace deal.
Despite intensified campaigns by subversive groups within the community to redefine the essence of the conflict and what it means to be pro-Israel, fully 75% of U.S. Jews recognized that the ultimate Arab goal is the destruction of Israel; 94% wanted the Palestinians to recognize Israel as a Jewish state thereby signaling an end to further claims. On the political front, a massive 85% thought that under President Barack Obama US-Israel relations were not going well. Which makes the next series of findings as disconcerting as they are seemingly incoherent: 55% of U.S. Jews sided with the administration even though 57% approved of the Netanyahu government's handling of relations; and 48% favor a Palestinian state "in the current situation."
The Luntz poll also illuminated the character of the community: more Democratic (50%) and independent (32%) than Republican (15%); heavily identified with the liberal streams of Judaism (52%) or "just Jewish" (37%) – whatever that means – than Orthodox (10%). Yet regardless of these distinctions, just 15% said Israel was not very important in their lives.
What does all this add up to? When it comes to the perpetual Palestinian war against Israel, rank-and-file Americans may have only a slim grasp of the complexities, yet they display an innate appreciation for the justice of Israel's cause. This is providential because no other nation is more dependent on the goodwill of Americans than Israel. The more solid that support, the greater the political constraints on any president whose pro-Israel sentiments are ambivalent. And the more apt is an Israel-friendly Congress to dispute White House pressure on Israel.
George Marshall, the U.S. Secretary of State in the late 1940s, observed that, "No policy -- foreign or domestic – can succeed without public support."
In the face of encouraging polling data, it behooves Israeli policymakers to shun complacency and to never, never, take the benevolence of the American people for granted.
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I am an Israel briefer and analyst, a political scientist, and a speaker on Jewish civilization. I'm also a rewrite guy & fact-checker, who can make your writing clear and compelling & help you contextualize.
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