A Yom Kippur Meditation

by Avi Davis

Yom Kipur, Jerusalem. The entire country enveloped in preparations for the day. The pilot and the stewards on the El Al flight, all secular, wish us ‘ chatimah tova’ (the Hebrew short hand for the blessing to be inscribed in the Book of Life) as we descend the gangway; same for the customs officials, the airport security officials and the taxi driver. Jerusalem is already awash in a sea of white – white shirts, white dresses, white shrouds – hours before the onset of the Festival. Zion Square, the throbbing heart of the city, looks like one of those mid-western towns in the U.S. through which a tumbleweed might occasionally blow. Except for the sporadic police car, it is eerily silent.

When the public siren sounds at 6:00 pm, signaling the onset of the holiest day in the Jewish calendar, the entire country seems to clank to a halt. And as I contemplate the awe that Yom Kipur inspires in the people of Israel – religious and secular alike, my mind is drawn back 42 years ago to the same day when all the young men were forced to leave their families, homes and synagogues and join their battalions in the Sinai Desert and Golan Heights to confront a surprise attack by the country’s enemies. Many would not return. Today, among those soldiers, would be four of my Israeli nephews.

In this part of the world there is a thin line between life and death, peace and war. The prayers on Yom Kipur itself make this clear – who will live and who will die, who will succeed and who will fail? – none of which is known and without exception we all walk the same tightrope. But here, in this country and in this city, that balance seems particularly poignant and relevant. To contemplate our good fortune, to think about our near misses, to give thanks for our fruitful year of life and to dare to hope and pray for another, makes fasting for 25 hours an utterly minor inconvenience – and almost a privilege. May we all merit, through repentance and forgiveness, the gift of life; may we all continue to long for peace, even as we know we must prepare for war; and may we all learn, as one of the central prayers on Yom Kipur implores us, the love of kindness, the elevation of righteousness, the kindling of compassion and the true blessings of life bestowed upon us by G’d.

Avi Davis is the president of the American Freedom Alliance and the editor of The Intermediate Zone

Good News Among the Bad

As the Jewish New Year of 5776 entered, news arrived that offered cause for the gravest concern. In England the British Labor Party had just elected Jeremy Corbyn, a viciously anti- Zionist agitator who has lent moral support to Hamas and Hezbollah, has maintained close associations through the years with antisemites and Holocaust deniers and is unapologetic in his embrace of the local Muslim Imams who call for the destruction and conquest of the West. This is, of course, coupled with the likely admission, in the near future, of hundreds of thousands of Muslim refugees into European cities, which will only exacerbate the tensions in those societies between secular society and its unassimable Muslim minorities, thereafter, inevitably, spurring further attacks on Jews; And of course the Obama Administration has just secured Congressional support for the most catastrophic diplomatic agreement since the 1938 Munich agreement – directly endangering the national security of the State of Israel.

All of us who live in the West must see the tragic trajectory that our foolish leaders have now committed us to – enabling, rather than crippling our enemies; providing them with the means of facilitating our destruction instead of stanching their supply of weaponry and providing diplomatic cover and access to funds which will be used to finance future attacks against us.

How to respond to all this bad news?

With the recognition that at no other time in history have the Jewish people been fortunate enough to possess a State of their own which is equal in military prowess and intelligence gathering to any other such force in the world; that the Israeli economy is booming, despite the country’s continuing diplomatic isolation – and this is because the world wants and needs what it has to offer – technological creativity and know how on a scale that it can find almost nowhere else in the world; that the State of Israel will, within the next few years, become a net exporter of natural gas, controlling, as it does , one of the world’s richest deposits of the energy resource beneath its Mediterranean sands – making the State an extremely vital supplier whose link with the West will be guaranteed and enhanced – particularly in the event that Russia veers further and further into autocracy, territorial expansionism and isolation from Europe. And that the Jews of Europe, understanding that the contagion of antisemitism that doomed them 70 years ago, has not died but instead resurfaced in a new and more virulent strain – will increasingly bring their resources – financial and physical to the State of Israel, adding wealth and sophistication to an already fascinating, polyglot society.

I thought about all this recently after a recent encounter on a trip to Europe.

On a flight to Amsterdam, I sat next to a fellow whose accent I immediately recognized as Australian. We struck up a very friendly conversation that continued for hours, comparing our interests in Australian sports and talking about favorite haunts in Melbourne. I discovered that he was Jewish and was moving to Berlin with his German wife, who was pregnant with his first child. Near the end of the flight he asked me about my final destination and when I told him it was Israel, his expression soured:

” Aw, mate,I could never go to that place. Can’t stand the thought that Jews are practicing apartheid just like the South Africans. ”

When I asked him if he had ever visited Israel to discover if this accusation was true for himself, he said he hadn’t and that he wouldn’t and that his mind is made up and that I would be wasting my breath to try to convince him otherwise.

I was quiet for a while and then I said;

“Mark, you know 75 years ago, Jews who had babies in Berlin – and chose to stay there, were almost certainly signing their childrens’ death warrant. It wouldn’t have mattered to the authorities that you were an anti- Zionist, a non-practicing Jew or that your wife was non-Jewish. The Nazis didn’t care about any of that. They took you if you had the least ounce of Jewish blood in your veins. The Nazis may well be gone but don’t think that you or your children or grandchildren will always be guaranteed to have it as good as you have had it in Australia and America all this time. Thirty years years from now, you, your child and your grandchildren may thank G’d,- even if none of you believe in Him – that there is a state in the world willing to accept you and your descendants because every other country in the world has shut its doors to the plight of the new German Jewish refugees.”

He turned away and we didn’t speak for the rest of the flight. But I realized that I had just confronted the same blinkered, festering self-hatred that I have seen in the writings of Noam Chomsky and Norman Finkelstein – intellectuals and activists who have joined with and given succor to the Jewish peoples’ enemies.

On this Rosh Hashana, let us then remember the miracle of the post-Holocaust, Jewish renaissance around the world; the extraordinary success of the people of Israel in building a flourishing democracy in a sea of hatred and contempt and the assurance that because that state exists, the Jewish people will live on and thrive and that the welfare and security of our grandchildren and great grand children is guaranteed because of it.

Shana Tova – Happy New Year -and may we all be blessed with health, peace, security and prosperity in the coming year.

With Jeremy Corbyn Elected as New Leader, Britain’s Labour Party Takes a Hard Left Turn

With the elevation of Mr. Corbyn, the Labour Party is in the hands of the hard left for the first time in decades.

nytimes.com|By STEPHEN CASTLE

Ally: My Journey Across the American-Israeli Divide by Michael B. Oren: A Review

 

by Avi Davis

It is interesting to conjecture what the history of America-Israel relations, written 100 years from now, will read like.  Will it paint the eight years of the Obama Administration as the very nadir in relations between the two nations, yet only a hiccup in a long and flourishing relationship that endured despite the pitfalls which almost upended it?   Or will it instead be seen as the commencement of a long and rapid decline to the point where successive U.S. administrations began  lining up against the Jewish state?

Whatever the judgement, it is inevitable that future historians will pay close attention to the words of Michael B. Oren, and his book Ally, a memoir documenting his four long years as Israel’s ambassador to the United States during the first years of the Obama Administration.

Oren, a renowned historian and author of two authoritative works on the Middle East ( Six Days of  War and Power, Faith and Fantasy: America in the Middle East) possessed excellent credentials to assume his ambassadorial post in 2009.  A New Jersey born Jew, who had lived in Israel for 30 years, he had already acted as a kind of  ambassador-in-waiting, with numerous book tours and a role as a highly respected television commentator and editorialist for distinguished American newspapers and magazines.  A fervent Zionist, whose ideological commitment to the state had not wavered an inch from his teenage years, he also possessed  the added strengths of being affable, politically limber and remarkably self effacing, to the point where his superiors recommended him as a man without an ego.

Of course Oren does have an ego, and he is as susceptible to flattery and praise – honors he received in copious amounts, as any man.  Yet his book, which caused  a firestorm upon its publication in June this year, is a modest and careful appraisal of not only his own journey along the America – Israel divide in the first years of the Obama Administration, but of the rocky relations which characterized the relations between Barack Obama and Benjamin Netanyahu, two men as different as chalk and water.

As a careful monitor of  the temperature of Washington political  life, Oren from the beginning projected that Obama would be a very different kind of American leader – expressing no particular love nor admiration for the Jewish state and instead determined to impose ‘daylight’ between the two long term allies in order to conciliate Muslim opinion.  He notes how Obama’s  Cairo speech in June 2009, in which he defended Israel’s right to exist on the basis of  the Jewish people’s persecution during the Holocaust and not on its 3,000 historical ties to its ancient homeland, gave an insight into  the President’s thinking.  The speech of course played directly into the prevailing Arab narrative which contends that the Jews are only recent interlopers with no historical ties to the land.

It was a statement that Obama was later forced to walk back;  yet, in a series of crises in Oren’s first year as ambassador, the new appointee quickly realized that the president’s attitude to Israel was, as he first suspected, far more born of ideology than of practical statecraft.

This became first evident in early 2010 when Obama sought to reignite the moribund peace process by insisting that Netanyahu order a 10 month long moratorium on all construction in the West Bank.  Such a decision would be politically risky for the right wing prime minister for whom the political support of West Bank residents and leaders was crucial.  Nevertheless, members of the Obama Administration convinced the Israelis that a good will measure such as this would jump start peace talks, build trust between Netanyahu and Obama and bring the Palestinian leadership back to the table.

But quite the opposite happened.  Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas weaved and dodged for the entire length of those ten months, refusing to meet Netanyahu unless conditions, which would be clearly unacceptable to the Israeli leader ( such as pre-commitments over borders and the status of Jerusalem as well as the right of return 0f Palestinian refugees) were met. When the ten month moratorium expired, Abbas turned his back on the prospect of talks altogether and would not consider returning to the table without for a renewal of the moratorium.

And so developed a consistent pattern: Obama would demand Israeli concessions and when given, Abbas would merely pocket them and walk away, with no consequences whatsoever for his recalcitrance.  Abbas would go much further over the course of those four years, applying for member status at the United Nations as well as applying for status as a member of the International Criminal Court, giving the Palestinians standing to sue Israel for war crimes, none of which he coordinated with the White House.  And even more egregiously, the Palestinians made a gambit, in September, 2013  to have a State of Palestine  recognized by the Security Council of the United Nations – a direct repudiation of the Palestinians’ commitments under the 1993 Oslo Accords.

None of this seemed to faze Obama nor his advisers who ordered a pro forma veto of the measures at the United Nations, but elicited no significant public reprimand or  rebuke of the Palestinian leader. Which naturally caused Oren to ask himself how the President could allow himself to be consistently kicked in the teeth by Abbas and yet remain so publicly oblivious and forgiving of the Palestinian leader’s transparent contempt.

There was no greater evidence of the tectonic shift in the relations between Israel and the United States  than in  the intense private and public battle over the ongoing Iranian  negotiations. Although  Ally was published a month before the final agreement signed between the P5+1 ( the five permanent Security Council members plus Germany)  and the Iranian Republic in Vienna, Oren nevertheless details the painful confrontations between Obama and Netanyahu over Israel’s national security issues  and makes clear that Obama deliberately interfered in Israel plans to launch a military strike against Iranian nuclear facilities and consistently argued that negotiations were the surest path to Iranian nuclear deterrence.  In the end, he concludes, Obama seemed  far more concerned with the consequences of an Israeli strike than he was with the likelihood of Iran’s acquisition of nuclear weapons and that this has been the guiding spirit of his Iran strategy.

All of which begs the question regarding these confusing years – how did Obama’s statecraft, which placed such inordinate pressure upon its ally, the only democracy and stable polity in the Middle East,while more or less ignoring Palestinian malfeasance, advance America’s national interests? As the Arab Spring imploded and regimes increasingly hostile to the United States replaced long term allies in Egypt, Yemen and Iraq, Obama  and his Secretary of State John Kerry, seemed to become monomaniacal in their quest for a solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict   which proved only a mere side show to the real drama playing out in those countries.  The stark reality that the entire Middle East was fast falling prey to a barbaric brand of  Islamic fundamentalism seemed beyond them.

The tensions in the relationship should not, however, overshadow the more uplifting moments over the past seven years, such as when Obama reacted with immediate aid and concern after Israel suffered a catastrophic forest fire in 2011 and  when visiting  the Jewish state in 2013, delivered speeches which could have been lifted directly from the writings of  the fervent right wing Zionist leader Ze’ev Jabotinsky.

And this is not to mention the unparalleled cooperation which continues between Israeli and U.S. military and intelligence services –  reportedly more firmly set than at any time in recent history.

But the roller coaster ride which the author presents provides an alarming view of a White House which had arrogated to itself the right to assess its ally’s best interests, regardless of any input from the ally itself.  It represented a very dangerous, some might say catastrophic, descent into bickering, distrust and suspicion when one would have expected that the rise of  ISIS, the spread of Islamic fundamentalism and the prospect of a nuclear Iran, necessitated  the forging of even closer bonds.

Oren’s final chapter is titled ” Goodbye Ally” which  foreshadows a suggestion that a gulf between the two nations  has become so unbridgeable that further cooperation- at least on a diplomatic level -has become increasing problematic. However this is hardly his conclusion. The “goodbye” in the chapter heading refers to his own departure from his post rather than a permanent rupture between the two allies and the author goes to considerable lengths to point out the across-the-board support for Israel demonstrated in Congress as well as the generally favorable attitude towards the state among American citizens.

Yet for all this bubbly optimism, the reader is left with the discomfiting notion that the once impregnable alliance has suffered severe, although not fatal damage during the Obama years, with an administration which was given over to  the idee fixee ( not the first administration to believe it) of the Israel-Palestinian conflict as incontestably the root cause of instability in the Middle East. It paints the portrait  of a president whose confidence in his own intellect and powers of analysis  successfully rebuffed not only the opinion and advice of America’s friends and allies but the very facts on the ground.

Whatever the final judgement on Obama, the book provides a cautious warning to all statesmen – American, Israeli or other –  that they should deal with the world as they find it and not as they wish it to be. As Congress begins the debate on the Iran  deal in the second week of September that warning may carry a heady resonance.

Avi Davis is the President of the American Freedom Alliance and the editor of  The Intermediate Zone.

Netanyahu Flies into a Storm of Obama’s Making

By Avi Davis

As the time for Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to address a joint session of Congress rapidly approaches, the skies around him are beginning to darken in an ominous way.

Yesterday a report from a Kuwaiti paper alleged that some time in 2014 Netanyahu, in consultation with his general staff, had authorized a pre-emptive strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities for fear that the United States and Iran had concluded a secret agreement which would have compromised Israeli national security.  Yet when informed of the prospective assault, Barack Obama warned that the U.S. military would shoot the Israeli planes out of the sky if they so much as dared to cross into Jordanian airspace.

While the story is almost certainly false (the U.S. army or navy has had a very limited capacity to interdict any squadron over Jordanian airspace – or even more likely Saudi Arabian airspace  – since the complete withdrawal of troops from Iraq in 2011) , the fact that so many people registered their alarm that U.S. and Israeli pilots might be involved in a real military engagement against one another, only illustrates its believability.  Relations have apparently sunk so low that the United States government now appears to view the State of Israel itself as the most significant obstacle to peace in the Middle East.

Such a view of course makes a convenient detour around both Islamic State and al Qaeda, both of whom possess a far more serious claim to that title.  Netanyahu might then be forgiven for a little exasperation with the U.S. President and his administration  – who do not seem to be responding to Israeli intelligence nor its analysis of the situation on the ground.

But the Israeli prime minister knows that he is dealing with an amateur in foreign relations, a leader who has demonstrated time and again a failed grasp of statecraft and whose stubbornness, even in the face of the most exigent facts, blinds him to the consequences of his actions and the catastrophic impact that they might have on the region.

Throwing caution to the wind is not a luxury afforded a tiny state like Israel, surrounded by hostile forces seeking its destruction.  But Netanyahu is not coming to Washington to represent just his own nation.   When he stands before the two house of Congress on Tuesday, he will, sotto voce, also be representing the governments of Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia , Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates, all of whom have witnessed the United States’ abandonment of leadership in the region and its apparent willingness to appease a determined Iran, glowing with the satisfaction of having gulled and outsmarted the Americans.

For Netanyahu the gambit to address Congress, at the risk of raising the ire of the Obama administration, is a supremely dangerous one; Obama still has now a little less than two years left in office and during that time there are many measures he can take to either punish Israel or else continue to endanger Israeli security – a perilous position in which to be in, considering that Iran’s military advisers now sit virtually on Israel’s very doorstep on the slopes of the Golan Heights.

Democratic supporters of Israel in Congress, alarmed by the widening rift, have urged the Israeli prime minister to cancel the appearance.   After all, does he not know that Obama has repeatedly stated over the years that he would not allow Iran to acquire nuclear weapons ( recycling those very words at a press conference with David Cameron not three weeks ago)? And hasn’t Obama just as often stated the United States’ commitment to the defense of Israel  – implying that it would back that commitment with military assistance – if not force – if necessary?

Why is he doing it then?

The first reason is that the negotiations, conducted in camera in Geneva, have not involved the Israelis at all.   The country most threatened by Iranian aggression – in fact the one singled out repeatedly by the theocratic regime for annihilation, has also been the one not even consulted about the outcome of the talks.  The Israelis are well aware that this is no oversight.  And it must surely invoke the memory of the Czechs who were not invited to join the British, French and Italian leaders at their negotiations with Hitler at his Berchtesgarden retreat in September, 1938.  The Czechs were handed a fait accompli and thereafter completely abandoned by the Allies – forced to surrender a sizeable chunk of their territory while dismantling their formidable defenses.

And while drifting down memory lane, the Israeli leaders are no doubt recalling the events of November, 1956 and May, 1967.

On November 5, 1956, President Dwight Eisenhower, enraged by the surprise joint, coordinated attack by British, French and Israeli troops on the Suez Canal – just recently nationalized by the Egyptian dictator Gamal Nasser, issued an ultimatum to the victorious armies – immediate withdrawal or face a Security Council denunciation at the United Nations.  The swift and sweeping conquest of the vast Sinai peninsula by the Israel Defense Forces relieved the country of a direct threat in the south from cross border fedayeen raids and Egyptian military insurgents and the Israelis were not about to give it up without something in return.  Eisenhower decided to give them a guarantee – that in the event of a future attack by Egypt in the south, an international  force would be stationed from now on in to help defend  the southern border.

Fast forward eleven years and Nasser was seen again threatening Israeli national security, this time mobilizing troops in the Sinai Peninsula and sabre rattling, in blood curdling national speeches, for the annihilation of the Jewish state.  Israel, pressed on three borders by hostile armies made urgent entreaties to President Lyndon Johnson, pointing to the guarantees offered by the Eisenhower administration.  Johnson hesitated, claiming his staff could not find the document but promising to organize an international flotilla to break the blockade of the Gulf of Aqaba imposed by Nasser’s navy.  Weeks went by and no such flotilla appeared. Frustrated and alarmed, the government of Levi Eshkol realized it was truly alone – the U.S. guarantees were not worth the paper they were written on.  With nothing else to lose he authorized a pre-emptive strike on the Egyptian air force, a mission which was ultimately so staggeringly successful that it essentially determined the outcome of the war –  concluded in Israel’s favor within six days.

This history lesson can surely not be lost on the current Israeli leadership.  They see the writing on the wall – a President who takes their security concerns with a passive non-chalance; who believes that Iran, for all its 30 years of fostering terrorism and instability in the Middle East, can be transformed overnight into a partner for peace; a leader who cannot grasp that the ideological engine which fuels the nuclear ambitions of the Mullahs in Tehran is the same motor spinning in the minds of al Qaeda and ISIS.

Benjamin Netanyahu, a far more savvy and focused strategist than the American president, knows all of this and knows the limited time the Israelis now have to make to make their arguments- if not to the U.S. president who has ceased to listen, then at least to the American people through their representatives in Congress.

In doing so, Netanyahu will be making the case that the quashing of Iran’s nuclear ambitions is not just an Israeli interest, nor just an American interest – but an interest of the world community which must combine to recognize the most significant threat to world peace since the end of the Cold War and deal with in an unequivocal and final manner.

Avi Davis is the President of the American Freedom Alliance in Los Angeles and the editor of The Intermediate Zone.

A Child Born in Israel

By Avi Davis

In July, 1923, a 20-year-old Polish Jew named David Czmielewski and his older brother Yitzhak stepped ashore at the Port of Jaffa determined to help build the Land of Israel. Economic opportunities however were sparse and he found it hard to make a living. Despondent, he was forced to leave five years later. Yet he never gave up the hope of one day returning.

David Czmielewski thereafter traveled to Australia and became David Davis. He was my grandfather.

His dream, never quite realized in his own lifetime, nevertheless transferred through the generations to his son and several of his grandchildren who all established homes in the State of Israel. Today he has twelve great-grandchildren living in the land. Three great-grandsons have served or are serving in the IDF. One is about to enter training in the Golani Brigade and a fifth has been selected as a candidate for a pilot training course in the Israeli Air Force.

Last week, his first great-great grandchild, Shira Perlmuter, was born in Petach Tikva to my niece Avital Perlmuter(nee Davis) and her husband Sagi. She represents the fifth generation of the Davis/ Czmielewski family in the land of Israel.

She is a beautiful, living testament to Jewish determination and commitment. May she live a long, happy, prosperous life and may she be joyously blessed with many children of her own.

 

The Happy Relationship Between Benjamin Netanyahu and the U.S. Congress

By Avi Davis

As love affairs go, there could not be one more honeyed than that between the State of Israel and the United States Congress.

For decades, through one Administration after another, Israel has been able to count on Congressional backing no matter what its alleged sins. Thus, when Israel hit Iraq’s nuclear reactor in Osirak in 1981, and severe condemnation followed from the Reagan White House, there was not even a squeak of denunciation from Congress.  When the the George H.W. Bush Administration in 1990 refused to follow through with promised loan guarantees in protest of continued Israeli settlement building in the West Bank, outrage in Congress forced the White House to back down;  When George W. Bush’s Secretary  of State Condeeleza Rice began pressuring Israeli leaders to return to negotiations, Congressional counter pressure ensured that her efforts were weakened.

 

Netanyahu, who has served in office for almost exactly the same length of time as Obama himself, has endured the testiest relationship of any Israeli prime minister with a sitting U.S. President.

The Obama Administration has repeatedly displayed its disdain for the Israeli leader, citing his intransigence on peace negotiations with the Palestinian Authority and picking fights over trivial matters such as housing developments in Jerusalem proper.   Relations hit a low most notably in 2010 when, during a visit to the White House, the Israeli prime minister was deliberately snubbed as he sat alone with his advisers in the West Wing while Obama abruptly departed their meeting to eat dinner with his family.  As recently as this summer, when Israel was engaged in Operation Cast Lead in Gaza to silence the rocket attacks pouring down on its population, Obama and Netanyahu exchanged harsh words with one another and the Administration delayed an Israeli request for replacement of spare parts for its weaponry while also almost certainly instructing the FAA to ban, for a short while, commercial flights to Tel Aviv.

It is little wonder then that at this nadir of relations between the State of Israel and the U.S. Administration, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, John Boehner,  has invited Benjamin Netanyahu to address a joint session of both houses of Congress?

In response to the Boehner invitation, the Obama Administration stated that there would be no scheduled meeting between the two leaders during the prime minister’s Washington trip, having previously indicated that protocol had been breached since planning for such visits is traditionally conducted through the White House alone and not through other branches of government.

So with a deep freeze crystallizing on the already frosty relationship, the two questions which might be asked are: why did Boehner invite Netanyahu now to speak to Congress?; And what does Netanyahu hope to achieve by his appearance?

The answer to the first question probably has as much to to do with the exercise of political muscle for Boehner as it does with the realities of Israel’s geopolitical challenges.   The sweeping victory of the GOP in November’s Congressional elections, gave notice to the White House that Republican control of both houses of Congress would signal a shift in power that the GOP would not hesitate to exercise when it felt the time appropriate.    That time might be now as negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program become continuously extended.  The recent joint press conference of the President with British prime minister David Cameron in which the two leaders insisted that Congress not impose new sanctions during on-going talks has been greeted in Congress with frustration and a degree of contempt. In fact  Robert Menendez, the Democratic co-sponsor of a bill to impose those additional sanctions on Iran  has labeled the President’s as “sounding like talking points that come straight of Tehran. ”

The lack of seriousness with which the Obama Administration views the Iranian nuclear threat was on full display when the President stated in the same press conference that the talks had less than a 50% chance of succeeding.  This was of course another way of stating his belief that negotiations are actually bound to fail.  If so, what contingency plans is the President offering should  negotiations come to nothing?   He refuses to say or even address the issue.

Congressional leaders have taken this  as evidence of an emerging policy of appeasement which they  justifiably view with alarm.  Many, even in his own party, see a President out  of touch and out to lunch (or out to dinner in the case of Netanyahu) on foreign policy, living, as Daniel Henniger  has commented in the Wall Street Journal, on his own private fantasy island, marooned from the pressing realities of a dangerous world.   Although the President has stated that he is resolved that Iran will never obtain a nuclear weapon, what he is really saying  is that it will not obtain such a weapon on his watch – a very different thing.

In the meantime, Benjamin Netanyahu has accepted Boehner’s invitation and will speak before a joint session of Congress on March 3rd.

With an approaching national election in Israel on March 17,, many have speculated that Netanyahu engineered the invitation himself in the hope of boosting his political fortunes in his own country.  However that does not entirely square with Israel’s pressing existential concerns about the Iranian menace – which are reflected across Israel’s political spectrum.  For years Netanyahu has issued public warnings – before joint sessions of Congress and at the United Nations – about Iran’s nuclear arms program, emphasizing not only how it threatens Israel’s security, but how it challenges world peace.  The Israelis have been insistent on a tough sanctions regime but have equally insisted that the West must be united in confronting the Iranian regime, (by force,if necessary)  since that regime has been, for decades, a sponsor of international terrorism and whose leaders have repeatedly threatened not just Israel but neighboring states.

It is obvious that Netanyahu has abandoned any hope that Obama will come to view the threat of a nuclear Iran as seriously as either he or as Israelis in general do.  He recognizes, as many Israeli prime ministers have before him, that Presidents come and go but Congressmen can retain their seats for multiple terms.  He also understands the shift in power in Washington DC as the GOP gears up for a full frontal assault on the Obama agenda and seeks to expose the President’s weak grasp of foreign policy.  The Israeli prime minister’s transparent attempt to conduct an end run around the presidency and speak directly to those whom he regards as true friends of the State about an issue central to its physical survival, should not be seen as a cynical electoral calculation but as a responsible act of statecraft, that is extremely time sensitive.

In this way he will be speaking not just to the representatives of the American people but just as surely to the next American president – a man or woman whom he hopes will have a much broader  and more incisive understanding of the geopolitical threats facing both the United States and Israel – and with a greater political will to act than the current resident in the White House.

Avi Davis is the President of the American Freedom Alliance and the editor of The Intermediate Zone 

 

 

Ominous Rumblings in Israel’s North

by Avi Davis

When Iranian Brig. Gen. Mohammad Ali Allahdadi  was killed on the Syrian -Israeli border on Sunday, along with six Hezbollah operatives, the news faded quickly.  Military deaths in the Middle East are, after all, a dime a dozen in these times, so why would Allahdadi’s make any difference?

The answer might be that Allahdadi was no ordinary Iranian general. He was one of the highest ranking and longest serving military men in the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.

But it was the identity of one of the six Hezbollah operatives that may have had an even deeper impact.

The attack also killed 20-year-old Jihad Mughniyeh, a low-ranking Hezbollah fighter whose father, Imad Mughniyeh ( aka The Engineer) had been responsible for multiple bombings and suicide attacks in Israel for over 20 years before his assassination in a Damascus car bombing in 2008.

The elder Mughniyeh is venerated as one of the legendary fighters in Palestinian and Hezbollah hagiography.  Posters of his image can be found everywhere in the West Bank, Gaza and Southern Lebanon.

It perhaps explains why the junior Mughniyeh was buried with such fanfare when his funeral procession passed through Hezbollah-controlled territory south of Beirut on Monday.

Hezbollah and Iran have both vowed a quick and painful response to the Israeli attack with representatives quoted as declaring the attack a deliberate provocation.

Since hostilities ended between Israel and Hezbollah in 2006  Israel’s  northern border with Lebanon has been relatively quiet. But that belies the devastating fire power buried by Israel’s most implacable enemy beneath the soils of the Litani watershed.

For in Lebanon, the Israeli army is faced with the prospect of 100,000 long-range rockets   – far more accurate and effective than the missiles used by Hamas in its confrontation with Israel over the summer and far more likely to cause damage to life and property than the former offensive.

Hezbollah is therefore the Hamas threat multiplied tenfold.

The 2006 conflict is believed to have killed at least 1,191–1,300 Lebanese people and 165 Israelis. It severely damaged Lebanese civil infrastructure, and temporarily displaced approximately one million Lebanese and 300,000–500,000 Israelis.

During that war, Hezbollah fired close to 4,200 rockets at a rate of more than 100 per day, unprecedented in any military confrontation since the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s.

About 95% of these were 122 mm (4.8 in)  Katyusha artillery rockets which carried warheads up to 30 kg (66 Ib) and had a range of up to 19 miles. A minor percentage (22%) of these rockets hit cities and built-up areas across northern Israel, while the remainder hit open areas. The attacks in that conflict included the Fajr-3 and Ra’ad 1 rockets both liquid-fuel missiles developed by Iran. It is now known that Hezbollah possesses the far more advanced  Fajr-3 and Fajr-5, with ranges of 27 and 45 miles; and a huge quantity of simpler 107mm and 122mm rockets with ranges up to 12 miles. These rockets are capable of striking many cities in northern Israel, such as Haifa, Tiberias, Afula, Nahariya, and Safed. In addition, Hezbollah has a cache of sophisticated antiaircraft and antiship cruise missiles which can significantly impede reconnaissance and deter attack.

This is not to mention the labyrinthine network of tunnels and deep underground bunkers Hezbollah has been constructing in the eight years since its last encounter with the IDF.  The IDF believes it likely that tunnels, extending for several kilometers, have been burrowed deep into Israeli territory allowing a rapid strike force to mimic the planned Hamas Jewish New Year attack on Israeli settlements in the south. The rolling topography of the north is of course of no benefit to a potential large-scale attack, but the capture of even a handful of IDF soldiers or civilians will become a great boon to the Hezbollah war effort.

To state that the recent military confrontations between Israel and the terrorist groups who occupy territory adjacent to it are mere proxy wars between Iran and the Jewish State is to underline the obvious but still bears repeating. Iran’s geopolitical interests lie in establishing a military hegemony of the region, intimidating much lesser military powers — Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and Jordan — into effective neutrality, so as to free itself to deal with its only serious challenger to its regional supremacy. The ongoing development of Iran’s nuclear arsenal  — essentially unimpeded by negotiations with the West — acts as a clever strategic wedge for the theocratic regime which allows it to build its deterrent capabilities while intimidating its neighbors into quiescence. Seen in this light, Hamas’ recent confrontation with Israel may have been guided by Iran as a means of deflecting attention from its drive for status as a nuclear power and avoiding an eventual showdown with Israel. After all, Israel will be in no mood for another military confrontation so soon after its recent engagement with Gaza.

But if Hezbollah, the far greater asset, remains so useful to the Iranians, why wasn’t it then unleashed to wreak havoc on Israel’s northern border while hostilities ensued with Hamas in the south?

The answer may lie in the prospect of an imminent direct military confrontation between Israel and Iran. While Israel’s plans to bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities are cloaked in ambiguity, most Israeli leaders are resigned to the fact that they will have to act unilaterally and decisively to severely retard, if not eliminate, Iran’s emerging nuclear clout. In the event of a strike against Iran, and threat to their own power, the mullahs may come to rely on Hezbollah’s arsenal’s retaliatory capabilities and perhaps even believe it acts as a significant deterrent against such an eventual attack.

Yet the Iranian strategy is now deeply complicated by the destabilization of both Syria and Iraq. The growing strength of ISIS in Iraq and its threat to the Baathist regime in Syria has presented a new challenge to a key Iranian ally in Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, who has proved himself indispensable to the fulfillment of Iranian objectives regarding Israel. If Assad in Syria falls, then the Iranian hold on Southern Lebanon and its ability to resupply its proxy Hezbollah is compromised. Alarmingly for the Iranians, the Lebanese Republic itself may now have come into play with ISIS’ taking of the Syrian/ Lebanon border town of Arsal on August 4th. Hezbollah may well have its hands full in the coming months not only attempting to reinforce Assad in Syria, but keeping ISIS from control of Northern Lebanon.

Signs of a strange realignment of interests and forces in the Middle East are therefore evident. It should surprise no one that the Israelis have been engaged in secret negotiations with the Saudis for years over use of Saudi airspace in the event of an Israeli strike on Iran; Additionally, the failure of any of the moderate Arab states to rise in support of Hamas’s recent actions (in fact there were outright condemnations in both the Egyptian and Saudi press) is another signal of a growing rapprochement between Israel and some of its former enemies.

Predicting future conflicts in the foggy and endlessly complicated Middle East is a risky business, to be sure, but a clearer picture may now be emerging with Israeli interests aligning with those of Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Egypt — and perhaps even Lebanon itself — in some kind of awkward but coordinated confrontation with Iran.  In this confrontation, Israel may well need to prepare itself for a neutralizing, preemptive strike on Hezbollah’s military installations in Southern Lebanon — just as the IAF is winging its way over Riyadh and into Iranian airspace.

Avi Davis is the President of the American Freedom Alliance and the Editor of  The Intermediate Zone

 

The BDS War Against Israel: A Review

by Avi Davis

Authors: Jed Babbin and Herbert London

Paperback: 98 pages

Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform; 1 edition

Publication Date:  May 28, 2014

Review Date:  January 14, 2015

The most revealing moment in Jed Babbin and Herbert London’s exposé of the BDS movement comes near the middle of the book, when the authors quote Omar Baghouti, founder and director of Boycott, Sanctions and Divestment Movement – the international effort to isolate Israel economically.  Claiming that his organization accepts Israel’s right to exist but is only focused on applying enough pressure  so that it abandons what it refers to as ‘occupied Palestinian territory’, Barghouti makes clear that even if Israel retreats entirely from the West Bank, the BDS movement will continue on:

“Even if the Israelis remove all their settlements and dismantle their military installations and return to the 1967 borders, the BDS movement will continue because there will still be 5 million  Palestinian refugees who are prevented from returning to their homes.”

With such a statement this Palestinian celebrity makes clear that the Boycott Divestment  and Sanctions Movement is not, as its literature and website declare, concerned with just forcing the State of Israel to give up the occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem to allow a State of Palestine to come into existence.  Rather it is about the destruction of the Jewish state itself since Bargouti and his international claque are well aware that permitting 5 million or so Palestinian refugees to take up residence in Israel proper can lead to nothing but the tilting of the demographic balance in the Palestinians’ favor.

This is the dirty little secret that such fellow travelers as Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters and actresses Emma Thompson and Jane Fonda all wish to hide from you:  they believe that Israel as a Jewish state is illegitimate and should not exist.  Every other statement – about Palestinian rights, justice for the refugees, claims of apartheid like conditions in the West Bank – are all smoke and mirrors to disguise the true agenda behind this malicious movement and its perfervid attempts to drive a wedge between Israel and the rest of the civilized world.

The State of Israel had in fact experienced a boycott movement even before its creation in 1948.  Arab boycotts have existed since the 1920s, aimed at preventing Jewish immigration to what was then Palestine.     Soon after the conclusion of Israel’s War of Independence in January 1949, the Arab League called for a boycott of any dealings of Arab nations with the Israeli government or Israeli civilians; a restriction of any non-Arab corporation or individual who does business with Israel and a prohibition of any Arab League member and its nationals who deal with a company who deals with another company that does business with Israel.

Almost from the beginning the Arab League boycott was a non-starter as within a few years it would have essentially required the 22 Arab nations to stop doing business with the rest of the world.   Today that boycott, still officially in effect, is regarded as a joke since nearly all the Arab countries have found a way to circumvent it.

But the new Boycott, Divestment and Sanction movement is not a joke and in the course of its ten years of operation has done real damage – if not to Israel’s booming economy, then to its international reputation.  Springing from the U.N.  Tehran Conference on Racism and the Word Conference Against Racism in Durban, South Africa in September, 2001  several hundred NGOs – such as Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, Oxfam and Doctors without Borders convened to draft a universal declaration against racism.  The latter conference spiraled into an ugly hatefest against Israel – involving  the resuscitation of anti-Semitic canards.   Israel and the United States stormed out in protest.

But the die was cast and being located in South Africa, the locus of so much of the left’s boycott efforts in the 1970s and 80s, the conference provided a perfect opportunity to zero in on what was alleged to be the  apartheid regime of Israel and its brutal handling of Palestinians.  Accusing Israel of having perpetrated war crimes, genocide and ethnic cleansing, while having also  instituted illegal blockades and partition barriers which , it was claimed, vitiate against international law, the NGOs successfully launched a world wide campaign aimed first at college campuses around the world  and then at major corporations and then governments.

 

To date the movement has had almost no visible  effect on Israel’s trade relations with the rest of the world.  A Knesset report, issued last week, indicated that the minimal impact was due to Israel’s growing high tech ties with countries and corporations around the world, who see no utility in the effort to interfere with Israel’s economic progress:

“So far, the attempts to boycott Israel have not hurt the Israeli economy on the macro scale. … The boycotts are able to hurt largely the end products of certain Israeli brands. However, since the majority of Israeli exports are intermediate goods, there has not been significant harm done to them,” the report said.

However on another level it is success is quite impressive. Its ability to win the support of certain high profile journalists, trade unions, academics, leading actors, actresses and rock stars has given the movement a luster it clearly does not deserve..  These groups and individuals  have been drawn to BDS’ anti-colonial message and its supposed platform for the underdog  – ignoring of course the lies upon which the movement was established as well as the continuing incitement to violence encouraged by Palestinian leaders and terrorist operatives.

Yet, the movement has succeeded in misleading many  influential journalists such as world renown physicist Stephen Hawking and New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman into believing that BDS is, simply, an “Intifada propelled by non-violent resistance and economic boycott, seeking to advance a solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.” However, far from offering solutions, the movement has only served to extend and intensify the conflict as it has encouraged Hamas’ three violent wars with Israel over the past ten years and has justified Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’ continuing rejection of any accommodation with Israel.  In the meantime it has demonstrated its complementarity with Palestinian terror, its acceptance of Iranian threats to destroy Israel and the continued Arab resentment of Israel’s prosperity.

As such, BDS is merely a recent variant of centuries -old anti-Jewish boycotts that the Arab powers and other nations once embraced well before the reestablishment of Jewish sovereignty in 1948.  And in this way it ties directly into traditional antisemitic tropes providing a seamless connection between Tzarist disinformation efforts, Nazi propaganda and the present day campaigns aimed at thedelegitimization of the Jewish state.

Authors Babbin and London provide a fitting exposé of this malign movement, indicating how it is funded, who are its collaborators and where and why it succeeds or fails.

The picture which ultimately emerges is of a cadre of vengeful ideaologues, who hate the West as much as they hate the State of Israel and would be pleased to see both disappear.

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Avi Davis is the President of the American Freedom Alliance and the editor of the Intermediate Zone.

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Palestinians Have the U.S. To Thank for their International Stature

by Avi Davis

A kleptocratic, corrupt, racist, terrorist-sponsoring political organization, led by liars and thieves, feels sufficiently emboldened to demand of the U.N. Security Council recognition of its sovereignty – and almost succeeds.

How did we get here?

The Palestinian leadership submission of a resolution to the U.N. Security Council on December 30th to recognize the State of Palestine was an act of hubris that makes  Vladmir Putin’s interference in the Ukraine look like small potatoes. And doomed though it was, the fact that the Palestinians had the temerity to take such action, in violation of international commitments they have made, in abdication of their responsibility to negotiate all final matters of the disposition of the West Bank territories in good faith with the State of Israel, is an indication of how woefully removed the world has become from its commitment to fairness. 

Blame for this atrocious condition can be meted out to many, but lets start with the United States itself.

It is true that the U.S.worked tirelessly to defeat the U.N. resolution and was able to bring both Nigeria (who has traditionally voted against Israel on the Security Council) and Rwanda into abstention on the vote, ultimately defeating the measure on December 31st.   But that does not excuse its own conduct over the past 25 years in paying the PLO and its political embodiment, the Palestinian Authority, the virtual recognition of a sovereign state – a designation it has not earned and whose continued stature as a respected political institution only gives it more leverage to destroy what is left of the peace process.

It should never be forgotten that the Palestinian Authority was a creature of the Oslo Peace Process;  it was formed from the bones of  the PLO – a terrorist organization – to provide a beneficent face of Palestinian intentions to the world – one in which its leader, Yasser Arafat, a life long committed terrorist, would transform into a statesman. The idea was that if Arafat was given this badge of respectability he would take his statesmanship role seriously and would forswear violence for the sake of negotiation.  If it worked in Ireland, then why not in the Middle East?

It was the first mistake. Arafat never lived up to any of his commitments and then turned a blind eye to terrorism from within his own ranks.  Then in the year 2000, when he walked out of the Camp David peace talks between himself and Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak, he decided to renounce statesmanship altogether in a return to terrorism.  For four years he led a hopeless insurrection against the Israelis, which ended with thousands of Palestinians either dead or injured  and with himself a virtual prisoner in his Ramallah compound.   All the while he insisted that he had no control over the insurrection he had masterminded and ruthlessly directed.

Almost all of this was known to the presidents, secretaries of state and associated political leaders in the George H.W. Bush, Clinton and George W. Bush administrations.  Yet Clinton entertained Arafat as his guest at the White House for seven years a record 18 times, according him the status of a Head of State. Arafat took the dignity that this lent him to the bank – winning the open arms and financial support of the Europeans and many African and Asian nations.

The U.S. government under Clinton took an active part in lending technical assistance in building the institutions of the Palestinian Authority. On March 30, 1994, Clinton ordered the allocation of   $4,000,000 for the construction of the Palestinian police and on March 16, 1995 ordered additional $ 5,000,000 to be allocated towards the same purpose. In July 1995, US Congress passed the Middle East Peace Facilitation Act of 1995, which authorized the President to withhold funds from the Palestinian Authority in cases of what it viewed as incompliance with commitments made to the Israeli government under the Oslo Agreement. It was never invoked.

In December 1998, Clinton became the first U.S. President to visit the Palestinian Authority.

George W. Bush succeeding to office in 2001, wisely determined that nothing good could come from dealing with Arafat and refused to even meet with him – in the White House or anywhere else.

However, following Arafat’s death in November 2004, the new Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas became a regular visitor to the White House.   Bush now referred to him in official communications as “President” instead of “Chairman”, as was done with Arafat.  Abbas visited the White House while receiving the honors of a head of state on six different occasions.

 

 

But Bush went further in his second term. He allowed his Secretary of State, Condoleeza Rice, to begin extensive discussions with Abbas, as the Administration developed an increasingly impatient attitude with the Israelis and an increasingly acquiescent one with the Palestinians. Nothing was done to condemn Abbas’ continued violations of the PLO’s commitment under the Oslo Accord

The Obama Administration has outdone both of the previous administrations in its obsequious coddling of Mahmoud Abbas and his Palestinian mafia.  Its heavy handed approach to Israel while requiring nothing of the Palestinians in terms of compromise or fulfillment of prior obligations has been a mark of shame for the administration. Repeated condemnations of Israeli building policy while failing to recognize that Abbas will not even concede even a very basic proposition upon which successful negotiations depend  – the recognition of Israel as a Jewish state –  has led to an entirely lopsided Middle East policy which has leaned heavily on Israel and left the Palestinians alone to do as they wished.    This, once again, only served to undeservedly enhance the stature of the Palestinians and has emboldened them to take measures and advance policies which are entirely at odds with American positions.

 

The Palestinian’s second drive for a U.N. Security Council resolution recognizing an independent State of Palestine has failed but that does not mean that the Palestinians are likely to be drawn back into the orbit of the United States. To the contrary, the day on which the resolution failed, the Palestinians were already making application to the International Criminal Court to sign the Rome Statute which would bring the Palestinians within the court’s jurisdiction and open up Israeli political and military leaders to possible indictment under international law.  Once again the Obama Administration will need to use its leverage to defeat this outrageous violation of previous Palestinian commitments.

But will it apply any real muscle?

The State Department on Wednesday condemned the Palestinian Authority for signing the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court,claiming that it was “deeply troubled”  and that the Palestinian move was “counterproductive” and  that it “badly damages the atmosphere with the very people with whom they ultimately need to make peace.”

When is that ‘deeply troubled ‘sentiment going to translate into real consequences for the Palestinians?  When is the Obama Administration going to realize that the United States has raised a wayward child which has now turned against its parent and that funding it and providing it diplomatic cover is tantamount to enablement?    It should be recognized that Mahmoud Abbas’ Palestinian Authority is no different in temperament or character to Arafat’s version of the same entity and has transformed into just another another rogue regime, opposed to the United States and U.S. national  interests.

Mahmoud Abbas has led the U.S. in a clever dance for a decade, feigning interest in an accommodation with Israel while refusing to engage in serious negotiations.  It is time for the U.S. to make the Palestinians recognize that there is a price to be paid for defying the world’s only super power. Close the PLO offices in Washington D.C.; make future diplomatic recognition of the Palestinian Authority dependent on compliance with its internationally sanctioned agreements; tie all future funding to a proper accounting of Palestinian Authority finances and stop receiving Mahmoud Abbas in Washington D.C. as if he is a head of State, rather than the kleptocrat we know him to be.

These measures will give the Palestinian leaders the jolt they deserve and go some way to bringing them into line with U.S. policy and U.S. national interests.

 

Avi Davis is the President of the American Freedom Alliance and the editor of the Intermediate Zone

This editorial first appeared in The American Thinker on January 3rd, 2015

 

 

The Israeli Solution by Caroline Glick: A Review

THE ISRAELI SOLUTION: A ONE STATE PLAN FOR PEACE IN THE MIDDLE EAST  by Caroline Glick

Publisher:  Crown Forum (2014)

260 pages

History changed on June 24, 2002.  On that day, President George W. Bush, who for the first eighteen months in office had not established a clear policy regarding the Israel- Palestinian conflict, announced his support for a two state solution.  Couching his commitment to this new policy in guarded terms, Bush insisted that U.S. recognition of a Palestinian state would be dependent on the latter’s renunciation of terrorism, the cessation of incitement against the Jewish state and its willingness to recognize Israel as entitled to live within secure borders according to  U.N. Resolution 242.

As a statement of U.S. intent it was not saying much. The Palestinians at that stage were still in the midst of a three year insurrection against Israel in which thousands of men, women and children on both sides would die.  Any trust generated by the years of negotiation between Israel, the U.S, and the Palestinians had been dissipated in the wake of massive suicide attacks in Israel’s major population centers and reprisals by the IDF.   Bush was also quite clear at the time that he had no intention of rehabilitating Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat as a negotiating partner.   In fact his announcement on June 24th was an attempt to sidestep Arafat altogether and speak directly to the Palestinian people.  Arafat’s role, as the course of events unfolded, would not be relevant anyway.  for the next two years he would remain a virtual prisoner in his Ramallah compound and within two and half years would be dead from AIDS.

But the announcement was deeply significant.  Until that time no U.S. President had gone on record as having accepted the two state solution as the ultimate goal of Israel-Palestinian negotiations.  The 1979 Camp David Peace Accords had been silent on the issue; so too had the 1993 Oslo Accords.  Although other Western leaders had been strident in support for the idea, for most of the U.S. leadership it remained a taboo topic.

No longer.  Now the sin qua non of any projected agreement between Israel and the Palestinians is the establishment of a second state to exist between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.  The idea of Palestinian statehood has become so ingrained in the thinking of  politicians, media commentators and editorialists worldwide, that mentioning any other kind of option is tantamount to lunacy.

But, as Jerusalem Post columnist Caroline Glick argues forcefully in The Israeli Solution, the entire notion of a Palestinian state has foundered on the facts of Palestinian malfeasance and the reality that the Palestinians do not so much want their own state as the elimination of another.  Her book is a long catalog of failed expectations on the part of successive U.S administrations and European governments who have been unable to understand or anticipate the dynamics of the Middle East conflict and continue to walk down a path that has only brought greater violence and hatred to the region.

What if the policy of support for a two state solution, given its abject failure, was dropped and a new plan encouraged?  What if, instead of encouraging Palestinian rejectionism and reversion to terrorism by holding out the carrot of statehood, the Israelis took matters into their own  hands and resolved the issue by simply annexing Judea and Samaria?  It is not a new idea , of course, and has been mooted as the only solution to the conflict by members of  the Israeli right for at least two generations.  But never has the argument been made in such a rational and dispassionate manner  – and the the arguments that Ms. Glick presents are well worth examining.

From Israel’s point of view the extension of Israeli law to the territories is absolutely essential for its future security.  Without military control of the Jordan Valley and the Samarian highlands Palestinian terrorists can command the entire Israeli hinterland and can shoot down any incoming plane to Ben Gurion Airport.  Any invading army, passing through the undefended roads of  the Jordan Valley to Jerusalem would have clear access to Israel’s capital giving its defenders little chance for preparation against assault.   The entire Sharon Plain – the locus of the major groupings of the Israeli population, would be open to bombardment.

But this is only one consideration for the sagacity of annexation.  The Palestinians themselves  would benefit if the kleptocratic, oppressive Palestinian Authority was removed and Israeli governance – with its democratic rights and benefits, could be installed.  The counter argument, that Palestinians themselves would never accept living under Israeli rule is dismissed by Glick as a chimera.  She provides ample evidence, through opinion polls and the actual migration records  among the Palestinians, that they, by a wide majority, actually admire Israeli democracy and envy their Arab cousins who are Israeli citizens.  And it is true enough.  Repeated polls of East Jerusalem’s Arab population returns consistent preferences to remain governed by Israel rather than by a future Palestinian regime.

The great bugaboo in this argument – the one for which many Israeli leftists and advocates of the two state notion desperately reach when the word ‘annexation’ is mentioned, concerns the demographic time bomb.  The argument goes that the growth of the Palestinian population is so great that within a generation in such a unified state it will emerge as no longer the 20% minority but as a  51% majority  and  would thereby enabled to vote the Jewish state out of existence.  To counter this argument Ms. Glick relies on the ground breaking work of the America-Israel Demographic Research Group (AIDRG) which eight years ago smashed the popularly accepted notion that Arabs would soon outnumber Jews in the territory between the Jordan and the Mediterranean.   The basis for these negative projections, the AIDRG reports argue, are Palestinian census numbers from the late 90s which were found to be both fabricated and inflated. The Palestinian numbers and projections also did not take account of the drastic drop in the Palestinian birth rate ( 2.0 compared to the Israeli 2. 6), the continued emigration of Palestinians, (departing because of an oppressive Palestinian regime) and the booming prosperity of Israel which has provided an economic climate in which Israeli parents want to have children. All told, the AIDRG claims, there will be a two-thirds Jewish majority, even in the event of an annexation, which will allow Israel to maintain demographic dominance over its territory.

What then of world reaction when and if such an annexation occurs?  This would clearly be one of the most troubling results of a would-be incorporation of Judea and Samaria within Israel proper.  Ms. Glick also deals deftly with this problem.  The surrounding Arab nations, caught up in their own upheavals and battling economic decline, the rise of ISIS  and the growing threat of a nuclear Iran would voice protests but would  do nothing – either because they are too weak militarily or because they would be glad to be done with the Palestinian problem, which has become as much as a millstone around their necks as it has been a wedge to use against Israel.   The United States could well threaten to sanction Israel in the U.N. and withdraw important diplomatic coverage – but only in the short term. The U.S – Israel economic partnership is so strong and formidable and support for Israel in both Congress and among the American people in general so unswerving, that any U.S. administration would have to think twice about the isolation of Israel.

The real problem might come from the Europeans who have staged a decades long diplomatic assault against the Jewish state in an attempt to weaken and delegitimize it.   Ms. Glick believes that the Europeans will also come around to seeing the one state solution as the only way forward for the Middle East as they find themselves having to deal forcefully with their own restive Arab populations who refuse to integrate and now seek separation.   Tied to Israel economically – and dependent to a certain extent on Israeli technology, Europe won’t be able to afford economic sanctions and in the event they are pushed through, Israel can weather the storm by pivoting from Europe, its second largest trading partner to the growing markets in India and China.

In its overall sanguine and perhaps overly simplistic approach to the matter of annexation, Ms. Glick goes to great lengths to stress that this is not the easiest of paths for Israel to undertake.

Yet what she neglects to address is the vehemence with which the Israeli left – made up of secularists, academics, authors and journalists, will greet such a development.  It could be said that there is a greater demand for an independent Palestinian state in the salons and streets of Tel Aviv than there is in Ramallah and that it has become such a sacred cause for this segment of the Israeli population that it rivals Judaism itself as the State religion.  To dislodge this cherished article of faith from the breasts of these elites is not as simple as passing legislation one day and moving the IDF in the next.  One can imagine massive civil disobedience and internal strife in Israel which could last years.  In addition, lets not forget the fallout in other parts of the world.   Jewish communities around the world would be attacked and the governments in some places may do little to protect them.  The rather ineffective BDS movement would receive an enormous shot of adrenaline with many communities agreeing to target Apartheid Israel – this time outlawing not just Israeli products deriving from Judea and Samaria (aka The West Bank) but from Israel proper;

And the United Nations Security Council ( with the U.S. refusing to apply its veto) will vote, not only to sanction Israel but to officially recognize a State of Palestine between the Jordan River and the 1949 Armistice Lines giving Palestine a seat in the General Assembly.  All of which will amount to a greater degree of isolation and the designation of ‘pariah state’ than the Jewish state has ever known before.

One might also ask questions about the threat of military force.  The author glosses over this possibility in her discussion of possible European responses, but she forgets about the formidable Turkish army and navy and its previous attempts, working behind the scenes, to break the blockade of Gaza in 2010 during the Mavi Mamara episode.   Is it possible that Turkey, with European support and backing, could ignite a regional war against Israel which would draw the Jewish state into a protracted international military conflict that could rapidly spread?

These rather dramatic events, given what we have witnessed just this year in the world reaction to the Gaza War (which was only, we should remember, a limited military engagement of self- defense, and not an outright annexation) should inspire pause.

The word ‘solution’ connotes the idea of permanence – that the actions Israel undertakes in extending Israeli law to the territories will ultimately lead to an end of the Arab- Israel conflict and the imposition of a lasting, if grudging, peace.  But this is not at all clear.  Ms. Glick fails to recognize, (at least in her book – although she has done it elsewhere) that the Arab-Israeli conflict is not truly about territory, but is a religious and cultural war, driven by the twin Muslim beliefs that Jews are dhimmis who do not deserve the status of statehood in a traditional Muslim neighborhood and that the continued existence of such a state is a stain on national honor and identity that can only be redressed by the elimination of the State of Israel.

Given these enduring beliefs, such an intractable problem as the Arab-Israeli conflict may defy a permanent solution. Arab governments will never surrender their enmity to Israel because, as Ms. Glick should know, Arab enmity to Israel is both useful and religiously sanctioned.  The whirlwind of hatred that has spun out of the Middle East because of this enmity will not abate and will most likely only intensify following annexation, sweeping up in its vortex the latent antisemitism of Europe and the adversity of other world governments to create a gale of resistance unlike any Israel has ever encountered.

Israeli statesmen for the past 67 years have been aware that international isolation is always the price that might be paid for taking matters into their own hands.  Most often that isolation has only lasted weeks or months – as was the case when the Begin Government authorized the bombing of the Iraqi nuclear facilities at Osirak in 1981.  But the risks of unilateral action on Israel’s part are real and cannot be taken lightly nor ignored.

What we may be left with is an intractable problem that even with annexation cannot be solved but only managed. Whether the annexation of Judea and Samaria could help manage the problem or else exacerbate it is a question that is difficult to accurately predict.  While there remain excellent moral, political and historical reasons for Israel to extend Israeli law to the territories, there are just as good countervailing arguments against it.  Any responsible Israeli government must weigh these considerations very carefully before committing itself to a course which could prove as disastrous as it proves providential.

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