Peace Process
In the four days since the UN Human Rights Council published its report on last summer’s war in Gaza, commentators have pointed out numerous ways in which it is bad for Israel, the Palestinians and the prospects of a two-state solution. But focusing solely on the local consequences obscures the fact that this report is part of a broader campaign with much more ambitious goals: depriving the entire West of any conceivable weapon – military or nonmilitary – against terrorist organizations and thereby leaving it no choice but capitulation. And though the UN report captured all the attention, the assault on nonmilitary means was also active this week.
On the military side, the goal was already clear last week, thanks to an interview by Israel’s Channel 2 television with international law expert William Schabas, who headed the HRC’s Gaza inquiry until being forced out in February over a conflict of interests. “It would be a very unusual war if only one side had committed violations of laws of war and the other had engaged perfectly,” he declared. “That would be an unusual situation and an unusual conclusion.”
In other words, it’s virtually impossible for any country fighting terrorists to avoid committing war crimes, however hard it tries, because as currently interpreted by experts like Schabas, the laws of war are impossible for any real-life army to comply with. Thus, a country that wants to avoid international prosecution for war crimes has no choice but to avoid all wars; its only option is capitulation to the terrorists attacking it.
The report ultimately issued by Mary McGowan Davis, who took over the inquiry after Schabas resigned, achieved his goal through a neat trick: replacing the presumption of innocence – the gold standard for ordinary criminal proceedings – with a presumption of guilt. As Benjamin Wittes and Yishai Schwartz noted in their scathing analysis for the Lawfare blog, despite admitting that Hamas routinely used civilian buildings for military purposes, the report nevertheless concluded that any attack on a civilian building is prima facie illegal absent solid proof that the building served military purposes.
But as the report itself admits in paragraph 215, in a quote attributed to “official Israeli sources,” such proof is virtually impossible to produce, because “forensic evidence that a particular site was used for military purposes is rarely available after an attack. Such evidence is usually destroyed in the attack or, if time allows, removed by the terrorist organisations who exploited the site in the first place.”
In short, it’s impossible for any country to comply with the laws of war when fighting terrorists, because it will be presumed guilty unless proven innocent, and the only evidence acceptable to prove its innocence is by definition unobtainable. And lest anyone miss the point – or labor under the delusion that this precedent won’t be applied to other countries as well – Davis underscored it in a subsequent interview with Haaretz. Asked what solution international law does offer “to a situation in which regular armies of democratic countries fight against terror organizations in the heart of populated areas,” she replied scornfully, “My job is not to tell them how to wage a war.” The claim that “international law needs to develop standards that more accurately deal with military operations” is unacceptable, she asserted; the only acceptable changes are “to make protection of civilians stronger” and thereby make waging war even more impossible.
But the self-appointed interpreters of international law are targeting nonmilitary tools against terrorism no less vigorously, as another development this week made clear. Responding to a bill approved by Israel’s cabinet last week to allow jailed terrorists on hunger strike to be force-fed, the UN’s under-secretary-general for political affairs declared that such legislation would be “a contravention of international standards.” The Israel Medical Association’s ethics chairman similarly declared the bill a violation of international law, saying force-feeding has been defined as a form of torture.
Yet letting hunger-striking prisoners die in detention is equally unacceptable to the self-appointed experts. So what solution does that leave? MK Michal Rozin of the left-wing Meretz party put it perfectly: “Instead of force-feeding them, which humiliates them and puts their lives at risk, we must address their demands.” After all, if you can neither force-feed them nor let them die, capitulation is the only option left.
Thus the bottom line is the same as that emerging from the UN’s Gaza inquiry: International law leaves democracies no options in the face of determined terrorists except capitulation. You can’t fight them, because then you’re guilty of war crimes. But you also can’t arrest and jail them, because they can simply start a hunger strike, which entitles them to a get-out-of-jail-free card.
The result, as Prof. Amichai Cohen perceptively noted in a report submitted to Davis’ commission, is that these self-appointed experts are destroying the very idea of international law with their own two hands. Because why should Israel – or any other country – make an effort to comply with international law “if the international system itself does not recognize [the effort’s] efficiency?”
Originally published in Commentary on June 26, 2015
Regardless of the subject, some people would always rather divert the conversation to Israel’s “relentless and deliberate program of settlement expansion,” as J Street founder Jeremy Ben-Ami did in response to Michael Oren’s revelations about the Obama Administration’s conduct toward Israel. So let’s honor their wishes and talk about the settlements – specifically, about how much Israel’s government spends on this “relentless program of expansion.” Because according to new data released by none other than the leader of the opposition, government spending on West Bank settlements and their residents is actually about 40 percent less per capita than Israel spends on all its other citizens.
In an interview with Haaretz published last Friday, Labor Party chairman Isaac Herzog – who opposes the settlements – was asked what “the annual cost of the occupation” is. His response: “From 2009 to 2014, Israel invested 10 billion shekels [$2.5 billion] in Judea and Samaria. That’s a huge amount of the state budget.”
But math clearly isn’t Herzog’s strong point, because 10 billion shekels is actually a trivial amount of the state budget, which totaled 408 billion shekels in 2014. So even assuming (which I do) that he meant 10 billion a year, not 10 billion over the course of five years, that still amounts to only 2.5 percent of the state budget.
According to data from Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics, however, there were 341,800 Jewish settlers in 2013 (the last year for which data is available), out of a total Israeli population of 8.1345 million. In other words, settlers account for 4.2 percent of the population.
Thus if the government is spending 10 billion shekels a year on the settlers, then their proportional share of the state budget is 40 percent less than their share in the population. And most of that money would be spent regardless of where they lived, since all Israelis are entitled to healthcare, education, defense and various other government-funded services.
Of course, one could claim that Herzog’s figure is simply unreliable. But his predecessor as Labor Party chairman, who also opposes the settlements, similarly concluded that the government actually spends very little on them.
In a 2011 interview with Haaretz, Shelly Yacimovich was asked whether “the billions … invested in the settlements” weren’t coming at the expense of her dream of a welfare state within the Green Line. She flatly denied it:
I am familiar with that well-known equation: that if there were no settlements there would be a welfare state within Israel’s borders. I am familiar with the worldview that maintains that if we cut the defense budget in half there will be money for education. It’s a worldview with no connection to reality. I reject it; it is simply not factually correct, even though it is now perceived as axiomatic. A school that is located in a settlement and has X number of students would be located inside the Green Line and have the same number of children at the same cost.
Two weeks later, she wrote a follow-up for Haaretz in which she doubled down on her “rejection of the mathematics of ‘if there will be no settlements, there will be money for a welfare state.’ I plead guilty: I too thought this, six years ago.” But after “six intensive years as a member of the [Knesset] Finance Committee,” she became convinced that this assumption is simply false.
For diehard anti-Israel types, the facts are never relevant. But for the rest of the world, maybe it’s time to finally admit what two successive leaders of the opposition now have: Far from Israel engaging in “relentless settlement expansion,” state spending on the settlements is actually minuscule.
Originally published in Commentary on June 18, 2015
Israel needs to stop arguing the Palestinians’ case and start arguing its own
Responding to last week’s column about the importance of stressing Israel’s achievements rather than its failures, a reader wrote that while she agreed with me, this alone wouldn’t suffice to fix Israel’s broken public diplomacy. And of course, she’s right, because that column addressed only one of two major flaws in Israel’s public diplomacy. The other is no less important: Quite simply, Israel needs to stop arguing the Palestinians’ case and start arguing its own.
I can’t think of another conflict in history where one side devoted so much time and energy to selling the world the other side’s narrative rather than its own. And then, after two decades of actively supporting the two most important Palestinians claims against it, Israel actually wonders why the world views it as the villain.
Claim number one is that the West Bank and Gaza are “occupied Palestinian territory.” This is a crucial issue, because if Israel is just a thief occupying stolen Palestinian land, then it has no right to retain any of this land or set any conditions on its return, and deserves opprobrium for even daring to pose such demands. In contrast, if Israel has a valid claim to these lands, then it’s being laudably generous in offering the Palestinians a state there and has every right to impose conditions on this generosity, like retaining certain areas or demanding specific security arrangements.
Official Israeli spokesmen don’t back this Palestinian claim in so many words. But they do talk constantly about the Palestinians’ “right” to establish a state in these lands, while talking only sporadically about Israel’s own legal and historical rights there. And needless to say, Palestinians don’t return the favor: They talk constantly about their own rights and never about Israel’s rights.
Moreover, Israel’s talk of Palestinian “rights” actually undermines the credibility of its own claims. After all, if Israel truly has the best legal claim to the land, why would Palestinians have any right to a state there? So by declaring that Palestinians do have such a right, Israeli spokesmen imply that even Israel doesn’t quite believe its own claim.
Thus for most of world, deciding who really owns the land becomes a no-brainer: The Palestinian claim looks much stronger. After all, both sides agree unequivocally that the Palestinians have rights there, so that must be true. In contrast, Israel asserts its own claims only half-heartedly, while Palestinians deny them outright; hence Israel’s claims seem dubious.
Or in other words, Palestinians are fighting the PR war full-time on their own behalf, while Israel is fighting only part-time for itself, and part-time for the enemy. And needless to say, that’s no way to win a war.
Claim number two is that Israel is the main obstacle to peace. Again, official Israeli spokesmen never back this claim in so many words. But they do constantly refer to the Palestinian Authority and its president, Mahmoud Abbas, as “partners for peace” and other such terms, whereas they only sporadically accuse the Palestinians of being peace rejectionists. And here, too, Palestinians never return the favor; their official spokesmen relentlessly term Israel the principal obstacle to peace – and usually, a genocidal apartheid state to boot.
Moreover, even when Israel does try to claim that the Palestinians are the main obstacle to peace, the credibility of this claim is undermined by its constant talk of the PA and Abbas as partners for peace. After all, the Palestinians can’t simultaneously be genuine peace-seekers and serial peace rejectionists. Hence by constantly making the former assertion, Israeli spokesmen imply that even Israel doesn’t quite believe the latter.
Thus when the international community must decide whom to blame for the lack of peace, it’s a no-brainer. Both sides agree the Palestinians are genuine peace-seekers, so they obviously can’t be the guilty party. Hence the PA must be right that Israel is to blame.
Or in other words, on this issue, too, Palestinians are fighting the PR war full-time on their own behalf, whereas Israel is fighting only part-time for itself, and part-time for the enemy.
Admittedly, Israel’s public diplomacy is hampered by the fact that sizable portions of the Israeli left openly back both Palestinian claims. And since Israel is a democracy, the government can’t change this.
But it can and must change the way official spokesmen effectively support the Palestinian narrative every single day. Israel must stop pleading the Palestinians’ case rather than its own, and instead start fighting on its own behalf as continuously, unequivocally and single-mindedly as the Palestinians do.
Israel should relentlessly expound Israel’s own rights to the land (for a primer, see here), while casting its offers of Palestinian statehood as unprecedented generosity rather than a Palestinian “right.” It should relentlessly paint the Palestinians as serial rejectionists who have turned down every peace plan of the last 20 years. It should relentlessly highlight the nonstop incitement by senior PA officials and the official PA media – like Abbas’s award of a “military star of honor” last month to a terrorist who tried to blow up a movie theater; or a recent sermon declaring that Jews use children’s blood to make matzah, delivered at a venue (Al-Aqsa Mosque) where all activities require prior approval by the PA Ministry of Religious Affairs; or PA soccer association chairman Jibril Rajoub’s famous statement that “If we had a nuke, we’d have used it [against Israel] this very morning.” And it must relentlessly highlight the Palestinian refusal to acknowledge any Jewish connection to the land, to the point of blatantly falsifying history – for instance, its denial that the historically well-documented Second Temple ever existed.
Israel has one huge advantage in this war: All the claims it can and should be making against the Palestinians are true, whereas Palestinian claims against Israel are frequently egregious lies. But the Palestinians tell their lies consistently and wholeheartedly, never offering any support for Israel’s truths, whereas Israel tells its truths sporadically and half-heartedly, while offering frequent support to Palestinian lies. And as long as that continues, the lies will be victorious. You can’t win a PR war by fighting on the enemy’s side.
Originally published in The Jerusalem Post on June 11, 2015
Even as President Barack Obama was arguing that Iranian anti-Semitism would never trump the country’s interests (as he defines them), an interesting case study in that theory was playing out in a very different venue: Europe. True, the European version doesn’t involve the classic anti-Semite’s obsession with individual Jews, but only the “new” anti-Semitism’s obsession with the Jewish state. Nevertheless, the results aren’t encouraging. In the past week alone, in the name of that obsession, one European country has gutted its own constitution and a second has endangered several of its leading commercial companies.
The first case involved a report by the Swedish parliament’s Committee on the Constitution, which concluded that Prime Minister Stefan Loefvan’s government violated proper legal procedure in its recognition of “Palestine” last year. The report said the government announced the decision and even instructed Swedish embassies worldwide to put it into practice without consulting parliament’s Advisory Council on Foreign Affairs, as required, and without taking other necessary preparatory steps, such as consulting with the European Union. The report was issued unanimously; even members of Loefvan’s own party signed it.
And then, having unequivocally declared the decision to be in procedural violation of Swedish constitutional law, the committee said the recognition of “Palestine” should nevertheless stand, because that’s a “political” issue on which the panel can’t intervene. In other words, it declared that not only can Loefvan violate Swedish law with impunity, but the illegal decision he made won’t be overturned.
Thus for the sake of catering to Sweden’s pervasive anti-Israel sentiment, Swedish parliamentarians have created a precedent that future premiers will be able to use to justify violating constitutional procedure in other cases. After all, if this unconstitutional move was allowed to stand, why shouldn’t others be? And letting a constitution to be violated with impunity is the surest way to destroy it.
That’s a very high price to pay for indulging anti-Israel animus, but Sweden is evidently willing to pay it.
Case number two involved the statement by a French cellphone company’s CEO that he would like to stop doing business in Israel in order to appease anti-Israel boycotters. Some French government officials promptly leapt to his defense: French Ambassador to the U.S. Gerard Araud, for instance, argued that Orange’s Israeli franchisee operates in the settlements and, under the Fourth Geneva Convention, “settlement policy in occupied territories is illegal. It is illegal to contribute to it in any way.” In other words, Orange’s Israeli operations violate international law.
Nor is Araud exceptional: Many European officials are increasingly pushing this view. In 2013, for instance, the Dutch water company Vitens canceled a deal with Israeli company Mekorot after the Dutch government warned of potential legal problems stemming from Mekorot’s operations in the settlements.
As law professor Eugene Kontorovich pointed out, this happens to be false: Even if you consider the West Bank occupied territory, neither international law nor European law bans private companies from doing business in occupied territory.
But Kontorovich also noted that many leading European companies do business in other occupied territories, including French oil company Total in Moroccan-occupied Western Sahara and French tire giant Michelin in Turkish-occupied northern Cyprus. So if any European country actually succeeds in declaring private business in “Israeli-occupied territory” illegal, activists in places like Western Sahara and Northern Cyprus will pounce on that precedent to sue European businesses operating in their territories.
Araud, for one, clearly doesn’t get this. When Kontorovich pointed it out to him on Twitter, he offered the following astonishing response: “I speak of one occupied territory. I am answered on other territories.”
But if something is the law for one occupied territory, then it’s the law for all occupied territories; as Kontorovich noted, law by definition is “a rule that applies to similar situations.” Thus by pushing the line that business activity in “Israeli-occupied territory” is illegal, European officials are making their own companies vulnerable to lawsuits from occupied territories ’round the world.
Again, that seems like a high price to pay for indulging anti-Israel animus, but many European officials are evidently willing to pay it.
I’ve written before about cases of European officials undermining cherished values and interests for the sake of indulging anti-Israel animus, but such cases used to be exceptional. Now, if the past week is any indication, they are rapidly becoming the norm. A growing number of Europeans are evidently willing to sacrifice both their democracies and their economies on the altar of their obsession with Israel.
But not to worry – Obama says anti-Semites are rational. And why let the facts interfere with a good story?
Originally published in Commentary on June 5, 2015
Israeli PR’s focus on the peace process highlights the country’s failures rather than its successes, and people dislike failures
Commenting last week on Israel’s surprising ninth-place Eurovision finish, achieved thanks to votes from millions of usually anti-Israel Europeans, Avshalom Halutz of Haaretz wrote sarcastically that the dramatic improvement over previous results “seems to validate Israel’s decision…to send its carefree ‘Golden Boy’ party anthem to Eurovision, after years of trying in vain to find favor with the Europeans with apologetic and hypocritical songs about peace and tolerance, and failed gimmicks like candlelight or a duet between a Jewish and an Arab singer.” Despite being an exaggeration, there’s something to what he says. And it’s something that goes to the heart of what’s wrong with Israel’s public diplomacy effort.
Because while most of Israel’s Eurovision entries don’t actually focus on peace (aside from the one Jewish-Arab duet Halutz mentioned), its real-world public diplomacy definitely does. Indeed, public relations experts have told us for years that only by constantly stressing Israel’s desire for peace can it possibly win Western hearts. Yet somehow, this “expert” strategy keeps failing – and this failure shouldn’t actually surprise anyone.
To understand why, consider one of history’s epic PR battles: the American-Soviet one. During their five-decade Cold War, Americans and Soviets fought militarily, economically and diplomatically. But they also waged a worldwide battle for public opinion – just as Israel and the Palestinians are doing (on a smaller scale) today. The USSR, for instance, funded pro-Communist front groups throughout the West, while America created global radio stations like Voice of America and Radio Free Europe.
But ultimately, America won on the PR front no less decisively than it did on other fronts. So it’s worth examining how and why.
Clearly, one factor is that America invested heavily in this fight – something Israel, unlike the Palestinians, has signally failed to do. But since the Soviets also invested massively in public diplomacy, resources alone can’t explain America’s victory.
Another factor is that America had a genuinely compelling narrative to tell about itself: one of freedom, opportunity and economic growth. But at least initially, the Soviet narrative – of economic development combined with equality and social justice – seemed no less compelling. Indeed, the Communist vision attracted millions of adherents worldwide throughout the Cold War.
So why did America’s vision ultimately triumph over the equally compelling Communist one? The answer is that America sold a vision it could actually deliver on: America really did provide freedom, opportunity and economic development. In contrast, as the decades passed, it became increasingly clear that the USSR couldn’t deliver on its vision. The Soviet Union ultimately provided neither equality nor social justice nor economic growth. And a failed promise is not a compelling narrative; it provokes deep disappointment that can easily morph into anger and disgust.
Yet a failed promise is precisely what Israel has been trying to sell the world for 20 years now. For two decades, the main story Israel has told about itself is that it wants peace. And since peace is clearly an attractive value, this story initially generated global enthusiasm.
But 20 years later, Israel still hasn’t achieved peace – which means that judged on its own terms, Israel is a failure. And a failure is the opposite of a compelling story: It provokes disappointment, anger and disgust.
What’s shocking about this is that Israel has numerous compelling stories to tell that it really has delivered on: the Jewish people’s rebirth from the ashes of the Holocaust, the only democracy in the Middle East, making the desert bloom, the ingathering of the exiles after 2,000 years, the West’s front line against Islamic extremism, the start-up nation, and much more. Each of these stories could be attractive to particular audiences. For instance, making the desert bloom might not resonate in water-rich Scandinavia, but it certainly could in drought-stricken places like California and China, both of which signed bilateral agreements last year under which Israel will share its water-management expertise and technologies with them.
Indeed, if you examine Israel’s supporters around the world – and it still has many – you’ll find very few who admire it mainly because of its desire for peace. Israel’s supporters admire it for its successes, not its failures. In America, for instance, Israel is admired as the Mideast’s only democracy and an ally in the battle against Islamic terror. Evangelical Christians worldwide support Israel because the Jewish return to Zion after 2,000 years resonates with Biblical prophesies. In China and India, Israel is generally admired for its high-tech innovations. And so forth.
Moreover, these successes have far more to do with what Israel is all about than its failure to make peace does. While peace is obviously a good thing, and it would be nice if Israel could achieve it, it isn’t Israel’s raison d’etre. Israel’s raison d’etre is to create a thriving Jewish state in the Jewish people’s historic homeland – something at which it has been stunningly successful.
But in contrast to American public diplomacy during the Cold War, which talked constantly about the public goods, like freedom and opportunity, that America really provided, Israel’s public diplomacy over the past 20 years has focused almost exclusively on its desire to make peace and to create a Palestinian state. In short, it has focused on Israel’s failures rather than its successes. And it has thereby created the impression that Israel itself is a failure – because it has created the impression that Israel should be judged by its success or failure in making peace rather than its success or failure in creating a flourishing Jewish state.
This year’s Eurovision entry, by contrast, reminded audiences not of Israel’s failures, but of one of its myriad successes: The admittedly inane lyrics were about the fun life in Tel Aviv. And millions of viewers responded.
This, on a more sophisticated level, is precisely what Israel’s public diplomacy should be doing. Because if Israel reduces itself to nothing but a failed effort at peace-making, it can hardly blame the world for doing the same. Only by portraying itself as it really is – a rousing success on multiple fronts – can Israel hope to persuade the world to see it the same way.
Originally published in The Jerusalem Post on June 3, 2015
Over the past two months, Amnesty International has quietly confirmed nearly all of Israel’s main claims about Hamas’s conduct during last summer’s war in Gaza. Yet the organization still lacks the intellectual honesty to admit that its findings about Hamas completely undercut its main allegations against Israel – made vociferously both at the time and in a series of reports last fall and winter.
Amnesty turned its attention to Hamas only after months of reporting on alleged Israeli crimes. First came a March report on Hamas’s rocket fire, then one this week on its extrajudicial killings of alleged collaborators. Each undercuts a key claim against Israel.
The most interesting finding in the March report was that Hamas’s rockets killed more civilians in Gaza than they did in Israel. Altogether, Amnesty said, the rockets killed six Israeli civilians and “at least” 13 Palestinian civilians. Where did the latter figure come from? From a single misfired rocket that killed 13 civilians in the Al-Shati refugee camp. In other words, Amnesty didn’t bother checking to see whether other Hamas rockets also killed civilians; it simply cited the one case it couldn’t possibly ignore, because it was reported in real time by a foreign journalist at the scene.
But according to Israel Defense Forces figures, roughly 550 rockets and mortars fired at Israel fell short and landed in Gaza, including 119 that hit urban areas. And it defies belief to think those other 549 rockets and mortars produced no casualties.
After all, unlike Israel, Gaza has no civil defense system whatsoever. A 2014 study found that Israel’s civil defense measures reduced casualties from the rocket fire on sparsely populated southern Israel by a whopping 86%. But Gaza has no Iron Dome to intercept missiles, no warning sirens to alert civilians to incoming rockets, and no bomb shelters for civilians to run to even if they were warned. Thus in densely populated Gaza, with no civil defense measures, those misfired rockets would almost certainly have killed at least dozens, and quite possibly hundreds, of civilians.
One of the main claims against Israel made by Amnesty and other human rights groups is that it caused excessive civilian casualties. Most such groups simply parrot the UN claim (which came straight from Gaza’s Hamas-run Health Ministry) that 67% of the 2,200 casualties were civilians; Israel has consistently said the civilian-to-combatant kill ratio was roughly 1:1. While there are many reasons to think the Israeli figure is closer to the truth, even the UN/Palestinian ratio of 2:1 would be drastically lower than the international norm of 3:1.
But once you acknowledge that some portion of those civilian casualties was actually caused by misfired Hamas rockets rather than Israeli strikes, then the claim of excessive civilian casualties becomes even more untenable. Indeed, it means the civilian-to-combatant fatality ratio from Israeli strikes was likely even below 1:1.
Then there’s Amnesty’s report this week on Hamas’s extrajudicial executions. Its most interesting finding, as Elhanan Miller reported in the Times of Israel, is that “Hamas used abandoned sections of Gaza’s main hospital, Shifa, ‘to detain, interrogate, torture and otherwise ill-treat suspects, even as other parts of the hospital continued to function as a medical center.’”
That goes to the heart of the other main allegation against Israel made by Amnesty and its fellows: that Israel repeatedly targeted civilian buildings rather than sticking to military targets. Israel countered that these “civilian” buildings doubled as military facilities – weapons storehouses, command and control centers, etc. – and were, therefore, legitimate military targets, but human rights groups pooh-poohed that claim.
Now, however, Amnesty has admitted that Hamas used Gaza’s main hospital as a detention, interrogation and torture center. And if Hamas was misusing a hospital in this way, it defies belief to think it wasn’t similarly misusing other civilian buildings for military purposes. Once you admit that Hamas did so once, there’s no reason to think it wouldn’t do so again. And, in that case, the allegation that Israel wantonly attacked civilian structures also collapses.
Thus in its reports on Hamas, Amnesty has effectively demolished its two main allegations against Israel. And if it had a shred of honor and decency left, it would admit it. But, needless to say, I’m not holding my breath.
Originally published in Commentary on May 28, 2015
As Jonathan Tobin correctly noted earlier today, the possibility that Pope Francis didn’t really call Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas “an angel of peace” doesn’t change the fact that the Vatican definitely did recognize the “State of Palestine.” That’s a setback to the cause of peace for many reasons, which Jonathan detailed in an excellent post last week. But I’d like to go into more depth on one point he raised: the question of which “Palestine” the Church is recognizing. Because “Palestine” isn’t merely split between the Fatah-controlled West Bank and Hamas-controlled Gaza by a quirk of geography; it’s a civil war waiting to happen.
Just last week, for instance, Hamas blamed Fatah for a series of recent bombings in Gaza and arrested 12 Fatah members as suspects. Last November, Hamas reportedly bombed the homes and vehicles of several senior Fatah officials in Gaza, as well as the site of a planned Fatah rally to mark the anniversary of Yasser Arafat’s death; as a result, Fatah canceled both the rally and a planned visit to Gaza by PA Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah. Last month, PA ministers who did visit Gaza left in a huff after Hamas placed them under house arrest in their hotel. The previous month, Abbas and one of his senior advisors separately urged Arab states to bomb Hamas out of Gaza.
Both sides routinely arrest each other’s members, and then accuse each other of torturing the detainees (usually accurately in both cases). Both also routinely accuse each other of collaborating with Israel – the worst crime in the Palestinian lexicon. Needless to say, none of this contributes to Hamas-Fatah brotherly love.
Indeed, the parties are so busy feuding with each other that they can’t provide for their people’s most basic needs, like reconstructing Gaza after last summer’s war with Israel. The reconstruction has made almost no progress in the eight months since the war ended, and astoundingly, everyone except Human Rights Watch director Ken Roth agrees that this is the fault of the feuding Palestinian governments rather than Israel. That, for instance, is the stated view of the Arab League, which is usually quick to blame Israel for anything. And it’s also the stated view of the European Union, which is generally equally quick to blame Israel for everything.
That the violence has remained relatively low-level despite the intensity of this hatred is due to one thing only: Israel. Hamas’s main fighting strength is concentrated in Gaza, while Fatah’s is concentrated in the West Bank, and these territories are currently separated by an impassible barrier – some 37 kilometers of Israeli territory. Moreover, Israeli troops in the West Bank have prevented Hamas from building up its forces there: Last August, for instance, Israel arrested dozens of Hamas operatives in the West Bank whom both Israel and Abbas said were plotting a coup against the Fatah-led government.
But both those barriers to war would disappear if the world had its way: Israeli troops would vacate the West Bank, and some kind of corridor through Israel would be created to link the West Bank to Gaza. At that point, there would be nothing to stop Hamas and Fatah from all-out war. Indeed, that’s precisely what happened after Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005: Months of escalating violence ultimately erupted into war.
That war was bloody but swift. One week later, Hamas-ruled Gaza, 600 Palestinians were dead and thousands more had fled to the West Bank (Israel allowed the refugees through its territory). But since then, both sides have built up their forces considerably, so the next war might well be longer and bloodier. And I have yet to hear anyone explain quite how enabling such a war would benefit the Palestinians.
Thus anyone who really wants to create a Palestinian state should start by pressuring both Hamas and Fatah to address basic needs like reconstructing Gaza instead of spending all their time and energy feuding. That way, if and when such a state does emerge, it might actually be a good thing for the people who have to live in it rather than a disaster. And it would surely do far more to help the Palestinians right now than the empty recognition of a nonexistent state does.
Originally published in Commentary on May 18, 2015
It’s not hard to find examples of double standards against Israel; COMMENTARY has published two examples, from academia and sport, just in the last two days. But it’s worth reiterating that such incidents are made possible not by the rabid Israel-haters, who remain a small minority, but by all the “good” people who know better yet are too intimidated to speak out. Nowhere is this more evident than in the so-called human rights community. And Exhibit A is the exception that proves the rule: Jacques de Maio, who heads the International Committee of the Red Cross delegation in “Israel and the Occupied Territories.”
The ICRC has produced its share of Israel-haters, but De Maio certainly isn’t one of them. Not only does he realize that Israel isn’t the Great Satan it’s generally portrayed as by “human rights” activists, but he’s even willing to say so occasionally – which makes him far braver than many of his colleagues. Yet even this braver-than-average member of the human rights community feels so intimidated that whenever he does say something positive about Israel, he feels the need to apologize. So you get astounding statements like this tweet from last November: “It may seem provocative, but I would contend that humanitarian access in Israel & OT is, comparatively, outstandingly good.”
The mind simply boggles. It’s “provocative” to state the simple fact that Israel, like any Western democracy, allows humanitarian aid groups relatively unfettered access? In his next tweet, De Maio added, “I can think of no other context where we operate worldwide where access for humanitarian organizations is as good as it is here.” Yet if that’s the truth, why should it be “provocative” to say so? Shouldn’t it be as natural for human rights organizations to praise countries for enabling their access as it is to criticize them for not doing so?
But of course, when it comes to Israel, it isn’t. After all, in the “human rights” community to which De Maio belongs, the loudest voices are people like Human Rights Watch director Ken Roth, who famously criticized Israel last month for sending the world’s largest medical team, 30 percent of all foreign medical personnel, to help victims of Nepal’s earthquake. In a world where “human rights activists” slam Israel even for providing humanitarian relief – though Roth has yet to explain how he thinks the world would be a better place had Israel failed to do so – it’s clearly not a given to praise it for enabling humanitarian access. So De Maio apologizes for telling the truth. And untold numbers of his less courageous colleagues choose the easier route of not telling it at all.
Nor is it Israel alone that pays the price for their silence – something else De Maio understands quite well. “Why is there so much more focus on Israel than on Syria [and] other places where many more civilians are dying?” he demanded in December. “In other ongoing wars, more civilians die in one week than in Israeli wars in a full year.” Yet even the braver-than-average De Maio made that statement at a conference in Israel, the one place it’s relatively “safe” to say such things. And untold numbers of his less courageous colleagues will never say it at all.
So all the people worldwide who truly need humanitarian assistance – in Syria and “other places where many more civilians are dying” – will continue having their pleas for help go unheard, because the only “human rights” activists raising their voices are the ones obsessed with Israel. The others are too busy proving, yet again, that all that’s needed for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.
Originally published in Commentary on May 11, 2015
I know it’s been a busy two weeks, but I’m still waiting for that apology. I’ve been waiting for it ever since the U.S. admitted on April 23 to accidentally killing two Western hostages in Pakistan, and doubly so after a U.S. airstrike allegedly killed 52 civilians in Syria last Friday. Clearly, I don’t expect an apology for the fact that American forces are composed of men rather than angels, and therefore sometimes makes mistakes. But I certainly do expect an apology for the Obama Administration’s refusal to acknowledge that so are Israel’s forces. In the administration’s view, Israel never makes honest mistakes. If Israel inadvertently kills civilians in wartime, then it wasn’t trying hard enough not to do so.
We don’t yet know what happened in Syria, but the drone strike on an al-Qaeda compound in Pakistan is instructive. Administration officials told the New York Times that the CIA had “no idea that the hostages were being held there despite hundreds of hours of surveillance.” Yet they apparently can’t conceive of Israel — in the midst of a shooting war where decisions on whether to return fire must be made instantly, rather than with the benefit of hundreds of hours of surveillance — being similarly unaware that civilians were present at various sites it targeted during last summer’s war with Hamas in Gaza.
Needless to say, American military professionals don’t share the administration’s view. The day after the White House announced the hostages’ deaths; Michael Schmitt and John Merriam published a summary of their detailed investigation into Israel’s targeting practices during that war. Schmitt, a professor of international law, heads the Stockton Center for the Study of International Law at the U.S. Naval War College and is considered a leading expert on the laws of armed conflict (LOAC). Merriam is a U.S. Army Judge Advocate and associate director of the Stockton Center. They were given unusual access to information, like targeting procedures that the Israel Defense Forces usually keeps secret; they were also allowed to observe IDF targeting cells at work and examine combat footage that hasn’t been publicly released. And here’s their conclusion:
Broadly speaking, we concluded that IDF positions on targeting law largely track those of the United States military. Moreover, even when they differ, the Israeli approach remains within the ambit of generally acceptable State practice … we found that their approach to targeting is consistent with the law and, in many cases, worthy of emulation.
They also pointed out that “the nuances of the Israeli approach … can only be understood in the context of the specific operational and strategic environment in which the IDF must fight.” And the complexities of that environment, which Israel’s critics largely ignore, go beyond such simple facts as Hamas’s penchant for launching rockets from civilian homes.
For instance, one key principle of LOAC is proportionality, meaning that an attack is illegal if the anticipated harm to civilians is disproportionate to the anticipated military benefit. But for a country that routinely trades hundreds of terrorists – who then resume killing Israelis – for a single captured soldier, the anticipated military benefit of preventing a soldier from being captured may be much higher than it would be for countries that don’t routinely make such trades, Schmitt and Merriam noted.
Yet the professionals’ view – also voiced by Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Martin Dempsey last November – never mattered to their civilian superiors. Even a Pentagon spokesman joined the administration pile-on accusing Israel of callous disregard for civilian life, declaring in a news briefing last July that “the Israelis need to do more to live up to their very high standards … for protecting civilian life.”
I don’t expect anything of people who think U.S. drone strikes are no less evil than Israel’s actions in Gaza. But the Obama Administration routinely defends its own civilian casualties as honest mistakes that occurred despite the strictest precautions. And to do that while simultaneously insisting that Israel’s can’t possibly be the same is the height of hypocrisy.
Originally published in Commentary on May 6, 2015
Responding to last week’s post about a poll showing that young Arabs no longer see Israel as the Mideast’s biggest problem, a reader pointed out that this doesn’t mean they’ve stopped hating Israel or wanting it to disappear. That’s unarguable; recognizing that Israel isn’t the source of all the region’s ills is merely the first step on a long road toward accepting its existence. But as one of the most remarkable stories I’ve read in years makes clear, it’s a very significant step. And how Israel responds to it will matter greatly.
The story, reported by Shlomi Eldar in Al-Monitor, began with a Muslim Arab veteran of the Israel Defense Forces–a rarity in itself, since few Israeli Arabs enlist. Outraged at hearing his own community’s leaders vilifying the IDF, M. made a Facebook page aimed at convincing other Israeli Arabs that the IDF isn’t evil and more of them should enlist.
What he got instead was an outpouring of love for Israel from across the Arab world. A young Saudi woman, for instance, posted a video clip saying, “I’d like to send a message of peace and love to Israel and its dear citizens … I hope the Arabs will be sensible like me and recognize the fact that Israel also has rights to the lands of Palestine.” A young Iraqi man posted a clip saying, “I want to send a message of peace and love to the dear Israeli people … I believe that the number of people who support Israel here will grow consistently.”
Stunned by these messages–and there were “lots of them,” Eldar reported–M. began asking their authors what prompted them to support Israel. Some had personal reasons, like a Jordanian lesbian envious of Israel’s gay rights. But others cited the crucial realization of that poll data.
“There are a lot of young people here who think like me,” the Iraqi man said. “Everything that is happening to us here in Iraq — the killings, the terrorism, the veritable bloodbath — showed us that Israel has nothing to do with it.” In other words, his recognition that Israel wasn’t the cause of the Arab world’s problems is what enabled him to start seeing it as it actually is.
Or take the Egyptian police officer who wrote, “We love, love, love Israel and its army,” even adding a heart with a Star of David inside. Four years ago, that would have been unthinkable. But today, Egyptian policemen are on the front lines against the brutal terrorism of homegrown Islamic extremists, and the IDF is one of Egypt’s closest allies in this fight. So instead of seeing Israel as the problem, some Egyptians now see it as part of the solution.
None of this means a New Middle East will break out tomorrow; these young Arabs remain a minority. Moreover, the ones who still hate Israel passionately are often the ones with the guns and bombs and missiles, which means they’re the ones who will take over any territory up for grabs.
Hence the last conclusion to draw from this is the one leftists routinely do: that Israel should attempt to accelerate this budding rapprochement by making territorial concessions. That would actually be counterproductive: It would further empower the extremists against the moderates by giving them more territory to control, endanger Israel by giving the extremists new bases from which to attack it, and thereby ensure more Israeli-Arab bloodshed.
Instead, Israel should recognize that since this new openness stems entirely from internal changes in the Arab world; the Palestinian issue is largely irrelevant to it. As evidence, consider that repeated Israeli pullouts, from Sinai, Lebanon, and Gaza, produced no such upsurge in Arab affection, whereas the past four years did, despite two wars in Gaza, zero pullouts, and zero progress in Israeli-Palestinian talks.
That doesn’t mean Israel can do nothing; it can and should try to help Arabs improve their own lives. And in fact, it’s already doing that in numerous ways, from counterterrorism assistance to Egypt through economic aid to Jordan to medical care for wounded Syrians. But it shouldn’t forget that this change in Arab attitudes is merely the start of a long process of baby steps. Any attempt at a “great leap forward” is liable to end in a painful fall.
Originally published in Commentary on May 1, 2015