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Moment magazine’s latest issue has an interesting symposium on what it means to be pro-Israel today. Though some of the choices are bizarre (the contributors include two Palestinians, one of whom formerly advised the Palestinian Authority, and John Mearsheimer, author of the notorious “Jews-control-Washington” screed The Israel Lobby), other pieces are illuminating.
I found Hillel Halkin’s definition particularly helpful. But I’d like to add one thing to his list. Clearly, it’s okay to criticize any particular Israeli policy; Israelis do it all the time. But those with influence in the Jewish community, like rabbis or officials of Jewish organizations, also have an obligation to try to understand – and explain to his community – why Israelis might view the issue differently.
For instance, it’s perfectly acceptable to argue that Israel should withdraw to the 1949 armistice lines, or unilaterally evacuate West Bank settlements; I disagree with both positions, but they don’t make you anti-Israel. Nevertheless, the fact remains that Israel’s government also disagrees, as do most Israelis. So a pro-Israel leader can’t just say “this is what Israel must to do to bring peace” and stop there, leaving his audience to conclude that since Israel’s government thinks otherwise, it must be anti-peace. He must also explain to a community that quite genuinely might not know why Israelis are reluctant to take such steps -like the fact that every previous withdrawal has produced a surge in anti-Israel terror, or the fact that Palestinians’ insistence on a “right of return” and refusal to recognize a Jewish state leads Israelis to fear they still haven’t given up their dream of destroying Israel. He thereby shows that while Israelis, in his view, are misguided, they are not anti-peace. And that is critical – because an Israel that’s “anti-peace” is evil; an Israel that’s merely misguided is not.
This rule is even more vital in light of the current assault on Israeli policies that critics portray as “anti-democratic,” because to most American Jews, Israel’s democratic character is even more important than its positions on the peace process. Again, there’s nothing wrong with opposing any or all of the recent controversial legislation. But a pro-Israel leader cannot just assert that, say, proposed changes to the judicial appointments system are “undemocratic”; she must also explain why many Israelis consider such changes essential: the fact that Israel is virtually the only democracy in the world where Supreme Court justices are chosen by unelected legal officials rather than the public’s elected representatives, or where sitting Supreme Court justices not only help choose their own successors, but actually have veto power over them; the fact that Israel therefore has one of the most monolithic courts in the democratic world; and the fact that it also has one of the world’s most activist courts, making the justices’ worldviews of paramount importance. She thereby tells her audience that even if a particular bill is flawed, Israelis aren’t “anti-democratic”; they are grappling with a genuine democratic concern.
The necessary information generally isn’t difficult to obtain; Israel now has several English-language news sites, including The Jerusalem Post, Israel Hayom and Ynet, that can usually be counted on to run multiple articles arguing both sides of any controversial issue (the main exception is Haaretz, where opposing views are few and far between). So all that’s needed is a bit of time and effort.
If a Jewish leader isn’t willing to invest that time and effort – if he would rather just slam Israeli policies as “anti-peace” or “anti-democratic” – then far from being pro-Israel, he is one of its worst enemies. For he is exploiting his own credentials as a Jew and self-proclaimed “lover of Zion” to convince others to hate the Jewish state.
Scarcely a day goes by without some pundit or diplomat proclaiming that we shouldn’t worry about Islamists’ electoral victories in places like Egypt and Tunisia, because they will soon be moderated by the demands of governance – primarily, the need for economic development to improve their voters’ lives. Unfortunately, Egypt’s new rulers don’t seem to have gotten the message: This week, they canceled an annual trip by Israeli pilgrims to the grave of a Jewish sage.
In other words, they announced that pandering to anti-Israel sentiment is higher priority than reviving Egypt’s battered tourism industry, its second-largest revenue source after expatriate remittances: Not only are they forgoing the revenues this particular trip would bring (550 Israelis went last year, and more would likely have joined had Cairo not capped the delegation’s size), but they are even willing to endanger future revenues from other sources by using an excuse certain to deter other tourists: that Egypt’s “political and security situation” makes it impossible to guarantee the pilgrims’ safety.
Technically, this decision was made by the transitional military government. But the Muslim Brotherhood, winner of the recent elections, is the one that led the drive to cancel the pilgrimage, terming it “unacceptable legally and politically.” The Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party reportedly organized a human chain to stop the “Zionists” from reaching the grave of Rabbi Yaakov Abuhatzeira in Damanhur; it also issued open threats against the pilgrims: Brotherhood official Gamal Heshmat declared the pilgrimage would be a “suicide mission” for the Israelis.
In fairness, however, it’s not just the Brotherhood that deems hostility toward Israel higher priority than economic development: The Egyptian media reported that 31 parties and organizations joined the campaign against the pilgrimage, including the one led by former International Atomic Energy Agency director Mohammed ElBaradei, a darling of the West.
According to Egypt’s official statistics agency, CAPMAS, the country suffered a 35 percent drop in tourist arrivals and a 26 percent drop in overnight hotel stays during the first nine months of 2011. Given tourism’s importance to the economy, one would think reversing this decline would be the new rulers’ top priority. But clearly, it comes a distant second to pursuing their anti-Israel vendetta.
Nor is this decision a fluke: The same order of priorities could be seen in September’s decision to ban exports of palm fronds (a crucial component of the lulav, a ritual object used on the Jewish holiday of Sukkot) not only to Israel, but to Jewish communities worldwide. Once again, an opportunity to earn foreign currency was trumped by anti-Israel and anti-Jewish sentiment.
This order of priorities should deeply worry both Israel and the West, because the same pundits have been claiming the need for economic development will also force the Muslim Brotherhood to uphold the Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty. But if Egypt’s new rulers are so eager to sacrifice desperately needed revenue on the altar of their anti-Israel vendetta, it’s far from certain they wouldn’t be willing to sacrifice peace as well.
Yesterday, I wrote about the State Department’s wishful thinking on the Muslim Brotherhood. But the most widespread form of wishful thinking nowadays is undoubtedly the global enthusiasm for Hamas’s “new direction,” as evidenced by, for instance, this Haaretz editorial, enthusiastically reprinted the next day by the New York Times’ global edition, the International Herald Tribune.
Let’s for a moment ignore all the evidence to the contrary and assume Hamas really did agree to abandon terror for unarmed “popular struggle.” What would that mean for Israel? About 500 rockets a year fired at its civilian population. How do I know? Because Hamas, unwilling to risk another Israeli offensive, hasn’t personally fired rockets at Israel since the last offensive ended three years ago. Instead, it has allowed smaller groups to fire 1,571 rockets from Hamas-controlled Gaza while disclaiming responsibility – a tactic it would undoubtedly continue. In short, Hamas’s “new direction” wouldn’t reduce anti-Israel terror from Hamas-controlled territory one whit.
But to believe that Hamas has actually agreed to end “military resistance” and accept a Palestinian state in the 1967 lines as a “permanent solution,” as Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas claimed last month, you’d have to commit the same fallacy I discussed yesterday: believing that what Arab leaders tell Westerners in English has more validity than what they tell their own people in Arabic. And Hamas leaders have been lining up to tell their own people they will never abandon terror or their goal of eradicating Israel. Following are just a few examples from the past month:
* Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh told those at a ceremony marking the organization’s 24th anniversary that “armed struggle” is “the strategic choice for liberating the Palestinian land, from the [Mediterranean] sea to the [Jordan] river … The Hamas movement will lead intifada after intifada until we liberate Palestine – all of Palestine.”
* Hamas “Foreign Minister” Osama Hamdan said Hamas’s recent agreement to join the PLO, Israel’s “partner” in the Oslo Accords, was aimed solely at getting the PLO to “reconsider its political program.” Hamas remains committed to “the liberation of our lands from the [Mediterranean] sea to the [Jordan] river,” Hamdan said, and “anyone who thinks Hamas has changed its positions and now accepts the PLO’s defeatist political program is living in an illusion.”
* Hamas official Khalil Abu Leila similarly said the group was joining the PLO solely to “bring the PLO back to its correct path and the goal for which it was established, namely the liberation of Palestine,” and persuade it to scrap Oslo.
* Senior Hamas official Sami Bardawil said that anyone who thinks Hamas will recognize Israel is “dreaming,” because “recognition of Israel is not only a red line but, from our standpoint, a religious-legal prohibition.”
* Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum denied a Haaretz report that Khaled Meshal, head of the organization’s political wing, had ordered a halt to anti-Israel attacks, saying the report merely reflected the Israeli government’s “state of despair.”
And a final point to consider: While Meshal, the man who signed the agreement with Abbas, was long considered Hamas’s top dog, Israeli intelligence now believes he has dropped to third or fourth place, below Gaza-based leaders like Haniyeh, Haaretz reported [Hebrew only]. Why? Because the Damascus-based Meshal’s power came from being the organization’s financier – the conduit for Iranian cash – and from his close ties with the Assad regime in Syria, where Hamas is headquartered. But now, the Assad regime is crumbling; Iran has slashed its funding over what it deems Hamas’s insufficient support for Assad; and Egypt is replacing Syria as Hamas’s patron. Hence, Meshal’s influence is waning.
But facts are often unpleasant things to contemplate. So wishful thinking springs eternal.
What do the State Department and the Arab League have in common? Both believe in wishful thinking. But while the Arab League version is farce, the State Department version could well end in tragedy.
Last week, the Arab League asked Hamas leader Khaled Meshal to convince Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to stop slaughtering Syrian protesters. After all, an organization that kneecapped opponents and threw them off rooftops during its 2007 takeover of Gaza is the obvious choice to convince Assad to treat his own opponents more gently. Were it not already amply clear that League efforts to stop the violence in Syria are mere lip service, this might be tragic; as it is, one can only laugh.
But the State Department’s wishful thinking is far more troubling. Last Thursday, department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland told reporters that the Muslim Brotherhood, which won Egypt’s recent elections, positively won’t abandon the peace treaty with Israel. How does she know? Because the group has given Washington private assurances to that effect – and private assurances in English are obviously far more reliable than Brotherhood leaders’ numerous public pledges in Arabic to scrap the treaty.
Earlier last week, for instance, the party’s deputy leader, Rashad Bayoumi, told the Arabic daily Al-Hayat that for a Muslim Brotherhood government to recognize Israel “is not an option, whatever the circumstances, we do not recognize Israel at all. It’s an occupying criminal enemy.” A Brotherhood government would therefore “take legal action against the peace treaty” by putting it to a referendum -where polls show a majority would favor scrapping it. “We must return this agreement to the people and let them have their say about whether this agreement hurts Egyptian interests and sovereignty,” he explained.
Last month, party Secretary-General Mahmoud Hussein made similar remarks to Asharq al-Awsat. Denying the Brotherhood had reached any understanding with Washington on preserving the treaty, he said the organization in fact intends to ask the new parliament – where the Brotherhood and another Islamist party, Al-Nour, will together have a roughly two-thirds majority – to reconsider it.
Experience has repeatedly proven that what Arab leaders say in Arabic to their own people is a far better guide to their intentions than what they say in English to Westerners. Yasser Arafat, for instance, repeatedly told Westerners he wanted peace with Israel even as he promised in Arabic to continue pursuing terror; only after the second intifada erupted in 2000 did Western leaders finally realize the Arabic statements were the truth. Similarly, Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait just days after promising the U.S. government that despite his repeated threats to do exactly that and the 30,000 troops he had massed on the border, he had no such intention. But Washington has learned nothing from its past mistakes: It would still rather believe what the Brotherhood says privately in English.
The tragedy is that Washington does have leverage with Egypt, thanks to the $1.3 billion in annual aid it provides. But you can’t use leverage to try to head off a problem unless you acknowledge the problem exists.
The Obama administration evidently prefers to pretend the peace treaty is in no danger. And by the time it wakes up to the truth, it may well be too late.
The ongoing chaos in both Egypt and Syria offers few certainties. But one fact is already clear: The military opportunities Israel wasted in recent years won’t come again, and those missed opportunities will likely cost it dearly.
In December 2008, Israel went to war with Hamas in Gaza. But rather than seeking to topple the Hamas regime, it opted for limited goals: weakening Hamas’s military capabilities and deterring it from future rocket attacks on Israel. Toppling Hamas, the thinking went, would entail a larger, longer and bloodier operation, so if a limited operation could achieve deterrence, that would be preferable. And if the rocket fire resumed, Israel could always reinvade; waiting a few years would not make it any harder.
But thanks to Egypt’s revolution, that comfortable assumption has proven false. If large-scale rocket fire on southern Israel resumes and another war in Gaza becomes necessary, Israel will now pay a far higher price, both militarily and diplomatically, than it would have in 2008.
Since the Egyptian uprising began a year ago, Israeli intelligence has reported a sharp increase in the quantity and quality of arms being smuggled into Gaza, including advanced anti-aircraft missiles from Libya. But you do not even need intelligence reports: UN agencies also report a sharp increase in imports to Gaza via smuggling tunnels from Sinai, and only the naive would assume the increase was in civilian goods only. Effectively, the Gaza-Egypt border is now wide open, as Egypt’s transitional government has abandoned even the Mubarak regime’s half-hearted anti-smuggling efforts. Thus in any future war, Hamas will be far better armed than it was in 2008.
Perhaps even more troubling, Hamas has reportedly established forward bases and rocket production facilities in Sinai, where they are essentially immune from Israeli attack. Clearly, it’s much harder to defeat an enemy whose vital military infrastructure is beyond your reach. While Cairo denied the report, its denial rings hollow given the ten successful attacks on the Egyptian-Israeli natural gas pipeline in 2011, compared to zero under Mubarak. Either the new government has so completely lost control of Sinai that despite deploying an extra two-and-a-half brigades beyond what the Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty permits, it can not prevent repeated attacks on vital infrastructure that brings in desperately needed foreign currency, or it is sufficiently anti-Israel to turn a blind eye. Either way, it would likely be equally unable or unwilling to stop Hamas from setting up shop in Sinai.
But the dangers of Hamas’s bolstered military capabilities pale beside the diplomatic ramifications of any future Israel-Hamas war. Whereas Mubarak loathed Hamas, the organization is now so closely allied with Cairo that it is considering relocating its headquarters there from Damascus. Egypt’s new rulers are also significantly more anti-Israel than Mubarak was, in part because they must be more attentive to a citizenry of which 90 percent views Israel as an “enemy” and a “threat.” With the economy collapsing, pandering to this anti-Israel sentiment is much easier than satisfying the public’s economic aspirations, and their willingness to do so became evident when a mob attacked Israel’s embassy in Cairo in September: Not only did they refuse to send troops to quell the riot until U.S. President Barack Obama personally intervened, but they refused even to answer the frantic phone calls from Jerusalem.
Hence, any future Israel-Hamas war will also threaten the Israeli-Egyptian peace, which most Egyptians already favor scrapping. At best, Cairo might seize the opportunity to move from cold peace to cold war by suspending or abrogating the treaty. At worst, Egypt could even be drawn into the fighting – for instance, if Hamas attacked Israel from its new bases in Sinai. In August, terrorists staged a cross-border attack on Israel from Sinai in broad daylight right in front of an Egyptian army outpost, and Egyptian soldiers made no move to intervene. But when Egyptian soldiers were killed in the ensuing cross-fire, anti-Israel sentiment surged. An Israel-Hamas war could produce similar scenarios on a larger scale. And enough such incidents could spark Israeli-Egyptian hostilities that neither side actually wants.
Finally, as Yaakov Lappin noted here last month, all these problems will only intensify if, as expected, the Muslim Brotherhood takes power in Cairo. Hamas is an offshoot of the Brotherhood and recently officially rejoined it; hence an even closer alliance is likely.
In short, Israel wasted an opportunity to remove Hamas at minimal cost in 2008. Now, it faces a far more dangerous enemy that can be fought only at a much greater diplomatic and military cost. And for that very reason, Hamas will likely be emboldened to escalate its anti-Israel attacks in a way that ultimately makes another war inevitable.
Moreover, the same could well prove true in Lebanon, where Israel fought a limited war against Hezbollah in 2006, but refrained from an all-out campaign to destroy the organization for the same reason it refrained in Gaza two years later. Since then, according to Israeli intelligence, Hezbollah has tripled its missile arsenal, making it far more dangerous. Far worse, however, is that with chaos reigning in Syria, Israel now fears Hezbollah could acquire some of Syria’s chemical weapons, plus other arms more advanced than anything it has now. If so, the price of defeating Hezbollah in the future will also be far higher than it would have been in 2006.
This is a lesson Israeli and American officials should ponder carefully in relation to Iran’s nuclear program. Already, military action against Iran will be harder, and less effective, than it would have been a few years ago, since Iran now has more nuclear facilities, better defenses, and above all, crucial know-how that would help it begin anew. But military action could quickly go from difficult to impossible if Iran moves its nuclear assets into underground bunkers, acquires more sophisticated defense systems or, worst of all, actually makes a bomb.
Israeli intelligence currently estimates that attacking Iran will become impossible in about a year, so there’s still time for nonmilitary efforts to stop Iran’s nuclear program. But if those fail, it is vital that Iran not become another missed military opportunity.
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has just hired a new adviser, the Jerusalem Post reports. Mahmoud Awad Damra is one of the prisoners Israel freed to ransom kidnapped soldier Gilad Shalit in October; he was then five years into a 15-year sentence for his role as planner and logistics coordinator of several deadly terror attacks whose victims included three U.S. citizens. That, combined with his previous job running Yasser Arafat’s Force 17 security service, clearly qualifies him for his new role of advising Abbas on local government.
Two weeks ago, during a working visit to Turkey, Abbas took time out to meet with Amna Muna and 10 other convicted terrorists who were also freed in the Shalit deal, but whom Israel considered particularly dangerous and therefore refused to allow back into the West Bank. Muna used an Internet romance with a 16-year-old Israeli to lure him to Ramallah, where her partners in crime murdered him. When Israel protested this meeting, Abbas adviser Nimer Hamad insisted it was “natural” for a president to “meet his people wherever they are.” But of course: American and European presidents always make a point of meeting with convicted murderers during overseas trips – just like they always hire convicted terrorists as special advisers. Isn’t that how “moderate,” “peace-seeking” leaders are supposed to behave?
Then there’s the children’s magazine Zayzafuna, which is partially funded by the PA and has several PA officials on its advisory board, including Deputy Education Minister Jihad Zakarneh. As Palestinian Media Watch revealed in a damning expose, the magazine combines genuinely positive educational content with gems like an essay by a teenage girl citing Hitler as one of her four heroes, because he’s “the one who killed the Jews.” The essay describes a dream in which she meets all four; Hitler receives her thanks for the sage advice he offers.
After PMW’s report was published, the Simon Wiesenthal Center urged UNESCO to end its support for the magazine, and surprisingly, UNESCO promised to do so. But there’s been no similar contrition from the PA. Indeed, as PMW noted, the latest issue of Zayzafuna contains new gems: an essay by a school principal lauding Arafat for demanding “the liberation of all the Palestinian land, without bargaining, without compromise,” and a map that makes the same point by showing all of Israel, the West Bank and Gaza painted as a Palestinian flag.
All this begs the question of why American taxpayers should be supporting such activity: While the Obama administration demanded UNESCO halt funding for Zayzafuna, it has simultaneously been urging Congress to approve funding for the PA – and since money is fungible, that helps Abbas finance projects like the magazine and Damra’s salary.
But it also underscores the absurdity of expecting the recent unity deal between Abbas’s Fatah party and Hamas to moderate the latter. When it comes to inciting terror and promulgating hatred of Jews and Israel, Hamas has nothing to teach Abbas, only something to learn: For unlike Hamas, Abbas has figured out how to traffic in hatred while still being lauded worldwide as a peace-maker.
In last week’s column, I discussed the lessons Israel’s far right ought to learn from Menachem Begin. But the left is no less in need of Begin’s wisdom today – and once again, the Altalena incident shows why.
A brief recap: The Altalena was an arms ship belonging to the Irgun, Begin’s pre-state underground. It reached Israel in June 1948, a month after statehood was declared, and David Ben-Gurion, who headed the provisional government, ordered the arms transferred to the government unconditionally (Begin had been holding out for input on where they were sent). When Begin refused, Ben-Gurion – in a move subsequently credited with establishing the principle of the government’s monopoly over armed force – ordered the ship shelled. Survivors reported being shot at, even after they fled the burning ship and were helpless in the water. Sixteen were killed, and Irgunists begged Begin to authorize revenge attacks.
But Begin refused. However viciously Ben-Gurion’s government had acted, or might yet act, nothing, as he wrote in his memoir, The Revolt, could be as bad as a “fratricidal war” that would “destroy the Jewish state before it was properly born.”
After 2,000 years of exile, Begin understood that any Jewish state was better than none, and that civil war would be its death knell – a lesson, as I noted last week, amply proven by Jewish history, but that right-wing hooligans clearly haven’t learned: Their irresponsible attacks on Israel Defense Forces soldiers could easily spark an escalating cycle of fratricidal violence.
Yet it seems leftists haven’t learned it either, judging by how easily they advocate civil war – something you almost never hear rightists doing. For the more people talk of civil war as a reasonable option, the more likely it is to someday come to pass.
It’s bad enough coming from the radical leftists of Haaretz, who have been urging civil war against the settlers for years now. But it’s truly frightening when it spreads to the mainstream, moderate left – like former Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer (Labor), who last month said, unblushingly, that IDF soldiers should have opened fire on stone-throwing right-wing extremists. Or Jerusalem Post contributor Daniel Gordis, who equally unblushingly urged the government last month to deal with right-wing and ultra-Orthodox extremists the way Ben-Gurion dealt with the Altalena – in other words, to shoot them.
As I’ve written repeatedly, I’m all in favor of arresting, trying and jailing both right-wing and ultra-Orthodox extremists. But that’s a far cry from shooting them.
Indeed, most leftists would be appalled at the suggestion that soldiers shoot Palestinians engaged in non-life-threatening hooliganism; they would correctly insist on sticking to routine law enforcement techniques. Yet they unabashedly advocate the use of live fire to suppress Jewish hooliganism, even though most of the vandalism, arson and rioting to date, while outrageous, hasn’t been life-threatening. Are Jewish lives worth less to them than Palestinian lives? Has it not occurred to them that opening fire in such circumstances could easily drive the extremists to retaliate with far worse violence, since these hooligans don’t have a Begin to restrain them? Or have they simply not grasped Begin’s key insight: that civil war is always the worst option?
But that isn’t the only lesson the left needs to learn from Begin. Equally instructive was his behavior after the Altalena bloodbath: Instead of saying “if this is the kind of Jewish state we’re going to have, I want no part of it,” he sent Irgun troops into the thick of the fighting in the War of Independence and then spent three decades serving as the government’s loyal opposition, patiently using the tools of democratic politics to try to bring Israelis around to his views. This effort finally paid off only in 1977, with his election as prime minister.
But too many on the left aren’t willing to work patiently to get their views accepted. They present their fellow Israelis with an ultimatum: Accept our dictates as to how the Jewish state should look, or we’re all going to jump ship.
Gordis made this threat implicitly when he said that many Israelis prefer to “live in America because what’s unfolding in Israel is so thoroughly unappealing to them.” Haaretz columnist Ari Shavit, another moderate leftist, has repeatedly made it explicitly. In June, for instance, he declared that the left’s willingness to fight in Israel’s defense depended on the government’s willingness to accept its policies on the peace process. In November, he went even farther, declaring that if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu didn’t kill various bills opposed by the left, then left-wing scientists, intellectuals and entrepreneurs would all emigrate: “That elite will simply not be here. It will hand over the keys to the Putinists, the Shas party and the settlers, and leave them to enjoy one another’s company.”
This brings us back to Begin’s insight that any Jewish state is better than none. First, this is because, even if Israel were as “illiberal,” “medieval” and “undemocratic” as its leftist critics claim (which I don’t for a moment accept), it would still fulfill functions that moderate leftists like Gordis and Shavit deem important. For instance, Israel still offers sanctuary should any Jewish community worldwide ever need it – a role no other state, even friendly America, can be counted on to play (if you doubt it, just look at how America closed its doors to Iraqis who helped it during the Iraq War).
Secondly, however, no country is immune to going through bad patches; look at the current woes in “enlightened” America and Europe. The question is how its citizens respond: by saying “my way or the highway,” or by engaging in long-term political efforts to make things better. The latter option is obviously preferable for any country, but it’s particularly vital for the Jewish state.
Because as long as the state exists, so does the possibility of reforming it, assuming opponents of its current policies are willing to invest the time and effort that Begin did. But if we abandon this Jewish state out of disgust with its flaws, we may well have to wait another 2,000 years to try again.
The writer is a journalist and commentator. She is currently a JINSA Visiting Fellow.
The Altalena seems to be on many commentators’ minds these days, mine included, but most of those who cite this incident misidentify its hero. The man Israel needs today isn’t the first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, he’s former prime minister Menachem Begin.
The Altalena was an arms ship belonging to the Irgun, Begin’s pre-state underground. The ship reached Israel in June 1948, a month after statehood was declared, and Ben-Gurion ordered the arms transferred to the provisional government unconditionally (Begin had agreed to the transfer in principle, but wanted input into where the arms were sent). When Begin refused, Ben-Gurion – in a move subsequently credited with establishing the principle of the government’s monopoly over armed force – ordered the ship shelled. Survivors reported being shot at, even after they fled the burning ship and were helpless in the water. Sixteen were killed, and Irgunists begged Begin to authorize revenge attacks.
Begin refused to retaliate. However viciously Ben-Gurion’s government had acted, or might act in the future if this slaughter elicited no response, nothing, as he later wrote in his memoir, The Revolt, could be as bad as a “fratricidal war” that would “destroy the Jewish state before it was properly born.” For any Jewish state was better than none at all.
This is a message both left and right in Israel desperately need to relearn. But, for lack of space, I’ll defer the left until next week and focus on the right, where young hooligans are attacking both Israeli soldiers and Palestinians in a paroxysm of rage at what they see as the state’s betrayal of its mission.
As I wrote last week, their disdain for democracy and the law is understandable, but their disdain for the state itself is another matter – because, by every parameter they themselves claim to value, our imperfect Jewish state is infinitely better than no state at all.
Jewish settlement? Yes, the 2005 disengagement uprooted some 9,000 settlers; outpost evictions have uprooted additional dozens, maybe even hundreds, and more may well follow. But, under the Jewish state’s protection, the number of Jews inhabiting the Land of Israel has risen from 650,000 in 1948 to 5.9 million today, including hundreds of thousands in the Biblical heartland of Jerusalem and the West Bank. And, without that protection, a mass exodus like the one that followed the destruction of the last Jewish state 2,000 years ago would ensue, leaving the land once again devoid of all but a handful of Jews. If you care about Jewish settlement, then preserving the state – any state, even one that sometimes uproots settlements – should be your highest priority.
Access to holy places? Thanks to the Jewish state, Jews can pray freely at the Western Wall, Hebron’s Tomb of the Patriarchs and other sites from which successive foreign governments barred them for 2,000 years. That Jewish worship remains forbidden at some sites, like the Temple Mount, is indeed shameful. But, without the Jewish state, the list would be far longer.
Saving Jewish lives? Yes, the state is sometimes delinquent in protecting its citizens; its ongoing tolerance of rocket fire from Gaza, for instance, is disgraceful. But the approximately 14,500 Israelis killed in all wars and terror attacks combined since 1948 pales beside, say, the six million Jews murdered from 1939-45. And that is precisely the right comparison, because those Jews died, in large part, for lack of anywhere to flee to. That no comparable slaughter of Jews has occurred since then is thanks to the Jewish state, which enables endangered Jewish communities, like those that used to inhabit many Arab countries, to get out before they are murdered.
Observance of Jewish precepts? True, Israel isn’t a halachic state. But it’s the only state in the world where government offices serve, and major supermarket chains sell, only kosher food; where the army is forbidden to make soldiers do nonessential work on Shabbat; where the government subsidizes yeshiva studies; where Shabbat and many Jewish holidays are mandatory days off. In short, it’s incomparably more Jewish than any non-Jewish state would ever be, and makes it incomparably easier to live a Jewish life.
Yet all these achievements are endangered by right-wing extremism. First, when self-proclaimed defenders of Jewish values engage in thuggery, they make nonobservant Jews despise Judaism. That could well lead to a less Jewish state, rather than the more Jewish one the extremists claim to want.
Second, in the name of saving “the Jewish people,” these extremists are endangering actual Jews. Already, the IDF’s Central Command is reportedly diverting 30 percent of its forces to dealing with right-wing extremism, at the obvious expense of counterterrorism. And, while terrorist activity has been muted lately, the extremists could easily cause a flare-up by stoning Palestinian cars and torching mosques.
But the worst danger of all is civil war. Certainly, that isn’t the extremists’ goal. But, if they keep attacking soldiers, some soldier will eventually feel threatened enough to open fire. That might well cause the extremists to escalate, driving more people into their ranks, creating a vicious cycle: Each new incident would deepen and widen the sense of grievance on both sides until the situation spiraled out of control.
A country like America, protected from external enemies by two oceans, can survive a civil war. Israel, surrounded by enemies, cannot, as Jewish history amply proves. It’s a pity that famed historian Josephus’s The Jewish War isn’t required reading in all schools; its chilling depiction of Jewish factions too busy fighting each other to unite against the Romans might dampen enthusiasm for civil war among left and right alike. But the same message is clear in the Bible, which these youngsters presumably have read: The civil war that splits the nation into two kingdoms, Judah and Israel, sparks a long decline that culminates, first, in the destruction of Israel and the permanent loss of 10 tribes and then in the destruction of Judah and a devastating exile. Indeed, Jewish history is one long lesson in the catastrophes that occur when Jews raise their hand against other Jews.
Begin understood that, and taught it to his followers. We desperately need someone who can do the same today.
The writer is a journalist and commentator. She is currently a JINSA Visiting Fellow.
Matthew Kroenig, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations who formerly served as a special adviser on Iran policy in the Defense Department, has an excellent article in Foreign Affairs on why a U.S. attack on Iran is the least bad of the available options. Kroenig lays out a detailed argument for why military action is feasible, why it’s preferable to a nuclear Iran and what the U.S. could do to minimize the inevitable fallout, and I sincerely hope Washington policy makers are reading it.
But there’s another argument that’s worth adding to Kroenig’s list: the relative track records of military versus nonmilitary efforts to stop nuclear proliferation.
In an article in the New York Times last week, another former U.S. official intimately involved in nuclear policy — Robert Gallucci, who served as chief negotiator with North Korea during President Bill Clinton’s administration — criticized the Bush administration for not taking a hard line on Pyongyang’s transfer of nuclear technology to Damascus. Syria, he noted dryly, might well have nuclear weapons today “had it not been for Israel’s version of a nonproliferation policy — aerial bombardment of the site.” And while Gallucci didn’t mention it, the same is true of Iraq.
In fact, Syria and Iraq are the only two countries where military action has ever been tried to halt a nuclear program. And so far, both are nuke-free. Moreover, in both cases, military action spared the world a nightmare. The current unrest in Syria would create a real danger of terrorist groups obtaining nuclear materiel had Israel not destroyed Syria’s reactor in 2007. And by bombing Iraq’s reactor in 1981, Israel made it possible for a U.S.-led coalition to go to war to reverse Iraq’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait – an invasion that, had it gone unchecked, would have destabilized the entire vital oil-producing Gulf region, but which the world would have had to swallow had Iraq had nukes by then.
By contrast, consider the track record in places where military action wasn’t tried, like Pakistan and North Korea. Both not only have the bomb, but have merrily proliferated ever since to some of the world’s worst regimes. And in Pakistan’s case, there’s the added fear that radical Islamists will someday take over the unstable country, along with its nukes.
In fact, nonmilitary sanctions have never persuaded any country to abandon a nuclear program: The few countries that have scrapped such programs did so not in response to sanctions, but to domestic developments (regime change in South Africa) or to fear of military action (Libya after the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003).
So far, the same is proving true in Iran, where years of nonmilitary sanctions have slowed its nuclear development, but have utterly failed to halt it, or to alter its leaders’ determination to pursue it. That confronts America with a stark choice: stick to nonmilitary methods that have never succeeded in the past until Iran becomes the next North Korea, or switch to military methods, which have worked in the past.
For if history is any guide, there is no third option.
Last week’s upsurge of right-wing extremist violence – which included breaking into and vandalizing a West Bank army base, stoning Palestinian cars, torching two mosques and assaulting and injuring an Israel Defense Forces officer – sparked a wave of denunciations, and rightly so. Such violence can’t be tolerated, and more can and must be done on the law-enforcement front. That some 50 extremists could invade an IDF base without soldiers arresting a single one, for instance, is outrageous.
But solving the broader problem of the extremists’ utter contempt for democracy and the rule of law is much more difficult, because, contrary to popular wisdom, better education by rabbis and teachers won’t help. In fact, nothing will, as long as these youngsters continue to see democracy and the rule of law being flagrantly abused by the same elites who preach those virtues most loudly.
Most of the hooligans are old enough to remember how settlers helped former prime minister Ariel Sharon to a landslide victory in 2003, only to see him implement the very policy he campaigned against: unilateral withdrawal from Gaza. They also remember how settlers secured a sweeping 60 percent victory in the subsequent Likud Party referendum by going door-to-door, lobbying against the pullout, only to see Sharon and his fellow Likud MKs ignore the results and leave Gaza anyway.
They grew up hearing about how activists successfully lobbied against the 1995 Oslo II accord, only to see then-prime minister Yitzhak Rabin reverse the 61-59 majority they secured by bribing two MKs to switch sides, then retroactively amending the law to legalize the previously-illegal benefits he promised them. And they saw and heard how all the journalists, academics, politicians and jurists who talk so grandiloquently about “democracy” applauded Sharon and Rabin for these anti-democratic maneuvers.
Yet, after all this, people expect rabbis and teachers to convince young people to put their faith in democratic methods of suasion? The youngsters would laugh in their faces.
Then throw in what these youngsters learned about the “rule of law” from former Shin Bet agent Avishai Raviv, a provocateur run by the security service in an effort to gather information on right-wing extremists. As Haaretz‘s Hebrew edition noted in a damning retrospective last month, the Raviv trauma runs so deep that, 16 years later, the Shin Bet still finds it almost impossible to recruit informants from the settler community.
Raviv’s information produced neither high-profile indictments nor any warning of Rabin’s 1995 assassination, but he did stage several well-publicized provocations, like a swearing-in ceremony to Eyal, the fake terrorist organization he created; a staged “terrorist training camp” for teens and T-shirts with pictures of Rabin in an SS uniform that Eyal members sported at an anti-Oslo demonstration. All were broadcast on national television, shocked the country and served to smear the entire settler community.
The Shin Bet, along with the senior prosecutor who personally oversaw Raviv’s employment, periodically authorized him to break the law, and ensured that cases against him were closed even when his law-breaking was unauthorized. The prosecutor also concealed Raviv’s role from her bosses, two successive attorneys general.
But what befell those who authorized Raviv’s anti-settler smear campaign? Then-Shin Bet head Carmi Gillon was forced out for failing to prevent Rabin’s murder, but suffered no penalties for the Raviv affair. Indeed, far from being disgraced, he was showered with prestigious appointments, including ambassador to Denmark, CEO of the insurance conglomerate Avner, director of the Peres Center for Peace and seats on the boards of several leading companies; he was also elected mayor of Mevaseret Zion.
The prosecutor did even better: Today, Supreme Court judge Dorit Beinisch is president of the Supreme Court, the “rule of law” personified. And then people wonder why these youngsters despise it?
Nor is such impunity exceptional. Just last week, the state agreed to pay two million shekels to formerly-accused murderer Yosef Zohar, who spent five years being wrongly accused of murdering his father, Moshe. Though an ambulance crew said Moshe died of natural causes in 2002, his second wife persuaded police to investigate. Both Zohar and his father’s caregiver told police that Zohar left his father at 9 p.m., rushed back at midnight when the caregiver called and arrived to find his father dead. Since police initially neglected to check the house’s second phone line, proof that the phone call indeed occurred was discovered occurred only after Zohar’s arrest. But then, instead of releasing him, police browbeat the caregiver into concocting a new story, and prosecutors accepted it as grounds for an indictment.
In 2007, a court cleared Zohar, saying there was no evidence his father had been murdered, that there was strong evidence supporting Zohar’s story and that police had bullied the caregiver to lie.
But instead of being penalized for their conduct, the police officer who headed the investigation was promoted, another who worked on it was commended and the lead prosecutor was elevated to a position as a judge. In short, three law enforcement officials were rewarded for an unwarranted prosecution that put an innocent man through five years of hell.
Or consider former Shin Bet officer Yossi Ginosar, a senior Shin Bet official who was involved in killing two captured terrorists in 1984, extracting a false confession of espionage by illegal means from a Circassian IDF officer who spent seven years in jail before being cleared and lying to a state commission of inquiry and a court, respectively, about these incidents. Not only was he never penalized, but, in 1992, Yitzhak Rabin’s government even sought to reward him with a plum job: director-general of the Housing Ministry. (The High Court of Justice ultimately thwarted the appointment; that its intervention had no legal basis is a separate issue.)
Thus when these youngsters look at how the “rule of law” actually operates, they see a “rule” that only applies to ordinary Joes. Those who belong to the in-group of well-connected journalists, academics, jurists, security officials, businessmen and politicians can commit abuses with impunity – and, in some cases, be rewarded.
So how, given these realities, is any rabbi or teacher supposed to convince these youngsters to respect the rule of law? They would laugh at anyone who tried. And I couldn’t blame them.
The writer is a journalist and commentator. She is currently a JINSA Visiting Fellow.