VIEW FROM MOUNT SCOPUS

Obama Strikes Back

2011-09-20T16:28:00.004+03:00

Republican Bob Turner’s victory in New York’s deep, dark-blue 9th District, long part of the Democratic base, has shown how grave President Obama’s domestic political troubles are. While Obama’s economic record was the chief source of Democratic voter discontent in the 9th, Obama’s Israel policy also played a signiifcant role in this district with a large Jewish population.

In the week after the election, Israel unfortunately has become a political football in American partisan politics. Obama apologists are out there trying to convince voters how good Obama has been for Israel. If their style and manner actually reflect White House thinking, they only confirm that Israel has a genuine, serious problem in Barack Hussein Obama.

Two advance notices of Obama’s new line on Israel are John Heilemann, writing in New York Magazine (“The Tsuris”), and Tom Friedman writing in the Sunday New York Times. Both articles argue that Obama has been supportive of Israel on Iran, vis-à-vis Turkey, and on the Palestinians’ bid for recognition at the UN. Both argue that the Obama Administration has been doing favors for an ungrateful Israel, perhaps against America’s own interest. Here’s Heilemann, regarding Obama’s threat to veto Palestinian statehood in the Security Council:

Yet despite the damage thwarting that bid might cause to America’s standing in the region, the Obamans have never wavered in going balls-out [sic] for Israel.

Tom Friedman, as usual, is blunter:

[T]he powerful pro-Israel lobby in an election season can force the administration to defend Israel at the U.N., even when it knows Israel is pursuing policies not in its own interest or America’s.

Got that? In opposing the Palestinians’ move to demolish the peace process, the United States is doing Israel a favor. It’s not as if the United States is interested in the process—far more interested, in fact, than a majority of Bibi Netanyahu’s coalition. It’s not as if Iran’s nuclear weapons program (about which the Administration has done far less than it might have), or Turkey’s new anti-Israel policy, don’t threaten America’s entire alliance structure in the Middle East.

No, the United States is going out of its way to do Israel’s bidding. If this is the apologia the Obama administration is proferring to America’s pro-Israel voters, it is a poisoned chalice. It’s the whole Mearsheimer-and-Walt thesis, dressed up and pitched to the pro-Israel constituency: In fact, supporting Israel is not really in America’s interest. It’s just something Obama does, against America’s interest and his own better judgment, because he’s nice. Or dumb. Or because, as Tom Friedman suggests, his hand is forced and Israel manipulates American foreign policy.

Heilemann has the effrontery to suggest that Obama is the best friend that Israel ever had in the White House. He does catalogue a series of Obama “mistakes” regarding Israel. Not visiting Israel after Obama spoke in Cairo in June 2009 was a “blunder.” Obama didn’t unilaterally pressure Israel; his attempts to pressure the Arabs and Palestinians to accommodate Israel (in the words of Heilemann’s administration source, “to do some stuff on incitement [against Israel]”) were “underreported” by bad journalists. Regarding Obama’s insistence on turning Vice President Biden’s visit to Jerusalem in 2010 into a crisis, and his subsequent snub of Netanyahu in the White House—topped by a 72-hour ultimatum on freezing settlements, which Netanyahu ignored—Heilemann says the Obama White House “disputes the details.” Obama’s blindsiding Netanyahu by using the term “1967 borders” in his speech, given just before Netanyahu’s address to Congress, “caught Netanyahu by surprise.” Heilemann does say that the Administration’s basic approach to Israel, which ostensibly justifies calling Obama the “most pro-Israel president,” is “tough love.”

If I had a woman friend whose husband treated her to a series of “misunderstandings,” “blunders” and “surprises,” who claimed that he wielded “tough love” in order to get her to realize how she was fundamentally in the wrong, I would plead with her to move into a battered women’s shelter and to get a good lawyer.

To shift the blame for the Palestinian impasse at the UN to Israel’s shoulders, both Tom Friedman and John Heilemann rewrite history so as to leave out Obama’s responsibility for bringing matters to the present pass. It was Obama who singlehandedly led the Palestinians to base their approach toward Israel on unreasonable expectations. Obama decided to demand a settlement freeze, applying tremendous unilateral pressure on Israel to accede. By so doing, he encouraged the Palestinians to make public and get entrenched behind their most intransigent demands, those that make any kind of territorial compromise not so much impossible as irrelevant: No to acknowledging Israel as a Jewish state, no compromise on the Right of Return, no accepting a peace treaty as the end of the dispute. Under Abu Mazen, the Palestinians made the “Nakba” of 1948 the main theme of their PR.

Netanyahu may or may not have been serious about a negotiated peace, but Obama’s blunders had, for Israel, a positive consequence: It made clear that the Palestinians were interested in redressing the “injustices,” not of 1967, but of 1948 (the founding of Israel). Tom Friedman (echoing, no doubt, briefers in the Obama White House) blames Netanyahu for not putting forth a peace plan, but by September 2011 it has become clear that the most generous territorial offer was not going to solve Israel’s real problem with the Palestinians, which is that they are happy to take offers of territory and put them in their pocket but are simply unwilling to acknowledge Israel’s right to exist. Frustrated in his attempts to go for the full monte, constrained by Palestinian radicalism and the threat of Hamas, Abu Mazen chose to make a rapprochement with Hamas and to go for the UN vote.

Heilemann’s piece is simply PR hutzpa, trying to brazen out Obama’s hostility to Israel's government by pretending it is something else. By the end of the piece, the lengthy catalogue of things Heilemann has to try to explain away shows that he, and Obama, would have been much better off if Heilemann simply had not written.

Tom Friedman, however, has done something unforgivable. Once an Obama groupie, Friedman is frustrated by the severe challenges the current American administration faces. Seeing no solution, he has written an article that reverberates with unbelievable, impermissible overtones: Israel is to blame. Israel is responsible both for the United States’ Mideast dilemmas and for not producing a solution to them, a deus ex machina in the form of territorial compromise. But Israel is also responsible for forcing the United States to act against its own best interests. Netanyahu has “boxed in” Obama; Republicans in Congress do Netanyahu’s bidding. They cannot conceivably have motives of their own for opposing the Democratic Party’s foreign policy or trying to win elections. It’s all . . . a conspiracy, Netanyahu pulling hidden strings behind the scenes.

It is painful to recall what this sounds like. This kind of argument has a long history, and historical consequences, that Mr. Friedman is well aware of. In making it he has entered dark territory no civilized person should traverse. One hopes he finds his way out soon.

If these White House apologists are the best that Obama supporters can do, they tend to confirm rather than dispel concerns about the Obama administration’s fundamental hostility to Israel. The themes the two articles share in common suggest that they both reflect a common wisdom that is in circulation in certain quarters. They suggest that someone is scapegoating the Israeli government for Mideast developments beyond Israeli or American control, or indeed for the Administration’s own blunders at home and abroad. They suggest far more than differences of opinion and analysis between the Israeli and American governments; they suggest a White House animus that distorts analysis and is fundamentally unfair.

Netanyahu’s New Stand on Settlements May Not Be Sustainable

2011-05-26T16:10:00.000+03:00

In his speech to the Knesset on May 16 and in Congress on the 24th Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu made a significant departure from his previous statements: He indicated that he might be willing to give up the great majority of the West Bank in a peace agreement, involving the dismantling of settlements where almost 100,000 Israelis now live. Some who have advocated this position for a long time are pleased that Netanyahu has seen the light. They claim that by embracing this new stance Netanyahu has created a new Israeli consensus. Their enthusiasm is premature. It is far from clear that Netanyahu’s new position enjoys a consensus and even less clear that Netanyahu can sustain it in the future.

Netanyahu’s address to Congress was a bold move intended to outflank President Obama. So far Netanyahu has succeeded. He made clear that Israel will not accept the basis on which Obama wants to conduct negotiations—a return to the 1967 lines, without appropriate security arrangements. Obama tried to ambush Netanyahu by including mention of the 1967 lines in his own speech on the Middle East, only for Netanyahu to brush him aside and win applause on both sides of the aisle on Capitol Hill. It’s probably impossible now for Obama to apply real pressure to Israel to accept his position. In the context of this signal victory, Netanyahu’s concession on settlements seems like a sweetener to moderates thrown in to increase support for his defiance of Obama.

Nonetheless, it’s hard to point to any real advantage Netanyahu gained by placing the homes of 100,000 of his fellow-citizens on the line. His concession won’t satisfy any of his critics in Washington, Brussels or Ramallah, all of whom want much more. And it’s hard to make a significant list of people who applauded him in Washington and who might have not done so if he’d simply not mentioned abandoning settlements.

The greatest weakness of Mr. Netanyahu’s new position on settlements is that it is predicated on the existence of negotiations. It is not about to be implemented, and nobody can now foresee a time when it will be possible to implement it. Israel and the Palestinian leadership are moving farther apart, not closer together. A policy that remains only a theory is bound to lose relevance and such public support as it now enjoys with every passing month.

Mr. Netanyahu’s problem is compounded by Israeli public opinion trends. Putting it bluntly, Netanyahu’s claim that his new position on settlements reflects the Israeli consensus is a stretch. Insofar as public opinion polls can tell us anything, the Second Lebanon War of 2006 turned Israelis skeptical about almost every aspect of the peace process, and this skepticism has not abated. One aspect of this skepticism is the sense that territorial withdrawals only whet the appetites of Israel’s adversaries for more—whether accompanied by formal agreements or not. The Palestinian Authority’s reach for a unilateral declaration of independence, in violation of the Oslo accords, and the Fatah-Hamas rapprochement, do nothing to disarm this skepticism.

It is true that if the Israeli public were presented with a peace treaty on Netanyahu’s terms, all wrapped up and ready for ratification, the public might go for it. The Israeli public has never yet rejected a proffered peace treaty. But they would be uneasy. Indeed, the Olmert government claimed to be negotiating something like the deal Netanyahu has in mind—the broader public has only the vaguest notion, if at all, of the ways in which Olmert’s position and Netanyahu’s new position differ. Netanyahu himself was elected in 2009 to put a stop to those negotiations.

This does not mean that Israelis want to run the Palestinians’ lives. There is a genuine consensus in Israel that Palestinians should run Palestinians’ lives—which they pretty much do right now. What is absent is any real expectation that the parameters can be established by negotiations. In its place there is growing support for the idea that Palestinian unilateralism should be matched with Israeli unilateralism: A de-facto partition of the West Bank. On the Israeli right, this means providing the Palestinians with functional contiguity (not necessarily genuine territorial contiguity) while segregating and annexing areas Israel wishes to retain—not just so-called settlement blocs but all or most settlements and 40-60% of the territory. This is the position of Avigdor Lieberman’s Yisrael Beitenu party, Netanyahu’s biggest coalition partner, and is advocated by two Likud cabinet ministers, Yuli Edelstein and Moshe Kahlon. The unilateral partition idea also has supporters on the left—Ehud Barak has expressed similar ideas in the past, though he would draw the partition line elsewhere.

Within Israel, therefore, as within the Palestinian Authority, Netanyahu’s and President Obama’s preferred solution, a negotiated settlement, is on shaky ground. Insistence that nothing change unless it be in the context of a negotiated solution, when no negotiations are in prospect, means that neither side can take practical steps to achieve genuine and important, though of course diametrically opposed interests. It practically defies nature to expect that matters can continue in this state of suspended animation for long. Indeed, the Palestinians have told the President what he can do with his preferred solution. Palestinian unilateralism will increase pressure within Israel for Israeli unilateralism.

Netanyahu’s new position is thus not one on which he can construct a new national consensus. Opposition within Netanyahu’s government to Netanyahu’s new policy began to appear the morning after his Knesset speech. Former Chief of Staff Moshe Yaalon, a member of Netanyahu’s security cabinet, stated that the Jordan Valley must remain under Israeli sovereignty and that no Israeli security presence there is sustainable in the long run unless it is backed up by a permanent civilian presence. Yaalon’s is probably the most senior and authoritative voice that could be raised against Netanyahu’s policy. It remains to be seen whether other prominent figures within Netanyahu’s party will join him in the weeks to come, but forces within the Likud are already working to ensure that they do.

Kadima Contemplates the Abyss

2011-05-04T16:09:00.001+03:00

The Fatah-Hamas reconciliation is likely to be bad news—especially for those unfortunates now likely to be targeted by Palestinian terror. The first victim of the Fatah-Hamas rapprochement, however, is Israel’s largest opposition party—Kadima. Its raison d’etre has just disappeared.

After the 2009 elections, a majority of the Knesset nominated Binyamin Netanyahu to the post of Prime Minister. Netanyahu offered to take Kadima into his coalition and make Livni his #2. Livni refused. She took Kadima into opposition, where she has since argued that she can make peace with the Palestinians where Binyamin Netanyahu cannot.

Kadima’s peacemaking policy was founded upon the Hamas-Fatah rift. Negotiations with Abu Mazen were possible even in theory only because Hamas, which insists on Israel’s destruction, mounted a coup d’etat against Fatah in Gaza in 2007 and was kicked out of the Palestinian coalition government. With the reunion of Hamas and Fatah, Kadima is left without a policy. 80% of the Israel’s Jewish public probably agrees with Binyamin Netanyahu that it's impossible to negotiate with a Palestinian government, half of which wants Israel dead. Almost everybody in Kadima also agrees with Netanyahu. There hasn’t been a word from anyone in the party about the possibility of negotiation since the Hamas-Fatah deal was announced. For Kadima, that means political oblivion beckons at the next election.

Instead, the deal Livni refused two years ago has started to look pretty good. In a revealing op-ed in the Jerusalem Post, Tzahi Hanegbi, a one-time Kadima MK convicted of graft who expects to run in the next elections, had the effrontery to suggest a text for “Bibi’s speech,” to be given in front of Congress in a few weeks’ time. Scheduled before the fatah-Hamas reconciliation, this speech was supposed to include some grand new diplomatic initiative. Those expectations have since diminished considerably.

Hanegbi, in fact, has nothing whatsoever to suggest regarding a diplomatic initiative toward the Palestinians. Everything he has Netanyahu saying about them in his draft is nothing more than Netanyahu is already saying today: No deal is possible. Instead, Hanegbi’s proposed new “diplomatic initiative” involves an offer by Netanyahu to Kadima: To prove to the world he is serious about peace, Netanyahu should offer to make Livni his foreign minister, to be in charge of negotiations with the Palestinians when and if they becoming possible. Livni will prove to the world that Netanyahu is serious about peace, even though both Netanyahu and Livni now agree that peace negotiations are impossible.

Yeah, that sounds a little forced to me, too.

What’s really happening is that Kadima thinks it will be a lot easier to get someone, anyone, to vote for the party if the party’s bigwigs come to the next elections ensconced in ministerial office. That will allow them to talk about how they’ve built roads, or absorbed immigrants, or—well, anything but that hopeless peace business. They hope to save their political skins by riding on the Likud’s political coattails.

To support this analysis, let me mention that I was told this week by a reliable source on the Israeli right that Shlomo Mula, Kadima’s Ethiopian MK, told her that he hopes Netanyahu will now take Kadima into his government. Mula is clearly hoping to stir up public support for the idea (my source isn’t even in the Likud).

Of course, Likud needs Kadima right now like a hole in the head. Likud’s best move right now is probably to conduct a vigorous, aggressive PR campaign about how Israel has to gird itself for a situation in which peace has become impossible—and go to elections on the issue within six months. That will probably give the Likud the dominant political position it sought and failed to achieve last time around. For Kadima, it means that most of the party’s MKs will have to apply themselves to an unfamiliar and unwelcome activity—looking for work.

"Bibitours"

2011-04-05T17:08:00.000+03:00

So the latest is that the Netanyahu couple are going to be investigated by the State Comptroller for taking airline flights and staying at hotels at the expense of organizations, like Israel Bonds or the Likud that invited Bibi to speak at their fundraisers abroad. Those who broke this “scandal” are indignant that a public servant should accept first-class travel and downtown hotel suites from those who invite him to promote their causes

???

Netanyahu is one of the most well-known and popular Israelis. It’s no surprise that his face sells bonds. He’s also head of the Likud party. Raising money for Likud campaigns is part of his job description. An organization that invites a blockbuster like Bibi to its event makes what his flight and hotel cost many times over. There’s no impropriety in his conduct. If he has to spend all that time on the move in order to do his job, there’s no justification to inflicting Spartan conditions on him while he does.

It’s also the fact that Everybody Does It. To his credit, the State Comptroller, at the urging of the Likud, said he would investigate the travel behavior of other ministers and prime ministers, past and present. Just recently several members of the opposition Kadima party flew to J Street’s annual conference. What are the odds that they flew tourist and stayed at airport hotels?

I find it extremely curious that this alleged scandal broke just as the Knesset approved the “Sheshinski Law,” which changed the rate at which Israel’s considerable gas reserves are taxed. I’ve been observing Israeli politics too long to believe in coincidence. The law was a great blow to several Israeli tycoons, who will no longer be near the top of Forbes 500 list—they will have to content themselves with becoming ordinary common or garden billionaires. They lobbied and threatened Netanyahu and Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz with lawsuits—perhaps worse. The two elected officials did their job and saw the legislation through the Knesset.

If this “scandal” did indeed break in retaliation for Netanyahu’s devotion to the public interest and public purse regarding gas royalties, the Knesset should consider voting him and his family lifetime free tickets on El Al as an act of gratitude. The rate of commission will be considerably less than 0.1%.

* * *

Everyone’s talking about Richard Goldstone’s recantation, so a few words about that (He’s only worth a few words). Goldstone’s original report pilloried Israel that’s what he was paid to do. He’s been a UN investigating judge for years. He investigated Serbia before turning to Israel. That’s the source of his money and his ongoing international prestige. He was hired to trash Israel and he knew that if he didn’t deliver the goods he’d never be employed by the UN again. So he delivered the goods he’d been paid for.

Since then the money has been spent and the prestige turned out to be less than advertised, since the entire Jewish world now ostracizes him. Goldstone recanted because the moral indignation aroused by his collusion with Israel’s delegitimizers made him miserable. It’s not like he learned anything new that he didn’t know when he wrote his blood libel. His attitude, then and now, is purely mercenary—and cowardly to boot.

Not Really Interested in Reform

2011-03-31T15:09:00.000+02:00

Israel’s State Prosecution is a mess. For years it has been incapable of keeping up with its workload; a few years ago the organization shredded over 30,000 files of cases it acknowledged it would never get around to investigating. Its work is often sloppy, prompting harsh criticism from judges and violating the due-process rights of defendants. Its workers are demoralized, as reflected by a lengthy strike last year over pay rates. It is infected with political bias. A special unit, the “Office of the Deputy Attorney General for Special Affairs,” focuses on prosecuting people for what they write and say, as well as for demonstrating. There are laws in Israel that can be interpreted in a way that prohibits these fundamental democratic activities, and the “Office” applies these laws selectively, generally against right-wing and religious political activists.

Widespread complaints against the State Prosecution have led to calls for some kind of oversight body with the power to redress the Prosecution’s violation of citizens’ civil and due-process rights. Pressure for this reform grew to the point where the current Attorney General, Yehoshua Weinstein, admitted that something would probably have to be done.

Weinstein finally announced the establishment of a committee to consider how such an oversight body should be designed. The composition of the committee is not encouraging. All eight members are senior employees of the Justice Department. They include Mike Blass, a deputy Attorney General with notorious left-wing views, and Raz Nizri, a senior aide to Weinstein (Nizri served the previous Attorney General, Menahem Mazuz, in the same capacity).

The point is not so much the political bias of the committee—Nizri is simply a lapdog for whoever holds the office of Attorney General—as the fact that these are all insiders whose first concern is to protect the institutional interests of the State Prosecution. Don’t look to them for any fundamental reforms.

Weinstein’s decision represents a pattern. A generation ago complaints about police violence led to the establishment of a special unit within the Ministry of Justice to investigate errant policemen. A study by the State Ombudsman seven years ago found that this body was chiefly staffed by . . . policemen, seconded to the unit for a number of years before returning to the police. Many had themselves long records of complaints filed against them by citizens who alleged their rights had been violated. Needless to say this body, the Police Investigation Department, is not considered very effective.

In 2006, rising complaints against judges prompted the Knesset to pass legislation to create an ombudsman for the court system. The judges fought tooth and nail and lobbied the Knesset to change the legislation to provide that the ombudsman be a retired judge, appointed by the Chief Justice. So lobbied, so provided.

So in Israel, “oversight” of the legal and law-enforcement system means oversight by the system: Judges by a judge, policemen by policemen, and now if Weinstein has his way, prosecutors by prosecutors. Which is to say, no effective oversight after all.

What really needs to be done is to establish a completely separate unit within the State Ombudsman’s office, charged with overseeing the protection of citizens’ civil rights. This unit should have the authority to investigate complaints against judges, prosecutors and policemen, to launch disciplinary actions against them and if necessary to indict them for violations of the law.

Weinstein’s announcement produced protests by members of the Knesset Committee on State Oversight, which had scheduled a session on the issue. The MKs insisted that the committee Weinstein established to prepare proposals for oversight of the State Prosecution include representatives from academia and the private sector. Stay tuned.

Time to Decide

2011-03-15T16:43:00.004+02:00

The Netanyahu government’s decision to approve construction of 500 housing units in Judaea and Samaria in response to the slaughter of the Fogel family in Itamar cannot please anyone. If building in the settlements is right, then it’s right whether or not Palestinian terrorists kill innocent people.

The decision underscores the fact that Netanyahu’s current non-policy on Judaea and Samaria is unsustainable. That policy is to approve no new building in Judaea, Samaria and Jerusalem, while waiting for the Palestinians to come around and resume negotiations. By not approving new building, Netanyahu hoped to reduce foreign pressure on Israel. The policy has failed.

The Europeans and the Obama administration are applying immense pressure to Netanyahu to “do something to facilitate negotiations.” This is pure cynicism. Everyone knows the Palestinians are not going to come back to the negotiating table. The foreign pressure is meant to force Israel to agree unilaterally to withdraw the IDF from almost all of Judaea and Samaria and destroy Israeli settlements there.

This is what the Olmert government was prepared to do. According to "Palileaks," the Olmert government had given up just about all Israeli settlements; only Ariel, Maale Adumim and Har Homa in Jerusalem remained to be negotiated about. Olmert himself confirms that he agreed to withdraw the IDF entirely from Judaea and Samaria, leaving the Americans to guard the Jordan front.

Subsequent events show how fortunate Israel was that the cavalier and shallow Olmert was thrown out of office before he could cut a deal. Without Israel’s military presence, Hamas’ takeover of Judaea and Samaria is only a matter of time. This is even clearer today, in the aftermath of the Egyptian uprising. An American presence in Judaea and Samaria won’t last long in the face of a Hamas terror offensive, just as terrorism is chasing the United States out of Iraq and Afghanistan. Israel cannot allow Judaea and Samaria to turn into another Gaza, where a murderous terror regime enjoys effective sanctuary from the IDF under the protection of hypocritical Europeans.

Obama and the Europeans consider Israel’s presence in Judaea and Samaria absolutely unacceptable, no matter what the consequences of withdrawal to Israel. Sooner rather than later, the Europe is going to announce it recognizes a Palestinian state in all of Judaea and Samaria. The Obama administration is going to agree—after all, it already agrees in practice if not in form.

Meanwhile, the Netanyahu government is doing nothing as the inevitable approaches. Netanyahu is preparing another Bar-Ilan-type speech, in which he will try to find some middle ground between Israel’s irreducable vital interests and the West’s nonnegotiable demands.

He may as well spare his breath. Israel and the West are on a collision course over Judaea and Samaria and Israel has nothing to gain by pretending otherwise. Israel is just going to have to tell the West, “We are not going to do what you want us to do, and we are all going to have to live with that fact.”

Israel needs to move unilaterally to create a situation in Judaea and Samaria conducive to its interests. This includes three elements:

Move quickly to separate from the Palestinians. Start working on roads and fences to join Palestinian inhabited areas together and isolate them from areas Israel seeks to control.
Lay claim to the rest of Judaea and Samaria, about 50-60% of the whole. From a security perspective Israel needs to control this area and especially to be able to intervene quickly in Palestinian-inhabited areas when needed. Its right to do so cannot be founded on security considerations however. It needs to assert that it is in Judaea and Samaria by legal right—which is only the truth—and the IDF’s presence needs to be backed up by a continued and growing civilian presence.
By no means should Israel agree to recognize a Palestinian state unilaterally, in any borders whatsoever. If the Palestinians agree to recognize Israel as the Jewish state, then there’ll be something to talk about.

Netanyahu needs to move vigorously to assert Israel's rights and interests in Judaea and Samaria. Procrastination isn't gaining Israel anything. Israel should be building now—whether or not its own citizens are being slaughtered. For now, it can argue that building is a response to Palestinian diplomatic provocations. That is the only policy that might, at the last minute, cause the Palestinians and the Europeans to pause. But that’s unlikely. Israel has to make clear that it will place its own stamp on Judaea and Samaria whether it suits the West or no, because it has no choice. Better sooner rather than later.

Time for New Elections?

2010-07-04T13:17:00.002+03:00

Netanyahu’s coalition with Defense Minister Ehud Barak, chairman of the Labor party, is unravelling. The two joined forces after the last election on the basis of the new consensus in Israeli politics: Dismantling settlements and unilateral retreat ends in disaster, the Palestinian Authority cannot be trusted to make a durable peace agreement, so Israel must retain effective security control of Judaea and Samaria. Now Barak is welching on the deal. Barak fears the Americans and wants to give in to American pressure. He also suffers from delusions of grandeur, imagining himself leading Netanyahu’s government down the path of unilateral concessions, taking credit for a peace treaty and reconciling himself with his party’s mainstream, now dominated by the loony left.

What the country may need is a snap election before Rosh Hashana. Netanyahu needs to shore up his ability to pursue a policy at variance with the Obama administration. Polls show that since Obama started pressuring Netanyahu, Netanyahu’s Likud and parties to Netanyahu’s right have become even more popular than when elected in 2009. They regularly get 70 Knesset seats or more in the polls. That won’t be the case anymore if Netanyahu lets the pair of Baracks (the American and the Israeli versions) force him to abandon the policy he was elected to pursue.

Of course an election needs to be prepared. Netanyahu needs to spend about a month campaigning hard, reiterating that his government’s policies reflect the national consensus. He should say that the issue of the campaign is the position laid forth in his Bar-Ilan speech a year ago: Yes to negotiations, no to a precommitment to retreat, dismantling settlements or abandon Israel’s security concerns in Judaea and Samaria. He should make Barak take responsibility for messing up the Mavi Marmara affair. Only then should the coalition introduce a bill to hold snap elections. Passing it should take 72 hours (at the start of which Barak should be fired), with elections taking place three weeks later. The heart of an American electoral campaign is the best time for Israel to hold its own elections; it will reduce Obama’s ability to interfere.

The opposing forces in the election will be very clear. On the one side will be Labor, Kadima, the press establishment, the academic establishment, the business establishment, and all the loonies who haven’t learned a thing in the past twenty years and think that safety lies in unilateral concessions and American smiles. On the other side will be the common sense of the great majority of Israelis, who actually have learned a thing or two in that time. Let’s see who prevails.

After the election, if all goes well, Netanyahu will no longer be dependent on Barak for political survival. He can even take Barak back into his new government if he wants, as head of a truncated Labor party or even on his own (though why Netanyahu needs a serial political loser like Barak at his side isn’t clear). Barak will hardly be in a position to say no. Then Netanyahu can then use Barak as he desires, without Barak holding the key to the government’s survival.

Barak Goes Off the Reservation

2010-06-29T16:44:00.002+03:00

Ehud Barak is the odd man out in Israel’s government. Netanyahu brought him in as Defense Minister to create a stable coalition. Since then Barak has been destroying Jewish homes in Judaea and Samaria, built during the “freeze,” with a dedication worthy of a better cause. Recently he made a fiasco of Israel’s takeover of the Mavi Marmara.

Barak joined Netanyahu’s government last year because he shared the opinion of Netanyahu and 70% of Jewish Israelis: The Palestinians are not interested in peace but in destroying Israel, unilateral withdrawals (Barak was responsible for one, from Lebanon ten years ago) merely encourage terrorist radicals, so all the talk about a negotiated peace between Israel and the Palestinians is just for show. Unfortunately, Barak is just about the only person in his party who’s wised up about the true prospects for “peace.” He’s under a lot of pressure to promote an “active policy,” which means giving up something for nothing—e.g. dismantling Israeli settlements—in order to entice the Palestinians to make peace.

Barak now appears to be going off the Netanyahu reservation. He’s calling for “an assertive diplomacy,” a code word for unilateral Israeli action. Barak’s faith in unilateral actions, of the dismantle-settlements-and-retreat kind, has been restored. He now wants Israel to make unilateral concessions, but not because that will promote peace with the Palestinians. He knows it only whets their appetite for more. He wants to do it because Barack Obama wants Israel to do it, and keeping the United States happy is vital to Israel’s security.

The United States is certainly vital to Israel’s security but that doesn’t mean that Barak’s new policy is a good idea. It isn’t. It’s hard to tell with Obama. He may want Israel to make unilateral concessions because that conforms to his abstract ideals of peace and justice in the Middle East. He’s swallowed the Palestian narrative, hook, line and sinker. Or he may want it because he wants to make the Arabs happy, and squeezing Israel is the way to do it. In practice, he’s acting as the Arabs’ tool.

Israel cannot, for its life, do what Obama wants. To do so is to prove to the Palestinians and the broader Arab world that they can get Israel to make unilateral concessions simply by getting the Americans to demand them. And that way lies the road to Israel’s demise. Barak may talk about “assertive” policies, but the real word for his policy is “appeasement.”

Lookit all the Democrats!

2010-06-24T16:31:00.004+03:00

I’m sitting in the library of the Hebrew University on Mount Scopus, looking at the news on the net. Hizbullah is preparing a flotilla of women to crash the blockade of Gaza. Why, I wonder, would more women want to go to Gaza? Once they get there, they will have to wear burqas. If they don’t bring male relatives with them on the boat to escort them once they land, how will they get around? Will the Hamas authorities throw them in jail, or sentence them to lashes for indecent strolling? I don’t know if Hamas has got around to prohibiting women from driving cars, as Saudi Arabia once did.

In the meantime, how’re things going in Europe, that bastion of democracy and civil rights? Today the upper house of the Spanish Parliament passed a law restricting the wearing of the burqa in public. The New York Times article reporting this event reviews Europe’s evolving attitude to the rights of its own Moslem citizens:

• Switzerland bans the construction of minarets.

• One house of Belgium’s Parliament has passed a law that outlaws wearing clothing in public that covers the face. (What are they going to do in six months, when the weather in Brussels drops to 20 degrees below zero Centigrade? Throw everyone wearing a ski mask into jail? At least the jail’s warm).

• France already bans headscarves in the public schools. According to the Times, France is “inching toward” a ban on the burqa, which French President Sarkozy supports.

Wearing a burqa is a personal, "self-regarding" decision. In the words of John Stuart Mill, in his essay On Liberty, it "neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.” Therefore it's nobody's business but the wearer's. Legislating against it is illegitimate, at least in societies that pride themselves on being free. Anti-burqa legislation, like anti-minaret legislation, is simply the prejudice and intolerance of the majority made law. It’s discriminatory and violates freedom of religion.

I look around me at the students of the Hebrew University, studying for exams. Two tables over, four of them sit together. Three wear headscarves that cover their hair, neck and ears. One wears a brown hijab. Earlier, I ate my sandwich in the stairwell, watching the students—not a few in headscarves—coming and going.

Who cares? In Israel, nobody--neither individual citizens nor the government. If an Arab woman wants to dress like an Arab woman, that’s her business, and maybe her family’s business, but certainly none of mine. Or yours. Or the State of Israel’s, which to its credit couldn’t care less about burqas. If an Arab woman wants to wear tights and a t-shirt, that’s fine too. Plenty do. One of them sits together with her headscarved sisters, cramming for an economics final.

Sometimes, sitting here at the top of Mount Scopus, I get a weird sense that either we’re crazy or else everyone else is crazy. This burqa business brings the feeling back. We’re surrounded by people who either force people to wear burqas or force them not to. The only thing these people seem to agree about is that Israel is a threat to human rights. Honestly, who’s being nuts?

Tzipi Speaks Out

2008-07-23T15:24:00.001+03:00

What’s a person like Tzipi Livni, who, as far as we can tell, never put an agora in her pocket that didn’t belong to her, doing in a party like Kadima? In her first public attempt to act like a Prime Ministerial candidate, she made it clear. She’s announced that she wants to form a National Unity government which can stretch to include even Meretz and (horrors) the Likud, in order to deal with Israel’s situation, which is “not simple,” in her words.

Tzipi’s right about the situation. She also assumes that while the situation is not simple, her audience is.

Somewhere, beneath the spin and the corruption and the nauseating display of the titanic ambitions of little people, politics is about important issues. Eons ago, Tzipi Livni was elected on a platform of tossing another 100,000 Israeli citizens into the dustbin and making a lasting peace with the puppet of the Mukata.

That platform lasted for about 90 days, before the Olmert government could get properly comfortable in its chauffeured Volvos. Since then Israel’s situation has changed dramatically. Just about everybody realizes that instead of being on the brink of peace, we stand on the brink of a war of annihilation. We’re just not doing anything about it.

In this situation, which is “not simple,” Tzipi Livni is not a tabula rasa. She comes with a record. She bears more responsibility for Israel’s predicament than any person alive with the exception of Ehud Olmert and Ehud Barak. Her political blindness has been monumental. She hasn’t done a single thing to warn the public of the dangers or to avert them. She hasn’t changed her personal positions an iota since the day before the outbreak of the Second Lebanon War. She’s pursued the will-o-the-wisp of peace with the Palestinian Nonentity long after a majority of the country has recognized it for what it is, a farcical scam. Till her statement yesterday, she seemed totally oblivious to the rapid and ominous darkening of Israel’s political horizon during her tenure in office.

That in itself would be reason enough for her to leave the political stage now rather than to seek to dominate it. At the very least, she should let the public know what she intends to do with her “national unity government.” What’s her platform? What does she intend to do about Gaza? About Judaea and Samaria? About Hizbullah? About Iran? Parties join a government on the basis of that government’s proposed policies. Nobody now has any idea what a Livni government would stand for, other than for Tzipi Livni.

Israel has had a hollow government for over two years now, full of comments about our serious situation but with no plans to do anything about it. The real object of those currently sitting around the government table is to . . . keep on sitting. When Livni discusses whom she wants in her government, as opposed to what she wants to do with it, she’s indicating that she’s really proposing more of the same. Like the entire Kadima lineup, she’s gotten the country into a situation that she’s too small to handle, or even to think constructively about. Good enough a reason to flee her “national unity government” rather than join it.

News scoop :)

Peres and Abu Mazen were meeting in the Israeli President’s residence when Abu Mazen’s constituent went on his tractor rampage on King David Street. In the ensuing uproar, few noticed when Abu Mazen pulled a tape measure out of his pocket and began measuring Peres’ rooms for his furniture.

Poor fool. He doesn’t realize that Ismael Haniya in Gaza has the complete floor plans of Peres’ residence in Jerusalem and Abu Mazen’s suite in the Mukata in Ramallah tacked onto the wall of his office.

Moral Hazard

2008-07-14T14:32:00.001+03:00

Moral hazard. It’s an insurance term. It’s also a fundamental concept in political philosophy. It means what happens when you let someone get off without paying in full for the risks he is exposed to, such as offering a cut rate on health insurance or a pension plan. Insurance companies may be tempted to do this in order to get a contract now, and worry about the costs later. Eventually, moral hazard ends in tears: the insurance company goes bankrupt, or the pensioner winds up with too little or nothing for his retirement, or both.

Moral hazard exists when people discount the future. People naturally tend to do this. What happens in twenty years seems a long time away, especially when we’re talking about risk, the chance of something happening rather than the certainty. Yet in the long run there seems nothing as certain in this world than that moral hazard, eventually, comes home to roost.

The world’s greatest producers of moral hazard are governments. Governments consist of people who, in theory, control a big chunk of everybody else’s money, lives, welfare. The people who make up governments are tempted to use those resources to achieve what they passionately desire today.

Democratic governments desire to be reelected. They are tempted to promise the people things now, leaving the payment to the future, when they will no longer be in office or even alive. Non-democratic governments aren’t immune. The Soviet Union wanted, more than anything else, enough military power to bully the West into submission, and they sacrificed everything to that. The result was the biggest political and economic implosion in history.

The headlines these days are about moral hazard. Americans have made a mess of their economy through neglecting moral hazard. Thirty years ago the American government promised everyone cradle-to-grave, government-guaranteed welfare. It couldn’t keep the promise. Taxes went up, growth went down, and there weren’t enough resources to keep the promises. Then things changed for a while. The Reagan Revolution came in. Instead of the failures of government, the free market was going to be given its head. Businessmen are entrepreneurial and good at creating wealth, so went the story. They’re hardheaded and don’t believe that something can be had for nothing.

For a while this worked quite well. But then it turns out that businessmen are pretty good at smelling out a sweet, government-guaranteed deal, especially if that is the quickest way to make a profit. Businessmen love it when the government guarantees that their deals can’t fail. When government does that, businessmen are as good at anyone else at throwing caution to the winds and taking on dodgy deals for the sake of immediate income. The result is this week’s headlines: Millions of people have taken on risks they cannot sustain, millions are in trouble and, yep, Uncle Sam has stepped in to take off the pressure. With just whose money?

The fact is that American civilization as a whole has spent the last twenty years taking on a monumental bad bet. Americans don’t save. They spend. They take out loans on their houses to fund spending beyond their income. And now the rest of the world looks upon the once-almighty dollar the way Americans used to look upon Mexican pesos. If and when America gets out of this, Americans are going to have to live a lot less well, spend a lot less and save a lot more. That will affect everybody, from Shanghai to Syracuse, who wants an American to buy something.

Moral hazard is not just about money. There was once a leader who was very careful about public money—so obsessed by it, in fact, that it blinded him to every other danger. So careful was Neville Chamberlain with pennies and pounds that when he went to Munich he found himself facing the biggest air force and army then in the world, with none of his own. His prudence turned out to be a rather poor investment for the British people, and for many others besides.

After every episode of catastrophe arising from moral hazard, people are careful for a while. Regulators get tough with private interests and prevent them from taking a free ride. For a decade, for a generation. Then special interests get to work again: They make or buy friends in government, the regulations get watered down, and we all get set up again. And of course, there are no “regulations” or regulative authorities in foreign policy.

The true defense against moral hazard is not regulation (though regulation can help). It’s an attitude of mind and soul, once called “prudence” or “character.” It means a disposition of the soul to be suspicious of momentary pleasures, to guard against them. At its highest, it means cultivating a sense of responsibility for the future, for the world around you—a sense that its welfare is in your care. It is not the same thing as simply being conservative, since prudence requires being alive to changes in the world around you, taking advantage of emerging opportunities and precautions against emerging risks.

The key to developing this kind of attitude on a society-wide basis appears to be religious belief and values, the sense that one is subordinate to a Creator, and responsible to Him for the welfare of His world, His people, and His soul—that is, the one He gave to you to guard and improve. This attitude of prudence and responsibility seems to be what modern (and postmodern) civilization is set up to destroy. Watch out, or it’ll take you—us—with it.

Behind the Facade

2008-07-07T18:21:00.001+03:00

Once again, Haaretz’ veteran political reporter, Yossi Verter, scored a scoop. For a few hours on Friday, the newspaper’s Hebrew website sported the information that Shimon Peres no longer believes that peace with the Palestinians was possible. Foolish me—I didn’t think to save the article to my hard disk or look for an English translation, but I did print it out. It’s there on my desk, in black and white.

Verter was invited to a dinner at Ehud Barak’s house on Saturday night. Among the guests were Peres, the Jordanian ambassador and a prominent left-wing lawyer whose identity Verter is carefully keeping secret. The lawyer said he believed it impossible to make peace with the Palestinians. When the Jordanian ambassador protested vociferously, Peres backed up the unnamed attorney. Abu Mazen has no legitimacy in Judaea and Samaria, Peres said, and no agreement made with him can last for more than a day.

Interestingly, the article appeared on Friday. The dinner at which this conversation took place happened the preceding Saturday night. It took Verter six days to convince his editors to run this piece of news. .

When you think about it, it’s really no surprise that Shimon Peres has finally lost faith in his blood-drenched Oslo project. Peres is a politician with a politician’s instincts. His opinions are merely catching up with where the majority of the population has been for almost two years. And his current opinion is no guarantee that he won’t suffer a relapse in the future. Nonetheless it is significant that he finally admits what most other Israelis take for granted, and equally significant that he did so only in what he presumed, mistakenly, was a private context.

There are other important people who may be presumed to hold similar views. Up to the Annapolis conference Ehud Barak made a point of snubbing Abu Mazen. Only when Condoleeza Rice held his feet to the fire did he agree to go through the motions of meeting and consulting with him. Does Ehud Olmert really believe that peace with the Palestinian Authority is possible this year, or any year? Well, the fact is that buildings have been creeping up not only in Jerusalem but in many communities in Judaea and Samaria. It’s not supposed to happen but the will to prevent it is sorely lacking. And the latest ceasefire with Hamas is not the act of a government that has made a strategic choice to conclude peace with the nominal head of the nominal Palestinian Authority.

No, what’s interesting is not Peres’, or Barak’s, or Olmert’s likely views about peace with the Palestinians. What’s interesting is that they still can’t or won’t admit it. After all, more than a foreign policy is at stake. Peace Messianism is the official ideology of an entire ruling class. Like Communism in Eastern Europe last century, it is both the logical conclusion of their world view and the justification for their regime. If it is no longer believable, it draws both into question. It both explains and exacerbates their precipitate loss of morale. It means that an entire ruling class is living a lie, merely in order to hang on to power.

There is one other reason: The undue influence of diehard peace fanatics who cannot change their minds, such as Attorney General Menahem Mazuz, who holds Olmert’s fate in his hands, or Amos Schocken and David Landau, respectively the owner and editor of Haaretz, who must even now be regretting the decision to let Verter run his piece. To recur to the Eastern European example, these people fulfill the role in the Israeli political system of the Soviet Army. They will move in to bash anyone who exhibits loss of faith in the one true system. But the Soviet Army didn’t save Communism once even most Communists lost faith in it. And it’s only a matter of time till the Israeli establishment’s façade crumbles as well.

I should leave my readers with that hopeful note but I won’t, because one has to think of what comes after the collapse. One looming option is the rule of a populist autocrat, possibly with a heavy Russian accent, over a people that no longer hopes for the future or cares for its liberties and lets it happen because it’s merely the path of least resistance. The other is a new dispensation for Israeli society, led by a leader motivated by faith and able to articulate, if not a belief that appeals to the majority of the people, a comprehensive new set of policies that they are willing to support. To date, unfortunately, no likely candidate has come forth.

Politics, 17-th Century Florence style

2008-07-02T13:49:00.001+03:00

If Jerusalem 2008 were Chicago in 1930, Ehud Barak would suddenly find himself friendless (as indeed he pretty much is today). Nobody would want to be seen talking to him. If he walked down the street, people would hurry across to the other side. If he entered a restaurant or a speakeasy, the patrons would take one look at him and leap for the exits; the proprietor would say “we’re closed!” and push him out the door.

For Ehud Barak is a marked man. He took a shot at Il Capo di tutti Capi, and failed to bring him down. If Jerusalem were Chicago in 1930, men in fedoras toting violin cases would be combing the streets for him. If he were smart, he’d leave town.

Barak is bright, analytical, cold-blooded and calm. He sometimes tells the truth with disarming naivete He has one besetting flaw: The inability to act decisively (which ought to disqualify him as Defense Minister or Prime Minister). Twice he issued ultimatums, to Arafat and to Hamas, and failed to follow through. Once he issued an ultimatum to Olmert. This time he didn’t back off, didn’t swallow his words. He merely temporized, postponed the day of reckoning, tried to be nice and to give Olmert and Kadima time. This could turn out to be the mistake that ends his political career.

In politics, Olmert is a past master to Barak’s puerile amateurism. By telling Olmert to go, Barak has marked himself as Olmert’s greatest foe. Barak foolishly gave Olmert three months, and Olmert will use them to wipe Barak out, swiftly and efficiently.

The overall game plan is clear: First and foremost, put Barak under investigation by the police. On Tuesday, six days after Olmert and Barak signed the agreement that postponed elections, Shmuel Levi, a former Barak flunky who is now an Olmert flunky, cut a deal with the police to turn state’s witness and testify about Barak’s illegal campaign contributions in 1999 (on the radio his attorney said he was doing so as “a matter of conscience.” I laughed so hard I nearly had to pull the car off to the side of the road).

Second, raise a revolt against Barak in the Labor party, where Olmert, giver of budgets and offices, has more clout than Barak himself. On Monday Amir Peretz declared he would challenge Barak for leadership of the Labor party before the next elections. Olmert got a freebie from MK Dani Yatom, who disgusted with barak, announced he was leaving the Knesset. Barak today heads the Labor party only nominally. His colleagues are divided into two camps: Those who are openly screaming for his political head, and those who would be happy to sit back and see him lose it.

By skillfully putting all of Barak’s weaknesses into play, in a manner which Barak has neither the skills not the resources to prevent, Olmert plans to reduce Barak to a political cipher by September. By then Olmert should be able to cancel Kadima’s primaries with impunity. Labor will be too divided and Barak too discredited to do anything about it.

Maybe my knowledge of political history is too limited, but I cannot recall a similar spectacle of the country’s greatest political crook methodically plotting the downfall of another political crook, using the country’s legal system as a political tool. One would have to go to the dying days of the Roman Republic or the Weimar Republic to find a parallel.

The dying days of republics . . .

To me he most ominous aspect of the whole affair are Olmert’s chosen hatchetmen, his guys in grey fedoras and violin cases. They are none other than the police and the State Prosecution. It is Olmert who, with a crook of his finger, is producing evidence against Barak where there was none before. With a history of lenience toward public figures and incompetence in investigating them, Israel’s law enforcement agencies cannot be portrayed as crusaders against official corruption. From Aharon Barak and Asa Kasher they have learned to let precious calculations of individual rights and solicitude for legal niceties dominate their real job of going after the corrupt, dominating them, and throwing them out of public life. Of course, the precious calculations and legal niceties go out the window when political enemies are involved. Like other parts of Israel’s unelected power elite, they themselves have been corrupted, first by the perversion of their power to political ends, and then by its perversion to personal ends of power and money.

They will not, of course, make themselves the agents of Olmert’s dirty political manipulations willingly or intentionally. But they will serve those ends nonetheless. The reality of Israel’s public arena today is that the crooks are on top, able to exploit the “forces of justice” as and when desired, for their desired ends.

The Culture of Apeasement

2008-07-01T17:18:00.001+03:00

The Culture of Appeasement

Once upon a time, a long time ago, there was a young officer named Ehud Barak, who was handed an old construction plan and an impossible order: Here’s the central terminal building in Entebbe, no local intelligence information, plan a rescue while the government negotiates and procrastinates and tries to buy you time to get ready. Bright and competent, Barak worked night and day, analyzing the mission and preparing everything.

As the government of Israel formally agreed to release prisoners in return for hostages, dun-colored transport planes took off. The first act of the drama about to unfold came about when the first transport plane rolled to the end of the runway at Entebbe, far from the terminal where the hostages were held. Combat engineers got out, ran to the jet fighters parked there, and blew them up. When the transports took off barely an hour later there was no Ugandan Air Force to chase them—Barak had thought ahead, and those fighters were the first thing on his lengthy checklist. I still remember Idi Amin, the dictator of Uganda, shedding crocodile tears on international TV, asking how the Israelis could do this to him, their best friend who only wanted to help. Uh-huh.

Once upon a time, a long time ago, there were Israeli governments who could tell friend from foe, and military experts who could apply force, sharp, precise and deadly, to achieve national security.

There is a long article in Haaretz last week by Ari Shavit, praising Ehud Barak for preventing an offensive into Gaza and agreeing to a ceasefire. The main reason for Barak’s restraint, according to Shavit, is the desire to make the Egyptians happy, to preserve their prestige, to ensure them we did everything we could before assaulting Gaza, an operation they are said to dread—overlooking their complicity in arming Hamas and turning them loose on our cities, something Shavit neglected to mention.

Lord Castlereagh, Britain’s famous foreign minister at the time of the Napoleonic wars, is reported to have said that Britain had no permanent friends, just permanent interests. To all appearances, Israel under its present leadership has no interests to speak of, just false friends it wants to appease. Abandoning Gilad Shalit to his fate was a nice touch, typical of the amoral crew now governing the state of Israel, a reminder of whom we’re dealing with and why they should be consigned to political perdition as son as possible.

Actually, I prefer Barak’s ceasefire to the alternative. Not a week ago in this space I made clear my adamant opposition to the kind of “offensive” the Olmert government is planning, in-and-out, sacrificing Israeli lives to make Abu Mazen, now the puppet king of the Arabs of Judaea and Samaria, the puppet king of Gaza as well. This strategy, if one can grace it with that name, is sure to fail. True, the ceasefire means Hamas will get tougher and action against them will eventually cost more. But it won’t cost as much as continuing the peace charade with Abu Mazen. If you’re not going to fight to win, there’s no point in fighting for the sake of a few newspaper headlines.

It’s better to do nothing than to do any of the things that this twisted government, representative of a twisted culture and a twisted ethic, is contemplating. But it’s more important to remember that there are options and policies not dreamt of in this government’s philosophy. It is hard, and wrong, to advocate going to war lightly. But Israel is threatened by enemies all about, and appeasement, the attempt to avoid fighting, is a sure recipe for disaster.

I think it would be wise for Israel to use its military strength preemptively to remove neutralize the Hamas regime before a major regional confrontation. And it would do Israel’s regional standing no end of good if it were to apply its military muscle swiftly and decisively, letting other nations in the region deal with the fallout however it lands. The best thing we could do to influence Egypt’s attitude to us in a positive way is to make clear that when our citizens are threatened we are very, very dangerous, and that it behooves everyone around us to run for cover.

Other People's Futures

2008-06-30T15:44:00.002+03:00

Olmert, Livni, Barak and Yishai have no objection to getting headlines now and paying for them with other people's futures.

I won’t comment extensively now about prisoner exchanges in general and the particular exchanges being negotiated with Hizbullah and Hamas. Six months ago I expressed my opinion here and I haven’t changed my mind.

I will only add that Israeli politicians’ stewardship of their country’s security is epitomized by the prisoner exchanges now being negotiated, in which Israel has given up the maximum in return for the minimum. The greatest incentive possible is being given to further terrorism.

All the experts warn that the deals further portray Israel as a hapless victim to be brutalized. For the politicians, the only thing that matters is the temporary orgy of emotionalism that will fleetingly sweep the popular press, in which they will play a part and have their pictures taken. They will have brought the boys—in some cases, their remains—home. Olmert, Barak and Yishai need an achievement, after their fatuous political performances last week, as something that can be spun as an achievement whether it is one or not. It does not matter how bitterly other families and other political leaders will have cause to rue it in the future. That, after all, will happen to other people and at other times.

This attitude is the exact opposite of stewardship: The use of public interests and resources for private advantage, with disregard for the consequences because they will likely be borne by other people.

Knesset Kremlinology

I don’t like to engage in straight political commentary, but sometimes something needs pointing out. Originally I was trained as a Sovietologist. I learned the arcane art of analyzing official statements in Pravda to discern when policy was being changed, and who in the Kremlin was doublecrossing whom. While I don’t consider myself an expert in the field of modern “media,” a lot of my old skills come in useful when applied to the Israeli press—especially Ha’aretz.

Ha’aretz is a lot like Pravda. All its writers are ideologically committed to Peace Messianism, with a few token exceptions like Nadav Shragai and Yisrael Harel. Many of them are connected to various portions of the left-wing establishment, and reflect the interests, passions and aversions of their chosen factions. As in the former Soviet press, why a news item appears and how it is presented often matters more than the facts it contains.

Thus on Friday a report appeared under the byline of Haaretz’ political reporter, Yossi Verter, telling us that “people close to Olmert” were referring to Ehud Barak as a “whipped cur,” a coward who again made a threat and backed off when challenged by Olmert. The whole tone of the “news item” smells like Verter got it ready written from one of Olmert’s spin doctors. The news, supposedly, is that this is Olmert’s opinion of Barak. The point however is not to impart information but to influence attitudes.

Barak’s conduct last week does not justify such crowing. Barak achieved what he set out to do—he got Kadima to agree to hold primaries, and he did it without Labor having to leave its cushy ministerial chairs. He’s won on points. But he made one serious mistake: He gave Olmert a breathing space of three months.

The Verter article in Haaretz is meant to start destroying Barak’s reputation among the members of Israel’s leftist elite who get their opinions from Haaretz. Olmert notes that most of Labor’s MKs and ministers really, really don’t want to go to elections. Only the necessity of not creating a public breach with Barak made them go along with his threat to leave Olmert’s government. Olmert is gambling that in three months, when he runs in Kadima’s primaries and wins, or better yet welches on his promise to Barak and cancels primaries altogether, he will have so weakened Barak’s image that his Labor colleagues will no longer follow his lead.

It is equally significant that Barak has sustained two more attacks since the weekend. His former campaign manager, who worked for Tal Silberstein, once Barak’s adviser, now Olmert’s, has threatened to go to the police with evidence that Barak, too, takes cash-filled envelopes. And Amir Peretz, whom Barak replace as head of Labor, has announced he will challenge Barak for the leadership position again before the next elections—which could be quite soon. Peretz may have made his announcement independently of Olmert, but it is also quite possible that Olmert told Peretz that the Prime Minister’s spin doctors would be gunning for Barak and that now would be a good time for Peretz to make his challenge public.

To me this all feels just like the time when I perused Pravda to follow up on Suslov versus Brezhnev, Andropov versus Chernenko, and Gorbachev versus the rest. I used to thank heaven that I lived in a country which wasn’t run by hints and innuendo in Pravda. Little did I suspect then what the future would hold . . .

Human Sacrifice

2008-06-23T13:28:00.000+03:00

Poor Shaul Mofaz. All he did was shoot his mouth off about attacking Iran for the sake of his political campaign. He didn’t actually launch F-15s or risk the life of one Israeli soldier (as transportation minister, he’s not in a position to give military orders). And everybody lands on him for talking too much and sacrificing Israel’s interests to his own personal political ambitions.

Now compare Mofaz to Barak, Livni and Olmert. The latter three (like Mofaz) are in campaign mode now. All share a common problem: They have to solve the security problem around Gaza, which now directly threatens a couple hundred thousand Israelis and is sure to get worse. At the same time, the one thing they cannot do is solve the problem. Solving it means, at a minimum, permanently taking over about 60% of Gaza, including all the territory of Gush Katif, and placing the rest of Hamastan under close blockade. They cannot do this because it means kissing goodbye to the supposed justifications for disengagement: returning Israel to “the quicksand of Gaza” and taking responsibility for the fate of the Arabs there.

Perhaps the main reason they cannot solve the Gaza problem is because they face an election. One would think that a patriotic war is good for somebody running for office. But in this case it’s just the opposite. Netanyahu’s speech will be short and to the point (I ain’t seen it, I’m just guessing): “The Likud applauds the Government of Israel’s operation to restore security to Israel’s citizens in the south. We’re behind the government all the way. We just don’t understand what took them so long. We knew they would have to do this—we told ‘em so, and they now have no choice but to implement the Likud’s policy. The only thing we’re worried about is whether the government will retreat ignominiously with its tail between its legs when the fighting is over. If Israel doesn’t want to have to do all this over yet a third time, the electorate had better vote Likud on November 11.” And that’s what the electorate will do.

So what are Livni, Olmert and Mofaz going to do? They’re going to put on a show. They will do more of the same. They will deploy twice as many or four times as many soldiers in Gaza as today and have two to four times as many fire fights with the Hamas, leading to two to four times as many casualties. They will blow up a few middle-ranking Hamas leaders. They will call it a big operation to “cut the Hamas down to size” or some such foolishness (the object should be not to cut Hamas down to size but to physically eliminate it). Of the three, only Barak still retains enough honesty to say that he wants a “middle-scale” operation. But all three of them simply want to create the impression of doing something. And while the soldiers are fighting and dying, G-d forbid, they will fill the airwaves about the need for “restraint” and for “leaving an opening for a political resolution” (this is with the Hamas, mind you). Because the one thing they cannot do is solve the problem.

Actually, if they do fight, they will have an object in mind. They’ll want to hurt the Hamas—not defeat it, but hurt it. They want to soften Hamas’ terms for a long-term cease fire. And if they accomplish that objective, they will give their blessing to Abu Mazen’s new negotiations with Hamas, and try to conclude that one big, comprehensive peace agreement with a government representing—once again—the Arabs of Judaea, Samaria and Gaza, incidentally leading to the expulsion of 100,000 Israelis from their homes. I don’t think they will achieve this objective—Hamas is fifty times tougher than they—but that will be the general idea.

Who’s going to be doing this? Not Olmert’s sons. They’re in the States, happily and peacefully bringing up their kids (while neglecting to invite Morris Talansky to their bar-mitzvas—one would think that he of all people had earned an invitation). No, they’re going to send my sons, one a reservist in the artillery, another a reservist in the armored corps.

So really, Mofaz has nothing to reproach himself for. He’s nothing but talk. The trio who are so down on him for opening his mouth, Livni, Olmert and Barak, are contemplating engaging in real, live human sacrifice for the sake of their political ambitions—sacrifices that will achieve nothing in terms of Israel’s long-term security.

The grim fact is that this leadership and its policies inspire no confidence in ordinary Israelis. Nobody feels confident that when Barak or Olmert goes to war they have the best interests of the country at heart, or even know how to achieve it. And an army that feels that way will not fight and cannot win. In fact, an army that feels that way may not even show up for the war.

I have informed my sons that if for some reason they wind up spending the impending Gaza offensive in Military Prison 6, they won’t lack for brownies and chiffon cake. One comes back alive from prison.

The Untouchables

2008-06-04T12:40:00.002+03:00

In testimony yesterday before a special Knesset committee, established to investigate the conduct of the law enforcement establishment in prosecuting former Justice Minister Haim Ramon, the current minister, Daniel Friedmann, complained that the police and the Attorney General were doing everything in their power to protect police officials and prosecutors who violated Ramon’s due-process rights. Freidmann called for the establishment of an official Commission of Inquiry. Unlike a Knesset committee, an official Commission of Inquiry can issue subpoenas, force civil servants to testify, and prescribe sanctions for offenders. As things stand now, the people who violated Ramon’s rights are untouchable.

When Kadima came to power in 2006, Olmert made Haim Ramon Justice Minister. Ramon had a brief to reform the ministry, which means especially its most powerful bureaucracy, the State Prosecution. On the eve of the Second Lebanon War Ramon kissed a woman officer stationed in the Prime Minister’s office. He says she led him on; she charged him with sexual harassment. Ramon was convicted—but not of felonious conduct. He’s now a minister again.

The really curious part had to do with the way police, prosecutors and judges handled the Ramon case. A senior police officer with a checkered history, Miri Golan, apparently pressured the young woman into filing charges. Police obtained a warrant to tap Ramon’s cellphone, apparently on false pretexts. A judge issued the warrant without asking the most basic questions as to why the warrant was needed or justified. Then, the prosecution failed to reveal the content of the wiretaps or even the fact of their existence to Ramon’s lawyers, as required by law; doing so would have revealed that the state went fishing for additional incriminating evidence and found none. All these facts were confirmed by an independent inquiry performed by retired judge Vardimon Zeiler. Nothing has been done to those responsible for deliberately or carelessly violating Ramon’s rights.

There is nothing new with Israel’s law enforcement authorities bending the law when they’re out to get a politician they don’t like. When Binyamin Netanyahu was Prime Minister, Attorney General Michael Ben-Yair, a Rabin appointee, filed trumped-up tax-evasion charges against Netanyahu’s Justice Minister, Yaakov Neeman. Later on a senior police officer, Moshe Mizrahi, obtained a warrant to wiretape conversations between Netanyahu and Avigdor Lieberman, then (and since) under investigation for corruption. On the basis of the warrant Mizrahi recorded hours and hours of purely political conversations between the two. The low-ranking police officer who spilled on Mizrahi, Stanislav Yazhemski, fled to Canada because, he said, he feared Mizrahi’s vengeance. Eventually Mizrahi was force out, a singular and exceptional development.

In the Knesset yesterday Daniel Friedmann testified in bitter tones that all his efforts to force his ministry to discipline the officials who violated due process in their haste to railroad Ramon into jail have failed. Judge Zeiler seconded Friedmann’s call for a Commission of Inquiry, saying (according to Haaretz’ Hebrew edition), “Everyone involved with [the Ramon investigation] agrees terrible things were done.”

In reaction, Haaretz reports current Chief Police Inspector David Cohen as saying, “So every time an internal investigation reaches a conclusion someone doesn’t like, we’re going to appoint a special Commission of Inquiry?” Cohen referred to the anemic “internal investigation” of the affair by the complaisant Judge Nathan Brener, appointed by Mazuz, who concluded that nothing special needed to be done to any individual.

Inspector Cohen has a point. What’s needed is not a special Commission of Inquiry. The fact is that Israel’s police and prosecutors habitually play fast and loose with the due-process and civil rights of citizens, prominent or nameless. The judges are careless in exercising their authority to oversee, and hence check, violations of citizens’ rights. The entire law enforcement establishment acts like one big happy family, claiming to act beyond reproach, in practice devoid of oversight and out of control.

Nobody in a democracy should exercise authority without oversight. What’s really needed is set up a permanent civil rights authority, independent of the police, the courts and the Justice Ministry, with the statutory right to do everything, on a permanent basis, that a one-off Commission of Inquiry can do: Hold investigations, issue subpoenas, and prescribe sanctions for judges, cops and prosecutors who go off the reservation. The appropriate place to set up such an authority is within the Office of the State Comptroller, which is already responsible for investigating the way the rest of Israel’s government is administered and is not chummy with the cops, courts and prosecutors.

Voodoo History

2008-06-02T09:19:00.002+03:00

While researching a paper on “Jewish labor”—the movement to employ Jews in the economy of the pre-State yishuv, now proposed by some as a way to combat the Palestinian erosion of the Zionist enterprise—I read the history of the “Jewish labor” phenomenon published (in Hebrew) thirty years ago by Prof. Anita Shapira of Hebrew University This book gave me a sudden insight into the post-Zionist mind.

This blog is not really about “Jewish Labor” but it’s worth investing a minute to understand the problem, which hasn’t changed in eighty years. Back in the 1930s urban factory workers were expected to have finished eighth grade or to have a skill, and there was no problem keeping those jobs in Jewish hands. The problem arose with simple, unskilled, hard physical jobs like fruit-picking or spadework: Jews didn’t want to do them, and in any case Arabs would do them for less.

Nonetheless, for some unskilled Jewish workers in the 1920s and early 1930s, agricultural jobs—and an above-market wage for them—were very important. The interests of Jewish fruit farmers, many of whom were barely breaking even, conflicted with Jewish workers who wanted jobs in the orchards reserved for them. Sometimes the conflict wasn’t pretty: Jewish workers would drive Arabs out of the orchards. The rest of the Yishuv, led by the socialist Labor party, castigated the farmers for pursuing their private interests at the expense of Zionism. In the end the principle of Jewish labor became accepted throughout the pre-state Yishuv.

Now here is what Prof. Shapira has to say in conclusion:

"Most of the workers’ movement in the first half of the 1930s did not understand the meaning of a genuine compromise [emphasis added]. For its part, compromise had to be at least a partial victory, the result of pressure and power, and not of discussion [emphasis added]. [Futile Victory, “Conclusion,” p. 349]."

I had to read this twice before I understood it. When people have a conflict, it’s because some objective is very important to them. Even when they negotiate, they apply sanctions—“pressure and power”—to make the other side accede to their interests. The final disposition of the conflict depends on the balance of power between the two sides, and on how important to them their respective objectives were in the first place. To the degree that each side succeeds in partially realizing its objectives, it will consider that a partial victory. That was the point of the exercise all along.

But Shapira appears not to be able to accept this simple fact of life. She is distressed by the very notion of a conflict of interests turning into a conflict in fact. She is convinced there ought to be a better, nobler way. Her term for it is hidabrut, discussion. This is exactly the same term Israeli leftists use when asked for their solution to, say, the genocidal Hamas regime in Gaza. We ought to sit down and discuss things with them: “OK, you want us dead. We wouldn’t like to be dead. Can’t we come to a meeting of minds?”

The Left refuses to acknowledge the existence of a world in which fighting and killing us is a genuine, clearly articulated objective that other people think it worth sacrificing their lives to achieve. A world in which hidabrut is futile because it means asking people to give up on what they consider the most important objective in the world, the one that gives their lives meaning. A world in which it is possible that there is no compromise resolution to our conflict with theAccording to the Leftist perspective, this entire point of view is illegitimate. Force applied in the pursuit of an objective is morally wrong, no matter what the objective of the other side is. A world in which no compromise solution to our problem with the Palestinians is possible because the Palestinians really, truly don't want one. In which case our wanting one is completely beside the point. This may indeed be a tragedy, but that doesn’t make it an avoidable one

According to the Leftist perspective, this entire point of view is illegitimate. Conflicts aren’t real. They shouldn’t be expected to govern people’s behavior. Force applied in the pursuit of an objective is morally wrong, no matter what the objective of the other side is. The real way to treat any conflict is through hidabrut, a meeting of minds. People who refuse to accept this are mindless warmongers, and in the wrong by definition.

Somehow an essential aspect of human relations seems to have escaped Prof. Shapira’s notice. Her analysis of conflict is Utopian, and seems based upon willful ignorance of an essential aspect of human nature. Call it voodoo history: a happy ending will spring into being, detached from anyone’s real interests or determination to realize them. I doubt she pursues such an attitude in her daily life. Applied to international relations, this approach is crippling, deadly. Alas, it also explains a lot about Israeli foreign policy.

Looking Beyond Olmert

2008-05-29T13:53:00.001+03:00

Behind his portly frame and seemingly unsophisticated exterior, Binyamin (Fuad) Ben-Eliezer, Minister of Infrastructure and Ehud Barak’s closest political ally, possesses one of Israel’s most cunning political minds. Fuad has been a diehard opponent of new elections: As of now, Labor looks like shedding a quarter of its seats in the Knesset, and if that happens the Labor party will hand Barak his head. Yesterday Fuad told a meeting of the Labor Party faithful, “make no mistake—we’re heading for elections.”

If even Fuad believes it’s elections, then it’s elections. Time to look beyond Olmert, beyond Kadima. I cannot do so without a strong sense of disappointment at lost opportunities. It’s not just Olmert who’s wasted two years of Israel’s time but ourselves as well, the author of this blog and all who share concern for a Jewish Israel. Israel is going to the polls, but with no real choices other than the discounted ones of yesteryear.

Something happened in the summer of 2006: The Israeli public lost its faith in the political shibboleths it has followed since Yitzhak Rabin was elected in 1992. People want peace but no longer believe in it. They oppose territorial withdrawals and think they’re bad news, with or without a piece of paper saying “treaty” on it. They have lost faith in all their public institutions: Government, politicians, courts, army, even the media, whom they despise even as they consume them compulsively. Deep beneath the surface is rising concern about the fate of the Jewish state.

The governing culture, whose various representatives are the chief candidates in the forthcoming elections, is losing its self-confidence. It is still strong, still able to defend its position, but it is in decline.

At the same time, the public declares that it feels more Jewish and more “right wing.” It is hard to determine exactly what these terms mean to those who use them. But as is often the case with social trends, the process is clearer than the particular point we have reached in it at the present or any other time.

This would be an opportune time for an alternative political leadership to present itself to the public with an alternative public agenda and, more important, an alternative cultural and ethical narrative to justify it. It’s no secret what these are:

We need to preserve the Jewish state, because it’s under mortal threat from enemies without and within.
To do that, we need first and foremost to be convinced of the justice of a Jewish state and of the policies needed to promote its welfare. That means we need to take traditional Jewish values seriously and make them the foundation of our public policy.
We need new policies in specific areas: A much more decisive foreign and military policy; large new incentives to encourage Palestinian emigration; new legal and media institutions; and a more open, competitive educational system which, without forcing anything on anyone, facilitates (=funds) access for all to the traditional Jewish values on which Israeli society must now be reconstructed.

An alternative political leadership broadcasting this message in a way accessible to the entire Israeli public would cast a giant shadow over Israeli society. It would set the agenda of this election campaign. It wouldn’t necessarily win this time, but it would set the terms of debate. And having once done so, its eventual victory, in the next elections or the ones after that, would be assured.

Unfortunately, it isn’t about to happen. We aren’t ready. We haven’t put forth the leaders and we haven’t put together the message. But we could, if we put our minds and our money to it. I think I know something of what we should be doing and, G-d willing, will write about more in the weeks ahead.

Why is Olmert different from Sharon?

2008-05-26T17:36:00.000+03:00

It’s pretty well accepted in Israel’s political scene that Olmert is finished. By Israeli law civil servants, including elected ones, may not receive gifts. Taking bribes is a felony carrying a 7-year sentence and by past Israeli caselaw, one doesn’t need to prove that the target of bribery actually did something for his money. It’s enough to establish that the money was given and received.

The police and state prosecution have been devoting a lot of effort to Olmert’s case since November last year, when the State Comptroller, Micha Lindenstrauss, seized computer files from the Ministry of Trade, where Olmert served as minister in 2005. By law, material in the State Comptroller’s hands cannot be used as evidence in a trial, so the Comptroller returned the materials to the ministry and told the State Prosecutor, Moshe Lador, “go have a look.” Lador and the Attorney General, Menahem Mazuz authorized the police to take out a warrant for Olmert’s files from the Ministry. The rest is history.

The real question is, why is Olmert being treated differently from Ariel Sharon?

This question has aroused a lot of conspiracy theories. In Sharon’s case, the Israeli legal system simply couldn’t bring itself to stop the corrupt Messiah of disengagement. Why isn’t Olmert considered as holy? Surely there must be some deep reason why “they” want Olmert out and so have given “instructions” to topple him.

I think the conspiracy theory is subtly off the mark. A ruling elite cannot function without morale. At its height, this morale is expressed in the belief that what’s good for the elite is what’s good for society. Fifty years ago Communist parties used to believe this. Anything that increased their power was good for “the revolution,” and that justified everything.

Many years before Communism collapsed for good, doubt set in. Good Communists did not doubt the goal of Communism, but they began to doubt that the Communist Party actually served that goal. For many middle-level Communist bureaucrats (such as a young district Communist leader named Mikhail Gorbachev), it became important that the party actually act in accordance with principle, even when doing so led to the weakening of its own political position. Before long, it became evident that doing good implied the opposite of shoring up Communist rule. At that point Communist parties began to tear themselves apart, riven by conflict between those who were motivated by the good of the party and those motivated by the good of society. What took their place had nothing whatever to do with the Communism.

Something like that is starting to happen in Israel today. In Israel, the ruling ideology is not Communism but peace and post-Zionism. The elite hasn’t stopped believing in its core values, but its more sensitive members are beset by doubts. Disengagement has gone badly wrong, as its opponents predicted. The public no longer believes in peace. For that matter, it no longer believes in the elites, in Israeli political institutions, in the elite’s views of democracy and the rule of law, because the elites have betrayed those values in pursuit of the Messiah of peace. Increasingly, some members of the elite wonder if the public’s view of them isn’t justified.
The business of Olmert, Sharon and Attorney General Menahem Mazuz is a case in point. Mazuz was appointed to his job in 2004 to get Ariel Sharon off the hook. He delivered the goods, refusing to indict Sharon in two corruption cases that seemed open-and-shut (in one case, Sharon’s son was convicted and now doing time, based on evidence that should have put Sharon pere behind bars as well). In the last two years, other decisions of Mazuz—first to prepare a severe indictment against former President Katzav and then be forced to accept a plea-bargain with him, then to indict Haim Ramon, only to have a court declare there was no moral turpitude in Ramon’s kissing a young officer stationed in the Prime Minister’s office—have contributed to a precipitious decline in the legal system’s reputation. Today, Mazuz has no choice but to indict Olmert if the evidence warrants it. The entire legal system expects him to. If it fails to deliver on Olmert, it will have lost its raison d’etre in its own eyes.

Which is the point. At this point, Israel’s ruling elite can only justify its existence by harming its ideological goals and its grip on power. As the elite continues to lose self-confidence, it will increasingly lose the ability to implement its policies no matter what the cost. It is in fact on skids. Its greatest good fortune is that there is not yet any effective, incisive faith-based alternative to challenge it for control of public opinion and public policy. And that’s our fault.

A Dumb Idea

2008-05-22T16:56:00.001+03:00

One of the striking things about Olmert’s new negotiations with Syria is that very few people are coming out and saying that the talks are a bad idea.

Ehud Barak, who probably has been kept a little bit more in the know by Olmert than most of us (and, in the last month, than Tzipi Livni) spoke about how he’s always favored negotiation. We just have to be careful about Syria and understand that nothing can be accomplished (assuming any treaty will be an accomplishment) quickly.

That seems to be the pattern. MK Michael Eitan of the Likud says on A7 today that “negotiating with Syria is like negotiating with Iran”—which one presumes means it’s a futile or dangerous idea—but says he’s in favor of negotiations. Netanyahu is in no position to say he’s against negotiations, he negotiated when he was prime minister. Various other people in different parts of the political spectrum have said similar things.

For the record (just scroll down a bit), I think the negotiations a re a dumb idea. Since it appears impossible to conclude them successfully, they tend to increase the likelihood of war. But even I haven’t said we can just decide to back out once we’ve begun, because that implies the relations between Israel and Syria are fast deteriorating toward war, and war is to be feared. Winding down these negotiations without damage will take time, patience and finesse to ensure that missiles don’t start raining down on Tel Aviv soon after they end. If they do start raining down on Tel Aviv we’ll have to go after the people firing ‘em, and that will be no fun at all.

The difference between Syria on the one hand and Hamas and the Arabs in Judaea and Samaria on the other hand is that the latter two are already doing us all the damage they can muster. No matter what we do in a military way, things won’t get substantially worse. Syria and Hizbullah could in principle do us a lot more damage than they’re doing now, and people are afraid of that.

Even politicians on the right are not saying outright that the negotiations are a mistake, though they may believe it, because you cannot tell the Israeli public that the prospect of peace with Syria is a mistake. Few people have confidence in Assad but equally few are willing to admit that a peace treaty is simply not among the options that the real world offers. That’s a regrettable weakness but politicians spend their lives accommodating their constituents’ regrettable weaknesses.

In fact, I think that both Syria and Israel were better off before the news of negotiations broke, before they were both committed to succeeding or failing at peacemaking. Not negotiating also means not forcing a confrontation once negotiations break down, as they almost inevitably will. If you can’t solve a conflict, the next best policy is benign neglect.

For Syria as well as Israel, open war would be an unmitigated disaster. They say Assad has been under enormous pressure from the Americans, because they boycott hum and because they press the international enquirey into the murder of Lebanese politician Rafik Hariri; that he wants negotiations, not peace but simply negotiations, to get American pressure of him. If so he’s not a lot more farsighted than Olmert. The ante in this poker game is liable to be a lot higher than he anticipated.

Olmert's Worst Act

2008-05-21T18:03:00.000+03:00

Ehud Olmert has just done immense damage to the State of Israel—damage that dwarfs anything he might have done at Annapolis, indeed anything he has done in his checkered public career. In the wild hope of saving himself from an indictment that now seems almost certain, he has involved Israel in a negotiation process, all of whose outcomes can only be bad for the country.

Syria’s foreign minister has announced that Olmert committed Israel to retreat to the line of June 4, 1967 as a precondition of talks, while not insisting on any Syrian precommitments, such as leaving the Iranian orbit and abandoning terror (Olmert’s office has issued a denial). These are the kind of terms usually offered by a country that has suffered a grave military defeat. Though Israel’s performance in the Lebanon War was disappointing, it certainly did not suffer a defeat that could justify such capitulation, nor could Syria inflict that kind of defeat now. The terms are entirely a product of Olmert’s personal situation and personal desperation.

It is not Olmert who will have to pay the price for them, though. He faces a couple of years in jail at most. The price may be paid, G-d forbid, by young men. And their families. And Israel’s civilians, huddled under bombardment in inadequate shelters. If Israel accepts the terms, war will come closer. The entire history of diplomacy suggests that if Israel rejects the terms and the negotiations fail, war is the most likely consequence.

Most Israelis and most Israeli politicians appear to appreciate how reckless Olmert’s move is. Even MK Shelli Yehimovich, from the left wing of the Labor party, said that Olmert is simply playing upon the cupidity of peace activists in hopes of staying out of jail. One junior Kadima minister has also come out against the move. Significantly, Israel radio at 2 pm Israel time reported “a senior government official” as saying that in a meeting attended by Bush, Condi Rice and Tzipi Livni last week, Bush said he thought it most unlikely Bashar Assad could bring about the changes in Syrian foreign policy he would have to make in order to conclude a genuine peace. No points for guessing the identity of the “senior government official,” hiding behind anonymity, as is her wont, rather than taking responsibility for her positions.

Oh yes, and Eli Yishai of Shas—someone else who never puts his vote where his mouth is—also came out against.

In starting negotiations under these conditions, Olmert has brought war nearer. He won’t save himself, but neither will the negotiations simply go away when he does. As Shahar Ilan writes in Ha’aretz today, “an MK who opposes a peace treaty with Syria before it is signed won’t necessarily oppose it after it is signed. . . . And when one recalls that Netanyahu also negotiated over the Golan, it is far from clear that Ehud Olmert has to be prime minister for the negotiations to be concluded. Another prime minister from Kadima can give back the Golan. Even Netanyahu.”

Ironically, in his attempt to save himself from prosecution, Olmert may have handed his hated arch-rival within Kadima, Tzipi Livni, the key to keeping her own government in business when she replaces him at the helm.

I fear that calculus of negotiation may come to have nothing to do with the prospects of real peace or a “new middle east.” Rather, it may come down to what I mentioned above—all choices are bad, but the Israeli public may feel that by agreeing to sacrifice the Golan it can buy a better chance for a longer period of shadowy no-war-no-peace. The term for that attitude is appeasement.

The next government, assuming it’s around the corner, will have to deal with the fact of negotiations. It can’t simply send the Syrians a card saying “we thought better of it, sorry.” If the negotiations are to be abandoned, it will have to be over real issues.

Two such issues are practical, foreign policy ones. First of all, the public must be made to consider what it would be like to fight a war without any of the Golan—neither a warning station on the Hermon, nor a viable defense line anywhere on the heights. Second, it must appreciate that it costs Syria nothing to get back the Golan in exchange for a piece of paper it can tear up whenever it’s ready for war. Israel must insist Syria go the whole route before a peace treaty of any sort can be signed: Kick out Palestinian terrorists, stop acting as a conduit for Iranian weapons to Hizbullah and Iranian-trained terrorists to Iraq, let Lebanon become a democracy, open its economy and society to Western, especially American, influence. Unless Syria changes its identity, a peace treaty with Syria will be meaningless. I agree with Bush, I don’t think Assad can or wants to do it.

The most important issue, however, is the most difficult to sell to the public, and it’s precisely because this is true that it’s the most important issue: Appeasement is a sign of moral collapse. The likelihood of war is determined only secondarily by borders, deployments, and ancillary conditions. Fundamentally, nothing makes war more likely than the perception of a tyrant that his opponent’s moral will to resist has crumbled. Unlike Olmert, Israel cannot afford to be tired of winning, because the alternative is defeat.

The Gaidamak Phenomenon

2008-05-20T17:05:00.001+03:00

Arkady Gaidamak, a very wealthy Russian Jew, now domiciled in Israel, wanted in France for illicit arms trafficking to Africa, has been doing a lot to put his name before the public. He’s been on TV, advertised cellphones (I think), and in general made a spectacle of himself. I haven’t seen much of him because I don’t own a TV. But I think he bears watching now, because he just bought himself an Israeli political party. He promised three unmemorable members of the Pensioners Party to fund their next political campaign if they break away from their mother party and become his party, possibly sending him to sit as their representative in Olmert’s government (or Tzipi Livni’s, or whatever. Stay tuned for our take on Tzipi). The Knesset’s legal adviser has determined that the agreement between Gaidamak and the pensioners—they provide the party, he provides the cash to get ‘em elected—is illegal. It will take a few days until Gaidamak finds a competent lawyer to write up the patently illegal deal in legally acceptable language.

Gaidamak has made a name for himself in Israel not just by making a spectacle of himself on TV but by engaging in large-scale acts of charity. He’s provided aid to refugees from Gush Katif. He provided vacations and outings to hundreds of Sderot families. He bought Bikur Holim hospital in Jerusalem, which caters to the impoverished Haredi population of the city, covered its deficit and put it back in business. In part, he did so precisely to increase his name recognition and popularity in Israel. So what could be bad?

He’s done other things as well. He bought Israel’s premier soccer team, Betar. And he bought a radio station, all the licensed television stations already being owned. This resembles a pattern, and the pattern set off alarms in my head. You see, that’s what Russian oligarchs do. They always buy a leading sports club and a TV station (there are more available in Russia) to round out their immense holdings, because owning a sports club makes them popular, popularity helps draw listeners to their media outlets, and their media outlets serve to defame their enemies and manipulate public opinion in favor of their business and political interests.

Gaidamak has formed a political party, “social justice.” It sounds good and goes well with Betar and with Bikur Holim, both of which cater to Israel’s poorer population. At first he declared that he was confining himself, for the time being, to local politics, i.e. running candidates in elections in Israeli municipalities, which are scheduled for November. It’s widely believed that he bought Bikur Holim to curry favor with Haredi politicians, so that they will agree to back him for mayor of Jerusalem. He was going to leave the Knesset for later. But a good businessman has a nose for opportunity, and when the option of buying a minority stake in the Pensioners’ Party, came on the market, Gaidamak exercised it.

Gaidamak’s political career is still very raw. When he first got here and bought Betar, he said he was going to use the club as a platform for promoting Jewish-Arab coexistence. That’s probably the last thing in the world Betar fans are interested in (Betar recently was penalized heavily because some of its fans cursed vocally during a pregame minute of silence in memory of Yitzhak Rabin). He still has to master Israel’s social and political cleavages, but he’s learning fast. Buying Bikur Holim and sucking up to the Haredi population generally is a shrewd move from his perspective. Gaidamak has done some good deeds and has a lot of fans. But I can’t help being suspicious of him. He exhibits a close familiarity with the culture of money and power that made a farce of democracy in Russia and little of the genuine commitment to democracy that characterizes, say, a politician like Binyamin Netanyahu (who should be given such credit as he’s due). When Gaidamak has a soccer club, a radio station, a political party, and in addition learns the prejudices of the Israeli public well enough to pander to them, he’ll be all set to make his bid to become Israel’s Boris Yeltsin. Or perhaps its Vladimir Putin.

As I mentioned, the Knesset’s legal adviser nixed, for the time being, the deal between Gaidamak and the three MKs currently on the market. But the law alone is not going to be enough—is never enough—to defend liberty. Only the public’s love of liberty, and its willingness to see through and resist the temptations offered by demagogues, will suffice. Do Israelis love liberty enough? The precedents of Sharon and Olmert are not encouraging.

Olmert in the Shadows

2008-05-19T10:51:00.001+03:00

Olmert in the Shadows

Ehud Olmert and the shady figures surrounding him are creatures of spin. They seem to believe, apparently with good reason, that they can get away with anything as long as they control the way it’s portrayed through the media. So far nobody has proved them wrong, but this may change in the next few weeks as the Talansky-Olmert probe bites deeper into the vitals of the government.

Olmert and people like him exhibit a diseased attitude to reality. To them, the world is a kind of amateur talent show writ large. As long as you can keep the crowd entertained, you can stay on the stage. People will call you Prime Minister, and the GSS will guard you and your family 24 hours a day. You will possess immense powers and perks that the public cannot see, in consequence of which rich and powerful men will seek your acquaintance and slip you envelopes full of money. All you have to do is make sure that the show goes on.

In the perception of the public there is another side of the job, one that has to do with running the country: Making hard budgetary choices, preparing the army and the country for war, taking the decision to nip the Hamas terror state in the bud so as to neutralize its influence when the really big war to the north and east starts. One gets the sense that for Olmert and his colleagues this is the shadowy part of the job, the one that doesn’t seems real and with which they never need, and never do, come to grips. Every politician of course has to manage his relationship with his public, in order to stay in power and in order to marshal resources and commit people to the things he really wants to accomplish. But for Olmert and his ilk, PR is the job. It’s not about accomplishing anything in particular, but about staying onstage.

Oh yes, I know, dangerous negotiations with the Palestinians and the Syrians are going on all the time. A year ago Olmert turned the Palestinian business over to Tzipi Livni and she’s going at it with devotion of a true believer. In the aftermath of his failure in the Second Lebanon War Olmert turned the IDF over to Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi. We don’t know if Ashkenazi’s a strategic planner, but he does appear to know how to train regiments and battalions, the building blocks of an army. When Olmert can find someone competent to do a piece of his work he turns it over to them and something gets done. When it comes to hard decisions, though—to go to war in Gaza, to make Israel’s educational system function, or to provide more resources for defense without busting the budget—Olmert simply isn’t there.

Olmert is actually pretty clever, but his thought processes are ill suited to evaluating complex problems and pursuing a strategy. His vaunted peace overture to Syria was handled in an amateurish fashion. He acted as if Assad were Morris Talansky or Eli Yishai: Offer him something he wants (the Golan) and he’ll come around. Olmert doesn’t appear to have considered that for Assad to accept such an offer, he would have to be convinced that all other avenues lead to a dead end and that the prospect of war with Israel was getting more, not less dangerous. But Assad has good reason not to think that and he snubbed Olmert, publicly and insultingly. With Lebanon knuckling under to Hizbullah and the clock running down on the American military presence in Iraq, Assad probably figures that he’ll pick up a lot more than just the Golan when Iran’s plans for Israel come to fruition.

From Olmert’s perspective, George Bush’s visit to Israel was a disaster. For months everyone in Israel anticipated, with horror or with glee, that Olmert would use the Bush visit to state just what he’s willing to give up, as the overture to new elections. But the Talansky business rendered anything Olmert would say non-credible and if there are new elections now Olmert won’t be a candidate. Even when Olmert decided to confine himself to soothing generalities about peace, Hamas ruined his show. It blew in the roof of an Ashkelon mall just as Bush and Olmert were having their celebrated press conference. The conference got no coverage, and Olmert was forced to spend the next 24 hours talking about war with the Hamas rather than peace. From Olmert’s perspective the whole visit turned out to be a PR disaster.

But this is only of importance to Olmert and his ilk, who think that PR successes or disasters are the only significant successes or disasters there are. There is indeed a whole other, real world beside the shadow world of spin and show. Eventually reality catches up with you. It’s catching up with Olmert right now. He thought you can manipulate public opinion and sell the perquisites of office forever, and it turns out that not even he can do it. Come to think of it, the main characteristic of the criminal mind is inadequate grasp of reality, the inability to imagine or take seriously the consequences of one’s actions. That’s Olmert in a nutshell.

The real question of course is how an entire people can make an Olmert, or a Sharon, their leader and not see through them. That’s a lot more serious than the criminal propensities of this or that politician. Olmert ignored the law and now it’s catching up with him. He led Israelis, however, in ignoring the mounting strategic threat from both north and south, and now that threat is catching up with Israel with giant strides.

Ceasefires and Escalations

2008-05-16T16:52:00.000+03:00

During the war in Vietnam there used to be the following pattern. The North Vietnamese, through their Vietcong terrorist allies, would launch an offensive against South Vietnam. They’d make progress in some places, get stalled in others. The Americans would bomb the heck out of their field forces and supply lines and bring them to the point of collapse. When the Vietnamese wanted a break, they would call for a cease fire—to celebrate the Vietnamese New Year, or May Day, or whatever. International pressure would force the United States to agree, on condition that the North Vietnamese refrained from using the ceasefire to reinforce or resupply its forces. The Vietnamese would of course accept, and then use the ceasefire to reinforce and resupply, so that the fighting could go on from square one.

This may sound like ancient history but it’s not. The tactic was invented in Moscow (I think it was first used in the Korean War, actually). The Russians taught it to many peoples, including the Iranians. The Iranians taught it to Hizbullah and Hamas. For them it’s not ancient history, it’s just part of the textbook for fighting Western countries. Things that work stay in the textbook generation after generation.

Our Islamofascist enemy’s greatest ally is our own hesitation. Israel’s present leadership, of course, wants peace at almost any price (for all I know it’s peace at any price—they just haven’t been put to that test yet, so that neither we nor the enemy can be sure). If we look at what’s happened in the region since the 2nd Lebanon War, however, we can see that the enemy’s strategy, for the meantime, is to play for time. During the 12 months since the war the IDF trained intensively, and for that time the balance of power shifted our way. Since then Hamas and Hizbullah have gotten stronger and stronger. Four years ago American pressure forced Syria to withdraw its forces from Lebanon, creating the possibility of sustaining a democratic, Western-oriented government in that country. The events in Lebanon over the past two weeks show that Lebanon has, in effect, fallen back into Syrian and Iranian hands. Syrian divisions are on the Lebanese border and some reports say they have already crossed back into Lebanon. Meanwhile, the IDF’s power has reached a plateau. It is retrained and reequipped, but it needs to get much bigger and more powerful it isn’t doing so.

Israel is between the jaws of a pincers in which the enemy has considerable advantages. To attack us it doesn’t need to invade us—just to shoot missiles. Its armies can dig in and wait for us to come to them in prepared defensive positions. As time passes, they get stronger. When they feel reasonably certain we no longer have the strength to go after them, they will attack.

Israel’s best strategy is the one most difficult for a democracy to take: Pick one enemy, attack and destroy it, while trying to deter the other from making a move. Israel’s attack against Syria’s reactor last year sent a double message: Not only would Israel prevent Syria from getting nuclear weapons, but the entire Syrian hinterland remains as vulnerable as Israel’s. What Israel ought to do now is conquer all of Gaza but the built-up urban areas (excepting two—Rafiah in the south an Beit Hanun in the north, which should be literally flattened, the civilian moved to tent cities under IDF control as provided for by the Fourth Geneva Convention). A ten-kilometer strip between Khan Younis and the Egyptian border should be occupied. The Syrians should be warned ahead of time that in response to attacks on Israel’s hinterland their entire energy, power, water and communications infrastructure will be eliminated, in a manner designed to cause as much civilian unrest as possible. If they do attack, Israel should carry out the threat to the letter.

It should have been done eighteen months ago. It ought to be done today.

Skipping the Party

2008-05-14T17:44:00.000+03:00

I'm not sorry I wasn't invited to Olmert's and Peres' party. I'm just sorry we can't do better.

An overcast, lugubrious day in Jerusalem. My business took me to the Knesset. The center of town is nearly abandoned. Jerusalemites know what to expect when the President of the United States comes to visit and the police bar them from entering their own downtown. Almost everyone stayed away. The city looks eerily like a museum piece or a movie set, the stage for somebody else’s illusions with ourselves as minor walk-on characters. Somewhere over our heads, about at the elevation of the police helicopter circling endlessly above, someone is staging a tawdry piece of theater. Ostensibly it’s about us, we’re certainly paying for it (in more ways than one), but it’s not actually meant for the real people down here on the ground.

The sense of detachment intensified as I passed security and entered the Knesset. The Knesset is festooned with flags—American and Israeli flags on alternate flagpoles. Once upon a time this sight, in this place, would have given me a thrill. Now I am aware mainly of a hole in the heart where the thrill would have been. I haven’t been able to summon a thrill at the sight of an Israeli flag since February 2005, when the Disengagement Law passed the Knesset. I am reminded of stories people told me back in the Old Country, people who couldn’t find it within themselves to be proud of the American flag as long as the Vietnam war was going on (From the time I could form a professional judgment I felt differently. To keep the Viet Cong away from South Vietnam and the Khmer Rouge away from the Cambodians was a cause worth fighting for, botched beyond retrieval by “experts” who had no comprehension of their job, the price paid by hapless and innocent millions).

George Bush is coming to visit a country with a fool (“history is meaningless!”) for president, a crook for prime minister, and a governing elite on the skids, unworthy guardians of the Jewish people and its inheritence. They have thrown themselves a party at public expense and invited the President of the United States to dress it up. The gaiety is forced—they have precious little to be gay about—but they’ll go through the motions all the same. My fellow citizens and I are invited to gawk, coo and be impressed. Considering the stars of the show, it’s not hard to decide to skip it.

It wouldn’t hurt so much if it these people hadn’t been chosen for their jobs by the people. They reflect on us, and to some extent the reflection is justified. They claim to represent the State of Israel but, detached from Jewish history and tradition and from common decency, they are capable of representing, of celebrating, nothing but themselves. Ordinary people know this and feel detached from their celebration. Because these are the people we chose to represent us, and because they do represent us, we find ourselves at a loss, unsure of what or whether to celebrate.

It shouldn’t be this way. The President of the United States ought to come to Jerusalem, the seat of David’s throne and the capital of the Jewish state, as a pilgrim and not as a celebrity. If his hosts knew what and whom they ought to represent, even the pilgrimage of the greatest potentate in the world would not seem like so much, but only homage—spiritual, not political—where homage is due.

What is one to do about it? Work. “The truly righteous,” wrote Rabbi Avraham Yitzhak HaCohen Kook, “do not complain about the darkness but spread the light.” What did I do today in the Knesset? I worked on legislation to eliminate the Israeli equivalent of the Riot Act, under which most of the protesters against disengagement were arrested, and the law against “insulting a civil servant,” used by the State Prosecutor to criminalize speech and writing on public affairs. I think I contributed at least as much to a future Jewish state that one can be proud of as Olmert and Peres did in their day’s work.