Caroline Glick, Author at Israel Rising

February 6, 2017

The Trump way of winning the war

The PLO is disoriented, panicked and hysterical. Speaking to Newsweek this week, Saeb Erekat, PLO chief Mahmoud Abbas’s chief conduit to Israel and the Americans, complained that since President Donald Trump was sworn into office, no administration official had spoken to them.

“I don’t know any of them [Trump’s advisers]. We have sent them letters, written messages. They don’t even bother to respond to us.”

The Trump administration’s shunning of the PLO is a marked departure from the policies of its predecessor. For former president Barack Obama, together with Iran, the Palestinians were viewed as the key players in the Middle East. Abbas was the first foreign leader Obama called after taking office.

Erekat’s statement reveals something that is generally obscured. Despite its deep support in Europe, the UN and the international Left, without US support, the PLO is irrelevant.

All the achievements the PLO racked up under Obama – topped off with the former president’s facilitation of UN Security Council Resolution 2334 against Israel – are suddenly irrelevant. Their impact dissipated the minute Trump took office.

Israel, in contrast, is more relevant than ever.

While Trump occasionally pays lip service to making peace in the Middle East, his real goal is to win the war against jihadist Islam. And he rightly views Israel as a woefully underutilized strategic ally that shares his goal and is well-placed to help him achieve it.

During the electoral campaign, Trump often spoke derisively of Obama’s nuclear pact with Tehran. And he repeatedly promised to eradicate Islamic State. But when asked to explain what he intended to do on these scores, Trump demurred. You don’t expect me to let the enemy know my plan, do you?

Trump’s critics dismissed his statements as empty talk. But since he came into office, each day signals that he does have a plan and that he is implementing it. The plan coming into focus involves a multidimensional campaign that if successful will both neutralize Iran as a strategic threat and obliterate ISIS.

Regarding Iran specifically, Trump’s moves to date involve operations on three levels. First, there is the rhetorical campaign to distinguish the Trump administration from its successor.

Trump launched the campaign on Twitter on Wednesday writing, “Iran is rapidly taking over more and more of Iraq even after the US has squandered three trillion dollars there.”

Shortly before his post, Iraq’s Prime Minister Haider Abadi appointed Iranian proxy Qasim al Araji to serve as his interior minister.

At a minimum, Trump’s statement signaled an abandonment of Obama’s policy of cooperating with Iranian forces and Iranian-controlled Iraqi forces in the fight against ISIS in Iraq.

At around the same time Trump released his tweet about Iranian control of Iraq, his National Security Adviser Lt.-Gen. (ret.) Michael Flynn took a knife to Obama’s obsequious stand on Iran during a press briefing at the White House.

While Trump’s statement related to Iran’s growing power in Iraq, Flynn’s remarks were directed against its non-conventional threat and its regional aggression. Both were on display earlier this week.

On Sunday, Iran carried out its 12th ballistic missile test since concluding its nuclear deal with Obama, and its first since Trump took office.

On Monday, Iranian-controlled Houthi forces in Yemen attacked a Saudi ship in the Bab al-Mandab choke point connecting the Red Sea to the Indian Ocean.

Flynn condemned both noting that they threatened the US and its allies and destabilized the Middle East. The missile test, he said, violated UN Security Council Resolution 2231 that anchored the nuclear deal.

Flynn then took a step further. He drew a sharp contrast between the Obama administration’s responses to Tehran’s behavior and the Trump administration’s views of Tehran’s provocative actions.

“The Obama administration failed to respond adequately to Tehran’s malign actions – including weapons transfers, support for terrorism, and other violations of international norms,” he noted.

“The Trump administration condemns such actions by Iran that undermine security, prosperity and stability throughout and beyond the Middle East and place American lives at risk.”

Flynn ended his remarks by threatening Iran directly.

“As of today, we are officially putting Iran on notice,” he warned.

While Flynn gave no details of what the US intends to do to Iran if it continues its aggressive behavior, the day before he made his statement, the US opened a major, multilateral, British-led naval exercise in the Persian Gulf. US naval forces in the region have been significantly strengthened since January 20 and rules of engagement for US forces in the Persian Gulf have reportedly been relaxed.

Perhaps the most potent aspect of Trump’s emerging strategy for defeating the forces of jihad is the one that hasn’t been discussed but it was signaled, through a proxy, the day after Trump took office.

On January 21, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu posted a remarkable message to the Iranian people on his Facebook page. Netanyahu drew a sharp distinction between the “warm” Iranian people and the “repressive” regime.

Netanyahu opened his remarks by invoking the new administration.

“I plan to speak soon with President Trump about how to counter the threat of the Iranian regime, which calls for Israel’s destruction,” the prime minister explained.

“But it struck me recently that I’ve spoken a lot about the Iranian regime and not enough about the Iranian people, or for that matter, to the Iranian people. So I hope this message reaches every Iranian.”

Netanyahu paid homage to the Green Revolution of 2009 that was brutally repressed by the regime. In his words, “I’ll never forget the images of proud, young students eager for change gunned down in the streets of Tehran in 2009.”

Netanyahu’s statement was doubtlessly coordinated with the new administration. It signaled that destabilizing with the goal of overthrowing the regime in Tehran is a major component of Trump’s strategy.

By the looks of things in Iran, regime opponents are taking heart from the new tone emanating from Washington. Iranian dissidents have asked for a meeting with Trump’s team. And a week and a half before Trump’s inauguration, regime opponents staged a massive anti-regime protest.

Protesters used the public funeral of former Iranian president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani to denounce the regime. In 2009, Rafsanjani sided with many of the Green Movement’s positions. His daughter was a leader of the protests.

Among the estimated 2.5 million people who attended the funeral, scores of thousands interrupted the official eulogies to condemn the regime, condemn the war with Syria and condemn the regime’s Russian allies.

This then brings us to Syria, where the war against ISIS and the campaign against Iran are set to converge. To date, Trump has limited his stated goals in Syria to setting up safe zones inside the country where displaced Syrians can live securely. Saudi Arabia and the Emirates have agreed to cooperate in these efforts.

Trump is now engaged in a talks with the Kremlin both above and below the radar about the possibility of coordinating their operations in Syria to enable safe zones to be established.

It is fairly clear what the US objective here would be. The US wishes to convince Moscow to effectively end its alliance with the Iranian regime. Trump repeatedly stated that the entire spectrum of US-Russian relations is now in play. Talks between the two governments will encompass Ukraine, US economic sanctions on Russia, nuclear weapons, Russian bases in Syria and Russia’s alliance with Iran and its Hezbollah proxies.

Everything is on the table.
Trump understands that Russia is threatened by Sunni jihadists and that Russia views Iran as a counterweight to ISIS and its counterparts in the Caucasus. A deal between the US and Russia could involve a Russian agreement to end its support for Iran and Hezbollah in exchange for US acceptance of Russia’s annexation of Crimea, cancellation of sanctions and perhaps some form of acquiescence to Russia’s military presence in Syria.

Russia and the US could then collaborate with Arab states with Israeli support to defeat ISIS and end the Syrian refugee crisis.

Combined with actions the Trump administration is already taking in the Persian Gulf and Red Sea, and its telegraphed aim of backing a popular Iranian insurrection, Trump’s hypothetical deal with Russia would neutralize Iran as a conventional and non-conventional threat.

This then brings us back to Israel – the first target of Iran’s aggression. If Trump’s strategy is successful, then the PLO will not be Israel’s only foe that is rendered irrelevant.

Earlier this week it was reported that in the two and- a-half years since the last war with Hamas, the Iranian-backed, Muslim Brotherhood-affiliate terrorist group has rebuilt its forces. Today Hamas fields assets and troops that match the capabilities it fielded during Operation Protective Edge.

Hezbollah, with its effective control over Lebanon, including the Lebanese military, is a strategic threat to Israel.

To date, Israel has demurred from targeting Hezbollah and Hamas missile arsenals, but not because it is incapable of destroying them. Israel’s efforts to avoid conflict with its enemies, even at the price of their rearmament, also haven’t stemmed from fear of European or UN condemnation or even from fear of the so-called “CNN-effect.”

Israel has chosen not to defeat its enemies – not to mention the EU-backed NGOs that whitewash them – because the Americans have supported them.

The Clinton administration barred Israel from taking decisive action against either Hezbollah or the Palestinians.

The Bush administration forced Israel to stand down during the war with Hezbollah in 2006.

The Obama administration effectively sided with Hamas against Israel in 2014.

In other words, across three administrations, the Americans made it impossible for Israel to take decisive military action against its enemies.
Under Obama, the US also derailed every Israeli attempt to curb the power of EU-funded subversive organizations operating from inside of Israel.

Trump’s emerging strategy on Iran and ISIS, together with his refusal to operate in accordance with the standard US playbook on the Palestinians, indicates that the US has abandoned this practice. Under Trump, Israel is free to defeat its enemies. Their most powerful deterrent against Israel – the US – is gone.

Israel has long argued that there is no difference between al-Qaida and Hamas or between ISIS and Hezbollah. It has also argued that Iran threatens not only Israel but the world as a whole. Hoping to co-opt the forces of jihad rather than defeat them, successive US administrations have chosen to deny this obvious truth.

Unlike his predecessors, Trump is serious about winning. To do so, he is even willing to take the radical step of accepting Israel as an ally.

The PLO is right to be hysterical.

Originally published in the Jerusalem Post.

January 29, 2017

ISRAEL’S MOMENT OF DECISION

Over the past week, we were given new evidence of what many assumed for years. Former president Barack Obama and his administration weren’t interested in bringing peace to the Middle East. They were interested in harming Israel.

Last Friday, Makor Rishon published an interview with former Foreign Ministry director general Dore Gold. Gold told the paper that Obama’s national security adviser Susan Rice once said, “Even if Israel and the Palestinians reach an accord, it’s possible that the US will oppose it.”

Rice said the US would oppose any deal that it felt didn’t do justice to the Palestinians.

Rice’s statement is significant not merely because it shows the depth of Obama’s hostility. It is important because it tells us the truth about the so-called “two-state solution.”

Rice’s statement showed that Western pressure for Israeli concessions to the PLO isn’t geared toward making peace between the parties at all. It is about retribution.

Obama’s anti-Israel vision of justice for the Palestinians was revealed in another story Gold told the paper.

Gold related that after Obama and his entourage left Israel following former president Shimon Peres’s funeral last September, Obama phoned Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from Air Force One. He told Netanyahu that if he wants to have a funeral like Peres’s, he needs to get moving with the Palestinians.

Netanyahu responded that he has no interest in having a funeral like Peres’s, “because I have no intention of participating in my country’s funeral.”

In other words, Netanyahu told Obama that the US leader’s understanding of what Israel needs to do to bring justice to the Palestinians involves Israel ceasing to exist.

Today, as excitement abounds in Israel about the new, friendly administration of President Donald Trump, we must understand what we just went through with Obama.

Obama’s vision did not die with him. Thanks to his leadership, the Democratic Party is now anti-Israel.

The millions of protesters who took to the streets throughout the US last Saturday voiced their opposition to Israel with the same enthusiasm and passion as they voiced their support for open borders.

Moreover, the American establishment supported Obama’s positions. Obama’s hostile policies were roundly supported by the State Department’s permanent bureaucracy. The diplomats who worked with Obama are still in place.

So, too, the Washington establishment, including US Jewish leaders, still support Obama’s policy of backing the PLO against Israel.

Immediately after Netanyahu and Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman announced that they approved plans to build 2,500 apartments for Jews in the so-called settlement blocs, David Harris, the CEO of the American Jewish Committee, condemned the move as “not helpful.”

Harris gave a public relations victory to those who reject the very notion of Jewish civil and national rights, by proclaiming that the announcement of building permits, “alas, could hand anti-Israel forces a PR victory.”

Harris was joined in his campaign against Jewish property rights by former US negotiator Dennis Ross.

Ross published an article in the New York Daily News where he argued that Trump should limit his support for Jewish property rights to the so-called “settlement blocs.” In so arguing, Ross invited Trump to reject the property rights of 100,000 Israelis who don’t live in the so-called blocs. Ross effectively called for the new president to support a plan that would require their mass expulsion from their homes and the destruction of their communities.

Ross’s fellow mediators used the past week or so to lobby against Trump’s plan to keep his promise to move the US Embassy to Israel’s capital city. Speaking to The New York Times, David Makovsky, who was a member of former secretary of state John Kerry’s negotiating team, and Aaron David Miller, who served as Ross’s deputy in the Clinton years, both said that Trump should not move the embassy to Jerusalem.

Their comrade Martin Indyk wrote an op-ed in the New York Times earlier this month where he argued snidely that Trump should move the embassy to Jerusalem and simultaneously announce his plan to open a second US embassy in Jerusalem for the state of “Palestine.”

Last Wednesday, Trump he told Israel Hayom that he intended to keep his campaign promise to move the embassy. The next day Trump’s spokesman Sean Spicer told reporters to “stay tuned” on the embassy move, intimating that an announcement could come as early as Trump’s first day in office.

On his first full day in office, Trump moved boldly to overturn Obama’s policies. He signed executive orders that effectively ended Obama’s environmental and health policies.

But he ignored Jerusalem. And Spicer made clear that the early plan to move quickly on the embassy has been abandoned. At his press briefing Spicer wouldn’t even commit to moving the embassy before the end of Trump’s term of office.

In other words, the Washington establishment won and Israel lost.

To be sure, the peace processors and the leftists weren’t alone in their opposition to the embassy move. The Arabs also voiced their disapproval.

PLO CHAIRMAN Mahmoud Abbas and his deputies threatened to open a new terrorist offensive against Israel and destabilize the Middle East if Trump kept his promise. Jordan’s King Abdullah reportedly threatened to withdraw his ambassador from Israel and suspend his security ties with Israel. Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi reportedly voiced opposition to the planned move as well.

But as former CIA director Gen. David Petreaus said during his visit to Israel this week, in recent years, the Palestinian issue, which was once the top concern Arab leaders voiced in their meetings with US officials, became a minor issue for them.

In an interview with Breitbart this week, former US ambassador to the UN John Bolton said that while moving the embassy “would… necessitate a lot of active diplomacy to calm down people who might be concerned about it,” reneging on Trump’s promise would be tantamount to “allowing other people, in other countries, to tell us… where we put our embassy.”

Trump’s abrupt about-face on the embassy move makes clear that now is no time for Israel to tread lightly.

To the contrary. As the government takes the first steps toward forging its relationship with the new administration, two basic truths need to inform its decisions.

First, in light of the hostility of the US Left and establishment alike to the notion that Israel is America’s ally, and given the speed with which Trump backed away from his promise to move the embassy to Jerusalem, the only way Israel can expect to be treated with respect is to command respect. And you can’t command respect when you beat around the bush about your vital interests and rights.

Second, Israel cannot expect Trump to abandon Obama’s hostile policies in relation to the Palestinians if it doesn’t abandon them first.

This means Netanyahu must heed his government ministers’ calls to abandon the two-state paradigm.

So long as Netanyahu continues to support PLO statehood even to a limited degree, he gives legitimacy to the wholly anti-Israel PLO narrative.

Right after Trump was elected, government ministers from Bayit Yehudi and the Likud implored Netanyahu to abandon the two-state formula and apply Israeli law to Area C in Judea and Samaria. Under pressure from Netanyahu, who himself was under pressure from Obama, the ministers quickly ended their calls.

Obama’s decision to enable the UN Security Council to pass Resolution 2234 brought the two-state paradigm to its inevitable conclusion. The resolution criminalized Israel and legitimized Palestinian terrorists.

After the UN resolution passed, and as Trump’s inauguration approached, the ministers renewed their calls to end support for Palestinian statehood and replace the two-state paradigm with the paradigm of Israeli sovereignty.

But pressured by Netanyahu, they scaled back their calls for Israeli administration of Judea and Samaria to a minimalist call to apply Israeli law to the city of Ma’aleh Adumim.

Over the weekend, calls for action grew louder. But on Sunday, just as Trump was backtracking on the embassy move, Netanyahu prevailed on his ministers to postpone consideration of their bill on Ma’aleh Adumim.

Netanyahu exhorted them to allow him to run Israel’s policy toward the Palestinian and toward the Trump administration. Netanyahu’s mantra this week has been that he doesn’t wish to surprise Trump with a big Israeli initiative. He insists that a new policy toward the Palestinians needs to be coordinated with the US administration.

Netanyahu also says that he continues to support a Palestinian state. But his vision involves establishing a state too weak to threaten Israel.

Trump’s sudden about-face on Jerusalem shows the weakness of Netanyahu’s gradual and careful approach. As Netanyahu preached caution, Israel’s opponents in the US worked hand in glove with the Palestinians to draw Trump into the anti-Israel logic of the “two-state” policy.

The situation isn’t lost. Even as he backtracked on Jerusalem, Trump has taken other steps that make clear that he really is a friend of Israel.

Due in large part to the UN’s hostility toward Israel, Trump moved resolutely to scale back US support for the UN. Trump also overturned Obama’s last minute decision to give the Palestinian Authority $221 million.

But so long as Trump continues to make establishing a Palestinian state the goal of US policy, including indirectly by failing to move the embassy to Israel’s capital city, Democrats and the Washington establishment will be able to keep on undermining Israel. They will point to Trump’s continued if indirect support for Palestinian statehood as an excuse to continue to require Israel to prefer the positions of terrorists sworn to its destruction over its national interests, in order to “preserve the two-state policy,” or “enhance prospects for peace.”

Moreover, so long as he supports the “two-state policy,” every supportive move Trump makes will be easily reversed by a successor administration. And it would be irresponsible, indeed reckless, for Israel to assume that Trump and the Republicans will maintain the upper hand in US politics indefinitely.

Eight years ago when Obama took office, the Democrats controlled both houses of Congress. Pundits were near unanimous in the view that the Democrats would remain in power for a generation as the Republicans, smarting from their losses were fractured and leaderless.

Two years later, the Republicans won control of the House of Representatives and for the final six years of his presidency, Obama was unable to get his policies through Congress.

Netanyahu is right. Israel shouldn’t surprise Trump.

But Israel must move immediately to take advantage of the time it has with Trump in power, and with the Republicans in control of Congress to ensure our interests in Judea and Samaria and to rally Trump to support our policies.

Time is of the essence. The one Obama legacy that is most likely to be lasting is his transformation of the Democratic Party into an anti-Israel party. His deep hostility toward Israel will likely be shared by his partisan successors.

And again, as Israel treads lightly, its opponents scored a victory.

If Netanyahu doesn’t seize the moment, the opportunity we have today will quickly slip away.

Published in Jerusalem Post.

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January 25, 2017

THE HOLOCAUST’S UNLEARNED LESSONS

How Merkel’s mistakes are empowering anti-Semites.

Two days before the leaders of European far-right parties met in Koblentz on January 21, one of the leaders of Germany’s far-right AfD party made clear why so many people fear the rise of nationalist forces in Europe.

Speaking at a rally in Dresden, Bjorn Hocke, AfD’s state leader in Thuringia, attacked the Holocaust memorial in Berlin. In his words, “Germans are the only people in the world who plant a monument of shame in the heart of the capital.”

Hocke likened German Chancellor Angela Merkel to Eric Honecker, the last leader of East Germany. The crowd responded by chanting, “Merkel must go!” Hocke insisted there must be a “180-degree turnaround” in the way Germany remembers its past. “This laughable policy of coming to terms with the past is crippling us,” he said.

Recalling the Allied bombing of Dresden, Hocke argued that Germany’s current policy claims that in World War II “there were no German victims, only German perpetrators.” This, he argued, is unjust.

Some of Hocke’s party colleagues criticized his remarks. But reported criticisms did not relate to the substance of what he said. Rather his fellow AfD leaders criticized him for making statements that could scare German voters away.

Frauke Petry, Hocke’s party leader, participated in the Koblentz conference. Sitting next to her fellow nationalist European leaders, Petry was the belle of the ball. Holland’s Geert Wilders, whose Freedom Party is expected to win the Dutch elections in March, and France’s Marine Le Pen, who is now leading national polls ahead of April’s presidential elections, both enthused that Petry is the future of Germany.

AfD enjoys the support of between 10%-15% percent of German voters. It is expected to gain seats in the Bundestag for the first time in September’s general elections.

The AfD’s rise has been sudden. It was formed in 2013 and in its short history it has siphoned off voters from nearly every party in Germany. In the 2014 elections for the European Parliament AfD shocked Germany’s political establishment when it won 7.1% of the vote.

In 2015 it won big victories in regional elections. In Merkel’s home state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania it outperformed the chancellor’s CDU party with 20.8% of the vote. It even won 14.2% of the vote in normally left-wing Berlin.

Like its European counterparts, whose leaders shared a stage in Koblentz with Petry on Saturday, AfD’s steady empowerment is based in large part on its stalwart opposition to Islamic immigration and its concomitant rejection of the intellectual constraints of political correctness and the cultural restraints of multiculturalism.

AfD’s barely disguised xenophobia and Nazi sympathies make its empowerment disconcerting.

It also points to the fact that not all far-right parties are the same.

Le Pen, for instance has taken drastic steps to separate her National Front party from the antisemitic and fascist roots her father Jean-Marie Le Pen planted.

Wilders has adopted a decidedly pro-American and pro-Israel platform and record.

In Germany, though, the situation is different.

There are many causes for the absence of a nationalist party in Germany that is bereft of Nazi sympathies.

Two are particularly worth noting.

First there is Angela Merkel and the political establishment she represents. The AfD’s rise is a direct consequence of the German political establishment’s refusal to consider the wishes of German voters along a whole spectrum of issues. On immigration specifically, rather than listen to her critics Merkel and her allies denounce them as racists and treat them as criminals.

For instance, as Judith Bergman reported last week at the Gatestone Institution website, in July 2016, 30 people had their homes raided by German police for publishing anti-immigration posts online.

When thousands of German women were raped by Muslim immigrants during the public celebration of New Year’s Eve in Cologne last year, German authorities went to great lengths to cover up and deny what had happened. The Cologne police took several days to acknowledge or begin investigating what had happened. For four days, the German media delayed reporting what had happened.

In September 2015 Merkel was caught on a hot microphone excoriating Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg for not erasing anti-immigration posts from Facebook fast enough.

If Merkel spent more time listening to her constituents and less time rejecting their right to their entirely rational opinions, the AfD would probably not be so powerful today. In all likelihood, AfD politicians wouldn’t be embarrassed when their colleague mouthed off about Holocaust memorials because their constituents wouldn’t include anyone who had a problem with people like Hocke.

Even if Merkel was willing to listen though, she would still have to worry about Germans that yearn for the glory days of Hitler and the Third Reich.

This then leads us to the second reason for the resonance of Nazi messaging in Germany and beyond.

In 1945 the Nazis were defeated and Nazism was outlawed in Germany and throughout Europe. But whereas the peoples of Europe were prohibited from denying the fact of the Holocaust, they were never required to conduct a true moral reckoning with what happened. Criminalizing Holocaust denial and outlawing Nazi parties, while reasonable on their own terms, mistook the symptoms of Nazism with the cause of Nazism.

Europeans have been schooled to view the Nazi period as a unique phenomenon unrelated to anything that happened either before 1933 or after 1945.

But the opposite is true.

Adolf Hitler and his Nazis and their collaborators throughout Europe didn’t spring from nothing. They were the natural outcome of centuries of European antisemitism. Their genocidal obsession with the Jewish people was a natural progression of a hatred that predated Christianity, and was an integral part of Europe’s development through the ages.

The way to block the Nazis from rising on the Right is to correct both Merkel’s mistake and the larger mistake of the leaders of Europe since 1945.

Merkel empowers Nazi forces by preventing liberal democracy, predicated on limited government, individual freedom and equal protection under the law, from developing in Germany. By demonizing and criminalizing her critics, she forces lawful citizens into the open arms of the political fringe, which resonates their concerns.

More generally, Europe itself facilitates the rise of antisemitism as a political force on the Right and Left by conflating European rejection of Jews with a more general, and less meaningful, problem of racism. You do not fight hatred of Jews by pretending away its significance and its roots that go back as far as European civilization itself. You do not block the resurgence of Nazism by pretending that European antisemitism was born the day Adolf Hitler came to power.

There is a tendency to believe that all nationalist movements are alike. But this is not true. Each nationalist movement is a reflection of the specific nation it represents. For European nationalists and globalists alike to avoid the fascism that captivated their grandparents, they need to embrace liberal values and meaningfully reject Jew hatred in all its forms.

Originally published by the Jerusalem Post.

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January 22, 2017

Netanyahu’s shameless opponents

Over the past week, Israel was subjected to the diplomatic equivalent of a lynch mob in Paris. It received unexpected assistance from Britain, which twice in two days departed from its traditional anti-Israel stance and blocked the Paris conference’s anti-Israel declaration from being adopted as the official position of the European Union.

Also over the past week, outgoing US President Barack Obama, outgoing Secretary of State John Kerry and outgoing UN Ambassador Samantha Power used their final appearances in office to blast Israel.

On the other hand, President-elect Donald Trump and his team played a key role in bringing about Britain’s change of heart toward Israel.

While these events have been widely covered by the foreign media, they have barely been mentioned in the Hebrew broadcast media, from which the majority of Israelis receive their news.

Instead, led by Channel 2 with its monopoly ratings share, the local media spent the past week covering almost nothing but the criminal probes being carried out against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Netanyahu is the subject of two probes. The first, which police investigators dubbed Affair 1000, involves allegations that Netanyahu improperly received gifts from his friends.

That probe seems to be withering on the vine. Consequently, over the past week, most of the media’s attention has been focused on what the police call Affair 2000.

Affair 2000 involves conversations Netanyahu conducted two years ago with Israel’s most powerful media mogul, and Netanyahu’s public nemesis, Yediot Aharonot chairman Arnon Mozes. Mozes is Netanyahu’s bitter foe because for the past 20 years, Yediot’s coverage of Netanyahu has been virulently hostile.

Affair 2000 itself, the media coverage it has garnered and the way the police are conducting their probe all raise deeply troubling questions about key institutions that are supposed to safeguard Israeli democracy and our rule of law.

To understand the affair and the concerns it raises, Affair 2000 must be placed in its proper context.

In November 2014, the government fell and the Knesset voted to go to elections barely a year after the previous elections were held.

Whereas generally a government falls because the opposition gains the votes to bring it down in a no-confidence vote, in 2014, Netanyahu caused his own government to fall and precipitated early elections.

Netanyahu took the drastic step, which placed his own future in jeopardy, because the heads of three parties that were members of his governing coalition colluded against him in a host of common actions that made governing impossible.

The straw that broke Netanyahu’s back was when the three rebellious ministers – then-justice minister Tzipi Livni, then-Treasury minister Yair Lapid and then-foreign minister Avigdor Liberman – decided to support the passage of the draft “Israel Hayom law.”

The bill, which was sponsored by Labor MK Eitan Cabel, would have outlawed the free distribution of national newspapers. It was dubbed the Israel Hayom law, because the paper founded in 2007 and owned by Netanyahu’s supporter US casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, is a free paper.

The goal of the draft legislation was to shut down Israel Hayom. Thanks to Livni, Lapid and Liberman, the bill passed its first reading in the Knesset with a vote of 43 in favor and 23 opposed.

Netanyahu vociferously opposed the bill. He and his Likud party voted against it.

With that context in mind, we can return to Affair 2000.

Netanyahu’s conversations with Mozes took place around the 2015 elections. Fearing Mozes intended to extort him, on the advice of his personal attorney, Netanyahu surreptitiously recorded the discussions.

The police discovered his recordings in the course of a separate probe of Netanyahu’s former adviser who had a copy of the recorded conversations on his mobile phone.

Channel 2 has opened its primetime news broadcasts nearly every night this past week with selected minutes from their recorded talks.

Netanyahu’s conversations with Mozes related to the Israel Hayom draft law. From Channel 2’s excerpts, we learned that Mozes offered Netanyahu to improve Yediot’s treatment of the premier if Netanyahu would convince Adelson to substantially curtail Israel Hayom’s distribution and if Netanyahu would agree to limit government advertisements that run in the daily paper.

Mozes told Netanyahu that if the premier accepted his offer, he would see to it that Netanyahu remained in power for as long as he wished.

The flipside, although unstated – at least in Channel 2’s excerpts – was clear. If Netanyahu rejected Mozes’s offer, Yediot would continue its campaign to bring down Netanyahu.

The end of their discussions is public knowledge.

Netanyahu brought down his own government and disbanded the Knesset rather than allow the legislative process to continue. His 2015 campaign centered on Netanyahu’s opposition to Mozes and Yediot.

The opposition’s campaign against Netanyahu on the other hand, was based largely on negative articles related to Netanyahu and his family that ran daily in Yediot.

In other words, Netanyahu rejected Mozes’s offers and the two went to war.

Although Yediot supports the Left and Israel Hayom supports Netanyahu, Mozes’s opposition to Israel Hayom wasn’t ideological.

His willingness to skew his paper’s coverage in favor of Netanyahu showed that Mozes’s attempt to destroy Israel Hayom stemmed solely from financial considerations.

In 2006, Yediot had a monopoly share of the print media market on weekends and dominated the weekday editions as well. Its closest competitor, Maariv, had half the sales that Yediot had.

Israel Hayom ended Yediot’s monopoly and lowered its advertising revenues. So if Israel Hayom were to close, the most direct and significant beneficiary would be Yediot Aharonot. And everyone knew this.

As justice minister, Livni chaired the Ministerial Committee on Legislation that controls in large part which bills will be brought before the Knesset. Ahead of the committee’s discussion of the Israel Hayom bill, then-attorney general Yehuda Weinstein issued a legal opinion which reasonably argued that the bill was unconstitutional because its aim was to specifically target one business for bankruptcy, because it harmed consumers and the economy, and because it sought to undermine the free press.

During the 2015 campaign, Livni acknowledged that she spoke with Mozes about the bill before it was discussed in her committee. Mozes, she said, also furnished her with a legal opinion authored by his private attorneys. Predictably, that opinion argued the bill was constitutional, was not prejudicial and would be great for the economy.

Livni rejected Weinstein’s opinion and enabled the bill to go forward. Yediot supported her lavishly during the election campaign.

AFFAIR 2000 is troubling first and foremost because of what is not being investigated.

Netanyahu, who refused to make a deal with Mozes, is being investigated as a criminal suspect for speaking to him.

Livni, who also spoke to Mozes, as well as Liberman, Lapid and 40 other members of Knesset who may have spoken with him, and who voted in favor of the bill that Mozes worked so hard to pass into law, are not being investigated.

How is it possible that police investigators aren’t interested in finding out if Mozes made any offers that were accepted? Why aren’t investigators checking whether there were changes in the volume of positive coverage that Livni, Lapid, Liberman and their colleagues received after they announced their support for his bill?

This brings us back to the media. Night after night, television viewers have been subjected to saturation coverage of Affair 2000 that distorts more than it reveals. Netanyahu is presented as a corrupt politician willing to destroy a newspaper to advance his own career even though he did nothing of the sort.

The 43 MKs who actually did something to destroy the paper are given a pass.

The distorted reports have clearly had an impact.

In a poll conducted by Channel 2 to check the effectiveness of its reporting, a majority of Israelis said that they believe Netanyahu behaved dishonestly in relation to his conversations with Mozes.

At least as far as Channel 2 is concerned, the way to correct the problems Affair 2000 exposed is obvious.

Just as Israel Hayom broke Yediot’s market monopoly so Channel 2’s broadcast monopoly must end.

The government must deregulate the broadcast media. It needs to sell broadcast licenses to anyone who has the funds to purchase one.

The problem with police investigators is unfortunately more difficult to contend with. According to independent investigative journalist Yoav Yitzhak, Netanyahu decided not to turn his recordings of Mozes over to the police despite the fact that they contained apparent evidence of extortion, or at a minimum the offer of a bribe, because he doesn’t trust police investigators.

Yitzhak reported on his website that Netanyahu told his close associates this week that he found out that the police’s senior investigators, Asst.-Chiefs Manny Yitzhaki and Ronny Ritman, had close relationships with hostile journalists from Channel 10, Haaretz and Yediot. He was concerned that if he brought them the evidence he had gathered against Mozes, the investigators would use the evidence as a means to open new criminal investigations against Netanyahu with the aim of destroying him politically.

The Prime Minister’s Office has not denied Yitzhak’s report. Assuming it accurately reflects Netanyahu’s thinking, it means that the prime minister believes the police are corrupt and politically motivated.

Certainly the police investigators’ selective investigation of Netanyahu since Affair 2000 broke seems to back up his feelings.

Police Commissioner Insp.-Gen. Roni Alsheich promised this week that the probes of Netanyahu will be concluded shortly. But even if Netanyahu is cleared of suspicion, the concerns raised by Affair 2000 will linger and grow if not dealt with.

Israel is on the precipice of a major shift in its international position. Trump’s rise, along with the weakening of the EU with Britain’s Brexit vote, means that Israel faces opportunities it hasn’t enjoyed in 50 years.

The concerted effort by the media with the apparent collusion of the police to undermine and overthrow Netanyahu at the dawn of this new era isn’t merely unjust. It is anti-Zionist, anti-democratic and dangerous for the future of the state.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

January 18, 2017

TRUMP, THE PISTOL AND HOLY BRANCH

Trump will take office on Friday. Since he was elected, he has given every reason to believe that Abbas and his deputies and their European and American enablers will have to either put up or shut up.

With a gun on his hip, on November 13, 1974, PLO chief Yasser Arafat stood before the UN General Assembly and made the West an offer that it didn’t refuse.

At the end of a long speech in which he rewrote history to erase all connection between the Jewish people and the Land of Israel and criminalized the very notion of Jewish freedom, Arafat declared, “Today I have come bearing an olive branch and a freedom fighter’s gun. Do not let the olive branch fall from my hand. I repeat: Do not let the olive branch fall from my hand.”

Arafat’s offer has served since that time as the foundation of European relations with the Palestinians and the wider Islamic world. It has also been the basis of US-PLO relations for the better part of the past four decades.

His trade was simple and clear.

If you stand with the PLO in its war to annihilate Israel and deny Jewish freedom, then PLO terrorists and our Arab state supporters will leave you alone.

If you refuse to join our war against the Jewish state, we will kill you.

Today, Arafat’s successor, Mahmoud Abbas, is reiterating Arafat’s offer.

Speaking Saturday at the Vatican after the Holy See decided to recognize “Palestine,” Abbas said that if US President-elect Donald Trump goes ahead with his plan to move the US Embassy to Jerusalem, it will “fuel extremism in our region, as well as worldwide.”

Abbas’s spokesman was more explicit. Saturday night, Osama Qawasmeh, spokesman for Abbas’s Fatah PLO faction and member of Fatah’s Revolutionary Council, said that if the US moves its embassy to Israel’s capital city, “The gates of hell will be opened in the region and the world.”

Abbas and Qawasmeh also said that the PLO expects that members of the international community will make Trump see the light and abandon his plan.

French President Francois Hollande’s “peace conference” on Sunday was the international community’s way of fulfilling Abbas’s demand.

As multiple commentators have noted, the conference’s purpose wasn’t to promote the prospects for peace. It was to constrain Trump’s policy options for handling the Palestinian war against Israel.

By bringing together representatives of some 70 countries to insist that Israeli homeowners are the moral equivalent of Palestinian terrorists, Hollande and his comrades hoped to box Trump into their PLO-compliant policy.

Spelling out the demand Trump is required to accept, French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc-Ayrault parroted the Palestinian threats.

Asked by the French media Sunday if moving the US Embassy to Jerusalem would provoke the Palestinians, Ayrault said, “Of course.”

He then demeaned Trump’s plan to move the embassy as nothing but the regular bluster of American politicians.

In his words, “I think he [Trump] would not be able to do it. It would have extremely serious consequences and it’s not the first time that it’s on the agenda of a US president, but none has let himself make that decision.”

Ayrault is correct about Trump’s predecessors.

To one degree or another, since the early 1970s, successive US administrations have joined the Europeans in selling Israel down the river to prevent Arafat’s minions from pointing their guns at the American people.

Like the Europeans, the Americans have upheld their side of this bargain even when the PLO failed to uphold its end. For instance, in 1973 Arafat ordered his terrorists to storm the Saudi Embassy in Khartoum and take US ambassador Cleo Noel, his deputy, George Curtis Moore, and Belgian diplomat Guy Eid hostage. Arafat then ordered his henchmen to murder the diplomats after then president Richard Nixon rejected his demand to release Robert F. Kennedy’s Palestinian murderer, Sirhan Sirhan, from prison.

Instead of responding to the execution of US diplomats by siding with Israel against the PLO, the US covered up and denied the PLO’s responsibility for the attack for the next 33 years.

The US is still covering up for the PLO’s murder of US embassy personnel in Gaza in 2003. At the same time, it is providing the PLO with nearly three quarters of a billion dollars in direct and indirect annual aid, including the training and provision of its security forces.

The Europeans for their part have egged the US along throughout the years. France has generally led European efforts to convince the Americans to side with Palestinian as well as Hezbollah terrorists in their war against Israel in the name of “peace.”

Sunday morning, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu dismissed the Paris conference as a “futile” relic of a period that is about to end.

Netanyahu said that the conference’s goal of boxing Israel into an untenable framework for dealing the Palestinians was nothing more than the “final palpitations of a yesterday’s world.”

“Tomorrow,” he intoned, “will look a lot different. And tomorrow is very close.”

Trump will take office on Friday. Since he was elected, he has given every reason to believe that Abbas and his deputies and their European and American enablers will have to either put up or shut up.

Speaking of the president-elect, Henry Kissinger said that Trump is the first man in recent memory who doesn’t owe anybody anything for his victory.

The only people he is answerable to are the voters who elected him.

Trump’s electoral victory owes to his success in tapping into the deep reservoir of popular disaffection with the elitist culture and policies that have governed post-Cold War West. He has used the mandate he received from American voters to revisit the basic assumptions that have driven US policies for the past generation.

His skepticism at NATO and the EU are examples of his refusal to simply accept the received wisdom of his predecessors. Just this weekend he told Germany’s Bild magazine that he continues to question the purpose of NATO, which is a drag on US taxpayers and doesn’t fight terrorism.

He similarly restated his ambivalence toward the EU and that its open border policy has been a “catastrophic failure,” and he expects more countries to follow Britain’s lead and exit the EU.

Trump’s position on the PLO and the Palestinian war on Israel is of a piece with his wider rejection of the common wisdom of Western elites. Just as he didn’t hesitate to say that the EU mainly serves as an instrument for Germany to dominate the European market, so he has made no mystery of his rejection of the moral equivalence between Israel and Palestinian terrorists which forms the basis of the twostate formula.

Not only won’t Trump join the Obama administration and the French in criminalizing Israeli homeowners, Trump is celebrating them. He has invited the leaders of Israeli communities in Judea and Samaria – that is, the so-called “settlements” – to attend his inauguration.

And he appears dead serious about moving the US Embassy to Jerusalem.

Under these circumstances, Israel has the opportunity and the obligation to end the PLO’s ability to threaten the US, not to mention itself. It is Israel’s duty to ensure that the next time the PLO tries to exact a price in blood for America’s refusal to abide by the terms of Arafat’s blackmail, his terrorist group is finally destroyed.

Similarly, Israel is now obliged to take the lead and abandon the PLO-friendly two-state policy, which blames Israel for Palestinian terrorism, and adopt a strategy that works in its place.

Netanyahu has refused to consider any alternative until after Barack Obama is out of office.

Consultations must be scheduled for Saturday night.

Originally Published in Jerusalem Post.

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