Author: Caroline Glick

Caroline Glick is an American-born Israeli journalist, newspaper editor, and writer. She writes for Makor Rishon and is the deputy managing editor of The Jerusalem Post.[2] She is also the Senior Fellow for Middle East Affairs of the Washington, DC-based Center for Security Policy.
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Netanyahu’s empathy for Trump

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was attacked by the media for not jumping on the bandwagon and condemning US President Donald Trump for his response to the far-right and far-left rioters in Charlottesville earlier this month. It may be that he held his tongue because he saw nothing to gain from attacking a friendly president. But it is also reasonable to assume that Netanyahu held his tongue because he empathizes with Trump. More than any leader in the world, Netanyahu understands what Trump is going through. He’s been there himself – and in many ways, is still there. Netanyahu has never enjoyed a day in office when Israel’s unelected elites weren’t at war with him.

From a comparative perspective, Netanyahu’s experiences in his first term in office, from 1996 until 1999, are most similar to Trump’s current position. His 1996 victory over incumbent prime minister Shimon Peres shocked the political class no less than the American political class was stunned by Trump’s victory. And this makes sense. The historical context of Israel’s 1996 election and the US elections last year were strikingly similar.

In 1992, Israel’s elites, the doves who controlled all aspects of the governing apparatuses, including the security services, universities, government bureaucracies, state prosecution, Supreme Court, media and entertainment industry, were seized with collective euphoria when the Labor Party under the leadership of Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres won Israel’s Left its first clear-cut political victory since 1974. Rabin and Peres proceeded to form the most dovish governing coalition in Israel’s history.

Then in 1993, after secret negotiations in Oslo, they shocked the public with the announcement that they had decided to cut a deal with Israel’s arch enemy, the PLO, a terrorist organization pledged to Israel’s destruction.

The elites, who fancied themselves the guardians of Israel’s democracy, had no problem with the fact that the most radical policy ever adopted by any government, one fraught with dangers for the nation and the state, was embarked upon with no public debate or deliberation.

To the contrary, they spent the next three years dancing around their campfire celebrating the imminent realization of their greatest dream. Israel would no longer live by its sword. It would be able to join a new, post-national world. In exchange for Jerusalem and a few other things that no one cared about, other than some fanatical religious people, Israel could join the Arab League or the European Union or both.

From 1993 through 1996, and particularly in the aftermath of Rabin’s assassination in November 1995, the media, the courts and every other aspect of Israel’s elite treated the fellow Israelis who reject- ed their positions as the moral and qualitative equivalent of terrorists. Like the murderers of innocents, these law-abiding Israelis were “enemies of peace.”

As for terrorism, the Oslo process ushered in not an era of peace, but an era of unprecedented violence. The first time Israelis were beset by suicide bombers in their midst was in April 1994, when the euphoria over the coming peace was at its height.

The 1996 election was the first opportunity the public had to vote on the Oslo process. Then, in spite of Rabin’s assassination and the beautiful ceremonies on the White House lawns with balloons and children holding flowers, the people of Israel said no thank you. We are Zionists, not post-Zionists. We don’t like to get blown to smithereens on buses, and we don’t appreciate being told that victims of terrorism are victims of peace.

Trump likewise replaced the most radical president the US has ever known. Throughout Barack Obama’s eight years in office, despite his failure to restore America’s economic prosperity or secure its interests abroad, Obama enjoyed the sycophantic support of the media, whose leading lights worshiped him and made no bones about it.

In one memorable exchange after Obama’s June 2009 speech in Cairo, where he presented the US as the moral equivalent of its enemies, Newsweek editor Evan Thomas told MSNBC host Chris Mitchell that Obama was “kind of God.”

Obama’s job, Thomas explained, was not merely to lead the US as his predecessor Ronald Reagan had done. Obama was above “provincial nationalism.” His job was to teach morality to humanity.

In Thomas’s words, “He’s going to bring all different sides together… He’s all about ‘let us reason together’… He’s the teacher. He is going to say, ‘Now, children, stop fighting and quarreling with each other.’ And he has a kind of a moral authority that he – he can – he can do that.”

The American Left’s adoration of Obama was so all-encompassing, and its control of the mainstream US media so extensive, that it never occurred to its members that the public disagreed with them. They were certain that Hillary Clinton, Obama’s chosen successor, would win.

In 1996, the Israeli elite greeted Netanyahu’s victory with shock and grief. The “good, enlightened” Israel they thought would rule forever had just been defeated by the unwashed mob. Peres summed up the results by telling reporters that “the Israelis” voted for him. And “the Jews” voted for Netanyahu. His followers shook their heads in mildly antisemitic disgust.

Their mourning quickly was replaced by a spasm of hatred for Netanyahu and his supporters that hasn’t disappeared even now, 21 years later.

The media’s war against Netanyahu began immediately. It was unrelenting and more often than not unhinged. So it was that two weeks after his victory, Jerusalem’s Kol Ha’ir weekly published a cover story titled, “Who are you, John Jay Sullivan?” The report alleged that Netanyahu was a CIA spy who went by the alias “John Jay Sullivan.” It took all of five minutes to take the air out of that preposterous balloon, but the media didn’t care – and it was all downhill from there.

Netanyahu, the media insisted, was a crook. He incited Yitzhak Rabin’s assassination. He may even have been the assassin. His wife, Sara, was mean to nannies. She was a bad mother. She was ill-mannered in general and probably crazy.

Any prominent politician or luminary who entered Netanyahu’s orbit was demonized and libeled. Authors who dared to have dinner with him, journalists who dared to write anything half- way supportive of him, were effectively excommunicated from their professional cliques.

His advisers and cabinet ministers found them- selves under criminal investigation over nothing, and so did Netanyahu and his wife.

Every action his government took that could in any way be interpreted as a step toward weakening the elite’s control of the country brought bombastic headlines day after day, accusing Netanyahu of seeking to undermine the rule of law.

Every disgruntled cabinet minister, every slight- ed aide who publicly criticized Netanyahu, was given instant celebrity and star-for-a-news-cycle status.

The dovish commanders of the IDF and the Shin Bet were openly disloyal to Netanyahu in every – thing relating to the peace process with the PLO. Every attempt Netanyahu made to abandon his predecessors’ blind and misplaced faith in PLO chief Yasser Arafat was immediately leaked to the media. “Security sources” blamed Netanyahu for terrorist attacks.

When the Mossad bungled the assassination of Hamas chief Khaled Mashaal in Amman, it was Netanyahu’s fault. When Arafat used Netanyahu’s authorization of the opening of a new entrance to the Western Wall tunnels to unleash a terrorist offensive against Israel that left 15 Israelis dead in a week, then-Shin Bet director Ami Ayalon blamed Netanyahu at a live press conference.

The purpose of the leaks and the misdirection was to box Netanyahu in with no option other than to continue his predecessors’ failed policy of appeasing and empowering Palestinian terrorists.

Just as the notion that Netanyahu – the man who rejected their post-Zionist euphoria and insisted that there would be no new Middle East – had beat- en their savior Peres blew the Israeli elites’ minds to bits, so the US elite has still refused to come to terms with the fact that Donald Trump, the man they view as nothing more than a nouveau riche vulgarian, beat the anointed successor of their idol Obama.

So they hate him and cannot stop demonizing him. Whether it’s Obama’s director of national intelligence James Clapper, who insisted that the Muslim Brotherhood is a “largely secular organization,” saying that Trump is insane, or Bob Costa from CNN calling him a white supremacist and antisemite, there is no lunatic depth the American Left will not plumb to attack, demonize and dehumanize Trump and his supporters.

So how is a leader to respond to this sort of onslaught? Netanyahu for his part gave up fighting at some point in his first term. Faced with the implacable animosity of an empowered elite that boxed him in at every turn, Netanyahu decided to try to give them what they wanted in the hope of surviving in office.

He made a deal with Arafat and Bill Clinton at Wye Plantation. He handed Hebron over to PLO control. He surrendered government control over selection of the attorney-general to a committee controlled by the elites and so sank Israeli democracy into the hole it is still in.

Since 1997, unelected lawyers unaccountable to elected officials have the power to dismantle democratically elected governments, essentially at will.

Netanyahu got nothing for his efforts. The media, prosecution, state bureaucracy and security services continued to wage political war against him until, with the help of the Clinton administration, they overthrew his government in 1999 and brought Ehud Barak to power. Barak presided over a government so radical that the Rabin-Peres government looked hawkish in comparison.

Before Israel could move past its elites, the fruits of their radical policies first had to be ingested. In the event, the fruits of those policies were 1,500 Israelis killed in the Palestinian terrorist war and the emergence of strategic threats and repeated wars from post-withdrawal Gaza and Lebanon.

Today it is clear that Trump is wrestling with how to proceed in governing, as the American elites openly seek his political and even personal destruction. One day he tacks to the establishment in the hopes of appeasing those who hate him, and the next day he embraces his supporters and repeats his campaign pledges to “drain the swamp.”

The lessons of Netanyahu’s first term – and to a degree, his subsequent terms in office as well – are clear enough and Trump would do well to apply them.

You cannot appease people who want to destroy you. And you cannot succeed by embracing the failed policies of your predecessors that you were elected to roll back. The elites who reject you will never embrace you. The only way to govern successfully when you are under relentless assault is to empower your supporters and keep faith with them.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

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NETANYAHU’S GREAT CHALLENGE

What can Netanyahu do to mitigate the impact of the probes on his ability to do his job?

Over the weekend, it was reported that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu supports legislation that would change the procedure for declaring war. The bill, supported by the government as well as by Netanyahu’s opponent and former finance minister Yair Lapid, involves implementing lessons learned from past experiences.

Under the suggested law, the government will provide the security cabinet with blanket authority to authorize military operations at the beginning of its tenure. By limiting the number of people involved in decision making regarding actual operations, leaks can be minimized and the element of surprise can be protected.

Given the wide support the bill enjoys, and its substance, the media could have been expected to cover the move in a sober-minded way.

But alas, there was no chance of that happening amid the media circus surrounding the criminal probes of Netanyahu. The desultory probes were recently fortified by the deal Netanyahu’s former chief of staff Ari Harow cut with the prosecution to incriminate his former boss in exchange for leniency in the ongoing corruption probe of Harow’s alleged influence peddling.

Now, with Netanyahu’s sworn enemies in the media and the political Left braying for his immediate resignation, the war powers bill, like everything else he is likely to initiate in the coming months and years, is being reported as nothing more than an attempt to change the subject.

None of the probes are expected to conclude any time soon. Legal experts assess they will stretch well into 2019. This means Netanyahu will be under a cloud of suspicion at least until the end of his current term of office. And that is not good for the country.

So what can Netanyahu do to mitigate the impact of the probes on his ability to do his job? The answer is complicated. On the one hand, it is fairly clear that he won’t be able to do anything to end the probes and not because he is accused of doing terrible things. To the contrary, he is accused of doing ridiculously stupid and harmless things.

The police are conducting two investigations of the prime minister. In the first, they are investigating whether he received too many gifts from his friends. Specifically, they want to know if he received too many cigars from his friend Arnon Milchen and whether he received other presents from other friends.

The second probe relates to a deal he discussed but never made with his arch-nemesis Yediot Aharonot publisher Arnon Mozes under which Mozes would give less hostile coverage of Netanyahu and in exchange, Netanyahu would get Yediot’s pro-Netanyahu competitor Israel Hayom to cut back its circulation. In the event, the talks went nowhere. In 2014 Netanyahu broke up his government and went to early elections in 2015 to prevent a bill – supported by 24 lawmakers in a preliminary vote – which would have bankrupted Israel Hayom from moving forward.

The 24 lawmakers that supported the bill received terrific coverage in Yediot. But none of them – including former justice minister Tzipi Livni – are under investigation. The police’s lack of interest in Livni is particularly notable. She advanced the bill despite the fact that then attorney general Yehuda Weinstein determined it was unconstitutional. She based her decision on a legal opinion produced for her by Yediot’s attorney.

FINALLY, THE third investigation doesn’t involve Netanyahu at all. Instead his attorney, confidante and cousin David Shimron is under investigation. And according to investigative reporter Yoav Yitzhak, the probe unraveled this week when the state’s witness was shown to have lied either to police investigators or to his own attorneys about Shimron’s role in brokering a deal for Israel to buy new submarines from Germany.

Netanyahu supported the purchase, indeed, he touted it. His media foes allege that he only supported the purchase, which was opposed by the Defense Ministry, because Shimron was involved.

This allegation itself makes clear the absurdity of the probe.

If the investigation goes forward despite the collapse of the investigation, and Netanyahu is implicated, there is simply no way to prove that he supported the deal for corrupt reasons when he insists that he supported it because he believes Israel needs a modernized submarine fleet.

In other words, the third investigation is incapable of implicating Netanyahu regardless of its relative merits.

It is important to understand the inherent weakness of the probes because it shows us two important things. First, the investigators and the prosecutors do not care what the public thinks of their investigations. In a damning interview with the online Hebrew-language journal Mida last week, former police investigator chief superintendent Boaz Gutman confirmed the long alleged claim that police and prosecutors are motivated to investigate right-wing politicians rather than left-wing politicians because they want the Left restored to power.

As far as police investigators and prosecutors are concerned, it is they, rather than the public, that should decide who gets to lead Israel.

And this brings us to the second aspect we need to understand about the weakness of the probes. To date, politicized investigators and prosecutors have felt comfortable probing and indicting politicians for political reasons because since 1993, the mere act of indicting a politician has been the professional equivalent of a felony conviction.

In 1993, the activist Supreme Court ruled that then interior minister Arye Deri had to resign due to his recent indictment on corruption charges. The ruling, which had no basis in law, has since enjoyed the status of law. Politicians, who are later exonerated of all criminal charges, have repeatedly been forced from office, their reputations in tatters.

The power to remove politicians from office simply by indicting them gives the prosecution absolute power over the political system. The fear of indictment, perhaps more than anything else, has been sufficient to stop every significant attempt to pass laws to reform the unchecked legal system.

In recent weeks, coalition chairman MK David Bitan has told the media that Netanyahu has pledged not to resign if indicted in light of the trivial nature of the probes. Netanyahu’s ability to remain in his position, in opposition to the non-binding norm dictated by the Supreme Court in 1993, will be a function of the public’s view of him and of the investigations against him. And if Netanyahu is strong enough to stay, then his intention not to fold will have a salutary impact on the fairness of the investigations against him.

If the prosecutors realize they will have to win a case against a sitting prime minister rather than one they have already forced from office in disgrace, their decision about whether or not to indict Netanyahu will be based far more on the investigations’ findings and far less on their political views than in the past.

Although prosecutors do not care what the public thinks of them, they do care what their colleagues think of them. And if they indict a sitting prime minister and then fail to convict him while he is still in office and popular, their colleagues will not think well of them.

So it all boils down to governing. But how should Netanyahu govern? If Netanyahu follows the lead set by prime minister Ariel Sharon when he and his sons were under investigation, and abandons his political base to appease the Left, he will harm his chances of remaining in power. Netanyahu will become as unpopular as Ehud Olmert was when he was indicted. He will not avoid indictment. And he will not be reelected.

If on the other hand Netanyahu is loyal to his voters and implements the Right’s policy on Judea and Samaria – namely, applying Israeli law to Area C of Judea and Samaria in anticipation of the era that will begin when 82-year-old PLO chief Mahmoud Abbas dies – then he will not only be able to stay in office if indicted, he will win the next elections even if he is still enmeshed in criminal probes.

Originally published by the Jerusalem Post. 

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AMERICA’S STRATEGIC PARALYSIS

It is obvious Trump seeks a clean break with Obama’s policies. But will the swamp let him?

On Thursday morning, for the second time in so many days, North Korea threatened to attack the US territory of Guam with nuclear weapons. Taken together with Pyongyang’s two intercontinental ballistic missile tests last month, and the US’s Defense Intelligence Agency’s acknowledgment this week that North Korea has the capacity to miniaturize nuclear bombs and so launch them as warheads on missiles, these threats propelled the US and the world into a nuclear crisis.

To understand what must be done, it is critical we recognize how we reached this point. We have arrived at the point where an arguably undeterrable regime has achieved the capacity to attack the US with nuclear weapons due to the policy failure of three successive US administrations.

The Clinton, Bush and Obama administrations all opted not to take concerted action against North Korea, instead embracing the easy road of appeasement. All three let the threat grow as they kicked the North Korean nuclear can down the road. They engaged in nuclear talks with Pyongyang that North Korea exploited to develop nuclear weapons and missile systems.

North Korea’s threats and capabilities tell us that the can has reached the end of the road. It can be kicked no further.

Unfortunately, neither the State Department nor the US media seem to have noticed. Rather than consider the implications of North Korea’s threats and its nuclear capabilities, the major US media outlets and Donald Trump’s political opponents on both sides of the political aisle have opted instead to attack Trump.

The media and Trump’s opponents all focused their responses to North Korea’s nuclear brinkmanship on Trump’s response to the threat. They stood as one in condemning Trump for responding to the ballooning threat by threatening on Tuesday to unleash “fire and fury like the world as never seen” against North Korea if it continues to threaten the US.

TV hosts and commentators bemoaned Trump’s dangerous trigger finger. Democratic Sen. Diane Feinstein said, “Isolating the North Koreans has not halted their pursuit of nuclear weapons. And President Trump is not helping the situation with his bombastic comments.”

Sen. John McCain, one of Trump’s Republican nemeses, similarly attacked Trump and intimated that the US lacks the capacity to follow through on his threats.

“I take exception to the president’s comments, because you gotta be able to do what you say you’re gonna do. I don’t think that’s a way you attack an issue and a challenge like this,” McCain said.

For his part, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson told the media on Wednesday that Trump’s statement was not a threat to use force, per se. It was, rather, an attempt to speak to North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un in a language he can understand, “since he doesn’t seem to understand diplomatic language.”

Tillerson then said that the administration’s policy remains the policy of its predecessors. The US seeks to renew nuclear talks with North Korea if it will just step back from the brink. Last week Tillerson said that the US is not seeking to overthrow the Kim regime. This was an extraordinary unilateral concession to a regime that is developing the means to conduct nuclear strikes against US cities.

What Tillerson’s statement along with the response of the media and Trump’s political opponents all make clear is that at a moment when the US is in critical need of a serious strategic discussion about North Korea, no such discussion is taking place.

And North Korea is not the only threat that the foreign policy elite in Washington – both in and out of government – is failing to address realistically or responsibly.

The absence of serious strategic discourse in the US is just as striking in everything related to Trump’s handling of the Iranian threat.

Over the past several weeks, Israeli officials have expressed dismay at the terms of the July 7 Syrian cease-fire agreement the Trump administration concluded with Russia. As Brig.-Gen. (res.) Yossi Kupperwasser of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs explained in a pointed critique of the deal, the cease-fire “tacitly gave legitimacy to the prolonged presence of Iranian and Iranian-backed forces throughout the regions of Syria nominally controlled by the Assad regime.”

Two weeks after concluding the pro-Iranian cease-fire deal, Trump met with Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri at the White House. Ignoring the fact that Hezbollah and Iran control the Lebanese government, and that Hariri, consequently, serves at the pleasure of both, Trump embraced Lebanon as an ally. He pledged continued US support for the Lebanese Armed Forces despite the fact that the LAF is subordinate to Hezbollah. And he extolled Lebanon’s war “against terror.”

Last week Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah announced in a televised speech that the LAF in coordination with Hezbollah would be carrying out a strike against ISIS forces along the Syrian- Lebanese border. The LAF would attack from the Lebanese side. Hezbollah and Assad regime forces would attack from the Syrian side of the border.

Nasrallah did not mention that US special forces were fighting alongside the LAF troops. But they were. The Pentagon released photos of US special forces operating from an LAF base. And news agencies reported that US forces were accompanying Lebanese forces into battle.

In other words, the Trump administration has embraced the Obama administration’s policy of viewing Iran and Hezbollah as allies in a common war against ISIS.

One of the lone voices who opposed this policy was Col. Derek Harvey. Trump’s National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster fired Harvey from his position of Middle East director on the National Security Council last month.

According to a senior US national security source familiar with the issue, Harvey advocated that the administration recognize and act on the growing threat to US allies Israel and Jordan posed by Iran and Hezbollah in Syria.

This week it was reported that both Israel and Jordan briefed US officials involved in cease-fire negotiations and set out their objections to continued deployment of Iranian and Hezbollah forces in the country.

Harvey, the source explains, objected to the Pentagon’s insistence on limiting its discussion of US operations in Syria to the campaign against ISIS. He said that Hezbollah and Iran must also be addressed.

Rather than consider his position, Harvey, the source says, was shot down by his colleagues from the Pentagon who accused him of being a warmonger.

And as a consequence, with US forces fighting side by side with Hezbollah in Syria, and so advancing Iranian control over Syria, the Trump administration’s policy in the country has become substantively identical to that of its predecessor.

As to Iran’s nuclear program, last month Trump again certified that Iran is in compliance with the JCPOA nuclear deal. He did this despite the fact that he opposed recertification. Trump was allegedly was blindsided by his national security team McMaster, Defense Secretary James Mattis and Tillerson, who reportedly insisted that the US has no alternative at this time to maintaining its commitment to the deal that guarantees Iran will be in North Korea’s position within 13 years.

National security sources in Washington dispute this claim. One source reveals that between Trump’s electoral victory and his firing last month, Harvey developed a detailed plan for withdrawing the US from the nuclear deal but that McMaster prevented him from presenting his plan to Trump.

Whatever the case may be, the fact is that at least for the next 90 days, the Trump administration remains committed to Obama’s Iranian nuclear deal.

Unfortunately, if the US does not act swiftly to forge and implement a strategy for denuclearizing North Korea, it may well face the specter of a nuclear-armed Iran in possession of ICBMs in much less than 13 years.

This is the case for two reasons. First, nothing happens in isolation.

If the US does not attach Trump’s threat to attack North Korea to a credible strategy for removing North Korea’s nuclear arsenal, then Iran will draw the appropriate lessons.

The second reason Trump’s response to the North Korean nuclear crisis will directly impact the burgeoning nuclear threat of Iran is that there is strong circumstantial evidence that the two programs are connected. Indeed, they may be the same program.

Last week, after the UN Security Council passed a new sanctions resolution against North Korea, the regime’s No. 2 official, parliament chairman Kim Yong Nam, arrived in Tehran for a 10-day visit.

In the past, CIA officials have claimed that Iranian observers have been present at North Korean nuclear tests. Iran also reportedly financed the Korean-built nuclear reactor in Syria that Israel reportedly destroyed in 2007.

Iran’s Shihab-3 and Shihab-4 intermediate range ballistic missiles are based on North Korean designs. Former US ambassador to the UN John Bolton recently revealed that during North Korea’s 1999-2006 missile testing moratorium, Iran conducted missile tests for North Korea.

If the circumstantial evidence linking the two nuclear programs is correct, then whatever North Korea has will be possessed by Iran in short order.

It is certainly possible that there is more happening behind the scenes in Washington than anyone can possibly know. Far from the television cameras, US national security officials may be configuring strategic goals and programs that will enable Trump to abandon Obama’s failed policies in relation to North Korea, Syria and Iran and move the US – and the world – in a safer and more secure direction.

Unfortunately, in light of Tillerson’s claim that the US seeks to return to the negotiating table with North Korea, and given the administration’s decision to continue to implement Obama’s pro-Iran and pro-Hezbollah policy in Syria and Trump’s second certification of Iranian compliance with Obama’s nuclear deal, it is certainly easy to conclude that this is not the case.

As Kupperwasser noted in his essay on the dangers the US-Russian Syrian cease-fire deal pose to Israel and Jordan, Trump’s abidance by Obama’s pro-Iranian policies in Syria “worries Israel… because it casts doubt over the depth of American commitment, the ability of the Americans to deliver, or the relevance of the ‘Art of the Deal’ to the Middle East and international politics.”

It is obvious that Trump continues to seek a clean break with Obama’s policies. But as his critics’ piling on against him following his threat to North Korea and the State Department’s determination to maintain Obama’s failed policy of appeasement toward Pyongyang both make clear, more than anything else, Trump needs advisers who are capable of helping him achieve this goal. He needs advisers willing to stand up to the pressure and the inertial force of the foreign policy bureaucracy and capable of having a serious strategic discussion about how to proceed in an international environment that grows more daunting every day.

Originally published by the Jerusalem Post. 

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Preparing for a Post Abbas Era

The post-Abbas era will pose new threats and opportunities for Israel. It is up to Israel to ensure that the opportunities are maximized and the threats are neutralized as quickly as possible.

PLO chief and Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas scored a victory against Israel at the Temple Mount. But it was a Pyrrhic one.

Days after the government bowed to his demand and voted to remove the metal detectors from the Temple Mount, Abbas checked into the hospital for tests. The 82-year-old dictator has heart disease and a series of other serious health issues. And he has refused to appoint a successor.

It is widely assumed that once he exits the stage, the situation in the PA-ruled areas in Judea and Samaria – otherwise known as Areas A and B – will change in fundamental ways.
This week, two prominent Palestinian advocates, Hussein Agha and Ahmad Samih Khalidi, published an article in The New Yorker entitled “The end of this road: The decline of the Palestinian national movement.”

Among other things, they explained that Abbas’s death will mark the dissolution of the Palestinian national identity. That identity has already been supplanted in Judea and Samaria by local, tribal identities. In their words, “The powerful local ties made it impossible for a Hebronite to have a genuine popular base in Ramallah, or for a Gazan to have a credible say in the West Bank.”

It will also be the end of the PLO and its largest faction, Fatah, founded by Yasser Arafat in 1958 and led by Abbas since Arafat’s death in 2004.

Fatah, they explain, has “no new leaders, no convincing evidence of validation, no marked success in government, no progress toward peace, fragile links to its original setting abroad and a local environment buffeted by the crosswinds of petty quarrels and regional antagonisms.”

One of the reasons the Palestinians have lost interest in being Palestinians is because they have lost their traditional political and financial supporters in the Arab world and the developing world. The Sunni Arab world, led by Saudi Arabia and Egypt, is now willing to publicly extol Israel as a vital ally in its struggle against Iran and the Muslim Brotherhood. The so-called Arab street is increasingly incensed at the Palestinians for monopolizing the world’s attention with their never ending list of grievances against Israel even as millions in the Arab world suffer from war, genocide, starvation and other forms of oppression and millions more have been forced to flee their homes.

As for the developing world, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s refusal to visit with Abbas during his recent visit to Israel marked the official end of the Third World’s alliance with the PLO.

After Abbas departs, Agha and Khalidi identify three key actors that will seek to fill the military and political void. First and foremost, the Palestinian security services (PSF) will raise its head. The PSF is heavily armed and has been trained by the US military. Agha and Khalidi argue reasonably that as the best armed and best organized group in the area aside from the IDF, the PSF will likely seize power in one form or another.

The Palestinian forces pose a major threat to Israel. It isn’t simply that their members have often participated in murderous terrorist attacks against Israel. With their US military training they are capable of launching large-scale assaults on Israeli civilian communities and on IDF forces.

To understand the nature of the threat, consider that last month, a lone terrorist armed with a knife sufficed to massacre the Salomon family in their home in Halamish before he was stopped by an off-duty soldier. Contemplate what a well-armed and trained platoon of Palestinian soldiers with no clear political constraints could do.

The second force Agha and Khalidi identify as likely to step into the leadership vacuum is the Israeli Arab political leadership. As Agha and Khalidi note, since the PLO-controlled PA was established in 1994, the Israeli Arab community and the Palestinians of Judea and Samaria have become more familiar with one another.

Due in large part to subversion by the PLO and Hamas and lavish funding of radical Israeli Arab groups and politicians by foreign governments and leftist donors, a generation of radical, anti-Israel Arab politicians has risen to power.

At the same time, since the Arab Spring destabilized all of Israel’s neighbors, a cross current of Arab Zionism has captivated the Israeli Arab majority. Recognizing that Israel is their safe port in the storm, Israeli Arabs in increasing numbers are choosing to embrace their Israeli identity, learn Hebrew and join mainstream Israeli society.

Agha and Khalidi signal clearly their hope that the integration of the Palestinians and Israel’s Arab minority will enable them to worth together to take over the Jewish state from within.

Finally, Agha and Khalidi note that as support for the Palestinians has waned in the Arab world and the developing world, the West has emerged in recent years as their most stable and enthusiastic political support base. Ethnic Palestinians in the West are more committed to destroying Israel than Palestinians in Syria and Jordan. Western politicians and political activists who support the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement are much more committed to the political war against Israel than their counterparts in Asia and Africa.

The Western forces now aligned against Israel in the name of the Palestinians will certainly seek to play a role in shaping events in a post-Abbas world.

This then brings us to Israel and what it must do now and in the immediate aftermath of Abbas’s exit from the scene.

The most important thing that Israel can and must do is send a send a clear message that it will not be walking away from Judea and Samaria. To do so, Israel should end the military government in Area C, where all the Israeli communities and border zones are located, and replace it with its legal code.

Militarily, it is imperative that the IDF be ordered to disarm the PSF as quickly and quietly as possible.

Since 2007, Abbas’s fear of Hamas has exceeded his hatred for Israel. As a consequence, during this time, the Palestinian security forces have cooperated with the IDF in anti-Hamas operations.

There is every likelihood that the forces’ calculations in a post-Abbas world will be quite different.

Israel cannot afford to have a well-armed force, steeped in antisemitic ideology, deployed footsteps from major Israeli population centers.

As for the Israeli Arabs, Israel can empower moderate, integrationist forces to rise to power. To do so, it must enforce its laws against terrorism-sponsoring groups like the Islamic movement and enforce its land and welfare laws toward Arabs with the same vigor it enforces them toward Jews. It must provide support for integrationists to enter the political fray against their anti-Israel rivals.

If Israel fails to take these actions, Agha and Khalidi’s dream that the Palestinian war against Israel is taken over by Israeli Arabs supported by the West will become a realistic prospect.

This then brings us to the West.

Economically, Israel has already begun to limit the capacity of anti-Israel forces in the West to wage economic war against it by deepening its economic ties with Asia.

Politically, Israel must reform its legal system to limit the subversive power of the West in its Arab community and more generally in its political system. Foreign governments must be barred from funding political NGOs. Israel should wage a public campaign in the US to discredit foundations and other non-profits in the US that work through Israeli-registered NGOs to undermine its rule of law.

By applying its laws in full to Area C, and by asserting sole security control throughout the areas, while empowering the Israeli Arab majority that wishes to embrace its Israeli identity, Israel will empower the Palestinians in Areas A and B to govern themselves autonomously in a manner that advances the interests of their constituents.

As Agha and Khalidi note, the Palestinians have been in charge of their own governance since 1994. But under the corrupt authoritarianism of the PLO, their governance has been poor and unaccountable. As local identities have superseded the PLO’s brand of nationalism borne of terrorism and eternal war against Israel, the Palestinians in Judea and Samaria well positioned to embrace an opportunity to govern themselves under a liberal rule of law without fear of the PLO jackboot.

The post-Abbas era will pose new threats and opportunities for Israel. It is up to Israel to ensure that the opportunities are maximized and the threats are neutralized as quickly as possible. Failing that, Israel can expect to contend with military threats in Judea and Samaria several orders of magnitude greater than what it has dealt with in the past. It can similarly expect to find itself under political assault from a combination of radicalized Israeli Arabs and Western governments that will challenge it in ways it has never been challenged before.

Originally Posted in the Jerusalem Post.

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Losing and Winning the Temple Mount

Israel ceded the Temple Mount to terrorists last week. But with a clear goal, we can get it back in short order and keep it perpetually for the good of all humanity.

Last week, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and his security cabinet caved in to the demands of the PLO and its partners in Hamas, the Islamic Movement, Jordan, Iran and Turkey by agreeing to remove metal detectors and other security screening equipment from the Temple Mount. The equipment was installed last month in response to Palestinian incitement and acts of jihadist violence against Israelis, including the murder of two policemen, at Judaism’s holiest site.

After polls showed 77% of Israelis felt he and his cabinet members capitulated to terrorism, Netanyahu issued a statement thanking US President Donald Trump’s senior adviser Jared Kushner and Trump’s senior negotiator Jason Greenblatt for their help in resolving the crisis.

The underlying message of Netanyahu’s statement was that he and his ministers folded like a cheap suit to our enemies’ demands, effectively ceding Israeli sovereignty over the Temple Mount to our enemies because Kushner and Greenblatt pressured them to do so.

But then this week, a congressional intern did us the favor of surreptitiously recording and leaking remarks Kushner made on the issue in off-record remarks to interns at the White House. Kushner’s remarks, which came in response to a question about his role in mediating the Palestinian conflict with Israel, were fairly detailed.

Regarding the Temple Mount crisis, Kushner justified Israel’s decision to place metal detectors at the entrance of the Temple Mount. In his words, following the murder of the policemen by terrorists armed with guns smuggled onto the Mount, “putting up metal detectors on the Temple Mount… is not an irrational thing to do.”

Kushner also emphasized several times the central role that Palestinian incitement played in fomenting the violence on the Temple Mount. He drew the logical conclusion that the same incitement which fomented the violence on the Temple Mount led to the massacre of the Saloman family in their home in Halamish two weeks ago.

Unlike all previous US mediators, Kushner didn’t blame “both sides” for causing the violence. He placed the blame squarely on the Palestinians who incited and committed murder.

In speaking this way, Kushner made clear that he isn’t the type of person who will apply bone-breaking pressure on Israel to capitulate to the demands of terrorist murderers. Certainly Netanyahu and his ministers are strong enough to withstand whatever pressure Kushner and Greenblatt may have brought to bear on them last week.

Indeed, as one administration official put it, “The idea that the same Netanyahu who withstood eight years of unrelenting pressure from the Obama administration crumpled under pressure from Kushner and Greenblatt is simply ridiculous.”

So if it wasn’t American pressure that convinced Netanyahu, Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman and their colleagues in the security cabinet to crumple, why did they do it?

All of their instincts were pointing them down the opposite path.

From a security standpoint, you don’t need to be a genius to understand that you don’t respond to an enemy on offense by surrendering your defenses.

More generally, Netanyahu and his ministers all know that just as releasing terrorists from prison guarantees more dead Israelis, so capitulating to the demands of terrorists ensures more dead Israelis.

But if the decision was wrong from a security standpoint, it was downright crazy from a political perspective. Among the 77% of Israelis who said the decision amounted to capitulation were doubtlessly 100% of Likud and Yisrael Beytenu voters and 85% of Kulanu voters. (Bayit Yehudi voters at least knew their cabinet representatives, Education Minister Naftali Bennett and Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked, voted against the measure.)

According to the media, the cabinet was intimidated into surrendering by a doomsday scenario presented by the IDF and Shin Bet representatives at the cabinet meeting. Channel 2 reported that the IDF and Shin Bet warned the politicians that failure to capitulate would result in a security nightmare, whose details they laid out in a frightening PowerPoint slide.

The Palestinians would start a new terrorist war, they said.

Fatah’s Tanzim terrorists, who have been inactive in recent years, would renew their attacks, they warned.

The Palestinians would undermine Israel’s capacity to fight Hezbollah effectively in Lebanon, they insisted.

And finally, if Israel failed to capitulate, a “rare unity” of forces in the Islamic world stretching from Turkey to Iran would emerge, they hectored.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but all of these doomsday admonitions are debatable.

Take the issue of the “rare unity” from Iran to Turkey.

Since the Turks tried to break Israel’s maritime blockade of Hamas-controlled Gaza seven years ago, unity has been the rule not the exception in Turkish-Iranian relations. Both supported the Muslim Brotherhood in the so-called Arab Spring. Both supported Hamas in its 2014 war against Israel from Gaza. And today, both support Qatar against the Saudi- and Egyptian-led bloc of Sunni Arab states.

As for the Sunni Arabs, last week, the Saudis took the stunning step of siding with Israel on the metal detectors. The Saudis noted supportively that they installed metal detectors in Mecca and Medina.

As to the rest of the scenarios the security chiefs raised, they may or may not be true. But what is certainly true is that it isn’t the job of the security community to tell Israel’s leaders they have no choice but to surrender to aggression. It is their duty to formulate plans for defeating the aggressors, period.

And incidentally, ahead of Tisha Be’av, which fell this year on Monday night/Tuesday, unlike the IDF and the Shin Bet, the police did just that. Whereas the Shin Bet wanted to prohibit Jews from visiting the Temple Mount on the day of mourning commemorating the destruction of the First and Second Temples, the police recognized it was its job to enable Jews to visit.

Rather than join the Shin Bet in recommending that Jews be barred from visiting the Temple Mount, the police provided the requisite protection and enabled more than 1,200 Jews to visit the site without incident.

The fact that Police Commissioner Roni Alsheich provided security when Shin Bet Director Nadav Argaman said it couldn’t be done makes it hard to avoid the impression that the warnings the IDF and Shin Bet chiefs issued the security cabinet last week stemmed less from professional considerations than from ideological or political agendas.

This impression is strengthened when last week’s horror scenarios are seen in the context of the security establishment’s long history of blocking the implementation of government policies it was its duty to facilitate.

For instance, in 2010 and 2012, the commanders of the IDF and the Mossad reportedly refused to carry out Netanyahu’s order to prepare their forces to strike Iran’s nuclear installations.

And then-Shin Bet director Ami Ayalon’s move to blame Netanyahu when the Palestinians unleashed a terrorist offensive in 1996 after Netanyahu’s first government opened a second entrance to the tunnels below the Western Wall is etched in collective memory.

But for all their institutional and personal drawbacks, there is a limit to the amount of blame you can place on Israel’s security leadership for the cabinet’s decision to surrender to terrorists last week. After all, while it is true the IDF and Shin Bet commanders crossed the line, Netanyahu and his ministers let them cross it.

If Netanyahu and Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman wanted to, they could easily have blunted the security brass’s push for capitulation. They certainly could have publicly criticized them for their defeatism rather than insinuate that the Americans made them capitulate.

So why haven’t Netanyahu and Liberman called them to order? Why doesn’t Netanyahu – at a minimum – publicly criticize his generals for their insubordination and contrast their spinelessness with Alsheich’s professional competence and determination? 

The answer is discouraging. Netanyahu allows himself and his cabinet members to be bullied by his generals because he doesn’t have a policy for securing Israeli sovereignty and advancing Israel’s national interests at the Temple Mount. Without a positive goal, he is reduced to treading water with the hope of keeping a lid on Muslim jihadists. And so his “policy” of bowing to his politically subversive generals bears a disquieting resemblance to George Orwell’s quip, “The quickest way of ending a war is to lose it.”

Perhaps the depressing aspect of all of this is that it isn’t hard to figure out what a reasonable, constructive policy would be for the Temple Mount.

As a liberal democracy, Israel has an interest, indeed a duty, to ensure that the holy site is open to all religions and that everyone has the right to freely worship on the Temple Mount. Given the fact that the Temple Mount is the holiest place in the world for Jews, Israel has a vital interest in securing its sovereign control over the area.

To secure its sovereignty and advance its clear interest in facilitating religious freedom for all, Israel’s policy goal is straightforward. The government should enable all faiths to worship freely at the site.

To secure this end, the government should announce its goal and make a good-faith effort to involve all relevant groups and governments, including the Palestinian Authority, Christian authorities, Jewish authorities, the Jordanian regime and others in achieving it. The government should also state outright that if the Palestinians opt instead to incite and commit acts of violence and terrorism from the Temple Mount, Israel will secure its goal and enable Jews and Christians to worship at the holy site unilaterally.

To date, the Temple Mount has been the Palestinians’ ace in the hole. They recycle the blood libel that Jews are endangering al-Aksa every time they feel they are losing ground in their never-ending war against Israel. And Israel inevitably capitulates.

But if Israel announces its policy is to secure religious freedom for all on the Temple Mount and makes a good-faith effort to advance it in conjunction with the Palestinians and all other relevant groups, it will set the conditions for taking that ace away.

If after it begins good-faith efforts to collectively advance the liberal, democratic goal of ensuring religious freedom for all at the holy site, the Palestinians again turn to violence, then the Islamic world, or parts of it, will be in a position to blame them when Israel unilaterally enables Jews and Christians to pray on the Temple Mount parallel to Muslim worshipers.

If Netanyahu and his ministers make this their goal then the IDF and the Shin Bet won’t be able to intimidate them into capitulation next time around. Instead, the leaders of the IDF, the Shin Bet and the Foreign Ministry will all know their jobs and know that if they fail to perform they will be replaced.

Israel ceded the Temple Mount to terrorists last week. But with a clear goal, we can get it back in short order and keep it perpetually for the good of all humanity.

Originally Published in the Jersualem Post.

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U.S. SUPPORT FOR PALESTINIAN TERRORISTS MUST END

A hefty reward awaits the murderer of an Israeli family — courtesy of U.S. taxpayers.

The Solomon family was massacred Friday night as they celebrated Shabbat and the birth of their newest grandson in their home. They were massacred by a 19 year old jihadist who posted an explanation of his imminent act of barbarous murder against his Jewish neighbors on Facebook less that two hours before he stormed their home in Neve Tzuf.

The murderer used the same language as his”moderate” “pro-peace” “legitimate” leader, PLO chief Mahmoud Abbas who said that Jews pollute the Temple Mount with our “filthy feet.”

Ironically and appallingly, just last week the US State Department published a report blaming Israel for Palestinian terrorism and claiming that the PLO-led, and US-funded Palestinian Authority doesn’t incite terrorism and violence and hatred.

The State Department also opposes the Taylor Force bill which if passed — along the lines passed in the House of Representatives, (the Senate bill is an insult to our intelligence), would end US taxpayer subsidization of Palestinian terrorism to the tune of more than half a billion dollars a year.

The State Department — Tillerson included, apparently, doesn’t see anything wrong with the fact that the PA uses more than $300 million every year to pay people like the murderer who butchered the Solomons and their families.

Having murdered the Solomons in their home, this terrorist is guaranteed a lifetime salary and pension for his family that ensure them all an upper middle class economic status — courtesy of US taxpayers via the “moderate” PA, PLO, Abbas, terror machine.

I just gave my final speech in Australia and will be heading on to the US for a month from here.

It is my intention to use my time in the US to convince the Washington types that this appalling, anti-Israel and anti-Jewish policy of supporting people committed to our annihilation in the name of fake peace must end.

Enough is enough. This simply cannot continue. Jewish life is sacred, not worthless. It is time for the US to accept and base its policy on this basic, self-evident fact.

Published from Caroline Glick’s Facebook Page.

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Hezbollah’s missiles will not rust

If we aren’t indifferent to Hezbollah’s expansion of its capabilities, what are we planning to do about it?

Last month IDF Military Intelligence chief Maj.-Gen. Herzl Halevi made a stunning revelation. Hezbollah and Iran are transforming the terrorist group into a military force capable of independently producing its own precision weapons.

Speaking at the Herzliya Conference, Halevi reported, “We are seeing Hezbollah building a domestic military industry on Lebanese soil based on Iranian know-how. Hezbollah is producing weapons systems and transporting them to southern Lebanon.”

Halevi added, “Over the past year, Iran is working to establish infrastructure for the independent production of precision weapons in Lebanon and Yemen. We cannot be indifferent to this development. And we aren’t.”

Not only is Hezbollah building a missile industry. It is deploying its forces directly across the border with Israel – in material breach of UN Security Council Resolution 1701 from 2006, which set the terms of the cease-fire between Israel and Hezbollah at the end of the Second Lebanon War.

Under the terms of 1701, Hezbollah is prohibited from operating south of the Litani River. Only the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) and UNIFIL – the UN’s peacekeeping force – are supposed to be deployed in southern Lebanon.

According to Halevi, operating under the cover of a phony environmental NGO called “Green Without Borders,” Hezbollah has set up observation posts manned with its fighters along the border with Israel.

In Halevi’s words, with these posts, “Hezbollah is now able to operate a stone’s throw from the border.”

In a media briefing on Sunday, Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman discussed Halevi’s revelations. Liberman said that the security community “is absolutely aware [of the missile plants] and is taking the necessary action.”

“This is a significant phenomenon,” Liberman warned. “We must under no circumstances ignore it.”

Perhaps in a jab at his predecessor, Moshe Ya’alon, who years ago argued notoriously that Hezbollah’s missiles would “rust” in their storage facilities, perhaps in warning to Hezbollah, Liberman added, “The factories won’t rust and the missiles won’t rust.”

So if we aren’t indifferent to Hezbollah’s expansion of its capabilities, what are we planning to do about it?

Whatever answer the IDF decides upon, Israel is already taking diplomatic steps to prepare for the next round – whoever opens it.

Last month Israel filed a formal complaint with the UN Security Council against Hezbollah for setting up observation towers along the border and manning them with its fighters.

Not surprisingly, UNIFIL and the Security Council rejected Israel’s complaint. Ever since six UNIFIL soldiers were killed in a roadside bomb in 2007, UNIFIL has turned a blind eye to all of Hezbollah’s operations in southern Lebanon. As to the strike for which the complaint to the Security Council began setting the conditions, what purpose would it serve?

In a future war, Israel shouldn’t aspire, for instance, to destroy Hezbollah as a fighting force. The goal, in my opinion, should be to destroy or neutralize as much of Hezbollah’s missile arsenal and its missile assembly plants as possible. If possible, Israel should also seek to destroy Hezbollah’s tunnel infrastructure along its border.

The first question is whether the threat justifies action. The answer, in my opinion, is clear enough. Over the past 11 years, Hezbollah’s missile arsenal has become an unacceptable and ever-growing strategic threat to Israel. Whereas in 2006 Hezbollah’s missile arsenal numbered some 15,000 rockets, today it fields approximately 150,000.

In 2006, at the height of its missile offensive against Israel, Hezbollah lobbed some 120 missiles a day at Israeli territory. Today it can shoot some 1,000 to 1,200 missile a day at Israel.

And it isn’t only the quantity of missiles that make them an insufferable threat. It’s also their quality. Whereas in 2006 Hezbollah attacked Israel with imprecise projectiles with low payloads, today Hezbollah reportedly fields precision guided, long-range missiles like the Yakhont and Fatah-110.

The Yakhont missiles can imperil Israel’s interests in the Mediterranean, including its offshore natural gas installations. The Fatah-110s, with a range of some 300 kilometers, threaten metropolitan Tel Aviv and key military installations. Both missile types are capable of carrying payloads of hundreds of kilograms of explosives.

To be sure, in the 11 years since the Second Lebanon War Israel has also massively upgraded its military capabilities. Last week air force chief Maj.-Gen. Amir Eshel said the force today can inflict a level of damage on Hezbollah in two days that it took it weeks to inflict in 2006.

The question is not whether Israel has the ability to respond to a Hezbollah assault. Given the lethality of Hezbollah’s arsenal, it would be reckless to assume that Israel can easily absorb an opening volley of missiles.

But battle losses aren’t the only consideration Israel needs to take into account. For instance, there is the US. How would the US respond to a war?

As far as the Trump administration is concerned, the picture is mixed. On the one hand, President Donald Trump and his advisers are much more supportive of Israel than predecessor Barack Obama and Obama’s advisers were.

Under Obama, not only could Israel have expected the US to oppose an attack against Hezbollah’s missiles, but there is reason to believe that the Obama administration would have supported Hezbollah against Israel.

This is the case for two reasons. First, Obama’s team made clear that his most important foreign policy goal was to develop an alliance with Iran.

Second, and in support of Obama’s goal of courting the Iranians, his administration repeatedly leaked details about IDF strikes against Hezbollah weapons convoys traversing Syria en route to Lebanon. These leaks worked to Israel’s detriment and to Hezbollah’s advantage by ratcheting up the danger that Israel’s strikes at Hezbollah convoys would lead to an undesired escalation of hostilities.

At a minimum, Israel can expect that the Trump administration’s response to a war with Hezbollah in Lebanon to be as tolerant as then president George W. Bush’s administration’s response was to Israel’s military actions in the 2006 war.

Bush and then-secretary of state Condoleezza Rice immediately called for a ceasefire. But in the early stages of the war, they also supported Israel and blocked anti-Israel resolutions from being brought before the Security Council. Their support for Israel began to weaken as the war dragged on and the IDF ran into trouble achieving significant battlefield gains.

Today, the Trump administration is divided on issues surrounding Israel. Trump’s White House advisers, led by Steve Bannon as well as Vice President Mike Pence and UN Ambassador Nikki Haley, are likely to support a war with Hezbollah. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Secretary of Defense James Mattis are likely to demand that Israel stand down.

One way to diminish opposition within the administration to a war is to highlight the depths of Hezbollah’s control of the Lebanese government and of the Lebanese military. The latter is particularly significant.

The foreign and defense policy establishment in Washington, with which Tillerson and Mattis are aligned, insistently continue to back the Lebanese Armed Forces, despite the fact that it is demonstrably subservient to Hezbollah.

As recently as May, the US sent assault rifles to the LAF, in its latest batch of military assistance. The strategic recklessness of continued US weapons transfers to the LAF was laid bare last November. US-made armored personnel carriers, identical to the type the US has provided the LAF, participated in a Hezbollah military parade in Syria.

Indeed, barely a week goes by without new evidence of the LAF’s subservient position to Hezbollah. This week, for instance, 150 LAF cadets toured Hezbollah’s military museum with Lt.-Col. Ali Ismail, who serves as the head of the LAF’s intelligence directorate in Nabatiya.

As for Iran, it is hard to know how it would respond. There is a low likelihood that Iran would strike Israel directly with ballistic missiles in the event of a war with Hezbollah. Iran views Hezbollah’s missiles as a means to deter Israel from attacking Iran – not the other way around.

Iran’s most likely immediate response to a war would be to deploy its foreign militia to Hezbollah’s side in Lebanon. Last month, Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah publicly asked Iran to send him foreign fighters from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Yemen and Iran.

Nasrallah’s request, and the likelihood that Iran will grant it in short order, are another reason why war will eventually happen. Israel shouldn’t stand around while Iran sends thousands of fighters to Lebanon to join the next war against it.

As for the Saudis and Egyptians and their allies, they have been clear that they view Iran and Hezbollah as a greater threat than Israel. Indeed, last year they declared Hezbollah a terrorist group. In 2006, they supported Israel until it began getting bogged down.

In a future war, if Israel is able to quickly deliver a serious blow against Hezbollah, the Sunnis would likely applaud it. So it boils down to capacity.

If the IDF can conduct a quick, effective operation against Hezbollah that would destroy, degrade or neutralize a large portion of its missile arsenal and its missile assembly plants, then the benefits of moving forward, in my opinion, outweigh the costs.

Originally Published in the Jersualem Post
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Modi and Israel’s Coming of Age

Modi’s historic visit is a good opportunity for Israel to understand where it now stands and what it must do to maintain and expand its current success into the future.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Israel this week marks more than the 25th anniversary of diplomatic ties between the two nations.

It marks as well Israel’s coming of age as a nation.

When in 1992, India and Israel forged full diplomatic relations, the Indian government was reacting to a transformation in the international arena, rather than to changes that were specifically related to the Jewish state.

In 1991 and 1992, in response to the US victory over the Soviet Union in the Cold War, a large group of countries restored or inaugurated full diplomatic relations with Israel. These states – including the Russian Federation and China – had by and large been either on the Soviet side of the war, or leaned toward Moscow. Their refusal to forge full ties with Israel, a key US Cold War ally, became a liability in the US-dominated post-Cold War global order. Hence, they abandoned their Cold War rejection of Israel and instead embraced it.

Although ingratiating themselves with Washington loomed large in the considerations of most governments involved, they also took the step due to Israel’s independent power. If Israel had been a strategic basket case facing an uncertain future, then even in the face of the demise of the Soviet Union, Moscow and its allies could well have had second and third thoughts. Why anger the Arab world by recognizing a soon-to-be gone Jewish state?

Had Israel recognized and built on the sources of its power and attraction for other governments, it would have spent the rest of the 1990s strengthening itself still further – defeating Hezbollah in Lebanon, weakening the Iranian regime and working with the Americans to end its ballistic weapon program. It would have moved quickly to liberalize its economy to enable the million new Israelis from the former Soviet Union to immediately transform Israel into the global innovator rather than waiting for this to gradually occur over decades.

Instead, in 1993, then prime minister and defense minister Yitzhak Rabin and then foreign minister Shimon Peres decided to go off on a strategic tangent.

Ignoring or failing to understand the implications of the US Cold War victory and the economic and national security implications of the aliya wave from the former Soviet Union, Rabin and Peres decided the key to everything was appeasing the PLO – a terrorist organization whose declared intention was to annihilate Israel through a mix of terrorism and political warfare.

As far as they were concerned, nothing that had just happened in the world had strategic implications for Israel. Rather, Israel’s diplomatic, military and economic power were all contingent on making peace by appeasing the PLO.

To implement that strategy, Rabin and Peres and their government lobbied foreign governments to support the PLO militarily, financially and politically (not that anyone needed much convincing).

And they transformed the IDF. Rabin and Peres instructed the IDF General Staff to “change its diskette” in relation to the PLO and to fighting terrorism.

No longer were Israel’s generals to aspire to defeating terrorists. They were instead ordered to facilitate appeasement – through the transfer of land and military power to the PLO. The PLO, Rabin told them, could defeat terrorism more effectively than the IDF could. And all Israel needed to do to induce Yasser Arafat to defeat the forces he built, paid and commanded was shower him with money, territory, firepower and international legitimacy. The PLO was not Israel’s enemy. It was Israel’s peace partner.

Not surprisingly, this didn’t work out at all.

Israel’s diplomatic position collapsed. The international community effectively sided with the PLO against Israel when it rejected peace and initiated its terror war against Israel in 2000. Since then Israel has found itself targeted by political and economic warfare from the EU, its second largest trading partner and its previously fairly supportive strategic ally. Following Europe’s lead, the American Left has incrementally abandoned its pre-1993 embrace of Israel.

As for security, in the seven years of the peace process that ended with the PLO’s rejection of peace and instigation of its terror war against Israel, the number of Israelis killed by Palestinian terrorists was twice what it had been in the previous 15 years. More than 1,500 Israelis have been killed by Palestinian terrorists since 1993. More than 10,000 have been wounded.

Buffeted by the utter and complete failure of the appeasement strategy, since Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu returned to power in 2009, he has gradually restored Israel to the classic notions of national development.

Building on the market reforms he initiated in his first tenure as prime minister from 1996 to 1999 and his stint as finance minister from 2003 to 2006, Netanyahu has overseen the continued liberalization of the economy and expansion of Israel’s international markets to ensure the continued expansion of the economy and increase Israel’s attractiveness as a trading partner and investment hub.

Abandoning the PLO appeasement strategy, which made Israel’s diplomatic standing contingent on PLO approval, Netanyahu has based his diplomatic strategy on Israel’s economic and attractiveness and stability. He has emphasized the aspects of Israel’s economy – technological and agriculture prowess – among other things, where Israel has a comparative advantage to draw international actors to its shores.

While decoupling Israel’s diplomacy from the PLO, he has also gradually rolled back the legitimacy Israel unwisely conferred on the terrorist group 24 years ago.

The fact that Modi has opted not to visit the PLO-controlled Palestinian Authority in Ramallah demonstrates the wisdom and success of the strategy. Modi may or may not be interested in establishing a PLO state, but he is very interested in developing his own economy. Modi recognizes the synergies between Israel’s comparative advantages in military and economic technologies and India’s needs.

As the leader of a democracy, his first interest is advancing his country’s needs. Whether or not there will be peace between Israel and the Palestinians has no impact on India’s security and prosperity.

Modi’s historic visit is a good opportunity for Israel to understand where it now stands and what it must do to maintain and expand its current success into the future. We must never again be seduced into believing that our nation’s fate will be determined by eternal factors. Whether Israel continues to prosper in security in the company of friendly trading partners and strategic allies is largely in our hands.

If we continue the hard work of growing our economy and defeating rather than appeasing our enemies while basing our diplomacy on what we have to offer the nations of the world we will ensure our prosperity and build a peaceful future for ourselves and all of our neighbors.

Originally Published in the Jerusalem Post.

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Who cares about Jewish unity?

There are four important aspects to the government’s decisions on Sunday relating to egalitarian prayer at the Western Wall and the conversion bill. The first is that by and large, the headlines of the stories distort rather than explain what the government decided.

The second is the nature of the American Jewish community’s response to the government’s moves.

The third important aspect of the story is what the government’s decisions tell us about how the government perceive Israel’s relations with the American Jewish community.

Finally, the aftershocks of the decisions tell us something important about the prospects for Jewish unity today.

To the first issue. From the headlines in the newspapers, it is easy to assume that the government just struck a blow at egalitarian prayer at the Western Wall plaza and changed for the worse the status of non-Orthodox conversions in Israel. But neither is the case.

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As far as the Western Wall is concerned, the government decision doesn’t harm the egalitarian prayers at the holy site. For the past several years, egalitarian prayer services have been taking place regularly at Robinson’s Arch along the southern wall of the Temple Mount Plaza, just outside the archeological park.

The area, easily accessible from the Dung Gate, is easier to reach by car and foot than the regular Western Wall complex.

In January 2016, after protracted negotiations with progressive American Jewish groups, the government agreed to connect the Robinson’s Arch complex to the Western Wall complex. The government also agreed that management responsibility for the egalitarian prayer area would be transferred from the ultra-Orthodox-controlled Western Wall Foundation, to a new body that would include representatives of Reform and Conservative Judaism as well.

On Sunday, the government reversed that decision.

People have every right to be angry about the government’s move. It just reneged on its agreement, and that isn’t right.

Substantively, though, the government didn’t change the status quo. It just chose not to change it.

While wrong, it doesn’t justify the vitriol being leveled at the government by American Jewish leaders threatening to rethink their support for Israel.

As for the conversion law, the government’s decision on Sunday should make the members of the American Jewish community angry, but not for the reasons they claim. The draft conversion law the government just approved doesn’t change the status of converts who were converted by non-Orthodox religious courts outside of Israel.

Twenty years ago, the Neeman Commission decided, with the agreement of the Reform and Conservative movements, that people who converted in Reform or Conservative conversions outside of Israel would receive citizenship if they chose to make aliya under the Law of Return. They would not, however, be registered as Jews for the purpose of marriage, divorce or burial by the state rabbinate.

This would remain the case under the proposed law.

The people who are harmed by the conversion law are the more than half a million Israeli citizens from the former Soviet Union who made aliya under the Law of Return because they have Jewish lineage, but are not halachicly Jewish because their mothers are not halachically Jewish.

As Rabbi Shlomo Riskin, the chief rabbi of Efrat and noted conversion expert, explains, “According to great halachic authorities like the former chief rabbi of Israel Rav Ben-Tzion Uziel, although [these Israeli citizens] are not formally Jewish and must undergo a formal conversion, ‘it is incumbent upon the Religious Court to convert them because they have Jewish seed (zera Yisrael).’” Riskin adds, “Of course, we must always encourage observance of the commandments, but the bottom line must be to love and embrace them; they are living in Israel and their children will be going to the IDF.”

Uziel’s ruling informs the conversion policies of religious-Zionist rabbis and conversion courts, but it is rejected by the ultra-Orthodox religious authorities who today exercise absolute control over state conversions.

When the Neeman Commission reached its accord with the Conservative, Reform and Orthodox Jewish authorities in 1997, the Orthodox authorities included both ultra-Orthodox and religious-Zionist, or Modern Orthodox, rabbinic authorities.

As a result, the assumption of the commission members was that the state conversions would be conducted in an atmosphere that reflected a plurality of views represented in the Orthodox Jewish world, including the view of Rav Uziel, which informs the judgment of religious-Zionist rabbinic authorities.

This assumption ceased to be correct however in 2004.

That year, then-prime minister Ariel Sharon’s coalition began unraveling. Sharon’s decision to adopt the policy of the Left and unilaterally withdraw from Gaza while destroying the Israeli communities in Gaza and northern Samaria and forcibly expelling their 10,000 residents tore his party and government apart. Sharon fired the ministers from the National Religious Party and the National Union.

To survive in office, Sharon had to retain the support of the ultra-Orthodox parties. To this end, he acceded to their demand to kick religious-Zionist rabbis out of the state rabbinate and replace them with ultra-Orthodox rabbis. Sharon’s move gave the ultra-Orthodox total control over all state conversions.

Since then, the ultra-Orthodox rabbis have used their absolute to cancel the conversions performed by the most senior rabbis in the religious-Zionist community. Some of the converts affected have been Jews for decades and raised Jewish children.

Their Judaism and that of their children was retroactively denied by the rabbinate.

The ultra-Orthodox rabbinic courts subject half a million Israeli citizens who made aliya under the Law of Return to humiliating and drawn-out conversion processes even though many of them have lived their entire lives as Jews in Israel.

Rather than be given consideration as Rav Uziel and the national-religious religious authorities prescribe, they are treated as though they never had any relationship with the Jewish people of which they have always considered themselves members.

Due to the progressive American Jewish groups’ enthusiastic support for the withdrawal from Gaza and the destruction of the Israeli communities in Gaza and northern Samaria, they did not object to Sharon’s move.

And now, by mischaracterizing the government- backed conversion bill as a slap in the face to Reform and Conservative converts, they miss the real reason they should be fighting the legislation.

They should be fighting the bill because a large majority of the members of their communities are intermarrying. The children of many of those marriages who want to make aliya will be subjected to the same humiliating conversion processes undertaken by the ultra-Orthodox state rabbinic courts as the half a million Israelis who are not registered as Jews with the Chief Rabbinate face.

The fact that this doesn’t seem to be a concern for them indicates two things. First, their anger over the proposed law is not substantive. The contents of the bill – from their perspective – do not change the status of their converts. They have been living at peace with that status, which they agreed to, for 20 years.

At the same time, the American Jewish leaders who threaten not to speak to or host Israeli politicians who support the bill, ignore the fact that the current law would doom the children of their intermarried community members to second-class status in Israel if they try to convert halachically in the framework of aliya, rather than ensuring that they are treated with the love and respect their deserve.

Along these lines, and in relation to the Israeli citizens from the former Soviet Union, Rabbi Riskin notes, “The entire fabric of Israeli society would be torn asunder if a division were made between Israelis and halachic Jews. The religious courts must do their utmost to expose them to basic Shabbat, festivals and kashrut observance, but the most important goal must be to bring them into the Covenant with the Jewish people. After all they have gone through because of their ‘Jewishness’ under the Communist regime, it behooves us to incorporate them within our Jewish collective as part of the miracle of the ingathering of the exiles.”

So both in the case of the government’s decision regarding the Western Wall and in relation to its decision regarding the draft conversion law, American Jewish leaders are reacting with fury unhinged from the substance of the decisions themselves.

They cry foul to perceived, but largely imaginary, slights while ignoring the real problem with the conversions bill.

This then brings us to the government, and what apparently motivated it to take action that so provoked the American Jewish leadership.

In an interview with The Jerusalem Post, Rabbi Julie Schonfeld, vice president of the Conservative Rabbinic Assembly, accused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of preferring momentary political advantage to the interests of the Jewish people. In her words, “The prime minister will do what he sees as beneficial for the next five minutes of his political life… There’s no possible way that the prime minister and his officials can argue they’re acting in the best interests of the State of Israel. They are betraying the citizens of the State of Israel in order to keep themselves in power for the next five minutes.”

While nasty, her criticism is not without foundation.

But what was Netanyahu’s alternative? If the American Jewish community flies off the handle and declares war against the government, threatening to blackball the elected leaders of the Jewish state when they adopt measures that while impolite have little substantive effect on their positions, then why should Israel take their views into account? If everything that the government does is terrible, then dialogue is reduced to recrimination. Sitting with progressive Jewish leaders from America means being subjected to a lecture about how terrible Israel is by people who do not live here and are not interested in having a serious discussion about what is actually on the table.

The fact that they are not interested in having that sort of discussion, and that they have no interest in making Israel their home, is demonstrated by their indifference to the real implications of the draft conversion law. Leaders truly invested in the future of both their communities and of their communities’ ties with Israel would be appalled by the retention of monopoly control over conversions by rabbinic authorities who refuse to recognize the difference between children of intermarriage and non-Jews with no relation to Judaism and the Jewish people.

They would insist that religious-Zionist rabbis be reinstated in the state rabbinate, and work avidly to ensure that conversions once approved cannot be overturned.

The real problem here is that while everyone involved speaks of the need for Jewish unity, no one involved in the conversation seems to be motivated to work toward that goal.

Jewish unity isn’t achieved by mutual recrimination.

And it isn’t achieved by one-upmanship. It is achieved through compromise based on mutual respect and love for fellow Jews. Absent that, nothing good will come from negotiations or laws or agreements. Absent that, nothing good will come at all.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

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The PLO’s IDF Lobbyists

Not only did Abbas reject their demand, he reportedly accused the presidential envoys of working as Israeli agents.

Should the United States pay Palestinian terrorists? For the overwhelming majority of Americans and Israelis this is a rhetorical question.

The position of the American people was made clear – yet again – last week when US President Donald Trump’s senior envoys Jared Kushner and Jason Greenblatt met with Palestinian Authority chairman and PLO chief Mahmoud Abbas and repeated Trump’s demand that the PA cut off the payments.

Not only did Abbas reject their demand, he reportedly accused the presidential envoys of working as Israeli agents.

Abbas’s treatment of Kushner and Greenblatt was in line with his refusal to even meet with US Ambassador David Friedman, reportedly because he doesn’t like Friedman’s views.

The most amazing aspect of Abbas’s contemptuous treatment of the Trump administration is that he abuses Trump and his senior advisers while demanding that Trump continue funding him in excess of half a billion dollars a year, and do so in contravention of the will of the Republican-controlled Congress.

Abbas’s meeting last week took place as the Taylor Force Act makes its way through Congress.

Named for Taylor Force, the West Point graduate and US army veteran who was murdered in March 2016 in Tel Aviv by a Palestinian terrorist, the Taylor Force Act will end US funding of the PA until it ends its payments to terrorists and their families – including the family of Force’s murderer Bashar Masalha.

The Taylor Force Act enjoys bipartisan majority support in both the House and the Senate. It is also supported by the Israeli government.

Given the stakes, what could possibly have possessed Abbas to believe he can get away with mistreating Trump and his envoys? Who does he think will save him from Congress and the White House? Enter Commanders for Israel’s Security (CIS), stage left.

CIS is a consortium of 260 left-wing retired security brass. It formed just before the 2015 elections. CIS refuses to reveal its funding sources. Several of its most visible members worked with the Obama administration through the George Soros-funded Center for a New American Security.

Since its inception, CIS has effectively served as a PLO lobby. It supports Israeli land giveaways and insists that Israel can do without a defensible eastern border.

Last Wednesday CIS released a common-sense defying statement opposing the Taylor Force Act.

The generals mind-numbingly insisted the US must continue paying the terrorism-financing PA because Israel needs the help of the terrorism-incentivizing PA to fight the terrorists the PA incentivizes. If the US cuts off funding to the PA because it incentivizes terrorism, then the PA will refuse to cooperate with Israel in fighting the terrorism it incentivizes.

If you fail to follow this logic, well, you don’t have what it takes to be an Israeli general.

Moreover, if you fail to follow this logic, and you defy the position of Israel’s retired generals, then you may well endanger Israel.

After all, they know what’s best even better than the Israeli government because they are retired Israeli generals.

The CIS group would be bad enough for Israel on its own. But unfortunately, the radical politics of its members – and their anonymous funders – are all too resonant inside of the IDF itself.

And just as CIS members use the ranks they received in the past to undermine the powers of the government today, so the current crop of serving generals use their positions to advance policies that are contrary to the expressed position of the government.

This is nowhere more evident than in the behavior of the Civil Administration in Judea and Samaria.

Until Israel formed the PLO-controlled PA in 1994, the Civil Administration was responsible for governing Judea and Samaria as the governing arm of the military government that Israel set up in the area after the Six Day War.

In 1996, Israel transferred all Palestinian population centers in Judea and Samaria to the PA. Since then, the Civil Administration has been responsible only for Area C where all Israeli communities are located and where between 100,000 and 200,000 Palestinians also live.

The question of what the ultimate disposition of Area C will be is the top issue on the national agenda today. The majority of government ministers and the majority of the public support applying Israeli law to all or parts of the area.

Yet while the government debates the issue and formulates policies to advance whatever policies it adopts on this issue, the Civil Administration has for the past several years been acting independently to undermine and constrain the government’s ability to make strategic decisions relating to Area C.

Among other things, the Civil Administration has been independently initiating Palestinian settlement projects in Area C that undermine Israel’s ability to govern the areas. By the same token, the Civil Administration has used its powers to scupper, delay and prevent Israeli construction projects in the area.

The story of the Civil Administration’s rogue policy making was catapulted to the headlines last week when Channel 2 reported that it was advancing a plan to massively expand the Palestinian city of Kalkilya into Area C. Among other things, the plan endangers Israeli communities whose territory abuts the expanded boundaries of Kalkilya advanced by the plan.

Channel 2 reported that the Netanyahu government’s security cabinet had given the Civil Administration a green light to begin construction.

The story caused a political outcry not only from Likud voters but from the security cabinet members themselves. Led by Minister Ze’ev Elkin, the Likud ministers insisted that they had been misled by the Civil Administration which deliberately hid the nature of the plan from them when it brought it to the cabinet for approval.

The ministers’ protests ring true because the Civil Administration has a history of acting in this manner.

In 2008 for instance, the Civil Administration initiated a building scheme in the Jordan Valley that would have taken land from Moshav Tomer to build Palestinian settlements.

The head of the local council complained to the government only to discover that the ministers had no idea what he was talking about. The Civil Administration had undertaken the plan, which undermined Israel’s control over a strategically vital area, without government knowledge or approval.

In contrast, and again against the wishes of the government, the Civil Administration has repeatedly acted to block Israeli construction in Area C. For instance, the IDF insists that no land deal between Israel and Palestinians is final until the IDF approves it. The policy harms Israeli construction in two ways.

First, it gives the Civil Administration the power – which it uses – to delay Israeli construction indefinitely.

Second, by forcing parties to land deals to come forward publicly, the Civil Administration intimidates Palestinian land sellers. They know that if their land deals with Israelis become public they will face execution by the PA.

Returning to Abbas for a moment, the PLO chief may have overplayed his hand by insulting Trump and his senior envoys. All the politicized retired and currently serving Israeli generals together cannot convince Trump to send US tax dollars to a terrorism supporting leader who trashes him and his senior officials. Consequently, there is every reason to believe that the Taylor Force Act will soon be signed into law and the US will end its financing of Palestinian terrorism.

But even if Washington cuts off funding to the PA, Israel is still left to deal with its radicalized generals who exploit their rank to undermine the government.

The best way to end this situation is for the government to shut down the Civil Administration and get the IDF out of the governing business in Judea and Samaria. So long as the government continues to empower unaccountable generals to administer civilian areas instead of its accountable, civilian bureaucracy, we will continue to be confronted with the surreal spectacle of Israeli generals lobbying for Palestinian terrorists.

If the government applies Israeli law to Area C, it can still negotiate with the PLO, just as it has negotiated about the Golan Heights and Jerusalem. But in the meantime, it will remove one of the most corrupting and corrosive forces preying on our generals and our democracy for the benefit of the Israeli and Palestinian residents of Area C alike and indeed for Israel as a whole.

Originally Publised in Jerusalem Post.