Tag Archives: Hamas

A prayer for 5772

Upon his return to Ramallah from New York, Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas was greeted by a crowd of several thousand well-wishers. They applauded him for his speech at the UN. There, Abbas erased Jewish history from the Land of Israel, denied Israel’s right to exist and pledged his commitment to establish a racist Palestinian state ethnically cleansed of all Jews.
Many of Abbas’s supporters in Ramallah held posters of US President Barack Obama. On them Obama was portrayed as a monkey. The caption read, "The First Jewish President of the United States."
The fact that the Palestinians from Fatah and Hamas alike are Jew-hating racists should surprise no one who has been paying a modicum of attention to the Palestinian media and general culture. Since the PA was established in 1994 in the framework of the peace process between Israel and the PLO, it has used the media organs, schools and mosques it controls to spew out a constant flow of anti-Semitic propaganda. Much of the Jew-hating bile is indistinguishable from anti-Jewish propaganda published by the Nazis.
As for their anti-black bigotry, it is enough to recall the frequency with which Condoleezza Rice was depicted as a monkey and a devil in the Palestinian and pan-Arab media during George W. Bush’s presidency to realize that the racist depiction of Obama was not a fluke. Moreover, and more disturbingly, it is worth recalling that like its fellow Arab League members, the PA has strongly supported Sudan’s genocide of black Africans in Darfur.
To a degree, the willingness of African-Americans to turn a blind eye to Arab anti-black prejudice is understandable. Since the mid-1960s, oil rich Arab kingdoms led by Saudi Arabia have spent hundreds of millions of petrodollars in outreach to African-Americans. This outreach includes but is not limited to massive proselytization efforts among inner city blacks. The combination of a strong and growing African-American Muslim population and a general sense of amity towards Muslims as a result of outreach efforts contribute to a willingness on the part of African- Americans to overlook Arab anti-black racism.
Unlike African-Americans, Jewish Americans have been targeted by no serious outreach campaigns by the likes of Saudi Arabia and the rest of the Arab world. To the contrary, as Mitchell Bard documented in his book The Arab Lobby: The Invisible Alliance That Undermines America’s Interests in the Middle East, these Arab nations have spared no effort in anti-Israel lobbying in the US. Among the Arab lobby’s goals is to undermine the legitimacy of American Jewish lobbying on behalf of Israel.
Furthermore, the anti-Jewish atmosphere in the Arab world is far more comprehensive and poisonous than its anti-black prejudice. A Pew global opinion poll from 2008 showed that hatred of Jews is effectively universal in the Arab world and overwhelming in non-Arab Muslim states. In Jordan, Egypt and Lebanon, between 95 and 97 percent of respondents expressed hatred of Jews. In Indonesia, Turkey and Pakistan between two-thirds and three-quarters of respondents expressed hatred of Jews.
Jew-hatred among Muslim minorities in the West is less overwhelming. But Muslim antagonism towards Jews vastly outstrips that of the general populations of their countries. According to a Pew survey from 2006, while 7% of British citizens express unfavorable views of Jews, 47% of British Muslims admit to such views. In France, 13% of the general population admits to harboring negative feelings towards Jews and 28% of French Muslims do. Likewise in Germany, 22% of the general population acknowledges anti-Semitic views and 44% of German Muslims do.
More dangerously, the quantity of anti-Semitic attacks carried out by Muslims in the West far outstrips their percentage in the general population. According to Pew data, in 2010 Muslims comprised just 4.6% of the population of the UK but carried out 39% of the anti-Semitic attacks. Moreover, according to the Times Online, in 2006, 37% of British Muslims claimed that British Jews are legitimate targets for attacks. Only 30% of British Muslims disagreed.
WITH THE overwhelming data showing that throughout the Arab world there is strong support for organizations and regimes which advocate the genocide of world Jewry, the American Jewish community could have been expected to devote the majority of its attention and resources to exposing and combating this existential threat. Just as the American Jewish community dedicated itself in the past to causes such as the liberation of Soviet Jewry and fighting neo-Nazi groups in the US and throughout the world, it could have been expected that from the Anti-Defamation League to the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, that major American Jewish groups would be using the financial and human resources at their disposal to defend against this violent, genocidal hatred.
But this has not occurred. Many leading American Jewish organizations continue to be far more involved in combating the currently relatively benign anti-Semitism of the Catholic Church and Evangelical Christians than confronting the escalating dangers of Muslim anti-Semitism.
According to a Gallup poll released last month, 80% of American Jews have favorable views of American Muslims. Seventy percent believe that they are not supportive of al-Qaida. These data indicate that American Jews are second only to American Muslims in their support for Muslim Americans. Indeed 6% more American Jews than American Muslims believe that American Muslims face prejudice due to their religion.
American Jewish championing of American Muslims is disconcerting when compared with American Jewish treatment of the philo-Semitic Evangelical Christians. Matthew Knee discussed this issue in depth in a recent article published at the Legal Insurrection website.
In a 2003 Pew survey, 42% of American Jews expressed antagonism towards Evangelical Christians. In a 2004 American National Election Study, Jews on average rated Evangelical Christians at 30 out of 100 on a "feeling thermometer," where 1 was cold and 100 was hot.
A 2005 American Jewish Committee survey found that Jews assessed that following Muslims, Evangelical Christians have the highest propensity for being anti-Semites. And yet, in the same 2004 American National Election Survey, Evangelical Christians rated Jews an average of 82 on the 1- 100 feelings scale. Evangelical Christians rated Catholics at 80.
Consistent survey data show that levels of anti- Semitism among Evangelical Christians is either the same as or slightly lower than the national average. According to a 2007 ADL survey, the US average is 15%.
There is a clear disparity between survey data on anti-Semitism among various American ethnic groups and American Jews’ assessment of the prevalence of anti-Semitism among the same groups. The AJC survey found that American Jews believed that 29% of Evangelicals are largely anti- Semitic. They assessed that only 7% of Hispanics and 19% of African-Americans are anti-Semites.
As it works out, their perceptions are completely incorrect. According to the 2007 ADL survey, foreign born Hispanics, and African-Americans, harbor significantly stronger anti-Semitic views than the national average. Twenty-nine percent of foreign born Hispanics harbor very anti-Semitic views. Thirty-two percent of African-Americans harbor deeply anti-Semitic views.
Like Jews, Hispanics, African-Americans and Muslims vote disproportionately for the Democratic Party. Evangelical Christians on the other hand, are reliably Republican. A 2009 survey on US anti- Semitism conducted by the Institute for Jewish and Community Research in San Francisco found that Democrats are more likely to be anti-Semitic than Republicans.
The Gallup survey from last month showing American Jews’ deep support for American Muslims is of particular interest because that support stands in stark contrast with survey data concerning American Jewish perception of Muslim American anti-Semitism.
THE 2005 AJC survey showed that American Jews believe that 58% of American Muslims are anti- Semitic. That is, American Jews are Muslim Americans’ strongest non-Muslim defenders at the same time they are convinced that most Muslim Americans are anti-Semites. 
What can explain this counterintuitive behavior? And how can we account for the apparent pattern of incorrect Jewish perceptions of anti-Semitism among Evangelical Christians on the one hand and fellow Democrats on the other hand?
As Knee argues, the disparity may very well be due to partisan loyalties. The Democratic Party has openly engaged in fear mongering and demonization of Evangelical Christians in order to maintain Jewish loyalty to the party. Knee quotes then-Democratic national chairman Howard Dean’s statement that "Jews should feel comfortable in being American Jews without being constrained from practicing their faith or be compelled to convert to another religion."
As for Muslims, Knee cites a press release from the National Jewish Democratic Council from March attacking Congressman Peter King’s hearings on the radicalization of American Muslims. In the press release, the council claimed that such hearings "can and will" harm religious tolerance in America. That is, the council implied that by investigating the radicalization of American Muslims – and its concomitant transformation of American Muslims into supporters of the genocidal Jew-hatred endemic among radical Muslims worldwide – Rep. King is endangering Jews.
If American Jews are most concerned with being able to maintain their loyalty to the Democratic Party, then it makes sense for them to wildly exaggerate Evangelical anti-Semitism. It is reasonable for them to underestimate African-American and Hispanic anti-Semitism, and ignore the higher rates of anti-Semitism among Democrats than among Republicans. Moreover, it makes sense for them to follow their party’s lead in failing to address the dangers of global Islamic anti- Semitism.
None of this makes sense, however, if American Jews are most concerned with defending Jews – in America and worldwide – from anti-Semitic sentiments and violence.
On Wednesday evening we begin our celebration of the New Year. Rosh Hashana marks a period of soul-searching among Jews. We are called upon at this time to account for our actions and our failures to act and to improve our faithfulness to our people, to our laws and to God.
It is possible that American Jews are simply unaware of the disparities between reality and their perceptions of reality. But it is the duty of all Jews to educate ourselves about the threats that reality poses to ourselves and our people.
At the UN last week, Abbas received accolades and applause from all quarters for his anti-Semitic assault on Jewish history and the Jewish state. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s remarks were applauded by Israel-supporters in the audience in the General Assembly.
As Israel is increasingly isolated and Jews worldwide are under attack, it is my prayer for the coming year that the American Jewish community will come to terms with a difficult reality and the choices it entails, and act with the majority of their fellow Americans to defend Israel and combat anti-Semitism in the US and throughout the world.
Originally published in the Jerusalem Post.

The war America fights

Ten years ago, in the shadow of the crater at Ground Zero, the smoldering Pentagon and a field of honor in Pennsylvania, America found itself at war.

Today, a decade on, America is still at war.

Ten years after the September 11, 2001, attacks, the time has come to assess the progress of America’s war. But to assess its progress, we must first understand the war.

What war has the US been fighting since September 11? 

President George W. Bush called the war the War on Terror. The War on Terror is a broad tactical campaign to prevent Islamic terrorists from targeting America.

The War on Terror has achieved some notable successes. These include Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan which denied al-Qaida free rein in Afghanistan by overthrowing the Taliban.

They also include the overthrow of Saddam Hussein and his fascist regime in Iraq, which played a role – albeit far less significant than the Taliban regime and others – in supporting Islamic terrorism against the US.

Moreover, the US has successfully prevented multiple attempts by Islamic terrorists to carry out additional mass terror attacks on US territory.

This achievement, however, is at least partially a function of luck. On two occasions – the Shoe Bomber in 2001 and the Underwear Bomber in 2009 – Islamic terrorists with bombs were able to board airplanes en route to the US and attempt to detonate those bombs in mid-air. The fact that their attacks were foiled by their fellow passengers is a tribute to the passengers, not to the success of the US war effort.

The US’s success in killing Osama bin Laden and other senior al-Qaida members is another clear achievement of this war.

But 10 years on, the fact that Islamic terrorism directed against the US remains a salient threat to US national security shows that the War on Terror is far from won.

And this makes sense. Despite its significant successes, the War on Terror suffers from three inherent problems that make it impossible for the US to win.

The first problem is that the US has unevenly applied its tactic of denying terrorists free rein in territory of their choosing. In his historic speech before the Joint Houses of Congress on September 20, 2001, Bush pledged, "We will pursue nations that provide aid or safe haven to terrorism. Every nation in every region now has a decision to make: Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists. From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime."

And yet, while the US applied this principle in Afghanistan and Iraq, it applied it only partially in Pakistan, and failed to apply it all in Iran, Syria, Lebanon and the Palestinian Authority. By essentially ending its application of the counterterror tactic of denying terrorists free rein of territory and punishing regimes that provide them shelter, the options left to the US in fighting its war on terror have been reduced to catch-as-catch-can killing and capturing of terrorists, and reactive actions such as arresting or detaining terrorists when they are caught on US soil.

On the positive side, these limited tactics can keep terrorists off balance if they are applied consistently and over the long term. Taken together, the tactics of targeted killing and financial strangulation comprise a strategy of long-term containment not unlike the US’s strategy in the Cold War. US containment then caused the Soviet Union to exhaust itself and collapse after 45 years of superpower competition.

UNFORTUNATELY, THE US’s containment strategy in its War on Terror is undermined by the second and third problems inherent to its policies.

The second problem is that since September 11, 2001, the US has steadfastly refused to admit the identity of the enemy it seeks to defeat.

US leaders have called that enemy al-Qaida, they have called it extremism or extremists, fringe elements of Islam and radicals. But of course the enemy is jihadist Islam which seeks global leadership and the destruction of Western civilization. Al-Qaida is simply an organization that fights on the enemy’s side. As long as the enemy is left unaddressed, organizations like al-Qaida will continue to proliferate.

It isn’t that US authorities do not acknowledge among themselves whom the enemy is. They do track Islamic leaders, and in general prosecute jihadists when they can build cases against them.

But their refusal to acknowledge the nature of the enemy has paralyzed their ability to confront and defeat threats as they arise. For instance, US Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan was not removed from service or investigated, despite his known support for jihad and his communication with leading jihadists. Rather, he was promoted and placed in a position where he was capable of massacring 12 soldiers and one civilian at Fort Hood, Texas.

Had the US not been in denial about the identity of its enemy, Hasan’s victims would likely be alive today.

So too, the US’s refusal to identify its enemy has made it impossible for US officials to understand and contend with the mounting threat from Turkey. Because the US refuses to recognize radical Islam as its enemy, it fails to connect Turkey’s erratic and increasingly hostile behavior to the fact that the country is ruled by an Islamist government.

In the face of the rising political instability and uncertainty in the Arab world, the US’s refusal to reckon with the fact that radical Islam is the enemy fighting it bodes ill for the future. Quite simply, America is willfully blinding itself to emerging dangers. These dangers are particularly acute in Egypt where the US has completely failed to recognize the threat the Muslim Brotherhood constitutes to its core regional interests and its national security.

The last problem intrinsic to the US’s War on Terror is the persistent and powerful strain of appeasement that guides so much of US policy towards the Muslim world.

This appeasement is multifaceted and pervades nearly every aspect of the US’s relations with the Islamic world.

The urge to appeasement caused the US to divorce the Islamic jihad against the US from the Islamic jihad against Israel from the outset.

Appeasement has been the chief motivating factor informing the US’s intense support for Palestinian statehood and its refusal to reassess this policy in the face of Palestinian terrorism, jihadism and close ties with Iran.

Appeasement provoked the US to embrace radical Islamic religious leaders and terror operatives such as Sami Arian and Abdurahman Alamoudi as credible leaders in the US Muslim community. It stood behind the decisions of both the Bush and Obama administrations to embrace US affiliates of the Muslim Brotherhood as legitimate leaders of the American Muslim community and to court the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood to the detriment of US ally former president Hosni Mubarak.

Appeasement stood behind the US’s bid to try to entice Iran to end its nuclear weapons programs with grand bargains.

It motivated US’s decision not to confront Syria on its known support for al-Qaida and Hezbollah as well as Palestinian terror groups; its proliferation of weapons of mass destruction; or its involvement in facilitating the insurgency in Iraq.

It is what has compelled the US not to seek the dismantlement of Hezbollah in Lebanon and indeed to fund and arm the Hezbollah-controlled government and army of Lebanon.

The urge to appease has motivated the US’s decision to take no action to stem the advance of Iran and its terror allies and proxies in al-Qaida and Hezbollah in Latin America.

WHEN A nation engages in appeasement at the same time it wages war, its appeasement efforts always undermine its war efforts. This is particularly the case, however, in long-term wars of containment such as the one the US is fighting against Islamic terrorism.

The logic guiding a containment strategy is that an enemy force will eventually collapse if kept off balance for long enough. Given that militarily the forces of Islamic jihad are weaker than the US, it is reasonable to assume that if applied consistently for long enough, a policy of containment can indeed cause the forces of global jihad to collapse.

The chronic instability of the Iranian regime and the current unrest in Syria demonstrate the structural weakness of these regimes. The dependence of terror groups such as Hezbollah, al-Qaida and Hamas on the support of governments make clear that containment could potentially defeat them as well by drying out their support structure at its roots.

The problem is that the US’s moves to appease its enemies empower them to keep fighting.

Iran, Hamas and Hezbollah are far stronger militarily today than they were on September 11, 2001. Hamas controls Gaza and would likely win any Palestinian elections. 

Hezbollah controls Lebanon.

Iran is on the verge of nuclear weapons and is poised to become the predominant power in Iraq. Its Egyptian nemesis Hosni Mubarak is gone.

Ten years ago Iran and its terror allies and proxies could have only dreamed of having the presence on the Western Hemisphere they enjoy today.

In Europe the threat of domestic terrorism is more salient than ever because the jihadist forces and leaders on the continent have been appeased rather than combated by both the governments of Europe and the US.

The US was able to win the Cold War through its policy of containment because throughout the long conflict there was strong majority support in the US for continuing to pursue the war effort. Despite the widespread nature of Soviet efforts at political subversion, US public opinion remained firmly anti-Soviet until the Berlin Wall was finally destroyed.

The US government’s moves to appease its Islamic enemies undermine the domestic consensus supporting the War on Terror. And without such domestic solidarity around the necessity of combating jihadist terrorists, there is little chance that the US will be able to continue to enact its containment strategy for long enough to facilitate victory.

Even as it has continued to prosecute the War on Terror, since it came to power in January 2009 the Obama administration has worked intensively to confuse the American people about its nature, necessity and goals. President Barack Obama dropped the name "War on Terror" for the nebulous "overseas contingency operation." He has rejected the term "terrorism," and expunged the term "jihad" from the official lexicon. In so doing, he made it impermissible for US government officials to hold coherent discussions about the war they are charged with waging. Meanwhile, the public has been invited to question whether the US has the right to fight at all.

Today the events of September 11 are still vivid enough in the American memory for America to continue the fight despite the administration’s efforts to discredit the war in the national discourse and imagination. But how long will that memory be strong enough to serve as the primary legitimating force behind a war that even in its limited form is far from won?

 

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post. 

 

American Jews and the Liberal Art of Demonization

US election season is clearly upon us as US President Barack Obama has moved into full campaign mode. Part and parcel of that mode is a new bid to woo Jewish voters and donors upset by Obama’s hostility to Israel back in the Democratic Party’s fold.

To undertake this task, the White House turned to its reliable defender, columnist Jeffrey Goldberg. Since 2008, when then-candidate Obama was first challenged on his anti-Israel friends, pastors and positions, Goldberg has willingly used his pen to defend Obama to the American Jewish community.

Trying to portray Obama as pro-Israel is not a simple task. From the outset of his tenure in office, Obama has distinguished himself as the most anti-Israel president ever.

Obama is the first president ever to denounce Jewish property rights in Jerusalem. He is the first president to require Israel to deny Jews property rights in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria as a precondition for peace talks with the Palestinians.

He is the first US president to adopt the position that Israel must surrender its right to defensible borders in the framework of a peace treaty. He has even made Israeli acceptance of this position a precondition for negotiations.

He is the first US president to accept Hamas as a legitimate actor in Palestinian politics. Obama’s willingness to do so was exposed by his refusal to end US financial assistance to the PA in the aftermath of last spring’s unity agreement between Fatah and Hamas.

He is the first US president to make US support for Israel at the UN conditional on Israeli concessions to the Palestinians.

Even today, Obama has refused to state outright whether or not he will veto a Security Council resolution later this month endorsing Palestinian statehood outside the context of a peace treaty with Israel. As he leaves Israel twisting in the wind, he has sent his chief Middle East Peace Processors Dennis Ross and David Hale to Israel to threaten Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu into caving to US-Palestinian demands and beg PA leader Mahmoud Abbas to accept an Israeli surrender and cancel his plans to have the UN General Assembly upgrade the PLO’s mission to the UN.

GIVEN OBAMA’S record – to which can be added his fervent support for Turkish Prime Minister and virulent anti-Semite Recep Tayyip Erdogan, his courtship of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, and his massive weapons sales to Saudi Arabia and Egypt – it is obvious that any attempt to argue that Obama is pro-Israel cannot be based on substance, or even on tone. And so Goldberg’s article, like several that preceded it, is an attempt to distort Obama’s record and deflect responsibility for that record onto Netanyahu. Netanyahu, in turn, is demonized as ungrateful and uncooperative.

Goldberg’s narrative began by recalling Netanyahu’s extraordinary statement during his photo opportunity with Obama at the Oval Office during his visit to Washington in May. At the time, Netanyahu gave an impassioned defense of Israel’s right to secure borders and explained why the 1949 armistice lines are indefensible.

Goldberg centered on then-secretary of defense Robert Gates’s angry statement to his colleagues in the wake of Netanyahu’s visit. Gates reportedly accused Israel of being ungrateful for all the things the US did for it.

After presenting Gates as an objective critic whose views were justified and shared by one and all, Goldberg went on to claim that the administration’s justified antipathy for Netanyahu was liable to harm Israel. That is, he claimed that it would be Netanyahu’s fault if Obama abandoned traditional US support for Israel.

Goldberg’s article is stunning on several levels. First, his distortion of events is breathtaking. Specifically he failed to note that Netanyahu’s statement at the Oval Office was precipitated by Obama’s decision to blindside Netanyahu with his announcement that the US supported an Israeli withdrawal to the indefensible 1949 armistice lines. Obama made the statement in a speech given while Netanyahu was en route to Washington.

Then there is his portrayal of Gates as an objective observer. Goldberg failed to mention that Gates’s record has been consistently anti-Israel. In his Senate approval hearings during the Bush administration, Gates became the first senior US official to state publicly that Israel had a nuclear arsenal.

Gates was a member of the 2006 Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group that recommended the US pressure Israel to surrender Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and the Golan Heights in order to appease the Arab world and pave the way for a US withdrawal from Iraq.

Gates did everything he could at the Pentagon to deny Israel the ability to attack Iran’s nuclear installations. He was also a fervent advocate of massive arms sales to Saudi Arabia that upset the military balance in the Middle East.

The Obama administration bases its claims that it is pro-Israel on the fact that it has continued and expanded some of the joint US-Israel missile defense projects that were initiated by the Bush administration. Goldberg sympathetically recorded the argument.

But the truth is less sanguine. While jointly developing defensive systems, the administration has placed unprecedented restrictions on the export of offensive military platforms and technologies to Israel. Under Gates, Pentagon constraints on Israeli technology additions to the F-35 Joint Strike Fighters nearly forced Israel to cancel its plans to purchase the aircraft.

IT IS an open question whether American Jews will be willing to buy the bill of goods the administration is trying to sell them through their media proxies in next year’s presidential elections. But if next week’s special elections for New York’s Ninth Congressional District are any indication, the answer is apparently that an unprecedented number of American Jews are unwilling to ignore reality and support the most anti-Israel president ever.

The New York race is attracting great attention because it is serving as a referendum on Obama’s policies toward Israel. The district, representing portions of Queens and Brooklyn, is heavily Jewish and has been reliably Democratic. And yet, a week before the elections, Republican candidate Bob Turner is tied in the polls with Democratic candidate David Weprin, and the main issue in the race is Obama’s policies on Israel.

To sidestep criticism of the president’s record, Weprin is seeking to distance himself from Obama. He refuses to say if he will support Obama’s reelection bid. And he is as critical of Obama’s record on Israel as his Republican opponent is.

But Turner’s argument – that as a Democrat, Weprin will be forced to support his party and so support Obama – is gaining traction with voters. According to a McLaughlin poll of the district released on September 1, Turner’s bid is gaining steam, and Weprin’s is running out of steam, with Turner’s favorability rates on the rise and Weprin’s declining.

Deflecting substantive criticism by seeking to demonize one’s opponents is a standard leftist play. Obama and his political supporters engage in it routinely in their demonization of their political opponents as "terrorists" and "extremists." And now, with the American Jewish vote in play for the first time since 1936, they are doing it to Netanyahu.

It is encouraging to see that at least in New York’s Ninth Congressional District, American Jews are refusing to be taken in.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post. 

 

Ankara’s chosen scapegoat

Monday morning Turkey took its anti-Israel campaign to a new level. Beyond downgrading diplomatic relations with Israel; beyond suspending military agreements; beyond threatening naval war; beyond threatening to foment an irredentist insurrection of Israeli Arabs; the Turks decided to terrorize Israeli tourists landing in Istanbul airport.
Forty Israeli passengers, mainly businessmen who had landed in Istanbul on a Turkish Airlines flight from Tel Aviv, were separated from the rest of the flight passengers. Their passports were confiscated.
They were placed in interrogation rooms and stripped down to their underwear. Their carry-on bags were checked. And then they were lined up against a wall, forbidden to sit down or use the washroom.
Passengers who contacted the Foreign Ministry said they felt frightened and intimidated.
The ordeal went on for 90 minutes, until Turkish authorities returned their Israeli passports and permitted them to pick up their suitcases and exit the airport.
What were the Turks trying to accomplish by terrifying the Israeli tourists? They didn’t need to threaten trade ties. Their Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu already took care of that over the weekend.
The victimized Israelis said the Turkish airport authorities wouldn’t even answer their questions. Any time we asked them a question, the tourists said, the Turks ignored us.
It was as if they weren’t even there.
And that’s the thing of it. The Turks didn’t harass the Israeli tourists in order to send a message to Israel. They have nothing more to say to us. We are non-entities to them. We’re only good for attacking.
No, Israel wasn’t the target audience the Turks were playing to on Monday. Their target audience was the Islamic world generally and the Arab world specifically. Turkey’s influence in these arenas skyrocketed in January 2009 after Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan accused President Shimon Peres and Israel of mass murder as the leaders shared a stage at the Davos Conference.
Similarly Erdogan’s domestic and pan-Islamic support levels increased steeply in the aftermath of the Turkish-supported pro-Hamas flotilla to Gaza in 2010. After nine Turkish government-supported IHH terrorists were killed aboard the Mavi Marmara when they tried to murder IDF naval commandos who had lawfully boarded the ship, the Arabs hailed Erdogan as a hero for bravely attacking Israel.
Given how well scapegoating Israel has served him, Erdogan clearly believes it is a no-risk strategy for raising his star from Cairo to Algiers.
Leftist Israeli commentators refuse to accept what is happening. Writing in Haaretz on Sunday, Shlomo Avineri recommended that Israel compensate the nine IHH members whom IDF commandos killed in self-defense on the Mavi Marmara. Avineri argued that by refusing to do so, Israel was playing into the hands of hardliners. True, "it won’t be easy, but we need to grit our teeth and do the right thing," he wrote.
Others have argued that Israel may be able to rebuild its strategic relations with Turkey by selling Ankara more drones with which to kill Iraqi and Turkish Kurds. The Turkish military claimed it killed 100 Kurdish fighters in its attacks last month in Iraq and along the Turkish-Iraqi border. Israeli UAVs reportedly played a key role in the bombing. But Turkey needs more. If we sell them more, the argument goes, maybe they will see how useful we are and stop attacking us.
Aside from being morally reprehensible, these arguments fail to recognize the basic reality that Turkey has no interest whatsoever in rebuilding its ties with Israel. The once-important strategic alliance is over and gone, and Israel cannot do anything about it. All Turkey sees us as today is a scapegoat.
It has been argued by commentators on the Right that Turkey’s abandonment of Israel is part and parcel of its abandonment of the US. But this is a mischaracterization of Turkey’s policy toward the US.
Since 2003, Turkey has undertaken a series of actions that have harmed US strategic interests. The first, of course, was Erdogan’s decision on the eve of the Iraq War to deny the US military the right to invade northern Iraq from Turkey.
The latest action was arguably Turkey’s joint air exercises with the Chinese Air Force last September.
Chinese jets en route to Turkey refueled in Iran. The exercise was a clear signal that NATO member Turkey intends to exploit its alliance with the US to build ties with the US’s chief geostrategic competitor.
Yet at the same time that Turkey has harmed the US, it has also taken steps to assist it. Most recently, last week, Erdogan belatedly agreed to station the high-powered US X-Band radar on its territory as part of a missile defense system to protect NATO allies against the threat of Iranian long-range missiles.
Turkey’s mixed policies toward the US reveal that unlike its position on Israel, Turkey believes that it has an interest in maintaining its alliance with the US. Its hostile behavior is more a function of perceived US weakness than anything else. That is, Turkey is willing to risk angering the US by undercutting it because it does not fear US retribution.
Turkey’s aggressive behavior might end if the US made Turkey pay a price for it.
To its credit, the Netanyahu government has not accepted the advice of the Left and has refused to apologize to Turkey or pay compensation to the families of those killed aboard the Marmara. Moreover, the government has wisely used Turkey’s behavior as a means of building strong bilateral ties with other victims of Turkish aggression. Over the past two years, Israel has strongly upgraded is strategic ties with Greece, Cyprus, Bulgaria and Romania. Israel should add to these accomplishments by strengthening its ties to Armenia and to the Kurds of Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran.
With newspapers running groundless stories about prospects for reconstituting relations with Turkey, we need to recognize that what we are experiencing now is the beginning, not the end, of Turkey’s slide into the enemy camp. Erdogan is openly taking steps to transform Turkey into an Islamic state along the lines of Iran. And the further he goes down his chosen path, the more harshly and aggressively he will lash out at Israel.
Given that scapegoating Israel is not a momentary lapse of reason on Turkey’s part but a central aspect of a long-term regional strategy, it is clear that Israel needs to meet Turkish aggression with more than momentary courage in the face of intimidation and threats. Israel needs to build on its already successful policy of forming a ring of alliances around Turkey and develop a long-term military and diplomatic strategy for containing and weakening it.
Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

The perils of a remilitarized Sinai

Will the Egyptian military be permitted to remilitarize the Sinai? Since Palestinian and Egyptian terrorists crossed into Israel from Sinai on August 18 and murdered eight Israelis this has been a central issue under discussion at senior echelons of the government and the IDF.

Under the terms of the Egypt-Israel peace treaty, Egypt is prohibited from deploying military forces in the Sinai. Israel must approve any Egyptian military mobilization in the area. Today, Egypt is asking to permanently deploy its forces in the Sinai. Such a move requires an amendment to the treaty.

Supported by the Obama administration, the Egyptians say they need to deploy forces in the Sinai in order to rein in and defeat the jihadist forces now running rampant throughout the peninsula. Aside from attacking Israel, these jihadists have openly challenged Egyptian governmental control over the territory.

So far the Israeli government has given conflicting responses to the Egyptian request. Defense Minister Ehud Barak told The Economist last week that he supports the deployment of Egyptian forces. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said Sunday that he would consider such deployment but that Israel should not rush into amending the peace treaty with Egypt.

Saturday Barak tempered his earlier statement, claiming that no decision had been made about Egyptian deployment in the Sinai.

The government’s confused statements about Egyptian troop deployments indicate that at a minimum, the government is unsure of the best course of action. This uncertainty owes in large part to confusion about Egypt’s intentions.

Egypt’s military leaders do have an interest in preventing jihadist attacks on Egyptian installations and other interests in the Sinai. But does that interest translate into an interest in defending Israeli installations and interests? If the interests overlap, then deploying Egyptian forces may be a reasonable option. If Egypt’s military leaders view these interests as mutually exclusive, then Israel has no interest in such a deployment.

ISRAEL’S CONFUSION over Egypt’s strategic direction and interests echoes its only recently abated confusion over Turkey’s strategic direction in the aftermath of the Islamist AKP Party’s rise to power in 2002. Following the US’s lead, despite Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s hostile rhetoric regarding Israel, Israel continued to believe that he and his government were interested in maintaining Turkey’s strategic alliance with Israel. That belief began unraveling with Erdogan’s embrace of Hamas in January 2006 and his willingness to turn a blind eye to Iranian use of Turkish territory to transfer arms to Hezbollah during the war in July and August 2006.

Still, due to US support for Erdogan, Israel continued to sell Turkey arms until last year. Israel only recognized that Turkey had transformed itself from a strategic ally into a strategic enemy after Erdogan sponsored the terror flotilla to Gaza in May 2010.

As was the case with Turkey under Erdogan, Israel’s confusion over Egypt’s intentions has nothing to do with the military rulers’ behavior. Like Erdogan, the Egyptian junta isn’t sending Israel mixed signals.

Former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak was never a strategic ally to Israel the way that Turkey was before Erdogan. However, Mubarak believed that maintaining a quiet border with Israel, combating the Muslim Brotherhood and keeping Hamas at arm’s length advanced his interests. Mubarak’s successors in the junta do not perceive their interests in the same way.

To the contrary, since they overthrew Mubarak in February, the generals ruling Egypt have made clear that their interest in cultivating ties with Israel’s enemies – from Iran to the Muslim Brotherhood – far outweighs their interest in maintaining a cooperative relationship with Israel.

From permitting Iranian naval ships to traverse the Suez Canal for the first time in 30 years to opening the border with Hamas-ruled Gaza to its openly hostile and conspiratorial reaction to the August 18 terrorist attack on Israel from the Sinai, there can be little doubt about the trajectory of Egypt’s relations with Israel.

BUT JUST as was the case with Turkey – and again, largely because of American pressure – Israel’s leaders are wary of accepting that the strategic landscape of our relationship with Egypt has changed radically and that the rules that applied under Mubarak no longer apply.

After Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip in August 2005, terrorists in Gaza and Sinai took down the border. Gaza was immediately flooded with sophisticated armaments. Then-prime minister Ariel Sharon made a deal with Mubarak to deploy Egyptian forces to the Sinai to rebuild the border and man the crossing point at Rafah. While there were problems with the agreement, given the fact that Mubarak shared Israel’s interests, the move was not unjustified.

Today this is not the case. The junta wants to permanently deploy forces to the Sinai and consequently is pushing to amend the treaty. The generals’ request comes against the backdrop of populist calls from across Egypt’s political spectrum demanding the cancellation of the peace treaty.

If Israel agrees to renegotiate the treaty, it will lower the political cost of a subsequent Egyptian abrogation of the agreement. This is the case because Israel itself will be on record acknowledging that the treaty does not meet its current needs.

Beyond that, there is the nature of the Egyptian military itself, which was exposed during and in the aftermath of the August 18 attack. At a minimum, the Egyptian and Palestinian terrorists who attacked Israel that day did so with no interference from Egyptian forces deployed along the border.

The fact that they shot into Israel from Egyptian military positions indicates that the Egyptian forces on the ground did not simply turn a blind eye to what was happening. Rather, it is reasonable to assume that they lent a helping hand to the terror operatives.

Furthermore, the hostile response of the Egyptian military to Israel’s defensive operations to end the terror attack indicates that at a minimum, the higher echelons of the military are not sympathetically disposed towards Israel’s right to defend its citizens.

Both the behavior of the forces on the ground and of their commanders in Cairo indicates that if the Egyptian military is permitted to deploy its forces to the Sinai, those forces will not serve any helpful purpose for Israel.

THE MILITARY’S demonstrated antagonism toward Israel, the uncertainty of Egypt’s political future, the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood, and the hatred of Israel shared by all Egyptian political factions all indicate that Israel will live to regret it if it permits the Egyptian military to mobilize in the Sinai. Not only will Egyptian soldiers not prevent terrorist attacks against Israel, their presence along the border will increase the prospect of war with Egypt.

Egypt’s current inaction against anti-Israel terror operatives in the Sinai has already caused the IDF to increase its force levels along the border. If Egypt is permitted to mass its forces in the Sinai, then the IDF will be forced to respond by steeply increasing the size of its force mobilized along the border. And the proximity of the two armies could easily be exploited by Egyptian populist forces to foment war.

In his interview with The Economist, Barak claimed bizarrely, "Sometimes you have to subordinate strategic considerations to tactical needs." It is hard to think of any case in human history when a nation’s interests were served by winning a battle and losing a war. And the stakes with Egypt are too high for Israel’s leaders to be engaging in such confused and imbecilic thinking.

The dangers emanating from post-Mubarak Egypt are enormous and are only likely to grow. Israel cannot allow its desire for things to be different to cloud its judgment. It must accept the situation for what it is and act accordingly.

Blood on the Streets

Israeli military preparedness follows a depressing pattern. The IDF does not change its assessments of the strategic environment until Israeli blood runs in the streets.

In Judea and Samaria, from 1994 through 2000, the army closed its eyes to the Palestinian security forces’ open, warm and mutually supportive ties to terror groups.

The military only began to reconsider its assessment of the US- and European-trained and Israeli-armed Palestinian forces after Border Police Cpl. Mahdat Youssef bled to death at Joseph’s Tomb in October 2000. Youssef died because the Palestinian security chiefs on whom Israel had relied for cooperation refused to coordinate the evacuation of the wounded policeman.

Youssef was wounded when a Palestinian mob, supported by Palestinian security forces, attacked the sacred Jewish shrine. They shot at worshipers and the IDF soldiers who were stationed at Joseph’s Tomb in accordance with the agreements Israel has signed with the Palestinians.

In Lebanon, the IDF only reconsidered its policy of ignoring Hezbollah’s massive arms build-up in the south after the Shi’ite group launched its war against Israel in July 2006.

In Gaza, the IDF only reconsidered its willingness to allow Hamas to massively arm itself with missiles and rockets after the terror group running the Strip massively escalated the scale of its missile war against Israel in December 2008.

It is to be hoped that Thursday’s sophisticated, deadly, multi-pronged, combined arms assault by as yet unidentified enemy forces along the border with Egypt will suffice to force the IDF to alter its view of Egypt.

By Thursday afternoon, seven Israelis had been killed and 26 had been wounded by unidentified attackers who entered Israel from Egyptian-ruled Sinai and staged a four-pronged attack. The attack included two assaults on civilian passenger buses and private cars. The assailants used automatic rifles in the first attack, and rifles as well as either anti-tank missiles or rocket-propelled grenades in the second attack.

The assault also involved the use of missiles and roadside bombs against an IDF border patrol, and open combat between the attackers and police SWAT teams.

There can be little doubt of the sophisticated planning and training required to carry out this attack. The competence of the assailants indicates that their organizations are highly professional, well-trained and in possession of accurate intelligence about Israeli civilian traffic and military operations along the border with Egypt.

Without the benefit of surprise, Thursday’s attackers will be hard pressed to maintain their offensive in the coming days. But the possibility that the assault was just the opening round of a new irregular war emanating from Sinai cannot be ruled out. Unfortunately, due to the IDF’s institutional opposition to confronting emerging threats before they become deadly, Israel faces the prospect of escalated aggression from Sinai with no clear strategy for contending with the enemy actors operating in the peninsula.

This enemy system includes Hamas, Muslim Brotherhood, and al-Qaida-affiliated Islamic terror cells. It also includes the Egyptian military and security forces operating in the area, whose intentions towards Israel are at best unclear.

LIKE THE watershed events in Judea and Samaria, in Lebanon and in Gaza, Thursday’s attack from Sinai did not come out of nowhere. It was a natural progression of the deterioration of the security situation in Sinai in recent months and years.

For more than a decade all the security trends in Sinai have been negative.

Sinai is populated mainly by Beduin. When Israel controlled Sinai from 1967 through 1981, the Beduin were willing to cooperate with Israel on both civil and military affairs. When Egypt took over in 1981, it punished the Beduin for their willingness to work with Israel. Perhaps as a consequence of this, perhaps owing more to regional trends emanating from Saudi Arabia, since the mid-1990s, the Sinai Beduin, like neighboring tribes in the Jordanian desert and, to a degree, their Israeli Beduin brethren, have been undergoing a process of Islamification as the loyalties of more and more tribes have been transferred to regional and global jihadist forces.

The first tangible indication of this came with the 2004 bombing of the Hilton Hotel in Taba.

That attack was followed by bombings in Sharm e-Sheikh and Dahab in 2005 and 2006. All the attacks were reportedly carried out by Beduin terror cells affiliated with al-Qaida.

Since the Palestinian terror war began in 2000, then-Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak did almost nothing to prevent massive arms smuggling by Palestinian terror groups through Sinai. The Palestinians – from Hamas, Fatah and Islamic Jihad – were assisted by Sinai Beduin as well as by the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood and Hezbollah. Mubarak also did next to nothing to prevent human and drug trafficking from Sinai into Israel and Gaza.

Mubarak did, however, protect the Egyptian regime’s control over Sinai by among other things sealing the official land border from Egypt to Gaza at Rafah, defending Egyptian police stations and other security installations and vital infrastructure such as the gas pipeline from attack. Forces from his Interior Ministry kept a firm grip on the Beduin tribes.

As bad and increasingly complex as the security situation was becoming in Sinai under Mubarak, it has drastically deteriorated since he was overthrown in February. Actually, the Egyptian government arguably lost control over Sinai while Mubarak was being overthrown, and until last weekend made no attempt to reassert its sovereign control over the area.

As the world media ecstatically reported on the photogenic anti-Mubarak protesters in Tahrir Square, almost no attention was paid to the insurgency unfolding in Sinai. Shortly after the protests began in Cairo in mid-January, Hamas sent forces over the border into Egyptian Rafah and El-Arish to attack police stations with rifles and RPGs. Hamas fighters reportedly went as far south as Suez. There they joined other terror forces in bombing and raiding the police station in the town that abuts the Suez Canal. In consortium with local elements, Hamas carried out the first of five bombings so far of Egypt’s gas pipeline to Israel and Jordan.

In a sharp departure from Mubarak’s policies, the ruling military junta opened Egypt’s border with Gaza and so gave local and regional jihadists the ability to freely traverse the international border.

Hamas and its fellow terrorists have used this freedom not only to steeply expand the missile and personnel transfers to the Gaza Strip. They have also escalated their challenge to Egyptian regime control over Sinai.

Over the past several months, in addition to recurrent bombings of the gas pipeline, these forces have attacked police stations and the port at Nueiba. In the wake of their July 30 attack on El-Arish in which two policemen and three civilians were killed, jihadist cells distributed leaflets calling for the imposition of Islamic law on Sinai.

According to media reports, jihadists also took over many of the main highways in Sinai at the beginning of August.

THESE LATEST assaults and the open challenge the leaflets and road takeovers pose to Egyptian state authority caused the military to deploy two battalions of armored forces to Sinai last weekend.

The stated aim of their operation is to defeat the al-Qaida-affiliated jihadist cells operating in the peninsula. Since Egypt’s peace treaty with Israel prohibits the deployment of Egyptian military forces to Sinai, the Egyptian military regime requested and received Israeli permission for the deployment.

It is unclear how effective the latest Egyptian military deployment had been until Thursday’s cross-border attacks on Israel had been. What is clear enough is that Israel cannot expect to receive serious cooperation from the Egyptian military in combating the enemy forces emanating from Sinai. Indeed, at this point it is impossible to rule out the possibility that Egyptian military personnel participated in the murderous attacks.

Passengers in one of the civilian cars attacked by gunmen in the first stage of the operation told the media that their attackers were wearing Egyptian army uniforms.

Almost immediately after the attacks took place, Egyptian military authorities denied the attackers entered Israel from Sinai. These denials signaled that the Egyptian military government will not assist Israel in its efforts to defend itself against the rapidly escalating threats it now faces from Sinai.

And this is not surprising. Since it overthrew Mubarak, the ruling military junta has assiduously cultivated close ties with the politically ascendant Muslim Brotherhood.

Three days before the attack, the IDF announced that its 2012-2017 budget includes no increase in either force size or equipment levels. As one IDF official told Reuters, "Our current capabilities are sufficient for our foreseeable requirements, though we will be investing anew in training and improving rapid-response mobility to allow for more flexibility during emergencies."

Recently, Chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. Benny Gantz explained that the reason the IDF does not intend to change the training or size of the Southern Command, despite Egypt’s increasing hostility towards Israel, is because Israel doesn’t want to provoke Egypt by preparing for the worst. In the immediate aftermath of the attack, Defense Minister Ehud Barak was quick to ignore Egypt and point his finger at the usual suspects in Gaza.

While it is reasonable to assume the Palestinians were involved in the attack, it is unreasonable to assume that they are the only culprits. And given the deteriorating security situation in Sinai and Egypt’s escalating hostility, it is madness to limit Israel’s attention in the wake of the attack to Gaza.

What the attack shows is that Israel must prepare for the new strategic reality emerging in Egypt. True, it is early yet to predict how Egypt is going to behave in the coming years. But we do not need perfect information about the emerging strategic reality to prepare for it.

Israel’s requirements are clear. We need to invest the necessary resources to fortify the 240-km. border with Egypt by completing the security fence.

We need to increase the Southern Command’s force levels by at least one regular division, preferably an armored one. We need to equip the IDF with more tanks and other platforms designed for desert warfare. We need for the IDF to begin training in desert warfare for the first time in 30 years.

We need to drastically ramp up the quality of our intelligence about Egypt.

On Thursday, we were shown that although the revolution in Egypt was not about Israel, Israel will be its first foreign victim as the new Egypt rejects the former regime’s peace with the Jewish state.

It is a bitter reality. But it is reality all the same and we need to contend with it, as the blood in our streets makes clear.

 

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

The Jacksonian Foreign Policy Option

Over the past several months, a certain intolerance has crept into the rhetoric of leading neoconservative publications and writers.

This intolerance has become particularly noticeable since February’s neoconservative-supported overthrow of Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak, and President Barack Obama’s neoconservative-supported decision to commit US forces to battle against Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi in March.

The basic concept being propounded by leading neoconservative writers and publications is that anyone who disagrees with neoconservative policies is an isolationist. A notable recent example of this tendency was a blog post published on Wednesday by Commentary magazine’s Executive Editor Jonathan Tobin regarding the emerging contours of Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s foreign policy views.

After listing various former Bush administration officials who are advising Perry on foreign affairs, Tobin concluded, "Perry might have more in common with the neoconservative wing of the Republican Party than the isolationists." While this is may be true, it is certainly true that the neoconservatives and the isolationists are not the only foreign policy wings in the Republican Party. Indeed, most Republicans are neither isolationists nor neoconservatives.

Isolationism broadly speaking is the notion that the US is better off withdrawing to fortress America and leaving the rest of the world’s nations to fight it out among themselves. The isolationist impulse in the US is what caused the US to enter both world wars years after they began. It is what has propelled much of the antiwar sentiment on the far Left and the far Right alike since September 11. The far Left argues the US should withdraw from world leadership because the US is evil. And the far Right argues that the US should withdraw from world leadership because the world is evil.

Neoconservatism broadly speaking involves the adoption of a muscular US foreign policy in order to advance the cause of democracy and freedom worldwide. Wilsonian in its view of the universal nature of the human impulse to freedom, neoconservatives in recent years have wholeheartedly embraced the notion that if given a chance to make their sentiments known, most people will choose liberal democracy over any other form of government.

Former president George W. Bush is widely viewed as the first neoconservative president, due to his wholehearted embrace of this core concept of neoconservativism in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks. Aside from their belief that if given the choice people will choose to be free, neoconservatives argue the more democratic governments there are, the safer the world will be and the safer the US will be. Therefore, broadly speaking, neoconservatives argue that the US should always side with populist forces against dictatorships.

While these ideas may be correct in theory, in practice the consequence of Bush’s adoption of the neoconservative worldview was the empowerment of populist and popular jihadists and Iranian allies throughout the Middle East at the expense of US allies. Hamas won the Palestinian Authority elections in 2006. Its electoral victory paved the way for its military takeover of Gaza in 2007.

Hezbollah’s participation in Lebanon’s 2005 elections enabled the Iranian proxy army to hijack the Lebanese government in 2006, and to violently take over the Lebanese government in 2009.

The Muslim Brotherhood’s successful parliamentary run in Egypt in 2005 strengthened the radical, anti-American, jihadist group and weakened Mubarak.

And the election of Iranian-influenced Iraqi political leaders in Iraq in 2005 exacerbated the trend of Iranian predominance in post-Saddam Iraq. It also served to instigate a gradual estrangement of Saudi Arabia from the US.

THE NEOCONSERVATIVE preference for populist forces over authoritarian ones propelled leading neoconservative thinkers and former Bush administration officials to enthusiastically support the anti-Mubarak protesters in Tahrir Square in Cairo in January. And their criticism of Obama for not immediately joining the protesters and calling for Mubarak’s removal from power was instrumental in convincing Obama to abandon Mubarak.

Between those who predicted a flowering liberal democracy in a post-Mubarak Egypt and those who predicted the empowerment of radical, Muslim Brotherhood aligned forces in a post-Mubarak Egypt, it is clear today that the latter were correct. Moreover, we see that the US’s abandonment of its closest ally in the Arab world has all but destroyed America’s reputation as a credible, trustworthy ally throughout the region.

In the wake of Mubarak’s ouster, the Saudis have effectively ended their strategic alliance with the US and are seeking to replace the US with China, Russia and India.

In a similar fashion, the neoconservatives were quick to support Obama’s decision to use military force to oust Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi from power in March. The fact that unlike Syria’s Bashar Assad and Iran’s ayatollahs, Gaddafi gave up his nuclear proliferation program in 2004 was of no importance. The fact that from the outset there was evidence that al-Qaida terrorists are members of the US-supported Libyan opposition, similarly made little impact on the neoconservatives who supported Obama’s decision to set conditions that would enable "democracy" to take root in Libya. The fact that the US has no clear national interest at stake in Libya was brushed aside. The fact that Obama lacked congressional sanction for committing US troops to battle was also largely ignored.

Neoconservative writers have castigated opponents of US military involvement in Libya as isolationists.

In so doing, they placed Republican politicians like presidential candidate Rep.

Michele Bachmann and former Alaska governor Sarah Palin in the same pile as presidential candidate Rep. Ron Paul and Pat Buchanan.

The very notion that robust internationalists such as Bachmann and Palin could be thrown in with ardent isolationists like Paul and Buchanan is appalling. But it is of a piece with the prevailing, false notion being argued by dominant voices in neoconservative circles that "you’re either with us or you’re with the Buchananites." In truth, the dominant foreign policy in the Republican Party, and to a degree, in American society as a whole, is neither neoconservativism nor isolationism. For lack of a better name, it is what historian Walter Russell Mead has referred to as Jacksonianism, after Andrew Jackson, the seventh president of the US. As Mead noted in a 1999 article in The National Interest titled "The Jacksonian Tradition," the most popular and enduring US model for foreign policy is far more flexible than either the isolationist or the neoconservative model.

According to Mead, the Jacksonian foreign policy model involves a few basic ideas. The US is different from the rest of the world, and therefore the US should not try to remake the world in its own image by claiming that everyone is basically the same. The US must ensure its honor abroad by abiding by its commitments and maintaining its standing with its allies. The US must take action to defend its interests. The US must fight to win or not fight at all. The US should only respect those foes that fight by the same rules as the US does.

THE US president that hewed closest to these basic guidelines in recent times was Ronald Reagan.

Popular perception that Reagan was acting in accordance with Jacksonian foreign policy principles is what kept the public support for Reagan high even as the liberal media depicted his foreign policy as simplistic and dangerous.

For instance, Reagan fought Soviet influence in Central America everywhere he could and with whomever he could find. Regan exploited every opportunity to weaken the Soviet Union in Europe. He worked with the Vatican in Poland.

He deployed Pershing short-range nuclear warheads in Western Europe. He called the Soviet Union an evil empire. He began developing the Strategic Defense Initiative. And he walked away from an arms control agreement when he decided it was a bad deal for the US.

Throughout his presidency, Reagan never shied away from trumpeting American values. To the contrary, he did so regularly. However, unlike the neoconservatives, Reagan recognized that advancing those values themselves could not replace the entirety of US foreign policy. Indeed, he realized that the very notion that values trumped all represented a fundamental misunderstanding of US interests and of the nature and limits of US power.

If a Jacksonian president were in charge of US foreign policy, he or she would understand that supporting elections that are likely to bring a terror group like Hamas or Hezbollah to power is not an American interest.

He or she would understand that toppling a pro-American dictator like Mubarak in favor of a mob is not sound policy if the move is likely to bring an anti-American authoritarian successor regime to power.

A Jacksonian president would understand that using US power to overthrow a largely neutered US foe like Gaddafi in favor of a suspect opposition movement is not a judicious use of US power.

Indeed, a Jacksonian president would recognize that it would be far better to expend the US’s power to overthrow Syrian President Bashar Assad – an open and active foe of the US – and so influence the nature of a post-Assad government.

For all the deficiencies of the neoconservative worldview, at least the neoconservatives act out of a deep-seated belief that the US is a force for good in the world and out of concern for maintaining America’s role as the leader of the free world. In stark contrast, Obama’s foreign policy is based on a fundamental anti-American view of the US and a desire to end the US’s role as the leading world power. And the impact of Obama’s foreign policy on US and global security has been devastating.

From Europe to Asia to Russia to Latin America to the Middle East and Africa, Obama has weakened the US and turned on its allies. He has purposely strengthened US adversaries worldwide, as part of an overall strategy of divesting an unworthy America from its role as world leader.

He has empowered the anti-American UN to replace the US as the arbiter of US foreign policy.

And so, absent the American sheriff, US adversaries from the Taliban to Vladimir Putin to Hugo Chavez to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad are empowered to attack America and its allies.

In the coming months, Republican primary voters will choose their party’s candidate to challenge Obama in next year’s presidential elections.

With all the failings of the neoconservative foreign policy model, it is clear that Obama’s foreign policy has been far more devastating for US and global security.

Still, it would be a real tragedy if at the end of the primary season, due to neoconservative intellectual bullying, the Republican presidential nominee were forced to choose between neoconservativism and isolationism. A rich, successful and popular American foreign policy tradition of Jacksonianism awaits the right candidate.

Norway’s Jewish Problem

In the wake of Anders Breivik’s massacre of his fellow Norwegians, I was amazed at the speed with which the leftist media throughout the US and Europe used his crime as a means of criminalizing their ideological opponents on the Right. Just hours after Breivik’s identity was reported, leftist media outlets and blogs were filled with attempts to blame Breivik’s crime on conservative public intellectuals whose ideas he cited in a 1,500 page online manifesto.

My revulsion at this bald attempt to use Breivik’s crime to attack freedom of speech propelled me to write my July 29 column, "Breivik and totalitarian democrats."

While the focus of my column was the Left’s attempt to silence their conservative opponents, I also noted that widespread popular support for Palestinian terrorists in Norway indicates that for many Norwegians, opposition to terrorism is less than comprehensive.

To support this position, I quoted an interview in Maariv with Norway’s Ambassador to Israel Svein Sevje.

Sevje explained that most Norwegians think that the Palestinians’ opposition to the supposed Israeli "occupation" is justified and so their lack of sympathy for Israeli victims of Palestinian terrorism was unlikely to change in the wake of Breivik’s attack on Norwegians.

Since my column was a defense of free speech and a general explanation of why terrorism is antithetical to the foundations of liberal democracy – regardless of its ideological motivations – I did not focus my attention on Norwegian society. I did not discuss Norwegian anti- Semitism or anti-Zionism. Indeed, I purposely ignored these issues.

But when on Friday, Norway’s Deputy Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide published an unjustified attack on me on these pages, he forced me to take the time to study the intellectual and political climate of hatred towards Israel and Jews that pervades Norwegian society.

That climate is not a contemporary development. Rather it has been a mainstay of Norwegian society.
In a 2006 report on Jew hatred in contemporary Norwegian caricatures published by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, Erez Uriely noted among other things that Norway banned kosher ritual slaughter in 1929 – three years before a similar ban was instituted in Nazi Germany.

And whereas the ban on kosher ritual slaughter was lifted in post-war Germany, it was never abrogated in Norway.

As Uriely noted, Norway’s prohibition on Jewish ritual slaughter makes Judaism the only religion that cannot be freely practiced in Norway.

Fascism was deeply popular in Norway in the 1930s. In the wake of the Nazi invasion, Norwegian governmental leaders founded and joined the Norwegian Nazi Party. Apparently, sympathy for Nazi collaborators is strong today in Norway.

As the JCPA’s Manfred Gerstenfeld noted in a report on the rise in Norwegian anti-Semitic attacks during 2009, two years ago the Norwegian government allocated more than $20 million in public funds to commemorate Norwegian novelist Knut Hamsun on the occasion of the Nobel laureate for literature’s 150th birthday. As The New York Times reported, in February 2009, Norway’s Queen Sonja opened the, "year-long, publicly financed commemoration of Hamsun’s 150th birthday called ‘Hamsun 2009.’"
But while Hamsun may have been a good writer, he is better remembered for being an enthusiastic Nazi. Hamsun gave his Nobel prize to Nazi propaganda chief Josef Goebbels. During a wartime visit to Germany, Hamsun flew to meet Adolf Hitler at Hitler’s mountain home in Bavaria.

And in 2009, Norway built a $20 million museum to honor his achievements.

As Uriely explained in his report, "Norwegian anti- Semitism does not come from the grassroots but from the leadership – politicians, organization leaders, church leaders, and senior journalists. It does not come from Muslims but from the European-Christian society."

Despite indignant claims that the two are unrelated, Norway’s elite anti-Semitism merges seamlessly with their anti-Zionism. An apparently unwitting example of this fusion is found in Eide’s attack against me in last Friday’s Post.

Eide’s attack on me revolved around my citation of Ambassador Sevje’s interview with Maariv. In his column Eide wrote, "Several other Israeli media have latched on to this [interview] as well."

While this may be true, I first learned of Sevje’s interview in the US media. Specifically, I read about the interview at Commentary Magazine’s website, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency’s website, and the website of the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA) before I read the original interview on Maariv’s website.

Commentary, JTA and CAMERA are not Israeli organizations or outlets. They are Jewish American organizations and outlets. Eide’s conflation of them with the "Israeli media" indicates that the deputy minister has a hard time separating Jews from Israelis, (and by extension, Jew hatred from Israel hatred).

One of the Jewish Americans who attacked the Norwegian ambassador’s willingness to distinguish between Palestinian terrorist murderers of Israelis and Breivik’s terrorist murder of Norwegians was Harvard Professor Alan Dershowitz. Dershowitz said, "I know of no reasonable person who has tried to justify the terrorist attacks against Norway. Yet there are many Norwegians who not only justify terrorist attacks against Israel, but praise them, support them, help finance them and legitimate them."

In March Dershowitz experienced Norway’s elite anti- Semitism-qua-anti-Zionism firsthand. Dershowitz was brought to Norway by a pro-Israel group to conduct lectures at three Norwegian universities. All three university administrations refused to invite him to speak. Student groups acting independently of their university administrations in the end invited Dershowitz to give his lectures.

As Dershowitz explained in a Wall Street Journal article, he was the victim of an unofficial Norwegian university boycott of Israeli universities. The unofficial boycott is so extensive that it bans not only Israeli academics, but non-Israeli, Jewish academics that are pro-Israel.

And lest someone believe Norway’s anti-Jewish boycott is due to the so-called "occupation," as Dershowitz pointed out, the petition calling for an academic boycott of Israel begins, "Since 1948 the state of Israel has occupied Palestinian land."

The Norwegian elite’s rejection of Israel’s right to exist, and ban on pro-Israel Jewish speakers from university campuses goes a long way in explaining Norway’s support for Hamas. If Norway’s opposition to Israel was merely due to its size, rather than its very existence, it would be difficult to understand why Norway maintains friendly contact with Hamas. Hamas is after all a genocidal, terrorist group, which like the Nazis seeks the annihilation of the Jewish people as a whole. Yet Norway’s Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Store wrote an article justifying his relations with Hamas as in line with Norway’s embrace of "dialogue."

As Store’s deputy Eide’s unrestrained and unjustified attack against me, and as Norway’s academic – and to a large degree media – boycott of pro-Israel voices make clear, Norway’s embrace of dialogue is as selective as its condemnation of terrorism.

Here we should recall that Norway’s ruling class supported Hamas against Israel in Operation Cast Lead.

Israel’s dovish Kadima government only began the operation in Gaza because it had no choice. For months then prime minister Ehud Olmert sat on his hands as southern Israel was pummeled with unprovoked barrages of thousands of missiles and rockets from Gaza. Olmert was forced to take action after Hamas massively escalated its rocket and missile attacks in November and early December 2008.
While silent about Palestinian aggression, Norway’s government attacked Israel for defending itself. As Store put it, "The Israeli ground offensive in Gaza constitutes a dramatic escalation of the conflict. Norway strongly condemns any form of warfare that causes severe civilian suffering, and calls on Israel to withdraw its forces immediately."

Two of Store’s associates, Eric Fosse and Mads Gilbert, decamped to Gaza during Cast Lead and set up shop in Shifa Hospital. The two were fixtures in the Norwegian media, which constantly interviewed them throughout the conflict, and so spread their libelous charges against the IDF without question.

Fosse and Gilbert never mentioned that Hamas’s high command was located at the hospital in open breach of the laws of war.

When they returned home, they co-authored a book in which they accused the IDF of entering Gaza with the express goal of murdering women and children.

Store wrote a blurb of endorsement on the book’s back cover.

Store visited Israel in January. During his visit he gave an interview to the Post where he ignored diplomatic protocol and attacked the Knesset’s contemporaneous decision to form a parliamentary commission of inquiry into foreign funding of anti-Zionist Israeli NGOs.

The basic rationale for the commission was that Israelis have a right to know that many purportedly Israeli groups are actually foreign organizations staffed by local Israelis. And many of the most virulently anti-Zionist NGOs staffed by Israelis operating in Israel are funded by the Norwegian government. Store arrogantly opined, "I think it is a worrying sign" about the state of Israeli democracy.

During Operation Cast Lead, Oslo was the scene of unprecedented anti-Semitic rioting. According to Eirik Eiglad, protesters who participated in anti-Israel demonstrations – and even a supposedly pro-peace demonstration – called out "Kill the Jews" and attacked policemen who tried to prevent them from rioting. Demonstrators at a pro-Israel demonstration were beaten. The Israeli embassy was threatened.

Pro-Israel politicians who participated in the pro-Israel rally were beaten and received death threats.

It is a fact that the day before Breivik’s massacre of teenagers at the Labor Party’s youth camp on Utoya Island, Store spoke to them about the need to destroy Israel’s security fence. The campers role-played pro- Hamas activists breaking international law by challenging Israel’s lawful maritime blockade of the Gaza coastline.

They held signs calling for a boycott of Israel.

Despite their obvious animosity towards Israel and sympathy for genocidal, Jew hating Hamas terrorists, at no point did I or any of my Jerusalem Post colleagues do anything other than condemn completely Breivik’s barbaric massacre of his fellow Norwegians. And yet, the Norwegian government attacked us for merely pointing out in various ways, that Norway should not use Breivik’s attack as justification for further weakening Norwegian democracy.

Following the massacre, the Post published a well-argued, empathetic editorial making these general points. In response, the paper was deluged by unhinged attacks claiming that the editorial was insensitive and excused Breivik’s crimes. In response, the Post published a follow-up editorial last Friday apologizing to the Norwegian people for the earlier editorial.

I was not consulted about this editorial ahead of time, and the editorial does not reflect my views. However I understand the moral impulse of not wishing to pour salt on anyone’s wounds, which stood behind the decision to write it.

For my part, I will not request a similar apology from the Norwegian government for gratuitously attacking me. I will not request a similar apology from the Norwegian government and elites for libelously defaming my military, my country and my people. I will not request a similar apology from Norway for limiting Jews’ freedom of religion in Norway. I will not request a similar apology from Norway for comparing Israel to Nazi Germany and celebrating Norwegian Nazis.

I will not request such an apology because there are certain actions that are simply unforgivable.

 

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

Obama’s only policy

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has explained repeatedly over the years that Israel has no Palestinian partner to negotiate with. So news reports this week that Netanyahu agreed that the 1949 armistice lines, (commonly misrepresented as the 1967 borders), will be mentioned in terms of reference for future negotiations with the Palestinian Authority seemed to come out of nowhere. 
Israel has no one to negotiate with because the Palestinians reject Israel’s right to exist. This much was made clear yet again last month when senior PA "negotiator" Nabil Sha’ath said in an interview with Arabic News Broadcast, "The story of ‘two states for two peoples’ means that there will be a Jewish people over there and a Palestinian people here. We will never accept this."
Given the Palestinians’ position it is obvious that Netanyahu is right. There is absolutely no chance whatsoever that Israel and the PA will reach any peace deal in the foreseeable future. Add to this the fact that the Hamas terror group controls Gaza and will likely win any new Palestinian elections just as it won the last elections, and the entire exercise in finding the right formula for restarting negotiations is exposed as a complete farce.
So why is Israel engaging in these discussions? 
The only logical answer is to placate US President Barack Obama. 
For the past several months, most observers have been operating under the assumption that Obama will use the US’s veto at the UN Security Council to defeat the Palestinians’ bid next month to receive UN membership as independent Palestine. But the fact of the matter is that no senior administration official has stated unequivocally, on record that the US will veto a UN Security Council resolution recommending UN membership for Palestine.
Given US congressional and public support for Israel, it is likely that at the end of the day, Obama will veto such a resolution. But the fact that the President has abstained to date from stating openly that he will veto it makes clear that Obama expects Israel to "earn" a US veto by bowing to his demands. 
These demands include abandoning Israel’s position that it must retain defensible borders in any peace deal with the Palestinians. Since defensible borders require Israel to retain control over the Jordan Valley and the Samarian hills, there is no way to accept the 1949 armistice lines as a basis for negotiations without surrendering defensible borders. 
SAY WHAT you will about Obama’s policy, at least it’s a policy. Obama uses US power and leverage against Israel in order to force Israel to bow to his will. 
What makes Obama’s Israel policy notable is not simply that it involves betraying the US’s most steadfast ally in the Middle East. After all, since taking office Obama has made a habit of betraying US allies.
Obama’s Israel policy is notable because it is a policy. Obama has a clear, consistent goal of cutting Israel down to size. Since assuming office, Obama has taken concrete steps to achieve this aim. 
And those steps have achieved results. Obama forced Netanyahu to make Palestinian statehood an Israeli policy goal. He coerced Netanyahu into temporarily abrogating Jewish property rights in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria. And now he is forcing Netanyahu to pretend the 1949 armistice lines are something Israel can accept.
Obama has not adopted a similarly clear, consistent policy towards any other nation in the region. In Egypt, Syria, Iran, Turkey, Libya, and beyond, Obama has opted for attitude over policy. He has postured, preened, protested and pronounced on all the issues of the day. 
But he has not made policy. And as a consequence, for better or for worse, he has transformed the US from a regional leader into a regional follower while empowering actors whose aims are not consonant with US interests.
SYRIA IS case and point. President Bashar Assad is the Iranian mullahs’ lap dog. He is also a major sponsor of terrorism. In the decade since he succeeded his father, Assad Jr. has trained terrorists who have killed US forces in Iraq. He has provided a safe haven for al Qaeda terrorists. He has strengthened Syrian ties to Hezbollah. He has hosted Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other Palestinian terror factions. He has proliferated nuclear weapons. He reputedly ordered the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri.
Since March, Assad has been waging war against his fellow Syrians. By the end of this week, with his invasion of Hama, the civilian death toll will certainly top two thousand.
And how has Obama responded? He upgraded his protestations of displeasure with Assad from "unacceptable" to "appalling."
In the face of Assad’s invasion of Hama, rather than construct a policy for overthrowing this murderous US enemy, the Obama administration has constructed excuses for doing nothing. Administration officials, including Obama’s ambassador to Damascus Robert Ford, are claiming that the US has little leverage over Assad.
But this is ridiculous. Many in Congress and beyond are demanding that Obama withdraw Ford from Damascus. Some are calling for sanctions against Syria’s energy sector. These steps may or may not be effective. Openly supporting, financing and arming Assad’s political opponents would certainly be effective.
Many claim that the most powerful group opposing Assad is the Muslim Brotherhood. And there is probably some truth to that. At a minimum, the Brotherhood’s strength has been tremendously augmented in recent months by Turkey. 
Some have applauded the fact that Turkey has filled the leadership vacuum left by the Obama administration. They argue that Turkish Prime Minister Recip Erdogan can be trusted to ensure that Syria doesn’t descend into a civil war. 
What these observers fail to recognize is that Erdogan’s interests in a post-Assad Syria have little in common with US interests. Erdogan will seek to ensure the continued disenfranchisement of Syria’s Kurdish minority. And he will work towards the Islamification of Syria through the Muslim Brotherhood. 
Today there is a coalition of Syrian opposition figures that include all ethnic groups in Syria. Their representatives have been banging the doors of the corridors of power in Washington and beyond. Yet the same Western leaders who were so eager to recognize the Libyan opposition despite the presence of al Qaeda terrorists in the opposition tent have refused to publicly embrace Syrian regime opponents that seek a democratic, federal Syria that will live at peace with Israel and embrace liberal policies.
This week Secretary of State Hillary Clinton held a private meeting with these brave democrats. Why didn’t she hold a public meeting? Why hasn’t Obama welcomed them to the White House? 
By refusing to embrace liberal, multi-ethnic regime opponents, the administration is all but ensuring the success of the Turkish bid to install the Muslim Brotherhood in power if Assad is overthrown.
But then, embracing pro-Western Syrians would involve taking a stand and, in so doing, adopting a policy. And that is something the posturing president will not do. Obama is much happier pretending that empty statements from the UN Security Council amount to US "victories." 
If he aims any lower his head will hit the floor.
OBAMA’S PREFERENCE for posture over policy is nothing new. It has been his standard operating procedure throughout the region. When the Iranian people rose up against their regime in June 2009 in the Green Revolution, Obama stood on the sidelines. As is his habit, he acted as though the job of the US president is to opine rather than lead. Then he sniffed that it wasn’t nice at all that the regime was mowing down pro-democracy protesters in the streets of Teheran and beyond. 
And ever since, Obama has remained on the sidelines as the mullahs took over Lebanon, build operational bases in Latin America, sprint to the nuclear finishing line, and consolidate their power in Iraq and Afghanistan. 
On Wednesday the show trial began for longtime US ally former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak and his sons. During last winter’s popular uprising in Egypt, Obama’s foes attacked him for refusing to abandon Mubarak immediately. 
The reasons for maintaining US support for Mubarak were obvious: Mubarak had been the foundation of the US alliance structure with the Sunni Arab world for three decades. He had kept the peace with Israel. And his likely successor was the Muslim Brotherhood. 
But Obama didn’t respond to his critics with a defense of a coherent policy. Because his early refusal to betray Mubarak was not a policy. It was an attitude of cool detachment. 
When Obama saw that it was becoming politically costly to maintain his attitude of detachment, he replaced it with a new one of righteous rage. And so he withdrew US support for Mubarak without ever thinking through the consequences of his actions. And now it isn’t just Mubarak and his sons humiliated in a cage. It is their legacy of alliance with America.
Recognizing that Obama refuses to adopt or implement any policies on his own, Congress has tried to fill the gap. The House Foreign Affairs Committee recently passed a budget that would make US aid to Egypt, Lebanon, Yemen and the PA contingent on certification that no terrorist or extremist organization holds governmental power in these areas. Clinton issued a rapid rebuke of the House’s budget and insisted it was unacceptable. 
And this makes sense. Making US assistance to foreign countries contingent on assurances that the money won’t fund US enemies would be a policy. And Obama doesn’t make policy – except when it comes attacking to Israel.
In an interview with the New York Times on Thursday, Muammar Qaddafi’s son Seif al-Islam Qaddafi said he and his father are negotiating a deal that would combine their forces with Islamist forces and reestablish order in the country. To a degree, the US’s inability to overthrow Qaddafi – even by supporting an opposition coalition that includes al Qaeda – is the clearest proof that Obama has substituted attitude for policy everywhere except Israel.
Acting under a UN Security Council resolution and armed with a self-righteous doctrine of "Responsibility to Protect" Obama went to war against Qaddafi five months ago. But once the hard reality of war invaded his happy visions of Lone Rangers riding in on white stallions, Obama lost interest in Libya. He kept US forces in the battle, but gave them no clear goals to achieve. And so no goals have been achieved.
Meanwhile, Qaddafi’s son feels free to meet the New York Times and mock America just by continuing to breathe in and out before the cameras as he sports a new Islamic beard and worry beads.
If nothing else, the waves of chaos, war and revolution sweeping through Arab lands make clear that the Arab conflict with Israel is but a sideshow in the Arab experience of tyranny, fanaticism, hope and betrayal. So it says a lot about Obama, that eight months after the first rebellion broke in Tunisia, his sole Middle East policy involves attacking Israel. 
Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

The media revolutionaries

Last Monday Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz gave an interview to Channel 2’s news anchor Yonit Levy during the prime-time news broadcast. Levy began the interview with a revealing "question."
Oozing professional probity, Levy said, "I assume you came here armed with wonderful data about the drop in unemployment and rising economic growth, but I want to ask you, Mr. Steinitz if for all your data you’ve forgotten the people, you’ve forgotten an entire class of working people who can’t live?" 
Not that she has an opinion.
Levy’s question encapsulates the pathology of the Israeli media and the public discourse it engenders. In the case at hand, it is true that the facts show Israel has never been economically better off. But how about "the people"? 
Levy and her comrades want to discuss abstractions, not facts. Abstractions like the amorphous "people," are attractive because they are meaningless and are therefore subject to politically correct interpretation. Facts are unattractive because they contradict the media’s effectively uniform worldview and prejudices.
Due to this uniformity, for the past three weeks Israel’s public discourse has been dominated by the media-supported "social justice" protesters. Three weeks ago fewer than a hundred protesters set up tents along Tel Aviv’s tony Rothschild Boulevard and demanded lower rents in Tel Aviv – Israel’s highest priced real estate market.
Ignoring the basic laws of supply and demand, the media immediately embraced the protesters as "the authentic voice of the nation." And so Israel’s newest "social revolution" began.
And it has all been downhill from there.
If the protesters’ initial demand for government intervention in the Tel Aviv rental market was simply dumb, their current demands are little less than a declaration of economic war against Israeli prosperity.
The protesters’ are effectively demanding no less than the destruction of Israel’s free market and a reversion to the state-controlled economy that doomed Israel to economic sclerosis for its first 45 years of independence.
They want the state to determine rents and nationalize housing construction. They want the government to get more involved in price controls than it already is. They want free day care and medicine. And they want cheap gas, cheap electricity and low taxes. And they want to punish the rich. Oh, and they want to live in communes.
To get a sense of just how economically deranged their economic views are, it suffices to consider what they claim is their most pressing demand. The leaders of the protests, (more on them later), announced on Monday that from their perspective, the first order of business is for the government to cancel its legislative program to reform the Israel Lands Authority.
That plan involves streamlining the process for approving construction tenders and removing most of the hidebound bureaucratic obstacles that make it nearly impossible to build anything in this country. By removing government barriers to increasing the supply of housing, the government aims to reduce housing prices, in accordance with the basic laws of supply and demand.
But the protesters will have none of it. If construction increases, that means that contractors will get rich. And that, they maintain, is unacceptable. From their perspective, the government has to lower housing prices without increasing supply.
It doesn’t take a degree in economics to recognize that this argument is complete nonsense. But most Israeli news consumers do not realize how fundamentally ridiculous the protesters are being. They do not realize it because the media are not in the business of providing facts and data. They are in the business of taking sides.
And in the eyes of the media, the protesters are the good guys and the government is the bad guy.
Aside from ignoring the absurdity of the protesters’ economic demands, the media have joined them in demonizing Prime Minister Netanyahu and his haredi and nationalist political partners. The latter are castigated as parasites who exploit the "nation," (of which they are apparently not a part), for their own selfish ends.
For instance, on Channel 2’s Sunday newscast, senior economic commentator Nehemiah Stressler argued that in order to pay for all the new welfare programs the good people on Rothschild Blvd. are demanding, the government must stop giving away money to the haredim and the settlers.
Stressler claimed that haredim are able to purchase their apartments "a quarter the price." Although he didn’t explain what price he was referring to, presumably he meant a quarter of the price of housing in Tel Aviv. But Stressler failed to mention that most of the building for haredi communities is in inexpensive, peripheral towns like Beitar Illit, not in urban centers.
As for the settlers, it is difficult to see how they are treated well. In 2009 the government banned all Jewish construction in Judea and Samaria for ten months.
Since the ban was lifted, housing starts have still been few and far between. Moreover, this politically motivated act had negative repercussions for the national housing market. As Globes reported in January, until 2009, housing starts in Judea and Samaria constituted 4-5 percent of the national total. By then end of last year, they comprised less than a third of one percent of total housing starts. Consequently, families who would have purchased homes in Judea and Samaria were forced instead to compete with families who wanted to buy homes outside the areas, thus artificially raising the overall price of housing.
The media’s contemptuous dismissal of reality in favor of misleading slogans and scapegoats goes hand in hand with their active steps to deceive the public about the identity and agenda of the protests’ organizers.
A poll released on Monday showed that 75 percent of the public supports the protests. The main reason that the protests have managed to garner sympathy from the general public is because with the help of the media, the protest leaders have hidden their identity and agenda from the public.
At every opportunity, the protesters claim they are apolitical and the media go along with them. Yet as a handful of bloggers have shown, more than eighty percent of the protest leaders are professional far Left activists. For instance, Maariv bloggers Uri Redler and Rotem Sela researched the affiliation of all the speakers at the July 23rd rally in Tel Aviv. They found that out of 27 speakers, 21 are known leftist activists affiliated with Hadash, the communist party, with Meretz, with the New Israel Fund, with the Nationalist Left proto-party, and with the anarchists.
Redler and Sela also exposed that several "grassroots," leaders are in fact professional political operatives affiliated with communist politicians and radical pressure groups. For instance, an activist named Tzika Bashour announced on Facebook that he would begin a general strike on August 1. Yediot Ahronot and Ynet covered his move as an authentic call of distress by an Average Joe.
The papers failed to mention that Bashour is a public relations executive who ran communist MK Dov Hanin’s campaign for the Tel Aviv mayoralty.
The media’s manipulation of the public in the service of their political agenda is nothing new. For the past two decades every disastrous strategic initiative Israel has adopted was the product of massive media campaigns.
In 1993 the media rallied unanimously behind the Rabin-Peres government’s decision to embrace the PLO and give Yasser Arafat and his terrorist armies land, political legitimacy, guns, and money. The more than one million Israelis who actively participated in demonstrations against this disastrous decision in subsequent years were demonized as the Israeli equivalent of Arab terrorists and potential assassins.
In 1997, when a handful of European Union financed activists formed the Four Mothers organization calling for the IDF to surrender southern Lebanon to Hezbollah, the media heralded the group as a "true grassroots movement."
The media blocked out all voices – including IDF commanders – that warned an IDF withdrawal would serve as a springboard for a Hezbollah takeover of Lebanon and lead to war. They demonized opponents of surrender as warmongers with the blood of IDF soldiers on their hands.
Had it not been for the media, the Four Mothers’ campaign would have ended before it began. But due to media manipulation, within three years, a majority of Israelis became convinced that it made sense to surrender to Hezbollah.
In the lead-up to Israel’s 2005 withdrawal from Gaza, the media again demonized the more than one million Israelis who actively opposed the plan. Voices warning of the dire strategic consequences of surrendering Gaza were silenced. Politicians who opposed the plan were attacked as warmongers. The media gave voice to those calling for open warfare against opponents of the withdrawal, and violence against the plan’s opponents was openly encouraged by the media.
Since the Lebanon withdrawal, the media have repeatedly led campaigns demanding that Israel bow to Hezbollah and Hamas demands and release of hundreds of terrorists in exchange for live and dead Israeli hostages. Opponents of such releases are demonized as heartless extremists.
In the aftermath of the Second Lebanon War, reservists released from service began marching to Jerusalem demanding the resignations of then prime minister Ehud Olmert, then defense minister Amir Peretz and then IDF chief of general staff Dan Halutz for their failed leadership of the war. The media scuttled the reservists’ protest by demonizing them as closet right wingers.
Israelis stereotypically boast that we are nobody’s suckers. And yet, the very same people who refuse to be suckers have been suckered into repeatedly supporting the most devastating policies any democracy has adopted in modern times.
This makes sense. After all, how is anyone to be expected to understand what is happening when the media systematically hide the truth from the public? How can anyone be expected to recognize they are being hand when, as Yonit Levy made clear in her "question" to Steinitz, the media are happy to dismiss facts when those facts contradict their interests as a class? 
The only solution to this situation is competition. Israel’s media market is able to operate as a closed guild because government regulations on media licenses have placed the same people destroying our discourse in charge of deciding who gets a broadcast license and what broadcasters can broadcast.
This has to end. Just as Israel’s economic success owes to the government’s withdrawal from the markets, so Israel’s ability to have a rational, truthful, fact-based public debate is entirely dependent on a government initiative to deregulate the media.
But it better act fast. For if the government does not act quickly, as we see today, the media guild will manipulate the uninformed public into believing that our best bet is to destroy our prosperity, just as they convinced us before to destroy our security.
 
Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.