FresnoZionism’s powerful piece about the warped perspective of the Jewish Left, “Beinartism,” is competing in the quarter-finals of the 2011 pro-Israel Blog-off!
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2011 pro-Israel blog-off -- click here and vote!
The biggest problem Israel has faced in its 63-year history has been its inability to translate military victories into political gains.
The Arabs have lost every war they’ve fought with Israel (yes, even the 2006 Second Lebanon War was a military defeat for them despite Israel’s multiple embarrassing failures), but at the same time they have made great gains in the diplomatic and PR arenas:
These events have seriously weakened Israel’s position. It’s even worse in the context of major changes in the strategic balance of the Middle East, like the almost complete Hizballah takeover of Lebanon and the shift in Turkey’s allegiance from the Western bloc to the Iranian orbit.
The response of the “pro-Israel Left” (or what remains of it) is that all of this indicates that the best path for Israel is to go with the flow and withdraw to 1949 lines, with some form of security guarantee. In order to see why this is exactly the wrong response, we need to ask: why has Israel lost ground so precipitously?
Some obvious reasons are the increased influence of the Arab nations and Iran since the 1970’s because of the Western sensitivity to the world price of oil, the Old Left’s turn against Israel after the Soviet Union squared off against the US by adopting the Arab nations as proxies, and the New Left’s reaction to American support for Israel. There is the Arab success in presenting their cause as a third-world anti-colonialist one. There is the popularity of the ‘human rights’ argument (although it is based on false information from the corrupt NGOs). And last but assuredly not least has been the mutation of antisemitism into anti-Zionism, where it is free to propagate itself in the most vicious ways.
All of the above forces have one thing in common: they are not so much pro-Palestinian as they are anti-Zionist. The Palestinian Arabs no longer pay even lip service to the idea that they want a peaceful state alongside Israel, Iran, Hamas and Hizballah explicitly call for the end of the Zionist entity, the movements of the Left present Israel as founded in sin and irredeemably corrupt, and the NGOs invent crimes where there are none.
The thrust of all of the above is to assert that a Jewish state should not exist.
An attempt to appease the forces of anti-Zionism by withdrawals and other concessions only leads to more terrorism and further demands, something that has been verified by recent history. And this makes sense if the goal is the elimination of Israel, rather than ‘peace’ or human rights.
Israel’s policy in this hostile environment must be to prevent erosion of its red lines: defensible borders, a united Jerusalem, recognition as a Jewish state, rejection of ‘right of return’ and nakba guilt, demographic integrity, freedom from terrorist attack, access to all holy places — Jews de facto do not have this now — all of these have to be explicitly claimed by Israel and defended by force if necessary.
Israeli leaders have often taken the easy way out and ignored encroachments on Israel’s sovereignty and other principles in order to avoid conflict with the “international community.” But said community is composed of two groups: a) those who will not be satisfied by anything Israel does except disappear, and b) those who don’t much care about Israel but don’t want to get on the wrong side of group a). Group a) understands this well.
It’s wrong to anthropomorphize the behavior of states — for example, although a president might feel friendship (or its opposite) toward a prime minister and this might influence his behavior on occasion, nations qua nations have interests, not feelings. It’s also wrong to say that because people respect strength and despise weakness the same applies to nations. But there is an analogue to respect that does apply to international relations — the concept of deterrence.
The idea that aggression will be met by force, that red lines can’t be crossed with impunity, that encroachment on a hard-won principle will be resisted — these are principles of deterrence. Deterrence is increased when threats and promises are carried out, and it ebbs when they are not.
Sometimes wars are ended in ways that nullify the military advantage gained at great cost. For example, in 1982, after the First Lebanon War, the US forced Israel to allow the PLO, including Yasser Arafat, to escape from Beirut. It is said that an Israeli sniper had Arafat in his sights but was not given permission to pull the trigger. How many lives would have been saved if he had! The legacy of this mistake was murderous Second Intifada, with more than a thousand Israelis dead.
The Second Lebanon War was ended by a Security Council resolution that the UN lacked either the will or the ability to enforce. Weapons began flowing across the border from Syria almost immediately, and Hizballah began an ambitious project to create even more and better fortifications and rocket launching facilities than before. The legacy of UNSC resolution 1701 will be another war with Hizballah.
Sometimes the imperatives of the information war appear to contradict the need to maintain deterrence. The Mavi Marmara affair was a perfect example of this. In order to appear humane, the commandos who boarded the ship were armed with paintball guns instead of assault weapons. Ironically, the anti-Israel forces were relatively successful in disseminating the message that the commandos attacked the ship with deadly force! So little was gained by endangering the commandos. The legacy of the Mavi Marmara affair will be more flotillas.
There have also been times when domestic pressure has caused the leadership to make inappropriate concessions, such as the exchange with Hizballah of 435 security prisoners for kidnapped drug dealer Elchanan Tannenbaum and the bodies of several Israeli soldiers. This precedent then led to an exchange after the Second Lebanon war in which several prisoners, including one of the most vicious terrorists in Israel’s history, Samir Kuntar, were released in return for the bones of two Israelis. The legacy of these affairs is Gilad Shalit’s continued captivity.
Deterrence is earned by fighting and by making hard decisions. It is eroded by compromise and appeasement, and leads to more war and more erosion. The only way to have peace when your enemies want to destroy you is to maintain deterrence.
Technorati Tags: Israel, deterrence, anti-Zionism
Hamas PM Ismail Haniyya at a press conference in Gaza called to denounce the killing of Osama bin Laden
Sometimes it’s too easy. Compare this:
And then there is the Palestinian Hamas, whose top leader in the Gaza Strip mourned bin laden [sic] on Monday as an “Arab holy warrior.” Ismail Haniyeh, who is Hamas’s prime minister, told reporters that “we regard this as a continuation of the American policy based on oppression and the shedding of Muslim and Arab blood.â€
“We condemn the assassination and the killing of an Arab holy warrior,†said the man who has assured former president Jimmy Carter, among other envoys, of Hamas’s peaceful intentions toward Israel and the United States. “We ask God to offer him mercy with the true believers and the martyrs.â€
With this:
President Carter said, “This [Fatah/Hamas] agreement, and the promise of elections in the next twelve months, has the potential to arrest the spiral of intra-Palestinian human rights violations and preserve Palestinian democracy. It can also lead to a leadership representing all Palestinians capable of negotiating peace with Israel. Based on my years of contacts with Fatah and Hamas, I am confident that, if handled creatively and flexibly by the international community, Hamas’ return to unified Palestinian governance can increase the likelihood of a two-state solution and a peaceful outcome. I encourage the international community to respect this decision by the Palestinian leadership and to view it as part of the larger democratic trend sweeping the region.”
— The Carter Center (April 29)
Technorati Tags: Hamas, Osama bin Laden, Jimmy Carter
2011 pro-Israel blog-off -- click here and vote!
FresnoZionism’s post “Beinartism” is a quarter-finalist in the 2011 pro-Israel blog-off!
You can vote for it (or against it if you think the other guy’s post is better) at the ISRAELLYCOOL blog. Vote your conscience, but vote!
The Israel/Arab conflict is reaching a new point of inflection. The status quo which has been in place more or less since the early ’90’s (when the PLO returned to the territories from Tunis) is about to be replaced by a new reality. This change could be peaceful, or — more likely — it could be mediated by the most vicious war in Israel’s history. But possible outcomes could be very different, depending primarily on the actions of the Israeli government.
The Hamas/Fatah arrangement, as I wrote recently, is designed to facilitate the creation of a state of ‘Palestine’ in the territories without recognition of Israel, end of conflict, or security arrangements. Such a state would immediately be in confrontation with Israel over settlements, etc., and would be a base for terrorism or outright war. If it were recognized by enough UN members, Israel’s self defense would be seen as aggression against the new state, and could be met with sanctions or worse.
But the Arab plan faces an obstacle: the US, and to a lesser extent, the Europeans, require that a Palestinian Authority that includes Hamas must agree to the three conditions of recognition, accepting prior agreements (Oslo) and renouncing violence. Hamas has never been prepared to even pretend to agree to these things.
The Arab strategy to overcome this is described brilliantly by the pseudonymous “Eldad Tzioni”:
So this is the game:
The PLO is the party that negotiates with Israel, and the party that officially recognizes Israel.
The PA [Palestinian Authority] is only responsible for governing the Arabs in the territories, not with any foreign relations.
The PA, despite claims of being democratic, reports to the PLO.
The fake Hamas/Fatah reconciliation is meant to only address the PA, not the PLO. They won’t hold any elections until after September, if ever.
So the PLO will claim to still recognize Israel and be peaceful, as it will claim that from its perspective nothing has changed.
The instant that Palestine is declared a state that is recognized by the world, in part because of these assurances that it is a peaceful state that recognizes Israel, Hamas and Fatah (and all the other terrorist parties that decide to join the government) will immediately take over the PLO’s foreign affairs, as that is what nations do. The PLO’s foreign affairs role will be superseded by “Palestine.â€
Which means that the very minute that Palestine is recognized as a state, it will be by definition a terror state that no longer recognizes Israel! And indeed it will not need to. The entire peace process since Oslo has been a sham in order to gain territory, with peace being a tactic, not a strategy.
As I wrote yesterday, the introduction of Hamas into the PA means that the ‘peace process’ is over. Israel can no sooner make peace with Hamas than it could have with Hitler. The Oslo accords require recognition, etc., and so the day Hamas joins the PA, the PA will have abrogated the Oslo agreements. But Oslo created the PA. And Oslo recognized the PLO as the “sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people”.
This means that the PA will be illegitimate, and the status of the territories will revert to the way it was defined by UNSC resolution 242: the entire area is disputed, until the parties can agree on secure and recognized boundaries. And it means that Israel will not be required to negotiate with the PLO — something that was illegal under Israeli law before Oslo, by the way.
This gives Israel freedom of action from a legal point of view, I think. Of course, in the real world nations do whatever they can get away with. Force rules and diplomacy provides fig leaves. So Israel can’t depend on support from other nations just because it makes a convincing legal case.
I think that Israel needs to act preemptively to establish facts on the ground before the September declaration of ‘Palestine’, in order to ensure its continued security. Here is an example of a proposal for the kind of actions Israel might take:
Naturally the Arabs and their supporters will scream bloody murder, including threats of war. Israel’s leaders and supporters must keep in mind that the replacement of Israel by an Arab state is and always has been the goal of the major Palestinian Arab factions. What has happened now is that the mask has dropped, and it will not be productive for Israel to pretend that there is still a possibility of a compromise peace.
The possibility of a major war today is greater than it has been for some time. Now to the threat from Hizballah and Hamas, we must add the possibility that Bashar al-Assad will deliberately provoke or join a conflict in order to divert attention from his violent suppression of domestic opposition, and also the possibility that Egypt will facilitate the supply of weapons to Hamas in Gaza.
But it seems to me that war will come if and when Israel’s enemies see the possibility of victory — that is, when it appears to them that Israel’s deterrent and defensive capability can be overcome. Israel’s ‘provocative’ actions would have little to do with it — the existence of any Jewish state is sufficient provocation.
The best way to prevent war, therefore, is to maintain the strongest possible defensive and deterrent posture. Proposals for appeasement, like the so-called ‘Israeli peace initiative‘, would have exactly the opposite effect. Naturally, the ‘peace camp’ is frantically coming up with new ideas along these lines. The good news is that they will be contemptuously dismissed by the Arabs, who are going for the whole enchilada.
Israel is facing a very difficult period in the near future. The way to traverse it successfully is to take a stance that is positive rather than apologetic or conciliatory.
Technorati Tags: Israel, Arabs, Palestinian statehood
