FresnoZionism.org — ציונות פרסנו

Last week I wrote about a high Iranian official’s anti-Jewish remarks and suggested that they consituted a threat and incitement to genocide. Yesterday (July 3), the State Department finally issued a statement in the name of spokeswoman Victoria Nuland:

We strongly condemn Iranian First Vice-President Mohammad Reza Rahimi’s vile anti-Semitic and racist comments on June 26 at the International Day Against Drug Abuse conference in Tehran. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) has confirmed that the conference was not held under UN auspices, nor did officials in attendance have any idea that Rahimi would level such offensive charges. Both UN Secretary-General Ban-Ki Moon and UNODC Executive Director Yury Fedotov registered their dismay and serious concern over Rahimi’s anti-Semitic speech and issued a statement July 3 calling on Iranian officials to refrain from these kinds of anti-Semitic statements.

It is strange that it took more than a week for State to notice, and that the statement was made by Nuland and not Secretary of State Clinton. After all, since June 26, Ms Clinton had time to comment on the Solomon Islands’ and Venezuelan independence days, the national days of the Congo,  Rwanda, Somalia and Burundi, and of course Canada day; speak at the dedication of Sumner Welles Street in Riga, Latvia; speak at the Climate Clean Air and Green Embassy event in Helsinki, Finland; and much more. She also gave interviews to NPR and CNN during which she did not mention the affair.

The last sentence of the press release is very misleading. Ban-Ki Moon publicly condemned Rahimi’s remarks on the day after they were made. So did the EU Foreign Minister Catherine Ashton, no particular friend of Israel. And so did the Italian Foreign Minister and the UK Foreign Office.

So why did our State Department wait 8 days to notice? And why was the statement made by Nuland and not our own “Foreign Minister?”

The statement that the conference “was not held under UN auspices” is mysterious. UN officials were present, as were European diplomats (some of whom expressed shock at Rahimi’s remark). Original reports said it was “co-sponsored by the UN and Iran.”  The impression is unavoidable that the State Department is more concerned about the possibility of a slur against the UN — which for once appears innocent — than about the Iranian’s Hitlerist remarks.

It is embarrassing that the US, given the Obama Administration’s constant repetition of its ‘unbreakable bonds’ with Israel should be so late and tepid in its response. It is not so surprising, though, given the administration’s practical actions to distance itself from Israel.

Technorati Tags: US State Department, Iran, Jew hatred

News item:

Israel sought a $1 billion IMF bridging loan for the Palestinian Authority earlier this year, but was turned down, an Israeli newspaper said Monday in a report confirmed to AFP by a senior Israeli official.

Haaretz reported that Israel’s central bank chief Stanley Fischer approached the International Monetary Fund for the money after discussing the Palestinian Authority’s financial crisis with Palestinian prime minister Salam Fayyad.

Absurd, isn’t it: Israel should take a loan to support an organization that officially considers Jews the offspring of apes and pigs and which venerates ‘heroes’ like Samir Kuntar and Dalal Mughrabi whose heroism consisted of murdering Jewish children?

I suppose I can understand the reasoning of the Israeli government: if the Palestinian Authority (PA) were to collapse, it would be replaced by Hamas or worse. Israel would lose whatever leverage it has over corrupt PA officials, and there would be an end to ‘security cooperation’ (PA people arresting or helping Israel to arrest Hamas terrorists). In the short term there would be more terrorism.

But I am not sure propping up the PA is a good long-term policy for Israel. The PLO-run PA does not differ from Hamas and more extreme elements in its ultimate goal: the elimination of Jewish sovereignty and the replacement of Israel with an Arab state. Its strategy differs — it endeavors to present a ‘moderate’ image to external observers — and perhaps it is marginally more corrupt than Hamas, but that is not to say that it is less likely to achieve its objective.

What is dangerous about the PA is that while its existence reduces the chances of a military confrontation in the near term, it facilitates the longer-term diplomatic war against Israel.

The PA enables the US president to demand that Israel stop construction in Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem and withdraw to the indefensible 1949 armistice lines. The PA manipulates UN agencies like UNESCO, which it uses to deny Jewish history.

The existence of the PA is necessary to the myth of a ‘peace process’ — the idea that somehow there can be a negotiation between Israel and the Palestinians that will result in a partition of the land which will end the conflict and cause the Arabs to accept the existence of a Jewish state.

The myth has been refuted over and over by the words of Mahmoud Abbas and other PA leaders, who insist that they will not recognize Israel as the state of the Jewish people, regardless of borders.

The PA is ‘unnatural’. It exists only because it is supported by the US, the UN and Israel. It was created by the failed Oslo process, which was based on the aforementioned myth.

Maybe the myth, and the PA, has outlived its utility. Maybe it is time for the Palestinian Arabs to stand on their own, without subsides, without special UN agencies, departments, “special rapporteurs,” etc. Maybe they should have to accept the consequences of their multiple refusals to compromise, to accept a sovereign state when offered, and rather to insist that only the elimination of Jewish sovereignty would be acceptable to them.

Would this make them more ‘realistic’? Probably not.

Perhaps they will choose Hamas or perhaps they will descend into civil strife. It is not Israel’s responsibility to protect them from themselves, only to defend herself against aggression if that is the path they take.

As I’ve argued before, Israel should unilaterally establish a defensible eastern border. It’s been 64 years since the War of Independence, and it should be clear by now that the Arabs in general, and the Palestinian Arabs in particular, are not prepared to agree to the permanent existence of a Jewish state.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Palestinian Authority

I just started reading Jonathan Haidt’s “The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion.” It is probably the most gripping book about moral philosophy and psychology that I’ve ever read, and that isn’t an oxymoron.

His ideas go a long way toward answering the question, “why is the pro-Israel side doing so poorly in the information war and how can we fix it?”

One of Haidt’s important insights is that judgments of right and wrong are based on intuition and only later justified by rational argument. The moral intuitions of different cultures — and different social groups within a culture — place different emphases on principles like avoiding harm or suffering, fairness, liberty, loyalty, authority and sanctity. The latter three are almost entirely not operative in liberal Western cultures, but very important, even predominant, in others.

If we accept his view, two things follow:

1. Different groups take pro- or anti-Israel positions because of pre-rational cognitions — intuitions — that they may not verbalize, and indeed may be different from their ‘official’ reasoning.
2. Appeals to logic will be ineffective, unless there is also an appeal to the intuitive ‘triggers’ that control  moral perceptions.

For example, most Arab Muslims — probably most Muslims — intuitively find the idea of Jewish sovereignty in the Mideast repugnant. It represents a usurpation of the natural order of things, wrong. We are not going to reason them out of this intuition, which is deeply embedded in their culture, by arguing that they would be better off economically if they accepted the existence of the Jewish state and cooperated with it.

Now let’s consider an American that would call herself ‘progressive’. Her most powerful moral intuitions are based on fairness and avoidance of harm. She may have a visceral dislike of ‘militarism’ and an automatic sympathy for the underdog. She will not be persuaded by arguments that the Jews have the right to settle anywhere in the land of Israel by international law, and even less so by saying that the Jews have a biblical mandate to the land (interestingly, the latter is considered persuasive by Muslims, which is why they work so hard to refute it by denying Jewish history).

Our progressive is very affected by stories about the IDF harming civilians (especially children) and might say something about Israel’s military might being brought to bear on the weak and miserable Palestinian people.

If I were trying to change her mind, I would explain that the conflict is accurately described not as Israel oppressing the weak Palestinians, but rather as the powerful Arab world and Iran trying to destroy Israel. I would explain how the Palestinians have been exploited by the Arabs as their most effective weapon against Israel. And I would refute atrocity stories against the IDF, like the Mohammad Dura libel.

I would stress that Israel is not a militaristic society and that it is not interested in conquest (and indeed has given up most of the territory conquered in 1967).

I think that there is a possibility to reach the liberal or progressive community this way.

One group for which there is no hope is those whose anti-Zionism grows out of simple antisemitism. The antisemite finds Jews intuitively repugnant, and therefore even more so a Jewish state. There are more of these out there than you may think, especially in Europe.

What about those Jews who place themselves in the forefront of the anti-Zionist movement? The Max Blumenfelds, the M. J. Rosenbergs? They too have a reflexive intuition that drives their judgments, possibly an Oslo Syndrome reaction based on the internalization of antisemitic attitudes and subconscious fear of becoming a target themselves. I don’t have an idea of how to reach them, short of intensive psychotherapy.

I don’t want to try to carry out this analysis in detail until I have finished Haidt’s book. But I think the idea of the non-rational, intuitive basis for moral, and therefore political, judgments is tremendously fruitful for understanding political behavior and how to influence it.

Technorati Tags: Jonathan Heidt, moral intuition, political behavior, Israel

Neturei Karta leader Rabbi Moshe Hirsch shakes hands with the Devil, 2003

In a democratic state where freedom of expression is cherished, can we place limits on expression when the very foundation of that state is attacked? Is there a point at which the state can say “if that’s how you feel, go live somewhere else?”

News item,

Three members of the radical ultra-Orthodox sect Neturei Karta were arrested on Tuesday on suspicion that they had vandalized a Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial earlier this month as well as several additional sites commemorating fallen IDF soldiers in the Jordan Valley.

“Hitler, thank you for the wonderful Holocaust” was one of the slogans spray painted some two weeks ago on the open campus of Yad Vashem, Israel’s main Holocaust memorial site…

Judea and Samaria District Police found spray cans in the suspects’ homes as well as posters inciting against the state and PLO flags, Army Radio reported Tuesday…

The three, aged 18, 26 and 27, call themselves the “Palestine Jews.” They confessed to the crimes and remarked that they had committed the act out of hatred toward the Zionist entity and the state.

There is no doubt that if they are convicted of the crime of vandalism they should be punished. But is the state required to tolerate residents who express hatred of “the Zionist entity” in any form?

In the US, almost all such expression is permitted (there are exceptions). But the population here is almost 312 million people, and only a tiny proportion of those want to overthrow the Constitution. Israel has about 7.6 million, and when you include fanatics like the “Palestine Jews,” Arab nationalists, Islamists, and extreme leftists or anarchists, it becomes a significant proportion of the population.

Consider the extreme academic Left, which literally dominates academic departments in some Israeli universities. They regularly call for a binational state, support boycott-divestment-sanctions, compare Israel to Nazi Germany, sign petitions favoring a right of return for Arab refugees, etc. (details are here).

Another example is the Israeli Arab (oops, ‘Palestinian resident of Israel’) organization Adalah. Supported by the US-based New Israel Fund, Adalah is openly anti-Zionist, advocating for a right of return, for Israel to admit its guilt and compensate Arabs for the nakba [disaster] that was the founding of the state, change its flag and national anthem, and give Arabs a veto power over all decisions of the Knesset.

Then there is the Islamic Movement in Israel. The leader of its Northern Branch, Ra’ed Saleh, openly supports Hamas and has incited riots in Jerusalem several times with claims that Israel is trying to destroy the al-Aqsa mosque.

The vandals of Neturei Karta have been around for years, appearing at anti-Israel demonstrations around the world. They were paid by Yasser Arafat and even visited Tehran where they embraced Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. There are other Hareidi extremists that are less well-known, but also oppose the Jewish state, while accepting its charity and protection.

When does this become too much for a small state which does not lack for external threats?

There is a word for the behavior of the groups described here — sedition — and a surprising number of liberal democracies have laws against it. Perhaps Israel should as well?

Technorati Tags: Israel, free speech

I spent the weekend in the Sierra at 8500 feet. No Internet, not even cell service. When I returned, I found that the army had allowed Mohammad Morsi to be elected president of Egypt. Although the struggle for control isn’t over, I think that barring a violent confrontation (which the generals don’t appear to want), what we can expect is a gradual consolidation of power into the hands of the Muslim Brotherhood.This doesn’t mean that war with Israel is imminent or inevitable, but it does mean that it will be impossible to depend on Egyptian security forces to prevent — or even to not abet — terrorism on the southern border. It also means that the position of Hamas, the Palestinian arm of the Muslim Brotherhood, will be greatly strengthened.

This is just one of the recent developments that have increased pressure on Israel. The emergence of Turkey as a hostile power, the determination of Iran in pursuit of nuclear weapons and the West’s tepid response, the ascendance of Hizballah in Lebanon, the threat from Syria’s non-conventional arsenal, the weakness of  the non-hostile (we can’t quite use the adjective ‘friendly’) regime in Jordan, the unprecedented anti-Israel atmosphere in much of Europe — all of these combine to make Israel’s security situation as dangerous as it has been at any time since 1948.

As I wrote last week, the lever that Israel’s enemies depend on, our own Sudeten Germans, are the Palestinian Arabs. At this historical moment, as external threats mount, so does the force applied to this lever. It is absolutely necessary to develop a consistent and reality-based policy towards the Arabs of the territories (and also the so-called ‘Palestinian citizens of Israel’, as well as the Arabs who are permanent residents of Jerusalem but choose not to be citizens). But we continue to be bombarded with fantasies that have nothing to do with the world in which we live.

Martin Sherman boils over with frustration at the disconnect between the prescriptions offered and the real world:

Take for instance Dennis Ross’s latest “contribution” at this week’s Presidential Conference in Jerusalem – where he prescribed that Israel should not only undermine its security, but its economy as well, “to restore belief in a two-state solution.”

Predictably, Ross studiously disregarded the fact, once so compellingly conveyed by his host Shimon Peres, that “if a Palestinian state is established, it will be armed to the teeth. Within it there will be bases of the most extreme terrorist forces, who will be equipped with anti-tank and anti-aircraft shoulder-launched rockets, which will endanger not only random passersby, but also every airplane and helicopter taking off in the skies of Israel and every vehicle traveling along the major traffic routes in the Coastal Plain.”

Ross suggested that the first step Israel should take to demonstrate that it is serious about a Palestinian state in the “West Bank” is to publicly announce that the government will provide financial compensation to settlers who are prepared to leave their homes and to move to “Israel proper.”

Of course Ross, who today serves as a counselor for the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, and was a senior director in Barack Obama’s National Security Council, offered no assurances that what is sweeping through the Arab world would not sweep through “Palestine” or what occurred in Gaza would not occur in Ramallah. Nevertheless, he suggested that the government go ahead and plan not only to bring millions more Israelis within the range of weapons being used today from territory Israel ceded to the Palestinians, but it should take measures that would increase both the demand (and hence the price) of housing in country, and the unemployment. Stupid or subversive?

Even in the early 1990’s, when Iran and Iraq were exhausted and the Soviet Union had recently collapsed, the chance of a positive outcome from a “two-state solution” was negligible. Arafat’s PLO insisted — on pain of death — that it was the “sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people,” and of course as we found out, had no intention of creating a peaceful state alongside Israel.

Today, after almost 20 years of Arafat’s educational system and media, the rise of Hamas, and the Second Intifada (which some call “the Oslo War”), the idea that yet another partition of the land set aside for “close Jewish settlement” by the Palestine Mandate could somehow end the conflict is as likely as the development of a perpetual motion machine or warp drive (actually, warp drive is more practical).

Despite this, the official position of the Government of Israel and its “hardline, right-wing” Prime Minister is to seek such a partition. The intention of the Obama Administration is to try to make it happen, almost entirely by pressuring Israel to make concessions. The official positions of the Jewish Federations of North America and the Union of Reform Judaism support it (in the US, opposition to the two-state solution is a litmus test for extremism of the Right or Left). And of course, many ‘experts’ like Dennis Ross have been presenting it as the Holy Grail since the 1980’s.

Sherman is almost beyond words:

For in light of the recurring failure of [the two-staters] prognoses, there are only two explanations for their obduracy – malice or idiocy. And whatever the truth is, it must be exposed.

As I like to say, “stupid or evil?” But there is a third possibility: mental illness, in particular, “Oslo Syndrome”. That’s another topic.

In any event, Sherman does not vent his anger only on the Left:

But when confronted with such infuriating dogmatism on the one hand, and inept dereliction on the other, everyone has his limit when it comes to courtesy and decorum.

And there are indeed limits – a limit to how long one can extend the benefit of the doubt to those who insist on advancing a consistently failed policy and still continue to believe they are doing so in good faith.

Or a limit on continuing to believe that those who ostensibly oppose this policy, but refrain from offering any real alternative, are sincere in their opposition to it. [my emphasis]

Mea culpa. I am one who criticizes the Left but doesn’t present alternatives. So I will outline an alternative now. I will leave it to the experts to fill in the details.

The Left continually says that the status quo is unacceptable; that if Israel doesn’t take “bold steps for peace” (by which they mean some form of surrender), then the international community will force Israel to accept a solution which will be worse for it. I am not sure about what the “international community” can or cannot do, but I do understand that the status quo is bad.

It is bad for the Jewish residents of Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem who have to deal with ongoing ‘misdemeanor terrorism’ like stone-throwing, which can easily become felony terrorism, like murder. It is bad for Israelis inside the Green Line, for the same reason. It is bad for Israel’s economy, and it is bad for Israelis who have to do reserve duty. It is bad because the so-called ‘occupation’ is used to transform self-defense into oppression, providing a never-ending justification for anti-Israel UN resolutions, prosecutions of officials, ‘human-rights’ investigations, etc.

The Left is right: the status quo is unacceptable. And they are right that it cannot continue forever. World opinion is increasingly getting used to the mistaken idea that the territories are ‘Palestinian’. Israel needs to take “bold steps.” For example:

1. Israel will issue a white paper explaining that the Jewish people are the primary benficiary of the Mandate, and have prima facie rights to settle in all of the territory from the Mediterranean to the Jordan.
2. The paper will also state that the PLO has abrogated the Oslo agreements by continuing terrorism (to the point of war) and incitement, by not changing its charter, and by presenting a unilateral declaration of statehood to the UN.
3. Israel will determine what parts of Judea and Samaria are either heavily populated by Jews, or strategically or historically important, and annex these areas. Arabs living in them will have the option of accepting Israeli citizenship or receiving compensation and leaving.
4. Part of the application for citizenship — for anyone, Jew or Arab — will be a declaration of loyalty to a Jewish, democratic state. Incidentally, this is presently a requirement for Knesset membership (Meir Kahane was not allowed to take his seat on these grounds). It should be enforced for Arab MKs too.
5. Israel will close and defend its borders.

Will there be an outcry in the “international community?” You bet. But the aforesaid “community” is now fixed on the idea that the only solution is to force Israel to commit suicide by agreeing to a partition that will provide its enemies a platform to destroy it. So there will be an outcry anyway.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Martin Sherman, two-state solution