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Normally I don’t bother with Larry Derfner because he is almost a caricature of the extreme anti-Israel Israeli. But his latest piece, “Clueless in Gaza” illustrates a few things in addition to the fact that Israel’s commitment to freedom of speech is formidable (and that Derfner’s choice of titles is unoriginal).

Derfner argues that the ‘siege’ of Gaza is ineffective, immoral and provides a propaganda advantage to Hamas. He suggests that

…what we should do about Gaza is finally, genuinely, end the occupation. Let the people there come and go by sea and air like people do in a free country. Let the trucks go through Israel into Gaza with no more than normal inspection.

As for Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the other terrorist groups – we are beating the living hell out of them. Maybe they’re more afraid of us than we are of them. Maybe if we keep in mind the stark imbalance of power in our favor, we can go back to the cease-fire and avoid the “big operation” everyone’s predicting….

I repeat: The war Israel is fighting with Gaza is the most one-sided war on earth. If the point is to end it, or at least begin to end it, the ball is not in Hamas’s court – it’s in ours.

Let’s begin at the end. Is it a one-sided war? Derfner writes as though the conflict between Israel and Hamas is actually between Israel and Hamas. He ignores the very significant fact that Hamas — and Hezbollah, and Syria — are just the point of the spear which is wielded by Iran. The Palestinians are happy to play this role because they think that they can turn the clock back to 1947.

By presenting one aspect of the larger conflict out of context, Derfner — and most of the anti-Israel Left — can say that a powerful Israel is oppressing a powerless Arab population. But considering the forces arrayed against Israel, it is not one-sided at all.

Is the blockade immoral? Derfner claims along with Hamas that civilians are suffering greatly. But everything imaginable, including zoo animals and designer jeans, has been smuggled through the Sinai Subway.  Derfner criticizes Israel for crying ‘Pallywood’, but do not pictures show candlelit Hamas meetings with bright daylight showing around drawn curtains? Other photos show fully-stocked Gaza markets. It is true that Hamas’ top priority for allocating resources is its army, but this is hardly Israel’s fault.

Is the blockade ineffective? On this point I have to agree with Derfner. They are getting weapons and supplies through the massive subway to Egypt (towns in the northern Sinai are having trouble getting fuel because it is all being smuggled into Gaza).   ‘Humanitarian’ shipments of cement have been diverted by Hamas into building an “underground city” of bunkers and missile launchers. Army radio reported that aerial photography shows almost no evidence of above-ground construction taking place since cement imports resumed in July. The blockade is neither bringing down Hamas nor keeping them from arming, training and building fortifications.

But the answer is not to go back to the cease-fire, which is simply a way for Hamas to prepare for war without Israeli interference.

The one fundamental, irreducible, undeniable fact is that Hamas, with Iranian backing, is getting militarily stronger every day and fully intends to be part of a major assault against Israel — probably in concert with Hezbollah and Syria — when it is ready.

Unlike Israel’s Arab neighbors and Iran, there is no possibility of making peace with Hamas. Hamas’ very reason for being is to pursue the replacement of Israel with an Islamist Arab state by armed conflict. They do not deny this and the only option they offer for ‘peace’ is a temporary truce.

The question is not “will there be a war with Hamas?” but rather “will the war be at a time and in a manner of Israel’s choosing or that of Hamas?”

Israeli policy so far has been to put off the confrontation as long as possible. This is understandable, since it is expected to be be bloody and expensive for both sides. But it is an irrational policy because the balance of power is moving against Israel in many ways: Hamas is building up its offensive and defensive capabilities, Hamas and its supporters are making their case effectively in the media (which will translate into more foreign pressure on Israel), and the US is about to install an administration which will be even more likely than the present one to intervene to prevent Israel from obtaining a conclusive victory over Hamas.

Here are some possible solutions to the problem of Gaza:

1. Derfner’s solution: Surrender, present Hamas with another victory. First they drove Israel out of Gaza by force of arms, and now they’ve “broken the siege”. The result will be the worldwide legitimization of Hamas, which will likely push Fatah aside as the representative of all Palestinians. Their military buildup will continue even more rapidly. At some point there will be a coordinated attack on Israel by Hamas and Hezbollah and possibly Syria, supported and commanded by Iran.
2. Cut off Medusa’s heads: Kill as many of Hamas’ leaders as possible with targeted strikes. Keep doing this as they appoint new ones.
3. Apply a real blockade: Invade the Philadelphi corridor (the area along the Gaza/Egypt border), destroy the tunnels, end all commerce and transit with Gaza, cut electricity and water. Starve them out (possibly with some targeted assassinations of Hamas leaders). Tell Ban Ki-Moon and the EU to go to hell — Israel is at war and Hamastan is the enemy. How is this different from the strategic bombing done by the Allies in WWII?
4. Confront Hamas: Invade Gaza, crush Hamas completely. Kill as many fighters and leaders as possible. Tell Condoleezza Rice or President Obama’s Secretary of State to go to hell. Disadvantages of this are that there would be many casualties on both sides, a way would have to be found to keep Hezbollah (etc.) from joining in, and the US might not agree to go to hell. Possibly the moment for this has passed.
5. Do nothing but hope for the best: Hamas will get stronger. The international community will continue to apply pressure to weaken the blockade until Hamas will declare victory. Little by little it will become legitimate in the eyes of the world. At some point there will be a coordinated attack on Israel by Hamas and Hezbollah and possibly Syria, supported and commanded by Iran.

There is no doubt in my mind that Israel, under Olmert — who is Prime Minister until February at least — has chosen strategy 5. It is guaranteed to fail as badly as 1; indeed, there is very little difference between them in practice.

What needs to happen is some variation or combination  of 2-4, and it needs to happen before January 20 when the new US president takes office. Does anyone believe that it will?

Technorati Tags: Israel, Gaza, Larry Derfner

Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni got this right:

International acceptance of Israel’s right to exist is not enough, the world must accept Israel as a Jewish state, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni said Wednesday to the thousands of Jewish American leaders who had come to Jerusalem for the General Assembly of the United Jewish Communities.

“The world is willing to defend the right of the state of Israel to exist, this is the part of the requirement that the [Mideast] Quartet demands [of] Hamas. But I would like to add two more words to this demand of the quartet: They need to accept the right of Israel to exist as a Jewish state,” she said.  — Jerusalem Post

Unfortunately, she said it to the wrong audience. She should say it to the UN and to every foreign leader that she deals with, and in particular to Mahmoud Abbas and Salaam Fayad of the Palestinian authority, to Saudi Arabia, and to the leadership of the Israeli Arabs all of whom have categorically refused to accept this.

First of all, let’s get straight what a Jewish state is and is not. It is not a theocracy like Iran; its leaders are democratically elected from all segments of the population. It is not a state governed by halacha [Jewish law] analogous to Islamic states such as Iran or Saudi Arabia in which the legal system is based upon shaaria. Although family law in Israel is in the domain of religious authorities (but not only  Jewish ones — Muslims, Christians and others also follow their traditions and authorities in this area), this is in no way essential to the Jewishness of the state.

The definition of the Jewish state is that it is the political realization of the Jewish people in the historical land of Israel –  am yisrael b’eretz israel. Anti-Semites, extreme leftists and other enemies of the Jewish state understand this and try to attack the concept of the Jewish people or the provenance of the Jews in the land of Israel. But the more scientific evidence — evidence from modern genetics and archaeology — is uncovered, the more unfounded these claims are seen to be.

It is instructive that so many find the idea of a Jewish state — even a democratic one in which non-Jews can vote — so unacceptable, so 19th century or worse, and at the same time do not complain about the myriad absolute monarchies and dictatorships, the nationalistic states of Europe, the Islamic republics and kingdoms, and the states (like the UK) with established religions.

Palestinians do not accept that Israel is a Jewish state because they believe that Jewish control of the land is illegitimate. They don’t accept the Zionist claim to purchased land, the Balfour declaration of 1917, the UN partition decision of 1947 or the outcome of the War of Independence that followed. They do not accept any responsibility for the consequences of their actions and those of their allies that caused their nakba. They are historically, legally and morally wrong about this but I and no one else will convince them of it, since — even among the secular Palestinians, in a sense — this has become a religious issue. This fact has had and will continue to have tragic consequences.

Nevertheless it is the responsibility of Israel’s leadership to insist upon the concept of the Jewish state in every venue. Nothing is more important for, as Livni said, this is “the raison d’être of the state of Israel.”

Technorati Tags: Israel, Tzipi Livni, Jewish state

Thanks to prolific commenter Shalom Freedman for calling this current item to my attention:

The Middle East is in danger of accumulating large stocks of nuclear material over the next decade that could be used to produce over 1,700 nuclear bombs, a U.S. research center has projected in a newly released report.

The Institute for Science and International Security [ISIS], headed by David Albright, one the world’s top experts on nuclear weapons and the prevention of nuclear proliferation, recently released its report urging president-elect Barack Obama to take a number of measures to avoid such an outcome, including convincing Israel to halt production of its nuclear weapons.

“The Obama administration should make a key priority of persuading Israel to join the negotiations for a universal, verified treaty that bans the production of plutonium and highly enriched uranium for nuclear explosives, commonly called the Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty (FMCT),” the institute argued. “As an interim step, the United States should press Israel to suspend any production of fissile material for nuclear weapons…” — Ha’aretz

The UN’s nuclear ‘watchdog’ Mohammed ElBaradei was even more forthright in 2004:

“This is not really sustainable that you have Israel sitting with nuclear weapons capability there while everyone else is part of the non-proliferation regime,” ElBaradei told The Sydney Morning Herald.

ElBaradei said Muslims in the surrounding region resented Israel’s nuclear arsenal and wanted it to be part of the non-proliferation program.

“It is a very emotional issue in the Middle East,” ElBaradei said.  — Ha’aretz

Emotional indeed. ElBaradei went on to say that he was ‘encouraged’ by Iran’s agreement to suspend enrichment (remember that?),

But he warned that getting Tehran to give up any ambition to develop nuclear weapons would depend on whether Israel was brought into the equation…

Commenting on Israel’s stance that a comprehensive peace settlement must be in place before nuclear disarmament could go ahead, ElBaradei recommended a compromise.

“My take on this is that we will probably need to do the two together in tandem,” he said. “You need a security structure to undergird, if you like, protect, that peace process.”

The idea that Iran is building nuclear weapons to protect itself against aggression from Israel is beyond absurd — except perhaps in the halls of the UN. And the suggestion that Israel should give up her last-ditch deterrent against an attack with weapons of mass destruction — which have been stockpiled by her enemies — while she is effectively at war, is nothing less then a demand for national suicide. But ElBaradei is a UN man and an Egyptian to boot, so what else should one expect?

The ISIS report is another matter. There’s no doubt that it will be taken seriously by the incoming administration. Although it does not call for Israel to divest herself of existing weapons now, this is the ultimate goal:

To reduce the risk of proliferation in the Middle East and help lay the basis for a regionwide nuclear weapon free zone (NWFZ), the United States must ensure that plutonium is not separated from irradiated reactor fuel, insist on adequate international inspections of these countries, including the adoption of the Additional Protocol, and develop mechanisms to remove spent fuel from the region.  [my emphasis]

“These countries” include “Iran, Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Yemen, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, Iraq … Israel [and] Turkey”.  This is another example of the “you guys stop fighting” syndrome, which everyone remembers from his or her schooldays, in which the authority figure makes no attempt to distinguish between the bullies and the bullied.

It’s safe to say that if there is one country in the world which actually needs nuclear weapons it’s ‘the Jew among nations’, Israel. And although it sounds naive in today’s media climate, the truth is that Israel would like nothing more than to live at peace with her neighbors, while they would like nothing more than to destroy her. 

The argument that proliferation would be reduced if Israel gets rid of her capability would only be true if her enemies sought nuclear weapons out of fear that Israel would attack them. But the majority of Israelis and their leadership have made it clear that they do not want to expand the territory under their control.  And Israel has acted in a way consistent with this belief, shedding the Sinai and Gaza and leaving southern Lebanon.

Indeed, if Israel did not have nuclear capability, then it would be advantageous for her enemies to obtain it themselves, since it could then be used against Israel without fear of a counterstrike! Furthermore, if Israel gave up her deterrent it would increase the possibility of a chemical/biological attack, which historically has been deterred by fear of a nuclear response.

The ISIS report, in its narrow focus on the sheer quantity of nuclear material in the region without considering the ramifications of who possesses it and what they might do with it, does not do the cause of peace any favors.  In fact, the argument is so bad that one suspects that it is being made now and in this form to act as support and cover for a deal in which Israel’s deterrent will traded for an Iranian promise.

Technorati Tags: Israel, ISIS, nuclear weapons, proliferation, Middle East, Iran

Baker, Brzezinski, Malley, Mearsheimer, Scowcroft, Walt, etc. have all been called foreign policy realists. What are they being realistic about?

In connection with the Middle East, there are apparently two things:

1. There are far more Arabs and Persians than Israelis. There are 24 Arab nations in the Middle East and Africa with about 325 million people (Iran has another 70 million).  On a map large enough to show them all, Israel with its 6 million people is almost invisible.
2. About 56% of the world’s petroleum reserves are found in five Arab countries and Iran.

Now it so happens that almost all 25 nations — their leadership and the man in the street — are more or less hostile to Israel, from the openly confrontational Iran and Syria to the ‘cold peace’ of Egypt and Jordan. The realists believe that facts 1) and 2) above imply that American policy should tilt toward these nations and against Israel.

There are other facts, but because they do not bear on questions of power they are not taken into account by realists. Examples of such facts are that Israel is the most free and democratic nation in the Mideast, that Israel is entirely legitimate under a fair reading of international law, and that despite pro-Arab historical revisionism, the existence of a Jewish state in the land of Israel is morally justified.

And then there is one more fact that does not appear on realist radar: the intentions of many of the state and non-state players in the Mideast toward Israel are frankly genocidal.

All these are irrelevant to the realist who is only concerned with hard relationships of power and economics. However, there are some power-related facts that have kept Israel alive despite almost continuous challenges from her enemies. One of the most important ones is the impossible-to-ignore Israeli nuclear deterrent. Although a weapon of absolute last resort, it gives Syria, for example, with its tens of thousands of conventional and biochemical warheads aimed at Israel, something to think very carefully about. I suggest that even mighty Russia can’t entirely ignore this factor.

The realist point of view seems to have taken hold of Bush Administration policy. It was expressed in the Iraq Study Group report of December 2006, and is the driving force behind the ‘Annapolis process’, whose goal is to create a Palestinian state, above all. Judging by President Elect Obama’s choice of advisors and by reading between the lines of his very guarded comments, it appears that his administration is likely to be even more ‘realistic’ about the Mideast than this.

During the campaign Obama advocated engagement of nations hostile to both the US and Israel such as Iran and Syria, and the exercise of ‘tough diplomacy’ to achieve such goals as ending the Iranian nuclear weapons program. Critics asked exactly what leverage we would have in diplomatic talks, given that we have made it clear that military options and actually painful sanctions are off the table. There has been no clear answer.

What we didn’t ask was “who will the ‘tough diplomacy’ be tough on?” And the answer isn’t ‘Iran and Syria’.

Caroline Glick writes,

By pressuring Israel to cede land to Syria and the Palestinians, Obama’s apparent foreign policy will provide Iran with still more territory from which to attack Israel both through its terror proxies and with its expanding ballistic missile arsenal. By embracing the Syrian regime in spite of its support for terrorism, its nuclear proliferation activities and its subversion of Lebanon, the incoming Obama administration will embolden Syria to increase its subversion of Lebanon and Iraq, while strengthening its ties to Iran still further.

As for direct talks with Iran itself, the question immediately arises, what could Obama offer Teheran in exchange for an end to its nuclear program that Bush hasn’t already offered?

What it can offer is Israel.

Over the past few years, Obama’s top nuclear nonproliferation adviser, Joe Cirincione, has repeatedly advocated placing Israel’s nuclear arsenal on the negotiating table and offering it up in exchange for an Iranian pledge to end its nuclear program. Defense Secretary Robert Gates – whom Obama is considering retaining – insinuated in his 2006 confirmation hearings that Iran is only building nuclear weapons to defend itself against Israel. Gates, it should be recalled, has been instrumental in convincing Bush not only not to attack Iran’s nuclear installations, but not to support an Israeli attack against Iran’s nuclear installations. [my emphasis]

So that’s the gist of it (but read all of Glick’s excellent article). Of course Obama and his officials will continue to insist that the security of Israel is paramount, and that the US will not allow it to be compromised — just as he did during his campaign.  But there’s no question that an Israel without its nuclear deterrent would shortly cease to exist.

While this may not be the intention of Barack Obama, it is a consequence of the realist policy — in essence, to sacrifice the interests of small and economically insignificant Israel in favor of those of the massive oil powers of the region. And those interests include the elimination of Israel.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Obama, realists, tough diplomacy, Iran, Syria