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Obama speaks at AIPAC yesterday.

Politicians tailor their speeches to their audiences, so President Obama’s AIPAC speech will represent the most pro-Israel interpretation of his positions.

It is very important for him to improve his relationship with the pro-Israel segment of the US Jewish community before the election. This is an older demographic, Jews who vote and donate to their party — and many of them live in the important swing state of Florida. Many of these Jews would very much like to vote for Obama because of his social and economic policies, but are deterred by the anti-Israel image that he has developed.

So despite the fact that Jews make up 1.7% of the population (and Jews that care about Israel less than this), it is important for the President to woo these voters. There is also a large community of pro-Israel Christians, but they overwhelmingly lean Republican, and his stance toward Israel is only one of many reasons that they dislike Obama.

The AIPAC speech is the best we will get; even if Obama does not explicitly renege on his commitments, the interpretation of them as actual policy after the election will be somewhat less positive. Keep in mind that many administration functionaries are actively hostile to Israel.

So let’s look at the important points of the speech.

First, there are a lot of statements about “America’s unbreakable bond” and the the President’s “unprecedented” commitment to Israel’s security. While they produce a warm feeling, they do not imply specific actions. They are vague enough that they have been used to justify, for example, pressuring Israel to make dangerous concessions to the Palestinians. With all due respect, this is fluff which is best ignored.

Second, the President devotes significant time to rehearsing the ways in which his administration has supported Israel. Again with all due respect, he is unconvincing.

Yes, his administration vetoed an anti-Israel resolution in the Security Council, but then Ambassador Susan Rice made a speech supporting the substance of the resolution. Yes, military assistance and security cooperation with Israel have been maintained, but this is not something new — Obama simply continued the policies of previous administrations and the dictates of Congress. Yes, the US supported Israel’s right to stop the blockade-breaking Mavi Marmara, but so did the UN’s Palmer Commission. And then the US pressured Israel to stop its economic warfare against Hamas, thus effectively converting the flotilla affair into a Hamas victory.

I think we also must remember the message sent by the President’s Cairo speech, in which he compared the Palestinian lack of a homeland (that is, their inability to destroy Israel) with the Holocaust, as well as his visits to numerous Muslim nations while pointedly avoiding Israel.

Lest we forget, Barry Rubin provides a partial list of some of the less-supportive aspects of administration policy:

For example, on Iran there were his long attempts to court Iran and failure to support the opposition; his slowness on pushing forward sanctions; efforts to reduce congressional sanctions’ proposals; and giving a free pass to Russia, China, and Turkey to break the sanctions.

On Syria, there was his courting of the Syrian regime despite its repression, antisemitism, and sabotage of peacemaking which continued until the revolution within the country forced him to reverse course, at which point his administration supported a Muslim Brotherhood-led opposition leadership.

And then there’s the history of the Israeli-Palestinian “peace process” policy that always gave the Palestinian Authority a pass and put the onus on Israel; all the events you know about;  the dissing of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu; the pressure on Israel to dismantle sanctions on the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip, and so on.

Finally, and most serious, is the policy toward revolutionary Islamists and their rule or takeover of Turkey, Egypt, Libya, and Tunisia.

Third, regarding the ‘peace process’, Obama reiterates his position that a two-state agreement with the Palestinians is urgent, despite the fact that that no Palestinian faction has agreed to recognize Israel as a Jewish state or commit to an end of the conflict. In the face of the galloping success of radical Islam in the region — including, very significantly, the certainty of Islamist control of Egypt and the de facto abrogation of the Camp David agreement — Obama makes the absurd assertion that “the changes taking place in the region make peace [read: Israeli withdrawal from the territories] more important, not less.”

There is no doubt that in a second term, Obama would continue to pressure Israel to make an ill-advised deal with the Palestinians.

Finally, and most critical, is what he promises concerning Iran.

He talks about his success in implementing sanctions. But in fact Congress and the Europeans took the lead, dragging the administration along. Most importantly, sanctions, while certainly having an effect on the Iranian economy, cannot force the Iranian regime to give up its project. They are leaky, and the dictatorial Iranian regime can divert resources from civilian purposes almost without limit. It will create unrest, but so what? The regime has already shown itself capable of shooting protesters in the streets.

There is only one way to stop Iran without actual military action: to make a credible threat of such action, a statement that “if you do x, then we will attack you.” But here is what the President said:

I have said that when it comes to preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, I will take no options off the table, and I mean what I say. That includes all elements of American power: a political effort aimed at isolating Iran, a diplomatic effort to sustain our coalition and ensure that the Iranian program is monitored, an economic effort that imposes crippling sanctions and, yes, a military effort to be prepared for any contingency.

Iran’s leaders should understand that I do not have a policy of containment; I have a policy to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. And as I have made clear time and again during the course of my presidency, I will not hesitate to use force when it is necessary to defend the United States and its interests.

What does he threaten here? A military effort to be prepared, not to act. And a general threat to use force when necessary to defend our interests, without defining the precise point at which those interests are violated. There is nothing new or particularly significant here.

It does not count as a credible threat to use force to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon. Without an American threat and since sanctions will not cause Iran to give up its program, only an Israeli attack (or threat thereof) can do so.

I do not think that the US should commit itself to go to war to defend Israel, which can defend itself. I do think that the prospect of an Iranian bomb is bad enough for US interests that we should be prepared to do whatever is necessary to prevent it. But I understand that the disastrous decisions of the previous administration to invade Iraq and to prosecute the war there as it did, as well as continued mistakes in Afghanistan by the present administration, have made it politically very difficult for the US to strike Iran today.

Therefore, from the standpoint of Israel, the best that can be expected from the US is a commitment to support Israel’s right and ability to take whatever actions it believes to be necessary to ensure its survival. What did Obama say that relates to this?

No Israeli government can tolerate a nuclear weapon in the hands of a regime that denies the Holocaust, threatens to wipe Israel off the map and sponsors terrorist groups committed to Israel’s destruction…

I know that Israeli leaders also know all too well the costs and consequences of war, even as they recognize their obligation to defend their country…

Iran’s leaders should have no doubt about the resolve of the United States – just as they should not doubt Israel’s sovereign right to make its own decisions about what is required to meet its security needs…

He seems to be saying saying that he will understand if Israel takes a decision to attack Iran. That is nice, but he has left open the question of what support the US would provide in that case. Such support could range from supplying bunker-busters or tankers or even providing midair refueling services (assuming that American tankers are capable of refueling Israeli planes), all the way to participating in an attack.

He has also not indicated how far he will go to pressure Israel to not attack. Other voices in the administration have recently been quite clear that it does not want to see an Israeli strike. Obama says that he thinks that diplomacy and sanctions should be given more time. At some point Israel will no longer agree with him. What then? It’s reasonable to expect that PM Netanyahu will ask him to be specific on these points at their meeting today.

Overall, there is nothing new or especially encouraging in this speech. Unless Obama makes some commitments to Netanyahu above and beyond what is here, Israel will be required to face the challenges of its enemies alone.

As always.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Obama, Iran

The woman responsible for the Sbarro Pizza bombing now hosts a talk show on "Quds TV"

A few words about Ahlam Tamimi, who was recently released as part of the Gilad Shalit swap.

On July 30, 2001, Tamimi, who was 20 years old, placed a bomb built into a beer can in a Jerusalem supermarket. The can was packed with explosive material plus rivets to serve as shrapnel — a home-made grenade. In order to avoid detection by security guards, she changed her clothes to look like a tourist, wearing a short top and pants. As she entered the store she pretended to be having a telephone conversation in English so that her handbag was not searched.

She placed the bomb on a shelf with similar beer cans, armed the device, and left the store. The bomb exploded, but although a large amount of damage was done, nobody was nearby. Here is a short snippet from an unofficial translation of some of the charges against her:

When the accused reached her home, she sent a message from her cellular phone to Mahmoud Daghlas [who provided the bomb] in which she expressed sadness that in the attack which she had carried out no-one had been injured, and apologized for it.

Because the explosion of the beer can had not caused any injuries, the accused told Mahmoud Daghlas that she demanded the devices be checked. The accused also said that if the results of attacks would be like this attack, devoid of injured persons, she would refuse to place further devices.

Her next operation was more ‘successful’. She selected the Sbarro Pizza restaurant as its site. On August 9, 2001, she brought a bomb built into a guitar by Hamas bomb-maker Abdallah Barghouti (who is still in an Israeli jail, although  his release was also demanded as part of the Shalit deal) to suicide bomber Izz-a-din al-Masry. She took al-Masry to the target in a taxi, gave him his final instructions, and left the scene. Al-Masry’s explosion ended the lives of 16 people, including 8 children.

For this she received 16 life sentences, one for each victim. She always insisted that she had no regrets, and would do it again if she had the opportunity.

Here is one of several videos available of interviews given by the charming Tamimi:

It is chilling to us to watch her smile as she is told that she murdered not 3 children, but 8. But it is important to understand that this woman is not a psychopath. She is quite simply convinced of the justness, indeed, the divine righteousness, of her cause.

Not only is she not a deviant psychologically, she is not one sociologically. One of the conditions of her release was that she would be exiled to Jordan, where she was treated to a hero’s welcome. She now hosts a TV talk show concerned with the plight of the remaining Palestinian Arab prisoners in Israel.

Ahlam Tamimi is the true face of the Palestinian Cause.

Technorati Tags: Ahlam Tamimi

So Joshua did as Moses told him, and fought with Amalek, while Moses, Aaron, and Hur went up to the top of the hill. Whenever Moses held up his hand, Israel prevailed, and whenever he lowered his hand, Amalek prevailed. But Moses’ hands grew weary, so they took a stone and put it under him, and he sat on it, while Aaron and Hur held up his hands, one on one side, and the other on the other side. -- Ex. 17, 10-12

I was recently honored by being asked to give a little talk about this Shabbat’s Torah portion to a minyan that I participate in. I thought my blog readers would find it interesting, too.

Since this is the week before Purim, there is a special maftir from Deuteronomy, one that is highly relevant to our situation today:

“Remember what Amalek did to you on the way as you came out of Egypt, how he attacked you on the way when you were faint and weary, and cut off your tail, those who were lagging behind you, and he did not fear God. Therefore when the Lord your God has given you rest from all your enemies around you, in the land that the Lord your God is giving you for an inheritance to possess, you shall blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven; you shall not forget.” – Deut. 25, 17-19

Amalek appears throughout the Tanach, always the bitterest enemy of the Jewish people. Amalek fought against Moses, Saul and David, often apparently destroyed, but always coming back to fight again. Haman was said to be a descendent of Amalek, and more recently so have Hitler and Ahmadinejad.

Historically there may have been Amalekites, but it’s not clear that the various biblical references relate to a single people. Probably not. But the concept of an Enemy is a natural one, an antithesis to the concept of a People.

Perhaps you can’t really define a people without also defining its enemies. Certainly many believe that if the Jews could get rid of the idea of peoplehood, then they wouldn’t have enemies. Shimon Peres likes to refer approvingly to “world citizenship,” as though it is an antidote to endless war with Amalek. In his 1993 book “The New Middle East,” he wrote that “In Western Europe, particularist nationalism is fading and the idea of ‘citizen of the world’ is taking hold,” and “The entire idea of the small national state – the Jewish state included – has collapsed …”

The experience of the 19^th century assimilationists and post-Oslo Israel tells us that this strategy doesn’t work in the real world. Even if we refuse to remember Amalek, he remembers us. And if we don’t have the support of self-conscious peoplehood (and its concrete representation, the Jewish state), how can we fight him?

The Book of Commandments (ספר המצוות) lists three commandments related to Amalek:

1. To remember Amalek (a positive commandment)
2. Not to forget Amalek (a negative one)
3. To destroy Amalek completely (the commandment Saul violated when he allowed Agag to live)

There are various explanations for the difference between 1 and 2 above. I like this one: 1 says that we must remember that we have enemies today who wish to destroy us. And 2 tells us not to drop our guard tomorrow – this situation is not going to change. As the quotation from Deuteronomy indicates, we must not forget Amalek, even when the Jewish people are sovereign in the land of Israel (this seems to be the part Shimon Peres doesn’t get).

What does it mean that we are required to “blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven?” It cannot mean that we are required, like Saul, to exterminate a tribe. Even if there was at some time a distinct  tribe of Amalek, it has long since disappeared as a distinct population. For this reason the rabbis warned us not to take this commandment literally.

I think – and it is appropriate that we are reading this parsha during Israel Apartheid Week – that what we are required to “blot out” are the false narratives of our enemies: the stories that they tell about the ‘crimes‘ of the Jewish people and Israel, including but not limited to

1. Deicide
2. Causing the Plague
3. Making matza from human blood
4. Controlling international finance and media
5. Dispossessing Arabs and stealing their land
6. Killing Mohammad Dura
7. Committing war crimes in Gaza
8. Imposing an apartheid regime

Our enemies today attack the Jewish people violently when they can, but they are not strong enough by themselves to damage us severely. Today’s Amalekite strategy is to bit by bit assassinate the truth about us, to create an image of an evil people in illegitimate possession of the land, in order to create a coalition that at best will stand by when we are assaulted and at worst actively prevent us from defending ourselves.

To summarize, here is how I would interpret the commandments relating to Amalek today:

1. Always be vigilant and prepared
2. Don’t be fooled by visions of peace through surrender
3. Tell our story loudly and fight the false narratives

Technorati Tags: Amalek, Israel

The "Little Boy": a simple fission bomb of the type that destroyed Hiroshima. The Iranian bomb will likely be more sophisticated.

Some years ago I had a job writing code for a large project. Every day my supervisor would come into my office and ask to see my progress. “Can’t you make the program display its opening screen and ‘Ready’ message?” he’d ask. No, I said, I was building data structures and writing subroutines. I was creating building blocks.

He was very unhappy. “You are not performing in this job. I need something to show management,” he said. I told him not to worry, my way of organizing a software development project was different from his.

One day he came in and I showed him that the program was almost complete. He was surprised. “How did you do all that so quickly?” he asked. He had simply assumed that I was goofing off during all those weeks that I was making the pieces. Fitting them together didn’t take long at all.

I think you know where this is going.

A useful nuclear weapon isn’t like a stone axe. It is a system made up of subsystems, which in turn have subsystems. You need the fissionable material, of course, which implies a whole set of systems to prepare it. You need to machine it, store it, handle it. You need a way to create a critical mass quickly, a non-trivial electromechanical problem. You need the appropriate control systems. You need to make it small and light enough and integrate it into a missile warhead or an aircraft system so that it can be delivered. You need to develop ways to simulate and ultimately test the weapon.

Many of the subsystems can be worked on in parallel. The building blocks can be created without assembling them into an actual deliverable weapon until the final stages of the project.

Iran is apparently taking this approach: create as much as possible of the subsystems first, and then put them together at the end.

But some say that there is a substantive difference between what they are doing and a weapons program. Juan Cole suggested in 2009 that Iran was only trying to assemble the technology and materials to build a weapon quickly if and when it decided it wanted one. This, according to Cole, doesn’t violate the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty or Islamic law which supposedly forbids random killing of civilians (both of these are doubtful, but never mind).

US officials have recently been talking like this too:

In Senate testimony on Jan. 31, James R. Clapper Jr., the director of national intelligence, stated explicitly that American officials believe that Iran is preserving its options for a nuclear weapon, but said there was no evidence that it had made a decision on making a concerted push to build a weapon. David H. Petraeus, the C.I.A. director, concurred with that view at the same hearing. Other senior United States officials, including Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta and Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have made similar statements in recent television appearances. (my emphasis)

This strategy is called ‘nuclear latency’, or the ‘Japan option’, since Japan has the technology, know-how and fissionable material to quickly build weapons if it decides to do so.

So, without the ability to read the minds of the Iranian leaders, how can we tell the difference between getting one’s ducks in a row in case one might want to shoot, and lining them up in order to shoot? Are they engaged in something less than a weapons program or is this only a question of project management methodology?

There is no doubt that Iran is developing technology that can only be used for weapons, as noted in the IAEA report of November 2011. For example, the report describes development of fast-acting detonators and a control system which can be used to fire multiple explosive charges at almost the same instant (within 1 microsecond), something for which there are few applications other than nuclear weapons. There are numerous other experiments and projects that are very highly probable to be weapons-related. Most of this activity was completed by 2005 and it would be naive to assume that there hasn’t been further development in these areas.

Combined with their progress in enrichment, this certainly appears to be a weapons program. To continue the duck metaphor, it looks, walks and quacks like one. But until a device is detonated, it is still logically consistent to say that it is only aimed at obtaining nuclear latency.

This is a perfect justification to do nothing. How is it possible to prove that the program is intended to build a bomb or to do everything except build a bomb? It seems that the administration officials quoted above would require either an official announcement of their intentions from the Iranians or an explosion to convince them the program is for real.

The administration has set a very high bar for proof — unreasonably high.

The Iranian strategy is to play for time, doing as much development as possible without putting the final pieces together. And the administration’s strategy is to play along, assuming that until the final pieces are in place, Iran does not have a weapons program.

The outcome of this cooperative enterprise is guaranteed to be an Iranian bomb, unless Israel takes action.

Technorati Tags: Iranian nuclear weapon

Afghans riot over accidentally burned Qurans

News item:

U.S. President Barack Obama has apologized to Afghans for the burning of Qurans at a U.S. military base, trying to assuage rising anti-American sentiment as an Afghan soldier gunned down two American troops during another day of angry protests.

The U.S.-led military coalition says the Muslim holy books were sent by mistake to a garbage burn pit at Bagram Air Field and the case is under investigation. The explanation and multiple apologies from U.S. officials have yet to calm outrage over the incident, which has also heightened tension between international troops and their Afghan partners.

On Thursday, thousands of protesters, some shouting “Long live Islam!” and “Death to America!” staged demonstrations across Afghanistan for a third day. Protesters climbed the walls of a U.S. base in the east, threw stones inside and adorned an outside wall with the Taliban’s trademark white flag.

Let’s get a grip. The President of the United States apologized to a bunch of 7th century tribesmen who are shooting our soldiers because someone accidentally burned their holy book?

Does that make you feel like we are a great power or what?

With all of the cultural sensitivity training that our officers and troops are undergoing, how did they leave out the fact that their objective is to humiliate their enemies, and that the more we grovel, the more they succeed? And the more they are encouraged?

How much study of the Pashtun (and a great deal of other Muslim) culture does it take for us to understand that weakness invites attack, and apologies, offers of compromise, payoffs, etc. are signs of weakness?

They may be primitive, but they aren’t stupid and they are good tacticians. They understand that our idiotic need to be sensitive to their culture is a weak spot, and they are concentrating their forces there, as good tacticians do.

What we need to do is explain to them in words and deeds that our culture is superior to theirs, because we can kill them much more effectively if we want to than they can kill us. And because we have a superior (that is, more deadly and terrifying) nature than they do, we can bloody well burn any books that we want.

I am not saying that this is my definition of a superior culture. Our culture is superior in many other, more subtle, ways, but they don’t care about these.

They don’t appreciate Christian magnanimity or Jewish compromises. These breed contempt, not admiration. The bottom line for most of the Middle East is power, and the ruthless application thereof.

President Obama seems to want the US to be liked, particularly by Muslims. This is not achievable, and the result of his attempts to bring it about make him a fool that is easily manipulated. Compare Obama’s reputation to that of, say, Vladimir Putin.

This same mistake is being made on different levels in our relations with Iran, Turkey, Egypt and probably other places.

In the Middle East, it’s not just more effective to be feared than to be liked — it’s essential.

Technorati Tags: Afghanistan, Quran riots