France throws a Pie in Obama's Face: The Increasingly Obvious Failure of Obama's Middle East Policy.

by Barry Rubin

 

It's a development of such shocking proportions that it would cause an earthquake if properly noticed and evaluated. President Barack Obama's entire Arab-Israeli and Iranian policies are miserably failing, though partly concealed by theatrical events and media protection.

Consider the latest development. French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner arriving at the UN General Assembly session, stated that he doesn't favor blocking the export of refined oil products to Iran, the keystone of the new sanctions proposed by Obama.

The New York Times reported this story but grossly underplayed its implications:

"But if France is to come out against fuel sanctions analysts said, they will most likely be off the table as an option for increasing the pressure on Iran."

Ha! If France does so it will be the end of Obama's whole strategy against Iran. For Tehran, it will be a straight, largely untroubled run to nuclear weapons, unless derailed by an Israeli attack.
"I think this is a bit dangerous," Kouchner said about the gas and fuel sanctions. Would that be more dangerous than Iran getting nuclear weapons? But Kouchner did not make clear to whom or what it is dangerous. He did say, however, that it would mostly harm "poor people" in Iran.

[An aside: This is the kind of phony "humanitarian" considerations that paralyze Western policy today. Sure, there is some patriotic reaction against foreign pressures in places like Iran, but do the millions opposing that regime as a repressive dictatorship really want the West to coddle and court their oppressors? Do Gazans favor Western actions ensuring Hamas remains in power? Do Iraqis retrospectively curse Western sanctions against Saddam Hussein's regime?

[Can the West fight no war because there will be civilian casualties; cannot it not preserve its freedoms because Muslims or others might be offended? Is the "zero-harm" approach an effective way for policy to be conducted, or even for democracies to survive at all?]

Of course, French President Francois Sarkozy may reverse his foreign minister's stance. Yet still it is extraordinarily significant that such a major ally supposedly wowed by Obama's charisma and popularity, can publicly do the equivalent of throwing a pie into the president's face with no consequences.

And there is a virtual parade of pie-throwers. Obama's Arab-Israeli policy was derailed by similar responses. Israel refused to bow to American demands stated in the most extreme, public and peremptory manner and Obama gave in. Then Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and other Arab states all publicly made clear that they would defy the president and reject any confidence-building measures with Israel.

Obama was slapped and pretended nothing happened.

Then the same thing happened with his Iran policy. First, Russia and China rejected his efforts to get their agreement to increased sanctions. Now, France may be doing the same thing. In between, the White House accepted an insulting Iranian message for talks.

Could it be any more obvious? Obama's salient international characteristic is not popularity but weakness. Already, Obama has been defied or has buckled under to a long list of countries including: China, Iran, Israel, North Korea, Pakistan, Russia, Syria, Venezuela, and now perhaps France.

That is why the conspiratorial notion that Obama is out to sell out Israel is wrong. He will back away if anyone stands up to him. The risk posed by administration policy is not to Israel but to U.S. interests altogether as he seeks to avoid trouble with anyone.

A strong argument could be made that the United States should boycott meetings with Iran altogether. After all, even if the Tehran regime wasn't working on nuclear weapons, the mere fact that it is a dictatorship that has just stolen an election, repressed a peaceful opposition, put on trial many dissident leaders, and appointed a wanted terrorist as defense minister should be sufficient to inspire such a boycott.

Just this week, there are reports leaked by U.S. military officials—frustrated at White House policy?—that Iran's Qods force (whose former head is now Iran's defense minister) is training and arming Taliban gunmen in Afghanistan. The official spin is that this poses no current threat to American forces there. Right. Only when the Taliban soldiers finish their training and go out to kill Americans will there be an immediate threat. Already, though, the same Qods force has been involved in helping to kill Americans in Iraq, according to U.S. intelligence reports.

Instead of action, the administration delivers the photo op of a meeting between Israeli and Palestinian leaders in New York that will enable Obama to portray himself as a great success in peacemaking. In fact, what he has "accomplished"—a meeting of the two leaders—would have happened months ago if Obama's injection of the construction freeze issue had not given the Palestinians a rationale for suspending talks.

[After I wrote this article, I heard National Public Radio's report on this event. It explained clearly the main problem clearly as Israel not wanting to freeze construction and the Palestinians not wanting to negotiate unless that was done. But it never mentioned that the whole problem arose because Obama made the issue the central factor. In other words, this conflict didn't just arise from Israel or the Palestinians but is all Obama's fault. This is rather typical of how most of the media has dealt with the administration's mistakes.]

Nahum Barnea, arguably the Israeli left's most distinguished writer, who backs a complete settlement freeze and would like to support Obama, wrote the get-together at the UN meeting, "Is a joke at the expense of an American president who tried to get involved in Middle East politics and was stung….The Americans," Barnea continued, "discovered that they want an Israeli-Palestinian agreement more than the leaders of both sides desire one."

Precisely. And in this regard nothing has changed much since 2000 when the Palestinian leadership rejected peace. That reality should have been clear to the Obama Administration from the beginning rather than its attitude of bravado about how it was going to hit the ground running and solve the conflict very fast.

Barnea concluded: Obama "is cool….Yet the U.S. president is not Brad Pitt or George Clooney. He's supposed to bring results."

Well-put. While American opinion-makers continue to focus on Obama's "coolness" and Western Europeans cheer him—what's not to cheer in an American president who let's you do whatever you want?—the world is giving him the cold shoulder.

 

Barry Rubin

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

 

Spain boycotts Ariel University Center for being on 'occupied territory'.

by Yaheli Moran Zelikovich

Spanish government, sponsor of Solar Decathalon, disqualifies architecture department of Ariel University Center of Samaria from finals. '10,000 students hurt by fight that is against international law,' claims college

The Spanish Housing Ministry disqualified Ariel University Center of Samaria from competing in the finals of the international competition between university architecture departments to design and build a self-sufficient house using solar power.

Sergio Vega, project manager of the Solar Decathlon, wrote in a communiqué to the college, "The decision was made by the Spanish government based on the fact that the university is located in occupied territory in the West Bank. The Spanish government is committed to uphold the international agreement under the framework of the European Union and the United Nations regarding this geographical area."

The Solar Decathlon was first held as a European initiative and run by the Spanish Housing Ministry.

The Ariel University Center reached the finals together with 20 other universities from around the world after two years of collaboration with the competition's management and the Spanish government.

In this framework, the college was even awarded a 100,000 Euro grant by the competition's organizers to build a model house for the final competition slated to be held in Madrid in June 2010.

The cancellation of the Israeli team's participation in the competition was urged by an initiative put out by the group, Architects and Planners for Justice in Palestine as a continuation of the academic boycott against Israel being led for quite some time by BNC - The Boycott, Divestment & Sanctions Campaign National Committee.

Surprising support from France

The BNC said of the decision that the boycott will be stepped up against the State of Israel and its institutions, including all the universities in Israel, until the "occupation" is ended and Israel allows the Palestinians refugees to return to their original homes.

The Ariel University Center responded: "We scornfully reject the one-sided announcement we received from the Spanish Housing Ministry. The anti-academic decision harms 10,000 students in the university center, including 500 Arab students who study at the institution, in particular the Jewish and Arab students studying together in the school of architecture."

The college added, "This is an expression of the political, illegitimate war (being waged) that is against international law and international charters on academic freedom, which are grossly and one-sidedly being violated by this decision. The Ariel University Center, together with the Foreign Ministry and the organization of universities against the academic boycott, will use all means to eliminate this phenomenon."

The college's struggle received surprising support from Prof. Pascal Rollet of France's Ecole Nationale Superieure d'Architecture de Grenoble. She sent a letter to the college: "I do not agree with the Spanish decision because the Ariel University's activities are directed towards academic excellence for peace. Kindly receive my utmost support in this difficult situation."

Yaheli Moran Zelikovich
Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Avoiding the Unthinkable: Missile Defense is Israel's "Secret" Weapon Against Iran's Nuclear Weapons.

by Barry Rubin

 

Remember the name Uzi Rubin because he might emerge as the most important individual in the issue of Iran’s nuclear weapons drive. Rubin is the former head of Israel’s missile defense program and now a defense consultant. He has developed the best alternative (or supplement) to blocking the dangers of a radical Islamist, genocidal-oriented, terrorist supporting, antisemitic regime having nuclear-tipped missiles pointed at Israel.

Briefly, Rubin and his colleagues have been developing a multi-layered defense system consisting of long-range Arrow missiles (developed in cooperation with the United States), medium-range David’s Sling interceptor missiles, and the short-range Iron Dome system aimed against the kind of rockets being fired by Hizballah and Hamas. By the time Iran gets nuclear weapons, and in some cases well before, these systems will all be operational.

None of these systems are perfect. For example, Iron Dome will not protect small areas of Israel closest to the Gaza border but will shield more populated places deeper inside Israel.

For those actually facing attack by rockets or missiles, what is most important is that the number of incoming warheads—and hence both casualties and damage--be reduced to the minimum possible number.

This would undermine the strategy used by Hizballah against Israel in 2006 and Hamas from the Gaza Strip more recently of mass rocket attacks as a means of sowing terror among civilians, disrupting life in Israel, and gaining strategic leverage. In addition, if Israel ever does attack Iran’s nuclear installation, these systems will reduce the effectiveness of retaliation by Iran’s client groups.

In addition, missile defense is part of a triad of ways to counter Iran, along with diplomatic efforts plus sanctions (sadly lagging) and a direct attack on Iran’s facilities. Since even an effective attack would only slow down and not completely stop Tehran’s efforts, missile defense may emerge as the most important of these three factors.

Obviously, of course, there is a problem with nuclear threats that doesn’t exist with rockets: even if one or two get through the results would be catastrophic. Uzi Rubin has a detailed answer that goes something like this:

For Iran to attack Israel with nuclear missiles, any even marginally rational commanders know they need to knock out Israel’s air force bases lest an Israeli second strike devastate Iran. To feel at all secure, Iran needs to launch a minimum of three missiles simultaneously against each airfield. Missile defenses, however, keep pushing up that number to the point where an Israeli second strike becomes unavoidable. Thus, any attack on Israel is clearly suicidal. This makes such an attack less likely.

But, you can say, it is a mistake to regard the Iranian regime as purely rational. This is far truer of the regime today than it was a year ago. And even then it is far truer of elements in the regime, including those who will have actual possession of the nuclear weapons.

How often do you see the point made in the Western media that the missiles and atomic bombs will be controlled by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the part of the regime closest to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the institution that is gaining growing power over Iran, and the one with the closest ties to terrorists abroad?

True as this is, missile defense becomes all the more important by providing protection against an “irrational” attack. Combined with direct air strikes on Iranian launchers, this becomes an impressive defensive system. The maximum possible deterrent gives the maximum possible protection and the greatest possible discouragement for Iran from starting a war.

Remember, too, that the number of atomic bombs Iran can build is going to be relatively limited in number, while the number which can be launched simultaneously (especially very fast) is even fewer.

Finally, there is more than one way to "use" nuclear weapons which involves flourishing rather than firing them. Much of the Iranian regime bluster about attacking Israel is designed to give Tehran greater leverage in the region. Israel can defend itself; Iran's Arab neighbors cannot and must depend on the United States--not the greatest assurance nowadays--to counter Iran's influence and power. Given their weakness and vulnerability to internal subversion, Arabic-speaking states are more likely to be the main target where Tehran regime's threats can achieve results.

In short, missile defense in combination with other efforts cannot necessarily provide perfect defense but it can provide the best possible defense. It is far more likely to be effective than the sadly weak diplomatic-sanction defense offered by divided and timid Western countries. Indeed, it might not be long before some of these are buying Israeli made systems, which the U.S. military is reportedly already planning to deploy.

 

 

 

Barry Rubin

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

 

Israel and the Trouble With International Law.

 

by Paul H. Robinson

 

Many restrictions on the use of force against aggressors make no moral sense.

 

Last week the United Nations issued a report painting the Israelis as major violators of international law in the three-week Gaza war that began in December 2008. While many find the conclusion a bit unsettling or even bizarre, the report's conclusion may be largely correct.

This says more about international law, however, than it does about the propriety of Israel's conduct. The rules of international law governing the use of force by victims of aggression are embarrassingly unjust and would never be tolerated by any domestic criminal law system. They give the advantage to unlawful aggressors and thereby undermine international justice, security and stability.

Article 51 of the U.N. Charter forbids all use of force except that for "self-defense if an armed attack occurs." Thus the United Kingdom's 1946 removal of sea mines that struck ships in the Strait of Corfu was held to be an illegal use of force by the International Court of Justice, even though Albania had refused to remove its mines from this much used international waterway. Israel's raid on Uganda's Entebbe Airport in 1976—to rescue the victims of an airplane hijacking by Palestinian terrorists—was also illegal under Article 51.

Domestic criminal law restricts the use of defensive force in large part because the law prefers that police be called, when possible, to do the defending. Force is authorized primarily to keep defenders safe until law enforcement officers arrive. Since there are no international police to call, the rules of international law should allow broader use of force by victims of aggression. But the rules are actually narrower.

Imagine that a local drug gang plans to rob your store and kill your security guards. There are no police, so the gang openly prepares its attack in the parking lot across the street, waiting only for the cover of darkness to increase its tactical advantage. If its intentions are clear, must you wait until the time the gang picks as being most advantageous to it?

American criminal law does not require that you wait. It allows force if it is "immediately necessary" (as stated in the American Law Institute's Model Penal Code, on which all states model their own codes), even if the attack is not yet imminent. Yet international law does require that you wait. Thus, in the 1967 Six Day War, Israel's use of force against Egypt, Syria and Jordan—neighbors that were preparing an attack to destroy it—was illegal under the U.N. Charter's Article 51, which forbids any use of force until the attack actually "occurs."

Now imagine that your next-door neighbor allows his house to be used by thugs who regularly attack your family. In the absence of a police force able or willing to intervene, it would be quite odd to forbid you to use force against the thugs in their sanctuary or against the sanctuary-giving neighbor.

Yet that is what international law does. From 1979-1981 the Sandinista government of Nicaragua unlawfully supplied arms and safe haven to insurgents seeking to overthrow the government of El Salvador. Yet El Salvador had no right under international law to use any force to end Nicaragua's violations of its sovereignty. The U.S. removal of the Taliban from Afghanistan in 2001 was similarly illegal under the U.N. Charter (although it earned broad international support).

An aggressor pressing a series of attacks is protected by international law in between attacks, and it can take comfort that the law allows force only against its raiders, not their support elements. In 1987, beginning with a missile strike on a Kuwaiti tanker, the Iranians launched attacks on shipping that were staged from their offshore oil platforms in the Persian Gulf. While it was difficult to catch the raiding parties in the act (note the current difficulty in defending shipping against the Somali pirates), the oil platforms used to stage the attacks could be and were attacked by the U.S. Yet these strikes were held illegal by the International Court of Justice.

Social science has increasingly shown that law's ability to gain compliance is in large measure a product of its credibility and legitimacy with its public. A law seen as unjust promotes resistance, undermines compliance, and loses its power to harness the powerful forces of social influence, stigmatization and condemnation.

Because international law has no enforcement mechanism, it is almost wholly dependent upon moral authority to gain compliance. Yet the reputation international law will increasingly earn from its rules on the use of defensive force is one of moral deafness.

True, it will not always be the best course for a victim of unlawful aggression to use force to defend or deter. Sometimes the smart course is no response or a merely symbolic one. But every state ought to have the lawful choice to do what is necessary to protect itself from aggression.

Rational people must share the dream of a world at peace. Thus the U.N. Charter's severe restrictions on use of force might be understandable—if only one could stop all use of force by creating a rule against it. Since that's not possible, the U.N. rule is dangerously naive. By creating what amount to "aggressors' rights," the restrictions on self-defense undermine justice and promote unlawful aggression. This erodes the moral authority of international law and makes less likely a future in which nations will turn to it, rather than to force.

 

 

Mr. Robinson, a professor of law at the University of Pennsylvania, is the co-author of "Law Without Justice: Why Criminal Law Does Not Give People What They Deserve" (Oxford, 2006).

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

 

Obama's Mideast Strategy: Useless If Not Harmful.

by Eric Trager

On Tuesday, President Barack Obama will hold trilateral talks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas at the annual U.N. Summit in New York.

 

Naturally, smart gamblers will bet against a peace process breakthrough. For starters, history suggests that the forthcoming Obama-Abbas-Netanyahu meeting will go the way of previous Bush-Abbas-Olmert and Clinton-Arafat-Barak encounters: nice photos, no results. Moreover, the two parties seem as far apart as ever on all of the issues – security, borders, refugees, and Jerusalem – that stand at the heart of the conflict. And then there's the inconvenient fact that Hamas – an Iranian-funded terrorist organization that rejects Israel's very right to exist – controls half of the Palestinian body politic.

 

But even if these traditional barriers to Middle East peacemaking weren't enough, President Obama has – through his own policy decisions – erected another. Indeed, by reinforcing Islamists'version

 of history and calling it "public diplomacy," Obama has systematically alienated the Israeli people, who have increasingly backed Netanyahu's more skeptical approach to both U.S. policy and peace making. Polls currently show that Netanyahu's approval rating among Israelis is at 65% – staggeringly high, especially by the standards of Israel's fractious political system – while only 4% of Israeli Jews see Obama as pro-Israel.

 

How might this affect Obama's ability to forge Middle East peace? Try this thought experiment: put yourself in Netanyahu's shoes and assume that, like most politicians, your top priority is political survival. Do you take the risks associated with immediate peace negotiations and more closely align yourself with an American president who is deeply unpopular among your constituents? Or, do you stick with an alternative approach that a strong majority of your countrymen endorse? The answer should be obvious.

Of course, none of this is news to the Obama administration. In recent months, it has attempted to counteract Israeli skepticism by pressing Arab regimes to make friendly gestures towards Israel. But, once again, Obama's own policies have gotten in the way: Arab leaders have refused incremental "normalization," using the administration's earlier demand for a complete freeze of Israeli settlement expansion as an excuse for doing nothing at all. And, strategically, this makes perfect sense for them. Just put yourself in the shoes of an Arab leader: when the U.S. President naïvely affirms your long-held contention that Israeli settlements – and not terrorism, nor your own rejection of Israel's right to exist – are the primary obstacles to peace, you run with it.

 

It is worth repeating that, even without Obama's policy blunders, Israeli-Palestinian peace would be highly improbable. Still, Obama is supposed to be the "realist" president who, according to his most erstwhile defenders, prioritizes strategy and interestsabove principles. If so, how has he failed to understand Arab and Israeli leaders' interests and decision-making so spectacularly?

 

 

 

Eric Trager
Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

 

Peace Process or War Process?

 

by Daniel Pipes

When Barack Obama announced in June 2009 about Israeli-Palestinian diplomacy, "I'm confident that if we stick with it, having started early, that we can make some serious progress this year," he displayed a touching, if naïve optimism.

Indeed, his determination fits a well-established pattern of determination by politicians to "solve" the Arab-Israeli conflict; there were fourteen U.S. government initiatives just during the two George W. Bush administrations. Might this time be different? Will trying harder or being more clever end the conflict?

No, there is no chance whatever of this effort working.

Without looking at the specifics of the Obama approach — which are in themselves problematic — I shall argue three points: that past Israeli-Palestinian negotiations have failed; that their failure resulted from an Israeli illusion about avoiding war; and that Washington should urge Jerusalem to forego negotiations and return instead to its earlier and more successful policy of fighting for victory.

 

I. Reviewing the "Peace Process"

It is embarrassing to recall the elation and expectations that accompanied the signing of the Oslo accords in September 1993 when Israel's prime minister Yitzhak Rabin shook hands on the White House lawn with Yasir Arafat, the Palestinian leader. For some years afterward, "The Handshake" (as it was then capitalized) served as the symbol of brilliant diplomacy, whereby each side achieved what it most wanted: dignity and autonomy for the Palestinians, recognition and security for the Israelis.

President Bill Clinton hosted the ceremony and lauded the deal as a "great occasion of history." Secretary of State Warren Christopher concluded that "the impossible is within our reach." Yasir Arafat called the signing an "historic event, inaugurating a new epoch." Israel's foreign minister Shimon Peres said one could see in it "the outline of peace in the Middle East."

The press displayed similar expectations. Anthony Lewis, a New York Times columnist, deemed the agreement "stunning" and "ingeniously built." Time magazine made Arafat and Rabin two of its "men of the year" for 1993. To cap it off, Arafat, Rabin, and Peres jointly won the Nobel Peace Prize for 1994.

As the accords led to a deterioration of conditions for Palestinians and Israelis, rather than the expected improvement, these heady anticipations quickly dissipated.

When Palestinians still lived under Israeli control, pre-Oslo accords, they had benefited from the rule of law and a growing economy, independent of international welfare. They enjoyed functioning schools and hospitals; they traveled without checkpoints and had free access to Israeli territory. They even founded several universities. Terrorism declined as acceptance of Israel increased. Oslo then brought Palestinians not peace and prosperity, but tyranny, failed institutions, poverty, corruption, a death cult, suicide factories, and Islamist radicalization. Yasir Arafat had promised to build his new dominion into a Middle Eastern Singapore, but the reality he ruled became a nightmare of dependence, inhumanity, and loathing, more akin to Liberia or the Congo.

 As for Israelis, they watched as Palestinian rage spiraled upward, inflicting unprecedented violence on them; the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs reports that more Israelis were killed by Palestinian terrorists in the five years after the Oslo accords than in the fifteen years preceding it. If the two hands in the Rabin-Arafat handshake symbolized Oslo's early hopes, the two bloody hands of a young Palestinian male who had just lynched Israeli reservists in Ramallah in October 2000 represented its dismal end. In addition, Oslo did great damage to Israel's standing internationally, resurrecting questions about the very existence of a sovereign Jewish state, especially on the Left, and spawning moral perversions such as the U.N. World Conference against Racism in Durban. From Israel's perspective, the seven years of Oslo diplomacy, 1993-2000, largely undid forty-five years of success in warfare.

Palestinians and Israelis agree on little, but with a near universality they concur that the Oslo accords failed. What is called the "peace process" should rather be called the "war process."

 

II. The False Hope of Finessing War

Why did things go so badly wrong? Where lay the flaws in so promising an agreement?

 Of a multiplicity of errors, the ultimate mistake lay in Yitzhak Rabin's misunderstanding of how war ends, as revealed by his catch-phrase, "One does not make peace with one's friends. One makes peace with one's enemy." The Israeli prime minister expected war to be concluded through goodwill, conciliation, mediation, flexibility, restraint, generosity, and compromise, topped off with signatures on official documents. In this spirit, his government and those of his three successors — Shimon Peres, Binyamin Netanyahu, Ehud Barak — initiated an array of concessions, hoping and expecting the Palestinians to reciprocate.

They did not. In fact, Israeli concessions inflamed Palestinian hostility. Palestinians interpreted Israeli efforts to "make peace" as signals of demoralization and weakness. "Painful concessions" reduced the Palestinian awe of Israel, made the Jewish state appear vulnerable, and incited irredentist dreams of annihilation. Each Oslo-negotiated gesture by Israel further exhilarated, radicalized, and mobilized the Palestinian body politic to war. The quiet hope of 1993 to eliminate Israel gained traction, becoming a deafening demand by 2000. Venomous speech and violent actions soared. Polls and votes in recent years suggest that a mere 20 percent of Palestinians accept the existence of a Jewish state.

Rabin's mistake was simple and profound: One cannot "make peace with one's enemy," as he imagined. Rather, one makes peace with one's former enemy. Peace nearly always requires one side in a conflict to be defeated and thus give up its goals.

Wars end not through goodwill but through victory. "Let your great object [in war] be victory" observed Sun Tzu, the ancient Chinese strategist. "War is an act of violence to compel the enemy to fulfill our will," wrote his nineteenth-century Prussian successor, Karl von Clausewitz in 1832. Douglas MacArthur observed in 1951 that in "war, there is no substitute for victory."

Technological advancement has not altered this insight. Fighting either continues or potentially can resume so long as both sides hope to achieve their war goals. Victory consists of imposing one's will on the enemy, compelling him to give up his war ambitions. Wars typically end when one side gives up hope, when its will to fight has been crushed.

Defeat, one might think, usually follows on devastating battlefield losses, as was the case of the Axis in 1945. But that has rarely occurred during the past sixty years. Battlefield losses by the Arab states to Israel in 1948-82, by North Korea in 1953, by Saddam Hussein in 1991, and by Iraqi Sunnis in 2003 did not translate into despair and surrender. Morale and will matter more these days. Although they out-manned and out-gunned their foes, the French gave up in Algeria, the Americans in Vietnam, and the Soviets in Afghanistan. The Cold War ended, notably, with barely a fatality. Crushing the enemy's will to fight, then, does not necessarily mean crushing the enemy.

Arabs and Israelis since 1948 have pursued static and opposite goals: Arabs fought to eliminate Israel; Israelis fought to win their neighbors' acceptance. Details have varied over the decades with multiple ideologies, strategies, and leading actors, but the twin goals have remained in place and unbridgeable. If the conflict is to end, one side must lose and one side win. Either there will be no more Zionist state or it will be accepted by its neighbors. Those are the only two scenarios for ending the conflict. Anything else is unstable and a premise for further warfare.

The Arabs have pursued their war aims with patience, determination, and purpose; the exceptions to this pattern (e.g., the Egyptian and Jordanian peace treaties) have been operationally insignificant because they have not tamped hostility to Israel's existence. In response, Israelis sustained a formidable record of strategic vision and tactical brilliance in the period 1948-93. Over time, however, as Israel developed into a wealthy country, its populace grew impatient with the humiliating, slow, boring, bitter, and expensive task of convincing Arabs to accept their political existence. By now, few in Israel still see victory as the goal; almost no major political figure on the scene today calls for victory in war. Uzi Landau, currently minister of national infrastructure, who argues that "when you're in a war you want to win the war," is the rare exception.

The Hard Work of Winning

In place of victory, Israelis developed an imaginative array of approaches to manage the conflict:

• Territorial compromise: Yitzhak Rabin (and the Oslo process).
• Develop the Palestinian economy: Shimon Peres (and the Oslo process).
• Unilateralism (build a wall, withdraw from Gaza): Ariel Sharon, Ehud Olmert, and the Kadima party.
• Lease the land under Israeli towns on the West Bank for 99 years: Amir Peretz and the Labor Party.
• Encourage the Palestinians to develop good government: Natan Sharansky (and George W. Bush).
• Territorial retreat: Israel's Left.
• Exclude disloyal Palestinians from Israeli citizenship: Avigdor Lieberman.
• Offer Jordan as Palestine: elements of Israel's Right.
• Expel Palestinians from lands controlled by Israel: Meir Kahane.

Contradictory in spirit and mutually exclusive as they are, these approaches all aim to finesse war rather than win it. Not one of them addresses the need to break the Palestinian will to fight. Just as the Oslo negotiations failed, I predict that so too will every Israeli scheme that avoids the hard work of winning.

Since 1993, in brief, the Arabs have sought victory while Israelis sought compromise. In this spirit, Israelis openly announced their fatigue with warfare. Shortly before becoming prime minister, Ehud Olmert said on behalf of his countrymen: "We are tired of fighting; we are tired of being courageous; we are tired of winning; we are tired of defeating our enemies." After becoming prime minister, Olmert proclaimed: "Peace is achieved through concessions. We all know that." Such defeatist statements prompted Yoram Hazony of the Shalem Center to characterize Israelis as "an exhausted people, confused and without direction."

But who does not win, loses. To survive, Israelis eventually must return to their pre-1993 policy of establishing that Israel is strong, tough, and permanent. That is achieved through deterrence — the tedious task of convincing Palestinians and others that the Jewish state will endure and that dreams of elimination must fail.

This will not be easy or quick. Due to missteps during the Oslo years and after (especially the unilateral withdrawal from Gaza of 2005 and the Lebanon war of 2006), Palestinians perceive Israel as economically and militarily strong but morally and politically weak. In the pungent words of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, Israel is "weaker than a spider's web." Such scorn will likely require decades of hard work to reverse. Nor will it be pretty: Defeat in war typically entails that the loser experience deprivation, failure, and despair.

Israel does enjoy one piece of good fortune: It need only deter the Palestinians, not the whole Arab and Muslim populations. Moroccans, Iranians, Malaysians, and others take their cues from the Palestinians and with time will follow their lead. Israel's ultimate enemy, the one whose will it needs to crush, is roughly the same demographic size as itself.

This process may be seen through a simple prism. Any development that encourages Palestinians to think they can eliminate Israel is negative, any that encourages them to give up that goal is positive.

The Palestinians' defeat will be recognizable when, over a protracted period and with complete consistency, they prove that they have accepted Israel. This does not mean loving Zion, but it does mean permanently accepting it — overhauling the educational system to take out the demonization of Jews and Israel, telling the truth about Jewish ties to Jerusalem, and accepting normal commercial, cultural, and human relations with Israelis.

Palestinian démarches and letters to the editor are acceptable but violence is not. The quiet that follows must be consistent and enduring. Symbolically, one can conclude that Palestinians have accepted Israel and the war is over when Jews living in Hebron (on the West Bank) have no more need for security than Arabs living in Nazareth (in Israel).

 

III. U.S. Policy

Like all outsiders to the conflict, Americans face a stark choice: Endorse the Palestinian goal of eliminating Israel or endorse Israel's goal of winning its neighbors' acceptance.

To state the choice makes clear that there is no choice — the first is barbaric, the second civilized. No decent person can endorse the Palestinians' genocidal goal of eliminating their neighbor. Following every president since Harry S Truman, and every congressional resolution and vote since then, the U.S. government must stand with Israel in its drive to win acceptance.

Not only is this an obvious moral choice, but Israel's win, ironically, would be the best thing that ever happened to the Palestinians. Compelling them finally to give up on their irredentist dream would liberate them to focus on their own polity, economy, society, and culture. Palestinians need to experience the crucible of defeat to become a normal people — one whose parents stop celebrating their children becoming suicide terrorists, whose obsession with Zionist rejectionism collapses. There is no shortcut.

This analysis implies a radically different approach for the U.S. government from the current one. On the negative side, it puts Palestinians on notice that benefits will flow to them only after they prove their acceptance of Israel. Until then — no diplomacy, no discussion of final status, no recognition as a state, and certainly no financial aid or weapons.

On the positive side, the U. S. administration should work with Israel, the Arab states, and others to induce the Palestinians to accept Israel's existence by convincing them that they have lost. This means impressing on the Israeli government the need not just to defend itself but to take steps to demonstrate to Palestinians the hopelessness of their cause. That requires not episodic shows of force (such as the 2008-09 war against Hamas in Gaza) but a sustained and systematic effort to deflate a bellicose mentality.

Israel's victory also directly helps its U.S. ally, for some of its enemies — Hamas, Hezbollah, Syria, and Iran — are also America's. Tougher Israeli tactics would help Washington in smaller ways, too. Washington should encourage Jerusalem not to engage in prisoner exchanges with terrorist groups, not to allow Hezbollah to re-arm in southern Lebanon or Fatah or Hamas in Gaza, and not to withdraw unilaterally from the West Bank (which would effectively turn over the region to Hamas terrorists and threaten Hashemite rule in Jordan).

Diplomacy aiming to shut down the Arab-Israeli conflict is premature until Palestinians give up their anti-Zionism. When that happy moment arrives, negotiations can re-open and take up anew the Oslo issues — borders, resources, armaments, sanctities, residential rights. But that is years or decades away. In the meantime, an ally needs to win.

 

 

Daniel Pipes
Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

 

Another Tack: Fond Jane and Mr. Braun.

by Sarah Honig

We're all familiar with holier-than-thou anti-Semites whose much-touted "best friends" invariably are Jews. Well, the good news is that Jane Fonda is awfully fond of us. She says so in her blog. Given all that fondness, Fonda feels persecuted for no fault of her own. She cannot fathom why she must "wake up in the morning to a barrage of e-mails" about "a petition protesting the Toronto International Film Festival's decision to feature a celebratory 'spotlight' on Tel Aviv... By doing this the festival has become, whether knowingly or not, a participant in a cynical PR campaign to improve Israel's image, make her appear less warlike."

Fonda is so fond of us that she insists our face remain as dirty, demonic and denigrated as she and her avidly mud-slinging chums (like Danny Glover, presumably our friend by association) deem appropriate for us. Truth may be detrimental to their ends, which obviously justify any and all means.

FOR THESE ends Israel needs to remain besmirched and blackened. And that was why fond Fonda, comrade Glover and more than 50 other petition signatories (among them various indispensable useful-fool Israelis) had such a bone to pick with the Toronto festival, itself hardly a Lovers-of-Zion shindig by any measure.

It featured a bunch of films about Tel Aviv, many of which conform to the popular Israeli genre of self-deprecating, pro-Arab flicks scripted for the explicit purpose of winning acceptance and accolades from Fonda and her ideological likes overseas. Sucking up to the Fondas of this world, it's widely believed in our provincial backwoods, is the only way for an ambitious Israeli academic/artiste/author/moviemaker to carve out a career and bask in the ambiance of moneyed Israel-bashing liberal patrons.

How deliciously ironic then that Fonda - albeit indirectly and inadvertently - punishes precisely those Israeli producers who obsequiously fawn to please just her sorts. Their radicalism and/or brownnosing make no difference. This effectively parallels two millennia of Jewish experience with assorted Judeophobes - including those who had cut no slack for urbane "Germans of the Mosaic persuasion."

Toronto's festival, according to the Jane-brand of spurious historiography, omitted to stress that "Tel Aviv is built on destroyed Palestinian villages, and that the city of Jaffa, Palestine's main cultural hub until 1948, was annexed to Tel Aviv after the mass exiling of the Palestinian population. This program ignores the suffering of thousands of former residents and descendants of the Tel Aviv/Jaffa area who currently live in refugee camps."

Uncool as it may be, according to George Orwell "speaking the truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act." Fonda should appreciate revolutionary acts. In her younger years, when she bombastically boosted Huey Newton and the Black Panthers, she insisted that "revolution is an act of love. We are the children of revolution, born to be rebels. It runs in our blood."

So let's get on with the revolutionary act of telling the truth. Habitual knee-jerk detractors, who disdain historical references, please note that Fonda and crew were those who launched us on this foray into that past.

RECENTLY I wrote of almost forgotten Tel Aviv founder Yosef-Eliahu Chelouche, a native of Jaffa, scion of a Jewish family from North Africa (kosher presumably for Third World ennoblers) and a notable political dove till Arab bloodlust disillusioned him. In his 1931 memoirs, long before Tel Aviv became the vast Zionist empire's icon, Yosef-Eliahu described those 12 desolate windswept acres of wasteland purchased for a hefty sum in 1909 for Ahuzat Bayit (as the embryonic city was called). They were hardly occupied by Arab villages as Fonda and friends aver.

Yosef-Eliahu recalled them as "a sea of sand, a barren desert with powdery yellow mountains and hills, where jackals howled." Beyond Jaffa's decaying narrow alleyways stretched an undulating shadeless wilderness. It was a horrendous, almost impassable and seemingly interminable tract, without landmarks or signs of habitation.

From its inception Ahuzat Bayit was traversed by a boulevard - not because it was a preplanned aesthetic feature. Tel Aviv would rise on pyramidal mounds with unstable continuously shifting slipfaces. These were pronounced unsuitable for construction. To level off the area, teams of pioneers used wheelbarrows to move tons of sand from the highest points and deposit them in the gullies bellow. The deepest ditch cut across Ahuzat Bayit exactly where Sderot Rothschild now stretches. Filled with so much soft sand, it was judged unsafe to support structures. Instead it was covered with topsoil and lined with trees. If anything, Tel Aviv was reclaimed from an empty strip of desert.

Elementary intellectual integrity should oblige Fonda and her retinue of our "best friends" to recall that Jaffa was also a pivotal early 20th-century Jewish hub. If anyone was forcibly dislodged therefrom, Jaffa's Jews were; 1921's unprovoked five-day Jaffa-generated Arab riots, in which 49 Jews were massacred (among them leading Jewish literati, including left-wing Yosef Haim Brenner) and more than 150 wounded, effectively brought down the curtain on Jaffa's Jewish community and boosted adjacent Tel Aviv as a separate, independent, viable, modern and thriving alternative entity.

The carnage filled 12-year-old Tel Aviv with tents and makeshift sheds to shelter Jewish refugees fleeing the Jaffa bloodbath before even self-proclaimed anti-imperialists of the Fonda-mold could conjure up supposed Jewish provocation for Arab butchery.

As to the 1948 escapades of Jaffans on the eve of Israeli independence, I will summon my own mother's testimony. The minaret of Jaffa's Turkish-constructed Hassan Bek Mosque, for instance, was used by Arab snipers to take frequent potshots at passersby on the adjacent streets of Tel Aviv. For Jane's attention, that was before we could conceivably be accused of becoming conquistador ogres.

My mother often recalled the mortal risk entailed in crossing the street to the corner grocery. She was nearly shot on her way to the dentist. One afternoon, her landlord, Mr. Braun, buttonholed her at the entrance to his apartment house on 7 Rehov Aharonson. Standing in the doorway he lectured her sternly about the foolhardiness of her sorties outdoors. Just then a bullet whistled by. Mr. Braun fell dead at my mother's feet.

Odds are Jane doesn't know about Mr. Braun. But she should educate herself about Hassan Bek's snipers, who didn't care about the identity of their numerous random victims. It helps Jane's predatory propaganda not to mention them, to pretend that Jaffa didn't aggressively and continuously attack Tel Aviv, that peaceable Jaffans were dispossessed arbitrarily in villainous circumstances devoid of context.

In a world of cosmopolitan detachment, Jane's propaganda works. Toronto Festival codirector Cameron Bailey half-apologetically conceded "that Tel Aviv is not a simple choice and the city remains contested ground." But if even Tel Aviv is "contested ground," if even its legitimacy is questionable, what are we to say about Israel as a whole?

So much for all those insincerely avowed two-state syrupy sentiments.

 

 

Sarah Honig

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.