ARTICLES

“THE ISRAELIS WILL NEED TO CHART THEIR OWN PATH OF RESISTANCE”

The Orwellian Obama Presidency
By Bret Stephens
Wall Street Journal
March 23, 2015

The humiliating denouement to America’s involvement in Yemen came over the weekend, when U.S. Special Forces were forced to evacuate a base from which they had operated against the local branch of al Qaeda. This is the same branch that claimed responsibility for the January attack on Charlie Hebdo and has long been considered to pose the most direct threat to Europe and the United States.

So who should Barack Obama be declaring war on in the Middle East other than the state of Israel?

There is an upside-down quality to this president’s world view. His administration is now on better terms with Iran – whose Houthi proxies, with the slogan “God is great, death to America, death to Israel, damn the Jews, power to Islam,” just deposed Yemen’s legitimate president – than it is with Israel. He claims we are winning the war against Islamic State even as the group continues to extend its reach into Libya, Yemen and Nigeria.

He treats Republicans in the Senate as an enemy when it comes to the Iranian nuclear negotiations, while treating the Russian foreign ministry as a diplomatic partner. He favors the moral legitimacy of the United Nations Security Council to that of the U.S. Congress. He is facilitating Bashar Assad’s war on his own people by targeting ISIS so the Syrian dictator can train his fire on our ostensible allies in the Free Syrian Army.

He was prepared to embrace a Muslim Brother as president of Egypt but maintains an arm’s-length relationship with his popular pro-American successor. He has no problem keeping company with Al Sharpton and tagging an American police department as comprehensively racist but is nothing if not adamant that the words “Islamic” and “terrorism” must on no account ever be conjoined. The deeper that Russian forces advance into Ukraine, the more they violate cease-fires, the weaker the Kiev government becomes, the more insistent he is that his response to Russia is working.

To adapt George Orwell’s motto for Oceania: Under Mr. Obama, friends are enemies, denial is wisdom, capitulation is victory.

The current victim of Mr. Obama’s moral inversions is the recently re-elected Israeli prime minister. Normally a sweeping democratic mandate reflects legitimacy, but not for Mr. Obama. Now we are treated to the astonishing spectacle in which Benjamin Netanyahu has become persona non grata for his comments doubting the current feasibility of a two-state solution. This, while his Palestinian counterpart Mahmoud Abbas is in the 11th year of his four-year term, without a murmur of protest from the White House.

It is true that Mr. Netanyahu made an ugly election-day remark about Israeli-Arab voters “coming out in droves to the polls,” thereby putting “the right-wing government in danger.” For this he has apologized, in person, to leaders of the Israeli-Arab community.

That’s more than can be said for Mr. Abbas, who last year threatened Israel with a global religious war if Jews were allowed to pray in the Temple Mount’s Al Aqsa mosque. “We will not allow our holy places to be contaminated,” the Palestinian Authority president said. The Obama administration insists that Mr. Abbas is “the best interlocutor Israel is ever going to have.”

Maybe that’s true, but if so it only underscores the point Mr. Netanyahu was making in the first place – and for which Mr. Obama now threatens a fundamental reassessment of U.S. relations with Israel. In 2014 Mr. Abbas agreed to a power-sharing agreement with Hamas, a deal breaker for any Israeli interested in peace. In 2010 he used the expiration of a 10-month Israeli settlement freeze as an excuse to abandon bilateral peace efforts. In 2008 he walked away from a statehood offer from then-Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. In 2000 he was with Yasser Arafat at Camp David when the Palestinians turned down a deal from Israel’s Ehud Barak.

And so on. For continuously rejecting good-faith Israeli offers, Mr. Abbas may be about to get his wish: a U.S. vote for Palestinian statehood at the United Nations. For tiring of constant Palestinian bad faith – and noting the fact – Israel will now be treated to pariah-nation status by Mr. Obama.

***

Here is my advice to the Israeli government, along with every other country being treated disdainfully by this crass administration: Repay contempt with contempt. Mr. Obama plays to classic bully type. He is abusive and surly only toward those he feels are either too weak, or too polite, to hit back.

The Saudis figured that out in 2013, after Mr. Obama failed to honor his promises on Syria; they turned down a seat on the Security Council, spoke openly about acquiring nuclear weapons from Pakistan and tanked the price of oil, mainly as a weapon against Iran. Now Mr. Obama is nothing if not solicitous of the Saudi highnesses.

The Israelis will need to chart their own path of resistance. On the Iranian nuclear deal, they may have to go rogue: Let’s hope their warnings have not been mere bluffs. Israel survived its first 19 years without meaningful U.S. patronage. For now, all it has to do is get through the next 22, admittedly long, months.

 

“IF IT WERE PUT IN A SIMILAR POSITION, THE U.S. OR ANY OTHER NATION WOULD ACT IN THE SAME WAY”

Spies Who Live in Glass Houses Shouldn’t Throw Stones
By Max Boot
Commentary magazine
March 24, 2015

https://www.commentarymagazine.com/2015/03/24/spies-who-live-in-glass-houses-shouldnt-throw-stones/

The Wall Street Journal rattled some teacups with its article today claiming that Israel is spying on the American team negotiating with Iran and sharing the results with lawmakers on Capitol Hill. It should be noted that in the article itself Israeli officials deny that they were spying on the U.S.; they say they got their information from spying on the Iranians and from information freely shared with them by the French, who are more interested in keeping the Israelis informed than the Americans are. Whether the Israeli defense is true or not I don’t know. But either way there is nothing particularly shocking going on here.

As a general matter, let us stipulate that allies should minimize the extent to which they spy on each other, if only because such revelations can be embarrassing and damaging. But the reality is that almost everyone does it. The only notable exception I’m aware of is the “Five Eyes” – the U.S., Britain, Australia, New Zealand and Canada – which have been closely cooperating in intelligence matters since World War II. The U.S. certainly spies on allies such as France and Germany, as we discovered from Edward Snowden’s leaks. And they spy on us.

For that matter the U.S. also spies on Israel. In fact it was through such spying that the U.S. discovered the alleged Israeli spying. As the Journal notes: “The White House discovered the [Israeli] operation, in fact, when U.S. intelligence agencies spying on Israel intercepted communications among Israeli officials that carried details the U.S. believed could have come only from access to the confidential talks, officials briefed on the matter said.”

So U.S. officials are in no position to be pointing fingers at Israel. If the Journal account is to be believed, the administration is less upset by the Israeli espionage than by the Israelis sharing what they discovered with legislators: “The espionage didn’t upset the White House as much as Israel’s sharing of inside information with U.S. lawmakers and others to drain support from a high-stakes deal intended to limit Iran’s nuclear program, current and former officials said.”

Let me get this straight: The administration believes that it must at all costs keep not only close allies such as Israel in the dark about the negotiations but also lawmakers who have a duty to ratify treaties. The only grounds I can see for the administration stance is that Obama is preparing to reach a generous deal with Iran that he knows will upset lawmakers and allies, and he is trying to keep the terms a secret until it is a fait accompli in the hopes of ramming it through using executive prerogative alone. This is well within the president’s power to do but it is hardly a wise way to proceed with such a momentous agreement.

One suspects that the Israeli espionage may have leaked out now for the same reason that the administration insists on pummeling Prime Minister Netanyahu repeatedly in public: as a way to delegitimize the Israeli position (which also happens to be the majority position of both houses of Congress) in the Iran debate. This is a dangerous game that Obama is playing. At stake is nothing less than Israel’s security as well as that of other American allies located near Iran – to say nothing of US interests in the region.

Is Israel supposed to sit blind, deaf, and dumb while this is going on? While it would be better if Israel didn’t feel compelled to spy on the U.S. (just as it would be better if the US didn’t feel compelled to spy on Israel), this is not an instance such as the Jonathan Pollard case, which was just stupid spying, disrupting the alliance for no good reason. (Pollard was providing “nice to have” information not “must have” information.) This is a matter of survival for the Jewish State. So, while Netanyahu has made some missteps in his dealing with Obama, such as challenging his negotiating position before Congress, this is an instance where Israeli actions are understandable: If the U.S. refuses to share what could be life or death information with Israel, the Jewish State will get its information however it can. If it were put in a similar position, the U.S. or any other nation would act in the same way.

 

A FORMER CIA ANALYST SAYS “CONGRATULATIONS AND THANK YOU TO THE MOSSAD”

Don’t Be Shocked that Israel Spied on the Iran Nuclear Talks
By Fred Fleitz
National Review Online
March 24, 2015

In what was obviously a targeted press leak by the Obama administration, the Wall Street Journal reported today that Israel spied on the Iran nuclear talks and used the intelligence it gathered to lobby the U.S. Congress against them.

According to the Journal article, Obama officials knew about Israeli spying on the nuclear talks for over a year. This spying reportedly consisted of eavesdropping and acquiring information from confidential U.S. briefings, informants, and diplomatic contacts in Europe, according to the Journal’s sources. Israeli officials denied spying directly on U.S. negotiators and said they acquired their information through other means.

Obama officials and the Democratic members of Congress who probably helped leak this story expressed outrage over Israel’s spying on the nuclear talks. One official told the Journal that “people feel personally sold out.”

Give me a break. Israel and the United States spy on each other constantly. Ironically, according to the story, the Obama administration found out about Israel’s spying on the talks from American spying on Israel.

It’s pretty outrageous that Israel had to resort to spying to discover details of the nuclear talks that the Obama administration was withholding from both Israeli officials and the U.S. Congress.

Why did this story come out now? The reason is obvious. Obama officials know the Iran talks are in trouble and leaked the Israeli-spying story to change the subject. There is growing bipartisan opposition to the huge concessions made by the United States in the negotiations. Many members of Congress believe a final deal with Iran will be a weak, short duration agreement that will legitimize Iran’s nuclear program and increase tensions in the Middle East. Moreover, according to recent press report, Iran is pushing for more concessions while France is trying to toughen a final deal.

According to article, President Obama decided to keep Prime Minister Netanyahu in the dark about the Iran nuclear talks because he was concerned about leaks. This was an unacceptable way to treat one of our closest allies on negotiations with profound implications for its security. Now that we know President Obama stiffed Netanyahu by refusing to keep him informed about the Iran talks, U.S. officials should stop whining about Netanyahu breaking protocol by addressing Congress and lobbying it against a nuclear agreement with Iran.

What worries me most about this clumsy Obama-administration attack on Netanyahu is how it will feed growing anti-Israeli and anti-Semitic sentiments from the left in the United States, especially from the far left. The administration should be standing behind Israel, not generating opposition to it among its radical supporters by leaking stories like this.

Israeli spying on the nuclear talks was nothing unusual. And although Israel’s reported decision to use the intelligence it gathered from this spying to lobby Congress was unexpected, I believe this decision was justified given the way the Israeli government was treated by the Obama administration and Netanyahu’s fear that the nuclear talks were on track to produce an agreement that would seriously endanger Israeli and regional security.

As a former CIA analyst, I say congratulations and thank you to the Mossad for its outstanding work to help stop the Obama administration’s reckless nuclear diplomacy with Iran.

 

OBAMA SQUEEZES ISRAEL

U.S. accusations of Israeli espionage – why now?
Analysis: The Obama administration has launched a media blitz against Netanyahu, fearing a narrow right-wing government that could be a potential ‘nightmare’ for the US.
By Ron Ben-Yishai
Yediot Ahronot
March 24, 2015

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4640401,00.html

The accusations from the US over Israeli espionage, published Monday in The Wall Street Journal, are unfair and even a little ridiculous.

The American administration and the government official who leaked the information are well aware that Israel is capable of obtaining this information in a completely legitimate manner from those party to the negotiations with the Iranians, as well as through other legitimate means within the intelligence community. It is no secret that Israel has its ways of knowing what is happening in Iran and in the talks Iran and its representative abroad are conducting.

What is unacceptable for Israel should also be unacceptable for the US. The article specifically states that the United States intercepted Israeli transmissions and from there decided that Israel supposedly “spied” on the US. Is it acceptable for the Americans, who do not face direct security threats, to spy on a Middle Eastern ally? And can the ally, Israel, which does face a direct security threat from Iran, therefore not take a closer look at what the US is doing behind its back?

But beyond the question of fairness and morality, it is important to understand that the reports of alleged Israeli espionage are part of a campaign waged by the United States, with a clear political purpose. This is not just a political vendetta against Benjamin Netanyahu, but a calculated political move by the Obama administration that was planned long before the Israeli elections, in case Netanyahu won.

Netanyahu is facing a media blitz against him being managed by the White House. His speech to Congress, the announcement there would be no Palestinian state during his tenure (that he has that he has since walked back), and his comments against Israeli Arabs, for which he apologized on Monday, all provide the administration with ammunition to discredit Netanyahu, and insult him as the US president was insulted when the prime minister defied him and went to speak in Washington.

Behind this media campaign, the administration is hiding deep concerns regarding two issues: the danger that Israel will torpedo the nuclear agreement with Iran and the fear that a narrow right-wing government in Israel will lead to an even larger and more violent conflict with the Palestinian Authority and Hamas in Gaza.

The US is worried that a defiant right-wing Israeli government will push it to veto all kinds of resolutions at the UN as well as those by American allies in Europe, and, even worse, spark a conflict with many American Jews. Senior Democratic Party officials have warned Obama not to allow Netanyahu to cause a rift with the Jews who will support the party in the next presidential elections in 2016.

PREEMPTIVE STRIKE

So what is the Obama administration aiming to achieve through its diplomatic and media campaigns? Firstly, the Americans want to lower the flames of the steadily developing conflict between Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. To achieve this, the US administration wants to influence the composition of the next Israeli government.

In Washington they are saying that if possible, they will prevent the establishment of a narrow right-wing government, and if such a government is formed, ensure that the key ministerial posts are given to relative “moderates”. Naftali Bennett in the Foreign Ministry, for example, would be a “nightmare” for the Americans.

In addition, the government is trying to influence the political platform of the next Israeli government. The administration wants it to be explicitly stated in the government’s basic guidelines that Israel adheres to a two-state solution and will do everything possible to bring it to fruition now, rather than in the distant future.

Washington would also prefer to see a unity government in Israel, and is exerting pressure to achieve this end. The US government is also trying to pressure Netanyahu to end a freeze on the transfer of tax revenues that Israel collects on behalf of the Palestinian Authority.

This is what the US means when it says it is interested in deeds rather than words from Israel. Furthermore, the Obama administration is threatening to support a UN resolution against the settlements, with the aim of getting Israel to declare a construction freeze in settlement blocs that will not remain under Israeli rule in a final peace agreement.

The accusations of spying made against Israel are primarily designed to limit the ability of Republican lawmakers in Congress to act against the agreement with Iran. Any member of Congress, Republican or Democratic, who uses the information received from Israel to vote against the agreement with Iran, is actually guilty of a form of treason as he or she made use of material obtained through alleged espionage against the United States.

In the battle for hearts and minds, Obama is waging war on Netanyahu not only out of revenge, but also as a way of setting a strategic policy, before the Israeli government is formed and before it is too late.

ARTICLES

PRESIDENT OBAMA LOSES HIS BID TO DEFEAT A U.S. ALLY

Netanyahu’s Victory
President Obama loses his bid to defeat a U.S. ally.
Wall Street Journal (editorial)
March 18, 2015

The Israeli election that looked like a cliffhanger when the polls closed on Tuesday had turned into a decisive victory for Benjamin Netanyahu and his Likud Party by Wednesday morning. With at least 29 seats in the parliament compared to 24 for the main center-left party, Israel’s Prime Minister should be able to put together a ruling coalition of center-right parties that is more manageable than his last majority.

The victory is a remarkable personal triumph for Mr. Netanyahu, who is now Israel’s second longest-serving Prime Minister after David Ben-Gurion. He gambled that he could assemble a more stable center-right coalition, as well as by giving a high-stakes speech to the U.S. Congress on Iran two weeks before the election, and in the final days stressing above all the security themes that must be Israel’s abiding concern.

Mr. Netanyahu and Likud were trailing in the polls in the final week as the opposition stressed the rising cost of food and housing and an economy that had slowed to about 3% growth from near 6% in 2010. But in the closing days Mr. Netanyahu played up that foreigners (read: President Obama) wanted him defeated, and he rejected statehood for Palestinians, reversing a position he had taken in 2009. The reversal gave the impression of opportunism, even desperation, but it also rallied conservative voters who had hinted at growing “Bibi fatigue” after his long tenure as premier.

While the results may dismay Mr. Netanyahu’s detractors abroad, especially in the White House, they surely reflect Israel’s security consensus. Opposition leader Isaac Herzog also opposed Mr. Obama’s emerging deal with Iran.

As for peace with the Palestinians, Israelis have seen Gaza become a launching pad for missile attacks on innocent civilians after Israel left. They have seen the Palestinian Authority reject reasonable land-for-peace offers and the terror group Hamas join the PA’s governing coalition. Israelis have shown they will take risks for peace—recall Oslo in 1993 and Ehud Barak’s sweeping concessions in 2000 that Yasser Arafat rejected—but they are not suicidal.

President Obama might also reflect on his own contribution to Mr. Netanyahu’s victory. Israelis surrounded by hostile nations sworn to their destruction are most likely to take risks for peace when they feel secure in America’s support. But Mr. Obama’s looming concessions to Iran’s nuclear program have united Israelis and Arabs in opposition. The President has also been so personally and overtly hostile to Mr. Netanyahu, even trying to stop and then belittling his speech to Congress, that he invited a backlash.

It isn’t Mr. Obama’s habit to admit error, or to be gracious to his opponents, but it would serve the interests of both nations if he were. Israel’s raucous democracy is imperfect, like America’s, but it is the only reliable one in the bloody cauldron of the Middle East.

 

THE ROLE OF THE PALESTINIAN AUTHORITY IN ISRAEL’S ELECTION RESULTS

The Role of the Palestinian Authority in Israel’s Election Results
By Alan M. Dershowitz
Gatestone Institute
March 18, 2015

Those around the world who are upset with Prime Minister’s Benjamin Netanyahu electoral victory over the Zionist Camp party should put much of the responsibility for Israel’s rightward turn squarely where it belongs: on the Palestinian Authority (PA).

At least twice over the last 15 years, Israel has offered the Palestinians extraordinarily generous two-state solutions. The first time was in 2000-2001 when Ehud Barak and Bill Clinton offered the Palestinians more than 90% of the West Bank and all of the Gaza Strip, with a capital in Jerusalem. Yassir Arafat turned down the offer and started an intifada, in which 4000 people were killed. This self-inflicted wound by the leader of the PA contributed greatly to the weakening of Israel’s peace camp, most particularly of Ehud Barak’s Labor party. The current Zionist Camp party, which is an offshoot of Labor, has continued to suffer from that weakening.

Then again, in 2007, Ehud Olmert offered the Palestinians an even more generous resolution, to which Mahmoud Abbas failed to respond positively. This failure also contributed to the weakening of the Israeli center-left and the strengthening of the right.

Israel is a vibrant democracy, in which people vote their experience, their fear and their hope. In 2000-2001 and 2007, most Israelis had high hopes for a peaceful resolution of the Palestinian conflict. These hopes were dashed by Arafat’s rejection and Abbas’ refusal to accept generous peace offers. It is not surprising therefore, that so many Israelis now vote their fear instead of their hope.

The Obama administration also contributed to the election results in Israel by refusing to listen to Israeli concerns -- concerns shared by Israelis of every political stripe -- about the impending deal with Iran. Many Israelis have given up any hope of influencing the Obama administration to demand more from the Iranians. The current deal contains a sunset provision which all but guarantees that Iran will have nuclear weapons within a decade. Zionist Camp leader Isaac Herzog made a serious mistake when he said he trusted President Obama to make a good deal with the Iranians. Few Israelis share that trust, as do few members of Congress, and few Sunni Arab governments. That lack of trust was reflected in voting for a Prime Minister who has been more confrontational and less trusting.

If Israelis voted their fears, these were not entirely irrational fears; they were based on the history of the region.

The international community, academics and the media tend to have short memories. They will blame Netanyahu, and especially his campaign rhetoric, for a result of which they disapprove. But Netanyahu’s rhetoric found a receptive audience because many Israeli voters have long memories. They remember what the leaders of the Palestinian Authority, the Obama administration, the Iranian mullahs and the United Nations have done and said with regard to Israel. They remember the lethal responses to earlier peace offers.

So let’s not look at a snapshot of these election results. Instead, let’s look at a videotape of the last 15 years in order to understand how Israel’s democracy produced the current election results.

Only time will tell whether these results will engender a better resolution of the Iranian threat, the Palestinian stalemate and other issues of concern to the world. But history has shown that positive results can never be achieved by directing pressure unilaterally at the Israeli government, and not at the Palestinian Authority, the Iranian mullahs, the Obama administration and the international community.

Already, the spokespersons for the PA have predicted that the reelection of Netanyahu marks the end of any realistic peace process, without reminding their listeners of how Palestinian intransigence marked the end of earlier peace processes and impacted this election. They are once again threatening to bring their grievances to the International Criminal Court and other international institutions, which would surely be a setback to any realistic prospects for a resolution.

So instead of casting the blame on Netanyahu and the Israeli right for all the problems of the Middle East, let all sides look at themselves in the mirror of reality and decide how they can contribute to making the world a safer place, by preventing Iran from ever obtaining a nuclear arsenal and by encouraging a compromise resolution of the Palestinian issue that protects Israel’s security while providing the Palestinians with a viable, demilitarized state.

 

WHY THE MEDIA ALWAYS GET ISRAELI ELECTIONS WRONG

Why the Media Always Get Israeli Elections Wrong
By Jonathan Schanzer
Politico
March 18, 2015

The era of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu [is] coming to an end,” read one Reuters headline. Similarly, Slate declared Netanyahu to be “Israel’s Sore Loser,” explaining that “he has botched his re-election the same way he has botched everything else.” Hundreds of other news items and analytical articles in recent weeks prophesied the demise of Israel’s embattled prime minister.

Today, of course, a triumphant Netanyahu is laying plans for a new government, and the media should be asking themselves why they tend to make the same sort of Dewey-Defeats-Truman mistakes, cycle after cycle, about Israeli elections. During the last round in 2013, the New Yorker’s David Remnick proclaimed that “the story of the election is the implosion of the center-left and the vivid and growing strength of the radical right.” Remnick was not alone, either. Pundits across the board predicted the meteoric rise of right-wing politician Naftali Bennett. Indeed, this was going to be the “Darth Bennett” government. In the end, Bennett’s party, Jewish Home, mustered only 12 seats in the Knesset, while centrist Yair Lapid played a far more pivotal role in the formation of Netanyahu’s government.

It’s a small consolation, perhaps, that observers outside of Israel aren’t the only ones who often can’t predict what the political system there will do. Israeli experts often get their predictions badly wrong too. A lot of that has to do with polling data that doesn’t ever tell the full picture. But there is a lot more to it than that.

Western analysts often view the Israeli parliamentary system through the prism of our own very different system and turn it into a binary equation. We vote blue or we vote red. We vote for one politician or the other. Undecided voters ultimately weigh their priorities and vote their conscience.

But that’s checkers, while Israeli voters and politicians must play chess. Indeed, it’s entirely possible that Israeli voters don’t always fully appreciate the implication of the voting game they’re playing. Every vote in their multi-party system is a rather grueling gambit. If they vote for the party they truly like and support, they may not get the government they desire. For example, for those who support the peace process, a vote for the leftist Meretz party might mean fewer seats for the center-left Labor party’s Isaac Herzog, who is the Israeli politician with arguably the best chance of jump-starting diplomacy. Similarly, for security hawks, a vote for rightist politician Avigdor Liberman might mean fewer seats for Netanyahu and his center-right Likud party, which is best suited to pursue a security agenda. Netanyahu himself appeared to be playing this game very late on election day Tuesday, when he posted a warning on Facebook that Likud needed to peel away allegiance from the smaller right-wing parties.

Israeli voters understand this dynamic. They are aware that their votes have consequences well beyond the simple numbers of seats each party gains. But it is impossible for them to foresee how their votes will impact the final tally. They simply cannot know what impact their vote will have on the ultimate composition of the government. It is for this reason that an estimated 10 percent of Israeli voters are undecided on the day of elections. One could argue that Israeli voters are undecided even after they cast a ballot.

The complexity of the Israeli system has often prompted pollsters to ask two key questions ahead of elections: Which party will you vote for? And who do you want to see as prime minister? The answer is not always the same. And this was apparently one of the indicators that gave Team Netanyahu hope, even as the eulogies for the prime minister began to appear in high-profile publication after publication. Indeed, fortunes can change overnight for Israeli politicians. And in this case, they did.

The Israeli system has not always been this way. The Israelis, between 1996 and 2003, experimented with a system whereby voters could cast one ballot for their prime minister and another for their party. But as my colleague Emanuele Ottolenghi explains, this encouraged ticket-splitting. “Many voters rejected Labor and Likud Knesset candidates, opting instead for smaller parties with sharper issue profiles, leaving the two big parties with less bargaining power than ever.” The system created inherently unstable governments, so lawmakers reverted to the one vote system, making it somewhat easier for the bigger vote-getters to bring together the 61 out of 120 Knesset seats to form a government.

The revised system hasn’t exactly made things more stable in recent years. We continue to watch governments crumble every two years—short of a full four-year term—because of intra-coalition squabbles.

But even coalition politics appears to be lost on Western observers. As polls showed that Netanyahu’s numbers were flagging, and the premature schadenfreude began to build, analysts failed to note that Netanyahu could lose the battle by failing to gain the most seats but still win the war by being in a position to pull together enough right-wing coalition members from other parties for Israeli President Reuven Rivlin to assign him the task of forming a government.

Despite a herd mentality that has produced two straight elections’ worth of failed analysis, few have had the integrity to admit they were wrong. Business Insider’s Armin Rosen is a rare breed. As the results trickled in, he admitted on Twitter, “Man, I wrote some profoundly wrong [stuff] about the Israeli election today.”

As Netanyahu sets out to build his new government—one that could just as easily include or exclude parties from the left–we are reminded there are just too many reasons not to put our trust in Israeli polls and predictions. Yet the media’s familiarity with Israel’s open system has bred a false sense of understanding, which is sometimes exacerbated by flawed polls. And, in the case of Netanyahu, who is roundly loathed by the American left, that lack of understanding could very easily be influenced by contempt and hope for his demise.

Editors should be cringing at what passed for news last week. Maybe a few corrections will be issued. Perhaps a few clarifications, too. But if there’s takeaway for them, it is this: The biennial “Running of the Israel Experts” is dangerous. Many get gored. Few walk away without a scratch. And even fewer seem to understand very well how the Israeli electoral system works.

One of them, perhaps, is Bibi Netanyahu.

 

ISRAEL CHOSE BIBI OVER BARACK

Israel Chose Bibi Over Barack
By Eli Lake
Bloomberg View
March 18, 2015

The experts who said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was vulnerable before yesterday’s national election insisted that the vote was a referendum on him. His overwhelming victory shows that it was equally a referendum on U.S. President Barack Obama. Netanyahu gave voters a choice between whom to trust more with their nation’s security. The result was clear.

To understand how the political dynamics played out, consider Netanyahu’s comments on the eve of the vote. Asked in an interview with the right-leaning website NRG if there was any chance for a Palestinian state under another Netanyahu government, he declared there was none.

Lots of journalists and analysts saw it as a reversal of the prime minister’s speech in 2009 at Bar Ilan University, in which he laid out his vision for a demilitarized Palestinian nation. But the context here is important. Netanyahu prefaced his answer by stating something very obvious: “I think that anyone who is going to establish a Palestinian state today and evacuate lands is giving attack grounds to the radical Islam against the state of Israel.”

This was not fear-mongering. It was something Israelis have been grappling with for a decade. Following then-prime minister Ariel Sharon’s decision to unilaterally uproot Jewish settlements and remove troops from Gaza in 2005, Hamas took over the territory. It didn’t happen all at once. But after Hamas won parliamentary elections in 2006 and the Fatah faction of the Palestinian Authority refused to seat its ministers, Hamas fighters expelled the Fatah loyalists from Gaza’s security agencies and took control of the territory.

Since then, Hamas has spent most of its resources preparing for battle. There have been three Gaza wars since the Sharon pullout, and most Israelis fear that a similar withdrawal from the West Bank would yield the same results. This concern has increased over the last year as Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas -- Israel’s peace partner -- has been trying form a unity government with Hamas, a jihadist organization committed to Israel’s destruction.

Of course, Israel and Netanyahu are not blameless in this. Netanyahu’s failure to curb settlement growth in the West Bank has convinced Palestinians that they have no Israeli partner. The Israeli presence in the West Bank has resulted in the detention of thousands of Palestinians -- many of them in the teens.

But only a sliver of Jewish Israelis support an unconditional withdrawal from that territory. Even Netanyahu’s center-left opposition, the Zionist Union, has abandoned the idea of a unilateral pullout. In their campaign, its leaders promised to pursue negotiations, but didn’t promise to cede any territory Israel won in the 1967 war or to re-divide Israel’s capital, Jerusalem.

Looking ahead, it’s important to consider a much-ignored part of Netanyahu’s NRG interview. He said he anticipated renewed international pressure to force an Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank. If so, the question is whether the U.S. will join in, pushing Israel to abandon the West Bank. As Democratic Representative Adam Schiff suggested on CNN, if the White House interprets Netanyahu’s pre-election statement as a new Israeli policy, the U.S. could decide not to veto a future U.N. Security resolution recognizing Palestinian statehood.

But these hypotheticals are overblown. Netanyahu is a politician. Politicians say all kinds of things in campaign mode that they don’t end up doing when they govern. Netanyahu opposed a two-state solution in the 1990s, but as prime minister he signed the Wye River Accords, which built up the Palestinian Authority’s security services and further committed Israel to a two-state solution. Netanyahu campaigned in 2008 against Sharon’s unilateral withdrawal from Gaza, but then gave the Bar Ilan speech in 2009 and agreed to a partial settlement freeze at the request of the White House.

Obama is also a politician. In 2012 he said he wasn’t bluffing when he pledged he would not allow Iran to acquire a nuclear weapon. Netanyahu campaigned on the simple message that Obama was indeed bluffing. The deal Obama’s diplomats are now trying to close would likely leave Iran in possession of thousands of centrifuges and expire in 10 years. Yes, there would be increased monitoring of its nuclear program, but Iran would remain a threshold nuclear state, capable of using its infrastructure to make a bomb when it saw fit.

That’s something neither Netanyahu nor his opposition could accept. The Zionist Union skewered Netanyahu for taking his grievances with Obama public, saying his alienation of Obama was partly to blame for the bad nuclear deal. Netanyahu turned this attack on its head. In his Washington speech this month he warned Congress about Obama’s diplomacy. At home, he accused the opposition of lacking the fortitude to stand up to an American president who was willing to sacrifice Israel’s security for a legacy agreement with Iran.

Netanyahu’s political instincts were correct. In re-electing him, a large plurality of Israelis agreed that Obama is not to be trusted. The question now for Obama is whether he thinks Netanyahu was bluffing or telling the truth in his pre-election interview. I suppose it all comes down to a matter of trust.

ARTICLES

ISRAEL’S BROKEN POLITICAL SYSTEM

The problem with Israel’s political system, and how to fix it

If Israel wants coalitions that last for the duration of a Knesset term, it needs both Likud and Labor to become powerhouse political forces again.

By Moshe Arens
Haaretz
March 16, 2015

http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.646989

Whoever ends up forming the next government will have a tough time assembling a coalition and holding it together while preparing for the next election. When the party forming the coalition has no more than 20-something seats in the Knesset, it is a foregone conclusion that it is not going to be stable. So while worrying about the housing crisis, the cost of living, a nuclear Iran, and the Hezbollah and Hamas rockets aimed at Israel, someone better start thinking about the root cause of the instability of Israel’s political system.

Too many parties, people say. But the number of small parties is a legitimate reflection of Israel’s heterogeneous society. The Arabs, the ultra-Orthodox (both Ashkenazi and Sephardi), the Russian immigrants – and maybe next time the new immigrants from France – want and deserve to be represented in the Knesset by parties that have their particular interests at heart.

The notion that raising the threshold of votes required for representation in the Knesset would contribute to the stability of governing coalitions, by reducing the number of parties in the Knesset, has no theoretical or empirical justification. The recent law increasing the electoral threshold to 3.25% – arbitrarily and brutally forced down the throats of the three Arab parties in the Knesset – will contribute nothing to the stability of the next coalition, while denying Israel’s Arab citizens the opportunity to express their diverse political views on election day.

When two large parties dominate the political scene, stability is undoubtedly enhanced. That was the situation for many years, when the Labor and Likud factions in the Knesset each numbered over 40 MKs. It is the drastic reduction of the parliamentary representation of these parties in recent years that is at the root of the unstable coalitions – whether led by Likud or Labor – that have attempted to govern in recent years.

It is too easy to blame the electorate, most of which casts its ballot for the array of small parties at election time. It is useless to attempt to force the electorate to change its way by introducing half-baked laws like the direct election of the prime minister [which occurred three times between 1996 and 2001] or the raising of the electoral threshold. The first only made the situation worse, and the second contributed nothing while causing harm to the democratic process. It is only when Likud and Labor once again become the two dominant parties in the Knesset that a measure of stability will return to the political scene.

The Labor Party’s deterioration began with the exodus of its leadership to other parties. The list is long: Shimon Peres, Ehud Barak, Amram Mitzna, Amir Peretz. Is it any wonder that many voters likewise deserted the party? The gradual recovery that has become apparent this year [now as Zionist Union] is no doubt the result of the efforts made by its leader, Isaac Herzog, and the party’s able director general, Hilik Bar, to renew and strengthen loyalty to the party.

Likud suffered from a similar affliction, with many of its leaders abandoning the party. This list is also long: Ariel Sharon, Ehud Olmert, Shaul Mofaz, Tzipi Livni, Dan Meridor, Tzachi Hanegbi [although the latter two did later return to Likud]. And Likud’s leader these past years, Benjamin Netanyahu, has paid little attention to the party and its branches. The virtual absence of Likud from the municipal elections weakened the branches and eliminated them as a training ground for national leadership. Add to that the ill-advised joint ticket with Yisrael Beiteinu in the previous, 2013 election, plus the departures of Moshe Kahlon and Gideon Sa’ar, and it is clear that major changes need to made within the party if it is to reappear as one of the dominant parties in future elections.

Political stability in the future will not be achieved by brute force legislative measures, but rather by hard, diligent work, grooming the next generation of leadership, and building cohesion and loyalty in the ranks of the two major parties – Labor and Likud.

 

WAR WITH IRAN IS PROBABLY OUR BEST OPTION

War with Iran is probably our best option
By Joshua Muravchik
Washington Post (Opinion page)
March 13, 2015

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/war-with-iran-is-probably-our-best-option/2015/03/13/fb112eb0-c725-11e4-a199-6cb5e63819d2_story.html

The logical flaw in the indictment of a looming “very bad” nuclear deal with Iran that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivered before Congress this month was his claim that we could secure a “good deal” by calling Iran’s bluff and imposing tougher sanctions. The Iranian regime that Netanyahu described so vividly — violent, rapacious, devious and redolent with hatred for Israel and the United States — is bound to continue its quest for nuclear weapons by refusing any “good deal” or by cheating.

This gives force to the Obama administration’s taunting rejoinder: What is Netanyahu’s alternative? War? But the administration’s position also contains a glaring contradiction. National security adviser Susan Rice declared at an American Israel Public Affairs Committee conference before Netanyahu’s speech that “a bad deal is worse than no deal.” So if Iran will accept only a “bad deal,” what is President Obama’s alternative? War?

Obama’s stance implies that we have no choice but to accept Iran’s best offer — whatever is, to use Rice’s term, “achievable” — because the alternative is unthinkable.

But should it be? What if force is the only way to block Iran from gaining nuclear weapons? That, in fact, is probably the reality. Ideology is the raison d’etre of Iran’s regime, legitimating its rule and inspiring its leaders and their supporters. In this sense, it is akin to communist, fascist and Nazi regimes that set out to transform the world. Iran aims to carry its Islamic revolution across the Middle East and beyond. A nuclear arsenal, even if it is only brandished, would vastly enhance Iran’s power to achieve that goal.

Such visionary regimes do not trade power for a mess of foreign goods. Materialism is not their priority: They often sacrifice prosperity to adhere to ideology. Of course, they need some wealth to underwrite their power, but only a limited amount. North Korea has remained dirt poor practicing its ideology of juche, or self-reliance, but it still found the resources to build nuclear weapons.

Sanctions may have induced Iran to enter negotiations, but they have not persuaded it to abandon its quest for nuclear weapons. Nor would the stiffer sanctions that Netanyahu advocates bring a different result. Sanctions could succeed if they caused the regime to fall; the end of communism in Ukraine and Kazakhstan, and of apartheid in South Africa, led to the abandonment of nuclear weapons in those states. But since 2009, there have been few signs of rebellion in Tehran.

Otherwise, only military actions — by Israel against Iraq and Syria, and through the specter of U.S. force against Libya — have halted nuclear programs. Sanctions have never stopped a nuclear drive anywhere.

Does this mean that our only option is war? Yes, although an air campaign targeting Iran’s nuclear infrastructure would entail less need for boots on the ground than the war Obama is waging against the Islamic State, which poses far smaller a threat than Iran does.

Wouldn’t an attack cause ordinary Iranians to rally behind the regime? Perhaps, but military losses have also served to undermine regimes, including the Greek and Argentine juntas, the Russian czar and the Russian communists.

Wouldn’t destroying much of Iran’s nuclear infrastructure merely delay its progress? Perhaps, but we can strike as often as necessary. Of course, Iran would try to conceal and defend the elements of its nuclear program, so we might have to find new ways to discover and attack them. Surely the United States could best Iran in such a technological race.

Much the same may be said in reply to objections that airstrikes might not reach all the important facilities and that Iran would then proceed unconstrained by inspections and agreements. The United States would have to make clear that it will hit wherever and whenever necessary to stop Iran’s program. Objections that Iran might conceal its program so brilliantly that it could progress undetected all the way to a bomb apply equally to any negotiated deal with Iran.

And finally, wouldn’t Iran retaliate by using its own forces or proxies to attack Americans — as it has done in Lebanon, Iraq and Saudi Arabia — with new ferocity? Probably. We could attempt to deter this by warning that we would respond by targeting other military and infrastructure facilities.

Nonetheless, we might absorb some strikes. Wrenchingly, that might be the price of averting the heavier losses that we and others would suffer in the larger Middle Eastern conflagration that is the likely outcome of Iran’s drive to the bomb. Were Iran, which is already embroiled in Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Lebanon and Gaza, further emboldened by becoming a “nuclear threshold state,” it would probably overreach, kindling bigger wars — with Israel, Arab states or both. The United States would probably be drawn in, just as we have been in many other wars from which we had hoped to remain aloof.

Yes, there are risks to military action. But Iran’s nuclear program and vaunting ambitions have made the world a more dangerous place. Its achievement of a bomb would magnify that danger manyfold. Alas, sanctions and deals will not prevent this.

 

“IF WE CONFRONT ANTI-SEMITISM WHENEVER WE SEE IT, IF WE COMBAT IT INDIVIDUALLY AND AS A SOCIETY, AND USE WHATEVER PLATFORM WE HAVE TO DENOUNCE IT, WE CAN STOP THE SPREAD OF THIS MADNESS”

Michael Douglas finds Judaism and faces anti-Semitism
By Michael Douglas
Los Angeles Times (Opinion page)
March 14, 2015

http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-0315-douglas-anti-semitism-20150315-story.html

Last summer our family went to Southern Europe on holiday. During our stay at a hotel, our son Dylan went to the swimming pool. A short time later he came running back to the room, upset. A man at the pool had started hurling insults at him.

My first instinct was to ask, “Were you misbehaving?”

“No,” Dylan told me through his tears.

I stared at him. And suddenly I had an awful realization of what might have caused the man’s outrage: Dylan was wearing a Star of David.

After calming him down, I went to the pool and asked the attendants to point out the man who had yelled at him. We talked. It was not a pleasant discussion. Afterward, I sat down with my son and said: “Dylan, you just had your first taste of anti-Semitism.”

My father, Kirk Douglas, born Issur Danielovitch, is Jewish. My mother, Diana, is not. I had no formal religious upbringing from either of them, and the two kids I have with Catherine Zeta-Jones are like me, growing up with one parent who is Jewish and one who is not.

Several years ago Dylan, through his friends, developed a deep connection to Judaism, and when he started going to Hebrew school and studying for his bar mitzvah, I began to reconnect with the religion of my father.

While some Jews believe that not having a Jewish mother makes me not Jewish, I have learned the hard way that those who hate do not make such fine distinctions.

Dylan’s experience reminded me of my first encounter with anti-Semitism, in high school. A friend saw someone Jewish walk by, and with no provocation he confidently told me: “Michael, all Jews cheat in business.”

“What are you talking about?” I said.

“Michael, come on,” he replied. “Everyone knows that.”

With little knowledge of what it meant to be a Jew, I found myself passionately defending the Jewish people. Now, half a century later, I have to defend my son. Anti-Semitism, I’ve seen, is like a disease that goes dormant, flaring up with the next political trigger.

In my opinion there are three reasons anti-Semitism is appearing now with renewed vigilance.

The first is that historically, it always grows more virulent whenever and wherever the economy is bad. In a time when income disparity is growing, when hundreds of millions of people live in abject poverty, some find Jews to be a convenient scapegoat rather than looking at the real source of their problems.

A second root cause of anti-Semitism derives from an irrational and misplaced hatred of Israel. Far too many people see Israel as an apartheid state and blame the people of an entire religion for what, in truth, are internal national-policy decisions. Does anyone really believe that the innocent victims in that kosher shop in Paris and at that bar mitzvah in Denmark had anything to do with Israeli-Palestinian policies or the building of settlements 2,000 miles away?

The third reason is simple demographics. Europe is now home to 25 million to 30 million Muslims, twice the world’s entire Jewish population. Within any religious community that large, there will always be an extremist fringe, people who are radicalized and driven with hatred, while rejecting what all religions need to preach — respect, tolerance and love. We’re now seeing the amplified effects of that small, radicalized element. With the Internet, its virus of hatred can now speed from nation to nation, helping fuel Europe’s new epidemic of anti-Semitism.It is time for each of us to speak up against this hate.

Speaking up is the responsibility of our political leaders. French Prime Minister Manuel Valls has made it clear that anti-Semitism violates the morals and spirit of France and that violent anti-Semitic acts are a crime against all French people that must be confronted, combated and stopped. He challenged his nation to tell the world: Without its Jews, France would no longer be France.

Speaking up is the responsibility of our religious leaders, and Pope Francis has used his powerful voice to make his position and that of the Catholic Church clear, saying: “It’s a contradiction that a Christian is anti-Semitic. His roots are Jewish. Let anti-Semitism be banished from the heart and life of every man and every woman.”

In New York, Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan is well-known for building a bridge to the Jewish community. His words and actions and the pope’s are evidence of the reconciliation between two major religions, an inspiring example of how a past full of persecution and embedded hostility can be overcome.

It’s also the responsibility of regular citizens to take action. In Oslo, members of the Muslim community joined their fellow Norwegians to form a ring of peace at a local synagogue. Such actions give me hope — they send a message that together, we can stand up to hatred of the Jewish people.

So that is our challenge in 2015, and all of us must take it up. Because if we confront anti-Semitism whenever we see it, if we combat it individually and as a society, and use whatever platform we have to denounce it, we can stop the spread of this madness.

My son is strong. He is fortunate to live in a country where anti-Semitism is rare. But now he too has learned of the dangers that he as a Jew must face. It’s a lesson that I wish I didn’t have to teach him, a lesson I hope he will never have to teach his children.

 

HAMAS’ TAKE

(Tom Gross adds: At least Israelis get to hold free and democratic elections, the Palestinians don’t get to hold elections at all. The Palestinian dictator Mahmoud Abbas is now in the 11th year of what was supposed to a four-year term. Many Palestinians I know express great envy that Israelis are allowed to vote.)

Hamas Owns Netanyahu Electoral Destiny
Alresalah
March 16, 2015

http://english.alresalah.ps/en/post.php?id=4584

Gaza (Alresalah.ps)— Keeping the Israeli public in the dark in relation to losses and casualties of the Israeli army in the last Israeli offensive on Gaza, chairman of Israeli Likud party Benjamin Netanyahu is almost blind and afraid he will have no political position in the coming election if Hamas reveals content of the “Black Box” over the Israeli offensive on Gaza in 2014.

Informed sources stated to Alresalah paper at condition of anonymity that Netanyahu is seriously concerned that Hamas may reveal the secret information it has previously called the “ Black Box” of the Israeli aggression on Gaza in the last hours before election.

Some of Hamas prominent leaders, including vice speaker of Hamas political Bureau Ismael Hanneya, have frequently talked about secret information “ Black Box” over Israel’s failure in the last offensive it waged on Gaza in 2014.

“This city keeps a lot of war secrets and it’s a black locked Box” Hanneya said in a visit to Rafah city after the Israeli offensive on Gaza.

The same sources pointed out that Netanyahu is strongly keen not to raise scandals of the Israeli offensive on Gaza, particularly the file of captive Israeli soldier Shaul Aaron al-Qassam Brigades captured in the last summer offensive. Netanyahu fears his opponents may exploit this file to highlight his failure in Gaza, which will put his political future at risk.

The sources added that If Hamas reveals some information that confirm its narration and refute the Israeli one over what had really happened in the Israeli offensive on Gaza , including the captive Israeli soldier as well as other lost Israeli soldiers , Netanyahu’s political future will be completely smashed which will be a heavy price he pays.

“If Hamas does, Netanyahu and his party will be shown as liars and cheaters in front of the Israelis, which will inevitably lead him to be overthrown, and he will lose the parliamentary election.” The sources continued.

The sources revealed that international parties contacted Hamas recently over a potential prisoners swap deal to return the captured Israeli soldiers. Yet, talks over the file were postponed post the Israeli elections that will take place on Friday. Hamas made no comments on this.

ARTICLE

“TO INFLICT PROPORTIONATE DAMAGE, AL QA’EDA WOULD HAVE HAD TO BURN DOWN BROOKLYN”

The University of the Holocaust: On Anti-Semitism Now
By Clive James
Sunday Times (London)
March 28, 2004

For the Israelis, anti-Semitism is merely a nightmare. For the Palestinians, it’s a catastrophe. If you believe, as I do, that the Palestinians’ cause is just, nothing could be more depressing than to hear them spout the very stuff that guarantees they will never get an even break. The mad idea that the Jews have no right to exist is a potent intensifier of the almost equally mad idea that the State of Israel can somehow be eliminated.

I say “almost” because a friend of mine in Australia recently presented me with a plausible case that the Middle East would probably be a more peaceful area if the State of Israel had never been founded. Like her argument that the Aborigines would have been a lot happier if the Europeans had never shown up, this contention was hard to rebut, except by rudely pointing out that we were both sitting in an Italian restaurant in Melbourne, history having happened.

But history might have happened otherwise, although in the case of the Jewish presence in Palestine you would have to go back beyond the 1850s (when the Jews were already a majority in Jerusalem) to somewhere near the beginning of the Old Testament, and equip the Canaanites with grenade launchers. To the perfect madness of the first idea, however — the idea that the Jews are candidates for extermination — no concessions are possible.

Anti-Semitism is so obviously insane that no refutation of it should be necessary, and indeed after the Holocaust the feeling was widespread throughout the world that the whole demented notion had at last become an historical back number, like phlogiston or the belief that mirrors could leak lightning. Throughout the world: but not, alas, throughout the Arab world.

Why this should have been so is hard to unscramble at this distance, but briefly, and without too much distortion, it can be said that the Arab nations never studied at the University of the Holocaust. Their interests lay, not in Europe, but in the area containing the nagging presence which was already threatening to become a Jewish state. The Arab nations on the whole concurred with the British mandate’s lethal reluctance to admit Jewish refugees into Palestine, and several of the Arab leaders saw nothing wrong with Hitler’s determination that as many potential colonists as possible should be dealt with at source.

One of the leaders, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, spent time in Berlin urging Hitler to get on with it. We should hasten to remember that another of the leaders, King Abdullah of Transjordan — grandfather of the future King Hussein — was always a model of far-sighted tolerance, and quite saw the possibility of fruitful coexistence with the infidel incursion.

But we should also remember that Abdullah paid for his liberalism with his life, in an early version of the price exacted from Anwar Sadat for even entertaining the idea of peace. It was the choleric Grand Mufti who set the tone. He had been reading the same Koran as Abdullah, but had reached different conclusions. Our own best conclusion should be that the Koran was not the book to blame. There were other books, borrowed from abroad, and one of them was that putrid old Tsarist forgery The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

Remember the name, because it goes on cropping up throughout the bloody history of the area. (In Egypt, supposedly the most enlightened of the Arab nations, the state television system recently dramatised it as a TV serial.) The historian Golo Mann once said that Nazi-style anti-Semitism was a crime encouraged by bad literature, and literature doesn’t get any more bad than The Protocols. But before we get to the written word, we should look at more substantive phenomena that might account for intransigence among Israel’s enemies. There are plenty to consider.

A year before he declared the Israeli state, David Ben Gurion was ready to accept a partition of Palestine: even though his resulting portion would be tiny, at least it would be independent. But when he realised that the Arab states would not recognize a Jewish state even if it were the size of a tennis court, he was ready for what was bound to happen when he made his unilateral announcement. The State of Israel was declared, and the Arab nations immediately combined to attack it.

One of the consequences was the flight of the Palestinians. In fairness to them, we should not mince words: the flight was an expulsion. The instrument of expulsion was terror. The nascent Israeli state already had an unfortunate heritage of terror, much of it due to the initiatives of Menachem Begin, a University of the Holocaust alumnus armed with the inflexible conviction that the only answer to the threat of overwhelming violence was to get your retaliation in first.

When the tiny new state was attacked from all sides, his brainchild, the Irgun, teamed up with the Stern Gang to massacre almost 300 Arabs at Deir Yassin, and the exodus of the Palestinians understandably ensued. Though their disappearance suited Ben Gurion’s purposes — already embattled on half a dozen external fronts, he would probably have lost the war if he had been forced to fight on an internal front as well — the Jews were suitably sorry at the time. But the Palestinians were sorry forever. We should not forget their grief.

The Arab nations, alas, forgot it immediately. With the honourable exception of Jordan, every one of them turned the Palestinians away, and not even Jordan has ever given them much beyond citizenship. There is enough oil money in the Arab nations to give every refugee a hotel suite with 24-hour room service. Instead, far too many of them have been obliged to remain in camps that are really display cases, so that they can testify with their desperation to Jewish inhumanity. The inhumanity was thought to be endemic in the Jewish race. Arab theorists believed that there was scientific literature to lend this contention weight.

The Jewish leaders had already been startled to discover, as early as 1949, that The Protocols had been officially translated and printed in the Arab nations. With the rise to power of Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser, the bad literature became a driving force. As Amos Elon reveals in his invaluable book A Blood-Dimmed Tide, Nasser discovered in The Protocols a proof “beyond all doubt that 300 Zionists, each knowing the others, control the fate of the European continent and elect their successors from among themselves.”

He didn’t say how successfully they had controlled the fate of the European continent when Adolf Eichmann was in charge of the train timetables, but what he did say is recorded in the official collection of Nasser’s Speeches and Press Interviews. If Nasser was not precisely a madman, he was certainly no model of detached judgment when he sucked Hussein of Jordan into the 1967 war, thereby laying the West Bank open for occupation and the Palestinians to the second stage of their suffering.

The suffering might have been worse. If Israel, between 1967 and 1973, was fatally slow to realise that the Palestinians had fair nationalist aspirations, one of the reasons was that they seemed to be doing fairly well. Arabs in the Occupied Territories, as Arabs have always done within Israel itself, prospered economically to an extent that might have made the leaders of the Arab nations wonder why their own poor were quite so destitute. Luckily the anomaly could be put down to the continuing efficacy of the infinitely subtle international Zionist plot.

Israel came so near to losing the 1973 war that Golda Meir and Moshe Dayan both had to resign in apology. It was the end of the old Labour Alignment’s preponderance in government. Begin was at last allowed into the Knesset from which he had previously been excluded as if infected — which indeed he was — and the inexorable rise of the hardliners began. But even then, the settlement movement might have been slower to start if a bunch of PLO “moderates” had not attacked a defenceless school containing nobody except 22 Jewish religious students and murdered them all.

It was a crime encouraged by bad literature. The crime has gone on until this day, and it will continue to be a crime even if the Jews prepare a counter-crime of their own. Some would say they already have. On one occasion, a single Jew walked into a mosque and killed thirty helpless Arabs before his weapons could be disentangled from his ultra-orthodox beard. But no Israeli government, however keen on reprisals against terror, has yet proclaimed the desirability of killing any Arab it can reach.

Hezbollah and Hamas both proclaim the desirability of killing any Jew, and there is nothing novel in the proclamation. For a quarter of a century before 1988, when Yasser Arafat finally recognized the state of Israel, it was the founding objective of the PLO to “liquidate” it. Losing people at a crippling rate for a country with such a small population, the Israelis had no reason to doubt that the word “liquidate” was meant in the Stalinist sense. In the last five years of suicidal attacks, Israel has lost almost half the number of people that died in the World Trade Centre.

To inflict proportionate damage, Al Qa’eda would have had to burn down Brooklyn. Nearly all of the dead Jews were non-combatants going about their everyday lives, and no doubt that was what made them targets. Any Jew, anywhere. Hezbollah has killed Jews in that well-known centre of the world Zionist conspiracy, Buenos Aires. Where next? Reykjavik?

A week ago, shortly after Hamas’ spiritual leader Sheik Ahmed Yassin finally met his rocket, some of our media representatives were impressed when one of his supporters promised that the Gates of Hell would now be open. For the Jews, those same gates have been open for a long time. People who hold the understandable belief that Jewish reprisals will create more Arab terror should be equally prepared to consider whether more Arab terror might not produce an effect on the Jewish side that we have not previously had to contemplate because they have so far been able to keep their own maniacs chained up. Out on the extreme, far beyond Ariel Sharon and even beyond Benjamin Netanyahu, there are ultras who would like to see every Arab dead.

Yitzhak Rabin, the lost hero of Israel, was murdered by the Jewish equivalent of the Arab fanatic who killed Sadat, the lost hero of Egypt. Rabin always believed that the loudly racist Gush Emunim settlers on the West Bank were a threat to democracy. Sharon couldn’t see it. By now he can, and those who loathe his ruthlessness might come to bless it when the time arrives for Jews to shoot Jews — as well it might, on the inevitable day when the last settlers are ordered out of the Occupied Territories. It wouldn’t be the first time Jews had shot Jews. In 1948, when Ben Gurion ordered the Irgun to disarm, their response was to run a fresh supply of guns into Tel Aviv. Ben Gurion ordered that the ship should be attacked. Twenty of the Irgun were killed, and Begin ended up swimming in the harbour. Some optimists believed he had learned his lesson.

The University of the Holocaust had as many dumb graduates as clever ones. Nazi anti-Semitism was so awful in its irrationality that any contrary force is likely to be irrational as well. The only rational contrary force is called democracy, which conquers extremism by containing it. In answer to those who think Mel Gibson, lonely creator of The Passion of the Christ, might be Hitler reborn with a more photogenic hairstyle, it should be said that if he had wanted to produce a truly anti-Semitic film, he would have had the Jews on screen whispering in Hebrew about setting up a world conspiracy with money swindled from the Romans. Authentic Jew-baiters don’t equivocate.

In its classic form, anti-Semitism did indeed emerge as a by-product of Christianity. None of the abuse recently heaped on world Jewry by the ex-Prime Minister of Malaysia and the top Imam of Australia was not first heaped by Martin Luther. But Christianity finally got over it, mainly because the democratic states deprived Christianity of political power. In a democratic state, the passion of the Mel, whatever it might happen to be, must be tempered for rational ears if it is to open big on the first weekend.

The Mel’s passion aside, however, we really do have fanatics of our own, preaching versions of The Protocols that differ from it only by substituting America as the source of all the world’s evil — including, of course, the depredations of the Israeli state, which generate such universal anger that a bunch of young head-cases in Bali are moved to blow up a night club. In reality, they blew up the night club because they didn’t like the way young Australians dance. I don’t much like it either, but I don’t think blowing their legs off is an appropriate cure.

My opinion, which I assume most of the readers of this newspaper share, was not transmitted to me by a sacred text, although I suppose the teachings of Jesus were in on the start of it. In the world of today, any reasonable and widely shared opinion is the result of a long and complicated history of enlightenment culminating in liberal institutions, which we should be proud of and teach our children to revere, instead of favouring the fantastic theory that a regard for civilized values somehow exacerbates a conspiracy against the wretched of the earth.

It shouldn’t need pointing out that the Bali bombers knew no more about the history of the Middle East than I know about quantum mechanics. But it does need pointing out, because so many Western intellectuals are incapable of reasoning their way to any conclusion that does not suit their prejudices. There are limits, however, to what they can say unopposed, and very definite limits to what they can do without legal sanction. With Islamic fanaticism as we now face it, no such restrictions apply.

This is bad news for Islam in general, and for the Palestinians it is beyond bad news. There are many Palestinians who know this to be true. In the week after Sheik Ahmed Yassin’s death, the Palestinian Authority issued an appeal for passive resistance that amounted to a repudiation of the suicide bombing.

The question remains, however, of how much authority the Palestinian Authority exercises over the fanatics. Our own absolutist half-wits need to realise two things. Al Qa’eda would go an attacking the democracies even if the Palestinians achieved justice tomorrow. And the Palestinians will never achieve justice if they go on attacking Israel. Both crimes are abetted by bad literature, and to produce bad literature of our own adds fuel to the fire. To that extent, the seductive idea that we are all guilty is exactly right.

ARTICLE

“MY TEN MONTHS WITH ISIS” – LIFE AS A HOSTAGE OF JIHADI JOHN’S BRUTAL TERROR GANG

“My ten months with Isis” – Life as a hostage of Jihadi John’s brutal terror gang

* In an exclusive first interview outside France, a freed French Isis hostage says the British and American prisoners remained as cheerful as possible but that their governments could have done more to save them.

By Tom Gross
Daily Mail
February 27, 2015

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2971709/Hostage-held-Jihadi-John-s-terror-gang-reveals-secret-chess-set-milk-cartons.html

I spent three days this week with Pierre Torres, one of the French hostages who was held captive by Isis in Syria for ten months. He was released last year, a short time before his American and British co-captives were beheaded one by one in a series of gruesome videos. He was among the last people to see them alive.

He and I were in Geneva to conduct a question and answer session at the Geneva Summit for Human Rights. A video of it can be seen here (or here), in which he explains why he first went to Syria, and other matters.

But in addition, over a series of coffees and walks around Geneva, Torres, a charming and good-humored but rather shy young man of 30, slowly provided me with additional insights into his time in captivity -- his first interview with a non-French journalist.

“We were moved around a lot, kept underground most of the time, sometimes chained together for weeks on end. It was tough and terrible things happened, but we also kept ourselves in as good spirits as possible.”

“We passed the time by inventing quizzes which we played with each other. We also played chess. We created chess pieces out of a discarded milk carton we had. Our captors let us play but were angered when we represented some of the pieces by faces – their interpretation of Islam strictly forbids any depictions of any man or animal. So we had to make the pieces again.”

Torres, speaking in English, said that during his 10 months of captivity he had learned English from the British and American hostages he was held with: British aid workers Alan Henning and David Haines, freelance journalist John Cantlie, and American journalists Jim Foley and Steven Sotloff and aid worker Peter Kassig. Cantlie remains in captivity. The others have been killed.

“We were not given access to TV, computers or the internet – but they did sometimes give us books, but mainly books propagating Islamic thought. They also brought us videos to watch – videos that tried to persuade us that the caliphate was god’s will.”

Torres added that he and fellow French hostage Nicolas Henin used the time in captivity to write a children’s story in their head -- and that book, titled “Papa Hérisson rentrera-t-il à la maison?” (“Will Daddy Hedgehog come back home?”) will be published in France next month (in mid-March). Torres did the illustrations for the book – which I suppose also served as a kind of therapy for him. He is a very gifted illustrator and drew me a beautiful full-page picture (which he said represented all the human rights activists at the Geneva Summit) on the copy of the book he gave me.

He speaks fondly of his fellow hostages. “Stephen [Sotloff] was very clever, and had deep political knowledge. And he was very brave. He was not afraid of to answer back to our captors. He used to challenge them with what he saw as inconsistencies in their teaching and worldview. He also, I should add, won all the games of chess.”

“He managed to conceal the fact from everyone that he was Jewish and had lived in Israel. None of us had any idea and I only found out from press reports after he was killed.” (Isis supporters tend to be extremely anti-Semitic and had they known Sotloff was Jewish, he would probably have been subject to additional torture.)

Torres also confirmed what fellow hostage Nicolas Henin already told the French media – that Mehdi Nemmouche, the French Islamist on trial in Belgium for the murder of four Jews at the Brussels Jewish museum last year, was the same man who had been one of his captors in Syria. (Henin has added that Nemmouche was responsible for torturing them too.)

Torres doesn’t want to go into detail about the mistreatment the Isis prisoners received and prefers to concentrate on the more agreeable details, to make sure they are not only remembered as victims of what are in effect perhaps the most sadistic snuff videos ever posted on the Internet.

But he did confirm to me that “at least 10 French and Belgium citizens” were among their captors. He also hinted that the British and American prisoners were “supervised” by a group of British and other fluent English-speaking Isis members.

“Alan [Henning] was in many ways the most simple and innocent guy you can imagine. Being a taxi driver he was more down-to-earth, not like the experienced travellers that some of the journalists being held hostages were. Alan had a huge heart. It was sometimes hard to understand his heavy Manchester accent. But his jokes and humour came through. ‘It’s cool to be with him,’ one of the other European hostages said to me at the time. Even though we were being moved around in locations in the middle of the desert he liked to speak of his beloved hobby of fishing. He was crazy about it. I think he taught me every word connected with fishing in the English vocabulary.”

“David [Haines] was more introvert. He thought very carefully before he said anything. Peter [Kassig] had been disappointed by some of the things he had seen when he served in the American army and so much wanted to help Syrians.”

“Jim [Foley] was very sociable. If the European hostages had arguments, he used to calm us all down. In a way he was the most respected of us all. He had a big soul.”

Torres also spent time with American aid worker Kayla Mueller (who Isis says was accidentally killed last month in a Jordanian airstrike) but said that most of the time, as a woman, she was kept separate from the men.

Together with the three other French hostages, Torres was released last summer, for a reported ransom of several million euros -- though the French government has denied they had anything to do with this.

“We were given 24 hours notice before we were freed. This gave time for the other hostages to give me messages to pass to their families. We were not allowed to take any paper with us but I memorised the email and phone numbers of their relatives.”

Torres has subsequently had phone and Skype conversations with the relatives of some of the hostages and Jim Foley’s mother flew from the U.S. to Paris to meet with him.

Torres also indicates that terrible things were done to them, and sometimes there were sharp disagreements between the hostages, but out of respect for those who were beheaded and for the sake of their families, he says he will never make public some of the disagreements or sufferings.

“It would be the decision of the families if they one day want to reveal details of the messages I passed on to them or what was done to them in captivity.”

Torres is also wary of saying anything publically that could make life harder for John Cantlie, who remains an Isis prisoner and who is now being used by Isis to film a series of propaganda reports from the de facto capital of the Islamic State capital, Raqqa.

Torres speaks a relatively fluent English – a language he barely understood before his captivity. “I learned English from the British and American hostages. Even though there were 23 of us in total from several different countries, English was the main language we all spoke together.” (For various security reasons, few details have been made public about other released hostages from Spain, Denmark, Germany, Italy, Sweden, Switzerland and elsewhere. The other European hostages were all released, apart from a Russian who was executed by Isis at the time Torres was being held there.)

“It is not for me to judge whether the U.S. and British governments should have paid a ransom for their hostages. I would only say that the U.S. is spending a lot more money on outside intelligence than any European government and they did not do the job to get their hostages out – more should have been done although it is not for me to say how.”

Torres also wanted to point out that he spent time with the locals in Raqqa in the immediate period before his abduction and “the population of Raqqa was not at all supportive of Isis and there were many demonstrations against Isis there.” He was concerned that the people of Raqqa now have to live not only under the terror of Isis rule but under the fear of American and allied airstrikes.

“It is them I am also thinking of,” he says.

(Tom Gross is a journalist and commentator specialising in the Middle East.)