Number 1 Threat to Israel

I share many people’s concern about the survival of the state of Israel. The threat of its demise would be tragic, not only to Israel but to the survivors and refugees of the Holocaust and their descendants. Loss of Israel would expose world Jewry to intensification of antisemitism. These are serious issues that go way beyond ordinary international politics.

But it is important to recognize that the biggest threat to Israel is the failure of the Netanyahu government and its supporters to understand the limits of international support. Israel cannot survive without international support. But international support is not and will not be automatic. If Israel’s government can be tricked into self-destructive behavior, Israel will be pushed into the sea.

Many people seem to understand the trap that Hamas laid for Netanyahu, a trap aimed directly at cutting off international support for Israel by provoking Netanyahu into behavior that the world would condemn, not support. In that respect Hamas showed that it does understand world politics in a way that Netanyahu, his government and supporters do not. That is and will be tragic.

The world, and many in this country, have not supported Netanyahu’s efforts to kick Palestinians out of their homes and lands on the West Bank so that Israel’s so-called ultra-conservative religious extremists could settle there. By constant pushing for yet more settlements, Netanyahu has kept that issue on the front pages. And the settlers themselves have harassed and shot at Palestinians on the West Bank. Not a good background for Israeli efforts to defend itself in ways that result in mass casualties of civilians.

Many are trying to push Biden to do more. They think that American support for Israel is locked in. But that misunderstands American politics just as it misunderstands world politics.

There are a few million Jews around the globe but well over a billion Muslims and many of them – fine, caring, decent people – live here too. They easily include Jews and even Israel in their wishes for peace, prosperity and good will. But they expect decent behavior in return. The left wing of the Democratic Party is already pushing back over the number of casualties in Gaza. If Biden jeopardizes support from too many such groups, we may end up with an occupant of the White House who has been encouraging this country’s armed antisemites.

As they have for people of all origins, America’s founding principles have welcomed Jews for centuries. America has been the major destination for Jewish refugees worldwide and Jews have built solid, peaceful, productive lives here. Jews have participated in everything from the Revolution to the Civil Rights Movement. Only a fool would risk America’s welcome and the possibility that it would be replaced by armed extremists who have already been attacking not only individual Jews but Jewish and American institutions.

So, for me, Netanyahu and those who think like him are the number 1 threat to Israel. Hamas gets the prize for immoral behavior, but Israel’s extremists get the dunce cap for stupidity. And America gets the prize for decades of standing on the sidelines and watching everything unravel.

It’s time for Israel’s strongest supporters to wake up, open their eyes, deal with the Middle East in a constructive way and take seriously the fact that equal justice for all has to be part of the solution. Thanksgiving is a good time to start.

— If you think I’m on target, please pass it on. For the podcast, please click here. This commentary was scheduled for broadcast on WAMC Northeast Report, on Nov. 21, 2023.

You Iranian

I keep wishing I wouldn’t have to write more about the Middle East. But anyway ….

Years ago I observed a minor traffic accident in Manhattan. One of the drivers jumped out of his car yelling “You Iranian” at the other. Of course he had no idea where the other driver was from but Iran was the villain of the day.

So today you hear people claiming that Iran was responsible for Hamas’ attack on Israel.

Everyone needs a boogeyman. But Hamas did not need Iran or anyone else to turn them on. From their point of view the worst thing that could happen was peace between Israel and other Arab states. Peace between Israel and the Arab states would make their project of a Palestinian homeland almost impossible. Hamas had every reason to disrupt any such rapprochement. The Abraham Accords threatened just such a rapprochement and took no account of the plight of the Palestinians. War and assassination had been used before to disrupt rapprochement between Israel and the Arab states. Hamas had plenty of motivation to act. And given its guerilla tactics, it didn’t need much from Iran, and certainly no puppet master pulling strings.

The war in Gaza and Israel is about Palestine, not Iran. And yes, Hamas’ response was unconscionable, un-Islamic, terrorism, but as a matter of cause and effect, it is also true that Israeli mistreatment of the Palestinians created the conditions in which this could happen. The idea that our friends, or ourselves, can do no wrong, is just blind idiocy.

Back to Iran, there’s something else Americans and their leaders don’t understand. Iran feels surrounded by Turkey and the Arab states. Hamas is based in Sunni Islam. Iran created Shia Hezbollah in Lebanon and has been supporting it. But beyond the religious split, Iran and the Arabs are generally quite hostile to and look down upon each other. Iran feels isolated and uses the Palestinian issue to give it entry to the surrounding nations of the Middle East. As has been said, they need to be more Palestinian than the Palestinians to keep the doors open to its neighbors.

Demagogues have sold America the idea that nothing good can come out of dealing with Iran. But the nuclear deal with the US and other European countries was very popular among the Persian people. It offered an opening to world trade that could have made their lives much better plus there was a reservoir of admiration and affection for the US that lingered despite major conflict between us. The mullahs didn’t like the deal but they understood that the people did and that put a lot of pressure on them to keep a workable relationship with this country.

Until an ignorant dilettante in the White House canceled it. Surrounded by unfriendly Arab states and with US trade cut off, Iran went looking for powerful friends and settled on Russia – not because they liked Russia – Russia was a historic threat to them – but because the enemy of my enemy is my friend. And no, Humpty Dumpty is not going back together again for a long time.

But what has been unraveling the Middle East has been the unwillingness of a segment of Israeli and Palestinian politics to follow the ethical inunctions of their own faiths.

And for too many of us, the solution seems to be to keep the history of other countries out of the schools and prevent Americans from gaining a realistic understanding of the world. But ignorance will not solve problems.

— If you think I’m on target, please pass it on. For the podcast, please click here. This commentary was scheduled for broadcast on WAMC Northeast Report, on Oct. 31, 2023.

Machiavelli and War in the Middle East

Machiavelli wrote that a prince had to do hateful things first and quickly so people would forget and get used to a better world. Dribbling out harsh decisions makes people hate princes.

In Machiavellian terms, Hamas made a canny move – horrible deeds over a couple of days triggered Israel’s lengthy response. In Machiavellian terms, Israel could have reacted quickly and overwhelmingly so everyone might eventually forget. But with Hamas embedded in the civilian population, Israel can’t react without getting everyone mad.

Hamas put Israel in a box. The good answer would have been choosing leaders long ago who’d have steadfastly worked to integrate the Palestinian population. Many Palestinians had voluntarily remained as Israeli citizens, represented in the Israeli legislature and elections.

But decisions have consequences. A warmhearted life together now looks unattainable. Neither side is willing to share the ancient land. So the Middle East won’t settle down. The consequences for America are serious despite Obama’s and Biden’s hopes to settle the conflict to ease a pivot toward dealing with China.

Giving allies carte blanche has consequences. America kept objecting to Israeli resettlement on Palestinian land but did nothing about it, implicating America, making our ideals of liberty and justice for all seem like a cynical joke, and sacrificing the worldwide power of American idealism.

Universal human rights are central from both Israeli and Palestinian perspectives. Both are right and both have violated the other’s. Too many ultra-nationalists in both Israel and Palestine are too angry, too committed to their own claims, to respect each other’s.

But the importance of respect for each other’s rights is constantly reinforced around the globe.

I asked a law student who’d immigrated from the Soviet Union why ethnic infighting had torn it apart in view of the universal principles the Soviets proclaimed. We talked about it over a tape recorder at a restaurant near the Law School. She explained that the Kremlin used divide and conquer tactics to hold onto power. Eastern Europe, the Baltic states, Belarus, Georgia and Ukraine have now split off and Russia’s effort to get Ukraine back is bleeding both.

Much of Africa is caught in religious, ethnic and tribal warfare. They can’t protect their health or their infrastructure if their politics prioritizes killing each other.

The great Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, and the Congress Party they led, tried to overcome ethnic and religious tensions in India, but Prime Minister Modi follows politicians who used violence to hold onto power.[1] India was on the verge of great breakthroughs in science and technology with enormous potential for Indian welfare, but now people question whether India has a future.

China has been silencing, kidnapping, sterilizing and enslaving Uighurs, the name for a large community of Chinese Muslims going back to the Middle Ages. It spends heavily going after Taiwan, the South China Sea and many of its East Asian neighbors. Vietnamese hostility toward the Chinese was one reason that our fighting Vietnam was so foolish. But the Chinese waste huge human and capital resources over religious and ethnic conflict.

Much of Latin America has been fighting wars over control of the poor instead of working together at regional development. Unfortunately, the US contributed to that fighting, to our everlasting shame.

Religious and ethnic wars are a dead loss to national health and prosperity. The so-called white nationalists are doing their best to get the US to jump into the same cesspool. They are, in effect, trying to destroy America.

When will we ever learn?

— If you think I’m on target, please pass it on. For the podcast, please click here. This commentary was scheduled for broadcast on WAMC Northeast Report, on October 24, 2023.

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[1] On the use of violence in Indian politics, see Ashutosh Varshney, Ethnic conflict and civic life : Hindus and Muslims in India (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002).

THE STRUGGLE OVER PALESTINE

By its deliberate brutality toward noncombatants – men, women, children, even infants – Hamas made clear that it’s not a worthy avenger of legitimate Muslim or Palestinian grievances, but are immoral by Muslim as well as Christian and Jewish teachings and principles. But condemning Hamas won’t stop such massacres, mayhem and murder. How do we stop this and make a better, more peaceful world?

Israel has been divided between people who want to be thought of as ultra-religious and want to reclaim for Jews the land they call Judea and Samaria, what most of us call the West Bank, west of the Jordan river, and those who either want to preserve that land for a two-state solution or otherwise provide fairness and justice for the Palestinians, people who were born and raised in that area.

That argument led to Netanyahu’s effort to hobble the Israeli Supreme Court which had found it illegal to take Palestinian land for resettlement. The official American position opposed forcible taking of Palestinian land to make it available for Jewish settlements.

Gaza has been virtually walled off as a Palestinian area, segregation that clearly didn’t prevent Hamas from atrocities or war. Would integration have been more effective? From our own experience and past events in Israel, integration of the Palestinians might have meant that the violence wouldn’t have come from the Palestinians but from the Israelis opposing integration. That’s a lesson of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin’s assassination in 1995 over signing the Oslo Accords. That’s also a lesson of white nationalism in the U.S. whose violence comes from opposing integration or sharing our country with dark-skinned people.

I could argue about which solution is more likely to produce peace, in the short or long run, but I want to make a different point. American Jews cannot be neutral about that argument. Our existence in America and much of the world depends on universal human rights and religious freedom. The principles embodied in the Declaration of Independence – that all human beings “are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness …” – are fundamental for us. America and what it stands for are fundamental for us. They aren’t options. We’re not just Americans by choice – we’re Americans to the core of our bones. For us, it was a great achievement when the late great First Lady, Eleanor Roosevelt, led the UN Commission on Human Rights to develop, and the UN to approve, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. We are bound by principle, by our own survival, and by the command of the Torah, what Christians call Old Testiment scripture, to pursue “liberty and justice for all” – for Jews, African-Americans, Hispanic-Americans, Asian-Americans, Native Americans, old stock Dutch, British and Spanish-Americans, of all genders and orientations.

The lesson of the Holocaust must be universal or it protects no one, not Jews or anyone else. In the Bible, God asks Jews to promote worship of the Almighty. Now, Jews must advance the cause of mutual concern and respect, of the values written into the Declaration, no matter how imperfect the people who wrote it, and of America as their advocate and leader. We have no other choice.

That said, we can only hope that cooler heads will use this war to craft a lasting peace the way French and German statesmen began to create the architecture of a peaceful Europe after World War II.

— If you think I’m on target, please pass it on. For the podcast, please click here. This commentary was scheduled for broadcast on WAMC Northeast Report, on October 17, 2023.

Stop War over the West Bank of the Jordan

The US quickly recognized Israel, over State Department objections, with much American, including Jewish support. I was in elementary school at the time but I believe that a future friend of mine ran guns here in New York for the State of Israel in 1948. I would have cheered. Later he ran an office in Mississippi in what was known as Freedom Summer – two actions that obviously took lots of guts. My friend, who has now passed away, also took a major part in the Association for Civil Rights in Israel.

Our support for the state of Israel was never unconditional. It always assumed a just state with the values of the free world. A state which dispossesses people from their homes or encourages squatters to do the dirty work can’t be described that way. The Israeli Supreme Court often objected to the treatment of the Palestinians, for which it was justly famous, and Israel repeatedly promised it would stop. Some Palestinians did commit or attempt murder, and mass mayhem. But Israel’s frequent collective punishment regardless of behavior is self-defeating and unacceptable.

Most international conflicts and civil wars are very difficult to stop. Usually the smartest policy is to stand back and watch the killing through our tears. But the war over the West Bank of the Jordan is different. Israel has been very dependent on American aid and arms. If we stopped and blocked it, Israel would have to reassess its policies and fast.

Some think the Chinese might intervene but on whose side? Our support of an aggressive Middle Eastern state has been a mixed blessing for us and the Chinese would face the same problems. Better they reap the whirlwind. Israel has pursued other trade and supply options, but those connections have historically been fragile. An American pullout would make them unsustainable for many of Israel’s partners. So I think Israel is the rare case where America policy could drive justice.

The problem that does concern me is that American withdrawal of support could have dangerous implications in an America already convulsed by hate groups.

To make American action conditional and effective, America would have to define the deal it’s willing to endorse. But we’ve been describing that for years and our so-called ally has been sticking its fingers in our eyes and flouting our wishes, confident that American support for Israel is one of the third rails of American politics.

Though most don’t realize it, America’s unconditional support for Israel isn’t because of general American Jewish support. Many of us are furious and tortured by Israel’s attempt to kill or push the Palestinians out, repeating there the treatment of Native American tribes here in America.

Instead, Christian fundamentalists made Israel the third rail of American politics, believing the temporary survival of the state of Israel is crucial for the Second Coming of Christ, the full sovereignty of God, or what is known, particularly to fundamentalists, as the Rapture – after which, according to their theology, Jews will collectively be sent to Hell, as if being Jewish is sufficient reason for eternal damnation, which has never sounded particularly Christian to me. But those who subscribe to those views have been so politicized that they’ll never support a Democrat. So I’m not sure there is a political downside to Biden or the Democrats.

America must be willing to make temporary compromises for our national security. But in the long run, America must stand for justice. And as Pete Seeger famously sang, Pacem in Terris, Mir, Shanti, Salaam, Hey Wa and Sholom too.

— If you think I’m on target, please pass it on. For the podcast, please click here. This commentary was scheduled for broadcast on WAMC Northeast Report, on June 27, 2023.