The Canadian Institute for Jewish Research cordially invites you to its
23rd Anniversary Gala
Wednesday, June 15, 2011
Congregation Shaar Hashomayim
450 Avenue Kensington, Westmount, Quebec, CanadaDISTINGUISHED KEYNOTE SPEAKER
MOSHE ARENS
Former Israeli Defense Minister and Ambassador to the U.S.
Also Featuring
Prof. Barry Rubin
Outstanding internationally-renowned Middle East analyst
Tax receipts will be issued for the maximum allowable amount
For additional information. or to register for the 23rd Anniversary Gala,
please call Yvonne at 514-486-5544 or contact us by e-mail at yvonne@isranet.com.
WHEN FARCE BECOMES TRAGEDY
Amiel Ungar
Jerusalem Post, May 9, 2011
It was Karl Marx who once opined: “History repeats itself first as tragedy, second as farce.” If one were to compare “Desert Storm,” the first Gulf war against Saddam Hussein in 1991, with “Odyssey Dawn,” the current parodic allied intervention in Libya, Marx would be half right: The intervention in Libya is farce, but from Israel’s perspective, some of the tragic elements also appear to be recurring.
Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi is no Saddam Hussein. He did not employ poison gas against a neighboring country and against his own citizens. He did not threaten to change the regional balance of power the way Saddam did when he marched into Kuwait in August 1990, with the idea of creating a petro-dollar empire that would fuel his military ambitions. The coalition arrayed against him was also more impressive. Muslim states from Bangladesh to Morocco sent forces, as did Syria and Egypt.
Today, we are still waiting for the first Arab cameo role in Libya.
Perhaps Qatari planes equipped with Al Jazeera satellite dishes will make an appearance. Then, in the early 1990s, the US response represented an assertion of leadership. Currently, the Obama Administration is doing its best to abdicate any leadership role and only French President Nicolas Sarkozy is spoiling for the limelight.
What has not changed is that Israel is being asked to suffer now and pay later, to avoid disrupting the coalition. When Saddam attempted to insert a wedge between the West and its Arab allies by firing Scud missiles at Israeli cities and Israel’s citizens walked around with gas mask kits, we were firmly instructed not to retaliate.
The Bush administration sent deputy secretary of state Lawrence Eagleburger for the duration of Desert Storm to babysit.
Then most Israelis, including prime minister Yitzhak Shamir, felt that by gritting our teeth and not retaliating, Israel was getting a bargain, as the US was taking out the state that posed the greatest threat to Israeli security.
The only dissident was then-defense minister Moshe Arens, who claimed that Israel as a sovereign state could not shirk its responsibility to retaliate against a dictator who was terrorizing its civilian population. The quiet-spoken Arens was once disparaged by his intra-Likud rival David Levy as “the professor.” However, it was the professor, rather than the former hardhat, who understood that sometimes being uber-analytical was inferior to the Reaganesque “a nation’s gotta do what a nation’s gotta do” approach.
The March missiles launched from Hamas-controlled Gaza kept the school children in Israel’s south at home and inched their way past Ashdod to Yavne, with the next stop presumably the most populous coastal city south of Tel Aviv, Rishon Lezion. Israel sufficed with a few desultory air strikes.
Its restraint was rewarded when US President Barack Obama himself and not some minor-league flunky conveyed condolences for recent terror attacks to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and reaffirmed America’s “unwavering” commitment to Israel’s security.
The role of Eagleburger was played by US Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who put in a day and a half in Israel, oozing sympathy while reining in the leash.
Gates agreed that no sovereign state can tolerate having rockets fired at its people. But he added that “we don’t want to do anything that allows extremists or others to divert the narrative of reform that’s going on in virtually all the countries of the region.” Israel is again to practice restraint for the sake of the big picture.
In the aftermath of Iraq, Israel was called upon by Bush senior to ante up on the peace process. But at least he could claim to have provided a security cushion. Now Libya appears to be the swan song of Western military force, the Grad and Qassam missiles continue to fly, and Sinai has become a freeway for their replenishment and upgrading. Yet Gates paradoxically views the situation as an “opportunity for bold action to move toward a two-state solution.” Israel must pay by passivity during the crisis, and then must help mollify the Arabs for allowing themselves to be liberated.
When Israel is deterred not by its enemies but by its friends from retaliatory action, its only recourse is to adopt civil defense measures.
For Israel, the Gulf War meant sealed rooms and Patriot missiles that did more harm than good. Now we are to be placated with the Iron Dome system and turning school buildings into redoubts, to be followed nationwide, no doubt, by fortified malls, reinforced clinics and buttressed hospitals.
An unwavering American commitment to Israel’s security and its qualitative military edge are of no avail, if it is not allowed to employ decisive force against Gaza. What is worse this time is that we lack a Moshe Arens who can push back against this passivity or, at the risk of giving some readers apoplexy, a Sarah Palin urging Israel to stop apologizing.
(Contributing editor Amiel Ungar is a columnist for the Makor Rishon daily,
and the national religious monthly Nekuda.)
GROWING MIDEAST DEMOCRACY COULD BENEFIT ISRAEL TOO
Moshe Arens
Haaretz, April 5, 2011
Trying to evaluate the implication of the wave of demonstrations sweeping over the Arab World, one is reminded of Zhou Enlai, the premier of the People’s Republic of China under Mao Zedong—who when asked what he thought of the French Revolution, reportedly replied that it was too early to tell. Samuel Goldwyn’s well-known aphorism reminds us that we should not hasten to predict future events: “Never make forecasts, especially about the future,” he said. And especially not about the future of the Middle East, one might add.
A number of Middle East experts who were asked to comment on recent events in the region and, throwing caution to the wind, dared to predict where this was all heading, found themselves with egg on their face within 24 or 48 hours.
It is not the experts alone who on occasion get the picture wrong. It happens to our politicians as well. Do you remember how Ehud Barak, on becoming prime minister, began showering Hafez Assad with complements, referring to him as “the builder of modern Syria”—the same Syria Assad ruled for many years using brutal repressive measures that should have landed him in the International Court of Justice for crimes against humanity. The “modern” Syria of which Barak spoke remained a third-world country throughout Assad’s corrupt rule, and it was in that sorry state that he bequeathed Syria to his son Bashar.
Ehud Olmert, as prime minister, completely misreading the developments in Turkey, sought out Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, that “great friend of Israel,” to serve as the “neutral” mediator between Syrian President Bashar Assad and Israel.
Cognizant of these mistakes, one needs to be very careful when venturing guesses regarding the direction the current events are going to take. Nevertheless, can we discern anything when we try to peer into the future in light of the dramatic events of the past few weeks, and gauge the impact they may have on Israel?
The wave of demonstrations sweeping over much of the Arab world these past weeks is aimed to overthrow autocratic rule. It is directed against dictators who have held power and abused that power for many years. Israel quite naturally sympathizes with those calling for democratic rule, whether in Tunisia, Egypt or Syria. The concern that has been rightly voiced, and not only in Israel, is that once democratic rule is established it would be hijacked by extremist elements, like the Muslim Brotherhood.
The possibility of such a development has raised concerns not only in Israel. If the Muslim Brotherhood were to take power in Cairo, it might spell the end of the Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty. How likely is such a development? There is no way to assess the probability of such a turn of events, but to take place a number of obstacles would have to be overcome. Even if the Muslim Brotherhood were to attain power in democratic elections overseen by the Egyptian army and then establish dictatorial rule, the group would have to contend with the secular liberal elements that played a prominent role in the Tahrir Square demonstrations. They will most likely make their appearance again in the square should they feel they have been cheated.
The West’s military intervention in Libya has added a new dimension to the events unfolding in the Middle East. Any group in power is likely to be cautious when considering drastic action against opposition groups, out of concern that such moves might lead to outside intervention. Thus dictatorial rule by the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and abrogation of the Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty, although a possibility, does not seem likely for the time being.
Similar considerations apply to Syria, where the younger Assad is at the moment holding on to power. He is not likely to repeat the brutal repression of opposition carried out by his father in Hama, in which tens of thousands were killed. Should the Assad regime be overthrown it may affect the existing alliance between Syria and Iran directed against Israel, which would be welcome news for Israel and the rest of the world. And if the wave of protests reaches all the way to Iran, that would be good news indeed.
So all in all, there is room for some optimism.
OBAMA WILL GO DOWN IN HISTORY
AS THE SPOILER OF MIDEAST PEACE
Moshe ArensHaaretz, May 24, 2011
It seems that when the time comes to write the history of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, U.S. President Barack Obama will go down as the great spoiler. He never seems to miss an opportunity to push the process into a dead end.
He has done so again with his declaration that Israel should return to the “1967 lines” in any peace agreement with the Palestinians. He seems oblivious to the fact that the present fluid state of affairs in the Arab world, clouded by uncertainty regarding future developments among Israel’s next-door neighbors, is hardly a propitious moment for risk taking by Israel. And he seems to ignore the coalition that has recently been formed between Mahmoud Abbas and the Hamas terrorists in Gaza, in effect removing any semblance of a Palestinian partner for negotiations with Israel at this time. Nevertheless, he urges Israel to agree to withdraw to the 1949 armistice lines with Jordan.
These lines, as he surely must know, run about 10 kilometers east of the Tel Aviv metropolitan area and right through the heart of Jerusalem, Israel’s capital.
It started two years ago, when Obama in Cairo called for a settlement freeze beyond the 1949 armistice lines, making it clear that by that he also meant the cessation of building in parts of east, north and south Jerusalem that had been occupied by Jordan after Israel’s War of Independence. As should have been expected, the Palestinian negotiators could not be less Palestinian than the president of the United States.
So the freeze on construction became their precondition for the resumption of negotiations with Israel, and that was the end of direct Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. It seemed for a while that Obama understood that he had made a mistake, forcing the Palestinian negotiators into an untenable position.
He retreated to calling for a temporary settlement freeze, but the Palestinians had already dug in their heels on his previous position, and he finally dropped the whole matter. By then he had already set back the peace process substantially.
Now he is calling on Israel to withdraw to the “1967 lines” and has pushed the Palestinians another step away from the peace process. This one is a giant step, and the damage is going to take a long time to repair. If and when Palestinian negotiators reappear, Israeli agreement to withdrawal to the “1967 lines” as spelled out by the president of the United States, will be their precondition for the start of negotiations. They now cannot possibly accept anything less than that. And that is a demand that Israel cannot accept. So here is another deadlock, made in Washington.
In baseball the batter is out after three strikes. Obama at bat on the Israeli-Palestinian peace process has already struck out twice. A third chance does not seem on the horizon at the moment. No doubt, his intentions were the best, but the results are greatly disappointing. Rather than advancing the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, he has managed to put obstacles in its way.
How did the president’s good intentions lead to this impasse? A good part of the blame rests with mistaken advice that he received from “experts” on the Israeli political scene.
They no doubt told him when he came into office that most Israelis object to the settlements that lie beyond the “1967 lines” and that if he made an issue of these settlements he would have the support of most Israelis, and that this would force the Israeli prime minister to accept his demands or else lose his coalition in the Knesset.
It turned out to be poor advice. This time the many calls heard in Israel for a withdrawal to the “1967 lines,” the demonstrations, the artist’s boycott of performances in Ariel, the “tsunami” that the defense minister predicted for this coming September unless Israel came forth with some daring initiatives, all must have convinced him or his advisers that his call for an Israeli retreat to the “1967 lines” would be an offer that the Israeli prime minister would have to accept if he did not want his government to fall. Wrong again.
The Israeli “peace camp,” advisers in Washington who believed that not only do they know what is good for Israel but that they also understand the Israeli political scene better than Netanyahu, have led Obama in the wrong direction.
They ended up pushing the peace they are seeking beyond the horizon.
WHAT I HAVE LEARNED IN MY LONG VISIT TO AMERICA
Barry Rubin
Pajamas Media, May 31, 2011
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.Surely some revelation is at hand.…
–Yeats, “The Second Coming”
What’s most scary in America today may be the deficit and it may be government policies, but for me the scariest thing is the way that traditional American pragmatism, an open-minded search for truth, the reliability of the media and of academia, has virtually disappeared in many cases.
I’m talking here about the media, academia, and the highly publicized public debate, not what all of the people are thinking. Clearly, a lot of people aren’t buying the conventional wisdom. But the important point is that it is the conventional wisdom, the main ideas held by the elite and government, what young people are being taught, and probably pretty much everything half of the population is hearing. I was in California, Iowa, Wisconsin, New York, Maryland, Florida, Virginia, Texas, Arizona, Oklahoma, and other places.
While this certainly doesn’t apply to all schools, the indoctrination that I’ve seen in one elementary school shocked me. If you really hear what eleven-year-olds are saying to each other you’d be amazed: accusing each other of being racists at the drop of a hat; thinking man-made global warming is a threat to their personal survival into adulthood; viewing America as evil.
If that happens in an educational system—especially in universities—indoctrination means that the more “educated” someone is, the more “stupid” they become.
The decline of professional ethics—journalists are supposed to be accurate and fair despite their personal views; professors should seek truth wherever that leads them, be open-minded, and represent accurately sources and evidence—is staggering. Large numbers of ideas are practically barred from the mass media; silly concepts are put forward that have huge holes in them but are protected from scrutiny or criticism. Some people or movements are always ridiculed; others are always exalted.
There are hundreds of examples of how this works and I see it every day.
The fact that Israel’s public opinion and expert opinion can be totally misrepresented by the mass media from being anti-Obama, pro-Bibi to being pro-Obama, anti-Bibi is frightening. We are beyond the “slant” and into the total reversal of reality.
The fact that during months of massive discussion of the Muslim Brotherhood it has been virtually impossible to find in the public debate on the big media, in academia, etc. that this is a radical Islamist anti-American group that favors violence is terrifying.
I’m sure you could all add examples from domestic issues and other international stories. Here are some from Victor Davis Hanson.
Consider California, the traditional land of optimism and creativity (if also fantasy). In traveling there I found despair. The massive deficit is just being ignored, as is the way in which excessive regulation is driving people and enterprises out. A new governor is elected who typifies everything that’s wrong.
It’s as if America—the country that was always the most ready to face facts and treasure an open, fair discussion—has lost its grip on reality.
I realize, of course that there are many people, perhaps half of the population, who aren’t like that. They’ve found other sources of information and hold to their views. Among the elite, however, the people certain in their superiority and who genuinely are possessing more power, the situation is proportionately worse.
Increasingly a debate over facts and evidence has turned into a slander fest over the personal identity and supposed opinion of the speaker. Once someone has been identified as “conservative” or not thinking that Obama is great; once someone can be libelled as “racist” (i.e., if they criticize Obama in many cases); Islamophobic, etc., that person’s views are discounted completely.
Recently, I have been involved in a number of exchanges in which I presented facts only to be told they are biased opinions. Interlocutors cited no evidence or even gave any specific examples of how what was said wasn’t accurate. They don’t have to do so any more since feeling has become truth and identity has become proof. To get them to understand that to make an argument one must have evidence, not just a personal feeling or can put a label on the person making the statement, is difficult.
Even being proven right by events doesn’t help. In April, many admitted that what people like myself were saying about the Egyptian revolution was true. Yet this prompted no reconsideration of basic beliefs or of the relative credibility of various “experts.”
Here’s the bottom line: No matter how bad the economic situation, leadership, or policies might be, a country can recover if the people and elite are able to define the real problems and the real solutions. If the connection with reality is lost, all hope is gone. That is one of the Middle East’s central problems. Increasingly, it seems to be Europe and America’s problem, too.
The way cults work is to isolate people from reality and bombard them with a single viewpoint. The victim is cut off from other influences by being told that they are evil and thus to be disregarded. In some ways, that is what’s been happening to America in recent years.
One weakness of this structure is that the arguments it makes and the claims puts forward are so ridiculous that if exposed to articulate and reasoned responses—often, even for a mere sixty-second period—it quickly collapses logically. Its strength is that it has such strong defenses against such exposure.
Another weakness is that the use of institutions for politically motivated exploitation must remain invisible. If someone understands that universities, mass media, and other trusted institutions have been distorted out of their historical, democratic, and American norms then that’s the beginning of seeing through deception.
Basically, there are three ways that this system can be broken:
- First, the power of ideas, which is why many perspectives are banned from campuses and mass media; distorted; and the places where they do appear discredited. Alternative ideas must have a way of reaching those who don’t already accept them.
- Second, the power of experience, in which events show dominant ideas and policies don’t accurately interpret the situation and don’t work. Experience can bypass media and schools and other institutions but may also be mediated by them.
- Third, elections, in which the number of people who think each way is actually counted, rather than merely “spun” by institutions controlled by the dominant ideology that is generated by a minority.
Having lived outside the United States for most of the time during the last twenty years, and soon to leave again, I have seen America from near and far. To have seen it so transformed close up without having watched the daily “fundamental transformation” bewilders me. Yet people who have lived through every minute of this process also don’t seem to be able to explain it, or at least each explains what went wrong in a different way.
Many think nothing has changed; many more believe all the changes have been for the better.
It’s too early to count America out. The reality of its exceptionalism—yes, viewing America from outside makes that reality more evident—and its people’s strengths might well pull it out of this swamp.
Yet in thinking about the future I feel like the British military attache in Istanbul, whose letter home I once found in the archives. It was spring 1941, 70 years ago almost to the exact day. Nazi Germany was dominant in Europe and steadily marching forward.
The city was deceptively serene and beautiful, he wrote:
“Every garden has a red Judas tree in it, and it’s a wonderful sight: even across the Bosphorus the Asiatic side is a blaze of red silhouetted against the black cypress trees of the vast cemeteries.” He had just hosted a successful cocktail party with every delicacy of food and plenty to drink. Anyone would think life was perfect.
Yet he thought this idyll would not last. Once the Germans rested a bit, he predicted:
A smashing attack will be staged.… I think we have at least a month.… I listened to Churchill’s broadcast last night, which didn’t hold out much comfort. I don’t mean that I have the slightest doubt about the ultimate end, but it does look a hell of a way off.
I, too, have no doubt about the ultimate end. But, yes, it seems too far off.
