Wednesday, November 15, 2017
From Ian:
Why Many American Jews Are Becoming Indifferent or Even Hostile to Israel
Why Many American Jews Are Becoming Indifferent or Even Hostile to Israel
All told, the two Jewish communities of the United States and Israel constitute some 85 percent of the world’s Jews. Although other communities around the globe remain significant for their size or other qualities, the future of world Jewry will likely be shaped by the two largest populations—and by the relationship between them. For that reason alone, the waning of attachment to Israel among American Jews, especially but not exclusively younger American Jews, has rightly become a central focus of concern for religious and communal leaders, thinkers, and planners in both countries.Evelyn Gordon: The Red Cross Destroys the Laws of War Making War More Deadly
True, other concerns have lately encroached: concerns in both countries, for instance, over the Trump administration’s still-developing stance toward the Israel-Palestinian conflict and, in the U.S., over a seemingly homegrown series of anti-Semitic acts of vandalism and bomb threats against Jewish institutions (most of the latter exposed as the work of a disturbed Israeli Jewish youth). But the larger worry—American Jewish disaffection from Israel—remains very much in place, and its reverberating implications were underscored during the waning days of the Obama administration, when by far the greater portion of American Jews stayed faithful to the president and his party even after his decision to allow passage of an undeniably anti-Israel resolution at the United Nations.
What explains the growing distance between many American Jews and the state of Israel? Two recent books ventured answers to that question, and both authors basically agreed that the problem lay with Israel, a country that had fallen out of sync with the progressive movement of history. To Michael Barnett in The Star and the Stripes, while most American Jews embrace “a political theology of prophetic Judaism” and exhibit “cosmopolitan longings,” Israel is “increasingly acting like an ethnonational state.” To Dov Waxman in Trouble in the Tribe, the movement of the Jewish state in an “increasingly illiberal” direction has forced young American Jews to “turn away . . . in despair, or even disgust.” Making a similar point was a newspaper column by the veteran Israeli diplomat Alon Pinkas, aptly titled: “Sorry Israel, U.S. Jewry Just Isn’t That into You.” The reason, wrote Pinkas, was “the reality of decades of Israeli occupation” of Palestinian Arabs, compounded by “the dismissive, inconsiderate, and [at] times arrogant Israeli attitude toward [American] Reform and Conservative Jews.”
Not everyone has laid the blame on Israel, to be sure. Arguing explicitly to the contrary, Elliott Abrams in Mosaic located the source of the divide not in Israel’s policies or political culture but rather on the other side of the equation: the changed makeup of American Jews and American Judaism. Specifically, he pointed to the loosening of once-powerful communal bonds, as evidenced by the high rates of intermarriage and the move away from Jewish religious affiliation. In a published response to the Abrams essay, I added another factor: the gradual erosion of communal memory, especially of the Holocaust era and the history of the state of Israel itself.
The International Committee of the Red Cross, self-appointed guardian of the laws of war, has embarked on an exciting new online project: destroying the very laws it ostensibly seeks to protect. Of course, the ICRC would put it differently; it would say it’s teaching the laws of war. The problem is that the “laws” it teaches aren’t the actual laws of war, as codified in international treaties, but a made-up version that effectively denies countries any right of self-defense against enemies that fight from positions inside civilian populations. And it is thereby teaching anyone unwilling to concede the right of self-defense that the laws of war should simply be ignored.The Moral Case for High-Tech Weapons
When Israel Hayom reported on the “Don’t Be Numb” project last week, it sounded so outrageous that I suspected reporter error. But the project’s website proved even worse.
The website has four sections – “behavior in war,” “medical mission,” “torture” and cultural property.” But the big problem is the first one, which consists of three questions users must answer correctly to receive a “medal of integrity.”
Question number one: “You’re a military commander. The enemy is hiding in a populated village across the front line. Can you attack?” The correct answer, according to the website, is “no.”
This is simply false. The laws of war do not grant immunity to enemy soldiers simply because they choose to hide among civilians, nor do they mandate avoiding any military action that might result in civilian casualties. They merely require that civilians not be deliberately targeted (the principle of distinction), that reasonable efforts be made to minimize civilian casualties, and that any such casualties not be disproportionate to the military benefit of the operation (the principle of proportionality).
The second question was, “What if you know for a fact that many civilians would be killed? Can you attack?” Since the ICRC had already ruled in the first question that attacking populated villages is never permissible, I’m not sure what purpose this question served; it would only make sense if the answer to the first question had been “yes” and this were a follow-up meant to explore the limits of the license to attack populated villages. But let’s ignore that incongruity and examine the question on its own merits.
The ICRC’s answer, of course, was “no.” But the correct answer is “insufficient information.” As noted, the laws of war don’t prohibit civilian casualties as collateral damage of a legitimate military operation. They do, however, require that such casualties not be disproportionate to the military benefit, and the question doesn’t supply the information necessary to determine whether this attack would be proportionate. For instance, how many civilian casualties does “many” actually mean – 10? 100? 1,000? Even more important, what price will your own side pay if it doesn’t attack? For instance, how many of your own civilians might be killed if you don’t stop the enemy’s rocket and mortar fire?
Spurred by the digital revolution and pressured by Western moral standards about protecting innocent life, advances in battlefield technology have fundamentally changed the way we fight wars. Armies can now use pinpointed weapons to minimize civilian casualties. They can fire missiles at a single apartment in a crowded building, can identify the car of a terror cell leader and monitor it until it passes into an isolated area and be destroyed with a drone, and can use cyber tools to remotely disable weapons systems without ever dropping a bomb.
In short, precision weapons offer a more moral way to target enemies and their military assets, especially when non-state fighters use urban settings and civilians to shield themselves. These weapons, and their wise employment on the battlefield, are developments we should largely praise and sustain, even as important questions remain about how to employ them lawfully and about the true extent of their reduction of civilian casualties.
Many of the weapons that make precise combat possible have their origins in Israel. The Weapon Wizards: How Israel Became a High-Tech Military Superpower, penned by Israeli journalists Yaakov Katz and Amir Bohbot, recounts how and why the small state has developed such advanced weaponry. The book largely takes the form of narrative nonfiction rather than an essay or a policy report, telling a series of stories about how “Israeli chutzpah” grew the country into a military technology hub.
it below. Thanks! 
