Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, March 27, 2019

03/27 Links Pt1: What to make of this pro-Israel presidency; Trump Could Replicate Golan Heights Decision in Judea and Samaria; Hamas: "Scatter the enemies’ body parts, make the skulls fly in the sky”

From Ian:

Jonathan S. Tobin: What to make of this pro-Israel presidency

Some have argued that Trump's "America First" beliefs will undermine America's position in the world and ultimately weaken Israel. But while that was a reasonable argument to make in 2016, before we knew how he would govern, it no longer makes sense in light of Trump's strong stance on Iran or his desire to persuade NATO allies to strengthen their defenses. Indeed, with France and Germany – whose leaders are supposedly the epitome of true Western values – bent on appeasing Iran, that argument now falls flat.

Nor has his inconsistent policy toward Russia – a combination of weak talk and strong policies that are much tougher than those of our European allies – endangered Israel, given that it was then-U.S. President Barack Obama who punted Syria to Moscow, not Trump.

Trump has done more than merely reverse Obama's goal of creating more "daylight" between the United States and Israel. He has promoted policies that have discarded decades of foolish conventional wisdom about the Middle East and replaced it with stances on the conflict that are rooted in realpolitik and recognition of Israel's rights and security needs.

That doesn't mean Trump is perfect and, as whoever wins the April election in Israel may find out, his peace plan may cause more harm than good. But it's past time that his critics acknowledge that what he's done with respect to Israel places him above any other American president with respect to friendship for the Jewish state, including Harry Truman (whom many Jewish admirers also spoke of in religious terms), Ronald Reagan or George W. Bush.

That doesn't make Trump Queen Esther. But whether or not you intend to vote for him next year, it is past time to stop pretending that this administration's policies toward Israel can be depicted as anything but a historic breakthrough that should be properly noted and applauded.

PMW: 2 PMW op-eds explaining why Hamas is launching rockets at Israel

Again using the PA's constant messaging and indoctrination that the terrorist prisoners are legitimate "freedom fighters", Hamas also had to prove its bona fides as the protector of the terrorist prisoners.

Accordingly, here again, notwithstanding the "official" excuse the underlying motive for the launch of the rocket, has nothing to do with Israel, but rather the internal Palestinian power struggle to win the hearts of the Palestinians.

As if the internal Palestinian power struggle was insufficient, in the last few weeks the PA and Hamas received what they perceive to be additional, albeit expected support, from the international community, specifically the UN.

In the last few weeks, Hamas and the other Palestinian "factions" in Gaza have continued to launch rocket attacks against Israel, including two long range rockets (criticized by Qawasmi) that targeted Israel's heavily civilian populated Dan region. While often quick to condemn Israel, the UN Secretary General's Special representative to the Middle East, Nikkolay Mladenov, issued no condemnation of these attacks.

Last week, the UN Human Rights Council adopted several resolutions condemning Israel after adopting the PA and Hamas narrative that the violent clashes, organized and orchestrated by Hamas, on Israel's border with Gaza since March 30th 2018, are nothing more than peaceful demonstrations and that the Israeli response to them was excessive.

The combination of the internal Palestinian power struggle with the "stamp of approval" of the UN that Palestinian terrorism will constantly be downplayed and even ignored in order to serve the goal of vilifying Israel made the launch of the rocket attack inevitable. Now, when Israel responds, the PA and Hamas will again play their all too successful "victim card", in the hope of diverting attention from their own pugnacious policies in favor of condemning Israel.

David Singer: Trump Could Replicate Golan Heights Decision in Judea and Samaria

Trump could well turn his attention now to recognising the legal right of Jews to live in Judea and Samaria.

The United Nations'

designation of Judea and Samaria as “The Occupied Palestinian Territories”and
retention of the term “West Bank” – first used in 1950 – rather than “Judea and Samaria” -used since biblical times
has similarly signalled the UN’s rejection of the Jewish peoples’ right to “close settlement” in Judea and Samaria – expressly recognised in article 6 of the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine and preserved until today by article 80 of the United Nations Charter.

Another Trump proclamation acknowledging the legal right of Jews to live in Judea and Samaria could happen at any time – irrespective of whether Israel has passed any law similar to that passed on 14 December 1981 declaring that ”the law, jurisdiction and administration of the state shall apply to the Golan Heights.”

Such a Trump proclamation would blunt the rising tide of rabid Jew-hatred within the United Nations, UNESCO, the United Nations Human Rights Council and the European Union resulting from these institutions having failed to acknowledge such vested Jewish rights under international law.

The Jewish people worldwide owe President Trump a huge debt of gratitude for championing and defending their right to reconstitute the Jewish National Home in the Golan Heights – and hopefully soon – in Judea and Samaria.

Sometimes, Arabs can't take the political correctness of pretending that they are OK with Jews and only oppose Zionists, and they explode.

From Egyptian news site Saaa25:

Unite with Gaza, oh Arabs, in the face of the accursed blood-shedders

The crimes and the unbearable bombing that the Zionist enemy is doing to the unarmed civilians in Gaza is nothing but a new crime that joins the other crimes committed by the Zionists in the region. So come, oh Arabs, the opportunity is here to liquidate Israel for good and uprooting it from the region.

I know that I am dreaming, and I know that my scream will fall on deaf ears, but I will keep dreaming, although I am torn on my inside because of what I see and what I hear, the brutal bombing of our people in Gaza, with the blessing of Trump, the agent of the Zionists, who is basically a Jew. All American presidents, regardless of their color or form, are hateful Jews, and deceitful foxes. What happened in Israel (to merit) all these bloody lethal preparations? What weapons and (military) equipment does Gaza have, in order to oppose the deception of the treacherous, blood-spilling, treaty-violating Jews. Citizens in Gaza do not have food, while Arabs are spending their nights in Tel-Aviv every day, among the pleasures, lust, drunkenness and clamor. The Palestinian civilian in Gaza does not have his freedom on his and his grandfathers’ land. The occupying, low-life, blood-sucking and blood-spilling foreigners came to occupy our lands. They are removed from the mercy of Allah. Everybody hated them and hates them today, because they violate treaties.

Is any one of the Arab kings brave enough to tell Israel to back off? And why is all this Arab silence, cowardice, feebleness in the face of the most heinous crimes committed against humanity? Where are all the human rights’s committees in the face of this hateful and bloody bombing by these accursed Talmuds, these treacherous spillers of blood? Netanyahu is the grandson of Sharon, who committed the most heinous crimes against this people, as you all know, as you all remember the massacres in Sabra and Shatilla, Deir Yassin, and Bahr Al-Baqar.

These are all the same scenes over and over again, only the faces are different. The thing that is left is revenge, and Allah is capable of everything. Unite, oh Arabs, in the face of the accursed Jews, they are weak and despicable. The land is not theirs. Unite, oh Arabs, what is happening is not acceptable by any religion or people, or anyone. Unite, oh Arabs, in order to protect the honor of your women in Gaza, Deir Balah, Deir Yassin, Tul-Karem, Haifa, Jaffa. Unite, for the Blessed Land knows its (rightful) owners. Glory belongs to those who stand against tyranny, arrogance, killing, and blood-shedding. Unite, oh Arabs, there is an accursed Zoroastrian (Iranian) and Jewish pre-planned attack against you. Unite, oh Arabs, what is it that makes you stay put????

(h/t Ibn Boutros)

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How to deal with antisemitic philosophers?

In the New York Times' philosophy column, Laurie Shrage points out a provocative point: Most major Western philosophers were antisemites.

We commonly assume that anti-Semitism and related attitudes are a product of ignorance and fear, or fanatical beliefs, or some other irrational force. But it is by now well known that some of the most accomplished thinkers in modern societies have defended anti-Semitic views. For instance, several of the major Enlightenment philosophers — including Hume, Voltaire and Kant — developed elaborate justifications for anti-Semitic views. One common thread running through the work of these philosophers is an attempt to diminish the influence of Judaism or the Jewish people on European history....

When the anti-Semitic views of great thinkers such as Kant, Voltaire or Hume (or Hegel, Schopenhauer, Heidegger and Wittgenstein, for that matter) are exposed, one typical response is to question whether these prejudices are integral to their important works and ideas. But this may be the wrong question. A better question is: Should those who teach their works and ideas in the 21st century share them without mentioning the harmful stereotypes these thinkers helped to legitimize?

Shrage then goes on to point out that Western philosophy classes still generally favor Christian philosophers over "non-Western" philosophers and that this bias needs to be corrected.

This is undoubtedly true, but she misses the point as well. Saying "All Philosophers Matter" is as unsatisfying a response to antisemitism in philosophy as "All Lives Matter" is as a response to antisemitic attacks.

For better or for worse, people who are regarded as being at the pinnacle of human knowledge have too often fallen prey to the lowest form or prejudice. How can that be?

Shrage minimizes the problem by calling it mere politics: "The anti-Semitic theories of Hume, Voltaire and Kant show that philosophy has rarely, if ever, been insulated from politics," she concludes.

Hate is much more than politics and Shrage is avoiding the real question.

My guess as to how philosophers could so easily justify antisemitism is related to Plato's famous Allegory of the Cave, something taught to all first year philosophy students.

Briefly, the allegory goes like this: Most of humanity are chained into a cave where they face a wall and there is a fire behind them that they cannot see. Sometimes people pass between the fire and the wall, casting shadows, and the people see those shadows and assume that they reflect reality - they make up theories based on the shadows and they are comfortable with their limited knowledge. A philosopher is the only one who sees the truth, who knows that there is a fire and an entire world out there - the only one who sees reality.

It is a very nice allegory. But that doesn't mean that it reflects the truth.

However, built in to this allegory is the hubris that philosophers are uniquely wise and anyone who disagrees with their words are simple and dumb, people who insist that the shadows are reality. When your entire self-perception is one where you are gifted and others are too stupid to see, then you gain a very large blind spot in your thinking. You start to think that everything you say is uniquely brilliant and that those who don't "get it" are inferior anyway and their opinions don't matter.

Bigotry goes hand in hand with egoism. The better you think you are, the bigger the blind spots you have to your own shortcomings - including bigotry.

We see the same thing with academics who spew the most ridiculous garbage freely and public it at will and who don't deign to consider the opinions of those who disagree as not being the "experts" they think they are. We see it with self-proclaimed "progressives" who are so certain that their moral sensitivities towards some forms of racism do not allow them to possibly hold antisemitic attitudes - and they deride those who point them out as being racists themselves.

One gets the impression that the professor of philosophy who wrote this column is not willing to think about the idea that perhaps a Hume or a Kant's philosophy that includes and justifies hatred of Jews could be entirely wrong in their methodology or their thinking. Or it could be a huge blind spot. Either way, the issue that these philosophers created elaborate justifications for hating Jews, and that these justifications can be seen today to be completely wrong, should take the air out of the balloon of philosophers as wise and beyond reproof.

If institutions of higher learning are interested in their members pursuing the truth without blind spots, perhaps they should invest in courses in humility. These classes that teach how the top people in each field (including hard sciences) have fallen to bias, bias that they were too blind to see because of their hubris and the lack of willingness to listen to other points of view. If we want to do better we need to learn from the mistakes of those who came before us.

If Kant can screw up so badly, then we all can. But if we know how badly our role models have screwed up, we are closer to knowing how to avoid those mistakes in our own lives and careers. That is the lesson to be learned from the antisemitic philosophers - and from the haters who hide behind morality or "expertise" today.

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The major legal reason given by critics of Israel today against the annexation of the Golan Heights is a combination of what the UN Charter says with an unwritten but widely assumed corollary.

The UN Charter says in Article 2, paragraphs 3 and 4:

All Members shall settle their international disputes by peaceful means in such a manner that international peace and security, and justice, are not endangered.
All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.

The corollary, which as far as I can tell wasn't made explicit until the preamble of Resolution 242 in the wake of the Six Day War, is that acquisition of territory in war is invalid:

"Emphasizing the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war and the need to work for a just and lasting peace in which every State in the area can live in security,"

This was finally made prescriptive in UNGA 2625 of 1970: "The territory of a State shall not be the object of acquisition by another State resulting from the threat or use of force. No territorial acquisition faulting from the threat or use of force shall be recognized as legal."

Does this apply in wars of self-defense as well? Today, most legal scholars argue that it does. Before 1967, however, their views were split.

It seems logical that the corollary of the illegality of gaining territory through force is that the aggressor should not be rewarded for his illegal aggression. If the party gained land in self-defense, and self-defense is legal under the UN Charter, then the spirit of the rule is maintained - the aggressor is not rewarded for his aggression. Otherwise the aggressive party can keep trying to destroy his enemy over and over again with no repercussions.

Possibly, the most relevant document from before 1967 that deals with this issue is the 1949 Draft Declaration on Rights and Duties of States which was an early attempt by the UN to codify these sorts of issues written by its International Law Commission. I'm not certain of its legal status but it was based on the best UN international law expert opinion of the time.

It says in articles 9, 11 and 12:

9. Every State has the duty to refrain from resorting to war as an instrument of national policy, and to refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of another State, or in any other manner inconsistent with international law and order.

11. Every State has the duty to refrain from recognizing any territorial acquisition by another State acting in violation of article 9.

12. Every State has the right of individual or collective self-defence against armed attack.

It says explicitly that the only time that acquisition of territory should be considered illegal is when it is acquired during an illegal war, in violation of Article 9. A war of self defense is legal (in fact the only kind that is legal,) as Article 12 says.

The idea that acquisition of territory in a defensive war is illegal seems to have only gained traction after 1967. Interesting how international law always seems to morph against Israel and only Israel! But it is important to recognize that the evolution of international law does not work retroactively - if acquisition of territory in a defensive war was legal before 1967, then Israel's control over the Golan remains legal today, even if today it is accepted that defensive acquisition is not acceptable.

As legal scholar Eugene Kontorovich notes, there were many other cases of legal acquisition of territory by war between 1949 and 1967:

The views of the U.N’s International Law Commission and most scholars in finding defensive conquest as lawful under the U.N. Charter should not be surprising given that it simply reflected broad state practice under the Charter. In the years immediately following the adoption of the Charter, many of the victorious Allies took territory of the defeated nations. All these annexations have been recognized, without controversy by the U.S. and international community. To mention only a few of these instances, Holland unilaterally annexed parts of Germany in 1949; Greece and Yugoslavia took parts of Italy; the U.S.S.R and Poland annexed large parts of Germany. The ILC in its deliberations specifically addressed the legal basis for these annexations: because the underlying use of force was lawful (defensive), the acquisition of territory can be permitted.
Nor did this practice stop with the immediate aftermath of WWII in the 1940s. At the close of the Korean War in 1953, the Republic of Korea controlled and claimed sovereignty of portions of territory north of the pre-war boundary at the 38th parallel. Nonetheless, the U.S. and the international community has not seen any obstacle to recognizing Seoul’s sovereignty over this territory.

No one disputes any of these. Only when Israel is involved does international law suddenly change, always to Israel's detriment.

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03/26 Links Pt2: Combating the anti-Zionist facade; VP Pence Slams Democrats for Failing to Condemn, Combat Antisemitism; Pompeo at AIPAC says ‘Anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism’

From Ian:

Combating the anti-Zionist facade

A conversation with Elisha Wiesel is like stepping into a Talmudic debate. Quietly spoken and urbane, he gives deep thought before delivering considered answers.

Despite his famous father’s larger-than-life legacy, he is his own man with his own ideas and strong opinions. He will take part in the March of the Living for the first time this year and is acutely aware of its significance – not simply from a personal perspective but as a powerful tool to strengthen Jewish identity and also create a deeper and more nuanced appreciation of Israel.

We live in an age in which we hoped that antisemitism would dissipate, where the world would take a step back and realize that words and actions have consequences, sometimes genocidal ones. But Europe and the United States are grappling with increasing levels of antisemitism, and one feature in particular caught Wiesel’s attention.

“What’s notable about the strain of antisemitism at the moment is that it is being masked as anti-Zionism and it is being embraced by the Left – and in America that is tragic. We are talking about causes where the Jewish people have been so closely aligned.

“Take the Black Lives Matter movement. It is incomprehensible to me that they have incorporated language from Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions. Where is the connection? It is disappointing. If you look at the history of the NAACP, US Jews were there from the beginning. That BDS is being swept into BLM saddens and disappoints me.”

The BLM movement began in 2013, after the acquittal of George Zimmerman, a neighborhood watch volunteer, who shot and killed African-American teen Trayvon Martin in Sanford, Florida. But its progression to becoming a more significant actor on the national stage followed the fatal shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, on August 9, 2014. At the same time, the BDS movement’s response to Operation Protective Edge drew the attention of the Black Lives Matter leadership, and it was at this point that two seemingly disparate issues converged into a fight, as the leadership of the movements’ saw it, against oppression.

Talking about the BLM and BDS movements brought the conversation to college campuses, where standing up as a proud Jew has become more challenging.

Lyn Julius: Palestinians Share Responsibility for Jewish Refugees, Too

Not long ago, I heard emeritus professor of Tel Aviv University Asher Susser give a talk on the Israel-Palestinian conflict. He came to the following conclusion: The conflict is insoluble because the Palestinians and Israelis have two irreconcilable narratives. And the Palestinians will never give up their so-called ”right of return.”

Yet as I pointed out to him, two sets of refugees arose out of the conflict: one Arab and one Jewish.

The Jewish refugee issue has been solved, but there was an incontrovertible (and irrevocable) exchange of roughly equal refugee populations between what is now Israel and the Arab world. Such exchanges happened in the India-Pakistan conflict, and between Greek and Turkish Cyprus.

End of story.

Professor Susser acknowledged that Israel would never accept five million Arab refugees (this number, uniquely among all other refugees in the world, includes the descendants of the original refugees). The responsibility, he said, should be shared with the Palestinians and the other Arab states.

Maybe the professor was playing Devil’s advocate, but his reply is one I have heard from Arab sources: What have the Palestinians got to do with Jewish refugees?

When I replied that the Mufti of Jerusalem embodied Palestinian antisemitism, inciting the 1941 Farhud massacre of the Jews in Iraq, the professor countered by saying the Mufti was just one man, and there were other causal factors behind the Farhud.

Yes, the Palestinian Mufti was just one man. But he was the de facto leader of the Arab world, where popular opinion was overwhelmingly pro-Nazi. He aligned himself with pro-Nazi nationalists to overthrow the Iraqi government. He took refuge in Berlin with 60 other influential Arabs, and broadcast virulent anti-Jewish propaganda over Radio Berlin with a view to facilitating the extermination of the Jews not just in Palestine, but across the Arab world. Palestinian and Syrian pro-Nazi nationalists had taken control of levers of power in Iraq, and they too bore responsibility for inciting anti-Jewish hatred.

Hero pilot from hijacked Entebbe flight dies at 95

Michel Bacos, the pilot of the Air France flight from Tel Aviv which was hijacked in 1976 and landed in Entebbe has died at age 95.

Christian Estrosi, the mayor of Nice, where Bacos lived, announced the news on social media on Tuesday.

"He refused to abandon his passengers, who were taken hostage because they were Israeli or of Jewish origin, risking his own life," Estrosi wrote. "Michel bravely refused to surrender to antisemitism and barbarism and brought honor to France."

On June 27, 1976, Bacos was the captain of Air France Flight 139, from Tel Aviv to Paris, with a stop in Athens. After the plane departed Greece, four hijackers took control of the cockpit and forced Bacos at gunpoint to head for Benghazi, Libya, and then Entebbe, Uganda.

The terrorist "sat behind me with his gun pointed at my head," Bacos told Ynet in 2016. "Every time I tried to look in a different direction, he pressed the barrel of his gun against my neck."

Several days later, the terrorists split up the hostages between those who were Israeli or Jewish and those who were not. Bacos demanded the hijackers give him access to both groups.

New "Apartheid?" Poster: Lian Najami

Continuing my popular series....

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An article in An Nabaa that purports to be an intellectual discussion of Judaism, Zionism and Israel defines Zionism this way:

Zionism is a Jewish national movement which is named after Mount Zion and aims to restore the glory of Israel and through the establishment of the Judean people in Palestine to establish the Temple and the destruction of the Al-Aqsa Mosque and to the head of this state of the Messiah, which ends with the rule of the world.

You learn a new thing every day.

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03/26 Links Pt1: Daniel Pipes and the Israel Victory Project; Caroline Glick: Why Trump Recognized Israeli Sovereignty over the Golan Now; IDF Takes Down Dozens of Hamas Terrorist Targets in the Gaza Strip

From Ian:

Daniel Pipes and the Israel Victory Project

Daniel Pipes, president of the Middle East Forum, a Philadelphia-based think tank, is considered one of the world’s foremost analysts on the Middle East and Muslim history. Since 1994, the Forum, through its various projects, has promoted American interests in the Middle East and protected Western values from Middle Eastern threats.

The Israel Victory Project, which calls for a Palestinian defeat in the place of what the Forum considers failed diplomacy, is today the Forum’s most high-profile campaign.

Explains Pipes, “The reigning assumption for 30 years has been that the Palestinian-Israeli conflict can be resolved through negotiations, diplomacy mediation, compromise and painful concessions. It has not worked.” Rather, Pipes, suggests “a completely different approach, which looks at the historical record and notes that conflicts generally end when one side gives up.” A loss on the battlefield, says Pipes, does not necessarily mean defeat.

“The Six-Day War in 1967 was perhaps the greatest military victory in recorded history, but it did not lead to a sense of defeat. The only way for the conflict to be resolved is for one side to give up.”

Pipes points out that his proposal is not anti-Palestinian.

“If the Palestinians give up, they would gain even more than Israelis because the Israelis live in a functioning advanced, democratic, law-abiding country; Palestinians live in something quite worse. Only when the Palestinians abandon their irredentist claim on Israel can they make progress and build their polity, economy, society and culture.” Any resolution of the conflict, says Pipes – whether Israeli sovereignty on the West Bank, complete withdrawal from it, or something in between – is better achieved once the Palestinians accept Israel as the Jewish state.

Caroline Glick: Why Trump Recognized Israeli Sovereignty over the Golan Now

Former Obama administration officials, and the left-leaning Israeli media, interpreted President Donald Trump’s March 21 decision to recognize Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights as a bid to help Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s electoral prospects ahead of Israel’s Knesset elections on April 9.

But while the timing of the announcement — formalized Monday — may help Netanyahu and his Likud Party vis a vis his main opponent, former Israel Defense Force Chief of Staff Benny Gantz and his “Blue and White” party, in all likelihood the timing of Trump’s statement was a function of recent developments in Syria.

The war in Syria broke out in 2011. It pitted the regime of Bashar Assad and his sponsors – the Iranian regime and Iran’s proxy forces, including Hezbollah and Shiite militias manned by Afghans, Pakistanis and Iraqis — against Sunni opposition forces, largely dominated by jihadist groups.

During the Obama administration, the U.S. shifted from diffident support for the Sunni rebels through CIA programs and support for Turkish operations to train and equip them, to opposition to the Sunnis and support for Iran. The shift in U.S. policy owed to the rise of Islamic State as the dominant Sunni force in Syria in 2014, and to U.S. efforts to appease Teheran in the framework of U.S. nuclear talks with Iran ahead of the 2015 nuclear deal.

From Israel’s perspective, the main threat the war posed was the prospect that through the regime, Iran would take direct control over Syria and use it, along with Hezbollah-controlled Lebanon, to wage a major war against Israel. To thwart that prospect, Israel supported Sunni militia fighting the regime along its border in the Golan Heights, and conducted repeated airstrikes against Iranian targets, particularly weapons shipments in Syria that were destined for Hezbollah forces in Lebanon.

In 2015, the strategic balance of powers in Syria shifted decisively in favor of Iran and Assad with the arrival of Russian forces. Russia’s decision to engage directly in the war on behalf of the Iranian side meant that Assad would survive.

Trump was right to recognize Israel’s claim to the Golan Heights

Amid all of the breathless commentary on a report from special counsel Robert Mueller that has yet to see the light of day, the real news today came at the joint press conference between President Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

When the two leaders confirmed reports that the United States will recognize Israel’s right to the Golan Heights, they also struck a blow for real-world facts on the ground being superior to decades of diplomatic fiction.

When Sens. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and Tom Cotton, R-Ark., early this year urged Trump to recognize Israel’s sovereignty over parts of the Golan Heights, I argued: “Control of the heights is tremendously important for the safety of people living in the northern part of Israel. If hostile powers control the heights, they can use the advantages of the elevation to rain attacks on the Israelis below. That’s exactly what Syrian artillery did to Israeli farmers in the 1950s and 1960s. Israel particularly fears Iranian presence on the heights through its proxy, the terrorist organization Hezbollah.”

Israel has controlled key portions of the Golan Heights since capturing them during the Six-Day War in 1967. That war began after repeated attacks on Israel, including from the Golan Heights, by Palestinian terrorists, followed by Egypt’s blockade of an Israeli port and by a joint mobilization of most of Israel’s Arab or Islamic neighbors. Acting in defense, Israel crushed the joint militaries of those nations and kept captured territories so as to make new aggression against Israel far less likely to meet success.

Israel went from control to full annexation of the Golan Heights in 1981, with no effective pushback from Syria since. In effect, therefore, all Trump did on Monday was recognize a territorial reality in effect for nearly 52 years and a political reality in effect for 38. Those are among the reasons why, as Ben Hubbard reported in the New York Times, the official recognition of Israeli sovereignty there “was met across much of the Arab world with a shrug.”

Hitlers Bosnian Islamic Waffen-SS division Grand Mufti of Jerusalem with Himmler inspects the new recruits. Each Islamic SS battalion had an imam,each company had a Mullah 60K Jihadists fighting with Hitler received a Quran with a Swastika on it #StopTheRevisionism @Campaign4T pic.twitter.com/soH6ErovS8
— Eye On Antisemitism (@AntisemitismEye) March 26, 2019

Earlier this year, we took a look at the controversy surrounding one aspect of Netanyahu’s string of diplomatic success stories: the bonds he has been building between Israel and Eastern Europe. The answer to the question, Why Are Jews Being Drawn To Europe's Right Wing Parties? turned out to be pretty pragmatic. Last December, Hungary abstained when the UN General Assembly rejected US recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. Then, Hungary was joined by the Czech Republic and Romania to block an EU statement criticizing the US for moving its embassy to Jerusalem. In return, East European countries -- by virtue of their friendship with Israel -- acquire a certain protectia, a shield against accusations of antisemitism and ethnic supremacy.

But another aspect of these alliances may touch upon the issue of Israel’s developing sense of identity.

Ivan Krastev, chairman of the Center for Liberal Strategies, wrote an opinion piece recently for The New York Times, on Why Do Central European Nationalists Love Israel So Much? He writes that there is a bond between Eastern Europe and Israel that goes beyond the politics of convenience.

They share a history.

Many of the original founders of the Jewish state originally came from Central and Eastern Europe and were influenced by them and by the politics surrounding the newly independent states that arose after WWI. For their part, Eastern Europe has watched Israel develope, and admires what it has seen.

And we are not talking about kibbutzim:

What attracts Eastern European populists to Israel today is their old dream realized: Israel is a democracy, but an ethnic democracy; it defines itself as the state for Jews in the same way East Europeans imagine their countries as a state for Poles, Hungarians or Slovaks. It has preserved the heroic ethos of sacrifice in the name of the nation that nationalist politicians covet for their own societies.

But Eastern Europe may be getting ahead of itself--the feeling may not be mutual.

For all the similarities, those countries overlook the unique position of Israel as the Jewish state. As the Jewish homeland, Israel offers itself as the home to foreign immigrants from very different countries around the world -- something those very same admiring countries in Eastern Europe would be loathe to do.

Krastev writes that the fascination Eastern European countries have for Israel is also due to the fact that despite its small size, Israel has the economic and military power to play in the big leagues.

But even there, Israel has an identity more in common with countries like India, who also deal with regional, existential threats, than with the Eastern European countries who enjoy peace and security in the EU.

And then there is the natural wariness Israelis have when they encounter the kind of chauvinistic nationalism that is reminiscent of the Holocaust.

Matti Friedman wrote about this wariness last year in an article on What Happens When a Holocaust Memorial Plays Host to Autocrats, where he addresses the mixed feelings at Yad Vashem for Netanyahu’s new friends.

Friedman too notes that these Eastern European leaders do not see Israel in quite the same way that she is used to seeing herself:

The Israel they see is not a liberal or cosmopolitan enclave created by socialists, but the nation-state of a coherent ethnic group suspicious of super-national fantasies, a tough military power and a bulwark against the Islamic world.

While Israel has evolved from its socialist kibbutz beginnings to being recognized as the Startup Nation -- these countries see in Israel an evolving nationalist state, and that conflicts with progressives, especially in the US, who also perceive Israel differently.

So on the one hand, Yad Vashem is confronting the overtures made by right-wing countries like Hungary and Poland:

how should a memorial to the devastation wrought in part by ethnic supremacism, a cult of personality and a disregard for law handle governments flirting with the same ideas?

Meanwhile, left-wing progressives seem to have a different value system as well, as expressed in how to understand the lessons of the Holocaust and the goal of Zionism.

As Friedman puts it:

An American liberal, for example, might say the lesson is universal humanist values — the kind of values that many of us assumed, mistakenly, were permanently ascendant in the world after the war. The Zionist approach has traditionally been that while those values are desirable, they won’t protect Jews after the Holocaust any more than they did when it was going on, and there must be a state with enough power to protect Jews in a brutal world.

Needless to say, that is not necessarily the Zionist goal that progressive Jews feel comfortable with.

But progressive Jews have not always argued with the results achieved by a nationalist Zionism. After all, it was that same nationalist Zionism with its willingness to form alliances with other countries with common interests that led Israel -- under the leadership of Menachem Begin, no less -- to sign a peace agreement with Sadat, the same Sadat who had once been a supporter of Nazi Germany.

Israel, like Zionism, is not so simple.

Some of the most right-wing of Israel’s leaders have been at the forefront of taking daring measures and making compromises in the interests of peace.

Meanwhile, a very different irony that Friedman points out is that it is those liberal democracies that progressives would prefer Israel to associate with who are the ones who pose the more serious threat to the Jewish state. After all, the biggest threat to Israel comes not from the right wing countries in the West but rather from Muslim countries -- where the biggest threat is from Iran. And it is the liberal leaders in the West who seem very willing to do business with Iran while at the same time joining dictatorships in isolating Israel at the UN.

And that brings Israel back to associating with some of the more right-wing leaders, like Orban and Trump.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

Two people were killed in the weekly Gaza riots on Friday. We already discussed that one of them was a member of Islamic Jihad.

What about the other?

Nidal ‘Abdel Karim Ahmed Shatat was killed with a bullet to the heart as he was close to the border fence. According to Felesteen, he was an enthusiastic participant in all Hamas-orchestrated border events (and indeed his body was wrapped in a Hamas flag, indicating that he had some ties to that terror group.)

Nidal told his father not to participate in the march because he had family that needs him and he wanted him to be safe. But Nidal had his own children, a six month old boy and a seven year old girl. So why did this reportedly sensitive young man go to what he himself clearly considered dangerous place when he had children of his own?

It turns out that Nidal had not seen his children for several months because of some sort of family dispute.

Imagine how it would feel to be separated from your own newborn son!

Nidal was depressed and wanted to become a martyr so that he wouldn't feel like a loser. He seems to have deliberately provoked the IDF, perhaps by charging the fence.

He wanted to die a "hero."

The same article says that hi mother told people not to cry but to distribute candy to commemorate his death.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

Last year, a brief article in Australian military website The Cove discussed cognitive warfare:

The term cognitive warfare has entered the lexicon over the last couple of years. General David L. Goldfein (United States Air Force) remarked last year we are “transitioning from wars of attrition to wars of cognition”. Neuroscientist James Giordano has described the human brain as the battlefield of the 21st Century. Cognitive warfare represents the convergence of all that elements that have lived restlessly under the catch-all moniker of Information Warfare (IW) since the term’s emergence in the 1990s. However, military and intelligence organisations now grappling with this contentious new concept are finding cognitive warfare to be something greater than, or as Gestalt intended, different than, the sum of these parts. Cognitive warfare is IW with something added. As we begin to understand more about what has been added, awareness is growing that western military and intelligence organisations may have been caught playing the wrong game.

...As Clint Watts has surmised, where IW described a war of information, the cognitive battlespace is a war for information as it is transformed into knowledge via the processes of cognition. The technologies of the networked digital age, conceived by the US and its allies as an accumulation of advantages on the conventional battlefield, and unleashed by the clamour for profit of the commercial sector, were transformed into a strategic gift for an imaginative adversary and thus presents us with the current dilemma. The convergence of IW into cognitive warfare has been forced upon us.
...
Cognitive warfare presents us with an orientation problem. Adversary actors have strategised to avoid a confrontation with US and allied forces at their strongest point – namely, in high intensity conventional warfare. They have pursued gains in various domains that remain under the threshold of inducing a conventional military response. While US and allied forces have mused over ways to bolster below-the-threshold capabilities, the adversary has been busy changing the rules of the meta-contest. By denying, disrupting, and countering the narratives that underpin US and allied legitimacy, and by stifling our capacity to regenerate the preferred narrative via sophisticated and targeted disinformation operations, the adversary has changed the context within which force and the threat of force is situated. In other words, the diplomatic power of the traditional force-in-being of allied militaries to influence the behaviour of others is being diminished. Furthermore, the actual deployment of lethal kinetic capabilities will be subject to a similar reorientation where and when they occur. Simply put, lethal kinetic capability, as the traditional remit of military organisations, has undergone a reorientation at the hands of an adversary enabled by the hyper-connected digital age to manipulate its context to an unprecedented extent.

Cognitive war is not the fight most professional military practitioners wanted. A little discussed aspect is the extent to which our military and strategic culture perceives it as a deeply dishonourable fight. A cultural bias – if not a genuine cognitive blind spot – is at work and has slowed our response. But national security, before it is about winning kinetic battles and before it is centred on the profession of arms, is at its core about ensuring that people are safe to live their lives: it is about keeping the peace and protecting the population from harmful interference. This includes the harm that disrupts our capacity to conduct our collective social, economic, and political lives on our own terms.

Israels war with Islamist terror groups has been almost exclusively a cognitive war, not a kinetic war, and too many observers have still not realized it.

Traditional kinetic wars have been fought in order to change the political facts by fighting with traditional weapons. Cognitive wars try to change the political facts by influencing others psychologically. In such a scenario, a victory in a kinetic war can easily become a loss when the victors are painted as immoral and cruel, and the world reacts to that perception.

Israelis are understandably frustrated at the IDF firing at empty buildings, at their warning people (including terrorists) that a bomb is on its way. But this is not a conventional war - it is cognitive. And perhaps this conflict between Israel and Hamas, now over a decade old, is the first war where the side with the overwhelming military advantage is at a significant cognitive disadvantage that renders most of the military capacity useless.

This war is unique. Hamas and its allied terror groups wants to see civilians die - on both the Israeli and Gaza side.

Dead civilians in Gaza is a victory for them in the cognitive battlefield of world public opinion. Every time a reporter does a "body count" showing how many more Gazans were killed than Israelis, Hamas wins. This is why Hamas' wartime strategy is to maximize Gaza civilian deaths. Hamas deliberately places its military targets in residential areas, Hamas has been known to threaten Gazans by force not to leave their homes when Israel warns them of upcoming attacks, Hamas threatens any reporters who show rocket launches from between civilian buildings. Hamas spends its money on bunkers and tunnels to protect its fighters from Israeli bombs - but not a penny to protect the people.

Dead civilians on the Israeli side is a victory for Hamas as well in local Palestinian public opinion. They paint such "victories" as an indication that they have nullified Israel's defenses. The recent terror attack that killed Rabbi Achiad Ettinger was loudly praised in Palestinian media as a brilliant and complex operation.

On the other side, the IDF properly has as its first priority the defense of its citizens. What is Iron Dome if not the most expensive per capita defense system in history?

The IDF is also the first army in history that goes to extraordinary lengths to protect the lives of its enemy civilians. Leaflet dropping, "roof knocking," robo-telephone calls are all meant to tell civilians to get out of the way while the IDF hopes to bomb only terror infrastructure. Large, noisy explosions are part of Israel's cognitive war - to show Israelis that something is being done and to remind Hamas that if they go too far, Israel's restraint may be limited.

All of these are purely cognitive. Reporting on the fighting as if it is a traditional war plays into the hands of Hamas, since controlling the news cycle is not peripheral but essential in cognitive war.

While the West may just be waking up to the importance of cognitive warfare, Israel has been fighting it for a long time - not always successfully.

In this war, the enemy isn't only Hamas. It is the so-called "human rights" NGOs who are eager to paint Israeli actions as war crimes. It is "Jewish Voice for Peace" and "IfNotNow" who are solidly on Hamas' side in the cognitive war. It is the pro-Hamas army on Twitter and Facebook who are quick to scream that everything Israel does is "genocide."

Military superiority is not an advantage at all in a cognitive war - and it can easily be spun to be a disadvantage.

In the cognitive war, whether they realize it or not, reporters are weaponized. If they fall for the lazy way to report the fighting as if it is a conventional war, they become tools of the terrorists.

The cognitive war demands an entirely different way of thinking, not only from the combatants but from the observers, who are caught up in the battle whether they like it or not. People who are easily manipulated are the targets in this war.

Each of us must ask ourselves whether we want to be manipulated or do we want to think for ourselves.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

03/25 Links Pt2: Douglas Murray: Is the Middle East now calmer than the West?; The Case for Aipac; Trump signs document officially recognizing Israeli control over Golan

From Ian:

Douglas Murray: Is the Middle East now calmer than the West?

People always think that wherever they are is the center of the world, but I always feel that Jerusalem actually is

I transfer in Cyprus to go on to Tel Aviv, wishing there was one country on this trip I could go to from another. Whenever things seem as though they may become straightforward in the Middle East, such as over warming relations with the Gulf states, you get a reminder of how complicated everything always will be. In Jerusalem I make my usual visit to the Western Wall. Just beyond the remaining wall of the Temple is the Dome of the Rock, where Abraham intended to sacrifice Isaac, and from where Muslims believe Mohammed ascended on the night journey. A lot of ascending happened around this spot — in Christianity too. People always think that wherever they are is the center of the world, but I always feel that Jerusalem actually is.

I return to Britain via Berlin to debate Radek Sikorski on the subject of nationalism. The former Polish foreign minister has to try to explain why nationalism is ‘a delusion’. It’s an interesting claim, because ‘nationalism’ is a shape-shifter term, sometimes seen as a liberal project (as in the 19th century), sometimes not (as in the 21st). But it is contingent on place too. Clearly some countries are permitted to be nationalist today and others are not. Yet the reason lots of Europeans are against nationalism isn’t that nobody should have it, but because we’re not sure if we should. And that, as I point out to an audience which finds the comment sweet-sour, is because we’re still not sure whether the Germans can be trusted with it. Inevitably Brexit comes up in the debate, and — despite my best efforts — at dinner afterwards. Radek, like many others, is still spitting about it. But I can’t really engage. I have traveled a great deal in recent years in order to avoid discussing Brexit. Partly because we have to have a country after this, and the way people have been talking I’d be amazed if we do. I watch Westminster through my fingers. One MP, who shall remain nameless, routinely gets up in the House of Commons, decries the British voting public as morons led astray by racists, and then asks why we can’t be more united.

I return to Britain just in time to find some online warriors trying to pin the New Zealand massacre on everyone who has ever spoken out against Islamic extremism or mass immigration, including me. Some Islamists decide that the correct response is to kill Sajid Javid and me, among others. Once again, things were actually cooler in the Middle East.

NYTs: The Case for Aipac

The bill of particulars never changes: Aipac has too much money and power. Aipac bribes Congress into twisting American foreign policy against the national interest. American Jews are more loyal to Israel than they are to the United States. And, most laughably, the Israel lobby silences all criticism of Israel.

Where to start? Maybe with this: Aipac’s success isn’t “about the Benjamins.” It flows from the fact that a majority of Americans, not just Jews, are predisposed to support Israel. Polls and surveys consistently confirm this.

Why is it so surprising, then, that a lobbying organization exists to channel this support into political and legislative action? Labor unions do it, chambers of commerce do it, abortion rights groups do it and Arab-Americans do it. It would be weird if there wasn’t a pro-Israel lobby. “There’s nothing new about lobbying on behalf of causes in foreign places,” Hubert Humphrey said in 1976. “It’s as American as a hot dog or apple pie.”

And Aipac was never the big spender its antagonists claim. Its total lobbying expenditures in 2018 came to $3.5 million, which doesn’t even put it in the top 50. (Realtors spent $72.8 million.) Instead, Aipac depends on grassroots organizing in every state. It is built on people power.

Not that Aipac supporters are afraid to write checks — a nationwide network of affiliated political action committees and donors is a key component of its strategy. Still, the total amount of pro-Israel donations to members of Congress came to $10.6 million in 2018, only the 34th highest among Washington interest groups, behind the entertainment industry ($15.6 million), lawyers ($80.6 million) and retirees ($110 million).

Trump signs document officially recognizing Israeli control over Golan

With Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu standing at his side, US President Donald Trump on Monday signed an official presidential proclamation recognizing Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights.

“Today I am taking historic action to promote Israel ability to defend itself, and really to have very powerful and very strong national security which they are entitled to have,” Trump said in the White House Diplomatic Reception Room soon after Netanyahu arrived at the White House for a meeting.

The meeting took place in the shadow of Hamas' missile attack on central Israel, and Trump said that attack showed “the significant security challenges Israel faces every single day.”

“Today aggressive action by iran and terrorist groups in southern Syria, including Hezbollah, continue to make the Golan heights a potential launching ground for attacks against Israel, very violent attacks,” Trump said.

Trump said that Any possible future each agreement must take into account for Israel's ability to “defend itself from Syria, Iran and other regional threats.”

Trump said that “under my administration the unbreakable alliance between the United states and Israel has never been stronger.”