Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, March 27, 2019

The legal issues around annexing the Golan

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.”

Cartoon of the Day: Taking responsibility

Continuing on with my re-captioning of single panel cartoons....

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One of my favorite reads of the last several years, Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking Fast and Slow, documents why our reasoning faculties – which should be protecting us from making bad choices based on emotion or instinct – contain flaws that make them the source of many human errors.

The book title refers to a model developed by Kahneman and his fellow researcher Amos Tversky (both Israelis, BTW) in the 1960s that posited a human mind driven by two processes: one fast, one slow.

The slow process is effortful and gets turned on when we engage in deep contemplation or perform other activities requiring heavy cognitive work (such as solving a mathematical problem, or writing something – like this blog entry). In contrast, our fast process takes in information from our senses and processes it very rapidly, taking charge of everyday activities like driving a car, or listening to or reading something (again, like this blog entry) spoken or written in a language you already understand.

Because our slow process is rather lazy, it tends to defer to the fast process to do as much work as possible. This makes sense, given the sheer amount of thinking/processing that must take place to get through a single day. But deferring to a fast process to make sense of the world comes at a cost.

For example, the fast process performs its sense-making role by looking for patterns and then fitting those patterns into a storyline, one which takes a lot of deliberate (i.e., slow process) work to unlearn. In many cases, this is not a bad thing. Unlearning that a loud noise signals danger, for example, might not be such a wise idea (which may explain the evolutionary benefit – and thus origin – of this fast-process/slow process duality).

But flaws in our reasoning, notably the many biases to which all human beings are vulnerable, are a side-product of this brain structure with considerable downside. For example, Confirmation Bias which leads us to believe information that confirms existing beliefs and reject information that does not, is just one of many cognitive biases that result from letting our fast process take the first cut at story formation.

You see this theory play out in the context of politics all the time. For what are candidates for office doing when they try to “define” themselves and their opponents if not creating narratives they hope will get taken up by the story-loving fast process of a majority of voters? Even those endless rows of lawn signs bearing only a candidate’s name (no policy positions, no slogans) can be seen as a means to embed that name into the non-deliberative component of a voter’s brain, hoping it will be top of mind when a majority of them walk into voting booths.

The BDS propaganda campaign is doing something similar with its endless repeating of their beloved “Israel = Apartheid” equation, regardless of how many times that and all their other accusations have been debunked. Given that many of the constituencies they address (like college students) were not even born during the era when Apartheid South Africa stood, the BDSer’s hope is that their mantra will result in those who know nothing about either Israel or Apartheid will build a fast-process connection before any slow-process cognition (i.e., thought) can interfere.

The narratives the BDSers spin for themselves offer an even clearer set of examples of cognitive biases at work. That’s because many of the manipulative techniques used by Israel-haters (and hyper-partisans of all stripes) are targeted not at opponents but supporters.

Spending a little time on the #BDS Twitter feed (or do some lurking on BDS sites like Mondoweiss and Electronic Intifada, if you can stomach it) to see what I mean.

When the BDSers score a win with a student government vote (like they did at Brown last week), that is portrayed as the latest example of their unstoppable momentum. And when they are rejected (as they were by at Columbia the week before last) that simply shows that their eventual embrace by all is just a matter of time.

When a handful of college professors (from a pool of tens of thousands) sign onto an academic boycott campaign, this news is treated as demonstrating wide acceptance of their position within academia. But when hundreds of college presidents condemn such boycotts, suddenly the BDSers discover the concept of percentages, declaring that these hundreds represent just a fraction of every college president in the country (never mind that they’d be screaming from the rooftops if even one such president embraced their cause).

As with many partisan political projects, the trick is to find an angle to fit any news (good or bad) into the storylines already established in the boycotters own heads (which they would like to insert into everyone else’s). Thus news about financing of anti-BDS efforts is turned into a story about Sheldon Adelson (a Right-leaning macher who gets to play the role of bête noir in their narrative), ignoring the involvement of Left-leaning Israel supporters like Haim Saban in that same effort. Yet when Hilary Clinton publically trashed the BDS “movement,” Saban is suddenly rediscovered but only to the play the role of pro-Israel moneybags pulling Hillary’s strings.

“Look over there!” might be a proper label to slap onto a strategy that involves scouring any news story for an element – no matter how tiny or irrelevant – that might conform to the boycotters' view of the world, and then blowing up that detail and screaming that it must be considered the Alpha and Omega of the tale. If you want to see what I mean, just check out how quickly Mondofada declares “case closed” whenever they can find a members of AIPAC or StandWithUs in the vicinity of a civic organization that has just told them to drop dead.

It’s easy to declare everyone involved in such efforts to be knowingly peddling falsehoods. But that misses the point that the boycotters should be seen as both pushers and junkies for the dopey lies (or, better, fantasies) they are peddling.

The BDS fantasist, after all, must continually build and reinforce their self-image as noble knights and warriors, the vanguard of a new world order, owners of the Left end of the political spectrum, battling dark forces that represent evil incarnate. How can they continue to chant “Free Gaza” as Gaza descends into a murderous hell hole and the rest of the Middle East goes up in flames? Because the slow process that might have once had the power to revise the storyline making up their primary identity has atrophied from long disuse.

All of us, by virtue of being human beings, routinely fall prey to Confirmation Bias and other frailties of reasoning. But under normal circumstances, competing aspects of our identity (represented by competing storylines in our own heads) allow us to occasionally engage Mr. Slow Process to impose some reality onto our view of ourselves and the world.

Failing that, we are also surrounded by other people who are likely to have other narratives floating around in their fast processes, creating a check on any one falsehood or fantasy dominating a group or society. But what happens when large groups of people (perhaps an entire self-declared “movement”) have decided to not just stop using its slow process entirely, but surrounds themselves only with people who have performed a similar self-lobotomy?

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03/25 Links Pt1: 7 injured, including 2 infants, in Gaza rocket attack on central Israel; The Golan Heights Was Once an Arab Rallying Cry. Not Anymore.

From Ian:

7 injured, including 2 infants, in Gaza rocket attack on central Israel

A rocket fired from the Gaza Strip struck a residential building in central Israel early Monday morning, injuring seven people, including two small children, and leveling the structure, officials said.

The attack triggered air raid sirens at approximately 5:20 a.m. throughout the Sharon and Emek Hefer regions north of Tel Aviv, the army said.

According to the military, the rocket was fired from the Gaza Strip, where earlier this month two rockets were also fired at Tel Aviv, in what was described at the time as an apparent “mistake” by the Hamas terror group.

The Iron Dome missile defense system did not appear to have been activated by the rocket attack. The military said it was still investigating the matter.
An infant’s swing outside the home of the Wolf family in the central Israeli village of Mishmeret, which was destroyed in the early morning hours of March 25, 2019 by a rocket fired from Gaza. (Jack Guez/AFP)

Police said the projectile early Monday struck a residential building in the community of Mishmeret, on the Sharon plain, causing it to catch fire. The shrapnel from the rocket attack also caused significant damage to the surrounding area, as fragments hit a gas tank outside the building.

Drone footage of the site showed that the majority of the structure, which contained two housing units, had been flattened by the strike.

Home in Central Israel Hit by Hamas Rocket

'I would be burying my family if we hadn’t gotten to the bomb shelter'

Luck and miracles saved the seven members of the Wolf family from certain death, when a rocket destroyed their home in Moshav Mishmeret just before 6 a.m.

“I nearly lost my family,” said Robert Wolf, as he stood outside the shell of his house, on a tree-lined street with single family homes in the middle of the country, close to Kfar Saba.

“If we had not gotten to the bomb shelter in time, I would now be burying all my family,” said Wolf, who immigrated to Israel from England with his wife Susan. “That is two grandchildren, one 5 months old, one 2 years old. That would be my third child, with his wife, my wife, myself and my youngest daughter. They would all have been dead if we didn't do what we had been supposed to do.”
Owner of home hit by rocket blames 'games of politicians', March 25, 2019 (Tovah Lazaroff)

At Meir Medical Center in Kfar Saba where most of the family was treated for light injuries, his son Daniel spoke with reporters about those fatal moments.

By chance, Daniel said, he had slept in the living room and heard the siren. He woke up his parents and younger sister, who were able to find shelter.

🔴🎥 FOOTAGE FROM THE SCENE where a rocket fired from #Gaza this morning hit a residential building in central Israel, north of Tel aviv. Several Israelis were injured.

🎥Dan Asulin pic.twitter.com/OCkXps9jOe
— Israel Foreign Ministry (@IsraelMFA) March 25, 2019

#BREAKING Latest #Gaza long-range rocket & destruction SUGGESTS the rocket was of M-302 variety with a range of 160 km & 144 kg warhead.
Rocket comes from the #Iran-#Syria-Hizbullah industries.
In 2014 the IDF intercepted a shipload of M-302s on the Klos-C ship heading to Gaza pic.twitter.com/wy6jUrf6b5
— Lenny Ben-David (@lennybendavid) March 25, 2019

No ⁦@cnni⁩, the rocket didn’t just ‘land.’ Planes land, birds land. This rocket took out a house. #HeadlineFail pic.twitter.com/VWZVUtDhEK
— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) March 25, 2019

Every Friday, the media reports on how many Gazans were killed and injured during the "peaceful protests" along the border.

It usually takes weeks for the Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center to dig out the details and find out that, more often than not, those killed were associated with terror groups.

But sometimes the terror groups brag about it.

Islamic Jihad issued a "martyr certificate" for Jihad Mounir Khaled Hara, who they admit was a "mujahadeen" killed while engaging in jihadist activities during the Friday "protests."

The statement goes on to say "And bear witness to the steadfastness of our people and their determination to continue Jihad and resistance until the liberation of every inch of the land of Palestine."

Doesn't sound like non-violent protesters to me.

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As I created a recent cartoon, it occurred to me that the people who say "As a Jew, I condemn Israel for X" are, in fact, promoting antisemitism.

The entire point of saying "As a Jew" is to place oneself into a position of moral superiority - compared to other Jews who do not share the same pseudo-morality of the speaker.

This gives their non-Jewish audience the idea that there are good "As a Jews" and the other, vast majority of Jews who do not share their hate of Israel are by definition immoral.

This mirrors the distinction made by John Mearsheimer between what he called "righteous Jews" and "New Afrikaners." His "righteous Jews" were those who can find no redeeming value in Israel:

Righteous Jews have a powerful attachment to core liberal values. They believe that individual rights matter greatly and that they are universal, which means they apply equally to Jews and Palestinians. They could never support an apartheid Israel. They also understand that the Palestinians paid an enormous price to make it possible to create Israel in 1948. Moreover, they recognize the pain and suffering that Israel has inflicted on the Palestinians in the Occupied Territories since 1967. Finally, most righteous Jews believe that the Palestinians deserve a viable state of their own, just as the Jews deserve their own state. In essence, they believe that self-determination applies to Palestinians as well as Jews, and that the two-state solution is the best way to achieve that end. Some righteous Jews, however, favor a democratic bi-national state over the two-state solution.

To give you a better sense of what I mean when I use the term righteous Jews, let me give you some names of people and organizations that I would put in this category. The list would include Noam Chomsky, Roger Cohen, Richard Falk, Norman Finkelstein, Tony Judt, Tony Karon, Naomi Klein, MJ Rosenberg, Sara Roy, and Philip Weiss of Mondoweiss fame, just to name a few. I would also include many of the individuals associated with J Street and everyone associated with Jewish Voice for Peace, as well as distinguished international figures such as Judge Richard Goldstone. Furthermore, I would apply the label to the many American Jews who work for different human rights organizations, such as Kenneth Roth of Human Rights Watch.

This is a pretty good list of "As a Jews." Notice that none of them seem to actually live in Israel and would have to live with the consequences of their policy prescriptions.

The Jews who actually support Israel and who disagree with calling it an apartheid state - including virtually all Israeli Jews - are the evil "New Afrikaners." (The idea that Zionists would be against an Israel that truly practiced apartheid is not even considered by Mearsheimer, who is of course the archetypical "As a Jew"/"Righteous Jew.")

The people who style themselves as the "righteous Jews" are sending a clear message - the other Jews, Jews who actually believe that Jews have a right to self determination, are immoral.

It is only a small step beyond that to be telling the world that only one kind of Jew deserves to be treated with respect and as a human being. The other type supports apartheid, oppression, murdering innocent children and all manner of war crimes - and when they get blown up and stabbed by the good oppressed Palestinians, they somehow deserve it.

When a Jew says "As a Jew," he is signaling to the world that the "other" Jews deserve to be hated. That is pure antisemitism.

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The best summary I've seen of possible reasons for last night's attack comes from Hamodia:

For the second time in under two weeks, Hamas is claiming that the rocket fire to central Israel early Monday was a “mistake.” Hamas made the same claim ten days ago, when two rockets were fired at the Tel Aviv area. The IDF rejected that explanation, saying that it held Hamas responsible for the rocket fire. Meanwhile, Islamic Jihad warned Israel not to retaliate for the attack.

Yediot Acharonot said Monday that after the rocket fired from Gaza hit a house in the town of Mishmeret in the Sharon region, north of Tel Aviv, Hamas contacted Egypt, telling officials that the rocket had been fired in error. Seven people, including an infant, were injured in the attack, with the family’s home sustaining heavy damage. Several other neighboring houses were damaged as well.

Egypt transferred the message to Israel, but in a statement, the IDF said it was not accepting the terror group’s excuse, and that it held Hamas responsible for the attack. The IDF is sending two divisions to the Gaza border area, its spokesperson said, and was conducting a limited call-up of reserves.

A report on Kan News said that top terrorists in Hamas and Islamic Jihad had gone into hiding, anticipating a heavy Israeli response. Meanwhile, Islamic Jihad warned Israel not to retaliate at all, because any retaliation would be met by rocket attacks “deep in the territory of Israel. The leadership of Israel knows we will strike back with power to such attacks,” the terror group said.

Groups allied with Islamic Jihad said that the attack was due to retaliation by the Prisons Service against terrorists who had attacked and injured Israeli guards in Ketziot Prison Sunday night.

The thought that this was a second "mistake" is way too far fetched to be believed. Much more likely is that it was done by Islamic Jihad and Hamas is covering up for it to try to minimize the Israeli response.

Islamic Jihad did not admit or deny firing the rocket.

It is worrisome that the warning sirens were not activated by this rocket.

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