Bored by Bush

By inviting Bush, Olmert is doing what he's best at:  Getting us to focus on the irrelevant.

I'm bored by George Bush's visit to Israel and it hasn't even happened yet.

What nobody has bothered to explain is what this visit is about.  That's because the true explanation won't bear scrutiny.  Bush is coming for only one reason, to give Ehud Olmert a photo-op, which Olmert calculated seven weeks ago that he would need about now.
I'm bored by George Bush's visit to Israel and it hasn't even happened yet.
  Bush's visit has no bearing on anything else.  Olmert is betraying Jerusalem and Sderot and Israeli security as hard as he can right now and he won't do any better (or worse) just because Bush took a trip.  His policy is as incapable of implementation as it was when his spin doctors thought it up and Bush's visit certainly won't change that.

Bush is coming because he and his secretary of state believe in Olmert's commitment to peace, whereas everybody who spends any time around Olmert or being governed by him knows that the only thing Ehud Olmert is committed to is Ehud Olmert.  It reminds me of when Bush's father purported to believe in Gorbachev, way back twenty years ago, though you couldn't find a single Russian who shared that belief.
 
The timing of the visit was determined exclusively by Olmert's political problems.  First, Israel's 2008 budget was passed last week, so Shas and Avigdor Lieberman need Olmert far less than they did ten days ago, and second, because of the publication of the full Winograd report.  Oops, that didn't happen.  The report was going to come out last week, and Bush's visit was going to cancel its political fallout.  However, the committee members pulled a fast one on Olmert (it's good to know someone is faster than he in this town):  They just announced that the report will come out at the end of January, when the memory of the Bush visit has faded and the public can concentrate on Olmert's obscenely patent unfitness for office.  Does the President do emergency political house calls?
I greatly dislike the immense effort good and dedicated people are investing in Bush's visit

When the President of the United States visits a country, and that country is a democracy, it's simple courtesy and standard protocol to schedule a visit with the head of the opposition, who may be the next leader (and in Israel's case almost certainly will be).  But Bush is snubbing Netanyahu, in a breach of both protocol and manners, for the sake of his good friend Ehud.  A photo-op with Bibi would ruin the only point this visit has.  I didn't expect anything else from Olmert, but I'm ashamed for the President of the United States.

I greatly dislike the immense effort good and dedicated people are investing in Bush's visit—protesting, demonstrating, etc. etc.  The main point of the Bush visit is to enable Olmert to determine the media's agenda for a week or so.  In reacting to the Bush visit my fellow faithful are simply playing Olmert's game.  Olmert's strategy—with us, as with the majority of citizens—is to keep us from paying attention to the important things.  So I don't want to end this blog before I mention what they are:
Israel's Jews are 33% orthodox and 47% traditional in religious observance. 55% describe themselves as "right wing." If these people were presented with a coherent program—here and here are our dangers, this and this is what we should be doing about it—it would generate the mother of all political revolutions in this country. What we ought to be doing is planning what the message is we want to convey to the Israeli public.

Olmert and his government and the unelected elites they serve are almost irrelevant to Israel.  The public can be bemused by Olmert's PR antics but they don't believe in them.  Israel's Jews are 33% orthodox and 47% traditional in religious observance. 55% describe themselves as "right wing."  If these people were presented with a coherent program—here and here are our dangers, this and this is what we should be doing about it—it would generate the mother of all political revolutions in this country.  The reason it's not happening is lack of imagination—on our part.  Yes.  The country is ready to turn around, and if it's not doing so, we're to blame, you, me, everyone who reads this site and plans to go to an anti-Bush demonstration Thursday.

What we ought to be doing is planning what the message is we want to convey to the Israeli public, how we're going to spread it, and how we're going to use power once we win it. 
 
As for President Bush's visit to Israel, my wife and I have concert tickets at the Jerusalem Theater Wednesday night.  With the capital snarled by security arrangements, we'll probably have to park in Beer Sheva.  That's my primary interest in his visit right now. 

The Rapists

David Landau, editor of "Haaretz," invited Condi Rice to join him in "raping" Israel.                                                                         

Some months ago, the American ambassador to Israel invited a group of Israeli “intellectuals” to a private meeting with the Secretary of State, Condoleeza Rice.  At this meeting David Landau, editor of the left-wing daily, Haaretz, beseeched Rice to “rape Israel.”  “Israel wants to be raped,” he assured her.  According to reports, many of the others in the room, most of them ageing white males of European extraction, nodded their heads in agreement.
One wonders if the historical parallel flashed through Rice’s mind, if she imagined other rooms, in other times and places, full of ageing white males assuring each other that “they want to be raped.”

Imagine the tableau.  Landau is saying this to a black woman, acknowledged to be—whatever one thinks of her policies—one of the smartest, toughest and accomplished ladies in the United States, a standing reproach to the benighted bigots who enslaved her forebears.  One wonders if the historical parallel flashed through Rice’s mind, if she imagined other rooms, in other times and places, full of ageing white males assuring each other that “they want to be raped.”

Sometimes a single ugly metaphor suffices to illuminate the ethical world of the person who utters it.  David Landau was not just egging Rice on to perform a solo hate crime, he was inviting her to join a gang-bang.  The essence of rape is not merely illicit sexual congress but a denial of the humanity of the victim, an assertion that her right to exist is a function of the rapist’s arbitrary will.  In the sense in which David Landau used the word “rape,” he and his newspaper rape Israel every day.  Every week Landau and “Haaretz” cast doubt on Israel’s right to defend herself, and portray her as evil and inhuman.  Her enemies are always right.  Israel’s indelible fault, her original, unforgivable sin, is the idea that the Jews are a people and deserve a state of their own.

Israel is raped in this sense every day by unelected elites who enjoy excessive access to the levers of political power.  Judges and jurists prevent her from defending herself and give preference to the rights of her enemies over the lives of her citizens.  Professors and publicists express contempt for her traditions, and state authoritatively that she is a tyranny with no right to exist among the nations of the world.  Corrupt and incompetent politicians trade her vital interests for another year in office.  Most of these people feed at the expense of the nation they abuse.The The bitter truth is that the rapists enjoy such power as they have by virtue of the consent of the governed, because of many Israelis’ ignorance about democracy, their inability to understand their true situation, and the brainwashing their masters subject them to, convincing them that the image those masters portray of them is accurate and the contempt in which those masters hold them is justified.
bitter truth is that the rapists enjoy such power as they have by virtue of the consent of the governed

A year and a half ago, at the end of the Second Lebanon War, something in this pattern of domination broke.  All polls show that since that time the Israeli public has entirely lost confidence in its political leadership, its public institutions, and the policies they would foist on Israel.  The public no longer believes its rapists nor trusts them.

True, that is not enough.  A wide gulf exists between loss of trust and the ability and willingness to do something about it.  But it’s just a matter of time.  Once the mythic aura of Israel’s unelected, self-hating elites is broken, liberation from their yoke will come someday.

Viva la liberacion!!

How Not to Conduct a Prisoner Exchange

It's hard to refuse to ransom an Israeli kidnapped by terrorists, but sometimes one has to do so.

This was not an easy blog to write.
If the kidnappers win, if they manage to bring about a deal on their terms, they send a clear message: Israel may have atomic bombs and a mighty air force, but it lacks the willpower necessary to survive.

Today a government committee is meeting in Jerusalem to decide on "easing" the criteria Israel uses in freeing convicted terrorists.  The object is to be able to free murderers or direct accessories to murder in return for Gilad Schalit, who's been held captive in Gaza for over a year and a half.  If the deal is done, Hamas and Islamic Jihad will be able to rack up a victory and concentrate on their next kidnapping.

It's not easy for an open society to deal with political kidnappings.  The pain of the victims' families cannot be wished away.  From the perspective of the families themselves, it makes sense to use their pain for PR purposes, pressing the government to cut a deal.  After all, they didn't ask for their loved ones to be kidnapped; if the Israeli government wants to make a point of opposing blackmail, let it do so at someone else's expense, not theirs.  Here in Israel, supporting the release of the kidnapped soldiers is portrayed as both patriotic and humane, which is one reason why Prime Minister Olmert's spinmasters are pressing him to do a deal.  Yet while the motives of simple, ordinary people who support the upcoming Schalit deal cannot be impugned, the future may reveal that it is a big mistake.

Political kidnappings are a great tactic for the weaker side.  Even if a terrorist group cannot beat its enemies in open combat, it can always pull off a kidnapping.  Kidnapping puts both sides on the same level:  The contest is not about who has more brute physical force but about relative toughness and determination.  If the kidnappers win, that is, if they manage to bring about a deal on their terms and demonstrate that kidnapping is a profitable tactic over the long term, they send a clear message:  Israel may have atomic bombs and a mighty air force, but it lacks the willpower necessary to survive.  Eventually it will fall.  If impending deal goes through, that is the message that Palestinians and the wider Arab world will internalize.

For these reasons, I oppose the upcoming deal with Schalit, hard as it is to say so.  Cutting this deal condemns us to more kidnappings in the future.
Never release, in exchange for an Israeli kidnap victim, a terrorist who was in jail at the time the kidnapping took place. Terrorists must know that they can never, never get someone released by kidnapping a hostage.

This doesn't mean I oppose all prisoner-exchange deals in principle—as long as they do not validate political kidnappings as a strategy.  For that to happen, I believe Israel ought to adhere to two principles:
a) Never release, in exchange for an Israeli kidnap victim, a terrorist who was in jail at the time the kidnapping took place.  Terrorists must know that they can never, never get someone released by kidnapping a hostage.  Only terrorists taken captive after the kidnap victim was abducted can eventually be released.  It is better to forego a deal, even if it means abandoning a particular kidnap victim to his fate, rather than to abet the enemy in making a working strategy out of political kidnappings.
b) As far as possible, Israel should define, in response to a kidnapping, the number and characteristics of the group of terrorists it proposes to release in exchange for a kidnap victim, e.g.:  500 residents of Gaza, married and over the age of 25.  Then it should go get them—provided, of course, that they are actual terrorists.

This will not always lead to the release of hostages.  If, for example, an Israeli citizen was kidnapped from Europe to Iran, it would be neither possible nor wise to try and "go get" Iranian terrorists to exchange for him.  Refusing to ransom a kidnapping victim is hard,  but sometimes it must be done, or else we'll have a kidnapping every day.  Many years ago Israel captured two terrorist leaders in Lebanon, Mustafa Dirani and Shaykh Obaid, intending to exchange them for Ron Arad.  Whoever held Arad didn't take the bait.  The strategy works best when it is applied to large numbers of terrorist captives, whose relatives can exert pressure on terrorist leaders just as the relatives of Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev, kidnapped by Hizbullah, and Gilad Schalit, kidnapped into Gaza, exert pressure on Israel's leaders.  Ironically, this strategy could have worked for Goldwasser, Regev and Schalit.  Only the culpable foolhardiness and timidity of Israel's current government prevented the attempt from being made.
Refusing to ransom a kidnapping victim is hard, but sometimes it must be done, or else we'll have a kidnapping every day.

Today Israel's army regularly makes deep incursions into the Gaza Strip.  It could have done so earlier.  It could have defined as one of its objectives taking members of Hizbullah and Islamic Jihad captive, concentrating if possible on fathers and elder sons who support families.  If Hamas wanted them back, it would have to release 
Schalit.

The policy I have suggested exposes another aspect of Israel's thoughtless and irresponsible approach to the Second Lebanon War.  If one object of the war was to free Goldwasser and Regev, it should be a no-brainer to figure out that one of the military objectives of the war ought to have been to capture hundreds of Hizbullah prisoners of war.  The Israeli army's original plan for operations against Hizbullah called for penetrating deep into Lebanon and setting up a cordon between Hizbullah's main forces near the Israeli border and its main bases in central and northern Lebanon.  That would have made mass captures possible.

Instead, a rash Chief of Staff (Dan Halutz) promised an unthinking Prime Minister (Olmert)
It should have been a no-brainer to figure out that one of the objectives of the Lebanon War was to capture hundreds of Hizbullah prisoners of war.
that he would achieve all the war's objectives by aerial bombing.  Neither of them seems to have stopped for a minute to think about the real objectives of their war or what they would have to accomplish in order to realize them.

The upcoming Schalit deal demonstrates once again Olmert's lack of capacity for strategic thinking.  According to Olmert we're supposed to be in "reinforce Abu Mazen" mode now.  Yet compared to Abu Mazen, to whom Olmert did the paltry favor of releasing a few hundred prisoners, most of them common or garden crooks,  Ismail Haniya of the Hamas will be able to rack up the release of many hundreds more prisoners, including for the first time murderers or accessories to murder.  That will really send a signal to ordinary Palestinians whom they should place their bets on.