Ceasefires and Escalations

The attack on Gaza should have been launched yesterday.  Or better yet, last year.

A footnote to the Ashkelon attack:  The timing was perfect.  The guy with his finger in the launch button must have had his ear glued to Israel radio.  As soon as the press reported that the Olmert-Bush powwow was over and their press conference was about to begin, he launched.  The press conference got exactly five minutes of coverage during the next two hours.  All the peace rhetoric was blown to smithereens for the remainder of Bush's stay. 

During the war in Vietnam there used to be the following pattern.  The North Vietnamese, through their Vietcong terrorist allies, would launch an offensive against South Vietnam.  They’d make progress in some places, get stalled in others.  The Americans would bomb the heck out of their field forces and supply lines and bring them to the point of collapse.  When the Vietnamese wanted a break, they would call for a cease fire—to celebrate the Vietnamese New Year, or May Day, or whatever. 
Our Islamofascist enemy’s greatest ally is our own hesitation
International pressure would force the United States to agree, on condition that the North Vietnamese refrained from using the ceasefire to reinforce or resupply its forces.  The Vietnamese would of course accept, and then use the ceasefire to reinforce and resupply, so that the fighting could go on from square one.

This may sound like ancient history but it’s not.  The tactic was invented in Moscow (I think it was first used in the Korean War, actually).  The Russians taught it to many peoples, including the Iranians.  The Iranians taught it to Hizbullah and Hamas.  For them it’s not ancient history, it’s just part of the textbook for fighting Western countries.  Things that work stay in the textbook generation after generation.

Our Islamofascist enemy’s greatest ally is our own hesitation.  Israel’s present leadership, of course, wants peace at almost any price (for all I know it’s peace at any price—they just haven’t been put to that test yet, so that neither we nor the enemy can be sure).  If we look at what’s happened in the region since the 2nd Lebanon War, however, we can see that the enemy’s strategy, for the meantime, is to play for time. 
Hamas and Hizbullah have gotten stronger and stronger. Every day that passes shifts the balance of power against us.
During the 12 months since the war the IDF trained intensively, and for that time the balance of power shifted our way.  Since then Hamas and Hizbullah have gotten stronger and stronger.  Every day that passes shifts the balance of power against us.  Four years ago American pressure forced Syria to withdraw its forces from Lebanon, creating the possibility of sustaining a democratic, Western-oriented government in that country.  The events in Lebanon over the past two weeks show that Lebanon has, in effect, fallen back into Syrian and Iranian hands.  Syrian divisions are on the Lebanese border and some reports say they have already crossed back into Lebanon.  Meanwhile, the IDF’s power has reached a plateau.  It is retrained and reequipped, but it needs to get much bigger and more powerful it isn’t doing so.

Israel is between the jaws of a pincers in which the enemy has considerable advantages.  To attack us it doesn’t need to invade us—just to shoot missiles.  Its armies can dig in and wait for us to come to them in prepared defensive positions.  As time passes, they get stronger.  When they feel reasonably certain we no longer have the strength to go after them, they will attack.

Israel’s best strategy is the one most difficult for a democracy to take:  Pick one enemy, attack and destroy it, while trying to deter the other from making a move. 
Israel’s best strategy is the one most difficult for a democracy to take: Pick one enemy, attack and destroy it, while trying to deter the other from making a move.
Israel’s attack against Syria’s reactor last year sent a double message:  Not only would Israel prevent Syria from getting nuclear weapons, but the entire Syrian hinterland remains as vulnerable as Israel’s.  What Israel ought to do now is conquer all of Gaza but the built-up urban areas (excepting two—Rafiah in the south an Beit Hanun in the north, which should be literally flattened, the civilian moved to tent cities under IDF control as provided for by the Fourth Geneva Convention).  A ten-kilometer strip between Khan Younis and the Egyptian border should be occupied.  The Syrians should be warned ahead of time that in response to attacks on Israel’s hinterland their entire energy, power, water and communications infrastructure will be eliminated, in a manner designed to cause as much civilian unrest as possible.  If they do attack, Israel should carry out the threat to the letter.

It should have been done eighteen months ago.  It ought to be done today.

Skipping the Party

An overcast, lugubrious day in Jerusalem. My business took me to the Knesset. The center of town is nearly abandoned. Jerusalemites know what to expect when the President of the United States comes to visit and the police bar them from entering their own downtown.
Jerusalem looks eerily like a museum piece or a movie set, the stage for somebody else’s illusions with ourselves as minor walk-on characters.
Almost everyone stayed away. The city looks eerily like a museum piece or a movie set, the stage for somebody else’s illusions with ourselves as minor walk-on characters. Somewhere over our heads, about at the elevation of the police helicopter circling endlessly above, someone is staging a tawdry piece of theater. Ostensibly it’s about us, we’re certainly paying for it (in more ways than one), but it’s not actually meant for the real people down here on the ground.

The sense of detachment intensified as I passed security and entered the Knesset. The Knesset is festooned with flags—American and Israeli flags on alternate flagpoles. Once upon a time this sight, in this place, would have given me a thrill. Now I am aware mainly of a hole in the heart where the thrill would have been. I haven’t been able to summon a thrill at the sight of an Israeli flag since February 2005, when the Disengagement Law passed the Knesset. I am reminded of stories people told me back in the Old Country, people who couldn’t find it within themselves to be proud of the American flag as long as the Vietnam war was going on (From the time I could form a professional judgment I felt differently. To keep the Viet Cong away from South Vietnam and the Khmer Rouge away from the Cambodians was a cause worth fighting for, botched beyond retrieval by “experts” who had no comprehension of their job, the price paid by hapless and innocent millions).
George Bush is coming to visit a country with a fool (“history is meaningless!”) for president, a crook for prime minister, and a governing elite on the skids, unworthy guardians of the Jewish people and its inheritence. They have thrown themselves a party at public expense and invited the President of the United States to dress it up.

It shouldn’t be this way. The President of the United States ought to come to Jerusalem, the seat of David’s throne and the capital of the Jewish state, as a pilgrim and not as a celebrity. If his hosts knew what and whom they ought to represent, even the pilgrimage of the greatest potentate in the world would not seem like so much, but only homage—spiritual, not political—where homage is due.
It shouldn’t be this way. The President of the United States ought to come to Jerusalem, the seat of David’s throne and the capital of the Jewish state, as a pilgrim and not as a celebrity.

Eric Yoffie's Presumptuousness

And just who does Rabbi Eric Yoffie think he is to decide who may or may not speak up for Israel?

I deeply regret that I didn't think up the headline of Richard Baehr’s article on the conservative website American Thinker--"Rabbi Yoffie Excommunicates Pastor Hagee." Rabbi Eric Yoffie, President of the Union for Reform Judaism, thinks that Evangelical Christians’ support is bad for Israel.  He thinks Pastor Hagee and similar enthusiasts for Israel should be ostracized by Jews in Israel and the United States:  Jews should neither attend Hagee’s events in support of Israel, nor invite Evangelicals like Hagee to demonstrate their support of Israel.
Yoffie wants Hagee out of debates regarding Israel’s future because Hagee is likely to be an effective and committed advocate of views that Yoffie doesn’t like.

Yoffie’s attitude is insufferable on at least two levels.  First of all, because of its blatant bias.  It’s not as if Yoffie thinks that Pastor Hagee is actually out to harm Jews or Israel.  No, he wants Hagee out of debates regarding Israel’s future because Hagee is likely to be an effective and committed advocate of views that Yoffie doesn’t like.  For Hagee believes that Israel should be the state of the Jews and that the Jews should control Eretz Yisrael.  Such views do not jive with the “two-state solution” that Yoffie prefers.  Yoffie would like to pretend that his views represent a consensus, but rather than argue for them he prefers to leave challenging interlocutors like Hagee out of the debating hall, in the cold.  Yoffie’s position is  intellectually dishonest. 

Now I happen to agree with the elements of Pastor Hagee’s positions cited above.  To be consistent, Yoffie has to regard me and people like me as a threat to Israel’s well-being.  If people’s views are what disqualify them from participation in the debate, then it cannot matter that I am Jewish, live in Israel, have Israeli citizenship, have sons that do reserve duty, and vote.  I’m as big a threat to Israel as Pastor Hagee is, and in Yoffie’s world view Israel would be better off if I were to just disappear.  Perhaps I’m fortunate that Yoffie lives in New Jersey and is not Prime Minister of Israel or head of its secret service. 

Which brings us to the second level on which Yoffie’s position is outrageous:  Who does he think he is anyway?

Long ago, American Jews used to debate whether they had a right to speak out on Israeli foreign policy.  After all, the argument went, American Jews were there, in the goldeneh medineh, and not here in Israel.  It wasn’t their lives and sons at stake.  Such decisions were best left for Israeli Jews to settle at the ballot box. 

That sentiment is long gone.  Partisans of unilateral retreat and pursuers of the will-o-the-wisp of a democratic
In our debates in Israel Yoffie is an outsider. He participates in our debates on sufferance. The last thing he should assume is that he has the right to decide whom to let into our debating hall.
Palestine have no problem lecturing Israelis ad nauseam, and using their influence to induce the American government to pressure Israel to act in ways most Israelis now think is against their country's best interests. 

Now in fact, I think American Jews have the right to talk about whatever they want.  It’s a free country.  Yoffie has solid Zionist credentials, having done much to legitimize Zionism among American reform Jews as head of the Association of Reform Zionists of America.  Nonetheless, if anyone has a right at this late date to pass on the propriety of participation, even as a kibitzer, in Israel’s critical debates, it’s me, a Jew in Israel, and not Eric Yoffie of New Jersey.

Yoffie seems to think that because he was born Jewish he was also born with a right Pastor Hagee doesn’t share, the right to nag me about my illiberality, inhumanity and violations of human rights.  Well, Yoffie's wrong.  A Zionist Yoffie may be, but in our debates in Israel he is an outsider. He doesn’t live here and nothing really vital to him is at stake.  He participates in our debates on sufferance.  The last thing Yoffie should assume is that he has the right to decide whom to let into our debating hall.

So why am I willing to tolerate Yoffie's presence in the debate?  First of all, because even though I am (apparently) a benighted warmonger whose opinions harm Israel, I am a more genuine liberal than Eric Yoffie.  I don’t seek to exclude people from debates simply because they disagree with me.

And second of all, because there are other Israeli Jews who want Yoffie in on the debate.  I have bitter
Pastor Hagee and Christian supporters of Israel are going to remain in the debate because I say so. I want them in the debating hall. Together with Amos Oz and Ehud Olmert, I own the hall. And I am going to seat Pastor Hagee in the first row.
disagreements with these Jews.  I think they are running the country to ruin.  I think they violated the rights of their fellow citizens during disengagement, thereby compromising the legitimacy of the Israeli state.  But they are here, their sons serve, they vote, and I owe them the courtesy of listening to Eric Yoffie.

And that is why Pastor Hagee and Christian supporters of Israel are going to remain in the debate, whether Eric Yoffie likes it or not:  because I say so.  I think Evangelical Christians' views on Israeli foreign policy are right where Yoffie’s are wrong, I think these Christians' Zionism is worthy of respect, that they have valuable contributions to make to Israel’s survival both in Washington and Jerusalem, and I want them in the debating hall.  Together with Amos Oz and Ehud Olmert, I own the hall.  And I am going to seat Pastor Hagee in the first row.  Shift over a seat, Yoffie, and let the man sit down.