HERZLIYA, ISRAEL — Finally, I can put the rumors to rest: The land of Zion isn’t merely an abstraction, it’s an actual country.
I am in Israel — my first time — to cover the Herzliya Conference, the country’s premier national-security forum.
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(Full disclosure: My trip, as well as that of several other journalists, was underwritten by the Emergency Committee for Israel, which seeks “to educate the public about the serious challenges to Israel’s security.” The views here are my own.)
One of the few things that critics and friends of Israel can agree on is that Israel is different, a special sort of nation representing a special idea. That’s true whether you subscribe to the heroic narrative, popularized by Leon Uris, of Israel’s birth or the sadly more familiar anti-colonialist fable so popular among the campus Left and the anti-Israel industry.
This is especially so for America’s so-called realists. Whether they are sympathetic to Israel or scornful, they are convinced that U.S. support for Israel fuels hatred and instability. Hence their obsession with the Israeli-Palestinian issue.
For instance, last night here in Herzliya, former Obama national-security adviser James Jones said that if God had visited Barack Obama in 2009 with instructions on how to “make the world a better place and give more people hope and opportunity for the future,” it would involve finding a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestinian issue. In 2009, when Jones was still in Obama’s administration, he told “J Street” — the “pro-Israel” lobby that isn’t very pro-Israel — that if he could just solve one problem in the world, it would be the Israel-Palestinian conflict, the “epicenter” of U.S. foreign policy.
Such thinking falls somewhere between wild exaggeration and dangerous nonsense. Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons. Al-Qaeda remains dedicated to our destruction. Turkey, a once-staunch ally, is Islamifying. Russia is careening toward autocracy and China is on the march. Oh, and the United States is fighting two land wars. But the national-security adviser’s No. 1 priority is keeping Israelis from building houses in East Jerusalem? Really?
Also, how would a two-state solution bring more hope and opportunity to the world’s poor? Or to those dying from AIDS or living under the yoke of dictatorship?
This, too, is the product of treating Israel like an abstraction. Obviously, the Palestinians’ plight (real and imagined) contributes to the Middle East’s problems. But it’s not the source of those problems, and it is not the key to solving them either.
In Egypt, the popular uprising unfolding is not about Israel, but about autocratic brutality, economic stagnation, and skyrocketing prices. The same goes for Tunisia as well as the popular protests brutally crushed by Iran’s mullahs in 2009. Turkey isn’t Islamifying because of the Palestinians. Al-Qaeda surely hates Israel, but its roots lie in hatred of the Saudi royal family and in the Islamist ambitions of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood.
And yet the “realist” fantasy that an Arabs-first (or Muslims-first) foreign policy will yield rich rewards endures. The French went that route. They nurtured the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in exile. They now pander to Arab sensibilities. And what has it gotten them? A lot of burning cars — and few lucrative oil deals.
As we’ve recently been reminded, Israel is the only truly democratic regime in the region, and therefore the most stable. But, somehow, if we were more conciliatory to dictators and more sympathetic to the “Arab street,” the region would be more stable? Please.
Much of the putative complexity in human affairs is an adornment applied by the professional intellectual rent-seekers, who would that it were so. It makes them seem valuable to the rest of us dullards.
So it is with the Arab-Israeli conflict. It isn't complex. It's pretty simple. Let's see if Jonah figures that out and comes clean with his loyal readers.
Suggestion: start with the "Palestinians". What, Sir, is a "Palestinian" ? When my very Jewish brother-in-law Gideon ( RIP) was born in Tel Aviv in 1947, his birth certificate ( issued by the British Mandatory authorities) had "Palestinian" in the Nationality field. In fact, virtually all references to "Palestinians" in the English-language press up until the mid-1950's or so referred to Jews residing in British Mandatory Palestine, i.e., the land comprising the former Ottoman province of Palestine, which is to say the former Roman province of Palestine.
Who, Jonah, are the "Palestinians" of today, and how did they come to own this mantle?
Seek out Caroline Glick while at the Herzliya conference. She'll explain the whole thing to you while standing on one foot.
It seems like the Middle Eastern anti-semites have a lot in common with Western Liberals, in that they both agitate relentlessly, falsely claiming that there will be no peace until you give them their demands. Our conservative weakness is that we mostly believe them, that they will grant us peace after we give in to their demands. The reality is that the Liberals and anti-semitic Middle Easterners will NEVER stop agitating until you become one of them -- become a Western Liberal or an anti-semitic Muslim. Maybe our greatest unused weapon in this irony is that even if Western conservatives conceded to their every demand, eventually it will come down to the opposing foundational values of Western Liberals that are in conflict with the values of Muslims. For the time being, though, Liberals and Muslims seem content to find common cause in their struggles against Western Conservatives.
The left mistakes the unretractability of the "Israel problem" as the key to the areas problems when it is only the most visible symptom. My best friend, left-ward oriented and truly open-minded, believes that Israel must go.
Admittedly, the conflict is associated with things we'd just like to see go away - a war every now and then and, unless Israel voluntarily dissolves itself, quite possibly the use of nuclear weapons (ironically, it might not be Israel that uses them). Avoiding a war involving one nation, Israel, and a blood hatred organized under one religion, Islam, by removing Israel, does not solve the problems of the Islamic world and only brings Jews closer to the harm always intended.
For biblical leftists like Jimmy Carter, this is a biblical problem for which Israel must martyr itself in order to regain righteousness. Yet another final solution to the Jewish problem.
"We" have to deal with people who are stuck in the 12th Century, people who will fight you to the death just because they feel their pride is hurt, people who feel like princes stripped of their titles.
"We" are everybody else who made it to the 21st century.
But just how do we deal with people such as these? When there are one or two of them in the schoolyard, we avoid them until the day they get a little too violent and someone calls the cops and they get dragged off to jail. A billion such people? We have to lower our voices the way your mother did when she wanted you to lower yours.
Stop with the huffing and puffing. This problem is not solved by matching force with force.
Mike B states: "Stop with the huffing and puffing. This problem is not solved by matching force with force." He could not be more wrong. The only way to solve this problem is to use overwhelming force against the Islamists and have folk quit apologizing and tolerating the behavior and atrocities of those stuck in the 7th century.
Tiredturtle, even after you slaughter hundreds of millions of people, many if not most of whom are innocent, you've basically smacked a hornet's nest as far as the survivors are concerned. Or do you really think you can engineer a Final Solution and kill each and every last one of them?
If you haven't noticed, Islamic terrorists don't respond to force. If you threaten to hunt them down and exterminate them, that does absolutely nothing. The only thing that will work is when a billion of their brothers and sisters stop admiring them and instead call the cops on them each time they spot one in a basement building a bomb.
That's the point, Charles. We need societies in those places where calling the cops is constructive, from our point of view. Getting to those societies requires something other than the Dresden/Tokyo approach.
I agree with much of what you are saying, but I'm not sure what solution you are proposing. Metaphorically "talking softly" isn't going to convince these people to join the 21st century.
Saying that any use of force will only make the Muslim street more angry is like saying that putting your 2-year-old in time-out for throwing a tantrum will only make him more upset. Maybe in the short term, but in the long term it will impart the lesson that misbehavior has consequences. Likewise, we need to impart the lesson that being a friend of the US is an advantage and being an enemy has unfortunate consequences. "Lowering our voices" to the terrorists while pressuring our allies to make more and more concessions to them won't do that.
Incidentally, using force against terrorists HAS been fairly effective. No, we haven't killed all of them, and perhaps our actions have convinced a few people "on the fence" to join up. However, we have decimated their infrastructure and funding and made them far less effective than they were. And perhaps we have also convinced a few people who were on the fence NOT to join up--convinced them that there was too much risk of being ignobly blown up in a cave rather than having a chance to martyr themselves killing infidels.
Not to be picky, but the question was reolved in 1948. The "other" state (the Arab homeland) was that part of Palestine across the Jordan River: Trans-Jordanian Palestine.
The Arabs didn't like only getting part of the country (they wanted the whole thing - like now), resulting in a war. They lost. What benefits accrue to the loser in a war? Evidently the right to claim a do-over whenever you want, and they did: 1967, 1973, etc.
A 2 state solution will play out as follows:
1. Fatah and Hamas will kill each other to get all the UN money (previously stolen by Arafat)
2. the losers are barred from Egypt, Syria etc. since they offer no advantage, have no money, and cause trouble.
3. Jordan cannot allow Palestinians to enter Palestine - they'd become the government.
4. Instead, they will flee to the only safe haven in the area: Israel.
5. they will then complain of poor treatment, and ask for a 2 state solution
Arafat wasn't looking for stability or a neighborly relationship with anyone. Bill Clinton and Colin Powell discovered that his game is to run you in circles.
Zsuzsa, how ya gonna keep 'em down on the farm once they've seen MTV?
Look at what the exposure to American culture did to the Soviet Union. My fervent hope is that young Egyptians considering the delights of Sharia law and comparing it to killer apps and awesome sneakers will choose the latter.
Without a two state solution Israel will become an apartheid country. Demographics are working against Israel. The call for one person one vote will become louder and louder.
To summarize the last few comments and quote one of this nation's earlier Tea Party members (not entirely pure, but certainly a fellow traveler):
Speak softly and carry a big stick.
MikeB is right that we (the West) should speak softly. Too often we do the opposite. He is wrong, however, in that when Mother lowered her voice, we all knew we were entering dangerous territory.
Our current policy is: Yell from the ramparts and carry a pillow. Definitely NOT what we need.
Jonah makes the common mistake of picking sides in the Israeli/Palestinian issue. Like there are good guys here!
Israel's problems stem from a basic national character flaw: They won't define their borders and then stay behind them. "Next Year In Jerusalem!" is the Seder lament. Check. Got it. Next Year in The Cedars. Check, had to give it back, most of it anyway. Next Year in the Golan. Check. Still got it. Next Year in the Suez, The Pyramids. Check and check. Had to give those back, too. Next Year at the Jordan River. Check. Although now they're having second thoughts on that if Israel insists on being a strictly Jewish state. While you're there Jonah, do me a favor and see if the "security" walls they are throwing up willy nilly all over the West Bank have wheels under them. Just a suspicion. . . .
Israel suffers from very bad leadership, all of which either have bragged at being terrorists (Meir and Dayan) or been convicted of it (Sharon). Even the peace effort by Rabin was shortened by internal violence. Jonah should be able to recognize a police state--since 1948--when he sees one.
Meanwhile, the Palestinians also suffer from very bad leadership. Blowing up buses for $25K in blood money from Saddam Hussein was not going to endear them to anybody. Neither Arafat nor Abbas ever negotiated in good faith for the best interests of the Palestinians, as recent Wikileaks so painfully points out. The leadership's inability to restrain outlier groups from antagonizing Israel, the latest being rockets launched senselessly from Gaza and the responding 1,300 dead as a result, is just one example. There are many, many others. Between Hamas and PLO, their subterfuge and neglect of their own people are well documented.
Other Arab leaders use the "legitimate rights of the Palestinians" as a cudgel to beat Israel with, with little interest in either their rights or their welfare.
Two peoples fighting for one land and unwilling to negotiate a peaceful compromise to co-exist is a very bad situation. Somebody will lose big. Our problem is trying to paint either one of them as the "good guys" when neither one deserves the paint.
I hope your right, but I see three possible results from showing them MTV and giving out sneakers and iPhones:
1) They develop an appreciation for the culture that produced this stuff and a disdain for those still stuck on what happened to their ancestors in 1492. The old ones die off, and the young people who take their place are thoroughly modern. This obviously what we would hope for, but there are two other scenarios.
2) It just confirms their opinion of Western Decadence. Certainly 5 minutes of the modern MTV makes me question whether Western Civ is worth defending. The founder of al-Qeada had just this reaction to his time in the US.
3) They appreciate the toys but fail to see the connection between those and the culture that produced them. They use their iPhones to read up on the latest jihadist news and construct bombs from those nifty Nikes.
You clearly think that (1) will win out. I hope you're right, but it isn't obvious. Certainly the fact that many young Muslims in the West are more radical than their parents suggests that the other two may be more likely reactions.
Thanks for telling us that your trip was underwritten by a Jewish supremacy group, Mr. Goldberg. I have a feeling if your trip was underwritten by a similar type of Palestinians group, you would be looking for a new job.
I see one area where Israel would benefit from the Muslim Brotherhood taking power in Egypt. In such a case, as part of the inevitable war between Egypt and Israel, the Israelis should push the Palestinians out of the Gaza Strip and annex it as a permanent part of Israel.
I definitely fear for Israel because it is the most vulnerable of the Western democracies. I support them 100% and think it is time for them to kick the Palestinians out of the Gaza strip. I say force the Palestinians to live in Egypt.
With one, or two minor weaknesses, Jonah did pretty well this time. Israel is the only real democracy in the region. It must adapt its democratic approach to accommodate constant and pervasive terrorist threats.
As for this nonsense about walking softly, that was a practically unproved slogan of an opinionated Progressive President. Teddy had a lot of foreign policy problems and he didn't practice what he preached. The slogan didn't work. What is needed is a Reaganesque approach. Strength is the only policy autocrats and terrorists understand. America doesn't do it very well these days, however. Too busy apologizing for our past sins. We should take a lesson from WWII. Israel needs to take tougher stands, too, on its borders, on Palestinian demands, on terrorism within its borders. Muslims on the Knesset won't calm the storm. It just encourages an already fierce and destructive wind.
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