Israel: the age of permanent war?

Comparing Israel's conflict with its immediate neighbors to the United States' adventurism in Iraq and Afghanistan is ludicrous. Whichever side one takes, it is clear that Israel is engaged in a war for survival, and has been since its birth. It sit among a sea of ideological, theological and tribal enemies, many of which have explicitly stated the goal of Israel's destruction, and have directly engaged in attacks against Israel.

Neither Iraq nor Afghanistan ever attacked the United States. We now know that the Taliban were even willing to hand over Bin Laden in the aftermath of 9/11, and what indirect involvement Afghanistan had by harboring Al Qaeda, was seen as secondary to the goal of occupying Iraq, anyway.

Israel maintains no foreign bases thousands of miles away, and has attempted to negotiate with its enemies for peace, not topple their governments. Israel does not have the choice of picking up and leaving. Just where would it go?

This is one of the most to-the-point comments I have ever seen on I/P. Kudos.

From The Jerusalem Post
April 9, 2009

Column One: Surviving in a post-American world

By Caroline Glick

Like it or not, the United States of America is no longer the world's policeman. This was the message of Barack Obama's presidential journey to Britain, France, the Czech Republic, Turkey and Iraq this past week.

Somewhere between apologizing for American history - both distant and recent; genuflecting before the unelected, bigoted king of Saudi Arabia; announcing that he will slash the US's nuclear arsenal, scrap much of America's missile defense programs and emasculate the US Navy; leaving Japan to face North Korea and China alone; telling the Czechs, Poles and their fellow former Soviet colonies, "Don't worry, be happy," as he leaves them to Moscow's tender mercies; humiliating Iraq's leaders while kowtowing to Iran; preparing for an open confrontation with Israel; and thanking Islam for its great contribution to American history, President Obama made clear to the world's aggressors that America will not be confronting them for the foreseeable future.

Whether they are aggressors like Russia, proliferators like North Korea, terror exporters like nuclear-armed Pakistan or would-be genocidal-terror-supporting nuclear states like Iran, today, under the new administration, none of them has any reason to fear Washington.

This news is music to the ears of the American Left and their friends in Europe. Obama's supporters like billionaire George Soros couldn't be more excited at the self-induced demise of the American superpower. CNN's former (anti-)Israel bureau chief Walter Rodgers wrote ecstatically in the Christian Science Monitor on Wednesday, "America's... superpower status, is being downgraded as rapidly as its economy."

The pro-Obama US and European media are so pleased with America's abdication of power that they took the rare step of applauding Obama at his press conference in London. Indeed, the media's enthusiasm for Obama appeared to grow with each presidential statement of contrition for America's past uses of force, each savage attack he leveled against his predecessor George W. Bush, each swipe he took at Israel, and each statement of gratitude for the blessings of Islam he uttered.

But while the media couldn't get enough of the new US leader, America's most stable allies worldwide began a desperate search for a reset button that would cause the administration to take back its abandonment of America's role as the protector of the free world.

Tokyo was distraught by the administration's reaction to North Korea's three-stage ballistic missile test. Japan recognized the betrayal inherent in Defense Secretary Robert Gates's announcement ahead Pyongyang's newest provocation that the US would only shoot the missile down if it targeted US territory. In one sentence, uttered not in secret consultations, but declared to the world on CNN, Gates abrogated America's strategic commitment to Japan's defense.

India, for its part, is concerned by Obama's repeated assertions that its refusal to transfer control over the disputed Jammu and Kashmir provinces to Pakistan inspires Pakistani terror against India. It is equally distressed at the Obama administration's refusal to make ending Pakistan's support for jihadist terror groups attacking India a central component of its strategy for contending with Pakistan and Afghanistan. In general, Indian officials have expressed deep concern over the Obama administration's apparent lack of regard for India as an ally and a significant strategic counterweight to China.

Then there is Iraq. During his brief visit to Baghdad on Tuesday afternoon, Obama didn't even pretend that he would ensure that Iraqi democracy and freedom is secured before US forces are withdrawn next year. The most supportive statement he could muster came during his conversation with Turkish students in Istanbul earlier in the day. There he said, "I have a responsibility to make sure that as we bring troops out, that we do so in a careful enough way that we don't see a complete collapse into violence."

Hearing Obama's statements, and watching him and his advisers make daily declarations of friendship to Iran's mullahs, Iraqi leaders are considering their options for surviving the rapidly approaching storm.

Then there is Europe. Although Obama received enthusiastic applause from his audience in Prague when he announced his intention to destroy the US's nuclear arsenal, drastically scale back its missile defense programs and forge a new alliance with Russia, his words were anything but music to the ears of the leaders of former Soviet satellites threatened by Russia. The Czech, Polish, Georgian and Ukrainian governments were quick to recognize that Obama's strong desire to curry favor with the Kremlin and weaken his own country will imperil their ability to withstand Russian aggression.

It is not a coincidence, for instance, that the day Obama returned to Washington, Georgia's Moscow-sponsored opposition announced its plan to launch massive protests in Tblisi to force the ouster of pro-Western, anti-Russian Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili.

And as for Russia, like Iran, which responded to Obama's latest ode to the mullahs by opening a nuclear fuel plant and announcing it has 7,000 advanced centrifuges in operation, so Moscow reacted to Obama's fig leaf with a machine gun, announcing its refusal to support sanctions against North Korea and repeating its false claim that Iran's nuclear program is nonaggressive.

Finally there is Israel. If Obama's assertions that Israel must support the immediate establishment of a Palestinian state, his declarations of support for the so-called Saudi "peace plan," which requires Israel to commit national suicide in exchange for "peace" with the Arab world, and his continuous and increasingly frantic appeals for Iran to "engage" his administration weren't enough to show Israel that Obama is sacrificing the US's alliance with the Jewish state in a bid to appease the Arabs and Iran, on Tuesday Vice President Joseph Biden made this policy explicit.

When Biden told CNN that Israel would be "ill-advised" to attack Iran's nuclear installations, he made clear that from the administration's perspective, an Israeli strike that prevents Iran from becoming a nuclear power is less acceptable than a nuclear-armed Iran. That is, the Obama administration prefers to see Iran become a nuclear power than to see Israel secure its very existence.

AMERICA'S BETRAYAL of its democratic allies makes each of them more vulnerable to aggression at the hands of their enemies - enemies the Obama administration is now actively attempting to appease. And as the US strengthens their adversaries at their expense, these spurned democracies must consider their options for surviving as free societies in this new, threatening, post-American environment.

For the most part, America's scorned allies lack the ability to defeat their enemies on their own. India cannot easily defeat nuclear-armed Pakistan, which itself is fragmenting into disparate anti-Indian nuclear-wielding Islamist and Islamist-supporting factions.

Japan today cannot face North Korea - which acts as a Chinese proxy - on its own without risking a confrontation with China. Russia's invasion of Georgia last August showed clearly that its former republics and satellites have no way of escaping Moscow's grip alone. This week's Arab League conference at Doha demonstrated to Iraq's leaders that their Arab brethren are incapable and unwilling to confront Iran.

And the Obama administration's intense efforts to woo Iran coupled with its plan to slash the US's missile defense programs - including those in which Israel participates - and reportedly pressure Israel to dismantle its own purported nuclear arsenal - make clear that Israel today stands alone against Iran.

THE RISKS that the newly inaugurated post-American world pose for America's threatened friends are clear. But viable opportunities for survival do exist, and Israel can and must play a central role in developing them. Specifically, Israel must move swiftly to develop active strategic alliances with Japan, Iraq, Poland, and the Czech Republic and it must expand its alliance with India.

With Israel's technological capabilities, its intelligence and military expertise, it can play a vital role in shoring up these countries' capacities to contain the rogue states that threaten them. And by containing the likes of Russia, North Korea and Pakistan, they will make it easier for Israel to contain Iran even in the face of US support for the mullahs.

The possibilities for strategic cooperation between and among all of these states and Israel run the gamut from intelligence sharing to military training, to missile defense, naval development, satellite collaboration, to nuclear cooperation. In addition, of course, expanded economic ties between and among these states can aid each of them in the struggle to stay afloat during the current global economic crisis.

Although far from risk free, these opportunities are realistic because they are founded on stable, shared interests. This is the case despite the fact that none of these potential alliances will likely amount to increased support for Israel in international forums. Dependent as they are on Arab oil, these potential allies cannot be expected to vote with Israel in the UN General Assembly. But this should not concern Jerusalem.

The only thing that should concern Jerusalem today is how to weaken Iran both directly by attacking its nuclear installations, and indirectly by weakening its international partners in Moscow, Pyongyang, Islamabad and beyond in the absence of US support. If Japan is able to contain North Korea and so limit Pyongyang's freedom to proliferate its nuclear weapons and missiles to Iran and Syria and beyond, Israel is better off. So, too, Israel is better off if Russia is contained by democratic governments in Eastern and Central Europe. These nations in turn are better off if Iran is contained and prevented from threatening them both directly and indirectly through its strategic partners in North Korea, Syria and Russia, and its terror affiliates in Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan.

For the past 16 years, successive Israeli governments have wrongly believed that politics trump strategic interests. The notion that informed Israel's decision-makers - not unlike the notion that now informs the Obama administration - was that Israel's strategic interests would be secured as a consequence of its efforts to appease its enemies by weakening itself. Appreciative of Israel's sacrifices for peace, the nations of the world - and particularly the US, the Arabs and Europe - would come to Israel's defense in its hour of need. Now that the hour of need has arrived, Israel's political strategy for securing itself has been exposed as a complete fiasco.

The good news is that no doubt sooner rather than later, Obama's similarly disastrous bid to denude the US of its military power under the naive assumption that it will be able to use its new stature as a morally pure strategic weakling to win its enemies over to its side will fail spectacularly and America's foreign policy will revert to strategic rationality.

But to survive the current period of American strategic madness, Israel and the US's other unwanted allies must build alliances with one another - covertly if need be - to contain their adversaries in the absence of America. If they do so successfully, then the damage to global security induced by Obama's emasculation of his country will be limited. If on the other hand, they fail, then America's eventual return to its senses will likely come too late for its allies - if not for America itself.

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1238562949505&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

Copyright 1995- 2009 The Jerusalem Post

All of this can be done, as soon as the Palestinian leadership can control its own forces and cease its attacks on Israel. Why would any nation with an advantage over it's foe cede anything, until there is a clear understanding -- not just some silly 10 to 40 year "truce" -- that the violence will end and Israel will never again be attacked?

I wonder exactly what "rules" you refer to, and if you really only expect one side to adhere to them. By the way, Israel has not been "playing"; you choose an odd term to describe the actions of a nation which lives every day with its survival at stake.

From The New Republic's "The Spine" Weblog:
April 6, 2009

What's The Impediment?

By Martin Peretz

I hold no brief for Avigdor Lieberman, not at all. I have already characterized him as a neo-fascist, and a neo-fascist he is. What's more he is an utterly reckless person, and the weird parliamentary system -too democratic by half- encourages the recklessness of Israeli politicians for many of whom it is by now habitual, perhaps even by now almost generic or genetic.

Today, another loudmouth, Gilad Erdan, minister of the environment, about which he knows roughly nothing, also took to the bullhorn and proclaimed that Israel is not America's 51st state. Believe me, that is not the issue in America's politics where, on the left wing margins, at least, the question is whether the United States is a satrap of the Jewish state. It is a false issue. But at a time when the country is overwhelmed by burdens at once domestic and international it would be wise and apt for Israeli politicians actually to appreciate (and to express that appreciation) for the unyielding military and diplomatic support provided Jerusalem from Washington.

This does not mean that Israel's political class has to fall into line behind every step that the Obama administration takes. But, to be fair, my own sense is that the administration is walking delicately between its ideological presumption that it can engage with reckless states and chiliastic movements and still maintain the country's strategic alliances with kindred democratic allies. I suspect that these are inevitably more divergent paths, and that this divergence will face the president with many wrenching dilemmas. If one can judge by AfPak, he will take the historically sanctioned path.

And, by the way, no, it is insufficient for Obama to say that Al Qaeda will not be conciliated by anything Israel does to palliate the Palestine question. Israel's enemies are Hezbollah and Hamas, Syria and Islamic fanatics spread through every Arab country, including Jordan and Egypt, two vulnerable states themselves beset by religious insurrectionists. Does Obama really believe that the great swath of Muslim hatred for Jews is amenable to a diplomatic solution?

In any case, Bibi Netanyahu is not Lieberman or the callow Erdan from his own party. Netanyahu knows what the stakes are which means that he understands that a "two-state solution" is the only possible resolve for the conflict. And the fact is that, all of the injunctions put before before Jerusalem by the various peace professionals about this solution notwithstanding, the Israeli body politic is itself committed to such a resolve. That has been Israeli policy for at least 16 years. It is a gross lie to deny this. The Greater Israel movement is dead. So is the Peace Now movement that assumed a territorial retreat will resolve everything. This movement died the day after Israel left Gaza.

The outstanding cartographical issues are mostly symbolic and procedural.

So what is the impediment?

It is that Israel cannot assume that any territory from which it withdraws will remain peaceful. What is the evidence that it would? Do you really think that rockets and missiles will not be lobbed into Israel proper on the morning after? And that Palestine's frontier with its Arab neighbors will not become what Gaza's frontier with (relatively well-intentioned) Egypt has become. A cease-fire was made, and the cease fire has not held. What's more, the smuggling of trajectiles and other weapons through the tunnels of the strip goes on unabated. This is despite a United Nations resolution. And in southern Lebanon another cease-fire resolution providing for an end to smuggling from Iran and Syria to Hezbollah is continually violated. One lesson Israel has certainly learned is that U.N. Security Council resolutions are worth less than the paper on which they are printed.

Until this issue is addressed conscientiously and practically there will be no progress on the two-state solution under any borders. And, instead of repeating the two-state shibboleth, it is time for the well-intentioned brokers -President Obama included- to confront the real barrier to peace which is Palestinian and Arab behavior after an Israeli withdrawal. This will be the test, and nothing else.

--Posted By Martin Peretz, April 06, 2009

The New Republic © 2007 - 2008.

http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_spine/archive/2009/04/06/what-s-the-impediment.aspx

From The New Republic's "The Spine" Weblog:
April 7, 2009

Obama Speaks of Compromise

By Martin Peretz

President Obama was a big hit in speaking to a group of students in Istanbul this morning. He did not pander and he did not speak in cliches. It's been a long time since we've had a president who speaks clearly but with complicated thoughts and in nuanced words.

He took on the intricate issues that affect Turkish-American relations, and there were no sweet promises. Again the assembly seemed to appreciate his candor.

And he added a significant trope to his discussion of the long and wearying conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians. The trope that he added to the palaver was "compromise." When the tiresome peace processors speak of negotiations they almost always mean concessions by Israel: territorial concessions, concessions on Jerusalem, demographic concessions, symbolic concessions, economic concessions, security concessions, historic concessions, moral concessions, concessions to Palestinian pride and to Palestinian shame. There is no concession that Israel has not tried, in one way or another, to meet. And there are forces in Israel which think that too much has already been forfeited. Of course, Palestinian expectations rise with every concession from Israel.

So that the notion, enunciated by the American president almost for the first time, that there are concrete concessions that the Palestinians have to make is almost a new phenomenon. The "land for peace" formula is a bankrupt idea. It doesn't work. What everybody needs but not everybody yet needs is "peace for peace."

The question then is: what must the Palestinians give up to secure tangible possibilities for statehood?

Yes, I know that there is much that they must accomplish among their to really become a nation and have a history as a people. But, whether we gloat or weep about these deficiencies, that's not our business. There are plenty of states that rule over populations that are neither a nation nor a people. I suspect that the Palestinians won't be the last of this unfortunate formula.

But since President Obama has put the idea of reciprocity on the table he is morally obliged to begin to make a list. And so is George Mitchell and Tony Blair and the busily intrusive European Union. The idea that Israel will give up a series of strategic advantages for recognition of its flag is nonsense.

--Posted By Martin Peretz, April 07, 2009

The New Republic © 2007 - 2008.

http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_spine/archive/2009/04/07/obama-speaks-of-compromise.aspx

You are being disingenuous by substituting your term "pursu[ing]" permanent struggle for what the author wrote --"recognizing" the state of permanent war. The radical Palestinian leadership has consistently claimed to be in a permanent state of war against Israel, ending only when Israel no longer exists.

I am constantly amazed how many critics of Israel polemicize based on the premise that The Arabs and Palestinians are an innocent party to this conflict, and would never do anything bad unless those evil Zionists forced them to do so.

If neither a one-state nor two-state solution will work, what do you propose?

A one-nation solution with democratic government respecting religious freedom and all the others is a must in that region (not a two-state perpetually warring solution) and let it evolve

That approach did not work particularly well in kosovo, or turkey, or post-WWI germany, etc. Get two tribes who don't get along and expect them to live together peacefully under democracy? It did work for belgium. It's working pretty well for the USA, where the black population is a reasonable-size minority. But to really work, that approach needs a commitment by both sides to make it work. And currently in israel/palestine that commitment is shared by only a very small minority.

I thought for awhile that the internet would help. Individual israeli and palestinian citizens were discussing things over the internet and starting to understand each other's needs. But the internet made it too easy for palestinians to tell the world what was happening to them and the israelis mostly shut down their access. So that approach failed.

S. Africa is an often-ignored model for international intervention playing a role in conflict resolution, peace and coexistence. That gives me hope for poor Palestine. But we think the last fully apartheid gov't of P.W. Botha hadn't crossed the nuclear threshold, in spite of Israeli proliferation to his die-hard racist regime. The lack of a palestinian Mandela or an Israeli de Klerk is a problem. Maybe they wouldn't (or didn't) survive, if they did exist.

Here in the contemporary world, Israel's Likud possesses an atomic Samson Option, threatening regional immolation of capitals, regardless of who attacks them. US force protection ensures that our missile radars are keeping a close eye on the folks possessing todays credible launch capability.

The only model (so far) for a nuclear power devolving it's hold on power and/or unwillingly yielding territory is the former Soviet Union. The jury is still out on whether the KGB/Putin truly folded their tent, or simply privatized, keeping the nukes and oil, and dumping the socialist pension obligations. Russian occupation of Chinese and Japanese territory is still a fact in evidence, like Israel's growing West Bank population.

The Bible stories of Ishmael and Essau are of elder (arab-ish) sons losing their inheritance to the tricky Hebrew patriarchs. It's ironic that the blood of the patriarch's, prophets, and kings runs stronger in the children of palestinian stay-behinds, than in ashkenazi returned from millenia of diaspora in Europe. To make it a word picture, the ancient children of Abe the Sumerian looked kinda like Arafat's cousins. David bin Jesse was not Michaelangelo's Italian body-builder, or a euro-macabee like Dayan, Sharon or Netanyahu, or the iconic midieval Frankish Jesus on my sunday school wall.

Israel's own sephardic jews have accused the euro-israelis of racism, even as their afro-asiatic appearance and language skills are employed by the IDF and Mossad to keep an eye on the previous tenants and other cousins.

Arvay, you appear to be attributing israeli emigration to the palestinian resistance.

But consider the possibility that israel is simply a tiny stagnant community with no particular future, and people who want a future go find one.

Maybe the USA could help resolve the issue by giving permanent resident status and a good shot at US citizenship to any israeli citizen who will give up their israeli citizenship and move here. The world is not improved when israelis have no other choice where to live.