Osirak Revisited

Posted on March 8, 2011 by jonathanspyer

11/11/2007

The possible emergence of a nuclear-armed, Islamist Iran committed to the destruction of the Jewish state is the key security issue currently occupying the attention of Israel’s political and security elite. It is one of the few issues upon which there is near (but not total) consensus. Israel has watched the growing power of radical elements within the Iranian ruling elite in the last half-decade with concern. These elements, of which President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad is the most prominent representative, openly reject Israel’s right to exist. Ahmedinejad’s comments advocating Israel’s destruction and denying the Holocaust are part of a larger project to recover the original fervour of the 1979 Islamic revolution. The expansion of Iran’s regional role is also part of this, and Israeli strategists note that the influence of Iran in all areas of key strategic concern to Israel is being felt, in a negative way. Iran’s alliance with Syria underwrites Damascus’s increasingly bellicose stance. Iran’s creation and sponsorship of Hizbullah has enabled it to come to constitute the powerful militia opponent seen in last year’s war. Iranian assistance to Hamas and Islamic jihad may be in the process of turning these organizations into analogous forces.

Iran’s active policy of subversion toward Israel, and stated desire for its destruction, make the possibility of a nuclear Iran inconceivable to Israeli policymakers. It is not only the scenario of an Iranian nuclear attack that is focusing concerns. Rather, there is concern that a nuclear Iran would use the “immunity” purchased by a nuclear capability to increase its support for countries and organizations hostile to Israel. Some Israeli policymakers, such as the deputy defense minister, Efraim Sneh, regard this as itself an existential issue. Sneh has stressed that a nuclear Iran could render life in Israel untenable – through support for terror groups, and the possibility that all determined Israeli attempts to oppose Iranian aggression would lead to immediate nuclear crisis.
An alternative, minority viewpoint exists within the Israeli policy elite, according to which Israel could successfully deter a nuclear Iran, and therefore the problem, while acute, is of less existential dimensions. Former Mossad Head Efraim Halevy is understood to support this view.

Israel’s response so far on the Iranian nuclear issue has been to support the imposition of tougher sanctions. Senior officials have been involved in recent weeks in an international campaign to bring home to European states the common danger posed by a nuclear Iran.
Nevertheless, should it become apparent that all attempts to reverse Iran’s progress toward a nuclear capability have failed, and Iran indeed stands on the cusp of a nuclear weapons capability, then the possibility of unilateral Israeli military action to prevent a nuclear Iran would come onto the agenda.

It should not be assumed from Ahmedinejad’s claims this week that Iran has begun to operate 3,000 centrifuges to enrich uranium at Natanz, that Israel will now conclude that this moment has been reached. Ahmedinejad made a similar claim in April, and Israel suspects that the Iranian regime is keen to give the impression of greater progress than has in fact been made.

For the moment, therefore, efforts toward further sanctions are likely to continue. But the consensus in the Israeli intelligence community is that Iran may be as close as two years away from a nuclear weapons capability. So if Tehran cannot be brought to abandon its nuclear ambitions through strengthened sanctions and international pressure – then pre-emptive Israeli action to prevent the emergence of a nuclear-powered Islamic Republic of Iran is an increasing possibility.
Regarding the likely results, should such action take place: to some degree, a precedent exists in Israel’s destruction of Iraq’s nuclear program at Osirak in 1981. The Israeli move then was universally condemned in public, and in private, at least retrospectively, was quietly welcomed as having prevented the need for the world to confront a nuclear-armed Saddam Hussein. Once again, it’s important to note that Israel’s hopes regarding the possibilities of toughened sanctions are genuine. But one may also discern in recent statements by President Bush and President Sarkozy a commitment to the prevention of a nuclear Iran of similar firmness to that of Israel. As such, should the moment of decision arrive, and a consensus be reached that sanctions have failed, it is likely that action by Israel will have no major effect on Israel’s relations with its allies.

Regarding the likely Iranian response: the Iranians may choose to increase their already existing aid to insurgents in Iraq, they may seek to strike at Israel through proxy and client organizations such as Hizbullah and Hamas, they may seek to hit at western, Gulf and Jewish targets through terrorism. The fallout in terms of regional anger and protests will no doubt be immense. Israeli strategists conjecturing such issues, however, may well consider that an angry, vengeful but non-nuclear Iran is a more preferable prospect than a nuclear-armed Islamic Republic, triumphant and filled with the ambition for regional hegemony which possession of nuclear weapons would bring.

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The Root Cause of Confrontation

Posted on March 8, 2011 by jonathanspyer

07/07/2006

The kidnapping of two IDF soldiers by Hizballah on the Israel-Lebanese border adds fuel to the flames of the already fraught situation between Israel and the Hamas-led Palestinian Authority in Gaza. The talk in Israel is now of wide-ranging ground and air operations into Lebanon. In order to understand the dynamics which have led to this renewed crisis, it is crucial to recall the events which preceded it, and to understand the strategic thinking underlying those events.

The Disengagement from Gaza last September was undertaken by Israel because of its conviction that no credible partner for negotiation existed on the Palestinian side. Nevertheless, embedded in Israel’s strategy of unilateralism was an assumption of a sort of base-line rationality among the Palestinian leadership. It was assumed that whatever the details, the absence of Israeli soldiers and civilians in the Strip would enable the beginnings of the construction of normal life for its residents. This in turn would lead to an obvious interest among the PA leadership, regardless of the larger differences over the diplomatic process, in preventing the escalation of tension with Israel. This assumption now appears flawed.

A massive increase in Palestinian paramilitary activity of all kinds took place immediately following the Disengagement. The increase preceded the election of Hamas on January 25th, though this development further intensified it. In the first three months of 2006, 500 Qassam rockets were fired from post-Disengagement Gaza onto the towns of the Western Negev. Israeli security officials estimated that if prior to Disengagement, perhaps 200-300 rifles were smuggled in, in the course of a month, the figure by early 2006 was probably closer to 3,000. 277 attempted attacks were recorded emanating from the Gaza Strip in December, 2005, compared to 48 in October, 2005. The Hamas-led PA openly defended the April 17 terror attack in Tel Aviv. Its spokesman referred to the bombing as a “natural result of the continued Israeli crimes.” The infiltration into Israel, and the kidnapping of Corporal Gilad Shalit should thus be understood as the culmination of a process, rather than the single causal factor precipitating Israel’s incursion into Gaza.

This decision by the various Palestinian armed factions in Gaza to busily set about turning the Strip into an armed camp at first seems counter-intuitive. It has brought no tangible gains whatsoever for the Palestinian people. Instead, the long-suffering residents of the Strip are now caught between the attacks of the armed organizations and the response of the IDF.

The actions of the PA government become comprehensible, however, when they are considered from within the framework of the strategy of the Hamas leaders of the PA. The strategic outlook of Hamas is shared by the Lebanese Hizballah organization, which has now entered the fray. The backers of this movement, in Damascus and Teheran, hold to similar views.

According to well-connected Egyptian sources, during a recent meeting between Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal and a senior Egyptian official, the latter berated the Hamas leader for the apparent nihilism of Palestinian strategy. He listed the collapse in international aid following Hamas’ refusal to accept international norms regarding Israel’s existence, the suffering of the Palestinian population following Israeli reprisals for attacks, and the collapse of any hopes for reviving the infrastructure of Gaza.

The official concluded by stating exasperatedly that time was not on the side of the Palestinians. Mashaal, unmoved, calmly replied that this was not true–time was on the Palestinians’ side, and the final victory would be theirs. The final victory to which Mashaal refers is Hamas’ openly-stated strategic goal of the destruction of Israel.

This is of course the well-known view of Hizballah chairman Hassan Nasrallah, whose forces on July 12th entered the fight, and who believes that Palestine is “an occupied land from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River, and this is the right of the entire Palestinian people, this land.” Such a statement also accurately reflects the views of the Assad regime in Damascus, which provides a home for Hamas’ leadership, and backs and finances Hizballah.

Of course, the fire-eating rhetoric of Mashaal, Nasrallah and their backers is offset by the relative feebleness of their abilities. Their intransigence can prevent a fair resolution, or even a rational managing of the conflict. But while they can inflict bloody wounds on Israel, their main victims will always be their own people, who will bear the brunt of Israel’s inevitable reprisals for attacks upon it. This coalition of rejectionist states and organizations can neither successfully develop societies nor build the militaries necessary for the realization of their strategic goals.

They can however, endeavor to keep their own side mired in poverty, failure and a culture of romanticized killing. So in the end, it is not only three unfortunate IDF soldiers who are the hostages of these men. Rather, any chance of progress toward peaceful development in the Middle East is hostage, and has been hostage too long, to their fantasies of destruction, and their continued incumbency in positions of power.

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Democratic Converts in Borrowed Array

Posted on March 8, 2011 by jonathanspyer

Haaretz-11/03/2005

Euphoria is back. Democracy, it appears, is about to experience a late birth in our region. The Berlin Wall of the Arabs has fallen, and all will shortly be transformed. But the new and emerging political language in the Middle East contains the potential for manipulation by forces with a quite different agenda from that of the true reformers in the Arab world. Israel would do well to pay close attention – both to what is being said and to who is saying it.

 

A strange and strangely familiar bunch, the latest converts to democracy. Walid Jumblatt, for example, of the Druze Progressive Socialist Party, who declares that he knew, when witnessing the Iraqi elections of January 30, that “it was the start of a new Arab world.” Lauding the push for reform in Lebanon, Mr. Jumblatt notes that it started “because of the American invasion of Iraq.” He goes on to scold himself for his former cynicism, of which he has now been cured. Is this the same Jumblatt who, a little more than a year ago, declared that the United States is run by an evil “axis of oil and Jews” and referred to Donald Rumsfeld’s deputy as a “filthy son of a harlot of Zion?” Apparently so.

 

In another corner, President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, who after a quarter of a century in power, has now decided to allow opposition candidates to run against him (though not, apparently, to campaign freely while doing so.) And closer to home, of course, Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, with his own indigenous democratic system, which includes a place, he told Time magazine this week, for the well-known Jeffersonians of the Hamas movement.

 

We are encouraged not to be cynical. And it is certainly not my contention that certain regions of the world must remain forever mysteriously inaccessible to democracy. At the same time, a healthy dose of skepticism is unavoidable regarding some of the new enthusiasts. Because all this is not without precedent. It is no longer controversial to maintain that the old ideas of Arab nationalism, and the corrupt, sclerotic political structures they have produced, bear the primary responsibility for the stagnation of the region in general, and the intractability of the Arab-Israeli conflict in particular. But it is interesting to note that one of the secrets of the survival of this discredited idea and its adherents is their ability to clothe themselves in borrowed array when the political climate demands it.

 

A glance at history confirms this. One need not go as far back as those young pro-German activists of the Young Egypt movement, miraculously transformed into champions of pro-Soviet anti-colonialism in their later incarnation as Egyptian Free Officers. More recent examples are at hand. Think, for example, of the right-wing Arab nationalist George Habash, who reemerged after 1967 as the leading mouthpiece for the pro-Soviet position among the Palestinians. Or even the former Muslim Brother Yasser Arafat, who also tried on the fashionable pose of Third World radicalism in the 1970s, before exchanging it for the equally unlikely role of conflict resolver in the 1990s.

 

What all these transformations had in common was one simple fact: that they were not transformations at all. Rather, allegiance to the same basic, authoritarian orientation remained throughout: Overheated nationalism and chauvinism, hostility to independent institutions – and, centrally, hatred of Israel as the endlessly returned to, endlessly warmed-over centerpiece of the whole construct – were the inner core, around which various other costumes were fitted.

 

It was these ideas, the stagnant systems they produced, and the militant Islamism that arose to fill the vacuum left by their failures, which bear the primary responsibility for the absence of regional progress and conflict resolution. The ability of some of their adherents to learn the political language of the moment should surprise no one. It is in the pattern of the past.

 

As far as Israel is concerned, however, this mastery of successive political languages on the part of its adversaries should be a matter for concern. Israel tends to perform well on the battlefield, and less well in the diplomatic maneuvers that follow armed conflict. The performance of the security forces, and the public, over the last four years of strife are generally acknowledged to have been impressive. In his recent interview with Time, Palestinian Authority Chairman Abbas, apart from declaring his allegiance to democracy, also found space to blame Israel and its security fence for the recent terror bombing in Tel Aviv.

 

He also reiterated his view of Hamas as a legitimate part of the Palestinian political map and expressed his desire for rapid progress to final-status negotiations. He has expressed nothing of substance to suggest that his views regarding final status differ from those of earlier Palestinian leaders. In form, however, he differs considerably, and fluently repeating the phrases of the moment, he is building up the legitimacy he will need to produce the eventual external pressure on Israel, which is his aim.

 

Meanwhile, in another world, the militants of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, untroubled by the security forces of Mahmoud Abbas, berate their leader for what they already regard as his excessive concessions to Israel. The contradiction is a basic one. As the region has learned in the past, words and reality, if not brought into some harmony with one another, will eventually collide head-on, with unforeseen results.

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Why Israel Needs a Fence

Posted on March 8, 2011 by jonathanspyer

Montreal Gazette- 24/02/2004

Israel’s security fence has become the latest focus for criticism of the country by a wide range of international bodies and personalities. Israelis have been warned against losing faith in reconciliation. They have been advised to build “bridges, not walls,” and warned against the danger of basing policy on the desire for vengeance, however understandable. The critics are right to feel saddened at the sight of relations between Israelis and Palestinians today. There is little there to give cause for joy. But they are wrong, gravely wrong, in believing that the construction of the fence derives from hatred, retaliation or the desire for revenge.

Israel’s security fence has become the latest focus for criticism of the country by a wide range of international bodies and personalities. Israelis have been warned against losing faith in reconciliation. They have been advised to build “bridges, not walls,” and warned against the danger of basing policy on the desire for vengeance, however understandable. The critics are right to feel saddened at the sight of relations between Israelis and Palestinians today. There is little there to give cause for joy. But they are wrong, gravely wrong, in believing that the construction of the fence derives from hatred, retaliation or the desire for revenge.

An overwhelming majority of Israelis support the construction of the fence. They do so because they have seen with their own eyes the result of entrusting their security to their declared enemies.

For seven years, from 1993 to 2000, Israeli policy rested on the assumption that in the Palestinian Authority there existed a partner committed to bridge-building and reconciliation. Tangible assets – land, water, security control and access – were ceded, as investments in a better tomorrow.

Continued Palestinian terrorism, ongoing incitement in the PA’s media and education system, and a lack of any attempt by the Palestinian leadership to prepare their public for the challenges of peace formed a discordant counterpoint to the great hopes of those years. But bridge-building and reconciliation – real or illusory – remained the watchwords. Then, in September 2000, after the Palestinians rejected an offer of a state with its capital in Jerusalem, the hour of reality’s victory over illusion struck. The PLO leadership came back from the negotiations at Camp David and launched a campaign of violence which continues today.

The construction of the security fence is a rational response to this situation. Whatever the future might bring (and one does not cease to hope), the Palestinian leadership, by its active involvement in terror since September 2000, by its blind eye to it in the preceding years, by its insistence on the so-called right of return (which would mean the de facto destruction of the Jewish state), and by its employment of imagery reminiscent of the darkest years of Jewish history in its propaganda has demonstrated that Palestinian nationalism is not yet ready for reconciliation with the Jewish state.

Lip service has been paid to countless formulas: to the Mitchell report,the Tenet document, UN Security Council Resolution 1397 and most recently, the Road map. All the while, the terror and incitement have continued without pause.

In the absence of a partner for bridge-building and reconciliation,Israel faces two clear and present dangers. First, the existence of an armed, organized and murderous infrastructure of Islamist and Palestinian nationalist terror in the West Bank and Gaza. We saw the handiwork of this infrastructure in the bloody attack on the No. 19 bus in Jerusalem a few weeks ago and again this past weekend.

The second danger is that of demographics – the fear that the growing Palestinian population, and the increasingly openly declared abandonment by the Palestinian leadership of any solution based on a two-state formula, could lead to a clash between the two peoples for control of the whole area a few years down the line.

The security fence is the response to these dangers. It offers a positive, although partial solution to both of them. Regarding the first, figures show that in the northern part of the West Bank, after completion of the construction of the fence in late 2002, successful attacks have dropped by more than 75 per cent – from 17 between April and December 2002 to five in 2003. Further south, meanwhile, in areas as yet without a completed fence, the level has stayed the same.

Regarding the second threat, the fence might come to play a significant role in demarcating the eventual border between the Israeli and Palestinian peoples. Should the Palestinians continue on the path of rejectionism, it might come to constitute a de facto dividing line between the Jewish state and an impoverished, chaotic Palestinian entity impotently committed to its own destruction. Should a more responsible Palestinian leadership emerge, the existence of the fence – not placed along the Green Line – could form a useful point at which to begin negotiations. The Palestinians would clearly have much to gain from keeping their side of the bargain in such a situation.

We are, alas, a long way from the bridges and reconciliation that seemed, not so long ago, to be within reach. Wisdom today lies in recognizing that Israel must for the foreseeable future make its own arrangements for its security and the maintenance of deterrence. The security fence is one such arrangement.

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The biggest Shoes to Fill

Posted on March 8, 2011 by jonathanspyer

The Guardian- 06/01/2006

If the massive cerebral hemorrhage suffered by Ariel Sharon marks the end of this remarkable man’s political career then Israeli public life is about to lose the figure who above all others reshaped Israeli politics and diplomacy in the post-Oslo period. In recent months Sharon fundamentally transformed both Israel’s policy toward the Palestinians and the internal Israeli political map.

The disengagement from Gaza of August 2005 represented a shift away from the split over the “land for peace” issue that has dominated Israeli policy discussion since 1967. Israel has no partner, so Israel must act alone to shape an interim arrangement, went the new paradigm. Sharon’s deliberate destruction of his Likud party, and his founding of the new, centrist Kadima list, was a move of corresponding boldness on the domestic Political front.

Sharon brought with him many of Likud’s most prominent leaders, as well as attracting his friend and rival Shimon Peres from Labour. According to polls, Kadima was carving out a dominant position at the centre of Israeli politics: it stood to gain around 40 seats, Amir Peretz’s Labour party was on 21 seats, Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud on 14.

The problem was that all this depended on one man alone: Sharon. There was a sense in which the Israeli public’s endorsement of him was based on a visceral trust in his ability to steer the ship of state, rather than enthusiasm for specific policies. Despite his bold practical moves, Sharon thus enunciated no clear political testament to which his successors in Kadima may claim to be loyal.

Kadima’s standing in the polls stayed steady after Sharon’s minor stroke just over two weeks ago — mainly because of his rapid return. But a poll at the time found that under different leadership the list could expect only30  seats. A Kadima leadership race may now be expected. Ehud Olmert is likely to act as prime minister until the elections, but his standing is nowhere near that of Sharon, and it should not be assumed that the other major figures in Kadima will automatically rally around him.

For Labour and Likud, Sharon’s absence from the campaign would mean that victory becomes a possibility again. Netanyahu probably has most to gain as Likud rather than Labour saw a massive departure for Kadima. Netanyahu will be hoping that some of that lost support will now return. Without Sharon, what may emerge for the first time is a Knesset based on three large parties holding similar numbers of seats.

The collapse of the Oslo peace process in 2000 left avoid in Israeli politics. Sharon filled it. His bold action against Palestinian attacks, combined with his willingness to redraw old orthodoxies, caught the mood of an Israeli public weary of conflict but unconvinced of the presence of a partner for peace. He brooked no equals and anointed no heirs. If he is now departing the stage he leaves an empty spot at its centre. But the public consensus upon which his premiership rested is unlikely to depart with him. The readiness for territorial concessions and the skepticism over the Palestinian side — seemingly confirmed by a growth in Islamist rejectionism — have become the defining characteristics of the Israeli mainstream.

Sharon’s ability to speak to that mainstream brought him the unprecedented standing he enjoyed on the Israeli political scene. It enabled him to hold Israel together through four years of strife, with no real cracks in support for his methods of defense, and made possible the Gaza disengagement. It is now clear that stable government in Israel is only possible on the basis of this skeptical post-Oslo consensus. The party that will achieve victory in the post-Sharon era will be the one most able to credibly reflect the concerns of that consensus.

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A Disengagement of Disenchantment

Posted on March 8, 2011 by jonathanspyer

Haaretz-07/01/2005

The political direction of which Ariel Sharon’s disengagement plan forms a part is the most significant development in Israeli policy making since 1967. It is an attempt to finally free the Israeli political discussion from the squabble between rival utopias that has dominated it since the 1970s.

The first of these promised utopias, that of the left, has already largely vanished from the public discourse – a victim of the cataclysmic failure of the Oslo process of the 1990s. This project posited a historic compromise between Israel and Palestinian nationalism, based on the ascendancy of shared, rational economic interests. As it turned out, the shared interests were perceived by only one of the sides. The collapse of Oslo cast the proponents of the possibility of rapprochement between Zionist Israel and the leadership of Palestinian nationalism as currently constituted into political irrelevance.

The result of the eclipse of the left is that the drama of the clash of ideas in Israel is currently taking place in the center-rightward side of the arena. The battle is being fought between a disenchanted, realist outlook, as represented by Ariel Sharon and his allies, and the redemptive ambitions of the religious nationalist camp. The flagship of the latter has for a generation been the settlement enterprise in Judea, Samaria and Gaza. Nevertheless, it should be understood that the clash between Sharon and the Yesha Council [representing settlements in Judea, Samaria and Gaza] is not ultimately an argument over demarcation and real estate. Rather, it is about fundamentally differing conceptions of democracy, of Jewish statehood, and ultimately of the very dynamics governing international affairs.

For right-of-center Israelis, the right to construct Jewish communities in Judea, Samaria and Gaza is axiomatic. And in a society increasingly demobilized, fragmented and self-critical, the apparent willingness of the settlers to cleave to old, treasured values and pay the price for them awakened the admiration of circles far beyond the religious nationalist public from which their leadership has been drawn.

Nevertheless, it is becoming increasingly apparent that the agenda of the most militant elements of the Yesha leadership, and their political allies in, for example, the Jewish leadership group of Moshe Feiglin, are far from the concerns, ambitions and desires of the greater part of the Israeli Jewish public. They are also far from anything resembling classical Zionism. Feiglin, the controller of around 130 votes in the Likud Party Central Committee, and one of the architects of the prime minister’s defeat in the Likud referendum in April 2004, openly advocates disobedience by Israel Defense Forces soldiers to thwart disengagement. “No one can overcome God’s will to keep us in Gaza,” he tells his followers. He also favors stripping Arab Israelis of their citizenship, ending military service for women and establishing a Sanhedrin on the Temple Mount. Such views, exotic and bizarre to the Israeli mainstream, are representative of the wilder streams now preparing civil disobedience. The clash between Feiglin and his allies and the prime minister and his camp is thus about more than disengagement from Gaza and part of northern Samaria. With increasingly unveiled calls to sedition being heard, it is shaping up to be about the right of elected government to govern, and a clash between the advocates of Jewish nationalism as we have known it and the partisans of something else entirely.

As for the “road map” guiding the advocates of disengagement, its key elements are the following items:

–Firstly, a rejection of arguments positing the imminent emergence of “democratic” leaderships in various parts of the Middle East and among the Palestinians, and the consequent emergence of a consensual “peace between democracies.” Abu Mazen’s latest statements in support of the so-called “right of return” and his rejection of firm action against Palestinian terror groups indicate that for the foreseeable future, Israel is likely to remain a Jewish democracy surrounded by neighbors seeking its demise. Palestinian nationalism has not yet crossed the Rubicon of historical rapprochement with Israel. It is showing no signs of being about to do so.

–Secondly, the awareness that something must be done. Demographic realities make the status quo untenable. A Jewish state presiding over an Arab majority will be an arrangement with a brief future ahead of it.

–Thirdly, the awareness that the bringing into being of a Palestinian state with provisional borders, created as part of a process of cooperation between Israel and its most important ally, the United States, represents the best possible outcome in the current reality. Irreconcilable issues will remain unreconciled. But a political arrangement including (limited) Palestinian sovereignty will have been established.

–Fourthly, Israel’s security in the dysfunctional region in which it is situated will continue to derive, in this arrangement, from the strength of its armed forces and their technological edge.

Disengagement is the first step along this road. The plan is the product of disenchantment, and hence has none of the heady thrills of utopia about it. In the weeks to come, its opponents, most significant among them advocates of theocracy of various stripes, will be mobilizing to make its implementation impossible. The future direction – internal and external – of the State of Israel will to no small extent be dependent on the outcome of this contest.

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Missed Opportunities

Posted on March 8, 2011 by jonathanspyer

The Forward- 07/05/2004

There is a growing corpus of Israeli responses to the collapse of the peace process of the 1990s, and the eclipse of the expectations of imminent historic compromise between Israelis and Palestinians that it brought in its wake. “A History of Modern Palestine: One Land, Two Peoples” by Ilan Pappe and “Politicide: Ariel Sharon’s War against the Palestinians,” by Baruch Kimmerling are the latest additions. Written from the vantage point of passionately held positions, these books offer examples of the pitfalls awaiting scholars unable or unwilling to draw a clear dividing line between academic research and political advocacy.

The authors are high-profile scholars, each of whose name has been associated, in different ways, with attempts to “explain” the Palestinian position and identity to both Israeli and general readers. Kimmerling, of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, is a noted sociologist whose previous works include a history of the Palestinians and a number of studies of the effects of Zionism on the growth and development of Israeli society. Pappe, a far more controversial figure, is an outspoken activist on behalf of the Palestinian cause, both in Israel and internationally. Both books deal with history, but are composed without recourse to primary sources or interviews. They are extended polemical essays, seeking to drive home very clear interpretations of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, partially via the enlisting of historical evidence.

Kimmerling”s book, which differs markedly in tone from his scholarly work, is more honest about this intention. Kimmerling clearly disagrees viscerally with the policies of Ariel Sharon– a legitimate point-of-view. But this book is the work of an able scholar whose dislike for a leader has clouded his judgement. “Politicide: Ariel Sharon”s War against the Palestinians” is written as a warning. Kimmerling defines “politicide” as “a process that has, as its ultimate goal the dissolution of the Palestinian people’s existence as a legitimate social, political and economic entity,” and he asserts that this is Sharon”s intention toward the Palestinians. Interestingly, the word “politicide” has a meaningful pedigree: It has traditionally been an item in the verbal arsenal of pro-Israeli campaigners, used to describe the Arab aim of bringing about the destruction of the State of Israel. One assumes that Kimmerling is aware of this, and has deliberately chosen to reverse its usage.

The desired picture of an Israeli polity bent on destroying the Palestinians is constructed in a variety of rather dubious ways. Israel is described as becoming a “semi-fascist” regime, and possessing “fascist tendencies.” We are offered no coherent explanation, however, of what these tendencies are supposed to entail. The desire for “politicide” of the Palestinians, meanwhile, is placed in the “very nature and roots of the Zionist movement.” The author quotes, for example, a Haaretz interview with IDF Chief of Staff Moshe Yaalon, in which Yaalon describes terrorism as a “cancer” against which he and his soldiers are applying “chemotherapy.” Kimmerling tries to assert that the Chief of Staff is referring to all Palestinians, or perhaps all Arabs, as a “cancer,” and he compares Yaalon’s words to the Nazi “Der Sturmer.” This is a disingenuous misinterpretation of the statement in question.

Later, we are informed that Sharon has surrounded himself with individuals who “seemingly” support the expulsion of the Palestinian population from the territories. Kimmerling names Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz and once again Moshe Yaalon as examples. We are not told on what this claim is based, or what exactly it means to “seemingly” support transfer. Neither man has expressed himself on any occasion as being in favor of such a policy.

A certain incoherence thus pertains throughout this book. At one point, Kimmerling even admits that he does “not pretend to…guess Sharon’s real intentions or plans,” but this has not deterred him, apparently, from writing an entire book about Sharon’s alleged desire for the “politicide” of the Palestinians.

Pappe wears his bias even more clearly on his sleeve. Though he claims to be taking a “new look” at modern Israel– one focused on the “different ways of life” attempted, in his view, by rank and file individuals on both sides– what follows is essentially a rehashing of the standard Palestinian nationalist version of events. Indeed, in the introduction, Pappe even admits to a bias in favor of the Palestinians, which he justifies as deriving from his natural “compassion” for the underdog.

The book has a number of minor but significant factual errors. Pappe depicts, for example, the Betar organization clashing with Arabs in Jerusalem in 1920, but Betar was founded– in Riga– in 1923. There are unattributed references, including a claim that David Ben-Gurion’s diary expresses support, under the right circumstances, for the expulsion of the “indigenous population” of Palestine.

Overall, in short, this book falls below the methodological standards one has the right to expect from an academic history. One last example should adequately prove my point: In what became a high-profile story in Israel in 2000 and 2001, a master’s student at Haifa University named Theodore Katz, who was supervised by Pappe, presented a thesis alleging that a massacre of 200 Arabs was committed by the IDF’s Alexandroni Brigade at the village of Tantura in May of 1948. Veterans of the brigade sued Katz, claiming he had falsified oral evidence, and Katz withdrew his allegations. The interview tapes on which he based his allegations were later examined by a university committee and found to contain discrepancies. Even more suspiciously, Katz received $8,000 from the PLO during the legal proceedings.

Katz’s accusations, with none of this background explained, are used by Pappe to depict what he calls the “ethnic cleansing of Palestine. Pappe’s blithe recounting of these extremely contentious allegations is accompanied by a footnote, in which he refers the reader to an article he wrote on the affair in the “Journal of Palestine Studies” (a PLO-sponsored journal). But don’t readers deserve to be made aware in the narrative of the very dubious and controversial nature of the evidence on which allegations of a massacre are being made? Pappe apparently thinks not.

In the sections dealing with the Oslo process and its demise, Pappe’s adoption of Palestinian claims is yet more apparent. He attacks the Israeli government’s insistence that progress depended on the “successful and peaceful” implementation of the Interim Agreement, phrasing which meant essentially that improvements could not be made if terrorism continued. Pappe dismisses this as the “Israeli concept of security,” and depicts with empathy the refusal of the Palestinians to accept the “humiliating” Clinton proposals. We should remember that among these proposals was a Palestinian state on 98% of the territory of the West Bank and all of Gaza, with Palestinian sovereignty over the Temple Mount area.

Such one-sided polemicising takes place in a book whose author promised to move us beyond “national” historiography. “A History of Modern Palestine” is a deeply dubious exercise, containing nothing new, except perhaps a new monument to political propaganda masquerading as research.

Pappe has been a strong supporter of the academic boycott of Israel, and one would be naïve to be surprised at the unashamedly propagandistic nature of his work. Kimmerling’s polemic, on the other hand, offers greater cause for concern. While holding radical, anti-Zionist views, Kimmerling has previously proved able to separate these views from his research work, and on this basis to pursue a distinguished and internationally-recognized academic career. His incoherently defended allegations of “politicide” represent a cheapening of his credentials, and an attempt to mask simple invective with a false veneer of intellectual gravitas.If this is to be the language of debate, if standards of rigor and proof are no longer considered necessary, and wild accusations fly freely, ultimately we all pay the price. One hopes that the discerning reader, faced with publications of this kind, will move on, uttering a murmured exhortation for the return of saner days.

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Strange Bedfellows

Posted on March 8, 2011 by jonathanspyer

Haaretz-04/11/2005

Four months have passed since the terror attacks in London. It is now possible to begin to discern the contours of the British response, and the new forces which are assembling against one another in the political debate. Notable among the latter is the growing crystallization, coherence and visibility of an alliance of Islamist organizations and apologists with influential elements of the British left. This alliance has as its primary goal the emasculation and frustration of all attempts to build an effective response to the Islamist threat.

In the weeks that followed the July 7 bombings, a steady drumbeat of opinion articles written by representatives of radical Islam began to appear in the U.K.’s left-of-center broadsheet newspapers. The comment pages of The Guardian newspaper were particularly noted for their willingness to provide space for both supporters and members of Islamist organizations to express their views. The articles consisted of attempts to “contextualize” and explain the grievances felt by young British Muslims and Muslims worldwide, which were held to have led to the bombings, and hence to argue against any confrontational response.

Thus, Saad al-Faqih, a Guardian column-writer of the last months, bylined as a “Saudi dissident,” appealed to British traditions of liberty and fair play in making his case against proposed anti-terror legislation: “The harsher the measures adopted by Britain and other western societies,” he wrote, “the nearer we will get to fulfilling Bin Laden’s strategic aim.”

In the days that followed the publication of Faqih’s article, interesting additional information regarding the dissident/columnist’s own biography emerged. Saad al-Faqih, on December 23, 2004, was listed on the UN 1267 Committee’s list of “individuals belonging to or associated with the Al-Qaida organization.” A veteran Islamist activist, he is suspected of involvement in the Al-Qaida bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi, in 1998.

That an individual such as Al-Faqih should be opposed to the planned legislation – which would allow for the deportation from the U.K. of radical Islamist preachers, and the outlawing of organizations promoting Islamist terror – is no surprise. That major and respected British publications should choose to afford a platform to a man of his type, however, deserves closer attention. Observation of statements by prominent spokespeople of the British left offers some explanation.

Natasha Walter, a well-known British left-wing and feminist columnist, party Hizb ut Tahrir. Walter identified similarities between these two young women and the idealistic youth of the 1930s, who turned to communism: “These women were impatient about the powerlessness of their people; although those people were not the international working class but the international Muslim community. They believed that human society was perfectible, even if it was to be perfected not by following the precepts of Marx but those of Mohammed.” Elsewhere she described Hizb ut Tahrir as espousing “decent things, such as women’s rights.”

Hizb ut Tahrir is an organization whose goal is Islamic revolution toward the reinstatement of the caliphate, and the imposition of Sharia law as the law of the state. The party, illegal in France, Germany, Holland and most Mideast countries, espouses an ultra-conservative, openly anti-Semitic version of Sunni Islamism.

The increasing, astonishing appeal of such organizations to parts of the British and wider European left is a product, it seems, of two elements. The first is the disappearance for the radical left of any real constituency within European societies. The old unionized industrial working class is long gone. The Third World “national liberation” movements that replaced it in the affections of the left-wing intelligentsia are themselves largely defunct. A position is available, and radical Islam, it seems, is being invited to fill it. The fact that radical Islam is, by any measure, a phenomenon of the radical right complete with idealized past, repression of women and a psychotic cult of violence is not allowed to disturb the mix.

This leads to the second element. The leftist intelligentsia in Britain and Europe has for the most part long since abandoned Marxism. Yet that once-dominant system of thought has left behind a host of remnants. One of these is the tendency to disregard the actual ideas professed by individuals or movements in search of the supposed “interests” lying behind their statements. These, the observed individual may be unaware of, even hostile to. But the left-intellectual will assess according to his own system, and draw his own conclusions. In the 1930s, this approach enabled European communists to see Western liberal democracies as “objectively” no better than Hitler. Today, it is leading to the unedifying sight of Guardian-reading feminists rushing to embrace the likes of Saad al-Faqih.

As the former Labor MP George Galloway summed it up: “Movements against oppression and exploitation have fought under many different banners. For many it has been a version of socialism or radical nationalism. For many others today it is through radical interpretations of religion.” Islamist movements whose professed aim is a return to the Middle Ages re imagined as a force against oppression and exploitation. Satire bows its head before such an achievement.
The proponents of such views, with their influential platforms in the media, intellectual life and extra-parliamentary organizations, are coming to form a hinterland for radical Islam in the West. The presence of a common enemy provides the cement for the alliance. That enemy is Western liberal democracy, whose proponents would do well to pay close attention to this emerging challenge.

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Feeding the Crocodiles

Posted on March 8, 2011 by jonathanspyer

Haaretz-12/03/2005

The internal peace of the democracies of western Europe is no longer assured. It is threatened by the growing presence, and growing confidence, of the organizations, activists and spokesmen of radical Islam. This is a phenomenon rarely remarked upon in Israel. It may yet have serious and damaging effects on European views of the Middle East conflict.

Observe: In July 2004, Ken Livingstone, mayor of London and a Labor Party member, hosted Imam Yusuf Qaradawi on a visit to the city. Qaradawi, an Egyptian with a Muslim Brotherhood background, is a resident of Qatar and a founder member of the Al-Jazeera TV channel. He is also the director of the European Council for Fatwa and Research, based in Dublin. Qaradawi is a keen supporter of suicide bombings in Israel, which he describes as “martyrdom operations.” He has spoken of the inherent “iniquity of the Jews as a community.” These views (in addition to suspected terrorist connections and his support, variously, for the execution by stoning of homosexuals and adulterous women) led to Qaradawi’s being banned from entering the United States.

They did not prevent, however, the princely welcome afforded the controversial cleric by the elected mayor of London, who addressed a packed public meeting together with Qaradawi, praised the “unacceptable truths” he has raised, and denounced the “Islamophobic outcry” against him.

The public action of Mayor Livingstone, is, according to Jewish community activists in the UK, only the tip of the iceberg. They point to the presence of Muslim Brotherhood extremists such as Azzam Tamimi among the leadership of the Stop the War Coalition, which was raised to protest the war in Iraq (and organized a demonstration of over a million people in central London in April 2003).

Hebron-born Tamimi, in an interview in November on BBC’s “Hard Talk,” expressed his willingness to undertake a suicide bombing in Israel. The coalition has now morphed into a left-wing political party, improbably uniting Muslim Brothers and British leftists under one political roof.

In the very different context of France, as official recognition of communal differences increases, once again the representation of Muslim communities is falling into the hands of the extremists. Thus, the French Council of the Muslim Faith, created in December 2002 as a representative body of the Muslim community in France, is headed by a moderate, Dalil Boubakeur. The real power in the organization, however, is the Union of Islamic Organizations of France (UOIF), a Muslim Brotherhood-associated group.

The role of Tariq Ramadan, with his condemnations of Jewish “communalism,” close relationships with key mainstream bodies (including the editorial staff of Le Monde Diplomatique) and quoting of Voltaire is of similar importance. Ramadan, surely a world master in the art of ambiguity, deems the killing of Israeli children in suicide bombings to be “contextually explicable.” (He has similarly refused to condemn the stoning of female adulterers.)

Why does any of this matter? The shared goal of Qaradawi, Tamimi, Ramadan, the UOIF and other Islamist organizations in Europe is to effect a shift in the terms of the European debate. They seek to establish a foothold in the mainstream political discussion in Europe for elements of militant Islamist ideology. These elements include the delegitimization of Jewish communal activity, the normalizing of support for violence against Israelis and Jews, and of calls for the destruction of Israel. This is a long-term project, which through the slow build-up and nurturing of political power and influence is intended to eventually bring forth the fruit of profound shifts in policy.

It is primarily, though not exclusively, the ideological left in western Europe which is opening the door to the Islamists, due to their shared hatred for Israel and the United States. But those elements of the European political classes who believe that the ideas of the Jihad can become simply another item in the supermarket of a pluralistic society (once the police have dealt with their most violent proponents) are making a grave error. What is taking place here is old-fashioned political warfare, complete with front groups, fellow travelers and “useful idiots.”

The Islamists described here will not be co-opted. Neither will they become contented citizens of secular Europe in return for shifts in policy toward Israel. Theirs is a revolutionary project, concerned with the transformation of societies. They see, however, the shifting of the European view toward greater hostility to Israel as an important interim goal. Israel’s legitimacy, they hope, will be tossed to them as a morsel in return for political and social peace.

A crucial task for Israel in Europe must be to lay bare the real nature of these individuals and organizations, and to remind those who would treat with them of Winston Churchill’s classic definition of an appeaser: namely, one who feeds a crocodile in the hope that it will eat him last.

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A Scourge in ‘Londonistan’

Posted on March 8, 2011 by jonathanspyer

Haaretz-15/07/2005

The responses of senior British officials following the London bombings last week are highly revealing. They contain within them clues to a decades-long failure of political judgment. This failure allowed the forces which produced the bombing to grow and proliferate on British soil, freely, under the noses of the authorities. Innocent Londoners, whose courage and dignity in the face of last week’s horrors were inspirational – are paying the price of the complacency of their leaders.

London’s mayor, Ken Livingstone, in his response to the bombings, and the forces behind them, declared: “That isn’t an ideology, it isn’t even a perverted faith – it is just an indiscriminate attempt at mass murder and we know what the objective is.” These words, in their determination to pry the bombings away from any political or ideological context, encapsulate the problem.

Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, successive British governments adopted an astonishingly myopic policy of tolerance toward the ideologues and activists of radical Islam. Britain’s liberal asylum laws allowed the entry of radical ideologues of global Islamism, many wanted by the authorities in their own countries. These individuals set about organizing and proselytizing deep in the heart of Britain’s urban Muslim communities. British Muslims, though suffering from the same difficulties of integration into British society as other newcomers (an unemployment figure of 10 percent above the national average, for example), are for the most part a law-abiding population. There is, however, a layer of mainly British-born, deeply disaffected young men for whom radical Islam possesses enormous appeal. A number of these young men have gone on to play prominent roles in the actions of the global jihad. It is now clear that the bombings in London were the work of individuals of this type.

I should probably declare a certain personal involvement here. In the mid-’90s, I left my home in Jerusalem to spend a year studying in London. At that time, I was peripherally involved with a private organization concerned by the activities of radical Islamist activists among Muslim communities in London, and by the complete failure of this to register in public debate. The result of this for me was the spending of more dreary evenings than I care to remember in obscure mosques in working-class areas of the city, listening to Arab Islamist exiles such as the Syrian-born Sheikh Omar Bakri Mohammed, and the Saudi Mohammed Masari, exhorting small audiences of young Muslim men toward involvement in the jihad.

Not being blessed with the gift of prophecy, neither I nor my colleagues could know that within a decade, the same ideas sounding forth in forgotten corners of London would bring mayhem and holy murder to the heart of the capital. But we were aware that something was afoot. In mainstream political and media discussion in the UK, meanwhile, the issue was not downplayed. It was nonexistent.

The result was that, largely unseen by the wider British public, a burgeoning militant Islamist subculture proliferated. London – “Londonistan” as the Islamists cheerfully began to term it – became a jihadist hub. The city played host to Islamist publishing houses, gatherings and newspapers: The Hamas monthly, Filastin al-Muslimah, was only one of many publications produced there. Individuals such as Sheikh Abu Hamza al-Masri and the Palestinian Abu Qutada preached support for the global jihad at regular gatherings in urban mosques. A recent British government report estimates between 10,000 and 15,000 supporters of radical Islamist groups resident in Britain by the end of the ’90s.

And from this fertile, unmarked ground, some of the best known names of the jihad have grown. The “shoe bomber” – Richard Reid, a convert to Islam radicalized by the fiery sermons preached at the Brixton Mosque in south London. Omar al-Sheikh, the killer of journalist Daniel Pearl, and the disaffected, brilliant son of Pakistani immigrants. Dhiren Barot, Nadeem Tarmohammed and Qaisar Shaffi – British citizens and Al-Qaida members currently on trial for plotting to attack major financial centers in United States cities. And, of course, Omar Khan Sharif and Asif Mohammed Hanif, the British-born students of Omar Bakri Mohammed, who came to Tel Aviv via Gaza in 2003 and carried out the bombing of Mike’s Place bar on the beachfront, killing three Israeli civilians.

The March 2004 bombings in Madrid sounded an alarm for the British authorities. It was now clear that offering asylum to radical Islamists and permitting them freedom to agitate offered no long-term immunity from attack. Some measures were taken. Abu Hamza al-Masri and Abu Qutada, among others, were arrested (though the latter has since been released). We are told that the resources of the security services began to be massively channeled toward the effective monitoring of radical Islamist networks. But the vital “paradigm shift” leading to wide-ranging action against radical Islamism has not taken place. Neither is it certain that it will happen now. The reason for this is because parallel to the actions of the radical Jihadists, a much broader, far-reaching effort at apologetics has taken place. This has created a strong lobby arguing for the retention of the ruinous policies of the ’90s.

The strange romance of parts of the European left with radical Islam is a much remarked-upon phenomenon of the current political scene. The response of the left/Islamist axis in Britain to the horrific events of last week is already becoming apparent. The Guardian newspaper is carrying a slew of op-eds from such luminaries as Tariq Ramadan, and also the UK-based Islamist Faisal Bodi, who seeks to blame the attack on British involvement in Iraq. Mayor Livingstone, who earlier this year hosted the Islamist Qatar-based, anti-Semitic Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi in London, at the expense of London’s taxpayers, is part of the problem.

These elements, strongly represented in opinion-forming circles in the UK, will be doing their utmost in the weeks and months to come to cast the blame for the events of 7/7 everywhere except where it belongs. They will seek to portray all attempts to focus the discussion on the past folly of policies toward domestic and external radical Islam as “Islamophobic,” and illegitimate. Consequently, the achievement of rational policy in the vital judicial, policing, intelligence and educational fields to ensure the defeat of this scourge is in the first instance a contest of political will. The prevention of a repeat of the terrible scenes witnessed last week in London may hinge on the outcome of this contest.

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