On Israel's Security Fence

There was a protest (about a dozen or so people) at Ben Yehuda Mall today (a crowded tourist destination in the center of town) against Israel's a security fence (or "Wall").

The barrier in question consists of a network of fences and vehicle-barrier trenches (with less than 5% of the barrier consists of concrete walls) erected mostly along the 1949 border between Israel and Jordan, but diverging in many places to include on the Israeli side several of the highly populated areas of Israeli settlements in the West Bank such as East Jerusalem, Ariel, Gush Etzion, Emmanuel, Karnei Shomron, Givat Ze'ev, Oranit, and Maale Adumim

As typically is the case in democratic Israel, the protesters, many of whom were clearly from outside the country, were not in any way bothered or harassed by police or other security personnel, nor by the majority of those citizens and tourists on the mall who no doubt strongly support the security fence - seeing it as one of the key factors behind the dramatic decrease in successful terrorist attacks over the past several years.

Indeed, Israel has demonstrated that in the areas where the barrier was complete, the number of hostile infiltrations has decreased to almost zero. Even Palestinian militants, such as a senior members of Islamic Jihad, have confirmed that the barrier made it much harder to conduct attacks inside Israel.

Many who protest the fence claim it is an attempt to annex land and has the intent or effect to pre-empt final status negotiations, and severely restricts Palestinians who live nearby, particularly their ability to travel freely within the West Bank and to access work in Israel. To this, a few things need to be said. First, the rout of the fence can be altered at any time and Israel's withdraw from Gaza has demonstrated that they will not only adjust their borders in the interest of peace, but will undertake the painful task of evacuating its own citizens to achieve such ends. Second, democratic Israel, with its independent judiciary, continues to take the needs of Palestinians seriously, and indeed, On June 30, 2004, our Supreme Court ruled that a portion of the barrier west of Jerusalem violates the rights of Palestinians, and ordered 30 km of existing and planned barrier to be rerouted.

But, I guess the most serious point is, as I've pointed out in the past, critics of the fence, as with critics of Israel more broadly, never offer an alternative to what they're criticizing. If there's another way, other than the security fence, to protect our country from Palestinian terrorists intent on crossing the boarder to kill innocent civilians, I'd be open to it. But, in lieu of such an alternative, I think, in even the most basic moral cost-benefit analysis, the hundres of Israeli lives that have been saved by this fence more than justifies whatever inconvenience its existence causes. (Indeed, countries all over the world have erected such fences at their border - including the United States along their border with Mexico - and it is usually seen as a reasonable, non-lethal, approach to enhancing border security.)

About a half hour into the protest, I saw a few Israelis peacefully engage the protesters, attempting to debate with them the merits of the fence.

On "Peace" in the Middle East

I've had a couple exchanges of late with friends about the idea of a two-state solution, the Obama administration's stance on what they see as Israeli intransigence on the issue of settlements, and the degree to which the election of Bibi Netanyahu presents an obstacle to peace - to which I would be inclined to reply as follows:

The recent election of a center-right government headed by Netanyahu - who refuses to (explicitly) accept a two-state solution and who refuses to put a halt to natural growth in W. Bank Settlements - merely reflects mainstream opinion in Israel at the moment that a two-state solution, and subsequent compromises necessary for such a deal, makes sense at some point, but probably not now under the current circumstances.

And, the circumstances I'm referring to are a Hamas-controlled Gaza, PA leadership in the W. Bank that, even if they are committed to peace, is far too weak to carry out the terms of any such deal, and the violence and instability created by Iran and Syria's support of both Hamas and Hezbollah.

More broadly, I think it needs to be noted that a two-state solution should not be viewed as a dynamic that, when implemented, will result in the end of hostilities between Israel and her Arab / Palestinian neighbors. Rather, a peaceful two-state solution will be the RESULT of the end of hostilities against Israel. So, I don't think the onus is on Israel to agree to any more territorial concessions in lieu of concrete steps by the Arab world and the Palestinians to remove the factors which contribute to violence and incitement. I think what Israelis want is some indication that the creation of a Palestinian state will really bring a cessation of hostility against us, will truly result in Hamas being marginalized and/or eliminated as a significant player in the region, and, more broadly, will really result in a truly more peaceful Middle East.

I don't think that's too much to ask.

My reply to the Philly Inquirer's Dick Pollman

The Philadelphia Inquirer published my letter the other day - a reply to Dick Pollman's piece about what he feels is the Republicans' increasing irrelevance to a majority of Americans - but they decided to edit out a key passage in which, while disagreeing strongly with Pollman's insinuation that the Republican's opposition to gay marriage is the cause of this decline in popularity, I express my support for gay marriage. Here's the original letter that I submitted to the Inquirer.

Dick Pollman's diatribe about how out of touch and irrelevant the GOP is (This Party's Over, 5/3) presents, as exhibit A, the party's opposition to gay marriage, and further argues that young people flocked to the Democratic party in the last Presidential election due, in large measure, to this issue, which renders the GOP in their eyes as " intolerant and exclusionary."

Yet, this explanation totally ignores the fact that Barak Obama himself, both as a candidate and now as President, is consistently on record as being in opposition to gay marriage - and has been very clear in his support of defining marriage as a union between a man and a woman. Further, with polls showing Americans pretty much evenly split on the issue - and with liberal states such as California voting against a gay marriage amendment - it is incorrect to argue that there is anything approaching a majority consensus on the issue.

While I happen to be a Republican who supports gay marriage, on both moral and more libertarian principles, I don't think that its fair of Pollman to characterize the many decent Americans, both Republicans or Democrats, who are on the other side of this difficult issue as backwards and reactionary. The fact is that, for many people on the Left (such as Pollman), the tolerance they so passionately advocate interestingly doesn't include tolerance for those on the other side of the political fence.

On the Hamas "Peace Plan" (or, Hope over Reality)

Below is a spot on take-down of the, at times, unintentionally hilarious recent NY Times piece on the "Hamas peace plan", by syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer. Only the Times could conduct a full-length interview with Hamas leader Khaled Meshal and argue, with a straight face, that he seeks peace. One of the most tragic aspects of the devolution of left-wing thought is their propensity to project their own values, of tolerance and accomodation, on governments and cultures who continually make clear, by word and by deed, their opposition to such democratic mores. While there clearly are some grey areas, Hamas is not one of them. Their malicious intent against Jews and Israelis has been annunciated countless times - including being codified in their founding charter, which actually quotes The Protocols of the Elders of Zion to "prove" that Jews are indeed trying to take over the world - and has been demonstrated in deed in the form of thousands of rockets fired at Israeli civilians since their rise to power in Gaza in 2007.

At its core, the left-wing propensity to argue that Hamas is willing to make peace with Israel seems to be motivated by a wish to legitimize their hope in the "peace process" - a process and a goal which most Israelis, and most of Israel's supporters in the West, view with increasing suspicion in light of what's occurred after the Israeli withdraw of Gaza, and the horrid possibility that a Palestinian state in the West Bank will eventually be ruled by Hamas - despite overwhelming evidence that the presence of Hamas (not to mention Hezbollah) and other radical elements within Palestinian society make such a process futile at best.

The only way to get to an effective two-state solution is for Palestinians to rid their political culture of such radicalism, and build a democratic culture and institutions of government capable of actually implementing an eventual peace deal. In short, peace can not be dictated from above (by the U.S., the E.U., the Quartet, etc.), but must be created from below.

The Hamas 'Peace' Gambit

By Charles Krauthammer
Friday, May 8, 2009

"Apart from the time restriction (a truce that lapses after 10 years) and the refusal to accept Israel's existence, Mr. Meshal's terms approximate the Arab League peace plan . . ."

-- Hamas peace plan, as explained by the New York Times

"Apart from that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you enjoy the play?"

-- Tom Lehrer, satirist

The Times conducted a five-hour interview with Hamas leader Khaled Meshal at his Damascus headquarters. Mirabile dictu, they're offering a peace plan with a two-state solution. Except. The offer is not a peace but a truce that expires after 10 years. Meaning that after Israel has fatally weakened itself by settling millions of hostile Arab refugees in its midst, and after a decade of Hamas arming itself within a Palestinian state that narrows Israel to eight miles wide -- Hamas restarts the war against a country it remains pledged to eradicate.

There is a phrase for such a peace: the peace of the grave.

Westerners may be stupid, but Hamas is not. It sees the new American administration making overtures to Iran and Syria. It sees Europe, led by Britain, beginning to accept Hezbollah. It sees itself as next in line. And it knows what to do. Yasser Arafat wrote the playbook.

With the 1993 Oslo accords, he showed what can be achieved with a fake peace treaty with Israel -- universal diplomatic recognition, billions of dollars of aid, and control of Gaza and the West Bank, which Arafat turned into an armed camp. In return for a signature, he created in the Palestinian territories the capacity to carry on the war against Israel that the Arab states had begun in 1948 but had given up after the bloody hell of the 1973 Yom Kippur War.

Meshal sees the opportunity. Not only is the Obama administration reaching out to its erstwhile enemies in the region, but it begins its term by wagging an angry finger at Israel over the Netanyahu government's ostensible refusal to accept a two-state solution.

Of all the phony fights to pick with Israel. No Israeli government would turn down a two-state solution in which the Palestinians accepted territorial compromise and genuine peace with a Jewish state. (And any government that did would be voted out in a day.) Netanyahu's own defense minister, Ehud Barak, offered precisely such a deal in 2000. He even offered to divide Jerusalem and expel every Jew from every settlement remaining in the new Palestine.

The Palestinian response (for those who have forgotten) was: No. And no counteroffer. Instead, nine weeks later, Arafat unleashed a savage terror war that killed 1,000 Israelis.

Netanyahu is reluctant to agree to a Palestinian state before he knows what kind of state it will be. That elementary prudence should be shared by anyone who's been sentient the last three years. The Palestinians already have a state, an independent territory with not an Israeli settler or soldier living on it. It's called Gaza. And what is it? A terror base, Islamist in nature, Iranian-allied, militant and aggressive, that has fired more than 10,000 rockets and mortar rounds at Israeli civilians.

If this is what a West Bank state is going to be, it would be madness for Israel or America or Jordan or Egypt or any other moderate Arab country to accept such a two-state solution. Which is why Netanyahu insists that the Palestinian Authority first build institutions -- social, economic and military -- to anchor a state that could actually carry out its responsibilities to keep the peace.

Apart from being reasonable, Netanyahu's two-state skepticism is beside the point. His predecessor, Ehud Olmert, worshiped at the shrine of a two-state solution. He made endless offers of a two-state peace to the Palestinian Authority -- and got nowhere.

Why? Because the Palestinians -- going back to the U.N. partition resolution of 1947 -- have never accepted the idea of living side by side with a Jewish state. Those like Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who might want to entertain such a solution, have no authority to do it. And those like Hamas's Meshal, who have authority, have no intention of ever doing it.

Meshal's gambit to dress up perpetual war as a two-state peace is yet another iteration of the Palestinian rejectionist tragedy. In its previous incarnation, Arafat lulled Israel and the Clinton administration with talk of peace while he methodically prepared his people for war.

Arafat waited seven years to tear up his phony peace. Meshal's innovation? Ten -- then blood.

The thinly veiled anti-Zionism of Stephen Walt

Stephen Walt is at it again. Writing in Foreign Policy magazine, his new essay, Treason of the Hawks, Walt, as he did in his book co-written with John Mearsheimer, The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, blames Israel, and only Israel, for the failure to achieve a peace agreement with the Palestinians, and then bizarrely implies that his vitriolic attacks on the Jewish state is undertaken as an act of concern for its future. He then contrasts this "love" with what he audaciously refers to as the "betrayal" committed by Zionists, such as Prime Minister Netanyahu and Israel's supporters in the West who, he implies, are so war hungry that they fail to seize the opportunity to achieve a two-state solution - the only solution that would secure Israel's long-term survival.


First, here's a good reply to Walt's piece in Commentary Magazine.

http://www.commentarymagazine.com/blogs/index.php/tobin/64101

Now, a few of my own thoughts.

1. In order to advance this narrative of Zionists as pro-war and rejectionist, Walt minimizes the threat Israel faces from Iran, implying that fears of Iranian nukes are an intentional over-reaction...simply meant to provide rhetorical cover for Israel's hawkishness. He bizarrely quotes Richard Cohen as evidence that Iran's intentions towards Jews are benign, and is just implies that Ahmadinejad's repeated threats to wipe Israel off the map have been mistranslated. In fact, Ahmadinejad has been quoted dozens of times repeating some version of this threat - statements that are on record. Further, Ahmadinejad addressed the UN last year and advanced a classical anti-Semitic conspiracy theory that Zionists (i.e., Jews) control the world's financial markets, and the policies of most Western governments. He is anti-Semitic to the core, and for Walt to simply say that he has made "foolish remarks about the Holocaust" and leave it at that is incredibly naive or dishonest. Ahmadinejad didn't just make foolish remarks, he knows that casting doubt on the Holocaust can serve to legitimize his hostility towards Jews. After all, implicit in any Holocaust denial is the charge that Jews have acted conspiratorially to create this "fiction" in the minds of most people.

2. He also erroneously casts doubt on Israelis confidence in the Zionist Ideal, ignoring surveys year after year that show Israelis to be among the most patriotic citizens in the world (the number of Israelis who express love of country and a willingness to die for their country is even higher than that of Americans.) The fact that Walt quoted Ian Lustick is pretty telling - Lustick is a leftist Penn professor known for his hyper-critical essays about Israel. Here's an article about that survey I mentioned, which shows them to be the most patriotic nation in the West.

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull&cid=1137605866664

3. The greatest weakness, however, is how puts all the onus of making peace on Israel - assuming that if Israel simply wants peace it will happen - and ignores that there has been a consensus within Israel about a 2 state solution since the 90's. In fact, most Israelis are skeptical of the possibility of a peace agreement because of what happened when the left S. Lebanon and Gaza and what the result of such unilateral withdraws portends for any subsequent withdraw from the West Bank. I honestly don't know how Walt can write a long essay about "peace" w/o even once mentioning Hamas - both in terms of what they've created in Gaza, and in terms of the possibility that they could eventually seize control of the W. Bank after an Israeli withdraw. Indeed, I think the biggest problem the anti-Israel crowd makes is to ignore the Palestinians all together in their narrative, as if how they behave now, and how they will behave politically if Israel gives them a state, is not a huge factor to be considered.

I've supported the idea of a two-state solution for some time, but, like many Zionists, am increasingly skeptical of the Palestinians capacity for responsible self-government. While the status quo (Israel continuing to occupy the W. Bank) is a horrible situation, the possible alternative (another hostile Islamist regime bordering them on the East) could be much, much worse. And, as politics is often about the lesser of two evils, I think that the status quo is the lesser of the two evils.

(Finally, he's simply wrong to imply that Abe Foxman, and the rest of the organized community, doesn't support the peace process and the idea of a two-state solution. They always have, and continue to do so.)

My Editorial in today's Jewish Exponent

What Are They Really Asking When It Comes to Israeli Survival?

April 23, 2009

Adam Levick

Adam Levick

Jewish participation in the anti-Israel movement was front and center last month when a small Jewish group demonstrated against the Israeli "occupation" outside the opening night gala of the Philadelphia Israeli Film Festival.

As the world watches the bizarre moral inversion taking place in Geneva -- in which participants from the worst human-rights violators in the world vilify the liberal, democratic State of Israel at the international conference on racism called Durban II -- the sad phenomenon of Jewish participation in the anti-Israel movement takes on greater concern.

While such groups tend to be small, within the progressive Philadelphia Jewish community exists a sizable number of people who continue to advance a view of Israel's conflict with the Palestinians that is at best monolithic and at worst fully demonizes the Jewish state.

Such views -- which typically reduce democratic Israel to a cartoon villain and Palestinians to eternal victims without a hint of moral agency -- find expression in a variety of ways. They include Jewish participation in anti-Israel protests by far-left extremists; representation on anti-Zionist blogs like Phillip Weiss' Mondoweiss.com; and in openly anti-Zionist groups like the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network, as well as in such benign-sounding local grass-roots organizations like Philadelphia Jews for a Just Peace and Bubbies & Zaydes for Peace in the Middle East.

While these individuals and groups often differ in their degree of radicalism, they are united in a belief that Israeli control of Palestinian territory following the Six-Day War in 1967 was and is at the root of terrorism and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and that, absent such occupation, peace would be achieved.

Yet such a view ignores the facts that contradict this claim -- namely, Israel's unilateral withdrawal from Southern Lebanon in 2000 and from Gaza in 2005.

In both cases, such moves only emboldened radical Islamist movements -- Hezbollah and Hamas, respectively -- which quickly filled the geographical and political void. In fact, they used their new territory to launch missiles at Israeli towns, abduct Israeli soldiers, and murder Palestinian and Lebanese civilians who didn't support their aims.

These Jews who routinely denounce Israel are strangely silent on the role of such radical groups in fomenting hatred, igniting war and preventing a resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict they supposedly seek.

The rhetoric used by such Jewish groups makes it clear that they're not content simply to make a rational case for Israel to withdraw from the West Bank as the basis for a peaceful two-state solution. Rather, they are intent on fully delegitimizing the Jewish state -- by suggesting, for instance, that Israel is an apartheid regime, and often insinuating that it is an inherently racist one.

Instead of a point-by-point rebuttal of these outrageous charges, consider this:

· You condemn Israel for building a security barrier to protect its citizens from suicide bombers and for striking at buildings from which missiles are launched at its cities, but you never offer an alternative. Aren't you practicing your own form of racism by denying an entire society the right to defend itself?

· Do Palestinians in the West Bank suffer as a result of occupation? Yes, they do. But can you deny that Palestinians in Hamas-controlled Gaza, who have been used as human shields, and who have suffered torture and extra-judicial killings as punishment for their disloyalty to the Hamas regime suffer far worse? Israeli society isn't perfect, but by any yardstick -- educational, economic, gay rights, women's rights, freedom of speech and assembly, legislative representation -- Israel's minorities fare far better than any other country in the Middle East.

· If you're really committed to a better world, why do you insist on using such incendiary and hyperbolic rhetoric? Vilification and vitriol is a blind alley that takes us nowhere. Your radicalism undermines the forces for peace in Israel and in the Palestinian territories. Many well-meaning people are working toward an agreement that recognizes the rights of both parties.

Finally, what would you say if your illusions about peace were shattered by the grim reality of implacable enemies who seek nothing less than the complete annihilation of the world's only Jewish state? Is there anything that Israeli Jews can do (absent national suicide) that will convince you that they are worth defending -- that standing up and unapologetically defending the rights of a tiny minority to live in peace is consistent with your most cherished, progressive ideals?

Adam Levick, a resident of Philadelphia, worked for the Anti-Defamation League's regional and national offices. He plans to make aliyah in May.

Warrior Jews, not Worrier Jews

This article by Gil Troy sums up much of my thinking about the moral elitism that many well-meaning American Jews especially, but not exclusively, in NYC suffer. At its heart is a stubborn refusal to acknowledge that no amount of Israeli good will or sechel (intellect) - of which, these Jews see themselves as possessing in massive quantities - by Israel's leaders can magically bring peace to the Jewish state, and that, as Troy states, is has become un-pc to..

"acknowledge [in regards to Hamas, Hezbollah, and other radical groups] that we are dealing with a different culture and a murderous ideology,"

an ideology, it should be pointed out, that doesn't share our assumptions about tolerance, pluralism, and peace.

But, Troy is also making a broader point about a Western Jewish world that has become so well-off, and lives in such freedom, comfort, and safety in the nations where they reside, that they have lost the sense of what it means to have to struggle for your existence, to have to take up arms and fight for your life, your family, your community, your nation, the right to live freely as Jews in a world (and certainly a part of the world) that is still hostile to such modest aims.

No matter how openly hostile Israel's enemies are to their existence, no matter how serious and complex the myriad of threats that they face are, such a disconnect results in an inability to empathize with such fears - the very real concerns of Jews whose lives aren't as easy as theirs.

Still, many of these Jews insist, they do indeed feel bad about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, do spend countless hours worrying about it, decrying the violence, and hoping for a resolution, to which Troy stresses,

"We need warrior Jews, not worrier Jews. Israelis should justifiably say: “don’t cry for us New York Jewry (and elsewhere). Our State, for all its challenges, is thriving. Our neighbors – and the world – need fixing.”