By David Isaac

In our last two blogs, we looked at the failure of Israel’s information efforts – a topic Shmuel devoted much time to – and the possibility that the root cause of this failure lies with Israel’s elites, who hold to a politically correct view of the conflict, dominate Israel’s media, academic and legal institutions, and force their positions even on those elected officials who don’t share their worldview.

It would explain why nationalist Israeli leaders, elected by the majority of Israelis, end up implementing leftwing policies. One could compare modern-day Israel’s predicament to that of the Pharisees and Sadducees, which struggled for dominance during the Hasmonean period. Then too, a majority was ruled by a minority elite which controlled the levers of power. The minority, the Sadducees, vanished from history. Let’s hope the same will be said of Israel’s leftwing elites.

The way to defeating them, as Dr. Martin Sherman writes in “Comprehending the Incomprehensible” (The Jerusalem Post, Jan. 13, 2012), is to create a counter-elite. The question is: where to start? A look back at Israel’s pre-state period, particularly the life of Revisionist leader Vladimir “Ze’ev” Jabotinsky, offers insight into where Israel’s nationalists should focus their efforts, namely, the youth.

In “The Jabotinsky Story: Fighter and Prophet,” (A.S. Barnes & Co., 1961), Joseph Schechtman writes, “By 1923-24, though only in his early forties, Jabotinsky was already an almost legendary world-wide Jewish figure and ‘steeped in triumphs.’ Yet he felt frustrated: somehow every triumph ended in defeat; there was no solid foundation on which his achievements could be added, like bricks, to one another and made to last; he felt that he was building on sand.”

The Zionist movement at that point was in dire straits. It had adopted other “isms,” melding together political ‘enthusiasms,’ (like pacifism and socialism) with Zionism in the hope of attracting Jewish youth. The result was a weird mix of ideals that ended up diluting Zionism. Socialism had no place in a country that had yet to be built and needed the cooperation of Jewish capital. Neither did pacifism, when Arabs were determined to destroy Jewish development.

This combination, Jabotinsky’s realization that he needed a foundation on which to build, coupled with Zionism’s decline into a muddle of “isms,” led him in 1923 to create Brit Yosef Trumpeldor, or Betar, a worldwide Jewish youth movement. It was named after Captain Joseph Trumpeldor, a Zionist pioneering hero whom Jabotinsky knew from the days of the Jewish Legion, and who had died in 1920 at the hands of Arabs in the Galilee.

There were other Jewish youth movements at that time. In “Lone Wolf: A Biography of Vladimir (Ze’ev) Jabotinsky,” Shmuel writes:

What was the difference, Jabotinsky asked, between Betar and other youth movements? The first was that Betar aimed at raising youth in a Herzlian mold. “It is already universally acknowledged that Zionism has been diluted. … Brit Trumpeldor teaches the youth to believe in the great concepts of Herzl and Nordau: a state, mass immigration, a solution to the Jewish problem in its political, material and spiritual senses.” …

The second difference lay in the Betar aim of teaching the youth self-defense. This had to be learned as a craft like any other craft, not for inculcating the courage to die, but the skills for keeping alive, and for helping others to keep alive.

The most important difference, however was the third: “Betar does not recognize a mixture of ideologies.” To encapsulate this concept, Jabotinsky adopted a felicitous prohibition from the Bible: “Thou shalt not wear a mixture of wool and linen.”

Jabotinsky had been involved in matters of Jewish education before, in particular his efforts to establish schools where the language of instruction would be Hebrew. But Betar went much further. As Shmuel writes in “Lone Wolf”:

Betar then was, first of all, a code of personal behavior. Jabotinsky gave it a name: Hadar. In its original sense, it conveys a sense of splendor, of glory; in the context of Jabotinsky’s code, it is almost untranslatable. The closest rendering of its meaning would probably be “overall impeccability.” … Jabotinsky’s own statement of the virtues inherent in Hadar included all the trivia that make up our daily lives – external sightliness, cleanliness, tidiness, punctuality, courtesy, chivalrous and considerate behavior towards women, the old and the very young. … Hadar, which he considered should be a universal code, was especially important to the masses of Jews. In the cramped and degraded living conditions of their lives, many of these qualities were simply unknown.

The youth of Betar adored Jabotinsky. He was known to them simply as Rosh Betar, head of Betar. He was enormously successful in imbuing them with his ideas. Just how successful can be seen in the story of Shlomo Ben-Yosef, a Betar member from Poland who immigrated to Palestine. In 1938, after a series of brutal murders by the Arabs, Ben-Yosef, together with two others, took action into their own hands. They attacked an Arab bus. No one was injured but the three were caught and Ben-Yosef, partly because he was the only one over 18, was sentenced to hang. In “Lone Wolf,” Shmuel writes:

It was Ben-Yosef’s bearing and behavior when he knew he was facing death that etched itself on the consciousness and the memory of his generation. In the five days after the death sentence was confirmed, he had been permitted visitors, and scores came to the jail. All came away stunned by the fact that the words of consolation had come from him to them; he had told all of them that he was facing death with equanimity. …

[One reporter], on leaving the prison, encountered a friendly British officer, who said to him: “There is no hope. This is the bravest man I have ever seen.” … Early in the morning of the twenty-ninth, after a few hours of sleep, Ben-Yosef washed his face and hands, brushed his teeth, drank a cup of tea and waited to be called. When eight o’clock came, he walked upright and in his strong voice sang the Betar hymn to the end. … Taking then his final step before the abyss of the gallows, he called out his last words: “Long live Jabotinsky!”

Shmuel describes Ben-Yosef as Jabotinsky’s “apotheosis – a personified realization of the dream he had begun to dream” even before the Kishinev pogrom, where the Jewish men hid shamefully as their town was ransacked. Ben-Yosef, who behaved with dignity in the face of death, became the embodiment of Jabotinsky’s “lifelong campaign for the transformation of the bent back of the ghetto to the upright stance of a proud and dignified national community.”

In “Fighter and Prophet,” Schechtman writes that Jabotinsky “affectionately referred to the Betar as his ‘Benjamin.’ Jabotinsky said, “I love the Hatzohar, I love the Brit Hachayal, and the young Brit Yeshurun … but above all I love Betar. … Betar is the roots from which the entire tree receives its nourishment.”

We no longer have Jabotinsky but those who are determined to break the stranglehold of the Left on Israel’s national institutions should look to his example. There are youth movements in Israel. Bnei Akiva is a youth group of the Religious Zionist movement. Tzofim is a larger organization of some 90,000 but it is apolitical, similar to the Boy and Girl Scouts in the U.S. Betar still exists, though it is a shadow of its former self. None of these are enough.

What would be needed is a youth movement with a broad appeal to both religious and secular youth with an unapologetically Zionist nationalist core. That would be a proper training ground for a new Israeli elite.

By David Isaac

In our last blog we discussed Israel’s abject failure in the realm of public diplomacy – dismal to the point of Israeli leaders stumping for President Barack Obama in a recent campaign video.

The information war was of paramount concern to Shmuel, who always considered himself “an information man,” and who had hoped to run Israel’s first Ministry of Information, a post promised to him, (but not given) by Menachem Begin.

It’s difficult to fathom Israel’s failure in this area. As Dr. Martin Sherman points out in “Comprehending the Incomprehensible,” (The Jerusalem Post, Jan. 13, 2012) Israel typically finds the resources it needs to ward off threats, whether investing in anti-missile defense or bunker buster bombs. But Israel can’t seem to do what’s needed to counter Arab propaganda. That, as the title of his piece says, is incomprehensible.

Dr. Sherman makes a strong case that at the heart of the problem is Israel’s elite, who have “the ability and the motivation to impose on the elected politicians – no matter what their electoral platform – an agenda that reflects their own unequivocally ‘PC’ (Palestinian-compliant) perspective on the conflict.”

Before Israel can deal with its informational shortcomings, he argues, it first needs to deal with this elite. “The remedy does not entail changing the elected political leadership, as two decades of disappointment from ostensibly hawkish candidates has depressingly demonstrated. Instead it involves fundamentally transforming the elite structure of Israel’s civil society and the discourse it generates,” he writes.

The creation of a counter-elite is no small feat, especially in Israel. Twenty years ago, this writer remembers Yoram Hazony, founder of the Shalem Center, saying in a lecture, ‘You think your Left is bad. Compared to Israel’s, America’s Left are pikers.’ Conservatives in the U.S. complain about the slanted mainstream media, anti-American professors at universities, and activist judges, but they pale in comparison to the virtual monopoly Israel’s Left enjoys in the state’s academic institutions, media and legal establishment.

Part of the reason is that the Left gained early success in the Zionist movement and had ample time to seal the doors to those who thought differently.

As Shmuel writes in “Lone Wolf: A Biography of Vladimir (Ze’ev) Jabotinsky,” by 1931, the Labor movement enjoyed “almost complete control of the Zionist economy and its near monopoly in job distribution and in Labor immigration…”

Labor used its power to good effect. At the Seventeenth Zionist Congress, for example, the Labor faction prevented the adoption of the Revisionist platform. As Shmuel writes in “Lone Wolf,” things were looking up for Labor’s opponents:

The results of the elections to the Seventeenth Zionist Congress were hailed as a great success for the Revisionists: the party jumped from 21 seats in the 1925 Congress … to 52 delegates (out of 254) … in 1931. What was no less significant potentially: the central ideas of Revisionism seemed to predominate throughout the Zionist movement.

When it appeared that Jabotinsky’s proposal defining Zionism’s aim as a Jewish majority “within the historic boundaries of Palestine” would be adopted, Labor resorted to dirty tricks. A telegram appeared, sent ostensibly from the Vaad Leumi, the Jewish National Council in Palestine, urging a cautious formulation of the Zionist aim. The cable was phony, but it had its desired effect. As Shmuel writes:

The gimmick contained in the cable was, of course, the use of the name of the Va’ad Leumi – designed to create a sense of urgency which, of course, every telegram creates, and of authoritativeness – to induce panic among uninformed people.

Labor then successfully tabled Jabotinsky’s proposal and would not let the Revisionists speak. In a move that has become part of Zionist lore, Jabotinsky stood on a chair, tore up his delegate’s card and shouted, “This is not a Zionist Congress any longer!”

There are lessons from these Revisionist efforts today, namely, how difficult it would be to take over existing institutions already run by the Left. They’re on the lookout for such attempts, as they’ve used the methods themselves.

In the U.S., for instance, radical Jewish groups have been very successful at infiltrating Jewish communal organizations. Dr. Rael Jean Isaac, in her monograph “The New anti-Jewish Agenda,” (AFSI, 1987) describes how the left wing group New Jewish Agenda “targeted Jewish community relations councils, seeking both to become part of local federations and to influence the policies taken at the annual general assemblies of these councils.”

Never mind left wing. In Israel, it’s difficult to take over rightwing groups. Rush Limbaugh, in an interview with Fox News host Greta van Susteren, pointed out that the Republican Party is not really conservative. The same can be said of Israel’s nationalist Likud Party – it’s not really nationalist.

For instance, it was the Likud Party that shut down radio station Arutz Sheva. Arutz Sheva was a valiant attempt at creating an alternative to Israel’s Left-dominated media. The station broadcast from a boat offshore for 14 years and reached one million listeners daily. In 2003, the boat was raided and shut down. Arutz Sheva now operates solely as an Internet site. In the final analysis, it was not the Left that shut down Arutz Sheva, (though it was instrumental) but Likud Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who wanted to silence opposition to his plan to evacuate the Jews of Gush Katif.

This sort of counterproductive behavior goes way back. HaYom was a newspaper of the Gahal Party which presented a rare right wing perspective in Israel. Menachem Begin chose to close the money-losing newspaper down, deciding the party had him to communicate its ideas and so a newspaper wasn’t really needed.

Moshe Feiglin, leader of the Manhigut Yehudit, “Jewish Leadership,” faction of the Likud, and a religious nationalist, attempted to take over the Likud Party from within. He appeared to enjoy some success. On December 10, 2008 he was voted to the 20th place in the Likud primaries, ensuring him a seat in the next Knesset. The next day, he was unceremoniously demoted to the 36th spot. Likud leader Bibi Netanyahu was responsible for this outrageously undemocratic move.

Over the years, Shmuel chronicled Likud’s depressing slide. In “The Chimera of Coordination” (The Jerusalem Post, Dec. 22, 1978) he wrote:

The Likud, which promised the people a new, imaginative and sophisticated foreign policy and information service; which would repair the grievous errors of its predecessors; which was so conscious of the need for speed; and which promised to mobilize the best elements in the U.S. for the difficult task of creating a barrier against the application of the pro-Arab policies rampant in Washington — the Likud did not, on taking power, even make a start on fulfilling its undertakings.

On the contrary the government rushed off in the opposite direction, without recourse either to caution or to commonsense, or to the lessons of experience, in its effort to outdo the [Labor] Alignment.

In “Loves that Labour Lost” (The Jerusalem Post, Oct. 15, 1982), Shmuel wrote:

Since the Likud came to power, the momentum of the hostile campaign [of anti-Israel propaganda] has continued to increase. The Likud, like Labour, has had neither the wit nor the wisdom to assess its magnitude, nor to build up a machine adequate to resist its inroads in the world community.

In November, 2004, on the day the Knesset voted for Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s Gaza withdrawal plan, Shmuel said in an interview with the Hebrew daily Makor Rishon,

Today, the Likud has come to the end of its road. … Somebody should climb the stairs in ‘Metzudat Ze’ev’ [Likud headquarters] and remove the picture of the Founding Father. To remove it as well from all the offices of the ministers and the office of the prime minister. … From now on, there is no tie whatsoever between Ze’ev Jabotinsky and what Arik made from the Likud.

What this suggests is that those who would start an Israeli counter-elite face an uphill battle, to say the least. They’ll be taking on not just the Left but the so-called Right. Shmuel, however, would approve. As he said in the same Makor Rishon interview:

We need to start everything anew. To prepare the hearts, to renew and be renewed in the doctrine of the head of Betar, to open the youth clubs, to reach the universities, to build a healthy, continuing generation for Jabo. …

I hope that somebody will still one of these days raise the flag of Jabotinsky. Somebody will definitely rise, I believe.

By David Isaac

“Thy destroyers and they that made thee waste shall go forth of thee” — Isaiah 49:17

Last month, Barack Obama released a campaign commercial, “America and Israel: An Unbreakable Bond.” The seven-minute video proposes that Obama is the best friend Israel has ever had in the White House.

Helping add substance to this risible claim are none other than Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, President Shimon Peres, and Defense Minister Ehud Barak. Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon, who also appears in the video, says: “I can tell you in a very categoric way, and I believe also in an authoritative way, that we have not had a better friend than President Obama.”

The Obama campaign gleaned these clips from various interviews. The Israelis didn’t actually sit for the ad, though they might as well have. By praising Obama and covering for his obviously anti-Israel policies, Israel’s leadership has essentially become part of Obama’s re-election run.

It’s hard to find a worse example of just how bad Israel’s public diplomacy efforts have become than this campaign commercial — aiding a president who enters office determined to put “daylight” between the U.S. and Israel, insists on an unprecedented Israeli settlement freeze, bars Israel from obtaining offensive weaponry, embraces the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, thwarts Israel from undertaking its efforts to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear bomb, and bows to a Saudi king.

Shmuel must be rolling in his grave. For decades, he kept up a steady drumbeat on the need for a Ministry of Information. He always considered himself an “information man.”

When Mr. Begin became prime minister, he wisely chose Shmuel to go to the U.S. to dispel the notion that the new PM was a “fanatical, intransigent, illogical, uncompromising” ex-terrorist. This distorted image of Begin had been spread by Israel’s Left, which had a long tradition of slandering its opponents.

Shmuel did a highly effective job. Within 10 days, the press stopped its attacks on Mr. Begin. For those who are interested, they can hear Shmuel tell the “miracle tale,” as he jokingly called it, in his own words here. Begin had promised Shmuel before he left, and in fact, had made it a campaign promise, to set up a separate Hasbara, or information, ministry as part of the new government.

Indeed, [Mr. Begin] had repeatedly pointed to the vital importance of establishing this ministry, a view that had crystallised in his mind over the many years during which he had observed the inadequacy and the failures of the Foreign Ministry. (“The Hollow Peace,” Dvir & The Jerusalem Post, 1981, p. 64)

Unfortunately, and to Shmuel’s bitter disappointment, Begin reneged on this promise. Over the ensuing years, Shmuel continued to point to the desperate need for such a ministry. In “Time to say ‘enough!’” (The Jerusalem Post, October, 29, 1982), writing in response to a smear by Abba Eban, Shmuel wrote:

I have incessantly promoted the theme that Israel, for a variety of good American (and Western) reasons, both political and moral, has a vast constituency of friends, large enough to provide a security belt against built-in tendencies in U.S. administrations that are inimical to Israel.

Hence my incessant criticism of the Alignment government and more emphatically, of the Likud, for failing to establish adequate machinery to mobilize and activate that tremendous heterogeneous constituency. This complex purpose cannot be achieved except by a powerful, authoritative government information ministry.

Ten years later, Shmuel’s theme hadn’t changed. In “It’s Time to Start Fighting Back” (The Jerusalem Post, April 3, 1992), Shmuel writes:

Put down starkly on paper the facts seem incredible. At least since 1967, a propaganda war has been in progress against Israel — growing in scope and intensity from year to year. Its content deals with every facet of Jewish life and history, and with Israel day by day.

It is the meat of Arab information, spread by every Arab medium and institution, every non-Arab Moslem medium, every Arab education system. It is spread inter alia by media throughout Europe and a large section of the American media. Whole volumes have been written to describe the propaganda war against Israel.

In this war, the victim — Israel — plays very little part. It conducts a completely different campaign — adequate for a small nation at peace. It finds that the unrelenting blast of hatred, denigration and mendacity can be met by a department inside the Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem with, of course, a small budget to boot.

Now, the Foreign Ministry is not built for the task, any more than it is built to conduct the military defense of the country. It is as though an Israel threatened from the land, the sea and the air, were to prepare its defenses by a handful of plans, a platoon of tanks, two artillery pieces and half-a-dozen fishing boats — all manned by highly efficient warriors from a Foreign Ministry department. Yes, a caricature.

In March, 2009, Israel finally did create a Ministry of Information and Diaspora Affairs, now headed by MK Yuli Edelstein. It is still a caricature, without the resources to do the job. To counter the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement’s “Israel Apartheid Week,” in 2011, the ministry sent a handful of ambassadors to the U.S.

When asked if they would make a difference, MK Edelstein frankly admitted ‘probably not.’

This situation is identical to what it was in 2001, when Shmuel wrote in “Curse of the Tongue-Tied” (The Jerusalem Post, November 6, 2001):

Israeli hasbara efforts have consisted, at moments of crisis, of sudden sorties of two or three emissaries who spend a few weeks in the United States and, as Israeli consul-general in New York Alon Pinkas has wittily hinted … what they achieve is to increase the consumption of bagels and smoked salmon.

Shmuel blamed the difficulty in setting up a separate information ministry on the Foreign Ministry, which like all foreign ministries, resisted the idea of anything that poached on its turf. It was at least partly for this reason that Mr. Begin backed out of his campaign promise to set up one – he encountered opposition from Foreign Minister Moshe Dayan.

Shmuel is no longer with us, but others continue to point out the absurd state of Israel’s hasbara efforts. In a recent two-part series in The Jerusalem Post, Dr. Martin Sherman, who writes often on Israel-related issues, analyzes the reasons behind Israel’s pathetic public diplomacy efforts. The conclusion he draws is startling – Israel doesn’t want to win. “Or to put it differently: The people charged with the nation’s public diplomacy have a worldview that prevents them from adopting a winning strategy,” he writes.

Dr. Sherman argues that “civil society elites” are decisive in determining the nation’s strategic agenda. These elites support the creation of a PLO state abutting Israel. But in order to wage a public diplomacy war effectively, Israel would need to portray Palestinian Arab society as it truly is — “a cruel, violent society that suppresses its women, oppresses it homosexuals, represses its political dissidents.” The elites cannot permit this, Dr. Sherman writes, because to do so would make nonsense of their worldview.

“As a result, Israeli endeavors are inevitably reduced to defensive tactical responses, chasing events rather than preempting them, and doomed to failure. This — far more than international animosity, global anti-Semitism or George Soros — is the underlying reason for Israel’s abysmal performance on the public diplomacy front,” he writes.

Dr. Sherman’s remedy? No less than “fundamentally transforming the elite structure of Israel’s civil society and the discourse it generates. It requires empowering and emplacing new counter-elites.”

That’s a tall order. But it may be the only answer.

By David Isaac

When the first High Commissioner for Palestine, Herbert Samuel, took over the administration of Palestine from Sir Louis Bols of the Occupied Enemy Territory Administration, he signed a note which read: “Received from Major-General Sir Louis J. Bols K.C.B. — One Palestine, complete.”

Now that the Islamists are set to dominate Egypt’s legislature, will Israel receive one Sinai – complete? That’s the question Caroline Glick asks in a recent Jerusalem Post column. The Egypt-Israel treaty “is effectively null and void,” she writes. “Will the U.S. act in accordance with its role as guarantor of the peace and demand that the new Egyptian government give Sinai back to Israel?”

U.S. guarantees, as the past shows, are not worth the paper they’re written on – when they can find the paper, that is. As Shmuel writes in “The world is full of empty promises” (The Jerusalem Post, April 30, 1993):

In June 1967, when the neighboring Arab states prepared for their again-advertised plan of genocide against the still tiny and vulnerable Israel … U.S. president Johnson could not find the 1957 document which recorded a pledge to aid Israel if Egypt closed the Tiran Straits, which it had done on May 23. …

In her day, Prime Minister Golda Meir said (in reply to the suggestion of guarantees by an American diplomat): “Guarantees? You speak of guarantees? By the time you got here, we wouldn’t be here.”

The sad truth is that the Egypt-Israel treaty was never but half implemented – the half requiring Israeli concessions. The other half, the Egyptian half, was ignored. As Shmuel writes in “The meaning of peace” (The Jerusalem Post, May 6, 1983),

Egypt, with Sinai “in its pocket,” has behaved as though that agreement never existed.

Some might argue that this was due to Hosni Mubarak’s ascent following the death of Anwar Sadat. But Sadat never had any intention of honoring the treaty either. Indeed, Sadat only came to Jerusalem after the offer of ‘one Sinai – complete’ had been made. Shmuel writes in “How Begin’s initiative became ‘The Sadat initiative’” (The Jerusalem Post, March 8, 1978):

For some reason the leaders and spokesmen of Israel, and its Information services — as far as they exist — have concealed the fact that the story of a Sadat initiative is a hoax, that the initiative for a sensational revolution in relations between Israel and Egypt did not come from Sadat at all, but from Begin. When Sadat announced, as though proclaiming a vision, that he was prepared to come to Jerusalem, and when jubilation greeted the news that he was actually coming, he already had in his pocket Begin’s promise that he could have all of Sinai.

So when Sadat had seen the light – in the form of a promise from Begin to get the Sinai back – he wasn’t taking any great political risk by traveling to Jerusalem. Indeed, there was great political reward. He was hailed as a great man. In the same article, Shmuel notes:

Because of this initiative Sadat has become a world figure of historic dimensions. Throughout the world, and particularly in the U.S., he has been accorded a measure of glorification usually reserved for cinema stars and sports champions.

And when Sadat did come to Jerusalem and make his famous appearance before the Knesset, it became clear to anyone who was not mesmerized by the sight of an Arab leader at the podium, that he was not prepared to give anything in return.

In “The Hollow Peace” (Dvir & The Jerusalem Post, 1981), Shmuel writes:

It was a superb propaganda speech, but not in a single word did he deviate from the traditional Arab demands. Nor was he sparing in harsh phrases aimed at Israel, again in line with the accepted Arab mythology, such as Israel’s being an aggressor and the source and cause of the conflict. “Between us and you,” he said, “there has been a great, high wall, that you have been trying to build up for twenty-five years.” Such being the case, all he was demanding was unconditional surrender.

There was, to be fair, a personal risk for Sadat – that some of his own people, too fanatical or politically obtuse to see that he wanted the same thing as they did, would take revenge on him for dealing with Israel. This is eventually what happened. Sadat was assassinated on Oct. 6, 1981 after a fatwa was issued by Omar Abdel-Rahman, the one and the same “Blind Sheikh” who was behind the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

Now those fanatics have just won two-thirds of Egypt’s vote. This would be bad under any circumstances. Thanks to the Egypt-Israel treaty they are worse. Egypt has the 23,500 square mile Sinai and is armed to the teeth with the latest American weaponry. As Shmuel wrote in “Peace Hoax” (The Jerusalem Post, March 5, 1982):

Who can now deny that … Israel will have attained no greater prospect of peace than it had in September 1977? Who is so blind as not to see that the central consequence of the peace treaty is that it will have been weakened grievously by the loss of Sinai and by the torrents of sophisticated arms pouring into all the Arab states, including Egypt? Who can deny the manifest bankruptcy of Begin’s peace policy?

Shmuel’s words ring as true today.

By David Isaac

“Trying to portray Obama as pro-Israel is not a simple task. From the outset of his tenure in office, Obama has distinguished himself as the most anti-Israel president ever,” Caroline Glick writes in a September op-ed for The Jerusalem Post.

After providing a laundry list of historic presidential firsts against Israel, Glick adds: “Given Obama’s record – to which can be added his fervent support for Turkish Prime Minister and virulent anti-Semite Recep Tayyip Erdogan, his courtship of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, and his massive weapons sales to Saudi Arabia and Egypt – it is obvious that any attempt to argue that Obama is pro-Israel cannot be based on substance, or even on tone.”

So it takes one aback to hear Obama last Friday, before a conference of the Union for Reform Judaism, declaring, “I am proud to say that no U.S. administration has done more in support of Israel’s security than ours. None. Don’t let anybody else tell you otherwise. It is a fact.”

This echoed earlier statements he made on November 30 at a New York fundraiser attended by wealthy Jewish campaign contributors. “I try not to pat myself too much on the back – but this administration has done more in terms of the security of the state of Israel than any previous administration.” He added: “And that’s not just our opinion, that’s the opinion of the Israeli government.”

Which raises an interesting question: Does Israel’s government share Obama’s high opinion of his administration?

On Dec. 2, Israel’s Ambassador to the U.S., Michael Oren, had the chance to answer that question. CNN Host John King asked Oren: “You speak for the Israeli government. Is that true? Has Barack Obama been better for the security of Israel than any other previous American president?”

Anyone who anticipated a hard hitting reply was disappointed. Oren responded: “President Obama has made immense contributions to Israel’s security. … We’ve developed anti-missile technology that is absolutely ground-breaking. We’ve stood together in the face of terror, in the face of Iranian nuclearization – truly an excellent relationship.”

No one is disputing the technological cooperation. Israel and the U.S. work together and have no doubt come up with ground-breaking advances such as Oren describes. It’s worth pointing out this is not a one-way street. America benefits greatly from Israeli technological innovation.

Shmuel Katz, in “The Big Lie On U.S. Aid” (The Jerusalem Post, March 20, 1992), describes how Joseph Sisco, a former assistant secretary of State, came up to him during a symposium of the International Security Council in February 1989. Sisco said:

“I want to assure you, Mr. Katz, that if we were not getting full value for our money, you would not get a cent from us.”

As Caroline Glick points out, even the technological cooperation is not as rosy as Ambassador Oren makes it seem: “[T]he truth is less sanguine,” Glick writes. “While jointly developing defensive systems, the administration has placed unprecedented restrictions on the export of offensive military platforms and technologies to Israel. Under Gates, Pentagon constraints on Israeli technology additions to the F-35 Joint Strike Fighters nearly forced Israel to cancel its plans to purchase the aircraft.”

But the real problem with the Israeli government’s approach is that it focuses on what goes on behind the scenes as opposed to what’s happening on the world stage.

What we see, and what the Arabs see, isn’t the secret cooperation, which, as Glick points out, isn’t that cooperative, and as Mr. Sisco points out, isn’t all that beneficent. Instead, the world sees a president who tells Israel to get back to the 1949 Armistice lines and tells the Palestinian Arabs that they have the right to a “sovereign and contiguous state,” a proposal that would split Israel in two.

From the start of his presidency, Obama has sent a clear message, starting with his first major policy address on the Middle East in Cairo, where he speechified about how Palestinian Arabs “endure the daily humiliations – large and small – that come with occupation. So let there be no doubt: The situation for the Palestinian people is intolerable. And America will not turn our backs on the legitimate Palestinian aspiration for dignity, opportunity, and a state of their own.”

It’s odd that that a president ‘who has done more for Israel than any other’ should have nothing to say about the suffering of Israelis at the hands of the Arabs. Yet, the Israeli government wants us to believe that relations are excellent – albeit secretly excellent.

It is a political error that Jewish leaders have made before and with predictably awful results. The prime example of this approach is Dr. Chaim Weizmann’s leadership of the Zionist movement during the inter-war years. From the start of the British conquest of Palestine, there began a deterioration of British-Jewish relations. Dr. Weizmann chose to support the British publicly and deal with any problems privately. Vladimir Jabotinsky, who would eventually establish a rival Zionist movement, warned him repeatedly to take the matter to the court of public opinion.

In a letter dated Jan. 22, 1919, Jabotinsky wrote: “…Arab impudence is growing daily. No forty-eight hours pass but some inciting speech is heard in Ramleh, concluding in a call to the ‘Arab sword’… [I]f all this exceeds certain limits I shall be forced either to resign altogether or to see to it that the cry of Palestine shall be heard in Europe.”

Weizmann, however, only expressed satisfaction with the British in public. As Shmuel writes in “Lone Wolf: A biography of Vladimir (Ze’ev) Jabotinsky” (Barricade Books, 1996):

[The British military administrators] having assured themselves of an accommodating attitude from the outstanding Zionist leader Weizmann, they were able without major effort also to manipulate their pro-Zionist masters in London into broad acquiescence, or resignation, to their anti-Zionist actions.

Weizmann did from time to time, in letters and private conversations, complain bitterly about their behavior, but was careful not to cause them public embarrassment.

Weizmann had many opportunities to change course. In “Lone Wolf”, Shmuel writes that, following the 1929 Arab riots:

No moment could have been more propitious for the Zionists, even while mourning the dead, to launch a supreme effort, visible equally to the Jewish people, to the British public and to the world at large, to translate the agonies and pent-up bitterness of the Yishuv into a political offensive for exposing British encouragement as the prime cause of Arab violence; and for demanding a full reinstatement of Britain’s obligations to the Jewish people under the mandate.

Unfortunately, the Zionist leadership had for so long remained silent about the problems with the British that it couldn’t announce its dissatisfaction. As Shmuel writes:

It was morally impossible for the incumbent Zionist leadership suddenly to challenge the British government. It was itself too vulnerable. It could, of course, correctly blame the government for not foreseeing the campaign of Arab violence; but had it itself warned the government and aroused public opinion to the danger? Had it not repeatedly pronounced itself “satisfied” with the situation in Palestine and its relations with the government as “excellent”?

Just like the Zionist leadership of the past, Netanyahu’s government is too timid to make waves and, thus, lets things go from bad to worse.

Oren said the Israeli government wants to preserve bipartisan support. If so, it has a strange way of going about it. Expressing satisfaction when an administration pursues policies that undermine Israel’s moral authority isn’t going to make that administration stop what it’s doing. It doesn’t encourage Israel’s friends to go out of their way either. What’s the upside to supporting Israel, when there may be political risk for doing so, but none for not doing so? After all, Israel’s government is going to say you’re wonderful no matter what you do.

A far better approach would be for Israel to express public disapproval when it is publicly attacked. The administration in question would then suffer a loss in American Jewish electoral and financial support. This would send a clear message: If you take an anti-Israel stance there is a price to be paid. It’s a simple problem in political math the Netanyahu government hasn’t solved, although Jabotinsky gave them the answer nearly 100 years ago.

By David Isaac

“Don’t despair, you will live to see a state in spite of these rascals,” said Zionist leader Vladimir Jabotinsky to two young idealists, dejected after witnessing the behavior of the Leftwing Labor faction at the 17th Zionist congress in 1931.

Jabotinsky was, of course, right. They did live to see a state. Unfortunately, what he did not tell them, or did not foresee, was that the ‘rascals’ would go on to run the place. They still do.

Two recent news items provide examples. In the first, reported in Arutz Sheva on Nov. 13 under the headline “Nationalist arrested for Facebook Post”, we learn that “police recently arrested a citizen of Jerusalem simply for responding to a Facebook status written by an extreme leftist.”

The citizen, referred to as ‘Y’, responded to Dorit Eldar, a lecturer at Tel Aviv University, who complained in her post that the IDF conducted a pogrom against her and her friends for blocking the entrance to the Jewish village of Anatot.

“When I saw this post, I replied to her in a polite manner and told her that it’s inappropriate and illegal to prevent people from entering their home,” Y said. Two days later, Y was pulled over by police, interrogated for two hours, had his computer and cell phone confiscated and was accused of spray-painting graffiti because police found a spray can for wheels in his car.

The Arutz Sheva article continues, “Y, who served in the IDF for three years as every citizen is required by law, said that he does not understand why he was arrested while extreme leftists, such as the one he responded to on Facebook, who speak against IDF soldiers and incite against Jewish residents of Judea and Samaria, are not detained.”

The second item, on Nov. 15, also in Arutz Sheva, describes how the Chief Rabbi of Kiryat Motzkin, Rabbi David Druckman, was questioned by police for signing a letter two years ago against employing Arabs. The letter came in the wake of the 2008 massacre at the Mercaz HaRav yeshiva in Jerusalem, when an Arab terrorist, who had previously worked at the yeshiva, murdered eight Jewish students.

Rabbi Druckman said, “I told them that as a matter of principle I am not willing to cooperate in the investigation so long as they don’t question [former Mossad chief] Ephraim Halevy for inciting against hareidim and as long as they don’t question those academics who incite against the State of Israel and against the Jews.” The article went on, “Rabbis being arrested and questioned by police seems to have become routine.”

While it may be a revelation to some that Jews, especially religious Jews, are being harassed by Israeli authorities, it’s of a piece with the Zionist-Left’s history. These examples are mild in comparison to the way the Left behaved in the past.

Shmuel Katz describes how the Labor-Zionists became intoxicated with violence in the 1920s. In his two-volume biography, “Lone Wolf: A Biography of Vladimir (Ze’ev) Jabotinsky”, he writes:

The use of violence by the Labor movement was not a product of local and immediate frustration. It had its origins in Marxist ideology, and though it was not given unanimous support in the movement, it had long been a calculated policy of the majority of the Histadrut leadership…

Shmuel quotes Jabotinsky, who wrote about this at the time in his article, “The Rule of the Fist in Eretz Israel.”

“These clashes were only a symptom of a deep, organic sickness which threatens to poison all relations within the country. It is a sickness inherent in the custom which affirms the right to use the fist. This right is being implemented more and more often, and always by the same side, the ‘Left.’ There are beatings in the settlements, in city streets or at meetings of the Asefat HaNivharim; and they are always carried out in calculated superior force – between two and ten to one. In the Jewish labor market the outcome of this phenomenon is that a worker who does not belong to the ‘Left’ can come close to starvation.”

What is so disheartening is that the spiritual heirs of these types still control large parts of Israel’s establishment, and that they continue to harass whole segments of the population, namely rabbis and national-religious Jews, even under the nose of a nominally nationalist prime minister.

As Dr. Elon Dahan, a lecturer on Israeli thought, writes in a recent article in “Ha-Umma”, a quarterly put out by Misdar Jabotinsky in Israel, “The Israeli left is always in power. When not in the corridors of government, then in the non-governmental organizations … that promote a permanent anti-Zionist agenda with state financing and under state authority. … How can it be that a representative of the national camp is found in the office of the prime minister, and nothing is done in this regard? After all, what is occurring here is the existence of a state within a state, a shadow government whose strength and influence is no less than the strength and influence of the state. … It is possible that against non-governmental entities it is more difficult to act but concerning government systems it is possible and desirable to take a number of steps and quickly.”

For now the harassment simmers. It hasn’t reached the levels of the 1920s, or of the ‘Season’, that low point in Zionist history when members of the Haganah rounded up members of the Irgun and handed them over to the British. The worry is that it is a small step from a low simmer to a high heat. We have already had a preview of where things could lead. In 2006, in Amona, the Israeli public was shocked to witness Israeli police on horseback plow into young protesters and beat them with truncheons.

The Left’s unelected hold on the Israeli establishment, its police and courts, must be broken, or there will be more harassment and more Amonas in Israel’s future. If it’s not done under a nationalist prime minister, it will never be done.

By David Isaac

October 31st marks the anniversary of the official end of the Sinai and Palestine Campaigns in the Middle Eastern Theatre during World War I. The British Egyptian Expeditionary Force was led by Field Marshal Edmund Allenby. He is rightly regarded as a hero of the British Empire. However, he is not a hero of the Jewish people. Far from it. Yet a major thoroughfare in Tel Aviv, Allenby Street, is named in his honor. This is an error long overdue for correction.

Field Marshal Allenby stood at the head of the British military administration that governed Palestine for roughly two years. Unfortunately, that first administration set the precedent and the tone for all subsequent administrations, which is why, in 1923, three years after Allenby had been replaced, Moshe Glickson, freshly minted editor of Ha’aretz, protested against “the insult and the deprivation of rights to which we are exposed in our historic homeland, against the crude contempt towards our vital interests, which have become the established system of the Palestine government.”

Anti-Semitism pervaded Allenby’s General Headquarters. This expressed itself in the denigration of members of the Jewish Legion, who were persecuted whenever they left the camp. The commander of the Legion, Lt.-Colonel John Henry Patterson, described the situation in 1919:

“Certain areas were placed out of bounds to ‘Jewish soldiers’ but not to men in other battalions. Jewish soldiers were so molested by the military police that the only way they could enjoy a peaceful walk outside camp limits was by removing their Fusilier badges and substituting others which they kept conveniently in their pockets for the purpose. They found that by adopting this method they were never interfered with by the Military Police.”

Orders to harass and demoralize Jewish Legionnaires came from General Headquarters. Shmuel, in Lone Wolf: A Biography of Vladimir (Ze’ev) Jabotinsky writes:

Anti-Semitic behavior filtered down from the heights of G.H.Q. into the rank and file … Patterson records the case of a British officer who, after spending a year at G.H.Q., was seconded to his staff in the Thirty-eighth. There he made insulting remarks to a Jewish officer. When he was forced by the brigadier to apologize to his victim he burst out: ‘I don’t like Jews. The Jews are not liked at G.H.Q. and you know it, sir.’…

Allenby – contrary to the widespread view – knew of the charges [of anti-Semitism], which were specific. Second, his failure to investigate them compels the conclusion that he was not appalled at the idea of anti-Semitism in his administration and under his army command. This implication is considerably strengthened by his reaction to Jabotinsky’s letter [concerning anti-Semitic acts by the administration]. That letter was couched in language that could leave no doubt as to the severity of the charge and the strong feelings of those who voiced it. He then simply used his military authority to ignore the accusations – and to punish the accuser. It is not unfair to suggest that this revelation should be taken into account in assessing Allenby’s personal role in the unhappy events of his period of office.

It’s important to note that if Allenby was not himself anti-Semitic, his complaisance in the face of anti-Semitism was ungrateful to say the least. Not only did the Jewish Legion perform exemplary service, but Allenby received critical help from the NILI organization, an underground intelligence network set up by the Jewish agronomist Aaron Aaronsohn. It was Aaronsohn who came up with the plan to break the deadlock before Gaza by outflanking the city and attacking Beersheba, and made the plan possible by providing indispensable intelligence, saving an estimated 40,000 British lives.

The behavior of the British administration eventually led to bloodshed. British officials actively encouraged Arab violence, believing violence would convince Whitehall to revise its pro-Jewish policy. When Vladimir Jabotinsky and his band of defenders repulsed Arab rioters in 1920, they were blamed, promptly arrested and tried by a kangaroo court. Jabotinsky was sentenced to 15 years penal servitude and the others to three years imprisonment for possession of firearms and for taking action to protect the Jews of Jerusalem. These sentences were later commuted.

At the time, however, Allenby upheld the charges and helped to whitewash his administration’s outrageous behavior both during the attacks and during the trial of Jabotinsky and his men. One may rightly ask why the name of Allenby Street was not changed then. Well, there was an attempt. In Lone Wolf, Shmuel relates:

One of the leaders of Hapoel Hatzair, Yosef Aharonovitz, proposed to the Tel Aviv municipality that the name of Allenby Road be changed to Jabotinsky Road. The municipality refused. Aharonovitz went out with a group of young people one night and replaced the street signs. Next day municipal workers restored the original signs; that night they were again replaced. This went on for several days. The story went around that Colonel Storrs, coming on a visit one night to a friend who lived in Allenby Street, was driven around for half an hour while his driver searched in vain for the address. He finally learned that the street described to him by passers-by as Jabotinsky Street was in fact the one he was looking for.

The Jews could be forgiven at first for naming a street after Allenby. It was November, 1918. Allenby had just conquered Palestine from the Turks – hardly a pro-Jewish bunch – and Allenby had yet to preside over the many injustices the Jewish community would be subject to under his administration. By 1920, as Yosef Aharonovitz recognized, Allenby did not deserve a street named after him. There’s even less excuse for it today. Indeed, changing the street’s name is a matter of honor.

If Tel-Aviv’s municipality has trouble coming up with a new name, we suggest naming it after another British officer, the Jewish Legion’s commander Lt.-Col. Patterson. There is a street named after him in Israel–in the German Colony in Jerusalem. As far as we’re aware, there is no street in Tel-Aviv named in his honor. He deserves a big one. If ever there was a heaven-sent Christian supporter of the Jews, Patterson was it. As Shmuel writes:

An Irish Protestant, he had, it so happened, from his boyhood, studied, out of choice, the history of the Jews, their laws and customs; and spent a great part of his leisure hours poring over the Bible.

Patterson wrote, “As a boy, I eagerly devoured the records of the glorious deeds of Jewish military captains such as Joshua, Joab, Gideon and Judas Maccabaeus.” At this writing, the Jewish American Society for Historical Preservation is making an effort to bring Patterson and his wife, currently buried in Los Angeles, to Israel. That would make a propitious moment for a renaming.

“Never in Jewish history has there been in our midst a Christian friend of his penetration and devotion,” Jabotinsky said.

Patterson paid for that devotion. For identifying with the Zionist cause, he was passed over for promotion. He entered World War I as a lieutenant-colonel and he left it as a lieutenant-colonel.

The Jews should make it clear that, in their book, lieutenant-colonel ranks higher than field marshal.

By David Isaac

Staff Sgt. Gilad Shalit is set to be released on Tuesday. In exchange, Israel will release 1,027 terrorists, among them murderers sentenced to consecutive life sentences. Needless to say, ‘life sentence’ does not carry the same force in Israel as it does in other places.

Those Israelis who have greeted this news with euphoria argue that Shalit has suffered, his family has suffered, and so everything must be done to release him. This myopic view ignores the suffering of those families who seek justice for the death of loved ones murdered by the terrorists about to be released.

Israelis in favor of the deal may plausibly argue that Shalit is still alive and his life takes precedence over those now dead. Nothing can be done to save them, but something can be done to save Shalit. This, too, is myopic, because it ignores those Israelis to be done to death by the unrepentant murderers back on the street.

Vice Prime Minister and Minister of Strategic Affairs, Moshe Yaalon, estimates that the deal will result in the murders of tens, if not hundreds, of additional Israelis. “[It] will be a great victory for Hamas, and from our perspective, a surrender to terror. The deal will meaningfully damage deterrence. We’re obligated to the life of Gilad Shalit and to bring him home, but we’re also obligated to the lives of Israel’s citizens.”

According to the Wall Street Journal, “In 2004, Israel exchanged several hundred Palestinian prisoners for an Israeli held captive by Hezbollah (and the remains of three soldiers). Drawing on government figures, Nadav Shragi noted in a report by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs that ‘those freed in the deal had murdered 35 Israelis’ by 2007.”

Unfortunately for those condemned to die, they do not yet have a face. Whereas Shalit’s face has been plastered everywhere for the past five-plus years. Gilad Shalit’s parents, aided by a sympathetic media and public, have pressured Israel’s government to get him home – to do whatever it takes to get him home – a natural position for any parent to take.

There is no counter to this pressure. But let’s say, for argument’s sake, we knew in advance those (let’s say 100), to be killed as a result of this deal. The parents of the hundred would establish a tent in front of the prime minister’s residence, as Gilad Shalit’s parents have done, and it would be larger, as it would have to fit 99 more families. Can one imagine the effect their emotional appeal would have on Israeli public opinion? Needless to say, there would be no such deal as the one now before us.

A recent article in The New York Times attempted to explain the Israeli attitude that makes this lop-sided exchange possible. “When Israelis say they view the seized soldier, Staff Sgt. Gilad Shalit, as their own son, they mean it,” the article said.

But from the hypothetical above, we can see that Israeli identification with Shalit would end for those parents whose sons were to die in his stead. It is impossible they would choose Shalit’s son over their own. It is true that Gilad Shalit’s parents would do anything to save their child. It’s equally true of every other parent in Israel.

In the real world, those who are to die cannot be known, so it becomes a matter involving all of Israel’s citizens, and thus a matter of national interest.

In “Government’s Duty” (The Jerusalem Post, June 7, 1985), Shmuel wrote of another mass prisoner exchange, the Jibril agreement, which took place on May 21, 1985. Over 1,000 terrorists were released for three Israeli soldiers.

Not a single national interest was served by the decision of a government elected to serve the national interest, when it decided to release 1,150 terrorists, including hundreds of convicted murderers. On the contrary, it undermined every relevant national interest. It damaged the security of the people, its morale and its sense and image of sovereignty.

It has given, directly, a new lease of life to the Arab terrorist movement. Not only those freed but, perhaps even more significantly, the youth of the whole Arab people is now absorbing a campaign of inspirational propaganda, on Israel’s moral weakness and indeed contemptibility, on the reduced risks for captured Arab heroes, on the assurance that there will always be available at least a handful of Israeli hostages from an Israel dominated by tearful mothers. …

It is worth noting that Hamas has already said that it plans to capture more soldiers. It would defy logic for them not to do so. They captured an Israeli and were rewarded with 1,000 more terrorists. Why not capture another Israeli and get still 1,000 more?

Can Israel stop the vicious cycle? Yes, by relearning a simple truth it once knew but has since forgotten. As Shmuel wrote in the same article:

For a time, Israel did stand firm in the face of terrorist blackmail, It did serve as an example to the world. And as long as it showed firmness, and wherever physically possible took military action against hijackers and kidnappers, the terrorists responded by keeping their demands within comparatively modest bounds.

The Labour government did sin on several occasions in negotiating with the terrorists, but in July 1976 its Entebbe operation raised steeply Israel’s prestige and the people’s morale.

When the Likud came to office, it proved that while it was capable, on the one hand, of carrying out the Litani military operation against the PLO, it was capable of outdoing the Labour Party in diplomatic bumbling. In 1979, it paid with 76 released terrorists for one Israeli civilian.

After 1979, the floodgates were opened. The price increased progressively. Negotiators, in effect, became couriers, delivering the terrorist leaders’ demands. From 76-to-one in 1979, we reached 380-to-one in 1985.

Only a conscious, radical change in the government’s conception of its obligations to the nation and in its behaviour can put an end to the dangerous mindset which has established itself in the management of the affairs of an embattled Israel.

A vital element in such a change is the revival and maintenance of the principle of not negotiating with the terrorists. For cases where breach of the principle is unavoidable for purposes of “exchange,” standing rules for negotiation must be laid down and must include a prohibition of negotiators’ consultation with families of prisoners.

And crucial it is that, at least, Israel apply the law which permits the imposition of the death sentence for murder.

As Shmuel writes, a death penalty in Israel exists. Its vigorous application may be the only thing to prevent future prisoner exchanges.

Israel’s leadership has shown itself time and again unable to withstand the political pressure that follows each new abduction. Prime Minister Netanyahu understands the dangers. In the 1990s he wrote, “Prisoner releases only embolden terrorists by giving them the feeling that even if they are caught, their punishment will be brief. Worse, by leading terrorists to think such demands are likely to be met, they encourage precisely the terrorist blackmail they are supposed to defuse.” Yet, when faced with the choice, Netanyahu collapsed.

The only thing left then is to deny Israel’s leadership the choice by creating a situation wherein there are no terrorists to exchange.

By David Isaac

U.S. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta visited Israel earlier this month. En route he laid the onus on Israel to improve its ties with neighboring countries.

“[T]he question you have to ask: Is it enough to maintain a military edge if you’re isolating yourself in the diplomatic arena? … that is not a good situation for Israel to become increasingly isolated,” Secretary Panetta said.

It takes real chutzpah to blame Israel for ‘isolating itself’ from its neighbors when its neighbors are the ones doing the isolating. It is like suggesting during World War II that the Jews of the Warsaw ghetto stop ‘isolating themselves’ from the German invaders. Yet, even as the Arab Ummah slides into Islamism under the badly misnamed ‘Arab Spring’, Israel gets the blame.

Beyond chutzpah is Mr. Panetta’s solution, which is to tell Israel to make peace with its neighbors. “So my main message is, to both sides, you don’t lose anything by going into negotiations and trying to pursue a peace process everyone in the world is hopeful can begin,” he said.

What on earth does Mr. Panetta think Israel has been doing for the last 30-odd years? Israel has made peace with her neighbors. And she has paid a bloody price for it.

Most recently, a man and his pregnant wife who was in labor were attacked by Arab stone throwers as they drove to the delivery room. They narrowly escaped death. This comes on the heels of the murder of a young man and his baby near Hebron when Arabs hurled a large rock through his windshield. And in another incident, a 20-month-old baby girl was bloodied when Arabs threw rocks at her face. (Will Panetta chastise the parents of the young girl pictured above to be more neighborly next time?)

Time and again Israel has made ‘peace’. In 1978, Prime Minister Menachem Begin signed the Camp David Accords with Egypt’s Anwar Sadat. In protest, Shmuel resigned from Mr. Begin’s government. In “What Peace” (The Jerusalem Post, June 12, 1992), Shmuel wrote:

[T]he moment Egypt had fulfilled her primary obligation under the peace treaty (to receive the territory of Sinai, appropriately free of Jews) its leading diplomat, Abdel Maguid, announced his government’s agenda for Israel. In a speech in Kuwait on April 8, 1982, he laid down afresh all the Arab demands, beginning with the Israeli withdrawal from all the territories including Jerusalem which would become the capital of the Palestinian State, and ending with the implementation of the “right of return” for the refugees to their former homes in Haifa and Jaffa, Ramle and Jerusalem et al. As for the peace treaty itself, and indeed the dozen subsidiary agreements, nearly all their provisions have remained dead letters for lack of Egyptian cooperation, or in direct Egyptian contravention.

Notably, there is no trade nor Egyptian tourism and, what is most significant, the vicious antisemitic propaganda war against Israel in the Egyptian media – controlled by the government – goes on merrily, in style and content reminiscent of German Nazi propaganda. Egypt too remains a full partner in the continuous diplomatic campaign against Israel. It even opposed the cancellation of the UN Zionism is racism decision. Now it is one of the initiators of the latest drive to promote the “right of return” – the proclaimed prescription first enunciated by Nasser for destroying Israel “from within.” Never once have the Arabs diminished their demands.

Despite that experience, Israel tried again, this time with a Labor government in the lead and with Yasser Arafat cast in the role of Arab peacemaker. The negotiations led to the infamous 1993 Oslo Accords. This mad act by Israel was met with fulsome praise by a credulous world. But as Shmuel wrote in “An Education in Violence” (The Jerusalem Post, August 9, 1996):

In every one of his speeches (some public, some “leaked”), Arafat has demonstrated how he is discouraging violence. In a mosque in Johannesburg, South Africa, he proclaimed (or envisaged) the jihad; in Stockholm early this year, at a dinner with 40 Arab diplomats he described (expansively) what would be done to the State of Israel (dismantlement) and its Jewish inhabitants (only dispersal). What do all these pronouncements amount to if not a deliberate education campaign not against but in favor of terror? Who can gauge the number of Jews who are likely to be killed by enthusiastic young Arabs thus encouraged and influenced by the rhetoric of their leader, and by the force of the “heroic” example of [Hamas killer Yihye] Ayyash and his like?

We have seen what the education campaign has led to – a population radicalized from birth to hate Jews – a hatred that has sunk so deep that an 18-year-old Arab expresses no remorse for slashing the throat of a 3-month-old baby girl. (The killer didn’t face the death penalty because, under Israeli law, he was underage.)

So much for the peace of Oslo. But wait, didn’t Israel also make peace with Jordan? Surely, that peace has held. In October, 1994, Israel signed an agreement declaring, “Peace is hereby established between the State of Israel and the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.”

In 2010, Jordan’s King Abdullah II called on the international community to take over Jerusalem’s holy sites. He rebuked Israel for including Rachel’s Tomb and the Cave of the Patriarchs on its list of national heritage sites. His father, it may be recalled, destroyed Jewish holy sites in the half of Jerusalem in his hands after 1948. The Jewish Virtual Library provides a particularly poignant description of Jordan’s pillage of Jerusalem.

“It is the story of hundreds of Torah scrolls, reverently preserved for generations, plundered and burned to ashes; of thousands of holy books committed to the flames; of synagogues razed to the ground or converted into hollow shells of their glorious former selves, their interiors used as hen houses and stables, filled with dung-heaps, garbage and carcasses, or as sites for latrines and sewage canals; of tens of thousands of tombstones broken into pieces or used as flagstones, steps and building materials; of large areas of the cemetery leveled and converted into parking lots and a filling station; of graves ripped up and skeletal bones scattered, and an asphalt short-cut through the pitiful remains … to a new hotel built incongruously upon the Mount of Olives.”

Most recently, the King of Jordan warned Palestinian Authority head Mahmoud Abbas not to go through with a unilateral declaration of statehood lest it jeopardize the Palestinian Arab ‘right of return’, the oft-repeated Arab demand that millions of Arab ‘refugees’ be allowed to inundate Israeli cities in a demographic tidal wave, destroying the country from within – just the sort of friendly, kingly, pat-on-the-back advice one would expect from one peace partner to another.

In the face of all this experience, Mr. Panetta says, “Back to the ‘peace process’”. “You don’t lose anything by going into negotiations,” are the sweetest words the defense secretary can muster. Together with the upside-down argument that Israel is “isolating itself”. Mr. Panetta, you are a poor salesman.

Israel’s leaders should remind Mr. Panetta, and by extension his masters in Washington, that Israel has already made peace with her neighbors. They just wish someone would remind the neighbors.

By David Isaac

In a recent column for Bloomberg View, Jeffrey Goldberg writes of statements by former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, who, shortly before his retirement, told the president that Netanyahu was “ungrateful” for the myriad contributions the U.S. has made to Israel’s security.

Goldberg writes: “In a meeting of the National Security Council Principals Committee, Gates coldly laid out the many steps the administration has taken to guarantee Israel’s security … and then stated bluntly that the U.S. has received nothing in return, particularly with regard to the peace process.” (italics added)

The idea that Israel ought to repay whatever security assistance it receives by helping to advance the “peace process” is illogical, given that the Obama administration’s notion of a peace process is that Israel return essentially to the indefensible 1949 armistice lines. You cannot demand as the price for “security guarantees” the end of Israel’s core security guarantee, namely its strategic depth.

Setting aside the former Defense Secretary’s assault on logic, Gates repeats an old slander against the Jewish State, one that Goldberg is only too happy to echo, namely, that the U.S.-Israel relationship is a one-sided grab bag for Israel in which America receives “nothing in return.”

Shmuel Katz dealt with this false charge many times over. As he wrote in “Interdependence in U.S.-Israel Relations” (Global Affairs, 1988):

Somehow, Israel has been made to assume the image of a poor relation entirely dependent on American charity; a relationship that is supposed to justify frequent hectoring and threats…

Shmuel emphasized Israel’s contributions to the relationship. In his Jerusalem Post op-ed “The Big Lie On U.S. Aid” (March 20, 1992), Shmuel wrote of a 1983 study that analyzed Israel’s contributions.

Professor Stephen L. Spiegel of the University of California, who for many years has studied this issue and followed its development, calculated already in 1983 that on a conservative estimate, Israel’s contribution to US security was worth at least 2 percent of the US defense budget – that is, today, about $6b. He was quantifying specific items.

But how far could one quantify, for example, the value of the information on Soviet weapons systems transmitted by Israel to Washington? Estimates by American military personalities, prominently by Gen. George Keegan, former director of US Air Force Intelligence, and by Ariel Sharon, vary from $50b to $80b. Such analyses and transmissions by Israel forced the Soviets to change at least one weapons system.

Asked by this writer if he had updated his analysis, Professor Spiegel replied in an Oct, 2010 email: “I have not done anything like that since then. It would require an entirely new calculus today, so that the old study is totally out of date, and would not necessarily have any relationship to what would be necessary to do such an estimate today, a task which is by its very nature problematic and subject to different interpretations.”

But while Spiegel treats the subject like a hot potato, it seems safe to assume that, if anything, Israel’s contributions to U.S. defense have increased since 1983. As George Gilder notes in The Israel Test (Richard Vigilante Books, 2009), “Before July of 1985, Israel was a basket case with wage and price controls making everything scarce. … As recently as 1990, Israel was a relatively insignificant technology force outside of a few military and agricultural initiatives…”

Israel’s high-tech boom only revved up in the last 10 years. The country has since advanced to become a world technological power, with at least a segment of its private research, (as Gilder notes, private research is far more productive than public research) focused on military developments.

The Obama Administration admits that Israeli technology contributes to America’s defense. In July, 2010, Andrew J. Shapiro, Assistant Secretary for Political-Military Affairs, said in a speech at the Brookings Saban Center for Middle East Policy:

“Israeli-origin equipment deployed on Iraqi and Afghan battlefields are protecting American troops every day. This includes armor plating technology for U.S. military vehicles and unique medical solutions such as the “Israeli bandage”.… It also includes sensors, surveillance equipment, unmanned aerial vehicle technology, and detection devices to seek out IED’s. Many such partnerships and investments between our two governments and U.S. and Israeli defense firms have yielded important groundbreaking innovations that ultimately make us all safer.”

Such remarks by the administration’s own officials should make Israel’s job of countering the canard spread by Gates that much easier. That is, if it will speak up. Israel has remained silent in the past. This was of significant concern to Shmuel, who recognized the dangers a non-response posed to Israel’s collective psyche. In the Global Affairs article, he wrote:

What is no less serious is the spirit of dependence that prevails in a large part of the Israeli public. Even among those regarded as Israel’s “hard-nosed” or “hawkish” citizens there exists a sense of “what can we do? We know that it is wrong to agree to some demands of the United States, but we are, after all, dependent on them.”

Unfortunately, nothing has changed. When asked by Goldberg about Gates’s remarks regarding Netanyahu, U.S. Ambassador to Israel Michael Oren replied, “We have nothing but the highest regard for Secretary Gates, and as allies, we don’t exchange accusations, we have communications. Israel deeply appreciates the excellent security relationship we have with the Obama administration.”

This pablum may seem worldly wise, a diplomatic answer to avoid an unpleasant and unnecessary dust-up. The problem is that more is at stake than a few parting shots by an outgoing defense secretary. Robert Gates has injected new life into a slander that can easily be disproved, but instead is allowed to fester and grow. Oren’s answer may even be seen as corroborating Gates’s statement – Oren asserts Israel has nothing but “the highest regard” for a man who says the U.S. has received “nothing in return” from Israel.

This isn’t worldly wise. It is dumb. It’s an approach that is of a piece with the policy of the official Zionist leadership as it watched the British back away from its obligations under the Palestine Mandate and pretended everything was alright. As Vladimir Jabotinsky, Shmuel’s mentor and hero, pointed out in 1922: “The worst is that the [Zionist] Executive deems it its duty to profess that it is satisfied. This is stupid. Zionism is entirely based on confidence. If we say that the situation is bad, and we are honest, everybody will at once endeavor to overcome the misfortune. But if we are lying and trying to cover up…”

Oren should be forthright. He should say that if the matter is one of gratitude, or lack
thereof, the former secretary of defense missed his target. He should have focused his sights on the Palestinian Authority. It has received $550 million in U.S. aid in fiscal 2011 alone. This corrupt regime refuses to back down from pursuing a UN proclamation of statehood despite requests by the administration to cease. It joined Hamas – a designated terrorist group – in a unity government. It has done nothing to stop anti-Semitic incitement in its media and schools, nor has it stopped its own members from conducting terror attacks.

As the 10th anniversary of 9/11 just passed, it is worth noting that the Palestinian Arab reaction to the fall of the twin towers was to cheer and hand out treats. (That year, the Palestinian Authority received $85 million in US aid.) According to a May, 2011 Congressional Research Service report, “Since the establishment of limited Palestinian self-rule in the West Bank and Gaza Strip in the mid-1990s, the U.S. government has committed over $4 billion in bilateral assistance to the Palestinians, who are among the world’s largest per capita recipients of international foreign aid.”

And yet the Palestinian Authority snubs the U.S. at every turn. Where’s the gratitude? Why did Gates not point this out? These are the questions Oren should ask. He might also note the loss that would occur if the U.S. were to give up its Israel-origin equipment.

Here, Oren could send a list of the items in question to the major news outlets.