Briefs
Friday, October 3rd, 2025
Demonstrating the relative seriousness of Israeli versus British media discourse, The Independent vs The Jerusalem Post on Trump’s UN speech. The former characterized it as “an extraordinary tirade” and “a spectacular outburst” and worried that “the speech risked all of the goodwill from last week’s historic state visit.” The latter:
Trump held up a mirror to the world. He did not seek to please, did not seek to appear enlightened, but exposed what other leaders try to hide. For him, leadership is not the art of compromise but the courage to tell the truth.
Friday, April 18th, 2025
At JCPA, Oded Ailam pens “Why Israel Should Embrace its Role as a Regional Power”.
A country that acts like a leader attracts others. Countries prefer to affiliate with a strong, stable power that leads with purpose and confidence. By projecting strength, not just militarily but diplomatically and economically, Israel can become a pole of attraction in the Middle East – for states, investments, and influence.
I’d like to see stronger initiatives to partner with similar countries. Finland to me seems a great target for seduction. About the same size, also fiercely independent, innovative, threatened — as liberals they lean pro-Palestinian but with better engagement I think they could be shown where true liberalism lies.
Thursday, March 6th, 2025
As a young advisor to then-Deputy Foreign Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the Madrid Conference in 1991, Dore brought his policy and national security expertise. Dore was a firm believer in the Jordanian-Israeli relationship, and the possibility of a federal-confederal, security-based approach to the Palestinian issue. Dore’s profound strategic concern about preventing future attacks from the East led him to pioneer a revival of General Yigal Alon’s defensible borders concept, which he advanced following the 1967 war.
Tuesday, February 4th, 2025
In Mosaic, A pair of important lengthy pieces of where we’re at in Israel: The Failed Concepts That Brought Israel to October 7 by Shany Mor, and To Save Itself from International Isolation, Israel Must Hold On to the West Bank by Rafi DeMogge. While both are problematic — DeMogge drums in a two-step argument that territorial withdrawals are actually harmful to Israel diplomatically but is thin on other points, and Mor throat-clears by it seems to me unfairly presenting the settler movement as irrational before focusing on the failure of peace-processing — together they touch on each other to paint a developed picture of the situation.
The idea that a Palestinian living in Palestinian territory under a Palestinian government is somehow a refugee from Palestine is a deadly contrivance, the work of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA).
Shany Mor, The Failed Concepts That Brought Israel to October 7
Sunday, January 5th, 2025
Yes, Davar still exists as a publication of Israel’s Histadrut. There’s a great piece by Or Paz-Ivry published in February, 2024 entitled “The Path Not Taken: Yigal Allon’s Approach to the Gaza Strip”.
Now more than ever, Israel is in need of an Allon-esque approach to security, what he referred to as “a strategy of peace.” As part of this conception, the possibility of Jordan playing the stabilizing role that Allon suggested in his plan must be reexamined, as many of the geopolitical conditions that Allon described at the time still exist today, despite the passage of time. These conditions lead to the conclusion that Jordan must be a central partner in any political solution…
I was saying this myself 20+ years ago. A pity in my ignorance I had no idea there was a strong thread of thought along these lines, articulated by a major Israeli figure whom history has regrettably sidelined. I am an Allonite.
Tuesday, December 31st, 2024
At Bar Ilan’s Begin-Sadat Center, Brig. Gen. (res.) Eran Ortal (recently retired from military service as commander of the Dado Center for Multidisciplinary Military Thinking) is concerned that in Lebanon Israel has “launched an operation against infrastructure, not against an enemy”.
Wednesday, December 18th, 2024
In The Jerusalem Post, Gil Murciano, CEO of the Mitvim Institute, pleas for Israeli engagement with the new Syria, deriding “splendid isolation” and the “village in the jungle” mentality. For one, if we don’t, the Iranians will be back in full force, willing to help out.
In retrospect, when I used to blog more, this issue was perhaps my main one outside of navel-gazing. Of course, hanging back is the lesson of Menachem Begin’s intervention in Lebanon in the early 1980s; and when he intervened, he was breaking an already-established norm.
There’s no doubt that Israel is in the center of the region, and her actions affect others. So there could be even more authority garnered by being very obviously clearly not interested in intervening in other countries, which is an unusual stance. But hasn’t that Rubicon now been crossed? Perhaps not; Israel’s shockwaves affecting others is not quite so new as it seems; regimes fall after wars with Israel — that’s how Nasser and Assad himself came to power.
I’m torn; while I tend towards the engagement direction, prudence suggests hanging back and staying out of the maelstrom of Middle Eastern affairs as much as is feasible. How much does the Powell Doctrine — you break it, you own it — apply?
Monday, October 28th, 2024
The Knesset has finally banned UNRWA, the humanitarian agency serving as strategic weapon against Israel since 1949.
Sunday, October 20th, 2024
On Sky News, former Head of MI6 Sir John Sawyer disagrees with David Patraeus’s characterization of Sinwar’s takeout being more important than that of Osama Bin Laden — because as opposed to being “a global struggle against the West” Hamas is merely limited to “the occupied territories of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank”. I presume Sky News asked this question in order to get this answer. And it perfectly encapsulates my personal fundamental incompatibility with the established British viewpoint.
Saturday, October 19th, 2024
The path out of loneliness is always a path of action.
Bret Stephens, If Israel Is Alone, What Do We Do About It?
Tuesday, October 15th, 2024
I keep going back to it to see if he’s reconsidered, so I guess I need a link to it. Paul Graham, startup hero, in his sharp and well exquisite style, tweeted on October 9th:
65 doctors, nurses, and paramedics told the New York Times what they saw in Gaza. What they saw was a pattern of children being shot in the head.
PG’s artful repetition of the fragment “what they saw” expresses his suppressed fury at Israel’s ongoing moral repugnance. I wonder, once this blood libel is debunked, if he will revisit this thread and more importantly his own priors. In such a sharp mind it’s difficult to imagine the thought framework required to arrive at this fury. PG presumes it’s true; wanting to believe it’s true requires a lot of scaffolding; actually believing it’s true requires still more.
[Update 2024 Oct 19:] Nope, he’s still at it, retweeting more of this kind of thing. Though the only thing he’s tweeted on the topic himself since is this on October 17th:
When I first saw this tweet I was horrified. Then I read the account name and I was relieved. This is from 1940. Then I remembered that the same things are happening right now, and I was horrified again.
He’s referring to this tweet from @RealTimeWWII:
Kennington Park rescue worker: “Whole thing’s blown to bits- heads, arms, legs, feet lying about. Only way you can tell girls from the men is their hair.”
Thursday, October 3rd, 2024
David Goldman often looks to demographics. “Improbable as it may seem,” he writes, “the core scenario according to present trends will make Israel the economic center of the Middle East sometime toward the end of the century.”
David Goldman tours the world with Caroline Glick with an emphasis on Israel and China.
Tuesday, October 1st, 2024
Ohad Merlin’s Indigenous Pact:
Israel’s challenge in the next stage is to create a mirror image of [Iran’s] bloody proxy war. Everywhere Iran has sent its arms – that’s where Israel needs to forge alliances and contribute to the cutting of the regime’s arms. Following Ben-Gurion’s “Periphery Alliance” and Begin’s “Minority Alliance” policies, Israel must now forge the “Indigenous Alliance” between the Jewish people and other indigenous peoples and religious communities in the Middle East who are suffering under the oppression of Khamenei and his emissaries throughout the region: Druze, Arabs, Kurds, Sunnis, Christian denominations, anti-regime Shiites – and fight the Islamic Republic together.
Been wondering who is this Khaled Hassan on the Twitters. My pet theory: there’s gonna be a lot more converts to Judaism like him once this damn war is won. It’s gonna be like moving to the New World.
Monday, September 30th, 2024
“There’s something so dazzling about the contemporaneousness of the attacks,” articulates Abe Greenwald on this celebratory episode of the Commentary Daily Podcast.
Netanyahu speaks in English directly to the Iranian people. Portentously, given the newfound utter credibility he has after the last month of military voodoo, he says: “When Iran is finally free — and that moment will come a lot sooner than people think — everything will be different.” Italics mine.
One thing does give me pause: that this is really a speech for a United States President to make. Maybe though I’m thinking too small and it is actually an Israel-scale job to take on Iran while the USA focuses on the larger-power horizon. Maybe it’s actually a fine one-two posture where the USA is willing to defend Israel to the point of insisting others contribute, then is unhappy yet ultimately tolerant when Israeli goes on the offensive. But regardless, you go to war with the army and allies you have.
Thanks for this, jpod. In “Israel Rises”, at his Commentary Magazine, John Podhoretz feels compelled to give thanks by listing Israel’s military successes in the past month.
Whatever the divisions and concerns and cautions inside the corridors of power about the astonishing onslaught of Israel against the Iran Axis of Evil, the fact is Israel stared into the abyss and said, “Not today. Not this week. Not this month. Not ever.”
Saturday, September 28th, 2024
Through perhaps gritted teeth and scripted statements and a day later, Biden/Harris nonetheless take the win. The line: “a measure of justice” has been served.
What a day, what a night. Between one thing and another this war has become epic. Yediot reports on the lead-up to the Nasrallah attack, emphasizing that Bibi approved it before his UN speech and that it is a continuation of the operation that began with the pagers [Hebrew]. I’d like to know when precisely it happened: presumably during the speech? And which countries stayed and who walked out. And how many people watched it around the world. And on which platforms.
Sunday, September 22nd, 2024
The whole purpose of Hezbollah from Iran’s perspective, which provides its rocket arsenal, funding, and training, was to deter Israel from ever attacking Tehran’s nuclear facilities, lest it give up its ace in the hole.
What if Sinwar had led Hezbollah into a war it was not ready to fight, with the IDF achieving massive strategic surprise and suddenly degrading the Hezbollah threat to a point where it no longer served to deter the Jewish state from acting against Iran?
Indeed, and it seems yet to have sunk in, the massive scale of Israel’s victory. On Israeli TV today I saw one pseudo-intelligent panelist warning his colleagues against crowing and maintain humility. Well, we’ve wallowed lower than humility this past year; hostages still in tunnels notwithstanding, Israel’s preparations have born huge fruit these last few days and weeks.
History twists and turns in mysterious ways. The way may soon be clear to move on to the final threat — Iran’s regime. If we prevail — and the alternative is rather unthinkable — the longer-term future is cascadingly bright. As Michael Ledeen was wont to end his articles: Faster, please!
Wednesday, September 18th, 2024
What’s nice, impressive and persuasive in this Jerusalem Post analysis by Yonah Jeremy Bob laying out the case that war with Lebanon is now closer, is that it’s due to eminently sensible rather than the media’s usual ludicrously cynical motivations. For instance:
Despite Netanyahu’s publicly threatening words and tone, another major reason that war has not broken out is that the prime minister was privately terrified of how many Israelis might die from an estimated Hezbollah onslaught of 6,000-8,000 rockets per day.
While “terrified” seems an unnecessarily disparaging choice of word, nonetheless the meaning is clear: Netanyahu is adjusting to the fluid situation that is war. What he deemed reckless and premature 10 months ago may be the obvious and inevitable now.
On August 25, the IDF did not just beat Hezbollah – it cleaned house … The military blew up the vast majority of the rockets and drones with which Hezbollah had intended to attack Israel before these threats could even be launched.
In this particular attack, Hezbollah neither killed nor damaged anyone or anything of significance, while the IDF destroyed thousands of rockets.
Suddenly, Netanyahu has a newfound confidence: that he actually can afford a major operation against Hezbollah – with much fewer losses to the home front than he had expected.
Bob’s editors might not like it, but there’s a way to describe this in two words: responsible leadership.
Monday, September 16th, 2024
What if the USA acted like the USA?
But of course, the US and all decent people worldwide condemned the Hamas murders. The Biden-Harris administration was “pained” by the murders (not outraged) and toothlessly jabbered that “Hamas leaders will pay for these crimes.” But this was not followed up by any moves against the genocidal terrorist group and its regional backers: anything concrete that would impose “full accountability” on Hamas.
Rather, the Hamas execution of Israeli hostages was followed up by pressure on Israel to make concessions to the perpetrators and essentially concede defeat to them. President Biden took to the microphone to accuse Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of “not doing enough” to secure a hostage deal.
Another scathing piece on Biden.
Thursday, August 29th, 2024
Once again Herb Keinon is proving his worth as veteran Jerusalem Post diplomatic correspondent. For the first time I’m seeing argued that the October 7th invasion has changed Israeli doctrine: threats must no longer be allowed to metastasize but instead must be nipped in the bud, unpleasantness and opprobriation notwithstanding. So Israel has made the most powerful incursion since Sharon ordered Operation Defensive Shield in 2002.
Just for shits and giggles, here is The Guardian addressing the same topic. Holding my nose, I quote two hall-of-mirrors sentences:
The world’s powers must ask why they seem incapable of finding an agreement to end the current bloodshed. Without a deal, faith in the global institutions risks withering away.
What does the first sentence even mean? Which powers? The implications here are multi-fold: 1) it is outside forces who must impose an agreement, rather than an attacked nationstate defeating the terror army that attacked it. 2) Such powers are actually able to impose this agreement but are just pretending they can’t due to certain reasons — presumably Jewish influence on them. 3) In the real world, global institutions are being eroded not by Israel fighting for its survival but by the cynical lawfare campaign being waged against it, with total disregard for the long-term viability of such institutions by submerging them in, yes, genocidal politicized mendacity.
I am annoyed with myself I even looked at this twisted stuff.
Tuesday, August 20th, 2024
Biden enabled this infamy too: in The Telegraph, Richard Kemp skewers the ICC on Israel.
Our assessment was that the IDF was complying with international law. We pointed out that they have been making greater efforts and employing more sophisticated procedures than any other armies to mitigate harm to civilians.
I am grateful that The Telegraph at least is promoting such common sense views to the great British public and beyond.
Thursday, August 8th, 2024
Haviv Rettig-Gur rants [Hebrew] about how Betzalel Smotrich’s statements are undermining support for Israel. While Rettig-Gur is impressive, nobody elected him; indeed it sounds to me like has a case of burnout over business class and should take a break from jetsetting on Israelis’ behalf.
Wednesday, August 7th, 2024
What a grim and ghastly tale of the Jew as the Jonah. The Israeli team has been booted out of an international youth frisbee competition in Ghent, Belgium due to safety concerns after the Israelis were threatened. My nephew is in this team. Is it fear or fetish or both, this surrender to islamothugs.
Tuesday, August 6th, 2024
Former Labour (then Kadima) minister Chaim Ramon points out the Likud’s folly in tacitly supporting Hamas, partially in an effort not to interfere against Palestinian violent splintering. I admit guilty in supporting this in-retrospect-too-clever-by-half approach. The Right was guilty of supporting religious Palestinians just as before them the Left was guilty of supporting secular ones, misguided by the notion that they just want what we want, ie, to just get on with it, building things and having as good a time as possible.
The very special Mike Doran hints at why he votes based on a candidate’s Israel policy (in response to Elon Musk’s enumeration of why he will vote for Trump):
I vote on Israel. The Israel test is the simplest and most elegant. The candidate that is best on Israel will be best on all the other things. I guarantee it. There are profound political and cultural reasons for this fact.
Someone asked him to explicate this. Here’s one quick stab at a vector: Supporting Israel demonstrates both powerful intelligence and strength of character: to be able to power down through overloaded linguistic chimeras, ie, towers of lies big and small, then have the intellectual integrity to choose not to look away but digest the (many) resulting conclusions, and finally have the courage to express support despite local social disapproval, with the faith that it’ll be ok to do so.
Wednesday, July 31st, 2024
As I awaken here in Hod Hasharon to the news of Ismael Haniye’s assassination — in Teheran, and with a rocket! [Update 2024 Aug 3: Apparently not a rocket but a pre-planted bomb] — I’m almost weepy with glee at this humiliation of the mullahs. As I survey media reactions, I see the BBC’s take by their “diplomatic correspondent” in Jerusalem:
While details of the attack slowly emerge, its political consequences are also coming into focus. The most obvious is the likely damage to fragile efforts to negotiate a ceasefire in Gaza. … American officials had recently suggested that ceasefire negotiations might soon succeed, although a meeting in Rome last weekend did not result in a breakthrough. But it’s extremely hard to see how any progress can be made in the immediate wake of the assassination of Haniyeh. All of which begs the question: if this was, as everyone assumes, an Israeli operation, why was it carried out? Beyond the desire to exact revenge on anyone associated with Hamas, what was Israel hoping to achieve? Turkey’s foreign ministry has already summed up the likely reaction of many in the region — accusing Benjamin Netanyahu of having “no intention of achieving peace”.
While this hack does qualify his analysis with “it’s extremely hard to see how any progress can be made in the immediate wake…”, grudgingly alluding to the fact that the opposite is more likely true: that putting the leaders themselves in danger is likely to make them pressure Sinwar to indeed come to a deal in order to preserve themselves, the tone and subtext nonetheless remains true to BBC form: if only Israel could control its murderous inclinations, they’d be alright.
Fuck the BBC — though even as I write that, I recall the profound love I had for that word growing up, seeing it on the credits of Camberwick Green and whatnot.
It’s also of note that he chooses Turkey’s government as the voice of authority, even while disdaining to bother with their requested name change to Türkiye. The Turks were so deluded thinking the Anglosphere would bother with umlauts — about as typographically likely as not serving beer down the local.
Sunday, June 23rd, 2024
1948
Benny Morris
First bought and read a dozen years ago, and mostly forgotten, I returned to Benny Morris’s 1948 now during the post-October 7th Israel-Gaza conflict, for which 1948’s War of Independence serves in a number of ways as a distant mirror. Although 1967’s Six Day War seems to loom larger in consciousness, 1948 was the big one, the epoch-definer.
Even back then, Israel labored under a diplomatic situation where it was held back from victory. This time around the Palestinians have different weapons: no Arab armies, but lopsided savagery, projectile warfare, a dedicated sponsor and participant in Tehran, Western cultural cognitive decline, and lawfare from a corrupted globalist establishment. The book, with its encyclopedic ambitions, suffers from one sin of history: it does not elicit mental images of many of the events it describes, such as the battles around Gaza between Israel and Egypt. That said, it’s a vital primer.
Tuesday, June 11th, 2024
I’ve heard people such as Dan Senor not understand the electoral logic behind President Biden’s pandering to Hamas supporters in Michigan. Like others, Senor cannot even imagine the only logical conclusion: it comes not from cynicism and expedience but rather ideology and belief (as much as this ethics-challenged pol can muster at any rate). In a devastating list-like article akin to a mordant Victor Davis Hanson column, Morton Klein reminds that Biden is not an Israel-friendly president. If he is not the architect of our current woes he is at least the midwife.
Biden has been hostile to Israel since day one of his administration before Michigan was a twinkle in his eye. Moreover, Biden stands to lose more Jewish and pro-Israel votes than he gains from anti-Israel communities, as 80% of Americans support Israel over Hamas. I thus believe that the real reason for Biden’s anti-Israel policies is Biden’s longstanding and sinister hostility to Israel.
In the last few days John Podhoretz has been coming to this conclusion, but sees it as the ranting of a senile old man, rather than long-held tendencies.
Thursday, June 6th, 2024
Salem Alketbi in The Jerusalem Post on Arab do-nothing-ism vis-a-vis Gaza. It’s great to hear this pragmatic, humanist voice coming from the UAE.
What remains unspoken about the Arab role in Gaza is the lack of a collective political vision for a solution to the crisis, despite the fact that it has been ongoing for over seven months. Instead, they have settled for official face-saving statements, while refraining from calling a spade a spade and without playing any real role in saving the Palestinian people from the ruthlessness of the Iran-backed Hamas faction.
Gaymen and ladies in San Francisco, your true colors shining through…
Tuesday, May 28th, 2024
Anything with eggplant, you can’t lose, ok?
Mark Wolters, Tel Aviv: The Don’ts of Visiting Tel Aviv, Israel
Friday, May 24th, 2024
Yossi Klein-Halevi: We have to own the strangeness of our story. I’ve been having similar thoughts; there is no comparable nation to Israel. Right from the get go we endemically punch way above our weight — this small nation sandwiched between bigger empires declared its god to be the only one, negating everyone else’s! It’s a world religion that — unlike any other world religion — doesn’t proselytize because it’s the religion of a nation, so grows through the womb not the meme. Always being small in one’s arena means always being a target.
Saturday, May 18th, 2024
Sense from John Spencer as reported by CNN of all outlets.
By going slowly, I can argue through history and through metrics, it gives your enemy more time to defend, more time to prevent your plans, more time to prevent you from achieving surprise. We, as in the world, are also responsible for some of the destruction that’s happened in Gaza.
Friday, May 17th, 2024
We are at a moment where what’s morally indefensible is becoming socially acceptable.
Tal Becker, “Call Me Back”, May 16th
Tuesday, May 14th, 2024
David Wurmser at the Center for Security Policy, the first I’ve come across to synthesize Israel’s Eurovision popular vote win:
Israel seems to be casting some light that is shining onto populations and peoples far away, triggering in them a rediscovery of themselves and what made those distant lands and cultures great.
He notes the dichotomy between the popular vote and the judges:
Many of the nations in which Israel won the popular vote by wide margins had their judges award Israel zero points. Western European elites led the trend: the UK, Switzerland, Luxembourg, San Marino, Spain, Finland, Australia, Italy, Netherlands, Portugal, Andorra, Belgium, and Sweden all had been won by Israel with 12 points on the popular vote, but all had the judged award Israel zero points. Four of the five UK judges had ranked Israel as the worst song of the 35.
Sunday, May 12th, 2024
Just when you think Bidenite kindergarten diplomacy couldn’t get any worse, can it be true that they are withholding intelligence from Israel on Hamas leaders’ whereabouts? No, if I had to wager I’d say this Washington Post story is not true; it’s just too egregious.
The Daily Mail seems to cover all angles of Eurovision 2024 in this sprawling report. Politics aside, I thought the Irish entry was pretty amazingly performed. I missed the Swiss song as too many bland numbers had forced me away from the screen, and my faith in Eurovision songwriting is not up to searching for it to listen to it. But mainly: I was totally taken aback by the number of votes for Israel; I know there’d been a campaign to do so and supporters probably went out and bought extra SIMs — Jews vote — but surely not in enough numbers to achieve the level reached; the mostly-European public spoke and it was briefly intensely heartwarming. As was seeing Eden Golan’s return to Israel at Benny-G arrivals.
Sunday, May 5th, 2024
I cannot (yet) follow Lee Smith to his conclusion that the Biden Administrations’ goal is American decline and defeat (though there was a strong strain of this in its precursor Obama Administration); rather than conspiratorial and malevolent, it seems more likely due to the more common weaknesses of delusion and cowardice.
Moreover Israel shares some blame for being weak-willed enough in recent months to go along with the Administration’s tacit protection of Hamas.
Benny Morris, prescient in 2008:
Many Israelis feel that the walls — and history — are closing in on their 60-year-old state, much as they felt in early June 1967, just before Israel launched the Six-Day War.
Thursday, April 25th, 2024
In contrast with the Jonathan Freedland piece I linked to earlier, Armin Rosen’s survey “The Israel-Gaza war has changed everything: The norms of war are being rewritten in real-time” in Unherd is simultaneously more detailed yet more humble.
Much of what’s happened since October 7 is without any real precedent … we are deep into the unknown, and were there long before this past week. The sides have notched accomplishments that are both novel and gruesome enough to demand real analytic humility…
Jonathan Freedman, a Jewish columnist for The Guardian, which in itself tells a tale, pens a column “In this shadow war between Iran and Israel, the outline of a different future is visible”. I can understand Palestinians’ disgusting murderous thuggery better than I can understand such sickly magpies within the nest. And he may not even be wrong in his conclusions! It’s the myriad of little things that bug me, the Olympian chin-rubbing despite being Jewish himself. First, the subtitle, which perhaps he didn’t write, but nonetheless reflects his conclusion:
Both seem keen to limit hostilities, and key Arab states are ready to resist Tehran. But real change will require new Israeli leadership
Israel is required to change its government! (No need for any change in Iran.)
It doesn’t help that the leaderships in both Iran and Israel are under constant pressure from elements that are even more bellicose.
Some insane and insulting parallels are being drawn here.
The hitherto crypto-alliance of Israel and those Sunni states that fear Tehran more than they fear Tel Aviv has stepped into the light.
Fear Tel Aviv? Firstly, that’s Jerusalem to you bub, though given that The Guardian is a British publication, which still shamefully does not recognize Israel as Jerusalem’s capital — I mean Jerusalem as Israel’s capital — no doubt “Tel Aviv” is editorial policy, but you are complicit in this policy, your name is in the byline. Secondly: fear? Hate I would say is more accurate; the Arabs never feared that Israel was going to invade or overthrow them.
Israel would have to do what the US and others are asking: offer the Palestinians a political horizon, one that holds out the prospect of an eventual Palestinian state.
Which others are these? Westerners project their desire for a Palestinian state onto Middle Easterners, who only pay lip service to this notion, because they are close enough to know that Palestinians are part of the problem not the solution. Resolving to being just like the Ayatollahs where it matters, Palestinians’ modus operandi is mass murder and the destabilization and overthrow of any polity they can, so that responsible Middle Easterners prefer to see them contained not empowered.
Normally I would just skip over such pap as this, especially if in The Guardian, which I only look at occasionally for movie reviews and design inspiration. But Israel’s Channel 12 hosts the Unholy podcast with Freedland to which people I know listen to devotedly, and who know him personally slightly as he sends his kids to the same Jewish school in northwest London. Why oh why does he not know better.
Wednesday, April 17th, 2024
Amidst all this it’s a happy thought that Germany sold Israel a doomsday device (Dolphin subs) and a couple of decades later Israel is selling Germany an anti-doomsday device. Ben-Gurion and Adenhauer.
Tuesday, April 16th, 2024
OK I need to stop reading the news, but one more, this diatribe in Arutz7:
To me, the word “State” has demeaning connotations in the English speaking world. What other country on this planet is referred to and refers to itself as the State of…….? To be referred to as a “State” implies a not quite equal status with other nations, implying some benevolent authority has graciously bestowed a degree of autonomy to Israel. It is time that Israelis and Diaspora Jews refer to Israel as Israel, period.
I see no need to take issue with the term “state”; we are in good company with the United States of America. Like them we explicitly acknowledge the legalistic framework within which the American and Israeli peoples live at liberty. There may even be some positive connotations; we live now in a state of Israel, as opposed to the previous state. At any rate, many nationstates have political prefixes that are ignored and shortened to their national names: République française is just France, for example, and the State of Israel is usually referred to as just Israel.
Giora Eiland’s commentary on Channel 12 last night warranted its own story this morning on Arutz7, with him arguing that the response to Iran’s attack should be to focus on Lebanon.
Israel does not need to attack in Iran. There is no reason for it, and it has the potential to become complicated militarily, as well as regionally and with all of our friends – and the achievement will not be significant, regardless. If you want to put Iranians in their place and maybe even test them – there are two other arenas: One is in Syria.
There is merit here, though I think his suggested mechanism, to announce Israel’s return to the North for the school year, is fatuous. Both the low- and the high-level attacks from Hamas and Iran respectively point to a response aginst the mid-level main threat from Lebanon. Even if it doesn’t happen visibly — Bibi’s response seems to be to keep things simple and retaliate against actual perpetrators — it does feel like the appropriate true focus.
Kudos to Britain’s Daily Mail for publishing the Foundation for Defense of Democracies’ piece “Why Israel’s failure to strike back at Iran could lead to NUCLEAR WAR” by FDD’s chief exec Mark Dubowitz and senior fellow Jacob Nagel.
Israel was acting well within the rules of its dangerous neighborhood by taking out [Mohammad Reza Zahedi, commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Quds Force in Syria and Lebanon]. But the Ayatollah responded with a potentially catastrophic barrage on Israeli civilians, military bases and government facilities. If Iran walks away from this moment without paying a severe price, Tehran may be emboldened to deploy its weapons again. And the next time, these drones and missiles may be armed with nuclear or chemical payloads.
Their conclusion is indisputable and anything else is either appeasement or overthinking.
