A nuclear weapon in the hands of the Iranians would have a
large-scale, negative geopolitical effect on the Middle East, but the
probability that the weapon would actually be used is extremely small.
However, the physical damage caused if it were to be used is essentially
infinite. With the withdrawal from Sinai, Israel became a point target
for a nuclear bomb. The product of the probability and damage incurred
is, therefore, incalculable.
The probability of Hezbollah launching its reservoir of missiles and
rockets against Israel is substantial. The theories discussed about our
ability to deter them from taking such an action are not on very solid
ground. Multiplying such a subjective probability by the damage that is
likely to be incurred produces a result, which although indefinite,
should be of grave concern to all.
Whereas the Iranian nuclear threat has been occupying our civilian
and military leadership these past years – and constant efforts have
been made to slow down the Iranian nuclear program – excepting civil
defense programs conducted by the Israel Defense Forces Home Front,
Israel’s answer to the Hezbollah rocket and missile threat has been
limited to a reliance on a dubious theory of deterrence. The opportunity
to destroy Hamas’ rocket capability in Gaza was missed during Operation
Protective Edge last summer.
From year to year, Hezbollah’s rocket and missile threat has grown in
numbers, range and accuracy. Despite the efforts that were made over
the years to interfere with the supply of weapons to Hezbollah from Iran
and Syria, the Shi’ite group’s capabilities to cause severe damage to
Israel’s civilian population and infrastructure has continued to grow.
It should be clear the hope that Israel will be able to deter Hezbollah
from utilizing this capability cannot be considered an adequate strategy
for Israel.
Lebanon received the first installment of $3 billion worth of French
weapons paid for by Saudi Arabia on Monday, part of a four-year plan to
help arm Beirut in its battle against jihadi groups.
The handover
ceremony held at Beirut's international airport was attended by Lebanese
and French defense ministers and top army officers.
The deal aims
to boost Lebanon's military as it struggles to contain a rising tide of
violence linked to the civil war in neighboring Syria.
Iran also wishes to arm the Lebanese army.
Lebanon announced the surprise $3 billion grant from Saudi Arabia in
December 2013. Since then, Riyadh's regional rival, Iran, also has said
it is ready to provide aid to the Lebanese army. Many Lebanese view
these offers as part of a competition for influence over their tiny
country, which is riven by sectarian fissures.
The Lebanese army is generally seen as a unifying force in Lebanon, and draws its ranks from all of the country's sects.
Netanyahu's mentor blasts him for supporting 'Palestinian state'
The man who launched Prime Minister Netanyahu's political career, Moshe Arens, blasts Prime Minister Netanyahu for his support for a 'Palestinian state' in a column in Tuesday's Haaretz.
Like then-Prime Minister Ehud Barak, who 13 years ago offered
then-Palestinian President Yasser Arafat almost everything, including
the Temple Mount, and on being refused declared proudly that he had now
proved that there was really nobody to talk to on the Palestinian side.
Presumably, it will be another victory for Israeli PR.
And
if, believe it or not, Abbas is prepared to accept the Israeli offer,
Israel will have saved itself from becoming a "binational" state, will
have removed the stigma of being an "occupier," or a "colonial power,"
as Justice Minister Tzipi Livni says, and will be applauded by the whole
"international community." So it's "win-win." Either way we come out
smelling like a rose.
But
not so fast. If Abbas remains obstinate, despite the Israeli enticement
and American pressure, will this really be a net gain for Israel? Will
the offer of Judea and Samaria rejected by Abbas then just vanish, like a
concession written on ice that melts with the first heat wave,
disappearing forever? Not on your life. What was offered first by Barak,
then by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and now by Netanyahu, will be
written in stone and require Herculean efforts in the future to erase. A
net loss.
If
he agrees, what then? A solution to the Palestinian problem, an end to
the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and no further demands by the
Palestinians on Israel - neither for the right of return nor for
additional territory - in other words, peace? Not by a long shot.
Just listen to Netanyahu speaking
at Mount Herzl on the 109th anniversary of the death of Theodor Herzl,
and listen closely: "[W]e do not want a binational country. However, let
no one delude themselves into thinking that if we reach an agreement
with the Palestinians it would erase the wild slander against the Jewish
state."
What
does that mean? An agreement with Abbas won't be the end of the
conflict and it won't be peace. And there will be additional demands
made on Israel and there will be rockets falling on Israel - but the
heart of the Land of Israel, Judea and Samaria, will have been abandoned
by Israel.
Arens appointed then 32-year old Binyamin Netanyahu to be his deputy when Arens was appointed Ambassador to the United States in January 1982. Netanyahu stayed in that position through 1984 (including spending nearly every night of the First Lebanon War in the summer of 1982 being interviewed by Ted Koppel on Nightline, which was how he became a household name in the US), when he became Israel's Ambassador to the United Nations for four years.
One of my Twitter trolls issued a challenge today, saying that if Assad has the S-300, why isn't Israel hitting him? (Note that I do not respond to Twitter trolls with less than about 1,000 followers on Twitter - it's not worth giving them the exposure). But there are several answers to that question. One is that the fact that Assad says he has the S-300 doesn't mean he has the S-300. In fact, Israel is checking that report now.
And if anyone thinks that Israel does not have the capability of seeing what Assad is doing, maybe this report will change your mind.
Israel tracks
every heavy missile fired in the Syrian civil war, keen to study
Damascus's combat doctrines and deployments and ready to fend off a
feared first attack on its turf, a senior Israeli military officer said
on Thursday.
Colonel Zvika Haimovich of the
air defence corps said southward launches against Syrian insurgents by
President Bashar al-Assad's forces gave Israel mere seconds in which to
determine it was not the true target - a distinction that could prove
crucial for warding off an unprecedented regional conflagration.
"Syria's
batteries are in a high state of operability, ready to fire at short
notice. All it would take is a few degrees' change in the flight path to
endanger us," he told Reuters in an interview at his base in Palmachim,
south of Tel Aviv.
...
Long-range radars feed real-time data on the
barrages to Haimovich's command bunker, where officers brace to activate
Arrow II, a U.S.-backed Israeli missile shield that has yet to be
tested in battle.
The more threatening launches set off sirens across Palmachim, whose warplanes also await orders to scramble.
...
"We are looking at all aspects, from the
performance of the weaponry to the way the Syrians are using it. They
have used everything that I am aware exists in their missile and rocket
arsenal. They are improving all the time, and so are we, but we need to
study this, and to be prepared."
He
would not detail how Israel determines a missile fired in its direction
will not cross the border, saying only that the process took "more than
a few seconds, but not much more".
Another
Israeli expert, speaking on condition of anonymity, said it combined
split-second analysis of the strength of the launch with up-to-date
intelligence on Assad's intentions.
Haimovich also described as 'credible,' a report that Assad has used up about half of his SCUD missiles. Read the whole thing.
Finally, here's former Defense Minister Moshe Arens talking about the delivery of the S-300 to Syria in an interview this morning on Israel Radio.
Let's go to the videotape (Hebrew with English translation).
Let's put it this way: Have the Russians yet confirmed that they delivered the S-300 to Syria? Not that I have heard.
Arens: Shamir warned Bush he was going to attack Iraq
Former Prime Minister Itzhak Shamir passed away during the course of the Sabbath. He was 96-years old. Shamir will be buried in the part of Mt. Herzl that is reserved for the country's leadership in a state funeral on Monday. I don't think Shamir would be pleased with much of what is said about him here.
Shamir was the state’s seventh prime minister from 1983 to 1984 and again from 1986 to 1992, the longest-serving premier after David Ben-Gurion. He was known for resisting international pressure to make concessions, yet initiated a peace process in Madrid that led to many diplomatic overtures by his successors.
“The truth is that, in the final analysis, the search for peace has always been a matter of who would tire of the struggle first, and blink,” he wrote in his autobiography.
Shamir also served as foreign minister, Knesset speaker and opposition head, and was an agent in the Mossad. He was among the leaders of the Stern Group (Lehi) in the Jewish underground in Mandatory Palestine.
President Shimon Peres, who fought bitterly with Shamir in the 1980s, issued a statement in which he described Shamir as a courageous fighter both before and after the establishment of the state. Peres said Shamir had left a lasting legacy of bravery.
“He remained true to his beliefs, was a great patriot of his people and a great lover of Israel who served the nation loyally and with great dedication for many years,” Peres said.
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said Shamir “belonged to the generation of giants that established the State of Israel and fought for the freedom of the Jewish people in its land.”
He said Shamir, whose family died in the Holocaust, fought in the Stern Group and as prime minister to build up the security of the state and ensure its future out of concern for its citizens.
“We lost a great man who was a great leader, who was fundamentally a man of the people,” Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin said.
“To really understand him and his refusal to be enticed by diplomatic overtures that would have weakened Israel, you had to have heard him speak on Holocaust Remembrance Day,” he continued.
“Shamir was a symbol of Israel’s rising from the ashes of the Holocaust to strength and staying power. Out of this developed his personality as an enlightened realist and a stiff ideologue who withstood internal and external pressure and fought to prevent a situation in which the people of Israel will not have their own land and state.”
By contrast, Deputy Prime Minister Dan Meridor, who served as a minister in Shamir’s cabinet, praised Shamir for negotiating with the Palestinians, initiating peace talks in Madrid and resisting pressure to attack Iraq after Saddam Hussein fired Scud missiles at Israel during the First Gulf War.
...
Although known as a hardliner, Shamir nonetheless showed teeth-gritting restraint during the 1991 Gulf War. At the urging of the United States, he held Israel’s fire in the face of Scud missile salvoes by dictator Saddam Hussein rather than retaliate and endanger the US alliance with Arab powers battling to expel Iraq from Kuwait.
His forbearance on that occasion drove home Israel’s consideration for Washington’s Middle East interests.
“I can think of nothing that went more against my grain as a Jew and a Zionist, nothing more opposed to the ideology on which my life has been based, than the decision I took... to ask the people of Israel to accept the burden of restraint,” Shamir said later.
After the war, US president George H.W. Bush called on Israel to accept multi-party peace talks with the Arabs. His administration drove home the demand by postponing $10 billion in US loan guarantees that the Shamir government needed to absorb new immigrants.
Shamir hinted darkly that Bush, the leader of the country’s most important ally, was an anti-Semite but relented on attending the Madrid peace conference, where he became the first Israeli leader to sit opposite Palestinian, Syrian, Jordanian and Lebanese delegates.
One has to wonder whether deep down Shamir understood that Madrid was a mistake. The 'Palestinian' delegates were supposed to be a part of the Jordanian delegation, which became a joke when it was discovered that they were reporting to Arafat.
We no longer have to wonder whether Shamir regarded the restraint during the Gulf War as a mistake. Moshe Arens, who was Israel's ambassador to Washington at the time, told Israel Radio on Sunday morning that Shamir sent him to warn George H.W. Bush, who was President at the time, that Israel had it with restraint and was going to attack Iraq. Before Israel could attack, a cease fire was declared. Bush repaid Shamir by withholding loan guaranties, as noted above, and by working for his defeat in 1992 elections. I doubt that restraint during Gulf War I is something Shamir would want as his legacy.
Lenny Ben David says that Prime Minister Netanyahu should have reminded President Obama of how poorly the US 'had our back' during the 1991 Gulf War.
According to Moshe Arens, Israel’s defense minister at the time, his American counterparts “expected that within 48 hours the U.S. Air Force would eliminate the missile launch capability of the Iraqis. If it turned out that they were not going to be able to do it within 48 hours, Israel would be free to take whatever action it considered appropriate.”
Not a single Scud missile or launcher was knocked out by American planes, not just in the first 48 hours, but during the whole war. Yet President Bush and Secretary of State James Baker insisted that Israel continue its restraint and not “spoil” their coalition. They assured Israel that the most modern Patriot anti-aircraft missiles would be dispatched to Israel and would be able to shoot down the Scuds. Post-war analysis showed that not a single Scud was intercepted by the Patriots.
Meanwhile, the commander of the American coalition, Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf, objected to the number of American planes hunting Scuds in western Iraq, wanting to redirect U.S. aircraft to the Kuwait front.
At the height of the war Arens was sent to Washington to meet with President Bush. In a 21-year-old news account that could actually describe Prime Minister Netanyahu’s meetings in Washington last week, The New York Times wrote, “An administration official said Arens seemed to be ‘laying the groundwork if the Israelis decide to retaliate.’ The administration official said that in the talks with Bush, Arens ‘didn’t say absolutely that the Israelis were going to retaliate. But he didn’t say they were not, either. He made a very emotional presentation, though.”
Unlike the politicians and pundits cited by Ben David, I think that Netanyahu's Holocaust analogy was apt.
But there are also some comparisons that can or cannot be made between Gulf War I and the Iranian threat. First, Gulf War I was characterized by a misplaced emphasis on the need for a multilateral coalition. I cannot recall any US President before George H.W. Bush who insisted on a UN mandate to do what needed to be done.
Second, while I disagreed at the time with the Israeli decision to stand down (we were still living in the US then - we made aliya later that year), once the first SCUD's did not have chemical content, they were reduced from a real threat to a nuisance, and standing down was not unreasonable. I doubt that the old war horses - Shamir and Arens - would have sat still if those had been chemical missiles.
Third, the fact that the US didn't do what it said it would do on Israel's behalf in Gulf War I ought to be waved in Obama's face. There is no basis in Obama's behavior on which to trust the US again to do our dirty work and no reason for us to entrust our security to the US. Obama certainly has no warmer feelings for Israel than Bush I had. Let's face it: It was only by God's grace that there was not much more serious damage in Israel. And the Iranian threat is much stronger.
Finally, for the Israelis, what good did standing down do us in 1991? Immediately after that war, the Bush administration dragged Shamir to Madrid, cut off his loan guarantees, and did more than any Republican President not named Eisenhower to destroy Israel's special relationship with the US. I cannot tell you how happy I was when George H.W. Bush lost to Bill Clinton in 1992. Does anyone really believe Obama will be any better?
Former Defense Minister and Israeli ambassador to the US Moshe Arens puts the terrorists for Gilad trade in perspective.
And though it may be a bitter pill to swallow for Israelis, the Gilad Shalit saga was another defeat of Israel by the terrorists in Gaza. Israel had every right to celebrate his return after over five years in captivity, but we'd better not forget that we were actually marking a defeat, a strategic defeat with long-term implications. Praising ourselves for our national solidarity and for the value we attach to each individual life cannot change the fact that this was another victory for terror. Many more defeats like that for Israel will portend great danger, and we should understand just what went wrong, so that it does not happen again.
We can be sure of one thing - there will be further abductions of Israelis, soldiers or civilians. Why were we not able to find Shalit prior to Operation Cast Lead, during that operation and after the operation? What action should have been taken to find him, and who should have been charged with taking that action? Was this solely the responsibility of the Security Services, or of the IDF, or of a combined team? Who should have been responsible for setting up such a team? We are in urgent need to find the answers to these questions, if we do not want to suffer another defeat at the hands of terrorists.
Writing in Haaretz, former Defense Minister and Ambassador to the United States Moshe Arens says that Israel has not taken sufficient action against Raed Sallah and his Islamist movement.
Sheikh Ra'ad Salah was arrested in London for illegal entry into the United Kingdom. There he has been labeled by the British media as a "preacher of hate" and a "virulent anti-Semite." The sheikh is well known in Israel and Israelis can vouch for the veracity of these appellations. However Salah's attorney in London has stated quite correctly that the Northern Branch of the Islamic Movement that Salah heads "is a legitimate organization which Israel has never moved to ban."
Who can explain the blatant inconsistency between Salah's scandalous and treacherous behavior and the subversive nature of the Islamic movement he leads and their continued unhindered activity in Israel?
A reminder of who it is we are dealing with can be found in the conclusions of the Orr Commission that investigated the events of October 2000. According to the final report, Salah was guilty of "transmission of messages that negated the legitimacy of the existence of the State of Israel and presenting the state as an enemy ... he had a substantial contribution to provoking tempers and the violent and widespread outburst that took place in the Arab sector at the beginning of October 2000."
Read the whole thing. He makes a pretty good case for the proposition that Sallah is endangering the state's security.
A Dutch director claims to have seen then-Defense Minister Ariel Sharon shoot two 'Palestinian' toddlers at close range near the Sabra and Shatilla 'refugee camps' in 1982. Sharon was in Israel at the time.
The claim first appeared in the Volkskrant, the third largest paper in the Netherlands, in an interview with the well-known Dutch-Jewish director George Sluizer. According to Sluizer, 78, he witnessed Sharon killing two Palestinian toddlers with a pistol in 1982 near the refugee camp Sabra-Shatilla while filming a documentary there.
“I met Sharon and saw him kill two children before my eyes,” said Sluizer, who lives in Amsterdam. Sluizer has made several documentaries about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but is best known for directing The Vanishing with Jeff Bridges and Kiefer Sutherland in 1992.
Sluizer repeated the accusation in an interview for Vrij Nederland, an intellectual magazine, published on November 13 ahead of a screening of his film at the prestigious International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam. “Sharon shot two children like you shoot rabbits, in front of my eyes,” he said.
The children, according to Sluizer, “were toddlers, two or three years old. He shot them from a distance of 10 meters with a pistol that he carried. I was very close to him.” Sluizer added he thought this happened in November, when Sharon was Israel’s minister of defense, but he was not sure of the month.
...
Sharon’s successor as defense minister, Moshe Arens, said Sluizer’s account was “a lie.” According to Arens, “Sharon would never shoot a child and he was not in Lebanon in November of 1982. Thirdly, protocol prohibits ministers from wearing weapons. As civilians they are not allowed to carry firearms.”
Amram Mitzna, former chairman of the Israeli Labor Party who served under Sharon as head of the Syrian front during the First Lebanon War, called Sluizer’s account “total nonsense.” Mitzna added: “I attacked Sharon politically over his decisions, but Sharon would never do a thing like that. It’s completely ridiculous.”
Yossef Levy, senior spokesperson for the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, called Sluizer's account a "crude and disgraceful lie. It is hard to believe that any reasonable person would take seriously this kind of modern blood libel, which is not supported by a single shred of evidence."
This is the same country that tried to prevent Geert Wilders from running for office and put him on trial for speaking against Islam.
Read the whole thing. The only mystery about this story is why the Dutch media published it in the first place. Oops. I guess that's not such a mystery either.
Former Defense Minister and Israeli ambassador to the United States Moshe Arens writes that the 112th Congress will be good for the Jews.
As is well known, in the United States foreign policy is determined by the president. He decides and he and his secretary of state execute. Only when foreign policy decisions require budgetary allocations is the president dependent on congressional approval. At first sight it looks like there is hardly any room for the Congress to interfere or influence when it comes to foreign policy. However, there is more here than meets the eye. First of all, the new Congress is very friendly to Israel. Not that friendship, and even admiration, for Israel is limited to the Republican party - that sentiment is bipartisan and includes Democrats and Republicans alike. However, many Democrats in Congress who did not agree with the pressure that the president applied to Israel in the past two years have hesitated to voice criticism of the president's policy out of loyalty to the leader of their party.
Republicans in the new Congress will feel no such compunction. They will let the president and the country know when they disagree with him. The new Congress can be expected to be openly supportive of Israel. That means that if the president were to resume his tactic of pressuring Israel he will find himself in opposition to many in the Congress. With many other urgent items on his agenda he may not want to get into a collision with Congress on this issue. If he were to consider taking punitive measures against Israel, if he finds the Israeli government recalcitrant, he will find it difficult to get the cooperation of Congress in the areas where this is required.
It is therefore unlikely that we will see a repeat of the crises between the U.S. and Israel, real and artificial, that we witnessed in the past two years. The Israeli prime minister will not again be insulted on his visits to Washington. There'll be some changes. This Congress will not give the president a free pass on Israel.
So then why is Prime Minister Netanyahu rushing to appease President Obama?
Others disagree with Arens. For example, both Newsweek and Haaretz's Akiva Eldar believe that Israel will soon be subjected to more pressure from Obama.
Both Newsweek's writer and Eldar conclude that, as the former puts it, "when the dust clears, [Netanyahu] can expect renewed pressure to resume the settlement freeze in the West Bank and get serious in talks with the Palestinians."
Benjamin Kerstein, at that last link, believes that Netanyahu can walk between the raindrops.
The reality in Israel is now completely different. Arafat's betrayal of Clinton at Camp David in 2000, the collapse of Oslo in the carnage of the second intifada, and the all but total lack of sympathy with or support for Israel displayed by the international community throughout the upheavals of the past decade have fundamentally changed the country's domestic consensus. However Israelis may feel about specific issues like settlements and borders, the overwhelming majority are unwilling to take the same risks they took in 1994, or for that matter in 1996. Moreover, they feel they should not be asked to do so.
As long as Netanyahu keeps himself in sync with this consensus, and does not swing too far to the Left or the Right, he is likely to be relatively safe from American attempts at triangulation. Indeed, he may be in a position to indulge in a little triangulation of his own, pleasing the center-Right in Israel and the U.S. by reacting sharply to Obama's criticism of building in Jerusalem ("Jerusalem is not a settlement; Jerusalem is the capital of the State of Israel") while pleasing the center-Left by acquiescing in another temporary settlement freeze.
Barring unforeseen events, then, it is highly questionable that Obama will be able to match Clinton's effectiveness in pushing his dream of a breakthrough agreement in the Middle East on a skeptical Israeli public, or for that matter on an American public whose sympathies are running strongly in Israel's direction. Again barring unforeseen events, Obama may find himself wishing for the kind of congressional support that Clinton never needed.
I believe that it all depends on where Obama sees himself. If Obama sees himself as a viable candidate for a second term (and right now he does), then Kerstein is right and Obama will not be able to put real pressure on Israel, at least until after the 2012 elections.
But if Obama comes to the conclusion that he is destined to be a one-term President, then he is likely to be more willing to pressure Israel in a bid to create a legacy for himself. In that case, while Congress may love us, there will be little they can do for us.
I am an Orthodox Jew - some would even call me 'ultra-Orthodox.' Born in Boston, I was a corporate and securities attorney in New York City for seven years before making aliya to Israel in 1991 (I don't look it but I really am that old :-). I have been happily married to the same woman for thirty-five years, and we have eight children (bli ayin hara) ranging in age from 13 to 33 years and nine grandchildren. Four of our children are married! Before I started blogging I was a heavy contributor on a number of email lists and ran an email list called the Matzav from 2000-2004. You can contact me at: IsraelMatzav at gmail dot com
