Love of the Land: Israel Prepares for the Enemy It Faces

Israel Prepares for the Enemy It Faces

Jennifer Rubin
Contentions/Commentary
21 April '10

In contrast with the Obama administration, which perpetually talks down the potential for a military strike, Israeli officials are beginning to talk openly about such action. The Wall Street Journal reports:

The Israeli security establishment is divided over whether it needs Washington’s blessing if Israel decides to attack Iran, Israeli officials say, as the U.S. campaign for sanctions drags on and Tehran steadily develops greater nuclear capability.

Some senior Israeli officials say in interviews that they see signs Washington may be willing to live with a nuclear-armed Iran, an eventuality that Israel says it won’t accept. Compounding Israeli concerns were U.S. statements this past weekend that underscored U.S. resistance to a military option. Defense Secretary Robert Gates on Sunday discussed a memo to National Security Adviser James Jones warning that the U.S. needed new strategies, including how to contain a nuclear Iran—suggesting that Iran could reach nuclear capability without any foreign military force trying to stop it.

Until now Bibi has played along both with the Obama engagement gambit and the sanctions effort, but we now hear that “Israeli officials have increasingly voiced frustration over the slow pace of diplomatic efforts to get sanctions in place.” We are, after all, running out of time. The concern for the Israelis tells us much about the state of U.S.-Israel relations and the real weak link in going after Iranian nuclear capabilities:

Many Israeli military experts say Israel can easily cope with any military retaliation by Iran in response to a strike. Iran’s medium-range rockets would cause damage and casualties in Israel, but they aren’t very accurate, and Israel’s sophisticated missile-defense system would likely knock many out midflight.

(Read full post)

Love of the Land: Israel Prepares for the Enemy It Faces

Love of the Land: First, Do No Harm

First, Do No Harm

Evelyn Gordon
Contentions/Commentary
07 January '10

After Israeli media reported yesterday that White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel had threatened to curtail U.S. involvement in Israeli-Palestinian talks, the White House rushed to deny it. That’s a pity — because curtailing U.S. involvement would be far more helpful than what special envoy George Mitchell is actually doing.

Interviewed by PBS yesterday, Mitchell (as Jennifer noted) declared: “We think that the negotiation should last no more than two years … Personally I think it can be done in a shorter period of time.”

That, frankly, is ridiculous. In 16 years of talks, the parties have yet to resolve a single final-status issue. Just 15 months ago, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas rejected an Israeli offer of 94 percent of the West Bank, territorial exchanges for the remainder, and international Muslim control over the Temple Mount. Current Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will certainly offer no more, and probably not as much. So what does Mitchell think will happen in the next two years to suddenly make Abbas abandon positions he has stuck to for the last 16 — or else make Israel agree to suicide by, for instance, accepting Abbas’ demand that it absorb 4.7 million Palestinian “refugees”?

Nor need one be “anti-peace” to recognize this. Here’s the first sentence of a column published in the left-wing Israeli paper Haaretz yesterday by its leftist, pro-peace diplomatic correspondent, Aluf Benn: “Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman is right: During the next two years Israel will not reach a permanent status agreement with the Palestinians.”

Love of the Land: First, Do No Harm

Love of the Land: Andrew Sullivan: It’s Time to Invade Israel

Andrew Sullivan: It’s Time to Invade Israel

Marine Barracks/Beirut

23 October 83

Noah Pollak
Contentions/Commentary
06 January '10

Click here to visit crazy town:

My own view is moving toward supporting a direct American military imposition of a two-state solution, with NATO troops on the borders of the new states of Palestine and Israel. I’m sick of having a great power like the US being dictated to in the conduct of its own foreign policy.

Presumably the direct American military imposition of a two-state solution would involve the Marines going house to house in Gaza City. Talk about American soldiers dying for Israel! For someone who has spent the past few years denouncing the hubris of American military intervention in the Middle East, this is heady stuff.

Love of the Land: Andrew Sullivan: It’s Time to Invade Israel

Love of the Land: BBC Removes Misinformation on US, Israel, Geneva Convention

BBC Removes Misinformation on US, Israel, Geneva Convention

Gilead Ini
CAMERA Media Analysis
05 January '10

As a result of CAMERA's formal complaint to the BBC, the British media giant removed inaccurate information from its Web site about the Geneva Accords and the Arab-Israeli conflict.

The BBC's online informational piece, which since 2004 had been featured on the BBC Web site's "In Depth" section under the headline "The Geneva Conventions," included two egregious distortions. It sharply misled readers by concealing the extent of the United States' departure from its Carter-era position on the legality of settlements; and it quoted a passage from an American report's section on the "Palestinian perspective," casting the passage as representing the view held by the author of the report when in fact it was merely describing the Palestinian position.

The Historical US Position on Settlements

The article asserted: "The United States has in the past called the settlements illegal, but has more recently used milder language, at least in public."

This reference to "milder language" was extremely disingenuous. It was during the Carter administration that the US last referred to settlements as illegal. But the president that followed, Ronald Reagan, explicitly and publicly asserted that the settlements are "not illegal." In the Feb. 3, 1981 edition of the New York Times, Reagan noted: "As to the West Bank, I believe the settlements there — I disagreed when the previous Administration referred to them as illegal, they're not illegal."

Reagan's explicit statement that settlements are "not illegal" cannot fairly be described simply as "milder language" than that of previous administrations. It represents nothing less than an overturning of Mr. Carter's position.

(Read full article)

Love of the Land: BBC Removes Misinformation on US, Israel, Geneva Convention

Love of the Land: An Israeli Comes to the Defense of Obama and His Frum* Jewish Aides and Supporters. Well, Sort Of

An Israeli Comes to the Defense of Obama and His Frum* Jewish Aides and Supporters. Well, Sort Of

Lenny Ben-David
I*Consult
1 December 09

(First time usage I've seen of Newest Testament" Jews; Jews who have embraced the new American Jewish religion of tikkun olam [fix the world] liberalism.)

This week a senior respected Israeli analyst asked me to look back and decide, "Are we seeing the worst crisis in U.S.-Israel relations? Is this the worst ever administration from Israel's perspective?" Also this week an Israeli minister termed President Obama's administration "awful," and an Israeli political activist was quoted in Israel's largest circulation paper as saying, "The Obama regime is anti-Jewish and anti-Semitic."

To all, I respond with the strongest possible retorts: balderdash, tripe, silliness and stupidity! There are other serious ideological problems with this U.S. administration which results in rock-bottom popularity for the US president in Israel but the labels of "anti-Semitic" or "the worst" are bum raps.
Just look at the history.

IN 1957, the Eisenhower administration threatened to come down hard on the fledgling Israel, including removing UJA's tax-exempt status, as a way of pressuring Israel to withdraw from the Sinai Peninsula.

In 1970, Richard Nixon threatened to cut the supply of 50 F-4 Phantoms to Israel because of insults hurled at French Premier Georges Pompidou by Jewish-American activists in New York. The demonstrations led the notoriously anti-Israel columnists Rowland Evans and Robert Novak to bray, "More than any president since Dwight Eisenhower, Mr. Nixon has shown a tough realism in trying to stake out the correct US policy in the inflamed Middle East without kowtowing to the large and highly influential Jewish vote." [Note Evans and Novak beat by more than 35 years professors Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer, the authors of the 2007 The Israel Lobby a distinctly unoriginal diatribe against Jewish influence on foreign policy. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose (the more things change, the more they stay the same.)]

Observers feared the worst in U.S.-Israel relations in 1975 when the Ford Administration weighed a "reassessment" of American policy in the Middle East, including cutting aid to Israel.

In the 1980s, Ronald Reagan earned a place in history as one of Israel's strongest friends, but his administration included strong critics of Israel such as vice president George H.W. Bush and defense secretary Caspar Weinberger. The sale of AWACS, just the tip of a massive arms sale and a realignment of US policy to embrace Saudi Arabia, took place under Reagan's watch, and the political war cry of "Reagan or Begin" was broadcast to suggest American Jews' dual loyalties. Arms to Israel were embargoed and delayed after the 1981 Osirak reactor bombing and the 1982 Lebanon War. And the Pollard affair pulled the U.S.-Israel relationship to new lows.

Could relations have been worse than when George Bush Sr. went on national TV to challenge 1000 Jewish lobbyists to block $10 billion in housing loan guarantees over the issue of settlements at a time when hundreds of thousands of Soviet Jews were flowing into Israel? Actually, yes, they worsened when his secretary of state, James Baker, was quoted as saying, "F*** the Jews, they don't vote for us anyway."

YOU GET the point: Anti-Semitism and crises in the U.S.-Israel relationship have existed in the past, and there is simply nothing like it in the current U.S. administration. Arms embargos and aid cut-offs then truly endangered Israel's security and gave Arab states tangible proof that American support for Israel was assailable. There is no such talk of cuts today. In fact, the strong support given to Israel by Congress and the unprecedented joint anti-missile exercise carried out by US and Israeli armed forces last month should put to rest the canard of an anti-Israel America.

So why the pervasive malaise about the Obama administration - a distrust so deep that Obama's popularity in Israel is equal to the margin of error? Well, Obama's failure to visit Israel doesn't improve his popularity, nor does his repeated cold-shouldering of Israel's prime minister.

(Continue article)

Love of the Land: An Israeli Comes to the Defense of Obama and His Frum* Jewish Aides and Supporters. Well, Sort Of

Love of the Land: Brezinski Calls for Obama to Shoot Down Israeli Jets; "A Liberty in Reverse"

Brezinski Calls for Obama to Shoot Down Israeli Jets; "A Liberty in Reverse"

Posted by Michael Goldfarb
The Weekly Standard
21 September 09

(It's not to difficult to understand why Carter's survived only one term as President surrounded by such dazzling intellects.)

In a little noticed interview with the Daily Beast (presumably little noticed because serious people don't read the Daily Beast), Zbigniew Brzezinski suggests that Barack Obama do more than just refuse to support an Israeli strike on Iran's nuclear sites -- the American president must give the order to shoot down Israeli aircraft as they cross Iraqi airspace:

DB: How aggressive can Obama be in insisting to the Israelis that a military strike might be in America’s worst interest?

Brzezinski: We are not exactly impotent little babies. They have to fly over our airspace in Iraq. Are we just going to sit there and watch?

DB: What if they fly over anyway?

Brzezinski: Well, we have to be serious about denying them that right. That means a denial where you aren’t just saying it. If they fly over, you go up and confront them. They have the choice of turning back or not. No one wishes for this but it could be a Liberty in reverse.

Contrary to Brezinski's half-hearted disclaimer that no one wishes for such an outcome, there are plenty on the left who would delight in a pitched battle between the United States and Israel. Democrats in Congress routinely support resolutions affirming Israel's right to take whatever steps it deems necessary to assure its own national defense. And Obama has at least paid lip service to the concept. But hostility to Israel among the rank and file is very real on the left -- and among "realists."

So conjure the image -- the Obama administration sending U.S. aircraft up to protect Iran's airspace and it's nuclear installations from an attack by a democracy that is one of America's closest allies. Unfortunately, this may not be so hard to imagine in Israel, where the number of people who believe Obama is pro-Israel is at just 4 percent -- and falling. And given Obama's (literally) submissive posture to the Saudis, his indulgence of the Iranians, and his simultaneously hard-line approach to Israel, it seems even some of Obama's supporters can savor the possibility of a "reverse Liberty."

Love of the Land: Brezinski Calls for Obama to Shoot Down Israeli Jets; "A Liberty in Reverse"