An Al-Jazeera reporter’s death and a Palestinian culture of lies

By Yochai Guiski

In the early hours of May 11, the IDF conducted a raid in the Jenin refugee camp, which has been a hotbed of terrorist activity over the last few weeks. IDF forces, together with Shin Bet domestic security service agents, who were trying to apprehend terrorist suspects, came under heavy fire from armed Palestinians shooting wildly in the narrow streets of the camp.

During the battle, Al-Jazeera’s veteran television correspondent Shireen Abu Akleh was killed (reportedly from a shot to the head) and another of the station’s journalists was shot in the back. As Abu Akleh is also an American citizen, the United States called for a “thorough investigation into the circumstances of her death and the injury of at least one other journalist”.

Footage of gunmen shooting indiscriminately in the alleyways of Jenin alleyways was published in the media as evidence of their reckless behavior, but an analysis by the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem of the area shown in the video and the location where the reporter was shot appears to indicate that these are two different sites.

The IDF has already committed itself to investigate the tragic incident as part of its regular protocols. Defense Minister Benny Gantz addressed the issue and while stating his support for the IDF soldiers acting to protect the country, also expressed sorrow for Abu Akleh’s death. He reiterated the commitment of Israel to a thorough and transparent investigation, called upon the Palestinian leadership to conduct a joint investigation and autopsy, and promised to provide a detailed report on the issue to the parties involved.

This seems like the sensible thing to do -- conduct a joint investigation, analyze the findings, and commit to transparency and open reporting on the issue. But the actions of the Palestinian side have shown that they are committed to a different agenda -- exploit the incident to scapegoat Israel, regardless of truth, consequence, or integrity.

First, the Palestinian leadership denied Israel’s request for a joint investigation and autopsy. The Palestinians rushed Abu Akleh’s body to the Institute of Forensic Medicine at An-Najah University in Nablus where an autopsy was carried out.

Second, as evidence emerged on social media of the reckless actions of Palestinian gunmen in Jenin, there was a coordinated effort by Palestinians (and others) to destroy evidence and delete any footage on social media of the clashes in Jenin, so as to prevent the truth from emerging and to dispute the narrative about the death.

Third, a narrative that claimed Israeli forces targeted the reporter deliberately was propagated. Al Jazeera claimed that the reporter was “assassinated in cold blood”, while Hussein al-Sheikh, the Palestinian minister for civilian affairs, stated: "The truth is murdered by the bullets of the occupation”.

Fourth, the reporter was hailed as a hero by the Palestinian leadership and media. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas decided to lead a ceremony honoring Abu Akleh at the Palestinian presidential compound in Ramallah, while Hamas produced a video clip praising her work on behalf of the Palestinian people. 

At the time of writing, we are mere hours from the tragic death which has yet to be properly investigated, but one thing is already certain: The Palestinian campaign to establish a narrative of Israeli guilt and premeditation and to disrupt the ability to get to the bottom of events is in full swing.

It is no less regrettable, but nevertheless predictable, that the only Palestinian on the Hill, Congresswoman Rashida Talib, promotes these abhorrent accusations and condemns Israel as an “Apartheid state” that “continues to murder, torture and commit war crimes” and “murdered” Shireen Abu Akleh. Congresswoman Talib also used the tragedy to call for an end to U.S. aid to Israel.

So let us bring some clarity to the affair and try to cut through the propaganda and narratives that the Palestinians have inundated the media with:

The IDF operation in Jenin was part of an ongoing effort to end the wave of terror attacks, many of which originated in Jenin. The deadly attacks in Bnei Brak (March 29), Tel-Aviv (April 7), and El'ad (May 5) were all perpetrated by residents of the Jenin area.

The terrorists who conducted these attacks all worked in Israel (without a permit) and got there rather easily through gaps in the security fence. Israel has in recent years been trying to improve the social and economic conditions of the Palestinians and did not crack down on these activities. This oversight had to change when the Palestinians launched a campaign of terror attacks in Israel. The operation in Jenin was thus justified and unavoidable. 

The IDF does not target the press deliberately. Such an accusation is nothing but a blood libel, propagated by the Palestinians and their supporters, who ignore the various times Palestinians have used press insignia in terror attacks, or the fact that terror groups like Hamas have their own TV and radio stations.

Al-Jazeera is not an ordinary media outlet. Much like RT is used by Russia, Al-Jazeera is used by Qatar to promote its agenda, and acts as a propaganda channel on behalf of the Muslim Brotherhood. Al Jazeera’s venomous and sometimes unhinged criticism of Egypt and Saudi Arabia has been met with expulsions and was one of the major causes of the rift between the Gulf states and Qatar.

In the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Al-Jazeera has served as a mouthpiece for Hamas, and its blatant support for the terrorist group has even led Israel to consider shutting down its operations in the country.

The Palestinians have been trying for a long time to get into the spotlight -- by comparing themselves to Ukraine or attempting to turn Ramadan into a rallying call against Israeli control of the holy sites in Jerusalem. Using the unfortunate death of the reporter is just another attempt to gain attention.

Even at a time when fake news triumphs over reason and catchy narratives rule the day, carefully gathering and analyzing the facts should still be the right way.

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LT. Col. Yochai Guiski is a 23 year veteran of the IDF. He retired in 2020 as a Lieutenant Colonel after serving in the Israeli Military Intelligence. Yochai served in various roles including: Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories (C.O.G.A.T.), Strategic Planning Division and the Ministry of Defense (politico-military directorate). Read full bio here.

A nuclear Iran could create a Middle East nightmare

By Frank Sobchak

Much ink has been spilled over how much of a threat a nuclear Iran would pose to Israel and her allies. Most scholars and practitioners agree that allowing an aggressive, expansionist regime that has described Israel as a “one-bomb country” to acquire the most terrifying weapon ever invented would be reckless and suicidal. However, recent efforts to rekindle the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) have led to a string of pundits and politicians describing how to live with a nuclear-armed Iran.  

Before accepting such a fatalistic position, it is important to review all the potential repercussions of such a tectonic change. One rarely explored impact is the potential for further proliferation within the Middle East. If Iran crosses the nuclear threshold — which White House officials worry could happen in weeks — Saudi Arabia will do everything possible not to be left behind.  

In the intelligence world, assessing a threat is often based on two elements: capability and intent. Saudi Arabia’s nuclear program has both. In terms of capabilities, Saudi Arabia began building a 30-kilowatt research reactor in 2018, a curious decision given that producing energy through nuclear reactors is exponentially more expensive than burning fossil fuels, of which they have an abundance. More telling is that the Saudis have not agreed to inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the world’s nuclear safety and proliferation watchdog. Saudi Arabia has approximately 90,000 tons of unmined uranium, likely enough fuel for that reactor as well as a weapons program, especially if reports are correct that China helped construct a facility to process the raw ore.  

Even if Saudi Arabia decides not to obtain the materials necessary for a weapons program, such as centrifuges or plutonium reprocessing facilities, there is credible evidence that they have an agreement with Pakistan to provide nuclear weapons in the event of a crisis such as Iran becoming a nuclear power. Saudi Arabia is long believed to have financed Pakistan’s weapons program, which is assessed to have approximately 160 warheads. Several U.S. and NATO officials indicated that a small subset of those weapons is earmarked for such a crisis. Amos Yadlin, the former head of Israeli Military Intelligence, observed that if Iran acquired a nuclear weapon, “The Saudis will not wait one month. They already paid for the bomb; they will go to Pakistan and bring what they need to bring.” Those warheads could be fitted to an arsenal of intermediate-range ballistic missiles that originally were provided by China but now are produced domestically.  

In terms of indicators, there is extremely strong evidence that the kingdom has every intent to join the “smallest club on earth,” as the group of states possessing nuclear weapons has been described. One needs only to explore the official statements of its leaders to understand how clearly they have communicated their objectives. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, known as MbS, bluntly noted in 2018, “Without a doubt, if Iran developed a nuclear bomb, we will follow suit as soon as possible.” 

Such overt displays of Saudi nuclear intent are not new. As Prince Turki al-Faisal, who served as chief of intelligence and ambassador to the U.S., told a conference in 2011, “We must, as a duty to our country and people, look into all options we are given, including obtaining these weapons ourselves.” Further communicating Saudi Arabia’s stance is what it has not said: It has refused to sign nonproliferation agreements and has not agreed to bans on enriching uranium or reprocessing spent fuel — the two ways to produce weapons-grade material.  

The kingdom’s intent to acquire nuclear weapons is driven, in part, by the fact that Saudi Arabia and Iran have engaged in a series of proxy wars since Iran’s 1979 revolution. While a component of the conflict is sectarian, dating to the Sunni-Shi’a schism, the core of the struggle is for dominance and power in the Middle East. Saudi support for Iraq during the Iran-Iraq War, combined with Iranian expansionism as part of its plan for a “Shi’a crescent,” has led to conflict between surrogates in Yemen, Iraq, Lebanon and Syria. The conflict has escalated so much that even Saudi Arabia itself is not off-limits to attacks. 

In some ways, the two states parallel the nuclear pathways of similar arch-rivals Pakistan and India. Each views the other as an existential threat and if one stands poised to acquire nuclear weapons, the other will seek the same to maintain the balance of power.

Recent changes in the kingdom’s geostrategic position increase the odds of proliferation. In the past, Saudi Arabia benefitted from a warm relationship with the United States. Like Japan and South Korea, having America as a powerful friend ensured that other regional powers could not become existential threats. But that calculus has changed. Following the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, Saudi Arabia became an international pariah. President Biden publicly threatened to make the Kingdom “pay the price” and described its government as having “little social redeeming value.” Saudi Arabia is somewhat on its own now, and with the possibility of its nemesis acquiring nuclear weapons, it faces little choice but to do the same. The painful lesson of Ukraine and Libya — which gave up their nuclear weapons — is that the survival of states that don’t have nuclear weapons is at the whim of states that do.

If a Saudi acquisition of the bomb is not enough to generate concern, it should be noted that they are not the only country that stands on the precipice of proliferation. There are indications that Turkey and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) are considering developing similar programs with the hope of establishing a deterrence as well as earning the prestige that accompanies possessing a weapon that is “the destroyer of worlds.” 

Iran’s acquisition of a nuclear weapon would not be the end; it would be just the beginning. Any thinking about how the world could live with it should include the almost certain impact of further proliferation in an unstable region that is rife with systems of government that could change violently overnight. We must consider such future nightmares while we debate what must be done now with Iran.  

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Col. Frank Sobchak (Ret.), PhD is an adjunct professor at the Joint Special Operations University and has taught at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, Tufts University, The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, and The Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He holds a BS in Military History from West Point and a MA in Arab Studies from Georgetown University and a PhD in international relations from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. Read full bio here.

The Harvard Crimson’s cheap ploy

By Grant Newman

On April 29, 2022, the Harvard Crimson published an editorial by the Crimson Editorial Board in support of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement in general, and of the Harvard College Palestine Solidarity Committee in particular.  In the editorial, the Board offered “support to those who have been and continue to be subject to violence” in Judea and Samaria and condemned “unlawful killings that victimize Palestinians day in and day out.”

The editorial has not aged well. Within a week of its publication, on May 6, two Palestinian terrorists wielding an axe and a knife murdered three Jewish fathers in the Orthodox town of Elad as Israeli Independence Day celebrations came to a close. The murdered Jewish fathers left behind 16 orphans: Yonatan Habakkuk, father of five; Boaz Gol, father of five; and Oren Ben Yiftach, father of six. This act of terror makes clear that Jews, even in Israel, “have been and continue to be subject to violence” and are victims of “unlawful killings . . . day in and day out,” to use the Board’s phrasing.

The contrast between the imaginary world that the Board depicts in its editorial, on the one hand, and the real world in which Jews live, on the other, is stark.  Indeed, after comparing the two worlds, one cannot help but conclude that the Board genuinely lives in a bubble that extends not one foot beyond Harvard Yard.  The questions posed to the Board in this article are an attempt to pierce that bubble (impenetrable though it may be) and in so doing facilitate the same “civil discourse and debate” called for by the Board.

In its editorial, the Board wastes no time explaining to the reader that, despite maintaining its anonymity in the editorial, its support of BDS is in fact a truly brave act. The reason for this, according to the Board, is that “for journalists, openly condemning [Israel’s] policies poses an objective professional risk,” and so by supporting BDS, the members of the Board are supposedly risking their professions, and opening themselves up to “online harassment” — again, in each case despite the fact that the members of the Board write anonymously and as a group.

For the sake of argument, let us assume that the allegations of professional risk and online harassment of journalists who support BDS are true. Firstly, are we to believe that Harvard students are actually going to be punished for supporting BDS?  Given that Harvard College has a Palestine Solidarity Committee, one must conclude that Harvard is at least accommodating to (and perhaps even encouraging of) supporters of Palestine.  Secondly, are we to believe that being harassed online for supporting BDS is on par with, say, being punched in the back of the head in Brooklyn for wearing a kippah?  It appears that the Board is unable to comprehend that Jews in Brooklyn — let alone Elad — are subject not simply to being mocked in a virtual forum, but to actual violence and physical injury for no other reason than they have decided to wear a kippah and thereby present themselves as Jews to the physical world.  Equating even the most vitriolic online harassment with random acts of bloody violence against religious persons is naive at best, deranged at worst, and in any event indicative of the Board’s distance from physical reality.  Moreover, it appears that the Board has a distorted understanding of bravery:  Bravery is not anonymously writing as a group an editorial with which the vast majority of fellow Harvard students, faculty, and staff will agree; on the contrary, bravery is openly wearing a kippah knowing that there is a material chance that doing so will result in being punched in the back of the head in one’s neighborhood while walking home from work (if not from school).  The very fact that the Board draws attention first and foremost to the supposed sacrifice its members are making by anonymously supporting BDS, while ignoring, for example, antisemitic violence against religious Jews in Brooklyn, shows both the self-interest with which the Board published its editorial and how out of touch the Board’s members are from the reality in which Jews live in Brooklyn, Elad and beyond.

But the assumption made at the beginning of the preceding paragraph regarding professional risk and online harassment is far from certain.  For example, during Operation Guardian of the Walls in May 2021 it was discovered that AP News was allowing Hamas to hide in its headquarters in the al-Jalaal Building in Gaza, believing that Israel would not strike the headquarters of AP News.  (AP News was wrong and Israel liquidated the al-Jalaal Building on May 15, 2021, citing its use as a hideout by Hamas.)  Given that AP News not only acted as a cheerleader of Hamas during the conflict but even went so far as to have its journalists act as human shields for Hamas, are we to believe that members of the Board are at risk professionally for supporting BDS?  If members of the Board are at any professional risk, then it likely is that merely supporting BDS is insufficient, as it seems that journalists who work for the likes of AP News now must not only write articles in support of Hamas but also must be prepared to die to protect Hamas and further its interests.

One must conclude that the Board lives in an imaginary world where online harassment and professional risk represent the outer limits of comprehensible pain and suffering.  Unknown to its members is the pain and suffering experienced in the real world that exists beyond the bubble that is Harvard Yard, whether such pain and suffering are felt and experienced in Brooklyn or Elad. As such, one must seriously discount the editorial of the Board and take it for what it is:  A cheap ploy by insular college students to signal their virtue and position themselves on the “right” side of history (as the term “history” is understood in Harvard Yard, if not beyond).

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Grant Newman graduated from Harvard Law School where he was an executive editor of the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy. Grant was the recipient of the Federalist Society’s James Madison Award in 2019, and was active in the Alliance for Israel. Prior to law school, Grant graduated from Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, with a degree in Business Strategy. Read full bio here.

Iowa Passes First State Antisemitism Bill

By Mark Goldfeder

On Wednesday, Iowa became the first state in the nation to pass a bill adopting the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism for use when assessing the motivation behind illegal discriminatory conduct.

The bill, which is based on a model I drafted, was first introduced in Iowa over two years ago by the Israeli American Council, but it stalled during the Covid-19 shutdowns. Similar bills are currently pending in Georgia, Tennessee, New Jersey, and Arizona, and a number of other states are also considering such legislation. South Carolina and Florida have already adopted IHRA for similar use in their education systems, and a total of 19 states have endorsed the definition in some fashion.

Iowa deserves a lot of credit for being the first to get the job done, especially because there has been so much misinformation spread about the subject. As more and more states move to pass these laws with wide bipartisan support, it is important for the public to be crystal clear about what activities they do and don’t affect.

None of the bills in question in any way limit or chill any person or organization’s freedom of speech or expression. None of the bills create any new protected class, or enhance any punishment, or regulate or restrict academic freedom. Anyone can say whatever they want, however abhorrent, about Jews and about the Jewish state. Antisemitic speech is constitutionally protected—just like racist and sexist speech—and none of the bills attempt to change that. Of course, it is true that the IHRA definition should not (and could not legally) be used as a speech code of any sort, but that is explicitly not what these bills do. Those who continue to claim otherwise are either purposely misleading the public or inexcusably ill-informed.

Practically speaking, these so-called ‘”antisemitism bills” are, in fact, quite narrow. All they do is ensure that when analyzing the intent behind illegal discriminatory actions that target Jewish people, when there is an allegation that the action was motivated by anti-Jewish sentiment, authorities consider (as rebuttable evidence) the world’s most well-accepted definition of antisemitism. For the record, that definition has already been officially adopted by over 865 separate governments, NGOs and other key institutions—including several departments of our own federal government.

Some people are genuinely curious about why these bills are necessary and important—after all, illegal discrimination is by definition already unlawful.

The bills are necessary as it relates to antisemitism because Jewish identity is so potentially multifaceted, (incorporating, as it does, aspects of religion, race, culture, national origin and ethnicity,) that without a standard definition for authorities to use as a reference it is easy for antisemites to hide behind this ambiguity by committing antisemitic acts, then claiming it was not antisemitism because it was not based on this or that particular characteristic. To that end these bills do not revise any existing anti-discrimination policies; they simply clarify a term and ensure that the rules will not be applied arbitrarily.

These bills are important as it relates to antisemitism because while Jews make up only 2% of the U.S. population, they account for 60% of all hate crimes directed at a specific religious group, and 13% of hate crimes overall. Unfortunately, those numbers are rising, and yet despite the demonstrable prevalence of antisemitic incidents, nearly half of all Americans say they have either never even heard the word antisemitism, or at the very least do not know what it means. You cannot fight a problem if you cannot recognize and define it.

Some have asked why Jews deserve their own group clarification. To be clear, these bills are not about establishing Jewish exceptionalism; they are just about ensuring equality. Jews need this additional clarification because history has shown that throughout the generations no other hatred has been this consistently amorphous and shifting. But notwithstanding the above, the importance of clarity in such definitions is not entirely unique to antisemitism. To the extent that any other group does feel that it is being routinely and systemically discriminated against, and that there is a need for a uniform consensus definition to clarify what is and is not bias-motivated illegal conduct, that group’s concerns should likewise be legislatively addressed.

Valid monitoring, informed analysis, and effective policy-making all require uniform definitions. Our states have a responsibility to protect their citizens from acts of hate and bigotry motivated by discriminatory animus—including antisemitism—and they must be given the tools to do so. Until now the absence of a legal definition of antisemitism has been an Achilles’ heel for those who expect their government to take a stronger stand against antisemitism, but this week, Iowans stood up to say that hate has no place in their state. God willing many other states will follow their lead.

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Rabbi Dr. Mark Goldfeder, Esq. has served as the founding Editor of the Cambridge University Press Series on Law and Judaism, a Trustee of the Center for Israel Education, and as an adviser to the Permanent Mission of Israel to the United Nations. Read full bio here.

INTERVIEW: Populist extremism must be ditched for national resilience

Dan Meridor interviewed by Yaakov Lappin

Former long-time Likud member and ex-Minister Dan Meridor has spent decades in the halls of Israeli power. He has played influential roles in multiple Israeli cabinets, with his last official position being deputy prime minister and minister of intelligence and atomic energy, from 2009 to 2013. A member of the Herut party, one of the forerunners of the Likud party, Meridor was close to the late prime minister Menachem Begin.

Today, nine years after leaving the political system, Meridor, 75, is more concerned than ever about what he describes as the “populist and extremist rhetoric” that has infected Israeli political discourse, and its toxic after-effects. In a wide-ranging interview with the Miryam Institute, Meridor sets out a comprehensive formula on how to rebuild Israeli national resilience and unity, based on a firm national liberal foundation.

Mr. Meridor, what do the words ‘national resilience’ mean to you?

“Let’s begin with terminology. What does the word ‘national’ mean? The word has different meanings and different contexts. In the American discourse, national means American, encompassing everyone from New York to San Francisco. It means all citizens who live in that country.

Israel is a nation-state, which is a different model. Based on the national self-determination vision of former American President Woodrow Wilson, the Jewish people formed a nation-state. So when we say national, do we mean Jews or Israeli citizens? There is an ambiguity here, and that ambiguity can be both constructive or destructive, depending on how it is used.

Israel is a majority Jewish state with a minority of Arabs living in it, some of whom refer to themselves as Palestinian-Israelis. If the word ‘national,’ in our context, means all Jews, that might sound exclusive to Arab Israelis. To be sure, I am deeply invested in my Jewish identity. It affects all aspects of my life, as it does, I believe, for most Israeli Jews. Our Jewish identity is what we are all about. But the Zionist idea came along and said that we are no longer just a community. We built a state, and in it, we are the majority nation. So when we say national and refer only to Jews, we could sound like we’re excluding non-Jewish Israelis.

There are ways of addressing this constructively, but passing the Nation-State Law [in 2018] only exasperated this tension. Where does this law leave the Arabs? What should their state be? How can we demand allegiance from them and in the same sentence tell them that this is not their state?

This is why the term national is so sensitive. We have multiple definitions of national here. I am fully Jewish and fully Israeli. We have Arab Israelis who feel fully Palestinian and Israeli. We both belong to the State of Israel.”

How has this tension played out in other nation-states around the world? Is there anything we can learn from their experience in managing it?

“Europe is filled with nation-states in which specific peoples constitute the majority, living alongside national minorities. This is the case in Russia, Hungary, Poland, and other countries. The majority-minority issue, in fact, rose to the surface in Europe in the 19th and 20th centuries, and the Jewish people played a key role in doing that.

In early 20th-century Poland, Jews numbered three million people, making up 10% of Poles. They were fully Jewish and fully Polish, so what were they? This is not a new question.

Ze’ev Jabotinsky, whose theories and ideology deeply influenced me, was one of the first to write about optimal ways of dealing with minorities, penning down his ideas on this in Helsinki in 1906. He wrote that recognizing the rights of minorities is an essential part of the Zionist vision.

In his 1923 Iron Wall essay, Jabotinsky swears in the name of his generation and in the name of his descendants that the Jewish people in the Land of Israel will never violate the equal rights of minorities. This concept is part of the DNA of Zionism’s vision of a Jewish state.

Since the start of Zionism and to this day, we remain involved in a historic conflict between Arabs and Jews. On May 15, 1948, this struggle reached a turning point when the Jews succeeded in establishing a Jewish state, with a clear-cut Jewish majority. From that point onwards, we were no longer just a community. We were a state with a Jewish majority and an Arab minority.

THAT MEANS that norms that were once acceptable for a community are no longer suitable for a state. For example, in our pre-state reality, Jewish communities in the land said they preferred Jewish manual labor, as part of the Jewish struggle to rebuild the land. Once a state came into being, however, it is no longer possible to discriminate on that basis. Similarly, in the pre-state reality, the Jewish National Fund worked intensively to purchase and develop land for Jewish communities. Now, however, in the reality of the state, the land must be allocated proportionately for all citizens of the country. The land must be for everyone living here. When I say proportionately, it is important to keep in mind that Jews are a majority.

This creates in-built tensions. At the same time, a long process of gradual integration of Israel’s non-Jewish minorities into the state has been occurring. Non-Jews are fully-fledged members of Israeli society and serve in the armed forces, where there are large numbers of Druze personnel, and a growing number of Arabs, including Bedouin, Christians, and Muslims.

Immigrants from the former Soviet Union who are not Jewish according to Halacha serve in significant numbers in the security forces.

When we speak of a national effort to fight terrorism, we need to remember that some of those doing the fighting, and some of those being killed in that fight, are not Jews. The Arab Christian police officer Amir Khoury who was killed taking on a Palestinian terrorist in Bnei Brak recently is the latest painful example.

So national resilience is based on creating unity, and that unity has to be built in an Israeli context. We are defending Israeli society here.”

In light of that, how do we define this Israeli identity, and how does it fit in with the Jewish identity of most citizens?

“Israeli identity requires a cohesive approach. First, it is important to note that the state’s Jewish identity is very clear. It favors Jewish education, literature, history, and culture. Now that we’ve established ourselves as a majority, we need to give minorities the same rights that we demanded for ourselves when we were minorities.

Druze and Arabs are in the security forces. To exclude them from the sense of Israeli national unity because they are non-Jews is both offensive and stupid.

Yet this is the dangerous place that the populist approach is leading us to. This is a discourse that is not based on values but on emotions. It is not based on ideology but on identity. It fosters the creation of groups in Israel and makes out that these groups must be in conflict.

THE FIRST step in rolling back this toxic discourse is to change the Nation-State Law, to add the basic principle of equality for all Israelis.

I have heard firsthand accounts of the pain that this law has caused patriotic citizens that come from the Druze sector. They have told me: We fight with you, we support the Jewish state, but this law alienates us.

Zionism was always about achieving a Jewish majority, based on the assumption that everyone votes in the political system. It never meant depriving non-Jewish minorities of their equal rights.

The Jewish communities that live in Britain or Switzerland accept the crosses on the national flags of those states and accept that they are minorities living in vast majorities that belong to a certain culture. So there is no reason that minorities can’t coexist justly among national majorities.

As Israeli Jews, our role in achieving this balance is to understand that we are a state, not a community, and a state belongs to all of its citizens. Because the majority of citizens here are Jewish, the state is therefore Jewish, and there is no contradiction between being a Jewish and a democratic state exactly because of this majority status.”

Now that we’ve defined what an inclusive Israeli national identity looks like, how do we in practice proceed to build it?

“Today’s politics is built on hating the other. This is a very dangerous trend, and we see it happening all over the world. The first step to strengthening unity is to understand that, as Israeli Jews, we are the winners here through the establishment of a Jewish nation-state, and in victory, we must be magnanimous.

Our Jewish heritage supports these very values. As the Book of Leviticus states: When a stranger resides with you in your land, you shall not wrong him. The stranger who resides with you shall be to you as one of your citizens; you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.

THE WAY to advance these values is leadership. Today, unfortunately, people get elected because they’ve mastered the dark art of catering to the lowest instincts of voters. They ask the voters what they want to hear, and say it. That’s not leadership – that’s being led by the masses. Leaders show the people the way and find new ways of seeing things.

In 1948, David Ben-Gurion didn’t hold a poll before declaring a Jewish state. In 1977, Menachem Begin didn’t go to the people before deciding to give up every last inch of the Sinai to an authoritarian leader from Egypt. He even faced opposition from parts of the Left over this move, such as from Yigal Alon. Yes, he had to convince the country about the wisdom of this move. But he didn’t ask the majority the right way. He created the majority, but he did not follow it. 

At Mount Sinai, the people received the Ten Commandments because otherwise, people would have committed those sins. This is human nature. People need leadership to steer them away from their base instincts. Leadership can be elected today, or appear in the form of kings and prophets in ancient times. Anyone who has influence has a responsibility to wield it in a positive manner. 

When an Arab Israeli terrorist commits an attack, it’s up to our leaders to warn against generalizing against all Arab Israelis. The vast majority of Arab Israeli citizens have nothing to do with terrorism and reject it. Arabs fill our hospital hallways saving lives every day, and Arab and Jewish doctors fought against the COVID-19 pandemic side by side.

Only strong leadership can lead the people away from generalization, not only because it is morally wrong, but because it is unwise and harms the national interest. This is the basis of building unity, and only from there can we begin to talk about resilience.”

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Yaakov Lappin, is the in-house analyst at the MirYam Institute. He provides insight and analysis for a number of media outlets, including JNS.ORG. Read full bio here.

Dan Meridor is a publishing expert with The MirYam Institute. He was Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Intelligence in the Israeli Government from 2009-2013. Read full bio here.

IRGC terror designation should not prevent Iran nuclear deal

By Chuck Freilich & Yair Golan

A nuclear deal with Iran is critical to Israel’s national security. A lifting of the US designation of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) as a terrorist group, the primary outstanding obstacle to a renewed deal, is a symbolic issue that should not be allowed to get in the way, as distasteful as it is.

The US first designated the al-Quds Force, the IRGC’s terrorist arm, as a terrorist group, in 2007. The Trump administration expanded the designation to include the entire IRGC in 2017.

A return to the previous situation, reportedly the only concession contemplated by the Biden administration, would have essentially no practical impact on US policy. The IRGC would still be subject to a series of terrorism, nuclear and human rights related sanctions. Foreign firms would still be reluctant to do business with it because of the sanctions’ secondary effects.

Symbolism may actually be Iran’s primary reason for making this otherwise unimportant demand. We fully appreciate the importance of symbolism in international affairs and there is no doubt that the IRGC is a heinous terrorist organization, responsible for the murder of Americans, Israelis and others. There are, however, more important issues at stake. It is sufficient that the al-Quds Force remain designated.

Iran is now thought to be just weeks from having sufficient fissile material for the first few nuclear bombs. It is, however, still 1-2 years from an operational missile warhead with which to deliver the weapons, a position it has been in for well over a decade.

This is clearly an intentional decision by the regime, which appears to fear that an operational warhead would be a bridge too far and potentially invite attack. The only question of importance is which option best prevents Iran from crossing the final threshold.

The primary criticism of the putative new deal is that it fails to extend the expiration dates of the original deal. In practice, most of the important limitations on Iran’s nuclear program would remain in effect until 2031, a significant period, but certainly not the long-term resolution of the issue that we all hope for. Time has a way of passing.

The other primary criticisms are a rehash of those repeated by critics ever since the original agreement was negotiated: it does not address Iran’s ballistic and cruise missile programs, drones, or regional expansionism.

All of this is true and painful, but both the Obama and Biden administrations correctly prioritized the nuclear issue and left the others to be addressed separately. In the past, this was Israel’s approach, too, and it should still be. Nuclear weapons pose a potentially existential threat, Iran’s other weapons and activities do not.

The choice that the US and Israel faced today is not, as some would have us believe, between a good deal and a bad one, but between the decidedly imperfect deal signed in 2015 and no deal at all. The argument that no deal is better than a flawed one is clearly specious. As it is, Iran has essentially already become a nuclear threshold state and, in the absence of a deal, would be free to cross the final line at the time of its choosing.

We are in the current situation and forced to contemplate further painful concessions – because of the disastrously misguided decision by president Trump with the encouragement of then-prime minister Netanyahu– to withdraw from the nuclear deal in 2018. National security decision-making is often about choosing between bad alternatives. Should a new deal not be achieved, the US and Israel will be left with the following even more problematic options:

• Sanctions – brought Iran to the negotiating table in 2015 and again now. In both cases, however, Iran steadfastly rejected anything beyond a temporary postponement of the nuclear program. Had the heightened sanctions imposed by the Trump administration remained in effect for a few more years, it is not inconceivable that they would have had the desired effect.

In reality, there is little precedent for international sanctions changing a state’s important policies or behavior and, in the meantime, the Iranian economy has adjusted and learned to live with the sanctions. Oil exports are up and trade is at pre-sanctions levels and expected to grow rapidly this year.

• Covert action and sabotage – is an important means of delaying Iran’s nuclear, missile and drone programs and should be pursued. Time gained is important, but not a solution.

• Regime change – has not occurred in the more than four decades since the revolution. If ever there was a regime that deserved to be toppled, it is Iran’s, but there is no reason to believe that it will happen in the foreseeable future, or, at least, in a time frame relevant to the nuclear issue.

• Military action – barring an unlikely breakout move by Iran, US President Joe Biden, like his predecessors who dealt with the Iranian nuclear program, has no intention of taking direct military action. Former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu refrained from doing so during his years in office.

Two other former prime ministers, Ehud Barak and Ehud Olmert, stated recently that Israel does not have the military capability to achieve more than a brief postponement of the nuclear program, at least for now. Once again, time gained is important, but not a solution, and there are other consequences to weigh.

• A regional security axis – with the Gulf and other Arab states with US backing – has now become a realistic option, thanks to the dramatic breakthrough in ties stemming from the Abraham Accords. This axis would probably focus on deterrence and defensive measures, such as a regional air defense system, i.e., management and mitigation of the threat, not resolve thereof.

Of the different options, only a renewal of the nuclear deal – if further extended – provides the basis for a long-term resolution of the issue, or at least postponement. The other options are means of managing the threat and, at best, gaining limited time.

Through a simple process of elimination, it is clear that a restoration of the nuclear deal is the best of the bad options for both the US and Israel. It is on an extension of the deal that the administration should focus, preferably during the current negotiations; unwaveringly, should this not be possible, as it nears its expiration date.

Some 40 years since the advent of Iranian terrorism and regional expansionism, thirty years after the nuclear threat first emerged, neither the US, nor Israel, have developed a coherent, comprehensive and long-term strategy for countering Iran. American policy has suffered from a lack of coherence and continuity, changing substantially with each new administration, often on the basis of questionable partisan preferences, rather than sound strategic assessment. Both the Obama and Biden administrations were perceived to be more eager to reach a deal than Iran and thus negotiated from a position of weakness.

Israel’s positions have also been strongly affected by domestic politics, but in contrast with the failings of American policy, have suffered from excessive continuity. The Bennett-Lapid government has wisely changed the atmospherics and avoided an overt conflict with the US, but essentially continued its predecessor’s policies towards Iran, restating many of the same hollow arguments against a restoration of the nuclear deal.

What is really needed, is not a choice between the above options, but a combination thereof. Diplomacy is most effective when backed up by a credible military option, indeed, the best way to ensure that one does not actually have to take military action, is to present a credible capability to do so.

This diplomatic-military strategy should be further buttressed by strong sanctions, covert operations and long-term pressure on the Iranian regime, designed to cause disruption and unrest and increase the costs associated with its malign activities.

The issue is too important to let symbolism get in the way.

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Prof. Chuck Freilich, a former Israeli deputy national security adviser, is senior fellow at the MirYam Institute and author of Israeli National Security: a New Strategy for an Era of Change. Read full bio here.

Maj.-Gen. Yair Golan (ret.) is a publishing expert with The MirYam Institute. He is a former deputy IDF chief of staff, and is Israel’s deputy minister of economics and industry. Read full bio here.

Israel likely on the way to elections in September

By Danielle Roth-Avneri

Earlier this month, the former coalition chairwoman MK Idit Silman (Yamina) dropped a bombshell. Shortly before 7 a.m. on April 6, Silman publicized a resignation letter she sent to Prime Minister Naftali Bennett -- who is chairman of Yamina -- announcing her departure from the coalition.

The immediate significance of Silman’s move is that the government’s narrow advantage over the opposition – an advantage of a single vote – is now gone, and the opposition and coalition are at a tie.

In Israeli politics, a tie means that in all likelihood, the days of this government are numbered.

The current government, which has been in power for nine months, saw Yamina become the ruling party with just six Knesset seats. As Bennett worked to achieve world peace, mediating between Russia and Ukraine, when it came to home turf he fell asleep at the wheel and his political structure simply fell apart.

Silman is a first-time Member of Knesset, serving her first term. She is from a religious-Zionist background and it took some work to convince her to enter the unity government made up of right-wing, centrist, left-wing, and Arab parties that have no common ideology.

Silman exhibited strong political-business abilities by securing the senior position of coalition chairwoman so early in her career.

One of the central features of her role is to act as the glue that binds the parties of the coalition, maintaining its unity. This is what Silman had engaged herself with since the coalition was formed.

Far from being an anonymous backbencher, she was the face of the coalition, playing a central role in maintaining the stability of the government. And then, one morning, she turned around and said she couldn’t go on anymore.

To understand why we need to look at things from Silman’s perspective. From its outset, the government was built out of incompatible puzzle pieces that seemed almost impossible to piece together.

Yet to serve the greater goal of pushing aside former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the parties managed to make it work, and they deserve credit for that achievement. Still, it was only a matter of time until the glue came unstuck, and the coalition started to crumble.

Bennett attempted to explain away Silman’s shock resignation by avoiding personal criticisms of her, leaving an unlikely path open for her to return. He pointed out that she was under constant verbal attack and harassment by Netanyahu’s supporters, as well as more militant right-wing political forces like Knesset Member Bezalel Smotrich, head of the Religious Zionist party.

This is true. Silman went through nine difficult months, experiencing repeat accusations that she is a traitor, and even her children were harassed. Yet this is all part and parcel of the political game, and the ability to stand up to such pressures should be in-built among all those who play it.

Bennett played down the significance of her resignation by arguing that it was all down to external pressure on Silman and her husband.

Attention is now on Bennett’s closest partner, Interior Minister and Yamina MK Ayelet Shaked. Shaked is an example of another right-wing politician who entered this government with great reluctance, and who has navigated a complex political situation ever since.

Now, Shaked must choose: Will she maintain allegiance to her political partner and remain with him until the government collapses, or should she dismantle the government herself and become the 61st vote in favor of the opposition, securing her legacy among the right-wing bloc?

Will she choose loyalty to Bennett, or opt for hero status on the right?

Shaked brought with her to the government Yamina’s Nir Orbach, who is chairman of the Knesset Committee, and Deputy Minister in the Prime Minister’s Office, Yamina’s Abir Kara.

The big question going forward is whether these three will move as a single unit. If they do, they would deal a fatal blow to Bennett’s position. As a result, the prime minister is intensively attempting to clarify Shaked’s goals. Ultimately, she holds the government’s fate in her hands.

As such, the Israeli political system has reached a rather absurd situation in which a prime minister who heads a party with six Knesset seats does not even control all of the occupants of those six seats.

Currently, the Knesset is in recess, and Silman’s decision will not have any immediate influence in the coming weeks.

On May 8, the Knesset will return from recess, and then it will find itself in a situation in which it cannot pass significant laws. That puts the entire country into paralysis.

The Right will seek to exploit the opportunity of a paralyzed government by searching for more defectors.

The coalition, for its part, understands that its days are numbered, and it is trying to do everything it can to survive, including appeasing the Joint Arab List, whose chairman, MK Ayman Odeh, called on Arab-Israeli members of the security forces to quit their position, a call that could constitute incitement.

The government could not wholeheartedly condemn his comments because it is fearful that may push him away. In light of the fact that Odeh should not be in the Knesset in the first place, this is a surreal development, but one that has been legitimized through the current political situation.

Despite all of the above, surprises can always occur in Israeli politics. Israel experienced four election campaigns in the past two years, and it saw prime ministers and a defense minister violate election promises to obtain power and remain there.

We must therefore remain open to the option of further surprises, and to know that another, currently unforeseen scenario, could always be around the corner.

The decision by Ra’am (United Arab List) to freeze its membership in the current coalition shows that the party can smell elections, and it is trying to position itself as a party that could break the coalition. Ra’am is the first Arab party to enter into a coalition and the government depends on it and thus has to deal with it cautiously. Nevertheless, the significance of the freeze is, at the moment, essentially spin, since the Knesset is in recess until May 8, and the move, therefore, has no significance beyond sending a defiant message to the government. 

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Danielle Roth-Avneri is an Israeli political commentator. She appears on the This Morning Program on Channel 13 Reshet TV. She is the former parliamentary correspondent of Israel Hayom, the most widely read newspaper in Israel. Read full bio here.

Israel can't allow bigots to control the narrative around the Temple Mount

By Jeremiah Rozman

In a fully rational world, it should be obvious to any observer who honestly seeks moral clarity that in a religious site sacred to multiple religions, the side that seeks to visit and pray in peace and also allows full religious freedom to the other is in the right, while the side that reacts with violence and seeks to bar the other from prayer is in the wrong. But in the real world’s cacophony of nonsense and ethical confusion, it is clear that Israel needs to forcefully, clearly, and, most importantly, publicly articulate its position to the world.

Failure to do so allows bigots and those seeking to harness bigotry to demonize Israel, arouse violence, inflame antisemitism and anti-Israel sentiment, and work to derail Israel’s budding diplomacy with its Arab neighbors. To prevail, Israel’s message must be clear: The Jewish People’s ties to the Temple Mount are an undeniable historical fact. Israel wants peace, tolerance, and religious freedom, while those who stash rocks, pipes, bottles, and weapons and engage in violent rioting are the ones who are truly desecrating the site.

While it is undeniable that since Islam’s conquest of Jerusalem in the seventh century CE, the Mosque that they built on the site of the Jewish Holy of Holies has become a Muslim holy site. Therefore, this site has been holy to Muslims for well over a millennium. No one is seeking to undermine this. However, it is also equally undeniable that the site has been holy to the Jewish people for centuries before Islam ever existed and the Jewish people never abandoned this belief. Therefore, every discussion to follow must be based upon the solid understanding that the site is indeed holy to both Muslims and Jews.

The argument that Israel seeks to take sole control over this or other holy sites is thoroughly disingenuous and has cynically been used for political purposes, with Hamas, the Palestinian Authority (PA), and Arab leaders inciting violence and hatred over peaceful Jewish worship. Their rhetoric utilizes blatant religious bigotry clearly aimed at incitement. For instance, in a 2015 speech, the ostensibly moderate Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas proclaimed: “The Al-Aqsa [Mosque] is ours… and they have no right to defile it with their filthy feet. We will not allow them to, and we will do everything in our power to protect Jerusalem… We bless every drop of blood that has been spilled for Jerusalem, which is clean and pure blood, blood spilled for Allah, Allah willing. Every martyr (Shahid) will reach Paradise, and everyone wounded will be rewarded by Allah.”

This position is not unique to extremist non-state militants. Just last week, the Arab League called to end Jewish worship on the Temple Mount, stating “Al-Aqsa and Haram al-Sharif in all its area is a sole place of worship for Muslims” and the UAE, a member of the Abraham Accords, canceled participation in a planned Israel Independence Day flyover due to the Temple Mount riots.

 The trope that Jews are trying to seize and desecrate Muslim holy sites -- “Judaizing the Temple Mount”-- has been used to foment violence since the 1920s. If Israel is “Judaizing” the Temple Mount, it is certainly taking its sweet time. One might even argue that Israel is going about it all wrong. For instance, when the Ottomans conquered Constantinople, they did not work out a deal by which Eastern Orthodox clerics and Byzantine authorities retain control over the Hagia Sophia. They just conquered it and converted it into a mosque. Israel by contrast conquered the Temple Mount in a defensive war after imploring Jordan not to attack. Upon its military victory, Israel then gave control over the Temple Mount to the Jordanian Waqf. There is no historical precedent in which a military victorious country made such a concession to a vanquished foe. One might have expected that the world would credit Israel for its tolerance.

Today, the concepts of human rights, dignity, equality, and tolerance are thankfully considered to be paramount in most of the world. The demand to bar only Jewish worship at a site that is sacred to multiple religions is akin to the worst examples of segregation. Jewish worshippers on the Temple Mount are not guilty of disrupting Muslim prayer. They are not the ones rioting, shouting, burning tires, throwing rocks, or even murdering worshippers. Indeed, neither Jews nor Israel even consider asking to ban Muslim worshippers from the holy site. While most controversial issues are some shade of gray, this is one of the most black and white ethical dilemmas. Jews want to pray and let Muslims pray. Those manufacturing a crisis want the Jews banned, period.

Unfortunately, many international leaders and the international media automatically blame Israel and thus, peaceful Jewish worship for tensions. Even the State Department called upon Israel to defuse tensions caused by Arab rioting on the Temple Mount. It is amazing that this centuries-old excuse for violence still bears weight.

If we start with assuming the best intentions of ostensibly neutral parties, the culprit behind this is ignorance, not malice. Therefore, it is less useful for Israel to bemoan antagonists for their antagonism than it is to proactively educate those inclined to take the side of those with the loudest voice. In other words, Israel cannot allow bigots to control the narrative around the Temple Mount, and it is high time its leaders get out in front with a well-articulated explanation. While many Jews and Israeli officials have made this case, the audience cannot be either those who agree with Israel’s position, or those predetermined to oppose it. Rather, Israeli leadership must make an articulate, public and unapologetic case to its Arab neighbors and the world that it respects religious freedom, demands that same respect and that it is those perpetrating violence who are truly desecrating this holy site. This is urgently needed, not just to combat antisemitism and anti-Israel sentiment, but to save the hopeful promise of the Abraham Accords.

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The views expressed do not reflect the position of the U.S. government or military and are the author's own.

Jeremiah Rozman currently works as the National Security Analyst at a DC-based think tank. From 2006-2009 he served as an infantryman in the IDF. His regional expertise is in the Middle East and Russia. He designed and taught an undergraduate course on the Arab-Israeli conflict. Read full bio here.

We need an iron fist and new intelligence capabilities

By Sharon Roffe Ofir

In July 2003, IDF Corporal Oleg Shaichat was kidnapped and murdered. Three Arab Israelis from the Galilee town of Kfar Kanna were charged with the murder.

Oleg served in the IDF’s Northern Command and headed home on leave, catching a ride. When he failed to show up at home, security forces began searching for him. Days later, the horror of the incident became clear after the soldier’s body was found in northern Israel, near Beit Rimon Junction.

Three suspects from the Arab town of Kfar Kanna near Nazareth were arrested. They later confessed to the murder, reenacted it and were put on trial at the Nazareth District Court.

Months later in April 2004, a wave of violent incidents began targeting security vehicles traveling on a road not far from the site where Oleg’s body was found.

Rock-throwing and firebombing incidents occurred on an almost nightly basis, and the Israel Police’s Northern District, together with Border Police units, decided to place an ambush in the area to target the attackers.

One night, my beeper flashed with a message that carried news of a firefight at Beit Rimon Junction. At the time, I was a reporter and when I arrived at the scene I received an update saying that a cell member had been shot and killed by security forces and others injured.

I learned another interesting fact that night: Officers found Oleg’s firearm at the scene. This caused the case against the Kfar Kanna three to unravel.

It turned out that the three were innocent, and that a terror cell called the Galilee Liberators had carried out the kidnapping and murder of the soldier. The cell formed under the nose of the Shin Bet intelligence agency. Its mission was to harm Israeli security forces.

Then, as now, public denouncements of an intelligence failure flooded the media. The weakest link that led to this failure was the inability to gather intelligence among Arab Israelis.

The same Shin Bet that does such exemplary work in the territories and thwarts hundreds of plots hatched in the territories of the Palestinian Authority has a less developed intelligence network among Arab Israelis. Even in the age of cyber, there is no replacement for HUMINT (a category of intelligence derived from information collected and provided by human sources).

In the last ten years, during the term of former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, crime in Arab society has grown and the phenomenon of illegal weapons has turned into a metastatic cancer.

Instead of strengthening the Israel Police and leading a clear policy of Shin Bet involvement, Netanyahu chose to shut his eyes and the problem exploded in Israel’s face in May 2021, during the conflict with Hamas, when waves of unrest and violence flooded Arab-Israeli towns. The same is true regarding neglect and lack of governance in the southern Negev.

In the past decade, more than 190 Israelis have been murdered in terror attacks. Tens of thousands of firearms are estimated by law enforcement to be illegally present in the Arab Israeli sector.

Israel must fight terrorism with an iron first, along with a similar battle against possession of illegal weapons, which should be classed as a security offense demanding Shin Bet intervention and the activation of its considerable intelligence capabilities. Those same capabilities that are activated in the areas of the Palestinian Authority together with the military and police need to be present here too, inside Israel.

The deadly terror attacks in Beersheba and Hadera were conducted by Arab Israelis, and these attacks serve as a stark reminder that the enormous quantities of weapons present in these areas are not only used by criminals, but also by terrorists.

This powder keg is already detonating. The policy for counteracting it must be clear.

At the same time, there are many Arab Israelis who seek to integrate into Israeli society and the country must not lose sight of that fact. Those moderates have to be strengthened, while the extremists must face a determined crackdown.

On the night of the March 27, terror was committed in Hadera by two Arab Israelis who swore allegiance to ISIS. Israel marked twenty years since the Park Hotel terror bombing in Netanya, when 30 people were murdered and 160 injured. It was the worst terror attack in Israel’s history.

Two decades later, two Border Police officers shot dead by terrorists in Hadera joined the list of victims, and since then, several more civilians have been killed.

In every generation, they rise up to destroy us, but a proper policy, the correct allocation of resources for boosting police and more severe punishments will lead to one more Israeli victory.

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MK Sharon Roffe Ofir was elected to the 24th Knesset on behalf of the Yisrael Beitenu Party. She has previously served as deputy council head, and worked as a journalist and senior lecturer in academic institutions for 24 years.. Read full bio here.

Jerusalem will determine the course of this wave of violence

By David Hacham

There is a reason the latest Palestinian terror wave in Israel proper and the West Bank has coincided with Ramadan: The Muslim holy month is an occasion for religious fervor and for some can serve as motivation for launching attacks.  

The current wave of terror has been characterized by a new generation of Palestinian assailants: young, acting alone or in small cells, lacking clear organizational affiliation, and working independently without receiving instructions from any established Palestinian organization.

From a broader perspective, it appears to be occurring as the Palestinian-Israeli conflict shifts to the margins after decades in which it topped the priorities and captured the attention of the Arab regional system since the establishment of the State of Israel.

This is a direct result of the process in which Israel and the moderate Arab camp are growing closer, as expressed by normalization agreements signed between Israel and Arab Gulf states – the UAE and Bahrain – and Morocco, and by the military-security cooperation that is being forged with Sudan.

Against this background, the Palestinian problem has been shoved into the corner. The Israeli government, with its political paralysis, is unable to take any political steps vis-à-vis the Palestinian Authority, and the conflict has been pushed into a deep freeze as a result.

Another feature of this wave of terror is Arab-Israeli operatives subscribing to the ideology of ISIS. This was the case in attacks in Beersheba and Hadera in recent weeks. The involvement of attackers subscribing to this ideology exposed a basic weakness in the detection capability of Israel’s security forces, which rely on Shin Bet intelligence monitoring, exposure, and identification of suspicious elements to prevent attacks in time.

The attacks have also shined a fresh spotlight on the ideology of ISIS, which, unlike Hamas, strives to establish a pan-Islamic caliphate here and now.   

Hamas, in contrast, a Muslim Brotherhood branch that rules Gaza, strives in the first stage of its plan to set up a Palestinian Islamic state on the ruins of Israel, from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, and only in the future to create the conditions for an Islamic caliphate.

The terrorist attack in Tel Aviv earlier this month is unusual and deserves special attention for another reason. It was carried out by the son of a senior Palestinian Authority security officer, whose organization holds coordination meetings with Israeli counterparts, and works with Israel to foil attacks.

Yet the terrorists’ father praised the atrocity committed by his son, telling crowds gathered outside of his Jenin home, “You will see the victory with Allah’s help in the coming weeks and months. And your eyes will enjoy the change. You will win freedom and will win with Allah’s help and liberate Al Aqsa’s Mosque.”

The IDF and Shin Bet have focused on Jenin and the town’s refugee camp in a series of counter-terror operations. Search and arrest operations have been taking place daily and have sparked exchanges of fire with Palestinian gunmen.

Dozens of Palestinians have been arrested on suspicion of terror activities in Jenin and its environment, as well as other areas across the West Bank.

Further fueling the flames have been ongoing incitement on social media, as well as on Palestinian television and radio. These messages express hostility and hatred to Israel in a way that can increase motivation to attack, among those who consume such content.

At the same time, incitement is surging against the security coordination in place between Israel and PA, not only among left-wing Palestinian terror organizations or Hamas but also within Fatah -- the ruling party in the Palestinian Authority. 

And yet, despite the above, the Gaza Strip has maintained almost absolute quiet for the past year.   The quiet in the Gazan arena derives first and foremost from a decision taken by the Hamas leadership to avoid border fence disturbances or attacks on Israeli targets with ballistic rockets or mortars.  

This is part of a clear trend by Hamas to secure and maintain quiet and prevent scenarios of escalation.

This is a direct result of clear priorities set by Gaza’s rulers, who are prioritizing the recovery and development of Hamas’s military-operational capabilities after the severe blows it absorbed in Operation Guardian of the Walls in May 2021.

Hamas is also advancing the rehabilitation of civilian infrastructure, with a focus on building roads and setting up new residential neighborhoods in northern Gaza, which are being built by Egypt. Gaza continues to receive monthly payments from Qatar for needy families and for subsidizing the entry of fuels from Egypt that nourish Gaza’s power station.

Hamas under current conditions has no interest currently in launching a new military conflict with Israel. In addition, the Hamas regime in Gaza is even using force in stopping Palestinian Islamic Jihad from firing rockets at Israel in response to PIJ casualties inflicted by Israeli security forces on its members in the West Bank.

Hamas’s reluctance to launch new attacks against Israel from Gaza does not stop senior Hamas members from calling for terrorist attacks against Israel and encouraging attackers to pounce in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

According to media reports, Israel sent warnings messages to Hamas via the Egyptian General Intelligence Service telling the group to restrain itself or face severe consequences.

To further consolidate the security calm in Gaza Israel is continuing to allow 12,000 Gazan workers into Israel for daily work trips. In addition, Israel is weighing the option of increasing the Gaza work permit quota to 20,000.

At the same time, any significant deterioration in clashes, particularly in the Temple Mount and Jerusalem during the sensitive period of Ramadan would increase the chances of a scenario in which Hamas joins in the clashes with Israel.

That would see a renewal of violence along the Gaza- Israel border fence, rocket attacks on southern Israeli communities and cities beyond, and infiltration attempts from Gaza via land and sea routes into Israeli territory to carry out terror attacks.

Despite the above, it is possible to cautiously conclude that at this current time there is no sign that the region is on the brink of a new intifada. Still, further lone-wolf attacks and IDF counter-measures can increase the violent dynamics to the point where the Palestinian side takes on an organized and planned dimension. Under these circumstances, the Israeli defense establishment will do well if it continues in its efforts to prevent collective punishment of Palestinians, thereby avoiding the risk of spreading the unrest and the integration of new, currently uninvolved sectors of Palestinian society into the terrorist circle.  

The military must also work rapidly to block the gaps in the security fence.

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David Hacham served for 30 years in IDF intelligence, is a former Commander of Coordination of Govt. Activities in the Territories (COGAT) and was advisor for Arab Affairs to seven Israeli Ministers of Defense. Read full bio here.

Enlarging the Israeli Police is critical for national resilience

By Alon Levavi

The current challenging security situation in Israel reflects a key fact: National resilience and domestic security are just as important as the ability to defend borders against external threats.

Add the ongoing terrorism threat faced by Israeli cities to the threat from projectiles from Lebanon and Gaza and it becomes clear that the Israel Police is simply too small to carry out its many missions.

Since 1991, the State of Israel has doubled its population, yet the police force has increased by a mere 20%. The officer-to-civilian ratio in Israel is one of the worst in the West.

To fill the gaps, the Israel Police has grown used to improvising solutions, through measures such as temporarily deploying backup forces from one district to another.

This is now occurring in the Jerusalem District, the center of friction and disturbances during the Ramadan holiday period. The technique of moving police units from place to place has plenty of costs as well. It generates organizational demoralization and creates endless logistical headaches.

Temporary measures will not enable the government to evade the need to make a decision. If the government wants to seriously boost national resilience, it would be well advised to go beyond seat-of-the-pants ‘solutions,’ like getting IDF units to go on patrol with police. It needs to strengthen the police during routine times too.

The Israel Police is the only force of its kind in the West that is responsible for both classic policing missions and emergency security situations. A life-affirming state that seeks democracy, law and order, public discipline, and the rule of law has to therefore strengthen its police force during routine.

Civilians want to see police on the streets in order to regain their sense of security. They want rapid response times to security and criminal incidents. But the resources for those expectations are simply not currently in place.

The Israel Police’s personnel are highly motivated. Recent terror attacks have, once again, demonstrated their willingness to sacrifice their own lives to protect the public’s lives and safety. Police officers ask no questions before jumping on motorbikes and taking on terrorist gunmen on city streets.

Yet the dominant narrative in Israeli society during quieter times is that the police force is ‘no good,’ incapable of providing decent service, and is of poor quality.

This narrative does not take into account the fact that the police force receives eight million calls per year, and that a million of those turn into police field responses.

When terrorism is inactive, the police becomes the public’s favorite punching bag. Only when officers go out and get killed as they tackle terrorists does the force begin to receive public credit for its dedication. This narrative harms the police’s morale in a significant manner.

This can help explain why 600 police officers quit their positions in the past year alone. If Israel wants to achieve domestic stability and prosperity, it will have to save its police, and reshape the public narrative – and not only during emergencies.

There are also many bright spots when it comes to the police’s development. Its ability to cooperate with the Shin Bet intelligence agency and the IDF is stronger than ever. Together, they form the three pillars for quashing terrorism that emanates from Judea and Samaria, Gaza, and from within Israel.

This cooperation is critical going forward.

While security forces will have to investigate how the latest string of attacks occurred, for every four or five attacks that take place, literally hundreds of terror plots have been foiled. This is accomplished through close cooperation on a daily basis between the civilian police, the Border Police’s Counter-Terrorism Unit, the Border Police, the Shin Bet, and the IDF.

Years of relative security quiet have always been deceptive. Every day, these units thwart murderous terrorist attacks.

Yet it is only when waves of attack occur that the police’s neglect comes into public focus. As such, there is no way around the need to increase the police’s budget, currently NIS 11 billion. All told, this budget is absurd in light of the quantity of missions faced by the police force.

After money is spent on salaries and pensions, barely one percent of the police budget is left for development. Fortunately, police salaries were recently raised after being intolerably low for years. But funds for development are still lacking.

In addition, building a reserves model for the Border Police can also go a long way to building a new emergency response force for domestic crises. Such a system could also retain knowledge that would otherwise get lost when Border Police officers leave their positions.

Another tool that can enable police to conduct large-scale security campaigns is the volunteer force. At its peak, the police’s volunteer force totaled 70,000. Today, it is less than half of that due to the decreased age requirements, and more stringent operational security and professional standards in place for approving new volunteers.

Volunteers act as a key bridge between the community and the police. They can help shift the toxic narrative while boosting the public’s sense of security.

In addition, it is time to examine the need to free up resources by turning some uniformed policing roles into civilian roles, particularly in office positions. There is no reason why civilians cannot fulfill some of these roles, and this is an accepted norm in other forces in the Western world. That could help increase the police’s size.

At the end of the day, if the size of the police force is not increased, the country will not be able to escape the vicious cycle of inadequate domestic security response capabilities.

A police force that is too small cannot afford the luxury of allowing officers to train, study, and gain new tools, thus creating additional harm. Afterward, complaints become common about unprofessional officers.

It is difficult to send officers for more training when they spend 24-7 dealing with crime, terrorism, and traffic. All of this stems from a lack of personnel.

The current wave of terrorism in Israel crashes on civilians, who are the intended target. The goal of terrorism is always to spread fear. To counteract this evil, building national domestic resilience during routine times is necessary. That can only be done by police, acting as the ceramic vest of the state. The time to invest is when things are quiet, rather than remembering to take improvised action during emergencies.

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Major General Alon Levavi served as a combat helicopter pilot in the Israel Air Force and later served for 34 years in the Israeli National police (INP). Read full bio here.

Cyberattacks don’t win wars

By Doron Tamir

As Russia’s war on Ukraine enters a new phase, Western countries are on heightened alert for Russian state-sponsored hacking attacks. Yet, while Moscow is capable of unleashing considerable disruption and damage through the cybersphere against Ukraine and its Western adversaries, there is no evidence to suggest that current cyber capabilities, as possessed by any state, can win wars.

Russia has developed its cyber capabilities over decades, using its large concentration of high-quality mathematicians and physicists. It only takes 20 to 30 top-level cyber attackers to build up advanced, persistent cyberattack capabilities. Russia has a tradition of doing this well — as well as it excels in the related fields of signals intelligence, encryption, and electronic intelligence.

The Russian private cyber sector is also well known around the world. The cyber capabilities of the Russian military feature one of the most advanced technological arrays of its kind. The Ukrainians are also good at cyberwarfare, due to their access to high-quality, advanced personnel, who have been “leased” by companies all over the world in recent years.

And yet, despite the above, the war in Ukraine has made clear a simple fact: Cyberwarfare won’t decide the conflict. Russia’s less-than-sweeping achievements on this front may have helped encourage it to rely increasingly on devastating conventional firepower.

It is important to address what cyber domain activities can do during a war. During Russia’s 2008 war with Georgia, the Russians disrupted their adversary’s ability to function by attacking communications systems. These systems can be blocked, but when an attacker does this, they are also blocking their own intelligence units’ ability to eavesdrop on the enemy, which can no longer communicate.

This represents a fixed dilemma when it comes to cyberattacks on communications systems. It is usually resolved by finding a balance — through the right “dosage” between cyberattacks and eavesdropping — to avoid harming the interests of those initiating the attack.

Other targets for cyberwarfare during conflicts are a state’s critical infrastructure, such as electricity networks and other sensitive core systems. Harming these targets disrupts the enemy’s ability to function and supply itself.

Transport forms another attractive target in the cyber domain. The long Russian military convoys traveling great distances in Ukraine could form a cyber target, particularly when it comes to vehicles built in the past 20 years, which have many computers onboard. Modern vehicles come with 30 to 40 computers onboard, making them highly vulnerable to cyber disruption, which in turn can significantly damage an adversary.

During wartime, states are more likely to activate state-level attacks, which require deeper technological, analytical and research capabilities than those possessed by ordinary groups of hackers. And yet the conflict in Europe demonstrates that the ability of militaries to conduct ground maneuvers remains the most influential factor in deciding the outcome of wars. Cyberattacks can disrupt and harm, but alone, they cannot win, much like an air force cannot win a war by itself, although it can play a significant role. Ultimately, even in 2022, boots on the ground are what decides armed conflicts.

There is a substantial difference between pulling a trigger and pushing “Enter.” Without the trigger, concepts of battlefield victory remain disconnected from reality. The Ukraine war has taught us that wars for territory are not a thing of the past.

One of the key lessons from the Russian invasion of Ukraine for other militaries is to not abandon land-maneuvering capabilities in favor of investing too much in technology. Both abilities are needed, but not at the expense of one or the other.

The fact of the matter is that until today, we have not seen dramatic, historic, game-changing use of cyberwarfare. No cyberattacks have sparked comparisons with the 1917 deployment of tanks by the British Army at the Battle of the Somme in World War I, or the appearance of fighter jets in 20th century combat decades later.

Rather, the cybersphere has become an additional domain together with another new domain: space. These have joined the three traditional domains of land, air and sea. Each domain requires intelligent use of tool kits, and a suitable command structure, to prove effective.

Just as there are no easy wars, there is no easy cyberattack solution that shuts down an enemy overnight.

When it comes to the West, heightened alert and readiness are certainly necessary at this time. Russian cyberattacks can target banks, hospitals and other key civilian infrastructures. But simple, basic preventative actions can solve some 70% of these problems. Basic steps, like changing passwords and software, can create real hurdles for attackers. This is particularly true if a large number of defenders change their passwords and software at the same time.

Another key lesson rapidly emerging from the war in Europe is the centrality of the cognitive struggle — or as it is more commonly known, psychological warfare. Such campaigns have very significant value in war and are easier than ever to conduct today in the digital age of social media networks.

As a result, many units from Russia and Ukraine are engaged in this struggle. It is a parallel effort to the cyber campaigns currently raging, and its significance on the battlefield, the motivation of soldiers and the understanding of each side of the general picture should not be underestimated.

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Brigadier General Doron Tamir General Doron Tamir had a distinguished military career spanning over 2 decades in the Intelligence Corps and Special forces - as the Chief Intelligence Officer in the Israeli military, where he commanded numerous military units in all aspects of the intelligence field, from signal, visual, and human intelligence, through technology and cyber, to combat and special operations. Read full bio here.

Handling of COVID-19 in Africa was a failure

By Daphne Richemond Barak

According to leading epidemiologists, getting vaccines out to the world on time, including to Africa, could prevent future mutations in the next pandemic. 

Although it might be too late now to make much of a difference given how many people have already been infected, the effort to get vaccines to the African continent on time has been a massive failure.

It’s true that many countries donated vaccines, including Israel, which despite its small size sent a million doses to African nations in December 2021. Still, according to the World Health Organization, just 11% of the population of the continent is fully vaccinated. 

The WHO said the vaccination rate needs to increase six times if Africa is to meet the 70% target set for the middle of this year. To achieve this goal, it has set up a vaccine production facility in Africa to make copies of Moderna and distribute doses across the continent. 

According to official figures, there have been 11.1 million confirmed COVID cases on the continent and 246,000 deaths. The case figures from African countries have badly underreported the full impact of the pandemic, however, as have the recorded deaths attributed to the coronavirus and its mutations. This has led some observers to claim that there was little COVID in Africa, that the continent is more resilient, or that COVID did not kill as much in Africa as it did elsewhere. 

Claims that Africa has not been affected by COVID could not be further from the truth – and we should be careful that they don’t serve as an excuse for inaction when it comes to vaccination.

ALREADY, PRIOR to the pandemic, the African continent suffered enormous vulnerabilities: climate change, armed conflict, food insecurity and health emergencies like Ebola or malaria. The pandemic has exacerbated these preexisting, often structural, vulnerabilities, adding unemployment and impeding access to humanitarian aid. The virus undoubtedly harmed efforts by humanitarian aid organizations to reach people and placed aid delivery programs on hold.

In countries like Cameroon, under-nourishment affects 10% of the population, while in Zambia, Uganda and Zimbabwe, swaths of the population suffer from lack of access to food. In Ethiopia, less than half of the population receives basic drinking water services. Levels of extreme poverty, meanwhile, remain dire in sub-Saharan Africa.

Finally, the negative effects of a pandemic are typically compounded by conflict. Ebola has shown that armed conflict makes it more difficult for any government to respond to a pandemic effectively by, for example, impeding access to affected populations and the delivery of personal protective equipment.

It is clear that the COVID pandemic has exacerbated these problems and stretched the already limited resources and capacity of some African countries. Its impact is felt beyond the health sector, magnifying existing vulnerabilities and undermining already economically unstable situations.

So whatever it is that scientists cannot understand about COVID’s impact in Africa should not come at the expense of what comes next.

With only about 11% of Africa’s population vaccinated, it is not surprising that one of the biggest mutations in the coronavirus pandemic emerged from the continent. While Omicron proved to be a less dangerous mutation, new ones are already emerging, some of which might cause higher mortality.

To put it simply, the next mutation may have different results if the world once again neglects to get vaccines to the African continent on time. In recognition of this, the WHO is taking unprecedented steps to establish vaccine production facilities in African countries. These are known as “technology transfer hubs,” and they’ve been made possible by Moderna’s tacit commitment not to enforce its patent in Africa.

SOME WILL argue that it is too late for such efforts to make much of a difference now. Serological testing in Africa has indicated that massive infection of populations already exists. For example, in Nigeria, a recent sample found that for every person who had no antibodies to the virus, 958 people did.

But learning the correct lessons now can save the world tremendous suffering in the next stages of this pandemic, or whenever the world faces the next medical challenge.

A key part of this lesson means giving technological vaccine production capacity now to countries such as Kenya, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa, Tunisia and Egypt. That will allow them to scale up production and rapidly distribute to the rest of the continent. Having the infrastructure in place can make a big difference when the next mutation or the next pandemic comes about.

Even if immunity fades following vaccination, vaccination still plays a role in containing mutations. Building vaccination capacity is something else altogether, as it enables the allocation of resources toward the creation of dedicated infrastructure. And it can be a game-changer later.

Global action and cooperation are needed to make sure that both vaccination and efforts at building vaccination capacity continue unabated in Africa. Israel’s voice is important here: it can help with research, technology and a general understanding of what it means to plan for the next hit and enhance preparedness. Israel could also take the lead in getting states to donate vaccines to the continent in a more centralized fashion and on a grander scale. Africa needs it. 

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Dr. Daphné Richemond-Barak is Assistant Professor at the Lauder School of Government, Diplomacy, and Strategy, and Senior Researcher at the International Institute for Counter-Terrorism (ICT) at the IDC Herzliya. She is also an Adjunct Scholar at the Modern War Institute at West Point and a publishing Expert at The MirYam Institute. Read full bio here.

Israel’s delicate navigation options in the face of Russia’s war

By Arthur Koll

When considering Israel’s diplomatic maneuvering options in the face of Russia’s war on Ukraine, it is important to first take stock of the fundamental, relevant facts.

The first of these is that Russia shares a common border with Israel. In northwest Syria, Russia is present in large air and naval bases and maintains a significant military presence. This forms a central consideration for Israel.

Russia has been a strategic pillar for Assad’s political (and physical) survival. Without Russian-provided military equipment and air power, the Assad regime could not have won its civil war.

Russian surface-to-air missile batteries – the most advanced in the world – are on Syrian soil, including the S-300 battery that Syria received from Russia, and the S-400, the peak of Russian air defense capabilities, operated by Russian forces in the country.

These assets could potentially form a major threat, not only to Israel’s military freedom of action in the crowded Syrian skies but also to civil aviation in Israeli airspace. As a result, Israel places enormous weight on the dialogue with Russia.

This dialogue occurs as Israel works to prevent the entrenchment of Iran in Syria. Understandings with Russia play a hugely important role in this context, and undermining these understandings could have significant consequences.

In addition, Israel is dealing with a two-dimensional Iranian threat. The first is the Iranian nuclear program. The Russian war on Ukraine has led to a delay of the signature on the revived Iranian nuclear program, despite America’s desire to fast-forward completion of the talks so that it can focus on Ukraine.

Meanwhile, the world has developed a new thirst for oil after disruption to Russia’s exports, and a post-nuclear deal Iran can help quench some of that thirst, particularly if the West upgrades the sanctions on Russia to include import of oil.

Surprisingly, while both the Iranians and the West have exhibited willingness to complete the deal, it has been Russia that introduced a new clause demanding exception from sanctions placed on it when it comes to its ties with Iran.

This has led to a return to consultations, which took several days to resolve until Russia said it received the necessary guarantees from Washington.

Whatever happens with the nuclear agreement, from the Israeli perspective, it is vital that it remains free to deal with the second dimension of the Iranian threat, namely its regional military-terrorist entrenchment program, particularly in Syria.

These factors form Israel’s principal considerations, which do not vanish as Russia mercilessly pounds Ukraine. While Israeli public opinion is firmly on the side of the Ukrainian people, Israel’s government does not have the luxury of ignoring key national security calculations.

Thus, Israel has adopted a policy that condemns the aggression by Moscow. It co-sponsored the UN General Assembly condemning the Russian invasion, provides humanitarian and medical aid, and has also made clear that it will not become a route to bypass economic sanctions on Russia. However, Israel has declined Ukraine’s request for Israeli military equipment.

To date, the United States has a full understanding of Israel’s array of considerations and its careful maneuvering.

Furthermore, Washington has found Israel’s role as a mediator between Kyiv and Moscow useful, although, so far, both sides remain too far apart for compromise solutions at this time.

There is no doubt that Israel’s stance and the practical steps are being tested and examined every day by decision-makers in Jerusalem. This is not a ‘fire and forget’ policy, and it may not remain static if the war drags on for months longer.

As warnings of chemical attacks by Russia continue to hover in the background, they serve as a reminder of the fact that critical changes in the situation in Europe, such as a WMD attack, or continued unrestrained Russian shelling, will obligate Israel to reassess its current position.

This would lead Israel to lose its position of mediator, but this is less important compared to the fact that it could lead to undesired elevated tension between Israel and Russia in the Middle East, should Russia choose to escalate.

In addition, should the situation change, the US could demand more categorical statements and actions from Israel as part of an alignment with Washington.

Israel is after all a part of the Western camp and enjoys a special alliance with the US. American support for Israel, past, present, and future, is of strategic vitality that cannot be exaggerated. This is backed by shared Israeli – American values. Hence, if the US demands a stronger Israeli posture on the European war, Israel will not be able to remain aloof.

Lastly, Israel’s handling of the Ukrainian refugee crisis began poorly but has improved steadily with time. Many of the Ukrainians headed for Israel are eligible for automatic citizenship under the Right of Return.

Should tens of thousands arrive, this will present a considerable event for a state the size of Israel.

At the same time, unforced and morally inappropriate errors were made by Israel in the initial reception of non-Jewish refugees. As Jews, we remember the dark days of the 1930s when the world shut its doors to us, and we could not escape the inferno of the Holocaust. As a nation that experienced this, we can’t turn away the small number of Ukrainian refugees who knock on our door. Most of them do not view Israel as their final destination.

Fortunately, on March 13, the Israeli government improved its policy and enabled thousands of additional Ukrainian refugees to claim asylum in Israel.

With no end to the crisis in sight at this time, Israel must prepare to keep adapting its policies as the situation evolves.

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Ambassador Arthur Koll is the former Deputy Director-General of the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, where he concluded his service as the head of the Media and Public Affairs Division. He is a former Ambassador of Israel to the Republic of Serbia and Montenegro and served as instructor of the National Defense College. Mr. Koll also served as Consul of the Israeli Consulate in Atlanta, USA and as Director of Projects for the Central Europe & Eurasia Division.

Will the UAE bring change to the UN Security Council?

By Daphne Richemond Barak

The United Arab Emirates became a nonpermanent member of the United Nations Security Council in January and will hold the position for the next two years.

For a country that perceives itself as a world leader in multiple areas and a key regional player, the UAE’s ascension to the Security Council fits neatly with its vision of promoting innovation, inclusion, resilience and peace.

Other UAE initiatives, like sending a probe to Mars, cleverly promote the same kind of ambitions, this time on behalf of the Arab world.

The UAE’s election to the Security Council happened around the same time as the signing of the Abraham Accords in August 2020. Like the Abraham Accords, this was the result of lengthy, successful planning by Emirati leaders. Arab states seeking endorsements as nonpermanent members have traditionally sought the support of the Arab League. The UAE received this endorsement in 2012, once again showing that achieving this position was a long time in the making and not an overnight move.

This is the second time that the UAE serves on the Security Council (the last time was in 1986-87), and this represents no small achievement for the rather small state, amid over 190 UN member states.

Ambassador Lana Nusseibeh, who has been the UAE’s representative at the UN since 2013, has been a vocal promoter of women’s empowerment in diplomacy, peace and security. She has vowed to make two-thirds of her office staff women, and she is certainly a nonconformist and an interesting character, while aligning her activities closely to the UAE’s political elite. She will no doubt lead initiatives at the Security Council and influence its agenda.

This is also an opportunity for the UAE to play a more prominent role vis-à-vis other international institutions: Nusseibeh recently met with the new prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Karim Khan, to engage on regional and global issues.

From a geopolitical perspective, the UAE’s presence on the Security Council could be influential.

On the one hand, the UAE cannot veto resolutions, but on the other, for a resolution to pass at the council, four out of 10 nonpermanent members need to vote in favor (in addition to the concurring votes of the five permanent members, Russia, China, the UK, the US and France).

This means that the nonpermanent members have a distinct influence on the passage of resolutions.

The UAE now has an opportunity to further push the issue of the Iranian-backed Houthis, who have recently been behind a series of UAV and missile attacks on the UAE, and to seek recognition of the Houthis as a terrorist organization.

Tensions between the US and Russia can spill over into the Security Council, and the UAE may be forced to take a position on Ukraine-related issues, placing it in the spotlight. Voting on these “hot” issues could potentially embarrass Russia and China – two superpowers with which the UAE is keen to maintain proper relations. Russia is an important player in the Middle East, and the UAE will likely tread carefully on any votes regarding the evolving situation in Europe.

Ultimately, although the position on the Council affords the UAE influence, it can also be a trap when votes are called for on difficult topics that can alienate world powers.

The UAE could also use its privileged position on the Security Council to advance Palestinian issues, and perhaps to urge Israel and the Palestinian Authority to kick-start negotiations in the future.

But here, too, the UAE could face tricky situations. A resolution on Israel or on Palestinian membership at the UN, even if an unlikely scenario, would require the UAE to vote – and any vote it casts could upset fellow council members. Even abstaining, in a situation like this, is a statement.

FOR ISRAEL, the question of whether it has a new ally on the powerful Security Council is a valid one to ask. The other nine nonpermanent members include countries friendly to Israel, such as Albania, Kenya and India. Importantly, Israel has diplomatic relations with all countries currently serving on the council.

Whether or not the UAE’s position on the Security Council will alter the council’s dynamics remains to be seen, but what can be stated with more confidence is that the current composition of the council is quite favorable to Israel.

Opportunities could arise for Israel to work with the UAE on issues of common interest at the UN, from climate change to international security and pandemic readiness. Israel could also use this opportunity to share its concerns on the buildup of Hezbollah’s military capabilities in Lebanon, and the inaction of Lebanese authorities.

The big question going forward is whether the UAE’s new influence at the Security Council will, over the next two years, trickle down to the rest of the United Nations.

With three new Arab countries normalizing ties with Israel, the traditional tendency of Arab countries to vote with one another as a bloc might fade over time.

Greater sub-bloc cooperation between the UAE, Bahrain and Morocco, as well as possibly Saudi Arabia, could become a feature, and not only on issues related to Israel. The arrival of the UAE on the Security Council could help kick-start this process.

There is also the possibility that this process of change could affect the infamous UN Human Rights Council.

In November 2021, a joint statement was issued at the Human Rights Council on the role of women in peace and security as part of a joint initiative of the UAE, Bahrain, Israel and Morocco. Another 51 states signed on to this historic statement. Is this a small sign of change? Quite possibly.

At the same time, it is important to remember that the UAE is highly skilled at cultivating and maintaining good relations with everyone – including Turkey and Iran. The UAE does not cut off dialogue with anyone.

The UAE can be expected to figure out how to balance opposing pressures, whether at the regional or global levels, while promoting its interests. This could make for an interesting two years at the Security Council and the General Assembly.

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Dr. Daphné Richemond-Barak is Assistant Professor at the Lauder School of Government, Diplomacy, and Strategy, and Senior Researcher at the International Institute for Counter-Terrorism (ICT) at the IDC Herzliya. She is also an Adjunct Scholar at the Modern War Institute at West Point and a publishing Expert at The MirYam Institute. Read full bio here.

True Equality Is Far Off

By Sharon Roffe Ofir

In late February, I represented the Knesset at the annual open hearing of the United Nations General Assembly and the Inter-Parliamentary Union. Among the issues on the agenda was advancing gender equality as a foundation for government stability.

The list of speakers wishing to address this important issue was the largest among the conference sessions – everyone wanted to talk about the importance of gender equality. When my turn to speak arrived, I sought to place reality on the table and to collectively examine how words can change reality. In my address, I stated, “I hear big, moving words here that touch on the importance of gender quality to the stability of the world in which we all live.”

In my speech, I compared the words spoken at the conference to a beautiful photograph, in which women who make up half the world population hold central positions, lead processes and are decision-makers. In reality, the picture is very different. While women indeed work in every sector of life and most of us believe in advancing gender equality as an important factor for government stability – I have placed bills before the 24th Israeli Knesset on this very issue – the reality is that the more senior the position, the fewer women there are.

I told the conference that even at the General Assembly hall that hosted us, even at the UN, a woman has never served as secretary-general. My observation drew applause from the plenum.

The post-COVID-19 world has to recover as it marches forward and our role as parliament members from around the world is to work together toward this recovery. The goal of gender equality to boost the level of government worldwide is a common mission.

Israel has indeed had a woman prime minister in the 1970s, but at the same time, due to the ultra-Orthodox political parties that have banned women from their ranks, Israel is currently listed 64th in the global gender equality index. We must not accept that.

On March 8, International Women’s Day was marked in Israel and around the world. As they do every year, voices surfaced claiming that this is an unnecessary event. International Women’s Day was first marked in the US in 1908. Two years later, in Copenhagen, Denmark, a strategy was set to promote women’s equality, including the right to vote.

While this right has been secured and the lives we lead today are different from those of our mothers and grandmothers, there is still a long way to go. We have yet to complete the journey to full gender equality. We live in a reality in which there are income gaps, glass ceilings, jobs that are not staffed by women and severe violence against women that sometimes ends in murder.

We live in a reality in which women struggle in rabbinical courts to achieve full freedom, in which women can be denied divorce and in which young women still have to fight in court for the right to be able to fulfill certain roles in the Israel Defense Forces. We live in a reality in which only once has a woman served as head of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee.

In this reality, we must continue to mark International Women’s Day to remind ourselves that the obligation to create change applies to us all. The path to gender equality needs to be walked by men and women together, as it passes through legislative reform, education and adapting the job market to parenthood and family life.

We women who have dared and achieved must also continue to walk on this path, and to declare loudly and clearly to other women: Yes we can!

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MK Sharon Roffe Ofir was elected to the 24th Knesset on behalf of the Yisrael Beitenu Party. She has previously served as deputy council head, and worked as a journalist and senior lecturer in academic institutions for 24 years.. Read full bio here.

PM Bennett must mediate Russia Ukraine conflict

By Yochai Guiski

As events in Ukraine unfolded over the past few weeks we witnessed a Russian ground invasion, a valiant Ukrainian defensive effort, thousands of deaths, over a million refugees, and heavy sanctions by the United States and Europe on Russia.  Israel for its part tried to stay out of the fray and avoid taking a harsh tone with Russia.

As a result, Jerusalem’s partners in the United States and Europe, as well as journalists in the Israeli and international media, pushed it to adopt a more vocal and unambiguous tone regarding Russia’s assault on Ukraine.

Reports suggested that U.S. officials, and even President Biden himself, were critical of Israel’s stance, expecting it to be “on the right side of history” and to join the chorus of condemnation of Russia’s aggression, at least at the United Nations. If U.S. anger with the policies of India and the United Arab Emirates is any indication, the pressure on Jerusalem must have been intense.

As Israel tried to stay the course, Washington pushed harder and a few days into the war, Foreign Minister Yair Lapid condemned Russia’s attack on Ukraine, supported Ukrainian territorial integrity, and voiced Israel’s commitment to humanitarian assistance to the people of Ukraine.

Even these steps were seen as insufficient and expectations of Israel to provide additional support, including weapon systems were expressed by Ukrainian officials and by U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham. Although at least, the nonsensical idea of providing Iron Dome systems to Ukraine, which has been circulated by the media, was rightfully rejected by Ukrainian defense officials.

But Israel’s boldest move came over the weekend when Prime Minister Bennett secretly flew to Moscow to meet with President Vladimir Putin and then on to Berlin to meet with Chancellor Olaf Scholz. The prime minister was also in contact with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy during his journey. Israel also sought to coordinate the effort with the U.S. by reportedly conferring with National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan before the flights.

The reactions to the prime minister’s initiative ranged from lukewarm support to dismissal and outright criticism of his actions.

But was Israel right to forge ahead with its mediation effort or should its leaders have toed the line, adopted a forceful approach toward Russia, and let other nations tend to the conflict? I believe the Prime Minister made the right call.

Even now, millions are in harm’s way or fleeing their homes in Ukraine to become refugees, and many millions more may suffer the same or much worse, as the crisis in Ukraine is set to intensify. The direct human toll could be extremely heavy, and the indirect costs of the conflict may be just as bad.

Shortages in grain supplies from major producers Russia and Ukraine, as well as the skyrocketing prices of wheat, may bring famine and instability to many countries including in the volatile Middle East.  

In these circumstances, Israel is one of the very few countries that are still on good terms with Russia, Ukraine, the U.S., and Europe. Should Israel walk away from its unique position and simply join the litany of states that forcefully criticize Russia (but do little else), or should it attempt to use its position to do some good?

There are several ways Israel can make positive use of its position vis-à-vis Russia:

1. Provide a secure and discreet back channel between the West and Russia. As the conflict in Ukraine intensifies and the specter of nuclear escalation looms, there would be value in such channels.

2. Allow for indirect communication between Russian and Ukrainian leadership, through Israel.

3. Communicate the need for humanitarian consideration to be incorporated into the Russian operations in Ukraine, as well as specific humanitarian requests.

4.  Assist the U.S. in understating Putin’s state of mind, and potentially help the U.S. develop and execute an exit strategy from the conflict and provide an “off-ramp” for the Russian leadership to de-escalate the situation.  

The value inherent in these possibilities is already being partly realized, as both President Putin and President Zelenskyy and other leaders conduct talks with Prime Minster Bennett, while the Ukrainian ambassador has commended his mediation effort, and even suggested that Jerusalem might be a venue for high-level negotiations.

The strategic and moral imperative dictates that Israel tries to use its influence to prevent more loss of life and alleviate the suffering of those who are still caught in the fighting, instead of joining the Western efforts to exact a toll from Russia for its actions.

Hundreds of thousands of Jews living in Ukraine and Russia would be part of the suffering, and as history teaches us, there are always dark forces of antisemitism at play in times of strife, who would seek to scapegoat and attack these communities.

There has been enough death and bloodshed in Ukraine, including the brutal murders of countless Jews during the Holocaust. The ground is already quenched with the blood of innocents - it need not get any more.

The Jewish Talmud teaches us a moral lesson - whoever saves one life saves the whole world. Israel must rise to the challenge and seize the moment to help save as many people as possible.

Doing so will not be achieved by joining the group of countries cutting ties with Russia and imposing sanctions on it, as the Israeli contribution to the overall effort would be negligible. Israel should focus on using the relations between Moscow and Jerusalem to help save lives.   

In his famous poem “The road not taken,” Robert Frost describes the contemplation of a person between two roads in the forest.  Like the choice made in the poem, Israel should also take the road less traveled, and hope that it makes all the difference.    

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LT. Col. Yochai Guiski is a 23 year veteran of the IDF. He retired in 2020 as a Lieutenant Colonel after serving in the Israeli Military Intelligence. Yochai served in various roles including: Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories (C.O.G.A.T.), Strategic Planning Division and the Ministry of Defense (politico-military directorate). Read full bio here.

Babyn Yar: Re-Burying the Holocaust by Bullets

By Michael B. Snyder

Russian dissident poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko’s famous 1961 poem “Babyy Yar” begins: “Over Babyy Yar, there are no monuments.” Resulting in what can be fairly termed the most attention ever paid to the largest mass shootings of Jews in German-occupied Europe, Russian aggression causing unspecified damage to the still-under-construction Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center is symbolic of unfinished business: the decades it took for recognition of the Holocaust by bullets in Soviet killing fields and the constant antisemitic attacks against the Shoah.  The site has become a rallying point for Jewish outrage against Russia; reasons for outrage, however, have long existed.

Before the Wannsee Conference that decided that the answer to the “Jewish Question” was the total destruction of European Jewry, and also prior to the German invasion of its then ally the Soviet Union during “Operation Barbarossa” in June 1941, there were 160,000 Jews living in Kyiv, thought to be about 20 percent of its population.  Approximately 100,000 Jews immediately fled or were already absent serving in the Soviet army. 

As part of German advances following this surprise attack, Einsatzgruppen (mobile groups of Nazis killing largely by bullets) pushed west, slaughtering 4200 Jews in Kamenetz-Podolsk, 6000 in Lomzha, Poland, 25,000 in Odessa, then 33,771 (along with 19,000 non-Jews) just outside Kyiv in the Babyn Yar ravine.  Jews died “by systematic, merciless executions” that were first considered random murders due to infrequent reports and accounts of other Jews dying from starvation, disease, or as part of other groups.  It was an ominous sign that the political affairs director for the World Jewish Congress said that many Jews “complain now as a sheer matter of habit....” in response to American Jews grumbling over the disinterest shown by the Allies.

The post-war history of the site is rife with significant controversy encased within political intrigue as a memorial was sought.  In March 1945, the Ukrainian government and Communist Party agreed to build a monument in the form of an abstract large black granite form that would not recognize Jewish victims.  The Soviet Ukrainian Ministry of Culture halted the program due to its refusal to build any monument at all, hoping to sweep away the atrocities altogether. 

During the 1950s, attempts to physically erase Babyn Yar occurred under the guise of “residential planning.” Liquid mud waste dumped over the mass grave as a primary weapon to bury the past proved so heavy that the dam abutting the land collapsed under its weight. The subsequent surge of water killed 145 people and destroyed 70 buildings in the area. A Jewish cemetery adjacent to the flood was paved over shortly thereafter to build a sports complex. 

The Ministry of Culture of Soviet Ukraine continued to control decisions in the 1960s, initiating a “closed competition” for monuments in memory of Soviet citizens and soldiers who perished during the Nazi occupation of Kyiv.  In response, a memorial park to be built on bridges over the Babyn Yar ravine, along with other entries that would memorialize Jews, were rejected as “Zionist.” The location became a person-made memorial with no official recognition when Russian and Ukrainian writers, many of whom were jailed, gave impassioned speeches (including the unveiling of the above “Babiyy Yar” poem) to 1,000 people decrying the suffering of the Jewish people and the necessity of the struggle against antisemitism.

On August 24, 1991, Ukraine’s Declaration of Independence was approved. Jews looked to it with the hope that it would mark the end of state-sponsored antisemitism.  Finally, 50 years after the Babyn Yar massacre, authorities for the first time admitted publicly that most of the victims were Jews. The man who would become the first President of independent Ukraine, Leonid Kravchuk, delivered a speech that stressed Jews were killed in Babyn Yar only because they were Jews.

Despite the continued Russian threat, the Ukraine government moved forward with reforms.  It was in Israel where the dam was broken: then-President Poroshenko spoke to the Knesset in 2015, emphasizing that Babyn Yar is a shared, open wound of Ukrainians and Jews, that 1.5 million Ukrainian Jews perished during the Holocaust, and apologizing to the children and grandchildren of Holocaust victims for the Ukrainian “collaborationists.” 

Finally, on the evening of October 6, 2021, the sacred ground saw the opening of the memorial that is not just for the memory of Nazi horror but also to symbolize continued repression of and antisemitism against Jews by the Soviet Union, Russia, and the Ukrainian collaborationists. With Ukraine’s Jewish president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy as a witness, the chair of the memorial’s advisory board and former refusenik and MK Natan Sharansky said, “Babyn Yar is not only the symbol of the Holocaust by bullets but it is the symbol of the efforts of Soviet communist regime to raze the Holocaust memory.” 

And now, the symbol comes full circle. With Purim’s own form of memorial approaching, the Jewish world pivots. Trending globally from Ukraine and Babyn Yar includes Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett undertaking at least temporary leadership in shuttle diplomacy; two Jews and Israel surging to front and center leadership in a conflict that includes the bombing of a Holocaust memorial. Israel opened its border to welcome home what could be ten thousand Ukrainian Jews making Aliyah (becoming Israeli citizens), along with increasing the number of non-Jewish refugees it will absorb for the coming year. 

At the same time, antisemitism and antizionism roar, fully integrated with political correctness. Israel is being compared to Russia, memorializing six million Jews remains under attack against charges of denial and distortion, and conspiracy theorists blame Jews for their own and Arab genocide without evidence.  Yet Israel and world Jewry is leading by showing and not telling, by acting and not pontificating. There is no reason to expect or desire credit as Israel shows the world and diaspora Jews what is possible despite the never-ending denunciation. 

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Michael B. Snyder is a publishing contributor at The MirYam Institute, he is an attorney with over 35 years of experience in the areas of children’s rights, human rights and Non-Government Organizations in the United States, Israel and Africa. Read full bio here.