MirYam In The Media: Israel Tour For U.S. & Canadian Military Cadets, 2023

By ETGAR LEFKOVITS

Nearly 50 American and Canadian military cadets toured Israel and German death camps in Poland this month, in a trip that seeks to buttress the future officers’ awareness of the history and shared values at the core of the U.S.-Israel relationship.

The two-week Israel Strategy and Policy tour, which was initiated by the New York-based MirYam Institute in partnership with the U.S. Defense Department, the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, the Virginia Military Institute and the Royal Military College of Canada, presented past and present to the future officers.

The cadets’ trip began with a three-day tour of the Nazi death camps, followed by 12 days spent crisscrossing Israel, taking in the sights and meeting with IDF soldiers and commanders.

For the non-Jewish cadets on the tour, the country’s size, diversity, mix of modernity and ancient, and the inseparable integration of the people’s army that is the IDF, came as a revelation.

“I was surprised flying in how much smaller Israel is compared to the U.S. and how densely packed everything is,” said Ian M., 19, from Cincinnati, Ohio, a cadet at West Point. “I was struck by the mix of the modern infrastructure in such an historic place.”

Sohum A., 21, a future infantry officer from New Jersey, also attends the United States Military Academy at West Point.

“I was surprised by how in such a small country you have widely different people and cultures who through thousands of years of history maintained their own identity while simultaneously living in close proximity,” he said.

Macy H., 21, from Seattle, also a cadet at West Point, said, “I knew that the IDF was a conscripted army but it is amazing how the IDF is part of society and how society is the army, and how integrated and inseparable the two are.”

Melina B., 19, from North Carolina and the Virginia Military Institute, offered, “The passion that Israelis have for their country and maintaining this place where they seek refuge and are able to be free even though there are wars is striking.”

Mission-ready academies

The cadets came from a wide variety of backgrounds across the U.S., as well as a handful from Canada. They will be integrated across the military including, for the Americans, the Marines, the U.S. Army’s Armor and Infantry Branches, and the U.S. Navy during their multi-year service.

The trip sidestepped the Palestinian territories due to State Department-imposed security restrictions that did not allow them to enter the biblical heartland.

(Active duty officers on a separate tour that MirYam offers are provided with helicopter rides and briefings over Judea and Samaria, commonly known as the West Bank.)

“We seek to impact the leaders of today and tomorrow now,” MirYam CEO Benjamin Anthony said in a statement. “By exposing these officers to the broad array of policymaking considerations in Israel we assist the academies with their goal of building mission-ready academies.”

MirYam has brought hundreds of cadets and officers to Israel since its inception in 2017.

“The vast majority of the participants are not of the Jewish faith yet the connection they forge with Israel … is deeply rooted in shared values and common challenges to Israel, the U.S., Canada and the entire free world,” said Rozita Pnini, the MirYam Institute’s chief operating officer.

Willpower and resolve

“Seeing the sites of the biggest demonstration of antisemitism in world history showed us the power of having a Jewish state and better appreciate the willpower and resolve of the people of the State of Israel,” said Bethany J., 19, a future armor officer from Orlando, Florida, who attends West Point.

“My grandfather landed in Normandy during World War II and liberated some of the death camps,” said Alexander D., 20, a West Point cadet from Wisconsin. He recounted his grandfather’s harrowing description of seeing bulldozers pilling up bodies for mass graves.

During a visit to the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem, the group saw a video showing that same scene. “It made me realize why Israel is so important,” he said.

Ela F., 20, a cadet at the Virginia Military Institute from Gettysburg, Pennslyvania, said, “That feeling in my stomach standing in Auschwitz and at Yad Vashem will never go away.”

Not on the news

A recurring comment among the cadets was that Israel is not what you see on the news and is something you have to experience for yourself.

“The American people and the people of Israel share a lot of the same interests but from seeing the news headlines some people don’t realize this,” said Justin P., 21, from Washington, D.C., and the Virginia Military Institute. He called the trip an “eye-opening experience.”

Alexander D. added, “Standing on the Golan and hearing from the IDF soldiers makes you understand the significance of what the IDF is doing.”

Ela F. said, “You expect fear, but you see the day-to-day life of the clubs, parties, beaches and nightlife of Tel Aviv as people go on with their lives.”

Paul M., 20, also from Washington, D.C., and the Virginia Military Institute, said, “The ability to discuss things openly despite the proximity to danger and not get rebuked by your flag officer really struck me.”

Melina B. said, “These are things you can’t get from reading a book, watching a video or watching the news. You have to have your foot on the land.”

The cadets said that the news from Israel was one of rockets raining down on the country, Israeli attacks on Palestinians in Gaza, or a government in turmoil, a picture of a country constantly at war externally or internally.

“You are not getting the full story in the media,” Alexander D. said.

“They talk about the conflict but never tell you about the fundamental history,” Paul M. said.

“Israel has a PR crisis,” Ian M. said. “Remind people why the Jewish state has to exist. If people understand that they will have much more sympathy.”

Benjamin Anthony is Co-Founder & CEO of the MirYam Institute, Benjamin brings considerable experience and expertise to his position in the areas of substantive, policy driven dialogue and debate about the State of Israel throughout the international community. Read full bio here.

Israel is Soft on “Soft Power”

By Chuck Freilich

 

“Soft power” is a function of a state’s ability to achieve its national security objectives through the appeal of its culture (arts, science, economy), the moral authority of its ideals (human rights, equality, democracy), and the quality of its domestic and foreign policy, rather than by coercive means. The more universal a state’s values, the greater its soft power.

In its early decades, Israel enjoyed great soft power. The horrors of the Holocaust created international sympathy and support for the Jewish people. Israel’s heroic early years were the subject of books, movies and song. The pioneers who reclaimed the ancient land and the kibbutz, came to epitomize Zionism’s attempt to build a new and just society.  The dramatic ingathering of the exiles is the story of legend. Israeli democracy was highly regarded and Israel was hailed as a “light unto the nations”.

Jews around the world cheered, cried and rejoiced upon Israel’s rebirth and celebrated its achievements, with the warm support of many Gentiles. Israel’s military victories were a source of international admiration and a balm for the souls of Jews worldwide, who saw in them the ultimate revenge against the Nazis. Israeli development projects, especially in agriculture and water, were deeply appreciated models in many developing countries.

The seemingly never-ending occupation, however, and especially the settlements, have fundamentally transformed Israel’s image. Israel is widely regarded today as an aggressive occupying power, bent on denying Palestinian rights. Nearly six decades after the Six-Day War, Israel has utterly failed to convince the international community of its claim to the West Bank.

Israel’s image has been further tarnished by questions relating to the quality of its domestic policies and democracy, including the recent “judicial reforms”, excessive prerogatives of the ultra-orthodox, status of Israeli Arabs, and rise of the radical right.

Over the decades, as Israel’s international standing waned, and the Arab refusal to make peace, or even negotiate, left Israel with little choice, military force came to occupy an outsized portion of its national security strategy. Moreover, force seemed to work; Egypt and Jordan made peace, and even Syria and the Palestinians conducted advanced negotiations. For a variety of reasons, however, Israel is reaching the limits to the efficacy of military force. It can continue to defend itself successfully and buy time, but there is no military solution to Palestinian nationalism, the Hezbollah and Hamas threats, or Iranian nuclear program.

In the interim, Israel has downplayed its soft power, or undermined it through some of its policies. The Palestinians, who have repeatedly rejected dramatic peace proposals, never presented a peace proposal of their own and who are governed by a dictatorship in the West Bank and a theocracy in Gaza, have wielded “soft power” very effectively and are winning the war for international opinion. 

In practice, Israel still enjoys considerable soft power. The epic story of the early decades may have faded, but diaspora Jews still harbor a deep sense of affiliation and caring for Israel. Christians around the world view Israel as the Holy Land and realization of divine scripture. Many still buy Jaffa oranges, an outdated symbol of Israeli agriculture, or fly El Al, long a fully privatized company, out of a sense of identification. Today, multinational corporations and scientists from around the world flock to the “Start-Up Nation”, seeking the technological creativity they cannot find elsewhere. Israeli arts and science enjoy an international reputation. Israel’s chaotic democracy still stands out in a dark sea of Middle Eastern authoritarianism.

These sources of soft power are the indispensable basis for much of Israel’s “hard” power, especially in the US. American support for Israel derives from three primary factors: the pro-Israel lobby and Israel’s strategic importance, but stems overwhelmingly from its soft power, the shared values that are the basis for the broad identification of the American public as a whole. Without this sense of identification, American support would not have remained as high as it has, for decades. American and European leaders’ opposition to the “judicial reforms” was so strong, precisely because they feared that Israel itself was undermining the normative basis for their countries’ relationships with it.

Soft power is of limited efficacy as a direct instrument of policy. It is hard to sway other countries just out of a sense of warmth and identification. Nevertheless, no country should be more attuned to soft power than Israel, whose right to a national homeland and subsequently to an independent state was recognized by the League of Nations and United Nations respectively and whose American support stems largely from it. Furthermore, Israel has successfully concluded many deals with foreign leaders and officials over the years, because in situations in which they could have adopted different decisions, identification with Israel was the determining factor.

Israel will not be able to fundamentally alter its international standing without resolving the West Bank issue, or at least achieving significant progress. Nevertheless, there are a number of important changes that Israel can make to improve its strategic circumstances, all of which are related to its soft power.

The use of force must be subject to clear political objectives, including the war of the narratives, which is almost as important today as the action itself, in some cases more. International standing, images and delegitimization campaigns, have a significant and even decisive impact on the outcome of policy initiatives, especially those that involve military action. Too often Israel wins the battles, but loses the war of narratives.

Israel must position itself so that it is always perceived as the side actively pursuing peace and accommodation, not the obstacle. The Jewish diaspora must come to be seen as a vital national security partner and asset, which greatly expands Israel’s capabilities beyond its indigenous ones, and treated accordingly.

Israel is a world leader in some of the primary issues of international concern today, including food security and agriculture, water, the environment and global warming, migration, poverty and entrepreneurship. Israel must do more to leverage its expertise in international organizations. Israeli aid programs (“Mashav”) are a pittance and should be increased. An Israel-diaspora “Jewish Peace Corps” would expand Israeli involvement in these areas and deepen Israeli-diaspora ties, especially between the young. Israel should also continue to provide emergency assistance in times of crisis, as it has so successfully done, notably in Haiti, Turkey and Ukraine.

The Palestinians miss virtually no opportunity to present their case in every possible international forum, with a long-term cumulative effect. Together with the US and others, Israel should target a few select and less politicized international organizations, such as the IAEA, in which a sustained effort can be made.

Professor Chuck Freilich, serves as Adjunct Associate Professor of Political Science, Dept of Political Science at Columbia University. He is a former deputy national security adviser in Israel and long-time senior fellow at Harvard's Belfer Center, has taught political science at Harvard, Columbia, NYU and Tel Aviv University. Read full bio here.

Deciphering Hezbollah’s decision-making

By Yochai Guiski

Contrary to frequent statements made of late in both Israel and Lebanon, it is far from clear that Israel and Hezbollah are entering a period characterized by heightened risk of miscalculation.

Rather, the current period appears to be marked by a more intense exchange of warning signals between the two adversaries – particularly in Syria, where Israel has reportedly been highly active.

Hezbollah, for its part, has also initiated maneuvers, such as the March cross-border Megiddo highway terror bombing, although these have not succeeded in causing Israel to lose its balance. In April, Hamas in Lebanon fired 34 rockets at northern Israel, sparking Israeli retaliatory airstrikes.

Last year, Hezbollah threatened Israeli offshore gas rigs in the Mediterranean in the lead-up to the Lebanese – Israeli maritime border agreement and sent unmanned aerial vehicles in the direction of one of the rigs.

Together, such incidents could collectively suggest that we are in an era of heightened tensions in which any miscalculation could drag the region into conflict, much like the period leading up to the 2006 Second Lebanon War.

But another way of seeing things is that the situation is far from being on a slippery slope and that it is far from being a repeat of 2006.

It is true that Hezbollah seems to feel freer to launch tactical attacks and also more capable of doing so. And that Israel feels the need to reset the dynamics, returning to a situation in which Hezbollah was more restrained. But this does not mean that either side is likely to make a gross miscalculation any time soon.

The last decade has demonstrated that both Israel and Hezbollah can de-escalate – even when one or both of the sides sustain casualties. Both sides have learned too much from the 2006 war to blindly repeat those actions.

Is Hezbollah wrongly judging reality due to internal tensions in Israel? So far, Hezbollah has shown that it does understand the Israeli system well. However, there is a joker in the pack that could still upset the situation: Iran.

If Israel concludes that it must take action because the Iranian nuclear program is advancing too far, then it may, potentially, also feel the need to take Hezbollah out of the equation in parallel military actions. If the Iranian arena stabilizes, however, and the U.S. reaches some sort of arrangement with Tehran, that will neutralize the above scenario.

Despite all of Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah's bravado in his speeches, he is, in practice, very cautious and understands the fragility of his situation. 

Hezbollah’s decision-making vis-à-vis Iran

First and foremost, Hezbollah is an independent entity, both in its decision-making and in choosing how to respond to Iranian calls to action.  Of course, Iran has a very significant dialogue with Hezbollah, but in the end, Hezbollah is independent.

Does that mean Hezbollah will turn Iran down on the day of the order to go into combat with Israel? Most likely, it will not do that, but it could decide to limit the intensity of the action, and the scope of the action that it takes.

There is also the question of how other players figure into Hezbollah’s decisions. Hamas is not really an influence. Hamas leaders will not decide if Hezbollah or Iran escalate. On the flip side, however, Hamas’s leaders may decide that they will join in a future Israel – Hezbollah conflict.

Would Hezbollah be the initiator of conflict, like Egypt was in 1967? That scenario seems highly unlikely at this time. At the very least, Syria would have to stabilize first, much more than it currently is.

Would Hezbollah be willing to consider “lying on the fence” for Iran? It may choose to do that to a certain extent, and that is why Hezbollah is always preparing for war.

Hezbollah lives in dissonance between its Shi'ite Islamist messianic vision of destroying Israel and its day-to-day realpolitik considerations, which very much guide it and dominate its actual decision-making.

An Iranian nuclear umbrella is certainly an event that could change the situation, boosting Hezbollah’s tolerance for clashes. But this scenario is far down the road.

For the most part, and on a daily basis, Hezbollah’s decisions are guided by very rational calculations, much like those of its benefactor, Iran.

One often repeated question about Hezbollah’s decision-making is the role played by Israeli deterrence. But a more precise way of analyzing this aspect is to inquire about Hezbollah’s overall balance of interests.

Deterrence is too imprecise a concept to measure decisions by since it reduces all actions to binary dos or don’ts. Deterrence is by definition the power to dissuade an adversary from acting. In reality, Hezbollah is building up force and does initiate some hostile actions, but its overall balance of interests prevents it from initiating war with Israel.

Hezbollah has a concept of defense and attack, and it is keenly aware that it has a powerful enemy located to the south with many capabilities that are dangerous to it. Part of its war readiness against Israel is tied to its ideological values and affiliation with Iran. These all factor into Hezbollah’s complex balance of interests.

Lebanese domestic interests greatly affect Nasrallah’s decisions too – more than is often given credit for.

The interests of Lebanese Shiites themselves within Lebanon, the dynamics within the Lebanese government, relations with non-Shi’ite Lebanese allies, external relationships between outside players and the Lebanese state, the involvement of foreign powers in the region, all play a role, adding another layer of complexity to Hezbollah’s decision-making process.

It is a process that requires in-depth study, and one that cannot be reduced to pure ideology or to merely following Iranian directives.

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.

Gaza operation won’t stop next escalation

By Zvika Haimovich

The latest conflict between Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Israel in early May has changed nothing when it comes to the basic strategic equation in place between Israel and the Gazan terror factions.

The fact that Hamas stayed out of this latest campaign means that the stop clock has begun to the next escalation involving Gaza’s ruling faction.

It is time for Israelis to ask themselves what the government’s strategy is for dealing with Palestinian terror factions in Gaza. They should do so immediately and not wait again passively for the next escalation to occur to raise this question.

Public comments by government representatives who claim that Israel has changed the equation in Gaza are simply false. The basic equation in Gaza remains identical to the situation that existed before Operation Shield and Arrow, just as it has before and after every previous round of fighting between Israel and Gazan terror factions over the past 15 years.

The question that should be guiding Israel’s strategy is how to delay the next break out of violence from Gaza for many years, not months. The first step in moving in that direction is to create political leverage on top of Israel’s military achievements, rather than relying on the IDF’s capabilities alone to buy a little more quiet.

One answer for shaping a new Israeli strategy should involve the recruitment of a regional coalition of powerful actors, involving Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, and others, who would be significantly more involved in Gazan affairs. The goal of such a coalition would be to push for a long-term political arrangement between Hamas and Israel that would produce years of quiet.

As part of such an arrangement, Israel must also present to the world its legitimate demand that Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad cease their continuous production of projectiles, whose sole intention is to terrorize, kill and injure Israeli civilians, while using Gazan civilians as human shields.

While Gaza won’t disarm tomorrow, it is important to begin delegitimizing the war crimes of Gazan terror factions on the world stage and to counter the trend of normalizing such actions, which has become all too common in recent years.

The escalation was ultimately a highly limited campaign, which must not be confused with the main combat scenario that Israel needs to prepare for.

During the five-day escalation, Israeli air defenses performed well, intercepting more than 95% of projectiles heading for built-up areas – but not providing a hermetic defense, a fact that took on a tragic form in the killings of two civilians in Rehovot and the western Negev during the fighting.

This is another reminder that no hermetic air defense solution exists, despite the advanced technology, sensors, and interceptors that take on Gazan-made projectiles. These rockets can follow unusual trajectories, presenting real challenges for air defenses.

Iron Dome has undergone continuous upgrades over the years, meaning that today’s system can cover far larger areas, deal with larger barrages and deal with more threatening projectiles. It is only the same system as the one first unveiled in 2011 in name, not in substance or capabilities; its evolution has been dramatic. No other air defense system in the world can even compare with Iron Dome’s performance.

Iron Dome forms one layer in Israel’s multi-layered air defense system, which also includes David’s Sling, the intermediate altitude system successfully employed for the first time during the May clashes, and the Arrow 2 and 3 systems against long-range ballistic missiles.

When the Iron Beam laser system becomes operational, an added layer of interception will become available to Israel’s air defenders.

If the Israeli Air Force can establish that terror rockets are repeatedly destroyed before entering Israeli air space, this could have an eventual effect on the IDF’s policy of sounding sirens for every rocket launch, enabling Israel to decrease such sirens potentially.

For this change to take place, it will be necessary to prove that the laser system – at first the ground-based interceptors, which will take around two years to be fully operational, and later, the aerial version placed on drones – can truly make some of the sirens redundant.

Israel is not yet at this stage, however, and even the laser system does not offer the guarantee of hermetic defenses.

Furthermore, it is essential to keep in mind that the significant military threat facing Israel is the prospect of a multi-arena conflict involving Iran and its array of ballistic and cruise missiles and UAVs, Hezbollah, with its mammoth projectile arsenal, Hamas in Gaza, and others.

Such a scenario, which would be a completely different challenge to the Israeli home front, compared to the most recent escalation, needs to be placed on the Israeli public agenda now; it is the threat that Israel needs to focus on.

The danger of public complacency based on the misunderstanding that this conflict is indicative of all of Israel’s future wars is real.

Zvika Haimovich served as Commander of the Israel Air Defense Forces from 2015-2018. He was Active Defense Wing Commander during Operation Pillar of Defense (2012) and Operation Protective Edge (2014). Read full bio here.

The state budget is Irresponsible

By Sharon Roffe Ofir

If all goes well for the government and things proceed according to plan, by the time this column is published, the state budget for 2023 - 2024 will have passed. Beyond the disputes within the coalition, the tendency of each party to pull in its direction and try and get a bigger slice of the cake, beyond the numbers and charts, beyond the headlines, the budget book tells a story, one in which numbers, unlike words, cannot lie, and the story does not have a happy ending.

To simplify the picture without having to dive into the numbers, imagine that you have a sum of money in the bank today that you would like to use for investment. After you look carefully over your bank statement, which includes your expenses and revenues, you search for the investment options that can deliver a maximum return. Your goal is to take care of your children’s future; their education, weddings, or helping them buy an apartment. At the same time, you want to make sure that your retirement is also taken care of.

It sounds simple, but if we seek to apply this same logic to the state budget presented to the Knesset, we will see that the current government has its own rules. If the train continues at high speed down the current route, we will all end up in the abyss. Or to put it differently, everyone gets wet when it rains.

The planned state budget for 2023 is NIS 484 billion and NIS 514 billion in 2024. Before we look at where the money is going, and who the state has chosen to invest in, let's recollect where the money comes from.

The bulk of the state budget comes from us, the citizens who work and carry the burden on our shoulders, with about 300 billion NIS in state revenues coming from taxes. The equation is simple -- the less economic ability Israel’s citizens have, the greater the harm to the State of Israel -- and that is without even addressing the issue of risk-averse investors, who have identified problematic trends and are pulling their money out.

The Chief Economist at the Finance Ministry, Shira Greenberg, recently released a report warning of the dire consequences for the Israeli economy resulting from the way the budget is being distributed. Among other things, she wrote that these decisions would increase the gaps in Israeli society and discourage people from joining the labor market. Greenberg referred to the fact that growth in Israel is expected to fall by 3.1% in 2023 and that state revenues are expected to be NIS 5.3 billion short of the original forecast. The loss of GDP resulting from the failure to employ the ultra-Orthodox will hit NIS 6.7 trillion over the coming decades, inflation will exceed the annual target, and the uncertainty produced by the judicial reform may also exacerbate the current situation.

Greenberg is a professional appointment, and she is looking at the numbers with great concern, while asking the government to bring the train to a stop. Yet instead of pulling the brakes, it is rushing ahead. The ultra-Orthodox party leaders who have become accustomed over the years to the patent of someone else carrying the economic burden are insatiable. Appetite comes with eating.

Where is the money going? Torah-study institutions will receive an additional seven billion shekels, about four billion will be allocated for benefits for married religious scholars, NIS 125 million will go to support ultra-Orthodox Jewish culture, NIS 600 million for family purity programs, half a billion to religious state education budgets, NIS 279 million to the Ministry of Religious Affairs, of which NIS 67 million will be used to hire more rabbis. Four million shekels will go to paying for religious legal rulings for overseas communities (yes, you read that correctly). Religious institutions that are exempt from teaching the core curriculum will also receive millions of shekels in additional budgets.

What about the middle class, you may ask? Where has the promise of free education from the age of 0-3 gone, what about the cost of living, investment in the geographic and economic periphery, strengthening the Negev and Galilee regions, reinforcing border communities against rocket threats, domestic security, providing for the elderly, students, directing resources to economic growth engines such as high tech and artificial intelligence? The answer will surely be that Israel is a Jewish state and that without its wise religious scholars, we have no right to exist.

Those who provide that answer, however, will forget to mention that an economy that lacks bread will also have no Torah.

Sharon Roffe-Ofir served as Knesset Member in the 24th Knesset. She has served as a deputy local council head at Kiryat Tivon, and has worked as a journalist and as a senior lecturer in academic institutions for 24 years. Read full bio here.

Israel lacks a coordinated public diplomacy system.

By Arthur Koll

The five-day escalation between Palestinian Islamic Jihad in Gaza and Israel in early May produced a mixed diplomatic result for Israel, and, above all, underlined the lack of a long-term Israeli strategy regarding the Hamas-controlled enclave as well as an ineffective Israeli public diplomacy system.

On the positive side, the escalation demonstrated that despite President Joe Biden’s negative perception of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu following the latter’s attempt to reform Israel’s judicial system, the American commitment to Israel remains strong.  This vital commitment continues to extend into international organizations, as demonstrated by Washington’s blockage of an attempt to pass an anti-Israel decision at the United Nations Security Council.

During this last escalation, the international media and the international community’s criticism of Israel’s actions was not extraordinarily voluminous. This resulted from the fact that the escalation was short-lived with a relatively low number of casualties and limited destruction in Gaza, when compared to previous rounds of fighting against Hamas.

At the tactical-military level, Israel achieved its goal in the first few seconds of Operation Shield and Arrow, when it simultaneously hit three senior Palestinian Islamic Jihad )PIJ( commanders in Gaza, in three different locations. At this point, after regaining at least some of its lost deterrence power vis-à-vis the terror organizations, Israel would have preferred a swift end of hostilities.

However, the operation dragged on for five more days, due to the absence of an effective completion mechanism to bring it to a halt. Iran, which finances and trains the PIJ, encouraged its proxy to continue firing on Israel.

In addition, the operation exposed a gaping hole in Israel’s ability to coordinate a unified public messaging campaign that involves various components, such as the Prime Minister’s office, the Foreign Ministry, the IDF Spokesperson Unit, and others.

To this day, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has failed to appoint a head of the public diplomacy division, which is stationed in his own office and is answerable to him directly. Nor has he yet appointed a spokesperson to the international media. Luckily, this last Gaza operation ended before international pressure started to mount.  Israel cannot however afford the luxury of lacking a functioning professional public diplomacy apparatus.

To make things worse, The Israeli Minister for Public Diplomacy, Galit Distel Atbaryan, lacks any experience in this line of activity. She appeared to be caught off guard by the military operation and released amateur and ineffective video messages during the escalation, which appeared to be a diversion from her focus of acting as a divisive internal Israeli voice that attacks protesters against the judicial reform.

Prime Minister Netanyahu, who has always given great attention to public diplomacy should urgently pay attention to this matter and repair what is now clearly a dysfunctional structure -- before a much more serious regional or international challenge erupts.

During this minor escalation with the relatively marginal PIJ terror organization, Israel did not pay a heavy price for this governmental chaos. But future, larger conflicts, will surely extract heavier prices from Israel on the international stage.

This latest round, therefore, is a clear warning that the prime minister must take significant steps to put his house in order.

Israel’s diplomatic standing is also harmed by the fact that Jerusalem lacks a strategy for Gaza, and the Palestinian issue in general. This lack of strategy has a knock-on effect on all other aspects of the state’s performance in this context, including public diplomacy. Rather than looking for an arrangement, or at least some sort of long-term agreement, it seems that Israel is dragged into endless bursts of violent eruptions against Hamas, PIJ, or both. And it seems that the intervals between these rounds are getting shorter.

The lack of any new strategic concept that can fundamentally chip away at the old Gaza equation is taking a toll, internally, regionally, and in the wider international arena. Thus, it is clear that the next round is around the corner.

The world is preoccupied with burning global issues, like Russia’s assault on Ukraine and economic challenges, and is getting tired of repetitious clashes between Gazan terror factions and Israel.

This is not welcome news for Israel, which needs active international attention directed to Iran's nuclear advances and its network of terror.

Palestinian Islamic Jihad is a small part of the Iranian web of client terror organizations that constantly threaten to destabilize the region. Much more significant members of this network are Hamas and, of course, Hezbollah. The likelihood of simultaneous attacks on Israel by Iranian proxies on more than one front is growing.

The IDF is preparing for such developments. It is essential that Prime Minister Netanyahu also uses this time to put his public diplomacy structure in order. It may be needed sooner rather than later. 

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.

Israel Has Lost Its Deterrence

BY Grisha Yakubovich

Despite often repeated statements in Israel made in recent days that the five-day escalation between Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the IDF in early May changed the situation in the Gaza Strip to Hamas’s detriment, the militant Islamic group that rules the Strip has in fact emerged as the biggest victor from the clash.

This is due to two primary factors. The first is that Israel officially set itself the goal of keeping Hamas out of the conflict – Israeli commentators celebrated the fact that Hamas indeed stayed out of the fighting – signifying the fact that Hamas has figured out how to deter Israel, rather than the other way around.

The second factor is PIJ’s relatively poor performance against Israel, which, on the Palestinian street, enabled Hamas to once again market itself as the most effective “resistance” force in the Palestinian arena. The implicit message is that only Hamas knows when and how to fight Israel.

This operation alerts us to the fact that Israel will have to deal not only with the Hamas threat triangle on three fronts – Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon, but also with the larger threat triangle made up of all factions in Lebanon/Syria, Gaza, and Iran – a double triangle of threats.

As a result of this “double triple catch,” Hamas believes that Israel is reluctant to attack it. This is the third time that Israel has struck PIJ alone while leaving Hamas out of the fighting, a decision that serves Hamas’s deterrence – even if the Israeli narrative is different.

Meanwhile, Hamas has identified an opportunity, with the expected departure – sooner or later –of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, to topple the Fatah-run entity, which it portrays as weak and as collaborating with Israel.

To be sure, not all is smooth sailing for Hamas. The latest escalation has enabled PIJ to challenge, to a certain degree, Hamas’s narrative of being the lead combat force against Israel, and the fury of the PIJ leadership over Hamas’s refusal to join the fighting could be seen in the way that the organization’s leader, Ziad al-Nakhalah, failed to thank Hamas in his speech summarizing the escalation (while thanking Iran and Hezbollah).

Just as Hamas, over the years, undermined Fatah’s rule and initiated escalations with Israel, so too is PIJ now doing the same to Hamas – with Iranian encouragement.

Still, Hamas has been able to respond to this challenge with sophistication and success.

On the one hand, it openly welcomed and backed PIJ’s escalatory steps, thereby promoting the message of ‘Palestinian unity’ – a useful ticket for it, up ahead of its goal of taking over the West Bank. On the other hand, it did not lift a finger as Israel’s considerable air power and intelligence pummeled PIJ in one strike after another in Gaza.

Hamas not only made it clear that it would not be dragged into wars by PIJ and Iran – it has also discreetly signaled to Iran that Hamas needed to be taken into consideration before escalations are embarked upon.

Meanwhile, on the flip side of the equation, the Israeli sigh of relief over Hamas’s non-involvement topped up Hamas’s deterrence and promoted its ability to threaten future escalation against Israel and call upon Iran for assistance as a member of the Iranian axis, which can activate multiple arenas.

Thus, in the final score, Hamas came out on top, despite the minor damage it incurred to its ‘street credibility’ by failing to go into battle alongside PIJ.

Even PIJ, despite its heavy losses, gained long-term points in this conflict, due to its ability to fight Israel, a major regional military power, on equal footing, sending millions of Israelis running for shelter with projectile attacks and air raid sirens.

In PIJ’s worldview, that in itself is a victory – regardless of how this is viewed in Israel or the West.

It is therefore vital to understand how Israel’s adversaries truly understand and interpret Operation Shield and Arrow, and to avoid the temptation of being enamored with one’s own military prowess and tactical achievements. As impressive as these are, strategically, the Gaza operation brings little good news for Israel because there is no long-term Israeli strategy for countering Hamas’s own calculated and sophisticated maneuvers.

One thing that Israel should consider is responding to the strategic Hamas challenge by formulating a well-thought-out strategy, which could involve weakening Hamas’s future ability to pursue terrorism and armed conflict by saddling it even further with the responsibilities and the privilege of power.

In effect, this would mean pushing for Gaza’s independence, giving it a port, full control over its borders, and major economic assets – giving the Gazan population, and the Hamas regime, a great deal to lose in a future war against Israel.

The status quo of a Gaza dependent on Israel for its economic needs, such as the sending of 17,000 workers from the Strip into Israel, the hundreds of trucks that deliver basic supplies via Israeli crossings every day, and Israel’s role in arranging electricity and fuel means that Gaza remains interlinked and dependent on Israel. Hamas and Gazans feel they have much to lose.

The more independent and prosperous Gaza is, the more targets Israel will have in a future conflict, the more Hamas and Gaza will have to lose, and the weaker Hamas becomes. In addition, Egypt should be given as much influence as possible over events in the Strip, freeing Israel from this painful geo-strategic bone that has been struck in its throat for too many years.

As counter-intuitive as it may seem, turning Gaza into a de facto independent Palestinian state is one of the most effective ways of neutralizing Hamas’s ability to wage war, and terrorize Israel’s civilians.

Colonel Grisha Yakubovich serves as a policy and strategy consultant to various international NGO's. He concluded his military service in 2016 as the head of the civil department for the Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories (C.O.G.A.T.). Read full bio here.

Washington Is Key To Saudi-Israel Normalization

By Henrique Cymerman

The Middle East is currently undergoing its largest geo-strategic revolution in decades, and Israel is at the heart of it.

From being a country surrounded by enemies calling for its elimination, the Jewish state has become a potential strategic partner for the most powerful Sunni-Arab state in the region, Saudi Arabia.

Saudi officials give four reasons when asked why they changed their mind about Israel:

The two states have common enemies, the 1973 Yom Kippur War demonstrated once and for all that the Arabs have no military option, Israel has blossomed into the start-up nation, and could help jump-start a start-up region, and finally, 70% of Saudis are under 30, and are not bogged down by 20th-century historical baggage.

In May, I visited the Saudi capital of Riyadh to meet with senior Saudi officials, just as a new escalation erupted between Palestinian Islamic Jihad in Gaza and Israel.

My concerns that the meeting would be canceled in light of the escalation were unfounded. The opposite occurred, and the meeting went ahead.

At the same time, it is impossible to ignore the fact that the Palestinian issue is an elephant in the room of Israeli – Saudi relations, casting a shadow.

When Jake Sullivan, the United States National Security Advisor, asked the Saudis what conditions are needed for normalizing relations with Israel, most of what he was told by Crown Prince Muhammad Bin Salman, related to obtaining sophisticated American weapons, resuming that strategic Saudi alliance with the US, obtaining nuclear power for civilian purposes, and for the US to stop condemning Saudi Arabia on human rights issues, or to keep bringing up the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

This shows that the Palestinian issue is a factor in normalization, but not a main one. For Saudi Arabia, Jerusalem and the future of the Haram Al-Sharif (the Temple Mount) is paramount.

It is an important issue for nearly two billion Muslims – and it also forms an opportunity for the Saudis to play a role in Jerusalem.

Most critically, however, any future normalization agreement between Riyadh and Jerusalem will have to run through Washington, not Gaza.

Furthermore, the Saudis make clear that the recent Iranian – Saudi normalization agreement does not come at the expense of normalization with Israel.

“Not everything happens through you the Israelis. The fact that 7 years after the break with Tehran we reopen the embassy, has to do with various national interests. The UK, Spain, Germany, France, they all have an embassy in Tehran,” a Saudi minister explained with a smile.

The Saudis are insulted when they are compared with smaller Gulf states, through the question of whether they will follow the UAE and Bahrain in joining the Abraham Accords.

This is due to the fact that the Saudis are the custodians of Mecca and Medina, the holiest sites of Islam, and where Islam was born, as well as being the world's main oil producer.

“With all the respect to our neighbors, we Saudi Arabia are the Israeli gateway to the Arab and Muslim world,” said one official.

And he is right. Unofficial normalization has long been underway. Security cooperation appears to be occurring in the Red Sea, for example.

Saudi officials point out that it is no coincidence that the phenomenal futuristic city of Neom is being built only 350 km from the Israeli border.

They are also happy that there are currently about five hundred monthly flights between the UAE and Israel, all full, and that a million Israelis have visited that country in the last year.

The danger to this trend comes from "spoilers" being plotted by Iran, which supports Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas and Islamic Jihad in the Palestinian territories. This axis wants nothing more than to spoil the party of agreements between Israel and the pragmatic Arab countries.

For Israel, a new chance is emerging for a type of second independence. The new geopolitical situation, despite the dangers of a confrontation on several fronts between Israel and Iran's proxies, forces decision-makers in the region, in many capitals, to reevaluate all the previous paradigms.

While tensions and doubts exist in some Arab countries due to the presence of extreme right elements in the current Israeli government coalition, the chances of a new coalition in Israel gives those rooting for normalization in the Arab world some hope.

Despite the risks and potential traps along the way, Israel and Saudi Arabia are only in the opening chapter of a long book.

Henrique Cymerman is a journalist of global renown whose writings regularly appear in media publications in Europe, the USA, Latin America and Israel. He lectures in five languages. Henrique has covered current affairs in the Middle East for over 30 years and has been nominated "Comendador," a title of nobility, by the King of Spain and the President of Portugal. Read full bio here.

Monthly Brief, Has Israel Strengthened Its Deterrence?

By Yaakov Lappin

Israel and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad terror faction in Gaza were embroiled in a five-day conflict, which ended on May 12, dubbed Operation Shield and Arrow by the Israel Defense Forces. At the time of this writing, the truce between the sides had entered its first day with a projectile fired from Gaza violating the ceasefire less than 24 hours after it was reached. The IDF responded by striking two Hamas military posts, representing a return to the Israeli policy of holding Hamas responsible for attacks out of Gaza.

These events may seem eerily similar to the security situation that existed before the launch of Shield and Arrow on May 9, but appearances can be deceptive.

At the strategic level, the operation was not designed to change the basic equation in Gaza. It is still ruled over by Hamas, a terrorist Islamist regime, with its own Iranian-funded army and rocket arsenal. It is still home to other, smaller, factions that do not have government responsibilities, but are just as murderous as Hamas, if not more so – with one Iranian proxy, PIJ, standing out.

After PIJ terrorized the residents of Sderot with a 102-rocket barrage on May 2, to ‘avenge’ the suicide of its hunger-striking prisoner in an Israeli prison, the Israeli defense establishment felt the time had come to stabilize the Southern and Gazan arena and to knock PIJ back down to size or face a broader escalation scenario involving Hamas.

As a result, on May 9, after days of intricate intelligence tracking, and waiting for operational opportunities to arise, within the space of three seconds, simultaneous Israeli airstrikes in three separate locations eliminated three of PIJ’s senior military commanders.

PIJ then set out to terrorize Israeli civilians for the next five days and thereby exposed its operatives and assets to accurate and devastating Israeli firepower, guided by the highest quality intelligence.

When the smoke cleared, PIJ had lost twenty-one of its operatives, including the decapitation of its entire operational command level – with six senior commanders killed. Many of its rocket launchers and weapons bases, as well as command and control centers, were destroyed. PIJ’s leader, Ziad al-Nakhalah, sitting comfortably on the Iranian payroll in Beirut, and under Iranian pressure to keep going, could no longer ignore the calls from his own embattled operatives to accept the truce. Israel had proven that it is prepared to launch surprise attacks, to overcome terrorist tactics of human shielding, and to employ precision air power anywhere it needed to. The obvious message reverberated among larger enemies, Hamas and Hezbollah. Their operatives aren’t immune either.

Air defenses

In five days of conflict, PIJ fired 1,469 rockets at Israel, of which 1,139 crossed into Israeli air space, while 291 misfired and fell in Gaza. Three Palestinian civilians were killed by PIJ rockets falling in Gaza.

More than 95% of projectiles aimed at inhabited areas were intercepted by Iron Dome. The system offers a very high – but not hermetic level of defense. The approximate 5 percent gap in defenses stopped being a dry statistic and took on tragic real-life form when a rocket slammed into a residential building in Rehovot, south of Tel Aviv, killing an 80-year-old woman in her living room. A Gazan worker was the second civilian killed in Israel by PIJ rockets, in the western Negev region.

David’s Sling, the intermediate altitude defense system, made its first operationally successful appearance since going online in 2017. The Israeli Air Force used it to intercept two projectiles, testing its capabilities.

In the coming year, Israel is expected to begin deploying its Iron Beam laser interceptor, first on the ground, and later, on-board UAVs, which will be used to intercept rockets, mortars, and drones at the speed of light, and at a fraction of the cost of kinetic interceptors.

With Hamas’s cross-border tunnels cut off by Israel’s underground barrier, and Israeli air defenses improving by the year, the growing technological gap gives Israeli decision-makers hope that they can contain the threats from Gaza, and even significantly reduce the number of sirens in the Israeli home front in the future with the help of the laser interception technology, which can destroy some of the rockets over Gaza before they enter Israeli airspace.  

Offense

The IDF struck 371 PIJ targets, including apartments used by PIJ for command and control, weapons storage facilities, rocket launchers, and bases.

Israeli aircraft, both manned and unmanned – jets, helicopters, unmanned aerial vehicles – were nourished with intelligence from a range of sources. The IDF Southern Command, Military Intelligence, and the Shin Bet intelligence agency worked hand-in-hand to locate targets and ensure they were free of large numbers of civilians. All of this, in dense difficult urban conditions, with PIJ cynically employing human shielding tactics, which are a core aspect of the doctrine of the region’s terror armies.

IDF officials shared accounts of watching PIJ commanders issue orders to rocket launching squads as they stood in apartments and drove in vehicles surrounded by their children. The IDF waited patiently for better opportunities and struck when they presented.

Looking ahead

The Gaza ceasefire seems likely to hold. On May 18, Israel will mark Jerusalem Day, celebrating the reunification of the city during the 1967 Six-Day War. This is always a period of high tension in Jerusalem, but one that Israel can manage in a manner that does not necessarily lead to new escalations in the capital or the West Bank.

Israel’s goal of stabilizing Gaza, without being drawn into a costly and major war, will be put to the test in the coming weeks. Other arenas are far more urgent: Iran is approaching dangerous nuclear thresholds, Hezbollah in Lebanon has amassed a monstrous arsenal of projectiles, including precision-guided missiles, and Iran is continuously trying to smuggle offensive capabilities into Syria, where it would like to build a second Hezbollah.

Israel’s multi-arena challenges mean that Gaza is but one arena among many.

Yaakov Lappin is an Israel-based military affairs correspondent and analyst. He provides insight and analysis for a number of media outlets, including Jane's Defense Weekly, a leading global military affairs magazine, and JNS.org, a news agency with wide distribution among Jewish communities in the U.S. Read full bio here.

It is Time for Israel to Act Decisively

By Jeremiah Rozman

Let me start with a controversial proposition: Iron Dome has thus far done Israel no favors. The technologically brilliant missile defense system is praised as a shining exemplar of Israeli ingenuity, a point of pride. Indeed, criticizing Iron Dome to an Israeli or someone in the pro-Israel community is akin to speaking ill of Israel's latest Eurovision finalist. However, I stand by my assertion. This latest round with Gaza shows why. 

The problem with Iron Dome is not its technology. Its capabilities have impressed to the point that even the world's preeminent arms exporter, the United States has purchased batteries, as have several other advanced European militaries. Its technology can save lives if used in a strategically wise manner. But, to say it has would be an unprovable counterfactual. Indeed, the evidence suggests otherwise. Since Iron Dome became a mainstay in Israel's arsenal, conflicts with Gaza have been longer, more destructive, and resulted in more Israeli casualties. 

A weapon is only as good as how it is used. To quote Knesset Member Yoni Chetboun from 2019, Iron Dome has become a “sleeping pill” for the Israeli government. It has allowed Israel to manage the conflict with Gaza without having to seriously degrade the threat. Instead, despite a few flare-ups each year where Israel claims each time to have dealt a "severe blow" or "changed the equation," or something along those lines, each time Gazan militants rebuild and emerge with greater launch capabilities and new leadership.

The truth is that Iron Dome has allowed Israel’s government to avoid decisions that require unity and stability. It does this by enabling Israel to manage this conflict through what I call a greater skew toward defensive vs offensive denial. Denial means blocking an enemy from hitting you. Deterrence means persuading an enemy not to hit you through the threat of hitting them back to the point that they calculate that it is not worth it. As I argue in my book Socializing Militants, How States End Conflict with Non-State Militants, terrorist entities that are willing to die to carry out an absolutist agenda cannot be deterred and cannot be negotiated with to end the conflict. Israel cannot agree to cease to exist on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays.

Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) exist to fight Israel or die trying. You cannot deter a group of people willing to die by threatening them with death. At best Israel can achieve a strategic pause where they recover and prepare for their next aggression. This is precisely the pattern we see. Hamas is rearming while PIJ provides a shield as the current magnet for Israel's strikes. Either Hamas will join in when it deems the time right, or PIJ will become the new big player in Gaza and the West Bank, this is already becoming the case, with PIJ increasingly getting a larger share of Iranian support. With deterrence off the table, Israel needs to effectively deny its enemies the ability to attack. Israel’s periodic strikes do not inflict anything close to a mortal wound. Within a few months, PIJ and Hamas will be better prepared than before this last round and Israel will have better intelligence, precision, and missile defense. So where does this go? The answer is… a continuation of the same dynamic. 

For Israel, this is a loss. It is an abnegation of the duties of a government for Israel to allow its south and increasingly its center to become war zones every few months. Israel must realize that effective denial requires offense, seriously degrading its enemies’ capabilities instead of relying on defensive capabilities that allow it to become increasingly comfortable with an ever-growing threat. Some call this strategy "mowing the lawn." To effectively mow the lawn, Israel needs to use its army, not just its air force and missile defense. It requires ground forces to do more than take out tunnels. It requires a prolonged operation to kill off thousands of terrorists and destroy their arsenals. Israel has the capability. But does it have the will?

Israel paid with the lives of one percent of its population to emerge as a sovereign state in 1948. If in the past, Israel had been unwilling to take casualties to prevent a noose tightening around its neck, it never would have been able to score its strategically crucial victories over its adversaries in 1948, 1956, and 1967. If Israel is no longer willing to pay the butcher’s bill, it will never have security.

Some ask why Israel needs to strike Gaza at all since it has Iron Dome. I heard a senior IDF officer answer: "Just because I'm wearing a cup doesn't mean I will let you kick me in the groin all day." For nearly-two decades Israel has allowed its southern communities to be pummeled and abused, its children growing up under fire. Israel should use Iron Dome not to forestall military action but to defend the home front while it cleans house. Israel’s government must be willing to take risks. This requires the government, the media, and the people to stop filtering every action or inaction through the lens of domestic politics. National security must supersede political bickering. 

The Zionist ideal was a Jewish state willing and able to defend itself, not a state that is a punching bag for jihadists. Using Iron Dome to avoid risking IDF casualties and to put off tough decisions is not working. It is time to use the IDF for its intended purpose. Every soldier understands their duty to risk their lives to defend their civilians. If given the order, Israeli soldiers will bravely take the fight to these terrorist organizations instead of allowing communities to be bombarded. This decision lies with the government. If Israel does not wish to retake control over Gaza, it must at least mow the lawn, and thoroughly this time. Iron Dome should enable this, not prevent it.

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.

Speaker McCarthy Certainly Got This One Right

By Mark Goldfeder

On Tuesday evening House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) canceled an event that Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) was set to host today at the U.S. Capitol with the purpose of mainstreaming her antisemitic historical revisionist views. Tlaib may yet find another (less prestigious) venue and, of course, she has the right to say whatever she wants, however abhorrent, about Jews and the Jewish State. But the public should hold her accountable for the lies she is now spreading; they have been used to justify the murders of Americans and Israelis.

Tlaib's "Nakbah Day" commemoration was designed to "educate members of Congress and their staff" with a falsified Middle East narrative. But the modern history of Israel is not lost in the shrouds of time, and there are clear contemporaneous records that give the lie to Tlaib's words.

In 1922, the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine officially established an area in the Middle East to be a national home for the Jewish People and entrusted it to Great Britain. Jewish people came from around the world to buy and cultivate land to further expand the existing Jewish communities that had remained in Israel as a continuous presence since Biblical times. As Winston Churchill, then secretary of state for the colonies, explained,

"When it is asked what is meant by the development of the Jewish National Home in Palestine, it may be answered that it is not the imposition of a Jewish nationality upon the inhabitants of Palestine... but the further development of the existing Jewish community... [I]n order that this community should have the best prospect of free development... it is essential that it should know that it is in Palestine as of right and not on sufferance. That is the reason why it is necessary that the existence of a Jewish National Home in Palestine should be internationally guaranteed, and that it should be formally recognized to rest upon ancient historic connection."

Britain was allowed to change the terms in the territory east of the Jordan: it did so, and gave 77 percent of the original area to what is now Jordan. When the United Nations was formed, it proposed a partition plan for the remaining 23 percent: Resolution 181 would have created two states, an independent Israel and an independent Palestine. The Jewish community accepted those terms, and declared the State of Israel. The Arab community refused, and launched a genocidal war that they then lost.

Over time, Palestinians developed the "Nakba" myth, in which the would-be ethnic-cleansing Arab armies (who had failed in their stated mission to kill all the Jews) are reimagined as the helpless victims of a horrible catastrophe (or "nakba," in Arabic). The Nakbah legend—that the Jews came in and violently expelled the majority of Arabs from their homes—fuels much of modern anti-Zionism. And it is also worth noting that the 'Nakbah' commemoration is not even ostensibly about any kind of settlement or post-1967 occupation claims: this is nakedly a demonstration against Israel's very existence.

It is important to correct the record, for two reasons:

First, because truth matters. Primary sources from around the world describe how the vast majority of Arabs who left their homes did so either voluntarily, or under orders from the invading Arab armies—not from the Israelis.

Just read the Jordanian daily Ad Difaa (September 6, 1954), for example: "The Arab governments told us: Get out so that we can get in. So, we got out, but they did not get in." Or just look at the UN Security Council Official Records (Third Year N. 62, April 23, 1948, p. 14), in which Jamal Bey Husseini, representative of the Arab Higher Committee, explained that "The Arabs did not want to submit to a truce . . . they rather preferred to abandon their homes, their belongings and everything they possessed in the world and leave the town. This is in fact what they did."

Oddly enough, and almost as if to reinforce what the real disaster was, the official 'Nakbah Day' is May 15—the anniversary of the day on which the armies of Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and Iraq all invaded Israel in their doomed attempt to destroy it.

The second reason to correct the record is because this lie in particular has deadly consequences for both Americans and Israelis.

In March 1976, in a column for Falastin a-Thaura (the PLO's weekly), Mahmoud Abbas noted that "The Arab armies entered Palestine to protect the Palestinians from the Zionist tyranny but, instead, they abandoned them, forced them to emigrate and to leave their homeland, and threw them into prisons similar to the ghettos in which the Jews used to live."

Then 'Nakbah Day' was invented by Yasser Arafat in 1998, and by 2011 Abbas' memory had faded in direct proportion to its rising popularity. Abbas, now president of the Palestinian Authority, rewrote history in a New York Times op-ed claiming that "Zionist forces expelled Palestinian Arabs to ensure a decisive Jewish majority in the future state of Israel, and Arab armies intervened." But even that was not enough.

Just last year, in 2022, Abbas used the annual commemoration of the nakba—the same events Tlaib was to be marking at the Capitol—as an excuse to reaffirm his government's ongoing commitment to "pay for slay," the Palestinian Authority policy under which terrorists who kill Israeli or American citizens are celebrated as heroes and financially rewarded.

Of course, it was a disaster for the Arabs to reject the U.N.'s Partition Plan; ignore the Jewish people's legitimate and indigenous claims; and resort to deadly violence. But that does not mean there cannot be hope for a better future. The continuing disaster is the 'leadership' of people like Abbas and Tlaib who engage in the same delegitimization and denial that led to the mistakes of 1948, and think that this time, somehow, their results might be different. Hopefully that will change, but in the meantime kudos to the speaker for not letting Tlaib share her ahistorical, antisemitic views under the false imprimatur and borrowed respectability of a congressional event.

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.

MirYam In The Media: Hamas’s al-Arouri and the Iranian connection

Yaakov Lappin IN CONVERSATION WITH: COL. DAVID HACHAM

Hamas’s deputy political bureau chief, Saleh al-Arouri, currently based in Lebanon, is interested in surrounding Israel with rocket and terror bases, and so is Iran.
That common interest has enabled al-Arouri to create new levels of cooperation between his Sunni-Islamist terror faction and the radical Shi’ite regime in Tehran.

“This is actually one of the strong people within Hamas. I would actually say that he is among the top three of the movement,” said IDF Col. (res.) Michael Milshtein, head of the Palestinian Studies Forum at the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies at Tel Aviv University, and a senior researcher at the Institute for Policy and Strategy at Reichman University in Herzliya.

According to Milshtein, al-Arouri is responsible for the Judea and Samaria arena on behalf of Hamas, including Jerusalem. In addition, al-Arouri coordinates Hamas activity with other members of “the axis of resistance,” said Milshtein, ex-head of the Department for Palestinians Affairs in IDF Military Intelligence.

Al-Arouri is also responsible for a large portion of Hamas’s military operations abroad, said Milshtein. He “manages to direct tactical military activity but also be involved and think strategically, and basically ‘swim’ between the two worlds,” he added.

IDF Col. (res.) David Hacham, a senior research associate at the MirYam Institute and a former adviser on Arab affairs to seven Israeli defense ministers, said al-Arouri joined Hamas’s military in the early 1990s, during the First Intifada.’

“He was responsible for establishing Hamas’s military wing in the Judea and Samaria region. For his activities, he sat in an Israeli prison for 18 years. After his release, he went o to Syria, where he settled. Later, in 2012, he left Syria after the outbreak of the country’s civil war, and came to Turkey where he headed Hamas headquarters,” said Hacham.

“In 2015, after Israeli and American pressure on Turkey, he moved to Qatar along with most of Hamas’s overseas leadership. After a short stopover in Malaysia, he arrived in Lebanon where he currently operates,” Hacham said.

In 2014, the Israeli military demolished his home in the village of Aroura, near Ramallah, believing him to have been involved in the kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teenagers in Judea and Samaria.

Al-Arouri, like the head of Hamas in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, represents the younger generation in the Hamas leadership, according to the Israeli observers. Both have operational experience and have served lengthy prison terms, speak Hebrew and are familiar with Israel, unlike members of the older Hamas generation, such as Khaled Mashaal, said Hacham.

Milshtein described al-Arouri as a major connector between Hamas and other members of the radical Islamist camp opposed to Israel’s existence. For example, al-Arouri’s role in the launch by Hamas of 34 rockets at northern Israel from Lebanon in April this year was a prominent one, he said.

Al-Arouri’s unique role is enabled by two factors, according to Milshtein. “One is Arouri’s location in Beirut. And the other is his basic approach for vigorous promotion of jihad in several arenas. Especially in Judea and Samaria and the newer arena—Lebanon. This makes him a favorite for Tehran and Hezbollah,” said Milshtein. “In this context, he is involved in formulating strategic relations, but also in practical terms, he is involved in weapons procurement, training, organization, military cooperation and more.”

Hacham cautioned that Arouri’s objective of unifying fronts against Israel directly contradicts Israel’s essential interest of differentiating between the arenas.

“This is particularly true for Israel’s differentiation between Gaza and Judea and Samaria. Hamas, on the other hand, wants to create as close a connection as possible between the various conflict arenas—Gaza, Judea and Samaria, Jerusalem, the Arab sector in Israel and Lebanon—and to gain effective control over the power switch of escalation,” he said.

“Hamas strives to ensure its ability to ignite and activate the arenas, individually or together, at an appropriate time according to the circumstances,” he added.

According to Milshtein, Al-Arouri’s intense efforts help him greatly with regard to fortifying his status within Hamas as someone who succeeds in preserving “the jihad,” and who found a way to activate arenas against Israel.

“I would describe al-Arouri and Sinwar as two halves of the same whole. Each is responsible for another major activity area in Hamas. They share the same concept, and I believe both are strategically coordinated,” said Milshtein.

Hacham said Israel has so far avoided eliminating al-Arouri for a number of reasons.

First, he spent many of the past 15 years in sovereign countries, some of which have diplomatic ties with Israel, Hacham noted. Second, previous targeted killings have shown that leaders are quickly replaced in terror factions, and third, there is concern that his elimination would increase motivation for terrorist revenge attacks on Israeli targets, or could spark a wider escalation.

Nevertheless, said Hacham, al-Arouri could certainly become a future target for assassination.

“Targeted killings are the number one worry of the Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad leaderships,” said Hacham, who spoke with JNS before Israel launched “Operation Shield and Arrow” on Tuesday with the assassination of three senior PIJ commanders in Gaza.

Yaakov Lappin is an Israel-based military affairs correspondent and analyst. He provides insight and analysis for a number of media outlets, including Jane's Defense Weekly, a leading global military affairs magazine, and JNS.org, a news agency with wide distribution among Jewish communities in the U.S. Read full bio here.

Professor Chuck Freilich, serves as Adjunct Associate Professor of Political Science, Dept of Political Science at Columbia University. He is a former deputy national security adviser in Israel and long-time senior fellow at Harvard's Belfer Center, has taught political science at Harvard, Columbia, NYU and Tel Aviv University. Read full bio here.