Author Archives: Rabbi

(First published at Israelnationalnews.com)

If someone has a clue as to what is Israel’s current strategy in Gaza, please step forward. It is quite understandable if during the protracted conflict not much attention was paid to the day after. Nonetheless, there were certainly strategists and planners in our government that dealt with this and, presumably, the conduct of the war was designed to effectuate these long-term goals. But what are they?

The immediate war aims were articulated numerous times by our leadership: defeat of Hamas and its extinction as a military and political force in Gaza, including disarmament and exclusion from governance, and release of all the hostages. (Shame on our government for releasing all the terrorists – including murderers – before every last hostage, dead or alive, was returned to Israel.) Those aims were appropriate but we must note the distinction between eliminating Hamas and our strategy for post-war Gaza. Those are not the same. Even if Hamas is completely eradicated as a terrorist entity and political power – no easy task given the current war-weariness of the Americans, not to mention much of the Israeli public – eliminating a negative does not automatically create a positive. What then is our plan, not for Hamas, but for Gaza?

We have already missed several important opportunities. As politics abhors a vacuum, in place of our reticence a series of dreadful suggestions have been proffered, mainly involving rebuilding Gaza in the presence of foreign troops who can hardly be expected to challenge Hamas (if it survives) or thwart the rise of a new terrorist group under a different name. This is a bad plan based on fantasies – but a bad plan based on fantasies will always beat no plan at all.

It seems that we have reverted to the traditional Israeli craving for the status quo, kicking the can down the road, and hoping for the best – a few years of relative quiet. Those who thought that conceptziya was overwhelmed by the Hamas atrocities of October 7 should think again. That conceptziya is alive and well because it substitutes for politicians having to make tough decisions, including insisting on our just rights even in the face of American and international objections. According to reports, it has given rise to the obscenity that our soldiers are now engaged in clearing the ruins of Gaza under pressure from the United States, and at our expense. It is hard to believe but weirder things have happened. Is the IDF also being tasked with rebuilding the tunnels?

What should we want to happen in Gaza? It does not mean it will happen but if we do not propose it, it means we have forfeited any possibility of an ideal outcome. Ideally, we would want Gaza to be free of any hostile Arabs, those inimical to the existence of Israel. We would want Gaza to be open to Israeli settlement. We would want remaining Gazan Arabs to live peaceful and prosperous lives in a territory that is stable, if not flourishing. We would want the Arab world to recognize our rights to the entire land of Israel, respect our sovereignty beyond the lip service, and not hide behind the fig leaf of the alleged unrest of the Arab street. And we want to annex Judea and Samaria. These are dreams, some might say pipedreams, but certainly cannot be realized if we never articulate them.

Imagine this dialogue between PM Netanyahu and President Trump (who has long been puzzled as to what Israel really wants) at their meeting next week in Florida:

PM Netanyahu: “Donald, as I see it, we have two roads ahead of us. One road can transform the Middle East forever and advance vital American interests, and you will become renowned as the reincarnation of Emperor Cyrus. That road has never been traveled. The other, well-trodden road is to maintain the sad status quo. In other words, we can keep spinning our wheels and doing the same thing again and again hoping for a different outcome. We fight in Gaza, give Hamas a beating, pretend that its citizens are innocents who despise Hamas and love the West, lavish money on terrorists and pretend they will use it to help their people rather than plot Israel’s demise, and then fight again in a few years (next time will be the ninth time). We can do the same thing and buy a few years of relative quiet that ends with horrific terror and another war – or we can try a different approach, a new dynamic.”

President Trump: “Bibi, what do you have in mind?”

PM Netanyahu: “Well, Donald, the first idea was yours! Gaza is a hopelessly toxic environment for its residents. By any reasonable metric, it is irredeemable. The fairest, most moral solution is to relocate them to countries where they can thrive and not be seduced by the vile fantasies of radical Islam. Of course, those who want to recognize Israel’s statehood and sovereignty and want to be part of the civilized world should be welcomed to stay or to return to a rebuilt, rejuvenated Gaza. And, yes, we must build Jewish communities in the parts of Gaza that we have conquered. That is the only way that the Arabs will feel that they were defeated, that Hamas and terror are both destructive and self-destructive, that they can choose a better way.”

President Trump: “Bibi, you know that is a non-starter. Even our Arab allies are against it – the Saudis, the Emiratis, the Egyptians will never accept it. They will never accept Israeli sovereignty in Judea, Samaria, and certainly not Gaza.”

PM Netanyahu: “Well, Donald, then we have to ask ourselves, why not? All those countries’ borders are contrived, arbitrarily delineated by foreign mapmakers, or won through conquest. Why are we different? And, if we are so different, then why do they want us to have to fight the same enemies constantly? Why are they dead set against Israel ever living in peace and security? Have they really, truly, reconciled themselves to a Jewish national presence in the Middle East? If not, then for how long must we chase the chimera of peace with those who dream of our destruction every day and night?

President Trump: “But these countries also want a Palestinian state! They keep saying it. They think that is the only solution, the only way to bring peace to the Middle East, the means of impeding the spread of radical Islam. And the only way I can expand the Abraham Accords, my signature diplomatic achievement, is to indulge their interest in a Palestinian state or at least allow them to finesse it with diplomatese, weasel words that give them political cover.”

PM Netanyahu: “Well, Donald, then we are at an impasse because a Palestinian state is one of our red lines. It makes absolutely no sense to reward the genocidal attackers of October 7 with their own state from which they have already pledged to commit future atrocities against us. That will not happen. And if these so-called moderate countries – your allies, as you call them – want to combat radical Islam, why would they want to create a Palestinian state that will invariably be a base for radical Islam that will threaten us, them, and… you, the United States?”

“Look the Abraham Accords were a godsend for Israel. It showed our people that we need not be isolated forever in our region and that there might be Muslims who acknowledge our existence. But the Saudi regime is rooted in a more radical form of Islam than, for example, the Emirates. The slightest relaxation of repression in that country is met in the West as if Thomas Jefferson has been crowned as their new king. But we are an ancient people returned, as the Bible prophesied, to our land. You may not believe that (and I might not believe that) but that is the reality. The Bible said it, repeatedly, and here we are. So, know that Saudi rapprochement is not worth our acquiescence, even in theory or words, to a Palestinian state on our land. Such a pact anyway would be a paper agreement, without real substance, much like – let’s be frank – your repeated declarations that you brought peace to the Middle East after three thousand years of war. There hasn’t been three thousand years of war – and there is no peace today.”

President Trump: “What can you give me, some type of achievement, some diplomatic victory?”

PM Netanyahu: “Donald, substantive and historic achievements are there for the taking! You freed all the living hostages. That could not have occurred without a miracle, and you were the vehicle for that divine miracle. Imagine your place in history if you changed course and – like you say all the time – stop doing things again and again that don’t work. Recognize our sovereignty over Judea, Samaria, and Gaza. It has been in our possession for almost sixty years! Sixty years! For how long must its residents live in limbo? For how long must we play the diplomats’ game that has never worked and will never work? For how long must we pretend that Judea is not Jewish or indulge the Arab fantasy that they can destroy us?”

“I will tell you something else, Donald. If we declare sovereignty, you will respect us more, and even more importantly, the Arabs – even those countries you see as allies – will also respect us more. They know the value of land. They are attached to it, even the desert. They sense that our hesitation to declare sovereignty is because we really do not believe it is ours. And if we do not believe it is ours, then they convince themselves that our residence in the land of Israel is tenuous and temporary. Enough with that! You can make history! American recognition of this annexation will neutralize the UN and flummox Europe which will eventually come around as well, much like it did with your recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.”

President Trump: “But we have already a workable plan to which you agreed. Nations from across the globe – Turkey, Qatar, Indonesia, Azerbaijan, and others – have committed to sending in their own troops in order to disarm Hamas and rehabilitate Gaza. They are on the verge of coming, and the Arab world will pay for it!”

PM Netanyahu: “Well, Donald, here is the real deal. In the Middle East, what people say to your face is not always what they mean, and often it is the exact opposite. You might even be familiar with that from the real estate business. Already, Qatar is refusing to fund the reconstruction of Gaza, and no country in the world has agreed to risk their own armies in removing Hamas’ weapons and banishing it from Gaza. None. Everyone is sweet-talking you and your emissaries, talking a good game but not delivering. Even the countries that might send troops want to send them to the area under our control. But we don’t need them there!”

“And do we look insane? Irrational? Why in the world would we allow troops from Turkey and Qatar who are our enemies, who themselves in their private moments dream of our demise, to enter Gaza? Qatar basically paid for Hamas’ terror infrastructure – billions of dollars now wasted – and long hosted their terrorist leaders in luxury. Turkey has been overtly hostile to Israel for almost twenty years and wants to rebuild the Ottoman Empire which ruled the land of Israel for four centuries. Erdogan just said the other day that Jerusalem is Muslim, not Jewish. Do you really think that they will ensure that Hamas doesn’t rebuild or that a new terror organization is not created? Sure – and why don’t you allow Venezuela to interdict drug shipments to the US, perhaps even give them a base in South Florida?”

“You don’t trust Venezuela because they are themselves the criminals. We don’t trust Turkey or Qatar because they are themselves supporters and fomenters of terror. And don’t get me started on the Palestinian Authority.

President Trump: “What do you suggest?”

PM Netanyahu: “Let us, for once, together, do the right thing, the bold move that makes history, just like you did in the first term. We will disarm and defeat Hamas ourselves, allowing anyone who wants to leave Gaza to leave first. Then we will settle northern Gaza and the land that abuts our communities in the south – you do realize that Gaza is about the size of two Manhattans – punctuating our victory and ensuring our security. Then, we will finally annex Judea and Samaria – at first the areas where Jews live, then all of it – bringing diplomatic clarity to that region for the first time since Israel’s founding.

“You will go down in history, again, as a visionary leader. You will endear yourself, again, to your Christian evangelical supporters who understand completely the Bible’s prophecies and the inalienable rights of the Jewish people to Judea and Samaria, the biblical heartland of Israel. I would love to tell you that this would even increase your support among American Jews but, let’s face it, they are a strange bunch who don’t like me any more than they like you.”

“And, Donald, one more thing: is there a better idea than this one that can secure the interests of both our countries and stabilize the Middle East? There is none that occur to me or to anyone credible, beyond, let Israel withdraw and Gaza rebuild, as if that hasn’t been tried multiple times in the past. So, Donald, what do you say, let us together make history.”

There is a strategic and political vacuum in Gaza. We should fill it now, before it is too late once again and we revert to the same failed policies of the last seventy years. We should not let the vacuum linger but replenish it with policies that reflect our interests, values, and destiny.

(First published at Israelnationalnews.com)

Prime Minister Netanyahu’s official request for a pardon from President Herzog – which would immediately end his show trials – has not unexpectedly unleashed a typical storm from leftists whose sole purpose in life for the last fifteen years, it seems, has been to topple him from office. But it has also provoked some opposition from Netanyahu’s supporters, and for legitimate reasons.

A pardon would provide some measure of finality to the absurdity that has pursued the PM for over a decade, with his indictment already six years old and his trial not scheduled to end for several more years. Even if he was not the head of government having weightier issues on his plate, the prolonged trial is a form of Chinese water torture designed not to elicit the truth (no trial is) or justice (presumably the goal) but rather to harass him out of office and to break him psychologically. To his credit, all that has failed.

On balance, a pardon would be better for Israel as a country than for Netanyahu as a person. For the country, it would end at least one legal farce of the many that have exposed the abominable corruption of the judicial establishment (civilian and military), the police investigators, and the courts at the highest level. It would deprive us of the truth of how various individuals have created an unaccountable and undemocratic fiefdom that effectively rules the country and can intimidate objectors into silence. These include the Government’s putative “Legal Advisors” who act as a law unto themselves and aggregate power they do not have and are shielded in their usurpation of democracy by the Supreme Court which similarly perceives itself as unbounded and unfettered by anything other than their self-serving construction of what a secular Israel needs. Add to them prosecutors and police investigators who have been credibly accused of fabricating evidence, inventing crimes, and then taking refuge in the fortress wall of silence that protects the establishment.

We now know that the prosecutors even went as far as badgering and threatening Netanyahu’s closest staff into offering them “anything criminal against him, anything,” any negative information at all, desperate as they were to indict him for something and so tie him up in legal knots that he could not run for office and win. The interminable investigation against the PM was more than a fishing expedition; it was corroboration of the Communist police chief Lavrentiy Beria’s boast to Stalin, “give me the man, and I will find the crime.”

For Netanyahu, the grant of a pardon lacks a full expression of justice, although it does spare him the expenses of an ongoing trial as well as enables him to focus on the affairs of state for which he has been repeatedly elected. It would be used as election propaganda against him. He would not earn the vindication against the accusations of his tormentors that he would through a complete acquittal. However, it is highly implausible that the court – a tool of the judicial oligarchy that is one of the two last refuges of secular Israel (the other being the mainstream media) – will not convict him on some count of the indictment, such as the amorphous “breach of trust.” All that takes is conviction on any count by two of the PM’s three judges eager to vindicate the judicial establishment and keen on advancing their careers beyond the District Court level.

It is true that no person is above the law but no person should be under it either – the victim of a targeted prosecution aimed at manipulating the politics of the country. In most of the civilized world, indeed, prosecutions of the head of government cannot take place while the leader is serving; such distracts from his primary tasks and harms the nation itself. That is why Trump was prosecuted when he was out of office – and all his cases pending when he won election were dismissed “in the interest of justice.” The indictment of a sitting prime minister – even where a country’s laws do not preclude that – should reflect grave offenses that affect the common weal and that are morally intolerable. Netanyahu’s indictment does not come close to that threshold of seriousness. Essentially, he is accused of several quid pro quos, in which neither the quid nor the quo occurred or mattered.

Beyond hiding the crimes of the left, a pardon would unduly strengthen Donald Trump who inappropriately and (typically) brazenly demanded it in public from Israel’s President. Trump, for whom everything is transactional, will want something down the road from Netanyahu that will not be in our interest, some concession that will facilitate another “deal,” whether of the century, the millennium, or the inevitably forthcoming “deal of eternity.”

For Israel as a country, a pardon would remove one of the thorniest elements of national discord, even as it would in the short term enrage the perennial protesters who have been protesting against Netanyahu for as long as Netanyahu has been winning elections. It will not be an easy call for President Herzog, deeply embedded on the left and (who knows?) young enough to still be harboring political ambitions in the future. A pardon would infuriate and even obliterate Herzog’s potential base. His forthcoming decision will captivate Israelis for the next several months.

Herzog might try to split the difference – pardon the PM if he admits guilt to something, agrees to leave politics, or the like. None of that is reasonable, and if either of that was to happen, it could have happened years ago and spared us (and Netanyahu) the embarrassment of the incessant legal circus in which he has been center ring. Herzog may then assert that he tried – but Netanyahu (rightly) refused. That would be an abdication of Herzog’s responsibilities.

Rather than be guided by personal or populist sentiments, President Herzog should look to two pardon precedents.

The first is the Bus 300 affair from 1984, in which four Arab terrorists of an Egged bus en route to Ashkelon hijacked that bus with the intention of taking hostages its passengers and bringing them to Gaza. (“There is nothing new under the sun,” said King Shlomo.) Two terrorists were killed in a shootout near the Gaza city of Deir-el-Balah, and two were captured alive, interrogated, and then executed by the Shin Bet. No one would have shed a tear or been any wiser but for an infamous photograph that appeared in a newspaper Hadashot, published in defiance of the military censor through the New York Times, which showed one terrorist very much alive and walking, just a few minutes before he wasn’t.

 A scandal ensued, which ended several years later with no convictions of anyone involved, the resignations of the heads of the Shin Bet and the Attorney General, and pardons for all, including the Shin Bet agents responsible for the deaths of the terrorists in custody. It was President Chaim Herzog, father of our current president, who pardoned the offenders, after they were indicted but before they were tried, and all in the interests of justice and national security. None of the people charged admitted to any wrongdoing. Some of those involved later served as Cabinet Ministers and Knesset members.

The second, perhaps even more instructive and controversial case, was Gerald Ford’s 1974 pardon of Richard Nixon for all crimes related to Watergate (formally: for “all offenses… Richard Nixon has committed or may have committed” while he was president), exactly one month after Ford became President. Naturally, this unleashed a firestorm of angry protests from Nixon’s numerous, permanent, and irate enemies. Ford did it because, as he said, it was the right thing for the country. If Nixon were indicted, then, during the pendency of his case and even after, “ugly passions would again be aroused. And our people would again be polarized in their opinions. And the credibility of our free institutions of government would again be challenged at home and abroad.

Ford continued: “My conscience tells me clearly and certainly that I cannot prolong the bad dreams that continue to reopen a chapter that is closed. My conscience tells me that only I, as President, have the constitutional power to firmly shut and seal this book. My conscience tells me it is my duty, not merely to proclaim domestic tranquility but to use every means that I have to ensure it. I do believe that the buck stops here, that I cannot rely upon public opinion polls to tell me what is right. I do believe that right makes might and that if I am wrong, ten angels swearing I was right would make no difference. I do believe, with all my heart and mind and spirit, that I, not as President but as a humble servant of God, will receive justice without mercy if I fail to show mercy.”

Was Ford’s pardon of Nixon the right thing to do? Well, it polarized the United States, impaired Ford’s ability to govern, weakened his presidency, and arguably cost him the election in 1976. Yet, in 2001, the Kennedy family bestowed upon Gerald Ford its “Profile in Courage” award, with Senator Ted Kennedy, a fierce opponent of the pardon when it happened, declaiming that history had proven that Ford was correct in his decision.

It is worth noting that Nixon would have been charged with obstruction of justice, abuse of office, and other crimes, all of which related to the conduct of his presidency. Guilty or not, at least the charges would have related to something of substance, crimes, moral offenses, corruption, misuse of the presidency. Compare that to cigars, champagne, favorable media coverage (every politician’s dream), and we realize the surreal nightmare in which Netanyahu, and the people of Israel, has been immersed for many years now because of his political enemies and a justice system, which, far from being the world’s “gold standard,” has run amok, gone off the rails, and is not at all “a light unto the nations.”

Is this President Herzog a profile in courage? We shall find out.