The Judictatorship

Posted on March 18, 2025 | 2 comments

(First published at Israelnationalnews.com)

The Judictatorship   by Rabbi Steven Pruzansky, Esq.

On December 7, 1941, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, destroying much of the US Pacific Fleet and killing 2403 Americans. The commanding officer was Admiral Husband E. Kimmel. How long did it take President Franklin D. Roosevelt to fire Kimmel, relieve him of his command, and demote him in rank? It took all of ten days, until Admiral Chester Nimitz was designated Kimmel’s replacement. No one called on FDR to resign. Less than four years later, the war in the Pacific was over and the Americans were victorious.

How is it that those responsible for the catastrophe of October 7, 2023, were not held accountable? How is it possible that the Chief of Staff, head of Southern Command, head of military intelligence, and head of the Shin Bet – all abject failures in their assigned tasks – continued to serve well beyond what should be normal, given their performance? How is it that the incessant reports of the tatzpataniyot, the female military observers, were ignored – and who ignored them? Why do we not yet know the names of their commanders who disregarded their warnings – and are they still serving in their roles? Why weren’t they all dismissed within ten days?

Surely the answers are multifaceted and laden with political implications and personal considerations, but one factor stands out above all others: we are living in a judictatorship – a judicial dictatorship – in which unelected judges and the elite legal establishment effectively govern the country and hamstring our elected officials. Gali Baharav-Miara is nominally the Legal Advisor to the Government (yoetzet mishpatit lamemshalah), not even an Attorney General (tovea klali), but functions as the head of government. Ronen Bar, Shin Bet head, is to be fired this week but the firing may not stick because the Legal Advisordisapproves. Bar even asserted weeks ago that he will not resign until he can designate his successor, this too with the support of the Legal Advisor. His adamance and the government’s prior hesitation to act recalls the era of longtime FBI head J. Edgar Hoover, who could not be fired because he had dirt (true or not) on everyone. Is the Shin Bet threatening the Prime Minister? Gali Baharav-Miara cannot be fired because, well, she cannot be fired, as she presumably disapproves of her firing and the Supreme Court will back her up. This is not normal and it is not how democracy functions.

The irony is that the Legal Advisor to the Government does not at all advise the government on anything. She doesn’t advise as much as she dictates. She often refuses to represent the ministries when she disagrees with their policies, leaving them without representation except when she approves private representation for them. She must approve any government hiring and any government firing. She sits in judgment on any proposed legislation, killing those she disfavors before the Knesset, ostensibly Israel’s legislature, can vote on them. She determines the extent of enforcement of laws that the Knesset has passed, disregarding those she frowns on and over-enforcing those she supports.

It should be obvious to any impartial observer that we are no longer living in a democracy. The people’s rule is illusory and the people’s vote is ultimately meaningless when a right-wing government is elected. The Prime Minister is effectively emasculated, forced to look over his shoulder at the Legal Advisor, barred from major decisions because of the legal charade that has been hovering over him for years. Even if he wanted to act decisively – not at all clear – he cannot.

The Legal Advisor is buttressed by a Supreme Court that allows no limits on its authority, no limits on its jurisdiction, almost no limits on its appointment of successor justices, and no limits on its encroachment on the Knesset’s authority. Statutes mean nothing. The Court, and the Legal Advisor, have the last word – and usually the first and middle words – on everything that transpires in society. They decide who serves in every major position in government, they dictate police and military policy, they encroach on purely halachic matters, they superintend every government decision and Knesset law, they delight in providing every legal right to our enemies and withhold them from Jews. And they are unelected and unaccountable.

In the name of democracy, there is no democracy. And note the deft linguistic trick pulled off by the Israeli left and anti-Netanyahu crowd: in the name of “democracy” they trample on every democratic norm, and then they accuse anyone who points this out of being “a threat to democracy.” George Orwell could not have said it better. It is worth recalling that Communist and Socialist countries labeled themselves “Democratic Republics” or “Peoples Republics.” Yair Golan even named his new party “The Democrats,” notwithstanding his disgust for the people’s opinions and his contempt for democratic norms, including repeated threats to use violence to attain his political objectives.

To them, the biggest threat to democracy is the voice of the people, who cannot be trusted to elect the right people to govern them. It demonstrates that democracy can be destroyed while purporting to save it if the radicals have the courts and the media on their side.

Certainly, democracy means more than government by the people, and the essence of liberal democracy is majority rule with protection for minority rights. But that, too, does not happen here. Extracting confessions via torture is acceptable if a scapegoat is needed and fits the bill, like Amiram ben Uliel. Homes of civilians can be bugged and their private lives eavesdropped upon if the target is their bête noire, PM Netanyahu, and the decades-long obsession with finding some, any, criminality to pin on him. They would appreciate the crack of Lavrentiy Beria, head of the Soviet Secret Police, “show me the man and I will show you the crime.” Ongoing efforts to hold these domestic spies accountable have been repeatedly thwarted by the Legal Advisor, who found time to shield her son from credible accusations of theft on an army base.

Who doubts that there are two or three tiers of justice, one for the elites and the others for religious Jews, settlers, Haredim, Ethiopian Jews, Edot Hamizrach, et al? It is why the radicals can block highways at will and take selfies with the police, while Haredim or settlers or Ethiopians who protest are beaten, shot with tear gas, and sometimes just shot. Left-wing protesters who oppose the government and shout “democracy” can riot at will notwithstanding the commission of crimes; right-wing protesters who peacefully oppose left-wing governments’ insanities (Oslo, Gush Katif expulsion) are jailed without trial. Perhaps the latter forgot to yell “democracy” loud enough.

We are an unruly people, difficult to govern under the best circumstances, but the alternative and more powerful government run by the judictatorship threatens our very freedoms and renders our elections superfluous, if not pointless. Every government action requires its permission, every appointment requires its approval. The Legal Advisor’s control over all legislation is without any statutory authority but is a right given to the L.A. by the Supreme Court, which has no authority to convey such rights. That too is a clever trick, bypassing the legislature and elected government. And we can be sure that the legal establishment’s role in the October 7 Hamas massacre will not be investigated, and not just the Court’s insistence that the IDF modify its open fire rules at the Gaza border to allow the enemy unfettered access.

The loudest voices calling today for the defense of democracy are those that are systematically tearing it down. It should be no surprise to anyone that the same playbook is used in the US, where in the last decade free speech was denied dissenting voices on the grounds of protecting free speech, election fraud was defended on the grounds that democracy was endangered, and the head of government was investigated and prosecuted for years. The greatest paradox is that the more Trump and Netanyahu were persecuted, the more popular each became with the electorate who saw the rigged system and the unfairness of it all.

It is fair to ask: who exactly is running our country? Who will challenge a court system and legal establishment that is running amok, disobeys written laws, and fabricates others as it suits them? It is shameful but not unexpected that any attempt to reform the judicial establishment is met with threats of violence and national suicide, all of course to protect democracy and freedom.

If democracy in Israel is in danger, it is from those who are screaming that it is in danger, and from no one else. They use the term “democracy” to deflect from their disdain for democracy and they use it because their exclusive goal is not democracy but power. It is all about power. And they want to use this power to narrowly define Israel as a secular state, rooted in Western progressive values, with a Jewish flavor but little Jewish substance, and thus impeding our spiritual growth and national destiny.

The people of Israel do not want a secular, progressive state. They want a Jewish state, rooted in Jewish values, tethered to tradition, to Jewish history, and to our eternal and divine mission. That is what we vote for – repeatedly – only to be thwarted by the judictatorship and its minions in the media.

Let us declare that the jig is up. We will no longer be deceived or even moved by the cries of “democracy!” from the most anti-democratic forces this country has ever seen. We are on to them and their semantic games. Their shrieks “democracy!” should be met by us with derisive laughter and mockery – and arrests, prosecution, and incarceration if they violate the law.

No one elected the Legal Advisor or the Supreme Court to anything, much less the sovereign of Israel. Beware the politicians who support judicial reform, but “not this” and “not now.” If so, then what? And when? To the question, what reforms would you support, the answer always is silence. They too are the tools of the deep state.

Make no mistake about it. It is the deep state that is most responsible for our failed and botched response to the Hamas invasion of October 7. The deep state that operates through the Legal Advisor and the Supreme Court, the deep state that has sought to undermine the Prime Minister since he was first elected years ago, the deep state that protects bureaucrats and their awful decisions and leftist politicians and their disastrous policies, the deep state that cut the Prime Minister out of the intelligence loop, the deep state that spies on him and his associates, the deep state that scorns democracy even as it wraps itself in its mantle.

In the name of true democracy, they need to be reined in, and the sooner the better. A government that cannot fire unelected bureaucrats – no matter their incompetence or malfeasance – is subservient to them and has forfeited its legitimacy. Only determined government action will protect democracy and hasten the demise of the judictatorship.

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Needed: Vision and Leadership

Posted on February 24, 2025 | 2 comments

(First published at Israelnationalnews.com)


Life in Israel is an emotional roller coaster. Not long ago I wrote that, aside from the hostages and their immediate families, we should feel not joy but relief at their liberation, and be mindful of the price paid in the lives of our soldiers who pressured Hamas to this point, as well as the lives of our soldiers lost capturing the terrorists who are now being freed. Our emotions range from relief to rage. Nevertheless, those enraged at the sight of coffins of Jewish victims now being returned alongside the jubilation seen in the Arab world at the release of their murderers should internalize that this is what “at any price” look like. What did we expect? This is their plan.

As if to add to our degradation, Hamas is so unbowed and undeterred that it has resumed blowing up our buses. Of course, only fools would release thousands of Arab Nazi genocidal terrorists from prison and not expect a resumption of terror. How did we lose our way? How did defeat take the place of victory – and so suddenly?

Abba Eban famously said that Arabs “never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.” That is no longer true. Arabs exploit every opportunity they get – to weaken us, terrorize us, murder us, and demoralize us. They know how to manipulate our society, they know that we will pay any price to liberate the hostages, and they know that this winning strategy can and will be repeatedly employed in the future to achieve whatever aims they want. We have rendered ourselves incapable of victory. For all the blather about learning from and not repeating the mistakes of the past, that is precisely what Netanyahu seems to be doing.

Do you know who “never misses an opportunity to miss an opportunity”? We Israelis, who time and again, especially recently, have been given opportunities to deal decisive blows to our enemies, and do not.

Hamas was on the brink of destruction and we saved them. In truth, the war was lost when Israel began providing humanitarian aid to our enemies and adopted the fiction that Gazans are innocent civilians, not an integral part of the Hamas terror network. The war was lost when we began (again) the lopsided terrorist for hostages deals in November 2023, validating that strategy.  The war was lost when Hamas was so on the verge of extinction in January 2023 that it was willing to barter hostages for cans of oil until Netanyahu succumbed to more Biden pressure and provided fuel in exchange for literally nothing. The war was lost when Netanyahu first rejected the notion of freedom for our hostages “at any price,” and then began paying that price.

With Donald Trump’s return to office, new opportunities present themselves that we are again disregarding. Trump recently said that “all the hostages must be released or else,” but Netanyahu, listening to the voices calling for hostage deals, failed to capitalize on that free hand, preferring the release of a few hostages here, some coffins there, and a plethora of freed terrorists. Trump is giving Netanyahu carte blanche to eradicate Iran’s nuclear program, which has been met so far with our silence and inaction. At this point it is more likely that Iran will develop a nuclear weapon than that Israel will demolish its capability (I do hope I am wrong).

The problem seems deeper than the recurrent accusations that Netanyahu talks tough and rarely acts. For sure, he is the finest communicator we have ever had as prime minister, and no Israeli politician has ever been unfairly vilified to the extent that he has. It is something else entirely.

All the evidence to date suggests that PM Netanyahu perceives himself (perhaps unconsciously) as a “conflict manager,” not as a “conflict solver.” He seems to recoil from solutions, preferring to nibble at the margins of a conflict rather than ending or resolving it.

Recall that Netanyahu was first elected in 1996 running against the implementation of the disastrous Oslo Accords. Yet, as soon as he was elected, he did not renounce this catastrophic agreement but implemented it, albeit more slowly, but implementing it nonetheless, even withdrawing from the holy city of Hevron. He boasted that “if they give, they get; if they don’t give, they don’t get,” but what they were “giving” was ephemeral and what they were “getting” endangered our lives. Instead of ending Oslo, he tried to manage it, and was voted out of office. Similarly, his vacillations on the calamitous Gaza expulsion – he was for it before he was against it – are part of the same pattern – management, not resolution.

Fast forward to Netanyahu’s tenure of almost 15 years and we see, unfortunately, not much has changed. The PM has been warning about Iran for decades but Iran is closer than ever to nuclear capability. His threats have been eloquent and ominous but nothing much has changed. To be sure, there have been attacks around the margins – delaying the program through the untimely deaths of Iranian nuclear scientists and detonation of some of its facilities – but these resolved nothing, The Mossad operation in 2018 that pilfered Iran’s nuclear archives was extraordinary, but long-term, accomplished what, exactly? Trump in his first term then withdrew from the Iran deal (which he had promised to do anyway) but Biden returned to it, so what was the long-term effect? Proving to the world that Iran has a nuclear program? Everyone knew that already but most nations don’t care. That is management, not resolution.

The Shalit deal was an example of conflict management, not resolution, emboldening the enemy that terror pays. The various Gaza skirmishes throughout the Netanyahu tenure – the “mowing the lawn” operations – are examples of conflict management, not resolution. Netanyahu seems to lack a killer instinct, never goes for the jugular, never strikes a deathblow against our enemies. That he is mocked today in Gaza, not feared, should be worrisome for all of us.

Hezbollah was near destruction, and most of south Lebanon was under Israeli control, until Netanyahu again decided to abandon territory won in a defensive war and again allow Hezbollah to rearm, rebuild, and return.The beeper caper was stupendous, but not a game changer. We let Hezbollah survive. It will bide its time. We will absorb its attacks without fully responding because that is what we do. That is management, not resolution.

Hamas was near destruction, and most of Gaza under Israeli control, until again Netanyahu decided to resuscitate them, and withdraw from territory saturated with Jewish blood, all to fight another day. That is management, not resolution. Our soldiers are killed, and nothing changes.

Most recently, President Trump proposed that Gazans be relocated to a place where they can live in peace (that is conflict resolution, not management), and what has been our response? To laud the proposal as bold – and then send caravans and building materials to Gaza. Why would caravans and housing materials be sent to Gaza if resolution entails resettlement? It is because we have a leader who manages conflicts but cannot end them, who repeatedly caves under pressure (Clinton, Obama, Biden, and to a lesser extent, Trump), and never accepts any responsibility for failure.

Hamas is solely to blame for kidnapping and murdering our hostages – but we should not need to be reminded of the pathological evil of our enemies. We need to know what our leaders are doing about it. The answer seems to be, again, declaring victory and pulling out, surrendering and calling it a “strategic retreat,” and kicking the can down the road. On October 7, we ran out of road, and still, spin and more spin, the old and failed ways have returned, we grieve and the enemy rejoices, nothing changes, and we are again promised that “just wait, victory is around the corner.” 

Count me a skeptic. If Hamas’ goals were to murder Jews and free their terrorists from our prisons, it has already won. And it is truly inexplicable why Israel has not yet enacted the death penalty for terrorists; at the very least, it would preclude the wild scenes of euphoria among the “innocent” Arab civilians who dwell in the land of Israel.

For better or worse, Trump is a conflict solver, not a manager. His Gaza logic – “why would you keep doing the same thing over and over, when it does not work?” – is impeccable, but such logic has always evaded our leaders. Rightly or wrongly, he has tired of Zelensky who has no realistic vision of an end to his conflict, and probably justifiably so, and he will soon tire of Netanyahu as well and his indecisiveness, his irresoluteness, and his failure of leadership and vision. Trump is a problem solver and if he determines that a problem cannot be solved he will walk away. He is almost daring Netanyahu to act, boldly, without inhibitions, against Iran, Gaza, Lebanon, and Yemen. Yet, as if preternaturally, Netanyahu cannot or will not act. There is always some enigmatic reason for him to remain passive and let the problems fester.

A conflict manager allows unfettered illegal Arab construction in Jerusalem – in Israel’s own capital city – as well as in Area C of Judea and Samaria. A conflict manager allows foreign consulates in Jerusalem to host events in praise of terror and view themselves as embassies and ambassadors in Palestine.  No self-respecting country would indulge such effrontery. A conflict manager talks of judicial reform and does little about it. A conflict manager wins elections not by presenting resolutions but by depicting every opponent as far worse, people who will “divide Jerusalem!” or “establish a Palestinian state!” or “expel settlers from their homes!” A conflict manager talks and talks and talks about annexing the Jordan Valley, or annexing Judea and Samaria, but does nothing about it.

A leader with vision would accept the Trump proposal for Gaza with a smothering, enthusiastic embrace. Such a leader would not be furnishing homes and allowing the Gaza ruins to be rebuilt but would maintain it as a demolition site to encourage emigration and as an eternal deterrence to our enemies. He would settle Jews in areas conquered from our enemy. He would actively work to implement the Trump plan for Gaza and then apply it to any Arab in Judea and Samaria from the river to the sea who rejects Jewish sovereignty.

If past is prologue, today’s pain and rage will dissipate, we will bind our wounds, find joy in our personal lives, and revert to supporting our political teams even if that demands a suspension of reason and a continuation of the failed policies of many decades. Our glib leaders will persist in exclaiming that “together we will win!” even if they are bereft of any plan for victory. The irony is that our most rabid enemies today are the enemies of most of the Arab countries in the Middle East, and so decisively defeating these enemies – ending that part of the conflict – will promote peace generally. And yet we do not.

Is failed leadership our inescapable reality before the coming of Messiah? Perhaps, but we need not make it more difficult on ourselves by acting irrationally and repeating awful mistakes. But for G-d’s grace, we would be utterly lost, and we thus pray for His compassionate hand that consoles us in our time of distress. May He send our leaders with strength, and integrity, leaders who rise to the challenges of this fateful moment in the history of our eternal people.

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The End of UNRWA

Posted on February 20, 2025 | Comments Off on The End of UNRWA

(First published at JNS.org)

The Knesset overwhelmingly passed legislation last year prohibiting the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) from operating on Israeli territory. It also banned every Israeli from cooperating with UNRWA in any way. Despite an outcry from the anti-Israel elements of the international community, the law went into effect at the end of January, and UNRWA was obligated to cease its operations in Israel. Its social services to residents of Jerusalem, for example, were assumed by the municipality, but it has created a vacuum among purveyors of incitement and anti-Israel animus.

The time has come for the United Nations, once and for all, to close down UNRWA entirely. It has not served a useful purpose for many decades, if ever. UNRWA in Jerusalem provided health care and sanitation services, as well as administered some schools—tasks that, according to residents, performed poorly in all respects. Elementary-school education taught little beyond incitement against Israel, and UNRWA routinely sold its supplies on the black market, enriching its employees and impoverishing its clients. As reported in Israel Hayom, only 2.3% of eighth-graders in UNRWA schools were proficient in reading at age-appropriate levels.

UNRWA’s failure to provide services pales before its active participation in terror, both inside and outside of Gaza. Estimates are that almost half of UNRWA’s staff in Gaza were active members of Hamas, and dozens of UNRWA workers were identified as among the assailants and torturers of Jews on Oct. 7, 2023. A substantial part of the UNRWA annual budget of roughly $2 billion functioned as a grant to Hamas. Terror facilities run by Hamas, including weapons depots and tunnels, were discovered under UNRWA buildings in Gaza, and Hamas has claimed responsibility for repeated acts of terror in Jerusalem in the last several years.

Why does UNRWA still exist? And why must it be permanently shuttered?

UNRWA was founded 75 years ago to deal with the 700,000 Arab refugees who fled their homes during and after Israel’s War of Independence in 1948. Oddly, another U.N. agency, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), was created around the same time to deal with the remainder of the world’s tens of millions of refugees resulting from the wars in that tumultuous decade. Neither agency inquired after the welfare of the 800,000 Jews who were simultaneously driven out of their homes in the Arab world, most of whom resettled in Israel and the West.

More importantly, UNRWA’s singular focus since its origin has been to perpetuate the refugee status of Palestinian Arabs rather than end it through resettlement, which is the objective of UNHCR. This is accomplished in several ways. First, UNRWA redefined “refugee” for its own purposes. According to the UNHCR, refugee status is limited to those individuals who fled a war zone. As soon as they are resettled, they are no longer considered refugees and are beyond UNHCR’s purview.

By contrast, UNRWA contrived its own unique definition of “refugee,” i.e., any descendant of a male who fled the Arab invasion of Israel in 1948. Thus, refugee status for Palestinian Arabs is transmitted from generation to generation, unlike any other refugee group in the world, and so by UNRWA’s (inflated) count, they now number almost 6 million people. Today, 99% of these “refugees” were born and raised in the country where they now reside. UNRWA is subsidizing its fourth generation of refugees, something unprecedented, and which therefore has no natural end to it.

Second, UNRWA makes no effort to find permanent homes for its “refugees” but has maintained them in refugee camps since 1949. While UNHCR seeks to terminate refugee status, UNRWA seeks to immortalize it. As such, for most Palestinians, their refugee status is never lost, and they remain eligible for UNRWA subsidies. In effect, Palestinians are not required to assume responsibility for their own well-being and resettlement, even though they reside mostly in Judea, Samaria and Gaza or in the Arab world among their co-religionists whose language and culture they share. Certainly, residence in Arab countries such as Jordan, Syria or Lebanon for 60 to 75 years should have resulted in the loss of their refugee status. Those countries should assimilate them.

Third, the desire to maintain the refugee status of Palestinian Arabs forever stems from UNRWA’s primary purpose. It perceives its role as integral to the fight for Israel’s destruction and disappearance. It is not just that UNRWA regularly incites against Israel and has participated in acts of terror. UNRWA inculcates a narrative of victimization and permanent grievance that can never be assuaged except by violence against Israel.

U.S. President Donald Trump said he would halt U.S. contributions to UNRWA, as he did in his first term, which then amounted to 17% of the agency’s budget, or $371 million. It is time that UNRWA be shuttered entirely. To incentivize this, Washington should threaten to reduce its contribution to the United Nations itself for the exact amount the international body spends on UNRWA, which is now upward of $2 billion.

It’s time for new thinking and new approaches. In the wake of the Trump initiative to relocate Palestinians in Gaza elsewhere in the Middle East so they can begin new and productive lives, UNRWA becomes even more superfluous.

As long as UNRWA exists and Palestinian Arabs perceive themselves as eternal wards of the world, they will retain their fantasy of destroying Israel. UNRWA will never disband itself; it is one of the world’s foremost boondoggles. Its disbandment by the United Nations can only help promote a better life for Palestinian Arabs and a more peaceful world.

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The Saudi Seduction

Posted on February 4, 2025 | Comments Off on The Saudi Seduction

Prime Minister Netanyahu’s diplomatic plate is overflowing. His visit to Washington, including the summit with President Trump, must delineate Israel’s impending agenda on several different fronts, most importantly the achievement of victory in Gaza that will defeat Hamas, end its reign of terror on Israel from its Gaza base of operations, and liberate our remaining hostages. Add to that the elimination of Iran’s nuclear capacity and these meetings are quite momentous.

According to reports, President Trump is fixated on advancing on the Saudi front, with the goal of achieving normalization between Israel and Saudi Arabia. To be sure, that is a worthy objective and will jumpstart the Abraham Accords that the Biden administration left to wither. Nevertheless, Israel should enter these negotiations as equals, not as beggars at the trough desperate for recognition at any price. We should be mindful of our national interests – as well as the advantages and limitations of any agreement with Saudi Arabia.

The theory is that any agreement with the Saudis will effectively end the Arab-Israeli dispute. Saudi Arabia has special status in the Muslim world as the custodian of the Islamic holy places. As such, its rapprochement with Israel would be tantamount to a declaration that all Islam should reconcile with Israel, effectively ending Israel’s ostracism from much of the Muslim world. That is certainly consequential.

Yet, similar claims were made when Israel and Egypt made peace in 1979. Removing the Arab world’s largest army from the battlefield was assumed to make future wars with Israel impossible, and an era of peace and prosperity would dawn. It hasn’t quite happened like that. It is true that battlefield wars between Israel and our neighbors have ceased since then but they have been replaced by protracted wars fought against non-state actors, or evil terrorists as they should be known, several times in Lebanon and Gaza, continuously in Judea and Samaria, with the specter of a genocidal Iran looming over the region.

Saudi Arabia may be attempting to modernize but agreements between democracies and autocracies are inherently unstable, as the latter are always subject to coups and abrupt changes in leadership. There have been several attempts to overthrow the Saudi monarchy, and we should recall the temporary rise to power of Mohammed Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt in 2013, which, if not overthrown by current Egyptian President Abdel al-Sisi, could have spelled the end of the Israel-Egypt peace treaty.

Israel then must be cautious about relinquishing vital assets or compromising our security for tentative gains that might be short-lived. These forfeited assets or hazardous compromises could theoretically include an end to the war with Hamas and withdrawal from Gaza, recognition of a Palestinian state, a freeze on construction of Jewish settlements in Judea and Samaria, withdrawal from Lebanon, a return to the status quo of October 6, 2023, a ban on Jewish prayer on the Temple Mount, et al.

Not one element of this is worth normalization with Saudi Arabia, even if President Trump is enamored with the deal. We are not at war with Saudi Arabia, except in the technical sense. There are no reciprocal claims on each other’s territory. There is no reason there should be any hostility between Israel and Saudi Arabia, there is no casus belli, and no reason peace does not already exist. I have never placed much stock in the notion that these powerful autocracies must heed the “Arab street,” and thus Israel has to make precarious compromises, and Saudi Arabia has to be afforded a fig leaf so as to better sell the deal to its public. Autocracies do not work that way. Perhaps the value of these agreements can be put into better perspective by analyzing the relationship between Israel and its current peace partners.

The peace with Egypt, as well as with Jordan, has long and accurately been described as a cold peace. Trade exists, but tourism these days is almost non-existent. Israelis must hide their identity when visiting those countries and the welcome is not always hospitable. These countries are not our friends or even allies, and they consistently evince open hostility to Israel in international forums including the United Nations. It would seem that we want it more than they do, which is not inherently unreasonable because Israelis feel better without the sense of isolation imposed on us by much of the world, but which should give us some pause as to the risks implicit in these agreements and the tangible concessions we make to procure them.

In both agreements, we forfeited vital territory won with the blood of our soldiers. With Egypt, we relinquished essential assets (oil) and with Jordan, we were somehow cajoled into providing them with water for, it seems, infinity. In exchange, they agreed to… well, not kill us. Both nations benefited substantially from American aid after signing these agreements.

Perhaps even more instructive is the linchpin of the Abraham Accords, the agreement with the United Arab Emirates. We enjoy trade and tourism. I have visited the UAE several times and always felt comfortable there. Yet, there was a noticeable difference on my most recent visit six weeks ago. Public Jewish prayer has ended, even if previously it was informally tolerated. There are no longer minyanim, even if an ornate synagogue was opened in the Abrahamic Village in Abu Dhabi. Jews who used to walk around with kippot no longer do so. There is a plethora of kosher restaurants in the UAE but – aside from the ones with “kosher” in their names – the others cannot be identified from the outside as kosher. There is no insignia, no indication that they are kosher restaurants, and patrons must ask for the kashrut certificate to verify that the establishment is, indeed, kosher. This state of affairs preceded the murder of the Chabad Shaliach, Rabbi Zvi Kogan, Hy”d, in the UAE this past November so it is not just security related.

The sense of “inclusion” that one felt in the early years of the Abraham Accords has subtly changed to a sense of “toleration.” Granted, any peace treaty is better than any war, but the question remains: at what price? Absence of war is a value for all sides, even without a treaty. What must we renounce or surrender for the privilege of being liked or tolerated? All we ask of former adversaries is they commit to not hating us, nothing more tangible. In exchange for that, in the Abraham Accords we postponed indefinitely the annexation of our biblical heartland, Judea and Samaria, and in the Egyptian and Jordanian treaties, surrendered quantifiable resources.

Normalization with Saudi Arabia is not worth it if the price is our acquiescence to the establishment of a Palestinian state in the center of our homeland. We should beware of the diplomat’s rhetorical games, of finding equivocal language that might mean this to us and something else to them but ultimately leave us weakened. One of Menachem Begin’s greatest mistakes at Camp David in 1978 was consenting to what was called “the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people,” then a newly created nuisance on the world scene. Begin resisted mightily, until he didn’t, assuaging his conscience by telling himself that “legitimate” and “rights” are undefined, and so they can mean whatever we want them to mean.

It was a good lawyer’s argument – but has been seized upon by our enemies to mean what they assumed it meant: that Palestinians have “legitimate rights,” not Jews, and whatever they are, the Jews are depriving them of those rights. Add to that the effective declaration in the disastrous Oslo Accords that the land of Israel is not just the homeland of the Jewish people, and we should not wonder why even the horrific massacre of innocent Jews – babies, women, men, the elderly – gained us very little sympathy from the world. Why sympathize with a nation that deprives others of “legitimate rights” on land that they do not consider their own?

We should not beg, grovel, or plead for recognition by other nations. There is something amiss about an ancient and eternal people fawning for acceptance by a nation – Saudi Arabia – that literally came into existence in 1932. We must come as a proud nation, equals. The Saudis want a defense pact with the US? That is fine – but we need not pay the price for it. Arguably, they need normalization with us more than we do with them. The Saudis need our assistance with their sworn enemy Iran – and if Iran is successfully neutralized, how valuable does this treaty then remain for them? The answer is, not much, so why should we concede anything substantive in order to achieve it?

That being said, I welcome a normalization deal of equals. Here is a suggestion: Mutual recognition between Israel and Saudi Arabia including full diplomatic relations, joint military efforts to defang the Iranian menace, trade and tourism (although we should be wary of wealthy Arab countries buying substantial real estate in our cities), Israel’s concurrence to a mutual defense treaty between Saudi Arabia and the United States (including lobbying Congress for approval, a such a treaty is not a done deal) and Saudi assent to the land of Israel as the homeland of the Jewish people.

And about the Palestinians? Well, if Saudi Arabia assigns less than 1% of its territory – in the area of the desert that is adjacent to Iraq and Jordan – President Trump can realize his creative plan to resettle Gazans in a place where they can thrive. Just 1% of Saudi Arabia – whose borders are not sacrosanct, were artificially drawn a century ago, and are still not finalized today – can fit almost 60 Gazas (1% can even contain almost four “West Banks”). Or the Saudis can draw that 1% from their southwestern coast, so Gazans can live near the beach and next to their friends, the Houthis of Yemen. Build them an oasis in the desert. Let them live.

But let us not repudiate our past, or endanger our future, on the shifting sands of Arabia. No good has ever come from renouncing our homeland. Only good can come from asserting our divine rights – call them “legitimate rights” – in the land of our forefathers to build a holy and godly society.

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