Tag Archives: Israel

(First published at Israelnationalnews.com)

One of the most reviled figures in Jewish history is Yeravam ben Nevat, a former minister of King Shlomo who seceded from the Kingdom of Judah and crowned himself the first king of Israel. That split has never healed and Yeravam’s path and destiny inform our current political imbroglio.

The Talmud (Sanhedrin 102a) teaches us that despite Yeravam’s secession, and even his promotion of idolatry, he was a person of greatness and nobility. So much so that, in the Talmudic tale, the Holy One, Blessed be He, grabbed Jeroboam by his garment, and implored him, saying: “Repent, and you and I and [David] the son of Yishai will stroll together in the Garden of Eden.” Yeravam said to Him: “Mi ba-rosh? Who will walk in the lead?” God said to Yeravam: “The son of Yishai will lead.” Yeravam responded: “If so, I do not want it.”

Certainly, the tale is metaphorical and esoteric, but some aspects of it are both comprehensible and too relevant to our world. The Garden of Eden here is not the world after life but, perhaps, the perfect world, in this world. In an ideal world, a talented individual such as Yeravam has an important role to play in Jewish leadership. But the Davidic dynasty must take precedence and have the dominant role. Yeravam, and others, are also central to the story of Israel but must first acknowledge the Kingdom of David.

That Yeravam refused to do, and for the crassest reason. “Mi ba-rosh?” Who leads? If it is not me then I do not want to be part of Jewish destiny. Yeravam’s fate was sealed, as the prototypical “sinner who causes others to sin,” who lost his share in the world to come, and presaged the eventual downfall of the First Jewish Commonwealth.

“Mi ba-rosh?” That question is the bane of Jewish organizational life and one reason – perhaps the main reason – why there is a plethora of organizations that do the exact same thing. If they merged, they could do it more efficiently, but then several people would not be able to be the rosh, the head of the organization. So, it does not happen.

That is the state of the politics in Israel today, especially regarding the rapidly mushrooming number of right-wing parties competing for the same vote. The party names really don’t matter much, as most will disappear after the election, but there is the party of Ofer Vinter, the party of Avi Maoz, the party of Moshe Feiglin, the party of Sharren Haskell (which Jonathan Pollard joined this week), the party of Gilad Erdan and Yuli Edelstein, and I am certain I have omitted a few.

These parties supplement the Likud, the Religious Zionists, and Otzma Yehudit, even though there is hardly a shekel’s worth of difference between them. Sure, each party addresses issues slightly differently, each has its own nuance, but most importantly, each has its own leader.

On Wednesday, Sharren Haskell stated that she has tried to integrate these parties into one list but has thus far failed. The problem is mathematics: there can only be one number one. Or as she identified the problem: “ego.” In other words, “Mi ba-rosh?”

The biggest losers are liable to be the State of Israel and the people of Israel.

Some – like Ofer Vinter, who is an attractive candidate and impressive personality, whose deeds, heart and ideology are in the right place – were offered prominent slots in several parties and spurned them. Others have been rejected by their original parties and daydream that the only way they can remain in politics is by leading their own party. Most, apparently, fail in another aspect of mathematics – the mathematics of Israeli elections.

The electoral threshold – the minimum number of votes that a party must receive in order to qualify for seats in the Knesset – is 3.25% of the valid vote total. The likelihood that all of these parties will qualify are zero. The likelihood that even one of these parties will qualify is slender, notwithstanding early surveys that show Vinter’s party squeaking by the electoral threshold. The greatest likelihood is that these parties will dilute the vote totals on the right-wing so that a left-wing government will assume power. Tens and potentially hundreds of thousands of votes will go to waste, the votes of people who want a conservative, traditional, proudly Jewish, security-minded government that loves the land of Israel in its entirety and sees it as the exclusive patrimony of the Jewish people. These voters will get the polar opposite of what they voted for.

As we know, it happened before, with catastrophic consequences. In 1992, the right-wing Hatechiya party (led by Geula Cohen) fragmented into three parties, none of which crossed the electoral threshold. Yitzchak Shamir and the Likud lost, and Yitzchak Rabin and Labor prevailed, formed a narrow government (although only right-wing governments are actually called “narrow”) and foisted the Oslo Accords and thirty years of horrors on the people of Israel.

It is quite simple. Had Hatechiya remained intact, those three parties together would have exceeded the electoral threshold and provided the requisite votes for a Likud government. The debacle of Oslo would have been averted. We literally brought disaster on ourselves. “Mi ba-rosh.”

To be sure, there is much jockeying on the right-wing among people who see themselves as potential prime ministers for the day after Netanyahu. And, it should be underscored, these people are not Yeravam, just like PM Netanyahu is not Rechavam, son of King Shlomo, who lost half his kingdom. But they are following the path of Yeravam: “if I can’t lead, then I do not want it.”

That is a losing formula. Invariably, there will be finger pointing when it happens, but all that will be needed is for these leaders – all number ones, all heads, in their own minds – to look in the mirror.

There is much to admire and much to criticize about PM Netanyahu but one point he emphasized this week is true and should not be doubted. “The left cannot beat the right. Only the right can beat the right.”

The media will do its best to promote Gadi Eisenkot, whose tenure as Chief of Staff was mixed and rooted in the conceptzitya that bedeviled almost all Israeli politicians, and whose service in the Knesset, and briefly in the Cabinet, was, to be charitable, undistinguished. His credentials to serve as prime minister are soft, primarily that he is the leader of the “anyone but Bibi” political camp.

There are right-wingers in Israel who, for whatever reason, will not vote for Likud, and they too deserve a political home. But not five or ten homes. One of the great anomalies of Israel’s electoral history is that until 1996, the largest party that formed the government always had at least 40 Knesset seats, whereas since 1996 (Netanyahu’s first term), the party that formed the government has never had 40 Knesset seats. A new party would be welcome – but governments led by a cluster of small parties are never stable, and the fragmentation of the political system has accelerated the fragmentation of the society. Beware of its implications. As it stands, all these new parties are just cannibalizing votes from the same base of voters, not adding but subtracting power.

Similarly, the Religious Zionists and Otzma Yehudit should unite as well. Whatever disgruntlement its leaders – Betzalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben Gvir – seem to arouse in their detractors, they have been two of the most successful ministers in Israel’s history, actually using their ministries productively and for the good of the people.

If these leaders don’t swallow their egos, and these parties don’t coalesce, we are looking at 1992 all over again. The fantasists of Oslo still remain, surrender is in the air, many on the left are actually offended by the meaning and implications of a Jewish state, and they will do all they can to debilitate it and sap it of any substance.  And they will surely snatch defeat from the jaws of potential victory and a reordering of the Middle East, a possible though not inevitable outcome of these years of pain and conflict.

There is an alternative. Humility, coupled with a dose of reality, can temper the fantasies of even the most quixotic politicians and forge true leaders. It is not too late for some or all of these parties to amalgamate. But the clock is ticking, the people are watching, and the dangers and opportunities ahead are looming. King David was among the humblest of men (Chulin 89a) and the eternal king of Israel – and lesson for all of us.

(First published at Israelnationalnews.com)

The United States celebrates this weekend its semi-quincentennial (literally, halfway to five hundred years) and a more easily pronounceable and spellable name would have been in order. It is an achievement; the world has changed so much since 1776, world maps have been re-delineated countless times and numerous countries have been founded or have had their forms of government changed. And yet, the USA endures.

The world and the Jewish people have benefited enormously from the founding of the USA, in mostly unanticipated ways. The great Torah leader, Rav Chaim of Volozhin, reportedly stated in the early 1800’s that the United States would be the last foreign refuge Jews would enjoy before the coming of Moshiach. Indeed, millions of Jews found safe haven in America in the 19^th and 20^th centuries, including three of my grandparents and my father, and for that we are eternally grateful. The idea that any nation on earth would welcome Jews – even for a time – and permit freedom of worship flabbergasted and gratified immigrant Jews, even if many exploited the freedom of religion to flee from their religion. And the US played an important, if occasionally reluctant, role in Israel’s creation and even our survival.

It was 250 years ago, that these words electrified mankind: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” No other nation then invoked G-d’s name in order to do anything but justify the absolute power of the monarch. No other nation perceived these rights as “truths,” much less self-evident truths. And no other nation had a system of government in which there were co-equal branches, each with checks and balances on the others.

None of this had to be and many Jews, as well as Americans, believed in the hand of Providence in America’s creation and statecraft. Abraham Lincoln, notably in his Second Inaugural Address, underscored this, and that, to paraphrase Bejamin Franklin, that the USA has been able to keep its republic for this long and to remain mostly faithful to its creed and values is remarkable, if not providential. No nation before had distributed power amongst the ruling classes in order to protect the individual. Is it easy to maintain co-equal branches or government? No, it is not, and exhibit one today in Israel is the seizure of supreme power by a runaway judiciary that essentially appoints itself, follows no laws, and capriciously asserts control over any and every aspect of society it wishes to.

For me, this anniversary recalls the far more pronounceable bicentennial in 1976, exactly fifty years ago. I was a teenager, in Israel at the time, and the day is forever etched in my memory because it coincided with the astonishing rescue of the Israeli hostages at Entebbe, Uganda. Israel had been on emotional standstill for more than a week with the lives of more than one hundred Jewish hostages in existential danger, and with the Rabin government in the process of negotiating a release of hundreds of terrorists in exchange for their freedom. That was the era when Israel prided itself on not negotiating with terrorists (how quaint that must sound fifty years later; for the more than forty years, we have just about only negotiated with and conceded to terrorists, beginning with the Abu Jibril deal in 1985 and reaching its full force with the Oslo Accords, and so on). But here the talks were designed to stall for time as Israel prepared for a potential military rescue.

We awoke that Sunday morning to the thrilling news of the rescue. We didn’t yet know that three hostages had perished along with one officer – Yoni Netanyahu. The sense of exhilaration was palpable. For one thing, almost immediately it lifted the gloom that had beset Israel in the aftermath of the Yom Kippur War. For another, the miraculous nature of the rescue – flying through the night thousands of miles, the decoys, the surprise assault, the quick escape with the hostages, and their safe return – all reaffirmed G-d’s role.

I recall traveling on a bus that afternoon from Netanya to Yerushalayim, looking at the clouds, which to me, seemed to form a hand, as in the hand of Hashem. The joy on the bus and on the streets was overwhelming. And where was I going? To the bicentennial celebration that was taking place in the football stadium of Hebrew University in Givat Ram. It symbolized for me the interconnection between the United States and Israel – how in many ways the American experiment was rooted in the Bible, how the Founders saw themselves as Providential actors – like Moses leading the Israelites across the Red Sea guided by the divine pillar of fire, itself Ben Franklin’s recommendation for the Great Seal of the United States – and how modern Israel sees itself, perhaps to a fault, as an American outpost in the Middle East, a nation guided also by biblical values.

There is no article about the USA (or Israel, for that matter) that omits the disclaimer that no nation is perfect, an indictment usually issued by citizens of nations that do not even aspire to goodness or virtue, much less perfection. One little known anecdote illustrates the point. On July 5, the day after the Entebbe rescue, US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, whose discomfort with being Jewish bordered on schizophrenia, called Israel’s US Ambassador Simchah Dinitz to complain about the Entebbe rescue operation.

“I have some bad news to tell you,” Kissinger said. “You used American equipment outside of Israel (the C-130 transport planes). We will have to apply the law… [and] put a temporary freeze on military shipments.” Dinitz responded, “you must be kidding,” to which Kissinger stated, “You know you have no right to do this without prior consultation.”

Dinitz, thinking quickly, replied that the transport planes are not “weapons, but equipment.” If the weapons freeze was eventually authorized, it did not last long.

Indeed, no country is perfect, and imperfect people in positions of power sometimes take inexplicable and mendacious positions.

It is a little surprising that there is not a semi-quincentennial celebration planned in Israel similar to the bicentennial, at least to my knowledge. And it has little to do with the reigning president and his policies towards Israel. In fact, the bicentennial year was preceded by Ford’s Kissinger-inspired “reassessment” of relations with Israel due to Israel’s sluggishness in surrendering to America’s dictates, then concerning the fate of Sinai. It is no matter. US-Israel relations have gone from cool to warm to very warm and everything in between. And many point to the United States current dysfunction and woes but, if anything, it was far worse in 1976. Inflation was in the double-digits, the US was in the middle of a bitter election campaign that would harp on the corruption of Watergate and the defeat in Vietnam. But anniversaries commemorate past events, not current events.

Despite my occasional pointed (and wholly justified) criticisms of the USA, suffice it to say that no other country aspires to do good in the world as does the United States. No other country has objective values that it tries to export across the world, and no country seeks the good and welfare of other countries as does the United States. Sure, it occasionally stumbles and even hesitates. As Winston Churchill – whose mother was American – reputedly said, “You can always count on the Americans to do the right thing, after they have exhausted all the other possibilities.”

We are living through that again in real time.

But what is true about the virtues of US is also true about Israel. We also seek only the good of mankind, only to be castigated even by those we try to help. We are held to a standard of conduct that no other nation is – and often a standard of conduct that no nation could survive if truly implemented. And we seek their welfare even when they dream of our destruction. E.g., who feeds their enemy in wartime? A good question never asked until slightly more than two years ago.

And yet, that has left Israelis not bitter but still hopeful, knowing as we do that the arc of history bends not towards justice but towards redemption and Moshiach. Part of our hopefulness as Israelis is that the United States retain its course and its values and not surrender to the temptations of materialism and hedonism. Undoubtedly, the disinclination of many American Jews to make Aliya stems from the fact that despite the surge of Jew hatred, the USA still remains a wonderful place to live, a place to which foreigners across the world regularly informed of America’s evil still want to sneak in and live there. Its opportunities still dwarf those of every other country in the world. And despite the frequent vicissitudes in US-Israel relations, we should be clear that the US is the only power in the world that is predisposed to our wellbeing.

If that should change, it would frankly be worse for the US than for Israel. But the American experiment has surely benefited all of us and transformed the world. The very notion of self-determination of peoples in their indigenous land – the essence of the political Zionism – found a powerful booster in the United States.

It would not be wrong to say that there are only two countries that are forces for good in the world: the United States and Israel. Today and tomorrow, if we remain on course, the possibilities are endless and optimistic.

Happy 250^th to the USA, all Americans, and the world!

(First published at Israelnationalnews,com)

It is outrageous enough that negotiations are taking place between the United States and Iran that directly affect the lives and well being of millions of Israelis but without the participation of Israel and with the expectation that we will simply acquiesce to any decisions that are made. This is eerily reminiscent of the treatment of Czechoslovakia in 1938, where its territory was dismembered at Munich and soon thereafter its sovereignty was entirely lost.

This analogy casts Iran in the role of the Nazis, which they would accept as a compliment. And it also casts Vice President JD Vance (if he were a rival, Trump would invariably nickname him “Shady J. D.”) in the role of Neville Chamberlain, with a full beard instead of a bushy mustache. In truth, it is Lebanon whose land is being segmented and whose sovereignty is being forfeited to foreigners, not Israel’s. But it is our lives that are at stake as well as the viability of our communities in the north, and all to appease a genocidal foe that has been able to humiliate the United States even from a position of abject weakness.

Worse, though, is Vance’s ill-disguised contempt for Israel and for Jews as indicated by a torrent of statements he made, some prepared, some improvised. As strange as it must sound to normal-thinking people, since Vance got involved the only nation he has singled out for criticism in the entire region has been Israel, which is the only nation in the region that has been threatened with extermination by Iran (Vance’s new pals, at least the “moderates” he has uncovered, as so many gullible Americans have as well in the last half-century when it suits them). He has not internalized this: if the deal “makes Iran weaker,” as Vance claims, why are they celebrating – and then mocking and threatening the United States? They don’t sound defeated, especially now that the US has effectively ceded control over the Straits of Hormuz to Iran.

What Vance has said is certainly offensive but nevertheless deserves answers. For example, this classic: “Over the last three months, two thirds of the defensive weapons that have protected your homeland have been built by American hands and paid for by American tax dollars.” And 100% of those weapons were improved, refined, tested, and deployed by the IDF, with the results shared with the US, at the price of Jewish blood and treasure, saving the US billions of dollars in research and development.

The good news is that Israel used them successfully, thank G-d, as opposed to the US military, which mostly did not. Yesterday’s Wall Street Journal reported what was previously concealed – that Iran essentially destroyed the major US naval base in Bahrain during the war. The American failure to dislodge Iran from the Straits or defend its Gulf allies undoubtedly played an enormous role in the US cut and run from this conflict. Trump can tout the US military with typical braggadocio as the “most powerful in the world,” but, sad to say, it underperformed and did not achieve US objectives in the war. The boast means nothing; the facts on the ground, in the air, and in the Straits prove otherwise.

Israel is grateful for American assistance, money that for many reasons is well spent for purposes of American security, but we would be better off without this dependence. And the suggestion being floated that the US should relocate its destroyed Bahrain base (or other bases) to Israel is insane and should be ruled out by Israel. The presence of American forces in Israel impairs our security. It would constrain our freedom of operation. Imagine having to consult with American officials every time our fighter jets departed; imagine US troops being killed, G-d forbid, in a future conflict or in a terrorist attack. We have always taken pride in defending ourselves without US soldiers to assist us, and we should adhere to that (and swiftly shutter the Kiryat Gat base).

What else did Vance say? In response to pointed criticism of the MoU by Ministers Smotrich and Ben Gvir, Vance suggested that “Donald J Trump is the only head of state in the entire world who is sympathetic to the nation of Israel at this moment in time.” And then he got testy. “If I was in the cabinet of the Israeli government, I might not be attacking the only powerful ally that I have anywhere left in the entire world… Anybody in Israel who thinks their biggest problem is the President of the United States needs to wake up and smell the reality of the situation in that country.”

Well, first, it is not true. There are plenty of heads of state sympathetic to Israel, even discounting our steadfast friends Micronesia, Palau and now Somaliland. Israel has warm ties with India (the most populous country on earth) and Azerbaijan, and most recently, relations with Bolivia and Colombia are strengthening. The Czech Republic is friendly as is Poland most of the time. Israel is Vietnam’s second largest supplier of weapons. And there are others who respect and sympathize with Israel but circumstances (fear of Muslim terror) force them to be less vocal about it.

Second, what Vance ignores or dismisses is precisely “the reality of the situation” in Israel. We are not surrounded by Canada, Mexico, and two oceans. We are surrounded by enemies – some of whom have “peace treaties” with us that preserve a non-belligerency without a real peace. And encircled by others who openly proclaim their genocidal ambitions – “to wipe us off the map, to drive us into the sea, to reverse this insult to Islam, to excise this cancerous tumor,” to use their words. It is a region of dictators and autocrats, some of whom seized power by force and others who ascended to power by heredity. That doesn’t even begin to address the designs of our enemies within our borders. Perhaps Vance needs to wake up. The United States might have the luxury of ignoring its enemies; Israel and the Jewish people do not. His only suggestion in dealing with those who wish to exterminate us is appeasement and heeding his every dictate.

Furthermore, Vance declared, “What is your exact proposal? You’re a ​country of 9 million people. You can’t just kill your way out of solving every single national security problem that you have.” To which Ben Gvir responded, and good for him, “This is the proposal … To deal with the Nazis of the 21st century, just as the United States dealt with the Nazis of the 20th century.” If Vance thinks that genocidal foes will be deterred by words and agreements (forget, signing ceremonies, as the Iranians still refuse to appear in public with the Americans), then his isolationism is as misguided as it is hazardous for Israel and the United States. He has a peculiar morality that would grant immunity to terrorists who hide among civilians, even when those civilians are supportive and share the goals of the terrorists.

But one question lingers: Why isn’t the world sympathetic to us, in Vance’s language? This is a perplexing question that has deep roots and makes many people uncomfortable, including many Jews. Why are we so hated? Why are we the only nation on the globe that is the target of such disdain, and for whom nations actively plan its demise? The only one!

Why would nations as diverse as Spain, Burkina Faso, Brunei, South Africa, Turkey, Bangladesh, and Australia have such animus towards Israel?

For sure, it must perplex even kind-hearted people across the world: why are Jews so hated? Why were we the victims of repeated pogroms, expulsions, and the Holocaust? Why, having returned to our ancient homeland in accordance with biblical prophecy, does Israel remain the only nation on earth whose very existence is found threatening and unacceptable?

Such questions cannot be fully answered in a brief essay and perhaps never fully understood. The answers go to the mystery and majesty of the Jewish experience that bewilders many Jews and certainly affronts many of our foes. Many unthinking Jews just assume that we must be doing something wrong because, if not, we would be loved! After all, we bring so much good to the world – kindness, morality, inventions, development, culture, etc. We are the first to respond when natural disasters strike anywhere in the world and still remain unpopular even among beneficiaries of our kindnesses.

Thus, Herzl thought that Jew hatred would end if we had our own state. Many in the world, including misguided Jews, today believe that Jew hatred would end if we didn’t have a state. Others feel that if we are hated, it is because we don’t make a sufficient effort to be loved, or haven’t conceded or surrendered enough in Israel, or haven’t established a Palestinian state, or didn’t build settlements, or … whatever. None of this is true.

The roots of Jew hatred go back to our forefathers and their covenant with G-d, to the Torah that we received at Sinai, to our maddening and inexplicable survival for thousands of years despite being the objects of unending enmity. Our forefathers dealt with genocidal enemies, as did their descendants, throughout history and down to our day. Our foes despise us because of our religion, and theirs, or because they have no religion (like the Communists) and resent our fidelity to ours. They hate us as rootless cosmopolitans or as colonialist masters over a tiny parcel of land. They have long chanted “go back to Israel” until we did, and now they chant “from the river to the sea” we have no claims or right to be here. Their hatred is based on overt jealousy and ill-considered fear, on opposition to the notion of a “chosen people,” on resentment towards those who are deemed “the favorites,” on barely disguised religious antagonism. It has nothing to do with where we live and how we act but entirely with who we are as a nation.

Shady J.D. Vance opposed the war, so much so that he was the only leading national security official not to be present in Mar-a-Lago when the most recent hostilities were launched. But his particular snarkiness – the only nation on the globe he taunts, since his verbal attacks on Ukraine were ignored by Zelensky – seems to be based on his newfound faith about which he is peddling a new book, as if he is personally trying to resuscitate the ancient Catholic disparagement of Jews.

He would do well to consider not only the fates of Bilaam and Balak but moreover, the historical reality that goes back to ancient times, to G-d’s promise to Avraham: “And I will bless those who bless you, and curse those who curse you, and all the families of the land will be blessed through you” (Breisheet 12:3).

May all those who support Israel share in the divine blessings.