Luke Ford

All of my Jewish friends — with one exception — are happy that Bibi Netanyhau won.

I ask the exception: “Do you have any emotional reaction to any particular result in the Israeli elections?”

He replies:

No. The split is almost as old as the Balfour Declaration. The successors to Labor Zionism vs the successors to Betar. Of course now they have all sorts of fringe parties including ultra orthodox, Mizrahis and Arabs, but they just join whatever coalition promises them the most goodies and the real power resides with the Prime Minister and Defense Minister.

Like the Democrats and Republicans the parties seek to exaggerate their differences and advertise themselves as if it is a life or death decision as to which party to vote for.

However, you cut it, just like in the United States, no substantive policy seems to change regardless of who is elected. Any liberals who think that repudiation of Netanyahu will mean an end to settlements, and peace with the Palestinians is deluded. Any conservative who thinks that if Herzog becomes Prime Minister the country will subordinate itself to Iranian interests is also not thinking clearly. There may be some marginal differences on how much governmental assistance goes where for internal purposes, but not enough to make a difference.

The biggest difference will be that if Netanyahu retains power, his personal style, which has not only antagonized Obama, but much of Western European leaders, will continue to hamper Israel’s international diplomacy. Things would unfreeze a bit with a more liberal, more conciliatory figure. But I think everything would be substance and not form.

Likud has changed Israel’s economy from socialist to capitalist, with Bibi probably doing more than anyone in this regard. That’s a huge change. I can’t imagine any Israeli PM more conservative about using force than Bibi. He’s ultra cautious.

Friend:

I am not so sure that Netanyahu is responsible for this although he certainly claims the credit. The first non socialist prime minister was Begin. The next was Shamir. They started the ball rolling. What has helped Netanyahu is the tremendous growth of the high tech industry and startups in Israel. The country still is socialist in many ways with the histadrut still carrying a lot of clout.

That is the reason that the Obama administration leaked that they had called him “chickenshit.” You can see that he is bluster much more than action with regard to the invasion of Gaza. He promised the Israelis that he would destroy the Hamas military infrastructure. In fact he did not sent in troops to do this as a result of the fierce resistance by Hamas which led to many IDF soldiers in their elite units losing their lives. He instead went with the typical western nations drones, missiles, air strikes, artillery to level much of Gaza and either (according to the Palestinians) deliberately or (according to the Israelis,) as a result of collateral damage killing a lot of Palestinian non combatants. The best advice Teddy Roosevelt gave was to speak softly and carry a big stick. Now both U.S. Presidents (George W. Bush in particular) and Israeli Prime Ministers speak loudly, threaten and bluster, but do not follow through, preferring to act covertly and usually ineffectually. That incidentally is the reason Israelis responded better to Sharon and to Rabin. As ex generals, they were willing to take action. They never threatened unless they were willing to back up the threats.

So all the National Review columns calling Bibi the statesman of the Western World, a modern Churchill, leave you unmoved?

Friend:

I take very little that the NR writers say seriously. I think they are neo conservatives who conveniently have forgotten that much of the problems we are currently facing in the middle east are a direct result of policies they encouraged, especially the invasion of Iraq, with the consequence of (1) destroying an ancient Christian community, (2) creating a country ruled by Shia in alliance with Iran, instead of a counterweight to Iran and (3) forcing the ex Saddam supporters (Baathists, including the officer corps of the Iraqi army under Hussein) into an alliance with fundamentalist Sunnis now making up ISIS.

They push Netanyahu as a modern Churchill as a weapon against Obama. To see Netanyahu as Churchill means that you have to equate Israel to England before September of 1939 and Iran as Nazi Germany. Unlike England, Israel has nuclear weapons. Unlike Nazi Germany, Iran is one of the smaller economies in the world, based almost entirely on export of oil and pistachios.

Nazi Germany was engaged in a huge arms buildup and made clear its aggressive position vis a vis its neighbors to whom it felt racially superior. Ethnic Germans comprised a majority of Austrians, and a significant minority of Poles, Czechs, people within the Soviet Union, Hungary and Slovenia. There aren’t Persian outposts among the Iraqis and the Pakistanis (although there are small numbers among the Afghanis) Iraq does not have much of a functioning air force. It has acquired some modern air defense systems from Russia, but its jets are all at least a generation behind those that the Saudis can muster.

England did have a huge overseas empire in 1939 while Israel has the diaspora with disproportionate influence within the United States. When England stood alone after the fall of France in June of 1940, the Germans had control over all of Europe (including alliances with Hungary, Romania, Italy and Bulgaria) up to the dividing line between the Soviets and the Nazi’s in Poland. Only Sweden and Switzerland were neutral, and Spain and Portugal were neutral but sympathetic to the Nazis. As far as I know the Iranian’s allies close to Israel are Syria which is bogged down in a protracted and especially brutal and bloody civil war.

The only threat that Iran poses to Israel is that it might be able to acquire a nuclear weapon which would end the Israeli monopoly on them.

To accept that Netanyahu is Churchillian because of his concerns about this, is fantastical.

That doesn’t mean Iran is not a threat. It doesn’t mean that Israel doesn’t have concerns. But it does mean that the folks at NR are crazy as loons.

Chaim Amalek writes:

I say a thousand bucks per Jew to keep Israel going and to prevent four or five million Jews from flooding into the US is a good deal for the US.

What if Europe made the following deal: “For every ten Muslims who leave Europe, we will take in one Israeli Jew.”

A Jewish friend writes: Did the world screw up in recognizing a Jewish homeland – Israel – in 1948, or was it wise to do so, creating a place for 6,000,000 Jews to be who otherwise might be causing all kinds of problems in America and Europe?

The establishment of this racial/tribal/religious ethnostate was the last gasp of the European impulse to spread its dominion over the world, which is why real cultural liberals have to hate it.

A Jewish friend says:

I wanted to weigh in on whether having a fractured Arab world benefits Israel.

Before that, I think it is important to distinguish between what constitutes Jewish interests in the United States and Canada from Jewish interests in Western Europe, from Jewish interests in Eastern Europe and Jewish interests in Israel. I am not sure that they are at all the same.

If you study the history of the modern state of Israel as a dispassionate observer, it is pretty clear that it is a colonial state. It was founded and originally populated by Jews primarily from Eastern Europe, later with a large influx from Arab countries. The Jews displaced a native Arab population, that now calls itself Palestinian, but that simply designates the area they are from.

If you believe that God promised the land to the Jews, then none of this makes any difference, but that is not the sort of argument that one makes to people who are not so religiously inclined or sympathetic to that religious view (that is to say Christian Zionists.)

Because Israel has always been in a situation where it has a large restive internal population and until it signed a peace treaty with Egypt, at war not only with its neighbors but with its neighbor’s neighbors, its policies have always been expedient and the country has exploited Arab weakness with superior tactics, but without much of a strategic vision and certainly without attempting to implement any long term strategy for the country’s survival.

Israel benefits from having stability in neighboring countries, if those countries have a government that wants peace with Israel. Egypt is the perfect example of this. It served Israel to have the country have an authoritarian government, be it led by Sadat, Mubarak or no Al-Sissi. Egypt is desperately poor, and unlike Sadat’s predecessor Nasser, these men have not been demagogues seeking to divert frustration over lack of jobs and food into antagonism toward Israel. To go to Egypt’s neighbor, Libya, I don’t think Israel wanted its stability affected. If what happened to Libya happened to Egypt it would be a disaster for Israel. Israel could launch punitive raids on the Islamic fundamentalists, but much better to have the government reign them in and to be held responsible than to have unaccountable militias launch small scale attacks.

Syria and Iraq actually pose different threats to Israel. Both were relatively secular Baathist regimes. In both cases a member of a minority held power, Assad as an Alawite in Syria, Hussein as a Sunni in a Shia majority Iraq. (In fact, only a minority can effectively govern. A majority would snuff out the rights of the minorities, something that those who supported deposing Assad seem to forget.) Israel would much rather have antagonistic regimes be strictly Islamist than be ones that protect the minority. The strict Muslim governments would have less support in the West. Even Obama recognizes this in his willingness to deal with Iran which still has a large population of Christians, and smaller populations of BaHai’s and Jews.

I don’t think Israel thinks it makes any difference in a military senses whether Hussein or Assad are in power. Neither was in a position to militarily threaten Israel. Syria did fight Israel in 1967 and 1973 but its two allies in the 67 war and its one ally in 73 both made peace with Israel. Assad is a realist and knows that by attacking Israel he is signing his own death warrant.

There has been a strain in the Israeli government since at least 1967 that believes that Jordan, which has a majority Palestinian population, should depose its monarchy and become a Palestinian state, but pretty much most Israelis have been happy with the status quo first under King Hussein and now under his son King Abdullah.

I don’t think that if the Arabs weren’t involved in infighting that they would devote their resources to building war machines to challenge Israel or to fight Israel out of solidarity with their Palestinian brothers, but many Israelis would disagree with me.

Israelis have exploited and will continue to exploit factions within the Palestinians when they see if giving them a short term tactical advantage. It has been widely reported and I think accepted that Israel provided material support to Hamas when it first was organized because they wanted to split the Palestinians. Of course, they are not happy with Hamas which has proven to be a pretty intractable and resilient opponent of Israel. But you might want to imagine what it would be like for Israel if the Palestinians both in the West Bank and Gaza and those who are refugees all accepted the PLO as their legitimate government and representative. So in that sense, at least as regards the Palestinians, it serves Israel’s interest to keep them fractious.