Why Bush went public on the raid

26 April, 2008

The Bush Administration went to Congress yesterday to disclose previously secret intelligence regarding Israel's September, 2007 attack on the Syrian nuclear facility. In Congress and in the United Nations the administration was strongly criticized for withholding the information, the assumption being that Bush's intended reason was to deliver a message to North Korea.

For seven months, and with American agreement, an unusual official silence has been maintained by Syria and Israel regarding the nature of the raid. The target itself was public knowledge since press reports early on accurately described it as a nuclear reactor, descriptions never officially denied. Even the press conference by Likud head Binyamin Netanyahu describing it as a reactor was in his capacity as a government outsider, and so not official. One reason for official silence by both sides might have been that public disclosure would embarrass Syrian national pride and possibly result in pressure to retaliate. Another might have been that the two sides were well advanced in backchannel negotiations via Turkey.

If Bush's intention was, as the many in Congress seem to take for granted, to embarrass North Korea, why now? I suggest that the timing of the disclosures was more intended for Tel Aviv than Pyongyang.

I

Suggestions of negotiations between Israel and Syria have been appearing more frequently in the news recently. According to reports, not denied, Olmert told the Turkish prime minister supposedly mediating backchannel discussions that he now agrees with his predecessors Rabin, Netanyahu and Barak that Israel should return the Golan in exchange for peace. Again last week Olmert is quoted ass tellling the Palestinians that in exchange for peace they could expect Israel to cede 64% of the West Bank, with the Wall as international boundary. He also proposed free access for the Palestinians to Old City holy places, in a united Jerusalem under Israeli sovereignty. Both suggestions represent a significant retreat from Camp David, 2000 where Israel had agreed to return 96% of the West Bank and a divided Jerusalem/Al Quds. At best Olmert's reported offers might be called inadequate, at worst insulting. In either case they represent a slammed door on Palestine, the Roadmap and Annapolis, a rejection of Bush.

Bush has never been known to take opposition gently, and several administration actions this week seem addressed at punishing Israel. In addition to the reactor hearings in the Congress, in a surprising move more than twenty years after the fact, in a highly publicized arrest reminiscent of the Pollard Affair the FBI raided a New Jersey nursing home to arrest 85 year old Ben-Ami Kadish on charges of espionage for Israel in the 1980’s. The arrest raises questions of Israeli reliability, and the dual loyalty issue certain to leave American Jewry squirming.

To my mind it is not an enormous leap, given the history of this administration, to act first and think later, to surrender to emotion over logic; that this is yet one more instance, like Iraq, of Bush shooting first and facing the consequences later. Clearly he has no compunction to sacrifice US allies, even his own country's national interests for the satisfaction of giving vent to injured pride.

II

Reduced to an issue of land-for-peace, surrendering the Golan offers Israel enormous strategic diplomatic and economic advantages at the cost of surrendering a geological formation that has long since lost significant military purpose. Before 1967 the Heights provided the Syrians a vantage point from which to fire on the valley below, an advance observation from which to direct artillery and mortar. Today Syria has missiles capable of striking anywhere within Israel, has no need for advance spotters to direct fire. Is there a military cost in surrendering the Heights, yes: positioning heavy weapons with clear fields of fire aimed at Damascus and with little geography between to slow an attack. But again, in the age of missiles and hi-tech drone and manned aircraft, while there is some tactical advantage there is no strategic advantage to maintaining direct control of the Heights. And the nearly completed 2000 agreement between the two countries already provided Israel early warning observation posts in the Hermon range, as well as demilitarization of Golan and surrounding terrain.

Emotional there is a cost to surrendering sovereignty over Golan, a part of Israel for more than thirty years. And that impact will be especially hard on those who live there, on their children and grandchildren who have known no other home. But while the 2000 agreement promised the return of Golan to Syria, it also protected those settlements, provided for the rights of their residents. And there is no reason to believe that a 2009 agreement would be less protective of their rights than that of 2000.

In a previous article I suggested several strategic benefits to Israel resulting from peace with Syria, including the obvious reduction in tension in the north resulting in fewer life and economy-disruptive reserve mobilizations; possible open borders between the two states allowing free tourism and trade; and a way around the impossible Saudi roadblock to a global agreement with Israel, peace with the Palestinians. Peace under the Saudi proposal opens diplomatic relations between Israel and nearly the entire Arab-Moslem world. This promises to lead to an explosion in growth for Israeli commerce and economic development, which in turn would result in a reversal of the technological brain drain. Instead of yerida, expat Israelis would be clamoring to return!

All advantages, of course, are not exclusive to Israel. For Syria an Israel peace means liberation from the yoke of Iranian dependence. This in turn would result in improved relations with surrounding Arab states. Under a different American administration (serious negotiations cannot even begin until Bush is replaced in the White House) when realpolitik replaces Bush ideology, Syria will be seen as the important bulwark she is to Iranian hegemony, will realize Assad's dream of alliance rather than enmity with the United States. And of course reduced tension on her border with Israel will result in the possibility to reduce her military and grow her civilian economy.

The only barrier to Israel and Syria sitting down at the negotiating table is, as it has been since he invaded Iraq, Bush and his administration. So the next few months will be bumpy for Israel-US relations. Bush will attempt to derail improving relations across the Golan in the months leading up to a new American administration. But all three potential future presidents are on record as supporting peace between the adversaries, all agree that such a peace would dramatically shake up the landscape of the entire region resulting in increased regional stability and American credibility. And an Israel-Syria peace would go a long way towards repairing the US Middle East defense shield destroyed in the aftermath of Iraq, would check the increasing regional threat represented by Iranian power loosed when the Bush invasion of Iraq removed Iran’s main enemy across the Persian Gulf.

We have only to outwait Bush. And Pray.

Olmert, Bush and the end to “Peace in our Time”

18 April, 2008

According to a recent Jerusalem Post report, Prime Minister Olmert is quoted in the London-based Arabic language newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat as offering the Palestinians 64 percent of the West Bank, and “…forget about territory west of the security fence." He is further reported to have offered them access to the holy sites of east Jerusalem, but that the city would remain under Israeli sovereignty. With the imminent arrival of President Bush signaling his intention to hold a summit to promote the Annapolis deadline of peace-in-his-term, what is the meaning of the prime minister laying down red lines certain to spell the end to Annapolis?

I

Palestine is, and has been since early mandatory days, socially and politically chaotic. And if there was little likelihood of political unity before, then the failed Bush-inspired Fateh coup against Hamas in Gaza was the death knell for any possibility of a unified Palestinian regime strong enough to impose internal order. Peace with Israel cannot precede peace within Palestine. And internal peace for Palestine appears as distant today as it was in the 1920’s. So the lofty speeches of Annapolis aside, for the Palestinians there will be no peace in our time.

Syria, on the other hand, has been signaling interest in peace with Israel for years, and the two countries reportedly came within a few meters of Kineret lakefront of a comprehensive treaty in 2000. Why Barak backed out of the nearly concluded agreement in favor of yet another round of fruitless talks with Arafat and the Palestinians remains a mystery.


One of the main advantages to dealing with Syria over the Palestinians is that it is a country with a relatively stable regime. Unlike the Palestinians, and particularly the Hamas in Gaza, Syria accepts responsibility towards protecting its land and people. This is clearly proven by the seriousness with which the regime has adhered to her bi-national agreements with Israel for more than four decades. Actions against Israel in defense of what Syria sees as her national interests were perpetrated by such third parties as Hamas and Hezbollah and never by the direct use of the Syrian military.


Of course Israel does not trust Assad and the Baathist regime, and the Syrians likely feel the same about Israel. But that is precisely the point of negotiations, to test and shape intentions, limits and commitment over time. If the parties already trusted one another an agreement could be achieved almost immediately and there would be no need for a drawn out period of confidence-building and negotiation!


Regarding Iran, Syria has a relationship with the Islamic Republic similar to that between Israel and the United States. Regarding the Palestinian rejectionists, Syria let it be known decades ago that she would not sit by and allow Israel and the Palestinians to come to agreement leaving Syria alone to face her far stronger adversary, Israel across the negotiating table. Which partly explains why Syria has hosted and protected the Palestinian extremists and rejectionists, allowed them to disrupt by terror any appearance of movement towards mutual accommodation on the Palestine front. On the other hand over the past year Bashar Assad has signaled through Israeli media that the alignment with Iran and the presence of the rejectionists are open to negotiation. And should an Israel and Syria come to terms then both Iran and Hamas/Jihad would become not only unnecessary as a tool of persuasion over Israel, but very likely a threat to the Syrian regime.

II

I referred to peace with Syria as of strategic importance to Israel. In what way strategic, and what benefits would peace with Syria provide the Jewish state? Not necessarily in order of priority they are:

1. Peace with Syria would mean the end to the state of war between the countries and that would likely include Lebanon. This would result in a dramatic reduction in the need and frequency of military alerts and mobilizations so disruptive to the lives of Israel’s citizen-soldiers and to Israel’s economy.
2. Peace with Syria would result in Iran withdrawing from Syria/Lebanon (an obvious Israeli demand) lessening the Islamic Republic’s influence and threat to the Levant, and closing the land route for invasion and re-supply in the event of war with Israel.
3. Peace with Syria would remove the Palestinian rejectionists from Damascus (another obvious Israeli demand) making them easier targets should they enter the Territories, or less influential and dangerous if relocated to refuges more distant from Israel.
4. Peace with Syria would open the door to dialogue with the Saudi’s, circumventing their unrealistic-because-unachievable precondition of an Israel–Palestine peace.
5. Peace with Syria, would, as signaled by Assad, provide open borders between the two countries allowing a free-flow of trade and tourism. This would provide Israelis more breathing room and expanded local vacation destinations.
6. Peace with Syria would expand and open new markets for Israeli commerce to the extended Arab world.
7. Peace with Syria would open the door to military cooperation with the Saudis and the other Peninsula Arab states against the common Persian threat, further normalizing relations with those states and reducing the likelihood of an open confrontation with hegemonic Iran.

III

Is peace with Syria a dream, yes. But according to both official and unofficial Israeli diplomatic and intelligence sources it is within reach. Possibly caving to pressure from Bush, in the past the Olmert government demanded that Syria eject Iran and the rejectionists as precondition to negotiations. Syria predictably countered with the demand that Israel commit to return the Golan in advance of negotiations. Both demands are core issues in any negotiation, not pre-conditions. As “pre-conditions” they are obstacles, non-starters for serious discussion. Quid pro quo, demand and compensation, is the currency of the negotiating process. And a successful negotiation means, for Israel, that she finally emerges from behind her defensive and claustrophobic Garrison State walls, turns her economy away from war, grows her world-renowned technology in service of civilian rather than military production and commerce, expands her industrial base providing the capital for an economy of increasing wealth and security for her citizens.

IV

What was Olmert’s reason for signaling an end to the fallacy of Annapolis on the eve of the arrival of President Bush? Perhaps it was a public acknowledgement of the prime minister’s awareness that regardless how long or intensive the discussions with the Palestinians, however much an agreement between the parties is desired by Israel or demanded by Bush, that the Annapolis roadmap is a train with a destination but without wheels. Perhaps Olmert is signaling the soon-to-arrive president that administration policies over the years are the major factor in creating today’s tattered Middle East, that current Bush policies are the cause and not the solution to the problems facing the Middle East today. Perhaps Olmert is declaring that Israeli-Arab interests are best served by saying a polite but firm goodbye to the American president, waiting out his obstructive term in office, hoping that the next US administration will be strategically more intelligent, diplomatically more adept, and more circumspect in deciding issues of war and peace.

V

An Afterthought: I had to check my calendar to confirm that today is mid-April and not April Fools Day, that the Olmert interview was not intended as a joke for the arriving US president. I then considered the possibility that the Asharq Al-Awsat interview might just be disinformation, or that the newspaper was engaged in character assassination of the prime minister. But why then would the excerpts appearing in my first paragraph have appeared in Jerusalem Post? Certainly the editors would have confirmed the quotes before printing them. Which leaves me with my original suggestion, that Prime Minister Olmert seems to have concluded that enough years have been wasted chasing the mirage of an impossible Palestinian peace and he is now sitting on his hands until the main obstacle to Israel engaging Syria, George W. Bush, has left the scene.

Hands off the Law of Return!

21 October, 2007

The Law of Return is the single most important document defining the character of the Jewish State and its relationship with the Jewish People. The move to amend it represents the most serious assault on that relationship since Ben-Gurion proclaimed statehood in 1948.

Menachem Ben-Sasson, chairman of the Knesset Constitution Committee announced that he would hold 12 hours of discussions with the intention of cobbling together a constitution in time for Israel’s 60th Independence Day celebration. Among the controversial issues the committee is to consider is a “compromise” version of the Law of Return. According to Ben-Sasson all sides will be taken into consideration, all sides will be represented in the final document. This is not encouraging since “all sides” to be considered includes the Rabbinate’s push for a Halachic-only definition of Who is a Jew. Such a definition would potentially alienate the majority of Jews living in the Diaspora. The third rail of Israeli-Diaspora relations, Who is a Jew must have no place in redefining the Law or Return.

I

How much influence the Diaspora should have on issues of an existential nature regarding war and peace is, so far as I am concerned, not a question. Israelis benefit or suffer the consequences from such issues and those decisions should be theirs alone to make. But issues existential regarding Israel’s relationship with the Diaspora is an area in which the Diaspora must be included on an equal basis. The Law of Return and the Grandchild Clause fall into this category. In fact the consequences of changing the Law are of such importance to both State and Diaspora that it must remain out of the reach of Israeli politics and politicians, since these represent transient attitudes of an immediate nature, while the Law is 2,000 years of history projected into the future. The Law must be protected from the influence of persons and groups with more immediate and selfish agendas.

The Law of Return is a Basic Law, among the first enacted following proclamation of statehood. It was no coincidence that such a law was in the forefront of thought at the time since statehood followed by a mere three years the liberation of Auschwitz. The need for enacting the Law was obvious at the time, as was the need to include a Grandchild Clause. Since Germany did not follow Halacha in determining who is a Jew, the Law had to conform to the German Holocaust definition.

The Grandchild Clause is also fundamental because it recognizes a basic psychological, sociological and historical fact, something almost culturally deterministic: once a traumatic event occurs the memory does not just fade into history but serves as precedent for future behavior.

But what has this to do with Israeli law, with Israel celebrating 60 years of independence, with Israel finally enacting a constitution? Everything! Because the Law of Return defines Israel’s relationship with the Diaspora, her acceptance of responsibility for the mission which Zionism bequeathed to, and for which the movement created the state. Will Israel evolve into a Jewish state, a country defined only by internal self-interest, its uniqueness that it is the only country with a Jewish majority? Or will Israel continue to identify with its historic responsibility as the state of the Jews, the only country whose purpose, beyond survival itself, is to serve as refuge and protector of Israel dispersed? This is the real issue surrounding the Law of Return: the Zionist heart, the very reason for the creation and existence of the Jewish State.

II

Orthodox Jews had for centuries sought to fulfill their Halachic obligation to live in the land of our forefathers. But it was not until the late 19th Century that some among us took a critical look around and concluded that Jews were not, never would be safe living in Christian society. They saw Palestine ideologically as sanctuary, future homeland and refuge. Later, around the turn of the 20th Century an assimilated Jewish journalist named Theodor Herzl, while covering the Dreyfus Affair in France, came independently to the same conclusion. If France, the country which led the way towards “emancipating” Europe’s Jews after 1800 years of serfdom could so quickly turn virulently antisemitic in response to the fraudulent but assumed treason of Dreyfus, how secure could we be in other, less philosemitic countries of our Diaspora? Herzl concluded that Christianity’s “Jewish Problem” could only be solved by Jews creating and living in our own state. Thus was Zionism born, the movement of Jewish self-emancipation. Forty years before the event Zionism recognized the physical threat that was soon to engulf the Jewish People in Holocaust.

III

While the rebirth of Jewish sovereignty was already in process before the crime, the murder of our six million forced sobriety, sanity and conscience upon the countries of Christendom that had directly committed the murder, or had stood by lending silent support to the slaughter by refusing refuge to its victims.

The legal precedent and need for the Law of Return was established in pre-Holocaust Germany. According to German race theory Jews were classified as biologically distinct from humanity, separate and sub-human. But since Jews and Aryans both appear human to the eye, Germany’s legal system had to devise a way to define the separation. For purposes of classification it arrived at the definition of “Jew” as an individual with a single Jewish grandparent. No matter that the grandparent was a Christian convert, that the child’s parents were both committed Christians; that the grandchild was third generation and baptized Christian. Once the child’s link to the grandparent was established the child was defined Jewish and condemned by the state for Final Solution. Jew was Jew and, to remove the threat of pollution from the true human family, death the final solution.

IV

The Law and the Clause and, for that matter Zionism and the Jewish State are necessary so long as the threat to our people continues; so long, put another way, as Diaspora exists. Is Christianity an irremediable threat to Jewish existence? This is the question that since the Holocaust has occupied not only Jews, but Christian scholars and the Catholic Church itself.

Twenty years after the ovens cooled the Church did a self-evaluation of its historical and textual role as possible inspiration and collaborator in the murder of our six million. The resulting document, Nostre Aetate, acknowledged that basal Christian texts refer to Jews and Judaism in ways that inspire hatred and incite violence. But the Church also concluded it could not eliminate or change those textual references without, it decided, undermining the very foundation of Christianity. So the Church settled on a middle ground of retaining the texts as holy while encouraging they not be taught or read literally. Clergy and faithful were directed to pass over the excesses of the offending passages. But recent surveys indicate that not only has there been no change in the way those passages are read and understood, but that anti-Semitism is more, not less prevalent today than before Nostre Aetate. This realization has led Church leaders to schedule a second conclave in 2008 tasked to revisit the problem of scripture-inspired anti-Judaism. But Church sources involved in its planning admit that, once again and for the same reasons, the offending passages will not be touched.

So the Law of Return continues necessary to Jewish survival; to serve its essential function in Zionist theory and practice. The Law defines Israel’s Zionist mission, our state as protector and refuge for threatened Diaspora Jewry.

V

Today, with but six decades separating us from that nearly successful effort to rid the world of Jews we, both resident of Israel and Diaspora, continue to deny the relevance of our recent history, choose to see Jewish life in Diaspora as normal, safe and secure. And at present it is relatively so. We convince ourselves that the past is aberration, our country in Diaspora exceptional. But when we lived in Germany before Shoah we felt exactly that same sense of safety and security, considered our fatherland also exceptional. In those days also we identified with and felt accepted by our country and neighbors, Germans first, Jews second. As in the United States today, in pre-Holocaust Germany we were leaders in the arts, academia and politics. Just a few short years before the ovens of Auschwitz we provided as many leaders of party and government in Germany as we do today in the United States.

Which is why the Grandchild Clause is, and will ever remain, such a necessary, no the key element of the Law of Return; and why it must never be tampered with. Because just as the Clause anticipates our future based on history and precedent, so too does the comfort we felt in Germany pre-Holocaust stand as yet another precedent: No country of the Diaspora is truly exceptional regarding antisemitism; no Diaspora “homeland” will for ever be secure for Jews.

VI

It appears that the Ben-Sasson Committee motivation to water-down the Law of Return is fed by two streams, the orthodox-Haredi interest in Who is a Jew; and political reaction to the recent spate of swastika synagogue desecrations by alienated Russian émigré youth. The parents of these self-styled neo-nazis, brought to Israel under the Grandchild Clause, apparently had little previous identification with Judaism as religion, destiny or state prior to leaving Russia. In other words, both parents and children were poor candidates for assimilation. If there is a problem with the Law it is not in the wording but in the way it is administered in times of non-emergency. As to joining the destiny of the Law with that of the Who is a Jew controversy, the two are distinct and must remain separate. Who is a Jew is part of the struggle for Jewish identity between religious orthodoxy and the majority secular citizenry of the state. The Law of Return defines Israel’s Zionist mission, her identity as the State of the Jews, her responsibility as haven for our threatened. Who is a Jew is political, and threatening as the controversy is to Diaspora Jewry, an internal Israeli debate. The Law of Return is national and must be insulated from Israeli politics and politicians.

Menachem Ben-Sasson must be brought to understand the distinction, to guarantee and protect the integrity of the Law of Return as Israel’s Zionist mission.