Deceptive ‘Divorce’ Analogies and the Commanders for Israel’s (in)Security - by Martin Sherman

Having your disagreeable spouse separate and move off to some distant location, allowing each former partner to live their life in undisturbed peace, is one thing. It is quite another to allow a belligerent spouse to take control of a property overlooking your own—from which he/she can harass you continuously, egged on by similarly inimical neighbors in the surrounding areas.

Martin Sherman..
JNS.org..
21 December '18..


One does not have to be a military expert to easily identify the critical defects of the armistice lines that existed until June 4, 1967. — Israel’s Deputy Prime Minister Yigal Allon, former commander of the Palmach strike force, 1976.

… historians a thousand years hence will still be baffled by the mystery of our affairs. They will never understand how it was that a victorious nation, with everything in hand, suffered themselves to be brought low, and to cast away all that they had gained by measureless sacrifice and absolute victory … — Winston Churchill, in the House of Commons, 1938.

The Jews consider Judea and Samaria to be their historic dream. If the Jews leave those places, the Zionist idea will begin to collapse. … Then we will move forward. — Abbas Zaki, PLO ambassador to Lebanon, 2009.


I used these very excerpts in an article I wrote some thirty months ago, titled “Imbecility squared,” addressing the policy proposals advanced by an organization called Commanders for Israel’s Security (CIS), comprising more than 200 senior Israel Defense Forces’ officers and other high-ranking officials in Israel’s intelligence and police force.

Sadly, they are as pertinent now as they were then, arguably more so.

Putting the two-state proposal on indefinite life support

Readers may recall that CIS have, in the past, called for Israel to declare that it forgoes any claims to sovereignty over territory beyond the Security Barrier; freeze all construction in Jewish communities beyond that barrier; encourage the unilateral removal of all Jewish civilian presence there; but leave the IDF in control of security throughout the entire area. Indeed, CIS envisages this IDF deployment continuing until some Palestinian peace-partner emerges—sufficiently pliant to reach an agreement to accommodate Israeli security concerns, yet sufficiently authoritative to enforce its terms on a potentially recalcitrant population.

The purported “rationale” for this policy prescription is to preserve the viability of the two-state formula for resolving the conflict with the Palestinian Arabs, something which CIS acknowledges is not feasible at the moment, as no prospective partner with the adequate pliancy-cum-authority can be identified.

Nonetheless, it believes that these proposed measures are necessary to prevent what it considers the disastrous demographic consequences entailed in Israel retaining large portions of Judea-Samaria, together with its Arab population.

While I do not want to diminish the demographic dangers annexation of Judea-Samaria, along with its Muslim inhabitants, might herald for Israel, the CIS blueprint is as pernicious as it is preposterous.

(Continue to Full Column)

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

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Welcome to the anti-Israeli democracy tour - by Jonathan S. Tobin

Retired Israeli generals deserve respect from Americans. But their efforts to undermine the country’s political consensus do not deserve our applause.

Jonathan S. Tobin..
JNS.org..
04 October '18..

In the last year, we’ve heard a lot about the threat to Israeli democracy from critics of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government. According to this narrative—endlessly hyped by Jewish left-wingers and mimicked in mainstream media forums like The New York Times—Netanyahu is subverting the values upon which the country was founded by undermining its Supreme Court, reducing non-Jews to second-class citizens, toadying to haredi political parties and other right-wing allies, and attacking the news media.

If you substitute evangelical Christians for the haredim, the similarities with critiques of the Trump administration are clear. That’s hardly an accident, as some of Netanyahu’s foes believe that his close ties with U.S. President Donald Trump is at the top of the list of their grievances.

But, as is the case in the United States, the talk about democracy is really just code for politics. A good example of this is a group of top retired Israeli generals who are currently on tour in the United States seeking to convince leading Jewish organizations, as well as Congress, to turn their backs on Netanyahu.

The touring veterans are from Commanders for Israel’s Security, a group of retired senior officers at odds with Netanyahu about the peace process and how best to solve the conflict with the Palestinians. They think that Israel must withdraw from the West Bank as soon as possible, and view the Palestinians’ refusal to seriously negotiate or to accept past offers of statehood as irrelevant. They feel that the security consequences of repeating Ariel Sharon’s experiment in Gaza—in which Israel withdrew from territory and then watched helplessly as it was turned into an independent Palestinian terror state—in the larger and more strategic West Bank are not worth worrying about.

(Continue to Full Column)

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

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The surreal spectacle of Israeli generals lobbying for Palestinian terrorists - by Caroline Glick

...The best way to end this situation is for the government to shut down the Civil Administration and get the IDF out of the governing business in Judea and Samaria. So long as the government continues to empower unaccountable generals to administer civilian areas instead of its accountable, civilian bureaucracy, we will continue to be confronted with the surreal spectacle of Israeli generals lobbying for Palestinian terrorists.

Caroline Glick..
Our World/JPost..
27 June '17..
Link: http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Our-World-The-PLOs-IDF-lobbyists-497984

Should the United States pay Palestinian terrorists? For the overwhelming majority of Americans and Israelis this is a rhetorical question.

The position of the American people was made clear – yet again – last week when US President Donald Trump’s senior envoys Jared Kushner and Jason Greenblatt met with Palestinian Authority chairman and PLO chief Mahmoud Abbas and repeated Trump’s demand that the PA cut off the payments.

Not only did Abbas reject their demand, he reportedly accused the presidential envoys of working as Israeli agents.

Abbas’s treatment of Kushner and Greenblatt was in line with his refusal to even meet with US Ambassador David Friedman, reportedly because he doesn’t like Friedman’s views.

The most amazing aspect of Abbas’s contemptuous treatment of the Trump administration is that he abuses Trump and his senior advisers while demanding that Trump continue funding him in excess of half a billion dollars a year, and do so in contravention of the will of the Republican-controlled Congress.

Abbas’s meeting last week took place as the Taylor Force Act makes its way through Congress.

Named for Taylor Force, the West Point graduate and US army veteran who was murdered in March 2016 in Tel Aviv by a Palestinian terrorist, the Taylor Force Act will end US funding of the PA until it ends its payments to terrorists and their families – including the family of Force’s murderer Bashar Masalha.

The Taylor Force Act enjoys bipartisan majority support in both the House and the Senate. It is also supported by the Israeli government.

Given the stakes, what could possibly have possessed Abbas to believe he can get away with mistreating Trump and his envoys? Who does he think will save him from Congress and the White House? Enter Commanders for Israel’s Security (CIS), stage left.