Is Israel the Only Country with No Right to a Normal Foreign Policy? - by Evelyn Gordon

...“While Israel’s unique security and other requirements understandably impel it to develop as wide a network of relationships as it can,” he said, “I think it will want to avoid finding its own democratic identity tarnished by, of its own choosing, aligning less with the club of democracies and more with this very different coalition.” This is simply ridiculous.

Evelyn Gordon..
Analysis from Israel..
15 July '18..
Link: http://evelyncgordon.com/the-only-country-with-no-right-to-a-normal-foreign-policy/

The news that Hungary’s prime minister will visit Israel next week has sparked outrage from liberal Jews both in Israel and abroad. Opponents raise two main objections. One would be serious if true, but it doesn’t seem to be. The other is sheer hypocrisy–and it’s an excellent example of the way liberal Jews routinely hold Israel to standards they apply to no other country on earth.

The hypocritical objection is that Viktor Orban is an authoritarian. “Sad company to keep,” tweeted Brookings Institute fellow Tamara Cofman Wittes after hearing that Orban was definitely coming and Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte (who is admittedly more problematic) might be. Former U.S. Ambassador to Israel Daniel Shapiro also questioned the wisdom of welcoming Orban and other authoritarians. “While Israel’s unique security and other requirements understandably impel it to develop as wide a network of relationships as it can,” he said, “I think it will want to avoid finding its own democratic identity tarnished by, of its own choosing, aligning less with the club of democracies and more with this very different coalition.”

This is simply ridiculous. Aside from the fact that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has also regularly hosted liberal leaders like German Chancellor Angela Merkel (several times) and Barack Obama, with French President Emmanuel Macron reportedly planning to visit later this year, the reality is that most countries in the world today are authoritarian, and even a growing number of Western democracies have authoritarian leaders. Thus, any country which wants to maintain relationships with more than a handful of other countries will end up hosting a lot of authoritarian leaders, which is why every other Western democracy also does so.

In fact, other Western democracies often host leaders considerably more objectionable than Orban, and with less justification. I can understand hosting Vladimir Putin or Xi Jinping despite their aggressive foreign policies; Russia and China are too important to be ignored. But just this month, Switzerland and Austria welcomed Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, as did France and Italy in 2016, even though Rouhani’s government is actively abetting the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of people in Syria and Yemen and brutally crushing dissent at home. That’s far worse than hosting Orban, whose government isn’t killing anyone.

Moreover, Hungary is genuinely important to Israel’s core foreign policy interests, since it has repeatedly helped quash anti-Israel decisions by Israel’s largest trading partner, the European Union. What vital contributions does Iran make to Europe’s core interests that justify overlooking its complicity in mass murder?

Everybody Loves Israel - by Arthur Herman

...The changing view of Israel, in short, is a remarkable landmark moment, not just for Israel but also for a new American administration ready to see the strong alliance with Israel not as something to apologize for, or as a necessary but regrettable loss-leader in U.S. foreign policy, but as the central pillar in a more realistic policy toward our friends—and toward our enemies—in the Middle East and beyond.

Arthur Herman..
Mosaicmagazine.com..
07 November '16..

If my title seems counterintuitive, let’s concede from the start: not everyone does love Israel now.

There’s still a Palestinian Authority that actively encourages Palestinians to murder Israelis; there’s still an Iran that periodically threatens to finish the Holocaust; there’s still a very active boycott-Israel movement in Europe and on American college campuses. And there is still and always the United Nations, with its unparalleled half-century record of hostility toward Israel and wildly disproportionate list of standing resolutions targeting the Jewish state.

As for the United States, the current president’s relations with Israel and its prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu have been anything but loving. Barack Obama has viewed the Jewish state almost exclusively as a regrettable holdover from the era of European colonialism and an occupier of land properly belonging to the embattled and oppressed Palestinian Arab population. Despite the president’s boasts to the effect that he “has Israel’s back,” and despite the recent renewal of military aid (albeit delivered with an air of chilly regret), he has hinted in the past at compelling Israel to return to its pre-1967 borders, and many Israelis worry that a lame-duck Obama may feel freer to take unilateral action against them.

Not just anti-Israelism but outright anti-Semitism is on the rise. For European Jews in general, the encircling atmosphere of hostility, often instigated by Muslims but tolerated or excused by elites, seems to worsen year by year. Jacques Canet, the president of La Victoire synagogue in Paris, reports that the France’s Jewish community—still the third largest in the world, though rapidly diminishing—feels threatened to the point where “Jews in Paris, Marseilles, Toulouse, Sarcelles feel they can’t safely wear a kippah outside their homes or send their children to public schools.” The number of French Jews emigrating annually to Israel has steadily risen from 1,900 in 2011 to nearly 8,000 in 2015, with no end in sight; additional thousands are making their way elsewhere. No less grim is the picture in the United Kingdom, where the Labor party, in Douglas Murray’s wordsy—“the party of Clement Atlee, Harold Wilson, and Tony Blair”—has been taken over by “forces aligned with naked anti-Semitism.”

The examples multiply. All in all, then, we may grant that in many quarters, an anti-Israel—and anti-Jewish—mindset remains a palpable presence on the political and social scene. But there is also good news: elsewhere, and not in obscure corners but in world capitals, a transformation of attitudes is under way. Far from being the pariah of the Middle East, Israel is fast becoming the region’s golden child, courted and caressed even by some of its most important and once-implacably hostile neighbors. The change has certainly registered in Israel itself, but so far has been largely ignored by Western media.

(Continue to Full Essay)

Arthur Herman is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and the author of, among other books, Gandhi and Churchill, Freedom’s Forge, and How the Scots Invented the Modern World.

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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Israel’s Strategy Shift Bears Fruit - by Evelyn Gordon

Relations with Europe are inevitably being frayed by the fact that what the EU seems to want most from Israel is something beyond Israel’s power to provide. Namely, a peace deal with people who have consistently refused every Israeli offer and are currently refusing even to negotiate with it. Europe’s attitude could change someday, but Israel can’t count on that. Hence it must develop alternative sources of trade and diplomatic support as an insurance policy.

Evelyn Gordon..
Commentary Magazine..
22 July '16..
Link: https://www.commentarymagazine.com/foreign-policy/middle-east/israel/israels-strategy-shift-bears-fruit/..


Wednesday’s announcement that Guinea is resuming ties with Israel almost half a century after severing them is a nontrivial piece of good news. Granted, Guinea is a poor and relatively unimportant African country. But it’s 85 percent Muslim, and few Muslim-majority countries have yet been willing to forge open relations with Israel; consequently, its decision could encourage others to follow suit. Guinea was also the first country in Africa to sever relations with Israel following the 1967 Six-Day War. For both those reasons, its renewal of ties underscores the degree to which a new Israeli strategy aimed at improving relations with the non-Western world has begun bearing fruit.

The Guinea announcement comes on the heels of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s successful trip to Africa earlier this month. Highlights of that trip included announcements by both Kenya and Ethiopia–two of Israel’s closest African allies–that they would push for Israel to receive observer status at the African Union, as well as Tanzania’s announcement that it planned to open an embassy in Israel, 21 years after renewing relations.

Israeli media outlets have also reported that officials from three other Muslim-majority African countries that don’t have relations with Israel–Mali, Chad, and Somalia–recently paid secret visits, indicating that the prospect of other Muslim countries following Guinea’s lead is far from inconceivable. Indeed, just last week, Foreign Ministry Director General Dore Gold visited Chad for a meeting with its president. This prospect is made more plausible by the warming of Israel’s relations with key Arab states. As several African leaders noted during Netanyahu’s trip, there’s little point in African countries continuing to give Israel the cold shoulder when some of the very Arab countries that originally pushed them to do so now have either overt or covert relations with it.

There are two reasons why Israel ascribes such importance to its warming ties with Africa, and both have more to do with the long term than the short term. The first is the need to diversify its trading partners. Currently, about a third of Israel’s exports go to Europe. But the combination of Europe’s slowing economy and its growing hostility to Israel make this heavy reliance on Europe a potential threat to Israel’s economic future. Africa is the world’s poorest continent, but it’s experiencing rapid economic growth, and many of Israel’s fields of expertise fit well with Africa’s needs, including agricultural technology, water conservation, and counterterrorism. Thus by expanding and improving its diplomatic relations with African countries, Israel hopes to eventually expand its trade relations as well.

Policy Gambles and Israel's Palestinian Dilemmas - by Prof. Efraim Inbar

Israel has gradually come to realize that the Palestinians are neither a partner for peace nor capable of establishing a viable state. Therefore, Israel's recent governments have adopted a de facto conflict-management approach, rather than a conflict-resolution strategy. This prompts several questions. Should Israel speak explicitly about the dim prospects of a two-state solution, or play along with the illusory preferences and pretensions of the international community? Should Israel apply more “stick” than “carrot” to the hostile Palestinian Authority? Would the collapse of the Palestinian Authority serve Israel's interests? And how diplomatically active should Israel be on the Palestinian issue?

Prof. Efraim Inbar..
BESA Center Perspectives Paper No. 341..
03 May '16..

Ever since the Palestinian terrorist wave began in September 2000, the Israeli body politic increasingly has resigned itself to the probability that there is no partner on the Palestinian side with which to reach a historic compromise with the Jewish national (Zionist) movement. The hopes for peace that were generated by the Oslo process in 1993 have been replaced by the stark realization that violent conflict will not end soon.

Moreover, the hostile messages about Israel purveyed in the Palestinian Authority (PA) educational system and official media leave little doubt about the rabid anti-Semitism prevalent in Palestinian society, which ensures that conflict with the Jews will continue. And thus, the central premise of the Oslo process seems exceedingly improbable. The premise was that partition of the Land of Israel and the establishment of a Palestinian political entity (what is known as the two-state paradigm) would bring peace and stability. Alas, this paradigm has been deeply discredited.

Aside from and beyond the assessment that the PA has no intention of accepting a Jewish state in any borders, the fact remains that the two sides remain far apart on most of the concrete issues to be resolved. Palestinian demands for control of the Temple Mount and the so-called “right of return,” for example, are insurmountable obstacles. Any pragmatic impulse that might otherwise have emerged in Palestinian politics is consistently countered by Hamas, whose growing influence reflects the Islamist tide that is surging across the wider region.

To make matters worse, the assumption that the Palestinians are capable of establishing a state within the parameters of a two-state paradigm has not been validated. The PA was unable to get rid of multiple militias and lost Gaza to Hamas, mirroring the inability of other Arab societies in the region to sustain statist structures.

Finally, protracted ethno-religious conflicts end only when at least one of the sides becomes war-weary, and runs out of energy for sustaining the conflict. That is not true of either Israeli or Palestinian society.

As a result of these trends, Israel essentially, if not formally, has given up on conflict resolution in the short run, and instead effectively has adopted a strategy of patient conflict management. But such a strategy brings policy dilemmas of its own.

The first dilemma is whether or not to admit that Israel no longer believes that negotiations can lead to a durable agreement in the near term.

(Excellent) - The Diplomatic View from Inside Netanyahu’s National Security Council

In this fascinating and revealing interview, Col. (res.) Dr. Eran Lerman discusses his six-year tenure as deputy for foreign policy and international affairs at the National Security Council in the Israeli Prime Minister's Office. He addresses Prime Minister Netanyahu’s far-reaching concessions to the Palestinians, Israeli preparations for an attack on Iran, US clandestine surveillance, and Israeli ties with Arab countries. Dr. Lerman joined the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies in October 2015.

Begin-Sadat Center For Strategic Studies..
Besacenter.org/..
26 February '16..

This interview was conducted by Ariel Kahane (@arik3000), the diplomatic correspondent of Makor Rishon newspaper, and published on February 12, 2016. The original Hebrew can be read here.

Just a few days into his position as deputy National Security Advisor, Eran Lerman was almost fired. The year was 2009. Lerman—a reserve colonel with a doctorate in political science, and a valued and longstanding member of the intelligence community—was invited by Prof. Uzi Arad to take part in the revamped and expanded National Security Council (NSC).

Lerman answered the challenge. But shortly before leaving the American Jewish Committee for his new position, he had given a farewell interview to a media outlet in which he described his views, including a critical reference to government attitudes towards non-Orthodox Jewish denominations in America. His new boss’s boss—Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—was very unhappy with such openness in senior members of the NSC staff. He made his displeasure known, and dispensed similar criticism to Uzi Arad for a different interview.

After being reprimanded, Lerman understood that the rules of the game had changed, and from that day to this has maintained media silence. He has spoken extensively with European diplomats, American colleagues, Jewish leaders, and acquaintances in Arab countries, but with very few limited exceptions, he has refrained from communicating with the Israeli public.

Now, four months after leaving his post, Lerman talks for the first time about the many dramatic events in which he has been involved. Lerman is the only senior figure who has been at Netanyahu’s side almost without pause since his return to power.

He has seen up close how the prime minister fought against the developing agreement with Iran, avoided a ground war during Operation Pillar of Defense, was drawn into such a conflict during Operation Protective Edge, stood up to pressure from Obama, decided to apologize to Erdogan, and expressed a willingness to offer the Palestinians extensive concessions. There have been three NSC heads over this period—Uzi Arad, Yaakov Amidror, and Yossi Cohen—while Lerman has remained close to the prime minister throughout. Now, freed from the bonds of silence imposed by his position, Lerman takes us inside the decision-making process, and even offers the occasional critique.

To my surprise, Lerman is willing to speak about highly sensitive subjects, such as the common interests shared by Israel and several Arab states, or the clandestine American surveillance of senior Israeli leaders. When I ask him how it is possible to hold secret discussions when everything you say might be recorded, and whether the constant fear of being listened to doesn’t eventually lead to madness, he answers:

“It’s not madness, it’s just the way things are. It’s a fish bowl; it always was. But fortunately, we’re not too bad at information security ourselves. When we want to make decisions, we know how to do it without everything being revealed. The prime minister is enveloped in layer upon layer of information, some of which I don’t always know, thankfully. He knows very well when conversations and actions are known to others and when they are truly confidential. Some decisions are made precisely so that everyone will know about them.”

We wanted to act against Iran on an issue critical to national security, and the whole world knew about it in real time. Is that not appalling?

“At the end of the day, the fact that everyone knew didn’t harm Israel’s interests. I can tell you that it was very much in the Americans’ interests that our ability to act against Iran was credible. As a consequence, two or three important countries that were initially unwilling to agree to sanctions against Iran were persuaded that without sanctions, Israel would go crazy. It wasn’t exactly a case of ‘hold me back,’ but there was a clear message of ‘If you don’t act, then we will.’”

Isolation for the Masses

Lerman, 59, lives in Re’ut, and is a father of three. In addition to Hebrew and English, he also speaks some Dutch, his wife’s mother tongue, and Arabic, a language that someone with his career path has to understand. He served in the IDF for 25 years, mainly in the Intelligence Corps. He left in 2001, and a short time later was appointed head of the Israeli office of the American Jewish Committee, a powerful Jewish voice in the United States and beyond. Like many others, he has no doubt that the Jewish-American arena is critical to Israel’s security.

We met twice at Shalem College, where Lerman recently began teaching. Lerman also has joined the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies at Bar-Ilan University, as a senior research associate. Were it not for the pressures of time, we could have talked for far more than the three hours we spent together; six years of being present at the most sensitive security crossroads have given him a wealth of stories, insights, and conclusions. But before we got into details, I asked him to give me an overview, a kind of satellite photo of Israel and its place in the world as can only be seen from a great height.

“On both sides of the political spectrum, as well as in the media, there is a tendency to emphasize the threat and the sense of isolation,” Lerman says. “They give the impression that Israel stands alone in the world, that we have enemies on all sides, that BDS will shortly crush us, the Americans will abandon us, the Europeans will break us, and so on. What I’ve seen in recent years is that, while those elements do exist, they’re not dominant. The foundations of Israel’s relations with the United States are very strong, and just two weeks ago we saw the formation of a new pact with Greece and Cyprus—two European countries that two decades ago would not have considered approaching Israel.

“By the way, this is an example of a strange phenomenon: good news makes absolutely no waves in the Israeli public sphere. The paradox is that it’s very convenient for the Left to denounce the prime minister for supposedly leading Israel into a dead end in the international arena; while for certain groups on the Right, it’s convenient to say, ‘The whole world is against us anyway, so let’s just ignore what it has to say.’ Both these positions are misguided.”

Over the years you were there, the years of Netanyahu’s rule, has our international situation improved or deteriorated?

Tobin - Can Israel Afford a Moral Foreign Policy?

Jonathan S. Tobin..
Commentary/Contentions..
15 June '12..




(A good question worthy of giving some thought, asked in a reasonable manner. Y.)

Earlier this week, I noted the fact that while President Obama has chosen not to visit Israel since taking office even when visiting the Middle East, Russia’s Vladimir Putin will be making his second trip to the Jewish state this month. The fact that Obama is still so resentful of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that he couldn’t bring himself to go to Jerusalem even when it would clearly be in his political interests to do so, while Putin thinks it is good politics to go there, struck me as interesting. But our friends at the Forward have a very different take on the story. In an editorial published this week, they think it is wrong for Israel to receive Putin and urge it to cancel the visit.

In assessing this position, we need to start by saying this is the sort of editorial that explains why there is a difference between government and journalism. In seizing the moral high ground on Putin, the Forward editorialist is taking a stand that no Israeli government, no matter how righteous or devoted to the cause of human rights in Russia, Syria and Iran it might be, can possibly take. Israel has enough enemies without picking a fight with Putin even the United States would be wary of starting. This is the sort of unrealistic moral preening that we journalists love to indulge in. There is also the fact that the Forward, whose idolatry of Barack Obama seems to be boundless, has been noticeably quiet in expressing criticism of the administration’s desire for a “reset” with Putin or his appeasement of Russia on a number of different fronts.

But having said that, I’m prepared to concede the editorial has a point, especially with regard to the egregious praise of Putin on the part of Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, and that the question of how moral Israel’s foreign policy should be is not solely a matter for idle journalistic posturing.

Ashton, Erdogan, and Dreamy Foreign Policies

Caroline Glick..
carolineglick.com
15 June '12..

With her unbridled hostility towards Israel, the EU's foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton provides us with an abject lesson in what happens when a government places its emotional aspirations above its national interests.

Since the establishment of the State of Israel, many of Israel's elite have aspired to be embraced by Europe. In recent years, nearly every government has voiced the hope of one day seeing Israel join the EU.

To a significant degree, Israel's decision to recognize the PLO in 1993 and negotiate with Yasser Arafat and his deputies was an attempt by Israel's political class to win acceptance from the likes of Ashton and her continental comrades. For years the EU had criticized Israel for refusing to recognize the PLO.

Until 1993, Israel's leaders defied Europe because they could tell the difference between a national interest and an emotional aspiration and preferred the former over the latter. And now, Israel's reward for preferring European love to our national interest and embracing our sworn enemy is Catherine Ashton.

To put it mildly, Ashton is not a friend of Israel. Indeed, she is so ill-disposed against Israel that she seems unable to focus for long on anything other than bashing it. Her obsession was prominently displayed in March when she was unable to give an unqualified condemnation of the massacre of French Jewish children by a French Muslim. Ashton simply had to use her condemnation as yet another opportunity to bash Israel.