Remembering Moshe Arens z"l (1925-2019) - by David M. Weinberg

Arens upheld the policy principal that Israel must always retaliate for attacks on its soil. He wasn’t prepared to bend to US diplomatic or defense pressures when Zionist fundamentals were at stake.

David M. Weinberg..
A Citadel Defending Zion..
10 January '19..
Link: https://www.davidmweinberg.com/2019/01/10/remembering-moshe-arens/

In the course of working on my master’s thesis in 1999, I had opportunity to interview Yitzhak Shamir and Moshe Arens regarding Israel’s decision not to retaliate against Iraq during the First Gulf War. I also had the privilege of knowing Arens, who passed away this week, through the security think tank I ran for 25 years at Bar-Ilan University. (Arens served on the institute’s board and spoke at many of our conferences).

As defense minister under Prime Minister Shamir, Arens believed that Israel had to respond militarily to the Iraqi Scud missile attacks on Israel. He upheld the policy principle that Israel must always retaliate for attacks on its soil. He wasn’t prepared to bend to US diplomatic or defense pressures when Zionist fundamentals were at stake.

Arens alleges in his memoirs that Shamir thought he was buying preferential treatment from the US for the future by acceding to Bush’s entreaties to stay out of the fighting in Iraq.

Arens: “It was strange to see Shamir, who had been so tough in the disputes which had arisen in past with the Americans, bending so far in order to meet the expectations of the Americans in the current situation. It appeared that he had set for himself certain issues on which he had decided not to give even an inch, and to compensate for this he was prepared to show compromise on other issues. Settlements in Judea, Samaria and Gaza were, of course, in the first category, whereas avoiding angering the Americans regarding involvement in the Gulf war could serve as compensation for this.”

Arens later told me that “Shamir was making a choice: settlements or responding to Iraqi attacks, and he chose settlements.” Shamir sacrificed what was “right” (– according to Arens, this meant the need to retaliate against Iraq) for what he (Shamir) thought was diplomatically useful in the long-term.

This prioritization of interests, as Arens tells it, is striking. A central Israeli interest in retaliating for attacks on its soil was subjugated to another interest – protecting settlements – and its situational corollary, bending to US demands re the Gulf War.

Moshe Arens at 90: 'There is no shame in being a strong nation' - by Shlomo Cesana

...The one-state option is only viable if Israel comes to the conclusion that the peace process is over, Arens says. "I don't support the notion of a Palestinian state, and certainly not the notion of uprooting Jewish communities. You ask if I think the land is sacred? Yes, the land is sacred. "I think the Jewish people have a very deep connection with the Land of Israel, and not only in the context of the 1949 armistice lines. That's all they are -- cease-fire lines. Our connection to Israel runs through to the Jordan River. When it comes to cutting out the heart of the biblical Land of Israel, I don't want to do it. Other solutions must be devised."

Shlomo Cesana..
Israel Hayom..
25 December '15..

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon, former Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Israeli Air Force commanders past and present came together this week to celebrate former Defense Minister Moshe Arens' 90th birthday.

An aeronautics professor who held key positions in the Israel Aerospace Industry, a three-time defense minister, foreign minister, ambassador and Israel Defense Prize laureate, Arens, a lifelong Likud member, was the first Israeli official dubbed "Mr. Security."

At 90, Arens has a unique perspective on life, politics and Israel's future.

When looking to Israel's future, one must also look at its past, he says.

"And looking back we've made amazing progress," he says.

"The State of Israel was a country fighting for its life, a poor country, budgeting for every citizen. Today Israel is very strong militarily, and economically it's a rich country. That's nothing to be ashamed of. We're a high-tech state with robust exports.

"Between the [1948] War of Independence and the [1973] Yom Kippur War, we felt we were fighting for our lives. Until that glorious victory [in 1973] we were under the constant threat of an attack by an Arab coalition, and we needed 48 hours to call up the reserves and counter the attack. This threat no longer exists. The Arab armies are deterred. Some of them no longer exist, and we have peaceful relations with Egypt and Jordan, including close defense ties. No one can predict the future, but if we look at where we were and where we are today, there's definitely reason to be optimistic."

Is Netanyahu ‘Apologizing to the Obama Administration’?

Part II of a two-part interview with Moshe Arens — former Israeli defense minister, foreign minister, and ambassador to the U.S. (Read Part I here.)


Ruthie Blum Leibowitz
Pajamasmedia.com
04 April '10
Posted before Chag
The concluding half of Ruthie Blum Leibowitz’s interview with Moshe Arens — former Israeli defense minister, foreign minister, and ambassador to the U.S.

Q: Are the Obama administration’s policies towards Israel a total about-face from the position of the Bush administration, which maintained there was a global struggle going on between the West and radical Islam, and that the Palestinian conflict belonged to that struggle? The current administration seems to be asserting that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not only a phenomenon in and of itself, but that solving it is necessary to dealing with the rest of the world.

A: The major difference, again, is that this administration is taking its disagreements with the Israeli government public. If we look back at the history of U.S.-Israel relations, the last time we can discern this kind of a breach in the discourse was during the Eisenhower years. That was right after the Sinai Campaign, when Secretary of State [John Foster] Dulles publicly pressured Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion into moving the Israeli army out of the Sinai and the Gaza Strip, though Ben-Gurion was initially hesitant. The Eisenhower administration made no bones about its views on that subject, and hinted at additional pressures that might be forthcoming if Israel did not accept. That was in 1957. Here we are 53 years later.

Q: Why didn’t you mention the Carter administration in this context, as so many commentators have been doing of late?

A: Well, I don’t think we had a serious rift with the Carter administration, though we certainly might have had one, had Prime Minister Menachem Begin not accepted the terms that Egyptian President Anwar Sadat insisted on during negotiations at Camp David. President Carter might very well have come down on Sadat’s side. But we never got to that point, and in the final analysis, Carter was quite happy with the fact that Begin, after some convincing and maybe a little bit of discrete pressure, accepted the condition that there be a total withdrawal of Israeli forces and removal of Israeli settlements from the Sinai.

Q: Can Netanyahu be compared to Begin in this respect? After all, at the time, Begin seemed to be the least likely prime minister to give away territory. Netanyahu, today, is considered by many to be “intransigent.” Will the upshot in this case be similar? Will Netanyahu ultimately agree to withdraw to the 1967 borders?

A: It’s very unlikely. And the analogy is not entirely apt. Begin was quite doctrinaire, and what made it possible for him to agree to a total withdrawal from the Sinai was his view that it was not really part of the land of Israel. The fact is that he was not prepared to give an inch of the Gaza Strip, because he said it was part of the land of Israel.

(Read full interview)
.