An Open Letter to ADL Leader Abe Foxman: A Response to Obama's Critics on Israeli-Arab Peace, by Gidon D. Remba

Dear Abe,

You've been at the forefront of American Jewish criticism of President Obama's renewed push for Israeli-Arab peace. After a recent meeting with the President along with 15 other Jewish leaders, you confessed that you continue "to feel uncomfortable with the assumptions that underlie President Obama's approach" to Israel and the Middle East.

You've charged that President Obama's outreach to the Muslim world is being conducted "at Israel's expense." For Obama, you say, "there is a need for the US to demonstrate that it can be tough with Israel to win back credibility with Muslims. We are seeing it already on the settlement issue..."

But being tough on Netanyahu about settlements is not at "Israel's expense." It is a blessing to Israel, given the grave threat which many Israeli military and political leaders have said the settlements pose to Israel's security, to the very possibility of a two-state solution to its conflict with the Palestinians, and to Israel's ability to remain a democratic Jewish state. For the last eight years, we've had a president who recklessly squandered American prestige. He had no credibility to broker an Israeli-Arab accommodation. He made little more than token efforts to do so, when not trumpeting his outright opposition to negotiations with Syria, despite the unanimous advice of Israel's intelligence and military brass, and its political leadership. An American president who has regained the confidence of the Arab and Muslim worlds is quite simply a strategic asset to Israel. American pressure over settlements is an investment in Israel's future, a gift to the Zionist project.

Nor does pressure need to be applied simultaneously and in equal doses to satisfy some artificial notion of even-handedness. As Larry Derfner points out in the Jerusalem Post, "The Palestinian Authority has been cracking down on Hamas for a long while, it kept the West Bank miraculously quiet during Operation Cast Lead, it's enforcing the law in city after city... If the PA wasn't giving us peace and we were giving it land - we'd be right to demand that Obama put all the pressure on the Palestinians and none on us. But the fact is that Abbas and the PA are giving us about as much peace as they're capable of, while we aren't planning on giving them an inch; instead, we're thinking only about how much more conquered land Obama will let us build on."

You've said that President Obama's "notion that we have to pressure Israel to show our bona fides to the Arabs is to buy into their distorted version of history." You've accused the president of ignoring the history of Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts. But such criticisms stand reality on its head. Obama understands all too well why past peace efforts have failed. His new way is designed to overcome the errors and missteps of the past. By adopting a regional approach, he is more likely to gain wide Arab backing for historic Palestinian compromises on Jerusalem and refugees, issues which resonate throughout the Arab and Muslim worlds. By enlisting the help of Syria, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, he stands a better chance of bringing about a unified Fatah-Hamas Palestinian government that will hew to the international and Arab consensus: a government that will have both the will and the wherewithal to honor its commitments under a peace accord with Israel.

Obama recognizes that the US cannot help forge peace between Israelis and Palestinians while allowing Syria and Iran to continue to stoke Hezbollah and Hamas extremism. While Bush's policies added fuel to the fires of Arab and Muslim radicalism, Obama is cutting off their oxygen supply, sapping Hezbollah's political power and reinforcing the impetus towards pragmatism in Hamas. Obama is finally ending the practice, perfected under Bush, of saying one thing--whether about settlements or the president's commitment to help negotiate an accord--and then doing something else.

You hold up President Bush's "enunciation of the need for a Palestinian state, the road map, Israel's disengagement from Gaza in 2005, and the Annapolis process in 2007" as having "provided opportunities for progress toward peace if the Palestinians were truly interested." You highlight what "Israel has done in recent years to advance peace: Israel's offer of a Palestinian state at Camp David in 2000, its unilateral withdrawal from Lebanon, also in 2000, and its disengagement from Gaza were all steps upon which there could have been building toward peace." Instead, you conclude, "the Palestinians responded with rejection, suicide bombs and kidnappings, extremist politics and rockets."

But this Manichean narrative of righteous Israelis and evil Palestinians - the stock-in-trade of right-wing hasbarah - is a cartoon version of what went wrong, ignoring true causes and effects. Annapolis did not fail because the Palestinians refused to accept another "generous Israeli offer," but because President Bush did nothing to help the parties bridge the gaps, failing to apply diplomatic tools to encourage their agreement to a US-proposed compromise, as President Carter successfully did with Egypt and Israel. Similarly, Bush did nothing to hold either party accountable for their commitments under the Road Map, even after promising to "ride herd" on both as he left the company of Sharon and Abbas at Aqaba.

The Road Map and Annapolis were built not only on the wobbly foundation of isolating and excluding Hamas and Gaza, but on an unrealistic, and ultimately failed, American-Israeli bid to topple Hamas by besieging Gaza and its entire population. This siege, more than anything else, coupled with the lack of real progress on the ground in the West Bank--and not Israeli "concessions"--were responsible for the attacks which Israel has endured on its southern communities. Had Sharon truly wanted to promote peace by withdrawing from Gaza, rather than to simply cut Israeli losses and bury any serious peace plan in "formaldehyde"--as his chief aide Dov Weissglas put it--he would have withdrawn Israeli troops and settlers from the Strip as part of an agreement with Abbas, rather than unilaterally. In this way, he would have enabled the PA and Fatah moderates to take credit for a diplomatic achievement, rather than allowing Hamas to gain bragging rights before the Palestinian public that Israel had been pushed from Gaza only by its "resistance"--much as Hezbollah did with its Lebanese audience when Barak unilaterally withdrew from Lebanon.

By the same token, Barak's move was largely motivated by Israel's need to cut its ongoing losses from guerrilla attacks while Israeli troops remained entrenched in Lebanese territory. It was a gift to Hezbollah, not a step towards peace, after Barak had walked away from a potential peace treaty with Syria, an act of political cowardice for which President Clinton and his chief Middle East envoy, Dennis Ross, have criticized him harshly. Barak balked on a Syrian-Israeli deal after Assad had committed to the US that under a land-for-peace bargain, Syria would insure that Hezbollah, its client, would be reined in, according to Ross.

You claim that the Arab world wasn't ready to reach an agreement with Israel when Carter and Brzezinski were in the White House, and that the same is true now--as if nothing has changed in thirty years and there were no Arab peace initiative offering Israel recognition, normal ties and peace with the entire Arab world today; as if the rise of Iran were not providing powerful new incentives for the Sunni Arab states to end the conflict and form a close alliance with Israel and the US.

Nothing's changed? Hamas political bureau chief Khaled Meshal has recently said that his group would not stand in the way of a peace deal between Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and Israel. Shin Bet security service chief Yuval Diskin told the Israeli government that "Hamas rhetoric has changed in recent weeks. ‘Public statements by leaders attest to efforts by Hamas to appear interested in ending the conflict with Israel, based on the model of a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders in exchange for a long-term hudnah'" or truce--until Netanyahu silenced him. Netanyahu's spokespeople claim that these changes in rhetoric are purely "cosmetic" and that Hamas "remains rooted in an extremist ideology which fundamentally opposes peace and reconciliation."

But the great Jewish historian Walter Lacqueur was closer to the mark when he observed in the 1970's that "even in the war aims of religious or quasi-religious movements a discrepancy often exists between the desirable and the possible. . . All such movements have come at one stage or another to the realization that with an enemy who cannot be defeated, temporary compromises have to be made. The old enmity, the odium theologicum, is itself subject to gradual erosion as such compromises become permanent; the formulas of hatred may linger on but they no longer carry the same conviction."

The latest poll of Israeli and Palestinian public opinion, conducted jointly by the Harry S. Truman Research Institute for the Advancement of Peace at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research in Ramallah, between May 21-June 3, 2009, showed that “59% of the Israelis support and 36% oppose a two-state solution. Among Palestinians, 61% support the two-state solution while 23% support a one-state solution and 9% support other solutions.” Are you imposing an idealistic, romantic definition of what constitutes acceptance of Israel by Palestinians, rather than a practical and realistic view of what it takes for there to be peace between two countries—whether Israel and Egypt, Palestine or Syria?

It is a categorical mistake to suggest that the Arabs aren't ready to make peace with Israel because some, notably the Saudis, are unwilling to start the normalization process in exchange for the partial settlement freeze Netanyahu will finally offer. His government has been unwilling to come to a full stop on settlement construction, as requested by the US and the international community, and as required by the Road Map. Instead, Netanyahu has insisted that Israel will continue building Jewish housing in Palestinian Arab neighborhoods in East Jerusalem, regarded by the Arab world as the future capital of a Palestinian state. Does this strike you as a wise way to inspire confidence in Israel's good intentions about a future peace?

As any schoolchild knows, but so many Jewish leaders pretend not to, there can be no two-state solution without sharing Jerusalem between Palestinians and Israelis. What's more, Netanyahu remains adamant about continuing to build in Israeli settlements in the West Bank, including those in heavily populated Palestinian areas which have no chance of becoming part of Israel under a future peace accord. To genuinely promote peace, Israel needs to start offering economic incentives to settlers deep in the West Bank to begin returning to Israel, rather than erecting yet more housing for continued settler growth in areas that Israel will most certainly have to leave in any peace deal.

The Saudis want to begin a normalization process only once there is an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement. Even if Netanyahu adopts a partial freeze on settlement building, they are rightly skeptical that he will countenance the establishment of a Palestinian state on fair terms. Netanyahu's long-standing opposition to a viable two-state solution, with a territorially contiguous Palestine in the West Bank and Gaza, justifies their skepticism. Under such circumstances, it is hardly surprising that Netanyahu has failed to engender the kind of trust and good faith that would enable Arab leaders to begin an incremental process of normalization with Israel now. Still, some Arab states--including Qatar, Tunisia, Bahrain and others--will probably agree to further normalization steps in exchange for a settlements moratorium.

Now let's turn to what may be your biggest concern: that President Obama is pursuing Israeli-Arab peace with a genuine sense of urgency. I'll address this issue, within the context of the dangers Israel faces with Iran, Hezbollah, Syria and the Palestinians, in the second part of this open letter, which is available here.

B'virkat shalom,

(Gidon) Doni Remba

Obama's Grand Plan for the Middle East, by Gidon D. Remba, The Jerusalem Report

As published in the Jerusalem Report, June 8, 2009 and online in Jewcy, May 18, 2009

With the maiden visit of newly elected Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Washington set for May 18, signs of an immanent clash between U.S. President Barack Obama and the hardline Israeli leader abound.

While both leaders will look to find common ground, papering over differences with diplomatic formulas, the rift may be unavoidable. The impending tension recalls previous encounters between Likud leaders and U.S. presidents from both parties. This time the tremors will center not only on the Palestinian fault line, but also on Iran.

Netanyahu views the development of an Iranian uranium enrichment capacity as an existential threat to Israel that must be squelched. He is certain that Obama’s “dialogue” with Iran is bound to fail, rendering inevitable an Israeli strike against Iranian nuclear sites. An Israeli attack will be preceded by more punishing economic penalties on Iran of the kind mooted lately on Capitol Hill, and backed by AIPAC, the hawkish pro-Israel lobby. But sanctions-on-steroids are unlikely to blunt Iran’s quest to join the nuclear club, serving only to clear away the final hurdles blocking a final push for preemptive Israeli military action.

Obama’s way represents nothing less than a revolution in the Middle East: not the stillborn new Middle East the Bush Administration imagined could be midwifed by the force of American and Israeli arms, but a new order that will arise from the centripetal forces unleashed by a political earthquake. How does Obama hope to set in motion this tectonic realignment? Reading the tea leaves, one can divine an unfolding pattern whose contours will only be more fully revealed when Obama delivers a major speech to the Arab and Muslim worlds in Egypt on June 4, following meetings with Netanyahu, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

With the backing of the Pentagon’s top brass and his Republican Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, Obama’s administration is convinced that a military strike against Iran will engulf the region in a raging firestorm. It believes that an Israeli air attack on Iranian nuclear sites will fall far short, accelerating the Iranian nuclear weapons program, part of which will remain intact underground. Netanyahu hopes to persuade Obama that, if all else fails, the U.S. must turn its gunsights on Iran. But Obama will be immovable: he will not launch the next catastrophic Mideast war.

On the contrary, Obama believes a negotiated solution to the nuclear issue may be in the cards if the U.S. treads an untried path with Iran. He may offer to create a multinational consortium to produce enriched uranium inside Iran under international management and supervision, with an enhanced verification system to ensure that weaponization does not take place. Israel too may be pressed to declare its nuclear capabilities, subjecting them, along with those of India and Pakistan, to international oversight and inspection. In return for a mutually acceptable resolution of the nuclear impasse, Iran may be willing to scale back its military aid to the Lebanese Hizballah and Palestinian Hamas militant organizations and accept a comprehensive Arab-Israeli peace accord, which could include Lebanon. Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has now offered, on American television, to support whatever peace plan is accepted by the Palestinian people and the international community.

Should U.S.-Iran nuclear negotiations fail, Obama hopes to transform the regional landscape in which Iran would emerge with a nuclear arms capacity in such a way that deterrence would be most likely to succeed. Even without a “grand bargain,” the U.S. will seek to foster cooperation with Iran in as many areas as possible, replacing confrontation with détente, from a position of greater regional leverage. Those in the regime who seek to project Iran’s influence in the Arab and Muslim worlds by backing Hizballah and Hamas “resistance” against Israel will have the rug pulled out from under their feet.

Obama hopes to woo Syria out of Iran’s orbit with economic and political incentives and a determination to broker a peace treaty between Israel and Syria as part of a grand rapprochement between Israel and the Arab and Muslim worlds. The U.S. will loosen Iranian bonds with Syria and Hamas – which has now offered a long-term truce with Israel – while depriving Hizballah and its Iranian backers of the tinder for their incendiary tactics. Contrary to pundits who cry that Israel will be sacrificed on the altar of American reconciliation with the Islamic world, Obama’s aim is the creation of a new regional political architecture in which Israel’s vital needs, and American national security, will be more firmly anchored than ever before.

For Obama, the Israel-Arab conflict, including the Israeli-Palestinian conundrum, can and must be moved towards resolution under American stewardship. Press reports suggest that the U.S. and Arab allies Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Egypt are working on revising the Arab League Peace Initiative, making explicit key compromises on Jerusalem and the refugee problem. They would make Israel an offer it will be hard pressed to refuse: Palestinian refugees would return only to the new state of Palestine or be rehabilitated within the Arab states or other countries. This would insure that refugee repatriation could not undermine Israel’s Jewish majority or the principle of “two states for two peoples” affirmed in the original 1947 U.N. partition resolution calling for an Arab and a Jewish state in Palestine. Gaining Arab unanimity on this radioactive issue may prove impossible. But even engineering the sponsorship of a group of leading Arab states for so far-reaching a change to the historic Arab position would represent a coup for Obama.

Jerusalem’s Old City, with its holy sites sacred to Judaism, Islam and Christianity, objects of both Israeli and Palestinian national identification, would come under international supervision, as proposed in the partition resolution. Arab and Muslim states would begin normalizing relations with Israel, in exchange for concrete Israeli steps like a comprehensive settlement building freeze, and a time-table for removing most West Bank settlers, designed to send the message to Palestinians and the Arab world that Israel is committed not only in word but in deed to realizing a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The Arab League, together with the Palestinians, and the U.S.-led Quartet, together with Israel, will become the primary interlocutors in the new negotiations. By adopting a novel holistic, regional framework, and clarifying the parameters of the Arab peace initiative and the way forward to its realization, Obama raises the odds higher than ever before that the players will at last overcome four great obstacles which have thus far stood in the way of a Palestinian-Israeli accord:

1. With the Arab League as the primary Arab interlocutor, Obama’s way helps bypass one consequence of Palestinian weakness and division, creating an environment in which the Palestinians are brought to the table hand in hand with the entire Arab world. By providing broad Arab and international public legitimacy for just compromises on Jerusalem and the refugees, as well as on borders and security, the regional approach eases the way towards Palestinian popular acceptance of the deal. Contrary to those skeptics who see only guile in Hamas’ offers of a long-term truce with Israel, ignoring the larger political context in which the movement operates, Hamas will feel enormous Palestinian public pressure to end terrorism against Israel, and to play its part in a Palestinian government that will sign on.

2. By the same token, the U.S. role in the new constellation helps compensate for the endemic weakness in the Israeli political system which has prevented shaky Israeli coalition governments from credibly offering a viable Palestinian-Israeli bargain. Former prime minister Ehud Barak’s government was already a minority coalition by the time he went to Camp David in 2000, and when he dispatched negotiators to Taba in early 2001. Ehud Olmert, Tzipi Livni and their Kadima party were on their way out the door when they renewed final status talks with the Palestinians this past year under the Annapolis umbrella, in the shadow of a Pyrrhic victory in Lebanon and corruption allegations against the prime minister.

3. Instead, the U.S., the Quartet, and the Arab League may ask Israeli and Palestinian leaders to present to their publics a complete outline for peace incorporating already ongoing Arab concessions and concrete steps to build Israeli confidence, paired with unfolding Israeli concessions and concrete steps to build Palestinian trust. Israeli and Palestinian plebiscites will take place with a full understanding on both sides that pushback from either Israeli or Palestinian governments will be met with the firm hand of their American and Arab patrons, who will be loath to see their monumental efforts fail. Israelis and Palestinians are bound to demand that their governments seize the opportunity for a breakthrough.

The Arab League, the U.S. and NATO will oversee the implementation of all aspects of the regional peace treaty: U.S.-led and Arab multinational peacekeeping forces will guarantee Palestinian and Israeli security in the West Bank and Gaza as Israel removes most settlers and phases out military control. An international trusteeship will guide the economic and institutional baby steps of the newly de-occupied demilitarized Palestinian state.

4. The U.S. will help broker Israel’s peace talks with Syria – and possibly Lebanon, if Iran and Hizballah can be co-opted. Should Iran and Hizballah prove unwilling, they will find themselves isolated in a new Middle East order, facing a far more united Israeli-American-Sunni Arab and international front.

Obama will no longer tolerate the slogans of American or Israeli obstructionists who claim that the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is not “ripe” for resolution – it never is by their lights – or that there is no Palestinian partner for peace. Nor will he countenance an Israeli strike on Iran, as he will make clear to Netanyahu. But Obama refuses to accept the status quo, which has proven far too dangerous for the U.S., Israel and our Arab allies. The risks of rejectionism now dramatically outweigh the risks of peace.


Gidon D. Remba is executive director of the Jewish Alliance for Change (http://www.jews4change.com/), a nonprofit organization which supported Barack Obama’s presidential candidacy and advocates for a progressive domestic and foreign policy agenda. A veteran Middle East analyst and pro-Israel peace advocate, he served as senior foreign press editor and translator in Israel's Prime Minister's Office from 1977-1978 during the Egyptian-Israeli Camp David peace process.

Arrange for Gidon D. Remba to speak on Israeli-Arab Peace

Gidon D. Remba is available to speak on "President Obama, Israel & Middle East Peace" at synagogues, churches, universities and other communal institutions.

Mr. Remba, who served as Executive Director of the Jewish Alliance for Change, Ameinu (the US affiliate of the World Labor Zionist Movement), and Americans for Peace Now Chicago, is a veteran Middle East political analyst and pro-Israel peace advocate. He was Senior Foreign Press Editor and Translator in the Israel Prime Minister's Office from 1977-1978 during the Egyptian-Israeli Camp David peace process.

His commentaries on Israel and the Middle East have appeared widely in the Jewish and general press, including the Chicago Tribune, the New York Times, the Chicago Sun Times, the Nation, Ha’aretz, the Forward, the Jerusalem Post, Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA), Jerusalem Report, Tikkun, and many other publications. He blogs at http://tough-dove-israel.blogspot.com/ and at http://mideastmythsfacts.blogspot.com/

To arrange for Mr. Remba to speak at your event, contact him at dremba@comcast.net

Recent reviews:

Temple Har Zion, a reform synagogue in a Toronto suburb:

"You deliver a fast, hard punch of facts and history." Members felt that "we needed to have you longer, during the day, instead of Friday night. People wanted to learn more and discuss more with you. I will look at things differently now, trying always to determine what is really in Israel's interest." - Natalie Cremer, Adult Education Chair, Temple Har Zion

"Members are still talking about your visit, and the debate it stirred. We were impressed by your insider knowledge of Israeli and American political workings."- Rabbi Cory Weiss, Temple Har Zion

Selected Recent and Upcoming Appearances:

Upcoming: Fall, 2009 (date to be announced): Montana State University, Bozeman, Montana

May 20, 2009, 7:30 PM: Special guest at political comedian Scott Blakeman's political humor talk show "The End Of The Week As We Know It," at the 45th St. Theater, 354 W. 45 St., New York City.

April 26, 2009: Institute for Living Judaism, Brooklyn, NY, "The Settlements," in a dialogue with Stuart Ain, columnist for the Jewish Week

February 2009: Panelist, The Joey Reynolds Show, WOR News Talk Radio

January 2009: Erev Shabbat talk, "President Obama, Israel & the Mideast," Temple Har Zion, a reform synagogue in a Toronto suburb

October 2008: Speaker on Obama’s Chicago career as a progressive pragmatist, in "Broadway for Obama," State Theater, in the Lehigh Valley, Pennsylvania electoral battleground before an audience of 1,000 people.

September 2008, Speaker on Obama's Chicago career and Chicago Jewish community support, George Street Playhouse, New Brunswick, N.J. (NJ Jews rally for Obama-Biden ticket: Speakers defend Democrats’ record on Israel, int’l issues, New Jersey Jewish News, Sept. 11, 2009)

Recent Publications:
Obama's Grand Plan for the Middle East (PDF version), Jerusalem Report, May 18, 2009, reprinted online in Jewcy

An Open Letter to Abe Foxman: A Response to Obama's Critics on Arab-Israeli Peace, Jewcy, August 1, 2009

Removing West Bank Israeli settlements is ethnic cleansing? Nonsense. http://www.obamasmearbusters.com/, August, 2009

Obama’s policy on Jerusalem and the US Consulate is anti-Jewish and anti-Israel? That’s outrageous, http://www.obamasmearbusters.com/, September 2009

Obama Planned "Ambush" of Israel at U.N.? Fat Chance. http://www.obamasmearbusters.com/, September 2009

For Selected Publication List visit here.

Click here for Mr. Remba's full bio

How to Talk to a Hawk—Or, Abandon These Myths Before You Vote, Gidon D. Remba

To Read the New Abridged Version to Appear Soon in a National Publication Click Here

Unabridged Version

A friend who recently spent the last year living in Israel recently wrote to explain why he won’t vote for Senator Barack Obama for President. He believes with all his heart and soul that “most American Jews just don’t get what is happening. We are in a fight for our lives, period. Ahmadinejad means to do us in if he can. He is a Hitler, pure and simple. I am supporting McCain because I feel he is the one president most likely to militarily go after Iran's nuclear facilities. I do not believe anything short of that or regime change will stop Iran from getting and using a nuclear bomb against our people.”

In fact, I am convinced that it is my friend who grossly, and dangerously, misunderstands the Middle East—and a whole lot else. And because Israel is in a fight for its life and American security remains in a parlous state both at home and abroad, I believe it’s absolutely vital that we get it right, that we grasp what will and won’t help Israelis and Americans best protect ourselves from the threats we face.

What Not to Learn from the Holocaust

“Who is the first American president to condemn the indefensible omission of conscience of not bombing the train tracks?” asks my friend. He answers: “None other than cowboy Bush when he recently visited Yad Vashem, at whom American Jews look down their semitic noses for being so stupid and folksy and corrupt and all that. They dismiss what he said as politicking. Not so, he meant it, for he is morally non-nuanced enough to understand that there is good and evil in the world and that not everything is relative. And this is why I voted for Bush in 2004 and why I support McCain now.”

By my friend’s logic, the leader who knows who and what is truly evil is he (or she) who will use the most force to defeat our enemies and to thwart their demonic plans: the right leader would have bombed the train tracks at Auschwitz. By the same token, the best president will now fight on in Iraq until we win, staying as long as it takes, as McCain has promised (not for 100 years, but until we achieve our goals, as he has indeed vowed). And that strong leader will “take out” Iran’s nuclear facilities with air strikes and commando raids, or whatever kinds of military attacks are needed, as McCain has promised, before it can commit a new holocaust against the Jewish people.

There is just one small problem with my friend’s logic: most of the best American military minds find these bellicose “solutions” to be foolhardy, utterly ineffective and strategically disastrous.

Take the case of bombing the train tracks—or the crematoria—at Auschwitz. President Bush shamelessly panders and manipulates Jewish emotions by condemning the US failure to “take the tracks out” to the death camps during the Shoah. Jews who think and vote with their kishkes instead of with their kopfs (their guts instead of their brains) hail W, and McCain, or even Hillary Clinton, as the kind of tough seasoned pro-Israel patriots that Israel and America need to be safe. In fact, those who favored the most use of force against what from a Jewish viewpoint seems the greatest embodiment of evil were dead wrong during the Holocaust, and demonstrably so; they are even more recklessly wrong now.

Jewish historian William D. Rubinstein devoted an entire chapter to “The Myth of Bombing Auschwitz” in his book The Myth of Rescue: Why the Democracies Could Not Have Saved More Jews From the Nazis. He notes that “Recent military historians have looked at … claims about the possibility of bombing Auschwitz with critical eyes, and concluded that the options put forward were highly impractical and most unlikely to have succeeded.” He concludes: “Because of the inaccuracy of bombing raids in 1944, if a raid had somehow been launched against Auschwitz in 1944 it is probable—even likely—that such a mission would have been seen, then and now, as a complete fiasco, an ill-considered and dubious exercise, carried out for political rather than for military reasons, in which many hundreds of Jews and other captives were killed but which utterly failed to halt the Nazi death machine.”

Shoot or Talk with Iran? Obama vs. McCain

John McCain pays lip service to the need to use “all elements of our national power” in the war on terror, including diplomacy and economic development. But when it comes to the chief purveyor of Middle East terrorism he would have the United States confront Iran with very few arrows in our quiver. Moreover, economic sanctions and threats of force have completely failed to halt Iran’s nuclear enrichment activities, which continue to advance.

The vast majority of generals in the Pentagon view a military strike on Iranian nuclear facilities—promised by McCain if Iran does not halt its march towards nuclear weapons—as both highly ineffective and extremely likely to involve us in another protracted war like Iraq that we cannot win and may well lose. Most senior American military officials believe that an attack on Iran “could set off Iranian retaliation without halting Tehran's nuclear program for long,” reported the Los Angeles Times. Many in the Pentagon’s leadership, “including Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, have concluded that a strike against suspected Iranian nuclear sites could be counterproductive,” according to senior U.S. Defense Department officials. That of course is diplo-speak for yet another clusterf***. “War with Iran would result in Iranians rallying around the flag...The government would be strengthened instead of toppled. The Iranian nuclear program would most likely accelerate than be destroyed,” warns Iran expert Trita Parsi.

Writing from Abu Dhabi, David Ignatius intimated in the Washington Post recently that “the United States doesn't have good military choices now -- and the Iranians know it. That's one reason they are being so provocative; they believe that a U.S. military strike would hurt America more than Iran.” Iran could “lure the United States onto a battlefield where its immense firepower wouldn't do much good. The Iranians could withdraw into the maze of their homeland and keep firing off their missiles -- exacting damage on the West's economy and, most important, its will to fight.” A war with Iran, many top US military officials have come to recognize, would be a trap. And that is the trap our bellicose Jewish friends, and their favored presidential candidates, tout as the panacea to the security ills that ail us and our closest Mideastern ally Israel.

Even the conservative Chicago Sun-Times has, in a moment of extraordinary clarity, implored Americans thus: “We should take a lesson from our failures in Iraq and try to handle our conflict in Iran with more level-headed diplomacy. The Iraq war already has cost the United States its global credibility. Even Ahmadinejad has played up our tarnished image, denouncing the sanctions as ‘bullying powers.’ If the United States takes on Iran by itself, it will only inspire more terrorists and create more enemies, both of whom will be working toward our demise.”

With these lessons in mind, I urge you take Remba’s Rule Number 1 with you into the voting booth: The candidate who talks toughest, or who has the most military experience, may be the worst for both America's and Israel’s security.

The faith in Bar Kochba-like politicians as our saviors is the mother of all fallacies in politics, and the one we Jews are most in need of throwing overboard. Politicians shamelessly pander to our emotional biases and play on our heartstrings. The wisest words I have heard yet from a Jewish source on the issue of Iran come to us from an editorial in New York’s Jewish Week, cautioning that “the Iran threat is too important and too complex for the chest thumping, sloganeering and jockeying for partisan gain that define the Iran debate on the 2008 presidential campaign trail … Negotiating with terror-supporting regimes clearly raises difficult questions, but it is irresponsible to suggest that negotiations are, by definition, the equivalent of appeasement, just as it is irresponsible to take the military option off the table entirely… But stopping [Iran's] nuclear program will take creative thinking, sober policymaking and a willingness to make tough choices in a universe of imperfect options.”

The less a politician has a cogent rationale for his or her policies the more he or she is apt to manipulate us by cozying up to our cherished symbols and mouthing comforting slogans about “the eternal unity of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel,” or bombing "Ahmadinejad's nuclear sites" to save the Jewish state from a future holocaust. If your bubbe didn’t teach you this lesson, she should have, and it behooves us all to learn it now: these are the most dangerous politicians for the Jewish people and for the United States.

Those Jews who would cast their vote for the most battle-tested politician or bellicose policy would have brought upon America, the Allies and world Jewry the embarrassment of grotesque failure against the Nazis when sober strategy was what we needed most. Then as now, we need helmsmanship with a sure compass steering our ship of state. All signs point to the wisdom of Barack Obama’s smart carrot-and-stick diplomacy on Iran and Iraq and to the folly of the new wars urged on us by John McCain. McCain's refusal to deploy the power of tough talk or hard bargaining with Iran or to use the leverage of real incentives bear all the hallmarks of Bush on steroids. So muscle-bound is his plan of attack that it cannot dodge and weave through the Mideast's serpentine alleyways, which demand agility and political ju-jitsu, not throw-weight.

Obama has said “he would ‘engage in aggressive personal diplomacy’ with Iran if elected president, and would offer economic inducements and a possible promise not to seek ‘regime change’ if Iran stopped meddling in Iraq and cooperated on terrorism and nuclear issues.” He has made clear that “forging a new relationship with Iran would be a major element of what he pledged would be a broad effort to stabilize Iraq…‘Changes in behavior' by Iran could possibly be rewarded with membership in the World Trade Organization, other economic benefits and security guarantees.” As Obama has stressed, “we will be in a stronger position to achieve … [tougher] international sanctions if the United States has shown itself to be willing to come to the table” with aggressive diplomacy incorporating both the offer of more potent incentives directly from the United States and the likelihood of more painful sanctions if talks fail or are dragged out in bad faith by Iran.

A New Diplomatic Solution to the Iranian Nuclear Impasse?

A new report by a group of former American diplomats and regional experts who have been meeting behind the scenes with a group of Iranian academics and policy advisers suggests that the Iranian leadership is open to direct US-Iran talks over a novel solution to the nuclear impasse: Western governments would jointly manage, operate and closely supervise all of Iran’s nuclear activities on Iranian soil. Under this proposal, “Iran would be prohibited from producing either highly enriched uranium or reprocessed plutonium,” thereby preventing it from producing the essential ingredients for constructing a nuclear weapon. Under such tight international supervision, even a secret attempt on Iran’s part to manufacture weapons-grade nuclear materials “would carry the risk of discovery by the international management team and the staff at the facility; the high probability of getting caught will likely deter Iran from trying to do so in the first place.” Iran would be permitted to produce “only uranium enriched to low levels that could be used in nuclear power plants.” And it would have to agree to fully implement the Additional Protocol of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, “which requires member nations to make their nuclear facilities subject to snap inspections, environmental sampling, and more comprehensive reporting requirements,” as Iran has already offered to do.

While this option is not ideal—only a complete cessation of nuclear enrichment by Iran would be—it is the best of the realistic options which may be available to us and the one most likely to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. Moreover, it is far better than the worst option, which is the one we are most likely to end up with if we continue down the paths advocated by Bush and McCain, and Hillary Clinton as well: “a purely national [nuclear enrichment] program on Iranian soil, one aimed at producing nuclear weapons” either without international safeguards or with insufficient monitoring. As the U.S. diplomats warn, “Outsourcing US diplomacy to others has not worked and is even less likely to work in the future … The US is the only nation that can take on [the task of direct engagement with Iran on the nuclear issue] and achieve the breakthroughs that will be necessary… The reward may be a more stable and peaceful Middle East.”

The Folly of War with Iran Revisited

Returning to the utter folly of the “bomb Iran” option, consider Exhibit B: Jerusalem Post Deputy Managing Editor Caroline Glick has written—with a straight face, I kid you not—that “even if an attack against Iran's nuclear installations inside of Iran were completely successful, there is a possibility that Iran's nuclear capabilities will not be significantly downgraded. Iran's program may be dispersed in Syria, North Korea, and in Pakistan which transferred nuclear technologies to Iran and North Korea, (as well as Libya and Egypt). In other words, there is now a distinct possibility that Iran is not the only country that will have to be attacked to prevent Iran and its allied rogue states from acquiring nuclear weapons.”

This, of course, is just what the neocons have always had in mind. War without end against all the “evil forces” threatening us and Israel; the ubiquitous devils which only moral absolutists like George W. Bush and John McCain can clearly see. Former Supreme Allied Commander General Wesley Clark reported recently that “on the eve of the war [in Iraq] he was shown a Pentagon document that portrayed Iraq as the first in a series of operations to change regimes in Iran, Syria, Sudan, Lybia, Somalia and Lebanon.” We know how well that plan went in Iraq, and how far it got. Recent revelations indicate that while we were distracted by the monstrous mess in Iraq, the Bush Administration was gearing up to foment a military coup in Gaza last year. The administration co-opted Israel and Egypt into playing along with its scheme to arm Fatah in Gaza in preparation for an armed showdown which would have deposed Hamas from power after having won democratic Palestinian elections (balloting held at Bush’s behest, contrary to the urgings of Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni). But last summer Hamas preempted the impending coup, routing Fatah and completely taking over the Gaza Strip. Israeli analysts fear that the West Bank may well be next. The deterioration in Israel’s security, the strengthening of Hamas and the rise in missile attacks on Sderot, Ashkelon and the kibbutzim in southern Israel were brought to you by none other than the “spare no use of force” trigger-happy gunslingers in the Bush administration.

And how did Hezbollah manage to rearm with even more long-range missiles, now targeting all of Israel, and with greater accuracy, than it had before the Lebanon war of 2006? Despite ongoing Israeli efforts to test the waters with Syria in behind-the-scenes diplomatic contacts over the last two years, the Bush Administration has refused to offer Syria the kind of powerful economic, political and security incentives which could lure it away from its rewarding alliance with Iran and Hezbollah. Only the U.S., leading its allies, has the power to counter the attractions of Iran for Syria, much as it did when moderate Republican and Democratic administrations pried Sadat’s Egypt away from the Soviet Union, helping to lay the foundations for peace with Israel. The failure of Bush to pursue robust diplomacy with Syria and Iran has permitted the military threats to Israel from both Syria, Hezbollah and Iran, to escalate year after year.

As for McCain, who with many of his senior advisors, including Senator Joe Lieberman, have long been among the most vocal champions for regime change in Iraq, Bloomberg News reports that many analysts believe, based on his own stated positions, that he is even more hawkish than Bush on Iraq, North Korea, Russia and China. Just what the doctor ordered. Dr. Kevorkian, that is.

Conservative columnist Pat Buchanan has said that McCain “will make Cheney look like Gandhi.” “He’s the true neocon,” notes Brookings Institution scholar Ivo Daalder: “He does believe, in a way that George W. Bush never really did, in the use of power, military power above all, to change the world in America’s image. If you thought Bush was bad when it comes to the use of military force, wait till you see John McCain. He believes this. His advisors believe this.” “He would employ military force to the exclusion of other options,” adds Larry Korb, a former Reagan Administration defense official. He is among those who are convinced that the Vietnam War could have been won if the US military had been given free rein.

This sounds eerily like the Israeli super-hawks who demand of the government to just "let the IDF win" in Gaza or Lebanon, much to the chagrin of the IDF general staff which knows that a full-scale Gaza invasion would bring Israel yet another pyrrhic victory, mushrooming into an even more destructive and futile—for Israel—conflagration with Hezbollah and possibly Syria. And now John McCain feels that if we follow Obama—or Clinton—we will make the same “mistake” all over again in Iraq and in the broader “transcendent” struggle against Islamic extremism. "There's going to be other wars," promises McCain. "I'm sorry to tell you, there's going to be other wars. We will never surrender, but there will be other wars." May God save us from the havoc this aging warhorse will wreak.

Watch Senator Obama Speak About Israel’s Security, from Jews for Obama

On Sunday, February 24, 2008, Barack Obama met with the Cleveland Jewish community for nearly an hour. He spoke about his views on issues of concern to the Jewish voters, including his strong support for Israel’s security and the U.S.-Israel relationship, and his determination to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. He also took questions from the audience, including on issues raised in email attacks against the Senator.

We thought you would like to see and hear his remarks for yourself, and hope that you would pass them on to others, so everyone will have an opportunity to hear the truth about Senator Obama’s views from the Senator himself. Below are links to several video excerpts:

Senator Barack Obama on Israel’s Security:
“Israel’s security is sacrosanct, it’s non-negotiable…. Israel has to remain a Jewish State and what I believe that means is that any negotiated peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians is going to have to involve the Palestinians relinquishing the right of return as it has been understood in the past.”"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnXUE2cfxGk

Senator Barack Obama on the Palestinians’ Commitments:
“I have consistently said, and I have said this to Palestinians, I said this when I was in Ramallah, that you cannot fault Israel for being concerned about any peace agreement if the Palestinian state or Palestinian authority or Palestinian leadership does not seem to be able to follow through on its commitments. And I think the approach we have to take with respect to negotiations is that you sit down and talk, but you have to suspend trust until you can see that the Palestinian side can follow through and that’s a position that I have consistently taken and the one I will take with me to the White House.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D79hRYLn9CQ

Senator Barack Obama on opposing negotiations with Hamas:
“….you can’t have a conversation with somebody who doesn’t think you should be on the other side of the table. At the point where they recognize Israel and its right to exist, at the point where they recognize that they are not going to be able to shove their world view down the throats of others but are going to have to sit down and negotiate without resort to violence, then I think that will be a different circumstance. That’s not the circumstance that we’re in right now.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-UeFWEmU4s

Senator Barack Obama on Israel’s right to Self-Defense:
“When Israel launched its counterattack against Hezbollah in Lebanon during the summer of 2006…I said, if somebody invades my country or is firing rockets into my country or kidnapping my soldiers, I will not tolerate that. And there’s no nation in the world that would.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VuMNF6m9ALE

Senator Barack Obama on bridging African-American and Jewish Community Relations:
“….one of my goals constantly in my public career has been to try to bridge what was a historically powerful bond between the African American and Jewish communities that has been frayed in recent years. For a whole variety of reasons. I think that I have served as an effective bridge and that’s the reason I have overwhelming support among the Jewish community that knows me best, which is the Jewish community in Chicago. And I think that anybody who has friends among the Jewish community in Chicago should check out those credentials.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JFlOt_TZREQ

Senator Barack Obama on Bush Foreign Policy:
“I do not understand how anybody who is concerned about Israel’s security and the threat of Iran could be supportive of George Bush’s foreign policy. It has completely backfired. It is indisputable that Iran is the biggest strategic beneficiary of the war in Iraq. We have spent what will soon be close to a trillion dollars strengthening Iran, expanding their influence. How is that helpful to Israel? How is that helpful to Israel?”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=89W6rGj39fY

Best of Jews for Obama: Top Links

Latest Updates:

How to Talk to a Hawk--Or, Abandon These Myths Before You Vote (Abridged), Jewish Chronicle, Gidon D. Remba
http://tough-dove-israel.blogspot.com/2008/04/how-to-talk-to-hawk-abridged-for.html

Open Letter to the Pennsylvania Jewish Community [and to all American Jews]
http://tough-dove-israel.blogspot.com/2008/04/open-letter-to-pennsylvania-jewish.html

Obama National Campaign Co-Chairman General Merrill Mcpeak Disputes Anti-Israel Charges From Republican Jewish Coalition, Shalom TV Press Release
http://tough-dove-israel.blogspot.com/2008/03/obama-national-campaign-co-chairman-gen.html

My Neighbor, Barack" by Rabbi Arnold Jacob Wolf
http://t.ymlp2.com/bealauuwadauhbyatajwb/click.php

Obama's Historic Speech on Race: An Excerpt
http://tough-dove-israel.blogspot.com/2008/03/given-my-background-my-politics-and-my.html

Web Video: Watch Obama's Historic Speech on Race
http://youtube.com/watch?v=pWe7wTVbLUU

Obama Denounces Rev. Wright's Controversial Remarks: Web Video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_7piGy0u43c

Classics

Obama is Good for the Jews, Miriam Sapiro, former Special Assistant to the President, National Security Council, Clinton Administration
http://jews4obama2008.wordpress.com/obama-is-“good-for-the-jews”/

Watch Senator Obama Speak about Israel’s Security
http://tough-dove-israel.blogspot.com/2008/03/watch-senator-obama-speak-about-israels.html

The Lying Despicable Campaign to Turn Jews Against Obama, M.J. Rosenberg
http://tough-dove-israel.blogspot.com/2008/02/lying-despicable-campaign-to-turn-jews.html


An Online Petition: We Are Jewish. We Support Barack Obama.
http://jews4obama2008.wordpress.com/

Obama is a Strong Friend of Israel, by Congressman Robert Wexler, Jerusalem Post
http://tough-dove-israel.blogspot.com/2008/02/obama-is-strong-friend-of-israel-by.html

Obama Reaches Out to Jewish Leaders (Cleveland, Ohio)
http://elections.jta.org/2008/02/25/obama-reaches-out-to-jewish-leaders/

Obama National Campaign Co-Chairman General Merrill Mcpeak Disputes Anti-Israel Charges From Republican Jewish Coalition, Shalom TV Press Release
http://tough-dove-israel.blogspot.com/2008/03/obama-national-campaign-co-chairman-gen.html

Philadelphia Jewish Voice Dossier on Obama: Best Links
http://www.pjvoice.com/v33/33100dossier.aspx#c

McCain, Obama and the Middle East: What Conservative Mudslingers Don’t Want You To Know, Gidon D. Remba, Jewish Chronicle (Pittsburgh) http://tough-dove-israel.blogspot.com/2008/03/mccain-obama-and-middle-east-what.html

Smearing Obama, Ari Berman (The Nation) http://tough-dove-israel.blogspot.com/2008/03/smearing-obama-by-ari-berman-nation.html

The Israel Litmus Test, Aaron David Miller, LA Times http://fairuse.100webcustomers.com/itsonlyfair/latimes0137.html

The New Republican Jewish Obama Smear: Return of the Big Lie, Gidon D. Remba
http://tough-dove-israel.blogspot.com/2008/02/new-republican-jewish-obama-smear.html

Web Video: Chicago Jewish Leaders Defend Obama Against Smear Campaign-Rabbi Sam Gordon http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WRZLgqGcIz8

Web Video: Chicago Jewish Leaders Defend Obama on Israel--Lee Rosenberg
http://tough-dove-israel.blogspot.com/2008/02/chicago-jewish-community-leaders-defend.html

The Truth About Obama's Foreign Policy Advisors, by Jack S. Levin (Obama friend and campaign insider)
http://tough-dove-israel.blogspot.com/2006/11/truth-about-obamas-foreign-policy.html

Barack Obama Speaks Out Against Anti-Semitism
http://tough-dove-israel.blogspot.com/2008/02/barack-obama-speaks-out-against-anti.html

Jewish Senators Condemn Religious-Based Attacks on Sen. Barack Obama
http://jews4obama2008.wordpress.com/jewish-senators-condemn-religious-based-attacks-on-sen-barack-obama/

An Insider's Report on Barack Obama's Meeting with Cleveland Jewish Leaders http://tough-dove-israel.blogspot.com/2008/02/insiders-report-on-barack-obamas.html

Obama’s Change Could Be Good for Israel, by Daniel Levy, Ha'aretz
http://tough-dove-israel.blogspot.com/2008/02/obamas-change-could-be-good-for-israel.html

Why Obama is Better for Israel, Daniel Levy
http://tough-dove-israel.blogspot.com/2008/02/why-obama-is-better-for-israel-by.html

Obama’s Middle East: Good for the Jews, Gidon D. Remba, Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle & Ohio Jewish Chronicle
http://tough-dove-israel.blogspot.com/2006/11/obamas-middle-east-good-for-jews-by.html

What Does It Mean To Be Pro-Israel? Response to a Critic on Obama's Middle East, Gidon D. Remba
http://tough-dove-israel.blogspot.com/2008/03/response-to-critic-on-obamas-middle.html

More Than a Friend, Bernard Avishai http://bernardavishai.blogspot.com/2008/02/more-than-friend.html

Facts About Barack Obama and Israel, by Obama Middle East Advisor Eric Lynn (Response to right wing blogger Ed Lasky’s misinformation about Obama)
http://tough-dove-israel.blogspot.com/2006/11/facts-about-barack-obama-and-israel-by.html

Web Video: Obama: I Will Re-Build Black-Jewish Alliance
http://tough-dove-israel.blogspot.com/2008/02/web-clip-obama-i-will-rebuild-black.html

American Smear-Artist Ed Lasky attacks Senator Barack Obama, by Ira Forman
http://tough-dove-israel.blogspot.com/2008/02/american-smear-artist-ed-lasky-attacks.html
Rob Malley, the Willy Horton of Right-Wing Jewish Nut Jobs, Daniel Fleshler http://www.realisticdove.org/archives/189

The Smears Against Rob Malley Continue, But Former U.S. Officials Rise to His Defense, Daniel Fleshler http://www.realisticdove.org/archives/193

Tony Karon's Eloquence on Obama Candidacy (Obama Reflects the Highest Ethical Ideals of Judaism), Richard Silverstein http://www.richardsilverstein.com/tikun_olam/2008/02/29/tony-karons-eloquence-on-obama-candidacy/

Official Obama Website http://www.barackobama.com/

Obama Support Site http://my.barackobama.com/

Some Israeli Hawks Say: Talk with Hamas

Former Shin Bet/General Security Services Chief Ya'akov Perry and Israel's Minister of Transportation, former IDF Chief of Staff Likudnik Shaul Mofaz have joined the growing ranks of Israeli hawks and other pragmatic realists who believe that it is in Israel's security interests to engage in talks with Hamas over a bilateral cease-fire and the release of Israeli captive Gilad Shalit.

In a new interview, former Mossad Chief Efraim Halevy (a Sharon appointee) makes the case once again for the view that Israel's current policy towards Hamas and the PA is failing and should be replaced by a more realistic strategy (he has made his case in many places during the last year, including in the Wall Street Journal). A new more successful approach, in Halevy's view, would no longer insist on Hamas' recognition of Israel as a pre-condition for any negotiations, much as Israel has never insisted on this pre-condition with any other Arab party with whom it has negotiated. Rather, recognition of Israel should be the outcome of a negotiation process.

Halevy proposes an alternative way which would enable Israel to continue to avoid direct contact with Hamas, but bargain with Hamas all the same: indirect negotiations through a third party acceptable to both sides. The potential dividend to Israel's security? Not only a cease-fire which would end the rocket attacks on Sderot and southern Israel, and avoiding a costly invasion of Gaza which might also fail to achieve its objectives, while also risking a renewed flare-up of hositilities with Hezbollah in the north, as happened in the summer of 2006, leading to the Lebanon War. A serious dialogue through a third party could even drive a wedge between Iran and Hamas, Halevy suggests.

While Halevy seems pessimistic that the Olmert government will try this approach, latest reports indicate that there are third party mediation efforts going on right now between the Israeli government and Hamas over a cease-fire and prisoner release. Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak's threats of a coming full-scale Gaza invasion may be intended to strengthen Israel's hand in the negotiations, so that Hamas believes it may have much to lose if it fails to cut a deal with Israel.

Back here in the States, suggesting that Israel talk to Hamas in any way, shape or form is viewed as heresy worthy of excommunication (despite the fact that such respected figures as Bush's former Secretary of State Colin Powell, who as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff led the U.S. to victory in the first Persian Gulf War, has endorsed this view). No presidential candidate, including Barack Obama, will so much as flirt with such notions. American electoral politics is no place for subtle distinctions, deviations from the slogans of political orthodoxy, or tectonic shifts in thinking about the Middle East. Or is it?

Doni Remba

Israel's Mossad, Out of the Shadows
Washington Dispatch: Former Israeli intelligence chief Efraim Halevy explains why he advocates talks with Hamas.
By Laura Rozen
Mother Jones
February 19, 2008

It's fair to call Efraim Halevy—who served three Israeli prime ministers as chief of the Mossad, Israel's national intelligence service—a hawk. He negotiated a covert peace deal with Jordan that preceded the countries' public treaty in 1994. Nine years later, he resigned as head of Israel's National Security Council over policy differences with then-prime minister Ariel Sharon. And when he left the Mossad, Halevy received the prestigious CIA Director's Award from then-director George Tenet for his assistance to the U.S. intelligence service—the exact details of which Halevy cannot disclose.

This month, St. Martin's Press published a paperback edition of Halevy's riveting 2006 memoir of his 35 years in the Mossad, Man in the Shadows: Inside the Middle East Crisis with a Man Who Led the Mossad. I interviewed Halevy by phone and email about his career, details of covert channels in his book, and his recent public call for both the Bush administration and Israel to talk with the Palestinian militant group, Hamas.

Mother Jones: Mr. Halevy, in your memoir you make clear your belief that Europe, and to a lesser extent the United States, have not fully come to terms with the national security threats posed by Islamic militancy and terrorism. Yet you've also said it would be a grave mistake for the West to treat all Islamist terrorist groups the same way, and argued that Israel should have some sort of process for talking with Hamas. If the West, led by Washington, continues to shun Hamas as an illegitimate terrorist group, do you see a risk that the group could take on a more nihilistic type of violence, a la al Qaeda?

Efraim Halevy: Hamas is not al Qaeda and, indeed, al Qaeda has condemned them time and time again. Hamas may from time to time have tactical, temporary contact with al Qaeda, but in essence they are deadly adversaries. The same goes for Iran. Hamas receives funds, support, equipment, and training from Iran, but is not subservient to Tehran. A serious effort to dialogue indirectly with them could ultimately drive a wedge between them.

MJ: Why do you think Israel and Washington should talk with Hamas?

EH: Hamas has, unfortunately, demonstrated that they are more credible and effective as a political force inside Palestinian society than Fatah, the movement founded by [former Palestinian Authority president] Yassir Arafat, which is now more than ever discredited as weak, enormously corrupt and politically inept.

[Hamas has] pulled off three "feats" in recent years in conditions of great adversity. They won the general elections to the Palestinian Legislative Council in 2006; they preempted a Fatah design to wrest control of Gaza from them in 2007; and they broke out of a virtual siege that Israel imposed upon them in January 2008. In each case, they affected a strategic surprise upon all other players in the region and upon the United States, and in each case, no effective counter strategy mounted by the US and Israel proved effective.

Security in the West Bank is assured not by the fledgling and ineffective security forces of Abu Mazen now undergoing training once again by American-led instructors. It is the nightly incursions of the Israeli Defense Forces into the West Bank, their superior intelligence, together with that of the Israel Security Agency that does the job.

Current strategy in the West Bank to forge a credible Palestinian security capacity is floundering; indeed, several of the deaths of Israelis at the hands of West Bank terrorists were perpetrated by none other than members of the units under the command of Abu Mazen.
It makes sense to approach a possible initial understanding including Hamas—but not exclusively Hamas—at a time when they are still asking for one. No side will gain from a flare up leading to Israel re-entering the Gaza strip in strength to undo the ill-fated unilateral disengagement of 2005.

MJ: Should Hamas be required to recognize Israel's right to exist before Israel would talk with it?

EH: Israel has been successful in inflicting very serious losses upon Hamas in both Gaza and the West Bank and this has certainly had an effect on Hamas, who are now trying to get a "cease fire." But this has not cowed them into submission and into accepting the three-point diktat that the international community has presented to them: to recognize Israel's right to exist; to honor all previous commitments of the Palestinian Authority; and to prevent all acts of violence against Israel and Israelis. The last two conditions are, without doubt, sine qua non. The first demands an a priori renunciation of ideology before contact is made. Such a demand has never been made before either to an Arab state or to the Palestinian Liberation Organization/Fatah. There is logic in the Hamas' position that ideological "conversion" is the endgame and not the first move in a negotiation.

MJ: How should such talks be conducted?

EH: Hamas shuns direct contact and negotiations with Israel and this actually meets Israel's reciprocal attitude to them. The same is true of the United States. But Hamas is eager to "engage" the two indirectly and reach a verifiable cease fire, and understands that could lead to more "down the road."

Such a strategy of indirect proximity engagement, whilst covering our flanks, offers the prospects of lowering the temperature in the region, easing constraints, and opening up real possibilities of social and economic progress. This is a policy that could be tested, and is warranted by the abject failure of the present Palestinian Authority rump leadership in the West Bank led by the aging, tired and sad Abu Mazen [Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas], and his able prime minister Salaam Fayyad, a great economist and banker but a man who does not pretend to overstay his time.

MJ: Regarding your mention of "indirect proximity talks." Structurally, how does that work? Is it conducted by a third party, like Egypt or Turkey? Who would be a trusted broker?

EH: Proximity talks can sometime be done through third parties who are states or individuals—third party emissaries who are not states. It can be done by personalities acceptable to both sides.

MJ: How do we know this is not already taking place?
EH: I don't know whether it's occurring or not. If it's occurring, I applaud it.

MJ: Do you envisage that new leadership in Washington next year could reject the path taken by Bush of refusing to deal with Hamas and make a big change towards the approach you recommend?

EH: I have no idea. I don't want to second guess, and I don't know who the leadership will be. It would be politically incorrect to start surmising what the new leadership would do a year from now. A year in life of the Middle East is a millennium.

MJ: Again and again, Israel and Washington too have tried to engineer which Palestinians would come to power, to whom they would speak or recognize, etc. Is this itself problematic? Should the West step back from trying to manipulate internal Palestinian politics?

EH: Yes, for two reasons. First, is the sovereign right of Palestinians to decide who their leadership should be. I think that is the basis of democracy. More than that, it is the best possible way in my opinion for a country or society to determine how it wants to be governed and how it wants to be lead. And second, so far it must be admitted that attempts to do this [manipulate internal Palestinian politics] have not succeeded. After all, in the final analysis, it would not be possible to create and fashion a leadership from without.

MJ: It's not just Washington and Israel, but Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas who is asking those countries not to deal with Hamas, but rather strengthen him. So do you think it's more of the same phenomenon if the West then picks Hamas as the more legitimate representation of the Palestinians?

EH: I don't think one or the other are the sole representation. But I think that the way things are at the moment, the two of them have a major role in the leadership of the Palestinian people, and to exclude one and to magnify the other artificially will not lead to a productive outcome.
I don't know whether it is Abu Mazen who is pushing Washington and Israel not to deal with Hamas, or Abu Mazen who is acquiescing to them, or some combination of both. I don't know who the stronger element in this policy is.

There is a triangle of forces: Israel, the Abu Mazen–led group in Ramallah, and the [Bush] administration. They have become mutually interdependent on this policy and one cannot rule without the other two. That's the way it is at the moment.

MJ: You are not optimistic that the current administration will change course?

EH: It appears by all indications that neither Israel nor the United States are prepared to contemplate such a test of alternative strategy. Therefore, what we seem to be in for is a period where Israel will continue to negotiate the details of a permanent settlement to the dispute with a rump Palestinian leadership that has already indicated it will not run for re-election in the upcoming elections in 2009.

Laura Rozen is Mother Jones' national security correspondent.www.motherjones.com/washington_dispatch/2008/02/israel-mossad-out-of-the-shadows.html

Assassinating Terrorist Kingpins: Successful Counterterrorism or Opening the Gates of Hell?, Gidon D. Remba

The assassination last week in Damascus of Imad Mugniyah, the notorious Hezbollah arch-terrorist, raises anew the long-swirling controversy over the practical efficacy, wisdom and moral justification for the Israeli and American counter-terrorism strategy of targeted killing. Israeli news correspondent Ronen Bergman offered the following trenchant observation in “Bracing for Revenge” in the New York Times (Feb. 18, 2008):

"However much backslapping and Champagne-cork popping may be going on in Tel Aviv and Langley, Va., the questions remains: Was it worth the effort and resources and the mortal risk to the agents involved? Few would deny that Mr. Mugniyah, who had the blood of many hundreds of Americans and Israelis, not to mention Frenchmen, Germans and Britons, on his hands, deserved the violent death that befell him, or that eliminating this top-flight mass murderer might prevent more death. But this act of combined vengeance, punishment and pre-emption might extract a far greater cost in the future…

At Mr. Mugniyah’s funeral on Thursday, Hezbollah’s leader, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, threatened to retaliate against Israel, saying, “Let it be an open war anywhere.”… Hezbollah has no doubt that it was Israel who eliminated its top terrorist, and once more it is bent on vengeance. As Hezbollah draws no fine distinctions between the United States and Israel, both nations, along with Jews around the world, might well have to pay the price for the loss of the man whose mystical aura was as important as his operational prowess.

In the immediate aftermath, Hezbollah has chosen not to respond with volleys of rockets aimed at Galilee, as many Israelis feared. But an inkling of how the group might respond can be found in the July 2007 statements of Michael McConnell, America’s director of national intelligence, expressing grave apprehension about Hezbollah sleeper cells in the United States that could go into action should the Americans cross the organization’s “red line.”

This line has now been crossed. Only the severest of countermeasures by the intelligence services of Israel and the United States will prevent last week’s assassination, justified as it was, from costing a vastly disproportionate price in blood."

I took the train today from New Jersey to Penn Station and saw the new signs at Amtrak and around the station informing passengers of the new security procedures: random checks of carry-on baggage, officers with automatic weapons and bomb-sniffing dogs patrolling platforms and trains. Having lived through mass terrorist attacks in Israel, it is clear to me that, reassuring though such steps might be, they are woefully inadequate. They remain a giant leap short of Israeli security practices in public places like commuter train stations. Moreover, the security holes remaining in the public transportation system are so large that one could almost drive an explosive-laden Mack truck through them. A determined terrorist—even a not-so-determined terrorist—can still carry a bomb into Penn Station’s main public areas through any of the non-secure trains linking from the tri-state area to Penn Station, or from the public entrances from 7th and 8th avenues, and wreak massive damage, killing dozens if not hundreds of people.

Trust me, I’m not giving the terrorists any ideas: they’ve done this countless times already in public places in Europe and in Israel. Innumerable security experts have been warning for years that we are long overdue for such attacks in the U.S. Now, the assassination of Hezbollah’s number two may well be the trigger which activates its sleeper cells in the U.S., pushing us off the cliff into the bloody hell of terrorist revenge on American soil.

U.S. government officials—federal, state and local—along with transportation authority leaders, still refuse to take the kinds of precautions which could save hundreds of innocent lives. These would entail, among other things, checking every passenger and parcel before he or she enters Penn Station and other mass transit points. It would vastly slow down our public transportation system, and snarl public commuting. I fear that we will take this highly inconvenient step only after we have sacrificed many more American lives.

Our current dilemma makes relevant once more an essay I wrote on the controversies surrounding targeted killing and assassination of terrorists in response to Steven Spielberg’s film Munich, titled Munich’s Moral Muddle: Steven Spielberg, Counterterrorism and Middle East Peace. There I show why, contrary to Spielberg (in his incarnation as the film’s director), and screenwriter Tony Kushner, state assassination of terrorists without trial is both moral and legal, and a necessary part of safeguarding our own human rights.

But I maintain that “Strong counter-terrorist efforts which are never followed by serious and sustained attempts to encourage Palestinian support for reconciliation with Israel, failing to exploit opportunities for peace, are misbegotten. Much the same is true of preemption which never knows when it is best to forbear the use of lethal force. Both condemn Israel to live by the sword forever, nurturing the cynical right’s self-fulfilling prophecies of doom.” Now what applies with regard to the targeted killing of Palestinian terrorists does not hold when it comes to the Lebanese Hezbollah. Nonetheless, might the assassination of Mugniyeh have been one more case in which it would have been wiser to forbear in the exercise of our legitimate right to employ preemptive force?

Munich’s Moral Muddle: Steven Spielberg, Counterterrorism and Middle East Peace
Gidon D. Remba

Excerpts Delivered as a Talk at Beth Emet The Free Synagogue, Evanston, IL

I. Spielberg’s Critique of Israeli Counterterrorism
II: The Historical Context: European Capitulation to Palestinian Terrorism after Munich
III. Targeted Killing and Jewish Ethics
IV. Just War, Terrorism and Preemptive Killing
V. Selective Criticism of Targeted Killings
VI. Spielberg’s Volte Face on Israeli Counterterrorism After Munich

I. Spielberg’s Critique of Israeli Counterterrorism

Steven Spielberg’s describes his film Munich as his “prayer for peace.” How so? Spielberg explained to the Los Angeles Times that answering aggression with aggression “creates a vicious cycle of violence with no real end in sight.” He has said much the same thing to Time magazine: “a response to a response doesn't really solve anything. It just creates a perpetual-motion machine.” And indeed the message of the film is that striking back with force against terrorism only breeds more terrorism—a war on terror only engenders terror—and compromises the very moral values which differentiate the counterterrorists from the terrorists themselves. Spielberg’s juxtaposition of the World Trade Towers at the end of the film is meant to generalize this message from the Israeli context to the US war on terror. But Spielberg’s message is either banal or misbegotten. His film offers little insight into the Palestinian-Israeli tragedy for navigating the moral maze of war and peace.

It is worth noting that since it is the Israelis in the Mossad hit team who undergo these epiphanies about the moral dubiousness of preventive or retributive killing—not the Palestinians—criticisms of the film which suggest that the Israelis are portrayed as morally equivalent to Palestinian terrorists are groundless. It is, after all, the Israelis who are portrayed as fastidious about avoiding civilian casualties, the Israelis, not the Palestinians, who exhibit moral compunctions about every use of lethal force, a fact which stands in stark contrast with the indiscriminate slaughter perpetrated by Palestinian Black September members at Munich. But the overriding message of the film is clear—and it is delivered in the voice of the protagonist, Avner, the leader of the Israeli team, and secondarily in the voices of those other members of his team who increasingly question whether killing terrorists, or suspected terrorists, can be squared with their Jewish moral values, and with whether it is even effective as a counter-terror tactic. The conclusion they clearly reach is that counter-violence, counter-force is futile, solves nothing, that counter-terror tactics like targeted killings or assassinations of suspected terrorists simply breed more terror and can’t lead to peace. Indeed, several of the hit team members conclude that what they have been doing is both inimical to peace, immoral and un-Jewish.

Indeed, Avner protests, “maybe we will just keep killing them forever,” suggesting that the killing may simply contribute to an endless killing cycle with no exit. His Mossad handler, Ephraim, assures him: “in the end this will help bring peace,” but Avner remains skeptical: “Everyone we killed has been replaced by someone worse, someone more violent and more militant than their predecessor. There is no peace at the end of this,” he cries.

Consider this crucial scene at the end of the film: Avner wonders aloud to Ephraim: maybe we should have arrested the suspected Black September terrorists, as Israel did with Eichmann, rather than assassinating them. And there may be some who will think that this was a realistic or practical option for Israel. But nothing could be further from the truth. The kidnapping of Eichmann and his abduction to Israel from a foreign country was a unique event, and would be extraordinarily difficult to repeat, let alone dozens of times in numerous European countries. Israeli agents would be at much greater risk of failure and would likely to be caught and arrested themselves in the countries in question, since they would be committing crimes in those countries and violating their sovereignty.

II: The Historical Context: European Capitulation to Palestinian Terrorism after Munich

The sad truth is that we live in a world in which there is no serious international willingness to arrest, try and punish under law the terrorists who murder Israeli civilians. It was embarrassing how true this was in the period after Munich, when the Germans pusillanimously freed the three surviving captured Palestinian terrorists, in what many justifiably believe was a staged airplane hijacking by Black September designed to give the German government a pretext to free them from their Bavarian jail—and it remains largely true to this day. Upon learning of the “hijacking” of the Lufthansa jet only weeks after Munich, on October 29, 1972, the German government immediately acquiesced to the terrorists’ demands, without even informing the Israeli government. German Chancellor Willy Brandt explained that he “saw no alternative but to yield to this ultimatum and avoid further senseless bloodshed.” (Aaron J. Klein, Striking Back: The 1972 Munich Olympics Massacre and Israel’s Deadly Response, pp. 127-8; Simon Reeve, One Day in September, p. 155, 156-159)

Simon Reeve reports: “The Palestinians had warned the government in Bonn that they would launch a wave of bombings and hijackings against Lufthansa unless the three Munich survivors were released. The ‘hijacking,’ according to German, Palestinian and Israeli sources, was a compromise agreed to by senior figures in the German government.” When Ulrich Wagner, a senior aide to German interior minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher, “was asked point blank and on camera what he thought of the alleged German-Palestinian scheme, he replied, ‘Yes, I think it’s probably true.’” (Klein, p. 128) Wagner continued: “The German government thought that they could negotiate with the terrorist[s] and could convince them that they would give them money and something else to get rid of them…But of course it was the wrong way, no question, because when one case is solved in this way other cases will come.” (Reeve, pp. 157-8)

And come they did. On August 5, 1973, two Palestinians “produced submachine guns and grenades in the departure lounge at Athens airport and began blazing away at what they thought were Jewish passengers leaving Greece for Israel…There was carnage as they sprayed bullets indiscriminately…The departure lounge was a bloody mess, with the dying and seriously wounded screaming for help.” Three people were killed outright, a fourth died later in the hospital, and fifty-five passengers were wounded. The Palestinian terrorists were “caught, convicted and then promptly released by the Greek government when terrorists hijacked a Greek ship in Karachi and used them as bargaining chips.” (Reeve, pp. 199-200)

When Abu Daoud, the avowed mastermind of the Munich massacre, was arrested in France, he was quickly released “on a string of technicalities…after a perfunctory hearing lasting just twenty minutes.” (Reeve, p. 209) “The French authorities,” continues Reeve, “had been bribing and blackmailing terrorist groups to persuade them to avoid France during their attacks, and Daoud’s arrest by their officers threatened their delicate game…France chose to release Abu Daoud not only to protect itself from possible terrorist attacks but also because several Arab states threatened states threatened to withdraw deposits of cash totaling more than $15 billion—money from oil sales—that were stored in French banks. The morning after Daoud’s release, France also signed a deal with Egypt for the sale of two hundred Mirage jets…When the news of Daoud’s release was broadcast on radio and television there were near-riots in Tel Aviv…Even US President Jimmy Carter said he was ‘deeply disappointed.’” (Reeve, pp. 209-210) Much the same thing happened in Italy, as recently recounted by former Mossad chief Zvi Zamir: after arresting Palestinian terrorists who were about to fire Strella missiles at an El Al plane from an apartment overlooking the runway at Rome’s Fiumicino airport, “the Italians gave in and released” the terrorists when “a few months later the Palestinians hijacked a plane.” (Yossi Melman, “Preventive Measures,” Ha’aretz, Feb. 17, 2006).

The faked Lufthansa hijacking enabling the Germans to free the three surviving Palestinian Munich murderers little more than a month after the massacre of the Israeli Olympic athletes “produced astonishment and rage in Israel,” notes Aaron Klein. Prime Minister Golda Meir later said with evident disgust: “I think that there is not one single terrorist held in prison anywhere in the world. Everyone else gives in. We’re the only ones who do not.” (Reeve, p. 158) Golda had resisted the urgings of Israeli military and intelligence officials to hunt down and assassinate those responsible for the Munich massacre. The German release of the Munich murderers was for her “the last straw.” Facing German and European cravenness, she consented to the counter-terror plan.

In the absence of real international cooperation to track down, arrest, try terrorists for their crimes against humanity in courts of law—rather than only using such venues selectively to advance the agenda of national liberation movements against Israeli or Western leaders considered war criminals while giving a free pass to their own barbarians—and to mete out proper judicial punishment to the guilty, countries like Israel and the US often have no choice but to take preemptive or preventive action themselves. And that means killing terrorists and their accomplices before they can strike again, often on the basis of intelligence information that would be insufficient to convict a terrorist of murder in a court of law beyond reasonable doubt. Even were there a concerted international effort to punish terrorists post factum, it would remain necessary to use lethal force to preempt and interdict terrorists in an effort to prevent acts of mass killing, particularly the many undeterrable terrorists who are prepared for martyrdom if only they can inflict mass casualties on their victim population.

When Israel in 1960 abducted Eichmann from Argentina to stand trial in Israel for genocide against the Jewish people, Argentina convened the UN Security Council and charged Israel with violating its sovereignty by committing an act of illegal force on its soil. It was the Soviet representative to the UN who, representing the apparent consensus of member states, responded: “By omitting to take measures for the timely arrest and extradition of Eichmann as a war criminal” Argentina had violated its international legal obligations. (Thomas M. Franck, Recourse to Force: State Action Against Threats and Armed Attacks (Cambridge University Press, 2002, p. 112-114). Following Munich, it is equally apparent that Germany and other European states who capitulated repeatedly to terrorist threats and hijackings, released convicted mass murderers, and bribed Palestinian terror groups to avoid their territory, failed to fulfill their fundamental legal and moral obligations, leaving Israel with no recourse but to use force to punish, deter, disrupt and prevent, to whatever extent possible, the ongoing terrorist activities of Black September and those Palestinians who aided and abetted it.

III. Targeted Killing and Jewish Ethics

Spielberg in his commentary, and in the film itself, attempts to send a resoundingly negative message about the value, both moral and practical, of using force against terrorism. Instead he offers (in a Time magazine interview) that “The only thing that's going to solve this is rational minds, a lot of sitting down and talking until you're blue in the gills.” As a veteran peace advocate who has long championed Palestinian-Israeli negotiations, I find Spielberg’s nostrum singularly unhelpful and inapt. Yes, negotiations are sorely needed to “solve” the Palestinian-Israeli conflict—indeed they are well-advised right now not only with the Palestinians but with other Arab states, as Amos Oz suggests. [1] But that is not the question at hand.

The question rather is what to do now, and what was to be done then, about those who slaughter Israelis indiscriminately in the name of a political cause. “Munich” never ponders whether negotiations must sometimes be preceded by the just use of lethal force. The solution to Palestinian terrorism, much like the solution to the broader problem of Islamic terrorism, their differences notwithstanding, requires the use of both wise military counter-terror means and a foreign policy which dries up support for terror and provides viable alternatives to violence. The findings of the 9/11 Commission leave no room for doubt: success in the war on terror “demands the use of all elements of national power” including “a preventive strategy that is as much, or more, political than it is military.”

Spielberg’s screenwriter, Tony Kushner, has his Golda Meir justify Israel’s new targeted killing policy in the film thus: “Every civilization must negotiate compromises with its own values.” This suggests that Jewish values would prohibit the preemptive or retaliatory killing of suspected terrorists, but that practical necessities require Israel to flout those moral and religious norms. Kushner’s comments in Newsweek suggests that in his view targeted killings are indeed antithetical to morality: he refers to “the conflict between national security and ethics” as if ethics requires nonviolence and national security impels one towards immoral violence. But there are deep problems with this conception of Jewish ethics, and of morality in general. The dichotomy Kushner erects is meant to recapitulate the conflict between egoism and altruism writ large on a national scale. Those who act out of “national security” motives are the egoists, acting solely, or primarily, in the self-interest of their own co-nationals, their fellow citizens in the state whose security is at risk; while those who act out of “ethics,” for Kushner, value the rights of others so much so that they refrain from harming the other. It is the ethical ones, for Kushner, who engage only in respectful dialogue and negotiations over justice with their enemies and refrain from force of any kind. The ethical one, in sum, is drawn to an altruistic pacifism and nonviolence, while the national security actor acts violently and immorally from egoism and the demand for collective self-protection.

But consider this account of morality from a Jewish point of view put forth by Ahad Ha’am, the founder of cultural Zionism, and the difference he identifies between Christian and Jewish concepts of the ethical:

In an essay on “The Character of Judaism,” Ahad Ha'am maintained that the most fundamental principle of Jewish ethics—“You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Leviticus 19:18)—does not teach us to love our neighbor more than ourselves, but as much: “The true meaning of the verse is: ‘Self-love must not be allowed to incline the scale on the side of your own advantage; love your neighbor as yourself, and then justice will necessarily decide, and you will do nothing to your neighbor that you would consider a wrong if it were done to yourself’… Judaism cannot accept the altruistic principle; it cannot put ‘other’ in the center of the circle, because that place belongs to justice, which knows no distinction between ‘self’ and ‘other’…” (Ahad Ha'am, "The Character of Judaism," (1910), in Simon Noveck, ed., Contemporary Jewish Thought: A Reader (New York: B'nai Brith Department of Adult Jewish Education, 1963); originally published as "Between Two Opinions").

While we may question whether Ahad Ha’am has fairly depicted Christian morality as purely altruistic—it was, moreover, Catholic theologians like Augustine and Aquinas who made seminal contributions to the development of just war moral thinking—from Ahad Ha’am we learn that we have duties not only to others but to ourselves, and that we must seek to balance these duties by way of principles of justice. Some acts of self-respect and self-preservation are expressions of our moral responsibility to ourselves and our own communities, even if they may harm others. We must turn to principles of justice to understand which acts of self-protection are morally mandated, and which are violations of what justice requires.

Second, there is indeed a Jewish moral basis for the preemptive killing of a prospective murderer in the Talmud—“If a man comes to kill you, you kill him first” (Sanhedrin 72a), a notion which is hardly in conflict with Jewish values, as Spielberg and Kushner suggest. The Munich massacre occurred within the context of an ongoing worldwide Palestinian terror war against Israel. “They hijacked planes, assassinated Israeli diplomats, and sent letter bombs all across the European continent,” notes Aaron Klein. In May 1972 alone, Palestinian terrorists hijacked a Sabena airlines flight from Brussels to Tel Aviv, demanding the release of Palestinians imprisoned in Israel, while the PFLP recruited members of the Japanese Red Army to commit an indiscriminate massacre at the arrivals terminal of Lod International Airport in Israel, killing twenty-six people and wounding seventy-six others. Palestinian terrorists had again and again risen to kill Israeli Jews, and there was no doubt that after Munich they would continue to do so.

IV. Just War, Terrorism and Preemptive Killing

In contrast to the standard context for preemptive killing or preemptive war, in which “peacetime” or an absence of armed conflict prevails between the two states until one party commits a preemptive act of war, Israeli preemptive killing of suspected terrorists has always occurred within the framework of an ongoing Palestinian war against Israel. Such acts are more akin to lawful reprisals committed after an armed conflict has already begun. Indeed, “‘defensive retaliation’ is justified when its prime motive is protective,” in the view of many legal scholars of the laws of war. “To be defensive, and therefore lawful, armed reprisals must be future oriented, and not limited to a desire to punish past transgressions.” (Yoram Dinstein, War, Aggression and Self-Defence (Cambridge University Press, 2001), p. 199).

Former Mossad chief Zvi Zamir insists that “We were not engaged in vengeance. We are accused of having been guided by a desire for vengeance. That is nonsense. What we did was to concretely prevent terrorism in the future. We acted against those whom [we] thought would continue to perpetrate acts of terror…There is no defense without an offensive foundation….we viewed this as part the defensive alignment and deterrence that would put an end to open Palestinian terrorism in Europe. And I think that in the war which developed in the wake of Munich, we succeeded in putting an end to the type of terror that was perpetrated.” (Ha’aretz, Feb. 17, 2006) To be sure, one element in Israel’s motivation was surely a desire for retribution. But as Dinstein notes, “the motives driving states to action are usually multifaceted, and a tinge of retribution can probably be traced in every instance of response to force. The question is whether armed reprisals in a concrete situation go beyond retribution.”

Third, and most important, there is a crucial difference between pacifism and the just war traditions, between the endorsement of just but limited uses of force versus the view that all uses of force, and all wars, are immoral and unjust. In the pacifist schema, violence and peace are absolute polar opposites. But advocating peace, a just peace, does not require a pacifist stance against all violence or use of military force. In my view, those who take a just war approach to the use of force are the most responsible and the true advocates of peace and justice. But Spielberg’s film falls on the wrong side of this crucial distinction, confusing pacifism with peace, implicitly endorsing blanket opposition to the use of lethal force in self-defense—including anticipatory or preemptive self-defense—against those involved in murderous acts against innocents. The responsible peace advocate will instead embrace a more judicious way of criticizing inappropriate acts of force which at the same time recognizes the right of democratic states to engage in certain uses of lethal force.

I believe that the criteria for determining when an act of force is just must be redefined in the new era in which we live wherein Israel, European nations, the U.S., Australia and others are faced with asymmetrical warfare on the part of guerrillas, insurgents and terrorists. The characteristics defining such warfare include that
1. the agents of such forms of warfare against states are typically non-state groups;
2. they use stealth and do not identify themselves as combatants, refraining from wearing military uniforms;
3. they often engage in attacks against innocent civilians, often committing acts of mass murder.

In catastrophic acts of terror—like 9/11, or like the attempted bombing by Palestinian terrorists a few years ago of Israel’s largest fuel processing plant, near Tel Aviv, and another near Ashkelon, thousands, even tens or hundreds of thousands of innocent lives are at risk. When terrorists begin to use non-conventional weapons—as there is good reason to believe they will in time—the loss of innocent life could be unimaginable, especially in the case of a small nuclear bomb in a major urban area. Graham Allison, the founding dean of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and director of Harvard’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, concludes his remarkable book, Nuclear Terrorism: The Ultimate Preventable Catastrophe (Henry Holt, 204) with the warning that if policymakers in Washington keep doing what they are currently doing about the threat, a nuclear terrorist attack on a major American city is inevitable in the next decade. At the same time, if we and other nations take necessary and appropriate steps, the ultimate catastrophe is also preventable.

If liberal democratic states do not have the right to engage in acts of lethal force for the purpose of deterrence and prevention, taking preemptive steps against those we have good reason to hold responsible for committing murderous acts against their citizens, then democracies have no effective right to self-defense to protect their citizens against such atrocities given the inherent advantages which guerrilla, terrorist or insurgent combatants have against states and against vulnerable civilians in open societies like ours. The steps democracies should take to prevent such catastrophic terrorism are wide-ranging, but they must include the judicious use of preemptive killing of suspected terrorists.

Moreover, we may accept the legitimacy of preemptive killing of suspected terrorists without necessarily embracing a broader philosophy of preventive war. But it is clear that many contemporary observers have come to recognize that there is a

"fundamental problem with the existing UN-based rules governing the use of force. These rules are based on two key principles that were the product of a particular era, the end of World War II and the start of decolonization: first, that states are sovereign equals, and second, that they should not interfere in each other’s internal affairs. The changes in the international environment of the past six decades have eroded the applicability of these foundational principles and thus rendered the rules based on them untenable." (Ivo Daalder and James Steinberg, in “The Future of Preemption,” The American Interest, Winter 2005).

But in a world in which state sovereignty is being eroded by a wide range of forces, and in which unprecedented threats to human life and well-being have emerged, the traditional UN “concept of the international system no longer accords with the world as it now exists. That means that the rules regulating the use of force must be adapted to the world we do live in—a world in which sovereignty is increasingly conditional on how states behave internally, and in which the need to intervene in the internal affairs of states is growing accordingly…[T]he problem with the Bush strategy has been less the concept of preventive force itself,” conclude Daalder and Steinberg, “than its near-unilateral application to achieve very ambitious—perhaps too ambitious—ends. Unilateral preventive wars of regime change should be relegated to the past. But circumstances will undoubtedly arise in the future in which policymakers will want to have the option of using force preventively—be it to kill terrorists, prevent weapons proliferation, halt genocide, stop the spread of deadly diseases, or deal with other kinds of danger. The proper task, then, is not to bury the concept, but to make it a more limited and more legitimate tool for addressing evolving security threats.”

Daalder and Steinberg maintain that

"a state’s failure to prevent internal developments that threaten people in other states implies that the responsibility to do so also falls on the international community. And the most effective way to commute that responsibility will often involve preventive action of some kind, up to and including military action. Indeed, the most effective way to defeat many of the new threats is to act before they are imminent—before enough fissile material has been produced to make nuclear weapons; before weapons in unsecured sites or deadly diseases in laboratories have been stolen; before terrorists have been fully trained to hatch their plots; before large-scale killing or ethnic cleansing has occurred; and before a deadly pathogen has mutated and spread sickness and death around the globe. Of course, in many of these cases military intervention is not the only or the preferred means for dealing with an emerging threat. There are often good alternatives…At the same time, the threat of force and the actual use of force will sometimes be necessary. And when it is, it is often best used early.” (pp. 36-37)

V. Selective Criticism of Targeted Killings

Beyond its blanket objection to Israel’s counterterrorism policy, “Munich” can also be understood as implicitly criticizing certain assassinations, like the killing in Rome of Wael Zu’aytir, a poet and translator who had rendered the Arabic classic One Thousand and One Nights into Italian, the first Palestinian assassinated in the film. The film depicts him as not having had a hand in killing Israeli civilians, whether the Munich athletes or others, though we hear Ephraim justify every target to Avner as having been complicit in terrorism against Israelis. Klein states that in fact, Zu’aytir, “unlike many of those around him…denounced terrorism and violence.” (p. 119)

He believes that “Zu’aytir was not directly involved in the Munich massacre. It also seems unlikely that he had an indirect hand in the operation as a saya’an [a helper]. Uncorroborated and improperly cross-referenced intelligence information tied him to the support network of Black September in Rome. From there, a slippery slope led the politically active, low-level saya’an to the Mossad’s hit list. Looking back, his assassination was a mistake. Undoubtedly, it resulted from the genuine desire to neutralize those involved in the Munich Massacre and ‘hot’ operatives in the midst of preparing an attack. Zu’aytir was, at best, a small fish in a pond of sharks. But in the vengeance-laced atmosphere of September and October 1972, when the head of the Mossad proclaimed that the mysterious, bohemian translator had blood on his hands, no one was in the mood to dispute it.” (p. 123)

Klein notes that a wide range of Palestinians in Europe who had been involved in the “planning, execution and logistical operations tied to the massacre” were placed on the Mossad’s assassination list. “In the weeks after the massacre, dozens of Palestinian names, implicated by thin shards of intelligence at best, were passed back to Tel Aviv. There, they were almost automatically put on a secret database of targets. The Mossad and the intelligence community, with the backing of the public consensus and the parliament, were stretching the meaning of the term ‘terrorist involvement’ to the limit. Anyone vaguely connected to a terrorist organization or act was immediately placed on the top of a slippery slope; assassination waited below.” (p. 111) While the Mossad did target terrorists who were substantially involved in the Munich massacre, or in planning or executing new attacks against Israelis, it is clear now that some of those it killed were not truly complicit in terrorism against Israel.

Had the film stopped there, its criticism of targeted killings would have been selective, judicious and appropriate. A judicious approach to criticizing targeted killings, drawn from just war tradition and modern laws of war, would apply the same sorts of criteria in deciding when an armed reprisal is immoral or unlawful: “[E]ach measure of counter-force should be put to the test whether it amounts to legitimate self-defense (in response to an armed attack), satisfying the requirements of necessity [and] proportionality…” (Dinstein, p. 203) Dinstein, like Michael Walzer and William O’Brien, among many other scholars who have applied just war doctrine to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, believes that some Israeli reprisals satisfy the criteria for just uses of force, while others do not. The same can be said for Israel’s assassinations. Each must be judged on its own merits.

Israeli governments can and should be criticized for having used this method at times irresponsibly, against the wrong people, including people who were innocent of complicity with the murder of Israelis and Jews; of having engaged in it at times and in ways that have sometimes have harmed the prospects for peace.[2] But from this it does not follow that targeted killings as a rule are inimical to a prospective peace. Aaron Klein concludes that overall, while some targeted killings have provoked acts of terror in the short term, “the numbers show a steep slide in the frequency of terror attacks against Israelis and Israeli institutions abroad from 1974 to the present.”

But the message that Spielberg and Munich seek to convey is that counter-terrorism solves nothing, begets more terror, and can’t lead to peace. Some targeted killings may indeed spur further retaliations, but the cumulative effect of a good counter-terror strategy is, and has been during several periods, the 80’s, 90’s and again in recent post-intifada years, to contribute to an overall disincentive to terror and to popular support for terror. At the same time, an effective counter-terrorism strategy must be accompanied by a very robust and generous set of political incentives to the Palestinian public to embrace moderation and the pursuit of peace talks with Israel, by far-reaching efforts to negotiate a peace agreement and on-the-ground changes which improve life for ordinary Palestinians. Strong counter-terrorist efforts which are never followed by serious and sustained attempts to encourage Palestinian support for reconciliation with Israel and to exploit opportunities for peace, are misbegotten. Much the same is true of preemption which never knows when it is best to forbear the use of lethal force. Both condemn Israel to live by the sword forever, nurturing the cynical right’s self-fulfilling prophecies of doom.

VI. Spielberg’s Volte Face on Israeli Counterterrorism After Munich

Having been subjected to widespread criticism for the moral message of Munich and for the politics he and Kushner attributed to the film in earlier interviews, Spielberg now insists that Israel was justified in waging its assassination campaign against Palestinian terrorists: He told Der Spiegel (January 26, 2006): “I believe that Israel’s prime minister had to respond to the monstrous provocation of Munich. Jews were being killed in Germany, and that at the Olympic Games. She could not let an act with such historic implications, such a gross transgression by the Black September movement, go unpunished. Munich was a national trauma for Israel. So in principle I think she did the right thing.” Now his revised view is that “A campaign of vengeance, even though it may contribute towards deterrence and preventing terror, can also have unintended consequences.” He draws our attention now to the damage such a campaign may wreak on the human beings who engage in assassinations: “It can change people, burden them, brutalize them, lead to their ethical decline. And even Mossad agents do not have water flowing through their veins.”

According to the new Spielberg, we are now to understand Avner’s disaffection with Israel, his abandonment of his country and his Mossad vocation, as nothing more than the dehumanizing consequences of combat on an individual, not as emblematic of the moral status of the State of Israel’s counter-terrorism policies. But can Spielberg have it both ways? The new Spielberg would have us believe, as he told Newsweek, that “’Munich’ never once attacks Israel”, and that “it barely criticizes Israel’s policy of counter-violence against violence.” Leon Wieseltier’s response to Spielberg’s new view is apt: “The latter claim is preposterous, as anybody who has seen Munich knows. The film’s very subject is the dubious moral legitimacy, and the dubious practical efficacy, of counterterrorism. If Munich is not about that, it is not about anything.” A repentant Spielberg, suddenly concerned with his image in the Jewish community, seems unwilling to stand by the principled criticisms of Israel’s counterterrorism policy that issue from his “prayer for peace.” As Wieseltier notes, “People should not engage the perplexities of morality and history if they are prepared only to be loved.”



RECOMMENDED READING

Two books offer far more historically reliable accounts than Spielberg’s film of Israel’s counter-terror campaign following the Munich massacre, and both read like thrillers: Aaron J. Klein, Striking Back: The 1972 Munich Olympics Massacre and Israel’s Deadly Response (Random House, 2005)

Klein, who is an officer in Israel’s Military Intelligence Branch, and Time magazine’s military and intelligence affairs Jerusalem correspondent, [from amazon.com] interviews over 50 former and current Mossad members, and appears to have uncovered considerable new information. The book is described by the publisher as “the first full account based on access to key players who have never before spoken, of the Munich massacre and the Israeli response…”

Simon Reeve, One Day in September: The Full Story of the 1972 Munich Olympics Massacre and the Israeli Revenge Operation “Wrath of God” (New York: Arcade, 2006)

For a more general history of Israeli intelligence and counter-terrorism:
Ian Black and Benny Morris, Israel’s Secret Wars: A History of Israel’s Intelligence Services

Recommended Articles:
1. Edward Rothstein, “Seeing Terrorism as Drama With Sequels and Prequels,” New York Times, December 26, 2005
2. Walter Reich, “Something’s Missing in Spielberg’s ‘Munich,’” Washington Post, January 1, 2006
3. Michael Kotzin, “‘Munich’ As a Post-Zionist Tale,” http://www.juf.org/news_public_affairs/article.asp?key=6667
4. Leon Wieseltier, “Steven Spielberg Bravely Confronts His Fundamentalist Critics,” The New Republic, February 2, 2006
5. Pauline Yearwood, “‘Munich’: Is Spielberg’s New Movie Good for the Jews?”, Chicago Jewish News cover story, January 1, 2006, presents a wide range of views about the film and its ideas in interviews with various Jewish commentators.

On the Jewish and Christian just war traditions, and law and morality in war, see:

1. Alan M. Dershowitz, Preemption: A Knife That Cuts Both Ways (Norton, 2006), which attempts to develop a jurisprudence or philosophy of preemption for our contemporary political world; unsurprisingly, the challenges facing Israel play a central role in Dershowitz’s thinking.
2. Yoram Dinstein, War, Aggression and Self-Defence (Cambridge University Press, 2001), by Israel’s leading scholar of the laws of war.
3. Yoram Dinstein, The Conduct of Hostilities under the Law of International Armed Conflict (Cambridge University Press, 2004)
4. William V. O’Brien, Law and Morality in Israel’s War With the PLO (Routledge, 1991), a classic and still highly relevant application of just war thinking to Israel’s counter-terrorist operations prior to Oslo.
5. Michael Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars: A Moral Argument with Historical Illustrations (Basic, 1977), a highly readable volume on the just war tradition, with several examples pertaining to Israel;
6. Michael Walzer, “War and Peace in the Jewish Tradition,” and Aviezer Ravitzky, “Prohibited Wars in the Jewish Tradition,” in Terry Nardin, ed., The Ethics of War and Peace: Religious and Secular Perspectives (Princeton, 1996);
7. Albert Vorspan and David Saperstein, “The Jewish Tradition and the Gulf War,” in their Tough Choices: Jewish Perspectives on Social Justice (UAHC Press, 1992).

[1]“I think Israel would be advised to terminate the occupation through an agreement or a settlement that, if it can't be made with the Palestinians at this moment, should be made with the member states of the Arab League. I believe termination of the Israeli occupation is urgent, and is in Israel's best interests and can be implemented as a part of an Israel-Arab comprehensive agreement.” Amos Oz interview, The Nation (online) “Curing Fanaticism” by Jon Wiener, February 1, 2006.

[2]Aaron Klein observes that after Munich, Israel often went after Palestinian diplomats in Europe who were not directly responsible for the Munich massacre or for acts of terrorism against Israelis, simply because they were largely unprotected and accessible, whereas the real perpetrators of Munich—those few who survived and those involved behind the scenes in planning and orchestrating it—were living in third world countries with much protection so that Israel found it virtually impossible to go after them. (There was one notable exception to this rule, the 1972 commando operation against several prominent Palestinian terrorist masterminds in Beirut by the IDF’s special anti-terrorist force, Sayeret Matkal, in which the young Ehud Barak played a prominent role.) But this was the exception that proved the rule.