T. Belman. The problem, according to the authors, is that Smotrich and Ben Gvir “incite against the Arabs”. I am dumbfounded. The truth is that the Arabs are inciting against the Jews and Israel. The US obviously want Israel to cave to the Arab demands. Because we refuse to capitulate, they say, we don’t have shared values. They threaten all kinds of dire consequences, should we exhibit different values. To the contrary, if we were to share their woke values and agree to appease the Arabs, it would be the end of us. We are entitled to embrace our own values even if the US doesn’t want us to. Shared values are not at the core of our relationship. Our relationship is based on mutual interests. Why the US supports the Palestinian cause at our expense has always puzzled me. It cannot be that she wants to benefit the Palestinians. It must be that they want to weaken us.
by Dennis Ross, David Makovsky, WASH INSTITUTE 2.11.22
Appointing senior ministers who incite against Arabs would undermine the shared values that buttress the bilateral relationship while giving fuel to Israel’s critics in Washington.
Following Israel’s fifth election in less than four years, Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s longest-serving prime minister, is poised to return to that office again. Even if divided, the country has clearly moved to the right. The “government of change,” which lasted a year included the left, center, right, and an Arab party for the first time, but it was undone not by its ideological diversity but by violence. Polls showed that in March 2022 a majority of Israeli Jews believed it was a good thing that an Arab party was in the government. (WE NOW KNOW BETTER.) That view changed dramatically with Palestinian acts of terror against Israelis during Ramadan—and the right wing’s claim that the government was limited in its response because it depended on an Arab party.
In reality, the Bennett-led government was not soft in its response, but the image stuck and contributed to the growth of the extreme right-wing party led by Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben Gvir. No one gained more from the violence and increasing mistrust of Israeli Arabs than the Religious Zionist Party, becoming the third-largest party in Israel.
Yes, Netanyahu is in a position to form a government, and his speech on election night was far more conciliatory than his campaign posture. But he does not face a simple choice. His clearest path to government formation depends on forging a narrow right-wing coalition. Such a government would not only depend on making Ben Gvir and Smotrich senior ministers but permit them to hold the balance of power in the government.
Netanyahu may not be adventurist, but they are. And that will have consequences in Israel with the Israeli Arabs and the legal system; with the Palestinians and the likely increase in violence; and with Israel’s Arab peace partners. (Abdullah bin Zayed—the foreign minister of the UAE—warned Netanyahu during a trip to Israel before the election that the inclusion of Smotrich and Ben Gvir would affect the relationship with the Emirates.)
The reverberations will be felt here in America as well. Senator Robert Menendez, a centrist Democrat with a strong track record of support for Israel, bluntly warned of the consequences for the US-Israeli relationship if Smotrich and Ben Gvir were to become senior members of the government. That should set off alarm bells in Israel. Menendez was reflecting something fundamental about the US-Israeli relationship; it is rooted in shared values.
Yes, shared interests are important, but Americans identified with Israel because of shared values. It was those values that attracted Harry Truman to support the creation of Israel; Jack Kennedy to be the first to speak of a “special relationship”; Ronald Reagan to identify with the Jewish state. Similarly, shared values produced strong support for Israel among those in Congress, Republican and Democrat, who have come from districts or states that have negligible Jewish presence. Our shared values created the lens through which the interests came to be seen. It made support for Israel bipartisan.
Lose the sense of shared values and something basic will be lost. Moreover, lose the shared values and Israel’s fiercest critics in the US will be given an enormous boost. Already some in the progressive movement argue that Israel does not share our values—it is the source of their criticism of Israel. They want to distance the US from Israel, change the character of the relationship, vote against military assistance, and even deny Israel the right to defend itself when Hamas or Hezbollah fire rockets against it.
There could be no greater gifts for these progressives than having ministers in the next government that are anti-Arab, incite against them, and oppose an independent judiciary and the separation of powers. Should Prime Minister Netanyahu opt to form a narrow right government, Itamar Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich will become its face. Their open hostility toward Israeli Arabs and their intended legal “reforms” will weaken Israel’s image as a democracy.
Those who have no love for Israel will seize on this. They will use it to expand their appeal in the Congress and the country. They will exploit it to try to undo aspects of the relationship, and certainly to challenge Israeli military requests. And they will see it as an opportunity to join with their European counterparts who seek to delegitimize Israel.
The reality is that no one should take the character of the US-Israeli relationship for granted. Yes, there are inherent enduring strengths because, notwithstanding its critics, five elections remind everyone that Israel is a democracy in which the Israeli public has the final say. And yes Israel is also the “Start-Up Nation” and offers much to its region and the world on water, food, health, and cyber security. (Moreover, with Russian and Iranian drones signaling new dangers and threats to the world, Israeli developments that can be game-changers, like laser-based defenses, are likely to add further to the importance of Israel as a partner.)
Still, there is a campaign against Israel and it is important not to strengthen the hand of those determined to weaken the relationship. Government formation in Israel is an Israeli decision. In normal circumstances, we, as Americans, would not be offering our counsel on it. But these are not normal circumstances, and, in good conscience, we cannot remain silent knowing the enormous impact that the words and actions of Itamar Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich as senior ministers would have on the US-Israeli relationship. That relationship is too precious and important to both countries and the Middle East as a whole—given Iranian threats—for it to be harmed. Even though it would mean resisting the rising tide of the far right, Netanyahu would be wise to form not a narrow-based government but a broad-based one that embodies and does not undermine Israel’s democratic values.
Dennis Ross is the counselor and William Davidson Distinguished Fellow at The Washington Institute. David Makovsky is the Institute’s Ziegler Distinguished Fellow, director of its Koret Project on Arab-Israel Relations, and creator of the podcast Decision Points, whose fourth season just launched. This article was originally published on the Times of Israel website.
Try to imagine Israel at peace, in its Biblical borders (which include all of the “West Bank” in any case), with the Diaspora Jews streaming to Israel “on the wings of eagles” (i.e., the airplanes), and think WHOSE PROPHECIES WILL HAVE COME TRUE (and how the other two “Abrahamic” religions’ adherents are going to feel about it).
Here is an interesting article about Israel’s Biblical borders:
https://www.thetorah.com/article/the-three-biblical-maps-of-israel-small-medium-and-large
BTW, the Areas A, B, and C are a total indivisible mess (at the end of the map displays):
http://www.jewishwikipedia.info/israelmaps.html
Try to imagine Israel at peace, in its Biblical borders (which include all of the “West Bank” in any case), with the Diaspora Jews streaming to Israel “on the wings of eagles” (i.e., the airplanes), and think WHOSE PROPHECIES WILL HAVE COME TRUE (and how the other two “Abrahamic” religions’ adherents are going to feel about it).
Here is an interesting article about Israel’s Biblical borders:
https://www.thetorah.com/article/the-three-biblical-maps-of-israel-small-medium-and-large
BTW, the Areas A, B, and C are a total indivisible mess (at the end of the map displays):
http://www.jewishwikipedia.info/israelmaps.html
@Edgar
You make some very valid arguments, as usual. The point you make about the Goyisher antipathy to Jewish Israel is indeed very relavent to everything I stated, as you suggest. Also, I do agree that the creation of an alliance by the US political elites with the Pals might outlive the original motivation of keeping the gas flowing, but I don’t see that it actually explains why the US political elites, all of them, have supported the Pals from the beginning in a very specific manner which could never result in anything but renewed violence, thus threatening the flow of gas.
Additionally, as you have noted many times here on the pages of Israpundit, the world would have been so much better for the subtraction of one idiot Englishman named Lawrence, who, while playing out his romantic fantasies in the desert, came to be the tool which so strongly misled the world and influenced events in his own age which have had an unpleasant result in every age since.
Also, your poor Aunt, to be as a fly on the wall to record such a sight in Selfridges, how very unfortunate for her. But at least she was a cashier and not the janitor responsible for the cleanup on aisle 5.
@PELONI_
Maybe just your own thoughts, as are mine. But the way you lay it all out gives , at least to me, a clear indication that the Goyisher antipathy to Jewish Israel, that I mentioned, is very relevant, and also. not least, that the Arab Terrorists in YESHA do NOT want peace with Israel. They have sworn “from the River to the Sea” and all that crap. They have never deviated from this.
And also, if they became a “sovereign state”, they’d be required to behave as least with some rationaiity, They’d have a sort of “responsibility” to uphold. It could interfere with the torrent of foreign aid that has enriched all the leaders,
And they’d have no natural resources, NO…their business is terrorism, crying victim, and taking in huge cash form the stupid West.
An Arab can be trusted for only as long as HE wants, and “binding agreements” are made to be broken as we have so often seen..
I think that the West has never really got over the “Lawrence of Arabia\” syndrome, Lowell Thomas should have dropped dead before he’s ever heard of Lawrence, who (self consciously) used to attract much attention, walking around Paris in 1919 dressed in Arab robes and braided head gear with open leather sandals.
As Meinertzhagen aptly said, “he had a talent for modestly backing into the limelight”..
The vision of a Desert Sheik swooping down on his white racing camel” is still there somewhere, as well as the mistaken notion that the “impulsive” Arab is merely an unruly child.
And of course, until Trump made the US totally energy self-sufficient, they still had to deal with the Oil “Emperors”, even when other sources also began to flow. (maybe a knee-jerk action, like the US Jews generationally voting Democrat).
An aside. I had an aunt, who worked as a cashier in Selfridges many years ago, and she would tell us how large Saudi Arabian families would sweep into the store, buy everything in sight, and behave in the most barbaric manner, all ignored by the staff and management, Men in flowing robes and women shapelessly covered by black “sacks”..
She mentioned that they never used washrooms but any convenient corner.in the building -men and women alike…
There are two states that the “world community” wishes to destroy: Israel and Russia – but for different reasons.
Their (mostly of the countries of the West) reason for wishing to destroy Russia stems from their desire to take over “Eurasia” and split its territory and resources among themselves.
Their (of the majority (if not all) of the countries of the world) reason for wishing to destroy Israel is religious, and thus it is irrational even though the “world community” gets some benefits from the process of trying to destroy Israel and the Jews, such as arms sales, the new technology, Israel’s startups, etc.
@Edgar
To be honest, some time ago, like you suggest, I had originally believed the issue of the free flow of oil was the motivation behind the US supporting the Pals over Israel. Over the years, though, it became obvious to me that the US did not want to actually help the Pals, or they would have forced the Pal leadership to actually accept an equitable resolution towards peace, as the idiot Israeli leadership have offered them incredible fire sale opportunities to do so. This would have ostensibly settled the potential issue of an Israeli-Arab flare up which would potentially cause interruptions to the flow of oil from the Middle East. Instead, the US supported the Pals while they became the spoilers of achieving most all of their own demands. While supporting this Pal intransigence, the US routinely abused Israel despite her significant, though foolish, offers to the Pals, acting as if it were indeed the Israeli’s who were responsible for the lack of an accepted settlement. This nonsensical method by which the US attempted to negotiate between the parties was done in just such a way which could only be explained that the US did not want peace to be achieved. Irregardless of the motivations of the Pals, the other Sunni nations or Israel, it was the US who seemed to particularly and repeatedly pursue the same path which would not have resulted in peace, even if the parties actually were honestly and earnestly seeking it. The repetition of the failed steps to seek a settlement was reproduced across multiple administrations, even with different political parties and different US peace envoys. The steps were the same failing steps, leading to the same failed outcomes. The people involved were well accomplished men, not fools or clowns, but they all followed the same exact recipe to failure as had been tried previously without success. Additionally, anyone with the slightest experience in dispute resolutions could recognize this recipe could only lead to the parties never settling anything while increasing tensions which would lead to the outbreak of violence, which would be the contrary desire of those who were concerned with the flow of oil.
Related to the Saudi’s, if the faux attempts to seek a settlement was specifically done to appease the Saudi’s, we would have to believe that the Saudi’s did not honestly want a Pal State to come from the negotiations, and I do not believe this is true.
More than all of this, though, is that when the US did, in fact, become energy independent, the same people who advocated on behalf of the Pals, presumably to maintain the uninterrupted flow of oil, became even more committed towards their advocacy for the Pals.
Even more relevant than the issue of the Pals, though, was the move by the US to incrementally move the radical Iran towards a role of domination in the middle east. This seems to strongly argue against the interest in maintaining the free flow of gas. The argument against this view became even stronger when the US supported the JPOA, which if successful would/will make the chance of a nuclear war in the middle east a real possibility, if not a certainty.
Just my own thoughts, such as they are, of course.
Ross and Makovski get paid to threaten Israel. That is their career.
Nothing in this article is new.
@PELONI-
\
I believe the US official coolness stems from the time when the Arabs put a semi-embargo on oil exports, resulting in horrendous chaos in the US, and sky high gas prices-if one had the zitzfleixh to wait in a lineup at every gas station for hours. And they often ran out of gasoline with a long lineup still there.
Industry was precarious and major entities as well as national govts. began to collect oil storage reserves in quantity, to cater for future emergencies.
Gas prices, although fluctuating minimally since, have never gone back anywhere close to what they were. The Saudis were the major culprits then.
Apart from the Goyisher antipathy and Anti-Semitic attitude, always around.
Just my opinion.
humor: I got a disturbingly un-Jewish message inside the fortune cookie that came just now with my shrimp lo mein: “”Why stop the revolution just because it’s the weekend?” 😀
@Ted
I agree that they want to weaken us, but more specifically, I would suggest that their real goal is and has long been to control us. They want to compromise our independence, strip us of our sovereignty and relegate us to a client state, vassalized to accept their instructions and exercise their will, no matter the risk or injury which doing so will bring upon our people. Israel must certainly resist this. It will be hard, it could be particularly costly with these Radicals ruling Washington with a determination to have their own way, no matter how public and criminal they reveal themselves to be while enforcing their will on others, even against their own public. As they stand ready to abuse, manipulate and persecute members of their own public who resist them, Israel can expect nothing less, and likely more, than a similar radical treatment from these Washington Radicals. Indeed, the will which they intend to wield against us places our people in a position of extreme threat. No nation deemed as sovereign would be so foolish as to place their survival under such obvious risks to appease another nation, just as no nation deemed as an ally would be so reckless as to demand that another should do so.
To be a sovereign nation carries with it a great burden which demands wise leadership, capable of independent actions, particularly when existential threats are involved. As our allies display an ever growing and significant degree of daylight between their demands and our own security and sovereignty, we must recognize that these facts reveal the distinguishing mark that our allies are led by forces which desire no alliance with us but only domination to gain our compliance to their goals, irregardless of the jeopardy which these goals might doom us to endure. Consequently, resistance to the desires of these Radicals is the only possible path forward, no matter how difficult that path might be. I would further suggest that this is the true reason for which the appointment and elevation of the independently minded Smotrich and Ben Gvir have raised such a universal alarm amongst these allies who seek our compliance to their dominant will. I only wish we had more such independently minded leaders who might be willing to pursue the will of their own people while opposing the domination of these Radical allies.
Did someone say “kish mir in tuchess?”
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/363041
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@Will
Well said.
Israel needs a gov’t that will stand firm. The strategy of pretending that America “has our back” and that we have “shared values” has weakened Israel substantially in recent years. America supports an international inquiry regarding the death of a single Arab reporter while ignoring the murder of dozens of Israeli Jews at the hands of Arab assailants. America, under Biden, will not block Iran’s path to a bomb, and will not support Israel’s efforts to do so. The “peace process” is clearly a program to subject Israel to a slow death-of-a-thousand-cuts. The sooner Israel begins to defend its own interests aggressively, the better. The appropriate response to the “Distinguished Fellows” who demand additional sacrifices from Israel should be “kish mir in tuchess.”