The Citizens of this Extraordinary State have every Reason to look Forward with Hope

T. Belman. This is a good article except he makes it sound like Israel is only a dependent of the US.  He totally ignores the benefits the US gets from partnering on innovation particularly, military innovation.

A corollary to this is that the US certainly doesn’t want Israel partnering with China. Furthermore if China dominates the ME, it will dominate Africa.

Israel at 75 Is Threatened but Strong
It can no longer take its relationship with the U.S. for granted, but it may not need to.

By Walter Russell Mead, The Wall Street Journal May 15, 2023

It’s been 75 years since the Jewish community in British Palestine rejected a last-minute plea from the Truman administration and declared independence as the last British forces left the embattled land. It wasn’t the most auspicious moment. One day earlier, the strategically located Gush Etzion bloc of Jewish agricultural settlements fell to Arab assailants following a bitter siege.

Disregarding Truman’s pleas and warnings from Western military leaders that they faced certain defeat, the Jews of Palestine voted for independence. They went on to win the War of Independence, thanks largely to an influx of Soviet-bloc weapons from Czechoslovakia, but 75 years later questions about its future still swirl around the Jewish state.

In recent weeks we’ve seen rocket attacks from Gaza, reports that Russia will deliver advanced fighter jets to Iran, and the readmission of Syria to the Arab League. A few months ago, Israelis were speculating over the likelihood that Saudi Arabia would join the Abraham Accords. Today, they are working to understand the ramifications of the China-brokered Saudi-Iranian thaw.

But the most important question facing Israelis today is the future of their relationship with the U.S. There is nothing written in the stars that guarantees its permanence. For the first 25 years of Israel’s independence, American presidents were more interested in cultivating Arab leaders and blocking the Israeli nuclear program than in aligning with Jerusalem. Only after Richard Nixon concluded that an Israeli defeat in the 1973 Yom Kippur War would empower the Soviet Union across the Middle East did Washington move toward a strategic relationship.

That relationship survived the fall of the Soviet Union. Washington saw Jerusalem as a necessary partner in containing Iran and, after 9/11, the war on terror. But as the latter recedes into the rear-view mirror and new challenges from Russia and China loom in Ukraine and Taiwan, America’s priorities could change.

What drives any change won’t be BDS activists pressing boycott, divestment and sanctions and observing “Israel Apartheid Week” on college campuses. It won’t be the activities of the so-called Israel lobby, either. Those forces provide the mood music for the relationship, and at the margin and on certain very specific issues have an effect. But the real forces lie elsewhere.

American policy toward Israel depends less on poll numbers than on how a given U.S. president sees American interests world-wide and where Israel and the Middle East fit into the administration’s global foreign policy. For the past half-century, American presidents generally believed that the Middle East, thanks to its oil reserves, was a high priority in America’s strategy of global engagement and that a close relationship with Israel on balance strengthened America’s position in the region and beyond.

Today, though, many Americans, especially progressive Democrats, believe that U.S. interests in the face of climate change require a rapid global shift from fossil fuel. Many others, especially among Trump-friendly Republicans, question whether the U.S. should remain globally engaged. The future of the U.S.-Israel relationship depends on how these two debates are resolved.

How much does the Middle East matter if the world is moving away from fossil fuel? In the 18th century, the lucrative Caribbean sugar industry was a major focus of Franco-British competition, and in 1763 France was willing to cede Canada to Britain in exchange for the return of a handful of small Caribbean islands. Fifty years later, the Caribbean was a strategic backwater. If something similar is happening in the Middle East, shouldn’t the U.S. gradually divest its responsibilities there?

Similarly, if isolationist perspectives among Democratic progressives or Republican populists dominate the agenda, U.S.-Israel relations likely will cool. Even if oil remains an important global commodity, the U.S. no longer needs Middle East crude. Why, neo-isolationists ask, should America spend money and risk war to protect oil destined for Europe, India, China and Japan?

Navigating an American withdrawal would be challenging but not catastrophic for Israel. Other potential partners are waiting in the wings. Narendra Modi’s India would eagerly embrace a closer technological and military relationship with the Jewish state. China, Russia and even Turkey would see serious benefits in a strategic relationship with Jerusalem.

But the likelihood of a wholesale American withdrawal from the Middle East is likely overestimated. The energy transition will probably take longer and be less total than greens hope. And global geopolitical competition is more likely to buttress American support for limiting Chinese influence in the Middle East than to promote isolationist sentiment at home.

In any case, Israel today is orders of magnitude stronger, wealthier and more influential than it was in 1948. History offers no guarantees and problems remain, but the citizens of this extraordinary state have every reason to look forward with hope.

May 17, 2023 | 10 Comments »

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  2. @Sebastien
    @Michael
    From the video Sebastien posted:
    “So far India has been successful in treading a difficult path of striking a balance between Israel and Palestine.”
    What total BS, a stark and utter load of self serving twaddle to assuage the Indians from having to recognize or admit an inconvenient truth. India has never struck a balance since the mid-70’s when it initially moved towards the Pals. Even today, even in the 8min video which Sebastien posted, the narrator references Israel and palestine as the ‘two countries’ at least 4 times. Of course there is no country of palestine, but India’s foreign policy, even today, is based upon the principle that there is such a country.

    I have been greatly disappointed by India’s position over the years with regard to the Pals, specifically because there is no balance between the Israel and the Pals in the eyes of India. That disapointment, however, needs to be appreciated in view of reality. More than one in ten of the world’s muslims live in India, luck them, which played a significant role in their move towards the PLO back in the 70’s. To offset this, India has nearly no Jews at all, and demographically never had very many before they mostly all moved to Israel – while still very much attached to India.

    More relevant than this, India’s policy with regards to Israel has always been tied to their wider geopolitical world view. Prior to the demise of the Soviet Union, India was very much in league with the Russians in their support for the anti-West Pals. When the Russians took out the Soviets, India remodeled its geopolitical stance to be stabilizing between the two emerging poles of China and the West, even as China is both an emerging economic and military threat to them, not to mention the historically relevant points of friction with China which are still not settled. In this context of balancing between these poles, India has extended scientific, agricultural, and technologic ties with Israel in the post Soviet era. It was only under Modi that India became more directly associated with Israel on a geostrategic basis, but even this has only marginally changed India’s position of continued support of the Pals. Even as they dropped calls for ‘east Jerusalem’ to be recognized as a capital of the Pal state, they voted against US recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. They were one of the first open advocates for a TSS and will likely be one of its last remaining advocates.

    This is why they still reference Tel Aviv as Israel’s capital and criticize Israel for human rights abuses while defending their citizens from terrorist attacks. Israel has irregardless of these facts built a strong connection with the Modi govt on trade and defense, but to claim that India is striking a balance between Israel and the Pals, as the video Sebastien posted does state, is simply misrepresenting the truth.

  3. Ghandi was only a pacifist when it came to Jews and Hindus but not Muslims. Despicable Hypocrite.
    And in the end he was hoist by his own petard, ironically, as his chickens came home to roost.

    “The Jews cannot receive sovereign rights in a place which has been held for centuries by Muslim powers by right of religious conquest. The Muslim soldiers did not shed their blood in the late War for the purpose of surrendering Palestine out of Muslim control.”

    “The calculated violence of Hitler may even result in a general massacre of the Jews by way of his first answer to the declaration of such hostilities. { non-violent civil disobedience }But if the Jewish mind could be prepared for voluntary suffering, even the massacre I have imagined could be turned into a day of thanksgiving and joy that Jehovah had wrought deliverance of the race even at the hands of the tyrant. For to the godfearing, death has no terror. It is a joyful sleep to be followed by a waking that would be all the more refreshing for the long sleep.”

  4. @Michael Yes, despite a willingness to make pragmatic opportunistic alliances – it also has concluded teade agreements with Iran – India’s antipathy to Zionism goes back more than 100 years to the views of modern India’s founder. This is what Ghandi wrote 102 years ago on April 6, 1921:

    “Do the Muslims claim Palestine, or will they restore it to the Jews who are the original owners?”

    “The Muslims claim Palestine as an integral part of Jazirat-ul-Arab. They are bound to retain its custody, as an injunction of the Prophet. But that does not mean that the Jews and the Christians cannot freely go to Palestine, or even reside there and own property. What non-Muslims cannot do is to acquire sovereign jurisdiction. The Jews cannot receive sovereign rights in a place which has been held for centuries by Muslim powers

    by right of religious conquest. The Muslim soldiers did not shed their blood in the late War for the purpose of surrendering Palestine out of Muslim control. I would like my Jewish friends to impartially consider the position of the seventy million Muslims of India. As a free nation, can they tolerate what they must regard as a treacherous disposal of their sacred possession?”

    https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/notes-in-young-india-by-gandhi-april-1921

    And this was his response to Kristallnacht, 11 days letter, and published 6 days after that. I became quite incensed when I learned a Jewish community center in Yesha was named after him. Read it and vomit,

    “Several letters have been received by me asking me to declare my views about the Arab-Jew question in Palestine and the persecution of the Jews in Germany. It is not without hesitation that I venture to offer my views on this very difficult question.

    My sympathies are all with the Jews. I have known them intimately in South Africa. Some of them became life-long companions. Through these friends I came to learn much of their age-long persecution. They have been the untouchables of Christianity. The parallel between their treatment by Christians and the treatment of untouchables by Hindus is very close. Religious sanction has been invoked in both cases for the justification of the inhuman treatment meted out to them. Apart from the friendships, therefore, there is the more common universal reason for my sympathy for the Jews.

    But my sympathy does not blind me to the requirements of justice. The cry for the national home for the Jews does not make much appeal to me. The sanction for it is sought in the Bible and the tenacity with which the Jews have hankered after return to Palestine. Why should they not, like other peoples of the earth, make that country their home where they are born and where they earn their livelihood?

    Palestine belongs to the Arabs in the same sense that England belongs to the English or France to the French. It is wrong and inhuman to impose the Jews on the Arabs. What is going on in Palestine today cannot be justified by any moral code of conduct. The mandates have no sanction but that of the last war. Surely it would be a crime against humanity to reduce the proud Arabs so that Palestine can be restored to the Jews partly or wholly as their national home.

    The nobler course would be to insist on a just treatment of the Jews wherever they are born and bred. The Jews born in France are French. If the Jews have no home but Palestine, will they relish the idea of being forced to leave the other parts of the world in which they are settled? Or do they want a double home where they can remain at will? This cry for the national home affords a colourable justification for the German expulsion of the Jews.

    But the German persecution of the Jews seems to have no parallel in history. The tyrants of old never went so mad as Hitler seems to have gone. And he is doing it with religious zeal. For he is propounding a new religion of exclusive and militant nationalism in the name of which any inhumanity becomes an act of humanity to be rewarded here and hereafter. The crime of an obviously mad but intrepid youth is being visited upon his whole race with unbelievable ferocity. If there ever could be a justifiable war in the name of and for humanity, a war against Germany, to prevent the wanton persecution of a whole race, would be completely justified.

    But I do not believe in any war. A discussion of the pros and cons of such a war is therefore outside my horizon or province.But if there can be no war against Germany, even for such a crime as is being committed against the Jews, surely there can be no alliance with Germany. How can there be alliance between a nation which claims to stand for justice and democracy and one which is the declared enemy of both? Or is England drifting towards armed dictatorship and all it means?

    Germany is showing to the world how efficiently violence can be worked when it is not hampered by any hypocrisy or weakness masquerading as humanitarianism. It is also showing how hideous, terrible and terrifying it looks in its nakedness.

    Can the Jews resist this organised and shameless persecution? Is there a way to preserve their self-respect, and not to feel helpless, neglected and forlorn? I submit there is. No person who has faith in a living God need feel helpless or forlorn. Jehovah of the Jews is a God more personal than the God of the Christians, the Mussalmans or the Hindus, though as a matter of fact in essence, He is common to all and one without a second and beyond description. But as the Jews attribute personality to God and believe that He rules every action of theirs, they ought not to feel helpless. If I were a Jew and were born in Germany and earned my livelihood there, I would claim Germany as my home even as the tallest gentile German may, and challenge him to shoot me or cast me in the dungeon; I would refuse to be expelled or to submit to discriminating treatment. And for doing this, I should not wait for the fellow Jews to join me in civil resistance but would have confidence that in the end the rest are bound to follow my example. If one Jew or all the Jews were to accept the prescription here offered, he or they cannot be worse off than now. And suffering voluntarily undergone will bring them an inner strength and joy which no number of resolutions of sympathy passed in the world outside Germany can. Indeed, even if Britain, France and America were to declare hostilities against Germany, they can bring no inner joy, no inner strength. The calculated violence of Hitler may even result in a general massacre of the Jews by way of his first answer to the declaration of such hostilities. But if the Jewish mind could be prepared for voluntary suffering, even the massacre I have imagined could be turned into a day of thanksgiving and joy that Jehovah had wrought deliverance of the race even at the hands of the tyrant. For to the godfearing, death has no terror. It is a joyful sleep to be followed by a waking that would be all the more refreshing for the long sleep.

    It is hardly necessary for me to point out that it is easier for the Jews than for the Czechs to follow my prescription. And they have in the Indian satyagraha campaign in South Africa an exact parallel. There the Indians occupied precisely the same place that the Jews occupy in Germany. The persecution had also a religious tinge. President Kruger used to say that the white Christians were the chosen of God and Indians were inferior beings created to serve the whites. A fundamental clause in the Transvaal constitution was that there should be no equality between the whites and coloured races including Asiatics. There too the Indians were consigned to ghettos described as locations. The other disabilities were almost of the same type as those of the Jews in Germany. The Indians, a mere handful, resorted to satyagraha without any backing from the world outside or the Indian Government. Indeed the British officials tried to dissuade the satyagrahis is from their contemplated step. World opinion and the Indian Government came to their aid after eight years of fighting. And that too was by way of diplomatic pressure not of a threat of war.

    But the Jews of Germany can offer satyagraha under infinitely better auspices than the Indians of South Africa. The Jews are a compact, homogeneous community in Germany. They are far more gifted than the Indians of South Africa. And they have organised world opinion behind them. I am convinced that if someone with courage and vision can arise among them to lead them in non-violent action, the winter of their despair can in the twinkling of an eye be turned into the summer of hope. And what has today become a degrading man-hunt can be turned into a calm and determined stand offered by unarmed men and women possessing the strength of suffering given to them by Jehovah. It will be then a truly religious resistance offered against the godless fury of dehumanised man. The German Jews will score a lasting victory over the German gentiles in the sense that they will have converted the latter to an appreciation of human dignity. They will have rendered service to fellow-Germans and proved their title to be the real Germans as against those who are today dragging, however unknowingly, the German name into the mire.

    And now a word to the Jews in Palestine. I have no doubt that they are going about it in the wrong way. The Palestine of the Biblical conception is not a geographical tract. It is in their hearts. But if they must look to the Palestine of geography as their national home, it is wrong to enter it under the shadow of the British gun. A religious act cannot be performed with the aid of the bayonet or the bomb. They can settle in Palestine only by the goodwill of the Arabs. They should seek to convert the Arab heart. The same God rules the Arab heart who rules the Jewish heart. They can offer satyagraha in front of the Arabs and offer themselves to be shot or thrown into the Dead Sea without raising a little finger against them. They will find the world opinion in their favour in their religious aspiration. There are hundreds of ways of reasoning with the Arabs, if they will only discard the help of the British bayonet. As it is, they are co-shares with the British in despoiling a people who have done no wrong to them.

    I am not defending the Arab excesses. I wish they had chosen the way of non-violence in resisting what they rightly regarded as an unwarrantable encroachment upon their country. But according to the accepted canons of right and wrong, nothing can be said against the Arab resistance in the face of overwhelming odds.

    Let the Jews who claim to be the chosen race prove their title by choosing the way of non-violence for vindicating their position on earth. Every country is their home including Palestine not by aggression but by loving service. A Jewish friend has sent me a book called The Jewish Contribution to Civilisation by Cecil Roth. It gives a record of what the Jews have done to enrich the world`s literature, art, music, drama, science, medicine, agriculture, etc. Given the will, the Jew can refuse to be treated as the outcaste of the West, to be despised or patronised. He can command the attention and respect of the world by being man, the chosen creation of God, instead of being man who is fast sinking to the brute and forsaken by God. They can add to their many contributions the surpassing contribution of non-violent action.”

    Segaon, November 20, 1938

    https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/lsquo-the-jews-rsquo-by-gandhi

  5. Ted, a correction to your assertion: The Jewish people (essentially ONLY the secular Jews) have been “partnering in innovation” with the US and other White Christian states since before 1911, viz,

    https://imgs.search.brave.com/sY4jUGE8zB9hI4seAhbE-1zhCN67an71NqlLyM-Nlbg/rs:fit:560:320:1/g:ce/aHR0cHM6Ly91cGxv/YWQud2lraW1lZGlh/Lm9yZy93aWtpcGVk/aWEvY29tbW9ucy90/aHVtYi9jL2NhLzE5/MTFfU29sdmF5X2Nv/bmZlcmVuY2UuanBn/LzUxMnB4LTE5MTFf/U29sdmF5X2NvbmZl/cmVuY2UuanBn

    This has not been an Israel-dominated partnership; but both parties have certainly benefited from it. Our enemies would like to dissolve this marriage, and some Jews are eagerly lawyering up for a favorable divorce settlement. Outside of the lawyers themselves, though, parties to divorces seldom benefit financially — not to mention what these things do to the children.

  6. Hi, Sebastien. Quoting your link,

    In June 2019, India voted, for the first time, in support of Israel at the UN’s Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) to deny observer status to a Palestinian human rights organisation named ‘Shahed’. This is the first time that India took a step back from its decades-old position on the two-state theory under which the country sees both Israel and Palestine as separate and independent countries

    The author describes this as a “balanced” position. It’s like building an altar to Ba’al in Jerusalem, while acknowledging the existence of the Jewish Temple. Of course, such a position would be condemned by the Muslims, and even by the current Israeli government; but I would still be against it. Donald Trump had the correct position, of course, acknowledging Israel’s eternal sovereignty in Jerusalem, granted by God. India voted AGAINST that move by the US president.

    “Balance points” such as this are well outside of the covers of the Bible. If Israel wants to claim the Bible, as Ben Gurion did, as its title deed, it must reject these UN resolutions and the countries that support them.

    Of course, it will probably get crucified for doing so, once the US is taken out of the way.

  8. From Mordechai Ben Menachem:

    “Disregarding Truman’s pleas and warnings from Western military leaders that they faced certain defeat, the Jews of Palestine voted for independence. They went on to win the War of Independence, thanks largely to an influx of Soviet-bloc weapons from Czechoslovakia, but 75 years later questions about its future still swirl around the Jewish state.”

    Factually incorrect:
    A) The Jews of Palestine DID NOT vote for independence. Firstly, there was no vote (though had one been taken, it would have resulted, in my opinion in a vote for independence).
    B) There were no pleas and warnings” from Truman. There were some (not many and quite general) from the US State Department. When have they EVER been right, about anything? Truman officially recognized the State of Israel 11 (eleven) minutes after its declaration. See: McDonald, James; My Mission in Israel 1948-1951.
    C) “Largely to an influx ofSoviet weapons” No, wile a small amount of weapons arrived from Czechoslovakia, weapons and ammunition also arrived via the actions of the so called Jewish Mafia (with active aid of the Sicilian Mafia). The majority of ammunition came from this source.

    “But the most important question facing Israelis today is the future of their relationship with the U.S. There is nothing written in the stars that guarantees its permanence. For the first 25 years of Israel’s independence, American presidents were more interested in cultivating Arab leaders and blocking the Israeli nuclear program than in aligning with Jerusalem. Only after Richard Nixon concluded that an Israeli defeat in the 1973 Yom Kippur War would empower the Soviet Union across the Middle East did Washington move toward a strategic relationship.”

    Despite American continued delusions with their own central importance to everything and everyone, our relations with the United States, while important, are far, quite far, from the most important issue facing the country, nor is it the issue most discussed. Many Israelis, including this author, question whether the United States, in its present form, will survive this decade. American seem incapable of comprehending anything longer term than a year. We think in terms of Millenia. Sorry America, you are important, but you are not, and never have been, the sole focus of the world. Nixon helped us in 1973 with ammunition, and we are very grateful to him and to America for it. America has now unilaterally rescinded that agreement for strategic ammunition storage here;; guess what? We will manage; really!

    “Today, though, many Americans, especially progressive Democrats, believe that U.S. interests in the face of climate change require a rapid global shift from fossil fuel. Many others, especially among Trump-friendly Republicans, question whether the U.S. should remain globally engaged. The future of the U.S.-Israel relationship depends on how these two debates are resolved.”

    American ME relationships in general, and with Israel much more so, have almost nothing to do with supply of oil to America. It does have somewhat to do with the supply of energy to American allies in Europe. Except America, under Biden, rejects all its allies, including Europe, and everyone outside of the US knows this. In reality, Israel is America’s LAST ALLY. America NEEDS Israel today much more than Israel needs America. I know, that is a shocking statement. Practically speaking, every American tech company does primary R&D in Israel. Even Ford, whose founder was Hitler’s primary funder, now does R&D here. How is that for irony? Intel Israel is larger than Intel USA; and the list is large.
    Today’s US military, which appears to most of the world as impotent and incompetent, is wholly dependent upon Israel for large portions of its critical intelligence sources, and NOT just in the ME. BTW, that was true during the Cold War, as well.

    “How much does the Middle East matter if the world is moving away from fossil fuel? “

    This question displays the basic geo-strategic ignorance with which the US suffers. The need for the ME is totally independent from oil. The ME is, as it always has been, at the center of the World Island and is its fulcrum. The examples given in the article are all trivia.

    ” if isolationist perspectives among Democratic progressives or Republican populists dominate the agenda, U.S.-Israel relations likely will cool”

    Again, if the US, or its parts, remains, in any way, engaged in the world, in trade or in geo-stateic interests, Israel is critical for the US; in intelligence, in technology, in innovation and in economics. As one example (of hundreds), Israel is FAR ahead of the US in Artificial Intelligence. Every US company active in tis area, is doing its primary work in Israel. Any American ‘anylist’ who does not take this aspect in consideration, is either ignorant of facts or …

    “In any case, Israel today is orders of magnitude stronger, wealthier and more influential than it was in 1948. History offers no guarantees and problems remain, but the citizens of this extraordinary state have every reason to look forward with hope.”

    Israel today has a higher birth rate, higher female fertility, higher GDP per capita, higher life expectancy than the United States. Israel has fewer murders, with all the issues with our neighbours, in a year than Chicago in a weekend. Our Social stability is far safer. Our banking stability is far safer. Our population, despite the issues we have at the moment with our ‘fascinating’ politics’, is far more cohesive than the USA.
    In other words, by EVERY ‘objective’ measurement, Israel is far more assured of a future than America. By non-objective measurement, we also believe, and this includes the secular population as well, in our promised future.
    That is also more than America can say.
    Sorry to tell you America, but it really IS time to grow up or to grow down.

  10. The final paragraph is very true but in politics there are no second prizes. You are in the congressional – or whatever – seat or not in it. Israel is now a lot more than the self-governing refugee camp it was in 1949 – 56 BUT relatively it is still very junior to the US or any of the BRICS. Israel like Switzerland is median averaage in the UN league of members by population and probably by coarse GDP even if well up being in the OECD by GDP per cap. Israel still ought to be cautiously polite to the USA and some people are too blinkered to what Israel is within and on its doorstep to see that. India, China, Russia, and any other large state by GDP and population will never be as close culturally and historically as the USA so keep in with it and out of its in-fights so as to have friends both sides of the aisle. Beinig obstinate about security and much else is easier if you keep silent and do not let extremists throw about stinging remarks.