RSS
New War Goals for Israel? No.
A general view of Tehran after several explosions were heard, in Tehran, Iran, October 26, 2024. Photo: Majid Asgaripour/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via REUTERS
The successful, but limited, Israeli strike on Iranian targets has prompted some analysts to ask if Israel’s war aims have changed — or suggest that the aims should change.
Some also say that Israel didn’t strike hard enough, or strike the right targets — denouncing the choice not to hit nuclear facilities, military sites and leaders, and economic infrastructure.
A: No, they didn’t.
B: No, they shouldn’t.
C: Hard enough for what?
D: Those are targets the US did not want hit, but which Israel also had reason not to hit.
Israel’s entry into Gaza on October 27, 2023, had three immediate aims: to uproot the military and governing power of Hamas; to secure the Gaza border and the people of Israel; and to rescue the 240 hostages taken by Hamas. Those goals have not changed, although American disapproval slowed the process considerably.
What did change is the military entry of Hezbollah and Iran directly into the war. Hezbollah began shelling Israel on October 8, 2023 — well before Israel crossed the border into Gaza — and Iran has struck Israel twice with missiles.
Israel’s war aims expanded to securing the northern border and allowing 60,000+ Israelis to return to their homes in the north — and preventing Iran from getting in the way.
Israel had ignored the long-range plans of Hamas and Hezbollah and ignored their tunnel-digging and arsenal-building. A deconfliction arrangement between Israel and Russia allowed Israel to reach Syria and eliminate various weapons manufacturing capabilities and the transport of certain weapons from Iran through Damascus to Lebanon, but a low-level war had been ongoing for years.
It was an ugly and volatile mess, but Israel appears to have done its best not to expand its areas of operation. Eventually, however, it was impossible to ignore Hezbollah in the north, thus: pagers attacks, surgical strikes on Hezbollah arsenals, leaders and headquarters; and strikes on Hezbollah banks and financial bunkers.
On the Iran front, Israel saw the rise of Iranian military manufacturing — particularly after the Biden-Harris administration lifted oil sale sanctions on Tehran, increasing the mullah government’s available cash by billions of dollars. Aside from drones and ballistic missiles, some of which have gone to Russia for use in Ukraine, the nuclear program expanded as well.
In June, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Board of Governors voted overwhelmingly to demand that Iran take action to resolve concerns about its nuclear work. The US was hesitant, noting that pressure could make Iran escalate its nuclear activity. But later that month, Britain, France, and Germany wrote to the wrote to the UN Security Council, detailing Iran’s violations of the 2015 JCPOA.
Iran still had a chance to stay out. It didn’t.
Keeping with its own interests and an odd sense of duty to its American patron, the Israeli air force struck military targets only:
- Air Defense Systems. This will allow the Israeli Air Force to return later, if necessary. It also probably gives the Russians hives, as the destroyed systems were Russian.
- Ballistic Missile production facilities and facilities for producing solid rocket fuel. This will reduce Iran’s ability to strike and make it less necessary for Israel to rely on the US for ballistic missile defenses. Iran will have trouble restoring production.
- Systems protecting sites including oil refineries, gas fields, and a major port — while not attacking those sites themselves. This is a warning to the mullah regime that its assets remain vulnerable to future attacks.
- Taleghan 2 in Parchin, previously used for nuclear testing activities. Although Taleghan 2 was cited in much of the media as relating to Iran’s “defunct” nuclear weapons development program, at least one analyst said that “even if no equipment remained inside,” the building would have provided “intrinsic value” for future nuclear weapons-related activities.
Iran reported four military casualties and no civilian casualties. All Israeli planes and crews returned safely.
The result is that Israel improved its position regarding Iran without assuming responsibility of overthrowing the regime or eliminating its nuclear program. These things should be done, of course, but not by Israel and not while Israel is fighting on other, close-in fronts. The US and other allies should be stepping up here, but the US has already failed to stop the Iranian-backed Houthis in the Red Sea and appears uninterested in the rest.
Israel’s primary objectives remain security of its borders and its citizenry; elimination of the arsenals of Hamas and Hezbollah — thus severely constraining (or eliminating) their power to terrorize the local population and to attack Israel; and the release of the hostages, living and dead, held in Gaza in violation of International Humanitarian Law (IHL).
For the longer term, note Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu:
I have not given up on the Iran nuclear program; it is at the forefront of our minds. We continue to work to remove the Iranian threat. Today, Israel is seen as the most powerful country in the region.
What fateful days of a historical turn.
Iran, as well as the Israeli people, should take that seriously.
Shoshana Bryen is Senior Director of The Jewish Policy Center and Editor of inFOCUS Quarterly magazine.
The post New War Goals for Israel? No. first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
RSS
A Hanukkah Guide for the Perplexed, 2024
A temporary menorah is seen on the last night of Hanukkah in the Ukrainian city of Uzhhorod, following an incident of suspected antisemitic vandalism. Photo: Facebook
Here are eight things to know about Hanukkah, as the holiday begins tomorrow night:
1. A bust of Judah the Maccabee is displayed at West Point Military Academy, along with those of Joshua, David, Alexander the Great, Hector, Julius Caesar, King Arthur, Charlemagne, and Godfrey of Bouillon.
In 1777, Hanukkah candles were lit during the Valley Forge encampment, the turning point of the Revolutionary War, which solidified the victory of George Washington’s Continental Army over the British monarchy.
Benjamin Rush, a signer of the Declaration of Independence and a player in the ratification of the US Constitution, paving the road to the Boston Tea Party, 1773, wrote: “What shining examples of patriotism do we behold in Joshua, Samuel, the Maccabees and the illustrious princes and prophets among the Jews…” On December 6, 2013, Ambassador Hank Cooper, a former Director of the Strategic Defense Initiative Organization, wrote: “We need modern day Maccabees to preserve the heritage of liberty for our posterity….”
2. Hanukkah is the only Jewish holiday that commemorates an ancient national liberation struggle in the Land of Israel, unlike the national liberation holidays, Passover, Sukkot/Tabernacles and Shavu’ot/Pentecost, which commemorate the liberation from slavery in Egypt to independence in the land of Israel, and unlike Purim, which commemorates liberation from a Persian attempt to annihilate the Jewish people.
3. According to Israel’s Founding Father, David Ben-Gurion: Hanukkah commemorates “the struggle of the Maccabees, which was one of the most dramatic clashes of civilizations in human history, not merely a political-military struggle against foreign oppression … Unlike many peoples, the meager Jewish people did not assimilate. The Jewish people prevailed, won, sustained and enhanced their independence and unique civilization … It was the spirit of the people, rather than the failed spirit of the establishment, which enabled the Hasmoneans to overcome one of the most magnificent spiritual, political and military challenges in Jewish history….” (Uniqueness and Destiny, pp 20-22, David Ben Gurion, IDF Publishing, 1953).
4. Hanukkah and the Land of Israel. When ordered by Emperor Antiochus IV Epiphanes of the Seleucid region to end the Jewish “occupation” of Jerusalem, Jaffa, Gaza, Gezer and Akron, Shimon the Maccabee responded: “We have not occupied a foreign land … We have liberated the land of our forefathers from foreign occupation (Book of Maccabees A: 15:33).”
5. Hanukkah highlights the centrality of the Land of Israel in the formation of Judaism and the Jewish people. The mountain ridges of Judea and Southern Samaria (the West Bank) — the cradle of Jewish history, religion, culture and language – were the platform for the Maccabean military battles: Mitzpah (the burial site of the Prophet Samuel, overlooking Jerusalem), Beit El (the site of the Ark of the Covenant and Judah the Maccabee’s initial headquarters), Beit Horon (Judah’s victory over Seron), Hadashah (Judah’s victory over Nicanor), Beit Zur (Judah’s victory over Lysias), Ma’aleh Levona (Judah’s victory over Apolonius), Adora’yim (a Maccabean fortress), Eleazar (named after Mattityahu’s youngest Maccabee son), Beit Zachariya (Judah’s first defeat), Ba’al Hatzor (where Judah was defeated and killed), Te’qoah, Mikhmash and Gophnah (bases of Shimon and Yonatan), the Judean Desert, etc.
6. Hanukkah’s historical context is narrated in the four Books of the Maccabees, The Scroll of Antiochus and The Wars of the Jews.
In 323 BCE, following the death of Alexander the Great (Alexander III) who held Judaism in high esteem, the Greek Empire was split into three independent and rival mini-empires: Greece, Seleucid/Syria, and Ptolemaic/Egypt.
In 175 BCE, the Seleucid/Syrian Emperor Antiochus (IV) Epiphanes claimed the Land of Israel. He suspected that the Jews were allies of his Ptolemaic/Egyptian enemy. The Seleucid emperor was known for eccentric behavior, hence his name, Epiphanes, which means “divine manifestation.” He aimed to exterminate Judaism and convert Jews to Hellenism. In 169 BCE, he devastated Jerusalem, attempting to decimate the Jewish population, and outlaw the practice of Judaism.
In 166/7 BCE, a Jewish rebellion was led by the non-establishment Hasmonean (Maccabee) family from the rural town of Modi’in, half-way between Jerusalem and the Mediterranean. The rebellion was headed by Mattityahu, the priest, and his five sons, Yochanan, Judah, Shimon, Yonatan and Eleazar, who fought the Seleucid occupier and restored Jewish independence. The Hasmonean dynasty was replete with external and internal wars and lasted until 37 BCE, when Herod the Great (a proxy of Rome) defeated Antigonus II Mattathias.
7. The reputation of Jews as superb warriors was reaffirmed by the success of the Maccabees on the battlefield. In fact, they were frequently hired as mercenaries by Egypt, Syria, Carthage, Rome, and other global and regional powers.
Hanukkah celebrates the Maccabean-led national liberation by conducting in-house family education and lighting candles — in a 9-branch-candelabrum –for 8 days in commemoration of the re-inauguration of Jerusalem’s Jewish Temple and its Menorah (candelabrum).
The Hebrew words Hanukkah (חנוכה), inauguration (חנוכ), and education ((חנוך possess an identical root.
8. Hanukkah highlights the defeat of darkness, disbelief, and the victory of light, faith, a can-do mentality, and optimism. The first day of Hanukkah is celebrated when daylight hours are equal to darkness hours — and when moonlight is hardly noticed — ushering in brighter days.
The author is a political commentator, and former Israeli ambassador.
The post A Hanukkah Guide for the Perplexed, 2024 first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
RSS
Ireland: Antisemitism Without Jews
A man walks past graffiti reading ‘Victory to Palestine’ after Ireland has announced it will recognize a Palestinian state, in Dublin, Ireland, May 22, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Hannah McKay
When Gideon Sa’ar, Israel’s Foreign Minister, recently announced the closure of Israel’s embassy in Ireland because of Ireland’s antisemitic actions and anti-Israel posture, it led to flurry of articles in the press.
The immediate cause of the closure was the decision by the government of Ireland to join South Africa in presenting the case accusing Israel of perpetrating genocide in Gaza. Largely missing from the discussion is that there are almost no Jews in Ireland.
Jews were never very numerous in Ireland, but today they are on the endangered list. The Jewish community in Ireland is declining, numbering only 800 in a population of 5.3 million. The number increases to about 2500 with the addition of Jewish expatriates and temporary residents, mainly Israelis, working in the technology sector.
James Wilson explains that the disappearance of Jews from communities outside Dublin grows further each year. For example, the last synagogue service in Cork was held in 2016. Most of the Belfast Jewish community left during the “troubles,” after the shooting of a member of the community and the kidnapping of another.
Wilson relates how the Chief Rabbi of Ireland once told a joke about three European Jews discussing emigration. One said he would go to America for comfort and security, the second to Israel because it was the land of his ancestors, and the third said he would go to Ireland. Why? Because the Devil would not think of looking for a Jew in Ireland!
The Rabbi’s joke is reminiscent of one told in James Joyce’s Ulysses. At an early point in the novel, Garrett Deasy (a minor character and headmaster of the school where Stephen Dedalus, Joyce’s alter ego in the novel, teaches) jokes to Dedalus that Ireland is the only country that has not persecuted the Jews. Why? Because they never let them in.
Leopold Bloom, the novel’s protagonist, is a Jew, sort of. Bloom’s mother was a Catholic, and his father was a Hungarian-Jewish convert to Protestantism. Although baptized at birth, everyone who Bloom interacts with considers him a Jew. Indeed, he admits to being Jewish (and Irish) when challenged by antisemites at Barney Kiernan’s pub.
First published in 1920, Ulysses is a fictional account of one day, June 16, 1904, in the life of Leopold Bloom, as he wanders through Dublin on a journey that loosely follows that of Homer in The Iliad. Examples of antisemitism, including the slanders of ritual murder and global conspiracies, as well references to Zionist projects in Palestine, figure prominently.
Joyce wrote Ulysses when he was living in self-imposed exile in Trieste, then part of Austria-Hungary. Leopold Bloom was a creation based on two Jewish friends of that period, not from Joyces’s earlier Irish background. They were the likely sources of information about Judaism and Zionism.
The Limerick Pogrom (also called the Limerick Boycott), emblematic of the reason for the small number of Jews in Ireland, is not mentioned in Ulysses, although it took place in 1904, the same year as Bloom’s fictional ramble. This pogrom, preceded by antisemitic outbursts in the late 1800s, included violence and intimidation, and led to the exodus of most of the approximately 170 Jews of Limerick; some to other centers in Ireland, many to other countries.
As to the situation for Jews in Ireland today, the outgoing Israeli ambassador, Dana Erlich, noted that she heard concerns about safety from Jewish citizens and Israelis.
In fact, the relatively few Jews in Ireland are not safe. A few weeks ago, a Jewish–American student wearing a Star of David was beaten severely, according toThe Irish Times. The assault took place at a Dublin bar (Flannery’s, 1.5 miles from Barney Keirnan’s pub).
Quite a few Jews left Ireland after October 7, 2023, because of safety concerns, according to Newstalk. One woman, an Israeli, said she does not mention that she is from Israel and avoids speaking Hebrew on her phone in public.
A recent article on antisemitism by Harvard scholar Noah Feldman notes that antisemitism has never been about real Jews as much as the antisemite’s imagination of them. In Ulysses, for example, the antisemite Deasy comments to Dedalus that “the jew merchants are already at their work of destruction” — to which Dedalus replies “ A merchant is one who buys cheap and sells dear … jew or gentile…”
What better example of imagination and reality?
Jacob Sivak, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, is a retired professor, University of Waterloo.
The post Ireland: Antisemitism Without Jews first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
RSS
The Palestinian Authority Violated US Law, and Biden Gave Them Billions; Will Trump Reverse Course?
US President Joe Biden holds a press conference during NATO’s 75th anniversary summit, in Washington, DC, July 11, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Nathan Howard
The Palestinian Authority (PA) continues to openly flaunt that it disregards American wishes and legislation.
American law prohibits funding the PA if the PA takes action against Israel in the International Criminal Court (ICC). Yet that is exactly what the PA and Palestinian leaders have done:
PA-controlled Committee to Resist Settlements and the Wall Director of Documentation Amir Daoud: “We have seen profound changes in the positions of the states … and this reached a peak in the issuance of arrest warrants against [Israeli Prime Minister] Netanyahu and [then Israeli Minister of Defense] Gallant …
We as Palestinians need to continue providing these organizations [e.g., ICC] with real documents and information to expand the scope of sanctions to ensure that all the occupation’s criminals will reach the world’s courts to receive their punishment.” [emphasis added]
[Official PA TV, Nov. 27, 2024]
Nevertheless, the Palestinians have no problem begging for and receiving American funding, to the tune of more than $2.1 billion since October 7, 2023, as reported in a USAID press release:
Since 2021, USAID/West Bank and Gaza has invested over $600 million in economic support funding of the Palestinian people, in addition to the over $2.1 billion in humanitarian assistance since October 7, 2023.
[USAID press release, November 15, 2024]
Palestinian Media Watch (PMW) has documented that the PA is acting contrary to the US Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2014.
That law renders the Palestinians ineligible to receive money from the US Economic Support Fund if they actively support an ICC investigation. The law states:
“None of the funds appropriated under the heading ‘Economic Support Fund’ in this Act may be made available for assistance for the Palestinian Authority, if after the date of enactment of this Act… the Palestinians initiate an International Criminal Court (ICC) investigation, or actively support such an investigation, that subjects Israeli nationals to an investigation for alleged crimes against Palestinians.”
Yet, the PA continues to show contempt for these basic American criteria. Not only does it fail to abide by the restrictions, but it celebrates its influence on the ICC decision as “among the most important achievements of the Palestinian struggle in the past 10 years.”
Secretary-General of the International Academic Campaign against the Israeli Occupation and Apartheid Ramzi Oudeh: “The courageous decision of the International Criminal Court (ICC) regarding the arrest [warrants for former Israeli Minister of Defense] Gallant and [Israeli Prime Minister] Netanyahu is among the most important achievements of the Palestinian struggle in the past 10 years. It is considered the most significant achievement. Today, this is a victory for the Palestinian people.”
[Official PA TV, Topic of the Day, Nov. 27, 2024]
American funding of the PA was cut off under President Trump due to the PA’s violation of the terms of the Taylor Force Act (TFA), but it was then reinstated under the Biden administration through various channels that bypassed the restrictions of the TFA.
With the PA gloating about its participation in ICC proceedings against Israel in violation of US restrictions, it will be noteworthy to see if the new US administration will stick to the letter and spirit of the law, which clearly intended for the US to cut off PA funding in such a case.
Ephraim D. Tepler is a contributor to Palestinian Media Watch (PMW). Itamar Marcus is PMW’s Founder and Director. A version of this article originally appeared at PMW.
The post The Palestinian Authority Violated US Law, and Biden Gave Them Billions; Will Trump Reverse Course? first appeared on Algemeiner.com.