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Virtual Kanee lecture: Former Mossad chief Efraim Halevy urges Israeli policy makers to “think outside the box”

former Mossad chief Efraim Halevy
June 6 screenshot

By BERNIE BELLAN (Note: This article was written prior to the change of government in Israel. As usual, with the swift flow of events there, much of what is presented here is already outmoded.) This year the Jewish Heritage Centre has been presenting a series of three Kanee lectures online, rather than the traditional annual in-person Kanee lecture. The most recent of these online lectures was delivered by Efraim Halevy on June 6.

It doesn’t seem that long ago that former Mossad head Efraim Halevy was in Winnipeg to deliver a Kanee lecture to a packed audience at the Shaarey Zedek Synagogue, but when I actually checked our own archives I see that Halevy was actually here in 2012. At the time Halevy had already been out of the Mossad for 10 years, although he had also gone on to a stint as head of Israel’s National Security Council (from 2002-3).

When Halevy paid a return visit as one of this year’s Jewish Heritage Centre’s Kanee lecturers, this time he was at his home in Israel speaking to the audience via Zoom. (I later found out that 114 individuals watched at least part of his lecture. While that number is certainly done from what a typical in-person Kanee lecture would attract, considering that it was a beautiful Sunday afternoon when Halevy spoke, it was quite a decent turnout – especially considering the multitude of Zoom sessions that have become a regular part of Jewish life here this past 14 months).
Halevy’s memoir about his time in the Mossad, “Man in the Shadows”(published in 2008) offered ample evidence of the moderate influence he exerted over Israeli foreign policy. He played an instrumental role in bringing about the peace accord between Israel and Jordan, for instance. He also put forward the position that Israel should seek to negotiate with Hamas – which led me to pose a question about that possibility during his June 6 lecture.
Halevy is now 86 years old, yet toward the end of his Zoom session (which lasted 1 ½ hours) he indicated that he had four more Zoom sessions scheduled in the next few days, so running out of energy doesn’t seem to be a problem for him. As a matter of fact, just when everyone watching might have thought that Halevy wanted to sign off, he began to tell a story about T.E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia) that stretched into another 20 minutes. He was clearly “in the moment”, so to speak.
During his free-flowing talk Halevy touched on a great many subjects. After speaking for half an hour he agreed to take questions from the audience. The questions were read to him by moderator Ben Waldman (who is a reporter for the Free Press), although when Waldman posed questions to Halevy it wasn’t at all clear whether a question had come from an audience member or whether it was one that Waldman was asking on his own.)

Before launching into his talk – which he did without referring to notes, Halevy said he was going to divide his talk into different segments, beginning with an overview of the Middle East, then turning his attention to Iran.
At the very start of his talk, Halevy admitted, however, that he is not privy to the kind of confidential information to which he would have had access during his long career in intelligence. Almost immediately though, he did broach a subject that, if what he said was indeed true, then it would certainly have be considered highly controversial: Halevy claimed that there is a secret annex to the Abraham Accords signed between Israel – on one side – and Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates on the other, that imposes a “freeze on settlements” in the West Bank, although “the details are not revealed”, Halevy suggested.
It is not at all apparent though that there has been an actual freeze on settlement activity in the West Bank, as Halevy suggested. There has been continued expansion of road construction in the West Bank, for instance, and while there has been no government sanctioned construction of new homes in the West Bank since the accords were signed, there has been continued expansion of more isolated – and illegal outposts. (As well there has been continued expansion of Israeli housing in the East Jerusalem area.)
A second aspect of the Abraham Accords, which was also not included in the publicly signed accords, Halevy said, was the decision by the US government to sell (50) F35 jets to the United Arab Emirates. According to Halevy, Israel’s having F35 stealth jets gave Israel a “strategic edge” in the Middle East in terms of military technology.

What did Israel obtain then, in return, when it agreed to sign those accords?
“These are countries with which we had relationships before,” Halevy noted. While those relationships may have been “passive” rather than overt, they “enabled Israeli businessmen to come to the Emirates and conduct business.” The accords, therefore, are really just an elaborate business deal.
There is another aspect to the Abraham Accords, Halevy pointed out, which may prove detrimental to Israel’s interests in the long term.
“We agreed we would be a conduit for the export of oil from the Emirates,” he said. Halevy explained that a pipeline that was originally built to transport oil brought to Israel from Iran and unloaded at Eilat will now be used instead to ship oil from the Emirates.
“It is going to be a massive transportation of oil,” Halevy warned. “We are entering a danger zone in which an oil pipeline (built originally in 1968 as a 50-50 venture between Israel and Iran) will lead to a massive “oil installation in Eilat which could have a major impact upon tourism” in that city – which, Halevy noted, is Israel’s most popular tourist destination.
(Ed. note: On June 3, Israel’s new Environment Minister, Gila Gamliel, called for cancellation of the oil deal between Israel and the UAE, saying that it could cause great environmental damage.)

If the benefits of the Abraham Accords are entirely economic – since Israel already had good diplomatic relations with Bahrain and the UAE, why has Saudi Arabia been reluctant to sign on to the accords as well – which is something that was rumoured would also occur?
Apparently signing on to the accords “is a subject of disagreement” between the king of Saudi Arabia (King Salman, who is 85 years old) and Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman (aka “MBS”), with the king being reluctant to enter into a signed agreement with Israel, while MBS is pushing for it.

Turning to other areas of the Middle East, Halevy offered this interesting insight about Egypt: “Egypt is concentrating on developing improved relations with China. China is now a major player in Iraq. We will have to look very carefully at what China is doing in the Middle East,” although Halevy added, “up to now China’s relationship with Israel has been good.”

Here’s what Halevy had to say about Israel’s relationship with Jordan: “There is a very serious problem with Jordan. We have a good relationship on the military and security level, but less so in other areas. The diplomatic relationship is very strained. The personal relationship between (King) Abdullah and Netanyahu is very poor.”

About Syria, Halevy said: “Hizbollah is very active there. We have regularly bombed arms shipments – in coordination with Russia – to prevent them (Hizbollah) from developing faster than they might otherwise do.”
Halevy quoted a line from the Bible to warn of the danger posed to Israel on its northern flank: “Evil will open up from the north.”

At that point Halevy turned his attention to Iran, saying that “Iran’s determination to obtain nuclear weapons is number one in our concerns.”
But, in order to understand the dynamics involved in the situation vis-à-vis Israel and Iran, Halevy suggested, one has to understand Netanyahu’s own background.
Netanyahu considers himself to be an “historic figure”, very much influenced by his scholar father, (Benzion) whose area of study was the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492.
Benzion Netanyahu focused in particular on the writings of a famous medieval Jewish businessman and scholar by the name of (Isaac) Abrabanel, Halevy explained.
Abrabanel wrote in 1492 that “there was going to be a Golden Age for the Jewish people”. (He was slightly wrong, you might say.)
Benajmin Netanyahu “said his aim was never to ignore threats to Israel; his mission was to remove an existential threat to Israel,” Halevy said.
When the “Mossad was able to get a hold of Iranian nuclear files to show the West what Iran was all about,” Netanyahu honestly believed that having this smoking gun would be decisive in swaying Western leaders not to believe that Iran was sincere in being willing to abandon its pursuit of nuclear weapons. Unfortunately, Netanyahu’s goal was never realized (although, in looking back at Halevy’s Kanee lecture in 2012, I note that at that time he warned that the greatest danger to Israel was not from external enemies, it was from within Israel itself, from religious right wing zealots).

Following his initial remarks, Halevy fielded questions from the audience.
I asked the following question: “Are there any chances that a younger element in Hamas might be willing to negotiate a peace with Israel?
Halevy’s answer was: “I don’t know. We’ve never tried…The important thing is to think out of the box. Inside of the box there’s no possibility of any resolution of these problems. We have to have courage – and think of our children and grandchildren and their future.”
Halevy, who was very close with Ariel Sharon, however, did say that Sharon made a terrible mistake when he evacuated Israeli settlers from Gaza. “The feeling is that Hamas got something for nothing – a dangerous precedent.”

Another question was about a new government in Israel, if one does succeed in forming: How would a new government impact relations with Israel’s neighbours?
Halevy said: “It will follow the policies of Netanyahu.” He then proceeded to relate this anecdote: “The United States will renew the (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action) agreement with Iran. Netanyahu instructed all agencies of the Israeli government not to present our view of the JCPA because we are opposed to the JCPA entirely.” (Halevy was critical of that position, by the way.)

Question: “Did the recent flare up in Gaza catch you by surprise?”
Answer: “In 2003 I said Israel should enter into a dialogue with Hamas. I have always thought we should negotiate with Hamas. I also say we should dialogue with Iran – although that doesn’t mean they will negotiate with us. By the way, the Saudis are now in a dialogue with Iran. We don’t serve our interest by isolating ourselves. We should have secret negotiations.” Halevy pointed to the example of the British negotiating with the IRA back in the 1980s. “The British denied they were negotiating with the IRA at the same time their Prime Minister was doing exactly that.”
A question about Israeli settlements led to this assessment of the situation: “The US expects they will be frozen. If not, there is a danger that there will be a major break with the US.”
As well, Halevy alluded to the growing gap between Israel and Jewish communities in the Diaspora. He noted that the position of Israeli Consul General in New York has been vacant for 18 months. That position is the “single most important” connection that Israel has with the American Jewish community. The fact that Netanyahu deliberately left it vacant “shows how the Prime Minister (and Netanyahu was still PM when Halevy gave his talk) views the importance of the role of Jewish communities in North America.”
Question: “How is anti-Semitism around the world viewed in Israel?
”
Answer: “If we have a new government the position of Consul General will be filled very quickly. Bennett understands the position of Jewish communities in North America very well. In a very short while we will see a change here. Bennett will attempt to restore the traditional relationship between Israel and the Jews in North America.”

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Israel

Hamas murdered their friend. Now, they help Israeli soldiers to keep his memory alive

David Newman (right): David died helping to save the lives of others who were at the music festival on October 7 when Hamas massacred hundreds of attendees

By VIRGINIA ALLEN (The Daily Signal) David Newman sent a text to a friend the morning of Saturday, Oct. 7. Something terrible had happened. Word quickly spread among Newman’s group of friends, who had known each other since high school.
Newman, 25, had traveled the night before to the music festival in southern Israel, close to the border with the Gaza Strip. It was supposed to be a fun weekend with his girlfriend “celebrating life,” something Newman, who served with the Israel Defense Forces, was good at and loved to do, friend Gidon Hazony recalls.
When Hazony learned that Newman, his longtime friend, was in danger, he and another friend decided they were “going to go down and try and save him.” Trained as a medic and armed with a handgun and bulletproof vest, Hazony started driving south from Jerusalem.
Hazony and his friend ended up joining with other medical personnel and “treated probably around 50 soldiers and civilians in total that day,” Hazony recalls, but they kept trying to make it south to rescue Newman.

But the two “never made it down to the party, and that’s probably for the best,” Hazony says, “because that area was completely taken over by terrorists. And if we had gone down there, I think we would’ve been killed.”
Hazony later learned that Hamas terrorists had murdered Newman on Oct. 7, but not before Newman had saved nearly 300 lives, including the life of his girlfriend.
When the terrorists began their attack on the music festival, many attendees began running to their cars. But Newman and his girlfriend encountered a police officer who warned them to run the opposite direction because the terrorists were near the vehicles, says David Gani, another friend of Newman’s.
Newman “ran in the opposite direction with his girlfriend and whoever else he could kind of corral with him,” Gani explains during an interview on “The Daily Signal Podcast.”
“They saw two industrial garbage cans, big containers, and so David told everyone, ‘Hide, hide in those containers,’” Gani says. “And so what he did over the course of the next few hours is, he would take people and … he was this big guy, and he would just chuck them in that container. And then he would go in, wait, wait till the coast is clear, and then he’d go back out, find more people, put them in there.”
Newman’s actions that day, and the atrocities Hazony and so many others in Israel witnessed Oct. 7, led Hazony, Gani, and several friends to quit their jobs and set up a nonprofit called Soldiers Save Lives. The organization is working to collect tactical and humanitarian aid for the Israel Defense Forces, or IDF.
According to the group’s website, Soldiers Save Lives has supplied over 20 IDF units and civilian response teams “with protective and self-defense gear.”
Gani, board chairman, chief financial officer, and chief technology officer of Soldiers Save Lives, and Hazony, president of the organization, recently traveled to Washington, D.C., to raise support and awareness for their mission to provide IDF troops with needed supplies.
If you would like to find out more about Soldiers Save Lives or donate to them, go to https://www.soldierssavelives.org/
Reprinted with permission.

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Israel

Our New Jewish Reality

Indigo bookstore in Toronto defaced

By HENRY SREBRNIK Since Oct. 7, we Jews have been witnessing an ongoing political and psychological pogrom. True, there have been no deaths (so far), but we’ve seen the very real threat of mobs advocating violence and extensive property damage of Jewish-owned businesses, and all this with little forceful reaction from the authorities.
The very day after the carnage, Canadians awoke to the news that the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust had inspired sustained celebrations in its major cities. And they have continued ever since. I’d go so far as to say the Trudeau government has, objectively, been more interested in preventing harm to Gazans than caring about the atrocities against Israelis and their state.
For diaspora Jews, the attacks of Oct. 7 were not distant overseas events and in this country since then they have inspired anti-Semitism, pure and simple, which any Jew can recognize. Even though it happened in Israel, it brought back the centuries-old memories of defenseless Jews being slaughtered in a vicious pogrom by wild anti-Semites.
I think this has shocked, deeply, most Jews, even those completely “secular” and not all that interested in Judaism, Israel or “Zionism.” Jewish parents, especially, now fear for their children in schools and universities. The statements universities are making to Jewish students across the country could not be clearer: We will not protect you, they all but scream. You’re on your own.
But all this has happened before, as we know from Jewish history. Long before Alfred Dreyfus and Theodor Herzl, the 1881 pogroms in tsarist Russia led to an awakening of proto-Zionist activity there, with an emphasis on the land of Israel. There were soon new Jewish settlements in Palestine.
The average Jew in Canada now knows that his or her friend at a university, his co-worker in an office, and the people he or she socializes with, may in fact approve, or at least not disapprove, of what happened that day in Israel. Acquaintances or even close friends may care far more about Israel killing Palestinians in Gaza. Such people may even believe what we may call “Hamas pogrom denial,” already being spread. Many people have now gone so far in accepting the demonization of Israel and Jews that they see no penalty attached to public expressions of Jew-hatred. Indeed, many academics scream their hatred of Israel and Jews as loud as possible.
One example: On Nov. 10, Toronto officers responded to a call at an Indigo bookstore located in the downtown. It had been defaced with red paint splashed on its windows and the sidewalk, and posters plastered to its windows.
The eleven suspects later arrested claimed that Indigo founder Heather Reisman (who is Jewish) was “funding genocide” because of her financial support of the HESEG Foundation for Lone Soldiers, which provides scholarships to foreign nationals who study in Israel after serving in the Israeli armed forces. By this logic, then, most Jewish properties and organizations could be targeted, since the vast majority of Jews are solidly on Israel’s side.
Were these vandals right-wing thugs or people recently arrived from the Middle East? No, those charged were mostly white middle-class professionals. Among them are figures from academia, the legal community, and the public education sector. Four are academics connected to York University (one of them a former chair of the Sociology Department) and a fifth at the University of Toronto; two are elementary school teachers; another a paralegal at a law firm.
Were their students and colleagues dismayed by this behaviour? On the contrary. Some faculty members, staff and students at the university staged a rally in their support. These revelations have triggered discussions about the role and responsibilities of educators, given their influential positions in society.
You’ve heard the term “quiet quitting.” I think many Jews will withdraw from various clubs and organizations and we will begin to see, in a sense like in the 1930s, a reversal of assimilation, at least in the social sphere. (Of course none of this applies to Orthodox Jews, who already live this way.)
Women in various feminist organizations may form their own groups or join already existing Jewish women’s groups. There may be an increase in attendance in K-12 Jewish schools. In universities, “progressive” Jewish students will have to opt out of organizations whose members, including people they considered friends, have been marching to the slogan “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” and similar eliminationist rhetoric, while waving Palestinian flags.
This will mostly affect Jews on the left, who may be supporters of organizations which have become carriers of anti-Semitism, though ostensibly dealing with “human rights,” “social justice,” and even “climate change.”
Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg took part in a demonstration outside the Israeli Embassy in Stockholm on Oct. 22 in which she chanted “crush Zionism” along with hundreds of other anti-Israel protesters. Israel is now unthinkingly condemned as a genocidal apartheid settler-colonialist state, indeed, the single most malevolent country in the world and the root of all evil.
New York Times Columnist Bret Stephens expressed it well in his Nov. 7 article. “Knowing who our friends aren’t isn’t pleasant, particularly after so many Jews have sought to be personal friends and political allies to people and movements that, as we grieved, turned their backs on us. But it’s also clarifying.”
Henry Srebrnik is a professor of political science at the University of Prince Edward Island in Charlottetown.

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Former Winnipegger Vivian Silver, at first thought to have been taken hostage, has now been confirmed dead

Jewish Post & News file photo

Former Winnipegger and well-known Israeli peace activist Vivian Silver has now been confirmed as having been killed during the massacre of Israelis and foreign nationals perpetrated by Hamas terrorists on October 7. Vivian, a resident of Kibbutz Be’eri was originally thought to be among the more than 1200 individuals who were taken hostage by Hamas.

To read the full story on the CBC website, go to https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/israel-gaza-vivian-silver-1.7027333

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