Connect with us

RSS

Israeli and US Interests on War and Ceasefires Do Not Align

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken disembarks from an aircraft as he arrives in Israel, as the push for a ceasefire between Hamas and Israel continues, in Tel Aviv, March 22, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein

Despite claims to the contrary, a significant divergence between the security interests of Israel and the United States has developed in recent months.

President Joe Biden and his top aides have spent months relentlessly trying to bring Israel and Hamas to a long-term ceasefire via a hostage release agreement and to push for an “end to the war.” Despite the US’ official position, the motivation for this intense effort is broader than a desire to bring the hostages home. The US wants to bring Israel to a ceasefire because it views Gaza as the key to deescalating tensions between Hezbollah and Israel. Washington wants to avert a war that could draw in Hezbollah’s sponsor, Iran, as that conflict could in turn draw the US itself into the fighting.

The White House administration therefore perceives Gaza as the key to regional de-escalation — but that view fails to address Israel’s need to ensure sustained freedom of operation in Gaza to prevent Hamas from regrouping. It also ignores Hezbollah’s massive military-terrorist infrastructure in southern Lebanon and 11-month assault on Israel as well as the alarmingly advanced Iranian nuclear program, which is intended by Tehran to provide a nuclear umbrella to protect the whole of the jihadist Iranian axis.

While the US has played a vital role in coordinating and taking part in defensive operations that have greatly benefited Israel, particularly during the April 14 Iranian missile and UAV attack on Israel, and has played an essential role in supplying Israel with war munitions, it has no desire to be drawn into sustained offensive operations against Iran. It is operating accordingly in line with this strategic agenda.

American efforts are therefore far from fully aligned with Israel’s interests, as they apply a “band-aid” approach that would leave festering threats in place. The ongoing threat from Lebanon would be allowed to continue, and an Israeli military withdrawal from Gaza would all but guarantee a Hamas regrouping and a renewed Iranian-backed force build-up in Gaza.

It is perfectly legitimate for close allies to have divergent interests and to manage these disagreements, but some transparency regarding this situation would be beneficial.

For example, CNN reported on September 5, 2024, that a prospective hostage and ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas was 90% completed, citing senior US administration officials. These statements minimized the large gaps that remain between the two sides and the fact that Hamas continues to demand a full Israeli withdrawal from all of Gaza.

(This essay will not go into the hostage deal proposals themselves, which warrant a separate analysis).

In the same report, a senior Biden administration official stated, “We still see this deal, this very complex but necessary arrangement, as really the most viable, perhaps the only viable option for saving the lives of the hostages, stopping the war, bringing immediate relief to Gazans, and also making sure we fully account for Israel’s security.”

On September 1, The Washington Post cited a US official as stating, “You can’t keep negotiating this. This process has to be called at some point.”

The US fears that a failure to reach a ceasefire in Gaza will tip the Lebanese arena into full-scale war, which in turn could activate Iran via missile and drone attacks. This series of events could draw the US into the conflict. US bases in Iraq, Syria, and elsewhere are vulnerable to attack by Iran and its proxies, and a Middle Eastern war involving the US military is deemed by Washington to be a political negative (whether it is an election year or not).

This concern is likely a primary motivator for US policy in the region, and a significant reason behind American impatience over the stalled talks.

In a reflection of this motivation, American officials have released statements at almost every step of the war in Gaza designed to cast doubt on Israel’s ability to deal with Hamas, as well as Israel’s ability to militarily take on Hezbollah.

For example, US officials were quoted by CNN on June 20 as expressing “serious concerns” that in the event of a full-blown war between Israel and Hezbollah, the latter could overwhelm Israel’s air defenses in the north. “We assess that at least some Iron Dome batteries will be overwhelmed,” said a senior administration official.

This assessment is largely self-evident and not in serious dispute. There appears to be no purpose to its release to the public by American officials other than the overall goal of pressuring Israel into a Gaza ceasefire.

In May, the IDF announced that it had succeeded in evacuating around a million Palestinians from Rafah. This was despite a major American pressure campaign designed to avert the Rafah operation that included the withholding of American arms shipments to Israel (including 2,000-pound bombs, which affects Israel’s posture against Hezbollah).

On May 12, CNN reported that top American officials “offered stark warnings” against an Israeli invasion of Rafah, predicting that a major ground offensive in the southern Gaza city “would lead to widespread civilian casualties, spark a Hamas insurgency and create a power vacuum the terror group would later seek to fill.”

Going “headlong into Rafah” could have dire consequences, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned prior to the offensive. “Israel’s on the trajectory, potentially, to inherit an insurgency with many armed Hamas left, or, if it leaves, a vacuum filled by chaos, filled by anarchy and probably refilled by Hamas,” Blinken told NBC at the time. White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan also warned at the time that the Israeli operation would lead to “really significant civilian casualties” while still being unlikely to eliminate Hamas. President Biden issued similar warnings prior to the Rafah operation.

Yet the extreme consequences they warned about failed to materialize due to Israel’s ability to evacuate the Gazan population from Rafah. And in any case, how leaving Hamas intact in Rafah would have solved the concerns raised by the US remains unclear.

The goal behind all these statements appears to have been the same: to create pressure on Israel to enter into a ceasefire, even if that meant leaving Hamas in power in Gaza.

Washington is taking a similar approach to the northern front. On June 28, US defense officials were quoted by Middle East Eye as stating that an Israeli ground offensive against Hezbollah in Lebanon could “further ignite Iran’s allies in the region and cement Tehran’s military cooperation with Russia.”

It is, however, possible to argue that the US’ own attempt to contain Iran has emboldened it and the IRGC’s region-wide terror-promoting elements, thereby also boosting Iran’s ally, Russia, which has become deeply dependent on Iranian firepower in its war against Ukraine.

Meanwhile, in Lebanon, the US has been involved in a series of failed efforts, led by mediator Amos Hochstein, involving talks with the formal Lebanese government (which holds no power whatsoever over Hezbollah). The goal is to create a diplomatic off-ramp for the northern conflict. Yet none of these efforts contain any clear proposed enforcement mechanism of UN Security Resolution 1701, which bans Hezbollah from being militarily active in southern Lebanon.

UN Security Resolution 1701 allegedly came into effect upon the conclusion of the 2006 Second Lebanon War. Yet Hezbollah spent the intervening 18 years turning some 200 southern Lebanese villages into Iranian-backed military-terror bases and building up a firepower arsenal larger than that of most NATO armies. It did this with no pushback from the UN whatsoever and no attempts to enforce the resolution.

For months, American officials have expressed alarm over prospects of full-scale war with Hezbollah and leaked assessments that cast doubt on Israel’s capabilities, similar to American assessments of IDF capabilities in Gaza.

As long ago as January 7, The Washington Post reported that “Israel’s talk of expanding war to Lebanon alarms [the] US.” The report contained references to “an American intelligence assessment” that found that it would be “difficult for Israel to succeed in a war against Hezbollah amid ongoing fighting in Gaza.” The target audience of those reports could well have been the Israeli public itself.

More recently, an American official was quoted by Israeli journalist Barak Ravid as saying that a full-scale war between Israel and Hezbollah could have “catastrophic and unforeseen consequences,” as Israel would need to shift growing numbers of military units from the Gaza front to the Lebanese border and Hezbollah would continue to bombard northern Israel and keep 60,000 Israelis internally displaced.

While an open discussion about the dangers of a full-scale war against Hezbollah and potentially Iran is welcome, there is little reason to continue to pretend that American and Israeli security interests in the Middle East are identical. The US long ago decided to seek de-escalation as its primary goal. Israelis should think twice before automatically accepting the claim that Washington’s regional agenda and public statements always promote Israel’s own critical security needs.

Yaakov Lappin is an Israel-based military affairs correspondent and analyst. He provides insight and analysis for a number of media outlets, including Jane’s Defense Weekly and JNS.org.A version of this article was originally published by The BESA Center.

The post Israeli and US Interests on War and Ceasefires Do Not Align first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

Post Views: 411
Related Topics:
Continue Reading

RSS

The BBC Documentary That Paints Every Israeli as an Extremist

The Jewish community of Beit El in Judea and Samaria. Photo: Yaakov via Wikimedia Commons.

Louis Theroux first visited the West Bank in 2011 to film a documentary titled Louis and the Ultra-Zionists, part of his long-running series for the BBC. Back then, he at least seemed to possess a trace of journalistic curiosity. Even the title signaled a degree of editorial caution — framing his subjects as a small, ideological fringe rather than representative of Israeli society as a whole.

At the time, Theroux made an effort to clarify that he was profiling a narrow segment of Israelis. He showed legally purchased Jewish homes (sold by Arab landowners, no less) and acknowledged the regular — and at times deadly — terror attacks faced by Israeli civilians living in the area, often requiring military protection. There was condescension, certainly. But there was also context.

Fast-forward to 2024, and the curiosity is gone — though the bemused, slightly smug expression remains. His new BBC documentary, Louis and the Settlers, drops even the soft qualifiers. No “ultra.” No nuance. Just “settlers.” And with that, Theroux makes it clear: half a million Israelis living in the West Bank are one and the same — extremists who, we’re told, want every last Palestinian removed from the land.

This time, the documentary doesn’t begin with questions. It begins with conclusions. And Theroux uses a brief, unrepresentative snapshot of life in the West Bank to draw sweeping indictments of the entire Israeli state.

The message is unmistakable: Israel is the problem. Settlers are the villains. And Palestinians are passive, blameless victims of a colonial project.

Within the opening minutes, Theroux plants his ideological flag. He refers to the West Bank as “Palestinian territory” and describes every Israeli community within it as illegal under international law — a sharp departure from his more qualified approach 14 years earlier.

And while his personal views seep in throughout the film, they become crystal clear during one exchange at a checkpoint, where an Israeli soldier casually refers to their location as “Israel.” Theroux shoots back: “We’re not in Israel, are we?”

And just like that, the BBC and Louis Theroux have redrawn Israel’s borders. No Knesset debate needed.

Erasing History to Blame the Massacre

The timing of this return trip is no accident. The film comes in the shadow of the October 7 Hamas massacres — the day 1,200 Israelis were slaughtered, families were burned alive in their homes, and children were dragged into Gaza. And yet, Theroux barely mentions it.

The few passing references to October 7 serve not to inform the audience — but to imply that Israel may be exploiting its own dead to justify further expansion. It’s not an investigation. It’s an accusation. And it allows him to skip over thousands of years of Jewish history in order to frame the current war in Gaza as a convenient cover story for Israeli “aggression.”

Take Hebron, for example. Theroux tells viewers that “in 1968, the year after [the West Bank] was occupied by Israel, a community of Jewish settlers moved in illegally. They now number some 700.” He fails to mention that in 1895 — decades before the modern state of Israel existed — Hebron had a Jewish population of 1,429.

Jews have lived in Hebron since antiquity — it’s where, according to Jewish tradition, Abraham purchased the Cave of the Patriarchs. Modern records date the community back centuries, despite discrimination under Ottoman rule and bans on Jewish prayer at holy sites. In 1929, Arab rioters carried out a massacre, wiping out Hebron’s Jewish population. Dozens were murdered; the rest were expelled. Under Jordanian rule from 1948 to 1967, Jews were banned from the city entirely. When they returned after the Six-Day War — not as colonists, but as a displaced community coming home — Theroux picks up the story there and calls it “illegal.”

On the Six-Day War itself, Theroux offers no context. No mention of the Arab armies preparing to destroy Israel. No mention of Israel’s preemptive strike against an existential threat.

According to The Settlers, Israel simply “occupied” — full stop.

Palestinian Terrorism? Not Even a Footnote.

Theroux visits Evyatar, a small Jewish community near the Palestinian town of Beita, and uses it as a stand-in for the entire West Bank. Beita is depicted as a symbol of peaceful resistance: a proud, ancient Palestinian village standing firm against violent settlers backed by IDF soldiers.

It’s a neat story. Too neat. Because missing from the story are years of organized, violent riots from Beita — complete with Molotov cocktails, burning Stars of David, and Nazi swastikas. All carefully omitted to preserve the narrative: Palestinians peaceful, settlers aggressive. Facts that don’t fit? Left on the cutting room floor.

Meanwhile, Israeli nationalism is treated as something sinister and unsettling — a moral aberration to be examined. The notion that Jews might want sovereignty or security is met with thinly veiled suspicion. Yet Hamas’ goal of a Jew-free Palestine, explicitly laid out in its charter, is never mentioned. Nor is the Palestinian Authority’s “pay-for-slay” policy, which literally incentivizes terrorism by rewarding those who murder Israelis — including women and children.

These aren’t fringe details. They’re central to understanding the region. And Theroux knows it. He just doesn’t care.

The BBC’s Complicity

That The Settlers aired on the BBC — a publicly funded broadcaster once seen as a gold standard of global journalism — says plenty. Not just about Louis Theroux’s agenda, but about the institutional direction of the BBC itself. This wasn’t a rogue filmmaker sneaking bias past the editors. This was bias built into the foundation — signed off, packaged, and broadcast under the banner of credibility.

There is, of course, no problem with scrutinizing Israeli policy, and no issue with questioning the settlement enterprise or highlighting the tensions in the West Bank. But journalism — real journalism — demands context. It demands precision. It demands at least a passing familiarity with the full scope of the story.

Theroux offers none of that. He arrives with a predetermined script and casts his roles accordingly: Hero. Villain. Victim. Oppressor. And when reality refuses to cooperate? It’s left out.

Louis Theroux didn’t return to Israel to understand it. He returned to flatten it. To reduce its complexity to a morality play — and to ensure everyone knows the antagonist is.

The Settlers isn’t a documentary. It’s a hit piece. And the BBC handed him the camera — then applauded the performance.

The author is a contributor to HonestReporting, a Jerusalem-based media watchdog with a focus on antisemitism and anti-Israel bias — where a version of this article first appeared.

The post The BBC Documentary That Paints Every Israeli as an Extremist first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

Post Views: 21
Continue Reading

RSS

Indian Army Kills Islamist Terrorist Linked to 2002 Murder of Jewish-American Journalist Daniel Pearl

Jewish-American Wall Street Journal journalist Daniel Pearl was kidnapped and murdered by Islamist terrorists in Pakistan in 2002. Photo: Screenshot

The Indian government announced on Thursday that its military forces had killed “Pakistan’s most wanted terrorist,” who was connected to the 2002 murder of Jewish-American Wall Street Journal journalist Daniel Pearl.

On Wednesday, India launched “Operation Sindoor,” which the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) claims is targeted at dismantling “terrorist infrastructure” in Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir.

The operation came after Pakistani terrorists killed 26 Hindu tourists in Kashmir last month amid escalating tensions between the two countries.

In a post on X, the BJP confirmed that during this week’s operation, the Indian army killed Islamist terrorist Abdul Rauf Azhar, who was involved in numerous terrorism plots, including the 1999 hijacking of an Indian Airlines flight, the 2001 terror attack on the Indian Parliament, and the 2016 Pathankot Air Force base attack.

Azhar’s involvement in the 1999 hijacking led to the release of Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, a British-born al-Qaeda member with close ties to Pakistan’s intelligence services, who later was involved in the kidnapping and subsequent murder of 38-year-old Pearl, who was covering the war on terror as a journalist when he was abducted.

In a statement on X, Pearl’s father, Judea, addressed initial reports regarding Azhar’s death and his connection to his son’s murder.

“I want to clarify: Azhar was a Pakistani extremist and leader of the terrorist organization Jaish-e-Mohammed. While his group was not directly involved in the plot to abduct Danny, it was indirectly responsible. Azhar orchestrated the hijacking that led to the release of Omar Sheikh — the man who lured Danny into captivity,” he said.

In 2002, the Jewish-American journalist was abducted and killed by a group of Islamist terrorists connected to Azhar’s militant network, which had ties to al-Qaeda and Jaish-e-Mohammed, a terror group aiming to separate Kashmir from India and incorporate it into Pakistan.

On Jan. 27, 2002, an email was sent to several Pakistani and US media organizations, which included several photos, stating that Pearl was being held in “inhumane” conditions to protest the US treatment of Taliban and al Qaeda prisoners in Cuba. Photo: Screenshot

Originally stationed in New Delhi as the South Asia bureau chief for The Wall Street Journal, Pearl later moved to Pakistan to investigate terrorism following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in New York City.

After kidnapping Pearl at a restaurant in Karachi, southern Pakistan, the Islamist terrorists, who identified themselves as the National Movement for the Restoration of Pakistani Sovereignty, accused him of being an Israeli spy and sent the United States a list of demands for his release.

However, Washington did not meet their demands, and Pearl was ultimately executed after being held captive for five weeks.

His wife, Mariane Pearl, gave birth to a baby boy, Adam D. Pearl, in Paris later that year. On the Daniel Pearl Foundation website, she said, “Adam’s birth rekindles the joy, love, and humanity that Danny radiated wherever he went.”

The post Indian Army Kills Islamist Terrorist Linked to 2002 Murder of Jewish-American Journalist Daniel Pearl first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

Post Views: 30
Continue Reading

RSS

Jewish Jewelry Shop Owners Brutally Assaulted in Tunisia Days Before Annual Pilgrimage

A Jewish jewelry shop owner in Djerba, Tunisia, was brutally attacked by a man wielding a machete. Photo: Screenshot

A Jewish jewelry shop owner in Djerba, Tunisia, was brutally attacked by a man wielding a machete just days before the Tunisian island was set to host its annual Jewish pilgrimage, which is expected to draw thousands of visitors.

On Wednesday morning, two Jewish men — owners of a jewelry shop in the center of the island, located off Tunisia’s southeast coast — were physically assaulted by a man carrying a large knife.

Although the attack was halted when one of them screamed — alerting members of the local Jewish community who subdued the assailant — one of them was left severely injured.

According to local media reports, the attacker had surveyed the island the day before, visiting several stores to identify those owned by Jews. Local police arrested him shortly following the assault.

After the attack, one of the owners was admitted to the hospital with severe injuries. The 50-year-old Jewish man had his fingers severed during the assault and underwent surgery to reattach them.

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar condemned the attack and expressed his wishes for a swift recovery to the victims.

“This attack comes two years after the previous deadly assault that claimed Jewish lives and the lives of security personnel during the Lag BaOmer celebration,” the top Israeli diplomat wrote in a post on X.

“I call on the Tunisian authorities to take all necessary measures to protect the Jewish community,” Saar continued.

Djerba is home to the majority of Tunisia’s Jewish community, numbering about 2,000 people, and is also where the renowned El Ghriba Synagogue, one of North Africa’s oldest synagogues, is located.

The attack comes just a week before Jewish pilgrims are expected to arrive on the island for the Lag B’Omer holiday, when thousands gather annually for three days of festivities. The annual pilgrimage to El Ghriba Synagogue, scheduled for May 15 and 16 this year, draws visitors from around the world.

The synagogue has been targeted in multiple terrorist attacks over the years, including in 1985, 2002, and 2023.

Two years ago, a shooting at the synagogue claimed the lives of two Jewish cousins and three police officers. Aviel Hadad, a 30-year-old Israeli goldsmith, and Ben Hadad, a 42-year-old Frenchman who had traveled to join the festivities, were among the victims.

The post Jewish Jewelry Shop Owners Brutally Assaulted in Tunisia Days Before Annual Pilgrimage first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

Post Views: 25
Continue Reading

Copyright © 2017 - 2023 Jewish Post & News