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ISRANET DAILY BRIEFING ARCHIVE Volume
VIII, No. 1,895 • TURKEY TURKISH REGRESS Turkey’s soccer team scored three goals in the last 15 minutes against the Czechs the other night to make the quarterfinals of the European championship. Now if only miracles happened in Turkish politics. The country needs one to get out of its latest self-inflicted crisis. For the second time in a year, a clash between the old secular establishment and an elected government with roots in Islam has split and paralyzed Turkey. Tensions look bound to escalate, putting the Muslim world’s strongest democracy in peril. The current fight is ostensibly over Islam and its most potent symbol, the headscarf. But that’s a proxy for a broader struggle over political power. The so-called secularists have run the place since Kemal Atatürk founded modern Turkey through their control of the military, state bureaucracy and schools, and the courts. But in this century, the ruling Justice and Development Party, AKP, has claimed the votes and the reform credentials. Now the Kemalists have the AKP on a back foot. In coming weeks, Turkey’s highest court will—barring the miracle—outlaw the AKP for “anti-secular activities.” The court tipped its hand recently by striking down an AKP-backed law to lift the prohibition against women wearing headscarves at public universities. The law led a Kemalist prosecutor to bring the case against the AKP in the first place. Seventy-one politicians, including Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, also face a five-year ban from belonging to any party. Such a decision would undo the outcome of last summer’s elections. The AKP won 47% of the vote, a landslide by Turkish standards. Other consequences are harder to predict, but none is welcome. Turkey’s negotiations on membership with the European Union, along with its modernization drive, would be put on hold—again. Political infighting has already stalled reform, and Turkey would be consumed for many more months with sorting out who should run the government. A ban on Mr. Erdogan’s party would amount to a judicial coup. It’s also perfectly legal. Under the 1982 constitution, the courts can outlaw parties and have done so on nearly two dozen occasions. The secular elite says the military and the courts are the only checks and balances Turkish democracy has against an AKP with a wide majority in Parliament and its own man in the presidency. Never mind that the AKP won those offices fair and square. The crux of the secular case against the AKP has always been a hypothetical fear that its secret agenda is to Islamize Turkey. If women are allowed to wear headscarves at university, goes the oft-heard argument, all women will soon be forced to wear them everywhere. Stories are told of AKP mayors who outlaw alcohol or force girls to cover their hair. Some Turkish Islamists can be as pushy in telling women how to dress modestly as some secularists can be in telling them not to. Yet these tend to be isolated incidents, and the AKP’s record in power tells a wholly different story. In his first term in office, Mr. Erdogan did more than any Turkish leader in the past two decades to strengthen democractic institutions and open up the economy. Minority rights, especially for the Kurds, were expanded. So were civil liberties. Turkey’s economy flourished. Membership talks started with the EU. Critics say the AKP is aggressive and intolerant. If anything, the party has been so obliging of the opposition that its reform efforts have suffered. In deference to the secularists, Mr. Erdogan backed off on plans to decriminalize certain political speech and liberalize the law on political parties to make it harder to ban them. In the headscarf case, the AKP moved only at the behest of the secular Nationalist Movement Party, or MHP. The MHP, naturally, isn’t in the high court facing a ban. In retrospect, Mr. Erdogan may have walked into a trap. This supposedly overbearing Prime Minister these days looks weak. The AKP’s rise reflects that of a new elite in a fast-changing Turkey. Its supporters tend to hail from blue-collar families, from the rural areas as well as the lower-class suburbs that rose around Istanbul and other cities in recent decades. They tend to work in the booming private sector. They also tend to be more socially and culturally conservative. The urban, educated secular establishment is a minority that finds this emerging reality discomfiting. They don’t trust ordinary Turks to make up their own minds about whom to vote for, and claim to know what’s better for them. Here’s an irony. Through their actions these past few months, the secularists are now the leading opponents of the West and pose a threat to secularism itself. Under the AKP, Turkey was moving at a dizzying pace to try to reconcile Islam and democracy, turning away from the mildly authoritarian precepts of Kemalism toward Western liberalism. In the Turkish context, that would mean keeping Islam and politics separate while giving Turks greater space to practice their religion (or not). The job was imperfectly and barely half done. Now that modernization drive, watched closely across the Muslim world, has been stopped cold. The next neo-Islamist Turkish government may not be as eager to liberalize as this one has been. TURKISH
COURT CALLS RULING PARTY CONSTITUTIONAL Turkey’s governing party narrowly missed being banned in a court ruling on Wednesday that relieved months of pressure in the country and handed a victory to the party’s leader, a former Islamist. The party, Justice and Development, or AKP, as it is known in Turkish, was kept alive by just one vote—six members of Turkey’s Constitutional Court voted to close it for violating the country’s secular principles, but seven were required. A ban would have brought down the government, forcing elections for the second time in a year and pitching Turkey into political chaos. “A great uncertainty blocking Turkey’s future has been lifted,” said Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the leader of the party, speaking in Ankara, the capital. The court case was the culmination of an epic battle between the country’s secular establishment—a powerful coterie of judges and generals that has deposed elected governments four times in Turkish history—and Mr. Erdogan, a broadly popular politician whose supporters say that his past as a political Islamist is firmly behind him. And while the ruling was widely viewed as a victory for Mr. Erdogan, and in turn for Turkish democracy, the court reined the party in, imposing a strong but not fatal sanction to cut its public financing in half and issuing a “serious warning” that it was steering the country in too Islamic a direction. Legislation pressed by the party that would have allowed women in head scarves to attend universities, for example, raised suspicions about its agenda. “AKP is on probation,” said Soli Ozel, a professor of international relations at Bilgi University in Istanbul. “The court clearly said it sees the party as a focal institution for Islamizing the country.” Still, by overcoming the case, which accused the party of trying to bring Islamic rule to Turkey, the party and its supporters have prevailed against the country’s staunchly secular old guard, which has steered the country from behind the scenes since Turkey’s founding by Ataturk in 1923. The ruling releases the political deadlock that had paralyzed politics in Turkey since March, when the case was filed, and seems to have softened the sharp polarization that had formed between parts of Turkish society—those who want a more openly religious society and those who fear that too much space for Islam will end up curbing secular lifestyles. In a live news conference interrupted by jubilant supporters, Mr. Erdogan said his party had “never been the focus of antisecular activities,” and pledged that it would “continue to protect the fundamental principles of our republic also in the future.” Turkey is overwhelmingly Muslim, but its system of government is secular. While the case against the AKP was broadly criticized as weak, secular Turks still worry that the party, with its control of Parliament, the presidency and the government, has too much leeway to impose policies that appeal to its socially conservative base. But the ruling seemed to have something for everyone, clearing the air politically and allowing even Turkey’s most adamant secularists to claim it as a victory. “AKP can no longer continue with its previous line in politics,” said Onur Oymen, the deputy chairman of the secular opposition Republican People’s Party. “They have been granted a chance. In order to make the best of it, they need to go through some serious self-critique.” There appear to be no practical implications for the party aside from the cut in financing, which is expected to be made up from other sources in the party’s vast middle- and upper-class network of supporters. The ruling opens a new opportunity for Mr. Erdogan to reach out to liberal Turks, who oppose the secular elite but resented his legislation on the head scarves. They felt that he had abandoned other liberal issues like freedom of speech. “They can no longer afford to act single-handedly,” said Ersin Kalaycioglu, political science professor of Sabanci University in Istanbul, who compared the party to a soccer player “with a yellow card to be expelled from the game after one more mistake.” The ruling was an “elegant solution,” said Soner Cagaptay, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, who used a metaphor to describe its effect: “If the AKP was a river that has overflown its banks, the court has set up embankments, forcing it back into its bed. It has not put a dam in front of it.” The ruling came at a time of great tension in the country. A bomb attack had killed 17 people in Istanbul just three days before, and a ban of the party and its senior members would have brought great instability. On Wednesday, the Istanbul police detained nine people in connection with the blast, Turkey’s state-run Anatolian News Agency reported. “The judges must have judged that the consequences of closure would have been intolerable for the country,” Mr. Ozel said. A government official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the party had taken the ruling to heart. “A new period is ahead,” the official said. “The self-critique following the verdict,” he said, “will be seen in our actions, not in words.” Turkey is trying to gain membership in the European Union, and its chances could have been dented if the party was closed. “There is a great sense of relief among the Europeans,” said Joost Lagendijk, a member of the European Parliament who works on matters regarding Turkey. The case has paralleled another sensational legal proceeding—the prosecution of 86 people, including writers, members of civic organizations and former military officers who are charged with plotting to overthrow the government—and many in Turkey saw the effects of that case in the ruling on Wednesday. The case, referred to as Ergenekon, the name of the ultranationalist organization the people belong to, is one of the first public accountings of the darker side of Turkey’s deep state. Baskin Oran, a professor of international relations at Ankara University, said the ruling was a sign that Turkey’s judiciary, long believed to be well in the sphere of the secular establishment, seemed to have broken ranks. “Everybody is very happy with this decision,” he said. “Otherwise it would have created a hell of a situation for Turkey.” For another perspective of the situation in Lebanon, please read Roger Cohen’s analysis. Volume
VIII, No. 1,894 • WEDNESDAY’S “NEWS IN REVIEW” ROUND-UP WEEKLY QUOTES
“I have decided I won't run in the Kadima movement primaries, nor do I intend to intervene in the elections. When a new [Kadima party] chairman is chosen, I will resign as prime minister to permit them to put together a new government swiftly and effectively.”—Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, announcing that he will not seek re-election, in an official statement to the public from his official residence in Jerusalem on Wednesday evening. Kadima's primary is scheduled for September 17; the winner will have until October 26 to submit his new government for approval by President Shimon Peres. In case the elected leader fails, the president customarily grants another 90 days to form a government; after the 90 days are through, in case no coalition is formed, a general election is scheduled, thus potentially allowing Olmert to remain in power until March 2009. According to a Channel 10 poll, 36 per cent of Israelis back the Likud’s Benjamin Netanyahu as Prime Minister; FM Tzipi Livni garnered 24.6 percent. (Ha’aretz, Jerusalem Post, July 30) “I purposely am not setting deadlines [for the negotiations with the Palestinians], because I think that's very bad. I very much don't want to be in the same situation that Ehud Barak was in at Camp David [at] the end of an American administration finishing its term and trying to put pressure on everyone to bridge gaps that cannot be bridged.”—Tzipi Livni, speaking at a Kadima rally in Jerusalem, expressing concern about PM Olmert’s reported intention to draft an interim agreement with the PA before the end of President Bush’s term. Kadima officials speculated that the reason Livni was so adamant in blocking the drafting of such a document was that she was afraid that if the concessions she has already agreed to were revealed before the mid-September Kadima race, she could lose support to her chief rival, Transportation Minister Shaul Mofaz. (Jer. Post, July 28) “The big powers are going down…. They have come to the end of their power, and the world is on the verge of entering a new, promising era…. The rich and powerful countries continue to exercise an inordinate influence in determining the nature and direction of international relations, including economic and trade relations, many of which are at the expense of developing countries.”—Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, speaking at the Non-Aligned Movement meeting in Teheran as Iran assumed chairmanship of the group. The NAM counts among its member-states Cuba, India, Jamaica, North Korea, Pakistan, “Palestine”, and Malaysia. Ahmadinejad also blamed the U.S. and other states for global problems such as nuclear proliferation and AIDS, and reminded NAM members that “if the United Nations and the Security Council…were supposed to deal with the problems of the world…we would not have a problem called Palestine.” (Washington Post, July 29) “We are all united in the view that Iran needs to be prevented from obtaining a nuclear weapon. There is no doubt that all diplomatic activity and sanctions are preferable, but we all understand—we and the Americans—that we need to prepare all options… We are witnessing, I believe, a paradigmatic change in the Middle East in which radical countries and elements are trying to [install] a new order to replace the traditional national, secular one that exists today.”—Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi, in Washington, explaining that Israel would not rule out any course of action regarding Iran’s nuclear ambitions. The IDF chief warned that it was crucial to block “Iranian aggression” in the Middle East, “which [may] in turn weaken the radicalization process in the region presently being manifested in such places as Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon and in the Palestinian territories.” (Ha’aretz, July 24) “The amount of missiles possessed by Hezbollah was doubled and even tripled, and their range was extended significantly… [Hezbollah’s violations] verge on changing Lebanon’s precarious political equilibrium, which Israel sees as a real and serious danger.”—Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak, briefing U.S. Vice President Cheney on his upcoming address to UN Secretary General Ban. UN Resolution 1701 that ended the Second Lebanon War has enabled Iran’s Lebanese terror proxy to present “real and serious danger” for Israel. One of his aides explained, “We have to admit it simply isn’t working.” (New York Sun, July 30) “‘He looked like a man in a hurry,’ a source close to Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said last week. ‘He was not interested in what we had to say.’ Still, many Iraqis liked Obama’s claim that the improved situation in Iraq owed to Iraqi efforts rather than the Gen. David Petraeus-led surge. In public and private comments, Obama tried to give the impression that the Iraqis would’ve achieved the same results even without the greater resources America has poured into the country since 2007.… “Iraqis were most surprised by Obama’s apparent readiness to throw away all the gains made in Iraq simply to prove that he’d been right in opposing the 2003 overthrow of Saddam Hussein. ‘He gave us the impression that the last thing he wanted was for Iraq to look anything like a success for the United States,’ a senior Iraqi official told me. ‘As far as he is concerned, this is Bush’s war and must end in lack of success, if not actual defeat.’… “In Paris, a friendly reporter asked the Illinois senator if there was anything that he’d heard or seen during his visit that might persuade him to alter any aspect of his polices. Obama’s answer was clear: no.”—Amir Taheri, New York Post columnist, commenting on Senator Barack Obama’s recent trip to the Middle East and Europe. (New York Post, July 29) SHORT TAKES TERRORIST BOMBINGS IN INDIA, TURKEY—(New Delhi) A series of explosions in India has left at least forty-five people dead and hundreds wounded. A little-known group calling itself Indian Mujahedeen, claimed responsibility, and thirty of its members have been detained by police. The next day in Turkey, two bombs exploded within minutes of each other in a crowded square in Istanbul, leaving fifteen dead and one hundred fifty-four wounded, in what the governor said is undoubtedly “a terror attack.” (New York Times, July 27; Globe and Mail, July 28) HAMAS FORCES EGYPT TO OPEN BORDER—(Gaza) Hamas exerted pressure on Egypt to open the Rafah border crossing to enable a dying Palestinian woman to receive medical treatment in Cairo. They exploited the celebrity of Miriam Farhat, who gained notoriety as “Mother of Martyrs” after a 2002 video encouraging her son to kill as many Jews as possible. Her son Muhammed killed five and wounded twenty-three before being shot dead, while another son was killed while preparing an attack the year after, and a third died in an IAF raid two years later. (Jerusalem Post, July 24) HEZBOLLAH RECRUITING SUNNIS—(Southern Lebanon) Hezbollah is recruiting members for “resistance battalions” in three Southern Lebanese Sunni villages opposite the Shaba Farms region in Northern Israel. Support for the Shi’ite terrorist group has wavered in the area and the new recruiting drive is an attempt to gain political dominance over the Sunni-backed Future Movement political party. The support of the three villages is important to Hezbollah, as it gives them a potential platform from which to launch attacks into Shaba Farms. (Jerusalem Post, July 25) IRANIAN REVOLUTIONARY GUARD CONVOY EXPLODES—(Teheran) The Iranian military convoy mysteriously attacked last week was delivering a load of military equipment destined for the Hezbollah terrorist group, western officials told the London Daily Telegraph. The resultant explosion, which occurred near an Iranian Revolutionary Guards’ munitions depot in a Teheran suburb left fifteen people dead and resulted in an Iranian media black-out. (Ha’aretz, July 25) REPORT: UK MUSLIM STUDENTS JIHAD—(London) Britain’s Center for Social Cohesion released “Islam on Campus: A Survey of UK Student Opinion”, a report that found thirty-two per cent of the country’s Muslim students believe killing in the name of religion could be justified, and nearly twice that among students active in Islamic societies on campuses. (Jerusalem Post, July 28) PALESTINIAN IN-FIGHTING INTENSIFIES—(Gaza) Two new human rights groups’ reports of the conditions in Palestinian detention centres indicate rising instances of torture. Al Haq director Shawan Jabarin estimates that twenty to thirty per cent of the two thousand detainees suffered torture over the past year, four of whom died, and many of whom were arrested arbitrarily. Human Rights Watch’s Fred Abrams emphasised the culpability of both Hamas and Fatah, that and the international community should scrutinize its eight-billion-dollar Fatah support in the West Bank. The timing of the reports is crucial, as factional conflict has re-ignited in the Gaza Strip. Following an explosion blamed on Fatah that killed five Hamas terrorists and a young child, Hamas forces have arrested over three hundred Fatah supporters in the Strip, their offices raided and closed. Fatah, denying responsibility for the bomb, for its part, has arrested over fifty Hamas members in the West Bank. (Jer. Post, National Post, July 28; New York Times, July 29) MUSLIMS THREATEN CHRISTIANS—(Gaza) Christians are facing increased threats from Muslim fundamentalists in the Middle East. The most recent attack, a bombing outside a Christian café in Gaza City Friday, left one man dead. That same café has been targeted twice in the past year, as have other Christian institutions in Gaza. In May, a bomb detonated outside a Christian school that had been ransacked one year before along with the adjoining convent. A Palestinian Christian activist was murdered in October after receiving several death threats. There are thirty-two hundred Christians living in Gaza. Meanwhile, 800,000 Christians have been forced to flee Iraq since the war began, where civilian-manned checkpoints to Christian villages have been officially granted the use of heavy machine guns and rifles. (Ha’aretz, July 25; New York Sun, July 28) NEVER HAVING TO SAY YOU’RE SORRY—(Baghdad) Two years ago, Rep. John Murtha (D-Penn) accused Marines of “murder” following the deaths of twenty four Iraqi civilians in Haditha. Eager to expose the supposed atrocities of American troops, anti-war crusaders in the media egged him on. On June 17, however, a military judge dismissed the charges against Lt. Col. Jeffrey Chessani. Five other Marines had already had their charges dropped and another had been acquitted by a jury. Of the eight Marines originally involved in the case, only one continues to await prosecution. While his fate remains uncertain, one thing is guaranteed: Murtha and his media cheerleaders will not apologize to any of the men they have smeared. (National Review, July 14) CHUTZPAH IN DACHAU—(Dachau) The Bavarian town of Dachau, site of the first Nazi concentration camp in 1933, is seeking to twin itself with an Israeli community. Dachau Mayor Peter Burgel has already begun networking with Israeli officials. Burgel told Germany’s Welt am Sontag: “It will surely be of Dachau’s interest to find a twin town in Israel, but one must prepare such ground with utmost sensitivity.” A previous proposal to change the town’s name was rejected as an attempt to “erase history” by a far-right town council member. Thus far, one of the only cities to twin with Dachau has been Klagenfurt, Austria, whose elected representative is far-right politician Joerg Haider. (Jewish Tribune, July 10) Volume
VIII, No. 1,893 • ISRAEL POLITICS POST-OLMERT: A NEW ERA OR MORE
OF THE SAME? That Ehud Olmert may remain at the helm for a few additional months, making life and death decisions at such a crucial time in our history, is utterly scandalous. But thank heaven, the most disastrous government Israel has ever experienced is now approaching its end. Had Olmert behaved honorably and resigned after the failed Second Lebanon War, he would have retained a modicum of dignity. Now he will depart in utter disgrace. Our next objective must be to ensure that the shameful era of corruption, incompetence and erosion of democratic procedures we have undergone is not resurrected six months after a new regime has been established. We must acknowledge that corruption is not merely a consequence of unethical or dishonest individuals achieving power. It is equally a by-product of a flawed system lacking governance. The greatest destabilizing factor has been the proportional representational system inflicted upon us by our Zionist founding fathers. Theoretically it implied pure democracy, but in practice it encouraged the emergence of one-dimensional minority groups able to undemocratically leverage their demands to the detriment of the nation. It also led to the centralization of power, with party hierarchies rather than electors determining whether individual political candidates were to be rewarded or punished. This inherent weakness of the system was concealed during the early years of the state because the leaders then were overwhelmingly idealistic and dedicated Zionists and would never contemplate promoting their personal agendas above the welfare of the nation.… The most serious breakdown occurred at the outset of the Oslo era when, desperate to obtain a Knesset majority, Rabin shamelessly bribed corrupt opposition members, including Gonen Segev, who was appointed a minister but subsequently convicted of a drug-related felony. From that point onward, in the absence of checks and balances and transparency, politicians began openly promoting their personal interests. … [Later, p]ublic morality collapsed. Omri Sharon recruited criminal elements to provide support for his faction in the Likud central committee. Avram Burg was obliged to step down as leader of the Labor Party after it was disclosed that more Arab Israelis voted for him than were even registered on the Labor list. When Ariel Sharon became prime minister, he introduced an authoritarian regime undermining the status of the Knesset and displaying contempt for the democratic process by overriding a Likud referendum—which he himself had initiated—opposing his disengagement policies. He also bypassed the government and destroyed his own party, creating Kadima which was largely based on personally handpicked malcontents with conflicting political affiliations who primarily joined the Sharon bandwagon to promote themselves. When Olmert inherited the mantle of leadership without an election, the die was cast.… The obscene scandals were never ending and included top leaders such as president Moshe Katsav, finance minister Avraham Hirchson, justice minister Haim Ramon and Olmert.… Now the Olmert era is virtually over but unless his departure is accompanied by major reforms, the corrupt practices that have been the blight of our lives will soon reappear.… [E]lections must be held to enable the people to elect new Knesset members committed to reform rather than once again merely having ministers playing musical chairs among themselves. The electoral system which is the root source of most of the problems must be reformed.… [D]irect accountability to [a] constituency should be substituted for the current proportional representation system. Party preferences should be introduced… denying [minority groups] the ability of imposing narrow sectional demands. The next prime minister must restore ministerial responsibility in order to ensure the primacy of government and collective decision. Ministers must understand that if they publicly criticize policies adopted by their government, they are obliged to resign.… If new leaders commit themselves to such a regime, a new era of governance could emerge in which corruption and cronyism would be drastically curtailed. The government could then also tap into the extraordinary talented brainpower at its disposal and develop long term strategies to deal with our adversaries. Instead of the endless empty threats, genuine deterrence would again apply. The peace process would be maintained, but only on the basis of genuine reciprocity.… Despite what they have undergone in recent years, Israelis are a remarkable people. Given normal decent leaders with whom to interact they will overcome these challenges. The dream of our Zionist founders of becoming a light unto the nations can yet be achieved. NO
MARGIN FOR ERROR? There was a time, not so long ago, when the Israeli leadership enjoyed a margin for error in its decisions. Israel was strong militarily and economically, was deterring its enemies from taking military actions against it, and could afford to take risks. And even mistakes made by the leadership were not going to have catastrophic consequences. Not like in the early years of Israeli statehood when there was no margin for error. In the days of the Sharon government there was enough confidence for Ariel Sharon to announce that since there was nobody to negotiate with, Israel would unilaterally determine its borders, use the Israel Defense Forces to evacuate settlements, and make itself “more Jewish and democratic.” It was a time when Ehud Olmert, then the deputy prime minister, declared that “we are tired of fighting and tired of defeating our enemies.” Those of us who were concerned about these mistakes could comfort ourselves by the thought that Israel was strong enough to have a margin for error—we could even afford to make mistakes. But since Olmert assumed the office of prime minister, the government’s mistakes have been accumulating at such a rate that our margin for error is rapidly disappearing.… Unfortunately, some of Israel’s enemies make no bones about their intention to bring about Israel’s destruction. Iran, under Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s leadership, Hezbollah and Hamas are in that category. When their fortunes improve it is bad for Israel, and the margin of error at Israel’s disposal shrinks. In the years of the Olmert government the fortunes of Hezbollah and Hamas have improved as a result of mistakes made by Israel. The debacle of the Second Lebanon War has been interpreted by Israel’s enemies as a sign that Israel could be defeated on the battlefield. Hezbollah’s hand was strengthened in Lebanon and its influence there increased. The newly elected Lebanese president, Michel Suleiman, recently declared that Hezbollah had “freed southern Lebanon of the Israeli occupation.”… (L’Express, no. 2975). The release of Samir Kuntar in exchange for the bodies of two Israeli soldiers only served to increase Hezbollah’s prestige in Lebanon and much of the Arab world. The disengagement from Gush Katif and the forcible evacuation of 8,000 Israelis from their homes there contributed to Hamas’ victory in the Palestinian elections, their subsequent takeover of the Gaza Strip, and encouraged them to launch rockets and mortar shells against Israeli towns and villages in the Western Negev. Israel’s agreement to a cease-fire with this terrorist organization further strengthened them and increased their standing among Palestinians and in the Arab world. Israel’s margin for error is shrinking. And now comes Olmert’s adventurous policy toward Syrian dictator Bashar Assad.… Throughout the world, [Assad’s] support for Hezbollah and the allegations that he was behind the murder of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri were not going to be soon forgotten. It was no accident that Imad Mughniyeh, the Hezbollah arch-terrorist, was in Damascus when he was recently assassinated. Syria’s record on human rights is also well known. So helping to improve Assad’s image cannot work to Israel’s benefit. Now, while Assad is being boycotted by the U.S. and most European countries, along comes Olmert and insists on beginning negotiations with him. If anyone wonders how Assad was so suddenly rehabilitated and greeted by President Nicolas Sarkozy in Paris, the answer is to be found in the Prime Minister’s Office and the Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem. When French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner was recently questioned on that point, he replied that “we cannot be more Israeli than the Israelis” (L’Express, no. 2975). Olmert’s shameless chase after a handshake with Assad at the Paris conference added embarrassment to the unease that most Israelis feel at his antics. The Olmert government may not be able to survive many more weeks, but in those weeks, at the rate they are going, they might very well exhaust the small margin for error Israel still has left. THE
NEXT GOVERNMENT’S RECORD As the curtain finally rings down on the Kafkaesque production that Israel’s 31st government has constituted, the most sensible way to bid it farewell is not to look back to its own legacy, but to look ahead and predict its successor’s record. Here it is: Israel’s 32nd government will not appoint an indicted embezzler as finance minister, a convicted sexual offender as deputy prime minister, and will not have an alleged recipient of cash envelopes at its helm. Instead, the next government will only include able, accomplished, scrupulous, humble, daring, accountable, balanced and visionary people. It will therefore not leave smart people like former Ben-Gurion University president Avishai Braverman, former IDF chief scientist Prof. Yitzhak Ben-Yisrael and former Hebrew University rector Menahem Ben-Sasson languishing outside the cabinet room, while crowding it with nonentities like former secretary Ruhama Avraham, union hack Amir Peretz and liar Estherina Tartman, who publicly claimed degrees she never earned.… Surely, Ehud Olmert’s successor will not wage a war with no aims, plans, equipment and commander. It will certainly not expose a third of the country to six weeks’ worth of shelling that would damage thousands of homes and displace hundreds of thousands, without verifying that the population is ready to sustain such a challenge, and the army to repel it. Naturally, it won’t engage in a devil’s dance with Hamas in response to incessant rocket attacks on Israel’s internationally recognized borders. Instead, it will strike swiftly, elegantly, suddenly and silently.… [T]he next administration will not have us shedding tears daily with Karnit Goldwasser and Noam Schalit; it will be too cautious to breed agonies like theirs in the first place, and too clever to be paralyzed in their wake should they still happen.… This is not to say that our next leaders will be perfect, inspiring or even merely well-accomplished. It’s just that they will detect the public’s loss of faith in its elected leaders, and set out to restore the standards of morality, decency, humility, conscientiousness, impartiality, patriotism and business-mindedness that once went here without saying. Well, hopefully. HOW
ISRAEL’S RACE COULD SHIFT OURS The most important pri mary for our 2008 election may be yet to come—the Kadima Party primary in Israel in mid or late September. It pits liberal-leaning Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni against hardliner and former Army Chief of Staff Shaul Mofaz. (Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is expected to sit out the contest and concentrate on staying out of jail.) The polls are neck and neck; in the most recent, Livni’s once-formidable lead has shrunk to 2 points. Hanging over the battle is the Iranian nuclear program. Livni is thought unlikely to attack Iran precipitously; she largely sees eye-to-eye with advocates of diplomatic solutions to the various problems her country faces. But Mofaz has openly said he’d resort to bombing Iran if it were necessary to stop the mullahs from getting the bomb. So if Mofaz wins, military action becomes much more likely. But when? By most accounts, the Israeli Defense Force would need considerable American cooperation to pull off such a strike. No top-level Israeli politician has much confidence that Barack Obama would be forthcoming. But most are confident that President Bush or John McCain would give Israel the help that it needs.… Surely, an Israeli attack on Iran would bring a sharp and instant response from Iran and from its satellites, Syria, Hamas and Hezbollah, as well as its pawns in Iraq. It would presage war in Gaza, Lebanon and the West Bank along with an air war of Israeli missiles and bombers against Iranian missiles. Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan and the Gulf states would criticize Israel in public but probably breathe a sign of relief in private that Iran’s nuclear ambitions were thwarted or at least postponed. The ensuing crisis would probably militate in McCain’s favor if it erupted before the US election. The more a foreign crisis intrudes on our politics, the more voters are apt to trust a seasoned hand like him and not to give an ingénue like Obama his shot. Polls show that voters trust McCain much more than Obama to handle a foreign crisis.… Of course, Mofaz would need other parties to form a governing coalition. The dovish Labor Party might not lend itself to any aggressive purpose—but a Mofaz determined to bring down Iran’s nuclear program might reach across to Likud and bring in hardline ex-Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to make a war politically possible. Volume
VIII, No. 1,892 • LEBANON LEBANON’S “SOLDIERS
OF VIRTUE” There have been a dozen prisoner exchanges between Hezbollah and Israel since the early 1990s, but Samir Kuntar was always a case apart. In 1979 Kuntar and his companions killed a policeman, kidnapped a young father, Danny Haran, and killed him in front of his 4-year-old daughter. Then Kuntar turned to the child and crushed her skull against a rock with the butt of his rifle. In the mayhem, Danny Haran’s wife, Smadar, hiding in her home, accidentally smothered to death the couple’s 2-year-old daughter. Now Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, has finally got his way. Last week, Israel handed over Kuntar in return for Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev, captured by Hezbollah in the summer of 2006. They returned to Israel in black coffins. This prisoner swap will serve Hezbollah’s purposes in the interminable struggles within Lebanon. Trumpets and drums greeted Kuntar’s release. Breathless pollsters now tell us that Nasrallah, a turbaned Shiite and a child of poverty, is the most admired hero of the “Arab street.” This is so, we are told, even in Sunni Arab lands otherwise given to animus toward Shiites…. The “Cedar Revolution” of 2005, so full of promise, [has been] no match for Nasrallah’s “soldiers of virtue.” A proxy struggle played out in Lebanon, with the United States, France and Saudi Arabia on the side of the incumbent government, and Syria, Iran and Hezbollah, on the other. There was no escaping the sectarianism: A determined Sunni-Shiite struggle had come to Lebanon…. There was a built-in flaw in the Cedar Revolution that Hezbollah preyed upon. Intended or not, that broad, spontaneous eruption following the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri had come to rest on an alliance of the Druse, the Sunni Muslims and the bulk of the country’s Christian population. The vast Shiite community, the country’s largest, had stood uncertain amid the tumult that followed Syria’s withdrawal. The Shiites had an uneasy alliance with the Syrian occupiers, and the Shiite mainstream was enthusiastic about Lebanese liberty. Hezbollah had the guns and the money. It had as well the status of a “liberation movement,” and few in Lebanon dared question this claim. The impasse between a sovereign Beirut government and an armed militia doing the bidding of the Iranian theocrats could not last. A small war broke out last May…. The Sunnis were easily overwhelmed. The Druse had put up a measure of resistance, but they, too, could not stand up to Hezbollah. It’s no small irony that Kuntar, a man of the Druse Mountains, is now returned home courtesy of Hezbollah. But the deep antagonism between the Druse and Hezbollah can’t be wished away by Kuntar’s release. More than ever, Hezbollah is a Shiite party, shorn of its exalted status as a national resistance movement. Behind Hezbollah’s deeds is the fine hand of Iran. Nasrallah had tried to obscure the difference between Lebanon’s needs and those of his paymasters in Iran.… [Yet] Hezbollah will not be able to run away with Lebanon. Already the Sunnis have been stirred up by Hezbollah’s power. Sunni jihadists have made their presence felt in the northern town of Tripoli, and in the dozen or so Palestinian refugee camps on the outskirts of the principal cities.… Nor do the Christians want Hezbollah’s utopia. The Christians have been weakened by emigration, but they, too, will fight for their place in the country if forced to do so. Furthermore, should there be any accommodation between America and Iran, the Persian power is sure to cast Hezbollah adrift.… Across the Lebanon border, Israelis may have once found a culture not so distant from their own, with mercy, decorum and “rules of engagement” even in times of conflict. The Lebanese will have to retrieve that older world if they are to find their way out of the grip of bigotry and terror. A decent country would be under no moral or political obligation to celebrate a murderer as a heroic son returning from a long captivity. (Fouad Ajami, a Bradley
Prize recipient, teaches at the School EXCERPTS
FROM NASRALLAH’S SPEECH On July 16, 2008, Hizbullah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah delivered a speech on the occasion of the prisoners exchange. Excerpts published in English on the Iranian Press TV website are as follows. “In the name of God the merciful, I thank God, peace be upon our prophet Mohammad, peace also be upon his family, peace be upon all his friends and colleagues, peace be upon all prophets. “Distinguished guests, representatives of the three political leaders, the president parliament speaker and prime minister, former President Emil Lahoud, Distinguished guests, all religious figures, all those present, all the representatives of the diplomatic delegations, the official delegations and specially the delegation of the Islamic Republic of Iran. “My brothers the representatives of Lebanese parties, the Lebanese factions, the families of the freed detainees, my dear brothers and sisters salaam alaikum, to all of you, peace be upon you all. “I welcome you all to this national wedding ceremony. Welcome to Samir, welcome Maher, welcome Khadher, welcome Hussein, and welcome Mohammed. “And I’d like also to welcome the martyrs whom we will welcome tomorrow in the same way we welcomed the live free prisoners today.… “On the 12th of July year 2006, a group of resistance fighters implemented an operation which led to the abduction of two Israeli soldiers. This was in order to liberate the rest of the prisoners in the Zionist prisons. And the most important of these prisoners, the dean of the Lebanese and Arab detainees, Samir Kuntar.… “Concerning the timing, we can take a lot from the timing of the swap has been significant for those who look deeply into the matter. How did we reach this result? This swap in certain stages seemed impossible or very far to achieve, a very far possibility to achieve, my brothers and sisters, the biggest factor which enabled us implement this prisoner swap which we call the ‘Rodvan Operation’ the biggest factor is the perseverance and the victory in the face of the July 2006 assault and the failure of the enemy in achieving any of its goals and also the repercussions of this defeat for Israel, the defeat of the Israeli leadership, people, and army.… “The only words, which were repeated by the delegations, who visited Lebanon and repeated by the whole world was that ‘you must release the two Israeli soldiers unconditionally’. The perseverance and the victory made Lebanon, made the resistance and made us all stand in a solid way…. “And the first person we remember is the genius, our loved one, Hajj Imad Mugniyah who was martyred, peace be upon his soul. And we also look back and remember our people how the people of Lebanon stood courageously in a historic manner, how of course all religious sects supported Lebanon.… “And the second factor is the very difficult negotiations. We got a lot of help in these negotiations; first of all, the enemy was incapable of bringing back the two soldiers without negotiating. This was very clear if you look at the results of the war. The war ended and the Israelis knew that they won’t get back the soldiers except if that they get into negotiations and there is no other way to get them back, the Israelis knew that. “The second point is that the Israeli Intelligence was just unable to know where these soldier were, but was incapable of knowing what the fate of these two soldiers was.… “So the pressure on the enemy was not just humanitarian pressure, there was incapability on the Israeli side to save these two soldiers and the incapability to know the fate of theses soldiers. The Israelis also feared that the resistance would kidnap or abduct other Israeli soldiers.… “And we told them you didn’t liberate Samir Kuntar and you will regret this. This is what we said in 2004. The Israelis knew if the prisoner swap did not happen then we would go to another plan which I don’t think Israel is ready for.… “My dear brothers and sisters, the free detainees, families of the martyrs and families of the detainees all of you who are waiting for your loved ones for your loved martyrs bodies tomorrow, all who are present I like to congratulate you on this victory…. “And I pray also for Lebanon I pray that Lebanon deals with this issue just like we sort the day with national responsibility concerning all detainees especially Samir Kuntar who must be viewed off the thirty, who must be viewed as a very very rich national treasure, and we must deal with this person in the appropriate manner after he put up with so much, after he spent all these years subjected to all these sufferings. Of course I hope all the detainees will be freed.” THE
NEW LEBANON Putting decades of vicious sectarian, political and personality differences aside, Lebanon’s body politic came together Wednesday night in a heartfelt display of national unity: Samir Kuntar had been brought home. After a nearly 30-year absence, there he stood before the frantic multitude, this progeny of Lebanon—whose road to manhood took him from out-of-control juvenile delinquent to adolescent child-killer to unremorseful mature terrorist—in army fatigues, waving the Lebanese and Hizbullah flags, arm outstretched in the Hizbullah salute, a manic glint in his eyes. A true son of his country. In a flash, the face of the new Lebanon was unmasked. As celebratory music helped work the crowd into a frenzy, and with Kuntar and several other released terrorists on stage as props, the real “hero” and personification of that new Lebanon, Hassan Nasrallah, emerged for a few moments—his first appearance since January. The Druse-born Kuntar impulsively kissed his beaming hero. Nasrallah did not reciprocate.… A while earlier the red carpet had been rolled out at Beirut International Airport, as warlords and politicians from rival factions welcomed Kuntar and the other released gunmen as national heroes. Druse leader Walid Jumblatt proudly recalled that his father, Kamal (assassinated by Syria), had been in the vanguard of Lebanon’s Palestinian cause. Christian Maronite president Michael Aoun cited Lebanese unity in the struggle against the Jewish state and commitment to “the return of the Palestinians to their land.” Nabih Berri, speaker of the Lebanese parliament and boss of the Shi’ite Amal movement, was there, as was “pro-American” Prime Minister Fuad Saniora, a Sunni Muslim. Rounding out the delegation were the Sunni majority leader of parliament, Saad Hariri (whose father was also assassinated by Syria) and Christian opposition leader Michel Aoun. They put aside their own differences and their disputes with Nasrallah to give each of the returning “militants” a hug and a kiss. A vital lesson Israeli strategists must draw from this nauseating display of perverted unity: Lebanon and Hizbullah are one. If, heaven forbid, there is another war, the IDF must wage it with ferocity—not on Hizbullah’s terms, but across the Lebanese battlefield. Ever since the June 1982 Lebanon War, the Israeli military has allowed itself to be hamstrung in targeting Lebanon. International media coverage of that war, often manipulative and tendentious, along with Western—particularly US—opposition to striking at the country’s infrastructure, made vanquishing our enemies impossible. Even among Israelis there was the lingering sense that Lebanon was essentially a peace-loving society taken hostage by violent, unrepresentative factions. Ultimately, that assessment reigned supreme, inhibiting the IDF from finishing Yasser Arafat off. Instead the PLO was merely ousted from its Beirut and southern Lebanon strongholds and exiled to Tunisia.… Now that Lebanon and Hizbullah have apparently melded, the self-defeating legacy of IDF inhibition must end. At the start of the Second Lebanon War, former IDF chief of staff Dan Halutz warned bombastically that Israel would “turn back the clock in Lebanon by 20 years” if Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev were not returned. No one took him seriously—Israel would never punish “good Lebanon” for the crimes of “bad Hizbullah.” The IAF limited itself to mostly targeting Islamist strongholds. But if Lebanon and Hizbullah are now one, Israel needs a radically revised strategy for winning a war on Lebanese soil. Artificial distinctions between “Lebanese” and “Hizbullah” targets were swept away by Wednesday’s display of barbaric unity. Lebanon was revealed in its hostile unanimity. If new conflict comes, Israel must internalize that unanimity of hate-filled purpose, and defeat it decisively. Volume
VIII, No. 1,891 • AUSCHWITZ SANCTUARY IN AUSCHWITZ For the past five years, I have had the privilege of serving as president of Park Avenue Synagogue, the largest Conservative congregation in New York City. On most Shabbat mornings, I sit on the bima in our magnificent sanctuary listening to our rabbis and cantors. The elegant surroundings complement and enhance our centuries-old ritual. We pray, meditate, study the weekly Torah reading, take pride in the proficiency of our bnei mitzva, say kaddish for a loved one. But sometimes, my mind drifts backward in time to other synagogues, other sanctuaries that I can only imagine. On June 22, 1943, my father, Josef Rosensaft, was on a transport from his hometown of Bedzin in southern Poland to Auschwitz. The son and grandson of devout hassidim, followers of the rabbis of Ger, he had become a labor Zionist and one of the few Jewish members of a local sports club. On this occasion, the train used by the Germans to deport Jews to the death camp was not made up of windowless cattle cars but consisted of normal passenger cars. My father, an excellent swimmer, escaped by diving out of one of the train’s windows into the Vistula River. Although wounded by three German bullets, he was able to return early the next morning to Bedzin where his father was waiting for him. Six weeks later, during the liquidation of the Bedzin Ghetto, my grandfather died of natural causes in my father’s arms. After my father had buried his father, he fled to the nearby town of Zawiercie. At the end of August, he was deported from there to Auschwitz-Birkenau. In mid-October 1943, during Succot, my father smuggled a tiny apple into the Birkenau barrack where the inmates had gathered to pray so that the highly respected Rabbi of Zawiercie, known as the Zawiercier Rov, could recite the Kiddush blessings. Throughout the prayers, my father recalled, the aged Rov stared at the apple, obviously conflicted. At the end of the clandestine service, he picked up the apple and said, in Yiddish, almost to himself, “In iber dem zol ikh itzt zogn, ‘ve-akhalta ve-savata u-verakhta et Hashem Elohekha...’ (And over this, I should now say, ‘And you will eat, and you will be satisfied, and you will bless your God...’). “Kh’vel nisht essen (I will not eat),” he went on, “veil ikh vel nisht zat sein (because I will not be satisfied), un ikh vill nisht bentchn (and I refuse to say the Grace After Meals).” And with that, he put down the apple and turned away. The rabbi never lost his faith in God. Like the hassidic master, Levi Yitzhak of Berditchev, however, he was profoundly, desperately angry with Him, and this anger caused him to confront God from the innermost depths of his being. One evening around the same time, my father and a group of Jews from Zawiercie were sitting in their barrack when the Zawiercier Rov suddenly said, again in Yiddish, “You know, der Ribboine shel-oilem ken zein a ligner” (the Master of the Universe can be a liar). Asked how this could possibly be, the rabbi explained, “If God were to open His window now and look down and see us here, He would immediately look away and say, ‘Ikh hob dos nisht geton’” (I did not do this) - and that, he said, would be the lie. The following year, my father was an inmate in the notorious Block 11, also known as the Death Block, at Auschwitz. He had been there for more than five months, ever since he had been brought back to Auschwitz after escaping from a labor camp to which he had been transferred and hiding in Bedzin for six weeks with a Polish friend. Throughout his imprisonment in Block 11, he had been continuously tortured. The Germans wanted him to betray the Poles who had helped him escape and who had hidden him, something he steadfastly refused to do. Millions of European Jews had already perished. Thousands were dying daily. It was the most unlikely setting for prayer and devotion to God. And yet that night, the Jewish kapo in charge of Block 11 wanted my father to conduct the Yom Kippur service. Half-naked, emaciated, starved, my father chanted Kol Nidre from memory in the Death Block of Auschwitz, and led the prayers there that evening and the following day for his fellow prisoners. As a reward, the kapo gave my father and the other inmates of Block 11 an extra bowl of soup to break the fast. A barrack in Birkenau during Succot, 1943, and Block 11 in Auschwitz on Yom Kippur, 1944, became synagogues for a few hours, sanctuaries for Jews, many about to die, fleeting refuges from horror and agony, where my father and the Zawiercier Rov simultaneously reached out to and defied God. At the outset of the 21st century, Jews throughout the world are blessed to be able to gather and pray publicly in comfort and safety. Still, we should remind ourselves every once in a while, as we sit in our elegant synagogues, that the essence of our identities and of our prayers emanate from deep within our souls. I would like to believe that there are moments when my prayers, our prayers, transcend the years to merge with those that rose out of Block 11 and a Birkenau barrack, and that together they somehow reach their destination. (Menachem Z. Rosensaft, is president of Park Avenue Synagogue in Manhattan and founding chairman of the International Network of Children of Jewish Holocaust Survivors.) FROM
AUSCHWITZ, A TORAH AS STRONG AS ITS SPIRIT The back story of how a Torah got from the fetid barracks of Auschwitz to the ark of the Central Synagogue at Lexington Avenue and 55th Street is one the pastor of the Lutheran church down the street sums up as simply “miraculous.” It is the story of a sexton in the synagogue in the Polish city of Oswiecim who buried most of the sacred scroll before the Germans stormed in and later renamed the city Auschwitz. It is the story of Jewish prisoners who sneaked the rest of it—four carefully chosen panels—into the concentration camp. It is the story of a Polish Catholic priest to whom they entrusted the four panels before their deaths. It is the story of a Maryland rabbi who went looking for it with a metal detector. And it is the story of how a hunch by the rabbi’s 13-year-old son helped lead him to it. This Torah, more than most, “is such an extraordinary symbol of rebirth,” said Peter J. Rubinstein, the rabbi of Central Synagogue. “As one who has gone to the camps and assimilates into my being the horror of the Holocaust, this gives meaning to Jewish survival.” On Wednesday, the restored Torah will be rededicated in honor of Holocaust Remembrance Day, which for more than 20 years the congregation of Central Synagogue has observed in conjunction with its neighbor, St. Peter’s Lutheran Church, at Lexington Avenue and 54th Street. The senior pastor, the Rev. Amandus J. Derr, said that next to Easter, the Holocaust memorial is “the most important service I attend every year.” The Torah from Auschwitz “is a very concrete, tactile piece of that remembrance—of what people, some of whom did it in the name of Christ, did to people who were Jewish,” Pastor Derr said, “and the remembrance itself enables us to be prepared to prevent that from happening again.” A Torah scroll contains the five books of Moses, and observant Jews read a portion from it at services. Its ornate Hebrew must be hand-lettered by specially trained scribes, and it is considered unacceptable if any part is marred or incomplete. For years, Jews around the world have worked to recover and rehabilitate Torahs that disappeared or were destroyed during the Holocaust, returning them to use in synagogues. This Torah remained hidden for more than 60 years, buried where the sexton had put it, until Rabbi Menachem Youlus, who lives in Wheaton, Md., and runs the nonprofit Save a Torah foundation, began looking for it about eight years ago. Over two decades, Rabbi Youlus said, the foundation has found more than 1,000 desecrated Torahs and restored them, a painstaking and expensive process. This one was elusive. But Rabbi Youlus was determined. He had heard a story told by Auschwitz survivors: Three nights before the Germans arrived, the synagogue sexton put the Torah scrolls in a metal box and buried them. The sexton knew that the Nazis were bent on destroying Judaism as well as killing Jews. But the survivors did not know where the sexton had buried the Torah. Others interested in rescuing the Torah after the war had not found it. As for what happened during the war, “I personally felt the last place the Nazis would look would be in the cemetery,” Rabbi Youlus said in a telephone interview Tuesday, recalling his pilgrimage to Auschwitz, in late 2000 or early 2001, in search of the missing Torah. “So that was the first place I looked.” With a metal detector, because, if the story was correct, he was hunting for a metal box in a cemetery in which all the caskets were made of wood, according to Jewish laws of burial. The metal detector did not beep. “Nothing,” the rabbi said. “I was discouraged.” He went home to Maryland. One of his sons, Yitzchok, then 13, wondered if the cemetery was the same size as in 1939. They went online and found land records that showed that the present-day cemetery was far smaller than the original one. Rabbi Youlus went back in 2004 with his metal detector, aiming it at the spot where the g’neeza—a burial plot for damaged Torahs, prayer books or other papers containing God’s name—had been. It beeped as he passed a house that had been built after World War II. He dug near the house and found the metal box. But when he opened it, he discovered the Torah was incomplete. “It was missing four panels,” he said. “The obvious question was, why would the sexton bury a scroll that’s missing four panels? I was convinced those four panels had a story themselves.” They did, as he learned when he placed an ad in a Polish newspaper in the area “asking if anyone had parchment with Hebrew letters.” “I said I would pay top dollar,” Rabbi Youlus said. “The response came the next day from a priest. He said, ‘I know exactly what you’re looking for, four panels of a Torah.’ I couldn’t believe it.” He compared the lettering and the pagination, and paid the priest. (How much, he would not say. The project was underwritten by David M. Rubenstein, a co-founder of the Carlyle Group. Mr. Rubenstein was tied at No. 165 on the Forbes 400 last year with a reported fortune of $2.5 billion; in December, he paid $21.3 million for a 710-year-old copy of the Magna Carta, a British declaration of human rights that served as the foundation for the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.) The priest “told me the panels were taken into Auschwitz by four different people,” Rabbi Youlus said. “I believe they were folded and hidden.” One of the panels contained the Ten Commandments from Exodus, a portion that, when chanted aloud each year, the congregation stands to hear. Another contained a similar passage from Deuteronomy. The priest, who was born Jewish, was himself an Auschwitz survivor. He told Rabbi Youlus that the people with the four sections of the Torah gave them to him before they were put to death. “He kept all four pieces until I put that ad in the paper,” Rabbi Youlus said. “As soon as I put that ad in the paper, he knew I must be the one with the rest of the Torah scroll.” (Rabbi Youlus said that the priest has since died.) Rabbi Youlus said that nearly half the Torah’s lettering needed repair, work that the foundation has done over the past few years. Thirty-seven letters were left unfinished: 36, or twice the number that symbolizes “life” in Hebrew, will be filled in by members of the congregation before the service on Wednesday, the 37th at the ceremony. Rabbi Youlus called it “a good sturdy Torah, even if it hasn’t been used in 65 years.” The plan is to make it available every other year to the March of the Living, an international educational program that arranges for Jewish teenagers to go to Poland on Holocaust Remembrance Day, to march from Auschwitz to its companion death camp, Birkenau. “This really is an opportunity to look up to the heavens and say, he who laughs last, laughs best,” Rabbi Youlus said. “The Nazis really thought they had wiped Jews off the face of the earth, and Judaism. Here we are taking the ultimate symbol of hope and of Judaism and rededicating it and using it in a synagogue. And we’ll take it to Auschwitz. You can’t beat that.” Shabbat Shalom to all our readers. Volume
VIII, No. 1,890 • IRAN NUCLEAR—ONE STRIKE AND YOU’RE OUT WHEN TALKING CAN KILL At the end of [this] week, Saeed Jalili, Iran’s nuclear negotiator, is scheduled to arrive in Geneva for yet another round of talks with EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana. It is unclear what the two have to discuss. On July 4, the Iranians sent their written response to the West’s latest offer to appease them. In and of itself, the offer, made by the five permanent members of the UN Security Council and Germany and communicated to Iran by Solana, constituted a major achievement for the Iranians. It promised civilian nuclear power plants, economic assistance, new airplanes, agricultural assistance, hi-tech transfers and a freeze on the expansion of economic sanctions against the nuclear-weapons-seeking mullocracy. In exchange for all of that, the Iranians weren’t even required to end their uranium enrichment activities. To get the ball of concessions rolling, all the Iranians needed to do was promise not to expand their current enrichment activities. If Iran were ever even remotely interested in reaching a deal with the international community, this was the deal it would have taken. For the unspoken subtext of the agreement was that the international community is willing to accept a nuclear armed Iran in exchange for the mere appearance of Iranian willingness to bow to international pressure. As David Albright, president of the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security, explained to Newsweek last week, at their current, known level of uranium enrichment the Iranians are producing 1.2 kg. of enriched uranium a day. And at this enrichment level, they will be able to produce a nuclear bomb by next year. So the international community’s willingness to accept continued Iranian uranium enrichment at current levels is a clear signal of the international community’s willingness to accept a nuclear-armed Iran. And yet, that offer still wasn’t good enough for the Iranians. Their written response didn’t even discuss the issue of uranium enrichment. They just asked for more concessions in exchange for nothing. And now they believe that their “counterproposal” should form the basis of this week’s round of discussions. … And still despite all of this, Solana looks forward to his meetings… with Jalili with hope for an accommodation. … Solana’s unshakeable faith that Iran can be appeased is to be expected. After all, Solana was on the first flight to Teheran to begin negotiating with the mullahs the minute that Iran’s nuclear program was exposed five years ago. And he’s been running the talks ever since—first for France, Germany and Britain, and then starting last May, for the US as well. Solana cannot acknowledge that the talks have failed. He is too personally invested in them to admit that Iran has been using him as the diplomatic fig leaf behind which it has pushed forward with its nuclear bomb program. Solana is a perfect example of why the oft repeated policy mantra “there’s never any harm in talking” is incorrect. … [I]t has become nearly impossible to have coherent discussion about the Iranian nuclear program. For when the “experts” are called to tell us how to proceed in preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, they instead exhort us to engage at ever higher levels with the Iranians in order to show them our good intentions toward them…. WE
ONLY GET ONE STRIKE An Israeli attack on Iran seems inevitable. If it succeeds, it will return to Israel its deterrent power and send a clear message to the saber-rattling jihadists that they were too early in beginning the countdown for the disappearance of the Jewish state. If it fails, or fails to achieve the majority of its objectives, it could amount to an act of national suicide. Fanatical Muslims on every side will be encouraged by the failure and outcome of an Iranian retaliation which would cause heavy damage to the whole center of our country. Iran would unquestionably be joined by its proxies on our borders, Hizbullah and Syria on the north and Hamas on the south, the PLO jihad brigades under various names, and the Arabs of Israel. The latter have already shown their ability to block major traffic arteries and demonstrated that their loyalties rest with their Arab brethren, not with the Jewish state. The repeated declarations of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that the aim of Iran is to wipe Israel off the world map should not be taken as the empty, fiery words of a fanatical Muslim dictator, but as a plan of action. True, Iran does not need a pretext, but an Israeli attack on any nuclear installation in Iran, or just an invasion of Iranian air space could be used as an excellent reason for mounting an all-out missile attack. The damage to Iran would be serious, but not devastating. Iran has a very high tolerance level. It proved it in the early 1980s during the war against Iraq, when Teheran and other places came under destructive attacks by Frog and Scud missiles and the Iranian army suffered heavy losses on the battlefield. Iran can live with one Israeli air raid or two; not with a nuclear attack. As it seems now, Israel does not have the military facilities to deal with the distances involved and with other technical obstacles to carry out a successful attack on Iran. A combined Israeli and American effort, however, could cause irreparable damage to the Iranian nuclear program. A non-nuclear Israeli attack on Iran would be a “surgical” operation. But an Iranian-Hizbullah-Hamas attack would be indiscriminate and aimed at the major urban centers, causing tremendous harm.Iran has the motivation to destroy Israel, and if it is allowed to gain nuclear weapons it will not need an excuse to do so. That motivation is a double one: messianic Shi’ite and expansionist-imperial. … [B]oth Shi’ites and Sunnis share one particular detail about “the [messianic] coming of the hour” and the dawning of messianic times: The Jews must all suffer a violent death, to the last one. Both Shi’ites and Sunnis quote the famous hadith attributed to the Prophet Muhammad: The last hour will not come unless the Muslims fight against the Jews, and the Muslims would kill them until the Jews hide themselves behind a stone or a tree and the stone or the tree would say: “Muslim! Servant of Allah! Here is a Jew behind me; come and kill him!” … Shi’ism regards the Jews as an embodiment of filth and the contaminating source of ritual impurity—which adds another religious justification to the Muslims to rid themselves of the Jews and their state. … The other side of Iran’s motivation to destroy Israel is the imperial one. Iran has the same virus inherent in every totalitarian power—to gain imperial dominion. Totalitarian Iran wants to recreate its empire east of the Mediterranean. The leaders of modern Iran, long before the present Islamic regime, toyed with the idea of reviving the empire of Cyrus and Darius. The present Islamic regime has the same aspirations. Nuclear power is necessary to achieve this desire. … Let us try a scenario in which Israel carries out a successful attack, with or without active American help, on a few key Iranian reactors. Such an operation would not completely destroy Iran’s nuclear capability, but it would badly wound its national and Islamic pride. … [B]eing an easy target, Israel would have to brace for the inevitable Iranian retaliation. Iran would attack with the Shihab 3 ballistic missiles that carry a warhead of up to one ton and have an accuracy of 50 meters-100m. Israel has an answer to a limited number of these missiles, of which Iran has probably a few hundred. It has no answer to all the missiles that would be launched against it from three fronts. Theoretically, Iran can deliver 1,000-1,500 tons of the most modern explosives within a few days. The long-range missiles that have been supplied to Hizbullah via Damascus, and the arsenal that has been massed by Hamas in Gaza, which includes missiles that can reach Beersheba, must also be taken into consideration. There is no question that these two organizations will move into action together with Iran, and it is not impossible that Hizbullah would attempt the invasion of Israel proper to gain a local victory by occupying a border village, killing inhabitants and kidnapping a few over to Lebanon. … Are these facts not known to the Israeli intelligence agencies? They are, but so were Hitler’s intentions known to the British and the French before World War II, and they were known to the Russians before Operation Barbarosa. None of them did anything to stop the German dictator before it was too late. At the end of the war, Europe was freed. The Germans were defeated and none of the countries of Europe was obliterated from the map. In the case of Israel, there is no recovery from a one-time devastation. There is no second chance. (Moshe Sharon is a professor
emeritus of Islamic studies USING
BOMBS TO STAVE OFF WAR Israel will almost surely attack Iran’s nuclear sites in the next four to seven months—and the leaders in Washington and even Tehran should hope that the attack will be successful enough to cause at least a significant delay in the Iranian production schedule, if not complete destruction, of that country’s nuclear program. Because if the attack fails, the Middle East will almost certainly face a nuclear war—either through a subsequent pre-emptive Israeli nuclear strike or a nuclear exchange shortly after Iran gets the bomb. It is in the interest of neither Iran nor the United States (nor, for that matter, the rest of the world) that Iran be savaged by a nuclear strike, or that both Israel and Iran suffer such a fate. We know what would ensue: a traumatic destabilization of the Middle East with resounding political and military consequences around the globe, serious injury to the West’s oil supply and radioactive pollution of the earth’s atmosphere and water. But should Israel’s conventional assault fail to significantly harm or stall the Iranian program, a ratcheting up of the Iranian-Israeli conflict to a nuclear level will most likely follow. Every intelligence agency in the world believes the Iranian program is geared toward making weapons, not to the peaceful applications of nuclear power. And, despite the current talk of additional economic sanctions, everyone knows that such measures have so far led nowhere and are unlikely to be applied with sufficient scope to cause Iran real pain…. Western intelligence agencies agree that Iran will reach the “point of no return” in acquiring the capacity to produce nuclear weapons in one to four years. Which leaves the world with only one option if it wishes to halt Iran’s march toward nuclear weaponry: the military option, meaning an aerial assault by either the United States or Israel. … But, as a result of the Iraq imbroglio, and what is rapidly turning into the Afghan imbroglio, the American public has little enthusiasm for wars in the Islamic lands. … Which leaves only Israel—the country threatened almost daily with destruction by Iran’s leaders. Thus the recent reports about Israeli plans and preparations to attack Iran (the period from Nov. 5 to Jan. 19 seems the best bet, as it gives the West half a year to try the diplomatic route but ensures that Israel will have support from a lame-duck White House). … Israel, believing that its very existence is at stake—and this is a feeling shared by most Israelis across the political spectrum—will certainly make the effort. Israel’s leaders, from Prime Minister Ehud Olmert down, have all explicitly stated that an Iranian bomb means Israel’s destruction; Iran will not be allowed to get the bomb. … [If] the international community will continue to do nothing effective… Iran will speed up its efforts to produce the bomb that can destroy Israel. … Such a situation would confront Israeli leaders with two agonizing, dismal choices. One is to allow the Iranians to acquire the bomb and hope for the best—meaning a nuclear standoff, with the prospect of mutual assured destruction preventing the Iranians from actually using the weapon. The other would be to use the Iranian counterstrikes as an excuse to escalate and use the only means available that will actually destroy the Iranian nuclear project: Israel’s own nuclear arsenal. Given the fundamentalist, self-sacrificial mindset of the mullahs who run Iran, Israel knows that deterrence may not work as well as it did with the comparatively rational men who ran the Kremlin and White House during the cold war.… Thus an Israeli nuclear strike to prevent the Iranians |