The US and NATO leave Afghanistan to its fate

This article appeared in the Jerusalem Post on 22 June 2021

Today Israel is home to more than 10,000 Jews of Afghan descent.  In Afghanistan itself there are no Jews at all – except one.  Zablon Simentov is convinced that he is the last Jew in the country.  Simentov lives in Kabul’s only synagogue, housed in an old building in the center of the Afghan capital.  He has survived a Soviet invasion, deadly civil war, brutal rule by the Taliban and the US-led occupation of his homeland. Over the decades all his relatives have left, including his wife and two daughters.   He has been imprisoned by the Taliban four times.  Still, he refused to leave.

Come the autumn, however, Simentov will almost certainly be making his way to Israel.  He has vowed that if the Taliban ever return to power he will leave Afghanistan – and this they are highly likely to do once US and NATO troops pull out.  US president Joe Biden has set the iconic date of 9/11 – September 11, 2021, exactly twenty years since the attack by al-Qaeda on the USA that triggered the American invasion – as the absolute deadline for the total withdrawal of US armed forces, although they may all have gone by the end of July.

          However neither Biden, nor NATO, nor any of the coalition nations, has put in place an effective military presence or a strong administration to follow their withdrawal. Meanwhile the Taliban are seizing the initiative by launching intensive attacks on government forces, and are threatening the capital, Kabul.

          Turkey, both a Muslim country and a member of NATO, is making the most of its equivocal position.  During the NATO conference on June 14, Turkey – which has been hosting talks with the Taliban and the Afghan government – undertook to safeguard the air link out of Kabul after US forces had left.  This was taken to mean that Turkey would prevent Hamid Karzai International Airport from falling into Taliban hands.  How much reliance can be placed on this undertaking is doubtful, but US officials are reported to have seized on it.

The Taliban, which emerged following a 10-year occupation of the country by the Soviet Union, swiftly became a formidable military machine. Towards the end of 1996 it captured the Afghan capital, Kabul.  By 1998, the Taliban were in control of almost 90 percent of Afghanistan.

Initial support from some of the population quickly faded as the fundamentalist group imposed hardline Islamist practices, such as amputations for those found guilty of theft, and public executions of adulterers. Television, music and cinema were banned, and girls aged 10 and over were forbidden to attend school.  Meanwhile, they continued to wage their two-handed war against the US presence in the country on the one hand, and the Afghan government on the other. That conflict continues.

Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who has twice served as Afghanistan’s prime minister, is reported as warning that what he terms the “irresponsible” American withdrawal is leaving behind a government unable to avoid a certain war, as the Taliban attempts to take back control of the country.  “It seems very improbable for the Afghan government and its military to be able to sustain this fighting.” he said.

   There is just a chance that Hekmatyar’s fears may prove premature.  Despite Biden’s announcement about the US military withdrawal, reports have appeared in the media suggesting that an internal debate in the Pentagon is under way over what level of Taliban resurgence would amount to a national security threat to the US, and therefore justify military action.  For example, if the Taliban tries to retake Kabul or another key capital in the wake of US forces withdrawing, airstrikes in support of the Afghan government, involving US aircraft or armed drones, may be justified.   Since there would be no US aircraft remaining in Afghanistan, any future attacks would have to be launched from bases elsewhere.  Biden, who would himself have to approve any such action, is likely to require a good deal of convincing.

Meanwhile the UK has decided to allow over 4000 Afghans who worked for the British military, mostly as interpreters, to settle in Britain together with their families.  Defence minister Ben Wallace explained that those being relocated were people who might otherwise "be at risk of reprisals" from the Taliban.  He said those who worked for the British had "sacrificed a lot to look after us, and now is the time to do the same".

Secretary of State Priti Patel said: "It's our moral obligation to recognize the risks they faced in the fight against terrorism and reward their efforts."

The US, who employed many more local Afghans, is working on a similar scheme to protect those who worked as translators for US forces and now fear for their lives once foreign troops leave Afghanistan.  On June 10 General Mark Milley, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, said: “The United States government will do what is necessary in order to ensure the safety and protection of those that have been working with us for two decades.”

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin gave the same message to the Senate Armed Services Committee.

In disengaging from Afghanistan, the Western alliance is tacitly acknowledging that its involvement and its effort has failed.  It has tried for twenty years to ensure that a democratically elected Afghan government was backed by a well- trained professional military capable of maintaining the peace.  Yet the extreme Islamist Taliban are currently occupying a large area of the country and, heavily armed, seem poised to defeat the government and take control of the nation.  The 3,500 American lives and the $2.26 trillion expenditure seem an inordinately heavy price to have paid for so little gain.

Published in the Jerusalem Post and the Jerusalem Post online, 22 June 2021:

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/the-us-and-nato-leave-afghanistan-to-its-fate-671651

Published in the Eurasia Review, 18 June 2021:

https://www.eurasiareview.com/18062021-the-us-leaves-afghanistan-to-its-fate-oped/

Published in the Jewish Business News, 18 June 2021:
https://jewishbusinessnews.com/2021/06/18/the-us-leaves-afghanistan-to-its-fate/

Britain’s Jewish community examines its record on race and discrimination

This article appears in the new edition of the Jerusalem Report, dated 21 June 2021

 

            On April 22, 2021, to acclaim from every sector of Britain’s Jewish community, the Board of Deputies of British Jews (BoD) published its report on “Racial Inclusivity in the Jewish Community”.  It was the result of a 10-month investigation that was, as the Board put it, “unparalleled in UK Jewish history” – an investigation into the experiences of Jews from ethnic minorities as well as Sephardi, Mizrahi and Yemenite Jews.  The report made no less than 119 recommendations, which seemed to imply that there was much wrong with the situation inside British Jewry.  Regardless of whether some or all of the recommendations are implemented, the mere fact of their publication has profound implications for UK’s Jewish community

            In launching its report, the Board explained that the death of George Floyd in the US in May 2020 at the hands of the police had acted as a wake-up call in many sectors of British life, as it had done all over the world.  Community leaders across the nation acknowledged that despite decades of positive action, racism and discrimination remained embedded in British society.  The BoD recognized that this was equally true of the Jewish community. Expressions of good intent in the media were not enough.  Positive action was needed.

“No community is immune from the scourge of prejudice,” the Board wrote, “and ours is no exception.” As society as a whole sought to express its solidarity with those in the States and beyond seeking to remedy racial discrimination, the BoD’s attention was drawn to “moving and concerning testimonies of black members of our own community about their experiences.”

And so it launched its Commission on Racial Inclusivity – an attempt to learn more about the experiences in the UK of black Jews, Jews of color and Sephardi, Mizrahi and Yemenite Jews.  It charged the Commission to examine the issues and recommend how Britain’s Jewish community could do better. As Chair, it appointed the prominent journalist Stephen Bush.

Stephen Kupakwesu Bush, born in 1990, is of mixed race which includes some Jewish heritage.  One of his grandfathers was “the last ‘proper’ Jew in the family,” Bush once explained.  He “married out” so, as Bush wrote, “none of his children, let alone his grandchild, were Jewish, although we have retained a token observation of the major festivals.” 

Bush, educated at a state comprehensive school in east London, won a place at Balliol College, Oxford University, where he studied history.  On graduating in 2011 he worked for the magazine Progress, before writing for the Daily Telegraph. He joined the prestigious left-wing weekly journal New Statesman in 2015, and was appointed political editor in 2018. 

During the years that Jeremy Corbyn was leader of the Labour party, Bush came to realize and condemn the failings of the party in general, and Corbyn in particular, in dealing with the problem of overt antisemitism.  In October 2020 he wrote about the “number of times when, through a combination of action or inaction [Corbyn] revealed himself to be beyond the pale”.

At the launch Bush said: “I hope my report will enhance communal life for black Jews, Jews of color and Sephardi, Mizrahi and Yemenite Jews.  Many of these recommendations, I believe, have a far wider applicability… A proactive attitude to inclusion will draw in many people of all backgrounds who have felt marginalized, left out or turned off from Jewish life… Giving as many people as possible a sense of belonging and a full ability to participate will nourish, strengthen and enrich the Jewish community further, for the benefit of all its members.”

                                                             Stephen Bush

Almost all the witnesses who gave evidence to the Commission expressed a strong connection with Israel, but some felt betrayed by a lack of communal support.

“My family would not be alive today if it were not for the State of Israel,” one said. “I feel let down when my rabbi welcomes an anti-Israel MP to my synagogue.”

“When I am in Israel,” said another, “I see plenty of Jews like me. But the Israel I know is never represented here in the United Kingdom... Israel is one of the most multi-racial and tolerant democracies in the world, and more should be made of this by the BoD.”

Sephardi, Mizrahi and Yemenite Jews complained about the assumption in the community that the British Jewish experience is solely an Ashkenazi one. As one witness put it: “The Sephardi/Mizrahi story is left out of Jewish education in the UK. It’s very Ashkenazicentric.”

Another testified: “I went to Jewish school in my entire life, and I don’t think I ever learned about my history, my story, my father, his story, or any similar stories. It…went from the pogroms to the Holocaust, to the foundation of the State of Israel.”  The 3000 year history of Jewish communities who never left the Middle East was simply ignored.

Some called for better, more open, more critical Israel advocacy to reflect their concerns.

“The community’s Israel advocacy is something I find very difficult,” said one. “As somebody who has a dual identity, I feel very Jewish and I feel very black. I’m Eritrean. I have Eritrean family in Israel who are treated abominably…it is a very difficult thing to deal with when there is Israel advocacy which is presented in a non-critical, no-criticism way.”

Another complained of the experience of travelling to Israel.  “Getting in and out as a Jew of color is terrible and can be traumatizing. In Israel I have no issues, but [on arrival] I am… viewed with a great deal of suspicion. There needs to be advocacy about this on our behalf by British Jewish leadership.”

Other witness statements highlighted what the Report terms “stigmatisation of minorities-within-the-minority.”  As one Mizrahi witness reflected, as youngsters the only time they saw people who looked like them were in depictions of Pharaoh and the Egyptians. Moses was always European or Ashkenazi; Pharoah distinctly Middle Eastern.  On the other hand several praised Simon Schama’s TV series and accompanying book “The Story of the Jews” for providing a comprehensive description of the diaspora’s history and diversity.

Unhappy experiences at school featured in the evidence: “I was at one of the top Jewish schools in the UK, and there were only a handful of us who were black in our year. I had a huge racist experience with teachers and students. And my first experience of being called the ‘N word’ was at my school.”

The 119 recommendations in the Report attempt to cover these and a multitude of other issues raised by the witnesses who provided testimony to the Commission.  For example the Commission proposes that representative bodies and organizations involved in rabbinic training should encourage members of under-represented ethnic groups to put themselves forward for communal roles. 

It recommends that Jewish schools should ensure that their secular curriculum engages with black history, enslavement and the legacy of colonialism, and review their curriculum through a process led by students, particularly those who define as black or of color.

Jewish studies departments should ensure that their teaching celebrates and engages with the racial and cultural diversity of the Jewish community worldwide, including the Mizrahi, Sephardi and Yemenite tradition.

Schools and youth movements should improve training for teachers and youth leaders on tackling racist incidents. Communal bodies and Jewish schools should establish regular listening exercises that seek the concerns of their members or students, and should ensure that complaints processes are accessible, transparent, fair and robust.

A code of conduct should be developed for discourse on social media, making clear that attempts to delegitimize converts, calling people names such as ‘Kapo’, or using Yiddish terms such as ‘Shvartzer’ in a racist way, are completely unacceptable.

One recommendation with profound implications for all Jewish communities was that Batei Din should improve their conversion processes, including a clearer process for complaints.

The report was acclaimed by every sector of British Jewish life from the Chief Rabbi to the Movement for Reform Judaism.  The Israeli NGO Tzedek, one of the fifty-plus organizations that are amalgamated under the aegis of Olam, wrote: “We particularly welcome the recommendation that international development should be an advocacy priority for our community, and we look forward to playing our leading role in making this happen.”

Rabbi Jonathan Wittenberg, senior rabbi of Masorti Judaism wrote: “One of the great beauties of the Jewish people is that we have lived in all parts of the world and absorbed the elements of culture and perspective from our international experiences. We are a repository of humanity’s diversity, and we must embrace that about ourselves.”

The Commission’s findings and recommendations have a relevance that extends far beyond the shores of the UK. 

Published in the Jerusalem Report on-line:
https://www.jpost.com/jerusalem-report/britains-jewish-community-examines-its-record-on-race-and-discrimination-670629

A two-state solution the UN rejects

 This article appeared in the Jerusalem Post on-line on 8 June 2021

The UN’s enthusiastic support for a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestinian dispute is well attested, but there is a certain two-state solution that the UN resolutely refuses to endorse.  Cyprus has been split apart politically ever since 1974, when Turkey invaded from the north, seized nearly 40 percent of the land, and set up a self-styled Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus.  Its legitimacy has never been accepted by the UN, nor any international organization or country other than Turkey itself, nor has its demand that Cyprus be split into two states.

Turkey’s invasion of Cyprus and its illegal annexation of territory has a direct parallel with the unhappy history of the West Bank and East Jerusalem – indeed, Turkey’s action might have been based on it.  In 1948 Jordanian forces attacked the newly-born Jewish state and seized the West Bank and East Jerusalem.  In 1950 Jordan annexed them – a move not recognized by the UN or the Arab League, nor by any countries except the UK and Pakistan.  When in 1967 Israel succeeded in regaining control of them, it would have been logical for the UN to applaud Israel for liberating illegally acquired territories.  They did not seem to see it that way.

As for Cyprus, when the EU decided in 1996 to admit the whole of the country, with or without a resolution of its enforced partition, Turkey tried for a while to demand a two-state solution. When that failed, it finally agreed to participate in UN-sponsored talks focused on reuniting the people of Cyprus into a single, if bicommunal, nation.  This idea was the basis of a plan proposed in 2004 by then UN secretary-general, Kofi Annan.  Put to the people of Cyprus in a referendum, though, it signally failed to gain the support of Greek Cypriots since it would have involved a tacit recognition of Turkish aggression.  Some two-thirds of Greek voters rejected the plan.  The same percentage of Turkish voters supported it.

Cyprus is an issue that the UN cannot leave alone.  Another international attempt to resolve the partition dilemma was made toward the end of April 2021. At the initiative of UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres, the two principals and the three guarantor powers – Britain, Turkey and Greece – met in Geneva with reunification very much in mind.  Ersin Tatar, recently elected president of Turkish Cyprus, pretty much doomed this round of talks from the start.

“We are negotiating for a two-state solution," he announced, as the talks began.  But a two-state deal would have to involve recognizing the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus – something the UN and the Greek Cypriots had resolutely refused to do for nearly 50 years.

So the talks ended in failure.  In his closing statement Guterres said: “"Unfortunately today we are not able to reach the agreements that we would wish to reach.  But we are not going to give up."  The United Nations, he said, would make a fresh attempt in "probably two or three months".

“Cypriotism” is a vibrant aspect of Cypriot political life. It envisions a freestanding Cypriot nation independent of the motherlands Greece and Turkey.   The idea of reunifying the divided country is expressed in the slogan: “Cyprus is neither Greek nor Turkish; it belongs to the Cypriots.”  That concept is increasingly popular among the young, and especially so in the Turkish north.  Many resent the overwhelming influence that Turkey exercises over their lives.  They see it as a threat to their unique secular culture. 

Over the years Turkish Cypriots have blown hot and cold over reunification.  On two occasions attempts to achieve it were actually promoted by Turkish leaders: by Mehmet Ali Talat, elected northern president in 2005, and by Mustafa Akinci elected in 2015. Although both efforts came to nothing, in 2016 success seemed only a hand’s breadth away.

Akincı’s counterpart, Nicolis Anastasiades, president of the Cyprus Republic, was the only Greek Cypriot leader who supported the Annan Plan. He, like Akinci, was born in the southern city of Limassol.  “Mr Anastasiades and I are of the same generation,” said Akinci after his election. “If we can’t solve this now, then the next generations, who lack memories of living together with the other community, could be tempted to explore other options and permanent divorce could be on the table.”

 Akıncı and Anastasiades immediately started intercommunal talks under UN patronage, building upon their close personal relationship. The talks progressed rapidly, and Cypriots saw the two leaders having coffee either side of the buffer zone that separates the two communities. They appeared on TV together to send a holiday message in Turkish and Greek.

In June 2016, Akıncı said negotiations leading to reunification were almost completed and might be finalized at the next meeting. He was too optimistic. Time had run out.  New elections were looming, and Anastasiades had to pull back from his identification with his Turkish counterpart.  This became clear during a summit on Cypriot reunification held in Switzerland that July under the patronage of the UN and the EU.  The talks collapsed, and were never resumed.  The pendulum had swung. 

In October 2020 Turkish Cypriots elected as president Ersin Tatar, whose campaign message had been that the concept of a unified Cyprus in the shape of a bicommunal federation had had its day. Instead, said Tatar, two states was the solution; Cyprus should be permanently partitioned.

His position accords with the geopolitical aspirations of Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The discovery in 2010 of the Leviathan gas field off Israel, and of Cyprus’s gas field in 2015, has fostered an agreement between Israel, Greece and Cyprus to build a 1,900-km pipeline distributing natural gas to Europe, bypassing Turkey.  Erdogan wants to develop a Trans-Anatolian pipeline to deliver natural gas from Azerbaijan to Europe. However, Azerbaijani gas reserves are not sufficient – which explains Erdogan’s claims on those of Cyprus, a position only sustainable if Turkey retains control of its self-declared republic.

In the face of Erdogan’s ambitions, Guterres’s continued efforts to achieve the reunification of Cyprus seem unlikely to succeed.

Published in the Jerusalem Post on-line, 8 June 2021:

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/a-two-state-solution-the-un-rejects-opinion-670312

Published in the Eurasia Review, 28 May 2021:

https://www.eurasiareview.com/28052021-a-two-state-solution-the-un-rejects-oped/

Published in the Jewish Business News, 28 May 2021:

https://jewishbusinessnews.com/2021/05/28/a-two-state-solution-the-un-rejects/

Published in the MPC Journal as "Cyprus - the two-state solution the UN rejects", 22 July 2021:

https://mpc-journal.org/cyprus-the-two-state-solution-the-un-rejects/

The Palestinian dilemma – how much can Egyptian mediation achieve?

 

High-level talks involving Israel, Hamas, the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Egypt are in full swing. Sponsored by Egypt, the aim is to secure an effective truce between Hamas and Israel, putting a formal end to the Gaza conflict. 

It is seven years since the last serious attempt to reach an accord on the perennial Israel-Palestinian issue – the peace talks sponsored by US President Barack Obama, which fizzled out in April 2014.   Oddly enough they failed because PA President Mahmoud Abbas thought he had secured a deal with Hamas – an “historic reconciliation” he called it – together with an agreement to form a unified Palestinian government.  As Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said at the time, Abbas could "have peace with Israel or a pact with Hamas - he can't have both."

Of course no joint Fatah-Hamas government ever emerged.  Numerous attempts over the years to effect a reconciliation have failed, just like the current effort to hold legislative and presidential elections. The divide at the heart of the Palestinian body politic seems irreconcilable.

About 5 million Palestinians live in the Holy Land.  Of these some 3 million occupy the West Bank, most of whom are under the civil administration of the PA.  About 2 million in the Gaza Strip fell under the control of Hamas back in 2007, when it seized the territory, killed or expelled all Fatah officials, and set up its own administration.

That occupation is not recognized as legitimate by much of the civilized world, and certainly not by the EU, the US or the UK.  The PA, which was formed in 1993 as part of the Oslo Accords, was established to administer agreed Palestinian-occupied areas in the West Bank and also Gaza.  This was meant to be an interim step in the journey towards a final settlement of the Israel-Palestinian dispute – a journey that stalled early on and, despite many false starts, remains gridlocked.

Following persistent and effective lobbying by the PA, recognition has been granted by the UN General Assembly, other UN organs, and much of world opinion, to a State of Palestine on the West Bank and East Jerusalem, without any precise specification of what its borders are or, crucially, whether it includes Hamas-occupied Gaza.  The same entities consistently advocate the two-state solution as the desirable outcome of the Israel-Palestinian dispute. 

This strategy is anathema to Hamas and its leaders.  Seeking a sovereign Palestine confined to the territories occupied by Israel in the 1967 war, is to acknowledge that the State of Israel exists legitimately outside those territories.  The same logic applies to the two-state solution.  If Fatah’s own charter, schoolbooks and propaganda are to be believed, two states are not the long-term intention of the PA, merely a holding position (“Long live Palestine, free and Arab” proclaims the charter).

                    “Stay at home so we can protect the homeland”
                         [Official Fatah Facebook page, April 5, 2020]

          All the same, Hamas will have none of it.  They did not support Abbas’s efforts to gain recognition for a State of Palestine, nor do they accept the concept of a two-state solution.  Their whole raison d’être is to eliminate Israel and to occupy the former Mandate Palestine “from the river to the sea”.

It seems clear that before any resolution of the Israel-Palestinian dispute is possible, the gulf that divides the Palestinian body politic must be bridged, at least in part.  The Biden administration has made its position clear.  It does not recognize Hamas, nor its occupation of Gaza.  US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has just completed a tour of the Middle East.  Briefing reporters before he left the States, a State Department official said that the administration sought to structure the delivery of aid to Gaza in a way that “begins a process of hopefully reintroducing and reintegrating the Palestinian Authority into Gaza.”

Hamas leaders were in no doubt that this approach was intended to by-pass them and weaken their grip, and they have no intention of allowing the Fatah-dominated PA a way back in.  Yahya Sinwar, head of Hamas’s political wing, accused the US of seeking to widen the divide between Hamas and the PA.  This is not Abbas’s view.  He is reported to have told Egypt’s security chief, Abbas Kamel, on May 30 that any reconstruction plan for Gaza must be carried out in coordination with the PA.

An extended truce between Hamas and Israel is perhaps achievable, but to reach a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians, Hamas will need to be out-maneuvered and politically neutered.  The basis for any accord would almost certainly be the Three Principles set out in 2006 by the Middle East Quartet (the UN, the EU, the US and Russia) – principles endorsed by the UN Security Council in its Resolution 1850 and which Hamas would be unable to sign up to.

They are that a Palestinian state must

·         recognize the state of Israel without prejudging what various grievances or claims are appropriate,

·         abide by previous diplomatic agreements, and

·         renounce violence as a means of achieving goals.

Hamas has its own game to play.  It does not seek peace or reconciliation.  It seeks to establish itself as the popular alternative to the PA as the champion of the Palestinian people.  It has no desire for a two-state solution – or, indeed, any solution – to the long-running dispute.  It seeks victory and the destruction of the state of Israel.  If Hamas cannot be defeated in conflict, because of the unacceptable level of consequent civilian deaths and casualties, then it must be weakened, diminished and undermined by political and diplomatic means until the PA can reasonably claim to be negotiating on behalf of the Palestinian people as a whole. 

An Egyptian-brokered truce between Israel and Hamas is the immediate goal, but a longer-term strategy aimed at spiking Hamas’s guns permanently and resolving the Israel-Palestinian issue needs to be devised and set in motion as a matter of urgency.  It should be high on the new Israeli government’s agenda.

Published in the Jerusalem Post, 13 June 2021:

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/hamas-israel-talks-how-much-can-egyptian-mediation-achieve-670827

Published in the Eurasia Review, 4 June 2021:

https://www.eurasiareview.com/04062021-the-palestinian-dilemma-how-much-can-egyptian-mediation-achieve-oped/

Published in the Jewish Business News, 4 June 2021:

https://jewishbusinessnews.com/2021/06/04/the-palestinian-dilemma-how-much-can-egyptian-mediation-achieve/

Israeli territory

 This letter appeared in the UK's Daily Telegraph on 31 May 2021

Sir

The report "Ireland attacks Israel's "de facto annexation" of Palestinian land" (May 27) is, of course, quite correct in stating that most countries view settlements Israel has built in territory captured in the 1967 Middle East war as illegal.

          What is almost never taken into account is that in 1948 Jordanian forces attacked the newly-born Jewish state and seized the West Bank and East Jerusalem.  In 1950 Jordan annexed them – a move not recognised by the UN or the Arab League, nor by any countries except the UK and Pakistan.  When in 1967 Israel succeeded in regaining control of them, it would have been logical for the UN - and most countries - to applaud Israel for liberating illegally acquired territories.  They did not seem to see it that way.

Neville Teller

Why Gaza must be de-Hamasified

 This article appears in the edition of the Jerusalem Report dated 7 June 2021

November 1944. World War Two is moving towards its close, and an Allied victory is assured. From Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF), a document is issued setting forth one of the major war aims of the United Nations ­– the de-Nazification of Germany.

          “It is the declared war aim of the United Nations to extirpate both Nazism and militarism in Germany”, reads the introductory paragraph. The document proceeds to set out the objectives, which in brief were to destroy the Nazi Party, its political organizations and government agencies; to purge and re-organize the police; and to dismiss from government offices and other position of influence all active Nazis, their sympathizers and leading military figures. Very shortly after the end of the war, the programme was set in train.

Why was it done? Because Nazism, with its wild-eyed philosophy of Aryan racial superiority, its virulent antisemitism, its brutal disregard for human rights, its cynical manipulation of the law to serve its own ends, was seen as a virus that had infected the German state and its population, and had to be eliminated.

The programme was fraught with enormous difficulties. It was only made possible because the Allies had won total victory and extracted an unconditional surrender from Germany.

Hamas is an extremist military organization that shares much of the Nazi philosophy. It is an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, whose leaders in the 1930s and 1940s not only supported, but were actively involved in carrying through, the Nazi’s ”Final Solution to the Jewish problem” – the Holocaust.  The Allies’ carefully considered plans for ridding the world of Nazism are a template for dealing with its modern manifestation in Gaza.

As Professor David Patterson demonstrates in his seminal article “How Antisemitism prevents peace”, the jihadists’ virulent hatred of Jews can be traced back to three founding fathers of Sunni extremism: Muslim Brotherhood founder Hassan al-Banna, jihadist ideologue Sayyd Quth, and the leader of the Palestinian Arabs from the 1920s to the 1940s, the Jerusalem mufti Hajj Amin al-Husseini.

Al-Banna was an open admirer of Hitler and Nazi methods of antisemitic propaganda; modern jihadists take their lead from him. They not only repeatedly quote the long-discredited forgery “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion” as proof of a world-wide Jewish conspiracy, but deny the Holocaust.

Sayyd Quth followed the Nazi ideologue Alfred Rosenberg in arguing that all Jews were evil and must be annihilated. The Nazis contended that Jews were poisoning the Aryan race; Quth provided an Islamist slant by asserting that Jews were “by nature determined to fight God’s truth and sow corruption and confusion.” Just like the Nazis, he argued, the jihadists must eliminate this source of evil that threatens all humanity. In short, hatred of Jews and their extermination is obligatory for Muslims, as it was for Nazis.

The Sunni jihadist who more than any other espoused the Nazis’ loathing of Jews, and their aim of exterminating them, was Hajj Amin al-Husseini, the one-time mufti of Jerusalem. “He who kills a Jew is assured of a place in the next world” was his rallying cry to the Arabs of Palestine in 1929, when they rose against the British mandate government and went on a frenzy of killing.

Just two months after Hitler became Chancellor of Germany, Husseini met the Nazi Consul General in Jerusalem, Heinrich Wolff, and arranged for the Nazis to provide support for the Muslim Brotherhood. He later indicated that the Arab revolt that he instigated in 1936, starting with rioting against the Jews of Jaffa, was engineered with the help of the Nazis.

In October 1937, shortly after the Peel Commission had recommended partition as the best way to resolve the Arab-Jewish conflict, Husseini had his first meeting with Adolf Eichmann, head of the Gestapo’s Department of Jewish Affairs. By November 1941 he was in Germany, conferring with Hitler. Before the end of the year, Husseini again met Eichmann, now responsible for carrying out the Final Solution. Eichmann’s deputy later stated that the mufti was directly involved in its initiation and execution, and in advising Heinrich Himmler, head of the SS and its architect.

On 2 November 1943, at a rally in the Luftwaffe Hall in Berlin, Husseini declared, “The Germans know how to get rid of the Jews. They have definitely solved the Jewish problem. [This makes] our friendship with Germany permanent and lasting…” In a series of broadcasts, he proclaimed that there are “considerable similarities between Islamic principles and those of National Socialism.” He enjoined Muslims to “kill the Jews wherever you find them.”

As the war turned against Germany, Husseini began to fear that it might end before the extermination of the Jews could be accomplished. He wrote to Himmler twice, urging greater speed in completing the enterprise.

Exemplified by Hamas, the modern jihadist movement has remained faithful to its origins. The Hamas charter expands on the theme of the God-approved duty of every Muslim to kill Jews. A good Muslim mother must prepare her children for the fighting that awaits them, for, as article 28 asserts: “The Zionist invasion of the world…[aims] at undermining societies, destroying values…and annihilating Islam.  Israel, Judaism and Jews challenge Islam and the Muslim people.”

The essential pre-requisite for a de-Hamasification programme in the Gaza strip would be either total victory by Israel following a ground invasion – a procedure fraught with overwhelming difficulties because of the inevitable extent of civilian deaths – or a fail-safe method of emasculating and out-manoeuvering Hamas through political means.

The disbanding of Hamas would need to be a well-conceived, comprehensive and fully worked-out plan, prepared and ready to put into action as soon as the moment was ripe. Back in May 2003, when the de-Ba’athification programme was initiated in Iraq by the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), only half the necessary elements were in place. The goal was to remove the Ba’ath Party’s influence in the new Iraqi political system.  Accordingly all public sector employees affiliated with the Ba'ath Party were removed from their positions and banned from future employment in the public sector. But the CPA had no plans to fill the vacuum in administration it had created, and the policy failed. It was officially rescinded a year later.

The de-Ba’athification exercise is an object lesson in how not to proceed in the case of Gaza.  In any event the current conflict will almost certainly not provide the opportunity for Israel to achieve a convincing victory against Hamas and initiate a de-Hamasification programme. International pressure to agree a cease-fire will pre-empt any sort of decisive outcome.  Once again a cease-fire will simply provide Hamas with a breathing space in which to regroup and re-arm in preparation for the next encounter.

Limited conflicts followed by ineffective cease-fires cannot go on forever. If not on this occasion, the time will eventually arrive when Israel will be forced to undertake a sustained, all-out effort to gain the upper hand against Hamas. With military means ruled out because of the unacceptable collateral damage in terms of civilian casualties, Israel, must devise a political strategy that will achieve the desired objective.

Out-of-the-box thinking is called for. One possible answer could lie in peace negotiations brokered, perhaps, by the Middle East Quartet (UN, EU, US and Russia), aimed at establishing not only a sovereign Palestine, but a political structure designed to support the new configuration in the region.  A sovereign Palestine could be established as part of a new legal entity – a Confederation embodying Jordan, Israel and Palestine.  A Confederation is a system in which sovereign states agree to collaborate in certain spheres such as security, defence, economic development or infrastructure.

Coming into legal existence simultaneously with the new Palestine, the Confederation  would be dedicated to providing hi-tech security and economic growth for all its citizens. The Israel Defense Forces would act in concert with the defence forces of the other parties to guarantee the security of Israel and that of the Confederation as a whole.

Gaza would, of course, be included within the new sovereign Palestine, and from the moment it came into legal existence, the Confederation could make it clear that any subsequent armed opposition, from whatever source, including Hamas, would be disciplined and crushed from within. 

          This is a configuration offering the possibility of spiking Hamas’s guns permanently.  It would allow the introduction of a de-Hamasification programme.  Hamas leaders and adherents would be dislodged from their positions of power within Gaza, the malevolent Hamas philosophy would be eliminated root and branch, and its Nazi-based anti-Jew, anti-Judaism and anti-Israel ideology extirpated from the Palestinian body politic. Gaza’s citizens would finally be freed from the social and economic deprivation they have endured for too long.

Published in the Jerusalem Post website, 24 May 2021
https://www.jpost.com/jerusalem-report/why-gaza-must-be-de-hamasified-668967

Unconditional surrender -- re-thinking a forgotten concept

 

            Anyone who lived through the Second World War – and we are growing fewer by the day – knows the experience of fighting a life-or-death conflict against a ruthless and vicious enemy.  They can recall how the allies, combatting the Nazi and Japanese war machines, agreed that the only acceptable outcome of the conflict would be the unconditional surrender of the enemy – a concept proposed by US President Franklin Roosevelt at the Casablanca conference in January 1943.  Unconditional surrender, it was recognized, would only be achieved by fighting the enemy to a complete standstill.

            Unconditional surrender is a concept unfamiliar to this generation.  In the recent attempt by Israel to force the terrorist organization, Hamas, to stop firing missiles indiscriminately on defenceless Israeli civilians, the world called for a “proportionate” response.  What sort of response the pundits would consider proportionate was never specified.  Even when members of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), having identified legitimate Hamas military targets, telephoned the inhabitants of buildings that housed them warning of an imminent attack, it was not enough.  Israel sought no civilian deaths at all, but given the fact that the Hamas military machine was embedded within and beneath the city of Gaza, it would have been simply impossible to respond at all without running the danger of unsought civilian casualties.

Hamas, like the Nazis, was waging what is known as “total war”.  Total war makes no distinction between enemy forces and unarmed and defenceless civilians.  Hitler’s opening shot in World War Two was his blitzkrieg against Poland, virtually obliterating Warsaw and scores of thousands of its inhabitants. Then he moved on to attack the civilian populations of much of western Europe.  When the Nazis decided to start bombing London, on September 7, 1940, causing thousands of civilian deaths, Britain responded in kind. 

By the end of the war, there was little attempt by any combatant to justify these bombing raids as strikes against military targets.  Indeed the Nazis’ so-called secret weapons – the V1 and V2 rockets – were simply launched at Britain and exploded wherever they fell.  The parallel with the Hamas missiles directed at Israel from Gaza is exact.

                                                     Hamas rockets target Jerusalem
           The ultimate purpose of Hamas’s existence is Israel’s total elimination.  Urged on by its paymaster, Iran, it seeks to conquer the Jewish state and replace it with its own regime, exactly as the Nazis sought in war-torn Europe.  When Britain stood alone against the Nazis in 1940, it was fighting for its very existence.  Under Iranian-inspired attacks from Gaza – or indeed from Lebanon, Syria or anywhere else – Israel is in the same position.  In the circumstances Israel would seem justified in declaring as its objective the unconditional surrender of its Hamas enemy.  But when the main battleground is the populated city of Gaza, and the consequent toll of civilian deaths would be totally unacceptable, unconditional surrender in a military sense is not a practical option.  The question, in a 21st century context, is whether it could be achieved by other means.

Unconditional surrender implies reducing Hamas to incapacity and ineffectiveness.  If achieved, it could enable Hamas and its hateful anti-Jew, anti-Judaism and anti-Israel philosophy to be eliminated from Gaza and the Palestinian body politic.  It could, as with the de-Nazification operation in Germany after World War Two, make membership of the Hamas organization illegal, remove Hamas officials from all positions of public responsibility in Gaza, and restore the administration to the Palestinian Authority.

Is there a political path to this desirable end? 

Lateral thinking is called for, but the vague outline of one possible strategy can be glimpsed – the frequently mentioned confederation concept.  Confederation and federation are different animals.  A federation is a system of government when sovereign states agree to merge their sovereignty in a joint form of administration. The USA is the supreme example.  A confederation, on the other hand, is a situation when sovereign states, while retaining their sovereignty, agree to collaborate in certain defined areas of government, and set up the machinery to do so.  The EU is a prime instance.

A new Israel-Palestinian peace initiative, building on the aspirations motivating the Abraham Accords, might be the way in.  Talks, brokered perhaps by the Middle East Quartet (the UN, the EU, the US and Russia), might aim at a deal incorporating copper-bottom guarantees of security for Israel, the absorption of the Gaza Strip into a sovereign Palestine, and a strengthening of the Jordan-Israel peace treaty.  

The mechanism for achieving a deal that would stick might be a Jordan-Israel-Palestine confederation, coming into legal existence simultaneously with a new sovereign Palestine.  The confederation would be dedicated to the defence of the region as a whole, and the IDF would act in concert with the defence forces of the other parties to guarantee it.  Jerusalem’s outstanding political and religious issues, as many others, would be much easier to handle within a confederation context.

From the moment it came into legal existence, the confederation could make it clear that armed opposition would not be tolerated, whatever source it might emanate from including Hamas.  It would be crushed by the integrated military forces of the confederation.  With Gaza incorporated within the new state of Palestine and its status guaranteed by the confederation, Hamas’s guns might be spiked permanently. 

In this 21st century Middle East of ours, the World War Two definition of unconditional surrender needs to be expanded to encompass a somewhat more sophisticated interpretation.

Published in the Jerusalem Post on-line, 24 May, and in the Jerusalem Post, 25 May 2021:

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/unconditional-surrender-re-thinking-a-forgotten-concept-opinion-669037

Published in the Eurasia Review, 21 May 2021:
https://www.eurasiareview.com/21052021-unconditional-surrender-re-thinking-a-forgotten-concept-oped/

Published in the Jewish Business News, 21 May 20221:

https://jewishbusinessnews.com/2021/05/21/unconditional-surrender-re-thinking-a-forgotten-concept/

Hamas: why now?

This article appeared in the Jerusalem Post on 18 May 2021 

   Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh meets Ayatollah Khamenei, Feb 2017

 Despite what much of the world's media report, Israeli police action on the Temple Mount and the Sheikh Jarrah affair are not prime causes of the current conflict between Hamas and Israel.  They are a convenient and long-awaited smoke screen behind which deeper incentives hide. 

Prime among them is the violent opposition to the Abraham Accords within the loose Islamist alliance of Iran, Turkey, Hamas and Hezbollah.  Sensible and pragmatic working relations between Muslim states and Israel, the aspiration behind the Accords, are the diametric opposite of what hard-line Islamists want.  As the agreements were announced Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, expressed outrage and threatened to cut diplomatic ties with the Emirates. Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, denounced the Accords as a “humiliation” for Muslim nations.  Since then, the Islamist axis has calculated that the best way to shatter, or at least shake, Israel’s newly forged relationships with Gulf states and Morocco would be to renew the Hamas-Israel conflict, making sure that the precipitating cause was connected to sensitive Muslim interests.

An equally important precipitating factor in the current conflict is the determined effort by leaders of Hamas and its Islamist backers to seize control of the Palestinian cause, to become the undisputed champions of Palestinianism. This they regard as a vital step towards their ultimate aim – the destruction of Israel.  All the evidence suggests that the barrage of rockets fired at Israel’s heartlands is part of a long-standing campaign to wrest the leadership of the Palestinian people from Fatah.  All that the Palestinian militants, together with their Islamist backers, had been waiting for was an excuse, or a series of excuses, to provoke a fresh confrontation.  Fomenting provocation on the Temple Mount and indignation over the Sheikh Jarrah affair provided the convenient smokescreen.

As part of their campaign to wreck the Accords, Turkey and Iran, as well as other Islamist-supporting governments like Qatar, are keen that Hamas, committed to the destruction of Israel, becomes the dominant voice in Palestinian politics in place of Mahmoud Abbas, the current, and largely ineffectual, Palestinian leader.  Turkish and Iranian leaders had been hoping that Hamas would emerge victorious in the Palestinian elections that were due to be held on May 22.

Under intense pressure from US and world opinion to restore some degree of democratic credibility to the Palestinian Authority, which last held parliamentary and presidential elections back in 2005/6, PA President Mahmoud Abbas announced that polling would take place in May and July 2021.  However he was only too well aware that the outcome of free and fair elections under neutral observation would probably result in an even greater Hamas victory than occurred in 2006.  That probability would not have escaped Israeli attention either.  When the question arose of arrangements for eligible Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem to vote, Israel, to quote the Jerome Kern song, “didn’t say yes, and she didn’t say no”.  Abbas seized on the issue, and cancelled the elections.

          Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, grasping the opportunity to parade himself as the Palestinian people’s defender, urged Abbas to defy Israel and go ahead with the polls. Hamas further strengthened its position in Palestinian eyes over the Temple Mount issue. Demanding that Israel remove the police from there by a given deadline, Hamas launched rockets against Jerusalem when its ultimatum went unheeded. The barrage of missiles it subsequently rained down on Israel, while testing the Iron Dome defensive system to the limit, was intended to consolidate the status of Hamas as the Palestinians’ champion. But the conflict is as much a battle for control of the Palestinian cause as it is an opportunity to attack Israel.

                      Hamas rockets target Jerusalem

For months Israeli security officials have warned that Hamas has been building stockpiles of missiles in Gaza in anticipation of renewed hostilities. The most sophisticated, manufactured locally, are based on medium-range Iranian systems, enabling Hamas to strike targets in major Israeli population centers and even as far as Eilat. 

This latest upsurge in Palestinian-Israeli violence is also due in no small measure to the obscure messages emanating from Washington about the US administration’s stance on the Middle East.  President Joe Biden certainly wants an end to the conflict, but he has been anything but clear about where he stands on the achievement of his predecessor, Donald Trump, in fostering Arab-Israeli peace.  Biden has so far shown little interest in maintaining the momentum of the Abraham Accords.  On the contrary, he has shown considerable enthusiasm for reopening dialogue with Iran and reviving the controversial nuclear deal.  The Abraham Accords are founded in part on a common Arab-Israeli desire to counter Iranian attempts to dominate the Middle East and overthrow both Sunni Muslim states and Israel.

Biden’s present position gives comfort to Israel’s enemies.  Middle East players interested in peace rather than eternal conflict need a display of strong US leadership, unequivocally opposed both to violence and to those states that foster it in pursuit of long-term goals of their own.  Is Biden prepared to provide this? 

These are the factors that have come together to provide the fuel for the current conflagration.  A desire to attack Israel in pursuit of a long-term aim of overthrowing the state is certainly among them, although by itself it is usually insufficient to spark conflict.  On this occasion it is strengthened by Islamist opposition to the recent Arab-Israeli reconciliation in the Abraham Accords, by the opportunity to seize control of the Palestinian cause from a clearly weakened PA leader, by the frustration of Hamas’s political ambitions because of the cancellation of the Palestinian elections, by ambiguous signals from the Biden administration tied to its desire to reopen the nuclear deal with Iran, and by convenient opportunities to whip up Palestinian anger provided by Israeli attempts to control protests on the Temple Mount and Sheikh Jarrah. 

In addition the Islamist axis has gained two unsought-for bonuses: the Arab-Jewish riots in Lod and elsewhere between extremist hotheads, and the collapse of the possibility of the United Arab List (Ra’am) joining a coalition Israeli government.

Can diplomacy and reason succeed in damping down the flames before they burst into all-out war?


Published in the Jerusalem Post, 18 May 2021, and in the Jerusalem Post on-line under the title: "Temple Mount, Sheikh Jarrah only smoke screens for Hamas's real incentive":
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/hamas-why-now-668355

Published in the Eurasia Review, 15 May 2014:
https://www.eurasiareview.com/14052021-hamas-why-now-oped/

Published in the MPC Journal, 14 May 2021:
https://mpc-journal.org/hamas-why-now/

Published in the Jewish Business News, 14 May 2021:
https://jewishbusinessnews.com/2021/05/14/hamas-why-now/

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    

 

J-TV – the global Jewish TV channel based in Britain

            Back in 2015 Oliver Anisfeld was an undergraduate reading history at University College, London (UCL).  Had he chosen, he could have had an assured future in the old-established family firm, H Forman and Son, headed by his father, the great grandson of its founder.  At one time, when London’s East End was home to hundreds of thousands of Jewish immigrants from eastern Europe, you had only to mention the name Forman, and everyone knew you were talking smoked salmon.  By 2015 the firm had expanded into an impressive nationwide enterprise with headquarters in the aptly named Fish Island, an area of east London adjacent to the River Lea.

            However, the heir presumptive to the Forman enterprise had other ideas.  Concerned at what he saw as apathy among young Jews about their Jewish identity, he dreamed a dream.  He conceived the idea of a new, high quality, online global Jewish media channel – a rich and vibrant source of information, thought, discussion and interchange about issues of concern to Jews the world over.  A source like this would have young Jews particularly in mind.  It would aim to inculcate, sustain and enrich their awareness of their cultural heritage.

Ideas are ten a penny; it takes special qualities of imagination, persistence and chutzpah to bring one to fruition.  These qualities Ollie Anisfeld possesses in abundance.  He set his sights on enlisting the help of the eminent Jewish peer, Lord Kestenbaum, to help with the birth of his enterprise.  Jonathan Kestenbaum, once head of Chief Rabbi Sacks’s office, and later chief executive of the United Jewish Israel Appeal (UJIA), was known for his extensive involvement in education.

“Tell him to leave a message,” was Kestenbaum’s first reaction, when told that a young student was asking for an interview. 

“No,” Anisfeld told his secretary. “I want to talk to him.”

“Tell him to send an email,” said Kestenbaum.

But Anisfeld refused to be palmed off.  Finally Kestenbaum, impressed with his persistence, agreed to see him.

“When he told me his idea,” Kestenbaum later admitted, “I was hooked.”

Less than a year later J-TV was launched at a prestigious reception held at Portcullis House, adjacent to the Houses of Parliament.  At the ripe old age of 22, Ollie Anisfeld had become a new Jewish media mogul.

 With the aim of disseminating Jewish ideas of global relevance, J-TV posts all sorts of video podcasts across a range of subjects of Jewish interest each week.  Subject headings include, amongst others, current affairs, Jewish wisdom. Jewish philosophy, entertainment, mental health, modern and ancient Jewish history.  Over the years Anisfeld has brought scores of politicians, academics, religious leaders, and thinkers to his studio to air their views or to be cross-questioned about them.  J-TV has never flinched from controversy, challenging personalities such as Norman Finkelstein, Baroness Tonge, Ben Shapiro and Shami Chakrabati to justify positions they had taken on issues of Jewish concern.

Anisfeld says that over the years he has learned some of the techniques necessary to grab and hold a social media audience.  A video must be fast-moving, but it should appeal as much to the emotions as to the eye.  To hold the attention it needs to be slick and graphic.  Above all, it must be entertaining.  I asked Anisfeld for an example, and he quoted J-TV’s Purim fest of a few years back, when he engaged a professional Donald Trump impersonator.  It proved to be an outstandingly popular video.

Over the five years of its existence J-TV has built up a regular global audience of some 250,000, though some videos have registered a million or more viewings.  The channel finds its largest audience in the US. with the UK a good second, followed by Israel, South Africa, Canada and Australia.

J-TV is an on-line video streaming channel, using YouTube as its main platform.  I asked Anisfeld whether he had been tempted to provide a fully-fledged TV service, but he said that he had favored the internet and popular social media from the start – he’d had no desire to launch his own website to carry his content.  His idea was to make access for his audience as easy as possible, and he believes that on-line provision from the well-established social media platforms is the key to reaching the younger audience who are his main target.  Being streamed online, J-TV can be watched anywhere and at any time.

                       Anisfeld interviews Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis

Anisfeld has succeeded in extending his audience to include a fair proportion of non-Jews – some 30 percent is his estimate. One ambition is, while expanding his existing devotees, to reach out to a non-Jewish audience and engage their interest.  He believes that the current upsurge of antisemitism in the West is based in fair measure on lack of knowledge and frank misapprehensions about Jews and Judaism.  In particular, he believes that some of the social  pressure placed on University Jewish societies, on both American and British campuses, could be countered by the dissemination of well-based media content aimed at people who are open to reason.

In this aim, Anisfeld told me, he would welcome input from people willing to contribute to his growing operation.  He wants to encourage creative video material and genuine emotional involvement with J-TV.  The enterprise has a long way to travel. Ollie Anisfeld is seeking help to achieve its worthy ideals.

When we were last in touch, he had this to say: "You said I didn't go into the salmon business, but I would beg to differ. The salmon is unique in that it swims upstream, against the tide, and that's what I've been trying to do every single day."

Published in the Jerusalem Post on-line, 12 May 2021:

https://www.jpost.com/jerusalem-report/j-tv-the-growing-global-jewish-tv-channel-based-in-britain-667942