HAARETZ: 4 Article...

We are all victims of terrorist logic

So this is how the occupation develops into war, which the commentators, in their righteousness, call a war "that neither side wants." Really? Do Military Intelligence and Shin Bet not know that Hamas will fire rockets if the air force kills people in the Gaza Strip? Of course they know.

By Yitzhak Laor

There's no doubt that the terrorist too has logic, and this logic is also technological. If he can outsmart the opposing power, why would he forgo the opportunity to sneak through a heat wave in the desert to approach a car with vacationing couples and kill? How can he not exploit his tactical advantage?

There are an abundance of moral justifications: occupiers should be eliminated; occupiers are not civilians (they are all soldiers ). And revenge, of course. And there are strategic justifications, too, that we can only guess at - September, the nature of the solution, etc. That's the part of the picture that's easy to digest.

The occupying side has its own terrorist logic: If it can use its technological knowledge to prove to the other side that "we're stronger" and that we know how to kill, why pass up the opportunity? There are numerous moral justifications: There are no civilians (they are all terrorists ), this is our country, there is no occupation in Gaza, our dead are still lying before us. At night we are shown the bodies; the next night, the funerals. And revenge, of course.

Surely there is also a strategy: deterrent power (which is always good, even if we have no clue what it is ), toppling Hamas, September, the defense budget, to score points with the West, scuttling the Palestinian struggle for independence, and even blurring the blunder of Bloody Thursday - the inability to translate warnings from the Shin Bet security service into real readiness.

So this is how the occupation develops into war, which the commentators, in their righteousness, call a war "that neither side wants." Really? Do Military Intelligence and Shin Bet not know that Hamas will fire rockets if the air force kills people in the Gaza Strip? Of course they know. But the terrorist logic includes, "What, we shouldn't respond?"

What every intelligent person knows - when you're confronted with a bully who takes your parking space, you keep your distance rather than be drawn into a fight - the terrorist doesn't know. He'll show the world who has the bigger Rottweiler. He'll show everyone who's tougher. He'll have the last word. Only death is mute.

And so ends August, which was meant to mark a great change in Israeli awareness. The commercial channels are allowed to return, after the funerals, to their stupid entertainment programs. Television builds a "private life," and in one's private life, "life goes on" and nothing is holy other than that which entertainment dispenses. Only the Israeli collective - that which perceives itself as the Israeli collective - stands silently to attention when the terrorist logic sings its song.

And thus, the young leaders of the social protest, who have not yet been through any war, also don't know how the Israeli left died in war - the left that Shelly Yachimovich calls "social" and calls for it to move forward, in its shrouds, from the place it was buried, as if we've learned nothing from history. When the collective becomes addicted to "unity," it dies from friendly fire. For a social struggle, unity is opium, despite all the lovely sentiments.

When the tent protest began, MK Zahava Gal-On expressed the fear that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would come up with a reason to call the residents of the tent camps to reserve duty. But she should have also been concerned about how to respond to an authentic alarm: What can be done in the cage of terrorist thinking? How does one continue being a collective opposition to a government whose "national prestige" is determined by Netanyahu, Avigdor Lieberman, Ehud Barak and Moshe Ya'alon?

How does one overcome Tzipi Livni as an "opposition" that wants another war? How does one overcome the orchestra of the live broadcasts that fan the flames of the "fitting response?" Will the next terror cycle again be avoided solely because of the fear of a crisis with Egypt?

Here's more proof that it's impossible to remain silent about war en route to social justice.

 

When Israeli arrogance meets Arab honor

When the neighbors' actions are motivated by honor, rather than by their interests, with Israeli arrogance, we call this 'Arab honor.'

By Akiva Eldar

 One can only hope that the prime minister will not ask his deputy, Moshe Ya'alon, to settle the dispute with Egypt in the wake of the incident in the south. According to Ya'alon's doctrine of international relations, under which "honor is a national asset," Cairo should be consigned to hell. Just as in the matter of the refusal to apologize to the Turks, standing tall and marching in the direction of lowering the level of diplomatic relations with the largest Arab country will without a doubt raise Israel's prestige in Washington and in Paris, and will deter Damascus and Tehran. When the neighbors' actions are motivated by honor, rather than by their interests, with Israeli arrogance, we call this "Arab honor."

The encounter between the Egyptians' prestige and the Israeli leadership's arrogance ignited the big blaze in October 1973. Egypt's honor required erasing the insult of the loss of the Sinai Peninsula, and then Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir's arrogance shut her ears to the peace signals from the late Egyptian President, Anwar Sadat. The thousands of victims exacted by that war did not succeed in curing the Israelis of the curse of arrogance. It sticks its nose up so high that it blocks the view around the corner - until the next violent clash.

The protest by the hundreds of Egyptians who are surrounding the Israeli Embassy in Cairo was not born during this past week. For decades, they have been watching Jewish settlers stealing lands that belong to Arabs, with the permission and the blessing of the government of Israel. All these years, the Arab commentators have been reminding the newspaper readers in the Arab countries that the Israelis deceived the Egyptians at Camp David in ignoring the Palestinian chapter in the agreement. Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman is threatening to revoke the Oslo agreement. It is a wonder he is not threatening to revoke the peace agreement with Egypt.

Two weeks ago, viewers of Al Jazeera watched Deputy Knesset Speaker Danny Danon, of the ruling party in Israel, declare the Jewish people's right to all of the land of Israel, and to Judea and Samaria (the West Bank ) in particular. Danon, who was introduced by his title of World Likud Chairman, asserted that the idea of two states to the west of the Jordan River was utter nonsense.

On the weekend, the Arabs learned that Danon, Lieberman and company are not alone. With a wave of arrogance, MK Shelly Yachimovich, who is vying for the Labor Party crown, granted a social-democratic certificate of kashrut to the settlements and their products. The young colleagues among the social revolutionaries of Rothschild Square, who are demanding social justice, are not evincing interest in the appalling lack of justice towards the Palestinian neighbors.

And this is not all. On Wednesday Israeli public figures will participate in a demonstration of support for Israel, moderated by Glenn Beck, the American preacher-broadcaster who recently declared that Jordan is Palestine. The event, of course, will take place with a mass audience and with television crews in East Jerusalem at the foot of the Temple Mount / Al Aqsa Mosque.

Cabinet ministers, among them Deputy Prime Minister Ya'alon, and Knesset members, among them MK Anat Wilf of Atzmaut, until lately of the Labor Party, alongside Kahanist MK Michael Ben Ari (National Union ) have stood in line to have their pictures taken in the company of the extremist broadcaster who is one of the biggest haters of U.S. President Barack Obama.

They have from whom to learn. Just a short time ago, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave a display from the podium of the House of Representatives of arrogance towards the (short-term, in his opinion ) tenant of the White House. The encounter between Israeli arrogance (and its sister, euphoria ) and ousted Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak's duplicitous policy regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict facilitated maintaining relations with Egypt, as though there were no occupation in the territories, and maintaining the occupation as though there were no Camp David agreement.

The channel between Cairo and Jerusalem remained open even after Netanyahu, in his arrogance, appointed as his foreign minister a politician who holds the patent on the proposal to bomb the Aswan Dam. The new Egyptian government's fear of the reaction by the United State has kept the Egyptian ambassador in Tel Aviv - for now.

This time, the Israeli arrogance is encountering the honor of an Arab street that is undermining the old order. When they see on television Israeli soldiers fighting Arab children on the day after the declaration of a Palestinian state in the UN, the dissidents in Egypt, Tunisia, Jordan, Syria and Libya will not be cracking sunflower seeds in front of the television. I hope I will be proven wrong.

Israel must adjust to a changing Middle East

Diamonds may be forever, but treaties with dictators are not. They are of limited duration, they last as long as the dictatorship lasts, and in this day and age that is well short of forever.

By Moshe Arens

 

John Maynard Keynes, the great economist, once said in a debate: "When the facts change I change my mind, what do you do, sir?"

Well, like it or not, the facts are changing. From the Sinai in Egypt, a country that has a signed peace treaty with Israel, terrorists are entering Israel and killing Israelis. And the Egyptian government, the military junta that has replaced Hosni Mubarak's dictatorship, is unwilling or incapable of assuring peace on the Israeli-Egyptian border. There may be more acts of terror emanating from Sinai to follow.

Diamonds may be forever, but treaties with dictators are not. They are of limited duration, they last as long as the dictatorship lasts, and in this day and age that is well short of forever.

It is now 34 years since Israel agreed to turn the Sinai peninsula over to Egypt as part of the peace treaty signed by Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat. Although many do not like to be reminded of it, Sadat was a dictator. The peace treaty survived his assassination four years later, when he was replaced by Mubarak. Whether it will survive the downfall of Mubarak is not clear at the moment.

When it was signed, Arab dictatorships were considered to be a permanent feature of the Middle East. It seemed obvious that Israel had to make peace with Arab dictators, and that the formula for making peace with them was "territories for peace" - giving up territorial strategic assets for peace with a dictator.

That peace is security was considered a tautology. Dictators were famous for their ability to enforce their will upon the people. When they signed a peace treaty you could depend on them.

You would expect Israel, a democracy, to welcome the downfall of dictatorships in neighboring countries, and see the Arab Spring bring freedom to the Arab World. But in recent months we have learned to our dismay that the downfall of Arab dictators may bring in its wake chaos and anarchy and the threat of the ascendancy of the Muslim Brotherhood.

On a number of occasions successive Israeli governments came close to reaching a peace agreement with the Syrian dictator Hafez al-Assad, prepared to trade the Golan Heights for peace with him. Today we can consider ourselves fortunate that such a treaty was not signed. What is happening in the Sinai could have been happening now in the Golan Heights.

We have little choice but to prepare for a continuation of an unpleasant situation and hope that whoever rules Egypt in the years to come will adhere to the peace treaty with Israel, and will realize that putting an end to the chaos in the Sinai is of common interest to both countries.

But most important, we must realize that the facts on the ground around us are changing, and that there may yet be more changes in the wind. It is time for a reappraisal of pre-conceived ideas.

This is not a time to throw caution to the wind. This is not a time to withdraw to the 1949 armistice lines. It is not a time for "daring political initiatives." It is a time for watching and waiting to see how things are going to turn out. It is a time to think how we are going to assure the security of Israel's citizens in the southern part of the country from daily rocket attacks, and make sure that those living in the north and the center of the country do not share their fate.

Iron Dome is a great technological achievement but it alone cannot do the job.

It is a time to put away the placards calling for "Peace Now" and "An End to the Occupation." It may be the time for those demanding "social justice" for the "middle class" to fold their tents.

Israel lacks an opposition to stop escalation of violence

It is in Israel's interest not to make the current spasm of violence more extreme, but to act in a proportionate manner while working to find points of consensus that will break the automatic cycle of violence.

Haaretz Editorial

 

The escalation in the south contains all the components that allow a prime minister to do what he pleases without significant opposition. Continued rocket fire on Israel's cities, a criminal act that should be unequivocably denounced, comes at a heavy cost to the residents of the south, in lives and property. It disrupts normal life in the country and increases pressure on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to rain down destruction on Gaza that will restore "deterrence" and "change the equation."

The pressure comes not only from the right, which traditionally prefers aggressive solutions, or from the inner cabinet or forum of eight senior ministers, whose members mostly represent aggressive worldviews. Even the main opposition party, Kadima, which is supposed to act as a brake and barrier between the government and decisions that might turn out to be Pyrrhic victories, is urging Netanyahu to take advantage of Israel's military superiority over Hamas and the other organizations that have claimed responsibility for the rockets.

The chairman of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, Kadima lawmaker Shaul Mofaz, said yesterday morning: "The state must expand its actions vis-a-vis Hamas and bring down infrastructures," while Kadima's deputy chairman, MK Yohanan Plesner, pledged that "the committee will back any move the government makes to restore deterrence vis-a-vis Hamas and the terror organizations."

For her part, Kadima chairwoman MK Tzipi Livni went even further. She announced on Friday that she would back the Netanyahu government if it undertook a major operation. "Terror must be fought with force," she said.

The fact that no significant political entity stands between Netanyahu and a reenactment of the violent military operation of 2008, Operation Cast Lead, shows that Kadima, which should be leading the opposition, is not being true to its function. But more importantly, it exposes a political vacuum that lays all responsibility at the doorstep of one person.

Precisely because all options are open to him, and despite his tendency to buckle under to political pressure, the prime minister must use maximum good judgment and restraint.

It is in Israel's interest not to make the current spasm of violence more extreme, but to act in a proportionate manner while working to find points of consensus that will break the automatic cycle of violence.