March 2009

An area often overlooked by students of the Middle East conflict is the Arab infiltration into Israel that occurred between 1949-1956, and Israel’s retaliation for these violent violations of her sovereignty.

Benny Morris, professor of Middle Eastern History at Ben Gurion University in Beersheba, contends that the infiltration by the Arabs and Israel’s reaction to these terror attacks "molded the nature of Israeli-Arab relations and set patterns of behavior that were to characterize the conflict for decades."

Morris describes the type of attacks perpetrated against Israel, her diverse responses to them, and the impact they had on Arab border population and states. He analyzes how the Arab countries viewed these attacks.

He then discusses the effects of these incursions on Israel’s border settlements and on the country’s people and society.

In an attempt to be even-handed, Morris claims that the Israelis missed opportunities for making peace after 1948 because Ben-Gurion "declined to meet the Jordan and Syrian rulers when they sought to confer."

"Israel had been in no mood to make territorial or any other substantial concessions and the Arab leaders with whom it secretly parlayed were too weak to make peace without receiving ample concessions," says Morris.

This analysis reflects a fundamental problem with Morris’ approach to the conflict. The Arabs have always wanted to destroy Israel and continue to use every means they have available to achieve this. When the Arabs lose a battle or a war, the Israelis, instead of insisting that they renounce the use of force and acknowledge the legitimacy of the Jewish state, accept world opinion and see themselves as the only party in the conflict expected to do everything for the sake of "peace."

Outside forces require Israel to make concessions, which usually means relinquishing land they had won while in the process of defending themselves against total annihilation.

Where else in the world would this formula ever be proposed? Who but the Israelis would even entertain such a one sided and self-destructive approach? And when have any of the concessions Israel has made resulted in advancing the "peace process?"

The increase in terrorist attacks throughout the world has prompted considerable interest in the legitimate use of force in international affairs. The attempt to define limitations on the unilateral use of force by states began in 1945 with the expectation that the UN Security Council would be the sole authority to determine what was acceptable for the international community.

This proved to be impossible during the years of the Cold War, and conditions today are no more conducive to resolving the problems, which, as Christine Gray puts it, "remain the subject of fierce debate and fundamental doctrinal differences."

Gray, a professor of International Law at Cambridge University and a Fellow of St. John’s College, Cambridge, has written a timely work, addressing very real legal issues relating to the "war on terror," a term which, she says, is misleading and does not further our understanding of the true nature of the problem. She is concerned that the term venerates people who should be seen as criminals and overstates the threat that they create.

The issues faced by Israel that are addressed in the volume include: anticipatory self-defense, Hezbollah, UN Security Council Resolutions, cross-border attacks, necessity and proportionality, the 2006 Israel/Lebanon war, self-defense, harboring terrorists, reprisals, Syria, the attack on the Iraqi nuclear reactor, and occupation and the wall to keep out terrorists.

Given the expanding role of international law in our daily lives, this book is a very useful resource.

Israel faces many adversaries bent on her destruction. On the battlefield, the Arab nations and Iran seek her physical annihilation and disappearance. American and European university campuses form another battleground, one where academics are determined to undermine Israel’s credibility and legitimacy.

In this book, Dr. Manfred Gerstenfeld, chairman of the Board of Fellows of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, brings together a group of first-rate academics, students, and other experts to document the international campaigns to demonize and libel Israeli academics, their institutions, and scholarly Jews in general. As part of their mission, Israel’s academic enemies seek first to force Western academia to boycott Israeli scholars and universities, and then divest from the Israeli economy.

Gerstenfeld and the other authors analyze the problems at Rutgers University; the future of Columbia University’s Middle Eastern Studies program; and the issue of Sheikh Zayed’s funding of Islamic Studies at Harvard University Divinity School. They also tackle antisemitism and anti-Israel bias at the University of California Santa Cruz and Irvine, on campuses in Canada, Britain, Austria, and Australia; and finally among Palestinian Authority academics.

Gerstenfeld views campus campaign against Israel as part of the continuing assault on Jews and the Jewish state. These campaigns often employ antisemitic themes that, on occasion, have lead to violence.

This poses a real danger, because the next generation of Western European and American leaders have been raised on the distorted Palestinian-Arab view of the conflict.

Harry Kney-Tal, a former Israeli ambassador to the European Union, recognized that the anti-Israel narrative, which has been reinforced by many left-wing Israeli and former Israeli researchers, has "nearly totally taken over the academic, political, and media discussion of the issues."

"It is appropriate to the popular worldview in Europe nowadays, which is pacifist and post-modernist, full of guilt toward the former colonies and full of sympathy for oppressed nations demanding self-determination. It also serves electoral interests as well as the traditional interests of Realpolitik, which makes up a large part of EU policy," he said.

Gerstenfeld rightly notes that if Israel and its allies fail to deal with the wider issue, "the consequences of the anti-Israel boycott attempts can be mitigated at best. The classic defensive approaches—rather than pro-active ones—may be both time-consuming and only partly effective."

That so many Jews and Israelis participate in this self-hating phenomenon is a major concern that was recognized by the World Jewish Congress: " Certainly, a most disturbing element in the present situation is the fact that certain extreme left-wing Israeli organizations are often operating in concert with the Arabs in such campaigns and even orchestrating them. For several years now, such organizations have been circulating a list of Israeli firms operating in the West Bank, the Gaza District and the Golan Heights, and even the boundaries of east Jerusalem, and have called on Israelis to boycott these firms. Moreover, the same people have sent their list to the offices of the European Union in order to have those firms disqualified as Israeli companies and thus receive certain benefits."

Tanya Reinhart, an Israeli who teaches Linguistics at Tel Aviv University, has actively promoted the academic boycott against Israel. In an open letter to another left-wing academic, Baruch Kimmerling of Hebrew University, who came out against the boycott, she wrote: "But no matter what you think of the Oslo years, what Israel is doing now exceeds the crimes of the South Africa’s white regime. It has started to take the form of systematic ethnic cleansing, which South Africa never attempted."

Both Reinhart and Kimmerling have since passed away, but their heirs are fully operational.

Israeli academics who are on the frontlines in this battle need our support. They must know that we are with them. The first step is to read this extremely significant book.

Jerome Murphy-O’Connor, professor of the New Testament at the École Biblique et Archéologique Française de Jérusalem, has written an easy-to-use guide for those interested in historical sites in Israel that are accessible and worth seeing. In this revised and expanded edition, Prof Murphy-O’Connor has included six new sites.

There is a brief historical outline of the human history of Palestine to explain the cultural development of the sites. There are more than 150 maps, diagrams, and photographs. A selected bibliography, practical travel advice, lodging suggestions, opening hours for the sites, lists of 34 national parks and reserves that have important archeological digs, and appropriate dress for various regions and neighborhoods throughout the country make this an indispensible guide.

This concluding volume, dealing with the political history of the Jewish people, is part of a three-book series that is now out of print. This work focuses on the political forces, processes, and decisions that helped create the Jewish state.

The Zionists were faced with a seemingly insurmountable number of obstacles: they had no territory, no substantial military forces, no financial leverage, no means to control their own supporters, and faced significant opposition within the American-Jewish community.

These daunting hurdles would have sufficed to derail any movement, but the Zionists’ luck was to emerge on the political scene at a time when there was a restructuring of world forces and the British were seeking greater role in the Middle East to advance their own interests. Zionists favored British control of Palestine while the British feared German control of Palestine and their reacquisition of East Africa.

Those interested in the political intrigues of governments and the confluence of interests of the British and the Zionists will find this volume quite informative.

Books that go out of print are often forgotten and thus not read or consulted even though they may still be important sources of information. In 1992, Bernard Wasserstein, a professor in the department of history at the University of Chicago, wrote such a study about Herbert Samuel, who, among his other accomplishments as a British politician and diplomat, served as the British High Commissioner in Palestine from 1920-1925.

Although Wasserstein deals with Samuel’s views on Zionism and his experiences as High Commissioner, he uses new sources to refine his analysis on Samuel’s very important tenure in Palestine.

From the time of the Balfour Declaration in November 1917, Samuel had a close relationship with the Zionists. Whenever they had an issue with the British, they asked him to intervene on their behalf. His son, Edwin, served as a liaison officer to the Zionist Commission sent to Palestine in the spring of 1918 with the approval of the British government.

Samuel later took a more active role in representing Zionist views and concerns to the British. As relations between the Jews in Palestine and the British military administration deteriorated, Samuel tried to ensure the situation would not affect delicate diplomatic negotiations being held in Paris and London about the future of the region. His goal was to strengthen the Anglo-Zionist alliance and make sure the British remained the only ruling authority in Palestine.

What is especially interesting is how Samuel functioned as High Commissioner after the British failed to deal with the Arab riots in Jerusalem in 1920 and, as a consequence, lost all credibility, leading to the disbandment of the military administration

His initial belief, that the masses of Arabs were "quite contented" with the Zionists, was shattered on May 1, 1921 when Arab riots broke out in Jaffa and spread to neighboring areas. Forty-seven Jews and 48 Arabs were killed, and 146 Jews and 73 Arabs were wounded.

Instead of punishing the Arabs for their murderous rampage, Samuel stopped Jewish immigration, the ostensible cause of Arab outrage.

In the face of this capitulation, the Arabs learned that riots and attacks against Jews yield positive results, a lesson Jews and the West have yet to internalize. Thus, the policies of appeasement continue to encourage the Arabs to use violence to achieve their objectives.

Herbert Samuel helped create the environment in which terrorism has become the weapon of choice.

Practically every time the US embarks on a new effort to resolve the Arab/Israeli conflict, some diplomat or academic suggests that the "peace building" lessons learned from the experience in Northern Ireland and South Africa should be used to solve the dispute in the Middle East.

Colin Knox, a professor of public policy at the University of Ulster in Northern Ireland, and Pádraic Quirk of the Community Relations Unit, Office of the First Minister, and Deputy First Minister of Belfast, Northern Ireland, accept the view that the Israelis are at fault in this conflict that continues to fester and that, before there is any chance for peace, the Jews are the ones who will have to change their polices, if not their very nature.

They quote one Israeli Arab who explains that the dispute functions on a number of levels throughout Israeli society. It is, we are told, a "conflict about resources, about land and about the status of the minority, it is about the nature of the state."

"I think the ethnic character of the state is the main source of the conflict," he says, castigating the Israelis for establishing Jewish state symbols, for adopting a national anthem that refers to "return to Zion," and for legislating a statute in 1984 that prohibits candidates to stand for election if they reject the idea that Israel is a "state for the Jews."

Knox and Quirk accept without question that these factors make coexistence exceedingly difficult if not impossible.

Nowhere in this work is there any analysis of Israel’s legal and moral right to exist as a Jewish state. There is no attempt to contemplate this key to understanding the country’s raison d’être. How then could the authors hope to fathom Israel’s unique position in the world?

Historical perspective is also missing in this account. The author futilely attempt to analyze coexistence during what they see as four historical periods, beginning in 1948.

Issues of coexistence were always an issue between the Arabs and Jews, even before Jewish immigrants began arriving in Palestine in large numbers in the 1880s. One wonders if Knox and Quirk ever read the letters of William Tanner Young, the first British Vice-Consul in Jerusalem (1838-1841) who went onto serve as consul from 1841-1845. Young wrote to Viscount Palmerston, British State Secretary for Foreign Affairs, and to other British officials about the horrid conditions the Jews were forced to endure at the hands of the Arabs and Christians. These letter and reports from other British officials in Palestine from the mid 1800s and throughout the period of British Mandate are available at the National British Archives and would have provided a perspective very much needed in this biased account.

Knox and Quirk quote members of Peace Now and other Israeli leftists to explain Israeli policy, seemingly without realizing that these groups represent only one small part of the story. From the account in this book, it would be reasonable to conclude that these leftists will eventually change events on the ground. The authors do not—or choose not to—understand that while the Israeli left was, at one time, an important voice, its hegemony is weakening as the Israelis themselves adopt a more balanced—and realistic—view of the true nature of the problems they face.

Despite, or, perhaps, because of its biases and lack of historical perspective, this is an important book. Listening to politicians and diplomats pontificate on how to solve the conflict between Israelis and the Arabs allows an understanding of what these naïfs have read in order to arrive at such distorted interpretations about the nature of the problem. This book unwittingly explains why they are able to do so with such ease.

Richard N. Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, and Martin Indyk, director of the Saban Center, spent 18 months working with a team of experts from these two institutions in order to present a number of "thoughtful" recommendations to President Barack Obama on how to "advance American interests at home and abroad."

Their hope is that this work will be provide useful insights for the new President, Congress, the media, and others throughout the world interested in the Middle East. Their focus is Iran’s quest for nuclear arms and regional hegemony, the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the "stagnant" Arab-Israeli conflict.

It is a basically a one-sided polemic that reflects Haass’s and Indyk’s ideology rather than any semblance of "balance."

In their essay, Steven Cook, a senior fellow of the Council on Foreign Relations, and Shibley Telhami, Anwar Sadat Professor at the University of Maryland, urge Mr. Obama to make the Arab-Israeli conflict a priority or, they warn, the US will suffer the "consequences of the collapse of the two-state solution," and have to endure the "impact" this would have "on Arab public opinion."

Any solution the President might want to try, they say, should be one geared to "connecting" the conflict to America’s "regional and global agenda."

Solving the dispute they assert, would allow new alliances that could "turn public opinion against al Qaeda."

Their advice to "put in place political arrangements that are conducive to successful negotiations and that limit Hamas’s incentives to be a spoiler," appears naive. Surely they have read the Hamas Charter and other Hamas declarations calling for the destruction of the Jewish state. If every inch of the land is holy and, according to Islamist doctrine, cannot be given or negotiated away, how can there be peace as long as the Jews control of any part of Israel?

The Arabs believe this is a religious holy war in which there can be no compromise.

Middle East experts have insisted that the Oslo Accords and the Disengagement from Gaza would bring if not peace, then, at least, a "roadmap" to a resolution of the conflict.

They were wrong. They insist that settlements are just another impediment to peace, but during the years when there were no settlements, the Arabs were still at war with Israel.

For the Arabs, the existence of the Jewish state is the fundamental problem, and always has been. The Arabs openly declare this in their writings, their political and religious declarations and pronouncements, and by their actions. The "experts" have trouble accepting this truth.

Readers may agree or disagree with the conclusions in this book, but it is an important work. Many of the authors whose essays appear in it are held in high regard by members of the President’s foreign policy team. Some of their views will undoubtedly shape American policy.

Restoring the balance in US foreign policy will occur only when we base our assessment on reality, not fantasy. The West is engaged in a war of survival with radical Islam. That should be our primary focus.

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