Israel Arab Conflict (Debacle in Lebanon)

In the Aftermath of the Lebanon 4-Week War

Background
1. For three decades we have been going from one debacle to another followed by mostly futile blame games and commissions of enquiries concluding always that it is the fault of individuals, the fault of others. This time it has to be different. We must face up to our collective responsibility as a country, as a nation, Government, Opposition, the political establishment and especially all factions that make up our Knesset whose existence is there to represent us, all of us:- WE THE PEOPLE. This time it has to be different because not since the 1948 War of Independence have we faced the thought of Israel’s extinction; the destruction of the only refuge of last resort, the only State that we can claim to be ours. The existential dangers we are facing are being articulated loud and clear by powerful and resourceful enemies: Hezbollah backed to the hilt by Iran and Syria. This danger however may prove to be more manageable and temporary than the bigger attritions and persistent dangers of the mobilized anti Israel, anti Jewish and anti-Semitic Arab forces backed by European public opinion and media. Facing that we seem to descend into a siege position, indeed a ghetto mentality saying: There is nothing we can do more than we have been doing and as the world hates us anyway and we have no partners for peace we have no choice but to continue with more of the same. We need to challenge this attitude. We have to distinguish between permanent matters of sheer existence as people and those changeable State’s needs for diplomatic alliances. We need now to adopt a long term strategy where even a 180 degree change of direction should not be left unexplored. But we can only do that if we stop our self-congratulatory posture post this war and grasp the fundamental changes that have been taking place relentlessly both in our region and also globally. The international landscape is witnessing the birth of new economic empires (China, Japan & India) who know little and care less for Jews and Judaism to whom Israel is just one more tiny state surrounded by countries with whom these empires’ interests are growing by the day. Our business leaders are acutely aware of that and are acting accordingly, but not our politicians who seem to continue to slumber in the old order.
2. In the aftermath of the debacle of the 4-week Lebanon War we have to ask ourselves fundamental questions. These questions need to be daring, deep and all encompassing. There is no doubt that for one century now our Arab neighbors have not accepted us. In turn we on our side ceased long ago to try to understand them. A mental curtain has descended between us and the Arabs, and that includes our own Arab citizens. We have become accustomed to view each other through a telescopic gun-barrel. One notable development has been contributing in recent years to the barrier separating us from our neighbors. Those amongst us who were born in Arab countries and understand their language, history and culture are disappearing. In contrast the Arabs are fast learning what make us the people we are. The command of Hebrew among some of their leaders, scholars and commentators is astonishing and their diligent pursuit of what is going on in Israel is envious. Some of our Arab MKs speak better Hebrew than many of their fellow Jewish MKs. And you only need to view the daily analysis in Al-Jazeera of our Hebrew dailies to put our kol Yisrael to shame.
3. However, our Arab neighbors are themselves facing acute internal problems of social strife political bankruptcy and overwhelming population explosion. The Palestinians are left to themselves and they are reveling in their infighting and delusions making it impossible to reach any accommodation with us. New Nassers and new Arafats are popping up everywhere without the Arabs asking themselves what good their old heroes did for them and what purpose the new ones serve. With this hopeless situation prevailing, it was right and practical for us to build the Security Wall and it was wise to act unilaterally to give both sides time to find a solution for coexistence. Late though Sharon was right. On the Arab side they can only accept coexistence once it dawns on them that Israel is there to stay not because of its army, not because of its history, not because of the Holocaust, but because the living 6 million Jews in Israel (more than half of whom anyway are descendents of ethnically cleansed Arab Jewish refugees) have nowhere else to go. They have no choice but to stand up and fight even if it is a war of mutual destruction with their enemies. Only this realization will convince the Arabs to seek mutually acceptable solutions.
4. On our side, our social fissures and political instabilities are creating hesitancy and lack of resolve and are sabotaging the implementation of our only available policy i.e securing ourselves unilaterally and quickly within defensible walls. These walls and new borders have to be defendable militarily and, even more importantly, acceptable in due course internationally through negotiation. We cannot solve these problems without introducing real changes in our political structures, without finding remedies to integrate our population including our minorities (Jewish and Arab) and without challenging what has come to be taken for granted in the assumptions underlying our political thinking.

Fundamental Questions
5. All the above can be summed up in the 3 basic areas: External Security, Internal Stability and Pro-active Public Relations. We need to keep analysing and articulating in order to accord with new circumstances developing as a result of previous preceding failures to deal with them. These 3 problems are interconnected and interwoven and must be dealt with and constantly reviewed in a strategic and coherent way. Successive Governments failed to deal with them as an integral whole. And at the heart of these failures is the tactical, piecemeal, fire engine response whenever a flare up erupts in any one of these three areas without any coordination between them. This approach is displayed starkly before our eyes now. Shoot first, justify later! Often Pangloss-like we assert that anything we have done is the best that could have been done. In fact the root of our failure is the lack of strategic thinking well ahead and co-ordinated overall plans backing them. The underlying reason for this sad state of affairs is not that we don’t have intelligent leaders in abundance (witness our science, medicine, business etc) but that members of our government coalitions cobbled together by unholy factional alliances, often respond with self-serving knee-jerk reactions rather than with cool calculated long term strategies. In times of crisis our Governments play too much to the media gallery, preying on the fears of the people, to the dismay of Israel’s citizens, friends and supporters. In all these cases neither we nor our sympathizers worldwide are helped by us with a well prepared ready proactive PR to understand the new realities to which we need responses. Unfortunately our fragile factions-based governments lack the steel in them to know better and to act differently. What is even worse is that our Knesset, the depository of our sovereignty, is itself paralysed and due to its structure unable to guide the Executive in time of crisis. For instance how can Netanyahu, with his mere 12 MKs, speak for a credible Opposition? Nothing will change until an Official Opposition look and act as an alternative government, the measure of a real democracy. This can only happen when a new electoral system is introduced to produce a stable Knesset and therefore stable full term governments.
6. So in the aftermath of this 4-Week War we need to ask many questions which on the face of it might look haphazard and disjointed when in fact they are interconnected and intertwined. And better to start in the overall national security sphere. Has our dependence on the USA forced us to act as their scouts shield and fire-fighter in the Middle East? Do we need to be their Hawaii in the Mediterranean? Do we need to go all the way in that direction or to pull back for our sake as much as for our American friends and allies? Identifying with every step they take is harming us without helping them. Did we let ourselves be caught in a power struggle between the Shi'a and the Sunni countries and peoples leaving ourselves to be the only element that is uniting them instead of taking advantage of their divisions? Did we try to forge new regional alliances while the peace with Egypt and Jordan still holds and our mutual defense interests with Turkey still intact? Did we keep the Gaza population in a pressure cooker waiting for it to explode? And therefore did we in this way only protect Egypt not ourselves from their militant radicalism? And likewise did we in effect by keeping our soldiers on the Jordan River protect the artificial integrity of Jordan? Is it time to let Gaza and the West Bank gravitate naturally in opposite directions one towards Egypt and the other to Jordan using both countries as bridges to slow infiltration of their exploding numbers into other Arab countries instead of imprisoning them inside the Occupied Territories? Are we wise in blocking this natural merging process instead of preventing it through controlling the Palestinian borders? Did we blunder in not welcoming the initiatives of Saudi Arabia instead of every time rejecting them out of hand? Did we distinguish between the motives credentials and methods of the Sunni Hamas from the Shi’a Hezbollah? Why not attempt direct contact with them using Fatah and Amal ? After all their memberships are the inhabitants of our borders and no battle or war will dislodge them from their homes? Recognizing us or not is semantics at this stage. Did we listen to the advice of our own friendly Arabs and more importantly the new brave voices coming from the Gulf? Did we analyze what the Knesset Arab MKs, friendly and hostile, are telling us? Are we missing the opportunity of using them as intermediaries and points of contact with the Arab world? Did we try to include them meaningfully in our delegations and representations in the international community as Israelis speaking for Israel? Did we examine the truth of the accusations by the outside world that we only know how to use force? Is our thinking governed by rigid entrenched assumptions of siege mentality (whether on the Right or on the Left) that are leading us to the same conclusions and therefore the same policies? In politics as in Academia but not in science and business we are led by fuzzy thinking that concentrates so much on trees that the sight of the wood is lost in distant drowsing mist. It is time to wake up and seek comprehensive answers. ( I shall attempt separately in a Q&A to analyze and answer these questions)

In the Aftermath of War
7. Our mismanagement of the 4-Week War is now forcing Lebanon to compromise with the leadership of Shi’a Iran in our North and our disjointed and late responses in Gaza is fostering a Sunni based Al Qaeda in the South. We lost the early opportunity of this war while the whole world was supporting us, to seek openly to sit face to face or through intermediaries with the Lebanese present government with its majority of Sunnis Christian and Druze. Instead we destroyed the ground from under its feet and repositioned it as hostage in the hands of Hezbollah and the Arab Street. With American influence and the tacit behind the scenes support of Sunni countries: Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan and most of the Gulf we can still find a way out of the straight jacket which within four weeks we managed to tighten around our chests. Our approach to the Iranians notwithstanding the apocalyptical pronouncements of Ahmadi-Nejad and as distinct from the Syrians was wrong from A to Z because we responded to the Iranian Government rhetoric instead of addressing ourselves to the Iranian people. We insulted the pride of the Iranian people and played into the hands of their crazy government (witness the early responses of Mofaz and Peres). We let ourselves be caught by the American approach, harming it and our American allies in the process. It is in our mutual interest to demonstrate to our neighbors and to the world that we are an independent close and loyal ally of the USA but we are not its client-state in the region. Instead of responding belligerently to Iran’s rhetoric as we did we should have lay low. We are a small country often trying to pose in super power robes. We can increase our appeal in the region to paraphrase an Old Persian dictum if we don’t stretch our legs beyond the length of our rug.
8. Iran’s leadership is merely using Israel as a proxy in its conflict with America provoking us for that purpose by Hezbollah. Instead of falling into their strategic devilish trap we should try to reach to the non Hezbollah Shi’as like Nabih Berry’s Amal Party instead of forcing it to play second fiddle to Hezbollah. Let us give credit to our enemies. They are not stupid. Iran knows that Hezbollah and not even Iran itself can defeat Israel or wipe it out. But they can use us and cause us untold damage in the process. At the moment they are interested in subjugating Lebanon to complete the Shi’a Arc stretching from Tehran to the Mediterranean, and divide the Sunni North from the Sunni South. Israel is not party to their conflict with the Sunnis and what they perceive to be their Western protectors. Let the West secure its interests. Why should we sacrifice our children to pick its chestnuts from the fire? We would have been well advised to re-evaluate our position, held our nerve in the face of provocations by Ahmadi Nejad, tone down our rhetoric and refrain from direct involvement in the West’s confrontation with Iran. The present atomic Pakistani (call Bin Laden’s) Bomb constitutes more of a real danger to us if President Musharraf is suddenly assassinated than a future uncertain Iranian one. And both are far more dangerous to the West and to the Arab countries than to us. The Saudi king spelled his fear of the Iranian Bomb in no uncertain terms here in London. Why do we need to be their patsy? A limited military response for few days instead of full 4 weeks could have done the trick, spared many Israeli lives retained the mystique of our power of deterrence and invincibility. As it happened our military achievements, which are considerable but at a price, look doubtful in the eyes of the Arab and international worlds and our diplomatic failures are clearly disastrous and painfully visible.

Solutions and Policy Direction
9. Blame and lamentation will not set the clock back. So how to proceed. Olmert was right when in the midst of the war he declared that he would carry on with his plan of continued disengagement, unilaterally if a Palestinian consent was not forthcoming. He was after all elected on that very platform. By subsequently retracting it he has done a great harm to himself and to the image and future of Israel. Instead he should have defiantly repeated it and said that he wanted to accelerate it. This episode illustrates the impotence of our political system which needs urgently to reform. His retraction is more to do with internal politicking and not with the national interest. He can still salvage his reputation and emerge as a great peace leader if he would set out an even more ambitious plan now facing his opposition head on. And he should announce it and challenge Arab positions in all fronts rather than let leaks dissipate its international impact. Sharon’s decision to pull out unilaterally gained him and Israel tremendous credit. Olmert should turn a deaf ear to his internal intimidators. Frankly after the 4-Week War he has nothing to lose and everything to gain if he goes out bold and defiant. I believe the country at large would support him as indeed it unpredictably did to Sharon.
10. Israel's future survival can only be assured if we separate ourselves from the rest of the Arab World. Leaving Gaza was a first step which now should be followed immediately by a unilateral withdrawal from the West Bank to within the lines agreed in the Bush/Sharon exchange of letters (of the 14th April 2004) This needs to happen quickly while Bush is still there. Abu Mazin is willing from his own perspective to cooperate. It is up to him to include Hamas and anybody else he wants to or forced into. Let us stop interfering in Palestinian politics. We have been getting nowhere assassinating this or that leader or fighting a shadowy guerrilla. Leaving them alone would eventually make them turn their attention to develop economic interests which would induce them to protect and seek to strengthen through relationship with Israelis. The most efficient way to repel katyushas is by harnessing world opinion and not taking out this or that launching pad.
11. Olmert should announce voluntarily that he will release the un-convicted Palestinian prisoners. Let us give what we save in costs to our suffering destitute in the peripheries. The narrative that these prisoners will be enemy soldiers does not wash anymore. There are millions of them all around us. Their release would add little to the hostile human sea around us. Completing the Border Wall along the above lines and in compliance with the modifications ordered by the Supreme Court will leave Israel in the best position to negotiate a final status peace treaty with the new Palestinian State. Sharon/Olmert plans are right. Negotiation and fixing final borders should come later. If left for negotiation it can take years and untold number of fatalities on both sides in the meantime. Quick action will spare internal slow and damaging strife amongst our people. This physical separation, far from antagonizing the Arabs, will pave the way for better relations with them and remove the sting and the stink of the occupation.
12. And while it is still in our control, we ought to build a separation fence in the middle of the courtyard of Al-Aqsa Mosque. This barrier will protect the Jewish worshippers of the Kothel/Western Wall in the future and avoid the constant tension often leading to violence created by Islamists during Friday prayers. Once this is done we should then proceed unilaterally to hand back the Mosque to the Palestinians together with East Jerusalem as we define it. Let Arab Al-Quds (Jerusalem in Arabic) which will anyway join with Ramallah be separated from Jewish Jerusalem. It is not as impractical as many try to characterize this separation barrier. Remember that the idea of any wall or physical separation was thought to be crazy only four years ago.
13. Sharon, by confining Arafat to Ramallah effectively moved the centre of political gravity (and its corrupting pot of gold) from Gaza to the West Bank. Resisting the building of any bridge, flyover or tunnel between Gaza and the West Bank should be the follow up to this vital move. Any Palestinians sovereign physical link crossing Israel will only stoke conflict and hostility for the future. Uniting the two parts of Palestine will result in cutting Israel in two in its most vulnerable belly from a future pincer violence simultaneously applied from Hebron and Gaza. All movements between the two parts of Palestine have to be by passports and transit or term visas. In this way the population of Gaza will be orientated and will gravitate towards Egypt while those of the West Bank will be orientated towards Jordan. That will lift the pressure off Israel. Jordan and Egypt will resist this move by us since the infiltration of Palestinians into these countries will eventually impact on their internal politics. For years we foolishly acted as border protective shields for both countries. It is time to wake up.

More Bold New Initiatives
14. That leaves the two problems of Hebron and the Golan. Here we must recognize that the Jewish enclave in Hebron will always be a vulnerable continuing festering wound. Its continued existence as it is today is an invitation for a future massacre of its Jewish population as indeed happened in the 1930s. Israel could declare, again unilaterally, that a period of its protection by the IDF, say 5 years, is to be followed by complete withdrawal. This would leave the Jewish settlers with the choice, either to relocate to Israel or if they could establish during these 5 years peaceful coexistence with the local population to remain as Israeli citizens living as residents in Palestine becoming subject, like any other foreign resident to Palestinian law. The good engendered by our unilateral declaration will help to create a new climate in Hebron. But more importantly it will challenge the Arabs’ underlying adoption of the concept of Judenrein.
15. Incidentally this would also be the best model for a solution for the Golan Heights. Here again unilaterally Israel should declare that once Syria acknowledges Israel’s claim that the international borders leave the entire shoreline of Lake Tiberias within Israel, the Golan Heights could revert to Syrian sovereignty say five years after a peace treaty and exchange of Ambassadors. Olmert should be the first to take the initiative and declare this solution. I believe the Golan Heights will soon be on the international agenda anyway so why not preempt that. It is therefore time to come up first with our own creative and bold solution which could turn the Golan into a great multi cultural tourist centre for the benefit of both countries. Such solution silly as it may sound to some diehard pessimists amongst us could catch the imagination of the international community and afford a way out of our impasse with Syria. It seeks to expose and may destroy the pernicious racist concept of Judenrein prevailing in Arab lands. We should use this powerful and evocative word, Judenrein, in this context and take pain to explain it to an ignorant world media. The mere proposal by Israel can constitute in itself a coup. The predicted negative response from Bashar El-Assad will undermine his regime and may induce the majority Sunni opposition to come forward with encouragement from outside Arab countries to support such a fair plan that restores the Golan to Syria.

Consequences of the 4-Week War
16. This is not the place to analyse our overall military planning and piecemeal execution of the 4-Week War This is the field of experts who need to knock their heads together, but not in the glare of TV studios. All the relevant questions are anyway already in the public and media domain. The one big question is yet to be thrashed out. How is it that after the failure of the “Shock and Awe” approach in Iraq and the subsequent quagmire we did not learn the lesson? Mighty America and mighty NATO never embarked on a military operation let alone a war without patient preparations. Why we could not wait for few weeks when world public opinion was with us, exerting diplomatic pressure, calling and training our reserves, revising our military plans, coordinating them with our political objectives, all before crossing the border. Hezbollah was not going to invade following the capture of the two soldiers. Frankly I cannot see how any politician, from any party, can escape the shame and blame. They need to answer the bereaved families, the orphans and the crippled amongst our heroic youth who obediently answered the call of duty often knowing full well that they were not equipped adequately to defend a policy with which they were not necessarily in total agreement on its details.
17. No less failure but with worse dire consequences of the 4-Week War is the utter collapse of our PR to project and explain our just cause to the outside world. The support for Israel has evaporated in the whole of Europe and even amongst sections of our friendly American supporters. We failed and continue to fail to put our just case may be because some of us appear to have lost faith in it. We let ourselves stand in the dock accused, instead of initiating and forcing our own agenda on our detractors. Viewing our performance on the receiving end outside Israel, examples of our utter impotence are in abundance even when the opportunity of knock-out arguments are presented to us by hostile commentators. We always reacted rather than pre-empted the defence of our operations.
18. Nasrallah stated proudly in a long interview in Al-jazeera that, way back in the 90s, he understood the need to appoint two commanders: one to fight the battle and one to care for PR always ready with photographers and crews to back him. We have witnessed his spectacular success in this field on world TV networks which has contributed to our perceived failures militarily and morally. It is not enough to declare and assert that we are a moral army. We need to explain its roots. As Secretary to the Kafr Qasim Commission appointed in the middle of the Suez War almost 50 years to the day, I know how the moral and legal basis of our soldiers’ behaviour is determined. Ben Gurion in the middle of the Suez War understood the gravity of our image abroad and the behaviour of our soldiers in the battlefield. Abba Khooshi, the famous Mayor of Haifa and a member of this Commission, told me the moment I met him that we needed to ensure that the Sword of Israel is not sullied with innocent blood. I wonder how many in Israel let alone outside Israel know this background which preceded the famous Mi Lai massacre in Vietnam and established the IDF since as an army backed by moral rectitude. Therefore the appointment of a senior Minister of Information at par with and as important as the Defence and Foreign Ministers should be made as a matter of urgency and not one day too soon.
19. With the opposition in the Knesset emasculated by the nature of our political system and with the media being so adversarial, negative and self-serving, often concentrating on trivial sensational scoops, a shroud has descended over our eyes driving us to resignation and despair. Short-term tactics are taking over and quick remedies are sought when in reality we need root and branch radical solutions; and this even while we live in days when we don't know where the next missile is going to hit us from the North or from the South. Our leaders, our academics and our TV Studio Generals are making blame and recrimination as objectives instead of concentrating on the search for solutions.
20. To have the right to speak up, accompanied by reserve Brigadier-General and MK Eliezer Cohen, I visited Galilee in the midst of the war and saw the devastation on the ground and felt the desperation of the families in shelter. I met Major Gen. Gershon, GCO Home Front Command and learnt and listened to the problems facing us from Mayor Adi Eldar who by his personal example, action and few words articulated what was happening around him in Carmiel and how we were falling short. In his mild and modest manner I sensed what Prof. Arnon Sofer has been for too long pleading with us. Our country is divided between the indulgent rich and safe centre from Gedera to Hadera and the neglected peripheries. To many inhabitants of the North, whom I had the privilege to listen to as “refugees” in Tel Aviv I felt the return of “Second Israel” we used to talk about in the 50s and 60s.
21. Two points became clear to me. First I sensed that we were back at Yom Kippur days caught napping because the early Katushas fell in the peripheries far away from Tel Aviv. The North could not understand why we had to wait for the capture of soldiers to respond. Indiscriminate firing of Katushas on civilians were enough even in International law to constitute CASUS BELLI to react. The second point they kept raising was that there was nobody in the centre of government or the Knesset to represent their different regions leaving them at the mercy of charity hand outs and family support at a time when they were hiding underground in fear. The 4-Week War has come to the regions as a wake up call. Things have to change. Fundamental structural reforms have to follow.
22. I have been watching Al Jazeera for the last 4 months and it was clear for any viewer and that must have included some viewers in Israel that Hezbollah was planning, scheming and preparing something. They were day after day analyzing our internal weaknesses, political divisions and social fissures. The weaknesses of Olmert Government at its inception and the factional nature of the Knesset were dissected ably by competent and knowledgeable commentators. That is why Nasrullah miscalculated. But he and those behind him missed one basic fact from their equation: this is that Israelis tend to forget their differences when it comes to their sheer existence simply because they have nowhere else to go. That is why it is only when we drive home to our Arab neighbors this simple truth that we might reach an accommodation and co-existence. But this can only happen when we on our side achieve a stable government, a representative Knesset and a powerful projection of our message to the world through a strong PR.
23. So now, even while licking our wounds, is the time to press ahead harder with our reform of the Knesset and Government. The President’s Commission for examining the Government and Governance of the country presided over by Prof Megidor is due to present its findings in Sept/Oct of this year. In view of our present calamitous DEBACLE, nothing could have been more timely and more relevant. Unless a clear and unified final report emerges from the Commission detailing agreed proposals for prompt implementation by the present 17th Knesset of real structural meaningful reform, the public reaction will be swift and uncompromising. The people in the regions and their supporters everywhere who suffered most and continue to suffer in the aftermath of the war for lack of direct representation will feel betrayed by an elite of academics and public figures entrusted with and given a whole year to come up with the goods. These will be perceived as caring more for their careers than their duties to the Presidency and the People. The regions and the public at large might erupt in frustration and anger in a powerful popular movement that will sweep out the present establishment of politicians that has been for too long enjoying power neglecting the trust of the real sovereign, the People of Israel.

Aharon Nathan
20th August 2006
http://www.aharonnathan.com/

Israel Arab Conflict (Oxford Union Address)

Aharon Nathan’s address on behalf of the Opposition to the Debate at the Oxford Union on 8th June 2006. The following motion lost and the Opposition led by Mr Nathan won by a large majority.

“THIS HOUSE BELIEVES IRAN HAS NO LESS RIGHT TO NUCLEAR WEAPONS THAN ISRAEL”

Mr President,
It is a great privilege for me to speak in this world famous hall on a subject that has haunted me all my life. So forgive my lack of wit and humour. All points for and against were already made by other speakers so eloquently and comprehensively that very little is left for me to pay for my dinner. Let me therefore summarize rather than expound for both sides of the aisle.
Nuclear weapons are an abomination. However, they have at least become internationally accepted as being deterrents to avoid the breakout of war and not weapons to be used in pre-emptive strikes. The problem is how to prevent them falling into the hands of rogue regimes or terrorist organisations. No one, not even its enemies, can say that Israel belongs to these categories. Nor do I think does Iran.
The case for Israel however, is not that Iran has less right, but that for the necessity of preserving its sheer existence, Israel has more right than Iran or indeed any other country.
1. Both Iran and Israel are stirred and spurred by fear of their neighbours. Iran’s fear is certainly not from tiny remote Israel however much Iran’s present leadership vocalise their apocalyptically expressed hostility. Israel has no quarrel with Iran and Iran has no reason to fear Israel unless you accept that if you are a Muslim anywhere you should by definition be in conflict with Jews. I can not believe that the Iranian people who were well disposed to Jews and Judaism throughout their history, pre and post Islam, would accept this premise. Iran’s leadership is merely using Israel as a proxy in its conflict with America. (…Otherwise there is no other reason why Iran’s government should be more hostile to Israel than neighbouring Egypt or Jordan who made peace with Israel….)
2. The fear of the Shi’a in Iran stems from a deep-rooted historic rivalry with, and mutual mistrust of Sunni Arab Islam. Ever since Khomeni’s Islamist Revolution this fear has been heightened by American support first for Sunni Saddam Hussein and later on for Sunni Saudi Arabia and the Gulf, and finally by the emergence of Sunni Pakistan as a nuclear power. These facts are behind the Iranian conflict with the West. Israel is not party to this conflict. (….and it would be well advised to re-evaluate its position, hold its nerve in the face of provocations by President Ahmadi Nejad, tone down its rhetoric and refrain from direct involvement in the West’s confrontation with Iran)
3. Iran has its sovereign right to go Ahamadi Nejad’s North Korean way or Rafsanjani’s South Korean way. It has the choice, and the right, but it does not have the need for Nuclear weapons. Israel is not in such a fortunate position. It continuously faces declarations by neighbouring nations threatening to wage a war of extermination and encouraging their streets and even their school children to that same end. It is in the context of self defence that Israel sought its nuclear capability. It held these weapons for decades but never once threatened anyone with them. Israel did not even confirm their existence in order to avoid any implied threat of employing them. Why has it suddenly now become an issue? It is particularly strange coming after Pakistan successfully exploded its Bomb. It has become increasingly crucial for Israel today facing the prospect of an unstable and porous Pakistan under the shadow of Bin Laden and with Ahmedi Nejad not mincing his words in echoing Arab leaders before him threatening and inciting and supplying arms and missiles to Israel’s neighbours to wipe Israel off the map. Israel’s need for its nuclear shield has never been greater to give her the feeling of security and military stability with so many refusing to recognise its legitimacy or even its existence.
4. Israel’s fears must be understood against its historical background. Two thousand years of persecution, execution and forced conversion culminated in Hitler’s Final Solution, a solution which wiped out almost half the world’s Jewish population on the watch of the civilised world.
5. Today it is worrying Israelis and Jews alike that what happened in Germany under the Nazis in the early 1930s is being re-enacted in a startling similar way in Europe today. Every aspect of life in Israel, its people, its institutions, its places of learning, even its acclaimed courts of justice are being demonized. Recently this demonizing has been organized and reinforced by concerted bans and boycotts here in Europe in protest they say to the occupation of Palestinian lands to which the majority of the people of Israel are opposed. All this sends shivers in the hearts of Jews everywhere reminding them of the anti-Semitic demonizing propaganda of the 1930s, which was the precursor of, and prepared the ground for the Holocaust. As Condoleezza Rice stated recently: Anti-Semitism is not just a historical fact but a current event.
6. The Arab World has played and continues to play its active part too in the Jewish tragedy. During World War 2 they made Jewish life in their midst a living hell. By the early 1950’s when the safe haven of Israel opened, some 900,000 Jews were ethnically cleansed to Israel from Arab countries leaving all Arab countries what the Nazis called Judenrein, lands without Jews. Therefore what the Nazis failed to do the Arab countries accomplished and perpetuated. And the world accepts that as normal. These 900,000 Jewish refugees are forgotten because Israel did not leave them in camps to rot and did not ask the UN to set up agencies to serve to perpetuate their misery and status as refugees. With help from Jews worldwide these Jewish refugees with their bare hands gave themselves dignity, security and a future in stark contrast to the way rich, very rich, Arabs treated the then 700,000 Palestinian refugees and disgracefully continue to treat them today. Mr President, I was a victim and a witness of this (constructive) ethnic cleansing. My personal story tells it all.
7. Fleeing Iraq, in my case via Iran, whose people I will always be indebted to for their hospitality and safe passage at my desperate time of need. I arrived at the absorption centre in Israel in 1949. I found there a mixture of people all dejected all helpless. My fellow refugees from Arab countries were desperately trying to rebuild their lives out of nothing in a land of nothing. But it was the sight of the remnants of the holocaust camps that broke my heart and my spirit. I saw frightened shadows of human beings dazed, confused and broken trying to regain their existence as humans. But the worst of all instead of hatred, rage and bitterness I found many trying to remove the concentration camp numbers on their arms feeling guilty of being alive and ashamed of not having put up a fight before allowing themselves to be led as sheep to the Gas chambers. It is the combined images of the ethnically cleansed Arab Jews who lost their countries, and the Holocaust remnants of European Jews who lost their dignity, that are engraved in my being and in the mind of every Jew who says “never again” Israelis feel the need to keep their nuclear shield not because they are on a Samson-like suicidal mission. It is because they are determined to live with pride and dignity denied to them in those dark days of the 30s and 40s. And this time, if they must die, they want to die fighting.
8. Fellow members of our great University, Your vote this evening will resound beyond the Quads of Oxford and the shores of Britain as indeed happened following the notorious debate of 1933. Israel desperately needs your support this evening at a time when it is waiting for a signal of hope from its Arab neighbours to create together two states living side by side in peace. It is these neighbours who can decide the fate of the Israeli nuclear weapons and make them redundant. Because it is they who continue to deny Israel and seek its destruction. Until their attitude changes Israel has the right above any other country be it Iran, Pakistan, France or Britain itself to continue to possess the nuclear shield, not to gain victory but through deterrence to prevent war and secure its continued existence. Mr President: Unlike Iran whose need for nuclear weapons is tenuous and optional, for Israel it is an existential imperative.

Aharon Nathan,
Oxford, 8th June 2006.

Representation in Democracy (Crisis in Israel’s Democracy)

FIRST STEP SOLUTION: TR TOTAL REPRESENTATION

Democracies throughout the world are facing crises in the governance of their polities. They are experimenting with changes and modifications especially to their electoral systems owing to the very discontent and disconnect that we are familiar with amongst our own electorate in Israel. The malaise is not confined to Israel. Recent examples are the new electoral systems to the Scottish and European parliament in the UK (which failed to reconnect) and the changes in recent years that New Zealand introduced (which largely succeeded.) Broadly speaking both major groups of systems i.e. PR and Constituency (regional) are under pressure as a result of many similar factors that I have highlighted in my essay on “TR” Total Representation. This disconnect between the people and their representatives is widening. I believe no amount of education of citizens or preaching to politicians can drastically change that. Only institutionalised systemic reforms can produce changes in attitudes of the citizenry through engaging them where they could feel that their votes and their individual participation in the election process count. One way of doing that is by preserving the salient elements of the two major systems, tested and tried over centuries, the PR system (of Israel) and the Constituency system (of the UK). The fusion of these two systems is the essence of TR Total Representation whose added advantage is the simplicity of its implementation. On the face of it, under PR theoretically all citizens’ votes in Israel today count. However the manipulations of centralised and remote political parties rob the ordinary voters, especially in the peripheries of political participation and influence on their parties leaving them with a feeling of discontent and disconnect, hence the necessity to correct that.

Instead of concentrating on core systemic changes some political scientists are exhorting political leaders to correct their behaviour and adhere to higher standards of morality and professional ethics. Professor Dror’s “Letter to A Jewish Zionist Leader” is a notable example. It is wise and laudable. But so too were the exhortations of Plato on the qualities of the Ruler. Unfortunately we are living in a world of Machiavelli where fear not love is the engine and the tool of modern leaders. Morality and fair behaviour are cultural attributes that grow gradually gaining acceptance by societies as they develop towards uniformity and cohesion. Being a fervent Zionist Jew I find myself in absolute agreement with the sentiments of Professor Dror’s letter. But I know having left the protective warmth of Academia and stepped out into the real world of power, greed and living for the day, I found myself amongst people poor in spirit and weak in flesh. That is why I concluded that the only way to get better leaders is by instituting systems that compel them to be good for their own selfish interests.

You cannot dictate moral or ethical behaviour to people or politicians but you can legislate for it and then only if you back it by sanctions. In a democracy the voter is the only brake on corrupt rulers. This is the essence of Karl Popper’s Open Society. When published in 1945 it was hailed as the last word in defending the concept of freedom of the individual and the definition of liberal democracy because its main theme was the elasticity to change, hence “Open” i.e. open-ended. The shackles of religious rigidity and philosophical imperatives are replaced by an alternative offered by Popper of an automatic engine of continuing change to preserve the ideals and the cohesion of society. However it did not take long before John Rawls brought up his “Theory of Justice” in 1972 followed by the publication of Ronald Dworkin’s “Taking Rights Seriously” to find ourselves back where Popper started. Far from the death cry of ideology following Popper, we find ourselves grappling with a new ideology dressed in divine terms, in fact a New Religion called “Human Rights” born of the wholesale application of the UN Charter. Today it is the pragmatic Anglo Saxons (UK and USA) that are taking up the gauntlet thrown at it by writers and judges prone to theorizing in Continental Europe, in contrast to their pragmatic lawmakers at home. The scourge of fanatic religious movements using terror rather than reason and debate to propagate and coerce others to follow their lead created problems inside the legal frameworks of many countries. The human rights of individual fanatics are precariously balanced against the existential rights of society.

In Israel, while putting the instability of Government at the centre of the argument we tend to overlook what is happening to the third arm of the State, the Judiciary. The emancipation of our “Jewish Tribes” from the Diaspora brought about a breakdown in our traditional Jewish values and sharpened the divide between the religious and the secular. With the growing weakness of our Legislator and the incessant preoccupation of the Executive with pressing security issues of life and death, it was left to the Judiciary to determine and implement normative constitutional issues forgetting that they are essentially there to judge the decisions of the first arm, the sovereign arm of the state, the direct representative of the people, on these matters. Unfortunately instead of drawing on centuries of Jewish traditions where legal Justice and social justice converged into Tesedek and Tsedaka they fell into the modern mantras of Human Rights as defined and dictated not by our present situation and our past traditions as any parliament should always do, but by philosophical reasoning of a variety of judges in Continental Europe. Common Law Practice inherited from the Mandate is not alien to our Talmudic procedures. Recently a lively debate in the Anglo Saxon world is developing to search for an accommodation with the overpowering Convention on Human Rights propagated from Continental Europe. Where do we stand vis-à-vis all that? Instead of aligning ourselves with our legal base rooted in our inherited English Common Law, we find our Judges giving new interpretations of our Basic Law of the early 90’s on Human Rights that is being transformed in the hands of our Supreme Court into “The Constitution” where the amorphous concept of “Dignity” have taken precedence on the wider interpretations of truth, equity and justice rooted in Talmudic and Common Law precedents. And when the lives of our innocent people are pitched against the rights of individuals who seem hell-bent to destroy them, Human Rights is fast becoming a pernicious New Religion not to be questioned leaving our people numbed and confused. The conclusion therefore is that reform is needed here as well as in the other two arms of the State. And the only arm that has the power to reform them is the Knesset as the depository of the sovereignty of the nation. But to start doing that it has first to reform itself.

Our problems in Israel echo what is happening in the old established democracies. They are more acute in Israel because of our special precarious coexistence with our neighbours and our own Arab minority living amongst us. Our very existence is in danger owing to outside pressures and inside divisions. We cannot afford the luxury that other nations enjoy of letting events create and shape the solutions. We have to be more proactive. Our task in the President’s Commission is to devise and advice. If we don’t urgently offer practical schemes to the Knesset to reform itself our present generation of academics and intellectuals will be accused by a future Julien Benda of yet another “Great Betrayal”. Many of our citizens in the peripheries, in Kiryat Shmoneh and Sderot feel helpless to what they perceive to be an unholy alliance of academia, political establishment and social elite.

Our democracy is not new even if its practice is only 57 years old. Most of our people in Israel came either from Western countries where they experienced open direct Democracy or from the East where they practiced communal democracy centered on Synagogues and institutions which they established independent of the polities of their host countries. It is a myth that publicists and some academics that lack knowledge of these communities have invented and fostered, that Oriental Jews have no understanding of Democracy. The fact is that from 1948 onwards and until recently immigrants from the East have despaired at being unable to pierce the oligarchic walls of European/Ashkenazi led establishments. To climb those walls they needed to be Europeanized/Ashkenized, (to become mitbolilim!!! assimilated) When they couldn’t or did not want to, they sought prominence in other fields of finance, services and industry. They succeeded; and the more successful of them cast aside ambitions to assume political responsibility and left the field open to religious leaders to assume political leadership hence the increasing power of religious parties. It was only natural then for the younger tier leaders in the development regions to cultivate political bases within their small communities. And while the old establishments of the fifties reinforced by an increasing supply of ex-generals are aging, the second tier mainly oriental (and soon Russian) are coming of age to find their proper places in the national arena. We should delight and celebrate this trend as it will consolidate cement and give cohesion to a revitalized Jewish Israel. To speed it up and find a place and rationale for the Arab minority to integrate into it we need a system that propels changes and sustains them at grass root level. In fact the last thing we need in our fluid situation is a rigid Constitution at this stage. A system that can greatly help the process of change is TR/YESH Total Representation.

In seeking a medicine for the general malaise that is penetrating and frustrating our people, I am looking at our political realities from different angles. First of all, our people and our country are in dire straits. They are disunited and fragmented into many factions: ideological, theological and downright egoistic self interest, producing a multiplicity of approaches to defending our people from a three prong attack by Arabs outside, radicalised Muslims inside and a growing anti Israel (call it anti Semitic if you wish) public in the West, mainly in Europe. As a result, while our adversaries are all singing one clear all embracing tune based on the Occupation and on a falsely presented treatment of Arabs inside and outside our country, we find ourselves responding with conflicting and contradictory solutions stretching from a unified secular non-Jewish Israel down to redrawing our borders by transferring Israeli Arab villages to the other side. To put it graphically while our enemies are singing one single MIZMOR (Psalm) we tend to counter with a whole book of TEHILLIM.(Psalms) Why is this? The answer is not that we have an unstable government but because we have a fragmented Knesset where all factions claim divine right, not least amongst them are the secular.

Recent Opinion Polls have pointed to a desire by our people to have a strong leader. In the simplistic nature of opinion polling the public cannot be specific about which leaders for which policies. The reason for this confusion is that in recent years the public could not focus on a person or policy because Sharon and Shimon Peres and behind them until recently Likud and Labour have merged in the public perception as one group that is behind the prevailing malaise. The Government and the Knesset have merged and are certainly perceived by the public to be one entity. So even unity coalitions were not functioning properly because real alternatives in the shape of realistic oppositions to hold the government relentlessly accountable were missing. Shinui and Shass from their positions are so factional and one sided in the public perception that their leaders could not be seen as the alternative strong leaders of political oppositions headed by Prime Ministers in waiting. The public is confused looking in vain for an elusive alternative Strong Leader. This is the reason for the popularity of emerging Sharon and Kadima. The TR Total Representation System is designed to produce an effective stable opposition to a stable government. In this way with a leader in the Knesset marshalling a strong opposition, the public can focus through the debates in the Knesset rather than the sensational media on alternative policies, an alternative Government and an alternative Leader. Democracy is not about the power of the majority only but also about the freedom of legitimate minority opposition. This is the essence of John Stuart Mill’s warning about the dictatorship of the majority.

Therefore those who are advocating a Presidential System are looking to cure the secondary infection of the illness. It is the instability inherent in the structure of the Knesset that is causing the instability of the Government and depriving the nation of a real opposition underpinning a real democracy. We have therefore to give priority to electoral reform and then see whether we still need to follow it with a Presidential Government. Moreover changing to a Presidential System entails repeal and replacement of the Two Basic Laws of the President and the Government. It is a tall order which amounts to dismantling the State of Israel and rebuilding it anew. Why do we need this sledgehammer when we might achieve our objective of stable government by a tuning screwdriver provided by the TR Total Representation System of electoral reform? But here I must hasten to add that a strong Knesset born of TR will be needed even more so under a Presidential Executive should this be favoured and established. TR is not an alternative to a Presidential Executive. Both in academic theoretical terms and against the political realities in Israel TR is a pre-requisite for the initiation and subsequent establishment of a Presidential System of Government. The TR horse will be an essential pre-requisite to pull the cart of a possible Presidential System. Let us put this horse in front of this cart.

In conclusion I feel we have to address the crisis in our democracy with specific straightforward solutions. I believe such solutions have to be systemic structural solutions in the heart of which is TR. Any general exhortation to higher standards in public life will fall on the deaf ears of political vested interests and only increase the confusion and disillusion of ordinary citizens. Apart from the problems of security of well defined state borders and the vulnerability to radicalised Muslims inside Israel, what in fact engages our ordinary citizens are the normal necessities of their daily lives. It is unrealistic to expect these citizens to find the solutions we are looking for. If they want a strong leader it is because they need one to allow them to get on with their lives. This is the same in the established West and in the developing East. If we encourage our citizens towards mass protests or civil disobedience of any magnitude as some writers suggest (in order to put pressure on the national leadership) we will not be able to contain it and inevitably will end up in some form of civil strife and even violence. The solutions have to come from above and we academics and intellectuals in the President’s Commission could take an active part in helping the political leadership by offering them clearly defined practical and do-able solutions.

Aharon Nathan, 1st December 2005
(Aharon Nathan is a member of the President‘s Commission examining the systems of government in Israel)

Reason versus Emotion (The Bin Laden Phenomenon)

18th July 2002

Conflict of Cultures or Tragic Misunderstandings

Introduction
This paper is prompted by the events surrounding the September 11 suicide bombings. It asks the question are the motives of the bombers and their organisations as often portrayed rooted in the Islamic culture which is irreconcilable with our Western culture or are they the results of deep seated misunderstandings of Islam by us and by those who are behind the bombers. Then it follows with an attempt to find a resolution of these misunderstandings. However it does not attempt to find political or international solutions rather merely to try to disentangle the religious aspects of the conflicts posed and provoked by the 9/11 events.

In order to get a grip on this problem we have to be open, rational and honest in our approach. In simple terms we have to call a spade a spade and leave diplomatic double talk behind. We have to recognise that we belong to different faiths. Keeping them private not out of irreverence or lack of respect would make it easier for us to debate the subject freely and not be shackled by taboos. This also makes it possible to bring into the debate secular thinking that would enable us to analyse religions as social phenomena. Unless we do that we would intensify the conflicts and block the doors of understanding and tolerance.

Culture Clash
First we have to dispose of the idea of a culture clash in the wider sense. Why don’t we have such conflict with the Chinese the Indians and certainly with the Japanese? We have far more in common with the Muslims and the Arabs than we have remotely with those peoples and their cultures. The sources of our culture were intertwined with and have in essence the same ingredients as theirs. Muslims embraced Greek philosophy and thought long before Christian Europe. Indeed it was through them that we managed to embrace Greek science and thought. And although Greek heritage was available to the West through Judaism and early Christianity it was the Muslims who took the initiative first in Baghdad then in Spain to delve into it. In those days Europe was the obscurantist and the Islamic world was the enlightened. Aristotle was translated into Latin only in the 13th century. The Arab tradition of translating and studying major works of non-Muslims started centuries before. And this trend intensified after Napoleon’ invasion of Egypt and continued to the present day. The Arab Society is not closed except for small power obsessed segments whose motivation is more political than cultural in the wider sense.
And what on the face of it should be even more uniting us together is religion. After all both Christianity and Islam sprung from the same Judaic ground. But it is this religious root which is the heart of the problem. Monotheism depicts one God. Therefore if He is with us He cannot be with you-in fact He must by definition be against you. Invoking the Divine by this simple logic is today and has been for centuries a lethal tool in the hands of various factions from time to time in their power struggles against their enemies internal and external by using it to mobilise the masses behind them. Paradoxically the spread of Democracy amongst ignorant and uneducated masses is bolstering these factions recently nourishing the struggle.

So what is the remedy? The answer in one word is "Enlightenment". There is nothing new in this. Judaism and Christianity have gone through the same process that is yet to be completed with relapses here and there. In Israel a small minority of ultra religious are still causing problems. The atrocities of the 2nd World War, the recent rise of anti-Semitism and the backlash against non whites (read non Christian) amongst the Right in Europe show that there is still a lot more for the Enlightenment to achieve. As for the Arab and Islamic world they are despite many tentative attempts almost centuries behind in this respect. This gap is the cause of the problems facing us. In order to bridge it or bridge over it we have to go back to the historical background.

The Theological Background
Amongst the three so-called monotheistic-religions Judaism found the accommodation first perhaps through the necessity and the nature of its existence in the Diaspora. It is traditionally accepted that the Jews came down from their self inflicted exile in Egypt to carve a territory to occupy and live in as they were not wanted and had nowhere else to go. (What a historical repeat!) They fought in the name of their God because He is the symbol of their cohesion and therefore belonged to them and to no other people. Remember He is termed God of active armies in the Hebrew Bible not of the hosts as politely translated. They were His chosen people and He would fight for them against other gods. And because presumably He was more powerful He and the Jews would prevail. Indeed they did. Monotheism as we came to understand it later was not clear to the Jews then and not since. (Although it is a logical concept- a Pyramid has to have an apex and the creation must have a single original mover.) If He belongs to them He can not belong to others. Every people lived happily side by side each with its own Deity. Moses wife was not Jewish and so was David partially. King Solomon revelled in marrying gentiles! Therefore when King Syrus helped the Babylonian exiles to go back to rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem though no doubt politically motivated neither side found that to be wrong or unusual. The Persians had their god and the Jews theirs. So were other peoples and nations of old. The whole conflict started when one Jewish sect, the Christians under the Romans’ domination introduced the universality and asserted the concept of monotheism. (And then diluted it with the Trinity and it had to wait for Islam to restore it to its purity.) From then onwards God became the universal God. Islam followed and accepted that but claimed that only they exclusively belonged to Him. And of course so did the Christians. The Jews at a loss on the one hand not wanting and not able to claim Him exclusively any more and on the other by necessity had to coexist with both Christian and Muslim produced an intellectual compromise. Maimonides of Cordoba articulated this by saying it is not the oneness of God that is His essence. It is His uniqueness and that is beyond human understanding and comprehension. This is the compromise through which all three religions today are trying to find a consensus. It is also this that through Maimonides’ great intellectual disciple Spinoza that the doors of Enlightenment started to open.

In the meantime and for one thousand years while the Jews stood aside Muslims and Christians fought each other to assert the supremacy of their respective path to what both claim to be the one God and the only one assured path to Heaven. Their zeal to succeed against each other resulted only in almost eliminating their theological mentors. Today we have one thousand millions Christians lined up against one thousand millions Muslims smothering 12 million Jews out of existence. Jews became an endangered species. (I wish they were treated like the Bengali tigers or the Arabian leopards! How about a preservation order!) This essay however is not about Lamentations. It is that each of the three groups recently spawned a small nucleus to fight for their understanding what their faith is. To coexist they have to keep their faith private and ensure that their places of worship are not used for anything but worship. Any other activity political or nationalist should be outlawed. Jews kept to that throughout the ages. Muslim governments in their varieties banned political activities in mosques right through to the end of the Caliphate and the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire. It is the western idea of freedom that is allowing this activity now to thrive in the West. In other words it is the West’s tolerance that is unwittingly encouraging intolerance. The ban on Salman Rushdie started in Bradford not in Tehran. Tolerant Europe has become the breeding ground for active terrorists.

To understand the root, the manifestation, and eventually the resolution of the 11th.September tragic phenomenon it is important to isolate, though not to ignore the Israeli-Arab conflict in order to focus on the primary causes. Since even if Israel were to disappear tomorrow the above problem will persist. It would probably become more accentuated and acute not least because Western Media would cease to be obsessed with viewing Israel as the root of all Middle East problems.

Israel has nevertheless become in the eyes of the Arab World a symbol of a Western implant and a propaganda tool exploited in many ways. Opposition to Israel helped to mould the Palestinians into a recognised nation. It was also instrumental in creating a second national identity - Jordan. Arab corrupt regimes and rulers use Israel to divert the wrath of their streets away from them. Recently bashing Israel is helping Europe to placate the Arabs and curry favour with their wealthy investors and export markets. More crucial however is that Israel or rather the Jewish people were used by the Muslim fundamentalists in their struggle against the West by invoking the imitation of the life of Muhammad who in his days perceived to have fought and overcome Jewish opposition to him and to his message.

Notwithstanding all that, the Arab ruling governments and classes in contrast to Europe and European media understand where the real fundamentalist danger lies. This is why recently they began to want to resolve the Israeli conflict out of sheer self-preservation and protection not from tiny Israel but from their own streets and masses. They hate the Israelis and the Palestinians equally-except that they fear the latter more than the former. But they cannot spell this out in public. It is a convention to support automatically any anti West voice or grievance in the Arab Street. The Arab leaders understand that and discount their own vocal support. The only side who takes it seriously is either the European Media out of ignorance or their governments out of self-serving interests. America recently has woken up to the real root of the problem.

It is against this background that we should analyse the Bin Laden phenomenon and the 11th of September.
Bin Laden – A Presumed New Caliph? Faced with their impotence in fighting foreign domination and following their failures first in the wars against Israel and then in the Gulf war the Arabs turned to those leaders who were using religion as weapon of last resort. Radicals were using it against their corrupt leaders for almost a century. No doubt some of these radicals must have thought out the grand design. However the majority support came and still coming from sincere believers. The climax presented itself when the American military were stationed in Saudi Arabia. To some devout Muslims it was analogous to replanting idolatry in the Kaaba. To appeal to the masses and the streets the golden epoch of the Prophet and his struggle against the infidels is invoked. They started to believe that they have to relive those wonderful days. This is not as outlandish as it sounds. Fundamentalists of all religions think of the universe, time and history in a circular way. Most of us in the west whose thinking is influenced by the Enlightenment our daily lives are pervaded by science and our religion is privatised. We tend to think of history as succession of events in the world in a linear way. To the fundamentalists history repeats itself. To us every day is an ever-new link in the succession of time. To them time can be recreated and relived.

Conditions and circumstances set the scene for re-enacting the times of the Prophet. Almost every detail fitted. And who better than Bin Laden to take the central role. He looks and acts the part. May be not a Prophet but certainly a Caliph is born. To understand the above we have to embark on a comparative account of both Muhammad and Bin Laden and their lives and times.

Life and Times of Mohammed
The story here is based on the Koran and history as taught in the Arab world. It exaggerates the central role of the message of Islam in its subsequent conquests and ignores the weakening of Persia and Byzantium prior to the advent of Islam. It also paints a hopeless picture of chaos ignorance and strife amongst the Arab tribes and belittles the deep penetration of the Jewish faith and culture both in north and south of Arabia. The historical truth is of course different. The Arabs swept their surrounding countries in a military conquest not unlike that of Alexander before them or the Mongols after them. To the Arabs and curiously enough even to most historians it was the Message of Islam that conquered the world. However in the context of our story what is important is what the average Muslim today believes what happened not what in actual fact happened historically.
While the Old Testament was shrouded in mythology and the New Testament was shaped and codified by a political conference convened by a Roman Emperor the story of the rise of Islam is based mostly on written historical material irrespective of its accuracy. That is why it can be accepted as more credible and appealing certainly to Muslims. It is not based on blind faith in mythology and rituals. That is why it is easier for enlightened Muslim leaders if they need to steer the fanatic masses towards rational interpretation of Islam than it is the case with fanatic Jews or Christians.

The rational basis of Islam enabled at least some of its scholars to deal freely and even to absorb Greek philosophy so easily in the early centuries of the last Millennium and so managed to accommodate it with Islam. This same accommodation helped Maimonides influenced by both Greek and Islamic philosophy to reform Judaism and paved the way to the creation of different Jewish religious movements existing side by side peacefully today. To understand this we have to refer to his Guide and to the writings of the great Muslim theologians from Al Farabi and Al Ashaari right to Ibn Rushd (Averroes) Ibn Bajja and others.
Mohammed’s life is a beautiful and attractive story. It is a great shame that it is caricatured by The Satanic Verses. It could be made into a best selling sensitive and dramatic film. His father died before he was born. His mother died when he was six. He had to fend for himself under the care of his grand father who died soon after and Muhammad found himself supported by his uncle, the father of Ali. (The subsequent 4th Caliph whose murder and that of his son Hussein split Islam into Shi’a and Sunna) He was lonely and lost and had to work for a wealthy Meccan widow to look after her trade with Damascus. She trusted and eventually married him. He was 25 she was 40. Thus he suddenly became wealthy with a status in his community and plenty of time and wealth on his hand. But his personal upbringing made him contemplative and introvert. He came in contact with the Christians on his travels to Syria. More importantly he was intimately in touch with the huge Jewish tribes in Mecca, Medina, Khyber and other towns in Arabia. He absorbed a lot of their teachings and culture. He admired them and felt affinity with them belonging, as he was to a movement the Hanafi, which believed in One God.

It was during one of Mohammed's contemplative retreats in a cave outside Mecca that he felt the Divine was inspiring him in the same way that Ezekiel did before him and almost in a carbon copy manner. Bewildered at first but later convinced that he was destined to be yet another Jewish Prophet. Initially the Jews themselves thought that he must be the awaited Messiah. Later on, when their Rabbis discovered his little understanding of their complicated theology and Talmud they disowned him thus repeating the same mistake that separated them five centuries back from Christianity. Muhammad fought them and defeated them. Did he connive or condone the massacres that followed is a matter for historians to continue to debate. Suffice us to say that it would have been out of character to do so. He was upright genuine and sincere and never even presumed direct personal contact with God. He never presumed to be divine or immortal and as a prophet in the best Judaic tradition he did not appoint a successor. He did not claim to be the last messenger in the sense of sealing the Prophecy. That would have contradicted his belief that God decides whatever He wants. It was not he but his second successor Caliph Omar who eventually drove God’s beloved Jews out of that part of Arabia. During Uthman Ibn Affan’s Caliphate the Koran was codified and all sorts of new traditions were initiated. However it was Omar who was the first political leader of Islam to shape the Caliphate that emerged later. This is the background for the Koran as it was handed down to future generations.

Muhammad was illiterate which was nothing unusual in those days. People learnt by heart poetry and recitations of events. The Koran came to him by way of remembering and commenting on what he knew of the Old Testament. He would go in a trance and recite these commentaries. Mystics and hypnotised individuals can behave similarly even today. After his trances professional storytellers would listen to the Prophet repeating them and they in turn would recount and recite them. The main thrust of the Koran is taking issue with the Jews who rejected him. The message is not different from those of Hebrew prophets Isaiah Jeremiah and especially Ezekiel.

Muhammad was shunned by his fellow Meccans and found refuge first with the Jews and later on with other supporters in Medina. When the Jews disowned and turned away from him and then others who embraced him first joined the Jews and the Meccans against him these two groups became the targets of his admonition. The Koran opens with a short stanza modelled on the opening lines of the Psalms. Then it goes on to castigate those who incurred the wrath of God (i.e. Jews and Christians lumped together) and those who have gone astray (i.e. the non Jews in Medina and Mecca who initially accepted Mohammed’s message and then reneged.)
The rest of the Koran is primarily one long polemic with the Jews, or the people of the Scriptures and a variety of Rules and Regulations. The second chapter named "The Cow", is referred to by scholars as mini Koran and contains the gist of the whole work. It states that God loved the Jews. He chose them as His own people and they turned away from him and although he forgave them time and time again they continued to rebel against his teachings and his message. They are argumentative and not prepared to accept without questioning God’s faith and straightforward messages. They made so much fuss about the Red Cow (hence the name of the chapter) instead of just obeying His wishes to sacrifice it without questioning. And as a last straw they were not listening to his latest messenger Mohammed. The rest of the Koran is a compilation of rules and regulations adapted with allusions to the words of God as revealed in the Old Testament. And just to complete the story the Koran accepts the Christians as believers while rejecting absolutely the concept of Trinity but curiously leave the door open for the Immaculate Conception. God after all created the world out of nothing why can’t He order the creation of a baby without the normal human contact.

It is interesting that the Koran by criticising the Jews pays them indirectly the greatest compliment. Jewish tradition is argumentative and reflective. Maimonides repeats and confirms this tradition which boldly asserts that they carry out the tenets of Judaism but they reserve afterwards the right gifted them by God to try to understand why. Briefly and succinctly: “we do first and we listen after.” It is this tradition that made the Greeks dub them the philosophising people. It may very well have contributed to their survival.

The power of the Koran is less in its contents. These are disjointed and their allusions and quotations of the Old Testament are often contradictory. Its power lies more in its poetic prose and musical quality that is most effective when read allowed. When properly recited it is mesmerising. Translation can never do it justice in fact it destroys it. Once compiled after Mohammed’s death it kept its present arrangement and form even though Muslims admit that it is haphazard in its chronology and coherence.

As important as the Koran is the life of the Prophet. It is told and repeated to every child in school and at home. Muslims are expected to follow and imitate his conduct (Sunna) and recall his deliberations (Hadith) and relate them to the appropriate passages from the Koran to provide them with authority and context. In this respect there is more similarity with the Christian attitude to the life of Christ. Jews never have such personality cults. When a child is blessed you would say " may he follow in the ways of Abraham Isaac and Jacob"-curiously not that of Moses or David or any Prophet.

Life and Times of Bin Laden (compared with Muhammad)
It is easy to discern a parallel of the two lives if you are intent on finding it. Like Mohammed, Bin Laden travelled the world and came in touch with those who lost their faith in God and questioned His existence. (Cf.Byzantium and Damascus) He made money and he could have lived a life of luxury. (Mohammed's. marriage to Khadija). He decided to fight the infidels, the Russians. (Cf. the Meccan Idolaters) helped by the Americans (Medina Jews and supporters) who then turned against the Muslims in the Gulf (the Meccans’s hostility and Medina’s renegades) then the American army is stationed in Saudi Arabia.(the enemy in Mecca) So he goes to Afghanistan (Medina) where he could lead them to repossess Arabian lands (back to Mecca). Like Mohammed bin Laden likes to think and contemplates in isolated caves. He will destroy the heathen images and symbols and idols like the Buddas and the arts and the museums. (The heathen idols in the Kaaba) He will declare one Islamic State and one Islamic society (the Ummah) by abolishing the name of Afghanistan changing even its radio to become Sharia Radio. He is helped by leading followers like Sheikh Omar, Al-Zuwahiri etc to establish the rule of Islam in Afghanistan. (Cf. Abu Baker, Ali, Omar Alkhattab etc setting a new state in Medina) He will have fighters from other Arab and Islamic countries (Al Ansar in Medina) and so on and so forth. How can any Muslim deny this messenger of God and his ambition to drive the infidels, those who "incurred God’s wrath" and those "who have gone astray" in the lands of Islam. (Dar-El-Islam.) To Bin Laden the West became the house of War to be destroyed. (Dar-El-Harb).

Once you see this comparison and follow it in details you understand what is happening today amongst large segments of Muslim communities and how easy it is to recruit naïve and innocent Muslims to this new cause. These recruits will find comfort in this cause from their anguish and frustration whether in their alienated lives in the West or living under the oppression of their corrupt leaders at home or under occupation in Israel. Bin Laden fits the image and embodies the renewed divine message. Driving Bin Ladin from and changing the regime in Afghanistan does not even begin the solution. To those who follow Bin Laden it is only a setback in their eyes the same way that Mohammed had his setbacks. The danger to the world today comes from the enormous body of converts to the new cause. They may be naïve and simple but nevertheless are sincere innocent believers. We have to find the way to their minds and hearts and not confine our efforts to eradicate the evil few who are inflicting terror on them and on the entire world.

Conclusions
So where do we look for a solution to this complex problem? The West has been experimenting by juggling stick and carrot with the Muslim countries but without success. The trouble of course is that the rulers and the peoples of most of these countries are caught in vicious circles. With the lack of real democracy they have become hostages of each other. The corrupt rulers are becoming hostages of their streets and the streets are hostages of these rulers. A twin track path towards democracy and complete separation of state and religion could ideally solve the problem. But these countries are marching in the opposite direction. And anyway can we say that we have really achieved such an ideal state in the West?

Some commentators on the other hand find the root in the jealousy and envy of the wealthy West. This may very well be the case. But it is an unrealistic pipe dream to think that a semblance of redress of inequality can be achieved in a foreseeable future. These and other factors are no doubt the breeding ground for the terror recruits. They may be the dynamites but the switch is in the hand of those the like of Bin Laden who is using Islam to ignite them.

How to counter this misuse of Islam as an evil tool? The simple answer is what both Judaism and Christianity have in their own ways discovered. And that is Enlightenment. But in order to be convincing and effective only Muslims can lead Muslims on the road to Enlightenment.

The question is where to find these leaders who can initiate and start to steer the Muslim world towards this goal. The answer is mainly in the West and may in some Islamic countries where Muslims enjoy free speech. And yes funny as it may sound amongst the Israeli Arabs. There would also be those Muslim academics, religious scholars and publicists of independent means. Only Muslims can influence Muslims. They should be encouraged and made aware of their responsibility to do that. Our mistake has been that we sought tolerance from those who by definition are intolerant. It is counterproductive to appeal to Muslim Mullahs and clerics. And to expect leaders of other religions to help is illogical and would only encourage hypocrisy. However to ask them all to join together to highlight their common moral values and show how similar these values are can be very positive and helpful.

Danger comes from the simplistic and adversarial methods of the Media and misinformed policies of the majority of Western Democracies. The main thrust of their argument is that all religions are either militant or intolerant and none more so than Islam. On the other side of the spectrum you have naïve religious leaders who seek to gloss over the exclusivity of religions. It is no use saying that the Testaments, Old and New, or the Koran preach messages of peace. They don’t. And where you cherry pick those phrases or interpretations to prove such good intentions you end up losing credibility. But while the majority of Christians and Jews have learnt during the last two centuries to privatise their faiths only a tiny minority of Muslims have. They can coexist with the rest of the world only if they do. Jews and Christians seem to coexist even if in some countries just. And so do the peoples and religions of the Far East. There is no reason why the Muslims should exclude themselves from this process.
Political preaching should be literally outlawed in places of worship. For centuries Islamic states did just that. Western tolerance is breeding Muslim intolerance. Loudspeakers on top of the mosques in the West must be banned. Those who find it important to remind themselves of the times of daily prayers can use “Pagers” or watch-alarms. Loudspeakers emphasise foreignness and alienate Muslims from other communities. State-sponsored or aided faith schools must be banned not encouraged. Sharia laws (or Jewish laws or Church laws) can be applied voluntarily to regulate relationships between members of certain communities if so desired by those individuals but only if always to be overridden by the democratic laws of the countries in which they exist. Unless such measures are taken and explained and accepted the future of our children, irrespective of their persuasion is bleak.

Aharon Nathan, July 2002
www.AharonNathan.com

Israel Arab Conflict (President Bush Speech)

Q&A in the Wake of President Bush's Speech


Question
Should the President’s speech on 24th June 2002 alter our views and our proposals on the problems outlined above?
Answer
No. The President gave us support and time to implement what we should be doing ourselves. The speech just extended the time limit for us to put our house and our affairs in order. It is like the President throwing to us a plank to enable us to swim to a safe shore. However, the time afforded to us is limited and I guess that it is not the eighteen months that is envisaged in his speech but rather the five month period leading up to the US elections in November. By that time the atmosphere in Washington may change and the President may be pushed to modify his staunch support for Israel. The speech is clearly thought out carefully. We must believe the President when he said later on that he was concerned about the survival of Israel. Of course he has other considerations. But not since Harry Truman did we hear a Western Leader speak about us with so much moral conviction and passion. We exasperated Truman then by over-pressurising him. Read his daughter’s account. Bush today has even more outside pressures. We must use the time he gave us and follow his road map in all details. We must help him to help us.
The media by picking up on the problem of Arafat in the speech blurred its other more positive aspects. The media in Europe, which is hell bent on its anti-American stance in every respect and on every possible occasion, caught the opportunity to try to criticise the President on this part of it rather than concentrate on its positive aspects.
It is interesting to note that no pro-western Arab leader has rejected the Bush vision. We have to remember that it was released after intensive consultation with the leaders of Egypt Saudi Arabia Jordan and even with Nabil Shath, the Palestinian Authority minister (PA) in charge of foreign affairs who stayed two weeks in Washington for that purpose. That is why even Yasser Arafat himself did not reject it. Only European media did so with alacrity.
Viewed from the Arab viewpoint Bush vision is a program for the establishment of their coveted State with American declared blessing and pledge for future help. We should not kid ourselves that it is tailored for a Sharon plan. The Arabs so adept lately in their PR portrayed it as such to score on PR hoping to squeeze more concessions in due course. From our viewpoint it asserts American support for our demand for security thus giving notice to the Arabs that violent tactics and homicide bombing will get them nowhere. It also put a stop to UN and Europe justifications for such tactics.
So in the midst of our general euphoria we seem to forget that now we cannot procrastinate any longer. The President set a time limit for us. This not a Sharon Plan. Bush advisors believe that they need a strong right winger to back their plan. That is an important ingredient in their support for Sharon. They declare that there will be a Palestine and we have to co-operate with this new State. We have now no alternative but to accept the World diktat on the borders in accordance with 242 and 338 albeit with some modifications. So we have to act very quickly to establish within this framework fait accompli markers on the ground for our future security. Hunting homicide bombers in the territories like finding needles in haystacks and demolishing buildings in countless incursions are only sapping our strength killing our boys, dividing our own people weakening our economy and alienating what is left of sympathy for our cause. Instead we should walk out of what we envisage to be future Palestine fortify and close our new conceived borders for the time being and let the Palestinians fight it out amongst themselves to choose how they want to live in a future coexistence with Israel. Believing that we can build for them a sophisticated security infrastructure friendly towards us is tragic naivety. Did we succeed in Iran, in Lebanon, in some African countries?
A very interesting sentence in the President’s speech seems to escape attention. When he spoke about a final settlement between the two countries, Israel and Palestine, he said something along the lines that such settlement should be helped or connected with Egypt and Jordan. Can we cash in on this when talking about economic links of Gaza to Egypt and the West Bank to Jordan? May be we should exploit this line of thinking.

Question
How to proceed now?
Answer
We have to solve the three problems outlined many times before i.e.
1. To establish on the ground secure and defendable borders which clearly separate Israel from Palestine to include only defendable settlements. We proceed urgently with building the border walls including Jerusalem and including a wall rising on the Temple Mount separating the Mosque and the Kothel wall. Once we establish these borders the struggle to have them accepted by the other side will follow through negotiation. Then we have to attend simultaneously to solving the other two problems. We have no time to waste. Bush has defined the time- table. Palestine is coming into being irrespective of whom in Israel is for or against. Bush Plan is not Sharon Plan. Bush has given time for Sharon to pave the way for Israel to accommodate the creation of Palestine. We must engage ourselves in defending the inside of Israel and not waste our strength on targeting few individual terrorists and blow up buildings. The people of Israel are numb with their tragedies and mourning. They are understandingly reacting with their emotions often in different directions. It is the responsibility of the leaders to think with cool and rational heads for long term solutions.
2. The internal political division in Israel caused so much harms to our cause during the last 2 years that we should feel ourselves as much responsible for the spilt Jewish blood as the homicide bombers. What chance have we got when Sharon and Peres undermine each other? They are old. They belong to yesterday’s world. They have to unite and speak with one voice for the sake of our future survival. Bush and his advisors are exasperated. While America was blocking a UN enquiry into the Jennin operation Peres rushed to scupper that by declaring that he had no objection because we had nothing to hide. Indeed we have none. But before he spoke he had to understand the legal and political implications not only for Israel but also for American stand on the international surrounding the principles involved. And now while bush is trying so hard to convince the G8 leaders that Arafat cannot be a partner for peace Peres comes on BBC Newsnight stating that if and if and if then he can negotiate with Arafat. Why volunteer such opinion at this juncture even if it is sound? What a nightmare! Frankly Israel is desperate for political statesmen who can unite to address the world with one voice. Unfortunately Israel can only speak with one voice if its political structure is modified to produce a strong representative government, which speaks for a truly democratic and representative majority of the country. Now that the direct elections for the office of the Prime Minister is abolished the only other method is to adopt the proposed electoral reform which combines constituency and proportional representation. Such system has to be put in place before the next general elections in two years time. This question is as urgent and as vital as dealing with homicide bombers. Only such electoral reform can produce a strong government that can speak for the whole of Israel with one voice. (See the paper on Electoral Reform in Israel.)
3. The third problem facing Israel and indeed world Jewry is the need to retell and keep explaining the historical background which necessitated the creation of Israel. An organised and aggressive assault on World public opinion is needed (outlined in a previous synopsis) to remind the world of the Holocaust and the cleansing of the Jews from Arab countries to Israel. Otherwise we will not be able to negotiate a proper settlement with the Palestinians with regard to the future of Gaza, the security of our borders and specifically the question of the Palestinian Refugees. It is not the Arabs I fear. They are predictable. It is world public opinion led by anti-Semitic European media recently bolstered by misguided Jewish do-gooders and may be some even self-haters.

Question
What is the link between Gaza and the Holocaust?
Answer
It is to do with the future security nay survival of Israel. Our comparative military strength today will not last forever. When we negotiate the future status of Gaza we must explain and emphasise our future fears to gain support for our plan. The evil axis of Gaza/Hebron will always threaten Israel dividing it in a pincer link or exposing its belly to bombers or missiles from both sides. There was a time even recently when we could have negotiated a settlement which could have in time diluted Gaza of its refugees leaving it a demilitarised municipality linked to Israel economically retaining Palestinian sovereignty. Our obsession with Judea and Samaria blinded us from hard realities. It is too late now. So what is the solution?
a) Under no circumstances should we agree to any bridge or tunnel or even a jointly policed corridor linking Gaza to the West Bank. Any link has to be a visa/passport-based arrangement for going in and out of the two territories. Israel should not be made to enter into any special long-term final status treaty in this respect. You never know when the conflict restarts irrespective of treaties and guarantees. Let us cast our mind to the pre not post Six-Day War situation of Israel.
b) Gaza and the West Bank can be two states or two countries or two entities linked together in a federation or confederation or any type of agreed union. They can of course also be two constituent parts of a single State. It is not up to Israel to decide or even be party to such decision. UN 242 and 338 ordered a reversion to the status quo anti which prevailed before the 1967 War. Gaza then belonged to Egypt and the West Bank to Jordan. Both have to be parties to the negotiations to restore the status quo anti. Israel will join in to negotiate adjustments to its borders for its security and the settlement of the Jerusalem question. Is that why Bush linked the names of Egypt and Jordan to the final negotiations for a Palestinian State? I wonder. If not, we should bring this up. Our objective should be to see evolving at least economic links of Gaza to Egypt and the West Bank to Jordan making the two parts of Palestine gravitating towards these two countries away from Israel. Any future demographic pressure will thus not fall on Israel provoking renewal of conflict. This idea may sound far-fetched to some but it is of such obvious importance to our future security and survival that we must not dismiss it out of hand. Some people in Israel may resist this line of action because of the need for Arab labour. The answer is to negotiate labour employment with the future State of Palestine on ad hoc basis and not as part of the structure of the final status agreement under the Bush plan or vision. There is a real big danger facing us right now. The US expects us to open our borders to the territories to ameliorate the economic conditions in preparation for the proposed elections for the PA in six months’ time. We have to resist vehemently otherwise we will prejudice and jeopardise our future negotiations. We should help in any other way but not in opening doors that we definitely will not be able to close in future emergencies.
c) We have to insist on the demilitarising of Gaza.
d) We must negotiate Israel’s some rights to the sea adjoining the shoreline of Gaza to enable Israel’s navy to monitor shipping activities.

Question
Is not this like giving the Palestinians two states for the price of one?
Answer
They already have two states Jordan and Palestine. They may as well end with three. Our consolation is that these will be three weak entities that in time will develop diverse identities and vested interests. We have provided this stage for them because we did not foresee beyond our arrogance for years after the Six-Day War. Then we compounded our mistakes by signing peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan releasing them of their troubles with the Palestinians to their ever relief and delight. And all this happened because we were fighting between ourselves. We are still doing this today and it is time to wake up and rectify some past mistakes. In the present atmosphere of terror we can be seen justified in using our economic card. We just say in view of the constant infiltration of homicide bombers we have to close our borders until the peace process is completed and the borders clearly defined and agreed.

In Conclusion
We are facing momentous decisions. The world and now the USA have decided to impose on us a Palestine based on almost all the territories. It is up to us to make the best of this bad job. Time is not working for us. Unless we respond quickly to establish facts on the ground we end up losing our future security and any hope of creating a situation of co-existence with our future neighbours. Both are essential for the survival of Israel.

Aharon Nathan, 28th June 2002
www.aharonnathan.com

Israel Arab Conflict (Consequences of Defensive Shield)

In the Aftermath of Defensive Shield - Q & A

Question
Soon after my talk on 5th May 2002 analysing the three problems in Israel and following Operation Defensive Shield by Israel Army in the West Bank, many friends asked me for my reaction and specifically in what way this Operation has changed the dynamics of the conflict and affected the three problems facing Israel outlined by my talk on how to right the wrong in Israel.
Answer
Defensive Shield accentuated all the three problems(Borders Security, Government instability and Negative Image) brought them into focus and made their solutions even more urgent. Otherwise Defensive Shield did not change anything. What it did was to give Israel time-very limited time - to solve all the above three problems. Defensive Shield coupled with external circumstances created a window of opportunity that we have to use while still open. It may not be wide open for long.

Question
What are these external factors or circumstances?
Answer
Initial reaction to Sept.11th was negative for Israel. The Arabs and specially the Palestinian radicals were emboldened. Many voices in the west and mainly in Europe sought to placate the Muslim world on the expense of Israel. Europe continues to do that. However the President’s decisive condemnation of terror and countries harbouring it, the American response and success in Afghanistan and the lack of clear support by the Arabs for that response restored American almost consensual support for Israel by the American Presidency, State Department, Congress and Media. This consensus may not last beyond the November elections for Congress. World media through Arab money and influence and under pressure from Europe is slowly changing tune and under State Department pressure may gain ascendancy.

Question
How to proceed?
Answer
On the 1st problem that of our future security we have to define clear demarcation of the ultimate borders of Israel (not what is desired but what is possible) and to effect complete separation of the two states of Israel and future Palestine along these borders. Israel has to act unilaterally by walking out of Gaza and the West Bank leaving within the borders of Israel only those settlements, which are linked uninterruptedly to Israel and therefore easily defendable. Proposals by Ben-Eliezer and Haim Ramon although come from different directions in actual fact seem to point the same way as far as creating the basis for separate and clearly defined borders with future Palestine. What is imperative is to implement them without waiting or negotiating. In this way we can consolidate the American support and may regain some of the support we have completely lost in Europe. The words “occupation” and “humiliation” in the new jargon of TV spin proved to be the most lethal weapons in the hands of our enemies in the Middle East and in Europe. It is no use talking about right or wrong. We have lost the propaganda war and we need to assert and reassume our moral high ground. We can only achieve this by boldly and openly declaring our acceptance of a State of Palestine. Protracted interim arrangements will work against us by depriving us of any sympathy or support of most of the countries in the world.
Let us also not commit the same mistake again of organising and arming the new state. It is none of our business. We cannot prevent any future state from arming itself having failed to prevent such arming to take place under the Palestine Authority when under agreement with them at least we had the power to do that. Treaties in the hands of terrorists and dictators are merely pieces of paper. We need to establish hard defendable borders on the ground. The utmost we can ask for now is to demilitarise Gaza retaining sovereignty over the sea bordering it. Once we have proper borders with a proper sovereign neighbouring State of Palestine we can regulate the flow of economic workers from there to suit us. This is a real and tangible and effective weapon. That entails visas, work permits, pre-entry research etc. I believe a new situation of good secure fences will bring about support from progressive elements within the new state to seek the assistance of Israel. In fact the new situation will have far reaching consequences both on our relations in the region and our internal relationship with our own Arab Citizens.
Suicidal bombers have introduced a new dimension to the conflict. Post Sept. 11th gives a new definition to what security entails. The balance of casualties, the number game, has swung in the Palestinians favour hugely impacting on their confidence and psychology. They now believe rightly or wrongly that time is on their side. The hurried manner of our withdrawal from Lebanon has encouraged them. We have to remember that the Arab radicals believed and to a degree rightly so that their terror created the internal pressure in Israel which compelled us to withdraw from Lebanon. They are trying to repeat the same tactics and will intensify its use by sending their homicide bombers from all surrounding countries. It is now embedded in their mythology that they have kicked us out of Lebanon and it is only a question of time to kick us first out of the territories followed eventually and over a time by the whole of Israel a la Crusades fashion. Internal pressure in Israel is building up and few concerted suicide bombings co-ordinated simultaneously will cause it to implode and fulfil Arab expectations. We have to act before this happens since if it does it will confirm the efficacy of their strategy and make it impossible to build a peaceful co-existence in the future.
The consequences of Defensive Shield have generated hatred and mistrust on both sides that will take generations to heal. The do-gooders amongst us who rely on goodwill, morality and equity to reach the basis of a settlement with few like-minded individuals on the other side are misreading the mood and the psyche of the streets on both sides. Reading the London Guardian and meeting each other’s counterpart in comfortable English or Norwegian countryside may draw few individuals together but that is a long, long way from solving the problems, pain and hurt of ordinary people. Only clear separate borders can in time rekindle trust between these two peoples of two proud countries through trade, tourism, cultural exchanges and the like. Forget about similarities with other situations. We are not in Northern Ireland and anyway who are the Catholics and who are the Protestants in our conflict. Comparisons are dangerous and misleading. They may be good only for patching up tools in the hands of self-serving mediators. Please beware!

Question
How can we just walk out? What about our economic interests? What about Arab workers whom we need in Israel and the Palestinians need of employment for their livelihood?
Answer
We have to decide our priorities. Closing our borders is a double-edged sword. But economic hardship on both sides is preferable to mutual slaughter. Moreover as it hits all the population it can concentrate the mind on solutions. First things first. We define our ultimate borders then we set out to strengthen and fortify them. And having declared and publicly explained our position and intention to recognise the new state we proceed to close the borders and hand over the territories except for Hebron to the present Palestine Authority reformed or corrupt. It is only then that we engage with them in bilateral negotiations for a series of treaties.
At the start of the negotiation whenever it happens the first and most urgent will be agreeing the borders which Israel would have established unilaterally on the ground. Our starting stage will be the status of Gaza. We insist that any agreement to reopen the borders here will be contingent on declaring Gaza a demilitarised entity with pre verifiable conditions. That will be our starting stage in the bilateral negotiation. Our weapon will be the pressure of closed borders.

Question
This sounds crazy almost giving up what even some Arabs are not contemplating. Is this a solution for Israel or for the Palestinians?
Answer
Any solution has to be good for both sides in the long run. However my proposal is only concerned with the security present and future of Israel. I believe that we are standing at a crossroad with regard not only of the safety of Israel but also with the future survival of our Jewish heritage that is dependent and intertwined with the future of Israel. The recent manifestations of the hostile attitudes of Europe, governments and peoples (U.K. and Denmark excepted) is far more disturbing than that of the Arabs who of course should be predicted. Once we reach a settlement with the Palestinians we would be amazed to find them far more reliable friends than the Europeans especially if we treat them and the Arabs of Israel with dignity as genuine and equal friends. I believe that the Palestinians have over the last twenty years learnt far more about us and about their so-called Arab brothers in the Arab countries than we realise and understand. They have particularly seen how much Jordan had gained in contrast to Syria by being supportive of America and neutral towards Israel. Once peace is established the progressive Palestinians will find more in common with democratic modern western orientated Israel than they have with the dictators and the corrupt regimes of almost every Arab country.

Question
Where do the Arabs of Israel fit into this picture?
Answer
In the same way that we should not lump the Palestinians with other Arabs living elsewhere we should not lump the Arabs of Israel with others. They are content where they are and would like to identify with Israel if given the chance. We must be careful not to see them as the simple villagers of the pre-1948 era. They have progressed since as we have done. We should treat them sensibly honourably and as equal citizens the way Jews and other ethnic groups are treated in, for example, tolerant “Christian” Britain. We should enlist them in the IDF but avoid taking them into sensitive units and the Air Force on account of the understandable justification of avoiding them having to fight their own relatives across the border. Modern Armies depend increasingly on specialised units that can be restricted to Jews. As for their social and political integration the proposed electoral system will help in that direction. Even today given the chance they would have been of immense value if a number of them were to be assigned to our key embassies in the West. They would have been proud to parade themselves as Israelis. I believe they could in time constitute our bridge to the neighbouring Palestinians and to the wider Arab world.

Question
What about the rest of the Arab world?
Answer
Once Israel withdraws from the territories the sting will go out of the propaganda venom of the Arabs and their supporters in Europe. They will try to sabotage any bilateral agreement with the Palestinians. They are not going to like losing the Palestinian card and the Israel bogey to divert the attention of their peoples and their streets away from their corrupt regimes and hopeless governments. We have to counter this by exposing their weaknesses. And of course each country has its own problems so there is no “fix fits all” in our treatment of our future relations with them. For the sake of continuing to receive financial aid from the West at least Egypt and Jordan will heat up their cold peace with Israel. Others will follow which may leave isolated Syria to seek settlement.

Question
What about Jerusalem and Hebron ?
Answer
We separate Jerusalem from East Jerusalem and start to call it Al-Quds. Then again just hand over to the Palestinian Authority those parts which we are prepared to give up as last resort even before any negotiations. These must include the Mosque. Meantime we must literally while it is in our hand erect a wall, a battlement wall in the middle of the courtyard of the Mosque to protect the Kothel-Wall and the Jewish worshippers below. We must assert and declare our sovereignty of this battlement structure and the area on our side of it. This is possible today but will not be so later on. This time let us use the cards we hold. The world would understand us and accept our action in today’s atmosphere of terror and homicide bombers. They will not tolerate this action tomorrow in quieter times.
As for Hebron we declare now that once an arrangement can be made with the new State of Palestine to ensure the safety of the settlers as Israeli citizens living in Palestine as Foreign Residents Israel IDF will withdraw after an agreed period of say one or two years. Only a clear declaration now can diffuse the perilous situation of the settlers, avoid more slaughter, and gain the sympathy of the outside world.

Question
But the Palestinians or Yasser Arafat would not agree to play ball?
Answer
The principle of this scenario is to act unilaterally. Establish facts on the ground as our ultimate concessions and negotiate the details of a treaty with Palestine afterwards. An urgent action is needed while we have the support of the President and Congress. You never know what may happen tomorrow. Let us deploy our army to seal our borders and secure the lives of our people inside those borders instead of using it to demolish few buildings which will be better designed and rebuilt by Western money. And let us do that while discredited Yasser Arafat is there. We will be under far more pressure if say an articulate Saeb Erekat or a moderate replaces him. Let us concentrate on rebuilding our shattered economy. We must abandon the idea of reorganising the Palestine Authority. The dream that Palestinian police or security organ will defend our borders from suicide or rocket bombing is naïve to the point of tragic misunderstanding of the present mood in the “occupied” territories. We will never have security that way. The aftermath of Oslo and later on of Clinton should have taught us some lessons. Let the factions in the territories fight it out between themselves. Eventually they will settle down and they may very well settle down in a confederation with Jordan. While we are interfering we are preventing the progressive elements amongst them from gaining power. Let us keep out of it. In the new scenario they will need Israel. And those in the West who want to help them will need Israel’s goodwill as a neighbour for economic not political reasons. I believe that ultimately our best friends after the Americans will be the Palestinians themselves and certainly not Europe. It will dawn on the Palestinians that their best friend is their western neighbour. We shall both see Europe for what it is and what it is showing itself to be nowadays i.e. anti-Semitic and racist. In this respect at least we have something in common with the Arabs. Jews in Europe should make this common ground to be felt both by Europe and by the many Arabs living there. Let us get to the hearts of the Arabs through co-operation in this area and not through arming or organising the security arms of the new State. We must remember that the enemies of the people in all Arab countries are their own secret services and their armies. We do not want to be associated with them in the eyes of their people in the way for example we did in Iran and lost so much as a consequence. Let us not be the tool of Western interests. We are not even helping anybody that way certainly not our American friends.

Question
What about the refugees and their right of return?
Answer
This is the one question that we should be clear and adamant about. We have taken more Jewish refugees from Arab countries than Palestinian refugees left what today is Israel. We must make this clear and keep saying it. Whatever are the circumstances of refugee movements on both sides we have to deal with the outcome and not talk of reversing it. For the sake of the ultimate success of any future negotiation and the future survival of Israel we must declare that this is the one question which is out of the question. Anybody in Israel who is prepared to negotiate this subject must have his head examined.
There are some comfortable Jews outside Israel and more importantly there are Israeli Jews who believe Israel should become a secular country of its inhabitants. Let us not volunteer to be the first. Let us follow others may be in 25th century! when may be the Arab and Islamic countries and even Europe not excluding the U.K become secular or at least not identified with any religion. We have to remain the Jewish State that is the refuge of last resort of persecuted Jews. We must not allow Israel to be diluted further. Tolerant Israel yes, un-Jewish Israel no. We must stop being ashamed of our heritage and our identity. Therefore we must resist any further Jewish dilution.

Question
What about the problem of electoral reform and the stability of Israeli Governments i.e. no. 2 problem outlined in the referred discussion?
Answer
This is becoming even more urgent and our divided front vis-à-vis the outside world during Defensive Shield made a change absolutely imperative. The present coalition with its backbone of Shraron/Peres/Ben-Eliezer have 18 months to introduce the new system. It will be a case of historical criminal negligence committed against the Jewish people by Likud/Labour if they do nothing about it. This is a case of putting the country nay the Jewish future survival before party politics. Enough is enough. Our incessant division and political in fighting are exasperating our friends and making us the laughing stock of our enemies. We ask Yasser Arafat to reform his political structure. What about him asking us to do the same to make any peace enduring!? What shall we say to him if he simply ask us the startling question: what is the difference between SheikhYassin in Gaza and Chief Rabbi Ovadiah in Jerusalem!! The case for electoral reform may not sound that urgent or important when viewed against pressing daily dangers facing Israel. In fact it has as much relevance as any outside danger facing us. It is rotting our socio-political structure and driving our best talent away from the Kenesset and government. The new proposals will force future politicians to seek their support in the regions and amongst the people away from the chatty cafes of Tel-Aviv and Jerusalem.

Question
What about the third problem highlighted in the synopsis i.e. that of our appalling public relations.
Answer
This is probably the saddest part. Here we are the people who produced the fathers of propaganda and P.R. namely Durkheim Freud and Bernays have failed abysmally in defending Israel’s case before and especially during Defensive Shield. Even now we have not recovered from all the faux pas we have stumbled in or failed to avoid. The only two persons who made any impact were Peres for substance and Nethanyahu for form. Unfortunately Peres was out of place in New York and Nethanyahu was out of place in Trafalgar Square! We could not even get the juxtaposition right! We really should spend time and resources in this area. May be we should find out who the Palestinians are employing and try to hire them! We need urgently to address this problem and highlight the points outlined in the discussion. Let us use the weapons of the Holocaust and the Arab cleansing of their Jews from their countries. We have paid so dearly for these two weapons and they are rusting away.

Question
Some may say that there seem to be so many contradictions and inconsistency in the above arguments i.e. We are enemies and friends of the Arabs. We are strong and we are weak. We want to keep what we can of the territories and we should give up most of it. Are we with Sharon/Ben-Eliezer or with Sarid/Beilin or worse are we the new defeatists?
Answer
We are none of the above. There is no inconsistency. There may be poor presentation of the argument. I concede that but we must be careful not to mix form and content. My point of departure is the future survival of Israel that I believe is synonymous with that of the Jewish People and Jewish heritage. Israel today is facing unprecedented danger. To overcome it we have to think with our heads not our hearts. We have to see the realities of our situation not the wishful thinking of our ambitions. The Palestinians have changed the rules of engagement and the world is unconcerned. They don’t need a huge army any more. They need few daring and punch drunk fanatics not necessarily to carry bombs that we may or may not intercept in time. Biological and chemical weapons can be easily carried in small tubes by beautiful and innocent looking teenagers. The world has not yet experienced this horror yet. Unfortunately innovations seem always to be tried on Israel first – aeroplane hijacking, suicidal bombing and tomorrow biological or chemical warfare. Our urgent response now must be two pronged: close the borders properly and seek an acceptable peace that can prepare the ground for neighbourly friendship. There is no alternative. And remember we have become an endangered species of 12 million squeezed between one thousand million Muslims and similar number of Christians. We cannot afford to play the number game with the Arabs when one suicide bomber kills tens and maims hundreds. This is a game too far.
This is a program based on hard and harsh realities not on ideals and aspirations.

Aharon Nathan, May 2002
http://www.aharonnathan.com/

Israel Arab Conflict (Three Problems in Israel)

Solutions to Border Security, Political Stability and Negative Image

The daily news from Israel is getting more and more alarming. It is only natural that we Jews would react emotionally and angrily and try to search for a quick fix. However such quick fixes in the past proved to be short lived and made future permanent solutions more difficult. Successive Israeli Governments worked on the assumption that time was on their side. Recent development, from Oslo onwards, the opposite became true. The Arabs feel today that they have discovered the recipe for success i.e. guerrilla warfare coupled with propaganda onslaught on Western TV’s.

Since the 6-day war Israel has achieved wonders in building a strong economy, an up-to-date technology, an invincible army and above all a real haven in time of need for the Jewish People. Tragically these achievements are being eroded now day by day owing mainly to three dangers which are corroding the future survival and viability of a Jewish State. These are:

Problem No. 1: Security of Borders
In the heart of this problem of the security of Israel’s borders is the cancer of Gaza which sits on the geographical belly of Israel and together with Hebron forms an axis of evil which divides the country in two halves. The fate of the isolated settlements on the West Bank looks precarious and untenable. The heart of Israel becomes vulnerable to attacks by suicide bombers or long distant rockets. A rational solution to resolve these problems has to be perceived and seen by both sides to be logical and in their mutual interest. And above all it has to look to the outside world to be fair in the circumstances.

The solution lies in moving the Capital and therefore the centre of gravity of the new State of Palestine to the West Bank (Ramallah or East-Jerusalem) and endeavour to resettle the refugees living now in the Gaza Refugee Camps outside leaving a demilitarised Gaza with its original inhabitants. All this is to be part of the overall settlement with the Palestinians. And together with realistic arrangements for the Hebron enclave becoming a community of Palestinian Jews or Israeli Residents within and subject to the sovereignty of Palestine and with similar status for some of the existing Settlements will end up with reasonably defendable borders.

Problem No. 2: Reform of the Electoral System
The present electoral system of Israel based on pure proportional representation has over the years pulverised the Jewish population and prevented it from integrating its big Arab minority into the body politic causing the latter to be the fifth column that it is virtually today. More importantly it rendered a stable Government of the country almost impossible. Israeli Jews are nowadays divided culturally and politically. They are diametrically opposed to each other even in their attitudes to security and foreign policy matters. No wonder the Government itself is speaking in so many voices giving mixed messages to friend and foe. The Arabs are taking advantage of this situation and Europe exploits it for their regional interests while venting their pent-up anti-Semitic impulses in the bargain.

The Solution is a new electoral system based on a combined Proportional Representation and Constituency system, which is easy to operate and can be acceptable to the two big Parties:Likud and Labour. With Labour Peres and Likud Sharon co-operating in the present government it will be possible to advocate it. In fact it is an opportunity which may be lost unless introduced in this Kennesset ready for the next general election.

The proposed system is based on dividing the country into 120 constituencies that elect 120 members of the Kenesset. And in addition another 30 members are elected by adding the votes cast for the unsuccessful candidates and allocating them on a proportional basis amongst the political parties out of their pre-announced lists of their candidates in the constituencies. Details of this proposal can show that it is simple to operate and practical. This is a completely new and innovative system, which Israel can pioneer and it can be, adapted in other democratic countries e.g. the U.K. where a change of electoral system in the opposite direction is called for. This system can over time cause to integrate the Arabs of Israel into its political life.

Problem No. 3: Israel’s World Image
This is the poor almost pathetic way which Israel’s information organs are presenting and advancing Israel’s case throwing away the two main underlying raisons d’être for the very existence of Israel: i.e. the persecution of the Jews in Europe culminating in the Holocaust and the treatment of the Jews in the Arab countries and the ethnic cleansing by them to Israel. Not only the world has forgotten this because they don’t want to remember but also because we ourselves don’t remind them. So we are left with Israel the aggressor the dispossessing and inhumane. And not only Arabs say this today but almost the whole of Europe and worst of all many Jewish "intellectuals" both inside Israel and outside. Any TV viewer can contrast the articulate and vocal Palestinian spokesmen with the Israeli halting apologetic defensive and almost lost for words in their responses.

The Solution is an offensive on a large scale to take on Arab propaganda European hypocrisy and above all the emerging Jewish intellectualism trying to curry favour in the West disdaining their heritage following their counter-parts in Germany in the twenties and thirties who thought that Goethe and Beethoven could take care of Anti Semitism and Nazism. We should not be abashed or ashamed in reminding the world of what happened to necessitate the existence of Israel. In modern days of spin and emotional appeals we cannot afford in our responses to be the gentle the clinically pure the refined. All Nations know and certainly the Arabs have realised the potency of the propaganda war. Unfortunately for the Jewish People we don’t even need propaganda. We just need to tell historical truths without inhibition or fear. We are at war.
To the Arabs we say: You ethnically-cleansed your old Jewish communities who preceded you in your countries. Why can Arabs live in Israel but not one single Jew can even visit any part of Arabia Iraq Syria let alone contemplate living as a foreign resident even in Jordan or Egypt. The Arabs have succeeded in making their appalling ethnic and religious prejudices acceptable even to the most enlightened and tolerant segments of society in the West. It is shocking how these views are taken for granted. The world forgot or did not know that the number of Jewish refugees taken by Israel far exceeds the Palestinian refugees.

To Europe we say: Please don’t lecture us on morality and human behaviour. You have caused the emergence of Israel. And the best way to help is to try to be friends to both sides, not to sit in judgement on Israel. You cannot choose to be neutral. You were party to the problem. The world and not least the Jews living in security and comfort for the time being in Europe have to know that the Israelis cannot afford to let Israel to be a big Ghetto or a concentration camp waiting for a Final Solution. These are harsh words but they have to be said loud and clear otherwise we may have only ourselves to blame in 10/20 years time.

Aharon Nathan, June 2001
http://www.aharonnathan.com/