The Americans stole a piece of
Mexico but not of Canada because of their cultural affinity with
the latter. They spared Haiti because there was no profit in
controlling and upgrading the alien population, not to mention
damaging their international image. Arabs will agree to Israeli
annexation if they admire her the way Mexicans admired the
United States. Lacking this sense of inferiority, Arabs will resist
encroachment, as the Canadians did.
July 25, 2011
Israel should drive the Palestinians into Jordan and Lebanon
The seemingly irresolvable situation has, however, a
solution. Israel should drive the Palestinians into Jordan and Lebanon and treat the other Arabs with kind indifference but react with cruelty to any
violation of her interests. Negotiators know an opponent is
much more likely to give way if pressured from the beginning
and then offered a way out.
Machiavelli left a message to future generations. He disdained government force and war; he admired just, wise rulers. He considered murder and deceit
distasteful but natural, but like a good surgeon, he saw the
need to do repulsive and painful things quickly and effectively.
It is better to live and let live, but if you decide on territorial
expansion and war, at least do it knowledgeably. Politics is a cold-blooded game with no place for moralizing and hesitation for the victors. Be coherent and
single-minded; smother the weakness of humanism, and
weaken the enemy by inducing him to act according to moral
rules while you disregard them as fiction, inapplicable in crises.
Israel has yet to accept and adopt the truth of warfare.
solution. Israel should drive the Palestinians into Jordan and Lebanon and treat the other Arabs with kind indifference but react with cruelty to any
violation of her interests. Negotiators know an opponent is
much more likely to give way if pressured from the beginning
and then offered a way out.
Machiavelli left a message to future generations. He disdained government force and war; he admired just, wise rulers. He considered murder and deceit
distasteful but natural, but like a good surgeon, he saw the
need to do repulsive and painful things quickly and effectively.
It is better to live and let live, but if you decide on territorial
expansion and war, at least do it knowledgeably. Politics is a cold-blooded game with no place for moralizing and hesitation for the victors. Be coherent and
single-minded; smother the weakness of humanism, and
weaken the enemy by inducing him to act according to moral
rules while you disregard them as fiction, inapplicable in crises.
Israel has yet to accept and adopt the truth of warfare.
A Jewish Country......
Would anyone challenge the right of Caucasians to
fight for their own jurisdiction within California? Many would
not. Ethnically, religiously, and even ideologically diverse
states that fail as melting pots dissolve. Who was there first
and who came later does not matter; much of Israel was not
settled fifty years ago. A coherent and importantly distinct
group living compactly is entitled to sovereignty, or at least it
makes sense to give them sovereignty to keep them from living
in perpetual conflict with their neighbors. What, except anti-
Semitism, denies the same logic to the Jews in the Middle
East?
fight for their own jurisdiction within California? Many would
not. Ethnically, religiously, and even ideologically diverse
states that fail as melting pots dissolve. Who was there first
and who came later does not matter; much of Israel was not
settled fifty years ago. A coherent and importantly distinct
group living compactly is entitled to sovereignty, or at least it
makes sense to give them sovereignty to keep them from living
in perpetual conflict with their neighbors. What, except anti-
Semitism, denies the same logic to the Jews in the Middle
East?
Jews will come Aaron. They'll come to Israel....
Aliyah...Aaron, Jews will come Aaron. They'll come to Israel for reasons they can't
even fathom. They'll turn up at El Al at Laguardia not knowing for sure why
they're there. They'll enter the plane as innocent as children, longing for HaShem.
Of course, we won't mind if you fly El Al, they'll say. It's only $600 per person.
They'll pass over the money without even thinking about it: for it is money they
have and peace they lack. And they'll arrive at Ben-Gurion, walk out to kiss the
ground; sit in the hangar to hear the PM on a perfect afternoon. They'll find they
have reserved apartments & Ulpan somewhere in the North or South, where they
remembered on Pesach when they were children and dreamed of going home. And
they'll listen to the PM and it'll be as if they dipped themselves in holy waters.
The tears of joy will be so thick they'll have to brush them away from their faces.
Jews will come Aaron. The one constant through all the years, Aaron, has been
HaShem. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It has been erased
like a blackboard, rebuilt and erased again. But HaShem has marked the time.
This People, this Eretz Yisrael: it's a part of our past, Aaron. It reminds of us of all
that once was Holy and it could be again. Oh... Jews will come Aaron. Jews will
most definitely come.
even fathom. They'll turn up at El Al at Laguardia not knowing for sure why
they're there. They'll enter the plane as innocent as children, longing for HaShem.
Of course, we won't mind if you fly El Al, they'll say. It's only $600 per person.
They'll pass over the money without even thinking about it: for it is money they
have and peace they lack. And they'll arrive at Ben-Gurion, walk out to kiss the
ground; sit in the hangar to hear the PM on a perfect afternoon. They'll find they
have reserved apartments & Ulpan somewhere in the North or South, where they
remembered on Pesach when they were children and dreamed of going home. And
they'll listen to the PM and it'll be as if they dipped themselves in holy waters.
The tears of joy will be so thick they'll have to brush them away from their faces.
Jews will come Aaron. The one constant through all the years, Aaron, has been
HaShem. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It has been erased
like a blackboard, rebuilt and erased again. But HaShem has marked the time.
This People, this Eretz Yisrael: it's a part of our past, Aaron. It reminds of us of all
that once was Holy and it could be again. Oh... Jews will come Aaron. Jews will
most definitely come.
July 23, 2011
July 20, 2011
The Jewish state’s choices are to either annex Judea and Samaria or be destroyed by its neighbors.
Our World: Israel’s only two options
By CAROLINE B. GLICK
07/18/2011 21:59
The Jewish state’s choices are to either annex Judea and Samaria or be destroyed by its neighbors.
Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas is in Europe this week seeking to convince the Spanish and Norwegian governments to support the Palestinian bid to sidestep negotiations with Israel and have the UN General Assembly recognize Palestinian sovereignty over Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem in addition to Gaza.
The Palestinians know that without US support, their initiative will fail to gain Security Council support and therefore have no legal weight. But they believe that if they push hard enough, Israel’s control over these areas will eventually unravel and they will gain control over them without ever accepting Israel’s right to exist.
Fatah’s UN gambit, along with its unity deal with Hamas, makes clear that the time has come for Israel to finally face the facts: There are only two realistic options for dealing with Judea and Samaria.
Either the Palestinians will take control of Judea and Samaria, or Israel will annex them.
If the Palestinians take control, they will establish a terror state in the areas, which – like their terror state in Gaza – will use its territory as a starting point for continued war against Israel.
It isn’t only Israel’s experience with post-withdrawal Gaza and South Lebanon that make it clear that a post-withdrawal Palestinian-controlled Judea and Samaria will become a terror state. The Palestinians themselves make no bones about this.
In a Palestinian public opinion survey released last week by The Israel Project, 65 percent of Palestinians said they believe that they should conduct negotiations with Israel. But before we get excited, we need to read the fine print.
According to the survey, those two-thirds of Palestinians believe that talks should not lead to the establishment of the State of Palestine next to Israel and at peace with the Jewish state. They believe the establishment of “Palestine” next to Israel should serve as a means for continuing their war against Israel. The goal of that war is to destroy what’s left of Israel after the “peace” treaty and gobble it into “Palestine.”
That is, 66% of Palestinians believe “peace” talks with Israel should be conducted in bad faith.
Moreover, three-quarters deny Jewish ties to Jerusalem, and 80% support Islamic jihad against Jews as called for in the Hamas charter; 73% support the annihilation of the Jewish people as called for in the Hamas charter on the basis of Islamic scripture.
As bad as Israel’s experience with post-withdrawal Gaza and South Lebanon has been, Israel’s prospects with a post-withdrawal Judea and Samaria will be far worse. It isn’t simply that withdrawal will invite aggression from Judea and Samaria. It will invite foreign Arab armies to invade the rump Jewish state.
Unlike the post-withdrawal situation with Gaza and South Lebanon, without Judea and Samaria, Israel would not have the territorial depth and topographical advantage to defend itself from invasion from the east.
Moreover, the establishment of the second Palestinian terror state after Gaza in Judea and Samaria would embolden some of Israel’s Arab citizens in the Galilee and the Negev as well as in Jaffa, Lod, Haifa and beyond to escalate their already declared irredentist plans to demand autonomy or unification with whatever Palestinian terror state they choose.
Living under the constant threat of invasion from the east (and the south, from a Muslim Brotherhood-controlled Egyptian army moving through the Sinai and Gaza), Israel would likely be deterred from taking concerted action against its treacherous Arab citizens.
As then-prime minister Ariel Sharon warned in 2001, the situation would be analogous to the plight of Czechoslovakia in the 1930s. Just as the Nazis deterred the Czech government from acting against its traitorous German minority in the Sudetenland in the 1930s, so Arab states (and a nuclear Iran), supporting the Palestinian terror states in Judea and Samaria and in Gaza, would make it impossible for Israel to enforce its sovereign rights on its remaining territory.
Israel’s destruction would be all but preordained.
The second option is for Israel to annex Judea and Samaria, complete with its hostile Arab population.
Absorbing the Arab population of Judea and Samaria would increase Israel’s Arab minority from 20% to 33% of the overall population. This is true whether or not Israel grants them full citizenship with voting rights or permanent residency without them.
Obviously such a scenario would present Israel with new and complex legal, social and law enforcement challenges. But it would also provide Israel with substantial advantages and opportunities.
Israel would have to consider its electoral laws and weigh the prospect of moving from a proportional representation system to a direct, district system. It would have to begin enforcing its laws toward its Arab citizens in a manner identical to the way it enforces its laws against its Jewish citizens. This includes everything from administrative laws concerning building to criminal statutes related to treason. It would have to ensure that Arab schoolchildren are no longer indoctrinated to hate Jews, despite the fact that according to the Israel Project survey, 53% of Palestinians support such anti-Semitic indoctrination in the classroom.
These steps would be difficult to enact.
On the other side, annexing Judea and Samaria holds unmistakable advantages for Israel. For instance, Israel would regain complete military control over the areas. Israel ceded much of this control to the PLO in 1996.
The Palestinian armies Israel agreed to allow the PLO to field have played a central role in the Palestinian terror machine. They have also played a key role in indoctrinating Palestinian society to seek and work toward Israel’s destruction. By bringing about the disbanding of these terror forces, Israel would go a long way toward securing its citizens from attack.
Furthermore, by asserting its sovereign rights to its heartland, for the first time since 1967, Israel would be adopting an unambiguous position around which its citizens and supporters could rally. Annexation would also finally free Israel’s politicians and diplomats to tell the truth about the pathological nature of Palestinian nationalism and about the rank hypocrisy and anti-Semitism at the heart of much of the international Left’s campaigns on behalf of the Palestinians.
No, annexation won’t be easy. But then again, the alternative is national suicide.
And again, these are the only options. Either the Palestinians form a terror state from which it will wage war against the shrunken, indefensible Jewish state, or Israel expands the size of the Jewish state.
Since 1967, Israel has refused to accept the fact that these are the only two options available. Instead, successive governments and the nation as a whole have set their hopes on imaginary third options. For the Left, this option has been the fantasy of a two-state solution. This “solution” involves the Palestinians controlling some or all of the lands Israel took over from Jordan and Egypt in the Six Day War, establishing a state, and all of us living happily ever after.
Given the Palestinians’ overwhelming, consistent and violent support for the destruction of Israel in any size, this leftist fantasy never had a leg to stand on.
And since 1993, when the Rabin government adopted the Left’s fantasy as state policy, more than 2,000 Israelis have been killed in its pursuit.
Not only has the Left’s third option fantasy facilitated the Palestinian terror machine’s ability to kill Jews, it has empowered their propaganda war against Israel.
Israel’s pursuit of the nonexistent two-state solution has eroded its own international position to a degree unprecedented in its history.
Last week’s meeting of the so-called Middle East Quartet ended without a final statement. It isn’t that its members couldn’t agree on the need to establish “Palestine” in Judea and Samaria and Jerusalem. That was a no-brainer. The Quartet members couldn’t agree on the need to accept the Jewish state. Russia reportedly rejected wording that would have enjoined the Palestinians to accept the Jewish state’s right to exist as part of a peace treaty.
And this was eminently foreseeable. The unhinged two-state solution makes Israel’s legitimacy contingent on the establishment of a Palestinian state. And it put the burden to establish a Palestinian state on Israel.
Since everyone except Israel and the US always accepted the establishment of a Palestinian state, and no one except Israel and the US always accepted the existence of the Jewish state, by making its own legitimacy dependent on Palestinian statehood, Israel started the clock running on its own demonization.
The longer Israel allows its very right to exist to be contingent on the establishment of another terror state committed to its destruction, the less the nations of the world will feel obliged to accept its right to exist.
As for the Right, its leaders have embraced imaginary third options of their own. Either Jordan would come in and save us, or the Palestinians would come to like us, or something.
The one thing that both the Left’s fantasy option and the Right’s fantasy option share is their belief that the Palestinians or the Arabs as a whole will eventually change. Both sides’ imaginary third options maintain that with sufficient inducements or time, the Arabs will change their behavior and drop their goal of destroying Israel.
Our 44-year dalliance in fantasyland has not simply weakened us militarily and diplomatically. It has torn us apart internally by surrendering the debate to the two ideological fringes of the political spectrum. Actually, to be precise, we have surrendered 99% of our public discourse to the radical Left and 1% to the radical Right.
The Left’s control over the discourse has caused its ideological opposite’s numbers to increasingly disengage from the state. That would be bad enough, but the Palestinians’ inarguable bad faith and continued commitment to Israel’s destruction have driven the far Left far off the cliff of reason and rationality.
Unable to convince their fellow Israelis that their two-state pipe dream will bring peace, the Israeli Left has joined forces with the international Left in its increasingly shrill campaigns to delegitimize the country’s right to exist and undermine its ability to defend itself.
This sorry state of affairs is exemplified today by the radical Left’s hysterical response to the Knesset’s passage last week of the anti-boycott law. The comparatively mild law makes it a civil offense to solicit boycotts against Israel. It bars people engaged in economic warfare against Israel from getting government benefits and makes them liable to punitive damages in civil suits.
The Left’s hysterical public relations campaign to demonize the law and its supporters as fascists and seek its overthrow through the Supreme Court makes clear that the Left will wage war against its own country in pursuit of its delusion.
But aside from driving the public discourse into the depths of ideological madness, Israel’s embrace of fantasy has made it impossible for us to conduct a sober-minded discussion of our only real options. The time has come to debate these two options, choose one, and move forward.
By CAROLINE B. GLICK
07/18/2011 21:59
The Jewish state’s choices are to either annex Judea and Samaria or be destroyed by its neighbors.
Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas is in Europe this week seeking to convince the Spanish and Norwegian governments to support the Palestinian bid to sidestep negotiations with Israel and have the UN General Assembly recognize Palestinian sovereignty over Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem in addition to Gaza.
The Palestinians know that without US support, their initiative will fail to gain Security Council support and therefore have no legal weight. But they believe that if they push hard enough, Israel’s control over these areas will eventually unravel and they will gain control over them without ever accepting Israel’s right to exist.
Fatah’s UN gambit, along with its unity deal with Hamas, makes clear that the time has come for Israel to finally face the facts: There are only two realistic options for dealing with Judea and Samaria.
Either the Palestinians will take control of Judea and Samaria, or Israel will annex them.
If the Palestinians take control, they will establish a terror state in the areas, which – like their terror state in Gaza – will use its territory as a starting point for continued war against Israel.
It isn’t only Israel’s experience with post-withdrawal Gaza and South Lebanon that make it clear that a post-withdrawal Palestinian-controlled Judea and Samaria will become a terror state. The Palestinians themselves make no bones about this.
In a Palestinian public opinion survey released last week by The Israel Project, 65 percent of Palestinians said they believe that they should conduct negotiations with Israel. But before we get excited, we need to read the fine print.
According to the survey, those two-thirds of Palestinians believe that talks should not lead to the establishment of the State of Palestine next to Israel and at peace with the Jewish state. They believe the establishment of “Palestine” next to Israel should serve as a means for continuing their war against Israel. The goal of that war is to destroy what’s left of Israel after the “peace” treaty and gobble it into “Palestine.”
That is, 66% of Palestinians believe “peace” talks with Israel should be conducted in bad faith.
Moreover, three-quarters deny Jewish ties to Jerusalem, and 80% support Islamic jihad against Jews as called for in the Hamas charter; 73% support the annihilation of the Jewish people as called for in the Hamas charter on the basis of Islamic scripture.
As bad as Israel’s experience with post-withdrawal Gaza and South Lebanon has been, Israel’s prospects with a post-withdrawal Judea and Samaria will be far worse. It isn’t simply that withdrawal will invite aggression from Judea and Samaria. It will invite foreign Arab armies to invade the rump Jewish state.
Unlike the post-withdrawal situation with Gaza and South Lebanon, without Judea and Samaria, Israel would not have the territorial depth and topographical advantage to defend itself from invasion from the east.
Moreover, the establishment of the second Palestinian terror state after Gaza in Judea and Samaria would embolden some of Israel’s Arab citizens in the Galilee and the Negev as well as in Jaffa, Lod, Haifa and beyond to escalate their already declared irredentist plans to demand autonomy or unification with whatever Palestinian terror state they choose.
Living under the constant threat of invasion from the east (and the south, from a Muslim Brotherhood-controlled Egyptian army moving through the Sinai and Gaza), Israel would likely be deterred from taking concerted action against its treacherous Arab citizens.
As then-prime minister Ariel Sharon warned in 2001, the situation would be analogous to the plight of Czechoslovakia in the 1930s. Just as the Nazis deterred the Czech government from acting against its traitorous German minority in the Sudetenland in the 1930s, so Arab states (and a nuclear Iran), supporting the Palestinian terror states in Judea and Samaria and in Gaza, would make it impossible for Israel to enforce its sovereign rights on its remaining territory.
Israel’s destruction would be all but preordained.
The second option is for Israel to annex Judea and Samaria, complete with its hostile Arab population.
Absorbing the Arab population of Judea and Samaria would increase Israel’s Arab minority from 20% to 33% of the overall population. This is true whether or not Israel grants them full citizenship with voting rights or permanent residency without them.
Obviously such a scenario would present Israel with new and complex legal, social and law enforcement challenges. But it would also provide Israel with substantial advantages and opportunities.
Israel would have to consider its electoral laws and weigh the prospect of moving from a proportional representation system to a direct, district system. It would have to begin enforcing its laws toward its Arab citizens in a manner identical to the way it enforces its laws against its Jewish citizens. This includes everything from administrative laws concerning building to criminal statutes related to treason. It would have to ensure that Arab schoolchildren are no longer indoctrinated to hate Jews, despite the fact that according to the Israel Project survey, 53% of Palestinians support such anti-Semitic indoctrination in the classroom.
These steps would be difficult to enact.
On the other side, annexing Judea and Samaria holds unmistakable advantages for Israel. For instance, Israel would regain complete military control over the areas. Israel ceded much of this control to the PLO in 1996.
The Palestinian armies Israel agreed to allow the PLO to field have played a central role in the Palestinian terror machine. They have also played a key role in indoctrinating Palestinian society to seek and work toward Israel’s destruction. By bringing about the disbanding of these terror forces, Israel would go a long way toward securing its citizens from attack.
Furthermore, by asserting its sovereign rights to its heartland, for the first time since 1967, Israel would be adopting an unambiguous position around which its citizens and supporters could rally. Annexation would also finally free Israel’s politicians and diplomats to tell the truth about the pathological nature of Palestinian nationalism and about the rank hypocrisy and anti-Semitism at the heart of much of the international Left’s campaigns on behalf of the Palestinians.
No, annexation won’t be easy. But then again, the alternative is national suicide.
And again, these are the only options. Either the Palestinians form a terror state from which it will wage war against the shrunken, indefensible Jewish state, or Israel expands the size of the Jewish state.
Since 1967, Israel has refused to accept the fact that these are the only two options available. Instead, successive governments and the nation as a whole have set their hopes on imaginary third options. For the Left, this option has been the fantasy of a two-state solution. This “solution” involves the Palestinians controlling some or all of the lands Israel took over from Jordan and Egypt in the Six Day War, establishing a state, and all of us living happily ever after.
Given the Palestinians’ overwhelming, consistent and violent support for the destruction of Israel in any size, this leftist fantasy never had a leg to stand on.
And since 1993, when the Rabin government adopted the Left’s fantasy as state policy, more than 2,000 Israelis have been killed in its pursuit.
Not only has the Left’s third option fantasy facilitated the Palestinian terror machine’s ability to kill Jews, it has empowered their propaganda war against Israel.
Israel’s pursuit of the nonexistent two-state solution has eroded its own international position to a degree unprecedented in its history.
Last week’s meeting of the so-called Middle East Quartet ended without a final statement. It isn’t that its members couldn’t agree on the need to establish “Palestine” in Judea and Samaria and Jerusalem. That was a no-brainer. The Quartet members couldn’t agree on the need to accept the Jewish state. Russia reportedly rejected wording that would have enjoined the Palestinians to accept the Jewish state’s right to exist as part of a peace treaty.
And this was eminently foreseeable. The unhinged two-state solution makes Israel’s legitimacy contingent on the establishment of a Palestinian state. And it put the burden to establish a Palestinian state on Israel.
Since everyone except Israel and the US always accepted the establishment of a Palestinian state, and no one except Israel and the US always accepted the existence of the Jewish state, by making its own legitimacy dependent on Palestinian statehood, Israel started the clock running on its own demonization.
The longer Israel allows its very right to exist to be contingent on the establishment of another terror state committed to its destruction, the less the nations of the world will feel obliged to accept its right to exist.
As for the Right, its leaders have embraced imaginary third options of their own. Either Jordan would come in and save us, or the Palestinians would come to like us, or something.
The one thing that both the Left’s fantasy option and the Right’s fantasy option share is their belief that the Palestinians or the Arabs as a whole will eventually change. Both sides’ imaginary third options maintain that with sufficient inducements or time, the Arabs will change their behavior and drop their goal of destroying Israel.
Our 44-year dalliance in fantasyland has not simply weakened us militarily and diplomatically. It has torn us apart internally by surrendering the debate to the two ideological fringes of the political spectrum. Actually, to be precise, we have surrendered 99% of our public discourse to the radical Left and 1% to the radical Right.
The Left’s control over the discourse has caused its ideological opposite’s numbers to increasingly disengage from the state. That would be bad enough, but the Palestinians’ inarguable bad faith and continued commitment to Israel’s destruction have driven the far Left far off the cliff of reason and rationality.
Unable to convince their fellow Israelis that their two-state pipe dream will bring peace, the Israeli Left has joined forces with the international Left in its increasingly shrill campaigns to delegitimize the country’s right to exist and undermine its ability to defend itself.
This sorry state of affairs is exemplified today by the radical Left’s hysterical response to the Knesset’s passage last week of the anti-boycott law. The comparatively mild law makes it a civil offense to solicit boycotts against Israel. It bars people engaged in economic warfare against Israel from getting government benefits and makes them liable to punitive damages in civil suits.
The Left’s hysterical public relations campaign to demonize the law and its supporters as fascists and seek its overthrow through the Supreme Court makes clear that the Left will wage war against its own country in pursuit of its delusion.
But aside from driving the public discourse into the depths of ideological madness, Israel’s embrace of fantasy has made it impossible for us to conduct a sober-minded discussion of our only real options. The time has come to debate these two options, choose one, and move forward.
Storm approaching - Caroline B. Glick
Column One: Caution: Storm approaching
By CAROLINE B. GLICK, The Jerusalem Post
July 15, 2011
No doubt millions of Arabs are upset about freedom deficit in Arab
lands. But the fact is that economics has played a decisive role.
It was seven months ago that Mohammed Bouazizi, a vegetable peddler in
Tunisia, set himself and the Arab world on fire. The 26- year-old
staged his suicidal protest on the steps of the local city hall after
a municipal inspector took away his unlicensed vegetable cart, thus
denying him the ability to feed his family of eight.
Most depictions of the Arab revolutions that followed his act have
cast them as struggles for freedom and good government. These
depictions miss the main cause of these political upheavals. No doubt
millions of Arabs are upset about the freedom deficit in Arab lands.
But the fact is that economics has played a decisive role in all of
them.
In Bouazizi’s case, his self-immolation was provoked by financial
desperation. And if current trends continue, the revolutionary ferment
we have seen so far is only the tip of the iceberg.
Moreover, the political whirlwind will not be contained in the Middle East.
Most of the news coming out about Egypt today emanates from Cairo’s
Tahrir Square. There the protesters continue to demand ousted
president Hosni Mubarak’s head on a platter alongside the skulls of
his sons, business associates, advisors and everyone else who
prospered under his rule. While the supposedly liberal democratic
protesters’ swift descent into bloodlust is no doubt worth noting, the
main reason these protesters continue to gain so much international
attention is because they are easy to find. A reporter looking for a
story’s failsafe option is to mosey on over to the square and put a
microphone into the crowd.
But while easily accessible, the action at Tahrir Square is not
Egypt’s most important story. The most important, strategically
consequential story is that Egypt is rapidly going broke. By the end
of the year, the military dictatorship will likely not only default on
Egypt’s loans. Field Marshal Tantawi and his deputies will almost
certainly be unable to feed the Egyptian people.
Some raw statistics are in order here.
Among Egypt’s population of 80 million, some 32 million are
illiterate. They engage in subsistence farming that is too inefficient
to support them. Egypt needs to import half of its food.
As David Goldman, (aka Spengler), reported in Asia Times Online, in
May the International Monetary Fund warned of the impending economic
collapse of non-oil exporting Arab countries saying, “In the current
baseline scenario the external financing needs of the region’s oil
importers is projected to exceed $160 billion during 2011-13.” Goldman
noted, “That’s almost three years’ worth of Egypt’s total annual
imports as of 2010.”
Since Mubarak was overthrown in February, Egypt’s foreign currency
reserves have plummeted from $36b. to $25b.-28b. Last month, Tantawi
rejected an IMF loan offer of $3b., claiming he would not accept any
conditions on the loans. Instead he accepted $4b. in loans from Saudi
Arabia and another $2.34b. from the Gulf states.
And still, Egypt’s foreign currency reserves are being washed away. As
Goldman explained, the problem is capital flight. Due in no small part
to the protesters in Tahrir Square calling for the arrest of all those
who did business with the former regime, Egypt’s wealthy and foreign
investors are taking their money out of the country.
At the Arab Banking Summit in Rome last month, Jordan’s Finance
Minister Mohammed Abu Hammour warned, “There is capital flight and
$500 million a week is leaving the Arab world.”
According to Goldman, “Although Hammour did not mention countries in
his talk... most of the capital flight is coming from Egypt, and at an
annual rate roughly equal to Egypt’s remaining reserves.”
What this means is that in a few short months, Egypt will be unable to
pay for its imports. And consequently, it will be unable to feed its
people.
EGYPT IS far from alone. Take Syria. There, too, capital is fleeing
the country as the government rushes to quell the mass anti-regime
protests.
Just as Egyptian and Tunisian protesters hoped that a new regime would
bring them more freedom, so the mass protests sweeping Syria are in
part due to politics. But like in Egypt and Tunisia, Syria’s economic
woes are dictating much of what is happening on the ground and will
continue to do so for the foreseeable future.
Last month, Syrian President Bashar Assad gave a speech warning of
“weakness or collapse of the Syrian economy.” As a report last month
by Reuters explained, the immediate impact of Assad’s speech was
capital flight and the devaluation of the Syrian pound by 8 percent.
For the past decade, Assad has been trying to liberalize the Syrian
economy. He enacted some free market reforms, opened a stock exchange
and attempted to draw foreign investment to the country. While largely
unsuccessful in alleviating Syria’s massive poverty, these reforms did
enable the country a modest growth rate of around 2.5% per year.
In response to the mass protests threatening his regime, Assad has
effectively ended his experiment with the free market. He fired his
government minister in charge of the economic reforms and put all the
projects on hold. Instead, according to a report this week in Syria
Today, the government has steeply increased public sector wages and
offered 100,000 temporary workers full-time contracts. The Syrian
government also announced a 25% cut in the price of diesel fuel, at a
cost to the government of $527m. per year.
Boasting foreign currency reserves of $18b., the Syrian regime
announced it would be using these reserves to pay for the increased
governmental outlays. But as Reuters reported, the government has been
forced to spend $70m.- $80m. a week to buck up the local currency. So
between protecting the Syrian pound and paying for political loyalty,
the Assad regime is quickly drying up Syria’s treasury.
In the event the regime is overthrown, a successor regime will face
the sure prospect of economic collapse, much as the Egyptian regime
does.
And in the event that Assad remains in power, he will continue to reap
the economic whirlwind of what he has sown in the form of political
instability and violence.
What this means is that we can expect continued political turmoil in
both countries as they are consumed by debt and tens of millions of
people face the prospect of starvation. This political turmoil can be
expected to give rise to dangerous if unknowable military
developments.
Poor Arab nations such as Egypt and Syria are far from the only ones
facing economic disaster.
The $3b. loan the IMF offered Egypt may be among the last loans of
that magnitude the IMF is able to offer because quite simply, European
lenders are themselves staring into the economic abyss.
Greece’s debt crisis is not a local problem. It now appears
increasingly likely that the EU is going to have to accept Greece
defaulting on at least part of its debt. And the ramifications of
Greek default on the European and US banking systems are largely
unknowable. This is the case because as Megan McArdle at The Atlantic
wrote this week, the amount of Greek debt held by European and US
banks is difficult to assess.
WORSE STILL, the banking crisis will only intensify in the wake of a
Greek default. Debt pressure on Italy, Ireland, Spain and Portugal,
which are all also on the brink of defaulting on their debts, will
grow. Italy is Europe’s fourth largest economy. Its debt is about the
size of Germany’s.
If Italy goes into default, the implications for the European and US
banking systems – and for their economies generally – will be
devastating.
The current debt-ceiling negotiations between US President Barack
Obama and the Republican congressional leadership have made it
apparent that Obama is ideologically committed to increasing
government spending and taxes in the face of a weak economy. If Obama
is reelected next year, the dire implications of four more years of
his economic policies for the US and global economies cannot be
overstated.
Due to the economic policies implemented by Prime Minister Binyamin
Netanyahu since his first tenure as prime minister in 1996-99, in the
face of this economic disaster, Israel is likely to find itself in the
unlikely position of standing along China and India as among the only
stable, growing economies in the world. Israel’s banking sector is
largely unexposed to European debt. Israel’s gross external debt is
44% of GDP. This compares well not only to European debt levels of
well over 100% of GDP but to the US debt level, which stands at 98% of
GDP.
Assuming the government does not bend to populist pressure and take
economically hazardous steps like reducing the work week to four days,
Israel’s economy is likely to remain one of the country’s most
valuable strategic assets. Just as economic prosperity allowed Israel
to absorb the cost of the Second Lebanon War with barely a hiccup, so
continued economic growth will play a key role in protecting it from
the economically induced political upheavals likely to ensue
throughout much of the Arab world and Europe.
Aside from remaining economically responsible, as Israel approaches
the coming storms it is important for it to act with utmost caution
politically. It must adopt policies that provide it with the most
maneuver room and the greatest deterrent force.
First and foremost, this means that it is imperative that Israel not
commit itself to any agreements with any Arab regime. In 1977, the
Camp David Agreement with then-Egyptian president Anwar Sadat, in
which Israel surrendered the strategically invaluable Sinai for a
peace treaty, seemed like a reasonable gamble.
In 2011, a similar agreement with Assad or with the Palestinian
Authority, (whose budget is largely financed from international aid),
would be the height of strategic insanity.
Beyond that, with the rising double specter of Egyptian economic
collapse and the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood to power, Israel must
prepare for the prospect of war with Egypt. Recently it was reported
that IDF Chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. Benny Gantz has opted to
spread over several years Israel’s military preparations for a return
to hostilities with Egypt. Gantz’s decision reportedly is due to his
desire to avoid provoking Egypt with a rapid expansion of the IDF’s
order of battle.
Gantz’s caution is understandable. But it is unacceptable. Given the
escalating threats emanating from Egypt – not the least of which is
the expanding security vacuum in Sinai – Israel must prepare for war
now.
So, too, with the US’s weak economy, Obama’s Muslim
Brotherhood-friendly foreign policy, and Europe’s history of
responding to economic hardship with xenophobia, Israel’s need to
develop the means of militarily defending itself from a cascade of
emerging threats becomes all the more apparent.
The economic storms may pass by Israel. But the political tempests
they unleash will reach us.
To emerge safely from what is coming, Israel needs to hunker down and
prepare for the worst.
By CAROLINE B. GLICK, The Jerusalem Post
July 15, 2011
No doubt millions of Arabs are upset about freedom deficit in Arab
lands. But the fact is that economics has played a decisive role.
It was seven months ago that Mohammed Bouazizi, a vegetable peddler in
Tunisia, set himself and the Arab world on fire. The 26- year-old
staged his suicidal protest on the steps of the local city hall after
a municipal inspector took away his unlicensed vegetable cart, thus
denying him the ability to feed his family of eight.
Most depictions of the Arab revolutions that followed his act have
cast them as struggles for freedom and good government. These
depictions miss the main cause of these political upheavals. No doubt
millions of Arabs are upset about the freedom deficit in Arab lands.
But the fact is that economics has played a decisive role in all of
them.
In Bouazizi’s case, his self-immolation was provoked by financial
desperation. And if current trends continue, the revolutionary ferment
we have seen so far is only the tip of the iceberg.
Moreover, the political whirlwind will not be contained in the Middle East.
Most of the news coming out about Egypt today emanates from Cairo’s
Tahrir Square. There the protesters continue to demand ousted
president Hosni Mubarak’s head on a platter alongside the skulls of
his sons, business associates, advisors and everyone else who
prospered under his rule. While the supposedly liberal democratic
protesters’ swift descent into bloodlust is no doubt worth noting, the
main reason these protesters continue to gain so much international
attention is because they are easy to find. A reporter looking for a
story’s failsafe option is to mosey on over to the square and put a
microphone into the crowd.
But while easily accessible, the action at Tahrir Square is not
Egypt’s most important story. The most important, strategically
consequential story is that Egypt is rapidly going broke. By the end
of the year, the military dictatorship will likely not only default on
Egypt’s loans. Field Marshal Tantawi and his deputies will almost
certainly be unable to feed the Egyptian people.
Some raw statistics are in order here.
Among Egypt’s population of 80 million, some 32 million are
illiterate. They engage in subsistence farming that is too inefficient
to support them. Egypt needs to import half of its food.
As David Goldman, (aka Spengler), reported in Asia Times Online, in
May the International Monetary Fund warned of the impending economic
collapse of non-oil exporting Arab countries saying, “In the current
baseline scenario the external financing needs of the region’s oil
importers is projected to exceed $160 billion during 2011-13.” Goldman
noted, “That’s almost three years’ worth of Egypt’s total annual
imports as of 2010.”
Since Mubarak was overthrown in February, Egypt’s foreign currency
reserves have plummeted from $36b. to $25b.-28b. Last month, Tantawi
rejected an IMF loan offer of $3b., claiming he would not accept any
conditions on the loans. Instead he accepted $4b. in loans from Saudi
Arabia and another $2.34b. from the Gulf states.
And still, Egypt’s foreign currency reserves are being washed away. As
Goldman explained, the problem is capital flight. Due in no small part
to the protesters in Tahrir Square calling for the arrest of all those
who did business with the former regime, Egypt’s wealthy and foreign
investors are taking their money out of the country.
At the Arab Banking Summit in Rome last month, Jordan’s Finance
Minister Mohammed Abu Hammour warned, “There is capital flight and
$500 million a week is leaving the Arab world.”
According to Goldman, “Although Hammour did not mention countries in
his talk... most of the capital flight is coming from Egypt, and at an
annual rate roughly equal to Egypt’s remaining reserves.”
What this means is that in a few short months, Egypt will be unable to
pay for its imports. And consequently, it will be unable to feed its
people.
EGYPT IS far from alone. Take Syria. There, too, capital is fleeing
the country as the government rushes to quell the mass anti-regime
protests.
Just as Egyptian and Tunisian protesters hoped that a new regime would
bring them more freedom, so the mass protests sweeping Syria are in
part due to politics. But like in Egypt and Tunisia, Syria’s economic
woes are dictating much of what is happening on the ground and will
continue to do so for the foreseeable future.
Last month, Syrian President Bashar Assad gave a speech warning of
“weakness or collapse of the Syrian economy.” As a report last month
by Reuters explained, the immediate impact of Assad’s speech was
capital flight and the devaluation of the Syrian pound by 8 percent.
For the past decade, Assad has been trying to liberalize the Syrian
economy. He enacted some free market reforms, opened a stock exchange
and attempted to draw foreign investment to the country. While largely
unsuccessful in alleviating Syria’s massive poverty, these reforms did
enable the country a modest growth rate of around 2.5% per year.
In response to the mass protests threatening his regime, Assad has
effectively ended his experiment with the free market. He fired his
government minister in charge of the economic reforms and put all the
projects on hold. Instead, according to a report this week in Syria
Today, the government has steeply increased public sector wages and
offered 100,000 temporary workers full-time contracts. The Syrian
government also announced a 25% cut in the price of diesel fuel, at a
cost to the government of $527m. per year.
Boasting foreign currency reserves of $18b., the Syrian regime
announced it would be using these reserves to pay for the increased
governmental outlays. But as Reuters reported, the government has been
forced to spend $70m.- $80m. a week to buck up the local currency. So
between protecting the Syrian pound and paying for political loyalty,
the Assad regime is quickly drying up Syria’s treasury.
In the event the regime is overthrown, a successor regime will face
the sure prospect of economic collapse, much as the Egyptian regime
does.
And in the event that Assad remains in power, he will continue to reap
the economic whirlwind of what he has sown in the form of political
instability and violence.
What this means is that we can expect continued political turmoil in
both countries as they are consumed by debt and tens of millions of
people face the prospect of starvation. This political turmoil can be
expected to give rise to dangerous if unknowable military
developments.
Poor Arab nations such as Egypt and Syria are far from the only ones
facing economic disaster.
The $3b. loan the IMF offered Egypt may be among the last loans of
that magnitude the IMF is able to offer because quite simply, European
lenders are themselves staring into the economic abyss.
Greece’s debt crisis is not a local problem. It now appears
increasingly likely that the EU is going to have to accept Greece
defaulting on at least part of its debt. And the ramifications of
Greek default on the European and US banking systems are largely
unknowable. This is the case because as Megan McArdle at The Atlantic
wrote this week, the amount of Greek debt held by European and US
banks is difficult to assess.
WORSE STILL, the banking crisis will only intensify in the wake of a
Greek default. Debt pressure on Italy, Ireland, Spain and Portugal,
which are all also on the brink of defaulting on their debts, will
grow. Italy is Europe’s fourth largest economy. Its debt is about the
size of Germany’s.
If Italy goes into default, the implications for the European and US
banking systems – and for their economies generally – will be
devastating.
The current debt-ceiling negotiations between US President Barack
Obama and the Republican congressional leadership have made it
apparent that Obama is ideologically committed to increasing
government spending and taxes in the face of a weak economy. If Obama
is reelected next year, the dire implications of four more years of
his economic policies for the US and global economies cannot be
overstated.
Due to the economic policies implemented by Prime Minister Binyamin
Netanyahu since his first tenure as prime minister in 1996-99, in the
face of this economic disaster, Israel is likely to find itself in the
unlikely position of standing along China and India as among the only
stable, growing economies in the world. Israel’s banking sector is
largely unexposed to European debt. Israel’s gross external debt is
44% of GDP. This compares well not only to European debt levels of
well over 100% of GDP but to the US debt level, which stands at 98% of
GDP.
Assuming the government does not bend to populist pressure and take
economically hazardous steps like reducing the work week to four days,
Israel’s economy is likely to remain one of the country’s most
valuable strategic assets. Just as economic prosperity allowed Israel
to absorb the cost of the Second Lebanon War with barely a hiccup, so
continued economic growth will play a key role in protecting it from
the economically induced political upheavals likely to ensue
throughout much of the Arab world and Europe.
Aside from remaining economically responsible, as Israel approaches
the coming storms it is important for it to act with utmost caution
politically. It must adopt policies that provide it with the most
maneuver room and the greatest deterrent force.
First and foremost, this means that it is imperative that Israel not
commit itself to any agreements with any Arab regime. In 1977, the
Camp David Agreement with then-Egyptian president Anwar Sadat, in
which Israel surrendered the strategically invaluable Sinai for a
peace treaty, seemed like a reasonable gamble.
In 2011, a similar agreement with Assad or with the Palestinian
Authority, (whose budget is largely financed from international aid),
would be the height of strategic insanity.
Beyond that, with the rising double specter of Egyptian economic
collapse and the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood to power, Israel must
prepare for the prospect of war with Egypt. Recently it was reported
that IDF Chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. Benny Gantz has opted to
spread over several years Israel’s military preparations for a return
to hostilities with Egypt. Gantz’s decision reportedly is due to his
desire to avoid provoking Egypt with a rapid expansion of the IDF’s
order of battle.
Gantz’s caution is understandable. But it is unacceptable. Given the
escalating threats emanating from Egypt – not the least of which is
the expanding security vacuum in Sinai – Israel must prepare for war
now.
So, too, with the US’s weak economy, Obama’s Muslim
Brotherhood-friendly foreign policy, and Europe’s history of
responding to economic hardship with xenophobia, Israel’s need to
develop the means of militarily defending itself from a cascade of
emerging threats becomes all the more apparent.
The economic storms may pass by Israel. But the political tempests
they unleash will reach us.
To emerge safely from what is coming, Israel needs to hunker down and
prepare for the worst.
July 19, 2011
If Kahane was wrong...what is the right course?
If Meir Kahane was wrong about the course for Israel.....What is the right course? Inaction is the wrong choice.
I invite any Leftist (or anyone) to tell me what the alternative is that will keep Israel a Jewish Country and satisfy the world and the Muslim/Arabs....
Avi
I invite any Leftist (or anyone) to tell me what the alternative is that will keep Israel a Jewish Country and satisfy the world and the Muslim/Arabs....
Avi
Non Secular Leftist Jews? Any such thing?
What I don't understand and never have, is the Lefts position that they
don't believe in any biblical entitlement to Israel, yet they remain in
Israel and advocate against her...or do so from the Galut.
If you were a Secular Jew, why on Earth (if you were not a Sabra) would you care about Israel? It is not their, or their families birthplace. So why would they care? They have become part of the Erev Rav.
The left has to believe that if they become part of the world community that the world will protect them from Arabs? They really have no position other than the arabs are just as entitled to the land as Jews.
Kahane said it from the start...annex the land and evict the enemy. There was and is no other choice since....what has changed in 3500 years?
Michael Ben-Ari is Kahanist and MK....The right need to get behind him and the National Union to lead Israel ......or Feiglin..
Time appears to be running out...but then I thought that years ago!
If you were a Secular Jew, why on Earth (if you were not a Sabra) would you care about Israel? It is not their, or their families birthplace. So why would they care? They have become part of the Erev Rav.
The left has to believe that if they become part of the world community that the world will protect them from Arabs? They really have no position other than the arabs are just as entitled to the land as Jews.
Kahane said it from the start...annex the land and evict the enemy. There was and is no other choice since....what has changed in 3500 years?
Michael Ben-Ari is Kahanist and MK....The right need to get behind him and the National Union to lead Israel ......or Feiglin..
Time appears to be running out...but then I thought that years ago!
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