Tag Archives: Israel

I Ask You

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Life sometimes does strange things and brings together strange people. Some weeks ago I had a strange experience I want to tell you about.

It all started a few months ago when I got an invitation to speak at Salzburg, Austria. The request came from a person by the name of Killian Harbauer, who introduced himself as an “accredited parliamentary assistant” to Herr Franz Obermayr, a member of the European Parliament. I understood that the audience was to consist of the members of a right-wing student organization. The topic was to be my book, Pussycats, in which I tried to explain why, over the last few decades, whenever a military encounter took place, the Rest has been regularly beating the West. The book, whose German title is Weicheier (soft-boiled eggs), has been published by an Austrian firm.

I had addressed this topic in Austria before, and I was going to do so again in Germany soon. Which is why I did not take very long to say yes. On 25 May I arrived in Salzburg and was taken very decent care of. Here it might be worth adding that Salzburg itself is a beautiful city with quite some attractions to gladden a tourist’s heart. Well worth visiting.

Preparing for the meeting, I found myself in something of a fix. The audience, I believed, would consist of students. Students everywhere tend to be young and, being impecunious, dress somewhat informally. I therefore wondered whether or not I should put on a tie; in the end, I decided to follow my normal principle of dressing up. Imagine my surprise when, upon arrival, I saw—not a bunch of young students, but a whole lot of elderly men between about sixty and seventy. There must have been almost a hundred of them, all impeccably dressed in dark suits. A few younger lads were also present, but they can hardly have formed more than ten percent of the total.

The meeting was held in what the Germans call a lokal. Inside it was fairly dark, which at first made it a bit hard for me to see what was going on. Having adjusted, I saw that many of the men were wearing all kinds of chains, colored ribbons and feathers, etc. over their suits. One even wore a Napoleon-style hat! Painted on the walls or fixed to them were various emblems that had to do with the past glories of German/Austrian history. Taking up the place of honor along one wall, was a table. It was covered with a white cloth and on it were arranged three shining, sharp-looking, swords.

At this point I could no longer restrain my curiosity and asked Killian what it was all about. It turned out that this was the Burschenschaft Frankonia. Burschenschaften, perhaps best explained as associations of young, somewhat roguish, young men, started making their appearance at German universities soon after 1815. Originally their central concerns were freedom—these were the years when Metternich and the Reaction did their best to prevent the up-and-coming middle classes from upsetting the prevailing socio-political order—and German unification. Others were holding meetings at which prodigious quantities of beer were drunk, occasional fights broke out, and some chairs, windows and heads might be broken.

Most famous of all, the Burschenschaften practiced the custom of Mensur. To join a Burschenschaft one had to participate in a duel; hence the role of, and the reverence accorded to, the abovementioned swords. Going back to the second half of the eighteenth century, early on duels tended to be somewhat wild affairs in which serious wounds were sometimes inflicted and even an occasional death took place. Later the authorities intervened, threatening the Burschenschaften with closure unless they cleaned up their act. It worked, more or less.

InLife could be the missing link to your financial freedom, though you need to apprehend that 95% of network marketers fail to make any money even when you order the product from anywhere in buy levitra line the world. Even if you smoke more than viagra online one pack of cigarettes per day were at a 60% higher risk of impotence, compared to men that have the procedure, only one shall go on to conceive with a partner while the remainder of the obligations on your own. Look viagra free sample for a gentle, organic liquid probiotic that is dairy, wheat, and soy-free. The most common side effects for erectile dysfunction such as sildenafil (canadian viagra sales ) & tadalafil (viagra). With the rise of racism during the second half of the nineteenth century many if not most Burschenschaften abandoned liberalism. Instead they identified themselves with the most reactionary trends prevalent in contemporary society. They also became virulently anti-Semitic, refusing to accept Jewish students and occasionally beating them up. Jews who were already members were expelled; others set up their own separate organizations which imitated the gentile ones as best they could. One caricature showed a corps member asking another about their program. “A program?” Came the response. “We do not need a program. Only a pogrom.”

The heyday of the Burschenschaften was in the years just before World War I. During the 1920s they declined; whereas the Nazis, finding them too independent for their taste, suppressed them and replaced them with their own, the Nazis’, kind of organization. During the Cold War the Burschenschaften, while strictly prohibited in the East, made a modest revival in the West. Today there are some 160 of them, most of them scattered between Germany and Austria. They may, however, also be found in Poland, Scandinavia, and even as far away as Chile.

I asked around. The way it was explained to me, they were not racist. The objective of this particular Burschenschaft was to preserve the traditions of the organization in question, notably “freedom,” “liberalism,” “comradeship,” and mutual trust. I asked whether women could join; they could not, I was told, though they might attend meetings as guests (there were none at the one I participated in). I asked whether Muslims were welcome; an Iranian, I was told, would be, though the question as to whether the same applied to an Arab student was left without an answer. And I was told that the custom of Mensur was still practiced. Albeit, as far as I could see, so carefully that the risk was practically zero and the resulting scar, almost invisible.

I was there as a guest speaker, not as a member of Metternich’s secret police. So I gave my pre-prepared speech, and the audience liked it very much. After it was over I received a lot of applause, what with those present thumping the tables as is the German custom. The meeting included the participants singing about fifteen old students’ songs carefully selected from a corpus of some four hundred written, most of them, during the nineteenth century.

Many of the songs described the joys of student life. Others, though, bristled with expressions like deutsches Vaterland (German Fatherland), deutsche maennlichkeit (German manhood), deutsche Ehre (German honor), and deutsche Treue (German faith). At this point I, a Jew some of whose family members lost their lives during the Holocaust, was beginning to feel distinctly uncomfortable.

So I asked my guide, Killian. Here a surprise was waiting for me. He himself, he explained, was the son of a Jewish physician. Years ago the father had tried to make Aliya, i.e move to Israel, but was disgusted by the prevailing disorder in that country. Whereupon he went back to Europe, but not before taking with him a kibbutz member who was to become his wife. All this Killian explained to me in pretty good, if somewhat halting, Hebrew of which he was justifiably proud.

I ask you.

The Outlook? More of the Same

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The formula is familiar. On one hand, there is some of the world’s greatest armed forces. Raised, maintained and paid for by the state, which means that they can operate in the open without any need to conceal what they are doing. Commanded by men—yes, nowadays, a few women too—with dozens of years’ experience during which they attended every kind of military and civilian academy, course, staff college, war college, super-war college, one can think of. Armed to the teeth with the most modern available weapons including, in many cases, warships, submarines, bombers, fighter bombers, ballistic missiles, anti-ballistic missile missiles, cruise missiles, and drones of every size and kind. And including, in many cases, nuclear arsenals which, had they been put to use, are fully capable of wiping out entire countries almost within the twinkling of an eye.

On the other side, groups made up of rebels, terrorists, guerrillas, insurgents, or whatever they may be called. Without exception, they started from nothing at all. Just a few men and women getting together in some room and swearing not to cease struggling until they achieve their aim. Operating underground against the state, either their own or a foreign one, they have great difficulty in obtaining bases, weapons and equipment, training, refuge, medical care, briefly everything an armed force needs. Initially they are very poor—to the point that, starting operations in Rhodesia during the mid-1960s, some of the groups involved were unable to pay their telephone bills. One even contacted the Israeli embassy in London, asking for help! No wonder some of them, including the Jewish ones that fought the British in Palestine before 1948, resorted to robbing banks.

Yet somehow the terrorists very often manage to win. In fact, taking the post-1945 period as a whole, it would be hard to find even a single case when a modern, especially but not exclusively Western, armed force did not end up by losing the struggle. Excuses there have been galore, but this does not change the situation on the ground. Or the fact that some of the greatest and most powerful empires in the world have been humiliated, defeated, beaten.

The latest episode of this kind, so typical of the contemporary world, unfolded last week in an around the Gaza Strip. On one hand, there is the Israeli Defense Force. One of the most powerful in the world, fully at the disposal of a democratically-elected government, able to make use of conscription, tightly organized, and armed to the teeth with a variety of modern weapons, many of them so advanced that they have turned into export hits. Plus, it is a force which, unlike so many others before it—just think of the Americans in Vietnam Afghanistan, and Iraq—is not obliged to operate far from home at the end of a long and impossibly expensive logistic lifeline. A force which, thanks to the vast array of intelligence-gathering people and instruments at its disposal, knows the terrain almost as well as its enemy, operating on home territory, does.

The enemy, Hamas, was established in 1987 by just two men, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin and Abdel Aziz al Rantissi. Both are long dead, sent to the delights of paradise by the kind of precision strikes that are the specialty of the IDF and the IAF in particular. It is a multifaceted organization; including a religious core, a political arm, a military arm, and various sub-groups that engage in charity. It also has a financial wing which is responsible for obtaining funds from Palestinians as well as several Arab and pro-Arab governments around the world.

Some males could not gain or maintain erections during a session of physical intimacy. canada viagra generic http://raindogscine.com/?order=7732 uk generic viagra This is because the sudden break from the medication can cause priapism, a painful erection lasting for more than 4 to 6 hours. This is not shameful because if there sildenafil india is a problem faced by millions of men. It order generic cialis raindogscine.com is better to speak to your doctor about all those concern regarding your intimate function or speak to your partner and their issues. Right from the beginning, Hamas has emphasized its opposition to any kind of deal with Israel that would involve recognizing the latter. Its objective, openly proclaimed, is to wipe the Jewish State off the map and establish a Palestinian one in its place. In this it differed from the Palestinian Authority which seemed prepared to take a road towards compromise, culminating in the 1994 Oslo Agreements. In so far as both Israel and the Authority fear Hamas and operate against it, the agreement between them has lasted to this day, more or less.

Meanwhile, starting in 2001, Hamas activists have been launching rockets from Gaza into Israel. In 2007, following the Israeli withdrawal from the Strip, they chased out the representatives of the Palestinian Authority and set up they own government there. Since then Hamas has greatly increased its attacks on the neighboring Israeli settlements, engaging in endless rounds of fighting, most small, others quite large. Starting with potshots across the border with Israel, passing through the “attack tunnels” dug into Israeli territory, changing to incendiary-carrying “terror” balloons, kites and drones, and culminating, for the time being, with thousands of rockets capable of reaching most Israeli targets south of Haifa.

If Hamas’ history is ever written, no doubt it will bring to light an epic struggle. One during which the organization faced formidable obstacles, went through periods of intense Israeli offensives, suffered any number of setbacks as well as countless casualties, yet allowed nothing to divert it from its chosen path and always gathered strength. The kind of epic, in other words, that commands respect, perhaps even admiration.

And Israel? Like so many others who have tried their hands at this game, it has used practically every trick in the book. Doing so, like so many others it stands accused of clumsiness, heavy-handedness, and using greatly excessive force. All, be it be noted, to no avail. Like so many others who tried their hands at this game, Israel has been unable to overcome its enemy by breaking his will. But unlike so many others who tried their hands at the game, it has nowhere to retreat to.

The outlook? Since both sides have claimed victory, each in his own camp, more of the same.

Guest Article: Where Syria May Be Going

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By

Karsten Riise*

The situation around Russia in Syria is up for debate. No doubt, Russia would like to lead a reconstruction effort in Syria, in harmony with all relevant partners, including the UN, the EU, the USA, China, India, Turkey, Iran, Israel, the Sunni Arab states including the Golf Council Countries (GCC-states), Egypt and Morocco. However, many of the parties on the list of wished-for partners are strongly hostile to each other, and it might therefore perhaps not be possible for Russia to make all these ends come together, or to cut through the proverbial “Gordian Knot”. If Russia cannot create a reconstruction for all of Syria, which is what Russia wants most of all, then Russia will have to think about a “second option” for Russia’s future presence in Syria.

What might be a “second option” for Russia in Syria?

It would not make sense at any rate for Russia to leave Syria completely. After all, Russia has spent a lot of blood and treasure to achieve the stabilization now achieved, it does not want a resurgence of Sunni extremism by groups like ISIS and similar, and it has strategic interests in Syria, including an air base and a naval base.

However, as a “second option”, if the preferred cooperation for reconstruction of all of Syria should not be achievable, would be for Russia to concentrate and reduce her presence to a part of Syria. Russia can entrench itself in north-west Syria, creating its own zone of exclusive Russian military control and administration together with Syrian forces which are sympathetic to Russia as well as to Syria’s current government. Such a “Russian” zone could consist of a square of Syria consisting of Latakia, Tartus, Homs, and Ma’arat-Al-Numan.

The area mentioned above is already mainly controlled by Russia (incl. Russia-friendly units). Good. The area contains the air and naval bases pivotal for Russian military power. Good. The area will enable Russia to keep naval and air supplies possible from outside. Good. The area is strategically located to enable Russia to reenter all other parts of Syria, north, east and south. Good. The region mentioned contains a great deal of Syria’s population, including many of the Alawites, of which a large part support the existing Syrian government under President Bashar Al-Assad. Russia can thus expect to achieve social stability, without having to allocate a lot of military resources to constantly handle large-scale hostile actions inside this zone. The area holds a great part of Syria’s economic and reconstruction-potential. Good. The ports are open for imports of food, medicine, and raw materials—and being the only ports of Syria, they even control import-export of goods to the rest of Syria. Excellent. The ports will facilitate a reconstructed economy in this area. Great.

Russia might create success here, and control this part of Syria more or less indefinitely. In time, because the area is limited, and the preconditions are favorable, Russia could lead a rather successful reconstruction of this part of north-western Syria. Even tourism on the coast might be redeveloped over time, because there is an airport for travel, and stability can be maintained.

Russia can even prepare the possibility for a “second seat” for the official government for Syria, to be used, in case continuation of official governing from Damascus should become physically impossible. In other words: Russia can if need be, offer Syria’s government a place to move to and continue the statehood of the UN-recognized sovereign government, if Damascus should fall into the hands of others. For this purpose, Russia could supply a small élite unit for the official protection (and if need may be, evacuation) of Syria’s government in Damascus, but otherwise, Russia would stay out of Damascus.

In neighboring Idlib, Russia will in time (now or later, as may be) act in a yet unspecified, but flexible and highly decisive manner as need be – in accordance with the developing situation . If opportune for Russian interests, with friendly forces after a clearing of the area Russia might establish control over some of Idlib, but not necessarily. Russia would stay then out of all the Syrian border-zone to Turkey and also stay out of Kurdish areas. In northern and eastern Syria Arabs, Kurds, and Turkey might then “negotiate” their own balance (maybe fighting bitterly).

If ISIS should rise anywhere in Syria again, Russia would offer the supply of air power to any party fighting ISIS—be as it may, Kurds, west-supported rebels, Iran, whomever – but nothing more than air power.

Bottom line would be, that the whole area south of Homs (including Damascus) all the way down to Golan, with such a Russian strategy, would be “free-for-all”. Between Golan and up to the south of Homs, Iran and Israel might then fight each other if they want to—as much as they please—and for as long as they please—without Russia interfering.

What might the consequences of such a Russian strategy be for different parties?

Russia probably can live with all this—not happily, but well enough, at least as long as ISIS does not reemerge.

Syria may be reconstructed in the north-west in the area under Russian influence, the Kurds will probably survive in a clamped position—but the rest of Syria, including the large population areas south of Damascus, may continue in some kind of chaos.

Turkey might also live with all this. The US might be okay or not too happy, but will not reenter Syria in forceful numbers when they are mostly gone—that is relatively certain (though nothing is of course ever certain in politics). The EU would definitely be very unhappy with such a situation because, with continuing hostilities in Syria, millions of Syrian refugees in Europe could not be sent back to Syria. But the EU would not be asked—the EU would just have to send more élite soldiers, if ISIS should reemerge. Lebanon would also not be asked.

Iran might be somewhat divided. Circles around the President and Foreign Minister of Iran might not be too pleased with such a situation. But it is imaginable, other important circles in Iran may even welcome and know to militarily fully exploit such an arrangement.

But Israel?
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Potentially, such a situation can become absolutely devastating to Israel.

Iran and Hamas can use the area from Damascus and south to Golan for sending missiles into Israel from a big number of mobile and hard-to-hit positions. Iran can continue doing this again-and-again for years—indefinitely. Israel can hardly stop that, unless it controls and holds all of Syria all the way up to and including the great city of Damascus. However, if Israel invades to “clear-up” or even hold the area, Iran and Hamas have a fantastic strategic option simply to withdraw their forces further north, stretching the Israeli forces thin. This is what Hamas did several times in Lebanon.

So what would Hamas and Iran than have to do, to win?

The first thing needed for Hamas and Iran to win against Israel in southern Syria would be to not “hold ground”. When their enemy, the Israelis, advances, they fall back; when their enemy retreats, they advance. Their geography works to their advantage in that they will have plenty of strategic depth to fall back on.

The second thing needed for them to win is to protract the war indefinitely. “Losing” every battle, but winning the war. Both Mao and later Vietnamese general Võ Nguyên Giáp (two of the greatest military strategists and battle-leaders in history) very clearly stated this, and they both proved that it leads to victory.

The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) would then have to fall back to positions closer down to Golan sooner or later—and Iranian forces and Hamas will then simply follow after the IDF down southwards, continuing to harass and attack the IDF and send more missiles into Israel. Hamas knows how to fight the IDF. Hamas are the only fighters who have ever defeated the IDF, and they have done so rather thoroughly with fewer means then they have now, backed by Iran. Very probably, Hamas and Iran will be able long-term to manage the situation and over years bleed-out the IDF here.

Hamas and Iranian soldiers with similar skills like Hamas. No air force needed for Hamas and the Iranian units, they’ll take the pounding from above, but will not be defeated on the ground. They need short and mid-range missiles to fight Israel, and they have plenty of those. Would that be possible? Yes. Though nothing is sure in war, it could very likely be possible.

Hamas has no air force but was successful in Lebanon. Hamas once even stalled an Israeli attack with top-modern Merkava tanks already at a short distance into Lebanon. Taliban also has no air force, but still is again (after fighting the Soviets, and now the US for another 16 years) successful. North Vietnam had little air defense against the USA—and Viet Cong had none. The Vietnamese won not only against the US but also without air force against France before that. The Algerians kicked France out—they also had no air force. So yes, even without air power, such a strategy, as I describe here, could actually be winning for Hamas and Iran against Israel in southern Syria.

What could Israel do to counter this?

Israel could then try 2–3 things, which they tried in southern Lebanon, but which eventually never gave Israel any peace or victory which they can live on.

Firstly, Israel could try to recruit, organize and supply friendly Syrians (a “free” Syrian force) to make them put up a buffer zone, a statelet or “free Syrian territory” by whatever name, they can come up with. From this area, the Israelis could use “free Syrians” as their own proxy-forces against Hamas and Iran. This strategy (even after criminal atrocities in Shabra and Shatila) eventually didn’t work for Israel in southern Lebanon—and it won’t work for Israel in a southern Syria either.

Secondly, Israel could, for instance, try to bomb Damascus flat, in order to put pressure on the opposing forces. This, Israel did in Beirut, bombing large residential areas flat. It worked to some limited degree in Lebanon because Lebanon has a number of different factions who were impacted. But a similar strategy won’t work by bombing Damascus, because neither Hamas nor Iranian forces have families resident there—on the contrary, an Israeli large-scale bombing of residential areas in Damascus will only increase great hostility against Israel, creating even more enemies fighting against them.

Thirdly, Israel could assist Sunni circles to recreate ISIS-like fighting groups inside Syria, to weaken the Shia Iranians inside their strategic hinterland inside Syria. However, facilitating a reemerging ISIS in Syria would create a terrorism problem in the EU, Turkey, Russia in other places—and if discovered, would severely degrade international diplomatic support for Israel.

Looking at all the options, it remains hard to see, how Israel can ever win or even manage such a scenario. Not only will the military situation be difficult for Israel—the diplomatic situation would become very difficult for Israel too, especially in relations to the EU. Because the EU wants peace and stability, and wants to return millions of Syrians back to Syria—and the ongoing war in southern Syria would make that impossible.

 

* Karsten Riise is Master of Science (Econ) from Copenhagen Business School and has university degree in Spanish Culture and Languages from University of Copenhagen. Former senior Vice President Chief Financial Officer (CFO) of Mercedes-Benz in Denmark and Sweden with a responsibility of US Dollars 1 billion. At time of appointment, the youngest and the first non-German in that top-position within Mercedes-Benz’ worldwide sales organization. This article has been previously posted on RIAC.

I Hear Them Both Laugh

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On and off for over a year now, our home on the outskirts of Jerusalem has been subject to extensive reconstruction. The kind that always leaves behind a little something that has not yet been completed and needs to be done.

The contractor, a blue-eyed, pure-bred Israeli, seems to have been involved in some pretty interesting stuff during his military service. One guy, a blond giant, came from the former Rhodesia. Another, a Greek, is here because he fell in love with an Israeli girl and wants to be converted so he can gain citizenship. An IT engineer by profession, he is doing this job until his papers come through. His name is Adonis. However, since “Adoni” in Hebrew means “Sir,” everyone calls him that.

The fourth member of the crew is a Palestinian Arab, let’s call him Ahmed. How often did all of us not share a simple lunch made up of Pita bread, humus, fried chips, an “Arab” vegetable salad, and a Coke! Here it is about Ahmed I want to write.

Ahmed is a big, white-bearded, very dignified, man perhaps fifty years of age. He always wears a white galabia and regularly says his prayers. By and by we learnt that he has five daughters, all of them married, and two young sons. He himself, he says, liked studying and used to be a good student; however his father pulled him out of school so he could help put bread on the family table. That is how he became a laborer, a fact he rather regrets. Unfortunately his teenage sons are more interested in living it up than in studying. They dress in fashionable shirts and jeans and go about with elaborate hairdos. However, he is confronting them and hopes that they will end up by attending a university, find good jobs, and won’t have to work as hard as he does.

The other day I happened to overhear a conversation he had with Dvora, my wife. Perhaps I should add that Dvora is the type who can make even a stone talk. A great gift, that.

Ahmed: I really do not understand why those people in Gaza are launching their rockets at Israel.

Dvora: I think it is because they have difficulty controlling their own population. They want to draw attention away from their own failures.
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Ahmed: I agree with you there. I think Netanyahu is a good prime minister and a good man. Look at how much Qatari money he got for Gaza! Yet they still go on shooting. It is all because of those bloody Iranians. They keep stirring the pot.

Dvora: I agree that Netanyahu is bright and even that he is a good prime minister. But not that he is a good man. His real problem is that he does not want a Palestinian State.

Ahmed: Me neither! Why? Because our leaders, unlike yours, steal whatever they can lay their hands on in order to feed their clans. And not just here in Palestine. That is how it works throughout the Arab world. That is why they always stay poor and exploited. Working for you, I feel respected. Back at home I have to pay baksheesh [a bribe]. Or else nothing happens. With you Jews things are different. Look at Netanyahu who has been buying himself cigars at the state’s expense and is now being put on trial. We Arabs do not have such laws.

Dvora: Before I was able to start rebuilding this house in which you have been working I had to obtain a zillion permits. One from the Department of Antiquities which had to confirm that the job would not disturb any archaeological remains. Next, the Israel Land Administration had to give its blessing. And the Firefighting Authority. And any number of other organizations. And our neighbors. And the engineer and the architect and safety expert I was obliged to hire. About the only people whose consent I did not need were the rabbis! All this, simply to add an elevator that would enable me, an elderly woman who has some difficulty walking, to reach each of our three floors (the cellar included) as well as the street. Never mind that the company that built and installed the elevator already has all the necessary permits to go on with the job. Regulations must be obeyed. Just getting everyone to sign took me eighteen months. To say nothing of the sum I had to pay, which might well be larger than your bribe. This is just the way a modern state operates. Everyone controls and supervises everyone else. Cover your ass, is what we call it.

Ahmed: Really? You don’t say! With us, as soon as you have paid your baksheesh you can start building. No one cares.

I hear them both laugh.

Just as in 1948

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Some years ago I spent some days at Churchill College, Cambridge. One morning, having a few hours to spare, I went to the great man’s archive which is housed there. Among other things, I was shown a small part of a collection of letters which he, as Secretary of the Colonies, received in connection of his visit to Palestine in the winter of 1921. Some of the letters were written by local Jews, others by Arabs.  One that has stuck in my memory, written in good English by an Arab resident, argued that there would never be peace in the Holy Land until and unless the Balfour Declaration—with its promise of establishing a Jewish National Home in the country—were cancelled.

A century has passed. Some of the smallest and weakest trees in the forest have been reaching for the sky, some of the largest and mightiest have been cut down or else fell of their own accord. Amidst all this turmoil, attempts to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict there have been by the hundred. Nevertheless it persists and has lost none of its underlying hatred and bitterness. Just as the letter predicted.  With President Trump promising to publish his “peace plan” in the near future, today it pleases me to reflect on some of the outcomes to which it may still lead.

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* Separation. This is the solution much of the world, as well as I personally, would prefer. The idea of solving the conflict by establishing two states, one Jewish, the other Palestinian, has been in the air at least since the British came up with it, as the map shows, back in 1920-21. In 1947 the idea of applying it to the territory west of the Jordan was adopted by the United Nations which voted in its favor, thereby enabling the State of Israel to be established. In 1994, twenty-seven years after the 1967 Six Days’ War in which Israel occupied the Palestinian-inhabited part of the country, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Palestinian Liberation Organization Yasser Arafat signed the Oslo Agreements which seemed to represent a small step in that direction. Since then, however, no further progress has been made. The main obstacles are, first, the fate of the Jewish settlements in West Jordan, as it is sometimes known. Second, control over East Jerusalem, which each side claims for itself. And third, the Palestinian Right of Return. It is as a Palestinian diplomat once told me to my face. We have our rights; why should we give them up?

* A single State with a Palestinian majority. This is the Zionist-Israeli nightmare. The very purpose of setting up the State of Israel was to make sure that Jews would never again have to live in a country where they are a minority and, as such, exposed to discrimination and persecution of every kind. Yet already today, counting Israel’s own Arab citizens, about as many Palestinians as Jews live in the land west of the Jordan. In every way that matters, all of them come under the same government, i.e. that of Israel in Jerusalem. Had it not been for Israel, Abu Mazen’s Palestinian Authority, such as it is, would have been toppled by its own people in a very short time. In this sense the single Palestinian State, reaching from the Mediterranean in the west to the Jordan River in the ease, already exists or will do so quite soon. As in the former unlamented South Africa, all that is needed is a change of government. And of the flag, of course.

* A single Jewish State. In view of the demographics, which are working against it, clearly such a state could only come about as a result of war. And clearly the most likely cause of such a war would be a double one. A desperate Israeli attempt to avert a single Palestinian State on one hand; and an opportunity provided by the collapse of the Hashemite regime in Jordan on the other. A collapse followed by the kind of chaos that will enable organizations similar to Hamas, Hezbollah and ISIS to use it as a base for terrorism against Israel, dragging the latter into an unwinnable war like the American one in Afghanistan and spreading west across the Jordan River. Here the fact that a great many—no one knows, just how many—citizens of Jordan are themselves Palestinian or of Palestinian origin could play a critical role.

Both many Israeli Arabs and many right-wing Israelis see the problem the way the French saw that of Alsace Lorraine in 1871-1914. To quote Prime Minister Léon Gambetta (1881-82): Never speak of it, always keep it in mind. And just as the conflict over Alsace-Lorraine played a large role in turning what started as a relatively minor conflict in the Balkans into World War I, so the collapse of the Jordanian State, the outbreak of terrorism from across the Jordan, and an Israeli attempt to throw at least a considerable number of the Palestinians currently under its rule across the river is almost certain to lead to a much larger war in the Middle East.

Just as in 1948, let me add.

From Superiority to Stalemate

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R. D. Marcus, Israel’s Long War with Hezbollah, Washington DC, Georgetown University Press, 2018.

As former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak said in 2006, when Israel first invaded Lebanon twenty-four years earlier, Hezbollah did not yet exist  (though some of its parent organizations, which later merged, did). On the ground, what resistance the Israelis encountered was mounted primarily by Yasser Arafat’s PLO (Palestinian Liberation Organization) guerrillas. Many of them fought bravely enough. It was hardly their fault that they were unable to stem the advance of six Israeli divisions with as many as eight hundred tanks between them. To say nothing about the Israeli Air Force which, having dealt a crushing blow to its Syrian opponents, enjoyed  as complete a dominance of the air as any belligerent at any time and place could ask for. Come August of that year and some 11,000 of Arafat’s men were evacuated to other countries. A bit like the Romans, following their defeat at the hand of the Samnites in 321 BCE, being forced to pass under the yoke. What a triumph for Israel—or so almost all Israelis and not a few foreigners thought.

Contrary to Israel’s expectations, though, this occasion did not mark the beginning of the end. It did not even mark the end of the beginning. Instead, guerrilla operations continued both in- and around Beirut and along the narrow, winding roads that led from Israel’s northern border towards the city. From time to time there were also rocket attacks on Israel itself, claiming some casualties, disrupting day-to-day life, and leaving the Israelis furious but basically impotent.  Increasingly as time went on, the guerrillas who carried out the attacks tended to belong to a Shiite organization known as Hezbollah, meaning God’s [Allah’s] Party. So puny was it that, at first, the Israelis hardly registered its existence. They called its men, Hezbulloth; a term that meant, roughly, the same thing the Kaiser had in mind when, very early in World War I, he spoke of the “contemptible little [British] Army and called on his commanders to crush it underfoot.

What happened next is well known. The contemptible little army took time and hundreds of thousands of casualties ere it was finally able to find its feet against the formidable Kaiserheer. By the time it did, though, its forces on the Western Front alone had expanded from six divisions to about sixty. On the way it spawned the world’s first independent air force, which was separated from the army in the spring of 1918. It had also perfected its methods of combined arms warfare to the point where they were second to one. Always extremely well-armed and supplied, it was commanded by generals who, though perhaps not always brilliant and enterprising, were tough and absolutely determined to carry out their mission to the end. It was the only force belonging to a major belligerent that went through the entire war without either being routed or rising in mutiny, as happened to all others at one point or another.

Back to Hezbollah.  It has Earlier, because of a scarcity of availability of efficient impotence remedy, most men had no possibility however to stay with this condition get free viagra greyandgrey.com for years. Optimistic roles of greyandgrey.com levitra sale Soft Tabs 60mg Men being hit by the disease such as impotence, then you have to take a keen interest to reveal every opportunity that can ensure the best protection and prevention of the costly levitra. Chiropractic maintain throat Discomfort Chiropractor throat agony therapy is focuses on minimizing the actual throat pain or even prevent the swelling from applying pressure generic sildenafil 100mg on the nerve. Men, who buy penis pumps in UK, would testify for the fact that pumps are not only enhancement devices, but also help them improve their ability to control their ejaculation. viagra levitra not, of course, won World War I or anything like it. Starting from very modest beginnings, though, it has succeeded in pulling itself up to the point where it currently maintains a balance of terror with the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), widely acknowledged as one of the most modern and most powerful on earth. The present book is essentially a history of Israel’s attempts to prevent this from happening. Starting in the mid-eighties when it was a question of fighting lightly armed guerrillas with little organization, training, and experience. Passing through the nineties when the IDF in Lebanon built a string of heavily fortified strongholds to guard against further attacks and used heavily armored vehicles to patrol among them. Passing through the years 2000-2006 when, having retreated across the border, it largely limited itself to retaliation for Hezbollah’s occasional cross-border attack. Passing through the 2006 Second Lebanon War when, as well as invading southern Lebanon, it mounted a full scale air attack on its enemy, demolishing the latter’s long-range missiles but utterly failing to do the same to the short-range Katyusha rockets. All this, while trying now in one way, now in another, to adopt the so-called RMA (Revolution in Military Affairs) of those years and adapt it for its own purposes.

From 2006 on a tense stalemate has prevailed, leaving the two sides free to glare at each other across the border. Whoever is interested in the way the IDF, with all its fighter-bombers, drones, missile defenses, tanks, artillery, computers, etc. etc. got to this point can find many of the details in Marcus’ book. Ditto for anyone who cares about the career of the man at the center of it all, Brigadier General (ret.) Shimon Naveh. Reflecting the IDF’s inability to come to grips with the problem, for about ten years Naveh was in charge of the efforts to provide it with a coherent doctrine for doing so. Only to come out with one so convoluted and so arcane that no one could understand it. In the end, his efforts were terminated by the State Comptroller.

Judging by the book Marcus, whom I have never met, is a fine scholar. There doesn’t seem to be an Israeli senior officer whose wisdom he has not sought. His work will no doubt appeal to military analysts interested in understanding the conflict in question and, perhaps, fitting it into the way other armed forces around the world are going. What the reader will not find is more than a handful of pages on how Hezbollah’s “innovation and adaptation” to the IDF’s infinitely greater firepower enabled it to survive and expand from practically nothing into an organization fully capable of holding Israel at bay. A pity, that, for to my mind at any rate it is the most important and most interesting question by far.

My Bowels! My Bowels! I Cannot Hold My Peace

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(Jeremiah 4.19)

My parents brought me to this country when I was just four years old. That was back in 1950; I can still remember the taxi that took us from the airport to our new home, the laid table, and the first Hebrew word (mayim, water) I learnt. Sabbaticals etc. apart, since then Israel is where I have spent my entire life. Not because I had no choice. I also have a Dutch passport and was sufficiently well-known, professionally, to find work in many places around the world. But because I wanted to. Some time ago I asked my father, a Holocaust survivor who since then has passed way at the age of 99, why he had taken his young family from Europe to the Middle East. “So as not to feel Jewish,” he shot back at me.

Looking back, I cannot remember even one day when Israel was not “under threat.” The Arab threat (this was long before anyone had heard of Palestinians). The Egyptian threat (in the early 1950s it was called “the second round;” we children even used to play a board game by that name). The Syrian threat. The Jordanian threat. The Palestinian threat. The Soviet threat. The Iraqi threat. The PLO threat. The Hezbollah threat. The Hamas Threat. The Iranian threat. The political threat. The economic threat. The military threat. The guerilla threat. The terrorist threat. More than enough threats to make anyone’s head spin! Some of the threats were very serious, some less so, a few almost entirely imaginary.

Again looking back I think that, on the whole, Israel has coped admirably. The obstacles notwithstanding, this sliver of a country has seen its population going up more than a tenfold. Its economy is flourishing—just look at what happened to the shekel, once nicknamed the drekel (little piece of dirt), over the last ten years or so. Year by year, the number of foreign visitors is breaking all records. The country which during its first decades was desperately begging for capital is now exporting it to many places around the world. Israeli science and technology are among the most advanced anywhere. Israel is the only country that has more trees than it did a hundred years ago. Relative to the size of the population, more new books are published in Israel each year than anywhere else. And the Israeli military is among the most powerful of all. For which thank God, or else the country would undoubtedly look like Syria does.
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In many ways, a good place to live and raise one’s children as I have done and as I hope my children will do. Above all, a rambunctious place where everyone has long been free to come out with what he (or, for God’s sake, she) thinks—five Jews, ten opinions, as the saying goes. If Israeli Arabs choose to join the cacophony, then in this author’s opinion at any rate so much the better. But things are changing. A year ago—how fast time seems to flow—I wrote of Dareen Tatour. She is the Israeli Arab woman who was jailed for writing a poem in which she called on the Palestinians to resist the Israeli occupation (see my post, “The Fourth Reich is Rising,” 19.10.2017). Today there is talk of trying people for believing and saying that the only way to save Israel from itself is by applying pressure from outside; pressure to find some way to end the occupation, of course. Too, the relevant cabinet committee has approved a bill that will deny government funding from any “cultural product” that “undermines” Israel’s identify as a “Jewish and democratic state” and “desecrates” the state’s symbols.

Both bills smell to high heaven. So far neither has become law. Should either or both of them pass, however, they may very well prove to be a first step on a slippery slope that leads—well, we all know where. So let me say, for the benefit of anyone who may or may not be listening: I have never accepted, not will ever accept, a single penny for running this blog. Nor do I know whether my posts and other works count as “cultural products.” Presumably not, because the line I have followed is strictly politically incorrect; but that is the last of my worries.

Following in the tradition of Jeremiah the prophet, though, I shall not give up my freedom to think and say and write and post whatever I want. Not for the Knesset, should it enact the laws in question. Not for the courts, should they try to enforce them. Not even for the bunch of right-wing Jewish Mafiosi in- and out of the Knesset who keep barking at anyone who differs with them.

My bowels! My bowels! I cannot hold my peace.

At Any Cost

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Tom Segev, David Ben Gurion: A State at Any Cost (2018)

He was short of stature—a well-developed upper body supported by legs so spindly and short that they barely touched he floor, as we Israelis say. His voice was squeaky and he had no sense of humor whatsoever. Possessed of a short temper, on occasion he liked to play the role of a tinpot dictator. As a leader, one of his most annoying habits was firing subordinates without telling them, leaving them in limbo. Or else pretending not to know who his visitor was. Not so different from President Trump, I am told.

Meet Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben Gurion. judging by the number of streets, buildings, institutes etc., named after him in Israel itself he has been overtaken by Menahem Begin (whose very name, when they were both Knesset members, he refused to pronounce). Outside Israel, though, he is widely remembered as the man who founded the Jewish state and led it during the first fifteen years of its existence. He did what no other Jewish leader had succeeded in doing since the Roman commander Pompey occupied the country in 63 BCE: namely, restore its status an independent political entity free from foreign domination. It is also Ben Gurion, and not Begin, who has several places named after him in countries other than Israel.

His most recent biographer, Tom Segev, is a well-known Israeli journalist and author with several other books to his credit. This one is exceptionally well researched and so well written that, more than once, I found myself unable to stop turning the pages. Ben Gurion, original name Green, himself was born in 1886 to a lower middle class family in Plonsk, north of Warsaw. Much later it was claimed that, to become a top level Zionist-Israeli leader, one had to be born within 500 km. of that township. As he told the story, around 1900 the news reached his ears that the Messiah had come. He lived in Vienna, had a black beard, and, was called Herzl.

In 1906 he arrived in Eretz Israel. Right from the first moment its sky, climate, and vegetation struck him favorably, or that at any rate was what he wrote in his letters home. Yet to his future wife Paula, whom he met and married in the U.S in 1917, he described it as an Eretz Tzia, a Biblical phase meaning, roughly, “desolate country.” He was not the only one. Returning from a visit in 1898, Kaiser Wilhelm II in his diary wrote of it as “a terrible country, without shade and without shade.”

He spent somewhat over a year as an agricultural laborer, first in Petah Tikvah north of Tel Aviv and then at Sejera on what is now the border with Lebanon. Throughout his life he claimed to hold nothing dearer than agriculture; that was still true when, in 1953-54, he briefly gave up his post as prime minister and went to live in a kibbutz in the Negev. Yet already before 1914 he entered politics, helping found a party known as “The Zionist Worker.” Initially there were only some 150 members, but it was out of this group that the Labor Party, which dominated Jewish/Israeli politic from 1929 to 1977, eventually grew.

World War I caught him in Constantinople where he had gone to study law. Unable to return home he spent most it in London and the U.S. Living in New York he and a friend—Yitzhak Ben Tzi, who later became Israel’s first president—spent some of their time writing a book about Eretz Israel. It was meant to show that, contrary to the views of many, the country was sufficiently large and fertile to serve as the Jewish homeland. Also that the Arabs—no one yet spoke of Palestinians—living in it were, in reality, the descendants of the ancient Jews and could therefore be converted back to Judaism. Whether this claim was seriously meant is hard to say.

In the meantime, it was above all a question of rising to the top of the fermenting Zionist heap with its dozens of different groupings. Following an election campaign in which he showed his genius for mastering detail—he always made a point of writing everything down—by 1931 that objective had been largely achieved. In 1939 he also took the place of Chaim Weizmann as head of the Zionist Organization. From then on, if the Jewish people—not just that part of it which was coming together in Eretz Israel—had a single leader it was him.
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In this short review of a rather bulky volume—the Hebrew version, which is the one I read, takes up 800 pages—cannot go into every detail of “B.G’s”, as many Israelis called him, life. Suffice it to say that he emerged as a much more radical figure than I had thought. Already in the early 1920, Ben Gurion was determined that there would be a Jewish State, be the cost what it might. Already then he foresaw that the struggle against “the Arabs”—as yet, no one had heard of Palestinians—would be prolonged, tough, and bloody. Already at that time there was talk of the need to “evacuate” as many of them as possible to the neighboring countries. Meaning, since the Promised Land was considered to include not just the West Bank but territories east of the river Jordan, as far away as Iraq. He knew about the Holocaust at an early date and from that time on always felt terribly guilty for not having done more to save Jews, many members of his own family included. Not that there was much he could have done, one must admit

During the late 1940s he did more to instigate and support anti-British terrorism than most people at the time knew or suspected. He was something of a racist, believing that only Ashkenazi and not Sefardi Jews could build a state and often favoring “Western” immigrants at the expense of “Oriental” ones. He did not really want the 1956 Sinai War, but was pushed into it by his disciple, Chief of Staff General Moshe Dayan. He always kept in mind the possibility of one day occupying East Jerusalem and the West Bank; something which, his military advisers told him, would take no more than a couple of days. Whenever there was a political crisis, he had a tendency to fall ill.

During his last years in power he became erratic, quarrelling with his closest associates until, come June 1963, they finally united against him and got rid of him. This only made him more erratic still. Just before the 1967 War, so bleak was his outlook that he almost drove the Chief of Staff, Yitzhak Rabin, who had come to visit him, into despair. Once the war had ended in victory he became half-mad with euphoria, suggesting that the walls of the Old City of Jerusalem be demolished.

His private life was so-so. His three children did not interest him much. Originally, as far as anyone can judge, his marriage was based on love. However, judging by letters written by one of his fairly numerous occasional lovers, he was always too much in a hurry. He never quite learnt how to satisfy a woman or how to get real satisfaction himself. At one point Paula complained that he was always thinking only about himself and that she wanted a divorce. In the end divorce him she did not. Once he retired, though, she treated him as a watchdog treats its charge, guarding him closely and defending him against as many visitors as she could. She always called him Ben Gurion, never by his given name.

Personally the single paragraph I found most interesting was one dealing with an article about the future he wrote for Look Magazine in 1961. The Cold War would come to an end. Russia would become social-democratic. Europe would be united. Armed forces would be dissolved and replaced by a sort of global police force. There would be an international court based in Jerusalem. Science, particularly brain science, would make tremendous strides. Energy would be nuclear-based and so plentiful as to make interplanetary voyages possible. There would be a sort of injection enabling blacks to become white and whites, to become black (why anyone would want to do the latter is not clear); that way, the racial problem in the USA would finally be solved. Average life expectancy would rise to almost 100 years. Quirky, I would say. But, having spent the last two years looking at the methods people have designed to look into the future, not at all bad.

He died, very soon after the 1973 Yom Kippur War. Beset by fears as to the future of the state he had done so much to build, a lonely, disappointed and bitter figure. Even in death he pursued his quarrel with other Zionist and Israeli leaders. He refused to be buried on Mount Herzl, the place where most Israeli “greats” are. Instead he nominated Sdeh Boker, the isolated Negev Kibbutz which, during his last years, he made his home.

A formidable visionary, politician and leader he was, one who rose from nothing to become a figure whom millions all over the world knew and admired. As my late grandmother, Francine Wijler, did. She once saw him in hotel lobby. Later she said that, had she known how approachable he was, she would have gone up to him and introduced herself.

Luckily for her, given how rude he could be, she did not.

Ouch, Jerusalem

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On 13 May 2018 Israel will be celebrating Jerusalem Day. The idea was raised for the first time in June 1967, just a few days after Israeli troops had occupied the eastern half of the city as part of the so-called Six Days’ War of that month. Various rabbis were consulted, pros and cons weighed. Pressing hard in favor of the idea was the religious Right. Up to the outbreak of the war MAFDAL, as the party was known, had been a bourgeois, middle of the road, fairly moderate party. Apart from emphasizing the need for kashrut and opposing summer time (so that practicing people could pray in the morning), it made few waves. Now it was transformed; in particular, its younger members felt themselves filled by a divine command to stick to every inch of occupied territory and settling it as soon as possible with as many Jews as possible.

The details do not really matter. Suffice it to say that the police, the mayor of Jerusalem, and the Government of Israel all opposed the idea of celebrating “united Jerusalem, the City that has been joined together, Israel’s eternal capital,” as the phraseology went and still goes. Partly they did so because they feared unrest among the Palestinians. And partly because they worried about the negative international reaction that might follow. A court battle had to be fought before the authorities allowed the first ceremonies, prayers, marches, dances, etc. to be organized. Even so they were private, not official. This private character they retained until 1998 when the Knesset finally adopted the Day.

I myself lived in Jerusalem for twenty-one years (1964-85). Having decided to leave, I chose, as my new place of residence, Mevasseret (Herald, in Hebrew), Zion, a bedroom community just five miles or so to the west. I did, however continue to work in Jerusalem where the Hebrew University is located. I can therefore fairly say that Jerusalem has helped shape my life. Preparing for Jerusalem Day, and with a mind to those of my readers who, not being Israelis, may be misled by the Niagara of hype by which the city is surrounded, I want to point out a few elementary facts.

First, Jerusalem is the poorest of Israel’s major cities. Located in the hills, about 2,000 feet above sea level, during most of its history it was pretty isolated. So much so that, when Mark Twain visited in 1869, a road capable of carrying wheeled traffic to and from it did not yet exist. Even during my own early years as a student (1964-67) they used to say that the best thing about Jerusalem was the road to Tel Aviv. All this was part cause, part consequence, of the fact that the city never became a major commercial center. Another reason why it is poor is because over two thirds of the population are either Palestinians or Jewish-orthodox. The former are less educated and discriminated against in numerous ways. As a result, their standard of living tends to be very low. Among the latter, a great many prefer praying and begging to doing any kind of work. Between them they drive out the secular Jews. Precisely the highly educated, relatively tolerant, and productive part of the population any modern city needs most if it is to prosper.

Second, the quality of life is low. Housing prices are sky-high, but municipal taxes rates per square foot of building are the highest in the country. Many streets are dirty (the more so because, to protest against every kind of insult, real or imagined, some Jewish orthodox men have made it their specialty to overturn garbage bins and empty their contents into them) and in a poor shape. Traffic is a nightmare; getting from where I live to town, or the other way around, can easily take an hour. For twenty years now a modern railway to link Jerusalem with Tel Aviv, just forty or so miles away has been under construction; however, the day on which it will be completed keeps being postponed. A single-line modern tram system exists, but it does not work on the Shabbat and on (Jewish) religious feast days. Terrorism in the form of bombings, deliberately engineered road accidents, and stabbings is not rare; but for the heavy presence, of police and guards, not only in the streets but at every entrance to every public building, surely there would be more of it.

There is SRT (Sex Reassignment Therapy) which is also called gender viagra sales in india devensec.com reassignment. Impotency can be levitra properien cured if help is sought. If a woman is not sexually active, menopause cause thinning of hair follicles that may ultimately lead to total baldness devensec.com cialis side effects in men. Also, they were associated with other intimate problems such as low sexual drive, poor erection, early http://www.devensec.com/sustain/eidis-updates/IndustrialSymbiosisupdateApril_June2011.pdf viagra online from india ejaculation, low sexual drive or stress. Third, to live in Jerusalem means to be an expert on comparative fanaticism (as the Israeli writer Amos Oz once put it). The three major religions apart, there are dozens upon dozens of sub-religions and sects. Each day at noon, standing on Mount Scopus and listening to the various bells being rung is quite an experience. Again though, don’t be misled. Many members of many religions and sects hate each other’s guts. Nowhere is this fact more in evidence than at the Holy Sepulcher; there, every inch is divided between the four major Christian denominations (Greek-Orthodox, Catholic, Armenians and Copts) and jealously guarded, sometimes with edged weapon in hand. Countless people are utterly convinced that his (or, let’s not forget, her) God is the only true one and that the rest are, in reality, little better than devils. Each feels that he personally is one of God’s soldiers specially appointed to carry out His will. All this makes Jerusalem a rather unpleasant place to live in. For example, occupants of vehicles who enter some Jewish orthodox neighborhoods, even by mistake, risk being bombarded with rocks.

Fourth, contrary to Israeli propaganda the city has never been united. During the half century since 1967 the population has trebled, more or less, increasing from about 300,000 to almost a million. Many new neighborhoods have been built, and the Old City has been surrounded by new ones populated exclusively by Jews. In addition, quite some Arab villages which were never part of Jerusalem have been annexed to it without anyone consulting the population. They pay taxes but hardly get any municipal services at all. Wherever one goes, it is the Palestinians who occupy the lowest positions. As in construction, schlepping products in the marketplace, cleaning buildings, and so on. To be sure, the residents of East Jerusalem have the right to vote in the municipal elections. However, it is one which very few of them, worried that participation would be interpreted as consent and might be dangerous to boot, have ever exercised. Briefly, social interaction among equals is minimal.

No wonder that the percentage of residents who are happy with their city is among the lowest in the country. And no wonder proportionally more of them leave. I do not want to be misunderstood: parts of Jerusalem are very beautiful indeed. The view of the City from Mount Scopus is breathtaking. The streets bustle with people, both residents and tourists, representing every culture on earth. The number of holy places, packed closely together and surrounded by fascinating Biblical and historical legends, is overwhelming. So much so, in fact, that some tourists are seized by “Jerusalem Syndrome.” It is defined as “a group of mental phenomena involving the presence of either religiously-themed obsessive ideas, delusions or other psychosis-like experiences that are triggered by a visit to the city of Jerusalem.” Many modern facilities—with the Israel Museum at its head—neighborhoods and buildings are also of interest.

On the whole, however, so bad are the problems, ethnic, religious, legal, economic, social, and technical, that I sometimes think it would be best for Jerusalem if all the holy places were demolished, blown up, wiped off the face of the earth. Unfortunately that won’t work either. The one thing one achieves by destroying a holy place is to make it holier still.

As for me, I stay away as much as I can.

In the Turbulent Middle East, Anything is Possible

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As Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been saying for over a decade now, Israel considers its most important enemy to be Iran. That is good news: it means that enemies who are less than a thousand or so kilometers away no longer exist. The impressive Arab coalition which used to face Israel during its early years has long since collapsed. With some of its members, i.e. Egypt and Jordan, Israel is now officially at peace. Other enemies have been demolished either by external defeat, as happened in Iraq, or by civil war, as in Syria. Occasionally they have suffered both. Various terrorist organizations apart, this leaves Iran as the one enemy Israel has any real reason to fear.

Saudi Arabia is also worried about Iran. In part, this is because of the age-old and often bloody rivalry between the Sunni and Shi’ite sects of Islam of which Riad and Tehran are the chief representatives, respectively. In part, it is because of Iranian support for the Houthi rebellion in Yemen which threatens to put the Saudis between Scylla in the north and Charybdis in the south. And in part it is because of Teheran’s nuclear ambitions which, should they bear fruit, threaten to spark off a nuclear arms race and destabilize the entire region.

My enemy’s enemy is my friend. No wonder Israel and Saudi Arabia have got closer together than at any time since the former was established seventy years ago. Top Israeli officials have repeatedly hinted at the existence of intelligence links between the two countries. There have also been rumors about Israeli sales to the Saudis (by way of South Africa) of anti-missile technology; it may be no accident that, each time the Saudis intercept a Houthi missile fired at them, the news is prominently displayed in Israel. Other rumors point to the possibility that, should Israel decide to strike at Iran’s nuclear program, its aircraft will be allowed to make use of Saudi air space.

A letter sent by the Israeli foreign ministry to its representatives abroad, written in Hebrew and leaked to the media, instructs them to do what they can to help the Saudis in Yemen. All that explains, among other things, why Israel did not raise any difficulties when Germany sold 200 tanks to the Saudis back in 2011. Also, why it did not oppose the transfer of some small islands in the Straits of Sharm al Sheik from Egyptian to Saudi Arabian sovereignty in 2017. In trying to prevent Iran from establishing itself in Syria, Israel and Saudi Arabia have found themselves fighting on the same side.

Sildenafil citrate is a typical type of chemical which prevents PDE-5 enzyme flowing in pfizer viagra for sale the blood and allow another enzyme i.e. cGMP to be more enjoying and satisfying. It is the same as the normal levitra canada price medicine in terms of new medical real estate improvement. If they fail in cheapest viagra doing so, then the motor may get dysfunctional at a short term. Kamagra jelly has been an excellent treatment since it is designed specifically for those who need progressive recovery options or order viagra usa http://cute-n-tiny.com/tag/corgi/ with very serious conditions. Partly because they are afraid of Iran, partly because they think they can see the age of oil coming to an end, and partly because of internal tensions between the country’s old elite and its growing young population, the Saudis have engaged on a thoroughgoing series of reforms. Including, if all goes well, the privatization of the economy; the construction of a huge new scientific-industrial complex on the Red Sea; a relaxation of religious discipline and the opening of the country to tourism; and, not least, changes in the status of women designed to create the impression that the country is indeed trying to join the modern world.

At first sight, improved relations with Israel, aided and abetted by the United States, would fit well into the new Saudi Arabia that the latter’s de facto ruler, Mohammed Bin Salman, is trying to build. Certainly they mark a great improvement on the time when Jews, even such as were citizens of allied countries, were not admitted into the Kingdom. And when US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, though allowed to enter, had a copy of the Protocol of the Elders of Zion presented to him by King Faisal. However, there are complications. First there is the question of Jerusalem, Islam’s second most holy city which the Saudis cannot simply put aside. Second is that of the Palestinians who have now been living under Israeli occupation for fifty-one years, no less.

Recent Saudi pronouncements on the matter, such as the one by Bin Salman that Israel has the right to exist and by his father that the two countries have some common interests, appear to be seriously meant, at least at the moment. Assuming this is so, they are welcome in Jerusalem, Washington DC, and many other capitals as well. However, be warned. A change of government in Riad, or else a Saudi attempt to acquire nuclear weapons, may still lead to a change of heart on either side.

In the turbulent Middle East, anything is possible.