A most unflattering investigation

Rouzan al-Najjar was 20 years old when she died, shot dead by an Israeli sniper on June 1 during one of the protests at the Gaza Strip border. The New York Times website showed an image of her, a paramedic clad in a white jacket, wearing a headscarf and standing in a field of blooming flowers, snapped shortly before her death.

 

On Sunday, Najjar’s story made the lead on the world’s most important news website. She’s one of several hundred Palestinians killed during the last eight months, since the protests on the border started. But her story was the one that made headlines.

Six researchers, headed by veteran journalist David Halbfinger, conducted the six-month long investigation. They went to Gaza and interviewed Najjar’s colleagues who were at the scene when her death took place. They collected 30 testimonies and more than 1,000 pictures and videos — recreating an image of the scene by marking the location of medics and protesters, and the IDF soldiers across the border. They wanted to figure out whether the soldiers were in danger.

Najjar's funeral, the Gaza Strip (Photo: AFP)

The IDF issued a statement 10 days after the events of June 1, saying that Najjar had been shot accidently. The New York Times’ investigation looks at the smallest of details, raising questions about the IDF handling of the situation, as well as the nature of the rules of engagement along the Gaza border. If Najjar was shot and killed without operational justification, as the Times shows, how many of the hundreds who were killed on the border during the last eight months were also shot without posing a real threat?

As an Israeli journalist I can only envy the thorough work of Halbfinger and his colleagues. Having the time and resources for such investigative work should not be taken for granted. While the Gaza Strip remains closed to Israeli journalists—on the orders of the Israeli security forces — the foreign media is free to enter. Us Israeli journalists have to rely on announcements from the IDF Spokesperson, and have no way of properly cross-referencing information. That isn’t journalism at its best, even though some of us have sources across the border and can ask for comments, or verify some details.

Najjar’s death was lost in the mass of events at the Gaza border this summer. Israeli fields were burning after incendiary balloons set them on fire, and Fridays became a lethal scene of confrontation at the security fence. We Israelis were naive to think the world was no longer interested in the Middle East or what happens on the Gaza border. Last night, for nearly two hours, the world’s most influential and important news site took a break from Donald Trump and the festive season and laid Israeli actions out across its site for all to see. And it wasn't a pretty picture.

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Are you looking for a new Likud?

Among the statements made Saturday night by the chairmen of the student council, sorry, the new right-wing party, most harrowing were the words of Ayelet Shaked, who said it would have been easier for her and Bennett to stay in the Jewish Home party, but they "chose the hard way." 

 

The current education minister (Bennett) and justice minister (Shaked) would not have received senior portfolios in the next government, something Shaked knows all too well. It's actually doubtful that they would have gotten two minor portfolios. In the past several weeks, ever since Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu managed to persuade them to back away from their public demand to make Bennett minister of defense, the two have been carrying the bitterness and resentment of humiliation. They are holding on to the insult and feelings of shame caused by Netanyahu.

This resentment came to fruition at government and security cabinet meetings, where, sources say, the two Jewish Home lawmakers were impudent, talking back to Netanyahu like no one has ever done before.

They had given up, was the conclusion reached by all present. Shaked and Bennett no longer had any expectations of the prime minister, understanding that he would be willing to form a coalition with anyone, regardless of political affiliation, he just didn't want to form one with them. This, apparently, was their main motivation in reinventing themselves. 

Naftali Bennett and Ayelet Shaked announcing their new party (Photo: Reuters)

Bennett was right; they had lost their hold over Netanyahu. The prime minister knew that the party of Bennett, Shaked, and MK Bezalel Smotrich was in his pocket. He knew it in the last elections, when he stole a few seats from the Jewish Home, and he discovered once again last month when he managed to stop Bennett and Shaked resigning — not only by sending the head of his National Security Council to former religious politician Rabbi Haim Druckman in order to put pressure on Bennett, but by convincing the right-wing public to stand with him and distance themselves from the leaders of their political camp.

In her opening statement, Shaked thanked two people who have died: former IDF Chief Rabbi Avichai Ronsky, and writer, journalist and former Jewish Home minister Uri Orbach.

It is no accident that Shaked chose two religious Zionists officials who were also liked by the secular public. In thanking Ronsky and Orbach, Shaked was marking the rabbis of the New Right party. No more controversial rabbis who are disliked by the secular public, but people who are also accepted by the military and secular elite.

For this very same reason, the chairmen of the new right-wing party saw fit to introduce their families. Shaked with her secular background, her husband the kibbutznik and fighter pilot, and Bennett with his secular wife Gilat, who just a few weeks ago rebuked Netanyahu for trying to plant "slander" on the Walla news website about her preparing desserts in an non-kosher restaurant. Now, in this brave new joint secular-religious party, it is an advantage to be married to someone secular.

Bennett and Shaked promised that their new party would be the true right, and would not zigzag on policy. Interesting, but this was never a problem for the Jewish Home. The party was right-wing and right-wing was the party. Bennett and Shaked pledged partnership between the secular and the religious, just like in basic training in the army, in the workplace, at the Passover Seder table. Sounds good. What do you say, Bennett, should we launch this enlightened approach in schools too? Or perhaps we should start with MK Shuli Mualem, the first to join the new right-wing, who does not exactly resonate with the secular public.

What's more, we should expect better production values from two such experienced politicians announcing a dramatic move. Their press conference looked very shoddy. From the joint anouncement with the embarrassing pauses, through the scrawled background image and the empty chairs at the front. This would never have happened with Bibi.

But the most intriguing question is what outgoing Justice Minister Shaked heard from her friend, Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit. What does she know that we do not about the prime minister's future and his chances of surviving the next term in office? One thing is certain – Bennett and Shaked know that it is impossible to reach the prime minsiter's chair from the Jewish Home. Worse than that, they can't possibly attack Bibi from there.

If Bennett and Shaked are indeed anticipating Netanyahu's imminent retirement from politics, this could well be the reason for establishing a new right-wing party. Or perhaps we should say, a new Likud?

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Amos Oz wrote the story of our Israeli life

Amos Oz was a generous and wise man. Anyone who had the good fortune of sharing a cup of coffee with him in the morning, even those who did not see eye to eye with him, got to hear him analyze our reality with wisdom. He had a deep understanding both of human nature and the nature of politics.

Amos Oz had a broad perspective. I felt so educated and enlightened after every meeting with him. There is no doubt he was one of the greatest writers of Hebrew literature, and one of the greatest literary figures in the world.

Left to right: David Grossman, A. B. Yehoshua, and Amos Oz (Photo: Gettyimages)

He influenced many writers of my generation and of the generation that followed. His book "In the Land of Israel" had a tremendous impact on me as I began writing my book "The Yellow Wind." I remember reading this book for the first time. Almost after every chapter, I had to put down the book and take a deep breath. When do I feel influenced by an author? When I finish a book, and the desire to write stirs within me. Not necessarily to write like the author, but to write simply for the joy of creation. I have experienced that feeling more than once after reading an Amos Oz book, and especially after reading his novel "A Tale of Love and Darkness."

This creation describes like no other the great story of our lives here in Israel, and the complications they entail. I've heard hundreds of people, who had neither the understanding nor the affinity for Israel, say that  reading his works suddenly gave them insight into the Israeli situation, Israeli anxieties, Israeli self-inflicted failure, and the greatness of the fact the State of Israel exists.

Amos managed to convey all of this through his personal story, his unsentimental childhood biography, and the way he slowly opened up to his readers. I've always felt that "A Tale of Love and Darkness" underwent a process of nationalization, of becoming state property. "What's in an Apple" is the reclamation by Amos of this nationalization because it showed him as his friends knew him—open, and with an extraordinary sense of humor and Irony. These two books describe quite accurately the Amos I knew.

Amos Oz (Photo: Haim Zach)

He always shared his infinite love. Even when the both of us competed over the Man Booker Prize. Amos did not attend the award ceremony. When I won, I explained how difficult it was for me that Amos was not there, and I quoted Isaac Newton's statement that, "If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." I feel that I and the rest of my generation indeed stood on the shoulders of giants—Amos Oz and A. B. Yehoshua, may he live a long life. I knew Amos went to bed early, so I didn't call him when I won. But I did so the next day and we had a very warmhearted conversation.

When someone of the caliber of Amos Oz is taken from us—and I think many Israelis feel the same, even those who didn't agree with him—something is diminished. Amos Oz will no longer be the scribe of our reality, because there isn't another like him. His passing evokes pain and loss. For it is truly sad.

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Israel urgently needs to build more prisons

In order to increase living space for prisoners, the Israeli Prison Service is set to release some 1,000 prisoners early. But what Israel really needs is to build more prisons, something which has not happened in more than a decade. There is no doubt that prisoners deserve more livable conditions, as in any western country.

 

The ruling issued by Supreme Court Justice Elyakim Rubinstein ensured that the entire law enforcement system, the Knesset and the Ministry of Public Security, would take heed of the issue and occupy themselves with the conditions of prisoners.

Commissioner Franco (L) with his replacement (Photo: Avi Mualem)

Just as the State of Israel has long-term plans for building hospitals, schools, universities, police stations, courts and other public institutions, the state must also plan ahead to build more prisons. Alongside the matter of living space, which even after the early release of some prisoners is still very low: 3.2 meters per prisoner, the government also needs to consider the decrepit condition of many prisons; old structures with outdated infrastructure badly in need of repairs and maintenance. Consider the Neve Tirtzah women’s prison. Already during my first tour as commissioner of the Prison Service I concluded that the prison was not fit to hold prisoners. Immediately plans were drafted to construct a new, modern prison that would provide all the needs of the female prisoners. NIS 150 million was allocated and a peripheral wall was constructed near Eshel Prison in Be’er Sheva. But unfortunately, as soon as my term ended in 2016, the budget was cut and the plans shelved. Only five percent of the Prison Service’s budget is intended for upkeep and technology, a woefully low sum relative to the growth in the amount of prisoners. Every year, the Prison Service manages to upgrade a few prison wards and decrease the amount of beds per cell. The question remains, what will happen in the second round of prisoners release — in accordance with the High Court ruling mandating 4.5 square meters of living space per prisoner? I hope that they don’t choose the easy way out, because releasing only 1,000 prisoners will definitely not suffice. During my tenure, the Holot Detention Center was established to hold illegal migrants. It could have been a good solution for prisoners not deemed to be high-risk, and today it lies abandoned. If the plan to build more prisons goes ahead and more beds and living space are added, and there are no unexpected delays or budget cuts, it will take at least five years before they can be inaugurated. Aharon Franco served as Israel Prison Service Commissioner for the years 2011-2016

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The truth about fake news

Fake news is now threatening world politics, and everyone is blaming everyone else for it. Donald Trump, obviously, is one of the main culprits. The Washington Post, for instance, has found that since Trump took office, he’s managed to make 6,000 deceptive or false statements. In a speech from May 2018, Trump made 98 statements, of which 76% were false, deceptive or not backed by evidence. And yet Trump and his supporters repeatedly refer to news outlets like the Washington Post, the New York Times and CNN as the “lying press,” accusing them for conspiring against the president. In Israel, Benjamin “the Arabs voting in droves” Netanyahu assumes Trump’s role. Recent police investigations raise serious suspicions that Netanyahu didn’t only allegedly spread biased reports, but had also tried to influence major media outlets in Israel. Netanyahu and many of his supporters claim that these suspicions are without base, and are a part of a fake news campaign that is aimed at slandering an excellent, innocent prime minister. In tyrannical regimes, like in China and Russia, the media is wholly subordinate to the government, which is free to rain whatever false facts it pleases upon its people. Moreover, these regimes have been blamed for spreading fake news worldwide, in order to support their politicians of choice, and hamper people’s belief in the very possibility of having a free media and a democratic regime.

US President Donald Trump (Photo: EPA)

From Vladimir Putin’s point of view, if Americans lose faith in democracy, Russians are less likely to want a democracy for themselves. However, the hysteria over the fake news phenomena is slightly overdone, and could very well play into the hands of tyrants. It’s hard to have an open public discussion when people no longer believe anything at all, since “it’s all fake news”. We have to remember that nowadays, in the 21st century, the way we view the truth isn’t in worse shape than it was in previous periods. Human societies have managed to function under massive attacks of fake news, and far worse lies than the ones we are now experiencing. We need to remember that fake news is old news. Propaganda, political lies and fabrications have been with us for thousands of years. For most of history, a major part of the “news” and “facts” that people came to know through their (non-virtual) social networks, were fables about miracles, witches, angels and demons. Long before Facebook and Twitter existed, the masses were easy to pump full of unfounded rumors. If you lived in a small medieval town, a neighbor might approach you and whisper: “you know that old cat lady who lives in a shack by the woods? I saw her riding her broomstick across the skies last night!” By evening, the frightful witch would be burning at the stake. A month later, that same babbling neighbor might spread a new rumour: “Remember the miller’s son who went missing? Last night I went past the synagogue, and what do I hear coming from the basement? A screaming child! The Jews must have murdered him for their Passover matzos!”. Two hours later, a bloodthirsty mob would be brandishing pitchforks and torches in the town  square, ready and willing to kill every Jew in town. Not only individual fables, but also whole religions and ideologies were crafted by using human imagination. Even religious people will agree that all faiths, save one, are based on fake news. What’s the odd one out? Why their religion, of course. Ask a Jew and he’ll tell you that claiming that Jesus was the son of God is a complete fable. Ask a Christian, and he’ll resent that, but say that there’s no way that Angel Gabriel revealed the Quran to Mohammed. Ask a Muslim, and he’ll swear that the story of Gabriel is true, but that all the gods, goddesses and myths of the Hindus are complete nonsense. During the 20th century, masters of propaganda like Adolf Hitler and Joseph Goebbels made lying into an art form. Goebbels’ technique was based on one assumption: “A lie told once remains a lie but a lie told a thousand times becomes the truth.” Hitler described the art of lying in one of the more sophisticated parts of his book Mein Kampf, and explained that people believe big lies easily in comparison to small ones, since “they themselves lie in little things, but would be ashamed of lies that were too big. Such a falsehood will never enter their heads and they will not be able to believe in the possibility of such monstrous effrontery and infamous misrepresentation in others...”

  

In other words: if you lie, go big.

Joseph Goebbels, German Nazi politician and Reich Minister of Propaganda of Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945 (Photo: AP)

Perhaps the best example for how true Hitler’s assumption was, lies in the career of his sworn enemy Joseph Stalin. The Soviet tyrant was one of history’s biggest murderers, and his victims probably number more than those of Hitler. Yet, in his lifetime he managed to persuade whole nations—including intellectuals, journalists and leading scientists—that he was humanity’s saviour. Nowadays, Vladimir Putin is having trouble hiding his responsibility for thousands of deaths in Ukraine whereas Stalin deceived a large part of the world regarding the death of millions. When Stalin died in May 1953, Israel’s United Workers Party (then the second largest party in the Knesset, that later morphed into a part of Meretz) published a long obituary, saying that “the United Workers Party of Israel was horrified to hear of the grave disaster that befell the Soviet Union, world proletariat and and all of advanced mankind, with the great leader and military man Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin being taken away from us.” The obituary called him “captain of the world’s peace movement,” and said that “we hope that his historic work will lead generations to come.” It’s true that the internet has made spreading lies easier than it was in Stalin’s days—but it also made spreading truth much easier. During the tyrants' days, Israeli kibbutzniks and European journalists knew little of the thousands dying of starvation in Ukraine, Stalinist population cleansings or Siberian gulags. Today, in the age of smartphones and YouTube, it’s a lot harder to conceal atrocities of such scale. It’s important to say that democratic governments have also used propaganda and lies throughout history. During the Cold War, the US was locked in a global propaganda campaign against the Soviets, not only to refute their lies—but also to destable socialist regimes around the world, and hide atrocities by America and her allies in Vietnam, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Chile and many other countries. When propaganda wasn’t enough, Americans were prepared to take more direct measures, like assassinations and military coups, to overthrow regimes that they didn’t like. In comparison to the American interference in Iranian politics in 1953, Indonesian politics in 1965, or Chilean politics in 1973, the Russians attempt to sway the 2016 US election are mere child’s play. Israel was never out of the game either. In the famous 1954 Lavon affair, Israeli agents executed terror attacks in Egyptian cinemas and libraries. The point was making it look like the bombings were the work of Egyptian nationalists, and destablize the Egyptian rule and the country’s relationship with other Arab countries. Two years later, in 1956, Israel signed a secret deal with France and Britain, designed to set the stage for the two nations to take over the Suez Canal. Under the agreement, Israel would attack Egypt, and then France and Britain would intervene as “neutral forces” and demand the two foes back away from the canal. Israel was supposed to agree and Egypt, it was believed, would refuse—allowing the European nations to take over Suez. Most Israeli citizens knew nothing of this secret agreement, and of the real reasons behind the Suez Crisis. But how different really are these events to the curtain of lies spread by Putin during the invasion of Ukraine and the takeover of Crimea?

What still makes the current trend of fake news different, however, is the ability to tailor propaganda on an individual basis, and match lies to all prejudices. When Hitler gave a radio speech to the entire German nation, he had to aim for the lowest common denominator. Howerer, modern trolls and hackers can tell different stories to different people. They can use big-data algorithms to get to know a person's weaknesses—and then use them against him.

Trolls can’t create hate or fear where it doesn’t exist. But once they discover the hatreds and weaknesses within us, it’s very easy to press the right emotional buttons and fan the flames. For instance, if you’re afraid of immigrants, trolls will show you a fictitious story about immigrants who raped local women, and since you tend to believe these kind of stories, you won’t bother checking the story’s authenticity. Meanwhile, your neighbor, who thinks that all those who oppose immigration are dumb fascists, will be handed a false story about racist groups who murder immigrants, and she’ll buy it easily. Now, try having a rational conversation with your neighbor about immigration. Trolls may not even care about immigration themselves. They’re just using the subject as a device to split and tear society, and crash the democratic system from within. Divide and rule—that’s their motto. So what can we do in order to protect our democracy and our public discourse? First of all, we have to acknowledge our weaknesses, fears and hatreds, and not to allow them to become weapons in the hands of trolls. If we know that we’re prejudiced about a particular group or sect—be it Arabs, the ultra-Orthodox, gays or settlers—and we stumble upon a story about this group, we should be extra careful, check its authenticity and its source. And that’s hard, because when we’re furious, we lose our equilibrium. But it’s important to make that effort. Another way to defend ourselves is to look at the big picture. Despite Hitler’s claims about big lies, it’s still easier to fabricate or twist a single fact rather than an entire historical process. If, for example, we’re absorbed in current news, we might think that we live in the most violent period in history, or that terror is a major threat to Western civilization. In fact, today’s Western world is the most peaceful place in history, where many more people die in car crashes or of pollution than in terror attacks.

Joseph Stalin, ruller of the Soviet Union from the mid–1920s until his death in 1953 (Photo: Getty Images)

Since the events of 9/11, terrorists have managed to kill a total of 50 people per year in the European Union, 10 in the US, and 25,000 worldwide (mostly in Muslim countries and the Middle East). Car crashes, on the other hand, claim 80,000 European lives each year, and some 1.25 million lives worldwide. Pollution kills seven million people per year. In order to defend ourselves from hysteria and manipulation, we should read less tweets and more books. The problem is that people don’t have much time for books, and because of the way evolution shaped human psychology, articles about terrorism are more attractive than articles about climate change. Newspapers sell better with a headline screaming “terror attack!” than one saying “new research about greenhouse gasses.” It’s the responsibility of journalists and editors to resist temptation and use all their creativity in order to write interesting stories about climate change. It takes a mediocre journalist to write an interesting story about terror—but a genius journalist to write one about climate change. But if we don’t support journalists in their fight for human attention, they’ll never win. We have to help them; the public has to change its attitude towards news. Right now, the model is “sensational news in exchange for our attention.” Consumers don’t pay for news, and they get a poor product in return. Worse than that: they become the product themselves. Our attention is caught with sensational headlines, and then sold off to politicians and PR and marketing companies. Think of that next time you’re offered a free newspaper. As the battle for our attention worsens, the truth gets cornered, since it has no advantage in this fight. The easiest way to capture human attention is by pressing the right buttons—the fear button, the hate button, the greed button. Too many media outlets specialize in pressing those buttons rather than searching for the truth. That’s why the model has to change. A far better one would be, “high quality news that cost a lot of money—but doesn’t take advantage of our attention.” Information and attention are valuable resources, and it’s incredibly daft to give our attention for free, and get low quality information in return. If we’re willing to pay good money for quality clothes, food and cars—why aren’t we willing to pay for good quality news?

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Israel must focus on the Lebanese front

Israel's Syria strike on Tuesday night achieved its goal by proving once again that the Jewish States does more than just talk, bolstering its credibility and deterrence. By targeting arms depots for the Hezbollah terror group and Iranian forces in the war-torn country, Israel is signaling that neither the downing of a Russian plane by Syrian forces in an attempt to repel an Israeli strike in September, nor the withdrawal of American forces from Syria will change its northern policy.

Even so, the incident might represent a turning point on three issues. Firstly, if in fact this was a three-hour strike and involved a large number of aircraft, it shows the Israeli determination to ensure the destruction of Iranian targets, as well as a demonstration of its raw military power. Secondly, Syria is also signaling its intentions by activating air defenses to intercept missiles fired by the Israeli Air Force over Lebanese territory.

IDF troops hunting Hezbollah cross-border tunnels near Lebanon

Thirdly, there is the Lebanese angle. Israel has reiterated the fact that the tunnels dug by Hezbollah under the Israel-Lebanese border constitute a violation of its sovereignty, which requires retaliation, whereas Lebanon argues that Israel is constantly violating its own sovereignty. This exchange of accusations, which intensified after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's speech at the UN General Assembly several months ago, might increase tensions between the two sides.

Israel should be more worried about the Lebanese front than the Syrian one. Iran is indeed aspiring to entrench an anti-Israeli presence in Syria, but the Islamic republic is still far from reaching that goal. On the other hand, Iran has met all of its objectives as far as Lebanon is concerned.

It may appear that Lebanon is an independent country, albeit with Hezbollah operating in its territory, but reality paints a different picture. Lebanon and the Shiite terror organization have an unwritten agreement: the government is responsible for civil issues and represents the country's beautiful side, while Iranian-backed Hezbollah is the sole military force in the country, telling the Lebanese army where to deploy its troops, and deciding whether calm prevails on the Israel-Lebanese border. Hezbollah is an Iranian satellite, or proxy, meaning that Lebanon is effectively controlled by Iran.

This fact leads us to two conclusions: Russia, like Israel, is not interested in strengthening Iran in Syria. Moscow, which seeks to maintain its grip on Syria via President Bashar Assad's puppet regime, is unwilling to allow Iran to seize Syria as it seized Lebanon. Therefore, Russia will continue to display patience with Israeli strikes in Syria, but only as long as Jerusalem hits Iranian targets. Russian rhetoric might be aggressive, but its reaction will be mild.

 

Hezbollah supporters in Beirut (Photo: AFP)

Furthermore, Israel must inform the world that if Iran decides to activate Hezbollah against it, this would not only lead to another war between Israel and the terror organization, but to an all-out conflagration between Israel and Lebanon.

If the United States, France and Saudi Arabia, who have invested great effort in Lebanon and desire to save it from destruction, they should explain to the Lebanese government the ramifications of placing the country's military force in the hands of Hezbollah and its patron, Iran.

If a third war breaks out in Lebanon, Israel would act against the country as a whole to ensure a short military campaign, as opposed to the Second Lebanon War in 2006, which lasted 34 days.

Iran is Hezbollah is Lebanon.  

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How Trump betrayed the Kurds in Syria

In the middle of December 2016, when the eastern part of Aleppo was bombed by the Russians, Iranians and its Shi’ite proxies, to the point that there was nothing left but dust, it became clear just how useless NATO, the United Nations and the United States are. It also became clear there is no such thing as the free world. The world is held captive by fear, abandoned and terrified. Thousands of women and children could be blown up and trampled on, and the rest of the world wouldn’t lift a finger. All of this happened a month after Donald Trump was elected as US president. There is no such thing as a coincidence.

 

Trump’s decision to withdraw US troops from Syria made me reminisce about the dark days of October 2014. I sat on a hill facing the Syrian town of Kobanî, which was then under Islamic State siege. The militants had already taken over most of the town, and had it not been for the assistance of the US Air Force, IS would have completely taken over the area and massacred its Kurdish population. The Turkish army stood by and watched as the Kurds were fighting for their lives. 

Female Kurdish fighters battling IS (Photo: Tsur Shezaf)

Kobanî was the turning point in the battle against IS, because it prompted the Americans to intervene, initially to save the Kurds, and later to rescue the Yazidis in an aerial operation in Jebal Sinjar. It was Barack Obama's America.

A few months later, as I traveled across the Jazira region, I closely accompanied the Kurds and the Yazidis who were relentlessly fighting IS in a battle of good versus evil. Women and men of the Kurdish militias in Syria were fighting alongside each other according to the philosophy adopted by the Kurdish rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan—imprisoned in Turkey since 1999—based on egalitarianism and a desire for a humane society. 

It was easy to bond with the Kurds over a conversation about Israeli inaction when it comes to the suffering of the Kurdish population, who openly ask to form an alliance with the Jewish state. My heart is with the Kurds who let me sleep in their homes and eat their food, and who shielded me during battles.

The independent Kurdish region of northern Syria, formerly known as Rojava, is flat and rich in oil. The Kurds can not survive without the aerial support. The Turks, the Russians, or even Syrian President Bashar Assad’s forces will devour them whole. Even in Afrin, which was occupied by the Turks through the assistance of the local jihadists at the onset of 2018, the Kurds didn’t have to face drones, helicopters and Turkish fighter jets.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s statement following a conversation with Trump, according to which he will destroy what’s left of IS (and the Kurds) in the war-torn country, is a mixture of intentions and lies. Of course he will destroy the Kurds, but the withdrawal of US troops from Syria actually helps IS to survive by escaping a Kurdish-American onslaught. 

Kurdish fighters (Photo: Tsur Shezaf)

Erdogan will not destroy IS; they are practically part of the Turkish military, trained and nurtured by Turkey's leader. The IS fighters whom I questioned after they’d been captured by the Syrian Kurds testified that Turkish intelligence officers were preparing them for battle and supplying them weapons.

Once the Kurdish forces are destroyed, the next step will be the ethnic cleansing that Assad and the Turks have been planning since

the start of the civil war in Syria. Hafez al-Assad, the father of the current Syrian president, resettled the local Arab population in the Kurdish territories in order to weaken the native Kurds. Although some of the Arabs left the region when the Kurds built their independent state there, the Arab jihadists will return if Assad’s forces or Turkish military take over the area.

Trump's decision to betray the Kurds to appease Erdogan is the action of an immoral man. It also does not strengthen America, it weakens it. So much damage caused by stupidity of one man. Obama, unlike the right-wing Israeli propaganda, understood Erdogan’s true nature and protected the Kurds.

Obama refused to order strikes on Syria back in 2013 following a chemical attack—which had allegedly been carried out by the Assad regime—after he was made aware of the tests conducted in British laboratories that revealed that the chemical agent had been supplied by Turkish intelligence and dispersed by jihadists working for Turkey, in order to force the US to enter the conflict in Syria. 

Barack Obama and Donald Trump (Photos: AP, Shutterstock)

The former president managed US foreign policy by prioritizing the interests of America and its allies in the region—Israel and Jordan. He sent the special units’ soldiers and outlined a clever strategy of hitting IS from the air in the open plains of the Syrian desert, pushing them out of the area with the help of the Kurdish forces.

The strategy helped the Kurds to take control of some 40% of the Syrian territory, which blocked a land route used by Iranian military envoys to smuggle weapons to Lebanon’s Hezbollah, and shielded the Kurds in northern Iraq. Trump, by dancing to Erdogan’s tune, gave a lifeline to the remaining IS fighters. Turkey’s leader is one of Israel’s most treacherous enemies, and his statements—backed up by NATO's large and well-equipped army—should be taken seriously.

Betrayal is rarely witnessed in real time. Israel has never been betrayed by an American president up to this day. Well, the apocalypse is now.

The quasi-independent Kurdish area in northeastern Syria is now either at the mercy of the Turks, who in principle hate Kurdish independence, or at the mercy of the Russians, who aspire to extend their dominance over all of Syria.

Since Trump’s dramatic announcement, my Kurdish acquaintances in Syria have been trying to reach me through any means of communication they have available, telling me in a trembling voice that their fate is sealed. What can I tell them? That I'm sorry? That there’s nothing I can say that would encourage them?

Syrian Kurds in Iraq (Photo: Tsur Shezaf)

The only silver lining is that French President Emmanuel Macron announced the country’s troops will stay in Rojava, meaning that Trump might just dismantle the NATO by taking the United States out of the equation and pitting Turkey and France against each other. The question is whether this situation puts Europe at odds with Russia.

This strange predicament also leaves Israel exposed, because even though I don’t envy the Kurds, our country has not been in such a vulnerable geo-strategic position in quite some time.

This is an important life lesson. Netanyahu supported Trump wholeheartedly and believed (like many others on the Right) that the current US president is the best thing that ever happened to our country. Netanyahu even delivered a speech at the United Nations praising Trump, while warning us about the dangers of Iran. The prime minister’s warm friendship with the unethical and unstable American president, tells us that Netanyahu is not that different from Trump. However, Trump cares neither about Netanyahu nor Israel.

  

So, who will protect the Middle East from Turkey, Russia and Iran? Not Netanyahu, who is another ingredient in this stomach-churning meal we’ve been served up.

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From Trump to #MeToo

A day after Donald Trump's inauguration in January 2017, some 500,000 people arrived in Washington to participate in the Women's March—the largest demonstration in American history. Two months prior, a day after Trump won the election, the protest's organizers began setting up the march in reaction to Trump's campaign and political views, namely his remarks about groping women.

 

 

That huge demonstration laid the foundation, perhaps unintentionally, of one of the most significant social movements in the last half century — the #MeToo movement.

US President Donald Trump (Photo: AFP)

 

It is not a new movement. Years before the "Me Too" phrase was popularized by actress Alyssa Milano; social activist Tarana Burke used the phrase to promote "empowerment through empathy" among sexual assault victims. But in October 2017, soon after sexual abuse allegations against Harvey Weinstein came out, the #MeToo social media hashtag spread quickly, imbued with one meaning: I, too, was harassed or sexually assaulted.

Those who complained about Weinstein encouraged more and more women to come forward and finally talk about life in a world where strong, rich men can do what they want.

Former Miss Arizona, Tasha Dixon: contestants were forced to greet Trump even when not fully dressed, October, 2016

However, the seeds of the #MeToo movement were planted with the publication of the 2005 Access Hollywood tape in which Trump is heard boasting about groping women. Perhaps what most gave rise to the movement was the fact that Trump was sworn in as President of the United State despite his sexist views and lewd remarks.

More than ten women complained that Trump sexually assaulted them, even before the elections. He threatened to sue them all but failed to do so. Meanwhile, the careers of Matt Lauer, Charlie Rose, Louis CK, Les Moonves, Bill O'Reilly and Al Franken are over, while Trump remains intact.

Only the women, who were brave enough to give a public voice to personal experiences and complain about the American president, are completely forgotten.

  

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The end of the affair

Donald Trump doesn’t love us, because he doesn’t know what love is.

 

Many Israelis believe that our relationship with the U.S. is a good deal, and some even think that the balance is in our favor — us, the little ally in the east. We are a military outpost, a testing ground for American weapons, a high-tech nation, a front-line fortress of democracy in barbarian lands. We are the most daring fighters against the terror that threatens America.

Trump, in truth, agrees with his predecessors in thinking that the U.S. should relax its firm grip on this malignant region. But while Barack Obama was honest about these intentions, Trump is a master salesman, who specializes in selling luxurious apartments made of cheap materials. Moving the embassy to Jerusalem costs nothing, whereas getting the troops out of Syria comes with hefty political profit. For him, not us.  

U.S President Donald Trump and his wife Melania visit U.S troops in Iraq (Photo: Reuters)

If you wish to understand the wild and dangerous gamble that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made when he decided to throw in his lot with Trump, spare a few hours and watch "Trump: An American Dream" on Netflix. You’re in for a nauseating adventure. The four episodes, from Britain's Channel 4, paint a dismal picture of Trump from the early days of his career as a successful building entrepreneur and the son of a successful building entrepreneur—all the way into the White House.

It’s a reliable offering, mainly because Trump’s image, as witnessed in endless articles, videos and books from the two years of his reign, tell a similar story about this man.

I’ve learned from this series that this is a man totally absorbed in himself. A liar, a cheat, a show-off, an aggressive man who has no self-reflection. In the circles that surround him you won’t find a single artist, thinker or activis, only businessmen, their lawyers, bankers, show business people, opportunistic women and politicians who need his money.

The palaces he’s built for himself are tasteless, grandious monuments. The only color he knows is the gleam of gold, and his only standards are to go big and bigger— for that’s what he believes quality is: the tallest building, the largest casino, the highest-rated TV show, the best-selling book and the biggest harem with the most beautiful women.

The Netanyahus and the Trumps in the Oval Office (Photo: GPO)

The senior officials in his organization and the talented engineers who devote themselves to his building initiatives do not register with him. For Trump, there’s only complete victory that entails the total humiliation of his opponent. The man who resents investment in societal initiatives is running a ferocious battle against responsible politicians who object his demands for a tax exemption from the New York municipality, so that he may graciously acquire a bankrupt hotel and renovate it.

This megalomaniac isn't sorry for the dozens of investors who bought bonds and stocks to fund his “world biggest casino,” which cost a billion dollars and failed a week after it opened.

The only art he’s ever referred to is Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane—but he fails to realize the lesson in it about his downfall. I don’t know if he can be labeled as a psychopath, a person who doesn’t know right from wrong, but this documentary clearly proves Trump has no shred of a conscience.

America doesn’t need Trump—despite what he and his MAGA shouters assert. He’s a businessman whose policy is based on accounting, whether something is profitable or not. Of course, if it weren’t for our military prowess, Trump wouldn’t give Israel a second thought. But the majority of Americans see us as an island of liberal democracy in a deranged region of fanatics. This image is fading.

If we want true empathy we should not look to American politicians who claim to admire Israel, but rather among those who want to save the country from itself. Unsurprisingly, these aren't Trump followers.

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Taking a chance on Gantz

Even after the Knesset voted Wednesday to dissolve itself and head to early elections, former IDF Chief Benny Gantz kept mum about his political plans.

 

Gantz is expected to be one of the main stars of the 2019 elections, but in the meantime he is considered an enigma — not speaking of what he intends to do or even presenting his views to the public. Gantz is silent and yet his potential seat count is climbing, perhaps due to the yearning for something new that appears in almost every election campaign.

Gantz has maintained this thunderous silence for months, even refusing to speak truly openly with the people closest to him. His apparent behind-the-scenes plans to take the upcoming elections by storm has been carried out in total secrecy.

Ultimately, he has two options: to join one of the exisiting major parties or to compete in an entirely new one. The tall, stoic former army chief has been courted by several party leaders, including the Likud's Benjamin Netanyahu, Yair Lapid of Yesh Atid, and Avi Gabbay of Zionist Union/Labor.

It has even been reported that Netanyahu even offered Gantz the post of foreign minister to both woo him over to the Likud and neutralize

a real political threat (Netanyahu denied it; Gantz, natch, refused to comment). Lapid and Gabbay also bent over backwards, each offering him the number 2 spot on their Knesset lists and the role of defense minister should they be the one to form the next government. Last Thursday, Gabbay even presented his party's membership with a poll showing that Zionist Union would take 29 out of the Knesset's 120 seats with Gantz in the No. 2 spot.

An associate of the veteran soldier said that as his political stock rose and his polling skyrocketed, Gantz fell in love with the idea of running on his own list in the top spot. Why should he be beholden to someone else?

"Gantz could be defense minister in any government that is formed, so he is not willing to gamble on joining a particular party, but would rather run under his own steam," says a source who recently spoke to Gantz. "He's a very calculating man and everything he does is checked a thousand times, sometimes to his own detriment.

Benny Gantz by Guy Morad

 

Benny Gantz has several political associates, such as Adina Bar-Shalom, former Yerucham mayor Michael Biton and attorney Rachel Turjeman, as well as a number of personal advisers working with him behind the scenes. A few weeks ago, close associates announced that they had formed the Ahi Yisraeli (My Israeli Brother) party, to create a platform for a future Gantz run. Gantz rejected this option, and Biton, announced last Saturday that he had decided to step down as chairman of My Israeli Brother to join whatever political entity that Gantz forms himself.

According to some reports, Gantz has already registered a new party to run in the upcoming elections, but he has not disclosed the details. Ehud Barak, another former IDF chief turned politician said this week that he is considering joining a united bloc against Netanyahu himself, and warned that Gantz would be making a mistake if he ran on his own ticket, as three moderate parties would fare less well against Netanyahu than one large one to going head to head with the prime minister.

Perhaps Benny Gantz will answer the prayers of those searching for an alternative to Netanyahu, but we must bear in mind that we still know nothing about the Gantz the politician, not Gantz the chief of staff. In the army, Gantz was a major general, but in politics he is a private.

Gantz does instill a certain amout of fear in Netanyahu and his people. After all, he did try to lure him over to the Likud. But the chances of this happening are low. A few weeks ago, a senior Likud minister close to the Netanyahus said in a closed-door conversation that he had "embarrassing material" on Gantz and would release it as soon as the former army chief announced his entry into politics. Gantz's silence should end in the coming days and while that may end the enigma, Gantz will undoubtedly be one of the most fascinating characters of the 2019 elections.

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Netanyahu's election u-turn is meant to sway his criminal probes

If I were one of Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit's advisors, I would advise him to stop reading the newspapers as of today, and start watching the television and returning politicians' phone calls instead. He has a tough call to make  — deciding on which charges, if any, the state will indict Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the others embroiled in his multiple criminal investigations. The decision-making process must neither be contaminated, nor influenced by the election date or election campaigns.

Nothing can separate the elections from the attorney general's decision, and no decision will be to everyone's satisfaction. If Mandelblit decides to postpone the decision until after the elections, many Israelis will wonder —and justifiably so—for whom are they being asked to vote. Is it for a man who is facing charges of bribery or for a man who is facing lesser charges? They will ask whether they are voting for someone whose criminal cases are about to be closed due to the fact that "there is nothing, because there was nothing," according to Netanyahu's oft-repeated mantra.

Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit

Will the prime minister announce his resignation when Mandelblit's decision is released? Will a deal be reached? Will his future coalition

partners abandon him if he has already formed a government? Will Netanyahu even be the Likud's ultimate candidate or does his candidacy depend on the outcome of these investigations?

Even those opposed to Netanyahu don't really know what they are voting for. Those going to the polls must surely wonder whether by giving their vote to Yesh Atid's Yair Lapid, or former IDF chief of staff Benny Gantz, or Zionist Union's Avi Gabbay, they are voting for a party that will join the coalition once the Netanyahu era is over, or are they voting for a party that will sit in the opposition no matter how things unfold in Likud.

Moreover, Likud's satellite parties — Jewish Home, Yisrael Beiteinu and Kulanu—will be obligated to explain to their voters the nature of their commitment to Netanyahu, and whether they will continue working with him should any indictments be filed. It appears this situation is convenient for Netanyahu. The right wing wants to see him continuing his tenure. Those on the right who do doubt him risk losing votes.

Yisrael Beiteinu Chairman Avigdor Lieberman (L) and Jewish Home Chairman Naftali Bennett (Photo: Getty Images, AFP)

If Mandelblit decides to release his decision in the run-up to the elections, he will be attacked by all of the candidates on the Likud list, first and foremost Netanyahu. They will surely demand to know by what right Mandelblit is meddling in the elections, and how dare he disgrace the man running for prime minister, the man chosen by the people, without a shred of evidence presented to the courts and before a hearing has even been held. In the best-case scenario, they would compare Mandelblit to former FBI head James Comey, who helped sabotage Hillary Clinton's chances in 2016 by making a series of miserable decisions in the days before the US presidential election. In the worst-case scenario, they would call Mandelblit a traitor, and he would be driven out of his synagogue in Petah Tikva.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (M) announcing early elections at a faction meeting of his Likud party (Photo: Amit Shabi)

Elections are an ongoing process. Many vote-changing events can occur at any point before Election Day on April 9, 2019. In the meantime, it appears that the election will focus on one man and his investigations. Netanyahu will be the main issue. No prime minister before him, not even David Ben-Gurion, has played such a dominant role in an election campaign ("Say yes to the old man" was the Mapai party's slogan during Ben-Gurion's days, not "Say yes to the old man even if he took bribes.")

Netanyahu's u-turn — going from vehemently opposing early elections to fully supporting them — is meant to disrupt any move by Mandelblit and transform his decision on whether to indict him into a political issue. It may be impossible to take looming indictments out of the election campaign, but the election campaign must be taken out of the discussions on the indictments. 

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The dilemma of the right

It was not so long ago, August in fact, when Benjamin Netanyahu promised that his Likud party would expand to 40 Knesset seats in the next elections, and other Likud members predicted a veritable windfall of votes. But while the national camp - that confederacy of right-wing Zionists and religious Jews - is set to do well in April, it has a big Netanyahu-shaped problem.

 

The prime minister has total support from his Likud party, where even political opponents like Gideon Sa’ar toe the line. Similarly, the Jewish Home party says it provides Netanyahu with support from the right and avoids expressing any criticism based on the prime minister’s legal predicaments. The right speaks with one voice, and that voice is Netanyahu's, but is he really their representative? Netanyahu, who once led a right-center party, has managed to appear more right-wing than Jewish Home leader Naftali Bennett during most of this government's existence.

PM Benjamin Netanyahu (Photo: EPA)

  

Most Israelis identify with the conservative stance of the national camp, and this is illustrated by the polls. If a clueless foreign pollster were to land in Israel, he would most certainly advise a potential candidate to create competition within this vast, unchallenged field. Most of Netanyahu’s political rivals have decided to throw in the towel. They view these elections as abortive — just another way to pass the time before Netanyahu is indicted and the next government collapses. They will compete against each other afterwards, when he's gone. Why will the government collapse? Because there are only a limited number of parties willing to join a coalition headed by a prime minister who has multiple indictments hanging over his head: the ultra-Orthodox, the Likud and maybe Jewish Home, but that's it.

  

What will they do, those on the right who believe that a prime minister cannot serve while under suspicion of corruption, but don’t identify with the likes of the far-right Jewish Home MK Betzalel Smotrich?

What will they do, those who were skeptical that the sensitive security situation, which that precluded elections just a month ago, ended unexpectedly on Monday?

Only time will tell.

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Israel holding elections for sake of Netanyahu's personal interests

It is unclear whether the decision to call snap elections was born out of desperation or whether Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu came to this conclusion in an informed and rational manner following a brainstorming session at the PM's residence in Jerusalem. I guess we will never know the answer. Or maybe it is the exact same situation we encountered back in 2015 when early elections had been announced after a failed attempt to pass the law that sought to ban the widespread distribution of free newspapers.

 

But let's not kid ourselves. The coalition heads were not the ones who decided to call early elections, as they claimed in an official statement, because they would have preferred to keep the current government alive for as long as possible. Minister of Welfare and Social Services Haim Katz (Likud) even said that he will never be the one to topple a right-wing government. The order came from Netanyahu himself, because if he genuinely wanted to keep the coalition afloat, nothing would’ve stopped him and a solution to crisis triggered over the IDF draft bill would have been found overnight.

Netanyahu, Regev and Amsalem (Photo: EPA)

 

Someone must have convinced the prime minister that the elections should be held soon, before Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit publishes his decision on Netanyahu’s corruption investigation—which could potentially influence the prime minister's electorate. 

The prime minister’s associates probably convinced him that Mandelblit, who they know well, wouldn’t dare release his recommendations a month before the elections, and after Netanyahu is once again elected as prime minister, Mandelblit will most likely not make his decision public right away. “Go for it. You are at your best when you’re the instigator,” his advisors probably told him.

Netanyahu’s advisors also most likely insisted that he shouldn't wait until former IDF chief of staff Benny Gantz establishes his own political party and starts fundraising.

It’s such a cynical move that it pains me to the bones. It’s been only a month since Netanyahu scolded Avigdor Lieberman for resigning from his post as defense minister and quitting the coalition along with his party Yisrael Beiteinu. It’s also only been a month since Netanyahu sabotaged attempts made by Education Minister Naftali Bennett and Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked from the Jewish Home to resign from the government, claiming that the complex security situation in the country would only deteriorate if the coalition collapsed.

Somehow, over the past month we’ve evolved from a country on a brink of war to a state that can easily afford to go to early elections—which are expensive and draining not only for the candidates but most importantly for Israeli citizens—only to end up with the exact same coalition we’ve had up until this point. As evidenced by Netanyahu's claims made on Monday, the current government is “the core” of the coalition we’ll have next year.

It’s no wonder the public doesn’t trust politicians, who prioritize their personal interests above the national ones. The issue that tipped the scale in calling early elections wasn’t the IDF operation to destroy terror tunnels constructed by Hezbollah along the Israel-Lebanon border or the ongoing wave of terror attacks in the West Bank, or even the volatile situation in the Gaza Strip.

IDF works on Israel-Lebanon border (Photo: AFP)

It’s fascinating how the reality suddenly changes when personal interests are at stake. It’s an insult to the intelligence of the general public.

A few bulldozers did some digging on the northern border, the prime minister took some photos with some soldiers and the hard times are suddenly behind us, despite the fact that for the past month we’ve been feeling as though there is a permanent cloud over the nation’s heads—precisely because Netanyahu warned us just how dire the security situation is. This doesn’t give us the sense of security, you fool!

The coalition heads said in their statement on Monday the decision to call snap elections stems from “budgetary and national responsibility,” which is the exact description Netanyahu used a month ago to explain why the coalition should be preserved at all costs.

It’s nothing but a matter of personal interest. Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon wants elections before the public feels the pinch from the latest hikes in the cost of living. The ultra-Orthodox parties want elections in order for the new IDF draft law to completely collapse. Lieberman wants elections in order to salvage some seats before his popularity fades altogther. And Bennett wants to dissociate himself from the prime minister as fast as possible.

As for Netanyahu, who only a few days ago said he’s confident that his government will survive at least until the end of the year, is motivated mainly by his legal woes.

Netanyahu might have hesitated to call early elections last week due to Mandelblit’s announcement that his decision will not be made because of time constraints, or maybe it was due to the pressure the prime minister had to face at home. One thing is certain, those who hoped there will be a plea deal or resignation, will be left disappointed.

Netanyahu is here to stay, and we’ll see who has the courage to challenge him.

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Israel must make sure is doesn't catch the Trump virus

In 1992, economist Francis Fukuyama released his renowned book, End of history. The title was wonderful, the concept was absurd. Riding the wave of euphoria that swept the West after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Fukuyama argued that the world had entered a new era, an era of peace, prosperity and security and that the Western liberal democracy would prevail this era. If wars were launched, they would be local and manageable. According to the economist, history and its turmoil were redundant and we were all doomed to die of boredom.

People are born and die, governments rise and fall but history is forever. It teaches us, usually the hard way, that nothing is eternal, nothing is guaranteed. The era that Fukuyama proclaimed was nothing more than a short-term illusion. If he proved something, it is that a catchy title, a simplistic idea and good timing can build a very successful career. Don't be right, don’t be wise, just sound smart. Sometimes that's enough.

 

The euphoria of the early 1990s has transformed into depression. The new year will begin, as every year, with fireworks and kisses as the clock will strike midnight, but the depression won't go away. Western countries are in deep, political, moral and economic crisis. And whether we like it or not, this crisis is also knocking on our door.

The manifestations of this crisis are known: globalization and technology have brought the world together, but also pose difficulties for a shared existence. The world’s wealth is greater than ever, but is unfairly divided. The middle class, which is the spine of any modern society, sees its job security eroding and its support for democracy is shrinking. The stream of immigrants flocking from third world countries undermines the sense of identity in Western countries and brings anti-democratic, racist and violent movements back to the center stage.

Populist and separatist politicians have risen to power, bringing down international alliances that have stabilized and strengthened the West since the end of World War II. Social media enables immediate and affordable communication, but it also betrays its users and the democratic values that led to its existence. Russia, and China, two non-democratic superpowers, are doing a good job in sabotaging the national strength of Western countries without firing even s single shot.

US President Donald Trump and his "Trumpism" are not the cause of this phenomenon, they are the result. Like flu in the winter, this virus can infect anybody, including those who got their jab. Nonetheless, it is still advisable to get vaccinated.

There are readers who ask me why I slam Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked's court appointments, including appointments for the High Court of Justice. After all, she is such a serious and respectable minister. I'm also asked why I think disaster would strike if some High Court judges had the same political stance as Shaked.

US President Donald Trump (Photo: TNS)

People also wonder what is so terrible in bill proposals that facilitate the theft of private land, or the expulsion of terrorists' families. They ask what I want from the supporters of former IDF soldier Elor Azaria, who was convicted of manslaughter after shooting dead a neutralized terrorist in Hebron, and why it pains me that a series of laws are passed in an attempt to perpetuate the rule of one person as prime minister.

I have one answer to that: the virus does not stop in the White House. Look what is happening in Italy, Hungary, and Poland. Look at the political chaos in London and Paris. Those countries are hanging off a cliff and we cannot be dragged to the precipice too.

Israel was not always part of the West. In the first years of its existence, there was a harsh dispute about the place of the Jewish state in the world. Some considered the Soviet Union as a role model and argued Israel should be part of the Soviet Union bloc. Some were impressed by non-aligned nations like India, and Yugoslavia. David Ben-Gurion turned to the West—first to France and Germany, and later to the United States.

Israel’s economic method has gradually changed— government companies were

privatized, and for better or for worse, the American model won.

There is nobody in Israel who aspires to establish a Soviet regime, not even the veterans of the Israeli Communist Party or the Hadash party.

Only the Right puts the democratic rules of the game at risk. There are Israeli politicians for who keeping a grip on the West Bank is more important than Israel existing as a country in which the law prevails. And there those who try to imitate Trump's blatant, uninhibited rhetoric.

This mixture transformed the Bayit Yehudi party — a niche faction — into a leading force in determining government policies.

This is the bad news. The good news is that there is no other alternative to the liberal Western democracy. The Israelis will not accept any other regime, not in Tel Aviv, not in Jerusalem, not in Ma'ale Adumim, and not in Bnei Brak.

The West will recover, history will see to that. Our job is to make sure we don't catch the virus until that happens.

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An Israeli evaluation of Trump's presidency

The State of Israel couldn’t have dreamt of a friendlier president than Donald Trump. For Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Trump is the manifestation of all his hopes and dreams, especially following the contentious leadership of former president Barack Obama.

At the tail end of the second year of Trump’s presidency, we can conclude there are more positives than negatives. For one, Trump moved the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and recognized the historic city as Israel’s capital (even though the move is largely symbolic, since not one embassy employee has so far moved from Tel Aviv).

Another positive is Trump’s decision to withdraw from Iran nuclear deal and reinstall all US sanctions on the country, reiterating Netanyahu’s sentiments that the deal would pave the way for Islamic Republic to build an atomic bomb.

Graffityof Trump in Bethlehem (Photo: AFP)

US support for Israel at the United Nations has also been unprecedented. Gone are the days when America looked the other way whenever the Security Council passed another biased, anti-Israeli resolution. The most vivid example of that is Resolution 2234 condemning the Jewish settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, passed on the last dayof Obama’s term.

Most importantly, Trump sends a message to the American people and the international community that Israel are the “good guys,” which has also helped on the path to normalizing ties with Saudi Arabia.

On the other hand, the new peace plan (aka "the Deal of the Century!") that the US administration has been developing for the past two years is stalling, and that’s something that can be interpreted as either positive or negative, depending on your side of the political spectrum. The Trump administration hasn’t correctly assessed the damage that the embassy relocation will do to the negotiating process and how little impact the move would have on the international community—so far, only Guatemala has followed in US footsteps.

Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu at the UN in 2018 (Photo: GPO) (Photo: Gov. Press Office)

There’s the recently announced withdrawal of US troops from Syria, which is very worrying rning for Israel. According to senior Israeli officials, Trump has essentially thrown the Jewish state under the bus, handing its war-torn northern neighbor country to the Iranians and Russians to do with what they will.

Trump’s ambiguous stance on the anti-Semitic white nationalists in the US is also problematic, and so is the rift he’s created within the US public, something that only harms Israel in the long term and turns support for the Jewish state to a bipartisan issue.

And there are those who claim that Trump’s pro-Israeli rhetoric hasn't translated into action. For instance, Trump hasn’t increased the aid package, unlike Obama who has given Israel significantly more money than any other US president, even by Netanyahu’s own admission.

The prime minister went on to correct himself once Trump was elected, insisting that the relationship between the two countries has never been better than during the current US administration. But has it?  

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Erdogan is not a benevolent sultan of old, he's a monster that must be stopped

Once upon a time, a Turkish sultan in situ was good news, such as those, for example, during the expulsion from Spain in 1492. The Sultan Bayezid II, who ruled 1481-1512, sent ships to Grenada to save the dispossessed Jews and invite them to live across the Ottoman Empire. Your loss, Bayezid tolds those who signed the deportation order, is our gain. And gain they did. The Jews were not only loyal, but also helped to develop the economy and spiritual life in every place they reached across the empire.

Life was not always good for the Jews under the Ottomans and/or the Turks. But what is very clear is that the current Sultan, Recep

Tayyip Erdoğan, is an impudent anti-Semite. His repeated statements make it clear that his role model is former Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and not sultans of yore who treated the Jews fairly. This attitude of Erdogan's did not start today, or even with the 2010 Mavi Marmara crisis, when IDF troops and Turkish activists clashed on board a Gaza-bound boat with deadly results. When he was younger, Erdogan wrote a play called "Mas-Kom-Ya", which depicts a conspiracy by the Freemasons, the Communists, and the Jews.

 

Since 1984, Turkey has destroyed 3,000 Kurdish villages, implemented mass transfer of the local population and caused a "Kurdish Nakba" of two million people who became refugees in their own country. During this orchestrated war on the Kurdish people, there have been massacres during which 30,000 people were killed. Even if Israel made every effort, it could not scratch the surface of the horrors perpetrated by the Turks, not those of recent decades and certainly not those of the last century, including the genocide committed by the Turks against the Armenians, and the atrocities committed in the framework of the expulsion of Christians at the end of the First World War.

Kurds protesting against Erdogan in Germany (Photo: AP))

Erdogan himself is responsible for several massacres committed in recent years. For example, his soldiers raided the city of Cizre, in the northeast of the country, in February 2016. Hundreds of civilians hid in three basements, but it did not help them as Erdogan's soldiers massacred them mercilessly. A total of 178 people were killed, most of them innocent civilians.

And this is one of many events. The list of crimes is long, but the world barely pays heed with them, because the guiding principle is all too familiar: As far as Muslims massacring Muslims is concerned – the world is silent. Muslims are treated like stupid children, and allowed to get away with much. The unfortunate Muslims on the receiving end complain bitterly about this treatment, which is seen as a license to commit atrocities.

Erdogan has managed to raise this principle to new heights. He complains about Israel, which is fighting jihad, while he also supports this jihad; he has erased the gap (although it is doubtful this gap even exists) between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism; he commits massacres against his own people, while accusing Israel of massacring the Palestinians.

Erdogan's anti-Semitic campaign continues with full force. Last year, Turkish TV aired an anti-Semitic series that included allegations of plots that were allegedly the brainchild the Jew Theodor Herzl, which were "inspired by real historical facts." This was not the first antisemitic series. In Turkey, it's routine.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan (Photo: Reuters)

One cannot easily dismmiss Erdogan, who in the past voiced opposition to Bashar Assad's continued rule in Syria, but soon joined the axis of evil that includes Iran and Hezbollah. There are those who argue that Turkey's economic interests will lead to restraint, but that's a mistake. History proves that leaders of Erdogan's ilk will pick ideological principles, especially those rooted in hatred, over national interests. Erdogan's Justice and Development Party is tied to the Muslim Brotherhood, whose founder, Hassan al-Banna, penned an article on the importance of the "industry of death." That's the idea, those are the principles that Erdogan follows.

It is important to note that the president of Turkey is not the enemy of Israel, he is the enemy of the free world. Europe already detests him; countries such as the Netherlands and Germany refused entry to ministers from his party. But this did not stop Erdogan from becoming the contractor for the project to stop the flow of refugees, for which he gets billions. This helps in the short term, but in the long run, Europe is cultivating a monster who is becoming increasingly racist and anti-Semitic.

Monsters like this must be stopped when they are small and toothless. But Europe has forgotten everything and learned nothing. And the monster continues to grow.

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Erdogan is not a benevolent sultan of old, he's a monster that must be stopped : http://bit.ly/2rQpZhI