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Jewish World Review Feb. 5, 2010 / 21 Shevat 5770 With war increasingly more likely, seditious Israeli anti-Israel group exposed By Caroline B. Glick
The latest developments are menacing. Last Saturday Iran's unelected
president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad threatened to open up a new round of
hostilities on February 11. Then Wednesday Iran launched a new missile into
space. Israeli and US missile experts claim that the missile launch signals
that Iran is developing intercontinental ballistic missiles and building the
capacity to launch nuclear warheads on ballistic missiles.
Following the missile launch, Syria's President and Foreign Minister issued
incendiary comments threatening Israel with war. Notably they did so the
same day the US informed Syria of its intention to send an ambassador to
Damascus for the first time in five years.
Hamas for its part sent barrels of explosives drifting to the Israeli
coastline - exposing new ways it can kill us. And Fatah for its part decided
to kiss Hamas's ring this week. Senior Fatah official Nabil Shaath's
obsequious visit to Gaza Wednesday was a graphic demonstration of Hamas's
preeminence in Palestinian society.
Then there is Hizbullah. In a speech on January 15, Hizbullah leader Hassan
Nasrallah pledged that the next war will "change the face of the region."
This may not be an exaggeration. It isn't simply that under the blind-eye of
UN peacekeepers Hizbullah has replenished and expanded its arsenal to
include long-range missiles. It isn't simply that in the three and half
years since the war Hizbullah has taken control over the Lebanese
government. Hizbullah has also build up a formidable ground force. In the
event of war, these forces may be deployed as an expeditionary force inside
of northern Israel.
And if the precedent of former MK Azmi Bishara - who fled Israel after
learning that he was about to be indicted for serving as a Hizbullah agent
in the 2006 war - is any indication of Hizbullah's modus operandi, Israel
may also face the specter of Israeli Arab fifth columnists assisting
Hizbullah forces inside the country.
Assuming for the moment that the IDF and the government are prepared to
contend with these mounting military threats, Prime Minister Binyamin
Netanyahu and his colleagues must take the necessary steps to withstand and
minimize the effectiveness of the far-Left's expected political warfare
against Israel. As the past decade has made clear, the aim of that warfare
is to delegitimize Israel's right to defend itself in order to make it
impossible for Israel to pursue the war to military and political victory.
As in the military arena, so in the political arena, Israel's foes have
grown from nuisances into strategic threats over the past decade. The
UN-sponsored Goldstone report, which effectively denies Israel's right to
defend itself and criminalizes Israel's military efforts to secure its
citizenry and its territory is evidence of the gravity of the threat Israel
faces as our leaders plan for the coming war.
On this latter plane, the past week has been an eventful and hopeful one.
The latest developments offer guidance for how the government must proceed
as the winds of war blow ever stronger. Late last week the Zionist student
movement Im Tirzu published a detailed report demonstrating that 16
anti-Zionist organizations funded by the post-Zionist New Israel Fund worked
hand in glove with the UN Human Rights Council and Richard Goldstone to
bring about the establishment of the Goldstone committee and give
credibility to its allegations that Israel committed war crimes during
Operation Cast Lead. According to the Im Tirtzu report, 92 percent of
Israeli allegations that Israel committed war crimes in its campaign against
Hamas came from these 16 NIF-funded organizations.
Im Tirtzu's report was prominently covered by Ma'ariv last weekend. The
media coverage provoked calls in the Knesset this week to investigate the
NIF and its operational arms in Israel both through regular committee
hearings and perhaps through a parliamentary investigative panel.
These calls are extraordinary because they represent the first time in a
decade that the legitimacy of these organization has ever been seriously
scrutinized.
Since the Palestinians began their terror war against Israel in September
2000, NIF-sponsored groups have worked steadily to intimidate political
leaders, law enforcement officials and military commanders to toe their
anti-Zionist line. In the wake of the PLO-incited riots in the Israeli Arab
sector in October 2000, the overtly anti-Zionist NIF-funded Adalah group
agitated for the formation of the Orr Commission. Charged with investigating
the police who quelled the rioting rather than the rioters whose violence
forced the prolonged closure of major highways to Jewish traffic throughout
the country, the Orr Commission had a devastating impact of the police's
morale and organizational culture.
Adalah successfully cowed the Barak government into agreeing to rules of
inquiry for the commission that denied police officers even minimal rights
of due process. They were not allowed to confront or question their
accusers. In the aftermath of the commission's public hearings - which
amounted to little more than show trials - the careers of several committed
officers were destroyed. As a consequence, police commanders began
curtailing their law enforcement activities in Arab villages. Everything
from illegal building to livestock theft to incitement to war against Israel
has gone uninvestigated and unpunished.
Furthermore, the Adalah-instigated and orchestrated Orr Commission empowered
the most radical voices in Israeli Arab society. Supported by Arab political
leaders, Adalah published a manifesto calling for the destruction of Israel
as a Jewish state. Bishara's suspected espionage for Hizbullah, and the
legal establishment's self-evident fear of prosecuting him for treason are
also the direct consequence of the Orr Commission.
As for the IDF, NIF-funded organizations have played a key role in
organizing the weekly violent riots at flashpoints like Nahalin and Bi'ilin
and to the recent expansion of these riots to other places in Judea and
Samaria like Neve Tzuf. Supported by anti-Israel activists from Europe and
the US, these riots have had a devastating impact on the IDF's morale and
its ability to defend Israeli communities.
The NIF-funded pro-Palestinian group B'tzelem provides the rioters with
video cameras with which they regularly shoot distorted footage. Their
canned films portray Israeli civilians seeking to defend themselves from the
rioters as attackers. They portray IDF soldiers trying to keep order and
protect Israeli civilians as violent bullies. B'tzelem gives these snuff
films to its supporters in the Israel media which broadcast them as credible
footage and demand that the IDF open investigations against its officers for
carrying out lawful orders.
On the defensive, the IDF is compelled to curtail its operations and Israeli
civilians, now demonized are viewed as legitimate targets for terror
attacks. One recent film of the rioting outside of Neve Tzuf posted on
YouTube shows border guards simply fleeing the scene and leaving the
residents of the community to fend for themselves.
Im Tirtzu's offensive against the NIF sparked outraged protest among the
NIF's supporters on the far left in Israel and in the US. Everyone from
Ma'ariv's in-house anti-Zionist reporters Maya Bengal and Meirav David to J
Street have piled on attacking Im Tirtzu's financial backers and seeking to
demonize the organization by referring to its as extremist, far right,
racist, fascist, out-of-the-mainstream and all the other routine far-left
terms used to demonize Zionists.
What is most encouraging about the aftershocks of the Im Tirtzu report is
that the Left's attempts to demonize it have so far failed. Indeed, the
loudest voices calling for an investigation of NIF and its sponsored
organizations have been MKs from Kadima.
The harsh truth is that the main cause of Israel's poor performance in Cast
Lead and the Second Lebanon War was the Olmert government's ideological
dependence on the far Left and its central contention that it is Israel's
presence in contested areas rather than our enemies' commitment to Israel's
destruction that causes wars. Owing to their allegiance to this falsehood,
Ehud Olmert and Tzipi Livni were unable to prosecute the wars to victory
militarily, justify the limited steps they did take to defend Israel
diplomatically, or discredit the rising chorus of Israeli NGO's arguing that
Israel had no right to defend itself politically.
Since Cast Lead however two important things have happened. First Kadima was
replaced by Likud. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu rightly recognized the
Goldstone report as a strategic attack against Israel. If Israel has no
right to defend itself; if its moves to do constitute war crimes, then
Israel cannot fight, cannot win and will be destroyed. Rather than give
credence to the report, Netanyahu has made discrediting it one his primary
aims in office. And to counteract its force, among other things, for the
first time since the start of the Oslo peace process with the PLO, Israel's
government is asserting the Jewish people's right to Judea and Samaria.
Beyond that, Kadima itself has changed its tune. Now in the opposition,
Kadima no longer needs to defend its rejected plan to unilaterally withdraw
from Judea and Samaria. Abbas's refusal of Olmert's offers to withdraw
Israelis civilians and military personnel from nearly all of Judea and
Samaria and to cede sovereignty in Jerusalem discredited the notion that it
is possible to make peace with the Palestinians. Most importantly, the fact
that Goldstone castigates Livni and Olmert as war criminals requires Kadima
to fight all forces - including the far Left it previously supported - that
give credibility to Goldstone.
These developments clear the way for the Netanyahu government to take steps
to neutralize the potency of these groups. The government should move
swiftly to order the police and the IDF to enforce the laws against these
groups and their allies. It must also provide the political support to
police and military commanders in the field to empower them fulfill their
orders without fear that they will be persecuted for doing their jobs.
If the government seizes the opportunity to weaken these subversive groups,
not only will it be making it clear that political open season on Israel is
over. It will be clearing the way for any future war to end not only in
military victory, but in political victory for Israel as well.
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JWR contributor Caroline B. Glick is the senior Middle East Fellow at the Center for Security Policy in Washington, DC and the deputy managing editor of The Jerusalem Post. Comment by clicking here.
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