No Longer Supporting Likud

Posted on: December 30th, 2010

One morning recently, I woke up to find that someone had plastered our yishuv community with signs proclaiming, "Join the Likud Political Party." The signs and subsequent Internet and SMS messages informed us that party workers would soon be around to sign us up.

Changes Ahead? American Nuclear Policy And Israeli Strategic Doctrine (Part II)

Posted on: December 22nd, 2010

Fourth, the Obama anti-nuclear vision does not provide any useful guidance on how to deal with those refractory states and sub-states that may not be subject to ordinary deterrent threats. This brings to mind the perplexing security problem of prospective enemy irrationality.

Changes Ahead? American Nuclear Policy And Israeli Strategic Doctrine (Part I)

Posted on: December 15th, 2010

From the beginning, Israel has successfully managed to craft its overriding strategic doctrine apart from any specific U.S. expectations. To be sure, keeping its "bomb in the basement" has been at least partially a response to expressed American wishes. After all, any explicit end to nuclear ambiguity could have proven unacceptable to Washington. Still, all other core doctrinal considerations of nuclear force structure, basing, targeting and nuclear retaliatory thresholds have likely been fashioned, quite correctly, to suit only Israel.

America’s Honey Trap

Posted on: December 15th, 2010

Did you hear what Obama is offering? What? F-35 Stealth Bombers. And why do we need them?

The Fiction Of Palestine

Posted on: December 15th, 2010

Whatever little remains of the so-called Middle East peace process suffered yet another body blow this month, as two of the largest countries in South America formally recognized an independent Palestinian state.

All Is Not Well On The Eastern Front

Posted on: December 15th, 2010

By now, many are aware of the tough anti-Israel situations on college campuses. Colleges and universities in California and Canada have earned themselves especially notorious reputations. But what is happening along the East Coast? I've been speaking to far too many people who are comfortably numb because they "just don't feel or see it." Reality check: The wind is blowing the wrong way on the eastern front, too.

A Strategic Imperative: Maintaining Israel’s Pax Atomica In The Islamic Middle East (Part I)

Posted on: December 8th, 2010

Si vis pacem, para bellum atomicum. "If you want peace, prepare for atomic war." However reluctantly, this must be Israel's overriding strategic mantra in the years ahead. This is not because a nuclear war is especially likely, but rather because Israel's nuclear deterrent will remain indispensable for the prevention of large-scale conventional conflict.

After The American Elections Israel, “Peace,” And International Law (Part III)

Posted on: December 1st, 2010

President Obama has hitherto accepted the language of a "moderate" Palestinian Authority. The PA and its associates are distinctly obligated to refrain from incitement against Israel. Going back even to the legal antecedents of the current peace process, the Interim Agreement (Oslo 2) stated, at Article XXII, that Israel and the PA "shall seek to foster mutual understanding and tolerance and shall accordingly abstain from incitement, including hostile propaganda, against each other...." In the Note for the Record, which accompanied the Hebron Protocol of January 15,1997, the PA reaffirmed its commitment regarding "Preventing Incitement and Hostile Propaganda, as specified in Article XXII of the Interim Agreement." Substantially familiar if more general reaffirmations can readily be found in the Road Map.

After The American Elections Israel, “Peace,” And International Law (Part II)

Posted on: November 24th, 2010

But what has all this to do with present-day Israel, the recent American elections, and the Obama Road Map? For a very long time, certainly for the past dozen years, specifically anti-Jewish and anti-Israel diatribes have been standard fare on Palestinian Authority, Syrian, Egyptian, Saudi Arabian and Hezbollah television. As for the Arab print-media, even in "moderate" Jordan, the general and unrelenting theme remains that Jewish "infidels" are distinctly less than human, basically degenerate and suitable only for sacrificial (terrorist) killing.

After The American Elections: Israel, Peace And International Law (Part I)

Posted on: November 17th, 2010

After the recent U.S. election, President Barack Obama unhappily conceded that he had suffered a "shellacking." For the most part, the president was referring to an obviously firm and far-reaching rejection of his domestic policies. Nonetheless, his personal influence has now been weakened generally, including in many areas of U.S. foreign policy. It is fair to ask, therefore, whether his oft-stated preferences for a "Road Map to Peace in the Middle East" (that is, creation of a Palestinian state out of the still-living body of Israel), and also for "a world free of nuclear weapons (that is, a world in which Israel would no longer be able to deter existential attacks) are still a matter of reasonable concern.

In A Language Of Lies, Don’t Lose To Wordplay

Posted on: November 17th, 2010

Americans understand the power of wordplay. When pro-abortion activists were fighting an uphill battle in the '90s, trying to gain public support for their cause, a very shrewd marketing company insightfully changed the language of their debate. The debate was no longer about abortion; now it was about "choice." The contentious question, "Are you pro-abortion?" had a new compelling answer: "No, I'm pro-choice." Language effectively changed the abortion issue, successfully focusing on the mother while disregarding the plight of the child. There is another roiling debate, this time concerning Israel, and you can help reframe it.

In A Language Of Lies, Don’t Lose To Wordplay

Posted on: November 17th, 2010

Americans understand the power of wordplay. When pro-abortion activists were fighting an uphill battle in the '90s, trying to gain public support for their cause, a very shrewd marketing company insightfully changed the language of their debate. The debate was no longer about abortion; now it was about "choice." The contentious question, "Are you pro-abortion?" had a new compelling answer: "No, I'm pro-choice." Language effectively changed the abortion issue, successfully focusing on the mother while disregarding the plight of the child. There is another roiling debate, this time concerning Israel, and you can help reframe it.

The Third Oldest Profession

Posted on: November 17th, 2010

e Jewish world was rocked last week by still another scandal, one so twisted and nefarious that it simply defies belief.

Palestine, Iran And Israel’s Nuclear Strategy: Critical Notes for an Essential Strategic Policy in Jerusalem (Part III)

Posted on: November 11th, 2010

Pretended irrationality can be a double-edged sword. Brandished too irrationally, Israeli preparations for a Samson Option could encourage enemy preemptions. Here, again, the specter of a nuclear Iran should emerge front and center. After all, sanctions against Iran have represented little more than a fly on the elephant's back.

Palestine, Iran And Israel’s Nuclear Strategy: Critical Notes for an Essential Strategic Policy in Jerusalem (Part II)

Posted on: November 4th, 2010

What is Israel to do? Confronting a new enemy Arab state that could act collaboratively and capably (thanks, largely, to the U.S.) with other Arab states, or possibly even with non-Arab Iran, and also potentially serious synergies between the birth of Palestine, and renewed terrorism from Lebanon, Israel could feel itself compelled to bring hitherto clandestine elements of its "ambiguous" nuclear strategy into the light of day. Here, leaving the "bomb in the basement" would no longer make strategic sense.

Palestine, Iran And Israel’s Nuclear Strategy: Critical Notes for an Essential Strategic Policy in Jerusalem (Part I)

Posted on: October 27th, 2010

In the always complex discourse of nuclear strategy, critical thinking is a "net." Only those who cast will catch. To calculate Israel's best strategic options in the months and years ahead, the capable strategist must continue to ask and answer difficult questions persistently, patiently, and above all, systematically. Only by drawing together, seamlessly, this interrelated body of queries and replies, can the serious military analyst ever hope for a coherent and comprehensive body of military and diplomatic theory - a strategic master plan from which particular policies and decisions can be suitably extracted. The only alternative is the usual patchwork quilt of journalistic or reportorial "explanation," an arbitrary mélange of more or less disjointed information and factoids lacking even the rudiments of predictive thought.

Israel’s Nuclear Ambiguity: Opportunity Or Liability? (Part III)

Posted on: October 20th, 2010

Only a selective end to its nuclear ambiguity would allow Israel to exploit the potentially considerable benefits of a Samson Option. Should Israel choose to keep its Bomb in the "basement," therefore, it could not make any use of the Samson Option.

Israel’s Nuclear Ambiguity: Opportunity Or Liability? (Part II)

Posted on: October 14th, 2010

The Israeli policy of an undeclared nuclear capacity will not work indefinitely. Left unrevised, this policy will fail. The most obvious locus of failure would be Iran.

Disturbing, But Not Hopeless

Posted on: October 13th, 2010

Misinformation and hate are spreading thick at American colleges. We'd like to think that it's not the type of thing that's happening on our very own campuses, but it's certainly occurring.

Three Questions For ‘Peace Process’ Supporters

Posted on: October 13th, 2010

Sometimes the truth can be found in the oddest of places, if one knows where to look. Even in poll results. A new study by the Ramallah-based Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research bears this out. Released last week, it raises three difficult questions for all those who continue to believe that Israel must make concessions to win peace with the Palestinians.