Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu recently called Turkey’s Prime Minister, Recep Tayipp Erdogan to apologize for the infamous Turkish flotilla incident that occurred back in May 2010. The reason that Mr. Netanyahu apologized?  His naval commandos, after repeated physical assaults, decided to defend themselves.  What began as Erdogan-instigated aggression against Israel’s legitimate naval blockade against Gaza led the rather conservative Netanyahu to issue an odious apology to Erdogan in a desperate attempt to mend the deluded “Turkish-Israeli alliance” that ceased to exist years ago. Yet the apology may have only opened up a Pandora’s Box for Israel, ominously endangering her security, and showing how Israel’s vigilance has declined over the decades.

In May of 2010, the Islamist IHH – with Turkey’s consent and aid — launched a flotilla to traverse Israeli waters in an attempt to aid the “oppressed Palestinians” living In Hamas-Occupied Gaza. Israel had instituted a blockade against Gaza in 2009 due to illegal weapons being smuggled into the territory.

When the  self-proclaimed ”activists” (“aggressors” might be a better term) aboard the Mavi Marmara came close to Israel’s territorial waters, Israel warned them to turn back. After being ignored, Israeli naval commandos boarded the ship. They first used paintball guns to defend themselves from the  well-armed group.  Finally, when that met with violent resistance and attack, the Israelis responded as any normal military under physical assault would. They used live ammunition, and in the ensuing struggle, nine Turkish nationals were killed.

One can know just what the “activists” had in mind, by listening  to them sing the “Khaybar Song” (sometimes spelled “Khaibar”). In Arabic, this witty ditty rhymes like a charm. But when translated, it shows just what Jihadis have in store, not just for Israel in general, but for Jews in particular. In English, this song states: “Khaibar, Khaibar, Oh Jews, the army of Muhammad will return!”  If one is not versed in the tragic history of how Muhammad exterminated the Jews of Arabia, read about Khaybar and the atrocities that the Muslim Arabs committed against the defenseless Jews.

After Israel’s defensive actions, Islamist Prime Minister Erdogan went on a veritable verbal tirade.  Erdogan warned that more flotillas would be accompanied by Turkish warships. Turkey recalled its ambassador from Tel Aviv and relations between what has become the neo-Ottoman Empire and Israel deteriorated to its lowest levels since Turkey first recognized Israel in 1949. Erdogan’s saber rattling made it appear that a Turko-Israeli war might break out imminently.

Thus it stood, until Barack Obama deigned to step on the soil of the Holy Land in March. According to sources, it was Obama — creator, author, and master of the “apology tour” to the Muslim world — who pressured Netanyahu to call Erdogan and apologize.  After the Israeli leader issued his mea culpa to Erdogan, the Turkish P.M. first said that he would restore   ”full diplomatic relations” with Israel. But as a true Islamic fundamentalist, what he said was not what he meant. Soon, Erdogan stated that re-establishing full relations with Israel “would not take place” and that Israel would have to do more.  Erdogan demanded that compensation be given to the families of the “victims” of the Israelis. This is currently being worked on between Israel and Turkey.

The Turkish delight that Netanyahu presented on a golden platter to Erdogan only fueled Turkey’s sense of invincibility against the dhimmi Yahudi. Not only Erdogan, but Turkey’s press, were ecstatic over Israel’s apologia. Billboards appeared in Istanbul boasting of Israel’s supine behavior. Ironically, Turkey’s opposition secularist party, the CHP issued a statement voicing concern over Israel’s apology, even blaming Obama for it.

For realists, and not fantasists, Netanyahu’s Hebraic version of Obama’s “apology tour” is nothing short of a political and diplomatic disaster. Former Israeli foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, called the apology in a Jerusalem Post article a “serious mistake.” And despite his tough talk over the years — and being lambasted internationally — this is not the first time that Benjamin Netanyahu has retreated from his nationalist views.

Quite disturbing is the timing of his non sequitur apology.  Only in late February did Erdogan call Zionism a “crime against humanity.” Erdogan even went further by defending  his sinister remarks less than a month later. Indeed, Erdogan could rightly be considered a Jew-hater based on previous remarks dating back to the 1990′s. For Israel, it should be axiomatic that a country with a modicum of pride would have told Erdogan a long time ago to take a dive in the Bosporus.

Perhaps the worst part of this affair is that Netanyahu’s apology can be viewed by her enemies as basically apologizing for Israel’s very existence, and undermining Israel’s military. Many Israeli commandos involved in the incident felt betrayed by Netanyahu’s apology. Bewildering is the fact  that Netanyahu  himself was a commando of Israel’s elite Sayeret Matkal, in which he took part in liberating Israeli hostages from PLO terrorists in the skyjacking of a Sabena plane back in 1972.

It is quite telling and sad that a warrior like Netanyahu can revert to dhimmi status before Erdogan, who has declared himself a “servant of Sharia.” Netanyahu’s apology is akin to a crime victim apologizing to the criminal for attacking him. Indeed, many Israelis believe that it is Erdogan who should be brought up on charges as a result of the Mavi Marmara incident.

Apologizing to Erdogan for the events of May 31, 2010 is as ridiculous as if Israel had apologized for a military operation that occurred on July 4, 1976. On that day, Israeli commandos landed in Idi Amin’s Uganda to free over 100 Israeli hostages taken by Arab and German terrorists. In the firefight, the terrorists and some Ugandan soldiers were killed. Several of the hostages were also killed in the crossfire. Israel lost its leading soldier in “Operation Thunderbolt.” His name was Jonathan Netanyahu, the brother of Benjamin Netanyahu. Can one imagine the uproar in Israel if then Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin had called and apologized to Amin, as well as offering “compensation” to the Ugandan soldiers killed? It would have been unthinkable. Yet, ironically, Benjamin Netanyahu has practically done this for Erdogan and his Islamist government.

In the near future, Netanyahu’s apology will in all likelihood usher in dire consequences for Israel. Already, Erdogan is planning to visit Gaza. Israel’s transnational Muslim enemies will see these incidents as more signs of weakness on the part of Israel and its will to survive. Israel, always under an international microscope, may very well have opened up a Pandora’s Box with Netanyahu’s apology. Indeed, if one apologizes for defending his right to live, is Israel’s very existence now imperiled more than ever before?

Originally published at the American Thinker.

Recently, a group of American Jews, including Rabbi Rick Jacobs, head of the Union for Reform Judaism (URJ); Rabbi David Ellenson, President of the URJ’s Hebrew Union College and Jewish Institute of Religion; Rabbi Eric Yoffie, previous URJ head; and Rabbi David Saperstein of the URJ’s Religious Action Center, signed a letter to Israel’s PM Netanyahu. Joining them were several prominent Jewish philanthropists, academics and liberal politicians.

The letter lauds President Obama’s ‘leadership’ for helping to bring about Netanyahu’s apology to Turkey over the Mavi Marmara affair, which I and others believe to be a disastrous mistake.

And — almost incredibly, given the recent history of Israeli withdrawals and concessions answered only by war, terrorism and further demands — the letter has the chutzpah to call for Israel to make “painful territorial sacrifices for the sake of peace.”

This point of view may have made sense thirty years ago, but the world, as they say, has moved on, with the rise of Hamas and its violent takeover of Gaza, the second Intifada, the 2006 Lebanon war and consequent re-arming of Hizballah, the abrogation of the Oslo accords by the PLO, the ascent of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, the Iranian nuclear program, the civil war in Syria … need I go on?

As always, the letter fallaciously conflates actual peace with the signing of a ‘peace’ agreement between Israel and the PLO and concomitant  concessions and withdrawals by Israel.

The endorsement of the Union for Reform Judaism, the largest Jewish denomination in America, placed on this piece of obsequious stupidity is not surprising, considering that Rabbi Jacobs was an activist in the phony ‘pro-Israel’ group J Street as well as the New Israel Fund before being selected to head the URJ. Yet again the liberal Jewish establishment demonstrates that support for President Obama trumps concern for Israel’s survival.

The Emergency Committee for Israel (ECI), a conservative advocacy group which supports U.S. political candidates and policies favorable to Israel, put it remarkably well in its own letter to Netanyahu, which I reproduce here:

Dear Prime Minister Netanyahu:

We know you don’t need our advice on how to handle the peace process – but given the decision by a group of self-described American Jewish leaders to call for you to make “painful territorial sacrifices,” we felt it appropriate to convey our own thoughts on the matter.

Be assured that they don’t speak for us or for a majority of Americans. We not only question the wisdom of their advice, we question their standing to issue such an admonition to a democratically-elected prime minister whose job is not to assuage the political longings of 100 American Jews, but to represent – and ensure the security of – the Israeli people.

Indeed, it’s puzzling to us why a small group of American Jews believes it appropriate to demand “painful territorial sacrifices” of Israelis, when those issuing the demand will not experience the pain, or be compelled to sacrifice anything, should their advice prove foolish – as it has so many times in the past. We affirm the words of Israel’s ambassador to the United States, Michael Oren, who recently asked an American Jewish audience to “respect the decisions made by the world’s most resilient democracy.”

The “American Jewish leaders” who deign to advise you today are largely the same leaders who rarely, if ever, demand “painful sacrifices” of Palestinian leaders – or even demand that they come to the negotiating table, which they have refused to do in any meaningful way since 2008. From the safety of America, in the past they have recommended trusting Yasser Arafat, dividing Jerusalem, surrendering the Golan Heights to Syria, and withdrawing from territory that today is controlled by Iranian-backed terrorist groups.

Before rushing to issue new recommendations, we suggest that these oracles of bad advice might pause to reflect on the wisdom of the recommendations they’ve already made.

We, too, have strong opinions on the peace process – but one thing we never presume to do is instruct our friends in Israel on the level of danger to which they should expose themselves.

We trust, of course, that you are under no misapprehensions about any of this. But we felt it important that you heard from a mainstream voice in addition to the predictable calls from a certain cast of American activists for more Israeli concessions.

Sincerely,

William Kristol
Rachel Abrams
Gary Bauer
Noah Pollak
Michael Goldfarb

Visit Fresno Zionism.

Populism is a double edged sword, as likely to stab the politician who brandishes it as it does his targets. Israel’s new Finance Minister Yair Lapid is a case in point. One of the ways Lapid has distinguished himself as a practitioner of “new politics” has been his Facebook presence. Of course, every Israeli politician, with the possible exception of the Haredim, has a robust Facebook presence, but Lapid, formerly a successful journalist and TV host, actually writes his own entries.

It’s been the secret of his success, being one of the people, the ultimate citizen-politician coming to the aid of his country. He spoke ingratiatingly to the “middle class” (in Israel, with its Socialist and classless history, the term is “middle strata”), singing the familiar tune about the most productive chunk of Israeli society, who pay the bulk of the taxes, serve in the military (including reserve duty, well into middle-age) and carry the national burden on their shoulders.

Who were not among those prized citizens? The populist answer that brought in 19 Knesset seats to his brand-new “Yesh Atid” party was simple: The tycoons, who make millions but manage to evade honest taxation with savvy lawyers who know all the loopholes; and the Haredim, who give nothing and just take, take, take.

Mind you, populist messages don’t have to be true, they only have to sound good. In the case of who is to blame for Israel’s inequality in sharing the burden, it should be noted that the local tycoons pay a whole lot more into the state coffers than do their fellow fat cats in the U.S.; and while the Haredim comprise a mere 8 percent of the population, the majority of Israeli Arabs, comprising more than 20 percent, contribute even less. And as to reserve duty, it has been established that residents of the settlements—who are also vilified as an unfair burden on the state budget—comprising 5 percent of the population, shoulder about 30 percent of the reserve duty burden.

Following his celebrated victory in the last (his first) elections, and then following a brutal stretch of coalition negotiations, Lapid landed one of the top three government jobs that aren’t Prime Minister: Foreign Minister (reserved for the embattled Avigdor Liberman), Defense (retained by Likud and given to former IDF chief Moshe Yaalon), and Finance.

Many Israeli pundits surmised that this was a clever trap laid out by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, to force Lapid (who fought to get the foreign office) into the worst and most ungrateful spot as the man in charge of the budget (currently in arrears to the tune of $15 billion), or, more accurately, of cutting the budget, and worse yet – of raising taxes. Wouldn’t that tarnish some of this cocky winner’s sheen?

Possibly. The new finance minister was in a bit of a shock after his first encounter with Israel’s budget ailments, which he called “monstrous.” Incidentally, in a world in which the U.S. public debt is estimated at $11.917 trillion, or about 75% of the GDP, going gaga over a puny $15 billion seems a stretch – but Israeli law prohibits a government deficit of more than 3 percent of the budget, which is part of the secret of Israel’s remarkable success, posting a 3 point growth even in 2012 (more than 5 points in 2010).

After his initial, well publicized shock, Lapid’s solution to his Finance job woes was to employ his tried and true, unabashed populism, speaking directly to the voters over the heads of his civil servant experts at the finance ministry. In short, rather than cower before their superior knowledge of economics and markets and all that boring stuff (I’m not making this up, I’m practically quoting verbatim), Minister Lapid forced them into his arena.

Here’s Lapid’s Facebook entry from Monday (while the rest of us were in shul, celebrating the splitting of the Sea of Reeds):

“I want to talk about Mrs. Cohen,” I told senior Treasury officials few days ago.

They paused, surprised.

We were in a large meeting that dealt, as usual, with trying to close the deficit. The long table was littered with cups of long since chilled coffee, and the big screen was showing yet another infinite column of numbers.

“Who is Mrs. Cohen?” someone asked from the far end of the table.

“Ricky Cohen from Hadera,” I explained. “She is 37, a high school teacher. Her husband has a minor hi-tech job and they make together a little over 20 thousand shekel (exactly $5,538.94) a month (or $66,467.28 a year). They own an apartment and they travel abroad every two years, but they have no chance of buying an apartment for any of their three children in the future.”

A few smiles broke through around me.

“We sit here,” I said, “day after day, talking about balancing the budget, but our job is not to balance Excel sheets, but to help Mrs. Cohen.”

“We need to help her,” I continued, “because she is helping us. It’s because of people like Ms. Cohen that our state exists. She represents the Israeli middle class – people who get up in the morning, work hard, pay taxes and do not belong to any interest group, but carry on their backs the Israeli economy. What are we doing for her? Do we remember that we’re her employees?”

The smiles were replaced with thoughtful looks.

“I want us to hold a special meeting about Mrs. Cohen,” I said, “where each of us will suggest how we—as the Ministry of Finance—can help her. I want structure for her programs and reforms to help her make ends meet, to improve the quality of her life, to lower her cost of living, to make her feel that her tax money really works for her.”

Now, that’s well written populism. And it was rewarding to imagine Minister Yair Lapid, in his leather jacket and James Dean hairdo, forcing his Finance bigwigs and wizards not merely to sit through the kind of stump speech one could hear anywhere there was a barn and a bale of hay on the great American prairie, anytime between 1920 and 1928 – he actually made them turn it into a policy discussion. Bravo.

But he who lives by Facebook would most likely die by Facebook. And he who makes populist brownie points using Mrs. Ricky Cohen can end up staring into the unamused gaze of an altogether different Mrs. Ricky Cohen.

“Finance Minister Lapid, look into my eyes and tell me how we get from here to a new reality in Israel? It’s unacceptable that children would come to school hungry,” this Mrs. Ricky Cohen, a social activist and a single mother of five children, said to Lapid through the kind services of a Channel 2 morning show.

She added that, unlike the Mrs. Ricky Cohen from Hadera who vacations abroad every two years, she only dreams of vacationing, and while she’s at it, she’s also dreaming of one day maybe owning a car. Because she only makes 4 thousand shekel a month ($1,107.79, or $13,293.48 annually before taxes).

Lapid’s Facebook entry has been bombarded with mostly angry, make it livid, responses, each one putting the self-made wealthy journalist deeper in his place. It also turned out that with her and her husband’s combined income, Mrs. Ricky Cohen from Hadera is nowhere near Israel’s median, income wise – she is closer to the top 80 percent.

Lapid’s enemies on the left quickly showed him what real populism sounds like.

“The post published by Lapid reveals that our new finance minister has no idea who the Israeli middle class is,” accused Meretz Chairperson MK Zehava Gal-On. “Lapid’s remarks are arrogant and out of touch,” she said.

“It must be that an income of 20 thousand shekels is not a lot of money for Lapid and his millionaire friends,” accused Gal-On’s fellow faction member MK Issawi Farij. “Lapid said today clearly for whom he came to work: for the top 20 percentiles of Israeli society – not for his imaginary Mrs. Cohen from Hadera, but for Mrs. Levy from Ramat Hasharon and Mrs. Berkowitz from Ramat Aviv,” Freij slammed the new finance minister.

I must admit it’s fun to watch Lapid doing his first public stumble in his new job. It’s probably a thousand times more fun to watch if you’re a senior Finance Ministry official who’s just been lectured on your civil service duties by a guy without a high school diploma.

But don’t expect this embarrassing Mrs. Cohen incident to come even near sealing Yair Lapid’s stint as the man who authors Israel’s budget plans. True, his name and both Mrs. Cohens’ will remain forever together on Google, but Lapid has already shown the kind of political skill you don’t get from a high school diploma, and he’s going to learn the lesson and come back with a better thought out tune.

Perhaps a tweet this time.

Following 3 rocket launches from Gaza on Tuesday evening, the Israel Air Force struck back at targets within Gaza.

This was the first time that Israel has responded with an air assault to the Gaza rocket launches since the Pillars of Defense cease fire. No one was reported injured in the IAF strike.

The Gazan rockets hit in the Eshkol region.

There was also a mortar launched earlier in the day that fell short and landed within the Gaza Strip.

The IDF Spokesperson said,

“The IDF will not accept any attempt to attack Israeli citizens or IDF soldiers, and the IDF has no intention of allowing the return to the situation as it was before Operation Pillars of Defense.
The IDF views the attacks on Israel as very serious, and holds Hamas responsible.”

Earlier in the day police also found the remains of the Palestinian rocket that targeted Israel during President Obama’s visit on March 21.

The Gaza rocket had hit a kindergarten in Sderot. The school was closed and empty at the time for the extended Passover vacation.

We know that “history is written by the victors,” and until recently much of Israel’s history was written by the Left. Begin, Jabotinsky and others were treated as marginal, extremist figures, sometimes even vilified by the socialist establishment.

Israel underwent a political revolution in 1977 with the election of its first right-wing government, led by Menachem Begin, although vestiges of the old leftist establishment hung on in the arts, academia and media. Maybe for that reason the historical record is still unfair to Begin — whom some believe to have been the greatest of Israel’s Prime Ministers — and to Vladimir (Ze’ev) Jabotinsky, a remarkably prescient thinker and philosopher of Zionism.

Jabotinsky thought that Israel is not only physically located in the Middle East, but must live in the Middle East in order to survive. He understood the importance of ideology, of holding on to one’s convictions, of symbols and of honor — quite the opposite of some of today’s ‘pragmatic’ politicians.

In 1911, Jabotinsky wrote an essay called “Instead of Excessive Apology” (thanks to Dan Friedman for reminding me). One hundred and two years ago, he explained why it is craven and in any case pointless to apologize to Jew-haters the way Prime Minister Netanyahu did to Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan.

In searching for a translation of Jabotinsky’s piece, I found one by Boris Shusteff, an Israeli of Russian origin. Shusteff had a few words about apologies also, even when there is something to apologize for (which of course there was not in the case of Turkey).

Here is Shusteff’s translation of the main points of Jabotinsky’s essay. Of course the ‘we’ refers to the then-stateless Jewish people, but it applies equally to the Jewish state. It could have been written yesterday, couldn’t it?

Instead of Excessive Apology by Zev Jabotinsky, 1911

Translated from Russian by Boris Shusteff

We constantly and very loudly apologize… Instead of turning our backs to the accusers, as there is nothing to apologize for, and nobody to apologize to, we swear again and again that it is not our fault… Isn’t it long overdue to respond to all these and all future accusations, reproaches, suspicions, slanders and denunciations by simply folding our arms and loudly, clearly, coldly and calmly answer with the only argument that is understandable and accessible to this public: ‘Go to Hell!’?

Who are we, to make excuses to them; who are they to interrogate us? What is the purpose of this mock trial over the entire people where the sentence is known in advance? Our habit of constantly and zealously answering to any rabble has already done us a lot of harm and will do much more. … The situation that has been created as a result, tragically confirms a well known saying: “Qui s’excuse s’accuse.” ["one that apologizes for oneself accuses oneself" -- ed.]

We ourselves have acquainted our neighbors with the thought that for every embezzling Jew it is possible to drag the entire ancient people to answer, a people that was already legislating at the time when the neighbors had not even invented a bast shoe. Every accusation causes among us such a commotion that people unwittingly think, ‘why are they so afraid of everything?’ Apparently their conscience is not clear.’

Exactly because we are ready at every minute to stand at attention, there develops among the people an inescapable view about us, as of some specific thievish tribe. We think that our constant readiness to undergo a search without hesitation and to turn out our pockets, will eventually convince mankind of our nobility; look what gentlemen we are–we do not have anything to hide! This is a terrible mistake. The real gentlemen are the people that will not allow anyone for any reason to search their apartment, their pockets or their soul. Only a person under surveillance is ready for a search at every moment…. This is the only one inevitable conclusion from our maniac reaction to every reproach–to accept responsibility as a people for every action of a Jew, and to make excuses in front of everybody including hell knows who. I consider this system to be false to its very root. We are hated not because we are blamed for everything, but we are blamed for everything because we are not loved…

I was appalled to learn a week ago that the Israeli prime minister had apologized to his Turkish counterpart for his government’s actions during the Mavi Marmara incident, seeing this as feeding the Turkish government’s inflated sense of grandeur and power.

That prediction was borne out in spades.

The municipality of Turkey’s capital city, Ankara, put up billboards on city streets reveling in the Israeli apology. They are not subtle, showing a sad-looking Netanyahu beneath a larger, buoyant Erdoğan, separated by the Mavi Marmara itself. Addressing Erdoğan, they read: “Israel apologized to Turkey. Dear Prime Minister, we are grateful that you let our country experience this pride.”

Erdogan himself claims not only that the apology has changed the balance of power in the Arab-Israeli conflict but that it obligates Israel to work with Ankara in its diplomacy with the Palestinians. He told parliament:

The point we have arrived at as a result of our consultations with all our brothers in Palestine and peripheral countries is increasing our responsibility with regard to solving the Palestinian question and thus is bringing about a new equation.

Erdogan also claimed that Israel agreed to cooperate with Turkey on talks with the Palestinians. Hürriyet Daily News goes on to paraphrase Erdoğan:

He said all his regional interlocutors, including Khaled Mashaal of the Hamas, admit that a new era has begun in the Middle East what they all call after Turkish victory on Israeli apology.

No less notable is Erdogan’s petty put down of the Israeli side:

Erdogan said his conversation with Netanyahu took place under the witness of Obama but he wanted first to talk with the US President as he missed his voice. “I talked to him and we have reviewed the text and confirmed the [apology] process. we have therefore accomplished this process under Obama’s witness,” Erdogan said, adding this phone conversation has also been recorded alongside with written statements issued from all three sides.

Ryan Mauro sums up Turkish actions over the past week:

Erdogan is extending his time in the spotlight by demanding that Israel pay $1 million to each of the nine casualties’ families, ten times the amount Israel has offered. He isn’t yet dropping his case against the Israeli generals involved in the raid, nor is he fully restoring diplomatic ties with Israel. And he’s announced that he will visit the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip in what is a thinly-concealed victory lap.

Indeed, the Turkish gloating has been so conspicuous and extended that it may have prompted to a healthy sense of reality. So long as the Mavi Marmara incident hung over their relations with Ankara, Israelis and others could believe that an apology would magically undo the past decade. The illusion could persist that the Turks, however unreasonably, just needed to put this unpleasantness aside and things would revert to the good old days.

Now that Israelis humiliated themselves and Erdogan is rampaging ahead, some are awakening to the fact that this apology only made matters worse. Naftali Bennett, Israel’s minister of economy and trade, slammed the Turkish response:

Since the apology was made public, it appears Erdogan is doing everything he can to make Israel regret it, while conducting a personal and vitriolic campaign at the expense of Israel-Turkey relations. Let there be no doubt — no nation is doing Israel a favor by renewing ties with it. It should also be clear to Erdogan that if Israel encounters in the future any terrorism directed against us, our response will be no less severe.

Boaz Bismuth of Israel Hayom colorfully notes that Israelis “didn’t expect to feel that only several days after Israel’s apology, Erdogan would already be making us feel that we had eaten a frog along with our matzah this year.”

Perhaps after all the apology was a good thing. For a relatively inexpensive price – some words – Israelis and others have gained a better insight into the Turkish leadership’s mentality. It’s not that they suffer from hurt pride but that they are Islamist ideologues with an ambitious agenda. If the misguided apology makes this evident to more observers, it has its compensations and possibly could turn out to be a net plus.

Originally published at DanielPipes.org and The National Review Online, The Corner under the title, “On Second Thought … Maybe that Israeli Apology to Turkey was a Good Idea,” March 29, 2013.

One key shift in U.S. policy was overlooked in the barrage of news about Barack Obama’s eventful fifty-hour visit to Israel last week. That would be the demand that Palestinians recognize Israel as the Jewish state, called by Hamas leader Salah Bardawil ”the most dangerous statement by an American president regarding the Palestinian issue.”

First, some background: Israel’s founding documents aimed to make the country a Jewish state. Modern Zionism effectively began with the publication in 1896 of Theodor Herzl’s book, Der Judenstaat (“The Jewish State”). The Balfour Declaration of 1917 favors “a national home for the Jewish people.” U.N. General Assembly resolution 181 of 1947, partitioning Palestine into two, mentions the termJewish state 30 times. Israel’s Declaration of Establishment of 1948 mentions Jewish state 5 times, as in “we … hereby declare the establishment of a Jewish state in Eretz-Israel, to be known as the State of Israel.”

Because of this tight connection, when Arab-Israeli diplomacy began in earnest in the 1970s, the Jewish state formulation largely disappeared from view; everyone simply assumed that diplomatic recognition of Israel meant accepting it as the Jewish state. Only in recent years did Israelis realize otherwise, as Israeli Arabs came to accept Israel but reject its Jewish nature. For example, an important 2006 publication from the Mossawa Center in Haifa, The Future Vision of Palestinian Arabs in Israel, proposes that the country become a religiously neutral state and joint homeland. In brief, Israeli Arabs have come to see Israel as a variant of Palestine.

Awakened to this linguistic shift, winning Arab acceptance of Israel no longer sufficed; Israelis and their friends realized that they had to insist on explicit Arab acceptance of Israel as the Jewish state. In 2007, Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert announced that unless Palestinians did so, diplomacy would be aborted: “I do not intend to compromise in any way over the issue of the Jewish state,” he emphasized. The Palestinian Authority immediately and unanimously rejected this demand. Its head, Mahmoud Abbas, responded: “In Israel, there are Jews and others living there. This we are willing to recognize, nothing else.”

Only six weeks ago, Abbas again blasted the Jewish state concept. The Palestinian rejection of Jewish statehood could not be more emphatic. (For a compilation of their assertions, see “Recognizing Israel as the Jewish State: Statements” at DanielPipes.org).

When Benjamin Netanyahu succeeded Olmert as prime minister in 2009, he reiterated this demand as a precondition to serious negotiations: “Israel expects the Palestinians to first recognize Israel as a Jewish state before talking about two states for two peoples.” The Palestinians not only refused to budge but ridiculed the very idea. Again, Abbas: “What is a ‘Jewish state?’ We call it the ‘State of Israel.’ You can call yourselves whatever you want. But I will not accept it. … It’s not my job to … provide a definition for the state and what it contains. You can call yourselves the Zionist Republic, the Hebrew, the National, the Socialist [Republic] call it whatever you like, I don’t care.”

American politicians, including both George W. Bush and Obama, have since 2008 occasionally referred to Israel as the Jewish state, even as they studiously avoided demanding Palestinians to do likewise. In a typical declaration, Obama in 2011 sketched the ultimate diplomatic goal as “two states for two people: Israel as a Jewish state and the homeland for the Jewish people and the State of Palestine as the homeland for the Palestinian people.”

That sentence breaks important new ground and cannot readily be undone. It also makes for excellent policy, for without such recognition, Palestinian acceptance of Israel is hollow, indicating only a willingness to call the future state they dominate “Israel” rather than “Palestine.” Then, in his Jerusalem speech last week, Obama suddenly and unexpectedly adopted in full the Israeli demand: “Palestinians must recognize that Israel will be a Jewish state.”

While not the only shift in policy announced during Obama’s trip (another: telling the Palestinians not to set preconditions for negotiations), this one looms largest because it starkly contravenes the Palestinian consensus. Bardawil may hyperbolically assert that it “shows that Obama has turned his back to all Arabs” but those ten words in fact establish a readiness to deal with the conflict’s central issue. They likely will be his most important, most lasting, and most constructive contribution to Arab-Israeli diplomacy.

Originally published at the Washington Times and Danielpipes.org, MArch 26, 2013.

Palestinians must recognize that Israel will be a Jewish state.
— Barack Obama, March 21, 2013

The ‘Jewish state.’ What is a ‘Jewish state?’ We call it, the ‘State of Israel.’ You can call yourselves whatever you want. But I will not accept it. And I say this on a live broadcast… It’s not my job to define it, to provide a definition for the state and what it contains. You can call yourselves the Zionist Republic, the Hebrew, the National, the Socialist [Republic] call it whatever you like. I don’t care.
— Mahmoud Abbas, 2009

When some 120 Israeli figures came here, they said, ‘What’s your opinion concerning the Jewish state?’, and I said that we wouldn’t agree to it. We know what they mean by it, and therefore we shall not agree to a Jewish state…
— Abbas, 2011

We say to him [Netanyahu], when he claims — that they [Jews] have a historical right dating back to 3000 years BCE — we say that the nation of Palestine upon the land of Canaan had a 7000 year history BCE. This is the truth, which must be understood and we have to note it, in order to say: ‘Netanyahu, you are incidental in history. We are the people of history. We are the owners of history.
— Abbas, 2011

Obama did not suggest that recognition of Israel as a Jewish state be a precondition for negotiations with the Palestinian Authority, and Prime Minister Netanyahu has called for “negotiations without preconditions.” But there is no doubt that it must be a precondition — not just for talking to the P.A., but for diplomacy with anybody about anything. How can a nation have a give and take discussion with someone who thinks that it is fundamentally illegitimate?

The Arab League initiative, for example, which I discussed here, does not include any mention of recognition. This is not merely an oversight: the initiative was conceived and is understood as an admission by the “Zionist regime” that is fully responsible for the conflict. The initiative calls for a redress of their historic grievance in part by means of the ‘return’ of almost five million Arabs who claim hereditary refugee status — something unheard of in the annals of diplomacy — which is incompatible with a Jewish state of Israel.

This is not a symbolic issue. Like Turkey’s Erdoğan, the Arabs have a narrative that they are not willing to compromise, not even a little. It includes the propositions that

* The Zionists created the conflict by taking Arab land and expelling the residents
* Israel perpetuated it by starting wars
* All the land from the Mediterranean to the Jordan is ‘occupied Palestinian land’
*Terrorism against Israelis is justified resistance to occupation

An agreement acceptable to the P.A. or the Arab nations must include an admission of guilt and an acceptance of the ‘ownership’ of the land by Arabs. Once this is done, then they may be more or less magnanimous to the Jewish residents — Hamas talks about killing them and the Arab league is willing to have ‘normal relations’ with them — but true Jewish sovereignty is out of the question.

So the Arabs insist on ‘right of return’ in order to reverse the nakba. They insist on withdrawal from 1967 territories to reverse the results of the several wars, and they insist on the release of all terrorist prisoners, even convicted murderers. All this sounds entirely fair and reasonable to them within the framework of their narrative.

This is why discussions about borders and security entirely miss the point, it is why the Camp David, Taba and Olmert proposals went nowhere, and why the negotiations that President Obama intends to restart will fail as well.

Unfortunately, many Israelis are blind to the importance of Arab ideology. They see the harsh statements of Arab leaders as ‘merely symbolic’, made for propaganda purposes or for home consumption. They believe that the Arabs are at bottom pragmatists like themselves, willing to set aside ideology for economic development or some degree of political autonomy.

This explains some really terrible ideas, such as the plan which surfaces periodically to grant the ‘refugees’ a ‘right of return’ in principle, but not in fact. Proponents say that it would satisfy the Arabs’ need for symbolism without destroying the Jewish state. But if such an abstract right were granted, then it would immediately be followed by demands to implement it in reality — just as the ‘apology’ to Erdoğan has been followed by demands to end restrictions on the flow of weapons and explosives to Hamas in Gaza.

They are not posturing. They mean what they say, and what they say is that they don’t accept a Jewish state.

As long as the Arabs cling to the idea that Jewish sovereignty is unacceptable, then no possible negotiations can end the conflict. But the process of negotiating under pressure from the U.S. — and the pressure is always almost all on Israel — is not only frustrating and pointless, it can be humiliating and even dangerous.

There is a simple solution. Israel must insist that there can be no negotiations until all parties agree that Israel is the Jewish state of the Jewish people.

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