WarSclerotic

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed on Sunday to meet shortly, Just days after Russia completed the delivery of S-300 anti-aircraft missile batteries to Syria.

Netanyahu announced the meeting, which will be the fourth between the two leaders this year, at the opening of the weekly cabinet meeting.

Netanyahu said that he spoke with Putin earlier in the day and that the meeting will take place to “continue the important security consultations between the armies.”

He did not say where or when it would take place.  The two last met in July in Moscow.

Netanyahu said that Israel will act “constantly to prevent Iran from militarily entrenching itself in Syria and to prevent it from transferring lethal weapons to Hezbollah in Lebanon.”

Putin and Netanyahu have spoken on the phone several times since Syria downed a Russian intelligence plane, and Moscow blamed Israel for indirect responsibility for the incident.

As a result, Russia transferred the S-300s to Syria, placing an additional obstacle in the way of the IAF carrying out actions against Iranian efforts to base themselves militarily in Syria, or transfer arms to Hezbollah.

Two people were killed and one was seriously wounded in a terror attack in the Barkan Industrial Park in the Samaria region of the West Bank on Sunday morning.

It’s the first terror attack in the park — which employees both Israelis and Palestinians —and is considered to be an oasis of coexistence where both Israelis and Palestinians come together.

The Palestinian suspect had no previous security-related history and had a permit to work the Barkan park, where he was employed at a factory for the past seven months though he had not shown up work for the past few weeks, IDF Spokesman Brig.-Gen. Ronen Manelis said.

Security forces are currently conducting a large-scale manhunt to capture the assailant, a 23 year-old Palestinian from the village of Shweika near the West Bank city of Tulkarem, who escaped following the shooting and is believed to still be armed with the Carl Gustav weapon he used in the attack.

At the end of the month, the Jewish Federations of North America will hold their annual General Assembly in Israel. And while the Federations’ decision to hold their annual conference in Israel rather than America seems at face value to be a statement of solidarity with Israel, in this case, it isn’t.

Five months after US President Donald Trump moved the US embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv in an extraordinary act of friendship, the Jewish Federations of North America chose to hold their annual General Assembly in… Tel Aviv.
The name the Federations gave their conference is also a stunner.

“Israel and the Diaspora, We Need to Talk.”

What do we “need to talk” about?

The homepage of the conference’s website makes that clear enough. At the very top, it spells out all the differences dividing Israeli and American Jews.

Fifty percent of American Jews define themselves as liberal and only 8% of Israeli Jews define themselves as leftists.

Sixty-one percent of American Jews think that “Israel and an independent Palestinian state can coexist.” Only 43% of Israelis agree.

Eighty percent of American Jews vs. 49% of Israeli Jews think non-Orthodox rabbis should officiate at Jewish ceremonies in Israel.

The odd thing about these data is that they aren’t new, and they certainly don’t point to unbridgeable disputes between two well-intentioned sides to an argument.

Israel has certainly demonstrated its good will.

According to the American Jewish Committee’s survey of Israeli Jewish and American Jewish opinions published in June, a mere 42% of Israeli Jews supported establishing an egalitarian prayer area at the Western Wall while 48% opposed it. And yet, out of respect for American Jews who overwhelmingly supported it, the government established an egalitarian prayer area at the Western Wall.

The issue of non-Orthodox rabbis in Israel is imaginary. According to the AJC, less than one percent of Israelis define themselves as either Reform or Conservative. And there is no line of Reform and Conservative American Jews demanding to get married in Israel.

As for the issue of a Palestinian state, if the American Jews shared Israel’s good will, they would not pick a fight on the issue.

The AJC poll showed that 68% of Israeli Jews think it is inappropriate for American Jews to attempt to influence Israeli policy on national security issues including the issue of negotiations with the Palestinians. Only 25% of Israeli Jews deem it appropriate. Given the wide majority of Israelis who oppose their meddling, it is clear that no Israeli government is likely to give American Jews a seat at the table as it determines policies for which only Israel’s citizens will bear the consequences. Presuming American Jews have a modicum of respect for Israelis and their government, it would seem reasonable for them to respect the wishes of the people of Israel.

As for the ideological divide between liberal American Jews and right-leaning Israeli Jews, it is true that it is wide. But it is also true that it has been that way for decades. And yet, until recently it was never an obstacle to good relations.

So what is going on? Why did the Federations choose to insult Israelis by holding their conference in Tel Aviv rather than Jerusalem five months after the US government finally moved the US embassy to Israel’s capital? And why are the Federations demanding that Israeli Jews give them an accounting for the longstanding disparities in the outlooks of the two communities?

The most reasonable explanation for the Federations’ unfriendly behavior is that it doesn’t lay in anger over Israel’s policies regarding non-Orthodox rabbis or the Palestinians or Israel’s rejection of the political Left.

Rather, the Federations decided to highlight these longstanding, workable gaps in order to hide the real source of the anger that their leaders feel towards Israeli Jews. The source of the anger can be summed up in two words: Donald Trump.

Israelis are divided on many issues. But one issue unites them. Israelis love Trump.

This week the Pew Research Center published a new survey analyzing how the nations of the world view Trump and America under Trump. While support for Trump and the US is low and dropping among many key US allies, particularly in Europe, Israelis adore him. And under Trump, their longstanding overwhelming support for the US has increased.

The Pew study found that 83% of Israelis and 94% of Israeli Jews love America. Israel is the only country in the world where a majority – 52% – believes that under Trump, the US is doing more to solve global problems than it was in previous years. Seventy-nine percent of Israelis think US-Israel relations have improved under Trump. Eighty-six percent of Israelis believe that under Trump, the US takes its interests into account.

On the other side of the Atlantic, the situation is almost completely reversed. The AJC poll from June showed that only 26% of American Jews support Trump while 71% oppose him. Seventy percent of American Jews oppose the way Trump is handling US-Israel relations.

As The Wall Street Journal editorialized on Thursday, one of the clarifying aspects of the Democratic bid to dehumanize and destroy Trump’s Supreme Court nominee Judge Brett Kavanaugh is that it shows that the Democrats’ rage is not solely directed against Trump personally. Trump is the Democrats’ “foil to regain power.”

Kavanaugh, after all, is not a “Trump Republican.” The Washingtonian is about as establishment as they come. By trashing Kavanaugh as though he were what the Journal refers to as “part of Mr. Trump’s New York menagerie,” the Democrats revealed that they oppose Trump because he is implementing conservative Republican policies and not because of his unconventional personality.

The Journal explained, “Republicans across America can see, and certainly their Senators voting on Judge Kavanaugh should realize, that the left hates them as much or more than they loathe Mr. Trump. Conservatives understand that, for the American left, they are all deplorables now.”

The Federations’ use of their conference to disrespect Israelis while highlighting longstanding disagreements is a means to express their anger as Democrats at Israelis for supporting Trump.

The fact that Democrats are using Trump as a foil to discredit his policies and demonize his supporters has had a radicalizing effect on Democrats. Since everything Trump supports is bad, Democrats now embrace positions that they had previously rejected.

Growing Democratic hostility towards Israel and effusive support for the PLO are a consequence of that radicalization. Last week, 34 Democratic senators – two thirds of the Democratic Senate caucus – signed a letter to Trump asking that he restore aid to the Palestinian Authority. This, despite the PA’s continued payment of more than $300 million a year to convicted terrorists and their families. That is, the Democrats called for Trump to ignore the Taylor Force Act which requires the administration to deny funding to the PA so long as it continues the payments.

The AJC survey indicated that Jewish Democrats are not lagging far behind their senators.

Consider the US Jewish community’s position on Trump’s transfer of the US embassy to Jerusalem.

Eighty-five percent of Israelis supported the move; only 7% opposed it. In contrast, only 46% of American Jews supported Trump’s decision to move the US embassy to Israel’s capital, while 48% opposed it.

This position is remarkable because for decades, a solid majority of American Jews supported moving the US embassy to Jerusalem. Major Jewish groups played key roles in passing the Jerusalem Embassy Act of 1996 that recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and enjoined the executive branch to move the embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

The precipitous drop in American Jewish support for the embassy move – graphically demonstrated by the Jewish Federations’ decision to hold their annual conference in Tel Aviv – shows that like their fellow Democrats, Jewish Democrats view Trump’s supporters – including Israelis – as “deplorables” who deserve their hostility. So their longstanding support for locating the US embassy in Israel in Israel’s capital city flew by the wayside.

The program of the three-day GA is similarly discouraging. The three days of panels, speeches and debates are ostensibly supposed to involve frank discussions between Israelis and American Jews, with the goal of building bridges between them. But the Federations invited no Israelis who represent the religious Israeli establishment that they spend so much time and energy demonizing. They invited no anti-immigration activists from south Tel Aviv who complain that their neighborhoods have been transformed into crime-ridden ghettos due to illegal immigration from Eritrea and Sudan. None of the sponsors of the Nation-State Law, so viciously opposed by the Jewish Federations, was invited to speak. No voices calling for abandoning the quest to establish a Palestinian state were invited.

Most of those invited to speak represent marginal factions in Israeli society. The spectrum of views spans from center-left to far-left with a sizable representation of Israel’s Arab community thrown in, to what is billed as a frank discussion between American Jews and the uninvited Israeli Jews who disagree with them (and support Trump).

The only Israeli speaker representing the positions held by the majority of the country’s citizens who was invited to address the GA is Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Given that his is the only representative voice on the program, Netanyahu should use his speech to voice the growing frustrations that Israelis feel towards the American Jewish establishment. He should ask them why they haven’t acknowledged, must less applauded Trump for his unparalleled support for Israel. He should ask them why so few of them support the embassy move – and what possessed them to hold their conference, in this of all years, in Tel Aviv rather than Jerusalem.

And he should tell them that Israelis are proud to stand with their friends and supporters wherever they may be – and ask them why they find it so difficult to do so.

The American Jewish community’s apparent preference for lawmakers who urge Trump to underwrite Palestinian terrorists over Trump and his voters who refuse to do so makes no sense to Israelis.

Netanyahu should tell them that while Israeli Jews are eager to work with American Jewry on the basis of our shared heritage and values, if American Jewry chooses to abandon those values in favor of their swiftly radicalizing partisan agenda, they are free to make that decision – and live with its consequences.

“[Actions of] such extreme seriousness on French territory could not be let go without a response,” a joint statement issued by France’s foreign affairs, interior and economic ministries read in part. “[We have] taken preventive, proportionate and targeted measures…[to] reiterate [our] determination to fight terrorism.”

Notably, the announcement coincided with a massive police operation targeting a Shiite Muslim “club” named the Centre Zahra France, whose leaders are accused of having ties to Tehran’s Lebanese proxy Hizbullah as well as to Iranian sleeper cells in the country.

Thereafter, Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian suggested that the developments “confirm the need for a tough approach in our relations with Iran.”

Except that France’s decision to sanction Iranian officials—including Assadi, who is set to be extradited to Belgium for prosecution—was made one week after Paris signed off on the creation of a “special purpose vehicle” geared towards circumventing renewed American financial penalties on the Iranian regime. Indeed, the government of President Emmanuel Macron committed to “assist and reassure economic operators pursuing legitimate business with Iran,” possibly by setting up a mechanism to barter European goods for Iranian oil.

This, in turn, came just hours after a meeting on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly between Le Drian and his Iranian counterpart Mohammed Javad Zarif, during which Tehran’s direct involvement in the bomb plot was discussed in detail. The two diplomats previously met—in, of all places, Vienna—only days after Assadi was arrested as part of an ongoing effort to salvage the 2015 nuclear agreement. For good measure, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani was welcomed in Austria earlier that same week after the news of the unsuccessful attack had already surfaced.

France’s Jekyll-and-Hyde game seemingly reinforces the contention of opponents of the atomic pact that the de-coupling of the nuclear issue from Iran’s other “nefarious” behaviors was bound to embolden the Islamic Republic. While this boomerang effect is only beginning to be felt more broadly in Europe—including as a result of Tehran’s role in creating the migration crisis through its military activities in Syria—the Revolutionary Guard Corps and its allies have over the past three years accelerated their march across the Middle East, leaving a wake of death and destruction.

“The French authorities are blind to reality and for years all governments—Left and Right—have been lax in tackling the growing threat of Muslim fundamentalism,” Christian Malard, a Paris-based political analyst who interviewed former Iranian revolutionary leader Ruhollah Khomenei multiple times, opined to The Media Line. “Now, the Iranian regime is playing off the rift between the US and Europe and if the goal is to topple the Ayatollahs then the gaps have to be bridged. This is not the case presently and could lead to a catastrophe.

“There is an incoherence in the French government’s way of dealing with Iran,” he continued, “as the foreign minister is declaring that there needs to be a re-evaluation of the [bi-lateral] relationship but [concurrently] shields Tehran from US sanctions.”

Avi Pazner, a former Israeli ambassador to Paris, likewise sees elements of hypocrisy in France’s position, which “is very lenient when it comes to the nuclear agreement and its economic ramifications even though the government knows exactly what it is dealing with: a state that sponsors terrorism.

“In this respect, [Macron] is not ready to make any concessions as France has been hit hard [by attacks]. But [he] needs to explain how it makes sense to continue doing business with Iran when this obviously helps a terrorist regime. Israel always [pleads with] the Europeans to not allow Iran to use their money to conduct terror. Apparently, economic considerations are more important than moral ones.”

How ironic, then, if reports are true that Israel’s Mossad spy agency provided invaluable intelligence to European security services about the Iranian plan, and then spearheaded the manhunt across the continent to thwart the plot.

On the flip side, supporters of France’s Iran policy note that the country was, initially, the party most skeptical of the atomic deal and in certain instances pushed the Obama administration to strengthen the language of its formulation. More recently, President Macron expressed a willingness to address Iran’s ballistic missile program and regional adventurism, albeit within an undefined context.

There is thus some common ground with President Donald Trump, although few believe that Paris will fall in line with Washington.

As such, perhaps the most probable scenario was encapsulated by an anonymous French source who told the Reuters news agency that, “We hope this matter [of terrorism] is now over. We have taken measures and said what we needed to say.”
The problem is that while France looks willing to forgive and forget, Iran may yet want the last word.

Several dozen students and activists at Columbia University in New York staged a demonstration on Thursday afternoon outside the university’s main gates against what they describe as the dismissive and disinterested attitude of the university administration towards the complaints of harassment by pro-Palestinian groups against Jewish and pro-Israel students.

The Columbia chapters of Students Supporting Israel (SSI) and Alums for Campus Fairness staged the protest following concerted efforts to get the university administration to act against alleged serial harassment by anti-Zionist groups.

In January this year, Students Supporting Israel submitted a detailed complaint, providing evidence of how such groups, including Students for Justice in Palestine, Jewish Voice for Peace and Columbia University Apartheid Divest have “systematically maligned, harassed and silenced” SSI and other pro-Israel groups and individuals.

In one incident in the Autumn semester of 2017 recorded in SSI’s complaint, “SJP members started a hostile, anti-Israel and anti-Semitic chant simply because they recognized SSI members walking by” outside an event unrelated to Israel.

The pro-Palestinian activists reportedly surrounded the Jewish students “while surrounded by a raging mob of around 50 angry activists encroaching on them in a physically threatening and intimidating way.”

Despite video evidence supplied by SSI, the Columbia University administration dismissed this and other evidence-backed complaints of harassment which seemingly violate university rules.

“Our goal was to show the Columbia University administration that Students Supporting Israel, its members and supporters, are not going to sit back while Columbia ignores our multiple harassment complaints,” SSI said following the demonstration on Thursday.