OPINION – Americans expect news journalists to be objective, or at least to strive for objectivity. That is why Octavia Nasr lost her job as CNN’s Senior Editor of Mideast Affairs after publicly expressing her views about Lebanese cleric Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah, a man who has argued in favor of suicide bombings against Israelis and denied the Holocaust. Nasr’s posting on Twitter, which stated that she had great respect for the “Hezbollah giant” and was saddened by his death, led readers to lose confidence in her ability to be objective about the Middle East conflict.

We might never know exactly whether or how Nasr’s views contributed to skewing CNN’s Mideast coverage, since her work was mostly behind the scenes. Not so with CNN’s Senior International Correspondent Ben Wedeman. As with Nasr, a post on the Cairo-based correspondent’s Twitter page raises serious questions about his objectivity. But in this case, the journalist’s contributions to CNN seem to answer those questions in a way that should deeply trouble the network, as they suggest that his biases excessively influence his reporting.

In a June 29, 2010 tweet, Wedeman directed his followers to an “excellent” article, as he put it, by the harshly anti-Israel professor/blogger Juan Cole. Judging by that warm praise, Wedeman embraces, and thinks his readers should likewise subscribe to, the radical and facile narrative put forth by Cole in the recommended piece. Cole’s article claimed:

[Israel's] isolation derives from Israeli policies, of illegal blockades… and systematic land theft and displacement of occupied civilians under its control, along with aggressive wars on neighbors, which target infrastructure and civilians and are clearly intended to keep neighbors poor and backward.

In other words, Cole and Wedeman promote the argument that Israelis send their sons and daughters to war not for the country’s security and preservation, but out of sheer malice. The Six-Day War, according to this view, did not stem from Egyptian acts of war and threats of annihilation. The war that followed wasn’t forced on Israel when Syria and Egypt launched a surprise attacked against the Jewish state on Yom Kippur in 1973. Hezbollah’s missile salvo on northern Israel and cross-border kidnaPping raid wasn’t the reason for war in 2006, nor were the thousands of rockets and mortars fired from Hamas’ Gaza Strip, which made life in southern Israel intolerable, the cause for Israel’s Gaza operation in 2009. Those crazy Israelis simply want their neighbors to be “poor and backward.” (Moreover, according to this line of thinking, Israeli official Mark Regev was lying when he described Israel’s belief that “a healthy, successful, prosperous Palestine is in the interest of the state of Israel. Living next to a failed state, a failed economy, would only be a recipe for further violence.”)

That Wedeman presumably shares Cole’s extraordinary biases should in and of itself raise red flags at CNN headquarters. But even if he does inwardly share Cole’s sharply biased views, is Wedeman able to be objective in his reportage?

It seems not. In a conspicuously one-sided piece he wrote in early 2008, for example, Wedeman insists that Israel’s security barrier had all but destroyed Bethlehem’s economy by “reducing… to a trickle” the number of tourists visiting the town. But it was clear at the time that the number of tourists visiting Bethlehem during Christmas, the town’s primary tourist season, had in fact skyrocketed since Israel completed the barrier between Bethlehem and Jerusalem in 2005. That is, his biased narrative influenced the accuracy of his story.

The problem continues. Wedeman’s most recent commentary, a July 19 analysis piece entitled “‘Groundhog Day’ for Mideast Peace Process,” promotes the view that Israel is the party primarily responsible for holding back the peace process, that it refuses to engage in “confidence-building measures,” and that east Jerusalem, which includes the Old City’s Jewish Quarter and the holiest site in Judaism, in fact belongs to the Palestinians.

Referring to a Cairo meeting between Benjamin Netanyahu and Hosni Mubarak, Wedeman claims in his article that “the main focus of the talks in Cairo was to convince the Palestinians and Israelis to move from, until now, largely fruitless ‘proximity’ or indirect talks to direct negotiations.”

He repeated this theme elsewhere in the piece, stating that US diplomat George Mitchell “has been trying to coax the two sides back to the table.”

In reality, though, the Israelis needed no convincing. Again and again, Israeli officials have urged the Palestinians to join them in direct negotiations, and again and again Palestinians have rejected Israel’s requests. On June 22, for example, a Reuters story noted that “Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu blamed the Palestinians on Tuesday for the absence of direct peace talks and insisted negotiations should resume right away ‘without delay and without preconditions.’”

Or as AP explained on June 28, “Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has been holding indirect talks with the Israeli government over the past two months but said Monday that Israel has not offered enough to make it worthwhile to move to direct talks.”

In response, Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev said direct talks are the only way to solve the conflict.

A July 1 AP story likewise reported that “speaking late Thursday at an Independence Day party at the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv, Netanyahu appeared to respond to Abbas’ move by repeating his call for direct peace talks. Mitchell has been shuttling between the Israelis and Palestinians for two months with the aim of relaunching direct negotiations in the fall. But Abbas said earlier this week that he has not received enough encouraging signs from Israel to warrant that.”

And just two days before Wedeman published his piece, Agence France Presse explained that “Netanyahu has repeatedly called for direct talks….”

Wedeman not only obscured Israel’s repeated calls for direct talks, but also directed blame for toward Israel for the fact that those talks are not occurring:

“Direct talks were suspended in December 2008 when Israel launched its offensive against Gaza. The 2009 election of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, never a peace process enthusiast, made reviving direct talks all the more complicated.”

The correspondent’s use of the passive voice — talks “were suspended” — meant readers weren’t told that it was the Palestinians who cut off talks in December 2008. And Wedeman’s glib suggestion that Netanyahu is an opponent of the peace process whose election complicated the move to direct talks further obscures Israel’s requests for face to face negotiations.

If Wedeman wanted to let readers know that the peace process is complicated, why did he not mention Palestinian infighting or Hamas’ stubborn refusal to renounce violence, accept Israel’s right to exist and honor previous agreements signed between Israel and the Palestinians? (The word “Hamas” does not appear even once in the analysis.) And what about the complications stemming from Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas’ continued glorification of terrorists?

It gets worse. After falsely casting Israel as a party that needs to be “convinced” to relaunch direct negotiations, Wedeman went on to claim Israel refuses to make confidence-building gestures to help Palestinians until those talks start: “The Israelis say that direct talks must go ahead, and only then will Israel initiate confidence-building measures.”

In fact, as noted by New York Times reporters Isabel Kershner and Fares Akram on the same day that Wedeman’s piece was published, “Israel is considering confidence-building measures to propel the Palestinians toward direct talks.” And these would be on top of additional measures already taken by Israel, such as a settlement moratorium, the removal of roadblocks, and other steps.

Wedeman’s bias is perhaps most glaring when he refers to “Palestinian occupied territory, including East Jerusalem,” thus accepting as self-evident the Palestinian position on the area in dispute. East Jerusalem is in fact a mixed Jewish/Arab area under Israeli sovereignty, but which the Palestinians argue should be part of their state. Complicating the tense conflict over east Jerusalem is the fact that the area houses Judaism’s holiest sites and the cradle of Jewish history alongside holy Muslim shrines. Writers of “analysis pieces” are expected to educate readers about the nuances behind the news, not obscure those nuances while unquestioningly accepting and promoting one side’s claims over the other’s. And Wedeman should be thoroughly familiar with Jerusalem issues, since he served as a correspondent in CNN’s Jerusalem bureau before transferring to Cairo last summer.

If CNN hopes to be “the most trusted name in news,” their Senior International Correspondent must be reminded of the difference between “analysis” and pro-Palestinian advocacy.

OPINION – Last month, a Home Front Command exercise was carried out in Israel. The emergency systems were tested for their response to various scenarios in case war breaks out. That same week, someone jokingly disseminated a message on the Internet regarding an emergency exercise that would be carried out to test responses for when peace breaks out.

In this imaginary exercise, calming sirens would be sounded and the general public would be required to respond to the cheerful scenarios that may unfold in this new and unfamiliar situation. In Jerusalem, the idea of preparing for peace should not be a topic of jokes. We are so preoccupied with the struggle over what the city would look like following a permanent status agreement that we are ignoring the fact that present-day Jerusalem is declining before our eyes, becoming a city in which life would be difficult even when peace finally arrives.

In east Jerusalem, Palestinian children suffer from a severely underfunded public education system. As a result most will not find employment that can afford any kind of social mobility. Health issues – such as development checkups – are often neglected and health problems that should be addressed in childhood will become a future economic and social burden, even in times of peace.

Hagai Snir

Chaos in the material aspects of life is sorely evident in east Jerusalem, where things like dense construction around roads which preempt any future expansion and collapsing sewage systems are creating an irreversible reality on the ground. The poverty and neglect in east Jerusalem will not only cause hardship for the Palestinians living there but will also affect the Jews in west Jerusalem whether the city remains united or divided, because if the city remains united, the need to rectify these problems would affect the funding for the western neighborhoods; if it is divided, poverty and neglect in the east would quickly become fertile ground for crime and terror against the Jews in the west of the city.

In west Jerusalem, the non-haredi Jewish population is dwindling. The city does not attract an economically strong population, as there are few job opportunities. It remains very attractive to the haredi for religious reasons, but they are economically weak. The deterioration of west Jerusalem is bad news for everyone.

Despite all these threats to the future of the city, too often Jerusalem’s municipal decision- making process is shaped by considerations that contradict local interests and cater to global politics.

One example is Jewish construction beyond the Green Line. The construction in Ramat Shlomo in north Jerusalem and in Gilo in the south made headlines around the world. Yet, anyone who has taken part in Israeli-Palestinian negotiations on Jerusalem knows that in any reasonable scenario, these neighborhoods will remain on the Israeli side.

Whether Jerusalem is united or divided, economic and employment cooperation between the two parts of the city keeps them intertwined and interdependent. However, as Israel refuses to differentiate between legitimizing the building in Gilo and legitimizing the neighborhoods in the heart of the Palestinian neighborhoods, the Palestinians and the rest of the world do not make this distinction either.

The world hears about Jews who enter homes in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood after its Palestinian inhabitants are evicted. The result: worldwide political pressure to stop the construction in Gilo and Ramat Shlomo, the same construction that can contribute to the prosperity of the city. Israel, in response, toughens its stance on Palestinian construction in Silwan. This brings only harm to all the residents of Jerusalem.

Almost 800,000 people live in Jerusalem, from a variety of religions, nationalities, religious outlooks and ethnic groups. When peace comes this diversity can turn into a wonderful resource for anyone who is interested in visiting or living in Jerusalem – if only we could save the city from its current decline. For this to happen the decision-making process on the municipal level must shift to a professionalism dedicated to improving services for all the residents of the city, one that sets aside global considerations.

A greater focus on these issues at the municipal level will make Jerusalem friendlier to its inhabitants. And paradoxically, focusing on its own population’s needs can help turn Jerusalem, even in the eyes of the world, from a political burden into a universal resource.

Hagai Agmon Snir is the director of the Jerusalem Intercultural Center and can be reached at hagai@jicc.org.il. The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect the views of Jerusalem Dispatch.

I spend my days helping clients develop and implement PR campaigns designed to promote the company in such a compelling way that its key audience will respond positively to what the company is communicating. Ultimately, the goal is always to build momentum and help the company achieve its potential.

So given that professional experience, it should be relatively simple to diagnose the PR problems Israel is having and prescribe a certain program to improve the situation.

And it is simple, but not in the way you might think.

Much has been written over the past few weeks – ever since “The Flotilla Affair” – about the overall weakness of Israel’s PR, both when crises hit and in general. And they all brought wonderful examples of how and why Israel’s PR has missed the mark.

But I’m afraid they’ve missed the mark as well.

One editorial lamented Information Minister Yuli Edelstein’s frustrating cell phone contact system. But that’s wrong, because fixing Edelstein’s voicemail wouldn’t help fight the incredible PR machine our enemies have built.

Glenn Jasper

Another article suggested that as long as Israel is not able to separate the politics from the tourism, Jerusalem’s tourism industry is going to suffer. But again, that is incorrect. Jerusalem is the center of the religious universe, and as such is going to be the hottest point on Earth for conflict. That is the deal and we must all understand and even embrace that. But this is irrelevant as well, in terms of the larger question about Israel’s PR, although we are drawing closer to the point.

Another PR complaint over the years has been the lack of Israel spokespeople who are able to speak strong English. Well, we now have Mark Regev at the wheel, one of the best I’ve ever seen, as well as Michael Oren in the U.S., who is fantastic.

And yet, Israel has had one of its worst PR runs over the last 12 months that it has had in decades. Doesn’t this seem strange to you?

How can it be that we did better PR during the post-9/11 period, when Ariel Sharon – who had trouble speaking “sound-bite English” – was prime minister, than now, when U.S.-educated Binyamin Netanyahu is at the helm?

When you consider the overall futility of the three above arguments of logistical ineptitude (the Edelstein example), brushing aside the negative in favor of the positive (the Jerusalem tourism example) and native-English-speaking spokespeople (the Regev-Oren-Bibi example), there is only one conclusion that should be drawn.

It’s not about any of these things.

To understand why we are failing, we must first look at why the other side is succeeding. And the answer to that question is simple: A unified message.

It wouldn’t matter if Edelstein drank Red Bull 24 hours a day and was 100% available for all requested interviews. Because an hour later someone from the government opposition will submit to an interview and completely contradict what Edelstein has said.

It doesn’t matter that Jerusalem has wonderful views, great restaurants and almost-perfect weather, especially this time of year. Because the world is being told – by Jewish-Israelis – on a regular basis that Jerusalem is a place of conflict, and that the conflict is all the Jews’ fault.

And it doesn’t matter that we have our strongest international spokespeople since the days of Golda Meir and Abba Eban.

Because we do not have that item that can often be the difference between success and failure for any PR campaign. In fact, it should be the cornerstone of any campaign.

It is the unified message.

After 9/11, Israel was unified, not only in its condemnation of the attack, but in its message to the world of “You see! This is what we’ve been going through! Now do you understand us?”

But time has “healed,” and we have once again descended to our previous disagreements and ideologies. We are not united.

And sadly, if Israel itself is not unified – as our enemies are, for the purpose of destroying Israel – then there will be no unified message, and we will continue to lose the PR battle, even if we are right.

So, please do not waste your time analyzing the PR strategy – or even lack thereof – or tactical approach of the Israeli government. It’s not about that. It’s the same problem that has plagued the Jewish people for centuries. We can’t unify. Even about a message. Even when our future is at stake.

Glenn Jasper is a PR veteran and the General Manager of Ruder Finn Israel, the leading full-service strategic marketing consultancy and public relations agency in Israel. He blogs at www.ruderfinn.co.il.

More flotilla articles:
YouTube pulls flotilla parody after three million views
ADL to US State Department: Flotilla backers are terror organizations
‘What’s left now?’ wonders Israel (opinion)
Netanyahu on flotilla clash: ‘We have a right to inspect cargo heading into Gaza’
Navy commando: ‘There were terrorists who wanted to kill us’
Flotilla passengers backed by global jihad group
Gaza backgrounder: Humanitarian aid, imports and conditions
Flotilla commando: ‘I saw the tip of a rifle’
Hamas terrorists were at Gaza flotilla launch

OPINION – Many Israelis and Israel supporters across the political spectrum were stunned by the recent hostile reaction of most of the world regarding Israel’s basic right to have a blockade against Hamas-dominated Gaza. They realized that the main focus of the hostile international reaction was not on improving the procedures of this security-motivated blockade, but on eliminating the blockade. This came as a shock since it is no secret that Hamas is actively seeking the violent destruction of Israel.

A reminder of the genocidal goals of Hamas can be found in the following statement regarding this terrorist organization which was written by a noted Israeli leftist leader, Danny Zamir, the head of the secular and leftist Rabin Pre-Military Academy: “The State of Israel is under a prolonged attack by the Hamas movement – a fundamentalist Islamic terror movement, based on a racist and ultra-nationalist ideology that seeks the killing of Jews for being Jews and the actual elimination of the State of Israel as its declared aspiration, and formally part of its foundation platform. And bear in mind that Hamas is not a marginal extremist underground, but a movement freely chosen by the Palestinians to head their elected government.”

In fact, the people of Gaza elected Hamas to govern them after Israel withdrew from Gaza. Despite Hamas’ genocidal goals, most nations are now denying Israel a basic right which they would not deny to themselves if they were in a similar situation.

This hostile attitude is even spreading to the United States. For example, the New York Times ran an editorial on June 1 that stated, “The United States should also join the other permanent members of the United Nations Security Council — Britain, France, Russia and China — in urging Israel to permanently lift the blockade.” Nary a word about the need to find other ways to prevent arms from being shipped to Hamas.

In a widely circulated article, columnist Charles Krauthammer noted this sinister and dangerous development.

“The world is outraged at Israel’s blockade of Gaza,” writes Krauthammer. “Turkey denounces its illegality, inhumanity, barbarity, etc. The usual U.N. suspects, Third World and European, join in. The Obama administration dithers.

“But as Leslie Gelb, former president of the Council on Foreign Relations, writes, the blockade is not just perfectly rational, it is perfectly legal. Gaza under Hamas is a self-declared enemy of Israel – a declaration backed up by more than 4,000 rockets fired at Israeli civilian territory. Yet having pledged itself to unceasing belligerency, Hamas claims victimhood when Israel imposes a blockade to prevent Hamas from arming itself with still more rockets.”

Citing the Cuban Missile Crisis, Krauthammer recalls how in 1962 the U.S. “quarantined” the Caribbean nation. Russian ships headed to Cuba turned back because the Soviets knew that the U.S. Navy would either board them or sink them, writes Krauthammer, “yet Israel is accused of international criminality for doing precisely what John Kennedy did: impose a naval blockade to prevent a hostile state from acquiring lethal weaponry.”

He notes that organizer Greta Berlin admitted the flotilla was not about humanitarian relief but about breaking the blockade, which would be tantamount to permitting the unlimited arming of Hamas. Israel has already twice intercepted ships laden with Iranian arms destined for Hezbollah and Gaza, he points out, and only had to resort to blockade as a fallback as the world systematically de-legitimizes Israel’s traditional means of self-defense.

Now that Israel has tried all available options to halt Hamas from arming itself to the teeth, “what’s left?” wonders Krauthammer.

“Ah, but that’s the point. It’s the point understood by the blockade-busting flotilla of useful idiots and terror sympathizers, by the Turkish front organization that funded it, by the automatic anti-Israel Third World chorus at the United Nations, and by the supine Europeans who’ve had quite enough of the Jewish problem.

“What’s left? Nothing. The whole point of this relentless international campaign is to deprive Israel of any legitimate form of self-defense. Why, just last week, the Obama administration joined the jackals, and reversed four decades of U.S. practice, by signing onto a consensus document that singles out Israel’s possession of nuclear weapons – thus de-legitimizing Israel’s very last line of defense: deterrence.”

Krauthammer ends on an ominous note. “The world is tired of these troublesome Jews, 6 million – that number again – hard by the Mediterranean, refusing every invitation to national suicide. For which they are relentlessly demonized, ghettoized and constrained from defending themselves, even as the more committed anti-Zionists – Iranian in particular – openly prepare a more final solution.”

More flotilla articles:
Why Israel can’t seem to solve its PR problem (opinion)
YouTube pulls flotilla parody after three million views
ADL to US State Department: Flotilla backers are terror organizations
Netanyahu on flotilla clash: ‘We have a right to inspect cargo heading into Gaza’
Navy commando: ‘There were terrorists who wanted to kill us’
Flotilla passengers backed by global jihad group
Gaza backgrounder: Humanitarian aid, imports and conditions
Flotilla commando: ‘I saw the tip of a rifle’
Hamas terrorists were at Gaza flotilla launch

OPINION – Peter Beinart’s “The Failure of the American Jewish Establishment” in last week’s New York Review of Books is an important piece – important in the same way as John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt’s 2006 screed “The Israeli Lobby”: It will be widely quoted and pernicious in effect.

Beinart begins with the results of focus groups conducted by pollster Frank Luntz with Jewish college students in 2003. In their discussions of Jewish identity, the subject of Israel never arose spontaneously, and when forced upon them, the students were careful to distinguish between themselves and Israelis. First and foremost, Luntz found, the students “reserve[d] the right to question the Israeli position.” Second, “they desperately want peace.” And third, “some empathize with the plight of the Palestinians.”

According to Beinart, those results constitute a damning indictment of the American Jewish establishment, which blindly supports Israel. Forced to Jewish between their Zionism and their liberalism, the students have – justifiedly in Beinart’s view – checked their Zionism.

For Beinart, Israel’s history can be divided between a halcyon pre-1967 period, when an embattled Israel committed to social justice rightly commanded the love and support of Jews all around the world, and the present, in which an invincible Israel nevertheless remains rooted in a culture of victimhood and paranoia. Increasingly, in his account, Israel politics are determined by nationalistic Russian immigrants, primitive Sephardim, and Orthodox Jews of all types.

Prime Minister Netanyahu’s 1993 book A Place Among the Nations serves as Beinart’s prooftext for the characterization of modern Israel. Netanyahu is accused of equating Palestinian statehood with Nazism by referring to the 1949 armistice lines as “Auschwitz borders” and taken to task for denying the existence of a Palestinian national identity. Yet it was Abba Eban, a man firmly of the older Israeli Left, who coined the term “Auschwitz borders,” and Golda Meir, another veteran Labor Zionist, who first doubted Palestinian national identity.

News of Netanyahu’s acceptance of a two-state solution or of the significant territorial concessions made by successive Israeli governments since 1993, including one headed by Netanyahu, has apparently not reached Beinart.

The changes in Israeli attitudes since 1993 have not been driven primarily by demographics, but by events. Far from being opposed to peace, Israelis greeted the handshake on the White House lawn with almost messianic expectations of imminent peace. Only when the Oslo process blew up in their faces, time and again, did Israelis sour on it.

That Ehud Barak, who as prime minister offered Yasir Arafat virtually the entire West Bank at Camp David in 2000, serves harmoniously as Defense Minister in Netanyahu’s current government, surely says more about the sources of the present Israeli consensus, than the views of Effi Eitam, who has disappeared into political obscurity, which Beinart quotes at length.

BEINART’S INDICTMENT OF TODAY’S ISRAEL is a cartoonish pastiche, sure to turn off American Jewish students even more. His characterization draws only from the Left-fringe, Avrum Burg, Zev Sternhell (who once called on Palestinian terrorists to confine their killing of Jews to the other side of the Green Line), Yaron Ezrahi, and various European Community-financed “human rights” organizations.

Unwittingly, Beinart reveals the flaccidity of much contemporary liberalism, in particular its preference for airy, utopian abstractions – e.g., “skepticism about military force, a commitment to human rights” – and an aversion to empirical inquiry and historical and social context.

Strikingly absent from Beinart’s off-putting portrait of contemporary Israel is the failure to mention any recent history. Yet without that context no evaluation of the present Israeli consensus is possible. Palestinians are mentioned, if at all, only as helpless victims. The thousand Israelis killed in post-Oslo terrorist attacks, the more than 4,000 rockets fired at southern Israel after the Gaza withdrawal, the over 30,000 missiles amassed by Hizbullah are nowhere mentioned.

Beinart twice cites the belief that the Palestinians are “capable of peace” as a liberal article of faith. But the view that all people are more or less alike in their life goals is deeply flawed. For starters, it leaves no room for the influence of religion. But the Moslem belief that Jewish sovereignty over land once under Moslem rule constitutes sacrilege in need of redress prevents the acceptance of Israel’s existence, in any borders. Similarly, the theology of Iranian clerics that a massive conflagration will precede the return of the Hidden Imam makes a nuclear Iran so terrifying.

Unaffiliated American Jews may assume as a matter of faith, that the average Palestinian wants peace, as Beinart argues, but that does not make it so. A June 2009 poll by the Palestinian Center for Social Policy and Survey Research found that three-quarters of Palestinians do not believe reconciliation with Israel would be possible in this generation, even after the signing of a peace treaty and creation of a Palestinian state.

There has been no Palestinian education for peace. Since Oslo, both the Palestinian Authority and Hamas have fostered a cult of martyrdom. Palestinian leaders fear they would pay with their lives were they to compromise on any traditional Palestinian demands. As Arafat explained in rejecting Barak’s Camp David offer, “You will not walk behind my coffin.”

PERHAPS BEINART’S SOUTH AFRICAN background leads him to press Israel’s Jews into a false template of dehumanizing Palestinians. He praises the late Tommy Lapid’s sympathy for an elderly Palestinian woman shown on Israel TV rummaging in the rubble of her house in Rafah for her medicines, as if such sympathy were rare. Yet it has never been hard to start a conversation on the plight of Palestinians in an Israeli café; Lapid’s sympathy was commonplace. But what must also be remembered is that the old woman’s house was not destroyed because she was a Palestinian, but because it harbored underground tunnels through which are smuggled deadly missiles aimed at Jews.

Lifting a page from Norman Finkelstein, Beinart writes, “In the world of AIPAC, the Holocaust analogies never stop, and their message is always the same: Jews are licensed by their victimhood to worry only about themselves.” That accusation is both false and ugly. Every major hospital in Israel is filled with Israeli Arabs, and in many cases Palestinians, receiving top medical care. No other army forced to fight among civilians is so tethered by a battery of field lawyers as the IDF. Every other army in the world would have simply leveled from afar the booby-trapped house in the Jenin refugee camp in which 13 Jewish soldiers were killed in 2002.

TODAY’S JEWISH COLLEGE STUDENTS do not respond to Israel, according to Beinart, in part because they have no experience of Israel or Jews under mortal threat. Yet Israel faces greater threats to its existence than any other country in the world. Soon-to-be-nuclear Iran has expressed the desire to see Israel wiped off the map. Iran’s proxies, on Israel’s northern and southern borders, and its ally Syria possess tens of thousands of missiles capable of reaching every part of Israel. Just living under such threat imposes burdens no other people suffer.

No other country is subject to the same delegitimization, demonization, and double standards in a variety of international forums and from a host of human rights organizations. Beinart does not even mention the three D’s. Nor does he address the substantive critiques of the reports of the human rights organizations upon which he relies. It is enough, in his mind, that the HRO’s are “respected.” Yet Robert Bernstein, who founded and chaired Human Rights Watch for twenty years, accused the organization recently in The New York Times of aiding and abetting an agenda “to turn Israel into a pariah state.”

Let Beinart ask himself whether in today’s climate the first priority of American Jewry should be to add its voice to the choir of those condemning Israel.

About one thing, Beinart is certainly right: the Luntz focus groups reveal a crisis among college-age American Jews. But the problem is not their rejection of all forms of “group think;” it is their lazy adoption of the standard liberal group think with regard to Israel. The problem is not their sympathy for Palestinians in fetid refugee camps, but their unawareness that those camps came into existence only because of the Arab decision to seek Israel’s destruction in 1948. And they remain today only because of the ongoing decision of the Arab and Palestinian leadership to maintain them as a permanent breeding ground for terrorists.

The problem is not Jewish student’s desire for peace, but their failure to learn why peace has proven so difficult. (Beinart, incidentally, offers not one word on this subject.) It is not their skepticism about the efficacy of military force, but their failure to understand why Israel cannot yet beat its swords into ploughshares.

The ultimate failure of the American Jewish establishment lies in not providing young American Jews with a sufficient connection to their Judaism for them to be bothered to inform themselves about the fate of six million fellow Jews in Israel.

OPINION – Ever since Israeli-Palestinian talks began nearly two decades ago, it’s been clear that Jerusalem would be the thorniest problem of all. Because of this, the prevailing assumption has been that Jerusalem would come last in negotiations, once the issues of borders, security, the settlements and even Palestinian refugees would be resolved. But this spring, Jerusalem became not only a barrier to the conclusion of negotiations, but also delayed Palestinian consent to participate in indirect “proximity” talks in the first place.

The very mention of Jerusalem evokes emotions that can preclude rational discussion. On this issue high rhetoric is treacherous. The only way to disarm this minefield is to focus on practical solutions, leaving symbolism behind.

First, the facts: Until the 1967 War, Jewish Jerusalem, on the west side of the city, comprised 9,390 acres, while Jordanian Jerusalem, on the east side of the city, comprised only 1,482 acres. But in the aftermath of Israel’s lightning victory and the dramatic return to Judaism’s Holy Sites, Jerusalem’s municipal boundaries were expanded to include not just east Jerusalem, but open areas, villages and refugee camps situated deep in the West Bank. Israel immediately began to create facts on the ground by settling all these areas with Jews.

Today, it’s patently clear that Israel’s own interests necessitate relinquishing those large swaths of greater Jerusalem that are densely populated by Palestinians. What Israeli interest could possibly be served by holding onto the Shuafat refugee camp? The same goes for several of the Arab villages, like A-Zaim, El-Azariya or Isawiya, situated at the edge of the desert and hardly visited by Jews since 1967. In the future these will only be a burden on Israel-devoid of any strategic, historic or symbolic importance. Bottom line: If Israel wants to preserve west Jerusalem’s Jewish character, it is in its own interest to reduce the number of Palestinians residing within its boundaries.

The expanded city’s new Jewish neighborhoods (such as Gilo, Ramot, Pisgat Ze’ev – and also the 1,600 units in Ramat Shlomo that caused the standoff during US Vice President Biden’s recent visit) are another story altogether: These were built beyond the Green Line, but in largely unpopulated areas, and are now home to some 200,000 Israelis. When Washington calls these “settlements,” Israel winces. They are part of Jerusalem for most Israelis.

The Clinton Parameters proposed in 2000 (and other subsequent draft peace plans, such as the joint Israeli-Palestinian grassroots based Geneva Accord) called for reflecting the demographic reality of the city-leaving the Jewish neighborhoods of Jerusalem (even if in east Jerusalem) in Israel’s hands and the Palestinian ones in the Palestinian state.

I believe President Obama would do well to adopt this position and to desist from demanding an Israeli construction freeze in the Jewish neighborhoods. Taking practical considerations of moving Israelis out of these neighborhoods and Israeli popular opinion into account, there seems little chance that these areas will not be part of Jerusalem’s future contours.

On the other hand, Obama is absolutely right in demanding a halt to construction in east Jerusalem’s Arab neighborhoods. Palestinians will never agree to a two-state deal without a capital in “Al-Quds” (Jerusalem). Whoever supports Jewish construction in these Arab neighborhoods is actually opposing the creation of a Palestinian state. Recognizing this, President Obama was right in reacting furiously to Israel’s announcement that it plans to construct 20 housing units in Sheikh Jarrah.

There is another element to resolving Jerusalem – and that is the Palestinian refugee issue. Unless Palestinians give up their demand for the return of more than a symbolic number of the 1948 refugees to Israel-a demand universally seen as undermining the state’s Jewish character-most Israelis will not agree to a deal. This provides an opportunity for a trade-off. The two core issues of Jerusalem and the refugees will have to be traded off one another. The Palestinians will have to concede to Israel on refugees, and in return, Israel will have to concede on Arab east Jerusalem.

Washington has to understand this. To the Israelis, its message should be: If you want your demand on the refugees issue to be accepted, you must concede much of east Jerusalem, where the Palestinian capital will be. To the Palestinians, its message should be: If you want east Jerusalem as your capital, you must forgo your demand for return of refugees to Israel. If the President does it now he will find a surprising degree of Israeli public support.

Guest opinion writer Dr. Yoram Peri is a former adviser to Prime Minister Rabin, former editor-in-chief of the daily Davar, and is now the Kay Chair of Israel Studies and Director of the Gildenhorn Institute for Israel Studies at the University of Maryland. His views do not necessarily reflect those of Jerusalem Dispatch.

As grim reports of missile threats from every direction rain down on Israel, military analysts and columnists are issuing a barrage of warnings that Israel could find itself in a war on several fronts in the near future.

“Israel has ramped up provocative overflights of Lebanese territory in recent months, and Iran has carried out missile tests and even a series of massive war games in the Persian Gulf,” writes Newseek’s Babak Dehghanipisheh in a blog, noting that Hizbullah hasn’t denied receiving Scud missiles. “In a tinderbox like Lebanon, such rumors could produce deadly results.”

Under the headline “Time to Plan for War,” Caroline Glick describes “open preparations for war that Iran and its clients have undertaken,” pointing toward a four-front war against Israel “dominated by missile attacks against the entire country aimed at breaking the will of the Israeli people while forcing the IDF to divert vital resources away from Israel’s primary target – Iran’s nuclear installations – to contend with Iran’s proxies’ missile stores.”

She advises Israel to start and end the war quickly, noting that the IDF “excels at limited, swift campaigns.”

Glick writes that Israel should focus all its resources on destroying or seriously damaging Iran’s nuclear installations. “Every resource turned against Iran’s proxies must be aimed at facilitating that goal. That is, the only thing Israel should seek to accomplish in contending with Syria, Hizbullah and Hamas is to prevent them from diverting Israeli resources away from attacking Iran’s nuclear installations.

“This means that Israel must launch a preemptive strike against Hizbullah’s missiles and missile launchers, Syria’s missiles, artillery and launchers, and Hamas’s missiles and launchers. As for their short-range rockets, Israel should do its best to intercept them and otherwise hunker down to weather the storm of Katyushas and Qassams.”

Galal Nassar of Al-Ahram Weekly, which is published in Cairo, agrees that Israel would favor a preemptive strike, adding that regional shifts have Israel worried.

“Today, Israel is afraid that it may not be able to win a war as convincingly as it used to do,” Nassar claims. “Things are changing, as the recent meeting in Damascus between Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Bashar Al-Assad and Hassan Nasrallah suggests. So Israel now wants to fight alongside Western armed forces, just as it did back in 1956. No longer is Israel willing to go it alone, as it did in 1967 and 1973.”

Tzvi Bar’el of Haaretz suggests if only Jerusalem decided to hand the Golan Heights over to Syria, the threat of Shihad, Scud and Katyusha missiles would all but vanish. “Peace with Syria might neutralize the military threat from that country, stop Hezbollah from arming and put Iran in a confusing situation, even if it doesn’t break off its relations with Syria, [and] would also change Turkey’s position and neutralize the hostility between Israel and the other Arab countries.”

Meanwhile Guy Bechor of Yediot Aharonot insists “war is not expected to break out this summer,” arguing that all sides have an interest in maintaining the status quo. He writes that the IDF succeeded in putting a scare into Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon. Bechor claims a well-trained, well-equipped IDF with a new generation of advanced arms lends it “the most powerful deterrence Israel has enjoyed in decades.”

The idea sweeping Washington over recent weeks has been the notion that President Obama should release an “Obama Plan,” or a set of principles or a statement outlining where the US stands on all the core issues in the Israeli-Palestinian dispute (Jerusalem, refugees, borders and security). National Security Adviser James Jones and many of his predecessors reportedly favor it; so do many Mideast experts and former officials.

This is a very appealing notion especially given the frustrations the United States now confronts in trying to get both sides to talk, even indirectly, in “proximity talks” to be conducted by the United States. Since the administration has not been able to start negotiations, shake the two sides up, and force them to focus on the issues instead of the procedures for moving forward, the argument goes, just shove an American concept in their face, and they’ll start paying attention alright.

There is no question that bridging proposals or American ideas privately presented can save talks, and will undoubtedly be necessary earlier rather than later once negotiations begin. The Clinton Parameters that such a plan might resemble were privately presented to the two sides in the last few weeks of the administration. They might actually have worked if the parties had reached that stage earlier in the President’s term.

But in a situation in which the two sides, especially the leaders, distrust each other, are suspicious of the Obama camp, and both are preoccupied with their internal problems, the chances of either accepting an Obama Plan are slim indeed. The far more likely scenario is that both sides will reject the president’s approach out of hand, leaving him weaker than before and less able to organize talks. Once the president has released his own “plan,” and it is rejected, where do we go from there?

Instead, I propose another approach. The Obama administration has been right to press for the proximity talks that have been stalled for many weeks, while the United States and Israel debated Israeli construction in east Jerusalem. But now that the prime minister appears to have quietly imposed a de facto freeze on building in east Jerusalem, the talks finally appear about to begin. This is good news, but the United States should pursue them on the basis of a new agenda.

Instead of focusing on the central issues for finally resolving the conflict, the discussions should build on several useful and intriguing recent proposals from Palestinians and Israelis alike, to create a fledgling Palestinian state quickly, and then build on that achievement to address the core issues in a new and rejuvenated set of direct talks.

And what are these ideas? Prime Minister Salaam Fayyad has proposed using the advances Palestinians are making in West Bank institution building — from security to economic structures — to unilaterally declare a Palestinian state in 2011.

Shaul Mofaz, the hitherto hard-line former defense minister, is suggesting “the immediate establishment of an independent disarmed Palestinian state” followed by a guarantee of discussions on final status issues. He suggests quickly expanding the areas of the West Bank where Palestinians are largely in control so that the Palestinians will have “60 percent of the territory of the West Bank and 99 percent of the population.”

Ehud Yaari, Israel’s leading TV analyst on Arab affairs, suggests “immediately negotiating the establishment of a Palestinian state within [1948] armistice boundaries before a comprehensive peace is secured…”

All of these ideas propose an early Palestinian state in a portion of the West Bank as a prelude to final status negotiations, which they would see as invigorated and more viable once a prototype Palestinian state existed. Yaari talks about the evacuation of about 40,000 to 50,000 settlers; Mofaz refers more vaguely to compensation and evacuations of settlers. Yaari thinks Hamas would go along quietly with his approach; Mofaz is ready to talk to Hamas if it is elected again by the Palestinian public and he is ready to consider an international force from western countries if necessary at the outset. All of these proposals try to address and overcome longstanding Palestinian fears that a partial state will be a substitute, not a precursor, of a final settlement by guaranteeing further talks.

These are all challenging ideas and they differ markedly from current American policy. All of those who make these proposals, and others who offer other ideas, admit that the leaders on both sides do not currently accept these concepts and the one exception, Fayyad, has a very small popular base. But they all offer more chance of genuine achievement under current conditions than basing our policy on either a premature Obama Plan or on devoting the proximity talks exclusively to core issues.

Now that proximity talks are an imminent possibility, let’s try something that has a much better chance of success. Let’s work with the Israelis and Palestinians to begin to create a Palestinian state now, and then finish the job in direct negotiations that will then have a far better chance of triumph in a new atmosphere.

Dr. Steven L. Spiegel is a National Scholar at Israel Policy Forum and is a Professor of Political Science at the University of California at Los Angeles.

The ideas contained in this article do not necessarily reflect the views of Jerusalem Dispatch.

American Jews are periodically tested by virtue of their association with Israel. Operation Defensive Shield, when the European press was filled with reports of 5,000 Palestinian civilians slaughtered – some shot in the head, others buried alive – constituted one such test. Operation Cast Lead and the subsequent Goldstone Report accusing Israel of war crimes in Gaza constituted another.

Today the test comes by virtue of the decision of the Obama administration to sever the special relationship between the United States and Israel. In an April 13 press conference, President Obama stated that the Middle East conflict is “costing us significantly in terms of blood and treasure.”

The New York Times, a reliable barometer of the President’s thinking, if nothing else, spelled out the significance of those words. According to the Times, the President drew “an explicit link between the Israeli-Palestinian strife and the safety of American soldiers as they battle Islamic extremism and terrorism in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere.” In doing so, Obama signaled the increased likelihood that he “will offer his own parameters for an eventual Palestinian state.” The Times further predicted, based on conversations with senior administration officials, that this “new thinking” would lead to “tougher policies toward Israel.”

Simply put, the shoddy Walt-Mearsheimer thesis that Israel is a strategic liability for the United States has not only gone mainstream, it now guides the Obama administration’s foreign policy. As Jonathan Tobin put it in Commentary, the President has painted “any Israeli refusal to accede to [his] demands as a betrayal in which a selfish Israel is stabbing America in the back.”

The US President wants to make American Jews uncomfortable expressing support for Israel’s position by brandishing the “dual loyalty” charge. From day one, the administration has actively promoted JStreet as an anti-Israel alternative for American Jewry. These efforts have met with some success.

Many American Jews have wearied of defending Israel. David Metzger, “an American Jew (Reform) and long time supporter of Israel,” warned in a April 1 letter to the Jerusalem Post, “You might not realize what a PR problem this has become in the US, but when support of Israel, even within the American Jewish community, begins to erode, there is a problem.”

WHAT WOULD CONSTITUTE passing the test for American Jewry? Minimally, it would require American Jews to evince concern with the fate of six million Jews in Israel. While it would be unfair to expect American Jews to cast their votes solely, or even primarily, on the basis of their perceptions of what is good for the Jews of Israel, the greater and more imminent the threat to Jewish lives in Israel, the more central one would expect Israel to be in the political calculations of American Jews.

Concern with the fate of the Jews of Israel involves first of all empathy for our situation. In March 2002, prior to the launching of Operation Defensive Shield, 130 Jews were killed in terrorist attacks, culminating in the Seder Night Massacre in Netanya. That’s the equivalent of over 50,000 Americans killed by terrorists in a single month. Only after thousands of rockets were launched at southern Israel, over a period of three years, and the citizens of Sderot completely traumatized, did Israel launch Operation Cast Lead in early 2009.

In judging Israel’s actions, American Jews should try to place themselves in our situation. With today’s broad consensus among the Jews of Israel about how to best to protect the lives of Israel’s Jews – those in most immediate danger – that consensus should be treated with a degree of deference.

Second, American Jews should exercise a healthy degree of skepticism when confronted with charges of Israeli atrocities or war crimes, especially as so many of those claims have been conclusively proven to be wild fabrications. And finally, American Jews’ obligation towards their brethren in Israel requires that they remain informed on matters with the most direct impact on the physical safety of the Jews of Israel.

The letter from the aforementioned Mr. Metzger is an example of a failure on the third count. He castigates the Netanyahu government for “insisting on continuing construction of settlements at a time when the US is trying to broker a peace between Israel and the Palestinians, and at a time when the US is trying to unify the world against the Iranian threat – both for your benefit.” He is either unaware that Israel has instituted a ten month freeze on settlement building or else he shares the Obama administration’s view that the Jewish neighborhoods built in Jerusalem since 1967 are settlements.

Nor does it occur to him that an imposed “peace” between Israel and the Palestinians — or at least the half of them living in the West Bank — that does not guarantee Israel’s security is not to Israel’s benefit. That is why he wrongly assumes that Prime Minister Netanyahu’s positions reflect a “need to appease the hard-line base of his coalition,” not a broad Israeli consensus. (Over three-quarters of Mr. Metzger’s fellow American Jews, in two recent polls, opine — correctly, I believe — that the Palestinians would still seek the destruction of Israel after achieving statehood, which if true makes a two-state solution at present a suicide pact.)

Metzger writes as if a nuclear Iran were solely an Israeli concern, and thus to the extent that President Obama seeks to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons, he is motivated by beneficence towards Israel. True, Israel would be the first country on which Iran would train its nukes. But Sunni Arab regimes are terrified of the mischief an expansionist, nuclear Iran could provoke. They have repeatedly made clear to the United States that stopping Iran is far more important to them than the Palestinian-Israel conflict (and thereby made mockery of the administration’s linkage of progress in resolving the latter to the former).

Far from aiding Israel, President Obama’s Iranian policy has been tailor-made to ensure that Iran obtains nuclear weapons. The policy of engagement has allowed Iran to move closer to its goal unhindered for sixteen months. In both September and December, the President ignored his own deadlines for some sign of a positive Iranian response, further convincing Ahmadinejad that he has nothing to fear from the United States.

By linking sanctions to Russian and Chinese agreement, Obama ensured that they would be toothless. And by insisting that any sanctions target only the Revolutionary Guard, but not harm the Iranian people, Obama effectively protected the mullahs from popular pressure and any threat of regime change. Along the way, Obama has resisted calls from Germany, France, and Great Britain to join them in imposing sanctions with a bite, and ignored Congressional legislation targeting Iran’s oil refining capacity. Finally, no less an authority than Secretary of Defense William Gates warned in January memo that the administration has no policy in place when such weakened sanctions as may eventually be imposed prove ineffectual.

HOW HAS AMERICAN JEWRY – 78% of which voted for Obama in 2008 – responded to the administration’s demonstrated animus towards Israel over the past month and the evident failure of its Iran policy? Important voices have been raised lately decrying the administration’s approach to Israel: Elie Wiesel, former Mayor Ed Koch, Ronald Lauder and Morton Zuckerman, both former heads of the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations, ADL director Abe Foxman, and Richard Wexler, the former lay head of the Chicago Federation. Even Alan Dershowitz, a long-time Obama stalwart, warned the President that if Iran obtains nuclear weapons, he will be remembered by posterity together with Neville Chamberlain.

But with the exception of Mayor Koch all those mentioned have been active players in Jewish institutional life for decades. And the octogenarian Koch belongs to a generation of strongly identified ethnic Jews that is rapidly passing from the scene.

Still, even among the rank-and-file of American Jewry, the President’s harsh approach to Israel has not passed unnoticed. In a mid-March poll by the American Jewish Committee, a fairly tepid 55% of those polled expressed support for the administration’s conduct of U.S.-Israel relations. And in a Quinnipiac University poll released April 22, American Jews disagreed with the President’s handling of the Palestinian-Israel conflict by 67%-28%. (In the same poll, 50% of the Jews polled still described the President as a strong supporter of Israel, as opposed to only 23% of Protestants and 35% of Catholics.)

In the AJC poll, the plurality of Jews, 47%, support the President’s Iranian policy, though somewhat inconsistently, only 5% think there is good chance that sanctions can deter Iran. In the Quinnipiac poll, 50% of Jews, as opposed to 44% of the general public, approved the administration’s Iran policy.

The impact of these attitudes on the 2010 midterm elections or the 2012 presidential election remains unclear. The only poll to directly address the question conducted by McLaughlin and Associates for the Zionist Organization of America found that 46% of American Jews would consider voting for a candidate other than President Obama, whereas 42% would not. It is far too early to say how the 58% not firmly committed to Obama will ultimately break — the 2012 election is still over two and a half years away. But it is not inconceivable that he will receive a record low percentage of the Jewish vote for any Democratic candidate.

Even if American Jews disapprove of the President’s treatment of Israel, the issue has still not generated any visceral outpouring of emotion comparable to the Washington march during Operation Defensive Shield. Koch pronounced himself “shocked by the lack of outrage,” and claimed that one prominent Jewish leader told him that a Washington protest march would draw fifty people at most. Richard Wexler concluded his blog entry: “Our silence is our shame.”

ONE FINAL POINT MUST BE EMPHASIZED: the test facing American Jewry has more to do with the future of American Jewry than it does with that of Israel. The major support for Israel in America today comes from tens of millions of Christians, not from American Jews. Eighty per cent of Republicans (whose ranks include few Jews) harbor positive feelings to Israel, as opposed to only 53% of Democrats, according to a recent Gallup Poll. No other country elicited such a wide disparity of opinion.

An even sharper disparity appeared in a recent Zogby poll for the Arab-American Institute: 73% of Democrats versus 24% of Republicans favor America pursuing a “middle course” between the Palestinians and Israel in the Middle East. A recent bi-partisan House letter to Secretary of State Clinton, critical of the administration’s recent handling of relations with Israel, failed to garner only seven Republican signatures, but 91 Democrats (a full third of the Democratic caucus) refused to sign.

Should the President reconsider his present course with respect to Israel, it will have more to do with not wishing to provide another emotional rallying cry to Christian supporters of Israel already incensed by Obamacare, than to the fear of a loss of Jewish support. Outside of Florida, it is hard to think of another state where a decline to 60-65% of the Jewish vote for Obama would be decisive in the 2012 presidential election.

But Israel remains vital for American Jewry. Only support for Israel and identification with the plight of its six million Jews provides concrete expression to the concept of Jewish peoplehood for most American Jews. Without Israel, Jewish peoplehood becomes an anachronism. American Jewry’s concern with the fate of their fellow Jews remains the primary means through which American Jews develop any sense of themselves as part of a people with mutual responsibilities and the best barometer of the vitality of the concept Jewish peoplehood.

OPINION – Israel’s status as the US’s most vital ally in the Middle East has been so widely recognized for so long that over the years, Israeli and American leaders alike have felt it unnecessary to explain what it is about the alliance that makes it so important for the US.

Today, as the Obama administration is openly distancing the US from Israel while giving the impression that Israel is a strategic impediment to the administration’s attempts to strengthen its relations with the Arab world, recalling why Israel is the US’s most important ally in the Middle East has become a matter of some urgency.

Much is made of the fact that Israel is a democracy. But we seldom consider why the fact that Israel is a representative democracy matters. The fact that Israel is a democracy means that its alliance with America reflects the will of the Israeli people. As such, it remains constant regardless of who is power in Jerusalem.

All of the US’s other alliances in the Middle East are with authoritarian regimes whose people do not share the pro-American views of their leaders. The death of leaders or other political developments are liable to bring about rapid and dramatic changes in their relations with the US.

For instance, until 1979, Iran was one of the US’s closest strategic allies in the region. Owing to the gap between the Iranian people and their leadership, the Islamic revolution put an end to the US-Iran alliance.

Egypt flipped from a bitter foe to an ally of the US when Gamal Abdel Nasser died in 1969. Octogenarian President Hosni Mubarak’s encroaching death is liable to cause a similar shift in the opposite direction.

Instability in the Hashemite kingdom in Jordan and the Saudi regime could transform those countries from allies to adversaries.

Only Israel, where the government reflects the will of the people is a reliable, permanent US ally.

America reaps the benefits of its alliance with Israel every day. As the US suffers from chronic intelligence gaps, Israel remains the US’s most reliable source for accurate intelligence on the US’s enemies in the region.

Israel is the US’s only ally in the Middle East that always fights its own battles. Indeed, Israel has never asked the US for direct military assistance in time of war. Since the US and Israel share the same regional foes, when Israel is called upon to fight its enemies, its successes redound to the US’s benefit.

Here it bears recalling Israel’s June 1982 destruction of Syria’s Soviet-made anti-aircraft batteries and the Syrian air force. Those stunning Israeli achievements were the first clear demonstration of the absolute superiority of US military technology over Soviet military technology. Many have argued that it was this Israeli demonstration of Soviet technological inferiority that convinced the Reagan administration it was possible to win the Cold War.

In both military and non-military spheres, Israeli technological achievements – often developed with US support – are shared with America. The benefits the US has gained from Israeli technological advances in everything from medical equipment to microchips to pilotless aircraft are without peer worldwide.

Beyond the daily benefits the US enjoys from its close ties with Israel, the US has three fundamental, permanent, vital national security interests in the Middle East. A strong Israel is a prerequisite for securing all of these interests.

America’s three permanent strategic interests in the Middle East are as follows:

1 – Ensuring the smooth flow of affordable petroleum products from the region to global consumers through the Persian Gulf, the Gulf of Aden and the Suez Canal.

2 – Preventing the most radical regimes, sub-state and non-state actors from acquiring the means to cause catastrophic harm.

3 – Maintaining the US’s capacity to project its power to the region.

A strong Israel is the best guarantor of all of these interests. Indeed, the stronger Israel is, the more secure these vital American interests are. Three permanent and unique aspects to Israel’s regional position dictate this state of affairs.

1 – As the first target of the most radical regimes and radical sub-state actors in the region, Israel has a permanent, existential interest in preventing these regimes and sub-state actors from acquiring the means to cause catastrophic harm.

Israel’s 1981 airstrike that destroyed Iraq’s Osirak nuclear reactor prevented Iraq from acquiring nuclear weapons. Despite US condemnation at the time, the US later acknowledged that the strike was a necessary precondition to the success of Operation Desert Storm ten years later. Richard Cheney – who served as secretary of defense during Operation Desert Storm – has stated that if Iraq had been a nuclear power in 1991, the US would have been hard pressed to eject Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi army from Kuwait and so block his regime from asserting control over oil supplies in the Persian Gulf.

2 – Israel is a non-expansionist state and its neighbors know it. In its 62 year history, Israel has only controlled territory vital for its national security and territory that was legally allotted to it in the 1922 League of Nations Mandate which has never been abrogated or superseded.

Israel’s strength, which it has used only in self-defense, is inherently non-threatening. Far from destabilizing the region, a strong Israel stabilizes the Middle East by deterring the most radical actors from attacking.

In 1970, Israel blocked Syria’s bid to use the PLO to overthrow the Hashemite regime in Jordan. Israel’s threat to attack Syria not only saved the Hashemites then, it has deterred Syria from attempting to overthrow the Jordanian regime ever since.

Similarly, Israel’s neighbors understand that its purported nuclear arsenal is a weapon of national survival and hence they view it as non-threatening. This is the reason Israel’s alleged nuclear arsenal has never spurred a regional nuclear arms race.

In stark contrast, if Iran acquires nuclear weapons, a regional nuclear arms race will ensue immediately.

Although they will never admit it, Israel’s non-radical neighbors feel more secure when Israel is strong. On the other hand, the region’s most radical regimes and non-state actors will always seek to emasculate Israel.

3 – Since as the Jewish state Israel is the regional bogeyman, no Arab state will agree to form a permanent alliance with it. Hence, Israel will never be in a position to join forces with another nation against a third nation.

In contrast, the Egyptian-Syrian United Arab Republic of the 1960s was formed to attack Israel. Today, the Syrian-Iranian alliance is an inherently aggressive alliance against Israel and the non-radical Arab states in the region. Recognizing the stabilizing force of a strong Israel, the moderate states of the region prefer for Israel to remain strong.

From the US’s perspective, far from impairing its alliance-making capabilities in the region, by providing military assistance to Israel, America isn’t just strengthening the most stabilizing force in the region. It is showing all states and non-state actors in the greater Middle East it is trustworthy.

On the other hand, every time the US seeks to attenuate its ties with Israel, it is viewed as an untrustworthy ally by the nations of the Middle East. US hostility towards Israel causes Israel’s neighbors to hedge their bets by distancing themselves from the US lest America abandon them to their neighboring adversaries.

A strong Israel empowers the relatively moderate actors in the region to stand up to the radical actors in the region because they trust Israel to keep the radicals in check. Today’s regional balance of power in which the moderates have the upper hand over the radicals is predicated on a strong Israel.

On the other hand, when Israel is weakened the radical forces are emboldened to threaten the status quo. Regional stability is thrown asunder. Wars become more likely. Attacks on oil resources increase. The most radical sub-state actors and regimes are emboldened.

To the extent that the two-state solution assumes that Israel must contract itself to within the indefensible 1949 ceasefire lines, and allow a hostile Palestinian state allied with terrorist organizations to take power in the areas it vacates, the two-state solution is predicated on making Israel weak and empowering radicals. In light of this, the two-state solution as presently constituted is antithetical to America’s most vital strategic interests in the Middle East.

When we bear in mind the foundations for the US’s alliance with Israel, it is obvious that US support for Israel over the years has been the most cost-effective national security investment in post-World War II US history.

Used with permission. To read more articles by columnist Caroline Glick, visit her website at www.CarolineGlick.com.