Before There Can be Peace between Israel and the Palestinians, the U.S. Needs to Defeat Radical Islam

If the U.S. really wishes to bring about peace between Israel and the Palestinians, argues Mario Loyola, it should begin by working to establish a situation in which Jerusalem can realistically consider ceding territory without risking national “suicide.” Doing so would involve a focus on containing Iran, defeating Islamic State and other Islamist groups, and forcing Palestinians leaders to end their incitement of terror. And that’s only the beginning:

There is only one reason the two-state solution is “in jeopardy” [to use John Kerry’s phrase], or more accurately dead, and that is Muslim terrorism against innocent Jews. There is only one reason for the harsh security measures imposed in the occupied territories, and that is Muslim terrorism against innocent Jews. There is only one reason for the continuing conflict between Israel and its neighbors, and that is Muslim terrorism against innocent Jews. A century of terrorism by Muslims against the Jews of Palestine—at first organic, then incited by the Soviets, and now propelled by political Islam—is the essence of this conflict and the only reason that it persists. Muslim extremism has now become a worldwide problem, claiming victims and threatening liberty on every continent except Antarctica. It is time to reshape U.S. policy on the whole Middle East . . . on the basis of a new principle, namely the decisive defeat of Muslim extremism. . . .

The world’s acceptance of Israel as a Jewish state, Palestinians’ demonstration that they can actually run a state, and the waning of extremism across the region are all things that have to happen before a two-state solution is even remotely feasible. End Israel’s isolation, and secure universal recognition of Israel as a Jewish state. . . . The U.S. should punish countries and organizations that boycott Israel, including those that boycott products produced in Israeli settlements. Beyond that, normalized relations with Israel should become a condition for fully normal ties with the United States.

[The U.S. should also] drop official opposition to Israeli settlements until the Arabs agree to a realistic transition plan. . . . Israel’s legal claim [to the West Bank] is for the moment better than anyone else’s. Meantime, since the Ottomans’ centuries-long rule over the entire territory ended at the close of World War I, the question of just whom the West Bank does or should belong to has never been settled. The claim of Palestinian Arabs to the land is no better than that of Palestinian Jews, i.e., Israelis. The competing claims can be settled only through negotiations, negotiations that the Palestinian Arabs have refused for years to engage in, despite multiple decisions by the Israelis to freeze their settlement activity.

Read more at National Review

More about: Iran, Israel & Zionism, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, John Kerry, Terrorism, U.S. Foreign policy

It’s Time for Haredi Jews to Become Part of Israel’s Story

Unless the Supreme Court grants an extension from a recent ruling, on Monday the Israeli government will be required to withhold state funds from all yeshivas whose students don’t enlist in the IDF. The issue of draft exemptions for Haredim was already becoming more contentious than ever last year; it grew even more urgent after the beginning of the war, as the army for the first time in decades found itself suffering from a manpower crunch. Yehoshua Pfeffer, a haredi rabbi and writer, argues that haredi opposition to army service has become entirely disconnected from its original rationale:

The old imperative of “those outside of full-time Torah study must go to the army” was all but forgotten. . . . The fact that we do not enlist, all of us, regardless of how deeply we might be immersed in the sea of Torah, brings the wrath of Israeli society upon us, gives a bad name to all of haredi society, and desecrates the Name of Heaven. It might still bring harsh decrees upon the yeshiva world. It is time for us to engage in damage limitation.

In Pfeffer’s analysis, today’s haredi leaders, by declaring that they will fight the draft tooth and nail, are violating the explicit teachings of the very rabbis who created and supported the exemptions. He finds the current attempts by haredi publications to justify the status quo not only unconvincing but insincere. At the heart of the matter, according to Pfeffer, is a lack of haredi identification with Israel as a whole, a lack of feeling that the Israeli story is also the haredi story:

Today, it is high time we changed our tune. The new response to the demand for enlistment needs to state, first and foremost to ourselves, that this is our story. On the one hand, it is crucial to maintain and even strengthen our isolation from secular values and culture. . . . On the other hand, this cultural isolationism must not create alienation from our shared story with our fellow brethren living in the Holy Land. Participation in the army is one crucial element of this belonging.

Read more at Tzarich Iyun

More about: Haredim, IDF, Israeli society