China’s Offer to Send Troops to Syria Threatens U.S. Interests

In the past several years, China has gradually sought to expand its influence in East Asia and the Pacific and undermine the American-led order in the region. But, writes Joel Sonkin, it is also turning its attentions farther afield:

Indeed, Beijing has been busy actively pursuing its much-discussed “Belt and Road” initiative to invest in infrastructure linking China by both land and sea to markets in Asia and Europe. As part of these efforts, President Xi Jinping made a visit in July to the United Arab Emirates to sign a host of financial and trade agreements. . . .

Just across the Arabian Peninsula, in what would be a key component of China’s sea route, Beijing established in 2017 its first overseas military base in Djibouti. This small African country sits at one of the most important maritime locations in the world: the Bab al-Mandeb Strait, the key chokepoint connecting Asia and Europe. Ships bound for Europe pass through the narrow waterway between Djibouti and the southern tip of Yemen into the Red Sea and continue through the Suez Canal to the Mediterranean. In short, Djibouti is poised to serve as a launchpad for China to project its power between Europe and Asia, i.e. the Middle East and North Africa. . . .

Finally, in what would be perhaps Beijing’s most audacious move yet, it was reported this past week that the Chinese ambassador to Syria offered his country’s assistance to the regime of Bashar al-Assad. The ambassador said that China is willing to participate “in some way alongside the Syrian army,” as it looks to finish off the Sunni opposition. . . .

The situation [in Syria] was made drastically more difficult when the U.S. allowed one of its fiercest competitors, Russia, to intervene on behalf of the Assad regime. But the [effect of the] potential entrance of America’s other ostensible global competitor into the Syrian arena is hard to fathom. A Chinese presence in the region . . . is unprecedented, and would bring the U.S. and its Middle Eastern allies into uncharted waters. . . . [I]t is not too soon for the Trump administration to pursue vigorously a policy of preventing China from gaining a foothold in the Middle East.

Read more at Algemeiner

More about: China, Middle East, Politics & Current Affairs, Syria, 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