How Western Governments Tried to Nip Israel in the Bud

In Israel’s Moment, Jeffrey Herf investigates the reactions of various governments to the creation of a Jewish state in the years between 1945 and 1949, and particularly the unwillingness in the West to punish the Palestinian leader and mufti of Jerusalem, Amin al-Husseini, for his collaboration with the Nazis. Sol Stern writes in his review:

Among its many benefits, Herf’s book exposes the big lie . . . that Israel was created as a Western imperialist or colonialist outpost. . . . Herf also shows that the most passionate political support for Jewish statehood “came overwhelmingly from American liberals and left liberals, French socialists, and between 1947 and 1949 from Communists in France and the Soviet bloc, especially in Czechoslovakia.”

American progressives and leftists who later pushed for Israel’s independence first came together to launch a public campaign to bring the mufti to justice for his collaboration with the Nazis and for possible war crimes. But Husseini was shielded from prosecution by high-level government officials in the U.S. and France who were determined to protect Western influence in the Arab world. In Washington, the sudden concern for the mufti’s safety came from the same anti-Zionist faction within the Truman administration that later tried to block the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine.

In June 1946, French security forces guarding the house where Husseini was detained conveniently left the door open and he “escaped” to Egypt. The mufti was granted asylum by King Farouk [of Egypt] and received a rapturous reception upon his return. In Cairo, he was greeted as a conquering hero by the founder of the Islamofascist Muslim Brotherhood, Hassan al-Banna. The mufti, al-Banna declared, was a great leader who “challenged an empire and fought Zionism with the help of Hitler and Germany. Germany and Hitler are gone, but Amin al-Husseini will continue the struggle.”

Read more at Quillette

More about: Amin Haj al-Husseini, Israeli history, Muslim Brotherhood, Nazi Germany, US-Israel relations

What a Strategic Victory in Gaza Can and Can’t Achieve

On Tuesday, the Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant met in Washington with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. Gallant says that he told the former that only “a decisive victory will bring this war to an end.” Shay Shabtai tries to outline what exactly this would entail, arguing that the IDF can and must attain a “strategic” victory, as opposed to merely a tactical or operational one. Yet even after a such a victory Israelis can’t expect to start beating their rifles into plowshares:

Strategic victory is the removal of the enemy’s ability to pose a military threat in the operational arena for many years to come. . . . This means the Israeli military will continue to fight guerrilla and terrorist operatives in the Strip alongside extensive activity by a local civilian government with an effective police force and international and regional economic and civil backing. This should lead in the coming years to the stabilization of the Gaza Strip without Hamas control over it.

In such a scenario, it will be possible to ensure relative quiet for a decade or more. However, it will not be possible to ensure quiet beyond that, since the absence of a fundamental change in the situation on the ground is likely to lead to a long-term erosion of security quiet and the re-creation of challenges to Israel. This is what happened in the West Bank after a decade of relative quiet, and in relatively stable Iraq after the withdrawal of the United States at the end of 2011.

Read more at BESA Center

More about: Gaza War 2023, Hamas, IDF