American Jews Should Stand Firm against the Iran Deal as They Did 40 Years Ago against a Deal with the USSR

In 1974, as the Nixon administration was about to grant generous trade benefits to the USSR, American Jewish organizations—and Soviet Jewish activists—criticized the move and urged the U.S. government not to turn a blind eye to the fate of Soviet Jewry. Thanks in part to their intervention, Congress passed the Jackson-Vanik amendment linking economic concessions to changes in Soviet behavior, crucially including the free emigration of Soviet citizens. Natan Sharansky reflects on the implications for today:

American Jewish organizations . . . faced a difficult choice. They were reluctant to speak out against the U.S. government and appear to put the “narrow” Jewish interest above the cause of peace. Yet they also realized that the freedom of all Soviet Jews was at stake, and they actively supported the policy of linkage. . . .

The decaying Soviet economy could not support an arms race or maintain tolerable conditions without credit and support from the United States. By conditioning this assistance on the opening of the USSR’s gates, the United States would not only help free millions of Soviet Jews as well as hundreds of millions of others, but also pave the way for the regime’s eventual collapse.

Today, an American president has once again sought to achieve stability by removing sanctions against a brutal dictatorship without demanding that the latter change its behavior. And once again, a group of outspoken Jews—no longer a small group of dissidents in Moscow but leaders of the state of Israel, from the governing coalition and the opposition alike—are sounding an alarm. Of course, we [in Israel] are reluctant to criticize our ally and to oppose so vigorously an agreement that purports to promote peace. But we know that we are again at a historic crossroads, and that the United States can either appease a criminal regime—one that supports global terror, relentlessly threatens to eliminate Israel, and executes more political prisoners than any other per capita—or stand firm in demanding change in its behavior.

Read more at Washington Post

More about: Barack Obama, Iran nuclear program, Natan Sharansky, Politics & Current Affairs, Refuseniks, Richard Nixon, Scoop Jackson, U.S. Foreign policy

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