The U.S. Election's Impact on the American and Israeli Economies

http://www.rubinreports.blogspot.co.il/2012/11/the-us-elections-impact-on-american-and.html

The U.S. Election's Impact on the American and Israeli Economies

By Barry Rubin

With President Barack Obama reelected there is every reason to believe that he will continue the tax, regulatory, and economic policies of his first term. That means the U.S. economy is unlikely to improve quickly, steadily, or even at all during the next four years. The problem is not just Obama’s own strategy on these issues but also the lack of business confidence in his plans.

Those doubts, along with even higher taxes, a complex and costly new health care system, and uncertainty about what new costs Obama is going to impose will keep investors, large corporations, and small businesses from investing money. Thus, unemployment will remain high and recovery slow or even non-existent.

And that will have a big effect on Israeli thinking. If Israeli policymakers--and businesspeople--view certain policies as failing in the United States they are unlikely to adapt those ideas to Israel, even if some of seem ideologically attractive to the moderate left here. 
The strategy of higher taxes, high regulation, increasing government intervention, and bigger government are already unattractive in Israel and will be even more so. The Labor Party wants more effort on improving social welfare and lowering the country's high prices yet knows the Obama-European approach has been disastrous. .

Poor performance by the U.S. economy will also have a negative effect on Israel’s own growth and trade, reducing the prospects for exports to America and by having a depressing effect on the global economy. 

In contrast, a victory for Romney would have encouraged businesspeople in the United States to believe they woulf face policies more favorable to their needs. With the possible repeal of Obama’s controversial health care plan, quite costly to employers, and the likelihood of lower taxes and reduced—or at least stable—regulation, there would have been an incentive for them to invest and expand their businesses.

A booming U.S. economy would benefit Israel’s economy both directly and indirectly through its impact on the international economic situation as well. Romney’s expertise on turning around failing businesses would have provided the proper management. But that's not going to happen. 

While the similarities should not be exaggerated one could suggest that a Romney presidency would have more closely paralleled Israel’s economic strategy. After all, Israel has succeeded in recent years with an approach favoring privatization, keeping unemployment low, and avoiding large-scale governmental borrowing or debt. This policy, of course, also has costs, as the social protests of last year showed.

Generally, though no one in the United States thinks in these terms, the battle in America is between the ideas governing Israel in two eras of its history. Obama’s statism reflects the early policies of Israel. The difference, of course, is that those positions were necessary for a newly born country that had no alternatives but not for the United States in the year 2013. Romney’s approach represented more of the strategy of Israeli governments of all three ruling parties during the last two decades.

At any rate, Israel is going to have to deal with a weak American economy, as well as a weak American foreign policy, for the next four years.

Israel’s Situation and Strategy In Obama’s Second Term

By Barry Rubin

“Don’t Panic” –Douglas Adams, Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

What should Israel’s policy and priorities be in President Barack Obama’s second term? There will be two key themes: minimize antagonism and cope with the negative consequences of U.S. regional policy.

1.       Protect bilateral relations.

Israel’s government must ensure continued U.S. aid; intelligence-sharing; and other forms of cooperation. Obama will almost certainly maintain these programs. This status quo situation is protected by support for Israel in Congress and the Defense Department.  Whatever verbal friction or temporary tempests taking place—including signs of Obama’s personal dislike of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu--should not change this.  

2.       Keep Obama from damaging Israel’s situation in regard to the Palestinians.

Obama must decide whether to put a priority on the Israel-Palestinian “peace process,” meaning pressure on Israel to make concessions while the Palestinian Authority (PA) doesn’t keep its commitments and makes no compromises.

Obama probably won’t behave this way. His botched attempt on Israel-Palestinian peacemaking during the first term is the only such failure he has ever acknowledged. Obama knows success is unlikely and that neither the PA nor Arab states will help him.

There are many more pressing issues for U.S. policy. Dramatic changes in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, and Syria, among other places, take center stage. When Obama wants to show the United States isn’t too close to Israel, thinking that will make Muslims like him, he can do so by relatively symbolic, minor measures.

At any rate, the Israeli government is quite capable of offering cooperation, making concessions on relatively unimportant issues, stalling for time, and essentially calling the PA’s bluff. It should be added that by creating a far more dangerous regional situation, Obama has made major Israeli concessions on territory unthinkable. In the end, though, nothing will happen on the peace process front.


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3.                   How will Obama handle a regional situation increasingly characterized by revolutionary Islamist movements in power or battling for it?  

Radical regimes now exist in Egypt, the Gaza Strip, Lebanon, Tunisia, and Turkey, though Obama doesn’t see this.  Obama is going to be supportive for these governments except for Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Even there, Hamas benefits from U.S. help and tolerance for its allied regime in Egypt.

Given Obama’s policy, the Islamists are likely to become stronger. Aside from consolidation and increasing confidence for those five governments, the most likely Islamist advance is the seizure of power in Syria.

And since these same people are dedicated to Israel’s destruction and often speak openly about committing genocide against Jews generally, a U.S. policy that is simultaneously weak and friendly toward its most fanatical enemies is a huge strategic problem for Israel.

During Obama’s second term, Israel is likely to face sporadic attacks from the Gaza Strip against which it will periodically have to retaliate against. Obama will remain aloof, issuing statements but giving no real support. This isn’t a good situation but it is a manageable one.

The real difficulty would come if Hamas launches an all-out attack on Israel as it did in late 2008. But this time there would be a significant difference. Hamas can expect some level of Egyptian support. That could take many forms:

Hamas headquarters, weapons’ storehouses, and other facilities being moved onto Egyptian territory so that Israel cannot touch them; a massive flow of arms, weapons, and money across the border financed in part by the ruling Muslim Brotherhood; an influx of Egyptian volunteers to fight alongside Hamas, whose death would lead to howls of revenge in Egypt and other such measures.

Beyond this, Egypt could escalate into allowing—it is already doing little to prevent them—cross-border terrorist attacks on Israel. It is conceivable that demands from Salafists and Muslim Brotherhood cadre, the regime’s own revolutionary enthusiasm, the need to distract popular attention from domestic failures, and ideological hysteria, Egypt could end up in a war-like situation or even an open war with Israel.

That would be more likely if Israel had to send military forces into the Gaza Strip as happened in 2009.

The Egyptian military, the only bulwark against such an adventurous Egyptian policy, has already been tamed by the Muslim Brotherhood regime and Israel cannot depend on the United States to press sufficiently hard for enforcement of the treaty or to deter Egypt.

 As a result, Israel will have to be ready to fight such a smaller or bigger war by itself. If a Muslim Brotherhood-dominated regime were to be in power in Syria, it could join in and a new war take place. 

In fact, for the first time in almost forty years, under Obama, Israel cannot depend on real U.S. support or protection against any Arab threat or aggression. And so Israel, while striving to get Obama to do as much as possible, will just have to take care of itself. It is capable of doing so. 

4.   4.   Iran and the Nuclear Issue

Although it is possible to pretend differently, the reality is that Obama will never attack Iranian nuclear installations or support such an Israeli attack. This situation, among other factors, makes an Israeli attack on Iran extremely unlikely. That in itself is not necessarily a bad thing. The problem is that Obama will not launch a credible and systematic effort to contain Iran’s aggressive policy, as opposed to putting in place early-warning stations and defensive missiles in the Gulf and verbal threats of retaliation if Iran uses nuclear weapons.

Ironically, the solution—aside from Israel’s own defensive efforts—is the very Sunni Islamist power that also threatens Israel. Given the rise of Sunni Islamism and the Syrian civil war, Iran’s influence is going to be largely restricted to Lebanon and, to a lesser extent, Iraq.

But what if Israel perceives a credible threat from a nuclear-armed Iran? How much help can it expect from Obama? Of course, he will say the right things. Yet the U.S. judgment on what constitutes a real threat which must be countered even by military force is going to differ sharply from that of Israel. As long as it is just a question of Iran getting nuclear weapons, that disagreement matters less. If it comes to a possibility of Iran using nuclear weapons that gap will be a matter of life and death.

So Obama’s reelection is a serious problem for Israel, albeit not a catastrophe or a threat to the state’s existence. For the first time in more than four decades, Israeli leaders—and not just Netanyahu-- understand that the country cannot depend on the United States as a protector.

It is amusing how Obama's defenders as a friend of Israel never discuss non-bilateral aspects of the relationship. For them, the only thing that could make Obama a big problem for Israeli security would be if he ended or sharply reduced military aid, funding for anti-missile development (which directly benefits the U.S. military), and intelligence-sharing. Israel exists in a Middle East environment and thus abetting, whitewashing, and not opposing radical Islamists from taking or reinforcing their hold on power is, to say the least, unhelpful. I have never seen a single piece in the mass media that made this simple point.

Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest book, Israel: An Introduction, has just been published by Yale University Press. Other recent books include The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). The website of the GLORIA Center  and of his blog, Rubin Reports. His original articles are published at PJMedia.

Why is Israel More Prosperous Than the Palestinians: The Ultimate Demonstration of Media Bias

By Barry Rubin


In almost 40 years of studying these issues I’ve never seen a better case study of mass media bias and knee-jerk narrowness than an aspect of the current flap about what presidential candidate Mitt Romney said during his trip to Israel. I’m going to focus on a single point because it brings this problem into sharp focus.

If you truly understand what you are about to read, I don’t see how you can accord most of the mass media any credibility when it comes to Israel ever again. Briefly, Romney mentioned the gap between the Israeli and Palestinian economies—ironically, he vastly understated the gap—and attributed it to “culture” by which he meant, as Romney has said elsewhere, such things as democracy, individual liberty, free enterprise, and the rule of law.

But I’m not talking about Romney here or the media’s critique of him. What is interesting is this: How do you explain the reason why Israel is so more advanced in terms of economy, technology, and living standards? The media generally rejected Romney’s explanation and pretty much all made the same point. To quote the Associated Press story, that was:

“Comparison of the two economies did not take into account the stifling effect the Israeli occupation has had on the Palestinian economy in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem—areas Israel captured in 1967 where the Palestinians hope to establish a state.

"In the West Bank, Palestinians have only limited self-rule. Israel controls all border crossings in and out of the territory, and continues to restrict Palestinian trade and movement. Israel annexed east Jerusalem in 1967, but has invested much less heavily there than in Jewish west Jerusalem.”

Or, in other words, it’s all Israel’s fault. Yet in choosing to blame Israel, the media generally showed no interest at all in additional factors which are equally or more valid. 

I’m not suggesting that journalists and editors thought through the following list of factors and deliberately decided not to mention them. I think that these things never entered their minds. Yet how can that be? Some of these points require knowledge of the situation on the ground and its history. Still, many should be obvious to those who have read past newspaper accounts or just use logic, not to mention research.

Consider the points made below. You might count them for less but anyone honest should admit that they add up to a compelling case:

1.      The most devastating problem for the Palestinian economy has been the leadership’s refusal to make peace with Israel and to get a state. Most notably, the opportunities thrown away in 1948, 1979, and 2000 doomed both countries to years of suffering, casualties, and lower development. Today, in 2012, both Palestinian leaderships—Fatah and Hamas—continue this strategy.

2.      Statistics show major advances in the West Bank and Gaza Strip during the period of Israeli occupation.  A lot of money also came in from Palestinians working in Israel (or to a surprising extent on the Jewish settlements).

3.      The media should be expected to explain why Israel interfered at all once, by around 1994, almost all West Bank and Gaza Palestinians were under Palestinian rule. The reason, of course, was Palestinian violence against Israel and Israelis. If there had not been such attacks, Israeli forces would not have set foot in Palestinian-ruled areas. Stability would have encouraged development and foreign investment. There would be no roadblocks. Incidentally, roadblocks and restrictions on travel have changed constantly and at times of relative quiet became almost non-existent. Of course, Israel maintained control of the borders to prevent weapons from coming in.

4.      There was a  large transfer of funds (as provided in the Oslo agreement but PA behavior did not make Israel violate the agreement) from Israel to the PA regarding refunds on customs' duties and workers' fringe benefits.

5.      The well-documented incompetence and corruption of the Palestinian Authority. For example, there is no reliable body of law that a company could depend on there. Bribes determine who gets contracts. Literally billions of dollars have been stolen and mostly ended up in the European accounts of Palestinian leaders.

6.      And where did those billions of dollars come from? They came from foreign donors who showered huge amounts of money on a relatively small population. Yet, even aside from theft, the money was not used productively or to benefit the people.

7.      Because of the risks and attacks on Israel, the country stopped admitting Palestinian workers except for a far smaller number. Tens of thousands thus lost lucrative jobs and the PA could not replace these.

8.      The unequal status of women in the Palestinian society throws away up to one-half of the potential labor and talent that could otherwise have made a big contribution to development.

9.      And then there are the special factors relating to the Gaza Strip. Under the rule of Hamas, a group committing many acts of terror and openly calling for genocide against Israel, the emphasis was not put on economic development but on war-fighting. The shooting of rockets at Israel created an economic blockade. Note also, however, that Hamas also alienated the Mubarak regime in Egypt which also had no incentive to help it, instituting its own restrictions that were as intense as those of Israel.

10.  The Palestinian leadership generally antagonized Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and other oil-rich Arab states that were consequently not interested in helping them develop.

11.  Finally, compare the Palestinians to the Egyptians, Jordanians, Syrians, or Lebanese. In those places the excuse of it’s all Israel’s fault is hard to sustain yet the Palestinians have done as well or better than those other Arabs who share a very similar political culture.  

12.  And incidentally remember that Israel also had to cope with war, terrorism, and defense needs unequaled by the burden faced by any other democratic state in the world. Moreover, it could not trade for most of its history with any of its neighbors--and commerce is still limited--or any of the countries in the Arabic-speaking world that surrounds it. In addition, it has almost no natural resources. So while Israel received a lot of U.S. aid most of that went into defense and not economic development. In other words, Israel's has handicaps as impressive (or almost as marked) as the Palestinian ones. 

My goal here was not so much to present these twelve points but to ask the question: Why is it that these factors were barely mentioned or not mentioned at all in the media analyses of Romney’s statement?

The answer, of course, is that most of the media is set on the blame-Israel argument. Yet even given this truth, why do they have to do so virtually 100 percent of the time with nothing about the other side of the issue? This applies to dozens of other questions such as why hasn't peace been achieved. And in this as in many other cases, they virtually take the PA's talking points as their themes and facts.

Often, one suspects there are a lot of people in the mass media and academia who are totally uninterested in presenting anything other than an anti-Israel narrative. This article doesn't mean to generalize about everyone, of course, but you who are doing that know who you are, and you readers know who they are! 

To read the entire article click here.

How the U.S. Government Should Deal With the Jerusalem As Israel's Capital Issue

By Barry Rubin

Recently there has been a controversy when State Department spokespeople refused to say what they thought to be Israel’s capital. To understand this issue we need to understand that there are two different issues involved: that of 1947 and that of 1967.

I’m not going to discuss ancient history, religious factors, and the merits of varying claims here but will merely point out some simple facts of practical diplomacy.

The U.S. embassy, like others, is located in Tel Aviv. When diplomats need to meet with Israeli officials they pile into their vans and drive up to Jerusalem. There are also restrictions on just where these diplomats can go and under what conditions, to avoid any implication that they recognize Israel’s annexation of the Golan Heights or east Jerusalem.

Presidents have repeatedly promised to move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem but have never made the tiniest move toward doing so because that would make Muslims and Arabs angry. In his speeches to AIPAC, President Barack Obama has said—to thunderous applause—that Jerusalem was the capital of Israel and should remain undivided. But of course this was a totally cynical gesture.

One could—as Obama no doubt hoped his audience would do—interpret this as favoring Israeli sovereignty over all of Jerusalem. Under that interpretation, Obama was taking a position on the “final status” negotiations. What Obama probably really meant is that after a two-state solution is implemented there should be no wall or closed border within Jerusalem. (That’s a nice idea though how it would be implemented is a puzzler.)

There is a genuine diplomatic problem for the United States here but there is also a reasonable way around it, if any future American president wanted to avail himself of that option.

To read the entire article click here.

Understanding Real Israeli Politics

“Can’t anybody here play this game?”  --Casey Stengel, great baseball coach

By Barry Rubin

Stengel’s complaint is the precise description of Israeli politics nowadays. To a remarkable extent—and this has nothing to do with his views or policies—Bibi Netanyahu is the only functioning politician in Israel today. No wonder he is prime minister, will finish his current term, and will almost certainly be reelected in 2013.

Consider the alternatives. The number one such option is Shaul Mofaz who is head of Kadima. Mofaz was a competent general but is a dreadful politician. He may be the least charismatic man I’ve ever met. Tsippi Livni, his predecessor, was a disaster as leader of the self-described centrist party. Here is a list of her major failures:

--She did not take the opportunity to oust the smarmy party leader Prime Minister Ehud Olmert when the corruption charges against him piled up.


--She did a poor job in the dealing with the  end-game in the Gaza war in January 2009.

--She mishandled the coalition negotiations when she did become acting prime minister, leading to the government’s fall.

--She barely beat Mofaz in the 2008 party primary.

--Although her party had one seat more than Netanyahu’s in the 2009 election, Livni bungled the chance for some kind of coalition or rotation agreement. True, Netanyahu held the upper hand and had no incentive to give up much but that was all the more reason for her to offer him a good enough deal so she wouldn't be thrown into fruitless opposition. 

--As leader of the opposition Livni was a total failure, never providing a good counter to Netanyahu’s positions and showing signs of personal panic that shocked people. Even the anti-Netanyahu media couldn’t rally behind her.

So Livni was a catastrophe; Kadima, itself a merger of ex-Likud and ex-Labor party people, developed no personality of its own.



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Mofaz’s record is quite bad, too. In fact, as one Israeli joke puts it, Mofaz in the party leadership accomplished as much self-inflicted damage in three months as Livni had in eighteen months. Previously, he said he would never leave Likud for Kadima, and then did so a few hours later. In 2012 he said he wouldn’t join Netanyahu’s coalition, then did, and then announced he was leaving within a few days  over the issue of drafting yeshiva (Orthodox religious studies) students.

Everyone knows that if an election is held, Kadima will collapse. Where will most of its voters go? Almost certainly to Netanyahu. So Mofaz is bluffing and everybody knows it. He cannot afford to have elections. So there’s another joke in Israel that the country will have “early elections” when Netanyahu’s term comes to an end, just after the end of 2013.

Then there’s the left. The Labor Party has split, with the smaller, more national security-oriented faction led by Defense Minister Ehud Barak sticking with Netanyahu’s coalition. That group should also disappear in the next election.

The remaining part of the Labor party has veered to the left and makes domestic social issues its priority. That might well revive the party—especially with the defection of lots of Kadima voters but it won’t win them an election. The party is now led by Shelly Yachimovich whose career experience consists of having been a radio journalist and has never been a cabinet member.

Of course, there were social protests in Israel last year about high prices for some consumer goods and for apartments. There are genuine problems. But these are the result of economic policies that also brought Israel one of the best records of any developed country in the world during the international recession.

And the fall-out from the “Arab Spring” puts national security issues once again front and center.

Alongside of this has been the collapse of the social protests. Last year the movement could mobilize hundreds of thousands—though the media exaggerated its size—and had broad public sympathy across the political spectrum.

Now it is reduced to hundreds or a few thousands at most. Why? Because the loony leftists ousted the moderate leadership which had some realistic proposed solutions.  

Yachimovich has no monopoly on picking up this support of the discontented. Israelis are realists and know that, unfortunately, a lot of the money intended to be used for social benefits now has to go to build a fence along the border with Egypt and build up Israel’s defensive forces there.

Then there are various centrist good-government style parties that are likely to take votes from Labor and from each other, notably the new party of Yair Lapid, whose father was also a journalist who also started a failed centrist, good-government and secularist party.  

 As I’ve often remarked, there is no country in the world about which people think they know more and that they actually know less. We often focus on bias but ignorance is equally important.

There are three key factors necessary to understand contemporary Israeli politics.

First, Netanyahu is not seen by the electorate generally as being right-wing and hawkish but as being centrist. He has successfully been developing this posture now for about fifteen years without much of the Western media appearing to notice.

Second, Israelis don’t really see the likelihood that different policies are going to make lots of Arabs and Muslims love Israel, or bring peace with the Palestinians, or end the vilification of Israel by the left. All of those things were tried by means of Israel taking high risks and making big concessions during the 1992-2000 period. Israelis remember, even if others don’t, that this strategy doesn’t work.

Third, there is no other politician who is attractive as an alternative prime minister.

We now know that President Barack Obama’s administration thought that he was going to overturn Netanyahu and bring Livni to power on a platform of giving up a lot more to the Palestinians on the hope that this would bring peace. The editorial pages of American newspapers and alleged experts still advocate this basic strategy. They couldn’t possibly be less connected to reality.

Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His book, Israel: An Introduction, has just been published by Yale University Press. Other recent books include The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). The website of the GLORIA Center  and of his blog, Rubin Reports. His original articles are published at PJMedia.

   

Israel is in Good Shape Because So Many Others Decided Not to Be

By Barry Rubin

The more I think about Israel’s security situation at this moment, the better it looks.  Obviously, this is counter-intuitive given the media bias, academic distortions, and campaigns for sanctions of various kinds. And, of course, Israel starts from a basis of facing far more security challenges than any other modern state. Still, by Israeli standards the outlook is good.

It’ll take a while to list all of the factors so let’s get started while the inkwell is still full.

On the surface, the “Arab Spring” along with the surge of revolutionary Islamism certainly looks bad but let’s examine the shorter-term implications. By reentering a period of instability and continuing conflict within each country, the Arabic-speaking world is committing a self-induced setback. Internal battles will disrupt Arab armies and economies, reducing their ability to fight against Israel.  Indeed, nothing could be more likely to handicap development than Islamist policies.

While one shouldn't depend too much on expecting Arab regimes to be too busy dealing with domestic transformation to want to stage foreign adventures against Israel, this is far more true than in past decades. And even if they would like to attack Israel they are less able to do so effectively given their disrupted societies, weakened armies, uncertain alliances, and lack of a Western sponsor. 

Every Arabic-speaking country is likely to be wracked by internal violence, conflict, disorder, and slow socio-economic progress for years, even decades, to come.

Westerners are going to be disillusioned as reform stalls; the oppression of women increases; and Islamism produces unattractive partners. True, the Western left romanticizes Islamism but the number of people persuaded that these regimes are more attractive than Israel will be less as what Marxism traditionally described as “clerical-fascist” movements flourish.

Moreover, for Turkey and Iran the last year has been a disaster for their regional power ambitions. With rising Arab Sunni Islamist movements in Libya, Tunisia, Egypt, and Syria, Sunni Arabs see no need to turn to non-Arab Turks and non-Arab, non-Sunni Persians. 

Turkey’s influence is limited to northern Iraq and, thanks largely to the Obama Administration’s backing, with the Syrian opposition. And if Syria became either Sunni Islamist or more moderate democratic, Damascus would quickly dispense with any need for Turkish patronage.

As for Iran, it has lost virtually all of its non-Shia Muslim assets, notably Hamas. Again, Sunni Arab Islamists are not going to follow Tehran’s lead while Sunni Arab countries don’t want to yield leadership of “their” Middle East to Tehran. 

Therefore, the big Middle East conflict of this era will be Sunni-Shia, not Arab-Israeli. But a series of conflicts have broken out all along the Sunni-Shia borderland as the two blocs vie for control of Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Bahrain.

In addition, the Syrian civil war is wrecking that country and will continue to paralyze it for some time to come. When the dust settles, any new government is going to have to take a while to manage the wreckage, handle the quarreling, diverse ethnic-religious groups, and rebuild its military. In Lebanon, a dominant Hizballah, trying to hold onto power and worrying about the fate of its Syrian patron, doesn’t want a confrontation with Israel.

Then there are the surviving traditionalist regimes—Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and the five other Gulf emirates—who know the main threat to them is from Iran and revolutionary Islamists at home, not Israel. In fact, they realize, Israel is a kind of protector for them since it also opposes those who want to put their heads on the chopping block.

An extremely important point to note is how completely Arabs, and especially Palestinians, threw away the greatest opportunity they’ve ever had to gain more U.S. support and widen the cracks between Washington and Jerusalem into a chasm. If properly motivated, the Obama Administration was ready to become the most actively pro-Palestinian government in American history, to offer more concessions to the Palestinian Authority (PA), and to put more pressure on Israel than ever seen before.

Instead, they refused to cooperate with Obama and rejected his initiatives. The PA wasted Obama's entire term in refusing even to negotiate with Israel. Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, the PA repeatedly showed the U.S. government that it was the intransigent party. And even if American officials would never publicly admit this, they certainly had to give up as a result.

I provide this list not to rejoice at the misfortunes of others, even those who are hostile, because their people are the real victims. But these misfortunes are the result of decisions they made. This is the reality of the Middle East today.

On the other side has been Israel’s dramatic success in terms of economic progress. The country has become a world leader in high-technology, medicine, science, computers, and other fields. It has opened up new links to Asia. The discovery of natural gas and oilfields promise a massive influx of funds in the coming years.

And despite the usual internal quarrels (social protests, debates over drafting religious students, nasty flaps over personalities, and minor corruption scandals) Israel is basically a stable and united (where it counts) country. The idea that Israel is menaced by the failure to get official peace with the Palestinians is a staple of Western blather but has no big impact in reality.

Of course, there are threats—Iran getting deliverable nuclear weapons; Egypt becoming belligerent—but both lie in the future and there are constraining factors. In Iran’s case, there is external pressure and problems actually building weapons; for Egypt, the army as well as the balance of force constrains the radical Islamists.  And if there are conflicts, Israel is well able to defend itself.

Foreign editorial writers may never admit it; foreign correspondents may thunder doom, but nonetheless Israel and its security are in good shape.

This article is available here. A different version of the article is published in the Jerusalem Post. 

Yasir Arafat Is Still Dead and We Know Who Really Did Him In

http://pjmedia.com/barryrubin/2012/07/06/yasir-arafat-is-still-dead-and-we-know-who-really-did-him-in/'

Yasir Arafat Is Still Dead and We Know Who Really Did Him In

By Barry Rubin

Yasir Arafat is still dead. True, he was once alive. I sat across from him in his Gaza office, for example. And he even had a copy of my history of the PLO on his book shelf so he must have been of sound mind at the time.  It's not my fault. I told him to start jogging and cut down on sweets.But he didn't listen. On November 4, 2004, he died, a fate he previously delivered to thousands of far more innocent people.

The effort now by various Palestinian factions to imply Israel killed him is the funniest thing in the Middle East since the CIA director’s congressional briefing when he said the Muslim Brotherhood was a secular democratic organization. What’s dismaying is how much play Western media are giving this charge as if it should be taken seriously. When the West behaves in this way it signals at the least a dangerously naive credulousness and amnesia; at worst, it signals a profound anti-Jewish and anti-Israel complex on their part.

But there's something else in this story, something very chilling indeed. Revolutionary Islamists especially, but many Muslims otherwise, believe that Jews tried to murder Muhammad, the founder of Islam, and even if they failed that the poison shortened his life. The accusation that Jews are the murderer of prophets--with Muslims throwing in the founder of Christianity also--is a phrase that derives from this story. It is frequently heard from Hamas and others. 

This is a blood libel, an alleged crime that then leads to the view that Jews are absolutely evil and should be wiped out. In short, it is a rationale for genocide. When Iran, Hamas, Hizballah, and the Muslim Brotherhood say that Israel should be wiped off the map and Jews generally should be murdered that incitement is the inevitable consequence of this line of thinking.

That Western observers are unaware of all of this history, and repeated every day in inciteful sermons found often in Middle East mosques, is quite evident. Such a lack of knowledge leads them to believe that the conflicts they say are easily resolvable, quickly settled by more Israeli concessions or still continuing because of Israeli actions when the causes are much deeper and the solutions far more remote. Western societies today are obsessed with searching everywhere for racism and hate speech. Well, the idea that the Jews murdered Arafat (rather than that Arafat spent most of his career murdering Jews) falls into that category.

As for the specific claims in the Arafat case, they are easily disposed of:

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Former Israel Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir Dies at 96: A Personal Memory

By Barry Rubin

Former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir has just died at the age of 96. Rather than discuss his broader career, I’d like to tell you about my most memorable meeting with him.

It was January 13, 1991. Everyone in the world knew that in 48 hours, a U.S.-led coalition was scheduled to attack Iraq in order to force Saddam Hussein’s withdrawal from Kuwait. Saddam had announced  that if the coalition attacked he would strike at Israel with long-range missiles, possibly with biological or chemical warheads.

I was asked by a visiting American delegation to accompany it to a meeting with the prime minister. We arrived at the prime minister’s office and went to his quite modest meeting room. Along with Shamir was Elyakim Rubinstein, then the cabinet secretary but today a Supreme Court justice. I won’t tell you who the Americans were but I’d love to do so and perhaps will some day but the group’s leader, let’s call him Mr. Bird, later held high diplomatic positions in the U.S. government.

Shamir sought to break the ice with a friendly question. “So,” he said to the delegation’s leader, “how long are you planning to be here? A week?”

I don’t know if he was joking about the impending deadline but a look of pure fear and panic leaped onto Mr. Bird’s face. “Are you kidding!” His voice shook with dismay. “We’re getting out of here tomorrow!” (Those were his precise words.)

Almost immediately, however, he realized that he was making himself look like a fool. He tried to calm down and recover. So he added, albeit with equal ham-handedness, “But I guess you have to stay here.” (Honest, that’s what he said.)

Rubinstein answered with a big smile on his face: “Oh, no. We don’t have to stay here. We just happen to like it here.” I will never forget the even bigger smile on Shamir’s face. Mr. Bird and all the little birds who fancied themselves great statesmen and Middle East experts had no idea what had just happened.

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Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His book, Israel: An Introduction, has just been published by Yale University Press. Other recent books include The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). The website of the GLORIA Center  and of his blog, Rubin Reports. His original articles are published at PJMedia.

In A Few Years China Will LIkely Be the Second-Most Important Country for Israel'

By Barry Rubin

                                                                                                                                Shanghai, China

                There is a remarkable amount of interest in China about Israel and Jews, as I discovered during a trip to China sponsored by SIGNAL, the Sino-Israel Global Network and Academic Leadership.

                The most obvious reason is that the Chinese--one important official called it the "little superpower--perceive that Israel in particular and the Jewish people in general have been success stories. Ten or twenty years ago this would have been less unique in the world.  But now, sad to say, it stands out more because the United States and Europe, perhaps only temporarily, are not working very well.

                Of course, on a strategic level, Israel and China have some differing interests but these are less important than they may appear to be. China wants to have commerce with everyone, including Iran, and is protecting Syria in the international framework.

                 Yet China has significantly reduced energy imports from Iran in order to show support for the international efforts against Iran’s nuclear drive and clear signals have been sent to Tehran. Clearly, Chinese interests don’t benefit from Tehran having a nuclear arsenal and being a destabilizing force in the region. As for Syria, Israel’s position on whether the current regime should be overthrown has not been unambiguous. The Chinese argue that a radical Islamist government worse than the current one in Damascus may well come to power. That is not clear but the concern is a reasonable one, especially because U.S. policy is supporting the Islamists in Syria.

                Israel and China also have many parallel interests, among them the desire for stability in the Middle East and the hope that revolutionary Islamism doesn’t spread. And China’s policy of dealing with all other countries has another side, since it will not let its relationships with Israel be interfered with by any possible Arab or Iranian demands. Indeed, if China decides to become the main customer for Israeli natural gas and oil exports, the Jerusalem-Beijing relationship may be Israel's most important link, second only to the one with the United States.

                Another factor which should not be underestimated is the lack of Chinese prejudice toward Jews and prejudgment against Israel that has become such a huge obstacle for Israel’s dealing with the West. 

                Most important of all, is China's emphasis on economic and social development, the priority on raising living standards and achieving national success rather than such typically regrettable goals of expanding their territory, getting revenge for past grievances, and preferring pragmatic solutions to imposing ideological rigidity on problems.


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                There is a huge amount of cooperation, far more than many people realize, on joint projects. While hi-technology is the most obvious area of such activity, there are many others as well. Energy issues are equally paramount. China shares with Israel a great interest in finding alternative energy sources, not so much due to environmental considerations but to financial and security ones. Some impressive ideas and pilot programs are underway that seem more imaginative and likely to succeed than what I’ve seen in the American debate.

                Several Israel and Jewish programs have opened in different universities; students are studying Hebrew and other relevant topics; Chinese bookstores contain multiple volumes about Jewish and Israeli achievements without—unlike some other Asian countries--exhibiting antisemitism. Obviously, those interested in these things is proportionately tiny in the world’s most populous country. But this sector has reached a size significant enough to sustain itself and to influence the broader society.

                On a humorous level, when a Chinese colleague told me, whether accurately or otherwise, that his people’s culture entailed always being optimistic and believing in a better future, I responded that the Israeli and Jewish characteristic was to be pessimistic and then make jokes about it.

                Seriously, though, there are a number of important points—certainly seen as such by those Chinese who think about it—in common.  Among the points that figure on this list are a mutual experience of a long history of civilization, wide dispersion, emphasis on the importance of education, readiness to work hard, focus on family, and suffering of persecution. If contemporary Jews and Israelis have lost some of these values, perhaps renewing them might learn something from China.

                Of course, we can have criticisms of contemporary Chinese politics and policies but it is also important not to cling to outdated notions.  I certainly don’t claim to be an expert on China—though I once thought seriously of pursuing that career path—but my visits to the country go back to 1974, when the word totalitarian could accurately have been applied.

                But China is no longer the country of the Cultural Revolution and the time of great repression. It has turned toward capitalism and opened up a much wider margin of freedom. The real power of personal initiative has been unleashed and the results have been awesome. I doubt whether any country has made such rapid progress in social and economic development so fast in history.       

                But here’s an equally important point. While these changes are theoretically reversible, I—and a lot of Chinese people—don’t think this is going to happen. A course seems set in which freedoms will continue to expand in the decades to come. Equally, there seems to be a genuine appreciation—as there has been in the West but there certainly hasn’t been in the Middle East—that the old strategies of war to seize territory and empire-building abroad are obsolete.

                An Egyptian friend visited China a few years ago and asked a counterpart, “China has been the victim of so much oppression and imperialism. How do you deal with that?”

                The response was, “We got over it.” The Egyptian was astonished, but as a liberal Arab he realized that his own society would be far better off if it eschewed the politics of revenge, bitter hatred, and the angry assertion of superiority on the basis of an inferiority complex. Of course, the Arabic-speaking world has unfortunately been moving in the opposite direction with predictably terrible results. In contrast, Israel and China focus on positive national construction, raising living standards, and seeking peace. 

                What’s important for Israel, then, is to work with this process of events in China rather than to underestimate it isn’t happening or focus only on a negative side that is becoming smaller over time. Given Europe’s regrettable decline and hostility—which should not be overestimated but must be seriously evaluated—looking east seems the sensible global strategy for Israel in the coming decades.

Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His book, Israel: An Introduction, has just been published by Yale University Press. Other recent books include The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). The website of the GLORIA Center  and of his blog, Rubin Reports. His original articles are published at PJMedia.

               

One Leader Who Will be Re-elected: Israel Goes to Elections

By Barry Rubin

Israel is  going to have elections on September 4 and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will almost certainly win by a big margin.  Understanding why explains a lot about the country that people think they know the most about but in fact comprehend the least.

According to polls, Netanyahu’s Likud party may go from 28 to 30 seats in the 120-member Knesset. That may not sound like a big percentage but with around 12 different parties likely to win seats that margin would be sufficient.

One key element in this equation is that the country is doing pretty well. True, it faces serious security problems but that’s the norm for Israel. Indeed, with no other trusted leader on the horizon, Netanyahu is the one most trusted to manage that dangerous situation.

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True, too, there have been real social problems due largely to the gap between low salaries and high living costs that especially hurts younger people and provoked protests last year. That the protests have dissipated and Israel’s economy is doing better, including low unemployment, low inflation, and manageable state debt. In contrast to other Western economies, Israel's government has avoided high government spending, unsustainable subsidies, and huge debt. 

A third factor is the total fractionalization of the opposition. Indeed, one might speak of Netanyahu and the seven dwarfs. Aside from Kadima there are three other mid-sized parties that take votes from the same potential constituency and quarrel among themselves:

--Kadima, the main opposition party which is vaguely centrist, is so discredited by its former, failed leader Tzipi Livni that it will not be saved by its new head, the militarily competent but colorless Shaul Mofaz, from falling as far as losing 20 of its current 29 seats.

--Labor, which has reinvented itself as a social issues party has an untested leader who is a radio personality, might come in a distant second.

--A new centrist party—named, perhaps in wishful thinking for itself—There is a Future—pushes the same secular centrism that has repeatedly produced one-election parties before.  

--Israel Our Home, headed by Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, has a solid base among immigrants from the former Soviet Union but by that very fact—and given the fact that Lieberman is widely disliked and close to indictment—should hold but not expand its base.

It is ironic to think that the Obama Administration, whose ignorance of Israel and its politics cannot possibly be overestimated, thought it was going to bring down Netanyahu and replace him with a more pliable Livni. In fact, by its periodic bashing of Israel and ham-handed Middle East policy promoting Israel-hating Islamists, Obama unintentionally mobilized domestic support for Netanyahu.  

Speaking about myths about Israel and Israeli politics here are corrections for some of the main ones:

--In contrast to the prevailing myth abroad, Netanyahu is no longer a “right-winger” in the way he was 15 years ago. He has moved into the center, a key factor explaining his success.

--Contrary to others who haven't followed events closely, Israelis do not believe they have a peace option at present, with the Palestinians uninterested in a deal and Egypt, Iran, Turkey, the Gaza Strip, Lebanon, and Syria in an all-out hostile mode.

--Despite claims that Obama has proven his support for Israel, among Israelis--even if some think Obama is a nice guy--there is no faith in U.S backing given the Obama Administration’s views and actions.

--In contrast to what is believed abroad, Israeli are neither stupid—giving away everything, as the foreign right often seems to think—or evil, as the foreign left definitely does think.  

Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His book, Israel: An Introduction, has just been published by Yale University Press. Other recent books include The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). The website of the GLORIA Center  and of his blog, Rubin Reports. His original articles are published at PJMedia.