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Myth: Israel Is the Largest Beneficiary of US Military Aid
US-Israel 'Austere Challenge' Exercise, IDF Blog, Flickr
BESA Center Perspectives Paper No. 410, February 10, 2017
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: Many American detractors of Israel begin by citing that Israel receives the lion’s share of US military aid. The very suggestion conjures the demon of an all-powerful Israel lobby that has turned the US Congress into its pawn. But these figures, while reflecting official direct US military aid, are almost meaningless in comparison to the real costs and benefits of US military aid – above all, American boots on the ground. In reality, Israel receives only a small fraction of American military aid, and most of that was spent in the US to the benefit of the American economy.
Countless articles discrediting Israel (as well as many other better-intentioned articles) ask how it is that a country as small as Israel receives the bulk of US military aid. Israel receives 55%, or $US3.1 billion per year, followed by Egypt, which receives 23%. This largesse comes at the expense, so it is claimed, of other equal or more important allies, such as Germany, Japan, and South Korea. The complaint conjures the specter of an all-powerful Israel lobby that has turned the US Congress into its pawn.
The response to the charge is simple: Israel is not even a major beneficiary of American military aid. The numerical figure reflects official direct US military aid, but is almost meaningless compared to the real costs and benefits of US military aid – which include, above all, American boots on the ground in the host states.
There are 150,500 American troops stationed in seventy countries around the globe. This costs the American taxpayer an annual $US85-100 billion, according to David Vine, a professor at American University and author of a book on the subject. In other words, 800-1,000 American soldiers stationed abroad represent US$565-665 million of aid to the country in which they are located.
Once the real costs are calculated, the largest aid recipient is revealed to be Japan, where 48,828 US military personnel are stationed. This translates into a US military aid package of over US$27 billion (calculated according to Vine’s lower estimation). Germany, with 37,704 US troops on its soil, receives aid equivalent to around US$21 billion; South Korea, with 27,553 US troops, receives over US$15 billion; and Italy receives at least US$6 billion.
If Vine’s estimate is correct, Japan’s US military aid package is nine times larger than that of Israel, Germany’s is seven times larger, and Italy’s is twice as large. The multipliers are even greater for Egypt. Even the Lilliputian Gulf states, Kuwait and Bahrain, whose American bases are home to over 5,000 US military personnel apiece, receive military aid almost equal to what Israel receives.
Yet even these figures grossly underestimate the total costs of US aid to its allies. The cost of maintaining troops abroad does not reflect the considerable expense, deeply buried in classified US military expenditure figures, of numerous US air and sea patrols. Nor does it reflect the high cost of joint ground, air, and maritime exercises with host countries (events only grudgingly acknowledged on NATO’s official site).
US air and naval forces constantly patrol the Northern, Baltic, and China Seas to protect American allies in Europe and in the Pacific – at American expense. Glimpses of the scale of these operations are afforded by incidents like the shadowing of a Russian ship in the Baltics, near run-ins between Chinese Coast Guard ships and US Navy ships dispatched to challenge Chinese claims in the South China Sea, and near collisions between US Air Force planes and their Chinese counterparts in the same area.
In striking contrast, no US plane has ever flown to protect Israel’s airspace. No US Navy ship patrols to protect Israel’s coast. And most importantly, no US military personnel are put at risk to ensure Israel’s safety.
In Japan, South Korea, Germany, Kuwait, Qatar, the Baltic states, Poland, and elsewhere, US troops are a vulnerable trip-wire. It is hoped that their presence will deter attack, but there is never any assurance that an attack will not take place. Should such an attack occur, it will no doubt cost American lives.
This cannot happen in Israel, which defends its own turf with its own troops. There is no danger that in Israel, the US might find itself embroiled in wars like those it waged in Iraq and Afghanistan at a cost of US$4 trillion, according to Linda J. Bilmes, a public policy professor and Harvard University researcher.
Japan’s presence at the top of the list of US military aid recipients is both understandable and debatable. It is understandable because Japan is critical to US national security in terms of maintaining freedom of the seas and containing a rising China. It is debatable because Japan is a rich country that ought to pay for the US troops stationed within it – or in lieu of that, to significantly strengthen its own army. At present, the Japanese army numbers close to 250,000, but it is facing the rapidly expanding military power of its main adversary, China. A similar case can be made with regard to Germany, both in terms of its wealth and its contribution towards meeting the Russian threat.
What is incomprehensible is not why Israel receives so much US military aid, but why Japan has received nine times more aid than Israel does. This is a curious proportion given the relative power Israel possesses in the Middle East and its potential to advance vital US security interests in times of crisis, compared to the force maintained by Japan relative to China.
Ever since the Turkish parliament’s decision in March 2003 not to join the US-led coalition, and the Turkish government’s refusal to allow movement of American troops across its borders, Israel has been America’s sole ally between Cyprus and India with a strategic air force and (albeit small) rapid force deployment capabilities to counter major threats to vital US interests.
It takes little imagination to envision these potential threats. Iran might decide to occupy Bahrain, which has a Shiite majority seriously at odds with the ruling Sunni monarchy. It might take over the United Arab Emirates, which plays a major role in the air offensive against the Houthis, Iran’s proxies in the war in Yemen. There might be a combined Syrian and Iraqi bid to destabilize Sunni Jordan, in the event that both states subdue their Sunni rebels. Any of these moves would threaten vital energy supplies to the US and its allies. Only Israel can be depended upon completely to provide bases and utilities for a US response and to participate in the effort if needed.
The politicians, pundits, and IR scholars who attack Israel and the Israeli lobby for extracting the lion’s share of US military aid from a gullible Congress know full well that this is not true. Israel receives a small fraction of the real outlays of military aid the US indirectly gives its allies and other countries. These experts also know that 74% of military aid to Israel was spent on American arms, equipment, and services. Under the recently signed Memorandum of Understanding, that figure will be changed to 100%. The experts simply cite the wrong figures.
The US is now led by a businessman president who knows his dollars and cents. He has been adamant about the need to curb free-riding by the large recipients of real US aid. He will, one hopes, appreciate the security bargain the US has with Israel – a country that not only shares many common values with the US, but can make a meaningful contribution to American vital interests with no trip-wires attached.
Prof. Hillel Frisch is a professor of political studies and Middle East studies at Bar-Ilan University and a senior research associate at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies.
BESA Center Perspectives Papers are published through the generosity of the Greg Rosshandler Family
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A summary of what we know so far about the Uranium One deal.Is it really a right wing witch hunt as Clinton seems to suggest? Absolutely not!
First though, had this scandal been about Trump , it would be the main topic on the MSM all day and all night long.There would be calls for him to be investigated and cries of impeachment echoing around the corridors of senate in spite of the fact republicans control both houses. but the democrats and the news media would have fits over it.
as I already alluded to, currently, the MSM are avoiding this issue like the plague.
Let summarize what we actually know about this:
A cache of documents 5,000 pages long, which were reviewed by The Hill, sheds new and more troubling light on this story.
The documents detail work done by undercover informant Douglas Campbell, who was paid nearly $200,000 for his cooperation with the FBI while he was working as a lobbyist on behalf of a Russian company. The Justice Department had previously barred Campbell from telling anyone about his work, a gag order it lifted only after the initial Hill story ran.( He also received an additional $51000 right before his work ended and was told not to go public with any of the information, Lynch warned him that he could be criminally charged if ever he went public or tried to go to congress to speak public about his finding. WHAT DOES THAT TELL YOU?
Among the revelations contained in these documents:
Campbell had documented a bribery/kickback scheme by Russian officials in the U.S. more than a year before Obama approved the Uranium One sale.
He also "relayed detailed information about criminal conduct throughout 2010."
Campbell was directly solicited by Russian officials to help overcome political opposition from Republicans to the Uranium One sale.
He regularly told his FBI handlers about what The Hill describes only as a "Washington entity with close ties to Bill and Hillary Clinton," which was paid millions to help expand Russia's U.S. uranium business and "began increasing its financial support" to the Clinton Foundation.
Russia saw the Uranium One purchase as part of a long-term strategy to dominate energy markets and make the U.S. more dependent on Russia's nuclear fuel.
Russians used "racially tinged insults to boast about how easy they found it to win uranium business under Obama."
It's important to note that all this transpired while Obama was embarking on his ill-fated Russian "reset" — in which he tried to make nice with Russia, and during which his administration not only approved the Uranium One sale but made other rulings favorable to Russian energy interests.
Adding further intrigue to the story is the fact that not only did the FBI keep a lid on its investigation for years, officials at Justice tried to downplay Campbell's significance as an informant and dispute that he had any information about the Uranium One deal after the initial story broke last month. As The Hill notes, the documents it reviewed directly contradict those claims.
One can only speculate why Justice officials would be doing this now.
Despite its potentially far-reaching ramifications, the Uranium One story has so far barely registered with the public, thanks to a near total news blackout from the mainstream press.
First though, had this scandal been about Trump , it would be the main topic on the MSM all day and all night long.There would be calls for him to be investigated and cries of impeachment echoing around the corridors of senate in spite of the fact republicans control both houses. but the democrats and the news media would have fits over it.
as I already alluded to, currently, the MSM are avoiding this issue like the plague.
Let summarize what we actually know about this:
A cache of documents 5,000 pages long, which were reviewed by The Hill, sheds new and more troubling light on this story.
The documents detail work done by undercover informant Douglas Campbell, who was paid nearly $200,000 for his cooperation with the FBI while he was working as a lobbyist on behalf of a Russian company. The Justice Department had previously barred Campbell from telling anyone about his work, a gag order it lifted only after the initial Hill story ran.( He also received an additional $51000 right before his work ended and was told not to go public with any of the information, Lynch warned him that he could be criminally charged if ever he went public or tried to go to congress to speak public about his finding. WHAT DOES THAT TELL YOU?
Among the revelations contained in these documents:
Campbell had documented a bribery/kickback scheme by Russian officials in the U.S. more than a year before Obama approved the Uranium One sale.
He also "relayed detailed information about criminal conduct throughout 2010."
Campbell was directly solicited by Russian officials to help overcome political opposition from Republicans to the Uranium One sale.
He regularly told his FBI handlers about what The Hill describes only as a "Washington entity with close ties to Bill and Hillary Clinton," which was paid millions to help expand Russia's U.S. uranium business and "began increasing its financial support" to the Clinton Foundation.
Russia saw the Uranium One purchase as part of a long-term strategy to dominate energy markets and make the U.S. more dependent on Russia's nuclear fuel.
Russians used "racially tinged insults to boast about how easy they found it to win uranium business under Obama."
It's important to note that all this transpired while Obama was embarking on his ill-fated Russian "reset" — in which he tried to make nice with Russia, and during which his administration not only approved the Uranium One sale but made other rulings favorable to Russian energy interests.
Adding further intrigue to the story is the fact that not only did the FBI keep a lid on its investigation for years, officials at Justice tried to downplay Campbell's significance as an informant and dispute that he had any information about the Uranium One deal after the initial story broke last month. As The Hill notes, the documents it reviewed directly contradict those claims.
One can only speculate why Justice officials would be doing this now.
Despite its potentially far-reaching ramifications, the Uranium One story has so far barely registered with the public, thanks to a near total news blackout from the mainstream press.
Israel’s Possible Paths to Nuclear War
The Baker explosion, part of Operation Crossroads, a nuclear weapon test by the US military at Bikini Atoll, Micronesia, 25 July 1946. Image by US DOD via Wikipedia
BESA Center Perspectives Paper No. 537, July 22, 2017
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: North Korea’s nuclearization has implications for Israel’s nuclear deterrence posture. There are several plausible means by which a nuclear conflict could arise in the Middle East. It may be time to consider a phase-out of Israel’s “deliberate nuclear ambiguity” and to focus Israeli planning around evaluations of enemy rationality.
In the end, we still depend upon creatures of our own making.
Goethe, Faust
For the moment, at least, global concern about nuclear war is focused on North Korea. The Middle East nevertheless remains a possible site for future nuclear conflict, and Israel’s strategy for dealing with this prospect warrants close examination. Worth pointing out, too, is that these two seemingly discrete theaters of potential nuclear belligerency are not mutually exclusive.
Quite the contrary. Nuclear warfare events in these two distant places could become mutually reinforcing.
Any conceivable resort to nuclear weapons on the Korean peninsula would almost certainly affect nuclear incentives elsewhere. At a minimum, any breaking of the longstanding nuclear taboo in Asia (southwest as well as northeast Asia, if coup-vulnerable Pakistan is factored in) could enhance the presumed usability of nuclear weapons in the Middle East.
There are overarching questions to be asked. How, precisely, might Israel find itself in some form or other of a nuclear war? Under what circumstances might it use nuclear weapons?
For the moment, at least, any such concerns might appear baseless. After all, Israel remains the only presumptive nuclear state in the region.
But Tehran, like Pyongyang, will not desist from its nuclear ambitions. Iranian membership in the Nuclear Club is more than likely to occur within the next several years, the Vienna 2015 Iran Agreement notwithstanding. Moreover, even in the absence of a single regional nuclear adversary, the Jewish State could still find itself having to rely upon nuclear deterrence against certain biological and/or massive conventional threats.
To answer its most basic nuclear questions, Jerusalem’s strategic planners will need to adhere closely to well-established canons of systematic inquiry, logical analysis, and dialectical reasoning. There are four plausible, intersecting narratives that “cover the bases” of Israel’s nuclear preparedness: 1) nuclear retaliation; 2) nuclear counter-retaliation; 3) nuclear preemption; and 4) the fighting of a nuclear war.
1) Nuclear retaliation
Should an enemy state or alliance of enemy states ever launch a nuclear first strike against Israel, Jerusalem would respond, to whatever extent possible and cost-effective, with a retaliatory nuclear strike. If an enemy first strike were to involve some other form of unconventional weapon, such as high-lethality biological weapons of mass destruction, Israel might still launch a nuclear reprisal. This response would depend in large measure on Jerusalem’s calculated expectations of follow-on aggression, and also on its assessments of comparative damage limitation.
If Israel were to absorb “only” a massive conventional attack, a nuclear retaliation could not be ruled out, especially if: (a) the state aggressor(s) were perceived to hold nuclear and/or other unconventional weapons in reserve; and/or (b) Israel’s leaders were to believe that exclusively non-nuclear retaliations could not prevent annihilation of the Jewish State. A nuclear retaliation by Israel could be ruled out entirely only in those circumstances in which enemy state aggressions were conventional, “typical” (that is, sub-existential, or consistent with previous historical instances of enemy attack in both degree and intent), and directed solely at hard targets (i.e., Israeli weapons and military infrastructures and not at “soft” civilian populations).
2) Nuclear counter-retaliation
Should Israel feel compelled to preempt enemy state aggression with conventional weapons, the response of the target state(s) would largely determine Jerusalem’s next moves. If the response were in any way nuclear, Israel could plausibly turn to nuclear counter-retaliation. If the enemy retaliation were to involve other weapons of mass destruction, Israel might feel pressed to escalate.
Any such initiative would necessarily reflect the need for what is more formally described in orthodox strategic parlance as “escalation dominance.”
All pertinent decisions would depend upon Jerusalem’s early judgments of enemy intent, and on accompanying calculations of essential damage limitation. Should the enemy state’s response to Israel’s preemption be limited to hard-target conventional strikes, it is unlikely that the Jewish State would move on to nuclear counter-retaliation. If, however, the enemy’s conventional retaliation were “all-out” and directed against Israeli civilian populations, not just Israeli military targets, an Israeli nuclear counter-retaliation could not be excluded.
It would appear, then, that such a counter-retaliation could be ruled out only if the enemy state’s conventional retaliation were proportionate to Israel’s preemption, confined exclusively to Israeli military targets, circumscribed by the legal limits of “military necessity” (a limit codified in the law of armed conflict), and accompanied by explicit and verifiable assurances of non-escalatory intent.
3) Nuclear preemption
It is exceedingly implausible that Israel would ever decide to launch a preemptive nuclear strike. Although circumstances could arise wherein such a strike would still be rational, it is unlikely that Israel would ever allow itself to reach such dire circumstances. Unless the nuclear weapons involved were somehow used in a fashion consistent with the laws of war, this all-out form of preemption would represent an especially serious violation of international law.
Even if such consistency were possible, the psychological/political impact on the world community would be fiercely negative and far-reaching. This means an Israeli nuclear preemption could be expected only when (a) Israel’s state enemies have acquired nuclear and/or other weapons of mass destruction judged capable of annihilating the Jewish State; (b) these enemies have made clear that their military intentions parallel their capabilities; (c) these enemies are believed ready to begin an active “countdown to launch;” and (d) Jerusalem believes Israeli non-nuclear preemptions cannot possibly achieve minimum levels of damage limitation – that is, levels consistent with physical preservation of the state and nation.
4) Fighting a nuclear war
Should nuclear weapons ever be introduced into an actual conflict between Israel and its enemies, either by the Jewish State or by an Arab/Islamic foe, the fighting of a nuclear war could ensue at one level or another. This would be true so long as: (a) enemy first strikes against Israel do not destroy Jerusalem’s second-strike nuclear capability; (b) enemy retaliations for an Israeli conventional preemption do not destroy Jerusalem’s nuclear counter-retaliatory capability; (c) Israeli preemptive strikes involving nuclear weapons do not destroy adversarial second-strike nuclear capabilities; and (d) Israeli retaliation for enemy conventional first strikes does not destroy enemy nuclear counter-retaliatory capability.
It follows that in order to satisfy its most essential survival requirements, Israel must take immediate and reliable steps to ensure the likelihood of (a) and (b) and the unlikelihood of (c) and (d).
In all cases, Israel’s nuclear strategy and forces must remain fully oriented towards deterrence and never towards the actual fighting of a war. With this in mind, Jerusalem has likely already taken steps to reject tactical or (relatively) low-yield “battlefield” nuclear weapons and, as corollary, any corresponding plans for counter-force targeting. For Israel, nuclear weapons can make sense solely for deterrence ex ante, not for revenge ex post.
These four core scenarios should remind Israel of the overriding need for coherent nuclear strategy and doctrine. Among other things, this need stipulates a counter-value targeted nuclear retaliatory force that is secure from enemy first strikes, and simultaneously capable of penetrating any enemy state’s active defenses. To best meet this imperative security expectation, the IDF would be well advised to continue with sea-basing designated portions of its nuclear deterrent force (that is, placing them on submarines). Naturally, to best satisfy the equally important requirements of penetration capability, Tel Aviv will have to stay well ahead of all enemy state air defense refinements.
Sooner rather than later, Jerusalem will need to consider a partial end to its historical policy of “deliberate nuclear ambiguity.” By incrementally removing the “bomb” from the “basement,” Israel’s planners would be better able to enhance the credibility of their very small country’s nuclear deterrence posture. However counterintuitive, the mere possession of nuclear forces does not automatically bestow credible nuclear deterrence.
Always, in strategic nuclear planning, reason must hold pride of place. Would-be aggressors, whether nuclear or non-nuclear, must be encouraged to believe that Israel has the willingness to launch measured nuclear forces in retaliation, and that these forces are invulnerable to first-strike attacks. Additionally, these enemies must be made to expect that Israel’s designated nuclear forces would penetrate their already deployed ballistic missile and related air defenses.
It follows that Israel could benefit substantially from releasing certain broad outlines of relevant strategic information. Without a prior and well-fashioned strategic doctrine, no such release would make any sense.
All such information could support the perceived utility and security of Israel’s nuclear retaliatory forces. Released solely to maximize Israeli nuclear deterrence, it would center purposefully upon the targeting, hardening, dispersion, multiplication, basing, and yield of selected ordnance. Under certain conditions, it must be understood, the credibility of Israeli nuclear deterrence could vary inversely with the perceived destructiveness of its relevant weapons.
In the end, Israel, heeding Goethe, must depend upon policies and calculations of its own making. Accordingly, what is currently happening on the Korean peninsula could have serious implications for what eventually happens in the Middle East. One especially crucial and common focus in both theaters of potential nuclear conflict is the presumed rationality or irrationality of the adversarial state leaderships. The same questions that now surround Kim Jong un could soon pertain to Iran’s decision-making elite.
Israel, like the US vis-à-vis North Korea, will need to prepare very differently for a rational nuclear adversary than for an irrational one. In such bewildering circumstances, Jerusalem decision-makers would need to distinguish between genuine enemy irrationality and pretended enemy irrationality. In actual practice, operationalizing such a subtle distinction will not be easy.
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Belief in Palestinian Openness to Two-State Solution Amounts to Insanity
Yasser Arafat, 1977, photo via Wikipedia
BESA Center Perspectives Paper No. 654, November 23, 2017
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: Rather than look at the historical record of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and draw the self-evident conclusions, Uri Avnery retreats into a counterfactual fantasyland.
I never thought I would concur with anything written by veteran Israeli “peace” activist Uri Avnery, but I find myself in full agreement with his recent prognosis that “sheer stupidity plays a major role in the history of nations” and that the longstanding rejection of the two-state solution has been nothing short of grand idiocy.
But it is here that our consensus ends. For rather than look at the historical record of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and draw the self-evident conclusions, Avnery retreats into the counterfactual fantasyland in which he has been living for decades. “When I pointed this out [i.e., the two-state solution], right after the 1948 war,” he writes, “I was more or less alone. Now this is a worldwide consensus, everywhere except in Israel.”
Ignoring the vainglorious (mis)appropriation of the two-state solution by the then 25-year-old Avnery, this assertion is not only unfounded but the inverse of the truth. Far from being averse to the idea, the Zionist leadership accepted the two-state solution as early as 1937 when it was first raised by a British commission of inquiry headed by Lord Peel.
And while this acceptance was somewhat half-hearted given that the proposed Jewish state occupied a mere 15% of the mandate territory west of the Jordan river, it was the Zionist leadership that 10 years later spearheaded the international campaign for the two-state solution that culminated in the UN partition resolution of November 1947.
Likewise, since the onset of the Oslo process in September 1993, five successive Israeli prime ministers – Shimon Peres, Ehud Barak, Ariel Sharon, Ehud Olmert, and Benjamin Netanyahu – have openly and unequivocally endorsed the two-state solution. Paradoxically, it was Yitzhak Rabin, posthumously glorified as a tireless “soldier of peace,” who envisaged a Palestinian “entity short of a state that will independently run the lives of the Palestinians under its control,” while Netanyahu, whom Avnery berates for rejecting the two-state solution, has repeatedly proclaimed his support for the idea, including in a high-profile 2011 address to both houses of the US Congress.
By contrast, the Palestinian Arab leadership, as well the neighboring Arab states, have consistently rejected the two-state solution from the start. The July 1937 Peel Committee report led to the intensification of mass violence, begun the previous year and curtailed for the duration of the commission’s deliberations, while the November 1947 partition resolution triggered an immediate outburst of Palestinian-Arab violence, followed six months later by an all-Arab attempt to destroy the newly proclaimed State of Israel.
Nor was the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), established in 1964 at the initiative of Egypt’s president Gamal Abdel Nasser and designated by the Arab League in 1974 as the “sole legitimate representative” of the Palestinian people, more receptive to the idea.
Its hallowed founding document, the Palestinian Covenant, adopted upon its formation and revised four years later to reflect the organization’s growing militancy, has far less to say about Palestinian statehood than about the need to destroy Israel.
In June 1974, the PLO diversified the means used to this end by adopting the “phased strategy,” which authorized it to seize whatever territory Israel was prepared or compelled to cede and use it as a springboard for further territorial gains until achieving, in its phrase, the “complete liberation of Palestine.” Five years later, when US President Jimmy Carter attempted to bring the Palestinians into the Egyptian-Israeli peace negotiations, he ran into the brick wall of Palestinian rejectionism.
“This is a lousy deal,” PLO chairman Yasser Arafat told the American Edward Said, who had passed him the administration’s offer. “We want Palestine. We’re not interested in bits of Palestine. We don’t want to negotiate with the Israelis. We’re going to fight.” Even as he shook Prime Minister Rabin’s hand on the White House lawn on September 13, 1993, Arafat was assuring the Palestinians in a pre-recorded Arabic-language message that the agreement was merely an implementation of the PLO’s phased strategy.
During the next 11 years, until his death in November 2004, Arafat played an intricate game of Jekyll and Hyde, speaking the language of peace to Israeli and Western audiences while depicting the Oslo Accords to his subjects as transient arrangements required by the needs of the moment. He made constant allusions to the phased strategy and the Treaty of Hudaibiya – signed by Muhammad with the people of Mecca in 628 CE, only to be disavowed a couple of years later when the situation shifted in the prophet’s favor.
He insisted on the “right of return,” the standard Palestinian/Arab euphemism for Israel’s destruction through demographic subversion; he failed to abolish the numerous clauses in the Palestinian Covenant that promulgated Israel’s destruction; and he indoctrinated his Palestinian subjects with virulent hatred toward their “peace partners” and their claim to statehood through a sustained campaign of racial and political incitement unparalleled in scope and intensity since Nazi Germany.
He didn’t stop at incitement, either. He built an extensive terrorist infrastructure in the territories under his control and, eventually, resorted to outright mass violence, first in September 1996 to discredit the newly elected Netanyahu and then in September 2000, shortly after being offered Palestinian statehood by Netanyahu’s successor, Ehud Barak, with the launch of his terror war (euphemized as the “al-Aksa Intifada”) – the bloodiest and most destructive confrontation between Israelis and Palestinians since 1948.
This rejectionist approach was fully sustained by Arafat’s successor, Mahmoud Abbas, who has had no qualms about reiterating the most vile of anti-Semitic calumnies and has vowed time and again never to accept the idea of Jewish statehood. At the November 2007 US-sponsored Annapolis peace conference he rejected Prime Minister Olmert’s proposal for the creation of a Palestinian state in virtually the entire West Bank and Gaza that would recognize Israel as a Jewish state.
When in June 2009 Netanyahu broke with Likud’s ideological precept and agreed to the establishment of a Palestinian state provided it recognized Israel’s Jewish nature, PLO chief peace negotiator Saeb Erekat warned that “not in a thousand years will Netanyahu find a single Palestinian who would agree to the conditions stipulated in his speech,” while Fatah, the PLO’s largest constituent organization and Abbas’s alma mater, reaffirmed its longstanding commitment to the “armed struggle” as a strategy, not tactic, “…until the Zionist entity is eliminated and Palestine is liberated.”
As late as November 2017, Abbas demanded that the British government apologize for the 1917 Balfour Declaration – the first great-power public acceptance of the Jewish right to national self-determination.
Can this 80-year-long recalcitrance be considered outright, unadulterated idiocy? It most certainly can. Had the Palestinians accepted the two-state solution in the 1930s or 1940s, they would have had their independent state over a substantial part of mandate Palestine by 1948, if not a decade earlier, and would have been spared the traumatic experience of dispersal and exile.
Had Arafat set the PLO on the path to peace and reconciliation instead of turning it into one of the most murderous and corrupt terrorist organizations in modern times, a Palestinian state could have been established in the late 1960s or the early 1970s; in 1979, as a corollary to the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty; by May 1999, as part of the Oslo process; or at the very latest, with the Camp David summit of July 2000. Had Abbas abandoned his predecessors’ rejectionist path, a Palestinian state could have been established after the Annapolis summit, or during Barack Obama’s presidency.
Avnery’s failure to see this stark historical record for what it is, and his unwavering belief in Palestinian openness to the two-state solution, may not qualify as idiocy, but it surely conforms to Albert Einstein’s famous definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
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