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Israel and
Syria: The Strategic Angle
Aharon Levran
Peace with Syria cannot be genuine and is
certainly not worth the heavy price of losing the Golan Heights. Since
real peace does not exist among the Arabs or between Egypt and Israel,
what sort of peace is possible with the radical Syrian regime that has
opposed it for so many years? But if it is any "consolation" that the
Egyptian front is quiet, such quiet has reigned on the Golan for more than
26 years, without "peace". Let us not be blinded by the shallow "peace"
mantra.
Not only can true peace not prevail with
Syria, but examination of the Golan's strategic importance to Israel shows
that "peace" whose price is the entire Golan is neither needed nor worth
it. Only the callous can envisage the uprooting of 17,000 people from 33
flourishing settlements – an act of "Ethnic Cleansing" that no peace can
warrant. Only a simpleton would give away a critical asset that deters
war or the launching of missiles (against Israel) and that maintains the
strategic equilibrium between the adversaries. Withdrawal to the 1923
international border is no less grave than withdrawal to the June 4, 1967
lines. In both cases, the Syrians will be fishing in, pumping water from,
and paddling on Lake Kinneret (Sea of Galilee).
The "security arrangements" that were
already agreed upon in 1995 are not worth the paper they are written on.
Certainly, no US early-warning station on Mount Hermon (even with a
doubtful "Israeli presence") could substitute for the worthy
"arrangements" – a drastic reduction of Syria's ORBAT (army), change in
its structure, and redeployment north of Damascus. For the short distance
from Damascus to the Golan, early warning is of little value, particularly
in comparison to the true "security arrangements".
To involve Americans on the Golan would be
folly, since it would enhance Israel's dependence and harm its special
relations with Washington. Also, a "peace" with Syria that results in its
economic and military strengthening (as in the case of Egypt), and by the
US, is sheer folly.
The "linkage" between Southern Lebanon
(suddenly a "tragedy" in Barak's words) and the Golan is most
unfortunate. Not only have we failed to subdue the Hizbullah, we have
extended legitimacy to Syria's conquest of Lebanon, and are even ready to
pay with the crucial asset of the Golan. Syria has critical economic
interests in Lebanon, and if we were only to apply the proper pressure we
could avoid the tragic abandonment of the Golan.
Israel's rights on the Golan are no less
than Syria’s, certainly in terms of its length of tenure there. Israel
will gravely err if it does not make use of the commitments given by
Presidents Ford, Bush, and Clinton that Israel must maintain a presence on
the Golan even in peacetime.
A
feasible solution for Israel on the Golan would not be territorial but
functional, i.e., a division between sovereignty (to Syria) and presence
and control (to Israel). We should bear in mind the precedent of Jordan’s
leasing (1999) of lands to Israel for decades.
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American Interests and an Israeli-Syrian Deal
Yuval Levin
The prospect of renewed Israeli-Syrian
peace negotiations has brought into sharp focus a serious misconception
about Syria’s intentions and strategic goals. Some decision makers in the
United States and Israel appear to believe that by making “a strategic
choice for peace,” Syrian President Assad is abandoning his long held
anti-American policy objectives and choosing to enter the American camp.
In fact, a peace deal with Israel will allow Assad to accomplish more
easily those longstanding goals, which run flatly counter to American
interests in the Middle East. These goals include the final subjugation of
Lebanon under Syrian rule, the weakening and isolation of Turkey, an
increased Syrian influence in the region and a strengthening of Assad’s
own regime. By investing its prestige and resources in the current
process, and thus investing itself in the future of the Assad regime, the
United States risks enabling Assad to accomplish these objectives, and at
the same time it risks impairing its own ability to exercise some measure
of control over Syria’s actions. A deal with Israel will certainly shift
the regional balance of power in Syria’s favor, and Syria’s favor equals
the detriment of America’s closest allies and most vital interests in the
region. Before committing itself to back any Israeli-Syrian deal, the
United States must carefully consider the consequences such an agreement
may have for its own interests and policy objectives. This study aims to
examine precisely what some of those consequences may be.
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Syrian Military
Expenditures
Shawn Pine
Both supporters and opponents of the peace
process agree that for Israel to take the requisite risks for peace it
needs to understand the intentions of its neighbors. A critical component
towards understanding their neighbors' intentions can be found in how much
these countries are spending on defense. Supporters of the peace process
claim that it is ameliorating the prospects for future conflict between
Israel and its neighbors. If this is true, then we should expect a
simultaneous reduction in arms expenditures by these countries as they
divert resources from their military to attend to their acute social and
economic problems.
Unfortunately, the peace process, rather
than providing a peace dividend, has augured in an unprecedented era of
weapons proliferation in the region. Most notable, has been the
proliferation of weapons from the West which has been precipitated by
competition among these western countries for lucrative sales contracts
from Israel’s Arab neighbors. This proliferation seems to cast doubt on
the contention that the Gulf War and the subsequent Oslo peace process
have ushered in a new era of peace and prosperity in the Middle East.
More important, it appears that Israel's
strategic planners are making a fatal error in their strategic threat
assessments of their two biggest contiguous neighbors, Syria and Egypt.
Indeed, actual military spending by these two countries far exceeds that
reported in standard sources such as The Military Balance; the
Jaffee Center’s Middle East Military Balance; and the Stockholm
International Peace Research Institute. For example, these sources report
that Syria spends approximately $1.7 billion in military expenditures.
However, a cursory review of the size of Syria’s military reflects that
these figures are grossly underestimated and that actual expenditures are
far greater than those reported. This paper analyzes Syrian military
expenditures and examines these expenditures in the context of its
declared willingness to make peace with Israel.
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The
EU and the Syrian Track: Israel Ensnared
Christopher Barder
There has been a long
perception in Europe and the USA, that Israel survived when it should not
have, with gains, and therefore since 1967 and 1973, it has been subject
to pressures to cut it down to size. Since the end of the Cold War, this
has meant a willingness to seek a rapprochement with Syria (EU financial
promises; courting of Assad by Clinton). By the acceptance of this process
by Rabin and Peres (followed by Ehud Barak), an extraordinary phenomenon
has occurred in Israel.
The pressures on Israel to
surrender the Golan have been accepted, not simply seen as external and
malevolent. The false arguments behind them have been swallowed and have
then poisoned rational analysis of the importance of the Golan. Syria's
image has altered in Europe and the USA and Israel has lost, as it were,
the capacity to see what the many internal left wing changes in perception
of its true interests mean: that those working heedless of Israeli
vulnerability and destruction are succeeding – and with Israel accepting
this weakening as a recipe for "peace" when in fact an inversion of logic
has occurred – a kind of "paradigm shift" exacerbated by the timing is
taking place: an ailing minority regime, bankrupt, in a succession crisis,
is gaining a position of mastery. How Europe views Israel being
sacrificed for the sake of Europe’s and America’s ambitions is an
unpleasant reality to be faced up to – it appears not to care at all.
The only conclusion: the EU
and USA, wishing Israel to surrender water, strategic assets, deterrent
capability, historic and religious association and so on, are either
themselves incapable of understanding the significance of such, or
willfully desire the end of Israel. So developed is the deception in
Israel that loss of assets to those who hate it is viewed as beneficial.
Thus it is perhaps justifiable for someone from outside to draw attention
to it.
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Peace with
Syria: No Margin for Error
Yoash Tsiddon-Chatto
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The Future Battlefield: Conventional and Non-Conventional Terror
Ezra Sohar
Immanuel Kant wrote his Perpetual Peace
in 1797, claiming that a democracy is less prone to go to war since its
voters are the ones to bear the brunt of the fighting and the costs of
damages.
Kant claims that, for dictators, going to
war is a relatively simple decision. He has been proven right over
the last 200 years. Democratic Israel versus Arab tyrannies is a
major Middle East asymmetry, as are the resulting aims, secure growth for
one, Israel's demise for the other.
Other asymmetries include the ratios of
500:1 geographical area, 80:1 population, 22:1 UN votes, 60% of world oil
production (by volume) to none, 4.19:1 tanks, 6.45:1 combat aircraft. All
these favor the Arab dictatorships.
Weapons technology has undergone nothing
short of a revolution since 1967 and the lessons of war have taught that
Israeli deterrence has not always been adequate. The Iraqi "trickling" of
ballistic missiles on Israel (39 missiles in 14 days) during the Gulf War
has taught a major lesson: missile attacks on urban areas, even with
conventional warheads, can disrupt and badly delay Israeli mobilization of
its reserves and its main forces, creating a situation on the front line
akin to that of the Yom Kippur of 1973.
In spite of the demise of the Soviet Union
and the peace agreements signed with Egypt and Jordan, the geopolitical
situation has not changed realistically for the better since 1967.
Considering all these said changes,
Israel, if attacked, is not capable of defending itself any more within
its 1967 borders. The protection of the high ground, all of it situated
beyond the "green line" (pre-1967 demarcation), becomes a vital condition
for Israel's survival, the Golan Heights being more important than all
other high ground.
The advocates of "instant peace", prodded
with a heavy hand by the US administration, claim that Israel may withdraw
from the Golan – this, against all its own advice, that of the Pentagon,
Russian, and others’ military "if peace is agreed upon", provided the
Golan and parts of Syria will be demilitarized under UN/US "observers" and
with US guarantees and the Israeli defense bolstered to the tune of some
US $20 billion.
The requirement to "have a strong force to
protect the peace" as the US and Israeli governments demand, is proof that
the peace anticipated will be a "peace of no war", or a cold war, US-USSR
or Israel-Egypt style, meaning that the lowering of Israel's level of
deterrence increases the probability of war.
Handing the Golan to Syria is equivalent
to a catastrophic lowering of Israeli deterrence, broadly characterized by
loss of control of 35% of Israel's water, an unbearable defense burden
that will reflect on Israel's economy and worse, the cracking of the
claims of Zionist legitimacy and weakening of Israel’s national and moral
fiber. The "window of opportunity", on which President Clinton insists,
is "unique" (for the last ten years) and has no glass pane anyway – it is
a virtual window.
There are simply not enough safety margins
in an Israeli-Syrian "peace" agreement because demilitarization, third
party guarantees, and the rest, have always proven to be valid only when
both parties desire them to be so, (for example US guarantees and UN
troops in Sinai, 1967).
Signing a peace treaty is no guarantee of
peace, as, for instance, shown by the case of the Iraqi-Iranian War that
erupted in 1980 after a five year negotiated peace was signed in 1978
(among a number of such examples).
Technology is not a substitute for the
Golan, as declared by General Amnon Lipkin-Shahak on December 10, 1995, an
opinion shared by this writer, who has been involved most of his life in
weaponry.
"We are strong enough to afford
withdrawal," claim some. But we are not strong if we lose the high ground
of the Golan, which represents the "terrain" asset of the "firepower",
"mobility" and "terrain" triad of which military strength is composed.
Finally, there are the advocates of
nuclear deterrence, assuming Israel has this "in the closet".
Israel may be destroyed completely by 2-4
nuclear charges due to its minute size. For the same reason, given
present satellite surveillance, it cannot house a secure second strike
capability which has to have a ratio of about 50:1 in Israel's favor.
Deploying nuclear deterrence means the legitimization of the Middle East
going nuclear, a sphere in which Israel is at its weakest. Nuclear
deterrence may also be weakened by international pressures.
The conclusion is that Israel cannot
succumb to the "instant peace syndrome" even if a friendly US president
insists upon it. This is especially the case when Assad may not be in
power for long.
As Motta Gur, former Chief of the General
Staff and Labor Party Minister, said in his book Chief of General Staff,
(Ministry of Defense Publishers, 1998): "Israel cannot defend its Eastern
flank without the Golan Heights and it cannot defend the Golan Heights
without the line of ridges it presently holds."
As Joseph
Sisco said at the time: "The (large) areas Israel vacated in 1974 are
withdrawal according to 242 and the line retained represents 'secure
borders' according to the same 242 (UN resolution)." The writer witnessed
the delivery of this statement.
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The
Anti-Millenium: The Islamization of Nazareth
Raphael Israeli
The rise of the Islamic movement in Israel
in the past two decades has had a very ominous ramification over the past
two years, when the Muslim fundamentalists moved to complete the
Islamization of Nazareth, a city known principally for its Christian Holy
Places, notably the Church of the Annunciation.
At the end of 1997, the Islamists invaded
the plaza at the foot of the Basilica, which had been earmarked as the
linchpin of the festivities of the Millennium. By squatting in the plaza
and demanding that a mammoth mosque be built there, which would dwarf the
Basilica, the Islamists were intent on wrecking the festivities and
determined to fixate in public opinion the idea that Nazareth has become a
Muslim city and has shed its ancient image as a Christian site.
The Israeli authorities were slow and
clumsy in responding to the challenge. They pursued the legal track
through courts, but also adopted intermediate measures of mediation in an
attempt to come to a "compromise", which by definition would have imputed
legitimacy to the Islamists' false claim that the terrain was a waqf
land (Muslim Holy Endowment). A Commission of Inquiry was also appointed
to deal with his issue.
But the problem was not resolved. The
courts rendered their verdict that the Islamists had usurped rights they
did not have, but two successive governments, before, during and after the
May, 1999, elections, stuck to the "compromise" which allowed the building
of a mosque on part of the terrain, thus bringing about a sense of triumph
among the Muslims and consternation amidst the Christians, in Israel and
throughout the world.
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"Address Unknown"
Kressmann Taylor
Max Eisenstein, a German-born Jew, and Martin Shulze, a German-born Aryan,
are longstanding partners in a flourishing gallery in San Francisco, which
deals in paintings and art objects. Toward the end of 1932, Martin
decides to return to Germany with his wife and three children and become
established in his homeland as a non active partner in the gallery.
At this point begins the story by Kressman Taylor, “Address Unknown,”
which consists of an exchange of letters between the two partners - the
Jew who remains in San Francisco and his German partner who now lives in
the outskirts of Munich.
Two months after Martin’s return to Germany, Hitler comes to power. Martin
is appointed to a senior position in a German bank and is enthused by the
atmosphere of upheaval in the country and becomes a devoted Nazi. Max’s
sister Griselle, a young actress who in the past was the beloved of Martin
the family man, prepares for her part in a play that is to be staged in
Berlin. Max asks his friend to watch out for her.
The Nazi audience drives Griselle the Jewess from the stage, and she
escapes from Berlin with storm troopers on her trail. When she comes to
the door of Martin’s house to ask for refuge, he turns her away, and
members of the storm troopers murder her in his garden.
A letter by Max to his sister is returned to him, and on it the postal
marking: Address Unknown. Fearing for his sister’s fate, Max writes to his
longtime friend and asks him to find out what has become of Griselle. When
Max learns of the manner of Griselle’s death, he begins to send Martin
fabricated letters that are likely to raise the Gestapo’s suspicions.
Max’s last letter to Martin is returned to San Francisco, stamped with the
postal marking: Address Unknown.
Thus the Nazi curtain of blood descends
upon Martin and his family.
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New
Light on the Murder of Chaim Arlosoroff
H. David Kirk
The June 1933 murder of Arlosoroff has
long been laid at the door of the Revisionists. Before he died Arlosoroff
said Jews did not do it and the British freed two accused Jews.
Nevertheless, Revisionism is still widely held responsible. Now new
information points in a very different direction.
Reading Goebbels' diaries, the author
found references to a love affair that led to the Nazi propagandist's
marriage to Magda Quandt. In 21 entries, Goebbels veers between hope and
despair, breakup and make-up. Magda, whose previous marriage failed, has
reservations about her suitor. She seems still connected with an old
flame, a Jew, whom the diary only calls "der fremde Mann" –
stranger or foreigner. Goebbels does not dare to mention it even in his
diary, thus the euphemism "stranger".
The former lover was Chaim Arlosoroff, now
an important Zionist leader in Palestine. He had lately – May 1933 – come
to Berlin to confer with the Nazi government about a deal to transfer
Jewish funds to Palestine in return for Zionist help against the worldwide
anti-Nazi boycott. Goebbels was likely behind the murder. Discovery of his
wife's involvement with this prominent Jew might have ruined his career as
top Nazi and Minister of Propaganda.
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Peace Now: The Latest Link in the Chain Of Jewish Radicalism
(I)
Editorial
The Jews played a prominent role in the ideological formulation and
actualization of two of the three main fascist movements of the twentieth
century – Soviet Communism and Italian Fascism. With Lenin’s death in
January 1924, three Jews and a Georgian took control of Russia: Lev
Bronstein, Grigory Radomilski, Lev Rosenfeld, and Joseph Dzugashvilli.
They are better known by their Soviet names – respectively: Trotsky,
Zinoviev, Kamenev, Stalin. The heads of the CHEKA, the NKVD, and up to the
KGB were mostly Jews, from Moses Solomonovitch Uritzky to Genrikh Yagoda
to Andropov. Yakov Ginzburg (Sverdlov), who supervised the expulsion of
the Czar’s family to Yekaterinburg in the Ural Mountains and their slaying
there, as well as the commander of the unit that carried out the
slaughter, who shot the Czar in the forehead from a range of zero, one
Yakov Yurovski – were Jews.
The proportion of Jews involved in the creation, planning, and management
of the Gulag Archipelag and forced-labor camps was much higher than their
proportion in the Party elite, where in any case they held a considerable
part of the key positions. Names such as Aron Solts, Yacov Rappoport,
Lazar Kogan, Matvei Berman, and Naftaly Frenkel still strike terror in the
hearts of Gulag veterans. The role of Lazar Kaganovitch in the
organization of the camps for people who were kidnapped for slave labor,
and also in the “collectivization” process that brought the death of
millions, is among the most notorious.
Jews such as Angelica Balabanoff had a decisive influence on the formation
of the spiritual world of Mussolini in his leftist-anarchist period.
Another example is that of Margareta Sarfatti (who edited Gierarchia,
el Duce’s fascist organ). Five Jews (A. Finzi, J. Pontremoli, A.
Jarach, E. Jona, C. Sarfatti) were among the founders of the fascist
nucleus of the “War Organization” (Fasci di combattimento) in March
1919. Those who formulated the socio-economic concept of Italian fascism –
“the state of corporations” – both on the ideological and practical
levels, were predominantly Jews. Thus, for example, Guido Jung, finance
minister and a senior member of the Supreme Fascist Council. Thus also
Guido Arias, the senior ideologue of the socio-economic concept of
fascism; L. Toeplitz, the chief banker of Italy; and Otto Herman Kahan, a
great admirer of el Duce and one of the pillars of banking and
American philanthropy. The hard-core of Mussolini’s economic advisers
strictly consisted of three Jewish senators (H. Ancona, A. Luria, T.
Meyer). Indeed, not for nothing did Alfred Rosenberg call Mussolini “Judenknecht”
(Jewish lackey).
The student rebellion of the late 1960s and early 1970s in the United
States and France was also mainly an expression of Jewish radicalism. Emma
Goldman, the Jewish anarchist of the early twentieth century, known for
her analysis of sexual repression in the context of the theories of
Sigmund Freud and Wilhelm Reich, is undoubtedly the mother of the
anarchist movements and of the 1960s slogan “Make love, not war.” In the
1950s the bridge between Goldman’s anarchism and the coming student
rebellion was Abraham Maslow, a leftist radical who developed his own
version of psychoanalysis that he termed “humanistic psychology”. Maslow
is the philosopher of communal living and the spiritual father of
Abraham (Abbie) Hoffman, Betty Friedan, Lenny Bruce (Leonard Schneider),
Bob Dylan (Zimmerman), and Jerry Rubin – to mention only some of the Jews
who were leaders of the student rebellion at that time.
The student rebellion in the United States, which in France wore the guise
of Gauchisme or Extreme Gauche, was indeed, as the
right-wing media in France called it, a “Jewish rebellion”. At the same
time the Jews constituted slightly over 1 percent of the entire population
of France. Their proportion among students was 6 percent. Yet their
proportion among the leading activists of the student rebellion came to
more than a third. Within a more limited list that includes 29 names in
the senior leadership echelon, at least 17, or 60 percent, are Jews. Among
the four official leaders – Daniel Cohn-Bendit, Alain Krivine, Alain
Geismar, and Jacques Sauvageot – only the last was non-Jewish. We may also
note that the leadership echelon of the Trotskyite and Maoist
organizations, such as the Communiste Revolutionnaire Ligue
and the Proletarienne La gauche, consisted solely of Jews, with the
help of a Sabbath goy here and there.
As one would expect, the common denominator of all these groups was (and
remains) a sweeping hostility toward Zionism. This reflects the
cosmopolitan principle that lies at the ideological foundation of the
Jewish left. Israel’s victory in the Six Day War raised this hostility to
levels of hatred among the various anarchistic organizations (e.g., Noam
Chomsky’s pathological hatred of Israel).
Within Jewish radicalism one may distinguish two trends that ostensibly
contradict each other. One trend is found in democratic societies and
preaches the destruction of the national frameworks, the establishment,
and the family. Emma Goldman and George Steiner manifest this aspect of
nihilism, which views the nation-state as the root of all evil (Steiner),
and liberation from the shackles of the family together with sexual
permissiveness as the true realization of human freedom (Goldman). In
tyrannical societies, Jewish radicalism blends well with tendencies of
extreme nationalism and repression of individual freedom. Thus in Soviet
Russia, thus in fascist Italy. The Jewish left has imported both trends to
Israel. The Peace Now movement is the faithful expression of this
mind-set, which impels it toward the destruction of Zionism. The great
irony of the Israeli case is that the process of self-destruction goes
hand in hand with devotion to the establishment of another state on
Israel’s ruins. And not just a state, since the population in question
already enjoys sovereign self-expression in the country where it
constitutes a decisive majority, Jordan. Nevertheless, the selective
blindness, a historical thought, and public demagoguery remain, then and
always, the essence of Jewish radicalism.
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