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Ariel Center for Policy Research (ACPR)

Nativ

A Journal of Politics and the Arts
Volume 21 Number 1 (120)  January 2008Shvat 5768

Table of Contents

Articles

Islam

Putting The Muslim Genie Back In The Bottle with a Clear-Cut Victory

Moshe Sharon

Fundamentalist Islam – Violence and Terrorism

Raphael Israeli

Military and Security

How Will Iran Retaliate to s Strike on Its Nuclear Facilities?

Dany Shoham

Self-Hatred

Our Inner Scourge: The Catastrophe of Israel Academics

Shlomo Sharan

Otto Weininger Remains Current Not Only in Vienna Cafes

Yosef Barnea

Defeatism

The Strategy of Defeat

Mark Silverberg

The Storks are Landing

Daniel Johnson

Literature

“Like a Bee Released from Captivity” on the book, Upon a Certain Place by Haim Be’er

Yosef Oren

Book Reviews

“The Right Book at the Right Time” – Christopher Barder on From Muhammad to Bin Laden, Religious and Ideological Sources of the Homicide Bombers Phenomenon by David Bukay ■ “What a Cute Enemy?” – Eviathar Ben-Zedeff on Meeting the Enemy in the Living Room by Tamar Lebes and Paul Frosh (eds.)

Literature and Arts Supplement ■ Editor: Dror Eydar

Special Supplement Dedicated to Poetry

Poetry

Orna Rav-Hon Phillip Rosenau Leora Ben-Yitzhak Shor Entebbe
Smadar Falk-Peretz

Cinema

Yuval Rivlin – Israeli Cinema in the Twenty-First Century

Plastic Art

On Edna Konfino-Alstein’s Exhibit, “Vehicle, Vessel / Homage”
Yaffa Berlowitz – A Lecture upon the Opening of the Exhibit

Ronit Dekel – On the Exhibit

Photography

Ronen Amrani

 

Selected Summaries

 

Putting the Muslim Genie Back in the Bottle with a Clear-Cut Victory

Moshe Sharon

When, in July 2006, the Hizbullah showered Israel with missiles for 33 days from Lebanon, targeting civilians and civilian installations, the government of Israel did not declare war, and announced that it would not conquer the enemy’s territory and it prevented the IDF from retaliating by attacking civilian settlements, even when the Hizbullah enemy used Lebanese civilians as human shields, and turned schools, mosques and hospitals into missile launching sites. Moreover, the government did not understand the importance for Israel to achieve a clear-cut, unquestionable, major victory in this war. It failed to perceive the unusual harm to Israel, in the long run, if the Hizbullah could claim victory, as indeed it actually did. The enemies of Israel, which comprise all the Arab countries in the Middle East (including Egypt and Jordan) and beyond it, and the rest of the Islamic world, are now convinced that Israel is a temporary entity that can be defeated and destroyed, and its Jewish population can be exterminated. The Western world, particularly the United States, and Israel itself, have not yet come to grips with the gravity of the global conflict, and keep on deceiving themselves with seasonal “peace initiatives”. The Saudi-influenced American State Department, backed by a deluded, uninformed and defeatist media, have convinced themselves and the Israeli government that once the Arabs sign an agreement they keep it. Meanwhile Israel has to pay for useless pieces of paper with territory vital for its existence, in spite of the bad experience of the “Oslo agreements”, which brought havoc to the streets of Israel.

All the Arab countries, led by the Arab League, Saudi Arabia and Egypt, concurrently while supporting and arming terrorists that are fighting Israel, are also active in digging Israel’s grave on the diplomatic front by publicizing “peace plans.” It is high time to announce clearly that all these plans are part and parcel of the Arab war against Israel. This, and nothing else, is the aim of the clauses in these peace initiatives, which demand the withdrawal of Israel to the pre-1967 armistice lines, and the “return of the Arab refugees”.

The “peace” treaty between Israel and Egypt is usually quoted as a successful agreement. There is no real peace between Israel and Egypt. Egypt treats Israel as a dhimmi state, subordinate to the Egyptians’ whims and compelled to accept the Egyptian self-declared superiority. At the same time, Israel obliges itself to ignore all the Egyptian violations of the treaty: The horrific anti-Semitic publications in the Egyptian state-controlled and state-directed media, and the intensive Egyptian anti Israeli activity in all the international forums.

Meanwhile Egypt is preparing for war, preparing a huge and modernized army. Is it not clear that Israel, its people, its territory and its army, are the targets of these extensive, intensive, and expensive Egyptian preparations?

Now, after Annapolis, in late November 2007, it is clear that Israel succumbed to the Arab-Saudi ultimatum: Either Israel accepts the Arab “peace” plan, which means putting it on the straight route to disappearance within a few years or “bear the consequences”. The Americans are elated: The Arabs are “talking peace”. The President of the United States of America was so excited that he decided to convene that “peace conference” where Israel was the defendant facing its accusers: The Arab League, the Egyptians, the Jordanians, the American Secretary of State, following the traditional pro-Arab policies of the State Department, and the European Union to top it all.

Islam knows only one kind of relationship with the non-Moslems: War and triumph. Negotiations with the infidel are sometimes needed; they are a method to win time. Time is exactly what the Hamas and the other dozen Palestinian terrorist groups need: They need time to arm themselves with more deadly missiles for more effective attacks on Israeli citizens. The same can be said about the Palestinians and their Arab brethren who wish to turn Israel into a coastal strip, a piece of indefensible land. If Israel and the West wish to live as independent “non-believers” the victory and triumph which represent the Islamic religious-political agenda can only be met with the same weapon: Victory and triumph.

 

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Fundamentalist Islam – Violence and Terrorism

Raphael Israeli

In the last decade, Muslim fundamentalists have authored the lion’s share of the most horrific acts of terror throughout the world, including the attack on September 11 and those in Bali, Ankara, Chechnya and other parts of Russia. To comprehend what makes them tick, one must first acknowledge the fallacy inherent in the artificial differentiation drawn between Islam, the supposed “religion of peace”, and the fundamentalist “bad guys” who are blamed for the horrors of terror, which ignores the overwhelming support that they get from the Muslim mainstream.

Then, the key question of leadership has to be invoked; as without it the tremendous appeal and success of the anti-establishment fundamentalist Muslims cannot be explained. And finally, the Muslim ideology that guides them, which is no different from mainstream Islam, sheds light on how these terrorist movements transcend ideology and enter the domain of violence and mass terror. These developments, far from remaining within the boundaries of the Islamic world, have penetrated the West and have engendered virulent manifestations of anti-Semitism. 

 

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How Will Iran Retaliate to a Strike on Its Nuclear Facilities?

Dany Shoham

During the recent decade, Iran became a major sub-nuclear regional power, militarily and otherwise, persistently aiming and considerably progressing towards shaping into a nuclear one. Such a shift appears to be undesirable, in various senses, hence a variety of countermeasures - including a strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities - are being conducted and considered. Iran’s military competence and readiness to react in response to such strike, namely to launch a second strike are factors of paramount importance. Particularly, that they seem to form an intriguing strategic equation, one wing of which embodies the first-strike option serving to deprive nuclear capability to Iran, while the other wing poses the adequacy - or inadequacy - of Iran’s increasing non-nuclear WMD arsenal to deter or hamper the implementation of that option. This demanding, scarcely dealt with equation constitutes the essential axis of the present analysis. It is thereby observed that Iran is currently in possession of instant, full-scale chemical-biological-radiological-based retaliatory abilities, which may foreseeably and effectively be realized, unless severely curtailed.

The implications of this study pertain, foremost, to Israel and the USA, and may be considered to be supreme ones. The strategic vulnerability of Israel to non-nuclear WMD has thoroughly been presented, in spite of the various, highly contributive protective and defensive measures fostered and upgraded by her. The threat to the USA is obviously restricted in comparison, generally, yet its potential magnitude is still considerable. Therefore, taking into account the sever menaces thereby posed to Israel and the USA, together with the actual feasibility of an Iranian CBR-based second strike, as pointed out in this paper, a preemptive attack should indeed be conducted, in effect, aiming to incapacitate the Iranian CBR potency, right prior to or in conjunction with the destruction of nuclear facilities. This would mean, in practical terms, hitting the Iranian storage and deployment facilities of CBR warfare agents, munitions, warheads, and/or delivery systems. Treating the threat of Iranian-induced CBR terrorism acts is another, highly significant dimension, and not a less complicated one, in its way.  

Not in vain, connectedly, said Alexis Debat, director of terrorism and national security at the Nixon Center, that the Pentagon had drawn up plans for massive air strikes against 1,200 targets in Iran, designed to annihilate the Iranians’ military capability in three days. “They’re about taking out the entire Iranian military,” he noted. “The US military had concluded that whether you go for pinprick strikes or all-out military action, the reaction from the Iranians will be the same.” It was, he added, a “very legitimate strategic calculus”. Although seemingly an extremely drastic, outstandingly complex military operation, it has its own sound rationale; one inherent component of which is, in all likelihood, the desirable elimination of Iran’s CBR retaliatory capabilities before they materialize. Inversely, that factor would cause the Iranians to carry out CBR-based retaliatory moves as early as possible, and consume their CBR arsenal as fast as possible, before injured. Naturally, this tentative interplay is most challenging for the attacker and for the responder. And the responder – the IRGC, actually – is quite able; it should be handled very meticulously.

 

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Our Inner Scourge: The Catastrophe of Israel Academics

Shlomo Sharan

The opinions and claims of Israel academics against Jews, Zionism and Israel are discussed and analyzed in this study. It is estimated that some 20 to 25% of people who teach the Humanities and Social Sciences in Israel’s universities and colleges have expressed extreme anti-Zionist positions, largely, though not exclusively, in regard to Israel’s policies and actions vis-à-vis the Arab Palestinians. In addition to their expression of anti-Zionist, and often outright anti-Semitic attitudes, they have engaged in public demonstrations, prepared and signed petitions addressed to soldiers in the IDF to disobey their commanders’ orders and not serve in Judea and Samaria, and have been active in encouraging academic organizations abroad (particularly in England) to boycott Israel universities and academics. These academic personnel travel abroad and consistently denounce Israel for a series of crimes against Arabs that are as fictitious as are the claims made by the Arabs themselves. In fact, the anti-Zionist academics have adopted the Arab view of Israel’s history and of Arab accusations against Israel without regard for their relation to reality. In particular, is the distressing use of the analogy between Israel policy and practices of the Nazi regime in WWII. A distinct percentage of the far-Left anti-Zionist outcries espoused the extreme position that Israel should be either a bi-national state or should be replaced in its entirety by an Arab-Palestinian nation, precisely in the terms advocated by Hamas and the PLO. In short, Jewish academic personnel who teach Israeli students in our institutions of higher learning advocate that Israel be dismantled as a Jewish state; the ingathering of the exiles should be discontinued, and Israel should cease persecuting the Palestinians by killing homicide bombers who infiltrate Israel or retaliate against the firing of rockets at towns like Sderot. In short, we should surrender to the Arabs for the sake of peace. Is this phenomenon sanctioned under the guise of academic freedom, or is it actually sanctioned by the incumbent powers that be who want peace now at all costs, including the destruction of the third commonwealth?

Not a few of the anti-Zionist academics were lifetime communists and adhere to a Marxist ideology that opposes separate nationalism beyond the international brotherhood of the proletariat. To dismantle Israel is a first step in this direction, despite the fact that other nations oddly enough refuse to follow suit.

 

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Otto Weininger Remains Current Not Only in Vienna Cafes

Yosef Barnea

Otto Weininger (1880-1903), the Jewish philosopher, who became an apostate on the day that he received his doctorate, remains an interesting research subject, as one can deduce from the pamphlet edited by Yaakov Golomb: “Nietzsche in the Vienna Cafes” (Rasling Publishers, 2006), based on an international symposium that took place in Vienna in June 2002. Kurt Rudolf Fisher, of the University of Vienna, notes in his article, “Experiences with Nietzsche and Weininger”, that from his perspective, the discussion of anti-Semitism is not merely theoretical, and after citing his personal background, he focuses on Nietzsche’s influence on Weininger, who considered him (Nietzsche) a philo-Semite and then Fisher goes back to deal with his personal historical experience regarding the gap between Weininger’s idealism, from the turn of the century, and the harsh reality that developed more than a generation after his suicide. He thereby contributes a critique of the mistaken perception that draws a straight line between Weininger’s philosophy and Hitler’s thinking.

It is regarding that point that Alan Jelenik disagrees with him, contending that it is not true that Hitler worshipped Weininger in any significant manner, and if influence on Hitler can be attributed to any author, it would seem to be Henry Ford, whose book, “The International Jews”, was published in 34 editions before 1934! Jelenik devotes a significant chapter in his article “Kant’s ‘Eunice’ Principle, or How Friedrich Nietzsche Influenced Weininger”, to the ethics of man and woman. In his opinion, Weininger was assisted by Ibsen in placing a mirror before the regnant narcissistic society in contending that “only when a third gender that is neither man nor woman will emerge from man, will humanity be saved”. The central idea posited by Jelenik in his article is the following contention: “The central contention raised in Sex and Character (Weininger’s book – Y.B.) is that sex is morally unjustified even in the context of marriage as it always involves treating the personality within me or within the other as a means to pleasure and not as an end in and of itself”

Alan Jelenik .makes a substantial contribution to understanding the dialectical relationship between Kant and Nietzsche thanks to Weininger, as Weininger is willing to accept the Nietzschean (love of fate) in the least likely place to find it – at the heart of Kantian ethics. According to Weininger, the human position that should be accepted is not burning passion, but rather its opposite – sexual restraint. According to Jelenik, Weininger’s perception that sides with logic and values with no alternative viable, was influenced by the contemporary liberal movements that advocated social reforms in the form of abstention (from drinking and patronizing prostitutes and the like).

 

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The Strategy of Defeat

Mark Silverberg

Based upon Israel’s geo-political situation, it is only a matter of time before Israel will be forced to confront the Islamic threat posed by Hamas, Fatah, Hizbullah, Syria and, by extension, Iran. As that moment approaches, it is critical that the Israeli military war doctrine be reevaluated with a view to redefining the concept of “victory”. As military historian Victor Davis Hanson of Stanford’s Hoover Institute wrote recently of the American experience in Iraq:

Sixteen years ago (1991) on the cessation of hostilities (after the first Gulf War), Saddam Hussein’s supposedly “defeated” army used its gun ships to butcher Kurds and Shiites while Americans looked on. And because we never achieved the war’s proper aim – ensuring that Iraq would never again use its petro-wealth to destroy the peace of the region – we have had to fight a second war of no-fly zones, and then a third war to remove Saddam, and now a fourth war of counterinsurgency to protect the fledgling Iraqi democracy.

...and the war still rages on.

An analysis of American military war doctrine over the past century and a half suggests that in existential conflicts “total (or general) war” (examples of which include the American Civil War and World War II) as opposed to a “limited, defensive war” (symbolized by Korea, Vietnam and the current conflict in Iraq) is the only means by which absolute and total victory can be achieved. Based on the American Civil War and the World War II experience, “absolute victory” has come to mean vanquishing the enemy – not merely defeating its army and effecting regime change, but forcing its acceptance that the vision that led to its aggression and the system that sustained it were at an end.

This paper argues convincingly that Israel must restore its “aura of invincibility” lost in the Second Lebanon War if there is to be any semblance of hope for a better future. That will only be achieved when Israel’s enemies come to realize that they have truly been defeated, that they cannot continue the system that led to the war, and that their dream of conquest is dead.

 

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The Storks are Landing

Daniel Johnson

(The complete article can be read on the site of  The American Spectator
http://www.spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=11624)

Europe is the birthplace of Western civilization and until the 20th century, defended the values of that civilization against all threats at home and abroad on its own, courageously battled and succeeded to preserve its unique character. In the 20th century, Europe needed the United States in order to save Western civilization from the Nazi and communist threats. The US took upon itself the role of warrior on behalf of the values of freedom, humanism and democracy; sacrificed the lives of its soldiers on European soil during two bloody World Wars and in the Cold War that continued until the collapse of the Soviet Union. The United States bears the burden of defending Europe even today. Thus, Europe owes a debt of honor to America.

When America again went to war (in Afghanistan, Iraq and perhaps, in the future, in Iran) against the new threat posed by radical Islam against the Western world and its values in the early 21st centuries, one would have anticipated that Europe would stand alongside America without hesitation. However, Europe not only ignores repaying its debt, but also renounces its historic heritage, displays weakness and appeasement vis-à-vis radical Islam, which openly threatens to conquer it (and has even initiated that process), and publicly voices reservations regarding America’s willingness to combat international Islamic terrorism and the Islamic countries that provide it with support and shelter.

In light of the very real danger facing Western civilization in general and Europe in particular, we call upon Europe’s leaders to come to their senses and stand shoulder to shoulder with the United States in the war that will bring salvation to the Western world from an unprecedented dark era.

 

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