Israel

What a relief it is turn away from the maelstrom of American politics, and the endless speculation over whether Donald Trump asked for a quid pro quo in the hope of generating negative coverage about Joe Biden, to the placid backwater of Israeli politics, and the endless speculation over whether Benjamin Netanyahu asked for a quid pro quo in the hope of generating positive coverage about himself. How refreshing it is to stop wondering whether the Ukraine-impeachment circus is merely an attempt to reverse the voters’ decision and spin the 2020 election by replacing democracy with judicial process, and to start wondering whether the Netanyahu-indictment circus is merely an attempt to reverse the voters’ decision and spin the 2020 election by replacing democracy with judicial theater.

There’s a lot going on in Israel. Due to indiscriminate rocket fire from Palestinian Islamic Jihad in Gaza, schools in many Israeli cities, including Tel Aviv, were closed on Tuesday. Some have already been closed for Wednesday. The rockets target anyone and anything, and give everyone, young or old, the same amount of time, usually under one minute, to seek cover. Thanks to the shelters and Iron Dome, an air defense system which today had an interception success rate of 90 percent per the IDF, these rockets typically result in few Israeli deaths. But the collective psychological trauma of constantly being under fire is impossible to measure.

Benjamin Netanyahu is to tight corners as Harry Houdini was to handcuffs. Only a fool or an expert foreign analyst would write off Netanyahu simply because Likud didn’t come first in Tuesday’s elections. There’s about as much chance of him throwing in the towel after coming a close second to Blue & White as there is of him ending up in Houdini’s bracelets because of corruption charges. Consider the blue-rinsed Machiavelli’s previous electoral failures. In 2009, Likud won 27 mandates, second to the 28 seats of Tzipi Livni and her new centrist party, Kadima. Netanyahu formed a majority coalition government, Kadima dissolved after the 2015 elections, and Livni, a politician without a public, retired from politics in 2019.

Scene: the beach at Tel Aviv. Jews disport themselves in the waves, soundtracked by a Yiddish-absurdist tinkling reminiscent of Curb Your Enthusiasm. ‘Attention all swimmers! Attention all swimmers!’ the lifeguard shouts into the megaphone. ‘Stay to the right — it’s much safer!’ ‘Bibi?’ Two young men interrupts their game of beach tennis. ‘Mr Prime Minister, what are you doing here?’ ‘Doing what I always do, keeping you safe,’ Netanyahu says. The nation’s lifeguard explains that he’s ‘supposed to start another shift’ on September 17, but it’s up to the two young men. They’re secular, Ashkenazis from Tel Aviv, the kind who despise Netanyahu and Likud’s chauvinism. They ask about the alternatives.

Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar should have been allowed to enter Israel, even if they hate it, and deny its right to exist. Even if they agitate for its destruction which, given the neighborhood, means agitating for the mass murder of Jewish civilians because they are Jewish. Even if, though of course this is simply unthinkable in both cases, they hate Jews in general. And even though, instead of joining last week’s 72-strong bipartisan congressional delegation, which bipartisanned its way optimistically around meetings with both Israeli and Palestinian leaders of various parties, they instead set up their own visit with the globally renowned and seriously named Humpty Dumpty Institute, so they could malign Israel as much as they possibly could.

Jared Kushner’s two-day ‘Peace to Prosperity’ workshop in Bahrain, the administration claims, was the first step in resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Neither the Israelis nor the Palestinians sent delegations. The roll-out of the strategy paper that preceded it was met with near silence. America’s regional partners provided only lukewarm support to Kushner’s efforts and, not least, the workshop was amateurishly misnamed. Kushner believes it’s actually ‘prosperity to peace’ — not the other way around. The workshop’s results, or lack of them, were predictable. But criticism among those who have been down this road before has been muted, partly because of Kushner’s quiet but focused effort to solicit their views.

The problem of resolving the tangle of conflict in the Middle East is one that has defeated generations of the world’s most experienced statesmen, and resisted the blandishments of its greatest orators. So who better now to step in than a well-groomed thirtysomething New York property developer, offering the 'deal of the century'? There were some hiccups to start with, sure. Jared Kushner launched his 'Peace to Prosperity' workshop in Bahrain with a cocktail party – alcohol not being traditionally the thing with Muslims. And it was boycotted from the off by the Palestinian Authority. Still, he had a bash.

There’s not much going on in the buzzing new village of Trump Heights. Turning off route 959, which runs from northern Israel to the Golan Heights, it wasn’t quite clear at first why our Israeli guide had taken us to an abandoned farm field. Standing in the middle of some flattened yellow grass, however, we saw it: a big (yuge) green sign with bold gold letters in Hebrew and English, the Israeli and American flags crossed in friendship - ‘TRUMP HEIGHTS’. It must have been 10 feet tall. The latest settlement in the Golan was a gift from Benjamin Netanyahu to the President, as thanks for US recognition that the disputed region is Israeli territory.

Beirut It seems that American planes were actually on their way to bomb Iranian targets last night when they were called back. That’s what the New York Times was told by a senior official in the administration, speaking anonymously of course. ‘Planes were in the air and ships were in position, but no missiles had been fired when word came to stand down.’ Was this President Trump or the Pentagon? It’s possible that the US military suddenly learned of a vulnerability in some part of their forces spread around the Middle East, in Bahrain, in Iraq, or in Syria, but then again, they’ve had time to prepare. More likely, this was Trump.

It’s not every day that global diplomat and ex-Swedish prime minister Carl Bildt makes a fool of himself on Twitter. On some days, Carl’s too busy to tweet. But on Friday, the Stockholm speculator went full wag-the-dog. https://twitter.com/carlbildt/status/1139117308838891520 ‘Are there state or non-state actors that have an interest in provoking a conflict between Tehran and the US? It is difficult to see any other motive behind the tanker attack.

It is with a heavy heart and a nice calming feeling that I find myself agreeing with Rashida Tlaib. Tlaib claims to get a ‘calming feeling’ every time she thinks about how the Arabs of British-controlled Palestine gave Jews a ‘safe haven’ after World War Two. This remark has elicited accusations of anti-Semitism and disbelief from President Trump, prominent House Republicans Steve Scalise and Liz Cheney, and a host of reality-based historians. But Tlaib is right, in this if little else, to protest that her words were not anti-Semitic.

On the late afternoon of September 29, 2000 (nearly 20 years ago now), I took a cab from Jerusalem into Bethlehem to visit with an old friend and his family, the owners of a well-known Bethlehem hotel. The streets were bustling; buses filled with tourists roared up the main Jerusalem-to-Bethlehem road towards the Church of the Nativity (the reputed birthplace of Jesus), and the city’s gift shops were jammed. My plan was to stay the night, but my friend (a Palestinian Christian who’d moved to Bethlehem from Philadelphia), shook his head: ‘No room at the inn,’ he said, and smiled at his joke. ‘In fact, you won’t find a room anywhere in the city.’ I was surprised. In all of my years traveling to the West Bank, Gaza and Israel, I’d never had trouble finding a place to stay.

On Sunday, Beto O’Rourke claimed that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu doesn’t ‘represent the true will of the Israeli people.’ Israel is a democracy in which every citizen has the right to vote, a fact of international trivia apparently lost on O’Rourke. Although it’s easy to criticize Bibi for many of his recent remarks — and for his recent decision to welcome the racist Jewish Power party into the mainstream, it’s silly to argue that he doesn’t represent the true will of the Israeli people. The Israeli people have spoken for more than a decade: they like to have Bibi at the helm. It’s possible the Israeli people will have something new to say in their election today.