The surprise overnight announcement cancelling plans for early Israeli elections and establishing a Likud-Kadima national unity government (with 94 of 120 MKs in the coalition!) cannot be read as just another crafty re-jiggering of the political map. It can only be explained as preparation for tackling the biggest of all challenges: the Iranian nuclear threat.

Obviously, this political ‘big bang’ would not have taken place unless it served the narrow political interests of all involved: Benjamin Netanyahu of Likud, who wants a stable government to take him to the end of 2013 and who aims to subsume and bury Kadima; Shaul Mofaz of Kadima, who would likely have been decimated at the polls in September; Ehud Barak of Atzmaut, who might have been eliminated electorally; and Avigdor Lieberman of Israel Beiteinu, who had boxed himself and the coalition government into a corner on the issue of equitable military draft.

The ‘big bang’ also delivers body blows to Shelly Yachimovich’s surging Labor party and Yair Lapid’s hot new Yesh Atid party. They will now languish in opposition (or oblivion) for a long time. From the perspectives of Netanyahu and Mofaz, this is simply delicious.

It is also true that this very broad-based new government can more easily deal with the three most vexing issues on the Israeli domestic agenda: replacing the Tal Law regarding the draft of haredim; passing a budget for 2013-2014; and reforming Israel’s electoral system. Starry-eyed Israeli analysts are dreaming about a new Israeli peace initiative on the Palestinian front too. With his rock-solid political base Netanyahu will be better able to tackle these issues, and others like settlement outposts as well.

But I doubt that real revolutions are to be expected, nor do I think that these matters are uppermost in the Prime Minister’s mind.

The margin for significant policy change on any of the above issues is slim. Realistically, a new arrangement for pressurizing and incentivizing haredim to participate in the workforce and do civil or military service – will end up as a compromise deal that brings marginal and gradual progress, at best. Next year’s budget will inevitably be a draconian austerity budget with increased military spending that pays only lip service to the heightened demands for social and economic justice.

Mild reform of the political system is possible, but more far-reaching reforms will be stifled by ethnic and religious pressure groups, I suspect. There is no sensible Palestinian partner for realistic negotiations, and neither Netanyahu, Mofaz nor Barak are going to support any more unilateral withdrawals.

This brings us to Iran, which is the one issue on which far-reaching and momentous decisions are imminent. Netanyahu’s government and inner cabinet now includes three former IDF chiefs-of-staff (Barak, Yaalon, and Mofaz), something which in itself is a form of deterrence. This ought to give pause to the Iranians and the Obama administration, and to stiffen the backs of the P5+1 negotiators. It is an important counter-weight to the nasty insinuations of “irresponsibility and messianism” in government decision-making regarding Iran made by former intelligence chiefs Dagan and Diskin.

I know that Mofaz truly intended to run a serious campaign against Netanyahu this fall, and was building a professional electoral machine to undermine Likud’s political base among disadvantaged segments of the population. Unlike many other analysts, I have never dismissed Mofaz’s abilities or underdog chances, nor been over-impressed by the current polls giving Netanyahu a crushing lead. If Mofaz nevertheless has now decided to join a national unity government with Netanyahu, he must know something we don’t. He must understand that a confrontation with Iran is coming, and that national responsibility dictates a closing of ranks.

As my wife left the house this morning to go shopping, I suggested to her that it’s time to stock up on batteries and bottled water.

###

Note: Two of my recent columns foreshadowed this development: My article entitled National Unity, Now (March 28) called on Kadima to join Netanyhau’s government, which is what just happened! On May 1, I wrote An Unnecessary and Unhelpful Israeli Election which called early elections “an expensive and debilitating nuisance” and asked: “What do we need an election campaign for now? We already have a reasonable government that represents what most of the public wants and what is realistically attainable. Moreover, it’s about time that we allowed a government to govern for a full term. The stability is good for the country.”

Published in Israel Hayom, May 1, 2012. Click for a printer-friendly copy.

I can already label the Israeli election campaign that appears to be breaking upon us as the most boring race in recent Israeli political history.

Review almost any aspect of this nascent campaign, and you’ll discover that no surprises are likely and no inspiration is to be found. The alternatives to Prime Minister Netanyahu are unconvincing; the margins for significant policy change are slim; and the end result is pretty much predetermined.

The election, at this time, is simply unnecessary. It is an expensive and debilitating nuisance.

Let’s face it: When all the political rhetoric and personality ballyhoo is put aside, there is little room for real differences between the major parties – on any issue.

I find it hard to believe that a Netanyahu-Mofaz-Lapid-Yechimovich government (with or without Lieberman and religious parties) would truly be any more or less cautious regarding Iran than the current Netanyahu-Barak-Lieberman government. Neither governing constellation is going to run headlong into direct military confrontation with Iran unless absolutely necessary. The result of the upcoming US presidential election in November has more bearing on whether Israel hits Iran than the result of any election in Israel.

The same goes for diplomacy on the Palestinian front. Kadima, Labor and Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid praty may be declaratively more willing than Israel Beiteinu or Habayit Hayehudi to forgo and swap land in the West Bank, but they are unlikely to find themselves in government without Likud or all of the sudden discover a sensible Palestinian partner with realistic negotiating positions. The public is not going to support any more unilateral withdrawals, and nobody is withdrawing the IDF from Samarian hilltops or the Jordan Valley with an Arab “winter” raging around us.

Economic and social policy? Summer protests and tent encampments notwithstanding, all public opinion surveys indicate that the public recognizes Netanyahu as the best economic steward for Israel at this time. His steady hand has helped Israel weather the global financial storms, and in the process he cut the middle class a few breaks too (like free early childhood education).

Sure, we’d all like the next government to lavish tax breaks and housing subsidies upon middle class wage-earners, but next year’s budget willy-nilly will be an austerity budget with yet another increase for the military. Kadima chairman Shaul Mofaz, and Lapid and Labor chairwoman Shelly Yachimovich can rally the masses with electioneering slogans of radical social and economic reform, but this is completely unrealistic. Empty slogans, no more.

This leaves us with the important issues of electoral system restructuring and equality in military service. However, significant reforms on either file won’t advance as long as the smaller ethnic and religious parties are represented in the governing coalition. It’s nice to dream of such an eventuality, but not a single poll shows this to be in the cards. Neither Netanyahu nor any of his opponents will be able to govern without these satellite parties’ support.

So what do we need an election campaign for now? We already have a reasonable government that represents what most of the public wants and what is realistically attainable. Moreover, it’s about time that we allowed a government to govern for a full term. The stability is good for the country.

Alas, when the promise of real change is limited, politicians tend to fall back on nastiness and vitriol to distinguish one from another in an election campaign. The haters and the propagandists who appeal to our most ignoble instincts – on the anti-religious left as well as the extreme right – will come out of the woodwork, drawing on government funds and public television time to broadcast their rage to the desperate and distraught of our nation.

For this we need an election campaign?

Those who consider history only in terms of international relations underestimate or misjudge Israel. They fail to understand that Israel is guided by an astral calculus that is not always perceptible, by a reckoning that blurs the lines between imagination and reality. This explains why we sometimes stubbornly refuse to recognize the rational calculations of diplomatic cost and benefit – calculations politely impressed on us by well-meaning allies.

After a gap of two thousand years, the 64-year-old Third Commonwealth of Israel is now an entrenched fact of contemporary history, backed up by close to eight million citizens, a strong military, a vibrant democracy and an active world Jewry. Good time to take stock.

Unfortunately, press reviews of the state of the country on Independence Day generally seem to miss the spiritual, meta-historic significance of Israel’s achievement. They tend to calculate a balance sheet of our successes and failures in defense, economy, democracy and peace-making, and pose poignant questions about Israel’s identity, society and security into the future.

But while it’s valid to apply temporal yardsticks of measurement to Israel, such evaluations undershoot the deeper challenge: to fathom the processes at work behind the curtain of current affairs; to understand the resurgence of Israel in grand historical terms; to discern the mystic movement, the Divine drama – if you will, at play.

It cannot be otherwise. There is nothing global, or even massive, about the State of Israel in political terms. This is a small piece of earth. We Israelis are but a tiny fraction of the human family. In the sweep of history, there have been greater battles, bigger construction and irrigation projects, larger transfers and emigrations of populations, more eminently impressive displays of might.

Thus the establishment, survival and advancement of Israel is more than a political or secular event in Jewish, or indeed in global, consciousness. Israel stands as vindication of the spirit; as validation of the tenaciousness of faith; as proof of humanity’s power to overcome.

History knows no parallel to the prophecies of the Bible, which foretold of exile, of the break-up of a people into a thousand pieces across the world, to every culture and civilization – yet destined not to assimilate, but to return.

This is the saga of a metaphysical union spanning centuries between a people, their God, and a land – defying all odds. This is the celebration of a nation who, at the moment of ultimate nadir, of devastating Holocaust, rose from the ashes, armed with little more than conviction and a historical consciousness that promised renewal, to stake claim to their ancestry. This is redemption, Providential consolation.

“In this generation of ideological confusion, of erratic thought, in the press and rush of civilization haunted by doubt, fear and spiritual inadequacy,” wrote the late Yaacov Herzog, “the still small voice of Israel reborn has a significance overreaching the criterion of material capacity, extending beyond the boundaries of geographical dimension and the gradation of international status.”

“Israel represents a vindication of faith and prayer through the ages; it is a symbol of revival, a message of hope, indeed a lasting evidence of the integrity of the spirit.”

Listen to Chaim Weizman at the 22cd Zionist Congress in 1946: “(We) stand today six hundred thousand strong, with steady vision and unwavering courage…drawing sustenance, spiritual and material, from a grudging and neglected soil….testimony to the irresistible force which drives our people to become free men and women once again on the land of our forefathers.” Or to put it another way, as did Theodore Herzl: “If you will it, it is no dream.”

This belief in the power of human will, animated by ancient faith, explains much about Israel, even today. It explains why we sometimes stubbornly refuse to recognize the rational calculations of diplomatic cost and benefit – calculations politely impressed on us by well-meaning allies.

It explains why those who consider history only in terms of national politics and international relations underestimate or misjudge us. They fail to understand that Israel is guided by an astral calculus that is not always perceptible, by a reckoning that blurs the lines between imagination and reality, between the possible and the feasible.

The other day, I explained it this way to a foreign correspondent friend of mine. It’s not just the Jewish people that have returned here, I said. God is returning too, bit by bit. “The Lord thy God will turn thy captivity…and gather thee from all the nations” (Deuteronomy 30:3). Read not ‘turn thy captivity’ says the Talmud, but rather ‘return Himself’ from captivity. His presence in the Land of Israel, and His protection, grows with every immigrant stepping off the plane and every new house we build.

Regrettably, many of us seem to have lost the capacity to think in providential terms; to discern historical movement, not momentary difficulty; to see the forest, not the trees; to disregard the mud and focus on the magnificent.

On Yom Haatzmaut, it is time to remind ourselves of this prophetic perspective and allow for true celebration.

The uncompromising, blustery and high-handed diplomatic letter that Palestinian officials handed to Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu last Tuesday contained a thinly-veiled threat.

Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas implicitly warned that unless Israel does as he demands (which is to immediately concede every point of contention on borders and settlements) he will dissolve the PA and dump responsibility for West Bank Palestinians back into Israel’s lap.

Is the threat serious? Is it even a threat? I doubt it.

First of all, it is hard to imagine a $2 billion enterprise collapsing itself. The PA receives over $2 billion a year in international aid, more than any known political entity in the present or past that I can think of, anywhere in the world. (Ethiopia with 80 million people and a GDP one-fourth that of the Palestinians, receives far less aid than the PA).

These funds pay the salaries of tens of thousands of Palestinian real and imaginary civil servants, supporting families in every Palestinian town and city. Despite all the talk about the economic boom in the PA, there is no daily existence for hundreds of thousands of Palestinians without international assistance.

So I don’t believe that any Palestinian leader is going to give up this largesse, and the power to distribute this bounty, by dissolving the PA just to get at Israel.

But what if, in a fit of Palestinian spite and self-immolation, the Palestinian Authority were to declare itself defunct? How would Israel handle this? Could Israel handle this?

I don’t know much about the garbage collection and municipal health services that the PA might be providing these days for Palestinians, and which Israel might have to take over. I assume that we won’t like doing this, but that it can be managed.

A bigger and more pressing issue is the 5,000 men under arms in the PA, in one of five security services (Preventive Security, Military Intelligence, General Intelligence, National Forces and the Presidential Guard). Israel can’t allow 5,000 armed men who answer to nobody to run around the territories. Israel would have to round up weapons and shut down PA military facilities.

Without a doubt, this too is doable. The danger, however, comes from Iran. Iran would be only too glad to pick up the tab for the salaries of these military men – they each earn about $1,000 a month, currently paid by Western donor countries — in order to buy a mini-army to operate against Israel. At the paltry price of $500,000 a month, this would be a bargain for Tehran.

Israel would have to block such Iranian influence, and collar any Palestinian military or police figure that reverts to terrorist activity. Prof. Hillel Frisch of the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, author of “The Palestinian Military: Between Militias and Armies” (London: Routledge, 2008), says that most of the armed Palestinians are family men, married with children, and unlikely to turn to terrorism. But even if only ten percent of them did so, that would still amount to 500 terrorists that the GSS and IDF would have to hunt down.

According to Frisch, there were about 300 active terrorists in the territories at the height of the Second Intifada. Today, he says, the GSS and the IDF closely track every single member of the Palestinian militaries, and Israeli intelligence would be quicker and more effective than it was back in 2002 at identifying and arresting any militiaman who turns to terrorism. “While it won’t be painless or happen overnight, the IDF can and will crush a revanchist Palestinian terrorist threat,” Frisch evaluates.

There is also a Palestinian threat of mass civil disturbances and non-violent marches that overwhelm Israel’s defensive lines. But this threat exists even today, when the PA is still functioning.

The point is that Abbas would be better off not threatening us with his own demise. We can manage without him and his “authority” if we have to. It would not be fun for Israel, but it also would be very painful and uncomfortable for Abbas’ people. And the Palestinians would recede further away than they ever have been – light years away – from achieving the independent statehood that Yasser Arafat and Abbas and all their international donors had  promised them.

"Zeidy": Prof. Zvi Meir (Henry) Weinberg z"l

Published in Israel Hayom on Yom Hashoah, 27 Nissan 5772, April 19, 2012. Click for a printer friendly copy.

This true personal story is about a kvitel, a little prayer note, that connects five generations of my family through the Holocaust and beyond.

My father, Prof. Henry H. (Zvi Meir) Weinberg of blessed memory, passed away in Jerusalem in December 2006, after a long, amazing life that took him (fleeing from the Nazis) from Poland to the Ukraine, Siberia, Uzbekistan, France, Israel, United States, Canada, and then again, some fifteen years ago, to Israel.

Here in Israel, he was elected in 1996 to the Israeli parliament as a representative of Natan Sharanky’s Yisrael Be’Aliyah political party. He lived to see all his children and grandchildren living aside him in Israel.

My father came from a long line of Sanz Hassidic Jews in Krakow, who were pillars of the community going back to the students of Rabbi Yeshaya of Pshedbosh in the early 1800s. His father (my grandfather), Moshe David Weinberg (for whom I am named), fled Poland with his wife and children into Russia just ahead of the Nazis in September 1939. Thus, the family survived World War II (although Moshe David himself died of illness in Fergana, Uzbekistan in 1942). Moshe David’s siblings and their families, however, perished in the Holocaust.

Moshe David’s father (my great-grandfather), Dov Beirish Weinberg, had passed away and was buried in Krakow in 1935. My father, Prof. Henry/Tzvi Weinberg, had searched for, found, and photographed, Dov Beirish’s gravestone in the enormous, overgrown and partly destroyed “new” Jewish cemetery in Krakow.

Here begins the story. Some three months after my father’s passing (in early 2007), my brothers and I were digging through the voluminous papers and books in his Jerusalem apartment. Among the many ancient holy books, I discovered an original, first edition copy of “Pardes Mordechai,” a volume of Torah commentary written by my step-grandfather Rabbi Mordechai Wulliger (published 1928 in Munkatch, Hungary), personally inscribed by Rabbi Wulliger to my father.

Inside the faded book, my father had stashed documents and papers in envelopes, all neatly labeled. Clearly, he wanted us to find these papers. One of the envelopes had a red tab on it, and was labeled: The “New” Cemetery in Krakow.

Inside that envelope I found a photo of Dov Beirish Weinberg’s gravestone in Krakow. I had seen this before, but attached to the photo was a hand-drawn map; a map sketched out by my father with detailed instructions how to find Dov Beirish’s grave inside the old/”new” cemetery. According to this map, Dov Beirish’s plot was adjacent to the gravestone of the well-known Rabbi Shimon Sofer — a Talmudic giant.

The Kvitel Map, hand drawn by my father

At the bottom of the map, my father had written: “Attached is a ‘kvitel.’ Please deliver the kvitel to the grave of my grandfather.” (A kvitel is a prayer note, the type that is often scribbled, folded and tucked by Jews into the crevices of the Western Wall in Jerusalem. There is a tradition to leave such prayer notes also at the graves of ancestors).

I read this out to my brothers. We shuddered. A request from the grave — my father’s grave, sending us on a mission — to the grave of our great grandfather! A last request, so carefully thought out and mapped out by our father, labeled clearly, and left conspicuously behind for us to find.

We peered at the small, square piece of paper that was attached to the map, folded into four. “A kvitel for the grave of Dov Beirish Weinberg” it proclaimed. Hesitantly, we opened it. “Refuah shleima for … and bracha ve-hatzlacha for Zvi Meir Weinberg and his family,” it read — a prayer for a relative’s health, and for the good fortune of our entire family.

Here is the rub. That day — the day I found the book Pardes Mordechai with the photo and map and kvitel and my father’s request – was a mere four days before my eldest daughter, Ariella Rachel, was scheduled to leave with her class on a heritage trip for Poland and Krakow.

Four days! Amazing. Could my father have known? Was this but a coincidence?

I have never believed it was.

Ariella was now on a mission for her grandfather to her great-great-grandfather’s grave. To deliver the kvitel.

It was no happenstance that Ariella was “chosen” for this mission. Ariella was my father’s oldest and favorite grandchild, the apple of his eye; named after his mother, Rachel Weinberg of Krakow. Ariella and her “Zeidy” (Yiddish for grandfather) had a special relationship. Zeidy was now sending Ariella on a posthumous mission to his grandfather’s grave.

Arrangements had to be made, fast. Ariella’s school principal and teacher were quite excited when I told them the story and showed them the kvitel. But they explained to me that breaking away from the class to make a special, personal side trip to the cemetery in Krakow would not be an easy thing. It necessitates advance approval by the Israeli security team that accompanies each Israeli class in Poland, and requires the accompaniment of a teacher and special transportation arrangements. And there wasn’t much time. Nor would they have much time in Krakow to search for the grave. And who knows how long it would take to find the grave, if at all!

To make a long story short… on Sunday morning, 22 Adar 5767 (March 18, 2007) Ariella set out for the cemetery in Krakow to deliver the kvitel.

Using Zeidy’s map, which was extraordinarily accurate, she found the grave of Dov Beirish Weinberg in no time at all, placed the kvitel on the stone, and prayed for the entire family. Then she left photos of our family on the grave, and lit ten candles shaped into the Hebrew word “Chai” (life).

Ariella delivers the kvitel to her great-great-grandfather's grave

“What should I do if I get to the grave?” Ariella had asked me at Ben-Gurion airport before she left for Poland.

“Well,” I answered, “you deliver the kvitel. Then you can say some Psalms. And then you can say to Dov Beirish: ‘Hi! I’m your great-great-granddaughter! The family survived Hitler, and I live in the sovereign state of the Jewish People, in Israel!”

And so she did.

Upon her return landing at Ben Gurion airport in Israel, Ariella excitedly showed me the photos on her camera from the cemetery in Krakow. “I wish I could show these photos to Zeidy and tell him that I made it to Dov Beirish’s grave with the kvitel,” she said to me.

“Don’t worry,” I replied. “I’m sure that Zeidy already knows…”

This article was originally published in March 2007, and was republished by Aish.com in January 2010. 

The letter that Palestinian Prime Minister Fayyad is expected to hand Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu today is a prime example of everything wrong with the current Palestinian leadership. The letter (according to the drafts leaked to Haaretz and the Times of Israel) mixes fact with fiction, is maximalist and threatening, and indicates no real desire to negotiate – only to place Israel in the international dock of criminality.

The little bit of truth in the letter is where Fayyad reiterates Palestinian commitment to “a policy of zero tolerance against violence.” That’s nice and indeed important, and Israel acknowledges that for the most part Palestinian Authority forces in the West Bank have refrained from terror and quietly helped in ferreting-out Hamas cells. But Fayyad says nothing about Hamas rocket fire on Israel or kidnapping attempts and the like.

What the letter has in spades is a lot of bogus diplomatic history. Fayyad lists every Israeli-Palestinian agreement since 1995 (Oslo I and II, Wye, Hebron, Taba, Camp David, Annapolis, etc.) as if these were Palestinian concessions to Israel, but fails to mention that the Palestinians turned down offers from Israel in 2000, 2001, and 2008 that would have given them a state in virtually all of the West Bank, Gaza and eastern Jerusalem.

As has been their want for the past three years (ever since Obama took office), the Palestinians in this letter yet again set impossible and outrageous preconditions for entering real peace talks with Israel. Basically, they want Israel to concede every point of contention such as borders and settlements in advance of the talks. Otherwise – no talks.

Furthermore, the letter expresses Palestinian maximalism. This includes a state on all of the pre-1967 territories, with only “possible minor and mutually agreed upon land swaps of equal size and value.” Note the new phraseology “possible” and “minor.” And of course, the “right” of return to Israel for refugees” as specified in the Arab Peace Initiative,” and so forth and son. There is no preparation of the Palestinian people for “painful compromises” – as every Israeli leader is expected to repeatedly warn the Israeli public.

The letter falsely claims that the Palestinians have honored all their obligations, including the “reactivation of the trilateral anti-incitement committee.” This, from an “Authority” that names streets after arch-terrorists and broadcasts anti-Semitic and virulently anti-Israel sermons on its official television station. (It also an “Authority” which imprisons journalists and Facebook bloggers who write favorably of Israel and unfavorably about PA leaders).

Fayyad’s propaganda missive claims Palestinian ownership and PA responsibility over the West Bank and Gaza “as a single territorial unit,” but amazingly fails to mention a slight problem named the Hamas. As if Hamas didn’t exist; as if Hamas control of Gaza wasn’t a problem; as if Fayyad and Abbas had control over the Hamas. What a joke!

The bottom line is that the current PA leadership (never mind the Hamas leadership) has no intention of truly entering realistic peace talks that involve compromise with Israel, or ever signing a piece of paper that recognizes the legitimacy of a Jewish state and therefore end the conflict for all time.

Instead, Abbas and Fayyad know how to threaten: That unless Israel bows to their demands, the PA “will seek the full and complete implementation of international law” to criminalize and penalize Israel’s presence “as an occupying power in all of the occupied Palestinian territory.” To seek to further isolate Israel internationally.

In truth, this is what the Palestinian national movement has always been about: the delegitimization of the Jewish state. I would say that the Fayyad letter constitutes another missed Palestinian opportunity to gain their own state, but clearly and unfortunately, that is not what today’s Palestinian leaders are after.

In a deliberate American campaign to scuttle any planned Israeli hit on Iran, the Obama administration is leaking classified intelligence assessments and documents that rip deep into our most sensitive military zones. 

“There should not be a shred of doubt by now that when the chips are down, I have Israel’s back,” proclaimed US President Barack Obama at the AIPAC conference earlier this month. “There is no good reason to doubt me on (Israel) issues,” he similarly grumbled to The Atlantic. “I have made a more full-throated defense of Israel and its legitimate security concerns than any president in history… I have kept every single commitment I have made to the state of Israel and its security… We’ve got Israel’s back.”

Well, Obama definitely has a thing with Israel’s back. But he doesn’t seem to “have” our back. He is “at” our back. Stabbing us in the back, it appears.

How else can one explain the blatant and bold sabotage of Israel’s security that the Obama administration is engaged in? All the adamant protestations of support for Israel don’t weigh up against the concrete damage that administration officials are doing to Israel’s deterrent power and operational military capabilities through purposeful leaks of information relating to Israel’s strike abilities against Iran.

In a deliberate American campaign to scuttle any planned Israeli hit on Iran, Washington is leaking classified intelligence assessments and documents that rip deep into our most sensitive military zones.

Worst of all is the revelation (through Foreign Policy Magazine, yesterday) of State Department documents and CIA-provided details of Israel’s secret “staging grounds” (airbases) in Azerbaijan, from which the IAF can more readily strike into Iran. In the article, “senior intelligence officers” and former CENTCOM commanders name specific Azeri airstrips from whence Israel is apparently operating; name Israeli officials involved in managing the secret relationship with Azerbaijan; and provide astonishing detail on the air staging logistics that would be involved in an Israeli military operation there.

This follows upon the Congressional Research Service study leaked earlier in the week, which pans Israel’s ability to do much damage to Iran, and suggests that an Israeli strike would uselessly stir up a hornet’s nest. Great cost, with little gain, the report said. Two weeks ago, the Obama administration leaked to The New York Times results of a classified Pentagon war game dubbed “Internal Look” which forecast that an Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities would likely draw the United States into a wider regional war in which hundreds of American forces could be killed. This is to say: Don’t you dare act, Israel, or the Obama administration will blame you for Americans getting killed. And to make sure that Israel understood just how directed this leak was, the newspaper was allowed to publish the exact location, date, parameters and some names of participants in this war game. A fully-authorized leak. A targeted kill.

So, for all the talk of “complete coordination” between the US and Israel on the Iran file, it seems that Obama is playing rough with Jerusalem. Obama said that he “is not bluffing” when it comes to stopping the Iranian drive for nuclear weapons. “Not bluffing,” perhaps, but it seems that he meant that meant not bluffing about stopping Israel from acting against Iran.

Obama boasts at length at every opportunity about upgrades in US-Israel intelligence sharing and weapons development that he has authorized. Aside from being a benefit to America well as Israel, these upgrades are, of course, primarily aimed at holding us back from attacking Iran. The enhanced security cooperation is a bear-hug designed to handcuff Israel. And it is counterbalanced and canceled out by security sabotage such as the Azerbaijan expose.

Obama is at our back, indeed.

The cold peace gets even colder. And the Mediterranean basin is in danger of becoming an Islamic sea. Time to rebuild Israel’s defenses in the south.

Thirty-three years ago this week, on the White House lawn to the cheers of thousands, Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat signed the Egypt-Israel peace treaty. Will the peace treaty survive the current upheavals in Egypt?

That was the question posed earlier this week to a panel of experts from the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, who convened at Jerusalem’s Menachem Begin Heritage Center. Assessments ranged from mild to downright pessimism.

Dr. Liad Porat of the Begin-Sadat Center says that Egyptian Moslem Brotherhood Supreme Leader Dr. Mohammed Badi regularly speaks about the evils of Israel, and teaches that Jews and Israelis can never be trusted. Badi’s disciples will do everything possible in every international forum to make Israel’s life difficult, Porat says. Nevertheless, the Brotherhood has been cautious, Porat points out, and won’t necessarily abrogate the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty even if the Islamists in parliament gain control over Egypt’s foreign and defense policies (which are currently still controlled by the military).

Prof. Hillel Frisch is even more sanguine, arguing that Egypt’s dire economic situation will prevent the leadership from embarking on a military build-up or a war with Israel. Frisch notes that Egypt’s foreign currency reserves have fallen from $120 to $60 billion in the past year alone; GDP growth is down from five to one percent; and there are major shortages in some basic commodities. Clearly, Egypt cannot afford to spend billions on its military or risk a war. Moreover, Egypt’s economic aspirations – to be a regional economic power like Turkey, Iran, Malysia or India – simply do not jive with re-militarization.

According to Frisch’s estimates, if Egypt went to war with Israel it would lose almost $4 billion in tourism revenues, $2 billion in U.S. aid, $1 billion in Suez Canal revenues, billions in gas sales, and more. No Middle East actor, including Iran, could possibly compensate Egypt for these losses. Therefore, Frisch concludes, war is not in the offing.

Begin-Sadat Center director Prof. Efraim Inbar agreed with Porat that the Brotherhood has been cautious and with Frisch that there is a low probability of war with Egypt at any time in the foreseeable future. But, Inbar warned, the Islamist leaders of Egypt are new and inexperienced in foreign and defense matters, and may be prone to mistakes. They view the demilitarization of Sinai, for example, as a national insult, and some Brotherhood leaders are agitating to change this. For Israel, this would be a red line, Inbar said. The demilitarization of Sinai is the very linchpin of the peace treaty! Additionally, the continued “Somaliaization” of Sinai – the peninsula is becoming a lawless free-fire zone for terrorist groups of all types – could also trip Israel into war in the Sinai and with Egypt too, Inbar warns.

Taking a broader look around the Mediterranean basin, Inbar cautions that the Mediterranean is in danger of becoming an Islamic sea. Islamic-oriented governments have come to power, or threaten to come to power, in Libya, Algeria, Egypt, Sinai, Gaza, Lebanon, Syria and Turkey, Inbar points out.

Inbar counsels caution and patience for Israel. Jerusalem should do nothing to exacerbate an already-flammable situation, he says, while quietly re-building its defenses in the south of the country. This includes, perhaps, the building a new IDF division for defense of the south and the expansion of the Israeli navy – both of which are long-term and expensive projects. It also requires the IDF to be ready and trained for the possible recapture of Gaza and part of the Sinai, he said.

Israeli Ambassador to Egypt Yitzhak Levanon, who was spirited out of our Cairo embassy six months ago as rioters ransacked the premises, notes with sadness that the peace with Egypt can only be expected to get colder and colder. He checked, he says, and unlike Israel, no government or public organization in Egypt is holding even the smallest panel discussion or ceremony to mark the Egypt-Israel treaty anniversary this week. How sad.

Shaul Mofaz and Avi Dicter should take Kadima into Netanyahu’s coalition government, and the sooner the better.

National responsibility demands this. There are very tough decisions ahead for this country before we arrive at the next elections in the fall of 2013. That is a long 17 months from now! As a joint force, Likud and Kadima will be well placed in this crucial period to advance electoral reform, deal with the haredi draft issue, implement economic austerity measures that will be necessary for 2013-14, and most of all, prepare for the inevitable confrontation with Iran.

Avi Dicter, now a key Mofaz lieutenant, made this a central pledge of his leadership bid: to take Kadima into the government for the next one and one half years and help navigate the country through these momentous times. Kadima’s voice – one-third of all Knesset members — should not be relegated to the sidelines as Israel gets ready to tackle Iran and perhaps face the ire of the global community.

Simply put, a Likud-Kadima coalition would be good for the country. I’m sure that Mofaz and Dicter understand this, as does Netanyahu.

Here, however, is where narrow party concerns and calculations enter the picture. I fear that Mofaz will be tempted to believe his own rhetoric and seek to build himself up as “the real alternative to Netanyahu as prime minister.” The now-humbled Tzipi Livni sought to present herself similarly, arguing that, unlike Netanyahu, she could bring peace with the Palestinians. The public didn’t buy this, and her pretensions in this regard were among the reasons she lost public credibility.

Mofaz is smarter than Livni, and he won’t pretend to have diplomatic solutions up his sleeve for the Palestinian conundrum or to have a better way of handling Washington or Iran. But he could attempt to portray Kadima as a real social-economic alternative to Likud’s fiscal conservatism. In fact, he began to do in his victory speech last night. Mofaz didn’t mention Iran or the Palestinians even once, but spoke over and over again about social-economic responsibility.

Will this wash? Can former IDF chief-of-staff and defense minister Shaul Mofaz (who dismisses Abbas as Arafat-era crony) and former Shin Bet director and internal security minister Avi Dicter (who argues that Israel must completely crush the Hamas government in Gaza) successfully rebrand themselves as social-economic revolutionaries? I doubt it, and I hope they don’t try. Instead, they should join forces with Netanyahu.

Some of Mofaz’s advisors will undoubtedly tell him that Kadima will fade into irrelevance as a political brand if he takes the party into government with Likud, and that he has to fiercely rebuild Kadima as the Official Opposition to Likud (something which Livni abjectly failed to do).

The advisors will additionally tell Mofaz that social and economic discontent, which is widespread, is the only real card to be played against Netanyahu – since on diplomatic and defense matters Netanyahu holds the confidence of most Israelis. And if Mofaz doesn’t ride the social-economic ticket, he’ll be rapidly eclipsed by Shelly Yechimovich’s rising Labor Party, or by Yair Lapid’s new (and as yet unnamed) political party, or perhaps by some newfangled conglomeration of these parties.

Still, I say, Mofaz should take the high road, and for the good of the country he should join a Likud-led coalition government.

Of course, members of Netanyahu’s current coalition will also object to a reconfiguration of the government. The ministerial posts of defense, internal security, finance, foreign affairs and more are not exactly unoccupied, and the ministers in these positions have mainly been loyal to Netanyahu.

Nevertheless, Netanyahu should see beyond coalition politics and look towards the legacy with which he will marked in Israel’s political history books. By bringing Kadima into government, he can be the political leader who led the country under national unity into its most comprehensive political-electoral reforms, its deepest social-economic reforms, and its most fateful defensive mission.

Photo: Planting trees in Migron on Tu BeShvat

The Migron outpost now must be evacuated by August 1, the High Court injudiciously ruled Sunday, overturning a wise government compromise that would have allowed an orderly move of the settlement to Psagot over the coming three years. Chaval. (Too bad).

Particularly sad about this turn of events is the old, hateful rhetoric that has been let out of the bottle by the Supreme Court debate. Left-wing rabble rousers like Zahava Galon of Meretz, Yariv Oppenheimer of Peace Now, and hundreds of benighted academics who published a repulsive, sinister anti-Migron petition in the newspaper Haaretz on Sunday, have peppered the public debate with settler-hating epithets like “land robbers,” “lawbreakers,” “violators” and “corrupt manipulators.”

Listening to some of these spokesmen on radio yesterday and today you could feel the hatred of anything related to settlers, settlements and the Netanyahu government oozing from every pore of their oh-so-democratically-and-legally-pure bodies. There was no sympathy expressed whatsoever for the plight of the Migron residents – who settled there with full government support and in the knowledge that the State of Israel had title to the land.

Instead, I smelled a whiff of pogrom. I could almost hear them sharpening their pitchforks and spinning the wool for torches with which impale the settlers of Migron and burn their homes to the ground. I could sense their glee at the imminent spectacle of mounted special-forces policemen charging at settler women and children and bashing their heads with batons, as happened at Amona.

Chaval.

Only those whose hearts are closed, and whose who ideological hatreds have overwhelmed their factual judgment, can speak and think this way. The issue for them, of course, is not the upholding of Supreme Court decisions or the rule of law – although that is what they swear the current controversy is all about. Neither is the issue Palestinian land rights or Palestinian national rights, to which they also swear fealty. Not really.

Rather, the issue for the ideological haters that came out of the woodwork this week is the uprooting of the settlement movement life’s work; the destruction of the power of the ideological right-wing, especially the national religious right wing. Tearing down an icon of the Yesha Council – that is what this is all about.

Chaval.

Just after the disengagement from Gaza, I accompanied a group of Canadian newspaper editors on a tour of Israel, and we met with, among other, the man who was at the time the editor-in-chief of Haaretz, David Landau. Landau explained to the Canadian journalists why he though the unilateral withdrawal from Gaza was a good thing. It’s not because we freed the Palestinians from Israeli occupation, he said. And it’s not because the Israeli army will no longer have to patrol the alleyways of Jibalya refugee camp, he said.

The reason why, he, David Landau, thought that the disengagement from Gaza was a great and historic thing was “because we tore down the settlements of the national religious public and we crushed the political power of Religious Zionism!” he thundered.

I heard some of that thunder and animus again this week in the execrations of hard-left spokesmen celebrating their “victory” over Migron. Chaval.