- David M. Weinberg
Israel needs to elect or reelect leaders with significant security and diplomatic experience. But Israel also needs an infusion of bright and believing, unpolluted leaders. The cynicism and divisiveness of Avigdor Liberman, Aryeh Deri, and Yair Golan must be ruled out.
Published in The Jerusalem Post, September 4, 2026. Print-friendly copy
I am partial to the argument that specifically at this time of heightened strategic risk Israel needs to elect or reelect leaders with significant security and diplomatic experience.
But I am convinced that Israel also needs to elect a new, younger generation of bright and believing, unsullied, and notionally more honest politicians – even if they are “green.”
I am certain that there is a capable and courageous next generation of Israeli leaders to take the reins of state – many of them the fearless heroes of Israel’s recent wars.
Therefore, I eagerly await the day, perhaps in 2028 or 2030 elections, when the current crop of politicians will have passed – and that means everybody from Binyamin Netanyahu to Yair Lapid and Moshe Gafni.
In the meantime, when I vote this fall, I am going to seek a synthesis between the two competing wrenches that tug at my conscience: experience vs. innovation, resilience vs. virtue.
This approach does not present easy choices. But to begin with, it means ruling out the most cynical and mercenary political candidates, those whose career has been based on violent and divisive rhetoric and endless acrobatics – always on the attack and flip-flopping from one position to another.
The classic examples of such cynicism and divisiveness are Avigdor Liberman, Aryeh Deri, and Yair Golan.
LIBERMAN is a cross between the deceased French extremist Jean-Marie Le Pen – a populist rabble-rouser, and Russian dictator Vladimir Putin – who excels at accruing power and asserting his relevance despite inherent weaknesses.
Alas, Liberman’s contribution to Israeli politics runs from negligible to detrimental. He has no record to speak of, aside from incitement and vindictiveness. I cannot think of a single positive contribution to Israeli society, economy, defense, and foreign policy made by Liberman and his dictatorially hand-picked Knesset faction members over the past 40 years (quite a few of whom have ended up in jail).
Does anybody remember Liberman’s tenures as minister of infrastructure, transport, strategic affairs, finance, foreign affairs, and defense? Is there a single concrete achievement or worthwhile doctrine that emerged from his tenure in these senior posts?
What I do remember well are Liberman’s many grandiloquent and violent eruptions on sensitive issues that require statesmanship and nuance – two qualities he lacks exceedingly; and then his pouting resignations each time he did not get his way.
Yvette the autocrat called for the bombing of the Aswan Dam in response to Egypt’s support of Yasser Arafat. He wanted to transfer Arabs of the Galilean triangle to Palestinian control, and to expel Arab citizens who refuse to pledge loyalty to the Jewish state.
On the other hand, he has played fast and loose with the idea of Palestinian statehood, sometimes fiercely against and other times smarmily and suggestively in favor. When, as foreign minister, he was seeking to ingratiate himself in Washington, he declared that he would be willing to evacuate his home in Nokdim (a Gush Etzion settlement) in exchange for peace. What that really meant was that Liberman would readily sell his mother and sister to advance his political fortunes.
In 2019, Liberman nauseatingly pushed the country into another utterly unnecessary election campaign; a campaign that meant months more of deadlock in government policymaking and tons of hateful election bombast – supposedly over the haredi army draft issue. And he threatens to do so again now.
But of course, Liberman doesn’t have a sliver of an idea how to coax Ultra-Orthodox Jews into the army. His going to the barricades on this issue to the point of forcing repeat elections was and is nothing more than pompous posturing; a cockfight meant to sadistically draw Prime Minister Netanyahu’s blood.
ARYE DERI’S ruinous record in politics is without peer. He is an acute expression of pugnacious haredi power; a super-self-confidant politician who bulldozes over all legal, civic, and moral boundaries to “bolster” (read: enfeeble) his haredi voting public. His brand of blithely sectorial, brusquely cynical politics has been catastrophic.
He is the central father-figure of the Haredi world of dependency, of living off the dole; to the creation of the all-encompassing government-support system for those studying in yeshiva, a system so comprehensive that it simply does not pay for a kollel student to step out into the working world.
He has never spoken positively about higher education and professional training programs for Ultra-Orthodox men and women that have opened in recent years, and he opposes the new haredi elementary and high school stream that teaches the basic core curriculum of math, science, and English.
I conjecture that Deri would sell every Judea and Samaria settler to the Saudis, twice over, if that were to earn Shas-affiliated schools a two percent budget increase.
Deri also is directly culpable for turning away Rabbi Ovadia Yosef of blessed memory from his earlier path of religious and political moderation. He whispered wicked things into the ears of Rav Ovadia, as needed, about Religious Zionist, Russian, and Reform Jews, and secular politicians.
The fact that Deri has been caught in criminal violations more than once and gone to jail has not stopped him. He brushes this off by presenting himself as a persecuted Dreyfus and wronged Demjanjuk rolled into one, and as a holy man whose concern for the poor will bring salvation to the downtrodden of Israel.
He seditiously plays the ethnic card, with him being discriminated against as a “franck” (a poor, marginalized Sephardic Jew). He has no problem cynically inflaming ethnic tensions in this way, even though it is of course ridiculous for Deri to claim marginalization. If anybody has been in the privileged political driver’s seat for the past 35 years, as opposed to being victimized, it is Aryeh Deri.
Deri also holds the bag for the disasters that befell the Haredi community in Meron on Lag BaOmer in 2021 and during the coronavirus epidemic (when he led the haredi community’s separatist and defiant response to the government’s lockdown restrictions).
And of course, Deri has been a key figure in the ongoing haredi effort to legislate a permanent exemption of haredi men from military or national service – all the while outrageously sitting in the internal security cabinet that made the critical decisions about sending (non-haredi) Israeli soldiers into battle.
YAIR GOLAN is both a disappointment and a danger. Disappointment, because I remember him as a nationalist and appropriately aggressive military general who proudly paraded his Jewish-traditional roots. He was a good colleague at one of my conservative-leaning think tanks.
But then he sensed a vacuum at the far left of the political spectrum with the disintegration of the Meretz and Labor parties, and he jumped into politics and revved up the most extreme political postures to benefit from the void.
Golan has grandiloquently attacked Religious Zionists and settlers, nationalists and soldiers, defended insurrection in the army, and accused Israel of genocide and other war crimes – to the point where his charges regularly feature in anti-Israel lawsuits around the world.
Yair Golan and the rabble he is rallying also are a danger. In every online video I have seen of parlor meetings and political rallies for “The Democrats” – a political party name meant as a caustic sneer – raw hatred and demonization dominates the discourse – of Netanyahu, of right-wingers, of the religious and Ultra-Orthodox, and even of “centrists” like Gadi Eisenkot and Naftali Bennett.
This is accompanied by threats to “crush and close” any and all institutions that don’t align with the party’s “democratic” (sic.) worldview (such as pre-military religious colleges and hesder yeshivas), and to violently rollback (“destroy”) settlements while repeating the Oslo-era mistakes of territorial withdrawals.
Golan’s hypocrisy, hyperbole, and fanaticism light up every warning signal in my book.
Oh, how Israel truly needs a different breed of upright, principled, and temperate leaders!
- David M. Weinberg
Israel needs an independent defense-industrial base and must reshape its security relationship with the US.
Published in The Jerusalem Post, August 28, 2026; and Israel Hayom, August 31, 2026. Print-friendly copy
The Knesset will be asked over the coming month (meeting in special recess session) to vote on expansion of the defense budget for urgent IDF weapons procurement from NIS 70 to 90 billion (a rise from $20 to $25 billion).
This will push the annual defense budget to NIS 184 billion (approximately $61 billion). Israel’s long-term military buildup plan has grown by about NIS 50 billion ($17 billion) in just one year. And over the next decade, the military budget is expected to double yet still.
There is currently no identified full funding source for these enormous defense expenses. Ultimately, Israel will have to cut the budget of other ministries and impose new taxes.
There is no choice. The war with Iran and its proxies is far from over. In fact, 2027 is shaping up as a year of continued military conflict on all fronts – against Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis.
Only G-d knows what kind of instability Israel may yet have to overcome on its eastern border, and Judea & Samaria are unsettled too. Turkey is threatening Israel as well.
This is the overall security scenario Israel needs to be prepared for, under whatever government is elected in Jerusalem this fall.
Therefore, Israelis will need to dig their hands deeper than ever into their own pockets, especially since Israel must transition toward a more independent military industrial posture.
REMEMBER: Israel was caught flat-footed in 2023 by Hamas because of two decades of military downsizing and mistaken defense policies.
In 2013, then IDF chief-of-staff Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz promulgated a misguided multi-year plan that accepted a significant decrease in funding to the IDF and shifted priorities away from the ground forces in favor of air force and cyber capabilities, intelligence, special operations forces, and stand-off precision fire.
Gantz and then-Defense Minister Ehud Barak accepted the relative weakness of the maneuvering capabilities of the ground forces as a given. They did not think that the IDF would need to fight any army in the foreseeable future, nor have to conduct large-scale ground operations in enemy territory.
Lt. Gen. Gadi Eisencot, the next IDF chief-of-staff, along with then-Defense Minister Moshe (Bogie) Yaalon, and later Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman, oversaw a continuation of the same hapless, dangerous policies.
The result: An IDF woefully unprepared – ideologically, doctrinally, and in terms of combat readiness and weapons supply – for years of hard war against deeply entrenched jihadist enemies.
The cost of this failure to prepare sufficiently: Three years of warfare since late 2023 at a cost of approximately NIS 400 billion ($134 billion) in direct military expenses (ammunition, fuel, equipment, and personnel). It is likely that Israel spent more than $1 billion alone on Arrow missile interceptions.
These figures do not include the cost of treatment and rehabilitation for 15,000 soldiers with varying degrees of injury including many with long-term medical rehabilitation challenges plus trauma and other mental burdens. The numbers above also do not consider the tribulations and needs of 2,000 Israeli families with widows and orphans from this war.
Nor do the above numbers above include necessary support for Israelis displaced from the Negev and Galilee, and the costs of rebuilding their cities and towns. In short, the defense and rehabilitation burden carried by Israelis is mammoth.
ISRAEL ALREADY has decided that it needs a far larger military along with a more independent defense-industrial base. The latter is a hedge against embargoes – like the one imposed by the Biden administration when it decided in 2024 to delay delivery to Israel of 2,000-pound bombs.
In December 2025, Prime Minister Netanyahu announced a plan to invest NIS 350 billion (about $110 billion) over the coming decade in the development of an independent Israeli arms industry. That has since grown to NIS 400 billion ($133 billion).
This year, two deals with Elbit totaling approximately NIS 1 billion were signed — one for heavy aerial munitions and the other for the establishment of a national raw materials plant – a step described by the then-director general of the Ministry of Defense and current IDF chief-of-staff, Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir, as a central lesson of the war.
Contracts have been signed with Rafael to expand Iron Dome production, and with IAI to increase the production rate of Arrow interceptors.
Israel also is pouring resources into indigenous production of the Roem artillery gun, Barak tank, Namer tracked APC, and the Eitan wheeled combat vehicle.
The Navy is advancing a blue-and-white shipbuilding program aimed at reducing dependence on foreign shipyards too, including production of five Reshef missile ships at Israel Shipyards at a cost of NIS 2.8 billion ($780 million).
In terms of diversifying procurement sources, Israel is advancing joint production in India and importing components from the Far East, thus reducing dependence on the US. For example, Elbit is now co-producing the Hermes UAV and IAI is co-producing the Heron UAV in India with Indian defense contractors.
Development of new military technologies that allow Israel to stay a step ahead of its enemies are necessary too. An example of this is the Iron Beam air defense laser for which Israel has signed an initial $500 million contract with defense contractors Elbit and Rafael. If the system is proven successful, the outlay will rapidly increase to over $2 billion.
Overall, Israel’s defense spending as a percentage of GDP, which stood at 4.5 percent in 2023, has risen to a whopping 8.8 percent – the second highest in the world.
ALONGSIDE these heavy expenditures, Israel faces the immediate challenge of reshaping its security relationship with the US around the principle of reciprocity in production.
Israel’s 10-year security memorandum of understanding with the US (in which Congress allocated budget for Israeli military purchases in the US) expires in 2028, and will not be renewed as is.
A new accord should transition from a pattern of one-way dependence on American aid to a reciprocal production partnership.
The new logic is reflected in the American National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for fiscal year 2027, which includes an initiative called the “US-Israel Defense Technology Cooperation Initiative,” aimed at cooperation in the fields of artificial intelligence, quantum computing, directed energy, and autonomous systems.
Dr. Raphael BenLevi, a senior fellow at the Misgav Institute for National Security & Zionist Strategy, has penned a complete framework for post-aid strategic-industrial cooperation between the US and Israel. After speaking to just about everybody in the US and Israeli defense establishments and to senior leaders in the defense industries, he has written concrete language for a new MOU and an accompanying Letter of Intent.
BenLevi’s new framework relates to a phase-out of FMF (foreign military financing) from the US to Israel (– a slow phase-out to allow for completion of existing contracts and a smooth transition), joint production of weapon systems, co-development of future-defense technologies, possibilities for integrated war fighting, enhanced intelligence sharing, the possibility of a limited US military footprint in Israel, regional cooperation opportunities, and ways for Israel to assist with broader US global interests.
In this way, Israel will strengthen its strategic value to the US, while reducing its vulnerability to boycotts and intense pressure in times of critical decisions.
The Jewish Institute for National Security of America (JINSA) also believes that such a shift will benefit both countries. “Closer alignment and cooperation with Israel across military, technological and economic lines of effort will help make America safer abroad, more prosperous at home and one step ahead of its adversaries,” it argues in a new report entitled Shifting the Center of Gravity: Transforming the U.S.-Israel Security Partnership.
JINSA would have the two countries sign one more aid MOU to maintain $3.8 billion in annual US assistance through fiscal year 2038, while pairing that funding with a series of initiatives designed to deepen operational and strategic integration between the two militaries over the long term.
It suggests a “Model Ally” status for Israel that would provide a framework for deeper joint research and development, co-production, and reciprocal offsets. The report argues that greater integration of the two countries’ defense industries would strengthen their respective industrial bases and supply chains.
JINSA also supports a larger US military footprint in Israel including a permanent air force presence at Israel’s Uvda Airbase, a forward CENTCOM headquarters in Israel for regional planning, expansion and modernization of the prepositioned US arsenal hub and war reserve stockpile in Israel, and even a limited U.S.-Israel mutual defense treaty (with a deliberately narrow threshold for activation).
Thankfully, the miracle of Israel’s wartime economy and its high-tech prowess make such aid transitions feasible for Israel and worthwhile for the US – something which was considered unfathomable just a few years ago.
- David M. Weinberg
Erdogan’s madly ferocious foreign and military policies need to be put in a box.
Published in The Jerusalem Post and Israel Hayom, August 21, 2026. Print-friendly copy
By DonkeyHotey – Recep Tayyip Erdogan – Caricature, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=60443645Unless Israel draws concrete red lines in Syria and the eastern Mediterranean, the Turkish army and navy will further encroach upon Israel’s northern and maritime borders. Israel could find itself facing Turkish tanks on the Golan Heights and Turkish frigates off the coast of Caesarea.
This is the warning I heard this week from a very senior Israeli intelligence official. The warning echoes the alarm expressed in the 2025 Nagel Commission report (which evaluated Israel’s security budget and force buildup) about the Turkish drive toward an Islamist-jihadist regional order with Ottoman-era hegemonic ambitions.
Israel must be prepared, the commission’s report cautioned, for direct confrontation with Ankara and with Syrian proxies and armies aligned with Turkey. “The threat from Syria could evolve into something even more dangerous than the Iranian threat,” the report stated.
This threatening reality explains the Israeli air strike several days ago on an airbase near Idlib in northern Syria, where the Turks apparently were setting up a radar and air defense system that was meant to interfere with the IAF’s operations in the north.
The Israeli strike sent a stark signal to Turkey’s radical Islamist dictator Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his Syrian satrap, the former ISIS terrorist named Ahmed al-Sharaa (a.k.a. Mohammed al-Julani), to back off.
Understand: Erdogan is a true-blue believing anti-Semite of the old school, who considers classic antisemitic myths like the Protocols of the Elder of Zion (where Jews control the global banking and media conglomerates) as truth. He honestly hates Jews and Israelis, and he openly seeks to lead a pan-Islamic coalition to crush Israel – while remaining a member of NATO.
Erdogan is anchoring a Sunni alliance of Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and Qatar (with some Egyptian role too) that has a malodourous anti-American and anti-Israeli scent. Erdogan has even drafted a model constitution for an Islamic confederation meant to replace NATO. According to US President Trump, Erdogan’s military was prepared to join Iran’s war against Israel this year until Trump “asked” Erdogan not to do so.
But that has not stopped Erdogan from siding with Russia against the West in defense of Iran and in support of the Iranian economy and Iranian war effort, and from hosting Hamas military headquarters. All the while, he petitions gullible Europeans for goodies, and lobbies his friend US President Donald Trump for engines for Turkey’s homegrown fighter jet and for advanced American F-35 fighter jets.
Trump and his special envoy to Turkey and Syria Tom Barrack (who is wildly solicitous towards Erdogan and Jolani) have stuffed their mouths with cotton balls and have nothing to say about Erdogan’s much-too-close alignment with Russia, China, and Iran; Erdogan’s long-term military occupation of northern Cyprus and northern Syria; and the diplomatic and military war he is waging (for the moment, mainly behind the scenes) against Israel.
Israel has not declared and does not want to consider Turkey an enemy country, but it cannot ignore Turkey’s military buildup and its encroachment – nay, its essential takeover of Syria and attempt to extend its military reach to Israel’s borders.
This week’s Israeli strike was designed to push back against Turkish air intrusion, and Israel will certainly strike again if Erdogan insists on expanding his military presence in Syria or attempts to rebuild the Syrian air force.
But the more immediate Turkish threat comes from its large navy, since Erdogan repeatedly threatens to wage war with Israel over gas fields in the Mediterranean.
The Turkish navy has tens of frigates, destroyers, and amphibious landing craft, as well as 12 submarines. It is now building six more submarines along with 24 new frigates and destroyers.
By comparison, the too-small Israeli navy has 15 missile ships, six submarines, and a dozen cruisers. Israel will soon add naval helicopters to its defensive arsenal. It is no surprise that the Nagel Commission recommended a massive build-up of the Israeli navy as a priority expenditure.
AT THE MOMENT, NATO cannot afford a complete rupture with a country that controls the Turkish Straits and hosts US nuclear weapons. But at the very least, a “reciprocity standard” should be applied to Turkey. Contracts with that country must be tied to its foreign policy and military conduct.
Human rights standards should pertain to Turkey too. Erdogan has jailed more journalists, judges, generals, and academics than any other country in the world, including China. He is building 40,000 new jail cells to handle the overload. He is creating an authoritarian system to suit his imperial purposes.
So, Erdogan needs to be cut down to size, and his madly ferocious foreign and military policies put in a box. American and European leaders who prioritize stability in the region ought to weigh-in against Erdogan’s overly ambitious and aggressive schemes.
They should not be censuring Israel when it necessarily acts to drive Erdogan back from the brink.
Remember: The past three years of devastating enemy attacks on Israel taught Israelis an important lesson – which is the need to maintain a proactive defense posture including strategic ascendancy against enemies near and far.
Consequently, Israel will not return to the containment policies of recent decades that prioritized restraint and diplomacy over enemy degradation and military triumph. This approach allowed enemies to develop attack capabilities under the cover of diplomatic breathing time; what some Western officials mistakenly called periods of “stability.”
That approach blew-up in Israel’s face, with terror and invasion from the West Bank and Gaza and from Syria and Lebanon, and with the march of Iran’s nuclear bomb program to near completion and Iran’s ballistic missile array to near-annihilation-of-Israel potential.
The lessons Israel has learned apply to Turkey too. From Idlib to Erbil, Israel will attack, if necessary, not defend. It will insist on jihadist-free buffer zones along its borders with Lebanon and Syria. It will not tolerate the placement on its doorstep of equilibrium-breaking strategic weapon systems nor abide the advance of threatening foreign armies and navies.
- David M. Weinberg
Color me amicably appreciative but stubbornly skeptical of the latest attempts to fashion fanciful diplomatic harmonies on Israel’s borders – an attitude born of hard-bitten experience.
Only the IDF, not international observers, will defang Hamas and Hezbollah.
Published in The Jerusalem Post, August 14, 2026; and Israel Hayom, August 16, 2026. Print-friendly copy
Israelis have every reason in the world to seriously doubt the American-hatched plans to bring peace to Israel’s southern and northern borders.
In both Gaza and Lebanon there are deeply entrenched, well-equipped, Iranian-backed terrorist armies arrayed against Israel. Nobody has yet met an Islamist truly willing to give up his weapons.
Now, you’ve got to give the Jared Kushner-driven American diplomacy some credit for trying to defang Hamas and Hezbollah and transform the regional security situation. Remember that nobody in Israel believed that Kushner and his team would be able to wedge Hamas into releasing all remaining Israeli hostages held in Gaza. There was a one-in-one-thousand chance of that happening, and yet it did.
The new American plans are dreamy-delicious too, at least on paper – perhaps hallucinatory, perhaps possible.
Hamas is supposed to be stripped of its weapons (guns, rockets, missiles, underground bunkers and weapons storehouses, and terror attack tunnels) and Gaza is supposed to be demilitarized by an “International Stabilization Force” (ISF) of Moroccan, Albanian and other troops. Hamas rule is supposed to be replaced by a neutral (non-Hamas) “technocratic government.” Members of this government and its “new” police force are supposed to be “vetted” for their peaceful intentions.
Hezbollah in Lebanon is similarly, hypothetically, going to be “decommissioned” or driven out of southern Lebanon by the ghostly, Hezbollah-penetrated weakling army known as the “Lebanese Armed Forces.” This near-fictious force, overseen by international observers from the US and reportedly by Italy, Switzerland and Indonesia too, are to “verify” Hezbollah’s disarmament and disappearance.
This is notionally wonderful! But both Hamas and Hezbollah vociferously deny that they will disarm (except perhaps performatively, imaginarily, a bit for the cameras), and they certainly have not abandoned their declared ideological commitments to the destruction of Israel.
And none of the presumed peacekeepers, observers, verifiers, vetters, stabilizers, and guarantors are going to actually, militarily, kinetically confront Hamas and Hezbollah gunmen. Never ever, none of them, not with a single bullet, never mind with a company of commandos.
Worse still, even before implementation of the plan for Gaza gets going, the so-called US-led “Board of Peace” already is backsliding from the commitments it made to Israel in the 20-point plan signed last fall.
In the original plan (point 13) Hamas’ infrastructure was to be “destroyed and not rebuilt” and its weapons confiscated and put “permanently beyond use.”
However, article 8 of recently enunciated “road map” for implementation of the grand peace plan downgrades to a situation where weapons are to be “decommissioned and stored,” and only after establishment of a new “National Committee for the Administration of Gaza (a “technocratic” government staffed by people undoubtedly loyal to Hamas, after “vetting” by the plan’s guarantors like Hamas backers Qatar and Turkey).
“Destroyed” and removed from Gaza has become weapons “stored” in Gaza (meaning that the weapons will be accessible in future to Hamas, “subject to Palestinian law”), and the new governing body now precedes Hamas’ disarmament rather than following it.
Plus, there is a new invented category of weapons, “personal weapons” – whatever that means – which will be allowed to Gazans (Hamas chieftains, gorillas, goons, and the like), not confiscated.
Furthermore, the “stabilization force” is no longer defined as a “long term internal security solution working alongside Israel” but as a buffer force between Gaza and Israel (see article 12), meaning that it has no policing role versus Hamas but will be there to prevent the IDF from operating against terrorist threats as they develop; in other words, it will protect Hamas.
AGAIN, Hamas (like Hezbollah) has no intentions of voluntarily disarming itself, and no one other than Israel will truly do the necessary job. Nobody but the IDF is going to do battle with Hamas, and this must be a constant battle.
Alas, Israel already is being forced into a situation where the IDF’s hands are tied. Targeted strikes against Hamas commanders and even against heavily armed Hamas shock troops probing Israeli defenses along the Gaza borders have dropped over the past two weeks to almost zero. This, reportedly at the insistence of the US.
This is a major mistake. What disrupts the ability of terrorist organizations like Hamas to rebuild and conduct attacks on Israel is the constant pressure of targeted counterterrorist operations. As long as they live under a constant Israeli threat, the leaders and operatives of these genocidal gangs are forced to live as hunted men – in hiding, in restrictive operational settings.
Furthermore, to prevent a surprise attack against Israel, it is essential to deny the enemy the ability to organize and prepare. Halting or significantly reducing Israel’s counterterrorism operations gives the enemy the confidence and sense of immunity that it currently lacks.
According to reports, the 600 trucks a day of “reconstruction” and food supplies now going into Gaza are largely being “requestioned, “repurposed,” and otherwise “taxed” by Hamas for its military rebuilding. Hamas’ fighting force is apparently back at 40,000 strong.
Consequently, Israel needs to keep things simple. Kindly Kushner plans aside, and with best wishes for their success, Israel nevertheless must maintain freedom of action to conduct counterterrorism operations.
As a matter of principle and practical defense policy, Israel must forcefully respond to every attack or attempt to attack Israel, and it must interdict emerging security threats in real time – not “restrain” itself to “keep the peace process alive.”
Additionally, it cannot and must not withdraw from the security zones currently held before the terrorists have been totally disarmed and their organizations genuinely dismantled.
The containment policies of recent decades that prioritized restraint and diplomacy over enemy degradation and military triumph – failed. This approach allowed enemies to develop attack capabilities under the cover of diplomatic breathing time; what some Western officials mistakenly called periods of “stability.”
That approach blew-up in Israel’s face, with terror and invasion from the West Bank and Gaza and from Syria and Lebanon, and with the march of Iran’s nuclear bomb program to near completion and Iran’s ballistic missile array to near-annihilation-of-Israel potential.
Israel today understands that it must continue to make fierce and overwhelming moves against enemy strongholds from Gaza City to Beirut and Isfahan. Israel must attack, not defend. It must initiate, not respond. It must hunt down its enemies, not be hounded by them or be reined in by whimsical international agreements.
Israel must maintain a proactive defense posture including tactical and strategic ascendancy against enemies near and far.
On this, there is a broad consensus in Israel that crosses party lines. Gadi Eisencott and Naftali Bennett have been just as critical as Binyamin Netanyahu of the latest peace plan implementation proposals outlined by Nickolay Mladedov. With Hamas in the neighborhood, they know that the IDF must constantly be on the offensive. They know that Israeli public opinion won’t brook any compromise in this regard.
No Israeli leader can be anything but dubious, too, of the tactical LAF test-takeover of two tiny villages in southern Lebanon where Hezbollah used to be based until Israeli troops rooted them out the hard way.
The likelihood that this can be expanded to all southern Lebanon and hold for the long-term without challenge by Hezbollah and its Iranian patron is slim to nil, even with Italian, Swiss, and Indonesian observers. The pilot project is likely no more than a Lebanese public relations endeavor.
Remember UNIFIL, which still impotently and even harmfully hangs around the zone? Is the American team going to propose the evil supervision services of Turkey and Qatar (and perhaps al-Jolani’s Syria) in south Lebanon too?
Color me amicably appreciative but stubbornly skeptical of the latest attempts to fashion fanciful diplomatic harmonies on Israel’s borders – an attitude born of hard-bitten experience.
- David M. Weinberg
The organization has joined the Palestinians in erasure of Jewish history in Judea & Samaria and Jerusalem.
Published in The Jerusalem Post, August 7, 2026; and Israel Hayom, August 8, 2026. Print-friendly copy
ChatGPT-generated image.Judea and Samaria (the West Bank) are rich with Jewish national heritage sites. It is the Biblical heartland. The physical record of the Biblical narrative lies in the ground with thousands of known archaeological sites (and perhaps thousands yet more undocumented sites), providing incontrovertible evidence that connects the Jewish People to the Land of Israel.
This is precisely why ever since the start of the Oslo process the Palestinian Authority (PA) has acted to destroy archaeological sites in Judea and Samaria – purposefully plundering Jewish antiquities, razing historical Jewish sites, and working in international institutions to erase the Jewish/Israeli identity of such places.
This year the PA submitted a long list of obviously and undeniably Jewish historical sites to the World Heritage List at UNESCO, rebranding the sites as “Palestinian” or “Islamic” heritage locations while expunging any Jewish association to them. UNESCO appears to be slap happily going along with this political looting of Jewish/Israeli history.
Indeed, the bludgeon that the PA and its backers at UNESCO have taken to Jewish heritage sites in Israel is like the sledgehammer that ISIS took to world heritage sites such as Mosul and Nimrud in Iraq and Palmyra in Syria.
UNESCO essentially has become an agency of annihilation, a willing partner in a campaign of systematic Jewish identity erasure. This amounts to cultural genocide.
REMEMBER THAT, according to UNESCO, the Temple Mount in Jerusalem is not really the Temple Mount. Back in 2018 that morally bankrupt international organization passed a series of nonsensical resolutions (proposed by PA dictator Mahmoud Abbas) declaring Jerusalem an exclusively Moslem heritage city and criminalizing Israel’s custodianship of the holy city.
The major vote was taken davka, specifically, on Chanukah, a Jewish holiday that marks the liberation and rededication of the Temple by the Maccabees in the second century BCE. Most European nations, those great paragons of “peace” and “love” for Jews, went along with that affront, either voting for or abstaining on the denialist resolutions.
They then doubled down on the perfidy by adopting in 2021 a similar resolution in the UN General Assembly which disavowed Jewish ties to the Temple Mount and called it solely by its Moslem name, al-Haram al-Sharif.
At Palestinian urging, UNESCO also has disgracefully declared Hebron and its Cave of the Patriarchs and Matriarchs, and Tel Jericho, as “State of Palestine” heritage sites.
Last month, at the cultural-genocide bloody behest of that same so-called “state,” UNESCO declared Sebastia/Samaria – the capital of the biblical Kingdom of Israel – as a Palestinian-associated World Heritage site. This, despite ongoing PA looting of the site (which falls partially in Area A of Judea and Samaria) and its building of homes over the ancient Israelite, Hellenistic, Roman, and Byzantine relics.
Fortunately, Israel very recently begun to assert its rights at Sebastia by driving off the Palestinian marauders, resuming professional archaeological digs there, and beginning to invest in touristic development of the site.
Now, UNESCO is considering declaration of a series of 22 additional properties in Judea and Samaria as Palestinian cultural assets under the World Heritage Convention.
This outrageously includes sites of core Jewish patrimony like Qumran and its Dead Sea Scrolls, Herodian, Solomon’s Pools and the aqueducts leading to King Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem, Mount Gerizim, the Cave of Chariton, Tel Rumeida in Hebron, and the Hasmonean aqueducts in Wadi Qelt (Nahal Prat) with the Hasmonean palaces at the lower end of the wadi.
All these sites are in Israeli-controlled territory, and none bear a historical or cultural connection under any plausible claim to “Palestinian heritage.” The PA list includes ancient Christian sites as well such as the Saint Hilarion Monastery in Gaza, now politically, ridiculously repackaged as a “Palestinian heritage” site.
And of course, note this too: According to the PA and its UNESCO submissions, none of these sites are in the “Judean” desert or mountains – because using the true historical name of Judea would be an implicit acknowledgment of the Jewish People’s connection to the land.
To wipe away Jewish history, the PA has instead invented new terminology for the territory. Thus, Judea disappears from the narrative, replaced by fabricated labels such as “Al Bariyah – Desert and Monasteries.”
THIS JEWISH identity erasure campaign extends from historical denial to physical destruction. The PA owns a clear patten of archaeological persecution and demolition.
According to the valiant Israeli NGO “Preserving the Eternal,” 80% of the 400 or so most significant heritage sites in Judea and Samaria have been damaged by “industrial-scale” Palestinian looting and the use of heavy machinery to bulldoze archeological sites for roads, factories and “agricultural projects” – read: purposeful bowdlerization of anything Jewish. (The numbers are from a five-year-old report and probably much worse today.)
Three shocking examples pertain to the Temple Mount, Joshua’s Altar on Mount Ebal, and Solomon’s Pools.
In 1999, the PA-led Wakf conducted vast, illegal construction projects on the Temple Mount and beneath it, willfully destroying centuries of Jewish archaeological treasures. Four hundred trucks full of archaeologically rich soil were unceremoniously dumped by the Wakf into the Kidron Valley. Thousands of artifacts from the Temple periods have since been found through careful sifting of the debris by Israeli archaeologists.
On Mount Ebal near Nablus a large archaeological site identified by the late Prof. Adam Zartal as the altar of Joshua has been imperiled. (See the Book of Joshua chapter 8, where a dramatic ceremony reaffirming G-d’s covenant with the Jewish People was held in the area after the early stages of conquest of the Land of Israel).
The PA drew up plans to pave over the site with roads and 24 high-rise housing units, and in 2001 Palestinian contractors ground part of the ancient stone fencing at the site to make gravel for roads.
Recently, Israel halted renewed Palestinian attempts to vandalize the spot, and has approved establishment of a yeshiva and a settlement nearby that also will protect the archaeological site.
Another infuriating episode relates to the incredible aqueduct identified as King Solomon’s water system for Jerusalem. This runs from Hebron through Bethlehem to Jerusalem, including what is today termed “Solomon’s Pools” southwest of Bethlehem.
This marvel of ancient engineering, 40 km. long, is described in detail in the Bible, and the description matches the archaeological findings precisely. The pools and aqueducts survived 2,000 years of summer and winter and many invaders and predators – until the arrival of the Palestinian Authority.
In 2022, the PA dug an enormous 1,500 dunam quarry pit at Beit Fajar right through a section of the aqueduct. The quarrying caused irreversible damage to the aqueducts, with some 100 meters of tunnel and approximately 2,000 meters of the aqueduct on either side of the tunnel reduced to rubble.
Only recently has the government of Israel (finally!) stepped-in to prevent further damage to the relics and to develop the site for organized biblical tourism.
THE ISRAELI cabinet has just approved NIS 113 million in government funding for protection and development of 70 Judea and Samaria heritage sites. This budget allocation was advanced by Finance Minister Betzalel Smotrich and Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu.
While insufficient given the scale of the challenge, this funding signals a shift in policy. Enforcement has increased, site development and public access have begun, and after decades of neglect and looting, long-buried historical treasures are being uncovered. The discoveries are significant, with the potential to reshape global scholarship on entire historical periods of importance to world heritage.
Some examples: At Hyrcania, near the Jerusalem-Dead Sea highway, a fortress marking the fall of the Hasmonean Kingdom is being revealed as a “mini-Masada,” complete with siege systems, underground chambers, inscriptions, and ritual baths.
At the Alexandrion fortress on Mount Sartaba, mentioned in the Mishna in connection with signal fires that inspired today’s Yom Haatzmaut torch-lighting ceremony, excavations are producing dramatic new findings too.
Every such archaeological excavation is a victory over Palestinian denialism and UNESCO’s ISIS-like efforts at Jewish erasure.
- David M. Weinberg
Wine Wonders in the Land of Israel. On the religious celebration of Tu Be’Av as the time of grape harvest, a time for recognition of God’s bounty. With some wine tasting recommendations too.
Published in The Jerusalem Post, July 31, 2026. Print-friendly copy
It is no surprise that the Jewish People’s return to its ancient homeland in Israel has entailed the reintroduction of grape-growing and quality winemaking. And it natural that the long-forgotten festival of Tu Be’Av (the fifteenth day of the month of Menachem Av), which was this week, be reintroduced in modern Israel.
No, I don’t mean the cheap celebration of Tu Be’Av as Jewish Valentine’s Day, a festival of love where according to the gods of modern marketing one is supposed to buy flowers, chocolate, and other trinkets for spouses and partners (although that is not a bad thing).
I mean, rather, the religious celebration of Tu Be’Av as the time of grape harvest, a time for recognition of God’s bounty. It is an occasion for renewed explorations of the connection between the Jewish People and their Patron in heaven as expressed by abundance and rootedness in the Land of Israel.
The background to this is Biblical. There are four basic agricultural products in Israel repeatedly mentioned in Scripture, and each is associated with one of the four major holidays.
Olives, harvested in autumn primarily for olive oil, are related to the fall festival of Sukkot (Tabernacles). Barley, harvested in the early spring, is tied to the spring festival of Pesach (Passover), and from which the Omer meal offering was sacrificed on the first day of the holiday in the Temple in Jerusalem.
Wheat, a summer harvest product, is bound to the summer festival of Shavuot (Pentacost), and from which the Shtei Halechem (two loaves) bread offering was held aloft and then eaten in the Temple on the holiday.
Where do grapes come in? Well grapes are for making wine, and wine has a Biblical holiday too: Tu B’Av, which occurs at the beginning of the grape harvest in July-August.
This is meant to mean much more than young women going out to dance in the vineyards on Tu Be’Av to find their shidduchim, marriage matches – as described in the Mishna (Tractate Taanit 4:8). That rabbinic teaching is the source of the ridiculous riff on Tu Be’Av as Valentine’s Day. The deeper meaning of the mishna is that the explosion of joy at grape harvest time is an opportunity for seeking closeness – with other Jews, with family, and with God.
Indeed, the Torah ties grapes to our two most basic relationships in this world: To the relationship between man and woman, and the relationship between man and God.
Between man and woman: Ishtecha kegefen poriya beyarketei betecha banecha keshitilei zeitim saviv shulchanecha (Psalms 128:3). Your wife is like a fruitful vine in the innermost parts of your house, and your children are like flowering olive plants gathered around your table. The most basic familial relationships are symbolized by wine and olives in plenty around the dinner table.
Between man and God: Elokim tzevaot shuv na habet mishamayim ureh ufkod gefen zot. Vechanah asher nateah yeminecha al ben imatzta lach (Psalms 80:15-16). We ask God, we beseech God, that He should look down from heaven and be mindful of His vine, of His stock which He Himself planted. That is the Jewish People. We are His stock, we are the vines that He planted and the branch that He has made strong for His own glory, for His own name in the world.
THERE are magnificent Biblical descriptions of festivity at the grape harvest (see for example Judges 9 and Isaiah 16). The harvesters would enter the vineyards in gladness (besimcha), and they would sing out and shout in joy (meranenim u’mre’im), in exultation (gil), with jubilant cries (hillulim), hollering hooray (heidad), and with song and harp (zemer and nevel). (Nevel is a play on words, because it means both a harp and a flask of wine.)
And in the modern Zionist era too there has been sensational celebration around the harvesting of grapes to produce wine. Consider, for example, this passage from the journal of one of the men who worked for Baron Rothschild back in 1890 at his new winery in Rishon LeZion when the first harvest was received.
The worker, David Yudelevich, relates the eruption of ecstasy. “The bell rang at 4 am to wake up the army of young men, women, and children armed with pruning shears. Their carts overflowing with grapes began streaming into the crushing vats, and they all sang: ‘Awaken, oh People of Israel, your youth has returned to the land, your redemption is near,’ followed by more song and dance.”
This is Biblical prophecy coming to fruition in our day. As Ezekiel (36:8) foretold in God’s name, in the time of redemption “You mountains of Israel shall shoot forth your branches and yield your fruit to My People Israel.” Two thousand years of desolation and devastation would come to an end.
Based on this verse, Rabbi Abba taught in the Talmud that “There is no greater revealed sign of redemption than the agricultural reblooming of the Land of Israel” (Tractate Sanhedrin 98a).
Jewish theology and law elevate wine one step further, giving it an important role in bringing the Divine Presence into this world. This is not possible, we are taught, when sadness and pain are the primary life experiences. Holiness in our lives and the Divine Presence in our world are only possible when we are happy.
Fortunately, “wine makes the heart of man glad, making the face even brighter than oil” (Psalms 104:15), and “wine cheers man and God” (Judges 9:12).
Drawing on these verses, the Talmud (Tractate Brachot 35a) rules that Ein omrim shirah ela al hayayin, that you cannot really give thanks to God unless you have a kos shel bracha, a glass of blessing, a goblet of wine, in hand.
This is where we get the use of wine for kiddush (sanctification) on Shabbat and holidays and at all Jewish life cycle events. This is also where we get the special formulations in Jewish law for benediction over wine: borei pri hagafen before drinking wine and al pri gafna after drinking wine. No other beverage is distinctively designated in this way.
FROM RECENT tastings, at the “Sommelier” professional trade fair in February and the “Israel Museum” public wine festival this week (held in Modiin), I came away convinced more than ever that wines made from “Mediterranean” varietals (grape types) are the wave of the future in this country (as opposed to the classic French Bordeaux and Burgundy varietals such as Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot). This means lighter wines similar to those made in other hot climates like southern France (Languedoc) and the Rhone Valley, as well as Spain and Italy.
Some of the outstanding Israeli red wines made in “Mediterranean” hand and style that I tasted and recommend are Bazak Syrah, Carmel Signature Guvrin (Petit Sirah), Flam Even Sapir (Syrah), Hayotzer Lyrica GSM (a Grenache-Syrah-Mourvèdre blend), Munitz Shaked (Marselan-Syrah-Argaman), Netofa Tel Qasser Red (Grenache-Syrah), Pinto Holot (Grenache-Petit Sirah-Syrah), Raziel (Syrah-Carignan), Recanati Atlier Syrah, Telem Rock and Stems (Syrah), Teperberg Legacy Petit Sirah, Tura Special Edition (Shiraz-Marselan-Merlot), and Vitkin Petit Sirah.
The writer is a WSET Level 3-accredited wine enthusiast, and he conducts wine tours and tutored tastings with Zionist/Jewish flavors.
