- David M. Weinberg
Time to discard the UN and start over from scratch.
Published in The Jerusalem Post and Israel Hayom, September 25, 2026. Print-friendly copy
Apparently, there wasn’t enough Israel bashing at the United Nations this week, from French President Emmanuel Macron to Jordan’s King Abdullah and Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan. Therefore, that cesspool of antisemitism and anti-Zionism has scheduled another hatefest for next week to mark the 25th anniversary of the infamous, rancid Durban conference.
The 2001 “World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance” in Durban, South Africa, unleashed a torrent of visceral anti-Zionism, raw antisemitism, and rank anti-Americanism that has since escalated to unhinged heights.
The myths of Israel as a genocidal and apartheid actor – the Jewish state as the source and cause of every evil in the modern world – were birthed then and there, as were the now-ubiquitous Orwellian campaigns of international lawfare against Israel.
Grotesque is the calmest term I can summon to describe the General Assembly’s planned “celebration” on Monday of this metastasizing monstrous movement.
Since then, the UN has built a sprawling network of more than 30 bodies, investigative mechanisms, offices, commissions, committees, special procedures, and special rapporteurs that contribute to the political, economic, and legal campaigns against Israel – as mapped out in a massive new report by my colleagues at the Jerusalem-based Misgav Institute for National Security & Zionist Strategy.
“The UN’s Anti-Israel Ecosystem: Mapping the Institutions, Mechanisms, and Resources Behind the Campaign Against Israel” by Dr. Adi Schwartz, Asher Fredman, and Noam Yakoby (165 pp.) shows how these structures result in a self-reinforcing echo chamber in which ostensibly independent bodies repeatedly validate and amplify one another’s “findings” and conclusions – which are invariably anti-Israel and antisemitic.
The UN’s highly resourced Israel-focused machinery manufactures wild claims and statistics about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict based on Arab sources hostile to Israel. These claims are backed by near-automatic voting majorities dominated by Islamic countries, China, and Russia; they then circulate from body to body across the UN system, acquire the authority of technical or professional expertise, and are then cited by governments, journalists, NGOs, courts, and other UN bodies.
The result is an insular institutional and ideological bubble that is ferociously devoted to delegitimizing and criminalizing Israel.
The machinery increasingly produces concrete political, economic, and legal pressure. Human Rights Council and OHCHR mechanisms have generated corporate blacklists and calls for arms restrictions. Special Rapporteurs have promoted sanctions, boycotts, asset freezes, and pressure on private actors. General Assembly initiatives have generated proceedings before the International Court of Justice, whose conclusions are then used to justify further measures. While the International Criminal Court is not a UN body, UN decisions helped create the pathway for Palestinian accession, while UN-generated claims and findings shape the wider environment surrounding its cases.
The authors argue that the danger extends far beyond Israel. The anti-Israel machinery generates legal theories, investigative practices, open-ended commissions, Special Rapporteur mandates, corporate blacklists, arms-embargo campaigns, sanctions proposals, and international criminal proceedings that can establish precedents for use against other democratic states.
Methods developed against Israel can and certainly will later be leveraged against democracies conducting counterterrorism operations or confronting terrorist organizations embedded among civilians. They can expose democratic officials and soldiers to politicized legal proceedings, pressure companies that supply democratic militaries, and delegitimize essential national-security tools.
WHAT CAN BE done about this? The authors outline eight courses of action, most of which relate to reducing funding for bodies that discriminate against Israel, the US, and other Western countries or undermine Western values.
After all, democratic governments and their taxpayers provide a disproportionate share of the resources that sustain the UN system. It makes no sense that democracies finance institutions that authoritarian and anti-Western blocs use to undermine democratic allies and advance norms those same democracies often oppose.
The amounts of money involved are staggering. In 2024, the US, Germany, UK, Japan, Canada, and France together provided 60% of all direct government contributions to the UN system; the US alone contributed more than 183 other member states combined. Researchers like Prof. Eugene Kontorovich and the late Claudia Rosett have shown that the US government provides more than $20 billion to the UN and related international organizations and multilateral entities – many of which are pugnaciously anti-American and radically woke in addition to rabidly anti-Israel.
The Trump administration started off in the right direction by ending US funding for UNRWA (the forever refugee agency for Palestinians), by reducing funding for the Human Rights Council, UNESCO, and dozens of other international organizations, and by seeking to punish and roll back the ICC.
But since then, the administration nonsensically has nevertheless transferred hundreds of millions of dollars to the UN and paid down hundreds of millions more in accumulated UN obligations, while boasting about paltry reforms and modest efforts to streamline UN waste. This includes payment this month of $827 million for the regular UN budget and for peacekeeping, and a commitment of $3.8 billion in US support for UN humanitarian programs.
And countries like Canada slavishly pour more money into UNRWA and the ICC and the “Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People” etc., no matter what – whether there are “reforms” and “audits” or not – whether to spite Israel and/or to purportedly prop up the two-state “solution.”
All the while, Britain, Canada, and France prattle on incessantly about “settler violence,” when the far, far more rampant violence is Palestinian terrorism against Israelis. See the shooting death of Netanel Shukron on the eve of Yom Kippur and the car-ramming attack on Neria Leiter on Wednesday. If any world leader emitted more than an imperceptible “tsk-tsk” about this terrorism, I missed it.
PERSONALLY, I doubt the eight reforms proposed by the Misgav Institute are implementable. I do not believe that the UN can be reformed. It operates with no real accountability, no functional moral compass, and no mechanism for acquiring any such vital features. It has developed a tyrant-friendly, diplomatically immune, and collectively irresponsible DNA.
Worse still, as Melanie Phillips has written, it is an “unstoppable geyser of moral and intellectual corruption. It teaches the West that lies about Israel are truths and truths are lies, and it has turned what the West tells itself is morality and conscience into an agenda of evil.”
It has ensured that the West can no longer distinguish more generally between victim and oppressor, reality and propaganda, right and wrong. Treating the UN and the “international law” it has promoted as the moral arbiters of global order is not just a sick joke. It has made the world sick, too.
Therefore, I argue that defunding the UN altogether may be warranted, at least for a while – as prophylactic treatment. It is pretty much taboo to call for shutdown of the UN, but it should not be so. I don’t buy the argument that while the UN may be imperfect, “it’s all we’ve got” – a refrain that tends to be accompanied by prescriptions for reforms that either won’t stick or won’t work at all.
Is the UN really the best we can do? No, it is not.
Do we have to settle for a system that elects Syria and Saudi Arabia to lead human rights councils, women’s rights agencies, and cultural bodies; and that cavalierly disregards slaughters in Syria, Sudan, Iran, and China while outrageously branding Israel a war criminal enterprise?
No, we should not have to. Time to chuck the travesty and start over.
Claudia Rosett’s important book What to Do About the UN argues that the guiding principle for replacing the UN is competition, the establishment of professional agencies with no grandiose moral pretensions.
Competition is what takes down monopolies, and the UN is the biggest monopoly of them all. It is a mammoth institution helped along by immunities, privileges, and lavish government contributions, and backed by legions of special-interest NGOs around the globe that lobby for more.
As a result, the UN has become like the failed collectivist experiments of the 20th century – the huge old Soviet state enterprises and gargantuan Chinese communist industries. It was and is extremely hard to shutter these behemoths since they are tied to every aspect of a dysfunctional economy and into the lives of their employees. They are a terrible drain.
You fix this by creating competition. So, Rosett proposed the establishment of coalitions that are not so much pegged to ideals as mission-driven, bringing together countries with specific shared interests – like NATO during the Cold War.
Thinkers and experts need to apply themselves diligently to this task. It is time for those with the expertise, resources, and genuine goodwill toward future generations to take an in-depth and non-polemical look at the opportunity cost to the West (not to mention Israel and the Jewish People) of cleaving to the UN.
We are way past the kumbaya rhetoric surrounding the founding of the UN 80 years ago. We are deep into the disastrous damage to global sanity and security unleashed by the abysmal Durban conference 25 years ago and everything ugly that has transpired since.
- David M. Weinberg
Finally, a voice of political responsibility from the Ultra-Orthodox public.
In fact, I am considering voting for the new “HaTzibur HaCharedi” party, even though I do not belong to the Ultra-Orthodox community and I dissent from part of the party platform. The party needs a boost from non-Haredi voters who understand the urgency and promise, and want it to succeed; a worthwhile investment in the long-term health of Judaism and Israeli society!
Published in The Jerusalem Post, September 18, 2026; and Israel Hayom, September 22, 2026. Print-friendly copy
Unfortunately, we have gotten used to snarling Haredi (Ultra-Orthodox) rabbis and politicians who dismiss the concerns of the general Israeli public and disassociate themselves from burden (actually, the privilege) of running and defending the State of Israel.
By their own admission, all they seek is sinecures for their secluded public, especially the narrowly self-defined “Olam HaTorah,” the Torah/yeshiva “world.”
From this distorted, so-called “Torah perspective,” the task of Haredi politicians has been to secure Haredi interests against Israeli society; to defend “their people” from “our state” – the “impure” and threatening Zionist state.
Alas, “our” army is not their responsibility. “Our” economy is not their responsibility either. God alone, “their” God, will take care of the bigger picture, along with the beleaguered Israeli taxpayer who pays through his nose and the “suckers” who serve in the Israeli army.
One might have thought that the trauma, suffering, financial deprivation, and household disruption of the past three years in the general Israeli public and in the “Torani” (ardently Torah observant) Religious Zionist community would shock the Haredi community out of its crushingly insular shell.
One had hoped that honorable Haredi leaders would be stirred towards some increased integration in Israeli society and would nudge forward towards national service in frameworks specially attuned to Haredi sensibilities.
One might have imagined great Haredi leaders participating in at least one or two of the many funerals for fallen soldiers, or showing up at soldier shiva houses to pay condolences, or quietly taking a minyan (prayer quorum) of their boys late night to daven (pray) at the Mt. Herzl military cemetery.
But nada. No movement at the leadership level. Haredi politicians like the recently deposed MK Moshe Gafni of the Degel HaTorah/UTJ party spent 40 years insulting and sneering at the secular and Religious Zionist publics and only doubled down on this over the past three years.
Despite October 7, “mainstream” haredi politicians have stuck to line that “yeshiva boys” (about 100,000 of them) cannot be drafted in any minimal way (whether they are really learning Torah full time or not) or educated any differently.
These leaders are purposefully and devastatingly cut-off from the war reality that most Israelis are living. Worse still, they are unflinchingly unfeeling towards the broader public, as their spokesmen sadly have made clear.
This is an historic tragedy that has the potential to crash the modern State of Israel, no less, in the Heavens and on earth.
FORTUNATELY, and finally, finally, substantial numbers of Haredi Israelis are moving away from this hostile approach. They think for themselves and are seeking alternative political leadership.
They realize that the rejectionist, protectionist posture described above may have been sustainable when the Haredi community was a small and embattled minority. It cannot provide a vision for a community rapidly becoming a central pillar in Israeli society. It does not provide a satisfying vision for Haredi people themselves.
Enter “HaTzibur HaCharedi,” the Haredi Public party, running for Knesset for the first time. The new political party begins from a wholly different premise from that of UTJ or Shas: That they, Haredi people, are part of the Israeli story.
They do not mean to abandon Haredi identity, but believe that Haredi Judaism is strong enough to take responsibility for Torah, family, and community; and also responsibility for sustainable livelihood, defense, civic life, and the future of Israel.
As the visionary chair of the new party’s rabbinic committee, Yehoshua Pfeffer, said at the party launch event: “Our initiative means moving from a politics of fear to a politics of hope. It means hope that Haredi young people will no longer feel forced to choose between belonging to their community and building a responsible life within the Jewish state. It means that the Haredi world believes it can grow, mature, and assume a larger and constructive role in strengthening and defending Israel – without losing its soul.”
“God did not bring millions of Jews back to the land of our fathers for Israel to fail. Nor did Haredi society build its extraordinary world of Torah, family, charity, and community in order to remain forever on the margins of the national story. The next chapter can be different. The question is whether we have the courage to write it.”
The new party, led by its articulate and measured chairman Moti Leitner (a hassidic deputy mayor of Beit Shemesh and a software professional), advocates for protecting those who truly learn Torah full-time while advancing meaningful service for all those who do not, and for giving Haredi youth the necessary educational tools to succeed in life and contribute to the Israeli economy and society.
This means working with, not against, the IDF to create Haredi service tracks from hesder programs to special brigades and soft military-industrial and civilian-security national service frameworks. It means rapidly and massively expanding the state-supported Haredi school stream (known as “Mamach”) which teaches the core curriculum of English, math, science, and civics alongside Torah and Talmud, and which prepares its graduates for potential college study.
Leitner explains that the party was born out of deep conversation with representatives of many Haredi communities who felt their voice was not being heard and their needs were not represented within the existing Haredi political parties. This includes working Haredi people including professionally successful women, Haredi immigrants from abroad, and more.
These Haredim also are horrified by the public and often violent shaming of young Haredim who serve in the security forces; by campaigns of vilification and terror against even great Torah sages who support cautious change in the Haredi world; and by rampant corruption in some Haredi municipalities and institutions.
This Haredi public also recognizes that too many of its youth are dropping out of schools and feeding the phenomenon of lost street youth without being offered paths that would legitimate a synthesis of Haredi identity and professional and national advancement.
Leitner emphasizes that the Haredi public he represents wants opportunities, not stipends, for Haredi young men and women; opportunities to grow and contribute and serve the nation, not to be on the government dole.
THE HAREDI PUBLIC’s decision to put two women near the top of its Knesset candidate list tells you how bold the party is. This is unprecedented and long overdue for the Haredi world, a breath of fresh air. The two Haredi women, Dr. Nechumi Yaffe (a political psychologist who once worked for the National Security Council) and Ziva Glanz (founder and CEO of the “LaShuv” olim network), are impressive leaders.
And Rabbi Pfeffer is an intrepid, insightful leader who founded the Iyun Institute at Herut–The Center for Israeli Liberty (formerly the Tikvah Fund), which operates a range of groundbreaking Haredi leadership programs and publications.
He is a respected “dayan” (religious court judge), served in the IDF, chairs the public board of “Netzach Yehudah” (the Haredi Nahal brigade), clerked at Israel’s Supreme Court, and is a professor at Hebrew University’s law school.
Pfeffer is truly a model par excellence of a Haredi community leader “taking responsibility” for the future of Israel, not shunning and deprecating Israel. I am proud to consider him a close friend!
In fact, I am considering voting for HaTzibur HaCharedi 40 days from now, even though I do not belong to the Ultra-Orthodox community and I dissent from the party platform which would still give, at least for the next while, a broad exemption from conscription for full-time yeshiva men. (That is too broad, whereas Haredi hesder programs combining yeshiva and military service is the better direction).
This new party, this bold new Haredi movement, needs electoral support. Recent polls indicate that it has captured the imagination of the Haredi street and the support of some ten percent of Haredi voters, amounting to about 100,000 voters (or 2.5 Knesset seats), and rising.
This is an astonishing achievement that portends even greater success in the future, but the minimum threshold for election to Knesset this year will probably be around 150,000 votes (or four seats).
So, the new party needs a boost from non-Haredi voters who understand the urgency and promise of HaTzibur HaCharedi and want it to succeed. This will be a worthwhile investment in the long-term health of Judaism and Israeli society!
- David M. Weinberg
Which of the following Mideast and world events can be expected in the coming year?
Published in The Jerusalem Post, Eve of Rosh Hashana 5787, September 11, 2026; and Israel Hayom, September 15, 2026. Print-friendly copy
Cartoon: The EconomistWhich of the following Mideast and world events can be expected in 5787 (2026-2027)? Take this quiz and calculate the year you need to be prepared for. (My answers are at the bottom of the article.)
1. Which of the following security-diplomatic developments can be expected in the coming year?
a. A security accord between Israel and Syria, and a rapprochement between Israel and Turkey.
b. Expansion of Abraham Accord partnerships to Oman, Indonesia, Djibouti, Comoros, Mauritania, and even Saudi Arabia.
c. A series of Iranian-inspired terrorist attacks on Israeli and Jewish targets around the world, including attempts to assassinate Israel’s prime minister.
d. Extension of Israeli sovereignty to Area C (which includes all Israeli cities and towns in Judea and Samaria plus the Jordan Valley and the greater Jerusalem envelope including Maale Adumim and Gush Etzion).
e. Under world pressure, Israel will delay declaration of sovereignty in Judea and Samaria, even though every Israeli government over the coming 100 years will reject Palestinian statehood, and Israeli towns and cities (“settlements”) in the biblical heartland will continue to prosper.
2. Where is the Palestinian-Israeli conflict headed?
a. The “democratic and peaceful” State of Palestine will cease to “pay-for-slay” (support for terrorists and their families), dismiss soldiers and policemen who have aided or participated in terror attacks on Israelis, criminalize and prosecute religious leaders and broadcasters who rail about Jews as subhuman forces of evil, introduce peace education in PA schools, and embrace water, sewage, industrial and other cooperative projects with Israel.
b. Mahmoud Abbas will die, be overthrown, or shunted aside by Jibril Rajoub, Mohammed Dahlan, or Marwan Barghouti – all of whom will claim to be non-partisan but will front a Hamas conquest of the Palestinian Authority. The IDF will have to retake Areas A and B in Judea and Samaria to repel an assault from Western-trained PA troops turning their rifles against the IDF.
c. The IDF will again drive deep into Gaza to end Hamas rule. One million Gazans will flee into Sinai and from there to refuge around the world, despite Egypt’s protestations.
3. If on one day, 5,000 rockets were to be fired into populated areas of Paris, London, Ottawa, and Canberra and 1,200 citizens of these countries were slaughtered or raped and kidnapped, and the enemy was continuing to rearm and prepare for a next assault – what would be the “proportionate response” of Emmanuel Macron, Andy Burnham, Mark Carney, and Anthony Albanese?
a. They would vote for a UN Security Council resolution calling on “all sides” to exercise “restraint,” then convene an international conference to accord “state” status on the attacking terrorist enemy.
b. They would seek to invest billions in the attacker’s economy to improve quality of life and squelch the urge of the attackers to further hit France, Britain, Canada, and Australia. They also would cheerfully and generously pay-out billions of dollars in “humanitarian aid” to feed the population that elected the terrorist attackers, without serious supervision of how the funds are used (meaning, diverted for military rearming).
c. They would shore-up a fictitious and revanchist “State of Palestine” and triple their funding of UNRWA, while tightening arms embargos and sanctions on Israel and accusing it of ethnic cleansing and genocide – all the while claiming to be pro-Israel.
d. They would erase the leadership of the attacking party from the face of the earth. And then carpet-bomb the attacking zone to kingdom come, as the Allies did in WWII.
4. After the midterm US elections in November, President Trump will take which of the following steps?
a. Leave foreign policy matters to Vice President JD Vance, while focusing himself on vainglorious projects like the White House ballroom, a triumphal arch on Columbia Island in Washington, and the renaming of various oceans and even the moon after himself.
b. Pressure Israel to withdraw from the security zones it has established over its unstable borders with Gaza, Lebanon, and Syria.
c. Declare his recognition of a new “technocratic” government in Gaza that is “neither Fatah or Hamas,” and insist that Israel allow thousands of foreign troops into Gaza to oversee the “peace” and to manage reconstruction and rehabilitation – even as Hamas quietly retains much of its weaponry and control.
d. Cut a soft (sellout) deal with Iran to “share” the Arabian Gulf shipping lanes and then withdraw most US troops from the Mideast.
e. Launch the “knockout punch of the century” on Iran’s surging nuclear sites like Pickaxe Mountain and on nodes of regime power, and drive revolution within Iran both by covert action and a round of Israeli-style targeted assassinations of IRGC leaders.
5. The result of next month’s Israeli election will be:
a. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will lose badly to Lt. Gen. (res.) Gadi Eisenkot and bow out of Israeli politics – with perhaps a pardon from President Yitzhak Herzog.
b. Netanyahu’s camp will surprise with a come-from-behind victory based on the ballots of Israel’s youngest voters (ages 18-22) who fought in the frontlines of the recent wars and are staunchly nationalist in orientation. But the political Left and its ideologically aligned Supreme Court will contest the validity of the election result, with months of resulting political paralysis and renewed “Kaplan” camp demonstrations in the streets.
c. Netanyahu and Eisenkot will end up in a draw and form a Likud-Yashar unity coalition with rotation in the prime minister post after two years. Netanyahu will rule the roost first (overlapping Trump’s remaining two years in office). A national commission of investigation into the October 7 disaster will be formed, and a law to slowly but determinedly draft the haredi public into military/national service will be passed.
d. Deadlock will prevent the establishment of any new government, and Israel will be thrown into a repeat election campaign while Netanyahu’s current government remains in place as the caretaker.
e. Who says that there actually will be an October election? A large-scale emergency security situation (like renewed war with Iran) will force postponement of the vote.
6. Among the pleasant surprises of the October election will be:
a. Entry into Knesset of a fresh crop of brave and ideologically motivated leaders, breathing hope and inspiration into Israeli politics; the heroic mid-level commanders of the current war, and the equally heroic civil society leaders of today. This, through Ofer Winter’s “Amcha Yisrael” and other parties.
b. A collapse in support for the existing Haredi parties and a surge in support for the new “HaTzibur haCharedi” (Haredi Community) party, which advocates integration of the Ultra-Orthodox into the worlds of higher education, the modern workforce, and appropriately adapted tracks in national/military service, while ensuring that the community remains strong and “protected” in its religious commitments. This will also bring female haredim into the Knesset for the first time.
c. Dissipation of support for extremist parties on either end of the political spectrum (such as Yair Golan’s “The Democrats” and Itamar Ben-Gvir’s “Jewish Power”).
d. All the above, hopefully.
7. If Gadi Eisenkot becomes prime minister of Israel, he would adopt which of the following policies?
a. Unilaterally withdraw Israeli settlers (ranches, outposts, and more) from significant sections of Judea and Samaria.
b. Strengthen Israeli settlement in critical parts of Judea and Samaria including strategic hills in Areas A and B, and continue to develop the E-1 quadrant on the eastern edge of Jerusalem.
c. Insist, like Netanyahu, on holding Israel’s new security zones in Gaza, Lebanon, and Syria, and maintain Israel’s aggressive military approach of interdicting emerging threats without flinching.
d. Withdraw relatively quickly from these security zones under world pressure, and back away from further confrontation with Hamas and Hezbollah.
e. Prepare the IDF for escalated confrontation with hostile armies and terrorist groups in the West Bank, ensuring that Israel not be caught off-guard again by an October 7-scale surprise assault.
f. Seek new ways of “strengthening” Mahmoud Abbas, also to assume responsibility for Gaza and bring stability, good governance, and goodwill to the entire area.
g. Prepare the IDF and IAF for renewed confrontation with Iran.
h. Temper Israel’s demand for total dismantlement of Iran’s nuclear and missile arrays, and instead partner with the E-3 and IAEA to reach accommodation with Iran.
i. Who the hell knows? Eisenkot has studiously avoided taking a position of any of the key strategic and diplomatic issues at hand. Instead, all we are told is that he is “Yashar” (honest).
8. The most important prayer that Israelis can offer this Rosh Hashana is:
a. A prayer for national calm and moderate conversation even amidst a hotly contested election campaign, like this text (attributed to Rabbi Nachman of Breslov): “May it be your will, O Lord, that there be great affection and peace among all your people of Israel; that we should all be guided by brotherly love and compassion; that we should accept one another and learn from one another; that we should appreciate all your living beings; and that the misfortune of one person should touch the hearts of all.”
b. A prayer for victories, like this text (Psalm 94): “Oh Lord God to whom vengeance belongs, shine forth! … The Lord is my defense, and my God the rock of my refuge. He brings (upon the enemy) their own iniquity, and He cuts them off in their own wickedness.”
c. A prayer for national restoration, like this text from daily prayers (attributed to the kabbalist Rabbi Isaiah Halevi Horowitz, known as the “Holy Shlah”): “Our King and God, protect me from evil urges and make me modest and humble. Proclaim Your name in this world, build Your city (Jerusalem), re-establish Your home and temple, gather back to Israel Your exiled people, redeem Your flock, and gladden Your community.”
d. All the above.
MY ANSWERS: 1e. 2a I wish. 3 They already did a, b, and c. 4b and c; we can dream of e. 5c. 6d. 7i. 8d.
- 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; and Israel Hayom, September 6, 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.
