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Home , Benjamin Netanyahu, Miriam Peretz, Shimon Shetreet, Yehudah Glick

The real reason the broke out Adam Raz |

There’s no shortage of pieces in Haaretz based on the political theory that the great ones – to borrow from Bertolt Brecht – often slip on banana peels as they go about the work of government. Consider Haaretz’s Hebrew edition this past Wednesday: Columnist and business editor Sami Peretz explained to his readers that the current round of violence “began with a series of mistakes by the Police” in . Senior Middle Eastern affairs analyst Zvi Bar’el wrote that “thanks to Israel’s mismanagement, identified an opportunity” to marginalize the Palestinian Authority. And top Military correspondent and defense analyst Amos Harel added that in recent days Israel “underestimated Hamas’ intentions and operational capabilities. But it’s possible that now the Hamas leadership in Gaza is making the same critical mistake.” Another Haaretz military correspondent, Yaniv Kubovich, reported on that same day that defense officials incorrectly believed that Hamas would be deterred from fighting, while chief intelligence and strategic affairs columnist adopted Barbara Tuchman’s “March of Folly’’ thesis to explain how sometimes leaders act just plain foolishly. As Melman put it, the measures being taken now “violate the self-interest” of . In other words, according to Wednesday’s Haaretz, the prime minister and Israel’s other decision-makers are, to put it crudely, thickheaded – as if they were making mistakes day in and day out. Mr. Melman, like other writers, insured himself against the risk that facts would emerge to destroy his thesis, so he added that we can’t rule out that “folly doesn’t apply to what’s happening to us right now.” Mr. Harel wrote in a similar vein when he wondered – as many have wondered – whether there’s a connection between the current bloody events and the progress that had been made in Israel toward forming a pro-change government, which would oust Netanyahu in the worst time possible for him – as Netanyahu stands trial on charges of fraud, bridery and breach of trust. As he put it, “This begs the question of which of this past month’s events were coincidence and which were spurred by moves made by the government.” He doesn’t answer the question, but says a “great deal of naivete would be needed to believe that everything that happened was the result of cosmic coincidence, that it was fate that led to the situation in which, moments before swearing in a government ... nationalist and religious tensions ... suddenly spiked.” So, is it a mistake or is it policy? The reader is left only half satisfied. It’s hard to interpret unfolding events; one reason is that available information isn’t reliable enough and comes by way of interested parties. That’s nothing new, of course. In 1854, Karl Marx noted how the elites in France and Britain manipulated and deceived the public. “So, as it has always been,” Marx wrote, “it will only become known 100 years from now.” But even without any available “historical” documentation, we can reach a few firm conclusions about the current conflict via a critical, political reading of Wednesday’s Haaretz. We simply have to address the mistakes being spoken about. The classification “mistake” that Haaretz used so often on Wednesday is easy to employ. A “mistake” doesn’t have to be explained, it explains itself. But how do the learned writers know that action A or B that they’re referring to was indeed a “mistake”? Beware of 'senior officials' One possibility is that this is how the writers interpret it. Let’s assume that the following is our commentators’ train of thought: A rational prime minister doesn’t want missiles falling on Israel. He “erred” in his assessment of how Hamas would react because the organization did in the end launch a barrage against Israel (and not just at areas near Gaza). Another possibility is that the journalists were told by a “senior official” that mistakes had indeed been made. But why believe an anonymous “senior official”? How do we know he didn’t tell the journalists it was a “mistake” to conceal his true motivation? Mr. Kubovich addresses this issue of mistakes and defense officials’ differing viewpoints on the way Hamas would act. He notes that there were people in Military Intelligence and the security service whose views differed from those being conveyed in the Israeli media by the Defense Ministry.

1 He quotes an anonymous source who noted that Hamas’ response to the Jerusalem clashes wasn’t spontaneous (as most had claimed) because “it requires days of preparation, during which the entire upper echelon is getting ready to oversee it from their tunnel command post.” In other words, defense officials knew what was happening and debated among different views. Meanwhile, Harel’s claim that the military “was caught having erred in some assessments” isn’t accurate. It wasn’t about a mistake but about differing assessments. The army didn’t err but debated. By the way, no one has explained in Israel why it was decided not to destroy long-range rockets. But let’s move on. If you exclude from the discussion the classification “mistake,” you can begin to look at events from a macro and micro perspective in a totally different way. You only have to adopt Machiavelli’s view: “You must never believe that the enemy does not know how to conduct his own affairs.” On a macro level, this view is based on findings no one can really argue with; they’re backed by ample evidence. For example, Netanyahu and Hamas have cooperated for years. There's lots of talk about the understandings between Israel and Hamas regarding the cash-filled suitcases that fund the organization and have allowed it to strengthen militarily. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg of cooperation. are less aware of the fact that the organization has grown stronger in Jerusalem and the (under the aegis of the Netanyahu government, Qatar and Turkey). It’s the other side of a clear Israeli policy of seeking to weaken the Palestinian Authority. Netanyahu’s strategy is well-known, even if it’s never explicitly stated – to keep Hamas as a key player in the dispute with Israel in order to undercut the PA in Ramallah. Why? Because with Hamas there’s no talk about a negotiated solution to the conflict. Over the years, the chatter about Netanyahu’s reluctance to use the military is based on a simplistic understanding of war. In reality, Netanyahu plays a central role in keeping the Middle East conflict on a low boil. For him, a big war could be a real problem; for example, by dealing Hamas a fatal blow (thereby strengthening the PA). The cops aren't dumb Only in the context of the macro reality described in the preceding paragraph can you understand the events of the last few days. It starts with a basic fact: The partners in the pro-change government were very close to reaching a coalition agreement and a few days later Netanyahu would have been removed from power. This represented a danger not only to Netanyahu but also to his allies in the region, first and foremost Hamas. This danger demanded that his longtime allies cooperate and move quickly to head off the possibility of a different government taking power, one that could oppose Hamas’ hegemony. In recent days, the Jerusalem police haven’t made any “mistakes” – rather, they understood which way the wind was blowing. Thus, you can agree with Harel, who wrote that the police “didn’t need explicit directives from above to know that they were expected to show an iron fist.” That’s a little vague, but the underlying meaning is clear, so it should be stated: At , Damascus Gate and the Al-Aqsa Mosque, no mistakes were made – policies were undertaken to inflame the area. (And remember, Hamas had prepared its rockets – it wasn’t a spontaneous attack on Israel.) Even the makeshift office of the national tinderbox, extreme right politician Itamar Ben-Gvir, which remained open a full 24 hours in Sheikh Jarrah, was no mistake, just one component of a strategy of frustrating the forming of a new government by igniting passions. In fact, a junta in Israel and in Hamas prepared the groundwork for violence in case the Netanyahu-Hamas axis faced an immediate danger. It’s important to stress that Hamas very much fears Netanyahu’s departure and the weakening of the political line he represents. In practice, the work of strengthening the organization in Jerusalem and the West Bank (under the sponsorship of Qatar and other reactionaries) is at a genuine risk if Netanyahu isn’t in power. Hamas knows very well that another prime minister may resume cooperation with whoever is leading the PA and thereby deal a fatal blow to Hamas. So Hamas fulfilled its part of the unwritten agreement, as partners are expected to do, and inflamed the situation as a terrorist organization knows how to do (rockets, remember, with Qatari-Israeli financing). In other words, the group made no mistake when it exercised too much force, as the commentators claimed. Israel (that is, Netanyahu) hasn’t responded to Egyptian proposals to calm the situation. It has bolstered support in the for Hamas and exacerbated the situation even more. Hamas has pushed the PA even further to the margins in recent days and strengthened its hold on Palestinian society (for example, in

2 Israel young people’s support for the organization was very small until now) as the one fighting for Jerusalem. (While in the past the group’s legitimacy was limited to Gaza.) In practice, the PA and have lost their hold on the ground to Hamas. The above is a short explanation for what has happened over the last few days without resorting to the classification of “mistake,” all based on what appeared in Wednesday’s newspaper. Now the discussion can be framed properly, not as a war between enemies but as collaboration between colleagues. Adam Raz is co-editor of "Telem: A Journal for the Israeli Left," published by the Berl Katznelson Foundation.

Cognition Games By Shimrit Meir @ – May 19, 2021

Progress was made on two parallel tracks yesterday and will continue to be made today as well. On one hand, efforts were and will be continue to be made [by Israel] to achieve a cease-fire without appearing to be overly eager to do so; on the other, Israel has and will continue to conduct an intensive manhunt for high-ranking [Hamas] officials, a last-minute attempt to cross off the names Yahya Sinwar, Mohammed Deif or Marwan Issa. Regarding a possible cease-fire, Israeli officials have been trying to educate Hamas. This time Israel will not tolerate a situation in which announces a cease-fire as of midnight, only to have Hamas fire a “final salvo” an hour later, just so it gets to say the last word. [Israel is insisting that] Hamas needs to say clearly that it wants a cease-fire and to convey that to the Palestinian public. It isn’t clear what it is precisely that Biden has said to Netanyahu in their telephone conversations, since the ’s statements only reflect the scaled-down, official version of the actual conversations. If we were to judge on the basis of the outcome—there has been a drop in the number of civilian casualties in Gaza while, at the same time, there hasn’t been an American call for an immediate cease-fire—Israel still has a bit of rope left that it might be able to use to get Hamas to ask for a cease-fire and to behave itself. That process might move forward today, since the army has decided to allow foreign journalists to enter the today. The goal is to force Hamas’s leaders to face the scope of devastation in the Gaza Strip, which is something they would prefer not to focus on just now, and to convey to the the price that the Gaza- Jerusalem axis and the “Aqsa War” has cost them after their initial enthusiasm. Hamas’s leaders, who have been moving from one location to another underground, might be mentally aware of the extent of the devastation in Gaza, but they haven’t yet seen it with their own eyes, and they haven’t been forced to give answers to the public that is suffering on account of that devastation. They, quite literally, are all underground. The destruction in Gaza is enormous. Craters in the middle of roads, 1,000 buildings that have been completely demolished and thousands more than have been partially damaged. According to UNRWA, there are 47,000 displaced persons, people who fled from their homes that were either destroyed or were about to be destroyed, and who took up residence in one of the schools operated by the agency, crowding together on mattresses, one family next to the other. The problem is that the Hamasniks, and Sinwar in particular, tend to watch the Israeli media, using the Hebrew that they learned in prison. And the Israeli media, perhaps in an attempt to neutralize criticism as if they are excessively sympathetic to the enemy—the logic here can be hard to grasp—offer very limited coverage of the turn of events in Gaza while providing highly intensive coverage of each and every siren that goes off in the Israeli home front—with reporters who rush on live television into the bomb shelters. Hamas has a team of translators who immediately translate into Arabic every word uttered by every Israeli commentator on television and every tweet written. They have construed from that that we are in a state of utter hysteria, while in the midst of fraught internal divisions. In the current round of fighting Hamas took to a new level of mastery its ability to cast itself as the victim on the one hand, and as the fighting force that is raining down blows on the Israelis on the other. Hamas is telling itself a story that to a great extent is completely out-of-touch with reality, and it is hard to reach a cease-fire when one of the sides is out-of-touch with reality.

3 Good neighbors By Sarah Tuttle-Singer @ TOI

The part I didn’t tell you is that last night, someone threw a Molotov cocktail at our apartment. But before I get to that, first, I want to tell you about where I live, and my neighbors. Our building is basically a Jerusalem microcosm. Nearly half the tenants are Arab. The rest of us are Jewish. There are religious tenants and there are secular tenants. There are left wing tenants and there right wing tenants. And Tzippy the Cat is the building manager. One of the things I love most about the building is that our hallways are often steeped in the aromas from the various kitchens — fragrances from all over the world wafting together along with the sounds of the different languages as parents call their children in for dinner in Hebrew, Arabic, Yiddish, Armenian, Russian, Amharic, and in English. This mixture of religions and cultures living together in one building is not common in Jerusalem where invisible lines aren’t just drawn: they’re often covered in barbed wire. And that’s what I love best about our building: that we all do live together and look out for each other. Okay, sometimes we also get irritated with one another — like the time Shmulik** left some old boxes near the garbage and didn’t throw them in and Moshe had to do it, or the time Senait’s dog was up all night barking because Aziza’s cat got stuck in the jacaranda tree in Senait’s yard, or the time my kids and I sang Shalom Alechem really, really, REALLY loudly on Friday night until Svetlana and Misha pounded on the walls… But mostly, we get along just fine. Even when we don’t. I also love the view: we live along a road that runs between this quiet neighborhood and an assortment of other quiet villages…. the desert beyond, stretching east as far as the eye can see. Except lately, things haven’t been so quiet here. Saturday night, the windows shook with the boom of stun grenades from clashes in the villages across the road. Last night was different. I was in bed when it happened. I heard a loud pop — I thought it might be a stun grenade. But then I could smell smoke, and it smelled awfully close. I looked out the front window, and I saw bright yellow flames licking the dry weeds and underbrush outside. And I just stood there, rooted, because the thing is this: when you see something frightening for the first time, sometimes you don’t realize what you’re seeing — your brain needs time to calibrate, to create a vocabulary around it, and then a story, and at first I wondered why the neighbors had built a bonfire and why it smelled like like pungent gasoline. Within seconds, I understood what had happened, and as the smoke rose in acrid plumes toward my window, I ran downstairs with some bottles of water, and saw Misha already out there dousing the flames with a bucket. Between the two of us, we got the fire out. Meanwhile, Mahmoud who lives upstairs went charging out the front door — it turns out he’s a volunteer for the Israeli police, and he went running — no weapon, no bullet proof nothing…. just his little neon yellow vest that says “Police” — down the road trying to find the “hayawan –– the animal” who tried to hurt us. He didn’t catch him. Nor did the Border Police when they showed up five minutes later. But the fire was out, and we were okay. I even made a joke that clearly not everyone likes my Taxi Driver Stories. Misha with the bucket rolled his eyes. “Spakoina noiche,” he said with a shrug and walked back inside like none of this was big deal. In some ways, I guess it wasn’t. “No injuries or damage reported,” the news reports would say. 4 Just a little scorched earth. But in other ways, it really was: I didn’t sleep last night. Because there are no sirens before a Molotov cocktail attack, there is no either, and I stayed awake with my eyes wide open just waiting for the pop and the smoke, and I stayed awake, my heart thudding in my chest, but the only thing that came was the dawn, pink and freshly scrubbed. And then morning passed into the afternoon, and on the stairs I passed a religious man with a long white beard. We’ve never spoken before, or even made eye contact, but today he looked at me — really looked at me — tattoos and all — and said he is praying for all our safety. I saw Mahmoud, the volunteer police officer. He’s decided to try to become a real cop so he can protect his family and his neighbors. Outside my window — for now, tonight, as I write this — there is no fire in the brush, nor stun grenades in the village across the road — just the stars shining bright against the vast black sky. And here in Jerusalem where we live tragically behind our invisible lines, where forces of extremism threaten to devour us, I am grateful for good neighbors, and I know this to be true: during these difficult days, our apartment building really means something — and while we may be the exception today, with hard work and trust, we could also one day be the rule. And we won’t let anyone injure or damage — let alone, destroy — that possibility.

Isaac Herzog, Miriam Peretz announce candidacy for presidency as race warms up By TAL SCHNEIDER @ TOI

Jewish Agency chairman and former Labor Party chief formally announced his candidacy Wednesday to become Israel’s next president, ahead of a midnight deadline. Activist Miriam Peretz, a recipient of the 2018 who lost two of her sons during their IDF combat services, also announced her candidacy, while another hopeful said he was dropping out of the race. The election for the presidency is warming up, with candidates having until Wednesday night at midnight to submit the signatures of at least ten members in order to formally file their candidacy. The parliamentary vote for the next president will be held in a secret ballot among the 120 members of Knesset on June 2, just over a month before President ’s seven-year term ends on July 9. Several candidates are known to be in the running in addition to Herzog and Peretz: Former Labor minister and judicial expert Prof. , former MK and renowned singer and actor Yehoram Gaon, whose candidacy is supposedly being promoted by Likud officials. Another hopeful, former Labor MK Michael Bar-Zohar, said Thursday that he was quitting the race and throwing his support behind Herzog. The Likud party whip, MK , has announced that the 29 Likud lawmakers will not be obliged by any party decision and may vote freely. The vote for the presidency is anonymous. Herzog is considered the frontrunner and is the most popular and well-known candidate. Many also consider him the person most suited for the position. He has wide familiarity with international politics, as well as vast experience in Israel’s complex politics. His late father, , served as Israel’s sixth president. His grandfather, Yitzhak HaLevi Herzog, was Israel’s Ashkenazi chief , beginning his tenure even before the establishment of the state. Herzog said Wednesday that he had taken unpaid leave from the Jewish Agency until after the presidential election. “My personal family history and years-long public experience have taught me to never take the miracle of the existence of the State of Israel for granted,” he said in a statement, highlighting the need to heal and unite the nation following the Gaza fighting and the extended political crisis, as well as the need to strengthen ties with world Jewry. Peretz is another strong candidate who may gain broad support from the right. MK Amichai Chikli () is one supporter who is close to the Peretz family, specifically her son Elihai Peretz. He told that he is not actively engaged in her campaign. It wasn’t immediately clear whether Yamina’s top two members, and , had also lent their signatures to her candidacy. If elected, Peretz would be Israel’s first woman president.

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