Is Raf OK? -- Installment #100

2024-04-10 -- Tel Aviv

Rafael Zimberoff

Apr 10, 2024

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Tags: 10 Min Read.

Holy moly. #100. The plan for this one is to:

Link to Most Viewed entries (the Top Ten)
Raf's "Situational Overview"
Recent Content

And then I am taking some days off the blog.

It is strawberry season. Rather, it is peak (or tail?) of strawberry season. Cheap (like US$2.50 a pound). Fresh. Deeply red. Tasty as an arousing dream. I wouldn't say I am scarfing them, but I did buy two pounds and am eating them myself. They might last more than 24 hours...

I buy them at the huge, permanent, open-every-day farmer's market that is... one block from my apartment.

The Top Ten

The following entries received the most views, so I infer readers liked ‘em best. The Top Ten, starting with Most Read:

My personal favorite is content by Anshel Pfeffer, such as this entry from #90.

Review

Is Raf OK?

I was reprimanded by a cousin yesterday. "How are you?" he asks. "Woofy!" I respond. And thence I am reprimanded for not engaging the question.

Hey, everyone reads this blog, right?

The response to the reprimand (edited for the blog context):

I publish so much about my life here, it is hard to know if I am talking to someone who is asking in the context of the blog, or is this conversation starting “from zero.” (I started this blog to answer the question: How Are You....)
Life in Israel is “normal” (“new normal” — it’s complicated) for %60 of people. Stressful for combat soldiers and their families (there are many more family members than soldiers), and, at a political level, stressful for at least half of everyone (c.f. #96 - The Demonstration Edition). But at bottom, it’s not normal for anyone.
While the war is geographically close, and the plight of both the hostages and the population of Gaza is known to all, life is good. (An aspect that can be easy to miss is that the overall, medium term, quality of life in Israel is amazing. It can get bumped down a few notches and still be amazing.) There is a splitting, but there is a context: When I lived in Seattle, poverty and homelessness were constantly visible and often invasive (aggressive panhandling, tents in the park I walked in every day). That was splitting. Here it is knowledge of violence and hostility. It is people who I know were on a battlefield getting shot at. It is knowing Gazans are forced to live in a war zone with no one looking out for them.
Even for a guy (me) who does not have family serving/wounded/killed/taken hostage, the war is everywhere: People wearing yellow marks and numbers; Stickers; Bloody teddy bears on Dizengoff; Hostage signs everywhere.
Splitting sucks. The delta is in nature and degree. (Were I wearing a yarmulke in Seattle, I suspect I would experience hostility. That doesn’t happen in Tel Aviv.)
Also, from here, the Gaza war is one of four wars. While one (Gaza) dominates the US news, the others are just as big here. In fact, the war in Lebanon is the ominous one. (Destruction and displacement in Lebanon, while not yet at the scale of Gaza, is huge and getting huger, while Gaza is, at the moment, much quieter as a huge number of troops have been pulled out. Those bombs and planes the Biden administration just approved? Those are to fight the Iranian axis in Lebanon, Syria and possibly Iran itself.) The other wars are (as an inventory): The Red Sea (the U.S. and other countries actively involved) -- this greatly affects to the ability of Mediterranean nations--including Israel--to do timely business with China; and, The West Bank (where the Palestinian Authority is in open street warfare with Islamic Jihad and Hamas -- they seem to have waited until Israel arrested most of the big Hamas people in the West Bank, and now are stepping forward).
(If you are really paying attention, difficult even from here, there are actually three or four additional struggles in the region, most of them violent: In Syria, anti-Assad forces are regularly attacking Assad's military [and killing people]; Ditto in Iran [and killing people]; In Jordan it is, so far, pro-Hamas demonstrations in Amman; and in Lebanon there is ongoing internecine violence, verbal and physical. Of these, the most violence so far has been in Iran against the Iranian army and police, with some number killed most weeks recently.)
War sucks. The forces behind it are what they are. My level of participation (so far) is going to some anti-government demonstrations and speaking up (and writing this blog, which has a growing number of Israeli readers).
But life goes on. For everyone, even in towns where bombs are falling (which includes Israeli towns -- Hamas and Islamic Jihad continue to fire rockets into Israel, even this week).

Where Does This Mess Go?

Criticism of Bibi flows from his inability to propose solutions. To him, everything is a problem. A glaring example: The failure to turn the UNRWA fiasco into forward motion.

A "positive development" of the war (if it can be said that any war spawns anything positive) is the exposure of UNRWA for what it is: A large part of the problem. Palestinians are treated differently than every other refugee group in the world, and this treatment, directly, creates ongoing conflict and loss of life on all sides.

I thought (silly me) that Israel, via its UN Ambassador and relationships with the U.S. and European countries would do the obvious thing: Aggressively, persistently, lobby for UNRWA to be shut down and the refugee management role transferred to the normal refugee wing of the UN under it's existing mandate and ruleset: The UNHCR.

Why? Because the entire case against UNRWA has been to show how it has failed relative to UNHCR: It spends far more per refugee; It fails to provide paths out of stateless status; and, It has been coopted by Hamas and others who perpetuate violence.

There is a reasonable case. One that could, with persistent, collaborative lobbying, get some traction.

But not a word of this kind is heard.

Israel is silent on this topic. You would think a great window has opened: Gaza is a problem because UNRWA perpetuates the refugee cycle indefinitely and has been taken over by Hamas extremists. The other part of the problem is that yes, Gaza is an open air prison because Hamas and Egypt don't let people leave.

Where is the movement to: a) Pressure countries of the world to accept Gazans as "normal" UNHCR refugees; and, b) Push Egypt to allow exit (for less than the current US$10,000!).

If those two things were achieved, the last entity physically in the way would be Hamas. Gazans have (for years, surveys show) desired a path to emigrate, but the way has been physically blocked by Hamas and practically blocked by UNRWA (which, unlike UNHCR, specifically does not help its charges build new lives).

As Israeli leadership is incapable of articulating "day after" scenarios, hope (such as it is) may be in the hands of those like Eylon Levy and others who have taken on "unofficial advocacy" roles. If “day after” and “next steps” were articulated by a central think tank, perhaps the small army of unofficial spokespeople could move the needle.

One way I think: Historically

After WWI Europe did what it could to put itself back together. Regimes fell (the Ottoman Empire, the Russian Romanovs) and the U.S. went home (having arrived late in any case). The result: The rise of Bolshevism in Russia and a Europe that lacked the organization and resources to recover, allowing violent populists to rise.

After WWII there was consensus that managing the post war was integral to managing war itself. Europe was shattered and there were many millions of European refugees. Borders (of Poland and Germany, for example) were moved, pushing millions into internal displacement.

Rather than leaving Europe to sort itself out (at the risk of another demagogue rising from the ashes ala Hitler), the U.S. and the U.K. actively managed the post war period. First the Morgenthau Plan and then the (better known) Marshal Plan gave Europe the space to rebuild and focus on domestic well being (rather than warfare).

The Middle East suffers from a confluence of problems, which have prevented the region from focusing on domestic well being. Here are the actors, as Raf sees them:

Israel: A cohesive society traumatized by decades of war and terrorism. Fantastic genius and productivity in many spheres but so self critical it often fails to elect competent leadership. It is also influenced by outside, right-wing money (particularly that of Sheldon Adelson, Jeff Yass, Arthur Dantchik, the Kohelet Policy Forum and American Evangelical Christians). Add to this Bibi's long-standing penchant for disputatious relationships with both U.S. Presidents and Palestinian leaders.
Palestinians: A group that has suffered multi-generational indignity. Pushed into the UNRWA, which closes paths open to refugees the world over, the Palestinians have suffered a series of bad leaders. I call them bad because the well being of their people is not their priority and often not even their agenda (Hamas essentially treats Palestinians as ammunition to expend). Kicked out at gunpoint from Jordan (1971); Massacred and displaced in Lebanon (1982) and Syria (2011+); The Gaza war is a chapter in a forty five year book of conflicts that Palestinian people find themselves stuck in. Palestinian leadership (such as Arafat and Abbas) seems unable to "see" Jewish Israel: Both have claimed that there is no historical Jewish connection to this region, and have either denied the Holocaust or blamed it on Jews. Compound this with the corruption on one hand (endemic to nearly all Arab leaders) and violent Islamic fundamentalism on the other, and it's a supreme mess.
Gulf states: Have the money, but not necessarily the interest, influence or know how to straighten out the region. To their credit, they have helped stabilize Jordan and Egypt over the years and have moved toward integration of Israel via the Abraham Accords. Much of this motion has been in response to the rise of Iranian influence in the region (which accelerated after the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003--an event Raf calls the "President Bush Iranian Expansion Project"--as a primary result of the invasion was for Iraq--historic enemy of Iran--to become an Iranian ally.)
Iran: Regional superpower. Religious Shia Islamic dictatorship. Superior to Israel in a number of areas. Bent on regional hegemony and Western chaos. Key funder and armorer of organizations like Hamas, Hezbollah and others in the region. Ally and armorer of Putin's Russia.
Arab "honor" culture: A Twitter post by Richard Landes:
Professor Landes is a historian (not of the Middle East!). Ten years ago, he wrote an essay (worth a read) that asks us to consider: "By ignoring the honor-shame dynamic in Arab political culture, is the West keeping itself from making headway toward peace?"
The regional arms race: Iranian nuclear weapons development was paused for a couple years. For reasons known only to him, Bibi agitated to "unpress" that pause. While nuclear weapons are a great concern, other technologies may be more immediate. For years, it has been observed that Hezbollah has enormous stores of missiles. It is understood to be more than Israeli defenses can handle. Israel, however, is expected to soon deploy directed energy weapons (read: lasers). It seems to Raf that this may create an incentive for Hezbollah to "use it or lose it" vis-a-vis their rocket arsenal. (A similar dynamic arose during the Cold War relative to ABM technology: To prevent a “use it or lose it” incentive relative to ICBMs lead to banning ABMs.)

Crises are opportunities. They can be a jolt of wakefulness. That means, Raf thinks, four things:

Accept that reality is reality: Palestinians are people; Iran is a danger; Regional players want to cooperate -- it can only get better if you try. And… reality ain’t going to disappear.
Engage the Palestinian topic from all directions:\
1. Increase "tractability" by eliminating UNRWA and moving refugees to UNHCR
2. Allow/impose freedom of emigration from Gaza (The West Bank has long had this)
3. Create an Arab-Israeli committee to foster Palestian political and economic development and autonomy, empower this committee to finish Oslo
4. Force Israel (via strong methods, such as sanctions) to give up recent (and not-so-recent) land appropriations and settlements in the West Bank
Create a regional "NATO" to counter Iran (John Stewart’s METO...)
Figure out how to reduce corruption and increase transparency

The last may be both the hardest and the key to the rest. Corruption weds people both to power and the past. It resists change.

The cost of the crisis is enormous, as its value.

The region's potential is amazing. Forces of chaos are strong. Leadership is scarce. In the face of one step back, can two be taken forward?

Sources & Errata:

Shlomi Eldar visited Cairo to meet some of the tens of thousands of Gazans who have fled there
Refugee Reality Check: Lebanon, a country of six million, has two million refugees from the recent Syrian civil war.

Mind Twisters

Arab Israeli Addresses Supporters of “Palestine” in Arab Countries

90 seconds. Arabic w/English subs

Concept: Apartheid

From Gaza

Gazan Merchant (from Arabic Language Social Media)

A Gazan merchant pours out his heart in front of the camera after he was arrested by Hamas officers when he tried to bring goods worth $250,000 into the Strip. In a long, but particularly interesting 6-minute segment, which I have attached above as testimony, a Gazan merchant describes how he arrived at the Rafah crossing with his goods and was sent by the crossing officials to find Abu Hashem Alfra, who is responsible on behalf of Hamas for managing goods, who is hiding inside the maternity ward at home The Emirati Hospital in Tel a-Saltan in Rafah (south of the Gaza Strip).
After the merchant located the person in charge of Hamas inside the hospital, among the women giving birth, the latter informed him that he must give up to Hamas a third of the goods he brought in (three trucks' worth of cakes and sweets), this after some merchandise had already been stolen in transit by the transit officials. The angry merchant says in front of the camera that there will be a reckoning with the senior Hamas officials who are responsible for stealing his goods and explains that this is the reason for the increase in the prices of the goods.
The merchant adds: May Allah take revenge on you. He who deprives, Allah causes him greater deprivation.

Tariq Salami

Tariq Salami, the spokesman for the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) in Gaza, was captured in the operation at Shifa hospital. This 8 minute interview with him in which Salami deconstructs the methods of Pallywood.
During his interrogation, Salami revealed new details regarding the incident at the al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza at the beginning of the war, acknowledging that the PIJ lied that "Israel hit a hospital in Gaza and that there are hundreds of dead" (when in fact a stray Islamic Jihad rocket was the cause of the explosion).
He also reveals that Hamas and Islamic Jihad make regular use of all the hospitals in the Gaza Strip (as if we don't have enough evidence for this already).

Arabic w/English subs

Tariq's Work... Examples from Hamas' Own Docs...

The IDF Arabic Language Spokesman discusses the lies Hamas spreads, referencing Hamas' own internal . 30 seconds. Arabic. In YouTube settings (the gear icon), turn on Arabic subtitles. Then there is an option for Automatic Translation and choose English. Voila... English subtitles.

Here is a second example. Also 30 seconds. Turn on Automatic Translation to English in YouTube Settings (the gear icon)

Six Months of War By Numbers

On the 6 month anniversary of the Iron Swords War, the IDF published official data on a variety of combat parameters.
Summary 604 IDF soldiers fell in the war, 260 of them since the beginning of the ground maneuver in Gaza. 41 of the IDF soldiers fell as a result of fire from our forces and accidents.
About 3200 soldiers have been injured since the beginning of the war, about half of them since the beginning of the ground maneuver. About 500 of them seriously.
About 9100 rockets from Gaza crossed into Israeli territory. About 3100 launches from Lebanon crossed into Israeli territory.
About 12 thousand terrorists were eliminated in Gaza. Of these, about 125 of commander ranks.
About 330 terrorists were eliminated in the northern arena (Hezbollah + other organizations), of which about 30 were at the command level.
About 420 terrorists were eliminated in the West Bank.