Kim Jong-un Can Kiss My Tuchus

I am distraught over the decision by Sony executives to cancel the release of "The Interview" in the face of North Korean intimidation. If it were only an issue of free speech or free commerce that would be bad enough. The shame of belonging to the generation that folded in the face of hacked emails and veiled threats while Pearl Harbor and Omaha Beach are still living memories is hard to bear. But it is the precedent that this capitulation sets that is truly intolerable. If North Korea can get everything it wants and more from this piddling act of terrorism, to what lengths will the next bully that doesn't like some aspect of U.S. culture go? A great American once warned against the capacity of fear to feed upon and perpetuate itself, and I wonder if our cravenness in this instance will plant a seed that will bear terrible fruit in years to come.

The custodians of the marketplace have failed us in this instance. It is up to us as individuals and citizens to redress this wrong. I hesitated to write this blog, as I am as vulnerable as anyone to cyber-mischief. But that hesitancy itself reinforced my distress at the insidiousness of this attack. So many of us now live, in part, on the internet. Thus, in subjecting Sony to digital retribution the North Koreans deliberately telegraphed that they can get to anyone.

There is only one answer for it. It has become the patriotic duty of every American (indeed, every citizen of the world) to publicly insult Kim Jong-un. If enough people do it, in blog posts, Twitter feeds, Facebook statuses, and other media, it will be impossible for the North Korean gestapo to retaliate against everyone.

I deliberated over whether I should title my blog "Kim Jong-un Can Kiss My Ass." It is true that the English insult is more immediately recognizable, so perhaps I have cravenly bought myself some cover by hiding behind a less widely familiar phrase. But it is not my fault if the North Korean espionage community is both vicious and clueless. Besides, if they are going to try to police comedy they had better buy themselves a Yiddish dictionary.

All We Are Saying Is Forget Peace, Give Statehood a Chance

Over the summer, moved by the crisis in Israel and Gaza, I posted an open letter to my fellow Jews, pleading that we should support Israel by working for Palestinian statehood. Much of the response was positive and supportive. Among those who responded negatively, the chief complaint was generally some version of "but they want to kill us."

This objection underscores the need for a fundamental re-conceptualizing of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Though the resolution of this conflict does hinge upon a two-state solution, the assumption that the road to Palestinian statehood should be coterminus with a "peace process" is false. Because the possibility of peace depends upon Palestinian statehood, we have become accustomed to believe that peace is the necessary condition for a two state solution; that the fighting must stop before Palestinian sovereignty is acknowledged or achieved. This belief must be discarded.

The raw fact is that peace may never come, but for Israel to survive a two-state solution must come. Interminable occupation is not sustainable. However powerful Israel may be right now, given world enough and time the occupation will erode the foundations of Israeli state and society to the point of collapse. On the other side of the coin, annexation of the West Bank and Gaza is likewise not a path to Israeli survival. Unless that hypothetical "Greater Israel" practiced a form of intolerable apartheid, annexation would result in a new binational state that was majority Palestinian. While that might be fair, it would not be Israel, and it might not be practically sustainable given the hostility between Jews and Palestinians.

Israel and its supporters must stop thinking of a two-state solution as part-and-parcel with the "peace process," and instead view it as the core component of the "survival process." Indeed, a two-state solution is the next necessary step in any strategy to ultimately defeat extremist groups like Hamas. As long as the occupation continues, Hamas and its ilk will continue to have a critical mass of support in Palestine and abroad. Only when Palestinian sovereignty is achieved will the destructive consequences of Hamas's anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism begin to fatally erode its position in Palestinian society.

If Palestinian statehood were a greater threat to Israeli survival than the status quo I would oppose a two-state solution, but the reverse is true. Palestinian statehood will not appease Arab hatred of Israel or redress all of the Palestinian grievances that have inspired violence. While a formal state of war may not break out between independent Palestine and Israel, hostilities will certainly persist, perpetuated by elements within both Israeli and Palestinian society. The early months and years of Palestinian statehood might unfortunately be much more violent and destructive than even the recent crisis.

Even so, "but they want to kill us" is not an argument against a two-state solution. Palestinian statehood will not produce peace, but it will materially degrade the offensive capacity of Israel's enemies. With Palestinian sovereignty, much of the international opposition to Israel (embodied by groups like BDS) would evaporate. Even the worst case scenario, in which Hamas takes over the government of an independent Palestine, would ultimately work in Israel's favor. The governments of the Arab world loath Hamas only slightly less vehemently than Israel and its allies. A Palestine led by Hamas would find itself completely isolated and abandoned, finally giving the Palestinian people the motivation to dispose of Hamas root-and-branch.

There are many reasons why Palestinian statehood has not yet been achieved. Among these, however, the failure of political will on the part of Israel and its supporters has been central. This flaw stems in part from the false conflation of a two-state solution and peace as mutually co-dependent goals. Palestinian statehood is necessary, not because it will procure certain peace, but because it is the only way to vouchsafe Israel's survival. Thus to anyone who cares about Israel's future I say again: we must support Israel, we must work to establish a Palestinian state.

Erdogan is not the Problem

As ISIS forces descend on the Kurdish city of Kobani, the Obama White House is reportedly "furious" at the refusal of the Turkish military to intervene. Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey's president, has insisted that the United States must provide greater assistance to the Free Syrian Army and must declare a no-fly zone over Syria for the air force of the Asssad regime before Turkey will commit troops to the conflict. Turkey obviously has ulterior motives for refusing aid to the Kurds, but the self-righteous posture of the Obama administration is nonetheless unfounded and ill-conceived.

To any informed political observer, President Erdogan's demand for a no-fly zone over Syria is entirely predictable. One cannot pretend that fighting ISIS does not implicate oneself in the Syrian civil war- they are not mutually alienable endeavors. If the U.S.-led coalition attacks ISIS without taking steps against the Assad regime, it will (despite any rhetorical denials) be intervening in favor of an Iranian-backed dictatorship that has ruthlessly poisoned its own people. No one can be surprised that Recep Tayyip Erdogan, a man whose career has been built on the claim of being a champion of Sunni Islam, is seeking to avoid this kind of political morass. Anyone shocked by Erdogan's refusal to appear a pawn of U.S. policy and a traitor to the Sunni cause is either hopelessly naive, willfully ignorant, or both at once.

Erdogan's reticence, moreover, has good strategic basis beyond the surface politics of the situation.  As I have written in previous posts, the pursuit of a campaign against ISIS without concomitant action against the Assad regime is hopelessly impractical. President Obama has admitted as much in his stance toward the Iraqi government. If, as Obama has insisted, the formation of a government more inclusive of Sunnis is crucial to eroding the political support of ISIS in Iraq, a nation which is only twenty percent Sunni, how can the case be any different in Syria, where Sunnis make up three quarters of the population? As long as the Assad regime seems secure, a critical portion of the Syrian population will give at least tacit to support to ISIS. That support will only flee ISIS once the Assad regime is clearly on the way out. President Erdogan thus does not want to commit ground forces to a struggle that, absent the necessary strategic commitments, is doomed to indefinite stalemate.

If America genuinely wants to see the demise of ISIS it can not remain myopically focused on the group as a purely tactical challenge. We helped create the problem, which has complex social and political roots, and we can not bully the people of the Middle East into cleaning it up on our terms and our terms alone.  We have to commit to a more global resolution of the tensions and conflicts that are destabilizing the region, and we must allow the groups and agents that share our interests to pursue their own agendas within the scope of what is fair and politically sustainable. Instead of rolling our eyes and mocking leaders like President Erdogan, we should be listening, weighing the merits of his position, and prepared to negotiate.

The Umbrella Revolution

The courage and tenacity of the demonstrators in Hong Kong must both inspire and frighten informed observers watching events unfold from afar. The drama is inspiring because the proponents of the Umbrella Revolution are fighting for reforms that are both profoundly just and sorely needed, not only in Hong Kong but in the People's Republic of China more generally. It is frightening because anyone who remembers the events of June 4, 1989 can not help but fear for the lives and safety of the young people protesting today.

Because the peril is so real, it was a relief to see the government deadline this morning pass without violence. The stakes are very high for the government in Beijing. The pressures pulling China' s leaders in both directions- toward a peaceful resolution of the conflict on the one hand and a violent suppression of the movement on the other- are so intense that it is very difficult to predict how Beijing will respond or how the situation will ultimately be resolved.

Economic incentives drive Beijing toward non-violent means. The hard currency that flows into China through Hong Kong's financial markets is a major driver of growth and prosperity. Violence and instability that undermines investor confidence would kill the goose that lays the golden eggs.

Some political factors also constrain Beijing. The people of Taiwan see a mirror in the current crisis that they quite naturally assume reflects their own potential future. Taiwan already has its own autonomous and democratically elected government. Any Taiwanese wondering how much of that institutional structure the island would be able to retain in any hypothetical reunification with Beijing could be forgiven for concluding that the answer will soon come from Hong Kong. Why would Beijing tolerate more democracy and self rule in Taibei than in Kowloon?  A violent repression of the Umbrella Revolution will undoubtedly strengthen the hand of independence advocates in Taiwan, a development that could lead to a cross-straits crisis with broad international repercussions.

But other factors drive Beijing in the opposite direction, toward intransigence and, perhaps, violence. Where Beijing might want to project a face of tolerance and accommodation to the people of Taiwan, it has every interest in sending a contrary message to political activists in Xinjiang and Tibet. After sentencing Ilham Tohti, a Uighur scholar, to life in prison for having the temerity to promote the study of his own language and literature, Beijing's leaders can have no illusion about the dangerously mixed signals they will send by compromising with any movement promoting regional empowerment.

Economic conditions also complicate the pressures shaping Beijing's response to the Umbrella Revolution. Hong Kong enjoys a vastly greater per capita GDP than the rest of mainland China ($52,700 US as opposed to $9,800), thus one of the issues at stake is how much control the people of Hong Kong will have over the revenue that is extracted from them in the form of taxes. If Beijing controls the political leadership of Hong Kong, it retains power over the pipeline redistributing wealth from Hong Kong to the rest of China (of which Beijing is a prime beneficiary), and can dictate the rate at which that stream flows.

This might not be enough to move Beijing to violence, were it not for the fact that Hong Kong's fiscal relationship to Beijing, though exceptional in degree, is far from unique in kind. The per capita GDP of ALL of China's coastal cities, especially those south of the Yangtze River, is vastly higher than that of the interior and northern regions of the PRC. The one exception to this rule is Beijing, which has the highest per capita GDP of any region of China outside of Hong Kong: a situation created and sustained by the steady flow of tax revenue from the south and coast to the capital.  Any compromise with the people of Hong Kong could be the match that sets off a powder keg of resentments fostered by the forcible transfer of wealth from the south and coast to the north and interior.

Beyond these considerations, it is lost on no one that many of the demands of the Occupy Central movement echo those of the Tiananmen protesters twenty-five years ago. If the CCP accommodates the aspirations of the young activists in Hong Kong, it might open a Pandora's box that reveals similar hopes still alive among students in Guangzhou, Shanghai, and Beijing itself. China's leaders can not feel sanguine about that possibility.

However this crisis plays out, it has presaged the eventual demise of the Faustian bargain at the heart of the current Chinese social contract. Beijing has operated under the assumption that demands for political reform can be forestalled by continued economic growth and increasing prosperity. Hong Kong demonstrates that this assumption is false. Hong Kong's people already enjoy vastly greater prosperity than the majority of China's citizens, yet the prospect of losing that wealth has not deterred them from demanding democracy and autonomy. Indeed, it is the desire to protect and sustain their economic good fortune that drives them to agitate so urgently for democratic reform. However compliant the people of the rest of the PRC may be for the time being, eventually (after however many years or decades) they will arrive at the same place the people of Hong Kong are at right now: viewing political reform as a non-negotiable necessity.

For this reason (among others) the leaders of the PRC should be very cautious and circumspect in their response to the Umbrella Revolution. They face a choice that may well determine whether the inevitable evolution of the Chinese state and polity unfolds peacefully and progressively or violently and tragically. As they weigh their options they should know that the world, and history, are watching.

ISIS and Assad: Two Parts of the Same Problem

When , on the eve of the thirteenth anniversary of 9/11, President Obama addressed the nation about the threat of ISIS, it underscored the extent to which the world has changed and the parameters of foreign policy have shifted. Today the U.S. is faced with a complex and volatile globe. It is a world in which there are no easy choices or simple solutions.

The threat of ISIS is real and the President struck the right tone in signalling America's determination to confront it. It was also reassuring to hear the President declare that U.S. action against ISIS would not be undertaken in cooperation with or to the benefit of the Assad regime in Syria. But such circumspection concerning the Assad regime will not suffice in formulating a credible and effective strategy against ISIS. ISIS and the Assad regime are mutually reinforcing pathologies, and neither one of them can be redressed in isolation from the other.

This principle is a natural extension of the President's own logic. He insisted that the Iraqis had to form a new, more inclusive government as a precondition for US assistance against ISIS, on the assertion that the exclusive and discriminatory policies of the al-Maliki regime had fueled ISIS's rise. As I wrote previously, this argument was empirically weak, as the Iraqi military's lack of air power goes much farther toward explaining why it performed so badly against ISIS than the political profile of the al-Maliki government.

Where a political explanation is not persuasive in the case of Iraq, however, it is virtually the only way to understand ISIS's purchase in Syria. The Assad regime has all of the modern weaponry that the Iraqis lack, and at one time controlled Syrian society with an iron fist. The only reason ISIS has been able to invest so much Syrian territory despite the overwhelming tactical advantage of the Assad regime and its military is that, in the wake of the Arab Spring, the legitimacy of the Assad government has collapsed in the eyes of a critical majority of Syria's people, who will no longer tolerate living under its rule.

If there was ever any argument that political change was necessary in Iraq in order to contend with ISIS (and there admittedly was, albeit provisionally), that argument is exponentially more forceful in the case of Syria. President Obama promises to bring massive U.S. air power against ISIS, and this is no doubt the right course. But events in Syria up to now prove that air power will not be enough. The Syrian government, which is much closer to the scene of ISIS's activity and has greater intelligence and human assets to bring to bear, has been using air power against ISIS to no avail. As long as the Syrian people perceive ISIS to be an effective opponent to the Assad regime (that is, as long as the Assad regime exists), they will provide ISIS with enough support to survive in the face of superior firepower.

Final defeat of ISIS will thus require a strategy that combines tactical and political elements. If the U.S. is to truly commit to the final destruction of ISIS, it must simultaneously commit to an end to the Syrian civil war. If the threat posed by ISIS was so grave that we could refuse protection to Iraq, an ally we had occupied for 10 years, in order to assure the conditions for ISIS's defeat, it is a short leap to insist that the Syrian government, one which has been hostile to the U.S. for decades, must undertake changes in the interest of U.S. national security.

Whether the U.S. acknowledges it or not, by declaring war on ISIS it has become a combatant in the Syrian civil war. As such, it should explicitly lay out the terms of its involvement in the Syrian conflict. Effective immediately Syria should be declared a no-fly zone for the aircraft of the Assad regime. Assad forces should understand that if they launch ground operations against the Free Syrian Army or its allies they will be met with American air strikes. If Bashar al-Assad steps down and his regime submits to negotiations for the formation of a unity government with the Syrian National Council, a reconstituted Syrian military (and its air force) could join in partnership with the U.S. and its allies in the fight against ISIS. Unless and until that occurs the Syrian government should be treated as a hostile force.

These are audacious and risky policies, but they are the only course that has any hope of redressing the threat posed by ISIS. Any attempt to impose a purely tactical solution on the situation in Syria will result in an endless quagmire. Until the problem posed by the Assad regime is finally redressed, the chaos created by ISIS will continue to spin further out of control.

The Wages of Retrocolonialism

If there were ever any doubts that ISIS (the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria) poses a threat to the international community, or that they are on a direct train, fast or slow, to the scrapheap of history, the vicious murder of journalist James Foley should have dispelled them. As clear as the problem may be, however, its causes and possible remedies remain murky in the discussions of pundits and politicians. The scramble to both assign blame and appear decisive in response has, predictably, produced a muddle of implausible diagnoses and cures.

Though there are many dimensions of this discourse one might examine, the discussion of American policy toward Syria is a particularly illuminating point of departure.  Critics of the Obama administration fault the president for failing to arm the moderate Syrian opposition. The president responded to this criticism by noting that: "[The idea of] farmers dentists and folks who have never fought before going up against...ruthless, highly trained jihadists if we just sent a few arms is a fantasy. And I think it's very important for the American people - but maybe more importantly, Washington and the press corps - to understand that."

The empirical case supporting the president's reasoning here is very strong. If the Iraqi military, trained and armed by the United States for a decade, could not defeat ISIS during the battle for Mosul, it is foolish to insist that a small ragtag band of Syrian militia could fare well against ISIS given some fraction of that support. However, this type of logic only yields good results if it is applied rigorously and consistently.

Alongside his credible assessment of the Free Syrian Army's chances against ISIS, President Obama has been adamant in insisting that the key cause for the rise of ISIS was the exclusive and discriminatory policies of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki: "The only lasting solution is for Iraqis to come together and form an inclusive government — one that represents the legitimate interests of all Iraqis." Inclusiveness and toleration are no doubt virtues that would serve any government well, but the idea that they could have prevented the rise (or can hasten the defeat) of ISIS is dubious, as demonstrated by the experience of neighboring Syria. No one would call the government of President Bashar al-Assad a model of inclusiveness, but his army was making gains in the field against ISIS even as Mosul fell. If one is going to compare apples to apples, as President Obama did in juxtaposing the Free Syrian Army to the Iraqi military, one must likewise assess the performance of Nuri al-Maliki's government against the other government that has opposed ISIS, that of Bashar al-Assad.

What could explain the disparity between Syrian and Iraqi military performance against ISIS? I would suggest that there is a rather simple answer that policy makers and commentators on all parts of the political spectrum have largely ignored.

By the end of 2013, the Syrian Air Force had 469 combat and reconnaissance planes in operation, mainly consisting of MiG-21 and MiG-23 jets. The Iranian Air Force has more than 600 fighter jets of various types. The emirate of Oman, a country of roughly four million people, has 12 American F-16 and 10 British Hawk 203 fighter jets, and is expecting delivery of another dozen British Eurofighter Typhoons.

At the time that ISIS captured the city of Mosul, the Iraqi air force had only two planes, both Cessna prop planes modified to carry Hellfire missiles. This last fact is key to understanding the current crisis in Mesopotamia and the Levant. It exemplifies the culture of error that has driven U.S. policy since the 9/11 attacks.

Why would the Republic of Iraq, a country of more than thirty-six million people, once home to one of the world's largest military forces, engaged in a decade-long civil war, be possessed of only two propeller-driven Cessna planes to serve as its air defense? What nation would risk being so lightly armed? The answer, of course, is that no sovereign nation would.

Air power is what distinguishes the army of a sovereign state from the paramilitary and insurgent forces that have proliferated since the end of the Cold War. Modern foot soldiers maintain discipline and mission focus in the face of extremely hostile circumstances, in part, because they know they can count on the logistical and tactical support of a sophisticated air wing. In 2014, an army that goes into battle with two armed Cessnas is not a real army, and the government commanding that army is not a real government. Is it any wonder that men who knew they were part of a fake army fighting in the name of a fake government should lose morale and break ranks when faced with a comparably armed force driven to suicidal frenzy by religious fervor?

This circumstance trumps all other variables in discussing the career of ISIS leading up to and beyond the capture of Mosul. Arguments over the training of the Iraqi military or the retention of U.S. combat forces in Iraq are rendered pointless by the raw reality of Iraq's neutered air defense. If the U.S. had kept 50,000 soldiers in Iraq until 2025 and only then left Iraq armed with two Cessna planes, by 2028 the country would have descended into a civil war just as destructive as we see today.

The fact that Iraq lacks a credible air defense has nothing to do with the wishes of anyone in Baghdad, it was mandated in Washington. Washington has refused to allow Iraq to arm itself because that would put Iraqi politics totally beyond the control of the United States. Some of this is no doubt an expression of the soft bigotry of low expectations. U.S. leaders do not trust Iraqis to manage their own affairs, thus they deny them the tools to genuinely do so even as they spout rhetoric about Iraqi accountability.

The absurdity of the situation, however, is driven to a large degree by systemic factors intrinsic to American politics. Since the 2003 invasion U.S. elected officials have been politically liable for the performance of the Iraqi government.  This vulnerability has driven American policy decisions, not only in Iraq, but in the larger Middle East, for most of the Bush and all of the Obama presidencies. An American leader contemplating giving fighter jets to Baghdad has to worry about the prospect of their being used against the Kurdish regime in Erbil. Giving planes to the Kurds might result in their being used against the Turks. The downing of a Malaysian airliner by Russian separatists in the Ukraine provided an object lesson in the unpredictable volatility of war by proxy, and American leaders are accountable to forces (the media, the political parties, the voting public, etc.) with which Vladimir Putin need not contend.

All of this is to say that Colin Powell's oft-quoted "Pottery Barn" rule ("You break it, you bought it") did not nearly approximate the policy vexation confronting the U.S. in the wake of the invasion of Iraq. By expending so much blood and treasure on the dismantling of Iraqi state and society, the US assumed an exquisitely tangled complex of horizons of virtually infinite liability. The question of how to maneuver amid so many pitfalls of shifting contingency has predictably resulted in a general climate of paternalism and paralysis.

The neoconservative dream was to turn Iraq into a democratic, sovereign ally of the United States. The nightmare that ensued in the wake of the U.S. invasion has turned Iraq into something entirely different. U.S. policy toward Iraq does not merit the label "colonialism," as U.S. leaders have eschewed the level of responsibility and engagement of a genuine colonial metropole. Neither can it be called "neocolonialism," as it is far more intrusive than any cases previously falling under that rubric. Instead, since the invasion of Iraq U.S. policy has embarked upon a kind of "retrocolonialism," an attempt to exercise all of the control of an old colonial power with none of the effort or sacrifice.

This has predictably led to tragic consequences, of which the rise of ISIS is only the most recent and alarming. Moreover, despite the ample evidence of folly, the U.S. seems incapable of changing course. This may be because the remedy for the ills of retrocolonialism is counter-intuitive. If we are suffering now for aspiring to too much control with too little effort, the answer is not disengagement, but a full reversal of the dysfunctional dynamic: less control, MORE effort.

What would this entail? "Less control" is fairly self-explanatory. The U.S. must begin to trust the people of Iraq, Syria, and the Arab world more generally to run their own affairs and conduct their own politics. But this does not mean that the U.S. should abdicate all engagement or influence in Middle Eastern affairs. If there are groups whose interests align with our own, we should assist them even if the results of that assistance are unpredictable and beyond our ultimate control.

Syria provides a case in point. President Obama is correct that providing small arms to the Free Syrian Army would have produced dubious results against ISIS. But that is because, in its dealings with the FSA, the U.S. has remained focused on getting it to do what is in America's interest rather than on assisting it (and the larger Syrian resistance of which it is a part) to achieve its goals. The FSA might be a much larger and more powerful force today (and ISIS much weaker) if, from the outset, America had committed robustly and decisively to the resolution of the Syrian civil war. If the U.S. had declared a no-fly zone over Syria in 2011 or 2012, the FSA might have enjoyed the same success against the Syrian military (deprived of an air wing as the Iraqi military is today) as ISIS did more recently in the assault on Mosul.

We did not provide that kind of robust assistance to the Syrian resistance in 2011 because we could not control the ultimate outcome of the Syrian civil war, and feared that the fall of the Assad regime might empower militant Islamists. Yet despite all that caution, ISIS is more powerful in 2014 than any Islamist group in 2011 or indeed ever in history. We must begin to understand that, in the wake of the Arab Spring, groups like ISIS are as empowered by American inaction and disengagement as anything the U.S. might do.

ISIS's ideology and strategic culture (for example, its ability to motivate members to engage in suicide attacks) makes it uniquely effective in an assymetrical struggle like the Syrian civil war. The longer that war dragged on and the more desperate the position of the resistance became, the greater the ranks of ISIS grew. For all its new strength, however, ISIS has not been able to defeat the well-armed Assad regime. It has thus shifted focus to the "soft targets" of Baghdad and Erbil. Even here, its success has been provisional. Though the Iraqi military forfeited the majority Sunni city of Mosul, when Baghdad was threatened, volunteer Shi'ite militias were able to check ISIS's advance. All of this indicates that though the extraordinary circumstances of the U.S. invasion of Iraq and the Arab Spring have given ISIS remarkable momentum, there are powerful forces within Iraqi and Syrian society that constrain and counteract ISIS's advance. If the U.S. hopes to defeat ISIS in the long term, it must trust those forces and lend them robust aid, even in the absence of short-term control over outcomes.

"Trust" is the crucial word here. If we are to genuinely trust the Iraqi government, we must allow it to become fully sovereign and develop all of the military capabilities of a nation-state. If we are to trust the Free Syrian Army we must not only provide them with small arms, but assist them with air power in all of their operations, not only against ISIS but also against the Damascus regime.

Already some pundits are squawking that we should partner with the Assad government in Damascus in the fight against ISIS. This is the same kind of retrocolonial thinking that has led us down the primrose path to the current crisis. The Assad regime is a known quantity, so goes this reasoning, while the victory of the Free Syrian Army would create an unpredictable and uncontrollable situation that might bring into power Islamist groups with which the FSA is still allied. This paternalism can lead nowhere good. Conspiring to impose upon the Syrian people a regime they have fought and died to remove will rebound back upon the United States in ways that are impossible to foresee, but the severity of which are pictured in the disgraceful murder of James Foley.  Less control, more effort, more trust.  If the U.S. ever hopes to set its policy orientation toward the Arab world on a functional footing, it must begin to trust the Arab people themselves, and understand the role they play in determining their own destiny. 

An Open Letter to My Fellow Jews

Dear Friends,

        Like you I am grief stricken by recent tragic events in Israel and Gaza.  Our community is as distressed as I have seen it in my adult memory, and rightfully so. There is a sense that we have entered a moment of significant crisis.  Though strife in and around Israel is something we have come to accept as virtually inevitable, the current troubles seem to constitute a turning point, and not for the better.

        At this time of turmoil I have one plea to make to our community at large. We must support Israel. We must work toward the establishment of a Palestinian state.

        Note that I say “one plea,” for that is precisely what I mean. As a Jew and a Zionist, I firmly believe that the most important, perhaps the only way that we can support Israel in the long term is to work toward the establishment of a Palestinian state. Israel is losing in the struggle to preserve the Zionist mission, and the only way to set the deteriorating situation on a new course is the fulfillment of a two-state solution.

        Why do I say that Israel is losing? In the short term Israel is not in existential danger. The Israeli state and military are very powerful and very secure. But every conflict has two dimensions: the tactical and the political. For the moment the Israelis enjoy substantial tactical superiority, both with respect to the Palestinians and in terms of the region as a whole.

        But in the political realm a crossroads has been reached. World opinion is turning against Israel, and this downhill slide will continue indefinitely if it is not redressed. The effects of this shift will not be felt immediately, but over years and decades it will begin to sap the political and economic energies of Israeli state and society, undermining Israel’s strategic security. If nothing is done, generations to come will mark the current crisis as the starting point of a long process that led to the disintegration of the Jewish state.

      Why is world opinion turning against Israel? Anti-Semitism accounts for some of the anger and condemnation that is being expressed in the international media, but we would be foolish to imagine that this is the whole of the matter. Nor can ignorance be assumed to account for whatever anti-Israeli feeling does not stem from anti-Semitism. The world is aware that Hamas is an evil and depraved organization. The nihilistically genocidal nature of its charter and ideology has been well publicized, and everyone can see the deliberate and malignant manner in which Hamas uses innocent civilians as human shields.

        Why, then, would current events erode Israel’s position in global politics?  It is because the issue of Palestinian statehood remains unresolved. As much as world opinion generally (with some exceptions) acknowledges the right of Israel to exist and defend itself, it also affirms the right of the Palestinian people to a sovereign state of their own. As the fiftieth anniversary of the occupation of the West Bank draws nigh, the patience of the world to see this problem settled grows thin. With each passing year, the argument that Israel is fighting to defend itself is undermined by the appearance that Israel is fighting to block the establishment of a Palestinian state. The more this situation persists, the less attention the global public will pay to the particulars of Hamas’s doctrine or strategy, and the more they will focus upon images of the destruction produced by Israel’s military, no matter how restrained the Israelis may be in the exercise of force.

        Continued protests about the very real villainy of Hamas will progressively lose effect in the face of this reality. Almost no winning cause in history would have done so if it was required that its proponents all be moral paragons. Without ardent Stalinists, Hitler would not have been beaten; without fervent slave owners, the American Revolution would have gone down to defeat. It does not matter that Hamas’s methods are evil or that their ultimate goal extends far beyond Palestinian nationalism. In the short term they derive political capital from fighting for a cause that is generally acknowledged as justified.

      This may seem unfair, but it is a brute fact that cannot be escaped. Nor are arguments over whether anyone is right to support Palestinian statehood sensible or productive. If Israel annexed the West Bank and Gaza today and made all of its inhabitants citizens, it would no longer be a demographically Jewish state. The only alternatives left to Zionists are thus either ethnic cleansing or a two-state solution. Since the former option is both immoral and impossible, the establishment of a Palestinian state is the only way to end the military occupation soon to enter its sixth decade, and the world knows that.

        One might protest that the establishment of a Palestinian state would give Hamas what it wants. To this one can only answer that if it is so, Hamas should be careful what it wishes for. Of course the creation of a Palestinian nation would not make all of Israel’s problems go away. Strife and violence would continue. The nightly news might look very much the same in the wake of Palestinian sovereignty as it does today. There would be a very real difference, however. If Hamas launched rockets from sovereign Palestinian territory, there could be no pretence that it was anything other than aggression bent on the destruction of Israel. In that situation, all of the facts about Hamas’s perversion and malevolence would regain the currency that they have gradually lost in recent years.

        In that new political climate, much of the anti-Israeli activism in Europe and America would evaporate. Organizations like BDS would find fewer and fewer supporters. Mainstream citizens who have joined anti-Israeli protests in recent years would move on to other issues, leaving only the most diehard anti-Zionists to fight from the margins.

        In the Middle East the effects could likewise be significant. Hamas might find that it not only has fewer supporters abroad, but at home as well. Once sovereignty is achieved, Palestinians’ tolerance for Hamas’s rocket attacks and the destruction they bring in retaliation would quickly run dry. A people given a proprietary stake in their own nation might show little enthusiasm for the fight to establish an imaginary future caliphate.

        For all of these reasons, as a people we should unite in focusing our political energies on the achievement of a two-state solution. If we care about Israel and want to see its future secure, our congregations, our civic groups, our rabbinical leaders, and we ourselves as individuals should take up the cry in ways big and small. Write letters to political leaders in Israel and abroad. Reach out to Palestinian groups that support peace. Donate money to organizations like the Israel Policy Forum that are working toward a two-state solution.

        As Jews we believe that the world is not going to fix itself, we must put our hands to the work. If we want Israel to remain a vital piece of the global tapestry, a new piece must be added. Whether there has ever been a state such as Palestine is an academic question that is ultimately of little consequence. One thing, however, is for certain: without Palestine, eventually there will be no Israel. We can not let that come to pass. We must support Israel. We must work toward the establishment of a Palestinian state.

                                            Shalom,

                                            Andrew Meyer