Howard Epstein – LETTER FROM ISRAEL: A CHANGE FOR THE BETTER IN THE KNESSET
You do not need me to tell you that Israel has a new prime minister and that this is the first time that those words have been written since January 2009. Since then, Israel has changed, and been improved, beyond all recognition under the leadership of prime minister Netanyahu. That is not, however, a good reason for inertia, any more than he can derive any satisfaction from failing in four recent elections to carry the country. One of the first steps to be taken by the new Knesset should be to limit the PM’s terms to two. That done, we shall not see Bibi’s like again.
The very fact that the new prime minister, Naftali Bennett, whose Yamina (“Right”) party has seven seats in the new Knesset, holds that position as a result of an act of extreme political generosity by Yair Lapid, whose Yesh Atid (“There is a Future”) party has 17 seats, should set a new tone for Israeli politics. Both were sworn in together, on the basis that Lapid will be PM in two years’ time. In the meantime, Bennett’s speech (find it on the Jerusalem Post website and kwel), heralded many welcome changes – and a two-year budget would be an improvement after two years without a budget at all.
Unchanged, however, is Israel’s policy towards Iran – it cannot be allowed to become an atomic power – and towards the current appeasement of Iran by the US administration. Biden is apparently determined to give the Mullahs the equivalent of the Sudetenland, the rest of Czechoslovakia, and the western half of Poland on a plate – and it is not as though, within the Washington DC Beltway, Israel is a faraway country of which they know little. No. The Democrats are determined to walk away with the Neville-Chamberlain-prize-for-selling-your-democratic-friends down the river just to satisfy their ideological Democratic raison d’être. What is that, you ask? Simply that this will be the third Obama administration, come hell or high water.
Yet, there is an important difference between the 1930s and now. Israel is a regional super-power, and Jews will no longer go meekly to their deaths. Nevertheless, a major war in the Middle East is not calculated to do the Dow Jones Average any good, so one hopes that reality will be borne in on the White House before it is too late.
There were revelations last week that will give even the Mullocracy in Tehran pause. The just-retired head of Mossad, Yossi Cohen (a future Likud prime minister and no mistake), spoke openly of how his agents (all Iranians) planted explosives beneath the floor of their Nantz nuclear facility. He then went into some detail about, as it were, the removal of the Crown Jewels from the Tower of London. I refer, of course, to the undetected exfiltration of vast quantities of Iran’s nuclear files from Tehran in summer 2018. The data was being uploaded to computer servers in Tel Aviv in real-time, whilst the heist was in progress. Then Cohen spoke with pride, and a certain unnerving openness, about several instances of the “neutralisation” of key Iranian atomic scientists. Others, reportedly, have been given the opportunity of a longer life if they chose a different career path. One is forced to wonder: if this is what we know about, how mind-blowing (both figurative and literal) might be the so-far-unrevealed weapons and techniques that Mossad has at its disposal?
Israel has been forced into its awe-inspiring capabilities, of course. It was the British who, by depriving Israel of the parts it required for its Centurion tanks when it most needed them, that persuaded Israel that it had to design and build its own tank. The result, the Merkava (“chariot”) is thought by some to be the best main battle tank in the world. (Israelis are proud of it because the crew can exit from a ramp at the back, instead of having to try to climb out of the turret when under, or on, fire.) Then again it was Hamas that forced Israel to make Ronald Reagan’s concept of Star Wars a reality with the development of Iron Dome, the missile interceptor system (which Ukraine is now considering acquiring). And it has been the almost 75 years’ state of war forced on Israel that has led to the Israel Air Force becoming the most efficient in the world. (No other air force can turn its planes round as quickly as the IAF). And to Elbit building an air force training school for the Greeks and a submarine school for the British Royal Navy. Thus too has Israel been forced down the path of jingoism. You may have heard of the 1878 pub song during the Russo-Turkish War: “We don’t want to fight but by Jingo if we do, we’ve got the ships, we’ve got the men, we’ve got the money too”.
The updated, Jewish State’s version of jingoism would, I suggest, be: “Just leave us alone, and then we’ll leave you alone. The alternative for you is not worth contemplating.” It does not rhyme or scan so well, but the message is just as clear.
Finally, this week, as for the tired old lie, “Apartheid Israel”, how, Israel’s critics should be asked, do you square that with the new Israeli government having not one but three Arab members of the Knesset?
