Free at Last: Now the Hard Part Begins

After two long years Hamas has finally freed the last twenty live hostages left in the dungeons of Gaza. With the captives being redeemed and an Israeli-Hamas cease fire in place, there is much to celebrate. Nevertheless, we should not lose sight of the very difficult tasks ahead. (See: https://shulmaven.blogspot.com/2025/10/the-israel-hamas-war-is-peace-at-hand.html )

As I write this Hamas gunmen are slaughtering their local Palestinian opponents. This has to stop and if Gaza is to be rebuilt by the proposed middle eastern consortium, Hamas will have to be disarmed. That will not be easy and what Arab state will allow their soldiers to be killed in a Gaza peace keeping mission?

In order for this to work is for the United States, Egypt, Qatar, and Türkiye have to put constant pressure on both Hamas and Israel to maintain the momentum of today. There are few hopeful signs. It appears that there is a new openness to expanding the Abraham Accords and that Indonesia, the country with the largest Muslim population, is prepared to commit troops. President Trump and his team have created the framework for a new beginning in the middle east; let us hope they will have the patience to follow through in the days to come.

My Review of Yaakov Katz's and Amir Bohbot's "While Israel Slept"

Confirmation Bias

Veteran Israeli journalists Yaakov Katz and Amir Bohbot have put together a well-sourced and deeply researched indictment of the vaunted Israeli intelligence services and Prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu in their failure to anticipate the deadly Hamas attack of October 7, 2023. In the bluntest of terms, they were guilty of confirmation bias in which their tunnel vision refused to see the signs of the coming attack by Hamas.

 

They thought Hamas was interested in growing the Gaza economy and the intelligence services had their attention centered on Iran, Hezbollah, and the West Bank. They refused to believe reports coming from the Gaza watchers on the border and, in fact, they did not have a single spy on the ground in Gaza. They relied too much on technical superiority, rather than human intelligence.

 

Hamas, on the other hand had excellent intelligence on what the Israeli’s were up to. They know where the cameras and sensors were, and they knew down to the minute details where troops were stationed and where the safe rooms of the nearby kibbutzim were located.

 

Katz and Bohbot pull no punches in describing the ideology of Hamas. Simply put, Hamas is a terrorist organization dedicated to the destruction of Israel. They do not believe in the so-called two state solution. They believe on one state that does not include the Jews of Israel. Why gullible westerners support such barbarism will be the topic of another blog.

 

The authors highlight the huge military buildup that was taking place in Gaza. Starting with the Morsi regime in Egypt which smuggled in weapons manufacturing and construction equipment in 2012. That enabled Hamas to produce heavy weapon and to construct a labyrinth of tunnels underneath Gaza. Israel has no idea as to the full extent of Hamas’ underground city.

Indeed, Hamas war using western and Arab aid to build a war machine. Further they invested some of that aid into a host of front companies to generate income. One of those companies was actually listed on the Istanbul Stock Exchange.

 

Nevertheless, there were warnings. In 2016 the defense minister urged a pre-emptive strike on Gaza. That was turned down out fear of high casualties. Israel’s 2014 incursion into Gaza did not go as well as planned with casualties far higher than expected.

 

Among the many recommendations Katz and Bohbot recommend are:

·      * Establish a Director of National Intelligence to coordinate the various security agencies. I would also create a Team B to critique the DNI conclusions.

·     *  Create a Department of Informational Warfare. Hamas propaganda has been running rings around Israel.

·      *  Change the defense posture from deterrence to active defense.

 

To conclude I believe that this book should at least be a starting point for the coming investigation of Israel’s intelligence failures. The witnesses are in the book. Netanyahu and his cabinet will have a tough time in defending themselves from this indictment.

Trump's Gaza Plan: More than Meets the Eye

 At his joint news conference with Israel's Prime Minister Netanyahu, President Trump stunned the world by calling for the resettlement of Gaza's population to pave the way for a massive development project under U.S. auspices in Gaza. According to Trump it would be a new "Riviera." Aside from the Israel far right, the idea was uniformly panned in the middle east, Europe and among Trump's MAGA base. Simply put, it is not going to happen.

However, Trump's forced the region to wake up to the fact that we can't go back to the world as it stood pre-October 7th. It will force the Palestinians to come to terms with the new realities of the region.

What has not been said is that while the U.S. will not rebuild Gaza, Trump's idea has whetted the appetite of every property developer from Egypt to Turkey to Saudi Arabia to the Gulf. While Gazans won't accept the U.S. to take the lead, they might be more amenable to an Arab consortium in a project that, of necessity, would involve the temporary exile of portions of the current population. I have to believe that discussions are already underway across the capitals of the middle east.  

My Amazon Review of Matti Friedman's "Who by Fire: Leonard Cohen in the Sinai"

 

Redemption in the Sinai Desert

 

Canadian-Israeli journalist Matti Friedman has written a moving commentary on Canadian singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen’s experience in the Siani desert during the 1973 Arab-Israeli War. The book opens with Cohen feeling sorry for himself on the Greek island of Hydra with his partner and young son. After success with “Suzzane” and “Bird on the Wire” he feels his career at age 39 is washed up.

 

Of a sudden Egypt invades the Sinai and Israel is at war with Egypt and Syria. And for whatever reason this scion of a very orthodox and very prominent Jewish family from Montreal feels the urge to go to Israel. On arrival in Tel Aviv, he hooks up with the Israeli version of a USO tour and he ends up entertaining the troops in a very active war zone.

 

Author Freidman pieces together the story from previously unpublished notes written by Cohen, articles from a defunct Israeli music magazine and seeking out after nearly 50 years the Israeli troops who witnessed his concerts. He also memorializes many of the soldiers who present at the time and more than a few of them died in combat. Cohen was there at the early stages of the war where casualties were high, and the prospect of an Israeli defeat loomed large. It was in these vignettes where Friedman’s reporting skills came to the fore.

 

Out of his experience in the Sinai Leonard Chen is redeemed and he becomes a new person. Within a few years he authors “Lover, Lover, Lover,” “Hallelujah,” “Who by Fire,” based on the Yom Kippur prayer Unetanah Tokef. He also sings and writes my favorite, “Dance Me till the End of Love.” With those songs Leonard Cohen becomes a legend in the music world.

 

Friedman has told a great story about Leonard Cohen, Israeli life during a time when Israel felt most threatened, and the heroism of Israeli soldiers in the early days of the Sinai War. Along the way there are many interesting vignettes such a wedding performed on a military barge. It adds life to the story.

For the full Aazon URL see: Redemption in the Sinai Desert (amazon.com)

 

 

 

 

My Amazon Review of Gershom Gorenberg's "War of Shadows:..........."

 

Signals War in the Desert

 

Israeli journalist/historian Gershom Gorenberg has offered up a very detailed history of the north Africa theater of operations in World War II through the prism of signals intelligence. The book opens with Cairo in panic as Rommel’s vaunted Africa Corps is within 60 miles of Alexandria in June 1942. As we know the British stand at El Alamein stops the offensive in its tracks.

 

Gorenberg’s history is in depth going into the desert explorers of the 1930’s who map the shifting desert sands. Those insights would have enormous strategic value when the war begins. He is very detailed in discussing the Polish capture of the German’s highly prized enigma code machine that is ultimately transported to Britain and its code breaking headquarters at Bletchley Park. He goes into minute detail as the British ultimately crack the German codes with the insight that the machine it of itself might be unsolvable, but human input errors under the stress of battle leave enough clues to crack the German codes. To Gorenberg it was the unsung men and women of Bletchley who are the heroes of El Alamein.

 

U.S. Army captain Bonner Fellers’ role is highlighted as military liaison to the British in Cairo. Fellers was an acolyte of America Firster Charles Lindberg who becomes a full-throated supporter of the British. After the war he returns to his rightwing form. Nevertheless, while in Cairo he has full confidence of the British and is privy to their plans. He transmits those plans to Washington, but unbeknownst to him the Germans, have access to the American codes. Thus, the Brits are listening in to the Germans and the Germans are indirectly listening into the Brits. Just two days before the Battle of El Alamein, the U.S. changes its code, and for the first time Rommel is operating blind of British intentions. It leads to his defeat.

 

Gorenberg shows how steadfast Churchill was in protecting British interests in the middle east.  This was true, not only in Egypt, but in Iraq. A reader interested in that part of the war should read John Broich’s “Blood, Oil and the Axis."  (See: https://shulmaven.blogspot.com/2019/06/my-amazon-review-of-john-broichs-blood.html) Gorenberg discusses the neutrality of the Egyptian Army which kept them out of the fighting and the pro-Nazi sympathies on the then young officer Anwar Sadat. To Egyptian nationalists the British were the enemy. On the other hand, the Jews of Palestine fearing a holocaust in their homeland fought with the British against the Germans on many fronts. That battle hardening experience would pay big dividends when they faced off against an unprepared Egyptian army in 1948.

 

As I said at the outset Gorenberg offers up a very detailed history. As a result, the book slows down at times. It also would have helped if there were maps depicting the battles described in the book. Thus, I give the book four stars, instead of five.

For the full Amazon URL see: Signals War in the Desert (amazon.com)

 

My Amazon Review of Tom Segev's "A State at Any Cost: The Life of David Ben-Gurion"

Implementing the Zionist Dream

Israeli journalist/historian Tom Segev has written a very detailed and somewhat biased biography of Israel’s first prime minister. He tells the story of how David Gruen, born in Plonsk, Poland, in 1886 becomes David Ben-Gurion the labor leader and for a time Israel’s leading politician after his arrival in Palestine in 1906.

Segev’s Ben-Gurion has a single minded focus on bringing the Israeli state into being. He analogizes him to Lenin, but there is also the all consummate Stalinist bureaucrat in him as he first gains control the Histadrut labor union and ultimately the Mapai (Socialist Labor) Party, Israel’s largest political party until 1977.

Ben-Gurion is a complete bibliophile as he reads voraciously and with his autodidact style become learned on science and military affairs. After the dropping of the atomic bomb in 1945 he immediately recognizes that it would bring a revolution in military affairs and in 1956 he starts the Israeli nuclear program.

We see him as a very lonely man subject to severe depression and although he was married to his wife Paula for over 50 years he undertook a series of affairs and he was far from a doting father to his children. His life was totally enmeshed in the politics necessary to bring into being the Zionist state.

Where Segev and his fellow “revisionist” historians go astray is when they argue that there was defined plan to uproot the Palestinians from 1948 Israel thereby creating the refugee problem. There was no central order given and while many Palestinians were forced to leave more of them left on their own accord. Segev pays little heed to Israel’s geopolitical reality of 1948 where there was no strategic depth. Hence it is unfair to characterize Defense Minister Dyan a warmonger in the 1956 War against Egypt. The strategic reality facing Israel is that it had to win quickly or lose a war of attrition. That lesson was learned in 1973 War, where Egypt attacked first and almost won.

Although Segev gives us a great deal of discussion on Ben-Gurion hot and cold relationship with Chaim Weitzman, there is far too little discussion on why Ben-Gurion’s relationship with Vladimir Jabotinsky, his political rival in the 1920’s and 30’s was so vitriolic. It had to be more than politics. That vitriol extended to Jabotinsky’s successor Menachem Begin.

To me Segev’s book is way too filled with minutia. Nevertheless, given the caveats mentioned above, he offers great insight into the life of Ben-Gurion and the creation of the Israeli state.

For the full amazon URL see: https://www.amazon.com/review/R1LLSNFVJT73TD/ref=pe_1098610_137716200_cm_rv_eml_rv0_rv

My Amazon Review of Dennis Ross' and David Makovsky's "Be Strong and of Good Courage: How Israel's Most Important Leaders Shaped its Destiny"

A Plea for Israeli Pragmatism

Dennis Ross a seasoned American diplomat who spent the bulk of his career dealing with middle-eastern issues and David Makovsky a distinguished fellow at The Washington Institute have written an important book about the fundamental dilemma facing Israel. To them, both committed Zionists, Israel faces a choice: will it be a Jewish-democratic state without most of the occupied territories or will it be a larger democratic- binational state with all of the problems that entails? To them Israel can’t hold on to the bulk of the Palestinian population and remain a Jewish-democratic state.

The authors make a call for pragmatism on the part of the current Israeli leadership by invoking the memories of four prior prime ministers. They being David Ben Gurion who accepted the 1947 U.N. partition plan, Menachem Begin who returned the Sinai to Egypt in exchange for peace, Yitzhak Rabin who accepted the PLO as a negotiating partner and Ariel Sharon who told the settlers to give up their dreams in Gaza. All of these men were security conscious and it was their belief that pragmatism should dominate over ideology in exchange for what they believed to be a more secure Israel.

Now don’t get me wrong, Ross and Makovsky are not wild eyed peace at any price advocates. They are hard-headed realists who currently believe that very little can be accomplished over the near term in negotiating with the Palestinian Authority. Nevertheless when the time does come for negotiations they offer a series concrete proposals of what Israel, the Palestinian Authority and the U.S. can do to create an environment for an ultimate deal. These are too lengthy to go into here, but at its core the Israeli Right, which I am sort of a supporter, has to accept that the current situation is not stable in the long run if Israel is to be true to its Zionist and democratic character.

My main criticism of the book is that there are no maps. This is especially relevant to understand the geographic reality of the proposals they are making. Ross and Makovsky have made an important contribution to the Israeli-Palestinian dialogue making their book very relevant for today.

I received this book as a gift.

For the full amazon URL see: https://www.amazon.com/review/R2OBLHMQQWHY8L/ref=pe_1098610_137716200_cm_rv_eml_rv0_rv

My Amazon Review of John Broich's " Blood, Oil and the Axis: The Allied Resistance Against a Fascist State in Iraq and the Levant, 1941"

Iraq War circa 1941

Case Western Reserve history professor John Broich tells us the little known story of how a small group of British soldiers and airmen along with local allies kicked the Axis out of the Middle East. With tacit support from Germany a group of Iraqi officers known as the Golden Square staged a fascist coup in Baghdad thereby threatening British oil supplies. Along with a pro-Vichy government in Syria the Axis powers had the ability to cripple British power in region by cutting off its oil supplies in the Mediterranean. If instead of invading Russia in 1941, had Hitler moved into the Middle East, he very well could have brought Britain to its knees and won the war.   

With Britain’s position in Egypt under attack by Erwin Rommel’s panzers, there were few resources to spare for the Levant. Yet with  volunteer troops from India, consisting of Hindus, Moslems and Sikhs, and a few airman, including the writer Roald Dahl of “James and the Giant Peach” fame, the British persevered first in Iraq and then in Syria where French forces supported the Vichy regime. In this Iraq war we are reminded of the battles in early 2000s where fighting takes place in Ramadi, Baghdad and Fallujah.

The British wisely enlisted local forces from Jordan under General Glubb and Palestine where the Palmach commando unit is established. It is during a battle in Syria where future Israeli general Moshe Dayan loses his eye. From Broich’s book I learned that both the Germans and the Italians bombed Haifa to stop the flow of oil from that city’s refinery to the British fleet. Further had Hitler’s armies moved into the region the 500,000 Jews then living in Palestine likely would have been slaughtered like there European counterparts.  

Broich tells a good story, but sometimes his writing seems to be bogged down in the sands of Iraq. I better editing job would have helped. Nevertheless it is a powerful story that highlights, yet again, that the Allied victory in World War Two was a close run thing.

The full amazon URL appears at:  https://www.amazon.com/review/R3KKM2ECEIECQD/ref=pe_1098610_137716200_cm_rv_eml_rv0_rv

My Amazon Review of Ronen Bergman's "Rise and Kill First: The Secret History of Israel's Targeted Assassinations"

Clausewitzian Realism in Service of the State

Israeli journalist Ronen Bergman has written a well-researched and readable book on Israel’s secret war of targeted assassinations against its most feared enemies ranging from Iran to Hamas to Hezbollah. In fact as I write this review there is a front page New York Times story (8/7/18) on the assassination of a Syrian rocket scientist on the streets of Damascus that was attributed to the Mossad which remains pound for pound the best foreign security agency in the world. He starts in the pre-state era and goes through 2015 and covers the three main organs of state security: Mossad (external), Shin Bet (internal) and AMAN (military). He covers their great successes and their failures. Unfortunately he is way too much of a critic for my taste.

Bergman begins his book by quoting from Talmud: “If someone comes to kill you, rise up and kill him first.” That in a nutshell is the major lesson of his book because a small state surrounded by enemies has to act preemptively if it is to survive. The state has to be a Clausewitzian realist who understands to paraphrase Clausewitz “assassination is the continuation of politics by other means.”

Perhaps the clearest example of realism is when the Mossad hires former Waffen-SS Lieutenant Colonel and Hitler favorite Otto Skorzeny to disrupt an Egyptian missile program in the early 1960s. At that time Nasser recruited World War II German rocket scientists to develop missiles to attack Israel. The operation was a success. Just think about this, Israel hiring a Nazi leader to defeat its current Egyptian enemy.

There are many stories like this with hits taking place in Europe, Iran, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon. Each and every one had to be personally approved by the prime minister. Of course thing often went awry, most notably during the 1982 Lebanon War. It is a high risk business where the lives of the agents are at great risk and the mission can fail if civilians are killed. However, unlike their opponents, the Israeli’s agonized over the potential for collateral damage and actually called off operations because of undue risk to non-targets.

Bergman’s main source for more recent events appears to be former Mossad head Meir Dagan who ran the operation from 2003-2012. Dagan died in 2015 and was a harsh critic of Netanyahu, especially with respect to his Iran policy. Bergman too dislikes Netanyahu but he more kind to Sharon and Begin. I did not like Bergman using his pejorative term “right wing” to describe the Likud faction. I would have used center-right. After all he never called the Labor Party “left wing.”

Despite my criticisms Bergman has written a terrific book. There is much to learn about Israeli tradecraft and how their decision making process worked. And when one reads about operational failures, the critic has to sit in the shoes of the decision makers at the time the decision was made. In the spy business it is easy to be a Monday morning quarterback. Bergman ends his book by noting that we can’t confuse tactical success with strategic success. Israel’s strategic dilemma hasn’t much changed since the aftermath of the 1967 war. It has yet to reach a long term settlement with the Palestinians and still faces a very hostile Iran.

For the full Amazon URL see: https://www.amazon.com/review/R1PFY89UKBK8SG/ref=pe_1098610_137716200_cm_rv_eml_rv0_rv