My Amazon Review of Daniel Gordis' "We Stand Divided: The Rift Between American Jews and Israel"

Couple’s Therapy

Daniel Gordis a vice president at Israel’s Shalem College has written an important book about the growing divide between Israeli and American Jewry. Indeed both parties are in need of some very serious couple’s therapy if the longstanding relationship is to remain intact.

What distinguishes Gordis’ view is that the divide is not about what Israel does, but rather what Israel is. Simply put Israel is not a transplanted America on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea. Further it is not quite the Ashkenazi culture of American Jewry, but rather it is a lot closer to the Sephardi/Arab culture of the greater Middle East.

While most American commentators focus on what Israel does with respect to the treatment of its own Palestinian population as well as its treatment of Palestinians within the territories and the rightist policies of the Netanyahu government, to Gordis the issues run far deeper. To put it bluntly, changing the Israeli government will not solve the core issues. Similarly Israeli’s view American Jews as to being completely clueless about the security situation they face.

The differences revolve around three issues:

1.     America is built on a universalist ideology (all are welcome) while Israel is built on a particularist ideology. (Zionism)

2.     America is a liberal democracy while Israel is an ethnic democracy.

3.     Many Jews in America view Judaism solely as religion while Israeli’s view Judaism as both a religion and a people.

To be sure many American Jews are very comfortable with the Israeli version of these three issues, but to those American Jews who worship at the altar of secular liberalism, these are very serious differences and it is to these Jews that Gordis has written his book.

With respect to the first two differences many liberal Jews are uncomfortable with nationalism in general and ethnic nationalism in particular. Hence no matter what Israel does, they will have a quarrel with it. These differences are exacerbated by the control Israel’s orthodox Rabbinate exercises over religious life in the country thereby estranging both reform and conservative Jews. However as long as they believe that there is peoplehood associated with Judaism the way will be open to reconciliation. Put bluntly they can agree to differ. After all demography has shifted the locus of post-Holocaust Jewry from America to Israel.

However for those Americans who view Judaism solely as a religion for which there is historical precedent (See the 1885 Pittsburgh Platform of Reform Judaism), then reconciliation becomes an extremely difficult task. To them Israel would just become another country where the Zionist project has little or no meaning. That result would be extraordinarily sad for the Jewish people.

Thus as in couple’s therapy the issue isn’t about taking out the garbage, but rather the fundamental nature of the relationship. Both Americans and Israeli’s are going to have to reconcile their competing visions of culture, democracy and religion in order to live under the same big tent. Further as an American Zionist I would say to my secular friends that there is no guarantee a secular society will remain hospitable to Jews; witness Europe. I guess they would rather support the cowering Jews of the eastern European shtetls rather than the more muscular Jew of today’s Israel.  And to my religious friends I agree that Israel should be “a light unto the nations,” but it is an imperfect state living in a very hostile neighborhood. Thus reading Gordis’ book would be a first step on the rode to a fruitful couple’s therapy.

for the full Amazon URL see: https://www.amazon.com/review/R3K6HJHKOOV2PE/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