Israel Update: August 7 (Day 306)
Situational Update
The Commander of CENTCOM, General Michael Erik Kurilla, arrived in Israel on Monday as the official guest of the Chief of the General Staff, LTG Herzi Halevi. The commanders held a joint situational assessment on security and strategic issues, as well as joint preparations in the region, as part of the response to threats in the Middle East.
According to Israeli journalist Marc Schulman, Iran has expressed a desire to avoid an all-out war. Reports indicate that we conveyed a message to the Iranians: if they target our population centers, we will destroy all their nuclear sites—a mission the Air Force has been preparing for over a decade. It remains unclear what Iran's next move will be, but there are increasing signs that they wish to avoid a full-scale conflict at this time.
White House officials believe that intensive diplomatic efforts to temper Iran’s retaliation for the killing of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran last week may be having an effect, the Washington Post said on Tuesday, while also reporting that the Biden administration was enraged by the timing of the assassination. Commenting on the efforts, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Tuesday that Washington had communicated to both Israel and Iran that conflict must not escalate.
According to the Times of Israel, the United Nations announced on Monday night that nine employees of the UNRWA agency for Palestinian refugees “may have been involved” in Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel and will be fired from the organization. The Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS), an independent body of the United Nations Secretariat, said in a terse press release that it had completed its investigation into 19 UNRWA staff members alleged by Israel to have taken part in the October 7 atrocities and concluded that in nine cases, the evidence obtained by the organization “indicated that the UNRWA staff members may have been involved in the armed attacks of 7 October 2023.”
According to the IDF, Jaber Aziz, Commander of Hamas' Al-Furqan Battalion, was eliminated during a strike on Hamas command and control centers in Gaza City. Aziz has been the Commander of Hamas' Al-Furqan Battalion since 2020, previously serving as Deputy Commander of both the Al-Furqan and Zaytun Battalions, and Commander of the Zaytun Battalion. The strike targeted terrorists operating within "Hassan Salame" and "Nasser" schools. He played a significant role in planning the Oct. 7 massacre and led numerous terrorist attacks against the IDF and Israel.
Per the Jewish Insider, Wesley Bell defeated Rep. Cori Bush (D-MO) on Tuesday in a closely watched primary, becoming the second Democratic challenger of the cycle to unseat a Squad-aligned incumbent. Pro-Israel groups invested heavily in the race to boost Bell’s campaign against Bush, whose hostile views toward Israel faced backlash in the district. The super PAC affiliated with AIPAC, United Democracy Project, was by far the biggest spender, dropping more than $8.5 million into a race that became one of the most expensive elections of the cycle.
The Washington, D.C., headquarters of AIPAC was vandalized early Monday morning with red spray paint and the words “F*** Israel” scrawled onto the front and side of the building.
Amit Elor, a proud American-Israeli, just became the youngest wrestler to ever win an Olympic gold for team USA! Listen to her emotional message to Israelis after winning the gold medal.
The Numbers
The North
With a heavy focus on northern Israel right now, I wanted to include some data from the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) that I routinely track.
Casualties
1,656 Israelis dead (+1 since Sunday) including 689 IDF soldiers (329 IDF soldiers during the ground operation in Gaza: thankfully no change since Sunday)
Additional Information (according to the IDF):
2,190 (+14 since Sunday) IDF soldiers have been injured during ground combat in Gaza, including at least 414 (+6 since Sunday) who have been severely injured.
4,272 (+20 since Sunday) IDF soldiers have been injured since the beginning of the war, including at least 637 (+7 since Sunday) who have been severely injured.
Note: we have always included the number of casualties in Gaza, as reported by the Gaza Health Ministry. We feel it is important to include this information with the caveat that this reporting ministry is not a trusted source of data by many. Most recently, The United Nations has begun citing a much lower death toll for women and children in Gaza, acknowledging that it has incomplete information about many of the people killed during Israel’s military offensive in the territory.
According to unverified figures from the Hamas-controlled Gaza Health Ministry, 39,677 (+197 since Sunday) people have been killed in Gaza, and 91,645 (+517 since Sunday) have been injured during the war.
We also encourage you to read this well documented piece from Tablet published in March: How the Gaza Ministry of Health Fakes Casualty Numbers
The Associated Press, an outlet with a demonstrated anti-Israel bias, conducted an analysis of alleged Gaza death tolls released by the Hamas-controlled "Gaza Health Ministry." The analysis found that "9,940 of the dead – 29% of its April 30 total – were not listed in the data" and that "an additional 1,699 records in the ministry’s April data were incomplete and 22 were duplicates."
Hostages (no change since Sunday)
On October 7th, a total of 261 Israelis were taken hostage.
During the ceasefire deal in November, 112 hostages were released.
A total of 7 hostages have been rescued and the remains of 21 others have been recovered (no change). Tragically, 3 have been mistakenly killed by the IDF, and 1 was killed during an IDF attempt to rescue him.
49 hostages have been confirmed dead.
This leaves an estimated 111-112 hostages still theoretically in Gaza, with somewhere between (assumed) 33-41 deceased. Thus, at most, 82 living hostages could still be in Gaza.
According to an article published in the WSJ, “Of the approximately 250 hostages taken in the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attack, 116 continue to be held captive, including many believed to be dead. Mediators in the hostage talks and a U.S. official familiar with the latest U.S. intelligence said the number of those hostages still alive could be as low as 50.”
That assessment, based in part on Israeli intelligence, would mean 66 of those still held hostage could be dead, 25 more than Israel has publicly acknowledged.
Link: Families of Hostages in Gaza Are Desperate for News but Dread a Phone Call | WSJ
(Sources: JINSA, FDD, IDF, AIPAC, The Paul Singer Foundation, The Institute for National Security Studies, the Alma Research and Education Center, Yediot, Jerusalem Post, IDF Casualty Count, and the Times of Israel)
Listen
[PODCAST] Call Me Back with Dan Senor: Israelis anticipate the response — with Haviv Rettig Gur
Is the region ready for an Israel-Iran war? Is the U.S. ready? What is the state of readiness of the IDF for such a war? Is Israeli society ready for such a war? Could such a war be avoided? What would de-escalation look like?
Most Israelis we have spoken to over the past few days have struck a balance between (tensely) trying to anticipate Iran’s next move and expressing confidence in Israel’s capacity for this new phase. One of those Israelis joins us for this episode. Haviv Rettig Gur of the the Times of Israel returns to the podcast.
Link: Call Me Back - with Dan Senor: Israelis anticipate the response
John Spencer, Chair of Urban Warfare Studies at the Modern War Institute, has been a trusted resource for information. He recommends this website: Rocket Alerts in Israel, to track the number of rockets fired and UAV’s entering Israel.
Since August 1st, Hezbollah has caused 98 rocket alerts
Rocket Alerts increased by 169 in one week
UAV Alerts by increased by 102 in one week
What We Are Reading
Israel on the Brink: If the Israelis find themselves facing difficult choices, so do their enemies. By Eliot A. Cohen in The Atlantic
It is therefore not surprising that some, in Israel and abroad, regard the recent attacks that eliminated Shukr in Beirut and the Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran—in a Revolutionary Guard Corps guesthouse, no less—as one more piece of folly by Netanyahu, who has mortgaged his country’s politics to religious extremists and who, many believe, is animated solely by a desire to survive in power as long as possible. There may be truth in all this, but only a part of the truth, and probably not the most important truth. A more detached strategic analysis yields a different picture.
Begin with the nature of the larger Middle East war, which has been going on for years now but chiefly in the shadows, or at least without a lot of Western-media attention, which amounts to the same thing. The war is an existential conflict between Israel and a coalition of its enemies, at the center of which is Iran. The various militant groups sponsored by Iran—Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza, militias in Syria and Iraq, and the Houthis in Yemen—share the elimination of the Jewish state as their strategic goal. They may agree to truces, but those are pauses, not armistices, much less peace.
Iran funds and supports this coalition, even if it does not entirely control it. Hamas, an outgrowth of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, is not its creation. Hezbollah has become the brilliant pupil that is now, in some respects, the equal of its teacher in military skill and capacity. The Houthis may not respond to command. But a coalition it is, and with it, Iran has built a ring of fire around Israel.
For Israeli strategists, the assassinations of Shukr and Haniyeh were part of a campaign aimed at two things: the restoration of Israel’s deterrent reputation, and the rebuilding of battered Israeli morale. The losses inflicted on Hezbollah and Hamas—the Israelis have been systematically attacking the senior ranks of both organizations—undoubtedly make them less effective. But the broader Israeli purpose is also reputational: to make its enemies believe that its intelligence agents are everywhere, that its armed forces are lethally accurate, and that Jerusalem can find them and kill them wherever they are.
The Israeli attacks, in other words, are best seen not as a ploy by Netanyahu but as a considered Israeli move, supported by its national-security establishment.
Link: Israel on the Brink
‘Everything Is Collapsing’: Israeli Reservists Confront Toll of Protracted War: As Gaza conflict drags on, reservists are exhausted, constraining Israel’s options as it weighs war with Hezbollah. By Carrie Keller-Lynn and Dov Lieber in the WSJ.
…with the war in Gaza heading into its 11th month, and long-running exchanges of fire with regional militias such as Hezbollah heating up, many of those fighters are close to a breaking point. Exhausted and in some cases demoralized, they are struggling to balance family and work with military service, while the economic toll from their absences mounts.
“Israel did not prepare itself for a long war; we thought about a big strike of the air force and then a fast maneuver by the ground forces,” said former Israeli National Security Council head Yaakov Amidror. “The longer the time, the more problematic it is to maintain the support and the readiness” of the fighting forces.
Armed militias, funded and trained by Iran, now control swaths of territory neighboring Israel’s. Dislodging them could take years, if it is possible at all.
At the height of the war in Gaza, about two-thirds of Israel’s fighting power was drawn from reservists—some 300,000 drafted reserve personnel, compared with a standing army of around 150,000, security analysts estimate.
Unlike conscripts, reservists are regular citizens who have jobs and are raising families. Many have now served multiple rounds and faced fierce fighting. More than 300 soldiers have been killed and over 4,000 have been injured since Israel started its ground war in Gaza, according to Israel’s military, which doesn’t break out figures for conscripts versus reservists.
Many reservists have had to shut businesses and delay investments. Nearly 150,000 have missed work days, including many in Israel’s crucial tech sector.
With so many disruptions, the Bank of Israel forecasts that the country’s economy will grow only 1.5% in 2024, after contracting 5.7% in the last quarter of 2023. It says growth should rebound to 4.2% in 2025—but only if the war ends by early next year.
Israeli lawmakers generally agree a fix is needed to meet the military’s needs. Israel’s Defense Ministry is promoting legislation to extend mandatory military service to 36 months from 32, increase annual reserve-duty commitments by 45 days a year and raise the age of obligatory reserve duty by up to five years, and in some cases, to age 52.
Many Israelis would rather see the country expand the pool of people who serve as conscripts. Yet the most obvious way to do that, by forcing ultra-Orthodox Israelis to serve, is potentially explosive.
Link: ‘Everything Is Collapsing’: Israeli Reservists Confront Toll of Protracted War
The West’s Fear of Escalation Is Not Helpful by Professor Efraim Inbar for the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security (JISS)
Governments in many capitals of the world have repeatedly expressed apprehensions about escalation of the Gaza conflict and Hezbollah’s war of attrition against Israel. They fear greater violence, more casualties and an expansion in the number of regional participants in the war.
Such fears, warnings and the many calls for restraint are understandable, particularly for Western audiences, but they are not very useful.
First, these pronouncements express genuine reluctance to use force and are seen by most people in the Middle East as weakness – a trait despised in these parts. In contrast to Western attitudes that view the use of force as uncivilized and anachronistic, Middle Easterners see it as a legitimate option in the toolbox of international actors.
Moreover, it is popular. Hamas gained huge popularity among Palestinians for its October 7 attack on Israel. Israelis cherish successful targeted killings, and these are also well appreciated by its Arab allies.
In many situations, climbing the escalation ladder is probably the best way to put an end to violence. Indeed, the Hamas raids and atrocities are a direct result of the containment policy conducted for years by Israel. Instead of escalating and exacting a high price from Hamas to change its strategic calculus, Israel preferred to absorb many rocket attacks and refrained from a strong riposte that could lead to escalation.
Similarly, Israel’s reluctance to preempt in Lebanon allowed Hezbollah to build a formidable missile arsenal. This organization grew to become a monster that since October 8 has conducted, undeterred, a war of attrition against Israel.
Attrition warfare is the best outcome for the population-centric Iranian strategy and the worst possible scenario for Israel. The continuous existence of over one hundred thousand missiles in the hands of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, after he crossed the Rubicon of waging a long war of attrition, is an intolerable situation for Israel. Only escalation intended to eliminate the missile arsenal can put an end to the war of attrition.
In the Lebanese case, the “diplomatic solution” the Americans and the French are pushing for is a mirage. Hezbollah cannot be trusted to abide for long to any agreement that does not serve its ends, and the UN contingent in south Lebanon assigned to prevent the Hezbollah encroachment toward the Israeli border has proved its impotence.
Therefore, being perceived as having a predilection for escalation helps deterrence. Fear of retaliation has a cooling effect on many tempers all over the world. This is the rationale for the threatening behavior of the bully in a tough neighborhood. Unfortunately, the Middle East is such a neighborhood. Deterrence must be maintained over time by the occasional use of force. This is its only lubricant – not words.
…the Pavlovian advice to act with restraint, and warnings of escalation, indicate a lack of understanding of the strategic game played by the violent Mideastern actors. Words such as goodwill, trust, and search for stability have a different meaning in the vocabulary employed by the radicals in the region. Iran and its proxies want to destabilize it.
In the final analysis, the only effective persuasion is the use of force. This requires willingness to escalate the struggle for freedom and other Western values. Islamist radicals need to be defeated. The timing of escalation can be debated but not the course of action.
Team Biden Can Help Mideast Peace by Walter Russell Mead in the WSJ
Israeli and Palestinian politics are similar in one way: Both sides contain enormous political diversity in a relatively small population. Just as Israeli Jewish opinion ranges from guilt-ridden left-wingers who want a “post-Zionist” Israel to far-right groups seeking to drive West Bank Palestinians across the Jordan River, Palestinian opinion ranges from moderates ready to accept a two-state solution on almost any terms to hard-liners who won’t stop fighting until Israel is destroyed.
The Oct. 7 Hamas attacks were not solely or even primarily aimed at the innocent civilians who were raped, tortured, kidnapped or killed. The larger target was the two-state solution. The savagery of the attacks, Hamas’s leadership hoped, would destroy any belief in Israel that peace with Palestinians was possible and provoke an Israeli response whose ferocity would radicalize Palestinians everywhere and discredit advocates of compromise.
Hamas and its allies in Tehran and beyond believe that Israel is doomed to collapse. Even if this doesn’t happen immediately, Israeli Jews will ultimately tire of living under military threat and global disapproval. The wealthiest and most mobile will emigrate, weakening the “Zionist entity” until its remaining defenders can be overwhelmed. The power of this ideology among Palestinians is not absolute, but enough Palestinians support enough of it that many Israelis believe real peace can’t be had. Even if moderate Palestinians sign a treaty with Israel, they argue, radicals can overthrow the government—as Hamas did when it ultimately took over Gaza after Israel’s 2005 withdrawal—leaving Israel to face an empowered, implacable foe on the West Bank.
Progress toward peace requires a change in approach. For Israelis to believe in peace, they must see among Palestinians a new consensus for peace, or at least the beginnings of one.
Real peace would include compensation funds for the descendants of both Arabs and Jews displaced during and after Israel’s war of independence. Instead of dribbling out refugee “relief” payments forever through the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, the world could fund a lasting solution to the problem of Palestinian dispossession.
Peace would also mean that every Palestinian, including those in Syria and Lebanon, would be able to obtain an internationally recognized passport with full citizenship rights.
…promoting pro-peace sentiment on both sides by making peace look attractive and realistic is something that America, along with like-minded Gulf Arabs and others, could actually accomplish.
Sinwar Stands Alone by Seth Mandel in Commentary
Yahya Sinwar has been named the new head of Hamas’s political division, and congratulations are in order—mostly for Israel, which can see in Sinwar’s promotion the continuing fruits of its methodical dismantlement of Hamas.
There are three reasons for the West to find encouragement in this latest turn of events.
First, Hamas’s leadership bench is depleted, and Israel’s careful decapitation of its branches has been effective.
Second, Sinwar’s consolidation of power, combined with his geographic isolation, turns Hamas from an organization into a literal death cult.
Third, it collapses a comforting lie that the West tells itself about these terror groups, enabling a more honest conversation about how to defeat them.
…the elevation of Sinwar isn’t itself unusual, but it wasn’t the plan and it puts all the hats on one man’s head.
More important, however, is that his communications network—Hamas deputies abroad, Hezbollah officials, Iranian government officials, Haniyeh in Qatar—has already been badly disrupted. His isolation means he is even more powerful within Hamas, but that is because now he is Hamas. And it also means that Sinwar is nothing more than an Iranian satrap.
Sinwar is now Hamas’s political “wing,” its military “wing,” and any other chimerical “wing.” Large terror groups like Hamas have different departments, sure, but the West has always fooled itself into believing there’s a fundamental difference between the guy playing Good Cop and the guy playing Bad Cop. In reality, they’re all the Bad Cop. And now there’s not even someone opposite Sinwar to pretend that a compromise is in the works and the West just has to keep making concessions to the “moderates” so the hardliners don’t lose their temper.
Link: Sinwar Stands Alone
The Essential Guidebook to October 7 and its Aftermath by Professor Gil Troy published by The Jewish People Policy Institute (JPPI)
This guidebook seeks to help Jews and non-Jews, in Israel and worldwide, understand the events that have unfolded since October 7 in historical and ideological context. These are difficult times – and this is no Six Day War. Months after absorbing the bloodiest terrorist attack in its history, Israel finds itself stuck on so many fronts. On Day 86, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant declared: “We are being attacked from seven different arenas: Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, the Palestinian territories, Iraq, Yemen, and Iran.” Israel has invaded Gaza, defended itself successfully against an unprecedented Iranian attack, absorbed more than 5,000 Hezbollah rocket launches, and seen tens of thousands of its citizens displaced, north and south, for months. Parts of Gaza in ruins, with hundreds of thousands of Palestinians displaced and thousands killed.
Questions asked include: What happened on October 7? Why did Hamas attack? Why did Israel launch a war that killed and displaced so many civilians? Why did events in Israel disrupt so many lives thousands of miles away? Why did Iran attack Israel on April 13?
Link: The Essential Guidebook to October 7 and its Aftermath
Iran Counts on U.S. Weakness to Check Israeli Strength by Reuel Marc Gerecht and Ray Takyeh in the WSJ
Since the outbreak of the Oct. 7 war, Iran’s strategy has had mixed results. It’s not unlikely that Tehran believed that by inflaming Israel’s frontiers with deadly but limited attacks by its proxies, it could provoke the international community to impose a cease-fire on Israel. A low-level war, in which Hamas and Hezbollah engage in a continuous duel with Israel, is a winning proposition for Iran. Mr. Khamenei likely foresees the Jewish state’s demise through a slow bleed, not a massive conflagration. A larger war, if it involved America, could start a chain reaction that might lead to U.S. Air Force bombing of Iran’s nuclear installations. Fear of losing the nuclear program before it is bomb-proof has probably been an important factor in Tehran’s development of proxy forces to attack Americans and Israelis.
Both the Biden administration and the Europeans have acted helpfully, dispatching a parade of mediators seeking a cease-fire. In that scenario, a battered Hamas would survive to fight another day, and Hezbollah’s large missile stockpiles would remain, deterring Israel and the U.S. from attacks on Iran.
If Iran manages to penetrate Israeli defenses this time, it’s not unreasonable to believe that Tehran still sees the Biden administration’s profound fear of escalation as a means to salvage its proxies’ fortunes.
The crucial actor in this drama is neither Iran nor Israel but America. Should Washington warn Iran clearly that if Tehran retaliates against Israel, the U.S. will intervene in the conflict on Jerusalem’s side—and far more muscularly than before—the mullahs will take note and proceed more cautiously. Despite their exhortations, the ruling clergy and the Revolutionary Guards still respect American power and understand that their wobbly regime can’t afford a conflict with the U.S.
Link: Iran Counts on U.S. Weakness to Check Israeli Strength
Washington’s Wavering Support for Israel by Ambassador Michael Oren
US policy today is almost unrecognizable from what it was on October 7. In the immediate aftermath of the Hamas attack, President Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken offered Israel immediate and unlimited support to fulfill its twin goals of rescuing the hostages and destroying Hamas. Although both stressed the need for the IDF to act in accordance with international law and minimize civilian casualties, neither Biden nor Blinken suggested that US backing for Israel would be conditioned on the humanitarian situation in Gaza or the number of Palestinians killed. Biden in fact dismissed Hamas’s casualty figures as exaggerated and stressed the difficulties Israel faced in fighting an enemy hiding behind its own civilians.
President Biden went from impugning Hamas statistics to citing them repeatedly. Soon, the supply of American munitions to the IDF, formerly expedited, was delayed. Secretary Blinken declared that the goal of the war was not to destroy Hamas but to ensure that “October 7 can never happen again.”
The war suddenly became a contentious issue in the presidential elections. But the White House had also concluded that Israel’s objective of destroying Hamas was unrealistic. Increasingly vilified by progressives for enabling the alleged massacre of Palestinians, the president was paying what many in his administration believed was a prohibitive political price for an unwinnable war. Reports began circulating that, in the absence of an Israeli “day after” plan, the US would seek a post-war administration for Gaza that included technocratic elements of Hamas.
Biden’s position on the hostage and ceasefire package is acceptable to a growing number of Israelis. Nevertheless, it too represents a departure from previous American policy. Moreover, it still stands at odds with the Israeli government’s longstanding determination to prevent Hamas from once again smuggling arms from Egypt into Gaza and to eliminate the terrorists as a political and military force.
In the north, too, American policy has changed. Back in October, Biden used his famous one-word warning “Don’t” to Hezbollah and Iran. Should either try to take advantage of the war in the south, the president suggested, they would elicit powerful American opposition. Both subsequently ignored that warning
Today, that same “Don’t” seems less directed at Iran than at Israel. Though some 100,000 Israelis have been displaced by Hezbollah rocket fire and thousands more subjected to almost daily barrages, Biden administration officials keep urging Israel to show restraint.
Now, with war looming, Israel must determine to what degree America will have our back. We must know the extent to which the United States will help defend us irrespective of whether we retaliate against Iranian aggression or strike Iran preemptively. Needed now is the clear and consistent US policy often lacking in the last ten months
Survival Nation: Israel’s Summer of Dread: For Israelis, waiting for Iran to attack evokes previous historical tragedies in which internal divisions made Jews vulnerable by Yossi Klein Halevi by WSJ
This year, Tisha b’Av, which begins on the evening of Aug. 12, has been preceded by foreboding. Ever since Israel’s assassination of Fuad Shukr, military commander of Hezbollah, in Beirut on July 30 and the killing of Hamas’s political leader, Ismail Haniyeh, in Tehran the following day, we’ve been waiting for the inevitable retaliation.
When an entire nation lives under the threat of imminent retaliation, deterrence—the core of Israel’s military doctrine—has failed. Why is it a given that Iran will retaliate? For all our determined effort to undo Oct. 7, the massacre exposed the fragility of our power.
Even as we maintain the pretense of daily life, a part of us is permanently alert. We tell ourselves that we’re steady and joke about the apocalypse, because that’s the Israeli way. But during one recent sleepless night, I literally jumped when a passing motorcycle sounded like an explosion.
Even as we brace for an Iranian attack, we are preoccupied by internal strife. The unity that Israelis experienced in the aftermath of Oct. 7 has dissipated. After a monthslong suspension of protests in deference to the war, tens of thousands once again demonstrate across the country, demanding new elections and a cease-fire deal to free Israeli hostages in Gaza.
Israel’s long-term survival depends not only on military deterrence but on social cohesion. After the internal devastation brought by the Netanyahu government, Israelis will need to relearn how to live with each other in this besieged pressure cooker we call home.
We Israelis can create a model for how to manage seemingly irreconcilable differences. We are, after all, a people sustained by memory. We’ve been in this situation before, and we know the consequences of unrestrained divisiveness.
Antisemitism
State Laws on Israel Boycotts Hold Up in Court by Richard Goldberg with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies
Daniel Schuchman writes that every American has a constitutional right to boycott Israel (“Free Speech Includes the Right to Boycott Israel,” op-ed, July 31). That’s true. What’s false, however, is that state laws related to boycotts of Israel infringe on First Amendment rights; that corporations have a constitutional right to state contracts or investments; or that states can’t condition their contracts and investments on a corporation’s commercial behavior.
Most states now have laws regarding companies that boycott Israel. None relate to speech. All relate to commercial conduct that attempts to inflict economic harm on Israel or Israel-based companies. Federal anti-boycott laws dating to the Arab League boycott of Israel also remain on the books.
The campaign to boycott Israel is deeply antisemitic. It attempts to use economic warfare as a tool to delegitimize and destroy the world’s only Jewish state. Its supporters hate the fully constitutional state laws that encourage companies to steer clear of that warfare, and for good reason: The laws work.
Airbnb reversed course on an Israel boycott when states threatened to prohibit investment as the company was going public. Unilever upended a boycott waged by its Ben & Jerry’s subsidiary because of state pension divestments. Morningstar recently abandoned its anti-Israel environmental, social and governance (ESG) ratings—sanctions on Israel-based companies that MSCI still imposes, which should prompt state investigations and enforcements.
Prosecute Criminal Protesters: Criminal anti-Israel demonstrators often go unpunished, even as other groups face severe sanctions. By Trey Hammond for City Journal
On July 24, during Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to Congress, protesters filled the streets of Washington and laid waste to historic monuments outside of Union Station. The pro-Hamas activists vandalized a monument to Christopher Columbus and desecrated a replica Liberty Bell with phrases like “welcome to the intifada” and “anarchy.” They also assaulted police and removed the American flag from its pole, burning it and replacing it with a Palestinian flag.
Their perception was partially vindicated in the days after the Union Station protest. While some were properly arrested at the demonstration, nearly a dozen have seen their charges dropped, and others were released from jail pending further court action. That is more enforcement action than occurred at the Lafayette Square protest, but not nearly enough to deter the next round of violent demonstrations.
Additionally, prosecutors’ treatment of the Union Square protests stands in stark contrast to that received by other groups. For example, three teenagers in Spokane were hit with felony charges for purposefully creating skid marks with electric scooters on an LGBTQ pride street mural; they face years in prison. What they did was wrong, but one wonders why they were prosecuted so aggressively as some anti-Israel protesters walk away scot-free.
This inequality of justice erodes American norms and ideals. The equal enforcement of law, regardless of political persuasion, is a cornerstone of our justice system. Without it, Americans lose faith in our legal and political institutions.
Similarly, when prosecutors decline to enforce the law, they undermine our legal system. They send the message that vandalism and other criminal acts are acceptable, which, as we saw at Lafayette Square and then Union Station, emboldens those who would flout our laws.
Bipartisan denunciation of illegal protest is great, but legal action is better. If America hopes to root out violence and get a grip on rising anti-Semitism, our prosecutors—local, state, and federal—must go after all forms of criminal conduct with equal vigor.
Holocaust Museums at a Crossroads: Their narratives have long been built around the stories of survivors. But with that generation dying off they need new ways to keep their testimony vital. By Edward Rothstein in the WSJ
There are more than two dozen Holocaust museums in the U.S. They have welcomed tens of millions of visitors over the past several decades and helped create Holocaust curricula required in 26 states, reaching some 20,000 American schools.
Moreover, the words “genocide” and “Holocaust” have become so profligately applied that the situation seems to illustrate the comically coined Latinate fallacy, “reductio ad Hitlerum”: Any disliked opponent is a “Nazi”; every act of war, a genocide; and any large-scale suffering, a Holocaust
First of all, they place a particular emphasis on survivors, who have spoken to classes and acted as docents. As that generation dies off, museums have had to seek new ways to keep their testimony vital.
…this emphasis on survivors has serious limitations. As the writer Dara Horn has pointed out, given their young age when the Nazis came to power, the survivors now encountered are unable to provide much sense of the past; in their accounts, the Holocaust can almost seem to arise ex nihilo. They also ultimately settled in North America, where they thrived on postwar liberalism. They laud tolerance and human rights—qualities they (and the museums) believe would have prevented the Holocaust.
Another result of the American museums’ approach is that more compelling historical lessons are ignored. Here is one: Don’t appease totalitarian states and terrorist organizations. Or another: Take their declared goals seriously, whether expressed in “Mein Kampf” or in the founding documents of Hamas and Hezbollah.
Holocaust museums also need to provide a deeper understanding of antisemitism, which is quite different from garden-variety racial hatred
The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington now has a “Center for the Prevention of Genocide” presenting case histories that range from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe. The Dallas museum devotes half its galleries to human rights, chronicling fights against injustice and surveying other genocides. But no museum I have seen provides enough information to understand any other example in convincing detail. The account of the Holocaust is supposed to suffice. Each example is offered as a variation on a theme, even though every questionable analogy weakens the hold of the original.
…the emphasis is less on a coherent Jewish identity than on Jews’ identity as victims. There is no triumph of a people, just individual survivors who are presented less as Jews than as Americans.