Iran in the media

Public speculation about whether Israel is planning a preemptive military strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities has erupted on numerous occasions in the past.

Already in the early 1990s, Amnon Lipkin-Shahak, who was then head of Military Intelligence and later was chief of the General Staff, predicted in private that if the Islamic Republic was not stopped it would have a bomb within a decade.

In June of this year, outgoing Mossad head Meir Dagan sparked controversy when he warned that an Israeli attack on Iran would be a “stupid idea.” However, over the past week, the pitch and fervor of public discourse have reached unprecedented heights.


High-ranking politicians – such as Minister of Intelligence and Atomic Energy Dan Meridor andMinister-without- Portfolio Bennie Begin – warned of the potential dangers resulting from a lively public debate about a subject best left to the discretion of political leaders who are privy to top secret intelligence data and analyses.

Undoubtedly, Begin was right to argue – in a diatribe apparently directed against Dagan – that public servants were obligated to “guard state secrets forever, also after they leave their positions.”

It was unclear, however, in what way Dagan, or any other public servant for that matter, such as the ones who might have generated last weekend’s banner-headlined story inYediot Aharonot titled “Atomic Pressure” had in fact revealed such secrets. If censorship laws were broken, the guilty party should be prosecuted in a court of law, not publicly lambasted by politicians.

Nor is it immediately clear how, even if it could be stopped, public speculation about whether Israel should or should not attack Iran is damaging to Israeli interests, as Begin and Meridor have claimed.

True, it can be argued that the recent flurry of Hebrew media reports was an intentional ploy to “unveil” Israeli plans for an attack, and thus ruin the element of surprise.

Or they could be an attempt to undermine the legitimacy of such an attack, by claiming, as sources in the Yediot Aharonot story did, that only two men – Prime MinisterBinyamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak – were involved in the decision-making process.

Contradictory media reports claimed that Netanyahu was working to assemble a majority in the inner cabinet of eight in favor of a strike and had recently won over previously skeptical Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman.

The government does not seem to be taking measures to defuse the situation. Several news media outlets, both local and foreign, described a major IAF exercise in Sardinia, Italy, over the weekend, planned months ago, that was said to include all of the types of planes Israel would use in an attack on Iranian nuclear facilities.

Meanwhile, The Guardian added fuel to the speculation fire when it reported Wednesday that the British military was accelerating planning for its part in a potential US-led attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities. And The New York Times reported that the Obama administration planned to bolster the American military presence in the PersianGulf, perhaps to position itself better for a possible military confrontation with Iran.

Though Begin, Meridor and others believe otherwise, these media reports, coming ahead of a report by the International Atomic Energy Agency, due on Tuesday, that is expected to offer new information about Iran’s attempts to develop designs for warheads and delivery systems, actually seem to serve Israeli interests.

The media spotlight clarifies that eliminating the Iranian nuclear threat is not solely an Israeli concern.

The US, Britain, Italy and perhaps other nations have a vested interest in making sure that the military option remains “on the table” along with more robust economic sanctions and various sabotage techniques ranging from cyber-warfare tactics – a la Stuxnet and “son of Stuxnet” – to the assassination of key Iranian atomic energy experts.

Also, the discourse inside Israel and abroad helps refocus attention on the Iranian threat and away from other issues such as the Palestinian bid for statehood in the UN.

All the talk and media exposure also serve to obscure Israel’s real intentions. Therefore, while it is of utmost importance that public servants safeguard military secrets, the renewed interest – both locally and abroad – over the possibility of a preemptive military strike on Iranian nuclear facilities seems to be serving Israeli interests quite well.

UNESCO's vote

A huge cheer of joy erupted Monday in the General Assembly room of the Paris-based UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) after "Palestine" was voted in as the organization's 195th member.

However, the event was, in reality, not a cause for celebration but another lamentable example of the moral bankruptcy of the UN and its organizations.

While the US, Canada, Germany, the Netherlands and Israel voted against it, such bastions of human rights and freedom as China, Russia and Brazil voted in favor.

Disappointingly, Austria and France ­ two states which should have known better ­ voted in favor, while Britain could do no more than abstain.

In its rush to aid the Palestinians in their unilateral bid for internationally recognized statehood status, UNESCO completely disregarded its own declared educational and cultural standards based on equality and mutual respect.

Instead, UNESCO effectively endorsed the warped, hate-mongering Palestinian national "narrative" as reflected in the Palestinian Authority's official school textbooks, cultural policies and popular media.

Impact-SE, a research organization that monitors and analyzes schoolbooks and curricula across the Middle East, with an eye toward determining their compliance with international standards on peace and tolerance ­ like those set by UNESCO ­ found shameful examples of anti-Semitism being taught in the Palestinian educational system.

Indeed, textbooks used in PA schools conveyed rabidly anti-Semitic messages (Jews are described as violators of treaties, deceivers, murderers of children, disembowelers of women and impersonators of snakes) erased Jewish peoples' ties to the land of Israel (Rachel's Tomb is presented as the Bilal bin Rabah Mosque, and the Kotel is described simply as Al-Buraq Wall) and supported jihad while, completing ignoring the option of a negotiated peace settlement with Israel.

The study quotes the following paragraph from a eighth-grade book: "Today the Muslim countries need urgently jihad and jihad fighters in order to liberate the robbed lands and to get rid of the robbing Jews from the robbed lands in Palestine and in the Levant." Nowhere in official PA textbooks is the Holocaust mentioned, though there is an entire chapter on World War Two.




One ambiguous passage states: "The Jewish question is first and foremost a European problem." Before the UNESCO decision, there might have been a chance, through international pressure and dialogue, to influence the PA to gradually revamp textbooks so that they more closely reflected reality.

Perhaps a new generation of Palestinian children could have been raised not on anti-Semitism, stereotypes and lies, but on respect for those who are different, the value of peaceful negotiation and recognition of the Jewish people's ties to the land of Israel.

But by accepting "Palestine" as a member, UNESCO has effectively given its stamp of approval to the sort of vicious indoctrination undergone by Palestinian schoolchildren at a young, impressionable age.

Can we honesty expect any future Palestinian leader to criticize the abhorrent messages that appear in PA textbooks if UNESCO failed to? Any leader who dared to introduce reforms would be fighting an uphill battle, not only against Palestinian prejudices and its culture of violence and self-victimization, but also against a respected UN institution's decision.

What's more, according to UNESCO's own rules, accepting "Palestine" as a full-fledged member means that UNESCO essentially waives its right to interfere in ­ or even criticize Palestinian education policies. If anything, Palestinian schoolbooks will inculcate children with even more uncompromisingly anti-Semitic, anti-Israel messages.

And the messages presented in school will continue to be reinforced in Palestinian media and in mosques. Consequently, the chances for peace between Israelis and Palestinians will get even slimmer.

Seen in this light, PA President Mahmoud Abbas's statement that the UNESCO decision "is a vote for peace" is utterly incomprehensible.

Rather, it is a vote for bigotry, hatred and conflict.

In praise of liberal arts

The crisis in Israeli universities’ humanities departments is deepening. As we gear up for the new academic year, yet another decrease has been registered in the number of university students studying subjects such as history, literature, languages, Jewish studies or philosophy.

Of the total number of students registered for the academic year of 2011-12, just 7.5 percent have chosen to study in one of the humanities departments, down from 7.9% last year.

This year’s modest drop comes after a long trend of dwindling interest in the humanities. In 1999, for instance, humanities departments were the second most popular after social sciences, making up 18.5% of the student body.

Part of the decline in the number of students learning humanities has to do with Israeli idiosyncrasies. In the early 1990s, for instance, smaller colleges began for the first time to compete with established universities.

Students with mediocre grades or low psychometric test scores who were once unable to get accepted to universities’ prestigious, job-oriented faculties such as law, economics or psychology, could now apply to smaller colleges with less rigorous requirements, instead of settling for the universities’ humanities departments.

Also, after a significant military stint (a minimum of two years for women and three years for men), Israeli university students are more likely than their American or European counterparts to pursue a “no nonsense” course of studies that leads to employment after graduation.

And Israeli universities are particularly focused on competing to enter the rankings of the top 50 universities in the world. Bolstering the hard sciences and emphasizing faculty research at the expense of humanities and teaching – which count for less in the rankings – are the most effective ways of achieving this goal.

But the decline of humanities is also part of a larger cultural and social trend plaguing the West that prioritizes efficiency, tangibility and productivity above all else. Since one’s familiarity with Homer or Rabbi Yehuda Halevi, the Talmud or Shakespeare cannot be commoditized, it remains unappreciated.

A generation of university and college graduates are the product of an increasingly myopic educational experience which might have imparted the know-how to get things done, but not the reasons why to bother.

A good liberal-arts education resulting from the in-depth study of classic texts and timeless ideas provides a number of important skills essential for the education of a new generation of leaders in the fields of journalism, politics, military and even business and science.

On the most basic level, liberal-arts graduates tend to hone written, verbal expression and critical thinking abilities.

But on a deeper level, exposure to the greatest thought humanity has to offer broadens intellectual horizons and might help innovators in many different fields to fuse diverse ideas and concepts in creative and unique ways.

THANKFULLY, A NUMBER of initiatives aspire to reverse the decline of liberal arts. Perhaps most significant among them is the Shalem Center’s ambitious project to create Israel’s first liberal-arts college, slated to open its doors in the fall of 2012.

Meanwhile, Prof. Manuel Trajtenberg, who in addition to heading the socioeconomic reform committee that bears his name, is also chairman of the Planning and Budget Committee of the Council for Higher Education, has set in motion changes in the way undergraduates earn degrees. Students will be required to take “prerequisite courses” that are outside their specific fields of expertise to broaden general knowledge.

It is impossible to measure the damage caused by narrow- mindedness. But there can be little doubt that one-dimensional thinking debilitates.




Our founders – from Yitzhak Tabenkin and Berl Katzenelson to David Ben-Gurion and Menachem Begin, and many others – were men and women with profound knowledge of their own culture as well as the best of Western culture. As a result they all had well articulated world views on how best to go about creating the Jewish people’s first sovereign state in nearly two millennia.

One of the goals of our higher-education system must be to produce a cadre of exceptional men and women comparable in stature to Israel’s founders who are capable of leading Israel into the 21st century.

A strong grounding in humanities is essential for achieving this goal.

Gaza and Egypt

Last Wednesday night, Islamic Jihad fired a Grad rocket that struck near Rehovot to mark the October 1995 assassination in Malta of Islamic Jihad leader Fathi Shikaki, a murderously zealous ideologue inspired by the Islamic revolution in Iran and an avid supporter of suicide bombings as a means of terrorizing Israel.

Various news media, including the BBC, have reported that the Mossad was responsible for Shikaki’s assassination.

The situation quickly deteriorated. On Saturday afternoon, Israel retaliated, launching a sortie against an Islamic Jihad cell preparing to carry out additional rocket attacks against Israel. Five terrorists were killed, including Ahmed Sheikh Khalil, a senior figure who was responsible for the organization’s rocket production facilities.

Enraged by Khalil’s demise, Islamic Jihad fired more than 20 rockets and mortar shells at Israel, one of which killed Moshe Ami, a father of four from Ashkelon. Four others were wounded in the barrage.

The tragic irony is that the cell operated from what used to be Bnei Atzmon, one of 17 Jewish communities making up Gush Katif. These Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip were forcibly evacuated in the summer of 2005 as part of a unilateral move to end “occupation” and facilitate the beginnings of Palestinian statehood.

Instead of being used for development and prosperity, this evacuated land has become the launching pad for death and destruction.




Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, has no interest in entering into a military confrontation with Israel right now. It has too much to lose.

Prolonged fighting could delay or even endanger the second phase of the Schalitdeal, in which an additional 550 Palestinians prisoners are slated to be released.

Hamas is also interested in maintaining quiet and stability in order to foster relations with Egypt.

Post-Mubarak Egypt is taking an increasingly active role in the Gaza Strip. Cairo was instrumental in helping to clinch a shaky cease-fire agreement between Islamic Jihad and Israel early Sunday. The deal did not hold, with more rockets being fired into Israel.

A day earlier, for the first time since Hamas seized control from Fatah in June 2007, representatives of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood visited the Gaza Strip. This was yet another clear signal of a shift in Cairo’s posture toward the Islamist movement since the ouster in February of Hosni Mubarak. And with the Muslim Brotherhood expected to fare well in Egypt’s upcoming elections, Hamas has an even more pressing interest in maintaining calm so as to consolidate its ties with Cairo while strengthening its control over Gaza.

At the same time, Hamas, which could easily stop Islamic Jihad’s attacks against Israel if it wanted to, is under pressure, in particular from Iran, Islamic Jihad’s patron, to accommodate the rejectionist camp, at least for a limited period.

Hamas was placed in a similar situation in August, when the Palestinian Popular Resistance Committees carried out a series of cross-border attacks near the Egyptian border that left eight Israelis dead. Hamas felt compelled at the time to join the firing, but only after sensing it was losing popularity in the Arab street to the more extreme factions.

Hamas’s warming relations with Egypt might lend some short-term stability to the Gaza Strip.

But Cairo’s willingness to strengthen ties with an anti-Semitic terrorist organization bent on destroying the Jewish state is also testimony to a change for the worse in the new Egypt.

With the Muslim Brotherhood expected to notch up an impressive victory in the upcoming Egyptian elections, the ties between Egypt and Gaza will inevitably strengthen further, while relations between Cairo and Jerusalem will undoubtedly suffer.

And that cannot augur well for the region, or for the peace process in the Middle East.

Beaches vs business

It took nearly four years of protests, including a petition signed by more than 28,000 concerned citizens, a human wave one-kilometer long, and regular picketing. But finally the objective was achieved.

Grassroots activism, a testament to the power of civic involvement, succeeded in nixing the building of a huge vacation village that would have included an amusement park, anartificial lake and a commercial center sprawling on over 200 dunams (20 hectares) of prime Mediterranean seashore.

If the project had been built, large stretches of Betzet Beach, some of the most beautiful beachfront in the North, would have either been scarred by commercial development or made inaccessible to the wider public.




Activists were fighting an uphill battle. The developers had already won a state tender. The project had the backing of Mateh Asher Regional Council head Yehuda Shavit. It had already been approved by the Israel Lands Authority and had reached the final stages before construction could begin.

But public opposition was unstoppable. Bolstered by support from organizations such as the Society for the Protection of Nature and the Israel Union for Environment Defense (Adam, Teva V’din), residents in the North managed to convince key politicians and government officials to scrap the plans. Environmental Protection Minister Gilad Erdan and Construction and Housing Minister Ariel Attias convinced newly appointed Israel Lands Authority Director Benzi Lieberman to enter negotiations to get the companies that had won the bid to stop work at Betzet.

Nor was this the first time a group of citizens had come up against big business interests and won. About six months ago, the cabinet ruled to freeze a plan to build a 350-room vacation village on the Palmahim Beach, which, as in the case of Betzet, had also received all the necessary building permits. In fact, the Palmahim beach had already been fenced off and contractors had begun preparing the area for construction. Nevertheless, after over two years of demonstrations the public convinced the cabinet to order the regional council responsible for Palmahim Beach to halt the project.

The successful campaigns against the projects at Palmahim and Betzet, alongside the socioeconomic protests over the summer, are all signs that Israeli society has undergone a profound change. Civic responsibility and empowerment of the “little guy” – the foundations of any healthy democracy – are taking the place of apathy and indifference.

Though activists have stopped large building projects in the past such as the Safdie plan in west Jerusalem and a proposed settlement in the Gilboa area, the Palmahim and Betzet victories are unique in the sense that activists managed to halt projects after they had been approved by regional building councils.

However, Palmahim and Betzet also raise questions about how best to balance free market forces with environmental responsibility. The construction firms behind the Palmahim and Betzet projects have undoubtedly invested millions of shekels in planning and development over the years. And if they had been built, the projects would have created jobs and tax revenues and attracted tourism.

The building contractors might be accused of putting their narrow business interests before environmental concerns, but they did not break any laws. All stages of development received official authorization.

At the same time, Palmahim and Betzet beaches are priceless resources that belong to the public, and the public, via grassroots protests, made clear it does not want its assets auctioned to the highest bidder, even if it means forgoing the economic benefits offered by the projects.

Therefore, while it is perfectly legitimate to freeze the Betzet and Palmahim projects in the name of environmental protection, it is absolutely imperative that building contractors be compensated for their losses and that alternative building sites be found. Protecting our environment should not lead to the trampling of private business rights.

Hit-and-run crimes

A decade ago, then-Supreme Court justice Mishael Cheshin remarked in a hit-and-run case that the driver’s despicable act “strikes a blow to the minimal requisite solidarity needed to maintain a healthy society… and it is only fitting that the driver be punished in the harshest way within the framework of the law.”

Tragically, in June of last year Cheshin experienced first hand the horror of the hit-and-run when his son, Shneor, 43, was run down while cycling. Tal Mor, 27, who was under the influence of both alcohol and drugs, not only abandoned Cheshin, leaving him to die on the side of the road, but also attempted to cover up his heinous crime.




Though he deserved it, Mor was, unfortunately, not “punished in the harshest way within the framework of the law.”

A 12-year-prison sentence was handed down, along with NIS 30,000 in compensation to the Cheshin family and the revoking of Mor’s driver’s license for 20 years, by Judge Zacharia Caspi of the Petah Tikva Central District Court.

“Twelve years is by no means a light sentence,” Prof. Emmanuel Gross, an expert in criminal law from the University of Haifa, told The Jerusalem Post Sunday, “but the court could have been harsher.”

Could have and should have.

The phenomenon of hit-and-runs is a blight on our society. And the frequency with which Israelis, brought up on the Zionist ethic of mutual responsibility and shared fate, choose to cowardly run away from the scene of an accident is shocking.

According to data provided by the Israel Police’s traffic department based on the past decade, there are on average about 700 hit-and-runs a year in which about 1,000 people are injured and some 18 people are killed.

Yet our courts are wary of handing down truly harsh sentences when a reckless driver kills or handicaps for life innocent pedestrians or cyclists (most hit-and-runs do not involve another car) and abandons the scene – and the victim – in a futile attempt to escape justice (the vast majority of hit-and-run perpetrators and quickly apprehended).

Too often we hear of plea bargains being reached such as in the case of 12-year-old Amir Balahsan of Yehud, who was reduced to a vegetative state by hitand- run perpetrator Pnina Toren and passenger Omri Naim. The two were sentenced to three years.

In January, the Supreme Court actually reduced the sentence of a particularly unsavory hit-and-run offender. In 2008, a drunk Shai Simon sped through a red light and plowed into Meital Aharonson, 27, and Mali Yazdi while they crossed a Tel Aviv street and then drove off, abandoning them. Aharonson was killed, Yazdi was doomed to spend her life in a wheelchair.

In the harshest punishment handed down for a manslaughter charge involving a road accident, Tel Aviv District Court Judge Zvi Gurfinkel sentenced Simon to 20 years in jail. But on appeal, the Supreme Court lowered Simon’s sentence to 14 years, arguing that the 20-year decision “radically exceeded the conventional punishment.”

We have in the past criticized the Supreme Court’s pedantic adherence to the principle of sentencing consistency, disregarding in the process the need to punish Simon’s contempt for human life, made doubly worse by very calculated cover-up tactics. We might now add that the Supreme Court’s decision to reduce the sentence handed down by Judge Gurfinkel might have been in Judge Caspit’s mind when he ruled on the Cheshin case.

No judge wants to see his ruling overturned by a higher court.

Under the circumstances, we welcome a new bill, drafted by MKs Moshe Matlon and Robert Elituv (Israel Beiteinu) and Ze’ev Bielski (Kadima) that would ban plea bargains in hit-and-run cases. It would also increase the maximum sentence for a fatal hit-and-run – not including other offenses such as driving under the influence or obstructing justice – to 14 years from just seven to nine years at present. The seven-to-nine- year maximum would be transformed into the minimum.

The Knesset Constitution, Law and Justice Committee approved the bill earlier thismonth for its second and third readings. Let’s hope it becomes law soon. If judges refuse to heed the call of retired justice Cheshin for harsh punishment against hit-and-run criminals, lawmakers are right to step in and force them to do so.

Democracy in Tunisia

In his 1991 book The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century, political scientist Samuel Huntington argued that Tunisia was a prime candidate for democracy. Since Huntington’s book was published this became even more true.

The country’s impressive economic growth, educated middle class, high rate of female literacy, strong sense of a unified national identity, non-politicized military, and relatively active civil culture of labor unions and Bar association seemed to position the Maghreb country particularly well for a democratic system of government.

Huntington’s assessment now seems to have been vindicated.

Starting December of last year, Tunisia became the first Arab country to rebel against and then overthrow its autocratic leadership, without any significant outside intervention.

In the process, Tunisia’s masses set in motion the Arab Spring. Grassroots uprisings that took the world by surprise swept through Egypt, Bahrain, Yemen and Syria.

On Sunday, Tunisia became the very first of the Arab Spring nations to hold a free, democratic election. Yet, while voting was remarkably well organized and turnout was exceedingly high, the victory of the Islamist Ennahda, or “Renaissance” party, which garnered a plurality of about 40 percent, according to preliminary vote tallies, is a worrying sign.

If Islamists have succeeded in Tunisia, a country widely considered to be the mostsecularized and democracy-inclined Arab country, the prospects for Egypt and Libya, both preparing for their own elections, are far from promising.

Admittedly, in comparison to other Islamists parties, such as the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, which stands a good chance of coming to power in Egypt’s upcoming elections, or Hamas, which in 2006 took advantage of a hastily implemented democratic election among Palestinians to rise to power, Ennahda, can, and has, been referred to as “soft Islamist” in its approach.

Rachid Ghannouchi, Ennahda’s head, said in an interview with Al Jazeera after returning to Tunisia from exile that Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party was closest to Ennahda’s in its outlook. Though he was attempting to point to Ennahda’s relatively moderate political approach, Ghannushi’s analogy was hardly comforting.

Turkey regularly represses the press and intimidates secular military and business figures at home, while forming an anti-Western axis in the region with the likes of Iran and Egypt’s up-and-coming Islamists.




Ghannouchi is also rabidly anti-Israel. Following the end of the Gaza War in January 2009, for instance, Ghannouchi praised Allah who “routed the Zionist Jews,” and labeled the Israeli withdrawal/disengagement from Gaza in 2005 as “the first step in the complete victory of all of Palestine and the holy places of the Muslims.”

Living under former president Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali’s autocratic regime was undoubtedly unpleasant for most Tunisians. The man was regularly reelected, sometimes getting more than 90 percent of the vote – a sure sign that human beings’ natural propensity for dissent had been either bypassed by ballot fraud or repressed by intimidation. Security forces regularly patrolled Internet cafes and other supposed hotbeds of sedition. The reason cited for the state’s intrusive policing was the need to counter Islamic extremists.

However, it was abundantly clear that once suppression of dissent was condoned for one group it became unruly and imperfect and metastasized, though it never reached the maniacal extremes witnessed in, say, neighboring Libya.

Ben Ali’s regime was not all bad, however. When the ancient synagogue on Djerba Island was truck-bombed by al-Qaida in April 2002, for instance, the government rushed to express solidarity and to rebuild.

It has been two decades since Huntington accurately assessed Tunisia’s potential for developing a democratic regime. His prediction has come true. It would be a tragedy and a sober lesson about the dangers of democracy if the very democratic process envisioned for Tunisia by Huntington ended up bringing to power an Islamist political party that will use its democratic mandate to roll back the positive reforms implemented under Ben Ali’s autocratic regime.