Israel and the United States are completely out of alignment on the Iranian issue. This became clear from a statement made by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley, to Congress six months ago (March 2023). Milley said his main concern was about "deployed nuclear weapons." It ostensibly sets a new condition for past declarations and promises made by the Americans, who took it upon themselves to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. The significance of General Milley's statement is that even if Iran has enough fissile material at an enrichment level of 60 percent or more, certainly 90 percent; And even if it is capable of assembling nuclear weapons and developing a long-range ballistic missile to carry the warhead, and even if there is already a combination of all three elements, Iran will still not be in conflict with the American promise, including the one made this week by Biden.
It is hard to think of greater flexibility than this, and it reinforces statements made by Ron Dermer even before he was appointed minister, because signs show that the United States has shifted to a strategy of containment vis-à-vis Iran's nuclear program, rather than prevention or elimination.
Thus, to a large extent, the meeting between Prime Minister Netanyahu and the aging and weakening president somewhere in Delaware, important and optimistic, was secondary in importance to Netanyahu's meeting with Elon Musk and his participation in discussions on AI. The only bright spot on the Iranian issue is the ongoing preparation effort by Israel's security leaders to prepare the US administration for the possibility that Israel will act against the nuclear program when it decides to do so, in the spirit of the vows of the Mossad chief, the chief of staff and other senior IDF intelligence officials.
The meeting with the president was intended mainly to convey a return to normalization in Israel, while talking about normalization with Saudi Arabia. If there is a breakthrough with the Saudis following the announcement of land links via Israel, and a high-level meeting is held with President Biden, the economy in Israel – and in the US – should receive an upward push. This optimistic option could explain Ehud Barak's violent incitement in an interview with CBS. His goal is not to block undesirable legislation, as far as he is concerned, but to send a message to international actors that Israel is not returning to stability. That the climate of uncertainty remains. And his militias will take care of that.
Netanyahu-Erdogan Meeting in New York | Roy Avraham /GPO, Sound: Yehezkel Kandil /GPO
That leaves the meeting with multibillionaire Musk, which has received huge exposure in front of millions, as the most important meeting this week. There was a moment in the meeting when the prime minister repeated several times the phrase "we don't have time, we don't have much time." Because of this repetition, it's unclear what he meant, securing humanity from the dangers of AI, or something else he didn't name: the issue of Iran, which Biden downplayed. Because of the changing times, an Israeli prime minister does not have to close an hour or two slot at the White House or a hotel in New York with the president. It is possible to meet with America even without the president, and meeting with Elon Musk is the really important thing.
The live broadcast on Twitter was a brilliant strategic move by the prime minister, who faces forces seeking to destroy him. It was a tripartite flank, of the American administration, of the "protest" in its anti-Israel campaign in the United States, and of the murderous media. The meeting with Musk also somewhat brought back some pretentious high-tech entrepreneurs to their natural dimensions. The possibility of Israel's partnership with the American techno mogul in developing AI in beneficial but protected and sane ways is a look to the future. It is clear that the dozens of demonstrators in San Jose and New York did not come from Sderot, Petah Tikva or south Tel Aviv; They're either relocation or those who, in a moment's resolution, jump to Ben Gurion Airport and sing "A.M. Living on a Jet Plain."
Biden's catch
If the aging president doesn't decide to retire soon, as even most Democrats hope, the Republican Party could start ironing out the suits
In the domestic political arena in the US, there is a clear deterioration in President Biden's situation. Two factors strongly influence domestic public opinion. One, Hunter Biden's more and more entanglements with the law, and some of the information that is being released links Biden Sr. to the corruption offenses of Biden Jr. related to his business dealings in Ukraine, China and the rest of the world. As a result, impeachment proceedings begin in Congress. The second factor is that Biden will be 82 years old if and when he is sworn in for a second term as president.
Voters in the Democratic Party don't like what they see, and in a recent CNN poll, 67 percent of Democrats would not want Biden to run in the next presidential election. In The New York Times, the figure is more "positive": Only about 50 percent — that is, about half of Biden's voters — would prefer another presidential candidate. About a week ago, Washington Post chief political analyst David Ignatius published a very unusual article; He called on the president to announce that he would not run for president again. Ignatius notes that Biden's decision must come in the coming weeks. If that doesn't happen in the near term, it will no longer be possible to begin the democratic process from which, Democrats hope, any leader will float up to stop Donald Trump's rerun to the top. There is a correlation between Trump's rise in the national polls, his challenge to incumbent President Biden, and his strengthening among Republicans, and the growing unease within the Democratic Party and the growing number of voices demanding that Biden step down.
In general, such calls, even when people hope it will happen, are not remembered from the past. Even when President Johnson announced in early 1968 that he would not seek the Democratic nomination for a second term again, it was largely his decision. There was a strong left-wing opposition against him, but he does not recall that party activists and activists encouraged him to quit.
They are in trouble ahead of the elections. Biden and Harris, Photo: AFP
The fact that Biden will begin his second term at age 82 immediately creates the image of Vice President Kamala Harris as being within heartbeat of the presidency. Or, in any case, a high probability of Biden's retirement during his term. And Harris is really seen as unfit for the high role. So another run requires appointing a new vice president that the public won't fear will be president following Biden's retirement. All these dilemmas and vague considerations create, in the opinion of James Carville, one of the Democrats' longest-serving strategists, a situation that suppresses voting. Many Democratic voters don't want the Biden and Harris duo, which could cause them to stay home and not participate in the election.
KGB in Hebrew
30 years after Oslo, the time has come to consider the activity of the security service in those days vis-à-vis the settler right and the full cover it received from the State Prosecutor's Office
Two events described in Yuval Bloomberg's book "The Oslo Trap" make it a must-read book in the 30th year of the Oslo Accords. The first is the political weakness of Yitzhak Rabin, who simply did not control the diplomatic process that defined his life, an agreement that only a few weeks earlier he would not have thought of signing. In other words, an agreement with the PLO on self-rule in the Land of Israel, signed by the PLO representative on earth, Yasser Arafat, and accompanied by a handshake sponsored by the White House. In June 93, Rabin orders the cessation of negotiations in Oslo, and in September he signs. The second story Bloomberg reveals is the use of S.B. to fight against the settlers and parts of the opposition that opposed the Oslo Accords.
All this is included in the chapter dealing with Rabin's assassination. We must preface by saying that the Shin Bet is apparently on a different level today, and its capabilities in defending the state and Israeli society are proven every day. But the Shin Bet of the '80s and '90s looked like a branch of the KGB. The only concern is that loyalty to the law and rights is still just the camouflage of Soviet DNA. A kind of wolf disguised as Little Red Riding Hood.
Bloomberg is stitching together events that have already been exposed into a narrative of warfare against the "enemies of peace." It turns out that this metaphorical expression of Rabin and Peres had a cover in the policy of dealing with settlers. As usual, the media contributed as much as it could to a murderous collaboration with Shas agents such as Avishai Raviv, who were non-stop producing events staging violence or violent racist outbursts to the glory of advertising in mainstream media and newspapers. Major reporters testify to this collaboration that fueled headlines. They don't realize that by doing so they are incriminating themselves.
In espionage activity across borders, across lines, in enemy countries or target countries, it sometimes happens – or has happened in the past – that an agent for operational purposes is forced to marry someone as an operational necessity. But the stories of young women whom S.B. agents married for operational purposes give macabre meaning to the phrase "fictitious marriage." All this within the country, mainly in Ground Zero of Hebron and Kiryat Arba; It is also likely further north in Samaria. In the rear of the legalistic security agency stood loyal soldiers Dorit Beinish, Edna Arbel and the rest of the State Attorney's Office, who closed cases left and right due to criminality in the service of the combat to blacken the settlers and the opposition. Bloomberg quotes Shimon Sheves' testimony about a sharp confrontation between Rabin and Dorit Beinish. "I don't understand how you... Doing nothing to prosecute people who call for violence, incitement and sedition on the street in broad daylight," the prime minister said. Beinisch said it was difficult to determine where freedom of expression ended and where sedition began.
Connecting flight
The trauma of the downing of the Libyan plane in February '73 is another link in the chain that led to the Yom Kippur War. Exposing the pilots at the time could harm the Air Force today
The impression from the first episodes of Kan 11's series "The One", about Phantom Squadron 201, is that the creators sought to instill feelings of failure and guilt. The emphasis of the film is on the downing of the Libyan passenger plane in February 1973 and the failed "Model 5" operation to destroy the Syrian missiles, in which the squadron lost too many planes and pilots.
All that is true to say is that the IAF pilots fought with supreme heroism like their fellow fighters on the ground. The losses were many, and naturally they raise the question among the surviving pilots not only why I am alive and my best friend is gone, but also the frustration that accompanies the question: Where did we go wrong? It's better to say in advance: you weren't wrong, you fought. This is what happens when the realm of chaos and uncertainty of war takes over.
The same is true of the downing of the Libyan plane. In every respect, the pilots did everything possible to land the plane on the runway in the pads, and even when the firing was carried out, it was still intended to make the pilot decide to approach the landing. IDF Chief of Staff Dado Elazar testified before the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee that Moti Hod told him: "'I want to force him to land. We will shoot and we may even bring him down...' I said, 'OK.'" Moti Hod's gamble was too big. But the interesting question is, where was Defense Minister Moshe Dayan in this story? Somehow he managed to crawl out of the decision-making loop, and everything remained on the Chief-of-Staff-MACHA axis. Hod's replacement, Benny Peled, was the one who was sent to Washington to explain to the Americans what had happened. Peled's lesson, as I remember from a conversation with him in his last days, was that the command echelon would always remain alone, without the backing of the political leaders. They will operate an ejector seat even before the pilots realize that a missile has been fired at them.
The importance of the Libyan plane stems from what MK Menachem Begin said at the time: "There has never been anti-Israeli incitement on moral grounds like the one that has been going on in the past 48 hours." The headline in the Washington Post editorial was "Murder." In other words, Israel entered a moral deficit vis-à-vis the American administration, and this added something to its decision to passively absorb a surprise attack on two fronts. The film clearly illustrates how the downing of the plane affected the 201 pilots. It was a psychological shock accompanied by demoralization. There is no reason to think that the truly traumatic event did not have a similar effect on Golda, Dayan and Dado, who testified that he had aged five years during the sad affair. In the various narratives about the Yom Kippur War, there is almost no reference to the event as a factor in the sequence of events on the way to the war. But even this terrible tragedy found expression in the miniseries "The One" in an ambivalent way, which leaves a cloud of guilt on the pilots themselves. Exposing the pilots who participated in the Libyan wearable business could hurt the morale of today's pilots.
Wrong? We'll fix it! If you find a mistake in the article, please share with us