Selling Israel Down The River By Continuing To Arm Israel While Permitting Iran To Reach The Ability To Eliminate Our Tiny Ally.

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The press and media have justifiably  been accused of bias and CNBC finally made a public display for all to see a few weeks ago.

anti-Semitism on College Campuses has also increased due to the influence of radical Arab students, Saudi financing of Middle Eastern Study Departments which bash Israel by presenting lies as facts   and bleeding heart liberals caught up in Political Correctness support of these radicals and anarchists.

Paying over $240,000 for four years of garbage and tripe parading as education is quite a hefty price.

http://global100.adl.org/#map    (See 1 below)

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What I have alluded to for many months if not longer - Obama has no intention of truly protecting Israel.

Yes, he has not blocked supplying Israel with military equipment and he promotes this whenever he speaks to American Jewish groups but I maintain he is ready to sell our ally down  the river while upgrading our relationship with Iran regardless of Iran's intentions to adhere to the Iran Deal.

I have made the observation and comparison acknowledging Obama has given Israel bigger gloves but when you take into consideration Israel's tiny size and his 'koshering' of Iran's nuclear ability these larger gloves will be of little use because Obama is giving Iran a sledge hammer

In fact,  the recent article I posted in a previous memo by Sylvia Thompson supports my concern.

What Obama is doing is not only cynical but I see it as a clever  sleight of hand act to get the world to focus on the arms we supply Israel with in order to take our focus off the increasing existential threat Obama is  purposely constructing.

Thompson writes, in unmistakable language, she believes Obama hates America, is seeking to diminish our military capability and has no intention of carrying out his Constitutional commitment to defend and protect.

Time will tell. You decide! (See 2 and 2a below.)
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Dick
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1)

Installing Jew-Hatred on America's Campuses

Editor's note: See Part I of this 2-Part Series HERE.

How ironic, how tragic, that such an academic should have to face accusations that she herself is allegedly “biased” and wants to censor academic, free speech.

How frightening that she is now being shunned by her colleagues of sixteen years—and that, earlier this month, she had to file a Notice of Claim against her college District based on a variety of charges including “discrimination, assault, intentional infliction of emotional distress, failure to prevent discrimination and harassment, retaliation, and tortious interferences with law enforcement investigation.”

What exactly happened?

Dr. Nussbaum challenged an invitation to an outside speaker, Miko Peled, an Israeli Jew. According to J.J. Surbeck, the head of T.E.A.M (Training and Education About the Middle East), Peled was a long-time martial arts instructor in California who was not known as an academic. He is the author of The General’s Son: Journey of an Israeli in Palestine, published by Just Words Books in 2012. Introduced by Alice Walker, the frequent-Turkish flotilla goer, it seems to be a briskly selling title.

According to Nussbaum, Peled  writes that “Iran is not the threat, Israel is.” He engages in non-stop falsehoods against the Jewish State. Peled has “seriously mischaracterized Israeli actions as 'a mission to destroy the Palestinian people,' accused Israeli Defense Forces of 'ethnic cleansing,' and falsely stated that the ongoing peace process is “a process of apartheid and colonization.'”

Nussbaum objected to Peled’s invitation on the grounds that he does not deliver academic speeches about “Israel-Palestine” but only inflammatory, irrational, anti-Zionist speeches. Her view prevailed among a majority of the faculty in charge of such lectures. And that’s when she became a marked woman.

Another faculty member, Shahla Razavi, an Iranian professor of Mathematics and an Amnesty International advisor, began a smear campaign against her. In a Letter to the Diversity Committee (which I have obtained), Razavi actually compared Peled to “Nelson Mandela,” and “Martin Luther King;” she wrote that “Miko Peled stands as one of them.” Razavi insisted that the American doctrine of “academic freedom” is meant to protect incitement to genocide and other non-academic ravings. She also referred to various United Nations International Court of Justice rulings against Israel.

I will not repeat these allegations here since, in my view, the United Nations has been effective in only one area: That of legalizing Jew hatred. It has prevented no genocides, rescued no sex slaves, challenged no Muslim country on its religious and gender apartheid, no barbarians on their destruction of humanity's heritage (beginning with the Buddhas of Bamiyan and the earth beneath the Temple Mount in Jerusalem),  but has, rather, scapegoated Israel for all such Muslim crimes.

In her letter, Razavi also claimed that Nussbaum had threatened to “rally thousands of Jews” against her and against the Peled event and alleged that Nussbaum was “infringing on (her) right to academic freedom.”

Nussbaum wrote to the Diversity Committee too; she denied making a threat of “rallying Jews,” showed how Razavi took what she did say out of context, and insisted that she had infringed on nobody’s academic freedom. Nussbaum wrote the following:

“What my email to the author (Razavi) stated was: “The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is incredibly important and deserves and open-minded, honest, factual, and academic discussion. If we are to bring this hot topic to campus it must be in a balanced and scholarly manner.”

Nevertheless, the smear campaign was underway. For four months, hundreds of Nussbaum’s colleagues were told that Nussbaum was against academic freedom, believed in censorship, and was extremely biased when it came to discussions about Israel. During this time, no investigator contacted her and the campus harassment continued.

And then—Something Else Happened. Nussbaum continues:

“To have my voice heard, I wore a sandwich board to a faculty meeting that read: 'When did we abandon academic integrity for academic freedom.' There were two quotes from Martin Luther King Jr: 'When people criticize Zionist(s), they mean Jews. You are talking anti-Semitism,' and 'Peace for Israel means security, and we must stand with all our might to protect its right to exist, its territorial integrity.' Her board also had a quote from Gandhi: 'What is really needed to make a democracy function is not knowledge of facts, but right education.' There was also some peace literature.”

“My sandwich board was taken from where I’d left it leaning against a wall. When I found it, one of my opponents was holding it. I went to retrieve it, found myself in the middle of my four opponents in a yelling match, and one of the men grabbed my arm. I tried to yank my arm free, could not, screamed 'TAKE YOUR HANDS OFF ME!!!' I tried to yank my arm free, could not, and screamed 'LET GO OF MY ARM!!!' I finally yanked free, though he never loosened his grip. At least 100 people were in the room. People admitted to hearing 'something' or 'a ruckus' or 'Denise yelling,' but no one came forward.”

What is this really about? In my view, this physical assault had a bit less to do with prejudice against Israel per se and more to do with prejudice against women. Nussbaum is a Zionist but she is also a high profile feminist on campus—and a woman. The College’s failure to come to her aid and its eventual decision to pay her attacker’s legal costs and to actually share the same lawyer with him also confirm a profound lowering of academic and ethical standards, a caving in to bullies, and gender discrimination.

Gary Vargas, an Associate Professor of History at MSJC, was standing with Razavi at the faculty meeting. Some of Vargas's female students had confided in Nussbaum; they said that Vargas had treated them in “misogynistic” ways and that he was scornful of feminist ideas. Vargas demanded that Nussbaum “name names.” She refused to do so. It was Vargas who gripped her arm very hard and would not let go. He demanded that she tell him who these students were; he wanted them to face him directly.

Vargas’s assault left a very large and ugly bruise. (I have seen photographs of her arm after this attack.) And it shattered Nussbaum’s sense of safety on campus. None of the one-hundred people in the room came to her aid. Thereafter, according to Nussbaum:

“My opponents used unethical and illegal measures—colluding; sharing privileged information; academic bullying (making threats to not support tenure), and threats of litigation—to spread their narrative. They claimed I was coercing the Diversity Committee (DC) to rescind Peled’s invitation (which the DC eventually did), but Peled’s supporters brought him anyway, despite the protests of many MSJC teachers and students. They claimed I was trying to squash free speech and academic freedom (another lie. I suggested a panel, a debate, a mediator, etc. they refused each time). They claimed I was a puppet of AIPAC, as were the members of Congress who wrote letters on my behalf (Juan Vargas, Duncan Hunter). And of course, they claimed I was an Islamophobe.”

“My opponents’ campaign was so insidious, that not one day would pass without a student or faculty member asking me why I was attacking my colleagues; why I was bullying the Amnesty International advisor; why did I hate Palestinians, etc.  Even those friendly to me called me a “trouble-maker”. Between February and April, I made two formal complaints of workplace harassment, and I had had two private phone conversations with my college President, who swore he had my back, that my opponent was “bat-shit crazy” and “out to get” me. He later denied all of this in a deposition. He and HR promised they took my complaints seriously and that an independent investigator had been assigned. Nothing was done.”

What the hell is going on?

Anti-Israel Brownshirts are employing a new tactic on American campuses, one that is eerily similar to the recent up-close-and-personal stoning of individual Israelis by Palestinian mobs.

In both cases, these attacks are characterized by a lynch mob mentality in which a horde attacks one or two individuals.

The difference is that the attacks in Israel target random individuals. On campus, highly competent, often beloved professors in areas unrelated to the Middle East– but who are known supporters of Israel–are carefully targeted.

This is precisely what happened earlier this very year to tenured Philosophy Professor Andrew Pessin at Connecticut College.  And it also happened to tenured Sociology Professor Denise Nussbaum at MSJC at about the same time.

Both professors have been accused of “racism,”  “Islamophobia,” “hate speech,” and defamed as supporters of “ethnic cleansing.”  These false allegations were spread globally over the internet and locally in college media.

Pessin critiqued Hamas’s war against Israel last summer; Nussbaum questioned the wisdom of inviting a known anti-Israel, non-academic, highly incendiary outside speaker to discuss Israel-Palestine.

In both instances, women launched the smear campaigns. At Connecticut College, a hijab-wearing student of Bangladeshi origin launched the ideological lynch mob; at MSJC, an Iranian Mathematics Professor led the charge. Both women were highly aggressive, persistently hostile, and tactically expert in propaganda warfare. They used clearly identified buzz words calculated to evoke sympathy, fear, anger, and hatred–words such as “Israeli Nazi soldiers,” “Israeli apartheid,” “persecuted Palestinians,” “persecuted indigenous people,” etc.

According to Professor Nussbaum, the Iranian professor had her husband sit at important meetings and “glare,” non-stop, for long periods of time, a tactic which disconcerted, intimidated, and disoriented everyone.  She also began a four month smear and whisper campaign against Nussbaum, claiming that Nussbaum opposed academic freedom, believed in censorship, opposed free speech, and had threatened the Iranian by promising to “rally Jews” against her.

In both cases, the college administrations supported the lynch mobs, not the attacked target. This is eerily similar to the way in which the global media supports the Palestinian stoners and stabbers as “resistance fighters.”

In Professor Pessin’s case, the administration hastily arranged a series of pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel events—and provided no support for Professor Pessin when he began receiving hate mail and death threats. They did not reach out to him in sympathy when he took a medical leave and, to the best of my knowledge, six months later, they still have not done so.

In Professor Nussbaum’s case, the college is treating her as a whistle-blower and retaliating against her. After the college failed to investigate her charges (mentioned above),  she filed a Claim of Notice against the District.  (Professor Pessin also has a legal suit pending).

As previously noted, the College hired the same lawyer to defend both itself and Vargas. It took MSJC five months to finally get around to interviewing Vargas after he assaulted Nussbaum on school premises. And then, according to Nussbaum’s lawyers, Ken and Robert Rose, the person “supervising this presumably ‘independent and impartial’ investigation was representing Vargas at the interview.”

Having to take a medical leave was painful for Professor Nussbaum but, like Professor Pessin, she had to do so.  Nussbaum gritted her teeth and returned this fall only to face hell.

She says:

“In general, my colleagues and administrators now look the other way when I walk by. Like I don’t exist. I am a pariah. No one wants to get involved. I was one of the most powerful faculty members on campus. If this could happen to me it could happen to anyone. Some faculty members and students asked me why I hated (the Iranian attacker), and why I opposed free speech and academic freedom.”

A colleague with whom she has “worked for years,” now calls her “the trouble maker.” When questioned, this colleague admitted that she had heard “something” about “my trying to keep a peace activist from coming to campus.” Nussbaum then explained to her who Miko Peled (the invited speaker) really is. Her colleague’s response? “Well, I have a Palestinian student….”

Nussbaum’s union President “was actively lobbying for (my) abuser at our graduation ceremony when the entire faculty was present but I wasn’t. This woman had been a friend, she has been to my home. She admitted that while she had been present, she did not see what happened. Others told her that ‘it was no big deal.’”

This semester, the Administration has been actively undercutting her teaching schedule and her responsibilities as Chair of her Department. “No administrators, including my Academic Dean have communicated to me since my first complaint of harassment.” (This was the problem long before she brought a lawsuit; in fact, as previously noted, just such non-communication and non-action is one of the reasons she was forced to sue).

Her Administration did not pursue her complaint; then, the Campus Police lied to Nussbaum’s attorneys, saying that Nussbaum had not wanted to take the matter any further. Now, according to Nussbaum, her Dean is changing her program without telling her and writing to her associate faculty members without including her. “It is unheard of. No one, not a single person in administration at the school has ever, once, contacted me to offer support or information.”

Nussbaum, like Pessin, is being shunned.  Without due process, they have been found guilty of politically incorrect Thought Crimes. The craven crowd believes that even if the allegations are false, that such professors deserve to be driven out.

The long and toxic propaganda campaign against Israel led to suicide killers and stabbers in Israel who wantonly murdered innocent civilians—but who were still viewed as “freedom fighters.”

The results of this same campaign may also be seen on American and Canadian campuses. Crack-pot views are being treated as scholarly; real scholars are being successfully damned as racists—and harassed off campus and out of the academic world.

We should all be very worried about this.

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2)  These stories form the backdrop of next week’s meeting between Netanyahu and Obama – the first they will have held in more than a year. They indicate that Obama remains committed to his policy of weakening Israel and downgrading America’s alliance with the Jewish state while advancing US ties with Iran. Israel, for its part, remains deeply distrustful of the American leader.

This Israeli distrust of Obama’s intentions extends far past Iran. Recent statements by Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry have convinced Israel that during his last 15 months in office, Obama intends to abandon US support for Israel at the UN Security Council, and to ratchet up pressure and coercive measures to force Israel to make irreversible concessions to the Palestinians.

"Unfortunately for Pelosi and her colleagues, Iran is a far more formidable obstacle to implementing the deal than congressional Republicans."

Our World: Showdown at the OK Corral

By CAROLINE B. GLICK Whatever he says before the cameras next week when he meets with Netanyahu, Obama has no intention of letting bygones be bygones.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s meeting with US President Barack Obama next week is likely to look less like a rapprochement than a showdown at the OK Corral. The flurry of spy stories spinning around in recent weeks makes clear that US-Israel relations remain in crisis. Two weeks ago, The Wall Street Journal published a fairly detailed account of the US’s massive spying operations against Israel between 2010 and 2012. Their purpose was to prevent Israel from attacking Iran’s nuclear installations. The Journal report, which was based on US sources, also detailed the evasion tactics the Obama administration employed to try to hide its covert nuclear talks with Iran from Israel. According to the report, the administration was infuriated that through its spy operations against Iran, Israel discovered the talks and the government asked the White House to tell it what was going on. Over the past several days, the Israeli media have reported the Israeli side of the US spying story. Friday Makor Rishon’s military commentator Amir Rapaport detailed how the US assiduously wooed IDF senior brass on the one hand and harassed more junior Israeli security officials on the other hand. Former IDF chiefs of General Staff Lt.-Gens. Gabi Ashkenazi and Benny Gantz were given the red carpet treatment in a bid to convince them to oppose Israeli strikes on Iran’s nuclear installations. More junior officials, including officers posted officially to the US were denied visas and subjected to lengthy interrogations at US embassies and airports in a bid to convince them to divulge information about potential Israeli strikes against Iran. Sunday, Channel 2 reported that the IDF’s Intelligence Directorate’s information security department just issued guidance to all IDF soldiers and officers warning them about efforts by the CIA to recruit them as US agents. These stories have been interpreted in various ways. Regardless of how they are interpreted, what they show is that on the one hand, the Obama administration has used US intelligence agencies to weaken Israel’s capacity to harm Iran and to actively protect Iran from Israel. And on the other hand, Israel is wary of the administration’s efforts to weaken it while strengthening its greatest foe. These stories form the backdrop of next week’s meeting between Netanyahu and Obama – the first they will have held in more than a year. They indicate that Obama remains committed to his policy of weakening Israel and downgrading America’s alliance with the Jewish state while advancing US ties with Iran. Israel, for its part, remains deeply distrustful of the American leader. This Israeli distrust of Obama’s intentions extends far past Iran. Recent statements by Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry have convinced Israel that during his last 15 months in office, Obama intends to abandon US support for Israel at the UN Security Council, and to ratchet up pressure and coercive measures to force Israel to make irreversible concessions to the Palestinians. From Netanyahu’s perspective, then, the main strategic question is how to prevent Obama from succeeding in his goal of weakening the country. The implementation of Obama’s deal with Iran deal will form a central plank of whatever strategy the government adopts. As far as Obama and his allies see things, the nuclear accord with Iran is a done deal. On October 21, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi hosted a reception for Democratic congressmen attended by White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough to celebrate its official adoption. Unfortunately for Pelosi and her colleagues, Iran is a far more formidable obstacle to implementing the deal than congressional Republicans. As Yigal Carmon, president of the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), explained in a report published on his organization’s website last week, at no point has any Iranian governing body approved the nuclear deal. Iran’s parliament, the Majlis, and its Guardians’ Council have used their discussions of the agreement to highlight their refusal to implement it. More importantly, as Carmon explains, contrary to US media reports, in his October 21 letter to Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, Iran’s Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei did not give his conditional approval to the deal. He rejected it. Carmon explained that the nine conditions Khamenei placed on his acceptance of the nuclear deal render it null and void. Among other things, Khamenei insisted that all sanctions against Iran must be permanently canceled. Obama couldn’t abide by this condition even if he wanted to because he cannot cancel sanctions laws passed by Congress. He can only suspend them. Khamenei also placed new conditions on Iran’s agreement to disable its centrifuges and remove large quantities of enriched uranium from its stockpiles. He rejected inspections of Iran’s military nuclear installations. He insisted that Iran’s Arak heavy water reactor must remain capable of producing heavy water in contravention of the deal. And he insisted that at the end of the 15-year lifetime of the deal Iran must have sufficient uranium enrichment capability to enable it to develop bombs at will. As Carmon noted, the US and EU have announced that they will suspend their nuclear sanctions against Iran on December 15 provided that by that date, the UN’s International Atomic Energy Commission certifies that Iran has upheld its part of the bargain. By that date, in conformance with their interpretation of the nuclear deal, the US and the EU expect for Iran to have reduced the number of centrifuges operating at the Natanz facility from 16,000 to 5,060 and lower enrichment levels to 3.67%; reduce the number of centrifuges at Fordow to a thousand; remove nearly all its advanced centrifuges from use; permit the IAEA to store and seal its dismantled centrifuges; reduce its stockpile of enriched uranium to 300kg.; remove the core from the Arak reactor and disable it; and submit to agreed monitoring mechanisms of its nuclear sites. Carmon noted that Iran has taken no steps to fulfill any of these conditions. With Khamenei’s rejection of the nuclear deal and Iran’s refusal to implement it, there are two possible ways the US and the EU can proceed. First, as Carmon suggests, Obama and the EU may renew nuclear talks with Iran based on Khamenei’s new position. These talks can drag out past Obama’s departure from office. When they inevitably fail, Obama’s successor can be blamed. The other possibility is that Iran will implement some component of the deal and so allow Obama and the EU to pretend that it is implementing the entire deal. Given the US media’s failure to report that Khamenei rejected the nuclear pact, it is a fair bet that Obama will be able to maintain the fiction that Iran is implementing the deal in good faith until the day he leaves office. So what is Israel to do? And how can Netanyahu use his meeting with Obama next week to Israel’s advantage? Israel has two policy options going forward. First, it can highlight the fact that Iran is not implementing the deal, just as Israel took the lead in highlighting the dangers of the nuclear accord with Iran over the past year. This policy can potentially force Obama onto the defensive and so make it harder for him to go on the offensive against Israel at the UN and other venues in relation to the Palestinians. But then, it is far from clear that Obama will be deterred from adopting anti-Israel positions at the UN even if Israel succeeds making an issue of Iranian noncompliance with the nuclear deal. Moreover, if Netanyahu leads the discussion of the Iran’s bad faith, as he drove the discussion of the nuclear deal itself, he will reinforce the already prevalent false assessment in the US that a nuclear Iran threatens Israel but is not dangerous for the US. This incorrect assessment has made a lot of Americans believe that by seeking to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, Israel is advancing is own interests at America’s expense. The other policy option is the one that Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon indicated Israel is pursuing in his meeting last week with his counterpart Defense Secretary Ashton Carter. At the Pentagon Ya’alon declared, “The Iran deal is a given. Our disputes are over.” The downside of this position is that it indicates that Israel accepts the legitimacy of a deal that Iran is not implementing and that would imperil Israel’s national security even if Iran were implementing it. Its upside is that it takes Israel out of the US debate regarding the nuclear deal. To the extent that opponents of Obama’s Iran policy are willing to lead the fight against the deal themselves, Israel could do worse than to take a step back and plot its own course on Iran, independent of the US policy discussion. It is hard to know which line of action makes more sense. But as the spy stories demonstrated, one thing is clear enough. Whatever he says before the cameras next week when he meets with Netanyahu, Obama has no intention of letting bygones be bygones.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2a) Can Israel’s military edge be sustained?(article in The Daily Tip.) The core concept of Israel’s national security strategy is and has always been its Qualitative Military Edge (QME). Put simply, it means that Israel must build and maintain a military that is qualitatively better than any other in the region. Originally formulated by Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, this long standing doctrine, grounded on the reality of Israel’s small size and embattled status in the Middle East, is now facing a grave challenge as the balance of power in the region tilts increasingly toward Iran. As Israel emerged victorious from the 1948 War of Independence, Ben-Gurion grasped that because the Jewish state lacked the territorial depth required for its population to separate itself from an attacking enemy, it could not lose a war without losing its territory. Any enemy victory would mean the physical conquest of Israel. Thus, Israel required a QME in order to prevent the catastrophic loss of Israeli life and land. America has recognized the existential importance of Israel’s QME since 1968, when U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson sold Israel F-4 Phantom fighter jets, one year after France—which had provided the backbone of Israel’s air force over the previous two decades—imposed an embargo on weapons sales to the Jewish state on the eve of the Six-Day War. But the U.S. also recognized the QME’s irreplaceable role in creating a balance of power in the region favorable to American interests. As a result, every president since Johnson has contributed to the maintenance of Israel’s QME in one form or another, and Congress has authorized the sale and supply of the military equipment and financing required to ensure that Israel’s needs are met. Since 9/11, Congress has become especially aggressive in pushing the Executive Branch to guarantee Israel’s QME. In 2008, Congress passed and President George W. Bush signed into law House Resolution 7177, which defined the requirements for Israel to maintain its QME. This was a critical development in American policy toward Israel, because it set a high minimum standard for U.S. military support. H.R. 7177 stipulates that Israel’s QME requires the “ability to counter and defeat any credible conventional military threat from any individual state or possible coalition of states or from non-state actors” while Sustaining minimal damages and casualties, through the use of superior military means, possessed in sufficient quantity, including weapons, command, control, communication, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance capabilities that in their technical characteristics are superior in capability to those of such other individual or possible coalition of states or non-state actors. America’s role in maintaining Israel’s QME is not just good for Israel. It benefits America greatly, because it guarantees Israel’s status as a “Strong Horse” in the region, keeping American influence at the forefront. The Strong Horse concept was explained by journalist Lee Smith in his book of the same name, in which he argued that the Middle East has historically been dominated by leaders and countries that catapult themselves into positions of regional influence through demonstrations of military superiority. These Strong Horse leaders maintain their positions of power until they are supplanted by a militarily superior rival. Israel’s QME has confirmed it as a regional Strong Horse, and American support has enabled the U.S. to project power and influence via Israel’s military superiority in two significant ways: First, Arab states have been dissuaded from engaging in dangerous military adventurism that would force Israel and perhaps the United States to intervene in order to keep Israel and America’s allies safe. (This, of course, required active American leadership, which has unfortunately been receding in recent years. Nevertheless, until American involvement began declining, the robust and active U.S.-Israel alliance limited what countries like Syria and actors like the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps could do.) Second, Israel has been able to do some of America’s bidding. One example of this is Israel’s ongoing contribution to protecting the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan from both ISIS and Iranian interference, significantly boosting America’s need for stability and Western-allied leadership in Jordan by setting up a joint command and control center in Jordan from which its domestic and international anti-ISIS operations are run, as well as supplying Jordan with Israeli combat helicopters and its most advanced unmanned aerial vehicles. But the Middle East is an ever-changing region, and lately the change has been for the worse. As a result of this, Israel’s military edge is being dangerously eroded at the just the time that Iran’s burgeoning QME is quickly closing the gap. 2b) Can Israel’s Military Edge Be Sustained? Aaron Menenberg Deputy Director of Congressional Affairs, Israel Allies Foundation Tower Magazine Article David Ben-Gurion famously said that in order to be a realist in Israel, you have to believe in miracles. Thus was born the “Qualitative Military Edge” strategy. Seven decades on, can it survive? The core concept of Israel’s national security strategy is and has always been its Qualitative Military Edge (QME). Put simply, it means that Israel must build and maintain a military that is qualitatively better than any other in the region. Originally formulated by Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, this long standing doctrine, grounded on the reality of Israel’s small size and embattled status in the Middle East, is now facing a grave challenge as the balance of power in the region tilts increasingly toward Iran. As Israel emerged victorious from the 1948 War of Independence, Ben-Gurion grasped that because the Jewish state lacked the territorial depth required for its population to separate itself from an attacking enemy, it could not lose a war without losing its territory. Any enemy victory would mean the physical conquest of Israel. Thus, Israel required a QME in order to prevent the catastrophic loss of Israeli life and land. America has recognized the existential importance of Israel’s QME since 1968, when U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson sold Israel F-4 Phantom fighter jets, one year after France—which had provided the backbone of Israel’s air force over the previous two decades—imposed an embargo on weapons sales to the Jewish state on the eve of the Six-Day War. But the U.S. also recognized the QME’s irreplaceable role in creating a balance of power in the region favorable to American interests. As a result, every president since Johnson has contributed to the maintenance of Israel’s QME in one form or another, and Congress has authorized the sale and supply of the military equipment and financing required to ensure that Israel’s needs are met. Since 9/11, Congress has become especially aggressive in pushing the Executive Branch to guarantee Israel’s QME. In 2008, Congress passed and President George W. Bush signed into law House Resolution 7177, which defined the requirements for Israel to maintain its QME. This was a critical development in American policy toward Israel, because it set a high minimum standard for U.S. military support. H.R. 7177 stipulates that Israel’s QME requires the “ability to counter and defeat any credible conventional military threat from any individual state or possible coalition of states or from non-state actors” while Sustaining minimal damages and casualties, through the use of superior military means, possessed in sufficient quantity, including weapons, command, control, communication, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance capabilities that in their technical characteristics are superior in capability to those of such other individual or possible coalition of states or non-state actors. America’s role in maintaining Israel’s QME is not just good for Israel. It benefits America greatly, because it guarantees Israel’s status as a “Strong Horse” in the region, keeping American influence at the forefront. The Strong Horse concept was explained by journalist Lee Smith in his book of the same name, in which he argued that the Middle East has historically been dominated by leaders and countries that catapult themselves into positions of regional influence through demonstrations of military superiority. These Strong Horse leaders maintain their positions of power until they are supplanted by a militarily superior rival. Israel’s QME has confirmed it as a regional Strong Horse, and American support has enabled the U.S. to project power and influence via Israel’s military superiority in two significant ways: First, Arab states have been dissuaded from engaging in dangerous military adventurism that would force Israel and perhaps the United States to intervene in order to keep Israel and America’s allies safe. (This, of course, required active American leadership, which has unfortunately been receding in recent years. Nevertheless, until American involvement began declining, the robust and active U.S.-Israel alliance limited what countries like Syria and actors like the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps could do.) Second, Israel has been able to do some of America’s bidding. One example of this is Israel’s ongoing contribution to protecting the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan from both ISIS and Iranian interference, significantly boosting America’s need for stability and Western-allied leadership in Jordan by setting up a joint command and control center in Jordan from which its domestic and international anti-ISIS operations are run, as well as supplying Jordan with Israeli combat helicopters and its most advanced unmanned aerial vehicles. But the Middle East is an ever-changing region, and lately the change has been for the worse. As a result of this, Israel’s military edge is being dangerously eroded at the just the time that Iran’s burgeoning QME is quickly closing the gap. On the back of a steady decline of American military and diplomatic involvement in the region since Barack Obama’s presidential victory in 2008, the latest setback to peace and prosperity is the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the nuclear deal with Iran. The JCPOA has been sold as a way to prevent Iran from further developing its nuclear weapons for the duration of the agreement. Implicit in this agreement, but not sufficiently acknowledged, is that by seeking to slow Iran’s progress, it provides an internationally-approved pathway for Iran to produce a nuclear weapon with zero breakout time in—according to the President of the United States, who fully endorses the deal—a minimum of thirteen years. Many supporters of the JCPOA, including the Obama administration, claim that the agreement strengthens the international non-proliferation regime. But this is belied by the administration’s own efforts to sell the deal to Israel and the Sunni Gulf states by offering them arms packages to offset the increased security threat they face from an empowered Iran. As the Sunni states beef up their conventional forces, they are also looking to develop their own nuclear programs to protect themselves from a nuclear Iran. As a result, what was supposed to be a non-proliferation effort is creating a new arms race across a region that is already among the most militarized in the world. Recognizing that the JCPOA provides an internationally blessed route to an Iranian nuclear weapon, several Gulf states, particularly Saudi Arabia, have begun putting together the initial pieces of their own nuclear programs, and suppliers like South Korea and Russia have not been shy about aiding them. Russia, of course, is aiding Iran at the same time, both with its nuclear program and its backing for the Assad regime in Syria. The Sunni states are moving towards nuclear programs because America’s stark retreat from the region, its acquiescence to Russia’s aggressive partnership with Iran, and its formal endorsement through the JCPOA of Iran’s nuclear program is making Iran the region’s next Strong Horse. Israel’s QME, which until quite recently helped stabilize the region and ensure American influence, is perhaps just a decade from being surpassed by Iran. The nuclear deal with Iran is a major threat to Israel’s qualitative military edge. For Israel, of course, this is a major threat. Iran has almost ten times Israel’s population and its influence is growing throughout the region. If Iran achieves nuclear capability, it would challenge Israel’s status as the region’s most dominant military power, and perhaps even supplant it. Gone would be Israel’s unquestioned QME, the favorable balance of power would be reversed, and American influence, already on a steep decline over the last decade, would precipitously fall. This devastating outcome can be avoided by maintaining Israel’s QME, and American influence and power, as defenses against a rising Iran. This will be a difficult task. Iran’s nuclear weapons program makes Israel’s quest to maintain a qualitatively superior program extremely difficult, if not impossible. Further, the terms of the JCPOA, such as America’s responsibility to help Iran protect its nuclear program from foreign attack, make America’s ability to help Israel achieve a QME in the post-JCPOA world very challenging as well. To understand why this is the case, a closer look at H.R. 7177 is required. For example, the resolution states that Israel must have “the ability to counter and defeat any credible military threat from any individual or possible coalition of states or from non-state actors.” That means that, if Iran gets a nuclear weapon, Israel must be able to counter and defeat a nuclear attack from Iran. At the same time, it must be able to counter and defeat simultaneous missile attacks from Hezbollah, Hamas, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, not to mention any ground attacks emanating from Lebanon, Syria, the West Bank, and Gaza. In addition, Israel must be able to sustain “minimal damages and casualties.” And it has to achieve all of this “through the use of superior military means.” It does not take a military expert to understand just how difficult—perhaps impossible—this objective is to achieve against a nuclear-armed Iran. This is because, on a fundamental level, an Iranian nuclear weapon hollows out the purpose of Israel’s QME, which is to negate Israel’s lack of strategic depth. In a conventional war, Israel has a strong enough military and defense system in place to keep an enemy from getting inside Israel’s territory and exploiting that lack of depth. An Iranian nuclear weapon, however, overcomes Israel’s QME by placing all of Israel’s territory under existential threat. The QME is supposed to render Israel’s lack of territorial depth irrelevant, but Iran’s nuclear weapons program makes it relevant again by creating the ability to instantly target Israel’s entire population with—given its dense concentration within a compact territory—quite devastating results. F-16s fly over Tel Aviv as part of the country’s 63rd Independence Day celebrations. Photo: Israel Defense Forces / Wikimedia Simply put, Israel cannot adequately defend itself against a nuclear-armed Iran without significant changes to its military capabilities. And making these changes is what is required of the U.S. Government according to H.R. 7177. For America to guarantee Israel’s QME in the JCPOA era and meet the definition of QME it made law in 2008, the Obama administration and Congress need to be honest about what is needed. This, in turn, requires an honest acknowledgment of the fact that authorizing further conventional military aid to Israel is insufficient to neutralize a nuclear attack. As a result, America may well need to help Israel create a nuclear program that is bigger, better, and stronger than Iran’s, and affords it second strike capability. This is a profoundly frightening realization, because it requires accepting the seemingly contradictory conclusion that, under the JCPOA, nuclear proliferation is required to maintain a chance of peace. Herman Kahn, founder of the Hudson Institute and one of the world’s preeminent nuclear deterrence theorists, argued that once a single state goes nuclear, prioritizing non-proliferation become more dangerous than achieving a strategic balance of nuclear deterrence between multiple states. The key is to limit proliferation to states that will act responsibly. Since the JCPOA means the world has now accepted nuclear proliferation in the Middle East, the right state must have nuclear weapons to deter Iran. In this scenario, Israel is clearly the most suitable state to wield a deterrent nuclear program. One measure of this is Israel’s responsibility as a nuclear power. It has been credibly rumored to possess nuclear weapons for decades. Yet it has never used them, even in such desperate situations as the 1973 Yom Kippur War. Indeed, Israel has studiously adhered to its stated policy that it will not be the first state to “introduce nuclear weapons into the Middle East.” The region has been able to to operate effectively as a nuclear-free zone, which means that there has been no need for a strategic balance of nuclear deterrence between multiple states. But nuclear proliferation in the Middle East has now become an issue because of the serious threat of Iranian and Arab nuclear power, not Israel’s ambiguous nuclear capabilities. A scientist enters the reactor hall of the nuclear facility in Nahal Sorek. Unlike the nuclear reactor at Dimona, the reactor at Nahal Sorek is inspected by the International Atomic Energy Agency twice a year. Photo: Yaakov Naumi / Flash90 If arming Israel with nuclear weapons seems too strong a reaction to the JCPOA, then the reason it must be seriously considered—Iran’s nuclear program—must be eliminated. If Iran’s nuclear program can be dismantled before the Tehran regime achieves a nuclear weapon, than the radical enhancement of Israel’s nuclear deterrent by the U.S. need not be pursued. This would be a much more desirable outcome than one that produces (at least) two nuclear-armed countries in the Middle East. Unfortunately, no international leaders have shown the appetite or courage to go after Iran’s nuclear program, because they understand Iran will fight such an effort every step of the way. It is a sad irony that the present fear of conflict, along with the belief that the feeble provisions of the JCPOA will prevent Iran from weaponizing, has increased the odds of a future conflict that would be far more horrific. Yet that risk must be accepted if we are to reduce the chances of nuclear war, which means moving to eliminate Iran’s nuclear program and creating a capable Israeli nuclear deterrent as a Plan B. Thus, Congress and the administration must look seriously and honestly at the options we have if we are to continue our role as the predominant influencer in the Middle East: Outfit Israel with a superior nuclear program, or eliminate Iran’s nuclear program altogether. This effort naturally must include Israel, which may not want to draw any more attention to a nuclear program it may or may not have given its deliberate policy of ambiguity on the subject. As the discussion takes place, all parties involved must also look for other ways to enhance Israel’s capabilities so as to compensate for its lack of territorial depth in the face of an Iranian nuclear weapon. The challenge will be finding the means to allow Israelis to remain in Israel while under nuclear attack from Iran or its proxies. Some of these will be military, but they must also be more than that. They must be diplomatic, they must be subversive, and they must be economic, because there is no military means of keeping Israelis safe in an attack involving a nuclear-armed Iran whether Iran uses the bomb or not. And so we come full circle to the reality that the JCPOA is not enough to keep the region safe from Iran. In order to limit nuclear proliferation and keep poisonous Iranian influence to a minimum, America, Israel, and their allies need a robust plan to ensure Iran’s nuclear program is eliminated, and the courage to see it through. Talking about ensuring that Israel can neutralize a nuclear-armed Iran, and moving towards that reality in order to create a credible deterrent, is a start, but demonstrative action towards the elimination of Iran’s nuclear program will be required if we are to achieve a stable Middle East free of radical rulers wielding nuclear weapons. The future of Israel, and the future of American regional influence, depends on ensuring that Israel’s QME is maintained and succeeding in eliminating Iran’s nuclear program. Failure to eliminate Iran’s nuclear capabilities means the price will be much higher for the people of the Middle East, including Iranian citizens who suffer severe oppression at the hands of a regime that will only get stronger under the JCPOA. Even without a nuclear weapon, the death and destruction that Iran has wreaked on the region has been incredible: Hundreds of thousands dead and millions displaced. There is no forgiving that, and there ought to be no accommodating it either.