Amb Bolton Speaks This Evening To Sold Out Audience. Cartoon, Videos and Links. Elliott Abram's Op Ed.

Amb. Bolton will be the SIRC's President Day Speaker this evening and we have house guests and also our son, Daniel, came in town.

Amb. Bolton will be speaking to an oversold audience and I will do my best to capture the essence of his address in a subsequent memo.

This will simply be a cartoon memo and linkage on a variety of topics. Some humorous, some prophetic some sad.

AND:

One small spelling error:

Let me tell you friends that one simple spelling mistake--even a typo—can make your life hell. 

I recently texted a short, romantic note to my wife while I was away on a golf trip, and I missed one small "e". 

No problem you might say.

Not so.

This tiny error has caused me to seek police protection to enter my own house.

I wrote, "Hi darling, I’m enjoying and experiencing the best time of my whole life, and I wish you were her. 

And More:

"American Pie" was the name of the plane that Buddy Holly went down in.  I have listened to the words to American Pie for many years and I thought I understood everything that was being sung.

However, when the words are put together with pictures and film clips the song takes on a new meaning.

It took a lot of thought to produce this. Sure brings back lots of memories.

It makes the lyrics really come alive! This is very, very well done.

http://youtu.be/VhX3b1h7GQw"
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Before I end, I want to leave you with three thoughts that form/comprise a theme I have expressed/addressed many times.

To destroy freedom  there are three things that must happen:

First, you must  control one's access/freedom to health care..

Second, you must intimidate people and deprive them of their freedom to express themselves.

Third, you must take away their freedom of personally protecting themselves and their government's ability to protect you which is an extension of protecting yourself  and your family'

These three freedoms are currently under attack from the radical left. The attacks are subtle but they are  real and have made significant advances.

 I cite the recent killings in Florida, attacks on free speech as evidenced by Amy Wax's op ed, and the un-funding of our military in order to pay for social entitlements and Obamacare. Think about this!
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My friend Elliott Abrams speaks out. (See 1 and 1a below.)
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No memos for several days.

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Dick
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1)

How to Ensure the Future of the U.S.-Israel Relationship

Is a defense treaty a good idea, and would it increase or decrease popular American support for the Jewish state?

By Elliott Abrams

The title of Charles Freilich’s essay in Mosaic, “Has Israel Grown Too Dependent on the United States?,” raises a very important question to which Freilich offers a number of answers and recommendations. Before considering his overall approach, I would like to take exception to three separate points he makes in passing.

First: Freilich claims that in 2005, “it was the American position that led to [Prime Minister Ariel] Sharon’s decision to withdraw from Gaza in its entirety, to dismantle all of the Israeli settlements there, and [also]to remove four settlements in the West Bank.” He’s not alone in this claim; it has been widely argued that Washington bent Sharon’s arm to force him to move out of Gaza. But the claim is false. I was closely involved in these matters while working in the George W. Bush White House, and I believe Freilich is correct only as to the last point: the removal of the four settlements in the West Bank.

As for the major decision—namely, to withdraw and remove Israeli settlements from Gaza—that was not the result of White House pressure. It was Sharon’s own decision, and it came as a surprise to us. We did counsel him to cut cleanly if he was cutting at all, on the ground that half-measures would reap neither political nor military benefit; he and many other Israeli generals agreed. And we also urged him to make some simultaneous move, however small, in the West Bank. The four removed settlements were, in fact, tiny.

Second: Freilich describes the 2006 war in Lebanon as “the first military confrontation . . . in which Israel did not face limits on the time it had to achieve its military objectives before the great powers would intervene to end the fighting.” Not so. In fact, Israel was subjected to heavy American pressure, brought to bear by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, to bring the fighting to an end. When the United States began to negotiate the terms of the UN Security Council resolution ending the war, then-Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was still asking for more time to achieve Israel’s objectives.

Third: Freilich describes Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as “more embattled with Washington than any predecessor.“ This would likely surprise Yitzḥak Shamir, who battled continuously with President George H.W. Bush and Secretary of State James Baker, and surely would amaze David Ben-Gurion, who was forced by Dwight D. Eisenhower and Secretary of State John Foster Dulles to disgorge Israel’s conquests in Sinai during the Suez crisis of 1956-57. Netanyahu’s strained personal relations with President Barack Obama, and even the open arguments over the Iran nuclear deal, pale in comparison with the confrontation between Jerusalem and Washington over Suez, which took place at a time when today’s rich pattern of Israel-U.S. commercial, military, intelligence, and political links did not exist.

More generally, and extrapolating from these points, I would suggest that Israel’s arguments with, and dependency on, the United States must all be seen in context. Freilich is certainly right to draw our attention to Israel’s dependency on its one true ally. Still, is this so rare in world politics? Is not Japan equally dependent for its security on the United States, and are not Taiwan and South Korea as well? Isn’t it fair to say that, during the cold war, all of the West European states were dependent for their security on the U.S.? Moreover, while Israel has, as Freilich shows, lost some of its independence due to its relationship with the United States, that, too, is a familiar aspect of international relations. Does Canada have “full” independence on a broad array of security matters? Does any member of NATO? Does Australia?

Israel’s situation is thus far from unique. The United States (which itself, given its various treaty relationships and web of overseas commitments, is also not “fully” independent) is a superpower; many countries depend for their own security on the decisions Washington makes regarding arms supplies, military aid, military commitments, and the widest range of foreign-policy and national-security affairs.

All that said,Freilich has a powerful overarching thesis: Israel does indeed exhibit a large measure of dependency on the United States as a supplier of arms and aid, and would be materially hurt should American support disappear. He is also right to point to political and cultural trends suggesting that popular American support for Israel might someday become reduced. Just a few weeks ago, on January 23, the Pew survey center released new findingsabout some of those trends, including this one:

The partisan divide in Middle East sympathies, for Israel or the Palestinians, is now wider than at any point since 1978. Currently, 79 percent of Republicans say they sympathize more with Israel than the Palestinians, compared with just 27 percent of Democrats.

As Freilich states, the declining support for Israel among Democrats, and also among younger Americans, is a very worrying phenomenon.

Hence his two important suggestions for strengthening the U.S.-Israel relationship and ensuring its future: first, that Israel begin to wean itself off of U.S. military aid; second, that it anchor the relationship in a permanent defense treaty. I agree with the first and oppose the second.

Israel is an increasingly well-off country and thus increasingly less in need of money from Washington. In early 2017, when the new ten-year military aid agreement was negotiated, I had hoped the dollar amount of assistance would stay at its existing level rather than be increased again. Instead, the dollar amount has risen once more. I agree with Freilich that at the end of the current agreement, in 2027, we should begin to build down, in the same way that, beginning in the late 1990s, U.S. economic aid to Israel was reduced over time until zeroing out in 2007.

In this case, the goal should not be to reach zero but rather significantly to reduce Israel’s dependence—and thereby, as with economic aid, to demonstrate to Americans that Israel (a) does not take their help for granted and (b) is always ready to stand on its own feet to the extent possible. Being an aid recipient is not necessary to Israel’s maintaining intimate and mutually beneficial defense relationships with the United States, and the move could have political benefits as well.

When it comes to the subject of a defense treaty, Freilich candidly states the counterarguments: there is no current need for one, given the tight security relations that already exist; a treaty “could result in a loss of Israel’s freedom of maneuver”—the very thing he is most worried about both in his Mosaic essay and in his forthcoming book on Israeli national security; and a treaty “might erode Israel’s national ethos of self-reliance and thereby diminish support for Israel in the United States, which has long been predicated on the assumption that Israel, unlike other allies, defends itself.”

Freilich understates that last of these points. I believe American popular support for Israel is in good part tied to the perception that it is unique in in its determination to defend itself by itself. Israeli leaders make this pledge repeatedly: for example, in addressing a joint session of Congress in 2011, Netanyahu said: “You don’t need to send American troops to Israel. We defend ourselves.” A treaty committing the United States to defend Israel would undermine, indeed erase, that pledge and similarly weaken popular support for the U.S.-Israel relationship.

Still, Freilich in the end favors the idea. I believe that he is right to raise the treaty question, but wrong to think such an agreement would guarantee or even add much to Israeli security. That security is better anchored in the widespread popular support that Israel has won and can continue to win as our unique ally: a country whose people widely admire and support the United States, and a country that aims to fight for itself.

1a)

Flare-ups in Israel's north and south: An Iranian butterfly effect? By CHARLES BYBELEZER/THE MEDIA LINE Experts debate whether Saturday's violence in Gaza is directly related to last week's exchange with Iranian forces in Syria.

Connecting the dots between Saturday's conflagration with the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip and last weekend's flare-up along the northern border with Syria has many analysts drawing a direct line to Tehran. The latest exchange began when an explosive device injured four Israeli soldiers—two seriously—who were investigating a suspicious flag along the border fence with the Palestinian enclave. That the bomb was attached to the object and remotely detonated only once the patrol neared confirms that it was a deliberate act aimed at causing mass casualties. “This was a severe terrorist attack that has the potential to destabilize the region,” IDF Spokesman Brig.-Gen. Ronen Manelis affirmed, and, indeed, the incident prompted the most intense Israeli military response in Gaza since the 2014 war. The IDF retaliated by striking a total of eighteen Hamas targets, including outposts, weapons manufacturing facilities and a subterranean tunnel intended to penetrate Israeli territory. A rocket fired overnight from the Strip into Israel hit a house in a southern community, causing limited damage and no injuries. The conflagration comes exactly one week after a major altercation provoked by the penetration of Israeli airspace by an Iranian drone. In response, the IDF struck a dozen targets in Syria, destroying up to half of the country's air defense systems after an Israeli jet was downed by a barrage of surface-to-air missiles for the first time in three decades. As the dust settles along the Syrian border, media reports claim that Hamas has conveyed to Israel through Egyptian intermediaries that it is not interested in a further escalation. But the terror group has become increasingly beholden to Iran, which has upped its financing to Gaza's rulers to shore up its influence over the territory. Observers agree it is possible that Hamas, at the behest of the Islamic Republic, simply turned a blind eye to Saturday's attack. Moreover, while the Israeli government holds Hamas responsible for all hostilities emanating from the enclave, it is notable that the first target struck by the IDF after its soldiers were injured was an observation tower belonging to Iranian proxy Islamic Jihad. In his comments, Manelis implied that the otherwise localized confrontation could have broader regional implications, which itself suggests that the army views growing tensions along Israel's northern and southern borders as connected. The common denominator: Iran. "I would not rule out that this is attack occurred under Iranian guidance," Brig. Gen. Michael Herzog, an International Fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and the former head of the IDF's Strategic Planning Division, told The Media Line. "It is not that groups in Gaza need the motivation, but there has not been an occurrence like this in a long time so it seems that there was some kind of Iranian hand [operating] behind the scene." Israel’s Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman on Sunday attributed the attack to the Popular Resistance Committees (PRC), a coalition of Palestinian terror groups that has ties to the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps and Hizbullah. As such, Herzog believes that there is likely a linkage between the two violent outbreaks over the past week. "Since there is a lot of tension in the north, Israel does not seek to intensify things in the south, but it may be an Iranian interest to do so," he explained. "The Iranians would like to establish a new deterrence balance as they are uneasy about the way that Israel has been acting freely in the Syrian theater. They are sending a message that there is a price to pay and also showing Israel that they have tools at their disposal." Jerusalem may, in fact, perceive developments in this light, given Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's statements Sunday from the Munich Security Conference. "Do not test our resolve," the premier asserted while holding up a fragment of the Iranian drone that Israel shot down. He further promised to prevent the "tyrants in Tehran [from]…putting a noose of terror around [Israel's] neck." According to Col. (ret.) Kobi Marom, an expert on Hamas and Hizbullah, "the incident in the north was significant as for the first time there was a direct confrontation between Israel and Iran and the damage that the Iranians suffered prompted them to lash out. The Iranian regime wants to dramatically increase its influence all around Israel," he stressed to The Media Line, "not only in Syria and Lebanon but also in Gaza. That is their objective, to create a multi-front threat to Israel." For her part, Col. (res.) Miri Eisin, a former adviser to the prime minister, believes that the clash with Gaza is mainly attributable to internal circumstances. "While there will always be a connection to the broader context," she told The Media Line, "the latest outbreak in the south has more to do with the domestic Palestinian front. The attack Saturday was a manifestation of the demonstrations along the border a day earlier, which were initially directed against Hamas, but then adeptly re-directed towards Israel, the really bad guy." Eisen noted that tensions with Gaza have been brewing for months, given the humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip; Israel's growing success in targeting Hamas' attack tunnels; and the terror group's deepening frustration over its inability to forge reconciliation with the Palestinian Authority in order to cede administrative control of the enclave. "Hamas tries to attack Israel all the time," she concluded, "but most often it does not succeed. This time it did and coming on the backdrop of the downing of an Israeli jet there is a [propensity] to draw quick conclusions. Events in the Middle East impact each other but the challenges in the Strip have always been there and aren't going anywhere, irrespective of the Iranians." As regards Israel's defense minister, he vowed to "eliminate" those responsible for the attack on the IDF soldiers, adding that the score would remain unsettled until this eventuality. But it is one thing to terminate the PRC cell that directly perpetrated the bombing, while a response of an altogether different magnitude would be required if Jerusalem indeed intends to hold the Iranian regime accountable.

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