The moral high ground is always a tenuous piece of property. It is difficult to obtain and is easily lost. It is seen, however, as crucial because most people, all over the world, cannot accommodate the notion that life is composed of shades of grey; they desperately need to see black and [...]]]> by Mitchell Plitnick

The moral high ground is always a tenuous piece of property. It is difficult to obtain and is easily lost. It is seen, however, as crucial because most people, all over the world, cannot accommodate the notion that life is composed of shades of grey; they desperately need to see black and white, good guys and bad guys, heroes and villains, in every situation. Nowhere is this truer than in the Israel-Palestine conflict.

It has become even more important for Israel to fight this rhetorical battle because, while it can always count on mindless support from Washington and from the most radically nationalistic and zealous Zionists around the world, the current escalation and ugliness are going to be very difficult to defend to even mainstream pro-Israel liberals, let alone the rest of the world. The hasbara (propaganda) has been flowing at a rapid pace, even more than usual, as Israel struggles to maintain the treasured hold on the “moral high ground” that its own actions have increasingly undermined.

The Setup

Here is the very simple reality of what is happening now between Israel and Gaza: Israel willfully and intentionally seized upon a crime to demolish the unity government between Hamas and Gaza and, at the same time, significantly downgrade Hamas’ administrative, political, and military capabilities.

Israel, of course, could not have foreseen the kidnapping and murder of three youths on the West Bank, but once it happened, the Netanyahu government went into high gear to press its advantage. Recognizing that it needed to whip the Israeli public into a frenzy, the government put a gag order on the case to avoid revealing that it knew almost right away that the young men were dead. Under the cover of what seemed to be a kidnapping, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was able to attack Hamas in both the West Bank and Gaza, launching a massive military operation throughout the former and increasing its bombing raids in the latter.

Hamas, for its part, didn’t react wisely, but the politics of its situation left its leadership little choice. They had advocated kidnappings too often in the past, and they delayed stating they were not behind this incident. They finally did, and when Israel named the two suspects, it gave weight to Hamas’ denial, as the alleged murderers were part of a powerful Hebron clan that, as J.J. Goldberg put it, “…had a history of acting without the [Hamas] leaders’ knowledge, sometimes against their interests.”

But while it is rather clear at this point that the Hamas leadership had nothing to do with the three boys’ murders, it did support the act, which played well into Netanyahu’s hands. All over Israel and all over social media, calls for revenge popped up, along with cries of “Death to the Arabs,” and horrifying, indeed genocidal, statements by Israeli politicians. Ayelet Shaked of the Jewish Home Party compared Palestinian children to snakes, called for a war on the entire Palestinian people, and said “They are all enemy combatants, and their blood shall be on all their heads.” It’s difficult for even the most brazen apologist to see those words as anything other than an incitement to attack civilians without restraint.

Such words bore their fruit when a Palestinian youth of 16 years, Muhammed Abu Khdeir, was burned alive. And here, of course, is where the Israeli rhetoric ratcheted up another notch. Setting out to capture the criminals was an imperative for the Netanyahu government because it made the case that “we prosecute such murderers, while our enemy celebrates them,” a refrain that was uttered continuously in various forms.

“…That’s the difference between us and our neighbors,” Netanyahu said. “They consider murderers to be heroes. They name public squares after them. We don’t. We condemn them and we put them on trial and we’ll put them in prison.”

Not only is that rhetoric dehumanizing, it is also false. For example, the town of Kochav Yair in central Israel is named after the leader of the notorious LEHI, or “Stern Gang,” Avraham Stern, a terrorist who was summarily executed by the British. LEHI, along with the Irgun Z’Vai Leumi (or Irgun for short) was responsible for the massacre of the Palestinian Deir Yassin village in 1948, though this was after Stern’s death. The same group also boasted among its members about future Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, who was behind, among other things, the 1944 assassination of Lord Moyne, British Minister for Middle East Affairs, while the Irgun was led by Menachem Begin, the first Israeli prime minister from an opposition party. Many streets are named after them.

If that’s not enough, in the settlement of Kiryat Arba one can find the Meir Kahane Memorial Park, dedicated to the late “rabbi” who called for violence against Arabs in Israel (and whose Jewish Defense League often organized violence against African-Americans in the US). And, of course, right across from that park is the tomb of Baruch Goldstein, who massacred 29 Palestinians in 1994. That grave has been turned into a pilgrimage site for radical Jews.

So, Israelis are quite capable of celebrating murderers as well. But it’s important for Netanyahu to conceal this fact for now. During the staged operation to find the “kidnapped” youths, Israel arrested hundreds of Palestinians, many, but not all associated with Hamas. They virtually closed down Hebron and the surrounding area, and entered many Palestinian cities throughout the West Bank, provoking frequent clashes with residents. Several Palestinians were killed and many were injured.

Hamas eventually took responsibility for some rockets that had been fired at Israel, and the situation continued to deteriorate. Eventually, Israel launched the current operation, which was dubbed “Solid Cliff” in Hebrew; their marketing people felt that “Protective Edge” sounded better in English.

Since then, over 100 Palestinians have been killed, many of them civilians and minors. Houses have been targeted and destroyed, hundreds of people injured. United Nations human rights officials have warned that Israel may be committing war crimes by targeting private homes while the United States performs its usual task of preventing the Security Council from issuing critical statements about Israeli actions.

While the US works that task, both its president and its ambassador to Israel are reassuring Israel with total support. In a stunning example of double talk, President Barack Obama offered to broker a cease-fire, but Netanyahu bluntly stated he doesn’t want one. So, naturally US Ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro responded by saying the US would back a ground invasion of Gaza.

War of Choice

Israeli military leaders, whose role in deciding defense strategy has become increasingly, if quietly, marginalized under Netanyahu, are not enthusiastic about the current Israeli onslaught. They understand that Hamas is not going to be defeated militarily and that this action is further degrading Israel’s standing in the world. They also understand that the impetus for this action was not security, but politics.

Netanyahu is meanwhile not striking a blow for security, or even revenge. The purpose of all this, from the deception of the Israeli people and the world about the fate of the three murdered youths, the mass arrests and provocative behavior during the staged “search” for the boys, and the following attacks on Gaza were directed not at Palestinian terrorists, but at Palestinian political leaders. While it’s true that Netanyahu envisions no exit strategy (he never does) for this operation, he does have objectives; three of them, in fact.

The first is obvious: to deliver a blow to Hamas. He is well aware that the group is already struggling financially, even more than usual, and these attacks are diverting resources toward fighting Israel and creating greater needs among Gazans.

The second is to humiliate Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. Netanyahu is absolutely furious that Abbas acted without Israel’s permission by joining international treaties and forming a unity government — two things which, actually, are not only Palestine’s right, but Abbas’ duty. Netanyahu is showing Palestinians how ineffective Abbas is: the PA president can do nothing but sit on the sidelines. This is a stupid thing for Netanyahu to do, of course, because it undermines the man who has been keeping the West Bank quiet for Israel, but when has that ever stopped him?

Finally, and most importantly, the goal that probably spurred all of this was Netanyahu’s desperation to dismember the Palestinian unity government. Bibi knows that while a unity government might not make progress in securing Palestinian rights, the split between Gaza and the West Bank makes it utterly impossible for there to be any progress toward ending Israel’s 47-year old occupation. From the day the unity agreement was signed, Netanyahu has been enraged about it and obsessed with undoing it. He hopes that the current violence will either increase international pressure on Abbas to dissolve his partnership with Hamas or that Hamas will grow so angry at Abbas that it will walk away.

Given that the West Bank has remained largely quiet, thanks entirely to Abbas’ security forces clamping down on any protests, let alone any action against Israel, it is entirely possible that Hamas will indeed bolt from the unity arrangement. This is rather remarkable because Netanyahu continues to demonize Abbas publicly and no one wants to compliment him on maintaining order because he is doing so at the expense of enraging his own people. Most Palestinians in the West Bank see their relatives being slaughtered in Gaza while their own president not only sits by helplessly but prevents his people from even protesting.

That is Netanyahu’s agenda, and it has nothing whatsoever to do with keeping Israelis safe and secure. Indeed, as has always been the case, far more Israelis are threatened and injured when Israel attacks than at other times.

To even maintain this thin façade, Israel must continue to make the false case that it has the moral high ground. While Hamas could be easily assailed because they only target Israeli civilians, Netanyahu has still found a way to be even more criminal, Machiavellian and ruthless, and ultimately the most culpable villain here by far.

Make no mistake about what the United States is backing here. This is as pure a war of choice as any. Netanyahu has set up this fight, and has waged it. And, as always, it is the people of Gaza who pay the heaviest price. But Israelis too will bear the cost of this ruthless escapade in the long run. And the United States can only look at itself in shame as it supports this murderous and reckless endeavor.

Photo: Five people were reported killed in an air strike on Rafah, southern Gaza, on July 11. Credit: AP

by Mitchell Plitnick

They were dueling op-eds, one in the New York Times and the other in the Jewish communal magazine, Tablet. The question being bandied between them was whether Israel is becoming a theocracy. Not surprisingly, both pieces missed the mark. It’s not theocracy but unbridled nationalism that is the threat [...]]]> via LobeLog

by Mitchell Plitnick

They were dueling op-eds, one in the New York Times and the other in the Jewish communal magazine, Tablet. The question being bandied between them was whether Israel is becoming a theocracy. Not surprisingly, both pieces missed the mark. It’s not theocracy but unbridled nationalism that is the threat in Israel.

The Times piece was authored by Abbas Milani, who heads the Iranian Studies program at Stanford University and Israel Waismel-Manor, a lecturer at Haifa University and visiting associate professor of political science at Stanford. Their thesis is that Iran and Israel are moving in opposite directions on a democratic-theocratic scale, and that they might at some point in the future pass each other. Milani and Waismel-Manor are certainly correct about the strengthening forces of secularism and democracy in Iran, along with a good dose of disillusionment and frustration with the revolutionary, Islamic government that Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini ushered in thirty-five years ago. But on Israel, they miss the mark by a pretty wide margin.

Waismel-Manor and Milani posit that the thirty seats currently held in Israel’s Knesset by religious parties shows growing religious influence on Israeli policies. But, as Yair Rosenberg at Tablet correctly points out, not all the religious parties have the same attitude about separation of religion and the state. Where Rosenberg, unsurprisingly, goes way off course is his complete eliding of the fact that the threat is not Israel’s tilt toward religion, but it’s increasingly radical shift toward right-wing policies, which are often severely discriminatory and militant.

Waismel-Manor and Milani collapse the religious and right-wing ideologies at play in the Israeli government. Rosenberg is right to counter this. There are currently three parties in the Knesset (Israeli parliament) which define themselves as religious parties: HaBayit HaYehudi (The Jewish Home), Shas, and United Torah Judaism (UTJ). Shas is the most explicitly dedicated, in ideology and practice, to a religious Jewish state. But it is currently in the opposition and has not seen much rise in its share of the electorate in quite a while. It is worth noting, as well, that Shas has generally been the most welcoming of all religious parties to a two-state solution, although its stance on an undivided Jerusalem is notoriously problematic.

UTJ is made up of two religious parties, which don’t always agree and sometimes split for a while and reunite later. But UTJ generally supports the status quo of religion in the state, and HaBayit Hayehudi, while ostensibly supporting a religious state, is much more focused on its radical nationalism. This is why Bennett, after some early difficulties, has found a way to work with secular parties like Yesh Atid and, most importantly, Avigdor Lieberman’s Yisrael Beiteinu (Israel, Our Home). Neither of those two parties, both major partners in the current coalition, could find common ground with UTJ or Shas.

That is very telling, because it illustrates where both the Times and Tablet op-eds go wrong. Rosenberg, who is also the editor of the Israel State Archives blog, is zealous in his determination to be a heroic “Defender of Israel” and in so doing he comes off as both snide and dishonest in his takedown of Waismel-Manor and Milani, despite the merits of his case. Surely so keen an observer of Israeli politics as Rosenberg claims to be could not have missed the thread that the two scholars detected but mis-identified in their piece. It is not theocracy that Israel is sliding toward, it is the passionate and often brutal oppression that extreme nationalism so often leads to. At the end of that road is fascism. And while Israel, despite some bombastic rhetoric of its fiercest critics, remains a long distance away from being fascist, the distance is not as great as it once was.

Rosenberg had the opportunity to issue an important corrective to the Times op-ed and grasp a teaching moment. Instead, he waved the Israeli flag and completely ignored the very real threat Israel’s increasingly right-wing body politic poses to the structures of democracy in Israel.

That threat is manifest in the ideologies and proposals of both Avigdor Lieberman of Yisrael Beiteinu and Naftali Bennett of HaBayit HaYehudi. I’ve explored in some detail the kind of future Bennett envisions; he is a leading champion of annexation of much of the West Bank. Lieberman, who is busily pushing stronger ties with Russia to increase Israel’s freedom of action, has repeatedly proposed such ideas as loyalty oaths for Palestinian citizens of Israel and the forced transfer of Arab areas of Israel to the Palestinian Authority. These, coupled with his general style and heavy-handed methods, have brought many people to describe him as a fascist.

But the threat doesn’t stop there, nor is it limited to the Palestinians on both sides of the Green Line. Various bills have been proposed to limit Israeli NGOs that work to support human rights, international law, and peace, many of which are staffed and supported by Israeli Jews. The bills have been directly targeting NGOs in these fields, not the right-wing ones which do not disclose their funding sources and operate in various shady ways.

And the effect is not limited to Lieberman’s and Bennett’s parties. The Likud, which has always been conservative and right-wing, has also seen a tilt in this same direction. Gone from the ranks of Likud are such party stalwarts as Dan Meridor and Benny Begin who, despite supporting settlement expansion and various hawkish positions, also stood firm by Israel’s democratic processes. They opposed the rightward march and now they’re gone.

Politicians like Meridor and Begin were able to stabilize Likud leaders like Benjamin Netanyahu in the face of rightward pressure, but those days have also passed. It is a mark of where Likud has gone that, not only did it form an electoral bloc with Lieberman in the last election, but an outspoken opponent of the creation of a Palestinian state, the son of Israel’s first Likud Prime Minister, Menachem Begin (who was, himself, once considered a terrorist by the British), Benny was considered too moderate for the Likud leadership.

Instead of right-wing leaders like Meridor and Begin, Likud features explicit opponents of democracy like Ze’ev Elkin, annexationists like Tzipi Hotovely and outright racists like Miri Regev. Here we find the common cause that Bennett and Lieberman find with Likud. Not religion, but the worst kind of nationalistic bigotry, one that leads to ongoing occupation outside the Green Line and increased institutionalized racism, whether you call it apartheid, segregation or whatever, inside.

Rosenberg merely wanted to demonstrate that the Times ran an op-ed that offered an inaccurate picture of Israel, hoping to strengthen the right-wing’s and center-right’s phony contention that the Times and other mainstream media treat Israel unfairly. He was right about Milani and Waismel-Manor mischaracterizing Israel. But rather than correct them with reality, he did it with pointless sarcasm and thereby perpetrated a lie by omission that is much more harmful to Israel.

The pull of Bennett and Lieberman has made Likud even more radically right-wing. It has made a party like Yesh Atid “centrist,” even though its leader kicked off his campaign in a settlement, claims to support a two-state solution while backing every second of Netanyahu’s obstructionism in peace talks, and proclaims repeatedly that Israel should not even discuss Palestinian refugees or dividing Jerusalem. That’s the new center in Israel.

And why wouldn’t it be, when the right-wing has pulled things so far from any kind of true moderation? That is the danger of where Israel is heading. It’s not theocratic, but it is repressive and a recipe for continued and escalated conflict. Milani and Waismel-Manor may have mid-identified the threat, but at least they acknowledge there is one. And it’s getting worse.

The CIA has just declassified a raft of documents related to President Jimmy Carter’s historic meeting at Camp David in September 1978, with Egypt’s President Anwar Sadat and Israel’s Menachem Begin. At least a cursory reading of the most salient documents does not reveal a lot that has not [...]]]> via LobeLogby Robert E. Hunter

The CIA has just declassified a raft of documents related to President Jimmy Carter’s historic meeting at Camp David in September 1978, with Egypt’s President Anwar Sadat and Israel’s Menachem Begin. At least a cursory reading of the most salient documents does not reveal a lot that has not already been reported and commented on a thousand times in the last thirty years.  But taken together, they say a lot, and point to what can — and perhaps cannot — be done with the current US-brokered negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.

The first thing that leaps out is how much President Carter was both in charge and deeply engaged. While some historians have faulted him for focusing too much on details during his presidency, at Camp David he proved that he could deal with both “trees” and “woods.” He could deal with minute and difficult details; but he never lost sight of the big picture, which was necessary to bring to bear the political leadership that ultimately created success. It is also evident from the documents — and was evident at the time — that Carter was supported by an immensely able, talented, knowledgeable, and experienced team, from Secretary of State Cyrus Vance and National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski at the top, to key advisors. These notably included Assistant Secretary of State Harold Saunders and NSC staff director for the Middle East, William Quandt. Together, they molded a successful US position.

Of course, so much credit also has to go to Egypt’s Sadat and Israel’s Begin , two very unlikely peace partners only a short time before Camp David, but both with a vision for their peoples that enabled them to take decisions that would have likely eluded lesser men. Sadat, as much as anything, wanted to get Egypt out of the business of having to confront Israel on behalf of other Arab states, to no benefit (and a lot of risk) to Egypt and its people. Begin wanted to eliminate Israel’s principal enemy from the Arab military balance, without which — Egypt — no coalition of Arab states had any chance of besting Israel in combat. And so it proved to be. In pursuing this goal, Begin gave hostages to his political enemies, including those who stoutly opposed Israel’s evacuation of Jewish settlements on the Egyptian side of the old Egyptian Israeli border, but which Begin agreed to do and then made happen.

The US had a major geopolitical stake, as well. On three previous occasions, the 1956 Suez War, the 1967 Six-Day War, and the so-called Yom Kippur War of 1973, conflict posed risks of confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union — and at least in 1973 came perilously close to becoming the second most risky moment of the Cold War after the Cuban Missile Crisis. The Camp David Accords, which took Egypt out of the Arab military balance, thus not only dropped the risk of a plausible Arab military attack on Israel almost to the vanishing point, it also dropped the risk of a US-Soviet confrontation in the region virtually to zero. Everyone gained.

Since then, there have been a series of attempts to build on the Camp David Accords and the Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty. Israel has peace with Jordan and Lebanon. It has evacuated Gaza (though this has not brought peace, for a variety of reasons). But the struggle between Israel and the Palestinians of the West Bank (and Gaza) is not all that much advanced from where the first talks began in the mid-1980s. (Note: I assumed the Arab-Israeli portfolio at the NSC after the Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty was completed, and served for nearly two years as the White House representative to the so-called Autonomy talks over the Palestinian territories). Indeed, any negotiator from that time would recognize all the issues are still in play 33 years later.

That should not be surprising. Unlike the first Camp David and the resulting treaty, there is no common interest among all the parties in reaching a basic deal. Israel (at least its government) is not keen on relinquishing much of the West Bank and at least some of the Jewish settlements (that now include half a million people): this is a deeply conflicted issue in Israel, with no obvious direct security payoff. For their part, the Palestinians want gains that go beyond what any Israeli government has been willing to contemplate. Gaza, meanwhile, is isolated by Israel and the West, thus making almost impossible a united negotiating posture on the part of the Palestinians. And while the “West” is committed to a resolution of the conflict, getting there remains in the “too tough” category, especially when the only potential arbiter, a succession of US presidents since Jimmy Carter, has not seen such a resolution as being of anything like the magnitude of peace between Israel and Egypt, at least in terms of gaining security for the United States (the Soviet Union has long since disappeared).

President Bill Clinton did try, by convening Israeli and Palestinian leaders at Camp David in late 1980. But he had waited until too late in his second term, without the prospect that he would still be in power to help foster the implementation of any agreement that would be reached — a necessary requirement.  Neither Israel’s Prime Minister, Ehud Barak, or the PLO leader, Yasser Arafat, had the political backing needed to take major “risks for peace,” and there was not a sufficient overlapping of interests. Nor did Clinton undertake the careful preparations that marked Jimmy Carter’s efforts a generation earlier, and which are revealed in the newly-declassified documents. And he did not take with him to Camp David a ”first team” of experts able to provide both the institutional memory or capacity to help work a deal. What Bill Clinton did achieve was the enunciation of a set of principles, a few days before he left office, and which can be found here. They are relatively simple as a set of compromises that could lead to a settlement — something that just about every serious negotiator over the last three decades would attest to. Simple to state but, so far, impossible to gain politically.

Now there is a third try to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. While Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gave negotiations a wide berth, secretary of State John Kerry has placed this high on his agenda, as did President Obama in his address this fall to the UN General Assembly. But the chances of success are still remote, for all the reasons that have bedeviled the last three decades of effort. Further, other events in the region work against hopes for ending the conflict anytime soon. Israel is preoccupied with turmoil in Egypt (where the Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty remains the cornerstone of its security and thus of its sense of confidence in the future); Iran poses a critical challenge; and the situation in Syria also provides no comfort. Together, these three crises grossly limit the capacity of the Israeli government to take risks for peace, even if it were predisposed to do so, which is far from evident. Meanwhile, there is little or no prospect of fostering a basis for serious negotiations on the Palestinian side, in major part because of the domination of Gaza by the radical group Hamas, which is ratified in power by the Israeli-Western blockade.

Further, like Bill Clinton, Barack Obama has not made the sustained commitment to move the peace process forward, given any indication that he would take the risks in US domestic politics that would be needed, or created a top-class team of advisors and — below Kerry himself — negotiators needed to increase the chances of success. Given the low probability that the talks will produce results, none of this can really be faulted.

Jimmy Carter’s legacy lives on; but neither objective circumstances, leadership of the contending parties (Israel and the Palestinians), or a strong US team argue for a repetition of success any time in the foreseeable future.  The new documents show what can  be done if all three factors come together.  Regrettably, however, none of them now exist.

Photo: Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat with U.S. President Jimmy Carter at Camp David in 1978.

Classifying political leaders as either “hawks” or “doves” obscures an uncomfortable truth: that the real debate between political rivals is rarely whether to go to war but rather with whom.

Case in point: a man interred in Israel on Monday, former Prime Minister and terrorist/resistance fighter Yitzhak [...]]]> via Lobe Log

Classifying political leaders as either “hawks” or “doves” obscures an uncomfortable truth: that the real debate between political rivals is rarely whether to go to war but rather with whom.

Case in point: a man interred in Israel on Monday, former Prime Minister and terrorist/resistance fighter Yitzhak Shamir.

Writing in the Sheldon Adelson-owned free daily Israel Today, Israeli Vice Prime Minister Moshe (“Boogie”) Yaalon praised Shamir for his unswerving commitment to the “iron wall” concept of Israeli security, first laid out by Vladimir (Ze’ev) Jabotinsky: “He acted on his principles, not according to polls or trends.” That resoluteness is viewed from a very different angle in the Financial Times: “The kind of unflinching resolution behind Shamir’s campaign of bombings and assassinations, first as leader of the Stern Gang and later as a Mossad agent, often appeared to have defined his core character.”

One of the code names Shamir chose in the Stern Gang  (a militant group also known as Lehi)  was “Michael,” in tribute to Michael Collins of the Irish Republican Army, who Shamir esteemed as a role model in resisting British occupation. Shamir had no qualms about being labeled a terrorist. On the contrary.  “First and foremost, terror is for us a part of the political war appropriate for the circumstances of today, and its task is a major one,” Shamir wrote in an article titled “Terror” in the Lehi journal Hazit in August 1943. “It demonstrates in the clearest language, heard throughout the world including by our unfortunate brethren outside the gates of this country, our war against the occupier.”

Shamir’s career as Foreign Minister (1979-1983) and his first term at helm of the Israeli government in (1983-84)  encompassed the unfolding of the Iranian Revolution, the Iran-Iraq war, and  the creation of Hezbollah in Lebanon as a response to the Israeli invasion and occupation in 1982.  The revelation of Israeli weapon sales to Iran that were exposed during the Iran-Contra hearings and the death of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in 1979 occurred during his second term as Prime Minister (1986-92). Yet neither the accolades nor the accusations published in the days since his death mention any of these events.

Nonetheless, Iran was very much at the forefront and part of the backstory of Israeli foreign policy at the time. U.S. Secretary of State George Shultz  cautioned President Reagan’s National Security adviser Robert McFarlane that “Israel’s agenda regarding Iran ‘is not the same as ours’ and that relying on Israeli intelligence concerning Iran ‘could seriously skew our own perception.’”

Elected to Israel’s parliament on the right-wing Herut party ticket in 1973, Shamir became Speaker of the Knesset in 1977 when Menachem Begin became Prime Minister, after elections  toppled the governing Labor-led coalition that had ruled the country since 1948.  Shamir was designated Israel’s Foreign Minister in 1979 when Moshe Dayan resigned from the post, eight months after the revolution that overthrew the Shah of Iran.

According to investigative journalist Robert Parry, who covered Iran for the Associated Press during the 1980s, Shamir confirmed in a 1993 interview that there was indeed a “Saturday Night Surprise”–as detailed by Gary Sick in a New York Times op ed and  in his book by that title–that delayed the release of the 54 American hostages held at the US Embassy in Tehran for 444 days (Nov. 4, 1979-Jan. 21, 1981)  because of a deal struck by the Iranian government with the Reagan presidential campaign. Furthermore, Shamir candidly hinted–before retreating–that the Israeli government  had approached Republican operatives and offered to help engineer President Jimmy Carter’s defeat:

To prevent a Palestinian state and buy time for Israel to further “change the facts on the ground” by moving more Jewish settlers onto the West Bank, Begin felt Carter’s reelection had to be prevented. The Likud also believed that Reagan would give Israel a freer hand to deal with problems on its northern border with Lebanon. The Likud-Republican collaboration reportedly led to Israel becoming a go-between for the Reagan campaign’s secret contacts with Iran, helping to prevent Carter from resolving the U.S.-Iranian hostage crisis and dooming his reelection hopes.

[nb: Parry's use of the party name Likud is anachronistic here, since Begin and Shamir's Herut party did not become part of the Likud bloc until 1988. mbc]

Like the Revisionist’s mentor Jabotinsky, Shamir did not believe that Arab states would ever willingly accept a Jewish state in their midst. The Islamic Revolution in 1979 may have changed Iran’s ruling regime, but it did not alter Israel’s needed non-Arab allies in the region–especially Iran–according to Israel’s long held “doctrine of the periphery.” Foremost among the Arab leaders worrying Israel was Saddam Hussein of Iraq, who invaded Iran in Sept. 1980, launching a war that would last for eight years.

Notwithstanding Ayatollah Khomeini’s vitriol against “the Zionist entity,” Shamir never wavered in his conviction that it was Iraq, not Iran, that endangered Israel. As Trita Parsi points out in his book Treacherous Alliance: The Secret Dealings of Israel, Iran and the U.S.:

From Tel Aviv’s perspective, Iraq was the single greatest threat to Israel’s security, while Iran–in spite of its ideology, its harsh rhetoric, and its vocal support of the Palestinian issue–was seen as a nonthreat. For all practical purposes, Iran continued to be a partner in balancing the Iraqi threat.

“Operation Opera,” Israel’s attack on Iraq’s Osirak nuclear facility on June 7, 1981, took place while Shamir was Foreign Minister. Shamir wrote a three page letter to world leaders justifying Israel’s preemptive strike before nuclear fuel had been loaded into it. Ari Ben Menashe, who claims to have spent two years as Shamir’s “roving troubleshooter” with the title of “special intelligence consultant,” told Parsi that representatives of the Khomeini regime met with Israeli officials about a month before the Osirak strike. The Iranians gave the Israelis details of an unsuccessful Iranian attack on the site on Sept. 30, 1980, according to Ben Menashe, as well as permission for Israeli planes to land at an Iranian airfield in Tabriz in an emergency.

Shamir was also Foreign Minister during the Israeli invasion that launched the “First Lebanon War” According to several sources, Shamir was neither particularly surprised nor troubled by the Phalangist massacre that took place in the Sabra and Shatilla refugee camps outside Beirut.  Author and journalist Ze’ev Schiff, co-author of Israel’s Lebanon War, attributed the catastrophic consequences of the Lebanon war not so much to the incursion itself but rather to Israel’s decision to remain in Lebanon as its occupier, recalling that in southern Lebanon at the outset of the war: “I was talking to an old man, a Shiite, who was very happy about what Israel had done. He grabbed my arm and said, ‘Don’t forget to leave.’ But we did. There is just no such thing as an enlightened occupation.”

The creation of Hezbollah as a Shiite paramilitary group to resist the Israeli occupation was one of the consequences of the Israeli decision not to leave. “Hezbollah’s original cadres were organized and trained by a 1,500-member contingent of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, who arrived in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley in the summer of 1982, with the permission of the Syrian government,” according to Adam Shatz . “For Iran, whose efforts to spread the Islamic revolution to the Arab world had been stymied by its war with Iraq, Hezbollah provided a means of gaining a foothold in Middle East politics.”

Shamir believed that Israel ought to prepare for the possibility that more moderate elements in the Iranian regime might gain control of the Islamic Republic once the aging and ailing Khomeini was gone from the scene. The late David Kimche, a retired founder deputy head of the Mossad who Shamir appointed as Director General of the Israeli Foreign Ministry in 1979,  told Parsi in an interview:

There were the ultraextremists and there were, let’s say, the moderate extremists…They were all fanatics, but there were the ones who were absolutely dangerous, and there was another group…who would be willing to come to terms with the West…They were still against Israel, but there were much less extremist than that first group.

Kimche would emerge as a key figure in the Iran-Contra affair which exposed Israel’s sale of US weapons to Iran during the Iraq-Iran war (albeit with weapons that Israel would claim were outdated, defective and overpriced).  The weapons sales, about which  Shamir denied having any knowledge (he alternated serving as Prime Minister with now-President Shimon Peres in a power-sharing arrangement during the mid-late 1980s) were motivated in part by Israel’s hope that if Iraq and Iran were fighting one another, neither would attack Israel. But it was also based on the expectation that Khomeini would eventually be replaced by more pragmatic Iranian leadership.

Shamir was a tough-minded pragmatist who did not let the label “terrorist” inhibit him. He knew from personal experience that the line between a terrorist and a resistance fighter against occupation and terrorist was very much in the eye of the beholder. In August 1987, when Iranian Parliament Speaker Hashemi Rafsanjani suggested in an NBC news interview that Western hostages held by extremist groups in Lebanon might be freed in a trade involving Shia Muslim prisoners held in Israel and Kuwait, the U.S. State Department immediately rejected the Iranian suggestion. “No deals,” State Department spokeswoman Phyllis Oakley responded. “The United States will not make concessions to terrorists nor will we ask others to do so. Making concessions only encourages additional acts of terrorism.” Shamir, however,  was willing to consider the proposal. “I must study the statement of Mr. Rafsanjani,” Shamir said. “I don’t know what was his intention and about which Shia prisoners he is talking. So after we will see what is the issue, we’ll decide what could be, and if will be, any reaction from us.”