Sunday Reads: Robert Gates on Trump, The Abbas-KGB story, The Torah on foreign brides
US
Former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates tries to size up the candidates for the commander-in-chief position and presents a very harsh verdict on Donald Trump:
At least on national security, I believe Mr. Trump is beyond repair. He is stubbornly uninformed about the world and how to lead our country and government, and temperamentally unsuited to lead our men and women in uniform. He is unqualified and unfit to be commander-in-chief.
Uri Friedman is disappointed about the lack of true foreign policy debate in this presidential campaign:
The Commander-in-Chief Forum was just one of many instances so far on the campaign trail when matters of war and peace have been boiled down to who was for what when, who founded ISIS, who is a gift to ISIS, and so on. In Britain, the wars in Iraq and Libya have recently prompted introspection and serious wrestling with hard truths. Not so across the Atlantic.
Israel
Daniel Gordis takes a look at the lessons of Shimon Peres:
More than anything, Shimon Peres, never a terribly successful politician, has long represented the belief in possibility, the belief in Zionism coupled to realism. With Peres aging and now very frail just on the eve of all those anniversaries, the fullness of those years not quite achieved, his illness is a kind of passing of the torch. His generation did what it could. It is up to us to pick up this mantle and emulate their wisdom before it’s too late, lest we lose the promise of those anniversaries. We still pray Shimon Peres will live to see them.
Nachum Barnea discusses the role of ego in the recent aid package deal:
And so Israel got caught up once again in the internal political conflict in Washington. Obama, who wanted to gain a headline without paying too much, encountered a stubborn rival, who did everything in his power to embarrass him; Netanyahu, who wanted to turn the agreement into a victory celebration, got caught in the eye of the storm. And most importantly, our defense establishment remains in a state of uncertainty. Government workers on both sides have worked for two weeks to reach—so they hope—understandings that everyone would be able to live with.
With fewer ego issues, the first plan could have been implemented, allowing the administration to allot funds and Congress to add to that. America is very generous towards us; why destroy it?
Middle East
Vox’s Jennifer Williams explains what is behind Iran and Saudi Arabia’s recent twitter feud:
So while the fight is nominally over Iran’s anger at Saudi Arabia over the hajj stampede, it’s really just another excuse for the two countries to make each other look bad in the eyes of the world’s Muslims…
The bottom line is that both Iran and Saudi Arabia support violent extremists and promote sectarian hatred that fuels conflict and chaos across the Middle East. And no number of snappy Twitter infographics or cleverly written op-eds is going to change that fact.
Michael Weiss takes a look at the odd 'Abbas and the KGB' story and at the PLO’s shaky relationship with the Soviet Union:
It took almost half a decade for Arafat to rehabilitate this dysfunctional relationship with a moribund Soviet Union, although the chances that one or more of his underlings were themselves being groomed or poached by the KGB during the locust years are high. Abbas has claimed that he never intended to join the PLO at all, but suddenly found himself “selected” to its executive committee in 1980 by Fatah’s Central Committee, while he was in Moscow ostensibly pursuing his academic study.
One wonders how that happened. And who in fact did the selecting.
Jewish World
Shulem Deen tries to find out why he still feels connected to the Jewish family:
Making too much of kin and tribe brings a risk of parochialism, but perhaps a universalist ethos need not contradict it; rather, it can be inspired by it. Jewish kinship is to maintain the best of our tribal instincts while radiating them outward to the rest of society. The concept of ahavat yisrael — love for your fellow Jew — is valuable not because your fellow Jew is more special, but because by your best attitudes toward your own, you learn what you can do for those beyond.
Atar Adari takes a look at the Torah’s interesting attitude toward foreign brides:
There’s no need to downplay the importance the Torah ascribes to the ritual and legal strictures of marriage and conversion to appreciate that, ultimately, what it’s interested is strong marriages and families. It doesn’t matter if your wife was born an Edomite or an Ammonite or the daughter of Moses himself. What matters is that you treat her right.
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