US
According to Michael Weiss, the US and the anti-ISIS coalition don’t intend to do anything to help Syria –
But now that the air forces of Sunni-led Arab nations are flying alongside US F-16 and F-22s, the actual US policy has come into the clear; it’s suddenly permissible to “manage expectations,” as General John Allen, the US military envoy to the coalition, put it, or revise the marketed plan to “degrade and ultimately destroy” ISIS. In fact, as has been proven in the last week, ISIS’s elimination in Syria is not actually an American objective at all.
Aaron David Miller has some scathing words for the President, whom he refers to as “the disappointer in chief” –
… on character, Obama has had a Jekyll and Hyde problem. Part pragmatist, part believer, but always capable of seeing all sides of an argument, the president has seemed too often at war with himself on how ambitious he wants to be, whether on climate change, tax reform or the size of the stimulus. And that personal conflict has made it too hard for him to make peace with his public. By nature, Obama is not a partisan, a populist or a revolutionary. Instead, he finds his comfort zone in conciliation and accommodation, and in the empirical world of rational policy analysis. Those can be useful qualities in many circumstances, but they won’t make you a transformative president.
Israel
According to veteran war corespondent Ron Ben Yishai, Israel’s security establishment admits the harsh blockade conditions in Gaza have done more harm than good –
The security establishment now admits that Israel's airtight closure of the Gaza Strip has worked against the country's general interests. The blockade created common interests and solidarity between the economically troubled Hamas government and the suffering residents of Gaza, many of whom supported the armed struggle to harm the citizens of Israel, acting out of frustration and anger. It is for this reason that before Operation Protective Edge had even begun, the IDF recommended that the cabinet adopt a policy aimed to dramatically improve the condition of the civilians of the Strip not involved in the fighting, with one limitation – preventing the rearmament of Hamas and Islamic Jihad.
Daniel Ben Simon finds Israel’s huge security budget hard to fathom –
One thing is clear: There hasn’t been such a large defense budget proposal since the establishment of the state. Although most of Israel's fronts are quiet, to the extent of being dormant, the prime minister envisages a grim future for the region, replete with threats of an overall conflagration that could sweep up many of the states in the region. Otherwise, how does one explain the diversion of billions of shekels from civilian and social needs to weapons of war and military personnel? Does the prime minister know of dangers that we don’t? Or does he live in a world of his own?
Middle East
The Atlantic Council’s Frederik Hof believes that Turkey is actually right about how the Assad regime is the major threat in Syria –
Ideally, the Turkish Army would be the near-term sought-after coalition ground force component in Syria. Yet Ankara is correct in defining the Assad regime as the principal cause of the ISIS phenomenon in Syria and, with the political passing of Nouri al-Maliki, its principal recruiter from the Mediterranean through Mesopotamia. Whether Turkey is truly prepared to do a heavy lift in Syria is far from certain. What is beyond doubt is its unwillingness to do so while the United States holds its coat with its gaze transfixed on Baghdad and its back turned to Assad. Two NATO allies need to get down to business and sort out this kettle of fish.
Tony Badran writes about the dangerous game Hezbollah is playing in Lebanon –
Of course, the reality is that the Party of God remains in a terrible quandary, with no end in sight to its entanglement in the Syrian war. Hezbollah purported to signal that its involvement in Syria has not diminished its readiness to confront Israel. Paradoxically however, Hezbollah’s warnings about Israel’s supposed collusion with the Syrian rebels only underscored how much the Shiite group is consumed by its war with the Syrians. So much so that even its conflict with Israel is increasingly defined by Syria’s dynamics.
Hezbollah is playing a dangerous game. It has already brought Lebanon to the edge. Sooner or later, it’s bound to push it over.
Jewish World
Robert Israel Lappin argues in favor of lowering the entrance age for Birthright –
Birthright Israel is one of the Jewish world’s greatest innovations. It superbly accomplishes what it set out to do. However, when Birthright Israel started in 1999, anti-Israel and anti-Jewish activities on campus were not the critical issue they have become. Consequently, teaching Jewish teens Israel advocacy skills and complex approaches to Israel before they go to college is a new, urgent need. The extension of the Birthright Israel program, by lowering the age of eligibility to 16, is the best and possibly only solution, to battle the growing crisis, quickly and effectively.
Adam Kirsch reviews two new novels about the Holocaust (by Martin Amis and Howard Jacobsen) and uses the opportunity to discuss some interesting questions –
If the Holocaust didn’t change society and humanity, did it at least change literature? Most scholars of Holocaust literature would say yes. Books like Night, by Elie Wiesel and Survival in Auschwitz, by Primo Levi introduced a new tone, a new approach to autobiography, that the world hadn’t known before. The distinctive qualities of Holocaust writing are its quietness and its specificity: This is a subject that demands a style as close to stylelessness as possible, in recognition of the way it overpowers the resources of language. When evil is as literally unimaginable as it was in Auschwitz—and who can imagine what it was like to be in a gas chamber?—then the writer must honor the failure of imagination by allowing facts to speak for themselves.
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