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Sunday Reads: Preparing for a Saudi collapse, Iraq’s vanished Jews, Samantha Power on Israel-bashing

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February 21, 2016

US

Eliot A. Cohen points out that the next American President will have a lot of teaching and advocating to do on the foreign policy front:

Although the new President should not dwell on Iraq and Syria, he or she will have to explain what lessons to take from those episodes. He or she will similarly have to articulate to the American people the case for their continuing to assume the leading role in international politics, a course openly and forcefully opposed by politicians like Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders. It will not be enough to direct foreign policy, including the use of force, through executive action and the occasional, cursory press conference.

Eli Lake and Josh Rogin describe America’s struggle to form an Anti-ISIS coalition:

The hope now for the U.S. is that it can persuade Turkey and the YPG to back off each other and turn their energies to defeating the Islamic State. If that effort fails, then the U.S. may find itself supporting both sides of a Kurdish-Turkish war it has been trying for months to prevent.

Israel

Ben Dror Yemini writes about Israel’s new Right:

They're right-wing people on a geo-political level. They aren't willing to give up the word “democratic,” which always accompanies the word “Jewish.” However, they won't vote for a left-wing party. That kind or right wing, perhaps center-right wing, perhaps liberal-right wing, isn't represented in the Knesset. The day the circumstances align just right and Netanyahu can publically admit his willingness to give up over 90 percent of Judea and Samaria, as part of talks with John Kerry, he'll lose a part of the right. But he'll also gain another part's trust. And it's yet unclear which part is larger.

Yair Rosenberg presents Samantha Power’s strong words against the UN’s Israel-bashing:

As you all know, the UN Charter guarantees ‘the equal rights of nations large and small,’ and yet we have seen member states seek to use the UN Security Council, the General Assembly, and even the most arcane UN committees in ways that cross the line from legitimate criticisms of Israel’s policies to attempts to delegitimize the state of Israel itself. The only country in the world with a standing agenda item at the Human Rights Council is not North Korea, a totalitarian state that is currently holding an estimated 100,000 people in gulags; not Syria, which has gassed its people – lots of them. It is Israel.

Middle East

Sarah Chayes and Alex De Waal believe the US should start getting ready for a Saudi collapse:

The United States keeps getting caught off-guard when purportedly solid countries come apart. To do better this time, U.S. military and intelligence officials should at the very least, and immediately, run some rigorous planning exercises to test different scenarios and potential actions aimed at reducing codependence and mitigating risk. They should work hard to identify the most likely, and most dangerous, regional outcomes of a Saudi collapse—or the increasingly desperate efforts of its rulers to avoid one. And above all, they should abandon the automatic-pilot thinking that has been guiding U.S. policy to date.

Owen Matthews writes about Putin’s plan for Syria and his power-struggles with Turkey’s Erdogan:

If Putin’s latest gambit does bring peace to Syria, even if it is a peace on Assad’s terms, it may one day be counted as a success, albeit a self-serving one. But it is also Putin’s riskiest move yet, and growing riskier by the second. So far Putin’s opponents have consisted of the disorganised regimes of former Soviet nations. In his Syrian war, he faces a ruler every bit as choleric and ruthless as himself — Erdoğan — and an increasingly belligerent Saudi Arabia. The prospect of peace in Syria is now dependent on the wisdom, restraint and goodwill of Putin and Erdoğan: an unsettling prospect.

Jewish World

Joe Samuels, an Iraqi born Jew, laments how history forgot the story of the Jews in Arab lands:

With the exception of the Jews from Iraq, the history of Jews from other Arab countries has vanished with them. Their artifacts were stolen, confiscated or destroyed. There are no records to show the world how they lived, their contributions to Arab culture and civilization, their influence and effect on their societies.

Leah Garrett tells the story of how Mad Magazine brought Jewish humour to the world:

In fact, as Jaffee explained to me, much of the humor in Mad was deeply Jewish because it was based on satire created by a community that saw itself as not having much power and which used the jokes to take down those who “had it made,” i.e., rabbis, parents and, later, the rich and powerful. As he explained it, being a Jewish kid in the shtetl who was constantly hungry, “your only revenge is to expose and make fun of the frailties of the big shots and the ‘better-than-thou’ people. We made fun of our rabbis. Some of it was a bit raw and mean spirited, especially the comments about the personal habits of the rabbi when he went to the outhouse and defecated all over the board. This is the stuff that makes you feel equal [to] or better than they are. So going after the wealthy is such a release when you are barely getting by.”

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