Sunday Reads: On Nixon & Israel’s nuclear program, How strong is ISIS?, The Jewish Elvis

US

Josh Rogin and Eli Lake report on the Obama administration’s heated debates about its ISIS and Syria policy –

To many outside the administration who have worked on Syria and the ISIS problem, Obama’s decision not to decide on a broader course of action will have negative implications for the war against ISIS. The administration raised expectations about altering its three-year policy of avoiding intervention in Syria, before Obama dashed those expectations Thursday.

Eugene Robinson tries to figure out whether the US is actually at war with ISIS –

Obama should tell the nation, in plain language, what he believes we must do. Congress should debate the issue rather than duck it. After all, no decision by our elected leaders is more fateful: This is war. As far as I can tell.

“We don’t have a strategy yet,” Obama said Thursday. Which is the one thing we already knew.

Israel

Amir Oren takes a look at the newly declassified documents which show how the Nixon administration agreed to Israel’s nuclear program –

Israel’s policy of nuclear ambiguity – which for the sake of deterrence does not categorically deny some nuclear ability but insists on using the term “option” – appears, according to the newly released documents, as an outcome of the Nixon-Meir understandings, no less than as an original Israeli manoeuvre.

Noah Feldman examines Hamas’ ‘victory’ –

Today, its back to business as usual — a looming gap between the views of Arab governments and the sentiments of their publics. The traditional Israeli and U.S. preference for refusing to engage Hamas can now be pursued with implicit and sometimes explicit Arab support. As a matter of realpolitik, Arab public opinion matters less than ever.

This is a depressing reality — but there may be a silver lining. Hamas survived the latest Israeli attacks, but in the long run it cannot survive abandonment by all its Arab allies. It desperately needs to reconcile with Fatah to get the money it needs to govern.

Middle East

The Washington Institute’s Michael Knight points out some of ISIS’ military vulnerabilities –

This article finds that ISIL is a military power mostly because of the weakness and unpreparedness of its enemies. Lengthy shaping of the battlefield, surprise and mobility made its recent successes possible, but all these factors are diminishing. As a defensive force, ISIL may struggle to hold terrain if it is attacked simultaneously at multiple points or if its auxiliary allies begin to defect.

A connected diplomat Fareed Zakaria spoke to believes that ISIS’ biggest (and most worrying) asset is its mass appeal to young Sunnis –

But the most dangerous aspect of the Islamic State, this diplomat believes, is its ideological appeal. It has recruited marginalized, disaffected Sunni youths in Syria and Iraq who believe they are being ruled by apostate regimes. This appeal to Sunni pride has worked largely because of the sectarian policies of the Baghdad and Damascus governments. But the Islamic State has also grown because of the larger collapse of moderate, secular and even Islamist institutions and groups — such as the Muslim Brotherhood — throughout the Middle East.

Jewish World

Jeffrey Goldberg explains why he stopped boycotting German cars –

At this moment, nuclear-armed Israeli submarines are patrolling the Persian Gulf, off the coast of Iran, making sure that the regime in Tehran understands the second-strike consequences of threatening Israel’s existence. The first two Dolphin-class diesel submarines in Israel’s fleet were gifts from Germany, made in the days following the first Gulf War. (German companies had been identified as having sold chemical-weapons precursors to Saddam Hussein’s regime—a very embarrassing development.) Two more were subsequently purchased, and a fifth is on its way.

The point is, if German submarines are good enough for the Israeli Navy, they should be good enough for a Shoah-haunted American Jew.

J.J. Goldberg writes about Elvis’ Jewish roots –

Apparently Elvis’s manager and image-maker, Colonel Tom Parker, didn’t think much of Elvis surrounding himself with Jews, particularly with Larry Geller’s Kabbalah teachings. Unlike Vernon, Colonel Tom had nothing against Jews, I’ve been told. It was just that the colonel didn’t think it would help Elvis’s image as an American idol in the heartland if it were known that he identified himself in some fashion as Jewish.