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H.R. McMaster Is No Foe of Israel

Aug. 17 2017

Recent weeks have seen a number of pieces in the American and Israeli press attacking National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster and questioning his fitness for his position. Some include the assertions that he is unfriendly to Israel and favors a conciliatory strategy toward Iran. Yaakov Amidror and Eran Lerman, both of whom have held senior positions on the Israeli National Security Council and in IDF military intelligence, disagree:

Israeli officers and scholars who have worked with McMaster say that he was always highly appreciative of Israel and of its contributions to the security of the U.S. They attest to his broad support for and admiration of the IDF. It is absurd to assert that, all these years, hidden underneath McMaster’s friendliness was a grudge against Israel that the general is now free to act on. . . . [W]hatever the reasons may have been for his decision to relieve certain senior National Security Council officials of their duties, anti-Semitic or anti-Israeli sentiments were certainly not part of the calculus.

Israelis and friends of Israel in the U.S. do not need to agree with every position McMaster has taken, nor should the general be immune to specific policy criticism, such as the Trump administration’s failure to put forward coherent policies on Syria or Iran. But McMaster is not an enemy. It is wrong to assault his personal reputation, especially when the attack is based on hearsay. . . .

McMaster, and the other generals who now form the backbone of the Trump administration, should be treated as representative of an American defense establishment whose positive views of Israel are by now an important aspect of the special relationship [between the two countries], and whose importance within the American system has grown steadily since 9/11. The days of anti-Israel attitudes in the Pentagon are long gone.

Read more at Jerusalem Post

More about: Israel & Zionism, U.S. military, U.S. Politics, US-Israel relations

The Summary: 10/7/20

Two extraordinary events demonstrate something important about Israel’s most fervent adversaries. One was a speech given at something called The People’s Forum (funded generously by Goldman Sachs), which stated, “When the state of Israel is finally destroyed and erased from history, that will be the single most important blow we can give to destroying capitalism and imperialism.”

The suggestion that this tiny state is the linchpin of a global, centuries-old phenomenon like capitalism goes well beyond anything resembling rational criticism. Even if Israel were guilty of genocide, apartheid, and oppression—which of course it is not—it would not follow that its destruction would help end capitalism or imperialism.

The other was an anti-Israel protest that took place in front of New York City’s Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, deemed “complicit” in Israel’s evils. At organizers’ urging, participants shouted their slogans at kids in the cancer ward, who were watching from the windows. Given Hamas’s indifference toward the lives of Gazan children, such callousness toward non-Palestinian children from Hamas’s Western allies shouldn’t be surprising. The protest—like the abovementioned speech—deliberately conveyed the message that Israel is the ultimate evil and its destruction the ultimate good, cancer patients be damned.

The fact that Israel’s adversaries are almost comically perverse does not mean that they can be dismissed. If its allies fail to understand the obsessive and irrational hatred that it faces, they cannot effectively help it defend itself.

Read more at Mosaic