The Nature of the Threat

Tom Friedman had a good column on Israel's fundamental strengths vis-à-vis Iran, it's leading regional rival: "Iran’s economic and military clout today is largely dependent on extracting oil from the ground. Israel’s economic and military power today is entirely dependent on extracting intelligence from its people. Israel’s economic power is endlessly renewable. Iran’s is a dwindling resource based on fossil fuels made from dead dinosaurs."

To me, though, the natural followup to this is consideration of Israel's real strategic vulnerability -- the country is ruling over a population of several million Arabs to whom it refuses to grant either independence or citizenship. That's a recipe for big trouble, and it's trouble that economic dynamism and technological prowess can't overcome. Independence for these Arabs, by contrast, would pose some direct security risks but as Friedman argues Israel is a very successful country and society that gives every indication of being able to whether the security challenges of a very difficult region. But how long can Israel persist as a successful country while contravening basic democratic norms and denying rights and electoral participation to a huge proportion of its de facto population? There are good and obvious reasons for Israelis to want to resist incorporating millions of West Bank and Gaza Palestinians into their country, but the only realistic alternative to doing that is create a viable state on those lands for the Palestinians. On one level, this is well understood, but on another level it's often hard to detect any understanding of it at all when you look at the policies of Israel and "pro-Israel" groups in the United States.

Comments

Seems to me Israel's economic and military power today is entirely dependent on extracting money/resources from the US.

Posted by HowdyDoody | June 9, 2008 12:32 PM

Mr Yglesias continues to produce the same old drivel. The problem with the issue of a state for the Palestinians is that the state they want consists of all of Palestine, and that therefore the Government of Israel should go out of business. Mr. Yglesias never gets around to telling us what, in his opinion, the Government of Israel should do to disabuse the Palestinians of this notion.

Posted by SLC | June 9, 2008 12:33 PM

it's its

Posted by DNS | June 9, 2008 12:34 PM

Excuse me, have some golf scheduled today and need to check the whether report.

Posted by steve duncan | June 9, 2008 12:37 PM

Israel’s economic and military power today is entirely dependent on extracting intelligence from its people.

if by "its people" Friedman meant the US taxpayers then yes, it has been very successful. The apartheird regime has done everything in its power to make a two-state solution unpossible, so we should expect even more apartheid, applied even more violently, for another generation.

Posted by mrs. ibrahim al-jafaari | June 9, 2008 12:39 PM

Few points:

1) Isrealis obsess about Iran a lot more than Iiranians obsess about Israel (see the Iranian news roundp at the National review online for evidence. Very little iranian discssion of Israel.). Ahmedinjead has a few stock lines about the little Satan. But nearly every radical Islamic regime has the same lines. Just window dressing.

2) Before Israelis were obsessing about Iran, tehy were obsessing about the dange of Iraq. Before than, Syria, Egypt, whoever.

3) None of there countries (with the possible exception of Egypt) ever posed a real threat to Israel.

Contention: Israel focuses on largely imaginary, hysteria-driven external threats in order to avoid focusing on the more serious internal issues Matthew identifies. Syria is not a real threat to Isreal. Saddam was never a serious threat. Iran is not a serious threat.

Posted by Ikram | June 9, 2008 12:46 PM

I always sort of suspected people believed that Israel subsisted on US government handouts alone, but I've never seen it expressed outright. It is completely, completely wrong. Israel has a GDP of 153 billion dollars, and a per capita income of 22,000 dollars (figures from Wikipedia). Israel is a rich, first-world country. They can oppress the Palestinians as much as they want, with no help from the United States.

Posted by Walt | June 9, 2008 12:47 PM

The subsidies don't make as much difference as people here seem to think. After all, Egypt gets almost as much, and it hasn't done much for that country. It helps, but pre 1970s, Israel got very little support from the US and it did just fine.

Posted by Hektor Bim | June 9, 2008 12:53 PM

Matthew Yglesias writes:

On one level, this is well understood, but on another level it's often hard to detect any understanding of it at all when you look at the policies of Israel and "pro-Israel" groups in the United States

That's because Israel's American "dinosaurs" have not yet died off although their ideas have fossilized.

Posted by ndm | June 9, 2008 1:04 PM

"I always sort of suspected people believed that Israel subsisted on US government handouts alone, but I've never seen it expressed outright. It is completely, completely wrong. Israel has a GDP of 153 billion dollars, and a per capita income of 22,000 dollars (figures from Wikipedia). Israel is a rich, first-world country. They can oppress the Palestinians as much as they want, with no help from the United States.

Posted by Walt | June 9, 2008 12:47 PM"

That is expensive though. Paying to maintain an occupation, as well as air superiority, naval superiority, military technological innovation, better infantry training, as well as all of the other things states do is expensive. Israel's economic output is high in relative terms, but it's tax base isn't that big because of its small population. It may be rich compared to its neighbors but the fact its neighbors are poor and technologically stagnant in the long run makes Israel poorer because of reduced competition and trade opportunities (would the modern Netherlands really be as rich if it was surrounded by Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Kygyrzstan rather than first world economies?). Add in the rising Palestinian population with Israel's stagnant population growth and the metrics all point south.

Our military aid to Israel simply has allowed the Israeli public and political elite to kick the moment of truth down the street a little more than Israel could otherwise have afforded. The choice is 1) democracy 2) Zionism or 3) Greater Israel. Choose two.

Also, does anyone think that if the Israelis made a real good faith effort that ended in an independent Palestine free from Israel trying to adversely and shortsightedly trying to micromanage internally from across the border that the US would abandon Israel? If Israel did this, does anyone think that Israel's old ally France would somehow become more anti-Israeli? Instead, it would be harder for Arab governments to distract their populaces through misdirection pointing at the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Posted by Reality Man | June 9, 2008 1:06 PM

3) None of there countries (with the possible exception of Egypt) ever posed a real threat to Israel. - Ikram

What's Syria with their constant rocket launches from the Golan when they controlled it? Chopped liver?

And given that sabre rattling does end up leading to some not so nice places, why shouldn't Israel feel threatened by Iran? How would any other nation respond if it were in Israel's place? With a far lot less restraint I imagine ...

And don't y'all remember how Israel came into having the West Bank and Gaza Strip in the first place?

Contention: Israel focuses on largely imaginary, hysteria-driven external threats in order to avoid focusing on the more serious internal issues Matthew identifies.

True that, though. In this way Israel is exactly like the Arab countries that surround it: blame Israel/the Arabs instead of actually focusing on the lack of liberties internally (which in Israel's case includes not just Arabs but Jews who wish to have a level of religious observance between 100% secular and 100% frum).

*

Regarding the "Little Satan". Remember folks, we're "The Big Satan". How much anti-Israeli sentiment is really "we hate America, but they are too big for us to bully, so we'll bully their proxy Israel". I wish the so-called pro-Israeli types would learn that the US being "friendly" to Israel is not always such a good thing for Israel: just because someone is "nice" to you doesn't make you their friend and just because someone critiques you doesn't make you their enemy. I wish otherwise smart American Jews would be smarter and realize this important life lesson.

Anyway, Israel should be independent and not even perceived as a US lackey, ain't that what Zionism is about? Jewish national independence?

Posted by Bad Jew Working On Shavuos | June 9, 2008 1:09 PM

And worth noting to the doting ignoramus Friedman: The Occupation is a troubling "economic" problem for Israel.

On the one hand, The Occupation costs Israel tons of money--very conservative estimates put it a 500 million. That is a lot of money to spend to colonize a population that is a stones throw away.

On the other hand, much of Israel's high-tech development to which Mr. Cheerleader crows is based on the occupation. The growth of high-tech in Israel is mostly defense/military related productions which stem from Israel's role as a militaristic non democracy that lords over a subjugated group of people.

Unfortunately in Friedman's usual blissful ignorance of reality, he fails to grasp this rather obvious problem that faces Israel. Give up the costly occupation and free up some capital, only to lose a lot of money built on the same endeavor? Or continue down this path of simultaneous growth and loss and the country's moral, democratic, and physical peril?

Tough questions indeed. But all is good when the World is Flat!

Posted by jeff | June 9, 2008 1:09 PM

Reality Man,

I would be surprised if Israel's population growth is 'stagnant', I thought that the influx of Orthodox Sepharadic Jews from the Middle East had raised the birth rate (the Sephardic Jews tend to have high birth rates). Or do you mean that Jews are emigrating now because of the political situation?

Posted by Hector | June 9, 2008 1:11 PM

But how long can Israel persist as a successful country while contravening basic democratic norms and denying rights and electoral participation to a huge proportion of its de facto population?

China's been pretty successful and seems like it'll be so for some time whilst contravening basic democratic norms, etc.

Next question please ...

Posted by Bad Jew Working On Shavuos | June 9, 2008 1:12 PM

Oh, goodness, I didn't even want to see the comment cesspool this post would bring up.

Posted by El Cid | June 9, 2008 1:13 PM

"Israel’s economic power is endlessly renewable."

Thanks to the U.S. taxpayer.

Posted by kafka | June 9, 2008 1:15 PM

On the one hand, The Occupation costs Israel tons of money--very conservative estimates put it a 500 million. That is a lot of money to spend to colonize a population that is a stones throw away.

On the other hand, much of Israel's high-tech development to which Mr. Cheerleader crows is based on the occupation. - Jeff

This is the problem with talking about the costs of [X] in a macro-economic sense: sure a war or whatever costs a lot of money, but the money is spent somewhere and if it is spent largely on the population bearing the costs, then really the war is not a cost, is it? it's rather a forced gain in economic activity or forced economic growth (c.f. WWII).

Of course, if the costs of the war are born by working-class tax-payers whose kids are sent to the front to die whilst all the profits go to rich contractors or are de-facto embezzled, then that's another story.

But when you talk about government spending (or macroeconomic spending in general) ... I'm no economist, but it seems to me it's hard to talk about the cost to the economy -- the more relevant question is where the money is going? is it being recirculated (and hence, by destagnating the money that at a Pareto income distribution equilibrium would end up all at the top with the economy as a whole reaching an equilibrium -- i.e. no growth and not even capitalism, but a return to feudalism) or is it being concentrated that much quicker at the top?

Posted by Bad Jew Working On Shavuos | June 9, 2008 1:17 PM

There's a drag if the capital goods purchased are just, in a sense, entombed. It's one thing to put money into circulation by having people build tanks and airplanes for a few years, but Israel's in the position to always have its people building tanks and airplanes. It's a surtax on life similar to the one America incurs to keep up the empire. It's money that could go elsewhere were the prick not there.

Posted by Jeffrey Davis | June 9, 2008 1:31 PM

Interesting to read this post right after the one about China's full subsidies propping up an authoritarian regime. In its own way Israel is an authoritarian regime vis-a-vis the Arabs it rules over, and the probably unsustainable cost of maintaining the Israeli occupation, like the probably unsustainable cost of maintaining Chinese authoritarism, is likely to be making things a lot worse sooner rather than later.

Another argument for respecting human rights: it's easier to navigate real problems like the cost of energy or the environment if you don't have to devote resources to sustaining an unworkable political structure.

Posted by Diana | June 9, 2008 1:57 PM

As usual, Friedman is mostly wrong. As several have noted above, he neglected to mention the US subsidy (which is large, if unappreciated) and the fact that Israel has nuclear weapons, which has a huge affect on the regional balance of power.

Posted by Peter Driscoll | June 9, 2008 2:31 PM

This is the problem with talking about the costs of [X] in a macro-economic sense: sure a war or whatever costs a lot of money, but the money is spent somewhere and if it is spent largely on the population bearing the costs, then really the war is not a cost, is it? it's rather a forced gain in economic activity or forced economic growth (c.f. WWII).

Well you've got opportunity costs to deal with. Money spent on rifles and jeeps isn't available for education and health care. There's also the problem that a lot of the GDP created when building war materials is simply destroyed in the course of fighting.

Posted by daveNYC | June 9, 2008 2:32 PM

In this way Israel is exactly like the Arab countries that surround it: blame Israel/the Arabs instead of actually focusing on the lack of liberties internally (which in Israel's case includes not just Arabs but Jews who wish to have a level of religious observance between 100% secular and 100% frum).

Excellent point. The other issue Israel has to face is demographics; the real population boomlets are in the Arab population on one hand and the religious Jews on the other. Hardly a recipe for harmony.

Posted by Persia | June 9, 2008 2:36 PM

I would really like it if people stopped saying that petroleum comes from dead dinosaurs. It comes anything dead, in the right circumstances; thus, almost entirely from dead plants and microorganisms. How did this nonsense get started anyway?

Posted by SqueakyRat | June 9, 2008 2:40 PM

But how long can Israel persist as a successful country while contravening basic democratic norms and denying rights and electoral participation to a huge proportion of its de facto population?

Indefinately.

The Palestinian uprising of the last 15 years is the easiest the jews have had it at any point in their history.

If the Palestinians are smart, they'll beg to be converted to Judaism.

Posted by Northern Observer | June 9, 2008 2:50 PM

Money spent on rifles and jeeps isn't available for education and health care. There's also the problem that a lot of the GDP created when building war materials is simply destroyed in the course of fighting. - daveNYC

Assumes that you are spending money on rifles and jeeps that would have gotten spent on education and health care as opposed to being left in private hands and being used to fuel ultimately disastrous speculative bubbles, for instance. OTOH, wars, if done right (e.g. by FDR rather than GWB) result in soldiers being educated and given health care even as vets so that you end up actually providing more people with health care and education than you would have before.

*

If the Palestinians are smart, they'll beg to be converted to Judaism. - Northern Observer

I'm sure Aish Ha-Haredi and/or Neturai Karta Rabbis would volunteer to do so, just to break the Zionist entity. However, the Agudah types, who control such things in Israel, already don't recognize conversions if the Rabbi doing the conversion didn't properly kiss Agudah tuchis before doing said conversions.

Of course, if Israel were such a crappy state, or in such danger of collapsing (or if we Jews still had it so bad as we've had it in our past history), why would anybody want to immigrate or even "return" to Israel in the first palce. E.g., in the old days nobody questioned someone who claimed to be Jewish 'cause they figured "who would claim to be Jewish unless they actually were". Having a quasi-successful Jewish state has turned the tables -- unfortunately, as with many things, the early Zionists completely lacked foresight and were stuck in 19th century modes of thinking about Jewish ethnos, etc.

Posted by Red Sea Pedestrian, So Shouldn't I be in Shul not Work? | June 9, 2008 3:02 PM

"But how long can Israel persist as a successful country while contravening basic democratic norms and denying rights and electoral participation to a huge proportion of its de facto population?"

41 years and counting ...

It's a matter of will. Rhodesia and South Africa lost their resolve, so they gave up, but it's hardly a historical inevitability.

Posted by Steve Sailer | June 9, 2008 3:08 PM

" the country is ruling over a population of several million Arabs to whom it refuses to grant either independence or citizenship"

Maybe the least intelligent analysis of the I?P conflict ever written.

Posted by Dave | June 9, 2008 3:20 PM

Matt professes to understand why Israel would rather not absorb large numbers of West Bank and Gaza Palestinians, then berates Israel for not "granting" the Palestinians an independent state. He overlooks the fact that the Palestinians don't want, and have never asked for, an independent state as part of an arrangement that would not permit large numbers of Palestinians to move into Israel. To the extent Palestinians have been willing to contemplate any sort of understanding with Israel, a Palestinian "right of return" into Israel has always been a core Palestinian demand. It's hard to "grant" what has never been requested.

Posted by Gator90 | June 9, 2008 3:26 PM

Every major American Tech company has an R&D center in Israel:

Google
Microsoft
Intel
IBM
HP
Cisco
Oracle
SAP
EMC
VMware
Motorola/Freescale
Juniper
NetApp

Posted by Dan | June 9, 2008 4:09 PM

Hey, SLC! SURPRISE! I AGREE WITH YOU!

"Mr. Yglesias never gets around to telling us what, in his opinion, the Government of Israel should do to disabuse the Palestinians of this notion."

Mr. Yglesias NEVER gets around to making statements about what anybody should do about anything involving Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan or any of the other FOREIGN POLICY AREAS where he claims expertise.

No, that would be too risky. AIPAC might come after him. Or if he reveals himself to be the "liberal hawk" he is, his book sales might suffer (which would be hard, since they're clearly suffering - if not expired - already.)

Matt's only "expertise" is in sports and political campaign kibitzing. Foreign policy and national security are issues about which he has nothing but broad ambiguous vague generalities to say - because he knows nothing about them.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | June 9, 2008 5:59 PM

Sailer: "41 years and counting ...

It's a matter of will. Rhodesia and South Africa lost their resolve, so they gave up, but it's hardly a historical inevitability."

Yes, it is a historical inevitability. 41 years ain't shit in "historical" terms.

Israel is doomed. It was doomed from Day One. It was a stupid concept on the face of it and only Zionist freaks could have conceived of it and believed in it.

The only reason Israel has lasted this long is because their enemies in the region are so lame. That and support from either European countries (early on) and the US (later).

But enemies eventually smarten up and find something that works - if you don't kill them first. And despite the nukes, it's going to be a little hard to kill 200 million Arabs effectively enough to prevent them from killing a lousy few million Jews in a limited area. Not impossible technologically, but still not easy.

A handful of terrorists could bring Israel to its knees merely by stealing one of Israel's own nukes. Even if they never set it off, the scare that would produce would make the world force Israel to disarm its nukes entirely.

After that, all the Arabs need to do is spend their oil money to achieve military parity. Of course, they'd still have problems with crappy soldiers and crappy leadership - but Hizballah has shown neither are inevitable. Not to mention that once again, there are more Arabs than Jews. Numbers do count.

Thus, the ONLY thing propping up Israel is its control over US politicians. Nobody will attack Israel and risk retaliation from the US. But even that is weakening as the US is proven to be incapable of winning 4th Gen wars. The upcoming war in Iran will seal that deal.

Israel will go down in history as the last stupid effort at colonialism.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | June 9, 2008 6:13 PM

Israel has bought from West Germany, as of 2006, five submarines which they have equipped with nuclear-armed cruise missiles. In other words, they now have the same deterrent, nuclear-armed subs, that kept the Soviet Union, with its 1418 ICBMs, 5.3 million man military, and 53,000 tanks deterred.

Posted by Steve Sailer | June 9, 2008 7:21 PM

Sailer is correct that Israel has far more deterrent than Iran alone can ever overcome with its own (nonexistent) nuclear weapons program.

The point of Iran theoretically having a nuclear weapon would be solely to deter Israel from a nuclear first strike on Iran - and more importantly, from allowing a policy of "regime change" to be feasible.

And THAT is why Israel wants the US to attack Iran - regime change. Or more precisely, destroy Iran's ability to function - Israel really doesn't care WHO runs Iran, just that it not be able to be "run" at all.

Which is precisely why they supported the war in Iraq - that and the possibility that they could get an oil pipeline from Kirkuk to Haifa if Saddam were overthrown. Five minutes after Saddam's statue came down, the Israelis were up in northern Iraq negotiating for just that.

But Steve is still wrong that Israel's mere possession of nukes guarantees its future existence. In fact, as I suggested, using Israel's own nukes against it is perhaps the best way to deal with the problem from the Arab point of view.

Whether any Arabs or Persians have the smarts to pull it off is another question. But given an indefinite future, one can't say it can't happen.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | June 9, 2008 8:31 PM

I don't know if this is worth it, but Israel got along pretty well with the Shah, actually. It is incorrect to say that Israel doesn't care who runs Iran. There are many possible Iranian governments that Israel would get along just fine with.

Posted by Hektor Bim | June 9, 2008 9:46 PM

Its not it's and weather not whether.

I've been reading Yglesias for at least a couple of years now, and for the most part his spelling errors have been more charming gaffes than annoying failings. But, for me, cumulatively the effect has been to erode his credibility. I frankly don't understand how he has not made a strong effort to improve his spelling, given that he's a professional writer. He is embarrassing himself to a large audience every day.

I say this as someone who was never highly proficient at spelling—at Matthew's age, I was probably at least as bad as he is. But I've worked at it, not simply relying on spell-checkers to correct my errors—I try to make note of the errors I make as identified by the spell-checker and learn the correct spelling. I get the strong impression by both the lack of improvement here over the years and how egregious some of his errors have been that he really doesn't give a damn. And that strengthens my suspicions that there's an inherent laziness in his character—a trait suggested by a number of his blog posts.

As a professional writer, he should be aware that editors and publishers have an ear for this sort of thing. Yes, they sadly expect many professional writers to be poor spellers and that they'll need heavy copy-editing. But it's this hint of laziness that is off-putting.

At any rate, as a reader of this blog, these errors are giving me these impressions and they increase my sense that Matt is a moderately above-average guy whose reach may occasionally exceed his grasp. Every egregious spelling error pegs my bozo meter. No doubt I'm not the only one. Matt, start taking this fault of yours seriously. Some effort here will pay off in subtle ways in the future.

Posted by Keith M Ellis | June 9, 2008 11:34 PM

"There are many possible Iranian governments that Israel would get along just fine with."

Fine, Hektor. You win a cookie.

Keith Ellis: Correct. But he doesn't even read most of these comments, so we're wasting our time.

One last try: Matt, get serious, please. Even at my high rate of typing, I do glance over my posts to avoid the most egregious nonsense - and I'm not the blog owner. If I was, I would be a hell of a lot more careful than I am. (I just caught "out" instead of "our" in the sentence in the previous paragraph.)

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | June 10, 2008 4:16 AM

I find it laughable that people to continue to assert that Iranians are somehow stupid people, they most certainly are not and the ability of their youth in major international math and physics competition certainly bears this out, they consistently place among the top 5, a remarkable achievement for a nation of its economic clout. In many ways Iran is far more progressive than many of its neighbors, its already performing some limited stem cell research and even leading American scientists who go there are surprised by the quality of research being performed.

Oh and Bad Jew, China can get away with what they do b/c Tibet and Uyghur are relatively small proportions of hteir population.

Posted by Sid | June 12, 2008 9:34 AM