The coronavirus pandemic has highlighted the fact that we live in an age of uncertainty. In such times, granting a veto over Israel’s borders to neighbors that are falling apart before our eyes does not advance the cause of peace

By: Caroline Glick

We are living through a grave crisis. And crises have a knack for clarifying fundamental truths. The coronavirus pandemic has exposed several of them.

First, our ability to control our world is limited. An unknown number of months ago, through unclear means, the coronavirus broke out in China and landed in the rest of the world shortly thereafter. Over the past month, everything that makes up our lives and our world came to a grinding halt. Schools closed. Workplaces shut down. Israel’s previously stable and promising economic outlook has disappeared. No one can tell us when or if our lives will ever go back to normal and what our economy will look like when this is over.

The second truth the pandemic has shown us is that no matter how bad things are in Israel, the plight of our neighbors is immeasurably worse. Consider Egypt. The Egyptian economy has been teetering on the brink of collapse for a decade. The Egyptian health system failed long before the coronavirus was a gleam in a bat’s eye. Government hospitals lack both basic equipment and a sufficient number of physicians.

The Egyptian government is trying to enact social distancing. Mosques and churches have been shuttered. But it appears that Cairo’s overarching strategy for handling the pandemic is to punish anyone who discusses the dimensions of the outbreak in Egypt.

A week and a half ago, authorities in Cairo stripped the press credentials from a Guardian reporter who published the findings of a study on Egypt’s coronavirus status that had been reported by the Lancet medical journal. The Lancet report claimed that the number of people in Egypt with the coronavirus is far higher than the official data.

At the start of this week, the Egyptian government claimed that Egypt had 286 coronavirus patients and that eight people had died in Egypt from the virus. The Lancet report alleged that more than 19,000 people in Egypt have coronavirus.

Then there is Lebanon. The coronavirus pandemic arrived in Lebanon just as the Hezbollah-controlled government of Prime Minister Hassan Diab defaulted on $1.2 billion in foreign loan payments. In the months that preceded the virus, thousands of protesters had flooded Lebanon’s streets demanding massive constitutional changes. The pandemic got them off the street, but it also hammered the final nail into the coffin of Lebanese nationalism. The Hezbollah-controlled Health Ministry, and Hezbollah itself, are focusing their resources on treating Shi’ites. Meanwhile, the Druze, Christian and Sunni militias, as well as political parties, are catering to their constituencies.

Jordan entered the pandemic after having barely survived a profound economic crisis that brought hundreds of thousands of Jordanians into the streets demanding government reform and destabilizing the government. Jordanians from all ethnicities have lost faith in the Hashemite Kingdom, which owes its survival to Israeli and U.S. support.

Iraq and Syria are both failed states, engaged in varying levels of civil war. They are run by combinations of warlords, Iranian proxies and Iran. They have no means of contending with normal life, let along with a pandemic.

Then there is Iran. The greatest state sponsor of terrorism and the author of much of the instability and suffering afflicting the region is also the greatest casualty of the coronavirus pandemic. Like Egypt and Lebanon, the crisis befell Iran in the midst of an economic meltdown. Iran’s economic difficulties aren’t the only reason it cannot contend with the coronavirus, however. The regime has exhibited total incompetence in managing the outbreak. Although the virus has raged through the country for more than a month, the regime still won’t shut down shrines in Qom, the epicenter of the outbreak.

According to Iran’s official midweek data, 47,593 Iranians have been infected, and 3,036 have died from coronavirus. Unofficial findings placed the number of infected at anywhere between 70,000 and 2,000,000, and 15,000 dead.

It is hard to know how Iran and the other states in the region will look when this pandemic has passed. But it is safe to assume that they will be less stable than they were when it first hit.

This returns us to Israel, which entered the crisis with a strong economy and an advanced, well-funded and functioning health system.

The coronavirus and the chaos engulfing our neighbors tell us two things. First, we need to preserve and strengthen the bonds that hold us together as a nation. Social solidarity is the vital foundation of all national efforts in times of crisis.

The second lesson is that in a world and region plagued with uncertainty and instability, we must do everything we can in the spheres that we do control to minimize uncertainty and maximize stability.

A week ago, Israel almost lost it all. Last week Israel was on verge of internal unrest and chaos the likes of which we hadn’t seen since the 2005 expulsion of ten thousand Israelis from their homes and communities in Gaza and northern Samaria. Indeed, the social cleavages that emerged since last month’s election foretold an even greater disaster than the crisis we experienced back then.

The fact that three former Israel Defense Forces chiefs of general staff were willing to work in concert with the Joint Arab List placed a question mark over the future of our society and state.

The Joint List is an alliance of parties that rejects Israel’s right to exist. Its members work openly in the Knesset, in the courts and in the international arena to delegitimize the Jewish people’s right to self-determination and to undermine Israel’s ability to defend itself from external attack and internal subversion. Blue and White’s willingness to work with the alliance called into question the Israeli center-left’s commitment to the continued existence of the Jewish state.

The public outcry their actions provoked compelled Blue and White Party leader Benny Gantz and his fellow former IDF chief Gabi Ashkenazi to reverse course and seek a unity government with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the right-wing bloc.

By abandoning their coalition with the Joint List, Gantz and Ashkenazi prevented large-scale civil unrest which would have been devastating at any time. In the midst of the coronavirus crisis, it would have been disastrous. But while they recognized the need for social and national solidarity, it is far from clear that Gantz and his colleagues understand the need at this time to introduce certainty and stability into our strategic reality.

With our neighbors all teetering on the edge of the abyss, Israel needs to take bold action to make clear what its red lines are to restore some order to our neighborhood. The first means of drawing these essential lines is by fortifying borders and making clear we will defend them.

Israel’s borders with Egypt and Lebanon, and (thanks to U.S. recognition of Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights) with Syria, are clear to all sides. Our neighbors know where the line is located, and they know not to cross it.

This is not the situation on Israel’s eastern border. It is not the situation in Judea and Samaria. There, for 53 years, Israel has failed to set out lines or make clear its intentions.

To protect itself from chaos to its east Israel must apply its laws to the Jordan Valley and the northern Dead Sea region and follow up the move with mass expansion of its communities and transportation and road infrastructures linking the eastern frontier to the rest of the country.

Gantz and his colleagues claim that to preserve its peace with Jordan, Israel must first receive Jordan’s approval before applying its law to the border. But their concerns are misplaced. Providing Jordan with a veto over Israel’s right to determine its border will empower the most extreme actors in Jordanian society at the expense of the regime’s stability. In contrast, unilateral action on Israel’s part will stabilize its relations with Jordan by dispelling uncertainty about Israel’s intentions.

The same logic holds in relation to the Palestinian Authority in Judea and Samaria.

This week, Israeli Health Ministry officials briefed reporters that Israel must “annex Judea and Samaria from a public health perspective.” They meant that from a medical perspective there is no difference between the population of sovereign Israel and the population of Judea and Samaria. What happens in one happens in the other because the populations are intertwined.

P.A. health officials clearly agree. They are following Israel’s lead and seek its guidance in all their efforts to slow and the spread of the virus and care for its victims.

The P.A.’s willingness to work so closely with Israel owes to their faith in their Israeli counterparts. If the ministry was conveying a sense of confusion and uncertainty about its actions in relation to the pandemic, the Palestinians would reject its authority. This, in turn, would raise the level of uncertainty among Israelis and Palestinians alike and fuel hysteria and chaos.

A parallel dynamic prevails in relation to Israel’s security control over Judea and Samaria and its commitment to its cities, towns and villages there. The more certainty Israel signals about its long-term intentions in relation to its security control over the areas and its attachment to its communities in Judea and Samaria, the more willing the Palestinians will be to live and let live.

The peaks in Palestinian violence and rejection of Israel and its permanent presence and control over Judea and Samaria have come when Israel has expressed the greatest confusion about its intentions and plans in relation to these areas. A clear Israeli position on Judea and Samaria will work like its clear borders with Egypt, Lebanon, Syria and Jordan to engender stability. Everyone knows Israel’s red lines and understands the price of crossing them.

Gantz and his colleagues reportedly oppose applying Israeli sovereignty to these areas and their opposition is a major stumbling block in coalition talks. Perhaps their opposition stems from their attachment to the left’s hidebound and false belief that the only way to secure peace is through appeasement. If so, they need to reconsider their views.

The coronavirus, and the failure of the societies and regimes around us, point to the fact we live in an age of uncertainty. In these times, Blue and White’s desire to grant a veto over Israel’s borders to neighbors who are dependent on Israel for their well being on the one hand and falling apart before our eyes on the other does not advance the cause of peace. It removes all possibility of peaceful coexistence. It raises the prospect of war by increasing uncertainty and instability unnecessarily. Israeli sovereignty and strength are the greatest stabilizing forces in the region today. Applying Israeli sovereignty to these areas now is the best way to promote peace and expand stability in our chaotic region.

            (JNS.org)

Caroline Glick is an award-winning columnist and author of “The Israeli Solution: A One-State Plan for Peace in the Middle East.”

This article first appeared in Israel Hayom

What effect might this plague have on the Left’s pampered soy boys and pussy-hat feminists?

By: Bruce Bawer

Last week, in the New York Post, Kyle Smith made a thoughtful argument that, in the COVID-19 era, “the woke virus,” too, “is spreading faster than ever.” He quoted a statement on Twitter by actress Fran Drescher that the Chinese virus is a product of capitalism; he noted the “vomitatious ‘Imagine’ video praising open borders, socialism and atheism” that was posted online by Gal Gadot and other C-list celebrities in response to the pandemic; and he cited inane claims by various activists that the coronavirus disproportionately disadvantages women or people of color. “Next year,” Smith concluded, “there will probably be a vaccine for coronavirus. But there will never be an inoculation for woke stupidity.”

He may be right. But during these strange weeks when all the world has been united in being apart, I’ve kept nourishing the hope that woke culture may turn out to be one of the casualties of this plague. In fact I’ve pretty much talked myself into believing that it will be. After all, what could more effectively expose the absurdity of the concept of microaggressions than a macroaggression on the scale of the coronavirus? When an increasing number of Americans are infected by a very real and malignant corporeal contagion, how many people are going to keep buying the leftist fiction that no country on earth is more riddled with the contagion of prejudice than the United States? In a time when we’re all “social distancing” to save our skins, who will dare to carry on about the need for “safe spaces” as protection from mere words?

If the religion of intersectionality survives the pandemic, how can its adherents not come to discern that if there are indeed legitimate victim groups in twenty-first-century America, they’re not women or gays or Muslims or racial minorities but the old and infirm? (Unless, of course, you’re talking about the Christians, Jews, Hindus, women, gays, and others who are the victims of systematic Islamic oppression.)

And what about the whole “trans” business – the insistence that men can become women, that women can become men, that there are more than two sexes, and that sexual identity is determined not by chromosomes but by how a given individual feels on a given day? Not only do some of these contentions contradict others – they all defy biology. And when everyone on the planet is preoccupied with a virus, biology is one thing that’s very hard to deny. If a lethal contagion came along that took down only men but not women, who would be more worried for his or her own life – a biological man who identified as a woman or a biological woman who identified as a man?

To be sure, as Kyle Smith points out, the mainstream media are still playing the same old tune. For example, they charge that calling the Chinese virus the Chinese virus is racist. On March 18, the New York Times ran a ridiculous piece that was presented as a news article and credited to no fewer than three reporters – Katie Rogers, Lara Jakes, and Ana Swanson. Its lede read as follows: “President Trump on Wednesday defended his increasingly frequent practice of calling the coronavirus the ‘Chinese Virus,’ ignoring a growing chorus of criticism that it is racist and anti-Chinese.”

Trump’s continued use of this term, we were informed, “has angered Chinese officials and a wide range of critics, and China experts say labeling the virus that way will only ratchet up tensions between the two countries, while resulting in the kind of xenophobia that American leaders should discourage.” Naturally, the article (which failed to acknowledge that the Times itself had used the term “Chinese virus” in a January 20 headline) went on to claim that Trump’s word choice had made Asian-Americans the targets of “racial slurs and physical abuse.”

Notably, the Times article referred to “the erroneous perception that China is the cause of the virus.” Of course, no one thinks that China is the virus’s “cause,” whatever that might mean; but it’s an established fact that China was its place of origin, that the virus would never have arisen if not for certain disgusting cultural and culinary traditions that are indigenous to China, and that the virus probably would never have spread so widely and taken so many lives if not for the treacherous duplicity of the Chinese Communist Party. Scott Kennedy, a “China expert” at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told the Times that the term “Chinese virus” was “fueling a narrative in China about a broader American hatred and fear of not just the Chinese Communist Party but of China and Chinese people in general.”

Yes, there is a narrative to that effect taking root in China: it’s a narrative that’s being pushed, in the most devious and cynical fashion, by the Chinese Communist Party. (Note, moreover, the implication here that hating and fearing the Chinese Communist Party, or any Communist Party, is a bad thing.)

On March 20, the Washington Post ran a similar story, which also masqueraded as a news article, by Allyson Chiu, who, like her compeers at the Times, maintained that Trump’s use of the term “Chinese virus” had dismayed certain “critics.” (As with the Times, there was no mention that the Post itself had used the term “Chinese virus” on January 17, January 21, January 22, January 24, and January 27.)

These critics, charged Chiu, worried that Trump’s word choice “could lead to increased discrimination and racism toward Asian Americans — a marginalized group with a long history of being scapegoated amid public health crises.” Chiu quoted Harvey Dong, who teaches Asian American studies at Berkeley, as saying that Trump’s word choice was “racist” and “dangerous”; she cited Gilbert Gee, who teaches public health at UCLA, as saying that Trump & Co. had “made it okay to have anti-Asian bias”; and Charissa Cheah, a psychology professor at the University of Maryland, told Chiu that Trump was throwing Americans “of Chinese and Asian descent ‘under the bus.’” Like the Times reporters, Chiu asserted that “[s]cores of Asian Americans nationwide” had been “targeted in verbal and physical attacks linked to coronavirus fears.”

In treating the coronavirus as yet another excuse to cry bigotry, the Times and Post are hardly alone. Other major media, such as CNN, have also sung from the same hymn sheet. These are, needless to say, the same media that were quick to heap scorn on President Trump’s January 31 ban on visitors from China — a ban now recognized as having saved lives. On February 5, the Times ran an op-ed headlined “Who Says It’s Not Safe to Travel to China?”

Accusing Trump of “xenophobic rhetoric,” the author, Rosie Spinks, suggested that the reason for his China travel ban was that “destinations perceived as ‘Western’ benefit from a kind of cultural familiarity and presumption of safety that so-called foreign or exotic places do not.” Who’s Rosie Spinks? A virologist? No. She’s a “global tourism reporter.”

Good try, Rosie. But at a time when we’re all constantly washing our hands in an effort to avoid perishing, how many of us are going to be inclined to wring our hands over the claim that hordes of Asian-Americans (none of them, to be sure, ever identified by name) are being verbally bashed or physically beaten from coast to coast because of the Wuhan plague? In any event, in the weeks after Spinks’s piece appeared as the U.S. and scores of other countries cut off travel to and from almost anywhere abroad, the media finger-pointers, instead of issuing apologies, began attacking President Trump for not acting sooner. At one White House presser after another, reporters have shown themselves to be less interested in obtaining information about the pandemic that might be of use to the public than in using the world crisis to try to tear down the president.

Again, Kyle Smith is right: they’re still stuck in pre-pandemic propaganda mode. But by taking this route at a time when they should be playing a critical role in the reliable dissemination of vital information, they’re proving themselves more useless – and downright dangerous – than ever. Most Americans, knowing that they’re being fed fake news rooted in woke ideology, already distrust the news media. How can the media’s decision to stick with propaganda in a time of crisis not send their approval ratings even further south?

As if we didn’t already have enough reasons to want to see the woke mentality quashed, this crisis has given us a new reason. Just as fear of being called racist kept colleagues and neighbors from blowing the whistle on the San Bernardino and Fort Hood terrorists (among others), and kept British police officers, social workers, journalists, and public officials from sounding the alarm about Muslim grooming gangs in that country, so the same woke-engendered fear reportedly kept Italian authorities from taking prompt, sensible action against the coronavirus.

Dr. Giorgio Palù, a virologist at the University of Padova, told CNN that “a proposal to isolate people…coming from China” was rejected outright by the Italian government because it was “seen as racist” – and this decision, he said, was the chief reason for Italy’s brutal death tolls.

It’s a consummation devoutly to be wished, then, that this bad dream we’re all dreaming together will put an end, once and for all, to the whole woke package, from microaggression to intersectionality to phony victimization. Is it a realistic wish? Am I kidding myself when I think that the experience of this plague might be a sobering, maturing experience for at least some of America’s privileged, pampered soy boys and pussy-hat feminists, turning them into rational grown-ups with a mature understanding of the challenges, uncertainties, tragedies, and responsibilities of life?

            (Front Page Mag)