In my teen years in London, which coincided with the wave of Palestinian terrorism of the 1970s, I had a poster on my bedroom wall. At first glance, the image looked like a packet of ring-shaped POLO mints – whose advertising slogan was “The mint with a hole.” On my poster, the brand name was replaced with the letters “PLO” and the wording read: “Mints look good with holes in them, people don’t,” accompanied by a call to ban Yasser Arafat’s murderous terrorist organization.
The world and I have now reached the age when social and political messages are found on social media walls rather than bedroom walls, so I’m thinking of creating a meme inspired by that poster: Instead of mints, I would have a block of Swiss cheese with the slogan: “Cheese looks good with holes in it, peace deals don’t.”
Signed unceremoniously last week in Lucerne, Switzerland, the Memorandum of Understanding between the US and the Islamic Republic of Iran created fallout that continues to be felt in the Middle East and beyond. The lakeside backdrop to the talks and signing ceremony looked calm and placid. Looks, as we know, can be deceiving. So can smiles and promises. The holes might swallow us up.
The deal is as kosher as a Swiss cheese and ham sandwich. Iran is calling the shots. Instead of protecting Israel from terrorists in Lebanon, it protects terrorists in Lebanon from Israel and the Lebanese government; instead of weakening Iran, it strengthens the Islamic Republic; instead of defending the West from a radical jihadist regime, it saves the leadership from defeat – and provides it with billions of dollars to rebuild its global terrorist network.
It seems US Vice President JD Vance, the main name behind the deal, forgot that it is the loser who is meant to accept defeat, not the victor.
With Qatar and Pakistan theoretically representing Lebanese interests, and the US team – including Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff – representing Israel, the main parties affected were deliberately left out of the negotiations. I wondered whether the situation might have been different had not the prime minister’s trusted adviser Ron Dermer, who knew his way around Washington, recently retired from public life.
I SPENT part of this week at the JNS International Policy Summit held at the Waldorf Astoria in Jerusalem. Speaker after speaker stressed the necessity of dismantling radical ideologies; creating defensible borders; strengthening Israeli and Jewish identity; fighting antisemitism; being more proactive in tackling the bias in international courts and international organizations; protecting US-Israel ties; fostering the relationship between Jews and Christians; and the need to expose false narratives about Israel.
Among the proposals was the creation of a unified body to deal with “Narrative warfare” – “The Eighth Front.” Special Envoy for Trade and Innovation at the Foreign Ministry Fleur Hassan-Nahoum said: “The main problem is that the government of Israel has not yet realized that we are in a hybrid warfare. There is also the narrative war, which unfortunately, nobody has decided... should be part of a national security doctrine. All we have are many disjointed solutions, most coming from the bottom up.”
She stressed the need to treat “narrative warfare” as a serious strategic challenge following the Iranian-funded, Hamas-led October 7, 2023, invasion and massacre of some 1,200 people and abduction to Gaza of 251.
In general, there was agreement to continue the shift seen post-October 7 – to judge an enemy by its capabilities.
When Lt. Col. (res.) Sarit Zehavi, founder of the Alma Research and Education Center, co-hosted a panel with Dan Diker on regional security, and spoke about “defensible borders,” she was talking about something very close to home. The Hezbollah tunnels discovered in recent days are just a few miles from the Israeli border community where she lives with her family.
Military analyst and author Yaakov Lappin noted that the MoU is the big test of Israel’s security doctrine and that the security doctrine must be non-negotiable, “and not let jihadists build terrorist capabilities.”
Geneva-based UN Watch executive director Hillel Neuer said his organization will act for the indictment of Philippe Lazzarini, the outgoing commissioner-general of UNRWA, when his term ends shortly. Neuer accused UNRWA under Lazzarini of playing a role in enabling and perpetuating Hamas terrorism, including on October 7 and the aftermath, regarding the hostages held in Gaza, for instance.
In a forum on “Justice and Accountability,” Arnold Roth stressed that second word, “accountability.” It has been 25 long years since his 15-year-old daughter, Malki, a US citizen, was murdered along with 15 others, including six other children, in the Sbarro pizzeria bombing in August 2001.
Ahlam Tamimi lives freely in Jordan
Ahlam Tamimi, the woman behind the bombing, is living freely in Jordan despite this being a violation of the Hashemite Kingdom’s cornerstone 1995 treaty with the US. Roth and his wife seek support for their call to US Secretary of State Marco Rubio to press Jordan into compliance with the treaty, so that Tamimi can stand trial in Washington on terror charges issued there in 2013.
As often is the case in such conferences, it was the new and unexpected that stood out. Ambassador and Columbia University professor Michael Shlomi called for “cultural intelligence,” sadly lacking in the events surrounding the MoU. He noted that Vance arrived at the room in Lucerne, where the “peace talks” were held, 30 minutes before the Iranian team. The US lost its standing as its team sat around waiting. The fate of Israel and the region is being determined in Washington and European cities where they literally don’t understand the language and culture of the Middle East, he noted.
During a panel on the challenges facing Israeli democracy, Efrat Last, a speech therapist by training and director of international relations at Netsach Israel, a right-leaning leadership NGO, had some important words to say. She described treating a Jewish teenager who was not familiar with the Hebrew word “chazan” (the cantor who leads prayers), and hadn’t heard of the “Shema,” the prayer which serves as a declaration of Jewish faith.
“Democracy isn’t merely a set of procedures. At its core, it’s a national self-determination, but this requires a ‘self.’ A people must know who it is before it can govern itself,” she said.
Media attention and public concern focus on the lack of education in the “core subjects” in Israeli ultra-Orthodox schools, where, in many cases, the graduates are not equipped to work in the modern world. However, many secular schoolchildren are graduating without knowing the basics of their own religion and history, and without a fundamental understanding of who they are.
The dominant narrative presents Israelis as “colonizers” rather than the indigenous people whose ancestors prayed in Hebrew in Jerusalem before other monotheistic religions had been born. Knowing who we are and why we’re here is essential for our survival. Knowing your own culture is the intelligent thing to do.
THE SITUATION is not all bleak; the fallout from the Iran deal could create new opportunities and alliances. Israel is the only Jewish state, but it is not the only country worried about the boost Iran has just received. This could be a time of strengthening ties with the Abraham Accords countries and expanding the 2020 agreement to new members. India, concerned about Pakistan’s extraordinary new elevated status as mediator, might also be open to furthering the already strong bonds with Israel.
The nascent Isaac Accords, drawn up by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Argentina’s President Javier Milei, with US mediation, could also take on new members in South America, where a wave of more conservative governments is coming into power, including this week in Colombia.
I would not look to the leadership change in the UK for salvation.
Nice words alone, in Switzerland or anywhere else, will not bring security. Only getting rid of the jihadist regime in Tehran and removing the terrorist threat of its proxies can do that.
The world needs to wake up and realize the dangers if a future deal leaves as many holes as the Swiss cheese MoU – the nature of terrorism is to fill the vacuum. The holes aren’t empty threats.