In October 2014 China established, together with other Asian countries, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB). The creation of the AIIB was a consequence of China’s exasperation at America’s refusal to reform the Bretton Woods institutions (i.e. the International Monetary Fund, or IMF, and the World Bank) and the Asian Development Bank (ADB). For years, China has asked to reform the IMF and the World Bank so as to reflect the global clout of the Chinese economy. But the US Congress is adamant not to yield influence, within institutions dominated by America, to a country it perceives as a threat. As for the ADB, Japan has more voting rights there than China, even though China is Asia’s biggest economy. Since China owns the world’s largest foreign-exchange reserves, it can afford to build alternative institutions and to bypass the United States.

The creation of the AIIB clearly indicates that Asia’s balance of power is swinging to China’s advantage, for this is the first time that America is unable to thwart the creation of a rival Asian financial institution. After the Asian financial crisis of 1997, for example, the United States blocked the creation of a proposed Asian Monetary Fund (AMF). Nearly two decades later, China’s will has prevailed.

Despite its intensive lobbying, America has not been able to convince its allies to stay out of the AIIB. In March 2015, Britain, France, Germany and Italy announced their intention to join the AIIB as founding shareholders. In Asia, major US allies such as South Korea, New Zealand, Singapore, and Thailand have announced that they will join the AIIB despite Washington’s pressures. Even Japan and Australia, which had originally indicated that they would not become AIIB members, are likely to join soon. In the Middle East, Israel just added its name to the list of “rebels” by submitting its application to the AIIB.

Israel’s decision to join the AIIB is but another indication of a growing Israeli readiness to defy US President Barack Obama. The looming agreement between the Obama administration and Iran raises concerns in Israel about America’s reliability. While China will never replace America as Israel’s strategic ally, Israel is definitely taking some eggs out of the American basket.

The Obama administration must understand that it cannot enjoy the best of two worlds. It cannot refuse to grant China more influence within the Bretton Woods institutions and expect China to stay still. It cannot abandon its allies and expect them not to develop alternative ties. As Jewish Agency Chairman (and former prisoner of Zion) Natan Sharansky recently argued in a Washington Post op-ed, America under Obama suffers from “a tragic loss of moral self-confidence.”

When US leaders were dealing with the Soviet Union, Sharansky explains, “They felt they were speaking in the name of their people and the free world as a whole, while the leaders of the Soviet regime could speak for no one but themselves and the declining number of true believers still loyal to their ideology. But in today’s postmodern world, when asserting the superiority of liberal democracy over other regimes seems like the quaint relic of a colonialist past, even the United States appears to have lost the courage of its convictions.”

Because the United States seems to have lost the courage of its convictions, it is losing the confidence of its allies. Instead of trying to lobby Western countries (including Israel) not to join the AIIB, America should convince its allies that it is reliable and determined.

When America displays moral relativism and weakness, there are consequences. China’s success with the AIIB is one of them, and Israel made the right decision by joining this new bank.

Israel’s position in today’s Middle East is somewhat similar to that of France in Europe during the Thirty Years’ War, in that it is surrounded by neighbors who kill each other for religious reasons. As opposed to Cardinal Richelieu, however, Israeli leaders don’t need to betray foreign coreligionists for the sake of “raison d’État” (national interest). In today’s parlance, Realpolitik has replaced raison d’État, but both terms express the same policy of which Richelieu was a master: the interests of the state precede moral considerations. Richelieu was a cynic, no doubt, but at least he knew how to identity and defend his country’s interests. The same cannot be said of France’s current foreign minister, Laurent Fabius.

Fabius recently made a point of expressing support for Saudi strikes in Yemen, and he also indicated that France would support an upcoming United Nations Security Council resolution on Palestinian statehood. Both moves show the trickiness and pitfalls of selecting “good guys” in the Middle East, not least because embarrassing details were recently revealed about the involvement of Saudi Arabia and of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in terrorism.

Iran’s ruthless attempt to take control of Yemen should indeed be resisted, but the Saudis are hardly freedom fighters. They might be the least of two evils, but evils they are. Two days before Fabius’ official visit to Riyadh, lawyers representing Saudi Arabia filed papers in Manhattan’s federal court asking the judge to reject claims by families of victims of the 9/11 terrorist attacks that the Saudi government “directly and knowingly” helped the hijackers who blew the Twin Towers. According to al-Qaida member Zacarias Moussaoui (who is serving a life prison sentence for conspiring with the 9/11 hijackers), Saudi Arabia did not cut ties with al-Qaida and with its ringleader Osama Bin Laden after 1994. Lawyers for the families of 9/11 victims claim that they have amassed new evidence suggesting that the Saudi government, or senior Saudi officials, individually funded al-Qaida. While this claim still needs to be fully substantiated, describing Saudi Arabia as a pro-Western ally is a fraud.

The same goes for the PLO. At the United Nations Security Council, France is working on a resolution that would impose the establishment of a Palestinian state along the 1949 armistice lines between Israel and Jordan, including in east Jerusalem, as well as a “fair” solution to the refugees issue. France insists that it is promoting a Palestinian state on behalf of the PLO (“the good guys”) and not on behalf of Hamas (“the bad ones”). This, despite the fact that Palestinian Authority (PA) Chairman Mahmoud Abbas added Hamas to his government last summer; that Hamas won the 2006 Palestinian elections; that Hamas would likely win the first (and last) elections held in a newly established Palestinian state; that Hamas’s regional backer is Iran; and that Iran has declared that it would actively arm a Palestinian state once it is established in the West Bank. So France is both supporting the anti-Iranian coalition in Yemen and the establishment of an Iranian base west of the Jordan River.

Attempts to invent a dichotomy between the PLO and Hamas are absurd not only because both organizations jointly run the PA, but also because the PLO has never ceased its terrorist activities –a fact that was also brought to the attention of a New York court recently. Less than two months ago, a New York jury ruled that the PLO and the PA were the catalysts for terrorist attacks in Israel between 2002 and 2004, and it ordered them to pay $218.5 million to the victims and their families.

Fabius’ two recent Middle East initiatives defy logic, and both rely on assumptions whose flimsiness was revealed (or is being disclosed) in US courts. “Deception is the knowledge of kings,” wrote Richelieu in his Political Testament. In the Middle East, this knowledge is not the privilege of royals.

British historian Edward Hallett Carr is generally known by international relations students as a theoretician who advocated realism in foreign policy. What Carr meant by realism was that there should be no moral dimension to foreign policy, and that statesmen must treat reality as it is and not as they wish it were. Yet the way Carr looked at reality was so delusional that it bordered on insanity: he supported Hitler’s claims and Chamberlain’s appeasement policy in the 1930s; he claimed that Britain could not win the war against Germany; and he praised Soviet communism as a highly successful system which the rest of the world would eventually emulate. While Carr’s writing was mostly nonsensical, he did get one thing right: states are motivated by interests and only evoke morality to justify their foreign policy.

European diplomacy is a case in point. The French and British bombed Gaddafi and spared Assad because Libya is an oil state while Syria is not – and yet Nicolas Sarkozy and David Cameron claimed that the 2011 NATO operation in Libya was motivated by humanitarian concerns. European leaders and diplomats would have us believe that their foreign policy is based on principles such as human rights and self-determination, yet they dare not criticize occupiers and human rights violators whose business they need. Saudi Arabia can torture bloggers because its oil is indispensable. China can occupy Tibet because it is a world power. Russia can occupy Georgia because no one is going to risk a nuclear war for the independence of this former Soviet republic. Turkey can occupy Cyprus and deny the Kurds their independence because Turkey is a valuable trade partner with temperamental leaders.

European diplomats typically retort that Israel gets different treatment because, as a democracy, it is rightfully judged by higher standards. According to this argument, Turkey is democratic enough to be a NATO member and a potential EU one, but not democratic enough to be asked to end its occupation of Cyprus and to give the Kurds a state.

The gap between theory and practice in European diplomacy was recently confirmed by Sweden’s Middle East policy. In October 2014, Sweden became the first European country to recognize the virtual “State of Palestine.” As a reward, Sweden’s foreign minister, Margot Wallstrom, was invited to the March 2015 meeting of the Arab League. Wallstrom prepared a speech in which she said that human rights should be respected in the Arab world too, and she sent a draft to her hosts for review. The speech was vetoed and canceled by Saudi Arabia. The Arab League explained in a statement that Wallstrom’s speech would have been an offense to Islam.

The fury didn’t end there. Saudi Arabia announced that it would not issue new business visas to Swedes, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) recalled its ambassador to Sweden. Swedish businessmen started getting nervous and asked their government to apologize to the Saudis. Not that the Swedish government needed to be convinced: it is running for the 2017 UN Security Council bid, and the 22 votes of the Arab League at the General Assembly are critical. So Wallstrom decided to apologize for mentioning human rights. On March 20 she said that she had never meant to criticize Islam and that Sweden wants to preserve good relations with Saudi Arabia.

In a way, the Palestinians have been the victims of their success: they have been so good at marketing their jihad as a struggle for human rights that the Europeans ended up believing them. So when Sweden recognized Palestine in the name of human rights, its leaders couldn’t understand why talking about human rights should offend Islam. The explanation, of course, is that you cannot duly play the role of the useful idiot and then be surprised to be treated like one.

If Europe is on Israel’s case, it is not because of human rights or because of democracy. It is because of the geopolitical value of the Arab world and of the electoral weight of European Muslims. Simply put, getting on Israel’s case pays. Precisely because Sweden and its European partners stick to their guns only when doing so does not affect their economic interests, it is hard to take their sermons seriously. The unmistakable conclusion from Europe’s behavior is that once Israel becomes a natural gas exporter, it will be treated differently. Even E.H. Carr could have understood that.

Benjamin Netanyahu’s statement on election day about Arab voters was inappropriate, as he himself admitted by apologizing. But Barack Obama had no business commenting on what is an internal Israeli matter. You would think that after seven years of counter-productive Middle East policy, Obama would have learned his lesson. Not at all: in his case, nemesis nurtures hubris.

The Obama Administration is incensed at Israel these days. The President himself publicly reprimanded Israel’s Prime Minister for his election day comment, and expressed concern for the future of Israeli democracy. Obama’s Chief-of-Staff, Denis McDonough, declared at the J-Street conference this week that “an occupation that has lasted 50 years must end.” State Department Spokesperson Mary Harf stated that it is for Israel to “demonstrate commitment to a two-state solution” and hinted that the Obama Administration does not trust Netanyahu: “We just don’t know what to believe at this point”, she said.

Barack Obama’s concerns about Israeli democracy hardly sound genuine in light of recent revelations about his undercover attempts to influence the outcome of Israeli elections. Israeli journalist Avi Issacharoff just revealed in The Times of Israel that a senior Israeli official speaking on condition of anonymity disclosed that the Obama Administration was directly involved in an attempt to topple the Israeli Prime Minister. On March 22, Republican strategist John McLaughlin declared on “The Cats Roundtable” radio show that “President Obama and his allies were playing in the election to defeat Prime Minister Netanyahu”, using US taxpayers’ money to fund the V15 campaign against Netanyahu, a campaign guided by former Obama political operative Jeremy Bird.

Obama’s attempt to undermine Netanyahu went beyond V15. On March 6, less than two weeks before Election Day, Israeli journalist Nahum Barnea published a document revealing that Netanyahu had allegedly agreed to a Palestinian state along the pre-1967 lines with land swaps and Israeli recognition of Palestinian claims over East Jerusalem. In other words, that Netanyahu had agreed to concessions he publicly opposes. Who could possibly have leaked such a document if not the Obama Administration? Precisely because Obama was trying to turn right-wing voters away from Netanyahu with this leak, Netanyahu had no choice but to reassure those voters by declaring that a Palestinian state would not be established on his watch. To echo Mary Harf, we just don’t know what to believe at this point: two weeks ago, the Obama Administration wanted us to believe that Netanyahu was a starry-eyed peacenik; now it is warning us that he is a peace renegade.

While the Obama Administration is lashing out at Netanyahu after unsuccessfully trying to prevent his reelection, the Palestinians keep getting a free pass. Obama has never demanded from Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas to demonstrate his commitment to the two-state solution, nor has he ever threatened to reevaluate his policy toward the PA, despite Abbas’ alliance with Hamas; despite the absence of elections in the PA since 2006; despite Abbas’ failure to respond to former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s 2008 peace offer; despite Abbas’ rejection of Hillary Clinton’s 2011 peace proposal, and his rejection of John Kerry’s last year; despite Abbas’ outrageous charge of genocide against Israel from the UN General Assembly podium; despite the anti-Semitic incitement in Abbas’ state-controlled media; despite Abbas’ repeated declarations that no Jew shall be tolerated in the Palestinian state; despite Abbas’ insistence that he can waive his own “right of return” to Safed but not that of five million Palestinians to Israel. Indeed, Mary Harf has never expressed difficulty in figuring out “what to believe” between Abbas’ conciliatory statements in English and his bellicose ones in Arabic.

What Netanyahu explained in his NBC interview after being reelected makes perfect sense. “I don’t want a one-state solution. I want a sustainable, peaceful two-state solution. But for that, circumstances have to change,” he said. And current circumstances include Abbas’ alliance with Hamas, Iran’s warning that it will arm the future Palestinian state, and the fact that the Obama Administration lets the Palestinians get away with everything. So when Denis McDonough says that the occupation must end, it is for him to provide a credible alternative. And, absent US pressures on the Palestinians, there is no credible alternative. Dennis Ross argued inThe New York Times on January 4, 2015, that if the Europeans are serious about achieving peace between Israel and the Palestinians, they should “stop giving the Palestinians a pass” and “raise the cost of saying no.” Well said, Dennis. But what about the Obama Administration?

When I moved to Israel as a graduate student and enrolled at the Hebrew University, I was struck by the popularity of French post-modern philosophers among Israeli academics. Having grown up in France, I had read the likes of Foucault and Derrida as a teenager and treated them for what they were: smart Alecks who had mastered the French art of playing with words to say nothing, with elegance. But then I realized why some academics are so fond of French deconstructionism: when your ideas keep being contradicted by reality, all you need is to claim that reality is “constructed” and, therefore, irrelevant. Jean Baudrillard pushed this technique to its limits during the 1991 Gulf War. Before the war, he claimed that “The Gulf War will not take place.” As the war broke out, Baudrillard published a second article titled “The Gulf war is not taking place.” And after the end of the war, Baudrillard’s authored a third article called “The Gulf war did not take place.”

Two days before Israel’s March 17 elections, Haaretz political analyst Barak Ravid wrote that “If Kulanu ends up with 12 or 13 seats on Tuesday night, it would mean that Likud would drop to below the 20 seats. Under such circumstances, all that would be left for Netanyahu to do is resign even before the final vote tally is in or wait until senior Likud officials come out against him and remove him as their leader.” And Ravid concluded: “The prime minister’s crash landing with reality appears unavoidable.” To his credit, Ravid didn’t “pull a Baudrillard” by claiming that Netanyahu didn’t actually win. But his colleague Gideon Levy knows just how not to lose an election again: “We need to replace the people,” he wrote in his Haaretz editorial the day after the election.

While most pre-election polls predicted a four-seat lead for Labor over Likud, Likud ended-up with a six-seat lead over Labor. In the outgoing 19th Knesset, Likud had 18 seats, Avigdor Lieberman’s Israel Beitenu 13, Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid 19, and Naftali Bennett’s Jewish Home 12. After the break-up of the Likud-Israel Beitenu bloc of 31 seats, and with the rivalry between coalition partners growing, the government had become unmanageable. Yair Lapid’s party was larger than the prime minister’s, and Lapid was able to impose his will on the government – to the point, indeed, that Netanyahu decided to go for broke by calling early elections. Netanyahu’s gamble has produced an outcome of which he himself hadn’t dreamed: Likud ended-up with 30 seats, Lapid will be exiled to the opposition benches, and Bennett and Lieberman (now with 8 and 6 seats, respectively) will crawl to the coalition on Bibi’s terms. It is the political jackpot of the century.

Netanyahu now can easily put together a stable coalition composed of Likud (30), Kulanu (10), Jewish Home (8), Shas (7), United Torah Judaism (6), and Israel Beitenu (6). With 67 seats, Netanyahu has a wide enough coalition. Such a coalition would also be stable as there are no major ideological disagreements among those six parties. Kulanu is indeed more dovish than its future coalition partners, but it ran exclusively on an economic platform and is unlikely to make a fuss about the “absence of a political horizon” regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Shas and United Torah Judaism will demand an amendment to the military draft law passed under the previous government, but the secular-minded Lieberman is hardly in a bargaining position to oppose it. This is Netanyahu’s dream coalition, and it will likely last for four years.

As for the prediction that the Jewish Home party might overtake Likud, it has proven completely fanciful. Some poll predicted 18 seats for the Jewish Home, sending candidates running for the party’s primary elections. In the end, the party imploded like a soufflé. There are two technical reasons for that: a. Many potential Jewish Home voters cast their vote for Likud for fear of seeing Labor enjoy a strong lead and form the next government; b. Jewish Home lost probably three seats to its rival “Yahad” party, which in the end didn’t pass the electoral threshold. But the underlying cause of Jewish Home’s retreat is that Naftali Bennett’s strategy is delusional. Jewish Home is a religious, sectorial party and, therefore, it cannot break the glass ceiling of 10-plus seats. Bennett took a ride on the Jewish Home after leaving Likud, but the core voters (and rabbis) of the Jewish Home will not let him reshape their party in the Likud’s image, even if that means remaining a small party. If Bennett wants to fulfill his political ambitions, he will have to return to the Likud.

Netanyahu has won big time. He must be giggling at Barak Ravid’s crash prediction, paraphrasing and repeating to himself Churchill’s famous line: “Some crash! Some reality!”

Israel’s decision to suspend the transfer of tax revenues to the Palestinian Authority (PA) was met by the latter’s claim that it is about to go bankrupt, as well as by the threat that it would have no choice but to disband itself. US Secretary of State John Kerry has publicly endorsed both the claim and the “threat” of the PA. What I call the “Kerry Rule” (i.e. if he says it, it must be wrong) has been confirmed yet again: the PA is not bankrupt and it will not disband itself.

The PA will not disband itself because its chairman, Mahmoud Abbas, will not kill the cow that he and his cronies have been milking for years. From the moment it was established in 1994, the PA has diverted foreign donations and tax revenues to fill personal bank accounts, to purchase weapons, and to finance incitement and terrorism. The 1994 Paris Agreements put Israel in charge of transferring export tax revenues to the PA, but then-PLO Chief Yasser Arafat asked Israel to transfer the money to a bank account accessible only to him and to his personal advisor Mohammed Rashid. According to Israeli journalists Ehud Ya’ari and Ronen Bergman, some $3 billion were transferred to this account between 1994 and 2000. Arafat used some of this money, among other things, to support his wife’s lavish lifestyle in Paris.

This corruption didn’t abate under Abbas. As former director of the PA’s anti-corruption department Fahmi Shabaneh declared in 2010: “Abbas has surrounded himself with many of the thieves and officials who were involved in theft of public funds and who became icons of financial corruption” (as reported by The Jerusalem Post on 29 January 2010). By dismantling the PA, Abbas and his entourage would have to renounce the millions they siphon every year from foreign aid.

World Bank reports consistently rate the Palestinians as the world’s top per capita recipients of foreign aid. The taxes collected by Israel on behalf of the PA only constitute a fraction of the PA’s budget. By way of comparison, $7.4 billion were pledged to the PA at the December 2007 Paris Conference, while the taxes collected on behalf of the PA by Israel amounted to about $300 million as of July 2007.

A recent paper authored by Prof. Hillel Frisch from Bar-Ilan University’s BESA Center shows that, in 2013 alone, the PA received $2 billion in foreign aid, which means that the average Palestinian received nearly fourteen times more foreign aid per capita than the average Ethiopian ($476 vs. $35). Yet the average Ethiopian is far needier than the average Palestinian: Ethiopia’s GDP per capita is $500, as opposed to $2,800 for the West Bank and Gaza combined. As Frisch notes, these figures are not only discriminatory, they are also inconsistent with the West’s declared policy of struggle against terrorism, since Ethiopia is at the forefront of this struggle, while the Palestinians produce terrorism.

Ethiopia is the largest contributor of forces against the Islamist Harakat al-Shahab in Somalia. The Palestinians, by contrast, intentionally and indiscriminately fire rockets at Israeli civilians and dig tunnels to kidnap and kill Israelis. In April 2011, the Palestinian Authority published a decision officially granting a salary to all Palestinian prisoners jailed in Israel for terrorist attacks against Israelis (as reported by Al-Hayat Al-Jadida on April 15, 2011). These salaries are paid by the PA to convicted murderers thanks to foreign aid as well as to the tax revenues collected and transferred by Israel.

The latest row between Israel and the PA over tax revenues provides an opportunity to end a farce that has gone too far for too long. While the tax money collected by Israel on Palestinian exports technically belongs to the PA, Israel cannot reasonably be expected to transfer money that is used to buy weapons and to dig tunnels to kill Israelis, and to pay the salaries of Palestinian terrorists who have murdered Israelis. Foreign donors cannot put pressure on Israel to release those tax revenues without providing guarantees about the use of that money.

When donor countries look the other way or dismiss the evidence of their monies being used for terrorism, incitement, and personal enrichment, they finance the perpetuation of the conflict rather than its resolution. When John Kerry echoes the Palestinians’ manipulative arguments, he not only corroborates the “Kerry Rule.” He also confirms to the Palestinians that they shall never be held responsible for their behavior.

The Institute for National Security Studies (INSS), a leading Israeli think-tank, hosted its annual conference this week on Israel’s regional and international challenges. INSS’s policy recommendations are of special significance this year because its Director, Amos Yadlin, was designated by the joint Labor-Hatnua list as its candidate for the position of Defense Minister in the next government. Whether in the unlikely scenario of a Labor victory or in the less unlikely scenario of a national unity government, INSS’s policy recommendations might be implemented (even partially) after the elections, and must therefore be gauged.

On the issue of the stalemate with the Palestinians, INSS expressed its views ahead of the conference in a short paper authored by Gilead Sher and Liran Ofek (“An Integrated Political Strategy: Regional, Bilateral, and Independent”). Sher, a practicing lawyer, is a senior fellow at INSS and served as Israel’s chief negotiator during the failed 2000 Camp David summit and Taba talks. While Sher witnessed firsthand the failure of the 2000 negotiations, and while subsequent negotiations failed as well (including the 2007-2008 negotiations under the Olmert government and the 2013-2014 negotiations under the third Netanyahu government), Sher is adamant that “a political solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict … can be achieved” though he himself admits that, in practice and “at present,” the likelihood of such a solution is “slim.”

According to Sher, the stalemate between Israel and the Palestinians is detrimental to Israel because it threatens Israel’s future as a Jewish and democratic country, and because it undermines Israel’s international standing. Therefore, Sher suggests, Israel should initiate a move meant to neutralize the “demographic threat” and to ease international pressure. While the initiative proposed by Sher is not a mere replication of the 2005 unilateral withdrawal from Gaza, its outcome would unlikely be significantly different.

Like Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Sher talks about “regional opportunities.” Unlike him, however, he considers the so-called Arab Peace Initiative to be a serious and valuable offer. This “initiative” was first issued by the Arab League thirteen years ago. Since then, the Arab world has turned into one big war zone. Iraq, Syria and Libya have imploded. Iran has become a threshold nuclear state that controls four Arab capitals (Baghdad, Damascus, Beirut, and Sana’a). Saudi Arabia, generally considered the main promoter of the “Arab Peace Initiative,” is surrounded by Iran’s allies in the north (Iraq, Syria, Lebanon) and in the south (Yemen). Its economic clout has been affected by falling oil prices. Who, seriously, is supposed to deliver peace on behalf of the Arab world in 2015?

Even if the Arab world were able to deliver, its “initiative” is an unacceptable take-it-or-leave-it document. It demands a “full Israeli withdrawal from all the Arab territories occupied since June 1967”, whereas UN Security Council 242 only expects Israel to withdraw “from territories,” purposely leaving room for negotiations. It calls for the implementation of the non-binding 194 UN General Assembly resolution (which the Palestinians claim as the legal backbone of the so-called “right of return”) but rejects “all form of Palestinian” patriation [sic]” in Arab countries.

Sher is implicitly skeptical about the negotiated “political solution” he calls for, since he himself suggests a “Plan B” (just in case repeating the same experiment for a fifth time were to produce the same outcome yet again). His “Plan B” consists of “a default plan of independently separating from the Palestinians via a provisional border” in which Israel would “hand over control of most of the West Bank to the PA (Palestinian Authority), with the exception of the Jordan Valley and the areas west of the security fence.” About 100,000 Israelis would be removed from the territory handed to the PA, yet the Israel Defense Forces would retain “full freedom of operation there” as well as “control over the airspace and the electromagnetic spectrum.”

What Sher is suggesting, in effect, is a (supposedly coordinated) unilateral semi-withdrawal. Doing so might relieve Israel of its demographic angst, but it will not convince the PA to end its “lawfare” against Israel, nor will it free Israel from international pressures. If Israel is still accused of occupying Gaza in spite of having withdrawn from that territory to the last inch nine years ago, how will it not be accused of occupying the West Bank while retaining its control over significant territories there and letting the IDF operate freely in the areas evacuated by Israeli civilians? And why would Israel’s inevitable military operations in the West Bank after such partial withdrawal produce less civilian victims, less Goldstone reports and less outraged media coverage than previous military operations in Gaza?

Trying to force oneself out of a Catch-22 situation is legitimate and even praiseworthy, but defying logic is neither.

The letter recently sent by Rabbis for Human Rights (RHR) to Israel’s Prime Minister about the intended demolition of illegal Arab constructions is generally presented in the media as a bona fide petition by human rights activists against “the destruction of Palestinian homes.” Behind this façade of innocence and legality, however, lies the grimmer of a deceitful and illegal European attempt to undermine Israeli sovereignty.

A report recently published by the Israeli NGO Regavim shows that the European Union (EU), while admonishing Israel not to “establish facts on the ground” by building in disputed areas, encourages and even funds the Palestinian Authority (PA) to do just that. In September 2012, for instance, the EU announced the allocation of €100 million for exclusive Arab construction in Area C (the portion of the West Bank that was maintained under Israeli jurisdiction by the Oslo Accords). A report of the European Commission from October 2012 emphasizes “the importance of aid (including humanitarian aid), particularly in areas in which [the PA] does not have authority or influence.”

A report of the European Commission from September 2014 openly states that “the European Union and Palestinian Authority are actively promoting planning and construction in Area C, which, if successful, will pave the way for development and expansion of the Palestinian Authority’s control over Area C.” Lately, the EU’s effort has been concentrated in the area known as “E1” (itself located in Area C), i.e. the mostly bare land between Jerusalem and the West Bank (Jewish) city of Ma’ale Adumim.

While successive Israeli governments have intended to build in E1 so as to create territorial continuity between Jerusalem and Ma’ale Adumin, the plan has been shelved for years due to US pressure. Not content with that pressure, however, the EU is now funding the construction of pre-fabricated structures for the Arab population in order to “establish facts on the ground.” According to Regavim, the EU has been funding the illegal construction of hundreds of pre-fabricated homes in E1, as well as other parts of Area C. Pictures taken by Regavim clearly show the European flag and logo displayed on those buildings. According to international law and to the Oslo Accords, construction in Area C (whether temporary or permanent) requires permission from Israel – a rule openly flouted by the EU.

Altogether, the EU has funded the establishment of 17 illegal Arab villages (also known as “EU settlements”) in the West Bank. On February 1, 2015, British MEP James Carver wrote to the European Parliament’s Committee on Foreign Affairs that “the structures all bear the name and flag of the EU and official EU agents have been photographed participating in overseeing the construction, so the active involvement of the EU can hardly be denied.” On February 5, 2015, the Daily Mail wrote that EU construction in Area C “has raised concerns that the EU is using valuable resources to take sides in a foreign territorial dispute.”

So Israel’s Prime Minister did not order “the demolition of Palestinian homes.” He ordered the removal of unapproved pre-fabricated structures recently built by the EU in contravention of international law.

As for the “400 rabbis” appealing to the Prime Minister, let us not be fooled, either. RHR is an NGO partially funded by the EU (according to NGO Monitor, RHR received €248,914 from the EU in 2012). The EU funds RHR to promote its agenda, and therefore RHR’s letter to the Prime Minister was hardly an innocent cri de cœur.

The EU is entitled, of course, to take sides (as it copiously does) in the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. But why be devious? The EU has no problem defying international law when doing so serves its political agenda, yet it is in the name of the law that it lectures Israel. The EU funds NGOs supposedly for the promotion of human rights, when in fact those NGOs act as PR stooges.

Abraham Lincoln famously quipped that “you can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.” His optimism, no doubt, would have been tempered had he lived to encounter the European Commission.

There is something deeply disingenuous about the mutual accusations of foreign interference in Israel’s election. Human nature is the same on both sides of the political divide, and hypocrisy is bipartisan. But, sometimes, one side gets the trophy. To the charge of foreign involvement and of illegal party funding, the Israeli left typically replies that Benjamin Netanyahu is the pot calling the kettle black since his American friend Sheldon Adelson also funds him indirectly via the Israel Hayom newspaper. The difference, of course, is that Netanyahu does not deny that Adelson is his friend and that he established Israel Hayom to challenge Yediot Aharonot. The Israeli left, on the other hand, denies that it enjoys the support of the V15 organization and of the Obama Administration.

There is likewise a difference between Netanyahu hiring a Republican strategist and President Obama “lending” his campaign guru Jeremy Bird to Netanyahu’s political rivals – not least because Obama explained that he would not meet with Netanyahu in Washington so as not to be perceived as favoring one candidate (just in case anyone suspected Obama of praying for Bibi’s reelection). Bill Clinton also campaigned against Netanyahu in the 1990s, but at least he did not try to hide it. In 1996, Clinton hosted Labor candidate Shimon Peres at the White House right before the Israeli elections. In the 1999 Israeli elections, Clinton sent Democratic pollster and political strategist Stanley Greenberg to Israel to help Labor candidate Ehud Barak.

While President Obama says he does not want to be accused of interference in Israel’s elections, Jeremy Bird is advising V15, a grassroots movement whose purpose is to unseat Benjamin Netanyahu. One also wonders why Israel’s Labor Party, while sharing V15’s agenda, denies any connection to it. V15 is backed by “OneVoice,” a political NGO that has received funding from the US State Department. OneVoice’s website lists among its “Honorary Board of Advisors” Israeli politicians from the Labor party such as Labor-Hatnua candidates for the 20th Knesset Danny Attar and Yoel Hasson (slots 15 and 16, respectively), as well as former Labor MKs Colette Avital and Ephraim Sneh.

The State Department gives money to many NGOs around the world, including to OneVoice. But OneVoice backs a political organization (V15) that is directly involved in Israel’s 2015 elections. V15 and OneVoice share the same office in Tel-Aviv. While OneVoice claims that the money it has received from the State Department was not used to fund V15, US Senator Ted Cruz and US Representative Lee Zeldin suspect otherwise and have asked Secretary of State John Kerry to provide evidence that US taxpayer money is not being used to influence the outcome of the upcoming Israeli election.

The issue of political funding by non-profit organizations is a controversial one – not only in Israel. In 2010, the US Supreme Court ruled that it is unconstitutional to restrict independent political expenditures by non-profit organizations (“Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission”). Those expenditures clearly constitute indirect political funding. In Israel, by contrast, political parties can only receive money from the State, as well as small donations from individuals whose identity must be disclosed. Candidates and parties are not allowed to receive money, directly or indirectly, from businesses and non-profit organizations. But what, exactly, constitutes “indirect funding?” In Israel, an NGO would clearly break the law by paying for public ads in support of a candidate. But would it break the law by publishing policy papers that implicitly endorse a candidate’s platform?

Former Prime Minister Ehud Barak got into legal trouble precisely because of those “grey areas.” Prior to the 1999 elections, he had set-up well-funded non-profit organizations to help his campaign. Barak thought that this was a clever way of circumventing the strict limitations of political funding in Israel, since non-profit organizations can receive as much money as they want (both from Israeli and foreign donors). Officially, those non-profit organizations set up by Barak had nothing to do with his campaign. The Israeli police happened to think otherwise and questioned Barak, as well as then Government Secretary Isaac Herzog (today’s Labor Chairman). The police, however, were unable to prove that Barak had broken the law – not least because Herzog invoked his legal right not to answer the police’s questions.

Recent polls indicate that Likud is pulling ahead of Labor. It seems that the dubious techniques of Israel’s left-wing journalists and of the Obama Administration are throwing undecided voters into the arms of the right.

Will the electoral victory of Greece’s left-wing party, Syriza, precipitate the eviction of Greece from the Euro (a prospect also known as “Grexit”)? Syriza’s young and charismatic leader, Alexis Tsipras, committed during his campaign to renegotiate the bailout program agreed with the so-called “troika” of the European Commission, the European Central Bank, and the IMF. He also promised to rehire laid-off government workers, to raise the minimum wage, and to increase government spending in order to subsidize electricity and health care. While Mr. Tsipras says he does not want Greece to leave the Euro, his country might be forced to do so if he insists on implementing the policies for which he was elected. Paradoxically, however, “Grexit” might be a good thing for the future of Europe.

The prospect of “Grexit” confirms that Euro members cannot have the best of two worlds: they cannot be part of a single currency and ignore its rules by overspending. France faced a similar problem in 1983. Its Socialist government, elected in 1981, had increased taxes and government spending, thus causing a massive flight of capital and three devaluations of the Franc. In light of the Franc’s free fall, France’s membership in the European Monetary System (EMS) was at risk. French President François Mitterrand had a choice between betraying his voters and betraying Europe. He chose the first option.

German Chancellor Helmut Kohl made a tough and courageous decision, too, when he accepted the idea of a single currency in 1991. With the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the reunification of Germany in 1990, France was in a panic. François Mauriac’s famous gibe about the division of Germany (“I’m so fond of Germany that I prefer two”) genuinely expressed France’s fear of its mighty neighbor and historical enemy. With the restoration of German sovereignty in 1949, France feared the rebirth of the German threat. This is why French statesmen like Jean Monnet and Robert Schuman conceived the idea of tying Germany, like Gulliver, to its neighbors. Hence did the European Coal and Steal Community (ECSC) come into being in 1951. Forty years later, François Mitterrand responded to German reunification with the idea of a European currency. The French tied Germany to Europe with a single market in 1951 and with a single currency in 1991.

The Euro, which emerged a decade later, was thus born out of French fear and of German guilt. It was not meant to encompass all of Europe – indeed, the British opted out from day one, and Sweden kept its currency after joining the EU in 1995. Not only can a country be an EU member without joining the Euro, but keeping countries within the Euro even when they break the rules might endanger the EU itself. Germany swallowed the pill of the Euro in 1991 to reassure France and to prove its European credentials, but the German taxpayer will not agree forever to subsidize countries that overspend and cook their books.

The financial crisis of 2008, which began in the United States as a mortgage default issue, created a sovereign debt crisis in Europe, with countries such as Greece unable to make payments on bonds. In Greece, the sovereign debt crisis was the result of irresponsible policies that included early retirement for government workers and excessive unemployment benefits. Greek politicians typically bought votes by squandering resources on social programs the country could not afford –not least because taxes were not rigorously collected.

German chancellor Angela Merkel is said to be of two minds about “Grexit.” More and more Germans are talking openly about leaving the Euro if the Greeks and other “Club Med” countries insist on defying the laws of economics. This trend is confirmed by the emergence, and recent electoral achievements, of “Alternative für Deutschland,” a German political party that calls for leaving the Euro (while staying in the EU). For most Germans, the idea that agreed rules of economic behavior should be flouted is even more corrosive to the future of the Euro than the idea of letting offenders leave the club. “Grexit” might also serve as a strong incentive to recalcitrant reformers. To be sure, “Grexit” would have a heavy economic price (hence Angela Merkel’s hesitation). But the political price of ruining Germany’s commitment to the Euro no longer justifies putting up with Greece’s antics.

Letting the Greeks revert to the Drachma will not spell the end of Europe. On the contrary: it might be the condition for preserving Germany’s goodwill and, therefore, the very future of the European Union.