Germany's political parties have their differences, to be sure. But they can all agree on one thing: that the upstart civilizationist party called the Alternative for Germany (Alternative für Deutschland, AfD) should not have any representation in the Bundestag (parliament).

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It's not hard to see why, as AfD's brazen outspokenness in favor of Western civilization, the United States, and Israel intensely annoys them. So, as elections loom, the other parties are ganging together to discredit the AfD. Given that this is Germany, the single most potent method is to tar it with antisemitism. And to do that most effectively, Jews must lead the charge.

That explains why Germany's Central Council of Jews (Zentralrat der Juden, ZdJ) initiated a document that no fewer than 68 other Jewish organizations endorsed. Titled "Jews against the AfD," it calls on Germans to vote for any party other than the AfD. Its message is not subtle: "Vote for an unquestionably democratic party [zweifelsfrei demokratische Partei] on September 26, 2021 and help banish the AfD from the German Bundestag."

The document, issued on September 9, accuses the AfD of "wreaking havoc" in parliament and calls it the home of "antisemites and right-wing extremists" who engage in "racism and misanthropy." To top it all, the signatories even claim to be "convinced that the AfD is an … anti-religious [religionsfeindliche] party."

Those organizations also include some big and established international names, including the American Jewish Committee, the B'nai B'rith, the Claims Conference, the European Jewish Congress, the Jewish National Fund, Limmud, the Maccabi Games, the Ronald S. Lauder Foundation, the Union of Progressive Jews, and the World Jewish Congress.

For starters, it bears noting that all German and American tax-exempt organizations endorsing this statement are very clearly breaking the law by advocating how votes should be cast. The document's headline includes a childish graphic of a downward arrow, reversing the AfD's upward one. Oddly, the ZdJ not once spells out the party's name in this document, just "AfD," its initials, as though mentioning the full name would sully it.

A day later, the organization Jews in the AfD (Juden in der AfD, JAfD) responded to this blast. It started by noting that the ZdJ gets nearly its entire €13 million annual budget from the government – so, of course, it toes the government's line. It also notes that "only state-financed [German] Jewish organizations took part in this appeal. Independent Jewish organs such as the monthly newspaper Jüdische Rundschau and conservative Jewish associations such as Chabad Germany are not represented."

It gets worse. The Central Council of Jews, notes Chaim Noll, a German-Israeli author, "is a unique institution that does not exist in other countries and also is unknown in Judaism. It is one of the state institutions financed by the federal government, it administers the country's Jews. … That Jews are subject to the government's wishes is the specific tragedy of the Jews in Germany; in other countries, Jewish communities are autonomous."

As for substance, JAfD accurately argues that "the AfD has done more to protect Jewish life than any other party in the German Bundestag." Specifically, it successfully initiated a ban on Hezbollah and the BDS movement, and it is working to defund UNRWA and abolish labeling requirements for Jewish products from the West Bank.

I personally witnessed this when sitting in the Bundestag on March 14, 2019, as a vote was taken urging the German government to vote favorably for Israel in the United Nations. AfD's members voted 89 percent in favor of this motion, about 350 times more so than the ¼ of 1 percent of the ruling parties who joined them.

This spat illustrates a deep truth about Europe's sad Jewish leaders: beholden to the Establishment, they sacrifice most of their Zionist inclinations to stay in its good graces. (For more detail on this pattern, see my article Europe's Jews vs. Israel.) So avidly do they bow before the government, they even convinced Israel's current ambassador to Germany, Jeremy Issacharoff, to broach diplomatic protocol, openly attack the AfD and defend Germany's anti-Israel parties.

In the end, however, Europe's supine Jewish leadership will find itself isolated from its own constituents and opposed by the people and government of Israel, all of whom will eventually recognize their true friends in German politics. The AfD is far from perfect but it does best fit that description.

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Israelis show an ambivalence between wanting to achieve victory over Hamas and a reluctance to pay the cost of this victory, a survey of Israeli opinion show. This points to the intellectual and political leadership needed to educate the public about this complex issue. (Midgam Research and Consulting conducted the survey for the Middle East Forum following the recent conflict with Hamas. It asked 22 questions in Hebrew or Russian on May 27-31 of 503 Jewish Israeli respondents. The poll has a margin of error of 4.4%.)

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Looking back on the 11 days of fighting in May 2021, Jewish Israelis feel frustrated. Despite persistent claims of success by the Israel Defense Forces, only one-third believe that their side won the fighting and only a quarter expect that the IDF broke Hamas' will to continue fighting. The great majority, in other words, expect further rounds of unprovoked attacks by Hamas on the country's civilian population.

Looking to the future, 82% agree that "There can be no appeasing Hamas; only by defeating it unequivocally can we bring this conflict to an end"; and the same%age concurs more generally on the importance "for Israel to defeat its enemies," not just Palestinians. Likewise, 70% agree that "There can be no deals with terrorist organizations, only defeat. Israel must use all its military, diplomatic and economic means to crush Hamas' will to continue fighting."

Sentiment for this view is also growing, as shown by the fact that only 54% of respondents agreed with this statement in January 2020; a 16% increase in 18 months is noteworthy. In keeping with this attitude, an extraordinary 90% of Jewish Israelis support the tactic of at-will assassinations of Hamas leaders both in Gaza and in other locations around the world.

Together, these answers emphatically point to the very strong support in the abstract for an Israel victory and a Palestinian defeat. They confirm that the Israel Victory Project has great potential to convince Israelis and their leaders that wars end when one side gives up, that victory is the necessary precursor to peace, and that the Palestinians will only tend to their own gardens, leaving Israel's alone, when they have permanently accepted the Jewish state. Anything short of these steps will not endure.

But then comes the kicker: those lofty numbers of 82% and 70% drop to 48% when respondents are reminded that crushing Hamas will lead to "a raised intensity of attacks on the home front and a possible significant loss of Israeli lives." It further descends to 37% when asked about Israel taking over the Gaza Strip "to root out Hamas once and for all." When asked about the main goal of a future round of fighting with Hamas, only 21% seek to break Hamas' will to continue to fight, with other respondents focused on lesser goals such as the return of captives or disarming or deterring Hamas.

A similar reluctance applies to the fighting in May. Yes, two-thirds of the sample believe the operation should have continued longer, "until Hamas' ability and will to attack Israel was destroyed and the hostages and bodies in Gaza were returned." But a larger majority of three-quarters rejects the government authorizing "a ground operation into the Gaza Strip."

This apparent contradiction implies that while roughly 80% of Jewish Israelis seek to defeat Hamas and other enemies, only about half that number are willing to pay the concomitant price in terms of rockets, ground troop casualties, international censure, and other problems.

More specifically, one-fifth of Jewish Israelis reject the idea of victory; two-fifths want it but are unwilling to pay the price for it; one-fifth want it, are willing to pay for it, but do not fully understand what it means; and just one-fifth want it, are willing to pay for it, and grasp the goal of breaking the enemy's will.

From the Israel victory point of view, this points to a receptive audience that requires much education about the nature of warfare and what ends conflicts. The middle three-fifths is the key target audience whose opinion can potentially be changed by explaining that, for all the pain involved in decisively defeating the Palestinians, this will ultimately prove a lesser price than unending conflict. Intellectuals and politicians have their work cut out.

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Here's a novel idea to resolve Israel's increasingly painful political impasse: The crux of the problem lies in the fact that one of Benjamin Netanyahu's potential coalition partners, the Religious Zionist Party headed by Bezalel Smotrich, refuses to support him should Netanyahu rely in any way on the Islamist Ra'am party to reach a majority of 61 in Israel's parliament, the Knesset. Yet without both the Religious Zionist Party and Ra'am in his coalition, Netanyahu cannot reach 61 seats. Thus the impasse.

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So far, Smotrich's rejection of Ra'am has been absolute and unconditional, based on the fact that Ra'am rejects the very existence of the Jewish state of Israel. To quote from its 2018 charter, the party calls Zionism a "racist, occupying project," rejects allegiance to the Jewish state, and demands a right of return for Palestine refugees. Reasonably enough, Smotrich fears that legitimizing Ra'am in any way will lead to a host of dire consequences for Israel. He stands resolutely on this point.

Fine. But it would be more productive if Smotrich and his party set out the conditions under which they accept Ra'am support. What would it need to amend in its charter? How would Ra'am's leader Mansour Abbas have to talk to his constituents in Arabic about Israel? Implicitly assuming such a change to be out of the question, Smotrich until now has not even raised the idea – reasonably enough, as presumably no Islamists anywhere in the world, much less among the Palestinians, recognize Israel.

But, in fact, the basis does exist for such recognition. It exists not in the turmoil of current politics but in the founding scripture of the Islamic faith, the seventh-century Quran. Believe it or not, but the Quran is a proto-Zionist document, with verses that endorse the Jewish presence in what it calls the Holy Land (al-ard al-muqaddasa), the territory that roughly makes up the modern state of Israel.

For example, the Quran (5:20-21) quotes Moses saying to the Jews, "O my people! Enter the Holy Land which God [Allah] has ordained for you to enter." Likewise, Quran 7:137 states that "We made those who were persecuted successors of the eastern and western lands [of the Jordan River], lands which We had blessed. In this way, your Lord's fair word was fulfilled for the Children of Israel." Other Quranic verses (2:40, 7:159-60, 17:100-04)) confirm this theme, as do Hadith reports and leading Quranic scholars of the premodern era.

(And note that the Quran refers to Jews as the "Children of Israel.")

Deep research into this issue has been carried out by such scholars as Nissim Dana of Ariel University, author of the 2013 book in Hebrew, To Whom Does This Land Belong? Reexamination of the Quran and Classical Islamic Sources on the People of Israel, Its Teachings, and Its Connection to Jerusalem. On the Islamic side, Muhammad Al-Hussaini, formerly of Leo Baeck Rabbinical College, Khaleel Mohammed of San Diego State University, and Mohammad Tawhidi of the Islamic Association of South Australia have led the way in making the case. In Khaleel Mohammed's words, "It's in the Muslim consciousness that the land first belonged to the Jews." Another Muslim thinker, Abdul Hadi Palazzi, comes right out and states that "Allah Is a Zionist."

The Religious Zionist Party might consider proposing that it would welcome Ra'am in a coalition if the party aligns itself with these fundamentals of the Islamic faith. To avoid ambiguity, the Religious Zionist Party should list its conditions in great detail and with exacting precision.

I am under no illusion that Ra'am would jump at this offer, but it is well worth a try, and for two reasons. First, Abbas has shown unprecedented pragmatism and flexibility, raising the prospect that Ra'am just possibly could accept the terms, leading to a government being formed and to an immeasurable and historic increase in Ra'am's stature. Second, even if Ra'am declines the opportunity, such a public challenge by Smotrich to Abbas would finally introduce the Quran's largely unknown proto-Zionist outlook into wide general discussion in Israel and beyond, a beneficial step for Jews and Muslims alike.

Although I have argued that Benjamin Netanyahu should be Israel's next president, not its next prime minister, the positive implications of Israeli Muslims recognizing the Jewish state overrides such a politics-as-usual issue.

In short, only good can come from this innovative step toward Israel Victory.

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Everyone knows about the Jewish-Muslim tussle over claims to rule Jerusalem, with its Palestinian lie that Jerusalem has no role in Judaism, and also the pro-Israel rebuttal that the Koran does not mention Jerusalem.

But there's another heated, if less public, battle over Jerusalem (Arabic: Al-Quds): not about the right to rule the city, but authority over the Temple Mount (Arabic: Al-Haram ash-Sharif), the holy esplanade containing two antique and holy edifices, the Dome of the Rock (built in 691) and Al-Aqsa Mosque (705).

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Palestinian Authority: Controlling the Temple Mount is absolutely central to the PA's mission. It may lack the economic and military resources of a state, but it wields two unique powers: day-to-day management (thanks to Israeli deference) and wide international support for its claim to rule eastern Jerusalem.

The PA zealously sustains these powers by intimidating Israel with its calls for Muslim outrage and leftist anti-Zionism. As the effective ruler atop the Temple Mount, it is the status quo power resisting any change.

Jordan: Amman enjoys many formal privileges but has minuscule sway on the ground. The 1994 Jordan-Israel peace treaty states that "Israel respects the present special role" of Jordan in "Muslim Holy shrines in Jerusalem" and it grants "high priority to the Jordanian historic role in these shrines."

One scholar mistakenly translates this into a supposed custodianship, "with its attendant duties of maintaining, protecting, and regulating access to the shrines." Indeed, Israel colludes with relatively friendly Jordanian kings to hide their impotence because that pretend "special role" is, in the words of Nadav Shragai, "The central anchor that bolsters their monarchical rule, granting it legitimacy in the face of Islamic extremist elements in Jordan. A weakened presence on the mount, Jordan fears, will necessarily also undermine stability in the kingdom to the point of presenting an existential threat."

Saudi Arabia: The Saudis lack influence but acutely aspire to some power to enhance their international standing. John Jenkins, a former UK ambassador to Riyadh, explains why: "Iran has always challenged them on the legitimacy of their custodianship of Mecca and Medina. If they were to add a third shrine to their list, it could enhance their claims to be the absolute [religious] leaders of the Islamic world." The Israelis could hand Riyadh such power, simultaneously sweetening a peace treaty and lessening Palestinian control.

Turkey: The Ottoman Empire ruled Jerusalem for four centuries (1516-1917), after which Turkish authorities abruptly lost interest in Jerusalem. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan recently renewed claims to its holy places, culminating in an October 2020 statement that "this city that we had to leave in tears during the First World War … is our city, a city from us."

Ankara has backed those words with tens of millions of dollars to promote Jerusalem's Turkish heritage, win support for Turkey's claims over the Temple Mount, and challenge Israeli rule. Allied with Hamas, the Turks do not cooperate with the Jewish state, which in turn wants to limit its role.

Morocco: Chairing the Organization of Islamic Cooperation's Al-Quds Committee and hosting its headquarters since the committee's founding in 1975 gives Moroccan kings a certain influence over the Temple Mount – despite a distance of 4,000 kilometers.

The committee also has a subsidiary, Bayt Mal Al Quds Agency, which funds Islamic interests in Jerusalem by donating prayer rugs, building houses, helping with renovations, etc. Symbolically, Foreign Minister Nasser Bourita prayed at Al-Aqsa in March 2018 to send "a strong message of support for the Palestinian cause."

Generally, Moroccan kings ally on Temple Mount issues with Saudi kings to diminish Jordanian kings. Winning its goodwill presumably had a role in Rabat's December 2020 decision to normalize relations with Israel.

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Israel: Israel faces two hostile actors on the Temple Mount – the PA, and Turkey/Hamas – and three actors quasi-willing to work with it – Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Morocco. Until now, Israeli leaders have lacked the imagination to exploit this rivalry, with its great potential psychological impact to help achieve Israel Victory. One idea: encourage Emirati rulers to join the other three kings to undermine PA legitimacy. Another: revive Ehud Olmert's initiative to sponsor a committee overseeing Jerusalem's Islamic sanctities.

The ball is in Israel's court.

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Israel's security establishment, it turns out, has a doppelgänger, an uncelebrated, defensive, reticent counterpart that emerged after the 1993 Oslo accords to deal with West Bank and Gaza Palestinians, the one that needed 50 days to end a minor military operation in 2014 and cannot stop burning balloons coming out of Gaza. The classic IDF seeks to win but the Palestinian one just wants calm.

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What accounts for this? Here are six factors:

Israeli governments consist of multi-partner coalitions which tend, in Jonathan Spyer's description, "to avoid focus on long term strategic issues, in preference for addressing immediate threats." Why deal with a problem like Gaza when you can kick it down the road?

Similarly, Israel's security services take pride in dealing with the here-and-now, not the misty future. In the apocryphal order of an Israeli officer to his troops, "Secure the area until the end of your shift." Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin's wife Leah once explained his mentality: "He was very pragmatic, hated to deal with something that would happen years down the road. He only thought of what would happen now, in the very near future." Similarly, Einat Wilf explains, the IDF encourages Qatari funds going to Gaza because it thinks that this buys it calm: "It will do anything possible to ensure that the funds keep flowing, even if that means that the calm is purchased at the cost of a war that will go on for decades."

Just as police see criminals as incorrigible troublemakers, so wizened Israeli security chiefs view Palestinians as irredeemable adversaries and reject the idea that these adversaries can learn a lesson; can lions reform hyenas? Security types oppose a tough approach because they want to avoid troubles. This outlook may make them sound like leftists, but they are not; long and bitter experience, not misty idealism, explains their reticence.

Israeli security services do not want again to rule directly over the West Bank or Gaza; fearing a collapse of the Palestinian Authority or Hamas, they treat these deferentially. They see the PA under Mahmoud Abbas, for all its deficiencies, as a useful security partner. True, it incites murder domestically and delegitimizes the State of Israel internationally, but better to endure these aggressions than to punish Abbas, induce his downfall, and re-live the nightmare of walking the streets of Nablus. So, he gets away with literal murder.

A combination of Palestinian military weakness and intense international scrutiny has caused Israel's security establishment to see Palestinians more like criminals than soldiers; dealing with them has morphed the IDF into a police force, with a defensive mentality viewing stability as a goal in itself. Generals do not enter battle with the goal of saving the lives of their soldiers; but police chiefs want the struggle with criminals to break no laws and leave no one harmed. Generals seek victory, police chiefs seek quiet.

Finally, an exaggerated sense of morality interferes with effective action. In 2018, IDF chief of staff Gadi Eizenkot justified passivity vis-à-vis the balloon arsonists for the eye-popping reason that "dropping a bomb on people flying balloons and kites" runs counter to his "operative and moral position."

This security establishment, and not a weakened Left, mostly stands in the way of resolving the Palestinian issue; time and again, its appeasing views have prevailed. Fortunately, the security establishment has dissidents and they speak out, especially after leaving active service. Gershon Hacohen calls for political leaders not to let the military leadership make their decisions; Yossi Kuperwasser calls for an Israel Victory; Uzi Dayan wants the military giving the country's leaders the means to achieve victory. Even the trio of chief-of-staffs who formed the Blue and White party called for tough action.

Resolution of the Palestinian problem requires an end to the split in Israel's defense establishment and the return to a unitary force dedicated to winning, to convincing the Palestinians that the conflict is over, they lost, and they should abandon their war goals.

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So much for the rejectionist Palestinians. What about the moderate and sober Jordanian government, Israel's long-time, discreet partner; what says it? Amman does not go so far as to deny any Jewish connection, but it too makes a hash of history.

Consider the just-issued 108-page, English-language-only white paper, The Hashemite Custodianship of Jerusalem's Islamic and Christian Holy Sites 1917–2020 CE, published by The Royal Aal Al-Bayt Institute for Islamic Thought. Although nominally an independent non-governmental organization, the institute was founded by King Hussein in 1980 and since then has continuously been headed by a member of the royal family. Secretive about its lavish funding, it appears to depend completely on government largess.

Hashemite Custodianship baldly states:

• "Jerusalem was always an Arab city."
• "When the Ancient Jews came, they attacked, killed and destroyed everyone and everything they could."
• "Even after they conquered the city of Jerusalem, however, [the Jews] were never able to expel all the original Arab inhabitants."
• "The Palestinian Arabs of today are largely the direct descendants of the indigenous Canaanite Arabs who were there over 5,000 years ago."

There are just a few problems with this account. The Arab (or more accurately, Arabian) identity does not go back 5,000 years; even 3,000 stretches the record. The Canaanites were not Arabians. The ancient Jews did a little bit more than "attack, kill and destroy everyone and everything they could;" does one really have to point out that the Bible they wrote serves as the basis of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, whose adherents make up over half the world's population?

And while DNA evidence shows that descendants of the Canaanites in Palestine survive throughout the Middle East, the great majority of its Muslims and Christians descend from immigrants. Writing in 1911, before the many twentieth-century immigrations, Irish archeologist Robert Macalister already listed 19 foreign ethnicities in addition to native farmers and Jews in Palestine: Algerian, Arabian, Armenian, Assyrian, Bosnian, Circassian, Crusader, German, Greek, Italian, Kurd, Motawila, Nawar, Persian, Roman, Samaritan, Sudanese, Turkic, and Turkoman.

How disappointing that the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, which wishes to be seen as responsible and moderate, publishes such twaddle in a purported scholarly study. It is the more dismaying when one recalls that King Abdullah II, Jordan's ruler since 1999, has taken a brave and forthright stand against Islamists, denouncing them as "religious totalitarians … who seek power by intimidation, violence and thuggery." He has also called for "a dynamic, moderate Islam – an Islam that upholds the sanctity of human life, reaches out to the oppressed, respects men and women alike, and insists on the fellowship of all humankind." An Islamist-style white paper applauded by a Palestinian anti-Zionist substantially undercuts these bold words.

The white paper promotes a familiar Islamic imperialism. Other recent examples include Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's government insisting that the Hagia Sophia Cathedral was originally a mosque; Muslims pressing to use the Cordoba Cathedral as a mosque; and the so-called Ground-Zero Mosque near the obliterated World Trade Center in New York City.

Ironically, the English-language Hashemite Custodianship meant for international consumption distorts history more than Arabic materials intended for locals. For example, Jordan's Royal Committee for Jerusalem Affairs only asserts Arabs founded Jerusalem 5,000 years ago without the nasty corollary that Jews "attacked, killed and destroyed everyone and everything they could."

The Jordanian government can and should do better. If falsifying ancient history seems like a small matter, it is not; such errors form opinions, shape governments, and potentially lead to renewed hostilities.

Where are the historians and theologians to denounce these falsehoods? Where are the friends of Jordan to urge a responsible course? Where are the Israelis, inhibited by an ever-present mistress syndrome, to protest this calumny?

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So much for the rejectionist Palestinians. What about the moderate and sober Jordanian government, Israel's long-time, discreet partner; what says it? Amman does not go so far as to deny any Jewish connection, but it too makes a hash of history.

Consider the just-issued 108-page, English-language-only white paper, The Hashemite Custodianship of Jerusalem's Islamic and Christian Holy Sites 1917–2020 CE, published by The Royal Aal Al-Bayt Institute for Islamic Thought. (Aal al-Bayt means "family of the house," or the family of Muhammad, the Islamic prophet.) Although nominally an independent non-governmental organization, the institute was founded by King Hussein in 1980 and since then has continuously been headed by a member of the royal family. Secretive about its lavish funding, it appears to depend completely on government largess.

Hashemite Custodianship baldly states:

• "Jerusalem was always an Arab city."
• "When the Ancient Jews came, they attacked, killed and destroyed everyone and everything they could."
• "Even after they conquered the city of Jerusalem, however, [the Jews] were never able to expel all the original Arab inhabitants."
• "The Palestinian Arabs of today are largely the direct descendants of the indigenous Canaanite Arabs who were there over 5,000 years ago."

There are just a few problems with this account. The Arab (or more accurately, Arabian) identity does not go back 5,000 years; even 3,000 stretches the record. The Canaanites were not Arabians. The ancient Jews did a little bit more than "attack, kill and destroy everyone and everything they could"; does one really have to point out that the Bible they wrote serves as the basis of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, whose adherents make up over half the world's population?

And while DNA evidence shows that descendants of the Canaanites in Palestine survive throughout the Middle East, the great majority of its Muslims and Christians descend from immigrants. Writing in 1911, before the many twentieth-century immigrations, Irish archeologist Robert Macalister already listed 19 foreign ethnicities in addition to native farmers and Jews in Palestine: Algerian, Arabian, Armenian, Assyrian, Bosnian, Circassian, Crusader, German, Greek, Italian, Kurd, Motawila, Nawar, Persian, Roman, Samaritan, Sudanese, Turkic, and Turkoman.

How disappointing that the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, which wishes to be seen as responsible and moderate, publishes such twaddle in a purported scholarly study. It is the more dismaying when one recalls that King Abdullah II, Jordan's ruler since 1999, has taken a brave and forthright stand against Islamists, denouncing them as "religious totalitarians … who seek power by intimidation, violence and thuggery." He has also called for "a dynamic, moderate Islam – an Islam that upholds the sanctity of human life, reaches out to the oppressed, respects men and women alike, and insists on the fellowship of all humankind." An Islamist-style white paper applauded by a Palestinian anti-Zionist substantially undercuts these bold words.

The white paper promotes a familiar Islamic imperialism. Other recent examples include Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's government insisting that the Hagia Sophia Cathedral was originally a mosque; Muslims pressing to use the Cordoba Cathedral as a mosque; and the so-called Ground-Zero Mosque near the obliterated World Trade Center in New York City.

Ironically, the English-language Hashemite Custodianship meant for international consumption distorts history more than Arabic materials intended for locals. For example, Jordan's Royal Committee for Jerusalem Affairs only asserts Arabs founded Jerusalem 5,000 years ago without the nasty corollary that Jews "attacked, killed and destroyed everyone and everything they could."

The Jordanian government can and should do better. If falsifying ancient history seems like a small matter, it is not; such errors form opinions, shape governments, and potentially lead to renewed hostilities.

Where are the historians and theologians to denounce these falsehoods? Where are the friends of Jordan to urge a responsible course? Where are the Israelis, inhibited by an ever-present mistress syndrome, to protest this calumny?

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We constantly seek out new ways to bring this argument to the public's notice, especially in Israel. Although the topic is deadly serious, we've had some fun in the process. Israel Victory Project attention-getting tactics have included posters of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in a swimsuit thanking Israel for all the money it sends his organization; a 10-meter tall rubber chicken posed in front of the Israeli parliament and the Ministry of Defense; and switching street signs in Tel Aviv (e.g., from Ben-Gurion Street to Yasser Arafat Boulevard).

In this spirit, as the election season heats up ahead of the national vote on March 2, we again sought a creative way to stimulate interest in Israel Victory. We came up with a provocative graphic showing blindfolded Palestinian Authority and Hamas leaders, Mahmoud Abbas and Haniyeh, photo-shopped against a battlefield scene. Abbas' hands are raised high while Haniyeh's hold a white flag. The graphic carries a pungent slogan in Hebrew, "Peace can ONLY be made with defeated enemies."

To stimulate curiosity, we did not put our name on the posters. The goal, as explained by Nave Dromi, head of the Middle East Forum-Israel office, was to "to spark public discussion about the crying need to change the thinking that characterizes the 'peace camp'."

This graphic went up on billboards at five prominent spots in Tel Aviv on Feb. 13.

On Feb. 14, the mayor of Tel Aviv, Ron Huldai, responded by denouncing the signs as Nazi-like incitements to murder. A municipality flack, Eytan Schwartz, actually compared the two depicted monsters to Jewish children in the Holocaust. Well no, the billboards were incitements to victory, not to murder; surrendering prisoners being blindfolded is common the world around. Both Israelis (in Syria) and Americans (in Iran) have experienced this sort of treatment.

The good mayor, who proclaims Tel Aviv to be a city that "celebrates pluralism and tolerance," is also known for his increasingly autocratic tendencies since coming to office in 1998. In this instance, he peremptorily ordered municipal employees to take down the ads, which they promptly did – freedom of speech and the sanctity of private property be damned.

In other words, without the nicety of first obtaining a court order, Huldai blithely took an illegal step. MEF responded in two ways: we went to court to assert our rights and we released a new version of the poster; this one covers the faces of Abbas and Haniyeh with a stamp Censored (in Hebrew) and a list of some of the 30 violent Palestinian attacks in Tel Aviv on Huldai's watch that left 93 dead.

I draw two conclusions from this incident. First, the concept of Israel Victory, a simple idea with immense implications, gets hugely under some people's skins. The positive response to it – among Israelis, some Palestinians, and caucuses in the U.S. House of Representatives and the Knesset – enrages those who remain wedded to their "peace process" delusions.

Israel Victory dispenses with the nutty idea of giving an enemy hope, replacing it with the sensible goal of forcing him to give up his war goal. Out goes the saccharine path of appeasement in favor of the bitter doctrine of deterrence. Out goes the illusion of luring Palestinians to give up their foul goal through promises of benefits. When they finally do give up on eliminating the Jewish state, Palestinians can begin to build their polity, economy, society, and culture. It's admittedly a long and tough path, but it will ultimately bring real rewards.

Second, as Israel's die-hard Left continues to decline, it increasingly relies on police methods to discredit its opponents. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has experienced a barrage of legal cases which (per Alan Dershowitz) in the aggregate "endangers democracy." Recently, Israel's police arrested Akiva Smotrich for unauthorized travel to the West Bank and it arrested Yehudah Glick – rabbi, former Likud member of parliament, and victim of a jihadi assassination attempt – for "walking too slowly" on the Temple Mount, then ransacked his house. And Huldai destroyed our billboards.

Where will it end?

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Attitudes toward Gaza are in flux. Efraim Inbar, the strategist who heads the Jerusalem Institute for Security Studies, for years advocated "mowing the grass" as "Israel's strategy for protracted intractable conflict." By this, he advocated an occasional reminder to Hamas' rulers and other Gazans of Israel's overwhelming power. Implicit in this approach is an Israeli acceptance, most of the time, of aggression from Gaza, with its attendant damage to property and life. As recently as May 2019, he dismissed the Palestinian threat to Israel as a "strategic nuisance."

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But Inbar recently recognized the high costs of this passivity and now calls for a "restricted ground invasion" of the territory. Why? Because "a short-term ground operation will bring better results than Israel's activity thus far [i.e., mowing the grass]. We need to maneuver inside enemy territory, locate them, and destroy them, or tie the hands of its members."

Others agree. For example, Ayelet Shaked, leader of the Yamina party, calls for a widescale military operation in Gaza: "We must choose the time that is best for us, evacuate the Israeli citizens who live in towns along the Gaza envelope in order to give us maximum flexibility, and we must uproot the terror from within Gaza."

To these analyses, I respond with Carl von Clausewitz's simple but profound counsel: First decide on your policy, then your strategy, then your tactics. Or, in plain English: Start by figuring out what you wish to achieve through the use of force, then decide the broad outlines of your approach, then the specific means.

Seen in this light, debating whether to engage in a ground invasion and to overthrow Hamas is debating a tactic; this should not be the topic of conversation until the goal and the means to achieve it have been decided upon. To start by focusing on tactics risks losing sight of the purpose.

So, what should Israel's goal in Gaza be?

The occasional show of force against Hamas interests has failed, as has destroying Gaza's infrastructure; so too the opposite policy of goodwill and the prospect of economic prosperity. It's time for something altogether different, a goal that transcends sending signals and punishing misdeeds, something far more ambitious.

Victory is such a goal. That is, aim to impose a sense of defeat on Gazans, from the head of Hamas to the lowliest street sweeper. Aiming for an Israel victory is entirely in keeping with historical war aims but it is out of step with our times when even the words victory and defeat have dropped from the Western war lexicon. The Israeli security establishment seeks just peace and quiet vis-à-vis the Palestinians; Inbar speaks for them in dismissing the goal of victory over Hamas as "naïve."

Negotiations, mediation, compromise, concessions, and other gentle means have replaced victory. These sound good but they have failed in the Palestinian-Israeli arena since 1993 and blindly persisting with them guarantees more destruction and death.

With imposing a sense of defeat on Gazans the goal, what are the strategy and tactics? These cannot be decided on in advance. They require a contemporaneous and detailed study of the Gazan population's psychology. Questions to be answered might include:

• Does the deprivation of food, water, fuel, and medicine in retaliation for attacks on Israel inspire a sense of resistance (muqawama) and steadfastness (sumud) among Gazans or does it break their will?
• Same question about the destruction of homes, buildings, and infrastructure
• Would knocking out the Hamas leadership paralyze the population or prompt an insurrection?

Israel's security establishment needs to explore these and related issues to map out a sound strategy and to offer reliable counsel to the political leadership. That done, with victory as the goal, Israel finally can address the hitherto insoluble problem of Gaza.

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These suggest the plan boils down to a grand exchange: The Arab states recognize Israel and Israel recognizes Palestine, both with capital cities in Jerusalem. This approach builds on elements forwarded by Egypt's President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi in 2016, the Obama administration in 2009, the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative, and even my 1990 symmetry plan.

These prior plans either had Israel go first or called for simultaneous steps; in contrast, Trump's has the Arab states initiate, with Israel responding. This change prompted Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to immediately reject the "deal of the century" when he met with Trump in May 2017; one report noted that "Abbas has long feared such a plan" and "vehemently opposed" it.

Despite that reaction, the purported deal contains many elements favorable to the Palestinians:

• Palestine consists of Areas A and B on the West Bank in their entirety and parts of Area C; in all, it will constitute 90% of the West Bank;
• The capital is within or near Jerusalem's expansive municipal boundaries, perhaps in an area stretching from Shuafat to Isawiya, Abu Dis, and Jabel Mukabar;
• An international body oversees a joint PA-Israeli administration governing Jerusalem's Holy Basin (including the Old City);
• A joint PA-Jordan body controls Jerusalem's Islamic sanctuaries;
• Egypt, Jordan, and Lebanon give more rights to their Palestinian residents;
• Jewish residents in smaller West Bank towns are relocated;
• A land passage connects the West Bank and Gaza;
• Gaza joins Palestine when the PA regains control of it;
• Washington organizes a gigantic economic aid package (perhaps $40 billion, or roughly $25,000 per Palestinian resident of the West Bank) for the PA;
• Palestinians enjoy temporary access to select Israeli seaports and airports until foreign funds build exclusive PA facilities.

In exchange, the Palestinians apparently will be asked to accept several limitations:

• Continued Israeli military control over Palestine's borders, its air and sea access, and the Jordan Valley;
• Legal recognition by the U.S. government (and perhaps annexation by Israel) of larger Jewish towns amounting to 10% of the West Bank;
• Giving up the "right of return" for Palestinians living outside Israel in favor of compensation.

Assuming this outline to be correct in the essentials, it raises three main worries. First, the benefits to Israel are illusory. Its peace treaties with Egypt (signed 40 years ago) and Jordan (25 years ago) led not to significant trade, friendly diplomatic relations, or an increase in human contact. Rather, they intensified anti-Zionist sentiments among Egyptians and Jordanians while improving their governments' arsenals. The same pattern of heightened hostility also followed other Arab diplomatic agreements with Israel – Lebanon in 1983, the PLO in 1993; why should Saudi or Bahraini recognition be otherwise? In other words, Arab state recognition hardly benefits Israel and could hurt it.

Ending the Palestinian claim to a "right of return" is Israel's other illusory benefit. Just recall the farcical 1990s non-change of the PLO charter to drop its call for Israel's destruction to anticipate the hollow theatrics ahead.

Second, despite the Palestinians gaining real and irreversible benefits (money, territory, legitimacy), they with certainty will continue their century-old pattern of rejecting Israel through campaigns of delegitimization and violence, as has been the case since the first Palestinian-Israeli agreement in 1993. That's because Shimon Peres' discredited "New Middle East" idea, that enriching and rewarding Palestinians makes them peaceable, underlies the reported Trump plan. Long experience, however, shows that these benefits make them more inclined to eliminate the Jewish state. In brief, the PA will pocket "Palestine" and intensify its anti-Zionism.

Third, should Israelis complain to Trump about that delegitimization and violence, he will likely respond with annoyance: The Palestinian-Israeli conflict is now "off the table" and they should move on. Should they persist, his predictable rage will damage not just Israel but also the anti-Tehran campaign and anti-Islamist efforts in general.

In short, the reported plan repeats the great miscalculation of traditional Palestinian-Israeli diplomacy by asking too little of Arabs and too much of Israelis. I predict that it will fail, just as did those of Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama.

Therefore, Americans concerned about Israel, Iran, and Islamism need to prepare for the imminent unveiling of what could be a problematic plan. Yes, so far, Trump has been "the most pro-Israel president ever" but, as the Bible reminds us, "put not your trust in princes."

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