Liberals break cultural values under the guise of encouraging tolerance to deviations. Civil unions offer homosexuals excellent tolerance: they are tolerated in the sense that they are not being persecuted or discriminated against. But calling their partnerships “families” imposes their values on society, which has to adapt its own understanding of families to the deviants. The difference is not merely semantic, but whether a family serves the societal interest of procreation or is irrelevant to the society, and is just a vehicle for pleasure. Tolerance lessons in schools inevitably turn into propaganda for homosexuality because it is elevated to a norm rather than tolerated as a harmless deviation. Libertarianism means a cultural blank slate, and leaves societies with no reason to ban other harmless behavior such as bestiality, adult incest, or public urination. All-permissiveness quickly turns into arbitrary prohibitions: societies that tolerate pornography crack down on vaguely defined hate speech. Criticizing the liberal policies becomes the most prohibited thing of all: who would dare to defend racism in the private sphere

Values are commonly connected to restrictions. Since values cannot be justified rationally, courts often strike down the restrictions. When pro-lifers could not prove the divine origin of the human soul in courts, the judicial establishment renounced anti-abortion laws as unreasonable restrictions. In the world of formal justice, liberals always win. Then, they repress the people of values for seeking to impose restrictions. In a twist, traditionalists become anti-social elements and even criminals because violence is all that is left to them.

Societies can never be value-less—on the contrary, societies are defined through their values. Democracy and liberalism are no less arbitrary values than religion or the ban on homosexuality. Ancient societies were somewhat permissive toward homosexuality but had other firm values, whether religious or chauvinistic.

States further break the societal fabric through welfare. Social welfare breaks families by making them economically irrelevant. Parents no longer depend on their children for retirement, and can afford to alienate their children through divorce.

Municipal projects, welfare, and access to government institutions encourage the development of large cities where the bonds of neighborhood are broken. Residents maintain ties neither to family nor to neighbors. Instead, they build ad hoc, artificial ties: to government institutions, sports teams, African recipients of their charity, or internet communities. More often, they suffer from incredible loneliness among millions of residents of the same city.

This unnatural absence of horizontal, cultural ties spells the end of nation-states and a return to small communities. People of such neighborhoods share the same values and live in moral comfort. Incidentally, such small, dispersed communities are the only ones militarily viable in the age of nuclear proliferation.

Justice is only applicable domestically because it presumes a shared system of values. A thief and his victim share the same values; the thief betrayed them knowingly and intentionally, thus there is a moral ground for punishing him. International and civil clashes presume a different system of values. Both peoples consider the land theirs; who is to blame for the casualties? Thus, international justice is always sacrificed to peace, or perhaps expediency. An alliance with the devil may be short-lived, but it offers a respite nonetheless.

The Torah deals with such a scenario of inherent injustice when describing an out-of-town rape which left the woman incapable of finding a spouse. It is called “as if one man arises against another.” No amount of compensation or retaliation resurrects the victim, thus justice cannot be restored.

Absolutes are never attainable, and absolute justice is a myth. Sometimes we have to abandon justice for the sake of peace.

But a treaty with Arabs leaves Israel about as peaceful as Northern Ireland.

Confidence-building is essentially a string of concessions, and each concession is a mini-victory. Victories encourage.

When the opponents exhibit hostility rather than free will, confidence-building does not work even in theory. The confidence is already there: each party is confident of the other’s hostility. No amount of handshaking between their leaders can obviate the fact that the Jews and Palestinians would love to see each other dead. The Jews who recite daily, “Remember, O LORD, against the children of Edom the day of Jerusalem” are not as nice as your temple “rabbi” leads you to believe.

The alternative to confidence-building is clearly laid out: tit-for-tat. Anatol Rapoport’s algorithm is probably the closest to the lawgiver’s intent: cooperate on the first move, then repeat your opponent’s move. Jews tried cooperating with Arabs eighty years ago; now it’s the time for unforgiving retaliation. There islittle doubt that adequate, unrestricted retaliation would be more efficient in reaching a peace deal with the Arabs than any confidence-building. Indeed, retaliation too builds confidence.

Various tit-for-tat scenarios generally presume that both sides are equally powerful. Israel has a better strategy: instead of decades of tit-for-tat retaliation, she can get rid of her opponent once and for all by expelling the West Bank Palestinians into their own state, Syria. Sixty years ago, Syro-Palestinian nationalists did not imagine themselves a separate nation.

There is an Axelrod problem to the conflict. Researching various tit-for-tat strategies, Robert Axelrod figured out that pure retaliatory strategies do not win. Predictably, in multi-player systems the other players line up against the harsh retaliator – if, like Israel, he fails to extinguish the threat soon. Israel failed to extinguish Arab presence in our land, and scores of countries lined up against us for our retalitary anti-terrorist operations.

This is a very important thing: pure tit-for-tat always wins in the short-to-medium term with a moderate number of players. The fact that the game extends into the long term shows the retaliation to be inadequate. The Torah prescribes tit-for-tat only on a personal level: no individual offender is sufficiently strong to threaten society. It is, therefore, enough to punish him in tit-for-tat fashion. But a totally different logic is applied to nations: according to the Torah, enemy nations must be exterminated. Unlike modern politicians, our lawgiver did not imagine that Palestinian Arabs would cease their terrorism because Jews kill a Palestinian for every Jew murdered by terrorists. For Arabs, a murdered Jew is not just a casualty, but a military, nationalistic victory. Jews, accordingly, need a victory of their own, not just a single dead Arab.

Much fuss is made out of Axelrod’s forgiveness. From various simulations, it seems that the best strategies forgive past offenses and switch to cooperation after the opponent starts cooperating. In practice, such conditions never hold. A previously hostile opponent would cooperate only half-heartedly, waiting for the chance to defect and strike in the back. It is foolish to cooperate with someone like that. In the simulations, cooperation is defined narrowly as piggy-backing your opponent’s friendly moves. Good enough. The Arabs refrain from terrorism, we refrain from retaliation. The Arabs claim none of the land we hold, we claim none of theirs.

Any other strategy is demonstrably a losing one.

They say, “If the Torah is not divine letter-for-letter, then how we know what to do?” How did the Hebrews know before Moses told them? How did the Sadducees live while rejecting Deuteronomy? We test conjectures, live normal lives, respect tradition, and assess the writings critically.

Moses judged the people well before he received the Torah. On Jethro’s urging, Moses wrote down the law and passed it to the elders. The Torah itself is clear that a significant portion of Jewish law is not divine.

People observe secular laws because they are enforceable and basically authoritative. Secular laws are promulgated because they are thought beneficial for the nation. Likewise, religious laws dating back to the priests are good enough if Israel cares to enforce them.

Theological issues need not determine our present. Strictly speaking, the Torah does not prohibit intermarriage. Rather, we refuse assimilation because everybody demands it of us; because the world tried to convert, annihilate, and expunge us; because of the stakes, pogroms, and gas chambers; because of the countless Jews burned, torn, and gassed; and because of the thousands of years we kept repeating, “The next year, in Jerusalem!”

Sure, a lot of criticism is leveled against the US unfairly. Though interrogation methods in Guantanamo violated the Geneva rules, those rules were never practiced. No realist can imagine the Allied or Axis military refraining from torturing enemy POWs who were thought to possess valuable information. Indeed, a refusal to torture them would be cruel to one’s own soldiers. Some other allegations against Guantanamo and Bagram were outright silly: the interrogators chained the detainees, abused them verbally, and stripped them. That’s not torture in any meaningful sense. The Americans went so far as to treat the prisoners for clinical depression. Indeed, the Americans offer Israelis a glimpse of normality. Whereas Jews treat jailed Palestinian terrorists to satellite TV, mobile phones, and pocket money, a normal nation’s guards tear the Koran, insult Islamic beliefs, and undress and photograph the Muslims. We can add the suggestion of distributing their naked photos in their hometowns, and offering them pork and wine instead of water. Jewish criminals in American jails cannot get kosher food, why are there better terms for the terrorists?

Treatment of POWs in a war against terrorists is always questionable. There is no need to refuse them Geneva standards: the insistence that soldiers must wear uniforms to be eligible for protection is out of touch with modern realities. Jailed terrorists cannot be treated as common criminals because there is often no hard evidence to convict them; they cannot be presumed innocent. But anti-terrorist wars last for decades, and jailing them for so long a term is unreasonable. The choice is between mutilation and a jail term—but the jail must be harsh compared to the terrorists’ normal living conditions. The horrible way competing mujahedeen groups treat each other’s prisoners offers a benchmark for the West’s treatment of them: presumably, we can rely on the neighbors’ advice.

It will be never known what part oil played in Bush’s calculations, but we know that it was a major thing for Carter. The peace-loving US president launched a brutal civil war because the Soviet Union came “close to the Straits of Hormuz, a waterway through which most of the world’s oil must flow.” Might we assume Bush was no less cynical? Reestablishing an American client state in Afghanistan would mean the US would gain control over the Central Asian oil and gas pipelines, major influence over Pakistan (and therefore on India) and Iran, whose insurgents hide in Afghanistan.

The American war in Afghanistan came at the cost of accepting Pakistani nuclear arsenals. Instead of buying its way into Afghanistan through Tajikistan and ignoring Pakistani sovereignty in occasional overflights, Bush lifted the sanctions against Pakistan. That acceptance of Islamic nuclear weapons was a major factor in Iran’s jump-starting of its nuclear program.

America initially invaded Afghanistan to reestablish its international position and deterrence after 9/11. As the perpetrators were unknown, Al Qaeda was appointed as the culprit and its hosts attacked. A swift, victorious war across the globe could affirm US supremacy. The fact that the superpower failed against cavemen is a slap in its face; never mind that the previous two superpowers were slapped similarly. During the course of the Afghan war, America lost its base in Uzbekistan and its relations with Pakistan soured, hardly adding to its international prestige. The obvious parallel with the recent Soviet defeat will haunt the United States in the Muslim world for decades to come.

In a sense, Afghanistan goes the way of the Philippines, a country servicing American troops. That is unsurprising because the NATO contingent’s budget exceeds the Afghani budget manifold. From pop-culture to brothels, Afghanis have become “American-friendly.” Decades of attrition, an atrocious civil war, and Western influence have turned the brave mountain nation into weaklings who depend on foreign aid and protection. After the US withdrawal local incomes will dwindle, and the population will remain nostalgic for the good Americans.

The United States lacked a goal in Afghanistan. Speaking thirty-three days after 9/11, Bush demanded of the Taliban a single thing: render Osama to America. They actually agreed, provided that Bush would offer them a shred of evidence which would allow them to rescind guest protection for Osama. But Bush had no evidence and refused negotiations. The Taliban cooperated with the West in removing the poppy plantations until sanctions left them drugs as their only income. Plausibly, a solution could have been found that would have allowed them to surrender Osama, and in any case ousting the Taliban had nothing to do with American interests in the region. On the contrary, the Taliban provided stability and an accountable government in Afghanistan, one that was much easier to deal with than anyone else, and plausibly an understanding could have been reached on the terrorist camps, just as an understanding was reached on drugs.

Interestingly, the United States employed in Afghanistan the strategy of squeeze, the very approach it refuses to allow Israel to use in Gaza. The assumption is that by inflicting sufficient hardship the population can be forced into changing its government. In both cases, that is unlikely: the Afghanis and Palestinian Arabs cannot realistically fight the Taliban and Hamas. And decrying the death toll from Israeli reprisals against Gaza, the Americans would better recall some places whose names most of them have never heard: Chowkar Karez, Mudoh, and Kama Ado—the villages where American jets obliterated the civili

The Americans only exacerbated the offense by appointing Khalilzad to oversee Karzai; overbearing Khalilzad made Karzai look like a nobody. Later, Maliki was similarly happy to get rid of Khalilzad as the US ambassador to Iraq. Like Kissinger and Brzezinski, Khalilzad is a schemer by birth and stirred up events in a country which needs to be calmed down. He enjoyed engaging the maximum number of players and encouraged the warlords with American assistance rather than suppressing them as a strongman must do.

The American Army failed in the occupier’s most important task: quickly ensuring the safety of the population. With bombs falling and order cracking all around them, people long for stability, however oppressive. The invasion failed on that account, and the population would accept the Taliban back. Common Afghanis won’t be overjoyed with the return of the fundamentalist Taliban, but they would see it as the least of a number of evils. Like in the West Bank, the American success in enforcing safety will eventually turn against the occupiers as the population discounts safety and longs for national freedom. Both in Judea and Afghanistan, the key to successful control is not letting the locals forget that they need the occupier for their basic security needs. Fatah and Hamas, mujahedeen and Taliban must keep fighting on the outskirts while order and curfews are enforced in towns. Too much peace is bad for occupation.

Having invaded Afghanistan out of sheer arrogance and without much thought, the Americans quickly found that they had no natural allies. So they reverted to their Cold War-era alliances and formed the Kabul government from the criminal thugs ousted by the Taliban. This is hardly a way to earn popular goodwill or even trust, as the Afghans see a gap between the Americans’ democratic pronouncements and the installation of the hated mujahedeen in the government. The mujahedeen often, make a good impression on Western news networks because they tend to speak softly. In the culture of mountain people, Afghanis in particular, one does not speak rudely because the next moment he would be killed. So even the worst thugs look as nice as Roosevelt.

Common Afghanis cannot oust the militias, which have been armed and financed by America for a decade. Also, there is the factor of affinity: the warlike Pashtuns fought the British invaders but are more reluctant to go against their own warlords, who are perceived as legitimate strongmen rather than occupiers. In any moral calculation, America ought to clear the mess it created in Afghanistan.

The rise of Islamic fundamentalism cannot be prevented in Afghanistan. Very poor people who strive to survive have no time for excessive religiosity. Affluent people have no need for it. The danger of fundamentalism arises when a society is in transition: people need firm values to cling to and can afford them. With American aid, urban Afghanis came to this stage, just like the Palestinians.

Americans dislike the Taliban, but Afghanis felt gratitude to the bearded fellows who brought order to their land. After decades of civil war—sponsored by Russia and the United States—Afghanistan became a lawless territory roamed by murderous gangs. America and Russia shed fake tears over Israel killing a few Palestinians, but close to two million Afghanis died in the war they fanned for thirty years. The Taliban brought a welcome respite from the murder at the low cost of fundamentalist Islamic observance. For the West to condemn their oppression of women is hypocritical: it was only recently that women were allowed to vote in America and France. Afghani society, centuries behind the West, can be allowed a few more restrictions. The Taliban restricted female access to higher education, an avenue pursued by a tiny minority in any case, but at least it shielded the women from rampaging rape by mujahedeen, which is now widespread again. The ubiquity of rape by Islamic fighters confirms that unrealized sexual drive is a major force behind militant Islam, and the West can channel the Muslims’ energies more cheaply and efficiently by distributing pornography.

There is little doubt that Afghanis would welcome the Taliban back, either in free elections or a military campaign after the Americans finally leave. The Taliban’s hold on Pakistan’s border regions provides it with cash.: As the anarchy increases in Afghanistan, the Taliban return to their old business of convoy protection. Remarkably honest and willing to risk their lives for their clients’ cargo, the Taliban push the convoys through numerous illegal checkpoints erected by local mujahedeen for racketeering. It is curious that the United States objects so vehemently to Israeli anti-terrorist checkpoints in the West Bank, but has basically accepted the numerous checkpoints dotting Afghani roads. Reportedly the Taliban also receives significant income from local levies and poppy trade. When the Americans leave, the Taliban is fully capable of recapturing Afghanistan. Pakistan would also prefer them in Afghanistan rather than on its own border areas. The reasoning goes that once the Taliban gets its own state, Islamic fundamentalists will be less inclined to capture the Pakistani regions; or at least they will be easier to fight: Pakistan can then retaliate against Afghanistan rather than its own population centers. Pakistan also prefers an Islamic rather than a Pashtun nationalistic government in Kabul because the Pashtuns would claim the Pakistani Northwestern Frontier settled by their kinsmen. Pakistan is not yet ready to recognize the wisdom of relinquishing their unruly border area to Afghanistan.

The American crackdown on the Taliban was senseless. They are an orderly bunch, which is a major advantage in a lawless territory. Unlike the Northern Alliance gangsters, the Taliban keep their word, don’t switch alliances easily, and are fairly predictable. Never did they engage in the mass murder or tortures typical of the Alliance gangs. Answering to the West’s call to curb opium production, the Taliban quickly eradicated poppy plantations in Afghanistan; at the same time, the size of the plantations tripled in the territory held by the Alliance. Still, America sided with known thugs and drug lords against decent Islamists.

Sure, everyone would prefer a liberal government in Kabul, but in practice, there can be no government at all. Afghanistan is a tribal area unsuitable for central rule. Monarchy is no longer an option: saturated with weapons, Afghanistan is no longer a patriarchal society based on mutual respect. The real choice is between uniting the country under the banner of Islam and breaking it into independent areas ruled by feudal warlords. As Islamists take over the border areas of Pakistan, it would be natural for them to demand a Pashtun state which carves its territory from Pakistan and Afghanistan. The balance of Afghanistan falls into Tajikistan’s sphere of influence.

There is not a chance for democracy to work in Afghanistan, a country grossly fragmented ethnically. Though Pashtuns are by far the largest group, a number of smaller ethnic groups together constitute the majority. In district (majoritarian) elections Pashtuns assuredly take hold of the country and push other groups out of the government. In nationwide (proportional) elections Pashtuns always lose and turn to fighting. A parliament based on ethnic quotas has little to do with democracy, and in any case ignores the smaller groups.

As Machiavelli noted, nations which do not learn to live under state control are inherently ungovernable. An occupier can exterminate them but not rule over them. The Taliban were sensible enough to enforce their order in major cities but leave the rural areas alone. They did not try to defeat other groups, but merely pushed them out of sight. The Russians, and later the Americans, were bent on bringing their order into every last village, a strategy which is certain to fail.

Democracy, a good order for homogeneous states, is destructive in tribal societies. In Iraq, democracy brought the Shiites to dominance over the Sunnis. In Afghanistan, democracy means suppressing smaller tribes. As often happens, small tribes are the most militant, and they dominate the state; they won’t accept being made to relinquish their power in the democratic process. To that problem the American planners reacted with a parliament in which every ethnic group has its quota. Not has only this little to do with democracy, but such an arrangement simply brings the suppression of dominant groups one step forward: they are suppressed in parliamentary voting rather than in elections.

The planners of something like 9/11 do not need training camps in remote mountains; an apartment will do. Destroying Al Qaeda camps was senseless in terms of global security, especially as the camps provided neither sophisticated terrorist training of the PFLP type nor guerrilla training like Hezbollah’s camps. Al Qaeda camps were the perfect place for foreign intelligence services to spot would-be international terrorists in one place and track them back to their home countries. Al Qaeda camps doomed the terrorist enterprise to massive infiltration.

The American invasion of Afghanistan stemmed from the rationalist delusion that large-scale security could be built. The notion of American security being developed in remote mountains halfway across the globe is suspect. This might be so for a very concentrated threat—say, a lab which develops bio weapons—but a regime such as the Taliban is normally so little concerned with American affairs that dislodging it just does not pay. Both security and retaliation are most effective if they are local. The United States can refuse visas to Afghanis, and perhaps to anyone who has traveled through Afghanistan, just as Israel should do for Palestinians.

A proper retaliation for 9/11 should speak the Afghani language: revenge. An air raid destroying everything Al Qaeda and Taliban would be understood and respected. A punishing raid could be effective in Afghanistan because the Taliban was strong there: a strong government can be punished into compliance while a weak one like the Lebanese government cannot. Failed occupation, like any failure, seeds disrespect and paves the way to further attacks on the United States, especially since the Afghanis won’t easily forget the American support for the Northern Alliance.

In rabbinical tradition, Jewishness is matrilineal while clan affiliation is patrilineal. This leaves an “interfaith” family without a clan and, consequently, with no land to settle in. The assumption that “interfaith” families settled in the land of the wife’s clan is impractical: she did not inherit the land and physically had no place to live in. Women went to live in their husband’s clan’s tents; the suggestion that a man moves into the home of his wife’s clan amounts to matriarchy, which is alien to the Jewish Bedouin mind. Such an arrangement for mixed families would put intermarried women at an advantage compared to their properly married sisters: an intermarried sister would have gotten a land plot while the one married to a Jew would not. The Torah cannot mean to prescribe such an unjust arrangement.

Sages accepted patrilineal descent for all other nations. Rashi cites Kiddushin 67b: “A son follows his father” to assert the originally patrilineal descent. Also, the Pharaoh ordered the killing of Jewish boys rather than girls when he sought to extinguish the people. Rabbis counter without much proof that Jewishness was patrilineal, as it was with other nations, until the law was given on Sinai. That contradicts their other doctrine that the forefathers observed the law before it was given to the entire people; never mind that the forefathers married pagans unreservedly.

In practice, Jewish women certainly married the strangers who settled in the Land of Israel and adopted Jewish customs. They lived in towns without inheriting land plots, or they rented them. If the male stranger (ger) observed Judaism, their children were Jewish, according to their father’s new religion. If the woman married a non-observant foreigner (toshav), their children obviously followed the father’s religion. To all practical purposes, Jewishness was patrilineal.

The Jews-by-father were frowned upon: Leviticus 25:45 distinguishes between “your brother” and “someone rooted in ger’s family.” The skeptical attitude is unsurprising: landless converts-gerim were likely to take off and leave Israel along with Judaism. After a few generations, the descendants of gerim fully assimilated and often attained significant positions in Jewish society.

In rabbinical Judaism, the entry into Jewishness is religious while the exit is biological. Religious conversion is required to enter the nation, but the children of baptized Jews are considered Jewish. A more consistent definition would be, “Children of somewhat Jewish families are Jewish.” A foreign woman who marries a Jew and casts her lot with the Israelis—her children are Jewish. The self-hating Peace Now Jews cannot impart the Jewish soul into their children.