Tag Archives: Egypt

Ehud Barak’s latest Nakba

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak have some explaining to do.

On Sunday, Israel was invaded along its border with Syria. More than 100 Syrians successfully infiltrated the country and rioted violently in Majdal Shams for several hours.

The IDF was reportedly surprised by these events. It was more prepared for violent riots along the borders with Lebanon and Gaza. And security forces were deployed more or less effectively in Jerusalem, the Galilee, the Negev, Judea and Samaria on Sunday.

Jerusalem, a focal point of the unrest since Friday, witnessed rioting in several Arab neighborhoods, which reached its peak with an assault on Hadassah Hospital on Mt. Scopus.

But the government and the IDF were surprised by the invasion from Syria.

What can possibly explain this surprise? And what does it tell us about the defense establishment’s ability to cope with the swiftly expanding and changing threats facing Israel?

BEFORE WE consider that issue, we need to understand the nature of the new assault now underway.

Sunday’s events were fully anticipated. In 1998, at the height of the so-called peace process, Nobel Peace Prize laureate and PLO/Fatah chieftan Yasser Arafat invented a new Palestinian holiday – the Nakba.

That year, for the first time, Arabs in Judea, Samaria and Gaza rioted on May 15 – the secular date of Israel’s establishment in 1948. The purpose of Israel’s "peace partner’s" initiative was to escalate anti-Israel sentiments of Arabs on both sides of the 1949 armistice lines. And indeed, the next year, for the first time, the Nakba – or catastrophe – of Israel’s birth on May 15, 1948 was marked by Israel’s Arab citizens.

In the years since, the Palestinians and their brethren throughout the Arab world have consistently escalated their May 15 attacks, with anti-Israel mass demonstrations now common fare throughout the Arab world.

In recent months, Hamas and Fatah have been ratcheting up their incitement and calling for their followers to descend on Jerusalem on May 15. Millions worldwide participated in social media campaigns calling for a third Palestinian intifada to begin on May 15.

Regionally, in recent weeks, as Syrian anti-regime protesters have escalated their calls to overthrow the Assad regime, Hezbollah and the Syrian media have been joining the Nakba incitement efforts. In Egypt as well, as the Muslim Brotherhood consolidates its power, the calls for invading Israel and avenging the Nakba have escalated daily.

Politically, the Nakba campaigns couldn’t be an easier target for an Israeli information counteroffensive.

The assertion that Israel’s establishment was a catastrophe for the Arabs makes clear that the Palestinian leadership has no interest in living at peace with Israel. This goes for both Fatah, which popularized the term, and Hamas, which was happy to adopt it. If Israel’s existence is the Palestinian catastrophe, then obviously, every patriotic Palestinian must seek Israel’s destruction.

Actually, the Palestinian and pan-Arab embrace of the Nakba myth doesn’t merely demonstrate that they aren’t interested in peaceful coexistence. It proves that their true aspirations are nothing short of genocidal.

The declared goal of the Arab armies that invaded the infant State of Israel on May 15, 1948 was to throw every Jewish man, woman and child in the country into the sea. By calling the Arab failure to carry out that plan a catastrophe, today’s Nakba rioters and mourners are saying they support the genocidal purpose of the 1948 Arab invaders.

And of course, by making the issue Israel’s establishment in 1948, the Palestinians and their supporters are showing that the popular myth that they have no problem with Israel existing within the 1949 armistice lines, and seek only the "liberation" of Israel’s heartland of Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem is a complete fabrication. Those areas were lands the Arabs successfully conquered and emptied of Jews in 1948. The Arab occupation of these areas only ended in 1967 because they again invaded Israel with the declared purpose of throwing every Jewish man, woman and child in the country into the sea.

In short, the entire notion of the Nakba is proof that the Palestinians specifically and the Arab world as a whole remain dedicated to the destruction of Israel and the genocide of Jewry.

Netanyahu and the rest of Israel’s leaders have the duty to point out this glaring, yet totally ignored fact. And yet, they have been silent.

The most Netanyahu could muster in the lead up to Nakba Day was a true but irrelevant mention of the fact that as full citizens of Israel, Israeli Arabs enjoy more freedoms than citizens of any Arab state.

As for the IDF, it’s hard to know where to begin describing its failures to understand or prepare for Sunday’s events.

Perhaps the oddest aspect of the IDF’s treatment of the mass infiltration from Syria was the IDF Spokesman’s Unit’s response.

First, IDF Spokesman Brig. Gen. Yoav Mordechai blamed the events on Iran. He called the events an "Iranian provocation aimed at creating friction."

Maybe it was, maybe it wasn’t. Certainly Iran is always interested in drawing Israeli blood and weakening the country. But Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad didn’t order the rioters to cross the border. Syrian President Bashar Assad did.

As for Assad, an unnamed military source told the media that Assad ordered the whole thing in order to divert world attention from the fact that he is butchering his citizens. As the official said: "This is a cynical and transparent act by the Syrian regime to create a crisis on the border with Israel in order to distract public opinion from the very real problems at home. Syria is a police state; this sort of thing could not happen without the support of the regime. It is clear they wanted this to play the Israel card in order to silence their own democratic opposition."

Well said. But this brings us to the next question: If the IDF understands why this happened, why weren’t there sufficient forces along the border armed with riot-control gear to block the infiltrators? Not only was the regime’s rationale for the attack easily understandable, the IDF could see the rioters coming. They saw the them get on the buses. They saw the buses coming to the border. There were enough forces along the border to stop a similar penetration from Lebanon.

Why weren’t there enough to prevent the Syrians from entering Israeli territory? Why weren’t there enough soldiers on the ground to prevent them from entering Majdal Shams, vandalizing the village and flying the Syrian flag inside Israel? Moreover, what does its abject failure to deploy adequately tell us about the defense establishment’s ability to properly understand regional developments and trends, and prepare the IDF to protect the country in the face of them?

HERE, TWO aspects of Sunday’s events must be borne in mind. First, in general, the events of Nakba day are simply an escalation of the suicide protest campaign that has been ongoing since 2001. The most famous suicide protester to date is Rachel Corrie. And the most successful suicide protest to date was last year’s Mavi Marmara suicide flotilla.

Suicide protests have two aims. The first is to humiliate the IDF and Israel. If unarmed suicide protesters are able to take control of a military target for any length of time, their achievement will harm the reputation of the IDF. This goal was achieved on Sunday, when Druse villagers in Majdal Shams were allowed to mediate between the Syrian infiltrators and the IDF.

The second aim is to force the IDF to use lethal force against the protesters and so portray the IDF as a criminal army that kills unarmed civilians. This goal was also partially achieved on Sunday along the Syrian and Lebanese borders.

Since the IDF has already faced suicide protests, it is inexcusable that it has not yet managed to put together a coherent doctrine for contending with them. For instance, why weren’t there water cannons along the border with Lebanon?

The other aspect of Sunday’s Nakba riots worth noting is that they were the first suicide protests to have taken place on a regional scale since the popular rebellion began in Syria, and since Hosni Mubarak was overthrown in Egypt.

IDF sources interviewed on Sunday claimed that since the Syrian border has been quiet since 1973, they didn’t expect it to be active on May 15. What this means is that the IDF failed to recognize ahead of time what its officials were able to recognize after the fact. Namely, that the populist upheavals in the Arab world give Assad (and a lot of other Arab leaders who have kept out of the direct fight against Israel in recent years) good reason to attack. And this new impetus to attack should have led the IDF to deploy forces along the border in sufficient numbers to prevent infiltration.

So why was the IDF unprepared?

THE PERSON most responsible for the IDF’s poor handling of events on Sunday is Defense Minister Ehud Barak. And his incompetence is not surprising. Barak is a serial bungler. He is the same man who armed the naval commandos who boarded the Mavi Marmara with paintball guns, even though it was known that the Turkish IHH, which organized the pro-Hamas flotilla, had links to terror groups.

In recent months, Barak has been too busy warning about the widely exaggerated diplomatic "tsunami" at the UN in September, when the Palestinians declare their independence for the second time, to notice events in the Middle East in May.

And that leads to the last disconcerting thing about the defense establishment’s surprise at Sunday’s events. Commentators and military officials alike are claiming that the Nakba day events are likely a dress rehearsal for even larger riots in September. And this may be true. But it is equally likely that they are the beginning of a new campaign that started this week and will escalate in the weeks and months to come. In this vein, of course we should note that a new, expanded Turkish government-organized pro-Hamas flotilla is set to sail next month with thousands of suicide protesters on more than a dozen ships.

This brings us back to Netanyahu and his relationship with Barak. It is hard to explain Netanyahu’s failure to condemn the Palestinians and their supporters for mourning the Arabs’ failure to annihilate the Jews of Israel in 1948 without placing it in the context of his close relationship with Barak.

There are many explanations for why Netanyahu gives so much weight to Barak’s consistently and dangerously incorrect assessments of regional developments. If they serve no other purpose, Sunday’s dismal events must cause Netanyahu to finally reconsiderhis attachment to Barak.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

Obama’s newest ambush

It is hard to believe, but it appears that in the wake of the Palestinian unity deal that brings Hamas, the genocidal, al-Qaida-aligned, local franchise of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, into a partnership with Fatah, US President Barack Obama has decided to open a new round of pressure on Israel to give away its land and national rights to the Palestinians. It is hard to believe that this is the case. But apparently it is.

On Wednesday, The Wall Street Journal reported that while Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is in Washington next week, and before the premier has a chance to give his scheduled address to a joint session of Congress, Obama will give a new speech to the Arab world. In that speech, Obama will praise the populist movements that have risen up against Arab tyrannies and embrace them as the model for the future. As for Israel, the report claimed that the Obama administration is still trying to decide whether the time is right to put the screws on Israel once more.

On the one hand, Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes told the Journal that Arab leaders are clamoring for a new US initiative to force Israel to make new concessions. Joining this supposed clamor are the administration-allied pro-Palestinian lobby J Street, and the administration-allied New York Times.

On the other hand, the Netanyahu government and Congress are calling for a US aid cutoff to the Palestinian Authority. With Hamas, a foreign terrorist organization, now partnering with Fatah in governing the PA, it is illegal for the US government to continue to have anything to do with the PA. Both the Netanyahu government and senior members of the House and Senate are arguing forcefully that there is no way for Israel to make peace with the Palestinians now, and that the US must abandon its efforts to force the sides to sign an agreement.

The Israeli and congressional arguments are certainly compelling. But the signals emanating from the White House and its allied media indicate that Obama is ready to plough forward in spite of them. With the new international security credibility he earned by overseeing the successful assassination of Osama bin Laden, Obama apparently believes that he can withstand congressional pressure and make the case for demanding that Israel surrender Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria to Hamas and its partners in Fatah.

THE SIGNALS that Obama is setting his sights on coercing Israel into agreeing to surrender its capital and heartland to Hamas and its partners in Fatah came in three forms this week. First, administration officials are trying to lower the bar that Hamas needs to pass in order to be considered a legitimate political force.

After Fatah and Hamas signed their first unity deal in March 2007, the US and its colleagues in the so-called Middle East Quartet – Russia, the EU and the UN – set three conditions that Hamas needed to meet to be accepted by them as legitimate. It needed to recognize Israel’s right to exist, agree to respect existing agreements with Israel, and renounce terrorism.

These are not difficult conditions. Fatah is perceived as having met them even though it is still a terrorist organization and its leaders refuse to accept Israel’s right to exist and refuse to abide by any of the major commitments they took upon themselves in precious agreements with Israel. Hamas could easily follow Fatah’s lead.

But Hamas refuses. So, speaking to Washington Post columnist David Ignatius two weeks ago, administration officials lowered the bar.

They said Hamas had made major concessions to Fatah in their agreement because it agreed to accept provisions of the 2009 unity deal drafted by the Mubarak government that it rejected two year ago and because Hamas agreed that the unity government will be manned by "technocrats" rather than terrorists.

Even if these contentions are true, they are completely ridiculous. In point of fact, all the 2009 agreement says is that Hamas will refrain from demanding to join the US-trained and funded Fatah army in Judea and Samaria. As for the "technocratic" government, who does the Obama administration think will control these "technocrats"? And as to the truth of these contentions, in an interview last week with the New York Times, Hamas terror-master Khaled Mashal denied that he had agreed to the terms of the 2009 agreement.

Indeed, he said that Fatah agreed to add annexes to the agreement reflecting Hamas’s positions.

The second pitch the administration and its friends have adopted ahead of Obama’s address next week is that Hamas has become more moderate or may become more moderate.

Robert Malley, who in the past advised Obama’s presidential campaign, made this argument last week in an op-ed in the Washington Post. Malley claimed that by joining the government, Hamas will be more moved by US pressure. A New York Times editorial last Saturday argued that Hamas may have moderated, and even if it hasn’t, "Washington needs to press Mr. Netanyahu back to the peace table."

Adding their voices to the din, Middle Eastern leaders like Amr Moussa, the frontrunner to serve as Egypt’s next president, and Turkish Prime Minister Recip Erdogan, have given interviews to the US media this week in which they denied that Hamas is even a terrorist organization.

Here it is important to note that none of the administration’s statements about the Hamas- Fatah deal and none of the media coverage related to it have included any mention of the fact that Hamas deliberately murders entire families and targets children specifically. No one mentions last month’s Hamas guided rocket attack which deliberately targeted an Israeli school bus. Hamas murdered 16-year-old Daniel Viflic in that attack. No one has mentioned the café massacres, the bus bombings, the university campus massacres, the breaking into homes massacres, the Passover Seder massacres Hamas has carried out and bragged about in recent years. No one has mentioned that when seen as a portion of the population, Hamas has killed far more Israelis than al-Qaida has killed Americans.

The final pitch the administration and its surrogates are making is that the deal needs to be seen as part of the overall regional shift towards popular rule. This pitch too is difficult to make.

After all, the first casualty of the Arab world’s shift towards popular rule is the 30-year-old Camp David peace treaty between Israel and Egypt. Now that Egypt’s citizens have gotten rid of US-ally Hosni Mubarak, they have committed themselves to getting rid of the peace he upheld with Israel throughout his long reign.

Again, despite the difficulties, the Obama administration is clearly willing to make the case. Regarding Egypt, they argue that the Muslim Brotherhood’s rise to power is a good. This was the point of Obama’s Passover and Israel Independence Day messages.

As for the regional shift, the fact that Obama reportedly intends to place the so-called Palestinian- Israeli peace process into the regional context signals that he sees potential for an agreement between Israel and Syria as well. His advisers telegraphed this view to Ignatius.

Obama’s advisers made the unlikely argument that if Syrian leader Bashar Assad survives the popular demonstrations calling for his overthrow, he will feel compelled to distance his regime from Iran because his Sunni-majority population has been critical of his alliance with the Shi’ite mullocracy.

This argument is unlikely given that the same officials recognize that if Assad survives, he will owe his regime’s survival to Iran. As they reminded Ignatius, US intelligence officials reported last month that Iran has "secretly supplied Assad with tear gas, anti-riot gear and other tools of suppression."

WHAT IS perhaps most remarkable about Obama’s apparent plan to use the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt as an excuse for a new round of diplomatic warfare against Israel is how poorly coordinated his steps have been with the PLO-Fatah. Mahmoud Abbas and his predecessor Yasser Arafat always viewed the US obsession with getting the Arabs and Israel to sign peace treaties as a strategic asset. Anytime they wanted to weaken Israel, they just needed to sound the fake peace drum loudly enough to get the White House’s attention. US presidents looking for the opportunity to "make history" were always ready to take their bait.

Unlike his predecessors, Obama’s interest in the Palestinians is not opportunistic. He is a true believer. And because of his deep-seated commitment to the Palestinians, his policies are even more radically anti-Israel than the PLO-Fatah’s. It was Obama, not Abbas, who demanded that Jews be barred from building anything in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria. It is the Obama administration, not the PLO-Fatah, that is leading the charge to embrace the Muslim Brotherhood.

Like his belated move to demand a permanent abrogation of Jewish property rights in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria, Abbas arguably embraced Hamas because Obama left him no choice. He has no interest in making peace with Israel, so the only thing he can do under the circumstances Obama has created is embrace Hamas. He can’t be less pro-Islamic than the US president.

ALL OF this brings us to Netanyahu and his trip to Washington next week. Obviously Obama’s decision to upstage the premier with his new outreach-to-the-Arab-world speech will make Netanyahu’s visit more challenging than it was already going to be.

Obama is clearly betting that by moving first, he will be able to coerce Netanyahu to make still more concessions of land and principles.

Certainly, Netanyahu’s earlier decisions to cave in to Obama’s pressure with his acceptance of Palestinian statehood and his subsequent acceptance of a Jewish building freeze give Obama good reason to believe he can back Netanyahu into a corner. Defense Minister Ehud Barak’s hysterical warnings about a diplomatic "tsunami" at the UN in September if Israel fails to capitulate to Obama today no doubt add to Obama’s sense that he can expect Netanyahu to dance to his drums, no matter how hostile the beat.

But Netanyahu doesn’t have to give in. He can stick to his guns and defend the country. He can continue on the correct path he has forged of repeating the truth about Hamas. He can warn about the growing threat of Egypt. He can describe the Iranian-supported butchery Assad is carrying out against his own people and note that a regime that murders its own will not make peace with the Jewish state. And he can point out the fact that as a capitalist, liberal democracy which protects the lives and property of its citizens, Israel is the only stable country in the region and the US’s only reliable regional ally.

True, if Netanyahu does these things, he will not win himself any friends in the White House.

But he never had a chance of winning Obama and his advisers over anyway. He will empower Israel’s allies in Congress, though. And more importantly, whether he is loved or hated in Washington, if Netanyahu does these things, he will be able to return home to Jerusalem with the sure knowledge that he earned his salary this month.

The PLO’s desperate defenders

By most accounts, the Fatah-Hamas unity deal signing ceremony Wednesday was a grand affair. Hamas terror-chief Khaled Mashaal jetted in from Damascus. PLO/Fatah/Palestinian Authority chief Mahmoud Abbas flew in from Ramallah.

The ceremony was held under the auspices of the newly Muslim Brotherhood-friendly Egyptian intelligence services. UN representatives and Israeli Arab members of Knesset were on hand to witness the "historic" accord which officially put the PLO in bed with Hamas, the Palestinian branch of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood and a terrorist organization dedicated to the annihilation of Israel and the establishment of a global caliphate.

No less significant than the pact itself are the lengths the Left is going to obfuscate and belittle the importance of what happened. At home and abroad, leftists have used three means to hide the meaning of the pact from the public.

First, some have upheld the deal as a cause for celebration. On Wednesday, Channel 10’s senior political commentator Raviv Drucker opined that the deal may increase the chance of peace between Israel and the Palestinians. Ignoring the fact that the pact paves the way for Hamas’s integration into the PA’s US-trained security forces, and its membership in the PLO, Raviv vapidly claimed that the villain in all of the recent developments is none other than Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, who is destroying all chance of peace by pointing out that the Palestinians have opted for war.

On the world stage, Drucker’s case is being made by former US president Jimmy Carter. In an op-ed in The Washington Post on Wednesday, Carter similarly praised the deal as a step forward. Never mentioning the fact that Hamas is a terrorist organization, Carter claimed that the deal will enhance Palestinian democracy. It will also increase chances for a cease-fire between Hamas and Israel and peace between Israel and the Palestinians, he promised.

The second way the leftist establishment is trying to hide the game-changing nature of the Fatah-Hamas deal is by belittling it. Most of the Israeli media, for instance, highlighted remarks by outgoing Shin Bet chief Yuval Diskin asserting that the agreement is likely to be short-lived.

The New York Times, too, emphasized the deal’s high chance of failure. But whether it succeeds or fails is irrelevant. The point is not that Fatah and Hamas don’t like one each other. They point is that they are terrorists.

Finally, voices in the Left have sought to hide the importance of the agreement behind bureaucratic illusions. For example, the Obama administration is using the artificial distinctions between Fatah – led by Mahmoud Abbas, the PLO – led by Mahmoud Abbas, and the Palestinian Authority – led by Mahmoud Abbas, to claim that there is no reason to get excited. Since the PLO signs the deals with Israel, and the PA pays the bills, the State Department has argued that the fact that Fatah signed a unity agreement with Hamas won’t have any immediate impact on US aid to the PA.

Abbas himself has gone out of his way to encourage this notion. During his meeting with a delegation of far left, retired Israeli security brass last week, Abbas said there is no reason for concern about the agreement because the PLO, which he leads, rather than Fatah, which he leads, carries out negotiations with Israel.

The reason that otherwise intelligent people are willing to make such obviously absurd statements is because they are in a state of panic. They realize that the Fatah-Hamas unity deal discredits the land-for-peace paradigm. If the public is permitted to recognize the importance of what has happened, then that policy will be abandoned. All Israeli and US support, recognition and legitimization for the Hamas-partnering PA/PLO/Fatah will have to be ended.

The Left’s panic was revealed on Wednesday in a Haaretz report of a classified Foreign Ministry report regarding the unity deal. Written by unnamed officials at the ministry’s leftist-dominated policy planning division, its authors rebuked the Netanyahu government for condemning the agreement. They claimed that the deal represents an opportunity for Israel. They further called on the government to "be a team player and coordinate its response to a Palestinian unity government with the [Obama] administration." Doing so, the authors claimed, "will empower the United States and serve Israeli interests."

Obviously displeased with the government’s failure to heed their ridiculous advice, the diplomats released their cable to Haaretz in a bid to intimidate Israel’s elected leadership into submission before it is too late.

This is not the first time we have been at the point of recognizing the truth – that the PLO/PA/Fatah never turned its back on terror and that all the commitments it has made to Israel have been subordinate to its commitment to maintaining its support for terror. We were here in 1990 and again in 2000.

In 1990, PLO chief Yasser Arafat refused to condemn a seaborne terror attack on Ashkelon and Tel Aviv carried out by the PLF faction of the PLO. As is the case today, Arafat tried to characterize the subordinate group as an independent organization in order to deny his own culpability for their crime.

At the time, the US was engaged in a dialogue with the PLO facilitated by the group’s November 1988 professed recognition of Israel. Faced with this clear breach of good faith, the US Congress and the Shamir government demanded that then-president George H.W. Bush cancel US recognition of the PLO and end its dialogue with the terror group. Although Bush had been a great champion of US-PLO relations, he had no choice but to agree to this obviously justified demand.

A year later, in 1991, Bush rejected the notion of reinstating his recognition of the PLO. Speaking to reporters he said, "To me, they’ve lost credibility. They’ve lost credibility with this office right here."

In 2000, Arafat again lost credibility when he rejected then prime minister Ehud Barak’s offer of peace and Palestinian statehood at Camp David, joined forces with Hamas and launched a terror war against Israel. Upon returning from Camp David, Barak bragged that he had taken the mask of peacemaker off of Arafat’s terrorist face.

But Barak’s peace-crazed leftist voters weren’t interested in the truth. Just as they are condemning Netanyahu now for acknowledging that Abbas’s deal with Hamas proves that the PA is uninterested in peace with Israel, in 2000 the political Left responded with vitriol to Barak’s announcement. From their great leader, he became their worst enemy.

Barak’s supporters’ decision to prefer their ideological commitment to the peace paradigm over their commitment to their country or to the facts on the ground made it impossible for Barak to act on his revelation. If he wished to have a political future, the only thing he could do was obey his voters, and put the mask back on Arafat’s face. After all, the Right, which opposed his massive concessions, would never vote for him.

So Barak dutifully elevated uber-leftist and then-justice minister Yossi Beilin to the head of his negotiations team. He empowered Beilin to make even more far-reaching concessions to Arafat at Taba, even as Arafat’s security forces were lynching IDF soldiers and planning, financing and ordering the suicide bombings.

Today the situation is closer to 1990 than to 2000. As in 1990, the US Congress fully supports ending US funding, recognition and support for the PLO/PA/Fatah. Even before the deal was announced, Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, chairwoman of the House Foreign Relations Committee, had already called for ending US financing of the PA in light of its refusal to negotiate peace with Israel or recognize Israel’s right to exist.

Immediately after the unity deal was announced, Ros-Lehtinen reinstated her demand that the US end all support for the PA. She noted that since Hamas is a terrorist organization, the US government is legally barred from providing it with assistance or recognition of any kind. Sen. Mark Kirk has led efforts in the Senate to end US aid to the PLO/PA/Fatah in light of the unity deal.

If Netanyahu follows the advice of his leftist critics and cooperates with the Obama administration in its apparent bid to ignore the legal and policy significance of the Hamas-Fatah deal, he will undermine Congress’s ability to support Israel. No American lawmaker – or presidential candidate – will want to be more pro-Israel than Israel’s prime minister. And if Netanyahu bends to the will of his leftist critics he will stop these welcome initiatives in their tracks.

So far, Netanyahu has been holding strong. His government’s decision to freeze tax transfers to the PA in response to the agreement with Hamas has sent a strong signal that Israel is withdrawing its acceptance of the PA as a credible peace partner and now views it as a terrorist entity. This move will facilitate swift congressional action to defund the PA and limit the administration’s ability to pressure Israel to make further concessions to Abbas.

From the perspective of US-Israel relations, the Fatah-Hamas unity pact couldn’t have come at a more crucial time. Netanyahu’s speech before the joint houses of Congress on May 24 provides the premier with a rare opportunity to radically alter the terms of reference for the discourse on the Palestinian conflict with Israel at home and in the US.

If he continues to highlight the PLO-Hamas alliance, Netanyahu can drive the political discourse away from the false narrative of Palestinian peacefulness and towards the truth about their devotion to terror and war. With just one address, Netanyahu can potentially do more to strengthen and safeguard Israel than he has in his entire career. And in so doing, he will guarantee his place among the ranks of the great statesmen.

Politically, Netanyahu has much to gain by remaining on offense and much to lose by surrendering. Unlike Barak’s voters, Netanyahu’s voters know that the discredited land-for-peace paradigm has failed, and they will reward Netanyahu for speaking the truth.

On the other hand, if he bows to leftist pressure, and empowers Obama to demand still more Israeli concessions to the Fatah-Hamas government, Netanyahu will place his political future in jeopardy. His voters are liable to transfer their support to Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman or to one of Netanyahu’s Likud ministers. They will not understand why they should vote for Netanyahu only to get Barak’s policy.

International affairs rarely provide the opportunity to correct past mistakes. If Netanyahu does the right thing, he will be attacked viciously by the mindless supporters of endless concessions. But their condemnations will be drowned out by hoots and cheers of enthusiastic support from the overwhelming majority of the public at home, and from Israel’s friends in Congress and throughout the world. They will thank him for freeing us all, finally, from the myth of peace with terrorists.

Originally published in the Jerusalem Post.

Obama’s altruistic foreign policy

If only in the interest of intellectual hygiene, it would be refreshing if the Obama administration would stop ascribing moral impetuses to its foreign policy.

Today, US forces are engaged in a slowly escalating war on behalf of al-Qaida penetrated antiregime forces in Libya. It is difficult to know the significance of al-Qaida’s role in the opposition forces because to date, the self-proclaimed rebel government has only disclosed 10 of its 31 members.

Indeed, according to The New York Times, the NATO-backed opposition to dictator Muammar Gaddafi is so disorganized that it cannot even agree about who the commander of its forces is.

And yet, despite the fact that the Obama administration has no clear notion of who is leading the fight against Gaddafi or what they stand for, this week the White House informed Congress that it will begin directly funding the al-Qaida-linked rebels, starting with $25 million in non-lethal material.

This aid, like the NATO no-fly zone preventing Gaddafi from using his air force, and the British military trainers now being deployed to Libya to teach the rebels to fight, will probably end up serving no greater end then prolonging the current stalemate. With the Obama administration unwilling to enforce the no-fly zone with US combat aircraft, unwilling to take action to depose Gaddafi and unwilling to cultivate responsible, pro-Western successors to Gaddafi, the angry tyrant will probably remain in power indefinitely.

In and of itself, the fact that the war has already reached a stalemate constitutes a complete failure of the administration’s stated aim of protecting innocent Libyan civilians from slaughter.

Not only are both the regime forces and the rebel forces killing civilians daily. Due to both sides’ willingness to use civilians as human shields, unable to separate civilians from military targets, NATO forces are also killing their share of civilians.

In deciding in favor of military intervention on the basis of a transnational legal doctrine never accepted as law by the US Congress called "responsibility to protect," President Barack Obama was reportedly swayed by the arguments of his senior national security adviser Samantha Power. Over the past 15 years, Power has fashioned herself into a celebrity policy wonk by cultivating a public persona of herself as a woman moved by the desire to prevent genocide. In a profile of Power in the current issue of the National Journal, Jacob Heilbrunn explains, "Power is not just an advocate for human rights.

She is an outspoken crusader against genocide…"

Heilbrunn writes that Power’s influence over Obama and her celebrity status has made her the leader of a new US foreign policy elite. "This elite," he writes, "is united by a shared belief that American foreign policy must be fundamentally transformed from an obsession with national interests into a broader agenda that seeks justice for women and minorities, and promotes democracy whenever and wherever it can – at the point of a cruise missile if necessary."

As the prolonged slaughter in Libya and expected continued failure of the NATO mission make clear, Power and her new foreign policy elite have so far distinguished themselves mainly by their gross incompetence.

But then, even if the Libyan mission were crowned in success, it wouldn’t make the moral pretentions of the US adventure there any less disingenuous. And this is not simply because the administration-backed rebels include al-Qaida fighters.

The fact is that the moral arguments used for intervening militarily on behalf of Gaddafi’s opposition pale in comparison to the moral arguments for intervening in multiple conflicts where the Obama administration refuses to lift a finger. At a minimum, this moral inconsistency renders it impossible for the Obama administration to credibly embrace the mantel of moral actor on the world stage.

Consider the administration’s Afghanistan policy.

Over the past week, the White House and the State Department have both acknowledged that administration officials are conducting negotiations with the Taliban.

Last week, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton defended the administration’s policy. During a memorial service for the late ambassador Richard Holbrooke, whom at the time of his death last December was the most outspoken administration figure advocating engaging Mullah Omar and his followers, Clinton said, "Those who found negotiations with the Taliban distasteful got a very powerful response from Richard – diplomacy would be easy if we only had to talk to our friends."

Of course, the Taliban are not simply not America’s friends. They are the enemy of every good and decent human impulse. The US went to war against the Taliban in 2001 because the Bush administration rightly held them accountable for Osama bin Laden and his terror army which the Taliban sponsored, hosted and sheltered on its territory.

But the Taliban are America’s enemy not just because they bear responsibility for the September 11 attacks on the US. They are the enemy of the US because they are evil monsters.

Apparently, the supposedly moral, anti-genocidal, pro-women Obama administration needs to be reminded why it is not merely distasteful but immoral to engage the Taliban. So here it goes.

Under the Taliban, the women and girls of Afghanistan were the most oppressed, most terrorized, most endangered group of people in the world. Women and girls were denied every single human right. They were effectively prisoners in their homes, allowed on the streets only when fully covered and escorted by a male relative.

They were denied the right to education, work and medical care. Women who failed to abide in full by these merciless rules were beaten, imprisoned, tortured, and stoned to death.

The Taliban’s barbaric treatment of women and girls probably couldn’t have justified their overthrow at the hands of the US military. But it certainly justified the US’s refusal to even consider treating them like legitimate political actors in the 10 years since NATO forces first arrived in Afghanistan. And yet, the self-proclaimed champions of the downtrodden in the administration are doing the morally unjustifiable. They are negotiating, and so legitimizing the most diabolical sexual tyranny known to man. Obama, Clinton, Power and their colleagues are now shamelessly advancing a policy that increases the likelihood that the Taliban will again rise to power and enslave Afghanistan’s women and girls once more.

Then there is Syria. In acts of stunning courage, despite massive regime violence that has killed approximately two hundred people in three weeks, anti-regime protesters in Syria are not standing down. Instead, they are consistently escalating their protests. They have promised that the demonstrations after Friday prayers this week will dwarf the already unprecedented country-wide protests we have seen to date.

In the midst of the Syrian demonstrators’ calls for freedom from one of the most repressive regimes in the Middle East, the Obama administration has sided with their murderous dictator Bashar Assad, referring to him as a "reformer."

As Heibrunn notes in his profile of Power, she and her colleagues find concerns about US national interests parochial at best and immoral at worst. Her clear aim – and that of her boss – has been to separate US foreign policy from US interests by tethering it to transnational organizations like the UN.

Given the administration’s contempt for policy based on US national interests, it would be too much to expect the White House to notice that Syria’s Assad regime is one of the greatest state supporters of terrorism in the world and that its overthrow would be a body blow to Iran, Venezuela, Hezbollah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad and al-Qaida and therefore a boon for US national security.

The Syrian opposition presents the likes of Obama and Power with what ought to be a serious moral dilemma. First, they seem to fit the precise definition of the sort of people that the transnationalists have a responsibility to protect.

They are being gunned down by the dozen as they march with olive branches and demand change they can believe in. Moreover, their plan for ousting Assad involves subordinating him to the transnationalists at the UN.

According to a report last week in The Washington Times, Washington-based representatives of several Syrian opposition groups have asked the administration to do three things in support of the opposition, all of which are consonant with the administration’s own oft stated foreign policy preferences.

They have requested that Obama condemn the regime’s murderous actions in front of television cameras. They have asked the administration to initiate an investigation of Assad’s murderous response to the demonstrations at the UN Human Rights Council. And they have asked the administration to enact unilateral sanctions against a few Syrian leaders who have given troops the orders to kill the protesters.

The administration has not responded to the request to act against Assad at the UN Human Rights Council. It has refused the opposition’s other two requests.

 

There responses are no surprise in light of the Obama administration’s abject and consistent refusal to take any steps that could help Iran’s pro-democracy, pro-women’s rights, pro-Western opposition Green Movement in its nearly two-year-old struggle to overthrow the nuclearproliferating, terror-supporting, genocide-inciting, elections-stealing mullocracy.

Power’s personal contribution to the shocking moral failings of the administration’s foreign policy is of a piece with her known hostility towards Israel. That hostility, which involves a moral inversion of the reality of the Palestinian war against Israel, was most graphically exposed in a 2002 interview. Then, at the height of the Palestinian terror war against Israel, when Palestinian terrorists from Hamas and Fatah alike were carrying out daily attacks whose clear aim was the massacre of as many Israeli civilians as possible simply because they were Israelis, Powell said in a filmed interview that she supported deploying a "mammoth" US military force to Israel to protect the Palestinians from the IDF.

In periodic attempts to convince credulous pro-Israel writers that she doesn’t actually support invading Israel, Power has claimed that her statements calling for just such an invasion and additional remarks in which she blamed American Jews for US support of Israel were inexplicable lapses of judgment.

But then there have been so many lapses in judgment in her behavior and in the actions of the administration she serves that it is hard to see where the lapses begin and the judgment ends. Libya, Afghanistan, Syria, Iran and Israel are only the tip of the iceberg. Everywhere from Honduras to Venezuela, from Britain to Russia, from Colombia to Cuba, Japan to China, Egypt to Lebanon, to Poland and the Czech Republic and beyond, those lapses in judgment are informing policies that place the US consistently on the side of aggressors against their victims.

Back in the pre-Obama days, when US foreign policy was supposed to serve US interests, it would have mattered that these policies all weaken the US and its allies and empower its foes. But now, in the era of the purely altruistic Obama administration, none of that matters.

What does matter is that the purely altruistic Obama foreign policy is empowering genocidal, misogynist, bigoted tyrants worldwide.

Turkey’s cautionary tale

Today’s Turkey is a cautionary tale for the West. But Western leaders are loath to consider its lessons.

Ever since Turkey’s Islamist Justice and Development AKP party under Recip Tayip Erdogan won the November 2002 elections, Western officials have upheld the AKP, Erdogan and his colleagues as proof that political Islam is consonant with democratic values. During Erdogan’s June 2005 visit to the White House, for instance, then-president George W. Bush praised Turkish democracy as "an important example for the people in the broader Middle East."

Unfortunately, nine years into the AKP’s "democratic" regime it is clear that Erdogan and his colleagues’ embrace of the language and tools of democracy was a mile wide and an inch thick. They used democracy to gain power. Now that they have power, they are systematically destroying freedom in their country.

Turkey ranks 138th in the international media freedom group Reporters Sans Frontieres country index on press freedom. Sixty-eight journalists are languishing in Turkish jails for the crime of doing their job. The most recent round-up of reporters occurred in early March. And it is demonstrative of Turkey’s Islamist leaders’ exploitation of democratic freedoms in the service of their tyrannical ends.

As Der Spiegel reported last week, veteran journalists Ahmet Sik from the far-left Radikal newspaper and Nedim Sener from the highbrow Milliyet journal were among those rounded up. As radical leftists, both men oppose the AKP’s Islamist politics. But they shared its interest in weakening the Turkish military.

The Left opposed the military’s constitutional role as the overseer of Turkish democracy because the military used that role to persecute leftists. The AKP party opposed the military’s power because it blocked the party’s path to Islamizing Turkish society and politics. When the AKP turned its guns on the military it used leftist journalists to support its actions.

This collusion came to a head in 2007. In a bid to destroy the legitimacy of the military, the AKP regime has engaged in unprecedented levels of wiretapping of the communications of senior serving and retired generals.

This wiretapping operation preceded the exposure in 2007 of the so-called Ergenekon conspiracy in which senior military commanders, journalists, television personalities, entertainers and businesspeople have been implicated in an alleged attempt to topple the AKP government. As part of the Ergenekon investigation, over the past four years, hundreds of non-Islamist leaders from generals to journalists have been arrested and held without trial.

Ironically, Sik, who is now accused of membership in the Ergenekon plot, was an editor at the leftist weekly magazine Notka that "broke" the conspiracy story.

As Der Spiegel notes, the arrest of Sik and Sener shows that the AKP’s early embrace of investigative reporters and championing of a free press was purely opportunistic. Once Sik, Sener and the other 66 jailed reporters had finished discrediting the military, the regime had no need for them. Indeed, they became a threat.

Both Sik and Sener have recently written books documenting how Turkey’s version of the Muslim Brotherhood, the Fetulah Gulen network, has taken over the country’s security services.

In an interview this month with the opposition Hurriyet Daily News and Economic Review, former Turkish president Suleyman Demirel warned that the AKP has established "an empire of fear" in Turkey.

TURKEY’S DESCENT into Islamist tyranny has not simply destroyed freedom in Turkey. It has transformed Turkey’s strategic posture in a manner that is disastrous for the West. And yet, in this arena as well, the West refuses to notice what is happening.

Earlier this week the US Ambassador to Ankara Francis Ricciardone gave an interview to the Turkish media in which he romantically upheld the US-Turkish partnership. As he put it, "Our interests are similar. Even if we have different methods and targets, our strategic vision is the same."

Sadly, there is no way to square this declaration with Turkish policy.

This week it was reported that NATO member Turkey is opening something akin to a Taliban diplomatic mission in Ankara. Turkey supports Hamas and Hizbullah. It has begun training the Syrian military. It supports Iran’s nuclear weapons program. It has become the Iranian regime’s economic lifeline by allowing the mullahs to use Turkish markets to bypass the UN sanctions regime.

In less than 10 years, the AKP regime has dismantled Turkey’s strategic alliance with Israel. It has inculcated the formerly tolerant if not pro- Israel Turkish public with virulent anti-Semitism. It is this systematic indoctrination to Jew-hatred that has emboldened Turkish leaders to announce publicly that they support going to war against Israel.

The Turkish government stands behind the al- Qaida- and Hamas- linked IHH group. IHH organized last year’s pro-Hamas flotilla to Gaza in which IHH members brutally attacked IDF naval commandoes engaged in a lawful mission to maintain Israel’s lawful maritime blockade of Gaza’s coast. With the support of the Turkish government, IHH is now planning an even larger flotilla to assault Israel’s blockade of Gaza next month.

Actually, in a sign of the intimacy of its ties to the AKP regime, this week IHH announced it is considering postponing the next pro-Hamas flotilla in order to ensure that its illegal pro-terror campaign will not harm the AKP’s electoral prospects in Turkey’s national elections scheduled for June.

American and other Western officials have argued that it would be wrong to distance their governments from Turkey or in any way censure the NATO member because doing so will only strengthen the anti-Western forces in the anti- Western government. Instead, Western leaders have done everything they can to appease Erdogan.

The US even allowed him to invade Iraqi Kurdistan.

Unfortunately, this appeasement policy has only harmed the West and NATO. Take the behavior of NATO’s Secretary-General and former Danish prime minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen. As Denmark’s prime minister, Rasmussen stood up boldly to the Islamists when they demanded that he apologize for the Danish newspaper Jyllands Posten’s publication of caricatures of Muhammad in 2005. Yet when Turkey threatened to veto his appointment as NATO secretary-general in 2009 over the Islamists’ rejection of free speech, Rasmussen abandoned his strong defense of Western liberal values to placate the Turks.

In a humiliating speech Rasmussen said, "I was deeply distressed that the cartoons were seen by many Muslims as an attempt by Denmark to mark or insult or behave disrespectfully towards Islam or the Prophet Muhammad… I respect Islam as one of the world’s major religions as well as its religious symbols."

Rasmussen then proceeded to appoint Turks to key positions in the alliance.

Far from reining in Turkey’s anti-Western policies, by maintaining Turkey in NATO Western powers have been forced to curtail their own defense of their interests.

NATO’s incoherent mission in Libya is case in point. It can be argued that Germany’s large and increasingly radicalized Turkish minority played a role in German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s decision to risk her country’s good ties with Britain and France and refuse to support the Libyan mission. So, too, it was reportedly due to President Barack Obama’s deference to Turkey that the US failed to support the anti-regime forces until Gaddafi organized a counteroffensive against them. So if as appears increasingly likely, Gaddafi is able to survive the NATO-backed insurgents’ bid to overthrow him, he will owe his survival in no small measure to Erdogan.

TURKEY IS a cautionary tale for the West, which is now faced with the prospect of AKP-like regimes from Egypt to Tunisia to Jordan to the Persian Gulf. And the real issue that Western leaders must address is how things in Turkey were permitted to deteriorate to the point they have without any US or European official lifting a finger to stem the Islamist tide? The answer, it would seem, is a combination of professional laziness and cultural weakness. This mix of factors is also on display in the US’s behavior toward the revolutionary forces active throughout much of the Arab world.

Professional laziness stands at the root of the West’s decision not to contend with the unpleasant truth that the AKP is an Islamist party whose basic ideology has more in common with Osama bin Laden’s values than with George Washington’s. This truth was always available. Erdogan and his colleagues did not make any special efforts to hide what they stand for.

The West chose not to pay attention because its senior officials knew if they did, they would have to do something. They would have had to distance themselves from Turkey, remove Turkey from NATO and seek to contain the power of the Erdogan regime. And this would have been hard and unpleasant.

So, too, they knew that if they noticed the nature of the AKP they would have to throw themselves deep into Turkish society and defend the superiority of Western values over Islamist values. They would have had to locate and support Turkish leaders who are willing to adopt Western values and then cultivate, fund and empower them. This also would have been hard and unpleasant.

Likewise, in post-Mubarak Egypt, it is easier to believe fairy tales about Facebook revolutions and Westernized student leaders than face the harsh truth that from Amr Moussa to Mohamed ElBaradei to Yousef Qaradawi there are no leaders in post-Mubarak Egypt who support the peace with Israel or believe that Egypt has common interests with Israel and the US. There are no potential leaders in Egypt who share Western values of individual liberty and human rights.

And as in Turkey, the price for recognizing these inconvenient facts is taking effective action to counter them. As in Turkey, the West will be forced to do hard things like develop a policy of containing rather than engaging Egypt, and of identifying and cultivating forces in Egyptian society that are willing to embrace John Locke, John Stuart Mill and Adam Smith over Hassan al-Banna and Qaradawi.

Rather than do any of these hard things, Western leaders have lied to themselves about the nature of these forces and regimes. They have told themselves that there is no problem with the likes of Erdogan and his Egyptian cohorts, and opted to limit their meddling in the internal affairs of others to endless attempts to undermine and overthrow successive pro- Western, democratic, non-leftist governments in Israel. These governments, they have argued, must be replaced by leftist parties in order to feed the West’s fantasy that all the problems of the region, all its Qaradawis and Erdogans, will magically become Thomas Jeffersons and John Adamses if Israel would just cut a deal with the PLO.

This fantasy is convenient for lazy Western cultural cowards. They know that there will be no pushback for their policies. Israel won’t attack them. And by pretending the Islamists share their values and strategic interests they are free to take no action to defend their values and strategic interests from Islamist assault.

But while this strategy has been convenient for policymakers, it has done great damage to their countries. The growing menace that is Islamist Turkey teaches us that professional laziness and cultural squeamishness are recipes for strategic disasters.

 

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post. 

 

The Syrian spring

Amidst the many dangers posed by the political conflagration now engulfing the Arab world, we are presented with a unique opportunity in Syria. In Egypt, the overthrow of President Hosni Mubarak has empowered the Muslim Brotherhood. The Sunni jihadist movement which spawned al-Qaeda and Hamas is expected to emerge as the strongest political force after the parliamentary elections in September.

Just a month after they demanded Mubarak’s ouster, an acute case of buyer’s remorse is now plaguing his Western detractors. As the Brotherhood’s stature rises higher by the day, Western media outlets as diverse as The New York Times and Commentary Magazine are belatedly admitting that Mubarak was better than the available alternatives.

Likewise in Libya, even as US-led NATO forces continue to bomb Muammar Gaddafi’s loyalists, there is a growing recognition that the NATO-supported rebels are not exactly the French Resistance. Last Friday’s Daily Telegraph report confirming that al-Qaeda-affiliated veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan are now counted among the rebels the US is supporting against Gaddafi, struck a deep blow to public support for the war.

US Defense Secretary Robert Gates’s admission Sunday that Gaddafi posed no threat to the US and that its military intervention against Gaddafi does not serve any vital interest similarly served to sour the American public on the war effort.

After al-Qaeda’s participation in the anti-Gaddafi rebellion was revealed, the strongest argument for maintaining support for the rebels became the dubious claim that a US failure to back the al-Qaeda penetrated rebellion will convince the non-al-Qaeda rebels to join the terrorist organization. But of course, this is a losing argument. If supporting al-Qaeda is an acceptable default position for the rebels, then how can it be argued that they will be an improvement over Gaddafi? 

THE ANTI-REGIME protests in Syria are a welcome departure from the grim choices posed by Egypt and Libya because supporting the protesters in Syria is actually a good idea.

Assad is an unadulterated rogue. He is an illicit nuclear proliferator. Israel’s reported bombing of Assad’s North Korean-built, Iranian-financed nuclear reactor at Deir al-Zour in September 2007 did not end Assad’s nuclear adventures. Not only has he refused repeated requests from the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency to inspect the site, commercial satellite imagery has exposed four other illicit nuclear sites in the country. The latest one, reportedly for the production of uranium yellowcake tetroflouride at Marj as Sultan near Damascus, was exposed last month by the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security.

Assad has a large stockpile of chemical weapons including Sarin gas and blister agents. In February 2009 Jane’s Intelligence Review reported that the Syrians were working intensively to expand their chemical arsenal. Based on commercial satellite imagery, Jane’s’ analysts concluded that Syria was expending significant efforts to update its chemical weapons facilities. Analysts claimed that Syria began its work upgrading its chemical weapons program in 2005 largely as a result of Saddam Hussein’s reported transfer of his chemical weapons arsenal to Syria ahead of the US-led invasion in 2003.

The Jane’s report also claimed that Assad’s men had built new missile bays for specially adapted Scud missiles equipped to carry chemical warheads at the updated chemical weapons sites.

As for missiles, with North Korean, Iranian, Russian, Chinese and other third-party assistance, Syria has developed a massive arsenal of ballistic missile and advanced artillery capable of hitting every spot in Israel and wreaking havoc on IDF troop formations and bases.

Beyond its burgeoning unconventional arsenals, Assad is a major sponsor of terrorism. He has allowed Syria to be used as a transit point for al-Qaeda terrorists en route to Iraq. Assad’s Syria is second only to Iran’s ayatollahs in its sponsorship of Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad in the Palestinian Authority.

Hamas and Islamic Jihad leaders live in Damascus. As Hezbollah terror commander Imad Mughniyeh’s assassination in Damascus in February 2008 exposed, the Syrian capital serves as Hezbollah’s operational hub. The group’s logistical bases are located in Syria.

If the Assad regime is overthrown, it will constitute a major blow to both the Iranian regime and Hezbollah. In turn, Lebanon’s March 14 democracy movement and the Iranian Green Movement will be empowered by the defeat.

Obviously aware of the dangers, Iranian Revolutionary Guards forces and Hezbollah operatives have reportedly been deeply involved in the violent repression of protesters in Syria. Their involvement is apparently so widespread that among the various chants adopted by the protesters is a call for the eradication of Hezbollah.

MENTION OF Lebanon’s March 14 movement and Iran’s Green Movement serves as a reminder that the political upheavals ensnaring the Arab world did not begin in December when Mohammed Bouazizi set himself on fire in Tunisia. Arguably, the fire was lit in April 2003 when jubilant Iraqis brought down a statue of Saddam Hussein in Baghdad.

The first place the fire spread from there was Syria. Inspired by the establishment of autonomous Kurdistan in Iraq, in May 2004 Syria’s harshly repressed Kurdish minority staged mass protests that quickly spread throughout the country from the Kurdish enclaves in northern Syria. Assad was quick to violently quell the protests.

Like Gaddafi today, seven years ago Assad deployed his air force against the Kurds. Scores were killed and thousands were arrested. Many of those arrested were tortured by Assad’s forces.

The discrimination that Kurds have faced under Assad and his father is appalling. Since the 1970s, more than 300,000 Kurds have been stripped of their Syrian citizenship. They have been forcibly ejected from their homes and villages in the north and resettled in squalid refugee camps in the south. The expressed purpose of these racist policies has been to prevent territorial contiguity between Syrian, Iraqi and Turkish Kurds and to "Arabize" Syrian Kurdistan where most of Syria’s oil deposits are located.

The Kurds make up around 10 percent of Syria’s population. They oppose not only the Baathist regime, but also the Muslim Brotherhood. Represented in exile by the Kurdistan National Assembly of Syria, since 2004 they have sought the overthrow of the Assad regime and its replacement by democratic, decentralized federal government. Decentralizing authority, they believe, is the best way to check tyranny of both the Baathist and the Muslim Brotherhood variety. The Kurdish demand for a federal government has been endorsed by the Sunni-led exile Syrian Reform Party.

This week the KNA released a statement to the world community. Speaking for Syria’s Kurds and for their Arab, Druse, Alevi and Christian allies in Syria, it asked for the "US, France, UK and international organizations to seek [a] UN resolution condemning [the] Syrian regime for using violence against [the Syrian] people."

The KNA’s statement requested that the US and its allies "ask for UN-sponsored committees to investigate the recent violence in Syria, including the violence used against the Kurds in 2004."

The KNA warns, "If the US and its allies fail to support democratic opposition [groups] such as the Kurdistan National Assembly of Syria and others, [they] will be making a grave mistake," because they will enable "radical groups to rise and undermine any democratic movements," and empower the likes of Hezbollah and Iran.

Led by Chairman Sherkoh Abbas, the KNA has asked the US Congress to hold hearings on Syria and allow representatives of the opposition to state their case for regime change.

Opponents of regime change in Syria argue that if Assad is overthrown, the Muslim Brotherhood will take over. This may be true, although the presence of a well-organized Kurdish opposition means it may be more difficult for the Brotherhood to take charge than it has been in Egypt.

Aside from that, whereas the Brotherhood is clearly a worse alternative in Egypt than Mubarak was, it is far from clear that it would be worse for Syria to be led by the Brotherhood than by Assad. What would a Muslim Brotherhood regime do that Assad isn’t already doing? At a minimum, a successor regime will be weaker than the current one. Consequently, even if Syria is taken over by jihadists, they will pose less of an immediate threat to the region than Assad. They will be much more vulnerable to domestic opposition and subversion.

EVEN IF Assad is not overthrown, and is merely forced to contain the opposition over the long haul, this too would be an improvement over what we have experienced to date. In the absence of domestic unrest, Assad has been free to engineer and support Hezbollah’s coup d’etat in Lebanon, develop nuclear weapons and generally act as Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s sub-contractor.

But now, in a bid to quell the anti-regime protests, Assad has been forced to deploy his military to his own towns and villages. Compelled to devote his energies to staying in power, Assad has little time to stir up fires elsewhere.

The first beneficiary of his weakness will be Jordan’s King Abdullah who now needs to worry less about Assad enabling a Hamas-Muslim Brotherhood-instigated civil war in Jordan.

Depressingly, under the Obama administration the US will not lift a finger to support Syrian regime opponents. In media interviews Sunday, not only did Secretary of State Hillary Clinton rule out the use of force to overthrow Assad, as his troops were killing anti-regime protesters, Clinton went so far as to praise Assad as "a reformer."

The US retreat from strategic rationality is tragic. But just because President Barack Obama limits American intervention in the Middle East to the places it can do the most harm such as Egypt, Libya and the Palestinian conflict with Israel, there is no reason for Israel not to act independently to help Assad’s domestic opponents.

Israel should arm the Kurds. Israeli leaders and spokesmen should speak out on behalf of Syria’s Kurds from every bully pulpit that comes their way. Our leaders should also speak out against Assad and his proliferation of missiles and weapons of mass destruction.

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu should ask the UN to speed up the release of the indictments in the investigation of the late Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri. Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman should call on the UN to behave honestly and indict Assad for ordering Hariri’s murder.

Defense Minister Ehud Barak should release information about Syria’s transfer of weapons to Hamas and Hezbollah. The government should release information about Syria’s use of terror against the Druse. Netanyahu must also state publicly that in light of the turbulence of the Arab world generally, and Assad’s murderous aggression against his own people and his neighbors specifically, Israel is committed to maintaining perpetual sovereignty over the Golan Heights.

We are living through dangerous times. But even now there is much we can do to emerge stronger from the political storm raging around us. Syria’s revolt is a rare opportunity. We’d better not squander it.

 

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post. 

 

America’s descent into strategic dementia

The US’s new war against Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi is the latest sign of its steady regional decline. In media interviews over the weekend, US military chief Adm. Michael Mullen was hard-pressed to explain either the goal of the military strikes in Libya or their strategic rationale.

Mullen’s difficulty explaining the purpose of this new war was indicative of the increasing irrationality of US foreign policy.

Traditionally, states have crafted their foreign policy to expand their wealth and bolster their national security. In this context, US foreign policy in the Middle East has traditionally been directed towards advancing three goals: Guaranteeing the free flow of inexpensive petroleum products from the Middle East to global market; strengthening regimes and governments that are in a position to advance this core US goal at the expense of US enemies; and fighting against regional forces like the pan-Arabists and the jihadists that advance a political program inherently hostile to US power.

Other competing interests have periodically interfered with US Middle East policy. And these have to greater or lesser degrees impaired the US’s ability to formulate and implement rational policies in the region.

These competing interests have included the desire to placate somewhat friendly Arab regimes that are stressed by or dominated by anti-US forces; a desire to foster good relations with Europe; and a desire to win the support of the US media.

Under the Obama administration, these competing interests have not merely influenced US policy in the Middle East. They have dominated it. Core American interests have been thrown to the wayside.

BEFORE CONSIDERING the deleterious impact this descent into strategic dementia has had on US interests, it is necessary to consider the motivations of the various sides to the foreign policy debate in the US today.

All of the sides have contributed to the fact that US Middle East policy is now firmly submerged in a morass of strategic insanity.

The first side in the debate is the anti-imperialist camp, represented by President Barack Obama himself. Since taking office, Obama has made clear that he views the US as an imperialist power on the world stage. As a result, the overarching goal of Obama’s foreign policy has been to end US global hegemony.

Obama looks to the UN as a vehicle for tethering the US superpower. He views US allies in the Middle East and around the world with suspicion because he feels that as US allies, they are complicit with US imperialism.

Given his view, Obama’s instincts dictate that he do nothing to advance the US’s core interests in the Middle East. Consider his policies towards Iran. The Iranian regime threatens all of the US’s core regional interests.

And yet, Obama has refused to lift a finger against the mullahs.

Operating under the assumption that US enemies are right to hate America due to its global hegemony, when the mullahs stole the 2009 presidential elections for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and then violently repressed the pro-Western opposition Green Movement, Obama sided with the mullahs.

Aside from its imperative to lash out at Israel, Obama’s ideological predisposition would permit him to happily sit on the sidelines and do nothing against US foe or friend alike. But given Obama’s basic suspicion of US allies, to the extent he has bowed to pressure to take action in the Middle East, he has always done so to the detriment of US allies.

Obama’s treatment of ousted Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak is case in point.

When the Muslim Brotherhood-backed opposition protests began in late January, Obama was perfectly happy to do nothing despite the US’s overwhelming national interest in preserving Mubarak in power. But when faced with domestic pressure to intervene against Mubarak, he did so with a vengeance.

Not only did Obama force Mubarak to resign. He prevented Mubarak from resigning in September and so ensured that the Brotherhood would dominate the transition period to the new regime.

Obama’s most outspoken opponents in the US foreign policy debate are the neoconservatives.

Like Obama, the neoconservatives are not motivated to act by concern for the US’s core regional interests. What motivates them is their belief that the US must always oppose tyranny.

In some cases, like Iran and Iraq, the neoconservatives’ view was in consonance with US strategic interests and so their policy recommendation of siding with regime opponents against the regimes was rational.

The problem with the neoconservative position is that it makes no distinction between liberal regime opponents and illiberal regime opponents. It can see no difference between pro-US despots and anti-US despots.

If there is noticeable opposition to tyrants, then the US must support that opposition.

This view is what informed the neoconservative bid to oust Mubarak last month and Gaddafi this month.

The fracture between the Obama camp and the neoconservative camp came to a head with Libya. Obama wished to sit on the sidelines and the neoconservatives pushed for intervention.

To an even greater degree than in Egypt, the debate was settled by the third US foreign policy camp – the opportunists. Led today by Clinton, the opportunist camp supports whoever they believe is going to make them most popular with the media and Europe.

In the case of Libya, the opportunist interests dictated military intervention against Gaddafi. Europe opposes Gaddafi because the French and the British bet early on that his opponents were winning. France recognized the opposition as the legitimate government two weeks ago.

Once Gaddafi’s counteroffensive began, France and Britain realized they would be harmed politically and economically if Gaddafi maintained power so they began calling for military strikes to overthrow him.

As for the media, they were quick to romanticize the amorphous "opposition" as freedom fighters.

Seeing the direction of the wind, Clinton jumped on the European-media bandwagon and forced Obama to agree to a military operation whose goal no one can define.

WHAT THE US foreign policy fights regarding Egypt and Libya indicate is that currently, a discussion about how events impact core US regional interests is completely absent from the discussion. Consequently, it should surprise no one that none of the policies the US is implementing in the region advance those core interests in any way. Indeed, they are being severely damaged.

Under Mubarak, Egypt advanced US interests in two main ways. First, by waging war against the Muslim Brotherhood and opposing the rise of Iranian power in the region, Mubarak weakened the regional forces that most threatened US interests. Second, by managing the Suez Canal in conformance with international maritime law, Egypt facilitated the smooth transport of petroleum products to global markets and prevented Iran from operating in the Mediterranean Sea.

Since Mubarak was ousted, the ruling military junta has taken actions that signal that Egypt is no longer interested in behaving in a manner that advances US interests.

Domestically, the junta has embarked on a course that all but guarantees the Muslim Brotherhood’s rise to power in the fall.

 

Saturday’s referendum on constitutional amendments was a huge victory for the Brotherhood on two counts. First, it cemented Islamic law as the primary source of legislation and so paved the way for the Brotherhood’s transformation of Egypt into an Islamic state. Under Mubarak, that constitutional article meant nothing. Under the Brotherhood, it means everything.

Second, it set the date for parliamentary elections for September. Only the Brotherhood, and remnants of Mubarak’s National Democratic Party will be ready to stand for election so soon. The liberals have no chance of mounting a coherent campaign in just six months.

In anticipation of the Brotherhood’s rise to power, the military has begun realigning Egypt into the Iranian camp. This realignment is seen most openly in Egypt’s new support for Hamas. Mubarak opposed Hamas because it is part of the Brotherhood.

The junta supports it for the same reason. Newly appointed Foreign Minister Nabil el-Araby has already called for the opening of Egypt’s border with Hamasruled Gaza.

There can be little doubt Hamas’s massive rocket barrage against Israel on Saturday was the product of its sense that Egypt is now on its side.

As for the Suez Canal, the junta’s behavior so far is a cause for alarm. Binding UN Security Council Resolution 1747 from 2007 bars Iran from shipping arms. Yet last month the junta thumbed its nose at international law and permitted two Iranian naval ships to traverse the canal without being inspected.

According to military sources, one of the ships carried advanced armaments. These were illicitly transferred to the German merchant ship Victoria at Syria’s Latakia port. Last week, IDF naval commandos interdicted the Victoria with its Iranian weaponry en route to Gaza via Alexandria.

Add to that Egypt’s decision to abrogate its contractual obligation to supply Israel with natural gas and we see that the junta is willing to suspend its commitment to international law in order to realign its foreign policy with Iran.

ON EVERY level, a post-Mubarak Egypt threatens the US core interests that Mubarak advanced.

Then there is Libya. One of the most astounding aspects of the US debate on Libya in recent weeks has been the scant attention paid to the nature of the rebels.

The rebels are reportedly represented by the so-called National Transitional Council led by several of Gaddafi’s former ministers.

But while these men – who are themselves competing for the leadership mantle – are the face of the NTC, it is unclear who stands behind them. Only nine of the NTC’s 31 members have been identified.

Unfortunately, available data suggest that the rebels championed as freedom fighters by the neoconservatives, the opportunists, the Europeans and the Western media alike are not exactly liberal democrats. Indeed, the data indicate that Gaddafi’s opponents are more aligned with al-Qaida than with the US.

Under jihadist commander Abu Yahya Al- Libi, Libyan jihadists staged anti-regime uprisings in the mid-1990s. Like today, those uprisings’ central hubs were Benghazi and Darnah.

In 2007 Al-Libi merged his forces into al- Qaida. On March 18, while denouncing the US, France and Britain, Al-Libi called on his forces to overthrow Gaddafi.

A 2007 US Military Academy study of information on al-Qaida forces in Iraq indicate that by far, Eastern Libya made the largest per capita contribution to al-Qaida forces in Iraq.

None of this proves that the US is now assisting an al-Qaida takeover of Libya. But it certainly indicates that the forces being assisted by the US in Libya are probably no more sympathetic to US interests than Gaddafi is. At a minimum, the data indicate the US has no compelling national interest in helping the rebels in overthrow Gaddafi.

The significance of the US’s descent into strategic irrationality bodes ill not just for US allies, but for America itself. Until the US foreign policy community is again able to recognize and work to advance the US’s core interests in the Middle East, America’s policies will threaten both its allies and itself.

 

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post. 

 

A win-win plan for Netanyahu

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is stuck between a diplomatic rock and a political hard place. And his chosen means of extricating himself from the double bind is only making things worse for him and for Israel.

Diplomatically, Netanyahu is beset by the Palestinian political war to delegitimize Israel and the Obama administration’s escalating hostility. That hostility was most recently expressed during President Barack Obama’s meeting with American Jewish leaders on March 1.

Insinuating that Israel is to blame for the absence of peace in the Middle East, Obama scolded Jewish leaders telling them to "search your souls," over Israel’s seriousness about making peace.

Obama’s newest threat is that through the so-called Middle East Quartet, (Russia, the UN, the EU and the US), the administration will move towards supporting the Palestinian plan to declare Palestinian statehood. That state would include all of Judea and Samaria, Gaza and eastern, southern and northern Jerusalem. Since it would not be established in the framework of a peace treaty with Israel, and since its leaders reject Israel’s right to exist, "Palestine" would be born in a de facto state of war with Israel. 

To credit this threat, Obama has empowered the Quartet to supplant the US as the mediator between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. Buoyed by Obama, Quartet representatives and American and European officials have beaten a steady path to Netanyahu’s door over the past several weeks. Their message is always the same: If Israel does not prove that it is serious about peace by giving massive unreciprocated concessions to the Palestinians then they will abandon all remaining pretense of support for Israel and throw their lot in completely with the Palestinians.

For the past year and a half Netanyahu’s policy for dealing with Obama’s animosity has been to try to appease him by making incremental concessions. Netanyahu’s rationale for acting in this manner is twofold. First, he has tried to convince Obama that he really does want peace with the Palestinians. Second, when each of his concessions are met with further Palestinian intransigence, Netanyahu has argued that the disparity between Israeli concessions and Palestinian rejectionism and extremism demonstrates that it is Israel, not the Palestinians that should be supported by the West.

To date Netanyahu’s concessions have included his acceptance of Palestinian statehood and the two-state paradigm for peace; his temporary prohibition on Jewish construction in Judea and Samaria; his undeclared prohibition on Jewish building in Jerusalem; his undeclared open-ended prohibition of Jewish building in Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem after his temporary building ban expired;  his agreement to drastically curtail IDF counterterror operations in Judea and Samaria; his move to enact an undeclared abatement of law enforcement against illegal Arab construction in Jerusalem; and his decision to enable the deployment of the US-trained Palestinian army in Judea and Samaria.

Netanyahu’s declaration of support for Palestinian statehood required his acceptance of the Palestinian narrative. That narrative blames the absence of peace on Israel’s refusal to surrender all of Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem. Having effectively accepted the blame for the absence of peace, Netanyahu has been unable to wage a coherent political counteroffensive against the Palestinian political war. 

NOW IN a bid to head off Obama’s newest threat to use the Quartet to back the Palestinians’ political war against Israel, Netanyahu is considering yet another set of unreciprocated concessions to the Palestinians. 

For the past week and a half, Netanyahu has been considering a new "diplomatic initiative." According to media reports, he is weighing two options. First, he may end IDF counterterror operations in Palestinian cities in Judea and Samaria. Such a move would involve compromising all of the IDF’s military achievements in the areas since 2002 when it first targeted the Palestinian terror factories from Hebron to Jenin during Operation Defensive Shield. 

The second option he is reportedly considering involves announcing his acceptance of a Palestinian state with non-final borders. Such a move would render it difficult if not impossible for Israel to conduct counterterror operations within those temporary borders. It would also make it all but impossible for Israel to assert its sovereign rights over the areas. 

Supporters of this initiative argue that not only will it stave off US pressure; it will strengthen Netanyahu’s political position at home. Recent polls show that Netanyahu’s approval numbers are falling while those of his two main rivals – Opposition leader Tzipi Livni and Foreign Minister and Yisrael Beitenu leader Avigdor Leiberman are rising. 

Netanyahu reportedly believes that by moving to the Left, he will be able to take support away from Livni and so regain his position as the most popular leader in the country. Given this assessment, Netanyahu’s supporters argue that making further concessions to the Palestinians is a win-win prospect. It will strengthen Israel diplomatically and it will strengthen him politically.

Sadly for both Israel and Netanyahu, this analysis is completely wrong. 

Since Obama came into office, he has consistently demonstrated that no Israeli concession will convince him to support Israel against the Palestinians. So too, the fact that every Israeli concession has been met by Palestinian intransigence has had no impact on either Obama or his European counterparts. Netanyahu’s correct claims that the Palestinians’ intransigence shows they are not interested in peace is of interest to no one.

And it is this lack of interest in Palestinian intransigence rather than Palestinian intransigence itself that is remarkable. What it shows is that Obama and his European counterparts don’t care about achieving peace. Like the Palestinians, all they want is more Israeli concessions. 

Since taking office, Obama has only supported Israel against the Palestinians twice. The first time was last December. After months of deliberate ambiguity, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced that the administration opposes the Palestinian plan to unilaterally declare independence. Then last month the administration grudgingly vetoed the Palestinian-Lebanese draft resolution condemning Israeli construction in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria.

In both cases, the administration’s actions were not the result of Israeli appeasement, but of massive Congressional pressure. Congress issued bipartisan calls demanding that the administration torpedo both of these anti-Israel initiatives. 

What this shows is that Netanyahu’s strategy for contending with Obama is fundamentally misconstrued and misdirected. Obama will not be moved by Israeli concessions. The only way to stop Obama from moving forward on his anti-Israel policy course is to work through Congress. 

And the most effective way to work through Congress is for Netanyahu to abandon his current course and tell the truth about the nature of the Palestinians, their rejection of Israel, their anti-Americanism and their support for jihadist terror. 

At the same time, Netanyahu must speak unambiguously about Israel’s national rights to Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria, our required security borders, and about why US national security requires a strong Israel. 

The stronger the case Netanyahu makes for Israel, the more support Israel will receive from the Congress. And the more support Israel receives from the Congress, the more Obama will be compelled to temper his anti-Israel agenda.

AS FOR domestic politics, Netanyahu’s attempt to appease Obama is a major cause of his falling approval numbers among voters. Likud voters do not expect him to outflank Livni from the Left. They voted for Likud and not Kadima because they recognized that Kadima’s leftist policies are dangerous and doomed to failure.

Kadima’s recent increase in domestic support owes more to the breakup of the Labor Party than to Netanyahu’s failure to carry out Kadima’s policies of territorial surrender and diplomatic kowtowing to the UN, EU and Obama. The main beneficiary of Likud’s eroding support has been Leiberman. 

While Netanyahu has maintained his allegiance to the false, failed, unpopular-outside-of-the-media "peace with the Palestinians" paradigm in the foolish hope of winning over Obama, Leiberman has seized control of the Right’s political agenda. While Netanyahu accepts the legitimacy of the Palestinian leadership which rejects Israel’s right to exist, Leiberman presents himself as the leader of the majority of Israelis who oppose the Left’s agenda of land for war.

Moreover, while Netanyahu shunts aside his own party’s most popular politicians like Minister of Strategic Affairs Moshe Ya’alon in favor of Defense Minister Ehud Barak, he demoralizes his party faithful and his voters. 

And not only does Barak hurt Netanyahu with voters, this week he took an ax to Israel’s most important diplomatic asset – Congressional support. 

In an interview with the Wall Street Journal on Monday, Barak said that Israel may ask Congress to increase US military support for Israel by $20 billion. Given the US’s economic woes, and Congress’s commitment to massive budget cuts, at best Barak’s statement represented a complete incomprehension about the basic facts of US domestic politics. At worst, it was a supremely unfriendly act towards Israel’s friends in Congress who are trying to maintain the current level of US military aid to Israel in the face of a popular push to slash the US’s foreign aid budget. 

Beyond that, the plain fact is that Barak’s statement was wrong. Israel’s steady economic growth and its recently discovered natural gas fields should make it possible for Israel to decrease the military aid it receives from the US. This is true even though the revolutions in Egypt and throughout the Arab world will require Israel to massively increase its defense budget.  

If Netanyahu is serious about surmounting his diplomatic and political challenges, his best bet is to abandon his present course altogether. The most effective way to defend Israel against Obama is to boldly assert, defend and implement a unilateral Israeli plan. 

NETANYAHU HIMSELF gave the broad outlines for such a plan this week when he stated that to defend itself, Israel will need to maintain perpetual control over the Jordan Valley. If Netanyahu were to announce a plan to apply Israeli law to the Jordan Valley and the major blocs of Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria, he would accomplish several things at once. He would advance Israel’s national interests rather than the Palestinians’ interests against Israel. He would force the US and Europe to discuss issues that are grounded in strategic rationality rather than leftist-Islamist ideology. Finally, he would take back the leadership of his own political camp from Leiberman and augment his political power domestically. 

So too, if Netanyahu fired Barak and replaced him with Ya’alon, he would energize his political supporters in a way he has failed to do since taking office. 

Netanyahu is reportedly considering unveiling his new diplomatic initiative in a speech before Congress in May. If he were to use that venue to unveil this plan and also announce a plan to wean Israel off of US military aid within three years, not only would he blunt Obama’s power to threaten Israel. He would secure popular US support for Israel for years to come. 

And if he did that, he would restore the Israeli voters’ support for his leadership and stabilize his government through the next elections. 

 

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post. 

 

Women’s surprising defenders

Every few months, we are presented with media reports about Jewish women rescued from their Muslim husbands in the Palestinian Authority or within Israel.

The stories are always similar. The women were tortured by their husbands, often locked in their homes or under constant guard by members of their husbands’ families. Either with or without the help of their Jewish families, they reached out to Yad L’Achim which rescues Jewish women and their children from Muslim husbands. Yad L’Achim volunteers plan and carry out often dangerous rescue operations and bring these women and their children to safety.

In January, Channel 10 presented live footage of one such rescue. Viewers saw relatives of a mother of four named Dana waiting anxiously at the Erez checkpoint as she and her children fled her husband and his family in Gaza and took their first steps of freedom.

During their courtship, Dana’s husband showed her every courtesy. After their marriage, he began regularly beating her and kept her under around the clock surveillance. A visit to Yad L’Achim’s website makes clear that her story is anything but unique.

Yad L’Achim’s work in saving Jewish women from violent Muslim husbands is especially notable given the nature of the organization. It is an anti-missionary haredi organization led by Rabbi Dov Lipshitz. It is not feminism that motivates its members to save these women. It is Jewish law. And specifically, the halachic command of the ransoming of Jewish hostages. According to the organization, it carries out scores of rescue missions like the one that rescued Dana every year.

The question naturally arises, why do haredim dominate what by rights ought to be a field occupied by secular feminists? Why aren’t Israeli and American Jewish feminists at the forefront of efforts to save these women from their violent husbands? Where, for instance, is the New Israel Fund? Its website brags, "The New Israel Fund founded or funded most of Israel’s women’s rights organizations and networks."

Obviously Yad L’Achim, which defends these women’s right to live without fear is a women’s rights group. So why doesn’t NIF fund it? Yad L’Achim and other religious groups have been pilloried with allegations of racism in recent months for their public calls for Jewish girls and women not to date Arabs. In principle, these attacks seem fair. Blanket denunciations of Jewish- Muslim dating and intermarriage are problematic, even if they are justified from a religious perspective.

But whether one agrees or disagrees with the religious precepts that guide Yad L’Achim’s actions, the fact is they are not saving a principle. They are saving women and children. Shouldn’t that be enough to earn them the respect of the Left that is supposed to be motivated by concern for the weak and downtrodden? 

IN HER interview with Channel 10, Dana said that in Gaza, "what they do is curse the Jews 24 hours a day."

The fact is that both misogyny and Jew-hatred are facts of life throughout the Muslim world. This state of affairs renders marriage to Muslim men a particularly dangerous prospect for Jewish women.

But the feminists throughout the Jewish world are silent on this issue. And this isn’t surprising. The egregious mistreatment of Jewish women by their Arab husbands involves two issues that the Left – which encompasses most feminist groups – is intent on ignoring: Islamic misogyny and Islamic Jew hatred. Just as the Left ignores, underplays, trivializes or justifies the fact that hatred of Jews is the most universal sentiment in the Muslim world today, so it systematically ignores, underplays or trivializes the endemic brutalization of women and girls throughout the Islamic world.

Take a purportedly feminist discussion of the impact of the Arab revolt on the position of women in the Arab world from ABC’s This Week with Christiane Amanpour on Sunday. In a segment that lasted roughly 15 minutes, Amanpour said essentially nothing about the appalling lives of women and girls under Islamic law.

When Newsweek editor Tina Brown mentioned "the barbaric custom of child brides," in Yemen, Amanpour didn’t ask her to elaborate. In accordance with that Yemeni custom, little girls are routinely married off to grown men.

When Iraqi women’s rights activist Zainab Salbi noted that the key issue for women in the Muslim world is changing the family law that governs their societies, Amanpour didn’t ask her what she meant.

What she meant was that under Islamic family law, women and girls are considered the property of their male relatives. And their "owners" can legally beat them and rape them and genitally mutilate them and force them into marriages they object to. If the women and girls are "disobedient," their male relatives can expect little or no punishment for murdering them.

Rather than discuss the real, truly life-threatening dangers faced by women and girls throughout the Islamic world, Amanpour presented her viewers with a superficial and false depiction of recent events in which a few well-dressed, perfectly coiffed, pretty young women in Egypt and two Western dressed women in Libya are supposedly transforming the position of women in their societies one tweet at a time.

It was a complete lie. But it wasn’t shocking. It would have been shocking if Amanpour had provided her viewers with any relevant facts about the subject she was purportedly discussing.

The contrast between Yad L’Achim and traditional feminist groups and icons worldwide is statement on the state of the free world today. Whereas the feminists obscure the plight of women living in the Muslim world, a haredi group is saving women living in the Muslim world.

For years the New Israel Fund and countless other Jewish and non-Jewish leftist organizations have waged a culture war against the haredim for what they allege is their mistreatment of women.

Many women – both Orthodox and non-Orthodox – disagree with the position of women in the haredi world. But it cannot be denied that today haredim are the only ones rescuing battered Jewish women from their abusive Muslim husbands.

 

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post 

 

The new Middle East

A new Middle East is upon us and its primary beneficiary couldn’t be happier.

In a speech Monday in the Iranian city of Kermanshah, Iranian Revolutionary Guards’ Politburo Chief General Yadollah Javani crowed, "Iran’s pivotal role in the New Middle East is undeniable. Today the Islamic Revolution of the Iranian nation enjoys such a power, honor and respect in the world that all nations and governments wish to have such a ruling system."

Iran’s leaders have eagerly thrown their newfound weight around. For instance, Iran is challenging Saudi Arabia’s ability to guarantee the stability of global oil markets.

For generations, the stability of global oil supplies has been guaranteed by Saudi Arabia’s reserve capacity that could be relied on to make up for any shocks to those supplies due to political unrest or other factors. When Libya’s teetering dictator Muammar Ghaddafi decided to shut down Libya’s oil exports last month, the oil markets reacted with a sharp increase in prices. The very next day the Saudis announced they would make up the shortfall from Libya’s withdrawal from the export market.

In the old Middle East, the Saudi statement would never have been questioned. Oil suppliers and purchasers alike accepted the arrangement whereby Saudi Arabian reserves – defended by the US military — served as the guarantor of the oil economy. But in the New Middle East, Iran feels comfortable questioning the Saudi role.

On Thursday Iran’s Oil Minister Massoud Mirkazemi urged Saudi Arabia to refrain from increasing production. Mirkazemi argued that since the OPEC oil cartel has not discussed increasing supplies, Saudi Arabia had no right to increase its oil output.

True, Iran’s veiled threat did not stop Saudi Arabia from increasing its oil production by 500,000 barrels per day. But the fact that Iran feels comfortable telling the Saudis what they can and cannot do with their oil demonstrates the mullocracy’s new sense of empowerment.

And it makes sense. With each passing day, the Iranian regime is actively destabilizing Saudi Arabia’s neighbors and increasing its influence over Saudi Arabia’s Shiite minority in the kingdom’s Eastern Province where most of its oil is located.

Moved by the political unrest in Bahrain and Yemen, Saudi regime opponents including Saudi’s Shiite minority have stepped up their acts of political opposition. The Saudi royal family has sought to literally buy off its opponents by showering its subjects with billions of dollars in new subsidies and payoffs. But still the tide of dissent rises.

Saudi regime opponents have scheduled political protests for March 11 and March 20. In an attempt to blunt the force of the demonstrations, Saudi security forces arrested Tawfiq al-Amir, a prominent Shiite cleric from the Eastern Province. On February 25 al-Amir delivered a sermon calling for the transformation of the kingdom into a constitutional monarchy.

Iran has used his arrest to pressure the Saudi regime. In an interview with Iran’s Fars news agency this week, Iranian parliamentarian and regime heavyweight Mohammed Dehqan warned the Saudis not to try to quell the growing unrest. As he put it, the Saudi leaders "should know that the Saudi people have become vigilant and do not allow the rulers of the country to commit any possible crime against them."

Dehqan continued, "Considering that the developments in Bahrain and Yemen affect the situation in Saudi Arabia, the [regime] feels grave danger and interferes in the internal affairs of these states."

Dehqan’s statement is indicative of the mullahs’ confidence in the direction the region is taking. In testimony before the Senate Appropriations Committee on Tuesday US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton acknowledged that Iran is deeply involved in all the anti-regime protests and movements from Egypt to Yemen to Bahrain and beyond.

"Either directly or through proxies, they are constantly trying to influence events. They have a very active diplomatic foreign policy outreach," Clinton said.

Iranian officials, Hizbullah and Hamas terrorists and other Iranian agents have played pivotal roles in the anti-regime movements in Yemen and Bahrain. Their operations are the product of Iran’s long running policy of developing close ties to opposition figures in these countries as well as in Egypt, Kuwait, Oman and Morocco. These long-developed ties are reaping great rewards for Iran today. Not only do these connections give the Iranians the ability to influence the policies of post-revolutionary allied regimes. They give the mullahs and their allies the ability to intimidate the likes of the Saudi and Bahraini royals and force them to appease Iran’s allies.

THIS MEANS that Iran’s mullahs win no matter how the revolts pan out. If weakened regimes maintain power by appeasing Iran’s allies in the opposition – as they are trying to do in Jordan, Kuwait, Morocco, Algeria, Bahrain, Oman and Yemen — then Iranian influence over the weakened regimes will grow substantially. And if Iran’s allies topple the regimes, then Iran’s influence will increase even more steeply.

Moreover, Iran’s preference for proxy wars and asymmetric battles is served well by the current instability. Iran’s proxies – from Hizbullah to al Qaida to Hamas – operate best in weak states. From Hizbullah’s operations in South Lebanon in the 1980s and 1990s, to the Iranian-sponsored Iraqi insurgents in recent years and beyond, Iran has exploited weak central authorities to undermine pro-Western governments, weaken Israel and diminish US regional influence.

In the midst of Egypt’s revolutionary violence, Iran quickly deployed its Hamas proxies to the Sinai. Since Mubarak’s fall, Iran has worked intensively to expand its proxy forces’ capacity to operate freely in the Sinai.

Recognition of Iran’s expanded power is fast altering the international community’s perception of the regional balance of forces. Russia’s announcement last Saturday that it will sell Syria the supersonic Yakhont anti-ship cruise missile was a testament to Iran’s rising regional power and the US’s loss of power.

Russia signed a deal to provide the missiles to Syria in 2007. But Moscow abstained from supplying them until now – just after Iran sailed its naval ships unmolested to Syria through the Suez Canal and signed a naval treaty with Syria effectively fusing the Iranian and Syrian navies. So too, Russia’s announcement that it sides with Iran’s ally Turkey in its support for reducing UN Security Council sanctions against Iran indicates that the US no longer has the regional posture necessary to contain Iran on the international stage.

Iran’s increased regional power and its concomitant expanded leverage in international oil markets will make it impossible for the US to win UN Security Council support for more stringent sanctions against Tehran. Obviously UN Security Council sanctioned military action against Iran’s nuclear installations is out of the question.

Unfortunately, the Obama administration has failed completely to understand what is happening. Clinton told the Congress and the Senate that Iran’s increased power means that the US should continue to arm and fund Iran’s allies and support the so-called democratic forces that are allied with Iran.

So it was that Clinton told the Senate that the Obama administration thinks it is essential to continue to supply the Hizbullah-controlled Lebanese military with US arms Clinton claimed that she couldn’t say what Hizbullah control over the Lebanese government meant regarding the future of US ties to Lebanon.

So too, while Palestinian Authority leaders burn President Barack Obama in effigy and seek to form a unity government with Iran’s Hamas proxy, Clinton gave an impassioned defense of US funding for the PA to the House Foreign Relations Committee this week.

Clinton’s behavior bespeaks a stunning failure to understand the basic realities she and the State Department she leads are supposed to shape. Her lack of comprehension is matched only by her colleague Defense Secretary Robert Gates’ lack of shame and nerve. In a press conference this week, Gates claimed that Iran is weakened by the populist waves in the Arab world because Iran’s leaders are violently oppressing their political opponents.

In light of the Obama administration’s refusal to use US military force for even the most minor missions – like evacuating US citizens from Libya – without UN approval, it is apparent that the US will not use armed force against Iran for as long as Obama is in power.

And given the administration’s refusal to expend any effort to protect US interests and allies in the region lest the US be accused of acting like a superpower, it is clear that US allies like the Saudis will not be able to depend on America to defend the regime. This is the case despite the fact that its overthrow would threaten the US’s core regional interests.

AGAINST THIS backdrop, it is clear that the only way to curb Iran’s influence in the region and so strike a major blow against its rising Shiite-Sunni jihadist alliance is to actively support the pro-democracy regime opponents in Iran’s Green movement. The only chance of preventing Iran from plunging the region into war and bloodshed is if the regime is overthrown.

So long as the Iranian regime remains in power, it will be that much harder for the Egyptians to build an open democracy or for the Saudis to open the kingdom to liberal voices and influences. The same is true of virtually every country in the region.

Iran is the primary regional engine of war, terror, nuclear proliferation and instability. As long as the regime survives, it will be difficult for liberal forces in the region to gain strength and influence.

On February 24, the mullahs reportedly arrested opposition leaders Mir Hossain Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi along with their wives. It took the Obama administration several days to even acknowledge the arrests, let alone denounce them.

In the face of massive regime violence, Iran’s anti-regime protesters are out in force in cities throughout the country demanding their freedom and a new regime. And yet, aside from paying lip service to their bravery, neither the US nor any other government has come forward to help them.

No one has supplied Iran’s embattled revolutionaries with proxy servers after the regime brought down their Internet communications networks. No one has given them arms. No one has demanded that Iran be thrown out of all UN bodies pending the regime’s release of the Moussavis and Karroubis and the thousands of political prisoners being tortured in the mullahs’ jails. No one has stepped up to fund around-the-clock anti-regime broadcasts into Iran to help regime opponents organize and coordinate their operations.

Certainly no one has discussed instituting a no fly zone over Iran to protect the protesters.

With steeply rising oil prices and the real prospect of al Qaida taking over Yemen, Iranian proxies taking over Bahrain, and the Muslim Brotherhood controlling Egypt, some Americans are recognizing that not all revolutions are Washingtonian.

But there is a high likelihood that an Iranian revolution would be. At a minimum, a democratic Iran would be far less dangerous to the region and the world than the current regime.

The Iranians are right. We are moving into a new Middle East. And if the mullahs aren’t overthrown, the New Middle East will be a very dark and dangerous place.

 

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.