Tag Archives: Hamas

The perils of diplomatic theater

The current flurry of diplomatic activity is deeply disturbing. It isn’t simply that the Obama administration has strong-armed Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu into participating in diplomatic theater with the PLO whose successful completion will leave Israel weaker and less defensible. It isn’t merely that the newest "peace process" diverts our leadership’s attention away from Iran and its nuclear weapons program.
The most disturbing aspect of the latest round of the diplomatic kabuki is that Israel’s leaders and Israel’s staunch friends in the US are enthusiastically participating in this dangerous project.
True, Netanyahu is in an unenviable position, situated as he is between US President Barack Obama’s rock and hard place. Instead of standing up to this hostile American leader, Netanyahu is desperately seeking a magical concession to get Obama off his back.
Netanyahu’s preference for appeasement is both ironic and destructive. It is ironic because he has turned to appeasement at the very moment that the notion it is possible to appease Obama has self-destructed.
Ten months ago Netanyahu found what he hoped was a magic concession. Capitulating to Obama, the Jewish state’s leader prohibited all Jewish building in Judea and Samaria for a period of 10 months. This unprecedented move to discriminate against Jews was supposed to get Obama off Netanyahu’s back. It didn’t.
Obama’s public demand this week that Netanyahu extend the abrogation of Jewish property rights shows he will not be appeased.
There is no magic concession. Every concession to Obama – like every Israeli concession to the Arabs – is considered both permanent and a starting point for further concessions.
And so Netanyahu concedes more. Not only has he effectively agreed to extend the discriminatory ban on Jewish rights. Netanyahu has moved on to even more outrageous concessions.
According to the Lebanese media, Netanyahu has agreed to surrender large swathes of the Golan Heights to Iran’s Arab puppet, Syrian dictator Bashar Assad. According to the reports, Netanyahu empowered Obama’s emissary George Mitchell to present his offer to Assad in Damascus and even furnished Mitchell with detailed maps of his proposed surrender.
If Netanyahu thinks that this move will diminish US pressure for a full withdrawal from Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria, he is in for an unpleasant surprise. Mitchell made this clear at his press conference Wednesday. Mitchell said the "two tracks can be complementary and mutually beneficial if we can proceed to a comprehensive peace on more than one track."
In plain English that means that the administration feels perfectly comfortable pressuring Israel to surrender to the Syrians and to the Palestinians at the same time.
Leaving aside the strategic insanity of surrender talks with Syria, it cannot be said too strongly that the talks with the Palestinians have absolutely no upside for Israel.
Many observers have pointed out that PLO leader Mahmoud Abbas is unlikely to make a deal. And this is probably true. With Hamas in charge in Gaza and widely supported in Judea and Samaria, Abbas will probably not risk signing a peace deal with Israel that will likely serve as his death warrant. But the same observers who bemoan the poor chances for a treaty ignore the fact that the alternative – that Abbas signs a peace deal with Israel – would be a disaster for Israel. Any deal Israel signs with the PLO will make the country weaker. We know this because we have already signed deals with the PLO. And all of those deals made Israel weaker.
All the agreements between Israel and the PLO have been predicated on Israeli territorial surrenders and Palestinian promises of moderation.
Israel has implemented its commitments and surrendered land to the PLO. The PLO has never abided by its commitment to moderate its behavior. To the contrary, the PLO’s response to every agreement has been to escalate its political and terror war against Israel.
The Palestinian terror war that began in September 2000 was the direct result of the Oslo "peace" agreement of September 1993 that created the framework for Israeli land surrenders to the PLO, and the framework agreement’s followon agreements. The terror attacks that have killed and wounded thousands of Israelis would never have happened – indeed they would have been inconceivable – had Israel not withdrawn from Gaza, Judea and Samaria in accordance with peace deals it signed with the PLO. The track record of the past 17 years demonstrates that withdrawals are dangerous. But still the "peace deal" now on offer is predicated on withdrawals.
Obama and his advisers claim that these talks will improve Israel’s relations with the wider Arab world. But again the last 17 years expose this claim as fatuous and wrong. Israeli land surrenders in exchange for pieces of paper have not convinced the Arab League member states to accept Israel as a permanent state in the Middle East. They have convinced Israel’s Arab neighbors that Israel is weak and getting weaker. This in turn has signaled to the wider Arab world that its best bet is to join forces with the likes of Hamas and fund and otherwise actively support the war against the Jewish state.
ENGAGING IN the phony "peace process" isn’t only bad because there is little prospect for reaching a deal or because any potential deal would be a disaster for Israel. There are three additional reasons the government’s decision to engage in this diplomatic psychodrama is terrible for Israel.
First, there is great harm in talking. Talking to Abbas and his deputies legitimizes a Palestinian leadership that is wholly committed to Israel’s destruction. As Abbas and his mouthpieces make clear on a daily basis, they do not accept Israel’s right to exist. They do not condemn or oppose the murder of Israelis by Palestinians. They will not accept a deal with Israel that leaves Israel in control of sufficient land to defend itself from Palestinian or other Arab attacks in the future.
And they will never end or abate their diplomatic war against Israel. The very act of legitimizing the likes of Abbas expands their ability to wage diplomatic war on Israel.
Second, just as Netanyahu’s magic concessions to the Americans are but a starting point for further magic concessions, so Israel’s willingness to engage in talks with its Palestinian adversaries forces our leaders to concede still more important things to maintain them. For instance, today, in the face of a clear Hamas terror offensive that has already claimed the lives of four Israelis and sent tens of thousands running for cover in bomb shelters, Israel is compelled to sit on its hands. An effective campaign against Palestinian jihadists would weaken the PLO because most Palestinians support the jihad against Israel. In the interest of "peace," Hamas is allowed to attack at will.
So simply by agreeing to talk with the Palestinians, the government has made it all but impossible to carry out its primary function – defending the country and its citizens from aggression.
The third reason that the talks are inherently against Israel’s interests is because they undermine Israeli democracy. Consistent, multiyear polling shows that the public overwhelmingly rejects more withdrawals. The public rejects any compromise in Jerusalem. The public rejects maintaining prohibitions on Jewish building. The public rejects expelling Jews from their homes. And the public rejects withdrawing from the Golan Heights.
Recognizing this, the Obama administration has insisted that the content of the current talks remain hidden from the public. As far as Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Mitchell are concerned, they are better judges of the prospects and wisdom of these talks than the Israeli public that will have to live with their consequences. By agreeing to these demands, Netanyahu is collaborating with a project that is inherently anti-democratic and harmful to Israel’s political order.
There is another aspect of the current diplomatic season that is upsetting. This aspect involves the negotiations’ deleterious role in shaping Israel’s position and options in the US.
When Netanyahu announced he was caving in to White House pressure and barring Jewish construction in Judea and Samaria last November, his defenders argued it was necessary given Obama’s relative political strength at the time.
But a lot has changed in the past 10 months.
Today Obama is deeply unpopular. The Democrats are likely to lose their control of the House of Representatives, and at a minimum, their hold on the Senate will be diminished.
Today Israel has nothing to gain and much to lose by bowing and scraping before Obama.
True, Obama’s positions on issues relating to Israel are not likely to substantively change after November 2. But Obama’s ability to implement his policies will be seriously constrained. Indeed, the anticipated Republican resurgence has already incapacitated him.
By playing along with Obama’s sham peace talks, Netanyahu has made it difficult for Israel’s supporters in the US to explain why these talks are dangerous and offer a counter-policy that is based on experience and reality. Even worse, Netanyahu has encouraged Israel’s friends to support what Obama is doing.
THIS MUCH was made clear by an article penned last week by syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer titled, "Your move, Mr. Abbas."
Krauthammer is widely perceived by the American public as a firm supporter of Israel. His many readers – who by and large are not close observers of Middle East events – defer to his judgment. Unfortunately, his latest column shows that trust is unfounded. Krauthammer wrote, "No serious player believes [Israel] can hang on forever to the West Bank."
Not only do many serious players believe Israel can – and indeed should – hang on forever to Judea and Samaria, most close observers of events in the Middle East recognize that the central lesson of the past 17 years is that Israel must hang on to Judea and Samaria. The partial territorial surrenders Israel conducted in the 1990s led to the murder of more than a thousand Israel. Ceding these areas entirely would imperil the country. Even Clinton acknowledged this week that the current situation can continue for 30 years. And as all close observers and serious players in the Middle East know, 30 years is tantamount to forever.
Given Krauthammer’s tremendous influence in shaping public opinion and policy in the US, his arrogant and false portrayal of reality is debilitating.
This is particularly true in the current electoral season where Americans are seriously questioning the received wisdom of their policy elite for the first time in a generation. Now not only will Israel’s supporters need to battle the administration for the US to adopt a rational policy towards the Palestinians and Israel. They will need to battle their supposed allies on the Right.
But while devastating, Krauthammer’s position is a side issue at the end of the day. Krauthammer is not the man charged with defending Israel. He’s a newspaper columnist and television commentator.
The man charged with leading and defending Israel is Netanyahu. Netanyahu is the man who stood for election. Netanyahu is the man who is responsible for leading and defending this country.
And Netanyahu is the man who is now leading us on a path to degradation and defeat.
Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

Saad Hariri’s cautionary tale

Lebanon is a sad and desperate place. And its disastrous fate is personified today by its prime minister.
All who claim to love freedom, democracy, human rights and dignity should take note of Saad Hariri’s fate. They should recognize that his predicament is a testament to their failure to stand up for the ideals they say they champion.
All those who say they seek a Middle East that is friendly to the West should see Hariri’s plight as a cautionary tale. Policy-makers in Washington, Paris, Jerusalem and beyond who envision the 21st century Middle East as a place where the US and its allies are able to project their power to defend their interests should study Hariri’s story.
All those who insist peace is possible and even incipient need to cast a long, lingering glance in his direction.
His story exposes all of their paradigms of peace and appeasement and compromise as nothing more than the hollow, callow, arrogant and irrelevant protestations of a transnational ruling class wholly detached from the reality of the world it would lead.
ON MONDAY, Yediot Aharonot reported that Iranian and Syrian intelligence agencies are applying massive pressure on Hariri to openly join the Iranian axis. Today that axis includes the Syrian regime, Hizbullah and Hamas. If and when Hariri openly joins, Lebanon will become its first non-voluntary member.
Chances are good that Hariri will succumb to their pressure. Yediot reported that the Iranians and Syrians made him an offer he can’t refuse: "If you don’t join us, you will share your father’s fate."
His father, of course, was former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri, who was assassinated in Beirut by Syrian and Hizbullah agents on February 14, 2005. A month later, on March 14, Saad led more than a million Lebanese in a protest in Beirut. Their demand was for Lebanon to be free of Syrian rule.
Everyone knew the March 14 movement had no chance of militarily defeating either Syria or its Hizbullah ally. But the US and France both lined up behind the young Hariri and his followers. The unlikely alliance of the Bush administration and the Chirac government just two years after Franco-American ties were seemingly irreparably frayed in the lead up to the US-led invasion of Iraq was enough to intimidate Syrian dictator Bashar Assad.
After 29 years of Syrian occupation, he ordered his forces to withdraw from Lebanon.
As the head of the March 14 movement, Saad Hariri was flying high. No one could have imagined that within five short years he would become a slave of his father’s murderers. No one, that is, aside from his father’s murderers.
IRAN SAW what happened in Lebanon and decided to take a gamble. In the face of Franco-American unity, it gambled that they were bluffing. The Iranians bet that they would not stand by the Lebanese if their will was challenged.
Iran prepared well for its challenge. At home, dictator Ali Khamenei lined up his ducks. He promoted Teheran’s fanatical mayor Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to the presidency. With his man in power, Khamenei and his regime ratcheted up their challenge to the US in Iraq.
First there was al-Qaida. Its leader in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, received his orders from the al- Qaida leadership which decamped to Iran from Afghanistan in 2002. So too, Shi’ite terror boss Muqtada al-Sadr took his orders from Hizbullah and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps.
Their orders were to turn Iraq into a killing field. Their stepped up insurgency weakened George W. Bush’s political standing in the US. For a chastened Bush, expanding his campaign to Iran became more and more unthinkable as US casualties mounted.
At the same time, Iran massively expanded its military ties and political control over Syria. 
In the Palestinian Authority, it brought Hamas under its control.
As for Hizbullah, the IRGC transformed the militia into a professional guerrilla army.
And all the while, the Iranian regime withstood US and international pressure to end its illicit program to develop nuclear weapons.
IN 2005, Israel was too busy with Ariel Sharon’s initiative of expulsion and withdrawal to pay much attention to what was happening in Lebanon or anywhere else in the region. It greeted the March 14 movement with little more than a yawn. The narrative Sharon and his lackeys Ehud Olmert and Tzipi Livni were peddling was that Israel’s greatest threat was internal. Who had time to pay attention to Iran and its proxies when there were Jewish "settlers" challenging the state’s legal authority to throw them out of their homes? 
In the aftermath of the expulsions and withdrawal from Gaza, Sharon and his followers committed themselves to repeating the expulsion-withdrawal program tenfold in Judea and Samaria. After Sharon was felled by a stroke, Olmert’s electoral platform called for expelling some 100,000 Israelis from their homes in Judea and Samaria.
Although distracted by Iran’s Iraqi proxies, the US began arming and training a Palestinian army in late 2005. At the same time, it demanded that Israel allow Hamas to run in the January 2006 elections and keep Gaza’s border open.
Iran watched as the US and the rest of the West refused to recognize the strategic significance of Hamas’s electoral victory lest they be forced to acknowledge that the Palestinian conflict with Israel had nothing to do with Palestinian nationalism. The mullahs watched too as Israel refused to acknowledge that Hamas’s victory signaled the failure of the peace/withdrawal/expulsion paradigms.
Iran saw an opportunity in its enemies’ combined strategic dementia. And so in June 2006, it went to war. First it attacked Israel from Gaza. A cross-border attack left three soldiers dead and Gilad Schalit was taken hostage.
Two weeks later, as Israel stammered out incoherencies about Gaza and Olmert barred the IDF from taking measures that might have freed Schalit lest his hopes for further withdrawals be exposed as strategic absurdities, Hizbullah struck. What became known as the Second Lebanon War began.
The only ones who openly acknowledged the stakes were the leaders of the March 14 movement. Druse leader Walid Jumblatt repeatedly warned that if Hizbullah was not completely defeated, Lebanon would become an Iranian colony.
But the withdrawal-crazed Olmert government wouldn’t listen. It couldn’t listen.
SO TOO, secretary of state Condoleezza Rice ignored the March 14 movement leaders’ entreaties. A full Israeli victory would require full US backing. And full US backing would require an admission on her part that Iran was engaged in a direct war and a proxy war against the US and that the war against Israel and the war against the US were two fronts in the same war.
These were realities that Rice would never accept.
And so together with her fantasy-driven Israeli counterparts, Rice sued for a cease-fire that left Hizbullah in charge.
The rest was preordained history. In 2007 first Hizbullah and then Hamas staged putsches in Lebanon and Gaza and wrested control over their respective governments from their Western-backed rivals in the March 14 movement and Fatah.
The US responded by massively increasing its military assistance to the Lebanese armed forces and Fatah. Continued Fatah terrorist attacks against Israelis in Judea and Samaria and last month’s lethal ambush of IDF forces along the border by the Lebanese army exposed the strategic insanity of that policy. And yet it continues. The US remains unwilling to acknowledge that Iran’s persuasive power is greater than theirs –given the price of non-cooperation with the mullahs.
SAAD HARIRI’S March 14 movement still enjoys the support of most Lebanese. But this is of no consequence. Hariri was only able to form his government last December by granting Hizbullah veto power over government action. And theprice he paid for his premiership was not merely his personal freedom. The last embers of the Lebanese independence movement his father’s assassination inspired have also been extinguished.
Since he formed his government, Hariri has travelled three times to Damascus to kiss Assad’s ring. And in so doing, he gave up his call for justice for his father’s killers.
This became clear when last month Hariri embraced Nasrallah’s allegation that Israel murdered his father. Then last week, following his latest trip to Damascus, Hariri announced that his past claims that the Syrian regime assassinated his father were unfounded.
As he put it, "We made mistakes in some places; at some point we accused Syria of assassinating the martyr and this was a political accusation."
Hariri went on to profess his warm sentiments for Syria. As he put it, when he visits Damascus, "I feel myself going to a brotherly and friendly state."
Obviously Hariri believes his only chance for survival is to bow before those who killed his father. It is also obvious that the killers – Iran, Syria, Hizbullah – will continue to use him as their front man and apologist for as long as his service is of use to them. And then they will murder him.
Today Hariri is useful. Ahmadinejad is planning a victory trip to Lebanon next month and Hariri will be a valuable prop. Ahmadinejad is scheduled to arrive on October 13. While there he will make a major speech at Bint Jbeil – the town where during the 2006 war then IDF chief of General Staff Dan Halutz wanted to stage a battle that Israel could use as an "image of victory."
In the event all Halutz got was a shooting gallery where Golani Brigade fighters were the ducks.
Ahmadinejad is also scheduled to peer over at Israel from the border town of Maroun Aras. Maroun Aras was also the site of heavy, inconclusive fighting in 2006.
As he uses Hariri as his figurehead host, Ahmadinejad will have more to celebrate than just Lebanon’s transformation into an Iranian colony. As a spate of recent reports make clear, he is probably just months away from declaring his regime a nuclear power.
The most recent allegations that Iran has yet another undeclared uranium enrichment facility are no skin off his back. He and his boss Khamenei took a measure of their enemies and are convinced they have nothing to worry about.
For his part, Hariri can rest assured that his humiliating transformation from freedom champion to slave will go largely unremarked. Israel and the US are in the throes of yet another worthless peace process.
Again they have agreed that the greatest threat to peace is the "settlers" and their supporters who want to wreck the peace/expulsion/withdrawal paradigm by building homes. Again our leaders and the chattering classes they cater to have chosen to embrace their fantasies at the expense of our national security and interests.
Of course it isn’t just Hariri whom they ignore. They ignore the basic fact that freedom must be defended with blood and treasure. Otherwise, as happened in Lebanon, it will be defeated by blood and treasure.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

The new Netanyahu?

Despite a multi-million dollar media blitz, Israelis are not buying the US-financed Geneva Initiative’s attempt to convince us that we have a Palestinian partner. A week after the pro-Palestinian group launched its massive online promotion urging people to join its Facebook page, a mere 634 people had answered the call. 
The US-funded agitprop involved ads in which senior Fatah propagandists were featured telling Israelis we can trust them this time around. The reason for its failure was made clear by a public opinion poll taken Tuesday night for Channel 10. When asked if they believed that Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas is serious about making peace with Israel, two-thirds of Israelis said no. Only 23 percent said he was serious and 17 percent said they didn’t know.
Moreover, most Israelis have had it with the peace paradigm based on Israeli concessions of land and national rights in exchange for Palestinian terror and political warfare. When asked whether the government should extend the prohibition on Jewish construction in Judea and Samaria beyond its Sept 26 terminus, 63 percent said no, it should not. A mere 21 percent of the public believes the government should respond positively to the US demand that Jews continue to be denied our property right in Judea and Samaria.
In his analysis of the results, Channel 10’s senior political commentator Raviv Drucker said that if Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu decides to make a deal with the Palestinians, he will have a hard time convincing the public to support him.
Drucker also argued that the results may have been influenced by the Palestinian terror attack on Tuesday night in which four civilians were brutally murdered on their way home from Jerusalem. That is, Drucker implied that the public is driven by its emotions. But what the results actually show is that the public is driven by reason. 
When Palestinian terrorists gun down innocent people on the highway simply because they are Jews, the public’s reasoned response is to say that the Palestinians do not want peace. The public’s wholly rational reaction to this act of anti-Jewish butchery is to insist that Jews should not be denied our basic civil and human rights in a dangerous bid to appease murderers.
The poll’s final question regarded Netanyahu and his intentions at the new round of land for peace negotiations in Washington. Slightly more than half of the public believes that Netanyahu is serious in his pursuit of a deal with the Palestinians and a mere 34 percent believe that he is not serious. 
This last response is interesting for two reasons. First it is a strong indication that the public trusts Netanyahu’s word. Since taking office a year and a half ago, Netanyahu has said repeatedly that he supports making a deal with Fatah. And a majority of the public believes him. 
The second conclusion suggested by the result is more discouraging. With the public convinced that the Palestinians are not to be trusted and that Israel should stop making concessions, the majority of the public believes that Netanyahu is moving in the opposite direction. Netanyahu’s statements in Washington give us ample reason for concern.
ON WEDNESDAY evening, ahead of a dinner at the White House with US President Barack Obama, Abbas, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Jordan’s King Abdullah, Netanyahu made a startling statement.
He said, "I have been making the case for Israel all my life. But I did not come here to win an argument. I came here to forge a peace. I did not come here to play a blame game where even the winners lose. I came here to achieve a peace that will bring benefits to all."
This statement is worth considering carefully. Does Netanyahu truly believe that by "making the case for Israel" he and others who speak out in defense of Israel have merely been argumentative? 
Does he think that defending Israel’s rights diminishes the prospects for peace and so those that defend Israel are actually harming it? 
Does he believe that in calling the Palestinians out for their brutality, barbarism and hatred of Jews and Israel he and his fellow advocates for Israel have merely been playing a blame game? 
Does he think that a peace forged on the basis of ignoring Israel’s case will be a viable peace? 
If Netanyahu does believe all of these things – and his statement on Wednesday evening indicates he does, then the public should be very worried. Indeed, if this is what the premier believes, then it is just a matter of time before he begins echoing his predecessor Ariel Sharon and tells us that we are too dimwitted to understand him because the world looks different from where he is sitting than from our lowly perches on the ground, in Israel.
AND THIS brings us back to Tuesday evening’s highway massacre. Predictably, the Obama administration led the way in framing the terrorist violence as a bid by Hamas to derail the newest round of negotiations. For example, after meeting with Netanyahu Wednesday Obama said, "The tragedy that we saw yesterday where people were gunned down on the street by terrorists who are purposely trying to undermine these talks is an example of what we’re up against." 
The only party that rejected the administration’s rationalization of the attack was Hamas, whose operatives reportedly carried it out. In an interview Thursday with the London-based Asharq al Awsat, Hamas leader Mahmoud A-Zahar said that the talks have nothing to do with the attack. As he put it, "The bid to link this operation to the negotiations is completely wrong. When people have the opportunity, the capability and the targets, they act."
The truth is probably found neither in A-Zahar’s claim nor in Obama’s assertion. In all likelihood, Hamas was testing the waters. Iran’s Palestinian proxy wanted to know whether the regular rules for peace processes have kicked into gear yet. Those rules — as the families of the hundreds of Israelis murdered by Palestinian terrorists during the peak years of peace processes will attest — involve Israel giving free rein to terrorists to murder Jews during "peace talks." 
Since Yitzhak Rabin first shook Yassir Arafat’s hand on the White House lawn 17 years ago, successive prime ministers have opted to not to retaliate for murderous attacks when peace talks are in session. They have justified their willingness to give the likes of Hamas a free hand to murder by claiming that fighting back would be tantamount to allowing terrorists to hold the peace process hostage. Conducting counter-terror campaigns in the midst of negotiations, they have uniformly argued, would endanger the talks and so, Hamas, Fatah and Islamic Jihad must all be given a carte blanche to murder.
Echoing these sentiments precisely, Defense Minister Ehud Barak, IDF Chief of General Staff Lt. Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi and Shin Bet Director Yuval Diskin all reportedly objected to launching any response to Tuesday’s attack. According to the media, the three closed ranks against Netanyahu who reportedly wished to attack Hamas targets in Gaza following the massacre. 
Wednesday’s roadside shooting attack, in which a man and his wife were wounded, was a clear indication that Hamas and its ilk received the message. Just as A-Zahar said, they are always looking for an opportunity. And in not responding to Tuesday’s attack, Israel told them that for the duration of these negotiations, Hamas can again kill with impunity.
 
Whether Hamas renewed its terror attacks this week because it likes to murder Jews, because it was trying to derail negotiations or because it was testing Israel, the fact of the matter is that from Hamas’s perspective, it stood only to gain from attacking. Terror is always popular with the Palestinian public. As the Jerusalem Post reported on Wednesday, when news broke of Tuesday’s attack, mobs of Palestinians in Judea and Samaria took to the streets to celebrate. 
Part of the reason that Palestinians love terrorism is because they have never had to pay a real price for killing Jews. To the contrary, they have been richly rewarded. The Palestinians believe that it was terror, not negotiations that convinced Israel to withdraw from Gaza. So too, as they glance at the international response to their acts of wanton murder, they see terror has only benefitted them. International monetary assistance and political support for the Palestinians have always risen as terror levels peaked. 
Obama’s insistence that the talks go on after Tuesday’s attack showed the Palestinians that the game is still theirs to win. The US will continue to side with the Palestinian demands against Israel regardless of their behavior. 
IN NETANYAHU’S defense, his speech on Wednesday evening was not simply a repudiation of his life’s work on behalf of Israel. Netanyahu seemed to hedge his bets when he said, "We left Lebanon, we got terror. We left Gaza, we got terror. We want to ensure that territory we concede will not be turned into a third Iranian sponsored terror enclave aimed at the heart of Israel. That is why a defensible peace requires security arrangements that can withstand the test of time and the many challenges that are sure to confront us."
The problem with this statement is that in light of the free pass he gave Hamas for Tuesday’s attack, Netanyahu already conceded this crucial principle. If he believes that the only way for the talks to advance is to stand down in the face of attack rather than aggressively strike back, then Netanyahu has already committed himself to a peace that will create "a new Iranian sponsored terror enclave aimed at the heart of Israel." 
Likewise, if he believes that only by ceasing to make Israel’s case can he make progress with his "partner" Abbas, then Netanyahu has already conceded his demand that a peace agreement contain security arrangements that will defend Israel’s national rights and other vital interests. 
The most distressing aspect of Netanyahu’s enthusiastic participation in a process the Israeli public rationally opposes is that it is him doing it. With Netanyahu now joining the ranks of those that attack Israel’s defenders as enemies of peace and claim that defending the country is antithetical to peace, who is left to defend us? 
Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

Washington’s Israeli allies

As Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu heads to Washington for another stillborn round of talks with Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas hosted by US President Barack Obama, he will probably be preoccupied with one issue.
It won’t be Obama’s bigoted demand that Jews be prohibited from building synagogues, schools and homes in Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria.
Netanyahu won’t be wondering how long Abbas can keep up with his "Palestinian president" act before his people chase him out of town. Abbas’s term ended in January 2009.
Israel’s elected leader will be thinking about Iran. He will be wondering how the US government will react if he sends the IAF to bomb Iran’s nuclear installations. Will the US permit IAF jets to overfly US-controlled Iraqi airspace? Or will Obama follow the advice of his foreign policy mentor Zbigniew Brzezinski and order the US Air Force to shoot down those jets, abandon the US-Israel alliance and embrace a new role as protector of Iran’s nuclear weapons program? 
While Netanyahu wonders if the US can be trusted, other Israelis sleep soundly at night knowing that Uncle Sam has their back. The Israeli Left knows that no matter how forcefully its platforms are rejected by the public, the US government will embrace its members and fund its projects.
This week in the leadup to the talks, the openly subversive Geneva Initiative has launched a multimillion dollar public relations campaign targeting the public. Its goal is to persuade Israelis that Fatah is a legitimate partner for peace. The campaign is funded by USAID.
ACCORDING TO Yediot Aharonot, the Geneva Initiative has hired Ron Asulin, one of the country’s top directors to stage and direct commercials featuring Fatah members telling Israelis they are credible partners in peace. The Geneva Initiative invited Yediot’s Alon Goldstein to watch the recording sessions in Ramallah.
His report, published Sunday, is a fascinating glimpse at the Left’s propaganda shop.
Goldstein describes how Asulin told Fatah’s Saeb Erekat to begin his greeting with the word "shalom."
"It will be effective," Asulin promised.
Among his other achievements, Erekat played a starring role in the PA’s 2002 blood libel in which he and his comrades accused Israel of committing a massacre in the Jenin refugee camp during Operation Defensive Shield. He told CNN that Israel had killed "more than 500 people." He also claimed that more than 300 were being buried in mass graves.
In the event, Palestinian losses in the battle stood at 54; some 90 percent of them were combatants. Twenty-three IDF soldiers were killed. The only massacres were the suicide bombings that killed some 500 Israelis – 80 percent of whom were civilians – in the months that preceded Defensive Shield.
Not only has Erekat never retracted his statements. He has repeated them.
But never mind. He said "shalom" rather nicely.
Next on the list of US-funded spokesmen was Fatah strongman Jibril Rajoub, who was instrumental in forging the operational alliance between Fatah and Hamas that facilitated the terror war against Israel 10 years ago. Throughout the roaring ’90s, Rajoub assiduously recruited Hamas members to his Preventive Security Force in Judea and Samaria.
As recently as May 10 he appeared on PA television and said, "Building a school and throwing a hand grenade, in my opinion, are resistance. I build the school in order to strengthen the reasons for my people’s resolve, as one of several aspects of the resistance, and when there is a need to throw a grenade [or launch] a rocket, I’ll do that as well out of my belief in the inevitable victory of my cause and its justness."
Last week the US paid for him to be filmed telling Israelis we should trust him. It was no mean task. According to Yediot, "Asulin had to work hard" to get Rajoub to say the word "partner."
Then there is Fatah’s propaganda boss Yasser Abed Rabbo. As Yasser Arafat’s culture and information minister, it was Abed Rabbo who ended press freedom in the PA shortly after it was established in 1994. Under his reign, journalists and editors were detained and beaten, newspapers were closed and printing presses were torched. In 2002, Abed Rabbo outdid Erekat in his mendacious condemnations of Israel. He accused Israel of "digging mass graves for 900 Palestinians in the [Jenin refugee] camp."
In 2001 he ordered the PA media to stop filming mass celebrations of the September 11 attacks on the US.
Despite his long career as a propagandist, Asulin still had his work cut out for him. He had to convince Abed Rabbo to stop waving his finger at the camera. "When you wave your finger, you are actually warning me. You are making threats."
IT IS WORTH pausing for a moment and considering the nature of the US-financed Geneva Initiative that is going to such lengths to present a wholly distorted picture of reality to the public. It is the brainchild of Israel’s most successful subversive – former justice minister and former Meretz leader Yossi Beilin.
Beilin is the architect of every major Israeli strategic disaster in the past 17 years. He was the architect of the disastrous 1993 Oslo Accord that lionized Arafat as a peace partner and empowered him to embark on a campaign of terror and political warfare that continued on long after his death in 2004.
Beilin is the architect of the disastrous 2000 Taba negotiations in which an embattled prime minister Ehud Barak offered Arafat the Temple Mount even as Arafat’s men were butchering Israelis on the roads, in buses and cafes.
In 2002 Beilin worked with Colin Powell’s State Department to draft the so-called road map for Middle East peace. That document was the most anti-Israel ever adopted by a US administration. The Sharon government managed in large part to scuttle the initiative by convincing president George W. Bush to agree that the document’s draconian demands could only be implemented after the Palestinians suspended their terror war.
His ambitions checked by the unremitting Palestinian violence, Beilin found another outlet for undermining his government. In 2003 he partnered with the Swiss government and the EU in founding the Geneva Initiative. The initiative was an open bid to subvert the writ of the government to conduct foreign policy. Beilin and Abed Rabbo gathered their followers in Geneva, held staged "negotiations" and signed an "agreement" in which the Israelis agreed to every Palestinian demand and the Palestinians thanked them.
Ariel Sharon’s chief of staff Dov Weissglas claimed in a 2005 interview that Sharon was so spooked by the affront that he was convinced to embark on the withdrawal from Gaza.
Together with the 2000 withdrawal from south Lebanon – which Beilin also spearheaded – the withdrawal from Gaza will go down in the annals of Israeli history as the greatest strategic blunder until that time.
Not surprisingly, the public takes a dim view of Beilin and his ilk. This is why in the last elections Meretz was destroyed as a representative political force. It won only three seats in the Knesset.
But Beilin and his supporters don’t care.
They are not trying to win over the public in any real sense. In many ways they are the flip side of Fatah. Just as Fatah is the lawful representative of no one, so they are the lawful representative of next to no one. And just as Fatah rules through a mix of tyranny and corruption, so they seek to dictate Israel’s path through a mixture of corruption and political subversion.
THE NEWEST Geneva Initiative campaign was far from the only display of the far Left’s contempt for the Israeli people this week.
Over the weekend, more than 50 far Left activists who double as actors, writers and tenured professors signed open letters pledging not to perform at Ariel’s new theater.
Since Ariel is beyond the 1949 armistice lines, as far as these self-described artists are concerned, its residents have no right to watch plays. On the other hand, as actor Doron Tabori, one of the signatories, argued in an appearance on the Knesset channel, the very idea that the state might consider ending its funding of his work in light of his discriminatory position is proof that his critics are all "fascists and racists." 
Tabori is far from alone.
His rejection of the legitimacy of public criticism and his demonization of his critics is the hallmark of the Left.
Take Hebrew University Prof. Ze’ev Sternhall for instance. In 2001 he published an oped in Haaretz advising the Palestinians to limit their acts of murder to Israelis who live beyond the armistice lines. As he put it, "There is no doubt about the legitimacy of armed resistance in the territories themselves. If the Palestinians had a little sense, they would concentrate their struggle against the settlements… and refrain from planting bombs west of the Green Line."
On Sunday, in response to the Im Tirtzu student movement’s recent campaign against Ben-Gurion University’s anti-Zionist Politics and Government Department, Sternhall wrote a new piece in Haaretz. Under the headline, "Only force will stop force," he threatened the government. If it continues to back Im Tirtzu, if its members maintain their call to fire state-funded professors who call for a boycott of Israel, then Israeli professors should work to foment an international boycott.
As he put it, "Any attempt to harm a lecturer’s status for political reasons will met with a firm response from Israel’s academic faculty. The expected reaction from the international community, including the possibility of a boycott, could be no less painful."
It is from the Sternhalls and Taboris of Israel that groups like the Geneva Initiative draw their support base.
On Sunday, Charles Krauthammer wrote about the American public’s abandonment of the political and cultural Left. Rather than consider the possibility that the public may have a point, he claimed that the American Left has responded to their fellow Americans’ repudiation by demonizing their countrymen as a bunch of bigots.
Krauthammer concluded that the Left will pay for its assault on American society at the ballot box in November. As he put it, "A comeuppance is due the arrogant elites whose undisguised contempt for the great unwashed prevents them from conceding a modicum of serious thought to those who dare oppose them." 
He is probably right about America. But their comrades in Israel will suffer no similar drubbing.
While Israel’s elected leaders are left guessing if the US will stand behind the country at its moment of greatest need, the likes of Beilin and Sternhall know that they can rely on Washington come rain or come shine.
Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

Accepting the unacceptable

Last weekend the mullahs took a big step towards becoming a nuclear power as they powered the Bushehr nuclear reactor. 
Israel’s response? The Foreign Ministry published a statement proclaiming the move "totally unacceptable."
So why did we accept the totally unacceptable?
When one asks senior officials about the Bushehr reactor and about Iran’s nuclear program more generally, their response invariably begins, "Well the Americans…" 
Far from accepting that Israel has a problem that it must deal with, Israel’s decision makers still argue that the US will discover – before it is too late – that it must act to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power in order to secure its own interests. 
As for Bushehr specifically, Israeli officials explain that it isn’t the main problem. The main danger stems from the uranium enrichment sites. And anyway, they explain, given the civilian character of the Bushehr reactor; the fact that it is under a full International Atomic Energy Agency inspections regime; and the fact that the Russians are supposed to take all the spent fuel rods to Russia and so prevent Iran from using them to produce weapons-grade plutonium, Israel lacked the international legitimacy to strike Bushehr to prevent it from being fuelled last weekend.
BEFORE GOING into the question of whether or not Israel’s decision makers were correct in deciding to opt out of attacking the Bushehr reactor to prevent it from being fuelled, it is worth considering where "the Americans" stand on Iran as it declares itself a nuclear power and tests new advanced weapons systems on a daily basis.
The answer to this question was provided in large part in an article in the National Interest by former Clinton Administration National Security Council member Bruce Riedel. Titled, "If Israel Attacks," Riedel — who reportedly has close ties to the administration – asserts that an Israeli military strike against Iran will be a disaster for the US. In his view, US is better served by allowing Iran to become a nuclear power than by supporting an Israeli attack against Iran. 
He writes, "The United States needs to send a clear red light to Israel. There’s no option but to actively discourage an Israeli attack."
Riedel explains that to induce Israel to accept the unacceptable specter of a nuclear armed mullocracy, the US should pay it off. Riedel recommends plying Israel’s leaders with F-22 Stealth bombers, nuclear submarines, a mutual defense treaty and perhaps even NATO membership. 
Riedel’s reason for deeming an Israeli strike unacceptable is his conviction that such a strike will be met by an Iranian counter-strike against US forces and interests in the Persian Gulf and Afghanistan. While there is no reason to doubt he is correct, Riedel studiously ignores the other certainty: A nuclear-armed Iran would threaten those same troops and interests far more. 
Riedel would have us believe that the Iranian regime will be a rational nuclear actor. That’s the regime that has outlawed music, stones women, and deploys terror proxies throughout the region and the world. That’s the same regime whose "supreme leader" just published a fatwa claiming he has the same religious stature as Muhammed
. 
Riedel bases this view on the actions Iran took when it was weak. 
Since Iran didn’t place its American hostages on trial in 1980, it can be trusted with nuclear weapons in 2010. Since Iran didn’t go to war against the US in 1988 during the Kuwaiti tanker crisis, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad can be trusted with nuclear bombs in 2010. And so on and so forth.
Moreover, Riedel ignores what any casual newspaper reader now recognizes: Iran’s nuclear weapons program has spurred a regional nuclear arms race. Riedel imagines a bipolar nuclear Middle East with Israel on the one side and Iran on the other. He fails to notice that already today Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Jordan, Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Sudan and Turkey have all initiated nuclear programs. And if Iran is allowed to go nuclear, these countries will beat a path to any number of nuclear bomb stores.
Some argue that a multipolar nuclear Middle East will adhere to the rules of mutual assured destruction. Assuming this is true, the fact remains that the violent Iranian response to an Israeli strike against its nuclear installations will look like a minor skirmish in comparison to the conventional wars that will break out in a Middle East in which everyone has the bomb.
And in truth, there is no reason to believe that a Middle East in which everyone has nuclear weapons is a Middle East which adheres to the rules of MAD. A recent Zogby/ University of Maryland poll of Arab public opinion taken for the Brookings Institute in US-allied Arab states Egypt, Lebanon, Morocco, Saudi Arabia and the UAE shows that the Arab world is populated by jihadists. 
As Herb London from the Hudson Institute pointed out in an analysis of the poll, nearly 70 percent of those polled said the leader they most admire is either a jihadist or a supporter of jihad. The most popular leaders were Turkish Prime Minister Recep Erdogan, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, Ahmadinejad, Hizbullah chieftain Hassan Nasrallah, Syrian President Bashar Assad and Al Qaida leader Osama Bin Laden. 
So if popular revolutions bring down any of the teetering despotic regimes now occupying the seats of power in the Arab world, they will likely be replaced by jihadists. Moreover, since an Iranian nuclear bomb would empower the most radical, destabilizing forces in pan-Arab society, the likelihood that a despot would resort to a nuclear strike on a Western or Israeli target in order to stay in power would similarly rise. 
All of this should not be beyond the grasp of an experienced strategic thinker like Riedel. And yet, obviously, it is. Moreover, as an alumnus of the Clinton administration, Riedel’s positions in general are more realistic than those of the Obama administration. As Israeli officials acknowledge, the Obama administration is only now coming to terms with the fact that its engagement policy towards Iran has failed. 
Moreover, throughout the US government, the White House is the most stubborn defender of the notion that the Iranian nuclear threat is not as serious a threat as the absence of a Palestinian state. That is, President Barack Obama himself is the most strident advocate of a US Middle East policy that ignores all the dangers the US faces in the region and turns American guns against the only country that doesn’t threaten any US interest.
And now, facing this state of affairs, Israeli leaders today still argue that issuing a Foreign Ministry communiqué declaring the fuelling of the Bushehr nuclear reactor "unacceptable," and beginning worthless negotiations with Fatah leaders is a rational and sufficient Israeli policy. 
WHAT LIES behind this governmental fecklessness?
There are two possible explanations for the government’s behavior. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu may be motivated by operational concerns or he may be motivated by political concerns. 
On the operational level, the question guiding Israel’s leaders is when is the optimal time to attack? The fact that government sources say that it would have been diplomatically suicidal to attack before Bushehr became operational last weekend makes it clear that non-military considerations are the determining factor for Israel’s leadership. Yet what Riedel’s article and the clear positions of the Obama administration demonstrate is that there is no chance that non-military conditions will ever be optimal for Israel. Moreover, as Israel’s 1981 attack on Iraq’s nuclear reactor shows, Israel can achieve its strategic objectives even without US support for its operations. 
From a military perspective, it is clear that it would have been better to strike Iran’s nuclear installations before the Russians fuelled Bushehr. Any attack scenario from now on will have to either accept the prospect of nuclear fallout or accept leaving Bushehr intact. Indeed from a military perspective, the longer Israel waits to attack Iran, the harder it will become to accomplish the mission.
So unless Israel’s leaders are unaware of strategic realities, the only plausible explanation for Netanyahu’s decision to sit by idly as Israel’s military options were drastically diminished over the weekend is that he was moved by domestic political considerations.
And what might those political considerations be? Clearly he wasn’t concerned with a lack of public support. Consistent, multiyear polling data show that the public overwhelmingly supports the use of force to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power. 
Then there is the issue of Netanyahu’s coalition. It cannot be that Netanyahu believes that he can build a broader coalition to support an attack on Iran than he already has by bringing Kadima into his government. Kadima leader Tzipi Livni is not a great supporter of an Israeli attack on Iran. Livni views being liked by Obama more important than preventing Iran from becoming a nuclear state.
The prospect of a Kadima splinter party led by former defense minister Shaul Mofaz joining the coalition is also raised periodically. Yet experience to date indicates there is little chance of that happening. Mofaz apparently dislikes Netanyahu more than he dislikes the notion of facing a nuclear-armed Iran, (and a nuclear-armed Saudi Arabia and Egypt and etc., etc., etc.).
Only one possibility remains: Netanyahu must have opted to sit on his hands as Bushehr was powered up because of opposition he faces from within his government. There is only one person in Netanyahu’s coalition who has both the strategic dementia and the political power to force Netanyahu to accept the unacceptable. That person is Defense Minister Ehud Barak.
Barak’s strategic ineptitude is legendary. It was most recently on display in the failed naval commando takeover of the Turkish-Hamas terror ship Mavi Marmara. It was Barak’s idea to arm naval commandos with paintball guns and so guarantee that they would be attacked and forced to use lethal force to defend themselves. 
Barak’s ability to dictate government policy was most recently demonstrated in his obscene abuse of power in the appointment of the IDF’s next chief of staff. Regardless of whether the so-called "Galant" document which set out a plan to see Maj. General Yoav Galant appointed to replace outgoing IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi was forged or authentic, it is clear that its operative clauses were all being implemented by Barak’s own office for the past several months. So too, despite the fact that the document is still the subject of police investigation, Barak successfully strong-armed Netanyahu into agreeing to his lightning appointment of Galant.
Even if Galant is the best candidate for the position, it is clear that Barak did the general no favors by appointing him in this manner. He certainly humiliated and discredited the General Staff. 
Barak is the Obama administration’s favorite Israeli politician. While Netanyahu is shunned, Barak is feted in Washington nearly every month. And this makes sense. As the man directly responsible for Israel’s defense and with his stranglehold on the government, he alone has the wherewithal to enable the entire Middle East to go nuclear.
How’s that for totally unacceptable?
Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

Standing on a landmine

US President Barack Obama’s warm endorsement of the plan to build a mosque by the ruins of the World Trade Center tells Israel – and its enemies – everything we need to know about the Pesident of the United States of America.
Speaking during a Ramadan fast breaking meal at the White House to an audience of people affiliated with various Muslim Brotherhood- related groups in the US, Obama couched his support for the mosque at Ground Zero in constitutional terms.
In his words, "As a citizen, and as president, I believe that Muslims have the same right to practice their religion as everyone else in this country. And that includes the right to build a place of worship and a community center on private property in Lower Manhattan, in accordance with local laws and ordinances. This is America. Our commitment to religious freedom must be unshakable. The principle that people of all faiths are welcome in this country and that they will not be treated differently by their government is essential to who we are. The writ of the Founders must endure."
Of course, none of those who have voiced opposition to the mosque project at Ground Zero have claimed that the Islamic group behind the mosque project is acting unlawfully in seeking to construct a mosque. The nearly 70 percent of Americans who oppose building a mosque at Ground Zero oppose the mosque because they believe it is wrong to build a mosque at the site where less than a decade ago Muslims acting in the name of Islam murdered nearly 3,000 people in an act of war against the US and an act of terror against the American people.
Obama has been pilloried by his opponents for his position. And his fellow Democrats, facing the likelihood of massive defeats in the Congressional elections in three months, are reportedly deeply frustrated by his statements. Indeed, the uproar Obama’s pro-mosque remarks has unleashed has been so harsh it raises the question of why he made it.
THERE ARE two possible explanations for Obama’s move. Either he was motivated by politics or he was motivated by ideology. The view that Obama was motivated by politics is easily dismissed. With more than two-thirds of Americans telling pollsters they oppose the Ground Zero mosque project, it makes no political sense for a politician to strike out a position in favor of the mosque. Indeed, major Democrats have either refused to state a position on the issue or, like New York Governor David Paterson, they have recommended that the mosque builders construct their mosque elsewhere.
Perhaps Obama thought he could he could get away with making his statement. However, with his polling numbers consistently eroding, it is hard to imagine Obama’s advisers would have told him that was a realistic view.
This leaves ideology. But what ideology motivates Obama to embrace such an unpopular initiative at such an explosive political juncture? Obama and his supporters would like us to believe this is a civil rights issue. In his defense of the Ground Zero mosque, Obama claimed his position was based on the American values such as, "The laws that we apply without regard to race, or religion, or wealth, or status. Our capacity to show not merely tolerance, but respect towards those who are different from us."
But if Obama is motivated by a belief in civil rights that is so strong it propels him to take on deeply unpopular causes in an election season, then one could reasonably expect that his support for civil rights would be absolute. That is, one could expect him to use the same yardstick for all groups, in all places and at all times.
But for Obama, there are some groups who must be denied the same civil rights he upholds as absolute in his defense of the plan to build a mosque at Ground Zero. As Obama has made clear since his first days in office, he believes that Jews should be denied the right to their property in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria simply because they are Jews.
OBAMA IS so firm in his belief that Jews should be denied civil rights in Israel’s capital and in the heartland of Jewish history that he has provoked multiple crises in his relations with Israel to advance this bigoted view. Almost from his first day in office Obama has struck out a radical position in which he has insisted that Jews must be prohibited from building anything – synagogues, homes, nurseries, schools – in Judea, Jerusalem and Samaria on land they own. Jews – Israeli and non-Israeli – should be barred from exercising their property rights even if their construction plans have already been approved "in accordance with local laws and ordinances."
At the same time, Obama has insisted that Israel take no action to enforce its "local laws and ordinances" against illegal structures built by Arabs in Jerusalem, Judea, or Samaria.
Next month the deeply discriminatory and legally dubious 10-month moratorium on Jewish building in Judea and Samaria that Obama coerced Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu into instituting is set to end. So now Obama is putting the full weight of the White House on Israel to again coerce Netanyahu into prolonging the discriminatory ban that denies the civil rights and property rights of Jews simply because they are Jewish.
Obama claims to be embracing the nullification of Jewish civil right in the interests of peace. In his stated view, to forge peace in the Middle East it is necessary for the Palestinians to achieve statehood. But it hard to see how the establishment of a Palestinian state squares with Obama’s purported dedication to civil rights.
In a briefing with the Egyptian media last week Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas told reporters that no Jews will be allowed to live in a future Palestinian state. He also said that while he would agree to allow NATO forces to deploy in the future Palestinian state, he would not permit any Jewish soldiers to serve in the NATO units stationed on the territory of such a state. As he put it, "I will not agree that there will be Jews among NATO forces and I will not allow even one Israeli to live amongst us on the Palestinian soil."
The notion that an inherently anti-Semitic Palestinian state, predicated on Jew hatred that strong, could possibly live at peace with Israel is simply ridiculous. But tellingly, in all the American pressure that has been placed on Abbas to begin direct negotiations with Israel, at no time has the administration been reported to have insisted that Abbas abandon his anti-Semitism. Obama has made no statement addressing the fact that the Palestinians demand that Jews be barred from living in the future Palestinian state. He has certainly not objected to this position although it squares with none of the American values of tolerance and property rights he upheld so strongly in his remarks on the Ground Zero mosque.
SO THE ideology Obama holds so strongly that it provokes him to take positions antithetical to the political interests of his party during an election season is not civil rights. Rather it has to do with his commitment to advancing the interests of a specific group or groups over the interests of other specific groups. In the case of the Ground Zero mosque he prefers the rights of Muslims over the values of the overwhelming majority of Americans. In the case of the Palestinians, he prefers their anti-Semitic nationalism over the civil rights of Jews.
Obama’s behavior tells Israel’s leaders something very important about how they should think about their relations with the Obama administration. It tells them that Obama is so wed to his ideology that he will push it regardless of political conditions. This means that for Israel, dealing with Obama is like standing on a landmine. Just as a landmine can explode at any minute, Obama can attack Israel at any moment. He is so ideologically bound to the Palestinian cause against Israel that he is liable to provoke a crisis when it is least politically advantageous – from his perspective – for him to do so.
This lesson is particularly urgent on the eve of yet another round of direct negotiations with the Palestinians and as the freeze on Jewish property rights is about to expire. Obama’s ideological fanaticism means that nothing Israel does in the upcoming talks will help us.
As Obama’s media surrogates like Tony Karon at Time magazine have made clear in recent weeks, the anti-Israel narrative has already coalesced. Everything that happens regarding those negotiations is Israel’s fault. It is Israel’s fault that they haven’t begun. It will be Israel’s fault when they falter. It will be Israel’s fault when they fail. And if they succeed, Israel will still be blameworthy.
Facing this US President and his radical ideology, Netanyahu and his deputies must understand that they cannot appease him. They cannot convince him of Israel’s good intentions.
The US leader who has rejected the expressed views of 68 percent of his fellow citizens in favor of the construction of a mosque at Ground Zero is not going to be moved by reason. The American President who defends the Ground Zero mosque builders even though their leader refuses to acknowledge that Hamas is a terrorist organization and has claimed that the US had the Sept. 11 attacks coming to it; and the American President who upholds the Palestinian cause even though it is virulently, and often genocidally anti-Semitic is not going to be appeased by Israeli building freezes and other confidence building gestures.
What this means is that Netanyahu and his deputies must concentrate on defending Israel and advancing its national interests. It is in Israel’s national interest to guarantee the civil rights and property rights of Jews. It is in Israel’s national interest to forthrightly set out and defend Israel’s legal rights in Judea and Samaria and its sovereignty in united Jerusalem. It is in Israel’s national interest to enforce its laws without prejudice towards all its citizens and expect all its citizens to respect its laws.
We are dealing with a self-consciously radical President who intends to remake the US relationship with the Muslim world. We will find no understanding from him.
Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

Guide to the perplexed

Israel’s leaders are reportedly concerning themselves with one question today. Are there any circumstances in which US President Barack Obama will order the US military to strike Iran’s nuclear installations before Iran develops a nuclear arsenal? 
From Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu down the line, Israel’s leaders reportedly raise this question with just about everyone they come into contact with. If this is true, then the time has come to end our leaders’ suspense. 
The answer is no. 
To all intents and purposes, there are no circumstances in which Obama would order an attack on Iran’s nuclear installations to prevent Iran from developing and fielding nuclear weapons. Exceptions to this statement fall into two categories. Either they are so implausible that they are operationally irrelevant, or they are so contingent on other factors that they would doom any US attack to failure. 
Evidence for this conclusion is found in every aspect of Obama’s foreign policy. But to prove it, it is sufficient to point out point three aspects of his policies.
First of all, Obama’s refuses to recognize that an Iranian nuclear arsenal constitutes a clear and present danger to US national security. Obama’s discussions of the perils of a nuclear Iran are limited to his acknowledgement that such an arsenal will provoke a regional nuclear arms race. This is certainly true. But then that arms race has already begun. Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt, Turkey, the UAE, and Kuwait have all announced their intentions to build nuclear reactors. In some cases they have signed deals with foreign countries to build such facilities.
And yet, while a nuclear arms race in the Middle East is bad, it is far from the worst aspect of Iran’s nuclear program for America. America has two paramount strategic interests in the Middle East. First, the US requires the smooth flow of inexpensive petroleum products from the Persian Gulf to global oil markets. Second, the US requires the capacity to project its force in the region to defend its own territory from global jihadists. 
Both of these interests are imperiled by the Iranian nuclear program. If the US is not willing to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, it will lose all credibility as a strategic ally to the Sunni Arab states in the area. For instance, from a Saudi perspective, a US that is unwilling to prevent the ayatollahs from fielding nuclear weapons is of no more use to the kingdom than Britain or China or France. It is just another oil consuming country. The same goes for the rest of the states in the Gulf and in the region.
The Arab loss of faith in US security guarantees will cause them to deny basing rights to US forces in their territories. It will also likely lead them to bow to Iranian will on oil price setting through supply cutbacks. In light of this, the Iranian nuclear program constitutes the greatest threat ever to US superpower status in the region and to the wellbeing of the US economy. 
Then there is the direct threat that Iran’s nuclear program constitutes for US national security. This threat grows larger by the day as Iran’s web of strategic alliances in Latin America expands unchallenged by the US. Today Iran enjoys military alliances with Venezuela, Nicaragua, Ecuador, Brazil and Bolivia. 
As former US ambassador to the UN John Bolton has argued, at least the Soviets were atheists. Atheists of course, are in no hurry to die, since death can bring no rewards in a world to come. Iran’s leaders are apocalyptic jihadists. Given Iran’s Latin American alliances and Iran’s own progress towards intercontinental ballistic missile capabilities, the prospect of a nuclear-armed Iran makes the Cuban missile crisis look like a walk in the park.
In the face of this grave and gathering threat, Obama cancelled plans to deploy anti-ballistic missile shields in Poland and the Czech Republic. He has shunned the pro-American Honduran and Colombian governments in favor of Nicaragua and Venezuela. He has welcomed Brazil’s anti-American president to the White House. He cancelled the F-22. 
THE FACT that Obama fails to recognize the danger an Iranian nuclear arsenal poses to the US does not in and of itself prove that Obama would not attack Iran’s nuclear installations. After all, the US has fought many wars and launched countless campaigns in its history against foes that posed no direct threat to the US. In most of these cases, the US has fought on behalf of its allies. 
In the case of Iran’s nuclear weapons programs, because the Iranians have openly placed Israel first on their nuclear targeting list, US debate about Iran’s nuclear program has been anchored around the issue of Israel’s national security. Should the US attack Iran’s nuclear installations in order to defend Israel? 
Given the distorted manner in which the debate has been framed, the answer to that question hinges on Obama’s view of Israel. Recent moves by Obama and his advisors make clear that Obama takes a dim view of Israel. He views Israel neither as a credible ally nor a credible democracy. 
First there is the character of current US military assistance to Israel and to its neighbors. In recent months, the Obama administration has loudly announced its intentions to continue its joint work with Israel towards the development and deployment of defensive anti-missile shields. Two things about these programs are notable. First, they are joint initiatives. Just as Israel gains US financing, the US gains Israeli technology that it would otherwise lack. 
Second, as Globes reported last week, the Obama has actually scaled back US funding for these programs. For instance, funding for the Arrow 3 anti-ballistic missile program – intended to serve as Israel’s primary defensive system against Iranian ballistic missiles — was cut by $50 million. 
The defensive character of all of these programs signals an absence of US support for maintaining Israel’s capacity to preemptively strike its enemies. When the Pentagon’s refusal to permit Israel to install its own avionics systems on the next generation F-35 warplanes is added to the mix, it is difficult to make the argument that the US supports Israel’s qualitative edge over its enemies in any tangible way.
An assessment that the US has abandoned its commitment to Israel’s qualitative edge is strengthened by the administration’s announcement this week of its plan to sell Saudi Arabia scores of F-15 and F-16 fighter jets for an estimated $30 billion. While the US has pledged to remove systems from the Saudi aircraft that pose direct threats to Israel, once those jets arrive in the kingdom, the Saudis will be able to do whatever they want with them. If one adds to this equation the reduced regional stature of the US in an Iranian nuclear age, it is clear that these guarantees have little meaning. 
Obama’s moves to reduce Israel’s offensive capacity and slow its acquisition of defensive systems goes hand in hand with his rejection of Israel’s right to self-defense and dismissive attitude towards Israel’s rule of law. These positions have been starkly demonstrated in his administration’s treatment of Israel in the wake of the IDF’s takeover of the Turkish-Hamas Mavi Marmara terror ship on May 31. 
In the face of that blatant display of Turkish aggression against Israel as it maintained its lawful maritime blockade of Hamas-controlled Gaza’s coastline, Obama sided with Turkey and Hamas against Israel. Obama demanded that Israel investigate its handling of the incident. Moreover, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton claimed that Israel was incapable of credibly investigating itself and so required Israel to add non-Israeli members to its investigative committee. 
Yet even Israel’s acceptance of this US humiliation was insufficient for Obama. His UN envoy Susan Rice then demanded that Israel accept a UN investigative panel that is charged with checking to see if the Israeli committee has done its job. And if the UN panel rejects the Israeli commission’s findings, it is empowered to begin its own investigation. 
As to the UN, as former Obama and Clinton administration officials Ray Takeyh and Steven Simon explained in an article in the Washington Post last week, Obama’s national security strategy effectively revolves around subordinating US national security policy to the UN Security Council. In the remote scenario that Obama decided to use force against Iran, his subservience to the UN would rule out any possibility of a surprise attack. 
 Although in theory the US military’s capacity to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities is much greater than Israel’s, given its practical inability to launch a surprise attack, in practice it may be much smaller. 
ALL OF these factors constitute overwhelming evidence that there are no conceivable circumstances under which Obama would order a US strike on Iran’s nuclear installations to forestall Iran’s development of nuclear weapons. And this reality should lead Israel’s leaders to three separate conclusions. 
First, and most urgently, Israel must attack Iran’s nuclear installations. Iran’s nuclear ambitions must be set back at least until 2017, the latest date at which a new — and hopefully more rational — US administration will certainly be in office. 
Second, given the fact that the US will not take action against Iran’s nuclear installations, there is no reason for Israel to capitulate to US pressure on lesser issues. The Obama administration has nothing to offer Israel on this most important threat and so Israel should not do anything to strengthen its position. Among other things, this conclusion has clear implications for Jewish construction in Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem, Israel’s future responses to Lebanese aggression, as well as for Israel’s continued cooperation with the UN probes of the Turkish-Hamas terror ship. 
Finally, Obama’s behavior is a clear indication that Israel was wrong to allow itself to become militarily dependent on US military platforms. Former defense minister Moshe Arens wrote recently that Israel should strongly consider abandoning plans to purchase the F-35 and restore the scrapped Lavi jetfighter to active development. Arens suggested that in doing so, Israel may find willing collaborators in the Indians, the French and even the Russians. 
No, the US has not become Israel’s enemy – although the Obama administration has certainly struck an adversarial chord. Polling data suggests that most Americans disagree with Obama’s treatment of Israel and recognize that Iran is a threat to the US.
 
But polls aside, the answer to Israel’s desperate queries is that it is up to us. If the Obama administration teaches us anything, it teaches us that we must rely first and foremost on ourselves. 
Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

Obama’s Misguided Iran Policies

February 14, 2009

Among the topics that President Obama covered in his first news conference on the evening of Monday, February 9th, was Iran.

The president made several troubling statements which is hardly surprising, given that the new administration’s entire approach to Iran is troubling.

President Obama used terms and phrases like “constructive dialogue,” “engage” and “mutual respect and progress.”

None of these expressions has any place in a conversation about Iran.

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.2526/pub_detail.asp

Israel’s made-in-America enemies

It wasn’t a US Army sniper who killed IDF Lt.- Col. Dov Harari and seriously wounded Capt. Ezra Lakia on Tuesday. But the Lebanese Armed Forces sniper who shot them owes a great deal to the generous support the LAF has received from America.
For the past five years, the LAF has been the second largest recipient of US military assistance per capita after Israel. A State Department press release from late 2008 noted that between 2006 and 2008, the LAF received 10 million rounds of ammunition, Humvees, spare parts for attack helicopters, vehicles for its Internal Security Forces "and the same frontline weapons that US military troops are currently using, including assault rifles, automatic grenade launchers, advanced sniper systems, anti-tank weapons and the most modern urban warfare bunker weapons."
Since 2006, the US has provided Lebanon some $500 million in military assistance. And there is no end in sight. After President Barack Obama’s meeting with Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri in June, the White House proclaimed Obama’s "determination to continue US efforts to support and strengthen Lebanese institutions such as the Lebanese Armed Forces and the Internal Security Forces."
And indeed, in late June, US Defense Secretary Robert Gates informed Congress that the Pentagon intends to provide the LAF with 24 120mm mortars, 24 M2 .50 caliber machine guns, 1 million rounds of ammunition, and 24 humvees and trailers. The latest orders should be delivered by the end of 2011.
According to the Los Angeles Times, the administration has already allocated $100m. in military assistance to Lebanon for 2011.
According to Lebanon’s As-Safir newspaper, in written testimony to Congress, last week Obama’s nominee to head the US Central Command, Gen. James Matthis, claimed that relations between US Central Command and the LAF focus on building the LAF’s capabilities "to preserve internal stability and protect borders."
And how is that border protection going? 
Tuesday’s unprovoked LAF ambush of Lt.-Col. Harari’s battalion within Israeli territory showed that the LAF is fully prepared to go to war against the US’s closest ally in the region, in order to deter IDF units from crossing the border.
Even worse, are willing to commit unprovoked acts of illegal aggression to harm Israel.
As The Jerusalem Post reported on Wednesday, there is no reason to be surprised by what happened.
Since 2009, LAF soldiers have frequently pointed their rifles at IDF soldiers operating along the border. In recent months they have also cocked their rifles while aiming them at IDF forces. It was just a matter of time before they started shooting.
The same aggressive border protection is completely absent, however, along Lebanon’s border with Syria. Since 2006, the LAF has taken no actions to seal off that border from weapons transfers to Hizbullah. It has taken no steps to protect Lebanese sovereignty from the likes of Syria and Iran that are arming Hizbullah’s army with tens of thousands of missiles.
THEN THERE’S Centcom’s "internal stability."
For the past four years, in open breach of UN Security Council Resolution 1701, which set the terms for the cease-fire that ended the Second Lebanon War, the LAF has done nothing to block Hizbullah from remilitarizing and reasserting control over southern Lebanon.
Moreover, the institution that the State Department views as the anchor of a multiethnic, independent Lebanon did not lift a finger against Hizbullah when Hizbullah staged a coup against the Saniora government in 2008.
In a sense, by effectively collaborating with Hizbullah, the LAF did ensure "internal stability." 
But it is hard to see how such "internal stability" — based as it is on Hizbullah control over Lebanon — advances US interests.
In stark contrast, as the Los Angeles Times reported last week, the US-supported Lebanese Internal Security Forces have used US signals equipment to help Hizbullah ferret out Israeli agents. According to the Times, "A strengthening Lebanese government is helping Hizbullah bust alleged spy cells, sometimes using tools and tradecraft acquired from Western nations eager to build up Lebanon’s security forces as a counterweight to the Shi’ite group."
The US has refused to reckon with the consequences of its actions. As the Times reported, last week Assistant Secretary of Defense Alexander Vershbow visited Beirut and said that continued US aid and training to the LAF would allow the Lebanese Army to "prevent militias and other nongovernmental organizations" from undermining the government.
It bears recalling that Hizbullah has been a partner in the Lebanese government since 2005. Since its successful coup in 2008, Hizbullah has held a veto over all the decisions of the Lebanese government.
It also bears recalling that during the 2006 war, the LAF provided Hizbullah commanders with targeting data for their missiles and rockets.
The LAF also announced on its official Web site that it would award pensions to families of Hizbullah fighters killed in the war.
UNFORTUNATELY, THE LAF is not the only military organization aligned with Israel’s enemies that the US is arming and training. There is also the US-trained Palestinian army.
As Israel Radio’s Arab Affairs commentator Yoni Ben-Menachem reported last month, the IDF is deeply concerned about the US-trained Palestinian force. Ben-Menachem recalled that since 1996, Palestinians security forces have repeatedly taken leading roles in organizing and carrying out terrorist attacks against Israel.
Hundreds of Israelis have been murdered and maimed in these attacks.
The Palestinian force being trained by the US Army represents a disturbing, qualitative upgrade in Palestinian military capabilities. OC Central Command Maj.-Gen. Avi Mizrahi warned IDF ground forces about the new US-Palestinian threat in May.
As Mizrahi put it in a speech at Tze’elim training base cited by Ben-Menachem, "This is a well trained force, better equipped than its predecessors and trained by the US. The significance of this is that at the start of a new battle [with the Palestinians] the price that we will pay will be higher. A force like this one can shut down a built-up area with four snipers. This is deadly. These aren’t the fighters we faced in Jenin [in 2002]. This is an infantry force that will be fighting us and we need to take this into account. They have offensive capabilities and we aren’t expecting them to give up."
The IDF assesses that the US-trained force will be capable of overrunning small IDF outposts and isolated Israeli communities.
To date, the US has spent $400m. on the Palestinian army. The Obama administration has allocated an additional $100m. for the next year.
And the US is demanding that Israel support its efforts. In a General Accounting Office report issued in May, Israel was excoriated for hampering US efforts to build the Palestinian forces.
The GAO railed against Israel’s refusal to permit the transfer of a thousand AK-47 assault rifles to the Palestinian forces. It criticized Israel’s rejection of US plans to train a Palestinian counterterror force. It complained that Israel does not give freedom of movement to US military advisers to the Palestinian forces in Judea and Samaria.
The US claims that what it is doing cultivates stability. It argues that the Palestinian and Lebanese failure to prevent terror armies from attacking Israel is due to their lack of institutional capacity to rein in terrorism rather than the absence of institutional will to do so. The US claims that pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into these Lebanese and Palestinian armies will enable them to become stabilizing forces in the region that will engender peace. What the administration ignores, however, is the fact that the members and commanders of these US-trained forces share the terrorists’ dedication to Israel’s destruction.
TO ITS undying shame, Israel has publicly supported, or, at best failed to oppose these American initiatives. By doing so, Israel has provided political cover for these US initiatives that endanger its security. Although it is crucial to call the US out for its sponsorship of terror-aligned armies, it is also important to understand Israel’s role in these nefarious enterprises.
Israel has gone along with these US programs for a variety of reasons. Sometimes it has been due to domestic politics. Sometimes it owed to Israel’s desire to be a team player with the US government. But generally the Israeli rationale for not loudly and vociferously objecting to US assistance to enemy armies has been the same as Israel’s rationale for embracing Yassir Arafat and the PLO in 1993 and for every other Israeli act of appeasement toward its enemies and allies alike.
Successive Israeli governments have claimed that by supporting actions that strengthen Israel’s enemies, they gain leverage for Israel, or, at a minimum, they mitigate the opprobrium directed against Israel when it takes actions to defend itself. In Lebanon, for instance, Israel agreed to the US plan to support the Hizbullah-dominated Saniora government in the hopes that by agreeing to give the Lebanese government immunity from IDF attack, the US would support Israel’s moves to defeat Hizbullah.
But this did not happen. Indeed, it could not happen. The pro-Western Lebanese government ministers are beholden to Hizbullah.
Whether they wish to or not, former prime minister Fuad Saniora and his successor Hariri both act as Hizbullah’s defenders to the US.
And once the US committed itself to the falsehood that the Sanioras and Hariris of Lebanon are independent actors, it inevitably became Hizbullah’s advocate against Israel as well. The logic of appeasement moves in one direction only – toward one’s enemies.
The same holds for the Palestinians. Israel believed that once it capitulated to international pressure to recognize the PLO the US, the EU and the UN would hold the PLO to account if it turned out that Arafat and his minions had not changed their ways. But when Arafat ordered his lieutenants to wage a terror war against Israel rather than accept statehood, the US, the EU and the UN did not rally to Israel’s side.
They had become so invested in their delusion of Palestinian peacefulness that they refused to abandon it. Instead, at most, they pinned the full blame on Arafat and demanded that Israel support their efforts to "strengthen the moderates."
And so, in this demented logic, it made sense for the US to build a Palestinian army after the Palestinians elected Hamas to lead them.
And so on and so forth. In every single instance, Israel’s willingness to embrace lies about the nature of its enemies has come back to haunt it. Never has Israel gained any ground by turning a blind eye to the hostility of the likes of Salam Fayyad and Saad Hariri.
It is true; the US is abetting and aiding the war against Israel by sponsoring the LAF and the Palestinian military. But it is also true that the US will not stop until Israel demands that it stop. And Israel will not demand that the US stop building armies for its enemies until Israel abandons the notion that by accepting a lie told by a friend, it will gain that friend’s loyalty.
Originally published in The Jerusalem Post

Sudan, Terror and Radical Islam

16 MAY 2008

Recently Cindy McCain, wife of Senator John McCain, announced that she was divesting the portion of her investment portfolio that was invested in companies doing business in Sudan. This affords us the opportunity to further explore the nature of the regime in Sudan and its role in Jihadist terrorism.

The issue of Sudan is not entirely clear to many Americans. Many do not realize how Sudan is ruled and their role in Jihadist terrorism.

Over the past few years, the Islamic Republic of Sudan has been justifiably targeted by a grassroots divestment movement for the genocide that it has committed against its own people.

Unlike famine and drought, genocide does not simply happen due to forces of nature. Genocide is committed.

And it is no accident that the regime which has committed this genocide is also on the US government’s list of terrorist-sponsoring nations and is thus under US economic and political sanctions.

Sudan has committed genocide over a period of many years in an effort by the Islamist government in Khartoum to impose sharia (a brutal legal system stemming from a virulent interpretation of Islam) on its entire population. Genocide first occurred in southern Sudan over a period of years in which the Arab Islamist government systematically killed hundreds of thousands of innocent black Christian and animist civilians. There are documented cases in which defenseless civilians lined up at aid stations set up by international non-governmental organizations (NGOs) were gunned down by Sudanese Air Force helicopter gunships by the hundreds.

More recently, the genocidal Arab Islamist regime has turned its sights on fellow Muslims—non-Arab blacks—in the Darfur region. These black Muslims do not subscribe to the same brand of militant Islam that the Arab Islamist regime subscribes to, thus they are being attacked in a manner similar to that which occurred in the south of Sudan.

Many Americans are asking, “There are brutal regimes in many areas of the world. Why should I care particularly about Sudan?”

The answer is that Sudan is a terrorist-sponsoring nation that has been involved with terrorist groups that have killed Americans.

http://divestterror.blogspot.com/2008/05/sudan-terror-and-radical-islam.html