Tag Archives: Hamas

Iran: The Islamofascist Terrormasters

Christopher Holton

Date Published: 2006-12-19

The U.S. State Department has for years described Iran as the world’s most active state sponsor of terrorism.

However, in recent years, it has suddenly become fashionable in some circles to downplay Iran’s role in Jihadist terrorism. Most notably, Richard Clarke, the former terrorism advisor in the executive branch, has begun insisting that Iran’s support for terrorism is largely something of the past, and as long as we don’t interfere with their nuclear ambitions, Clarke believes they will continue to behave. On the other hand, if we do take a stand against Atomic Ayatollahs, Clarke says we can expect terrorism worse than anything Al Qaeda is capable of from Iran’s favorite terrorist organization, Hezbollah.

All of this hogwash was recently detailed and refuted nicely by Thomas Joscelyn in the Weekly Standard, in an article entitled “Iran’s War on the West.”

http://www.fsmarchives.org/article.php?id=92513


Lucent-Alcatel: Doing business with states sponsoring terrorism

By Christopher Holton

SPECIAL TO WORLD TRIBUNE.COM

Thursday, April 6, 2006

Alcatel does a considerable amount of business with countries on our State Department’s list of terrorist-sponsoring nations, including Iran and Sudan. Worst of all, the services and products that Alcatel provides to Iran can, at least indirectly, help that nation’s military capability. Among its activities in Iran that have relevance to Tehran’s military and terrorism-related activities are contracts signed with state-controlled Iranian companies to provide data transmission and switching network capabilities. The contracts have reportedly included provisions of hardware, software, technologies and training to Iranian companies. It likewise is installing an undersea telecommunications cable for Iran.

http://www.worldtribune.com/worldtribune/WTARC/2006/ss_holton_04_06.html


Lights, camera, peace process!

The Israeli Left is on a collision course with the Obama administration. It is reportedly trying to undermine negotiations between the Netanyahu government and Fatah. The Obama administration is earnestly seeking to initiate them.
According to an unnamed eyewitness interviewed by Israel Radio, during a July 8 meeting between Kadima Council Chairman and former vice premier Haim Ramon, and Fatah chief negotiator Saeb Erekat, Ramon urged Erekat to tell Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas to reject the Netanyahu government’s offer for direct negotiations towards a peace deal.
Ramon allegedly claimed to speak for President Shimon Peres and warned Erekat that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu will not give the Palestinians what they demand. In light of this, Ramon urged Fatah to reject Netanyahu’s offers to meet.
The implication was clear. If the Palestinians wait out this government, a Kadima-led leftist government will happily give them what they want: Israel on a platter.
Ramon has rejected these allegations. He has also accused the eyewitness of being an agent of the Prime Minister’s Office.
If Ramon is telling the truth, the PMO would have been justified in keeping an eye on him. According to reports from late March, Ramon played a central role in instigating the crisis between Israel and the US that erupted during US Vice President Joseph Biden’s visit to Israel. Ahead of that visit, Kadima MK Yoel Hasson gave an interview to Israel Radio in which he said that the people of Israel would soon see how bad Israel’s relations with the US had become under Netanyahu.
During that visit, the administration seized on a routine meeting of Jerusalem’s municipal planning committee as a means of provoking the largest crisis in US-Israel relations in some twenty years. After Biden’s visit, Makor Rishon reported that Ramon met with one of Obama’s senior Middle East advisors before Biden arrived.
If Ramon did in fact tell Erekat to refuse Netanyahu’s offers to negotiate, it means that the Israeli Left and the Obama administration are working against one another. Whereas the Left’s chief concern is bringing down the government, the administration has made clear that it fervently wishes for Abbas to agree to direct talks with Netanyahu and begin those talks ahead of the midterm Congressional elections in November.
WHILE THEY disagree on when these negotiations should take place, the Israeli Left and the Obama administration agree on what it will take to get them started and keep them going. 
Like Ramon, Obama seeks to woo Abbas to his side by promising to deliver up Israel. According to media reports, Obama has pledged that if Abbas agrees to negotiate, the administration will coerce Netanyahu into submitting to the Palestinians’ demands on substantive issues. These include borders, Palestinian militarization, ethnic cleansing of Jews from Judea and Samaria and large portions of Jerusalem, and other issues.
Unfortunately for Obama, despite these and other massive inducements, Abbas still refuses to negotiate. And so the administration has released its heavy guns.
No, Obama is not threatening to end US training of the Palestinian army. That $550 million training will continue despite Israel’s position that a Palestinian state must be demilitarized and its concern that the US trained force will turn its guns on Israel.
Among other things, that concern is based on the fact that members of the Palestinian security forces and their Fatah affiliates have been responsible for most of the lethal attacks against Israelis in Judea and Samaria in recent years.
Despite this, the Obama administration’s commitment to its Palestinian army is so massive that the US’s General Accounting Office just published a report criticizing Israel for not being sufficiently supportive of the US-trained military force.
No, Obama is not threatening to end US support for Palestinian statehood or stop defining that objective as the US’s central goal in the Middle East. Indeed, Obama’s decision to upgrade the PLO mission in Washington signals that he is willing to consider accepting a Palestinian state formed outside the framework of a peace deal with Israel. That is, he is willing to consider supporting a Palestinian state that will be at war with Israel.
So what are the big guns that Obama has just turned on Abbas in his bid to cajole him into talking to Netanyahu? According to the Daily Telegraph, Obama is threatening not to increase the pressure he is currently exerting on Israel to extend its ban on Jewish building in Judea and Samaria if Abbas refuses to negotiate. So Obama’s "stick" against the Palestinians doesn’t involve sticking it to the Palestinians. It involves the intensity with which he sticks it to Israel.
It is certainly ironic that Ramon’s meeting with Erekat places Kadima in conflict with the Obama administration it supports. But arguably more remarkable than what divides the two is what unites them. 
In both cases, the Israeli Left and the Obama administration are offering to serve up Israel to the Palestinians for negotiations that have no chance whatsoever of leading to a peace deal.
What this means is that both are willing to serve up Israel not for peace, but for political theater.
IT IS hard to think of anything Abbas hasn’t already done to make clear that he doesn’t want to negotiate. He has refused to negotiate. He has demanded impossible preconditions. He has asked Fatah and the Arab League to refuse to negotiate.
 
While Abbas rejects the legitimacy of the Jewish state, his refusal to sit down with Netanyahu is not primarily a question of ideology. It is important to remember that Abbas doesn’t actually represent anyone anymore.
Abbas has no legal authority to represent the Palestinians. His term of office ended in January 2009. The only reason he continues to be referred to as the president of the Palestinian Authority is because the US insisted that he pretend that he is still represents someone.
But Abbas’s status as a has-been is the least of his problems. Even if Abbas’s term had not ended a year and eight months ago, he still wouldn’t have the power to make a deal with Israel. Hamas, not Abbas’ Fatah holds the cards in Palestinian society. This much was made clear in the first instance when Hamas won the Palestinian elections in 2006. By most non-Abbas controlled accounts, despite the billions of dollars Fatah has received in US and EU aid since then, if elections were held today, Hamas would likely win again.
And then there are the military realities.
Today, it is not the US-trained and financed Palestinian army that keeps Abbas’ expired government in power in Judea and Samaria. It is the IDF. If the IDF were to withdraw, Hamas would take over in those areas just as it took over Gaza three years ago.
And if Abbas signed a peace accord with Israel tomorrow, he would have no capacity to implement it. He would be dead before he had a chance to declare statehood. And he knows it.
When Hamas reinstated its missile war against Israel last week, the media contended that Hamas is seeking to derail talks between Abbas and Netanyahu. Whether this is true or not, it misses the point.
The point is that Hamas can derail talks any time it wishes because Hamas is the real power in Palestinian society – not Abbas.
And because the US has coerced Netanyahu into agreeing to hold talks with a Palestinian who has no power to negotiate, and because the Palestinians with actual power are controlled by Iran and wholly committed to Israel’s destruction, it is clear that Obama’s most earnestly held goal and the Israeli Left’s greatest desire is not to engage in a peace process, but to engage in political theater with Abbas at Israel’s expense.
UNFORTUNATELY, WHILE the goal is theater, its consequences are anything but entertaining. Indeed, they are deadly.
This longstanding penchant for having Israel negotiate with the Palestinians despite the latter’s refusal to accept the legitimacy of the Jewish state has brought about a situation in which Israel faces the prospect of a two-state solution that involves the creation of two Palestinian states. The first – the Palestinian state in Gaza, has existed for five years. It is run by Hamas and is controlled by Iran and Syria. 
The second – the Palestinian state in Judea and Samaria is run by Fatah. Protected by the IDF, it wages war against Hamas in the streets. And legitimized by the Israeli Left and the US, Fatah wages diplomatic war against Israel internationally. And when the blinds are pulled, Fatah forces join with Hamas and Islamic Jihad in their common goal of killing Israelis.
Because this political theater requires everyone in a position of power to ignore the fact that the Palestinians have both no interest and no ability to make peace with Israel, the Palestinians are consistently supported. And since it requires Israel to make endless concessions to the Palestinians to keep the drama going, support for Israel has consistently eroded.
Reality on the Palestinian side is not the only thing the likes of Ramon and Obama ignore in the interest of their love of theater.
They also ignore that the Israeli people have had enough of their play acting.
In a poll of Israeli Jews carried out for Channel One last week, by a margin of more than two to one, respondents said the withdrawal from Gaza was a mistake. By a margin of three to one they said they would not support similar withdrawals in the future. By a margin of nearly four to one they said their support for settlers had increased since the expulsions from Gaza. And by a margin of two to one, they said that the withdrawal harmed Israel’s deterrence.
Ramon is the architect of the unilateral withdrawal strategy. He cooked it up back in 1994 when the Palestinian introduction of the suicide bomber to the daily lives of Israelis soured the public on the peace process with the PLO. And now, with no chance that Abbas or any other Palestinian leader will sign or implement a deal with Israel, it is clear that the only way to progress in the political theater Obama and Ramon so fervently desire is for Israel to give more unreciprocated concessions to the Palestinians.
The obvious remedy for all of this is for the Israeli Left and the US to recognize what it is that they are doing. Outside the world of theater, neither the Israeli Left nor the US have an interest in building yet another terror state in Judea and Samaria in addition to the one in Gaza. Neither has an interest in weakening Israel to the point where it cannot defend itself and therefore invites aggression from its neighbors.
If the Israel Left and the Obama administration truly want peace, they would be making some demands on the Palestinians. At a minimum they would demand that the Palestinians accept the legitimacy of the Jewish state and reform their anti-Semitic institutions.
But then they wouldn’t have their political theater. And that is something that cannot live without.

The new, improved Obama

You have to hand it to US President Barack Obama. He is relentless. Just when you thought he was shifting gears – easing up on Israel and turning his attention to Iran’s nuclear weapons program – he pulls out a zinger. His recent courtship of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu led some Israelis and supporters of Israel in the US to believe the administration had seen the light. After 18 months, we were told Obama finally realized that contrary to what he had thought, Palestinian statehood is not the most urgent issue in the Middle East, Iran’s nuclear weapons program is.

In the past week alone, two prominent commentators – Aluf Benn from Haaretz and Ehud Ya’ari from Channel 2 both wrote articles claiming that Obama’s Middle East policy has undergone a transformation. As Benn put it, "President Barack Obama’s campaign of wooing Israel reflects a fundamental about-face in US policy in the Middle East."

And in Ya’ari’s words in an article in the Australian, "The foreign policy team of US President Barack Obama is undertaking a reassessment of its policy all over the Middle East, including Israel." Both claimed the administration has resolved to cooperate with Israel as an ally rather than attack it as an obstacle to peace, and that Washington has recognized that Iran must be prevented from acquiring nuclear weapons.

The basic notion informing both of these nearly identical articles is that the Obama administration’s foreign policy is fundamentally pragmatic rather than ideologically motivated. Both Ya’ari and Benn, like many of their fellow commentators on the Left, argue that Obama’s decision to invite Netanyahu to Washington and treat him like an ally rather than an enemy is proof that when stripped to its essentials, his foreign policy is pragmatic.

After a year and half in office, Obama recognized that his previous view of the Middle East was wrong. And as a pragmatist, he has embarked on a new course.

Yet before the ink on their proclamations had a chance to dry, Obama demonstrated that their enthusiasm was misplaced. Late last week the administration decided – apropos of nothing – to upgrade the diplomatic status of the PLO mission in Washington.

From now on, the PLO will be allowed to fly its flag like a regular embassy.

Its representatives will enjoy diplomatic immunity just like diplomats from states.

Indeed the PLO delegate in Washington Maen Areikat claimed that the administration’s move equates the PLO’s diplomatic status in the US to that of Canada and states in Western Europe.

Some in the media have claimed that this is a symbolic act and essentially meaningless. But this is not true. While this step does not constitute US recognition of a Palestinian state in the absence of a peace treaty between the Palestinians and Israel, it certainly sends a clear signal that this is the direction the US is heading. As such, it represents a dangerous step that will encourage continued Arab hostility.
TO PUT this move in perspective, it is worth comparing the PLO’s new status to that of the US’s firm ally and fellow democracy – Taiwan, the Republic of China. Whereas the PLO now has a "delegation general" in Washington, Taiwan has the "Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office."

When asked to comment on the move, White House spokesman Thomas Vietor said, "This decision reflects our confidence that through direct negotiations, we can help achieve a two-state solution with an independent and viable Palestine living side by side with Israel. We should begin preparing for that outcome now, as we continue to work with the Palestinian people on behalf of a better future."

Like the decision itself, Vietor’s explanation signals that the Obama administration has not embraced pragmatism over ideology. Vietor could never have made his statement if it had.

Any pragmatic analysis of the situation leads to the clear conclusion that there is little chance of the Palestinians agreeing to a settlement anytime soon. Just this past week Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas escalated still further his already unacceptable preconditions for direct negotiations.

Now in addition to his absurd demand that Israel agree ahead of time to withdraw to the indefensible 1949 armistice lines, Abbas is demanding that it also agree to withdraw all of its forces to those lines and accept the deployment of foreign forces along its borders with the Palestinian state.

These are demands that no government in its right mind would accept in direct negotiations, let alone as a precondition for them.

And any pragmatic US administration upon hearing these demands would recognize that there is no chance that the Palestinians will agree to any reasonable offer of a peace treaty in the foreseeable future.
Indeed, for any pragmatic US administration, the message to send at this time is that statehood can be achieved only by getting serious about negotiations. That means clarifying that statehood is not inevitable but, rather a potential result of Abbas deciding to abandon his preconditions and get serious about talks.

In line with this, if the US intends to recognize a Palestinian state formed in the framework of a negotiated peace settlement, then it is utterly ridiculous, in the face of Abbas’ latest pronouncements, for it to upgrade the Palestinians’ diplomatic status. The move makes sense only if the US is secretly preparing to help the Palestinians avoid negotiations and obtain a state that is not established in the framework of a peace treaty.

But then, an administration that is willing to recognize a Palestinian state outside the framework of a peace agreement is an administration that is motivated by ideology and not by pragmatism. Moreover, it is motivated by an ideology that is fundamentally opposed to a strong democratic Israel.

This is the case because there is no Palestinian leader – not the US favorites Mahmoud Abbas and Salam Fayyad and not their competitors in Hamas – who accepts the legitimacy of the Jewish state. And so any state formed outside the framework of a peace treaty will be in a de facto state of war with Israel. Indeed, its legitimacy with the Palestinian people and other Arabs will be defined by its commitment to the eventual destruction of the Jewish state. And now, by upgrading the PLO’s mission, the Obama administration is actively encouraging just such an outcome.

OBAMA’S DECISION shows that he has not allowed reality to interfere with his perception of the absence of a Palestinian state as the most urgent problem he faces in the Middle East. He has adopted other measures that indicate that he remains fundamentally unconcerned about the threat that Iran poses to both US national security and to regional security in the Middle East.

That threat has been spelled out clearly in recent weeks by top US officials. Last week the outgoing US commander in Iraq, Gen. Ray Odierno, told reporters that Iran fields three Shi’ite militias in Iraq whose forces are attempting to attack US troops as they withdraw from the country. Iran’s goal is to present the image that the US is withdrawing in defeat.

As for Afghanistan, last March the Sunday Times reported that Iran is training Taliban fighters at camps inside Iran. Last Wednesday the deputy commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps threatened that US commander Gen. David Petraeus will be overwhelmed by terror in Afghanistan. Brig.-Gen. Massoud Jazayeri told the Iranian media, "The presence of Petraeus in Afghanistan will increase terrorism and seal the expansion of American failures.

The US government has no chance of success as the igniting flames which will engulf America in Afghanistan are already visible."

Then there is Iran’s nuclear weapons program.

As CIA Director Leon Panetta said last month, sanctions on Iran will "probably not" deter the regime from moving forward. This understanding would be sufficient to convince a pragmatic administration that force must be used to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power. A pragmatic administration, after all, could be expected to understand what a nuclear armed Iran would mean for the US’s strategic interests in the region.

If Iran becomes a nuclear power it will be able to wreak havoc on oil shipments from the Persian Gulf. So too, it will make it all but impossible for the US to safely project is military force in the region. The current threat that Iranian proxies will force US troops to flee Iraq and Afghanistan will likely be realized.
Furthermore, Kuwait, Bahrain and Qatar can be expected to expel US forces from their territory as the regimes cut deals with the new regional nuclear power.

Obama recently ended his public support for appeasing Iran and seemed to adopt a more confrontational approach as he moved to pass a new round of sanctions at the UN Security Council and when he signed congressional sanctions. But rhetoric aside, as Michael Ledeen reported at Pajamas Media Web site last week, his appeasement policy remains in force.

Since 1979 the Swiss Embassy in Teheran has represented US interests. According to Ledeen, last week the Swiss ambassador submitted a request from US congressmen to meet with their Iranian counterparts. The Iranians rejected their request out of hand.

What this means is that the Obama administration – now working through congressional proxies – is still trying to cut a deal with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Ali Khamenei.

All of this makes clear the sort of leader Obama is. He is a pragmatic politician and a radical ideologue all rolled into one. The pragmatic politician understands that going into the congressional elections in November, he has to convince the US public that he is a reliable ally for Israel and that he is credible on Iran. So he invited Netanyahu to Washington for a public hug and he made angry declarations about Iran’s nuclear program.

As an ideologue though, even in the midst of his charm offensive he couldn’t resist the urge to attack the Jewish state, so he signaled that he will recognize a Palestinian state that does not recognize it. And as an ideologue, he can’t stop begging the Iranians to love him.

The desire of commentators like Benn and Ya’ari to believe that the US government is behaving rationally is understandable. But their wish is unsupported by facts.

We can only hope that Netanyahu has not been similarly fooled.

 

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

Change we must believe in

Change has come to the Middle East. Over the past several weeks, multiple press reports indicate that Turkey is collaborating militarily with Syria in a campaign against the Kurds of Syria, Iraq and Turkey.
Turkey is a member of NATO. It fields the Western world’s top weapons systems.
Syria is Iran’s junior partner. It is a state sponsor of multiple terrorist organizations and a proliferator of weapons of mass destruction.
Last September, as Turkey’s Islamist government escalated its anti-Israel rhetoric, Ankara and Damascus signed a slew of economic and diplomatic agreements. As Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu made clear at the time, Turkey was using those agreements as a way to forge close alliances not only with Syria, but with Iran.
"We may establish similar mechanisms with Iran and other mechanisms. We want our relationship with our neighbors to turn into maximum cooperation via the principle of zero problems," Davutoglu proclaimed.
And now those agreements have reportedly paved the way to military cooperation. Syrian President Bashar Assad has visited Istanbul twice in the past month and then two weeks ago, on the Kurdish New Year, Syrian forces launched an operation against Kurdish population centers throughout the country.
On Wednesday, Al-Arabiya reported that hundreds of Kurds have been killed in recent weeks.
The Syrian government media claim that 11 Kurds have been killed.
There are conflicting reports as well about the number of Kurds who have been arrested since the onslaught began. Kurdish sources say 630 have been arrested. The Turkish media claims 400 Kurds have been arrested by Syrian security forces.
Al-Arabiya also claimed that the Syrian campaign is being supported by the Turkish military.
Turkish military advisers are reportedly using the same intelligence tool for tracking Kurds in Syria as they have used against the Kurds in Turkey and Iraq: Israeli-made Heron unmanned aerial vehicles.
Even if the Al-Arabiya report is untrue, and Turkey is not currently using Israeli-manufactured weapons in the service of Syria, the very fact that Syria has military cooperation of any kind with Turkey is dangerous for Israel. Over the past 20 years, as its alliance with Turkey expanded, Israel sold Turkey some of the most sensitive intelligence- gathering systems and other weapons platforms it has developed. With Turkey’s rapid integration into the Iranian axis, Israel must now assume that if Turkey is not currently sharing those Israeli military and intelligence technologies and tools with its enemies, Ankara is likely to share them with Israel’s enemies in the future.
OBVIOUSLY, THE least Israel could be expected to do in this situation is to cut off all military ties to Turkey. But amazingly and distressingly, Israel’s leaders seem not to have recognized this. To the contrary, Israel is scheduled to deliver four additional Heron drones to Turkey next month.
Even more discouragingly, both the statements and actions of senior officials lead to the conclusion that our leaders still embrace the delusion that all is not lost with Turkey. Speaking to the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee earlier this month, IDF Chief of General Staff Lt.- Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi told lawmakers, "What happens in Turkey is not always done with the agreement of the Turkish military. Relations with the Turkish army are important and they need to be preserved. I am personally in touch with the Turkish chief of staff."
As Turkish columnist Abdullah Bozkurt wrote last week in Today’s Zaman, Ashkenazi’s claim that there is a distinction between Turkish government policies and Turkish military policies is "simply wishful thinking and do[es] not correspond with the hard facts on the ground."
Bozkurt explained, "Ashkenazi may be misreading the signals based on a personal relationship he has built with outgoing Turkish military Chief of General Staff Gen. Ilker Basbug. The force commanders are much more worried about the rise in terror in the southeastern part of the country, and pretty much occupied with the legal problems confronting them after some of their officers, including high-ranking ones, were accused of illegal activities. The last thing the top brass wants is to give an impression that they are cozying up with Israelis…"
As described by Michael Rubin in the current issue of Commentary, those "legal problems" Bozkurt referred to are part of a government campaign to crush Turkey’s secular establishment.
As the constitutionally appointed guarantors of Turkey’s secular republic, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Islamist government has targeted the military high command for destruction.
Two years ago, a state prosecutor indicted 86 senior Turkish figures including retired generals, prominent journalists, professors and other pillars of Turkey’s former secular leadership for supposedly plotting a coup against the Islamist regime.
By all accounts the 2,455-page indictment was frivolous. But its impact on Turkey’s once allpowerful military has been dramatic.
As Rubin writes, "Bashed from the religious Right and the progressive Left, the Turkish military is a shadow of its former self. The current generation of generals is out of touch with Turkish society and, perhaps, their own junior officers. Like frogs who fail to jump from a pot slowly brought to a boil, the Turkish General Staff lost its opportunity to exercise its constitutional duties."
And yet, rather than come to terms with this situation, and work to minimize the dangers that an Iranian- and Syrian-allied Turkey poses, Israel’s government and our senior military leaders are still trying to bring the alliance with Turkey back from the dead. Last month’s disastrous "top secret" meeting between Industry, Trade and Labor Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer and Davutoglu is case in point.
Far from ameliorating the situation, these sorts of gambits only compound the damage. By denying the truth that Turkey has joined the enemy camp, Israel provides Turkey with credibility it patently does not deserve. Israel also fails to take diplomatic and other steps to minimize the threat posed by the NATO member in the Iranian axis.
OUR LEADERS’ apparent aversion to accepting that our alliance with Turkey has ended is troubling not only for what it tells us about the government’s ability to craft policies relevant to the challenges now facing us from Turkey. It bespeaks a general difficulty that plagues our top echelons in contending with harsh and unwanted change.
Take Egypt for example. Over the past week, a number of reports were published about the approaching end of the Mubarak era. The Washington Times reported that Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak is terminally ill and likely will die within the year. The Economist featured a 15- page retrospective on the Mubarak era in advance of its expected conclusion.
There are many differences between the situation in Egypt today and the situation that existed in Turkey before the Islamists took over in 2002.
For instance, unlike Turkey, Egypt has never been Israel’s strategic ally. In recent years however, Egypt’s interests have converged with Israel’s regarding the threat posed by Iran and its terror proxies Hizbullah and Hamas – the Palestinian branch of the Mubarak regime’s nemesis, the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. These shared interests have paved the way for security cooperation between the two countries on several issues.
All of this is liable to change after Mubarak exits the stage. In all likelihood the Muslim Brotherhood will have greater influence and power than it enjoys today. And this means that a successor regime in Egypt will likely have closer ties to the Iranian axis. Despite the Sunni-Shi’ite split, joined by a common enmity toward the Mubarak regime, the Muslim Brotherhood has strengthened its ties to Iran and Hizbullah of late.
Recognizing the shifting winds, presidential hopefuls are cultivating ties with the Brotherhood.
For instance, former International Atomic Energy Agency chief and current Egyptian presidential hopeful Mohamed El-Baradei has been wooing the Brotherhood for months. And in recent weeks, they have been getting on his bandwagon. Apparently, El-Baradei’s support for Iran’s nuclear program won him credibility with the jihadist group even though he is not an Islamic fanatic.
If and when the Brotherhood gains power and influence in Egypt, it is likely that Egypt will begin sponsoring the likes of Hamas, al-Qaida and other terrorist organizations. And the more powerful the Brotherhood becomes in Egypt, the more likely it is that Egypt will abrogate its peace treaty with Israel.
It is due to that peace treaty that today Egypt fields a conventional military force armed with sophisticated US weaponry. The Egyptian military that Israel fought in four wars was armed with inferior Soviet weapons. Were Egypt to abrogate the treaty, a conventional war between Egypt and Israel would become a tangible prospect for the first time since 1973.
Despite the flood of stories indicating that the end of the Mubarak era is upon us, publicly Israel’s leaders behave as though nothing is the matter. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s routine fawning pilgrimage to Mubarak this week seemed to demonstrate that our leaders are not thinking about the storm that is brewing just over the horizon in Cairo.
TURKEY’S TRANSFORMATION from friend to foe and the looming change in Egypt demonstrate important lessons that Israel’s leaders must take to heart. First, Israel has only a very limited capacity to influence events in neighboring countries.
What happened in Turkey has nothing to do with Israel and everything to do with the fact that Erdogan and his government are Islamist revolutionaries. So, too, the changes that Egypt will undergo after Mubarak dies will have everything to do with the pathologies of Egyptian society and politics, and nothing to do with Israel. Our leaders must recognize this and exercise humility when they assess Israel’s options for contending with our neighbors.
Developments in both Turkey and Egypt are proof that in the Middle East there is no such thing as a permanent alliance. Everything is subject to change. Turkey once looked like a stable place. Its military was constitutionally empowered – and required – to safeguard the country as a secular democracy. But seven years into the AKP revolution the army cannot even defend itself.
So, too, for nearly 30 years Mubarak has ruled Egypt with an iron fist. But as Israel saw no distinction between Mubarak and Egypt, the hostile forces he repressed multiplied under his jackboot.
Once he is gone, they will rise to the surface once more.
Moving forward, Israel must learn to hedge its bets. Just because a government embraces Israel one day does not mean that its military should be given open access to Israeli military technology the next day. So, too, just because a regime is anti-Israel one day doesn’t mean that Israel cannot develop ties with it that are based on shared interests.
Whether it is pleasant or harsh, change is a fact of our lives. The side that copes best with change will be the side that prospers from it.
Our leaders must recognize this truth and shape their policies accordingly.
Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

Fit for the New York Times

Two important statements this week shed a light on the nature of the Palestinian conflict with Israel. Both were barely noted by the media.
On Saturday the London-based Al-Hayat newspaper reported that Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas gave US mediator George Mitchell a letter detailing a number of concessions that he would make towards Israel in a final peace treaty. These included a willingness to accept permanent Israeli sovereignty over the Jewish Quarter in Jerusalem’s Old City and over the Western Wall. The Al Hayat report received enthusiastic and expansive coverage in the Israeli media and in media outlets throughout the world.
What was barely noted was that just hours after the report hit the airwaves, Abbas’s chief negotiator Saeb Erekat categorically denied the story. In an interview with Israel Radio, Saeb Erekat said the story was untrue.
Abbas has been the recipient of adulatory press coverage in Israel over the past several days. Last week he thrilled the Hebrew-language media when he invited Israeli reporters to a sumptuous feast at his Ramallah headquarters. And then the Al Hayat story came out. Lost in the excitement was Abbas’s eulogy for arch terrorist Muhammad Daoud Oudeh who died over the weekend. Oudeh was the mastermind of the PLO’s massacre of 11 Israeli athletes during the 1972 Munich Olympics. Abbas himself served the operation’s paymaster.
As Palestinian Media Watch reported, in a condolence telegram quoted in the Abbas-controlled Al-Hayat al Jadida newspaper, Abbas touted Oudeh as, "a wonderful brother, companion, tough and stubborn, relentless fighter," and described him as "one of the prominent leaders of the Fatah movement." 
So while the local and international media pounced on the Al Hayat story as proof that the Palestinians are serious about peace, they failed to mention that their hope was based on a story that the Palestinians themselves deny. So too, in their rush to embrace Abbas, they failed to mention his glorification of an unrepentant mass murderer who commanded the terror squad that massacred Israel’s Olympic athletes. 
These statements by Palestinian officials the media routinely characterize as moderates, demonstrate how deeply distorted and largely irrelevant the discourse on the Middle East has become. As the "moderate" Palestinians insist they are uninterested in peaceful coexistence and territorial compromise with Israel, news coverage in Israel and throughout the Western world is dominated by other issues. Specifically, discussion of prospects for peace between Israel and the Palestinians is dominated by an endless discussion of Israel’s Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria and Jewish neighborhoods in eastern, southern and northern Jerusalem.
The most egregious recent example of this distortion was a 5,000 word article in Tuesday’s New York Times regarding US charitable contributions to these Jewish communities. Titled, "Tax Exempt Funds Aid Settlements in the West Bank," the report was co-authored by five Times reporters. It was the product of weeks of research. And notably, the Times chose to publish it on its front page above the fold on the very day that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu visited the White House.
The Times article is a textbook case of the media’s ideologically motivated aggression against Middle East reality. Any way you look at it, it is a premeditated affront to the very notion that the role of a newspaper is the report facts rather manufacture news aimed at shaping perceptions and skewing debate.
The article goes to great lengths to discredit the American citizens who make charitable, tax deductible donations to organizations that provide lawful support to Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria and Jewish neighborhoods in southern, northern and eastern Jerusalem. It paints a sinister picture of such contributions and contributors and accuses them of actively undermining US foreign policy. 
The contributors, we are told in the opening lines of the report are the Left’s bogeyman -Evangelical Christians and religious Jews. They are unacceptable actors in the Middle East because they both believe that Jewish control of Judea and Samaria is a precursor to the coming of the messiah.
Reacting to the Times’ report, on Wednesday Honest Reporting noted that the article appears to be the product of active collusion between the Times and the radical, anti-Zionist, tax exempt Gush Shalom organization. As Honest Reporting relays, in July 2009, Gush Shalom sent out a communiqué to its supporters calling for the initiation of a campaign that, "includes a combination of legal action and public advocacy aimed at denying federal tax exempt (501c3) status to US charities supporting settlement activity." 
The Times’ article bears all the markings of a political campaign. First, despite the valiant efforts of five Times reporters, the article exposes no illegal activity. At best, its investigation of more than forty organizations that contribute funds to the hated Jewish communities in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria indicated that less than a handful of them are guilty of poor accounting practices. 
Assuming that Honest Reporting’s eminently reasonable conclusion that the Times report is the product of collaboration between the newspaper and radical anti-Zionist groups is accurate, the report is shockingly hypocritical. By publishing it, the Times is engaging in the precise behavior it argues the organizations it investigated should be punished for purportedly engaging in. To wit, in the service of radical, tax-deductible organizations, the Times seeks to undermine US foreign policy. 
For the past four decades, it has been the foreign policy of the United States to maintain a strategic alliance with Israel. The goal of Times’-aligned groups like Gush Shalom is to undermine that alliance by discrediting and criminalizing those who wish to strengthen and maintain it.
The Times’ article uses dark language and innuendo to create the impression that there is something treacherous and evil about contributions to Jewish communities and neighborhoods in Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem. For instance, the article argues, "The donations to the settler movement stand out [from other charitable contributions that promote US foreign policy goals] because of the centrality of the settlement issue in the current talks and the fact that Washington has consistently refused to allow Israel to spend American government aid in the settlements. Tax breaks for the donations remain largely unchallenged, and unexamined by the American government."
What the Times’ fails to acknowledge is that the reason these donations are "largely unchallenged, and unexamined," is because it is the constitutional right of American citizens to contribute to charities that promote policy goals even when those goals – like those of Gush Shalom – are antithetical to US policy as determined by the US government. 
The Times’ alleges that these communities are illegal. Its authority for this allegation is none other than Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat. Erekat opined to the paper, "Settlements violate international law."
The truth is that Israeli communities beyond the 1949 armistice lines are legal. But even if one were to accept the argument that they are unlawful, one would be accepting an argument based on the language of the 4th Geneva Convention from 1949 which prevents occupying powers from transferring their population to the areas under occupation. 
There is no possible reading of the convention that would prohibit the voluntary movement of Israelis to Judea, Samaria and post-1967 neighborhoods in Jerusalem. Likewise, there is no possible reading of the convention that would prohibit the provision of financial support to Israelis who voluntarily move to the areas in question. 
Yet it is precisely this indisputably lawful, voluntary movement of Jews to these areas – which the Times acknowledges is often done against the wishes of Israel’s governments – that the Times’ article attacks. 
In short, the Times’ contention that there is something legally problematic about these donations is preposterous both as it relates to US law and as it relates to international law. 
From a journalistic perspective, worse than the Times’ decision to engage in precisely the behavior it seeks to criminalize when carried out by its political nemeses on the Christian and Jewish Right, and worse even than the article’s false characterization of law, is the article’s clear attempt to obfuscate the main problem with land issues in Judea and Samaria. This it does in the interest of manufacturing a false but ideologically sympathetic picture of the situation on the ground.
The Times only gets around to alluding to – and obfuscating — the real problem with land issues in the 58th paragraph of the article. The Times reports, "Islamic judicial panels have threatened death to Palestinians who sell property in the occupied territories to Jews."
Actually, while this may be true, it is not the problem. The problem is that the second law promulgated by the PA — just weeks after it was established in 1994 – criminalized all Arab land sales to Jews as a capital crime. Since 1994 scores of Arabs have been killed in both judicial and extrajudicial executions for selling land to Jews. 
This open move to hide the fact that since 1994 the PA has dispatched death squads to murder both Palestinians and Israeli Arabs suspected of selling land to Jews is a shocking miscarriage of journalistic standards. Whereas the Times required five reporters to work for weeks to come up with exactly nothing illegal in the operations of US charitable groups that support Jewish communities the Times wishes to destroy, the Times would have needed to invest no resources whatsoever to discover that the PA kills any Arab who sells land to Jews. The PA has made no effort to hide this policy. It is in the public sphere for anyone willing to look at reality.
And that is of course the real issue here. The entire Times’ "investigation" of American charitable groups that support Jewish communities and neighborhoods in Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem is a blatant attempt by a major newspaper to hide the real issues prolonging the Palestinian conflict with Israel. Those issues – exposed by Abbas’s praise for a terrorist mass murderer, Erekat’s denial that Abbas has any interest in compromising with Israel, as well as by the PA’s policy of killing all Arabs who sell land to Jews – do not serve the Times’ purpose of blaming the absence of peace on Israel generally and on the Israeli Right and its supporters in the US in particular. 
And so it is that 17 years after the start of the so-called peace process between Israel and the PLO, and ten years after the PLO destroyed that process by launching a terror war against Israel, and four and a half years after the Palestinians elected Hamas to lead them, we are still stuck in a distorted, irrelevant discourse about the Middle East. We are stuck in a rut because politically and ideologically motivated media organs operate hand in globe with radical groups seeking to undermine Israel’s national sovereignty and end its alliance with the US. 
Together they manufacture news that bear no relation with reality or the true challenges facing those who seek peace in the Middle East. But obviously for the New York Times, that is what makes it fit to print.  
Originally published in The Jerusalem Post. 

Standing down the hanging jury

In Britain today, hating Israel has become a valid criminal defense. This week five criminal defendants charged with destroying property valued at some $285,000 at the EDO MBM arms factory in Brighton during a January 2009 break-in were found innocent of all charges. They were found innocent despite the fact that all five admitted to having committed the crime. As the Guardian reported, the defendants boasted in online forums at the time of the incident that their crime was premeditated. It took place during the IDF’s campaign against Hamas in Gaza. Their declared aim was to, "smash up," the factory. And they achieved their goal.

The jury found the five innocent because the jurors accepted as a valid defense the defendants’ claim that they vandalized the EDO MBM plant because they wanted to prevent Israel from carrying out war crimes in Gaza. EDO MBM does business with the IDF, therefore, the defendants claimed and the jury agreed, it deserved to be attacked.

In finding as they did, the jurors were acting in accordance with the guidance they received from the presiding judge. As the Guardian reported, Judge George Bathurst-Norman instructed the jury, "You may well think that hell on earth would not be an understatement of what the Gazans suffered in that time."

What this verdict shows is that in British courts, hatred of Israel has become a license to break the law. This turn of events is the logical flipside of Parliament’s abject refusal to amend Britain’s outrageous universal jurisdiction law. British lawmakers, government officials and jurists all basically agree that the law – which allows magistrates to issue arrest warrants against foreigners based on allegations filed by British subjects – is a legal travesty. It subverts the capacity of the British government to conduct foreign policy by placing all foreigners at the mercy of political activists.

Both Spain and Belgium amended their universal jurisdiction laws for this reason.

But in Britain no amendment is in the offing because the demand for the amendment is linked to Israel. Since Israel-hating activists began hijacking magistrate courts to force the issuance of arrest warrants against Israeli military personnel and politicians five years ago, Israel has repeatedly asked that the law be changed. And because Israel wants it changed, it will remain in force.

In fact, not only will it remain in force, its use against Israelis expands by the day. Today any Israeli who served in the IDF has to think twice about travelling to Britain lest doing so place him or her in jeopardy of being arrested on trumped-up charges.

What both the Brighton court’s verdict and the abuse of the universal jurisdiction law show is that today in England Israelis cannot assume that the laws will protect them. And by the same token haters of Israel can assume that they will be immune from punishment for violent attacks against Israel-related targets.

THE PERVERSION of the legal system in England isn’t unique. Take the situation in Malmo, Sweden for instance. In an almost one-to-one parallel of the arguments that won the day in the Brighton courtroom, in January Malmo Mayor Ilmar Reepalu used the occasion of Holocaust Remembrance Day to bash Israel and Israel supporters and equate them with Nazi Germany.

Over the past few years, Malmo’s Jewish community has been fleeing the city due to the massive increase in anti-Jewish violence conducted by an alliance of Muslims and leftists. Reepalu denied there is anti-Jewish violence in his city and then went on to blame the city’s Jewish residents for the violence launched against them. As he put it to the Skanska Dagbladet newspaper, if the city’s Jews don’t wish to be attacked, all they have to do is denounce Israel. But he said, "Instead the community chose to hold a pro-Israel demonstration," adding darkly that their action, "may convey the wrong message to others." 
So like the EDO MBM plant, Malmo’s Jews deserve to be attacked.

Then there is the situation in Australia. In the weeks that followed the Mossad’s alleged assassination of Hamas terror-master Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai in January, Australia’s generally relaxed Foreign Ministry sprang into action. No, it didn’t attack Dubai for allowing wanted arch-terrorists to roam free and enjoy the principality’s famed hospitality at one of its luxury hotels.

Australia’s Foreign Ministry angrily expelled an Israeli diplomat amid unproven accusations that the Mossad officers allegedly involved in the counter-terror operation used forged Australian passports to enter Dubai.

Notably, the fire-in-the-belly attitude that marked Australia’s assault on Israeli embassy personnel had no parallel in an Australian federal courtroom last week as Judge Neil McKerracher adjudicated an extradition request from Hungary.

Hungary requested the extradition of retired Nazi Charles Zentai. Zentai is wanted in Hungary for his role in the 1944 murder of Peter Balasz. Balasz was 18 when he was killed. Zentai and his fellow Nazis killed Balasz because he was Jewish and threw his body into the Danube River.

There is no statute of limitations for Zentai’s crime. Yet, McKerracher didn’t care about the law. Instead he followed his heart. And his heart told him that extraditing the 88-year-old war criminal who has evaded justice for 66 years for his crime would be "oppressive and incompatible with humanitarian considerations." And so he denied Hungary’s request.

To sum up the situation Down Under, an Israeli diplomat got expelled from Australia because Israel allegedly used Australian passports to kill a senior member of an organization dedicated to the eradication of Jewry. And an Australian judge ruled that a Nazi war criminal who actively participated in the genocide of Jewry can live out the rest of his life in peace in the bosom of his family.

THIS BRINGS us back to Britain for a moment. Britain was the first country to expel Israeli diplomats over the Mabhouh incident. The Foreign Office received the rousing support of the British media for its action. The Guardian for instance characterized Israel’s alleged use of British passports in the Mabhouh operation as the action of an "arrogant nation that has overreached itself."

Notably, while Israel allegedly used forged British passports to target a terrorist, last week it emerged that Russia used British passports to spy on the US. Reports of the Russian spy ring that was arrested last week in the US indicate that members of the ring used forged British passports. Amazingly, (or actually, predictably), neither the Foreign Office nor the British media have taken or called for action to be taken against Russian embassy personnel for abusing British travel documents.  

As to the international campaign against Israel following the Mabhouh assassination, this week Poland is set to rule on Germany’s extradition request of Uri Brodsky. Polish officials acting on a German arrest warrant arrested Brodsky at a Polish airport last month for his alleged role in forging a German passport for one of the alleged Mossad operatives allegedly involved in the Mabhouh operation. Germany is adamant that Poland send Brodsky to Germany to stand trial for his alleged role in assisting in the targeted killing of a wanted terror mastermind.

Germany’s feverish insistence that Brodsky stand trial in Germany is of a piece with its newfound appetite for waging political warfare against Israel.

Last week Germany’s Bundestag unanimously passed a resolution calling for an international investigation of the IDF’s takeover of the Turkish-Hamas ship Mavi Marmara on May 31. The resolution also demanded that Israel immediately end its lawful maritime blockade of the Gaza coast and slammed Israel for violating the principle of proportionality. Like the court in Brighton, the Bundestag’s action asserts that Israel is guilty by nature and that as a consequence, unlike every other country in the world, it cannot be judged by an impartial body. Rather, as the British judge made clear in his libelous instructions to the Brighton jury, guilty Israel must be judged by a hanging jury that draws its conclusions in advance.

ONE QUESTION that necessarily arises amidst any discussion of this legalistic-political assault on Israel and the worldwide perversion of law in the service of Israel’s enemies is where is the Government of Israel in all of this?

Last week Britain’s Methodist Church voted to boycott all products emanating from Israel’s Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria and from Jewish neighborhoods in Jerusalem. It probably goes without saying that the Methodist Church has levied no similar boycott against any other country. Indeed, as Robin Shepherd wrote in Monday’s Jerusalem Post, not only did the Methodist Church never consider boycotting say Sudan or Iran or Saudi Arabia for their human rights abuses, the only countries the Methodists considered attacking other than Israel were Britain and the US… for having relations with Israel.

As Shepherd relates, among other factors guiding the church’s decision was its members’ assertion during the boycott deliberations that Jews worship a racist God.

Shepherd recommends that Israel fight fire with fire. In his words, "If the Methodist Church is to launch a boycott of Israel, let Israel respond in kind: Ban their officials from entering; deport their missionaries; block their church-funds; close down their offices; and tax their churches. If it’s war, it’s war."
These recommendations are eminently reasonable.

Indeed, the government has no cause for not adopting them.

For generations Jews have clung to the belief that law is intrinsically good and if we follow the law the law will protect us. But this has never been more than a fool’s belief.

As we see today in the wholesale perversion of law in the service of Israel’s destruction in countries around the Western world, law is but a tool. Depending on who wields it, it can be a force for injustice just as easily as it can be a tool for pursuing justice.

Israel’s response to date to all of these legal assaults against it has been muted and defensive. But as the energized boycott movement and the Brighton court’s obscene ruling and similar actions throughout the world show, Israel must itself take up the law as a cudgel to beat its foes.

Where are Israel’s government lawyers? Why aren’t they issuing international arrest warrants against every agent of Hamas and Hizbullah?

Where are Israel’s diplomats? Why aren’t they expelling British, Swedish, Australian and German diplomats involved in subverting Israel’s sovereignty in Jerusalem and other subversive and unlawful activities? 

Where are Israel’s political leaders?

It is not enough to decry the international campaign to delegitimize Israel in speeches before foreign audiences and in newspaper interviews. A war is being waged against us and it is well past time for us to fight back and fight to win.

 

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

NewsReal Interviews Caroline Glick

Caroline Glick has received notoriety for her recent parody, "We Con the World." She considers herself an American-Israeli Jew who is currently a deputy editor for the Jerusalem Post. She was a captain in the Israel Defense Force and from 1997- 1998 served as Assistant Foreign Policy Advisor to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. She is a senior fellow for Middle Eastern Affairs at the Center for Security Policy in Washington, DC where she routinely briefs senior administration officials and members of Congress on issues of joint Israeli-American concern. In 2008, she wrote the book, Shackled Warrior: Israel and the Global Jihad. She commented on the issues facing Israel today. 

NewsRealBlog: Do you understand the criticism you are getting for your video?

Caroline Glick: No. We were just making a parody of "We Are the World."

NRB: Are you upset that Jews like Steven Spielberg are not speaking out in support of Israel?

Glick: Speilberg produced Schindler’s List and Munich. He clearly has a vision of Jews based upon weakness, not strength and upon Jews being protected by non-Jews rather than defending themselves with the tools of power.

NRB: Are you upset with the criticism?

Glick: Not at all. If they or Hamas said they liked me I would be very concerned about what I am doing.

NRB: Why did you make the video?

Glick: Latma is our website. At Latma it is our belief that by exposing the media to ridicule, we will help to change the nature of public discourse. We were planning on doing this parody for only the Israeli domestic audience.

NRB: Why did you change your mind?

Glick: We decided to direct it to the international audience when we saw the international community pile on against Israel and produced it in English.

NRB: Is this the first parody you created?

Glick: No. On the website LATMA we have had lots and lots of parodies. We have produced them with English subtitles for the past several months.

NRB: Do you want to respond to those critics who are calling you a racist?

Glick: The lefts’ favorite method is to call anyone who gives them an argument they can’t contend with a racist. It’s ok that the left call Israel a neo-Nazi or Fascist state. I categorize those attacks against myself and my team as the last refuge of desperate, pathetic, frustrated ideologues that cannot handle reality.

NRB: Has your job at the Jerusalem Post been affected by this outcry to fire you?

Glick: Definitely not.

NRB: What point did you want to get across with the video?

Glick: My team and I wanted to lash out to those people who dared to call our naval commandos murderers for defending their country and themselves from a lynch mob. Calling those on the flotilla "peace activists" is a complete lie. They were just championing the rights of a terrorist organization.

NRB: What do you want to tell your critics?

Glick: 90% of the tens of thousands of responses to this clip were positive. The leftist response to what we did is marginal. We have received an outpouring of support not only from the US but literally from all over the world.

NRB: Do you agree that a lot of the left embrace anti-Semitism?

Glick: Yes. It’s the anti-Semitism of Hamas, Hezbollah, and Helen Thomas. They want the destruction of the state of Israel, the third exile. People don’t want to get their arms around the fact that Israel is in existential danger.

NRB: Did you read Andrew McCarthy’s book The Grand Jihad which also talks about the left?

Glick: I haven’t read it yet but I can’t wait to read his book. I read his earlier book. I think he is an excellent and a wonderful supporter of Israel.

NRB: Do you think the left is trying to demonize you?

Glick: They try to personalize everything. They can’t deal with content based upon reality. They can’t deal with the fact that leftism is a recipe for disaster on every level. They attack people who point it out.

NRB: What is your book about?

Glick: My book is a compilation of my columns from 2002 to 2004.

NRB: Can you be more specific?

Glick: I use my columns as a vehicle to explain the basics of Jihad. Israel is on the front lines. There is an onslaught on Western Civilization and the free world. How do we in Israel contend with the challenge that we are being presented with by radical Islam. These are basically the themes I touch on with my column twice a week.

NRB: Do you think America is also on the front lines to fight Jihad?

Glick: The Obama Administration is doing two things. First, they are ignoring and denying the existence of the enemy, the Radical Jihadists. They are pretending there is no such thing. Second, President Obama does not believe the US should have a leadership role in the world. The US should just be a part of the pact. They need to change this policy because the US has a right and a duty to lead the free world in defending itself against radical Islam.

NRB: What do you think of Iran backing down and not sending the supposed aid ship to Gaza?

Glick: A video released around June 18 will have Ahmadinejad in it. If Iran is sending a ship it is not an aid ship. Call it like it is-a war ship. They are basically provoking an act of war with Israel.

NRB: Are you going to make more videos and write more books?

Glick: We will do what is necessary, so yes.

 

 

Netanyahu must play for time

Just ahead of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s trip next week to Washington, Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas went on a charm offensive towards the Israeli media. On Tuesday Abbas invited representatives of the Hebrew-language press to his office in Ramallah and assured them of his good intentions towards Israel.

We have been here before. In Netanyahu’s last go-around as Prime Minister, it seemed like every time he was due to visit Washington, then president Bill Clinton’s advisors would set up a meeting for Abbas’s predecessor Yassir Arafat with the Israeli media. Arafat would talk about how much he wanted peace with Israel, and how he was just waiting for Netanyahu to agree to embrace the cause of peace.

The peace-crazed Israeli media enthusiastically reported Arafat’s lies to the Israeli people without questioning either Arafat’s motives or his honesty. Has they exhibited even a minimal amount of journalistic competence, they would have at least checked to see what the Arafat-controlled Palestinian media was reporting about their meeting with the "Rais."

But that would have ruined their Netanyahu-bashing narrative. And so the Israeli public was denied knowledge that not only did the Arafat-controlled Palestinian media fail to report their meeting, Arafat’s newspapers and television broadcasts routinely told the Palestinian people that there could be no peace with the Jews. Indeed, they daily exhorted the Palestinians to view the destruction of Israel as their greatest goal.

In a similar manner, this week as Israel’s newspapers published ecstatic headlines about Abbas’s moderation and desire for peace, the Abbas-controlled Palestinian media made no mention of the meeting. Moreover, in recent weeks, the Abbas-controlled Palestinian media have been intensifying their incitement against Israel and Jews.

As Palestinian Media Watch reported this week, on Tuesday Abbas-controlled PATV aired a sermon by the PA’s Mufti Sheikh Muhammad Hussein. The mufti said, "The Jews, the enemies of Allah and of His Messenger, the enemies of Allah and of His Messenger! Enemies of humanity in general, and of Palestinians in particular… The Prophet says: ‘You shall fight the Jews and kill them…’"

Similarly, last week PATV re-broadcast a "documentary" film in which all of Israel is described as "occupied Palestine." In one excerpt cited by PMW, the film’s narrator asserts, "The West Bank and Gaza have another section in Palestine which is the Palestinian coast that spreads along the [Mediterranean] sea, from …Ashkelon in the south, until Haifa, in the Carmel Mountains.

"Haifa is a well-known Palestinian port. [Haifa] enjoyed a high status among Arabs and Palestinians especially before it fell to the occupation [Israel] in 1948. To its north, we find Acre. East of Acre, we reach a city with history and importance, the city of Tiberias, near a famous lake, the Sea of Galilee. Jaffa, an ancient coastal city, is the bride of the sea, and Palestine’s gateway to the world."

Tuesday, the moderate Abbas told his Israeli guests that he’s ready to hold direct negotiations with Netanyahu as soon as the premier gives him his positions on borders and security. As Abbas’s full statement made clear, what he means by that is that he will negotiate with Netanyahu after the latter agrees to adopt his predecessor Ehud Olmert’s position on borders and security. Those positions included an Israeli withdrawal to the 1949 armistice lines – including the division of Jerusalem — and the stationing of foreign forces along the border with Jordan.

For its part, the Obama administration is putting its own pressure on Netanyahu to make Abbas – and US President Barack Obama happy. Over the past several weeks the administration has been pressuring Netanyahu to extend the ten-month prohibition on Jewish construction in Judea and Samaria beyond its scheduled September end date. As a sweetener to help Netanyahu swallow this strategically and politically disastrous pill, Obama and his aides claim that an extension of the draconian, bigoted policy would serve as a confidence building measure to convince Abbas to begin direct negotiations with Israel.

In Obama’s bid to convince Netanyahu extend the Jewish building ban we see the foreign policy equivalent of a used car salesman’s attempt to sell the same customer the same lousy car twice – using different lies each time.

Last year, Obama and his advisors justified their demand that Netanyahu act to strangle the Jewish communities of Judea and Samaria by claiming that doing so would make the Arab world to begin normalizing its relations with Israel. Obama’s Jewish surrogate former congressman Robert Wexler told Netanyahu last July that in exchange for barring Jews from building kindergartens in Israel’s heartland, Israel would see twenty Arab embassies opening in Tel Aviv.

Of course not only did that not happen, moments after Netanyahu announced the prohibition on Jewish building, Obama’s peace mediator George Mitchell claimed that his massive and unprecedented concession was insufficient. Channeling Abbas, Mitchell declared that the US expects Israel to agree to destroy all the Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria and withdraw to the indefensible 1949 armistice lines. Weeks after Netanyahu’s concession in Judea and Samaria, the administration began its onslaught against Jewish building in Jerusalem.

As the minutes tick by towards Netanyahu’s visit with Obama at the White House, Netanyahu is signaling that he is willing to buy the same used car a second time. Although Netanyahu continues to insist that he will not accept preconditions for negotiations, he has empowered Defense Minister Ehud Barak to take a leading role in contacts with the PA.

Wednesday Barak announced that he will be holding direct talks with Israel-boycotting PA Prime Minister Salam Fayyad in the coming days. Earlier this week Barak effectively announced his support for an Israeli withdrawal to the 1949 armistice lines even without a peace treaty. In a media interview Barak claimed that that the unilateral withdrawals from Gaza and South Lebanon were great achievements that should be repeated.

Netanyahu’s desire to avoid a confrontation with the Obama administration is understandable. Given the nature of the Israeli media, Netanyahu would certainly pay a political price if he were to be blamed for making the administration turn against Israel. But the truth is that today more than ever, Obama shares Netanyahu’s desire to avoid an open clash.

The midterm Congressional elections are just four months away and Obama’s Democratic colleagues are running scared. Polls show that the Democratic Party is likely to lose control over the House of Representatives. The Democrats will also likely see their control over the Senate weakened if not lost. As the Wall Street Journal’s political analyst John Fund reported this week, out of 70 competitive Congressional districts, the Democrats will likely lose 60 and so lose control over the House.

Going into such a problematic electoral season, the last thing Obama needs is an open confrontation with Israel. A new row with Netanyahu will not only harm Democrats in key states like Florida, New York, New Jersey, Illinois and Pennsylvania. It will harm the Democrats’ fundraising efforts among Jewish American donors. Over the past several months there have been repeated reports that Jewish Americans are drastically cutting back their donations to Democrats. The current trend will likely escalate if Obama forces Netanyahu into a corner next week.

What this means is that Netanyahu is well placed to stand up to Obama’s pressure. If he plays his cards wisely, he can say no to Obama and avoid an open confrontation. For instance, instead of agreeing to extend the building prohibition, Netanyahu should say that he is willing to discuss that demand in face-to-face negotiations with Abbas. Rather than agree to Abbas’s preconditions, Netanyahu should say that he is willing to listen to Abbas’s position in face-to-face negotiations. And so on and so forth. Such statements by Netanyahu will take the pressure for making concessions off him and put Obama and Abbas on the spot.

Even more importantly, it will buy Israel time. And buying time should be Israel’s chief goal with respect to Washington today. Since taking office, Obama has repeatedly demonstrated that he will not reconsider his fundamentally hostile view of Israel. Obama’s basic belief that Israel’s strength and size are to blame for all the violence and radicalism in the Arab world is not subject to change regardless of how clearly and continuously events on the ground prove it wrong.

Even worse for Israel, Obama is not alone in this view. Indeed, as a report in Foreign Policy this week makes clear, Obama’s position on Israel is moderate when compared to the positions being staked out in influential policy circles in the US military.

Wednesday Foreign Policy published the content of a memo written last month in the US Military’s Central Command. The memo, a "Red Team," assessment of how the US should position itself vis-à-vis the likes of Hamas and Hizbullah, reveals that among key members of the US policy-making community, Israel is viewed with extreme hostility.

The leaked memo reportedly reflects the views of a significant number of senior and mid-level officers in Centcom, including large numbers of intelligence officers, as well as a significant number of area analysts stationed in the Middle East. It argues that it is wrong for the US to lump jihadist movements like Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood, al Qaida and Hizbullah in one group.

Dismissing the significance of the identical religious dogma that stands at the root of these movements, the memo asserts that Hamas and Hizbullah are pragmatic and important social forces with which the US must foster good relations. The memo calls for the US to support the integration of Hizbullah forces into the Lebanese military. It also calls for the US to encourage and permit the integration of Hamas forces into the US-trained Palestinian security forces.

As far as Israel is concerned, the memo blames the Jewish state for the US’s failure to date to adopt these recommended policies. Moreover, the memo’s authors condemn Israel’s maritime blockade of Gaza as keeping "the area on the verge of a perpetual humanitarian collapse."

The Centcom memo also condemns Israel’s July 2006 decision to respond to Hizbullah’s unprovoked bombardment of northern Israel and its unprovoked cross-border attack against an IDF patrol in which five soldiers were killed and two were kidnapped and subsequently murdered. Denying Hizbullah’s subservient relationship with the Iranian regime, the report claimed that Israel’s decision to use force to defend itself against Hizbullah’s acts of war served to strengthen Hizbullah’s ties to Teheran.

What this memo shows is that Israel has little hope of seeing a change for the better in US policy in the near future and its best bet today is to play for time. Next week at the Oval Office Netanyahu should capitalize on his advantage four months ahead of the Congressional elections and put the burden on Obama and Abbas to show their good intentions.

 

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

Alternatives to surrender

To the roaring cheers of the local media, on Sunday the Schalit family embarked on a cross-country march to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s residence. They set out two days after the fourth anniversary of IDF Sgt. Gilad Schalit’s captivity.
Outside their home in the North on Sunday, Gilad’s father Noam Schalit pledged not to return home without his son. The Schalit family intends to camp out outside of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s home until the government reunites them with Gilad.
For weeks the local media – and especially Ma’ariv and Yediot Ahronot – have portrayed the Schalit family’s trek to Netanyahu as a reenactment of Moses’ journey to Pharaoh. Like Pharaoh, the media insinuates that Netanyahu is evil because he refuses to free Gilad from bondage.
The only drawback to this dramatic, newspaper-selling story is that it is wrong. Gilad Schalit is not a hostage in Jerusalem. He is a hostage in Gaza. His captor is not Netanyahu. His captor is Hamas. 
And because the story is wrong, the media-organized cavalcade of ten thousand well intentioned Israelis is moving in the wrong direction. And not only is it going in the wrong direction, it is doing so at Gilad Schalit’s expense.
The truth that Yediot and Ma’ariv’s marketing departments ignore is that Schalit’s continued captivity is a function of Hamas’s growing strength. To bring him home, Israel shouldn’t release a thousand terrorists from prison. It shouldn’t strengthen Hamas.
To bring Gilad Schalit home a free man, Israel must weaken Hamas. And this is an eminently achievable goal. Gilad’s father Noam knows it is an achievable goal. That is why last week Noam Schalit was the most outspoken critic of Netanyahu’s decision to abandon Israel’s economic sanctions against Hamas-controlled Gaza. That is why over the past four years the Schalit family has staged countless protests against Israel’s massive and continuous assistance to Hamas-controlled Gaza.  
If anything positive is to come from this march, then when the Schalit family arrives in Jerusalem they should abandon the newspapers’ demand that Israel surrender to all of Hamas’s demands. They should acknowledge that doing so will only guarantee that more Israelis will be kidnapped and murdered by Hamas and its allies. 
If the Schalits wish to criticize the government, they should criticize Netanyahu and his government for the steps they have taken to strengthen Hamas. The Schalits should demand that the government reinstate and tighten Israel’s economic sanctions against Gaza. They should demand that Israel end its supply of electricity and gasoline to Gaza and take more effective action to block smuggling into Gaza through the tunnels along the Gaza-Egypt border. All of these actions will weaken Hamas, and so contribute to the prospect of Hamas being forced by the Gazans themselves to release Schalit to his family. 
ONE OF the important truths ignored by Israel’s pathological media is that Hamas and its Iranian sponsor are not all powerful. They are vulnerable to criticism from their own publics. And Israel is capable of fomenting such criticism. 
For example, the imprisoned terrorists whose release Hamas demands in exchange for releasing Schalit have consistently responded rationally to Israeli threats. The Knesset is slowly debating a bill that would worsen prison conditions of terrorists. And the terrorists are worried. Their worry provoked them to demand that Hamas be more forthcoming with Schalit. 
By the same token, were Israel to cut off electricity to Gaza – an act that is not merely lawful, but arguably required by international law – we could expect residents of Gaza to express a similarly rational demand to Hamas. That is, were Israel to weaken public support for Hamas, Hamas would be more likely to bow to Israel’s will. 
And if Hamas is vulnerable to public criticism, the Iranian regime is downright terrified of public criticism. Take the regime’s behavior in the wake of the Turkish-Hamas flotilla campaign. In the days that followed Israel’s bungled May 31 takeover of the Mavi Marmara terror ship, Iran announced it was sending two of its own ships to Gaza. Israel responded rationally and forthrightly. The government warned that any Iranian ship would be viewed as an enemy ship and Israel would respond in accordance with the rules of war. 
As Iran expert Michael Ledeen has argued repeatedly, the Iranian regime is terrified of getting the Iranian people angry over its radical foreign policy. In light of its precarious standing with its own public, Israel’s forthright threat of war brought the regime to its knees. 
Last Thursday Hossein Sheikholdslam, the Iranian regime functionary responsible for the Gaza-bound ships told the Iranian news service IRNA that plans to send the ships were scrapped because Israel "sent a letter to the United Nations saying that the presence of Iranian and Lebanese ships in the Gaza area will be considered a declaration of war on [Israel] and it will confront it." 
During the war with Iran’s Hizbullah proxy in 2006, thousands of Iranians demonstrated against Hizbullah. They demanded that the regime invest its money in the local economy and not in Hizbullah and the Palestinians. Were Israel to present Schalit as an Israeli victim of the Iranian regime, it could provoke a similar popular outcry against Iran’s support for Hamas.
  
The media-manipulated Schalits are not the only ones acting precisely against their own interests. The government is acting with similar madness in its relations with the Obama administration. Indeed, Netanyahu ended Israel’s lawful economic sanctions against Hamas-controlled Gaza, (sanctions that served, among other things as a bargaining chip for freeing Schalit), because the Obama administration placed overwhelming pressure on him to do so. 
Not wishing to let the Mavi Marmara crisis go to waste, US President Barack Obama has used it as a means to weaken Israel against Hamas. Obama announced that he is giving Hamas-controlled Gaza $400 million in US aid. He forced Netanyahu to end Israel’s economic sanctions against the illegal Hamas regime. And he continues to threaten to abandon US support for Israel at the UN. Moreover, according to remarks by a senior Hamas terrorist to the London-based al Quds al Arabi newspaper on Friday, the Obama administration maintains direct ties to the Hamas leadership in Syria.
   
When Netanyahu entered office last spring his desire to appease Obama was understandable. At the time, he was operating under the hope that perhaps Obama could be appeased into ending his onslaught against the Jewish state. But the events of the past year have made clear that Obama is unappeasable . Every concession Israel has made to Obama has merely whetted the US President’s appetite for more.
 
The policy implications of this state of affairs are clear. First, Israel must strive to weaken Obama. Since Israeli concessions to Obama strengthen him, Israel must first and foremost stop giving him concessions. 
Weakening Obama does not involve openly attacking him. It means Israel should act in a way that advances its interests and forces Obama to reconsider the desirability of his current foreign policy.
Regionally, Israel should make common cause with the Kurds of Iran, Iraq and Syria who are now being assaulted by Iran, Turkey and Syria. Doing so is not simply the moral thing to do. It weakens Iran, Syria and Turkey and demonstrates that Obama’s appeasement policies are harming those who love freedom and empowering those who hate it. 
By the same token, Israel should do everything it can to strengthen the Iranian Green movement. Every anti-regime action in Iran – regardless of its size – harms the regime and therefore helps Israel. And every anti-regime action in Iran exposes the moral depravity and strategic idiocy of Obama’s policy of appeasing the mullocracy.
As for the US domestic political realm, in Ambassador Michael Oren’s all but schizophrenic recent statements about the Obama administration’s policy towards Israel we may at last be witnessing an embrace of political sanity on the part of the government. For the past several months, Oren has acted as the Obama administration’s most energetic cheerleader to the US Jewish community. Oren has repeatedly and wrongly reassured US Jewish audiences that Obama is a great friend of Israel, that his Democratic Party remains loyal to the US-Israel alliance and that the Republicans are wrong to claim that there is a difference between the two major US political parties when it comes to supporting Israel. 
The pinnacle of Oren’s pro-Obama campaign came with his interview last week with the Jerusalem Post. There he brought all of these false and counter-productive claims into the public realm. Apparently Oren’s decision to make his adulation of the Obama administration public finally forced his bosses in Jerusalem to order him to cease, desist and do an about face. 
And so, last week, Oren told a closed audience of Israeli diplomats the truth. Under Obama, Oren whispered, there has been a "tectonic rift" in US relations with Israel. While some of Obama’s advisors are sympathetic to Israel, these advisors have no influence on Obama’s positions on Israel. No doubt recognizing how silly his about face made him look, Oren tried to deny his statements at the Foreign Ministry. But it is hard to imagine anyone will take him seriously. 
During his visit to the White House next week, Netanyahu should follow the path set by Oren’s quickly leaked remarks. Netanyahu should abstain from praising Obama for his friendship and speak instead about the fact that the US-Israel alliance is vital for both countries’ national security. 
NETANYAHU SHOULD insist on the right to call on questioners at his joint appearance with Obama. And he should use those questions and those appearances to discuss why Israel’s actions are not only legal and necessary for Israel, but vital for US national security. During his stay in the US, Netanyahu should discuss the global jihad, Islamic terrorism, the freedom loving Kurds and the freedom loving Iranian people every chance he gets. Indeed, he should create opportunities to discuss them.
Here we see a crucial point of convergence between the Schalit family march to Jerusalem and Netanyahu’s trip to Washington. To increase the effectiveness of their efforts on behalf of Gilad, ahead of Netanyahu’s visit to Washington, the marchers should split into two groups. 
The first group should continue to Jerusalem and demand that Israel take a firmer stand against Hamas. The second group should walk to Tel Aviv and camp out outside the US Embassy. There they should demand that the administration end its contacts with Hamas, end its pressure on the Israeli government to strengthen Hamas, cancel Obama’s plan to give an additional $400 million dollars in aid to Hamas and use the US’s position on the UN Security Council to condemn Turkey for its material support for Hamas. 
For too long, by allowing themselves to be led by our deranged media, Israeli citizens and governments alike have ignored the basic fact that the answer to every question is not more Israeli concessions. Contrary to what our tabloids would have us believe, surrender is only one option among many. It is time we try out some alternatives.   
Originally published in The Jerusalem Post