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The western way of war

General Stanley McChrystal has paid a huge price for his decision to give Rolling Stone reporter Michael Hastings free access to himself and his staff. But he performed a great service for the rest of us. US President Barack Obama fired McChrystal — his hand-picked choice to command NATO forces in Afghanistan — for the things that he and his aides told Hastings about the problematic nature of the US-led war effort in Afghanistan. But by acting as he did, McChrystal forced the rest of us to contend with the unpleasant truth not only about the US-led campaign against the Taliban in Afghanistan. He told us the unpleasant truth about the problematic nature of the Western way of war at the outset of the 21st century.

Hastings’ now famous article, "The Runaway General," told the story of an argument. On the one hand, there are people who want to fight to win in Afghanistan. On the other hand, there are people who are not interested in fighting to win in Afghanistan. Obama – and McChrystal as his general — occupy the untenable middle ground. There they try to split the difference between the two irreconcilable camps. The inevitable end is preordained.

The US and its NATO allies first deployed in Afghanistan in October 2001 with the aim of toppling the Taliban regime and destroying Al Qaida’s infrastructure in the country. They have remained in the country ever since with the goal of preventing the Taliban from returning to power.

After McChrystal took command a year ago, he conducted a review of the allied strategy. His revised strategy was based on counter-insurgency methods developed in Iraq. It called for a surge of 40,000 US forces in Afghanistan. It also recommended that NATO train 400,000 Afghan forces who, in the long term, would replace NATO forces once the Taliban was defeated.

McChrystal’s strategy was greeted with moans by leading members of Obama’s leftist base in the administration and outside it. Led by Vice President Joseph Biden, they offered a counter-strategy. As Biden has explained it, the alternative would involve deploying special forces units and airpower to target the Taliban as it becomes necessary, and otherwise disengage from the country at quickly as possible.

McChrystal and his allies dismissed Biden’s strategy as a recipe for disaster. Without a sufficient number of forces on the ground, the US would lose its ability to gather intelligence and so know what targets to attack. Recent reports that the US drone attacks in Pakistan are killing civilians rather than al Qaida and Taliban members indicate just how difficult it is to gather credible, actionable intelligence from a distance.
Presented with the two opposing strategies, Obama decided to split the difference. He ordered 30 thousand troops to Afghanistan. He refused to increase the target number of Afghan security forces from its previous 230,000. And he announced that US forces would begin to withdraw from Afghanistan in July 2011.

Citing administration officials, last December the Washington Post explained Obama’s goal as follows, "The White House’s desired end state in Afghanistan… envisions more informal local security arrangements than in Iraq, a less-capable national government and a greater tolerance of insurgent violence."

So too, an administration official stated, "The guidance they [the military] have is that we’re not doing everything, and we’re not doing it forever. … The hardest intellectual exercise will be settling on how much is enough."

As J.E. Dyer noted at the time and reasserted this week at Commentary’s Contentions blog, "this was not executable guidance." Or more to the point, as the Rolling Stone article illustrated, when executed, this guidance brings not victory nor even stability.

The White House’s guidance, as extrapolated from Obama’s chosen strategy for Afghanistan endangers NATO forces. It empowers the Taliban. It demoralizes Afghans who would potentially stand with NATO against the Taliban. And in the end, it ensures that as NATO forces depart, the Taliban will return to power in a blaze of glory marching hand in hand with al Qaida.

In recent months Obama and his advisors have repeatedly attacked Afghan President Hamid Karzai for his problematic positions on the Taliban. But their criticism is unfair. They cannot expect loyalty from a man America is set to abandon in a year. It is up to Karzai and his fellow Afghans to cut deals with the Taliban while they still have something to bargain with.

By all accounts, until he was fired Wednesday, McChrystal had a better relationship with Karzai than anyone else in the US government. And this is not surprising. As White House and State Department officials signaled their willingness to cut deals with the Taliban, McChrystal and his forces have fought the Taliban.

Hastings devoted a great deal of attention to the deleterious impact US rules of engagement are having both on the war effort and on troop morale. Due to the administration’s aversion to civilian casualties, preventing civilian casualties has become a chief fighting aim for the US military. Yet since the Taliban war effort relies on civilian infrastructures and human shields, the strategic significance of preventing civilian casualties is that US forces’ ability to fight the Taliban is dramatically circumscribed.

For instance, Hastings reports on the death of Corporal Michael Ingram. Ingram was killed last month by an explosive device hidden in a house that had been used as a Taliban position.

Ingram’s commanders had repeatedly requested permission to destroy the house and had repeatedly been denied permission. Destroying the house, they were told would have run counter to the aim of not upsetting civilians.

Since Obama is commander in chief, it is reasonable for criticism of this losing strategy to be directed towards him. But the truth is that for the better part of the last several decades, with occasional important exceptions, this sort of "half pregnant" strategy for war fighting has been the template for Western armies.

Today US forces in Afghanistan are fighting in a manner that is depressingly similar to that forced upon IDF forces in Lebanon in the 1990s. Like the US forces in Afghanistan today, during the 1990s, concerns about civilian casualties caused Israel’s political leadership to constrain IDF actions in southern Lebanon in a manner that effectively transformed soldiers into sitting ducks. Israel’s finest were reduced to fighting from fortified positions and Hizbullah was given a free hand to intimidate Lebanese civilians, commandeer private homes and schools to use as firing positions and forward bases, and generally maintain the initiative in the fighting.

As he withdrew IDF forces from south Lebanon ten years ago – like Biden today – then prime minister Ehud Barak claimed that Israel didn’t need boots on the ground to fight Hizbullah. If we needed to go in to fight, we would send in commando squads or fighter jets to do the job. Of course, as US drone operations in Pakistan again demonstrate, without a presence on the ground, you cannot have any certainty that you are attacking real targets.

The important story this week was not about a US general with abysmal judgment about the media. Rather the story is that in Afghanistan, the US is repeating a sorry pattern of Western nations of not understanding — or perhaps not caring — that if you are not willing to fight a war to victory, you will lose it.

The stakes in Afghanistan are clear. NATO forces can defeat the Taliban, or the Taliban can defeat them. To win, all the Taliban needs to do is survive. Once NATO is gone, like Hizbullah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza, the Taliban will be crowned the victors and from their failed state, they will be able to again attack the US and its allies.

There were only two instances in the last ten years where Western forces fought to victory. Israel defeated the Palestinians when in the wake of Operation Defensive Shield in 2002, it retained security control over Judea and Samaria. The US defeated al Qaida and Muqtada el-Sadr’s Mahdi Army in Iraq in 2007 and 2008 by taking and retaining security control over Iraq.

Both countries’ victories have been eroded in recent years as they have removed their forces from population centers and restricted them to more static positions. In both cases, the erosion of the Israeli and American achievements is due to waning political will to maintain military control.

It is hard to imagine that McChrystal’s decision to open his doors to Rolling Stone was a calculated move to blow the lid off of the mirage of strategic competence surrounding the "good war" in Afghanistan. This is not the first time that the US military has mistakenly given access to hostile Rolling Stone reporters. And of course, the US military – not unlike the IDF and the British military – has a long history of giving undeserved access to its media foes and paying the price for its mistakes.

But still, the truth remains that by effectively committing career suicide, McChrystal has posed a challenge to his country – and to the Western world as a whole. Now that you know the truth, what is it going to be? Are you willing to lose this war? Are you willing to see the Taliban restored to power in Afghanistan?

This week Haaretz reported on a new hit children’s song that is making waves throughout the Arab world. Called, "When we die as martyrs," the song is sung by a children’s choir called "Birds of Paradise." In a YouTube video of the song, children between the ages of two and six sing sweetly of their desire to die for Palestine and are shown triumphantly killing kippa-wearing Jews.

The Taliban’s perspective on the value of human life is similarly grotesque.

For years, citizens of free nations have willfully ignored or dismissed the significance their enemies’ gruesome goals and ideology. They have claimed that what these people stand for is insignificant. At the end of the day, they say, the only reason there are wars is because the nations of the West provoke them by being strong. And so, when they have fought wars, they have fought them with strategies that can bring them nothing but defeat.

McChrystal’s final act as US commander in Afghanistan was to show us where this leads. But it also reminds us that there is another choice that can be made. The Western way of war needn’t remain the path of defeat. That still is for the people of the West to decide.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

The high price of coalition stability

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and his colleagues are doing their best to put a pretty face on an ugly situation. After nearly three weeks of deliberations, Netanyahu and his government caved in to massive US pressure to ease, if not end, Israel’s blockade of Hamas-controlled Gaza.
On Sunday the government announced that all economic sanctions on Gaza will be immediately lifted. Henceforth, Hamas-controlled Gaza will have an effectively open economic border with Israel. Israel will only prohibit the transfer of military material. Even dual-use items, like cement, will be allowed in if international officials claim that they are to be used in their humanitarian projects.
Netanyahu and his colleagues argue that these new concessions have now given Israel the international legitimacy it needs to maintain its naval blockade of the Gaza coast. But this is untrue. Even as he welcomed Netanyahu’s latest capitulation, US President Barack Obama made clear that he expects Israel to continue making unreciprocated concessions to Hamas.
Following the government’s announcement, the White House declared, "We will work with Israel, the Palestinian Authority, the Quartet and other international partners to ensure these arrangements are implemented as quickly and effectively as possible and to explore additional ways to improve the situation in Gaza, including greater freedom of movement and commerce between Gaza and the West Bank."
In plain English that means that the administration doesn’t trust Israel. It will escalate its pressure on Israel by among other things, pressuring it to provide members of the illegal Hamas regime in Gaza greater access to Judea and Samaria.
AS IF anticipating its next capitulation, government spokesmen told the media that in addition to ending economic sanctions on Gaza, Israel is now considering permitting the EU to station inspectors at its land crossings into Gaza. That is, Israel is considering a move that will constitute a first step towards surrendering its sovereign control over its borders.
The economic sanctions the government is now cancelling were not simply legal, they were required by international law. Binding UN Security Council resolution 1373 requires states and non-state actors to deny support of any kind to terrorist organizations. And here, in a bid to win international "legitimacy" for its lawful blockade of Gaza, Israel has bowed to US pressure to unlawfully facilitate the economic prosperity of an area controlled by an illegal terrorist organization.
There is something pathetic about the Prime Minister’s office’s protestations that by bowing to White House pressure the nations of the world will now accept our right to defend ourselves from an Iranian-controlled terrorist organization committed to the genocide of the Jewish people. After all, we have heard these hollow words many times before.
This notion that unilateral Israeli capitulation to terrorists would bring Israel international "legitimacy" is of course how former prime minister Ariel Sharon justified his strategically indefensible decision to cede Gaza – and the international border between Gaza and Egypt – to Palestinian terrorists.
If they attack us after we leave, he claimed, we’ll have all the international support in the world to really destroy them.
Today, the government argues, all we have to do is sell them spaghetti and cilantro and the international community will suddenly rally to our side.
According to sources close to the cabinet, the main advocate for the latest capitulation was Defense Minister Ehud Barak. Barak is the serial bungler. Ten years ago, he argued that his decision to relinquish Israel’s security zone in south Lebanon to Hizbullah guaranteed that Israel would have international legitimacy to really take it to the Iranian proxy army if it dared to attack us after we left.
Barak is also the deep strategic thinker who brought us the Palestinian terror war.
Barak promised that if Yasser Arafat rejected his offer at Camp David and so demonstrated that his commitment to destroy the Jewish state trumped his interest in establishing a Palestinian state, that the international community would rally around Israel and we’d have all the international legitimacy we needed to defeat the PA.
And in the lead-up to the Mavi Marmara fiasco, it was reportedly Barak who decided it would be a terrific idea to outfit the naval commandos with paintball guns. Doing so, he promised would convince the Obama administration to support Israel against Hamas.
A key question that needs to be considered is what makes policymakers like Barak advance such colossally stupid and dangerous policies time after time. Israel’s history since 1993, when then prime minister Yitzhak Rabin and then foreign minister Shimon Peres opted to embrace Arafat and the PLO, bring thousands of PLO terrorists to the outskirts of Israel’s major cities and give them weapons and international legitimacy indicates that three factors come into play.
First there is the fact that many of Israel’s leading politicians are simply not that smart.
They are happy to be led by an ideologically radical media that have insisted since the 1980s that Israel must withdraw to the indefensible 1949 armistice lines.
Not only are they happy to be led by the media, they are loath to dispute its misrepresentation of reality. And so the second cause of serial bungling on the part of politicians like Barak is that they are, in the end, sheep, not leaders.
THE FINAL major cause of Israel’s strategic idiocy is corruption. On Monday morning, the police announced that they recommend indicting Sharon’s sons Omri and Gilad Sharon for soliciting bribes on behalf of their father.
After an eight-year investigation, the police said they believe that Sharon received $3 million in bribes from former Stasi-aligned Austrian banker Martin Schlaff.
Schlaff, whose former attorney Dov Weisglass served as Sharon’s chief of staff, was the majority share owner in the Jericho casino. He also reportedly intended to build another casino on the ruins of the destroyed Israeli community Elei Sinai in the northern Gaza Strip if and when Israel expelled its residents.
There can be no doubt that Sharon’s alleged corruption and his fear of the far-left legal fraternity that investigated his alleged corruption played a significant role in his decision to abandon his campaign pledge to voters, toss strategic sanity to the seven winds, expel ten thousand Israelis from their homes and transfer the Gaza Strip lock, stock and barrel to Hamas and Fatah terrorists.
Like Sharon, Barak has been the subject of several corruption probes. Barak is also known to have had strong indirect connections to Schlaff. For instance, during his tenure as prime minister, Barak sent shock waves through the country when, with no prior warning, he announced that he was ceding Israel’s rights to the natural gas deposits discovered off the Gaza shore. Barak’s move precipitated a deal between the PA and British Gas to develop the gas deposits.
Media reports exposed that Schlaff and Arafat’s economic bag man Muhammed Rashid were major shareholders in British Gas.
During his stint as a private citizen, in 2006 Barak sought to lobby Shin Bet Director Yuval Diskin to permit Orascom, the Egyptian telecom provider, to expand its ten percent ownership share in Partner, Israel’s second-largest cellular telephone company.
Israeli law prohibits foreign entities from owning more than a ten percent share in Israeli telecommunications firms. Diskin refused to meet with him and banned the deal. Rashid and other Schlaff associates are reportedly major shareholders in Orascom.
Barak and Sharon are only the tip of the iceberg.
Schlaff’s connections to Israeli politicians run far and wide. Most of the leading founders of Kadima, including Ehud Olmert and Haim Ramon have personal ties to Schlaff. So too does former Shas leader Aryeh Deri. The ongoing criminal probes against Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman include, among other things, investigations into his allegedly prolific business ties to Schlaff.
REGARDLESS OF whether these ties to agents of corruption are criminal or not, it is obvious that they have influenced the policy preferences of more than one major politician in Israel. And regardless of what stands behind his poor judgment, the fact is that it is this judgment that is driving Israel’s strategic direction.
It is also apparent, that Barak is being handsomely rewarded by the Obama administration for his actions.
Barak is currently on yet another junket to Washington where he is being given the red carpet treatment. While the premier is forced to conduct international diplomacy with Quartet chairman Tony Blair, Barak is feted by the White House, State Department and Pentagon on a regular basis. It is hard to avoid the conclusion that the Obama administration agreed to end its public campaign to overthrow the Netanyahu government in exchange for Netanyahu’s effective concession of control over national policy to Barak.
Barak has used this control to force the government to accede to every American demand. So far, he has convinced Netanyahu to take a back seat to Obama on Iran; to end Jewish construction in Judea and Samaria at least until September; to effectively ban Jewish construction in northern, southern and eastern Jerusalem; to embrace the cause of Palestinian statehood; to accept US mediated indirect negotiations with Fatah; and to pretend that the Obama administration is a credible ally to Israel.
Before heading to Washington, Barak reportedly gave Netanyahu an ultimatum: Either make massive concessions to Fatah that will allow Obama to claim victory in the peace process, or Labor will bolt the coalition.
So too, Barak is reportedly behind Netanyahu’s latest bid to bring Kadima, led by Tzipi Livni into his government.
Netanyahu and his spokesmen defend both Barak’s primacy in the government, and their interest in bringing Kadima into the coalition by noting that the Left’s partnership ensures political stability. If Labor were to bolt from the coalition, the government would be less likely to survive until the next scheduled election in 2013.
There is certainly truth to this assertion. With Labor inside the coalition, Kadima has no relevance.
So too, rightist parties are unable to bring down the coalition.
This would be a decisive argument if coalition stability enabled Netanyahu to govern more effectively. But the opposite is true.
Netanyahu knows the folly of his decisions.
He recognizes Obama’s hostility to Israel. He also knows that the US president is not going to do a thing to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power.
Stability should be a means to an end, not an end unto itself. Netanyahu did not seek the premiership to achieve the goal of overseeing a stable government. He sought to lead the country to secure and strengthen it. As his latest concession to Barak makes clear, the price of governing stability is the abandonment of his leadership goals.
Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

Weathering the approaching storm

Israel is endangered today as it has never been before. The Turkish-Hamas flotilla two weeks ago precipitated a number of dangerous developments. Rather than attend to all of them, Israel’s leadership is devoting itself almost exclusively to contending with the least dangerous among them while ignoring the emerging threats with the potential to lead us to great calamities. 

Since the Navy’s lethal takeover of the Mavi Marmara, Israel has been stood before an international diplomatic firing squad led by the UN and Europe and supported by the Obama administration. Firmly backed by European and largely unopposed by Washington, the UN is moving swiftly towards setting up a new Goldstone-style anti-Israel kangaroo court. That canned tribunal will rule that Israel has no right to defend itself and attempt to force Israel to end its lawful naval blockade of Hamas-controlled Gaza. 
Fearing this outcome, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu bowed to US President Barack Obama’s demand that Israel set up an Israeli inquest of the Mavi Marmara takeover and permit foreigners to oversee its proceedings. Netanyahu also agreed to scale-back Israel’s blockade significantly, and allow international bodies to have a role in its far more lax enforcement.  Netanyahu has made these concessions with the full knowledge that they will strengthen Hamas in the hopes that they would weaken the international onslaught against Israel.
Unfortunately, it took no time at all to see that his hopes were misplaced. Even before Netanyahu announced these concessions, UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon already announced that they make no difference to him or to his friends in Washington and Brussels. They will move ahead with their plans to appoint a new kangaroo court charged with asserting that Israel has no right to defend itself. 
AS BAD as all of this is, in truth, it is unimportant relative to the other consequences of the flotilla incident. The impact of the diplomatic campaign now being waged against Israel will be felt in the medium and long term. In the immediate term, Israel is facing two threats that dwarf what it faces from the UN.
Recent statements by the leaders of Iran, Turkey, Syria, Hamas and Hizbullah make clear that the members of the Iranian axis view the Mavi Marmara episode as a strategic victory in their ongoing campaign against Israel. The international stampede against Israel at the UN, the White House and throughout Europe exposed Israel’s Achilles heel. The Mavi Marmara demonstrated that on the one hand the IDF cannot enforce its blockade of Gaza without the use of force. On the other hands it taught Israel’s enemies that by forcing Israel to use force, Iran, Turkey and their allies incited a UN-EU-US lynch mob against Israel. 
Iran, Turkey, Syria, Hamas and Hizbullah are moving rapidly to exploit their new discovery. In the very near future, Israel will face off against Iranian, Lebanese, and Turkish ships complemented by ships full of Israel-hating German Jews and other Jewish and non-Jewish Hamas supporters.
The Mavi Marmara showed Iran and its allies hat they can win strategic victories against Israel by giving the IDF no option other than using force against them. This means that Israel can bank on the prospect that all the ships they are dispatching will be populated by suicide protesters. Indeed the Iranians have openly admitted this. Mohammad Ali Nouraee is one of the regime officials involved in dispatching the Iranian ships to the Gaza coast. In an interview this week with Iran’s official IRNA news agency Nouraee said that the passengers aboard the ships, "are willing to become martyred in this way."
The Lebanese ships are being organized by Hizbullah-affiliated individuals and the Turkish ships are being organized by the IHH terror group that organized the Mavi Marmara. Hizbullah’s penchant for dispatching suicide squads is of course well known. And the IHH showed its devotion to suicide protests on the Mavi Marmara. So it is fairly clear that the passengers aboard the ships from both countries intend to force the IDF to kill them. 
The intensification of the suicide protest campaign against Israel is dangerous for two reasons. First, it is a model that can be and in all likelihood will be replicated on air and land and it can be replicated anywhere. Israel can and should expect mobs of suicide protesters marching on Gaza to force Israel to surrender control over its borders. Israel can expect mobs of suicide protesters marching on Israeli embassies and other government installations around the world in an attempt to increase its diplomatic isolations. 
In the air, Israel can expect charter flights to take off from airports around the world with a few dozen kamikaze protesters who will force the IAF to shoot them down as they approach Israeli airspace. 
Iran and its allies have found a weak chink in Israel’s armor. They will use it any way they can. Israel needs to quickly develop tactics and strategies for contending with this.
THE SECOND and far more dangerous implication of Israel’s enemies’ aggressive adoption of suicide protests is that by ensuring violence will be used, they increase the chances of war. Indeed, Iran and its allies clearly believe that suicide protests are a vehicle for initiating a full-scale war against Israel on what they view as favorable footing. According to Bahrain’s al Wasat press service, Hussain Amir, Iran’s ambassador to Bahrain threatened this week that, "If the [Zionist] entity dares to direct any aggressive attack [against the Iranian ships] then it is certain that [Israel] will be met by a much stronger and firm blow." 
Syrian President Bashar Assad told the BBC Wednesday that the region is moving towards war. And the Turkish government is continuing to escalate its assaults on Israel. On Thursday Turkey threatened to cut off diplomatic relations with Israel if Israel does not issue a formal apology for its takeover of the Mavi Marmara and pay restitution to the families of the terrorists killed on board the ship.
Obviously the most disturbing aspect of the war threats is the specter of Turkish naval vessels attacking the Israeli navy. If Turkey – a NATO member — participates in a war against Israel, the repercussions for Israel’s relations with NATO member states, including the US, as well as the EU are liable to be unprecedented. 
While going to war against Israel would be a major gamble for Turkey, in recent years it has not shied away from high stakes challenges to its NATO allies. Indeed, one of Turkey’s ruling AKP party’s first actions upon taking power in 2003 was to deny the US military the right to invade Iraq from its territory. The deleterious impact of Turkey’s refusal to come to the aid of its NATO ally at the time has been felt by US forces in Iraq ever since. 
IN THE days and weeks to come, Israel’s political and military leaders must move resolutely to prepare to withstand these new threats that arisen in the aftermath of the Mavi Marmara episode. To meet the expected deluge of suicide protesters on sea, land and air, Israel must immediately acquire non-lethal means to disperse these protests. This involves purchasing and producing tear gas, water cannons, rubber bullets and other non-lethal weaponry. These non-lethal weapons must be rapidly distributed to IDF units deployed along the frontier with Gaza and to the Navy. They must also be supplied to Israeli security teams tasked with protecting government installations worldwide. Forces must undergo intense and immediate training in crowd control and mob dispersal to be ready to meet what is clearly on the way.
Diplomatically, Israel needs to hold its new line on the Gaza blockade. Netanyahu’s buckling to US-EU-UN pressure has encouraged them to redouble their assault on Israel. The new line must be held at all costs. Otherwise, Israel will have no diplomatic line of defense as the approaching threats become reality. 
Strategically, our leaders need to consider what our aims will be in the coming war. For instance, as far as Turkey is concerned, Israel’s aim will be to end the war as quickly as possible. Here the tools of diplomacy with NATO members and public diplomacy with the American people will be crucial to convincing Turkey to stand down. They must be aggressively and energetically utilized without delay. 
From a military perspective, evasion is preferable to confrontation. This understanding must guide naval operations towards Turkish forces.
As for Iran, Israel’s aim must be to prolong the war as long as necessary to secure its strategic objective of denying Iran nuclear weapons. Moreover, it is important to use both kinetic and non-kinetic means to change the relative power balance between the Iranian people and the Iranian regime. While in all likelihood today the Iranian opposition green movement is unable to overthrow the regime, if Iran initiates a war against Israel, Israel must use the opportunity the war affords to change that balance of power.  
Once Israel’s political and military leaders determine the strategic goals of a regional war, they must move swiftly to outfit and train the IDF to fight it. This war will certainly be different from its predecessors and Israel’s strategic goals – and the clear strategic and tactical preferences of its enemies – dictate the training that the IDF must initiate immediately. 
The longer term lesson of the Mavi Marmara incident, and the threats that emerged in its wake is that war is too serious a subject to leave to generals. The IDF and the Defense Ministry clearly misunderstood the nature of the threat posed by the Turkish-Hamas flotilla. Indeed, recent reports that until the Mavi Marmara Israel wasn’t even collecting intelligence on Turkey despite its obvious, multiyear transformation from ally to enemy underlines the fact that the IDF is woefully incapable of assessing, understanding and preparing for the threats Israel faces. 
In light of the IDF’s failure to understand Turkey’s transformation from ally to enemy in a timely manner, its incompetent planning for the takeover and its problematic performance in both Operation Cast Lead and the Second Lebanon War, Netanyahu must create an external body empowered to assess and dictate the means for preparing for emerging threats. This body can either be a new department in the Prime Minister’s Bureau or the National Security Council can be empowered to perform this function. While this is not the most urgent matter on the national agenda, the establishment of such a body should be a central mission of the government. 
The Iranian ships are already en route, and the ships from Lebanon could appear at any moment. The mass demonstrations against Israel throughout the world and the threatened violence from the Hamas-supporting Israeli Arab leadership indicate that mobs of suicide protesters could appear anywhere with no prior warning. 
Time is of the essence. No, Israel does not want another Goldstone kangaroo court. But right now, kangaroo courts are not our biggest problem. 
Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

Hamas rises in the West

Since the navy’s May 31 takeover of the Turkish-Hamas flotilla, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and his advisors have deliberated around the clock about how to contend with the US-led international stampede against Israel. But their ultimate decision to form an investigatory committee led by a retired Supreme Court justice and overseen by foreign observers indicates that they failed to recognize the nature of the international campaign facing Israel today.

Led by US President Barack Obama, the West has cast its lot with Hamas against Israel.

It is not surprising that Obama is siding with Hamas. His close associates are leading members of the pro-Hamas Free Gaza outfit. Obama’s friends, former Weatherman Underground terrorists Bernadine Dohrn and William Ayres participated in a Free Gaza trip to Egypt in January. Their aim was to force the Egyptians to allow them into Gaza with 1,300 fellow Hamas supporters. Their mission was led by Code Pink leader and Obama fundraiser Jodie Evans. Another leading member of Free Gaza is former US senator from South Dakota James Abourezk.

All of these people have open lines of communication not only to the Obama White House, but to Obama himself.

Obama has made his sympathy for the Muslim Brotherhood clear several times since entering office. The Muslim Brotherhood’s progeny include Hamas, al Qaida and the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, among others. Last June, Obama infuriated the Egyptian government when he insisted on inviting leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood to attend his speech at Al Azhar University in Cairo. His administration’s decision to deport Hamas deserter and Israeli counter-terror operative Mosab Hassan Yousef to the Palestinian Authority where he will be killed is the latest sign of their support for radical Islam.

Given Obama’s attitude towards jihadists and the radical leftists who support them his decision to support Hamas against Israel makes sense. What is alarming however is how leaders of the free world are now all siding with Hamas. That support has become ever more apparent since the Mossad’s alleged killing of Hamas terror master Mahmoud al Mabhouh at his hotel in Dubai in January.

In the aftermath of Mabhouh’s death, both Britain and Australia joined the Dubai-initiated bandwagon in striking out against Israel. Israel considers both countries allies, or at least friendly and has close intelligence ties with both. Yet despite their close ties with Israel, Australia and Britain expelled Israeli diplomats who supposedly had either a hand in the alleged operation or who work for the Mossad.
It should be noted that neither country takes steps against outspoken terror supporters who call for Israel to be destroyed and call for the murder of individual Israelis.

For instance, in an interview last month with the Australian, Ali Kazak, the former PLO ambassador to Australia effectively solicited the murder of the Jerusalem Post’s Palestinian affairs correspondent Khaled Abu Toameh. Kazak told the newspaper, "Khaled Abu Toameh is a traitor."

Allowing that many Palestinians have been murdered for such accusations, Kazak excused those extrajudicial murders saying, "Traitors were also murdered by the French Resistance, in Europe; this happens everywhere."

Not only did Australia not expel Kazak or open a criminal investigation against him. As a consequence of his smear campaign against Abu Toameh, several Australians cancelled their scheduled meetings with him.

AND OF course, this week we have the actions of Germany and Poland. Germany and Poland are considered Israel’s best friends in Europe today, and yet acting on a German arrest warrant, Poland has arrested a suspected Mossad officer named Uri Brodsky for his alleged involvement in the alleged Mossad operation against master Hamas terrorist Mabhouh. Israel is now caught in a diplomatic disaster zone where its two closest allies – who again are only too happy to receive regular intelligence updates from the Mossad – are siding with Hamas against it.

And then of course we have the EU’s call for Israel to cancel its lawful blockade of the Gaza coast. That is, the official position of the EU is that Israel should allow an Iranian proxy terrorist organization to gain control over a Mediterranean port and through it, provide Iran with yet another venue from which it can launch attacks against Europe.

For their part, the Sunni Arabs are forced to go along with this. The Egyptian regime considers the fact that the Muslim Brotherhood took over Gaza a threat to its very survival and has been assiduously sealing its border with Gaza for some time. And yet, unable to be more anti-Hamas than the US, Australia and Europe, Mubarak is opening the border. Arab League Secretary General Amr Mussa’s unprecedented visit to Gaza this week should be seen as a last ditch attempt by Egypt to convince Hamas to unify its ranks with Fatah. Predictably, the ascendant Hamas refused his entreaties.

As for Fatah, it is hard not to feel sorry for Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas these days. In what was supposed to be a triumphant visit to the White House, Abbas was forced to smile last week as Obama announced the US will provide $450 million in aid to his sworn enemies who three years ago ran him and his Fatah henchmen out of Gaza.

So too, Abbas is forced to cheer as Obama pressures Israel to give Hamas an outlet to the sea. Such a sea outlet will render it impossible for Fatah to ever unseat Hamas either by force or at the ballot box. Hamas’s international clout demonstrates to the Palestinians that jihad pays.

THERE ARE three plausible explanations for the West’s decision to back Hamas. All of them say something deeply disturbing about the state of the world today. The first plausible explanation is that the Americans and the rest of the West are simply naïve. They believe that by backing Hamas against Israel, they are advancing the cause of Middle East peace.

If this is in fact what the likes of Obama and his European and Australian counterparts think, then apparently, no one in the West is thinking very hard these days. The fact is that by backing Hamas against Israel, they are backing Hamas against Fatah and they are backing Iran, Syria, Turkey, Hamas and Hizbullah against Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia as well as against Israel. They are backing the most radical actors in the region – and arguably in the world – against states and regimes they have a shared strategic interest in strengthening.

There is absolutely no way this behavior advances the cause of peace.

The second plausible explanation is that the West’s support for Hamas against Israel is motivated by hatred of Israel. As Helen Thomas’s recent remarks demonstrated, there is certainly a lot of that going around.

The final plausible explanation for the West’s support for Hamas against Israel is that the leaders of the West have been led to believe that by acting as they are, they will buy themselves immunity from attack by Hamas and its fellow Iranian axis members.

As former Italian President Francesco Cossiga first exposed in a letter to Corriere della Serra in August 2008, in the early 1970s then Italian prime minister Aldo Moro signed a deal with Yassir Arafat that gave the PLO and its affiliated organizations the freedom to operate terror bases in Italy. In exchange the Palestinians agreed to limit their attacks to Jewish and Israeli targets. Italy maintained its allegiance to the deal – and the PLO against Israel – even when Italian targets were hit.

Cossiga told the newspaper that the August 1980 bombings at the Bologna train station – which Italy blamed on Italian fascists — was actually the work of George Habash’s Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Eighty-five people were murdered in the attack, and still Italy maintained its agreement with the PLO to the point where it prosecuted and imprisoned the wrong people for the worst terrorist attack in Italian history.

Cossiga alleged that the deal is still in place today and that Italian forces in UNIFIL have expanded the deal to include Hamas’s fellow Iranian proxy Hizbullah. It isn’t much of a stretch to consider the possibility that Italy and the rest of the Western powers have made a similar deal with Hamas. And it is no stretch at all to believe that they will benefit from it as greatly as the Italian railroad passengers in Bologna did on August 2, 1980.

True, no one has come out an admitted that they support Hamas against Israel. So too, no one has expressed anything by love for Israel and the Jewish people. But the actions of the governments of the West tell a different tale. Without one or more of the explanations above, it is hard to understand their current policies.

Since the flotilla incident, Netanyahu and his ministers have held marathon deliberations on how to respond to US pressure to accept an international inquisition of the IDF’s lawful enforcement of Israel’s legal blockade of the Gaza coast. Their deliberations went on at the same time as Netanyahu and his envoys attempted to convince Obama to stop his mad rush to give Hamas an outlet to the sea and deny Israel even the most passive right of self defense.

It remains to be seen if their decision to form an investigative panel with international "observers" was a wise move or yet another ill-advised concession to an unappeasable administration. What is certain however is that it will not end the West’s budding romance with Hamas.

The West’s decision to side with Hamas against Israel is devastating. But whatever the reasons for it, it is a fact of life. It is Netanyahu’s duty to swallow this bitter pill and devise a strategy to protect Israel from their madness.

 

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

The first rule of strategy

The first rule of strategy is to keep your opponent busy attending to your agenda so he has no time to advance his own. Unfortunately, Israel’s leaders seem unaware of this rule, while Iran’s rulers triumph in its application.

Over the past few weeks, Israel has devoted itself entirely to the consideration of questions that are, at best, secondary. Questions like how much additional assistance Israel should provide Hamas-controlled Gaza, and how best to fend off or surrender to the international diplomatic lynch mob have dominated Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s and his senior ministers’ agendas. Our political leaders – as well as our military commanders and intelligence agencies – have been so busy thinking about these issues that they have effectively forgotten the one issue that they should have been considering.

Israel’s greatest strategic challenge – preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons – has fallen by the wayside.

In the shadow of our distraction, Iran and its allies operate undisturbed. Indeed, as our leaders have devoted themselves entirely to controlling the damage from the Iranian-supported, Turkish- Hamas flotilla, Iran and its allies have had a terrific past few weeks.

True, Wednesday the UN Security Council passed a new sanctions resolution against Iran for refusing to end its illicit uranium enrichment program. But that Security Council resolution itself is emblematic of Iran’s triumph.

It took a year for US President Barack Obama to decide that he should seek additional sanctions against Iran. It then took him another six months to convince Iran’s allies Russia and China to support the sanctions. In the event, the sanctions that Obama refers to as "the most comprehensive sanctions that the Iranian government has faced," will have no impact whatsoever on Iran’s nuclear weapons program.
They will not empower the Iranian people to overthrow their regime. And they will not cause the Iranian regime to reconsider its nuclear weapons program. They won’t even prevent Russia from supplying Iran with S-300 anti-aircraft missiles to protect its nuclear installations from air assault.

THOSE LONG-awaited and utterly worthless sanctions underline the fact that life is terrific these days for Iran’s leaders and their allies. A year ago, the Iranian regime was hanging by a thread. After stealing the presidential elections last June 12, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his boss Ali Khamenei required the assistance of all their regime goons to put down the popular revolt against them. Indeed, they needed to import Hizbullah goons from Lebanon to protect themselves and their regime from their own people. European leaders like French President Nicolas Sarkozy were openly supporting the Iranian people as they announced their intention to overthrow the regime.

But then Obama sided with the regime against its domestic, democratic opposition. Intent on giving his appeasement policy a whirl, Obama took several days to express even the mildest support for the Iranian people. In the meantime, his spokesman continued to refer to the regime as the "legitimate" government of Iran.

Obama’s support for Ahmadinejad forced European leaders like Sarkozy to temper their support for the anti-regime activists. Even worse, by keeping the democracy protesters at arm’s length, Obama effectively gave a green light to Ahmadinejad and Khamenei to resort to brute force against them. That is, by failing to back the democracy protesters, Obama convinced the regime it could get away with murdering scores of them, and torturing thousands more.

A year on, although the regime’s opponents seethe under the surface, with no leader and no help from the free world, it will take a miracle for them to mount major protests on the one-year anniversary of the stolen elections. It is unimaginable that they will be able to topple the regime before it gets its hands on nuclear weapons.

A year ago Ahmadinejad was afraid to show his face in public. But this week he received a hero’s welcome in Istanbul. He had a bilateral meeting there not only with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, but with Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.

In the past year Iran has deepened its strategic ties with China and Russia. It has developed an open strategic alliance with Turkey. It has expanded its strategic web of alliances in Latin America. Now in addition to Venezuela, Nicaragua, Ecuador and Bolivia, Iran counts Brazil among its allies.

THEN THERE is Lebanon. Like the regime in Teheran, Iran’s Lebanese proxy Hizbullah lost the Lebanese elections last June. And like the regime in Teheran, Hizbullah was able to use force and the threat of force to not only strong-arm its way back into the Lebanese government, but to guarantee itself control over the Lebanese government.

Now in control, with Iranian and Syrian support, Hizbullah has an arsenal of 42,000 missiles with ranges that cover all of Israel.

Then, too, Hizbullah’s diplomatic situation has never been better. This week former US ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker called for the US to initiate a policy of diplomatic outreach to the Iranian-controlled illegal terrorist group. Ryan is the second prominent US official, after Obama’s chief counter-terrorism adviser John Brennan, to call for the US to accept Hizbullah as a legitimate actor in the region.
As for Syria, it too has only benefited from its alliance with Iran. The Obama administration has waived several trade sanctions against Damascus.

As it battles the Senate to confirm its choice for US ambassador to Syria, the administration has become the regime’s champion.

Assuming the Senate drops its opposition, Syria will receive the first US ambassador to Damascus in five years as it defies the International Atomic Energy Agency and openly proliferates nuclear technology. Today Syria is both rebuilding its illicit nuclear reactor at Dar Alzour that Israel reportedly destroyed on Sept. 6, 2007 and building additional nuclear installations.

Luckily for Bashar Assad, the IAEA is too busy trying to coerce Israel into agreeing to international inspections of its legal nuclear installations to pay any attention. Since June 2008, the IAEA has carried out no inspections in Syria.

AND THAT’S the heart of the matter. The main reason that the past year has been such a good one for Iran and its allies is because they have managed to keep Israel so busy fending off attacks that Jerusalem has had no time to weaken them in any way.

It is true that much of the fault here belongs to the US. Since entering office, Obama has demonstrated daily that his first priority in the Middle East is to force Israel to make concessions to the Palestinians. As for Iran, Obama’s moves to date make clear that his goal is not to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. Rather, it is to avoid being blamed for Iran’s acquisition of nuclear weapons. Moreover, Obama has used Iran’s nuclear weapons program – and vague promises to do something about it – as a means of coercing Israel into making unreciprocated concessions to the Palestinians.

The problem is that despite overwhelming evidence that Obama is fundamentally not serious about preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, Israel’s leaders have played along with him. And in so doing they have lost control over their time and their agenda.

When Obama first came into office, he was committed to three things: appeasing Iran, attacking Israel for constructing homes for Jews in Judea and Samaria, and condemning Israel for refusing to support the establishment of a Palestinian state.

Obama was only partially dissuaded from appeasing Iran when Ahmadinejad rejected his offer to enrich uranium for the mullahs last December. As for his other goals, he coerced Netanyahu into agreeing to support Palestinian statehood last June and coerced him into ending Jewish home building in Judea and Samaria last September.

Ahmadinejad’s rejection of Obama’s outstretched hand forced Obama to launch his halfhearted drive for worthless UN sanctions. But he used this bid to coerce Israel into making still more unreciprocated concessions. After pocketing the prohibition on Jewish construction in Judea and Samaria, Obama moved on to Jerusalem.

From there he moved to forcing Israel to accept indirect negotiations with the Palestinians through his hostile envoy George Mitchell. And once he had pocketed that concession, he began pressuring Israel to surrender its purported nuclear arsenal.

Following that, he has moved on to his current position of pressuring Israel to accept a hostile international investigation of the navy’s enforcement of Israel’s lawful blockade of the Gaza coast. He also seeks to weaken Israel’s blockade of Hamas-controlled Gaza and force Israel to accept a massive infusion of US assistance to Hamas-controlled Gaza.

This last Obama action plan was made explicit on Wednesday when the US president announced that his administration would give $400 million in assistance to Gaza, despite the fact that doing so involves providing material aid to an illegal terrorist organization controlled by Iran.

OBAMA’S ACTIONS are clearly disturbing, but as disturbing as they are, they are not Israel’s main problem. Iran’s nuclear program is Israel’s main problem. And Netanyahu, his senior cabinet ministers and the IDF high command should not be devoting their precious time to dealing with Obama and his ever-escalating demands.

To free himself and Israel’s other key decisionmakers to contend with Iran, Netanyahu must outsource the handling of the Palestinian issue, the Obama administration and all the issues arising from both. He must select someone outside active politics to serve as his special envoy for this purpose.

Netanyahu’s envoy’s position should be the mirror image of Obama’s Middle East envoy George Mitchell’s role. He should be given a suite of fancy offices, several deputies and aides and spokesmen, and a free hand in talking with the Palestinians and the Obama administration until the cows come home.
In the meantime, Netanyahu and his senior cabinet ministers and advisers must devote themselves to battling Iran. They must not merely prepare to attack Iran’s nuclear installations.

They must prepare the country to weather the Iranian counter-attack that will surely follow.

Those preparations involve not only fortifying Israel’s home front. Netanyahu and his people must prepare a diplomatic and legal offensive against Iran and its allies in the lead-up, and aftermath, of an Israeli strike against Iran.

The most obviously qualified person to fill this vital role is former defense minister Moshe Arens.
Aren has the experience, wisdom and gravitas to handle the job. Bereft of all political ambitions, Arens would in no way pose a threat to Netanyahu’s leadership.

Whoever Netanyahu chooses, he must choose quickly. His failure to bear in mind the first law of strategy places Israel in greater and greater peril with each passing day.

 

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

The plain truth about Israel

In other times, Hearst Newspapers White House Correspondent Helen Thomas’s demand that the Jews "get the hell out of Palestine," and go back to Poland, Germany and America would have been front page news in every newspaper in the US the day after the story broke. 

In other times, had the dean of the White House Correspondents Association expressed such hatred for the Jews, the White House would have immediately removed her accreditation rather than wait three days to criticize her. 
In other times, the White House Correspondents Association would have expelled her.  In other times, her employer – Hearst Newspapers – would have fired her. 
But in our times, it took days for anyone other than Jews and conservatives to condemn Thomas’s vile statements to Rabbi David Nesenoff. And she was not fired. She was allowed to retire.
Our times are times of Jew hatred. Our times are times where hatred breeds strategic madness. Our times are times when we need to recall basic truths about Israel and the Jewish people. Specifically, we must remember that the US is privileged to count Israel as an ally – whether Americans like Jews and our state or hate us. 
This week, Anthony Cordesman from respected Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies joined the bandwagon of Israel bashers. In an article titled, "Israel as a Strategic Liability?" 
Cordesman asserted that Israel "is a tertiary US strategic interest." And given its alleged insignificance, Israel must "become far more careful about the extent to which it test[s] the limits of US patience and exploits the support of American Jews."
Cordesman argued that Israel is only an asset to the US when it is giving its land away to its neighbors. He called for Israel to constrain its military actions and demanded that Israel "not conduct a high-risk attack on Iran in the face of the clear US ‘red light’ from both the Bush and Obama administrations."
The fact that Cordesman’s article reflects an increasingly popular school of thought in the US is not testimony to its accuracy. Indeed, his arguments are completely wrong.
The plain truth is that Israel is the US’s greatest strategic asset in the Middle East. Indeed, given the strategic importance of the Middle East to the US national security, Israel is arguably the US’s greatest strategic asset outside the US military.
Cordesman allows that "Israel is a democracy that shares virtually all of the same values as the United States." But he fails to recognize the strategic implications of that statement. As a democracy, unlike every Arab state, the US does not need to worry a change in leadership in Jerusalem will cause Israel to abandon its alliance with the US. This of course is what happened in Iran – which until 1979, was the US’s most important ally in the Persian Gulf. As Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak ages, the US faces the prospect of a post-Mubarak Egypt led by the Muslim Brotherhood similarly abandoning its alliance with America. 
The fact that the US and Israel share the same foundational values also guarantees that the alliance is stable. No government in Jerusalem will ever sway the Israeli people away from America as has happened in Turkey since the Islamist Erdogan government took office in 2002. 
Cordesman grudgingly allowed that Israel provides intelligence to the US. But he refused to acknowledge how important Israel’s intelligence has been for the US. Since Sept. 11, 2001, US military and intelligence officials have repeatedly admitted that Israeli intelligence has been worth its weight in gold for US security operations in the region and around the world. 
Cordesman also noted that Israeli technology has contributed to US defense, but again, he undervalued its significance. The very fact that pilotless aircraft – first developed by Israel – are the lead force in the US campaign in Afghanistan and Pakistan gives lie to his tepid admission of Israel’s technological contribution to US security.
Like many on the Left, Cordesman ignored the fact that Israel’s enemies are the US’s enemies. But his failure to note that the same people who call for Israel to be destroyed also call for the US to be destroyed does not make this fact any less true. And since the US and Israel share the same foes, when Israel is called on to fight its enemies, its successes redound to the US’s benefit.
In many ways, Israel – which has never asked the US to fight its wars — has been the catalyst for the US’s greatest triumphs. It was the Mossad that smuggled out Nikita Khrushchev’s secret speech acknowledging Stalin’s crimes at the Twentieth Communist Party Conference in 1956. The publication of Khrushchev’s speech in the West was the first turning point in the Cold War. 
So too, Israel’s June 1982 destruction of Syria’s Soviet-made anti-aircraft batteries and the Syrian air force was the first clear demonstration of the absolute superiority of US military technology over Soviet military technology. Many have argued that it was this Israeli demonstration of Soviet technological inferiority that convinced the Reagan administration it was possible to win the Cold War.
Beyond politics and ideology, beyond friendship and values, the US has three permanent national security interests in the Middle East.
  • Ensuring the smooth flow of affordable petroleum products from the region.
  • Preventing the most radical regimes, sub-state and non-state actors from acquiring the means to cause catastrophic harm.
  • Maintaining its capacity to project its power in the region. 
A strong Israel is the best guarantor of all of these interests. Indeed, the stronger Israel is, the more secure these primary American interests are. Three permanent and unique aspects to Israel’s regional position dictate this state of affairs. 
First, as the first target of the most radical regimes and radical sub-state actors in the region, Israel has a permanent, existential interest in preventing these regimes and sub-state actors from acquiring the means to cause catastrophic harm. 
Israel’s 1981 airstrike that destroyed Iraq’s Osirak nuclear reactor prevented Iraq from acquiring nuclear weapons. Despite US condemnation at the time, the US later acknowledged that the strike was a necessary precondition to the success of Operation Desert Storm ten years later. As Richard Cheney has noted, if Iraq had been a nuclear power in 1991, the US would have been hard pressed to eject Saddam Hussein’s army from Kuwait and so block his regime from asserting control over oil supplies in the Persian Gulf. 
Second, Israel is a non-expansionist state and its neighbors know it. In its 62 year history, Israel has only controlled territory vital for its national security and territory that was legally allotted to it in the 1922 League of Nations Mandate which has never been abrogated or superseded.
Israel’s strength, which it has used only in self-defense, is inherently non-threatening. Far from destabilizing the region, a strong Israel stabilizes the Middle East by deterring the most radical actors from attacking. 
In 1970, Israel blocked Syria’s bid to use the PLO to overthrow the Hashemite regime in Jordan. Israel’s threat to attack Syria not only saved the Hashemites then, it has deterred Syria from attempting to overthrow the Jordanian regime ever since. 
Similarly, Israel’s neighbors understand that its purported nuclear arsenal is a weapon of national survival and hence they view it as non-threatening. This is the reason Israel’s alleged nuclear arsenal has never spurred a regional nuclear arms race. 
In stark contrast, if Iran acquires nuclear weapons, a regional nuclear arms race will ensue immediately. Indeed, it has already begun. Turkey, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and other states have all signed contracts to develop nuclear installations. 
Although they will never admit it, Israel’s non-radical neighbors feel more secure when Israel is strong. On the other hand, the region’s most radical regimes and non-state actors will always seek to emasculate Israel. 
Finally, since as the Jewish state Israel is the regional bogeyman, no Arab state will agree to form an open alliance with it. Hence, Israel will never be in a position to join forces with another nation against a third nation. 
In contrast, the Egyptian-Syrian United Arab Republic of the 1960s was formed to attack Israel. Today, the Syrian-Iranian-Turkish alliance is an inherently aggressive alliance against Israel and the non-radical Arab states in the region. Recognizing the stabilizing force of a strong Israel, the moderate states of the region prefer for Israel to remain strong. 
From the US’s perspective, far from impairing its alliance-making capabilities in the region, by providing military assistance to Israel, America isn’t just strengthening the most stabilizing force in the region. It is showing all states and non-state actors in the greater Middle East it is trustworthy. 
But every time the US seeks to attenuate its ties with Israel, it is viewed as an untrustworthy ally by the nations of the Middle East. US hostility towards Israel causes Israel’s neighbors to hedge their bets by distancing themselves from the US lest America abandon them to their neighboring adversaries.
The Obama administration’s willingness to effectively back Turkey and Hamas against Israel at the UN Security Council last week forced Vice President Joseph Biden to drop everything and fly to Egypt this week. Watching the US abandon Israel and strengthen the most radical actors in the region, the Egyptians are terrified that they can no longer believe in US security guarantees. 
A strong Israel empowers the relatively moderate actors in the region to stand up to the radical actors in the region because they trust Israel to keep the radicals in check. When Israel is weakened the radical forces are emboldened. Regional stability is thrown asunder. Wars become more likely. Attacks on oil resources increase. The most radical sub-state actors and regimes are encouraged to strike. 
Cordesman claims that Israel only advances US strategic interest when it works towards the creation of a Palestinian state. But this is wrong. To the extent that the two-state solution assumes that Israel must contract itself to within the indefensible 1949 ceasefire lines and allow a hostile Palestinian state allied with terrorist organizations to take power in the areas it vacates, the two-state solution is predicated on making Israel weak and empowering radicals. In light of this, the two-state solution as presently constituted is antithetical to America’s most vital strategic interests in the Middle East. 
In our times, when Jew hatred has become acceptable and strategic blindness and madness are presented as nuanced sophistication, it is essential to maintain a firm grip on the truth. And that truth is that love the Jews or hate us, the US’s alliance with Israel has been and remains America’s most cost-effective national security investment since World War II.
Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

Israel’s daunting task

The ferocity and speed of the current international assault on Israel has left the government in a daze. Statements from our leadership are marked by confusion. This reaction is understandable. Everywhere Israel turns it is met with hostility.

Turkey — which just a decade ago was Israel’s most important regional ally – has taken a leadership position next to Iran in the Islamist and global assault against the Jewish state.

Under President Barack Obama’s stewardship, the US has joined the international bandwagon against Israel. Ireland – never a friend — is now openly siding with Hamas against Israel. And as Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu noted on Wednesday evening, Britain, France and Germany and the rest of the Western democracies calling for Israel to end its blockade of Hamas-controlled Gaza’s coast are effectively arguing that Israel should give Iran – which controls Hamas – a seaport on the Mediterranean.

The footage of the IDF’s celebrated naval commandos falling prey to an Islamic lynch mob on the deck of the Turkish ship Mavi Marmara on Monday morning serves as a perfect simile for the national mood. The commandos boarded the ship armed with paintball guns expecting to be greeted by hostile, but non-violent humanitarian activists. Instead they were accosted by a murderous mob.

Similarly, the Israeli public feels that when we go out of our way to show our peaceful intentions and nature to the world, we are greeted with an international lynch mob. Rather than listen to us, the world shouts us down with mendacious propaganda in act after act of political theater.

In a situation when everything seems hopeless and futile, it is important to take a step back and consider what stands behind the assault. Only by understanding why what is happening is happening will Israel’s leaders be able to formulate a strategy for navigating the country through the current straits.

TODAY’S GLOBAL campaign against the Jewish state is the product of three recent developments: The waning of traditional Arab power relative to the waxing of non-Arab Islamic states including Iran, Pakistan and Turkey; the concomitant rise of anti-Semitic incitement throughout the Islamic world; and the US’s attenuation of its ties with its allies generally and the US abandonment of its support for Israel specifically.

Since the fall of the Ottoman Empire in World War I, Arab states like Egypt and Saudi Arabia have been the widely recognized leaders of the Islamic world. Over the past several years, their power has diminished and it is now being overwhelmed by the rising non-Arab Islamic states Iran, Pakistan and Turkey.

Pakistan – so far the only Islamic country with a nuclear arsenal — is the home base of the wildly popular al Qaida movement. Despite its nuclear and jihadist cachet, Pakistan’s ability to challenge the power of Arab governments is limited. Its financial dependence on Saudi Arabia, its strategic ties with the US and the ongoing war between its government and the Taliban/al Qaida have all rendered Pakistan – for now – unable to compete with the Arab world for the mantle of Islamic leadership.

But Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal has helped place Iran on the verge of regional domination. Iran’s long-held nuclear aspirations only became realistic when Pakistan shared its nuclear and ballistic missile technologies with the mullocracy. Iran’s nuclear weapons program is the stick it now wields to coerce the Arab world to bow to its will.

Iran isn’t all about threats and coercion though. It also offers the Arab world an attractive carrot. Since the US invasion of Iraq and even more forcefully since the 2006 war between Israel and Hizbullah, Iran has taken the lead in fighting the great enemies of the Arab world: the US and Israel.

In 2006, the Arab masses rallied to Iran’s side as Israel fought its Shiite Arab proxy to a draw in Lebanon. Hamas’s willingness to serve as Iran’s Palestinian proxy has given Iran complete control over the most active fronts against the hated Jews.

Since the radical Islamic AKP party took over Turkey in 2003, its leader Prime Minister Recip Erdogan has presided over the thorough brainwashing of the Turkish people. According to repeated polling data, the majority of Turks believe that Israel and America are demonic, murderous nations that kill innocent people for entertainment.

Erdogan has cultivated anti-Semitism and anti-Americanism for two reasons. First, doing so enables him to divert his people’s attention away from his government’s economic failures. Stirred into frenzies of hatred, the Turks willingly rally behind their leader who is saving them from the Jewish and Yankee beasts.

Then there is Erdogan’s goal of reasserting Turkish regional dominance and reclaiming the lost power of the Ottomans as the leader of the Islamic world. His decision in 2006 to be the first world leader to host Hamas terror masters on an official visit after their victory in the Palestinian elections was a clear bid to win popularity for Turkey among the Arab masses.

Iran and Turkey understand that attacking the Jewish state is the fastest route to the top of the Muslim world.

For decades two things limited the salience of Jew hatred as a political force in the Muslim world. First, Israel’s reputation as a regional power deterred Arab states from attacking it. And second, the US’s Middle East policy of rewarding states that lived at peace with Israel and spurning those that did not made attacking Israel a less attractive option for most Muslim states. The likes of Iran and Syria were punished for their support for terrorism and their refusal to make peace with Israel. Then too, Turkey’s rise in prominence in the US in the 1990s owed a great deal to its close strategic ties with Israel.

Israel’s reputation as a regional power was diminished by its 2000 withdrawal from south Lebanon and its less than stellar performances in the 2006 war.

As for the US, in the year and a half since Obama took office he has fundamentally restructured US foreign policy in a manner that rewards US enemies at the expense of US allies. From Honduras and Columbia to Britain, Poland, and the Czech Republic, to Japan and India to Israel, Iraq and Afghanistan, Obama has treated US allies with contempt and hostility. At the same time, his repeated bids to woo US adversaries have rewarded the leaders of Iran, Venezuela, Russia and others for their aggression.

Israel of course is the US’s most threatened ally. And Obama’s treatment of Israel has been uniquely shabby– and dangerous. Guided by his ideological worldview which argues that US support for Israel is the root of the Arab and Islamic world’s animus towards the US, Obama has advanced a policy of punishing Israel and wooing its worst enemies that has radically changed the Islamic power calculus. By seeking to appease Iran and Syria for their aggressive behavior and by courting an ever more radical Turkish regime, Obama has humiliated Egypt and Jordan that signed peace treaties with Israel. In so doing, he has convinced the Arabs that the only way to retain and expand their power is by attacking Israel.

THIS BRINGS US to Israel’s current quandary about how to respond to the international campaign against it. Israel of course can do nothing to change the potency of Jew hatred in the Islamic world. It can also do nothing to change American behavior. For as long as Obama is president, US foreign policy can be expected to remain on its current trajectory. That is, for at least the next two and a half years, the US will continue to play a destabilizing and hostile role in the region.

What this means is that Israel should adopt a strategy that minimizes the international lynch mob’s ability to get close to it and maximizes Israel’s ability to knock the mob off balance.

Take for instance the UN Security Council call for an independent investigation of the Mavi Marmara incident. Israel rightly rejected such a UN inquiry understanding that its aim is to diminish Israel’s sovereign right to self defense. On the other hand, on Thursday morning Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman offered that Israel could establish its own judicial inquiry and that there was no reason for international investigators not to be members of the Israeli committee.

This idea is ill-advised for two reasons. First by its very nature, a judicial inquiry would place Israel in the role of criminal defendant. And second, given the nature of the international assault on Israel, no international observers or investigators can be given any role in investigating the Mavi Marmara episode.

In contrast, Israel could benefit from a domestic investigation of the operational and diplomatic aspects of its handling of the Turkish-Hamas flotilla. It is in these areas– rather than the legal areas– that Israel has failed and must learn the lessons of those failures. Moreover, appointing a committee would buy Israel time in the face of the anti-Israel campaign now sweeping the globe.

And as to that campaign, it is time for Israel to launch a counter-offensive. Its representatives at the UN should demand an investigation into Turkey’s illegal sponsorship of the pro-Hamas flotilla. They should raise such protests at every UN forum and continue to protest until they are thrown out of the meetings and then return, the next day to relaunch their protests.

The Justice Ministry should issue international arrest warrants against the flotilla’s organizers and participants and prepare indictments against them for trial in Israeli courts. Israel’s embassies throughout the world should call for their host governments to outlaw organizations involved in the Gaza flotilla movement.

No, these Israeli efforts will not change anyone’s vote in any UN forum. But they will place these wholly corrupt institutions on the defensive. For decades Israel has taken for granted that the UN is hopelessly hostile and left things at that. Israel’s willingness to declare defeat has emboldened UN officials. By putting them on the defensive, Israel will force them to devote time to staving off Israeli attacks and so have less time available for initiating new assaults against Israel.

IN LOS ANGELES on Monday, a crowd of Muslims carrying signs calling for Israel’s destruction gathered outside the Israeli Consulate. As they shouted Allahu Akhbar, a lone Jewish high school student carrying an Israeli flag appeared on the scene. Suddenly, the protesters forgot that they were supposed to be demonstrating against the State of Israel and began threatening this single Jewish boy who held his head high and waved the Israeli flag.

As they converged around him, a cordon of policemen headed them off and surrounded the young Jewish boy who refused to be intimidated. Speaking to reporters, clearly moved by his courage, the boy said, "I came out because I want to defend Israel." Asked if he was affiliated with any group, he responded, "Just Judaism and Israel."

Israel’s task is daunting and the stakes couldn’t be higher. But our cause is great and it is far from lost. 

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

How wars begin

In hindsight, it will probably be obvious that the missteps of the Obama administration vis a vis Israel were critical catalysts to a war that today seems ever more likely to engulf the Middle East, and perhaps the world more generally. Assuming such an outcome is neither the intention of the President and his team, nor desired by them, American course corrections must be urgently taken.

To be sure, as is often the case in the moment, a different narrative is operating. The rising tensions in the region are widely seen as the fault of the Jewish State. Most recently, Israel is being portrayed as the villain of the bloody interception of a "humanitarian flotilla" bringing relief aid to the Gaza Strip.

Before that, the Jewish State has been serially excoriated for: engaging in: "illegal" construction of homes in Jerusalem; exercising "disproportionate force" in military action in Gaza, including by some accounts "war crimes"; and being intransigent with respect to the sorts of territorial, strategic and political concessions needed to advance the "peace process" with the Palestinians.

In each case, the Obama administration has either strongly endorsed these memes or acted fecklessly to challenge them. Throughout their seventeen months in office, the President and his senior subordinates have been at pains to demonstrate a more even-handed approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and to "engage" the Muslim "world."

The practical effect, however, has been to excuse, empower and embolden those hostile not just to Israel but to the United States, as well. Consider just a few ominous examples:

The Iranian regime has understood that the Obama administration will do nothing to defeat the realization of Tehran’s longstanding ambitions to acquire nuclear weapons.  Instead, the United States is now focused on how it will "live with" a nuclear-armed Iran by trying to "contain" it. Meantime, the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency says Tehran has enough enriched uranium to make two atomic weapons.  If true, it will be a matter of a relatively short time before such material is sufficiently processed to be ready for that purpose.

The Syrians have, presumably at Iran’s direction and with its help, transferred dangerous Scud missiles to the mullah’s re-armed terrorist proxy, Hezbollah.  Particularly if equipped with chemical or biological weapons (which the Syrians and Iranians have in abundance), such missiles would pose a mortal threat to Israel and her people.

Egypt has recently conducted offensively oriented war games in the Sinai Peninsula. Their clear purpose:  Honing the Egyptian military’s capabilities for renewed attacks on Israel.  The government of Hosni Mubarak has also failed to halt the massive network of smuggling tunnels into Gaza that are supplying another of Iran’s terrorist surrogates, Hamas, with an array of ever-more-deadly weapons in preparation for when (not if) hostilities are resumed with Israel.

Even before last weekend’s conflict over the blockade-running "aid flotilla," Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan had effectively terminated the close ties Israel once had with his country.  Erdogan’s accelerating Islamicization of the once-secular Turkey has been accompanied by his intensifying rapprochement with Iran and Syria.

Notably, the Turks recently joined Brazil for the transparent purpose of running interference for Tehran’s nuclear weapons program.  It remains to be seen whether these three nations will succeed in sabotaging Team Obama’s latest bid to secure a new UN sanctions resolution against the mullahs.

Last week, a powerful new weapon in the campaign to delegitimize the Jewish State was spawned by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference.  It mandated negotiations to start in 2012 with the aim of ridding the Middle East of nuclear weapons.  Israel was the only nation named.  It would also likely be the only one disarmed if the transnationalists (both the secular UN types and Shariah-adherent ones) have their way.

These developments have two things in common:  First, particularly when taken together, they constitute the greatest existential threat to Israel since 1973.  And second, they reflect– and powerfully reinforce– a growing perception that the United States has cut Israel loose.

Israel’s many friends in this country – particularly a number of American Jews critical to Democratic electoral prospects this fall – finally seem to have awakened to these realities.  Hence, Team Obama’s feverish effort last week to have the President seen with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a man it had humiliatingly spurned and publicly upbraided just a few months ago. (Mr. Netanyahu’s decision to head home to deal with the Flotilla crisis spared both men the obvious PR challenges associated with the former making a Washington visit at this juncture.)

Unfortunately, matters have reached the point where such calculated exercises in Potemkin political rehabilitation will not suffice.  Ditto rhetorical pledges of unseverable bilateral ties.

Unless and until President Obama gives comprehensive and tangible expression to America’s commitment to Israel– in terms of reliable military assistance, unstinting diplomatic support and wide latitude to act in its self-defense– the forces that have been unleashed by him and others will assuredly translate in due course into war.  It is certainly harder to do such prophylactic things today than it would have been at the outset of the Obama presidency.  But such costs are nothing compared to those that will be incurred by freedom-loving people in the Middle East and elsewhere, including here, if he fails to undertake these necessary course-corrections.

Frank J. Gaffney, Jr. is President of the Center for Security Policy, a columnist for the Washington Times and host of the nationally syndicated program "Secure Freedom Radio" heard in Washington weeknights at 9:00 p.m. on WTNT 570 AM.

Ending Israel’s losing streak

These words are being written before the dust has had a chance to settle on Monday night’s naval commando raid of the Gaza-bound Turkish flotilla of terror supporters. The raid’s full range of operational failures still cannot be known. Obviously the fact that the mission ended with at least six soldiers wounded and at least ten Hamas supporters dead makes clear that there were significant failures in both the IDF’s training for and execution of the mission.

The Navy and other relevant bodies will no doubt study these failures. But they point to a larger strategic failure that has crippled Israel’s capacity to contend with the information war being waged against it. Until this failure is remedied, no after-action investigation, no enhanced training, no new electronic warfare doodad will make a significant impact on Israel’s ability to contend with the next Hamas flotilla that sets sail for Gaza.

In the space of four days, Israel has suffered two massive defeats. A straight line runs between the anti-Israel resolution passed last Friday at the UN’s Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference and the Hamas flotilla. And in both cases, Israeli officials voiced "surprise," at these defeats.

Given the months-long build-up to the NPT review conference, and the weeks-long build-up to the Turkish-Hamas flotilla, that surprise cannot be attributed to a lack of information. What it points to rather is a cognitive failure of Israel’s leaders – from Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu down – to understand the nature of the war being waged against us. And it is this fundamental failure of cognition that has landed six soldiers in the hospital, Israel’s international reputation in tatters and Israeli spokesmen – from Netanyahu down – searching for a way to describe a reality they do not understand and explain how they will cope with challenges that confound them.

The reality is simple and stark. Israel is the target of a massive information war that is unprecedented in scale and scope. This war is being waged primarily by a massive consortium of the international Left and the Arab and Islamic worlds. The staggering scale of the forces aligned against Israel is demonstrated by two things.

The Hamas abetting Free Gaza website published a list of some 222 organizations that endorsed the terror-supporting flotilla. The listed organizations hail from the four corners of the earth. They include Jewish anti-Israel groups as well as Christian, Islamic and non-religious anti-Israel groups. It is hard to think of any cause other than Israel-bashing that could unite such disparate forces.

The second indicator of the scope of the war against Israel is far more devastating than the list of groups that endorsed the pro-Hamas flotilla. That indicator is the fact that at the UN on Friday, 189 governments of 189 countries came together as one to savage Israel. There is no other issue that commands such unanimity. The NPT review conference demonstrated that the only way the international community will agree on anything is if its members are agreeing that Israel has no right to defend itself. The NPT review conference’s campaign against Israel shows that the 222 organizations supporting Hamas are a reflection of the will of the majority – not a minority – of the nations of the world.

This war against Israel is nothing new. It has been going on since the dawn of modern Zionism 150 years ago. In many ways, it is just the current iteration of the eternal war against the Jewish people.

The Red-Green alliance’s aims are twofold. It seeks to delegitimize Israel’s right to exist and it seeks to make it impossible for Israel to defend itself. If these aims are met, Israel’s destruction will become an historic inevitability.

Until US President Barack Obama took office, Israel’s one steady asset in this war was the US. Until last year, the US consistently refused to join the Red-Green alliance because its leaders recognized that the alliance’s campaign against Israel was part and parcel of the Red-Green campaign against US superpower status in the Middle East and throughout the world. Indeed, some US leaders recognized that the Red-Green alliance’s animus towards Israel stemmed from the same source as its rejection of American exceptionalism.

Dismally, what the US’s vote in favor of the NPT review conference’s final anti-Israel and by default pro-Iranian resolution makes clear is that under President Barack Obama, the US is no longer Israel’s reliable ally. Indeed, what the US’s vote shows is that the Obama administration’s ideological preferences place it on the side of the Red-Green alliance against Israel. No amount of backpedalling by the Obama administration can make up the damage caused by its act of belligerence against Israel at the NPT review conference.

If Israel’s leaders were better informed, in the lead-up to the NPT conference they would have recognized a number of things. They would have realized that Obama’s anti-nuclear conference in April, his commitment to a nuclear-free world, as well as his general ambivalence – at best – to US global leadership rendered it all but inevitable that he would turn on Israel at the NPT review conference. The truth is that Egypt’s call for the denuclearization of Israel jibes with Obama’s own repeatedly held views both regarding Israel and regarding the US’s own nuclear arsenal.

Armed with this basic understanding of Obama’s inclinations, Israel should have taken for granted that the NPT conference would target Israel. Consequently, in months preceding the conference, Israel should have stated loudly and consistently that as currently constituted the NPT serves as the chief enabler of nuclear proliferation rather than the central instrument for preventing nuclear proliferation it was supposed to be. North Korea exploited its status as an NPT signatory to develop its nuclear arsenal. Today Iran exploits its status as an NPT signatory to develop nuclear weapons. Unless the NPT is fundamentally revised it will continue to serve as the primary instrument for nuclear proliferation.

Had this been Israel’s position, it would have been able to undercut US arguments in favor of signing onto the anti-Israel final resolution. So too, such a position would have prepared Israel to cogently explain its rejection of the final resolution without sounding hypocritical.

And that is the thing of it. The Red-Green alliance’s aim at the NPT conference was to discredit Israel’s deterrent capacity while delegitimizing its right to take preemptive action against Iran’s nuclear facilities. Now, due to Israel’s failure to make its case against the NPT in the months leading up to the conference, as Israel’s enemies use the US-supported final resolution to claim that Israel’s opposition to Iran’s nuclear weapons program is hypocritical, Israel lacks a cognitive framework for responding.

The fact that Israel still doesn’t get the point is made clear by the government’s response to the decision. Israel’s denunciation of the resolution makes no mention of the fact that the NPT regime itself has become the chief institutional enabler of nuclear proliferation today. So too, disastrously, in a clear bid to pretend away Obama’s treachery, Israel actually applauded Obama for emptily criticizing the resolution he voted for. This Israeli response compounds the damage and ensures that the assault will continue and grow stronger.

As to the flotilla, the challenge it presented Israel was nothing new. Israel has been confronted by suicide protestors for a decade now. The fact that these pro-Hamas activists intended to commit suicide in order to discredit Israel on camera was made clear by the fact that the Turkish organizers named the lead ship Rachel Corrie – after the most famous pro-Hamas suicide protestor.

So too, the fact that Israeli forces boarding the ships would be met by trenchant, violent opposition was knowable simply by looking at Turkey’s role in the operation. First of all, the Turkish government-supported NGO behind the operation is IHH. As the US government, the Turkish government in the 1990s, the Investigative Project on Terrorism and countless other sources have proven, the IHH is a terrorist organization. It has direct links to al Qaida and Hamas. Its members have been involved in terrorist warfare from Chechnya and Bosnia to Iraq and Israel. The notion that IHH organizers would behave like radical leftist anti-Israel demonstrators on university campuses is simply ridiculous.

Moreover, there is Turkey’s behavior to consider. Since Obama took office, Turkey’s gradual slide into the Iranian axis has sped up considerably. Turkey’s leading role in the flotilla, and the Erdogan government’s ostentatious embrace of IHH which just a decade ago Turkey banned from earthquake relief efforts in light of its violent, jihadist mission made clear that the Erdogan regime would use the violence on board the ships as a way to strike a strategic blow at Israel’s international standing.

In view of all of this, it is clear that Israel’s information strategy for contending with the flotilla was ill-conceived. Rather than attack Turkey for its facilitation of terrorism, and openly prepare charge sheets against the flotilla’s organizers, crew and passengers for their facilitation of terrorism in breach of both Israeli domestic law and international law, Israel’s information efforts were largely concentrated on irrelevancies. Israeli officials detailed all the humanitarian assistance Israel has provided Hamas-controlled Gaza. They spoke of the Navy’s commitment to use non-lethal force to take over the ships.

And now, in the aftermath of the lethal takeover of the flotilla, Israel’s leaders stammer. Rather than demand an apology from the Turkish government for its support for these terrorists, Defense Minister Ehud Barak called his Turkish counterpart to talk over what happened. Rather than demand restitution for the terrorist assault against Israeli troops, Israel has defended its troops’ moral training in non-violent crowd control.

These efforts are worse than worthless. They make Israel appear whiny rather than indignant. And more depressingly, they expose a dangerous lack of basic comprehension about what has just occurred and a concomitant inability to prepare for what will most certainly follow

Israel is the target of a massive information war. For Israel to win this war it needs to counter its enemies’ lies with the truth.

The NPT has been subverted by the very forces it was created to prevent from acquiring nuclear weapons.

Hamas is a genocidal terrorist organization ideologically indistinguishable from al Qaida. International law requires all states and non-state actors to take active measures to defeat it.

Israel is the frontline of the free world. Its ability to defend itself and deter its foes is the single most important guarantee of international peace and security in the world. A strong Israel is also the most potent and reliable guarantor of the US’s continued ability to project its power in the Middle East.

This is the unvarnished truth. It is also the beginning of a successful Israel campaign to defang and neutralize the massive coalition of nuclear proliferation- and terrorism- abettors aligned against it. But until our leaders finally recognize the nature of the war being waged against our country, these basic facts will remain ignored as Israel moves from one stunning defeat to the next.  

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.