Tag Archives: Israel

Frank Gaffney of the Center For Security Policy On Why To Stay Out Of Syria

 

TRANSCRIPT BELOW:

HH: Joined now by Frank Gaffney, president of the Center For Security Policy, www.securefreedom.org. Frank Gaffney, my first question to you is did the announcement that AIPAC is going to storm the Hill next week in support of intervention, and the New York Times story on the Israel government’s surprise you, that the Israeli government also supporting intervention? Did those stories surprise you?

FG: No, Hugh, I’m afraid that AIPAC, and sort of the organized Jewish lobby more generally, has been Obama’s poodle, basically, since he came to office. I think that they have long since lost the bubble on what’s in the interest of American Jewry, let alone Israel. And I think this is in keeping with that. You know, they didn’t fight Chuck Hagel’s nomination, they didn’t fight Samantha Power’s nomination, they haven’t said beans about the peace process, even when John Kerry threatened Israel with de-legitimation if they don’t make sweeping concessions to the Palestinians in the nature of a second state. All of this is evidence, I think, of a kind of rot that I fear is going to do two things. One, I believe this will put Israel in greater jeopardy, not less, and two, that it’s going to create an image in a lot of other Americans’ minds which you can be will be exploited by enemies of Israel, and I’m certainly not one, that the Jews are making us go to war in Syria. And that ain’t good for any of us. I really don’t think this is advisable.

HH: All right, now the Israeli government is also, according to the New York Times, urging that the President strike Syria. Does that surprise you? Or do you not believe that report?

FG: Again, no, I think it is consistent with the posture that the Netanyahu government has taken, basically, since President Obama came to office, and that is do whatever is necessary to stay on good terms with Obama. I’d like to think that at least they recognize that Obama is very hostile to Israel, but I am afraid that it is at least in part borne of this notion that if they just stay on his good side, then he won’t be too beastly to them. I don’t think it’s going to work out that way. I think he’s going to be beastly to them as he will before he’s done.

HH: Now I have been canvassing all of the center-right’s people this week, and trying to keep my eye on the news at the same time. And I just was, Brian Todd was just on CNN talking about possible retaliatory actions if we strike Syria. I am afraid, Frank Gaffney, that if we don’t, Khamenei will say I wonder what the real red line is, let’s see what…you know, as you know better than anyone, you and Ledeen, the Iranians use to go and assassinate people when no one stood up to them. They would send their killers everywhere. What signal would Khamenei take, Frank, because I have been persuaded we have to do this because of Khamenei.

FG: Look, can I say, first of all, how appreciative I am that you’re taking national security really seriously? I mean, you do more than just about anybody in talk radio, but the fact that you’re devoting this kind of time, your time, as well as your audience’s time, to a real debate about this is extremely laudatory, even if you’ve got this absolutely wrong.

HH: (laughing)

FG: You’re making the effort to inform us, and frankly, that’s not happening much in Washington these days.

HH: No, by the way, that’s exactly the way people should respond on this debate. They should just, okay, we’ve got to listen to each other, so tell me more.

FG: To your point, you are hanging your hat on being able to influence the Khamenei regime and its strategy for becoming even more of a threat in the future. I see absolutely no evidence that their behavior has been modulated in the least. Have they stopped assassinating people? Well, not since I’ve noticed. I mean, they did try to blow up the Saudi ambassador here a year or two ago in Washington.

HH: Yes, they did.

FG: And it’s, the problem, fundamentally, Hugh, the problem is this. They’ve already understood this president has no stomach for enforcing a red line against them. They already know. They’re good to go. I frankly think they probably already have got nuclear weapons, but if they don’t, there’s no, nothing standing in the way of them doing it. And our getting embroiled in a civil war in Syria, which would divert not only our attention, but also our military’s diminished resources, you’re absolutely right, we need to make a spot around the President acknowledging he’s been hollowing out our military. Indeed he has. We go waste it in a strike, and believe me, it’s not going to be the Goldilocks strike. It will turn into an escalating problem, because not least, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, if their resolution makes it through, it’s, I gather what you want, you’re going to have us committing to changing the momentum on the battlefield.

HH: We’ll come back and talk about that. Frank’s going nowhere. He’s coming back, and we’ll take our calls.

— – – – –

HH: Frank, Fox News, the reason we were off the mark there, we were watching a report on Fox News just now that the Pentagon has been asked to revise the Syrian retaliation plan more than 50 times. Now that is a talking point in your favor, I know. But it also suggests they’re getting very serious about deposing Assad, and as we went to break, you’re worried about that. Tell people why.

FG: Well, Hugh, you and others, many of whom are good friends of mine, and with whom I agree on a lot of things, have created what I believe is a delusional outcome, namely that when we go to war on behalf of the so-called opposition, and help them overthrow Bashar Assad and his regime, and run whatever retaliatory response we get in the course of that, which probably means more war, probably, I would argue, more regional war, not just confined to Syria, but that when we do all that, the guys that are going to come out of this on top are the so-called Free Syrian Army. And actually, if you know enough about it to be following the unfolding saga about these guys, it turns out it’s a subset of the Free Syrian Army that might be pro-secular, might be pro-democratic, might be pro-Western, but are absolutely unlikely to succeed as the dominant force in the country, at least probably for the rest of our lives for the simple reason that far more numerous, far better armed, far more disciplined and ruthless and combat hardened, are the Islamists. Best case as a result, Hugh, you get out of this the Muslim Brotherhood. Worst case, you get al Qaeda. And…

HH: All right, let me get some calls…

FG: …not in favor of turning over Syria to al Qaeda. We’ve already switched sides in this war, for God’s sake. I don’t think that’s an advisable thing to do, and the American people don’t want to do it, either.

HH: John in Minneapolis, your comment or question for Frank Gaffney.

John: Hi, Hugh. Yeah, I agree completely with Frank. What I was going to say is we’ve got perfect examples recently. Going back to Gaza, they were allowed to elect Hamas. Going to Egypt, they elected Muslim Brotherhood. Libya is chaotic right now we got rid of Qaddafi. I mean, there’s example after example. Even Iraq’s not stable, and look at the investment there.

HH: All right, thank you, John. Let me also go to Steve in Los Angeles. He has a question for Frank. Steve, go ahead.

Steve: Hey, hi again, Hugh. And Frank, it’s a pleasure to talk to you. Hugh had Jack Keane on, and boy, you know, I was going back and forth until I heard him, and he really thinks there’s a viable group that we can support. What do you think of Jack Keane’s observation?

FG: Well, I’m a great admirer of Jack Keane, and I’m afraid in this case, as we talked about, I think it was last night, Hugh, he is relying upon this young graduate student by the name of Elizabeth O’Bagy, who it turns out works for the Syrian opposition…

Steve: Wow.

FG: …who gets a cut of contracts anytime she brings more business to the so-called Syrian Emergency Task Force. And you know, if there’s another source of information about the relative strength of these competing factions, I’d be all ears. But when the Secretary of State and John McCain and Fox News and the Wall Street Journal, and just this morning, National Public Radio all cite this young woman as the savant of what we’re dealing with here, I don’t feel too comfortable with it, I must say, especially since she’s not acknowledging the conflict of interest.

HH: And Frank, I want to follow up on that. I saw your Tweet on that. Steve, thank you for reminding me about this. I saw your Tweet on it this morning. And that’s a serious charge about a conflict of interest. How do you know that?

FG: It is a matter of public record, Hugh, that she is associated with, as the political director, of this group called the Syrian Emergency Task Force, which is run by a fellow by the name of Mouaz Mustafa, who until, I don’t know, five or six years ago, was an intern in Blanche Lincoln’s office. This is kind of like the Children’s Crusade, if I can just say…

HH: Oh, my gosh.

FG: But the point is that she’s been called it. Neil Cavuto did it the other day. The Wall Street Journal today had to issue a sort of a backhanded clarification that they failed to acknowledge that she works for the opposition. And all I’m saying is she’s entitled to work for the opposition. We’re entitled to know she’s working for the people that she’s trying to get us to help. And I don’t think that’s a basis for going to war.

HH: Yeah, the reason I bring it up is because…once I saw, because I follow your Tweet feed, obviously. Everyone should, @frankgaffney. And when you pointed it out, I went to the Center For the Study of War’s website, and I read their conflict of interest policy. Kim Kagan is very high in my esteem, very high, as is Fred. And their adamant statement on their conflicts is you can’t do that and work at the Center for the Study of War.

FG: Yeah, it’s a little curious. She seems to be running government contracts through ISW, and you know, she’s got this relationship. And she claims that it isn’t affecting her judgment. I don’t know. I just want to know that she is working for the Syrian opposition. And again, Hugh, the point is I’m willing to accept that there are some people in this Syrian opposition that might not be so bad. It’s just the problem that they A) swear fealty to the al-Nusra Front, which is al Qaeda, and two, there’s going to be a problem, because I believe they won’t win.

HH: Okay, I’ve got to get one more question is, Frank, before we run out of time. Is there anything the President can say on Tuesday night to change your mind?

FG: Hugh, if his lips are moving, he’s lying.

HH: (laughing) I guess the answer is no, then.

FG: The only thing that would make me give him the benefit of maybe a little doubt is if he says, as Jimmy Carter did in December of 1979, I’ve got this all wrong, the Soviets then invaded Afghanistan, and he turned around his hollowing out of the military, if this president said now, I’ve got this all wrong, we are going into a full-scale rebuilding of our military capabilities, and then we’re going to take on the Iranians as well as the Syrians, then we can talk. But he’s not going to do that, and if he did, he’d be lying.

HH: But at least he knows what he’s got to do to get Frank Gaffney’s vote in Congress.

FG: Yeah.

HH: Frank Gaffney, president of the Center For Security Policy, great to speak with you as always.

End of interview.

Obama’s ‘Goldilocks’ strike on Syria

President Obama surprised friends and foes alike with his announcement in the middle of Labor Day weekend that he would attack Syria, but ask Congress for approval first.  Even more surprising is the idea that anyone – friends, foes or Congress – would take seriously his Goldilocks-like strike plan, with its promise of “not too much, not too little, just right” amounts of death and destruction somehow calibrated to punish Bashar Assad for using chemical weapons, but not defeat him.

Fairy tales are not a sound basis for American strategy, especially in as volatile a part of the world as today’s Middle East.  The coming debate on Capitol Hill must establish whether the President actually has a credible, coherent and reasonably promising plan, one that looks beyond his initial missile lay-down to shaping a positive outcome in Syria and minimizing the real dangers of retaliation from one or more quarters.

The following are among the issues Congress must be address:

  • If the object of the exercise is not only to penalize the Assad regime for killing large numbers of civilians with Sarin nerve gas and perhaps other chemical agents but to prevent his stocks of such weapons from being used in the future, will the U.S. attack serve that purpose?  It is hard to see how, unless it involves a concerted effort to destroy Assad’s chemical stockpiles.

Otherwise, there is a distinct possibility that either the regime’s own troops or allies (notably Iran and its proxy, the designated terrorist organization Hezbollah) or its enemies (notably, the Muslim Brotherhood and its partner in Syria, the designated terrorist organization al Qaeda) will get their hands on these weapons.  Either way, the prospect is for more chemical weapons use, not less, if Assad’s chemical arsenal is not eliminated.

Unfortunately, no one can promise that an effort to use force to neutralize Assad’s chemical stockpiles would be surgical and antiseptic – two attributes upon which Mr. Obama seems fixated.  Even if we actually know where all of them are (including those Saddam Hussein is believed to have covertly transferred to Syria before we liberated Iraq), blowing up the caches will almost certainly result in some of their deadly contents being released downwind.  So, what’s the plan?

  • Those like Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham, who insist the United States must help overthrow Bashir Assad, contend that there is an alternative in the Free Syrian Army (FSA).  They assert that the FSA is “moderate,” pro-Western and has a realistic possibility – with our assistance – of keeping Syria together and out of the hands of the Islamists who appear to dominate the opposition’s political and military operations.

There are a number of problems with this proposition, which President Obama may have to endorse more or less explicitly to secure the support he acutely needs in the coming debate from the Senate’s Dynamic Duo, Batman McCain and his sidekick, Robin Graham.  For one thing, it is far from clear that the Free Syrian Army is, as advertised, the secular great-white-hope for Syria.  As Daniel Greenfield points out at FrontPage Magazine (http://frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/the-wall-street-journals-misleading-report-on-the-moderate-syrian-opposition/), even Elizabeth O’Bagy – who waxed enthusiastic about the FSA in a Wall Street Journal op.ed. last Saturday – told the New York Times in April, “My sense is that there are no seculars [in the Syrian rebel leadership].”

Then, there is the natty problem that, if the Free Syria Army somehow does prevail over Assad’s forces and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and Hezbollah units now augmenting them, the FSA will also have to triumph over the avowedly Islamist units – including al Qaeda – with whom it is now aligned.  If President Obama is unable to offer a way to accomplish this hat-trick, the best that can be hoped for is that Syria remains chaotically riven between our enemies: Assad and Company on the one hand and the Sunni Islamists and their FSA partners on the other.  The unhappy alternative is that the worst in one or the other of these factions will emerge victorious, with dire consequences for Syria, the region and us.

O Among those most at risk from a bad outcome in Syria is Israel.  To be sure, an Assad victory would strengthen and embolden Iran.  Conversely, an Assad defeat, particularly at American hands, would be a strategic blow to the mullahs in Tehran – a prospect that is inducing some Israelis and many of their champions here to fall into line behind President Obama’s proposed attack.

These stakes suggest, however, that Iran will do everything possible to make a U.S. intervention in Syria very costly.  Its threats to retaliate against Israel if Obama pulls the trigger cannot be discounted.  Neither should the possibility that Hezbollah cells known to be in this country will be ordered to carry out attacks here.

For those who believe the United States must defeat the Iranian regime before it obtains nuclear weapons, there are other, more direct and certainly more effective means of doing so than by engaging in a bank-shot – particularly a Goldilocks-style one – by attacking Syria.  We should help the people of Iran free themselves from their Islamist oppressors.  Our success there would do more than any single other thing to assist the Syrian people.

A congressional debate on Obama’s Mideast policies is long-overdue.  If the impending one fails satisfactorily to address these critical topics, among many others, President Obama’s proposed attack on Syria will probably have – like some other fairy tales – an unhappy ending.

Israeli Innovators in National Security Technology: Case Studies for US and International Technology Transfer

PreviewScreenSnapz002Israel’s deserved reputation as a source of groundbreaking innovations in both pure and applied science and engineering, for both military and civilian applications, is known world-wide. Many US-Israel partnerships at both the governmental and private levels have fostered a two-way transfer of research and development expertise as well as investment and marketing support. This 21st Century pioneering effort has been captured in best-selling books, supported by incubators in Israel and in the US, and amplified through an expanding network of websites and associations. The last decade has seen expanded cooperative agreements forged by individual offices in many US state governments with Israel, as well as agreements at the federal level, to encourage technology innovation and entrepreneurship in both countries.

The Center for Security Policy presents “Israeli Innovators in National Security Technology: Case Studies for US and International Technology Transfer – 2013” as part of the Center’s Occasional Paper series. The paper is intended to provide a sample of important innovations to better inform the public of emerging technologies. The paper features ten case studies of innovative and potentially game-changing technologies that are currently improving national security or homeland security capabilities in Israel or that have a significant potential to do so. Most are from small companies, though not all, the significant exception being the Iron Dome missile defense system. All are noteworthy for their potential applications for protecting the national security and homeland security of the United States and our allies.

The Appendices include sample lists of associations and websites that both enable and educate the public on Israeli innovation or the Israeli-US technology partnerships, and a list of key cooperative agreements at the federal level and for numerous states.

Download the PDF

 

Companies profiled: BETH-EL INDUSTRIES | CAMERO TECHNOLOGIES |  DSIT SOLUTIONS |  FLOW-INDUSTRIES | IRON DOME | NOWFORCE | PLASAN SASA | RADA ELECTRONIC INDUSTRIES | ROBOTEAM | SERAPHIM OPTRONICS

Bibi and the true believers

Standing next to US Secretary of State John Kerry on Tuesday morning, Justice Minister Tzipi Livni gushed that through his indefatigable efforts to bring Israeli and Palestinian officials to Washington, Kerry proved that “nothing can stop true believers.”

As usual, the cognitively challenged Livni told us something she hadn’t intended to say. The term “true believer” was coined by Eric Hoffer in his classic work The True Believer from 1951, which Livni has obviously not read. Hoffer’s epic study of the psychological roots of fanaticism described a true believer as a person so fanatically committed to a cause that no amount of reality can make him abandon it.

And that just about sums up Kerry, and the man he works for, US President Barack Obama.

Kerry visited Israel six times in the four months leading up to the meetings in Washington this week, during which Americans, Palestinians and Israelis discussed the size of the table they will be sitting around in the coming discussions.

During the same four months, the Syrian regime used chemical weapons against its opponents on multiple occasions. Most recently, they gassed Palestinians in Yarmuk refugee camp outside Damascus, killing 22 people.

During those four months, al-Qaida strengthened its control over the Syrian opposition groups fighting the regime.

During those four months, the Syrian civil war became a focal point of a wider Sunni-Shi’ite religious war that has already spread to Lebanon and Iraq. In its post-US-withdrawal role of Iranian satrapy, Iraq has allowed Iran to use its territory and airspace to transfer war materiel to the Syrian regime.

During those four months, the Obama administration decided to begin arming the al-Qaidadominated rebel forces. It has also deliberately raised the risk of a Syrian-Israeli war by informing the media every time that Israel attacks missile sites in Syria.

Also during the four months that Kerry obsessed over convincing PLO chief Mahmoud Abbas to send his representative to Washington, Egypt experienced its second revolution in which, buffeted by millions of demonstrators who filled the squares of Egypt’s cities, the Egyptian military overthrew the US-supported Muslim Brotherhood regime.

The Obama administration was quick to jump onto the bandwagon of the first Egyptian revolution in January 2011. That revolution led to the military’s ouster of then-president Hosni Mubarak, a staunch US ally, and so paved the way for the totalitarian and deeply popular Muslim Brotherhood to rise to power.

When the Brotherhood became subject to its own revolution due to its incompetent handling of Egypt’s failed economy and its single-minded focus on transforming Egypt into an Islamist state as quickly as possible, the Obama administration was confounded. Speaking to The Wall Street Journal this week, a senior administration official expressed complete befuddlement at events in Egypt. “None of us can quite figure this out,” the official said. “It seems so self-defeating.”

And that is the thing of it. In its support for the Brotherhood, the administration was implementing its wholly unfounded, dead-wrong ideological belief that the Muslim Brotherhood is a progressive, “largely secular” organization that is dedicated to good works. And now that the Egyptian military, supported by about half of the Egyptian people, has rejected the Brotherhood, its actions are incomprehensible to the Obama administration.

In the face of massive documentary evidence, and facts on the ground, (Egypt has run out of food, and rather than get them some, overthrown president Mohamed Morsi rammed through a totalitarian Islamist constitution), the Obama administration still clings to its ideological belief that the Muslim Brotherhood is a positive, progressive, “largely secular” organization that is devoted to good works for the poor.

So, too, in Syria. The administration thinks it is okay to fund the Free Syria Army, because its leadership is dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood.

Owing to the administration’s blind faith in its belief that the reason that the US is hated in the Muslim world is because it has opposed populist Islamist forces, Obama and his advisers think it makes sense to arm those forces in Syria now – so long as the Muslim Brotherhood is able to hide the fact that it is dominated by al-Qaida for a sufficient number of news cycles to sell this fiction to the media.

The administration’s faith in Islamist reasonableness holds for the Shi’ite Islamists just as strongly as it does for the Sunni Islamists. This is why it maintains its commitment to negotiating with Iran’s fanatical regime about its nuclear weapons program, despite overwhelming evidence that the Iranians are using the negotiations as a means to develop their bomb in peace.

This week David Albright and Christina Walrond at the Institute for Science and International Security in Washington published a deeply disturbing report. They explained that based on what we know, Iran will reached “critical capacity” in its nuclear program by mid-2014. Albright and Walrond defined critical capacity as “the technical capability to produce sufficient weapongrade uranium from its safeguarded stocks of low enriched uranium for a nuclear explosive, without being detected.”

Albright and Walrond then explained the many ways Iran can speed up the process, and hide its achievement from the international community for long enough to make it too late to conduct military strikes on their nuclear facilities to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power.

In other words, they told us politely, and diplomatically, if urgently, that we have arrived at the moment of decision. Will the US or Israel strike Iran’s nuclear installations to prevent it from becoming a nuclear power, or will Iran become a nuclear power? If we wait much longer, we won’t have sufficient time to act.

But for Kerry and his fellow true believers the most urgent priority was to convince the Palestinians to sit in the same room as Israelis. And this week they scored a great victory for US foreign policy by achieving their goal.

In her brief remarks, not only did Livni inadvertently tell us that Kerry is a fanatic. She also told us that she is a fanatic.

Livni said, “[I]t took more than just a plane ticket to be here today. A courageous act of leadership by Prime Minister Netanyahu that was approved by the Israeli government made this visit here and the beginning of the negotiation possible.”

The “courageous act” she referred to was the government’s decision to release 104 “Palestinian prisoners” from Israel’s prisons. The demand for their freedom was the obstacle Abbas placed in the way of Livni acquiring her long-sought-after plane ticket to peace talks and five star receptions at Kerry’s Washington mansion.

The 104 “prisoners” are made up of Palestinians and Israeli Arabs. They are not car thieves or pickpockets. They are monsters with human faces. All 104 are serving life sentences for murder or attempted murder. Their crimes were gruesome acts of barbarism marked by demonic cruelty.

Yusef Said al-Al and Ayman Taleb Abu Sitteh stabbed David Bubil and Haim Weitzman to death and mutilated their bodies, cutting off their ears as souvenirs.

Three other “Palestinian prisoners” hacked four teenagers to pieces, killing them with pitchforks, hatchets and knives.

Thirteen-year-old Oren Baharmi was raped and murdered by Amad Mahmad Jamil Shehada.

And the list goes on and on, and on.

There was nothing even vaguely courageous about Netanyahu’s decision to release these monsters.

There was nothing even vaguely courageous about his cabinet members’ decision to vote for their release. Theirs was an act of utter cravenness. They dishonored the victims, the victims’ families and the nation as a whole.

And they endangered the country. According to the Almagor Victims of Terror organization, from 2000 to 2008, 180 Israelis were murdered by Palestinian terrorists released by Israel in previous “deals.” And those terrorists had been imprisoned for non-lethal actions, (i.e., without blood on their hands).

The fact that Netanyahu and his ministers passed this decision simply to provide a sufficient payoff to Abbas for him to send Saeb Erekat to Washington to talk about nothing with Livni, makes their actions, not only craven, but insane.

Livni’s obscene characterization of this cowardly, life-threatening injustice as a “courageous act,” exposes her as well as a true believing fanatic.

Only a fanatic could say such a thing.

In his remarks, Kerry said that the talks about the size of the table are going to bring about a situation where Israel will achieve, “not just the absence of conflict, but a full and lasting peace with the Arab and Muslim nations.”

Like Kerry’s demand that Israel free the terrorists, this statement bespeaks an underlying fanatical dementia. Regarding the “Arab and Muslim nations,” in Syria, neither the al-Qaida forces nor the regime have mentioned anything about putting down their weapons if Israel coughs up Jerusalem and Elon Moreh. The same goes for Hezbollah, Iran and their friends and enemies warring for power throughout the region.

As for the Palestinians, if they were interested in “lasting peace” with Israel, they wouldn’t demand freedom for terrorist murderers. Moreover, while Kerry was exulting in his brilliant success, Abbas announced that in his version of “lasting peace,” Jews will be wiped off of the map of Palestine.

As Abbas put it, “In a final resolution, we would not see the presence of a single Israeli – civilian or soldiers – on our lands.”

So again, while Kerry and Livni see rainbows and unicorns, Abbas sees a Jew-free Palestine, with the 600,000 Jews of Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria rendered homeless refugees to make room for his anti-Semitic fiefdom.

It is not surprising that Kerry, Obama and Livni are going along with this obscenity. It is not surprising that fanatics who pray to the god of the two-state solution think it is courageous to free Jewish-baby killers. It is not surprising they think the most important thing on the international agenda is to secure Israel’s surrender of land, our legal rights, and our ability to defend ourselves to a terrorist group that hates Jews so much it requires all of us to be gone before it will do us the favor of accepting sovereignty.

What is surprising – and frightening – is that Netanyahu, who is not a true believer, and knows that they are true believers, is going along with this.

Netanyahu knows that Israel cannot survive without Judea and Samaria. He knows what the Muslim Brotherhood is. He knows the nature of the Iranian regime. He knows that the PLO is no different from Hamas. Their goal is the same – they want to destroy Israel.

Netanyahu knows that Obama is hostile to Israel and that he will not lift a finger to block Iran from becoming a nuclear power.

So why is he going along with their insanity? In bowing to US pressure and approving the release of 104 terrorist murderers from prison, Netanyahu behaved like a coward. In bowing to US pressure not to bomb Iran’s nuclear installations, Netanyahu is being a coward.

The most important question for Israel today then is whether our leader is capable of being anything else.

Palestinian Poisoning of Israel’s Wells

Israel resumes direct negotiations with the Palestinians today, thanks to its agreement to release another one hundred terrorists from Israeli jails – even though most will likely resume their jihad against the Jewish State.

Lethal insult is added to injury by the fact that the Palestinians are simultaneously making clear their abiding determination to destroy Israel in one of the most revolting ways imaginable. Each year, Palestinian towns and villages on the high ground of the West Bank send some fifty million cubic meters of raw sewage downhill to pollute the streams, lands and aquifers of Israel.

Among other pollutants, this practice is introducing the polio virus into Israel’s water supply. Those who deliberately do that to their neighbors are not people with whom a real and durable peace can ever be reached.

How to respond to EU sanctions

This week the EU took three steps that together prove Europe’s ill-intentions toward the Jewish state.

First, last Friday the EU announced it is imposing economic sanctions on Israel. The sanctions deny EU funds to Israeli entities with an address beyond the 1949 Armistice Lines. They also deny EU funds to Israeli entities countrywide that carry out activities beyond the 1949 Armistice Lines.

The areas beyond the 1949 Armistice Lines delineated by the EU directive include the Gaza Strip, which Israel abandoned eight years ago; the Golan Heights, which has been under Israeli sovereignty since 1981; eastern, northern and southern Jerusalem, which have been under Israeli sovereignty since 1967; and Judea and Samaria, over which Israel has shared governance with the PLO since 1994 in accordance with signed agreements witnessed by EU representatives.

The EU’s second action was the publication Tuesday of EU foreign policy commissioner Catherine Ashton’s letter to her fellow commissioners informing them that by the end of the year, the EU will publish binding requirements for specially labeling Israeli goods produced by Jews beyond the 1949 Armistice Lines exported to EU member states.

This act is potentially more damaging for Israel than the ban on transferring EU monies to Israeli entities with “bad” addresses. Labeling Israeli products is a means of signaling Europeans consumers that they should view all Israeli exports as morally inferior to other goods and wage a consumer boycott of Israeli products. Indeed, Lithuanian Foreign Minister Linas Linkevicius described the proposed labeling as an alternative to a broader boycott of all Israeli goods.

The EU’s third act was its decision to define Hezbollah’s “military wing” as a terrorist organization, but leave all the other Hezbollah-related institutions untouched. While the move has been applauded by Israeli politicians desperate to deny Europe’s animosity, Europe’s partial designation of Hezbollah as a terrorist entity is another act of aggression against Israel.

By pretending that Hezbollah has a legitimate “political wing” – a transparent lie that even Hezbollah has denied – the EU ensures that Hezbollah personnel and Hezbollah institutions can continue to find safe haven in Europe so long as the avoid attacking non-Jewish Europeans.

Hezbollah agents can continue raising money, planning attacks, and recruiting terrorists in Europe, as long as Hezbollah labels the activities “political.”

In other words, all Hezbollah operations directed against Israel and Jews will remain lawful in Europe.

Beyond exposing the EU’s fundamental and obsessive hostility toward the Jewish state, these three actions put paid to the EU’s protestations of allegiance to international law and commitment to bringing about peace between the Palestinians and Israel.

As ambassador Alan Baker, the former legal adviser to the Foreign Ministry, wrote in an article published by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, the EU’s actions against Israeli entities that operate beyond the 1949 Armistice Lines are unsupported by international law. The EU’s claim that Israel’s presence beyond the 1949 Armistice Lines is unlawful is not supported by any treaties or customs. Indeed, it is explicitly refuted by treaties and customs.

Israel’s legal rights to sovereignty over Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem are recognized under the law of nations through the 1922 League of Nations Mandate for Palestine, which also called for “close Jewish settlement” of these areas. The Mandate’s allocation of sovereign rights over all of these areas to the Jewish people, and its recognition of the Jews as the indigenous people of the areas, has not been abrogated by any subsequent treaty. To the contrary, they were reinforced by Article 80 of the UN Charter.

Moreover, as Baker noted, the EU wrongly claims that Jewish communities beyond the 1949 Armistice Lines are illegal under Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention from 1949. But authoritative interpretations of Article 49 make clear that Article 49 does not apply to such communities.

The lines the EU points to as Israel’s legal border were never borders and never legal. The 1949 Armistice Lines, which the EU falsely refers to as the 1967 borders, represent nothing more than the lines at which Israeli forces halted the invading armies of Arab states that illegally assaulted the nascent Jewish state at its birth on May 15, 1948.

The armistice agreements explicitly stated that the armistice lines lack all legal significance in terms of claims of parties to lands beyond the lines.

Finally, as Baker noted, the EU itself repeatedly supported UN resolutions and international agreements that recognize the legality of Israel’s continued control and civilian presence in the areas. As a consequence, its own actions contradict its claim that Israel’s presence and the presence of Israeli civilian communities beyond the 1949 Armistice Lines are illegal.

Beyond its unsubstantiated legal claims against Israel, both in its intention to label Israeli products and in its actions related to Hezbollah, the EU is acting in violation of international law. The EU’s intention to label Israeli products involves the imposition of trade barriers in contravention of the World Trade Organization’s legally binding rules.

By allowing Hezbollah to continue to operate in the EU, the EU is in violation of binding UN Security Council Resolution 1373 from 2001 that prohibits the use of member states’ territory for the benefit of terrorist groups.

Justice Minister Tzipi Livni called the EU’s imposition of economic sanctions a “resounding wake-up call,” adding, “I hope that now all those who thought it is possible to continue with the freeze [in the peace talks with the PLO] will understand that we have to act to open negotiations, because this is the only way to protect Israel’s general interests.”

This view, which is the official view of the Left, is based on a complete denial of reality.

The EU announced its sanctions on the very same day US Secretary of State John Kerry announced he had convinced the PLO to return to peace talks with Israel. The confluence of these events could not demonstrate more clearly that the EU’s diplomatic onslaught against Israel has nothing to do with the conduct of negotiations with the PLO. If the EU’s chief interest was bringing Israel and the PLO to the negotiating table, Brussels would be sanctioning the Palestinians who have refused to negotiate with Israel since 2008.

By levying sanctions the EU does not seek to advance the cause of peace. It hopes to coerce Israel into abandoning its legitimate historic claims as the indigenous people of the Land of Israel to the lands allocated to the Jewish people under international law by the 1922 League of Nations Mandate for Palestine. It hopes to coerce Israel into surrendering its right to defensible borders and voluntarily transform itself into an indefensible strategic basket case wholly dependent on the goodwill of outside powers for its survival.

The question is what can Israel do about it? Were Israel to fight fire with fire and levy counter sanctions on European goods it would be entering an economic war that it would lose and therefore has every interest in avoiding. But Israel’s inability to respond in kind to European aggression does not mean it is without options.

Europe is using economic sanctions to expand its political power over Israeli decision-makers. So Israel should act to diminish Europe’s political power in Israel.

The EU itself told Israel how to go about doing this in Paragraph 15 of the sanctions directive. It reads, “The requirements [banning the transfer of EU funds to Israeli entities operating beyond the 1949 armistice lines]… do not apply to activities which, although carried out in the territories…

aim at benefiting protected persons under the terms of international humanitarian law who live in these territories [i.e., the Palestinians] and/or at promoting the Middle East peace process in line with EU policy.”

In other words, Israeli NGOs that receive EU assistance are exempt from the financing ban if they commit to undermining Israel’s rights in the area. As the EU sees it, NGOs who receive EU money are EU agents, advancing European goals in the domestic Israeli arena, and as such should be exempted from the EU’s economic sanctions.

In a 2010 meeting with US diplomats leaked by WikiLeaks, Jessica Montell, the executive director of the Israeli-registered pro-Palestinian pressure group B’Tselem, effectively admitted that her organization would cease to exist without European funding.

According to the protocol of the meeting, Montell “estimated her NIS 9 million ($2.4 million) budget is 95 percent funded from abroad, mostly from European countries.”

To stem the momentum of Europe’s new economic war, Israel’s first response to the EU’s sanctions must be swift passage in the Knesset of a law requiring all Israeli entities that agree to operate under the EU’s funding guidelines to register as foreign agents and report all EU contributions.

Those contributions should be taxed at the highest corporate tax rate.

EU officials have stated repeatedly that they seek to undermine Israeli control over Area C. Area C is the area of Judea and Samaria where, in accordance with agreements signed between the PLO and Israel, Israel exercises most civil and military authorities. The EU is funding projects in Area C whose stated goal is to make it impossible over time for Israel to assert its authority over the area.

Israel’s second response to the EU’s announcement of economic sanctions on Israeli economic activity in Judea and Samaria should be to suspend all EU projects in Area C. Future EU projects should be subject to intense scrutiny by the civil administration. Israel’s default position should be to reject, rather than approve, such requests, given their hostile intent.

Finally, EU peacekeeping forces from Gaza to Lebanon to Syria have repeatedly proven not only their cowardice, but their willingness to act in ways that endanger Israel in order to protect themselves.

In Gaza, EU border guards fled to Israel following Hamas’s takeover of the area in 2007.

Along the border with Syria, Austrian peacekeepers fled at the first sign of trouble, leaving Israel to deal with Syrian breaches of the European-sanctioned 1974 disengagement agreement by itself.

European forces in UNIFIL in Lebanon have signed protection agreements with Hezbollah where in exchange for European forces’ turning a blind eye to Hezbollah’s illegal use of civilian infrastructures as military installations, Hezbollah has promised not to murder European forces.

Given this track record, Israel should bar European forces from further participation in armed forces in Israel. To this end, Israel should allow the mandate of the European-dominated Temporary International Presence in Hebron to expire when it next comes up for review. The TIPH, which has been deployed to the city since 1994, is composed of forces from Denmark, Italy, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland and Turkey.

Israel has for years been operating under the misguided belief that the EU would eventually come around and side with Israel against its enemies.

This belief has been informed by equal doses of innocence and wishful thinking. The EU’s decision to initiate an economic war against the Jewish state forces Israel to abandon its long-held illusions.

Israel has options for responding forcefully to Europe’s aggression. If judiciously and firmly employed, these responses can diminish the Europeans’ interest in escalating this economic war, by denying them the political victory they seek.

Kerry’s folly, Israel’s peril

In one of Team Obama’s trademark Friday afternoon specials, Secretary of State John Kerry announced last week that his six rounds of shuttle diplomacy had resulted in an agreement to reconvene Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations.  As usual, the timing was appropriate for an initiative designed to garner favorable headlines, but that doesn’t stand up to scrutiny.

It appears that Kerry has bought this “breakthrough” by bullying Israel into making further concessions to its Palestinian enemies, even before the talks begin.  In exchange for nothing more than the Palestinians’ agreement-in-principle to resume them, the Israelis will release some number of additional convicted terrorists.  Never mind that the ones left in Israeli jails after numerous previous releases are, by and large, those who have most successfully and murderously attacked innocent civilians in the Jewish State.

If the Israelis once again pay this price, they must expect the same results as before: More hardened criminals unleashed to wage jihad against Israel – and against any Palestinians that might actually wish to make peace with her.

The rapturous public welcome routinely accorded these terrorists makes clear that it is such war-mongers, not the peace-makers, who are blessed in the radicalized West Bank.  That is even more true in Gaza, where few defy the despotic and virulently anti-Israel dictates of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Palestinian franchise: the designated terrorist organization, Hamas.

For that reason, among many others, notwithstanding Kerry’s ego-driven pursuit of negotiations, his purported “breakthrough” cannot produce real progress towards a genuine peace.  And inevitably, pressure will begin to mount all over again for further Israeli concessions.

This pattern was evident in the immediate aftermath of the latest Friday afternoon special.  Unidentified Palestinian officials promptly put out the word that Secretary Kerry had, as The Blaze reported, given “Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas a letter guaranteeing that new peace negotiations with Israel will be based on pre-1967 borders.”

Israeli officials, including prominent politicians in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ruling coalition, have responded sharply.  They deny any agreement to use as the basis for these talks a return to the indefensible territorial boundaries that have aptly been called “Auschwitz borders.”  So, the new negotiations may founder before they begin.

But let’s engage in a thought-experiment.  Just for the purpose of discussion, consider what would happen if Israel did agree to surrender territory on the West Bank and Golan Heights that provides a modicum of strategic depth to the otherwise incredibly vulnerable Jewish State?

One need look no further than the emerging correlation of forces arrayed against Israel.  The unmistakable reality is that it is facing the prospect for the first time in a generation of actual or prospective enemies on every side, including potentially devastating attacks from the sea.

O The most populous Arab state, Egypt, is convulsed by domestic unrest and a volatile confrontation between Islamists sworn to destroy Israel and a military that, in the past, has repeatedly tried to do so.  The two nations’ cold peace, enforced for decades by a demilitarized Sinai, is jeopardized as that desert peninsula is increasingly populated by al Qaeda and other jihadists itching to attack Israelis.

O Syria is wracked by civil war in which the ultimate victory of either Iranian/Hezbollah-backed Bashir Assad or the Muslim Brotherhood-al Qaeda alliance is likely to pose new threats to the long quiet, but now restive, Golan Heights.  U.S. arming of the so-called “rebels” may or may not assure their triumph.  But it will surely increase the danger that faction poses to Israel.

O Jordan, Lebanon and Iraq are in various stages of destabilization at the hands of Islamists of assorted stripes.  Turkey is in the hands of a particularly dangerous one, Recep Tayyep Erdogan, who makes no secret of his hostility towards Israel and solidarity with its enemies.  And the Islamic Republic of Iran is continuing to build the capacity to deliver an existential nuclear threat to Israel.

O As the brilliant strategic analyst and author Mark Helprin pointed out in the Wall Street Journal last weekend (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323848804578607724088622856.html), Israel can no longer take comfort in the “qualitative edge” in conventional armaments that previously enabled it to contend with numerically superior enemies:  “Saudi Arabia’s air force (soon 380 combat aircraft, primarily F-15s) is rapidly gaining on Israel (441 combat aircraft) in quantity and quality. Were the Saudis to take a Muslim-solidarity time-out with Iran and join Egypt, Syria and perhaps even Turkey to defeat Israel in an air war, it would mean Israel’s death.”

In short, this is no time for the U.S. government to be demanding that its most important, self-reliant and reliable ally in the Middle East make territorial concessions that will render it more vulnerable to attack from one, or more, of the aforementioned quarters.  That is especially so given that such concessions have no prospect of translating into an enduring peace with all, or even most, of the Palestinians.

It is neither in the Israelis’ interest nor our own that they weaken themselves further in the face of the region’s burgeoning shariah-driven religio-politico-cultural dynamic, one that is feeding their enemies’ unrequited ambition to “drive the Jews into the sea.”

John Kerry’s vainglorious diplomacy has thus far done nothing to mitigate that dynamic.  If anything, his sympathies and those of President Obama towards the Muslim Brotherhood are feeding it.  We must not permit such folly to continue to intensify Israel’s peril, and our own.

There already is a Palestine

Forty-six years after the Six Day War, its memory invariably produces a deluge of propaganda attacking “the Zionist Entity” and promoting “an independent Palestine”, restricted to the territories Israel took in 1967 (for English-speaking audiences), or “driving the last Jew into the sea” (in Arabic and Persian).  Lost in the din are some particularly “inconvenient truths”, both historical and contemporary, but none more so than this: there already is a Palestine, and it’s called Jordan.

This may be news to you.  It is certainly not news to the Jordanians (the vast majority of whom are actually Palestinians).  It’s not news to the Israelis either, who having made peace with Jordan don’t care to raise the issue.  It certainly isn’t news to the terrorists in the West Bank and Gaza:  it just doesn’t serve their purpose.

But truth is truth.  And it might ultimately serve everyone’s interests to remember it.

“Palestine” (from the Greek for Philistine, the deadly enemies of ancient Israel) was a creation of the World War I Allies after they severed it from the Ottoman Empire, or Turkey.  It was largely empty, and even then a large percentage of the people in the western portion (today’s Israel) were Jews.

In 1917 the British committed themselves in the Balfour Declaration to creating an independent Jewish homeland in Palestine, in much the same way that the Allies shortly carved Europe into independent homelands for the Poles, Czechs, Slovaks, Lithuanians, Latvians, Estonians, Finns, Hungarians, Slovenes, Serbs, Bosnians, Montenegrins and Croats.  This was based in large measure on Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points, the driving principle of which was the end of empire and the right of self-determination.

Hardly anyone opposed this.  As Hussein ibn-Ali, the Hashemite Sharif of Mecca and leader of the Arab Revolt against the Turks, wrote in 1918, “The resources of the country are still virgin soil and will be developed by the Jewish immigrants.  [The Arabs know] that the country [is] for its original sons, for all their differences, a sacred and beloved homeland.”  Implicit in his statement was the emptiness of the land, largely depopulated for two millennia.

The next year, Hussein’s son Faisal, newly King of Syria and chief representative of the Arab nations at the Versailles Peace Conference, signed a treaty of friendship with Chaim Weizmann, leader of the Zionist Organization, jointly adopting the Balfour principles.  It said: “All necessary measures shall be taken to encourage and stimulate immigration of Jews into Palestine on a large scale, and as quickly as possible….”  King Faisal further wrote: “We Arabs, especially the educated among us, look with the deepest sympathy on the Zionist movement. Our delegation here in Paris is fully acquainted with the proposals submitted yesterday by the Zionist organization to the Peace Conference, and we regard them as moderate and proper.”

To implement this clearly enlightened position, Britain was given control over Palestine by the new League of Nations.  But that “Palestine Mandate” covered neither what we think of as Palestine (the West Bank and Gaza, two concepts which did not yet exist) nor the PLO’s idea of Palestine (any territory currently held by a Jew).  Oh no.  “Palestine” meant what Weizmann, Faisal, Hussein, Churchill and all the powers at Versailles understood it to mean:  Biblical Palestine, all of today’s Israel and Jordan.  And the borders were drawn accordingly.

Hence, 80% of Palestine is today’s Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.  And from this, things began to go off the tracks.

The problem began when France was granted Syria at the San Remo Conference the next year. It promptly invaded its new “mandate”, made it a French colony, and expelled Faisal.  His brother Abdullah prepared to march on Damascus, but Churchill persuaded him not to attack Britain’s ally, and instead offered to make him Emir of a new British protectorate, “Transjordan” (literally, “the other side of the Jordan”).  With the stroke of a pen, the Jews lost 80% of their land.

They didn’t complain that much.  The Zionists understood that Jordan was filled with Palestinian Arabs, and there simply weren’t enough Jews to settle there anyway.  They also hoped for continued peace and cooperation with the Hashemites: Hussein, Faisal and Abudullah, who had made peace with Weizmann and now ruled most of Arabia.

But of course the rest is history.  The rising House of Saud drove Hussein’s Hashemites out of the Arabian Peninsula, which meant out of control of Mecca and Medina.  Despite long-promised support, the British did nothing.  They did make Faisal King of Iraq, but Iraq is not Mecca, or even Syria, and multiple broken promises by the European powers increasingly soured the Arabs on their deal with the (largely European) Jews.

Compounding stupidities, the British appointed the violent anti-Zionist Haj Amin al-Husseini (uncle of longtime PLO leader Yasser Arafat) Grand Mufti of Jerusalem.  From this high post he not only incited ever-increasing hostility between Arab and Jew, but also, seeing the Germans as a superior alternative to the duplicitous British and French (like most Arab and Persian nationalists of the Thirties and Fourties), he openly collaborated with Adolf Hitler to bring the “Final Solution” to Palestine, adopting much of Nazi ideology in the process.  Rabid anti-Semitism thus became the dominant sentiment of Arab leaders throughout the Middle East.  It still is.

By 1947, the situation had deteriorated beyond repair.  The UN attempted to resolve matters by partitioning the remaining 20% of Palestine into a Jewish half and an Arab half, leaving Jerusalem neutral and under international control.  The Jews readily agreed to this 10% solution, and to peace.  The Arabs instead chose war.

Failing to annihilate the Jews, Jordan instead annexed the West Bank.  Egypt annexed Gaza.  Even though these territories roughly corresponded with the UN’s planned Palestinian state – to which Israel had agreed – no Arab power even considered that an option.  No Palestinian wanted it.  And Jordan already existed: as King Hussein put it as late as 1981, “The truth is, Jordan is Palestine and Palestine is Jordan.”

No, the only thing the Arabs wanted was the extermination of the Jews.  Which is still true of most of them, particularly the “Palestinians”, the ones on the west side of the Jordan River at least.

So is there a solution in all of this?  Maybe.

The overwhelming majority of all Palestinians are today called Jordanians.  Except for the Hashemite foreigners, they are the same people who live in the West Bank and Gaza.

But whereas Jordan is a functioning country, “the territories” are not.  Gaza is a city-state with no commerce or industry occupied by 1.5 million largely unemployed and unemployable people whose primary skill is firing mortars at Jewish subdivisions. The largely rural West Bank is better, but not by much, and has no desire to be ruled by the city-dwellers in Gaza.  There are virtually no jobs (other than “assassin” and “suicide bomber”) in either territory, and cannot be:  who will invest in a country almost completely cut off by sea and air, that has a population whose chief skill is slitting throats, and is semi-permanently at war?

And then there’s Israel, just nine-miles across in its most populated region if the West Bank were independent.  Which might be okay if the West Bank were populated by Canadians instead of Jew-hating suicide bombers.

Under the current diplomatic approach – the “two state solution” – Palestine can never be more than a seething economic and military dependency of Israel.  Unless, of course, it achieves its sworn aim of actually destroying Israel.

But what if, instead of creating a dependent postage-stamp state with no future, “Palestine” was reattached to Jordan instead?

It would not be easy.  Jordan doesn’t want the terrorists:  it already fought a civil war in 1970 to drive the PLO (today’s Palestinian Authority) out of Jordan.  And Israel would have to get some or all of the land, work out a permanent “neutral zone” under Jordanian authority but Israeli military and police, or somehow be able to trust the Jordanians with a border leaves Israel just nine miles across.  Both sides would have to eradicate Hamas and the PLO, much easier said than done, but on the other hand, a boon to the entire world, most especially the Palestinian people.

Even so:  recognition that Jordan is and always has been the promised Palestinian state restores the possibility of a meaningful solution instead of a violent stalemate.  It permits geographic and security options now impossible for either side.  It allows the possibility of peace based on equality with Israel, not dependence.  And given today’s friendly ties and even free trade agreement between Jordan and Israel, it opens the door to genuine prosperity and freedom for all involved:  a rolling back of the clock to a time when Arab and Jew lived confidently and cooperatively in mutual respect and peace.

For many, it is indeed an inconvenient truth.  But it’s long past time someone pointed it out.

————————-

— Rod D. Martin, founder and CEO of The Martin Organization, is a leading futurist, technology entrepreneur and conservative activist. Previously he was part of PayPal.com’s pre-IPO startup team and served as policy director to Governor Mike Huckabee.  He is currently President of the National Federation of Republican Assemblies (NFRA) and a member of the Council for National Policy. His writings are online at RodMartin.org.

How Russia undercuts itself with the S-300

In making the case for the supply of S-300 missiles to Syria, Russia’s highly experienced foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, tried to make the point that his government was only selling Damascus “a purely defensive system.” The S-300, he said, as was clear from its name, was for purposes of “air defense.”

In other words, he was suggesting that there were weapons systems, like air defense missiles, that were inherently defensive by their nature.

Ironically, by making this argument, Lavrov was undermining one of the main pillars of Moscow’s case against other defensive systems which it has opposed vociferously in the past. If defensive weapons systems should not be opposed because, by definition, they have no offensive applications, then why not accept US missile defense deployments in Eastern Europe or in other countries ringing Asia? For while Russia has been stressing that its air defense systems are not offensive in character, it has been strenuously opposing missile defenses for many years, refusing to see them as defensive weapons alone.

Since President Ronald Reagan first proposed the US anti-missile system known as the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) – also called the “Star Wars” program – in 1983, Russian strategists argued to their American counterparts that missile defenses are inherently destabilizing. During the Cold War, stability was based on the maintenance of deterrence and the credibility of each superpower’s retaliatory strike capability. The argument against missile defenses back then was that a robust SDI-type system could neutralize the weakened retaliatory capacity of the side that was hit first.

This strong opposition to missile defenses was maintained by Moscow after the disintegration of the Soviet Union. To some extent it was intensified as the Soviet missiles forces were degraded and even cut by arms control agreements like START. In 2007, for example, when the Bush administration proposed installing missile defense installations in Poland and the Czech Republic, the chief of the Russian General Staff declared that Moscow would withdraw from arms control agreements with the West in retaliation.

In that same year, President Vladimir Putin even compared the deployment of Western anti-missile systems to the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962.

Russian generals in 2007 spoke about targeting these missile defense systems if they were ordered to do so by the Russian leadership. More recently, the US defense correspondent Bill Gertz reported on Russian military exercises simulating an attack on US sea-based missile defenses deployed on an Aegis cruiser near Japan.

In a speech in late December 2009, Putin laid out the logic behind the Russian opposition to missile defenses: “By building such an umbrella over themselves our [US} partners could feel themselves fully secure and will do whatever they want which upsets the balance.”

In short, according to the Russians’ strategic doctrine, missile defenses were completely destabilizing.

It would take extraordinary political acrobatics to explain why missile defenses in Eastern Europe endanger stability, yet robust air defenses based on the S-300 in Syria somehow contribute to stability.

What ultimately gives a weapons system an offensive or defensive character is the strategic context in which it is placed. In 1970, for example, Moscow deployed SA-2 air defense systems in Egypt and then decided to move them up to the Suez Canal, in violation of the US-Soviet Standstill Agreement at the time. By providing the Egyptian Army with an air defense umbrella over the Suez Canal, and in so doing protecting it from the Israel Air Force, Moscow made it possible for the Egyptians to cross the canal three years later and launch the Yom Kippur War. Air defenses were not just for defensive purposes but rather made possible offensive ground operations.

In the Syrian case today, Israel is not likely concerned with a surprise attack by the Syrian army like in 1973, given the state of Syria’s ground forces after two years of fighting against rebel troops. What is changing in Israel’s north is the buildup of Hezbollah, backed by a growing Iranian military presence on the ground that has become engaged in combat operations against President Bashar Assad’s opponents.

The most immediate problem is Syria’s willingness to deliver advanced weaponry to Hezbollah that can upset key aspects of the strategic balance.

Besides the transfer of chemical weapons, Israel has been concerned with Syria providing Hezbollah with long-range anti-ship cruise missiles, like the supersonic Russian Yakhont that can strike targets 300 kilometers into the Mediterranean. Last year, the director of the US Defense Intelligence Agency described the proliferation of such missiles as a concern to the US Navy as well.

Israel has also focused on the supply to Hezbollah of surface- to-surface missiles armed with particularly heavy warheads for striking Israeli cities.

The payload of the Fateh 110 is 30 that of the Grad rockets used by Hezbollah in 2006.

Finally, Israel is monitoring whether Syria is equipping Hezbollah with long-range airdefense missiles like the SA-17.

Using Putin’s own logic, supply of the S-300 by Moscow will create an air defense umbrella over Syria which will provide Assad and his generals in Damascus with the security to make these kinds of weapons transfers to Hezbollah and to “do whatever they want which upsets the balance.”

This is a development which Israeli officials have clearly stated they must prevent.

The next time US officials sit across from Russian negotiators over the deployment of Western missile defense systems, and the Russians charge that missile defenses are destabilizing, Washington should be prepared with all the statements that came out of Moscow insisting that the S- 300 air defense system in Syria is purely defensive and hence threatens no one. President Putin will not accept the application of Lavrov’s statements about the S-300 to the US missile defense deployments, but in taking that position he will be going into important negotiations for Russia with a much weaker hand than he had before.

Know “Justice”, Know “Peace”

An adviser to Egyptian President Mohammad Morsi let slip an interesting statement in the wake of an interview with the Times of Israel. While the interview focused on Salafi leader Emad Abdel Ghafour’s statements regarding the Camp David Accords with Israel, the piece ended noting:

“We want Al-Watan party to be an effective contributor in building a realm of dignity and social justice. We want the Islamic Sharia to be a reality we can live in, not rhetoric anymore,” Abdel Ghafour said at his party’s launch.

Responding to a decision by Egypt’s Supreme Constitutional Court to ban political slogans in election propaganda, Abdel Ghafour said that a distinction must be made between explicit religious promises, such as the promise to win heaven in return for voting for a certain party, and more neutral words such as “justice” which could be misconstrued as religious.

Why, precisely would a term like justice be misconstrued as “religious”? Because of course, in the Islamic context, there is no justice absent the Sharia, and indeed it is “unjust” to force men to live by the laws of men, rather than the law of God.

This is part of the great difficulty Western observers have when viewing the events now rising out of the Middle East. When the Muslim Brotherhood founds a “Freedom and Justice Party” they mean freedom from secular authority, and justice via the application of Sharia.

This is not (merely) dishonest rhetoric designed to fool Westerners, although it has that result. It has more in common with a lawyer’s legalese, where terms are strictly defined but not always as would understood by the lay person. Not an outright lie, but designed to obscure, rather than illuminate.

Which begs the question:

If we don’t understand what Ghafour means when he says “Justice”, do we understand what he means when he says “peace”?