Seeing The Facts Converts a Critic

Donald E. Walter, a federal judge for the Western District of Louisiana, sees the light after going to Iraq.

Despite my initial opposition to the war, I am now convinced that, whether we find any weapons of mass destruction or prove Saddam Hussein sheltered and financed terrorists, we absolutely should have overthrown the Ba'athists - indeed, we should have done it sooner.

What changed my mind?

When we left in mid June, 57 mass graves had been found, one with the bodies of 1,200 children. There have been credible reports of murder, brutality and torture of hundreds of thousands of ordinary Iraqi citizens. There is poverty on a monumental scale and fear on a larger one. That fear is still palpable. I have seen the machines and places of torture.

Terrible things happened with the knowledge, indeed with the participation, of Saddam, his family and the Ba'athist regime. Thousands suffered while we were messing about with France and Russia and Germany and the United Nations. Every one of them knew what was going on there, but France and the United Nations were making millions administering the Food-for-Oil program.

I submit that just because we can't do everything doesn't mean that we should do nothing. We must have the moral courage to see this through, to do whatever it takes to secure responsible government for the Iraqi people. Having decided to topple Saddam, we cannot abandon those who trust us.

Israeli Judenrein

Israel Harel hits the nail on the head in this USA Today op-ed, Let Jews Live on Homelands.

The term Judenrein means an area cleansed of Jews. In the past, this German concept was applied throughout Europe. Now we hear American and other liberals saying that Jewish communities on the biblical land of Judea and Samaria, the cradle of the Jewish nation, must be emptied of all their inhabitants, so that even in a Jewish homeland there can be Judenrein areas.

The expulsion of the Jews from Europe, which reached its height during World War II, was a manifestly barbaric and inhumane act. But there, at least, the Jews were unwelcome guests, having lived in that area for merely a thousand years or so. However, to drive out the Jewish community of Hebron, where the matriarchs and patriarchs of the Jewish people are buried and King David first ruled 3,000 years ago, is unthinkable.

The United States is dotted with towns named for biblical cities in Israel: Hebron, Shilo, Bethlehem. But according to the terminology of many in the U.S. press, the Israeli Shilo, the original one, is a "settlement," and consequently must be cleansed of Jews.

If someone decided to expel Jews from Shiloh, Ohio, or Hebron, Neb., USA TODAY might be among the first to come out against what it would likely term racism. Why then does it support the expulsion of Jews from the original Shilo the Jewish one? Why are Jews living in their own homeland considered "an obstacle to peace"?

Why is the only place in the world where Jews cannot live according to liberals the very place where the Jewish faith was born, where it developed monotheism, where the Judeo-Christian civilization took shape and where the Jewish people returned after 2,000 years of exile?

It is not the presence of Jews in the settlements that is a provocation to Palestinians; it is the presence of Jews anywhere in Israel on either side of the Green Line, the 1949 armistice line.

So, if you support the expulsion of Jews from Europe, America or anywhere else, you're a racist. But if you advocate the expulsion of Jews from the heart of their homeland, you're a liberal.

Liberals' demand to drive Jews off their own land to create a Judenrein area, in the land of the Jews, of all places, is the height of hypocrisy by those who claim to be fair-minded advocates of justice in the world.

Israel Harel, a political columnist for the Israeli Haaretz newspaper, is former chairman of the council that represents Jewish settlers.

Hezbollah's Strategy

The WP's David Ignatius attended a Hezbollah conference and brings this assessment of their views.

Hezbollah believes that the Islamic forces arrayed against Israel are winning -- thanks to the carnage wrought by suicide bombings. These "martyrdom operations," as Hezbollah prefers to call them, are often seen in the West as a tactic of desperation. But the leaders of this Lebanese Shiite militia view them as a successful weapon that has put Israel on the defensive.

A brochure prepared in English and Arabic for the Beirut conference outlined why Hezbollah regards these bombings as a route to victory. The group argues that "the first harsh defeat" for Israel came in May 2000 when it withdrew its forces unilaterally from southern Lebanon after several years of Hezbollah suicide attacks on Israeli soldiers there.

Palestinian groups such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad embraced these martyrdom tactics in their "Second Intifada," and Israel ever since "has been passing through its worst days," according to the pamphlet.

"The Zionists do not dare to move in the streets and he who ventures out is not sure he will come back alive," the pamphlet said. In this climate of fear, the Israeli economy has lost more than $5 billion, and Israelis are migrating away from the Jewish state, according to the pamphlet. It predicted that the intifada would defeat Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, just as it did his predecessor, Ehud Barak.

This stark assessment makes clear that suicide bombings are part of a very deliberate strategy. They aren't driven by poverty, neglect, irrational fanaticism or the other factors Westerners often cite. They are motivated by a belief that killing Israelis will bring military victory.

Biased Non-Sequitirs

BOTW from today, September 22, 2003 has an excellent blurb entitled, Inverted Pyramid Scheme demonstrating how media injects its bias into reporting through the use of non-sequitirs.

We've been in journalism for most of our adult life, but even we crusty old veterans can learn something new from time to time. Back when we were learning how to write news stories, we were instructed in the "inverted pyramid"--i.e., you start with the most important part of the story and gradually work down to less important elements. That way if an editor is pressed for space, he can simply cut from the bottom.

What no one ever told us was what comes after the point of the period: a total non sequitur. An example is this Associated Press dispatch, which begins: "A sister and brother were being held Saturday in the death of a baseball fan who was shot during a stadium parking lot dispute after attending a Dodgers-Giants game, police said." This is followed by some details about the shooting, information about the suspects and the victim, and the reaction of the Dodgers. So far, so good. Then the non sequitur:

The Giants won the game 6-4.

There's no indication, however, that the shooting had anything to do with the score of the game.

Then there's this Reuters dispatch about a tabloid's claim that Saddam Hussein was negotiating a surrender: "The U.S. military on Sunday denied a British media report that Saddam Hussein had offered money and information on weapons of mass destruction in return for safe passage to the ex-Soviet republic of Belarus," reads the first paragraph. Fine. Then more information about the report, quotes from the military denying it, background information on the hunt for Saddam, a fact of two about Belarus--and then this complete change of subject:

The United States, which invaded Iraq in March citing a danger from weapons of mass destruction, has said it would not negotiate with Saddam. It has so far failed to find any evidence of nuclear, chemical or biological arms.

Weapons of mass destruction have nothing to do with the story, but they did provide an opportunity for Reuters to sneak in its usual anti-American editorial commentary. Oh well, we'll have to try this non sequitur thing out one of these days.

Arafat won a Nobel Peace Prize in 1994.

How to Pretend to Want Peace

Ion Mihai Pacepa (Former head of Romanian Intelligence was the highest ranking intelligence officer ever to have defected from the former Soviet bloc) had this to say in the WSJ about Yasser Arafat.

The Israeli government has vowed to expel Yasser Arafat, calling him an "obstacle" to peace. But the 72-year-old Palestinian leader is much more than that; he is a career terrorist, trained, armed and bankrolled by the Soviet Union and its satellites for decades.

...

KGB chairman Yuri Andropov in February 1972 laughed to me about the Yankee gullibility for celebrities. We'd outgrown Stalinist cults of personality, but those crazy Americans were still naïve enough to revere national leaders. We would make Arafat into just such a figurehead and gradually move the PLO closer to power and statehood. Andropov thought that Vietnam-weary Americans would snatch at the smallest sign of conciliation to promote Arafat from terrorist to statesman in their hopes for peace.

...

The KGB file on Arafat also said that in the Arab world only people who were truly good at deception could achieve high status. We Romanians were directed to help Arafat improve "his extraordinary talent for deceiving." The KGB chief of foreign intelligence, General Aleksandr Sakharovsky, ordered us to provide cover for Arafat's terror operations, while at the same time building up his international image. "Arafat is a brilliant stage manager," his letter concluded, "and we should put him to good use." In March 1978 I secretly brought Arafat to Bucharest for final instructions on how to behave in Washington. "You simply have to keep on pretending that you'll break with terrorism and that you'll recognize Israel -- over, and over, and over," Ceausescu told him for the umpteenth time. Ceausescu was euphoric over the prospect that both Arafat and he might be able to snag a Nobel Peace Prize with their fake displays of the olive branch. [Emphasis mine]

The Odds and a Story

Michael Coren describes why Israel is still the underdog in the Middle East, despite world media versions to the contrary.

...Israel is still David to the Arab world's Goliath, no matter what the more fashionable of our media types would have us believe. There are 23 Arab and Iranian police states and theocracies, and one democratic Israel. For every Israeli, there are 60 Arabs and Iranians. Israel has no oil reserves, the Arabs and Iranians have 2/3 of the world's oil. The Arabs and Iranians have 750 times the land of Israel, they have 14.6 times the GDP of Israel, they spend five times as much on arms.

This does not include the rest of the Islamic world, which in large part supports the Arab nations and spews hatred towards Israel.

He concludes with an bulls-eye story on the attitudes of the Western, pro-Palestinian protestors.

I remember the white, Anglo-Saxon Canadian young woman at the airport in Israel last year with her expensive clothes mixed with Palestinian trappings. She was indignant that the polite young Israeli policewoman had asked to search her bag. "My God", she said, "this is worse than the Nazis." The young Israeli fixed her with her big, beautiful, brown eyes and said this.

"No, miss. The Nazis didn't say please and thank you, didn't ask to search the bag of someone who has been living in the heart of terrorist country for a month, didn't allow you the right to protest. What they did do was to murder virtually every member of my family. Why weren't you people protesting then?"

Try Arafat Like Eichmann, Then Hang Him

Uri Dan proposes putting Arafat on trial, echoing my own sentiments.

ONLY PEOPLE lacking in imagination, or the usual fools from the Left, immediately started explaining that the decision to remove Arafat was damaging, and how much damage his expulsion or killing would bring.

There are other ways to neutralize Arafat. The glass cell constructed for Adolf Eichmann still exists, and it could be used for Arafat's trial in Jerusalem. There is sufficient evidence linking him to acts of murder, not only of innocent Israelis but also of Americans and holders of other citizenships. The evidence is so categorical that it could be used to bring Arafat to trial for war crimes.

The time has come for the heads of the intelligence services, the military establishment, and the police to collect all the material into a single file, which would be submitted to international jurists for study. In the US, Britain, even France, there are jurists prepared to defend the Jews. This will help Israel as it takes steps "to remove Arafat."

Consequently, the decision of the Israeli government was a good one in principle, and it is important that it was publicized. In historical and moral significance, even before implementation, it is equivalent to the secret decision to bring Adolf Eichmann from Buenos Aires to trial in Jerusalem in 1960, and to the expulsion of Arafat from Beirut in 1982.

After he is tried and duly convicted (based on years and years of mountains of evidence, not a kangaroo court), he should be executed as Eichmann was. Since Eichmann was the only person ever to be executed by Israel, I think that it will show the fitting moral equivalency.

How the Sierra Club Will Preserve "Open Spaces"

Betsy Hart in A vast and mostly empty land:

It's no surprise... that in 2001 the powerful and respected environmentalist/conservation group the Sierra Club defined "efficient urban density" as 500 housing units to the acre. Only, shortly after that pronouncement, they were informed by demographers Randal O'Toole and Wendell Cox that such densities were almost three times the highest-density areas of Manhattan, and nearly twice the densest areas of Mumbai (Bombay), India.

So, they revised their definition of efficient urban density down to a still sky-high 100 units per acre - still more than all but the very densest area of Manhattan - and added a "dense urban" category of 400 units per acre - some 1.5 times Mumbai's densest and poorest area.

A Cold Peace And ...

Spacewar carries this observation on what 25 years of a cold peace has brought to Egyptian-Israeli relations in an AFP article.

"Most of today's students were born after the return of Egyptian territory (in 1982), and that has not stopped them from listing Israel as the number one enemy," he [Egyptian researcher Emad Gad at the Al Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies] said.

Overreaching Soon-to-be-overturned(?) Courts

Thanks to BOTW.

Historian John Steele Gordon e-mails us with this observation:

I have been trying to think of a constitutionally mandated election (California Constitution in this case, of course) that was canceled a priori by a court. There have been a few that were overturned ex post facto for permeation of fraud--the Miami mayor's race a few years ago, for instance. But the only election that I can think of off the top of my head that was canceled (and in this case by the election authorities) was the primary being held on Sept. 11, 2001, in New York City.

Indeed, in 1864 this country held an election for president and Congress in the middle of the greatest war of the 19th century. How many voters were potentially disenfranchised by military action that day? By the way, that is the only instance in all history of a country holding an election in the midst of a civil war. But a few potentially hanging chads is justification for canceling the California election? Disgraceful does not begin to cover this decision.

Your Life Will Be Recorded in a Matchbox

VNUNet carries this tidbit from an Intel researcher. He describes how, within a few years, a small device can record all conversation or actions of a person.

Within 10 years we could be carrying personal computing devices that store our every word and deed, according to chip giant Intel.

...

He [Senior Intel researcher Roy Want] explained that the matchbox-sized PC could be used to store a wide variety of personal information that could be accessed by many different devices.

"Storage capacity is growing in leaps and bounds. By 2012 you will be able to carry a device that could record a lifetime's conversations. It would take about three terabytes of data to do," said Want.

"To include video you'd need 97 terabytes, which is expected to be economically viable at current development rates by 2014."

...

Prices, timetables and news could be downloaded from billboards and other public access points and then printed out on wireless printers.

Security would be a major concern with such a device, and Want proposed a new system of access control based not on passwords but on what the user can do uniquely.

He gave the example of carrying a number of digital images, some of which the user knew and some of which were random. Access would be allowed by picking the correct images.

Interesting Ping-Pong Game from Japan

Ping-Pong

The Airbrush is Mightier Than the Sword

All teenage girls wondering how they can look like the models in fashion magazines should look at this. Even the models themselves cannot look like the pictures in the magazines. (Wait for each view to load. See the difference as you rollover the pictures.)

(Thanks to Gut Rumbles.)

Setting the Record Straight in Chile

What really happened in Chile? Was Pinochet really hell-bent for power? JAMES R. WHELAN has the real story in this WSJ article.

Socialist Party congresses in 1965 and 1967 proclaimed that "revolutionary violence is inevitable and legitimate. Only by destroying the bureaucratic and military apparatus of the bourgeois state can the Socialist revolution be consolidated." In 1972 -- two full years after Allende was elected -- the Party proclaimed: "The bourgeois state is not suited for the construction of socialism; its destruction is necessary . . . we must conquer all power."

By March of 1973, when the worst was yet to come, former president Eduardo Frei Montalva spoke of "this carnival of madness." He added: "Chile is in the throes of an economic disaster -- not a crisis but a veritable catastrophe no one could foresee would happen so swiftly nor so totally. The hatred is worse than the inflation, the shortages, the economic disaster. There is anguish in Chile."

Faced with illegal seizures of farms and factories, of defiance of judicial orders, unchecked street violence and death threats against the judges themselves, the Supreme Court warned on May 26, 1973, in a unanimous and unprecedented message, that Chile faced "a peremptory or imminent breakdown of legality." Three months later, on Aug. 22, the Chamber of Deputies -- which had come within two votes of impeaching Allende -- voted a resolution which said "it is a fact that this Government has been, from the very beginning, bent on the conquest of total power . . . so as to implant a totalitarian system."

It was in that setting that Gen. Pinochet and the heads of the other armed forces acted, responding not to the craving for power typical of Latin caudillos, but to the clamor of a desperate people. Former President Gabriel Gonzalez Videla joined Frei and the third living president in thanking the military: "The Armed Forces have liberated us from the Marxist claws . . . the totalitarian apparatus which had been prepared to destroy us has itself been destroyed."

Let's take another crack at the French while we're at it. Hypocrites...

The man who headed Chile's secret police, Manuel Contreras, said recently that Gen. Paul Aussaresses, former head of the French intelligence service, personally trained Chilean agents in Brazil. In his monumental work, "Modern Times," historian Paul Johnson wrote that the French state terror units headed by Gen. Aussaresses "murdered and tortured prisoners, and on a wide scale. In this case, neither liberal France nor the international community raised a whimper of protest."

And the price for not acting?

Suppose Gen. Pinochet and his fellow commanders had not acted? Patricio Aylwin succeeded Gen. Pinochet as the first elected president and was among those imploring the military to act. A constant and acerbic critic in more recent years, he was in 1973 president of his Christian Democrat Party. He said then that if the military had not acted, Chile would have had to mourn the deaths of hundreds of thousands killed at the hands of Red brigades.

He was far from alone in that judgment. Volodia Teitelboim, the chief ideologue of the Communist Party (who spent his entire exile preaching violence from the microphones of Radio Moscow), said a few months before the coup that if civil war came, "it probably would signify immense loss of human lives, between half a million and one million." On Sept. 11, because the military averted civil war, the actual death toll was under 200.

The day Jimmy Carter was reduced to silence

From JPost

Sep. 11, 2003
The day Jimmy Carter was reduced to silence, By Yehuda Avner



Jimmy Carter, peanut farmer, ran an austere White House. Consonant with his innate Calvinistic intuitions, he cast himself in the role of citizen-president. He banned Hail to the Chief, slashed the entertainment budget, sold the presidential yacht, pruned the limousine fleet, and generally rid his mansion of foppery, artifice, and pretentiousness. He even carried his own bag.

So when he welcomed prime minister Menachem Begin to the White House in July 1977 with a flamboyant ceremony fit for a king - replete with a 19-gun salute, a march-past of all the armed services, and a choreographed parade of the Army Old Guard Fife and Drum Corps in the white livery of the Revolutionary War - the media rightly conjectured that this was a token of either high esteem or pure flattery.

US ambassador Samuel Lewis confided that it was a bit of both: "The president was persuaded that in dealing with Begin honey would get him a lot further than vinegar," he said.

And, indeed, the talks did get off to a decent start. The two leaders and their advisers exchanged views on such sensitive topics as an Israel-Arab peace parley in Geneva, the Soviet mischief in the Horn of Africa, and the PLO menace from Southern Lebanon. Then came a pause, and when coffee was served the president and the premier sipped in silence, each sizing the other up as if by mutual consent in preparation for what was next to come.

And what came next was an amazingly detailed presentation of the Likud creed on the inalienable rights of the Jewish people to Eretz Yisrael. This being the first summit between a Likud premier and an American president, Menachem Begin was determined that Jimmy Carter hear firsthand what he stood for.

Secretary of State Cyrus Vance, an unruffled man as a rule, became quite agitated upon hearing that Judea, Samaria, and the Gaza Strip were not to be relinquished. He contended that this would put pay to any plan for a Geneva peace conference.

The president thought so, too. Carter wore a mask of politeness as he peered at his notes, written in his neat penmanship on heavy bond White House stationary, but one could tell by his clenched jaw that irritation lurked beneath. He said in his reedy Georgian accent: "Mr. Prime Minister, my impression is that your insistence on your rights over the West Bank and Gaza would be regarded as an indication of bad faith. It would be a signal of your apparent intention to make the military occupation of these areas permanent.

"It will close off all hopes of negotiations. It would be incompatible with my responsibilities as president of the United States if I did not put this to you as bluntly and as candidly as I possibly can. Mr. Begin," Carter railed, exasperation flaring in his steely, pale-blue eyes, "there can be no permanent military occupation of those conquered territories."

We Israeli officials around the conference table in the Cabinet Room, where the meeting was held, eyed each other with sideways squints. But Begin had readied himself for this encounter with this post-Watergate president of moral renewal - Carter the preacher with a penchant for self-righteousness.

So he leaned back and gazed with deceptively mild eyes above the president's head at the old brass chandelier hanging over the grand oak table. He was not going to be rushed.

He knew that he and the president were on vastly different trajectories, a no-exit confrontation on the settlement of the biblical heartland. Carter was as cast iron as himself. He would not bend. Nevertheless, Begin had somehow to persuade this judgmental man, who wanted to be a healer, this energetic doer with the empirical mind of an engineer, that he honestly and truly wanted peace, and that the territories were not only a matter of historic rights but also of vital security.

SO WHEN he returned Carter's stare he did so with a look that was grave and commanding.

"Mr. President," he said, "I wish to tell you something personal - not about me, but about my generation. What you have just heard about the Jewish people's inherent rights to the Land of Israel may seem academic to you, theoretical, even moot. But not to my generation. To my generation of Jews these eternal bonds are indisputable and incontrovertible truths, as old as recorded time. They touch upon the very core of our national being.

"For we are an ancient homecoming nation. Ours is an almost biblical generation of suffering and courage. Ours is the generation of Destruction and Redemption. Ours is the generation that rose up from the bottomless pit of Hell."

His voice was mesmeric, his tone deeply reflective, as if reaching down into generations of memory. The sheer ardor of his language nudged the table to intense attention.

"We were a helpless people, Mr. President. We were bled white, not once, not twice, but century after century, over and over again. We lost a third of our people in one generation - mine. One-and-a-half million of them were children - ours. No one came to our rescue. We suffered and died alone. We could do nothing about it. But now we can. Now we can defend ourselves."

Suddenly he rose to his feet, his face as tough as steel. "I have a map," he said, intrepidly.

An aide snappily unrolled a 3x5 chart between the two men.

"There is nothing remarkable about this map," Begin went on. "It is quite a standard one of our country, displaying the old armistice line as it existed until the 1967 Six Day War, the so-called Green Line."

He ran his finger along the defunct frontier, which meandered down the center of the country.

"And as you see, our military cartographers have simply marked the infinitesimal mileages of defensive depth we had in that war." He leaned across the table and pointed to the deep brown-colored mountainous area which covered the northern sector of the map.

"The Syrians sat on top of these mountains, Mr. President. We were at the bottom." His finger marked the Golan Heights, and then rested on the green panhandle below. "This is the Hula Valley. It is hardly 10 miles wide. They shelled our towns and villages from the tops of those mountains, day and night." Carter gazed, his hands clamped under his chin.

The prime minister's finger now moved southwards, to Haifa: "The armistice line is hardly 20 miles away from our major port city," he said. And then it rested on Netanya: "Our country here was reduced to a narrow waist nine miles wide." The president nodded. "I understand," he said.

But Begin was not sure that he did. His finger trembled and his voice rumbled: "Nine miles, Mr. President. Inconceivable! Indefensible!" Carter made no comment.

The finger now hovered over Tel Aviv, and then it drummed the map: "Here live a million Jews, 12 miles from that indefensible armistice line. And here, between Haifa in the north and Ashkelon in the south" - his finger ran up and down the coastal plain - "live two-thirds of our total population.

"And this coastal plain is so narrow that a surprise thrust by a column of tanks could cut the country in two in a matter of minutes. For whosoever sits in these mountains" - his fingertips tapped the tops of Judea and Samaria - "holds the jugular vein of Israel in his hands."

His dark, watchful eyes swept the stone-faced features of the powerful men sitting opposite him, and with the conviction of one who had fought for everything he had ever gotten, tersely declared:

"Gentlemen, there is no going back to those lines. No nation in our merciless and unforgiving neighborhood can be rendered so vulnerable and survive."

CARTER BENT his head forward, the better to inspect the map, but still said nothing. His eyes were as indecipherable as water.

"Mr. President," continued Begin in a tone that brooked no indifference, "This is our map of national security, and I use that term in its most unembellished sense. It is our map of survival. And the distinction between the past and the present is just that: survival. Today, our menfolk can defend their women and children. In the past they could not. Indeed, they had to deliver them to their Nazi executioners. We were tertiated, Mr. President."

Carter lifted his head. "What was that word, Mr. Prime Minister?"

"Tertiated, not decimated. The origin of the word 'decimation' is one in 10. When a Roman legion was found guilty of insubordination one in 10 was put to the sword. In our case it was one in three - tertiated!"

And now, with moistening eyes, and in a voice that was deliberate, stubborn, his every word weighed, Begin declared, "Sir, I take an oath before you in the name of the Jewish people - this will never ever happen again."

And then he broke down. He compressed his lips, which began to tremble.

Unseeingly, he stared at the map, struggling to blink back the tears. He clenched his fists and pressed them so tightly against the tabletop, his knuckles went white. He stood there, head bent, heart-broken, dignified.

A hush, as silent as a vault, settled on the room. Seized by his private, infernal Shoah reverie, he peered past Carter with a strange reserve in his eyes, a remote stare. It were as if he was looking through this born-again, Southern Baptist president from way inside himself, from that deep, Jewish intimate place of infinite lament and eternal faith - the place of long, long memory. And hidden down there, in that place, he was standing with Moses and the Maccabees.

Carter bowed his head and remained in an attitude of respectful frozen stillness. Others looked away. The tick of the antique clock on the marble mantelpiece suddenly grew audible. An eternity seemed to hang between each tick. The silence was deafening. It was a thunderbolt of national resolve never to go back to those lines.

By degrees, in slow motion, the prime minister raised himself to his full height and the room came back to life. Carter considerately suggested a recess, but Begin said it wasn't necessary. He had made his point.

The writer, a veteran diplomat, was an adviser to four prime ministers, including Menachem Begin.

A History of Terrorism Against US Citizens

Jeff Jacoby covers some of the history of Islamic terrorism against US citizens in his article on JWR.

THE WAR we are in didn't begin on Sept. 11, 2001. It began 22 years earlier. On Nov. 4, 1979, Islamist radicals stormed the US embassy in Tehran and, with the support of the Ayatollah Khomeini, proceeded to hold 52 Americans hostage for the next 15 months.

...

When American citizens living in Lebanon were abducted -- and some of them tortured and killed -- by Iranian- and Syrian-backed terrorists between 1982 and 1991, the United States reacted not with a terrible swift sword, but with a pathetic arms-for-hostages ransom scheme. When a massive car bomb at the US embassy in Beirut murdered 63 people in April 1983, and another attack in October killed 241 Marines in their barracks, the Reagan administration promised vengeance, but in the end merely withdrew US troops from Lebanon.

...

And so it went when TWA Flight 847 was hijacked and Navy diver Robert Stethem murdered in 1985. When the cruise liner Achille Lauro was seized and Leon Klinghoffer shot dead in his wheelchair. When Pan Am Flight 103 was blown up over Scotland. When the World Trade Center was bombed in 1993. When dozens of Americans were murdered by Arab terrorists in Israel. When two US military compounds in Saudi Arabia were destroyed in 1996, leaving 26 dead and more than 500 wounded. When Al Qaeda blew up the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. When the USS Cole was attacked in 2000.

...

No, the terror war didn't start on the 11th of September. What happened on 9/11 is that America began fighting back. And the counterattack was launched not from Washington but from the skies over southeastern Pennsylvania, when the heroic passengers of United Flight 93 rose against the terrorists, and aborted the fourth attack.

No One Supports Oslo

According to a survey in Israel, the Oslo process is perceived as:
35% - see Oslo as "an honest but failed attempt to end the conflict;"
11% - "a mistaken but remediable step;"
20% - "a historic breakthrough that was missed;"
20% - "a historic failure for which we are still paying the price."

Kill Arafat Now!

A JPost editorial calls [at last] for killing Arafat.

Enough

The world will not help us; we must help ourselves. We must kill as many of the Hamas and Islamic Jihad leaders as possible, as quickly possible, while minimizing collateral damage, but not letting that damage stop us. And we must kill Yasser Arafat, because the world leaves us no alternative.

...

the idea of exiling Arafat is gaining currency, but the standard objection is that he will be as much or more of a problem when free to travel the world than he is locked up in Ramallah.

...

Israel cannot accept a situation in which Arafat blocks any Palestinian break with terrorism, whether from here or in exile. Therefore, we are at another point in our history at which the diplomatic risks of defending ourselves are exceeded by the risks of not doing so.

...

If we are going to be condemned in any case, we might as well do it right.

Arafat's death at Israel's hands would not radicalize Arab opposition to Israel; just the opposite. The current jihad against us is being fueled by the perception that Israel is blocked from taking decisive action to defend itself.

PM Sharon's Confidante: PA State -- Not in this Generation

One can only hope...via Arutz Sheva.

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has changed his mind about the establishment of a Palestinian state. At least so writes his good friend and confidante, journalist Uri Dan.

After returning from the official visit to India with Sharon early this morning, Dan wrote in Maariv today that he has the impression that "in India, the State of Palestine was buried" (based on Theodore Herzl's statement, "In Basel [at the First Zionist Congress], I established the Jewish State").

In light of the recent wave of Palestinian Arab terrorism, Dan writes, "The Palestinian leadership will not get to see a Palestinian state - at least not in this generation. The chance that they were given has expired." Dan, who has never been known to criticize a position taken by Sharon, wrote that the events of the past few days have convinced the Prime Minister that the PA must "disappear from the map."

Listing The Sins of Oslo

Arutz Sheva

The Knesset held a special mid-recess debate on the Oslo process this afternoon. Likud MK Yuli Edelstein began with a unique and timely listing of the 'sins of Oslo'.

Today's special mid-recess Knesset debate on the Oslo process and the lessons to be learned from its failure was conducted in a very orderly and quiet manner, reports Haggai Seri - possibly in light of, or despite, yesterday's two terrorist attacks. Seri noted that Likud MK Yuli Edelstein began with a unique type of speech:

"Edelstein said that the month of Elul is a time of repentance, and he thereupon began enumerating all the sins of Oslo:

Making secret decisions by a group of youngsters who were not authorized to do so [a reference to the clandestine and even illegal way in which the pre-Oslo negotiations took place between representatives of the Labor Party and the PLO]

the sin of the Mitsubishi [the deputy-ministership offered by Labor to two right-wing party MKs, Segev and Goldfarb, in exchange for their vote in favor of the second Oslo agreement]

the sin of running away from responsibility and giving it to the PLO leaders because 'we were tired'

the sin of trying to solve major problems hastily by just saying everything will be OK

and most of all, the syndrome of silencing opponents and going along with the flock

Quote of the Day

Ian Buruma: How to Talk About Israel: "If one thing ties neoconservatives, Likudniks, and post-cold-war hawks together, it is the conviction that liberalism is strictly for sissies. "

10 YEARS AFTER OSLO

10 YEARS AFTER OSLO---Lessons of Oslo are clear: Palestinians don’t want peace By Dore Gold

The overwhelming evidence from statements by the PLO leadership was that it viewed the Oslo process as a tactical necessity to realize its ultimate strategic goal of recovering the entire territory of British Mandatory Palestine — including the area of Israel.

It would be a mistake to assign this intention to PLO leader Yasser Arafat alone. After all, it was the PLO’s top official for Jerusalem, Faisal Husseini, who on two separate occasions in 2001 described Oslo as a "Trojan Horse" that served the realization of "the strategic goal — namely, Palestine from the river to the sea."

Similarly, the leader of the Fatah movement in the West Bank, Marwan Barghouti, told The New Yorker that even if Israel withdrew from 100 percent of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would not end. What was needed, he said, was "one state for all the peoples."

PA NGOs Refuse to Sign Anti Terror Document

Palestinian Media Watch's article PA NGOs Defy US -- Refuse to Sign Anti Terror Document shows why the Palestinians are far from accepting the idea of living side by side with Israel. Even their center for "human rights" and their Red Cross-equivalent cannot deny backing terrorism.

The Palestinian Authority [PA] NGOs have defied the US, by refusing to sign a declaration that they will not use USAID grant money for terrorist purposes. This is a major challenge to the US administration, which sees the elimination of Palestinian terror and terrorist organizations as an integral component of US policy. The US has conditioned new funding agreements with PA NGOs, upon their signing an Appendix declaring the funding will not be passed on to terrorists. The PA NGOs are refusing to sign.

The Palestinian NGO opposition is universal, following a meeting of representatives of many NGOs who unanimously agreed they would not sign, and called for disciplinary measures to be taken against any Palestinian organization that signs. The Palestinians called the US anti terror Appendix "provocative" and called on the NGOs to refuse USAID, as was done during the Jenin battle, rather than sign.

In spite of the significant sums of money given to the Palestinian through USAID, the organization was maligned at the event, one speaker calling USAID a "destructive" organization, whose purpose it to "damage" or "corrupt" Palestinian organizations.

The following is the declaration that the Palestinian NGOs refuse to sign:

"The beneficiary institution has not supplied, and will not supply in the future, any material or other form of aid to any individual or other body that is known or has any reason to be considered as a person or a body that incites, plans, supports, or is involved in any terrorist activities of any kind." [Trans from Arabic, Al Ayyam Aug. 25, 2003.]

"Another appendix … includes the names of Palestinian individuals and bodies that the United States considers to be terrorists, and therefore prohibits any cooperation with them such as the Hamas, the [Islamic] Jihad, the Al-Aksa Martyrs’ Brigades, the Popular Front, the Democratic Front, etc." [Al Ayyam Aug. 25, 2003.]

Organizations refusing to sign include the "Mizan" Center for Human Rights, "The Red Crescent" and the "Federation of Sanitation Activities". The refusal is based on the PA policy that refuses to see murder of Israelis including suicide bombings as terrorism. The current opposition to suicide bombings, as it is often stressed within the PA, is because of the negative political conditions that make suicide bombings politically detrimental, and not because suicide bombings are terror. Suicide bombings are defined as "legitimate resistance".

Why Oslo's Hopes Turned to Dust

Daniel Pipes writes in JWR on the true cause of the collapse in the prospects for peace.

...the deal rested on a faulty Israeli premise that Palestinians had given up their hope of destroying the Jewish state. This led to the expectation that if Israel offered sufficient financial and political incentives, the Palestinians would formally recognize the Jewish state and close down the conflict.

Israelis therefore pushed themselves to make an array of concessions, in the futile hope that flexibility, restraint, and generosity would win Palestinian goodwill. In fact, these steps made matters worse by sending signals of apparent demoralization and weakness. Each concession further reduced Palestinian awe of Israeli might, made Israel seem more vulnerable, and incited irredentist dreams of annihilating it.

The result was a radicalized and mobilized Palestinian body politic. In speech and actions, via claims to the entire land of Israel and the murder of Israelis, the hope of destroying Israelis acquired ever-more traction.

He proposes a new path that still counts on the Palestinians turning permanently to peace.

In the spirit of Oslo's tenth anniversary, I propose a radically different approach for the next decade:

Acknowledge the faulty presumption that underlay both Oslo and the roadmap (Palestinian acceptance of Israel's existence).

Resolve not to repeat the same mistake.

Understand that diplomacy aiming to close down the Arab-Israeli conflict is premature until Palestinians give up their anti-Zionist fantasy.

Make Palestinian acceptance of Israel's existence the primary goal.

Impress on Palestinians that the sooner they accept Israel, the better off they will be. Conversely, so long they pursue their horrid goal of extermination, diplomacy will remain moribund and they will receive no financial aid, arms, or recognition as a state.

Give Israel license not just to defend itself but to impress on the Palestinians the hopelessness of their cause.

When, over a long period of time and with complete consistency, the Palestinians prove they accept Israel, negotiations can be re-opened and the issues of the past decade - borders, resources, armaments, sanctities, residential rights - be taken up anew. The sooner we adopt the right policies, the sooner that will be.

I have my doubts, but, at least, he doesn't delude himself, confusing conflict and cessations in fighting with true peace.

Plain as Day in Black and White

Amir Taheri demonstrates the agenda of the Islamo-Nazis in his article in the NYPost.

'IT is not the American war machine that should be of the utmost concern to Muslims. What threatens the future of Islam, in fact its very survival, is American democracy.' This is the message of a new book [by Yussuf al-Ayyeri, one of Osama bin Laden's closest associates], just published by al Qaeda in several Arab countries.

Wow. That's laying it out straight and to the point. No need to wonder, "What did we do wrong?". Our existence is the problem.

Al-Ayyeri argues that the history of mankind is the story of 'perpetual war between belief and unbelief.' Over the millennia, both have appeared in different guises. As far as belief is concerned, the absolutely final version is represented by Islam, which 'annuls all other religions and creeds.' Thus, Muslims can have only one goal: converting all humanity to Islam and 'effacing the final traces of all other religions, creeds and ideologies.'

I think that we can also see where this must lead.

Unbelief (kufr) has come in numerous forms and shapes, but with a single objective: to destroy faith in God. In the West, unbelief has succeeded in making a majority of people forget God and worship the world. Islam, however, is resisting the trend because Allah means to give it final victory.

He goes on to describe all the forms of unbelief to attack Islam (in his opinion, obviously):
* '..."Modernism" (hidatha), which led to the caliphate's destruction and the emergence in the lands of Islam of states based on ethnic identities and territorial dimensions rather than religious faith.'
* "...Nationalism, which, imported from Europe, divided Muslims into Arabs, Persians, Turks and others. Al-Ayyeri claims that nationalism has now been crushed in almost all Muslim lands. He claims that a true Muslim is not loyal to any particular nation-state."
* "...Socialism, which includes communism. That, too, has been defeated and eliminated from the Muslim world, Al-Ayyeri asserts..."
* '...Ba'athism, the Iraqi ruling party's ideology under Saddam Hussein... Ba'athism (also the official ideology of the Syrian regime) offers Arabs a mixture of pan-Arabism and socialism as an alternative to Islam. Al-Ayyeri says Muslims "should welcome the destruction of Ba'athism in Iraq."'

With the West having defeating all these, what is left?

What Al-Ayyeri sees now is a "clean battlefield" in which Islam faces a new form of unbelief. This, he labels "secularist democracy." This threat is "far more dangerous to Islam" than all its predecessors combined. The reasons, he explains in a whole chapter, must be sought in democracy's "seductive capacities."

This form of "unbelief" persuades the people that they are in charge of their destiny and that, using their collective reasoning, they can shape policies and pass laws as they see fit. That leads them into ignoring the "unalterable laws" promulgated by God for the whole of mankind, and codified in the Islamic shariah (jurisprudence) until the end of time.

The goal of democracy, according to Al-Ayyeri, is to "make Muslims love this world, forget the next world and abandon jihad." If established in any Muslim country for a reasonably long time, democracy could lead to economic prosperity, which, in turn, would make Muslims "reluctant to die in martyrdom" in defense of their faith.

He says that it is vital to prevent any normalization and stabilization in Iraq. Muslim militants should make sure that the United States does not succeed in holding elections in Iraq and creating a democratic government. "If democracy comes to Iraq, the next target [for democratization] would be the whole of the Muslim world," Al-Ayyeri writes.

The al Qaeda ideologist claims that the only Muslim country already affected by "the beginning of democratization" and thus in "mortal danger" is Turkey.

"Do we want what happened in Turkey to happen to all Muslim countries?" he asks. "Do we want Muslims to refuse taking part in jihad and submit to secularism, which is a Zionist-Crusader concoction?"

Al-Ayyeri says Iraq would become the graveyard of secular democracy, just as Afghanistan became the graveyard of communism. The idea is that the Americans, faced with mounting casualties in Iraq, will "just run away," as did the Soviets in Afghanistan. This is because the Americans love this world and are concerned about nothing but their own comfort, while Muslims dream of the pleasures that martyrdom offers in paradise.

"In Iraq today, there are only two sides," Al-Ayyeri asserts. "Here we have a clash of two visions of the world and the future of mankind. The side prepared to accept more sacrifices will win."

Add Another to the Gift List!

BOTW points out the coolest new toy on the block.

Bring 'Em On---The Next Generation

BOTW carries this quote from blogger William Dyer on Schwarzenegger being allowed to run for president:

It drove the Angry Left nuts when Dubya baited the US military's honey-trap by telling would-be terrorists in Iraq to "bring 'em on"--Dubya's Texas drawl simply ruled when delivering that line. But The Terminator can deliver not only an ominous accent but a physical presence that bodes major mayhem. . . . I very much want our President to be someone who can, when appropriate, take a blunt, pithy, and aggressive phrase, and then deliver it into the CNN microphones in just the utterly convincing way that will turn it into the shrieking, bed-wetting #1 cause of recurring nightmares for even non-English speakers like Osama bin Ladin.

The Cultural Divide Between America and Europe

BOTW carries this quote from a Ralph Peters piece in the NYPost

Strategically, Europe is in danger of becoming the greatest impediment to positive change in the world. Europe clings to the international status quo, no matter how dreadful, simply because risk has been bred out of its culture. This leaves the United States (and Britain) with the choice of doing that which is necessary and just without Europe's support, or accepting the rules that made the 20th century history's bloodiest.

Europeans are correct when they insist that America has become a danger. We are, indeed, a tremendous threat to their self-satisfaction, to their dread of change, to their moral irresponsibility and to their dreary, state-supported cultures.

Anti-Semitism in Britain

FrontPage magazine.com reports:

Something very strange has happened when middle-aged and elderly Conservative Britain applauds the anti-American, anti-Israel sentiments of someone who a few years ago they would have thought was a dangerous revolutionary. So why does Middle Britain now think Israel and the United States, rather than al-Qaeda, Saddam Hussein and the “axis of evil,” are the root cause of world terror?

The answer is complex, but no less terrifying. The first factor is the influence of the political Left, which has captured the Establishment: the media, politics, civil service, legal profession and the churches. As a result, its worldview has increasingly become the received wisdom of the public. And it is the Left which now openly promulgates the opinions that Israel should not exist, that it is a Nazi state and that the Jews control America.

Why does the Left take this position? The most obvious explanation is that it demonizes America and capitalism and lionizes the Third World and all liberation movements.

At a deeper level, its embrace of victim-culture means that it now confuses truth with lies. People are increasingly unable to make moral distinctions based on behavior; there is a tendency to equate and then invert the role of the perpetrators of violence and that of their victims, so that self-defense is misrepresented as aggression while the original violence is viewed sympathetically as understandable and even justified. The human bomb is therefore a hero, while his victim had it coming.