Israel -- Enemy #1 (According to Europe)

EUbusiness brings us this lovely piece of information from our friends in Europe.

Europeans believe Israel poses the biggest threat to world peace...[according to a] report in the Spanish daily El Pais which cited findings that 59 percent of Europeans rate Israel as the most threatening country, ahead of the United States, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and North Korea.

Why won't the Prez stop using ‘fuzzy terrorism’ language?

Zev Chafets on JWR

Bush can insist all day long that America isn't at war with Islam. But that misses the point. In varying degrees, the Islamic world is at war with the U.S., its interests and purposes.

Muslim leaders know that, obviously, and they think Bush must know it, too.

Noah's Ark Today

From JPost

Noah's ark By Emma Kimor

And the Lord spoke to Noah and said, "In one year, I am going to make it rain and cover the whole earth with water until all flesh is destroyed. But I want you to save the righteous people and two of every kind of living thing on the earth. Therefore, I am commanding you to build an ark."

One year later, a fierce storm cloud covered the earth and all the seas of the earth went into a turmoil. Noah was sitting in his front yard weeping. "Noah," the Lord shouted, "Where is the ark?"

"Lord, please forgive me," cried Noah, "I did my best but there were problems: First I had to get a permit for construction and your plans did not comply with the codes. I had to hire an engineering firm and redraw the plans. Then I got into a fight with security over whether or not the ark needed a fire sprinkler system and flotation devices. Big problems arose over getting enough wood for the ark because there is a ban on cutting trees. Then the carpenters' union went on strike and I had to negotiate a settlement with the Histadrut national labor relations board before anyone would pick up a saw or a hammer. (Now I have 16 carpenters on the ark, doing nothing.)

"When I started rounding up the animals, I got sued by an animal rights group for taking only two of each kind aboard. Once this suit was dismissed, I was notified that I could not complete the ark without filing an environmental impact statement on Your proposed flood. Besides, the IDF Engineering Corps demanded a map of the proposed new flood plan. This was settled satisfactorily: I sent them a globe.

"That's not all. Right now the income tax commissioner has seized my assets, claiming that I'm building the ark in preparation to flee the country to avoid paying taxes. I just got notice that I owe the state some kind of 'use' tax and that I was to register the ark as a 'recreational water craft.'

"Finally, there is a court injunction pending against further construction of the ark altogether. Since God is flooding the earth, it claims, it is a religious event and therefore unconstitutional...

"Really, dear God, I don't think I can finish the ark at all!"

Just then the sky began to clear, the sun began to shine, and the seas began to calm. Noah looked up at the rainbow across the sky.

"You mean you are not going to destroy the earth, Lord?"

"No," said the Lord, "I don't have to - the government already has."
- Adapted from an anonymous sermon

MICHAEL DANBY, a member of the Australian House of Representatives for Melbourne Ports, and secretary of the National Security, Foreign Affairs and Defense Policy Committee of the parliamentary Labor Party, writes in the WSJ about Dr. Mahathir bin Mohamad, head of Malaysia and his comments on the Jews and the West and reveals the anti-semitism and anti-Western attitutude.

If we had to ask which leader of an Islamic country has done the most, in practical terms, to crack down on organizations which support, fund and carry out terrorist attacks, the answer would have to be the prime minister of Malaysia, Dr. Mahathir bin Mohamad.

...

Dr. Mahathir is not doing these things, however, to oblige the United States, or Australia, or the West in general. Although Malaysia has a dynamic, if managed, capitalist economy and a reasonably free parliamentary system, Dr. Mahathir has a profoundly un-Western, indeed anti-Western, view of the world.

Dr. Mahathir opposes Islamist terrorism not because it harms the West or kills Westerners, but because he thinks it is un-Islamic and harmful to the Islamic cause. Some tough-minded analysts loathe Dr. Mahathir but judge him to be politically "useful," if aesthetically revolting. The West should, of course, be pleased that Dr. Mahathir is helping to curb terrorism, but it should not be under any illusions about his motives.

...

He is willing to cause serious damage to Malaysia's diplomatic interests by indulging his anti-Semitic and anti-Western fantasies; clearly he believes most of what he says.

Recently Dr. Mahathir gave the most systematic outline of his view of the world, in his opening address to the Islamic Summit Conference in Kuala Lumpur. This was the speech in which Dr. Mahathir made his widely-reported comment that "today the Jews rule the world by proxy. They get others to fight and die for them."

This remark drew condemnation from all over the world, and rightly so. But Dr. Mahathir had much more to say. His speech showed that he sees the entire Islamic world engaged in a war against the West, a war which has been going on for centuries. And behind the West, Dr. Mahathir said, stand the real enemy, the Jews.

...

So Dr. Mahathir, elected leader of a nation of 22 million people, has signed on to a full-blown anti-Semitic conspiracy theory that dates back to the publication of "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion," a notorious anti-Semitic forgery published by the Okhrana, the Russian secret police, in 1905. He believes that "socialism, communism, human rights and democracy" were all invented by the Jews, as part of a dark and ancient Jewish plot to rule the world.

This is, of course, not the first time Dr. Mahathir has given vent to his anti-Semitic views. Although he is an intelligent man, with a Western education including a medical degree, he seems willing to swallow the most absurd conspiracy theories if they reinforce his prejudices.

...

In his recent speech, Dr. Mahathir said, in passing; "the Europeans killed six million Jews out of 12 million." So he does not deny that the Holocaust happened. He just thinks that the Jews are not entitled to any "sympathy" over this unfortunate incident, particularly if that might "tarnish" the reputation of the much-maligned Germans.

Dr. Mahathir accepts the basic thesis of the Protocols and of all anti-Semites since the 19th century: that "the Jews" are a single conspiratorial entity, which acts together in secret to further its objectives.

...

One of the objectives of the Jewish conspiracy, according to Dr. Mahathir, is to weaken and eventually colonize the Muslim world, in order to overthrow the one true religion, Islam. Despite this, Dr. Mahathir is not an Islamist: he vigorously opposes the Islamist PAS party in Malaysia. He also opposes suggested laws which would restrict Malaysan women, or damage Malaysia's attractiveness to Western investment and Western tourism. Dr. Mahathir believes that Muslim countries can only compete with the West by becoming richer and more powerful, not by retreating into virtuous Islamic poverty.

Nor does Dr. Mahathir support Islamist terrorism against the West, or even against the Jews. Speaking of Islamist terrorism in his Kuala Lumpur speech, he asked, "Is there no other way than to ask our young people to blow themselves up and kill people and invite the massacre of more of our own people?

"We fight without any objective, without any goal other than to hurt the enemy because they hurt us . . . We sacrifice lives unnecessarily, achieving nothing other than to attract more massive retaliation."

Dr. Mahathir opposes terrorism, not because it is wrong, but because it is futile. He does not disagree with the Islamist view that the Western world and the Islamic world are fundamental enemies, he merely disagrees with the Islamists on tactics. [emphasis mine]

Some might say that, from the West's point of view it doesn't really matter why Dr. Mahathir opposes terrorism, so long as he does. But the danger in this is that at some point Dr. Mahathir, or his successor, may change his mind and decide that terrorism is not futile. So long as this is the case, Malaysia can never be a fully reliable ally in the war against terrorism.

Only the Naive or the Malicious Would Urge a Binational Israel

Yossi Klein Halevi comments on ideas of a binational state in place of Israel:

Think Yugoslavia, only worse. That's what proponents of a binational, Arab-Jewish state are really offering in their utopian vision of the Middle East. The notion that Palestinians and Jews, who can't even negotiate a two-state solution, could coexist in one happy state is so ludicrous that only the naive or the malicious would fall for it. But despite this, the idea — which periodically surfaced in the 20th century — is again growing fashionable.

The naive have included Jewish intellectuals like Martin Buber, who before Israel was created in 1948 tried to avert war by promoting a binational solution. But the Arab leadership quickly made it clear that its goal was expulsion of the Holy Land's Jews, not coexistence, and the idea was quietly dropped.

The Jewish Future in Britain?

Carol Gould writes about her experiences outside a Marks & Spencer and dealing with the Muslim and non-Muslim anti-Israel protestors.

But the crowning glory was an elegantly-dressed businessman next to me, who seemed normal except for the fury in his eyes. He said, "I love and revere the suicide bombers. Every time I hear of a suicide bomb going off I wish it had been eighty or ninety Jews instead of a pitiful handful."

And the result in her mind?

Does this [current anti-semitism in Britain] mean, as Melanie Phillips has said so often in the British press this year, that Britain is no longer a place where Jews may live without fear? Yes, we think it does...

Sadly, we believe anti-Semitism is endemic in the world at large. We feel that our own spiritual home is the United States (we have given up trying to explain to European Jews why we feel as free and proud as Jews in the USA as we do in Israel), but were we as young as the men at the Israel stall on Thursday we would make aliyah.

NOW.

Very Scary

Very scary assessment of nuclear proliferation.

Today, while our forces are engaged in a major open-ended operation in Iraq, a minor open-ended operation in Afghanistan, and a global war against al Qaeda, we are quietly sliding into the gravest crisis of this kind since Nikita Khrushchev placed nuclear-tipped missiles in Cuba. Two crazy states--both charter members of what President Bush has rightly called the "axis of evil," both openly flouting an international treaty to which they are party, both perpetrators of acts of international terrorism, both animated by a blistering hatred for America and the West--are bent on acquiring weapons of unthinkable destructive power. The CIA, as it admits in its own statements, does not know what it needs to know about either country, except that North Korea almost certainly possesses two or more fully operational bombs and could have as many as ten within months, while Iran is at most several years away from acquiring the bomb unless it purchases one or more tomorrow or next week or next month from Pyongyang.

Whatever the constraints on our resources, the challenge is unmistakable and cannot be dodged. The price of action is likely to be high, very high; the price of inaction is likely to be much higher.

This notion that religion is not at the heart of the hatred directed at America from outside and now inside the country qualifies as extreme denial. Throughout the Muslim world, America is condemned not mainly because of its ideas but because Islamists believe we are infidels opposed to G-d.

-- Cal Thomas

Palestinian terror, American blood

Jeff Jacoby mentions that as of the Gaza bombing this month (10/2003), 51 Americans have been killed by Palestinian Arab terrorists just in the last 10 years.

Americans have been dying at the hands of Palestinian Arab terrorists for decades, yet the US government and media rarely if ever portray Yasser Arafat and his lieutenants as avowed enemies of the United States. The State Department does not demand the extradition of Palestinian killers of Americans, not even when the killers' identities and whereabouts are known. President Bush has never given the Palestinian Authority the same ultimatum he gave the Taliban in Afghanistan: Hand over the terrorists or be destroyed.

Instead he issues incoherent declarations like the one he made on Wednesday — blasting the Palestinian Authority for refusing "to fight terror in all its forms," while assuring Americans that the US is "working closely with the appropriate officials" — i.e., the selfsame Palestinian Authority — to find and prosecute the terrorists responsible for the latest butchery. As if it isn't those very officials who have been aiding and abetting such butchery all along.

What does the PA really think of this?

A few months ago, Palestinian officials renamed the central square in Jenin after Ali Jafar al-Na'amani, the Iraqi suicide bomber who killed four US Marines at a checkpoint in Najaf on March 29. That is what Arafat and the Palestinian Authority think of spilled American blood.

Yikes

eWeek Quote of the Week 10/6/2003

Ian Murdock, chairman and chief technology officer, Progeny

We view open source as the commoditization of software. It's going to happen.

Temple Mount is more important than peace

Temple Mount is more important than peace by Natan Sharansky

Since the existence of the Geneva initiative was publicly announced on Sunday, there has been much criticism of the process that led to the agreement. Once again the same gang of Oslo blazers - a gang not even elected by an Israeli public, who instead denounced it and kicked it out of government and centers of influence for its "amazing successes" of the past. Once more the same gang is conducting negotiations on its own and committing Israel to far-reaching and irresponsible concessions.

Criticism of the process, although it is correct and justified, is diverting attention from the central and more important contents of the agreement - and primarily from the relinquishing of Jerusalem.

I remember a discussion in the Barak government, even before Camp David, in which Yossi Beilin tried to convince us that if we would only reach "some kind of agreement" on the Temple Mount, and give Palestinians the Christian Quarter of the Old City as well, the longed-for peace would come.

I asked, why the Christian Quarter? What connection do the Palestinians have to the Christian Quarter? Beilin looked at me in surprise and said, what do you care? That's the Christians' problem. We'll achieve peace and let the Christian world worry about freedom of religion and access to its holy places.

At the time I thought that this was a matter of disdain for the values of other nations and cultures. Beilin didn't mind sacrificing Israel's relations with the Christian world and risking the access of millions of Christians to places that are the cradle of their religion, so long as we could achieve the longed-for peace. (That assumed the Palestinians would respect religious freedom the way they respect other human rights).

Today, after Camp David, Taba, and now the relinquishing of Temple Mount in the framework of the Geneva accord, I understand that Beilin's gang are not necessarily contemptuous of the values of other nations, they are contemptuous of all values. Of all, except one that is - peace.

This gang seems to have forgotten, or hasn't yet understood, that as much as we long and hope for peace, it is not a value that stands by itself. It is an essential condition for the existence of a country that wishes to live, but it isn't the goal. It was not for the sake of peace that the State of Israel was established, and it was not because of peace that millions of Jews gathered here.

Nor was it peace for which the Jewish people prayed for thousands of years. The Jewish people prayed for Jerusalem. Because of Jerusalem, the Jewish people returned to Israel from the four corners of the earth, for it they were willing to make all the necessary sacrifices. For that same dream of a thousand generations - "next year in rebuilt Jerusalem."

It should be noted that if we totally relinquish every value for the sake of peace, we won't have peace either. Just as in the past, this time, too, the Palestinians will interpret such a relinquishing of what constitutes our very identity as a tremendous weakness that calls for war.

The values symbolized by Jerusalem are not only religious in nature. One doesn't have to be religious to understand that without our historical connection to Jerusalem, without the link to the past, without the feeling of continuity with the ancient kingdoms of Israel for whom the Temple Mount was the center of existence, we really are foreign invaders and
colonialists in this country.

One doesn't have to be religious in order to understand that relinquishing the Temple Mount is a justification of the Palestinian argument: You have no right to exist in this country, you have no connection to it, get out of here. One
doesn't have to be religious in order to understand that relinquishing the Temple Mount is not only relinquishing the past, it is primarily relinquishing the future. The future of all of us, here.

The members of the Hovevei Zion Zionist movement were not religious - they were secular socialists who considered religion a degenerate and sick product of the exile. Despite that they fought with all their might against the Uganda Plan [a 1903 British offer to let the Jews build a homeland in Uganda]. It was clear to them that without a common past, without roots, the Zionist project had no chance of succeeding.

Even today we must understand that without Jerusalem and without our historical roots the Zionist project will not be able to survive. Without Jerusalem Israel will become just another Jewish community, one of many in the world, like that of New York, London or Toronto - except more dangerous, less wealthy and less comfortable. It will not be the center of the Jewish world, not the focus of its existence - just one more community. And if that's the case, why continue to live in it? For what? In the name of what?

Why There is No Israeli-Palestinian Peace

Summary quoted from The Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations Daily Alert from the TNR article by Yossi Klein HaLevi.

Why There is No Israeli-Palestinian Peace - Yossi Klein Halevi (The New Republic)

The peace process is over; in fact there never was a peace process, if by that we mean a mutual process of reconciliation. "Land for peace" wasn't an option because recognition of Israel's legitimacy was never being offered. The current war isn't merely a glitch on the way to an inevitable comprehensive peace, but the end of the assumption that a comprehensive peace is possible, perhaps in our generation.

In numerous conversations I've had over the years with Palestinians, from all levels of society, when I'd ask the question, "What will happen after the peace?" the answers almost invariably focused on the next phase of repatriating Palestinian refugees and transforming Israel into a bi-national entity. When the war over Israel as a state ends, the war against Israel as a Jewish state will begin.

Most Israelis agree that renewing the peace process is impossible so long as Arafat controls the PA, a point reinforced by Abu Mazen's downfall. And unilateral withdrawal, however appealing, will only reinforce the message of Israel's Lebanon withdrawal that Israel is on the run - a message which encouraged the current Palestinian terror offensive.

Construction of the fence sends a message to the Palestinians that the absence of a willingness to negotiate a compromise settlement will eventually result in a unilaterally imposed border that will be less advantageous to the Palestinians than the offer they rejected at Camp David.

We've made a mistake in demonizing Arafat because the problem is hardly Arafat alone, but the widespread Palestinian and Arab refusal to grant us genuine recognition. Gambling on Arafat was symptomatic of our refusal to recognize the depth of Arab rejection. The widespread resistance in the Arab world to granting legitimacy to Jewish history, from Holocaust-denial to Temple-denial, isn't a side-effect of the conflict. It is the conflict.

Blaming Sharon, even partly, for not supporting Abu Mazen is to fail to understand that Abu Mazen couldn't be saved, because he was the victim of a political targeted assassination by Arafat.

There is no massive construction going on in the settlements. The latest building, which made front-page news and attracted Collin Powell's concern, involves 600 apartments mostly in the West Bank towns of Maale Adumim and Efrat, both of which will remain within Israel's borders no matter what deal is ultimately negotiated.

Cowardice costs

David Warren in JWR on the Israeli bombing in Syria.

Israel's weekend attack on the Islamic Jihad camp near Damascus was an act of cowardice, properly considered.

...

Prime Minister Sharon chose the Syrian target as an alternative to acting against Yasser Arafat — either by exiling him, or, as was originally proposed, by killing him. Under domestic political pressure, Mr. Sharon was choosing the lesser way to make the point that "Israel will not stand for this anymore" — in response to an horrific suicide bombing in Haifa. He was boxed in, by media-led world opinion. He goes on to hunt Islamic Jihad agents in Jenin and Nablus who, the Israelis sincerely believe, themselves ultimately report back to Arafat' s surrounded compound in Ramallah.

In making his lesser point, Mr. Sharon was providing an ineffective deterrent. He knows Arafat is informed, before the fact, of all organized terror strikes against Israel, and his intelligence services believe, on evidence repeatedly shown to the U.S., that Arafat personally orders most of them. The Haifa bombing was done through Islamic Jihad, instead of through a Fatah branch, or Hamas, to make the greatest possible distance from Arafat's chain of command. For Islamic Jihad has become so closely affiliated with the Iranian- and Syrian-sponsored Hizbollah, as to be practically their "diplomatic representative" within the Israel/Palestine theatre.

Mr. Sharon had implied that the earlier Israeli cabinet authorization to remove Arafat would be acted upon after the next major bombing. He was thus hoping to hold Arafat hostage against new terror incidents. But the tactic risked backfire if there were a major incident, and Arafat remained untouched.

Now this has happened. In effect, Arafat has been able to show his people and the Arab world generally that he can continue the bombings with impunity — that the Israelis will always look elsewhere to settle scores, not having the courage to go for him directly. He has thus, once again, successfully raised the stakes — so that his authority continues to be restored over West Bank and Gaza, and his prestige throughout the region.

Instead, Israel has been compelled, against its immediate interests, to open a second front of contention. Mr. Sharon has triggered border incidents along Israel's northern frontier, and mutual mobilization of Syrian and Israeli armies. He may think there is an advantage to Israel in re-opening the Syrian can of worms which, previously, Israeli governments had gone to lengths to close. Instead he has created a distraction that Arafat can better exploit than can he.

...

World opinion has Israel boxed in, yet paradoxically, as the temperature rises, world opinion will have less and less influence over Israel's defense. The proverb, "As well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb," begins to apply here — for it is not as if Israel ever gets praise for its restraint, or any other privilege it could risk losing. The only foreign power that retains real power over the decisions made by Israeli politicians is the United States, because it is in a position to cut substantial military and civil aid. But Egypt gets the same aid, and if Egypt's Hosni Mubarak can't be punished for providing the Syrian regime with its Arab League cover, Ariel Sharon can't be punished for taking potshots at known terrorists.

The cowardly course invariably leads to the bigger catastrophe. If the Israelis shot Arafat, there would be days, even weeks of Arab rage, and international condemnations. But this would most likely be followed by — nothing, except the implosion of the Palestinian Authority, and thus the removal of the political cover it offers to Palestinian terrorists. Whereas, hitting a site in Syrian territory brings, on balance, less rage; and more chance of hostilities across international borders that could spread rapidly through the region.

American Attitudes

Lou Dobbs hits the nail on the head (on JWR) regarding the world's opinion of America.

It's become fashionable of late for news organizations and opinion researchers to fixate on the world's view of the United States. We seem to be confronted weekly with another report, study or survey purporting to demonstrate global distrust or dislike of America and Americans.

A recent opinion survey in the Middle East showed that Arab attitudes towards the United States are at an all time low, and of course we know what the French and Germans think of us.

So how concerned should we be? In my opinion, not very. Unjustified negative opinions of the United States are far from a new phenomenon.

"Such is the destiny of a great power," says Fouad Ajami, professor of Middle Eastern Studies at Johns Hopkins University. "We sit astride the world, we protect the world, and the world takes this protection and bemoans the protector."

Ajami says we should consider the possibility that some of the recent polls may have been conducted by people who find it politically advantageous that America is more unpopular now, in the post-Iraq-war era.

Whatever your opinion of weapons of mass destruction or regime change, ridding Iraq of Saddam Hussein was a very good thing for Iraqis. And ridding Afghanistan of the Taliban and al-Qaida was a good thing for Afghans.

In addition to ridding those two countries of dictatorial rule, the U.S. government maintains, at some considerable expense to U.S. taxpayers, forces in South Korea, Japan, Germany and the United Kingdom.

"The United States is the major supporter of international security and peace," says Nicholas Eberstadt, a foreign-aid expert from the American Enterprise Institute. "We do that not through foreign assistance, but through our military budget, which is as large as the military budget of the next dozen or more countries combined."

Not only do we bear the role of global protector, but the generosity of the United States also provides an incredible $11 billion in official government aid each year to developing nations - an amount that is going to increase steadily over the next several years. The United States is also a global leader in fighting the diseases AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria. We contribute roughly $550 million a year in UN peacekeeping activities, and the United States is by far the largest contributor to the UN's general fund.

And U.S. foreign aid isn't limited to the official development aid that we provide each year. American foreign aid that includes non-government sources such as corporations, foundations, individuals and other sources totals an astonishing $60 billion a year.

However, United Nations voting records are proof positive that our generosity has never automatically translated into loyalty from other nations. A 1998 study of UN votes found that 74 percent of U.S. foreign aid recipients voted against the United States a majority of the time. India, for example, received more than $143 million in U.S. aid but voted against the United States 81 percent of the time. And Egypt, which received more than $2 billion in foreign aid (the second-highest amount of any nation), voted against the United States 66 percent of the time.

Providing the bulk of the United Nations' budget and giving away billions of dollars in aid each year doesn't require apology from Americans. We should feel pretty good about what this country has achieved and what it is accomplishing in the world.

"I don't think that gratitude has ever been a historical hallmark of international relations," Eberstadt says. "One need look no further than the country of France to understand that. They were rescued twice by the United States in the past century."

If you are still concerned over polls about the United States, consider the poll recently conducted by the Germany weekly Die Zeit, which revealed that one-third of Germans under the age of 30 believe that the United States may have sponsored the attacks of September 11.

So what should the United States do about world opinion? I believe that the best answer is: nothing.

Fouad Ajami says that most of us are asking the wrong question: "We are unloved in foreign lands; what's wrong with us?" When we should be asking: "We are unloved in foreign lands, what's wrong with them?"

On the Palestinian Death Cult

Mark Steyn shows why no peace will come to the Middle East for a long time.

The Palestinian death cult negates all the assumptions of western sentimental pacifism: If only the vengeful old generals got out of the way, there'd be no war.

...

I spent a short time on the West Bank earlier this spring. I would have spent longer, but to be honest it creeped me out, and I was happy to scram across the Allenby Bridge and on through Jordan to Iraq. Say what you like about the Sunni Triangle and RPG Alley, but I never once felt I was in a wholly diseased environment. On the West Bank, almost all the humdrum transactions of daily life take place in a culture that glorifies depravity: you walk down a street named after a suicide bomber to drop your child in a school that celebrates suicide-bombing and then pick up some groceries in a corner store whose walls are plastered with portraits of suicide bombers.

Nothing good grows in toxic soil. You cannot have a real peace with such people; you cannot even have the cold peace that exists between Israel and Jordan, where King Abdullah, host of the Arab-American-Israeli summit at the start of the road map, did not dare display the flag of the Zionist Entity, lest it provoke his subjects.

The problem is not the security fence, but the psychological fence - a chasm really - that separates a sizable proportion of the Palestinian population from all Jews.

AT THE time of that summit, I supported the road map because it seemed to me the best thing to be done was to thrust a state upon the Palestinians as quickly as possible. The present neither-one-thing-nor-the-other Palestinian Authority gives Arafat and company all the advantages of controlling their own territory with none of the responsibilities. Its anomalous status enshrines the Palestinians' victim status and means Israel gets a far worse press internationally than if it were dealing with a sovereign state.

But the main reason for conjuring up a Palestinian state would be to call their bluff. For six decades, nothing the Palestinians have done has made sense if the objective is to secure a state of their own. But, if the objective is to kill Jews, it all makes perfect sense. That's why, in West Bank towns, you see no evidence of nationalist fervor, only of Jew-killing fervor.

They Do Not Want Peace, Plain As Day

David Ignatius in the Washington Post actually asked the leader of Hezbollah about having peace with Israel. His reply was as plain as day as it always has been.

Is there any way to stop the horrifying dance of death between Israel and its enemies? Are there terms under which Islamic militants might agree to halt their suicide bombings?

I put these questions last week to Hasan Nasrallah, the head of the Lebanese Shiite militia known as Hezbollah, in an interview at his heavily guarded offices here. It was a few days before the latest hemorrhage of violence, in which a Palestinian woman blew herself up inside a Haifa restaurant Saturday, killing 19 and wounding 55.

"I can't imagine a situation, based on the nature of the Israeli project and the nature of the Israeli leaders, where the Palestinians would agree to lay down arms," Nasrallah answered. A decade ago, at the time of the Madrid conference and the Oslo accords, he continued, "there was a philosophical debate" about the possibility of a peace settlement. But it is over.

"The road of negotiation did not solve the Palestinian problem," Nasrallah said. "If you have today widespread support [among Palestinians] for Hamas and Islamic Jihad, this is due to the failure of the political option."

The solutions to the "situation" become rather extreme then.

See what happens when you put liberals in charge?

Look at what happens when the Democrats are in charge of a state.

The left got what it wanted because much of that agenda has in fact been implemented in California in the past five years. And today, the voting "lab rats" will let Sacramento know what they think of this grand experiment. They've already rendered a verdict of sorts by inviting the recall, and by showing in every poll before the groping and "Hitler" stories broke that they wanted to throw Mr. Davis and his allies out.

What Californians have witnessed is what the modern liberal coalition looks like in power: a gerrymandered majority dominated by the "progressive" special-interest trinity of trial lawyers, unions (especially of public employees) and environmentalists.

Their priorities are the transfer of wealth from working people to an ever-expanding public sector; more mandates and rules on business that enhance union power but reduce the ability to invest at a profit and create new jobs; and of course legal standards and workers' compensation loopholes that create more openings for trial-lawyer assaults.

Green Day

Alan Caruba is certainly opinionated when it comes to the Greens.

Not a day passes when I don’t receive a book or read a news story filled with Green gobbledygook, the deliberately obscure language Greens use to hide their true agenda. The Green revolution is based on the techniques of the Communist revolution. It infiltrates organizations in order to take them over and it smothers the media with its profusion of lies in order to influence public opinion and policy. The Greens are patient, knowing that a lie told over and over again becomes the "truth" if not debunked over and over again.

He reviews a book called, The Web of Life Imperative: Regenerative Ecopsychology Techniques that Help People Think in Balance with Natural Systems. [That's the real title. No, really, it is.]

What struck me immediately—and no doubt yourself—is the use of verbiage to give the appearance of serious intellectual content, but which reveals only the pure invention of something called "ecopsychology." This is absurd pseudo-science, if in fact, psychology can be considered science despite its use of statistical information and endless "studies."

He debunks many of the good-sounding statements from the book.

This psychobabble book purports to respond to "the dire problems that arise because people in contemporary society live extremely nature-separated lives." This is hogwash! Anyone who has spent any time in the "great outdoors" knows that it is not a friendly place for humans. There are no supermarkets filled with a largesse of food in Nature. There are no places fit for habitation in Nature unless you pitch a tent, build a lean-to or find a cave. Nature does not provide clean water from the tap with a flick of the wrist. Nature offers merciless cold or heat.

The rise of civilization has been man’s triumph over Nature. It was the invention of agriculture, barely five thousand years or so ago, that provided food and permitted the rise of towns and then cities, freeing men to become artisans and craftsmen.

Here's another.

"Like a benighted cancer, we overrun, pollute and destroy natural systems in people and places while fully knowledgeable that these systems are life and support our life. Such behavior is a form of madness." For the record, barely 3% to 5% of the landmass of the United States of America involves cities, towns, highways, railroads and airports. The vast bulk of our population lives within fifty miles of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.

The Greens regard the human species as a form of "cancer" on the Earth. We are said to be bent on the destruction of the Earth as we go about finding new ways (biotechnology) to abundantly feed the billions who would otherwise starve to death. We have eradicated diseases that threatened millions with needless death. We are threatened by other diseases because the Greens have systematically banned essential and beneficial pesticides to suppress insect and rodent pest populations.

We humans know how to grow and manage forests. We know how to ranch and farm. We know how to build systems to provide clean water to drink and irrigation for our farms. We know how to generate life-enhancing energy to light, heat, cool, and power our homes. We know how to provide medicines to protect and extend our lives. We know how to criss-cross the Earth in hours and days. We can communicate with each other as no previous generation ever could.

Sifting out the hidden agenda...

"In our denial, we learn to offer ‘progress’, ‘God’s will’ and ‘economic growth’ as rationale for our injurious effects."

There it is. The bottom line. Greens hate progress if it means a better life for everyone on Earth. The Greens worship Gaia, the pagan Earth goddess, not the universal God of mankind. And the Greens do everything they can to destroy economic growth and the spread of prosperity anywhere on the face of the Earth.

The real threat to our lives are the Greens. There are other threats, but this evil anti-progress, anti-capitalist, anti-energy, anti-science, anti-God movement is the real cancer that seeks victory through its twisted belief that the only thing that matters is "Nature." Man is part of Nature and what matters most is each new child born today, bringing with them the hope of a better world for future generations.

Amen.

Too Funny

This is just too funny. Thanks to Brian Livingston for pointing it out.