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.

Moral Equivalency

Joel Mowbray sums it up nicely.

Intentionally killing civilians from America, Europe, or Asia (or almost anywhere else) makes you a terrorist—but intentionally killing innocent Jews in Israel merely makes you a "militant." At least in the eyes of the "mainstream" media.

The vocabulary makeover is part of the moral equivalency that is rampant in media coverage of Israeli-Palestinian issues.

The USA Today’s editorial page recently informed readers that "both Israeli and Palestinian leaders are captives of fanatical extremists," as if a democratically-elected government seeking to protect its citizens from mass murderers is on a par with a self-appointed dictatorship aiding and abetting those same mass murderers in the intentional slaughter of innocent civilians. But at least that’s the editorial page.

Never Support WJC Again

Jonathan Tobin relates an interview by World Jewish Congress president Edgar Bronfman with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency

[World Jewish Congress President Edgar] Bronfman dug himself an even deeper hole when he discussed the motivations for his letter [to the US President against the Israeli security fence] with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency by talking about his distaste for Jews who live in Judea, Samaria and Gaza. Bronfman said "a more effective" tactic for the Palestinians would have been to attack only the settlements and not Jews inside pre-1967 Israel.

"If the Palestinian suicide bombers only went to the settlements … then the whole world would have had a case against Israel and there would have been a two-state solution by now," he said. "Instead, they sent them into Israel proper, which is ghastly."

Is There Ever Too High a Price to Pay?

JPost carries an insightful but frustrating article on the Sharon government reaction to the bombing of children on a Jerusalem bus.

"Israel will not be able to continue with the road map as long as the Palestinians don't fulfill their obligations," Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom said.
...
"As long as the Palestinians do not act seriously and continuously against terror, there can be no progress in the diplomatic arena, despite Israel's strong desire to continue on this path as quickly as possible." Shalom said Israel would remain committed to the peace process in the long term, but at the moment there would need to be a "price to pay."
...
Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz said Israel would remain committed to the road map for the long term.
...
"There will be a reaction," said one [Defense official]. "But it won't be a major operation."

In other words, there is absolutely nothing that the Palestinian Arabs can do to derail the peace process with the Sharon government...ever.

Observations on Potential Responses to the Bombing

Amos Harel in Haaretz gives an insightful reason as to why Israel had committed to turning over control over more West Bank towns to PA control.

There are senior officers in the army who at least until Tuesday believed that it is best to speed up the handover to bring the PA leadership to a moment of truth: present Abbas and Dahlan with a real test of foiling terror while they are responsible for the territory instead of accepting a reality in which the hudna is seemingly in place but "little" attacks continually occur.

Up until Tuesday night, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz preferred the IDF's position in favor of a withdrawal over the Shin Bet security service's warnings of its dangers. Thus, Sharon and Mofaz even agreed to a withdrawal from the cities without a commitment from the PA to arrest the wanted men in the cities.

Unfortunately, it will never work. He has an even more accurate assessment of what will happen as an American and Israeli response to the bombing.

The immediate response Tuesday night was to freeze the talks about a withdrawal from the four West Bank cities of Qalqilyah, Jericho, Ramallah and Tul Karm . But there is no certainty that freeze will last for very long.

It is reasonable to assume that Israel will try to use the attack to enlist the U.S. administration to pressure Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas and his Minister for Security Affairs Mohammed Dahlan to finally confront the organizations. And then, after a few days of contacts, with American mediation, the incentive for the Palestinians, in exchange for implementation of Dahlan's "90 day plan" for fighting terrorism, will be, after all, handing over the cities.

Lessons from the Israel and UN Bombings

A JPost editorial carries the following:

The objective of the terrorists is to make us think what we have done wrong, to wonder what we have done to provoke such a heinous crime. And the answer is always the same. It is not what we, the US, or the UN has done wrong, but who we are and what we have done right.

There are two simple lessons from the suicide bombings yesterday in Baghdad and Jerusalem: No one is safe and there is no turning back. Suicide terrorism is the plague of this century. It cannot be escaped, denied, or appeased. It must be defeated.

Appropriate Quote on a Terrible Day

In the NYT: "Israel cannot be the perpetual testing ground for peace proposals that the Palestinians fail to implement," said Dore Gold, an adviser to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.

Being an Activist Means Always Having to Find Something New to Complain About

Declan McCullagh starts his News.com commentary with a great quote about the Greens: Being an activist means always having to find something new to complain about.

So, what are the Greens complaining about now?

For much of the past decade, environmental activists have voiced fears about bioengineered crops. Engineered crops such as soybeans, corn and canola are popular in the United States, because farmers can reduce the amount of pesticides released into the environment, but pro-environmental groups have successfully campaigned against them in Europe.

Never mind that in a major study published in 1989, the National Research Council concluded that genetically engineered products were as safe as or safer than products that are manufactured through more traditional methods. And never mind that there's no evidence that the millions of Americans who munch on engineered grain have experienced any ill effects as a result.

Some well-meaning but scientifically illiterate activists who populate environmental groups are currently targeting another emerging area: nanotechnology. (Nanotechnology refers to working with materials in the one- to 100-nanometer range, a process that promises to create useful new substances, aid medical research and accelerate microprocessors. A June estimate says research and development in nanotech is expected to surpass $3 billion in 2003.) [Emphasis mine]

So, what's their (obvious) solution?

The environmental activists want the world's governments--or better yet, a world government--to enforce the point of view that's known as the "precautionary principle," which states that when there is any risk of a major disaster, scientific progress must halt.

Declan suggests an alternative, common-sense path.

A second point of view is a more libertarian approach that weighs the cost of prohibition against the cost to human freedom and scientific progress. It recognizes that any legal prohibition on research is unlikely to be effective: Military research and development inevitably will continue, and any group that hopes to exploit the technology for ill purposes will hardly stop, just because Congress orders them to.

There's already a reasonable precedent for that point of view. It's modeled after the approach the biotechnology industry adopted in the aftermath of a series of seminal conferences in the early 1970s. Scientists developed voluntary standards backed up by common-sense regulations for government-funded research that were so well-crafted, they're still followed today.

Saudi Arabia's Overrated Oil Weapon

The Weekly Standard carries the following article that lists the common misperceptions of the Saudi leverage over the oil supply issue.
Saudi Arabia's Overrated Oil Weapon: There's no need for Washington to be deferential to Riyadh
by Max Singer | 08/18/2003, Volume 008, Issue 46

OVERESTIMATES OF ARAB OIL POWER are an important and harmful influence on policy toward the Middle East. The following myths, or outdated facts, support the world's misjudgment of the power of the Persian Gulf oil producers--especially Saudi Arabia, but also Iran, Iraq, and the Gulf states.

(1) Most of the world's oil reserves are in the Middle East. Wrong. That is only true for "conventional" oil, the stuff that flows easily. When you count "unconventional" oil, Canada has larger reserves than Saudi Arabia. There is more unconventional oil than conventional oil, and most of it is in the western hemisphere--principally Canadian oil sands and Venezuelan heavy oil.

Technological developments over the last 10 years have reduced the cost of producing unconventional oil to below $15 a barrel, so that it is being produced profitably at the price at which oil has sold for almost all of the last 30 years. We'll see later why the much lower production cost of Gulf oil gives the Gulf countries less power than people think. Already a million barrels a day of unconventional oil is being produced, and it is just as good as the black goo pumped in the old-fashioned way.

...

(2) The world can't get the increased oil supply it will need in coming years without buying a larger share from the Persian Gulf. Wrong. There are many potential sources of increased oil supply--in addition to unconventional oil. In 2020 the Gulf may supply even less than the 23 percent of the world total it provided last year.

...

(3) The low production cost of Gulf oil lets the Gulf countries determine how much of world demand they will supply. Wrong. Where the world's future oil supply comes from depends on where oil companies decide to drill wells and make other investments. Since there is much more oil available in the ground than will be needed in the next few decades, oil investors have much choice about where to get oil. Right now there is practically no investment being made in increasing--or even maintaining--oil production capacity in the Gulf region; instead, almost all drilling is being done in other parts of the world.

There are two reasons the oil industry is not investing in the Gulf. Owners, not producers, control the benefit of low production costs, so low costs in the Gulf don't necessarily give companies an incentive to invest in producing Gulf oil. And oil producers have strong incentives to avoid sources that are as politically vulnerable as the Gulf seems to be.

...

(4) The United States and other consumers need Gulf oil much more than the Gulf countries need the money paid for the oil. Wrong. Most of the Gulf countries have become very dependent on their oil income, which provides almost all their foreign currency. The oil-consuming countries get less than a quarter of their oil from the Gulf and have stockpiles of oil that could replace Gulf supply for six months or more.

...

(5) Saudi Arabia has the power to determine how much the world has to pay for oil and therefore the power to help or hurt Western economies. Mostly wrong. So long as Saudi Arabia has the ability quickly to produce more oil than it is selling, it can bring down prices in periods of tight supply. But the Saudis understand that keeping prices from going too high is in their national interest as well as ours, because they would lose more than most producers if high prices chased consumers to other energy sources.

So, what's the bottom line, then?

When American politicians realize that the new facts of the oil industry destroy the basis for the traditional American awe of Saudi oil power, they will begin to use more normal standards in thinking about Saudi-American relations. To be sure, the Saudis, with or without the other Gulf or OPEC oil countries, can create short-term difficulties for the United States and other oil importers; but such difficulties, springing from normal business bargaining, present a limited danger, comparable to that resulting from labor strikes. There is no reason to be afraid of this.

...

In other words, the Saudis' power over the United States is a house of cards that can be blown away by fresh thinking based on a realistic understanding of the current oil business.

The second conclusion is that there is no strategic imperative for the United States to reduce its "dependency" on imported oil by reducing oil consumption. We should make sure that world oil-production capacity stays comfortably ahead of world demand for oil. We should also ensure that there are large stockpiles of oil to improve the short-term balance of supply and demand. And we need to stop feeling dependent when we are not. These measures are all feasible and have moderate costs. They do not require changing our way of life or our economy.

A Lesson from Mideast Dictators

The Region: A Lesson from Mideast Dictators by Barry Rubin -- Jun. 30, 2003 | The Jerusalem Post

Years ago a perfume ad perfectly embodied one of the main features of contemporary Middle East politics. "Promise her anything," it said, "but give her Arpege."

The strategy: Pretend to comply with a request or plan, then sabotage it. Dare your adversaries to do something about your behavior, in the often correct belief that you can easily get away with it. The reasons for expecting such a method to succeed are persuasive:

Perhaps your adversaries won't be aware of the trespass. The Western media will, at least, report your denial as being equally valid as any claim that you are lying.

Perhaps they will not act at all for internal reasons because the problem is too low a priority, the risks too high, or any number of other reasons. If they complain you can ignore them, since they are bluffing.

You can then ask for still more concessions in return for delivering on a promise or deal already made. Often you will actually get more after which the whole process can be repeated. If they launch a limited attack you can mobilize international support against them. The Arabs and Europeans will come to your aid. The party that acts not the one that provoked the action will be blamed as the aggressor.

At worst, you can just wait until they get tired and go away.

Isn't this what Saddam Hussein did in confronting the United States in 1991 over Kuwait and then, with great success, for the next 12 years? Wait a minute! He's still doing it, carrying on a war of attrition from his hiding place, telling his lieutenants that the Americans will soon go home. In short, the lesson of Middle East leaders is that while deterrence may work no state is going to attack Israel or the United States pressure does not. Only on the rarest occasions can a superior power press a weaker state, even one that has just lost a war, into doing anything.

And so the region's dictators are confident that when they face economic sanctions, threats, speeches, even military pressure, they can lie, conceal and deny. They can make no concessions and wait it out, ignore the costs to their own people who can be mobilized to support them by being told that the pressure proves how evil the enemy is, and how necessary the dictator's continued leadership is.

Some brief examples:

Syria told the United States it had stopped the operation of Saddam Hussein's pipeline through its territory, but it hadn't. It claimed to have closed terrorist offices on its territory. Same thing. It says it isn't giving refuge to high-ranking Iraqi officials, or serving as a launching pad for anti-American resistance in Iraq and if it was doing such things before, it certainly isn't any more. No and no. Etc., etc.

Iran insists that it does not sponsor terrorism, is not really building nuclear weapons, and is quite ready to cooperate to prove its good faith. Teheran promises that it isn't subverting US-backed governments in Afghanistan and Iraq. Etc., etc.

The Palestinian leadership has a track record going back to 1994. Yasser Arafat scoffs at the idea that he is organizing terrorism and periodically promises to stop. The Palestinian leadership is more than happy to promise frequently not to incite violence against Israel or tell its people the state should be destroyed. There is no terrorism, but if there was, they would be ready to stop it. Etc., etc.

Saudi Arabia says it has never provided aid to terrorists (even excluding attacks on Israel) and swears it is not giving them money any more. It affirms it is cooperating in the war against terrorism. And so on, and so on.

IN OTHER words, the more audacious the misrepresentation, the more stubborn the refusal to change or make concessions, the better a regime will do in retaining power. Thus goes the current regional wisdom; and with good reason, because this strategy is very often successful.

What is Israel going to do if the Palestinians refuse to make peace? Keep fighting and be blamed by the world for the conflict?

What is the US going to do if Iran builds a nuclear weapon? Attack it? Even if the invasion of Iraq seems to show one should not call America's bluff, regional regimes don't seem to be rushing toward cooperation and moderation as a result of Saddam's overthrow.

In contrast, Middle Eastern politicians scoff at the idea of there being much value in moderation. To the list that includes king Abdullah of Jordan and president Anwar Sadat of Egypt, both murdered for their pragmatism, one can add Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen). Whatever his shortcomings he deserves credit for being horrified by the incompetence of Arafat's leadership, angry at the corruption of his colleagues and determined to end his people's suffering.

Had Abu Mazen kept his mouth shut, done nothing and lived quietly for a while he would probably easily have succeeded Arafat. Now, however, other Palestinians denounce him as a traitor for seeking peace.

How has working with the US helped him? Even if it forces Israel to make concessions the militants will only claim this proves their violent strategy has been successful.

More than two centuries ago Benjamin Franklin set down a poem on the folly of governments: "Look round the habitable world, how few/Know their own good, or, knowing it, pursue!" Yet the problem in the contemporary Middle East is that leaders do pursue their own good. And they understand that running against pragmatism taking risks, incurring losses, blocking progress, losing wars is a proven winning strategy for fulfilling their selfish interests.

The writer is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal, part of the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya (IDC). His most recent book is The Tragedy of the Middle East.

The Settlements are a Phony Problem

The Settlements are a Phony Problem
By Carl Pearlston -- FrontPageMagazine.com | August 6, 2003

If there is one item of conventional wisdom that unites most of the world’s governments, the UN, various humanitarian, civil rights, and religious organizations, and diverse academics and intellectuals, it is that Israeli settlements in Gaza and the West Bank of the old Palestine Mandate are the only real impediment to peace between the Arabs and Jews. In this view, if only the Jewish settlers -- all 380,000 of them -- would pack up and move back to Israel proper, abandoning their neat suburban villages and planned communities to the Palestinians, peace would reign over the MidEast. This naïve article of faith, endlessly repeated by its partisans, conveniently ignores the hard fact that there were no such settlements in 1948 when nascent Israel fought the massed Arab armies intent on its destruction, nor at the time of the 1956 war, nor when the PLO was formed in 1964 pledged to the elimination of the Jewish state, nor before the 1967 war when the West Bank territories were seized from the attacking Jordanian army and Gaza from the Egyptians. If the elimination of Jewish settlements is the key to peace, then how to explain the absence of peace before there were any such settlements?

The answer is that in the Arab view there have been intrusive Jewish settlements such as Tel Aviv and Haifa since the end of WWI destroyed the Ottoman empire, and the League of Nations adopted an international policy for the establishment of a Jewish homeland in the Palestine Mandate under British governance. This policy encouraged Jewish settlement of the Mandate, and some settlements were established under the British administration. Such actions were fiercely opposed by the Arabs, and in 1921 the first of many Arab pogroms killed forty Jews in the coastal city of Jaffa, followed in 1929 by riots in Jerusalem, Hebron, and Safed in which Arabs killed and injured over 500 Jews and drove out the Hebron survivors. From 1936-1939, hundreds more were killed under the leadership of Yasser Arafat's uncle, Hajj Amin al-Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, who met with Hitler in Germany during WWII to plan for extension of the Final Solution for the Jews of Palestine. The Arabs tried for that Solution when they rejected partition of Palestine into two states in 1948 and made war on Israel. When Jordan captured the West Bank in that war, it prohibited Jews from settlement in that area, as they had earlier been banned from Jordan itself. It was not until 1967, when Israel captured the West Bank, East Jerusalem, Gaza, and the Golan Heights, that Jews were free to settle in the areas intended for them to settle by the Mandate policy.

It is not the settlements in any particular area to which the Arabs object, but the very fact of Jewish presence in any part of what the Arabs identify as Arab land, which is the entirety of the Palestine Mandate, encompassing Israel, Gaza, the West Bank, and Jordan. Thus, rather than having a two-state solution in 1948, the then-secretary of the Arab League stated: "this will be a war of extermination and a momentous massacre which will be spoken of like the Mongolian massacres and the Crusades." This is still the stated policy of Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and Fatah; the PLO claims to have tempered its own goals to a two-state solution, though its rhetoric and incitement belies this assertion.

Having lost five wars and failing to exterminate and drive the Jews into the sea, some of the Arabs now assure us that they will be content with Arabs and Jews living side-by-side in their own states, but not together, at least not in the Arab state. The current fashionable view is that Arabs have the right to live anywhere in the old Palestine Mandate—Gaza, Israel, West Bank, Jordan—but Jews have only the disputed right to live in Israel proper, along with the nearly one million Arab citizens of Israel, who constitute almost 20 percent of the population. These Arabs live under Israeli law, protected by the police and the army, and do not fear each day for their lives at the hands of either the government or Jewish Israelis. But in the proposed Arab state, there is to be an ethnic cleansing in which all Jews will be expelled , and their neat suburban communities turned over to the Arab refugees who have been kept languishing by their Arab masters for these past 55 years in squalid camps. The Arab demand for elimination of any Jewish presence in areas claimed by Arab is a recognition by the Palestinian Authority that it lacks both the means and the will to ensure the safety of any Jews who would choose to live under Palestinian control in a future land agreement. But just as Arabs live peacefully in Israel under Israeli law, so should Jews be able to live in the suburban communities they have established in the West Bank without the need for protection by the Israeli army. As was contemplated by the old League of Nations, Jews should be free to live in any part of the Mandate area; that they are not is a symptom of the problem’s intractable nature and the relatively primitive state of Arab political culture. Logically, this should lead to another enforced population exchange, wherein the Arabs of Israel are relocated to the West Bank as the Jews there are expelled to Israel. If ethnic cleansing is to be practiced, it should be equitably applied.

This would be, of course contrary to the Fourth Geneva Convention, adopted right after WWII to prevent forced population transfers as was done in Eastern Europe before and during the war. That Convention is frequently, but erroneously, cited as proof that the Israeli settlements in Gaza and the West Bank are “illegal,” but the Convention bans only forcible transfers or deportations from or into the occupied territories, not voluntary movement of persons into those areas as is the case with the settlements. The Convention was intended to ban ethnic cleansing, which is of course exactly what the Arabs intend to do in their new state. Further, since Israel captured Gaza and the West Bank areas in a defensive war in 1967 from countries who had illegally occupied the areas since 1948, the Convention does not even apply. It only addresses the situation where the areas in question were occupied from another nation with legitimate sovereignty over those areas, which is not the present case. There is no basis for calling the settlements illegal. But the legal niceties are irrelevant to the conventional wisdom, which plans to eventually force Israel to resettle its Gaza and West Bank population behind the Green Line, permitting the ethnic cleansing which the Convention was intended to prevent.

It is naïve to believe that removing the settlements will bring peace, since in the Arab view, all of Israel is a series of settlements on Arab land. Israel is viewed as a Crusader kingdom, which like the first, may last 200 years, but is eventually fated to fall under Arab domination, if not from armed invasion, then from natural population demographics. The Arabs take the long view of history and are in no hurry.

Still True Today

Arutz-Sheva carried this article last year, but it is worth rereading for its applicability to the current situation with the "Road Map".

The Main Problem in the Middle East
by Jihad Renee Albanee
May 28, 2002

Many political personalities and leaders accuse the Israeli army and the State of Israel for all possible ills: Massacre of the Palestinian population, destruction of Palestinian cities, genocide, war crimes - a very long list.

It is evident that all those claims, some of which may be completely sincere, evince the claimants total ignorance of the main problem in the Middle East. I am going to sum up this problem in one sentence: The will of the non-Arab minorities in the Middle East to survive.

The two principal and largest minorities in the region are the Christians and the Jews. There are two states in which these two minorities still have their full human rights: Lebanon and Israel. In Egypt, the sole Christian who had the possibility to ascend to an important post was Boutros Boutros Ghali. He had been appointed by the former Egyptian President Anwar Sadat as delegate minister for foreign affairs, a post equivalent to that of a French cabinet chief, because Egyptian law forbids Christians from acceding to the posts of full ministers. In Iraq, the only Christian who fills an important post is the Catholic Tarek Aziz, Saddam Husseins long-time friend. In both above mentioned countries, and for that matter in all Arab countries, Christian rights are almost non-existent.

In 1975, Yasser Arafat and his cohorts waged their attack against Lebanon and particularly against the Christians. They hoped that within three weeks at the maximum, the Lebanese Christians would exile themselves to the United States, Europe, Australia and Canada, allowing Arafat to create an Islamic-Palestinian state in Lebanon. The road to Jerusalem passes through Jounieh, the Palestinian leaders were saying at that time. Jounieh is a Christian town situated to the north of Beirut, that is, in the opposite direction from Jerusalem. At present, Lebanon is laboring under the Syrian yoke, a fact to which the countries that defend human rights are totally indifferent.

Since the destruction of Lebanon and its occupation by the Arabs, the latter have decided to attack the second non-Arab country in the Middle East, namely Israel. Let us recall that Israel was created in 1948. The Arab countries rejected the partition of Palestine into two states, Jewish and Arab, and decided instead to throw the Jews into the sea (Nevertheless, a Palestinian state was founded, in Jordan. However, the Jordanian King regarded that state as his personal territory, though 70% of the population was Palestinian). From 1948 to 1967, the Arabs constantly preached the destruction of the State of Israel. During those years, the Jordanian King Hussein had made Jerusalem Judenrein (empty or cleansed of Jews), Jewish cemeteries were vandalized and destroyed, and some 58 synagogues were destroyed or turned into stables for Jordanian horses. It is ironic to note that during those 19 years, when Egypt ruled Gaza and Jordan ruled the West Bank, including eastern Jerusalem, no Arab country yearned to see the creation of a Palestinian state there. All that those Arab countries wanted was the destruction of the State of Israel. However, once Israel had conquered these territories and united Jerusalem, Arab countries started calling them "occupied territories," and, unable to destroy Israel directly, they began to call for the establishment of a Palestinian state on those territories. In addition, Egypt, in its aim to weaken Israel to better destroy it, requested at the Madrid conference the elimination of Israel's nuclear arsenal.

Naive Israeli personages were recruited in order to weaken the State of Israel. Among these, we will cite particularly former Prime Minister Ehud Barak. He believed that by withdrawing from southern Lebanon and by betraying his Lebanese allies, he would be able to achieve peace with the Arab people of the region. What happened, however, was just the opposite. The Israeli retreat from southern Lebanon was perceived by the Arab countries as a sign of Israel's weakness. A few short months following this retreat, Yasser Arafat gave orders to attack Israeli civilians under the cover of a Palestinian revolt - Intifadah. Weapons, financed by Iran, made their way to the PLO via Syria and occupied Lebanon. Iraq paid considerable sums of money to the families of terrorists who exploded themselves in Israel, killing Israelis.

Peace movements have always been activated when Israel was undergoing murderous attacks, in order to incriminate the Israeli population and leadership. This strategy had been used in Western Europe during the Cold War. The political parties, satellites of the Soviet Union, used to demonstrate all over Western Europe or manipulate associations, which would then demand the dismantling of American nuclear arsenals located in Western Europe as well as the departure of American troops from West Germany. Yet, the aim of these two requests had been to facilitate the invasion of Western Germany and adjacent countries by troops from the USSR.

The same method has been used for many years in Israel and against Israel for the purpose of weakening it, with a view to destroying it. Dozens of Internet sites were created to request Israeli leaders to quit southern Lebanon; huge demonstrations took place before and after the signature of the so-called peace accords between Yasser Arafat and Yitzhak Rabin. All this was for one purpose only: The political and military weakening of Israel and the establishment on its very borders of a terror organization called the Palestinian Authority, whose sole objective is the destruction of Israel.

Despite the presence of a Palestinian State called Jordan, Israel has agreed to the creation of a second Palestinian state in Gaza, Judea and Samaria. Yet, the Israelis have not relinquished their claim to a united Jerusalem that must remain the eternal capital of the State of Israel. However, regardless of this affinity for Jerusalem, Ehud Barak proposed to Arafat at the Camp David summit to surrender eastern Jerusalem in three stages. Yasser Arafat refused. Why? Because he does not believe in the co-existence of two neighboring states, one Palestinian and the other Jewish. History is repeating itself. Yasser Arafat had once settled in Lebanon and erected a state within a state before waging his murderous war against the Lebanese, the people who had welcomed him. Today, the same Arafat has decided to destroy the State of Israel. Regretfully, the Israelis have not learned anything from the past and have not understood that one doesn't let the wolf into the sheep pen.

Some imagine that such a Palestinian state, even were it to be established without threat to Israel, could survive on its own. They are wrong. The Palestinians are also subject to internal Islamic-Christian tensions. The Christians of this Palestine will have little choice: Either live without any rights, similar to the Christians in other Arab countries, or quit.

As for those in the West who believe that they'll make a political career by defending the Palestinians who live in Judea and Samaria, I would like to say to them: Before tackling problems that are beyond you, it would be more profitable to interest yourself in problems closer to your country and its honor. For instance, you might ask the French and American states to arrest the criminals who've ordered the murder of French and American citizens (civilian and military) in Lebanon. Here is a tip that might help you: In 1998, the Syrian Minister of Defense Mustapha Tlass announced publicly that it was he who, in 1983, had ordered the Hezbollah and other Moslem organizations to attack the barracks of American and French soldiers in Beirut (there were some 270 American soldiers and 85 French soldiers killed). This same minister, friend of France and the United States, had also announced that he refrained from authorizing an attack against Italian soldiers because he had a crush on Italian actress Gina Lolobrigida. How sad that neither France nor the United States had had a Lolobrigida of their own. She might have saved the lives of soldiers on a mission of peace.
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Jihad Renee Albanee is a senior official in the Guardians of the Cedars - National Lebanese Movement.

The Road Map for Gay Marriage

The Weekly Standard carries Stanley Kurtz's insightful analysis of the issue of gay marriage in Beyond Gay Marriage.

Among the likeliest effects of gay marriage is to take us down a slippery slope to legalized polygamy and "polyamory" (group marriage). Marriage will be transformed into a variety of relationship contracts, linking two, three, or more individuals (however weakly and temporarily) in every conceivable combination of male and female. A scare scenario? Hardly. The bottom of this slope is visible from where we stand. Advocacy of legalized polygamy is growing. A network of grass-roots organizations seeking legal recognition for group marriage already exists. The cause of legalized group marriage is championed by a powerful faction of family law specialists. Influential legal bodies in both the United States and Canada have presented radical programs of marital reform. Some of these quasi-governmental proposals go so far as to suggest the abolition of marriage. The ideas behind this movement have already achieved surprising influence with a prominent American politician.

He also covers heterosexual polygamy.

Why is state-sanctioned polygamy a problem? The deep reason is that it erodes the ethos of monogamous marriage. Despite the divorce revolution, Americans still take it for granted that marriage means monogamy. The ideal of fidelity may be breached in practice, yet adultery is clearly understood as a transgression against marriage. Legal polygamy would jeopardize that understanding, and that is why polygamy has historically been treated in the West as an offense against society itself.

In most non-Western cultures, marriage is not a union of freely choosing individuals, but an alliance of family groups. The emotional relationship between husband and wife is attenuated and subordinated to the economic and political interests of extended kin. But in our world of freely choosing individuals, extended families fall away, and love and companionship are the only surviving principles on which families can be built. From Thomas Aquinas through Richard Posner, almost every serious observer has granted the incompatibility between polygamy and Western companionate marriage.

Where polygamy works, it does so because the husband and his wives are emotionally distant. Even then, jealousy is a constant danger, averted only by strict rules of seniority or parity in the husband's economic support of his wives. Polygamy is more about those resources than about sex.

Yet in many polygamous societies, even though only 10 or 15 percent of men may actually have multiple wives, there is a widely held belief that men need multiple women. The result is that polygamists are often promiscuous--just not with their own wives. Anthropologist Philip Kilbride reports a Nigerian survey in which, among urban male polygamists, 44 percent said their most recent sexual partners were women other than their wives. For monogamous, married Nigerian men in urban areas, that figure rose to 67 percent. Even though polygamous marriage is less about sex than security, societies that permit polygamy tend to reject the idea of marital fidelity--for everyone, polygamists included.

Gay marriage will also have corrosive effects on hetersexual outlook on marriage as well.

IRONICALLY, the form of gay matrimony that may pose the greatest threat to the institution of marriage involves heterosexuals. A Brigham Young University professor, Alan J. Hawkins, suggests an all-too-likely scenario in which two heterosexuals of the same sex might marry as a way of obtaining financial benefits. Consider the plight of an underemployed and uninsured single mother in her early 30s who sees little real prospect of marriage (to a man) in her future. Suppose she has a good friend, also female and heterosexual, who is single and childless but employed with good spousal benefits. Sooner or later, friends like this are going to start contracting same-sex marriages of convenience. The single mom will get medical and governmental benefits, will share her friend's paycheck, and will gain an additional caretaker for the kids besides. Her friend will gain companionship and a family life. The marriage would obviously be sexually open. And if lightning struck and the right man came along for one of the women, they could always divorce and marry heterosexually.

In a narrow sense, the women and children in this arrangement would be better off. Yet the larger effects of such unions on the institution of marriage would be devastating. At a stroke, marriage would be severed not only from the complementarity of the sexes but also from its connection to romance and sexual exclusivity--and even from the hope of permanence. In Hawkins's words, the proliferation of such arrangements "would turn marriage into the moral equivalent of a Social Security benefit." The effect would be to further diminish the sense that a woman ought to be married to the father of her children. In the aggregate, what we now call out-of-wedlock births would increase. And the connection between marriage and sexual fidelity would be nonexistent.

Hawkins thinks gay marriages of convenience would be contracted in significant numbers--certainly enough to draw the attention of a media eager to tout such unions as the hip, postmodern marriages of the moment. Hawkins also believes that these unions of convenience could begin to undermine marriage's institutional foundations fairly quickly.

In the end, the movement for gay marriage, polygamy, polyamory, and their ilk will be a foot in the door to removing marriage from state-sponsorship to just being a contractual partnership between any number of individuals (and non-humans as well?). It will be to the detriment of both the adults and children involved as well as society in general.

Second North Korean War

James Woolsey and Thomas McInerney write in the WSJ about the best non-violent means to resolving the North Korean nuclear crisis.

The only chance for a peaceful resolution of this crisis before North Korea moves clearly into the ranks of nuclear powers is for China to move decisively. Indeed we see no alternative but for China to use its substantial economic leverage, derived from North Korea's dependence on it for fuel and food, to press, hard and immediately, for a change in regime. Kim Jong Il's regime has shown that agreements signed with it, by anyone, mean nothing. [Emphasis mine]

They propose that the alternative is a military campaign against North Korea that they claim the US and South Korea could win.

U.S. and South Korean forces have spent nearly half a century preparing to fight and win such a war. We should not be intimidated by North Korea's much-discussed artillery. Around half of North Korea's 11,000-plus artillery pieces, some of them in caves, are in position to fire on Seoul. But all are vulnerable to stealth and precision weapons--e.g., caves can be sealed by accurate munitions.

Massive air power is the key to being able both to destroy Yongbyon and to protect South Korea from attack by missile or artillery. There is a significant number of hardened air bases available in South Korea and the South Koreans have an excellent air force of approximately 550 modern tactical aircraft. The U.S. should begin planning immediately to deploy the Patriot tactical ballistic missile defense system plus Aegis ships to South Korea and Japan, and also to reinforce our tactical air forces by moving in several air wings and aircraft carrier battle groups, together with the all-important surveillance aircraft and drones.

The goal of the planning should be to be prepared on short notice both to destroy the nuclear capabilities at Yongbyon and other key North Korean facilities and to protect South Korea against attack by destroying North Korean artillery and missile sites. Our stealth aircraft, equipped with precision bombs, and cruise missiles will be crucial--these weapons can be tailored to incinerate the WMD and minimize radiation leakage.

The key point is that the base infrastructure available in the region and the accessibility of North Korea from the sea should make it possible to generate around 4,000 sorties a day compared to the 800 a day that were so effective in Iraq. When one contemplates that the vast majority of these sorties would use precision munitions, and that surveillance aircraft would permit immediate targeting of artillery pieces and ballistic missile launch sites, we believe the use of air power in such a war would be swifter and more devastating than it was in Iraq. North Korea's geriatric air defenses--both fighter aircraft and missiles--would not last long. As the Iraqis understood when facing our air power, if you fly, you die.

Marine forces deployed off both coasts of North Korea could put both Pyongyang and Wonson at risk of rapid seizure, particularly given the fact that most of North Korea's armed forces are situated along the DMZ. With over 20 of the Army's 33 combat brigades now committed it would be necessary to call up additional Reserve and National Guard units. However, the U.S. forces that would have the greatest immediate effect are Expeditionary Air Forces and Carrier Battle Groups, most of which have now been removed from the Iraqi theater.

The South Korean Army is well equipped to handle a counteroffensive into North Korea with help from perhaps two additional U.S. Army divisions, together with the above-mentioned Marine Expeditionary Force and dominant air power. We judge that the U.S. and South Korea could defeat North Korea decisively in 30 to 60 days with such a strategy. Importantly, there is "no doubt on the outcome" as the chairman of the JCS, Gen. Meyers, said at his reconfirmation hearing on July 26 to the Senate.

Anti-Semitism in Israel???

INN reports on non-Arab anti-Semitism in Israel.

There has been an alarming rise in anti-Semitic acts by full fledged, non-Arab Israeli citizens in recent years. From swastikas painted on synagogues in B’nai Brak to vandalized graves in Beit Shemesh, to countless anecdotal stories of threats and harassment all around the country, traditional anti-Semitism seems to be rearing its head – this time from a different source – non-Jewish Russian immigrants.

One man involved has proposed changed the Law of Return to deal with the situation.

He [Zalman Gilichinsky, director of the Information Center for Victims of Anti-Semitism in Israel] says he favors an immediate change to the Law of Return to prevent immigrants who are not Jewish from entering the country. “This law was created to increase the Jewish population in Israel, but today it has the opposite effect and it is increasing the numbers of non-Jews,” Gilichinsky says.

I'm sure that the Reform and Conservative Movements will cry foul over any attempt to change the law of return.

The Significance of Death

NYT article carries this great quote.

Hilary had just completed a college semester in Paris where she sampled nihilism served up with espresso at doily-size tables, and was moved to generalize about the difference between the French national mood she had experienced and the Israeli one. In France nothing matters because we will all die anyway, she said. In Israel everything matters for the same reason.