Europeans are worse than cockroaches

Mark Steyn levels the guns and fires with all guns blazing!

There is a Cold War between the US and the EU, says Mark Steyn, and it will
end with the collapse of Old Europe
by Mark Steyn

Here’s a round-up of recent items from the world’s press you may have
missed: Item 1: In the last two weeks, two Toronto-bound El Al flights had to be
diverted to other airports after credible terrorist threats were made about using
surface-to-air missiles against them. The Canadian transport minister, David
Collenette, responded by suggesting that the Israeli airline’s service to
Pearson International Airport might be ended.

Item 2: The Baghdad hotel in which Paul Wolfowitz was staying was blown up.
Several people were killed, though the US deputy defence secretary emerged
unscathed. Much of the death and destruction was caused by French 68mm missiles
‘in pristine condition’, according to one US officer who inspected the rocket
tubes and assembly. In other words, they’re not rusty leftovers Saddam had lying
around from the 1980s. The Baathist dictatorship had acquired these missiles
from the French rather more recently.

Item 3: According to Le Nouvel Observateur, ‘D’après un questionnaire de la
Commission Européenne, 59% des Européens pensent qu’Israël est le pays le plus
menaçant pour la paix dans le monde.’

Item 4: In the Guardian, Tariq Ali ended this week’s column on the mounting
American (and NGO) death toll in Iraq thus: ‘Iraqis have one thing of which
they can be proud and of which British and US citizens should be envious: an
opposition’.

On 11 September 2001, I wrote that one of the casualties of the day’s events
would be the Western alliance: ‘The US taxpayer’s willingness to pay for the
defence of Canada and Europe has contributed to the decay of America’s
so-called “allies”, freeing them to disband their armed forces, flirt with dictators
and gangster states, and essentially convert themselves to semi-non-aligned.’
‘The West’ was an obsolete concept, because, as I put it later that month,
for everyone but America ‘the free world is mostly a free ride’. [Emphasis mine!]

Two years on, most governments, at least officially, and most commentators,
at least in the mainstream press, still don’t believe the relationship between
America and its ‘allies’ is in a terminal state. But the above quartet of
stories — and you can find equivalent items any week — illustrates why it can’t
be put back together.

One: Mr Collenette’s response to terrorists is to take it out on their
targets. Terrorists are threatening to use SAMs against El Al? No problem, we’ll get
rid of El Al. That’s a great message to send. How soon before similar threats
are phoned in to similarly jelly-spined jurisdictions in Europe? Pretty soon
El Al won’t be flying anywhere. But no matter: Air Canada and Air France and
Lufthansa will still be flying to Tel Aviv — at least until a couple of
anonymous phone calls are made hinting at fresh targets.

The threats against El Al came via phone calls from the Toronto area from
terrorists claiming to have heat-seeking missiles. Police subsequently found a
cache of weapons including a German-made shoulder rocket launcher that was
smuggled into Canada through the ingenious method of dropping it in the mail and
letting the Post Office deliver it. So there are two approaches to this problem:
you can crack down on Toronto-based terrorist cells and try to get government
agencies not to deliver their rocket launchers; or you can ban El Al. Mr
Collenette inclines to the latter. This is a man, by the way, who marked the first
anniversary of 11 September by publicly regretting the fall of the Soviet
Union because now there is nobody to check America’s ‘bullying’.

Lesson: In the war on terror, the United States believes in pre-emption;
Canada, like many other ‘allies’, believes in pre-emptive surrender. These two
strategies are incompatible.

Two: Just suppose that one of those French rockets had killed Paul Wolfowitz.
One of the greatest fictions of the interminable debate on Euro-American
differences over Iraq is that it’s an argument about the means, not the end. If
only Bush had been a little less Texan, less arrogant, less bullying, if only
he’d been less impatient and willing to put in the hours, he could have brought
the French and Germans round. After all, everyone agrees Saddam Hussein is a
very bad man.

Not the French and Germans. There’s too much evidence suggesting the main
reason they were unable to join the Bush side in this war is that they’d already
signed on to the other team and they’d decided, in the sort of ghastly
vernacular the cretinous Yanks would use, to dance with them what brung you. They’re
being admirably consistent about this: at the recent Madrid conference France
and Germany both refused to pony up one single euro to Iraqi reconstruction.
It was never about the means, only the end.

Lesson: America and ‘Old Europe’ have different objectives in Iraq, and
those objectives are incompatible.

Three: 59 per cent of Europeans think Israel is the biggest threat to world
peace. Only 59 per cent? What’s wrong with the rest of you? But, hey, don’t
worry. In Britain, it’s 60 per cent; Germany, 65 per cent; Austria, 69 per cent;
the Netherlands, 74 per cent. The good news is that Israel won’t be a threat
to world peace much longer, at least not if Iran’s nuclear programme carries
on running rings around the International Atomic Energy Agency and the
ayatollahs fulfil their pledge to solve the problem of the Zionist Entity once and for
all.

Let us leave for another day the question of whether Israel is actually a
bigger global menace than North Korea, which has hung a big shingle on the street
saying ‘Nukes? We Got ’Em! And You Won’t Believe Our Prices!’ The fact is
that 11 September bound America to Israel in ways that oblige Washington to
regard European distaste for Jews as more than a mere social faux pas. Given the
rate of Islamic immigration to Europe, those anti-Israeli numbers are heading
in only one direction. At present demographic rates, by 2020 the majority of
children in Holland — i.e., the population under 18 — will be Muslim. What do
you figure that 74 per cent will be up to by then? Eighty-five per cent?
Ninety-six per cent? If Americans think it’s difficult getting the Continentals on
side now, wait another decade. In that sense, the Israelis are the canaries in
the coalmine.

Lesson: America’s and Europe’s world views have diverged significantly, and
those world views are now incompatible.

Four: Tariq Ali may not be the most representative political commentator, but
it’s still quite something to find the house journal of the United Kingdom’s
leftie establishment printing the assertion that Americans and Britons can
only envy the vigour of the Iraqi ‘opposition’. So that’s what Iain Duncan
Smith was doing wrong! He should have been loading up ambulances with rockets and
firing them into hospitals. That’s the way to draw attention to the problems
of the NHS.

The other day I accidentally referred to Tariq Ali as Tariq Aziz and within
minutes had a little flurry of emails from correspondents sneering that
evidently all these guys sound alike to me. Well, I wouldn’t say that. But Tariq Ali
and Tariq Aziz are sounding very much alike. In fact, T. Ali sounds more
Baathist than T. Aziz these days. When I was in the Sunni Triangle, I met many
Iraqis who were grateful to the Americans; some who wanted a more visible US
presence on the ground, a few who resented the infidel occupier — but not one who
was as gung-ho for the Saddamite holdouts and Syrian and Iranian opportunists
as Tariq Ali. For him, and for Mr Collenette, and for Goran Persson and Nelson
Mandela and many many others, even on 11 September, the issue was never
terrorism; the issue was always America.

Lesson: Washington and Europe do not agree on the problem, so they’re hardly
likely to agree on the solution.

Tariq and co. are right to this extent: in the scheme of things, it’s not
about Islamic terrorism. The Islamist goal is a planet on which their enemies are
either dead or Muslim converts. That’s not going to happen. But Islamism is
sufficiently disruptive to rupture permanently the old ‘Western alliance’. A
lot of things have been said on both sides, but what’s impressive about the
Europeans is the palpable desire for America to fail, and Bush to fall.

I can’t see that happening. On election day next November, the Democrats have
no chance of taking back the House of Representatives and they’re all but
certain to lose seats in the Senate. Bush is likely to be re-elected: with that
7.2 per cent growth in GDP, it’s hard even for the BBC to keep pretending
America’s in the middle of some sort of recession; and whatever happens in Iraq
it’s difficult to see the Democrats, running on a foreign policy of Cut & Run,
being the beneficiaries. But the trouble with a war on terror is that the
victories go unreported — the plotters who get foiled, the bombers who don’t make
it through. All you hear about are the defeats. Let’s say there’s a terrorist
attack in the US in the next 12 months and it kills several hundred people.
On the one hand, you could argue that this shows the soundness of Bush’s
judgment in making terrorism the priority of his administration. On the other, you
could argue that this proves he never learnt the lessons of the failures of 11
September. Knowing the American media, I’d bet on the latter line being the
one they settle on.

But other than that, the arguments over the next few years are going to be
between conservatives — between those who think it is worth pushing on with an
ambitious programme to bring the Middle East within the non-deranged world, and
those who figure that’s doomed to fail and we should settle for something
less. This project is in the national interest of the United States but, in the
end, the fate of the world’s hyperpower does not hinge on it.

Now let’s turn back to Europe. The Telegraph’s Adam Nicolson got irritated
the other day because Denis Boyles of America’s National Review had dismissed
the Europeans as ‘cockroaches’. Boyles is wrong. The Europeans are not
cockroaches. The cockroach is the one creature you can rely on to come crawling out
of the rubble of the nuclear holocaust. Whereas the one thing that can be said
with absolute confidence is that the Europeans will not emerge from under
their own rubble.

Europe is dying. As I’ve pointed out here before, it can’t square rising
welfare costs, a collapsed birthrate and a manpower dependent on the world’s
least skilled, least assimilable immigrants. In 20 years’ time, as those Dutch
Muslim teenagers are entering the voting booths, European countries, unlike parts
of Nigeria, will not be living under Sharia, but they will be reaching their
accommodations with their radicalised Islamic compatriots, who like many
intolerant types are expert at exploiting the ‘tolerance’ of pluralist societies.

How happy what’s left of the ethnic Dutch or French or Danes will be about
this remains to be seen. But the idea of a childless Europe rivalling America
militarily or economically is laughable. Sometime this century there will be 500
million Americans, and what’s left in Europe will either be very old or very
Muslim. That’s the Europe that Britain will be binding its fate to. Japan
faces the same problem: in 2006, its population will begin an absolute decline, a
death spiral it will be unlikely ever to climb out of. Will Japan be an
economic powerhouse if it’s populated by Koreans and Filipinos? Possibly. Will
Germany if it’s populated by Algerians? That’s a trickier proposition.

Last Sunday, recalling the US–Soviet summits that helped ‘ease the tensions
of the Cold War’, the New York Times’s Thomas Friedman proposed we hold
regular US-Franco-German summits. Implicit in that analysis is the assumption that
France and perhaps other Continental countries now exist in a quasi-Cold War
with America. If that’s so, the trick is to manage the relationship until the
Europeans, like the Soviets, collapse. Europe is dying, and it’s only a
question of whether it goes peacefully or through convulsions of violence. On that
point, I bet on form.

The Crux of the Issue

Avi Shafran on abortion:

...the crux of the abortion issue is not "a woman's right to choose" at all, but rather to what extent to value the life of a fetus.

Quote of the Day

QOTD: Jonah Goldberg

America is the only nation out there willing to sacrifice blood and treasure for the sake of world peace. We are the engine for the global economy, we are the chief guarantor of global stability and security, and we are the model for countless nations in countless realms - from law to politics to education. More importantly, America understands - much like the British did in the 19th century - that such delicate machinery needs to be maintained as well as protected from saboteurs.

Israel -- Enemy #1 (According to Europe)

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

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

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

Zev Chafets on JWR

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

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

Noah's Ark Today

From JPost

Noah's ark By Emma Kimor

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

...

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

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

...

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

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

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

...

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

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

...

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

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

...

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

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

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

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

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

Only the Naive or the Malicious Would Urge a Binational Israel

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

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

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

The Jewish Future in Britain?

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

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

And the result in her mind?

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

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

NOW.

Very Scary

Very scary assessment of nuclear proliferation.

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

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

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

-- Cal Thomas

Palestinian terror, American blood

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

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

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

What does the PA really think of this?

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

Yikes

eWeek Quote of the Week 10/6/2003

Ian Murdock, chairman and chief technology officer, Progeny

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

Temple Mount is more important than peace

Temple Mount is more important than peace by Natan Sharansky

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why There is No Israeli-Palestinian Peace

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cowardice costs

David Warren in JWR on the Israeli bombing in Syria.

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

...

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

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

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

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

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

...

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

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

American Attitudes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

On the Palestinian Death Cult

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

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

...

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

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

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

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

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

They Do Not Want Peace, Plain As Day

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

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

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

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

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

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

See what happens when you put liberals in charge?

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

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

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

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

Green Day

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here's another.

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

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

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

Sifting out the hidden agenda...

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

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

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

Amen.

Too Funny

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

Seeing The Facts Converts a Critic

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

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

What changed my mind?

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

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

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

Israeli Judenrein

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hezbollah's Strategy

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

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

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

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

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

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

Biased Non-Sequitirs

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

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

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

The Giants won the game 6-4.

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

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

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

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

Arafat won a Nobel Peace Prize in 1994.

How to Pretend to Want Peace

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

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

...

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

...

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

The Odds and a Story

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

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

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

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

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

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

Try Arafat Like Eichmann, Then Hang Him

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

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

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

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

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

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

How the Sierra Club Will Preserve "Open Spaces"

Betsy Hart in A vast and mostly empty land:

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

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

A Cold Peace And ...

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

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

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

Thanks to BOTW.

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

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

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

Your Life Will Be Recorded in a Matchbox

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

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

...

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

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

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

...

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

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

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

Interesting Ping-Pong Game from Japan

Ping-Pong

The Airbrush is Mightier Than the Sword

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

(Thanks to Gut Rumbles.)

Setting the Record Straight in Chile

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And the price for not acting?

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

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

The day Jimmy Carter was reduced to silence

From JPost

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



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A History of Terrorism Against US Citizens

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

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

...

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

...

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

...

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

No One Supports Oslo

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

Kill Arafat Now!

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

Enough

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

...

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

...

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

...

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

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

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

One can only hope...via Arutz Sheva.

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

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

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

Listing The Sins of Oslo

Arutz Sheva

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Quote of the Day

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

10 YEARS AFTER OSLO

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

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

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

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

PA NGOs Refuse to Sign Anti Terror Document

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why Oslo's Hopes Turned to Dust

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Resolve not to repeat the same mistake.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Plain as Day in Black and White

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Add Another to the Gift List!

BOTW points out the coolest new toy on the block.

Bring 'Em On---The Next Generation

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

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

The Cultural Divide Between America and Europe

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

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

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

Anti-Semitism in Britain

FrontPage magazine.com reports:

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

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

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

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