Who won, who lost in Lebanon...

Ralph Peters on who really won the war

HEZBOLLAH 3, ISRAEL 0
By RALPH PETERS

August 17, 2006 -- ISRAEL'S rep for toughness in tatters. Hezbollah triumphant. Iran cockier than ever. Syria untouched. Lebanon's government crippled. An orgy of anti-Semitism in the global media. Anti-Americanism exploding among Iraqi Shi'as inspired by Hezbollah.

Thanks, Prime Minister Olmert. Great job, guy.

The debacle in Lebanon wasn't even a war. It was only round one of a war. And Israel's back in its corner, dazed and punch-drunk.

Israel got in a gut jab, but Hezbollah landed three ferocious haymakers:

* Despite the physical damage the Israeli Defense Forces inflicted, Hezbollah's terror-troops were still standing (and firing rockets) when the bell rang.

* At the strategic level, Hezbollah's masterful manipulation of the seduce-me-please media convinced the region's Shi'a and Sunni spectators alike that Hassan Nasrallah is the new Great Arab Hope. He's got a powerful Persian cheering section, too.

* While Israel couldn't plan or execute a winning campaign, it also failed to think beyond the inevitable cease-fire. But Hezbollah did. The terrorists had mapped out precisely what they had to do the moment the shooting stopped: Hand out Iranian money, promise they'll rebuild what Israel destroyed - and simply refuse to honor the terms of the U.N. resolution.

Israel couldn't wait to throw in the towel and start pulling out troops. Then Hezbollah's fighters emerged from the rubble of towns Israeli leaders lacked the courage to conquer - and the number of terror-soldiers who survived shocked the Israelis.

Politicians and generals everywhere, repeat after me: "Air power alone can't win wars; you can't defeat terror on the cheap with technology; and (in the timeless words of Nathan Bedford Forrest) War means fighting, and fighting means killing."

The U.N. resolution called for Hezbollah to disarm - a fantasy only a diplomat could believe. As soon as the refugees began flowing southward and packing the battlefield, Nasrallah told the international community to take a hike. He knows that U.N. peacekeepers won't try to disarm his forces - if they ever show up - and the Lebanese military not only won't try, but couldn't do it.

The world's response? The French (who talked so boldly) took a cold swig of Vichy water: Now they say they won't send in their peacekeepers until Hezbollah is completely disarmed - which isn't going to happen. And Lebanese leaders stated openly that not only wouldn't the Lebanese army attempt to take away the terrorists' weapons, it wouldn't even confiscate caches it stumbled on.

Sucker-punched (well, don't fight with your eyes closed), Israel's complaining to the ref. While staring around in bewilderment.

Want more good news? After finally calling our enemies by the accurate name of "Islamo-fascists," President Bush backtracked so fast the White House lawn was smoking. Then he declared that Israel had won.

That's about as credible as insisting the Titanic docked safe and sound.

And that ain't all, folks. If you're an Israel supporter - as I proudly admit to being - get ready for some tough love: Not only did Israel's abysmally incompetent government start a war impulsively and prosecute it half-heartedly, the country's military leadership failed, too. Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Dan Halutz, who was going to destroy Hezbollah from the skies, reportedly put his main effort on the eve of war into selling off his stock holdings before his bombs could weigh down the market. Now that's insider trading!

But that was just one jerk-general dishonoring his uniform. The serious news is that the IDF's reserve forces were a shambles when they mobilized. Information from an inside source reveals that, when the reserves' warehouses and depots were opened, key stocks were missing - stolen.

What was gone? Fuel, weapons, ammunition, food, spare parts - all that a modern military needs to go to war. And I doubt it ended up in Iceland.

The IDF has great combat leaders and brave soldiers. But Hezbollah's boys proved tougher - and we can't pretty it up. The terrorists were willing - even eager - to die for their cause. Israeli leaders dreaded friendly casualties. And IDF troops - except in elite units - lacked the will to close with the enemy and defeat him at close quarters.

Israel tried to fight humanely. Hezbollah was out to win at any cost. The result was inevitable.

On the ground in southern Lebanon, the IDF was able to muster a ten-to-one advantage around contested villages. But its leaders lacked the guts to do what needed to be done. And Hezbollah's frontline fighters survived.

You can't win if you won't fight.

The IDF needs pervasive reform. Still structured to defeat the conventional militaries of Syria and Egypt, it faced an enemy tailored specifically to take on the IDF. Historical reputation isn't enough - the IDF must rebuild itself to take on post-modern threats. As one senior American general put it, "The IDF's been living on fumes since 1967."

Hezbollah cleared the air.

All this is heartbreaking. I wish it were otherwise. I wish I could back up our president's surreal claim that Israel won. I wish Israel had won. I wish it had the leadership the Israeli people deserve.

And that's what's tragic: Israel's politicians turned out to be even more profoundly out of touch with their people than the pols in Washington. Israelis were willing to fight. They wanted to win. The rank and file of the IDF would have done what needed to be done. And their leaders failed them.

There will be consequences. Iran's convinced it's on a winning course. Syria got away with murder (literally). And Hezbollah will come back more determined than ever.

Oh, I almost forgot those two IDF soldiers whose kidnapping triggered all this. But I can be forgiven, since Israel's leaders forgot about them long before I did: The U.N. resolution Olmert welcomed makes no binding and immediate demand for their return.

And the world is going to let Iran build nuclear weapons.

Get ready for Round Two.

Copyright 2006 NYP Holdings, Inc. All rights reserved.

QOTD:Abba Eban

QOTD:Abba Eban, Israel's first Ambassador to the United Nations

Arabs could kill Israeli citizens across the border, blockade our port of Eilat, close the Suez Canal to our shipping, send armed groups into our territory for murder and havoc, and decline to carry out stipulated clauses of the armistice agreement in the complete certainty that the Security Council would not adopt even the mildest resolution of criticism....On the other hand, there was no inhibition to resolutions criticizing Israel for retaliating against attacks. Thus the doctrine of the United Nations came to imply that Arab governments could conduct warfare and maintain belligerency against Israel while Israel could offer no response.

Reality Hits Jewish Liberal Upside the Head

Thane Rosenbaum

This is a soul-searching moment for the Jewish left. Actually, for many Jewish liberals, navigating the gloomy politics of the Middle East is like walking with two left feet.

I would know. For six years I was the literary editor of Tikkun magazine, a leading voice for progressive Jewish politics that never avoided subjecting Israel to moral scrutiny. I also teach human rights at a Jesuit university, imparting the lessons of reciprocal grievances and the moral necessity to regard all people with dignity and mutual respect. And I am deeply sensitive to Palestinian pain, and mortified when innocent civilians are used as human shields and then cynically martyred as casualties of war.

Yet, since 9/11 and the second intifada, where suicide bombings and beheadings have become the calling cards of Arab diplomacy, and with Hamas and Hezbollah emerging as elected entities that, paradoxically, reject the first principles of liberal democracy, I feel a great deal of moral anguish. Perhaps I have been naive all along.

And I am not alone. Many Jews are in my position -- the children and grandchildren of labor leaders, socialists, pacifists, humanitarians, antiwar protestors -- instinctively leaning left, rejecting war, unwilling to demonize, and insisting that violence only breeds more violence. Most of all we share the profound belief that killing, humiliation and the infliction of unnecessary pain are not Jewish attributes.

However, the world as we know it today -- post-Holocaust, post-9/11, post-sanity -- is not cooperating. Given the realities of the new Middle East, perhaps it is time for a reality check. For this reason, many Jewish liberals are surrendering to the mindset that there are no solutions other than to allow Israel to defend itself -- with whatever means necessary. Unfortunately, the inevitability of Israel coincides with the inevitability of anti-Semitism.

This is what more politically conservative Jews and hardcore Zionists maintained from the outset. And it was this nightmare that the Jewish left always refused to imagine. So we lay awake at night, afraid to sleep. Surely the Arabs were tired, too. Surely they would want to improve their societies and educate their children rather than strap bombs on to them.

If the Palestinians didn't want that for themselves, if building a nation was not their priority, then peace in exchange for territories was nothing but a pipe dream. It was all wish-fulfillment, morally and practically necessary, yet ultimately motivated by a weary Israeli society -- the harsh reality of Arab animus, the spiritual toll that the occupation had taken on a Jewish state battered by negative world opinion.

Despite the deep cynicism, however, Israel knew that it must try. It would have to set aside nearly 60 years of hard-won experience, starting from the very first days of its independence, and believe that the Arab world had softened, would become more welcoming neighbors, and would stop chanting: "Not in our backyard -- the Middle East is for Arabs only."

It is true that Israel has entered into peace agreements with Egypt and Jordan that have brought some measure of historic stability to the region. But with Israel having withdrawn from Lebanon and Gaza, and with Israeli public opinion virtually united in favor of near-total withdrawal from the West Bank, why are rockets being launched at Israel now, why are their soldiers being kidnapped if the aspirations of the Palestinian people, and the intentions of Hamas and Hezbollah, stand for something other than the total destruction of Israel? And if Palestinians and the Lebanese are electing terrorists and giving them the portfolio of statesmen, then what message is being sent to moderate voices, what incentives are there to negotiate, and how can any of this sobering news be recast in a more favorable light?

The Jewish left is now in shambles. Peace Now advocates have lost their momentum, and, in some sense, their moral clarity. Opinion polls in Israel are showing near unanimous support for stronger incursions into Lebanon. And until kidnapped soldiers are returned and acts of terror curtailed, any further conversations about the future of the West Bank have been set aside.

Not unlike the deep divisions between the values of red- and blue-state America, world Jewry is being forced to reconsider all of its underlying assumptions about peace in the Middle East. The recent disastrous events in Lebanon and Gaza have inadvertently created a newly united Jewish consciousness -- bringing right and left together into one deeply cynical red state.

Mr. Rosenbaum, a novelist and professor at Fordham Law School, is author, most recently, of "The Myth of Moral Justice" (HarperCollins, 2004).

Are Democrats really patriotic?

Ann Coulter reports on a recent study of Republican and Democratic attitudes towards the United States of America.

To give you a snapshot of today's Democratic Party, in 2004, pollster Scott Rasmussen asked likely voters if they believed America was generally a fair and decent country and whether they believed the world would be a better place if more countries were like America.

Republicans agreed that America is generally fair and decent, 83 percent to 7 percent. Eighty-one percent agreed that the world would be a better place if more countries were like the United States.

By contrast, Democrats were nearly split, with only 46 percent agreeing that America is generally a fair and decent country, and with 37 percent saying America is not a generally fair and decent country. Only 48 percent of Democrats said they thought that the world would be a better place if more countries were like the United States.

Wear that kippa

Wear that kippa

"The first time I interviewed Hamas chief Mahmoud al-Zahar," says [WND's Aaron] Klein, "I did not bring my yarmulke. I wanted to get out alive. But during the course of our conversation I ended up talking about my Orthodox Judaism. Al-Zahar asked why I didn't wear a yarmulke to meet him. I told him I'd been afraid to. He said he was insulted. He claimed he was a religious Muslim who only had a problem with the state of Israel and not with Judaism. He lectured me about not forsaking my religion or denying my Jewish identity. He said the next time we meet I had better be wearing my yarmulke. Since then I have interviewed him a number of times. Whenever we speak by phone or when he joins me on the radio, he first jokingly inquires as to whether I am wearing my yarmulke."

QOTD: Jack Kelly

QOTD:Jack Kelly

Advocates of a "diplomatic solution" whatever the circumstances tend to believe (a) that nothing is worse than war; (b) that everybody agrees with (a), and (c) that there is no problem that can't be solved if people talk about it long enough.

But most people who aren't liberals think submission to tyranny is worse than war, and tyrants tend not to bargain in good faith for part of what they want if they think they can get it all by force.

When acts of aggression are met with gestures of appeasement, the aggressors (not unreasonably) assume the appeasers are afraid of them.

And since it was bad behavior that brought forth the gestures of appeasement, the aggressors are encouraged to behave worse, not better. Diplomacy based on hubris and cowardice inevitably leads to failure.

But that's a lesson some people never learn.

Are we too nice?

John Pohoretz asks the questions that I have been asking for a long time. The West has the military might to beat the Islamic terrorists, but does it have the philosophical makeup to decide to do just that? And pay whatever cost is necessary?

Could Israel - even hardy, strong, universally conscripted Israel - possibly stomach the bloodshed that would accompany the total destruction of Hezbollah?

If Lebanon's 300-plus civilian casualties are already rocking the world, what if it would take 10,000 civilian casualties to finish off Hezbollah? Could Israel inflict that kind of damage on Lebanon - not because of world opinion, but because of its own modern sensibilities and its understanding of the value of every human life?

QOTD: Hussein Massawi

Hussein Massawi, the Hezbollah leader behind the slaughter of U.S. and French forces 20 years ago. (via Mark Steyn)

We are not fighting so that you will offer us something. We are fighting to eliminate you.

This is why you cannot buy off Hezbollah, Iran, or Hamas.

Mark Steyn

The forces at play in the Middle East are beyond the Geopolitical Friars' Club. The median age in Gaza is 15.8 years old. How likely is it that any of those bespoke Palestinian 'moderates' who've been permanent fixtures on CNN and BBC Middle East discussion panels for 30 years have any meaningful sway over a population of unemployed uneducated teenage boys raised by a death cult?

QOTD: Ephraim Sneh

Deputy Minister Defense Ephraim Sneh at the time of the 1992 Lebanon pullout:

We are leaving because of problems with the ability of the Israeli public to stand firm. That is the whole truth. There is no point in pretending.

Being British for 350 Years

Ashley Perry on British anti-semitism:

I have my own personal opinions as to why British mistrust and suspicion of the Jews is so different and perhaps at a higher social level than most other forms of world-wide anti-Semitism. The British consider themselves the height of civilization, the founder of democracy and the force that brought culture to much of the world. However, there is one people that has lived with the British for many years which reminds them that their "civilization" is relatively new.

A good example of this was a retort by Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli to an anti-Semitic remark aimed at him in the House of Commons, "When the right honorable gentlemen's ancestors were savages on an unknown Island, mine were priests in the Temple of Solomon," Disraeli responded.

Interesting voting pattern

Lowell Ponte

Since 1984 even the Communist Party USA has officially directed its members to vote for the Democratic candidate -- although neither the CPUSA nor the establishment media call public attention to this.

QOTD: Caroline B. Glick

QOTD:Caroline B. Glick

It is not a lack of reform at the UN that stymies the US. It is the UN itself. An overwhelming majority of UN member states believe that their national interest is served by weakening and humiliating the US. Given this, the US has no chance of ever getting its reforms passed or its policy initiatives supported. By continuing to attempt to work within the UN rather than effectively abandoning it and establishing new organizations capable of contending with current threats, the US has entrapped itself, empowered its rivals and diminished its chances of leading effective multilateral initiatives against the forces of global jihad.

Fantasies About Jihad

Robert Spencer discusses how Europe can willfully blind itself from what is happening in its midst. When the absolute truth is too horrifying to contemplate, it is better not to ask to many questions which will force these realities into the open.

[Deputy Chief of Mission in Holland Chat] Blakeman introduced me to an official of the Dutch Ministry of Integration, who spends her days in dialogue with Dutch imams and other Muslim leaders. We began a wide-ranging discussion about the nature of the jihad threat and the proper response to it. In the course of this I asked her how many Muslim leaders she encountered who were ready to lay aside attachment to the Sharia, accept the Dutch governmental and societal structure and the parameters of Dutch pluralism, and be willing to live in Dutch society as equals to, not superiors of, non-Muslims indefinitely. She told me that there were only very few, but insisted that we had to work with those few, and indeed had to place our faith and hope in them, for otherwise the future was impossibly bleak. I asked her if she had read the Quran. She told me no, she hadn't, and wouldn't, because she didn't want to lose all hope -- and because whatever was in it, she still had to work to find some accord with the Muslim leaders, no matter what.

I urged her to ask the imams with whom she spoke questions that made their loyalties clear, insofar as they would answer them honestly. I urged her to ask them whether they would like to see Sharia implemented in the Netherlands at any time in the future, and whether they were working toward that end in any way, peaceful as well as violent. I asked her to ask them whether they would be content to live as equals with non-Muslims indefinitely in a Dutch pluralistic society, or whether they would ultimately hope to institute Islamic supremacy and the subjugation of non-Muslims.

She couldn’t ask them those questions, she told me. Such questions would immediately put their relationship on a confrontational plane, when cooperation was what they wanted, not confrontation. But, I sputtered, you’re not getting cooperation as it is. The confrontation is already upon us. What is to be gained by pretending that it isn’t happening?

The Rise of Hamas and Decline of Israeli Determination

The Jewish Press has an excellent commentary by Steven Plaut on Israeli leaders needing backbone transplants. He wonderfully relates the PA Nazi demand for a corridor linking Gaza to the West Bank to Hitler's similar demand from Poland prior to WWII.
The Rise of Hamas and Decline of Israeli Determination
By Steven Plaut

In the biblical saga of the exodus from Egypt, there is a great military mystery. We are told that when the Israelites left Goshen in Egypt, they had 600,000 men of fighting age in their ranks, and – at least according to one reading of the text – they were well armed (hamushim). That being the case, why did they behave in such a cowardly manner, shuddering as Pharaoh's army approached?

True, comments the great sage Ibn Ezra, the Egyptians had 600 chariots, but what are those when up against 600,000 fighting men? The medieval French rabbi Chezkuni makes the same point.

The mystery gets more mysterious just a few lines later. After crossing into the Sinai wilderness, a handful of Amalekite terrorists harass the Israelites. But how many Amalekites could there have been, given that they were living off roots and bugs in the desert with no manna? Yet even then, the Jews were unable to fight off the Amalekites without Divine intervention and supernatural assistance.

One explanation of why the Israelites had to spend 40 years in the desert is that they needed to be cured of their cowardice and defeatism. Military challenges and powerful Canaanite kingdoms awaited them in the campaign to conquer the Promised Land. The generation that had known exile and slavery was unable to cope with that. It was necessary to wait for the next generation, born in freedom, to tackle the task.

*******

The generational changing of the guard we read about in the Bible has been recreated in modern Israel, but in the reverse direction.

The generation that had been raised in exile, suffering persecution and massacre, entered the Promised Land as military heroes, brilliant tacticians, and determined fighters. Yet within a short time they had been replaced with a new generation, one raised in freedom in their own sovereign state. This new generation lost the determination and courage of their fathers and grandfathers. It became infected with defeatism and cowardice; increasingly, it lost its willingness to resist and even to survive as a nation.

This generational change was not apparent until the emergence of the Oslo peace process. In Israel's early years, Israelis manifested the courage and valor of the Israelites of the Book of Joshua. Small militias of Jews defeated the combined military forces of the invading Arab armies in the 1948-9 War of Independence. Modern Israel fought terrorism with a policy of "Zero Tolerance" and in the Sinai campaign of 1956 easily defeated Egyptian forces.

A decade later Israelis crushed the combined military might of the Arab world and liberated Jerusalem. They again defeated those same forces in 1973, despite being caught in a surprise attack on Yom Kippur. And Israelis continued to demonstrate courage and resourcefulness in the war against Arab terror, most dramatically with the dramatic rescue at Entebbe.

But some time between 1978 and 1992 a great transformation took place. Despite the long track record of military successes, the new generation of Israelis lost its willingness to fight and resist. It convinced itself that capitulation and appeasement are the only paths to peace. It decided that self-abasement is the key ingredient to good reations with its neighbors.

Israelis elected leaders who hectored the new generation over their selfishness and bigotry, who insisted that the only reason peace had not yet emerged was that Israelis did not desire it enough.

In a Middle East in which the Arabs control territory nearly twice the size of the Unites States (including Alaska), the new breed of Israeli leaders insisted that the war was still going on because Israelis held too much land – almost the size of New Jersey in total.

In a Middle East already containing 22 sovereign Arab states – one of those states already controlling two-thirds of the land of Mandatory Palestine – the new breed of political leader in Israel maintained that creation of a 23rd Arab state could solve the whole conflict.

Back when Israel was behind its 1949 "Green Line" borders, it was repeatedly attacked by Arab armies seeking its annihilation. But returning to those same borders (or something close to them), insist Israel's new leaders, will result in peace and tranquility.

From 1992 onward, Israeli leaders insisted that peace could be achieved by pretending that war did not exist. And the greatest need of all, urgent and important above all else, was that the new generation of Israelis forget all of human and Jewish history, lest they infer from history that the policy of Oslo appeasement would not work.

In many ways, the Hamas Putsch is the natural and inevitable outcome of 14 years of Israeli policy. It is not at all an exaggeration to say that Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin installed the Hamas Amalekites in power when they shook Arafat's hand on the White House lawn in 1993. It was there and then that they welcomed a Hamas army into the suburbs of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. East Jerusalem was turned over to Hamas for all intents and purposes when Peres and Yossi Beilin sent their representatives (illegally) to meet with PLO terrorists in Oslo in the late1980's.

The Hamas Putsch was not a surprise development but rather the inevitable fruition of the doctrine of appeasement and capitulation that has been embraced by an entire generation of Israelis. The "Oslo approach" has failed at each and every step of the way, producing the opposite of the results its apologists insisted they would deliver.

Israeli goodwill measures produced escalated terrorism and suicide bombings. Israeli niceness was interpreted as weakness, and strengthened the most xenophobic forces and open Islamofascists among the Palestinians. Israeli flexibility and concessions triggered a worldwide campaign of anti-Semitism and demonization of Israel, especially in Europe. The Palestinians did not respond with flexibility and moderation, as the Oslo Camp had promised, but rather with open preparation for war. Israel has demonstrated since 1993 that the Jews are on the run, that the Jews have lost their will to survive. Palestinian Arabs drew the logical conclusion.

With each failure of the "Oslo approach," with each manifestation that Israel's appeasement was resulting in inflated Palestinian expectations from armed conflict with Israel and escalating Palestinian intransigence, Oslo defeatism metastasized further throughout the political system of Israel.

In the early 1980's, only the Israeli Communist party and its front groups were advocating an armed sovereign Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza. By the late 1990's, this had become not only the platform of the Israeli Labor Party but also of the Likud. Even the "hawkish" wing of the Likud, led by Ariel Sharon, adopted what had been the Communist position.

The unilateral Israeli eviction of the settlers from Gaza resulted in a massive escalation in the firing of rockets and mortars into Jewish civilian areas in the Negev. Yet the lesson that Israel's political leaders have drawn from this is that more evictions of Jews, this time from the West Bank, are what is needed to restore calm.

And in spite of hopes that the Hamas Putsch might at long last wake Israelis up to the folly of their overnment's policies these past 13 years, acting Prime Minister Olmert's first two responses to the Hamas victory were to turn over 200 million shekels in tax revenues to the Hamas and then to send mounted police in to evict Jews from their homes in the settlement of Amona.

In the coming Knesset elections in Israel, all three major parties are advocating the same basic strategic position: eviction of Jewish settlers from most of the West Bank without Arab quid pro quo, turning the other cheek when rockets land in Jewish areas, and continued support for a Palestinian state.

Indeed, buried in the Israeli election news is the fact that Israeli voters have just lost their only ballot option to vote against the Oslo "peace process" and against the pursuit of peace through appeasement and self-abasement. The last holdout, the only party in the last parliament not promoting peace through appeasement, had been the Ichud Leumi party, itself a coalition of several smaller factions.

The National Religious Party (NRP) or MAFDAL had been paying rhetorical lip service to opposing Oslo, although few believe it was really opposed. After all, the NRP had sat in Israeli government coalitions of both Labor and Likud that implemented earlier Oslo appeasements without batting an eyelash. One wag suggested that if Israel's government finally decided to move Israel back to its 1949 borders, the only concern of the NRP would be that the withdrawal not take place on the Sabbath.

As a coalition partner, the NRP never had any problem abandoning its nominal opposition to Oslo in exchange for fiscal handouts to its party institutions and schools. The merging of Ichud Leumi with the NRP means, first of all, that the new party is abandoning the chance of retaining the votes of secularist Israeli voters opposed to Oslo – people repulsed by the NRP. In addition, any voter, of any level of religiosity, who casts a vote for this new party out of anti-Oslo conviction must know that there is a distinct chance of seeing his own vote perverted. How long will it take for the new party to sell out and cash in its Knesset support for some funds (dare I say pork?) handed over to NRP institutions?

The worse the failures of the Oslo process, the fewer the electoral possibilities for Israelis to oppose it.

One fundamental plank in the Oslo peace process is to provide the Hamas entity with a "safe corridor" that links the Gaza Strip with the West Bank. Israel would be prohibited from stopping the movement of weapons, explosives, and terrorists along this "safe corridor." The Americans and the EU have been pressuring Israel to allow the operations of the "safe corridor" to begin immediately.

Now that there is no Israeli presence in the Gaza Strip, there are also no obstacles to the massive importing of state-of-the-art advanced weapons into the area via Egypt. These likely include shoulder-fired missiles. There will be no more Kassams for Hamas, those pieces of junk held together by chewing gum and glue.

The emerging Hamas terrorist army will have 21st-century hi-tech weapons. And the "safe corridor" will ensure that these also reach the West Bank. Shoulder missiles that can knock down civilian planes will be in the hands of Hamas terrorists positioned in areas over which planes fly when landing at and taking off from Ben Gurion Airport.

The most amazing thing is that the Israeli political establishment has learned absolutely nothing from previous cases of implementation of "safe corridors." Israel's will not be the first. The most infamous is probably the"Polish Corridor" that Hitler demanded in 1939.

When Poland was reconstituted after World War I, Danzig remained a free city and parts of East Prussia remained under German rule. After Hitler took power, ethnic Germans in Danzig formed a Nazi party and took control of the city. Following Hitler's success in cowing the West, winning all his demands at Munich, and then destroying Czechoslovakia, the next item on the Nazi agenda was a "safe corridor" between Germany proper and Danzig/East Prussia through Poland. Hitler was sure the West would again acquiesce and appease.

But Poland dug in its heels and refused the demand for a safe corridor. Poland understood that the notion of a safe corridor represented the end of Polish sovereignty on its own territory – that it was little more than a tactic to divide Poland and make it more vulnerable to invasion. With Hitler's forces grouping in the West and the Red Army poised to conquer Poland from the East, Poland, friendless and poorly armed, still chose war rather than surrender to the demand for a "Polish Corridor."

On September 1, 1939, Germany invaded Poland, with the Red Army following. After Poland's defeat, Danzig and the Polish Corridor, as well as much other territory in western Poland, were annexed to Germany. (After World War II, the entire German population of East Prussia and Danzig was expelled by Poland.)

In recent years we have been hearing cries from the Israeli Left that the forthcoming "Palestinian state" must be provided with territorial "continuity." The only problem is that one look at the map shows that if a Palestinian state were to have territorial continuity, the Jewish state would lose its territorial continuity.

This in fact is the point of the demand for a "safe corridor," which would simply be the first step toward constraining Israeli sovereignty, armed aggression against Israel, and territorial dismemberment. The Polish government of 1939 understood that the "Polish Corridor" would amount to a first step on the path to self-annihilation and refused German demands. The Israeli political establishment has far less backbone and common sense.

The "corridor" is not the only manifestation of the refusal of the Israeli elite to learn from history. Since the Hamas Putsch, we have been hearing arguments about how Abu Mazen will stay on as Palestinian president while Hamas "only" controls the Palestinian parliament. Supposedly this could mean that Abu Mazen will keep Hamas restrained.

Speaking of historical precedents, this strongly resembles similar predictions made when Hitler took power and Paul von Hindenberg was Reich president. Von Hindenberg will keep Hitler restrained, was the accepted wisdom and media spin of that day.

Of course, within a year von Hindenberg was dead and Hitler had seized all presidential powers.

But don't bother telling any of that to Israel's leaders. They still prefer life in a fantasy bubble to learning from history.

Steven Plaut is a professor at Haifa University. His book "The Scout" is available at Amazon.com.

QOTD:Martin Kramer

QOTD:Martin Kramer

The present Muslim campaign has its share of opportunists. But it is also driven by a religious fervor. At some point, a Muslim equivalent of Pope Urban II could appear. This time, the crusade would be a Muslim one. Its advance scouts are already at work in Europe.

The West (and Israel) have mocked the prophet--not Muhammad, but Samuel Huntington, author of The Clash of Civilizations. Our elites have spent a decade denying the truth at the core of his thesis: that the Islamic world and the West are bound to collide. Even now, we glibly predict that possession of political power and nuclear weapons will make Islamists act predictably. It all makes perfect sense?to us. But the cartoon affair and the Hamas elections are timely reminders that our perfect sense isn't theirs.

Fortunately, it isn't too late. There is a clash of civilizations, but there isn't yet a war of the worlds. "You do not have God," they say. "God is with us." That is their prayer. But they lack power, resources and weapons. Today they burn flags; a united West can still deny them the means to burn more. It can do so if it acts swiftly and resolutely, to keep nuclear fire out of Iran's hands, and to assure that Hamas fails.

QOTD:Jerusalem Post

QOTD:The Jerusalem Post

It's January 30, 1933, and here's what the Cleveland Press reports from Washington under the headline, US Unruffled by Hitler Rise.
"High authorities here regard with complacence Adolf Hitler's rise to power in Germany... They [express] faith that Hitler would act with moderation... Experts based this belief on past events showing that so-called radical groups usually moderated, once in power."

QOTD:Motley Fool

QOTD: Richard Gibbons in Motley Fool

America is arguably the most resilient country on the planet. Last century, we faced two World Wars, the Cold War, communism, a depression, the failure of numerous banks, the impeachment of a president, an oil shock, interest rates rising from 2% to 15%, several stock market crashes, and disco. We didn't just survive; we overcame these challenges and prospered.

QOTD: Jonathan Rosenblum

QOTD:Jonathan Rosenblum

Why do so many Moslems naturally respond to insult with threats of murder and why is democratic tolerance so foreign to them?

From the moment Islam swept out of the Arabian peninsula, it was a religion of conquest. Military success became associated with divine favor, and the expansion of Islamic rule a religious imperative. The reversal of those early triumphs over the last five hundred years is thus a continual affront not only to Moslems but to their god.

Traditionally, most Moslems have had little experience living with people of other creeds, except as rulers, and thus little interest in rules that allow people of different views and faiths to dwell together in relative harmony.

QOTD: Dave Barry on Red States and Blue States

QOTD: Dave Barry on Red State residents versus Blue State residents as retold by James Q. Wilson

As summed up by the distinguished social scientist who writes humor columns under the name of Dave Barry, residents of Red states are "ignorant racist fascist knuckle-dragging Nascar-obsessed cousin-marrying road-kill-eating tobacco-juice-dribbling gun-fondling religious fanatic rednecks," while Blue-state residents are "godless unpatriotic pierced-nose Volvo-driving France-loving leftwing Communist latte-sucking tofu-chomping holistic-wacko neurotic vegan weenie perverts."

QOTD: Professor Paul Eidelberg

QOTD: Professor Paul Eidelberg on America's War Aims (what they should be rather than what they are)

The U.S. should issue a declaratory policy having the following elements:
(1) The U.S. will regard as a belligerent any Islamic state that supports or harbors terrorists.
(2) The U.S. will regard as racist any Islamic state that encourages its people to hate and kill non-Muslims, and will take action to have that state banned from the United Nations.
(3) The U.S. will proclaim that the bellicose concept of jihad contradicts the UN Charter as well as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which prescribes “tolerance and friendship among all nations, racial, or religious groups.” Accordingly, the U.S will take action to terminate the UN membership of any Islamic state that does not renounce that concept.
(4) The U.S. will regard public renunciation of jihad as the litmus test of whether a Muslim state is sincerely committed to peace and worthy of diplomatic relations.

The war aims of the United States should not include wholesale democratization of Islamdom—an impractical and, in many countries, an undesirable objective. In such countries, constitutional monarchy is preferable. The political objective is to rid Islam of tyranny. The moral objective is to rid Islam of its jihadic ethos.

QOTD: Melanie Phillips

QOTD:Melanie Phillips

The West shows daily that it will go to extraordinary lengths to deny the screamingly obvious and take refuge in its lethal fantasies of rational actors prosecuting irrational conflicts. Thus Hamas is guaranteed to sow terminal confusion by engaging in precisely the same kind of lies and mind-twisting manipulation that has brought such success for the Palestinian cause among the dupes of the West.

QOTD: Daniel Pipes

Daniel Pipes in USA Today

An increasing number of voices are calling for Hamas to be recognized, arguing that the imperatives of governance would tame it, ending its arch-murderous vocation (it has killed about 600 Israelis) and turning it into a responsible citizen.

...The historical record, however, refutes this "pothole theory of democracy". Mussolini made the trains run, Hitler built autobahns, Stalin cleared the snow and Castro reduced infant mortality -- without any of these totalitarians giving up their ideological zeal nor their grandiose ambitions. Likewise, Islamists in Afghanistan, Iran and Sudan have governed without becoming tamed. If proof is needed, note the Iranian efforts to build nuclear weapons amid an apocalyptic fervor.

QOTD: Jacob Neusner

QOTD:Jacob Neusner

Conservative Judaism had been made up of "Orthodox rabbis serving Conservative congregations comprised of Reform Jews."

QOTD: Victor Davis Hanson

QOTD:Victor Davis Hanson

So how do we make sense of what seems so nonsensical [in Iraq and the Middle East in general]? Rather easily--just keep in mind four general talking points about America's recent role in the world and most things gradually become clearer.

Point One (for Americans): My own flawless three-week removal of Saddam Hussein was ruined by your error-prone postwar peace.

Point Two (for Middle Easterners): We are for democracy--unless you Americans help us obtain it.

Point Three (for Europeans): We are privately for and publicly against what you do.

Point Four (for everyone else): When angry at either the United States (or yourself,) just blame the Jews in America, and Israel abroad.

Sometimes in these crazy times, that is all you need to know.

QOTD: Ehud Olmert

Daniel Pipes reveals the emptiness of the secular elites in Israel.

Israel's Vice Prime Minister Ehud Olmert revealed important points about Likud's thinking about the Gaza withdrawal in a speech today in New York to the Israel Policy Forum.

We are tired of fighting, we are tired of being courageous, we are tired of winning, we are tired of defeating our enemies, we want that we will be able to live in an entirely different environment of relations with our enemies. We want them to be our friends, our partners, our good neighbors.

.

The entire article is very enlightening (and depressing) of their vacuousness and the philosphical battle that Israel is facing.

Pebble to Caroline Glick.

QOTD: Ha'aretz

Munir, a Palestinian in an interview with Haaretz: "We are Muslims... and we vote for Islam because Islam is the solution -- on every level. It's important that you write this down exactly as I say. From a religious perspective, Muslims cannot legitimize a State of Israel in this region. The Islamic movement would lose its identity if it recognized Israel as a state."

QOTD: Caroline Glick

Caroline Glick explains politicians who are in politics for their country versus themselves.

There are two types of political leaders in democratic systems of government: those whose political power grows in tandem with that of their party and political base, and those whose political power grows on the back of their party and political base. US president Ronald Reagan was probably the most recent archetype of the first type of political leader. Former president Bill Clinton and Prime Minister Ariel Sharon are textbook cases of the latter type of political leader.

Reagan's political maneuverings over the years were led by what he referred to as his 11th Commandment: 'Thou shalt speak no ill of a fellow Republican.' For Reagan, the strengthening of the Republican Party and the conservative camp in the US was an end in itself as well as a means towards his own political success. During his two terms in the White House, Reagan transformed American policy and politics at home and abroad and had a lasting impact on the way Americans perceived their nation. When he left office, the conservative-Republican base had become the majority camp in American politics and society. More importantly, American strength, wealth and self-assurance at home and abroad grew in concert with Reagan's political power.

Understanding that his own liberal Democratic base was the minority in the US, Clinton based his political strategy on what his former political adviser Dick Morris referred to as "triangulation." Clinton was not guided by a core principle of loyalty to party and to his political base, but by a desire to amalgamate his personal power. Clinton rallied his base by emphasizing his personal affability and by offering patronage positions and perks. He rallied conservative swing voters by implementing conservative economic, social and international policies. When Clinton left office, his political camp not only remained a minority, it was as bereft of new ideas as it had been when he entered office. While Clinton remained personally popular throughout his tenure, he left no enduring or transformational legacy on America. Indeed, if anything, Clinton's legacy is the implementation of Reagan's vision for American society.


The major difference between Sharon and Clinton is that Sharon abandoned the policies of his own rightist Likud political base in favor of those of the radical Left despite the fact that his political base constitutes the majority of Israelis. Aside from this important distinction, Sharon and Clinton's political machinations have been notably similar.


Sharon, like Clinton, has been consistent in making the consolidation and extension of his political power his singular goal as Israel's leader. This self-obsession is in many ways his most valuable political asset. It enables him to adopt policies and take steps that no politician who is concerned primarily with substantive matters like the welfare of the nation or even the political fortunes of his political party or political base would ever consider adopting. The direct and perverse result of Sharon's egocentric maneuverings is that while his position and popularity - internationally and in Israel - has never been stronger, the State of Israel has never been weaker or more derided in the international community and in the Middle East.


While Reagan transformed American politics by inspiring Americans themselves to take risks and rise to the many challenges they faced as individuals and as a country in the 1980s, Sharon has entrenched his own power by lulling Israelis into a sense of powerlessness and indifference. This he has done in two ways. First, Sharon has cultivated a persona that puts him above and at a distance from the regular Israeli "masses." In his rare public statements, Sharon has never encouraged Israelis to rise to the challenges they face. He speaks mostly of himself and his self-perceived greatness while promising his people "quiet" and "stability" - things they can expect to receive by simply keeping their heads down.


In his press conference on Sunday evening when he announced he was abandoning the Likud, for instance, Sharon used the word "stability" four times and "quiet" twice in a 10-minute address. Sharon spent the first three minutes of the speech talking about his past and the rest of the speech was devoted to castigating the Likud for daring to challenge his judgment.


Indeed the second anchor of Sharon's political power has been his systematic demonization of his party members and of his party's political support base. Sharon maintained his offensive against his voters and party by at once buying off enough Likud members with jobs and perks to assure their votes for his leftist policies and by turning every policy debate regarding the merits of his radical leftist policies into a referendum on his personal leadership. This dual strategy has worked to simultaneously corrupt the decision-making processes in the Likud and the Knesset and to cause a previously unified Likud and rightist political camp to become deeply divided and embittered.


Like Clinton, Sharon's self-obsession has been his most important political asset. Unburdened by the national interest, Sharon is unfettered in his pursuit of power by mere "inconveniences" like national security and his party's interests. This has provided him with unprecedented flexibility in forging political alliances and adopting policies that no leader who is fettered by his party ties and the national interest would dare enter into.


But even as Sharon's egomania has served him, it has also been the root of every political failure he has experienced in recent years. In April and May 2004, Sharon's self-adulation led him to believe that his party members would support his adoption of the radical Left's withdrawal and expulsion plan from Gaza and northern Samaria. He lost the Likud referendum on the issue - a poll which he called for - by more than 20 points. Equally telling, ahead of this month's Labor primaries, Sharon operated under the assumption that Shimon Peres would win the race. This assumption was based not on what Labor voters themselves were saying but on the fact that Peres supported Sharon. As well, when Sharon speaks of his victory in the 2003 elections, it never seems to occur to him that no one actually voted for him - they voted for Likud. Today, Sharon's belief in his own infallibility has led him to bolt his own party and believe that he will win elections in a new party that lacks a party machinery of any kind including offices and activists.


Aside from his own delusions of grandeur, two other calculations no doubt guided Sharon in his decision to leave Likud. First, given that his popularity is built on his evisceration and demonization of his party and party members, it is far from clear that Sharon would have won a primary race for Likud leadership. Second, the Likud will not support Sharon in his hypothetical next term if he moves to continue his policy of unilateral land giveaways to Palestinian terrorists in Judea and Samaria along the Gaza blueprint.

Chanukah in America Today

Gaby Wenig describes in The Jewish Journal Of Greater Los Angeles Chanukah in America today.

At Temple Beth Hillel, Mark Singer teaches his third-grade Hebrew school class about Chanukah using all the usual props: he lights a menorah, spins a dreidel and throws a doughnut and latke party.

However, considering that anywhere from 25 to 100 percent of his students come from mixed marriages, one thing he does not emphasize too strongly is that the real message of the Maccabean victory is a staunchly anti-assimilationist one. Instead, Singer adamantly informs his class that Chanukah celebrations should not be blended with celebrations of that other holiday of the same season.

...Welcome to Chanukah and the December Dilemma. In Hebrew schools all over Los Angeles — and in temple discussion groups for intermarrieds on how to survive the holiday season — Chanukah is taught as a ritually dense Jewish substitute for Christmas that needs to elbow its way into some December shelf space, rather than a holiday that commemorates a group of Jews fighting against the forces of Hellenistic secularism to remain an insular, Torah-committed community.

QOTD: National Guardsman

QOTD:BOTW

...the Salt Lake Tribune has a wonderful quote from First Lt. Bruce Bishop, a 31-year-old fireman, who explains that he plans to re-enlist in the Utah National Guard "because as I look around at the state of this nation and see all of the weak little pampered candy-asses that are whining about this or protesting that, I'd be afraid to leave the fate of this nation entirely up to them."

Also see the Google cache version.

The Crimes of Christopher Columbus

The Crimes of Christopher Columbus: "However small their numbers, however crude their representatives, Europeans came to the Americas with a civilizational ideology that was unquestionably modern, even if embryonically so. Among the ingredients of this modernity were a rational understanding of the universe and a new understanding of individual initiative.
By contrast, the Indians still lived in the world of the spirits-the enchanted universe. They could not adapt to changing circumstances. They confused the Europeans with gods. They sought to reverse casualties by sacrificing their own soldiers to the totems. When Montezuma's military advisers and soothsayers warned him of ill-omens he ordered them imprisoned and their wives and children killed. The Indians were held in paralyzing obedience to the emperor. They were accustomed to exterminating their inferiors but were unfamiliar with the challenges of combat against well-armed peers.
In short, the Indians were defeated and massacred because, by a cruel juxtaposition of history, they encountered, even in the persons of 'semi-literate, implacable, and greedy swordsmen,' a Spanish civilization that was superior both in the sophistication of its arms and its ideas. "

WorldNetDaily: Sustainable oil?

WorldNetDaily carries a very interesting article with a different theory of how oil is formed and the implications for the future.

An intriguing theory now permeating oil company research staffs suggests that crude oil may actually be a natural inorganic product, not a stepchild of unfathomable time and organic degradation. The theory suggests there may be huge, yet-to-be-discovered reserves of oil at depths that dwarf current world estimates.

The theory is simple: Crude oil forms as a natural inorganic process which occurs between the mantle and the crust, somewhere between 5 and 20 miles deep. The proposed mechanism is as follows:

Methane (CH4) is a common molecule found in quantity throughout our solar system -- huge concentrations exist at great depth in the Earth.

At the mantle-crust interface, roughly 20,000 feet beneath the surface, rapidly rising streams of compressed methane-based gasses hit pockets of high temperature causing the condensation of heavier hydrocarbons. The product of this condensation is commonly known as crude oil.

Some compressed methane-based gasses migrate into pockets and reservoirs we extract as "natural gas."

In the geologically "cooler," more tectonically stable regions around the globe, the crude oil pools into reservoirs.

In the "hotter," more volcanic and tectonically active areas, the oil and natural gas continue to condense and eventually to oxidize, producing carbon dioxide and steam, which exits from active volcanoes.

Periodically, depending on variations of geology and Earth movement, oil seeps to the surface in quantity, creating the vast oil-sand deposits of Canada and Venezuela, or the continual seeps found beneath the Gulf of Mexico and Uzbekistan.

Periodically, depending on variations of geology, the vast, deep pools of oil break free and replenish existing known reserves of oil.

DISENGAGEMENT or DISASTER?

Serena Weil on unpleasant facts and questions about Gaza.

1. GAZA vs. KATIF: A Clearer picture. Historically, the city of Gaza (and its surroundings) is part of Biblical Israel, included in G-d's divine promise to the Jewish People. Jews have resided in Gaza from Biblical times until 1948 when, as the result of Arab violence, they were forced to leave. The city contains ruins of synagogues, a Jewish cemetery, and archeological finds of Jewish origin. A Jewish presence in the Gaza area (known as the Gaza Strip) was re-established in the wake of the Six Day War after 1967. Known as Gush Katif (the Katif Block), it comprises 22 communities and numbers 8,500 inhabitants and comprises only 12% of the Gaza Strip.


2. CAN THE IDF LEAVE GAZA? The IDF already left the Gaza Strip (!) eleven years ago as part of the Oslo agreements. Since then the Strip has been governed by the Palestinian Authority (under Arafat). Israel remained in Gush Katif. The IDF manned points of entry into Katif and at the border-like road blocks. They enter Gaza itself only when terrorist activity makes their entry necessary. Meanwhile, a monstrous terror network of worldwide proportions has surfaced in Gaza. Constant shelling of nearby Israeli settlements and cities, suicide bombers, shootings, and mines have become daily fare. (Many, thank G-d, miss their mark.) The media barely mentions them before going on to more 'interesting' news.

Retreating from Katif would bring the cities of Ashkelon, Netivot, and Ofakim into the range of Arab missiles in the south. As it did in Lebanon, the Hezbollah terrorist organization intends to bring thousands of missiles into Gaza as well. The highly successful results of the terrorist organizations in the recent Palestinian Authority elections in Gaza do not bode well for peaceful intentions or resolutions. With additional, far ranging weapons in Gaza, the long arm of Hezbollah will bringing not only Ashkelon, but the port of Ashdod, Beersheva and the nuclear reactor in Dimona within firing range. Israel has to be utterly insane to allow this to happen.


3. WHOSE WATER IS TASTIER? Israel is presently supplying Gaza with water. After Oslo and the Israeli retreat from Gaza, as a result of total Arab/ Palestinian Authority mismanagement and greed, vast amounts of water were pumped from the wells in the area, the salt level rose drastically, and the water is no longer potable. Humane Israel, unwilling to deny water to thirsty Arabs, now provides for their needs from its own water supply. The IDF also forces the Arabs to treat their sewage and refrain from pouring it into the sea. In addition to severe pollution, the sewage destroys the filters from a large purification plant in nearby Ashkelon.

Sharon speaks of further withdrawals in northern Samaria which sits atop one of Israel's largest aquifers and main sources of water. Once in Arab hands, it is expected that the Arabs will, as they have done throughout the rest of Judea and Samaria, pump water without plan or thought for the future, thus endangering vital water sources in the Jezreel Valley. The oft-bandied solution of treating sea water would cost billions of dollars. Can Israel afford to place her precious and limited water supply in the hands of her Arab neighbors?


4. DEMOGRAPHY & GEOGRAPHY and other fraudulent claims: Gaza, we are told, is the most crowded place in the world. The Arabs, they say, need land, living space! Well, so does Tel Aviv. The population density in the city of Tel Aviv is eleven times higher than in Gaza!

Not only that. The much maligned Katif area, on only twelve percent of the Gaza Strip, covers approximately ninety square miles! Does anyone really think that giving this pittance of the Strip as a gift to the Arabs will solve their demographic problems? (It is highly suggested that the reader open a map of the Middle East to verify the size of Israel, of the Gaza Strip and of Katif. If Israel is infinitesimal, then Katif is infinitely more so!)

Perhaps Egypt, a huge country, would like to contribute a portion of its vast holdings in Sinai to its fellow Arabs. Sinai was never officially part of Egypt (just as Judea and Samaria were never officially part of Jordan). It is devoid of settlements — absolutely empty except for several tourist locations (originally built and set up by Israel) and best of all, it borders Gaza. Could there be a more perfect, fitting, humane solution to lessen the population density in Gaza?

Gush Katif was built on virgin sand dunes which even the Arabs had never exploited. The constantly attacked and bombarded community of Kfar Darom was built on swampy land which was purchased at full price by Jews during the time of the British Mandate. The Jews have turned the entire Katif area into a mini Garden of Eden. Eleven percent of all Israeli agricultural exports come from this tiny spot on the map. No wonder the Arabs living in their squalid cities nearby have dreams of inheriting it!


5. ECONOMICS — What's the Price? According to government assessments, direct costs for disengagement will be upwards of six billion NIS (one and one half billion U.S. dollars). Since this figure was released, the Knesset upped it by offering larger restitution to the settlers. (The previous amounts were rather parsimonious and it was felt that a bit more generosity would make things easier for all concerned.) Add to this related expenses such as additional security for settlements within the Green Line which will now be within Gaza's firing range; unemployment for the several thousand evacuated families; establishing new communities, new schools or classrooms for the thousands of Katif children who will be evacuated; new social services; and the necessary psychological counseling and help for those evacuated (this promises to be a highly traumatic experience, to put it mildly), Etc., etc.

No country, and surely not the U.N. or the E.U., is offering to reimburse or assist Israel with disengagement. The Israeli taxpayer will be expected to foot the entire bill. All the advances Israel has so painfully made in the past ten years on the economic front will be wiped out. And the price of real estate all along the shrunken new border will fall drastically. (Who will want to live next to Gaza?) Disengagement promises to be an economic disaster.


6. THE ARMY — What affect will disengagement have on it? Is the Israel Defense Force here to evacuate Jews from their homes, or to protect them from their enemies? Discomfort at the idea of the army forcefully evacuating peaceful citizens is widespread. So much so that the government changed gears and decided the police would be given the job while the army stood guard to make sure the Arabs don't take advantage of the evacuation and aim their missiles in the direction of the evacuees.

There is also the well founded fear that a large number of soldiers and police will refuse to take part in the disengagement. And if nonetheless it does take place, it is feared that tens of thousands of young people across the country will be so disillusioned that many of them will refuse to serve when they are called up. Huge numbers of youngsters from youth movements and yeshivas, the ones you see at the demonstrations and on street corners passing out flyers, are passionately anti-disengagement. These youths tend to be some of our best soldiers and a high percentage, out of all proportion to their numbers, of officers. Which is why the government is taking such a hard stand against conscientious objectors whom they view as a "threat to democracy". Many older people will refuse to continue to serve in the Reserves as well.


7. DEMOCRACY or DICTATORSHIP? Sharon ran for office on a platform diametrically opposed to this plan. His own Likkud party overwhelmingly rejected the proposal in an internal Likkud referendum. After much political wrangling and the firing of two cabinet ministers, Sharon finally managed to obtain Knesset approval for his plan although the law approving the financial restitution has not yet been passed.

No legitimate government, however, has the right to oust people from their legal homes by means of a highly questionable order and without recourse to due process of law. No government has the moral right to make historic changes and cede parts of its historic homeland with only a slim majority and a highly unstable minority coalition. Just as no government, even with a large majority, has the moral right to legitimize murder, rape or robbery. Years ago, Yossi Sarid, one of Israel's extreme, leading Leftists, proclaimed: The day that an order is given to transfer [Arabs] from their homes, an order which is patently illegal and immoral, will be the Day of Refusing Orders. … We will not fulfill an order to transfer [Arabs], nor will our children or our students fulfill such an order. How, then, can he legitimize transferring Jews?

Democracy does not mean the dictatorship of the many over the few. Democracy is built on a shared set of values; its laws are supposed to give form to these values. Destroying the basic values underpinning democracy, and ripping apart the social fabric and shared values of a nation destroys democracy itself.

Where might all this lead? The papers are rife with reports of detention centers being set up for reluctant settlers, their wives and children; of special, speedy courts of "justice" to deal with resisters; with special police training courses hastily organized to program the police to deal with the expected, traumatic expulsion. (All this while it was just announced that over nine hundred convicted terrorists will be released from Israeli jails as a sign of Israel's "good will").

Remember, we are not speaking of evacuating an enemy. We are speaking of 8,500 Israeli citizens who settled an empty, new area with full government approval and are now being ousted after thirty years because a prime minister, without the necessary democratic sanctions, has decided they must leave.


8. DID YOU SAY DISENGAGEMENT? From what? According to the government's own declarations, Israel will continue to supply the Palestinian Authority in Gaza with 1) water; 2) electricity; 3) communications (a telephone system); 4) food, medical and other supplies, just as we do now. Oh yes, and also employment in Israel. No one expects Gaza to support itself or provide employment for its people. Everyone - the entire world - expects Israel to help the new "fledgling state" along. Israel assumes she will fill all these needs although she insists that in case of trouble or terrorist activity, she will feel free to re-enter Gaza whenever necessary. (Just imagine the world's reaction to that!)

What then will be different? What exactly is being "disengaged"? Only one thing. Jewish communities in one small corner of the Gaza Strip. They are being evacuated, transferred, "resettled" — all the things Israel would never allow to be done to its Arab citizens or neighbors. Judenrein at the hands of the Israeli government.


9. WHAT IS SHARON THINKING? No one seems to know. If the above is an accurate description of the situation, based on true, objective facts (and it is), how could any normal, intelligent person choose this path?

Sharon has led us to a Palestinian state. He gave his approval to the Road Map whose cease-fire cost scores of Jewish lives. He approved the infamous prisoner swaps which put an end to hope for finding or releasing Ron Arad, the missing Israeli pilot. And now he is taking us further along the road to destruction with his new plan. Why?

While there are a few souls who feel that Sharon is taking a brave step forward and has the best interests of the country at heart, there are many more who are doubtful. The rumors are that he is depressed, demented, or wants to go do down in history as the great Man of Peace after having been demonized as Israel's worst war-monger. There are other, even more disturbing theories at large.

Zvi Handel a Knesset member from Gush Katif, and a former friend of Sharon who spent years working in close contact with the Prime Minister, has an different explanation. Both of Sharon's sons were involved in highly publicized, highly questionable, extremely lucrative, international business transactions. There was grave evidence of illegalities and the country was waiting for a judicial decision to indict. Suddenly, when things became exceedingly uncomfortable, Sharon dropped a bombshell and announced his disengagement plan. It immediately replaced the stories of his sons in all the media and has kept them out of the public eye. The indictments are also still on hold.

It is believed by many that this sudden bombastic political decision, which ran counter to Sharon's entire history and career (he was called the "Father of the Settlement Movement" and was a close and constant advocate of settlement activity), which conflicted with all his previous statements, promises and campaign platform, was a way of turning the public attention away from his private troubles. If the settlers had to be the sacrificial lamb, so be it. Better them than Sharon's sons.

Handel's accusations were made publicly and were detailed. The media made mention but chose not to dwell on them and they were "lost" in the governmental tsunami of determination for the disengagement plan.


10. WHAT ELSE IS LOST? Much has been "lost" in the media reports. Not only the legalities of the Sharon family affairs, but many of the above uncomfortable facts and observations. The settlements in Gaza have existed for more than thirty years. Families have four generations in the area. There is rarely a family in Israel which doesn't haveIsraelis all over the country have a a relative, a neighbor's relative or a friend in Katif. Most of the population - truly a silent majority — is distinctly uncomfortable with disengagement although they have few public avenues open to express their discomfort. (The media gives expression primarily to the left.) The more active and vocal section of the populace that supports Katif and the settlements and is thoroughly opposed to "disengaging" is dubbed "the extreme right" by the media. There is never — or very rarely — an "extreme" left. Disengagement ("evacuation" is a more accurate term) of Jews from the area — is not a simple, administrative decision. It is truly a moment of crisis for Israel.

Nor is disengagement a legitimate legal, democratic decision. Sharon consistently refuses to consider either a referendum on disengagement or new elections, even though two years after the elections he still does not have a stable, dependable coalition to pass . Nor has he been successful in passing the annual budget (which is why he is turning somersaults to put a coalition together. Without an approved budget, new elections are in the offing whether he wants them or not.)which he needs in order to assure funds for the evacuation of Katif. Yet he has engaged the country in a disastrous process. Anti-democratic, anti-Zionistic, militarily and economically incomprehensible.

Add that to the national, emotional and religious issues which have been stirred up and you wonder if the man has not gone mad?

QOTD: David Warren

QOTD:David Warren

So to the question, "Is there a crisis in Islam?" -- the answer might be a droll, "No, it is flourishing." The crisis is developing in Former Christendom. President Bush and Prime Ministers Blair of Britain and Howard of Australia have made a brave start in leading Western response to what is becoming less deniably a "clash of civilizations". They were right to take the battle to the enemy; they remain right in attempting to rebuild Iraq and Afghanistan as "beacons". They rightly grasp that the alternative is worse.

What they have done is just a start, however, and I see no one in mainstream Western politics with the glimmering of an idea about what to do next. Plenty of evidence, on the other hand, that our "ruling classes" have been rotted away by moral relativism, and by the cowardice that is the rot below that. And, especially in Canada and western Europe, evidence that "the people" do not have the stomach for any challenge at all.

QOTD: OBL

QOTD:OBL

What's unknown is the level of destructive capacity in al-Qaeda's arsenal. What is known, however, is what bin Laden thinks. "By God's leave", he declared in his February 1998 call for a jihad, "we call on every Muslim who believes in God and hopes for reward to obey God's command to kill the Americans and plunder their possessions wherever he finds them and whenever he can."

The killings on Sept. 11 were "blessed by Allah to destroy America's economic and military landmarks", he explained. "Yes, we kill their innocents and this is legal religiously and logically."

Furthermore, to ratchet up the killing with WMD is fully correct, "religiously". In May 2003, dutiful to the conventions of running a holy war, bin Laden secured a fatwa -- a ruling on a point of Islamic law that is given by a recognized authority -- from a Saudi sheik saying al-Qaeda would be justified in using nuclear weapons against America.

QOTD: On utopians

QOTD

According to Dr. Peter Mezan, a psychoanalyst in New York City, "There is an impulse that is common to perversion and to utopian thinking. The wish is to create a world in which differences make no difference. The great utopian thinkers have been immensely inspiring, but there is a reason that utopian communities have never worked out. In the name of equality of every sort and in the attempt to eliminate the tensions that normally divide us, they propose to create a marvelously unnatural world without the usual boundaries. But then it gets all fucked up."

QOTD: Victor Davis Hanson

QOTD: Victor Davis Hanson

Throughout this war we have an understandable, if ethnocentric, habit of ignoring what our enemies actually say. Instead we chatter on, don't listen, and in self-absorbed fashion impart our own motives for their hatred. We live on the principles of the Enlightenment and so worship our god Reason, thus assuming that even our adversaries accept such rational protocols as their own.

So they talk on and on of beheading, suicide bombing, another holocaust, and blowing thousands of us up, while we snooze, now and again waking in the midst of a war to regurgitate Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay, flushed Korans, the abusive Patriot Act, and the latest quip of Donald Rumsfeld.

QOTD: You'll never guess who

Who said this? Pebble to BOTW
The same amendment of the Constitution that forbids the establishment of a State Church affirms my legal right to argue that my religious belief would serve well as an article of our universal public morality. I may use the prescribed processes of government--the legislative and executive and judicial processes--to convince my fellow citizens--Jews and Protestants and Buddhists and non-believers--that what I propose is as beneficial for them as I believe it is for me; that it is not just parochial or narrowly sectarian but fulfills a human desire for order, peace, justice, kindness, love, any of the values most of us agree are desirable even apart from their specific religious base or context. . . .

I can, if I wish, argue that the State should not fund the use of contraceptive devices not because the Pope demands it but because I think that the whole community--for the good of the whole community--should not sever sex from an openness to the creation of life.

And surely, I can, if so inclined, demand some kind of law against abortion not because my Bishops say it is wrong but because I think that the whole community, regardless of its religious beliefs, should agree on the importance of protecting life--including life in the womb, which is at the very least potentially human and should not be extinguished casually.

No law prevents us from advocating any of these things: I am free to do so.

So are the Bishops. And so is Reverend [Jerry] Falwell [a 1980s "religious right" figure].



















Mario Cuomo!

QOTD: Jean Francois Revel

QOTD: Jean Francois Revel

A civilization that feels guilty for everything it is and does will lack the energy and conviction to defend itself.

Thumbs up for Cheznoff

Richard Z. Chesnoff has the right idea for "solving" the problem in Gaza. Two thumbs up.

If I were King of the Hill, I'd have the UN carve out a larger area to the south of the current Gaza Strip -- say along Egypt's largely unpopulated Sinai coast, or Saudi Arabia's vast Red Sea coast, or even Jordan's southern tip -- and declare it "New Gaza." Then with Israeli technical assistance and international financing, I'd build sparkling new cities, irrigated farms and ultramodern industrial zones. Next I'd construct a road and/or railway connecting New Gaza to the Palestinian West Bank.

Finally, I'd seriously grubstake every one of Gaza's Palestinian families and move them from squalid Gaza to this new seaside El Dorado. Old Gaza could then become a recognized part of Israel. Gaza's Jewish settlers could return to the lands they've made green -- and more could join them. As Palestinians flourished in their own new homeland, trade and peaceful ties between Israel and the sovereign Palestinian territories would grow. A 60-year-old thorn could start to be removed from the world's side.

Far-fetched? Of course. Fatah and Hamas would reject it out of hand. Nor would Arab leaders approve. Unlike Israel, which welcomed and absorbed 700,000 Jewish refugees from the Islamic world, most Arab states still refuse to allow Palestinians to settle permanently among them. Besides, the very idea of "population transfer" is politically incorrect. Or is it? During the 1947 partition of British India, more than 5 million Hindus moved from present-day Pakistan into present-day India, and more than 6 million Muslims moved the other way. When all else fails, far-fetched solutions become possibilities.

World Bank: Israeli Gov´t Corruption Among Highest in the West

Arutz Sheva carries this unfortunate but accurate news

Israel is second only to Italy with regard to government corruption in the western world, according to a study released Wednesday by the World Bank.

Business Data Israel's (BDI) government corruption index showed the Israeli government to be inefficient, with high levels of corruption and a low rate of law enforcement. The study was based on indices examined and confirmed by the Bank of Israel.

The rating received by the Israeli government is particularly poor in comparison with most developed countries. Its rating in terms of political stability is the lowest of any other Western country.

Mr. Sharansky, ease my doubts by Martin Kramer (Natan Sharansky's The Case for Democracy)

Martin Kramer has an interesting response to Natan Sharansky's The Case for Democracy. He differentiates between freedom of and freedom from. Freedom of being rights like freedom of speech and freedom of religion.

A much larger group is what I would call the 'freedom from' people. Their idea of freedom is somewhat different. It is freedom from oppressive government, not so much for the individual, as for the collective -- the kinship group, the tribe, the religious sect. The quest for this kind of freedom has existed in the Middle East from time immemorial. The late Elie Kedourie put it best. 'The Middle Easterner,' he said, 'is very far from thinking that he has a right to have a say in politics. All he wants is to be left alone and not to be oppressed.' Elsewhere he wrote of the Syrians, as archetypes of the Arabs, that 'they have never been much accustomed to being asked their opinion about their rulers. For them the happy man has always been he who has a beautiful wife, a comfortable house, a lucrative occupation, who does not know government, and whom government does not know; in short, the private man.'

No doubt this is a desire for freedom, but it is freedom from, not freedom of. What is the difference? You may desire freedom from oppressive government, and still deny your beautiful wife the freedom to drive, or get an education, or go about in public. You may fervently wish not to know government, but still expect blasphemers and adulteresses to be punished by law. You may fight for freedom from oppression for yourself, and not much care if your neighbor is oppressed, especially if he is from a different family, or tribe, or sect.

It brings into doubt how much transformation across the Middle East can be achieved in the short-term -- decades.

Distractions or Part of the Thinking Process?

LISA BELKIN in NYT makes an interesting observation in her article referring to recent studies of the amount of time people "slack off" at work.

There is a point, of course, where distraction becomes blatant slacking off, but I would argue that some percentage of time wasted during work is actually a part of the work. I call it gel time, when a corner of your brain noodles with a problem while the rest of your brain checks the baseball scores or looks for replacement coffee mugs on eBay. In other words, gel time is what you have to do to make you ready to do what you need to do.

Daniel Pipes: The attempt to establish a world dominated by Muslims, Islam, and the Shari'a has begun -- but the world is in denial

QOTD:Daniel Pipes: The attempt to establish a world dominated by Muslims, Islam, and the Shari'a has begun -- but the world is in denial

In nearly all cases, the jihadi terrorists have a patently self-evident ambition: to establish a world dominated by Muslims, Islam, and the Shari'a (Islamic law). Or, again to cite the Daily Telegraph, their "real project is the extension of the Islamic territory across the globe, and the establishment of a worldwide 'caliphate' founded on Shari'a law."

What the world owes "Palestinians" and their ideological benefactors

QOTD:Dennis Prager

Judea Pearl, the father of murdered Wall Street Journal journalist Daniel Pearl, has devoted his life since his son's murder by Muslims in Pakistan to building bridges to the Muslim world. He told me on my radio show that he is sad to report that '99.99 percent' of the Muslim world does not believe that Israel has the right to exist as a Jewish state. It is no wonder, then, that so few Muslims religiously or morally condemned Palestinian terror against Israeli Jews. At best, some Palestinians condemn Palestinian terror as counterproductive to the Palestinian cause. Period. It may be impractical, but not immoral or un-Islamic.

QOTD: Lileks on Arafat and the UN

QOTD: James Lileks

All you need to know about Arafat was that he insisted on wearing a pistol when he addressed the UN General Assembly. And all you need to know about the UN, I suppose, is that they let him.

Roe's affect on political discourse

James Taranto in The WSJ on how the Supreme's decision in Roe v. Wade has skewed the political discussion on abortion.

Roe v. Wade is a study in unanticipated consequences. By establishing a constitutional right to abortion, the justices of the U.S. Supreme Court no doubt thought they were settling the issue for good, accelerating a process of liberalization that was already under way in 1973. But instead of consensus, the result was polarization. The issue of abortion soon after, and for the first time, took a prominent place in national political campaigns. By 1980, both major political parties had adopted extreme positions--Republicans favoring a "pro-life" constitutional amendment to ban abortion, and Democrats opposing virtually all regulation on "pro-choice" grounds. Every presidential and vice-presidential nominee since then has toed the party line on abortion.

Polarization over abortion coincided with a period of Republican ascendancy. Since the parties split on abortion, the GOP has won five of seven presidential elections, and no Democrat has had a majority of the popular vote. Republicans took over the Senate in 1980, and both houses of Congress in 1994. Obviously, many other factors have contributed to Republican success, but it is hard to look at these results and conclude that abortion has been a winning issue for the Democrats. Thus, the politics of abortion has favored the party that opposes the court-imposed "consensus."

This is not to say that America has embraced the near-absolutist pro-life position that the Republican Party formally endorses. Most Americans are moderate or ambivalent on abortion, rejecting the extreme positions on either side. One reason Republicans have an advantage is that as long as Roe remains in effect--taking off the table any restriction that imposes an "undue burden" on a woman seeking to abort her pregnancy--Republicans are an extreme antiabortion party only in theory. When it comes to actual legislation, the GOP favors only modest--and popular--regulations. The Democrats, on the other hand, must defend such unpopular practices as partial-birth abortion, taxpayer-subsidized abortion, and abortions for 13-year-olds without their parents' knowledge.

...And if Republicans keep winning the presidency and appointing Supreme Court justices, Roe v. Wade may eventually be overturned. (This almost certainly would have happened in 1992 if the Senate had approved Robert Bork's confirmation five years earlier.) ... If Roe were overturned, the politics of abortion would change dramatically, and in the Democrats' favor. With the legality of abortion itself on the line, the debate would shift away from the pro-choice extremes, forcing pro-choice politicians to take a more centrist (and popular) position. Republicans would be torn between their antiabortion base and more moderate voters, for whom an outright ban on abortion is a bridge too far.

The best solution for both parties would likely be a return to the status quo ante Roe--that is, for Congress and the president largely to ignore abortion, and leave its regulation to the state legislatures. This would allow politicians, Democrat and Republican alike, to tailor their views to match those of their constituents and their own consciences, and it would remove abortion as a polarizing issue from national elections.

Study Says Ethanol Not Worth the Energy - New York Times

The NYT carries this interesting tidbit...

...it takes 29 percent more fossil energy to turn corn into ethanol than the amount of fuel the process produces

Fun Facts

Pew Global Attitudes Project Fun Facts:

The latest survey by the Pew Global Attitudes Project, conducted among more than 17,000 people in 17 countries this spring, finds that while many Muslims believe that radical Islam poses a threat, there are differing opinions as to its causes.

...The polling ...finds that in most majority-Muslim countries surveyed, support for suicide bombings and other acts of violence in defense of Islam has declined significantly. In Turkey, Morocco and Indonesia, 15% or fewer now say such actions are justifiable. In Pakistan, only one-in-four now take that view (25%), a sharp drop from 41% in March 2004. In Lebanon, 39% now regard acts of terrorism as often or sometimes justified, again a sharp drop from the 73% who shared that view in 2002. A notable exception to this trend is Jordan, where a majority (57%) now says suicide bombings and other violent actions are justifiable in defense of Islam.

...Anti-Jewish sentiment is endemic in the Muslim world. In Lebanon, all Muslims and 99% of Christians say they have a very unfavorable view of Jews. Similarly, 99% of Jordanians have a very unfavorable view of Jews. Large majorities of Moroccans, Indonesians, Pakistanis and six-in-ten Turks also view Jews unfavorably.

In the Asian countries surveyed, views of religious groups are generally more moderate. India, with its substantial Muslim minority, is closely divided with respect to views about Muslims; 46% hold a favorable view while 43% view them unfavorably. Opinions of Christians are considerably higher: 61% favorable compared with 19% unfavorable. Most Indians (56%) offer no opinion on Jews; those that do split 28% favorable to 17% unfavorable.

QOTD: Pat Sajak

QOTD:Pat Sajak

The people there [in France] were so nice, I had almost forgotten a friend's advice upon my departure: "Be sure to drive on the left side in England. Do that in France, too, because you'll run over more French."

QOTD: Carolyn Glick

QOTD: Carolyn Glick in JWR

THE FACT that the US and Europe have yet to make any strong statements condemning the terrorist about to take over the Iranian government should be a warning to Israelis. They are told by their leaders that if Hamas takes over the Palestinian Authority then the kid gloves will come off. Israel will finally have the international legitimacy to really take it to the Palestinians. But the Iranian situation seems to indicate that just the opposite is the case.

If the Iranians can elect a man like Ahmadinejad to their presidency and not suffer immediate international isolation, then it is simply not credible for anyone to believe that a Hamas takeover of Palestinian society will cause any reformulation of the European and US policy towards the Palestinians.

Like Ahmadinejad, Hamas has made it absolutely clear that it is serious in its plans to transform the Palestinian Authority into an Islamist state.

And this is why they did it

Amir Taheri describes what is unfathomable to the Left -- why the Islamofascists do what they do.

Moments after yesterday's attacks my telephone was buzzing with requests for interviews with one recurring question: but what do they want? That reminded me of Theo van Gogh, the Dutch film-maker, who was shot by an Islamist assassin on his way to work in Amsterdam last November. According to witnesses, Van Gogh begged for mercy and tried to reason with his assailant. "Surely we can discuss this," he kept saying as the shots kept coming. "Let us talk it over."

Van Gogh, who had angered Islamists with his documentary about the mistreatment of women in Islam, was reacting like BBC reporters did yesterday, assuming that the man who was killing him may have some reasonable demands which could be discussed in a calm, democratic atmosphere.

But sorry, old chaps, you are dealing with an enemy that does not want anything specific, and cannot be talked back into reason through anger management or round-table discussions. Or, rather, this enemy does want something specific: to take full control of your lives, dictate every single move you make round the clock and, if you dare resist, he will feel it his divine duty to kill you.

...There are many Muslims who believe that the idea that all other faiths have been "abrogated" and that the whole of mankind should be united under the banner of Islam must be dropped as a dangerous anachronism. But to the Islamist those Muslims who think like that are themselves regarded as lapsed, and deserving of death.

It is, of course, possible, as many in the West love to do, to ignore the strategic goal of the Islamists altogether and focus only on their tactical goals. These goals are well known and include driving the "Cross-worshippers" (Christian powers) out of the Muslim world, wiping Israel off the map of the Middle East, and replacing the governments of all Muslim countries with truly Islamic regimes like the one created by Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran and by the Taleban in Afghanistan.

Strange Bedfellows

USATODAY reports that the GREEN Party in Austria wants to arrest the new president of Iran for suspected terrorist activities, including murder.

Wow, when the Green Party begins pressing for the arrest of terrorists (albeit not going there and killing them), it certainly makes for unpredictable allies. We can only hope that this is the signal of a change in the policies of the EU, but this is probably an anomaly.

In Austria, Green Party leader Peter Pilz told the newspaper he wants a warrant issued for the arrest of Ahmadinejad, who he alleged "stands under strong suspicion of having been involved."

Pilz accused the hard-liner of planning the murders of Kurdish resistance leader Abdul-Rahman Ghassemlou and two of his colleagues, all of whom were shot in the head at a Vienna apartment by Iranian commandos on July 13, 1989. A fourth victim survived the attack and was able to crawl out of the apartment and alert Austrian authorities.

Pilz told Der Standard his source was an unidentified Iranian journalist living in France, who he said also claimed to have evidence that former Iranian President Ayatollah Hashemi Rafsanjani gave the order to have Ghassemlou killed. He did not elaborate.

He said Ahmadinejad, then a high-ranking member of Iran's elite revolutionary guard, allegedly traveled to the Austrian capital a few days before the slayings to deliver the murder weapons to the commandos who carried out the attack. Austrian authorities have said the gunmen apparently entered the alpine country with Iranian diplomatic passports.
Pilz said the journalist was contacted in 2001 by one of the alleged gunmen, described as a former revolutionary guard who has since died in a drowning accident."

Founding Principles

Keith Thompson inFrontPage Magazine on the Founding Father's intentions in setting up constitutional government.

The final chapter of [Thomas Sowell's book] The Quest for Cosmic Justice is titled The Quiet Repeal of the American Revolution. That's what's at stake [in today's political debates], but it's not going to happen. Not as long as men and women who understand that the true meaning July 4, 1776 is alive and well in the recognition that

* a government without limits inescapably descends into tyranny;
* the proper role of federalism is to create safe conditions for the states to experiment in creating conditions in which culture and economy may freely evolve;
* the only alternative to interpreting the Constitution to mean what its words say in the plain language of the time in which they were written is to reduce our nation's guiding charter to the status of the Framers' unfinished to-do list, and thus to subvert the rule of law.

QOTD: Caroline Glick

QOTDCaroline Glick

The reason for Rice's insistent support for Abbas is clear. The US, in committing itself to President George W. Bush's 'vision' of the establishment of a Palestinian state in Judea, Samaria and Gaza and perhaps Jerusalem, has mortgaged its entire Middle East policy to a 'solution' of the Palestinian conflict with Israel that has no relation whatsoever to the realities on the ground. The reality on the ground is that Palestinian society is unified by a dedication to the destruction of Israel, not the establishment of a Palestinian state. Abbas is a reflection of his society.

In backing Abbas, the US is not shoring up a weak leader who wants a different future for the Palestinians. The US is backing one Palestinian terrorist organization — Fatah — against Hamas and Islamic Jihad. Yet since Fatah coexists harmoniously with Hamas and Islamic Jihad, by backing Fatah, the US is effectively backing all Palestinian terror groups. That is, the US commitment to the establishment of an independent Palestinian state as quickly as possible simply blocks its path from developing any strategy for actually addressing the true reality on the ground. And at the same time, by calling for Israeli "confidence-building measures" to strengthen Abbas, the US is effectively weakening its ally.