These Obama skeptics recall a similar time, 1973, when Israel also faced extermination. Prime minister Golda Meir had miscalculated Anwar Sadat's willingness to go to war and decided against a first strike against Egypt. The Arab nations attacked in October 1973, and within days Israel was facing defeat.

The Israelis went to president Richard Nixon with a request for a massive infusion of arms. The Defense and State Departments squabbled. Our European allies, who feared an oil embargo (and would refuse us bases to refuel our planes), inveighed against it, and the Soviets blustered. Many on Nixon's staff wanted to deny the request, or offer only token assistance. Don't antagonize the Arab states, they counseled.

Nixon persisted and, according to some accounts, doubled the amount of aid Israel had requested. Riding herd on the bureaucrats, Nixon repeatedly intervened to push the transports along. Informed about a dispute regarding the type of air transportation, Nixon at one point exclaimed in frustration: "Tell them to send everything that can fly." Over the course of a month US airplanes conducted 815 sorties with over 27,900 tons of materiel.

Israel was saved due to this massive infusion of military aid. Meir referred to Nixon with enormous affection for the rest of her life. Nixon, despised by many in the US, was hailed as a hero in Israel. And Nixon (who had garnered a minority of the Jewish vote in 1972) received little or no political benefit at home for his trouble, leaving office the following year.

So what does this have to do with Obama? The Obama skeptics do not for a moment believe that Obama, in the face of domestic and international pressure similar to what Nixon faced, would rise to the occasion at a critical moment in Israel's history and "tell them to send everything that can fly."

In every significant interaction in Obama's adult life with those who distain and vilify Israel - from Rashid Khalidi to Reverend Jeremiah Wright to Louis Farrakhan - Obama has demonstrated passive resignation and indifference.

He did not stand up to his friend Khalidi, the Palestinian activist, professor and former Palestinian spokesman whom Obama honored at a farewell dinner, and object to Palestinian invectives that Israel was an apartheid state. He did not recoil, until Wright insulted him at the National Press Club, from Wright when he learned that Wright considered Israel a "dirty word" and postulated that Israel had invented an "ethnic bomb."

He did not heed (or was oblivious to) public pleas from Jewish organizations to avoid the Million Man March that Farrakhan organized; nor did he years later leave his church when it honored Farrakhan. It took a hateful rant from another wide-eyed preacher against Hillary Clinton, just when Obama needed to cool intra-party animosities, to do that.

And if any further proof were needed, Obama's actions with regard to the Kyl-Lieberman Amendment, the measure to classify the Iranian National Guard as a terrorist organization, should settle the question of Obama's intestinal fortitude when it comes to Israel. An issue presented itself: a choice between, on the one hand, taking a stance against Israel's most vile enemy, Iran, and, on the other, appeasing the far Left of his own party.

Obama chose to satisfy the MoveOn.org crowd and opposed the amendment. The amendment would have been "saber rattling" and unduly provocative, Obama argued at the time. Senators Dick Durbin, Harry Reid, Hillary Clinton and three quarters of the U.S. Senate voted for the amendment.

Once his nomination was secured, Obama told those assembled at the AIPAC convention that he supported classification of the Iranian National Guard as a terrorist organization, a move he well understood was important to Israel's security and to AIPAC's members. Yet under just a smidgen of political pressure during the primary race, he had not been able to muster the will to support a modest measure which inured to Israel's benefit.

Is there anything in all this to suggest that in a potential crisis, when much of the world would be pressuring him to let Israel die, Obama would push all the naysayers aside and demand to "send them everything that can fly"? There is not a shred of evidence to suggest that he would be beyond persuasion when it came down to Israel's survival. In fact, all the available evidence indicates that the opposite is true.

That does not mean Obama will not carry the majority of the Jewish vote. Jews are overwhelmingly Democratic, and it is certainly the case that for many American Jews the secular liberal agenda takes precedence over everything else in presidential politics.

For these voters, then, "1973" is not uppermost in their minds. Their devotion to liberalism is controlling, and for their own peace of mind they are willing to accept Obama's generic expressions of warm feelings toward Israel.

Indeed the temptation to believe in Obama's bland promises of support for Israel is a tempting one for liberal Jews. If they can convince themselves that he will be "fine on Israel," no conflict arises between their liberal impulses and their concern for Israel. The urge to believe is a powerful thing, especially when the alternative is an intellectual or moral quandary.

It is also the case that some American Jews simply do not believe Israel is in peril, or that "1973" is remotely relevant. They imagine Iran is merely spouting nonsense, that Hizbullah and Hamas lack the organization or competence to threaten Israel's survival, and that Israel will muddle along indefinitely.

But some Jews are incapable of deluding themselves that Obama would be the most resolute candidate in defending Israel. In quiet moments of contemplation and in noisy debates with family members and friends, they worry about the tenuous nature of Israel's existence and the dangers which lurk from within and outside Israel's borders. These Jews cannot imagine a world without Israel and could not countenance election of a president who, in Israel's moment of peril, could well falter.

And that is why these obstinate Obama skeptics, some even after a lifetime of Democratic voting, will not pull the lever for him. For them some things rank higher than even the top items on the liberal political agenda. The risk is, in their minds, too great that when Israel needs help the most, Obama will buckle and Israel will be crushed.

Many, albeit not all and likely not even most, American Jews will therefore decline to vote for Obama. They know that if the majority of their co-religionists had their way and George McGovern, rather than Richard Nixon, had been in the White House in 1973, Israel might not have survived.

A few barbs from their fellow congregants, amazed they would not vote for a Democrat for president, are a small burden to bear as they cast their vote for the candidate who - they are certain - when the chips are down, will send everything that can fly.

July 1, 2008
Jennifer Rubin
THE JERUSALEM POST

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The fact that he says he would talk to the genocidal fanatics of Iran without preconditions (along with the dictators of North Korea, Syria, Cuba and Venezuela) needn't bother them at all.

Because for them, there's only one thing that matters about Obama. He's not a Republican!

For the overwhelmingly Democrat-supporting American Jews, voting for a Republican is as unthinkable as eating a ham sandwich on Yom Kippur. Indeed, a number of them would rather eat a ham sandwich on Yom Kippur, because their conviction that religion is bunk and has nothing to do with being Jewish comes second only to their conviction that Republicans are the acme of evil.

That is because they think that to be Jewish is to be liberal in outlook. Therefore to be a Jew is to be a Democrat. End of story. Unlike their British counterparts, American Jews haven't become more conservative as their prosperity has increased over the generations. (This is not true of the growing minority of mainly younger American Jews, who are markedly more Orthodox and thus, since they are rather more in tune with authentic Jewish ethics such as truth, justice and the difference between right and wrong, are indeed voting Republican; but let that pass.)

Being Jewish, think liberal American Jews, means showing that you are not prejudiced against minorities. That means adopting the core presumption of 'victim culture' that minorities are never at fault. That means in turn that if an ethnic or religious minority is prejudiced against you, you can't criticize it because to do so means you are prejudiced.

True, the fact that Obama belongs to a kooky church makes them uneasy. The fact that he associates with various mafia types and nut-jobs makes them twitch a bit. The fact that he would go cap in hand to Iran and Syria makes at least some of them suck their teeth.

But they know that he must be their friend because he is a Democrat and he is black. They know that he cannot be their enemy because they know that President Bush is their enemy.

The fact that Bush is arguably the greatest friend the Jewish people has ever had in the White House cannot possibly be true because Bush is a Republican and therefore can do no right.

Conversely, Obama can do no wrong. So American Jews ignore the fact that all Obama's foreign-policy advisers are veteran Israel-haters. They ignore his long-standing friendship with Columbia professor Rashid Khalidi.

Khalidi has written that Israel has carried out the 'ethnic cleansing' of Palestinians; that Israel should be replaced by a bi-national, cantonal system for Jews and Arabs; and that suicide bombings are a response to 'Israeli aggression'. Obama has said he merely had 'conversations' with Khalidi. But reports say the Khalidi and Obama families are long-standing friends. In 2000, Khalidi raised funds for Obama's failed bid for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. And according to the Los Angeles Times, Obama said his talks with the Khalidis served as 'consistent reminders to me of my own blind spots and my own biases. a conversation that is necessary not just around Mona and Rashid's dinner table', but around 'this entire world'.

No matter. All of this is simply erased from the gaze of America's Jews in their own collective blind spot. As a result, as pro-Palestinian blogger Ali Abunimah let slip at The Electronic Intifada, Obama is playing them for suckers. Abunimah wrote that during his campaign for the US Senate, Obama told him: ''Hey, I'm sorry I haven't said more about Palestine right now, but we are in a tough primary race. I'm hoping when things calm down I can be more upfront.'

He referred to my activism, including columns I was contributing to the Chicago Tribune critical of Israeli and US policy, 'Keep up the good work!''

So if, as is expected, Obama wins the Democratic presidential nomination, American Jews will vote for him and maintain their purity of soul.

Cluck cluck!

By Melanie Phillips
5/30/200830

Hat tip: Len Salonsky

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Since nature abhors a vacuum, Israel's deterrent capacity would be transferred to the hands of Syrian dictator and Iranian proxy Bashar Assad and his henchmen. Additionally, in the wake of an Israeli surrender of the Golan Heights on the heels of Iran's consolidation of its hold over Lebanon, Assad's regime will be triumphant. His decision to cast his country's lot with Iran will be perceived an act of brilliant statecraft.

While there is no certainty about how long it would take before Syria took advantage of the new situation to initiate aggression against Israel, it is clear that an Israeli withdrawal would raise tensions dramatically. And those tensions would find the remainder of Israeli territory more vulnerable to an Iranian-Syrian attack than ever before.

Today Syria already has the capacity to attack all of Israel with its Scud and Nodong ballistic missiles. But while these missiles can terrorize and kill Israeli civilians, their guidance systems are generally assessed as too primitive to enable them to be successfully deployed against tactical and strategic targets. Possession of the Golan Heights would enable Syria to use more conventional armaments to precisely target IDF positions, arms depots and attack formations throughout Northern Israel. So one of the consequences of Israel's handover of the Golan Heights would be a steep rise in the price in blood that a post-Golan Heights-withdrawal-Israel would be forced to pay to win any future military contest with Iranian proxies Hizbullah or Syria. Indeed it would dwarf the heavy price that Israel paid for victory in 1967 and 1973.

And the cost of an Israeli relinquishment of the Golan would not be paid by Israel alone. With Syria in control of the Golan, Damascus and its allies in the Iranian axis would be even more willing to assert themselves in battlegrounds like Iraq. Their renewed will to fight would limit still further the possibility that the US could remove its forces from Iraq without risking the prospect of Iraq being forced into the Iranian axis.

Moreover, with Israel's strategic options massively curtailed as a result of its surrender of the Golan Heights, the Iranians would have far less cause to fear that Israel would launch a counter-attack in the event of an Iranian nuclear attack on Israel or a preemptive attack against Iranian nuclear installations.

In his statement Saturday in support of Olmert's announced intention to give Assad the Golan Heights, Halutz said, "For real peace one must be willing to pay a real price." While this is no doubt a true statement, it is completely irrelevant. Everyone knows that Israel won't get a "real peace" from Assad. Indeed it won't even get a pretend peace from Assad.

To understand why Israel can expect to receive absolutely nothing from Syria in exchange for the Golan Heights, one needs to look no further than Syria's last big peace treaty with a neighbor. In 1989, Syria agreed to withdraw all its troops from Lebanon under the Taif Accord that ended Lebanon's civil war. Needless to say, Syrian troops
continued their illegal occupation Lebanon for the next 15 years and still today continue to block Lebanese independence by arming Hizbullah.

Or consider Israel's "successful" treaty with Egypt, under which Egypt received the entire Sinai Peninsula in exchange for signing a peace treaty with Israel. Due to Egypt's willingness to sign the deal, Hosni Mubarak's dictatorship has been hailed as a moderate and friendly regime by the US and Israel alike. And yet, short of going to war against Israel, since it signed its peace treaty, Egypt has done just about everything in its power to endanger Israel's security.

At the cabinet meeting Sunday, Shin Bet Director Yuval Diskin warned the Olmert-Livni-Barak-Yishai government that Hamas has missiles with ranges long enough to hit Ashdod and Kiryat Gat. Diskin added that with the border between Gaza and Egypt breached, time is working in Hamas's favor. With every passing day of Israeli inaction, Hamas brings in more and more advanced weapons.

Aside from Iran, which is the major source of Hamas's weapons, Egypt has done more than any other country to enable Hamas's missile war against southern Israel and its takeover of Gaza in general. As MK Yuval Steinitz has noted repeatedly over the past several years, those missiles didn't just magically appear at the Egyptian-Gaza border. Those Iranian weapons are transported in ships through Egyptian waters that dock at Egyptian ports. The weapons are then offloaded onto trucks and travel overland across the country before reaching Gaza.

Egyptian security forces could intercept these weapons at any point along the way. But they pass through unmolested because Egypt wants Hamas to have those weapons to attack Israel and to keep the border destabilized.

And if this is what Israel gets from our supposedly moderate Egyptian friends, what can Israel expect to receive from our radical Syrian enemies? Here it bears noting that Syria is still preventing the International Atomic Energy Agency from sending inspectors to check out the site of the North Korean-built nuclear reactor in Syria that Israel destroyed last September 6. And again, if this is how Syria treats the UN, how will it treat Israel after Israel relinquishes its ability to threaten the Syrian capital?

Given all of these self-evident drawbacks of Olmert's proposal to surrender the Golan Heights to Syria, it is obvious that the plan is ridiculous. Similarly, in light of the massive danger such a withdrawal would entail, withdrawal advocates like Halutz are exposed as complete fools.

But the fact that this is true does not diminish the chance that Israel may still give up the Golan Heights if those who advocate this policy remain in power and continue to enjoy public respectability. Reality has counted for little in Israel's political and strategic discourse in recent years.

The lunacy of transferring control over south Lebanon to Hizbullah in 2000 and of giving Gaza to Fatah and Hamas in 2005 was just as obvious as the lunacy of relinquishing the Golan Heights to Syria in 2008. Moreover, the lunacy of transferring control over Gaza and Judea and Samaria to the PLO was obvious to anyone with eyes to see in the 1990s. And yet, even though all the opponents of these strategic fiascos made these arguments until they were blue in the face, Israel still withdrew.

All along and still today, standing against these voices of sane reality were voices preaching utopian peace. Men and women like Yossi Beilin, Shimon Peres, Yitzhak Rabin, Shulamit Aloni, Tzipi Livni, Yuli Tamir, Sheli Yachimovich, Amnon Shahak, Uri Saguy, Ehud Barak, Ariel Sharon, Ehud Olmert and their chorus of "peace" operatives in the media castigated all proponents of reality-based policymaking as nothing more than fear-mongering fanatics and enemies of peace almost indistinguishable from the likes of Hizbullah, Hamas and all the rest.

And of course the voices of reason were correct every time and never thanked for their wisdom. Indeed, they continue to this day to be condemned as fear-mongering fanatics.

And in spite of the fact that the utopian peace junkies have been wrong every single time, they are still the first to be put on television and the radio to advocate Israel's capitulation on every conceivable front. Even as the cemeteries fill up with the charred corpses of Israelis killed because of their utopian madness, they are still feted as experts and wise men and elder statesmen.

The one hopeful sign of change is found in the Israeli public's reaction to the current malformed public debate about Olmert's new plan to give Assad the Golan Heights. In the past every time a government launched negotiations or simply called for unilateral surrender of land opinion polls showed an immediate jump of some 20 percent in public support for the initiative. Today's polls suggest that public support for a withdrawal from the Golan Heights has decreased since Olmert announced he is negotiating their surrender.

If during past negotiations and planned withdrawals, politicians enjoyed the support of 45 percent of Israelis for their moves, today Olmert has the support of only 22 percent of Israelis for his plan to give up the Golan Heights.

The fact that Israelis are reacting negatively to people like Olmert and Halutz and their advocated withdrawals for "peace," may simply be a consequence of the public's contempt for these men specifically. That is, it is possible that the public would be more supportive of capitulation to Syria if more popular leaders like former prime minister Ariel Sharon were advocating it.

But it is also possible that the public has finally had enough of these utopian gasbags and their capitulation agenda. One can only hope that this is the case. Because while Israel will not be destroyed if its leaders are stupid enough to relinquish the Golan Heights, without the Golan Heights, Israel's chances of survival in the long term will be vastly diminished.

Carolline B. Glick
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com

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-----------------

Response by Len S.:

"Peace operatives" seem to be the types vying to assume or retain control both in America and Israel. They and their constituencies have lost (if they ever had) the capacity to recognize, and act against evil.

Rather, they insist that their "feelings" be the gauge by which "civilized" nations should act. These are NOT students of history, finding that pursuit "irrelevant" in today's "modern world." Such well-intentioned fools (like those who brought home signed peace documents from meeting with Hitler) represent an existential threat to Israel and to America today. Their ascent to the corridors of power can only be pernicious.

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The day after Ramon's announcement, Defense Minister Ehud Barak went down to Egypt to conclude a ceasefire agreement with Hamas through the group's Arab sponsor - Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak. The terms of the accord require Israel to stop fighting Hamas. Hamas has pledged to decrease the number of rockets, missiles and mortars it shoots at Sderot, Ashkelon and surrounding communities. During its bombing hiatus, Hamas will build its army and bring in still more weapons and fighters from Iran through Egypt.

Once the ceasefire agreement is finalized, Hamas and Fatah will immediately reunify their forces. Since Israel has now accepted Hamas as a legitimate force, it will have no call for arguing against Fatah doing the same. Through the new Hamas-Fatah government, Hamas will maintain its military control over Gaza and expand its control over Judea and Samaria and the US-trained and armed PA militias. With Hamas formally ensconced in power, Western states will line up to recognize it and remove it from their terror lists. Israel will be forced to continue provide food, water, fuel, medical care, electricity, jobs and consumer markets for the Palestinians.

Hamas's great leap forward on Monday and Tuesday would have been enough to put a smile on Assad's face but then along came Wednesday and turned that smile into a glow of unqualified delight. For on Wednesday, Syria regained effective control over Lebanon and was restored to its position of honor in the Arab world. Washington too, was compelled to forego its legitimate hostility.

Syria's road to Beirut was paved Wednesday by the Saniora government's official surrender of power to Hizbullah. In the "agreement" mediated by Qatar - one of Iran's Persian Gulf affiliates - Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Saniora ceded control over the Lebanese government to Hizbullah, which now has a cabinet majority. This couldn't be better news for Syria.

Hizbullah has acted as Damascus's chief defender in Lebanon since Lebanon's now defeated March 14 democracy movement forced Syrian troops out of the country in March 2005 after Damascus masterminded the assassination of former prime minister Rafik Hariri. Hizbullah's takeover of the Lebanese government will enable Syria to again treat Lebanon as its colony. Hizbullah's control of the Lebanese government has also guaranteed that Beirut will stop supporting the UN's investigation of Hariri's murder and this is deeply significant for Damascus.

With the termination of the UN inquiry comes the termination of Damascus's international isolation. Since the regime in Damascus is no longer in danger of being convicted of murder, it will be impossible for Western governments to argue that it should be overthrown or even sanctioned for its criminal behavior. The Olmert-Livni-Barak(nee Peretz) government is at least partially to blame for Hizbullah's takeover of Lebanon.

By refusing to fight the 2006 war with Hizbullah to victory, the Olmert-Livni-Peretz government paved the way for the Iranian proxy group's takeover of Lebanon. Last week the Olmert-Livni-Barak government had the option of acting to prevent Hizbullah's takeover of Lebanon. In deciding to do nothing, it enabled Hizbullah's putsch in Western Beirut and Tripoli and through them, its assertion of control over the whole of Lebanon.

So between Monday and Wednesday, the Olmert-Livni-Barak government enabled Iran's proxies and Syria's terror clients to entrench their control along its northern and southern borders. And that isn't all it did. Just as the Saniora government was signing its unconditional surrender to Hizbullah in Doha, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's office released its announcement that Israel is negotiating the surrender of the Golan Heights to Syria through Turkish mediators.

Ankara and Damascus released identical announcements of the talks at the same time as Jerusalem. Although the official scripts were serious in tone, once they were out, Syrian spokesmen could not restrain their glee. Members of Assad's ruling clique rightly bragged that Israel's acceptance of Assad as a legitimate negotiating partner makes it impossible for the Sunni Arab states and the US to boycott Damascus.

So just two months after the Lebanese, Saudis, Jordanians and Egyptians boycotted the Arab League summit in Damascus as a sign of their rejection of Syria's Iranian controllers and of Damascus's support for the Hizbullah takeover of Lebanon, thanks to the Olmert-Livni-Barak government, Syria is again a full-fledged and respectable member of the international community. The US and Iran's Arab foes have no choice but to accept Syria now.

Israelis like retired generals Amnon Lipkin Shahak and Uri Saguy have close personal relations with IDF Chief of General Staff Lt. Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi and Barak and have been pushing for an Israeli withdrawal from the Golan Heights for some 15 years. Their argument for moving ahead in recent years has been that by offering the Golan Heights to Syria, Israel will pull Syria out of Iran's sphere of influence. Opponents of negotiations like Mossad chief Meir Dagan have argued that such negotiations will have just the opposite effect.

As Syria's ecstatic reaction to Israel's announcement demonstrated, the Saguy-Shahak-Barak-Ashkenazi crowd is completely wrong and Dagan is completely right. By negotiating with Syria while it is firmly entrenched in the Iranian axis, Israel has not moderated the regime. It has legitimized Syria's presence in the Iranian axis.

That is, the Olmert-Livni-Barak government's embrace of Syria as a credible negotiating partner and Olmert's statement Wednesday evening that he supports giving Syria the Golan Heights even as the Assad regime hosts Hamas and a dozen other genocidal jihadist groups; as Syria acts as Hizbullah's partner and logistical base and the main entry point for jihadists into Iraq; and with Damascus having effectively rendered itself Iran's Arab colony means that Israel has legitimized Syria's behavior. Now that Syria has received Israel's stamp of approval, the other Arabs and the US have no excuse for continuing to oppose it.

In Israel, news of Olmert's embrace of Syria was greeted with derision by the public. According to a Channel 2 poll conducted after Olmert's office announced its negotiations with Syria, 70 percent of Israelis oppose surrendering the Golan to Syria in exchange for peace. 58 percent of Israelis believe that Olmert is only conducting negotiations to divert the public's attention away from the corruption probe being carried out against him.

It is deeply frustrating that Olmert, who led Israel to defeat in war in 2006 at the hands of Hizbullah; who has allowed southern Israel to become a free fire zone for Hamas; who is under 5 separate criminal investigations for financial corruption and influence peddling; and who is conducting talks with the powerless Fatah terror group towards the surrender of Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem to Hamas, now is pushing an Israeli surrender of the Golan Heights to Syria. And all the more depressing is the fact that he is getting away with it.

Many supporters of Israel cannot understand how it is that Olmert and his colleagues - principally Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni - have managed to stay in power. Throughout their two year tenure in office, Olmert and his colleagues have displayed nothing but incompetence bordering on idiocy in their conduct of Israel's foreign affairs. They have caused enormous damage to Israel's strategic ties with the US by refusing to contend with Iran's Palestinian, Lebanese and Syrian clients and proxies or with Iran itself. Why, these supporters of Israel ask, is the Olmert-Livni-Barak government still in power?

The Olmert-Livni-Barak government has three main assets that make it all but impossible to topple and set a date for new general elections. The first asset is Olmert's complete and utter lack of shame and coupled with his unbridled opportunism. Olmert is a man who will stop at nothing to remain in power. He will lose the war with Hizbullah and refrain from defending southern Israel. He will imperil the north by facilitating Hizbullah's takeover of Lebanon and its rearmament. He will imperil Jerusalem and the center of the country by negotiating the surrender of Judea and Samaria and eastern Jerusalem. He will do all of this and more if that is what it takes to stay in power. And by his estimation that is what needs to be done because to stay in power he needs to maintain the support of the post-Zionists who control the media, the Labor party and the state prosecution. All these make up the government's second asset.

Former prime minister Ariel Sharon exposed and exacerbated the underlying corruption of Israel's political classes by doctrinaire leftists who control the media and the state prosecution when in late 2003 he responded to the corruption probe being carried out against him and his sons by announcing that he would expel all Israelis from Gaza and hand the area over to the Palestinians. For his efforts on behalf of the radical Left, Sharon received a Get Out of Jail Free card and was hailed as a visionary leader.

Already on Sunday - after Ramon announced the government's negotiations with Hamas - Attorney General Menachem Mazuz said that the current probe of suspicions that Olmert received hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes from American businessman Morris Talansky will take months to conclude. The implication was clear: Olmert is free to go ahead with all negotiations toward land giveaways.

The fact that Olmert's announcement of his talks with Syria was synchronized with the release of new details of his alleged criminal activities made a lot of reporters snort. The opportunism was too blatant to ignore. And yet, the heavyweights at Ha'aretz and their water carriers at state television didn't bat a lash as they launched into impassioned defenses of Olmert. Ignoring the general glee in Damascus, Channel 1's diplomatic reporter and Olmert cheerleader Ayala Hasson said the announcement couldn't be spin since Syria released its announcement of the talks the same time Olmert's office did. And of course, Hasson explained sagely, Syria wouldn't want to do Olmert any favors.

Labor ministers like Peace Now founders Education Minister Yuli Tamir said that obviously Labor will be compelled to stay in the government now because the "peace process" must not be sacrificed for anything - even if it means that a crook remains in charge.

The Olmert-Livni-Barak government's final asset is the fact that the Right was decimated in the 2006 elections. Without Shas and some breakaways from Kadima, there is simply no way to bring down the government. The votes aren't there. And Shas isn't going anywhere. Olmert made sure of that by approving 286 building permits for new homes for Shas voters in Beitar Illit on Wednesday afternoon.

So Olmert and his cadres remain in power and all of Israel suffers. But at least Syria's happy. And so is Iran. And so is Hizbullah. And so is Hamas.

By Caroline B. Glick

Caroline B. Glick is the senior Middle East Fellow at the Center for Security Policy in Washington, DC and the deputy managing editor of The Jerusalem Post.

http://www.jewishworldreview.com/0508/glick052208.php3

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Arnold Toynbee calls the displacement of the Arabs an atrocity greater than any committed by the Nazis. Other nations when victorious on the battlefield dictate peace terms. But when Israel is victorious, it must sue for peace. Everyone expects the Jews to be the only real Christians in this world. Other nations, when they are defeated, survive and recover but should Israel be defeated it would be destroyed. Had Nasser triumphed last June [1967] he would have wiped Israel off the map, and no one would have lifted a finger to save the Jews.

No commitment to the Jews by any government, including our own, is worth the paper it is written on. There is a cry of outrage all over the world when people die in Vietnam or when two Blacks are executed in Rhodesia. But, when Hitler slaughtered Jews no one remonstrated with him. The Swedes, who are ready to break off diplomatic relations with America because of what we do in Vietnam, did not let out a peep when Hitler was slaughtering Jews. They sent Hitler choice iron ore, and ball bearings, and serviced his troop trains to Norway.

The Jews are alone in the world. If Israel survives, it will be solely because of Jewish efforts. And Jewish resources. Yet at this moment, Israel is our only reliable and unconditional ally. We can rely more on Israel than Israel can rely on us. And one has only to imagine what would have happened last summer [1967] had the Arabs and their Russian backers won the war, to realize how vital the survival of Israel is to America and the West in general.

I have a premonition that will not leave me; as it goes with Israel so will it go with all of us. Should Israel perish, the holocaust will be upon us all.

Hat tip: Suzanne R.

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Meanwhile, shifting the lens to the north, last week the head of Israeli Military Intelligence, Maj.-Gen. Amos Yadlin, reported to the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee that Syria is "purchasing massive amounts of ground-to-ground and anti-tank missiles from Russia"—a country whose name tends to turn up in these contexts—and that, while "there is a low probability that Syria will initiate a war against Israel," Syria could launch attacks in the Golan Heights even though it could lead to war.

Another report gave an even more ominous picture of an "unprecedented military buildup in Syria," including the deployment of 300 home-manufactured Scud missiles just north of the Golan Heights, the establishment of new commando units, and a spike in training for urban and guerrilla warfare.

A source in IDF Northern Command said that "Syria saw the difficulty the IDF had during the fighting inside the southern Lebanese villages [last summer] and now . . . wants to draw us—in the event of a war—into battles in built-up areas where they think they will have the upper hand."

And over in Lebanon itself, the fallout from last summer's war is just as negative and the prognosis no better. In his same testimony to the Knesset committee last week, Maj.-Gen. Yadlin noted that up to several hundred Al Qaeda members have arrived in Lebanon with the aim of attacking UNIFIL and other Western targets; and that Hezbollah remains entrenched in southern Lebanon and keeps amassing large quantities of arms from Syria and Iran.

Rounding out the circle by returning to the south, Yadlin also said some Al Qaeda operatives have infiltrated Gaza as well, and that Hamas is gaining financial and political strength while its members receive training in Syria and Iran.

Overall, "the MI chief stressed that Iran continues to provide funding and weapons to Syria, Hamas, and Hezbollah, and has close military and intelligence coordination with Syria." Add Russia to the mix and the picture is complete: a Shiite-Sunni-Russian terror-military axis seeking to surround, pressure, and harass Israel and ultimately eradicate it.

Tragically, this is happening at a time when Israel has a government hobbled by incompetence, unpopularity, scandals, infighting, (liberal secularism) and delusory dovishness, and that, apart from stepped-up training for some IDF units, is essentially doing nothing about the growing threats. It does not help that Israel's U.S. ally keeps obsessively choreographing diplomatic dances with the likes of PA chairman Mahmoud Abbas, the Saudis, and the Arab League with which Israel dutifully complies - achieving nothing except to further project weakness to Israel's enemies and lull the parts of the Israeli public and American Jews that are eager to be lulled.

As Schiff points out in another analysis, it was the reluctance to enter a two-front war that led Israel to allow Hezbollah's major military buildup in southern Lebanon in the first place. After Israel pulled out of southern Lebanon in 2000 against the advice of most of the IDF top brass, Prime Minister Ehud Barak and then Prime Minister Ariel Sharon found themselves facing a Palestinian terror onslaught mounted from the West Bank and Gaza and did not want to further complicate matters by doing something about Hezbollah in Lebanon.

So Israel, Schiff notes, "never once struck at the convoys transferring the missiles to Lebanon, and never struck even one Hezbollah missile warehouse, or even the short-range rockets near the border." The end result was that Israel found itself at war on two fronts anyway—when Hamas attacked from Gaza and kidnapped a soldier last June, and Hezbollah followed suit the next month with an attack and kidnapping from Lebanon; and now faces the prospect of a further two-front war against enemies with enhanced capabilities.

Hope resides mainly in the interim report later this month of the Winograd Committee, set up to investigate the failures in last summer's war and also expected to address the whole period of 2000-2006. Sufficiently harsh conclusions against Prime Minister Ehud Olmert could lead him to resign or cause other political ferment leading to new elections. As time goes on and Israel, aside from antiterror policing work in the West Bank, remains almost entirely passive against the growing threats, it does not appear that Olmert's government has the will or ability to do anything about them, and its continued tenure appears to spell disaster.

If there is a chance—apart from a strike on Iran that would alter the region's strategic balance—for Israel to avoid another two-front entanglement, it lies mainly in regaining its deterrence by making an effective move in Gaza. A hard-enough blow to Hamas and its friends there could make Hezbollah and Syria think twice about starting more trouble in the north. But there may be little time left, and such an outcome requires a functioning government in Jerusalem (and Washington, D.C.). It also calls for a Washington able to look past short-term diplomatic concerns (self-interest) and give Israel the backing it needs.

Commentary by David R.: This difficulty we are having in fighting urban guerilla engagements is self inflicted, not the product of either their innovation, or a lack of ability on our part. It is a lack of will on the part of the western world. This "problem" will change when they hurt us badly enough for us to take it seriously and stop pussyfooting around. There was no guerilla problem in either Hiroshima or Nagasaki.

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a. No moderation from the Palestinians or Islam. No realist ever has.
b. Western and European governments will try to deny legitimization of Hamas with little effect.
c. Some in the U.S. will call for ending financial subsidies of the Palestinian Authority, but Congress lacks the will to act in America's or Israel's best interests.
d. The free world will recant on its offer of a Palestinian state now that it has been made clear, yet again, that Palestine will be a terrorist state.
e. Liberals in Israel and the U.S. State Department will continue to advocate giving away more precious land and putting Israel at greater and greater risk.
f. Congressional influence will continue to be sold to Corporations and Media outlets who themselves are owned, in part or in total, by foreign Islamic interests - including Fox News. Middle Eastern countries, through growing ownership and control of the American media, will actively pursue feeding the American public a bitter pill that (if allowed to be swallowed) will lead to the media-assisted suicide of America.
g. Congressmen, who are directly or indirectly on the campaign contribution payrolls of Mexico, and Middle Eastern governments such as Saudi Arabia and Iran, will continue their attempts to disengage from the Middle East.

So, the first Palestinian Authority election has endorsed Hamas. What's the big surprise? In December, 2005, the Egyptian electorate came out strongly for the Muslim Brotherhood, a radical Islamic party. In Iraq, the post-Saddam electorate voted in a pro-Iranian Islamist as prime minister. In Lebanon, the voters celebrated the withdrawal of Syrian troops by voting Hezbollah into the government. Likewise, radical Islamic elements have prospered in elections in Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan. Only someone blind in one eye and unable to see out of the other is befuddled by the events in Palestine. Yes, elections are bringing to power Islamic regimes in the Middle East, and some are deadly enemies of the West. It’s not a question of what went wrong with democracy. The recent democratic elections are simply a validation of what all rational people already knew. Islam is a formidable enemy of the West and a lethal threat to the existence of Israel. The PA elections reveal that the Islamic cause of exterminating Israel has now been pubically endorsed for all the world to see by the Palestinian electorate. It amounts to nothing less than a mandate. The only solution is to deal with reality, recognize and confront the threats. Just maybe the rantings of Iran will begin to take on more credibility in Europe and the United States Senate.

This may come as a surprise to the cool-aid drinkers in Congress, the U.S. State Department and much of Europe, but it’s not Islam or some obscure cultural factor that accounts for the difference in the outcome of installing democracy in the Middle East. Instead, permit the immodest observation that America’s ideological enemies in the Middle East have been pushed around and disrupted, but not yet defeated - not by a long shot and soon they will have nuclear weapons.

The issue is Islam itself and the centuries-old unrelenting ambition for world dominance by Islamofascists. What differentiates Islam in the current incarnation is their clear grasp of fact, history and technology. As harsh as it may sound to Americans trying to get in touch with their feminine side, in all conflicts there must be a winner who brutally crushes a loser and then imposes the unconditional terms of peace. There can be no peace without a winner and a loser. Adherents of Islam understand this. Muslims understand that no negotiation ever resolves conflict! Negotiation is only necessary when needed to extend a simmering conflict indefinitely until such day as the weaker party feels strong enough to once again try to reassert dominance. Today, internet chat rooms have replaced the ancient market squares and mosques as the mechanism for exporting the faith and recruiting.

Diplomats say:
a. Slow down. That would be the worst possible decision. The better choice would be to speed up - exponentially.
b. Settle in for the long run. The better choice would be to defeat our enemies quickly, decisively and without remorse or mercy. The slow down alternative results in unnecessary deaths in a gradual war of attrition on the "good guys."
c. Give diplomacy a chance. Diplomacy is a code word for negotiation. Attempts at negotiation will resolve nothing until the enemy is defeated. Ask Israel. Diplomacy is irrelevant anywhere in the Middle East until there is a winner and a loser. Iran, Syria, Egypt, Saudia Arabia and the Palestinian Authority understand this. The U.S. State Department has not a clue.
d. Try to establish stability. Forget about stability. Focus on a crushing victory first. Take the sissy gloves off and get on with it. Stability only comes from, and subsequent to, the defeat of your enemy. Pandering and hand-wringing, typical of Congress and the seditionist New York Times, only prolongs instability, both in the Middle East and in America.

There is no dilemma posed by the Hamas election victory. European and Western capitals need to recognize that Palestinians, like the Iranians, and like the Germans in 1933 – have chosen a path of ideological and physical world domination. Concerned politicians may attempt to isolate and reject the Hamas-led Palestinian Authority, but the only solution that will have any reasonable chance of success will be to respond to the first lethal misstep of the Palestinian Authority against innocent women and children with a mind-numbing ruthless retaliation, from the PA leadership to the PA janitors, and decisively crush any PA desire to continue the error of their ways. The Israeli (or American) retaliation to the next Islamic suicide bomber or rocket attack should be sufficient to cause most people in Europe and America to say, “Oh, my God!” Only then will the military response have been just about right. Forget proportional or measured responses. Either win decisively now or surrender. As for collateral damage, it is the price our adversaries should have to pay in spades for their barbaric trangressions against humanity. Let's see some real collateral damage.

The following is a message for Congress and the Main Stream Media from a self-appointed spokesperson for the American public: "Engaging in sedition and giving aid and comfort to America's enemies will prolong the war. Prolonging the war will result in more of your own needlessly bleeding and dying. If you're not willing to win, if you're not going to fight to win, decisively, right now, if you think the solution is a negotiated peace, you are needlessly sacrificing American lives. Self-imposed restraint is viewed by Muslims as a pathetic weakness, and make no mistake, you are in a fight for our life."

Americans are tired of listening to Congressional Democrats and weak-kneed liberal Republicans wail in the night some variation of, "Cut and run." In the liberal view of the world, there are no other choices but to attempt negotiation, and failing that surrender and beg for mercy. If America stays in the Middle East another day, and there is no doubt we should and we will, then we as Americans must resolve that any and every future Muslim atrocity be met with additional examples of “shock and awe,” not proportionally but 1,000 fold. Until then, nothing will change, and the Islamic goal of exterminating Israel will remain on track and viable.

In the meantime, the next Congressman, staffer, or media employee who recklessly or knowingly releases classified information should be incarcerated for a long, long time. It's fine to disagree with the Congressional vote by our elected representatives to go to war, however there is a profound difference between disagreeing with a Congressional vote and attempting to undermine the entire United States of America by revealing classified information to the enemy or engaging in sedition.

The following is free advice, and worth far more than you paid for it: "Never start a fight, let alone a war, unless you are determined and committed to win, at any cost – at any cost - all or nothing - all in!" The “Islamic Wars” returned at the Munich Olympics from obscurity and Islam is fully committed to this newest struggle world-wide, as demonstrated by their reoccurring barbaric atrocities.

We "misunderestimate" Islam at our own peril. Political events subsequent to 9-11-2001 have convinced the majority of Americans, and the Muslims in the Middle East, that American liberals couldn't find the will to defend America if it were presented to them on a serving plate by Senator John F. Kerry's man-servant. Since liberals refuse to deal with the fact that America really is in a war for survival, in a fight for its literal existence, hopefully conservatives will just deal with it. Let's win and then discuss our recriminations; but for all that is precious in America, let's not lose.

The question now is about us. We know who they are.

Red State Patriot

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Bluster aside, Carter's chief complaint seems to be that anyone who identifies with Israel, whether in the form of individual support or in a more organized capacity, is incapable of grappling honestly with the issues in the Arab-Israeli conflict. But Carter is poorly placed to make this claim. If such connections alone are sufficient to discredit his
critics, then by his own logic Carter is undeserving of a hearing. After all, the Carter Center, the combination research and activist project he founded at Emory University in 1982, has for years prospered from the largesse of assorted Arab financiers.

Especially lucrative have been Carter's ties to Saudi Arabia. Before his death in 2005, King Fahd was a longtime contributor to the Carter Center and on more than one occasion contributed million-dollar donations. In 1993 alone, the king presented Carter with a gift of $7.6 million. And the king was not the only Saudi royal to commit funds to
Carter's cause. As of 2005, the king's high-living nephew, Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal, has donated at least $5 million to the Carter Center.

Meanwhile the Saudi Fund for Development, the kingdom's leading loan organization, turns up repeatedly on the center's list of supporters. Carter has also found moneyed allies in the Bin Laden family, and in 2000 he secured a promise from ten of Osama bin Laden's brothers for a $1 million contribution to his center. To be sure, there is no evidence that the Bin Laden’s maintain any contact with their terrorist relation. But applying Carter's own standard, his extensive contacts with the Saudi elite must make his views on the Middle East suspect.

High praise for Carter's work -- and not inconsiderable financial support -- also comes from the United Arab Emirates. In 2001, Carter even traveled to the country to accept the Zayed International Prize for the Environment, named for Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan al-Nahyan, the late UAE potentate and former president-for-life. Having claimed his $500,000 purse, Carter enthused that the "award has special significance for me because it is named for my personal friend, Sheikh Zayed Bin Sultan al-Nahyan." Carter also hailed the UAE as an "almost completely open and free society" -- a surreal depiction of a rigidly authoritarian country where the government handpicks a select group of citizens to vote and strictly controls the editorial content of the newspapers and where Islamic Sharia courts judge "sodomy" punishable by death. (To appreciate the depth of Carter's cynicism, one need only compare his gushing encomia to the emirates with his likening of Israel, the most modern and democratic country in the entire Middle East, with the racist "apartheid" of South Africa.)

On top of these official honors, Carter was offered a forum at the Abu Dhabi-based Zayed Center for Coordination and Follow Up, the country's official "think-tank." For his part, Carter declared his intention to forge a "partnership" with the center; in a 2002 letter, Carter praised its efforts to "promote peace, health, and human rights around the
world."

Inconveniently for Carter, the center has since become famous for a different reason: It has repeatedly played host to anti-Semitic speakers who have denied the Holocaust, supported terrorism, and alleged an international conspiracy of Jews and Zionists to dominate the world. (Harvard University, in contrast to Carter's enthusiasm for Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan al-Nahyan, rejected a $2.5 million from the ruler in 2004 due to his ties to the Zayed Center.)

Nor does this exhaust the list of Carter's backers in the Arab world. Still other supporters include Sultan Qaboos bin Said, who sits atop Oman's absolute monarchy. An occasional host to Carter, the sultan has also made generous contributions to his center. Prior to inviting Carter for a "personal visit" in 1998, the sultan pledged $1 million to the Carter Center, promising additional support in the future. Similarly, Morocco's Prince Moulay Hicham Ben Abdallah, the second in line to the kingdom's throne, has in the past partnered with Carter on the center's initiatives.

On its face, there is nothing objectionable about these contacts. What has raised critics' eyebrows is Carter's immense chutzpah: In securing the financial support of assorted Arab leaders, Carter has gradually come to parrot their anti-Israel political agenda -- even as he styles himself as a dispassionate mediator in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

This was nowhere more evident than in Carter's credulous support for the late Yasir Arafat. Although Carter had championed Araft as a committed peacemaker since his presidency, in the face of ample evidence to the contrary, his apologies for the terrorist chieftain became particularly shameless in the 1990s. When Arafat and his PLO backed Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait, thereby loosing the support and -- more important for the corrupt Arafat -- the funding of neighboring Sunni Arab powers, Carter embarked on a Middle East publicity tour to revive Arafat's diminishing fortunes. As recorded by Carter biographer Douglas Brinkley, "together [Carter and Arafat] strategized on how to recover the PLO's standing in the United States." In desperation, Carter turned up in Saudi Arabia on what Brinkley called "essentially a fund-raising mission for the PLO," pleading with King Fahd to restore Arafat to the Saudi dole.

Now that Arafat's Fatah has been replaced with Hamas, Carter has again proven himself a reliable ally of Palestinian extremism. Scarcely had the terrorist group ascended to power last January than Carter launched a media blitz urging the United States to circumvent its own laws against financing terrorism in order to fund Hamas. As the New York Times put with exquisite finesse, Carter called on Western nations to "redirect their relief aid to United Nations organizations and nongovernmental organizations to skirt legal restrictions" -- that is, to launder money to a terrorist group. When American policymakers declined to heed his advice, and Israel proved unwilling to bankroll the enemy seeking its destruction, Carter promptly denounced the both countries for their "common commitment to eviscerate the government of elected Hamas."

With its relentless disparagement of Israel and its reckless abuse of the historical record, Carter's latest book may fairly be seen as the logical culmination of his many years of anti-Israel incitement. There was of course no shortage of clues about Carter's sympathies in his earlier books. In his 2004 memoir Sharing Good Times, for instance, Carter recalled the trips he has taken over the years to Arab dictatorships in Syria and Saudi Arabia and noted with evident satisfaction that he was "always greeted with smiles and friendship."

Readers may be forgiven for finding nothing shocking in this admission. Carter may still harbor illusions of grandeur, seeing himself as an instrument of peace in the Middle East. But an altogether different element explains his enduring popularity in Arab capitals: Not for all the millions they have sunk into the Carter Center over the years could Arab elites have hoped to purchase such a prominent and willing propaganda tool.

Hat tip: David R.

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The Mystery of Hate
by Yair Lapid

Hundreds of years of fighting, six and a half wars, billions of dollars gone with the wind, tens of thousands of victims, not including the boy who laid down next to me on the rocky beach of lake Karon in 1982 and we both watched his guts spilling out. The helicopter took him and until this day I do not know whether he is dead or survived. All this, and one cannot figure it out.

And its not only what happened but all that did not happen - hospitals that were never built, universities that were never opened, roads that were never paved, the three years that were taken from millions of teenagers for the sake of the army. And despite all the above, we still do not have the beginning of a clue to the mystery of where it all started:

Why do they hate us so much?

I am not talking about the Palestinians this time. Their dispute with us is intimate, focused, and it has a direct effect on their lives. Without getting into the "which side is right" question, it is obvious that they have very personal reasons not to stand our presence here. We all know that eventually this is how it will be solved: in a personal way, between them and us, with blood sweat and tears that will stain the pages of the agreement. Until then, it is a war that could at least be understood, even if no sane person is willing to accept the means that are used to run it by.

It is the others. Those I cannot understand. Why does Hassan Nasralla, along with tens of thousands of his supporters, dedicate his life, his visible talents, his country's destiny, to fight a country he has never even seen, people he has never really met and an army that he has no reason to fight?

Why do children in Iran, who can not even locate Israel on the map (especially because it is so small), burn its flag in the city center and offer to commit suicide for its elimination? Why do Egyptian and Jordanian intellectuals agitate the innocent and helpless against the peace agreements, even though they know that their failure will push their countries 20 years back? Why are the Syrians willing to stay a pathetic and depressed third world country, for the dubious right to finance terror organizations that will eventually threaten their own country's existence? Why do they hate us so much in Saudi-Arabia? In Iraq? In Sudan? What have we done to them? How are we even relevant to their lives? What do they know about us? Why do they hate us so much in Afghanistan? They don't have anything to eat there, where do they get the energy to hate?

This question has so many answers and yet it is a mystery. It is true that it is a religious matter but even religious people make their choices. The Koran (along with the Shariaa - the Muslim parallel to the Jewish Halacha) consists of thousands of laws, why is it that we occupy them so much?

There are so many countries who gave them much better reasons to be angry. We did not start the crusades, we did not rule them during the colonial period, we never tried to convert them. The Mongolians, the Seljuk, the Greeks, the Romans, the Crusaders, the Ottomans, the British, they all conquered, ruined and plundered the whole region. We did not even try, so how come we are the enemy?

And if it is identification with their Palestinians brothers then where are the Saudi Arabian tractors building up the territories that were evacuated? What happened to the Indonesian delegation building a school in Gaza strip? Where are the Kuwaiti doctors with their modern surgical equipment? There are so many ways to love your brothers, why do they all prefer to help their brothers with hating?

Is it something that we do? Fifteen hundreds years of anti-Semitism taught us - in the most painful way possible - that there is something about us that irritates the world. So, we did the thing everyone wanted: we got up and left. We have established our own tiny little country, where we can irritate ourselves without interrupting others. We didn't even ask a lot for it. Israel is spread on a smaller territory than 1% of the territory of Saudi-Arabia, with no oil, no minerals, without settling on another existing state's territory. Most of the cities that were bombed this week were not plundered from anyone. Nahariya, Afula, and Karmiel did not even exist until we established them. The other katyusas landed on territories over which no one ever questioned our right with regards to them. In Haifa there were Jews already in the 3rd century BC and Tiberias was the place where the last Sanhedrin sat, so no one can claim we plundered them from anyone.

However, the hatred continues. As if no other destiny is possible. Active hatred, poisoned, unstoppable. Last Saturday the president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, called again "to act for the vanishing of Israel"' as if we were bacteria. We got used to it so much that we don't even ask why.

Israel does not hope and never did for Iran to vanish. As long as they wanted, we had diplomatic relations with them. We do not have a common border with them or even any bad memories. And still, they are willing to confront the whole western world, to risk a commercial boycott, to hurt their own quality of life, to crush what's left of their economy and all that for the right to passionately hate us.

I am trying to remember and cannot: have we ever done something to them? When? How? Why did he say in his speech that "Israel is the main problem of the Muslim world"? More than a billion people (are) living in the Muslim world, most of them in horrible conditions. They suffer from hunger, poverty, ignorance, bloodshed that spreads from Kashmir to Kurdistan, from dying Darfur to injured Bangladesh. How come we are the main problem? How exactly are we in their way?

I refuse to accept the argument that claims "that is just the way they are". They said it about us so many times that we have learned to accept this expression. There must be another reason, some dark secret that because of it, the citizens of South Lebanon allow to rouse the quiet border, to kidnap the soldiers of an army that has already retreated from their territory, to turn their country into a wasteland exactly at the time they finally escaped twenty years of disasters.

We got used to telling ourselves worn expressions - "it's the Iranian influence", or "Syria is stirring behind the scenes" - but it is just too easy (an) explanation. Because what about them? What about their thoughts? What about their hopes, loves, ambitions and their dreams? What about their children? When they send their children to die, does it seem enough for them to say that it was all worth while just because they hate us so much?

Hat tip: Suzanne Rothfeld

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It quickly became clear that Israel’s military response into Lebanon was tactically questionable (inept). With the knowledge that there was nothing to fear from the United States or Europe, Arab nations quickly changed sides in the conflict – supporting Hezbollah and Hassan Nasrallah. The United States was the biggest loser in the tide change of Middle East sentiment, losing all believability, either as a credible force or a deterrent in the Arab world.

The United Nations cease-fire resolution, described more accurately as a pause-fire resolution, has been hailed by the main stream media as a monumental success. The Internet blogosphere expressed profoundly the opposite reaction. While the United Nations resolution was not passed under Chapter 7 of the UN Charter and does not have the authority of international law, it does expose Israel to condemnation if Israel attempts to respond to, or defends itself from, future Hezbollah provocations. Probably the most alarming fact, from an Israeli perspective, is who in the United Nations has been given the responsibility for determining compliance. That gem of negotiation has been placed in the hands of UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, a man historically and notoriously anti-Semitic.

Inexplicably, the UN resolution, which the United States both sponsored and voted to adopt, makes no mention of either Syria or Iran. Without their support, Hezbollah would not exist let alone wage war against Israel. By ignoring Hezbollah's sponsors in the conflict, the UN resolution sends an unambiguous message to Iran and Syria that they can continue to equip and command terrorist proxy armies in Lebanon, the West Bank, Iraq and anywhere else with impunity, and foment violent unrest without fear of economic or military consequences. History has already been written that Hezbollah's aggression against Israel, and Israel's military action in defense of its sovereign territory, were morally equivalent.

The fate of the two IDF soldiers, Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev, was relegated to one paragraph in the UN resolution preamble, which links the return of the Israeli soldiers to the release of Lebanese terrorists held in Israel. The resolution all but eliminates any possibility of the soldiers returning home.

Then there is the question of an arms embargo and disarming Hezbollah, which the resolution puts off to some future date when Israel and Lebanon can agree to the terms of a "permanent cease-fire." Should that ever happen, it places the power to oversee an arms embargo against Hezbollah in the hands of the Lebanese government, of which Hezbollah is a prominent member. Can you see anything wrong with this picture?

Remember, the United States sponsored this UN resolution.

The UN resolution goes on to legitimize the claim of Lebanese sovereignty over the Shaba Farms, or Mount Dov - a vast area on the Golan Heights that separates the Syrian Golan from the Upper Galilee. The Shaba Farms area, long disputed between Israel and Syria, has now been placed on the UN negotiating table. By doing so, the UN rewarded Hezbollah's aggression by giving international legitimacy to its demand for territorial aggrandizement via acts of aggression. It must be an established law of the known universe - Israel can never expect the world to recognize any of its borders as final.

The diplomatic world refuses to acknowledge what should be obvious, i.e., Hezbollah and Syria are one in the same (appendages that have the same Islamic head - Iran), and Hamas and Syria will soon be one in the same, after remnants of the Palestinian Authority have been absorbed into Hamas - all with a unity of purpose and action. Since Hezbollah will neither disarm voluntarily, nor permit a search for hidden weapons stockpiles in Lebanon, it is hard to imagine – inconceivable more likely - that Iran and Syria will not reinitiate the conflict after re-supplying Hezbollah and Hamas.

If one needs proof of the inevitable, there is the nagging fact that no Islamic militant force, throughout recorded history, has ever voluntarily disarmed. In fact, no rational human being voluntarily disarms, particularly in the face of adversity or religious quest. In the Islamic case, Muslims are entirely rational. Muslims consistently make rational decisions in their own self interest. Prophet Mohammad is a profound unifying force and the Qur’an is their roadmap to the afterlife. No Muslim will ever voluntarily or willingly abandon fervent core beliefs, or give up the ability or forsake the tactics, to wage war against infidels. Any opinion to the contrary is worth what you paid for it. You would have better luck getting a “Born Again” Christian to forsake Jesus Christ – and that day will come if Islamic fascism is not stopped.

Military historians may someday show that Israel emulated the failed politically correct warfare strategy of the United States in Iraq (arguably the right war, but the wrong tactics). Modern intellectuals, political opportunists and those without military training have lost sight of history and the inviolate facts - all wars, without exception, are won with and by massive collateral damage, not by avoiding collateral damage. Battles can occasionally be won by precision strikes, but not wars – and particularly not wars for survival. The last man standing wins. It has always been and always will be, and the Islamic Wars will not end until the last man is standing. Muslims see their conflict, first with Israel and then Europe and the West, in exactly that light, supremely confident the last man standing will be a Muslim. Someday, liberals will realize that Islamic terrorism cannot be stopped with political correctness, only by overwhelming remorseless force. Until such a day that realists instead of opportunists warm the seats of Congress, U.S. State Department and the Kinneset, thousands if not millions will die at the altar of secular liberal fantasies.

War between Islam and Israel has but one purpose - to eliminate the nation-state of Israel. Ten thousand square miles of Jewish nationhood, established by the UN in 1948, has been under relentless assault by five million square miles of Muslim dominance, not counting Iran. It would be a really good thing if the Israeli sleeper were to awaken.

The logical extension of the United Nations' cumulative actions, after Israel has become a footnote in history, is to acquiesce to (foster) the eventual Islamic subjugation of France, Spain and Great Britain. If you reside in Europe, you’re next. Hopefully what remains of European civilization is paying attention. Those who are not concerned today can avail themselves of the southern United States border tomorrow or at their convenience. It is probably already too late for France, themselves descendants of Muslim occupiers centuries ago.

Equally troublesome is the speculation that the United States’ State Department must have intended by their actions to give the advantage and ultimate victory to Islam (Iran). Lacking additional information, why else would the United States sponsor a UN cease-fire resolution before Israel had the opportunity to dismantle or seriously degrade Hezbollah’s military capabilities? Assuming Israel is an ally, why did the United States of America not do more – much more? Having failed that test, why would the U.S. State Department orchestrate an unprecedented defeat for Israel at the hands of the United Nations? It is doubtful a U.S. government spokesman would frame the events this way, but they are just about the only ones in the world who would not.

Iran’s stated desire to annihilate Israel remains intact as a viable objective.

When all is said and done, Iran has accomplished its strategic objectives, i.e., reinvigorating Syrian dominance, isolating Jordan, reaching out and absorbing Hamas, rebuking the Arab League, fermenting Iraq’s collapse in a civil war of Iranian-instigated internal strife, undermining the internal stability of the governments of Great Britain and Europe, and ultimately unleashing Iran’s nuclear plans to establish a Muslim caliphate over the entire region by force of nuclear arms.

Can you think of any reason, other than wishful thinking, why Iran’s nuclear plans will not prevail?

Iranian strategic planning seems to have accurately calculated that Hezbollah would briefly lose control over southern Lebanon in the current military engagement. Iran had every reason to expect that with the help of the United Nations, Hezbollah would later reacquire and strengthen its control over Lebanon in traditional Islamic fashion, this time with UN legitimacy. Hezbollah will have sacrificed only a few hundred square miles in southern Lebanon which can easily be reacquired at a later date. In the interim, Iran and Syria will consolidate their gains. Hezbollah will set about to eliminate any remnants of the Lebanese Democracy movement known as the Cedars Revolution. Once Hezbollah has purged Lebanon of its remaining Christian influences, Shia Muslims in the Middle East and elsewhere will carefully prepare for a wider and bloodier war with Israel, from all sides- and from within.

Iran and Syria correctly anticipated a lack of support for Israel in the main stream media and had no fear of a United States Congress consumed with self-interest - not unlike a pig at a trough of fresh slop. The European Union remains gripped in self-loathing and Islamophobia. At last sighting, the European Union, led by France – was seen flying in ever decreasing concentric circles in the process of assimilation by the Islamic Borg, only one small step by mankind behind Lebanon.

The outcome in Lebanon was all but inevitable. Even if the United States or Europe had seriously considered interfering in the conflict initiated by Hezbollah with Israel, Iran had every intention of using Muslim proxies embedded in European and United States populations as a distraction.

The European Union, to this day, will not label Hezbollah a terrorist organization.

The terrorist plot to take down numerous commercial airline flights over the Atlantic Ocean, and its timing, was unlikely a coincidence, regardless of what we’ve been led to believe about its homegrown origins. The terrorist plot was fortunately foiled, but from Iran’s perspective, as it turned out, it really wasn’t necessary and the distractions served their purpose. Muslims will rampage none-the-less to keep Great Britain preoccupied and cause the uninformed to question every government anti-terrorist move in self-doubt.

No one has to imagine the worst case scenario for western civilization. It is becoming a reality in our lifetime - a nuclear-armed Iranian-Syrian-Lebanese Islamic axis complete with international legitimacy, which completely envelopes Israel and is brazenly dedicated to Israel’s elimination (annihilation), and an axis of Islamic fascism whose hegemony now directly or indirectly controls Middle Eastern oil supplies.

Only one of two alternative explanations correlates easily with UN actions:

a. The United Nations has no intention of intervening in any conflict between Israel and Islam except as necessary to prevent Israel from gaining the upper hand, or

b. UN member nations choose to believe the imposed Hezbollah-Israeli ceasefire will somehow forestall a wider conflict in the Middle East, and that acquiring most of Lebanon will somehow magically satiate Iran, Syria, Hezbollah and Hamas.

It appears the Iranians closely studied the history of WWII, learning from the successes and mistakes of the Third Reich. If Adolph Hitler were still with us, he would commend Ahmadinejad.

Red State Patriot

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The only sound in the bar was the sickening staccato sound of this sailor's lightning fast fists making contact with new areas of the Marine's head. The only sound I have heard since that was remotely similar was from the first Rocky film when Sylvester Stallone was punching sides of beef in the meat locker.

Finally the Marine's pleading turned to screams.... a high, almost womanly shriek. And still the punches continued relentlessly.

Several people in the bar took a few tentative steps as though they wanted to try to break it up at that point, but hands reached out from the crowd and held them tight. I'm not ashamed to say that mine were two of the hands that held someone back.

You see, in between each blow the sailor had begun chanting a soft cadence: "Say [punch] you [punch] give [punch] up [punch]... say [punch] you [punch]were [punch] wrong [punch]".

He had been repeating it to the Marine almost from the start but we only became aware of it when the typical barroom cheers had died down and we began to be sickened by the sight and sound of the carnage.

This Marine stood there shrieking in the corner of the bar trying futilely to block the carefully timed punches that were cutting his head to tatters... right down to the skull in places. But he refused to say that he gave up... or that he was wrong.

Even in the delirium of his beating he believed in his heart that someone would stop the fight before he had to admit defeat. I'm sure this strategy had served him well in the past and had allowed him to continue on his career as a barroom bully.

Finally, in a wail of agony the Marine shrieked "I give up", and we gently backed the sailor away from him.

I'm sure you can guess why I have shared this story today.

I'm not particularly proud to have been witness to such a bloody spectacle, and the sound of that Marine's woman-like shrieks will haunt me to my grave. But I learned something that evening that Israel had better learn for itself if it is to finally be rid of at least one of its tormentors:

This is one time an Arab aggressor must be allowed to be beaten so badly that every civilized nation will stand in horror, wanting desperately to step in and stop the carnage... but knowing that the fight will only truly be over when one side gives up and finally admits defeat.

Just as every person who had ever rescued that bully from admitting defeat helped create the cowardly brute I saw that evening in the bar, every well-intentioned power that has ever stepped in and negotiated a ceasefire for an Arab aggressor has helped create the monsters we see around us today.

President Lahoud of Lebanon, a big Hezbollah supporter and a close ally of Syria, has been shrieking non-stop to the UN Security Council for the past two days to get them to force Israel into a cease fire.

Clearly he has been reading his autographed copy of 'Military Success for Arab Despots' by the late Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt. Ever since Nasser accidentally discovered the trick in '56, every subsequent Arab leader has stuck to his tried and true formula for military success:

1. Instigate a war.

2. Once the war is well underway and you are in the process of having your ass handed to you... get a few world powers to force your western opponent into a cease fire.

3. Whatever you do, don't surrender or submit to any terms dictated by your enemy. That would ruin everything! All you have to do is wait it out and eventually the world will become sickened at what is being done to your soldiers and civilian population... and will force a truce.

4. Once a truce has been called you can resume your intransigence (which probably caused the conflict in the first place), and even declare victory as your opponent leaves the field of battle.

This tactic has never failed. Not once.

In fact it worked so will for the Egyptians in 1973, that to this day they celebrate the Yom Kippur War - a crushing defeat at the hands of Israel - as a military victory! No kidding... it's a national holiday over there!

President Lahoud has already begun to shriek like a school girl to the UN Security Council to "Stop the violence and arrange a cease-fire, and then after that we'll be ready to discuss all matters."

Uh huh. Forgive me if I find that a tad hard to swallow. He allowed Hezbollah to take over his country. He allowed the regular Lebanese army to provide radar targeting data for the Hezbollah missile that struck the Israeli destroyer. He has turned a blind eye while Iranian and Syrian weapons, advisers and money have poured into his country.

And now that his country is in ruins he wants to call it a draw.

As much as it may sicken the world to stand by and watch it happen, strong hands need to hold back the weak-hearted and let the fight continue until one side finally admits unambiguous defeat.

Originally posted by David Bogner on July 16, 2006 on the following website:
http://bogieworks.blogs.com/treppenwitz/2006/07/thanks_i_needed.html

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