The indictment and arrest of University of South Florida professor Sami
Al-Arian by the FBI last week was a watershed event in the US war on
terrorism.

This was so not because Arian was the CEO of the Islamic Jihad, although
that he was. Nor was it a watershed because by arresting Arian, the US has
shown that it will apply the full weight of its laws against terrorists,
whether their targets are Israeli or American.

Nor still was it a watershed because it brought to bear the new anti-terror
law enforcement powers granted to police and intelligence arms of the US
government by the 2002 Patriot Act.

Rather, Arian's arrest was a watershed because of the political will that
stood behind the decision to move forward in the case.

Arian was arrested on charges of conspiracy to murder and maim people
outside the US, conspiracy to provide material support and resources to
Islamic Jihad, extortion, obstruction of justice and immigration fraud -
charges that carry a sentence of life in prison.

Since journalist and terror expert Steven Emerson produced the PBS
documentary Jihad in America in 1994, the fact that Arian was the head of
the Islamic Jihad in America was the worst kept secret in the world.

In that documentary, Emerson showed that the Islamic Jihad's headquarters in
the US has the same address as the World and Islam Studies Enterprise,
(WISE), a USF think- tank run by Arian.

One of WISE's research fellows was Ramadan Abdullah Shallah. Shallah left
the institute in 1995 and moved to Damascus to take over the Islamic Jihad
after the group's leader Fathi Shikaki was killed in Malta by the Mossad.

In the same 1994 documentary, Emerson showed Arian in action, making
speeches in praise of jihad against Israel and suicide bombers.

And yet the result of the documentary was that the liberal establishment of
the US branded Emerson a bigoted, Islam-bashing racist while Arian was feted
as a civil rights trailblazer for Muslims in America.

Emerson was banned from National Public Radio and Arian was invited to the
White House on four separate occasions - three times by President Bill
Clinton and once by President George W. Bush.

In spite of Emerson's reams of evidence, which proved conclusively that
Arian was an arch-terrorist, Arian received accolades from both the Left and
the Right.

Middle East studies professors, influential journalists and political
organizers spanning the ideological spectrum attacked Arian's accusers as
racist right up until the week before his arrest.

After years of fighting a lone battle against Arian and the Islamic Jihad
cells he funded and organized in the US, Emerson's cause was given a push on
September 26, 2001 when Arian was interviewed by popular Fox News
commentator Bill O'Reilly. O'Reilly, who questioned Arian about past
statements in favor of jihad and suicide bombings in Israel concluded the
interview by commenting that if he were in the CIA he would trail Arian '24
hours a day.'

In the aftermath of the interview, USF suspended Arian.

This move was met by howls of indignation from Arian's friends on the
political Left and in academia. The powerful and respected Middle East
Studies Association wrote a letter to USF President Judy Genshaft in
February 2002, decrying the suspension as an attack on academic freedom.

Calling on USF to reinstate Arian, MESA's board of directors wrote, 'The
Arian case IS about academic freedom. It is also about the basic first
amendment right to freedom of speech.'

Here then, the most respected Middle East academic organization in the US went on record defending a suspected terrorist and decrying those who would view the issue as one of law
enforcement rather than one of civil rights.

On the political Right, Arian's greatest friend and supporter is the
Republican political organizer Grover Norquist. Since the late 1990s,
Norquist, who is closely allied with President Bush's senior political
advisor Karl Rove, has cultivated close relations with radical elements
within the US Muslim community.

Spurning those who question the wisdom of his feting of Islamic extremists,
Norquist was quick to claim after the 2000 elections that 'George W. Bush
owes his election to the Muslim vote.' This, in spite of the fact that Bush
lost the State of Michigan, which is home to the largest concentration of
Muslims in the US to Al Gore.

Norquist, who succeeded in getting candidate Bush to support the banning of
secret evidence from criminal trials (a position Bush abandoned after
September 11), was given an award for his efforts in April 2001 by an
organization called the National Coalition to Protect Political Freedoms -
or NCPPF. The president of this organization is Arian. Among the coalition
members are front organizations for Islamic Jihad, Hizbullah, Hamas, the
IRA, the Peruvian Shining Path and the Basque separatists.

Just one week before Arian's arrest, Norquist launched a defamatory attack
against fellow Washington Republican Frank Gaffney, a former Reagan
administration official who now heads the Center for Security Policy, a
Washington- based neoconservative think tank. In an open letter to Gaffney,
Norquist attacked him for raising questions about a current and a former
White House official for having invited heads of radical Islamic
organizations with ties to terror groups to the White House.

Both men, Suhail Khan and Ali Tulbah are the sons of radical Islamic operatives on the
West Coast and were hired by the Bush administration to oversee outreach to
the Muslim community. Khan was removed from his position after it was
exposed that his father hosted an al-Qaida leader during two separate trips
to the US.

Ignoring the security implications of inviting known Islamic terror
sympathizers to the White House, Norquist claimed that raising criticism
amounted to 'racial prejudice, religious bigotry or ethnic hatred.'

Here too, then, Norquist on the Right - like MESA on the Left - refused to
acknowledge that support for terrorism and, in the case of Arian and his
associates, actual action in support of a terrorist organization, bear
criminal implications.

Instead, terror apologists and perpetrators are viewed as simply another
legitimate voice in a free society's marketplace of ideas. Thus US academics
like Columbia University professor Joseph Massad, who just last week
published an article in Al-Ahram calling for progressive circles to force
the Palestinian leadership to again overtly embrace the destruction of
Israel and terrorism as official policy, are allowed to act with impunity.

The Bush administration's decision to press forward with charges against
Arian, in spite of his prominence, now puts these people on notice. It also
has several important implications for Israel in our fight against Islamic
terrorism - not least, to stop giving voice to those who use the public
stage to make apologies for terrorism and incite against Israel.

In enabling MKs Ahmed Tibi and Azmi Bishara, whose overt support for
terrorist organizations is well documented, to run for Knesset in the last
election, our Supreme Court justices showed that they are unable to make the
distinction between protected and criminal speech.

As Justice Minister, Tommy Lapid will preside over the selection of the next generation of
Supreme Court justices. His choices will largely determine whether our
justice system will finally accept the necessity of ending the practice of
providing legal protections to those who seek common cause with the enemies
of the State of Israel.

Today the US Congress is debating the second Patriot Act. This act provides
for the revocation of citizenship of those who support terrorist
organizations. During his term in office, outgoing Interior Minister Eli
Yishai revoked the citizenship of two Israeli Arabs who are members of
Hizbullah. Will incoming Interior Minister Avraham Poraz have the political
will to continue and widen the practice thus enforcing the state's
regulation that stipulates that support for terrorist activities and Israeli
citizenship are incompatible?

In arresting Arian and his Islamic Jihad cronies, the US has shown that its war on terrorism is being consistently and unapologetically fought by all levels of the US government.

It will be a central challenge of our new government, and particularly of our Shinui
ministers, to show that Israel fights our war against terrorism with at
least the same seriousness and intensity as the Bush administration.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

Today Labor Party Chairman Amram Mitzna is set to meet with Prime Minister Ariel Sharon for a discussion that has been touted as "critical" for determining whether the Labor party will join Sharon's next government.

The Labor party has made four demands of Sharon that its leaders -- from Mitzna to Binyamin Ben-Eliezer and Haim Ramon -- maintain must be met as a condition for Labor's participation in the next government.

Labor demands that the government immediately and unconditionally resume negotiations with Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority. Labor demands that in the event that these negotiations do not lead to a peace deal within a year Israel will unilaterally withdraw from the territories to allow the establishment of a Palestinian state.

Labor demands that all settlements in Gaza and isolated settlements in the West Bank be dismantled and their residents forcibly ejected. Finally, it demands that the government slash budgetary allocations to the Israeli communities in the territories.

Our media outlets have given prominent coverage to these demands. But there has been next to no discussion of their worthiness. Rather than examine the probable consequences of adopting these Labor policy dictates, the media has focused coverage on the narrow question of whether Ariel Sharon is "willing to pay the price" for the unity government he so desires.

But as coalition negotiations move into high gear, it is crucial to take a moment to consider what is being demanded.

Ahead of discussions in London this week with representatives of the EU, UN, Russia and the US (the "quartet"), Yasser Arafat announced last Friday that he is willing to appoint a prime minister for the PA. The statement was greeted with delight by the British hosts as well as by the EU, UN and the US State Department. The Israeli and US media have spent much of the past week discussing possible candidates for the position.

But according to knowledgeable Palestinian sources, Arafat is now putting together a list of demands that he claims must be met before he actually appoints anyone to act as prime minister. These demands are set to include a total Israeli withdrawal from PA areas, the release of all terrorists arrested by Israel over the past two years, and unimpeded movement of Palestinians throughout the territories. Arafat is set to demand that his prime minister's appointment be approved by a full session of the PA's Legislative Council.

Arafat is also set to demand that the appointment be approved by the PLO's Central Committee, most of whose members reside abroad and have been denied entry to the PA because they constitute security threats. In addition, since his announcement, Arafat has refused to reveal when he is planning on making the appointment.

The significance of these demands is that Arafat is trying to move international pressure from him to Israel. These demands will obviously be rejected by Israel, as their acceptance would constitute surrender to terrorism and blackmail and will endanger lives. But by forcing Israel to say no, Arafat hopes to be able to argue that Israel is responsible for the lack of reform in the PA.

While the Israeli media has given prominent coverage to PA actions to thwart rocket and missile attacks from Gaza (actions that, as residents of Sderot and Gush Katif will attest, have met with little success), these actions have gone unreported in the Palestinian media. The entire prospect of PA reform has received next to no coverage either. At the same time, incitement against Israel and Jews continues unabated in the PA's print and electronic media outlets.

According to Itamar Marcus, Director of Palestinian Media Watch, which monitors the PA's media outlets, PA television has in recent months shifted its focus from overt calls to murder Israelis to "mind-numbing indoctrination to hatred of Israelis and Jews."

Marcus attributes this shift to the IDF's success in thwarting terrorism. "The IDF's operations in the PA have vastly degraded the Palestinians' ability to carry out successful attacks against Israel. The PA does not want the people to become frustrated so rather than continuing the constant incitement to 'martyrdom operations,' they have decreased these calls and have increased their cultivation of hatred. This way, when the IDF weakens its pressure on the PA, there will be cadres ready to be incited to carry out attacks."

So, in spite of Labor's protestations to the contrary, there has been no movement on the Palestinian side that would indicate any ability to resume negotiations toward the signing of a peace deal. Arafat will not cede power and the Palestinian Authority he runs remains wholly committed to continuing its terror war against Israel.

Labor demands that if its proposed negotiations were to fail (which of course they would), that Israel finish building the wall dividing itself off from most of the West Bank, unilaterally withdraw and establish a Palestinian state within the year. Why such an abject surrender will do anything but inspire the Palestinians to continue attacking Israel is a question that remains unexamined by the Israeli media. Statements by IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Moshe Ya'alon that the Palestinians will view any unilateral withdrawal or evacuation of even the tiniest settlements as a victory are forgotten in the rush to bring Labor into the coalition.

Over the past few weeks IDF sources have stated repeatedly that the mortar and missile attacks launched against Israeli towns from Gaza are rendering the wall that divides the strip from Israel ineffective for protecting Israelis. Ya'alon himself has also stated that a wall around the West Bank would be much less effective in stemming terrorist penetrations than the wall around Gaza because the West Bank is so interconnected with the rest of Israel. IDF sources have also repeatedly pointed out that the only reason that terrorist attacks against Israel have diminished is because the IDF is deployed in most major PA cities in the West Bank.

So, aside from giving the Palestinians a sense of victory, Labor's demand to build a wall and withdraw will undoubtedly leave Israel much more vulnerable to attack than it is at present. But like Labor's demand to immediately restart negotiations with the PA, with these demands as well, there has been almost no public debate regarding the consequences of such a unilateral withdrawal.

Finally, Labor is unified it its demand that budgets to the Israeli settlements in the territories be slashed. Labor promises that doing so will somehow be a magic bullet for solving Israel's economic woes. This week, the Council of Jewish Communities in Judea, Samaria and Gaza released data on the budgets they receive from the government. The council reveals that the basis for the 2002 budget was identical to the Labor government's 2001 budget. The council further reveals that during the 2002-2003 fiscal year, tax rebates offered to residents of the territories were scaled back while those given to residents of the Galilee and the Negev were retained. That is, while residents of the territories have been forced by Palestinian terrorism to invest large sums in installing security systems for their communities and their homes, the government has been decreasing its financial assistance to these communities.

At the same time, OC Central Command Maj. Gen. Moshe Kaplinsky announced a few months ago that the IDF is training residents as first-response teams to defend their communities. Kaplinsky foresees this program, which has already been launched successfully in ten communities, reducing the IDF manpower necessary to defend the settlements by tens of thousands of reservist call-up days per year.

According to the capitulationist Peace Now organization, the government today allocates $400 million to defending the settlements. If these numbers are accurate, this constitutes less than one percent of the annual budget. It is unclear how slashing this allocation will save the economy. But then, the Labor party has never been asked by the media to defend its attacks against the budgets for the settlements or to show how cutting them will in any way encourage economic growth.

It is equally unclear why building a 360 km wall around the West Bank that our best security experts believe will have little chance of enhancing our security is a reasonable expenditure. Just the first 116 km of this wall come with a price tag of NIS 900 million.

It is a mark of shame for the Israeli media that it refuses to engage in a discussion of the ramifications of Labor's demands for joining the next government. But it is the civic responsibility of the Israeli public to carry out this discussion all the same.

Citing the importance of the Labor movement, Prime Minister Sharon has repeatedly stated his preference for forming a unity government with the party. But the once vibrant Labor party has transformed itself into a delusional movement dedicated to spurring on its own demise, or as Binyamin Ben-Eliezer aptly put it, it has become "Meretz B." The old Labor party may well have been a worthy coalition partner. But the price of unity with Labor as presently constituted is too high. In the interests of true peace and security, Sharon must exclude Labor from his government lest the delusional child of David Ben-Gurion's party force the entire country to join it in its descent to oblivion.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

Americans were shocked this week to discover that while their attention was focused elsewhere, Europe -- or large swathes of Europe -- has become a hotbed of Iranian-like anti-American sentiment.

The same irrational, insurmountable hatred of America that fuels Iranian rhetoric and dictates its policies against the Great Satan also characterizes much public opinion throughout Europe and informs the policies of the governments of Belgium, France and Germany.

The major difference today between Iranian America-bashing and the axis of America-haters in Europe is the god in whose name this hatred is justified. While the Iranian mullahs justify their hatred of America in the name of Allah, the French, Germans, Belgians and Scandinavians bow their heads in hatred of America before the alter of Envy and in the name of their idiosyncratic doctrine of human rights.

This week was a watershed in American understanding of European irrationality. It came to light with the NATO veto by France, Germany and Belgium of Turkey's request for assistance ahead of possible Iraqi attack. It further came to light with the French threat to use its veto power in the UN Security Council to prevent the UN from enforcing its resolutions to disarm Iraq.

For the past twelve years, US policy towards Iraq was motivated by a desire to move in tandem with Europe. The first Bush administration's decision to work through the UN to dislodge Saddam Hussein's army from Kuwait was testament to former President Bush's optimistic belief that with the end of the Cold War, freed from the shackles of a bi-polar world, the UN would be willing to work with the US to contain and destroy threats to international security.

As early as 1996, when the Iraqis prevented intrusive UN weapons inspections of their non-conventional weapons sites, it became clear that the international body was ineffective for contending with the threat of Iraq. Yet, until the September 11 attacks, the US felt it could go along with this charade because its interest in maintaining the appearance of alliance with Europe outweighed its interest in stemming the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction to rogue regimes.

After September 11, this calculus changed. And yet, for a full year and a half, the US moved slowly in the hopes of convincing the Europeans as a bloc that there was no justification for inaction in the face of the unacceptable threat of unconventional terrorism.

Today the Americans see that their firm commitment to destroying threats to international security has caused an earthquake in Europe. While most European states have wisely sided with the US with 18 European leaders, including the prime ministers of Britain, Spain and Italy recently putting their names to an op-ed supporting the Bush administration -- Germany, France and Belgium, the EU's heartland states, stand opposed. The myth of European unity has been rent.

Now that the earthquake has occurred, the question America faces is where this reality will take American foreign policy. How is the US to navigate the fissure in Europe? On the one hand, leading members of Congress have voiced outrage and are threatening sanctions against France. For their part, Pentagon officials are debating the possibility of removing the 78,000 US troops from Germany and moving them to such friendlier European nations as Hungary and Poland.

Yet there are other prominent voices in the US that call on placating Europe -- chiefly at Israel's expense. Thus, in an opinion piece in Thursday's Wall Street Journal, former National Security Advisors Zbigniew Brzezinski and Brent Snowcroft urged the Bush administration to put forward a US plan for the swift establishment of a Palestinian state.

In their view, "Arab countries and much of the Muslim world, as well as most European countries, see a direct link between their ability to be more forthcoming in supporting US goals in Iraq and our commitment to working for a fair settlement of the Israel-Palestinian conflict."

For Messrs. Brzezinski and Snowcroft, then, America's problems are of its own making, and can be solved only by indulging the whims, and appeasing the demands, of its "partners" in Europe and the Arab world. Apparently, they think it impossible that there are countries that are motivated not by real interests but by irrational hatred and thus cannot be appeased.

For seven years, Israel too believed, like Snowcroft and Brzezinski that states are motivated by rational and therefore appeasable interests. The entire Oslo process, like the negotiations with Syria and the unilateral pullout from south Lebanon was based on the assumption that on the whole, states and nations are rational actors.

Relative military strength and deterrence theory were summarily discarded in 1993 in exchange for Shimon Peres's theory of statecraft. According to this theory, a peaceful New Middle East, built upon unilateral Israeli concessions, was a viable option since the Arabs must rationally understand that living at peace with Israel advances their interests.

For Israel, this jig was up two and a half years ago. After years of deluding ourselves into believing that irrational hatred is not a meaningful factor in international relations, we awoke in October 2000 to hatred's harvest. When the Palestinians refused Barak's offer of statehood and opted for war; when the olive branches Israel extended to Syria and Lebanon were greeted with intensified arming of Hizballah and direct support for Palestinian terrorism -- only then did Israelis realize that concessions in the face of irrational hatred and rejectionism are provocative, and dangerous.

As for Europe, after a half-century of mostly lukewarm, on-again, off-again relations, the newest round of Arab aggression has been widely greeted with European indulgence and a full-throated condemnation of Israel as the little Satan.

Rather than condemn the Palestinians as war criminals for conducting massacres against Israeli civilians, the Europeans saved their condemnations and war crimes tribunals for us. Rather than boycott the terrorist Palestinian Authority, the Europeans continue financing Arafat and his henchmen and launched a boycott against Israel.

European condemnation and Iranian-styled hatred are more dangerous for Israel than for the US. European America-bashing is a relatively new phenomenon. And, as the recently exposed fault-lines in Europe show, hatred of America is not all pervasive. But, as Foreign Minister Binyamin Netanyahu explained to me recently, the roots of European rejection of Israel are ancient and enduring.

In his view, far from a recent phenomenon, anti-Semitism in Europe "goes back not only 2,000 years but even to the 500 years of Hellenistic anti-Semitism that preceded the birth of Christianity. The odd thing, the exception, is that Europe did not have overt anti-Semitic expression over the last 50 years, and that's an historical exception because of the Holocaust."

There is no question that being anti-Israel is more convenient for Europeans than being anti-American. Israel is not a great power. Unlike the US, Israel cannot step over Europe, deter it or shake it up and divide it. But we can take action against it.

Our criminal code, like the Belgian criminal code, provides Israeli courts with universal jurisdiction over war crimes. There is no reason why Belgium's decision Wednesday to move forward with its obnoxious war crimes investigation of Israeli officers and to postpone rather than end its investigation of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon should not be met with similar indictments of Belgians.

The Justice Ministry would advance our national interest if it were to begin an investigation of the genocide Belgium all-but allowed to happen in Rwanda, which took an estimated 800,000 lives. In fact, justice may be served if our Justice Ministry lawyers began filing indictments against senior officials of the EU for indirectly enabling Palestinian terrorism through their financial support for the PA.

At the same time, we must not lose sight of the fact that the world does not begin and end in Europe. A reminder of this truth came last week from New Delhi. There, the Washington-based Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs held a trilateral conference where former Israeli, American and Indian security and diplomatic elites met to discuss the formation of a strategic alliance between the three democracies. Today, Israel is the second largest supplier of military goods to India behind the US. India's middle class is 100 million people strong and is capable of generating economic demand for Israeli products that could eventually replace European markets.

Far from boycotting Israel for fighting the terrorist war launched against it, India has over the past two and a half years been expanding its military and economic cooperation with Israel. An Indian diplomat told me last year that perhaps even more than the US, Israel is capable of deep economic cooperation with India because Israeli economic strengths are better attuned to the needs of the Third World.

"The burgeoning alliance with India provides an answer to European rejection of Israel and the US," says Martin Sherman of the Interdisciplinary Center at Herzliya who participated in last week's conference.

This week's European split over American policy in Iraq, combined with Europe's longstanding negative attitudes toward Israel, point to a new course in international relations. The notion of a "Western Alliance," sharing common values, common threat perceptions, and common attitudes is coming unglued. In its place is a new "coalition of the willing," as George W. Bush puts it, willing to stand up to the threat of unconventional terrorism and unappeasable states. Alliances and friendships must now be forged with those nations, like India that appreciate America -- and Israel -- for our virtues and for our strengths.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

The tragic loss of the US space shuttle Columbia and the death of its crew just moments before their return home sealed in common blood the foundations of the US-Israel alliance.

As we saw at Tuesday's memorial ceremony at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, this alliance's roots run far deeper than shared forms of government. The stories of the astronauts, told and retold in their eulogies, bespoke a commonality of values that underlie our natural and inevitable commitment to democracy.

These values inform our actions, engage our imaginations and move us in common directions. At their core is a commitment to liberty, a highly disciplined work ethic that encourages, applauds and enables individual and national exceptionalism, an overarching optimism in humanity's ability to change the world for the better, and a common humility in the presence of an all powerful God.

IAF Colonel Ilan Ramon and his six American crewmembers were the embodiment of these shared values that form the core of the Zionist and American psyches. They represented the best that both countries have to offer. All seven men and women displayed irrepressible patriotism, optimism, curiosity, courage and compassion that attached them body and soul to one another and to the eternal ideals that move both nations and motivate the actions of our leaders and citizens.

US President George W. Bush made clear during his visit with the bereaved families after Tuesday's ceremony that joint exploration of space was not an aberration in US-Israel relations but rather, as Ambassador Daniel Ayalon put it, "the natural next step," for an already rock solid alliance.

Speaking to Ramon's children, President Bush gave voice to the significance of their father's life for this alliance. The President paid homage to the fact that in 1981 their father, together with seven other IAF pilots, destroyed Saddam Hussein's French-built nuclear reactor and that he died just as the President is assembling an army of 150,000 to complete the work that Ramon had so nobly and bravely advanced. "Your father started the job," Bush is quoted as telling the Ramon children, "And I will finish it."

It is important to remember that back in the summer of 1981, Israel was loudly condemned for destroying the Osirak nuclear reactor. The Reagan administration, that was supporting Saddam's regime as a secular counterweight to Iran, was beside itself when Israel cast a strike at its "moderate" Arab ally. The Europeans were of course largely responsible for Saddam's ability to acquire nuclear, chemical and biological weapons while fully cognizant that Israel was their intended target. And the Europeans were, not surprisingly, made apoplectic by Israel's audacity.

Here in Israel as well, then opposition leader Shimon Peres was outspokenly critical of the operation. Fear that Peres, who had been leaked information about the plan to destroy the reactor, would misuse his knowledge almost caused then Prime Minister Menachem Begin to scrap the entire idea.

In 1981, Israel risked and absorbed international and local opprobrium to safeguard its national interest. That interest: preventing a hostile rogue regime from acquiring the means to destroy the State of Israel, clearly outweighed any diplomatic advantage that may have been gained by standing on the sidelines and accepting the unacceptable.

Years went by and as a decade closed, American opprobrium turned to admiration and gratitude. In 1991, then US Defense Secretary Richard Cheney remarked that it would have been virtually impossible for the US to have led a coalition to eject Saddam Hussein's army from Kuwait if Saddam had been in possession of nuclear weapons.

It is fair to say that while the first Bush administration understood the operational importance of the 1981 strike as it amassed its international coalition to fight the 1991 Gulf War, it still refused to understand its true message. In accepting continued Arab rejection of Israel's right to exist by loudly excluding Israel from its coalition and refusing Israel's requests to retaliate for the Iraqi Scud missile attacks, the first Bush administration ignored the true nature of the war it was fighting.

Another ten years, and the September 11 attacks finally made clear that far from simply manifesting a threat to Israel, a nuclear-armed Iraq constitutes a threat to freedom itself. That is, in threatening Israel, a country based completely on the notions of liberty, freedom and their natural consequence, liberal democracy, Saddam threatens more than a place, he threatens a way of life.

Today, as the US stands poised to eradicate the threat of Saddam Hussein, Israel is beset by a new threat to our way of life and to our lives themselves. Yet this threat is still not understood by the US. Rather, this threat -- a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip -- has been embraced by the US and is the apple of Europe's eye.

The Palestinian and Arab rejection of Israel has been so long-lived that sometimes it is hard to believe that it can possibly still exist. From Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Saudi Arabia to Iran, the Arab and Islamic world's encouragement the Palestinian war has been overwhelming. Among the Palestinians themselves as well with so many of their European patrons, the war has enjoyed such backing that it is easy to see why one could be tempted to believe that Israel shares the blame for its victimization. After all, it is hard to imagine that so many can be so wrong about so much. It is easy to fall into the trap of accepting that Israel must be forced to pay an unacceptable price of surrendering defensible borders to a terrorist state in order to rationalize the hatred.

But the faces of the 726 Israelis murdered in the past two and a half years by Palestinian terrorists who are trained, funded and lionized by their Arab and Islamic supporters must be enough to remind us that this rejection of Israel's right to exist is real.

The fact that a Palestinian state will be a terrorist state should also be clear. Were this not the case, a messianic peacenik like Labor leader Amram Mitzna would not be demanding that the Great Wall of China be built to separate Israel from his much sought for Palestine in the hope that, so divided, the Palestinians will magically be divested of their ambition to destroy the Jewish state.

The international community's experience with Saddam Hussein's Iraq over the past twelve years is instructive in understanding the threat a Palestinian state would constitute for Israel and to the human will to freedom that the nation symbolizes.

After the Gulf War, the international community, under the aegis of the UN Security Council, placed strict limits on Iraqi sovereignty. And yet, in spite of the sanctions and the UN weapons inspectors and no-fly zones, Saddam has pursued his weapons of mass destruction programs and has increased his support for international terrorism.

Just as Saddam's Iraq was first perceived as a threat to Israel alone but later was revealed as a threat to liberty itself, so too does the specter of a Palestinian state in the heart of Israel threaten humanity.

The virulent anti-Americanism evident in the Palestinian street demonstrations, mosque sermons and official propaganda is evidence of this. But the probable scenario that a US-recognized terrorist state that -- like the PLO mini-state in Lebanon in the 1970s -- will be a training ground for international terrorism, should clearly give pause to those who recommend its establishment.

The Iraqi experience should completely disabuse the notion's advocates of their faith that the international community can somehow restrain those committed to destruction.

President Bush's vision of a Palestinian society transformed from a hotbed of extremism and terror into a liberal democracy is a vital goal. But in the meantime, as in Saddam's Iraq, power must dictate policy. The military threat posed by the current Palestinian mini-state must be dealt with in the first instance by military means.

A military operation by Israel to destroy completely the Palestinian terrorist option will be roundly and loudly condemned by the Europeans, accomodationist Israelis and Americans. But, as has been the case with Iraq, time and reality will prove that this policy is the only proper and moral course.

The absolute fusion of the nations of Israel and the US in the aftermath of the shocking loss of the Columbia space shuttle last Saturday distilled a normally murky reality. It showed us that the differences in views of our two countries are more apparent than real. In reality, Israel and the US are cut from the same cloth.

In pursuing our vital national interests, Israel must not fear moving ahead of the US. As it has with Iraq, the US will come to admire us for the courage to act on our convictions, and be grateful for our sacrifices.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

In 1981, IAF Col. Ilan Ramon flew one of the F-16 jets that blew up the Iraqi nuclear reactor in Osirak. In so doing he saved the country and perhaps the entire world from the specter of a nuclear holocaust.

For the past 16 days, as Israel's first astronaut, Ilan Ramon again saved us. This time he was not armed with a payload of bombs on a fighter craft. This time Ramon set off for outer space on the Columbia space shuttle, armed with a picture of the Earth as seen from the moon drawn by a Jewish boy in Theresienstadt concentration camp, a torah scroll from Bergen Belsen, a microfiche copy of the bible, the national flag and the dreams and hopes of the State of Israel and the Jewish people.

Ramon saved us this time not by clearing our skies of the threat of nuclear attack, but by reminding us of who we are and of what we can accomplish if we only have faith in ourselves.

Ramon made clear at every opportunity that he went to outer space, not simply as a citizen of the State of Israel, but as a Jew. As the representative of the Jewish people he recited kiddush on Friday night. As a Jew he said Shema Yisrael as the space shuttle orbited over Jerusalem. As a Jew he insisted on eating only kosher food in outer space. And as a Jew he told the Prime Minister from his celestial perch, "I think it is very, very important to preserve our historical tradition, and I mean historical and religious traditions."

In so doing he showed that there is no limit to what a person can accomplish as a Jew. He said to all Jews, here in Israel and throughout the world, even as anti-Semitism again threatens us, even as Jews in Israel are being murdered just for being Jews, our enemies will never define us or tell us there are limits to what we can do.

But Ilan Ramon was not simply a Jew. He was an Israeli Jew. And, as a scientist and fighter pilot his was the face of Israeli exceptionalism. Ramon excelled in all he did. He was first in his class in high school. He was first in his class in flight school. He was first in his class in astronaut training.

In a break from the Air Force in the 1980s, after completing his studies in electrical engineering and computer science at Tel-Aviv University, Ramon joined the team at Israel Aircraft Industries that developed the Lavi fighter jet. On the Columbia, Ramon conducted environmental research on desertification.

Today, when mediocrity seems to be the unifying characteristic of so many of the personalities that make up our national landscape, Ramon reminded us of what we can and should aspire to.

Speaking of Ramon a few months before the shuttle launch, his fellow astronauts praised his professionalism above all.

As we have been consumed for more than two years with our daily reality of terrorism and pain, Ramon reminded us that there are other sides to our lives in Israel. Our mastery of science has placed our tiny state at the cutting edge of space research. Like our friends, the Americans, we will not be limited by gravity in our quest for answers to the riddles of the universe.

Finally, Ramon was a husband to Rona and father to Assaf, Tal, Yiftach and Noa.

Our hearts go out to his family members. But we can only pray that they will take comfort in the fact that in his life, their Ilan saved both the life and the spirit of his country.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.