Something remarkable is happening in Iraq. There is a civil war going on and the terrorists are losing. US Marine commanders in Fallujah reported Wednesday that they seized enough weapons in the city "for the insurgency to take over the whole country."

Iraq is currently undergoing a post-Saddam revolution. Last April, when the Marines first attempted to take over Fallujah from the Sunni terrorists, they were joined by an Iraqi army brigade led by a general from the former regime. His troops quickly went AWOL and joined the ranks of the terrorists in fighting American forces. Under pressure from the UN, the Coalition Provisional Authority, led by then-viceroy L. Paul Bremer, lost its nerve to continue fighting. The Marines fell back to the city's outskirts and enabled the likes of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Palestinian-Jordanian arch terrorist, to take over Fallujah.

This month's combined US-Iraqi offensive into Fallujah was different. It was marked by tight cooperation between the Iraqi and American forces on the ground, and ordered by Iraq's Interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, who didn't back down even when three of his relatives were kidnapped by the terrorists. The new Iraqi army that is now being trained is the first instance of an Arab army to be developed to fight Arab and Islamic terrorists. This is an extraordinary accomplishment. Iraqi soldiers are now fighting and dying to purge their country of Arab terrorists, many of whom are also Iraqis.

In addition to the new Iraqi government's determination to fight on the side of the US on the battlefields, it is also fighting the intellectual war against terror. This week, in an interview with the pan-Arab newspaper Asharq al-Aswat, Iraqi Defense Minister Hazem Shaalan branded Al-Jazeera television station a "channel of terrorism." Shaalan went on to threaten Al-Jazeera, saying, "Let God curse all those who terrorize Iraqi citizens and the children of Iraq, be they journalists or others. The day will come when we will take measures against Al-Jazeera other than by words."

As PLO chieftains and the likes of Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak defend their regime-controlled media's dissemination of constant calls for jihad against Israel and the US as an exercise of free speech, Iraq's leaders are admitting openly that these media operations are part and parcel of the terror arsenal. And so, in Iraq today, we have a situation in which it is the Iraqi government itself – rather than the US or Israel or any other country targeted by jihad – which is taking the lead to punish organs of incitement.

And then there is the question of democracy. Ahead of the January 30 elections scheduled to be held in Iraq, some 126 political parties have registered to run. Some are Islamists. Some are crypto-Ba'athist. Some are Iranian backed. But many of them are regular political parties that want to earn power and a piece of the pie through the democratic process.

When asked about the possibility that elections be delayed until the civil war has subsided, Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, speaking at a conference at Sharm e-Sheikh this week, vowed that in spite of the violence the government would hold elections as planned. In his words, "our very credibility is really on the line."

Zebari made these statements because the Arab leaders present at the conference, like their counterparts from the UN and France, were all pushing for Iraq to delay the elections. The conference itself was almost scuttled due to the French demand that the terrorists fighting in Iraq also be allowed to send representatives, as if the international community shouldn't choose sides between the terrorists who until a week ago were running slaughterhouses in mosques and apartment buildings and the soldiers sent in to destroy them. So it is now the Iraqis themselves who are standing up to the so-called international community in demanding to be allowed to become a democracy while fighting terrorism.

The Arabs, like the UN and France, are worried. If the Iraqis pull off the elections and a democratic representative government is established early next year, then their entire policy rationale is done for. Their calls for maintaining the status quo of terror-supporting autocracies in the Arab world that refuse to accept Israel but control the world's largest oil reserves will be rendered obsolete.

In a call of desperation on Wednesday, Zarqawi sent out a whiny-voiced tape recording on the Internet in which he slammed Muslim leaders for not joining his fight against the Americans. In his words, "Men have lost their virility; maybe it's time for women to pick up the fight."

Unfortunately, even as US President George W. Bush gives full-throated support for the establishment of a terror-fighting Palestinian democracy, the lessons of the Iraqi experience seem lost on one and all as they approach the question of who should now lead the Palestinians in the wake of Arafat's death.

For the past four years, every time Israel or the US has demanded that the PLO leadership take action against terrorists, the Palestinians, from Arafat to Mahmoud Abbas to Ahmed Qurei and down the line, have refused, claiming that they will not fight against their brothers and that there will not be a Palestinian civil war. Now, with Arafat dead, we see Israel's elites, like their European and American counterparts, buying into the notion that the only "legitimate" Palestinian leaders are those who have been active in terrorism and who support the view that Israel must be destroyed by hook or by crook.

Arafat confidant Abdel Bari Atwan, the editor of the London-based Al Quds al-Arabi newspaper, admitted this week to The Jerusalem Post that after signing the Oslo Accords in 1993, Arafat told him, "The day will come when you will see thousands of Jews fleeing Palestine. I will not live to see this, but you will definitely see it in your lifetime. The Oslo Accords will help bring this about." And so we have an admission that the entire deal from top to bottom was a hoax.

Is it possible that Arafat hoodwinked not only the Israelis but also his closest underlings in the PLO? Is it possible that Mahmoud Abbas, his presumptive replacement – who this week held talks with Hamas to the applause of US Secretary of State Colin Powell and vowed that there would be no peace until four million foreign-born Arabs are allowed to freely immigrate to Israel – did not know that Oslo was, in the words of the late Palestinian "moderate" Faisal Husseini, "a Trojan horse?"

No, it is not possible.

As Powell made his farewell visit to Jerusalem this week, we were witness to a revolting display of the moral turpitude of the Israeli press. Powell was asked continually whether he supports granting permission for convicted mass murderer Marwan Barghouti to run for the position of Palestinian "president."

Happily, Powell refused to play ball. All he would say is, "This is a matter to be worked out here in the region and not by the United States expressing a view or putting itself in the middle of this situation."

The Israeli media, whose saturation coverage of Arafat's funeral bordered on necrophilia, has descended to a new low with its campaign to free Barghouti. Most tragically, what it shows is that in Israel the biggest thought our ruling punditocracy can think involves crowning a terrorist who speaks gutter Hebrew as well as gutter Arabic to replace a dead one who spoke only gutter Arabic.

While Israelis, like the Americans and Europeans, apparently think they have no power to force a regime change among the Palestinians, the fact of the matter is that their pining after Palestinian terror chiefs has given the Palestinian leadership license to become more extreme.

Ahmed Qurei told the US consul in Jerusalem last week that he wants to bring the Fatah's Aksa Martyrs' Brigades terror group into the "reformed" Palestinian official militias. The State Department reacted by declaring that, for the first time, they would be giving $20 million in direct aid to the PA. It should be noted that the Martyrs' Brigades have carried out more terrorist attacks than either Hamas or Islamic Jihad. And, as Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz noted last year, Hamas and Islamic Jihad are no more religious than Fatah. Since 2002, their main supporter, as is the case with Islamic Jihad and Hizbullah, has been Iran.

During British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw's visit on Wednesday, he defended Abbas's statement about unlimited Arab immigration to Israel as a condition for peace, stating that Israel should overlook it as simple posturing for domestic consumption. Again, what Straw's statement exposes is the fact that all the interested parties have swallowed whole the notion that it is perfectly reasonable that the only legitimate Palestinian leaders today are those who openly call for the destruction of Israel.

Finally, in the Palestinian Legislative Council's memorial ceremony for Arafat on Tuesday, Abbas, Qurei and Rouhi Fatouh, Arafat's official replacement, together pledged to be loyal to "Arafat's legacy." Is it possible for them to be any clearer?

And so, those who would wish for a true and lasting peace between Israel and the Palestinians gaze longingly at Iraq. If the experience there has shown anything, it has shown that it is possible to topple terrorist regimes and it is possible to build the organs of a democracy in the Arab world.

Why are Iraq's lessons lost on the Palestinians?

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

The agreement that France, Germany and Britain reached with Iran this week signals that the diplomatic option of dealing with Iran's nuclear weapons program no longer exists. To understand why this is the case, we must look into the agreement and understand what is motivating the various parties to accede to its conditions.

The agreement stipulates that the European-3 will provide Iran with light water reactor fuel, enhanced trade relations and more nuclear reactors. In exchange, the Iranians agree that for the duration of the negotiations toward implementing the agreement – including a European push for Iranian ascension to the World Trade Organization – it will not develop centrifuges and will not enrich uranium. At the same time, the Europeans accepted Iran's claim that it has the legal right to complete the entire nuclear fuel cycle – meaning, it has the legal right to enrich uranium.

Strangely, in a separate Iranian agreement with the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency, the Iranians announced that they would cease enriching uranium effective Monday, November 22, rather than immediately. This apparently annoyed the Europeans, but it wasn't a deal breaker.

The Weekly Standard this week explained that light water reactor fuel of the type that the Europeans have agreed to give Iran can be used to produce bomb material within nine weeks. Since the IAEA inspectors only visit Iran every three months, it would be a simple matter to divert enough light water fuel to produce a bomb between inspections. And so, the agreement itself holds the promise of direct European assistance to Iran's nuclear weapons program.

While the Europeans were congratulating themselves for their feckless diplomacy, the Iranians were taking to the airwaves and arguing that they gave up nothing in the deal and received everything.

Hamid Reza Asefi, a spokesman for the Iranian Foreign Ministry, said the suspension of nuclear activities would last only until Iran and the Europeans reached a long-term agreement. For his part, Iranian chief nuclear negotiator Hassan Rowhani said that enriching uranium is "Iran's right, and Iran will never give up its right to enrich uranium."

Iran's interest in making the deal is clear. The IAEA governing board is set to meet next week to discuss Iran's nuclear program. By agreeing to the deal with the Europeans, Iran has effectively foreclosed the option, favored by the US, of transferring Iran's nuclear program to the UN Security Council for discussions that could lead to sanctions on Iran.

Aside from that, all along, Iran has been gaming the system. It has pushed to the limits all feasible interpretation of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, of which it is a signatory, to enable it to reach the cusp of nuclear weapons development without breaking its ties or diminishing its leverage over the Europeans as well as the Russians and Chinese. In so doing, it has isolated the US and Israel – which have both gone on record that Iran must not be allowed to acquire nuclear weapons – from the rest of the international community, which is ready to enable Iran to achieve nuclear weapons capabilities.

In the meantime, as Iran has negotiated the deal with the Europeans, it has moved quickly to develop its nuclear weapons delivery systems. Its recent Shihab-3 ballistic missiles tests seem to have demonstrated that Iran can now launch missiles to as far away as Europe. In addition, last week's launching of an Iranian drone, as well as this week's Katyusha rocket attacks on northern Israel, have shown that Iran has developed a panoply of delivery options for using its nuclear (as well as chemical and biological) arsenals to physically destroy Israel.

For their part, the European powers must know that this deal is a lie. The ink had not dried on their signatures when Iran announced that it wasn't obligated by the agreement to end its uranium enrichment. As well, on Wednesday, just two days after the deal was announced formally, the Iranian opposition movement, the National Council of Resistance – the political front for the People's Mujahedeen (which the deal stipulates must be treated as a terrorist organization comparable to al-Qaida) – held press conferences in Paris and Vienna where its representatives stated that Iran is continuing to enrich uranium at a Defense Ministry facility in Teheran and that it bought blueprints for nuclear bombs three years ago from Pakistani nuclear scientist A.Q. Khan's nuclear bomb store.

The Council of Resistance is the same organization that blew the whistle on Iran's nuclear program in 2002, when it exposed satellite imagery of Iran's nuclear facility in Natanz.

Aside from this, European leaders themselves have said that in their view there is no military option for taking out Iran's nuclear facilities. In an interview with the BBC this week, British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said, "I don't see any circumstances in which military action would be justified against Iran, full stop." Straw made this statement the same week that French President Jacques Chirac made an all-out diplomatic assault against British Prime Minister Tony Blair for his alliance with US President George W. Bush.

Speaking to British reporters on Monday, Chirac said, "Britain gave its support [to the US in Iraq] but I did not see much in return. I am not sure that it is in the nature of our American friends at the moment to return favors."

Chirac added that he had told Blair that his friendship with Bush could be of use if the US adopted the EU position on Israel and the Palestinians. Since Bush has refused to do so, Chirac argued, Bush has played Blair for a fool.

From these statements, two things about the European agenda become clear. First, by bringing Britain into the talks with Iran, the French have managed to ensure that the Americans, if they decide to do something about Iran's nuclear weapons programs, will be forced to act without British backing and at the expense of the British government, thus causing a serious fissure in the Anglo-American alliance. Straw's statement is breathtaking in that it shows that on the issue of Iranian nuclear weapons, the British prefer to see Iran gain nuclear weapons to having anyone act to prevent them from doing so.

Chirac's statement exposes, once again, France's main interest in international affairs today. To wit: France wishes only to box in the US to the point that the Americans will not be able to continue to fight the war against terrorism. The French do this not because they necessarily like terrorists. They do this because as Chirac has said many times, he views the central challenge of our time as developing a "multipolar" world. France's obsession with multipolarity stems from Chirac's perception that his country's primary aim is not to free the world from Islamic terror, but to weaken the US.

Given this state of affairs, it is clear that the newest deal with the mullahs has removed diplomacy from the box of tools that can be used against Iran. In the unlikely event that the issue is ever turned over to the Security Council, France will veto sanctions even if Russia and China could be bought off to abstain. As the Iraqi oil-for-food scandal has shown, even if sanctions were to be levied, there is no credible way to enforce them.

So where does this leave the Jews who, in the event that Iran goes nuclear, will face the threat of annihilation? Crunch time has arrived.

It is time for Israel's leaders to go to Washington and ask the Americans point blank if they plan to defend Europe as Europe defends Iran's ability to attain the wherewithal to destroy the Jewish state. It must be made very clear to the White House that the hour of diplomacy faded away with the European Trio's latest ridiculous agreement with the mullahs. There is no UN option. Europe has cast its lot with the enemy of civilization itself.

The prevailing wisdom in Washington these days seems to be that the US is waiting for an Israeli attack on Iran. There is some logic to such a policy. No doubt, the Arabs and the Iranians will all blame America anyway, but they are not America's chief concern here. Britain and Germany are.

What the US needs is plausible deniability regarding an Israeli strike vis-a -vis Britain and Germany, in order to get itself out of the trap that Paris has set for it. An Israeli strike against the Iranian nuclear program will leave Germany in an uncomfortable public position. Berlin cannot condemn the Jews for doing what we can to prevent another Holocaust without losing whatever crumbs of moral credibility it has built up over the past 50 years.

As for Britain, if Israel were to conduct the attack on its own, the British would be hard-pressed to abandon the Americans; thus, the danger that British involvement with the Paris-based multipolarists on Iran will breach the Anglo-American alliance could be somewhat mitigated.

On the other hand, if the Bush administration does not accept Israeli reasoning, the fact will still remain: Israel cannot accept a nuclear Iran.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

Suha Arafat's rant against leaders of the Palestinian Authority and Yasser Arafat's heirs apparent earlier in the week was revealing in many ways. On a basic level, it showed much about the nature of the PA and the PLO which Arafat has built and led. Arafat's wife, who had been estranged from him more or less since they were married, had thrown down the gauntlet. Her beef with everyone was over the loot that Arafat amassed over all these years – money he made by bilking the international community for aid and shaking down Palestinians in Judea, Samaria, Gaza and around the Arab world for pay-offs. She wanted the money – estimated at somewhere in the neighborhood of $6.5 billion – and she wasn't going to let her brain-dead hubby be taken off the feeding tube until she got it.

For their part, everyone from Mahmoud Abbas to Ahmed Qurei to Saeb Erekat on down Arafat's food chain sanctimoniously protested. The money, they said belongs to the Palestinian people and therefore, they, not she, should be given the codes to the secret bank accounts where Arafat stashed it (after he stole it from the Palestinian people – which they don't say).

From all of this we received an admission that the house that Yasser built, in addition to being the world's richest terrorist organization, is a criminal syndicate.

This is important because, while Arafat and the PLO had been lauded by Europe and the international Left for decades as revolutionaries, at the end of the day what they were was – and still is – a den of thieves. Of course we knew this all along. During the negotiations with the PLO in the roaring Nineties, the only time the Palestinian negotiators would truly get bent out of shape was when the discussions turned to money.

When Israel tried to prevent Arafat's money launderer, Muhammad Rashid, from taking control of revenues from sales tax on cigarettes and fuel, he flew off the handle. In the midst of negotiations, Rashid (whom Arafat trusted, because as an ethnic Kurd, he has no ability to build up his own power base in the PLO) stood up and threw a chair across the negotiating table. This he did while accusing the young Israeli negotiator (me) of insulting the national honor of the Palestinian people for mentioning that the revenues weren't supposed to go to Arafat's secret account at Bank Leumi in Tel Aviv, but to the Palestinian Ministry of Finance.

Rashid, like Qurei, Abbas, Muhammad Dahlan, Jamil Tarifi, Nabil Shaath, Jibril Rajoub and others, made clear to his Israeli "peace partners" that what he really needed was control over resources. This, they all said, would maintain stability in the Palestinian territories.

For their part, Israeli negotiators, like their American counterparts, looked patronizingly at their corrupt Palestinian friends. They believed that Palestinian corruption was good for Israel. If the warlords were kept fat, so the thinking went, law and order in the territories would be ensured – at least to the extent that Israelis would be prevented from getting killed.

Since the PLO was Israel's putative peace partner, no one batted a lash when the PLO announced and rapidly enacted its policy of killing every Palestinian who had ever cooperated with Israeli security forces. Israel did nothing but launch meaningless protests when, in its first order of business, the PA announced the "legislation" of a "law" whereby any Palestinian who sold land to Jews would be killed.

Why did Israel need moderate, peaceful Palestinians who for years had stuck out their necks to help Israel, when it had the PLO? Why should Israel worry about these "collaborators" when it had the real McCoy in its pocket in the guise of Arafat and his lieutenants, embraced by one and all as the "sole legitimate representatives of the Palestinian people?"

The problem with this plan was also revealed in Suha's on-air fit. Suha claimed that all of Arafat's men were trying to bury him alive (neat trick since he was already dead, but whatever). Suddenly they all decried her and spoke of their loyalty to Arafat's path and legacy and insisted that they would never dream of trying to step into his shoes.

When Hamas and Islamic Jihad came out with their warning that they would not tolerate Arafat's lieutenants trying to tell them what to do, they were essentially making the same statement as Screamin' Suha. Arafat, they claimed, had legitimacy with their organizations because of his importance as a "symbol" of the Palestinian people. Since none of Arafat's cronies has been elevated to the level of "symbol," they have no reason to listen to them or accept their leadership. So all of Arafat's men in the PLO, again, began a mad dance of explaining that Arafat's legacy is their legacy and that they won't depart from his path.

And here we get to the crux of the issue. Arafat's men – from Qurei to Abbas to Farouk Kadoumi and even to Israeli Arab leaders like Knesset member Ahmed Tibi – owe their positions in the world to the fact that they were integral parts of Arafat's kingdom. It wasn't just Arafat that Israel insanely brought into Judea, Samaria and Gaza (and Israel) in 1994, but the entire terrorist and corrupt regime of the PLO. Though Arafat's death has finally been announced, his kingdom remains intact.

In their usual vacuous and ridiculous style, pundits, experts and politicians in Israel and from around the world have been mouthing off over the past week about Israel using the opportunity of Arafat's death to strengthen the "reformist" elements in the PA. Fat chance of that working.

There are no "reformist" elements in the PA. And anyone inside the PA who would dare speak of making changes to the way things are done would immediately be attacked, if not murdered, for daring to question Arafat's legacy.

We have only to look to Nabil Amr, the PLO member and former PA propaganda minister who dared to attack Arafat in July for the PLO's corruption. He was shot in the leg and is now getting fitted for a prosthetic limb in Europe. And this happened while Arafat was still in charge. Imagine what will happen now that the "Martyred President" has finally been buried.

If Abbas or Qurei – Jerusalem and Washington's favorites to inherit Arafat's helm – try to cut a deal with Israel, or in any way take action against the PLO militias or Hamas or Fatah or Islamic Jihad, they will be immediately murdered. Not, of course, that they would try to take any action to rein in or disarm the terrorists. They side with the terrorists, because they are and always have been terrorists themselves. This is how they got their positions and retained them all these years at Arafat's side.

The point is that without a regime change in Palestinian society, Arafat's legacy will survive. And, as Suha's screeching statement makes clear, that legacy is both criminal and terrorist.

On the criminal side, we have the division of the stolen monies between the chief thieves. If anyone expects these men to suddenly become financially transparent, he is purposely misleading himself.

And on the terrorist side, we have the legacy of the so-called "armed struggle" against Israel. The aim of this struggle will remain, in the aftermath of Arafat's funeral, precisely what it has always been: not the establishment of a peaceful Palestinian state next to Israel, but the destruction of the Jewish state.

If something doesn't give, we can expect that nothing will change now that Arafat's dead and buried. Our enlightened "peace" supporters on the Left have already begun exhorting the Israeli government to help our Palestinian enemies – like Abbas and Qurei – while ignoring our Palestinian friends, whom we can barely find anymore, because so many of them have been killed that the ones who still draw breath are afraid to come forward.

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who has for the past three and a half years followed a policy of vilifying Arafat while leaving his regime untouched, will likely continue on this devastating course. The Europeans, together with US Secretary of State Colin Powell, are claiming that now that Arafat is out of the picture, there is no discrepancy between the Bush administration, Elysee Palace and 10 Downing Street on the Palestinian issue.

There is only one glimmer of hope in all of this. And it comes from Washington.

In his first press conference after being reelected, US President George W. Bush referred not to the road map, but to his speech from June 24, 2002, as the basis of his Middle East policy. In that speech, Bush said, "I call on the Palestinian people to elect new leaders, leaders not compromised by terror. I call upon them to build a practicing democracy, based on tolerance and liberty."

The president went on to call for economic transparency and an end to official corruption of the PA. If Bush intends to stand by his statement now that Arafat is dead, then so long as Israel's Left doesn't wreck his plan, there is for the first time an opportunity to change the way things are done around here. The only chance this has, however, is if there is a true Palestinian regime change and the PLO goes the way of Arafat.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

In his press conference last Thursday, President Bush said people who don't believe in the applicability of democracy to the Arab world cannot really believe in a two-state solution to the Palestinian conflict with Israel. That is, as long as the Palestinians remain governed by terrorists, there is no way they will be willing to live at peace with Israel. 

With Palestine Liberation Organization chieftain Yasser Arafat, the godfather of Islamic terrorism, now dead or dying in France, is there at last a real chance the Palestinians will achieve a democratic transformation that will enable peace to emerge? 

In answering this question, we should take an example from one of Mr. Arafat's guiding lights: Adolf Hitler. Hitler's suicide in his bunker in Berlin in May 1945 was not what enabled Konrad Adenauer to lead a democratic West Germany. Adenauer could not have led, and certainly would never have been a democrat, if all he did was replace Hitler in May 1945. Before Adenauer was brought in to lead West Germany, aside from Hitler passing from the scene, the Nazi regime he created was militarily defeated and Nazi leaders -- both political and military -- were brought before war crimes tribunals. 

Adenauer presided over a German democracy whose truncated borders were determined by the Allies; where Nazi propaganda was expunged from the schoolbooks; where Nazis were barred from positions of power and influence; and where Germans educators were made to teach their pupils the evil Germany had wrought in the war. Adenauer's ascension was only possible after the total destruction of the Nazi power apparatus. 

The analogy of Hitler's death is pertinent in the case of Mr. Arafat not merely because of his ideological affinity with Hitler, but because Mr. Arafat, like Hitler, has built the Palestinian power apparatus in his own murderous image. All of Mr. Arafat's presumed heirs -- from Mahmud Abbas to Ahmed Qureia to Muhammed Dahlan and their colleagues in the Palestinian Authority are terrorists. 

Mr. Abbas and Mr. Qureia owe their prominence to their having co-founded the Fatah terror group with Mr. Arafat. Mr. Abbas, who has been upheld by the United States and Israel alike as a "reformer," wrote his Ph.D. dissertation and later a best-selling book "explaining" the Holocaust is a hoax. Mr. Abbas has overseen terrorist attacks for the past several decades and has outspokenly conditioned peace on the destruction of Israel as a Jewish state through the so-called "right of return" of millions of foreign born Arabs to Israel. 

Mr. Qureia, who also has a rich history of terror involvement, has been the PLO's chief money man for the past three decades. From Tunis to Lebanon to the Gulf States to the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Mr. Qureia has overseen a confidence operation that puts the Sicilian Mafia to shame. Mr. Qureia overtly supports terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians and in recent months has openly called for terrorists to murder Israeli civilians. 

Muhammed Dahlan, who with his charismatic smile won the hearts of Israeli and American policymakers alike, is one of the architects of the current terror war. In 1994, Mr. Arafat put him in charge of coordinating with Hamas. Mr. Dahlan's militia in Gaza has actively carried out attacks against Israelis, including an Israeli school-bus bombing in November 2000, in which three persons were murdered and a half-dozen children lost legs and arms. Since then, Mr. Dahlan's forces have retained their leadership role in terror attacks, as well as in the weapons smuggling and development in Gaza. 

And so on, down the line. Today there is no Palestinian political party that is not a terrorist organization. Of the 12 militias Mr. Arafat formed in the West Bank and Gaza since 1994, every one is deeply involved in terror activities. Documents seized by the Israeli army during major combat operations in the West Bank have shown Mr. Arafat's generals ordering suicide bombings and authorizing payments to terrorists. 

Under Mr. Arafat's leadership, Palestinian society has been indoctrinated to jihad in a manner unmatched throughout the Arab world, perhaps with the exception of al Qaeda training camps. Children have been brainwashed to believe their life goal should be to die carrying out acts of genocidal mass murder of Jews. Women have been inculcated with the inhuman belief their wombs are bomb factories, rather than the sources of life. 

Through the Palestinian media, school system, religious institutions, sports teams and iconographers, Palestinians over the past decade have been brought to believe their sole purpose as a people is to liquidate the Jewish people. Suicide bombings in Israel are greeted with carnival-like celebrations in the West Bank and Gaza. There is no remorse, no regret, no shame and no guilt over the wanton brutality and barbarity of suicide bombings. 

And so, in light of the current derangement of Palestinian society, does Mr. Arafat's passing have any significance for policymakers? 

On a basic level, the death of an evil man is always a cause for hope. Yet Mr. Arafat's death will provide an opportunity for building a better future only if the Bush administration uses his disappearance as a catalyst for a true overhaul of Palestinian society. This requires more than just pressuring Israel to meet with and make concessions to a new PLO warlord, raised on Mr. Arafat's knee. 

There is no doubt there are Palestinians alive today who have the potential to be Palestinian Adenauers. But for these leaders to come forward, the apparatus of genocide and terror that Mr. Arafat has wrought over the past four decades must first be dismantled. Mr. Arafat's heirs have no more chance of bringing peace and democracy to the Palestinians than Hitler's heirs could have done in Germany. For peace to arise, Palestinians must cleanly break not only with Mr. Arafat but with his legacy.

Originally published in The Washington Times.

Theo van Gogh was a hero in the battle for freedom in this world war, and he was gunned down Tuesday for fighting this terrible fight. His assassin, who found him riding his bicycle through his hometown of Amsterdam, shot him eight times and then slit his throat. He killed him because van Gogh dared to speak the truth.

Vincent van Gogh's great-grand nephew stuck his neck out. He was a filmmaker who recently produced a documentary showing how Islam oppresses women. One might think that given the totalitarian subjugation of women throughout the Muslim world, such a film would not spark a controversy. But in Europe these days, anything that points out the primitive and barbaric treatment that hundreds of millions of women suffer in the Islamic world, as well as in Islamic enclaves in the West, is considered verboten.

Muslim extremists can gang rape women – Muslim and non-Muslim – and mutilate their daughters' genitalia as a matter of course. They can indoctrinate their daughters into believing that covering themselves from head to toe with potato sacks and draperies will somehow set them free. They can do all of this – and burn down synagogues – and reasonably assume that the European press won't mention their ethnic identity or ask what is wrong with them as a group for carrying out barbaric, evil, and primitive acts against others.

So, in stating the obvious, Theo van Gogh was picking a fight with a violent yet protected minority. Suddenly, in our topsy-turvy world, it was van Gogh, not the evil, racist, fascist misogynists about whom he produced a film, who was controversial. And now he is dead.

Two and a half years ago, another Dutchman was murdered for speaking the plain truth. That time it was the homosexual politician Pim Fortuyn, who was murdered just nine days before his parliamentary list was poised to become the largest political force in the Dutch parliament. Killed by a radical Left animal rights activist, Fortuyn was running on a platform of reducing Muslim immigration to Holland by 75 percent.

Were these men wrong to fight, given that they paid for their message against Islamic extremism with their lives? Were they fools to stick their necks out for the truth? Were their lives and their struggles meaningless? After all, had they been silent and just toed the line, no doubt both would be alive and healthy today. Fortuyn would have been a sociology professor, much loved by his pet dogs and his students alike. Van Gogh would have been a popular, irascible cinematographer and TV talk show host.

But now the Dutch government is doing something. For the first time, acting as the head of the rotating EU presidency, it is calling for the EU to recognize that Hizbullah is a terrorist organization. The Dutch people, too, are taking action. Twenty thousand Dutch citizens gathered on the spot where van Gogh was murdered to protest. After Fortuyn's murder, his anti-Islamofascist platform was adopted by mainstream politicians. This week, after van Gogh's murder, the Dutch press has come out with calls to protect Dutch society from Islamic fascism. In the words of the daily, De Telegraaf, "Afraid of being called racist, we have been so tolerant with regard to these religious fascists that they have been allowed to merrily undermine the roots of our freedom."

These men paid the ultimate price. But if at the end of the day Holland is able to protect itself from the gathering threat of Islamic terrorism, their sacrifice will have saved countless lives of their countrymen. And while this does not mitigate the tragedy, it means these men were heroes.

The same day that van Gogh was killed, across the ocean another controversial figure stood for election. US President George W. Bush, who ran on a platform pilloried by the Left in America and throughout the world, was overwhelmingly reelected by his countrymen. Not only has Bush been personally demonized by his political opposition and by the US and world media for his firm stand against terrorism and for traditional American values, but his supporters have also been violently attacked by those who oppose them. In the months before Tuesday's presidential election, anti-Bush hooligans violently attacked Republican campaign offices in five states and attacked Republican activists in two. On Monday, a mob of Arab students at San Francisco State University attacked a group of College Republicans at a campus "get out the vote" rally.

In an interview with Frontpage Magazine, Derek Wray, the president of SFSU's College Republicans, said the attack began when a woman from the school's General Union of Palestinian Students accosted Republican students handing out campaign literature by screaming, "You and the Jews want to kill all the Muslims! You and Ariel Sharon want to kill innocent Palestinian babies."

According to Wray, after one of the students asked her why she doesn't leave America if she hates it so much, the woman yelled, "I have some pride. I would strap a bomb on myself and blow myself up as a suicide bomber rather than call myself an American." Another woman reportedly threatened to blow up the College Republicans.

Are these Republicans at SFSU and throughout the US stupid to be placing themselves in harm's way by trying to advance their political beliefs? Should these American political activists just forget about politics and go on about their business?

At SFSU, after the Muslim students shifted from verbal to physical violence, rather than arrest them, the campus police suggested to the Republican students that they pack up their things and go home. And what were they thinking, really? After all, California was a Kerry state, so what is the purpose of their taking a stand, given the consternation their activism caused the poor, miserable Palestinians?

Of course, the point is that were these brave souls to abandon the fight, there would be no one left to stand up to these bullies and they would win. Their home, SFSU, would be a place where Republicans would not be able to exist freely. And if they ceased defending their own rights, no one would be defending them for them.

This is true everywhere, and in all things, not just in fighting jihadis in one's backyard. A case in point is British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

Immediately following Bush's victory speech on Wednesday, Blair gave an address congratulating him for his reelection and calling on him to dedicate his second term to solving the Middle East problem. "I have long argued that the need to revitalize the Middle East peace process is the single most pressing political challenge in our world today," he said.

Say what one will about the veracity of Blair's view, he was acting reasonably. He is the prime minister of Britain, and in his view, the interests of Britain, and of Blair the politician who will soon face reelection, are served by putting pressure on Israel to make concessions to Palestinian terrorists. So he takes every opportunity to shape the American political agenda to advance those interests. No one else will do it if he doesn't.

Sadly, the fact that having the courage to act on one's convictions and in one's interests is the only way to advance either seems to have escaped the notice of Israel's leaders. And so it was that in his message of congratulations to Bush, Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom wrote, "The United States has been the driving international force in all of Israel's efforts to reach peace with her neighbors. Presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton facilitated the historic peace agreements with Egypt and Jordan respectively, and president George Bush, Sr. convened the Madrid peace conference in 1991. We hope that during President Bush's second term, we can complete the circle of peace and deliver a better future to all peoples of the region."

Who is Shalom representing here? If he is representing Israel, why is he upholding the three most egregious cases of American interference with Israel's national security? Jimmy Carter was and remains the most hostile US president to the Jewish state in the history of Israeli-American relations. Bush's father, according to former prime minister Yitzhak Shamir in an interview with this writer in 1999, "was a hater of Israel." And Clinton's empathic pressure "facilitated" the current war.

Can it be that Shalom, like Tony Blair and Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak, truly believes it is in Israel's interest to ask the Bush administration to pressure us to surrender to Palestinian terrorism?

After watching Bush stand up to all his detractors, demonizers, and haters from San Francisco to Brussels to the Arab world to the UN and emerge victorious, can it be that Israel's leaders have learned nothing about the virtues of having moral courage? From Holland to France to Canada to America, all of which are far more removed from the frontlines of this war than Israel, people are putting their lives, careers, safety, and happiness on the line to fight for their freedom. And in every country throughout the world, leaders strike poses they hope will advance their national interests, as America, under Bush's leadership, stands poised to fight four more years of World War IV.

But in Israel, we are not standing up for ourselves. Despite our 4,000-year history, every moment of which has taught us that "if we are not for ourselves no one will be for us," our leaders seem hell-bent on relinquishing the battleground to our enemies and to those who see their advancement resulting from our diminishment.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.