Last Wednesday Attorney-General Menachem Mazuz did something unpardonable. He decided that the state can no longer abide by the law of the land. That law, the Basic Law for the Israel Lands Authority from 1960 provides the legal basis for the ILA's administration of both state-owned lands and lands owned by the JNF.

The law states that lands owned by the JNF – a privately owned and funded trust – are to be administered in accordance with the JNF's charter. Mazuz decided that from now on, the ILA will ignore the JNF's charter and administer its lands in the same manner as it administers state-owned lands.

The JNF was founded at the dawn of modern Zionism for the purpose of raising money from Jews in the Diaspora and in Israel to buy lands in the Land of Israel for Jewish settlement. Its charter stipulates that JNF lands are to be used specifically for Jewish settlement. Stemming from this, it was agreed in 1960 that the ILA would only lease JNF land – which comprises some 13 percent of the total land in Israel – to Jews.

In the meantime, state-owned lands – which constitute more than 80 percent of land in Israel – are leased to all citizens – Jews, Muslim and Christians.

The proximate cause of Mazuz's decision to renounce the state's commitment to administer JNF lands in accordance with its charter is a petition to the High Court of Justice submitted by the Arab Israeli "human rights" organization Adalah. While Adalah adamantly rejects Israel's right to be a Jewish state, it demands that Israel confer "collective rights" to Israel's Arab minority.

In its petition, Adalah argues that the state, which through the ILA is prohibited from discriminating against citizens based on their religious or ethnic status, cannot administer JNF lands in accordance with its charter, but rather must treat JNF lands as it treats state-owned lands.

In its response to the petition, the JNF explained, "The petitioners are requesting that the honorable court instruct the state to initiate an expropriation of all JNF lands. With all due respect, we have yet to hear of a case where a citizen forces the state to expropriate land for him from another.

"The JNF is not a trust for the public living in Israel. The JNF trust belongs to the Jewish people – in the Diaspora and in Israel. Not only does the JNF not have the duty to act for the benefit of all citizens of Israel, the JNF has a duty to purchase lands for use by Jews.

"The JNF is prohibited from acting for the provision of lands to all residents of the state."

In deciding the state's response to Adalah's petition, Mazuz took Adalah's point and concluded that the ILA, as a statutory body, cannot both honor the terms of the JNF trust and follow the law of how the state is supposed to administer state lands.

But there is a simple solution to this problem. If the state cannot administer privately owned lands in accordance with the wishes and directions of the lands' owners, it can stop administering them. After all, the Islamic Wakf owns large swathes of land in Israel which Jews are prohibited from purchasing or leasing. The Holyland Christian Ecumenical Foundation buys lands in Israel exclusively for Christian settlement.

Yet rather than turn to the simple solution, Mazuz decided that the ILA can no longer publish tenders for any lands it administers which include a stipulation that the land is to be leased for Jewish settlement or use. And so, at his directive, JNF lands are to be treated from now on as if they are owned by the state. In so deciding, Mazuz has effectively expropriated and nationalized all JNF lands.

This is a blatantly discriminatory decision. According to Dr. Alex Safian, the deputy director of the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America, who has studied Israeli land policies in depth for more than a decade, "The JNF is the Jewish parallel to the Muslim Wakf. The attorney-general can no more say that Arabs have a right to JNF land, which was purchased by the Jewish people for the specific purpose of Jewish settlement, than he can say that Jews have a right to Wakf land."

The most troubling aspect of this situation is that it is wholly politically motivated. Adalah's attorneys know full well that the ILA does not in practice discriminate against Israeli Arabs. Upper Nazareth, which is built entirely on state land, has a population that is 18 percent Arab. More than 50% of the lands used by Arab Israeli farmers are state-owned.

Until now, in cases where Arabs have asked to lease JNF lands, the ILA and the JNF have enabled such leases by swapping ownership of the JNF-owned lands in question with state-owned lands. What Adalah is demanding in its petition and what Mazuz is agreeing to is the acceptance of a discriminatory principle whereby Jews have no right to collectively own land for the benefit of Jews in the Jewish state. Again, were this not the case, Mazuz would simply decide that the ILA must cease to administer JNF lands.

In making this decision, Mazuz has not merely overstepped his authority. He has effectively seized the property of the entire Jewish people – in Israel and throughout the world – who have for the last 120 years been putting their dollars, rubles, francs and pounds into the blue boxes of the JNF.

It is the responsibility of all Jews to protest against this discriminatory expropriation of our property.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

In America, the Democratic Party is in a state of tumult following its defeat in last November's presidential and Congressional elections, as voters deepened Republican control over both the legislative and executive branches of the government.

Because in the US judges are appointed by the president and approved by the Senate, over time they inevitably reflect majority sentiment. Democratic presidents in the 1960s and 1970s ensured a liberal bench for a generation. Today's Republican control over the executive and legislative branches – together with the aging of Supreme Court justices – holds the prospect of a strong Republican majority on the bench that, like the current Democratic preponderancy, will give Republicans control over the judicial system for the next generation.

In the aftermath of the elections, Democratic spokesmen and leaders spent great energy insulting the electorate that rejected them. Now, however, it seems that voices of reason are beginning to be sounded.

In an op-ed in Wednesday's New York Times, Paul Starr, the editor of the liberal American Prospect magazine, argues that the Democrats' controlof the bench deadened its members and leaders to the sentiments of the majority of voters. In his words, "For decades, many liberals thought they could ignore the elementary demand of politics – winning elections – because they could go to court to achieve the[ir] goals on constitutional grounds." Starr insists that "Rebuilding a national political majority will mean distinguishing between positions that contribute to a majority and those that detract from it."

In Israel, things are a bit different. Since 1977, the only way Israeli leftists have been able to compete in national politics has been to espouse right-wing views for electioneering purposes. This has not led them, however, to engage in a debate similar to that now taking place among American Democrats. This is because in Israel the Supreme Court effectively appoints both its own members and the justices of the lower courts. With a perpetual majority of increasingly radical leftists sitting on Israel's bench, the Israeli Left will never lose its ability to push through its agenda – in spite of its lack of support among the public.

A case in point is the High Court of Justice's abuse of IDF Deputy Chief of Staff Major General Dan Halutz. Last May, a group of radical leftists banded together to petition the court to suspend Halutz's appointment to his current position, claiming that he wasn't sufficiently "moral." The proximate cause of the concern was a newspaper interview that Halutz granted in August 2002, in which, as commander of the Air Force, he defended the IAF's bombing of Hamas terror commander Saleh Shehadeh's house in Gaza, despite the fact that in addition to Shehadeh, 15 civilians also died in the blast.

The court's decision to hear the case was absurd, both because in no normal country would such extremists have standing on this kind of issue and because in a properly functioning democracy, courts rule on legal, not moral, issues.

After publicly humiliating Halutz last month by demanding that he write an essay for the court explaining why he considers himself a moral person, the court went a step further. While ruling against the petition on Wednesday, Justice Edmond Levy wrote in the court's decision, "The tone of the interview was regrettable, as were some of the things that were said, which would have better been left unsaid, especially by an IDF general who was the commander of the Air Force."

Levy's behavior in this case – where, prodded by radicals who have no significant base of public support in Israeli society, he used the Supreme Court as a political reeducation camp – is an affront to the very notion of the rule of law in Israel. Given the leftist judicial self-appointed fiefdom which, engaged by left-wing individuals and groups that have little in common with majority sentiment in Israel, transforms politically radical viewpoints into law, the question arises of whether Israel can be considered a democracy governed by the rule of law.

This question is becoming increasingly urgent in light of the government's intention to use IDF forces to conduct the expulsion of Israeli citizens from their homes and communities in the Gaza Strip and northern Samaria. Recently, a number of army officers, reservists and lawyers have begun asking whether it is legal to use the army to conduct this mission. The IDF is legally responsible for protecting Israel against enemy forces. It is impossible to argue that the citizens who are slated for expulsion by the army are enemies of the state. The emergency call-up orders for reservists whom the government now intends to order the IDF to mobilize – either to carry out the expulsion or to replace regular army units as those forces are diverted to the settlements – would, according to these sources, be illegal on their face.

According to the argument, emergency call-ups, by law, can only be instituted in times of war or grave security threat. Since the settlers pose no such threat, it is not legal to utilize such orders for this purpose. Even Haaretz's leftist legal commentator, Zev Segal, wrote last Friday that it is not at all clear from a legal perspective that "the IDF should carry out the evacuation of civilian settlements."

In discussing the legality of refusing to carry out orders to evacuate settlers, Israel Radio's leftist legal commentator, Moshe Hanegbi, argued this week that it is impossible to defend such refusal, given that soldiers have legal recourse in the form of petitions to the High Court of Justice.

However, in light of the self-evident political slant of the court, many reservists argue that Hanegbi's contention is irrelevant.

Given their lack of faith in the court's ability to interpret the law fairly, those who reject the use of the army for the political purpose of expelling civilians from their homes and communities have, in their view, no recourse other than to conscientiously object to their orders and serve whatever punishment the IDF metes out to them.

For the record, I feel compelled to note that I do not support the calls currently being sounded by prominent leaders of the Israeli communities in Judea, Samaria and Gaza for soldiers to refuse orders to evacuate the communities in Gaza and Northern Samaria. My view is grounded in a clear recognition that citizens, regardless of the irresponsible behavior of their politicians, must leave the IDF, the only force that guarantees Israel's survival for all its citizens, firmly outside of politics.

Yet, irrespective of my views, the phenomenon of soldiers who will indeed refuse to carry out orders to evacuate these communities is real and widespread. It does not merely or mainly manifest itself in the calls of irresponsible rabbis and right-wing spokesmen. The fact of the matter is that thousands of reservists are quietly telling their friends and colleagues that they intend to be sick or out of the country when they receive their call-up orders. And this is alarming.

It is alarming because, more than anything else, it is the consequence of a serious systemic failure of the mechanics of Israel's democratic system. As a conscripted force, the IDF owes its functioning to a clear social compact it has made with Israel's citizenry. The foundation of this compact is the assumption that the IDF is the manifestation of the collective will of the Israeli people to serve in their nation's defense. It is because the IDF has to date upheld its part of the social compact that the overwhelming majority of Israelis willingly and happily submit themselves to the draft. If the IDF is used for any function other than national defense that is not acceded to by a clear majority of Israelis, it will effectively undermine this compact.

In 1947, Winston Churchill famously quipped that "democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others that have been tried from time to time." Democracy can be cumbersome and irritating and messy. It demands that citizens remain engaged in the activities of their government. It requires that civil servants, politicians, justices and law enforcement agencies all stand accountable for their actions, both in the face of duly enacted laws and in the court of public opinion as it manifests itself at the ballot box.

Democracy forces politicians to engage in robust debate to win public support and legitimacy for their actions and it demands that the courts both protect minority rights and reflect the values and interests of the majority when they interpret the laws legislated by lawmakers. It is much more difficult for politicians operating democratically to steer the ship of their state in new directions than it is for their authoritarian counterparts. Yet the fact that this is the case is one of the beauties of the democratic system. The robust public discourse of a democratic society is the strongest safeguard against the adoption of irresponsible, dangerous or corrupt polices by the government.

The Left's perpetual control of the courts has to date insulated it from the need to contend with the fact that its ideology and policies cannot garner the support of a majority of the public. As a result, it has never faced a reckoning like the one with which the US Democratic Party is currently contending.

But by forcing a politicization of the military, the government, which has adopted the minority policies of the Left, is doing more than simply advancing a plan that was overwhelmingly rejected by voters in the last election. It is endangering the very lifeblood of Israeli society – the social compact that stands at the foundation of the military, which is the sole guarantor of the survivability of the Jewish state.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

In a recent poll, 62 percent of Germans said they were "sick of all the harping on about German crimes against the Jews." Two thirds of Germans said they believe Israel is waging "a war of extermination" against the Palestinians.

Jews often focus their attention on Holocaust sentiment among non-Jews to gauge anti-Semitic feelings. But while feelings about the Holocaust serve as an indicator of general sentiment about Jews, there are other indicators no less important or revealing. Sensitivity about the Holocaust may tell us what a person feels about Jews, but it may also simply tell us what that person feels about dead Jews.

But let's say that most Germans did believe the Holocaust was a terrible crime. Would the German rejection of the Holocaust mean that the majority that believes Israel is today's Nazi Germany is less anti-Semitic? No, it would not.

Yesterday the UN General Assembly for the first time held a special session to commemorate the liberation of the Nazi death camps and the Holocaust. Does this mean that the UN, which devotes some one-third of its resolutions to condemning Israel, is no longer hostile to the Jewish people? No, it does not.

SINCE THE Holocaust, the rallying cry of Jews has been "Never Again!" But the enormity of the Holocaust must not blind us to its present-day mutation.

Today the vast majority of anti-Semites are not calling for Jews to be deported to death camps. They are calling for the destruction of the Jewish state and, as was the case in previous generations, they are seeking out and finding Jews like Karl Marx who share their hatred for the Jewish people and willingly advance their evil agenda.

This agenda is to again reduce Jews to a state of powerlessness where we will be at the mercy of the same world that either participated in or did nothing in the face of the extermination of European Jewry.

Today this is done by striking out at the main safeguard against such powerlessness – the State of Israel – criminalizing it as the modern-day incarnation of Nazi Germany. The role of Jewish anti-Semites in this campaign is to decouple the dead Jews murdered by the Nazis from the live Jews who live in, or support, the Jewish state.

Such a Jew was found by the British conservative magazine The Spectator in one Anthony Lippman. Lippman is actually an Anglican, not a Jew, but as the child of Jewish Holocaust survivors, he will do.

In a recent article, Lippman writes hypnotically about his mother's sufferings in Auschwitz only to explain that the job of Holocaust survivors and their children is to speak out against... Israel.

In his words, survivors have "a terrible responsibility – to live well in the name of those who did not live and to discourage the building of walls and bulldozing of villages. Even more than this, they – and all Jews – need to be the voice of conscience that will prevent Israel from adopting the mantle of oppressor, and to reject the label 'anti-Semite' for those who speak out against Israel's policies in the occupied territories."

ANOTHER such Jew is Tony Judt. Since the start of the Palestinian terror war, Judt, a historian at New York University, has been outspoken in his rejection of Israel's right to exist.

In a series of articles in The New York Review of Books, The Nation and The New Republic, Judt has led the charge in claiming that "the depressing truth is that Israel today is bad for the Jews," and that for Jews to feel good about themselves again Israel must cease to be a Jewish state – that is, Israel must cease to exist.

This perverse line of reasoning, whereby the only way for Jews to be happy is for us to again be powerless, has brought Judt under attack by prominent Jews who have exposed the anti-Semitism inherent in his argumentation.

In a new article in The Nation magazine, Judt takes a stab at responding to his many critics. The article is a ponderous attempt to argue that there is no relation between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism.

On the one hand, he says that it is anti-Semitic to say that Jews control the US. But on the other hand, Judt allows that "contemporary US foreign policy is in certain respects mortgaged to Israel," adding, "To say that Israel and its lobbyists have an excessive and disastrous influence on the policies of the world's superpower is a statement of fact."

Judt allows that there has been a rise in anti-Semitism in Europe in recent years, but he blames this on "the policies of Israeli government." Echoing Anglican Lippman, Judt writes that for anti-Semitism to be dealt with in Europe, "Jews and others must learn to shed inhibitions and criticize Israel's policies and actions."

In Judt's view, "once Germans, French and others can comfortably condemn Israel without an uneasy conscience, and can look their Muslim fellow citizens in the face, it will be possible to deal with the real problem [i.e., anti-Semitism]."

Since the September 11 attacks Muslims have been called upon to decry the preaching of hatred in their community. It is argued that until Muslims themselves delegitimize the voices of hatred in their communities the poisonous message of jihad will continue to attract thousands to its genocidal cause.

The 60th anniversary of Auschwitz's liberation is a good time to call for a similar Jewish condemnation of hate-filled Jews and those that use them to advance their anti-Semitic agenda.

These are not legitimate voices. These are not legitimate views. They are the views of deranged Jew-haters which, if listened to, will do nothing other than pave the way to the next calamity.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

Writing Tuesday in The Daily Telegraph, British military historian John Keegan compared the Palestinian terror war to the Iraqi insurgency. "What is going on in Iraq," Keegan writes, "resembles the second Palestinian intifada, though it is more intensive and better organized. It is also more difficult to counter, since the Western forces lack the detailed intelligence to which the Israeli security forces have access."

Keegan's statement is both true and false. It is certainly true that, from a strictly military perspective, Iraqi terrorists and foreign terrorists who fight with them in Iraq have mimicked Palestinian terror techniques, just as American forces have adopted IDF counterterror tactics in combating them. It is also true that Israel, which has been fighting the Palestinians for upwards of 100 years, knows its enemy much better than coalition forces know their opponents in Iraq.

Yet, tactical capabilities aside, the US and its coalition partners will likely emerge victorious in Iraq, while Israel is losing its war against Palestinian terrorism. The reason for this has little to do with military prowess and everything to do with a vision for the future. The Americans and their allies in Iraq, including the 85 percent of Iraqis who intend to vote on January 30, have a clear vision of where they want to go. They wish, through ushering in democracy and liberalization, to better the lot of the Iraqi people while ensuring, through counterterror warfare, that the terrorists will have no future at all.

In Israel, in spite of the IDF's mastery of its realm, the policies of the government are creating a situation in which Palestinians who are not involved in terrorism continue to live on a dead-end street while the terrorists who are responsible for both their suffering and the suffering of the Israeli people are given respect, legitimacy, power – and the future.

This week, the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), which monitors the Arab press, released a transcript of the televised confession of Muayed al-Nasseri, who commanded Saddam Hussein's "Army of Muhammad" throughout 2004. In his confession, Nasseri said that his organization was founded by Saddam immediately after the fall of Baghdad to US troops in April 2003. He then detailed its links to the Syrian and Iranian regimes and to other terror forces operating in the country.

The fact that the Iraqi interim government decided to run Nasseri's statement on television speaks volumes about the nature of Iraqi politics today. The Iraqi people want to know, and the interim government whose members are now running for election want them to know, who it is that is bombing them every day. As Nasseri made clear, the Iraqis' enemies are not the coalition forces who are fighting day and night to kill and capture the terrorists. Their enemies are Saddam's henchmen and their Arab and Iranian neighbors who would prefer to see Saddam and his tyrannical rule reinstated than see the Iraqi people prosper in a free, open and democratic country.

It is interesting to note that in spite of being the most visible politician in Iraq, it is projected that Interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi will lose his power in the elections. Allawi, a Shi'ite and former Ba'athist who was anointed by the Jordanian monarchy, UN representative and former Arab League chairman Lakdar Brahimi and the CIA, is headed for defeat largely because the Iraqi public was angered by his decision to stop the de-Ba'athification process initiated by the provisional governing council appointed by the US after the fall of Saddam's regime.

Speaking this week to The Financial Times, Mohammed Tawfiq, one of the leaders of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, said the Shi'ite party that is set to take over from Allawi's interim government will vigorously reinstate the process.

One of the most outstanding features of the upcoming elections in Iraq is that they are only the first step toward the democratization of the country. The elections next week are not for a permanent government, but for a Constitutional Assembly. That elected body will select an interim government that will run Iraq until the assembly has completed the writing and ratification of a new Iraqi constitution. Only after the ratification process is completed will there be elections for a non-transitional government. And that government, in accordance with the constitution, will be both democratic and opposed to terrorism.

Meanwhile, the situation with the Palestinians is the exact opposite of the situation in Iraq. Yasser Arafat's death in November provided the Palestinians with their first real opportunity to begin the process of liberalization and democratization. Arafat, who ruled by terror and tyranny since the founding of Fatah in 1959, prevented all challenges to the PLO's preeminence among Palestinians. The fact that his patently dictatorial declaration that the PLO is the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people was accepted shows that the entire world, over time, came to believe that Palestinians have no right to freedom in any real sense.

And so, when he finally passed away, for a moment it seemed that it would be possible to usher in a new period in Palestinian history. Just moments, however, after Arafat was finally declared dead, the nations of the world, led by Israel, America and the EU, ensured the continuation of Arafat's authoritarian, terror-supporting regime by anointing his deputy of 40 years, Mahmoud Abbas, to replace him. That Abbas's election last week was a sham was testified to by the resignation en masse of the Palestinian Central Elections Committee last Saturday, just hours before Abbas was sworn in as the new PA chairman.

Ammar Dwaik and Baha al-Bakri, two of the former election officials, told The Jerusalem Post that a group of gunmen, including at least one security officer from the PA's General Security Force, stormed their offices on Election Day and demanded that non-registered Palestinians be allowed to cast ballots. The purpose of the fraud, they claimed, was not to change the results of the election, in which Abbas ran without significant opposition, but to ensure a convincing victory for Abbas, who was declared the winner with 62 percent of the vote.

Abbas has made no bones about the course his leadership will take. On the day he was sworn into office, two Palestinian youths were shot to death in Nablus for "collaborating" with Israel, and in Gaza, a Palestinian court sentenced five men to prison for the same "crime." Abbas stated that rather than fight Palestinian terrorists, he will negotiate with some and integrate others into the Palestinian security services.

And what of the law-abiding Palestinians who voted for him? Last Thursday night's attack on the Karni cargo terminal, which was carried out jointly by Hamas and the Fatah's Aksa Martyrs Brigade – with whom Abbas is now negotiating – forced Israel to close down the terminal through which Palestinian farmers and businessmen transport their goods to market.

The Hamas bomber who blew himself up at Gush Katif junction this week hid his bomb in his underwear. This means that Palestinians waiting at checkpoints will now, no doubt, have to undergo still more intrusive inspections before traveling. To them, Abbas promises nothing other than to demand that Israel release thousands of terrorists from its prisons – terrorists who, if released, will undoubtedly return to terror, forcing Israel to take still more military measures to protect its citizens and thus exacerbating the conditions in which rank-and-file Palestinians live.

The US has made several mistakes in Iraq. It was wrong for it to stop pursuing the de-Ba'athification process. It was probably a mistake for it to call for the Iraqi army not to fight its forces when they invaded in March 2003. In so doing, the Americans enabled Saddam's army to escape intact, to fight another day on the terror battlefield of its choosing. And it was wrong not to seal Iraq's borders with Iran, Syria and Saudi Arabia immediately after the terror war began in the summer of 2003.

Yet, for all it has done wrong, the US has learned from its mistakes. Ahead of the elections, Iraq's borders will be sealed. The US is building an Iraqi military whose forces wish to fight the terrorists. The US is making clear to Iraq's neighbors that they will pay a price if they continue to interfere in Iraq. And the US has made absolutely clear that its forces will not leave Iraq until their job is complete.

In Israel, where the lessons of our government's decision in 1993 to reward terrorists with arms and territory have been learned on the backs of the more than 1,300 Israelis who have been murdered since then, we find that rather than apply those lessons, our government is repeating the mistakes. Rather than forming partnerships with Palestinians like Dwaik and Bakri and the thousands of Palestinians who are demanding democracy, we have anointed yet another dictator who seeks to shore up his legitimacy not by fighting and exposing terrorists, as the Iraqi government is doing, but by incorporating terrorists into his government and security services.

Speaking to Egyptian journalists shortly after Saddam's capture in December 2003, US Ambassador to Egypt David Welch, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's nominee for assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs, said, "America does not covet territories, it does not covet resources... America does covet ideas, and we believe – to quote Winston Churchill – 'ideas are the empire of the future.'"

While it is still too early to say whether the American idea of an Iraqi democracy will succeed, it is, sadly, self-evident that the Israeli idea of rewarding Palestinian terrorists with land and power in exchange for them not fighting other Palestinian terrorists is doomed to failure. It is true that America has much to learn from Israeli battlefield tactics. But Israel has even more to learn from America's vision for victory.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

New York Magazine published a long article this week outlining the dispute between pro-Israel students at Columbia University and the overwhelmingly pro-Arab professors in the university's Middle East and Asian Languages and Cultures Department.

The students allege that the department's professors promote the notion that Israel is a racist, terrorist state.

While the dispute has been simmering for years, it rose to the headlines four months ago when a pro-Israel organization called The David Project released a short documentary film called Columbia Unbecoming, in which 14 students and recent alumni recounted incident after incident of abuse they suffered in Columbia's classrooms at the hands of these professors for their "crime" of defending Israel's right to exist.

Rashid Khalidi, the PLO activist who holds Columbia's $2.5 million endowed Edward Said chair for Middle East Studies (partially financed by the United Arab Emirates), gave the magazine a telling critique of his department's detractors saying, "We're not in an environment where Jewish students, as they were in the history of the Ivy League, are discriminated against." Turning to his computer screen, Khalidi added, "Have you looked at the Hillel Web site here? It blew my mind!

"Look at this. They have 10, 12 paid employees [T]here's no reason for a person who's Jewish at Columbia to feel persecuted."

So in Khalidi's view, since there are no longer quotas limiting the number of Jewish students allowed to enroll at Columbia, as there were until the 1950s, and because Columbia's Hillel is a large organization, (serving the needs of some 2,000 Jewish students), Jews have no right to feel persecuted by their hostile professors.

This is pure anti-Semitic claptrap, but note how Khalidi changed the subject.

He said nothing about the substance of the students' claim that Columbia professors indoctrinate their students into believing that Israel is evil.

He dismissed them by hinting that the real problem isn't academic abuse but pampered Jews who ought to feel so grateful for not being discriminated against in enrollment that they should mutely accept any lies their professors tell them about the Jewish state.

Khalidi is far from alone in turning on his accusers to avoid contending with the substance of their arguments.

Take, for example, Khalid bin Mahfouz.

Mahfouz is a Saudi financier, who until 2003 owned and ran the National Commercial Bank, (NCB) the largest bank in Saudi Arabia.

After the September 11, 2001 attacks, Mahfouz, his family and the NCB came under the scrutiny of several major newspapers, think tanks and terrorism researchers in the US and Europe for their apparent links to al-Qaida, Hamas and other terror organizations' funding networks.

Rather than responding to the allegations, Mahfouz filed libel suits against his detractors in British courts. His choice of Britain as his litigation venue was not coincidental.

In sharp contrast to most Western countries, Britain's libel laws place the burden of proof not on the purportedly injured party but on the side that leveled the allegations. That is, in Britain a party accused of libel is guilty until proven innocent.

Mahfouz has deep pockets. His personal net wealth is estimated at over $3 billion, so he can afford to litigate forever, unlike the targets of his lawsuits. Most of them have abandoned their pursuit of his terror links.

Major publications like The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, The Los Angeles Times and Harper's Magazine have opted to rescind their allegations rather than face the high court costs of battling Mahfouz.

Mahfouz's most recent victim is New York-based terrorism researcher Rachel Ehrenfeld.

Ehrenfeld, who directs the American Center for Democracy, documented the allegations against Mahfouz, his family and the NCB in her 2003 book Funding Evil: How Terrorism is Financed and How to Stop It.

Mahfouz filed suit against her in Britain last October.

Ehrenfeld, who like Mahfouz's other targets lacks the financial means to defend herself in Britain, and who like the others understands that she would be hard-pressed to emerge victorious given Britain's pro-plaintiff libel laws, has through necessity decided to turn the tables on Mahfouz.

She scraped together the money to file a countersuit in New York last month.

In her suit, Ehrenfeld asks the court to find that Mahfouz's libel charges would not pass muster in America. She further asks that the court declare unenforceable any award granted to Mahfouz in Britain.

In both Khalidi's manipulations and Mahfouz's litigation we see the real price demanded of individuals brave enough to fight for their principles, rights and freedoms.

Khalidi, backed by the financial muscle of a Persian Gulf state, hides behind the self-righteous cloak of multiculturalism to malign anyone who dares expose him and his colleagues as bigots. Mahfouz uses his vast wealth to intimidate his critics into silence with the threat of financial and professional ruin.

No one who recognizes the importance of intellectual, political and professional freedom can afford to remain indifferent to this fight. The battles being fought by Columbia's Jewish students and by Rachel Ehrenfeld are also our battles. We owe it to ourselves, no less than to them, to support them in their fights. For if they lose, all of us will be less free.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

For the past generation, Israel has found itself engaged in post-modern warfare. Whereas Arab armies have proved themselves in five wars to be no match for the IDF on the battlefield, our enemies over the last 20 years, since the IDF withdrawal from most of Lebanon, have found that the most effective means of fighting Israel is on the post-modern battlefield.

The most conspicuous component of the post-modern battlefield is terrorism. Terrorist foot soldiers of the post-modern army sow fear and revulsion in the heart of the target population in order to induce a sense of helplessness. In the face of photographs of the charred remains of babies being pulled from bombed-out cafes and buses, the mighty Israeli army suddenly seems small and impotent.

While terrorism is the outward face of the post-modern aggressor, social psychology is perhaps his greatest weapon. If the target population can be manipulated to view itself as the aggressor, if it can be brought to view its position as untenable, then it will sue for peace and surrender. So it was that Kadoura Fares, a member of the Palestinian Legislative Council and one of the heads of Fatah who signed Yossi Beilin's Geneva Accords, said in an interview with the pan-Arab London-based newspaper Al-Hayat in October 2003 that the Palestinian aim in signing the accords was to "foment a piercing public and political debate in Israel."

While Hamas has placed its emphasis mainly on the terrorist aspect of the post-modern battlefield, the PLO has placed an equal emphasis on the psychological component of the war. In fact, it could be said in retrospect that the greatest single victory the PLO has scored in its 46-year-old war with Israel was the publication of a single report in 1997. That report, "Demographic Indicators of the Palestinian Territory, 1997-2015," is based on a census carried out by the PA's Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS) in 1997. It projects that the Arab population west of the Jordan River will by 2015 outnumber the Jewish population.

These numbers were immediately adopted by such prominent Israeli demographers as the University of Haifa's Arnon Soffer and the Hebrew University's Sergio Della Pergola, who have both warned that by 2020 Jews will make up between 40 and 46 percent of the overall population of Israel and the territories. The Palestinian projections, which place the Arab population of Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip at 3.83 million and the Israeli Arab population at 1.33 million for a total of 5.16 million Arabs west of the Jordan River, put Israel with its 5.24 million Jews at the precipice of demographic parity with the Arabs.

Largely in reaction to these statistics, which were bandied about by everyone from politicians to diplomats to defense officials, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon decided a year ago to adopt the Labor Party's campaign platform and withdraw the IDF from Gaza and northern Samaria and forcibly remove the Jews living in those areas from their homes.

In his interview with Yediot Aharonot in December 2003, which was the curtain raiser for Sharon's announcement of his policy shift later that month, Vice Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said: "Above all hovers the cloud of demographics. It will come down on us not in the end of days, but in just another few years. We are approaching a point where more and more Palestinians will say: 'There is no place for two states between the Jordan and the sea. All we want is the right to vote.' The day they get it we will lose everything."
 

BUT WHAT if the numbers are wrong? What if the doomsday scenarios we hear on a daily basis, arguing that Israel is about to be overrun by the Arab womb, are all based on fraudulent data – part of an ingenious Palestinian plan to psychologically manipulate Israel into capitulating?

This week a team of American and Israeli researchers presented a study of the Palestinian population statistics at the American Enterprise Institute and the Heritage Foundation in Washington. The team, led by American businessman Bennett Zimmerman and Israeli strategic consultant Yoram Ettinger, compared the PCBS data to birth and death records published annually by the PA's Health Ministry; to immigration and emigration data from Israel's Border Police at the international crossing points into the Palestinian Authority and at Ben-Gurion Airport, and to internal migration records of Palestinians from the territories into Israel recorded by the Israeli Interior Ministry.

The researchers also compared Palestinian population data from the PCBS to voting records compiled by the Palestinian Central Elections Commission before the 1996 Palestinian elections and this week's Palestinian elections, as well as to the Israeli Civil Administration's population survey of Palestinians carried out in the 1990s before the transfer of authority over Palestinian population records to the PA.

The PCBS forecast was further compared to Palestinian population surveys carried out by UNRWA and the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics (ICBS) in the mid-1990s, and to World Bank Palestinian population studies. All of the team's comparative analyses led to the conclusion that the Palestinian population forecasts upon which Israel is basing its current policy of withdrawal and uprooting of Israeli communities in the territories are faulty in the extreme.

The PCBS count includes the 230,000 Arab residents of Jerusalem. Yet these Arabs are already counted by the ICBS as part of Israel's population, which means that they are counted twice.

The PCBS numbers also project Palestinian natural growth as 4 to 5 percent per year, among the highest in the world and significantly higher than the natural population growth of Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria. Yet Palestinian Ministry of Health records published annually since 1996 show that Palestinian natural growth rates in Judea, Samaria and Gaza average around 3 percent. In 2002, the Palestinian Ministry of Health retroactively raised its numbers and yet even the doctored figures never extended beyond 3.7 percent. The original data show a steady pattern of decrease in natural growth leading to a natural growth rate in 2003 of just 2.6 percent.

Indeed, the total fertility rate of Palestinian women has been trending downward in recent years. Palestinian women in Judea and Samaria averaged 4.1 children in 1999 and 3.4 in 2003. Palestinian women in Gaza averaged 5 children each in 1999 and 4.7 in 2003. The multi-year average of Israel's compound growth rate from 1990-2004 is 2.5 percent. And even as Israel's growth rate went down to 1.7 percent between 2000 and 2004, a similar decline occurred among Palestinians in Gaza, where growth decreased from 3.9 percent to 3.0 percent, and Palestinians in Judea and Samaria, where growth declined from 2.7 percent to 1.8 percent.

The PCBS also projected a net population increase of 1.5 percent per year as a result of immigration from abroad. But the study's authors found that except for 1994, when the bulk of the Palestinian leadership and their families entered the areas from abroad, emigration from the Palestinian areas has outstripped immigration every year.

Aside from this, the PCBS numbers include some 200,000 Palestinians who live abroad. This fact was corroborated by an October 14 press release by the Palestinian Central Elections Commission which stated that "200,000 eligible voters are living abroad." The number of Palestinians living abroad constitutes 13 percent of the Palestinians counted in 1997 and forms the basis of the projections of that population's growth in spite of the fact that they don't live in the territories.

The report also shows that while the Israeli Interior Ministry announced in November 2003 that in the preceding decade some 150,000 residents of the Palestinian Authority had legally moved to Israel (including Jerusalem), these 150,000 residents remain on the Palestinian population rolls. Parenthetically, this internal migration is largely responsible for the anomalous 3.1 percent annual growth in the Israeli Arab population. Absent this internal migration, the Israeli Arab natural growth rate is 2.1% – that is, below the Israeli Jewish growth rate.

The study presents three separate scenarios for calculating the actual Palestinian population in Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip. Its authors prove that the first scenario, based on the PCBS numbers, minus the double counted Jerusalem Arabs and minus the internal migrations, is not statistically plausible. Yet even this scenario places the Palestinian population at 3.06 million, or 770,000 less than the number that currently informs Israeli decision makers.

The average of the last two scenarios, which corrected for the Palestinians living abroad and were based on base populations comprised of ICBS Palestinian population survey projections from the 1990s and Palestinian voting records in 1996 and 2004, brought the final projected number of Palestinians in Gaza, Judea and Samaria to 2.42 million – nearly a third less than the 3.83 million figure currently being used.

The study, which has been accepted by prominent American demographers Dr. Nicholas Eberstadt and Murray Feshbach, shows that contrary to common wisdom, the Jewish majority west of the Jordan River has remained stable since 1967. In 1967 Jews made up 64.1 percent of the overall population and in 2004 they made up 59.5 percent. Inside Israel proper, including Jerusalem, Jews make up 80 percent of the population.

While reading the report, the inescapable sense is that something has gone very wrong within Israeli society. The numbers are so clear. The data have always been readily available. And yet, like bats attracted to the darkness of a cave, we preferred the manipulative lies of the PA to the truth.

The entire 117-page report can be accessed on-line at www.pademographics.com. Given that it shows that the government's current policies are based in large part on an uncritical acceptance of fraudulent data whose purpose was to demoralize us into capitulating to our post-modern foe, hopefully Olmert and Sharon will take a look at it.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

Amid low turnout and allegations of vote fraud and voter abuse, Mahmoud Abbas, longtime associate of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, appeared to have won yesterday's vote to succeed Arafat as president of the Palestinian Authority. Exit polls placed his electoral majority at between 66% and 70% of the vote.

Mr. Abbas, also known as Abu Mazen, was Arafat's deputy for four decades when Arafat, who died November 11, was chairman of the Palestinian Liberation Organization, and was Arafat's successor as head of the PLO's ruling party, Fatah.

Polling throughout the day at the West Bank, Gaza, and Jerusalem went off without major incident.

At Ramallah, however, five Fatah terrorists stormed a polling station, shooting their rifles into the air and saying their relatives were denied a vote. They were quickly ushered out of the polling station by an election official. At Jerusalem, Israeli police arrested two Arabs for distributing literature at a polling station calling on people to boycott the elections.

Moreover, when the polls closed at 9 p.m., an independent candidate, Mustafa Barghouti, and the Palestinian Center for Human Rights in the Gaza Strip alleged massive fraud. The independent human rights group petitioned the Palestinian courts to cancel the election results.

It cited the decision of the Palestinian Central Elections Commission to extend voting for two additional hours at the end of the day. The 2,000 polling stations had been scheduled to close at 7 p.m., but the Fatah-dominated commission was alarmed by the markedly low voter turnout and decided at 5 p.m. to keep the polls open until 9. At the same time, the commission announced that it was loosening voting requirements. While throughout the day voters were allowed to cast their ballots only if their names appeared on the voter rolls at their assigned polling stations, those who arrived between 7 p.m. and 9 p.m. were allowed to vote simply by presenting an identification card to polling judges. Mr. Barghouti and the Palestinian Human Rights Center allege that thousands of people voted for a second time during those two hours.

Senator Joesph Biden, Democrat of Delaware, who led a group of American elections observers, told reporters that, by and large, the Palestinian Arab election reminded him of American elections. Those sentiments were shared by former president Jimmy Carter, who led the overall delegation of thousands of election observers from America and Europe.

Palestinian Arabs who cast their votes were stamped on their finger with indelible ink as a means of preventing double voting. Elections monitors noted, however, that the same practice was followed in last October's elections in Afghanistan, and it was then discovered that the ink can be washed off after an hour or two.

Palestinian Arab sources in the West Bank claimed that Fatah Party activists were rounded up to vote in the afternoon and revote in the evening. One Ramallah resident, who asked to be referred to only as Ahmed, said: "Abu Mazen's people went into the party offices and hangouts and told everyone to go out and vote again in order to ensure a great mandate for Abu Mazen."

This alleged fraud was exacerbated by a recent controversial decision by the Palestinian Legislative Council, also dominated by Fatah, to add 650,000 new names to the voter rolls that had been prepared by the Elections Commission and approved by international elections observers in September.

The original voter rolls included some 1.1 million voters. The legislators argued that they wished to have more voters to enhance the legitimacy of the election. Both local and foreign opponents of the move said thousands of names on the supplementary list belonged to individuals who are deceased, and thousands more belong to people who live outside the region.

In response to the criticism, it was decided that the people whose names appeared on the supplementary lists would vote only in 70 special polling locations throughout the areas. And yet, when the voting hours were extended yesterday, that requirement was also dropped, and individuals whose names appeared on the supplementary list were allowed to vote wherever they wished.

As was the case in 1996, when Arafat was elected, the overwhelming majority of Arab residents of Jerusalem did not vote. In 1996, only 10% of Jerusalem's 230,000 Arab residents exercised their right to vote. In yesterday's election, observers and journalists often outnumbered the voters at the six polling stations that were set up at post offices in Arab neighborhoods within the city.

Jerusalem Arabs are eligible for Israeli citizenship, although only 10,000 have exercised that right. All, however, are eligible for social benefits, and most are unenthusiastic about the prospect of living under Palestinian Arab sovereignty, as the result of a future peace deal between Israel and the Palestinian Arab leadership.

Palestinian Arabs at the West Bank, questioned during the day about their views of the elections, gave mixed responses. Some said they believe that Mr. Abbas, who has the support of the Bush administration and of the Israeli government, will be able to improve the economic situation in the Palestinian Authority. Others argued that the elections were "a joke" since the winner was a foregone conclusion. Mohammed, a Palestinian Arab resident of the Jerusalem neighborhood of Abu Dis, told reporters that as far as he was concerned: "These elections are ridiculous. Abbas will just continue with the same corruption we've seen all along."

Israel's foreign minister, Silvan Shalom, insisted yesterday that Mr. Abbas, whose campaign featured public embraces with wanted terrorists and who referred last week to Israel as "the Zionist enemy," must move immediately to end incitement against Israel and to dissolve the terrorist organizations in the territory of the Palestinian Authority. Palestinian Arab spokesmen interviewed by the Israeli press throughout the day said Mr. Abbas would enter into negotiations with Hamas and Islamic Jihad to reach a "cease-fire."

The Associated Press reported last night that aides to the Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon, said he expects to meet with Mr. Abbas soon. Israeli officials also said that in a gesture to Mr. Abbas, Israel plans to release some of the more than 7,000 Palestinian prisoners, provided that Arafat's successor stops terrorists from firing rockets at Israeli towns.

As Fatah supporters shot their rifles in the air in celebration of the outcome of the seven-candidate race, Mr. Abbas gave his first victory speech last night. Calling the election results "a victory for Yasser Arafat and the en tire Palestinian people," Mr. Abbas proclaimed: "The small jihad is over and the big jihad has begun. We are facing tough missions - how to build a state of security where people live a dignified life."

President Bush applauded the election results. In an announcement released by the White House, he said: "I am heartened by today's strong turnout in the Palestinian elections. Palestinians throughout the West Bank and Gaza took a key step toward building a democratic future by choosing a new president in elections that observers described as largely free and fair. This is a historic day for the Palestinian people and for the people of the Middle East."

While the American president urged Mr. Abbas to take measures to end terrorism, Election Day was marked by intermittent rocket and mortar attacks on Israeli communities at the Gaza Strip and southern Israel. The terrorist group Hezbollah entered the fray, too, attacking an Israeli patrol in northern Israel, killing an officer and wounding four soldiers.

In his victory speech, Mr. Abbas pledged to work for the release of all Palestinian Arab fighters in Israeli jails and to protect Palestinian Arabs who are wanted by Israel for their suspected role in terror attacks.

Originally published in The New York Sun.

In his testimony before the Knesset's Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee Tuesday, Shin Bet director Avi Dichter described some short-term threats inherent in carrying out Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's plan to pull the IDF out of the Gaza Strip and northern Samaria.

"In a situation where Israel is not in control of the Philadelphi corridor [which separates Gaza from the Sinai Peninsula]," Dichter warned,"terrorists arriving from Lebanon are liable to infiltrate through it into the Gaza Strip and there is the distinct possibility that in a short while the Gaza Strip will turn into south Lebanon."

Dichter also cautioned that the current "trickle" of arms smuggling through the corridor is liable to turn into a "river." As to northern Samaria, Dichter said that "Samaria is an area with terrorist potential that already proved itself in the past. Therefore nothing should surprise us. If we evacuate the area and turn it into Area A, under complete Palestinian security control, we are liable to get an area there that operates by the Gaza model."

Dichter presented us with real cause for concern over Sharon's plan, but his analysis was far from exhaustive. He limited his remarks solely to the realm of terrorist warfare.

Since the 1967 Six Day War, the view of the leaders of the IDF's General Staff has been that in a conventional war with Egypt and Jordan participating, Palestinian forces can wreak havoc on Israel's lines of communications moving from west to east and north to south. As a result, until 1993, the view of Israel's defense establishment had always been that from a strategic perspective, the establishment of a Palestinian state in the territories constituted too great a threat to Israel's national security to be an acceptable option.

This week the International Atomic Energy Agency reported that Egypt has been secretly advancing a nuclear armament program. Apparently aided by Pakistani nuclear scientist A.Q. Khan, Egypt reportedly was experimenting with uranium as recently as last year. Then, too, two months ago the IAEA found plutonium particles near an Egyptian nuclear facility. A nuclear-armed Egypt would no doubt feel much more comfortable opening conventional hostilities against Israel, which, given an Egyptian nuclear threat, would be hard-pressed to use its own nonconventional arsenal to deter an Egyptian offensive.

Dichter also did not speak of the demographic threat that a Palestinian state would constitute to Israel. The reason we are given by Sharon and his underlings and allies for the withdrawal from Gaza and northern Samaria, and, as Deputy Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told The Jerusalem Post recently, for further withdrawals from Judea and the rest of Samaria in the near future, is demography. The Palestinians, we are told, are so numerous that if we don't give them a state they will overwhelm Israel and either turn the country into a racist regime where a Jewish minority controls an Arab majority or Israel will cease to be a Jewish state altogether. That is, we are told, the choice is among a democratic Jewish Israel, a theocratic, racist Israel or a non-Jewish democracy.

There are three main problems with this view. First, it makes no sense numerically. During the decade since the establishment of the Palestinian Authority, the number of Jews in Israel rose by around one million. The Arab population in Israel has also grown significantly so that Arab citizens of Israel still make up roughly 20 percent of the population. Additionally, the Palestinian population has risen significantly, mainly as a result of the thousands of foreign Arabs who entered the areas with the PLO. If past experience is a guidepost for future developments, it is reasonable to assume that the number of Arabs, like the number of Jews, will continue to grow significantly after the establishment of a Palestinian state in the territories.

The demographic argument, therefore, is not about numbers but about intentions. The view is that if a Palestinian state is established, Arabs will no longer wish to overrun Israel and create a "one-state solution," happy as they will be to live under their own leaders.

Yet this assumption ignores what the Palestinian leadership is telling us will happen. In his recent jaunt through Syria and Lebanon, PLO chairman and soon to be "elected" PA chairman Mahmoud Abbas vowed that there will be no peace until millions of foreign Arabs (referred to as"Palestinian refugees"), who have been forced to live in UN internment camps (referred to as "refugee camps") for the past 56 years, are allowed to move to Israel. US President George W. Bush announced last April that the US would not support a Palestinian demand to have these people enter into Israel as part of a peace deal. So we can assume relatively safely that in the initial period of statehood, these Arabs in Lebanon, Syria and elsewhere will instead move to the Palestinian state.

The question is: What will they do there? The PA has received more foreign aid per capita in constant dollars over the past decade from the international community than Western European citizens received in the Marshall Plan, and yet the Palestinian economy is in far worse condition by every indicator than it was before the Oslo process was instigated.

Yasser Arafat and his minions, who now surround Abbas, systematically stole, diverted and misappropriated some $6.5 billion in international aid. This impoverishment of the Palestinians was done by design. The purpose was to cultivate rage and extremism throughout Palestinian society as Arafat and his minions like Abbas understood that a happy, prosperous populace does not extol the virtues of suicide bombing to its children.

Given Abbas's statements in recent days and weeks in praise of terrorism and in condemnation of "the Zionist enemy," as well as his deep involvement in Palestinian corruption and terror financing, it strains credulity to believe that he will oversee a process of reform over PA budgets and militias. Rather, it is safe to assume that, under his leadership, Palestinian society will continue to be characterized by destitution and rage.

If this situation is further exacerbated by the entry of millions of destitute Arab immigrants into the rump Palestinian state, what does Israel think will happen? Since Abbas, and the rest of the PA leadership, not to mention Hamas and Islamic Jihad, have all proclaimed consistently that their demand is for these Arabs to move to Israel, can there be any doubt that they will point to their economic desolation and blame it on Israel's "obstinate refusal" to allow these hostile foreigners to live inside its borders? And what does our leadership think that Europe's response to this demand will be, given the European view, passively supported by the US, that the current terror war is Israel's fault?

The public debate regarding the soundness of Sharon's withdrawal and expulsion plan has been completely silent on these issues. Indeed, Dichter's remarks about the specter of a massive escalation in the terror threat to Israel received but a yawn, as it was discounted as an"alarmist, gloom-and-doom scenario" by the major newspapers and broadcast media.

The only issue that interests the Israeli media today is the threat manifested by a tiny number of Israeli opponents to Sharon's withdrawal and expulsion plan (Dichter placed it as a few dozen), who may use violence against soldiers sent to throw them out of their homes and communities in Gaza and northern Samaria.

In Wednesday's papers covering Dichter's remarks at the Knesset, his statements about the threat of increased terrorism after the withdrawal plan received less than one hundred words of coverage in both Ma'ariv and Yediot Ahronot. At the same time, both papers devoted five pages, including their cover pages, to the issue of Israeli opponents to the pullout plan.

On the radio and television, there has been saturation coverage of the prospect that thousands of soldiers may refuse to participate in the expulsion of Jews from their homes, while the strategic implications of the program have been systematically ignored by everyone. Major cultural icons like Yair Lapid have demonized the settlers, extolling the virtues of a civil war. Lapid argues that such a war would not be a war between brothers because, as far as he's concerned, anyone who wants to stay in Gaza, Judea and Samaria and opposes the establishment of a Palestinian state is no longer to be considered a "real" Israeli and hence is no longer part of the family.

Old-guard military establishment types like Labor MK and (res.) Brig.-Gen. Ephraim Sneh are openly calling for a civil war. In an opinion column published in Ma'ariv two weeks ago, Sneh wrote, "85 years after its establishment, the United States of America was drawn into a cruel and destructive civil war, but the results of that war formed the democratic character of the giant country. The confrontation among [Israelis] is also unpreventable."

Totally ignoring the threats emanating from Palestinian society today and those likely to arise in the coming months and years, Sneh wrote, "Even if the confrontation will be bloody, the toll will be minuscule in comparison to the blood and sacrifice that more decades of conflict with the Palestinians will extract from us."

If we can be brought to believe that the dangers that Sharon's plans manifest relate only to the pesky, overwhelmingly religious Israelis who live in the areas he wishes to empty of Jews, rather than to the country as a whole, then there can be little doubt that there will be bloody confrontations (provoked mainly by the Left) between Jew and Jew. On the other hand, if we are willing to recognize that the dangers inherent in his plans relate to the entire state, then not only would such internecine violence be consummately avoidable, we would also be able to craft policies that would ensure the wellbeing and security of Israeli society as a whole for decades to come.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.