Former prime minister Ehud Barak sent a jolt through the political system when on Monday he told a television interviewer: "The Sharon family is corrupt to its very foundations, and in any other normal country, Sharon would have no longer been in power."

The remark was made just after Barak had participated in a meeting of his Labor Party's Knesset faction, where he accused his colleagues of losing their party identity and their loyalty to the rule of law as a result of their infatuation with Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.

Barak made these statements against the backdrop of Attorney-General Menahem Mazuz's decision last Thursday to indict Sharon's son, MK Omri Sharon, on several felony counts relating to his illegal financing of his father's 1999 campaign for leadership of the Likud. Mazuz declined to indict the prime minister.

In response to Barak's criticism, his party colleagues explained that it isn't their job to attach guilt or innocence to anyone. This job, they said, belongs to the legal system. It is also, of course, the job of the media.

As to the media, in a program on Army Radio Tuesday, journalistic heavyweights Eitan Haber, from Yediot Aharonot and Moti Kirschenbaum, the former head of the Israel Broadcasting Authority and current talk show host on Channel 10, readily admitted that the press has been largely silent on the issue of the legal investigations because it doesn't want to disturb Sharon's plan to destroy all Israeli communities in Gaza and northern Samaria.

Haber explained, "The Left, and not only the Left, is as silent as lambs [about Sharon's criminal investigations] because it's convenient for it that he's carrying out his political plan."

Kirschenbaum agreed, saying, "There's no doubt that the media is dealing with the Sharon family with uncharacteristic tenderness because of its empathy toward his diplomatic plans."

So here we have it, the watchdog of Israeli democracy, the Fourth Estate, is willfully ignoring one of its cardinal responsibilities – holding our public officials to standards of proper behavior in order to ensure the proper functioning of our government. And the media is behaving thus because apparently, the Powers That Be hate the Israeli communities in Gaza and northern Samaria more than they love the law.

As Labor leaders Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer and MK Avraham Shochat readily explained to Israel Radio Tuesday morning, upholding and enforcing the law is the responsibility of the attorney-general and the courts. As politicians, they said, their job is limited to getting their political plans implemented and this means supporting Sharon's decision to root out all Jews from Gaza and northern Samaria.

Fair enough. At least they have the integrity to admit they will overlook corruption if it serves their political interests.

Unfortunately, it would seem that Mazuz, Israel's chief law enforcement officer, shares Ben-Eliezer's and Shochat's sentiments. His decision last week not to indict the prime minister is case in point.

Omri Sharon is accused of setting up fictitious companies in 1999 through which he funneled some NIS 6 million into his father's campaign. The process of moving the money – illegally transferred from abroad – and its use to fund various campaign activities, was a day-to-day process. Omri paid service providers with checks from Annex Research, a fictitious company (registered for him by Sharon's diplomatic representative and personal attorney Dov Weisglass).

He then asked these service providers to equip him with fraudulent receipts in exchange for these checks. Omri lied under oath about these payments. He also carried out these felonious activities in his official capacity as his father's campaign chairman, while living intermittently with his father at their Sycamore Ranch – and updating him daily on the progress of the campaign.

According to the Political Parties Law, a candidate for office is responsible for all activities that take place during the course of his campaign. The burden of proving a candidate's lack of culpability for criminal activities that were carried out by his campaign workers rests, according to the law, on the candidate, not on the police or the state prosecutors.

In Sharon's case, the prime minister did not actively prove his lack of culpability; he merely denied knowledge of the criminal activities and claimed that he instructed his son to act lawfully.

On the one hand, this passive, declaratory defense does not meet the dictates of the law. On the other, it strains credulity to believe that Sharon had no idea what his son was doing. NIS 6 million is a lot of money. Sharon has a reputation as a micro-manager. Is it reasonable to credit his statement that he never once asked his son where all this money had come from?

Mazuz justified his decision to clear the prime minister by arguing that there was insufficient evidence to indict him. But again, this is impossible, for if there is sufficient evidence to indict Omri Sharon, then there must be sufficient evidence to indict Ariel Sharon. Again, according to the law, the candidate is criminally culpable for any illegal activities that are carried out in the course of his campaign unless he actively proves he had no knowledge of what was happening.

As Haaretz legal commentator Zev Segal put it, in acting with such leniency against Sharon – in apparent contravention of the law – Mazuz "has turned into the prime minister's defense attorney."

WHY WOULD Mazuz do this?

In Israel's loaded political environment it is difficult to escape the feeling that in preferring the political survival of the prime minister to the dictates of the law he is sworn to uphold and enforce, Mazuz, like the media, is acting on his political sympathies rather than on his professional responsibilities.

This suspicion is strengthened when one notes Mazuz's unrelenting campaign to have Likud central committee member Moshe Feiglin barred from running for Knesset.

In an almost unprecedented move, Mazuz Monday petitioned the High Court of Justice to overturn Justice Jacob Turkel's decision to allow Feiglin to run for office. Feiglin was convicted of sedition, publishing seditious materials and conducting illegal gatherings when, as leader of the Zo Artzeinu movement in 1995, he led mass protests against the agreement to transfer Judea and Samaria to the PLO. Feiglin since joined the Likud and formed the Manhigut Yehudit faction inside the party which Sharon has spent the better part of the past two years trying to purge from the party because its members object to his policies.

In arguing against Turkel's decision, Mazuz wrote that the court should overturn the decision "especially in light of today's flammable circumstances, the shrillness of the public debate – which is expected to deteriorate even further – and the implications involved in letting [Turkel's] ruling stand in terms of the unconstructive message it conveys to the public."

It is unclear where the legal argument is here. It is not Mazuz's job to worry about the shrillness of debate. And what is the statute that discusses the need for courts of law to squelch "unconstructive" messages? For that matter, where is the legal definition of an "unconstructive message?"

Furthermore, Mazuz's pursuit of Feiglin is not an isolated action, which would indicate that his political views dictate how he enforces or fails to enforce the law.

This week, two interesting stories emerged that, one could assume, would capture the attention of a nonpartisan attorney-general.

The first was a Ma'ariv report on Sunday according to which a police agent provocateur has been disseminating incendiary political material – such as bumper stickers saying, "Sharon, Lily [his late wife] is waiting for you."

This is one of the messages that the media has latched onto in its hysterical offensive against right-wing incitement. Yet here, it works out that rather than emanating from Sharon's political opponents, it is emanating from the police. This would appear to be an egregious abuse of authority on the part of the police, and one that bears investigation. But to date, Mazuz has not said a word about it.

The second was the news magazine Koteret's cover story this month. In an investigative report, the magazine alleged that in financing his campaign for leadership of the Yahad (Meretz) party, far-Left politician Yossi Beilin illegally used funds donated by the EU. The report claims that Beilin illegally transferred funds from his EU-financed "Geneva Initiative" to his political campaign.

The magazine came out a couple of weeks ago. It would seem that Mazuz might have taken an interest in the story, given that former justice minister Beilin was largely responsible for promoting Mazuz to a leadership position in the ministry. But again, not a word has passed through his lips about Beilin's reported criminal activities.

It is Supreme Court President Aharon Barak who has done so much in recent years to involve the court with the day-to-day running of Israel – and who, since his tenure as attorney-general, has been the prime mover behind the realignment of the office of the attorney-general with judicial rather than the executive branch of government. Barak justified this state of affairs by claiming that the attorney-general's subordination to elected officials prevented him from carrying out his duty as chief law enforcement officer in a dispassionate, independent and professional manner.

Unfortunately, from Mazuz's behavior, it would seem that just the opposite has occurred. The more independent the attorney-general has become from any political authority, the more politicized and less professional the office has become.

There can be no doubt that having a professional and independent state prosecution is an essential component of democratic governance. Unfortunately, what we see is that in the name of "professional independence," it is precisely this component of the prosecution that is disintegrating before our very eyes.

In light of the fact that our media unabashedly admits to willingly surrendering professional standards for political purposes, the absence of a professional prosecution is all the more disturbing.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

Did the US-led invasion of Iraq restore American deterrence in the Middle East after it had been tattered by the precipitous withdrawal of American forces from Lebanon in 1983 and Somalia in 1993?

It is an open question.

On the one hand, the actions of Lebanese opposition leaders and parties since the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri last week would indicate that the US has restored its credibility in the region. These opposition forces, led by people like Druse leader Walid Jumblatt, have been outspoken in their demand for an end to Syrian occupation of their country.

Jumblatt, who in the past was a strong backer of the Syrian government's occupation of Lebanon, has always been a local bellwether – sensing the direction of the prevailing winds blowing across the Levant and acting accordingly. His behavior over the past week indicates that he is certain the prevailing wind now gusts forth from Washington.

On the other hand, the proximate cause of the Lebanese opposition's call for the ouster of Syrian forces from their country tells a different story. Syria's apparent decision to kill Hariri, who recently had become the most powerful critic of the Syrian occupation of Lebanon, was based on a cost-benefit analysis by Damascus. According to that analysis, the price America would make Damascus pay for the murder would be significantly lower than the benefit it would accrue from Hariri's departure from the scene.

Clearly, then, Syria has not been deterred by America's post-September 11 positions and actions in the region.

The same is true of Iran. The Iranian government's public embrace of Bashar Assad's Ba'athist regime late last week, which entailed the two countries' announcement of the formation of a mutual defense pact, was a clear sign Iran believes that in the game of chicken it is now playing with America the US will be the first one to back down.

Truth be told, the Bush administration has given both the Lebanese opposition and the Syrian and Iranian regimes reason to believe that their diametrically opposed interpretations of Washington's resolve are correct.

In its backing of the Iraqi elections and its shepherding of the process of Iraqi democratization, as in the president's soaring rhetoric about US support for democracy and human rights advocates throughout the region, the Bush administration has given hope to the Lebanese that America will stand behind them if they take action to free themselves of Syrian occupation.

But then again, the Bush administration has also given the Iranian and Syrian regimes good reason to believe that they can test America resolve and survive.

The US-led invasion of Iraq, and America's subsequent resolve to stay the course in that country in spite of the hardships, is not seen by these regimes as representative of American policy as a whole. These regimes view American action in Iraq against the backdrop of America's overall policies, and these other policies give them reason to believe that in a game of chicken, America will be the first to back down.

They see America continuing to embrace Saudi Arabia and Egypt as its allies. America's support for these countries remains stable in spite of the fact that both states are ruled by tyrannical regimes that encourage hatred and terrorism against the US and its allies through their media, religious authorities, education systems and government pronouncements.

Iran and Syria see Washington backing the Palestinian Authority's new president Mahmoud Abbas in spite of the fact that Abbas has said consistently that he will not raise a finger against Palestinian terrorists. They see Washington embracing Abbas and showering him with US taxpayer dollars at the same time as Abbas signs execution orders for Palestinians who have helped Israel combat terrorism and declares his intention to "reform" the PA security services by enlisting Hamas and Fatah terrorists in their ranks.

These glaring weaknesses in American resolve to stand forthright against terror and tyranny in the region combine with the fact that both the Syrian and the Iranian regimes see their confrontation with America as a life-and-death struggle.

If America forces a Syrian withdrawal from Lebanon then Hizbullah, the Iranian terror proxy, will be vastly weakened and the forces for democracy and human rights in Syria and Iran will be emboldened to topple the regimes. They cannot believe that America is willing to pay the price of toppling them.

President Bush is now in Europe attempting to shore up the Atlantic alliance that was damaged by European opposition to the American-led war against Islamic terrorism and its state sponsors. The results of this trip will do much to make clear whether it is the Lebanese opposition or the Syrian and Iranian governments who have the better understanding of Washington's policies.

Two possible outcomes can emerge. The president may be successful in persuading the Europeans and the Russians to join the US in using the coercive tools of diplomacy – sanctions and isolation – against the Syrian and Iranian regimes. If this happens, then Damascus and Teheran will be presented with irrefutable evidence that, contrary to their view, not only does the US not lack resolve to confront them, Washington's resolve is so strong that it has convinced its erstwhile allies to act in concert with it.

A second possible outcome is that in his conversations with his European and Russian counterparts, Bush will be convinced that they are committed to continuing their policy of opposing US global leadership even at the cost of emboldening and empowering Syria and Iran.

If this occurs, Bush will be faced with a choice. He can prefer good relations with Paris, Berlin and Moscow to his own stated policy objectives.

If this is the outcome – and it will be made clear if Bush in any way is perceived as even slightly backing away from his stated doctrine of fighting terror and oppression as a means of winning the war – the Syria and Iran leaders can breathe easy as their democratic opponents are forced to relent or go underground.

On the other hand, if Bush does not relent but remains true to the policy he has articulated, in the absence of European and Russian support the Americans will be constrained to turn to the one tool of coercion they have in acting unilaterally to achieve their objectives – lethal force.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

Last Friday night, the TV stations were in a frenzy over the right-wing incitement against Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's plan to withdraw from Gaza and northern Samaria and to expel all Jews living in these areas from their homes and communities. Channel 2 devoted fully a third of its hour-long news broadcast to the issue -- super-imposing images of the political protests against the Oslo Accords in the months before Yitzhak Rabin's assassination with footage from the recent mass rally and protests against Sharon's withdrawal plan.

Much was made of the fact that right-wing activist Itamar Ben-Gvir yelled at Education Minister Limor Livnat at the memorial service for the slain Jewish underground leader from the pre-statehood days, Avraham Stern. Ben-Gvir told her (probably correctly) that Stern would never have approved her support for Sharon's plan.

It was unpleasant seeing Ben-Gvir and his nasty friends following Livnat and yelling at her. But then again, how was their behavior different from that of members of Knesset who insult and curse one other as a matter of course? Why is this news?

Then there is the pseudo-attack against Finance Minister Binyamin Netanyahu at Kfar Habad last Thursday night. The initial reports claimed that a group of anti-withdrawal thugs slashed Netanyahu s tires and surrounded him, yelling, as he tried to make it to his disabled car. He was spirited away in another vehicle, escaping, so the reports had us believe, by the skin of his teeth.

After the matter was duly investigated, it worked out that Netanyahu's tires had not been slashed; he may simply have had a flat tire. And that no group of hooligans had surrounded him; one teenager had yelled at him. According to Amnon Abramovich, from Channel 2, this teenager had actually been asked to yell at Netanyahu by a journalist at the scene who told him what to say and even sent him a "thank you for a job well done" text message on his cellular phone.

In the meantime, in light of these major infractions on the apparent right of public servants to receive no unpleasant criticism for their support of highly controversial policies, Sunday, Interior Security Minister Gideon Ezra called for inciters -- including people writing nasty graffiti on city streets -- to be placed under administrative detention.

For his part, Sharon has castigated anyone who calls for a referendum on his withdrawal program as contributing to incitement and indeed as advancing the cause of civil war. In a speech last week Sharon said, "The idea of holding a national referendum is an attempt to delay the
implementation of the Disengagement Plan." He went on to say, "The inciters use threats of civil war in order to influence the public who wants disengagement but prefers quiet. A national referendum will bring about an increase in incitement."

So for the prime minister of Israel, anyone who claims that the Israeli voters have a right to weigh in on what is perhaps the most controversial plan ever adopted by an Israeli government is playing a direct role in inciting a civil war.

This is a shocking statement for two reasons. First, it shows the utter disdain the prime minister feels for his people who he clearly doesn't believe are capable of responsibly exercising the freedom to choose. Second, Sharon is effectively saying that anyone who calls for the people to be given the right to choose is guilty of fomenting a rebellion. That is, he has relegated all of his political opponents to criminal status.

This week saw MK Effi Eitam thrown out of the Knesset's Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee when he argued with Sharon for accusing parliamentarians who are opposed to his plan of incitement. Apparently, committee chairman Yuval Steinitz is unaware that in a democracy, one of the main functions of a parliament is to enable free and fair -- often rancorous -- debate of the issues of the day, and that it is the responsibility of legislators to call leaders to account for their actions and policies.

Then there is democratically challenged Transportation Minister (and former justice minister) Meir Sheetrit. On Monday, Sheetrit told Israel radio that as far as he is concerned, Likud party members are guilty of incitement when they write letters to Likud MKs informing them that future political support for these politicians is dependent on their voting against the withdrawal and expulsion plan. That is, in Sheetrit's view, it is incitement for constituents to base their support for politicians on the extent to which those politicians advance their interests while in office.

The most amazing aspect of the entire "incitement" craze is that, as Shin Bet Director Avi Dichter explained this week, statements by opponents of Sharon's plan have no influence over potential assassins. According to Dichter, there are some 500 people floating around who fit the psychological profile of a potential assassin. Like Rabin's assassin, Yigal Amir, and John Hinckley Jr. who attempted to assassinate US president Ronald Reagan in 1981 these individuals are not members of any organization or group.

Rather, potential assassins are sociopaths with messianic protestations of divine selection. People of Amir's ilk are not moved by what leaders say. They are moved by their own delusions of grandeur and sense of alienation. They would murder even if no one were in the streets protesting against Sharon's plan.

But in the meantime, rather than focusing their attentions on finding and neutralizing the threat posed by such sociopaths, our political leadership is moving to demonize and criminalize the huge swath of the Israeli public who opposes Sharon s policy of withdrawal and expulsion.

In advancing this objective which, if allowed to continue, will destroy Israeli democracy, the government has been ably assisted by the media. The news media's advocacy of Sharon's withdrawal plan has been shockingly brazen. Opponents of the plan, when given any airtime at all, find themselves under attack.

Rather than allowing people like MK Gideon Sa'ar or Binyamin Regional Council Chairman Pinchas Wallerstein to explain why it is that they oppose the plan, radio and television left-wing partisans posing as objective journalists attack them for their role in contributing to the "atmosphere of incitement," and pointedly demand that they justify their disloyal and dangerous behavior. On the other hand, these pretend journalists shamelessly pander to Sharon's supporters, such as Deputy Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who is constantly handed softball questions by fawning hacks commiserating with him about the dangerous extremists on the right who are just about to kill Sharon.

Because, as far as these paragons of the free press are concerned, it is a foregone conclusion that Sharon will be assassinated. On Sunday, under a headline that proclaimed "The Fear: A Jewish Suicide Attacker," a Yediot Aharonot sub-head asserted, "The question isn't whether they will try to assassinate the prime minister, the question is how."

Alex Fishman, the paper's military "reporter," detailed the likelihood of a Jewish suicide bomber breaking through Sharon's security cordon and then pushing the button. The entire article was devoid of sourcing, facts or even grounded suspicions. But then, what can we expect from the most widely read newspaper in the country? Certainly not that it accurately report the news.

Back in 1798, the US Congress passed the Sedition Act. The act, which was aimed at silencing political criticism of president John Adams' administration, was dressed up as a precaution against what at that time was an imminent threat of war between the US and France. The act made it a criminal offense to criticize the government, and its enforcement brought about the imprisonment of a number of anti-Adams newspaper publishers and editors.

This fundamentally unconstitutional and anti-democratic law was allowed to lapse. But if it had remained in effect, would it have prevented four American presidents from being assassinated in later years? Given the profile of political assassins, it strains credulity to think so. On the other hand, one thing is clear beyond doubt: Had the Sedition Act remained the law of the land, democracy in America would have been destroyed.

US Supreme Court Chief Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes once famously said, "Every idea is an incitement." And in a democracy, ideas -- that is incitement -- are supposed to flow uninhibited.
Indeed, ideas -- from the idiotic to the sublime -- are the stuff of democratic societies. The constant incitement of competing ideas is what differentiates democracies from tyrannies.

The failure of Sharon, his allies and underlings -- like the failure of his apparatchiks who run the country's media -- to understand that just as an elected government has the legal right to set policy, so does its political opposition have a legal right to protest its policies as loudly, nastily and unaesthetically as they wish, exposes a singular failure of our political and cultural elite to adopt the habits of democracy.

The main victim of this terrible reality is, of course, the Israeli public, which has not been afforded an opportunity to hear any significant debate or discussion of Sharon's plan to uproot thousands of Jews from their homes and withdraw Israeli forces from Gaza and northern Samaria. This policy -- arguably the most controversial plan ever to be adopted by an Israeli government -- is being bulldozed through to implementation without Sharon or his allies ever satisfactorily explaining how it will advance Israel's security or political interests.

Sharon has not explained how turning Gaza over the Palestinians will enhance Israeli security.

He has not explained how Israel will protect itself from rocket and mortar attacks on Ashkelon, Ashdod or Netivot after the withdrawal.

He has never explained why it is necessary to give the Palestinians the communities in northern Gaza - Dugit, Alei Sinai and Nissanit - which are geographically indistinguishable from Ashkelon and whose heights control the entire area.

He has never explained how Israel will be able to defend the strategic sites like the Ashkelon power station and the Ashkelon-Eilat oil pipeline with Hamas roaming freely on those heights.

He has never explained why it is necessary for Israel to remove itself to the 1949 armistice lines, rather than retain the areas necessary for its security and what Israeli acceptance of these lines in Gaza means for future negotiations regarding Judea and Samaria and Jerusalem.

Because of the absence of real debate in the Knesset or in the press, and the concerted effort by the government and the media to criminalize political speech, the Israeli public is being denied the one thing that distinguishes a democracy from a tyranny: the ability of the citizenry to make informed decisions and to hold their leaders accountable for their actions. 

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

The government's decision to release 500 terrorists from prison raises a number of profound concerns about the direction the newfound friendship between Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Mahmoud Abbas – the democratically elected legitimate leader of the reformed, democratic and anti-terrorist Palestinian Authority – is taking.

Abbas is well regarded because he has made a number of statements saying the time of the so-called armed intifada has passed. His call for a temporary cease-fire by Palestinian terror groups in exchange for a general amnesty of terror commanders from Israel has been greeted with exultation by breathless diplomats yearning for a return to the days when "historic" summits and secret talks in European five-star hotels were a routine occurrence.

The government has defended its decision to free 500 terrorists and to stop chasing down terrorist fugitives by claiming that these policies are needed to shore up Abbas's legitimacy among the Palestinian rank and file.

But this raises an obvious question. Why does Abbas, who (according to the so-called international community) was legitimately and overwhelmingly elected in a free and open and democratic election, need legitimacy? Isn't the 66 percent of the vote he garnered in a more or less uncontested race legitimacy enough?

Sharon said last week that Israel will, for the first time, be crossing one of the only remaining "red lines" that has been maintained since the days when we could still refer to red lines without cynicism. Sharon has agreed to release terrorists found guilty of murdering Israeli citizens.

Speaking to his favorite radical left-wing "reporter" Yoel Marcus from Haaretz, Sharon explained that the issue of releasing murderers is of "decisive importance" to Abbas and his deputies and that Israel just has to do this for them to ensure the stability of their new legitimate, democratically elected, anti-terror, reformed regime.

But something is amiss here. If Abbas is supposed to be convincing the Palestinians that they have to reject terrorism, it seems odd for him to be insisting that Israel conduct a mass release of convicted terrorists, let alone murderers. Abbas justifies this demand by claiming that these men and women are Palestinian heroes and that his people won't accept their remaining in prison.

Yet his acceptance of the notion that these war criminals are heroes of the Palestinian people makes it hard to imagine that he has anything but admiration for the crimes they committed – namely acts of terrorism against Israelis. Far from opposing terrorism and being poised to purge the scourge from Palestinian society, in his first act as the legitimate, democratically elected, anti-terror, reform leader, Abbas is sticking out his neck to support terrorism.

Sharon, like IDF Chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen.l Moshe Ya'alon, further defends his support for releasing murderers by espousing the Abbasian (nee Arafatian) contention that it is inconsistent and therefore unjustifiable for Israel to agree to meet with these inmates' "commanders" – that is, Abbas and his deputies – while continuing to punish these "poor things" who were merely the foot soldiers of the revolution.

One senior military official warned last week that an Israeli refusal to accept this contention could lead to a "symmetric" Palestinian demand that Israeli soldiers be tried for murder for having killed Palestinians.

These views are disturbing for two reasons. First, they are morally reprehensible and mark a stunning abandonment of self-respect and national honor by Sharon and his followers. Comparing Israel's right to bring terrorists to justice to the malicious Palestinian libels against IDF soldiers' conduct in fighting Palestinian terrorists is morally bankrupt and represents an abandonment of Israel's inherent right to defend its citizens from perpetrators of crimes against humanity.

The second reason why Sharon and Ya'alon's support for the release of terrorists is jarring is because it constitutes an Israeli acceptance of the Palestinian claim that the use of terror against Israel is legitimate. This point is made even more abundantly clear by Israel's mute acceptance of Abbas's plan to integrate Hamas, Fatah and Islamic Jihad into the official PA militias and bureaucracies.

Abbas justifies his refusal to destroy the terror groups and infrastructures by claiming that he does not have the power to do so. Given that in the Gaza municipal elections three weeks ago Hamas beat Abbas's Fatah party with 70 percent of the vote, he may be right. But then, if he is incapable of fighting terrorism, what good is he?

If the results of the vote – which mark the first time that Hamas has ever openly competed with Fatah – reflect the sentiments of the Palestinian people, it is clear that they have no interest in either purging themselves of terror or of living peacefully with Israel – and therefore Israel should be giving them nothing.

On the sidelines of the government's decision to release the 500 terrorists was a separate decision to allow the terrorists deported from Bethlehem in 2002 – after they took over, desecrated and laid siege to the Church of the Nativity for 39 days – to return to the city and face no charges for their crimes. This decision has the Christians of Bethlehem in a blind panic.

Back in 2002, the members of this gang summarily executed more than a dozen Christians, including children. They raped Christian girls, took over Christian homes in Beit Jala to fire at Israelis in Jerusalem, extorted money from Christian businessmen and expropriated Christian-owned farmlands.

As one Christian put it at the time of their deportation, "They hate us Christians more than they love Palestine."

Yet, at Abbas' insistence, and in the interest of bucking up his legitimate, democratically elected, anti-terror, reform minded regime, Israel has decided to let these war criminals come home to a hero's welcome.

After two years of rest and relaxation in Europe, they will no doubt resume their campaign to destroy all vestiges of Christianity in Bethlehem in no time at all.

It isn't that the government has completely abandoned the fight against Israel's enemies. After all, today everyone from Sharon to Internal Security Minister Gideon Ezra is calling for the state to place those who oppose the newfound friendship with Abbas too loudly or obnoxiously in administrative detention... if they're Jews, that is.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

On Thursday, for the first time, North Korea formally admitted that it possesses nuclear weapons. In so doing, the Stalinist state made clear that the Bush administration's recent policy of avoiding public censure of North Korea, in the hope of reigniting the six-party talks on its illicit nuclear program, was at best ineffective and at worst counterproductive.

The North Korean example is worth noting because it bears significantly on the current state of international reckoning with Iran's program to develop nuclear weapons.

Over the past week or so, the Bush administration has made repeated statements to the effect that it has no intention for now of taking any military action against Iranian nuclear sites, but rather wishes to concentrate on solving the issue through diplomacy. This, in spite of Mossad Chief Meir Dagan's statement last month that "by the end of 2005, the Iranians will reach the point of no return from the technological perspective of creating a uranium-enrichment capability."

Today, two diplomatic plans for contending with Iran are on the table. The first is the attempt by France, Germany and Britain to reach an agreement with Iran whereby, in exchange for nuclear fuel and economic cooperation and assistance, the Iranian government will abandon its nuclear program.

The second is the Bush administration's proposal to have the issue of Iran's nuclear weapons program transferred from the International Atomic Energy Agency to the UN Security Council, where the US wishes to raise the possibility of UN-backed sanctions against the mullocracy.

During her meetings with European leaders and the press in the course of her travels this week, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice sent out contradictory signals. On the one hand, she told Fox News Wednesday that the Iranians "need to hear that the discussions that they are in with the Europeans are not going to be a kind of way station where they are allowed to continue their activities, that there's going to be an end to this and that they are going to end up in the Security Council."

Yet later in the day, Rice clarified that the US has "set no deadline, no timeline," for how long talks between the Europeans and the Iranians could continue before the matter was moved to the Security Council.

For their part, both the Europeans and the Iranians have dismissed the American proposal, insisting that America support their negotiations now taking place in Geneva.

The Iranian government's reaction to the US plan has been caustic. Responding to Rice's statements on Wednesday, Iranian president Muhammad Khatami said, "We consider enrichment our clear right and will never give it up. We suspended it voluntarily to show our goodwill."

Khatami also made a thinly veiled threat that Iran would vacate its signature to the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty if provoked, saying, "If we feel others are not meeting their promises, under no circumstances would we be committed to continue fulfilling ours. And we will adopt a new policy, the consequences of which are massive and would be the responsibility of those who broke their commitments."

In the meantime, on the ground, Security Council veto-wielding members are making it clear that far from supporting sanctions against Iran, they are warming their ties to Teheran.

Iran's official news agency, IRNA, reported on Wednesday that Standard Charter Bank of Britain will be the second European bank to open a branch in the Iranian free trade zone on the island of Kish. The first bank, the Iran-Europe Commercial Bank, opened last month and is jointly owned by German and Iranian investors.

Also Wednesday, the Russian Embassy in Teheran announced that over the weekend former Russian prime minister Yevgeny Primakov will lead the heads of more than 30 Russian companies on a visit to Iran, where they will sign an agreement setting up a joint Russian-Iranian trade council.

More disturbingly, on Monday it was reported that the head of Russia's Atomic Energy Agency, Aleksandr Rumyantsev, will be traveling to Iran later in the month to sign an agreement for supplying Iran with nuclear fuel for its Russian-built nuclear plant in Bushehr. And on Sunday, Iran and Russia signed an agreement for a joint Russian, French and German program to develop the Zohre satellite for Iran. The program includes training of Iranian scientists to develop independent capabilities in space launches and technologies.

As for China, this week Undersecretary of State John Bolton said in Tokyo that the US would suspend business with Chinese companies that provide sensitive weapons technology to Iran and other countries trying to build weapons of mass destruction. Bolton admitted, however, that the Chinese government has taken no action against China North Industries Corp., with which the US has already suspended trade links due to its proliferation activities.

So, on the one hand, the Europeans are pursuing an agreement with the Iranians that has no chance of ending or significantly slowing down Iran's program to acquire nuclear weapons. And on the other hand, the Bush administration proposes referring the issue to the UN Security Council, where every veto-wielding member aside from the US is either actively assisting Iran's nuclear program or actively fostering ties with Iran in a manner that rules out any chance of a sanctions resolution getting adopted.

In light of this, can it be concluded that the US dropping the ball on Iran just as it apparently dropped the ball on North Korea – taking a soft stand toward a regime that views softness as a sign of weakness, not as a diplomatic opportunity? Perhaps.

Yet there are other noises. Two weeks ago, UPI published a report that the US Air Force has been infiltrating Iranian airspace in an attempt to grid the country's air defense systems for use in future targeting. The report quotes US government officials claiming that Israeli-trained Kurds are infiltrating Iran from northern Iraq for the purpose of mapping Iran's nuclear sites, while US-trained Iranian exiles are infiltrating Iran from Basra and the Baluch province of Pakistan for the same purpose.

Aside from that, in his State of the Union address last month, Bush encouraged the Iranian people to oppose their regime, saying, "As you stand for your own liberty, America stands with you."

Bush's call was made just before the Iraqi elections, whose results will likely bring Shi'ites to power for the first time.

Ahmed Chalabi, the head of the Iraqi National Congress who was instrumental in forming the United Iraqi Alliance list which is the projected winner of last month's elections, is a likely candidate to become Iraq's next prime minister. In an interview with The New York Sun on Wednesday, Chalabi said that the Iraqi elections "will have an influence on the democratic movement in Iran."

Also on Wednesday, US Senator Rick Santorum introduced the Iran Freedom and Support Act to the Senate. The act will commit America to "actively support a national referendum in Iran with oversight by international observers and monitors to certify the integrity and fairness of the referendum." According to the Sun report, the legislation will enable the president to finance democracy movements in Iran and to fund pro-democracy radio and television broadcasting there.

Santorum's bill, together with Bush's statement and the prospect of the ascension of a non-radical Shi'ite-dominated democratic government in Iraq, provide the greatest encouragement the Iranians have received to date to overthrow the clerical regime.

It is not easy to conflate the declared American policy of pursuing a diplomatic track that has no chance of succeeding with isolated indications that a completely opposite plan may be in the works. If the Bush administration wishes to build an international coalition that would back a combined military and revolutionary offensive targeting the Iranian regime and its nuclear installations, it is hard to understand how Washington's current declared policy will effect such a result.

On the other hand, perhaps it doesn't matter. If a US-Israeli strike on Iran's nuclear installations came immediately before the instigation of a popular overthrow of the regime, who would be able to condemn the action?

Whatever the case may be, Israel for its part should say nothing about any possible military action. Israel's deterrent posture has already been damaged severely by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's decision to appease Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas by returning to the failed Oslo process.

Israel's default position should be to use diplomacy to shame Europe into backing military action. Israel should fervently, loudly and publicly protest the appeasement policy adopted by Germany, France and Britain in the face of Iran's stated intention to annihilate the Jewish state with nuclear weapons.

But if it works out that, as with North Korea, the US has no plan to take effective action to stop Iran's nuclear program – if US policy has indeed limited itself to the conduct of impotent diplomacy – then Israel's policy imperatives will be radically altered.

Israel will have to act independently. For as is clear to every Israeli, Israel cannot abide a nuclear-armed Iran.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

As US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice embarked on her maiden voyage, it was reported that she departed from America armed with a new policy paper on how to implement the Quartet's road map produced by the James Baker Institute for Public Policy at Rice University.

According to Edward Djerejian, the former US ambassador to Syria who directs the Baker Center, the paper, with its detailed recommendations, is a "street map to the road map."

One of the things that make the paper significant is that it bears former US secretary of state James Baker's name. Not only did Baker serve under the president's father, he now plays a formal role in mobilizing international support for Iraqi reconstruction efforts.

As well, the team that composed the report included senior policy makers from the US, the Palestinian Authority, Egypt, Canada and the World Bank. The US was represented by current Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs William Burns as well as by Norman Olsen, the political counselor at the US embassy in Israel. The PA was represented by security strongman Jibril Rajoub and by senior aides to Mahmoud Abbas, Yasser Arafat and Ahmed Qurei. Egypt was represented bypresident-for-life Hosni Mubarak's senior adviser Osama El Baz and by General Hossam Khair Allah.

Israel had no official representation. Rather, the Jewish state was represented by none other than Yossi Beilin's Geneva Accord crowd. Amnon Lipkin Shahak and Shlomo Brom, signatories to that subversive agreement where private citizens tried to abscond with the government's sovereign power to determine foreign policy by negotiating the scandalously anti-Israel "accord," participated. They were joined by members of Beilin's EU-financed think tank, the Economic Cooperation Foundation.

Not surprisingly, the product this team produced and delivered to Rice is soft on Palestinian terrorism, soft on Palestinian democratization, and relentlessly harsh toward Israel – its sovereignty, its right to defend itself, and its ability to claim any right to retain any of the Israeli communities in Judea and Samaria.

The document makes no clear statement on the need for the Palestinians to dismantle terrorist organizations. Indeed, the term "terror organizations" is absent from the report. Instead, the Palestinian requirement to combat terrorism is reduced to demands on Israel to facilitate the training, arming and operation of the "reformed" Palestinian security services while not interfering with them in any way.

While the report pays lip service to the need for the PA to reform its governing institutions, its only clear statement on the end-product of reform is unabashedly authoritarian. The aim of all the reforms must be the "consolidat[ion of] Fatah as the main political player in Palestinian society."

And although the report makes no call for the destruction of Palestinian terror organizations and bucks up the authoritarian, corrupt PA, it calls for Israel to be treated with hostility and suspicion.

The paper calls for the establishment of a multinational force that will implement the agreements. Implicit in this statement is the assumption that Israel will be prevented by the presence of this force from taking any measures to defend itself against attacks.

International border crossings in Gaza and Judea and Samaria, including the weapons smuggling hub at the Philadephi Corridor which separates Gaza from Egypt, are to be controlled by the Palestinians. The report gives Egyptian forces a more prominent role in implementing the agreements than the IDF.

WHERE THE report's anti-Israel bias is most blatant is in its discussion of the Israeli communities in Judea and Samaria. The authors refer to their desire to see "The Palestinian people establish a viable state in the West Bank and Gaza" and make it clear that a precondition for the state's viability is that it be racially pure – entirely cleansed of Jewish communities. At the same time, they express their desire to "assure that Israel will continue to exist as the democratic homeland of the Jewish people and its other citizens." So in the authors' view, Israel is to be a state of all of its citizens while "Palestine" is to be Judenrein.

The report calls for the institution of a draconian regime in the Defense Ministry and the Justice Ministry to effectively prevent any building activities whatsoever from being conducted in the Israeli communities in Judea and Samaria. This regime, "The Special Office on Settlement Activities," will be obliged not simply to act as the enforcer of the attrition of these communities. The report determines that this body will be subordinate to the US embassy in Israel – effectively ceding Israeli sovereignty to the US.

The study even dares to dictate what propaganda moves must be made by the Israeli government to force the Israeli public to accept this policy. A close reading makes it clear that the result of this policy will be the expulsion of more than 400,000 Israeli Jews from their homes. This is so because the destruction of Israeli neighborhoods in Jerusalem is implicit in the section's opening paragraph, which mendaciously claims: "The US government policy has been based on the principle that there can be no acquisition of territory by war."

Not only does this sweeping and totally false statement necessarily include Jerusalem; it can easily be interpreted as saying that the only borders Israel can legitimately claim are the UN partition borders from 1947 since much of the land that makes up the 1949 armistice lines was acquired in war.

Perhaps it is reasonable that officials pushing a plan that would cause Israel to effectively become the ward of the international community should not feel limited by the positions of the Israeli government as it makes its plans – sufficing instead to have Israel "represented" by radical free agents with Israeli citizenship.

But two questions still arise: Why is the US government sending its officials to participate in a "working group" which works to undermine the sovereignty of a US ally; and why is the Israeli government not taking legal action against private citizens who travel the world "negotiating" away the sovereign rights of the state while undermining the prerogatives of the Israeli government?

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

Speaking with State Department personnel on Monday, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice gave form to the Palestinian state that now stands at the center of American Middle East policy. "The Israelis," she said, "were going to have to recognize that there was going to have to be land for – contiguous land for the Palestinian state to exist on."

Contiguous land? Well, how can there be contiguity between Judea and Samaria on the east and the Gaza Strip on the west unless Israel is split in two? It's simple geography. Either Israel will separate two sections of the Palestinian state or the Palestinian state will divide Israel in two. And now we know where America stands on the issue.

The contiguity statement also bodes ill for Israeli sovereignty over Jerusalem and the Jordan Valley. After all, Israel's control of Jerusalem cuts off the Hebron and Bethlehem areas from Ramallah. And Israeli sovereignty over the Jordan Valley would cut Jericho off from the rest of the Palestinian cities in Judea and Samaria.

The most amazing aspect of Rice's statement is that it was made before Israel and the Palestinians have even begun to negotiate. Then again, since the so-called road map is the only plan in town, we already know that America has joined Europe, the UN, Yossi Beilin and Vice Premier Shimon Peres in believing that at the end of the day, Israel will enable the establishment of a sovereign Palestinian state. That state will share borders with Egypt and Jordan (and after Israel gives the Golan Heights to Syria, with Syria); will encompass all of Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip; and will have its capital in Jerusalem. In addition, there will be foreign troops in the areas to prevent Israel from defending itself.

On Tuesday, Rice made clear that now that America has joined the bandwagon of those calling for Israel's disembowelment, it should be able to patch up its relations with the EU. In her words, "This great alliance that has faced very grave threats now faces really remarkable opportunities in the world." The first opportunity she mentioned was "the opportunity to support the parties in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to try and find a two-state solution."

It is odd that the US, in trying to patch up its relations with Europe, has preferred to give in to Europe's Palestinian fetish over say, building on common interests. As Robin Shepherd from the Center for International and Strategic Studies wrote in The Washington Post last week, the core of Europe's rift with America is Europe's emotional and irrational antipathy for Israel. And, as he warned, "Americans should now be aware that on one crucial issue, at least [i.e., Israel], it is Europe, and not America, that needs to clean up its act."

All the same, it is hard to feel too betrayed by America when the charge to strengthen Palestinian terrorists at the expense of Israel's national security is being led today – just as it was in 1993 – by the Israeli government.

Thursday, the "security cabinet" – stacked with security geniuses like Shimon "Arafat's Great" Peres and Haim "Israel is Bad" Ramon – decided to release 900 Palestinian terrorists from prison. This is just the latest of the Israeli payoffs to the "democratically" elected PA leader Mahmoud Abbas.

And what has Abbas done to deserve such largesse? He has purportedly reached an agreement with Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Fatah that involves these terrorist groups temporarily ceasing their attacks. (This is probably news to the residents of Gush Katif who had 15 mortars and rockets lobbed at them over the past few days.) During this temporary cessation of terrorist attacks, the terrorists will not be disarmed. If they desire, Abbas told a Russian newspaper this week, they can be integrated into the Palestinian security services.

Those would be the same security services to which Russia pledged to donate helicopters; to which Turkey has asked to donate uniforms and guns; which Rice says America will train; and which President Bush wishes to finance.

And, if terrorists are dissatisfied with the pace of Israeli withdrawals or other appeasement measures, Abbas promised them that they can always go back to murdering Israelis.

In addition to his mollification of terrorists, Abbas announced a ban on illegal weapons. That would seem a promising move, except that his announcement has no enforcement mechanism, is directed against "criminal elements," and makes no mention whatsoever of gun-toting terrorists.

Abbas has also deployed PA militias in Gaza. But these forces have been given strict orders to take no action against terrorists.

As to reform of Palestinian institutions, in one of his first "law enforcement" actions, Abbas instructed the PA's mufti to speed up the process of executing the 51 Palestinians who have been sentenced to death by Palestinian "courts." At least seven of those 51 were convicted of the capital crime of "collaborating" with Israel.

Then there is the question of economic transparency, which the US demands Abbas shore up. In an interesting move on this score, one of the first "economic" issues that the Palestinians raised this week was their demand to reopen the casino in Jericho. That particular edifice is the concrete manifestation of everything that is corrupt about the PA and about the "peace process" itself. Jibril Rajoub, Muhammad Rashid and Abbas have all been investors in the casino. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's adviser, Dov Weisglass, represents casino shareholders. And the late Yossi Ginnosar, who set up meetings between Omri Sharon and Yasser Arafat back when Sharon first came into office four years ago, was both a member of the Board of Directors of the Peres Peace Center and an investor in the casino. Indeed, Omri's first meeting with PA officials took place in Vienna, in the presence of Weisglass at the offices of Martin Schlaf, the casino's main stockholder during Sharon's election campaign in 2001.

Perhaps most indicative of Abbas's intentions is his acceptance of Iran's invitation to conduct a state visit. This willingness to truck with global terrorists who are pursuing nuclear weapons aligns nicely with Abbas's visits to Syria and Lebanon, where he was mollycoddled by dictators and terror masters while campaigning for the office he won in a largely uncontested, highly corrupt election.

It stands, of course, to reason – in the Orwellian world that so characterizes Israel when it is peace-drunk – that our leaders would look at all that Abbas has done and say, "Wonderful, let's give this guy a state!" So here we are. Our army has been ordered not to protect us, because the Palestinians will do that for us now. PA security forces will now be deployed in Judea and Samaria, as well as in Gaza. Wanted Palestinian terrorists – mass murderers – are free to go back to their homes. Israel won't harm them. Palestinian terrorists whom Israel caught and imprisoned will now be released on their own recognizance.

It's all in the interest of peace, after all, and we can rest assured that they won't return to killing, because they will all be required to sign declarations promising not to be terrorists anymore. That's crucial. Let's not forget that the terrorists who carried out the bombings in Cafe Hillel and outside Tzrifin military base in September 2003 signed precisely such declarations before they were released as part of a confidence-building gesture to Abbas.

In addition to rushing to embrace Abbas, Israel is doing everything it can to shore up Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak in the hope that he will protect us after we run away from Gaza. Crowned with legitimacy as a peacemaker after he and his security chief, Omar Suleiman, have spent the better part of two weeks getting Hamas and Islamic Jihad to agree to... absolutely nothing – according to Hamas chieftain Khaled Mashal – Mubarak next Tuesday will host a peace party in Sharm e-Sheikh, where peace-drunk Israeli politicians and media flacks will gush, and Palestinians will demand that Israel take down the security fence and the roadblocks and release still more murderers from jail in order to give them confidence to make "hard steps" toward peace sometime later on down the line.

In the meantime, because of his vital role in the "peace process," Mubarak can safely assume that he will receive no flak from America for having imprisoned Ayman Nur, the leader of the only opposition party trying to challenge his one-party rule in Egypt. King Abdullah, too, can be sure he will pay no price for trying to prevent Iraq from becoming a democracy.

And herein lies the greatest irony of the peace process. American supporters of both Bush and Israel are now backing Sharon's plan to withdraw from Gaza and northern Samaria and Bush's plan for Palestinian statehood, claiming the world has changed since Oslo. They promise that Bush is going to cause a democratic revolution in the Arab world that will change the entire strategic balance in Israel's favor.

What they don't seem to remember is that the world had also changed after the fall of the Soviet Union and the 1991 Gulf War. Then, as now, there was an expectation that the Arabs would be forced to change the way they treated Israel and America. Then, as now, the reactionary forces in the region were saved by one thing – the peace process with Israel.

Back in 1992 at Madrid and in 1993 at Oslo, the Arabs learned that the way to ensure the longevity of their authoritarian, terror-supporting and jihad-engendering regimes is by attacking Israel with olive branches. These earn them legitimacy from the Jewish state and gratitude from the White House. Since peacemakers are of course indispensable, all thought of democracy must be put aside in the furtherance of a greater good.

So, here we are again, at the dawn of a new peace process which will bring no peace; will legitimize terrorists and the authoritarian regimes that support them; will weaken Israel's democratic institutions while endangering its citizenry; and will engender scorn for America and faith in Israel's eventual destruction in the hearts of millions of people who today waver between support for freedom and support for terror.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.