It was ironic that Attorney-General Menahem Mazuz announced his decision to indict Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's son, MK Omri Sharon, on criminal corruption charges related to his management of his father's political campaigns – charges that could lead to five years' imprisonment – at the same time the prime minister was en route to Paris for a state visit.

The timing of Mazuz's announcement was ironic because it brought to the surface just how similar 72-year-old French President Jacques Chirac and 76-year-old Ariel Sharon are. Omri's indictment, which reinforces the already entrenched public perception of Sharon's corruption, aligns nicely with the corruption scandals that have plagued Chirac for the past several years. The Paris prosecutors are reportedly eagerly awaiting Chirac's departure from office in 2007 to indict him for corruption charges stemming from his tenure as Paris mayor in the 1990s. In May, the US Senate's investigation of the UN's oil-for-food scandal revealed that former French interior minister Charles Pasqua, a man who the committee described as a "longtime friend and political ally" of Chirac, received oil vouchers for 11 million barrels of Iraqi oil. Pasqua has denied the charges.

This week it was reported that longtime Sharon crony South African businessman Cyril Kern is an investor in a project to build a casino in Elei Sinai after the government expels the community's Jewish residents next month. Allegations that Kern illegally funded Sharon's political campaigns form the basis for one of the ongoing criminal investigations being conducted against the premier.

On Tuesday, the Knesset State Control Committee launched an investigation into Brig.-Gen. (res.) Eival Giladi, who serves in the Prime Minister's Office as the coordinator of all governmental activities related to the withdrawal of the IDF and the expulsion of Jewish residents from the Gaza Strip and northern Samaria. Earlier in the month Makor Rishon newspaper and Israel News Resource Agency revealed that Giladi also serves as the director of the British nonprofit Portland Trust, which is seeking to raise $500 million in investment funds to develop Gush Katif after it is emptied of its Jewish residents in the operation that Giladi oversees.

Aside from their age and suspected corruption, Chirac and Sharon also share a disdain for popular democracy. In his relentless drive to build up the European Union under Franco-German leadership as a counterweight to the US, Chirac has done more than any other single European leader in recent years to transform European nation-states into mere vassals of the post-democratic regime of unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats in Brussels.

The stunning defeat French voters delivered to the EU constitution sent Chirac's approval numbers into the low forties and was rightly seen by observers as a rejection of his post-democratic dream by his own, underrepresented and trampled countrymen. In reacting to his failure, Chirac compounded the damage by appointing Dominique de Villepin, the co-architect of his anti-American, anti-Israel policy, French prime minister. Villepin has the distinction of never having been elected to public office.

Like Chirac, Sharon, too, has worked hard to undermine the public will as expressed at the polls in the January 2003 election. Ignoring his party and his cabinet, Sharon has made every key decision with his unelected, unaccountable political and public relations advisers. He fired cabinet ministers who objected to the Gaza withdrawal and expulsion plan and replaced them with representatives of the Labor Party, which the Israeli voters eviscerated in the last elections. He disregarded the will of his party members by ignoring their overwhelming rejection of his withdrawal and expulsion plan in May 2004 after he himself called for the poll.

What distinguishes him from Chirac is that Sharon did not bow to public pressure; he refused to allow a national referendum of his plan, preferring instead to build an artificial majority for it in the Knesset by bribing Likud MKs with ministerial and deputy ministerial positions.

On the face of it, Sharon's visit this week to Paris seems to have been a remarkable success. Chirac greeted his Israeli guest with all the ceremony reserved for revered guests like the late Yasser Arafat. The red carpet was pulled out. The honor guard played "Hatikva." Fish were eaten and wine was ingested as lively jokes were told around the luncheon table at the Elysee Palace.

And yet, there was no substance to the meeting. Chirac made no move to revisit his support for every Palestinian demand against Israel currently on the table. He similarly refused to acknowledge that Hizbullah is a terrorist organization or to work toward the organization's disarmament. While he stated that Iran must cease its quest to achieve nuclear capabilities, he insisted that France, together with Britain and Germany, will continue to drag out negotiations with the mullahs. This, in spite of the fact that Iran's outgoing president Muhammad Khatami announced that Iran will continue to enrich uranium at its Isfahan nuclear installation and in spite of the fact that, while Chirac was meeting with Sharon, Iranian Defense Minister Ali Shamkhani announced that the Shihab-3 ballistic missiles that are capable of hitting Israel and Europe now can be launched using solid fuel technology.

THE ONLY reason that Sharon's meetings in Paris went off so well is that the leaders had agreed ahead of time not to discuss the main issues that divide them. Chirac made no mention, for instance, of France's support for the Palestinian demand that the Gaza withdrawal be but the first of many and that Israel remove the 450,000 Jews living in Judea and Samaria and the neighborhoods of Jerusalem built since 1967. For his part, Sharon softened his call for French Jewry to make aliya, stating meekly that he tells all Jews that.

At the end of the day, it could be said that while Sharon got a fancy photo-op with his anti-Israel French doppelganger, Israel got nothing from his state visit.

The pity of this state of affairs is twofold. Israel has a critical national interest in diversifying its foreign policy. To date, Sharon has placed all his diplomatic efforts on securing US support for his government and for himself, personally. He has received this support from the Bush administration but the price has been the undermining of Israel's relationship with the US.

Since September 11, first under the watchful eye of then-foreign minister Shimon Peres and later under the gaze of his bureau chief and personal attorney Dov Weisglass, Sharon has refused to publicly link the jihad being waged against the US with the jihad being waged against Israel. In so doing, he has enabled the US to adopt two separate policies for dealing with terrorism.

The first policy, which applies only to terrorism against Israel, involves appeasing the terrorists. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's bizarre and offensive embrace of PA chief Mahmoud Abbas during her visit here last week, in the shadow of the renewed Palestinian terror offensive against Israel and in spite of the fact that he has gone out of his way to defend and support Palestinian terrorists since replacing Arafat last November, was case in point.

The US's second policy, which applies everywhere else in the world, is to fight terror.

Sharon has justified his decision to move ahead with the withdrawal and expulsion plan with nonexistent guarantees from President George W. Bush to support the remaining Israeli communities in Judea and Samaria and to oppose the Palestinian demand to obliterate Israel through the so-called right of return. The Americans, seeing that Sharon has effectively rendered his own fortunes hostage to Washington's discretion in not making it too clear that no such guarantees were ever made, can now demand anything of him that they wish.

In this state of affairs, one of the things Israel must do is diversify its international ties. And so, improving relations with France and other European countries that have shared interests with Israel is an important move. But, as Sharon's visit showed, he is incapable of delivering the goods.

The second pity of his failure is that both in Israel and in France, as well as Germany, there are other, younger, more vibrant and visionary politicians who are waiting in the wings to take over their countries' leadership once Sharon and Chirac and Chirac's German buddy Gerhard Schroeder finally retire.

In France, Minister of the Interior Nicolas Sarkozy is such a leader. He is set to replace Chirac in 2007. In Germany, opposition leader Angela Merkel will in all likelihood replace Schroeder as chancellor after the September elections. In Israel, Finance Minister Binyamin Netanyahu will likely replace Sharon in the next elections, which will probably be called early next year.

All three of these leaders have a firm grasp of the multifaceted challenges facing their countries and a healthy respect for democracy. All three have championed, and Netanyahu and Sarkozy have both overseen, major market reforms. In Netanyahu's case, his banking and tax reform packages sailed through the Knesset the same day that Sharon flew off to France. These reforms, like Netanyahu's budgetary reforms before them, will push Israel even further away from its statist, stagnant, socialist economy, paving the way for unprecedented economic growth in the coming years.

These three leaders, and other similar ones in Holland, Denmark, Italy and Poland, also share an understanding that the global jihad is the largest threat to international security today. Working together, with the US, they could move the US-led war out of its current torpor and paralysis.

The dog and pony show we were witness to this week in Paris, conducted by two beseiged leaders who are well past their prime, was yet another indication that the most urgent challenge we face is persevering through what remains of their respective tenures. The good news is that the cavalry is on its way.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

Well, that was quick. No sooner had the blasts gone off in Sharm e-Sheikh than the Egyptians were already blaming the murderous attack which claimed at least 88 lives on the Jews. As Khaled Abu Toameh reported in Sunday's Jerusalem Post, the immediate reaction to the bombings Saturday night on Egyptian state television and pan-Arab television networks Al-Jazeera and Al Arabiya was to blame the bombings on Israel.

As retired Egyptian army general Fuad Allam stated in an interview on Egyptian television that was repeatedly rebroadcast, the perpetrators of the October 2004 bombings at tourist sites in Sinai, where 12 Israelis were among the 34 dead, were "apparently linked to Israel's security forces." He continued: "I'm almost certain that Israel was also behind this attack because they want to undermine our government and deal a severe blow to our economy."

One has to wonder what purpose such statements serve for the Egyptian government, which controls its state television network. Why would Egyptian television push such a ridiculous claim while Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak stated "this cowardly, criminal act is aimed at undermining Egypt's security and stability and harming its people and its guests"?

The only reasonable explanation of this behavior is that statements such as Allam's are an indication of a lack of intent on the part of the Egyptian government to take any concrete or effective action against Islamic terrorists operating in the Sinai. In blaming Israel for the attacks, Egypt was essentially doing two things. First, it was making common cause with the bombers on the one issue – hatred of Israel and the Jews – that unites them.

IN A PEW Global Attitudes poll released on July 14, citizens in Lebanon and Jordan were asked if they had a favorable or unfavorable view of Jews. In Jordan, 100% of those polled stated they have an unfavorable opinion of Jews; in Lebanon, 99 percent of respondents said the same. While Egypt was not surveyed in the poll, given that under Mubarak's reign Egypt has acted as the epicenter for the propagation of anti-Semitism throughout the Arab world, it is hard to imagine that Jews receive significantly more sympathy there than we receive in Jordan and Lebanon.

So in blaming the Jews, Mubarak's television station was showing the government's affinity with the murderers of its own people at Sharm e-Sheikh.

Given this endemic hatred of Israel, it stands to reason that once the conspiracy theory has been officially propagated, any attempt to take action against the actual culprits – who of course have no links to Israel but rather are affiliated with al-Qaida – will be seen by the properly incited,
thoroughly anti-Semitic Egyptian public as a form of collaboration with the Jews.

And so the second thing Egypt has done in alleging that Israel was behind Friday night's blast is delegitimize any concrete action it could take against the perpetrators in the future.

After last October's attacks the Egyptian government, whose tottering economy is in large measure dependent on tourism, took no effective action against the al-Qaida terror cell responsible for those attacks. Nor did it take any effective action to protect its easily defended tourist villages.

Rather, it rounded up some 100 or so Beduin, whose links to the attacks were never altogether clear. As in the most recent attacks, last October the Egyptian media was quick to lay the blame on Israel.

And now, as then, the Egyptians have already rounded up some 100 Beduin whose links to the attacks are as unclear as they were in October.

ALL THIS must be taken into account as this week the Israeli government is poised to sign a memorandum of understanding with the Egyptians which will enable the deployment of 750 Egyptian forces to the Philadelphi Corridor linking Gaza with the Sinai.

For the past five years of the Palestinian terror war, Egypt has done nothing to prevent, and so has enabled, massive arms smuggling into Gaza through the Philadelphi Corridor, which the IDF is set to vacate upon its withdrawal next month from the Gaza Strip. Now, both Ariel Sharon's government and the Bush administration are arguing that Egypt can be trusted to block the infiltration of terrorists and weaponry into the Gaza Strip after the IDF's scheduled retreat. The notion that has been sold to the public is that Egypt will not be interested in allowing Gaza to turn into a base for global jihad because such a transformation could manifest a threat to Egypt.

The fact that Egypt has taken next to no action against terrorists operating in its territory, against its own economy and citizenry, should expose the folly of this view. Aside from that, the delusion that Egypt is interested in fighting terrorism was put paid the evening after the Sharm e-Sheikh attacks by none other than the deputy chief of Egyptian Military Intelligence.

Saturday night, less than 24 hours after the Sharm e-Sheikh attacks and just an hour or so before Dov and Rachel Kol were murdered along the Kissufim route after finishing a weekend visit with their family in Gush Katif, Egyptian deputy intelligence chief Mustafa al-Beheiri was meeting with leaders of the Islamic Jihad in Gaza. Rather than hurrying home to protect Egypt from terrorism, Beheiri was continuing Egypt's four-year official dialogue with Hamas, Fatah and Islamic Jihad in a supposed attempt to integrate these murderers into the Palestinian Authority.

The two terrorists who murdered the Kols claimed membership in Fatah and the Islamic Jihad.

Egypt's refusal to take any action against Palestinian terrorists should have disqualified it from any role in Gaza after Israel's planned withdrawal. As well, Egypt's abject refusal since October 2004 to take any effective action against al-Qaida operatives in Sinai raises clearly the specter that subsequent to Israel's retreat, not only will Palestinian terrorists flourish, al-Qaida will seed itself in Gaza.
 

As Maj. General (res.) Ya'acov Amidror noted in a policy paper published by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs in November 2004, al-Qaida has a tendency to locate its operatives and operational bases "wherever there is a security vacuum." Gaza is certainly such a location today and will likely become even more chaotic after the IDF's planned withdrawal.

THE PA EXERTS no effective security control over Gaza. The fact that the Kols were murdered in a joint Fatah-Islamic Jihad operation, like the fact that the suicide bomber intercepted by the IDF in the western Negev on Friday night after he had infiltrated from Gaza was also a member of Fatah, shows that PA leader Mahmoud Abbas does not even exert control over his own political-terror faction.

Hamas and al-Qaida share both ideological affinity and financing networks. They have also conducted at least one joint operation in the past. The bombing at Mike's Place nightclub in Tel Aviv, located spitting distance from the US embassy, which was perpetrated by two British terrorists in April 2003, was a joint al-Qaida-Hamas operation. As Amidror noted, there is little reason not to suspect that subsequent to the IDF's withdrawal and transfer of control of the Philadelphi Corridor to the Palestinians and Egyptians, Gaza will be transformed into a significant base for al-Qaida.

Egypt's readiness to continue to accuse Israel of being behind al-Qaida operations that take place on its soil should put to rest any notion that either Israel or the US can look to Cairo for any assistance in stabilizing a post-retreat Gaza or in combating jihadist forces generally.

The fact that neither Jerusalem nor Washington is willing to acknowledge this fact is a disturbing indication that the Sharm e-Sheikh bombings and the murder of Rahel and Dov Kol are but a small taste of what awaits us.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

Walking among the tens of thousands of Israeli protesters at Moshav Kfar Maimon this week was like being witness to a miracle. There in the scorching summer heat were thousands upon thousands of families with children of all ages, young men and women and elderly people, living under siege and in conditions that would make an infantryman cringe.

And yet, there was no complaining. There was no shouting. There was no pushing. There was no garbage on the ground. There was no stench of any kind. What one saw in the protesters' faces and heard in each and every statement and conversation was dignity, determination, integrity, faith and a form of earthy, plainspoken and unabashed patriotism and concern for the greater good that has become an artifact of a barely remembered past for many Israelis.

In witnessing this – when just outside were 20,000 soldiers and policemen, laying concertina wire along the fence penning these people in as if they were terrorists, and standing arms locked in row upon row, poised to pounce at them at the slightest provocation – it was, indeed, hard to shake off the sense that one was watching a miracle happen.

The tens of thousands of law-abiding citizens – estimates of their actual numbers run between 30,000 and 60,000 – were exercising their democratic right to protest the government's plan to expel 10,000 Israelis from Gaza and northern Samaria and destroy the communities they built from sand next month. The protesters oppose this plan for moral reasons. It is simply obscene, they say, to carry out these expulsions. These people are set to be thrown out of their homes and their farms just because they are Jews. Israel receives nothing in return. These people's homes will be either destroyed or turned over to the same Palestinian terrorist forces that have been attacking them continuously for the past five years. Their hothouses and livestock are set to be turned over to the Palestinians as well.

The plan's proponents argue that the expulsion of 10,000 Jews from their farms and communities in the Land of Israel is necessary to maintain Israel as a democratic, Jewish society. Yet, what these opponents of the expulsion plan experienced, in their efforts to even voice their opposition, is that in insisting on carrying out this plan – which Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was reelected overwhelmingly in 2003 by promising to oppose – the government is trampling and endangering both Israel's democratic form of government and its character as a Jewish state.

On Sunday evening, the day before the Council of Jewish Communities in Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip's solidarity march from Netivot to Gush Katif was set to begin, the police denied the council a permit. In so doing, the police unabashedly denied these people their democratic right to protest the policies of their government. The police's justification was the announced plan to walk to Gush Katif – on the third day of the protest. The denial of the permit to demonstrate meant that everything about the protest plan was deemed illegal. Citizens conducting demonstrations in Netivot, Kfar Maimon and Kibbutz Re'im, the first three planned stops on the march – all of which are well within the sacrosanct 1949 armistice lines – was deemed an illegal activity.

Then Monday, when the council ignored this draconian announcement, the police breached the constitutional rights of tens of thousands of Israelis by intercepting privately owned buses throughout the country – from the Golan Heights to Tel Aviv to Eilat – and prevented their law-abiding passengers and drivers from exercising their right to travel freely in the State of Israel. In both of these actions, the police – with full backing from the Prime Minister's Office, the State Attorney's Office and the leftist local media – took actions that undermined Israeli democracy and its foundations as a state ruled by law and not the police.

On the roads to Netivot on Monday and on the roads to Kfar Maimon on Tuesday and Wednesday, the police set up roadblocks to inspect cars. Cars with orange banners of solidarity with the residents set for expulsion, and cars whose passengers were identifiably religious, were pulled over and not allowed to pass. Rather than turn around and go home, the passengers said nothing of this obviously unlawful, discriminatory humiliation. They simply got out of their cars and, pushing their baby carriages and strollers, walked for kilometers under the desert sun to reach Kfar Maimon on foot. In so treating these citizens, the police clearly signaled that they view religious Jews as a threat. So much for leaving Gaza and northern Samaria in order to ensure Israel's future as a Jewish, democratic state.

AS ONE walked along the crowded road and the lawns of Kfar Maimon, one was struck by the ubiquity of the television cameras. Nearly all major news organizations in the Western world were present. In the past, when the council brought up to a quarter of a million people out to protest land giveaways, the mass demonstrations in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv received barely any attention. And here were Fox and Sky News, CNN and the BBC competing with Israel's television channels for the best place to park their satellite dishes.

The reason for this is clear: The world press has bought into the demonized image of the Jewish residents of Gaza, Judea and Samaria that has been largely propagated by the Israeli Left and the Israeli media. The "settlers" are viewed as violent, extremist, money-grubbing religious fanatics who threaten the foundations of Israel and block any chance for peace between Israel and its neighbors. In other words, under normal circumstances, protests by the settlers are considered unworthy of media attention. But this time, the media swallowed the bait set by the council leaders who insisted that they would march to Gush Katif. Everyone came to film the blood that would be let when the protesters clashed with the Israeli army and the police.

But once they were there, far away from their air-conditioned offices and apartments in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, they had to send in the pictures of what they saw. And what they saw was the truth they have been insistently denying for the past 30 years. Namely, that these Israelis have nothing in common with their demonized image. Here were tens of thousands of peaceful protesters singing and dancing and studying together. Here they were, handing fruit and drinks to the soldiers and policemen sent to stand against them and, rather than fighting with them, they prayed with them. For the first time, perhaps ever, both the general public in Israel and the world were able to receive undistorted images of these people on their television screens.

If the police's trampling of democracy by attempting to block the protesters from arriving at Netivot and Kfar Maimon weren't enough, we had the hysterical reaction of the police and the IDF to ensure that the general public understood that, like the media, the commanders of the police and the IDF had fallen for the discriminatory stereotypes of the settlers and their supporters. Arrayed against these families was a division and a half of security forces. There were more security forces laying siege to Kfar Maimon than participated in the Operation Defensive Shield in Judea and Samaria in April 2002. In the entire US invasion force of Iraq in 2003, only 20,000 troops actually participated in combat operations. As the Palestinians in Gaza continued their Kassam rocket and mortar attacks, rather than fight Israel's enemies, the IDF deployed six combat brigades to Kfar Maimon, where the soldiers were told to lay siege on their own family members.

Brig.-Gen. Gershon Hacohen, who is the division commander charged with commanding the withdrawal and expulsion from Gush Katif, laid siege to his brother, Rabbi Reem Hacohen and his family. Reem's son, a cadet at officer training school, laid siege to his parents and siblings. Thirty percent of the soldiers in the Golani Infantry Brigade live in Judea, Samaria and Gaza. These soldiers laid siege to their parents and brothers and sisters.

At least one battalion commander refused to follow his order to lay barbed wire along Kfar Maimon's fence. Several commanders ordered their soldiers to remove their unit insignias and berets so that no one would recognize them. Soldiers from command courses in the IDF, who were sent with no warning to Kfar Maimon, cried when they received the orders and the soldiers standing arm to arm against the protesters cried as they were forced to lay siege to their innocent countrymen whose only offense was voicing their opposition to the expulsion plan.

Sensing the impact of the demonstration, and no doubt noting that the latest polling data from the left-leaning Herzog Institute show that less than 50 percent of Israelis support the plan, Thursday morning Deputy Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said that the government may order the expulsion to begin immediately rather than on its scheduled date of August 17.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice arrived Thursday afternoon to make sure that Sharon goes through with the plan in spite of the fact that doing so all but ensures that Hamas will take over Gaza. Hamas has already prepared 20,000 new uniforms for its operatives and supporters. They are planning a victory march through Gush Katif the day after the last Jew is expelled. So much for Washington's belief that throwing Jews out of their homes simply because they are Jews will contribute to the prospects of Middle East peace.

When a democratic government adopts an immoral policy, it is the duty of its loyal citizens, through acts of protest and civil disobedience, to hold up a mirror to their leaders and their fellow citizens to force them to contend with the implications of their policies. At Netivot and Kfar Maimon this week, the protesters did just that. What we saw on the one side was the dignified, humble and stubborn Zionism of the citizens set to be expelled and of their supporters.

On the other side, we saw the anti-democratic and discriminatory face of the government that stands against them. The time has come for the people of Israel to be allowed to freely and democratically decide which side they are on.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

Yesterday Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari, accompanied by a dozen Iraqi cabinet ministers, rounded off a three-day official visit to the Islamic Republic of Iran. While there, Jaafari met with Iranian arch-dictator Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, outgoing president Mohammad Khatami and president-elect Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Jaafari heads the Islamic Dawa faction in Iraq, which is closely allied with Teheran. He came to Iraq after the downfall of Saddam's regime from Iran, where he had been living under the protection of the mullahs for more than a decade. Both US and Iraqi officials – Shi'ite and Sunni – have since the inauguration of the Iraqi Governing Council in the summer of 2003 stated repeatedly and matter of factly that he is an Iranian agent.

In the days and weeks ahead of Jaafari's visit, Iraq and Iran agreed to cooperate on military issues as well as on oil distribution issues. The oil deal, largely worked out last week, involves the transfer of some 380,000 barrels of Iraqi crude per day to Iran, to be swapped for an equal amount of refined petroleum products transferred to Iraq daily at the port of Basra.

Last June, in an act of international piracy, the Iranian Revolutionary Guards abducted eight British servicemen along the Shatt-al-Arab waterway linking Iran and Iraq by Basra. It was suspected at the time that the sailors were abducted while laying ship-detection sensors along the waterway in order to protect Iraqi oil terminals in Basra from the constant sabotage that had rendered the Iraqi oil industry a virtual hostage to terrorist forces. These forces, largely based in Iran, have been continuously attacking Iraq's pipelines and terminals since the fall of Saddam's regime.

So, in negotiating the oil deal with Iran, it can be easily argued that the Iraqis are surrendering to Iranian sabotage of their oil industry.

As to the military cooperation, two weeks ago, Iraqi Defense Minister Saadoun al-Duleimi met with his Iranian counterpart, Ali Shamkhani, in Teheran and the two reportedly agreed to conduct joint military training and cooperation in minefield removal. During their press conference Shamkhani demanded that the Iraqis force a withdrawal of US forces from the country. In Shamkhani's words, "Iran demands that the Iraqi government make a decision on this case. The government and people of Iraq should not allow foreign forces to consolidate their control in the area with the aim of providing security for Israel."

The most appalling aspect of the democratically elected Iraqi government's embrace of Teheran is that much of the terror war raging in Iraq today is directly sponsored by Teheran. This week Iran made an improbable announcement that it has detained, deported or imprisoned some 3,000 al-Qaida members whose identities, for some reason, it refuses to divulge. The announcement strains credulity since, as Gary Metz, otherwise known as Dr. Zin, the intrepid blogger from the "Regime Change Iran" Web site, noted this week, numerous intelligence reports have indicated that the majority of al-Qaida's leadership are in the Iranian Chalous area under the protection of the Revolutionary Guard's Jerusalem force, which was founded by Iran's president elect.

Both the Shi'ite terror leader Moqtada al-Sadr and al-Qaida's chief in Iraq Abu Musab Zarkawi have documented connections with Iran. Al-Sadr's terror campaign in the spring of 2004 was directed by Ayatollah Haeri in Teheran, and Zarkawi entered Iraq from Iran, where he had reportedly been operating since fleeing Afghanistan during the US invasion in the fall of 2001.

FOR ITS part, the US is saying little about Iraq's newfound alliance with Iran. US Ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalizad merely noted last Wednesday, "It's not the US policy to advocate or promote a hostile relationship between Iraq and Iran. They are neighbors. We want to see these two countries have good relations."

On Sunday The New York Times reported that the Bush administration has denied allegations made in the current issue of The New Yorker magazine to the effect that the US sought to influence the outcome of last January's elections in Iraq by supporting pro-US candidates. This denial is believable since one of the strangest aspects of those elections was that the US abjectly refused – in the name of non-interference – to help pro-US politicians in spite of the fact that Iran was funneling millions of dollars to its political allies – like Jaafari. Iran's influence over the elections was also ensured through the hundreds of radio and television stations and newspapers its intelligence organs began setting up in Iraq immediately after the US-led invasion.
 

JAAFARI'S JUNKET to Iran follows up nicely on another US-favorite "democratically" elected leader's trip to another terror capital. This, of course, would be Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas's trip to Damascus last week. The press reports from Damascus indicated that during his visits with the heads of Hamas and Islamic Jihad as well as with Syrian dictator and terror sponsor Bashar Assad, Abbas asked for their cooperation in his "truce" with Israel.
 

And yet the facts on the ground tell a different tale. Four days after his return to Ramallah, Islamic Jihad sent its suicide bombers to Netanya and Shavei Shomron. Two days later Hamas began its terror offensive, pummeling Israeli communities in the Negev and Gaza with hundreds of mortars and Kassam rockets. In his call for an end to violence on Saturday, Abbas made it absolutely clear – for the millionth time – that he wishes not to disarm Hamas and Islamic Jihad, but, like Yasser Arafat before him, only to integrate them into the PA.

Here too, as is the case with Jaafari, not only is the US not voicing any anger or criticism at Abbas's collusion with terrorists, it is showering him with financial and diplomatic support.

The US embraced the G-8's decision – made while Abbas was still in Damascus – to transfer a mind-boggling $9 billion in aid to the PA over the next three years. Aside from this, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's abrupt decision to visit Israel and the PA this Thursday can only be seen as a US directive toward Israel not to launch a major ground operation in Gaza, in spite of the fact that the only way for Israel to deal with the rocket and mortar assaults is through just such an operation.

Indeed, in spite of the obvious fact that Abbas is no different from Arafat in terms of his support for terrorism as a strategy for dealing with Israel, the US insists on continuing to back him without question as the "democratically" elected leader.

The odd thing about the US refusal to challenge dubious "democratic" regimes like that in Iraq and the PA is that the US doesn't hesitate to challenge bona fide democratic allies like France, Germany and Israel when it has a policy difference with their governments. What is it about these particular regimes which makes them immune to US criticism?

Aside from this, while the administration claims that the nurturing of democracy in the Middle East is its overarching strategy for winning the war on global terrorism, in reality, in backing Abbas and Jaafari what the Bush administration is actually doing is nurturing the types of behavior that prevent democracy from taking root. It is encouraging and strengthening regimes and leaders who excel in doublespeak, coddle terrorists and undermine basic human rights.

Is anyone in Washington paying attention? 

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

Reacting to Neville Chamberlain's Munich Pact with Adolf Hitler in the British Parliament in October 1938, Winston Churchill warned, "You have to consider the character of the Nazi movement and the rule which it implies....There can never be friendship between the British democracy and the Nazi power, that power which spurns Christian ethics, which cheers its onward course by a barbarous paganism, which vaunts the spirit of aggression and conquest, which derives strength and perverted pleasure from persecution, and uses, as we have seen, with pitiless brutality the threat of murderous force. That power can never be a trusted friend of British democracy."

With the outbreak of World War II one year later, Churchill's warning that Munich was "the beginning of the reckoning" with an implacable foe was of course proved correct.

In the week since last Thursday's attacks in London we have repeatedly heard the analogy between those bombings and the Nazi bombing war against Britain. Most of these analogies have to do with the famous British stiff upper lip in the face of terror and carnage. Some of these parallels relate to the determination enunciated by Queen Elizabeth and Prime Minister Tony Blair never to surrender to the forces behind the bombings. Indeed, in most cases, the analogies drawn between the two circumstances have to do with the British response to the attacks and not to the parallel nature of the perpetrators.

In truth though, just as the British stoicism recalls the same from 65 years ago, so too, there is a deep and instructive similarity between the Nazis and the Islamic-fascist forces that attacked then and attack today. The fact of the matter is that even more important than invoking the famous British "stiff upper lip," to fight this current war to victory requires understanding and accepting the similarities between the Nazis and the Arab-Islamic terrorist armies.

On Tuesday The Wall Street Journal published an investigative report into the establishment and growth of the Islamic Center in Munich. As Stefan Meining, a German historian who studies the mosque, told the paper, "If you want to understand the structure of political Islam, you have to look at what happened in Munich."

According to the report, the Munich mosque was founded by Muslim Nazis who had settled in West Germany after the war. These men, who were among more than one million citizens of the Soviet republics who joined the Nazis while they were under German occupation, were transferred by their Nazi commander to the Western front in the closing stages of the war to protect them from the advancing Red Army.

The Journal report explains that the first leader of the mosque was a native of Uzbekistan named Nurredin Nakibhidscha Namangani. Namangani served as an imam in the SS and participated in the liquidation of the Warsaw ghetto and the putting down of the Jewish uprising in 1943.

According to the article, the exiled head of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, Said Ramadan, participated in a 1958 conference organized by Namangani and his fellow Muslim Nazis to raise money to build the mosque.

The article then outlines the subsequent takeover of the mosque by the Muslim Brotherhood in the 1960s and its transformation, with Saudi and Syrian funding, into a nexus for the spread of Islamic-fascist ideology and its call for jihad and world domination.

Ignored by the report is that there was no particular reason, other than perhaps turf warfare, for the Nazis to have had a problem with the Muslim Brotherhood. As German political scientist Matthias Kuentzel chronicled in his work "Islamic anti-Semitism and its Nazi Roots," the Muslim Brotherhood, which spawned the PLO's Fatah as well as al-Qaida, Hamas and the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, owes much of its ideological success and pseudo-philosophical roots to Nazism.

In the 1930s, the mufti of Jerusalem, Amin el-Husseini, rigorously courted the Nazis. When, in 1936, he launched his terror war against the Jewish Yishuv in the British controlled Palestine Mandate, he repeatedly asked the Nazis for financial backing, which began arriving in 1937.

From 1936-39 Husseini's terror army murdered 415 Jews. In later years, Husseini noted that were it not for Nazi money, his onslaught would have been defeated in 1937. His movement was imbued with Nazism. His men saluted one another with Nazi salutes and members of his youth movement sported Hitler Youth uniforms.

Husseini was allied with the new Muslim Brotherhood movement that was founded by Ramadan's father-in-law, Hassan al-Banna, in the 1920s. The impact of his terror war on the movement was profound. From a 1936 membership roster of 800, by 1939 the ranks of the Brotherhood had risen to 200,000 official members backed by perhaps an equal number of active sympathizers.

As Kuentzel argues, the notion of a violent holy war or jihad against non-Muslims was not a part of any active Islamic doctrine until the 1930s and, as he notes, "its concurrence with the arrival of a newly virulent anti-Semitism is verified in no uncertain terms." Husseini's gangs in the Palestine Mandate were joyously praised by the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, which held mass demonstrations with slogans like "Jews get out of Egypt and Palestine," and "Down with the Jews!"

For the Nazis, the Jews were seen as the principal force preventing them from achieving their goal of world domination. As Hitler put it, "You will see how little time we shall need in order to upset the ideas and the criteria for the whole world, simply and purely by attacking Judaism." In his view, once he destroyed the Jews, the rest of the world would lay before him for the taking. "The struggle for world domination will be fought entirely between Germans and Jews. All else is facade and illusion," he said.

Husseini, who became an active Nazi agent – fomenting a pro-Nazi coup in Baghdad in 1942 and then fleeing to Germany where he spent the rest of the war training a jihad army of Bosnian Muslims; exhorting the Arab world to rise up against the Allies; participating in the Holocaust and planning an Auschwitz-like death camp to be built in Nablus after the German victory – escaped with French assistance to Cairo after the war. There he was embraced as a war hero.

Hitler's obsession with the Jews as the source of all the evils in the world became so ingrained in both the Arab nationalist and Islamic psyche that it has become second nature.

At the 2002 trial in Germany of Mounir el-Moutassadeq, who was accused of collaborating with the September 11 hijackers, witnesses described the world view of Muhammad Atta who led the attackers. One witness claimed, "Atta's [world view] was based on a National Socialist way of thinking. He was convinced that 'the Jews' are determined to achieve world domination. He considered New York City to be the center of world Jewry, which was, in his opinion, Enemy Number One."

In light of the wealth of historical documentation of the Nazi roots of Islamic fascism, it is absolutely apparent that the collaboration between Nazis and the Muslim Brotherhood in the building and developing of the Islamic Center in Munich was anything but coincidental or unique.

It is also hardly surprising that PA chieftain Mahmoud Abbas, whose predecessor, Yasser Arafat, was Husseini's follower, devoted his doctoral dissertation to a denial of the Holocaust and a justification of Nazism.

The thing of it is, just as with the Nazis, it is impossible to separate the Islamist ideological and military quest for world domination from its genocidal anti-Semitism. As with the Nazis, they are two sides of the same coin. And, just as was the case from the Nazi ascent to power in 1933 through the end of World War II, the British and, to a lesser though increasing degree, the Americans refuse to acknowledge that the war against the Jews and Israel is the same as the war against them.

There are reasons for the attempts to separate the inseparable. The discovery that the London bombers were flowers of British immigrant youth – like the British-Pakistani al-Qaida-Hamas terrorists who committed the suicide bombing at Mike's Place in Tel-Aviv in April 2003, and Omar Sheikh, the British-Pakistani al-Qaida terrorist who kidnapped and murdered Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in a Nazi-style execution in January 2002 – shows that the enemy today is largely homegrown.

One of the most difficult challenges for a democratic society is facing up to the presence of an enemy fifth column in its midst. Aside from this, the fact of the matter is that the global economy is fueled by oil, which is controlled by the same forces that stand at the foundations of the current war against the Jews and Western civilization.

Much easier than contending with these realities is to engage in the politics of denial. As the British and French blamed German anti-Semitism and warmongering in the 1930s on their impoverishment and humiliation by the Treaty of Versailles, so too, the British, like their European allies and large swathes of American society, today blame Arab and Islamic anti-Semitism and aspirations for global domination on poverty and perceived humiliation at the hands of Western imperialists and by the establishment and continued viability of the State of Israel.

It is the duty of the State of Israel (much ignored by its own leadership today) to point out this inconvenient reality to the rest of the world. And it is the duty and responsibility of all who treasure freedom and the right to live without fear to accept this reality in spite of its inconvenience. Refusing to do so is not simply a matter of cowardice. It is a recipe for suicide.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

A district attorney in a Middle Eastern country last week indicted a citizen for writing a letter to a public servant accusing him of being a quisling. The remarkable thing about the episode is that it did not take place in Syria or in Egypt. It took place in the only democracy in the Middle East.

Last Thursday, the Jerusalem District Attorney's office indicted Nadia Matar, head of the right-wing, largely religious women's movement Women in Green for the crime of "insulting a public servant."

The "insult" came in the form of a faxed letter to Yonatan Bassi, the head of the government's withdrawal authority, last September, in which she referred to him as "a modern version of the Judenrat." The Judenrat, of course, were the Jewish officials in the Nazi ghettos who were forced by the Gestapo to carry out eviction orders of their fellow Jews to death camps.

It was certainly not nice, and indeed not historically truthful for Matar to have used this analogy. The Jews of Gaza and northern Samaria are indeed set to be expelled from their homes and communities for no reason other than the fact that they are Jews. But they are not being sent to death camps. So to use the analogy of the Judenrat is both nasty and wrong.

As the analogy does not stand up to scrutiny, it would have been easy enough for government spokesmen to refute her charge or ignore it as unworthy of a response. No one would have thought any worse of the government if it had taken either of these reasonable courses of action. But rather than do this, the police opened a criminal investigation against Matar and now the District Attorney has decided to indict her for the specious criminal charge of "insulting a public official."
 

Why would the state prosecutors do this? What are they trying to accomplish by criminalizing Matar?

The weekend papers provided an explanation of the reasoning behind the move. In Haaretz's Friday editorial the rationale for the Left's support of Sharon's plan was laid bare: "The disengagement of Israeli policy from its religious fuel is the real disengagement currently on the agenda. On the day after the disengagement, religious Zionism's status will be different," the paper explained. It then concluded: "The real question is not how many mortar shells will fall, or who will guard the Philadelphi route, or whether the Palestinians will dance on the roofs of Ganei Tal. The real question is who sets the national agenda."

Doron Rosenblum, one of the paper's chief columnists, spelled the message out even more bluntly on Sunday, fulminating, "There is an enemy on the Right. Anyone who behaves like an enemy, walks like an enemy and makes the sounds of an enemy – at least let him not complain about being treated like an enemy. And don't forget: Let the IDF win."

To Rosenblum and Haaretz's editorialists must be added Dan Margalit, the senior commentator at Ma'ariv. In his Friday column, Margalit argued in favor of placing quotas on the number of religious Jews allowed to serve as officers in the IDF. Referring to religious Jews serving in the IDF as "the dear brothers," Margalit invoked the Latin expression for quotas for Jews restricting their right to study in European and American universities in the early 20th century – the infamous numerus clausus. He warned religious Israelis that if they refuse to carry out the expulsion of Jews from Gaza and northern Samaria, "the reaction to their action is liable to be a "numerus clausus," this time in Hebrew, Jews against Jews. Hair-raising, but there is no choice."

WHAT WE see here unfolding is a situation where the anti-religious Left, the primary supporters of Ariel Sharon's policy to forcibly expel 10,000 Jews from their homes and communities, has given the policy its support – through its members' legal authority and public platforms – not because they see any security benefit arising from the move. In fact, they support the plan despite its security dangers because they see it as a culminating battle in their cultural war against religious Zionism.

Saying so much in an op-ed in The Jerusalem Post this past March, former Haaretz and Globes editor Mati Golan wrote, "Religion and democracy simply do not go together. Democracy requires an open mind, freedom of choice, the ability to criticize. Religion on the other hand is based on virtually blind obedience to its priests. What some in the religious settler population want is to eat their democratic cake and, as believers, have their anti-democratic one too."

The inanity of this view is matched only by its basic misunderstanding of both Jewish tradition and democracy. Anyone vaguely familiar with the former would know that blind obedience is the last thing Jewish faith endorses. As well, the basic values of democracy demand respect for all views in a society, even those that Golan and his colleagues reject.

There are multiple and weighty arguments against the withdrawal and expulsion plan. Some of them relate to the moral issue of expelling Jews from their homes and making areas of the Land of Israel – or any land for that matter – off-limits to all Jews. The main group of opponents to the withdrawal and expulsion plan who base their arguments against it on the plan's moral dimension are religious Jews, in Israel and abroad.

Aside from the moral questions, all Israelis who don't have a death wish are concerned with the security implications of handing land and strategic positions over to a junta of terrorists who have repeatedly stated their intention to use that land and those positions to advance their terror war against the State of Israel. Yet, to date, due to the negligence of the media and the courts, no government official – from the prime minister on down – has been called on to answer how Israel will be militarily better off without Gaza and northern Samaria. Indeed, no government spokesman from Sharon on down has been able to coherently explain how Israel will defend itself when Gaza and northern Samaria are under Hamas and Fatah control.

The security consequences of the plan have been systematically ignored while the full brunt of media scrutiny has been placed on its religious opponents. They are reviled as zealots, criminals and extremists. Rabbis are threatened with firings and the closing of their yeshivot if they do not toe the government line. Gaza residents are accused of being money-grubbing and wasteful of government resources for forcing the IDF to expel them rather than leaving their homes quietly and meekly. Religious Jews are being intimidated with threats to keep them out of the army or prevent their promotion in the ranks, simply because it will be necessary to prevent what Margalit refers to as "difficulties with future operations."

There are ample reasons to be concerned about and, indeed, oppose a plan that involves no security opportunities – only expanding threats – for Israel. But at the end of the day what is even more debilitating are the plan's implications for the future of Israel as a democracy.

When the loudest voices favoring it are those espousing hatred and exclusion of religious Zionists, or what Haaretz refers to as "a Trojan horse that has infiltrated Zionism in order to destroy it from within," it becomes absolutely clear that for the plan's strongest advocates, capitulation to terror is a means of carrying out their culture war against religious Jews.

And just as security can be readily sacrificed, democracy and the rule of law become mere Pascal lambs on the altar of cultural supremacy – ignored, reviled and happily trounced on the path to victory in the culture war these priests of enlightenment instigated against their brethren years and years ago.
 
Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

The barbaric terrorist attacks on Thursday morning in London make us all feel like Englishmen.

Sitting in Jerusalem and watching the scenes on the television screen of emergency workers evacuating wounded from the burned out bus and of survivors, faces blackened from the underground blasts, describing the frightful events, bend one's heart toward Britain in its hour of pain.

As we Israelis think of England, it is hard to help from wondering if perhaps, in the hearts of some of the British, the sentiment arose that on July 7, 2005 they became Israelis.

It will take a long time to sort out how the attacks were organized and perpetrated. But one thing is clear enough. Britain was attacked by jihad. In attacking London's financial center, as in the attacks on the World Trade Center, the object of the terrorists was not merely to kill people, but to harm a way of life, built on freedom and free trade – the way of life of Western civilization.

The reason that it is hard not to wonder if, at their moment of shock, the British people felt a kinship with the Israeli people is because for the past five years, since the Palestinians began their jihad against Israel, Britain has been playing a lead role in distinguishing between jihad directed against Israel and jihad directed against the rest of the world.

In Britain itself, which for the past two decades has hosted some of the ideological leaders of global jihad, the jihadists have made no attempt to hide that their goals are not limited to the Jewish state, or as the common parlance has it, "the occupation," but rather span the globe.

In the weeks ahead of the British elections in May, Muslim activists stormed mosque meetings and denounced democracy demanding that British Muslims boycott the elections. Even as radically anti-Israel politicians like George Galloway and Oona King tried to outdo one another with their anti-Israel diatribes to win a seat in Parliament, both were attacked by Muslims on campaign stops.

In 2004, anti-Semitic attacks against Jews in Britain increased 42 percent over 2003. Yet, lip service aside, the steady rise of violent anti-Semitism has been greeted with complicity by the government. The Labor Party's election campaign was marked with anti-Semitic imagery. In one campaign poster, Tory leader Michael Howard was depicted as a hooked-nose Fagin – the anti-Semitic archetype from Oliver Twist. Rather than apologize for the slur, Prime Minister Tony Blair's adviser Alistair Campbell laughed off the storm, saying that the publicity the poster had generated was worth millions of pounds of free advertising.

In an article published on his website, www.elaph.com, and quoted by MEMRI this past spring, Dr. Ahmad Abu Matar, a Palestinian living in Oslo, discussed the Islamic Liberation Party, active in Britain, which, "announces from London its political platform – to establish the Islamic caliphate over all corners of the earth – and declares that the party will suggest to the Queen of England that she convert to Islam, and thus will not have to pay the Islamic poll tax on non-Muslims." MEMRI reported that in the same article Matar cited the activities of Abu Hamza Al-Masri, the imam of Finsbury Park Mosque in London, who called for jihad and suicide bombings in Israel, Iraq, and Afghanistan.

Last summer, London Mayor Ken Livingstone received Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the main religious authority of the Muslim Brotherhood, which has spawned such movements as al-Qaida and Hamas, to his City Hall, referring to him as "an Islamic scholar of great respect." This "scholar" to whom Livingstone gushed, "You are truly, truly welcome," is a bit of a liberal in Islamist circles. He believes that both men and women should strive to become suicide bombers in the name of jihad.

Just months before, the senior imam of the Grand Mosque of Mecca, Abdul Rahman al-Sudayyis, visited London as well. Sudayyis was welcomed by a minister from Blair's government as an honored guest of Britain even though he has referred to Jews as "the scum of the human race, the rats of the world, the violators of pacts and agreements, the murderers of the prophets, and the offspring of apes and pigs."

Writing in May of the prospect of suicide bombings in Britain in the Saudi daily Al-Yawm, also published by MEMRI, Sawsan Al-Sha'er noted, "After we read about three English youths of Asian background breaking into one of the mosques in London to prevent the worshipers from voting in the [recent] elections, on the grounds that [Muslims] should not vote in these elections, expect the English 'Islamist' version of exploding suicide bombers soon."

Rather than accept that the jihadists who live in and visit Britain themselves make no distinction between their anti-British rhetoric and their anti-Semitic rhetoric, the British societal elite, on both the Left and the Right, have been intent on ignoring that in the minds of those who seek their destruction, there is no distinction between the war against the Jews and the war against the Christian West. The vilely anti-Semitic decision by the Anglican Church last week to divest from Israel and companies doing business with Israel is a case in point. The Anglican Church, which has wholeheartedly adopted the anti-Semitic "replacement" theology which asserts that Christianity replaced the Jewish covenant with God, is no doubt so blinded by its anti-Semitism that it is incapable of understanding that it shares the same enemies as the despised Jews.

Responding to the increasing anti-Semitism in his own country, Tony Blair has worked to undermine Israel's strategic partnership with the United States. Since the September 11 attacks, Blair has been studiously insisting that Arab and Palestinian terrorism against Israel and Jews and concomitant anti-Semitic ideology is wholly distinct from terrorism and jihadist ideology against non-Jews.

Over the weekend, on his way to Singapore, Blair made a brief visit to Saudi Arabia to meet with Crown Prince Abdullah and reportedly discussed with him the need for the establishment of a Palestinian state. During his campaign for reelection, Blair paid a visit to the Board of Jewish Deputies and told them, in the midst of the violent anti-Semitism that wracked the campaign, that achieving "peace" between Israel and the Palestinians through the establishment of a Palestinian state was the most urgent foreign policy issue on his agenda.

Even as the battles were still raging in the immediate aftermath of the American-British invasion of Iraq, in April 2003, Blair pushed US President George W. Bush to pressure Israel to accept the so-called road map for peace despite Israel's objections. Blair has offered to train the terror-tainted Palestinian militias and Alistair Crooke, the British EU security coordinator with the Palestinians, has been carrying on a dialogue with Hamas and Hizbullah for years.

The thing of it is, through all of this, the overwhelming majority of Israelis have had great respect for Blair as a leader because of his willingness to stand shoulder to shoulder with the Americans in Iraq despite the toll it has taken both on his standing in his own political camp in Britain and on Britain's relations with France and Germany. His insistence on remaining true to the Anglo-American alliance even as levels of anti-American sentiment have risen precipitously throughout Europe and in Britain itself in recent years has been honorable and courageous. Israelis see a reason for hope in Blair's stubborn defense of that partnership. Just as he stands by America, we believe that he will also stand by Israel when at last he accepts the truth that the Palestinian war against Israel is part and parcel of the same jihad that turned Salman Rushdie into a hunted man in Britain and has now turned Britain's underground system and its buses into scenes from a Tel Aviv cafe.

This past May in a sermon televised on PA television, PA employee Sheik Ibrahim Mudeiris said, "We [Muslims] have ruled the world before, and by Allah, the day will come when we will rule the entire world again. The day will come when we will rule America. The day will come when we will rule Britain and the entire world – except for the Jews. The Jews will not enjoy a life of tranquility under our rule, because they are treacherous by nature, as they have been throughout history. The day will come when everything will be relieved of the Jews."

When Israelis hear this we understand two things.

We understand that our enemies truly do seek to annihilate us. And we also understand that the rest of the civilized world, which is being attacked by the same forces, must stand up to them just as we must stand up to them if any of us is to prevail.

It is not polite to criticize a nation when it is under attack. But doing so is not motivated by anger or bitterness, but rather by an understanding of the difficulty of mustering the will to fight. Reacting to the attack on his country and his people, Blair said, "It is important that those engaged in terrorism realize that our determination to defend our values and our way of life is greater than their determination to cause death and destruction to innocent people in a desire to impose extremism on the world. Whatever they do, it is our determination that they will never succeed in destroying what we hold dear in this country and in other civilized nations throughout the world."

Just so. And again, as it is true that Israel stands with Britain in the aftermath of the murderous attacks on its citizens, it is also true that for the civilized nations of the world to win the war against jihad, it is necessary for all to understand that the forces who fight us are the same ones. An attack against any of us – including Israel – is an attack against all of us.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

Since his election to the Iranian presidency two weeks ago, ultra Islamist Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has done everything to make a strong first impression on the rest of the world.

On the nuclear issue, Ahmadinejad is planning to take a "new approach" towards Iran's ongoing negotiations with Britain, France and Germany on Iran's nuclear program. This new approach does not involve an Iranian pledge to end its uranium enrichment activities. On the contrary, it involves demanding that Europe butt out of Iran's nuclear weapons program. As Ahmadinejad said last Sunday at his first post-election press conference, "The EU should not talk to us from a proud distance and should come down from the ivory tower. The Iranian nation is a great, alert nation, and will protect its [nuclear] right seriously."

As to Iranian state support for terrorism, just a few days after his election, five former American hostages identified Ahmadinejad as one of their captors when Iranian students took over the US Embassy in Teheran in 1979 and held them captive for 444 days. Then, too, there is the Austrian intelligence allegation that Ahmadinejad was a commander in the Iranian Revolutionary Guards who organized and oversaw the execution of three Kurdish-Iranian dissident leaders in Vienna in 1989.

Speaking to The New York Sun, Iranian dissident Ahmad Batebi said last week that Ahmadinejad founded the Revolutionary Guard's Jerusalem Brigade. The unit is responsible for engineering Iranian support for Palestinian terrorism. Sponsorship of Hizbullah is also the direct responsibility of the Revolutionary Guards. Then, too, the Jerusalem Brigade is responsible for liaison activities with al-Qaida. According to a 2003 Washington Post report, the unit's members have protected senior al-Qaida terrorists such as Saad bin Laden, Osama bin Laden's son, who have been living in Iran since the US invasion of Afghanistan in the wake of the September 11 attacks.

The question is, now that he is about to be sworn in as president, will Ahmadinejan abandon terrorism and become a responsible pragmatist who understands that he has to cooperate with the West?

Speaking of the role he envisions Iran playing under his leadership, Ahmadinejad said on Friday, "Thanks to the blood of the martyrs, a new Islamic revolution has arisen and the Islamic revolution... will, if God wills, cut off the roots of injustice in the world. The era of oppression, hegemonic regimes, tyranny and injustice has reached its end. The wave of the Islamic revolution will soon reach the entire world."

In short then, the answer is no. Ahmadinejad sees his role as promoting the same platform of global jihad he has been actively participating in since 1979.

IN A nutshell, Ahmadinejad is the personification of everything that the US and its erstwhile European allies claim that the war against global terrorism is seeking to defeat. He is a religious fanatic, a terror commander with global reach who seeks to destabilize the world and he is planning a no holds barred sprint to the finish line of Iran's race to acquire nuclear weapons which, he promises, will be used to protect the entire Islamic world.

This naturally raises the question, now that the mask of "reform" has been removed from the Iranian face, what will the US and Europe do? Will they accept that there is no diplomatic way of dealing with a regime that, in selecting Ahmadinejad as president has finally admitted that it remains fully committed to the destruction of Western civilization? Or will they try to ignore the obvious and tell themselves that a deal can still be reached if the payoff is high enough? The signs are mixed but discouraging.

On the one hand, the State Department was quick to state that its investigation showed that Ahmadinejad was not among the hostage takers in 1979-1980. US spokesmen have stated that in spite of the fact that the Iranian elections were a democratic farce, the US will still deal with Ahmadinejad as the legitimate president of Iran. As well, Patrick Laurent, the European commissioner responsible for Persian Gulf Affairs said that EU policy toward Iran, "will not suffer any changes with the election of Ahmadinejad."

So, from the side of the appeasers in Europe and the State Department, the election of a global terrorist who actively seeks nuclear weapons is no reason to change policies. They are just as willing to try to appease an unapologetic terrorist as they were a covert terrorist like outgoing president Muhammed Khatami who oversaw Iran's support for international terrorism and its nuclear armament program while passing himself off to the West as a moderate reformer.

On the other hand, there are voices being heard in Washington and Europe saying that it might be possible that diplomacy has run its course in Iran. Given that the remedy these foreign policy "hawks" seek is the transfer of the Iranian nuclear issue to the UN Security Council for discussion of possible sanctions, there really isn't that much difference between the two views. Engaging Iran directly will yield no change in behavior and engaging Iran at the Security Council will solve nothing because both China and Russia will veto any call for sanctions against Teheran.

THE FACT that the US and Europe have yet to make any strong statements condemning the terrorist about to take over the Iranian government should be a warning to Israelis. We are told by our leaders that if Hamas takes over the Palestinian Authority then the kid gloves will come off. Israel will finally have the international legitimacy to really take it to the Palestinians. But the Iranian situation seems to indicate that just the opposite is the case.

If the Iranians can elect a man like Ahmadinejad to their presidency and not suffer immediate international isolation, then it is simply not credible for anyone to believe that a Hamas takeover of Palestinian society will cause any reformulation of the European and US policy towards the Palestinians.

Like Ahmadinejad, Hamas has made it absolutely clear that it is serious in its plans to transform the Palestinian Authority into an Islamist state. As The Jerusalem Post reported on Monday, Hamas, which occupies all seats on Kalkilya's city council, has banned a summer festival from taking place because it involved men and women dancing together.

All projections indicate that in the wake of Israel's planned withdrawal from Gaza and northern Samaria next month, Hamas will take over Gaza. Europe's response to this state of affairs has been to make the dialogue it has been carrying out with Hamas for the past five years public. The US response to this has been vague and contradictory. On the one hand, the Bush administration says it continues to view Hamas as a terrorist organization. But on the other hand, it is taking no action against PA chief Mahmoud Abbas for bringing Hamas into his government and extending its leadership now residing in Damascus an invitation to move to Gaza.

While it is not surprising that the EU will do everything humanly possible to continue to appease terrorists even if it has no plausible way to deny that they are in fact terrorists, that the US reaction to both Iran's new president and Hamas's increased empowerment has been so muddled is a major disappointment. It demands a reformulation of Israel's policy towards both the Palestinians and the Iranians.

Unfortunately, given the government's single-minded obsession with expelling 10,000 Jews from their homes next month, it is hard to imagine that such a policy shift will be considered.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.