On February 6, the General Synod of the Church of England voted to impose a selective boycott of firms that do business with Israel. Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams supported the motion.

This was not Williams's first swipe against the Jewish state. To take just one example of his consistent anti-Israel bias, in June 2004, during an official visit to Jerusalem, Williams dismissed protocol and harshly criticized Israel for building the security fence to protect its citizens from mass murder.

Britain's Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks reacted angrily to the synod's boycott decision. In an explanatory letter to Sacks, Williams defended the move by stating that the Church was interested in divesting from companies like Caterpillar - the US firm that produces, among other things, bulldozers that are used by the IDF to demolish structures that facilitate Palestinian terrorism. In his words, "The demolition of Palestinian homes in recent years has been a regular source of controversy, and raises moral issues of some seriousness."

In a bit of irony, the Church's vote on divestment from Israel came three days after British Muslims held a demonstration across the street from the Danish embassy in London that raised a few "moral issues of some seriousness" of its own. Demonstrators held signs saying "Jihad against European Crusaders!" and "Europe, Europe, you will pay, annihilation is on its way!"

Among their catchy slogans the demonstrators yelled, "UK, you will pay, 7/7 on its way," and "We want Danish blood!" For good measure they threw in, "Khaibar, Khaibar, oh Jew, the army of Muhammad is coming for you!"

CONSUMED AS it was over Catapillar, the Church of England had nothing to say about the demonstration. But, then, Williams has a personal history of bending over backwards to please radical Islamist leaders. 

September 11, 2004 found him visiting Egypt. He used the anniversary of the attacks on America to meet with Sheikh Muhammad Tantawi from Al-Azhar University in Cairo. During a public appearance with Tantawi, Williams apologized for what he referred to as the "unfaithful or careless Christian way of speaking [which] has led Muslims and Jews to believe that we have a doctrine of God that does not recognize the oneness and sufficiency of God."

Williams then added, "In our conversations with Muslim friends, we Christians are rightly challenged to think more deeply."

Tantawi himself has been far less respectful in his statements about Christians and Jews. In March 2003 he said it was the duty of every Muslim to wage jihad in Iraq against American and British soldiers. In 1998, he said: "It is every Muslim, Palestinian and Arab's right to blow himself up in the heart of Israel, an honorable death is better than a life of humiliation."

IN LIGHT OF The Archbishop of Canterbury's moral depravity, one would think that Jews would try to keep their distance from him. Yet just the opposite is the case. Rather rather than shun or castigate him, Israel's religious leaders are wooing him. Israel's Chief Rabbis Yona Metzger and Shlomo Amar are planning to travel to England to meet with Williams in May. This will be their third visit with him.

In remarks to The Jerusalem Post, Jon Benjamin, CEO of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, who is helping to organize the meeting, explained that the proper response to the Anglican Church's divestment decision is "not to break off dialogue, but to intensify it."

Now why on earth is that the proper response to anti-Semitism and moral bankruptcy?
 

What does Israel have to gain from having its chief rabbis meet with a man like Williams? Why do Benjamin, Amar and Metzger believe that meeting with Williams will influence his actions, when he voted for divestment after meeting with them twice?

If they meet Williams in May, the message they will send is that one needn't treat Israel or the Jews with respect because we will exact no price for our mistreatment.

THE CHIEF RABBIS' plan to meet with Williams who castigates their country and people is a perfect complement to American Jewry's campaign to demonize and marginalize evangelical Christians who are Israel's staunchest supporters.

Case in point was Ha'aretz's interview Sunday with Reform Rabbi James Rudin. Rudin served for 35 years as head of the American Jewish Committee's committee on inter-religious relations. He recently published a book entitled The Baptizing of America: the Religious Right's Plans for the Rest of Us.

In his interview Rudin likened the struggle between conservative Christians and the rest of the country to the American Civil War. He explained: "While America is currently fighting a global war against international terrorism, there is an equally important war going on within the United States. The outcome of today's conflict will decisively determine the future of the American republic.

"Christocrats are waging an all-out campaign to baptize America. It is a struggle that will decide whether the United States remains a spiritually vigorous country but without an officially established religion, or whether America will become Christianized."

IN HIS BOOK Who Are We? The Challenges to America's National Identity, Professor Samuel Huntington noted that in surveys taken between 1989 and 1996, between 84 and 88 percent of Americans identified themselves as Christians. That is, there is a higher percentage of Christians in America than Jews in Israel.

Against this reality, Rudin's statement about the "Christianization" of America is both blind to America's Christian heritage and demographic reality and bigoted against Christians.

His allegations against Christians, and similar statements made recently by Anti-Defamation League Director Abe Foxman, are soaked with paranoia. For their part, Evangelicals themselves do not uphold any designs to turn America into a theocracy.

In an interview with Knight Ridder last Saturday regarding the Muslim cartoon riots, Rev. Ted Haggard, President of the National Association of Evangelicals explained, "The appreciation of pluralism is something that every religious group has to grow in. We evangelicals struggle with this issue every time we send one of our kids off to college. But we think pluralism is a high value.

"Radical Muslim extremists have to grasp that pluralism is a fact of life for all cultures."

LIKE THEIR fellow Jews in Britain, American Jewish anxiety regarding conservative Christians who support Israel unconditionally is matched by their tolerance and support for liberal Christians who support Palestinian claims against Israel. This contrast was nowhere more clear than in their reactions to statements made by evangelist Pat Robertson and former president Bill Clinton in the wake of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's massive stroke last month.

Robertson intimated that the stroke was a divine response to Sharon's withdrawal of the IDF and Israeli civilians from the Gaza Strip. Clinton said that Sharon's stroke "puts yet another obstacle in the path of the peacemakers. And it's almost as if God were testing them one more time to rise again, to keep on."

Both men's remarks were ill-mannered and ridiculous. Yet Robertson was excoriated, and Clinton applauded.

Writing in the Sunday Telegraph last weekend, Harvard historian Niall Ferguson argued, "The antagonism between Bible Belt conservatives and secularized liberals is now the most important cleavage in American society."
 

And an article in the Forward last month indicates that the greatest cleavage is between liberal Jews and conservative Christians. Eric Uslaner and Marc Lichbach reported, "On a feeling thermometer ranging from 0, for extremely cold, to 100, for extremely warm, 37% of Jewish voters rated evangelicals at 0. In 2004... by comparison, only 4% of non-evangelical Christians rated fundamentalist Christians at 0. The average rating of evangelicals was 24 for Jews, compared to a positive 54 for non-Evangelical Christians."

SO WHILE mainline, non-evangelical churches in America seem to be lining up these days to divest from Israel, American Jews most detest the Christians who are going out of their way to support Israel.

Last week's Torah portion set out the basics of Jewish law. Among other things, we were told, "Put not thine hand with the wicked to be an unrighteous witness."
 

This command contains within it a commonsense approach to life: Be bad to your enemies and good to your friends, otherwise you become your own enemy. Unfortunately, this lesson seems lost on Israeli and American Jews alike.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

Ilan Halimi's barbarous murder in France should awaken all Jews to the most significant truth of our times: Today, every Jew in the world is on the front lines of war.

As was the case 70 years ago, every Jew today is a target for our enemies, who shout from every soapbox and prove at every opportunity that their goal is the annihilation of the Jewish people. From 1933-1945, the enemy was Nazi Germany. Today, the enemy is political Islam. Its call for jihad aimed at annihilating the Jews and dominating the world is answered by millions of people throughout the world.

Among the lessons of the Holocaust, there is one that is almost never mentioned. That lesson is that it is possible, and indeed fairly easy to exterminate the Jews. The fact that the Holocaust happened proves that it is absolutely possible for the Jewish people to be wiped off the map - just as Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Hamas leader Khaled Mashal promise.

The story of Ilan Halimi's murder at the hands of a terrorist gang of French Muslims brings to the surface the various pathologies now converging to make the prospect of annihilating all Jews seem possible to our enemies. First, there are the murderers who took such apparent pleasure and felt such pride in the fact that for 20 days they tortured their Jewish hostage to death.

This makes sense. Anti-Semitism in the Muslim dominated suburbs of Paris and other French cities is all-encompassing. As Nidra Poller related in Thursday's Wall Street Journal, "One of the most troubling aspects of this affair is the probable involvement of relatives and neighbors, beyond the immediate circle of the gang [of kidnappers], who were told about the Jewish hostage and dropped in to participate in the torture."

It appears that Ilan Halimi's murderers had some connection to Hamas. Tuesday, French Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy said that police found propaganda published by the Palestinian Charity Committee or the CBSP at the home of one of the suspects. The European Jewish Press reported this week that Israel has alleged that the organization is a front group for Palestinian terrorists and that in August 2003 the US government froze the organization's US bank accounts, accusing it of links with Hamas.

Halimi's family alleges that throughout the 20 days of Ilan's captivity, the French police refused to take the anti-Semitic motivations of the kidnappers into account. The investigators insisted on viewing his kidnap as a garden variety kidnap-for-ransom criminal case, which they said generally involves no threat to the life of the captive. The police maintained their refusal to investigate the anti-Semitic motivations of the kidnappers in spite of the fact that in their e-mail and telephone communications with Ilan's family, his captors repeatedly referred to his Judaism, and on at least one occasion recited verses from the Koran while Ilan was heard screaming in agony in the background. The family alleges that if the police had been willing to acknowledge that Ilan was abducted because he was Jewish, they would have recognized that his life was in clear and immediate danger and acted with greater urgency.

Like the police, the French government waited an entire week after Ilan was found naked, with cuts and burns over 80 percent of his body by a train station in suburban Paris, before acknowledging the anti-Semitic nature of the crime. According to the press reports, the French government was at least partially motivated to suppress the issue of anti-Semitism by its fear of inflaming the passions of the French Muslims who make up between 10 to 13 percent of the French population and comprise a quarter of the population under 25 years old. And yet, now that the French government has acknowledged that the crime was motivated by hatred of Jews, it is behaving responsibly in pursuing the murderers and decrying the attack on French Jewry.

In addition to the exterminationist anti-Semitism of Ilan's murderers and the unwillingness of the French authorities to acknowledge the anti-Semitic nature of the crime until it was too late, there is one more aspect of the case that bears note. That is Israel's reaction to the atrocity. In short, there has been absolutely no official Israeli reaction to the abduction, torture and murder of a Jew in France by a predominantly Muslim terrorist gang that kidnapped, tortured and murdered him because he was a Jew.

No Israeli government minister, official or spokesman has condemned his murder. No Israeli official has demanded that the French authorities investigate why the police refused to take anti-Semitism into account during Ilan's captivity. No Israeli official flew to Paris to participate in Ilan's funeral or any other memorial or demonstration in his memory. The Foreign Ministry's Web site makes no mention of his murder.

The Israeli Embassy in Paris - which has been without an ambassador for the past several months - only publicly expressed its condolences to the Halimi family on February 23, 10 days after Ilan was found. This, when the French Jewish community considers Halimi's murder to have been the greatest calamity to have befallen it in recent years; when aliya rates from France rose 25% last year; and when Ilan's mother has told reporters that her son had planned to make aliya soon and was just staying in France to save money to finance his move to Israel.

For its part, as Michelle Mazel pointed out in The Jerusalem Post Thursday, the French press has noted that the Israeli media has not given the story prominent coverage. Halimi's murder has not appeared on the front pages of the papers or at the top of the television or radio broadcasts.

Although appalling, the absence of an official Israeli outcry against Halimi's murder is not the least surprising. Today, the unelected Kadima interim government, like the Israeli media, is doing everything in its power to lull the Israeli people into complacency towards the storm of war raging around us. Against the daily barrages of Kassam rockets on southern Israel; nervous reports of al-Qaida setting up shop in Judea, Samaria and Gaza; the ascension of Hamas to power in the Palestinian Authority; and Iran's threats of nuclear annihilation, Israel's citizenry, under the spell of Kadima and the media, appears intent on ignoring the dangers and pretending that what happens to Jews in France has nothing to do with us.

Israel's societal meekness accords well with Kadima's ideology. Its creed was best expressed by Foreign Minister, Justice Minister and Immigration Minister Tzipi Livni last month at the Herzliya Conference and is best characterized as "conditional Zionism." In her speech, Livni explained that Israel's international legitimacy is conditional. Unless a Palestinian state is established in Judea, Samaria and Gaza, she warned, Israel will lose its legitimacy as a Jewish state.

So for Livni, Acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Shimon Peres and the rest of the Kadima gang, unlike every other people in the world, the Jewish people does not have an inherent, natural right to exist as a free, sovereign and independent people in its homeland. For Kadima, the Jewish people's right to self-determination in our land is conditional on our enemies' acceptance of our right to be here.

Kadima's conditional Zionism finds expression in its policies in Judea and Samaria. There, the gist of the government's actions is that the only people with inherent human rights in Judea and Samaria are the Arabs.

Throughout the areas, the government, backed by the post-Zionist courts, prohibits Jews from building on land that Jews own. Today, as Moshe Rosenbaum, the mayor of Beit El explains, even receiving a permit to build an extension on a standing house or additional classrooms in a school is all but impossible.

While Olmert and Internal Security Minister Gideon Ezra have repeatedly condemned Jews for allegedly cutting down trees owned by Arabs in Judea and Samaria, the government has said nothing and done nothing to stop the wholesale destruction of Jewish orchards and national forests in the areas by Palestinians. Over the past several months, in the vicinity of Gush Etzion alone, thousands of Jewish-owned trees have been chopped down by Arab vandals. Two national forests have been laid to waste. Busy directing their energies and attentions at delegitimizing the Israelis who live in Judea and Samaria, the government has ignored Israel's enemies.

And so, as Kassam attacks against Israel multiply by the day and Hamas leaders hold Jew-hating love-fests with Ahmadinejad and Ayatollah Khamenaei in Teheran, Olmert assured us Wednesday that Hamas is not a strategic threat to Israel.

When the Israeli government itself is claiming Jewish rights are not inherent but rather defined and granted by others, it can surprise no one the government has ignored Halimi's murder.

Luckily for both Israel and the Jews around the world, the current leadership is not our only option. We have other leaders, the most prominent among them being Likud Chairman Binyamin Netanyahu and former IDF chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. (res.) Moshe Ya'alon. Both of these men understand well that the two most important lessons for the Jews from the Holocaust are that we must never grant anyone else the authority, legitimacy or power to define who we are or what our rights are, and we are all responsible for one another.

On Tuesday, Ya'alon, who is currently based at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, came to Jerusalem for the day to speak at a conference on the strategic implications of Hamas's takeover of the Palestinian Authority. There Ya'alon explained what he considers to be the key to Israel's security. Israel, he said, has the military capability to defeat its enemies. But for Israel to be able to take the steps it needs to take to win the war being waged for our destruction, first we need to accept the fact that we have an intrinsic, unconditional right to our land and our sovereignty. Once we understand that our rights our unconditional, we will understand that we have an obligation to wage war against those who work for our destruction. That is, Ya'alon explained that for Israel to survive, we need to return to our unconditional Zionism.

Sir Martin Gilbert, perhaps the preeminent British historian of World War II, has said, "The interesting thing about history is that it always repeats itself."

As was the case in World War II, today the Jewish people in Israel and throughout the world is being targeted for annihilation by an enemy bent on world domination. Ilan Halimi's monstrous murder is just the latest sign of this disturbing reality. Today, as 70 years ago, the Jews are disserved by poor and weak leaders who refuse to see the dangers.

But if we learn from history and we assess our options, we will see that history needn't repeat itself. It is within our power to reverse the course of our all too repetitious past.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.
 

At its Sunday morning cabinet meeting did Israel's interim government finally lay out a strategy for contending with the fact that Hamas has taken over the Palestinian Authority? The Israeli and international media reports of the meeting could easily lead a person to think so.

Sadly, nothing could be further from the truth. The interim government's decisions Sunday show that the government has no policy for contending with Hamas. The absence of a policy is a result of the government's lack of a basic understanding of - or its unwillingness to understand - the threat the Hamas takeover of the PA poses to Israel.

In declaring that the government had decided to stop all direct transfers of funds to the PA, Sunday's headlines indicated that Acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and his associates have launched a concerted campaign against the Hamas-led PA. But the small print told a different story completely.

Over the objections of the IDF, the government is continuing to allow Palestinians to work in Israel. The government also rejected the IDF's recommendation to cut off all links to Gaza and transform the passages from Gaza to Israel into international border crossings.

Far from working to cut off international funding of the Palestinians, the Olmert government continues to support international funding of non-governmental and UN organizations that operate in the PA; and apparently does so unconditionally.

Finally while Olmert admitted Sunday that the PA has become a "terrorist authority," he and his ministers failed to take any actions - either diplomatically or militarily - that legally arise from this designation.

OLMERT'S opponents, and specifically Likud leader Binyamin Netanyahu, were quick to criticize the government's decisions. They argued that in acting in such an ambiguous manner, the government ignored the threat Hamas - which is supported by Iran and works in concert with Hizbullah and al-Qaida - poses to Israel's survival.

Responding to those critics Olmert defended his government's contradictory decisions by castigating his detractors as "fear-mongers." Olmert further stated: "There is no reason to terrify the State of Israel by claiming that the sky has fallen."

Olmert and his colleagues justified their limited steps against Hamas by saying that they were motivated by "humanitarian" considerations. Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni told reporters that Israel wants to prevent a "humanitarian crisis" in the PA. Were such a crisis to unfold, Livni warned, Israel would be blamed for it.

Livni, like Olmert and all other Kadima spokesmen, further maintained that by acting in such a limited manner, the government is safeguarding international support generally, and US support specifically, for Israel's bid to isolate the Hamas-led PA.

PERHAPS THE strongest indication that the Olmert interim government has no idea how to craft national strategies or advance Israel's national interest is the fact that the US Congress and the Bush administration are both taking much clearer stands against Hamas than Israel's government.

Perversely, far from working to build a strong and unambiguous international consensus against the Hamas-ruled PA, the Olmert government is undermining the efforts of Israel's friends in the US Congress. Its contradictory moves toward the Hamas-led PA serve to undercut Israel's supporters in Washington while strengthening the leftist American Jewish groups now working feverishly to scuttle a concerted US response to the Hamas takeover of the PA.

Immediately after the PA election results were announced, US Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, who chairs the House of Representative's Subcommittee on the Middle East and Central Asia, submitted a bill that updates US policy toward the PA in response to the Hamas takeover. Her bill, which enjoys wide support in both houses of Congress and is backed by AIPAC and other mainstream American Jewish organizations, would not only end all US direct assistance to the PA, it would also bar US support for non-governmental organizations and UN agencies operating in the PA areas that have any links whatsoever to terrorism.

Furthermore, the Ros-Lehtinen bill designates the PA as a terrorist sanctuary. In line with this designation, the legislation bars PA officials from receiving visas to enter the US; bars the PA from having representative offices in the US; and places travel restrictions on PA and PLO representatives to the UN.

Finally, the bill bars US diplomats from having any contact of any kind with members of Palestinian terror groups including Hamas, the Aksa Martyr Brigades, Islamic Jihad and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

AS OPPOSED to other Congressional actions taken against the PA in the past, the proposed legislation does not include a presidential waiver that would allow the administration to ignore the law if the president deemed it necessary for national security reasons. For this reason, the State Department opposes its passage. But even the State Department - which has distinguished itself for over 20 years mainly for its equivocation regarding Palestinian terrorism - has minced no words about its view of the Hamas-led PA.

Last Friday a State Department spokesman publicly demanded that the PA return $50 million in direct US assistance which was transferred to the PA before the elections. For its part, the Olmert government has made no similar demand for the return of the $50 million in tax revenues that it transferred to the PA after the Hamas electoral victory.

As well, on Sunday the US Treasury Department blocked the assets of KindHearts charitable organization. That group, which is based in Toledo, Ohio, was determined to be a terrorist organization because it funds Hamas. According to the Akron, Ohio, Beacon Journal, since its founding in 2002 KindHearts has raised and transferred some $4 million per year to Hamas.

As the actions of Congress and the Bush administration show, the US continues to define Hamas as a global terrorist organization, and is abiding by US laws regarding terrorist organizations in its dealings with the Hamas-led PA.

In light of this the Olmert government's halting and confused steps against the Hamas-led PA seem all the more ridiculous.

THE ONLY constituency in the US that has galvanized around the Israeli government's incoherent response to Hamas's takeover of the PA is the Jewish American Left.

American Friends for Peace Now, the Israel Policy Forum and the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism are all actively lobbying Congress to derail the Ros-Lehtinen bill. As reported in The Jewish Week, these organizations are trying to bring about the defeat of the proposed legislation because, in their view, it will make it impossible for the US to reward "incremental movement [by Hamas] toward abandoning its traditional commitment to destroy Israel."

One of the excuses the government has given for its refusal to take concerted action against the Hamas-led PA is that it wishes to prevent the PA's "collapse." Yet, in an address last week in Washington, former IDF chief of General Staff Lt. Gen. (res.) Moshe Ya'alon explained: "We should not fear collapse; the experience of Israel's security operations in recent years shows that Palestinian society will not collapse - as the word is commonly interpreted - even under extreme conditions. Municipalities, for example, continued to operate and provide services even at the height of Israel military actions against the PA."

Ya'alon further explained, "It must be remembered that the Palestinian people elected Hamas with full awareness of its terrorist nature. It is therefore highly important that the international community send a clear message that terrorism does not pay."

Sadly, Ya'alon's clear and rational statements, which enjoy the support of the US government and the American people and are already codified in US law, are undermined by the Israeli government and by a handful of leftist Jewish American organizations.

Through its ambiguous and contradictory policies toward the PA since the elections, far from acting to forge an international consensus against the Hamas-led PA, the Olmert government is undercutting US resolve to isolate it. In so doing it is strengthening the positions of Russia, Turkey, the Arab League and France, which advocate embracing Hamas as a legitimate political force.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

Since Israel withdrew its citizens and military forces from the Gaza Strip last summer, a great deal has been written about the consequences of the destruction of the Jewish communities there for the Israeli communities in Judea and Samaria. Much has also been said of the rising threats to Israel's security in the south as a result of the retreat from Gaza.

There is a third aspect of the Israeli retreat from Gaza and northern Samaria that to date has not garnered any significant public attention. That issue is the impact of the operation on the Israel Defense Forces. Given that the IDF is the national organization charged with ensuring Israel's survival, anything that happens to the IDF has direct consequences for Israel's national security. And so it is worth considering what impact, if any, the operation has had on the IDF.

Disturbingly, the military's organizational behavior since the withdrawal from Gaza, as manifested in operations on the ground and in statements by senior commanders, indicates that the withdrawal of IDF forces from Gaza has harmed the IDF's self-assessment and its understanding of its mission.

This troubling situation is most clearly evident in the Southern Command. That command devoted itself last year almost entirely to the non-military task of preparing and carrying out the uprooting of the Jewish communities from Gaza. Now it is contending with the new threats that have emerged along Israel's long border with Egypt and in the Gaza Strip since it completed that mission.

As the daily Kassam rocket and mortar strikes on Ashkelon, Sderot and the rest of the Israeli communities bordering Gaza have shown, since the withdrawal, the Southern Command has failed in its mission to provide security to southern Israel.

Last Thursday afternoon, CG Southern Command Maj.-Gen. Yoav Galant briefed military reporters in Tel Aviv. The day before the briefing, Ashkelon's industrial area - home to some of Israel's most vital national infrastructures - was struck by Kassam rockets. That attack on the industrial area was launched from Gaza right after the IDF declared the successful conclusion of "Operation Lightning Strike." That operation was supposed to prevent the shooting of Kassam rockets on southern Israel.

As well, last Thursday morning, soldiers from the Givati Brigade killed two terrorists who attacked them with rifle fire from the Erez crossing where Gazan workers enter Israel.

Addressing reporters, Galant declared that on the one hand, "Israeli bloodshed will not be met with silence." On the other hand, he said, "I can't say that we have a perfect response for the Kassam rockets, but our operations are effective. The Palestinians think twice before they shoot."

Galant brushed off the fact that the Palestinians are lobbing rockets and mortars at Israel on a daily basis in spite of the IDF's "effective" responses, by saying: "You have to look at the glass as half full. It could be better, it could be worse."

Finally, one week after the Palestinians voted Hamas into office, the commander who holds direct responsibility for the security of southern Israel said: "With our departure from the Gaza Strip, the Palestinians were given the chance to choose a new path. Instead of fighting, I hope that they will choose the path of hope and of fighting terror."

What Galant's statements make clear is that in its post-withdrawal operations against Palestinian attacks, the IDF is simply ignoring its duty to secure the country. Galant's basic message last Thursday was that rather than do its job or admit that in the absence of ground forces in Gaza it cannot do its job, the IDF excuses its failure to protect the country with hollow and pathetic political slogans. Most depressingly, the IDF does this with the full expectation that the Israeli public will not notice the fact that our army is unable or unwilling to uphold its basic obligation to the nation.

In an interview Wednesday with the Ynet Web site, a high-ranking officer in Central Command said that over the past year the IDF prevented 10 Palestinian shooting attacks on Jerusalem's Gilo neighborhood. He also revealed that Palestinians in the Bethlehem district possess mortars.

The officer seemed to be using his interview as a way to beg the government and his commanders not to take away his forces' freedom of activity in the Bethlehem district. In his words, "There is a threat of gunfire attacks on Gilo, but we have an effective answer to that threat as long as we retain the freedom to act and collect intelligence in Bethlehem. Today we have freedom of action in the city, but there are mortars moving around in Bethlehem. There are attempts to transfer know-how, attempts to transfer missiles. We also see attempts to connect the area to northern Samaria and Gaza, and by that I mean in terms of weaponry, know-how and personnel."

Yet, in seeming disregard to this rising terror threat, the officer said the IDF's major activities in 2006 in the Bethlehem-Gush Etzion area would center around two issues: the construction of the security fence against the backdrop of both Arab and Jewish opposition to the project; and contending with the Hamas takeover of the Palestinian Authority.

It was difficult not to despair after reading that officer's interview. There are mortars at the gates of Jerusalem and the IDF has made guarding a fence its first priority for 2006. It seemed apparent from his remarks that this commander himself is aware of the absurdity of the IDF's operational priorities.

It is not the army's job to guard fences. The army's duty is to secure the state and its citizens. Against the emerging mortar and rocket threat to Jerusalem and Tel Aviv from Hamas-ruled Judea and Samaria - a threat that this officer claims finds its origins in the territories the IDF vacated last summer - what this officer most fears is that he will be ordered to retreat.

The officer's conflation of Israeli and Palestinian opponents of the security fence around Gush Etzion echoes the statements made by CG Central Command Maj.-Gen. Yair Naveh after the violent clashes between police and civilians at Amona two weeks ago. There Naveh drew parallels between the Jewish protesters and Palestinian terrorists who fight IDF forces in Palestinian cities. Both officers' statements expose a deep confusion about the role of the IDF.

Last week, a US Army commander, who observed the events in Amona from afar, shared with me his deep concern for the future of the IDF. In his words, "The Israeli army will not be able to survive as an effective fighting force if it continues to place itself in the middle of the mainstream political debate in Israel. It cannot survive if it allows itself to confuse the Israeli public with Israel's enemies."

At the same time as they confuse the government's political opposition with Israel's enemies, IDF commanders also actively deny the threat Israel's enemies constitute for the country. On Tuesday, in his first appearance before the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, incoming CG Intelligence Maj.-Gen. Amos Yadlin said Hamas is now trying to decide whether it will form a moderate or radical government. He added that the key question is whether Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas will restrain Hamas by forming a dictatorial government, or whether he will attempt to reach agreements with Hamas as has been his wont until now.

In so relating to the Hamas takeover of the PA, Yadlin echoed statements by other IDF commanders and Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz regarding the possibility of separating the Hamas government from Palestinian society. By framing Israel's strategic predicament in this fashion, IDF commanders are making it all but impossible for the public to recognize the fact that it is not just terrorist organizations that are waging this war against the country. Palestinian society as a whole is warring against Israel. That was the message of the Palestinian elections, which brought Hamas to power. And so the question of what sort of government Hamas will form and what Abbas's relationship to that government will be is strategically irrelevant.

Perhaps the most remarkable recent example of the confusion that has plagued the IDF since the withdrawal from Gaza was the joint press conference Mofaz held with IDF Chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. Dan Halutz on Monday. There, the two heads of Israel's defense establishment announced that they are cutting the length of compulsory military service for male IDF conscripts from 36 months to 28-32 months.

It should be recalled that in August 2000, as IDF chief of General Staff, Mofaz gave the same announcement at a press conference with then prime minister and defense minister Ehud Barak. The next month the Palestinians launched their terror war. Given the precedent, the beginning of the next big round of the Palestinian terror war may well be set to begin next month.

The fact that the Palestinian war is a societal war that threatens the existence of Israel was given disturbing expression on Wednesday when the heads of the Israeli Arab political parties announced in a press conference that that they are unifying their Knesset candidates lists in an alliance against the "Zionist political parties."

Ibrahim Sarsour, the head of the Israeli Islamic Movement's southern branch, who now heads the unified list, declared unabashedly that the Israeli Arab public supports the Palestinian and global jihad forces working to destroy Israel and take over the Western world. In his words: "The entire Arab public, but especially the Muslim public, is in the crosshairs. It is the target of a global attack. As the Islamic Movement, we wish to see the establishment of the Islamic caliphate without borders, and this is what scares the West."

Sarsour applauded the Palestinians for electing Hamas, saying: "The Palestinian people did not choose the Hamas movement in order to add another tragedy to the tragedies it has already undergone, but in order to reap achievements."

The threats Israel faces, as a frontline state in the global jihad are exacerbated with every retreat and statement of defeatism by Israeli political leaders and military commanders. To surmount these threats, Israel needs an army that is capable of contending with the reality of war that characterizes our times.

Over the past year and a half, the government has forced the IDF to occupy itself with missions that are unrelated or counterproductive to its core duty of defending the country and its citizens. The removal of its forces from Gaza last summer has made the IDF's duty to secure southern Israel impossible to fulfill. But rather than admit that the limitations the government has placed on its operations have made it impossible for the military to defend the country, IDF commanders take sides in political disputes and make excuses for their failures.

There can be little doubt that the withdrawal from Gaza had a terrible impact on the IDF. It can only be hoped that the General Staff will pull itself together and face reality before the next round of war begins so that it can adequately prepare our soldiers and our society for the challenges that await us.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

Yesterday was Tu B’Shvat, the Jewish Arbor Day festival. While, as is traditional, Israeli schoolchildren marked the day by taking nature walks and planting trees, militant Israeli leftists, funded by American Jewish donors, found a different way to mark the holiday.

 

In a junket sponsored by the New Israel Fund, militant Israeli leftists, led by cultural icons like War of Independence poet Haim Guri, set out for the Arab village of Salem in Samaria to plant olive trees for the Palestinians. It is hard to think of a sharper slap on the face to Zionism or to Judaism, than Israeli Jews traveling on Tu B’Shvat to a village that just voted a terrorist organization devoted to throwing the Jews into the sea into power, and planting olive trees for them.

 

The organizers claim that they did this in response to reports that Israelis from the area have been chopping down Palestinian owned olive trees. MK Ran Cohen from Meretz, who never calls for decisive Israeli responses to massacres of its citizenry by Palestinian terrorists, said in a recent interview with Israel Radio that Jews caught cutting down Palestinian trees should be shot.

 

Guri was asked in an interview on Israel Radio Sunday morning why he and his comrades felt it necessary to help Palestinian tree owners but have done nothing to bring attention or redress to the Israeli refugees from Gaza who six months after being forced from their homes and farms, have yet to receive adequate compensation or housing solutions.

Guri replied that the “plight of Palestinians is a humanitarian concern while the settlers removed from Gush Katif is politics.” So for Guri and his associates, and for their sponsors from the New Israel Fund, the rights of Palestinians are absolute while the rights of Jews are debatable at best.

 

The militant leftists’ decision to plant trees in Salem is part and parcel of their political warfare campaign against their country. While the allegations that Israelis have been involved in cutting down Palestinian olive trees have spread like wildfire, no proof has been given to substantiate the claims. While in response to the charges, the IDF and the police have reinforced their surveillance of the afflicted groves, they have yet to find one suspect and have made no arrests.

 

The Israeli civilians in the areas claim that the allegations of Jewish vandalism of Palestinian trees are unfounded. The Israelis maintain that the Palestinians have simply been pruning their trees and they have offered photographs that tend to support their contentions. Wherever the truth may lie, it is a matter for the law enforcement authorities to deal with.

 

And that is the crux of the matter.

 

These leftist extremists did not go to Salem to protest a crime, they went to Salem to demonstrate their view that their own state has no right to exist and that the Arabs are the true people of the land while the Jews are mere interlopers whose human rights are subject to political debate.

 

Given their anti-Zionist world view, it is not surprising that it is not merely the notion that Israeli civilians may have vandalized Palestinian olive groves they find objectionable. They believe that Palestinian groves are terra sancta that no Jew or agent of the Jewish State has a right to touch.

 

There has scarcely been an occasion in the past five years of the Palestinian terror war that these militant leftists have not objected to the cutting down of Palestinian owned trees by IDF forces engaged in counter-terror operations. The IDF has frequently found it necessary to cut down trees that have been used as hiding places by terrorists. By protesting these IDF actions, the militant leftist Israeli planters of Palestine and sowers of Israel’s destruction have shown that from their perspective, there is no Israeli act of self defense against Palestinian terror that can be justified. And there is no Palestinian act of terror against Israelis that cannot be justified.

 Unfortunately, the views of these anti-Zionist Jews are no longer sentiments found only at the fringe of world Jewry. Indeed, the preference for Palestinian terror supporters over Jewish Zionists has reached as far as Brandeis University. Last year the “Jewish Harvard” hired a Palestinian with known ties to the Islamic Jihad terrorist organization as a senior fellow at its Crown Center for Middle Eastern Studies.  Khalil Shikaki, the head of the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research in Ramallah, is the brother of Fathi Shikaki, the founder of Islamic Jihad who was slain in Malta in 1995. He was recruited to Brandeis by the center’s head and the former director of Tel Aviv University’s leftist Jaffee Institute, Shai Feldman.  Shikaki’s ties to Islamic Jihad go far deeper than his blood ties to its founder and first commander. Steven Emerson, the head of the Investigative Project and leading American terror researcher detailed Shikaki’s deep links to the terror group in a dossier he compiled and published on the Investigative Project’s website last week. As Emerson documents, Shikaki was instrumental in setting up the Islamic Jihad’s network in the US in the late 1980s and early 1990s. He also played a central role in transferring funds to terror cells in Judea, Samaria and Gaza through early 1995.  In 1990, Shikaki was appointed the Director of the World and Islam Studies Enterprise, (WISE) a think tank set up at University of South Florida in Tampa by Sami al-Arian. The FBI has concluded that WISE served as a “front organization” for the Islamic Jihad.  Arian was indicted in October 2003 for financing, fundraising and promulgating the ideology of Islamic Jihad in the US. Ramadan Abdullah Shallah, the current head of the Islamic Jihad also worked at WISE with Shikaki and al-Arian. During al-Arian’s trial, (where he was acquitted of eight of the 17 charges in his indictment), the federal prosecutors presented wiretapped conversations regarding al-Arian’s activities on behalf of Islamic Jihad. These conversations directly implicated Shikaki in transferring funds from the US to Judea and Samaria and Gaza for the use of terror cells.  In light of Shikaki’s links to Palestinian terrorists, Morton Klein, the president of the Zionist Organization of America, (of which Brandeis’s namesake, Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis once served as president), recommended that Brandeis’s donors  “rethink their support for Brandeis if the university fails to address their concerns [about Shikaki’s links to terrorism] in a timely and appropriate manner.” Klein has also stated that if it wishes to retain Shikaki in spite of his known past links to Islamic Jihad, the Jewish university should demand first that he apologize for his past support for the terror group and openly condemn by name Islamic Jihad, Hamas and all other Palestinian terrorist organizations. Furthermore, Klien stated, Shikaki should openly declare his recognition and support for Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state. 

Feldman who brought Shikaki to Brandeis, has responded to the ZOA’s protests by attempting to castigate the ZOA and Klein. In an interview with the Brandeis school newspaper, Feldman said, “I don't deal with Mort Klein’s and I don't deal with the Zionist Organization of America.”

 

Yehuda Reinharz, President of Brandeis has also refused to contend with the documentary evidence linking Shikaki to the Islamic Jihad. He has deflected the criticism of Shikaki by accusing Klein and the ZOA of “Jewish McCarthyism.”

 

In their statements, both Feldman and Reinharz behave in a manner all too similar to that of the leftist militants who went to Salem yesterday to plant trees for Palestinian terror supporters. The two men, like their radical leftist counterparts in Israel, prefer to truck with people who are overtly tied to Israel’s sworn enemies than, in Feldman’s words, “deal” with their fellow Jews, who devote their lives to defending Israel but have an annoying habit of noticing reality.

 In both the Israeli and Brandeis cases, there are only two ways to explain this pathological behavior on the part of these Jews. Either Feldman, Reinharz and the New Israel Fund supported Israeli militant leftists are stupid or they are immoral. In either case, they are serving the interests of those who wish to destroy Israel while vilifying its most stalwart defenders.   

Israel's public debate is known for its ferocity and general nastiness, but very rarely is the prime minister called a bald-faced liar. The fact that both the Likud and Labor called Acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert just that after he gave his first televised interview as acting premier Tuesday night is therefore significant.

In that interview, as during the tour he conducted earlier that day along the route of the security fence around Jerusalem, Olmert pledged that if he forms the next government, he will establish Israel's permanent borders. Olmert said those borders will maintain Ma'aleh Adumim and Gush Etzion under Israeli sovereignty. A unified Jerusalem and the Jordan Valley will also remain under Israeli control, he promised.

Unfortunately, when Olmert's statements from Tuesday are compared to his actions on the ground, it becomes clear that the Likud's and Labor's invectives were accurate. On the ground, the government's policies are cutting both Gush Etzion and Ma'aleh Adumim off from Jerusalem and bringing about the partition of Jerusalem. As well, there is no evidence that the government is working to preserve Israeli control over the Jordan Valley - to the contrary.

Additionally, the Olmert government has failed completely to bring about the Palestinians' isolation in the wake of Hamas's electoral victory. It is not only that the government transferred tax revenues to the PA or that Russian President Vladimir Putin has invited Hamas leaders for an official visit to Moscow. The government's incompetence in dealing with the Hamas challenge was made abundantly clear by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's remarks at her joint press conference with Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni on Wednesday.

Tuesday Olmert was expected to make a final decision regarding the route of the security fence around the Palestinian village Jaba, which is located next to Gush Etzion. The planned route places Jaba outside the fence. To keep Jaba out of the fence's boundaries, it will be necessary to move Highway 367, which connects Gush Etzion to the center of the country, from its present location south of Jaba, to a new location north of the village. The project, which will cost Israeli taxpayers NIS 100 million, will locate the new road on a narrow ridge directly below Jaba and thus place every vehicle traveling on it within range of terrorist snipers. The new route will be surrounded on all sides by Hamas-controlled villages - so the only link between Gush Etzion and the center of the country will be all but impossible to defend. Gush Etzion residents, as well as the IDF and the Defense Ministry support changing the route of the fence and leaving the highway where it is. Olmert deferred deciding the issue.

When Olmert says that he will maintain Gush Etzion, it is not at all clear how he intends to do so. The current route of the security fence excludes its three eastern communities - Nokdim, Tekoa and Karmei Tzur.

As well, while last month the government ordered hundreds of IDF troops and policemen to destroy an unauthorized home at Neveh Daniel North, as well as a crate and an antenna on a hill two kilometers north of the small settlement, it refuses to enforce its own orders calling for the demolition of hundreds of illegal Palestinian structures.

Hundreds of such illegal structures have been built along Highway 60, which connects Gush Etzion to Jerusalem. The Palestinians have also seized thousands of dunams of state lands all around Gush Etzion. In both cases, the Civil Administration in Judea and Samaria has issued orders to destroy the structures and take back the lands, but it has not moved to implement any of those orders.

Neveh Daniel North and the hilltop where the antenna and crate were destroyed, are located directly above Highway 60 and the road that connects the towns of Tzur Hadassah and Betar Illit to Jerusalem. If the government wanted to guarantee Gush Etzion's integration with Israel, it would be allowing more Jews to live in Neveh Daniel North and enable Jews to settle on the unpopulated hilltop where the antenna and crate were located.

For its part, the Palestinian Authority is directing the seizure of government lands around Gush Etzion in order to link the villages of Husan and Nahalin to one another and link both to Bethlehem. If the Palestinians are successful - and given the Civil Administration's refusal to enforce the law against the Palestinians, there is no reason to believe they will fail - the road from Jerusalem to Gush Etzion will be surrounded on all sides by hostile villages under Hamas control. So if Olmert was truly committed to preserving Gush Etzion, he would be implementing policies directly opposed to the ones he is advancing today.

The same is the case for Ma'aleh Adumim. Today, there are two obstacles blocking the linkage of Ma'aleh Adumim and Jerusalem: The government's refusal to permit a neighborhood to be built in the area known as E-1; and Olmert's support for a plan that would serve to connect the Arab neighborhoods of Isawiya and A-Tur. If the neighborhoods are allowed to link up, their expanded boundaries will prevent the connection of Jerusalem to the Judean Desert and expose the road between Mount Scopus and Ma'aleh Adumim to the threat of rifle attacks from the Hamas/Palestinian Authority-controlled territories.

Three weeks ago, Haaretz's weekend magazine published an article regarding the plan to expand the two neighborhoods. The article accused Aviatar Cohen, who runs the Nature Reserves Authority's Jerusalem District, of working to prevent their expansion for "political" reasons.

In accordance with a decision by then interior minister Natan Sharansky from 2000, the Nature Reserve Authority is building a national park called "Ancient Landscapes Park" in the area where the Arabs wish to link Isawiya and A-Tur. According to sources in the Nature Reserves Authority and the Jerusalem Municipality, the article led to Cohen being removed from his office and forced to work from the authority's offices Ein Hemed. As well, the plan to build the national park is being revisited.

One of the major players behind the initiative to expand Isawiya and A-Tur is former Israeli and New York attorney David Fox. Fox is known to be friendly with both former prime minister Ehud Barak and Olmert. Fox developed the plans to link Isawiya and A-Tur in conjunction with the radical leftist planning organization Bimkom. Bimkom, which is supported by the New Israel Fund, has been prominent in attempts to expand the village of Bil'in near Ramallah amid violent clashes between Palestinians and their leftist supporters and IDF and police forces. It has also been active in attempting to foil development plans for the abandoned village of Lifta on the western outskirts of Jerusalem.

During his tenure as Jerusalem mayor, Olmert opposed the expansion of Isawiya toward A-Tur and even destroyed 18 illegal structures in Isawiya. But, as deputy prime minister, Olmert wrote Fox a letter expressing his support for the building plans.

As to Jerusalem itself, like Likud leader Binyamin Netanyahu has noted in recent weeks, the fence that Olmert has pledged to complete within six months will endanger both the city and vehicles traveling on Highway 1 between Tel Aviv and the capital. This is the case because Olmert's fence relinquishes Israeli control over the village of Beit Iksa.

The transfer of Beit Iksa to Hamas/Palestinian Authority control will place residents of the adjacent Ramot neighborhood and the hundreds of thousands of vehicles that travel daily on Highway 1 within the rifle range of terrorists. Even more disturbingly, according to knowledgeable, well-placed sources, senior members of Olmert's Kadima Party have been conducting discussions for over a year with Palestinian officials regarding the partition of Jerusalem. According to these sources, the two sides have agreed that all Arab neighborhoods in the capital will be transferred to Palestinian control.

As to the Jordan Valley, while Kadima's platform makes no pledge to preserve Israeli control over the area, Tuesday Olmert promised to maintain "control of Israel's eastern border." As we learned in Israel's capitulation regarding the Philadepli Corridor and the Rafah Terminal that connect Gaza to Egypt, in the wake of the withdrawal from Gaza, there is no reason to believe that Olmert is serious. The fact that over the past few years, right under our noses, the government has built a border passage between the Jordan Valley and the Beit Shean Valley, tells us all we need to know about the value of Olmert's pledge to retain Israeli control of our eastern border.

AN ANALYSIS of Olmert's actual policies shows that far from following a hard-nosed strategy, Kadima is implementing Yossi Beilin's agreement with Mahmoud Abbas from 1995. According to that unofficial agreement - which then prime minister Yitzhak Rabin rejected because it did not address Israel's security needs even in an era of peace - in exchange for peace, Israel was supposed to transfer 95 percent of Judea and Samaria to Palestinian control, partition Jerusalem and agree to security arrangements on the Jordan Valley that would pave the way for the area's eventual transfer to Palestinian control.

The irony is that at least Beilin's unofficial agreement was supposed to bring Israel peace. Today, Olmert and his associates seek to implement Beilin's plan as Hamas takes control of the PA, so ensuring that an Israeli withdrawal will not be accompanied by any guarantee - even a mendacious one - of Israel's future security in the framework of a peace treaty. That is, the Olmert government's policies are to the left of Beilin's.

The Olmert government's desire to abandon Judea and Samaria makes the question of Hamas's international standing a pivotal one. Once Hamas gains legitimacy, Israel will not have international support for military actions aimed at defending what will remain of the country from Palestinian aggression. Unfortunately, the government's bid to isolate Hamas/Palestinian Authority in the wake of the Palestinian elections last month has been a total failure. This fact was made clear not only by Russia's decision to recognize Hamas, but also by Rice's statements during her joint press conference with Livni.

During their joint appearance, Rice did not once use the term "terrorist organization" to describe Hamas. Indeed, the only thing about Hamas that seemed to bother Rice was the fact that Hamas does not recognize Israel's right to exist. From this it becomes clear that a vague declaration by Hamas which acknowledges - for now - the fact of Israel's existence, will likely be deemed sufficient for Hamastan to be welcomed as the newest member of the US-led international community.

Olmert's current policies indicate that if he forms the next government, he and his cohorts in Kadima will lead Israel into a national and military abyss. The fact that he is basing his campaign on denying his actual policies is more than sufficient reason for Israeli voters to look elsewhere for their next prime minister. The fact that his actual policies endanger the long-term survival of Israel makes defeating Olmert and Kadima a national imperative.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

After reading the reports of the International Atomic Energy Agency's decision Saturday to refer Iran's nuclear program to the UN Security Council it is hard to know whether to laugh or cry.

Teheran greeted the resolution with the indignant and combative announcement that it would cease all cooperation with IAEA inspectors. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Sunday: "If this resolution makes you satisfied, go on and issue as many as you want."

He added that as far as he was concerned, the IAEA's decision showed that its members were "stupid" because they "do not understand that the world has changed. They believe that we are still in the Middle Ages, where several people decide and others accept. But this era is over." Iran also announced that it was resuming full uranium enrichment activities.

So much for the hope that referral of Iran's nuclear program to the Security Council would work to deter and moderate the Iranian government.

The fact of the matter is that the IAEA and its member states - first and foremost the US - have given the Iranians three good reasons reason to believe they can feel free to continue apace with the nuclear weapons program.

Almost unbelievably, in spite of the agency's clear evidence that Iran is working to build nuclear bombs, rather than refer the issue of Iran to the Security Council immediately, the IAEA's decision postponed the referral of Iran's nuclear program to the UN Security Council for five weeks. Aside from this, the fact is that there is close to zero chance that the Security Council will take any meaningful action on the issue next month, or at all.

Immediately after the IAEA's decision was made public, the veto-wielding Chinese government announced that China would oppose any resolution calling for sanctions on Iran. In an interesting choice of words, China's ambassador to the UN, Wang Guangya, explained that his government opposed sanctions as "a matter of principle."

Aside from the fact that Iran has just received five weeks to enrich as much uranium as it wishes and that China has made clear it will block any sanctions resolution against Iran, there is a the fact that one of Iran's greatest defenders is the man who is charged with submitting the report on Iran to the Security Council.

IAEA CHIEF Mohamed ElBaradei of Egypt has spent the better part of the past two and a half years - since information regarding Iran's burgeoning nuclear weapons program first surfaced - actively scuttling every attempt to refer the issue of Iran's non-compliance with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to the UN Security Council. His defense of Iran has caused him to knowingly and blatantly breach the charter of his own organization. The IAEA charter explicitly stipulates that when there is any evidence that a state signatory to the NPT is behaving in a non-transparent manner regarding its nuclear activities, that state must be referred to the Security Council.

ElBaradei's moves to shield Iran from criticism have been marked with absurdity. In October 2004, for instance, he said that "the jury is still out on whether the mullahs want the bomb." At the same time ElBaradei was making this statement, Muhammed Ghannadi, the deputy head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organization, told the Teheran Times that the Isfahan uranium conversion facility was "70 percent operational right now."

ElBaradei's lenience-bordering-on-collaboration toward Iran is matched only by his animosity toward Israel. Time after time ElBaradei has claimed that it would be hypocritical to censure Iran, or take any actions against it at all, as long as Israel has nuclear capabilities. It is not hard to imagine the type of pressure he exerted on the US over the weekend to accept the offensive, counterproductive and insidious Egyptian clause in the IAEA's decision that makes it the "objective" of the IAEA to render "the Middle East free of weapons of mass destruction, including their means of delivery."

As everyone immediately understood, the purpose of that clause was to equate Israel and its presumptive nuclear arsenal with Iran and its nuclear weapons program.

And so, in light of the fact that this is the man who is empowered to write the report on Iran that will be submitted to the Security Council next month, it can be assumed that ElBaradei will deliver a report filled with loopholes and tendentious explanations, the purpose of which will be to make it as hard as possible to get majority support for taking any action whatsoever against Teheran.

IN AN alarmingly large number of respects the US decision to anchor its entire policy regarding Iran on bringing the issue of Iran's nuclear program to the UN Security Council mirrors its decision to work with that body on Iraq. In both cases the American attempts to build a coalition of the unwilling at the UN has been a sop to domestic US opinion, which has only grown more divided since the invasion of Iraq, and to European powers, whose main role on the international stage is to weaken the US's ability to wage its war against Islamic fascism. And in both cases the Bush administration's decision to deal with critical issues through the UN framework has been worse than counterproductive.

It is not only that, given China's position, there is no chance of getting a sanctions resolution passed against Teheran and so the US is about to repeat the failure of late 2002, when it could not pass a second resolution on Iraq. Aside from being a preordained failure, by relegating the issue of the Iranian nuclear weapons program to the UN, the US ties its hands and the hands of its allies in two ways.

First, the fact that after two years of dithering the IAEA finally decided to refer the issue to the Security Council entraps the US in a situation where it is possible to make ostensible progress, but impossible to make real progress. This is a dangerous situation. Since the IAEA decision makes people believe that progress is being made when it is not, the US will be unable to justify action outside the UN for the foreseeable future.

Additionally, by operating under the aegis of the UN in yet another fruitless attempt to form a coalition with states that are uninterested in assisting it, the US has barred itself from making any attempt to operate with a coalition of the willing outside the aegis of the UN. Such a coalition, of course, exists, but the US is now constrained from making any move to form it and lead it, busy as it is awaiting a duplicitous and counterproductive report from ElBaradei the Ba'athist next month.

FINALLY, OF course, we come to Israel, the country with the most at stake in preventing Iran's acquisition of nuclear weapons. Here we face two problems. First, Israel is today being led by the most incompetent government in its history. The fact that Acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert warmly rather than cynically welcomed the IAEA's decision is just the latest example of the fact that the current government is incapable of standing up for Israel's interests in a matter-of-fact and unapologetic way.

Aside from this, by all counts it will be exceedingly difficult for Israel to strike effectively against Iran's nuclear installations. It will be all but impossible for Israel to do so without at least tacit US assistance in enabling Israeli aircraft to refuel at US bases in Iraq, Afghanistan and Turkey. Given the fact that the US has entangled itself in unworkable alliances with the UN, it is hard to foresee a situation where such critical operational assistance would be forthcoming.

From all this we see that far from advancing the cause of preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons - which it has already announced it will use to annihilate Israel and which will make the US-led war on Islamic radicalism all but impossible to win - the IAEA's resolution has simply boxed the US into a policy that has no chance of succeeding.

There can be no doubt that a radical rethinking of the current policy toward Iran must be conducted immediately.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

On Thursday, for the second time this week, a group of Palestinian terrorists took over the European Union's offices in Gaza. Armed with rifles, the terrorists demanded an official apology from the Danish government for caricatures of Muhammad published in a Danish newspaper last September. At the same time as the EU offices were commandeered, another group of terrorists in Gaza issued an ultimatum: Either Denmark and the EU issue formal apologies for the publication of the cartoons by nightfall, or the terrorists will begin kidnapping Europeans in Gaza.

It is notable that in the wake of Hamas's electoral victory last week, the Palestinians have placed themselves alongside al-Qaida as the "guardians" of Islamic honor. It says a great deal both about who the Palestinians are and what it is that Israel and the Western world are up against.

At its base, the Muslim furor over the cartoons is part and parcel of their culture war against the West. The Muslims pushing the issue believe that non-Muslims ought to behave obsequiously towards all things Islamic, while the Muslims are free to demonize Jews as monkeys and pigs and accuse Christians of being idolaters. According to the rules of their culture war, if Western societies refuse to behave in accordance with their dictates, the Muslims have the right and duty to attack them.

That is, the culture war that is being waged by the Arabs and Muslims in response to the Danish cartoons is an assault on the West's right to live and govern in accordance with its values. It is an assault on the notions of freedom and self-determination themselves. That the Palestinians should now be placing themselves at the head of the charge against freedom and self-determination should serve as an indicator of who they are and what they stand for. But alas, it is not.

While, under US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's incompetent gaze, the Iranians quickly assemble the capability to build nuclear bombs at will, Hamas is directing its efforts towards building an Iranian enclave in Judea and Samaria. Due to Rice's insistence on reenacting her predecessor Colin Powell's failed policy of seeking UN backing for American actions in the Middle East, Iran is being allowed to achieve independent nuclear capabilities. At the same time, over the long term, Hamas's Iranian enclave in Judea and Samaria could well cause Israel's collapse and thus mitigate the ayatollahs' need to destroy Israel with nuclear warheads.

Hamas's victory at the polls last week was just the beginning of the jihadist group's takeover of Judea and Samaria. In the coming weeks and months, as Western aid continues to flow into the Palestinian Authority's coffers, together with supplemental aid from Iran, Hamas will have the means to gain control of the Western trained and heavily armed Palestinian security forces. The forces' loyalty will be bought simply: with the payment of their salaries. As it secures its control over Judea and Samaria, Hamas will adopt modes of operation similar to those adopted by their terrorist colleagues in Fatah, although it will be far more popular than Fatah ever was.

The main truth that Hamas's rise to power has exposed is not that Palestinian society is perhaps the most genocidal society on the face of the planet. That has been clear for all to see for the past five and a half years of the enormously popular Palestinian terror war against Israel. What Hamas's ascent to power has uncovered is that in everything related to the Palestinian conflict with Israel, the policies of the US-led international community, like the policies of the current Israeli government, are predicated on myths rather than facts.

Hamas's election last week should have put paid to the US plan to resolve the Palestinian conflict with Israel by establishing a Palestinian state in Judea, Samaria and Gaza. After all, in a public relations blitz, Hamas leaders in Damascus, Khaled Mashal and Musa Abu Marzook, explained in op-eds in the Guardian and Washington Post newspapers that their goal remains the destruction of Israel. And yet, the US has just agreed with the EU, Russia and the UN to continue to transfer funds to the Palestinian Authority. Moreover, Rice is now pressuring Israel to continue its tax revenue transfers to the PA.

Indeed, rather than simply cut off all support for the Palestinians, who daily humiliate them, attack Israel and just voted al-Qaida's sister organization into power, the US is negotiating with Hamas. In his State of the Union address this week, US President George W. Bush laid out conditions for Hamas to be accepted by America. Bush's decision to set out conditions for Hamas to fulfill, rather than simply identifying it as the jihadist terror group it is, makes clear that far from isolating al-Qaida's ally, Bush is bargaining with it.

Essentially, what Bush and his European counterparts are saying is that they expect Hamas to behave like Fatah - that is with duplicity. For its part, Hamas has been a willing negotiating partner. While giving no ground to the Americans and the Europeans on the substance of its aim to destroy Israel, Hamas leaders are offering "long-term cease-fires" and have adopted Fatah's platform of destroying Israel in stages.

THE QUESTION that arises from the US maneuvering with Hamas is why is the Bush Administration acting as it is? The source of Washington's awkward posture towards Hamas is that over the past three years, Bush has allowed his clear strategy of winning the war on global terror by bringing freedom to the Arab world to be subverted. In the case of the Palestinians, on June 24, 2002, the president laid out what the Palestinians needed to do in order to receive US support for statehood.

Bush conditioned US support for the Palestinians on their disavowal of terrorism and destruction of terror groups; their embrace of liberal values; the conduct of a genuine campaign to root out corruption; and above all, a genuine Palestinian acceptance of Israel's right to exist accompanied by an end of the PA's indoctrination of their people to seek Israel's destruction.

Over succeeding months, Bush's clear policy was denuded of its substance by the State Department, the Israeli Left and the EU. In December 2002, Bush accepted the road map plan for peace in spite of the fact that it flew in the face of the policy he had laid out in June. Rather than officially break with his democratization and liberalization policy towards the Palestinians, Bush pretended that the road map advanced that policy.

Similarly, while during the initial phases of his post-September 11 policymaking, Bush was clear that democratization of the Arab world meant the embrace of freedom by Arab societies, as the US became bogged down by the terror war in Iraq, the president pretended that liberalization and the conduct of open elections were the same thing. That is, he conflated elections with democracy.

But the open elections that were just held in the Palestinian Authority proved that the conduct of elections and the establishment of democracy are two separate things. The Palestinian elections led to Islamization, not democratization. There will be no freedom for the Palestinians at the end of this process. And by dictating conditions for Hamas to fulfill, Bush now ignores the fact that the Palestinians elected Hamas because it is what it is, not because they want Hamas to be something it is not.

For their part, for 14 years successive Israeli governments have replaced policymaking with myth-making. While the Americans do this to placate the Europeans and the Arabs, Israel's governments build their policies on fantasies to gain short-term political advantages on the home front.

Today, the Western world is more or less cognizant of the fact that the Muslim and Arab worlds - or large swathes of them - are waging a war against the West. It is true that to varying degrees Western societies all lie to themselves about what the fact that this global jihad is being waged demands of them. And yet, few leaders deny today that radical Islam is a threat to Western civilization.

PERVERSELY, WHILE the rest of the West is awake to the threat of jihad, Israel's government remains stubbornly asleep. Although all jihadist groups and societies daily declare that the destruction of Israel is one of the first aims of their war on the West, the Israeli government itself is largely in denial of both the fact that Israel is a prime target in a larger Islamic jihad and of the fact that the Palestinians see themselves as the flag bearers of global jihad in their war against
Israel.

Rather than accept the reality or Israel's predicament, the current Israeli government, like its predecessors, insists that the real "root" of the global jihad being waged against it is the presence of Israeli communities in Judea and Samaria or the absence of Palestinian statehood in general. So it was that in the shadow of the September 11 attacks, rather than declare Israel's key role in thwarting the aims of the jihadists, Ariel Sharon sent his foreign minister Shimon Peres to the UN where Peres told a befuddled world body that the Palestinian jihad against Israel was completely unrelated to the global jihad. Lecturing the world leaders, Peres waxed romantically over the need for a Palestinian state to be established and for a new New World Order, based on nanotechnology and the Internet to be formed.

Currently, Olmert is ignoring the threat that has crossed Israel's doorstep by designing a diversionary campaign - not against Hamas, but against his fellow Israelis. So it is that rather than contend with the fact that the international community is moving towards welcoming Hamas as its newest member, Olmert declared war on the religious Israelis who live in Judea and Samaria.

Olmert's decision to send a force of 6,000 policemen to the community of Amona on Wednesday in order to destroy nine homes was an act of deliberate provocation. His aim was to divert the attention of Israeli voters from the Hamas state in Gaza and the Hamas state-in-the-making in Judea and Samaria by providing them with pictures of settlers battling riot police. This was necessary because Olmert's only policy regarding Hamas is to transfer Judea and Samaria to their control.

In light of this, Olmert and his associates desperately strive for the Israeli electorate to ignore the fact that the only real issue on the agenda today is whether Hamas will rule over Judea and Samaria or the Israeli military will rule over Judea and Samaria. As Israelis learned from 2000 to 2002, when the IDF cedes control over Judea and Samaria to the Palestinians, life for Israelis becomes impossible. The security of Tel Aviv is dependent on Israel maintaining control of Jenin, Nablus, Kalkilya and Tulkarm. The security of Jerusalem is dependent on Israeli control of Bethlehem, Ramallah and Hebron.

Given the strategic threat that Hamas control of Judea and Samaria poses to Israel, Olmert's fervent wish is for them to postpone their takeover until after the elections, allowing him to continue his diversionary campaign against his own people unfettered by the weight of reality.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.