Since replacing Ariel Sharon in office last December, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has refused to permit a large-scale IDF incursion into the Gaza Strip. The hundreds of rockets, mortars and missiles that have rendered the Western Negev's population and economy hostage to Palestinian rocket crews could not budge him from his refusal to take the war to the enemy. Indeed, for months he ignored the pleas of residents of Sderot and told the IDF to suffice with artillery fire into empty fields and aerial bombings of terrorists en route to launching rockets.

The fact that Israel's intelligence collection capabilities in Gaza were grievously undermined in the aftermath of last summer's withdrawal; the fact that IDF commanders acknowledge that more weaponry has been brought into Gaza in the past ten months than entered in the previous 38 years, made no impression. Repeated reports of Al Qaida opening shop in Gaza and of Iranian Revolutionary Guards units training Fatah and Hamas members in the destroyed Israeli communities were dismissed as unimportant, irrelevant and insignificant.

Olmert refused to send forces into Gaza to contend with the transformation of Gaza into a strategic threat to Israel because doing so would involve acknowledging that his plan to retreat from Judea, Samaria and parts of Jerusalem will turn Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Hadera, Afula and Beersheba into frontline communities. He refused to send forces into Gaza because doing so would demonstrate that Israel cannot defend its cities from their outskirts.

He refused to send forces into Gaza because it would involve an acknowledgment that Israel is at war and that the war cannot be ignored by building walls or inciting the public against Israeli residents of Judea and Samaria.

He refused to send forces into Gaza because doing so would be tantamount to admitting that all territory abandoned by the IDF is taken over by Israel's enemies.

He refused to send forces into Gaza or take concerted action against Palestinian terror leaders because, as the nasty upbraiding that Israel suffered Thursday at the hands of US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and her colleagues at the G-8 showed, the international community sees Israeli counter-terror operations in the aftermath of the withdrawal from Gaza as no more legitimate than its counter-terror operations before the withdrawal.

So does the fact that this week Olmert finally permitted forces to reenter Gaza mean that he now gets it? Does Olmert's decision to arrest Hamas parliamentarians and government ministers in Judea and Samaria in spite of Condi's objections signal that he has accepted that Israel must destroy its enemies' capacity to attack its territory, its forces and its citizens? Does the fact that Olmert ordered IAF jets to overfly Syrian dictator Bashar Assad's palace mean that he understands that the war being fought against Israel is part of the global jihad?

Unfortunately, a close look at Olmert's counter-terror measures makes clear that, no, in spite of the wailing of the international press corps, and the whining of the State Department and its European and Russian counterparts, in fact, Olmert still refuses to get it.

Olmert and his associates in the government have pointed their fingers at Hamas blaming it for the Palestinian guerrilla attack on Israeli territory Sunday morning while ignoring Palestinian Authority Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah terror group's equal share of culpability. It was Fatah, not Hamas that kidnapped and murdered 18-year-old Eliahu Asheri. It is Fatah that is threatening to blow up Israeli embassies abroad. It is Fatah that is threatening to renew shooting attacks on Jerusalem and attack Israel with chemical and biological weapons. It is Fatah that is threatening to kill the IDF hostage Cpl. Gilad Shalit.

While Shin Bet Director Yuval Diskin was preparing the list of Hamas leaders IDF forces arrested in Judea and Samaria Wednesday night, Abbas was finalizing his deal with Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh for the formation of a Hamas-Fatah unity government. Abbas and Haniyeh not only agreed to form a unity government, they also agreed that Hamas would become a member of the PLO. Aside from that, they agreed to establish a unified force for fighting their joint war against Israel. That is, this week, as Israel trained its rifles on Hamas alone, Abbas effectively unified Hamas with Fatah.

Rather than contending with this development, Olmert and his colleagues chose to ignore it. And this makes sense of course. Acknowledging that Fatah and Hamas are equally at war with Israel would mean that Israel has no option of giving away Judea, Samaria and parts of Jerusalem to any of these groups.

Olmert's decision to blame Syria for Sunday's attack on Kerem Shalom is similarly problematic. Yes, it is true that the orders for Hamas's major operations, (like those of Fatah and Islamic Jihad) come from Syria and Teheran. The fact that the government is acknowledging that the war being fought against Israel is not simply a dispute between Palestinians and Israelis about the partition of the western part of the Land of Israel is on the face of it a welcome development. Unfortunately, the government's acknowledgement of the foreign command of the Palestinian war against Israel is being used not as a justification for fighting, but as a justification for not fighting.

Olmert has used Syria's role in ordering attacks against Israel as a way of letting the local terror commanders Abbas and Haniyeh off the hook. Rather than recognize that they are both subordinate to and supportive of Damascus and Teheran's terror war strategy against Israel, Olmert and his associates are using the foreign elements of the war as a way to say that the Palestinians are not responsible even though they are the ones carrying out the operations on the ground.

As to the current IDF operation in Gaza, it is fairly clear that whatever accomplishments the IDF may achieve over the next few days, Olmert will call for a retreat rather than enable those tactical accomplishments to become translated into an enhanced strategic environment for Israel. Olmert, whose primary goal as prime minister is to reenact the failed withdrawal from Gaza twenty-fold in Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem cannot enable the Israeli public to see proof on its television screens night after night that the withdrawal was an abysmal failure. The footage that the Israeli public has seen every night since Sunday shows them with absolute clarity that the country was safer when the Israeli communities separating Gaza from Ashkelon and Egypt were still standing and when the IDF was deployed in Gaza protecting southern Israel and keeping the border with Egypt quiet.

Making this point absolutely clear, this week Olmert and Defense Minister Amir Peretz paved the way for new pictures to be seen on the television screens next week. Amidst the military earthquake in the south, the two men repeated their intention to destroy four communities in Judea and Samaria next week. What they refuse to recognize is that while doing so may confuse the public for awhile about whom its real enemy is, the footage from their planned operation will destroy in one fell swoop any accomplishments the IDF may garner this week in Gaza. Pictures of Israeli police and military forces forcibly removing Israelis from their homes will prove to the Palestinians - once again - that their hope to destroy Israel through jihad is well founded.

When one compares Olmert's management of the current crisis with former prime minister Ariel Sharon's management of Operation Defensive Shield in April 2002, the fact that this operation is not serious becomes manifestly clear. On March 29, 2002 Sharon announced the cabinet's decision that precipitated Operation Defensive Shield. In his words, "Israel will act to defeat the terror infrastructure - all its component parts and facets." He further announced that Yasser Arafat "is the enemy."

The reason Defensive Shield was a success is not because in its aftermath the Palestinian terror infrastructure in Judea and Samaria was destroyed. Indeed, shortly after it was officially concluded there was a suicide bombing in Rishon Lezion. In fact, the terror never really stopped at all.

Defensive Shield was a success because it set the conditions for making it impossible for the Palestinians to carry out an effective terror offensive from Judea and Samaria. During Defensive Shield, the IDF reasserted its security control over the Palestinian towns and villages in the areas, a control it has not relinquished.

Because it remains in control of the area, rather than being forced to kill terrorists from the air, as is done in Gaza where the IDF never reasserted its control, in Judea and Samaria every night, forces go into the homes of terrorists and arrest them in their beds with no collateral damage. And every day, because the IDF is in charge, it is able to enhance its intelligence capabilities. Those enhanced capabilities in turn make it possible for the silent nightly raids that keep Israelis safe in their beds to continue.

But while Defensive Shield's goal was to "defeat the terror infrastructure," the current Operation Summer Rains in Gaza has set as its goal returning Cpl. Shalit to Israel. Olmert and Peretz hope to somehow convince Hamas and Fatah and their bosses in Damascus and Teheran that they are better off coughing up Shalit. They are supposed to think this even though Israel has made it clear that it won't stay in Gaza and is dead set - regardless of the outcome of Summer Rains - on giving them Judea, Samaria and parts of Jerusalem.

On Monday, Meretz leader MK Yossi Beilin told Olmert that his party, like the Arab parties will not support Olmert's plan to retreat from Judea and Samaria and parts of Jerusalem because Olmert plans to retain control of some 5-10 percent of Judea and Samaria for the long haul. Two weeks ago Beilin met with the EU's External Relations Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner and elicited from her a clear EU rejection of Olmert's plan to determine Israel's borders. Beilin told The Jerusalem Post that Israel must surrender all the Israeli communities to the Palestinians and sign a deal with Abbas to this effect even if Abbas is incapable or unwilling to uphold any pledge to fight terrorism.

In staking out this position, Beilin is repeating his actions towards then prime minister Ehud Barak after the outbreak of the Palestinian terror war in September 2000. Beilin, who served as justice minister in Barak's government saw that Barak had lost all security credibility with the failure of his peace talks and his inability to take effective actions against the Palestinian terror offensive. Beilin understood that what Barak feared most was the fall of his government and new elections. Because of this, Beilin was able to force Barak to adopt still more accomodationist positions after the outbreak of the Palestinian terror war than he had proposed at Camp David in July 2000.

Beilin convinced Barak to agree to the transfer of the Temple Mount and the Jordan Valley to the PLO.

Olmert, like Barak was brought to power as the head of leftist coalition. If Olmert loses that support base, his government could easily fall. In light of this, and given the fact that through his actions and inactions Olmert has made clear that he remains unwilling to reconsider his policy of surrendering Judea, Samaria and parts of Jerusalem to terrorists, it is hard to imagine that his decision to approve the IDF's operations in Gaza and the arrest of Hamas leaders will have any ameliorative effect on Israel's security situation. In short, the limited nature of this week's IDF operations makes clear that Olmert still refuses to get it.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

It is painful to watch Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Defense Minister Amir Peretz and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni try to contend with the terrible outcome of the Palestinian terror strike against the IDF on Sunday morning.

They use so many fancy and angry words. They sound so resolute. And yet, they have nothing useful to say. Two soldiers are dead, a third is now the prisoner of jihadist killers, seven are wounded, an IDF border post has been overrun, and a world view and a security doctrine have been blown to smithereens.

Olmert and his associates have four general messages. First, they tell us that Palestinian Authority Chairman and Fatah chief Mahmoud Abbas is responsible for bringing about Cpl. Gilad Shalit's release. Second, they say Hamas better watch out because they're gonna get it. Third, they say that Hamas won't get it until later. Finally, while stipulating that they will not negotiate with Hamas, Olmert and his associates are negotiating with Hamas.

None of these messages and none of the actions that attend to them have any chance of making Israel safer. They also hold little promise of bringing Cpl. Shalit home. Yet there is next to no possibility that Olmert or his associates will widen their options to include any relevant responses to Sunday's terror offensive. Doing so would involve an admission that what the Kadima and Labor parties have presented to the public as their world view is wrong.

That world view involves a denial of a basic, fundamental truth: When you empower terrorists, terrorists are empowered.

WE HAVE been in this situation before. Six years ago, in October 2000, on the eve of Yom Kippur then prime minister Ehud Barak gave Yasser Arafat an ultimatum. He was ordered to end all the violence he had fomented within 48 hours or face the consequences. When as the deadline passed Arafat continued the violence, Barak did nothing. He did nothing because he could do nothing. His entire government was based on the idea of making peace with Arafat by empowering him. When Arafat chose war, Barak had nothing to say.

Kadima and Labor insist that by empowering terrorists they are somehow weakening them. This is the notion that stands at the base of the government's insistence on reenacting the empowerment of Hamas and Fatah caused by last summer's retreat from Gaza by repeating it twenty-fold in Judea and Samaria.

Somehow, destroying Israeli communities, ordering the retreat of IDF forces and so enabling the terrorist takeover of those lands is - according to Olmert and his associates - supposed to bring about the enhancement of Israel's security through the weakening of terrorists that Israel is empowering.

Ahead of Sunday night's security cabinet meeting, Olmert reportedly told IDF Chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. Dan Halutz not to present any wide-scale military options to the cabinet. This makes sense. Any major operation, just like any real discussion of Israel's security situation or its options for contending with it would show the failure of the government's retreat policy. And so the government entertains only fictions.

The first fiction the government entertains is that of PA Chairman and Fatah Chief Mahmoud Abbas as anti-terrorist peace partner who must be empowered. Abbas is viewed as an irreplaceable resource and ally of Israel. If he goes, Israel will face nothing but Hamas. And since Hamas is bad, Abbas must be good. Unfortunately, Abbas is a terrorist too.

Abbas has pocketed the money, arms and legitimacy that Olmert, the Bush administration and the EU have given him and proceeded to buck up his terrorist credentials. He appointed Mahmoud Damra, a top Fatah terrorist as the commander of his personal army Force 17. Damra is wanted by Israel for his direct involvement in the murders of scores of Israelis since 2001.

Abbas took the thousands of rifles and millions of rounds of ammunition the US gave him last month and had his security chief Muhammad Dahlan issue a joint call with Hamas for the murder of all Palestinians suspected of assisting Israel in its counter-terror operations.

He has been negotiating a blueprint for war - authored by jailed Fatah mass murderer Marwan Barghouti - with Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh and has been touting the document as a peace plan.

And, his Fatah organization is as responsible for Sunday's strike against Israel as Hamas. The Popular Resistance Committees, a Fatah front group that also includes Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists claims to be holding Cpl. Shalit. Fatah has threatened to attack Israel with chemical and biological weapons and to renew shooting attacks on neighborhoods in southern Jerusalem if the IDF launches a major operation in Gaza.

But none of this can be acknowledged because acknowledging that Abbas is a terrorist would mean acknowledging that empowering him means empowering terrorists.

THEN THERE is the doctrine of the security fence. Olmert and his colleagues are big proponents of replacing defensive strategies with slogans and one of their favorite ones is "We'll be here and they will be there." Israel will build a fence and we'll never have to deal with the Palestinians again.
But then those mean old Palestinians showed us on Sunday that they can dig beneath our fence. They show us daily that they can launch missiles and rockets and mortars above the fence. They can build ladders to climb over the fence. And of course, they can simply subcontract their killing to their collaborators on our side of the fence.

But this cannot be acknowledged because doing so would be tantamount to an admission that Olmert and his associates have been passing off cliches as security plans for the past four years.

The bombardment of the Western Negev that holds the population and the economy of southern Israel hostage to the whims of jihadist cells with rocket launchers has shown up another major myth that forms the basis of Olmert's world view. Olmert and his associates claim that the IDF deployment in Gaza was wasteful because all those forces were being used just to defend those annoying, fanatical settlers in Gush Katif and northern Gaza. But as the bombardment and the IDF's inability to stop the bombardment from outside Gaza shows, the IDF was not in Gaza to protect the Israelis who lived there. The IDF was in Gaza to protect Israel.

Any major IDF offensive in Gaza would constitute an admission of this truth. Yet since the government's only policy is to reenact last summer's retreat in Judea and Samaria, it cannot acknowledge this truth. It needs the public to believe that the safety of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem can be guaranteed by having IDF forces sitting in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. It needs the public to believe that settlers are the cause of their misfortunes and not the jihadists who are waging war against our country.

That is, they need the public to believe that empowering terrorists doesn't empower terrorists.

FINALLY, OLMERT cannot allow a counter-terror offensive in Gaza because doing so will lead to international condemnation of Israel. It isn't the impact of the condemnation on Israel's international standing that concerns him. Olmert cannot be condemned internationally because he promised that after Israel retreated from Gaza, the international community would accept any Israeli counter-terror offensives in Gaza.

Sunday's attack and Cpl. Shalit's kidnapping are watershed events. In the coming days and weeks, it will become self-evident to the Israeli public as a whole just how indefensible Olmert's plan to empower terrorists actually is. Yet public recognition of his plan's failure is not enough.

In 2000, the public realized that Barak's terrorist empowering peace plan had brought us war. Yet rather than discard the policy of empowering terrorists, our political leaders simply repackaged it. What had formerly been called "peace" was called "separation" and "disengagement" and now is called "convergence" or "realignment." These euphemisms are sold to the public in turn as new quick-fixes that spare us the need to recognize the reality of war.

So to our fervent prayers for Cpt. Shalit's rescue, we should add another prayer. We should pray that whereas the demise of the so-called peace process did not cause the demise of its core policy of empowering terrorists, the demise of Olmert's retreat policy will also cause the burial of the notion that empowering terrorists can do anything other than make terrorists more powerful.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

As is its habit, the Israeli media missed this week's big story. While our television channels, mass circulation dailies and publicly funded radio stations were scope-locked on the tragedy of children in Gaza killed and injured because they were being used as human shields by the terrorists pummeling Sderot and the Western Negev with rockets and mortars, the world took a step toward nuclear confrontation.

This week the crisis was fomented not by Iran but by its ally North Korea, as Pyongyang made loud preparations ahead of the test launch of an intercontinental ballistic missile. Unlike previous missiles tested, the Taepodong-2 has a 15,000 km range capable of hitting the West Coast of the United States.

North Korea's latest strategic gambit is highly significant for Israel. Its import stems from its relevance for Israeli strategists tasked with crafting a policy to contend with Iran's nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles programs. If Israel draws the proper lessons from the current crisis with North Korea, it will take the necessary steps to better position itself against Iran's developing threat. By so repositioning itself, while enhancing its national security, Israel would strengthen the forces in the US and Europe calling for the jihadist, genocidal Iranian regime to be confronted rather than appeased.

An international storm broke out as soon as North Korea's preparations to launch its Taepodong-2 missile and thus directly threaten America became known. For the first time, the US activated its ground based missile defense shield. The US Navy conducted the largest naval carrier group exercise since the Vietnam War, off the coast of Guam. Three carrier groups participated.

US Ambassador to Japan Thomas Scheiffer said that from America's perspective, "All options are on the table" if North Korea launches the missile. On Thursday, two former senior defense officials from the Clinton administration published an op-ed in The Washington Post urging the Bush administration to launch a cruise missile attack against the missile on its launch pad.

On Wednesday, Japan - which has been operating under the threat of North Korean missiles since Pyongyang tested a Taepodong-1 missile over Japan in 1998 - deployed ships and planes toward North Korea to closely monitor developments. For their part, the South Koreans - who have lived under the threat of destruction at the hands of North Korean artillery pointed at Seoul for the past several decades - announced the cancellation of former president Kim Dae Jung's planned visit to the North. Unification Minister Lee Jong Seok said that a missile launch would force Seoul to curtail food aid to North Korea.

North Korea Wednesday demanded that the US agree to conduct direct negotiations with it to defuse the crisis it had fomented. As Han Song Ryol, North Korea's UN deputy chief of mission, put it to a South Korean reporter, "We know that the US is concerned about our missile test launch. So our position is, why don't we try to resolve this problem through negotiations?"

US President George W. Bush rejected North Korea's demand for direct talks. The US position is that if Pyongyang wishes to speak with the US it should return to the six-party talks with the US, China, Russia, Japan and South Korea that it abandoned last November.

By Thursday afternoon it appeared the North Koreans had softened their stand and their manufactured crisis was ending with a whisper. Yet even if this is the case, when the events of the week are analyzed, it is not clear that North Korea lost this round.

TO APPRECIATE why it is difficult to know who is emerging as the winner of the latest confrontation, the uniqueness of the current crisis must be fully grasped. Until this week, North Korea's threat to the US was indirect. It threatened America by threatening its allies, forces and interests in Asia. Now it is directly threatening the US mainland. Whereas until now the US focused on defending its allies and interests, now it must also defend its own territory, which from what now on should be considered to be under direct threat from Pyongyang.

There are three clear and complimentary goals that North Korea seeks to achieve by directly threatening the US. First, it seeks to capitalize on Bush's political weakness. One can almost hear the conversation in Kim Jong Il's bunker: "Why should the Iranians be the only ones to cash in on Bush's decision to make the Europeans love him?" If Bush now seeks to be relevant by appeasing axis of evil members, the thinking goes, then far be it for North Korea to let Teheran be the only beneficiary of the policy shift.

Second, Pyongyang is trying to exploit the weaknesses in the US alliance with South Korea. For the past several years, Seoul has adopted anti-US positions in the hopes of appeasing Pyongyang and strengthening its ties with China. This week the US placed great pressure on Seoul to cancel Kim Dae Jung's visit to Pyongyang. It is not unreasonable to assume that Pyongyang took his visit into account when it timed the launch of its latest provocation. If Seoul had not bowed to US pressure and canceled the visit, North Korea could have exploited it to announce in Kim Dae Jung's presence that it was canceling its planned launch. By doing so it would have weakened the position of US officials who insist on refusing North Korea's demand for direct talks.

Lastly, by directly threatening the US North Korea is maneuvering to improve its international position. Specifically, Pyongyang wishes to force the Americans to accept its status as a nuclear power. While the stalwart positions taken this week by Japan and South Korea indicate that for the time being Pyongyang has failed to achieve its first two goals, it may well have made progress toward achieving this latter aim.

In his statement in Vienna on Wednesday, Bush said, "It should make people nervous when non-transparent regimes who have announced they have nuclear warheads, fire missiles."

Although he took a clear stand against the planned missile launch, Bush did not threaten North Korea's nuclear arsenal, indeed he may have given it de facto recognition. If the US does agree to discuss the ICBM issue with North Korea in the six-party talks rather than limit those talks to Pyongyang's nuclear arsenal, Pyongyang could use this development to foment a breach in the US alliance with Japan and South Korea. The two Asian allies could perceive the US move as tantamount to abandoning them to their fates.

THERE ARE many notable similarities between the ways North Korea and Iran engage the world. Both manufacture international crises to squeeze concessions out of the US and its allies in exchange for neutralizing their manufactured crises. Both seek to exploit all differences of opinion between Western nations to strengthen the voices of appeasement at the expense of the voices calling for them to be brought to account for their behavior.

Iran and North Korea both wage war against near and distant foes. Pyongyang threatens South Korea, Japan and the US. If it manages to unravel their alliance, it will be able to threaten each far more effectively.

Iran campaigns against Israel, the US and the EU. From Teheran's perspective, if it can place the world's undivided attention on its war against Israel, it will be able to deter the US and Europe from contending with the fact that it is also working to undermine their security. Teheran has to this end worked assiduously to hide the fact that its Shihab ballistic missile program is directed mainly against Europe and the US, and not against Israel.

Iran does not need guided or ballistic missile systems to attack Israel. Today Iranian forces directly control Hizbullah's arsenal of missiles, mortars and rockets along Israel's border with Lebanon. Last December when Iran took command of the Palestinian campaign against Israel in Gaza, it gained a significant presence along Israel's southern border.

If Israel does nothing to prevent it, in all likelihood we will soon see Iranian forces deployed along Israel's eastern border with Syria. The defense pact signed this week between Syria and Iran paves the way for the introduction of Iranian forces in Syria, across from the Golan Heights. MK Yuval Steinitz, a former chairman of the Knesset's Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, explains that such an Iranian deployment "goes along with the trends we are now seeing regarding the beefing up of the Iranian presence along our border with Lebanon."

Moreover, if Prime Minister Ehud Olmert implements his plan to give Judea and Samaria to Hamas and Fatah, Iranian forces will be deployed on the outskirts of the Dan Region, the Sharon Plain, the lower Galilee and Jerusalem. All in all, today Iran has no need for sophisticated ballistic missiles to attack Israel.

THIS WEEK the Northern Command brought reporters to the border with Lebanon to show them that Iranian forces now command Hizbullah outposts located 20 meters from the border. The commanders stipulated that Israel will not be the first side to open fire along the border. It is quite possible that such restraint is misguided.

Israel would do well to follow the example set this week by Japan and South Korea. While both countries let the US lead the international response towards North Korea, they both also took reasonable, unilateral steps aimed at ensuring their own security from the unique threats North Korea poses toward each of them. Israel must also take steps to secure itself from the unique threats Iran poses toward it, while leaving the US in charge of managing the international community's confrontation with Teheran.

If Israel were to seize the initiative against Iran and its terrorist proxies in Gaza and Lebanon while preventing their deployment across from the Golan Heights and in Judea and Samaria, it would be accomplishing two goals at once. First, it would be diminishing the most immediate Iranian threat it faces today while enhancing US options for dealing with Teheran's ballistic missile arsenal and nuclear program. Second, by dealing with the Iranian threat that endangers Israel alone, Israel would be increasing international awareness of the fact that the Shihab missile program is not first and foremost a threat to Israel, in spite of Iran's attempts to portray it as such.

A poll published at the beginning of the month revealed that 63 percent of Dutch citizens believe that Islam is incompatible with modern European life. More than anything else, this poll demonstrates that as the threat of global jihad becomes more tangible, citizens of the Free World will have less of a tendency to try to appease jihadist forces. By weakening the immediate threat Iran now poses to Israel, Jerusalem will force Europe and the US to understand more clearly just how real Iran's threat towards them actually is.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.
 

Sunday morning Israel Radio reported that a delegation of judges met with Justice Minister Haim Ramon and demanded that he defend them from what they consider to be unprecedented media attacks against them.

The meeting with Ramon took place on the same day the Supreme Court went a step further in its usurpation of the power of the people's elected representatives in the Knesset to set the law of the land. In yet another breathtaking act of judicial legislation, the Court Sunday demanded that the Knesset show cause why its 2004 law permitting the operation of privately run prison facilities does not breach the Basic Laws regarding individual rights and the delegation of powers by the government.

In so acting, the Court effectively named itself the ultimate arbiter of the wisdom of Israel's economic policies as set by the people's elected leaders in the government and the Knesset. This it did on the basis of a petition from a group of law teachers who in any normally functioning democracy would have no standing before the Court because they are neither directly nor indirectly impacted by the law.

The justices' demand for Ramon's protection from criticism also came the same day that Justice Ayala Procaccia overturned the rulings of two lower courts to free a 14 year-old girl from Hebron who was arrested last week while protesting in Hebron. Procaccia ordered that the girl be kept in jail until the completion of proceedings against her.

This is the same Justice Procaccia who last summer ordered that three other girls aged 13, 14 and 16, Moria Goldberg, Chaya Belogrodsky and Pnina Ashkenazi be held in jail until the completion of proceedings against them for their "crimes" of protesting the expulsion of Israelis from Gaza. They were held in jail for three months even though the maximum sentence for the charges they were being held for was a monetary fine. At the time, Procaccia announced her agreement with the State prosecutors' view that the girls constituted a "danger to the society because of [their] ideological motivation."

It is unclear whose criticism the judges want to be protected from. Perhaps the judges sought Ramon's protection from their own colleagues on the bench. Last month in an interview with Haaretz, retiring Justice Mishael Cheshin had this to say about Chief Justice Aharon Barak's view of human rights: "He is ready for 30, 50 people to be blown up - but we will have human rights."

Of Barak's view of the Court's oversight of the Knesset Cheshin said, "For Barak, if the Knesset passes a law by a majority of a hundred to two, he can come and assert that the law is annulled."
 

Cheshin attacked his colleagues on the Court collectively when he strongly hinted that his fellow justices' political views were what kept them from overturning Attorney-General Menachem Mazuz's decision last year not to indict then prime minister Ariel Sharon and his son Gilad on corruption charges. Of Mazuz's decision to close the investigation of the so-called Greek Island affair Cheshin said, "I can say only that when someone gets $600,000 and the promise of $2 million more for surfing the Internet, [Gilad Sharon's payments from businessman David Appel] one has to be a fool to think that he really received the money for that work."

Of his colleagues' decision not to overturn Mazuz's decision he noted, "If Sharon had stood trial, there would have been no disengagement [from Gaza and northern Samaria].

SADLY, THE ideological conformity and anti-democratic tendencies that Cheshin admitted plague the Supreme Court extend throughout the judicial system and state prosecution. The widespread nature of the problem was brought to the fore in three separate cases last week.

First, in Nazareth, Magistrate's Court Judge Rim Nidaf ruled that Prof. Steven Plaut from Haifa University was guilty of libeling Dr. Neve Gordon from Ben Gurion University for publishing articles referring to Gordon as a pro-Hitler Jew and likening him to the Judenrat. The first instance related to the positive review Gordon published in Haaretz of Norman Finkelstein's book The Holocaust Industry.

In his book Finkelstein accuses the Jewish people of exploiting the Holocaust in order to force the world to support Israel and ignore its "crimes" against the Palestinians. In his own commentary, Plaut argued that by supporting Finkelstein, Gordon was abetting a type of Holocaust denial where through comparisons of the German-led genocide of European Jewry to actions Israel has taken against the Palestinians, the Holocaust itself is effectively reduced to a justified act of war.

In the second instance, Plaut condemned Gordon for going to Arafat's headquarters in Ramallah with his associates in the anti-Zionist organization Ta'ayush during the height of the 2002 Operation Defensive Shield in order to protect the terror leader from IDF attack.

Nidaf ordered Plaut to pay Gordon NIS 85,000 in damages and an additional NIS 15,000 in court costs. In her decision, she attacked what she referred to as "the phenomenon where anyone who dares to investigate the events of the Holocaust or its dimensions, in any fashion...immediately becomes a target of attacks and accusations as an anti-Semite or a Holocaust denier worthy of the title Judenrat or Jew for Hitler."

Nidaf wrote, "This phenomenon is incomprehensible and is in my opinion unjustifiable, and opposes the principles of democracy...It is impossible and unacceptable to turn the subject of the Holocaust into a 'taboo,' a subject that cannot be studied or analyzed outside of the consensus and the 'acceptable.'" She also defended Gordon's defense of Arafat and Gordon's defense of Finkelstein's accusation that Israel has used the Holocaust to force international support for the establishment of the Jewish state "on another nation's lands."

SO FOR Judge Nidaf, Gordon is within his legal rights to obstruct IDF operations in times of war and to support Finkelstein's marginalization of the crimes of the Holocaust but Plaut is guilty of libel for opining that it is wrong for Gordon to do so.

The same topsy-turvy logic informed the State Prosecution in its case against right-wing activist Nadia Matar from Women in Green which opened in the Jerusalem Magistrate's Court last Wednesday.

In The State of Israel vs. Nadia Matar, Matar is being tried for the crime of "insulting a public servant." The insult in question involves a letter Matar faxed last year to Yonatan Bassi the head of the Government's Disengagement Authority where she likened him to the Judenrat for his role in organizing the government's expulsion of 10,000 Israelis from their homes in Gaza and northern Samaria.

While the presiding judge David Mintz ended the court session last week by suggesting that the prosecution review its decision to pursue the case, the fact of the matter is that the damage to Israel's democracy has already been done. By indicting Matar the prosecution showed that it will apply anti-democratic laws in a prejudicial fashion. Not only is the law itself draconian, the cases in which leftist activists could, yet are not indicted for similar statements, (as in the case of Gordon) occur on almost a daily basis.

Just last Saturday a group of radical leftist activists including Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's daughter Dana Olmert demonstrated outside IDF Chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. Dan Halutz's home and held signs calling him a "murderer" for the deaths of members of Raliya family in Northern Gaza. They called him a murderer even though it was Hamas, not the IDF that caused the deaths.

Reasonably, no one in the State Prosecution is considering indicting Dana Olmert for those insults even though they were quoted by anti-Israel forces internationally to support their condemnation of Israel for actions it did not commit.

Today the judiciary and state prosecution receive the knee-jerk support of the overwhelming majority of the Israeli media. Indeed, there are less than a handful of journalists that write or broadcast reports critical of their anti-democratic and prejudicial actions. Most of those reporters are found outside the mainstream media and attract little attention.

So while it is unclear against whose criticism the judges feel the need for politicians' protection, it is even less clear why they are not criticized more often. It is not just the Right - which the judicial system systematically discriminates against - that should be criticizing the judges. Everyone who holds liberal values and Israeli democracy dear should be on their feet shouting for our justices to be brought to order.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

During his tour this week of European capitals, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert announced that in addition to Judea and Samaria, he plans to transfer a number of neighborhoods in Jerusalem to Hamas. In his words, "Not all the Arab neighborhoods will be part of the city in the future."

Olmert claims that taking these Arab neighborhoods out of Jerusalem's municipal boundaries will strengthen the city. From a security perspective this makes no sense since transferring Tzur Baher, Jebl Mukaber and Isawiya to the Hamas-Fatah-Islamic Jihad-al-Qaida-Hizbullah-led Palestinian Authority will place all the remaining neighborhoods in the city within enemy rocket, mortar and even rifle range.

Olmert apparently thinks that partitioning the city will secure the Jewish majority of the city. Yet, taking these neighborhoods out of the city will actually endanger that majority.

Over the past few months, a team of American and Israeli researchers conducted a demographic study of Jerusalem and its environs. Last year the same researchers - Bennett Zimmerman, Roberta Seid, Michael Weiss and Yoram Ettinger - conducted the first independent study of the Palestinian population data published by the PA's Central Bureau of Statistics in 1997. Their study exposed that the PA had inflated the number of Palestinians in Judea, Samaria and Gaza by some 1.5 million or 50 percent. Olmert and his colleagues in Kadima and the Labor Party have justified their plan to surrender Judea and Samaria to Hamas on the basis of these inflated numbers which falsely project that by 2015 there will be more Arabs than Jews between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.

The team's research methods and their findings were reviewed by the leading American demographer Nicholas Eberstadt from the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, DC. At the Herzliya Conference in January, Eberstadt praised the team's research methods and stated that their conclusions were "not only plausible but quite persuasive."

Their study showed that today Jews comprise 59 percent of the overall population of the areas that include sovereign Israel, Judea and Samaria and Gaza and 67 percent of the population of Judea, Samaria and sovereign Israel. Far from becoming the minority by 2015, the group's projections show that in 2025, Jews will comprise between 56-71 percent of the overall population of Judea, Samaria and sovereign Israel. In other words, the team showed that there is no demographic threat to Israel's Jewish majority.

The team began examining the demographic situation in Jerusalem and its environs after Olmert first expressed his plan to partition the city as part of his unilateral retreat policy. The team noted at the outset that Olmert's claim - that by placing Arab neighborhoods outside the municipal boundaries he would be reducing the Arab population of the capital by tens of thousands - ignores the fact that Arabs can move. As legal residents of Jerusalem these Arabs are under no obligation to remain in the neighborhoods slotted for transfer to Hamas.

Indeed, since the government's intention to partition the city was made clear by the route of the security fence, thousands of Arabs with Jerusalem ID cards who had previously lived in Judea and in neighborhoods set to be placed outside the city's boundaries started converging on the city.

Residents of Pisgat Ze'ev and Neveh Ya'acov relate that Arabs are moving into their neighborhoods in droves. This is also the case in the city's Arab neighborhoods not set for transfer to Hamas such as Beit Tzafafa, Wadi Joz and Abu Tor. Rather than reduce the number of Arabs in the city, Olmert's plan is just crowding the city's population into shrunken boundaries. At the same time, by giving up all the reserve open lands around the city, he is blocking all chance of municipal growth.

As Zimmerman and his team members note, in Jerusalem's current municipal boundaries, 487,000 Jews make up 68% of the population and 231,000 Arabs make up 32%. Fertility rates of the two populations are nearly identical, with a Jewish fertility rate of 3.8 and an Arab fertility rate of 4.1 per woman.

The team checked what would happen if, rather than partitioning the city, Israel were to expand the boundaries of the city. They found that if Israel were to extend the borders of the capital to include the Adumim bloc, the Etzion bloc, the Adam bloc, the Givon bloc, Mevasseret Zion and its satellite neighborhoods, the Tekoa area, Abu Dis and Bir Naballah and incorporate all these communities' Jewish and Arab residents into the city, Jerusalem's demographic balance would remain the same.

The enlarged city would have 704,000 or 68% Jewish residents and 335,000 or 32% Arab residents.

The enlarged capital would have plenty of land reserves on which to build new housing for both its Jewish and Arab residents. Retaining Israeli control over the areas around Jerusalem's current boundaries would also protect Bethlehem's status as a Christian city while Olmert's plan, which places these areas under terrorist control, guarantees that Jesus's birth city will become a Muslim majority city with all the religious and political consequences that such a religious transformation would involve for the Christian world.

The study shows that the number of Arabs that would be incorporated into the city if it were to expand its borders is smaller than the number of Arabs incorporated into the city with its unification in 1967. And it goes without saying that an enlarged Jerusalem would be safer than a partitioned city with its removed sections under terrorist control.

In light of the study's findings, and given the deterioration of Israel's national security situation in the wake of its retreat from Gaza last summer and the recent reports of al-Qaida cells operating in Jerusalem, it is impossible to avoid the conclusion that in configuring his retreat and partition plan for the country's capital city, Olmert did not consider its devastating repercussions on Jerusalem itself.

SO IF Olmert's planned retreat harms Jerusalem, what purpose does it serve? The sole goal that Olmert's partition plan advances is that of attempting to appease racist, anti-Jewish radical Islamic forces that claim that Jews have no rights in Jerusalem. Indeed, at its core, Olmert's plan internalizes this jihadist view by completely ignoring the security, municipal and demographic concerns of the city's Jews and non-jihadist Arabs.

This Israeli internalization of the jihadist view of Jews in Jerusalem also pervades the government's treatment of Jewish land purchases in eastern Jerusalem. Last week Ha'aretz reported that a month ago the State's Attorney, Eran Shendar, asked Police Inspector Yohanan Danino to undertake a covert investigation of Ateret Cohanim - a non-profit organization that works to bypass the Palestinian Authority's policy of defining land sales to Jews as a capital offense for which dozens of Arabs have been murdered since 1994.

Shendar's instructions came after an Arab Jerusalemite named Muhammad Marageh, who in the past worked for Ateret Cohanim, offered to attempt to criminally implicate the organization in exchange for receiving state's witness protection and, perhaps, money from the state. The Ha'aretz report makes clear that Israel's chief prosecutor is so convinced that there is something wrong with willing Arab sellers selling land to willing Jewish buyers that apparently, without being presented with any evidence of wrongdoing, he ordered the police to begin a secret criminal investigation of the Jews.

This anti-Jewish view is similarly manifested in the police's indifference to the fates of Arab land sellers. On April 12, the eve of Passover, Jerusalem resident Muhammad Abu Al Hawa was tortured and murdered in Jericho for the "crime" of selling a building in Abu Tor to Jews. The week before his murder Israel's Channel 10 led prime time news broadcasts, on two consecutive nights, with hysterical reports about the land sale. The reports were precipitated by a court order for the police to evict illegal squatters from the building to enable the legal owners to take possession of their property - an eviction which Channel 10 filmed.

As I reported at the time, sources in Abu Tor stated that after the Channel 10 expose, it was only a question of time before Hawa was murdered. Those sources also said that far from protecting Hawa, the police were suspected of tipping off Channel 10's reporter on the scheduled eviction. This week, the spokesman for the police's Samaria and Judea District responsible for investigating Hawa's murder did not respond to repeated requests for information on the status of the investigation.

THE GOVERNMENT'S treatment of the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate similarly exposes its internalization of the anti-Semitic view that Jews have no rights in eastern Jerusalem. Today there are two Patriarchs of the Greek Orthodox Church: the legal Patriarch Irineos and the illegal de facto Patriarch Theophilos. Last summer Ma'ariv reported that Irineos leased two hotels near the Old City's Jaffa Gate to Jews. The story caused an uproar in the Church, the PA and among Israeli Arabs. In its wake, Irineos was illegally ejected from his position and his life has been under constant threat.

The Church, together with Jordan's King Abdullah and PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, selected Theophilos to replace him. Ahead of his appointment, Theophilos promised Abdullah that he would operate in accordance with Jordanian rather than Israeli law, meaning that he would uphold the Jordanian legal prohibition of conducting land deals with Jews. Attorneys and others involved in this issue claim that Theophilis also pledged to Abbas that he would cancel the lease agreement for the hotels at the Jaffa Gate.

In an interview with Al Quds newspaper on May 18, Theophilos said that he was unable today to fulfill his pledges because the Israeli government has yet to approve his appointment.

To force Israel's hand, Theophilos filed a petition with the Supreme Court demanding that the government approve his appointment. The Supreme Court is scheduled to hear the petition on July 19. The Jews involved in the Jaffa Gate lease agreement and in other land agreements with the Greek Orthodox Church, which owns vast landholdings in Jerusalem and throughout the country, are deeply concerned about the government's likely response to the petition. The government did nothing when Irineos was sacked although it is legally bound to protect him and his position. Indeed, Israel has allowed Theophilos to act as the de facto Patriarch.

The government's acceptance of the jihadist view that denies all Jewish rights to Jerusalem is nowhere more evident than on the Temple Mount, which since 1995 Israel has abandoned to the control of the PA's Mufti Ikrameh Sabri. Sabri preaches the "rights" of Arabs to eradicate the Jews whom he refers to as "pigs and monkeys." And with the backing of the Israeli government, he ensures that the police enforces his ban on Jewish and Christian worship on the Temple Mount.

Moreover, under the impotent eye of the government, for the past decade Sabri has overseen the commission of one of the most heinous archaeological crimes in human history. While denying the Judeo-Christian sanctity of the site, since the mid-1990s the Islamic Wakf on the Temple Mount has been systematically destroying Jewish and Christian relics hidden inside the mountain that date back to the time of Solomon's Temple, in an attempt to erase the historical record. Sabri and his colleagues further exploit their control of the Temple Mount to incite Muslims to attack Jews for imagined crimes relating to the so-called "Judaization" of Jerusalem.

In answer to reporters' queries, this week Olmert repeatedly stated that he would never give up the Temple Mount. But his statements are meaningless. You cannot give up what you already surrendered. No, Olmert is not giving up the Temple Mount. Olmert is giving up all of Jerusalem.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

Sunday Palestinian Hamas Authority Foreign Minister Mahmoud Zahar was in Teheran meeting with his boss, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.  Ahmadinejad reportedly devoted the meeting to reminding Zahar that jihad is the only path for the Palestinians, and demanding that Hamas redouble its attacks against Israel.

This report tells us little we don't already know about Hamas and Iran. Since last year, Hamas leaders Zahar and Khaled Mashaal have been traveling to Iran to meet with Ahmadinejad and commanders of Iranian intelligence and the Iranian Revolutionary Guards units on a monthly, twice-monthly and even weekly basis.

This meeting merely served to remind us what has been clear for months, namely, that Iran today is the leader of the global jihadist axis. More interesting than the meeting is how Iran and Hamas's chief enemies - the United States and Israel - have responded to the war the Iranian-led jihadist axis is waging against them. Two words aptly describe the Bush administration and the Olmert government's responses to the escalating war. They are respectively: appeasement and capitulation.

The Bush administration's decision to negotiate directly with Iran over the genocidal mullocracy's race to achieve nuclear capabilities represents the White House's clearest renunciation of everything that President George W. Bush claims to have been fighting against since the September 11 attacks.

The Iranian regime, with its openly stated intention to annihilate Israel; its active participation in the war against US-led forces in Iraq; its support and sponsorship of other terror forces fighting US forces in Iraq and Afghanistan; its active subversion of pro-Western regimes throughout the Middle East; its support for anti-US regimes and political forces throughout the world; and its race to acquire intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of attacking the continental US, represents everything that Bush pledged to bring down in the aftermath of the attacks on the US five years ago.

THERE HAVE been many attempts to rationalize, justify and excuse the move. Some say it is a result of political distress. It is hard to see why Bush would think that attempting to appease America's worst enemy will placate his political support base. But more important than the reasons for his policy reversal are the content and consequences of his new position.

In providing an opening to Teheran, the Bush administration has adopted the policy that former president Jimmy Carter forced down the throat of the Clinton administration in its dealings with the North Korean Stalinists in 1994. Twelve years ago, Carter invited himself to North Korea to "defuse" the crisis the North Koreans had fomented by openly developing nuclear weapons. Since then-president Bill Clinton had no policy for dealing with North Korea, he allowed Carter to negotiate the deal that Bush is now offering Teheran. As then, today in exchange for a "pledge" to stop enriching uranium, the US is willing to give Teheran nuclear fuel, airplanes, spare parts, light water reactors, World Trade Organization membership and US acceptance of the mullocracy as a legitimate regime.

There can be no doubt that Carter's deal effectively caused the US to facilitate North Korea's development of nuclear weapons. And now, after refusing for five years to adopt an Iran policy, Bush has been convinced by the likes of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to follow the Europeans' lead in appeasing the mullahs.

For all that the nuclearized Pyongyang threatens its neighbors, North Korea is still less dangerous than Iran. Unlike Pyongyang, Teheran sees itself as a contender for global supremacy. It has terror cells all over the globe capable of striking Western targets at a moment's notice. Aside from that, Iran has already committed itself to using the nuclear bombs it is now building to destroy Israel and bring America and Europe to their knees.

AFTER RICE announced Washington's adoption of the EU's appeasement policy, Iran wasted no time repeatedly humiliating America. Last Thursday Ahmadinejad bragged that the US offer showed America had been defeated. The IAEA revealed that since the US made the offer, Iran intensified its uranium enrichment operation. The Sunday Telegraph reported that Iran has yet another secret nuclear site which is dedicated to military grade uranium enrichment.

To all this President Bush has responded with more appeasement. He says that Iran has weeks to decide whether to accept the US offer. The administration is backing Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Richard Lugar's refusal to bring an Iran sanctions bill - already passed overwhelmingly in the House of Representatives and sponsored by 61 senators - to a vote. So rather than fighting Iran, the administration is fighting its most loyal supporters while advancing the policy of its most ardent detractors.

THE OLMERT government in Jerusalem similarly refuses to recognize that a war is being actively waged against Israel. Olmert's refusal to accept the reality of war is even more unjustifiable than the Bush administration's because while Americans haven't been attacked where they live since September 11, every day Israelis are attacked in their homes.

Against the backdrop of the intensification of the Palestinian rocket attacks on southern Israel, Sderot's Mayor Eli Moyal showed the absurdity of the government's willful blindness when Sunday he presented Olmert with the only choice he has. As Moyal put it, Olmert can continue to ignore the war and so turn the bombarded town of Sderot into a ghost town, or he can fight the war and turn Beit Hanoun in Gaza - from which the rockets raining down on Sderot and surrounding communities are being launched - into a ghost town. That is, it is us or them, as simple as that.

To this the government responded with denial and surrender declarations. Olmert and his equally inexperienced, weak-kneed, ideologically blinded Defense Minister Amir Peretz and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni claim that they are sending Hamas a clear signal by doing nothing. And what are they signaling? That if Hamas doesn't shape up, Israel will give it Judea and Samaria and parts of Jerusalem.

AS TO Iran, according to a report over the weekend in The Forward, in his recent meetings with the American Jewish leadership, Olmert urged them to lower their profile on Iran because his government doesn't want the issue to be perceived as an Israeli issue. And so, most Jewish groups, including AIPAC, have not publicly criticized the administration's adoption of Europe's appeasement policy. As Jess Hordes, the Anti-Defamation Leagues Washington affairs director, told the Forward, "Looking down the abyss at the choices, which, in their starkest terms, are either accepting Iran as a nuclear power or attacking militarily, I think people are looking to see whether or not a third way can be found to achieve the same purpose."

By the same token, Israeli diplomats in New York and Washington have admitted that their activities today are largely dedicated to convincing American Jewish leaders to support the Olmert plan to surrender Judea and Samaria to Hamas.

In 1943 when the evidence of the destruction of European Jewry became incontrovertible, some strident Zionists in the US - most notably Peter Bergson and Ben Hecht - launched a massive campaign to try to force the Roosevelt administration to do something to save the Jews of Europe. The organized Jewish leadership, led by Steven Wise, did everything it could to delegitimize their efforts. According to the copiously documented account of these events in Rafael Medoff's history, Militant Zionism in America, Wise, like the leaders of the Labor Zionist movement, didn't want the war to be seen as a Jewish issue and didn't want to alienate the White House by crying out too loudly for European Jews.
 

Today, as Iran moves closer to committing a second Holocaust, how are American Jewish organizations spending their time? Aside from supporting the administration and the Olmert government, leading American Jewish organizations including the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, the Anti-Defamation League, the Jewish Federation of New York and the Joint Distribution Committee have joined forces with the far-left New Israel Fund and announced their intention to fund Israeli Arab organizations.

There is no doubt that as the leadership of Israel and the US lose their collective will to reconcile themselves to the reality of war, it falls on the shoulders of private citizens to tell them that they are wrong. Iran has been at war with the US and Israel since 1979 and today it has a leadership committed to advancing this war by destroying Israel and bringing America to its knees. In light of this danger, and in view of the clear lessons of the Holocaust, it is an act of cowardice and immorality for those who recognize the dangers to take a back seat to leaders who refuse to stand up for their countries.

As Moyal said, it is time to face the facts. There is no middle way. You cannot nuance genocidal foes bent on your destruction and defeat.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

This past April the IDF published its new military doctrine. The new classified field manual, The General Staff's Operational Concept for the IDF, is the result of four years of serious study. It gives expression to the transformative changes the IDF's way of thinking about war fighting and designing military campaigns underwent since the outbreak of the Palestinian terror war in September 2000.

Yet last week the IDF separated itself from those most responsible for leading its intellectual transformation. On May 30, the heads of the IDF's Operational Theory Research Institute (OTRI), Brig. Gen. (res.) Dov Tamari and Brig. Gen. (res.) Dr. Shimon Naveh, were notified that they were suspended from their duties due to irregularities in their billing procedures. On Tuesday a distorted version of the events was presented to the public on the front page of Yediot Ahronot. The headline read, "Hero of Israel Suspended from Duties: Brig. Gen. (res.) Dov Tamari, commander of the Operational Theory Research Institute, who received three combat decorations, is suspected of [financial] irregularities."

Tamari and Naveh's suspensions together with Tuesday's headlines effectively terminated one of the most glorious periods in the IDF's intellectual history. It ended a process that OTRI shepherded which, over the past decade, has transformed the IDF into the world leader in operational warfare.

The story of OTRI's disembowelment should alarm anyone who cares about the IDF. It is part and parcel, and indeed an exacerbation of the trend that has been forcing independent thinkers out of decision-making circles in Israel for the past three years. In 2003 this trend was ushered in when, after consulting with his public relations team, then-prime minister Ariel Sharon decided to retreat from Gaza in exchange for absolutely nothing.

Sharon made this decision without advising with the IDF General Staff. For his opposition to the plan, then IDF Chief of General Staff Lt. Gen. Moshe Yaalon was fired. So too, Efraim Halevy, former Mossad director, was forced out of his position as director of the National Security Council for his opposition to Sharon's sole reliance on his PR flacks Reuven Adler, Dov Weisglass and Eyal Arad in making strategic decisions about Israel's future. This trend most recently caused the conclusion of Maj. Gen. (res.) Giora Eiland's tenure as Halevy's successor at the National Security Council. Eiland made clear his complete opposition to the retreat strategies adopted by the Sharon and Olmert governments in an interview with Ha'aretz this past Sunday. Eiland's comments - like all statements by national leaders expressing opposition to the retreat strategy before them - were completely ignored by the rest of the Israeli media.
 

SINCE THE summer of 2004, I have been employed as a researcher at OTRI. Naveh's decision to offer me the position two years ago came as a complete surprise. An ideological gulf separates me from Naveh, Tamari and most of OTRI's researchers. Yet, as I became familiar with OTRI's work, I realized it is wholly non-ideological. OTRI concerns itself solely with the pursuit and development of knowledge necessary for military commanders to think critically, systemically and methodologically about war fighting. In promulgating its operational concepts, OTRI pays little attention to who the enemy is or how to fight a specific group of people - Palestinian, Iraqi, Russian, American, Israeli, etc.

Rather, the institute's work focuses on the concept of "enemy" and provides operational commanders with tools to conceptualize both their enemies and themselves for the purpose of designing suitable campaigns. In short, OTRI's methods are a powerful tool - like a tank - that can serve anyone who understands how to use them, without connection to his identity or that of his enemy.

In light of this, the decision to get rid of Tamari and Naveh is even more disconcerting than Sharon and Olmert's decision to force Yaalon, Halevy and Eiland from their posts. In those cases, the political leaders purged the ranks of decision-makers of those who oppose their political goals. In so doing, they acted within what is generally considered the purview of political leaders.

But in forcing Naveh and Tamari out of the IDF, Chief of General Staff Lt. Gen. Dan Halutz and his deputy Maj. Gen. Moshe Kaplinsky sent the message that independent thinkers are unwelcome in their IDF. The political-strategic trend initiated by Sharon has brought about a state of affairs where Israel's decision-making echelon is bereft of all voices opposing Israeli retreats. By eviscerating OTRI, Halutz and Kaplinsky have added an operational component within the IDF to this larger political-strategic trend. They have set the course for purging the IDF of people who - while perhaps ideologically sympathetic towards the unilateral retreat policies - are guilty of the sin of thinking critically about military science.

What exactly did OTRI accomplish under Naveh and Tamari's stewardship? On Wednesday, Yaalon, who began his association with OTRI as Commander of Central Command in the late 1990s, summarized the institute's activities as follows: "OTRI contributed both to Central Command and to the General Staff. Its contribution to the General Staff involved the development of a new operational concept whose development was necessitated by the evolution of the threats [that Israel faces]. OTRI, in conjunction with commanders in the field worked on developing cognitive tools and doctrines on a trial and error basis. The method of operational assessment that is used today in the regional commands and in the General Staff was developed through the joint work of OTRI with field commanders."

Over the past few years, foreign militaries began noticing that something new was happening in the IDF. As Yaalon explains, "The Americans saw there were a lot of changes in our assessment methods, and they asked us to transfer our new knowledge to them. OTRI worked with the Americans to teach them the methods we had developed."

Lt. Col. David Pere, from the US Marine Corps, is now involved in authoring the Marine Corps' operational doctrine. He characterizes OTRI's contribution to the US Armed Forces thus: "Naveh and OTRI's influence on the intellectual discourse and understanding of the operational level of war in the US has been immense. The US Marine Corps has commissioned a study of design that will result in a Marine Corps Concept of Design that is based heavily on Shimon [Naveh]'s [work]. One can hardly attend a military conference in the US without a discussion of Shimon or [OTRI's] System of Operational Design….The Army's doctrinal publication on Operations (Field Manual 3.0), will include design based on SOD in its next edition."

Like the Americans, the British, Australians and other armed forces are integrating the concepts developed over the past decade by IDF commanders and OTRI researchers into their formal doctrines.

OF COURSE, in spite of all of this, if OTRI personnel were involved in corrupt practices, then Halutz and Kaplinsky would be wrong not to take action.

But they were not involved in corrupt practices. The decision to suspend Naveh and Tamari and two additional OTRI researchers last week came in the wake of a draft report by the State Comptroller on the IDF's training of its senior officer corps. The draft report was submitted to the IDF for review last month. The report's preliminary findings determined that Naveh, Tamari and two other OTRI researchers had not followed all the proper procedures for billing their hours. The report did not allege that the researchers did not work or that they somehow absconded with tax payers' money.

Yediot's report noted that the State Comptroller's draft report found problems with the management norms of both OTRI and the National Security College and that these problems led Halutz and Kaplinsky to transfer the report to the Military Advocate General. Here is the place to note that the relative weight Yediot gave to the two reports was misplaced. Equally curious is the fact that in responding to Yediot's inquiry, the IDF Spokesman's Unit limited its statement to allegations against OTRI and ignored completely the charges raised against the National Security College. There is much that could be added to these general observations. Unfortunately adding to what was already reported in Yediot on Tuesday is illegal.

And that is the heart of the matter. The State Comptroller's Law states explicitly that no one may make use of the materials prepared by the State Comptroller. According to paragraph 28 of the Law, Yediot was legally barred from publishing the contents of the draft report. Furthermore, paragraph 30 of the Law stipulates: "Reports, opinions and any other document promulgated or prepared by the Comptroller in carrying out his duties may not be used in any legal or disciplinary procedure."

In light of this, the disciplinary procedure which Halutz set in motion against OTRI's researchers which led to Naveh, Tamari and two other researchers' suspensions and precipitated both Naveh and Tamari's resignations was illegal.

A number of theories are making the rounds attempting to explain why Halutz and Kaplinsky decided to purge OTRI of its leadership. Some say that Halutz and Kaplinsky oppose the whole concept of operational design. But this view does not pass the reality test. The General Staff's Operational Concept for the IDF is rooted in OTRI's theoretical doctrine of systemic operational design. Indeed, it is a complete vindication of OTRI's research.

Others say that Kaplinsky and Halutz cannot abide by Tamari and Naveh because they represent Yaalon's intellectual legacy in the IDF. According to this reasoning, while Kaplinsky and Halutz accept in whole OTRI's conceptual framework and so embrace Yaalon's legacy, they wish to co-opt this legacy and believe they can only do so by throwing Naveh and Tamari out of the army.

Whatever the proximate cause of their banishment from the IDF, the effect of their departure will, in Pere's view, "endanger the IDF."

There are two reasons for this. First, any replacement that Halutz and Kaplinsky appoint to succeed Naveh will be unable to carry forward his work. Naveh, like Clausewitz, is a path breaker. He has many disciples, but no substitutes. Second, and more generally, in forcing Naveh and Tamari's departure, Halutz and Kaplinsky are sending a devastating message to the IDFs senior officer corps. By precipitating the departure of the IDF's most prominent intellectuals, Halutz and Kaplinsky are signaling those senior officers that their career advancement is dependent on their willingness to think what they are told to think.

From a national perspective, the significance of the decision to decimate OTRI is similarly bleak. To all intents and purposes, since 1973, Israel has suffered from a nearly continuous breakdown in strategic thinking that has produced an unremitting string of national failures from Oslo, through the withdrawal from Lebanon to the withdrawal from Gaza. Indeed, Israel's continued survival in the face of these strategic blunders is the product of the IDF's ability to compensate for the political leadership's incompetence by producing operational and tactical successes.

Woe to Israel if our strategic idiocy spreads to these areas as well.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.


 

Allegedly spurred on by images of conflict in Iraq and Afghanistan, and angered by what they saw as the mistreatment of Muslims at home, they became increasingly aggressive in their beliefs, according to media reports.

This is how London's Sunday Telegraph explained the decision of 17 Canadian Muslims to stockpile three tons of ammonium nitrate and plot acts of war against their country.

These men - all Muslims - who reportedly planned to blow up the headquarters of Canada's Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) in Toronto, are what Canadian officials refer to as "home-grown terrorists," and products of the "jihad generation." Before their arrests on Friday, they had never visited Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq or the Palestinian Authority. They chose the path of jihad in the streets and mosques of Toronto. They learned how to build bombs from the Internet. They trained for their mission in a training camp in Ontario.

Like the Telegraph, most media reports claim that these men were prompted to wage a war against their country because they believe that their fellow Canadians are launching war against Islam. But why would they think this?

Canadians are outspoken in their anti-Americanism. They have contributed generously to the Palestinians. It only took the Canadian government a few weeks after the Palestinian elections to announce it would fund a Hamas-led PA. Canadians overwhelmingly oppose the US-led war in Iraq and President George W. Bush.

A Canadian Muslim friend who lives in Ontario told me recently that he has been unwelcome in his local mosque since the September 11 attacks on Washington and New York. His fellow Muslims have blackballed him because he made public statements critical of the hijackers and of al Qaida and the Palestinians and supportive of the US and Israel. He informed me that while in absolute numbers, mosque attendance in Canada has dropped since Sept. 11, those who continue to attend are fervent in their devotion to jihad against the Western world.

That is, the Muslims who have been forced from the organized Canadian Muslim community are those who believe in Muslim integration in the West while those who remain within that community are radical separatists who cannot abide their pro-Western Muslim brethren.

My friend and his fellow pro-Western Muslims are doubly ostracized. Not only are they rejected by their fellow Muslims who decry their denunciations of jihad, they are also rejected by the intellectual and cultural elites in their countries who insist on apologizing for jihadists in the name of multiculturalism and anti-racism.

The depth of my friend's isolation was made clear this weekend when, in the wake of the arrests of the Canadian jihad cell, Luc Portelance, the CSIS assistant director of operations told his countrymen, "It is important to know that this operation in no way reflects negatively on any specific community, or ethno-cultural group in Canada."

FOR ITS part, the Canadian Islamic Congress (whose leader, Mohamed Elmasry has openly stated his view that all Israeli citizens are legitimate targets for terrorist murder), attacked Canada's Prime Minister Stephen Harper for what it referred to as his decision to "paint today's arrests as a battle between 'us' and 'them.'" The CIC alleged that "Such statements put all Canadian Muslims in great danger," and demanded that the Canadian government fund "legitimate academic research to diagnose this serious social problem [of Canadian Muslims waging war against their country] and provide scientific solutions to it."

Justifications for the actions of Western born and raised jihadists - and indeed for all jihadists from Osama bin Laden down - like that published by the Telegraph are of course par for the course. As author Bruce Bower exhaustively demonstrates in his book While Europe Slept: How Radical Islam is Destroying the West from Within, there exists a unity of purpose between Islamic extremists and Western elites in Europe and throughout the world. Both sides wish to hide the fact that Islamists seek to dominate the Western world while painting the US and Israel as the greatest threats to international security.

There seems to be no limit to the willingness of Western elites to justify jihadist acts of war against their societies. The Telegraph's apology for the Canadian jihadist terror group came at the same time as Britain's counter-terror forces were conducting a desperate search for a chemical bomb they fear was built by two British born terrorists who were also arrested on Friday in London. The fact that Britain's own jihadists were planning to attack Londoners with sarin gas made no dent in the Telegraph's willingness to make excuses for radical Islamic warriors.

THIS PATTERN of collaborative dissimulation between leftist Western elites and jihadists manifested itself last week in Winnipeg, Canada. There, as the Ontario 17 steadily advanced their plans of war, Muslims in Manitoba launched an attack against a film that exposes the nature of the global jihad against the West. Last Monday and Tuesday the documentary film Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West launched its Canadian premiere in the city. (It will be premiering in Israel at Hebrew University on June 14.)

Obsession was produced by the media watch group Honest Reporting. It effectively shows the depth of the hatred and indoctrination to jihad that is taking place worldwide. Interweaving clips from Arab television, recordings of mosque incitement, interviews with extraordinarily brave Muslim heroes like The Jerusalem Post's Khaled Abu Toameh and renowned historians such as Sir Martin Gilbert, Professor Robert Wistrich, and Daniel Pipes, the film seeks to fill the void left by the Western media and academia to alert regular citizens to the reality of the threat that jihadist ideology presents to their freedom.

In light of the film's purpose, (and having participated in the project myself and viewed the film several times, I can attest to its success), it is not surprising that the Muslim community in Winnipeg sought to have it banned. It is also not surprising that in reporting the protest, the Winnipeg Sun used the misleading headline, "Aspers sponsor hate film, say critics."

Ahead of last week's screenings, members of the Winnipeg Muslim community filed a complaint about it with the city police's hate crimes unit. Shahina Siddiqui, the president of the Islamic Social Services Associations told the press, "I want the police to identify this as hate propaganda. I want them to be aware who the sponsors are and what they are doing."

SO FOUR days before Friday's arrests, the Canadian Muslim community attempted to prevent Canadians from watching a film that explains why it is that Canadian born Muslims are trying to destroy their country. And four days before the arrests were made, the Winnipeg Sun maintained faith with its colleagues throughout the Western world by running a headline that gave its readers the sense that there was some legitimacy to the Muslims' complaint.

And even though the apparent ringleader of the terror cell served as a prayer leader and a member of the board of directors of his local mosque, in the wake of Friday's arrests, Canadian and other Western commentators and editors continued to argue that the arrested terrorists bore no relationship to the larger Canadian Muslim community.

It is against the backdrop of the refusal of Western elites to acknowledge the fact that there is a global jihad that the true danger of radical Islam becomes clear. Many argue that the forces of global jihad are no match for their enemies because they lack regular armies.

Yet because of the defiant, irrational and immoral refusal of Western political, cultural and media elites to acknowledge the threat that internal and external jihadist forces manifest to the very notion of human freedom, they make it impossible for their societies to take measures to protect themselves.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.