Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is the man to watch these days. And yet it would seem that those in positions of power are paying him little heed.

Ahmadinejad, whose proxy army Hizbullah is now waging war against Israel, has promised to respond to European and American demands to cease his country's illicit nuclear programs on August 22. As Robert Spencer, a noted expert on Islam, has explained, August 22 corresponds with the 27th of Rajab on the Muslim calendar. According to Islamic tradition, that is the day after Muhammad made his nighttime journey to Jerusalem and then flew to heaven from the Temple Mount, lighting up the skies over the holy city in his wake.

Monday the UN Security Council passed a resolution giving Iran until August 31 to end its nuclear programs. The obvious meaning of the new deadline is that until then, in spite of Iran's direction of Hizbullah's war against Israel - a state which Iran daily threatens to destroy - no action will be taken against Teheran.

Indeed, in all the talk of Security Council resolutions regarding the war that Iran's proxy force Hizbullah is waging against Israel, no one has mentioned the possibility of condemning Iran, or Syria, for their sponsorship of Hizbullah.

AS THE STAKES of the war against Israel rise by the day, we find the international community, led by the US, and willingly followed by the Olmert government, scope-locked on a diplomatic agenda that is irrelevant to the imminent dangers Israel and the world now face in the midst of this Iranian sponsored jihad.

Indeed, it is worse than irrelevant. It is counterproductive.

For if the aims of the ongoing diplomatic blitzkrieg are all met, Israel will find itself denied its right to self-defense; with its legal right to secure and recognized borders in tatters; and with Hizbullah sitting pretty behind a protective shield of the Lebanese military and an international force that will not attack it.

On Wednesday the UN Security Council is scheduled to vote to approve a resolution under Chapter VII of the UN Charter that will mandate a cease-fire and the establishment and deployment of a multinational force to Lebanon. The tasks of the proposed force will be to man a buffer zone in southern Lebanon; enable the deployment of the Lebanese army along the border with Israel; and control Lebanon's international border with Syria.

The purpose of the force is to prevent Hizbullah from attacking Israel and to cut it off from its logistical base in Syria while barring Israel from continuing the fight.

THERE ARE several basic problems with this approach. First, Chapter VII resolutions are the only UN resolutions that enable the Security Council to use force and other coercive tools against UN member states. Any state breaching them is considered an international lawbreaker.

Israel's enemies have for decades sought to have Israel come under the authority of Chapter VII resolutions, but the US has blocked all such attempts, understanding that they are aimed at denying Israel the right to defend itself.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and her colleagues claim that the proposed multinational force would protect Israel. Yet it is already clear that this will not be the case. As things now stand, the proposed force will be led by France. Indonesia and Turkey have reportedly offered to participate. With France leading the international community in condemning Israel for defending itself; with some 40 percent of Indonesians telling pollsters that they wish to participate in jihad; and with Turkey led by an Islamist government, can anyone believe that this force will neutralize Hizbullah? None of these countries even accept that Hizbullah is a terrorist organization.

OBVIOUSLY this force will not fight Hizbullah. But it will prevent Israel from attacking Hizbullah. And given that the force is to be mandated under a Chapter VII resolution, were Israel to take independent measures to defend itself, it would immediately become an outlaw state open to arms embargoes and other sanctions.

Moreover, the planned multinational force is supposed to facilitate the Lebanese army's deployment along the Lebanese border with Israel. This is supposed to be a good thing. Yet, since the outbreak of the war, the Lebanese army has been actively fighting with Hizbullah.

Its radars have been used to lock in Israeli targets for Hizbullah missile crews. It is paying pensions to the families of fallen Hizbullah fighters. On Sunday Lebanese media organs boasted that Lebanese soldiers shot at IDF helicopters in the Bekaa Valley. But to date, the US-led international community refuses to recognize the Lebanese army as a combatant, and similarly insists that the aim of the postwar settlement should be to strengthen both the Lebanese government that includes Hizbullah and the Lebanese army that fights by Hizbullah's side.

IN HER discussions with Israeli leaders, Rice has proposed that in the framework of a settlement of the current crisis, Israel give Mt. Dov on the Golan Heights to Lebanon. There has been almost no public debate about the reasonableness of the US position. Yet even the most superficial analysis makes it clear that such a move would be catastrophic for Israel's long-term viability.

Mt. Dov, which Hizbullah refers to as the Shaba Farms, is not and has never been Lebanese territory. In 2000, following Israel's withdrawal from Lebanon, the UN certified that Israel had removed itself from all Lebanese territory.

The UN further confirmed that Mt. Dov was territory Israel wrested from Syria during the course of the 1967 Six Day War. The UN stated that the fate of the territory would be determined in the course of negotiations toward a peace treaty between Israel and Syria.

Hizbullah cut the Lebanese territorial claim to Mt. Dov out of whole cloth as a pretext for continuing its war against Israel after Israel left Lebanon. Its claim that Mt. Dov is Lebanese territory has been rejected by the international community. Yet today, the US is prodding Israel to give Mt. Dov to Lebanon as a confidence-building gesture toward the Lebanese government, which of course supports Hizbullah's demand. By adopting this Hizbullah demand, the US is breaching the decades-old foundation of the Law of Nations, which stipulates that states cannot win territory from other states through armed aggression.

ADDITIONALLY, by supporting Hizbullah's demand, the US is in effect suing for a Hizbullah victory in this war. Hizbullah has never demanded Mt. Dov for itself. It demands the vast territory that connects the Syrian Golan to the Upper Galilee for Lebanon. And the Lebanese government, which the US seeks to strengthen, supports this Hizbullah demand just as it supports all of Hizbullah's demands. If Lebanon receives the territory, Hizbullah will be the clear victor in this war.

Moreover, by even suggesting that Israel consider giving Mt. Dov to Lebanon, the US is undermining the very notion that Israel has a right to recognized borders. If after Israel removed itself to the international border Lebanon can receive support for additional territorial claims against Israel, that means there is no line to which Israel can remove itself in the Golan, or in Jerusalem, or in Judea and Samaria or Gaza and safely assume that its borders will be recognized by the rest of the world.

In short, by backing Lebanese claims to Mt. Dov, the US is paving the way for future territorial claims for West Jerusalem, the Galilee, Haifa, indeed for all of Israel.

Israel will never be able to trust that any peace treaty it signs is final. An act of aggression by its enemies may pave the way for additional claims, which in the interests of strengthening the Palestinian, Egyptian, Jordanian, or Syrian governments the international community is liable to support.

IT WOULD seem that, in spite of themselves, both the US and the Israeli government have managed to maneuver themselves into diplomatic positions that undermine their own national interests. Somehow, between the US's early and misguided decision to ignore the Lebanese government's support and responsibility for Hizbullah and the Olmert government's clearly halfhearted prosecution of the war, both governments have gotten lost. The goals that now form the basis of their diplomatic agendas serve only to advance the interests of their enemies.

A clear break from the current path must be made immediately. Ahmadinejad is looking on and laughing.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

In his address to the Knesset last week, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert framed Israel's war in Lebanon as a war for "our right to be normal." His emphasis on our right to drink coffee led many to wonder if he understands the immensity of the threat we face as he curries favor with Israel's aging baby boomers.

As polls of the Arab and Muslim world's opinion of Israel make clear, The Jerusalem Post's Khaled Abu Toameh probably understated the magnitude of their desire to destroy Israel when he wrote on Thursday: "Throughout the Arab and Islamic world, hatred of Israel is so immense today that, if given the chance, tens of thousands of women and men would join Hamas and Hizbullah almost immediately."

The Arab world's desire to "wipe Israel off the map" is the result of their total immersion in an anti-Jewish, jihadist, genocidal world view through the indoctrination efforts of their state-run schools, mosques and media organs. In addition, their perception of Israel being on the retreat ever since it opened negotiations with the PLO in 1993 has convinced them it is possible to destroy Israel.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has made wiping Israel off the map the central goal of his administration and is the primary sponsor of Hizbullah and Hamas, says he will respond to the US and European demand that Iran cease its uranium enrichment activities, on August 22. It is assumed that Iran today is pushing forward with its enrichment program. It is now accepted that Iran is collaborating with North Korea in its program to develop intercontinental ballistic missiles.

And so it may well be that on August 22 Ahmadinejad will announce that Iran has successfully completed the nuclear fuel cycle and so has the ability to independently destroy Israel, and to attack its Arab neighbors, Europe and the US with nuclear weapons. Such an announcement would push the Middle East into a tailspin.

This is the context in which Israel now finds itself at war with Iran's proxies. Both the Israeli people and Israel's allies must understand that the clock is ticking. Come what may, Israel must win this war.

Given the gravity of the hour, after two and a half increasingly bloody weeks of war, we Israelis must keep our heads and coldly assess where we stand: our resources; our stumbling blocks; and our mistakes. In short, we must assess the good, the bad and the ugly in our campaign in Lebanon.

The good

Our major ace in the hole is the unprecedented support we are receiving from America. US support for Israel stems from clear strategic considerations and, as a result, it is fairly stable. The Americans understand well just how dangerous Hizbullah and the Iranian-Syrian-Hizbullah axis are. If Israel loses this war, chances are the US will be unable to hold on in Iraq, where the same forces are fuelling the violence.

The fact of the matter is that in Lebanon, the jihad against the US and its allies has openly merged with the jihad against Israel. Because it understands that our fortunes are directly linked, the US is blocking all attempts by the UN, Arab governments and the EU to bring about an immediate cease-fire, understanding that doing so would be perceived as an Israeli defeat and a Hizbullah victory.

Due in large part to Hizbullah's successful psychological warfare against Israel, we seem to be ignoring the distress signals that our enemies are emitting. On Tuesday, Syria declared its interest in reaching a cease-fire. Iran joined the call on Wednesday. In his speech Tuesday night, Hizbullah chief Hassan Nasrallah for the first time felt the need to justify his decision to attack Israel to the Lebanese people. Moreover, Nasrallah reduced his definition of victory from defeating Israel to ensuring Hizbullah's survival. These and other statements by Lebanese politicians indicate that Israel is causing Hizbullah significant pain.

Finally, there is the strength of the Israeli people. The fact that in the past week alone nearly 1,000 new olim have arrived from the US and France is a testament to the strength of our nation. That tens of thousands of families in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Judea and Samaria, and the Negev are taking in refugees from the North is proof that in spite of our enemies' best efforts, the will of our people remains steady.

The bad

Israel's strengths are formidable. Yet Israel also suffers from weaknesses that must be immediately addressed. First, although the Olmert government properly defined the goal of the campaign in Lebanon as dismantling Hizbullah, it will not take the necessary steps to achieve that vital goal. The government's stubborn refusal to commit a sufficient number of forces to Lebanon to enable the IDF to achieve victory is inexcusable.

The government's plan for prosecuting the war aimed at Hizbullah's dismantlement places the IAF as the main component of the campaign. The IAF is supposed to be assisted by limited ground operations that should not rise above the brigade level. Although this plan's logic fell apart a week ago when it became clear that the IAF bombings had not done enough to damage Hizbullah's war waging capabilities and its ability to rain down 100 rockets and missiles a day on northern Israel, the government maintains its devotion to the plan because it is unwilling to admit that its entire political vision for the country is based on lies.

The Olmert government insists that Israel can separate itself from terror and jihad and live a "normal life" by building a big fence and hiding behind it. The government knows that nothing will prove to the public the emptiness of its political rhetoric better than a serious ground invasion of southern Lebanon. And so, rather than shed its hallucinatory agenda, it clings to it with all the fervor of a Communist true-believer in Stalin's gulag.

While our political leadership insists on paralyzing the campaign in favor of its narrow political and ideological interests, for its own reasons the IDF General Staff is demonstrating a dangerous unwillingness to accept that its doctrine of an aerial war has failed.

The General Staff's concept of a campaign based predominantly on aerial bombing is a recap of the operational logic that guided the IDF in its earlier (failed) campaigns in south Lebanon, namely Operations Accountability (1993) and Grapes of Wrath (1996).

The logic of both operations was to "send a message" to Hizbullah and the Lebanese government not to mess with Israel. That message was to be sent by aerial and artillery bombardments of Hizbullah infrastructures and of Lebanese infrastructures that served Hizbullah. Today, since Israel's goal is to destroy Hizbullah as a fighting force rather than deter it, "sending messages" should not be the IDF's concern. Destroying Hizbullah as a fighting force requires more than an infantry battalion here and an infantry battalion there. It requires 100 tanks entering southern Lebanon to take control of the territory and destroy Hizbullah's arsenal and to kill or capture its fighters.

The ugly

The government's refusal to acknowledge that it cannot win a war through half-measures and the General Staff's insistence on believing, contrary to all evidence, that the IAF can win this war almost on its own have caused the IDF to commit avoidable tactical failures that if left uncorrected are liable to entrap us on a strategic level.

The battles in Bint Jbail this week were the result of a mistaken operational concept. IDF generals constantly refer to Hizbullah fighters as "terrorists." While this is a reasonable distinction for politicians, it is fatal for those actually waging war. It is true that Hizbullah is a terrorist organization. But on the ground in Lebanon, it has organized itself as a near-conventional force that uses terror and guerrilla warfare tactics along with standard flanking maneuvers and ambushes.

When military commanders define the enemy as "terrorists" rather than as "fighters" they engender a perception of Hizbullah as an enemy little different from Fatah or Hamas. The result of this intellectual indolence is unwillingness on the part of IDF commanders to recognize the magnitude and quality of the military challenge they face and to take appropriate measures to surmount it.

When an army knows it is fighting a well trained opposition, its commanders remember to activate and man the electronic warfare defensive systems on their missile boats.

When an army fights against a conventional foe that has trained continuously for this exact war in earnest for the past six years and periodically for the past 24 years, its spokesmen and commanders do not make empty, unverifiable claims of victory. They do not make bombastic statements claiming to have destroyed 50 percent of the opposing force's infrastructures by aerial bombardment after two days and argue that ground forces are unimportant.

When an army fights an army, it does not attempt to cordon off an entire village with a single infantry battalion and it does not claim to have cordoned off a village when it has only surrounded it from 270 degrees.

As an increasing number of voices in and out of the IDF claim, it is possible that the IDF commanders who insist on fighting in Lebanon with force levels and methods bettered suited to Gaza will have to be replaced. Galilee Division Commander Brig.-Gen. Gal Hirsch, OC Northern Command Maj.-Gen. Udi Adam, IDF Spokeswoman Brig.-Gen. Miri Regev and Chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. Dan Halutz may not be capable of successfully performing their duties.

At the same time, even ideal commanders would have difficulty achieving victory when the Israeli government, in the interest of its narrow and misguided political agenda, is denying the IDF the resources needed for victory. The security cabinet's decision Thursday afternoon to reject the IDF's request to intensify the ground campaign and to call up more reserve units is nothing less than a gift to Hizbullah - a gift the IDF will be hard pressed to take back no matter who its commanders are.

Wednesday, Olmert said that the war will last as long as the public supports it. It is debatable whether it is proper for a premier who is leading his nation in a war for survival to make such a statement. But since he has placed the decision in our hands, we the Israeli people must make clear our demand for victory.

A people that demands and requires victory cannot be deterred by obstacles placed in its path. With Israel's international, social, economic and strategic resources, it has the ability to win this war. And we have our secret weapon: the IDF.

As the soldiers and officers of Battalion 51 of the Golani Brigade demonstrated at that horrible battlefield of Bint Jbail Wednesday, our soldiers are simply extraordinary. Their heroism under fire takes your breath away. Without a doubt, it is the combination of its spirit and its hardware that make the IDF a world class fighting force.

A nation that sends its best sons into battle to defend its liberty and its very survival has the right and the duty to require its government to act responsibly and to discard hallucinatory ideological agendas before they lead us to yet another disaster. 

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

Today US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will meet with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. The press reports leading up to their meeting were full of details about how European armies wish to send their forces to Lebanon. The reports also noted that Israel will be expected to surrender the Shaba Farms on Mount Dov to Lebanon in exchange for promises of security.

For their part, Israeli leaders from Olmert to Defense Minister Amir Peretz to Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni have been demonstrating a disturbing lack of resolve. Their statements expose a consistent watering down of the goal of the IDF's mission in Lebanon - from destroying Hizbullah as a fighting force to weakening it as a fighting force and "paving the way for a diplomatic settlement" that will apparently include Hizbullah.

On the other hand, other voices make clear that despite the best wishes of the government and the Israeli left-wing intelligentsia, it is far from clear that the IDF will end its operations without victory achieved.

For instance, writing in The Sunday Times, former Conservative MP Michael Portillo told his British countrymen that their hostility for Israel and the US aside, "The bloody truth is that Israel's war is our war." Portillo went on to argue that given the threat that Iran and Hizbullah pose to Britain itself, "for us to turn against Israel and America would be perverse and potentially suicidal."

STRENGTHENING the view that opposition to war against Iran and its proxies is suicidal, it was reported Sunday that Bulgarian border guards along their border with Romania had intercepted a British truck filled with radioactive materials for building a so-called dirty bomb. The components, which included dangerous quantities of radioactive caesium 137 and americium-beryllium, were stored in 10 lead-lined boxes addressed to the Iranian Ministry of Defense.

According to the Daily Mail, this was the second time in less than a year that a British shipment of nuclear materials had been stopped by Bulgarian border guards. Last August, Bulgaria stopped a shipment of zirconium silicate, which can be used as a component of a nuclear warhead, at its border with Turkey en route to Iran.

THE CURRENT campaign in northern Israel and Lebanon has brought into sharp focus the major pathologies and strengths of the West in fighting the Iranian-led jihadist axis. The British government's push for a cease-fire, together with the enthusiasm of the UN and France for sending their own troops to Lebanon to protect the Lebanese from the "disproportionate" Israelis; the demand of Israel's radical Left that a deal be made with Syria; and the demands of leftist ideologues in the US that an artificial deadline be set for the conclusion of Israel's operations in Lebanon all point to a similar pathology.

As a group, the ideological Left rejects the notion of victory in war for Western forces (although it is fine for jihadists); rejects the notion that there are enemies that are impossible to appease; and specifically rejects the idea that Israel has a right to defend itself against its enemies, let alone vanquish its foes.

LET US BE clear. The European foreign ministers and UN envoys who are tripping over one another on their way to Jerusalem are the same European foreign ministers and UN officials who brought about the misguided American decision to throw out 27 years of US practice and officially engage the mullahs in Teheran.

That is, the same European governments now jockeying for a place in an international force that will protect Hizbullah from destruction are the ones who have been stymieing American attempts to take concerted action against Iran's nuclear weapons programs for the past three years.

This is the pathology of the West. For if one takes the ideology of appeasing unappeasable foes to its logical conclusion, appeasing states will eventually join forces with their enemies against themselves, or, as Portillo put it, they will become suicidal.

AND SO, Britain's Department of Trade and Industry can give export licenses to dirty bomb components en route to Iran. And so American columnists named Cohen can tell the world that Israel's existence is a mistake. And so, Javier Solana, the EU's foreign policy chief, can refuse to acknowledge that Hizbullah is an Iranian-run terrorist organization dedicated to Islamic world domination even as its supporters throughout Europe hold mass demonstrations where they hold signs calling for Europe's destruction at the hands of Hizbullah and Iran in the name of Islam.

And so Yossi Beilin can say that Israel doesn't need to worry about the repercussions of standing down while a fifth of its population sits in bomb shelters, because Hizbullah is just a measly terrorist organization that poses no real threat to the country.

On the other hand, events of the past two weeks have also shown some of the West's greatest strengths in fighting the war so many of its powerful citizens and statesmen refuse to acknowledge.

First of all, the IDF has discarded its dangerous delusions that it will be possible to win this war by remote control. Today it fights like an army that knows it is both at war, and at war with an enemy that needs to be destroyed, whatever the price may be.

SEVERAL supporters of Israel were quick to write off the IDF in the wake of unsupported statements by Chief of General Staff Dan Halutz and his generals last week, in which they announced - based perhaps on the tonnage of ordnance IAF jets dropped on Lebanon - that Israel had destroyed up to fifty percent of Hizbullah's capacities.

"Israel is losing this war," these commentators moaned, not recognizing that the IDF is capable of learning from its mistakes. "Israel's intelligence services fell asleep on their watch," it was said.

But these eagerly defeatist voices do not recognize that the failure was not one of intelligence, but of politics. Mesmerized by the dovish ideologies propounded by three consecutive governments, it took the General Staff a week to understand that Israel was at war.

BUT NOW they know. And now the IDF is fighting well, boldly and effectively on the ground. Halutz initiated a rolling mobilization of the reserves, and the IAF has pulled back to its proper supportive role.

As well, it is impossible not to recognize the Bush administration's centrality in the current campaign. Not only is the US rearming the IAF with bunker buster bombs, it is making certain that its own public and the international community recognize that what is at stake here is far greater than the well-being of Israel's citizens.

As President George W. Bush has made clear, this is not just Israel's war. This is a campaign of the Iranian-led axis of jihad that seeks to dominate the entire free world. And echoing Bush are voices like Portillo's that are heard from Beirut to Sydney.

Moreover, by rising to the challenge Hizbullah, Syria and Iran have placed before it, the entire Israeli public is setting an example for its army, its government and the world to follow. Families in the North are stoically accepting the around-the-clock bombardments and standing strong in their demand for victory. Families in the rest of the country are opening their homes to thousands of refugees from Haifa and Nahariya and Tiberias.

As a friend put it the other day, "Halutz has no choice but to win. Israel is a country with five million chiefs of staff and they are all breathing down his neck."

FINALLY, the campaign in Lebanon is indeed the opening salvo of Iran's war against the free world. But this works both ways.

Iran and Hizbullah believe that the ferocity of the attacks against Israel will deter us all from taking action against Iran's nuclear facilities. But by giving the West the opportunity to fight it first in Lebanon, Teheran is providing the US, Israel and others with critical intelligence about its own installations. The subterranean bunkers in south Lebanon that IDF ground forces are now conquering were built by Iranian Revolutionary Guards units and designed by Iranian engineers - the same forces that conceived and constructed Iran's nuclear installations.

IN 1982, when Israel destroyed the Syrian Soviet-made and trained air force in Lebanon, it was able to provide the US with critical information about the Soviet Air Force and its air defense systems that enabled the US to outstrip both in a manner that all but sealed the fate of the evil empire. Today, by fighting Iran's proxy, Hizbullah, Israel is amassing information that will be critical for planning a successful strike against Iran's nuclear installations.

It is impossible to know what will actually be discussed today as Olmert meets with Rice. But it must be hoped that now that the US, Israel and other Western states are acknowledging the true nature of the war against Israel, they will abandon their suicidal demons and use this campaign as a stepping stone for neutralizing its chief instigator: The Islamic Republic of Iran.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

The week before Hizbullah launched the war in the north, Ha'aretz's chief diplomatic correspondent Aluf Benn wrote an ode to the Islamist movement. Entitled, "We need a Nasrallah," Benn romanticized the terror master, writing, "Nasrallah hates Israel and Zionism no less than do the Hamas leaders, [kidnapped IDF Cpl. Gilad] Shalit's kidnappers and the Kassam [rocket] squads. But as opposed to them - he has authority and responsibility, and therefore his behavior is rational and reasonably predictable."

Benn continued, "The moment Hizbullah took control over... south [Lebanon] and armed itself with thousands of Katyushas and other rockets, a stable balance of deterrence was created on both sides of the border."

On Thursday, Benn wrote a follow-up column excusing his own blindness by noting that "the IDF, the intelligence services and the government, which have at their disposal much better sources of information than mine, thought the same" of Nasrallah in the days before his Iranian bosses ordered him to war.

Benn's strategic befuddlement is noteworthy not merely because of what it says about the quality of analysis he provides to his readers, but also because it makes clear that there is a gaping chasm between the perceptions of reality shared by a disconcertingly large and influential segment of Israel's governing elite and reality itself.

Happily, today Benn and his like-minded colleagues in the IDF, the intelligence services and the government are no longer being looked to for guidance by the Bush White House. While the Israeli elites, including Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and her colleagues in the government, still speak of a need for Israel to seek some sort of accommodation with Hizbullah, its terrorist allies in the Palestinian Authority and Syria, as well as with the terror apologists in the EU and UN, America has stopped listening.

US President George W. Bush, his press secretary Tony Snow, US Ambassador to the UN John Bolton and both houses of the US Congress have made it clear over the past week of war that America is unwilling to continue to abide by the view that it is possible to deter terrorists.

As Snow put it in a press briefing on Tuesday, "What we want is... the cessation of violence in a manner that is consistent with stability, peace, democracy in Lebanon, and also an end to terror. A cease-fire that would leave the status quo ante intact is absolutely unacceptable. A cease-fire that would leave intact a terrorist infrastructure is unacceptable. So what we're trying to do is work as best we can toward a cease-fire that is going to create not only the conditions, but the institutions for peace and democracy in the region."

Snow explained that from the administration's perspective, a cease-fire that left Hizbullah intact would effectively be rewarding it for its criminal behavior. In his words, "You do not want to engage in a cease-fire... when you say to the Israelis, you guys just stop firing, when you have Hizbullah saying, 'We're going to wage total war,' because Hizbullah would read that as vindication of its tactics."

It is important to remember that "the status quo ante" was a situation where Hizbullah and its state sponsors Iran and Syria pocketed Israel's ill-advised territorial and political concessions and used them to build up not only a massive arsenal of missiles, but also a complex underground bunker system that Israeli ground forces are only beginning to uncover; and a formidable, well trained paramilitary force replete with Iranian Revolutionary Guard officers as trainers and commanders. This is the threat that developed under the status quo ante, and the declared goal of Israel's current campaign in Lebanon is to eliminate this threat.

Assuming that Israel is able to achieve its military objectives, what should a cease-fire that does not revert to the status quo ante look like? What should be its guiding assumptions?

Any Israeli strategy directed toward building military and political stability has to be based on two components: decisive and continuous fighting against terrorist and other irregular forces; and the development of a system of deterrence directed against hostile regional actors, whose aim will be to compel them to refrain from interfering in the Israeli-Lebanese-Palestinian area of operations.

In the case of Lebanon, this means that the Lebanese and Syrian governments must be compelled to accept that, in accordance with UN Security Council Resolution 1559 and the requirements of Israel's national security, Hizbullah and all other irregular forces must remain perpetually disarmed.

To this end, during the current military campaign, Israel must make clear to both governments that they will pay an enormous price if they enable the reconstitution of Hizbullah. And that price must be clear: Israel will bring down both governments if they do not ensure that in the aftermath of the current campaign, Hizbullah remains disarmed.

In this vein, Israel must not accept an international force in south Lebanon. The lesson of our long and bitter experience with international forces, from UNIFIL in Lebanon to the MFO in Sinai, is clear: The only force willing and able to defend Israel is the IDF.

So too, Israel must end its practice of granting immunity to Syrian way-stations that arm Hizbullah as well as Syrian bases of Hamas and other terror groups.

It is quite reasonable to expect that in the future, the Israel-Lebanon border will remain open for one type of traffic. IDF forces will enter Lebanon any time there are signs that Hizbullah and other hostile forces attempt to build a presence anywhere near the border.

WHILE ATTENTION is now riveted on events in Lebanon, it is important to keep in mind that Lebanon is merely one of three fronts from which Israel is being attacked. After all, Hizbullah joined the fray last week to come to the aid of its ally and fellow Iranian proxy, the Palestinian Authority.

The PA is led by a formal alliance between the Fatah and Hamas terror organizations. That alliance was cemented both by last month's Fatah-Hamas cross-border operation that led to the capture of Cpl. Shalit, and by the signing of the so-called "Prisoners' Document" by Fatah leader and PA President Mahmoud Abbas and Hamas leader and PA Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh.

As Mort Zuckerman noted this week in US News and World Report, the joint signing of that document "means that both Hamas and Fatah are equally committed to Israel's annihilation. Now that Fatah is seeking to outflank Hamas on the side of radicalism, it is no surprise that Israelis feel they do not have a partner for peace. Abbas's willingness to sign it should open the eyes of the world to the fact that he is no moderate and no potential peacemaker."

In a recent training video broadcast on Al-Jazeera, Hamas boasted that like Hizbullah in Lebanon, it has exploited Israel's land giveaway in Gaza to establish a military force of some 15,000 soldiers in Gaza alone. Moreover, events of the past week are a stark indicator that there is no difference between Hizbullah control of south Lebanon and PA control of Gaza and sections of Judea and Samaria.

Since the northern campaign began last Wednesday, the PA has organized daily mass marches in both Ramallah and Gaza in support of Hizbullah. Members of PA militias, from both Fatah and Hamas, have demanded that Arab League states join the war against Israel. Commanders from the PA militias have openly admitted their desire to join Hizbullah in attacking Israel. This week, two suicide bombers from Judea and Samaria attempted to carry out attacks in Jerusalem and in the Sharon region, and Israeli troops have been engaged in pitched battles with terror forces in Nablus.

Nearly every day another militia is founded. Last week Fatah announced the establishment of a force of female suicide bombers in Judea and Samaria and this week the Popular Resistance Committees - a terror consortium that includes personnel from PA militias, Fatah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad - displayed its female suicide bomber unit in Gaza. The ladies marched through the streets with their rifles and declared their intention to join the forces of Global Jihad.

As a spokesman in that Hamas training video explained, Hamas will continue to fight "Until the liberation of Palestine, and until the message 'There is no God but Allah, and Muhammad is His Messenger' reaches the entire world."

The activities of all factions in the PA show that, as is the case in Lebanon, it would be impossible to achieve stability in Gaza, Judea and Samaria through deterrence. The only way to stabilize these fronts is to conduct a military campaign aimed at disarming all the terror groups and all 17 PA militias. That is, Israel must conduct a campaign in Gaza and Judea and Samaria that will disarm the Palestinian Authority in its entirety.

Once this operation is complete, Israel will have to establish buffer zones in Gaza and along its borders with Egypt, and Israel that will prevent the Palestinians from either rearming or attacking Israel.

In Judea and Samaria, Israel should reassert complete security control over and apply Israeli law to the large settlement blocs and the Jordan Valley, based on Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's stated intention to act in accordance with the Israeli consensus that these areas should remain under Israeli control in perpetuity.

Israel's steps in Gaza and in Judea and Samaria should be accompanied by a declaration of intent according to which Israel will freeze the political status of Gaza and the remaining sections of Judea and Samaria for 10 years. This declaration would serve two purposes. First, it would recognize the fact that today, Palestinian society is unwilling to live at peace with Israel.

Second, it gives the Palestinians sufficient time to determine whether or not they wish to reform themselves and to act on that decision. If at the end of the decade the Palestinians have in fact undergone a cultural transformation, Israel would be willing to recognize a demilitarized, democratic and anti-terrorist Palestinian state in Gaza. It would also be willing to conduct negotiations with that state and other relevant parties regarding the future status of the Palestinian areas in Judea and Samaria.

AN ISRAELI strategy aimed at stabilizing the security and political situation in Lebanon, Gaza, and Judea and Samaria is essential to enable the international community to contend with the greatest threat to global security: Iran's nuclear weapons program. As was evidenced by last weekend's meeting of the G-8 in Russia, through its proxies' attacks against Israel, Iran has been able to distract the global leaders from its nuclear program.

As if to emphasize the danger his regime poses, in a speech broadcast on Iranian television on Tuesday, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said, "The final point of liberal civilization is the false and corrupt state that has occupied Jerusalem. That's the bottom line. That's what all those who talk about liberalism and support it have in common."

Ahmadinejad went on to threaten "all those who talk about liberalism and support it," saying, "If this volcano [of Muslim pride] erupts - and we are on the brink of eruption... and if this ocean rages, its waves will not be limited to the region."

The challenge that Israel is now presented with on the battlefield is great. But if Israel stands strong with US support and meets this challenge, it will have the opportunity to strike out in a new strategic direction that holds a realistic possibility of stabilizing the security situation in a way that increases the chances for a peaceful future for the region and for the world as a whole.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

Northern Israel is a vacationer's paradise. From hiking trails to walk on, to rivers to swim in, to luxury hotels to bask in, to mystical sites to seek inspiration from, it has something for everyone.

This is why, when last week I took my first vacation in four years, I made my way to the North.

As Hizbullah attacked an IDF patrol on the Lebanese border Wednesday morning and so opened its newest round of war, I was standing at the fortress of Megiddo looking at the ruins of civilizations and their wars for this land stretching back 5,000 years.

Thursday found me in Nahariya walking on a battlefield of the current war: the street where two hours earlier Monica Seidman was killed by a Katyusha while sitting on her balcony drinking her morning coffee.

After I left Nahariya with its residents huddled in bomb shelters and stairwells of apartment buildings, I headed west along the border highway to Kiryat Shemona. As I drove along the empty, beautiful, mountain road and gazed at the rocket smoke buffeting upwards from Mt. Meron, Safed, and Rosh Pinna below me, commentators on the radio kept asking, "Why is Hizbullah attacking Israel now?" Former generals spoke of the need for Israel to restore our deterrence against Hizbullah.

FOR SIX years, since Ehud Barak surrendered to the demands of the radical, EU-funded Israeli Left and withdrew IDF forces from southern Lebanon in May 2000, Israel stood by and did nothing as Hizbullah built up its massive arsenal of rockets and missiles. The IDF did nothing as Iran effectively set up shop along the border.

All day Thursday Lebanese radio stations played military marches. Announcers made repeated statements invoking Allah, Lebanon, mujahadin and jihad. Clearly, they were thrilled that the long anticipated war had begun.

For six years Israel was deterred by Hizbullah. The knowledge that the Iranian proxy has missiles capable of hitting Haifa and Hadera sufficed to convince three successive governments to ignore or appease repeated Hizbullah provocations while praying that Hizbullah would wait for the next government to start its war.

Now that Hizbullah has started the war, can it be deterred from continuing to attack Israel? What can Israel do now, as more than one million Israelis live in areas that have already come under attack?

Hizbullah struck last week because Iran ordered it to attack. Immediately after the Iranian delegation rejected the European-American offer of all manner of goodies in exchange for a suspension of its uranium enrichment activities, they flew to Damascus and gave Hizbullah its marching orders.

Hizbullah is always ready to attack Israel. That is what it exists to do. As its leader Hassan Nasrallah makes clear every day, Hizbullah sees the destruction of Israel as a central battle in the global jihad. And jihad is all that matters to Hizbullah.

In this, Hizbullah is no different from Hamas. Hamas (and Fatah for that matter), defines itself by its goal of destroying Israel and conquering Jerusalem in the name of jihad. Both Hamas and Fatah have used all their resources to build up their political, social and military capabilities to fight Israel.

Because these groups exist only to destroy Israel and advance the cause of global jihad, they cannot be deterred. They have no interest other than war and there is nothing they are not willing to sacrifice in order to win. Since they cannot be deterred, the only thing that Israel can do is destroy their ability to fight by demolishing their military capabilities.

ALTHOUGH IT is impossible to deter Hizbullah, there are parties in the current conflict that can be deterred. Specifically, Israeli officials have rightly pointed their fingers at the Lebanese and Syrian governments as central enablers of Hizbullah. Although both governments are also Iranian proxies, unlike Hizbullah and Hamas, they have interests beyond the destruction of Israel and therefore, they can be deterred. To date, because Lebanon is weaker than Hizbullah, Iran and Syria, successive Lebanese governments have cooperated with Hizbullah rather than fight it.

The Lebanese army cannot disarm Hizbullah. It can however be deterred from assisting Hizbullah. If Israel is able to credibly assert to the Lebanese that IDF forces will not end their operations in Lebanon until Hizbullah is completely destroyed as a fighting force, then it can persuade the Lebanese government to stay out of the conflict and deploy its military along the border with Israel after the fighting is ended.

Syria too has interests unrelated to Israel. Bashar Assad wants to maintain his grip on power. Israel can weaken Syria's bond with Iran by threatening his regime. In the first instance, this should involve targeting Hamas headquarters and Hamas chief Khaled Mashal's home in Damascus.

By targeting Hamas in Syria, Israel would be making clear that national borders are not sacred for states that sponsor terrorism. If attacking Hamas in Damascus is not enough to make Assad recalibrate his national interests, then Israel should attack the headquarters of the regime's secret police as well as Syria's Scud missile bases and its chemical and biological weapons arsenals.

By destroying Hizbullah and peeling away its client states, Israel would be striking a serious blow at Iran which is directing the violence in Lebanon and Gaza as well as in Judea and Samaria and Iraq.
Iran has made destroying Israel a central plank on its agenda because by attacking the hated Jews, Iran is successfully raising its stature as the leader of the Muslim world. By leading the war against Israel, Iran has rendered itself immune to attacks from Arab states like Saudi Arabia and Egypt that, while objecting to Iran's power grab, cannot condemn aggression against the same Israel they have indoctrinated their people to despise.

Iran's proxy war against Israel follows the same strategy as its proxy war against the US in Iraq. In both cases its goal is to defeat its enemies through a prolonged war of attrition that will defeat the will of the Israeli and American people to fight to victory.

GIVEN THE diverse interests of all the parties involved in the current war against Israel, the Olmert government rightly defined Israel's objectives as destroying Hizbullah as a fighting force and compelling the Lebanese army to deploy along the border with Israel after Hizbullah is routed.

But is the Olmert government capable of achieving its stated objectives?

Disturbingly, several indicators lead to the conclusion that to the contrary, the government does not have the will to accomplish its declared goals. First, by Sunday evening, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was signaling that he was ready to start negotiating a cease-fire through UN or EU intermediaries.

Since both the UN and the EU are organizations dedicated to ensuring the survival of organizations like Hizbullah and Hamas, Olmert's willingness to use these groups as intermediaries exposes his willingness to stop far short of destroying Hizbullah.

Second, Olmert's strategy in the south against Hamas and Fatah in Gaza shows that he does not understand that Israel's terrorist adversaries are by their nature undeterrable. When Saturday Palestinian forces blew a hole in the wall separating Gaza from Egypt and so enabled hundreds of terrorist to pour across the border, they made quite clear that they have not been impressed by Israel's military actions in Gaza. Indeed, Israel's continued support for Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas in spite of his group's intense collaboration with Hamas both in the guerrilla raid that led to Cpl. Gilad Shalit's capture, and in the rocket offensive against the Western Negev is a clear indication that Israel is not serious about destroying its terrorist enemies.

Third, the Olmert government's continued insistence on going forward with its plan to retreat from Judea and Samaria and partition Jerusalem indicates that the premier has not accepted the now obvious fact that Israeli withdrawals strengthen our enemies. Since the central policy of the government contradicts its stated objective of denying operating bases to terrorists, it is difficult to see how the government will muster the necessary enthusiasm to see its campaign in Lebanon to a successful conclusion.

FINALLY, THE fact that the government has limited the IDF campaign in Lebanon to aerial bombardment indicates that it is not willing to take the necessary actions to secure the country from Iranian-Hizbullah attacks. The IDF campaign recalls the NATO bombing campaign against Kosovo and Serbia in 1999. Yet the situation on the ground in Lebanon is more analogous to the situation in Afghanistan in 2001. It was possible to limit the campaign in Kosovo to aerial bombardment because the Serbian government was deterrable. Yet, like the Taliban and al-Qaida in Afghanistan, Hizbullah is not open to persuasion and so must be destroyed utterly. This can only be accomplished with ground forces.

As my interrupted vacation proved, by retreating from Lebanon and Gaza, Israel effectively surrendered the initiative for waging war to its enemies. Israelis no longer control when war comes to us. It is therefore imperative that the Olmert government understand that retreat is not an option. Otherwise, whether at work or at play, at home or on the town, we will all be sitting ducks. 

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's secret visit to Sderot Tuesday morning was met with snorts of disgusted laughter. When the prime minister of Israel treats a visit to a city in Israel as a military secret on the order of an American presidential visit to Baghdad, the message he sends is clear: Israel's withdrawal from Gaza last summer was a national security disaster - and he knows it.

Olmert said he hid his plan to visit Sderot because he didn't want to give the Palestinian Authority a special reason to launch rockets against the city. That statement, like the government's decision to retake the destroyed communities of Dugit, Elei Sinai and Nisanit in a bid to halt the Palestinian rocket offensive, is a clear admission that the IDF is incapable of defending southern Israel from outside the Gaza Strip.

That is, it is a clear admission that the government lied last year when it said the IDF was in Gaza just to "protect the settlers." If anything, the Gaza settlers, by providing a friendly base of operations, protected the IDF. And just as opponents of the retreat warned, the removal of both endangered Israel's national security.

So now that the consequences of last year's retreat are clear, how is the Olmert government defending its goal of compounding the failure 20-fold in Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem?

The government's line is that the withdrawal from Gaza wasn't supposed to make Israel more secure, and therefore the deterioration of the security situation in the South doesn't mean that the withdrawal was a strategic blunder.

As Yonatan Bassi, the outgoing head of the government's so-called Disengagement Authority, explained, "From a security point of view, I never thought things were going to be better" after Israel left Gaza. In an interview with The Jerusalem Post on Thursday, Bassi claimed that the retreat was important for strengthening Israeli democracy, which is "better... now than it was a year ago."

Amplifying Bassi's line are government ministers who claim that what is happening in Gaza is irrelevant to the government's plan to retreat from Judea and Samaria and to partition Jerusalem. Internal Security Minister Avi Dichter explains that the failure of the withdrawal from Gaza is immaterial to Judea and Samaria because there the IDF will remain in place.

According to Dichter, all the government wants to do is to orchestrate mass expulsions of Israeli citizens from their homes and to destroy their communities. The IDF, he promised in an interview Thursday with Ha'aretz, will stay where it is. The removal of the Israelis, Dichter says, will be undertaken to strengthen Israel's demographic balance and to enhance Israeli democracy.

Dichter's assumption that it is possible to expel tens of thousands of Israelis from their homes and to destroy their communities while leaving the IDF deployments in the areas untouched is delusional. The Israeli Left, on whose support the government depends for survival, and the Europeans, on whom the Israeli Left depends for survival, will not back the retention of IDF forces in Judea and Samaria in the wake of the planned mass expulsions.

BUT LEAVING aside the military consequences of the government's plans for Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem, the question arises: Is the government working to enhance Israel's demographic stature and strengthen its democratic system?

The Olmert government bases its claim that Israel's demographic standing is in need of immediate enhancement on a census carried out by the Palestinian Authority in 1997. That census claims there is near numerical parity between the Arab and Jewish populations west of the Jordan River.

Yet a study published in January 2005 by a group of independent American and Israeli researchers who examined the PA population data proved that that data was fraudulent. The researchers, who presented their findings to the government and the Knesset, showed that the PA's numbers were inflated by some 50 percent, or up to 1.5 million people.

After the study was published, Prof. Arnon Sofer - Israel's loudest demographic alarmist - quietly reduced his Palestinian population data by one million. Last month, in an interview with Hadassah magazine, Prof. Sergio Della Pergula, Sofer's colleague, reduced his Palestinian population estimate by some 900,000.

So today, Israel's two most prominent demographic sirens admit that, far from approaching numerical parity, Jews make up approximately two-thirds of the population of Israel, Judea and Samaria.

The government may well believe that a two-thirds majority is not enough. But expelling up to 100,000 Jews from Judea and Samaria and partitioning Jerusalem will not add one Jew or detract one Arab from Israel's population rolls.

The fact of the matter is that if the government was truly concerned about Israel's demographic balance, it would be working tirelessly to bring every possible Jew to Israel. Yet, not only is the government not doing this, it is subverting the rule of law to prevent Jews from coming here.

Last month, Immigration Minister Ze'ev Boim broke the law in order to block the aliya of 218 Jews from India who have been waiting, suitcases packed, for nine months to come. These Jews, members of the Bnei Menashe community, underwent conversion under the auspices of Israel's Rabbinate nine months ago. As Michael Freund related in Thursday's Post, the community's more than 7,000 members were recognized as "descendents of the Jewish people" by Sephardi Chief Rabbi Shlomo Amar in March 2005.

One thousand community members, fully converted, are already living in Israel. All the rest, including the 218 who have completed the conversion process, want to come. But rather than helping to facilitate the aliya of the members of one of the 10 Lost Tribes who after nearly 2,800 years miraculously found their way back to their people, the government of Israel prefers to make a mockery of the rule of law.

Boim claims that he decided to violate the Law of Return and block the aliya of the 218, whose status as Jews is not in dispute, in order to consider how to best deal with the Bnei Menashe as a group. And how is the government now dealing with Bnei Menashe as a group? By freezing all of their conversion activities until further notice.

In a similar vein, today some 20,000 members of the Falash Mura community in Ethiopia are living in a refugee camp in Addis Ababa, waiting to make aliya. The conditions in their camp are reportedly unspeakable. These same Falash Mura have relatives in Israel who have been waiting for 15 years to be reunited with them.

In January 2005, the government decided to double the monthly quota of Falash Mura allowed to enter Israel, from 300 to 600. It then proceeded to do nothing. In September 2005, camp residents opened a hunger strike in hopes of forcing the government to implement its own decision, but to no avail.

Last month, the ministerial committee charged with handling the Falash Mura canceled the 2005 decision. Committee chairman Interior Minister Roni Bar-On justified the move by claiming that Israel lacked the money to bring them and that even if Israel had the funds, the Falash Mura would cause social problems once here.

No one seems to have thought of asking the Falash Mura whether they would prefer to come to Israel and forgo welfare assistance or remain in the camp in sub-Saharan Africa. Moreover, Diaspora Jewry has already raised the money to bring 600 Falash Mura a month to Israel. The government simply refuses to use it.

Then there is the government's discriminatory policy towards New York's Yeshiva University. A year ago, it came to light that the government does not recognize bachelors degrees from YU. As a result, graduates of the Orthodox university's undergraduate program who live in Israel and work in government jobs are paid as if they only graduated from high school, even if they went on to receive advanced degrees and now work as heart surgeons in government hospitals.

A year ago, the Education Ministry promised to end this discriminatory practice. Yet the government has done nothing.

As Richard Joel, president of YU, put it to New York's Jewish Week, "On the one hand, Israel is saying we want everybody to make aliya and build the state, and on the other hand it is actively discouraging people from thinking that way by engaging in outrageous minutia. We all spend such energies encouraging people to make aliya, we can't have the State of Israel fighting us."
 

THE GOVERNMENT'S behavior indicates that it does not give a hoot about demography. But what about strengthening Israeli democracy? Is strengthening Israeli democracy an aim of the Olmert government?

Last month the government submitted to the Knesset a bill to change the sections of the criminal code relating to the crime of incitement. In the bill's explanatory notes, the government claims that there is a need to broaden the scope of the statute to "prevent the 'pollution' of the public debate." The government also claims that freedom of speech must be constricted "to prevent an atmosphere that threatens the members of society and its leaders [and so prevents] them from forming their views and expressing them freely."

Dr. Avi Bell, a constitutional law expert from Bar-Ilan University's Law School, explains that the explanatory note reveals the amendment's anti-liberal intentions. "Rather than adopting the liberal assumption that people should be free to do whatever they want unless there is a compelling reason for the government to abridge their freedom, it adopts the anti-liberal assumption that people are free only to do what the government permits them to do, and, in this case, the government should not permit them to speak in a way that produces a 'violent' and 'polluted' public discourse." 

The same anti-liberal tendencies are evident in a bill the government pushed through a first reading in Knesset on Wednesday that would make it illegal to publish opinion polls in the three weeks leading up to national elections. Here too, the government's claim to champion democracy is undermined by its actions. Indeed, its actions empty the term "democracy" of all meaningful content.

The government's illiberal tendencies were similarly exposed by its decision this past month to restrict the freedom of movement of more than 20 citizens in Judea and Samaria. According to the Attorney General's Office, although none of these people have been indicted on any charges, they are all "dangerous."

All these citizens live and work in Judea and Samaria, and so the consequence of the restraining orders issued against them is that they are prohibited from living in their homes, seeing their families or going to their jobs. While the government does not have enough evidence to arrest any of these supposedly dangerous people for any crime, by issuing the restraining orders, the police are free to arrest them if they dare to enter their own homes.

No self-respecting liberal democracy would accept this sort of behavior, yet in Israel, the government justifies its trampling of democratic norms in the name of democracy.

An Israeli government that was interested in strengthening Israel's Jewish majority and its democratic system would be making use of the ample and readily available opportunities for doing both. Rather than doing so, the Olmert government is ignoring and indeed undermining these opportunities while, in the name of democracy and demographic stability, it is advancing a policy that will turn Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Netanya, Ra'anana, Kfar Saba, Afula, Hadera and Tiberias into frontline communities just like Sderot and Ashkelon.  

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

On Sunday, as Cpl. Gilad Shalit's terrorist captors in Gaza prepared their ultimatum, in Jerusalem, at the Mt. Herzl military cemetery a crowd stood quietly around a grave, bowed their heads and remembered one of the greatest heroes the State of Israel has produced.

The 30th memorial ceremony for Lt.-Col. Yonatan Netanyahu, who was killed on July 4, 1976 while commanding the raid that freed more than 100 hostages held in Entebbe by Palestinian and German terrorists, could not have come at a more significant moment. For Israel's Arab enemies, who today hold Cpl. Shalit, no doubt the decision to set July 4, 2006 as their deadline for Israeli surrender to their demands is motivated by their desire to wipe out for the world Yoni's legacy and that of the Entebbe raid he led.

The legacy of Entebbe for the world couldn't be clearer. The message of the raid is that nations must never give in to the demands of terrorists. Through their war crime of taking over the Air France jet, the terrorists declared war not only on Israel but on all who abide by the norms of human decency and value freedom. If Israel is brought to its knees 30 years later, it will send the message throughout the world that the barbarians are the victors after all.

While the Entebbe raid is vested with deep significance for the entire world, its significance in shaping Israel's national psyche has been deeper still. This was apparent on Sunday evening on Mt. Herzl. As speakers stood at the foot of his grave and one by one discussed the significance of Yoni's life and his death for Israelis today and for generations of Israelis to come, it was clear that Yoni - now immortal - is an embodiment of Israeli exceptionalism, Israeli morality, Israeli Judaism, the Israeli warrior ethos and the inherent justice of Zionism.

ADDRESSING THE mourners, Maj.-Gen. (res.) Yossi Ben-Hannan - whom Yoni rescued when Ben-Hannan was wounded and caught behind Syrian lines during the Yom Kippur War - discussed Yoni's legacy for Cpl. Shalit.

As he sits alone with his captors in Gaza, Ben-Hannan said that Shalit has hope. His hope is based on the knowledge - seared into the collective consciousness of our nation at Entebbe - that the IDF does not leave men behind. Yoni, Ben-Hanan noted, "is one of the foundations of this moral underpinning."

Yet, just as Yoni's memory and that of the heroic raid he led at Entebbe is one that Israel's enemies are desperate to blot out, so too in Israel's culture wars there are powerful forces vested in tearing down Yoni's memory and in dwarfing the significance of the Entebbe raid. Indeed, these forces, motivated by a mix of envy and politics, have been attacking Yoni for 20 years. The aim of his detractors is not dissimilar from that of Israel's enemies. His domestic foes also wish to weaken the power of Yoni's legacy and the legacy of Entebbe over Israel's national ethos. They too wish to make Israelis believe that we have no option other than to placate our enemies.

THE ASSAULT against Yoni has been led by Muki Betzer, who served as his deputy in the Sayeret Matcal reconnaissance unit. In 1986 Betzer gave a series of media interviews in which he argued that he, not Yoni had planned the raid at Entebbe. This claim gradually morphed into a full-scale attack on Yoni and his family for their work in memorializing him. Betzer claims that Yoni was not a hero but a failure and that the Entebbe raid succeeded in spite of Yoni rather than because of him. Indeed, according to Betzer, it was Betzer, not Yoni who saved the day.

Initially Betzer was reviled as a jealous pretender. His attacks against the Netanyahu family were seen as grotesque assaults on a bereaved family. Yet, over the years, the Israeli political and cultural Left adopted Betzer's revisionist history of the Entebbe raid and his criticisms of Yoni as a cause celebre.

Tearing down Yoni was seen as a way of breaking the morale of society and so of convincing the Israeli people that we have no option other than appeasement. By destroying what people like former education minister and Meretz leader Shulamit Aloni describe as the "sacred cows" of Israel's national ethos, the Left very publicly set out to culturally subvert Israeli society.

Betzer's assault on Yoni became increasingly acceptable in the early 1990s, when then prime minister Yitzhak Rabin recognized the PLO and began giving land to Yasser Arafat. In 1993 Avigdor Shahan published a revisionist history of Entebbe based on Betzer's attacks on Yoni. In 1994, the "alternative" theater festival in Afula awarded first prize to a play by Etgar Karat that attacked Yoni's brothers Iddo and Binyamin for their work chronicling Yoni's life. Karat's below the belt assault included obscene insinuations regarding Yoni's masculinity.

FOR TWENTY years, in keeping with the tradition of secrecy that is the mark of their covert unit, Yoni's soldiers refused to weigh in on the issue. Unfortunately, Betzer used their reticence as cover for his increasingly sharp attacks. As the 30th anniversary of the Entebbe raid approached, Betzer launched an all-out assault against his martyred commander.

On June 16, Amir Oren in Haaretz published an article based on interviews with Betzer. Oren concluded, "The sad truth, which Netanyahu's commanders and comrades first tried to hide, is that his contribution to the raid was between marginal and negative."

This libelous attack on Yoni, together with Oren's aggrandizement of Betzer, caused Yoni's soldiers to break their silence. The day after Oren's article was published, 15 of the officers and men who participated in the raid published a declaration defending Yoni and attacking those "who think it is possible to rewrite history, and attempt for years to create their own versions" of what happened.

The warriors wrote, "We were silent until now not because we have nothing to say but because we think that neither Yoni Netanyahu, nor we his soldiers, need additional glory - we are proud of what we did. But this does not mean that we will sit by passively at a time when others are trying to glorify themselves not only by putting down other warriors and distorting their role in the mission, but also by attacking someone who cannot respond - Yoni Netanyahu.

"Yoni was killed at the hour that he commanded the force of Sayeret Matcal. As the commander of the unit, he planned and prepared the unit's mission with his officers from the start. Because of him, his warriors and staff members, the unit successfully rescued the hostages. Yoni justifiably became a national hero and we will not allow for his memory to be defiled and will not accept continuous attempts to distort Yoni's contribution and what we and our comrades did in the operation.

"We were there."

IN AN interview with Yediot Aharonot last Friday, Yoni's soldiers also weighed in on the capture of Cpl. Shalit. Maj. (res.) Avi Weiss, former deputy director of the Mossad and former POW in Syria, said, "Just as then, at Entebbe, we refused to surrender to the terrorists' demands, the message must now be the same message: We do not give into the demands of kidnappers."

In deciding to put an end to Betzer's unanswered attacks, Yoni's soldiers worked not only to defeat those who assault Yoni's honor. Their defense of Yoni serves as a counterattack against those who assault the very notion of honor. In defending Yoni, they moved to defeat those within Israeli society that seek to demoralize us by distorting our national memory.

It is now the duty of the IDF and the government to ensure that on Entebbe's 30th anniversary, Israel does not allow our enemies to wipe out the international and strategic legacy of that heroic operation.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.