Since the guns in the north fell into a momentary silence, there has been a marked tendency to think of smaller things than war. From life and death, the subject changed to the good life - specifically Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's pursuit of the good life.

In governmental matters, Israel's public discourse has moved from the security of the homeland to Olmert's home on Cremieux Street in Jerusalem. Inquiring minds want to know, did he, or did he not pay a below market rate for that apartment as part of a bribe from the building contractor?

It is important to know whether Israel's prime minister is involved in crooked real estate deals. But the problem with this discussion is that it ignores Israel's main difficulty with Olmert. The problem is that the war did not end this summer. And whether or not Olmert is on the take, the fact of the matter is that he doesn't know how to defend the country. Rather than recognize and correct the mistakes he made this summer, Olmert is ignoring and compounding them.

In Olmert's mind, the latest war in Lebanon was an unvarnished success - perhaps, as he hinted in holiday interviews, it was an even greater success than the Six Day War. Olmert stubbornly denies that that he defined the war's aims as achieving a decisive victory over Hizbullah forces, leading to their dismantlement; removing Hizbullah forces from the border; and producing the unconditional release of IDF hostages Ehud Goldwasser, Eldad Regev and Gilad Shalit. Moreover, Olmert insists that UN Security Council Resolution 1701, which brought about the current cease-fire, is a codification of Israel's greatest military and political victory.

Olmert has led the public to believe that Resolution 1701 established an international force that will dismantle Hizbullah and that recognizes Israel's right to take whatever actions it deems necessary to defend itself against Hizbullah. But 1701 does neither of these things.

The resolution contains no mechanism charged with dismantling Hizbullah or removing its forces from the border. It does not recognize Israel's right to defend itself. Indeed, UNIFIL commanders have stated outright that they have no intention of acting against Hizbullah and that they view IDF operations against Hizbullah as breaches of the resolution.

While Olmert mendaciously insists that 1701 is wonderful, IDF commanders are far from sanguine. This week they conditioned the completion of the IDF's withdrawal from Lebanon on a change in UNIFIL's mode of operations.

Yet, even if the IDF retains its forces on the Lebanese side of the border, it is not at all clear what our forces would do there. On the face of it, there is an opportunity to do great things. They could gather precise intelligence about Hizbullah's fortifications, force levels and arsenals, and they could gather operative intelligence regarding the whereabouts of Regev and Goldwasser.

But it is unlikely that the residual forces in Lebanon today will be deployed for such tasks. The IDF receives its missions from the government. Olmert's statements this week made clear that, as he did during the war, Olmert today is denying the IDF permission to carry out missions that would advance Israel's national security.

During Wednesday's cabinet meeting, IDF Chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. Dan Halutz raised the issue of the border town of Ghajar. The residents of the town, which is split in two by the international border, want to build a fence on its northern edge. Since the IDF's retreat from Lebanon in May 2000, Hizbullah forces and affiliated criminal elements have utilized the breached border at Ghajar as an intelligence and operational base. So the residents' desire to unify the town under Israeli rule is a welcome initiative. But Olmert won't have any of it.

"No fence should be built around Ghajar village, not even as a local initiative. A fence will only be erected after a written document is signed," he said.

In his Rosh Hashana interviews, Olmert said that Iran is the greatest challenge that Israel must contend with today. And he is right. But he apparently has no interest in contending with Iran. Olmert told The Jerusalem Post that he trusts US President George W. Bush to handle Iran for us.

"First of all," he said, "I think President Bush has the courage. This is something that is very important. There is no one in the world today who has greater courage and determination, and a sense of mission about these issues, than President Bush, and I admire his determination and sense of mission."

OLMERT IS right about Bush. He is mission-driven and courageous. But he is not all-powerful. In another month and a half, there will be elections to the US Congress and there is a distinct possibility that the Democratic Party - whose leaders have shown no willingness to pay a price to remove the threat of an Iranian nuclear arsenal - will take control of the Congress.

Bush's political challenges make taking concerted steps against Iran difficult. Moreover, it is a fact that Bush doesn't exert full control over his own administration. In just one example, the State Department and the CIA have been undermining his Middle East policies for the past five years.

In light of this, it is unforgivable gross negligence for the prime minister of Israel - whose country Iran has threatened with annihilation - to abdicate responsibility for thwarting Teheran's nuclear weapons program to a foreign leader.

Israel's nuclear concerns are not limited to Iran. There is also Egypt, which just announced its intention to build nuclear reactors to generate electricity. And as with Iran, Olmert's reaction to the news from Egypt has been scandalous. Right after the news broke, Olmert announced that Israel has no problem with Egypt's plans.

Let us for a moment assume that he is right and that Egypt really has no intention today of using the planned reactors for military purposes. Who can guarantee that this will remain the case after Egypt's aging dictator Hosni Mubarak dies? With the ascendance of the Muslim Brotherhood as a political force in Egypt, next to no one assumes that there will be a smooth transition of power to Mubarak's son Gamal, or to any of his other potential heirs.

Moreover, Bush is making a valiant effort to prevent the proliferation of nuclear technology in the Middle East. By rushing to welcome Egypt's initiative, Olmert swept the rug out from under any potential American move to prevent Egypt from taking what could be its first open step toward acquiring nuclear weapons capabilities. How can Washington now express opposition to Mubarak's move - or to the similar initiative being taken by Turkey's Islamist government - when Israel has announced that it supports Egypt's decision?

Finally, Israel's relations with Egypt are one long session of give and take. With his response to Egypt's announcement, Olmert gave up a valuable bargaining chip for free. For the past several years, Egypt has been leading an international campaign against Israel's nuclear capabilities. Just this week Canada torpedoed an Egyptian initiative at the International Atomic Energy Agency to have Israel's nuclear program declared an international threat that must be removed. Olmert could have conditioned his acceptance of Egypt's nuclear program on a cessation of Egypt's longstanding offensive against Israel's nuclear program. But Olmert wasn't interested.

And of course, the issue of whether or not Egypt wishes to pursue nuclear weapons is not Israel's most pressing concern regarding Cairo's behavior. There is the more urgent matter of Egypt's refusal to take concerted action to stem the flow of weapons and terror personnel from the Sinai peninsula into Gaza. As Shin Bet Director Yuval Diskin reported to the cabinet Wednesday, since August 2005, some 19 tons of TNT have been brought into Gaza from Egypt. Four tons of TNT made their way to Gaza through the Sinai in the last two months alone.

Olmert could have conditioned Israel's acceptance of Egypt's construction of nuclear reactors on effective Egyptian action against the massive weapons smuggling into Gaza. But Olmert doesn't believe it is his job to make such demands. Responding to Diskin's report, Olmert announced that he plans to deal with the weapons smuggling by raising the issue in his next meeting with US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

Olmert explained that he thinks the best way to stem the hemorrhage of advanced weaponry into Gaza is to update the agreement relating to the Gaza-Egypt border. Olmert didn't mention which agreement he was referring to. Perhaps he meant the Fatah-Hamas agreement relating to the sharing of smuggling resources? Or maybe he means Israel's agreement with the World Bank and the State Department. The fact is that there is no agreement, and given the tendencies of the Egyptians and Palestinians, it is apparent that any future agreement would be unenforceable.

Olmert's positions on Security Council Resolution 1701, Iran and Egypt reveal a disturbing pattern. It is apparent that Olmert is willingly abdicating responsibility for Israel's national security to a foreign power. And while this foreign power, the US, is a friendly one, Israel's security is not America's responsibility, nor is it, nor should it be, America's primary concern. Israel's national security is Israel's responsibility and the primary concern of the Israeli government.

So regardless of whether he is honest or crooked, it is abundantly clear that Olmert is incompetent to lead the country. But what can be done to oust him from power?

MANY VOICES in the local media and intellectual classes have argued that Israel has no good leaders who can replace Olmert and his associates. Not surprisingly, among those arguing that all politicians are equally bad are people who enthusiastically supported Kadima in the last elections.

This claim is, of course, nonsense. We have a fine alternative to Olmert's incompetent government.

Israel's alternative leadership - Binyamin Netanyahu, Moshe Ya'alon, Shaul Mofaz, Yuval Steinitz, Natan Sharansky, Uzi Landau and others - is clear. These politicians are capable of dealing with the many challenges that have only multiplied as a result of the Olmert government's incompetence.

There is much talk about power struggles, personal rivalries and jealousies among the members of Israel's alternative leadership. These rivalries must end immediately. This is not a popularity contest. This is a matter of national survival. These men must bury the hatchets that divide them, rally around Netanyahu's leadership, bring down the government in an no-confidence vote and lead this country to victory and safety. One needs only to look at the world according to Olmert to see what hangs in the balance.

Originally published in Th Jerusalem Post.

During the past week we learned a great deal about the nature of our enemies. We also learned a great deal about ourselves. If we draw the proper lessons from what we have seen we will go far toward winning the war.

With their ghoulish presentations at the UN General Assembly, both Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez made clear their hostile intentions, their disdain for freedom and their foes, and their fanatical intent to use all murderous means toward their totalitarian ends. The men were so hostile that even their usual apologists in academia and the political Left were too embarrassed to be seen in their company.

The Chavez and Ahmadinejad show ensured that the Bush administration's gamble in permitting the two entry to the United States had paid off. Given a platform, the dictators demonstrated the gravity of the threat they posed, as the administration had doubtless hoped they would.

Yet laying out a gangplank and hoping the enemy will be stupid enough to walk it is hardly a winning strategy in war. The stark reality of the global Islamist jihad and its strong support from European appeasers and third world dictators alike makes it necessary for the US to enact an information campaign capable of effectively advancing the stated American war aim of destroying jihad as a governing ideology and social force.

The potential for victory in the information warfare arena is great, and the failure of the US to meet this challenge is a great shame.

INFORMATION operations are a vital part of any war effort. They serve four basic purposes: to rally supporters to the rightness of their cause and the wrongness of their enemies cause; to dissuade any potential allies of one's enemies from joining their forces; to gain an ideological foothold in the enemies' society; and to demoralize enemy societies and so convince them that they have no chance of winning the war.

In both the Muslim world and the West, massive Saudi and other Islamist funding of mosques, Islamic schools, Middle East studies departments in universities, and lobbying arms show that jihadists have placed a premium on their information operations. The jihadists' extensive use of the Internet, cassette tapes, DVDs, videotapes and the print and broadcast media in the Muslim world complement these efforts.

The goals of the jihadists are clear. They wish to recruit soldiers. They wish to buy supporters among Western elites who will act as their apologists. They wish to demonize and delegitimize their ideological opponents in both Muslim societies and in the West by calling them apostates or racists. They wish to convince their enemies that there is no way to defeat the forces of jihad.

While massive, these efforts should be easy enough to undermine. For all the billions of dollars the jihadists have spent indoctrinating Muslims and weakening the West's will to fight them, their cause is anything but attractive. The cause of jihad is the cause of totalitarianism. It is the cause of hatred, misogyny, bigotry, mass murder, slavery, barbarism and humiliation. It is fundamentally unesthetic and unsympathetic.

As a result, attacking those who sponsor jihad, or serve as its apologists or purveyors should be a simple matter that can be undertaken at vastly less expense than that which has already been paid by the other side.

BUT THERE is a catch, of course. In order to conduct information operations effectively you have to be willing to identify your enemies and your allies, and to point fingers at those who refuse to take sides and embarrass them for sitting on the fence. That is, you need moral courage and clarity. You need to be willing to make people angry at you if you wish to earn their respect and support.

For the past five years the Bush administration has shirked this unpleasant task. It has categorized Saudi Arabia, the prime financier and propagator of jihad, as its ally. It has labeled Egypt, the epicenter of jihadist propaganda and incitement, a paragon of moderation and a stalwart ally.

Then there is Pakistan, which created the Taliban and has served as a refuge for Osama bin Laden since November 2001. Pakistan, too, is labeled a great ally, as are the Europeans and the Russians.

Israel, on the other hand, is a problem. Israel is the excuse that all of America's "great allies" give for refusing to act like America's allies. In the interests of pleasing its great allies, America holds Israel at arm's length.

Unfortunately, this policy sends exactly the wrong message. It teaches America's "allies" that they have nothing to lose by double-crossing the US. And it teaches truly liberal forces in the Muslim world and in the non-Islamic world that the US will not keep faith with them, and that they are, essentially on their own if they wish to take on the forces of jihad in their own societies and throughout the world.

THE BUSH administration's refusal to acknowledge the difference between its enemies and its allies was most pronounced last week in the president's meetings with Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf and Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas.

Earlier in the month Musharraf signed an accord with the Taliban that gave the group control over the Pakistani territories of north and south Waziristan. This agreement, which also involved Pakistan's release of some 2,500 Taliban and al-Qaida fighters from prison, is the Taliban's and al-Qaida's greatest victory since September 11, 2001. As military analyst Bill Roggio has reported on his Web site, The Fourth Rail, Musharraf's decision to hand Waziristan over to the Taliban and al-Qaida makes clear that he is a major enemy of the US.

But the Bush administration refuses to acknowledge this fact. Bush met with Musharraf in the White House and praised his leadership and his strong alliance with the US in fighting al-Qaida. The State Department praised the agreement that has caused NATO commanders to announce that more troops will be required in Afghanistan to fight the resurgent Taliban.

Likewise, Abbas has gone out of his way in recent months to forge an alliance between Fatah and Hamas on Hamas's terms. He agreed to form a unity government with Hamas that would unify their terror forces under one command to better wage war against Israel. He agreed that Hamas would not recognize Israel's right to exist. Fatah itself, which he commands, has committed more attacks against Israel than Hamas in recent years, and was involved in the cross-border attack on Israel in June where Cpl. Gilad Shalit was abducted. Under the agreement he offered, Fatah would maintain its terrorist agenda.

And yet, rather than announce that the US will have nothing to do with Abbas, Bush invited him to the White House and praised his commitment to peace. Rather than acknowledge that the Palestinian leadership - in Fatah and Hamas, as well as all other major parties - has shown by word and deed that it seeks not an independent Palestinian state but the eradication of the Jewish state, Bush has insisted that he wants nothing more than to see the creation of a Palestinian state.

THE BUSH administration's insistence on confusing friends and foes has been complemented by its refusal to make distinctions between jihadist political parties and non-jihadist political parties. Indeed, the US facilitated the participation of Hamas in the Palestinian elections, Hizbullah in the Lebanese elections, the Muslim Brotherhood in the Egyptian elections, and the jihadist Justice and Development party in the Moroccan elections.

In all these cases, these forces of totalitarianism were legitimized by their participation in the elections and their empowerment has enabled them to more ably advance the cause of jihad in their own societies and worldwide, at the expense of those moderate, liberal Muslims that must be empowered if jihad is to be defeated.

The world stands today on the edge of a potential upheaval. In Nicaragua, the Sandinistas are poised to retake power in elections in November. In the US, on November 7, voters will decide the composition of the Congress and Senate and so, in many ways, decide whether the war will continue to be fought to victory or will be abandoned.

Israelis have awoken from the fantasy of appeasement and are poised to bring in a government capable of defending them. In Britain, Tony Blair's heirs operate with the knowledge that they will be better off politically if they abandon the US.

Information operations that expose liberal democratic civilization's foes and support its allies - be they states or individuals - have never been more vital. Yet unless the Bush administration finds the courage to properly identify those foes and allies, its message will do more to confound than to clarify, and US policies will continue to be plagued by confusion - to the detriment of America and humanity as a whole.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

Pope Benedict XVI has become political Islam's newest excuse for rioting. Mobs from Rawalpindi to Ramallah are burning him in effigy. Muslim leaders from Gaza to Indonesia to Qatar, from Turkey to Washington and London are attacking the pope and demanding that he apologize to Islam for what they consider to be a heinous attack against their religion.
 

To recap what has been exhaustively reported in recent days, the pontiff's "crime" against Islam occurred in the course of a scholarly lecture at the University of Regensburg in his native Germany earlier in the month. Benedict quoted from a dialogue between Byzantine emperor Manuel II Paleologus and a Persian scholar of Islam circa 1391 where the emperor criticized harshly the Islamic practice of forcibly converting non-Muslims to Islam.

In the pope's words, the Byzantine emperor, "addresses his interlocutor with a startling brusqueness on the central question about the relationship between religion and violence in general, saying: 'Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.'

"The emperor, after having expressed himself so forcefully, goes on to explain in detail the reasons why spreading the faith through violence is something unreasonable. Violence is incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul. 'God,' he says, 'is not pleased by blood - and not acting reasonably is contrary to God's nature.'"

As Benedict explained, the harsh judgment that the Byzantine emperor rendered on Islam stemmed directly from his Christian understanding of God as a reasonable deity. According to Benedict, the reason a Christian leader was able to judge Islam, and so conduct a meaningful inter-cultural discussion on the merits of Islam and Christianity, was because he had a clear understanding of how his religion construed the God-created world and conceived of man's relationship to God.

Expanding on this theme, the pope told his audience that European civilization itself is a fusion of Christian faith and Greek philosophy of reason. Europe's current cultural drift, he argued, stems from the cultural separation between faith and reason that began with the Reformation and went on through the Enlightenment. By relegating faith to a subculture that has no place in discussions of practical human endeavors, he said, Europeans have rendered themselves incapable of understanding who they are or of defending themselves and their values in a manner that the Byzantine emperor, in the pre-scientific era, was able to do so stalwartly.

IT COULD be said that the Islamic world's hysterical and violent reaction to Benedict's use of the 600-year-old dialogue only serves to reinforce the Byzantine emperor's impression that Islam does not perceive God as being a reasoning deity. But limiting an analysis of Benedict's lecture to the Muslim world's hysterical reaction would ignore the pope's central point. Benedict's overarching message in that lecture was that to survive, a culture must be willing to embrace its identity, for if it does not, it won't even be capable of understanding why it should survive.

While Benedict's specific message was to his fellow Christians, the Jewish people should take heed of his general message. Today, the Jewish people, in Israel and throughout the world find ourselves under attack from all quarters. The rise of anti-Semitism globally, and particularly in the Islamic world, finds us in a period of grave self-doubt. Like the Europeans, our ability to defend ourselves against the swelling ranks of haters is dependent on our ability as a people and as individuals to embrace our identity as Jews.

Commenting on the nature of this surge in Jew-hatred, the great (non-Jewish) Canadian pundit Mark Steyn wrote last month in the National Review, "The oldest hatred didn't get that way without the ability to adapt. Jews are hated for what they are - so, at any moment in history, whatever they are is what they're hated for. For centuries in Europe, they were hated for being rootless-cosmopolitan types. Now there are no rootless European Jews to hate, so they're hated for being an illegitimate Middle Eastern nation-state. If the Zionist entity were destroyed and the survivors forced to become perpetual cruise-line stewards plying the Caribbean, they'd be hated for that, too."

It is crucial that all of us internalize the message that these lines convey. For in recent years, rather than recognize the prejudice of our detractors, we have devoted ourselves to attempting to understand and so justify the hatred they heap upon us.

We tell ourselves we are hated because we are too strong - or because we are too weak. We are hated because we are too religious - or because we are not religious enough. We are hated because we insist on defending Israel - or we are hated because we are willing to compromise on Israel.

Yet, as Steyn wisely notes, we are not hated because of what we do, we are hated because we are Jews. In light of this, the best way to defend ourselves, the best way to safeguard our freedom and our heritage, is to embrace and celebrate our identity as Jews. As Elie Wiesel once explained to me, the key to defending ourselves is to never allow our haters to tell us who we are. "Hatred only defines the haters," he said.

And indeed, when we look at the manner in which Jews in Israel and throughout the world are being attacked today, we see that the attacks are based not on Jewish actions but on the fact that we are Jews.

Thus, in the midst of yet another wave of violent attacks by Muslims against Jews in Norway last month, Norway's Jewish community warned its members not to wear kippot or Stars of David in public.

Thus it is that the charter of Hamas, the movement that now controls the Palestinian Authority, calls not for compromise with Israel but for all Jews to be expelled from the Land of Israel or forcibly converted to Islam as part of the global jihad.

So it is that attacks against Jewish supporters of Israel in the West target not the substance of their arguments, but their right as Jews to lobby for Israel in their countries of citizenship.

"We Jews," Wiesel explained, "have always defined ourselves as the children of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob." Indeed, at Mount Sinai, in our acceptance of the Ten Commandments, the Jewish people became the first nation in history to self-consciously define itself. And each subsequent generation of Jews has remade that choice.

Jews do not exist, as Jean-Paul Sarte ignorantly argued, because anti-Semites exist. The leader of the existentialist movement should have understood; anti-Semites exist because anti-Semites choose to exist.

AS STEYN notes, today hatred against Jews is anchored on Israel. Provoked by this new form of Jew-hatred, some Jews, both in Israel and in the Diaspora see Israel as a burden. This is a self-inflicted tragedy. For if we look at Israel, we see that far from being a burden, our Jewish state is one of the most stunning successes of Jewish history.

Today, Israel is the home of the largest Jewish community in the world. More Jews live in Israel today than at any time in our history. And the state in which we live is one of the most vibrant, optimistic, "happening" countries in the world. We have the highest birthrate in the West. Rates of entrepreneurship are among the highest in the world.

We are one of the most highly educated societies in the world. Over the past 15 years, more than a dozen colleges have been established in Israel and last year the government decided to allow two colleges to join Israel's nine research universities as full-fledged, independent research universities.

Israelis are among the most patriotic citizens in the world. Our patriotism is expressed in the high level of volunteerism in all age groups. In the recent war, tens of thousands of reservists willingly left their families and jobs to take up arms and defend the country, and hundreds of thousands of Israelis volunteered to help our one million brothers and sisters whose homes were targeted by rockets, missiles and mortars.

Jewish life blossoms in Israel as it has nowhere else in our history. The rates of literacy in Jewish learning in Israel are higher than they have ever been anywhere in our history. Israel is the home of some half dozen generations of Jews whose mother tongue is the language of the Bible and the Talmud.

Israel's success stems from its serving as a vehicle that allows us to express our heritage in all facets of society. And our Jewish heritage is one of the most precious heritages known to man.

The Jewish people gave humanity the concepts of God, liberty and law. Our understanding of the fallibility of mankind has prevented us from being tempted by false prophets promising us heaven on Earth, and has allowed us to take practical steps toward improving our lot and our world.

All of the ideals that Israel represents, both spiritual and physical, have formed the foundations for human progress and freedom throughout the world for millennia. Our willingness to stay loyal to our identity and our heritage has been the key to our survival throughout the ages in the face of the countless foes who sought to destroy us both spiritually and physically.

Rosh Hashana marks the beginning of the Ten Days of Repentance that precede Yom Kippur. To properly atone for our sins and correct our mistakes, we must understand who we are, what we represent and what we can and should aspire to as Jews. To do this, we must reject the notion that those who hate us can tell us who we are. To do this we must embrace our Jewish identity and uphold our commitment to our collective destiny.

The fact that hatred of Jews has endured for so long says nothing about the nature of the Jewish people. What does speak volumes about that nature is the fact that through the ages our fortunes have been directly related to our ability to spurn our enemies' distorted portraits of the Jewish people and our willingness to endure and progress as Jews in the midst of that hatred.

Pope Benedict is able to discuss Islam because, secure in his Christian identity, he has a clear basis for judging the goodness or unreasonableness of Muslim values and behavior. Whether we agree with his judgments or not, through his willingness to judge, Benedict capably defends and advances his faith.

When we embrace our moral and intellectual identity as Jews, we are then capable of meeting the challenges of our times. It is my prayer that in 5767, the Jewish people will rally around our heritage, history and culture and so pave the way for a secure, peaceful and moral future for our people and our world.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

Again last week our hopes were raised, only to be dashed once more. OC Northern Command Major General Udi Adam raised our hopes when he resigned his command. Adam, the first of our incompetent leaders to leave his job after mishandling the war against Hizbullah this summer, made us think that perhaps other incompetents in the IDF and the government would follow his example.

Our hopes were also raised later in the week when former IDF chief of General Staff Lt. Gen. (ret.) Moshe Ya'alon made public his demand that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Defense Minister Amir Peretz and his successor, Lt. Gen. Dan Halutz, quit or be forced from office due to their mismanagement of the war.

Charging at the heels of Ya'alon's frontal assault were the retired generals. In a meeting with Halutz Friday afternoon the IDF elders, too, told him he must go. And Halutz isn't the only commander who needs to resign.

During the meeting, one of the retired generals read aloud an order of battle authored by Division 91 Commander Brig. Gen. Gal Hirsh, who led much of the ground operation in Lebanon. Hirsh ordered his forces to conduct "a massive infiltration with a small signature, charge, quick deployment in the commanding territories and the creation of cataclysmic contact with the built-up areas while inducing shock and awe."

Got that? While the incoherent order evoked laughter in the audience, as one of the generals commented to Yediot Aharonot: "It is more sad than funny. It sounds like a poem, not an order of battle."

Clearly the IDF is due for a serious house-cleaning. But Halutz, like Olmert and Peretz, refuses to follow Adam's example and go away.

LIKE OLMERT and Peretz, Halutz justifies his refusal to take responsibility for his failure and resign by arguing that letting someone else try to succeed where he failed would be irresponsible. Halutz will fix Halutz's mistakes.

But his investigation of the war's operational and tactical management makes you wonder. Division 91's operations are being reviewed by none other than Brig.-Gen. Hirsh - who has asked to extend his command.

So if Halutz won't quit and his investigations won't solve the problems, then we place our hopes in the newly appointed Winograd Commission, which received a governmental mandate Sunday to investigate the war.

The committee, chaired by a retired judge and manned by a law professor, a political scientist and two retired generals, received a broad mandate for investigation. Not only is it empowered to investigate the conduct of the war and the preparations leading up to the war, it has been mandated to investigate the actions of past governments and IDF General Staffs going back to "the period when Hizbullah first began fortifying itself along the border."

That is, the committee will investigate how successive governments and IDF General Staffs contended with the Hizbullah threat as it grew since the IDF withdrew from Lebanon in May 2000.

It isn't clear what professional qualifications the members of the committee have to judge military and policy blunders. But assuming that its members are competent to fulfill their mandate, is there room for hope that this committee of retirees can fix what needs to be fixed?

Unfortunately, no matter how talented its members may be, the Winograd Commission has no chance of fixing what is broken in the IDF, or in the government. Its failure is preordained by its mandate.

THE OPERATIONAL and tactical failures of the brigade, division and regional commanders in the war did not come out of thin air. They stemmed from a basic strategic misreading of reality which has informed all governments from 1999 until today. That strategic failure does not relate to what Israel did or did not do after the withdrawal from Lebanon in May 2000.

The strategic error that stands at the root of the latest war, as well as at the root of the war with the Palestinians is the IDF's withdrawal from south Lebanon itself and the erroneous thinking that caused it. By beginning the inquiry into the latest war from the period that followed the withdrawal, the commission, whatever its qualifications, is blocked from investigating the source of the operational and tactical confusion and incompetence that followed.

Israel's withdrawal from south Lebanon was predicated on the unfounded notion that Hizbullah - an Iranian-proxy organization dedicated to the eradication of Israel and the US and the establishment of a global caliphate through jihad - was only fighting Israel because Israel maintained its security zone in south Lebanon. Were we to leave, Hizbullah would magically abandon its core belief, accept Israel and become a political party.

THE IDF and the entire defense establishment completely opposed this militarily and strategically unjustifiable initiative. Yet the notion of embracing surrender as a national security doctrine, spawned circa 1996 by EU-financed Israeli politicians like Yossi Beilin and EU-financed non-profit organizations like Four Mothers, captured the imagination and received the unqualified backing of the radical leftist media, particularly at publicly financed Israel Radio and TV.

And so it was that Ehud Barak, who until Ehud Olmert's ascension to power had no competition for the title "The worst prime minister in Israel's history," scored his greatest "achievement" in the office of prime minister by carrying out the strategically indefensible withdrawal. In so doing he handed the global jihad movement its first strategic victory against the "infidels" since the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Hizbullah, an Iranian-commanded Shi'ite band in the Lebanese backwater, became, overnight, a symbol of Islamic strength. It earned the distinction of being the first Arab army to defeat the Jews.

THE PALESTINIANS made no attempt to hide the fact that it was Hizbullah's victory over Israel that inspired them to begin their jihad against Israel four months later, in September 2000. Hizbullah's victory convinced them that the Jews would run away if you attacked them. Terror, not negotiations was the way to destroy the Zionist entity.

As to Israel, neither the media, which was directly responsible for pressuring Barak to order the withdrawal, nor the Barak and Sharon governments had an interest in questioning the wisdom of the withdrawal from Lebanon.

And so, rather than sound the alarms as Hizbullah overtly armed itself with thousands of rockets and missiles, the government and the media lulled the public into complacency. Any general, politician or commentator who dared to point out that since the withdrawal Hizbullah had been transformed from a tactical nuisance into a strategic threat, was dismissed as a warmonger.

And based on the perceived success of the Lebanon withdrawal, the Sharon-Olmert-Livni government convinced the public that the model ought to be implemented in Gaza and northern Samaria as well.

Olmert insisted that the Winograd Commission investigate the handling of the Hizbullah threat since the withdrawal because he, Halutz and Peretz want to spread the blame as widely as possible. In line with these efforts the three failed leaders are blaming the war on Ya'alon and former defense minister Shaul Mofaz by asking why they did nothing to contend with the growing Hizbullah threat during the years they led the IDF under Ariel Sharon.

BUT HERE we enter the heart of the matter. The moment Israel left Lebanon, the political cost - both domestically and internationally - for contending with the growing threat from Hizbullah was raised exponentially. After bragging about how brilliant we had been to enable Hizbullah to build fortifications adjacent to Metulla and Kiryat Shmona, how could the government have taken action against a few thousand silly missiles? Particularly in light of the media's pro-European pacifism, the reputational cost of striking Hizbullah was too high for politicians to bear.

By propagating its own delusions, Israel had maneuvered itself into a position where it could take no preemptive action against Iran's proxy force at its doorstep.

Yet, one may argue, Israel's intelligence capabilities are such that the IDF didn't need to maintain its presence in Lebanon to contend with Hizbullah. Our spies in the Mossad or Military Intelligence or the Shin Bet could have taken on the missile threat through "massive infiltration with a small signature," to quote the poet.

Yet to argue this is to ignore one of the side effects of Israel's withdrawal from Lebanon. When the IDF pulled out it abandoned the best allies Israel had ever had - the soldiers and officers of the South Lebanese Army, who fought side by side with the IDF for nearly 18 years. After this betrayal it doesn't take a genius to understand the kind of difficulties Israel experienced in finding spies.

It is clear, then, that our irresponsible and incompetent leaders have placed us in a situation where no effective action is being taken to fix what is clearly broken. It is similarly apparent that they wish to lull us again into complacency by investigating everything except the cause of everything.
They intend to capture our attention with juicy stories about various generals' malfeasance on the third or 13th day of the war, and so delude us into believing that something is being done.

But the only way for something to be done is for the current leadership to be replaced. The only commission of inquiry that will be capable of clearing out the rot is general elections.

The only way we can remedy our operational and tactical woes is by having leaders who can understand, and are brave enough to correct our strategic mistakes.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

Britain's Prime Minister Tony Blair is Israel's best friend in Europe.

And he's not a very good friend.

Immediately after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the US, Blair was instrumental in convincing US President George W. Bush to view the Palestinian jihad against Israel as a conflict completely separate from the global jihad. His success in convincing Bush of this distinction turned the anti-Semitic - not to mention strategically disastrous - view that terrorists who kill Israelis should be treated differently from terrorists who kill anyone else into one of the cognitive foundations of the US war on Islamic terror. This foundation was first enunciated in Bush's address of September 20 to a joint session of Congress where he identified "every terrorist with global reach" - that is every terrorist who isn't part of the Palestinian Authority - as enemies of the US.

Later, Blair was a principal force behind Bush's move to abandon the guidelines for dealing with the Palestinians that he enunciated in his speech of June 24, 2002. In that address, Bush stipulated that the Palestinians needed to transform themselves from a society that supported terror into one that combated terror in order to receive US support for Palestinian statehood.

Shortly after Baghdad fell to coalition forces in April 2003, Blair convinced Bush to accept the road map plan for Palestinian statehood. The road map, which effectively locks in US support for Palestinian statehood irrespective of Palestinian terrorism and radicalism, represented a practical abandonment of the positions that Bush set out in his June 24, 2002 address.

During his visit to the region this week, in keeping with his studied habit, Blair ignored the fact that the Iranian-backed Hamas government was elected to lead the Palestinian Authority by a large majority of Palestinians. He ignored the fact that PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas has voiced support for the abduction and continued captivity of Cpl. Gilad Shalit and for the continuation of the terror war against Israel. He ignored the fact that rather than working to overthrow the Hamas government, Abbas has begged Hamas to allow Fatah to join its government. To this end, Abbas has accepted Hamas's policy guidelines rejecting the possibility of recognizing Israel's right to exist and committing all Palestinians to unite in the war against Israel.

Ignoring all these inconvenient facts, Blair called on the Olmert-Livni-Peretz government to renew negotiations with Abbas on the basis of the road map.

And yet, for all this, Tony Blair is Israel's best friend in Europe. He is Israel's best friend because, in contrast to all his colleagues in Britain and the EU, Blair at least recognizes that the global jihad is a threat to the free world and that the price of not fighting the forces of jihad would be the loss of our freedom.

Soon, Israel's closest European friend will exit the world stage after being effectively sacked by his own Labor Party last week. British political commentators say the chances are slim that Blair will manage to hold onto the reins of power as a lame duck for the next 12 months, as he pledged. More likely, he will leave 10 Downing Street in a matter of months.

The two men most likely to succeed Blair - Chancellor Gordon Brown and Tory leader David Cameron - will be more similar to French President Jacques Chirac than to Blair in their attitudes toward Israel and the US. This is the case first and foremost because that is what the British people expect of them.

British antipathy towards the US and Israel was clearly exposed in an opinion poll published on September 6 in the Times of London. The poll reported that 73 percent of Britons believe that Blair's foreign policy, and especially his "support for the invasion of Iraq and refusal to demand an immediate cease-fire by Israel in the recent war against Hizbullah, has significantly increased the risk of terrorist attacks on Britain."

More than 62% said that to "reduce the risk of terrorist attacks on Britain, the government should change its foreign policy, in particular by distancing itself from America, being more critical of Israel and declaring a timetable for withdrawing from Iraq."

The day after the poll was published, Blair announced that he would leave office in a year.

Also, on September 7, a committee of members of Parliament released a report on anti-Semitism in Britain. The all-party committee found that that since the Palestinian jihad against Israel began in 2000, anti-Semitism in Britain has become a mainstream phenomenon. Attacks against Jews in Britain were at an all time high over the summer.

In their anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism, the British, of course, are no different from their Continental brethren. And the situation in Europe is alarming. Writing in Frontpage magazine this week, Islamic expert Andrew Bostom reported that in November 2005, Stephen Steinlight, the former director of education at the US Holocaust Memorial Council, told a conference in Washington that on average, Muslims attack Jews in Paris 12 times a day. According to Steinlight, this means French anti-Semitic violence is approaching the level of anti-Semitic violence in Germany during the days of the Weimar Republic.

These attacks against Jews in Europe are accompanied by ever increasing official hostility towards Israel on the part of European governments. On the second day of the war with Hizbullah, Chirac felt comfortable alleging that "Israel's military offensive against Lebanon is totally disproportionate." Chirac then acidly asked, "Is destroying Lebanon the ultimate goal?"

Chirac's remarks opened the floodgates for anti-Israel propaganda throughout Europe. They were followed by the barring of El Al cargo planes carrying weapons shipments from the US from European airports. That prohibition still stands.

From the moment Chirac launched this unjustified diplomatic assault against Israel, his government began acting as an agent of the Lebanese government, which itself acted throughout the war as Hizbullah's mouthpiece. So from the second day of the war, the groundwork was already laid for UN Security Council Resolution 1701, which treats Israel and Hizbullah as equals and lets both Syria and Iran off the hook for their central roles in Hizbullah's illegal war against Israel.

THROUGH THEIR behavior toward both Israel and the US, Europe's leaders have made clear that they will do just about anything to please the Muslim world. Even though Iran has made absolutely clear that it refuses to end uranium enrichment activities, or even to suspend them, the Europeans continue to insist on negotiating with the mullahs and refuse to take even the smallest concrete step against Iran in the UN Security Council.

As for the Palestinians, the Europeans have made no attempt to hide their eagerness to renew their monthly transfers of tens of millions of euros to the Palestinian Authority in the wake of Hamas's agreement to let Fatah join its jihadist government.

And in Lebanon, together with the UN, the Europeans have defined the rules of engagement for UNIFIL in a way that on the one hand protects Hizbullah, and on the other hand, prevents Israel from defending itself. Above all else, these policies clearly demonstrate that the Europeans have defined ingratiating the Muslim world as their primary geopolitical interest.

Seemingly unaware of Europe's growing hostility toward Israel, the Olmert-Livni-Peretz government has succumbed to the charms of the likes of Chirac, Romano Prodi and Javier Solana and is systematically abandoning Israel's positions in favor of Europe's pro-Arab stands. During his press conference with Blair, Olmert renounced his previous well-considered demand that Shalit be released before any meeting can take place between him and Abbas.

During her visit to Washington, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni emphasized Israel's desire to renew negotiations with the Palestinians on the basis of the road map, and the government's continued support for Abbas. This, in spite of the fact that the government Abbas is forming with Hamas will not recognize Israel's right to exist and will be committed to continuing its jihad against Israel. In so doing, Olmert and Livni are lending informal approval to the renewal of European funding of the Palestinian Authority.

Even more troubling is the government's inaction, bordering on tacit support, regarding the radical Left's campaign to transfer responsibility for Israel's security from the IDF to Europe. The campaign, which New York Times columnist Tom Friedman enthusiastically dubbed, "Land for NATO," in his column on Wednesday, involves the adoption of the UNIFIL model in Gaza and Judea and Samaria. This newest messianic trend is based on the blind belief that Israel can continue giving land to the Palestinians in spite of the fact that the Palestinians are the most radical, pro-jihad society on the face of the earth, because Europe will protect Israel from them. Whether under the UN flag or the NATO flag, the new writ of leftist faith maintains that Europe can replace the IDF in defending the Jews.

Blair's stubborn refusal to acknowledge the simple fact that just as the Iranians will not cease uranium enrichment because they want to build atom bombs, so the Palestinians will reject all offers of statehood because they prefer to destroy the Jewish state is infuriating. And yet the fact remains that he is the last European leader who truly believes that Israel has an inherent right to exist and bases his policies on this belief. It is absolutely clear that in the coming years, Europe's hostility towards Israel and the Jewish people as a whole will continue to rise.

HOW THEN, is Israel to contend with Europe? As Israel's largest trading partner, relations with Europe are vital to Israel's economic well-being. So it is clear that Israel cannot simply turn its back on the free world's Achilles heel.

At the same time, given Europe's hostility, it is similarly obvious that the direction of the Olmert-Livni-Peretz government's policies toward Europe must be reversed. Rather than enabling Europe to increase its influence in the region, Israel must take every step possible to minimize Europe's foothold in its neighborhood.

Israel should use Blair's exit from the world stage as an opportunity to lock its doors and shutter its windows before any new European friends can come inside.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post

Last Friday, Harvard University's student newspaper The Crimson had a noteworthy front page. The top headline read, "Students plan to protest Khatami's visit."

The second headline read, "Cheney visits Harvard Club through backdoor."

The first story referred to plans by student groups to protest Harvard's Kennedy School of Government's decision to invite former Iranian president Muhammad Khatami to speak at the school on Sept. 10. The second story reported how Vice President Richard Cheney was forced to enter the Harvard Club in Boston through the back door to evade some 200 protesters.

On the surface, these stories seem to perfectly balance one another. Some people are protesting against Cheney, some against Khatami…

Now how are the Red Sox doing?

Kennedy School Dean David Ellwood defended the decision to provide his school's most prestigious platform to Khatami by asking rhetorically, "Do we listen to those that we disagree with, and vigorously challenge them, or do we close our ears completely?" This sounds reasonable, but is it?

It is surely important to know what people like Khatami have to say. But why did Harvard need to honor him with an invitation to speak? And why was he allowed to speak alone? Why did Harvard not suggest that he debate Iranian students or journalists whose friends and colleagues were imprisoned, tortured and in some cases killed by Khatami for calling for democracy and freedom of the press during his tenure?

Why did Harvard not offer to have Khatami debate former Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu regarding the ballistic missiles capable carrying nuclear warheads that Iran developed during his tenure; the hundreds of millions of dollars Iran transferred to Palestinian terror groups and to Hizbullah during his presidency; and the advances in Iran's nuclear weapons program that were made when Khatami was in office?

Why did Harvard not suggest Khatami debate Vice President Richard Cheney regarding the evidence that several of the Sept. 11 terrorists passed through Iran on their way to the US; several senior Al Qaida leaders including Osama Bin Laden's son Sa'ad have been operating in Iran since the US-led invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001; and that most of the terrorists in Iraq are directed by Iran?

Of course, Khatami would have refused to participate in such a debate. But had a debate between him and Cheney been organized, it would have been interesting to see which side the protesters outside of the Harvard Club in Boston would have supported. Expressing the view of his 200 fellow demonstrators, Nick Giannone told the Crimson that having Cheney speak at the Harvard Club was, "the equivalent of Hitler coming back to life and coming to Boston." Giannone continued, "This guy's a straight-up fascist. I also find it pretty appalling that someone would pay… to sit in a room with a war criminal."

It would also be interesting to know what side Ellwood and his Kennedy School colleagues would have taken. Just a few months ago, then Academic Dean Prof. Steven Walt co-authored an anti-Semitic diatribe titled The Israel Lobby where he effectively accused Israel and the America Jewish community of subverting US national security interests by coercing the US to fight the war against the global jihad and view Israel as a US ally.

THE TWIN headlines in the Crimson were complemented by twin news stories in Israel's papers on Sunday. Sunday morning Jerusalem Magistrates Court Judge David Mintz dismissed criminal charges against right-wing activist Nadia Matar. Last summer Attorney-General Menachem Mazuz indicted Matar for "insulting a public servant" in reaction to a letter Matar faxed to Yonatan Bassi, the head of the Disengagement Authority where she compared Bassi to the Judenrat who collaborated with the Nazis in deporting fellow Jews to concentration camps.

In his decision to expunge the charges against Matar, Mintz wrote, "Anytime we are dealing with freedom of speech, criminal law does not present the correct and effective tool."

Using the same logic in the past, Attorney-General Mazuz has refused to indict MK Azmi Bishara, now visiting in Damascus with two of his fellow MKs Jamal Zahalka and Wasal Taha, for incitement to violence or treason for statements he has made expressing support for Palestinian terrorism, Hizbullah and Syria.

At the urging of Interior Minister Roni Bar-On, Sunday, Mazuz ordered a criminal investigation against Bishara, Taha and Zahalka for visiting Syria in violation of the law barring officials from visiting enemy states without explicit government permission. The law was passed in response to Bishara's last visit to Damascus in 2001. The Knesset passed the law because six years ago the Attorney-General claimed he lacked the legal means to indict Bishara.

Bishara claims that he has a right to say anything that he likes. And he is right. He has the right to praise Hizbullah. He may tell Israeli Arabs that they should reject Israel's right to exist. His colleague Taha had the legal right in July to tell an online audience that he and his colleagues had repeatedly advised the Palestinians to kidnap IDF soldiers. Taha had the right to commend them for abducting Cpl. Gilad Shalit. Bishara had the right last week to praise Syria for its operations to free "occupied Arab lands," and warn his Ba'athist hosts to be on the lookout for Israeli aggression.

It is legal to make these statements. What is illegal is the treasonous actions they describe. Yet, rather than contending with the fact that Bishara, Taha and Zahalka are guilty of treason, Mazuz now investigates the technical fact of their visit, just as in the past he ignored their treasonous actions arguing that they have a right to their opinions - as if providing aid and comfort to Israel's enemies is a matter of opinion.

IT BEARS pointing out that Bishara - who like Hizbullah, Iran, Fatah and Hamas believes that Israel has no right to exist - is a favorite son of the Israeli Left. Haaretz's op-ed pages are open to him. Last Tuesday he wrote there that protests against the government and IDF's mishandling of the war are the result of the inherent racism of Israeli society which immorally assumes "that Israel… must threaten its Arab neighbors and not be threatened, deter and not be deterred; and that the Arabs are incapable of developing human and material infrastructures that make resistance possible."

Bishara, who blamed the war in Lebanon on the US which he said put Israel up to it, is the former director of research at the prestigious Van Leer Institute and a frequent speaker at the institute's events. In 1997, the New Israel Fund invited him to participate in a conference at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington discussing Israel at 50.

When considered in isolation, Harvard's decision to invite Khatami to speak; the leftist protesters' desire to humiliate Cheney; Mazuz's decision to indict Matar for "insulting a public servant; and Mazuz's decision to ignore Bishara, Taha and Zahalka's apparent treason, all seem to be reasonable good faith judgments. They can all be defended in the interests of liberty, democracy, free speech and public order. But when placed in the overall context, it becomes clear that the opposite is true.

By inviting Khatami to speak unopposed at Harvard, the Kennedy School effectively advanced his anti-American, anti-Semitic, anti-liberal agenda.

In calling Cheney a Nazi, a fascist and a war criminal, the leftist protesters in Boston silenced debate about the nature of fascism, genocide and war crimes by claiming that those who fight these scourges of humanity are morally equal to those who commit them.

By indicting Matar for expressing herself because he didn't like her views on the one hand, and refusing to even investigate apparent acts of treason by Bishara and his colleagues because those actions are considered acceptable by his social circle on the other hand, Mazuz makes a mockery of Israel's laws. He transforms his position from one of chief law enforcement officer to one of chief thought enforcement officer. To advance a radical, anti-Zionist and anti-American political agenda, he is willing to outlaw debate and ignore treason.

Many argue that the only way to stop the Left's subversion and so win the war of ideas, is to attempt to co-opt its agenda from the inside. By this logic, champions of free speech, democracy and liberty should eagerly seek opportunities to speak at Harvard, or be the token "fascists" on panel discussions at Hebrew University. Unfortunately, this view is wrong. Accepting the legitimacy of leftist institutions prolongs their power, expands their undeserved legitimacy and erodes the power of the message of those who defend liberty, free speech and democracy.

Rather than supporting the Left, those concerned about the protection of liberal values should work to expose the corruption of these institutions and build alternative institutions that can replace them.

Five years after Sept 11, the greatest asset the jihadists who seek our physical and spiritual destruction have are those individuals, institutions and groups within our own societies that prevent us from seeing the dangers and defending ourselves. Our greatest challenge as individuals is to expose these dangers and those who hide them to our fellow citizens.   

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

Sunday Supreme Court Justice Edmond Levy presided over a hearing on a petition submitted by one Shimshon Cytryn requesting to be released from Dekel prison and placed under house arrest. Justice Levy deferred his ruling to a later date.

Cytryn, 19 a yeshiva student from the community of Nachliel in the Binyamin Region, is accused of attempted murder. Last June 28, two groups of teenage boys pelted one another with rocks on the Muwassi beach area in Gaza adjacent to the Israeli community Shirat Hayam. As the fight raged for three days without IDF intervention, the Israeli press set up shop near the boys and waited.

On June 28 the media sprang into action. Channel 1 filmed a series of narrow lens video clips which showed only the Israeli youths - including Cytryn -- throwing rocks. Then Yediot Aharonot reporter Yitzhak Saban "heroically" inserted himself into the drama. He jumped before the cameras and "saved" a Palestinian youth whom he and his fellow reporters claimed had been critically wounded by the Israeli youths in a manner that recalled "a lynch." The next morning a photo of Saban's "intervention" was on the front page of Yediot. Television and radio news broadcasts led with stories about the "lynching" carried out by "right-wing extremists." They reported that the Palestinian "victim" was hospitalized in Gaza and fighting for his life.

Yet that Palestinian "victim" was in and out of the hospital in the space of two hours. The picture of health, he gave multiple interviews to Arab and European reporters where he expounded on the "heroic battle" he and his friends fought against the "Jewish settlers." The fact of the "victim's" miraculous recovery from his life threatening wounds was not reported in the Israeli press until several days later and then the story was hidden in laconic reports on the inside pages of the papers.

The "lynch" story was manufactured against the backdrop of a steady drop in public support for the Sharon government's plan to expel all the Israeli residents from Gaza and northern Samaria. Polling data showed that less than 50 percent of Israelis supported the plan. But the "lynching" story reversed the trend. In the space of 24 hours, the public's support for the withdrawal rose to over 60 percent.

After the expulsions were completed last August, IDF commanders, including then OC Southern Command Maj. Gen. Dan Harel admitted that there had never been anything even vaguely resembling a lynching. But the crime's fabrication did not prevent the police from arresting Cytryn nor did it did stop the state prosecution from charging him with attempted murder. So now Cytryn sits in prison awaiting trial for a crime that was never committed.

THE LEGAL environment that enabled situations like Cytryn's to arise is part of the judicial legacy of retiring Supreme Court President Aharon Barak.

Barak has presided over the Court for 11 years. As a self-declared "judicial-statesman," he used his position on the bench to reshape Israeli society and politics in his own image through his "constitutional revolution."

Barak's revolution placed the judicial branch above the legislative and executive branches. The elevation of the high court was enacted in four ways: First, the Court gave standing to petitioners who were neither directly nor indirectly affected by the matters they brought before the Court.

Second, by cleverly interpreting a series of new Basic Laws to say something their drafters had never dreamed of, Barak was able to gain the power to overturn lawfully promulgated legislation.

Third, the Court empowered itself to intervene in government decisions by raising the standards of "permissible actions" by the government and the Knesset in a manner that constricted the freedom of elected officials to set policy and legislate laws.

Finally, Barak insisted that "everything is justicible."

The consequence of all these actions was the effective transfer of executive and legislative authority to the judiciary. As a result, private and public behavior that has traditionally been seen as the realm of morality and prudence; military decisions regarding Israel's national security that had previously been under the exclusive authority of the executive; ideological questions that had been the preserve of private citizens and state bodies; and religious questions that had been the exclusive reserve of religious authorities, now all came under the authority of the Supreme Court.

As he was establishing his power to overturn government and legislative decisions, Barak also consolidated his control over the judiciary. Using his control over the judicial selection process, over the past 11 years Barak transformed Israel's judiciary into a near unitary organism whose members are overwhelmingly united in their support for Barak's political agenda and his use of the judiciary as a means of forcing his political agenda on the Israeli public.

Barak's political agenda is one of leftist, post-Zionist multiculturalism and radical secularism. Barak used various methods to advance his agenda. While refusing to ever consult Jewish legal traditions, he has given anti-Israeli, non-binding UN General Assembly documents and International Court of Justice advisory opinions the weight of international law and has incorporated these "international laws" into Israeli law.

HE PUSHED the idea that elected leaders are not allowed to make their best faith judgments about Israel's defense, economy or ideological foundations. Working indirectly with far Left special interest groups that have eagerly embraced Barak's throwing open of the Court's doors to politics and flocked to the Court to gain through judicial fiat what they cannot hope to gain at the ballot box, Barak has ruled lawful, good faith government decisions regarding the defense of Israel and other national policy issues to be illegal.

Aside from that, through a legal precedent he himself established, Barak rendered our elected officials subject to blackmail by the legal bureaucracy. Barak's Court ruled that all ministers indicted for any crime must resign their offices. As a result, the police and state prosecution, backed by the Court, can effectively fire political leaders by indicting them on the basis of flimsy or non-existent evidence. Such charges led to the resignations of Justice Ministers Ya'acov Neeman and Haim Ramon and former Internal Security Minister Rafael Eitan, all of whom expressed opposition to some aspects of Barak's policies. Former Justice Minister Tzahi Hanegbi was neutralized in office by a criminal probe against him which remained open throughout the course of his tenure.

THROUGH HIS rulings, Barak made clear that some people's human and civil rights are more equal than others. He barred the IDF from utilizing certain tactical measures that protect the lives of the troops because Barak said those measures impinged on the human rights of civilians who sheltered wanted terrorists. Barak ruled that Arab farmers' free access to their crops outweighs the right of Israelis to defenses capable of protecting them from terrorist infiltration.

Retired justice Mishael Cheshin explained that Barak's support for the expulsion of all Israelis from Gaza and northern Samaria made Ariel Sharon and his son Gilad immune from indictment for what appeared to be clear acceptance of bribes. In his words, "If Sharon had stood trial, there would have been no disengagement."

And of course, under Barak's rule, religious Israelis could expect little to no legal protection for their human or civil rights. Last year Barak's Court enabled the abrogation of their freedom of expression by approving the police decision to prevent buses from traveling to licensed demonstrations; he indirectly approved police harassment and violence against demonstrators; he enabled unindicted citizens to be barred from their homes and prohibited from seeing their families. He ruled that they could be divested of their property rights without due process and without equitable restitution by the government; could be divested of their livelihood without due process or equitable restitution; could be prevented from running for office; and could be held for months in administrative detention.

All of these decisions are part of the means through which Barak's "enlightened society" is cultivated and his "democracy" is protected.

UNFORTUNATELY for Shimshon Cytryn and the 65 percent of Israelis who in a poll last week said they believe that the Court's rulings are motivated by political interests rather than law, the guard will not change when Barak retires next week.

His hand-picked successor Justice Dorit Benisch not only subscribes to his judicial philosophy, during her 31 years in the State Prosecution, Benisch stacked the prosecution with what she referred to in a recent interview with Yediot as attorneys who "worked in accordance with the same values" that she ascribes to. As she has made clear through her actions and words, Benisch's "values" are post-Zionism; hostility towards the military; hostility towards religious Zionists; support for the Palestinians; and support for anti-religious social forces and pressure groups.

As Benisch replaces Barak next month she faces a situation where only 32 percent of Israelis think that she is qualified for office, and only 33 percent of the public has full faith in the Court. This is in contrast to the 85 percent of Israelis who had full faith in the Court in 1995.

Since it is clear that she will continue and attempt to widen Barak's usurpation of governing authority in Israel, the question that arises is whether our political leaders will have the courage to curb the court's power.

Unfortunately, given our current crop of politicians, there is every chance that Shimshon Cytryn will be tried and convicted of a crime that was never committed.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

On Tuesday, Shin Bet head Yuval Diskin warned of the growing threats to Israel's security emanating from the Gaza Strip and Northern Samaria in the aftermath of the latest war. If the proper steps are not taken to stop the massive transfers of advanced armaments to Gaza, he warned, in just a few years, it will turn into a second south Lebanon.

In south Lebanon itself, Hizbullah is creating the illusion of cooperation with the Lebanese army in order to put us all to sleep as it quietly rebuilds its forces in anticipation of an Iranian order to renew the war against Israel. Hizbullah chieftain Hassan Nasrallah's assertions last week that his organization had no intention of starting a second round and that it had had no idea that Israel would respond so massively to its abduction of Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev on July 12 were aimed at confusing Israel and calming the Lebanese. At least as far as Israel is concerned, his goal was accomplished.

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and the Israeli media pounced on Nasrallah's statements as "proof" that Israel had won the war.

In the meantime, the Ayatollah Republic is proceeding steadily toward the acquisition of a nuclear capability. The conciliatory international reactions to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's announcement Thursday that Iran rejected the UN Security Council's demand that it end all uranium enrichment actually preceded Ahmadinejad's insolent statement. On Wednesday, EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana was busily attempting to renew talks with Iran.

Meanwhile, the UN is behaving not as an international policeman, but rather as Iran's defense attorney. During his visit to Israel Wednesday, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan sounded like an Arab leader with his unrestrained, obnoxious condemnations of Israel for every act of self-defense it has taken in Gaza and Lebanon on the one hand, and his seemingly endless tolerance for Iranian threats of nuclear genocide against Israel on the other.

During his press conference with Olmert, Annan intimated that from his perspective, the problem with Iran's threats to annihilate Israel is not that they are illegal or morally inexcusable. Rather, Iran's threats are wrong simply because Israel is a member of the UN.

Surrealistically ignoring both Iran's efforts to acquire nuclear weapons and its command over the latest war in Lebanon and Gaza, Annan stated bizarrely, "One cannot wipe away Israel with statements."

Today, unbeknownst to the Israeli public, the Olmert-Livni-Peretz government is steering Israel down a course that, if not quickly abandoned, will render our right to self-defense - and by extension our independence - conditional. The proliferation of security threats is being exacerbated by the government's facilitation of an UN-EU diplomatic bid to chip away at Israel's right to defend itself against Hizbullah, the Palestinians and Iran.

The present danger is rooted in the text of UN Security Council Resolution 1701, which set the guidelines for the cease-fire in Lebanon. That decision constituted an unprecedented diplomatic victory for Hizbullah by placing the sub-national, jihadist, illegal militia on equal footing with Israel.

Moreover, Resolution 1701 set the terms for the reinforcement of UNIFIL forces in a way that enables Hizbullah to continue to reinforce its forces in south Lebanon while barring Israel from exercising its right to defend itself against the growing threat.

Resolution 1701 restricts Israel's freedom of action in three additional ways. First, the resolution named Ahmadinejad's solicitor, Kofi Annan, as arbiter of the sides' compliance. Annan revealed how he will be using this authority two weeks ago when he condemned the IDF's commando raid in Baalbek while beginning his calls for Israel to lift its air and sea blockade of Lebanon and so enable Hizbullah to rearm, not only by land, but by air and sea as well.

Second, although Olmert and Livni loudly champion the European forces being deployed to Lebanon as an important diplomatic achievement, the fact is that the decision to empower the EU to dominate UNIFIL is disastrous for Israel. While protesting their "love" for Israel, the Europeans are making no bones about the fact that their decision to lead UNIFIL is motivated by their intention to prevent Israel from defending itself.

Italy's Communist Foreign Minister Massimo D'Alema made this point clearly in his interview last Friday with Ha'aretz. There he explained that the EU goal in Lebanon is to "prove to Israel that it can ensure its security better through the politics of peace than through war."

D'Alema then insulted the US by adding, "The American policy, which Israel also supported, created an impossible situation... The thinking was that it is possible to control the world via the power of a hegemonic liberal power. This philosophy has created serious damage, and now the US is looking for a logical way out."

So by deploying troops to UNIFIL, the Europeans will show us that the only way to contend with enemies who wish to destroy us is by appeasement and more appeasement.

The Europeans and Annan also do not hide the fact that they plan to use their deployment in Lebanon as a springboard for achieving greater influence on Israel in its dealings with the Palestinians. In this vein, D'Alema stated, "I think if things go well in Lebanon, a similar positive process could also begin in the Gaza Strip: The release of [Israeli hostage Cpl. Gilad] Shalit, a Palestinian unity government that meets the criteria set by the international community, and the presence of a UN force to bolster the Palestinian government."

Here the EU is openly joining forces with radical leftist Israeli policymakers led by Meretz leader MK Yossi Beilin, who for the past two years have been quietly advancing the idea of internationalizing the conflict. After both Israel's negotiations and its unilateral surrender of land to the Palestinians both led to war, the thinking now is that the Palestinians will accept Israel after the UN divests the Jewish state of its ability to defend itself.

IF THE above is insufficient to convince us that the expanded UNIFIL force, whose arrival is so eagerly awaited by Olmert-Livni-Peretz, is not a good thing for Israel, there's also the Islamic element of the proposed force. Both Annan and the Europeans are insisting that a force of up to 7,000 soldiers from Muslim countries be included in the UNIFIL force. These soldiers are set to be sent by Bangladesh, Indonesia, Malaysia and Turkey. All of these countries are commonly referred to as "moderate Muslim countries." This assertion bears investigation.

The jihadist party Jamaat-e-Islami is a member of Bangladesh's coalition government. Its student activists recently sent death threats to two prominent intellectuals for teaching the country's youth the values of secularism, democracy and science.

Furthermore, in November 2003, Bengali journalist Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury was arrested as he waited to board a flight to Bangkok with continuing service to Tel Aviv. Choudhury, who was set to attend a conference in Israel about how the media can promote peace, was accused of sedition and spying for Israel. He was repeatedly tortured during his 17-month incarceration.
Bangladesh plans to send 2,000 soldiers to Lebanon.

Then there is Indonesia, the largest Muslim state. As punishment for inciting the terror bombings in Bali in 2002 that killed 202 people, the not-particularly-independent Indonesian judiciary sentenced Jemaah Islamiyah leader Abu Bakar Bashir to 30 months in prison, the last five of which were commuted in June.

In May, Ahmadinejad was received by roaring crowds during a visit to Jakarta. In an interview with The Wall Street Journal Tuesday, Indonesian Defense Minister Juwono Sudarsono said he believed the best way to secure south Lebanon was for Hizbullah forces to be "absorbed" into the Lebanese army.

As the war in Lebanon raged, the Malaysian government called for all nations of the world to cut off diplomatic relations with Israel. This week, senior Malaysian officials said that there was no justification for the West's opposition to Iran's nuclear program.

Of all the Muslim countries who are planning to contribute forces to UNIFIL, Turkey is the only one that has diplomatic relations with Israel. As a result, to date, its forces are the only ones the Olmert-Livni-Peretz government is willing to see deployed in Lebanon. Two weeks ago, during a visit with Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul, Olmert said, "Turkey plays an important role in the Middle East and will continue to do so." He added, "Israel has confidence in Turkey."

While until the formation of the AKP's Islamist government in 2002 it made sense for Israeli prime ministers to say such things, today such statements are unjustified. Over the past four years, Turkey has been transformed from a stalwart US and Israeli ally into one of the most overtly anti-American and anti-Semitic states in the world. By the same token, Turkey has gone to great lengths to warm its relations with the Arab world and Iran.

During the war, IDF Military Intelligence discovered that Iran was shipping weapons to Hizbullah through Turkey. After Hamas's electoral victory in January, Turkish Prime Minister Recip Erdogan was the first international leader to host Hamas terror leaders in an official visit. During the war, Erdogan announced Turkey's support for Hizbullah, saying that "nobody should expect us to be neutral and impartial."

From all of this it is apparent that the participation of Muslim armies in the UNIFIL force - even if they are only from Turkey - could easily lead to a situation where the IDF finds itself fighting UN forces. Alternatively, as the UN and EU foresee, cowed by the "international community," the Olmert-Livni-Peretz government may simply concede Israel's right to self-defense, in spite of the growing threats from Hizbullah, the Palestinians and Iran.

AS FOR America, disturbingly the Bush administration, like the Olmert-Livni-Peretz government, is showing acute signs of policy collapse. In a near inexplicable move, the State Department issued a visa to former Iranian president Muhammad Khatami. Obscenely, the former leader and regime flack for the Islamic supremacist ayatollahs has been invited to speak at the National Cathedral in Washington.

As it did at the beginning of the war in Lebanon, the Olmert-Livni-Peretz government set the proper goals for managing the cease-fire. But as it did during the war, it has proceeded to take every step possible to ensure that those goals will not be achieved.

Now, the troika hopes that through UNIFIL, Israel will cobble together a coalition against Hizbullah, while it is actually facilitating the formation of a coalition that will protect Hizbullah against Israel. They have failed to recognize that to secure its national security interests, Israel does not need to negotiate, it needs to act. The only reason the EU and the UN feel comfortable ordering Israel around is because the Olmert-Livni-Peretz government obeys them.

Things do not have to be this way. No country in the world lets outsiders dictate its policies on fundamental issues of national security. Israel must not be the first to do so.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.