The diplomatic campaign against Iran has failed.

After three years of sterile diplomacy, last Saturday the UN Security Council passed impotent sanctions against Iran. Iran greeted the sanctions by announcing its intention to expand its uranium enrichment activities by running an additional 3,000 centrifuges at its nuclear installation in Natanz.

Iran's contemptuous response to the sanctions indicates that they have come too late. The Security Council resolution is aimed at encumbering foreign assistance to Iran's nuclear program. But the Iranians no longer need much outside help to develop atomic bombs.

Due to this Iranian invulnerability, many in Israel and the US argue that additional sanctions, undertaken outside the UN that would target Iran's economy, must be adopted. Israeli diplomats and Bush administration officials have reportedly descended on Europe in the hopes of convincing the Europeans to support NATO sanctions that would isolate Iran economically.

Yet here too, such sanctions would probably come too late to make a difference. As a report recently released by the Institute for Analysis of Global Security in Washington demonstrates, Iran is working steadily to minimize its economic susceptibility to sanctions. To this end it is working to overcome its two principal economic vulnerabilities: its dependence on imported refined oil, and its antiquated oil and gas infrastructures.

Last year Iran signed a $70 billion deal with the Chinese to modernize its oil and gas fields. Iran also signed an oil deal with Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez that guarantees its fuel imports will be sanctions-proof.

To make itself immune from the effects of economic sanctions or a possible naval blockade, Iran is building two new oil refineries. It is also moving its transportation sector from oil to natural gas. With the second largest natural gas reserves in the world, an Iranian transportation system which runs on natural gas will be immune to foreign sanctions. Furthermore, by modifying its gas stations and private cars to run on natural gas, Iran is freeing up its oil refineries to produce jet fuel for its air force.

Through these massive economic projects, Iran shows clearly that it is placing its economy on long-term war-footing. It will do whatever it takes to ensure it is equipped to acquire nuclear weapons and maintain its control over the global jihad.

This all-out Iranian commitment to jihad is disconcerting to its Sunni neighbors. Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah recently worried aloud about the burgeoning Shiite threat. So too, Jordan's King Abdullah has warned repeatedly of the rising Shiite Crescent extending from Lebanon to Iran.

Influenced by these Arab voices, many Israeli policymakers have raised the possibility of forming a coalition with these Arab nations to block Iran's nuclear ambitions. To advance such a notion, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has given Fatah commander and PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas $100 million, has armed Abbas's terror squads with thousands of rifles and millions of rounds of ammunition, and is planning to release terrorists from Israeli prisons.

So too, some American officials who hear these statements believe that the key for securing Arab support for action against Iran is renewed US pressure on Israel to give its land to the Palestinians and the Syrians; and a redeployment of US and Coalition forces outside of the major cities of Iraq.

Tempting as it is to believe that Riyadh and Cairo would help us to fight our common foe in Iran, there is absolutely no chance that they will. In any Islamic contest against Israel or the US, the Arabs will support the jihadists. This is so because Arab despots who have promoted jihadist ideals among their subjects, must support jihad against non-Muslims throughout the world to prevent their people from implementing their ideals at home. The support for jihad is what brings together Arab nations of all stripes and colors with their Persian neighbors.

This Arab-Islamic union was given ideological heft last week at a two-day conference in Doha, Qatar. "The Sixth Pan-Arab and Islamic Conference" brought together some 270 leading pan-Arab and jihadist leaders from throughout the world. The jihadists, led by Sheikh Yusuf Qaradawi, included Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal, Hizbullah leader Hassan Hadroug and the Iraqi Sunni jihadist ideologue Sheikh Hathir al-Dari. Among the pan-Arabists was Khair al-Din Haseeb, who the US Army refers to as the "father of pan-Arab nationalism." Iranian and Iraqi Shiite ayatollahs also reportedly attended.

Qaradawi announced that the goal of the conference was to merge the pan-Arab and Islamic wars against the US and Israel specifically and against the infidels generally. In his words, "All Arabs, Kurds, Sunni, Shia, right-wingers, left-wingers should be united in the full-scale battle with the enemies. They are launching a political, economic, social and civilizational, and cultural battle against us and we should unify our efforts to stand up to it."

The participants all echoed Qaradawi's call for Fatah and Hamas to formally merge and so reflect the wider trend of consolidation in the cause of jihad that is occurring throughout the Arab world. As Qaradawi put it, "Pan-Arabism and Islam are very closely linked. There is no contradiction between them. Whoever is seeking to separate Pan-Arabism from Islam is trying to separate the soul from the body."

That the pan-Arabists and Islamists are military allies in the global jihad was made clear this week in the Horn of Africa as Sunday Ethiopia invaded Somalia.

Last June an al-Qaida aligned jihadist movement called the Islamic Courts Union (ICU) took control of Mogadishu and so consolidated its control over most of Somalia. The ICU moved swiftly to institute Sharia law, and so transformed Somalia into a Taliban-like state.

The legitimate Somali government, the Transitional Federal Government - a secular regime run by various warlords and tribal chiefs - was isolated in the provincial capital of Baidoa. The ICU is strongly supported by Eritrea. And although it fights neither Americans nor Jews, it is also sponsored by Iran, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Sudan, Djibouti, Yemen and Libya.

In November, the ICU declared jihad against Ethiopia and announced its intention to conquer large chunks of Ethiopian and Kenyan territory. According to the US, the ICU was also planning to assassinate Ethiopian and Kenyan political leaders, and carry out terror attacks in Ethiopia.

Surrounded by Sudan and Eritrea to its west and north and the ICU to its east, the government in Addis Ababa decided to help the TFG overthrow the ICU and reinstate its authority. In just four days, it succeeded, as Thursday morning TFG and Ethiopian forces took control of Mogadishu, while ICU forces were on the run.

Unfortunately, in today's world, apparently nothing breeds condemnation and hatred more than military victories against jihadists.

The Organization of the Islamic Conference has called daily for an Ethiopian pullout from Somalia. So too, the Arab League demands that Ethiopia retreat. With their people on the ground retreating with the ICU, as has been their consistent policy towards Israel, so in Somalia the Arabs and Muslims wish to win at the negotiating table what they cannot achieve on the battlefield.

In this pursuit, they enjoy support from a familiar quarter. Five days before Ethiopia invaded Somalia, the EU attempted to mediate the conflict in a manner that would prolong and legitimize the ICU's control of Somalia.

On December 20, EU mediator Louis Michel shuttled between Baidoa and Mogadishu. Later that day he triumphantly announced, "There is a strong, good will by both parties to resolve this conflict with political dialogue."

When word of the Ethiopian invasion got out, Michel - like his associates in the EU Secretariat - moved immediately to condemn Ethiopia. Sunday he said, "I condemn in the strongest terms the escalation of the conflict in Somalia into an all-out war and appeal for all Somali sides to cease immediately all hostilities. I express my deepest concern on the reported involvement of foreign forces in Somalia and urge all external players to refrain immediately from intervening militarily in Somali affairs and provoke further violence."

Last week, as he engaged in his shuttle diplomacy, Michel pointedly did not take a public stand regarding the ICU's declaration of jihad against Ethiopia or its announcement that it would target any UN-peacekeepers that entered the country.

Israelis routinely assume that Europe's pro-jihadist policy towards the Palestinians is a result of anti-Semitism or anger over Israel's military victory in 1967. But the EU's treatment of Ethiopia and the TFG indicates that Brussels' hostility towards the Jewish state is part of a much further-reaching policy. Europe's pro-jihad position toward the war in Somalia indicates that its support for jihad is over-arching rather than limited to specific battlegrounds.

So what we learn from the Qatar conference and the war in Somalia is that a tripartite alliance of Iran, the Arab world and Europe upholds the cause of jihad not merely against Israel and the US, but globally. It is clear that the Iranians are the most dangerous part of the three-headed jihadist Hydra. Like the Arab despots, the Europeans are provoked by cynicism. While the Arab dictatorships embrace jihad to safeguard their regimes, the Europeans support the jihadists in the hope that their support will deflect jihadist violence away from them.

For their part, the Iranians truly believe in the ideals of jihad which is why Europe and the Arabs oppose them. The Iranian regime wants to see jihad everywhere and so it supports the overthrow of the regimes in Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Belgium no less than it supports jihad in Israel, Iraq and Somalia.

All this is important for Israel to understand today as it weighs its options towards Iran and the Palestinians. The events in Somalia and Qatar demonstrate that Israel cannot influence the Palestinians' behavior one way or another because the Palestinians do not stand on their own. They are part of a wider pan-Arab and pan-Islamic trend.

In their jihad against Israel, the Palestinians will receive automatic support not only from Iran, but from the Arab world and Europe as well. So too, the war in Somalia and the conference in Qatar show that supporting the Palestinians is but one aspect of Arab and European global support for jihad. Just as the US was the only country not to call for an Ethiopian retreat this week, so Israel cannot expect to expand its support base beyond Washington.

Ethiopia's flag once portrayed the Lion of Judah. This is notable for today Ethiopia is becoming the new Zion. If Israel wishes to persevere in the jihad raging against it, it must take close note of what is happening to Ethiopia today.

It is true that Iran threatens the Arabs and Europe. Sadly, as their joint support for the jihad in Somalia indicates, neither the Arabs nor the Europeans will help us contend with Teheran.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

You have to wonder what thoughts passed through the minds of Bethlehem's Christians as Palestinian Authority Chairman and Fatah commander Mahmoud Abbas appeared at the Church of the Nativity for Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve.

On April 2, 2002, as IDF forces swept into Bethlehem to root out the terrorists who had taken control of the city, between 150 and 180 Fatah terrorists under Yasser Arafat's command shot their way into the Church of the Nativity. For the next 39 days they held the sacred site and some 150 clergymen hostage.

Three weeks into the siege, three Armenian monks escaped from the church through a side entrance and revealed what was happening inside. Friar Narkiss Koraskian told reporters: "They stole everything. They stole our prayer books and four crosses. They didn't leave anything."

When the siege ended, the released hostages told of frequent beatings of clergymen. The terrorists, they told The Washington Times, "ate like greedy monsters," gorging themselves on food and slurping down beer, wine and Johnny Walker scotch they stole from the rectory as their hostages went hungry.

CATHOLIC priests said that the terrorists used their bibles as toilet paper. Franciscan priest Nicholas Marques from Mexico reported: "Palestinians took candelabra, icons and anything that looked like gold."

Thirteen of the ring-leaders of the siege were deported to Cyprus and then dispersed to European countries. Twenty-six were sent to Gaza.

Bethlehem's Christians could not hide their relief at the expulsions. They spoke of a "reign of terror," of rape, murder and extortion that the men had waged against them over the previous two years. Helen, a Christian woman, told The Washington Times, "Finally the Christians can breathe freely. We are so delighted that these criminals who have intimidated us for such a long time are going away."

On Saturday night, as part of his massive effort to "strengthen" Abbas, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert agreed to convene a joint committee to discuss the return of these terrorists to the city.

Speaking of his good friend Mahmoud on Sunday afternoon to a Kadima audience in Ashkelon, Olmert allowed that "Abu Mazen [Abbas] is an adversary." But, he explained, he is an enemy Olmert can do business with.

IT IS TRUE that business sometimes can be done with enemies. But what business can Olmert do with Abbas? And how does any of this business advance Israel's national interests?

At the cabinet meeting Sunday, Shin Bet Director Yuval Diskin embraced Olmert's decision to "strengthen" Abbas, by, among other things, giving him $100 million and agreeing to release terrorists from Israeli prisons even without receiving so much as a sign of life from IDF Cpl. Gilad Shalit, who has been held hostage by Abbas's underlings and their Hamas pals in Gaza for the past six months.

Diskin warned the ministers that if elections were held today in the PA, Hamas would win hands down. Not only would they retain their control over the PA government, they would no doubt rout Abbas himself and take over his presidency.

In light of the Palestinians' apparent satisfaction with their lot at being governed by genocidal jihadists from Hamas as opposed to corrupt genocidal jihadists from Fatah like the ones who took over the Church of the Nativity, the government believes that it needs to make the PA irrelevant - a mere school district - as one government official put it. In the meantime, the real power will be placed in the hands of the Fatah-controlled PLO.

There are of course, two problems with this. First, that "mere school district" will be armed to the teeth and controlled by an Iranian (and Saudi) trained, funded and armed regime that is overwhelmingly popular among its "students." This little backwater will continue to serve as a nexus for global jihad that is little different from Somalia.

Hamas has made clear that it will fight to the last man to protect its regime. Yet in the interest of "strengthening Abbas," Israel is doing nothing to weaken Hamas either militarily or politically.

THE SECOND problem with the "school district" strategy is that the edifice of power the Olmert government seeks to replace the PA with has no interest in making peace with Israel. To the contrary, far from seeking to transform the PA into a liberal, pacific democracy committed to peaceful coexistence with Israel (or for that matter, just freeing Shalit from captivity), Abbas seeks to strengthen the terrorist character of Palestinian society.

Abbas's demands of Olmert make this fact perfectly clear.

If Abbas were interested in peace he would not be demanding that Israel release terrorists from prison; stop arresting wanted terrorists; make it easier for terrorists to operate in Judea and Samaria by suspending IDF counterterror operations and taking down roadblocks; bring more terrorists into the areas from Jordan; arm terrorists through Egypt; and give him money to pay the salaries of terrorists.

If Abbas wanted peace he would be asking the IDF to escalate its fight against the terrorists. He would prefer that they rot in jail and not be released to enjoy the freedom to kill again.

In other words, if Abbas were interested in peace he would be doing precisely the opposite of what he is doing.

THERE ARE three reasons why Olmert and his government are acting as they are. First, they are doubtless bowing to pressure from the Bush administration. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice stated several times over the past week alone that the US has decided that its interest is advanced by Israel giving things to Abbas. But is US pressure a reasonable justification for Olmert's treatment of Abbas?

Olmert justifies his refusal to negotiate with Syrian dictator and Iranian toadie Bashar Assad by noting that the Bush administration strenuously objects to holding such talks. Yet this is a flimsy excuse for not negotiating with Syria. Even if the US were pressuring Israel to negotiate with Syria it would make no sense to engage Assad because Israel has absolutely nothing to gain from doing so.

As is the case with Abbas, by holding talks with Syria Israel would be conferring unwarranted legitimacy on Assad while receiving nothing of value in return. If Syria agreed to handover of IDF hostages Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser and end Syrian sponsorship of Palestinian terror groups and Hizbullah in return for negotiations with Israel, it might make sense to confer such legitimacy on Assad even if the US objected. But Assad will do no such thing, and so there is nothing to be gained from talking to him.

So too, were Abbas to agree to fork over Shalit and end Fatah terrorism and indeed cooperate with the IDF in fighting Hamas and Islamic Jihad, there would be something to be gained by meeting with him - regardless of the US's position.

Although US pressure is real, it would be relatively easy to brush off simply by publicly pointing out the obvious. Aside from Washington's carping, the second reason that Olmert has decided to "strengthen" Abbas stems from the fact that his government has no strategic vision whatsoever. Cast adrift, Olmert is moved by the prevailing winds.

FOR THE PAST two weeks or so, since Assad began chirping about his wish to negotiate, the leftist-controlled Israeli media has been excoriating Olmert for bowing to Washington by refusing to meet with Assad. The weekend papers were full of condemnations by the chief diplomatic commentators in the major papers demanding that Olmert give the Golan Heights to Assad regardless of what the fuddy duddies in Washington think.

And so, Saturday night's kissy-kissy meeting with Abbas was aimed, among other things, at shutting them up. And it worked quite nicely. Both Ma'ariv and Yediot Ahronot merrily proclaimed in their Sunday editions that Abbas was a stand-in for Assad - but he'd do for now.

Finally, it is impossible to ignore the contribution the apparent stupidity of Israel's leaders made to Olmert's decision to embrace Abbas.

Sunday morning, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni exposed this idiocy when she asked Diskin whether he thought that Hamas was strong enough to stop the rocket attacks on Sderot and the Western Negev. In response, Diskin gently pointed out that Hamas is a terror group that is dedicated to destroying Israel, and so while it could stop the rockets, it has no interest in doing so.

GEE, HOW COME she didn't think of that?

But then Diskin inanely opined that if Israel responds to the rocket attacks on Sderot's kindergartens, elementary schools and apartment blocks, Hamas will get really mad at us for breaching the cease-fire that only the IDF upholds and will continue to attack us.

In light of his schoolhouse analysis, Diskin concluded that there's nothing we can do except pretend that the terrorists will change their minds about attacking us after we reward them for doing so by giving them money to pay themselves, bullets and rifles to shoot us with, send their terrorist buddies home from prison to join them in attacking us, and maintain the imaginary ceasefire to enable them to shoot at us with impunity.

In the meantime, while Olmert is planning to spring terrorists from prison next week in honor of the Islamic holiday, Gaza's Christians were too terrified to go to their Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve. So the mass was cancelled. And in Bethlehem, as the dwindling Christian population reeled with the news that their tormentors may soon return to rape, murder and extort them again, Manger Square stood near-empty on Christmas.

But at least the peace process is getting back on track.  

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

The domestic and international debate about the Palestinians has become thoroughly detached from reality. On the one hand there are the friendlies. These include the Olmert government, the Israeli media, the Bush administration and some European governments. The friendlies say that the "moderate" Palestinian Authority Chairman and Fatah terror organization commander Mahmoud Abbas is the key to peace. Everything must be done they say, to strengthen Abbas against the Hamas terror organization, which they oppose.
 

But if this week's bloody battles between Fatah and Hamas terrorists in Gaza showed anything, they showed that Abbas is anything but weak. When he wishes to confront Hamas, he is more than capable of doing so. The reason that peace has eluded us is not because Abbas is weak but because he doesn't want peace with Israel. He will battle Hamas to enhance his power but not to secure chances of peace with Israel. Far from the key to ending the Palestinian jihad against Israel, Abbas is part of the problem.

Pitted against the friendlies, are the unfriendlies. These include people like EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana, UN officials, the European press and Ha'aretz columnists. Although members of this group adore Abbas, they object to the friendlies' refusal to accept Hamas's rise to power in the PA.

The unfriendlies call for Israel to negotiate with Hamas on the basis of Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh's offer for a cease-fire with Israel in exchange for an Israeli retreat to the 1949 armistice lines. If Israel refuses to accept Hamas's offer, this camp warns, it is liable to find itself facing Al-Qaida rather than Hamas in the future, and that, they claim, would be much worse.

As Johann Hari, from Britain's Independent put it this week, "Every time the Israeli government rejects a Palestinian leader because he is too hard-line, they do not get a cuddly Gandhian moderate in his place. They get somebody more hard-line still."

Hari, who went on to advocate that Israel recognize Hamas and give it Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem, wrote these lines after he visited with Al-Qaida terrorists in Gaza and described how these jihadists are terrorizing Gazans into accepting Taliban-like repression of women and modernity.

Both the friendlies and the unfriendlies share a fundamental assumption and acceptance of Palestinian jihadism. They assume that Palestinian society will never be anything but a jihadist society and that the only change it will undergo will be one of further radicalization. By limiting their argument to whether Israel should give its land to Fatah or to Hamas, they accept as legitimate the view that for the Palestinians all roads lead inevitably to Osama bin Laden and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. For both groups, the goal of diplomacy is to arrest, not reverse this trend. And both believe Israel should be willing to pay whatever is necessary to appease those who hate it less, or face those who hate it more.

Although Hari clearly shares this defeatist view, he inadvertently demonstrated that it is wrong and counterproductive. Hari quoted 29-year-old Basa Abu-Jased, whose Internet cafe in Gaza's Jabalya refugee camp was firebombed by jihadists. Abu-Jased expressed his despair and frustration at the emerging Islamist state in Gaza, saying, "Of course women are frightened now. [Even as a man] I am really frightened! I used to sit on the street and talk to women. Now I won't do it. You don't know what's going to happen."

What Abu-Jased and his friends need most desperately is for someone to offer them the opportunity to support something other than competing terrorist organizations. But no one gives them this opportunity.

In the interest of "strengthening" Abbas, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert refuses to take any actions to defend southern Israel from Kassam rocket attacks. Olmert cannot imagine a "peace" policy that doesn't involve Israeli land transfers to terrorists and so is incapable of conceiving of a policy other than the current failed one of embracing the fantasy of Abbas as the key to utopia.

ISRAEL, OF course, has options other than surrendering to either Hamas or Fatah. It could defeat them. A policy aimed at victory would be based first of all on a recognition that today there is no power structure in the PA, including the PA militias, that is not a terrorist organization. It would similarly recognize that there is no such thing as a good terrorist organization. Consequently, a strategy for winning would recognize that Israel must launch a concerted campaign aimed at defeating and dismantling the PA as a whole.

A policy for victory would also start from a recognition that the common thread joining all the Palestinian terror factions together is jihad. In light of the ideological nature of their common war against Israel, a campaign based on military might alone cannot bring about any long-term sociological or political change in Palestinian society. Unless the ideology of jihad is defeated, a new crop of jihadists will rise up to replace the current one.

Since jihadist ideology is what makes the Palestinian war against the Jews intractable and vests it with its central importance to the global jihad, the defeat of this ideology in the marketplace of ideas will go a long way towards defeating the global jihad as a whole. And the ideology of jihad is far from indestructible.

With its call for genocide of Jews and subjugation of all other non-Muslims, and with its demand that Muslims live under a literal interpretation of Shariah law which enslaves women and abolishes the very notion of human freedom - jihad is an inhuman ideology. It is inherently unattractive to people who sanctify life rather than death. So central to a strategy for beating the Palestinian jihad would be an Israeli ideological assault on jihad.

The unattractiveness of the notion of jihad is most apparent to the jihadists themselves. This is why they spend billions of dollars on a never-ending stream of propaganda aimed at brainwashing as many people as possible. The aim of the jihadist mosques, television and radio stations and Internet sites is twofold. First they work to indoctrinate and mobilize supporters. Second they serve to demonize anyone who fights them - be that George W. Bush, Tony Blair, Salman Rushdie, or Israel.

The Olmert government's inability to recognize the actual state of Palestinian society and act accordingly has two major sources. First, the government is incompetent. As with the Palestinians, so with Iran, Syria, and Hizbullah. The Olmert government is simply incapable of conceptualizing policies capable of defending Israel.

Yet, aside from the specific incompetence of the Olmert government, in its inability to contend with the ideological nature of the war being waged against Israel, the Israeli government is little different from Western governments from Washington to Brussels. Six years after the Palestinians launched their jihad, and five years after the jihadist attacks on the US, the governments of the free world remain deeply hesitant about engaging in a true ideological struggle with jihad.

It is not merely that fearing accusations of racism, the leaders of the world's democracies are averse to noting the monstrous nature of an ideology that marginalizes life and embraces death. Terrified of being falsely labeled fascists, Western leaders, held intellectually hostage by the multicultural police, refuse to assert what ought to be obvious: Liberal, free societies, which uphold human freedom and sanctify life, are superior to jihadist societies that do the opposite. Not only must the free world win the war against the global jihad, we deserve to win it, because we are the good guys and our enemies are the bad guys.

If our leaders are incapable of conceiving a policy for victory or of explaining to either themselves or to our enemies why we must win and they must lose, is there any reason to hope that we can survive, let alone emerge victorious in this war?

THIS WEEK we received a clear sign that indeed, we can win. On Tuesday, Likud leader Binyamin Netanyahu embraced an initiative launched last Thursday by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs. Led by former UN ambassador and Netanyahu adviser Dore Gold, the JCPA launched an effort to have Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad indicted under the Genocide Convention and tried as a war criminal at the Hague for his calls to annihilate Israel. This campaign is the first constructive Israeli public relations campaign against Iran. If backed by mass protests of Jews in Israel and in international capitals calling for the overthrow of the genocidal mullahs in Teheran, this initiative could form the basis for an effective Israeli political campaign against Teheran. And it is a completely private initiative.

What the JCPA's campaign shows us clearly is that just as private groups can wage political war against Iran even if Olmert is too incompetent to do so himself. So too, private groups and individuals can wage an ideological war against the ideology of jihad far more effectively than our governments can. For while the Olmert government and its Western counterparts are at the mercy of the multicultural commissars, private citizens are under no such constraints. And Israelis are better positioned than any Western society to launch such a war.

Tens of thousands of anti-jihadists Israelis - both Jewish and Arab - are completely fluent in Arabic, contemporary culture and the Internet. A private initiative to operate hundreds of Arabic language websites with anti-jihadist, liberal, pro-American and (dare we say) Zionist messages would constitute a serious challenge to jihadist predominance over Palestinian and pan-Arab consciousness.

Philanthropists in Israel and worldwide should have no difficulty investing a few million dollars for a project that would do nothing more than state the patently obvious: The path of jihad is immoral, inhuman and no fun at all while the path of human freedom is moral, just and can be highly enjoyable.

After Netanyahu presented the JCPA initiative to indict Ahmadinejad to foreign ambassadors, Defense Minister Amir Peretz was asked if he agrees that Ahmadinejad is a war criminal. Peretz did agree. Although he hadn't considered the issue himself, Peretz could not possibly have opposed what is obviously true and obviously an Israeli interest.

So too, were Olmert asked whether he agrees that Zionism and the notion of human freedom it embodies are superior to the notion of jihad, no doubt, Abbas's most enthusiastic champion would say yes. This is so not simply because Zionism is objectively better than jihad. It is so because it would be politically foolish for Olmert to say otherwise.

Although the dangers our world presents us with mount by the day, much of the power to surmount those dangers lies in our hands as citizens of Israel and of free societies more generally. By acting privately, we can force our leaders to defend us publicly and to adopt policies based on reality that see victory rather than surrender as our best option moving forward.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post. 

There is something terribly confusing about Iran's penchant for denying the Holocaust. Given Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's stated desire to see Israel wiped off the map, it would seem more reasonable for Iran to be celebrating the Holocaust than denying it as he has done this week by hosting his international Holocaust denial conference in Teheran.

But Ahmadinejad is slicker than that. He embraces not the Holocaust but the nation that pulled it off. In his August missive to German Chancellor Angela Merkel, he referred to the German nation as "a great contributor to progress in science, philosophy, literature, the arts and politics" who have had a "positive influence in international relations and the promotion of peace." These lines of course are open to interpretation. He could be referring to Goethe and Schiller and he could be referring to Heidegger and Goebbels.

So why is the guy who is gunning for a new Holocaust belittling the last one?

First of all, by doing so he empowers those Germans and friends of Germany who carried it out. By denying the Holocaust Ahmadinejad turns the Nazis into victims and so provides a space for them to express themselves after a 60-year silence. Indeed, in Germany neo-Nazism is a burgeoning political and social force that proudly parades its links to Iran.

The German fascist party NPD's followers demonstrated in support of Iran at the World Cup in Germany last spring. This week, Der Spiegel reported that attacks against Jewish children have increased markedly in recent years. Jewish children and their non-Jewish friends have been humiliated in anti-Semitic rituals unheard of since the Nazi era. "Jew" has become one of the most prevalent derogatory terms in use in Germany today.

Iran's adoption of Holocaust denial as an official, defiant policy gives legitimacy to this striking phenomenon. This is especially the case since Iran is blaming the Jews for silencing these poor fascists. In his same letter to Merkel Ahmadinejad wrote, "The perpetual claimants against the great people of Germany are the bullying Zionists that funded the Al Quds Occupying Regime with the force of bayonets in the Middle East."

Ahmadinejad of course does not limit his efforts to the Nazis. He is also setting the cognitive conditions for the annihilation of Israel for the international Left by presenting Israel's existence as a direct result of the Holocaust. As Iran's Foreign Minister Manoucher Mottaki said this week, "If the official version of the Holocaust is thrown into doubt, then the identity and nature of Israel will be thrown into doubt."

In short, Iran views Holocaust denial as a strategic propaganda tool. By downgrading the Holocaust, Iran mobilizes supporters and paralyzes potential opponents. Its coupling of the last Holocaust with the one it signals daily it intends to carry out wins it support among the Nazis and the Sunnis alike. Its presentation of the Holocaust as a myth used to exploit Muslims wins its support in the international Left which increasingly views Israel as an illegitimate state. So by denying the Holocaust Iran raises its leadership profile both regionally and globally.

Indeed, even if the Left doesn't buy into Holocaust denial, it can still agree with Iran's conclusion that Israel has no right to exist. As Mottaki explained, "If during this [Holocaust denial conference] it is proved that the Holocaust was a historical reality, then what is the reason for the Muslim people of the region and the Palestinians having to pay the cost of the Nazis' crimes?"

So from Mottaki's perspective, Israel is illegitimate whether the Holocaust happened or not. In making this point, Mottaki closed the gap between Iran and a loud chorus of voices in both Europe and the US who claim that Israel was established only because of European guilt over the Holocaust and consequently the Jewish state has no inherent legitimacy. This is a view that even Jewish leftists like Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen and New York University Professor Tony Judt have expressed.

Inevitably, those who hold this view come to believe that Israel has no right to defend itself. After all, if Israel is but an illegal European colony on stolen Arab lands, then any act of self-defense that Israel takes is by definition an act of aggression. So from this perspective, all Israel can do is give away land and accept that it must pay for all the pathologies of the Arab world.

THE VIEW that every problem in the region is somehow or other bound up in Israel's stubborn refusal to disappear is clearly reflected also in the policy prescriptions of the Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group, in former president Jimmy Carter's anti-Semitic attacks against Israel, and in the position paper authored by professors Steve Walt and John Mearsheimer about the so-called "Israel Lobby" (which is due to be published as a full-length book ahead of the 2008 presidential elections).

And so, by framing its Holocaust denial around an interpretation of the Arab world's war against Israel propounded by radical leftists and foreign policy "realists" of the soft-Right, the Iranians enable them to find a comfort level with what Iran is doing today. This comfort was displayed by the new US Defense Secretary Robert Gates in his Senate confirmation hearing where he justified Iran's nuclear weapons program by claiming that it was a deterrent measure in response to the fact that Pakistan, Russia, the US and Israel all have nuclear weapons. Gates of course served on the Baker-Hamilton commission and no doubt supports its recommendation that Israel be forced to give the Golan Heights to Syria and Judea and Samaria to Hamas.

Not only does Iran's Holocaust denial attract potential supporters, it also confuses and so neutralizes potential opponents who neither like nor dislike Jews and are too confused to understand the threat Iran poses to the US.

Although it has not for a moment desisted from its calls of "Death to America," its vision of a world without America or its threats to attack Europe, Iran has made Israel the focus of its propaganda. In so doing it has provided cover for "realists" like Mearsheimer, Walt and James Baker who claim that the war is really just between Israel and the Muslims and that the only reason that the US finds itself caught in the middle is because of its support for Israel. That support, in turn, is the result of Jewish subversion of Washington through the so-called all powerful "Israel lobby," which Carter claims, as he sells his latest screed, no politician will risk bucking up against.

This view, now emerging into the mainstream political debate in the US, has already won the debate in most of Europe. There the view is that European Muslims are only attacking their non-Muslim countrymen in places like Belgium and Norway because states like the US and Micronesia have yet to abandon Israel.

FOR MERKEL, the centerpiece of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's trip to Germany Tuesday was her furious denunciation of the Iranian conference. "I would like to make it clear that we reject with all our strength the conference taking place in Iran…. Germany will never accept this and will act against [Holocaust denial] with all the means that we have," she said.

Merkel's breathless furor is an example of the final problem that Ahmadinejad has created for his opponents by adopting Holocaust denial as a central plank of Iran's foreign policy. Bluntly stated, he gives people a way to be perceived as being against Iran without actually doing anything to stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons.

Merkel and her fellow Germans have spent an inordinate amount of time over the past three years condemning the Nazi Holocaust. This week they even organized a special Holocaust-condemning conference in response to the Iranian Holocaust-denying conference.

Yet over the same time period, they have conducted negotiations with Teheran as part of the EU-3 that have enabled Iran to continue its nuclear progress; obstructed US efforts to levy sanctions on Iran; and maintained active trade relations with Iran. Merkel's government has continued the practice of providing loan guarantees to German firms doing business with Iran. In 2005, German-Iranian trade stood at about $5 billion.

Now, after three years of disastrous negotiations with the mullahs, Germany has finally come around to supporting the European draft sanctions resolution against Iran being debated in the UN Security Council. The problem is that the proposed sanctions are so weak that they will have no impact on Iran's ability to move on with its nuclear bomb program.

The obvious fact that the sanctions will have no impact on Iran has not made a dent in Merkel's refusal to support military action against Iran under any circumstances - a refusal she reiterated while standing next to Israel's prime minister on Tuesday.

Olmert was apparently too busy admitting that Israel has nuclear weapons only to take back his admission hours later, absurdly praising Russian President Vladimir Putin for his opposition to the "nuclearization of Iran" which Putin is actively promoting, and promising to give Judea and Samaria to Holocaust denier Mahmoud Abbas to take issue with Merkel's statement. And that is a pity, because by taking issue with it, he would have gone far towards destroying the effectiveness of Iran's Holocaust denial strategy.

Were Israel to base its diplomatic, military, informational and economic policies on a single-minded commitment to prevent Iran from achieving nuclear capabilities, it would succeed.
Unfortunately, under the Olmert government Israel is doing nothing of the kind on any level.

On the public diplomacy level, were Israel to take concerted action against Iran's Holocaust denial program, it could destroy the program and so enact a positive change in the public discourse on Iran. Merkel's stated refusal to support military action against Iran's nuclear facilities was an ideal opportunity to launch such action. If Olmert had reacted in disgust to Merkel's statement and announced that it was unacceptable, he would have stood the Iranians' propaganda on its head.

Imagine what the impact would have been if Olmert had rejoined, "Excuse me, but it is quite possible that at the end of the day a military strike against Iran will be the only way to prevent Iran from acquiring atomic bombs and so committing another Holocaust. Given this, your blanket opposition to the notion of military strikes constitutes Germany's effective acceptance of another Holocaust. Shame on you, Angie. Shame on Germany."

Such a statement would have changed the entire dynamic of the international discourse on Iran.

If we are willing to do what is necessary, Israel can prevent the next Holocaust. It is unforgivable that Olmert and his ministers are not doing what needs to be done. 

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

For the past week, former US secretary of state James Baker has defended his Iraq Study Group's recommendation that the US negotiate with Iran and Syria from myriad criticisms. While acknowledging that Iran and Syria may not respond positively to US attempts to appease them, Baker said that even rejection will be helpful. If they refuse an American hand extended in partnership then they will stand exposed as enemies, he promises grandly.

But exposed to whom? Who is supposed to care if Iran and Syria are unmasked? They already are unmasked.

Everyone knows that Iran is developing nuclear weapons. Everyone knows that Iran and Syria are the primary engines of the insurgency in Iraq. Everyone knows that they instigated and commanded Hizbullah's war against Israel this summer and continue to arm Hizbullah and prepare for the next round of fighting. Everyone knows that like Hizbullah, the Palestinians today act as Iranian proxies.

Everyone knows that Syria engineered the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri in February 2005 and the murder of Lebanese Industry Minister Pierre Gemayel last month. And everyone knows that Iran and Syria are currently working to overthrow the pro-Western, democratic government of Lebanon.

And everybody knows that everybody knows. The problem isn't whether people know. The problem is that the Europeans, the UN, the Russians, Chinese and the Arabs either do not care or wish them well in their endeavors.

The so-called international community knows that appeasement will not work with Iran and Syria. And it also knows that since it doesn't wish to take action against either Iran or Syria, its members will oppose the US and Israel in their attempts to combat them while pretending that they don't know that Iran and Syria are aggressors and threats to international security.

UNFORTUNATELY, Baker is not the only one who supports embracing delusion over reality in as a foundation for policymaking. The Bush administration also supports making believe that the world is not as it is. For the past three years, the Bush administration has abdicated responsibility for contending with Iran's nuclear program to the UN and its subordinate bodies. Administration officials have justified the move by saying that if the UN refuses to take action, it will prove itself irrelevant and so pave the way for the US to strike out on its own and contend with Iran's nuclear program.

Albert Einstein defined insanity as repeating the same experiment and expecting to receive different results. In the months before the US-led Coalition deposed to Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq in 2003, the US tried this exercise with the UN and it failed - twice. Not only did the UN refuse to act, for the past three years the UN has done everything in its power to undermine US efforts to bring democracy and security to Iraq. Far from becoming irrelevant, the UN has made itself relevant as a major adversary of the US in Iraq.

There are two possible explanations for policymakers preferring to base their policies on delusion and wishful thinking rather than reality. The first is cynicism. By maintaining that the failure of a misguided policy will be blamed on the other side, Baker and the Bush administration seek to block debate on the wisdom of the actual policy by making the wisdom seem unimportant.

The second explanation is naivete bordering on stupidity. Although it is difficult to imagine that Baker is acting from innocence, it may explain the Bush administration's decision to empower the UN to hold America's policy on Iran captive to the vagaries of the Security Council.

UNFORTUNATELY, the embrace of fantasy is not a neurosis unique to American policymakers. Ahead of his visit to Rome this week, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert expressed willingness to consider agreeing to Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi's offer to deploy European troops to Gaza. As Olmert put it in an interview with Italian television, "If Italy is willing to allow its army to fight on a daily basis against terrorist activities by Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other terrorist groups that operate in the Strip that could be interesting news. I would be willing to contemplate that."

Olmert's willingness to contemplate the deployment of European forces in Gaza as well as Judea and Samaria is as bizarre as the Baker team's recommendation that the US negotiate with Syria and Iran. Unless Olmert has been asleep for the past 12 years, he knows the Italians and their European colleagues will never fight Israel's enemies.

Since 1994, Europeans have been deployed in Hebron in the Temporary International Presence in Hebron. Throughout that period, the TIPH has either done nothing or worked to delegitimize and undermine Israel's right and ability to defend itself.

IN GAZA European forces have been deployed at the international terminal at Rafah joining Egypt with Gaza since November 2005. Those forces have refused to lift a finger to prevent or even to protest the massive, illicit inundation of Gaza with Iranian weaponry transiting through Egypt. In turning a blind eye to the weapons smuggling, the Europeans have facilitated Gaza's transformation into one of the most active bases for global jihad in the world.

Then of course there are the European forces deployed in UNIFIL in Lebanon. While the French have distinguished themselves by daily threatening to shoot down IAF jets, UNIFIL has generally done everything in its power to defend Hizbullah and undermine Israel's national security.

Shortly after the cease-fire came into effect, UNIFIL forced Israel to end its naval blockade of the Lebanese coast and to open Lebanese airspace. This paved the way for Hizbullah's rearmament.

Last month UNIFIL was a key force in coercing the Olmert government to agree to remove IDF forces from the northern half of the village of Ghajar. Ghajar, with its unfortunate demarcation as half in Israel and half in Lebanon served as Hizbullah's main intelligence base and the epicenter of its drug smuggling operations into Israel until this summer the IDF took over control of the entire town. By making IDF forces leave the northern side of the town, UNIFIL has facilitated Ghajar's reversion to its previous status. Finally, UNIFIL has turned a blind eye to Hizbullah's reassertion of control over the border towns in southern Lebanon.

And now Olmert is ready to discuss allowing European forces to deploy in Gaza, Judea and Samaria.

In light of Europe's ferocious hostility towards Israel that has become full blown since the outbreak of the Palestinian jihad in 2000, it is all but impossible for an Israeli leader to be naive about Europe's position. Indeed, at this juncture, naivete becomes a mere synonym for stupidity.

So is Olmert cynical or stupid? Olmert's address to high school students last week in Nahariya where he justified his decision to accept a cease-fire in Lebanon without first securing the release of IDF soldiers Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser from Hizbullah captivity was a sign that he may be stupid. Olmert told the students that he accepted a cease-fire because he didn't want other soldiers to die just to get them home a little faster. They can wait a little longer, he said.

As the reservist brigade and battalion commanders noted in their reaction to his speech, Olmert displayed a shocking lack of moral fiber and honor in that statement. Indeed it was so detached from even the lowest standards for leadership that it bordered on idiocy.

But then, there is something deeply cynical in his insistence on publicly portraying UNIFIL as a positive force in the region and in acting as though Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi and his European colleagues are friends of Israel. By so doing, Olmert, echoing Baker, seeks to deflect criticism and stifle debate about his failure to defend Israel either militarily or diplomatically from the tightening circle of hostility bearing down on it.

The basic fact that is missed by Baker, the Bush administration, and Olmert in their repeated attempts to make leopards change their spots is that no one ever built support for his own agenda by advocating the agenda of his adversaries. If the Americans aren't willing to make the case for defeating Iran and Syria, no one will make it for them regardless of how self-evident that case is. So too, if Olmert wants the Europeans to face up to the fact of Palestinian aggression, barbarism and corruption, he won't be able to do so by rewarding their refusal to acknowledge it.

The world we inhabit becomes more dangerous by the day. The time has long passed when we could afford to embrace wishful thinking as a substitute for reality-based policies.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

When the history of our times is written, this week will be remembered as the week that Washington decided to let the Islamic Republic of Iran go nuclear. Hopefully it will also be remembered as the moment the Jews arose and refused to allow Iran to go nuclear.

With the publication of the recommendations of the Iraq Study Group chaired by former US secretary of state James Baker III and former congressman Lee Hamilton, the debate about the war in Iraq changed. From a war for victory against Islamofascism and for democracy and freedom, the war became reduced to a conflict to be managed by appeasing the US's sworn enemies in the interests of stability, and at the expense of America's allies.

Baker and his associates claim that the US cannot win the war in Iraq and so the US must negotiate with its primary enemies in Iraq and throughout the world - Iran and Syria - in the hopes that they will be persuaded to hold their fire for long enough to facilitate an "honorable" American retreat from the country.

Like his unsupported assertion that the US cannot win in Iraq, Baker also asserts - in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary - that Iran and Syria share America's "interest in avoiding chaos in Iraq." Because of this supposed shared interest, Baker maintains that with the proper incentives, Iran and Syria can be persuaded to cooperate with a US withdrawal from Iraq ahead of the 2008 presidential primaries.

The main incentive Baker advocates offering is Israel.

Baker believes that Iran will agree to temporarily hold its fire in Iraq in exchange for US acceptance of Iran as a nuclear power and an American pledge not to topple the regime. Syria will assist the US in exchange for US pressure on Israel to hand over the Golan Heights to Syria and Judea and Samaria to Hamas.

Obviously, if implemented, the Baker-Hamilton group's recommendations will be disastrous for Israel. Just the fact that they now form the basis for the public debate on the war is a great blow. But it isn't only Israel that is harmed by their actions. The US too, will be imperiled if their views become administration policy.

Baker, and incoming Secretary of Defense Robert Gates who served on his commission until Bush announced his appointment last month, believe that there is a deal to be had that will end Iranian and Syrian aggression against the US, its vital interests and its allies. But the fact of the matter is that there is no such deal. Contrary to what the Baker report argues and what Gates said in his Senate confirmation hearing Tuesday, Iran is not analogous to the Soviet Union and the war against the global jihad is not a new cold war.

Even if the US were to somehow get them to agree to certain understandings about Iraq, there is no reason to believe that the Iranians and Syrians would keep their word. Not only would the US be approaching them as a supplicant and so emboldening them, but to date the US has never credibly threatened anything either Syria or Iran value. Indeed, through supporting negotiations between the EU and Iran, empowering the UN to deal with Iran's nuclear program, and forcing Israel to accept a cease-fire with Hizbullah last summer that effectively gave victory to the Syrian and Iranian proxy, the US has consistently rewarded the two countries' aggression.

Worse than that, from a US perspective, although Gates admitted Tuesday that he cannot guarantee that Iran will not attack Israel with nuclear weapons, he ignored the fact that Iran - whose President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad daily calls for the destruction of the US - may also attack the US with nuclear weapons.

Gates admitted in his Senate hearing that Iran is producing many bombs - not just one.

Since it is possible to destroy Israel with just one bomb, the Americans should be asking themselves what Iran needs all those other bombs for. There are senior military sources in the US who have been warning the administration to take into consideration that the day that Iran attacks Israel with a nuclear bomb, 10 cities in the US and Europe are liable to also be attacked with nuclear weapons. Unfortunately, no one is listening to these voices today.

IT IS particularly upsetting that Washington has chosen now of all times to turn its back on the war. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad hinted Monday that Iran has completed the nuclear fuel cycle and so has passed the point of no return on its nuclear program. He also made a statement indicating that Iran may have its nuclear arsenal up and running by March - just four months away.

Serious disagreement exists in Washington over the status of the Iranian program. Some claim that Iran is four or five years away from nuclear weapons capabilities. Others maintain that Iran has recently experienced serious technical setbacks in their uranium enrichment activities and that the North Korean nuclear bomb test in October, in which Iranian officials participated, was a failure.

But there are also engaged officials who agree with Ahmadinejad's assessment of Iran's nuclear progress. Those officials maintain first that the North Korean-Iranian test in October was successful and should be taken as a sign that Iran already has a nuclear arsenal. Second, they warn that the US and Israel have six months to act against Iran's nuclear installations and to overthrow the regime or face the prospect of the annihilation of Israel and the destruction of several US cities as a result of an Iranian nuclear offensive.

Obviously, Israel cannot risk the possibility that the last group of officials is correct. And since Washington has decided to go to sleep, it is up to Israel alone to act.

WHAT MUST Israel do? First, it must plan an attack against Iran's nuclear facilities and regime command and control centers. To pave the way for such an attack, the IDF must move now to neutralize second order threats like the Palestinian rocket squads and the Syrian ballistic missile arsenals in order to limit the public's exposure to attack during the course of or in the aftermath of an Israeli attack on Iran.

Second, Israel must work to topple the Iranian regime. As the Defense Minister's advisor Uri Lubrani told Ha'aretz last week, the regime in Iran is far from stable today and ripe for overthrow.

The overwhelming majority of Iranians despise the regime. There are rebellious groups in every ethnic group and province in the country - Azeris, Kurds, Ahwazi Arabs, Baluchis, Turkmen and even Persians - that are actively working to destabilize the regime. Every day there are strikes of workers, women and students. Every few weeks there are reports of violent clashes between anti-regime groups and regime forces. Recently, oil pipelines were sabotaged in the oil-rich Khuzestan province in the south where the Ahwazi Arabs are systematically persecuted by the regime.

Westerners who recently visited Iran claim that Israel operating alone could overthrow the regime by extending its assistance to these people.

Thirdly, in his testimony in the Senate on Tuesday, Gates casually mentioned that Israel has nuclear weapons. In so doing, he unceremoniously removed four decades of ambiguity over Israel's nuclear status. While his statement caused dismay in Jerusalem, perhaps Israel should see this as an opportunity.

With the threat of nuclear destruction hanging over us, it makes sense to conduct a debate about an Israeli second strike. While such a discussion will not dissuade Iran's fanatical leaders from attacking Israel with nuclear weapons, it could influence the Iranian nation to rise up against their leaders.

Moreover, such a debate could influence other regimes in the region like Saudi Arabia which today behave as if Israel's annihilation will have no adverse impact on them. Americans like Baker, Gates and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and their European friends need to understand that as goes Israel so go the Persian Gulf's oil fields. Such an understanding may influence their willingness to enable Iran to acquire nuclear weapons.

Tragically, in these perilous times, we are being led by the worst, most incompetent government we have ever had.

Prime Minister Olmert's way of dealing with the Iranian threat is to pretend that it is none of his business. During his visit to the US last month, Olmert abdicated responsibility for safeguarding Israel from nuclear destruction to President Bush. It didn't bother him that Bush didn't accept the responsibility. By mindlessly adhering to non-existent cease-fires with Iranian proxies in Gaza and Lebanon and squawking about peace with them, Olmert continues to behave as if this is someone else's problem.

For her part, reacting to the possibility of national extinction, Education Minister Yuli Tamir this week cocked her pedagogical pistol and shot at her rear. By ordering the public schools to demarcate the 1949 armistice lines on the official maps and so wipe Israel off maps of Judea, Samaria and the Golan Heights, Tamir worked to divide the nation over second order issues at a time when unity of purpose is most essential. Olmert, who refused to overturn her scandalous decree, was doubtlessly pleased with her political stunt. For two days the media devoted itself entirely to stirring up internal divisions and so ignored the threat hanging over our heads and Olmert's refusal to deal with it.

Next Thursday, Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz, Vice Chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations Malcolm Hoenlein and former ambassador to the UN Dore Gold will hold a press conference in New York where they will call for the US to indict Ahmadinejad under the International Convention Against Genocide for his call to annihilate Israel. This is doubtlessly a welcome initiative. But it is insufficient.

In a few months, Iran may well be in possession of nuclear weapons which it will use to destroy the Jewish state. With the US withdrawing from the war and Israel in the hands of incompetents, the time has come for the Jewish people to rise up.

GUARANTEEING our survival begins with each of us deciding that we are willing to fight to survive. And today the challenge facing us is clear. Either the Iranian regime is toppled and its nuclear installations are destroyed or Israel will be annihilated. The Jews in the Diaspora must launch mass demonstrations and demand that their governments take real action to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.

The citizens of the State of Israel must also take to the streets. The government that led us to defeat in Lebanon this summer is leading us to a disaster of another order entirely. All citizens must demand that Olmert, his ministers and the generals in the IDF General Staff make an immediate decision. They now hold the responsibility for acting against Iran. They must either act or resign and make way for others who will.

America just abdicated its responsibility to defend itself against Iran and so left Israel high and dry. Nevertheless, the Jewish people is far from powerless. And the State of Israel also is capable of defending itself. But we must act and act immediately.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

The world has gone mad. As Lebanon teeters on the brink of Iranian and Syrian instigated collapse, senior American and British political officials urge President George W. Bush to hand Iraq over to Iran and Syria.

As the Palestinians push forward with their Iranian-sponsored, Arab supported jihad, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert responds by announcing his intention to release thousands of terrorists from prison and throw thousands of Israelis out of their homes while giving their lands to Hamas.

While Saturday found the Palestinian Authority's Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh meeting in Teheran with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and applauding his plan to annihilate Israel, Olmert decided Sunday that, in the interest of peace with the Palestinians he would forbid the IDF from attacking terrorists positions in Gaza even if doing so would prevent imminent rocket attacks against the Negev.

And now, according to Britain's Sunday Times, Saudi Arabia is becoming the "principal peace broker" between Israel and the Palestinians.

Since meeting in Amman in September with the former Saudi ambassador to the US, Saudi Prince Bandar, Olmert has reportedly been seriously considering embracing the so-called Saudi peace plan from 2002. Senior Israeli officials told the Times that the plan, which would establish a Palestinian state, "could lead to a formal peace deal between Israel and seven Arab countries: Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman, the Emirates, Morocco and Tunisia."

IT WOULD really be terrific if Israel could have peace with Saudi Arabia and the rest of those Arab countries. A true peace with Saudi Arabia would mean an end to the illegal Arab economic boycott of Israel and their boycott of companies that do business with Israel.

Peace between Israel and Saudi Arabia would mean that the Saudis would stop financing Islamic terror groups dedicated to killing Jews in Israel and around the world.

Since having peaceful relations with Israel would presuppose Saudi acceptance of Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state in the Land of Israel, obviously a Saudi peace with Israel would mean an end to Saudi financing of mosques, schools and media organs throughout the world which indoctrinate hundreds of millions of people to believe that Jews are dogs and pigs and vermin and must be annihilated.

Peace between Saudi Arabia and Israel would mean an end to Saudi pressure on Europeans to criminalize Israel and marginalize the Jewish communities in their countries in exchange for a stable oil supply.

The calls by professors who teach in Saudi-financed US and European universities to boycott Israeli academics and end the US alliance with Israel would be muted if Saudi Arabia was at peace with Israel. Similarly, former US officials employed by the Saudis would stop calling American Jews traitors for supporting the US-Israel alliance.

So if there were a possibility that the Times' report that "The Saudi Arabian government is emerging as a key player in talks to broker a comprehensive Arab-Israeli peace agreement," were true, it would be a true cause for a celebration in Israel.

BUT OF course, like the view that the turmoil in Lebanon is an internal Lebanese affair; and the view that a US retreat from Iraq could be anything other than a strategic victory for the global jihad, the belief that the Saudis are interested in brokering peace with Israel is a complete fabrication. Indeed the "deal" that the Saudis are "brokering" is nothing less than a blueprint for Israel's destruction.

The 2002 Saudi "peace plan" requires Israel to agree to be overrun by millions of hostile foreign Arabs in the framework of the so-called "Right of Return." Moreover, the text of the initiative, "Assures the rejection of all forms of Palestinian partition which conflict with the special circumstances of the Arab host countries." That is, the Saudi plan prohibits Arab states from granting citizenship to these millions of Arabs and so leaves them no choice other than to destroy Israel.

Saudi Arabia's "peace plan" also demands that Israel surrender east Jerusalem - including the Temple Mount, all of Judea and Samaria, the Jordan Valley and the entire Golan Heights to the Palestinians and the Syrians. This Israeli surrender would enable the formal establishment of a Palestinian terror state. It would also strengthen Iran's principal ally - the Syrian Ba'athist regime.

HERE TOO, the Saudi plan is a recipe for Israel's destruction. Without these territories, Israel would be rendered indefensible. Without Judea, Samaria, Jerusalem, the Jordan Valley and the Golan Heights, Israel would be so vulnerable to missile and artillery attack that it could be overwhelmed even before conventional invading Arab armies set foot on its remaining territory.

As a reading of the Saudi plan makes clear, it would only be after Israel surrendered all this land and allowed itself to be overrun by millions of hostile Arab immigrants that the Saudis and their Arab brethren would "establish normal relations with Israel." That is, the Saudis will be ready to talk to Israelis only after Israel is destroyed.

The Times' report claims that Olmert's speech at David Ben Gurion's grave last week where he offered to surrender to Hamas, "was not Olmert's own initiative but a dictate given to him last month when he met George W. Bush and Condoleezza Rice in Washington." The Americans reportedly were acting at the behest of the Saudis who wanted proof that Olmert is truly committed to capitulation.

IT MAKES some sense that the Bush administration would express such devotion to the Saudi plan. The most glaring Achilles heel of Bush's entire war against the global jihad has been his refusal to contend with Saudi Arabia's central role in fomenting the jihad.

Bush's father's secretary of state James Baker III is the senior partner of Baker, Botts law firm which is representing Saudi Arabia in the lawsuit filed against the kingdom by the relatives of the victims of the September 11 attacks. As the co-chair of the Iraq Study Group, Baker is about to recommend that Bush pressure Israel to capitulate to Hamas and Syria in Judea and Samaria, Gaza and the Golan Heights order to facilitate the US's capitulation to Syria and Iran in Iraq. Prince Bandar, Olmert's reported interlocutor is a personal friend of Baker and the Bush family. After 15 Saudis and four Egyptians carried out the attacks on the US on Sept. 11, it was Bandar who persuaded Bush to become the first US president to ever make the establishment of a Palestinian state an official US policy goal.

Olmert's motive for providing the Saudis with an unwarranted propaganda victory in the US and Israel is similarly understandable. Quite simply, Olmert will do anything to take the Israeli public's attention away from his failure in office. And to successfully "spin" the public, he needs the support of the Israeli media.

Olmert's embrace of a new imaginary "peace process" will win him the support of Haaretz and the other radical leftist elements in the Israeli media. These media organs will then work to prevent the opening of police investigations into Olmert's alleged criminal activities.

Friday, Haaretz columnist Gideon Samet made clear that in exchange for the media's support, Olmert must release thousands of Palestinian terrorists from jail even without securing the release of IDF Cpl. Gilad Shalit; scale-down IDF counter-terror operations in Judea and Samaria; facilitate the free flow of goods from Gaza into Israel and so render Israel even more vulnerable to terrorist penetration from Gaza; destroy Israeli communities in Judea and Samaria; and provide free medical services to Palestinians in Israeli hospitals.

OLMERT'S SPEECH at the gravesite of Israel's founding father was a signal on his part to the radical leftist media that he is accepting their terms. And in exchange the media ignores the ever escalating allegations that Olmert has been involved in criminal activity. More importantly, the media makes light of the fact that by losing the war this summer and adopting a strategy of total capitulation to all external forces Olmert has placed the country in the greatest existential danger in its history. Similarly, the media hides the ideological bankruptcy of Olmert's Kadima party - whose platform of capitulation has failed completely, and ignores the fact that Kadima has no clear constituency.

It is a Faustian bargain these leaders of Israel and the US make when they prefer good press to good policies. What the self-satisfied grins on the faces of the leaders of Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia and other "moderate" countries these days clearly signals is that it is a bargain we cannot afford.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.