The general tendency of Westerners is to view global jihad as a foreign policy issue. But today it is clear that it is also a domestic policy issue.

Over the weekend The Sunday Telegraph reported that a recently circulated British intelligence report warned: "The terrorist threat facing Britain from home-grown al-Qaida agents is higher than at any time since the September 11 attacks in 2001."

After foiling the jihadist plot to down US-bound British passenger aircraft last summer, MI5 director Eliza Manningham-Buller claimed that there are some 1,600 British Muslims actively involved in plotting attacks against Britain. According to the intelligence report cited in the Sunday Telegraph, today that number exceeds 2,000.

As one senior British political source told the newspaper, "The Security Services have constantly warned that the task of countering Islamic terrorism is a daunting one. There will be more attacks in Britain."

It is not surprising that Britain faces the specter of mass attacks carried out by its own citizens in the name of Allah. Repeated exposes of the goings-on in British mosques and in supposedly "moderate" British Muslim communal organizations have shown unequivocally that they are being used as indoctrination centers for jihad.

A poll published last month by Britain's Policy Exchange think tank bore out the poisonous impact this indoctrination has had on young Muslims in the country. Thirty-seven percent of British Muslims between the ages of 16-24 would rather live under Shari'a law than under British Common Law; 36 percent think Muslims should be killed if they convert to another religion; 13 percent admire al-Qaida and similar terror groups; and a whopping 74 percent of young British Muslims believe women should wear veils.

WHILE IT is true that in the US the danger of home-grown jihadists to national security is lower than it is in Britain, it is also true that there is a growing phenomenon of jihadist violence being perpetrated by Muslim men against American civilians in the name of jihad.

Ten days ago, the Investors Business Daily published an editorial enumerating a partial list of acts of terrorism carried out by Muslim men against their fellow Americans since the September 11 attacks. Most recently, Sulejman Talovic entered a shopping mall in Salt Lake City, murdered five and wounded four unsuspecting shoppers before being killed by an off-duty police officer.

As was the case when Derrick Shareef, another Muslim male, was arrested in early December for plotting to carry out a similar attack at a shopping mall in Illinois just before Christmas, the media and the law enforcement agencies covering the Salt Lake City massacre have made light of the fact that the perpetrator was a Muslim.

While Talovic is dead and so cannot explain his motives to authorities, Shareef was arrested after telling an FBI informant of his plans to murder Jews specifically and Americans in particular for Allah. As Shareef told the informant, "I swear by Allah man, I'm down for it too. I'm down for the cause. I'm down to live for the cause and die for the cause, man."

SHAREEF'S protestations of jihadist ardor made little impression on either federal authorities or the media. Upon announcing Shareef's arrest, US Federal Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald insisted that he was acting on his own and that he had no outside inspiration for his decision to commit mass murder for Allah. As was the case with Talovic and with Naveed Afzal Haq, who murdered one woman and wounded five during his shooting rampage at the Seattle Jewish Federation last July, the media and federal authorities have hushed up and failed to investigate the jihadist motives for the Illinois attacker or link him to any larger phenomenon.

The Investors Business Daily editorial ran under the headline "Sudden jihad syndrome." The term, which has been bandied about by law enforcement officials in both the US and Britain in recent months, encapsulates the view that Muslims can be incited and then move to commit acts of murder in the name of Allah and jihad instantaneously.

The attractiveness of the "sudden jihad syndrome" explanation for violent Islamic crime is clear. By arguing that the jihadists are acting on their own after being mysteriously inspired by no one, law enforcement officials and the media are relieved of the thankless task of investigating mosques, Muslim advocacy groups and Islamic centers, where the jihadist indoctrination is conducted on a daily basis.

IT IS hard to know what to make of this view. Perhaps there is something to it. Perhaps the message of jihad is so strong that young Muslim men can be inspired to shoot pregnant women in office buildings after the notion of murder for Allah enters the transoms of their minds independently of other outside factors - through vapors or spontaneous generation perhaps.

What is clear enough is that since this is the view that is informing policymakers, law enforcement officials and the media in handling a clear trend of jihadist murder, it requires serious empirical study. The obvious place for that research to take place is in the universities.

Unfortunately, there can be little hope that universities in the US or in the West in general will devote any serious consideration to this most important sociological, psychological and national security trend. Far from being willing to study the most central issue of our times, universities are leading the charge in either ignoring it, or apologizing for it.

On February 15, the Iraqi Ambassador to the UN, Hamid Al Bayati, spoke at New York's Fordham University. During the course of his remarks, Bayati doubted the fact that the Holocaust had occurred. In his words, "I'm not aware of any dictator who used chemical weapons against his own people. Some academics or diplomats would say Hitler used chemical weapons, but I am sure he didn't use them against his own people - his German people."

When pressed by law professor Avi Bell on the fact that several hundred thousand German citizens were gassed to death by Nazi Germany, Bayati still refused to take the point.

Fordham University is far from alone in providing a platform for Holocaust deniers. Last Thursday the Dean's office at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology co-sponsored an event on the Arab-Israel conflict called, "Foreign Policy and Social Justice: A Jewish View, a Muslim View." The man invited to provide the Jewish view was Dovid Weiss, a member of the crackpot Neturei Karta sect. Weiss rose to prominence when he traveled to Teheran last December to participate in Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's Holocaust denial conference.

While MIT and Fordham were hosting Holocaust deniers in the name of intellectual freedom, their fellow universities were hosting "Israel Apartheid Week." As part of their efforts to criminalize the Jewish state, Arab and Jewish speakers at "Israel Apartheid Week" events refer to Israel as "1948 Palestine" and show propaganda films portraying IDF soldiers and Israeli civilians in Judea and Samaria as murderers.

The events are generally sponsored by the International Solidarity Movement. In addition to their campus outreach, the ISM sponsors the weekly riots against the security fence in Bil'in and in Hebron, where its protesters throw rocks at IDF soldiers. Given the violent content of their actions in Israel, it should come as no surprise that their events on US campuses also breed violence.

At an "Israel Apartheid Week" event at City University of New York, after watching a propaganda film, 19-year old Binyamin Rister rose and politely asked the ISM presenters if they supported terrorism. When he received no reply he politely repeated the question. Rather than wait for an answer, CUNY security guards dragged Rister from the room and then repeatedly banged his head against the wall of an elevator and threw him head first down the stairs. Rister's injuries from the assault by campus security required him to be evacuated by ambulance in a neck brace to the hospital.

In an almost identical case at Georgetown last year, Bill Maniaci a 65-year-old retired Jewish American police officer was brutalized by Georgetown security guards after he asked ISM spokesmen if they supported terrorism. He is currently suing Georgetown for $8 million in damages for the assault. According to Lee Kaplan's report of the CUNY event in Frontpage Magazine, there were seven witnesses to the unprovoked attack against Rister. He too has filed a multi-million dollar lawsuit against CUNY.

EVEN THOSE propounding the view that jihadist murderers in the US and Britain are inspired to kill after being brought under the spell of the "sudden jihad syndrome" cannot deny that the root of the jihad is ideas. Similarly, it is self-evident that the key to beating the global jihad is victory in the battlefield of ideas. Unfortunately, as the pro-jihadist trend on US and Western campuses, and its impact on idea consumers in law enforcement, the media and policy circles throughout the free world shows, to the extent that those charged with engaging in the battle of ideas are engaged, they fight on the side of the enemy.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

Iran has an interesting take on international law. According to Iranian Foreign Minister Manuchehr Mottaki, the UN Security Council's Chapter VII resolution from last December requiring Iran to cease all its uranium enrichment activities is illegal. As he put it Wednesday during a friendly visit in Turkey, "We were against [the resolution] for being illegal and politically motivated."

Anyone with even a casual acquaintance with international law should recognize that Mottaki's statement is not merely incorrect. His rejection of the legality of Security Council Resolution 1737 is an expression of contempt for the very foundations of the law of nations which have been almost universally adhered to since the Peace of Westphalia in 1648.

What comes across most clearly in Mottaki's statement is that little has changed in Iran since the Khomeini revolution in 1979 brought the current regime to power. Back then, in their first stab at international diplomacy, the mullahs showed that their regime stands opposed to all the norms of civilized behavior that have formed the basis of the nation-state system since the end of the Thirty Years War. The Iranian takeover of the US embassy in Teheran and the holding hostage of 52 embassy employees for 444 days was not merely an act of state terrorism. It was a declaration of war against civilization.

And so, it should come as a surprise to no one that Mottaki rejects the Security Council's right to force Iran to abide by its commitment to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty which Iran voluntarily signed and ratified. He is behaving in a manner that is wholly consistent with Iran's international behavior since the overthrow of the Shah.

Similarly, the US and its Western and UN partners responded to Iran's provocation in a manner that is wholly consistent with their treatment of Iran since the revolution. For the past 27 years, the US, the European Union and the UN have responded to Iran's contemptuous disregard for international law and civilized norms of behavior by seeking to appease the mullahs.

Wednesday US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice expressed this consistent preference in an interview with CNN. Brushing off the allegation that the US may be planning to forcibly prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons Rice said, "The United States is on a diplomatic path and we believe in this diplomatic path."

She continued, "If Iran will, in fact, suspend its enrichment and reprocessing activities we can sit down together, reverse 27 years of the isolation of the United States from Iran and Iran from the United States. We can talk about anything. The United States has no desire for confrontation with Iran. None. We would rather have with Iran the opportunity to discuss whatever matters Iran would like to discuss."

So as far as Rice is concerned, diplomacy is not only her chosen method of dealing with Iran. It is the only method for dealing with Iran.

Muhammad el Baradei, who as chairman of the International Atomic Energy Agency is charged with reporting Iranian non-compliance with Resolution 1737 to the Security Council, took Rice's diplomatic line to the next logical level when he said last month, "the only solution to the Iranian issue… is dialogue, is negotiation."

Baradei argues this point in both practical and normative terms. Practically speaking, he said Tuesday that it is impossible to put the Iranian nuclear genie back in the bottle because the Iranians have already acquired the know-how to build atomic bombs.

Baradei made that statement after meeting with Iran's chief nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani. At the meeting Larijani told Baradei that Iran remains steady in its rejection of the Security Council's demand that it suspend its uranium enrichment activities.

Aside from explaining why it is pointless to try to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear bombs, Baradei explained that it would also be wrong to check the mullahs' behavior. "Our experience without exception is that sanctions alone do not work and in most cases radicalize the regime and hurt the people who are not supposed to be hurt…. [S]anctions have to be coupled at all times with incentives and a real search for a compromise based on face-saving, based on respect," Baradei opined.

Perhaps Rice's enthusiasm for appeasing Teheran is influenced by people like former senator and Democratic contender for the presidency John Edwards. This week Edwards reportedly said that the greatest short-term threat to world peace is the possibility that Israel will bomb Iran's nuclear facilities. Perhaps it is similar voices in the James Baker and Brent Scowcroft corner of the Republican Party that are motivating Rice to behave like the Europeans and the UN.

Whatever the explanation for the US's French-style Iran policy, the EU for its part insists on negotiating with Iran in spite of the fact that last week an official EU document acknowledged that the Europeans know full well that their four-year nuclear diplomacy with the Iranians has failed to delay even slightly Iran's acquisition of atomic bombs. That is, Europe maintains its "jaw jaw" with Iran in spite of the fact that it knows that by doing so it is all but ensuring that Iran will acquire nuclear weapons which it has publicly pledged to use to eradicate Israel.

THE IRANIANS are more than willing to humor the West's diplomacy fetish. Even as President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Wednesday that "It is worth it to stop other activities for 10 years and focus only on the nuclear issue," he and his colleagues announced their willingness to discuss their nuclear weapons program with the US and anyone else who asks (aside from Israel), so long as those discussions don't impinge on their freedom to build their nuclear bombs.

From Washington to Brussels to Moscow to Turtle Bay, everyone applauds the fact that both the so-called international community and its Iranian antagonist desire negotiations. This, they say, is proof that there is no reason to abandon diplomacy.

But this is nonsense. The American, European and UN defense of negotiations with Teheran is nothing more than a willful act of collective delusion. For while it is true that everyone wants to talk, it is equally true that there is absolutely nothing to talk about.

In theory, nations engage in negotiations in order to advance their national interests, whether separately or collectively. In the case of Iran, the US and its allies seek to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. They maintain that the best means of achieving that aim is diplomacy.

For its part, Iran wishes to acquire nuclear weapons unmolested. It chooses to negotiate with the West in order to achieve that aim.

The problem here is that the sides' intentions are mutually exclusive so one side's gains come at the other's expense. Since Iran refuses to suspend its uranium enrichment, diplomatically engaging its emissaries serves only to legitimize the regime and enable its leaders to acquire nuclear weapons under the cover of international diplomacy.

THIS SAME disturbing pattern repeats itself with the so-called international community's engagement of the Palestinians. This is particularly the case in the aftermath of the Mecca agreement which relegated the Fatah terror organization to the position of junior partner in the Hamas terror organization's government. As with Iran, so too with the Palestinians: While everyone agrees that negotiations are the answer, they ignore the fact that there is nothing to negotiate about.

The so-called international community argues that it wishes to engage the Palestinians in order to peacefully resolve the Palestinian conflict with Israel. For their part, the Palestinians in Hamas and Fatah claim that the purpose of negotiations is to advance their strategic aim of destroying Israel.

In their dealings with both Iran and the Palestinians, the leaders of the so-called international community assert that were they to abandon diplomacy they would strengthen the most radical elements on the other side. As Baradei put it with regard to Iran, "We know that if you jolt a country's pride, all the factions, right, left and center will get together and try to accelerate a program to develop a nuclear weapon to defend themselves."

Unfortunately, experience shows that just the opposite is the case. The so-called international community's engagement of the Iranians and the Palestinians has in no way weakened the most radical elements in those societies. Rather, it has weakened the West's willingness to confront those radical elements and so brought about an effective radicalization of the West. Case in point is Britain.

Until recently, the British treated Hamas like the genocidal jihadist movement that it is. But Wednesday Britain's policy collapsed completely. In a speech before Parliament, Prime Minister Tony Blair said, "It's far easier to deal with the situation in Palestine if there is a national unity government. I hope we can make progress, including even with the more sensible elements of Hamas."

But of course, there are no "sensible elements of Hamas." So what sort of "progress" does Blair believe it is possible to make?

Moreover, while Ahmadinejad may be the most outspoken Iranian leader on the issue of eradicating Israel, he is by no means alone in his intention. Every Iranian leader from Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on down has expressed a desire to see Israel wiped off the map. Engaging these fanatics in talks that have already failed can only serve to strengthen their commitment to carry out their monstrous, openly acknowledged plans.

What we have here is a full-blown eclipse of rational policy-making with diplomatic fetishism. What Rice, Blair, Baradei, French President Jacques Chirac and German Chancellor Angela Merkel are all forgetting is that diplomacy is a means and not an end. By engaging the Palestinians and the Iranians, they willfully ignore the fact that if you are not using diplomacy to advance your aims, that diplomacy will be exploited by your antagonist to advance his aims.

If Israel had an even slightly competent government, our leaders would be pointing out the perversity and stupidity of fetish diplomacy. But Israel's government is not even slightly competent. The Olmert-Livni-Peretz government has descended to a level of incoherence that makes it seem like a waste of time to even bother criticizing it. Its moves are transparently motivated by nothing more than a desire to hold onto power for as long as possible.

In light of this abysmal state of affairs, it falls to private individuals to remind the diplomatic fetishists that diplomacy is a means, not an end. If their current policies are played out, the fact that they abjured war and remained faithful to diplomacy will not excuse them when Hamas transforms Gaza, Judea and Samaria into a Taliban state; destabilizes the Jordanian monarchy; and murders thousands of Jews in Israel. Their commitment to diplomacy will not make posterity more forgiving of their failure to prevent a second Holocaust.

You are not being peacemakers when you engage the mullahs and Hamas. You are preparing the ground for a huge conflagration.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

The mafia brings people into the police and they act as [the mafia's] servants…The people in the police are afraid of nothing. A person who can take a half-a-million shekels inside a police station and not report it is someone who couldn't care less and fears nothing. A police like this cannot endure.

Thus spake retired district judge Vardi Zeiler Sunday morning. Zeiler's indictment of the police came as he presented the findings of the state commission he led which investigated allegations of police and prosecutorial mishandling of organized crime investigations and of police collusion with the Perinian crime family.

Hours after the Zeiler Commission published its report, housecleaning in the police high command had already begun in earnest. Insp.-Gen. Moshe Karadi announced his resignation. An hour later, Internal Security Minister Avi Dichter announced he was appointing Prison Service Chief Warden Yaakov Ganot to replace Karadi and former Jerusalem District Commander Mickey Levy to replace Karadi's deputy Benny Kaniak.

In explaining his decision, Dichter said, "I have reached the conclusion that in order to undertake policy changes, and especially in order to improve the performance of the 28,000 officers and men serving in the police, I must place a different high command at the helm of the organization."

Praising Dichter's appointments, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said that Ganot and Levy "can lead the Israel Police to achievements and successes in preserving the rule of law, public order and the provision of personal security to every citizen."

Both Olmert and Dichter spoke of the urgent need to restore public faith in the police and promised that with its new commanders the police force is embarking on a new path that makes it worthy of the public's trust.

UNFORTUNATELY, Dichter's command appointments do not inspire faith that the police force will reform itself. Moreover, there is no reason to expect that simple replacement of senior commanders will suffice to fix what is clearly broken in the police force specifically, or in the public sector generally.

In 1994 Ganot was indicted for taking bribes. Although he was found innocent of criminal wrongdoing, the facts that led to his indictment - which are apparently undisputed - cast doubt on his fitness to serve as the chief of police.

While serving as the police commander of the Northern District, Ganot accepted unusually cheap contracting estimates for home improvements from a contractor whose base of operations was within Ganot's geographical command. It is true that the state prosecutors failed to prove their contention that in hiring the contractor Ganot had accepted a bribe. But in behaving as he did, Ganot displayed at worst contempt, and at best an inexcusable misunderstanding of what it means to be a public servant.

Levy's past service record contains an even more disturbing blot. In 1994, while serving as the commander of the Jerusalem Police station, Levy led his men in dispersing a legal demonstration against the Oslo process organized by the right-wing advocacy group Women in Green. As his men violently dispersed the non-violent, law-abiding demonstrators, Levy brutally attacked Women in Green leader Nadia Matar. After attacking her, Levy arrested her and filed a criminal complaint accusing Matar of attacking him.

In a bit of bum luck for Levy, a Channel 2 camera crew filmed the episode. The film clearly showed Levy assaulting Matar as she passively resisted arrest for leading a licensed, legal protest.

Acting on Levy's false testimony, the state prosecution opened criminal proceedings against Matar. After Matar's attorney entered the Channel 2 footage as exculpatory evidence, the presiding judge advised the state prosecution to withdraw the complaint. It did so only after Levy testified under oath that Matar had assaulted him.

LAST YEAR, in its preliminary findings, the Zeiler Commission issued warnings to the former head of the Police Investigations Department and current State Attorney Eran Shendar and his successor at PID, Herzl Spiro, for what the commission viewed as undue willingness to close the PID's criminal investigation against police Commander Yoram Levy for his documented untoward relationship with the Perinian crime family.

In Matar's case, after the prosecution withdrew its charges, her attorney filed a request for the PID to open a criminal investigation of Mickey Levy on suspicion of assault and perjury. Here, in a manner disturbingly similar to his refusal to pursue the investigation of Yoram Levy, Shendar claimed that in spite of the Jerusalem police station commander's prima facie false testimony against Matar and the film evidence of his brutality, there was insufficient evidence to indict him.

Both Ganot's and Levy's past records raise serious questions about the reasonableness of their appointments. Moreover, Shendar's failure to properly investigate Levy on the one hand and Dichter's willingness to appoint Ganot and Levy in spite of their problematic records on the other indicates that the problems that afflict the police as a whole will not go away with the shake-up of the police high command.

Those problems, as former internal security minister Uzi Landau puts it, are "systemic" and cannot be reduced to a few rotten apples here and there that need to be removed.

That systemic problem is not one of lawlessness so much as propriety. In a disturbingly large number of cases the police officers, like their counterparts in the state prosecution, have forgotten that their status as public servant does not render them a privileged class above the "unwashed masses" who pay their salaries.

AND HERE we arrive at the wider systemic problem that Landau referred to. It is the same systemic flaw that caused the Zeiler Commission to be formed and the same problem that fomented the establishment of the Winograd Committee, whose investigation of the government's and IDF's conduct of last summer's war with Hizbullah is due to be completed next month.

For the past decade or so, Israel's elites in the public sector and in the media have repeatedly drawn an unsubstantiated distinction between professional bureaucrats and politicians. The former are upheld as incorruptible and upright while the latter have been decried as incompetent, unprofessional and inherently corrupt. This absurd distinction has engendered the view that our bureaucrats can do no wrong while our politicians can do no right.

And this is the heart of the matter.

Whether a person is fit to serve or not has far less to do with his resume than with his character. This is as true of so-called "professional" bureaucrats as it is of so-called politicians. In the case of the police, what men like Karadi, Ganot and both Levys, like Shendar and Spiro, lack is not professional qualifications, but integrity.

IN SHARP contrast, at the same moment that the disgraced professional Karadi announced his resignation, a purely political meeting in Tel Aviv took place that showed politics at its best.

At Likud party headquarters a group of Likud Central Committee members attempted to convince Uzi Landau to return to the Knesset. Landau failed to be reelected in last year's general elections largely because he refused to abandon his convictions.

Rather than close ranks around then party leader and prime minister Ariel Sharon, Landau led the internal Likud campaign against Sharon's withdrawal and expulsion plan from Gaza and northern Samaria. Now he is in line to reenter the Knesset to fill the seat being vacated by MK Dan Naveh, who has decided to leave politics in order to take a high-paying job in the private sector.

The Likud Central Committee has for years been portrayed by the media as the most corrupt enclave in Israeli society. Its members are castigated as hacks who, to a man, care nothing for the public welfare or the good of the state and are motivated only by an unquenchable appetite for political jobs and graft.

Yet, lo and behold, as the police force was dismembering itself on live television, these supposedly wholly corrupt Neanderthals were imploring one of the most ideologically driven and competent politicians in Israel to drop what he is doing and return to the Knesset for the good of the party and the country.

Unfortunately for both the party and the nation, Landau rejected their pleas. No, he has not abandoned his efforts to serve the country in favor of a lucrative private sector job. After leaving the Knesset last year Landau founded a non-profit organization called "Beautiful Country" that seeks to reinforce the general public's Zionist ideals by organizing subsidized nature hikes and tours of the country, and public lectures for people who are little involved in the issues of the day.

As he explained, Landau doesn't feel right abandoning the project now, before he has gotten it fully operational. In the next elections, he promised, he will think about running again if the party is still interested.

THE CONTRAST between the political meeting with Landau, the politician, and the spectacle of the professional police disgrace makes a point that is crucial for Israeli society understand if we wish to truly solve our systemic problems. Israel has many honest public employees, and it has many dishonest politicians. So too, it has many dishonest and disgraceful public employees and many honorable and admirable politicians.

The challenge of our times is not to find a way to get the so-called professionals to oversee politics. Our central challenge is to ensure that our public servants in both appointed and elected office are honest and good people who have our best interests at heart. 

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

It is impossible to guess the consequences of the approaching showdown between the US and Iran. But if the events of the past week are any guide, the future does not look promising.

President George W. Bush asserted Wednesday that the deal the State Department achieved with North Korea in the six-party talks "will bring us closer to a Korea Peninsula that is free of nuclear weapons." But it is hard to see how this is so.

Reached seven months after North Korea tested an intercontinental ballistic missile and four months after it conducted an underground nuclear test, the accord makes no mention of Pyongyang's nuclear or missile arsenals. Indeed all it does is pay North Korea handsomely for a promise that within 60 days it will temporarily seal its nuclear installation at Yongbyon. For this promise, the Americans agreed to supply the North with 50,000 pounds of heavy fuel oil; conduct direct talks with the North Koreans towards the normalization of diplomatic ties; and cancel banking sanctions that have effectively barred the North Koreans from international capital markets.

The last US payoff is the kicker. In 2006 the US Treasury took action against a bank in Macau that was laundering North Korean counterfeit dollars. That action was the first truly effective step the US has taken toward destabilizing Kim Jung Il's Stalinist regime.

Kim understands that the only way he can remain in power is to force the international community to subsidize his tyranny. The only way he can get foreign powers to do that is by using nuclear blackmail. By removing its banking sanctions, the US effectively destroyed its only effective bargaining chip against North Korea and so ensured that Kim's brinkmanship will continue. In light of this, as former US ambassador the UN John Bolton's noted, the message the US sent by acceding to the agreement is that "if you hold out long enough and wear down the State Department negotiators, eventually you will get rewarded."

Aside from capitulating to North Korea, this week the US took an initial step towards accepting Hamas as a legitimate actor. The unity deal between Fatah and Hamas negotiated under the aegis of the supposedly moderate Saudi King Abdullah is a stunning rebuke of US Palestinian policy. By effectively demoting Fatah to the status of junior partner to Hamas, the agreement is a slap on the face to the Bush administration which for the past four years has based its Palestinian policy on its blind faith in Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas.

Since 2003 the administration has put all its eggs in Abbas's basket. No amount of evidence of Fatah's direct involvement in terrorism against Israel could convince Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to change their view that Abbas is a "moderate" who is willing to make peace with Israel.

The US has showered him with money, arms and legitimacy and forced Israel to do the same. And in Mecca last weekend, Abbas showed that he has played Bush for a fool. Not only did he agree not to fight against Hamas or disarm it. By accepting an agreement which does not include recognition of Israel's right to exist, Abbas demonstrated that there is no significant difference between Fatah and Hamas in terms of their commitment to bringing about Israel's destruction.

Yet as with North Korea, here too, the Bush administration has chosen to pretend that in failing it has succeeded. Rather than distance herself from Abbas, Rice insists on going ahead with the scheduled three-way summit with Abbas and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on Monday.

It is possible that there is more here than meets the eye. It is possible for instance that the US is willing to take a few hits in order to clear its deck of nuisances so that it can concentrate on the greatest danger to global security. Perhaps the Bush administration is appeasing North Korea by buying it off and appeasing the Arabs and Europeans by being nice to the Palestinians in order to buy time to deal with Iran.

But if this is the game that the Americans are playing, it is a dangerous one. In the first instance, there is no assurance that their concessions will buy them any time at all. The North Koreans have already disavowed their supposed pledge to seal the Yangbyon installation and allow free access to international inspectors. Similarly, by meeting with Abbas next week, Rice may be opening the US to Palestinian extortion.

Thursday Abbas announced that he is postponing the public address that he was supposed to give describing the unity deal with Hamas until after the summit with Olmert and Rice. In so doing, he is paving the way for a post-summit public denunciation of the US and Israel which will seal his agreement to subordinate himself and Fatah to Hamas.

BUT ASSUMING that the US is in fact playing for time, and assuming that it gets the time it seeks, it is far from clear that it will use that time wisely.

Today positive and negative indicators regarding the nature and outcome of a US confrontation with Iran run together and so forecasting the likely form and outcome of the contest is all but impossible.

On the one hand, the US is beginning to openly target Iranian agents and assets in Iraq. This limited move has been enough to unnerve Iranian leaders who apparently fear that it is but the first step towards an all-out American offensive against Iran.

Their fears are also raised by the US naval buildup in the Persian Gulf, the Iraqi government's announcement that it is sealing its borders with Iran and Syria, and the build-up of NATO forces near the Afghan border with Iran.

Economically, the pressure that the US has been exerting on European and Asian oil companies to curtail their operations in Iran is beginning to pay off. Tuesday The New York Times reported that the Iranian economy, which is completely dependent on oil and gas exports, is beginning to show signs of distress. Without foreign assistance, the Iranians cannot long maintain their current export rate or develop their reserve capacity. This shortfall will force the regime to curtail government subsidies of gas and oil prices and so encourage civil unrest.

The regime's fear of unrest grows by the day as the regime itself shows increased signs of disintegration. With the supreme leader Ali Khamenei reportedly suffering from the late stages of cancer, Iran expert Michael Ledeen reported this week that factional fighting for succession between forces loyal to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and forces loyal to former president and leader of the powerful Guardians Council Hashemi Rafsanjani is gaining momentum. The succession battle has engulfed the ayatollahs who are themselves turning against one another.

Furthermore, according to the Iran Press Service, the attack in Baluchistan that killed a dozen Revolutionary Guards troops on Tuesday was only one of many violent attacks against regime targets to have occurred in recent days. If the US and its allies act wisely, there is every reason to believe that they could successfully foment a revolution that would bring down the regime.

Yet it is far from clear that the US is interested in bringing down the regime. This week Oklahoma Senator Tom Coburn released a report on US Farsi language broadcasting into Iran. From an analysis of those broadcasts, Coburn reached the disturbing conclusion that far from working to advance the US's stated aim of overthrowing the regime, these US taxpayer-funded broadcasts "undermine US policy on Iran, often even supporting the propaganda of the Islamic Republic of Iran."

Needless to say, this is not the sort of behavior one would expect from the US if the administration was seriously pursuing the overthrow of the mullahs or planning a strike against Iran's nuclear facilities.

Then there is the leaked EU report that admits that its negotiations to date have had no impact on Iran's nuclear weapons plans and that any future negotiations will likewise have no impact on Iran's nuclear ambitions or activities. While it is possible to view this as an admission of failure which could pave the way to European support for a US-led military campaign against Iran's nuclear installations, it is more likely that the EU will decide that in light of the ineffectiveness of their negotiations with the Iranians to date that they have no choice but to continue with them.

Indeed, this week Switzerland took it upon itself to offer the Iranians yet another package of concessions in exchange for their agreement to hold discussions. If Iran, as its press agencies have indicated, agrees to negotiate with the Europeans, it could very likely buy itself some time at the US's expense.

For both Bush and Rice made it clear this week that they do still cling to the fantasy that diplomacy can carry the day with Iran. While touting her deal with North Korea on Tuesday, Rice said it should be viewed "as a message to Iran that the international community is able to bring together its resources, and that strong diplomacy has achieved results."

YET WHETHER or not the US is planning for a confrontation with Iran and whether or not its deal with North Korea and its continued tolerance for Abbas is aimed at preparing the ground for a confrontation with the mullahs, that confrontation will occur.

As the regime becomes less stable, the mullahs are becoming more extreme. They are ratcheting up their suppression of regime opponents throughout the country. There is little reason to doubt that they will seek to divert their people's attention from their failures by inciting hostilities against the US in Iraq or against Israel in Lebanon, Syria or the Palestinian Authority and expediting their nuclear program. Indeed, the Iranians have ample means at their disposal to initiate the confrontation with the US on a battleground most convenient to them.

Whether the US arrives at its showdown with Iran from a position of weakness or strength, willingly or unwillingly, there is no doubt that the confrontation is approaching. And the difference between initiating the confrontation and allowing Iran to initiate it with a nuclear first strike is not a trivial question. It will make a difference of millions of lives. The question of the hour is therefore whether the little time left before the war is being used wisely.

And here is the great failure. By sending a message of weakness now, in order to purchase maneuvering time that may not be obtained, the US this week has accelerated rather than distanced the moment of truth while doing nothing to build support or increase its chances of triumph when the inevitable occurs.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.  

One of the most difficult things in life is to draw the line between friend and foe. Take the Palestinian terror groups.

Last week in Mecca, the Fatah terror group, which mixes the murder of Israelis with negotiations with Israelis, officially joined forces with the Hamas terror group, which murders Israelis while refusing to negotiate with us.

Although the agreement makes it clear that both are at war with Israel, on Sunday the Olmert government decided to reserve judgment on the terror unity deal. And Monday morning Vice Premier Shimon Peres warned that saying bad things about the Mecca deal would only weaken Fatah terror boss Mahmoud Abbas, whom we should strengthen because he likes to negotiate while killing.

Given how hard it is for Israel to identify its Arab foes, it is little wonder that identifying Jewish foes is a near-Herculean task.

Last month the American Jewish Committee took an important first step in this direction by publishing a paper by Prof. Alvin Rosenfeld from the University of Indiana entitled, "'Progressive' Jewish Thought and the New Anti-Semitism." Explaining the difference between criticism of Israel and demonization of the Jewish state, Rosenfeld wrote, "To call Israel a Nazi state… as is commonly done today, or to accuse it of fostering South African-style apartheid or engaging in ethnic cleansing or wholesale genocide goes well beyond legitimate criticism."

Rosenfeld noted that these descriptors of Israel, which aim to single out Israel "as a political entity unworthy of secure and sovereign existence" are today "part of a standard discourse among 'progressive' American Jews, who seem to take for granted that the historical record shows Israel to be an aggressor state guilty of sins comparable to Hendrik Verwoerd's South Africa and Hitler's Germany."

HAVING described the phenomenon, Rosenfeld proceeded to identify prominent American Jews, including New York University Prof. Tony Judt, playwright Tony Kushner, Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen, Noam Chomsky, and Adrienne Rich as leading Jewish lights in the leftist assault on the Jewish people's right to self-determination in our homeland.

Rosenfeld's paper evoked strong reactions in the American Jewish community. A New York Times write-up of the controversy entitled, "Essay Linking Liberal Jews and Anti-Semitism Sparks a Furor," described how the same "progressive" Jews and their supporters are up in arms over being painted as anti-Semites. Judt opined that the point of the article was to silence them.

This of course, is pure nonsense. All the Jews in America couldn't silence Judt and his colleagues even if they wished to. As anti-Israel Jews, they will never lack prestigious forums from which to propagate their hatred for Israel.

Far from seeking to silence these hostile Jewish voices, Rosenfeld's essay simply serves to draw lines between friend and foe where such lines are important. The views of Kushner, Judt and Cohen are no less anti-Jewish than similar statements by non-Jews.

Rosenfeld's efforts, while important, are insufficient. The likes of Judt and Kushner use their professed Jewishness as a tool to advance the cause of Israel's denunciation. Others hide behind protestations of Zionism to undermine Israel's right to defend itself against enemies actively working toward its destruction.

CASE IN point is the Union of Progressive Zionists. The UPZ is the US campus representative of the Labor and Meretz parties as well as of Hashomer Hatzair and Habonim Dror. In its mission statement, the UPZ claims to be "a network of student activists organizing on campuses across North America for social justice and peace in Israel/Palestine. The UPZ was created to provide guidance, education and resources to students who seek to impart a progressive voice into the campus debate on Israel."

Mission statement in hand, the UPZ joined the Israel on Campus Coalition (ICC) - a pro-Israel umbrella group established to build support for Israel and fight the rise in anti-Israel incitement on college campuses. Yet, while operating under the ICC umbrella, UPZ is actually promoting hostility toward Israel and so advancing the cause of those who maintain that Israel has no right to exist.

In recent months, under the aegis of the ICC, the UPZ has hosted members of the radical leftist Israeli organization "Breaking the Silence" on a number of college campuses. "Breaking the Silence" was established by former IDF soldiers for the declared purpose of "exposing" the "irreversible corruption" of Israeli society by the IDF's counterterror operations in Judea and Samaria.

Armed with photographs which purposely present a distorted image of IDF operations, soldiers and Israeli civilians in Judea and Samaria, the group works to demonize and criminalize the IDF and so undermine Israel's right to defend itself against the Palestinian jihad. That is, it seeks to advance an aim which is diametrically opposed to the goals of the ICC.

Ilan Benjamin, an Israeli chemistry professor at University of California at Santa Cruz, attended the UPZ-sponsored "Breaking the Silence" event on his campus. In a letter to the ICC Benjamin wrote, "the presentation was neither fair nor balanced, but was rather unabashedly anti-Israel." He continued, "There was almost no mention of why the Israeli army is inside Arab towns. [The program's speaker] dismissed the notion that security checkpoints prevent a large percentage of the suicide bombers… [S]tudents who attended the event did not get a crucial point of information necessary for a critical understanding of the conflict, namely, that Israel is in a state of war with a terrorist organization imbedded in civilian neighborhoods."

THE CONTRADICTION between the UPZ and "Breaking the Silence's" protestations of Zionism and the aim of their programming is so blatant that even the Israeli Consulate in Los Angeles weighed in on the issue. In a report to the Foreign Ministry published in Yediot Aharonot, Ehud Danoch, the consul-general warned: "The willingness of Jewish communities to host these organizations and even sponsor them is unfortunate. This is a phenomenon that must not be ignored."

But the ICC has decided to ignore the phenomenon. Last month, the Zionist Organization of America, which is also an ICC member, requested that the ICC's Steering Committee expel the UPZ on the grounds that through its sponsorship of "Breaking the Silence" it contravened the ICC's explicit mission of defending Israel.

The Steering Committee, which includes representatives of the American Jewish Committee, the Anti-Defamation League, AIPAC, Aish HaTorah, the Jewish National Fund, Hillel, the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, and the Shusterman Foundation, voted unanimously to reject ZOA's request. (Aish HaTorah later renounced its vote and joined ZOA in calling for UPZ's eviction from the Coalition.) In their decision, the member organizations argued that there is no "cause under the ICC's membership criteria to remove UPZ from the Coalition."

Although unjustifiable, the ICC's refusal to expel the UPZ is understandable. Obviously, it is hard to get beyond labels. The UPZ's self-definition as a Zionist group makes it even harder to attack than self-professed Jews who declare their anti-Zionism. This is the case despite the fact that the damage the actions of both groups cause to Israel's position in the world is more or less the same.

There is also UPZ's "progressiveness" to consider. Given that for four generations, American Jews tied their fortunes almost solely to the Left, expelling leftist groups from Jewish umbrella groups involves openly recognizing the painful fact that today the Left makes little place for the pro-Israel community in its ranks.

As Rosenfeld put it, "Because... the ideological package that informs progressive politics today links anti-Zionism to anti-capitalism, anti-imperialism, anti-globalization, anti-racism, etc., one is expected as a matter of course to be against Zionism." Or as he quotes political scientist Andrei Markovits, "If one is not at least a serious doubter of the legitimacy of the State of Israel… one runs the risk of being excluded from the entity called 'the left.'"

THE LEFT'S abandonment of Israel is compounded by the fact that the Palestinian jihad, which is rooted in a Palestinian rejection of the notion of coexisting with Israel, has rendered irrelevant the "progressive Zionist" goal of forcing Israel to withdraw its forces and citizens from Judea and Samaria in order to establish a Palestinian state in the areas, as well as in Gaza and eastern Jerusalem. Instead of accepting this paradigm-shattering truth, "progressive Zionists" have chosen the path of radicalization.

Rather than calling on the Arabs to abandon jihad and accept Israel, they have turned to criminalizing Israel for defending itself from the jihadist forces bent on the wholesale slaughter of its citizens.

Like Israel, if American Jews are to have any chance of properly defending themselves, they must first openly identify the trends. As political loyalties and alliances shift, a small people like the Jews must be willing to distinguish friend from foe. This is true whether the friend or foe in question is an Arab or a Jew; a self-proclaimed progressive or a self-proclaimed conservative.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

Today Israel's leaders claim that Saudi Arabia is our new best friend. The Wahhabis will protect us from Iran and its proxies they promise. It's difficult to see how this view jibes with reality.

Indeed today, in a manner eerily reminiscent of last spring, we are on the precipice of a new war and our leaders stubbornly reject truth for delusion. Unless they acknowledge reality soon, they will again bar the IDF from fighting effectively, again maneuver us into diplomatic isolation and so again lead Israel to defeat.

With this in mind, it is our duty today to take a hard look at reality.

As they did in the months that preceded the outbreak of their jihad in September 2000, for the past several months the Palestinians have been accelerating their preparations for war. On Monday Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) Director Yuval Diskin revealed some of those preparations.

Diskin said that in 2006, the Palestinians imported 30 tons of explosives into Gaza from Egypt. Hamas has dug 10 tunnels into the western Negev from which it will be able to launch attacks against the IDF or against civilians. The situation along the breached Gaza-Egypt border is even worse. Diskin referred to the weapons and personnel smuggling tunnels there as "one big rabbit warren."

As the Palestinians prepare themselves for battle, this week they invented their justification for attacking the Jews. Just as they did in September 2000, this week Palestinian and Israeli Arab leaders opened their propaganda campaign for war by falsely accusing Israel of conspiring to destroy the mosques on the Temple Mount.

Like its excavation by the Western Wall that has been going on quietly for the past several months, the Israel Antiquities Authority coordinated its salvage dig by the Mughrabi Gate of the Old City with the Islamic Wakf, the Jordanian government and all other relevant authorities before its archeologists began their work this week. Everyone understood that the excavation is being conducted 70 meters away from the Temple Mount and will in no way affect it.

But facts are irrelevant. The Arabs are not interested in the facts. They are interested in war. Sheikh Abdullah Nimer Darwish, the head of the southern branch of the Israeli Islamic movement, made this point clearly Thursday morning when he told Israel Radio that the war will likely begin when the heads of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas and Ismail Haniyeh, return from Mecca. It can be reasonably concluded from Darwish's statement that the Fatah-Hamas unity talks taking place in Mecca have more to do with coordinating the coming jihad than with dividing government ministries in their soon-to-be-formed, Saudi-sponsored terrorist unity government.

However the talks conclude, there is no doubt that the PA is gunning for war with Israel. Palestinian television, which Abbas and Fatah control, has been showing incendiary live and archival footage from the Temple Mount for the past three days. The images are interspersed with speeches by Palestinian and pan-Islamic leaders calling on the Muslim world to protect Al Aksa mosque.

As Israel's leaders praise the Saudis for their role in promoting the peace process, Al-Jazeera satellite network is broadcasting live calls to war to the entire Muslim world live from the Temple Mount. While Al-Jazeera reporters have been kicked out of Algeria, Iraq, Sudan, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Jordan for calling for war against anyone who doesn't talk like Osama bin Laden, and even the PA closed its offices twice, the Israeli government apparently has no problem with Al-Jazeera reporters calling the Islamic world to launch a genocidal jihad against the Jewish state from the Temple Mount.

On the Lebanese front, the situation is also frighteningly familiar. Just as last summer the Palestinians and Hizbullah worked in close coordination, so the escalation of hostilities along the border with Lebanon this week shows that their coordination remains high. What is new in the current situation is the hostile role being played by the Lebanese military, and what this role tells us about the nature of the coming war.

Last summer many warned Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni that it would be unwise to allow the Lebanese military to deploy to the border. To the extent those forces participated in the last war, they did so on the side of Hizbullah. Lebanese units directed Hizbullah's missile attack against the INS Hanit. They were similarly involved in identifying targets in northern Israel for Hizbullah's rocket units. Forty percent of the soldiers and officers serving in the Lebanese army are Shi'ite and many of them owe their primary allegiance to Hizbullah.

In spite of these warnings, Olmert and Livni did not merely accept the Lebanese army's deployment along the border. They insisted on it. And Wednesday night, when the Lebanese military attacked IDF units operating within sovereign Israel, those who preached caution were proven right. By insisting that the Lebanese army deploy along the border, Olmert and Livni effectively enabled Hizbullah's reassertion of control over south Lebanon.

It should be recalled that the timing of last summer's war was anything but a coincidence. At the time, Iran ordered Hizbullah to attack Israel two days before the G-8 summit where the world leaders were poised to condemn Iran for refusing to cease its uranium enrichment activities, and a week before the International Atomic Energy Agency was scheduled to refer Iran's nuclear program to the UN Security Council.

So too, today, the escalation of enemy incitement and operations is anything but random. On February 21, IAEA inspectors are scheduled to report to the Security Council that in defiance of Resolution 1737 from two months ago, Iran has not ceased its uranium enrichment activities. In the wake of this report, the sanctions set out in the resolution are supposed to be firmly enforced.

On the Iraqi front, hostilities between the US and Iran escalate daily and signs abound that the much awaited US offensive in Baghdad is about to start. If successful, the offensive will seriously weaken Iranian proxy forces in that country and similarly weaken Iran's influence over the Iraqi government.

All in all, a two-front war against Israel would go a long way towards advancing Iran's interests today.

All of this naturally raises the question: What are Israel's leaders doing as our enemies prepare for war?

While demanding that Olmert order the IAA to stop its salvage dig at the Mughrabi Gate, Defense Minister Amir Peretz is preparing to renew his hostilities against his greatest foes - the Israelis who live in Judea and Samaria. Last week Peretz ordered the IDF to draw up plans to destroy several Israeli communities in the areas. As to the Palestinians, Hizbullah and their state sponsors, Peretz has nothing constructive to say.

For her part, Livni continues to applaud her brilliance in negotiating the cease-fire agreement last summer under which Hizbullah has rearmed and reasserted its control over south Lebanon. Then too, Livni continues to act as the spokeswoman for the Fatah terror organization.

In her joint appearance with British Foreign Minister Margaret Beckett on Tuesday, Livni said that Israel and Fatah (which she refers to as the "moderates in the Palestinian Authority"), "are on the same side."

While repeating her vapid mantra distinguishing "moderates" from "extremists," Wednesday Livni claimed that the incitement surrounding the Temple Mount is being carried out by "irresponsible elements" which include "political groups within Israel and extremist elements outside Israel." As is her practice, Livni ignored the fact that her "moderate" friend Abbas stands at the center of those "extremists" inciting for war.

Finally we have Prime Minister Ehud Olmert himself. In his testimony last week before the Winograd Commission which he appointed to investigate last summer's war, Olmert continued to insist that Israel won. This being the case, we oughtn't be concerned about the defeated Hizbullah.

As to the Palestinians, Olmert is now busily preparing for his February 19 meeting with Abbas, the "moderate" terror master, and US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. He continues to forbid the IDF from striking the burgeoning terror armies and armories in Gaza and refuses to acknowledge the known fact that Fatah is supported by Iran.

This week Olmert again tried to lull us into complacency about the ayatollahs' nuclear weapons program. Speaking to the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish American Organizations, Olmert enthused that we have ample time to deal with the threat and that anyway, the international community including China and Russia can be counted on to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons through diplomacy.

At this juncture it is worth recalling precisely what was wrong about the Olmert government's handling of the war last summer. While the Winograd Commission writes its report, the citizens of Israel should realize that regardless of what the members of the commission who Olmert appointed say, the war was not merely or mainly a military failure. The central cause of Israel's defeat was the incompetence of our political leaders. Specifically, Olmert and Peretz failed to act to ensure that the IDF achieved the goals they set for it.

Before ordering the IDF to war, Olmert held no discussions regarding the conditions on the ground, and so did not consider whether the war plans he approved were relevant to the achievement of his declared goals.

Olmert and Livni failed to grasp the diplomatic opportunities the war created. Had they been paying attention they would have seen a tangible willingness in Washington to consider a joint Israeli-American strike against the terror headquarters and training bases in Syria that serve not only the Palestinians and Hizbullah, but the insurgents warring against coalition forces in Iraq. The consequences that such a joint operation would have had on both Israeli-US relations and on Syrian-Iranian relations would have changed the face of the region in a dramatic and positive way.

Due to their ignorance of both military and diplomatic affairs, Olmert and colleagues barred the IDF from conquering south Lebanon and so denied the army the only means of achieving the goal of ending the missile attacks on northern Israel and destroying Hizbullah as a fighting force.

When Olmert's, Livni's and Peretz's incompetence last summer is compared to their current behavior, the unavoidable conclusion is that they have learned nothing from their experience and so remain incompetent to contend with the dangers we face today.

And so, as they bumble us into another war while speaking dreamily of their friends in Mecca, at least Olmert, Livni and Peretz cannot say that they weren't warned.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

Kenyan Foreign Minister Raphael Tuju is on a five-day visit in Israel this week and boy, does Israel have a lot to discuss with him. Unfortunately, it would seem that the Olmert government will fail to recognize this.

The most important question that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and his colleagues should be broaching to their Kenyan guest is how his government is coping with the fact that Washington has apparently lost its will to fight the war against the global jihad.

Last week, under pressure from US Ambassador to Kenya Michael Ranneberger, Kenyan authorities released from prison Sheikh Sharif Ahmad, one of the leaders of the ousted al-Qaida-linked Islamic Courts Union (ICU) in Somalia.

In late December, with US backing and support, Ethiopian forces invaded Somalia with forces from the recognized Somali Transitional Federal Government, (TFG). The invasion came a month after the ICU declared jihad against Ethiopia and Kenya. ICU forces, which had set up a Taliban-style tyranny throughout the country, fled before the Ethiopian advance. In just six days, the ICU was overthrown and the recognized Somali government had retaken control over Mogadishu.

From the outset of the Ethiopian invasion, the Arab League and the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) both demanded an immediate Ethiopian retreat.

This is not surprising because the ICU has been the beneficiary of generous support from Arab League and OIC member states Eritrea, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Sudan, Djibouti, Yemen and Libya. According to respected military analyst Bill Roggio, US intelligence officials maintain that the so-called Saudi "Golden Chain" of al-Qaida financiers have given $200 million to the ICU since last spring. The EU also demanded that Ethiopia withdraw its forces and that the TFG negotiate an accord with al-Qaida's front organization in the Horn of Africa. Today EU humanitarian aid commissioner Louis Michel has linked EU assistance to the TGF to its acceptance of ICU elements in its government.

THE US was the only country that backed Ethiopia, and it had good reason to do so. Shortly after Ethiopian forces took control of Mogadishu, US aircraft pursued fleeing al-Qaida terrorists in southern Somalia after intelligence reports indicated that among the fleeing ICU leaders were the masterminds of the 1998 bombings of the US embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam.
 

Disturbingly, the US seems to have abandoned the fight. The State Department has joined the EU, the Arab League and the OIC in calling for "reconciliation" between the TFG and the ICU and supports the participation of "moderate" jihadists in the Somali government. Speaking to African journalists this week in Addis Ababa, US Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Jendayi Frazer said, "I think the [ICU] was hijacked by the extremists from within. And there are members who want negotiation to participate in national reconciliation."

So it is that the US ambassador in Nairobi, Kenya, forced Kenyan authorities to release Sharif Ahmad from jail. Commenting to the Kenyan media on his release, Prof. Ali Abdiweli, a US-based Somali professor with ties to the TFG said, "I am outraged by the behavior of [the US ambassador] to Kenya. More than 3,000 Somalis died because of Sheikh Sharif and the ICU.

"[Sharif] should be put on trial. Here we go again saying that he is moderate... This is nonsense, and there is no way that Sheikh Sharif will accept any secular government. Actually, the behavior of the ambassador will encourage the remnants of the Islamic Courts."

THE US policy of appeasing jihadists in the Horn of Africa is just one example of the recent turn that US policy has taken regarding the war against the global jihad. On every major front, and particularly in its dealings with Israel, Iraq and Iran, the Bush administration is implementing policies that undermine its allies, strengthen its enemies and consequently harm US national security interests.

While the administration and the new Democratic Congress argue over troop levels and funding for the US military in Iraq, as former CIA analyst Robert Baer wrote last week in Time magazine, Iran has effectively taken control of Basra, Iraq's port city and oil hub. The Iranian toman rather than the Iraqi dinar is the currency of trade in the city. The Shi'ite holy city of Najaf is also veering toward becoming a protectorate of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards.

Although he is far from alone, the central Iraqi leader enabling the Iranian takeover is Abdul Aziz al-Hakim. Hakim, who heads the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) spent the 20 years preceding the US-led invasion of Iraq in Iran. SCIRI's militia - the Badr force - has overt ties to the Iranian Revolutionary Guards. Indeed, both the Badr militia and SCIRI were created in Iran in 1982 by the Revolutionary Guards.

SCIRI is the largest faction in the Iraqi parliament today, and Hakim is considered key to ensuring stability in Iraq. To this end, he was brought to Washington last December to meet with President George W. Bush.

But since Hakim is controlled by Iran, by attempting to appease him, the US is effectively attempting to collaborate with Iran in a manner that facilitates the Iranian takeover of Iraq. This move is opposed by US military commanders in the country who are tired of allowing the Iranians to kill US forces at will. Yet while they are reportedly demanding that the authority kill Iranian operatives in Iraq, their moves are being blocked by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and her associates at the State Department and the CIA.

THIS CRITICAL dispute currently revolves around the issue of whether or not the White House will publicly reveal evidence of Iran's deep involvement in the war in Iraq generally, and attacks against US forces specifically. Rice and her colleagues argue for suppressing the information. Revealing the depth of Iranian operations against the US, they argue, will force the US to actually fight back.

That is, apparently, Rice and her associates would rather see Iran take control of Iraq, and so bring about the most humiliating defeat of US forces since the Vietnam War, than acknowledge that Iran is fighting the US and its allies.

This preference for appeasement and defeat in Africa and the Persian Gulf is even more apparent in the US dealings with the Palestinians. Ahead of his summit with Hamas terror masters Khaled Mashaal and Ismail Haniyeh today in Mecca, Fatah chief and Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas said, "We must unite the Hamas and Fatah blood in the struggle against Israel as we did at the beginning of the intifada. We want a political partnership with Hamas and we are not only optimistic, but also very serious about this. And that's why we're going to Mecca."

Fatah forces make no attempt to hide their involvement in terror attacks against Israel. They wear their Aksa Martyr Brigades T-shirts beneath their official uniforms. And yet, this week it was revealed that some $76.4 million of the $86.4 million that the US plans to give to Fatah will go to training 13,500 terror forces. That is, the US is now openly involved in training and equipping Palestinian terrorists who, as Abbas makes clear, are seeking to expand their operations to kill Israelis.

Furthermore, last month Rice signaled that the US is easing off its refusal to engage the Hamas terror group. Speaking to European reporters, Rice referred to the jihadist terror group as a "resistance movement."

IN MANY ways it makes sense that Bush has lost his will to fight. Since the September 11 attacks, the president has refused to acknowledge the true nature of the forces arrayed against the US and the rest of the free world. By insisting on referring to the war against Sunni and Shi'ite jihad as a war against terrorism, Bush refused to acknowledge the identity of America's enemies or the scope of their power and ambitions. Consequently, he has approved policies in Iraq, and indeed throughout the world, which are based on a denial of the nature of the enemy and so cannot possibly defeat its forces.

Now, frustrated with the seemingly intractable realities on the ground and in the political battlefield in Washington, Bush is attempting to establish a middle course between victory and surrender. Unfortunately, this course - which involves handing over the fruits of military victories to jihadists and their state sponsors - cannot help but ensure the defeat Bush rightly wishes to avoid.

Were Olmert and his colleagues in the government to recognize this state of affairs, perhaps they could join forces with governments - like the Kenyan government - to persuade Bush of the dangers inherent in his embrace of this recipe for failure. Unfortunately, in light of the Olmert government's own failures to contend with the growing threats to Israel's security, it is difficult to imagine its members acting in such a constructive and prudent manner.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

This has not been a good week for Israel. The day after a Fatah terrorist self-detonated in Eilat, US President George W. Bush announced his intention to transfer $86 million to Fatah. Furthermore, the Iranians announced this week that they are operating 3,000 centrifuges at their nuclear installation at Natanz. If this is true, the Iranians will have a sufficient amount of weapons-grade uranium to build atomic bombs by the end of the year.

These developments could have been expected to unleash furious public debate in Israel about the status of our ties with Washington and what we must do now to prevent a second Holocaust. But both events went largely unremarked.

The Israeli media cannot be bothered with these critical matters for they are too busy reducing our public debate to a pornographic peep show. For the past several weeks, the mass media in Israel have dedicated themselves almost entirely to non-stop discussions of the sexual perversity of our political leaders in light of the criminal investigation of rape and sexual harassment allegations against President Moshe Katsav, and the trial and conviction of former justice minister Haim Ramon for the indecent act of kissing a young IDF officer on the mouth.

Even within the narrow scope of public debate, the media could still ask some questions that deserve our attention. For instance, we could discuss how we have raised sons to manhood without teaching them how to be gentlemen, and how we have raised daughters to womanhood without teaching them how to stand up for themselves when men treat them in an ungentlemanly fashion. We could ask how it is that so many Israelis, like our counterparts throughout the West, do not understand that human sexuality is both private and worthy of universal respect.

These basic questions have not been addressed in the media storm surrounding Katsav and Ramon's sexual entanglements. And this is not surprising. As a society, we are incapable of debating these basic moral, cultural and sociological questions today because we have abdicated our moral responsibility for our behavior to unelected clerks. We have rendered lawyers - who are not necessarily gentlemen and who do not necessarily have our best interests had heart - the sole arbiters of our social mores.

Not surprisingly, our abdication of ethical responsibility to lawyers has brought about the conflation of the completely separate issues of what is proper, on the one hand, and what is legal, on the other. As a result, judging from the vacuousness of the public debate over Katsav's legal crisis and Ramon's criminal conviction, we have lost track of what is really wrong with their prosecutions and what is wrong with our society.

What is wrong here is that for the past several months, and at an accelerated pace this past week, Attorney-General Menachem Mazuz has absconded with governing powers beyond his statutory purview and no parliamentary, governmental or public debate preceded or followed his actions.

The powers that Mazuz has seized are not limited to the non-legal field of morality. They go to the very heart of Israel's status as a democracy. By definition, a democratic society is one governed by leaders elected by the public who are accountable to the public. In democracies, the public is the source of governmental authority. Mazuz has acted to diminish to near nothingness the public's ability to determine through voting the path the state will take. This he has done by eroding the power of our elected leadership to govern.

Wednesday, following a criminal investigation and prosecution nearly unprecedented in intensity, Haim Ramon was convicted of sexual indecency for being a lecherous cad. Yet, while it is disgraceful for a man to be a lecherous cad, it is not illegal. And even more disgraceful than Ramon's undistinguished behavior was Mazuz's single-minded prosecution of that behavior which forced a powerful politician from office.

In Katsav's case, the facts are in dispute. Perhaps Katsav is a serial sexual harasser and a rapist, perhaps he is innocent. But what is absolutely clear is that Katsav is a victim of prosecutorial abuse. Even before any indictment has been filed against him, on Tuesday sources at the state prosecution which Mazuz heads leaked the most damning and salacious parts of the draft indictment to Haaretz. In so doing, the state prosecution actively contributed to forming and maintaining a public atmosphere highly prejudicial to the president, who has yet to be charged with any crime or brought to trial.

Also on Tuesday, Mazuz shot off a letter to the Knesset's legal adviser Nurit Elstein ordering that Katsav be immediately evicted from his official residence. Mazuz further demanded that Elstein author a legal opinion prohibiting Katsav from staying at his official residence for the duration of his suspension from office. In his words, Katsav's presence at Beit Hanassi "is not in keeping with the aim of the law."

It is hard to get one's arms around the depth of contempt for democracy exhibited in this letter. As a democracy, Israel has a separation of powers. The Knesset is not subordinate to the state prosecution. The attorney-general is not the Knesset's legal adviser's boss. Mazuz has no legal authority to demand that Elstein accept his legal interpretations.

Mazuz's bullying of Elstein is part and parcel of his campaign to supplant the Knesset as the source of the government's authority. Two years ago he took a giant step in this direction, when backed by the Supreme Court, Mazuz ruled that the Knesset must cede to his office its legal authority to preserve or rescind its members' immunity from criminal prosecution during their period in office.

The Basic Law which grants criminal immunity to elected officials for the duration of their tenure unless that immunity is rescinded by the Knesset was enacted to protect elected representatives from criminal investigations that could undermine their ability to carry out the public's will as manifested in general elections. Ramon was a senior member of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's government and there is no doubt that his removal from office significantly weakens Olmert's ability to govern.

Before their power to preserve or rescind their colleagues' immunity from prosecution was wrested from them by Mazuz and the Supreme Court, members of Knesset were expected to weigh the public interest in seeing elected officials prosecuted for suspected wrongdoings against the public interest of ensuring the government is capable of governing in a manner that reflects the public will. In Ramon's case, the Knesset would have debated whether our interest in seeing him prosecuted for kissing a soldier outweighed our interest in seeing him advance the agenda for which he and his colleagues in Kadima were elected.

By seizing the Knesset's prerogative to delay prosecution of its members until after they leave office, Mazuz effectively abrogated the law and subordinated all our elected officials - who until then were only accountable to the public - to unelected clerks who are accountable to no one.

In response to the public criticism of the Ramon affair, on Wednesday Mazuz announced his appointment of a retired judge to lead an inquiry into the manner in which the prosecution pursued the case. Many aspects of this ferocious prosecution - which entailed, among other things, sending police investigators to Guatemala to take testimony from the vacationing complainant regarding the nature of the kiss she received from Ramon - are worth investigating. But it is impossible to expect that the man Mazuz appointed to investigate Mazuz will carry out a proper investigation.

MAZUZ SENT off yet another shocking missive on Tuesday. He informed Finance Minister Avraham Hirchson that he is abrogating his statutory power to appoint the next director of the Tax Authority. Mazuz has decided that the next person authorized to administer the government's fiscal policies will be appointed by a committee of unelected "professionals." This, Mazuz opined, will serve to "reconstitute public faith in the Tax Authority," which is currently embroiled in a corruption scandal.

Mazuz's letter to Hirchson is an outrage. Whether or not the public has faith in its institutions is none of his business. Fiscal policy is a political issue. The voting public elects its political representatives to set fiscal priorities that reflect the public interest as that interest manifests itself at the ballot box.

The voters also expect the government to reflect their preferences by overseeing the public prosecution. Yet, over the past decade, the attorney-general and state's attorney's offices have used their prosecutorial power to intimidate successive governments and so prevent our elected leaders from exercising their governing authority over the state prosecution. Since 1997, two justice ministers - Yaacov Ne'eman and Ramon - have been removed from office by the prosecutors they were charged with overseeing. Another justice minister, Tzahi Hanegbi, was neutralized throughout his tenure in office by an open criminal investigation that his subordinates held against him.
Reuven Rivlin was prevented from being appointed to office when sources in the state prosecution leaked that they were considering opening a police investigation against him.

All four men shared a common goal of reining in the prosecution and amending the law governing the selection of judges. In the latter case, as the law currently stands, judges largely appoint themselves. The four men wished to place elected leaders in charge of appointing judges.

It is impossible to accept that it is a mere coincidence that these four men were brought under criminal scrutiny. And this is the heart of the matter. With the support and backing of the Supreme Court, for the past decade, and to the grave detriment of Israeli democracy, the state prosecution has been acting as an independent arm of government. And unlike the Knesset and the government, the state prosecution is unaccountable to the public which did not elect its members and cannot fire them.

The public understands that something is wrong with this state of affairs. The day Ramon's conviction was announced, 42 percent of the public said his conviction was unjustified while only 31% supported it. Some MKs even dared to openly suggest that the law must be amended to prevent cases like Ramon's from being brought into the courtroom again.

Unfortunately there is little reason to believe that the Knesset will reassert its powers anytime soon. The same Israeli mass media which block discussion and debate about both burning national security issues and basic issues of moral propriety also protect the prosecution from criticism. Politicians like Benny Elon and Rivlin who call for action to restrain unelected prosecutors and self-selected judges are portrayed as opponents of the rule of law. Conversely, politicians like Acting Justice Minister Tzipi Livni and former minister Dan Meridor who praise the state prosecution and back its seizure of governmental and parliamentary powers are lionized as champions of the rule of law.

And so it is that the rising threats to our national security are left unaddressed by our elected officials who fear the judgment of state prosecutors more than they fear the judgment of voters. In the creeping coup of clerks, the public interest is cast asunder.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.