The return of thousands of Israelis to the ruins of Homesh village in northern Samaria this week was a bolt from the blue. A rare combination of wisdom, morality and great timing, the demonstration forced the local media to acknowledge the strategic folly and moral bankruptcy of the expulsion and withdrawal policy that transformed some 10,000 Israeli Jews into internal refugees a year and a half ago.

Homesh was one of the 21 communities razed by prime minister Ariel Sharon's government in August 2005. On Monday, thousands marched to its ruins and pledged to rebuild it. Although by Tuesday radio and television newscasters were predictably agitating for the IDF to violently remove the demonstrators, their anti-settler prattle came off flat. The thrill was gone.

After the war in Lebanon last summer, and Gaza's post-withdrawal transformation into a mini-Taliban state, it is no longer possible to sound intelligent while advocating Israeli withdrawals and expulsions. Since few people are willing to sound like fools, most of the broadcasters acknowledged the withdrawal's strategic failure.

Without its strategic fig leaf, all that remains to defend the policy of ethnically cleansing areas of Jewish presence is the hatred card upheld by the Arabs and the Left. Both claim that Jews must be removed from their homes because their mere presence in their communities is responsible for the genocidal hatred than has taken control of the Palestinian and the Arab world's collective psyche.

The protesters at Homesh ably dispensed with this anti-Semitic nonsense by pointing to the fact that the IDF remains in the areas in spite of the removal of its Jewish residents. The IDF has remained in place because contrary to the promises of the plan's proponents, the expulsion of the Jews of northern Samaria and Gaza did nothing to mitigate the Palestinians' commitment to Israel's destruction. To the contrary, it simply whetted their appetite for war. Indeed, what the aftermath of the expulsions proved was that far from burdening the army, before they were destroyed, the communities in northern Samaria and Gaza protected the IDF by providing secure bases for operations.

As luck would have it, the demonstrators exposed the moral bankruptcy and strategic idiocy at the heart of the withdrawal and expulsion policy just as US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice arrived in Israel. Rice came to pressure the Olmert-Livni-Peretz government to conduct negotiations with the Palestinian Authority's Hamas-Fatah terror government. The ultimate object of Rice's proposed talks is the expulsion of hundreds of thousands more Israelis from their homes in Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem just because they are Jews. There can be little doubt that their protest took the wind out of Rice's sails.

SINCE ISRAEL'S defeat in last summer's war, the public standing of most of the politicians who worked towards the 2005 expulsions has taken a pounding. But while Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's approval ratings languish in the single digits, the politician whose contribution to the expulsion policy was second only to Sharon's, and the minister who pushed hardest for Israel's defeat in last summer's war, continues to enjoy widespread public support.

A Ma'ariv poll taken last week showed that were Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni to stand at the helm of Kadima in the next elections, the governing party would win 27 Knesset seats to 23 seats for Likud under Binyamin Netanyahu.

Given that Livni is a relative newcomer to the leadership ranks of Israeli politics, it is worth recalling the context of her rise to prominence. When Sharon first announced his lunatic plan to retreat from Gaza in early 2004, Livni was a junior minister in his government identified with the right-wing faction of the Likud.

But Livni saw her opportunity, and she took it.

Without pausing to ask questions, Livni abandoned all her previous ideological protestations and jumped on the expulsion bandwagon.

It was just a matter of months until the junior immigration minister was reinvented as the senior justice minister and Livni became one of the most powerful politicians in Israel.

In her new role Livni did two things that together ensured the expulsions would go forward. First, Livni protected Sharon's leadership position in the Likud by drafting the so-called "compromise" deal on expulsions in early 2005. Livni's compromise, which was approved by the government in February 2005, co-opted Likud ministers who opposed the expulsion policy by promising that it would be implemented in stages over a period of months and that each stage would require separate cabinet approval.

It took Sharon's advisers all of five minutes after the deal was approved by the cabinet to disavow it. But Livni didn't mind. Her safeguarding of Sharon's premiership at her colleagues' expense made her the media darling she has remained to this day.

And her colleagues weren't the only ones who Livni trampled on her way up the political ladder. Livni actively worked to subvert the rule of law in order to squelch lawful opposition to the expulsion plan. In her capacity as justice minister, Livni was one of the principal architects of the draconian judicial and law enforcement measures used against opponents of the expulsion policies in total contravention of the laws of the state.

Livni denied protesters their freedom of movement by blocking buses en route to legal demonstrations. She approved massive and arbitrary arrests and lengthy pre-trial incarcerations of thousands of citizens including minors for participating in protests. She blatantly trounced the civil rights, including property rights, of the residents of Gaza and northern Samaria. Taken together, the measures that Livni implemented caused the effective collapse of Israeli democracy in the summer of 2005.

Livni's contribution as justice minister to undermining the rule of law and Israeli democracy is matched by her contribution as foreign minister to Israel's diplomatic collapse.

Last Sunday, former US ambassador to the UN John Bolton discussed last summer's war in Lebanon during an interview with the BBC. Bolton said that during the first weeks of the war the US rejected holding cease-fire negotiations because it wished to give Israel the time it needed to defeat Hizbullah. According to Bolton, the Bush administration only agreed to commence cease-fire discussions after it became clear that Israel was not winning.

In supporting an Israeli victory, the Americans apparently didn't count on the Livni-led diplomatic charge to defeat. By her own admission, Livni was pushing to begin cease-fire negotiations on the second day of the war. Although (or perhaps because) a ground campaign was the only way that Israel could possibly have defeated Hizbullah, Livni consistently opposed conducting one. Instead she recommended deploying an international peacekeeping force at the border to separate Israel from an undefeated Hizbullah.

Livni's cease-fire discussions with Rice from the earliest stages of the war, coupled with her consistent rejection of the option of military victory were used by State Department officials to justify their opposition to President George W. Bush's view that Israel should be given as much time and maneuvering room as possible to defeat Hizbullah in battle.

Since August, Livni has exulted in UN Security Council Resolution 1701 which set the cease-fire terms. But far from the stellar achievement Livni claims it to be, Resolution 1701 marked an unprecedented military and diplomatic defeat for Israel.

As Livni mindlessly wished, the resolution places an international force on Israel's border. But rather than fight Hizbullah, UNIFIL forces act principally to prevent the IDF from blocking Hizbullah's rearmament and reassertion of its control over south Lebanon. Indeed under the cover of 1701 Hizbullah has in fact rearmed and reasserted its control over the south.

Diplomatically, the resolution treats Israel and Hizbullah as equals; makes no mention of Syria and Iran - without which Hizbullah would be little more than a vigilante gang of religious fanatics; and does not require the release of IDF hostages Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser.

Although Livni played a central role in ensuring Israel's defeat last summer, the media have given her a free pass. For the overwhelmingly leftist media, given the irrevocability of Olmert's political demise, Livni represents the last hope to maintain the Left's control over Israeli policymaking.

Livni's strategically calamitous embrace of defeat during the war in Lebanon is matched by her strategically calamitous embrace of PA chairman Mahmoud Abbas today. Since accepting Fatah's junior status in the Hamas government, Abbas has been reduced to nothing more than a Hamas toady. So by upholding Abbas as a credible partner, Livni has effectively provided Israeli cover to the terrorist unity government.

While most Israelis consistently voice their opposition to dealing with the Hamas-Fatah government, Livni has encouraged the US to pressure Israel to negotiate the surrender of Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem with Abbas. Most recently, Livni's diplomatic wrangling paved the way for the US's embrace of the so-called Arab initiative. That anti-Israel initiative states that the Arabs will conduct "normal" relations with Israel right after Israel commits national suicide by surrendering Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem to the Palestinians, the Golan Heights to Syria, and permitting millions of foreign Arabs to immigrate to its shrunken territory.

While Livni opposes the Arab demand that the so-called Palestinian refugees be permitted to settle in Israel, she openly supports their unlimited immigration to the Palestinian state in Jerusalem, Gaza, Samaria and Judea. Livni's position - as usual - ignores the reality on the ground. Since there is no natural geographical distinction between a future terrorist state of Palestine and a future defenseless Israel, if millions of Arabs come to Palestine, they will also come to Israel.

PUBLIC SUPPORT for Livni is based less on her policies, of which the public is largely unaware and overwhelmingly opposes, than on the fact that she is not currently the subject of any criminal probes. Due to her apparent non-involvement in criminal activities, in contrast to her colleagues in Kadima, Livni is perceived as honest and uncorrupt.

But corruption takes many forms.

Livni has repeatedly sold out Israeli's national interests for personal gain. Earlier in the year, Livni lied to the public in order to transfer $100 million in tax revenues to the Hamas-Fatah terror government. As justice minister she prostituted the rule of law to advance the expulsions. Last summer she surrendered the security of northern Israel to the good graces of Iran, Syria and Hizbullah in order to sign on to a humiliating cease-fire. And now she advocates a policy towards the Palestinians that would imperil Israel's viability as a Jewish state.

In short, Livni sold out Zionism for a job promotion.

This week's return to Homesh was another important step forward in the nation's abandonment of the path of defeatism and surrender. But for defeatism to be replaced with a reassertion of Zionist ideals, Livni, who owes her career to her sacrifice of those ideals, must also be cast aside.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post. 

In an open act of war, Iran Friday kidnapped 15 British soldiers in the Persian Gulf. Iran's act of aggression occurred just as the British voted in favor of a UN Security Council resolution imposing increased sanctions against Teheran for its illicit nuclear weapons program.

Several theories have been raised to explain Iran's behavior. Some say that the Iranians acted against the British in the hope that Britain would respond by abandoning its alliance with the US and swiftly pulling its forces out of Iraq.

Another theory is that in kidnapping the sailors the Iranians are seeking to reenact their ploy from last summer. Then, Iran ordered its Lebanese proxy Hizbullah to kidnap IDF soldiers in order to divert the international community's attention away from Iran's nuclear program. As is the case with the British servicemen, so last summer's attack on the IDF took place as the Security Council was expected to convene and discuss sanctions against Iran for its pursuit of nuclear weapons.

Yet another theory has it that Iran kidnapped the sailors to use as a bargaining chip to force the US military to release Iranian operatives who the US has arrested in Iraq in recent months.

Whatever the case may be, it is absolutely clear that the Iranians intentionally fomented this international crisis with the expectation that their aggression would in some way be rewarded.

AGAINST THIS backdrop, and given the stakes involved, it could have been expected that the US and its allies would be concentrating their attention on how to weaken Iran and its terror proxies and curtail Iran's ability to acquire a nuclear arsenal. But, alas, the US is doing just the opposite.

The Iranians acted as US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was en route to the region. Since Friday, Rice has shuttled between Egypt, Israel, the Palestinian Authority and Jordan, and is on her way to Saudi Arabia. She is not working to coordinate moves to check Iran's increasing bellicosity. Rather, Rice is laboring to empower Teheran's terrorist allies in Hamas, the Islamic Jihad and Fatah. This she does by promoting the so-called Arab peace plan, which demands that Israel agree to dangerous and strategically catastrophic concessions to the Palestinian terrorist government.

In behaving thus, Rice is walking in the well-worn footsteps of her predecessors. Indeed, it seems almost axiomatic that when the going gets tough for US administrations, administration officials get tough on Israel.

AFTER THE Republicans won control of the Congress in 1994, then president Bill Clinton was hard-pressed to advance his domestic agenda. And so Clinton - who had almost no interest in foreign policy in his opening years of office - turned his attention to Israel and the so-called peace process, in which Israel was expected to give land, arms and legitimacy to the PLO in exchange for terrorism.

Clinton's penchant for forcing Israeli concessions to the PLO in the name of peace became more pronounced as things became more difficult for him during his impeachment hearings in 1998. As the House of Representatives poised to vote on articles of impeachment, Clinton twisted then prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu's arm until he signed the Wye Plantation memorandum, in which Israel pledged to transfer wide swathes of Judea and Samaria to Yasser Arafat's terrorist government.

Clinton forced Netanyahu's hand in spite of the fact that, by 1998, it was clear that Arafat was actively enabling Hamas and Islamic Jihad to carry out terror attacks against Israel and indoctrinating Palestinian society to wage jihad for Israel's destruction.

But negotiating with Netanyahu was inconvenient. Netanyahu refused to implement the Wye agreement in light of Arafat's support for terrorism and forced Clinton to acknowledge that Arafat was doing nothing to combat terror. Unhappy with this state of affairs, Clinton set out to overthrow Netanyahu's government.

IN AN ACT of unmitigated contempt for Israeli democracy and electoral laws, Clinton sent his own election advisers James Carville, Stanley Greenberg and Robert Schrum to Israel to run Labor party leader Ehud Barak's campaign in the 1999 elections.

The culmination of Clinton's campaign was the failed Camp David summit in July 2000. There, and in subsequent desperate discussions with Arafat at Taba, Barak agreed to hand over the Temple Mount to Arafat in addition to Gaza, Judea, Samaria and a pile of money.

Israel paid dearly for Barak and Clinton's behavior. In the Palestinian jihad that followed Arafat's rejection of Barak and Clinton's plaintive offers, more than 1,000 Israelis were murdered - more than 70 percent of whom were civilians. Israel's international standing fell to all-time lows as global anti-Semitism rose to levels unseen since the Holocaust.

America too, paid dearly for Clinton's behavior. Rather than pay attention to the burgeoning terror nexus which had placed the US directly in its crosshairs - in 1993 at the World Trade Center; in 1996 at the Khobar Towers; in 1998 at the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania; and in 2000 at the USS Cole - Clinton remained scope-locked on the so-called peace process.

Rather than acknowledge the existence and threat of the global jihad to US national security, Clinton pressured the global jihad's primary victim - Israel - into transferring its heartland and capital to the godfather of modern terrorism.

But while Israel and America bled, Clinton himself paid no price for his behavior. Rather than be blamed for the war he contributed so richly to enabling, Clinton is upheld as a hero at best, or at worst a tragic figure who devoted his presidency to the cause of peace.

Today, Rice's newfound mania for peacemaking comes when local conditions negate any possibility of peace. Just last month the Saudis promised the Palestinians a billion dollars and so paved the way for the Mecca accord, where the Iranian-sponsored Fatah terror group surrendered to the Iranian-sponsored Hamas terror group. In so acting, the Saudis brought about the formation of a Palestinian government openly committed to the use of terrorism as a tool to ensure Israel's destruction.

International conditions also ensure that Rice's peacemaking will fail to make peace. Regionally, Iran ups the ante daily against the US-led coalition in Iraq. Domestically, the Democratic-controlled Congress works daily to prevent the US from fighting its enemies. Globally, states as far-flung as Russia, China and Venezuela make deals with terror governments to check US power.

The program that Rice has come to the region to advance does not even have the benefit of a peaceful facade. The Palestinians make clear every single day that they do not and will not accept Israel's right to exist in any borders, and that they will not work to combat terrorism against Israel. The Arab League, and its member states, for their part, have repeatedly announced that they will brook no change in their "peace" plan which, if implemented will bring about Israel's rapid destruction.

In behaving as she does, Rice, like Clinton before her, is aided by a politically weak and strategically incompetent Israeli government that is willing to sacrifice Israel's long-term security for the benefit of prime-time photo opportunities with bigwig American leaders and Arab potentates.

Sunday, the Olmert-Livni-Peretz government has announced that it is open to negotiating on the basis of the Arab plan. As one government official told The Jerusalem Post, Israel will "not dismiss" the plan.

THIS IS Israel's position in spite of the fact that the Arab plan calls for Israel to surrender east, north and south Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria and the Golan Heights to Hamas and Syria and for Israel to permit four to five million hostile, foreign-born Arabs posing as Palestinian "refugees" to immigrate to its truncated territory. As the "peace" plan makes clear, all these suicidal Israeli moves must come before the Arab states will be willing to have "regular" (whatever that means) relations with the indefensible, overrun Jewish state.

Commenting on the government's position, the official explained, "We would not reject this out of hand."

It is not surprising that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni are behaving in this manner. After all, these are the same leaders who brought about Israel's defeat in Lebanon in last summer's war at the hands of Iran's Hizbullah proxy army. Last summer, Olmert followed Livni's lead in rejecting military victory as an option. Heeding Livni's unwise, defeatist counsel, Olmert postponed the essential ground offensive in south Lebanon until it was too late to make a difference and instead opted for a negotiated cease-fire.

As is the case with the Arab "peace" plan, the cease-fire Israel enthusiastically acceded to last summer was strategically disastrous for the country. UN Security Council Resolution 1701 places Israel on the same plane as the illegal Hizbullah terrorist organization; prevents Israel from taking steps to defend itself; does not require the safe return of IDF hostages Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser; enables Hizbullah to rearm and reassert its control over south Lebanon; and lets Hizbullah's state sponsors Syria and Iran completely off the hook for their central role in Hizbullah's illegal war against the Jewish state.

Recent history shows that the US and Israel will both pay heavily for the opportunism of our weak political leaders. It can only be hoped that the Israeli and American people have learned enough from our experiences to demand that our leaders stop their reckless behavior before the price of their cowardice and perfidy become unbearable.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

In Israel, as in the rest of the free world, we are witnessing the death by a thousand cuts of free thought.

Last month, two students at Cambridge University's Clare College became victims of this state of affairs. The students dedicated an edition of their satire magazine to the one-year anniversary of the global Muslim riots which followed the publication of caricatures of Muhammad in the Danish Jyllands Posten newspaper. As the students recalled, those riots led to the deaths of more than a hundred people.

Although the British media refused to republish the caricatures, British Muslims held terrifying protests throughout the country where they called for the destruction of Britain, the US, Denmark and Israel and for the murder of all who refuse to accept the global domination of Islam.

In their magazine, the students published some of the caricatures and mocked the Muslims for their hypocrisy in accusing British society of racial prejudice while calling for its violent destruction.

The Muslim reaction was apparently swift. Fearing for their lives, the students were forced into hiding.

But the Muslims were not alone in their anger. Clare College set up a special disciplinary court to consider action against the students. And the Cambridgeshire police opened a criminal investigation against them in late February.

The persecution of these students provides a case study of the two-pronged offensive being carried out today against Western culture. First there are the jihadists, who call for our destruction. Then there are the leftist intellectuals and public figures who defend radical Islamists and work to silence those who criticize them by criminalizing speech and condemning free thinkers as racists.

The direct consequence of this two-pronged offensive is the repression of free thought.

FOUR YEARS ago, US President George W. Bush called the invasion of Iraq "Operation Iraqi Freedom." The intention was clear. The purpose of the war was not merely to bring down Saddam Hussein's murderous, terror-supporting regime. It was to bring about the defeat of the vile world view that supported the regime and to replace that view with the values of freedom, tolerance and democracy.
 

Four years on, US forces continue their heroic fight to bring order and security to that violent land. But the purpose of their efforts is no longer clear. The US no longer pushes the Iraqis or the greater Arab world to abandon jihad in favor of freedom.

Earlier this month, columnist Joel Mowbray gave evidence of the Bush administration's abandonment of the war of ideas in a Wall Street Journal expose on the US taxpayer-financed Arabic-language television network Al-Hurra. The US launched Al- Hurra in February 2004 to compete with jihadist television networks like Al Jazeera. Its stated aim was to present a liberal, pro-democracy and pro-human rights voice to the Arab world. Yet, as Mowbray reported, since former CNN producer Larry Register was appointed to lead the network last November, that aim fell by the wayside.

In December the network began allowing itself to be used as a platform by arch terrorists like Hizbullah commander Hassan Nasrallah and Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh. Last month, when the Israeli Islamic movement began attacking Israel for conducting an archeological dig by the Aksa mosque, Al-Hurra's coverage of the story was more extreme than Al Jazeera's. Palestinian Authority mufti Ikremah Sabri was brought on live and accused Israel of shooting and throwing bombs into the mosque and of denying medical care to those it had supposedly wounded. Al-Hurra has also hosted an al-Qaida terrorist who rejoiced in the September 11 attacks on America.

As is the case in Britain, the Bush administration's decision to largely abandon the ideological battlefield is the result of an uncompromising and unrelenting ideological and political assault against the voices that justify the war against the global jihad generally, and against the hawks in the Bush administration specifically.

Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith and John Bolton - and arguably Scooter Libby - were all forced from their positions in the Pentagon, the State Department and the White House after coming under unrelenting attack by the Left which all but accused these men of treason for their vigilant support of the war against Islamic totalitarianism. A central component of the onslaught against them was the repeated claim that their support for Israel is what brought these men to delude America into believing that the global jihad is a threat to US national security.

One of the central players in this concerted attack has been the billionaire George Soros. Soros is an anti-Zionist Jew with a troubling past. Specifically, by his own admission in interviews with 60 Minutes in 1998 and PBS in 1993, Soros collaborated with the Nazis in seizing Jewish property in Budapest in 1944.

Author Serge Trifkovic, who is currently researching a biography of Soros, tells of a Holocaust survivor in Hungary who claims that the reason Soros was allowed to remain free was "the boy's special knowledge of the Jewish community and its attempts to protect its property from confiscation."

Since 2003, Soros has donated more than $100 million to radical left-wing groups and to the political campaigns of far-left anti-war Democratic candidates in the US. His money has made him one of the most influential forces in the Democratic Party.

After Hamas won the Palestinian election last January, Soros turned his guns against Israel. Last October he announced his intention to work with left-wing American Jewish groups such as Brit Tzedek v'Shalom, American Friends of Peace Now and the Israel Policy Forum to form an effectively anti-Israel lobbying group that will compete with the pro-Israel American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). Soros accuses AIPAC of making common cause with the war hawks and so harming US and Israeli national security.

This week Soros laid out his anti-Israel views in the New York Review of Books. In a longwinded screed entitled, "On Israel, America and AIPAC," Soros presents an incoherent hodgepodge of sloppy logic and contradictory statements. On the one hand, he acknowledges that Israel's withdrawal from Gaza radicalized the Palestinians and brought Hamas to power. On the other hand, he insists that further Israeli withdrawals will cause the Palestinians to moderate. While he acknowledges that Hamas is a terror group, he insists that the US must recognize it and force Israel to recognize it and that AIPAC is responsible for neither recognizing Hamas as a legitimate political force in the region.

Soros claims to want peace for Israel. Yet he demands that the US and Israel embrace the Saudi plan which calls for Israel's effective destruction through a forced Israeli withdrawal from Judea, Jerusalem, Samaria and the Golan Heights and the demographic destruction of the Jewish state through unimpeded immigration of 4-5 million foreign-born Arabs.

In effect, Soros's arguments make clear that protestations aside, the advancement of human rights and peace cannot possibly be his true goals. Rather, what seems to interest him most is the erosion of the US-Israel alliance. A US abandonment of Israel is seen as a necessary component of an overall strategy for causing the US to cease its fight against the global jihad.

In her visit here next week, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is expected to pressure the Olmert-Livni-Peretz government to continue diplomatic contacts with the Hamas-Fatah terror government through PA Chairman and Fatah commander Mahmoud Abbas. In light of the administration's weakening stand on Hamas, it is clear that Soros's views have taken hold in ever-widening policy circles in Washington.

In advancing their anti-Israel views, Soros and his allies (most recently, New York Times columnist Nicholas D. Kristof), invoke the work of radical leftist Israeli organizations like the Geneva Initiative, B'tselem and Peace Now. Like Soros, these organizations claim to act for the advancement of peace and human rights. And like Soros, these organizations effectively cooperate with pro-jihadist groups in eroding Israel's ability to defend its rights as a Jewish democracy.
 

The public storm that ensued this week after Jews in Hebron took control of a building they recently purchased in the city was a clear example of this leftist-jihadist collusion.

In demanding that the IDF move immediately to eject the Jews from the building they had bought, Peace Now and B'tselem ignored human rights and openly advocated the abrogation of the human rights of Israeli Jews to purchase and hold property. In so doing, they lent their support to the racist jihadist view that Jews must be barred from stepping foot in so-called Arab areas.

B'tselem spokeswoman Sarit Michaeli told The Jerusalem Post on Sunday that whether the Jews purchased the building or not was immaterial. In her words, "Our opposition in principle is that these settlements should be evacuated anyway and that there shouldn't be these pockets in Hebron."

She added that "other than watching and making sure that [the sale] was done in a legal way, the IDF has the obligation to make sure that settlers don't take over more areas."

In so arguing, Michaeli gave effective Jewish Israeli support to even more outrageous statements by Israeli Arab parliamentarians. As she claimed that the IDF's job is to fight Jews, Arab MKs Ibrahim Sarsour and Muhammad Barakei participated in the PA's "Jerusalem First" conference in Ramallah. Sarsour called for "Muslims and Arabs" to "liberate Jerusalem."

Sarsour declared, "Just as the Muslims once liberated Jerusalem from the Crusaders, so must we today believe that we can liberate Jerusalem. It is not an impossible dream."

Barakei accused Israel of trying to "empty Jerusalem of its Palestinian inhabitants." Calling Jerusalem a "national issue, not just a religious issue," he called on Palestinians to act immediately to "reclaim the city."

As for Hebron, on Tuesday MK Taleb a-Sanaa called for an international boycott of Israel in response to the Jewish purchase and takeover of the building.

The Arab MKs spoke against the backdrop of Israel's first Arab cabinet minister Ghaleb Majadle's refusal to sing the national anthem and the publication of a University of Haifa poll showing that 76 percent of Israeli Arabs believe that Zionism is a form of racism and that 28% of Israeli Arabs deny the Holocaust.

Needless to say, no criminal investigations into possible treason charges have been opened against the Arab politicians.

A CLEAR line connects the Cambridge students, the Americans in Iraq, and the situation in Israel. The leftist-Islamist front is eroding the free world's sense of justice. Rather than assert our liberal, democratic values and defend our freedoms, fearing leftist condemnation, politicians and opinion shapers have permitted themselves to become shackled to ideologies that negate everything for which the free world stands.

Israel, which stands on the front lines of freedom, is duty-bound to stem the tide. But our ignoble leaders have preferred to stop thinking and silently surrender.

This is how a civilization collapses.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post. 

Anxiety and anticipation swirled through the air in the days preceding Saturday's swearing-in ceremony for the new Hamas-Fatah terror government in the Palestinian Authority. Since Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah brokered the Fatah terror group's surrender to the Hamas terror group last month, everyone who was anyone whispered the same questions: How would the terrorists finesse the existence of Israel in a government platform that refuses to recognize the legitimacy of a Jewish state? What would the government of, by and for terrorists say about terrorism? How would it elide the issue of the four-to-five million so-called Palestinian Arab refugees they want to settle in Tel Aviv and Haifa?

Most importantly, everyone wanted to know how the Palestinian terrorist unity government would approach the so-called peace process, wherein Palestinian terrorists promise Israel peace but never deliver, while Israel gives them land, guns, money and international legitimacy. How would they treat the writ of faith that stipulates the world will be a safe and peaceful place if only the Jews hand Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem and a pile of cash over to Hamas-Fatah?

Would they meet the Quartet's lip-service requirements by denouncing violence, acknowledging Israel's existence and accepting the Israel-PLO agreements that have brought us the current paradise of peace to the Promised Land?

IN OPERATIVE terms, what was utmost on people's minds was whether the Palestinians would provide cover to the Israeli Left, the Europeans and the State Department to resume direct European and US financing, arming and championing of the Palestinian terror groups against Israel and pressure Israel to resume concessions to the Hamas-Fatah government.

Sadly for the peace processors, the answers to all the above questions was no. The Palestinians, under the Hamas-Fatah government, have turned their backs on their supporters on the Israeli Left, in Europe and the State Department. The platform of their government is antithetical to everything the Israeli Left, the EU and the State Department claim to stand for.

Instead of accepting the legitimacy of Israel, the new government platform rejects Israel's right to exist. And as PA chairman and Fatah terror chief Mahmoud Abbas explained, the so-called "right of return," or unlimited immigration of millions of foreign Arabs to the State of Israel - which would lead to the destruction of Israel - is the non-negotiable position of the entire Hamas-Fatah terror government.

Rather than renounce violence, Hamas terror boss and PA Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh stated clearly on Saturday that his Hamas-Fatah government supports "all forms of resistance." Abbas lackey, legislator, Palestinian negotiator and corrupt Fatah businessman Nabil Shaath echoed this point on behalf of Fatah. Defending the terror government's support for terrorism, Shaath said, "The right to resist the occupation is a legitimate right… This should not stop us from seeking a hudna [temporary truce], particularly if it's in the interest of the Palestinians. Meanwhile, we won't give up our right to resist."

Indeed, the government platform says that "resistance" can only be halted upon realization of the "right of return." As to peace, the unity deal between Fatah and Hamas gives no quarter to the peace-mongers. While the government's platform authorizes Abbas to negotiate with Israel, Haniyeh explained that any agreement recognizing a Palestinian state in Judea, Samaria and Gaza must not hinder the rights of the Palestinians to continue "liberating" the rest of Palestine, i.e., Israel.

FACED WITH complete rejection of their minimal conditions, the Israeli Left, the Europeans and the State Department took the only step they could possibly take: They ignored everything the Palestinians said and did. Confronted by the Palestinians' absolute commitment to terror and extortion, they have closed their eyes and moved to embrace the fantasy that there is a deal to be made with the Palestinians.

Menachem Klein is one of the propagators of the Geneva Initiative from 2003, where radical leftists, led by Meretz leader Yossi Beilin and funded by the Swiss government, signed a surrender agreement with the Palestinians, led by the PA's former propaganda minister Yasser Abed Rabbo. Acting with no authority from any quarter, Klein and his colleagues signed away the store to the PLO, and then insisted that the Israeli government was responsible for all the problems in the region because it hadn't signed such a deal itself.

Writing on Ynet, Klein explained this week that now is the time for the radical Left to repeat the exercise by breaking Israeli law, which bans contacts with terror groups like Hamas, and negotiating still another surrender agreement.

In his words, "Not only should the Israeli government engage the Palestinian unity government, the Israeli Left should do so as well. The Israeli Left should not suffice with talks with Abbas... alone. If the Israeli government stands in its way, the Left should resume the tactics that characterized it in the 1980s, when the government legislated a bill that prohibited contact with PLO representatives. With the help of several European governments, this obstacle can also be overcome."

KLEIN'S CALL was echoed by Defense Minister and Labor Party chief Amir Peretz. Speaking at the cabinet meeting Sunday, Peretz called for Israel to come up with its own peace plan that would be based on the proposition that Israel must not insist that the Palestinians first give up terrorism before Israel can give them more land. Sticking to principles such as the right of Israeli citizens not to be murdered makes Israel look anti-peace, Peretz explained.

Like their Israeli clients, the Europeans have made no bones about their eagerness to embrace the terror government. Recalling their quisling predecessors, the Norwegians became the first European country to give it full recognition.

The neo-quislings were followed by the EU and by Italy, which both sent the Palestinians letters of congratulations on their new terror government. France has reportedly agreed to host the Hamas-Fatah terror government's foreign minister, and Britain has pledged to continue its "humanitarian aid" to the Palestinians.

FOR ITS part, the State Department, while stipulating that it won't speak to Hamas, is more than happy to speak with Fatah ministers who flack for Hamas. The Americans' favorite terror financier and recycled PA Finance Minister Salam Fayad will be visiting Washington later in the week. In one of his most recent exploits, Fayad oversaw the disappearance of $100 million in tax revenue that Israel transferred to Abbas's office.

The Palestinians could not be clearer about their demands. Having made no steps toward Israel or even their own devoted supporters, they want Israel to stop defending itself, and they want Israel and the rest of the world to give them lots of money. They want the former so that they can attack Israel without fear. They want the latter because, dedicated as they are to Israel's destruction, they are thoroughly uninterested in developing their own society and economy into anything remotely resembling a viable state. Indeed, they are incapable of even feeding their own people. And so they need us to do it for them, even as they wage war against us.

WHILE ALL of this is quite infuriating, there is nothing new in the actions of any of the concerned parties this week. Indeed, a reading of 60-year-old documents shows that little of substance has changed since Palestinian Arabs first resorted to terror to foil the emergence of a Jewish state.

The 1939 British White Paper reserved its "unqualified condemnation" for "methods employed by Arab terrorists against fellow Arabs and Jews alike," only to explain that "it cannot be denied" that the only proper response to Arab terror was to cut off Jewish immigration and thereby doom European Jewry to its fate. The only thing the British wanted Jews around for was to hold up "the whole of the financial and economic system of Palestine."

Needless to say, Palestinian Arabs pocketed the concession and continued attacks as the British plan was too "pro-Jewish." In September 1948, in the midst of the War of Independence, which came as the Arab world and the Palestinian Arabs launched a war of extermination against Israel rather than accept the UN's partition of the country, the UN mediator Count Folke Bernadotte explained that without "economic union" between the Arabs and the Jews the plan was anyway doomed to failure because of the "justifiable doubts concerning the economic viability of the proposed Arab state."

The Palestinian Arabs failed to establish their own state at the time due to their "unwillingness to undertake any step which would suggest even tacit acceptance of partition, and by their insistence on a unitary State in Palestine."

Then as now, there was no viable Palestinian Arab state because the Palestinians were so dedicated to destroying Israel that they could not spare the time or interest to support themselves. Then, as now, the so-called international community insisted on ignoring or apologizing for the genocidal bellicosity of Palestinian Arab nationalism, while attempting to appease the Palestinians with money and the conferral of international support and legitimacy for the cause of Israel's disembowelment.

THE ONLY thing that can be done in the face of this historically consistent depravity is to finally declare that the jig is up. Those who support recognizing all or part of the Hamas-Fatah terror government are in breach of international law and of UN Security Council Resolution 1373, which bars member states from financing terrorists and those giving them safe harbor.

There is no peace process, only a war process. And if we do not recognize this fact and fight, we shall soon begin to bury more innocents whose lives will be sacrificed because we were too stubborn to acknowledge reality.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

This has been a banner week for Syrian diplomacy. First, together with their big Iranian brothers, the Syrians were given a place at the table alongside US officials at the conference on Iraqi security in Baghdad last weekend.

At the same time as their underlings exchanged recriminations with the US, Syrian dictator Bashar Assad and Iranian Defense Minister Mustafa Muhammad Najjar merged the Syrian and Iranian militaries at a summit in Damascus. On Sunday Najjar explained the deal to reporters saying, "We consider the capability of the Syrian defensive forces as our own and believe that expansion of defensive ties would ... help deal with the threats of the enemies." Najjar added that Iran "offers all of its defense capabilities to Syria." The meeting was capped off on Monday when Najjar signed a memorandum of understanding on military cooperation with his Syrian counterpart Hassan Turkmeni.

Tuesday, US Assistant Secretary of State for Refugees Ellen Sauerbrey became the first senior US official to visit Syria since Damascus engineered former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri's assassination in February 2005.

Following closely on Sauerbrey's heels was the EU's foreign policy chief Javier Solana. Like Sauerbrey, Solana was the first senior EU official to set foot in the Syrian capital since Hariri was murdered. Unlike Sauerbrey, who came and left without making a sound, Solana used the occasion to drop a diplomatic bomb.

Standing next to Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Moualem Wednesday, Solana announced, "We would like to work as much as possible to see your country Syria recuperate the territory taken in 1967."

Israel should be very concerned by Solana's statement. Seventeen years ago, an American diplomat made a similar statement to another Arab dictator. It was swiftly followed by war.

On July 25, 1990 then US ambassador to Iraq April Glaspie held a fateful meeting with Saddam Hussein. It occurred against the backdrop of a massive Iraqi military build-up along the Kuwaiti border. Glaspie received a cagey and defensive reply from Saddam when she asked the meaning of the deployment. According to the protocol of the meeting which she sent that day to Washington, Glaspie told Saddam that the US took no position on intra-Arab disputes.

At the time, and since, the common view has been that Saddam interpreted Glaspie's statement as American acquiescence to Iraq's invasion of Kuwait which took place eight days later.

Solana's statement that Europe supports the reassertion of Syrian control over the Golan Heights came in the midst of a massive Syrian deployment of offensive weapons systems close to its border with Israel. Early this week, Israeli military commanders revealed that since last September, Syria has deployed between 1,000 and 3,000 missiles and rockets close to that border.

This revelation followed the apparent murder of Russian journalist Ivan Safronov. Safronov, who fell to his death from his fifth floor apartment window in Moscow on March 2, told his editors at the Kommersant newspaper just before his death that he was working on a story exposing Russian sales of advanced Iskander missiles to Syria and jetfighters to Iran.

This week, Michael Maples, the director of the US Defense Intelligence Agency, announced that "Syria has a program to develop select biological agents." Maples explained, "Syria's biotechnical infrastructure is capable of supporting limited biological agent development." He added that Syria is seeking to install biological and chemical warheads on its missile arsenal.

Indeed, according to opposition leader Binyamin Netanyahu, over the past year Syria has increased its military outlays by a factor of ten.

Syria is using the smokescreen of near weekly protestations of interest in negotiating with Israel to divert attention away from its clear preparations for war. Rather than see these statements for the psychological warfare antics they are, Israeli leftists have pounced on them. Led by Haaretz newspaper, the Israeli Left is exerting massive pressure on the rudderless Olmert-Livni-Peretz government to force it to open negotiations with Damascus - negotiations that would lead to Israel's surrender of the Golan Heights in exchange for a piece of paper from Iran's Arab colony.

Due to the government's general incompetence, it is unable to formulate a coherent policy towards Syria. The Left's calls for surrender talks consequently dominate the public debate on Syria. This in turn has paralyzed the state bodies responsible for taking measures to prepare the IDF and the public for the prospect of war.

The IDF's public assessment of the Syrian threat is evidence of the confusion. Last month, Military Intelligence chief Maj.-Gen. Amos Yadlin addressed the Syrian threat at the government's intelligence assessment meeting. Yadlin said, "The chances of a full-scale war initiated by Syria are low, but the chances of Syria reacting militarily against Israeli military moves are high."

Yadlin's statement was presented to the public as good news. But it was not good news. Syria will not initiate a full-scale war against Israel because it would lose a full-scale war. Syria's comparative advantage against the IDF is found in the area of low-intensity warfare. And as Yadlin noted, there is every reason to expect that it is this sort of warfare that Syria is preparing to initiate.

Over the past several years, Syria has built up massive artillery, missile and rocket arsenals capable of causing extensive damage to the IDF and to Israeli communities in the Golan Heights and the Galilee. So too, Syria fields a highly trained commando corps capable of exacting physical losses and tactical setbacks to the IDF.

Syria has two good reasons to go to war against Israel. Since 1973, every Arab state and terrorist organization that has gone to war against Israel has benefited from their aggression. Syria no doubt expects for the pattern to continue. In all likelihood, if Syria is able to fight Israel to a stalemate as Hizbullah did last summer, the Israeli Left, the EU and the US can be expected to increase their pressure for an Israeli surrender of the Golan Heights.

Moreover, a war with Israel would shore up Assad's dwindling support at home. Sherko Abbas, a Kurdish-Syrian exile living in the US, heads the Kurdistan National Assembly of Syria. He explains that due to Syria's economic weakness and the Assad government's profligate corruption, the regime is widely despised by its Syrian subjects. According to Abbas, the organized domestic opposition to the regime crosses ethnic lines and includes Kurds, Druse, Alawites, and even members of Assad's family clan.

Three years ago, regime-sponsored Sunni thugs attacked Kurdish soccer fans in Dayz az Zawr, a Kurdish city along the border with Iraq. The attack led to three days of Kurdish anti-regime riots. Rioters destroyed regime monuments and burned government offices. Brutally quelled, the riots left 85 Kurds dead, hundreds wounded and thousands imprisoned.

Numbering between 2.5-3 million, Kurds make up some 15 percent of the Syrian population. On Monday, hundreds of thousands of Kurds flocked to cemeteries to publicly commemorate the anniversary of the riots. As Abbas sees it, the fact that the Kurds were unafraid to publicly commemorate their uprising is proof of the regime's weakness.

Most Israeli politicians claim that were the regime to be overthrown, it would be replaced by the Muslim Brotherhood. The specter of an Islamist government arising in Syria is seen as sufficient reason for the Israeli government to do nothing to destabilize the Assad regime despite its strategic partnership with Iran.

Abbas disputes this view. He claims that the Muslim Brotherhood is a spent force in Syria. "If the Brotherhood were capable of replacing the regime, it would have overthrown it when there was a chance in 2004," he argues.

To offset his regime's unpopularity, over the past few years Assad has imported more than 100,000 "immigrants" from Iran. These new Persian-speaking Syrians are keen to influence their adopted society. To this end, they have built new Shi'ite mosques throughout the country and are paying Syrians to convert to Shi'ite Islam.

According to Abbas, the regime has settled its new loyalists in Damascus, Latakiya, Homs and Aleppo. All these areas - in close proximity to Lebanon and Israel - are of strategic importance to the regime.

By the same token, repeated press reports from Syria over the past year indicate that Assad replaced his Syrian security detail with a new presidential protection force comprised of members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps and Hizbullah.

With Syria clearly on war footing, there are several moves Israel must make right now. Militarily, Israel must prepare for war. The IDF should be pre-positioning equipment in the Golan Heights, training its reserves and regular forces for war, and updating its doctrine for fighting in the Golan Heights. So too, municipal authorities should be readying their bomb shelters for another war and preparing contingencies to evacuate civilians from the North.

If Syria does initiate hostilities, the IDF's goal must be to destroy the Syrian military and avoid a stalemate at all costs.

Diplomatically, Israel must work to cancel the diplomatic gains that Syria made this week. The goal must be to return Syria to the international isolation it has been relegated to since it engineered Hariri's murder.

Israel must also identify and assist forces in Syria working to undermine and topple the regime. Last week the Knesset's Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee invited Syria's US-based agent Ibrahim Suleiman, who held contacts with the far-left former director-general of the Foreign Ministry Alon Liel, to address its members. That invitation should be rescinded. Rather than Suleiman, the Knesset should invite regime opponents to speak to its members.

Working with the Kurdish opposition, the US-based Center for Democracy in the Middle East operates a satellite television station that runs limited broadcasts into Syria in Kurdish, Arabic and Persian. The station educates its viewers about the regime's corruption, suppression of human rights and democracy. It calls for peaceful coexistence with Israel and the rest of Syria's neighbors. Israel should be helping to fund, expand and run these broadcasts.

For its part, the regime itself announced this week that it is planning to launch a satellite television station that will advance the Syrian-Iranian line to the Arab world. Imagine how refreshing it would be for audiences to have the opportunity to watch something other than jihad on television.

In all its dealings with Syria, Israel must understand that today Syria is a clear enemy whose interests are diametrically opposed to the interests of the Jewish state. As a result, in all arenas and at all times, Israel should be working to weaken and destabilize the regime. There is much it can do to advance this purpose.

Unfortunately, until the current government is replaced, it is hard to imagine how this can happen.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

Last November 26, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert ordered the IDF to withdraw its forces from Gaza. Sounding oddly triumphant, Olmert announced that he had reached a cease-fire with the Palestinians. The strangeness of his statement became apparent when just hours later Sderot absorbed yet another bombardment of rockets from Gaza.
 

And as the IDF grudgingly withdrew its forces mid-mission, the Palestinians established the rules that they and Olmert have followed ever since. They attack Israel and prepare for war, and Israel helps them by giving them money, negotiating with them and taking no steps to defend itself or its citizens.

The strange agreement was announced three days before US President George W. Bush snubbed Olmert when he demurred from either visiting Israel or visiting with Olmert during his trip to Amman, Jordan. In the four months since Olmert forced the IDF to stand down, the IDF, the Shin Bet, and even the media have warned both Olmert and the public that Syrian, Iranian and Lebanese-Hizbullah trainers, engineers, commanders and advanced anti-air and anti-tank missiles have been brought into Gaza.

The foreign terror masters and their Palestinian counterparts have used the respite that Olmert provided them to build what Shin Bet Director Yuval Diskin has referred to as "warrens" of tunnels and fortifications along Gaza's borders with Egypt and with Israel. Like Hizbullah in Lebanon, operating from these fortifications, the Palestinians will be able to attack IDF ground forces and aircraft when they are finally permitted to defend southern Israel from attack.

So thanks to Olmert's unilateral cease-fire, the Palestinians have upgraded their capabilities. Whereas before Israel withdrew its forces and civilians from Gaza in August and September 2005, the Palestinians operated as low-level terrorist cells, today they field bona fide terror armies that are capable of conducting coordinated, multi-layered operations.

YET THE Palestinians' avid preparations for war are apparently irrelevant to all concerned. In the past week alone, we have seen the US, Israel and the Arab world in the throes of a diplomatic frenzy that would make it seem as though the coming war was nothing but a joke.

Last Wednesday, Jordan's King Abdullah addressed a joint session of the US Congress. Abdullah came to the US at an interesting moment in the history of his own kingdom. The same day that Abdullah told US lawmakers that Israel is the source of all the misfortunes in the world, or as he put it, "The wellspring of regional division, the source of resentment and frustration far beyond, is the denial of justice and peace in Palestine," his state prosecutor announced the arrest of three al-Qaida terrorists. The men were arrested for plotting to assassinate Bush during his visit to Amman on November 29 and for plotting to bomb the US embassy in Amman.

What is interesting about the announcement, coming as it did the day that Abdullah spoke to the Congress and ate a private dinner with the president, is that it shows the mendacity of Abdullah's contention.

Israel is not responsible for the fact that Jordan has a huge problem with al-Qaida. Moreover, with a population that is more than 70 percent Palestinian, the monarch of the Hashemite kingdom would do well to look in the mirror before declaring that the lack of Palestinian statehood has anything to do with Israel.

ACCORDING to Israel's Channel 2, Abdullah built on his "Blame the Jews" theme to great effect during his private dinner with the president. Bush was reportedly convinced by his Jordanian guest that the world will be a better, safer place if the US abandons its demand that the PA destroy the terror cells and armies operating in its territory before it commences pressure on Israel to surrender Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem to Hamas-Fatah.

Abdullah's success has had immediate significance on the ground. Just four days after the monarch's visit to Washington, Olmert announced that he is going to ignore the situation on the ground in the PA and conduct negotiations on Israeli withdrawals from Judea and Samaria with Abbas. At Sunday's cabinet meeting Olmert repeated his praise for the so-called "Saudi plan," or, alternatively, the "Arab peace initiative."

That initiative calls for Israeli surrender of Judea, Samaria, the Golan Heights and Jerusalem; Israeli acceptance of blame for the Arab world's refusal to accept the right of the Jewish people to national sovereignty; and Israeli acceptance of millions of foreign-born, hostile Arabs within its truncated borders. After Israel makes these suicidal concessions the Arab peace initiative states that the Arab world will be willing to recognize a defunct and defenseless Arab-majority State of Israel.

OLMERT AND Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni have repeatedly stated that at its meeting later in the month in Riyadh the Arab League will moderate the plan. But Jordan's Foreign Minister Abdullah Khatib said Sunday that there would be no changes of any kind made in the plan.

Hours after Olmert praised the Arab plan for Israel's destruction, he met with PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas. Olmert's office tried to put a positive spin on the meeting by loudly repeating Abbas's empty pledge to work to bring about the release of IDF Cpl. Gilad Shalit, who has been held hostage by Palestinian terrorists in Gaza since June.

But the fact of the matter is that the content of the Olmert-Abbas meeting represented nothing less than an Israeli diplomatic capitulation to Hamas. This capitulation is no less dangerous to Israel's national security than Olmert's acquiescence to Hamas's military transformation of Gaza into a mini-Lebanon, replete with Iranian and Syrian military advisers.

Under orders from Bush, Olmert agreed Sunday to abandon Israel's demand that the PA fight terror and expunge all terror elements from its midst as a necessary precondition for further Israeli concessions. For their part, the Palestinians responded to Olmert's query regarding how they had used the $100 million that Israel gave them by demanding more money.

And while Olmert was happy to lie to the public and claim that Abbas had agreed to end the rocket attacks on the Western Negev, he knows full well that he won't. Indeed, the only thing that was announced about the meeting that was true is that Olmert has agreed to negotiate with the Palestinians and the Arabs on the basis of the Arab initiative, which is based on the proposition that Israel essentially has no right to exist.

SPEAKING on Israel Radio on Monday morning, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni said that Israel and the US are working in pure harmony in formulating their policies regarding the Palestinians, as well as Syria. And this is no doubt true. Both Israel and the US are pretending that it is possible to make a distinction between Abbas and Hamas, even though in the aftermath of last month's agreement between Fatah and Hamas in Mecca Abbas now acts at the pleasure of Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal.

Perhaps the only bright spot for Israeli diplomacy since the onset of the Palestinian jihad in 2000 has been the US and European willingness to make a distinction between the Fatah terror group and the Hamas terror group.

It is true that Fatah, which receives at least 40 percent of its finances from Iran and has killed more Israelis over the past seven years than Hamas, is unworthy of the international legitimacy it has enjoyed. But in refusing to directly fund and support Hamas, the US, Israel and Europe were at least agreed that some Palestinian terror groups were beyond the pale.

This Israeli diplomatic asset was destroyed by a combination of Arab perfidy and Israeli incompetence in the aftermath of last month's Mecca agreement. In Mecca, Abbas agreed to a Hamas takeover of the PA. He agreed to become a Hamas figurehead whose main task is to restore Western funding of the Hamas-led PA.

Rather than point this out and so wrest away Fatah's international legitimacy, Israel has allowed Fatah to do Hamas's bidding and act as a conduit toward the international legitimization of the jihadist movement.

PERHAPS what is most interesting about the diplomatic maneuvering taking place today is that all
four main actors carrying it out are advancing aims inimical to their national or organizational interests. Israel and the US's security interests, like those of Jordan, are harmed rather than advanced by the empowerment of Hamas. As for Abbas, Fatah's fiduciary interests are harmed by the transfer of power to Hamas.

So why are these men behaving as they are?

The answer to that apparently is to be found in a characteristic shared by Bush, Olmert, Abdullah and Abbas. All of them lead without the support of their people. All of the men, in engaging in near-manic diplomatic wrangling, are advancing the aims of neither peace nor security. They act as they do not because they believe in what they are doing - indeed, none of them could possibly believe in what he is doing. Rather, they are doing this because they want us to ignore the fact that in Bush's and Olmert's cases they are lame ducks, and in Abdullah's and Abbas's cases, they are sitting ducks.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is certain that he has nothing to be ashamed of. As the first Israeli leader to have led the country to military defeat, Olmert is proud of his performance in office and thinks that we should be, too.

Thursday, Ha'aretz reported the gist of Olmert's February 1 testimony before the Winograd Committee which he appointed to investigate the government and IDF's (mis)handling of the war last summer against Iran's Lebanese proxy Hizbullah. The Ha'aretz story was one of only a handful of reports detailing testimony brought before the commission and so it is reasonable to assume that Olmert's office, rather than the commission members, was the source of the story. Olmert's advisers presumably believe that publishing their spin on his testimony will deflect criticism away from him and onto the IDF and so buy the premier more time in office in spite of the fact that only 3 percent of the public supports him.

In his testimony before his hand-picked investigators, Olmert claimed that last March he had approved a contingency plan for war against Hizbullah in the event that Hizbullah abducted IDF soldiers along the Lebanese border. Those plans, Olmert claimed, involved the conducting of an air campaign and a small-scale ground campaign against Hizbullah with the goal of destroying its missile arsenal and forcing it to disarm in accordance with UN Security Council Resolution 1559.

Olmert stated that he only ordered the helter-skelter large-scale, inconclusive 48-hour ground offensive at the end of the war because the IDF's small-scale ground operations until that time had been unsuccessful. He ordered the large-scale offensive, in which 33 soldiers were killed just before their comrades were ordered to retreat, because he wanted to get a better cease-fire resolution at the UN Security Council. This is the case, he argues, in spite of the fact that the Security Council had already unanimously passed the resolution before the offensive began.

"Improved" Security Council Resolution 1701 is hailed by Olmert and his colleagues Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and Defense Minister Amir Peretz as a brilliant, pro-Israel document that was well worth the sacrifice. They claim this in spite of the fact that 1701 makes no mention of either Iran or Syria; treats Israel, a UN member nation, and Hizbullah, an illegal terrorist organization, as equals; treats the Saniora Government in Lebanon which collaborated throughout the war with Hizbullah as a positive force; enhances the role of UNIFIL in spite of the fact that its forces reported IDF troop movements in real time on their Web site; and has enabled Hizbullah to rearm in broad daylight.

Olmert's testimony to the Winograd Commission is interesting for two reasons. First, if Olmert was telling the truth then, far from clearing his name, he incriminated himself. By March 2006, the IDF had war-gamed his chosen strategy of an air campaign with a limited ground component. The strategy had failed. The fact that he chose it anyway casts doubt on his competence to lead the country in war. Moreover, while the public understood just days after the war broke out that it was imperative to call up the reserves and launch a large-scale ground offensive, Olmert clung to his failed air-based strategy until the end stages of the war. He called up the reservists so late that they had insufficient time to train for their missions.

Olmert's testimony, like his office's apparent decision to leak it to the media, is also interesting for the arrogance it betrayed. Olmert told us his version of his testimony because he thought we would accept it without question. If he had thought we would question him, it is hard to imagine he would have revealed what he said because his defenses are so easily taken apart.

Indeed, within hours of the Ha'aretz report, MK Yuval Steinitz, the former chairman of the Knesset's Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, did just that when he told Israel Radio how strange Olmert's statements are. If he ordered the IDF to prepare for war, Steinitz asked, why did the IDF do nothing to prepare for war? If he had a plan to respond to the abduction of IDF soldiers with a large-scale military campaign, then why did he slash the IDF's budget by a half a billion shekels two months before the war?

With 57 percent of Israelis praying for new elections, it is hard to see how Olmert and his colleagues can ever regain the public trust. But the fact that their careers are about to end, while no doubt tragic for them, is a happy occasion for Israeli society as a whole and a great victory for Israeli democracy.

It is because of the openness of Israeli society that we are able to have a public debate about what happened last summer in Lebanon and so identify those at fault and the notions that led them to their failures. And it is only by properly identifying both the failed officials and their failed ideas that the State of Israel will be able to safeguard its security in the future.

WITH AN eye towards safeguarding Israel's security, it is instructive to compare Olmert's political woes versus Israeli society's democratic resilience to the panicked atmosphere in Iran this week in the aftermath of former deputy defense minister and former Iranian Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) commander Ali Rez Asgari's apparent defection to the West.

The IRGC is responsible for both Iran's nuclear weapons program and its terror armies. Its forces reportedly both develop and guard Iran's nuclear installations. As to terror, the IRGC is in direct command of Hizbullah, Islamic Jihad and the Mahdi Army in Iraq. It exerts a large degree of control and influence over other groups like al-Qaida, Fatah and Hamas which receive money, training, arms and logistical support from the IRGC.

In light of the IRGC's central role in the Iranian regime's most secret endeavors, there can be little doubt that Asgari's information will have strategic value for the US, Israel and other Western countries in assessing Iran's plans, capabilities and logistics.

Here it is useful to compare Teheran's hysteria over Asgari's defection with Israel's muted reaction when IDF (res.) Col. and would-be drug dealer Elhanan Tannenbaum was abducted by Hizbullah to Lebanon in 2000. As a senior reserves officer, Tanenbaum was privy to top secret information relating to the IDF's Artillery Corps where he served. But in spite of the clear damage that Tannenbaum no doubt wrought during his years of captivity, he did not have the capability to do anywhere near the level of damage to Israel's weapons' systems as Asgari apparently can cause for Iran. No doubt, if a member of the IDF's General Staff were abducted by Iran, he too would be capable of causing far less strategic damage to Israel than Asgari can cause to the mullahs.

The reason that Israeli commanders who fall into enemy hands can harm Israel's national security less that an Iranian commander who defects to the West can harm the mullahs is because Israel is an open and free society and Iran is a closed and unfree society. In free societies, much of what would be considered top secret information in a closed society is openly debated. Senior officials, who in a closed society like Iran are above scrutiny, are under constant scrutiny in Israel. Criticism of policies - which, as the case of Olmert's political demise makes clear - is necessary for correcting mistakes and moving forward, is the stock-in-trade of open societies. In closed societies, those that criticize policies risk death, torture and imprisonment for their actions.

Because open societies like Israel are information societies, their strength is based not on hiding information from their citizens but in galvanizing their citizens' knowledge and talents to progress and defend themselves. In contrast, since by their nature closed societies maintain control by concentrating power and information in the hands of as few people as possible, a member of the powerful few who defects to an open society can do a great deal of damage to the regime.

By the same token, since the main precondition for progress in open societies is public debate, when Israeli students protest against government policies, no one worries that their protests will destroy the regime. But in closed societies, criticism of the regime is liable to open a Pandora's Box that can bring about the regime's overthrow.

That this is the case is obvious when observing the mullahs' obsession with both quelling dissent and preventing the fact that most sectors of Iranian society oppose their rule from being reported by the media.

In this vein, Asgari's defection was not the only setback the ayatollahs suffered this week. The broadcast of a massive student protest against Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad during his recent visit to Teheran University was another major blow to the regime. The footage, which was broadcast on France 2, was taken by cellular phone video cameras. It showed heroic students standing on stage next to Ahmadinejad calling him a dictator and daring him to arrest them, as hundreds in the audience cheered them on while burning Ahmadinejad's photograph.

For the regime in Teheran, the widely circulated film was a huge disaster. Now it is clear to the world that although the mullahs may present a unified front, their people do not support them.

Here it is important to emphasize that the mullahs' panic will in no way impact their commitment to carrying out a nuclear holocaust. What it does show however, is that the regime is anything but all-powerful. Indeed it is highly susceptible to a concerted campaign to overthrow it.

Like all closed societies, the strength of the Iranian regime is built on the twin foundations of internal repression and external aggression. But also like in all closed societies, the mullahs suffer from an inability to identify mistakes and correct them or build their future on the power of their people who hate them.

When the Olmert government's political collapse and Iran's strategic setbacks are taken together, one can safely say that this has been a fairly good week. Olmert's exposure of his incompetence has set the course for his government's replacement by a government capable of defending Israel.
Then too, the exposure of Iran's inherent weaknesses by Asgari and the students at Teheran University points out a clear path towards preventing the regime from carrying out it planned nuclear holocaust while liberating the Iranian people from its tyranny.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.
 

Israel's man in Mecca is at it again.

Five years ago, for the first time, the Palestinians were beginning to feel diplomatic pressure. In January 2002, the IDF's interception of the Gaza-bound Karine-A Iranian weapons ship in the Red Sea exposed the close relationship that Fatah terror chief and Palestinian Authority chairman Yasser Arafat had developed with the mullahs in Teheran. In February 2002, a little-known al-Qaida terrorist by the name of Abu Musab Zarqawi, who had set up shop in Iran after fleeing US forces in Afghanistan dispatched three Palestinian terrorists to Israel to conduct terror operations. The men were arrested en route in Turkey.

By February and March 2002, Israel had accumulated and disseminated a critical mass of evidence demonstrating that the Palestinian jihad against Israel was being massively funded by the same states that were funding al-Qaida. Israel had also shown that far from being interested in peace or in combating terror, Arafat, his official PA militias, and his Fatah terror group were directing the jihad.

With the foreign-funded Palestinian terror machine on the verge of being delegitimized, something had to be done to change the subject.

Enter Saudi Arabia.

As one of the PA's chief terror financiers; one of the epicenters of jihadist propaganda and recruitment; and the Arab state with the most influence over the Bush administration, the Saudis had an interest in preventing the US from acting on the knowledge that there is no difference between al-Qaida and Hamas or between the PA and the Taliban-led regime in Afghanistan.

And so, then crown-prince, (and current King) Abdullah invited The New York Times' in-house peace-processor Tom Friedman to Riyadh for dinner. After serving his guest the customary royal meal of freshly slaughtered lamb and sticky rice, Abdullah informed Friedman that if Israel weren't so insistent on defending its citizens from murder, he would introduce a peace plan he happened to have sitting in his desk already.

That plan was first fully enunciated at the Arab League Summit in Beirut on March 27, 2002. The day was a watershed day. In Netanya, 30 Jews were murdered at the Park Hotel by a jihadist suicide bomber while celebrating the Passover Seder. The massacre caused the Sharon government to finally launch its limited counter-terror offensive - Operation Defensive Shield - in Judea and Samaria after more than a year of stalling.

On March 27, 2002, two conferences convened in Beirut. In the first conference, terror masters from Hizbullah, al-Qaida, Hamas, Fatah, and Islamic Jihad convened to discuss collaboration and strategy. At the second conference, the leaders of the Arab League agreed to accept the Saudi initiative.

AS PUBLISHED the next day, the Saudi plan includes two stages. In the first stage, Israel divests itself of defensible borders by surrendering the Golan Heights, Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria. It also allows itself to become inundated with millions of hostile foreign-born Arabs who call themselves Palestinian refugees.

After Israel completes these tasks, the Arab world will agree to sign peace agreements with Israel and have "normal," (but not diplomatic), relations with the indefensible Jewish state. Given that it was acceded to by such terror states as Syria, Libya, Sudan and Saddam Hussein's Iraq, it should surprise no one that the Saudi plan included no mention of the need to end terrorism, incitement or jihadist indoctrination and violence in its pledge to have normal ties with Israel.

While the international media and the leftist Israeli media greeted the Saudi plan enthusiastically, then prime minister Ariel Sharon did everything he could to discredit the initiative. Sharon understood that it was a tactical ploy to delegitimize Israel's military campaign against the Palestinian jihad and to rebuild the legitimacy of the PA.

From a strategic vantage point, both Sharon and then foreign minister Shimon Peres made it clear that Israel did not accept the Arab view that Israel must surrender all the lands it gained control of in the Six Day War as a precondition for peace. That is, both Sharon and Peres were quick to point out that the plan itself, if implemented by Israel would be a strategic catastrophe for the Jewish state and was therefore unacceptable as a basis for negotiations.

Then too, the Sharon government rejected the sequencing of events, with Israel giving up the store in exchange for vague, unverifiable commitments to an unclear peace sometime down the road. Indeed, President Moshe Katsav invited then crowned-prince Abdullah to visit Israel as a means of calling the Saudi bluff. As Katsav put it, "assuming that the Crown Prince is interested in promoting [his peace plan], the most natural way to do this is by meeting the Israeli government."

With Israel's rejection of the plan, and with the documents the IDF secured during Operation Defensive Shield proving definitively that Arafat was a terrorist, the Saudi plan was laid to the side. But now, five years later, Saudi Arabia is again placing it on the international agenda.

SAUDI ARABIA'S motivations today are as clear as they were five years ago. Then, in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks, the Saudis wanted to block the US from recognizing that the jihad against Israel is part and parcel of the global jihad against the US and the rest of the free world. Today, against the backdrop of the Iranian nuclear threat - which also makes clear that the war against Israel is simply a front in the larger jihad - the Saudis again wish to convince the Americans not to view Israel as a strategic ally.

The Saudis reportedly raised President George W. Bush's hackles by mediating last month's Mecca agreement between Hamas and Fatah which transformed the Iranian and Saudi-financed Fatah terror group into a junior partner in the Iranian and Saudi-financed Hamas terror group's government. The Saudis, like the Palestinians wish for the West to renew its underwriting of the PA in spite of the fact that it no longer makes any bones about being a terror regime.

The easiest way to do that is to pretend that there is a possibility of renewing the "peace process" by putting a deal on the table that Israel will have to reject. With Israel rejecting "peace plans," the Saudis and their counterparts in the Arab League will say that there is no distinction between peace rejecting Israel and peace rejecting Hamas and therefore the West - and the US in particular - should recognize Hamas and give it lots of money.

So in resubmitting their "peace plan," the Saudis are simply acting as they have always acted - as Israel's enemy and as a country dedicated to preventing the US from basing its Middle East policy on a recognition of the basic fact that Arab and Islamic hostility towards the US stems from the same source as Arab and Islamic hostility towards Israel.

WHAT IS new in the current iteration of the Saudi game is Israel's response. Rather than reject the plan as their predecessors did, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni are embracing it as a basis for negotiations while applauding the Saudis for their "positive" role in the region.

In press interviews last week, Livni said that Israel's only real quibble is that the Saudi plan stipulates that Israel has to allow millions of hostile foreign Arabs to move here. If they would just fix that one little thing, which she refers to as "an absolute red line," (apparently as opposed to a flexible red line), then we could start getting down to business.

Aside from that, Livni said that the plan "is positive in my view." As she put it, "The initiative does discuss the 1967 lines, but it would be great if we were in a position where the conflict was a border dispute."

For his part, not only does Olmert consider the Saudi plan to be a positive development, according to Haaretz, Olmert so values Saudi Arabia that he decided not to reject the Mecca deal for fear that doing so would upset his friends in Riyadh.

Olmert's aversion to annoying Riyadh reportedly stems from his desire to keep the Saudis on board in opposing Iran's nuclear weapons program. If this is true, then Olmert is as much of a fool as Livni, who claims to truly believe that the Saudi plan can be the basis for negotiations.

In Olmert's case, he apparently has failed to understand that an Iranian nuclear bomb will imperil Saudi Arabia regardless of its impact on Israel. The Saudis would have to oppose Iran's nuclear program even if Israel were to destroy the PA and send its leaders - from Hamas and Fatah alike - packing to Mecca. Israel doesn't have to pay anything for Saudi support of actions to destroy Iran's nuclear installations.

So it is possible that Olmert and Livni are supporting the Saudis because they are obtuse. It is equally possible that they are using the Saudi plan as a diversion to shift public attention away from the fact that they led the country to defeat in the war against Iran's Lebanese proxy last summer and that due to their continued incompetence, Israel currently faces the prospect of a new war starting at any moment.

Whatever the cause of their support for the Saudis, that support is but another sign that they are incompetent to lead the country.

Oeiginally published in The Jerusalem Post.