When thousands of IDF reservists were released from service at the end of last summer's war they were angry and demanded an accounting from the Olmert-Livni-Peretz government and from the IDF's General Staff. The reservists rightly felt that they and the country had been betrayed by failed political and military leaders who chose the wrong strategy, prosecuted it incompetently, and led the IDF and the nation to an ignominious defeat that could have been a victory if they had been less incompetent, arrogant and foolish.

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert saw the thousands of reservists organizing hunger strikes and demonstrations, and families whose sons had been killed, and residents of the North all joining together. He heard their call for his resignation and he did what any self-respecting political hack would do in his position.

He formed a commission.

Generally speaking, commissions are formed in times of political crisis by politicians and other interested parties that wish to kick the can down the road. The hope is that by the time the commission publishes its report no one will remember the crisis that spurred its formation, and so no price will have to be paid by whoever failed in their duties and so fomented the crisis in the first place.

IN THE case of the Second Lebanon War the idea for a commission came from the Left. Led in this case by the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, the Left demanded a commission in order to prevent elections from being called. The Left understood that the Right would win elections and therefore just as the reservists were getting their footing, backed by Peace Now and Meretz, ACRI put out the call for a commission.

But Olmert felt that an official state inquiry headed by the Left's favorite - the Supreme Court - would be a bit too risky. So he hit on the idea of appointing his own commission. That is how the Winograd Commission, which released its interim report yesterday, was born.

Although this column is being written before publication of the Winograd Commission's interim report, several observations can already be made.

First, it is worth noting just how narrow the focus of the report actually is. The interim report discusses the period between the IDF's withdrawal from Lebanon in May 2000 and the sixth day of last summer's war. By deciding to ignore the IDF withdrawal that precipitated the Hizbullah takeover of south Lebanon, the commission evaded the necessary discussion of what prompted Ehud Barak's government to make the decision that paved the way for Hizbullah's kidnappings and the eventual war.

Over the weekend, Ma'ariv reported protocols of cabinet meetings in the weeks which preceded the 2000 withdrawal where then IDF chief of staff Shaul Mofaz and then IDF OC Northern Command Gabi Ashkenazi begged Barak not to go through with the withdrawal precisely because the Hizbullah buildup and aggression were so predictable.

The withdrawal from south Lebanon was fomented by the Left with the propaganda support of the Israeli media and the financial support of the EU.

Together, they worked to destroy the public consensus regarding the need to protect the North from Hizbullah and Iran. They propagated the lies that unilateral withdrawal would create an "invisible wall of international legitimacy" that would protect Israel from Hizbullah better than the IDF could, and that if Israel withdrew to the international border Hizbullah would abandon jihad and become a regular Lebanese political party.

But the Winograd report will not discuss such things, because it conveniently decided to begin its inquiry with the period after the IDF had already surrendered southern Lebanon to Hizbullah.

THEN THERE is the seemingly arbitrary decision by the committee to extend its interim inquiry only until the fifth day of the war. Whatever the reason for this bizarre choice, it betrays the ideological composition of the Olmert-appointed committee that seeks to shift the focus away from the government's incompetence in prosecuting the war to the very decision to respond militarily to Hizbullah's aggression.

On the fifth day of the war, things were still looking fairly good. The Air Force had concentrated its bombings on readily available targets and had obliterated them. Public support for the war and the government was sky-high. It was in the last four weeks of the war - not covered by the interim report - where the full brunt of the government's incompetence came to the fore.

It was during those last four weeks that the government repeatedly refused to call up the reserves in spite of the public outcry and the tactical necessity of a large-scale ground operation. It was in the last four weeks that the government repeatedly changed its plans and goals and so sent troops into battles that had no strategic end or operational logic.

It was in the two days that the government finally decided to launch the ground campaign that it knew could make no difference to the outcome of the war since it began after the UN Security Council had approved the cease-fire agreement.

ISSUING A harsh report that covers only the initial five days of the war insinuates that the war was a failure not due to bad war leadership, but rather because a wise government would have opted not to go to war at all but rather continued the business-as-usual response to post-withdrawal Hizbullah aggressions: paying ransom, releasing terrorists and burying dead Israelis.

Furthermore, throughout its inquiry, the Winograd Commission ignored the very nature of war itself. War after all, is not just the military battles. It is the mobilization of the resources of society to improve the position of the state vis-a-vis its enemies. And, as Israelis know only too well, war is ultimately won or lost in the world chanceries, not on the battlefield.

Yet the commission completely ignored this fact and so ignored the diplomatic campaign of the war and its disastrous conclusions. In absolute terms it could be said that the diplomatic campaign was a far worse failure than the military campaign. At least when IDF units were allowed to fight Hizbullah they defeated them. But in the diplomatic campaign Israel scored no points at all.

Israel began the war in arguably the best diplomatic position it had ever enjoyed. The G-8 endorsed Israel's right to win. The US was strongly behind it. Then Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni took the helm and capsized the ship of state.

Livni decided that it would be better for Israel if there were international forces deployed along the border. This was an assumption based on the same "invisible wall of international legitimacy" delusion that had failed to prevent Hizbullah from carrying out the kidnappings and missile attacks that precipitated the war in the first place.

Today, as IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi has just explained to the government, Hizbullah has rearmed and is reinforcing its forces in south Lebanon to return them to their pre-war strength. This it does under the protective gaze of the international force Livni was so keen to see in action. And due to the Livni-midwifed UNIFIL forces, Israel now risks an international scandal if it takes action against Hizbullah. Indeed, it was only because of some fancy footwork by opposition leader Binyamin Netanyahu and former minister Natan Sharansky that Livni didn't get her wish to have the entire cease-fire resolution fall under Article 7 of the UN Charter. Had that occurred it would have increased the already-present risk of any future Israeli move against Hizbullah bringing the UN-mandated international force to the defense of Hizbullah, against Israel.

ONE COULD console oneself by saying that at least there is a commission for the Second Lebanon War. Three greater strategic failures that all devastated Israel's defensive posture have gone without any scrutiny whatsoever.

First, Barak's precipitous surrender of southern Lebanon to Hizbullah has avoided scrutiny not only by the Winograd Commission but by all other official bodies.

The second failure also played an important role in the Second Lebanon War, but has escaped examination. This is the Sharon government's decision to hand over the Gaza Strip in its entirety to Hamas and Fatah while expelling 10,000 Jews from their homes. This not only ensconced a Hamas-Fatah jihadist army within striking range of Israel's major population centers and cemented the Palestinians' belief that terrorism would bring about Israel's national collapse through the gradual handover of all Israeli territory to terrorists; it also provided a safe base of operations for terrorists to conduct operations like the kidnapping of IDF Cpl. Gilad Shalit.
 

And, of course, the grandest of all Israeli failures was the Rabin-Peres government's decision to recognize the PLO and give it arms, land and legitimacy, ushering in the most deadly period of terrorism in Israel's history. This decision too, has never been scrutinized by a commission.

But, truly, the great pity is not that no commissions were formed to investigate these failures, as the Winograd Commission was formed to investigate the Second Lebanon War. The great pity is that Israeli society has yet to find the means to conduct a true public debate of our failures that could enable learning and corrective action.

If the Winograd report is to have any positive impact at all, it should be in beginning, not blocking the necessary public debate into the real sources of the failures last summer, and into the strategic failures of the Oslo process, and the withdrawals from Lebanon and Gaza. All of these call out for our attention and correction.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post. 

Since the details of former MK Azmi Bishara's rap sheet for treason are still secret, it is impossible to assess how his actions on behalf of Hizbullah during last summer's war affected Israel's campaign against Iran's proxy army in Lebanon.

But even without knowing the specifics of Bishara's crimes, two notable aspects of his case stand out. First, the very decision of Israel's investigatory arms to open a probe against Bishara for acts of treason is a welcome development. It marks a clear departure from their past treatment of Bishara and other Arab parliamentarians who have openly worked on behalf of Israel's enemies in recent years.

Bishara has acted as an overt Syrian and Hizbullah flunky ever since he was first elected to the Knesset in 1996. In contravention of Israeli law, which bars unauthorized travel to enemy states, in 1997 he traveled to Syria and met with then-vice president Abdel Halim Khadam. In 1998 he returned to Syria to meet with then-foreign minister Farouk a-Shara. Throughout the 1990s he organized illegal visits for Israeli Arabs to Syria.

Bishara's high profile visit to Syria and Lebanon last September along with his Knesset colleagues Jamal Zahalka and Wasal Taha, when he praised Hizbullah and Syria, was but an escalation of his actions on behalf of Hizbullah and Syria in the wake of the IDF's withdrawal from south Lebanon in May 2000. After that withdrawal, Bishara praised Hizbullah at a conference of Israeli Arabs in Umm el-Fahm, saying, "Hizbullah is entitled to take pride in its achievement in humiliating Israel."

He repeated the statement in 2001 during another illicit visit to Syria. There he praised Iran's proxy army in Lebanon while standing next to Hizbullah commander Hassan Nasrallah at a memorial ceremony for Hafez Assad.

Bishara's work on behalf of Syria and Hizbullah was but one aspect of his treasonous behavior. He has also championed the unification of Israeli Arabs with the Palestinians in their war against Israel. According to the Orr Commission, Bishara played a central role in inciting the Israeli Arab riots of October 2000.

Although all of these acts reeked of treason, Israel's legal and security establishment demurred from addressing them. Rather than investigate him for treason, he was probed for incitement or supporting terrorist organizations or visiting enemy states without permission. Due to his political prominence, time after time, he was given a pass.

And Bishara's was not a unique case. Since 1994, MK Ahmed Tibi has openly acted as an agent of the Fatah terror organization. Last month MKs Muhammad Barakei and Ibrahim Sarsour participated in a conference in Ramallah where they called on the Palestinians to conquer Jerusalem. No criminal probes have been initiated against any of these men.

Is there reason to hope that Bishara's investigation signals a new willingness on the part of the legal and political establishment to put an end to the culture of treason that has come to dominate Israeli Arab society?

Unfortunately, the answer to this question can be inferred from the second notable aspect of the Bishara case, namely, that he has fled the country.

The law on treason stipulates that members of Knesset suspected of being traitors do not enjoy parliamentary immunity from investigation or prosecution. The police and the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) could have arrested Bishara for the duration of the probe against him. Yet not only did they not place him under arrest, they allowed him to leave the country.

Some have attributed the authorities' decision to permit Bishara to leave to a bad judgment call. But this view a misses the mark. It is far more likely that the decision to allow him to flee justice stemmed from institutional weakness.

To date, attempts by the Knesset, the police and the Shin Bet to enforce the laws of the state against Arab politicians and radical leftists who act against the state have been stymied by the Israeli establishment. That establishment is comprised of the academic and cultural elites who embrace them and the heads of the state prosecution, the Supreme Court justices and Israel's political leadership who protect them.

In 1999 and 2003, the Supreme Court overturned decisions of the Central Elections Commission to bar Bishara from running for Knesset. Haaretz provided him with an open forum to air his anti-Zionist rantings. Despite his East German university pedigree, Hebrew University's Van Leer Institute gave Dr. Bishara academic legitimacy.

Faced with this state of affairs, the police, the Shin Bet and the Israeli people as a whole had no reason to believe that Bishara would be indicted upon the completion of his investigation. They had no reason to believe that if he were indicted he would be convicted. And they had no reason to believe that if convicted, he would remain in prison rather than released by presidential pardon in the framework of a deal with Hamas, Fatah or Hizbullah.

So it is reasonable to assume that the investigatory authorities preferred allowing Bishara to become an announcer on Al-Jazeera to having him make a mockery of the rule of law in Israel. Were Bishara to be indicted and acquitted, far from deterring others from following his example, the entire affair would have encouraged Israeli Arabs to embrace him as a role model.

AND HERE lies the heart of the problem. Bishara and his associates have only been able to act as they have because the Israeli establishment has allowed them to do so. And the Israeli establishment has allowed them to do so because since the inauguration of the Oslo peace process with the PLO in 1993, that establishment has been corrupted and dominated by anti-Zionists.

Since Deputy Premier Shimon Peres was the father of the Oslo process, it can come as no surprise that he has been the central engine behind the corruption of the establishment. Today, Peres openly mocks the rule of law by basing his campaign for the presidency on his promise to pardon Marwan Barghouti, the imprisoned Fatah commander and convicted mass murderer.

After inaugurating the Oslo process, then-foreign minister Peres worked steadily to undercut the Zionist foundations of the state bureaucracy. The most obvious example of this was his decision to close the Foreign Ministry's public diplomacy department. That department had been responsible for making Israel's case to the world based on Jewish history, the history of the Zionist movement, and the history of the Arab world's war against the Jews in the Land of Israel.

For Peres, ensuring public support for his embrace of the PLO - a terrorist organization founded in 1964 to destroy Israel and to nullify the Jewish people's right to self-determination in its homeland - necessitated a rejection of history. Still today, Peres insists that history must be rejected. Just two weeks ago he said, "If it were up to me, I would cancel all history studies."

Under the thrall of Oslo and the control of anti-Zionist professors, the Education Ministry quickly began toeing the line. Now led by Yuli Tamir, one of the founders of Peace Now, the ministry last month announced that in accordance with her educational vision, school children will learn fewer facts, since there is no real historic truth.

As Prof. Anat Zohar, the head of the ministry's pedagogical secretariat put it, "Until now, classrooms didn't deal with developing thought, only with the transfer of knowledge. Today, with the expected change, the learner will become active. The knowledge will be built in terms of context."

So since everything is now contextual, there can be no value distinction between the a-historical, false Palestinian narrative and Jewish history.

Wednesday, Ma'ariv's columnist Ben Dror Yemini published a front page jeremiad entitled "From independence to suicide." Yemini reported that three taxpayer-funded bodies - the Rabinovich Fund, the Jerusalem Cinematheque, and Channel 8 - have hired the anti-Israeli and arguably anti-Semitic former Israeli filmmaker Eyal Sivan to make the official movie marking Israel's 60th birthday next year.

Yemini asserted, "Anti-Zionists, who make up perhaps a half a percent of the public, control 70% of the cultural institutions in Israel."

Yemini ended his dirge with an impassioned plea to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to end the disgrace and cancel the deal. "Mr. Prime Minister," he wrote, "You have the opportunity to act as a Zionist and a nationalist, to prevent this enormous travesty. Do not let this opportunity pass."

But what Yemini failed to note is that Olmert is part of the problem. The corruption scandals that engulf Olmert and his colleagues in Kadima are the fuel that drives the anti-Zionist takeover of the national establishment.

It is this corruption-driven takeover that caused the Shin Bet and the police to prefer to see Bishara escape justice by leaving the country than be tried in an Israeli courtroom for crimes against the state. It is this takeover that empowers people like Bishara to work toward the collapse of the state without fear.

BUT FOR all this, there is reason, great reason, for hope in this country. This hope was clearly evident on Sunday when hundreds of young people from all walks of society came together at the Kedumim cemetery to pay their final respects for Prof. Yosef Ben-Shlomo. Ben-Shlomo, who died at 77 after a prolonged bout with cancer, is widely considered to have been the greatest teacher and scholar of his generation.

Due to his staunch loyalty to Jewish and Zionist values, Ben-Shlomo - who headed Tel Aviv University's Jewish Philosophy Department until he was coldly encouraged to retire eight years ago - was isolated and ignored by his colleagues in Israeli academia. Upon retirement, he turned down an offer to teach at Harvard and opted to become the chief pedagogue of the secular pre-army leadership training academies that his former students were establishing.

At the onset of the Oslo process 14 years ago Ben-Shlomo challenged Israeli society to prove that Zionism is not a passing fad. He took up his own challenge by becoming the life force behind the academies that swiftly began filling the void left by the school system. In eight short years these schools have inculcated thousands of Israeli youngsters with Jewish, Zionist and humanist values.

Although the funeral was a sad occasion, the message that emanated from it was a mighty one. The hundreds of officers, soldiers and students present made clear that Israel's establishment is not Israel. The nation is not corrupt, and has not turned its back on its history. Far from the leering eyes of the old guard, the citizens of Israel are building a new guard, based on our true Jewish and Zionist values.

So in spite of the establishment's corruption so brutally exposed by the Bishara affair, there is every reason to believe that it, rather than Zionism, is a passing fad.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

Last Friday, Haaretz's military commentator Ze'ev Schiff accused the Barak and Sharon governments of responsibility for last summer's war. As Schiff put it, since the IDF withdrawal from southern Lebanon in May 2000, "a threatening system [comprised of Hizbullah, Syria and Iran] arose [on Israel's northern border], which required a preemptive strike. The aversion to conducting such a strike eventually caused the war."

Schiff's analysis is correct. But since it stops short of drawing lessons for the present dangers, it is largely useless. Today, due to the Olmert-Livni-Peretz government's failure in the last war, we stand at the brink of the next one. And in the next war, the main enemy will be Syria, which will fight in conjunction with Hizbullah and the Palestinians and under Iranian guidance.

Syria has been openly preparing for war since the last summer. And in the space of the past week
alone, the Syrians twice announced their intention to attack Israel. On Monday, Syria's Propaganda Minister Mohsen Bilal threatened that if Israel doesn't fully implement the Arab plan which calls for its retreat to the 1949 armistice lines and acceptance of millions of Arab immigrants, Syria will go to war. On Wednesday, Syrian dictator Bashar Assad said, "We always prepare ourselves. Israel is a fierce enemy. We have seen nothing from it but harm."

A constructive Israeli policy for contending with Syria must be based on a clear understanding of both Syria's interests and our own.

First there are Syria's war preparations. Many note optimistically that Syria has not moved its tanks to the border. But why would it?

Syria has no intention of fighting a conventional war against Israel. The war that Syria is planning will bear greater similarity to the insurgency in Iraq and Hizbullah's war last summer than to Syria's previous wars with Israel.

In the midst of last summer's war, Assad announced the formation of a new terror force tasked with infiltrating and attacking targets on the Golan Heights. The Syrian order of battle also includes a highly trained commando division; a massive artillery force capable of wreaking destruction on the Golan Heights and the Galilee; Scud ballistic missiles with ranges covering all of Israel; and chemical warheads that can be fitted on the Scuds.

This week CBN broadcast satellite footage of three hardened Syrian missile facilities outside of Homs and Hama. Syria aims to bleed Israel in order to force subsequent Israeli political concessions.

Syria has good reasons to go to war with Israel. Its forced departure from Lebanon in 2005 humiliated and weakened the regime both politically and economically. The regime views an achievement on the Golan Heights as a way to make up for the shame.

Moreover, Hizbullah's achievements in last summer's war challenge Syria to demonstrate that it too can humiliate Israel. It is also notable that June 11 will mark the fortieth anniversary of Israel's liberation of the Golan Heights.

Rather than contend with the Syrian challenge, the Olmert-Livni-Peretz government has opted to ignore it. In his appearance before the Knesset's Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee on Wednesday, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said, "We have no intention of attacking Syria."

He added, "The assessment of all of Israel's assessment bodies is that Syria is deploying defensively in line with a scenario of an attack against them. But we are also preparing for a situation where we are surprised."

The gist of Olmert's statements is that he is unwilling to decide how to deal with the Syrian threat. He would rather be "surprised" by the Syrians than prevent surprises by crafting an Israeli policy that would defend Israel's interests and preempt Syrian aggression.

The Israeli Left maintains that the only way to prevent war is by holding peace talks with Syria that will lead to an Israeli withdrawal from the Golan Heights. But former national security adviser Maj. Gen. (ret.) Giora Eiland explained in a recent lecture at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs that under current conditions, in contrast to the Left's protestations, an Israeli withdrawal from the Golan Heights, even in return for a peace treaty, would increase the chance of war with Syria, and decrease Israel's chances of winning the war. Syria would have little reason to abide by the agreement after an Israeli withdrawal and Israel would lack international support to enforce the agreement after Syria breached it.

Rather than preemptively surrendering, Israel's strategic aims should be to degrade Syria's capacity to harm it and to change the Syrian regime's assessment of the attractiveness of attacking Israel.

Any plan to reduce Syria's capacity for aggression against Israel should properly begin with Schiff's analysis of last summer's war in Lebanon. Given the nature of the gathering threat, it makes sense to consider a preemptive strike on Syria's terror training camps, its missile sites and artillery bases. Such a strike should be guided by the lessons from the last war regarding the limitations of air power. Air strikes had limited results against hardened targets and they exposed Israel's flank to anti-Israel propagandists in the media war.

Changing Syria's cost-benefit analysis of war with Israel involves going beyond the military realm. To impact Syria's decision-making loop, Israel must also consider the economic and political realities facing the Assad regime.

Syria is an economic basket case. In a study of the Syrian economy published this week, the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) noted that since the US-led invasion of Iraq, some one million Iraqis have fled to Syria. Rather than stimulate economic growth, due to the corruption and economic incompetence of the regime, the population inflow has simply caused massive inflation. Aside from this, Syria's oil revenues are steadily declining. US and EU economic sanctions instituted in recent years have made it impossible for Syria to receive financial credits or significantly expand its international trade. Today the regime can barely provide basic services to the population.

Syria's economic weakness undermines the regime's political stability. Another factor undermining that stability is the restive Kurdish minority in northeast Syria. The Kurds, who comprise twenty percent of Syria's overall population, already staged an uprising against the regime in May 2004.

Today, Syria's Kurds are inspired by their brethren in Iraq to work to achieve their rights. Like the Iraqi Kurds, the Syrian Kurds, who have good relations with their Arab compatriots, do not demand independence. Rather they seek to transform Syria from a centralized totalitarian state into a federated democracy.

Two weeks ago a conference of Iraqi, Syrian, Turkish and Iranian Kurds took place in Irbil, Iraq. Massoud Barzani, the President of Iraqi Kurdistan, spelled out the Kurdish view of Israel in an interview with Al Arabiya.

In his words, "If [Iraq] establish[es] relations [with Israel] we will do so publicly. There is no reason for these relations to be kept secret, because we are neither afraid nor ashamed of such relations."

Barzani attacked the Iranians, Hizbullah and Palestinians for supporting Israel's destruction, explaining, "I am against driving Israel into the sea…. This policy is wrong, illogical, and unreasonable. Why annihilate a people?"

Sherkoh Abbas, who heads the Kurdistan National Assembly of Syria from his home in the US, participated in the conference. In a recent conversation he explained, "Most Syrian Kurds…have views similar to President Barzani. As Kurds we can say that we have no issues with Israel; in fact we are against the desire of the Ba'ath party, the Muslim Brotherhood or terrorists to destroy Israel…

"The Kurds did not suffer by the hands of Israelis or Jews. All or most of their sufferings were caused by Arabs, Persians and Turks. In Syria, the Ba'ath regime Arabized the Kurdish region, stripped 300,000 Kurds of Syrian citizenship, and killed many Kurds.…. We do not want to fight for the Syrian regime."

The Kurds' desire to replace the current regime with a democratic federal government is backed by the Syrian Reform Party, an exile group with strong ties to the population in Syria. Farid Ghadry, a Washington-based Syrian exile who heads the party, believes that the Kurdish federal plan is the best way to bring freedom to Syria.

The interests of the Kurds and the other regime opponents align with Israel's interests in many ways. First, Israel will benefit greatly if they achieve their aim of democratizing Syria and protecting minority rights by decentralizing authority while maintaining the territorial integrity of the country.

Centralized governments throughout the Arab world are the primary fulminators of Arab hatred of Israel. These regimes require a constant drumbeat of incitement against Israel to deflect their people's attention from their failure to provide basic services. Decentralized governments would have difficulty blaming the Jews for their failures.

There is widespread fear in Israel that if Assad's regime is overthrown, it will be replaced by the Muslim Brotherhood. This makes sense given that for the past 30 years, the Ba'athists ensured that the Muslim Brotherhood is the only other force in the country with organizational and financial means. But even so, strengthening the Kurds - who oppose jihad - will counterbalance the Muslim Brotherhood, whether or not the regime falls.

Turkey, too, fears Kurdish separatism. But Israeli support for the advancement of legitimate Syrian Kurdish rights through the cultivation of democratic federalism rather than secession, should not concern Ankara.

One of the reasons the Olmert-Livni-Peretz government is taking the Arab "peace plan" seriously in spite of the fact that it is inherently hostile to Israel is because the government is desperate to find allies against the Iran-Syria-Hizbullah axis. The trouble with this gambit is that the Sunni countries involved in the initiative act as the Iranian-Syrian-Lebanese-Palestinian axis's support network against Israel. The Saudis and their colleagues have no interest in helping Israel.

In contrast, the Kurds are natural allies for Israel with overlapping interests and values. They would be happy to receive Israeli media and financial support. And, if at the same time as Israel helped broadcast Kurdish language television and radio into Syria, it also provided the Kurds with arms to defend themselves against Syrian aggression, the move could potentially alter Syria's cost-benefit analysis of war with Israel.

Even if the Syrians open hostilities, arming the Kurds would likely muddy the waters in a manner that would cause serious harm to Syria's war-making capacity. How well would Syria contend with the IDF if it were simultaneously trying to put down a popular rebellion? And how long would the regime survive in the aftermath of such a war?

Studying past wars is always worthwhile. But today we must prepare for the next one.

There is an Israeli strategy for victory. If we conduct a military strike that degrades Syria's ability to harm us while economically weakening the regime still further and politically supporting an oppressed, large, pro-Israel minority, perhaps we could avert war altogether.

At the very least, if war comes, we would win.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

The British people could be forgiven if they feel bewildered by the poor treatment they have been receiving at the hands of the Muslims of late.

Iran places Britain in the category of Satan, along with the US and Israel, and eagerly kidnapped its servicemen and humiliated Her Majesty's Admiralty and Government. But for all of Iran's anti-British rantings, the fact of the matter is that Britain is the mullahs' most effective defender.

By working with France and Germany to fecklessly negotiate with the ayatollahs regarding their nuclear weapons program, the British were more responsible than anyone for giving the mullahs three years to work freely on developing their nuclear weapons. If the French and Germans had engaged Iran without the British at their side, the Bush administration would have condemned the talks for the stalling tactic they were and set out to shape a coherent, effective policy to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear bombs.

When, last summer, it became impossible to ignore the fact that the Europeans' jaw-jaw had failed, it was once again Britain who curbed Washington by convincing President George W. Bush to empower the UN Security Council to deal with Iran's nuclear program. Without Britain pressing the UN route, it is difficult to imagine Bush agreeing to subordinate US national security to a body more or less dedicated to demonizing, isolating and eviscerating America.

THE IGNOMINY Britain suffered at the hands of Iran occurred a week after BBC Gaza reporter Alan Johnston was abducted by Palestinian terrorists. After a month of silence, Sunday his kidnappers announced that they had executed Johnston.

Monday morning, the kidnapers had yet to produce their promised execution film, and so Johnston's status was still unknown. But with or without a body bag, the British could be excused for feeling even more confused by their reporter's plight than by their servicemen's kidnapping in Iraqi coastal waters.

After all, since the 1920s, the Palestinian Arabs have had no friend more stalwart than the British. Until Israel declared independence 59 years ago the British did everything possible to prevent the establishment of the Jewish state. They even enabled the Holocaust by blocking the doomed Jews of Europe from escaping to the Land of Israel.

Since Israel declared independence, the British have been unrelenting detractors of the Jewish state and champions of the Arabs. In recent years, British support for the Palestinians against Israel has been one of the rallying cries not only of the Foreign Office but of British society as a whole.

In a sharp departure from both British and EU official policy, Britain's consul-general in Jerusalem Richard Makepeace held open talks with Hamas terror commander and Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh on April 5 in a bid to secure Johnston's release.

Last week, after declaring a "day of action" on Johnston's behalf, BBC Chairman Mark Thompson went to Ramallah, where he met with Fatah terror chief and PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas. After the meeting Thompson praised Abbas and announced that Abbas claimed to have "credible evidence that Johnston was safe and well."

POOR JOHNSTON was so biased in favor of the Palestinians that he could have been forgiven for believing he would be safe from Palestinian terror. As the BBC's Middle East Bureau chief Simon Wilson put it, Johnston "is regarded as a Gaza journalist foremost and a foreign journalist second." The Palestinian Journalists Syndicate said that Johnston is "famous for his opinions which are supportive of the Palestinians."

Of course, there is nothing extraordinary about Johnston's anti-Israel positions. The day before his execution was announced his colleagues in Britain went out of their way to prove their anti-Israel animus. By a vote of 66-55, Friday the British National Union of Journalists voted to boycott Israeli goods.

It will be interesting to see how they manage to implement their boycott and work as reporters at the same time. Since Israeli engineers developed their cell phones, their Pentium chip computers, their voicemail and their instant messenger software, boycotting Israel will involve giving up their ability to quickly amass their anti-Israel propaganda, vomit it out on their computers and send it off to their Israel-bashing editors.

But then, even if they figure out a way to work without technology, one can still only wonder at their decision. After all, their Palestinian colleagues don't seem too concerned with Israel these days. They have real tyrants to contend with.

In response to Johnston's disappearance and in protest against the utter lack of press freedom in the Palestinian Authority, the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate called a boycott not of Israel, but of the PA.

THE SAD truth is that British journalists are far from the worst Israel-bashers in Britain. Anti-Semitism has increasingly become the defining characteristic of British society.

First there are the non-governmental organizations. Last week, Oxfam, one of Britain's largest charities, chastised Blair, claiming that both his decision to participate in the US-led campaign in Iraq and his refusal to side with Hizbullah against Israel in last summer's war have damaged Britain's international clout. Oxfam is calling for the UK and the EU to resume their transfer payments to the Hamas-controlled PA.

Yet Oxfam, which claims to "support Israel's right to exist alongside a viable and independent Palestinian state," could be mistaken as an Israel advocacy group compared to those tasked with educating British students. Last year, the National Association of Teachers in Further and Higher Education (NATFHE), the largest university and college trade union in the UK, and the Association of University Teachers (AUT), agreed to institute a "silent boycott" of Israeli universities, students and professors.

NATFHE urged its members to consider "the appropriateness of a boycott of those [Israelis] that do not publicly dissociate themselves [from Israel]." The organization also castigated the British media and government for their response to Hamas's victory in the January 2006 Palestinian elections. NATFHE decried the "hysterical reporting of the [election] result by most of the British news media and the outrageous bias shown by UK government statements against the outcome of a democratic process."

BRITAIN TODAY is in the throes of a noxious blend of virulent anti-Semitism and indifference. An example is the willingness of school teachers to abandon their professional duties in a bid to appease their Muslim students. Rather than confront the Muslims' rabid anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial, their teachers have opted to stop teaching about the genocide of European Jews.

According to a study just released by Tel Aviv University's Stephen Roth Institute for the Study of Contemporary Anti-Semitism and Racism, another product of this mix has been a steep rise in anti-Jewish violence in Britain.

In one of the 136 "major violent attacks" against Jews last year in Britain, last August, while riding a London bus, Jasmine Kranat was brutally beaten by a gang of Muslims. The attackers refused to believe her when she denied being Jewish. They beat her unconscious, then continued to stomp on her chest and head, breaking the orbital bone in her eye.

Not one of the bus passengers or the bus driver came to her defense.

It is true that the Blair government is criticized by the British people for not following them in labeling Israel the greatest threat to global security, and the US as the second-greatest threat to global security. But the fact is that the Blair government has been responsible for turning the Bush administration into a loud proponent of Palestinian statehood. And it was Blair who brought the White House on board with both the so-called road map peace plan and the Saudi peace plan. Were either of the plans to be implemented, Israel would lose its ability to defend itself or to survive as a sovereign Jewish state.

YES, IT is more than understandable for the British to wonder why they are being targeted by the likes of the Iranians and Palestinians, whose interests they have done so much to advance.

But to answer the question they need to look in the mirror. In their relentless campaign to advance the interests of the Palestinians and Iranians who daily call for their destruction, the British have made themselves the most attractive targets for attack.

They are the weakest link in the alliance of so-called Satans. And as members of the alliance, the British are in the best position to pressure the US and Israel. Iran, the Palestinians and their allies understand and exploit this fact.

The British will continue to be targeted for as long as they champion the cause of their enemies and then react to attacks against them by redoubling their pressure on the US and Israel to join them in appeasing those sworn to our collective destruction.

If it wished, the Bush administration could try using the bully pulpit to at least stem Britain's societal dementia. For its part, aside from warning British Jewry to leave before it is too late, the Jewish state can do nothing to influence England.

THE MOST urgent change that must be made in Israel's policy toward Britain is to cease viewing it as an ally. As with France, it is possible for Israel to cooperate with Britain on certain levels, but impossible to trust British support on any level. Although they share the same enemies and interests as Israel, the British, blinded by their bigotry, are incapable of understanding this basic reality. Until they do, Israel must keep its distance and watch its back when the British come a-calling.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

The common wisdom in Washington these days is that the Americans will leave Iraq by the end of President George W. Bush's presidency regardless of the situation on the ground. This view is based on the proposition that Iraq is unwinnable and it has had a devastating impact on the administration's confidence that it can handle Iran's nuclear weapons program.

Monday's events brought that impact home starkly. On the one hand, the fourth anniversary of the fall of Baghdad came as the US wages a seemingly last-ditch attempt to defeat the insurgency in Iraq. On the other hand, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's performance at the Natanz nuclear installation where he said, "With great pride, I announce as of today our dear country is among the countries of the world that produces nuclear fuel on an industrial scale," indicated that he, for one, does not believe he has anything to worry about from America.

"Right-thinking" people these days claim that if the US and Britain hadn't invaded Iraq, everything today would have been perfect. The US would have been loved. The Europeans, Arabs and the UN would be standing on line to support the US in preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.

As British commentator Simon Jenkins put it in The Guardian on Tuesday, "If ever [British Prime Minister Tony] Blair hoped to carry his 'Western values agenda' on a white charger to the gates of Teheran, that hope vanished in the mire of Iraq."

Yet this is untrue. The US's difficulties with confronting Iran have little to do with the decision to invade Iraq. Rather, America's feckless diplomacy toward Iran to date is the result of the administration's early misunderstanding of Iraq and of Iranian and Arab interests.

In the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, the Bush administration identified certain basic guiding realities and missed others. First there was the issue of Arab tyranny. As Bush recalled last September, "For decades, American policy sought to achieve peace in the Middle East by pursuing stability at the expense of liberty. The lack of freedom in that region helped create conditions where anger and resentment grew, and radicalism thrived, and terrorists found willing recruits."

Yet recognizing this basic reality did not lead the administration to adopt appropriate policies.

Rather than promote liberty, which at its core revolves around a certain foundational understanding of human dignity, the administration promoted elections - fast elections - in Iraq and throughout the region.

In so doing, the administration placed the cart before the horse, with predictable results. The legacy of tyranny is hatred and dependence. And the values of hatred and dependence were those that were expressed at the ballot boxes in Iraq, Egypt and the Palestinian Authority. In all jihadists, often allied with Iran, were empowered while those that were considered moderates modified their positions in opposition to the US.

The Americans pushed for elections in the hopes of finding a silver bullet that would instantly solve the problem of tyranny in the Arab world. But in their rush, the Americans trampled the very liberal democrats they sought to empower.

These forces, who receive no money from Iran and Saudi Arabia to buy votes, and have no private militias to intimidate voters, couldn't compete against the likes of the Dawa party in Iraq, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt or Fatah and Hamas in the Palestinian Authority.

In Iraq, the one openly liberal party, led by Mithal al-Alousi, won one seat. In the Palestinian elections, all political parties were either directly or indirectly tied to terrorist organizations. And in Egypt, the supposedly liberal Kifaya party one-upped dictator Hosni Mubarak when it demanded the nullification of Egypt's peace treaty with Israel.

By pushing fast elections, the US entrapped itself. It inadvertently empowered its enemies and so was unable to embrace the duly elected governments. In opposing the forces it expended so much energy getting elected, the US was perceived as weak, foolish and hypocritical.

AFTER SEPTEMBER 11, Bush explained that the attacks showed that the friend of your enemy is also your enemy. As he put it last September, "America makes no distinction between those who commit acts of terror, and those that harbor and support them, because they're equally guilty of murder."

Yet what Bush failed to note is the converse of that reality: The enemy of your enemy is not necessarily your friend. Here the distinction generally relates to Sunnis and Shi'ites. The administration's failure to grasp that just because Shi'ites and Sunnis are rivals doesn't mean that they will join forces with the US to fight one another, or won't join forces with one another to fight the US, has caused the Americans no end of difficulty.

In the 1980s, the Reagan administration did recognize this truth. In its handling of the Iran-Iraq War, the Reagan administration adopted a policy of dual containment. The Americans helped both sides enough to ensure they could keep fighting, but too little to enable either side to emerge the victor. Rather than believing the fiction that "the enemy of my enemy is my friend," the Reagan administration advanced US interests by using their rivalry to weaken both.

Rather than follow its predecessor's example, the Bush administration clung to the delusion that Shi'ites and Sunnis would ally with the US against one another. This fantasy has confounded the administration in every one of its subsequent initiatives toward Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the Palestinians.

In Iraq, for three years the Americans treated Mugtada al-Sadr, Teheran's man in Baghdad, as a potential ally due to the fact that he too is an enemy of al-Qaida. The delusion only ended finally when Sadr moved to Iran in February ahead of the US surge operation in Baghdad.

The Americans' treatment of Sadr is similar to its treatment of his state sponsor. Since the fall of Saddam, the Americans have repeated the mantra that Iran and Syria share America's interest in bringing stability to Iraq because the current instability destabilizes them.

But while it is true that the chaos in Iraq breeds instability in Syria and Iran, it does not follow that the Iranians and Syrians are interested in ending it.

Since Iran and Syria view the US as their enemy, their ideal scenario is for the US to bleed in Iraq while propping up a weak Shi'ite government that has no inclination or ability to threaten them. That is, for Iran and Syria, the current situation in Iraq aligns perfectly with their interests (which explains why they are working so diligently to maintain it).

As for the Arab world, the administration believes that since the Arabs oppose Iran's quest to become a regional nuclear power, they will help the US both in stabilizing Iraq and in preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.

Here too, the administration confuses common interests with common agendas. The fact that the Arabs share common interests with the US does not make them allies. As a young Saudi imam put it this week to The Wall Street Journal, "We are waiting for the time to attack [the US]. Youth feel happy when the Taliban takes a town or when a helicopter comes down, killing Americans in Iraq. It is a very dangerous situation for the US in the whole Muslim world."

The fruits of America's disorientation were revealed in last month's three Saudi summits: the Hamas-Fatah summit, the King Abdullah-Ahmadinejad summit and the Arab League-Iranian summit.

Since last summer's war between Israel and Hizbullah and more intensively since the publication of the Baker-Hamilton Commission report on Iraq last November, the Bush administration has been advancing a vision of an anti-Iranian Arab coalition which will join forces with America to confront and defeat Teheran.

There has been no rational basis for this view since the Saudis, Egyptians and Jordanians responded last year to Iran's nuclear advances by announcing that they will get their own nukes. But it took last month's diplomatic cavalcade in Saudi Arabia to finally destroy the fantasy.

First there was the Hamas-Fatah summit in Mecca where Abdullah undermined the US by promising to pay Hamas terrorists a billion dollars in exchange for their agreement to let Fatah terrorists be their junior partners in government.

If that wasn't sufficient proof that Abdullah is not a friend, there was his warm and fuzzy love-fest with Ahmadinejad.

Their meeting shocked Israeli, American and British intelligence services, who perceived it as the culmination of a progressive Saudi estrangement from the US. It was preceded by a massive expansion of Saudi ties with China and Russia.

Any notion that the US could expect assistance from the Arabs in contending with Iran disintegrated a week later when Abdullah and Mubarak enthusiastically signed onto the Arab League and Iranian statement referring to the US presence in Iraq as an "illegal occupation."

Yet for all their overt anti-Americanism and competition with Iran to see who can destroy Israel first, the Arabs have not become Iran's allies. They do not want Iran to win its war against America. They want to play Iran and the US against one another. That is, the Arabs are implementing the double containment strategy that the US should have adopted toward them.

THE FACT of the matter is that the Americans are capable of learning from their mistakes. This week, the commander of US forces in Iraq General David Petraeus published a letter to the Iraqi people ahead of the fourth anniversary of Baghdad's fall. In it, he discussed the anti-American rallies that Sadr organized from Iran.

As Petraeus put it, "On this April 9th, some Iraqis reportedly may demonstrate against the coalition force presence in Iraq. That is their right in the new Iraq. It would only be fair, however, to note that they will be able to exercise that right because coalition forces liberated them from a tyrannical, barbaric regime that never would have permitted such freedom of expression."

In the end, the protests were ill attended. Now Sadr is whining that he will pull his support for the government as US forces destroy his militia in Diwaniyah and daily release information about Iranian support for the insurgency.

The success the US is now experiencing in Iraq is the result of a process of identifying and correcting mistakes. If such learning could take place regarding the US's regional strategy, there is every reason to believe that it will contend successfully with Iran and the Arab world. But to correct mistakes it is first necessary to recognize them.

The US is not failing to contend with Iran because it went to war in Iraq. It is failing because it is implementing policies that prefer imaginary silver bullets to real solutions for real problems.

There are no shortcuts in this war. But victory is still waiting at the end of the long and difficult road.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

Shoshana Amos, Aviel Atash, Vitaly Brodsky, Tamara Dibrashvilli, Raisa Forer, Larisa Gomanenko, Denise Hadad, Tatiana Kortchenko, Rosita Lehman, Karine Malka, Nargiz Ostrovsky, Maria Sokolov, Roman Sokolovsky, Tiroayent Takala, Eliyahu Uzan, Emmanuel Yosef (Yosefov).

All the above were murdered on August 31, 2004, in twin bus bombings in Beersheba. The attack was planned and commanded by Matzeb Hasalmon, Hamas terror commander in Hebron.

The massacre in Beersheba was far from inevitable. Hasalmon, who recruited the bombers, trained them for their mission and sent them on their way, had previously been taken out of commission. He was arrested and convicted for the felony crime of membership in Hamas.

Since Hasalmon was not convicted of murder, when the Sharon government released him from prison together with another 460 terrorists on January 29, 2004, no one raised a fuss. The massive release, and the simultaneous release of the bodies of 59 dead terrorists was carried out in exchange for the return of Elhanan Tenenbaum, who was kidnapped in Dubai and brought to Lebanon by Hizbullah in 2000. Israel also received the bodies of IDF soldiers Benny Regev, Adi Avitan and Omar Suwaid, who were kidnapped and murdered by Hizbullah terrorists in October 2000.

Today the Olmert-Livni-Peretz government is in advanced stages of negotiations towards the exchange of Cpl. Gilad Shalit for up to 1,400 terrorists. Shalit was kidnapped from his base near Gaza in late June by a joint Fatah-Hamas terror cell. He has been illegally held incommunicado ever since.

Speaking Sunday of the impending deal, Welfare Minister Isaac Herzog said Israelis should be prepared to see not only small-fry terrorists like Hasalmon, but also convicted murderers set free. As Herzog put it, we should use "original thinking" regarding who we should let out of prison.

During the heyday of the peace process in the 1990s, in repeated "confidence building measures," Israel released 6,912 terrorists from prison. As time went by, it became increasingly difficult to limit the releases to those who had not actually murdered. So the governments thought "originally" and released killers whose victims were not Israelis. So it was that killers like Iyad Suwalha were sent packing.

Suwalha was arrested in 1992 for murdering a fellow Palestinian who he suspected of assisting Israel in its counterterror operations. He was released in 1999.

Senior Warrant Officer Haim Alfasi, Chief Warrant Officer Yaakov Ben-Shabbat, Cpl. Mazi Grego, Capt. Yael Kfir, Cpl. Felix Nikolaichuk, Sgt. Yonatan Peleg, Sgt. Efrat Schwartzman, Prosper Twito, Sgt. Liron Siboni, Dr. David Appelbaum, Nava Appelbaum, David Shimon Avizadris, Shafik Kerem, Alon Mizrahi, Gila Moshe and Yehiel (Emil) Tubol.

All of the above were murdered in two suicide bombings on September 9, 2003. The first took place outside Tzrifin military base; the second inside Cafe Hillel in Jerusalem. Suwalha commanded both attacks.

In July, in response to the abduction of IDF reservists Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert took the nation to war in Lebanon. Olmert enjoyed massive public support when he pledged to fight to gain their release and to destroy Hizbullah, Iran's proxy army in Lebanon that had kidnapped them.

Yet Olmert lost interest in fighting and gave up on winning when he saw how hard it was. Due in large part to the premier's personal incompetence, Israel lost the war. Not only was Hizbullah not destroyed, and not only have Iran and Syria already rebuilt its arsenal to pre-war levels, Regev and Goldwasser - like Shalit - remain in captivity.

Since the ignominious cease-fire last August, the public has demanded an accounting from Olmert. At almost every single non-scripted public gathering where Olmert appears, he is hounded by angry citizens who demand he explain how he dared to abandon the field of battle and leave our soldiers behind.

Last September in one such incident, Olmert was confronted by Elipaz Baeloha, whose son Nadav was killed in battle in the war. When Baeloha demanded an accounting, as is his wont, Olmert refused.

Rather than accept the responsibilities of the office to which he stubbornly clings, Olmert deflected Baeloha's criticism by saying the public is at fault. We are to blame, he explained, because we were stupid enough to believe him when he said he would fight to bring the men home.

As he put it, "From the beginning I knew we would have to negotiate to secure the release of the hostages. To rescue them we would have to pay a very heavy price. How many more children would you want to die like your son died to rescue them? Did anyone seriously think that I would get to some place, which I don't know where it is, and would try to rescue them?"

Although as the months have passed the plight of our hostages being held in Gaza and Lebanon has been mostly out of the headlines, no one has forgotten them. And the frustration at the government's failure to secure their release came to the forefront of the public agenda since the 15 British sailors and marines were kidnapped by Iran last month.

The contrast between the British, who were paraded seemingly continuously before the television cameras from the day of their capture, and the Israelis, who haven't been seen or heard from since their abductions, was a cause for deep frustration. "Those lucky Brits," the thinking went, "At least they get to see their guys."

The manner in which the Blair government secured the release of the hostages has been roundly praised by the Israeli Left. Led by the Haaretz newspaper, the Left, which castigates as warmongers all who call for Israel to defeat its enemies, immediately pointed a finger at the government for not having yet capitulated to all the terror-masters' ever-escalating terms for a deal on the soldiers.

As Zvi Barel of Haaretz put it, "Britain... understands what Israel refuses to understand: The captives and prisoners of a country perhaps 'disturb' its prestige, but negotiating their release does not damage the state's power. Their release sometimes requires a high price, but in the case of Israel vis-a-vis Hizbullah or the Palestinian Authority, the price is in identical coinage: captives in exchange for prisoners and detainees... Only the exchange of people. And a bit of prestige."

Like the British, the Haaretz-led Israeli Left ignores inconvenient truths. In the media age, prestige is power. Loss of prestige leads directly to a loss of national power and, inevitably, to the loss of life. The families of the four British soldiers who were killed by Iranian-sponsored terrorists in Basra the same day their navy and marine counterparts were released in shame by Iran can attest to this fact.

Avraham (Albert) Balhasan, Rose Boneh, Hava Hannah (Anya) Bonder, Anat Darom, Viorel Octavian Florescu, Natalia Gamril, Yechezkel Isser Goldberg, Baruch (Roman) Hondiashvili, Dana Itach, Mehbere Kifile and Eli Zfira.

The families of the 11 Israelis listed above can also attest to this fact. They were murdered in a bus bombing in Jerusalem on January 29, 2004. The attack occurred just as Israel was releasing 461 terrorists from prison and transferring the bodies of 59 dead terrorists to their masters in the PA and Lebanon for burial in the Tenenbaum deal.

Another 50 Israelis were wounded in the attack.

That day, then-science minister Eliezer Sandberg stated, "There is no connection and it is forbidden to make a connection between the bombing and the deal for the prisoner swap."

Sandberg's statement, far-fetched under any circumstances, was rendered farcical when Fatah declared responsibility for the massacre on Hizbullah's television network.

All told, the Almagor Terror Victims Association has counted 177 Israelis who were murdered by terrorists who Israel released in prisoner swaps with terrorists.

The Olmert-Livni-Peretz government acts as though there is no way other than releasing terrorists, and so signing the death warrants of hundreds more Israelis, to bring about Shalit's release. But this is simply untrue. What is true is that since the government embraced defeat last summer, it has had no policy other than capitulation.

But there are many, many other options. Shalit was kidnapped by a joint Hamas-Fatah force. The government could place sanctions such as travel bans on PA Chairman and Fatah terror chief Mahmoud Abbas and PA Prime Minister and Hamas terror chief Ismail Haniyeh and their associates. So too, the government could order the Prisons Service to prevent jailed terrorists from talking to reporters, politicians and European diplomats and so end the anomalous state of affairs whereby convicted murderers like arch-terrorist Marwan Barghouti are allowed to engage in psychological warfare against Israeli society and serve as power brokers in Palestinian society from prison.

Since last summer, the Olmert-Livni-Peretz government has taken no steps that would lead either the Palestinians or Hizbullah to view Shalit, Regev and Goldwasser's illegal captivity as a burden. Rather, like their bosses in Teheran, the terrorists have all benefited from their criminal behavior.

Because of the fecklessness of our leaders, we lost a war we should have won and our hostages, who soldiers like Nadav Baeloha heroically gave their lives to free, have remained in captivity.

As Hizbullah, Iran, Syria, and the Palestinians show daily with their escalating saber-rattling, our leaders' continued incompetence since the war has brought us ever closer to a new war.

Now, through their cowardly and unnecessary genuflections to our enemies, made under the preening cover of feigned concern for the lives of our hostages they have done nothing to free, Olmert and his associates place the lives of every one of us in danger.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

The footage of the British hostages thanking Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for his hospitality and forgiveness, like the footage of Speaker of the US House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi covering her head in a scarf while on a visit to Damascus, was enough to make you sick.

Must we lose this war?

On Tuesday, US President George W. Bush had some clear thoughts on Pelosi's visit. Bush said, "Going to Syria sends mixed signals - signals in the region and, of course, mixed signals to President [Bashar] Assad... Photo opportunities and/or meetings with President Assad lead the Assad government to believe they're part of the mainstream of the international community when, in fact, they're a state sponsor of terror; when, in fact, they're helping expedite - or at least not stopping - the movement of foreign fighters from Syria into Iraq; when, in fact, they have done little to nothing to rein in militant Hamas and Hizbullah; and when, in fact, they destabilize the Lebanese democracy."

The president's criticism was well-founded. By visiting Damascus, Pelosi strengthened Assad's view that the free world has no problem with his behavior. Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem made this clear Tuesday when, speaking to a Kuwaiti newspaper, he said Pelosi's visit proved that Syria's international isolation, which began after Damascus masterminded the February 2005 assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri, is officially over.

Other Syrian officials made clear that far from softening Syria's policies, Pelosi's visit, like those of European leaders, will only toughen Syria's positions. As Imad Moustapha, Syria's ambassador in Washington, put it, "Syria will not hurriedly offer concessions when it refused to offer them under much greater pressure from the United States in the past."

On Wednesday, Pelosi stated triumphantly, "We were very pleased with the assurances we received from [Assad that] he was ready to resume the peace process. He's ready to engage in negotiations for peace with Israel."

Yet this is a lie. Over the past several weeks, it has become abundantly clear that Syria is preparing to attack Israel in the coming months. If Pelosi had bothered to pay attention, she would have noted the terrorists from Gaza, Lebanon and Iraq passing her at the Damascus airport en route to training camps in Syria and Iran.

Unfortunately, Pelosi isn't the only self-declared "champion of peace" who is strengthening Syria's will to attack by appeasing Syria directly or through its master, Iran.

ON THE face of it, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who also paid a visit to Syria this week, seems to take a stronger stand on the issues than Pelosi. While visiting Ramallah she called for Hamas to accept Israel. While in Lebanon she called for Syria to stop arming Hizbullah. While in Israel, as is her wont, she said that 70 years after her nation murdered a third of the Jewish people, she strongly opposes letting Iran acquire the means to kill another six million Jews.

Strong words. Unfortunately, Germany's actions tell a different story. As German political scientist Matthias Kuntzel pointed out in a recent paper, through its support for German trade with Iran, Merkel's government is a central driver of the Iranian economy and so enables Teheran to finance both the global jihad and its nuclear weapons program.

Immediately after its sailors and marines were taken hostage on March 23, Britain tried to mobilize the European Union to support its actions to bring about their release. Since Britain is a member of the EU, and since the capture of the servicemen was an act of war, in taking the 15 British sailors and marines hostage, the Iranians committed an act of war against the EU.

Europe is Teheran's largest trading partner. A quarter of Iranian exports go to Europe, and 40 percent of Iranian imports are from Europe.

Britain reportedly asked its EU sister-states to respond to this act of war by freezing their trade ties with Iran. Its request was met with immediate rejection. Reportedly, Germany led the pack in saying no. This is a shame since freezing European trade with Iran would effectively start the countdown for the fall of the mullahs.

Merkel's Germany is Iran's largest trading partner in Europe.

Kuntzel quotes Michael Tockuss, the former president of the German-Iranian Chamber of Commerce in Teheran, explaining, "Some two-thirds of Iranian industry relies on German engineering products. The Iranians are certainly dependent on German spare parts and suppliers."

Germany's booming trade with Iran would have gone bust long ago had it not been for the largesse of the German government. The German government, which supposedly opposes Teheran's nuclear weapons program, provides export guarantees for 65% of German investments in Iran.

When seen in the context of her government's subsidization of the Iranian economy, Merkel's anti-Iranian and anti-jihad statements are exposed as farce. Iran, Syria, Hizbullah and the Palestinians have no reason to be concerned. Their principal trading partner in Europe will not abandon them.

FOR ITS part, Britain too, has little to be proud of. The British government's response to the kidnapping of its sailors and marines was cowardly and dishonorable. Rather than fight to free them, Britain bowed before Ahmadinejad to free them.

Prime Minister Tony Blair claimed that London wished to bring about the hostages' release without rewarding Teheran for its aggression. If this were the case then Britain did not have to turn to the EU, the UN or even the US for assistance. The British had ample options at their disposal to contend with Iran. And none of them required the use of force, or the support of other states.

The British could have closed their embassy in Teheran. Indeed, after the mullahs organized a violent mob to attack the embassy and call for its capture, it was irresponsible for the British to keep their embassy open.

Moreover, the British could have closed the Iranian embassy in Britain and either deported or detained Iranian officials operating in their territory.

In his paper, Kuntzel notes that while British trade with the mullahs is only one-fifth of Germany's, it is nonetheless significant. Since 2003, when Iran's nuclear program was first exposed, British trade with Iran has nearly tripled. And as is the case with Germany, the British government also backs the trade with export credits.

Earlier this year, the official UK Trade and Investment Department was promoting trade with Iran. Its Web site gushed, "Iran is one of the most exciting countries in the region for business development... The main opportunity for UK business is in providing capital and equipment to Iran's priority sectors: oil, gas and petrochemicals, mining [and] power."

If Blair truly wished to force Teheran's hand, he might have considered ending his government's subsidy of the Iranian economy.

Perhaps British and European hypocrisy, and even the hypocrisy of the US Democrats can be shrugged off as nothing new. But it is more difficult to shrug off complementary behavior by the Bush administration.

Today some of the most confusing signals are coming from the Bush administration. On the one hand, the US naval buildup in the Persian Gulf leads many to hope and believe that the US military is planning to launch a strike against Iran's nuclear facilities. On the other hand, it is fairly clear that Bush agreed to pay Teheran off in exchange for the hostages.

Ahmadinejad announced that he was setting his British hostages free on Wednesday. On Tuesday, the US released Jalal Shirafi, who until his capture some months ago served as a terror master for the Iranian Revolutionary Guards in Baghdad while doubling as the second secretary at the Iranian embassy. Also Tuesday, the British announced that the US would allow Iranian officials to visit five other Revolutionary Guards terrorists that the US arrested in Irbil, Kurdistan, in recent months.

UNFORTUNATELY, IRAN and its underlings share none of the American or European penchant for two-facedness. As the IDF's head of Military Intelligence Maj.-Gen. Amos Yadlin told the cabinet on Sunday, Iran, Syria, Hizbullah and the Palestinians are all openly preparing to go to war against Israel and the US this summer.

Moreover, Iran maintains its single-minded pursuit of nuclear weapons. As ABC news reported on Monday, over the past three months, Iran has tripled to more than 1,000 the number of centrifuges it will use for uranium enrichment. This puts Iran well in line to abide by Ahmadinejad's pledge to operate 3,000 centrifuges by next month. Indeed, the latest report makes clear that if Teheran is not stopped, it will likely acquire nuclear weapons in another year and a half.

Even more distressing than America's policy confusion is Israel's policy collapse. Israel, the country most directly threatened by current regional and international trends, finds itself at this dangerous juncture with no policies toward our enemies or toward the countries of the free world.

In his recent holiday interviews, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert did not make one clear policy statement toward Iran, Syria, Hizbullah or the Palestinians. Olmert's inability to assert a constructive or coherent Israeli policy on any strategic issue has rendered the country a strategic irrelevancy. As numerous Israeli officials have admitted since last summer's war, the Americans and Europeans no longer give weight to Israeli statements.

So too, as the Riyadh summit made abundantly clear, the Arabs and Iranians have also stopped taking us seriously. This unacceptable and dangerous state of affairs will end only after the Olmert-Livni-Peretz government is voted out of office.

If maintained, the current policy trend will lead us directly to the worst-case scenario. In this scenario, after the US leaves Iraq in shame, or remains only to watch the country officially become an Iranian proxy, Israel will find itself encircled and under attack from Teheran's proxies as Iran itself becomes a nuclear power.

But it is far from inevitable that the current trend will continue. For every step that takes us toward the worst-case scenario, there are multiple counter-steps that can lead us away from it. This week the British could have honorably confronted the Iranians. They still can.

The Americans can attack Iran's nuclear facilities.

Germany can destroy Iran's economy.

Israel can initiate a campaign against the Palestinians or Hizbullah or Syria and so weaken Iran's creeping regional hegemony and at least partially extricate itself from its present encirclement. (To this end, of course, the Knesset must vote for new elections and the people must choose a government capable of crafting policies to defeat our enemies.)

Iran grows stronger in the face of Western weakness and hypocrisy. But it still isn't all that strong.

The fact remains that even at this late date, we alone will determine whether we win or lose.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.