For people around the world, the United States is not merely a country, and not merely a superpower. The United States is also a symbol of human freedom.

Because their country is a symbol, the way that American officials behave is rarely taken at face value. Rather, their behavior is interpreted and reinterpreted by friend and foe alike.

The American First Lady has no statutory power. As a result her actions are wholly symbolic. So when last week First Lady Laura Bush embarked on a visit to the Persian Gulf to promote breast cancer awareness in the Arab world as part of the US-Middle East Partnership for Breast Cancer, she traveled there as a symbol. And the symbolic message that her visit evoked is a deeply disturbing one.

As a Washington Post report of her trip to Saudi Arabia from last Thursday noted, there is a dire need in the kingdom to raise public awareness of breast cancer and its treatments. Due to social taboos, some 70 percent of breast cancer cases in Saudi Arabia are not reported until the late stages of the disease. It is possible that the local media attention that Mrs. Bush's visit aroused may work to save the lives of women whose husbands will now permit them to be screened for the disease and receive proper medical treatment for it in its early stages.

And this is where the disturbing aspect of Mrs. Bush's visit enters the picture. During her public appearances, the First Lady limited her remarks to the issue of breast cancer awareness. Yet in the Persian Gulf, it is impossible to separate the issue of breast cancer or for that matter the very fact of the First Lady's visit from the issue of the systematic mistreatment and oppression of women in the Saudi Arabia specifically and throughout the Arab and Islamic worlds generally.

IN THE context of the regional degradation of women, while the consequences of Mrs. Bush's visit remain mixed, the overall effect of her mission was negative.

Women in Saudi Arabia do not have human rights. As Amnesty International puts it, "The abuse of women's rights in Saudi Arabia is not simply the unfortunate consequence of overzealous security forces and religious police. It is the inevitable result of a state policy which gives women fewer rights than men, which means that women face discrimination in all walks of life and which allows men with authority to exercise their power without any fear of being held to account for their actions."

For instance, women in Saudi Arabia cannot choose whom they marry and they have no real power to divorce their husbands. Men on the other hand can lawfully marry up to four women and divorce any of them simply by announcing that they have divorced them. And once women are divorced, they are by law and practice denied custody of their children.

Marital rape and physical abuse are not generally considered crimes and therefore women have no legal recourse for dealing with abusive husbands, or fathers or brothers. Since they are legally barred from serving as lawyers, and Islam weighs a woman's court testimony as worth half the testimony of a man, even if they were able to press charges against their male tormentors, Saudi women are effectively denied recourse in the local courts.

Women of course are not the only victims of the Saudi regime. Non-Muslims are denied the right to worship. Shi'ite Muslims' right to worship is subject to draconian limitations. Jews are officially barred from entering the kingdom. Then too, there are no real elections in Saudi Arabia, no press freedom, no freedom of assembly. Yet even against this totalitarian backdrop the position of women stands out in its severity.

Take education for example. As the State Department's 2006 Human Rights report notes, there is little academic freedom in Saudi Arabia. For instance, "The government prohibited the study of Freud, Marx, Western music, and Western philosophy." Yet women's educational opportunities are even more constrained. Due to gender apartheid, women may only study in all female institutions. There they are prohibited from studying fields like law and engineering and petroleum sciences. In 2005 the BBC reported, "Although women make up more than half of all graduates from Saudi universities, they comprise only 5 percent of the kingdom's workforce."

Saudi women have no freedom of movement. They may not drive. And they may not move around in public unless escorted by their husband, father or brother. Women found in public unescorted by suitable males are subject to arrest and corporal punishment.

The limitations placed on public appearances are mind boggling. As Freedom House reported in
2005, "Visible and invisible spatial boundaries also limit women's movement. Mosques, most ministries, public streets, and food stalls (supermarkets not included) are male territory. Furthermore, accommodations that are available for men are always superior to those accessible to women, and public space, such as parks, zoos, museums, libraries, or the national Jinadriyah Festival of Folklore and Culture, is created for men, with only limited times allotted for women's visits."

TO THE extent that women in Saudi Arabia are allowed leave their homes, they are prohibited from actually being seen by anyone through the rigid enforcement of Islamic dress codes. As the State Department 2006 report explains, "In public, a woman was expected to wear an abaya (a black garment that covers the entire body) and also to cover her head and hair. The religious police generally expected Muslim women to cover their faces and non-Muslim women from other Asian and African countries to comply more fully with local customs of dress than non-Muslim Western women. During the year religious police admonished and harassed citizen and noncitizen women who failed to wear an abaya and hair cover."

Perhaps it is because it is so offensive to the Western eye to see women covered like sacks of potatoes, the abaya has become a symbol of Islamic oppression and degradation of women. Although outlawing their use, as the French have attempted to do in recent years, is itself a form of religious oppression, the sentiment informing their ban is certainly understandable. The fact is that a free society should not be able to easily stomach the notion that women should be encouraged, let alone obliged to wear degrading garments that deny them the outward vestiges of their humanity and individuality.

Due to the fact that the abayas convey a symbolic message of effective enslavement of women, Mrs. Bush's interaction with women clad in abayas was the aspect of her trip most scrutinized. In the United Arab Emirates, Mrs. Bush was photographed sitting between four women covered head to toe in abayas while she was wearing regular clothes. The image of Mrs. Bush sitting between four women who look like nothing more than black piles of fabric couldn't have been more viscerally evocative and consequently, symbolically meaningful.

The image told the world that she - and America - is free and humane while the hidden women of Arabia are enslaved and their society is inhumane.

But then Mrs. Bush went to Saudi Arabia and the symbolic message of the previous day was superseded and lost when she donned an abaya herself and had her picture taken with other abaya-clad women. The symbolic message of those photographs also couldn't have been clearer. By donning an abaya, Mrs. Bush symbolically accepted the legitimacy of the system of subjugating women that the garment embodies, (or disembodies). Understanding this, conservative media outlets in the US criticized her angrily.

Sunday morning, Mrs. Bush sought to answer her critics in an interview with Fox News. Unfortunately, her remarks compounded the damage. Mrs. Bush said, "These women do not see covering as some sort of subjugation of women, this group of women that I was with. That's their culture. That's their tradition. That's a religious choice of theirs."

It is true that this is their culture. And it is also their tradition. But it is not their choice. Their culture and tradition are predicated on denying them the choice of whether or not to wear a garment that denies them their identity just as it denies them the right to make any choices about their lives. The Saudi women's assertions of satisfaction with their plight were no more credible than statements by hostages in support of their captors.

As the First Lady, Laura Bush is an American symbol. By having her picture taken wearing an abaya in Saudi Arabia - the epicenter of Islamic totalitarian misogyny - Mrs. Bush diminished that symbol. In doing so, she weakened the causes of freedom and liberty which America has fought to secure and defend since its founding at home and throughout the world.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

It goes without saying that if and when a decision is made in Jerusalem or Washington to carry out an attack against Iran's nuclear installations the public will only learn of the decision in retrospect. All the same, over the last few weeks, it has been impossible to miss the fact that the Iranian nuclear program has become the subject of intense and ever increasing international scrutiny. This naturally gives rise to the impression that something is afoot.

Take for example the head of the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency Muhammad elBaradei's recent remarks on the subject. Speaking to Le Monde on Monday, elBaradei asserted that it will take Iran between three to eight years to acquire a nuclear arsenal. Consequently, he argued, there is no reason to consider conducting a military strike against Teheran's program. There is still plenty of time for diplomacy, or sanctions or even incentives for the ayatollahs, he said.

ElBaradei's statement is only interesting when it is compared to a statement he made in December 2005 to the Independent. Back then Baradei's view was that Iran was just "a few months" away from producing atomic bombs. But then too he saw no reason to attack. As he put it when he warned that Iran was on the precipice of nuclear weapons, using force would just "open Pandora's box."

"There would be efforts to isolate Iran; Iran would retaliate, and at the end of the day, you have to go back to the negotiation table to find the solution," elBaradei warned.

Given that the IAEA's Egyptian chief has been unstinting in his view that no obstacle should be placed in Iran's path to nuclear bombs, what makes his statements from 2005 and today interesting is what they tell us about his changing perception of the West's intentions. At the end of 2005, he was fairly certain that the West - led by the US - lacked the will to attack Iran. By making the statement he made at the time, he sought to demoralize the West and so convince it that there was nothing to be done to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.

Now, when faced with a real possibility that the US or Israel or a combination of states are ready and willing to attack Iran's nuclear installations, elBaradei seeks to undermine them by questioning the salience of the threat.

ElBaradei's statement of course was not made in a vacuum. It came against the backdrop of an increasing unanimity of opinion among top Bush administration members that Iran must be prevented from acquiring nuclear weapons. Last Thursday, President George W. Bush said that a nuclear armed Iran would foment World War III.

The next day, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, who until recently was known to oppose military action against Iran and to minimize the danger that a nuclear-armed Iran would constitute to the US, said at a press briefing that a nuclear-armed Iran would likely spark a nuclear arms race in the Middle East and was liable to foment a major war. Gates added that in light of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's stated desire to destroy Israel, "Washington couldn't trust that Iran would handle nuclear weapons responsibly."

Standing next to Gates last Thursday was Admiral Michael Mullen, the new Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Mullen rebuffed assertions that the US campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq have strained military resources to the point that the US today cannot mount an effective campaign against Iran. As he put it, "From a military standpoint, there is more than enough reserve" to mount an attack against Iran's nuclear installations.

While Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice continues to champion negotiations with the mullahs, in testimony before the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Wednesday Rice acknowledged that "the policies of Iran constitute perhaps the single greatest challenge for American security interests in the Middle East and possibly around the world."

And then there is Israel. It appears that both the IDF and the government are earnestly preparing for the possibility of war. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's sudden visits to Moscow, Paris and London, and Defense Minister Ehud Barak's trip to Washington this week were all devoted to the Iranian nuclear project.

One of the main things that we have learned from these reports about the September 6 Israeli strike against the North Korean nuclear installation in Syria is that Israeli intelligence on nuclear proliferation is more comprehensive, and at least in certain areas, superior to US intelligence. According to media reports of the strike, the US approved the Israeli operation after Israel brought the US incontrovertible evidence of the threat posed by the nuclear site.

In light of Israel's apparent intelligence prowess, it seems reasonable to assume that Olmert and Barak did not fly to those foreign capitals empty-handed. Indeed by some accounts they brought with them new and incriminating information regarding the current status of Iran's nuclear program.

Then there is Iran's neighbor Turkey to consider.

This week Turkish Prime Minister Recip Erdogan paid a sudden visit to London. There he met with Olmert, who was also in the city that day. The meeting took place less than two weeks after Turkey's Foreign Minister Ali Babacan visited Israel. In an analysis this week in The Asia Times, M.K. Bhadrakumar, India's former ambassador to Turkey tied Turkey's pro-Hamas government's sudden interest in speaking to Israel to the tension between Turkey and Iraqi Kurdistan.

Bhadrakumar noted that Israel has close relations with Kurdish President Massoud Barzani. He hypothesized that the intensification of high-level discussions likely signals that a deal is being crafted which involves Turkey's position on Iran, and Iraqi Kurdistan's position on Turkey and the PKK. His view is buttressed by the fact that Erdogan is scheduled to meet with Bush at the White House on November 5.

Finally it is important to note Barak's crash-program aimed at purchasing and deploying missile defense systems capable of covering all of Israel as quickly as possible, and last week's media reports that US, British and Australian commandos are fighting Iranian forces inside of Iran close to the Iran-Iraq border by Basra.

Assuming that all of these developments do in fact mean that the day is quickly approaching where Iran's nuclear installations come under attack, a discussion of some of the likely outcomes of such a strike seems in order. How would Iran respond? What would be the long-term effect of such a strike?

Until Israel attacked the North Korean nuclear installation in Syria last month, according to the foreign reports, most analysts assumed that Iran will retaliate against such a strike with as much force as it is able to muster, and that a successful attack against Iran's nuclear sites will push back Iran's nuclear program for approximately five years.

As this scenario has it, Iran will direct a counter-strike against Israel that will include a ballistic missile attack carried out jointly by Iran, Syria and Hizbullah in Lebanon. Furthermore, Iran will direct Hizbullah terror cells throughout the world to carry out attacks against Jewish and American targets.

But again, as bad as it may be, there is no comparison between an Iranian missile and terror offensive and Armageddon. By pushing back Iran's acquisition of nuclear weapons by several years, a strike against Iran gives the world the opportunity to bring down the regime through non-military means by fomenting an internal revolution of Iranians.

This outcome remains the most likely scenario. And it is because it remains the likeliest consequence of an attack that Barak is keen to get a missile defense system up and running. And it is because this is the likeliest scenario that most analysts have suggested that Israel will have to attack Syrian and Hizbullah missile sites at the same time as Iran's nuclear sites are under attack.

But the Israeli strike on Syria also points to other possible scenarios - for better and for worse. In an interview with the British Spectator, a senior British governmental said of the Israeli operation: "If people had known how close we came to World War III that day there'd have been mass panic."

According to reports in the Washington Post and the Sunday Times, in the days before the attack IDF commandos collected soil samples which indicated the presence of fissile materials at the site. That together with intelligence regarding the transfer of nuclear materials, perhaps even a nuclear warhead from North Korea some three days before the attack, leads to the conclusion that far from being the start of a long-term undertaking, the site in Syria was advanced and nearly operational. Given the strategic nature of the installation that Israel attacked, perhaps the most astounding aspect of the operation is Syria's decision not to respond.

Syria's non-response may be telling something very optimistic about the consequences of an attack against Iran. It is possible that what we learn from Syria's decision not to respond is that under certain circumstances Iran too may opt not to react to a strike against its nuclear installations.

On the negative side, the Israeli strike on Syria brought a harsh reality into full view. The nature of the target and subsequent reports make clear that the nuclear collaboration between Syria, Iran, North Korea and perhaps other states is close, active, deep and strategic. In an article published in last Saturday's Wall Street Journal, the ranking Republican members of the House Intelligence and Foreign Relations committees, Peter Hokstra and Ileana Ros-Lehiten - who both received classified briefings on the Israeli strike - emphasized the threat arising from this close collaboration. Their article complemented a report in Jane's Defense Weekly from last month. According to that report, Syrian and Iranian engineers were killed when a North Korean Scud-C missile they were attaching a mustard gas warhead to exploded accidentally. The explosion took place at a Syrian military depot near Aleppo on July 26.

What this is liable to mean is that even if an attack against Iran's nuclear installations inside of Iran were completely successful, there is a possibility that Iran's nuclear capabilities will not be significantly downgraded. What the Syrian operation indicates is that Iran's program may be dispersed in Syria, North Korea, and in Pakistan which transferred nuclear technologies to Iran and North Korea, (as well as Libya and Egypt). In other words, there is now a distinct possibility that Iran is not the only country that will have to be attacked to prevent Iran and its allied rogue states from acquiring nuclear weapons.

And yet, when one looks at Iran, and sees the genocidal fanaticism not merely of Ahmadinejad but of the regime as a whole, one understands that whatever the cost, Israel and all who wish to prevent a massive worldwide conflagration cannot allow Iran to become a nuclear power. Everything must be done everywhere to prevent Teheran from acquiring the wherewithal to foment a new world war and destroy the State of Israel.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

Monday the verdict in the largest terror finance case in US history was read in a Texas courtroom. The case against the Holyland Foundation for Relief and Development and five of its principal leaders -- which ended in a mistrial -- was predicated on the interconnection between terrorism and international finance. The five men were accused of financing Hamas by transferring millions of dollars to organizations in Judea, Samaria and Gaza that served as distributors of charitable or zakat contributions to Hamas members and entities.

Perhaps the greatest problem with the term "war on terror" is that it confuses both the public and those charged with prosecuting the war on all levels about the nature of the enemy we face. The jihadists who seek to dominate the world in the name of Islam are not merely involved in violent activities. Organizations like Hamas, Hizbullah and al-Qaida devote the majority of their efforts to spreading the message of jihad by proselytizing fellow Muslims through propaganda, educational and welfare activities. These actions are vital for building popular support both for their terror activities and for their larger political goals.

Essential to the aims of the jihadists is the Muslim sacrament of zakat. Zakat, one of the pillars of Islam, requires Muslims to donate 2.5 percent of their incomes to charity. As the indictment in the Holyland Foundation case showed, most of the money that the five defendants transferred to Hamas was transferred through zakat committees in Palestinian cities in Judea, Samaria and Gaza. These committees then transferred the monies to Hamas terrorists, their family members, political leaders and terror cells.

LABELING the Holyland Foundation a terrorist entity and freezing its funds was one of the first concrete actions that the Bush administration took in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks. The move was a turning point in the US perception of the nature of terror organizations.

If until September 11 the US related to terror groups as essentially cell-based armed groups, since the attacks on Washington and New York, curbing terror funding has been a central pillar of the US war effort. And targeting supposedly charitable organizations registered in the US, which like the Holyland Foundation served as conduits for money laundering and terror financing was one of the first courses of action that the Bush administration embarked on in its campaign against the global jihadist network.

The targeting of these organizations has been strongly criticized by self-styled Muslim civil rights organizations which protest the government's actions by claiming they are anti-Muslim. Some of the main organizations that have adopted this line were themselves identified as unindicted co-conspirators in the Holyland Foundation case. Specifically, the Council on American-Islamic Relations and the Islamic Society of North America, which both US government agencies and the US media have treated as credible groups were named in the Holyland indictment as unindicted co-conspirators with Hamas's US front group.

THE ESTABLISHMENT of charitable front organizations is merely one of many ways in which jihadist groups have raised funds. Today terror analysts fear that a new means has been found to skirt anti-terror laws and finance terror while rendering the financial systems of the West vulnerable to Islamic manipulation and control. The fear is that through the burgeoning presence of Shari'a-compliant investment houses, jihadist groups and financiers will be able to raise enormous sums of money to fund their nefarious activities aimed at global domination.

Islamic clerics tout Shari'a-finance as one of the central components of Islam. But this is untrue. Shari'a economics did not exist until the ideologues of the Muslim Brotherhood Maulana Abul Ala Mawdudi and Sayyd Qutb invented it them in the 1940s and 1950s. As Alex Alexiev explained in a recent paper on the subject published by the Center for Security Policy in Washington, DC, the purpose of Shari'a economics was to mobilize Muslim support for radical Islam by promoting Muslim exclusivity and separatism. That is, the purpose of Shari'a finance is religious and political, not financial.

Shari'a finance became a significant factor in the Muslim world in the aftermath of the 1973 OPEC oil embargo which raised Arab oil revenues a hundredfold in under a decade. The first Shari'a-compliant banks were established in 1975 with the opening of the Saudi-controlled Islamic Development Bank and the Islamic Bank of Dubai. Today the International Monetary Fund estimates that there are some 300 Shari'a-compliant banks operating in some 75 countries. Arab estimates place the number at 400. Close to a trillion dollars are under Shari'a-compliant management.

ASIDE FROM these Shari'a-based financial institutions in the Islamic world, the new trend in the West is for Western financial institutions to offer Shari'a-compliant investment opportunities. So excited is Britain, for instance about the financial benefit to be gained by attracting oil-rich Islamic investors that in January Britain's Treasury Minister Ed Balls announced his government's intention to turn London into the center of global Islamic finance.

Given the religious rather than financial aim of Shari'a-compliant investing, it isn't surprising that Shari'a-compliant investments are little more than a word game. Paying lip service to the Koranic prohibition on interest-based transactions and risky investments, Mawdudi and Qutb invented various means to cover the fact that Shari'a-compliant investments involve both interest payments and risk.

UNDERSTANDING that Shari'a-compliant investments are the same as regular investments, banking and other financial institutions in the West that are naturally interested in attracting Islamic investors have enthusiastically opened Shari'a-compliant portfolios. Unfortunately, the banks' enthusiasm is raft with security and perhaps even criminal implications.

In order for investments to be defined as Shari'a-compliant, they must receive the approval of Shari'a advisors. Only certain Islamic entities are entitled to issue religious rulings or fatwas that can recognize investments as Shari'a-compliant. These entities include the Fiqh Academy in Jedda, Saudi Arabia, which is associated with the Saudi-dominated Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC); the European Council for Fatwa Research, and the Fatwa Council of North America. All of these entities are associated with the radical pro-jihadist Wahabi and Salafi schools of Islam adhered to by groups such as al-Qaida and Hamas.

Similarly, the groups that these organizations spawned for the express purpose of overseeing Shari'a-compliant investments and the people authorized and recognized as Islamic authorities capable of declaring an investment Shari'a-compliant are identified with political Islam and, in several cases with terror financing and support. For instance, radical cleric and jihad ideologue Sheikh Yusuf Qaradawi is recognized as an expert in Shari'a-compliant investments. So is Sheikh Muhammad Taqi Usmani.

AS ALEXIEV notes, Usmani is a key official at the radical Deobandi madrassa Darul Uloom in Karachi, Pakistan. The madrassa has trained thousands of Taliban and other jihadist cadres. Usmani played a central role in convincing the Pakistani government to declare Ahmadi Muslims apostates. This determination led to the murder of members of the sect. Usmani was quoted in the Times of London on September 7 saying that Muslims in the West "must live in peace" with their societies "until strong enough to wage Jihad" against their fellow citizens. At that point, he said, they must fight "to establish the supremacy of Islam."

These radicals, supported by jihad-supporting Islamic institutions constitute an effective cartel in Shari'a-finance. Each serves as a Shari'a advisor to dozens of financial institutions. The main problem here is not their personal enrichment - which is enormous. In accordance with Shari'a law, Shari'a compliant investments, like Muslims are required to allocate 2.5 percent of their profits to zakat. The determination of where to contribute these profits is made by the Shari'a advisors employed by the financial institutions who oversee the investments.

So it is these men, who belong to the pro-jihadist Wahabi school of Islam who are empowered to determine how to spend the 2.5 percent of revenues that are contributed to charity in fulfillment of the zakat obligation. With a trillion dollars now invested in Shari'a-compliant investments, the amount of money available for zakat is staggering.

Islamic financial kingpin Sheikh Saleh Kamel, a Saudi multi-billionaire, founder of the Dallah al-Baraka Islamic banking group and alleged terror financier recently suggested - with the full support of Qaradawi - that one central institution be established that will distribute all zakat contributions from Shari'a-compliant financial institutions.

As Rachel Ehrenfeld and Alyssa Lappen recently reported in The Washington Times, their suggestion was adopted as policy when, "On April 30, the OIC…established the clerical International Commission for Zakat, replacing more than 20,000 organizations that previously collected the money. [The] Islamic clerics' "expert committee" in Malaysia now supervises and distributes those funds."

On October 24 and 25th, the New York law firm Gersten Savage will host a major conference in New York on Shari'a-compliant investments.

MANY NEW YORK investment houses, banks and hedge funds have indicated their interest in expanding their services to include Shari'a-compliant investments. These organizations should carefully consider the likely moral and criminal implications of enabling Shari'a advisors associated with radical Islamic theologians and a foreign body on record for supporting terror, anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism to determine both the composition of their investments and the utilization of 2.5 percent of the revenues stemming from those investments.

It may work out that by bringing what is essentially a cartel sympathetic to jihad into their institutions, they will inadvertently be picking up the slack caused by the shuttering of non-profits like the Holyland Foundation. Like the heads of Islamic charities, these banks also will be held accountable for their actions.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

Apparently US and Israeli leaders think that idle chatter is risk free. Last week, the Democrats in the US Congress decided to take on the Ottoman Empire. Acting boldly, the House Foreign Relations Committee condemned the empire (which ceased to exist in 1917) for committing genocide against the Armenians in 1915.

The Democrats' goal is clear. They wish to use the Armenian genocide as a way to embarrass the Bush administration, which like its predecessors over the past 92 years, has yet to acknowledge the Armenian genocide. And they have succeeded.

The administration that lobbies and begs the Turks not to invade Iraqi Kurdistan in response to the terror attacks carried out inside Turkey by PKK terrorists based in Iraqi Kurdistan; the administration that lobbies and begs the Turks to continue to allow US forces to use Incirlik air base to move troops and materiel into Iraq; the administration that is searching for a way to build proper relations with a Turkey that has now twice elected the pro-jihad AKP party to lead it - that administration has been duly embarrassed.

But the Democrats' petty political achievement has come at a devastating cost for America. The Democrats' declaration induced the worst crisis in US-Turkish relations in recent memory. Turkey has recalled its ambassador from Washington. On Wednesday, the Turkish parliament overwhelmingly approved an invasion of Iraqi Kurdistan. And Turkish military commanders are threatening to bar the US from using the air base in Incirlik.

THIS TALE of the consequences of empty rhetoric should serve as a warning for Israel and the US as the Olmert government moves forward in its "peace" negotiations with Fatah figurehead Mahmoud Abbas ahead of US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's planned "peace" conference at Annapolis.

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's ability to conduct negations with Rice and Abbas regarding the partition of Jerusalem, the surrender of Judea and Samaria and the establishment of an armed Palestinian state in the areas that Israel vacates owes much to his coalition partners in Shas and Israel Beiteinu's preference for empty rhetoric over action.

On Sunday, Shas leader Deputy Prime Minister Eli Yishai told Rice that Shas opposes partitioning Jerusalem. Yishai warned Rice, "If the sides return from [Annapolis] with a signed document and a done-deal, this could destabilize and end the tenure of the government."

Given that Rice didn't miss a beat in speaking forcefully of her ardent commitment to establishing a Jew-free Palestinian state in Hamas-dominated Gaza, and Hamas-ascendant Judea and Samaria and Jerusalem, Yishai's statement clearly failed to impress her.

For his part, Avigdor Lieberman's rhetoric is increasingly incoherent. Last week, after blaming the Left for all of Israel's woes, Lieberman joined its ranks by calling for a partition of Jerusalem. It works out that this paragon of supposedly "hard-line" rightist ideals supports surrendering the Arab neighborhoods surrounding the Jewish neighborhoods of Pisgat Ze'ev, Neveh Ya'acov, Ramot, Arnona, Gilo, Armon Hanatziv and Har Homa to Hamas.

But then this week, Lieberman suddenly remembered that he has voters to consider. And so Sunday he announced that he opposes Olmert's attempt to reach an agreement regarding Jerusalem's partition with Fatah.

LIKE THE Democrats' condemnation of the Ottomans, Lieberman and Yishai's empty rhetoric targets a domestic audience. And like the Democrats' condemnation of the Ottoman Empire, while their statements will have no impact on government policy, the consequences of those statements for Israel are far reaching and dangerous.

Yishai and Lieberman talk because they don't want to take the only step open to them if they truly wish to prevent damage to the country. That step of course is resignation from the Olmert government and support for new elections. And Olmert knows this.

It is because he understands their ardent desire to remain in office that Olmert feels he runs no political risk by negotiating away Israel's survivability to Abbas. Yishai and Lieberman's vacuous pronouncements enable Olmert to move forward toward national capitulation.

Additionally, their empty declarations of opposition to Olmert's moves lull the public into complacency. They make us believe that they are curbing Olmert's urge to capitulate and so mitigating the dangers to the state. But as Olmert's repeated statements regarding the partition of Jerusalem make clear, as long as they are inside the government they exert no influence over him.

Even if Yishai and Lieberman resign in the aftermath of the conference at Annapolis, their move will come too late to make a difference. The damage to Israel's security will already have been wrought. This is clear because even before a date has been set for the conference, we already know how it will end, if it is convened, and we already know the basic contours of its aftermath.

We know with near absolute certainty that the conference will end in failure. The conference will fail because there is no offer that Israel can make that Abbas can accept. Abbas, who doesn't even control his own Fatah terrorists - let alone Hamas and Islamic Jihad - has no real support among Palestinians. He already lost the Palestinian elections and Gaza to Hamas. Abbas cannot accept any offer from Israel after his predecessor, Yasser Arafat, chose to go to war rather than make peace.

Statements by both Hamas and Fatah leaders over the past several weeks also make clear what will happen after the summit collapses. As was the case after the failure of the Camp David peace conference in July 2000, in the aftermath of the Annapolis conference, Fatah and Hamas will reunite and the Palestinians will open a new round of jihad against Israel. And in light of Egypt's open and stalwart backing of Hamas, and given Hamas's subservience to Iran, it is impossible to assume that the coming war will be limited to the Palestinian arena.

Today a rare Right-Left consensus has emerged in Israel which recognizes that Olmert has no public mandate for making far-reaching concessions to Abbas. In light of this, it is argued with some justification that even if Olmert offers Abbas far-reaching concessions regarding Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria, he will be unable to implement them. Noting this, many government and Kadima officials claim that there is no reason for concern about the talks Olmert is holding with Rice and Abbas. But this is untrue.

In July 2000, then-prime minister Ehud Barak conducted negotiations with Arafat at Camp David after his government lost a no-confidence vote in the Knesset. In the fall of 2000, Barak conducted further negotiations with Arafat at Taba where he expanded the concessions he had offered at Camp David. Those negotiations took place after Barak's government had already fallen and elections had been called for January 2001.

In December 2000, outgoing US president Bill Clinton presented his Middle East peace plan, which essentially codified the concessions Barak offered at Taba. Clinton announced his plan despite the fact that George W. Bush, who had been elected the month before, had expressed deep misgivings about the by-then-defunct Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

When Ariel Sharon and Bush succeeded Barak and Clinton, both asserted that the Israeli offers at Camp David and Taba and the Clinton peace plan were no longer on the table. But to their discredit, neither leader took any steps to translate those statements into reality. And so today, seven years later, Barak's offers are being used by Olmert and Abbas as the starting point for their negotiations. Indeed, according to Palestinian spokesmen, it was Olmert who insisted on basing today's negotiations on Barak's offers.

What we learn from this is that offers made by an Israeli government bereft of both a public mandate and popular support remain perpetually on the table. As a result, even though Olmert and Abbas will fail to reach an agreement at Annapolis, the offers that Olmert will make there will survive long after he and his government leave office.

All of this demonstrates the dire consequences of Yishai and Lieberman's preference for idle chatter over action. By remaining in the government they do two things: They enable Olmert to participate in a "peace" conference that will lead to war. And they enable Olmert to place Israel's existence in long-term jeopardy. If his proposed concessions are ever implemented, they will render Israel indefensible while enabling the establishment of a terror state with its capital in Jerusalem. And even if they are not implemented today, those concessions will remain on the table and form the basis for future talks.

YISHAI AND Lieberman are Olmert and Rice's enablers. But it is Rice and Olmert who lead us down the road to disaster. What accounts for their reckless behavior?

By any objective standard, Rice has failed in office. On her way to Israel, she and US Defense Secretary Robert Gates visited Moscow, where they were publicly humiliated by Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Under Rice's stewardship, the US failed to foresee or reckon with Russia's abandonment of the West. Consequently, today the US has no coherent policy for contending with the Kremlin. The same is the case with Hugo Chavez's Venezuela, Kim Jung-Il's North Korea and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's Iran. And this is Rice's fault.

As the clock ticks toward the end of Bush's time in office, Rice fears history's impending verdict. And so she seeks a singular achievement. Like her failed predecessors, she has turned to Israel. Like so many others before her, Rice hopes to force Israel to make concessions that will lead to war only after she is safely ensconced at Stanford University.

In her race to a signing ceremony, Rice ignores the fact that through her actions she is destroying America's international credibility. Her genuflection to the Palestinians and the Arab world as a whole on the one hand and her open hostility and moral condemnation of Israel on the other destroy US credibility twice. First, by ignoring all of Bush's previous demands for the Arabs and the Palestinians to abjure terror and accept the Jewish state's right to exist, Rice is making clear that countries will pay no price for supporting terror and jihad. Second, by running roughshod over Israel, Rice shows that there is no advantage to be had by being a loyal ally of America.

Then there is Olmert. When not engaged in surrendering Hebron and Jerusalem to Hamas, Olmert faces his police investigators. As the subject of three separate official criminal probes, Olmert's desire to divert attention away from the fact that he is unfit for office is so great that he is willing to give up Israel's right to defensible borders and to its capital city.

Like the Democrats in Congress, Yishai and Lieberman demonstrate the deleterious consequences of empty talk. For their part, Rice and Olmert show us how reckless talk born of personal arrogance can sink the ship of state. Both instances show us the deadly consequences of misused rhetoric. What will it take  for these petty politicians to understand this?
 
Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

As expected, after bending the Pakistani constitution like a pretzel, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf won his bid for reelection on Saturday. But Musharraf has not been strengthened by the race, to the contrary. In order to secure his reelection, he was forced to agree to stand down from his command over the Pakistani military. He was further forced to accept a role for other political forces - particularly the Pakistani People's Party led by exiled former prime minister Benazir Bhutto - in the governing of the country.

The consequences of these political concessions on the governing capabilities and political direction of Pakistan are still unknown. But what is clear enough is that Musharraf himself has been significantly weakened politically in recent months. And today, this weakened leader is presiding over a tinderbox that threatens to engulf the nuclear-armed state and its neighborhood.

If Musharraf is unable to meet the challenges facing his regime, there is a reasonable chance that this state, with its nuclear arsenal, will soon fall into the hands of the Taliban and al-Qaida. Such an event, of course would have horrific geopolitical consequences.

TO UNDERSTAND Pakistan's present straits, some basic facts about the country must be borne in mind. First of all, with its largely illiterate population of 165 million, in most respects Pakistan is a failed state. The only well-functioning body in the country is the military. Until the Sept. 11 attacks, the Pakistani Inter-Service Intelligence agency was the Taliban's main ally. Indeed the ISI basically created the Taliban. Al-Qaida too, has always had an extremely strong presence in the country.

Aside from that, since Sept. 11, popular support for the Taliban and Osama bin Laden has hardened in Pakistan. In a poll taken in August by Terror Free Tomorrow, bin Laden was more popular among Pakistanis than Musharraf. The al-Qaida leader received a 46 percent approval rating to Musharraf's 38 percent. Asked about their view of the purpose of the US-led war on terrorism, 66 percent of Pakistanis said they believe that the US is acting against Islam. 75 percent of Pakistanis said they oppose US military operations against al-Qaida or the Taliban inside of Pakistan.

AFTER SEPT. 11, the Bush administration made Musharraf an offer he couldn't refuse: Abandon the Taliban and al-Qaida and support the US campaign against them, or be attacked by the US. While Musharraf chose to ally himself with the US, he made scant effort to convince the Pakistani public to join him. Despite US prodding, his efforts to battle the jihadists operating in Pakistan, and indoctrinating the people for war in their mosques and madrassas were negligible.

Musharraf's decision not to wage an ideological battle against the jihadists in his own country has had both political and military consequences. Politically, the maintenance of popular support for the jihadists against the US meant that support for Pakistan's alliance with the US was felt only at the top echelons of the government and military. On the one hand, this rendered the US completely dependent on Musharraf himself. On the other hand, the overwhelming popular opposition to the US-led war in Afghanistan severely constrained Musharraf's ability to behave as a credible ally towards the US.

It was thinness of the Pakistani support for the US in its war against the Taliban and al-Qaida that informed Musharraf's decision to allow Pakistan to serve as a sanctuary for al-Qaida and Taliban leaders who fled Afghanistan. So too, the lack of popular support for the war against the jihadists played a role in Musharraf's decision to bar US forces from operating on Pakistani territory.

From their sanctuary in Pakistan, al-Qaida and the Taliban have been free to conduct their insurgency in Afghanistan. Then too, rather than thank the Pakistani government for its hospitality, the Taliban and al-Qaida have been building their Pakistani cadres and carrying out attacks inside of Pakistan aimed at overthrowing the Pakistani government largely by subverting and demoralizing the Pakistani military.

And truth be told, their task has not been particularly daunting. Since the 1970s, the Pakistani military has defined itself as a jihadist force. Its motto is "Faith, Piety and Jihad in the Way of Allah." Musharraf's post-Sept 11 break with this view has never trickled down to the rank and file, or even to many top commanders.

As a result of the Musharraf government's ineffectualness in contending with radical Islamic forces in the country, in the past two years the Taliban has asserted its authority over the Federally Administered Tribal Areas bordering Afghanistan. Today the Taliban controls, and has declared Islamic caliphates in North Waziristan and South Waziristan. It largely controls Bajaur, Khyber, Kurran, Mohmond and Orakzai agencies.

After Musharraf ordered the army to storm the al-Qaida-controlled Lal Masjid mosque and madrassa in Islamabad in July, al-Qaida declared war against the regime. In August, intelligence services reported that without prior warning, al-Qaida vacated all but one of its 29 training camps in North and South Waziristan. The whereabouts and plans of the terrorists remains a mystery. Last month, Osama bin Laden disseminated an audiotape calling for the overthrow of Musharraf's regime.

THE TALIBAN asserted their control over North and South Waziristan by waging a violent insurgency against the Pakistani military. Failing to defeat them, in 2006 Musharraf signed a peace agreement with them which essentially surrendered control over the areas to the Taliban. After the Lal Masjid raid, the Taliban and al-Qaida abrogated those agreements.

The military has been demoralized by its inability to fight the Taliban. At the same time, there is good reason to believe that its battlefield defeats were not due to lack of capabilities but to a lack of will. As Bill Roggio recalled in a recent report on Pakistan in his online Long War Journal, in August CNN reported that among US officials "There is… a growing understanding… that Musharraf's control over the military remains limited to certain top commanders and units, raising worries about whether he can maintain control over the long term."

The impact of the situation in Pakistan on Afghanistan is already being felt. The UN estimates that 80 percent of suicide bombers in Afghanistan come from Waziristan. The renewed strength of the Taliban in Afghanistan has led Afghan President Hamid Karzai to beseech the Taliban to conduct negotiations with him and to join his government. The strategic consequence of Karzai's move is clear. Six years after the US and NATO invaded Afghanistan to overthrow the Taliban, their success is being overturned.

Several policy failures in Washington over the years have allowed the situation in Pakistan to deteriorate in this manner. First, deterred by Pakistan's nuclear arsenal, in 2001 the US decided not to do anything that could anger Musharraf. Consequently, Musharraf has been allowed to play his double game of helping both the US and the Taliban and al-Qaida. The US neglect of the strategic implications of the pro-jihadist sympathies of the Pakistani people has enabled the insurgency in Afghanistan to be maintained and expanded to Pakistan. The strengthened Afghan insurgency has caused the Karzai government to fail in its mission of transforming Afghanistan into a coherent, anti-jihadist society.

Moreover, the Pakistani nuclear deterrent has made it immune from US proliferation pressures. Unafraid of the US, the Pakistanis allowed their chief nuclear scientists to open a veritable nuclear Walmart, selling nuclear technologies and materials to anyone who could pay for it. And once A.Q. Khan was exposed, Pakistan has refused to allow US investigators to interrogate him.

While understandable, the emerging situation in nuclear-armed Pakistan shows the misguided nature of the strategy and provides telling lessons for the US in its dealings with Iran and the Arab world today.

FIRST, THE US erred in placing all its eggs in Musharraf's basket. What Pakistan's disembowelment shows is that the military dictator has never been all-powerful. The US should have spread its support beyond him. Pakistani politicians and most importantly military commanders should have been cultivated as countervailing forces. The US should have insisted on an abandonment of the jihadist principles that form the ideological creed of the Pakistani military.

Today the US is planning to train Pakistani counter-insurgency forces. It has also pledged $750 million in USAID development funds to Pakistan. Yet as Hassan Abbas, a former Pakistani police chief in the Northwest Frontier Region of Pakistan wrote in a recent paper for the Jamestown Foundation, it is unclear how US development assistance can be credibly put to good use. Over the past several years, US development funds to Pakistan have been squandered by corrupt officials or passed out in a manner that often increased public hostility to the US. Still today, the US has developed no Pakistani local leaders who can be trusted to manage development projects.

The situation in Pakistan shows clearly just how vital the war of ideas is in this conflict. Although it is expedient for foreign ministries to maintain relations on government-to-government levels, in light of the cultural and religious realities in the Islamic world today, this is a failed strategy.

In 2001, Pakistan was a failed state propped up by a military dictatorship with nuclear weapons. In 2007, it remains a failed state with nuclear weapons, but now it is ruled by a failed military dictator threatened by the Taliban. While drastic measures may need to be taken in Pakistan, it should serve as a warning for policymakers.

It is impossible to rely on dictators. The war is as deep as it is wide. And to win it, the battle for the hearts and minds must be more than a slogan. It must be a war cry that sustains a deliberate, unrelenting effort to convince the Islamic world to dump jihad or face real, physical consequences.
 
Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

As the Jerusalem Post's Palestinian affairs correspondent Khaled Abu Toameh reported Monday, over the weekend he and the newspaper fell victim to a Fatah hoax. Saturday, Abu Toameh was "summoned" to Fatah's General Intelligence headquarters in Ramallah where he was given a "scoop" - a graphic videotape of the murder of a 16-year-old girl in July perpetrated as a so-called "honor killing." The Fatah officer in Ramallah supplied Abu Toameh with the phone numbers of two "eye-witnesses" to the episode who would corroborate the story.

It later worked out that the "eye-witnesses" were Fatah militiamen in Gaza. The story was a fabrication. The video was taken in Iraq in April. The purpose of the elaborately crafted tale was clear. Fatah wished to use the Post to project itself as a credible, moderate actor battling the forces of evil and darkness in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip.

Abu Toameh wrote the story and it appeared on The Jerusalem Post's Web site on Saturday night. It was removed when the Post was alerted to the hoax and did not appear in the Sunday paper.

Abu Toameh's forthright admission of his error and his report in Monday's paper of the anatomy of the Fatah ruse is a testament to his own journalistic integrity. But he is not the issue here. The issue here is Fatah and what the hoax tells us about the organization on which the Olmert government and the Bush administration are basing all their plans for a future peace between the Palestinians and the State of Israel.

As Abu Toameh noted, the false videotape was Fatah's second propaganda story last week. Wednesday, PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas's terrorist organization's propaganda services announced that its forces in Bethlehem had intercepted two rockets "ready for launch" against Israel in the Bethlehem suburb of Beit Jala. They further announced that they had turned the rockets over to the IDF. This story, which came as Abbas was meeting with US President George W. Bush and other world leaders at the UN in New York, of course projected the image of Fatah as a terror-fighting, Israel-protecting, peace-seeking, credible, moderate actor.

SPEAKING to The Washington Post on Thursday, Abbas used the story to explain why Israel should feel comfortable giving Fatah all of Judea and Samaria and half of Jerusalem. Responding to a question regarding his view of Israel's concern that areas transferred to Palestinian control will be used as operational bases for carrying out attacks against its cities Abbas said, "Last night, [our security forces] seized two rockets. We handed [them] over to the Israelis. We are very worried about these deeds and I think we can put an end to all this. Our security apparatus is ready to stop all kinds of violence."

The Washington Post published the interview without noting that the story was a total fabrication. The "rockets" that Fatah transferred to the IDF were just a pile of metal pipes which had apparently been used as toys by local children. The IDF had already noted that the rockets weren't real when The Washington Post conducted its interview with Abbas. Unlike Abu Toameh and The Jerusalem Post, The Washington Post and its veteran reporter Lally Weymouth saw no reason to mention that Abbas's anti-terror credentials were based on nothing but lies manufactured by his own propaganda arms.

AND THAT'S the thing. Since Fatah's creation in 1959 its primary weapon has been disinformation and its primary asset has been the Western media's willingness to be duped and stay duped. What is notable about the honor killing video story is not that it was false, but that The Jerusalem Post acknowledged that it had been lied to.

But today, even the media's complicity with Fatah's lies cannot hold a candle to Fatah's newfound, greatest asset - the Israeli government.

In reacting to the rocket hoax, which caused a minor panic among Jerusalem residents, the IDF went out if its way to cover for Fatah. Although they noted that the rockets were fake, the IDF spokespeople applauded Fatah for giving its metal pipes to Israel.

Yet, the IDF's embrace of Fatah's hoax is nothing compared to the treatment the terror organization receives from the Olmert government. Monday the government enthusiastically released 87 mainly Fatah-affiliated terrorists from prison. Speaking to a delegation of policemen and women on Sunday, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert promised that these of prisoners - many of whom police officers like the ones who met with Olmert risked their lives arresting - were only the first batch of many still to be set free.

My government, Olmert stated happily, wants to drastically reduce the number of terrorists in our prisons. Actually, he didn't call them terrorists. He called them "security prisoners."

Among those sent home on Monday were men who conducted shooting attacks at Israeli motorists and laid bombs to murder Israelis. Some of the men had held contacts with state sponsors of terrorism. Racad Sallam, for instance oversaw terror financing ties with Saddam Hussein's regime. In short the men released on Monday are enemies of the State of Israel who have dedicated themselves to the murder of Israelis. They were convicted and imprisoned for their actions by duly authorized Israeli courts.

But none of this is mentioned by the government. Olmert and his colleagues extol Monday's move as a confidence building gesture towards Abbas. Its aim is to shore up his support among the
Palestinians to give them confidence in Abbas's ability to secure their interests.

No mention is made of the fact that there is something terribly wrong with Palestinian society which views these attempted murderers as heroes and champions of their cause. The fact that Abbas says there is a direct link between his political strength and the freeing of these terrorists is not viewed as significant. The basic immorality of a society that praises the murderers of innocent people is similarly given no attention whatsoever by the government in its mad rush to "strengthen Abbas."

And of course no one says a peep about the simple fact that by releasing these men and pledging to release still more terrorists from jail, Olmert and his colleagues signal to the Palestinians that from their perspective, the Palestinian desire to kill Jews is basically legitimate.

SINCE HAMAS'S takeover of Gaza in June, the Olmert government has only had positive things to say about Abbas. Olmert and his colleagues make no mention of the fact that until the Hamas takeover, Fatah - with Abbas at its helm - was a junior partner in Hamas's "unity government."

Abbas isn't the only beneficiary of the Olmert government's embrace of the Fatah hoax. In the interests of "strengthening" Abbas and Fatah, last week Infrastructures Minister and former defense minister Binyamin Ben Eliezer recommended releasing Fatah terror chief and convicted mass murderer Marwan Barghouti from prison. Ben Eliezer and Deputy Defense Minister Matan Vilnai defend their position by extolling Barghouti as "the new Yasser Arafat."

It was during Ben Eliezer's tenure as defense minister that the IDF arrested Barghouti in April 2002. Four months later, the State Prosecution submitted his indictment. Israel indicted Barghouti of 26 counts of premeditated murder, accessory to murder, solicitation of murder, attempted murder, criminal conspiracy, membership in a terrorist organization and terrorist activity.

The indictment explained how from 2000 until his arrest, Barghouti, among other things, set up Fatah's terror arms in Tanzim and the Aksa Martyr's Brigades; coordinated and often ordered Fatah's terrorist operations; mobilized and recruited terrorists by inciting murder and financing it; oversaw operational collaboration between Fatah and Hamas; and told the terror cells when to attack and when to hold their fire.

IN ITS 2004 verdict, the Tel Aviv District Court found Barghouti guilty of five counts of murder. Regarding the other murders, the court felt he had "moral responsibility" but that he had no "legal responsibility," for the carnage he directed, incited and financed.

While leading the Palestinian jihad against Israel, Barghouti also served as a propagandist for Fatah and Arafat toward the Israeli Left, (that is, the Israeli media) and the international media. At the same time he was ordering the murder of Israeli civilians, he was meeting with Israeli and international "peace activists," and speaking of the need for a "two-state solution."

The Israeli Left went nuts after his arrest and its leaders - first and foremost Meretz chief Yossi Beilin - have been calling for his release ever since. And now the man who signed his arrest warrant agrees.

In an interview with Army Radio last week, Ben Eliezer explained that freeing Barghouti is necessary to "strengthen Fatah" against Hamas. Rather than castigating Barghouti for his close ties to Hamas, Ben Eliezer presented them as an attribute. In his words, the arch-terrorist is "well-respected by Hamas." He then said, "For us he might be a murderer, but I'd like to remind you that Arafat was no less of a murderer, and we approached him as well."

Ben-Eliezer failed to note the irony of his statement. Yes, Israel "approached" Arafat and lo and behold, Arafat remained a murderer committed to Israel's destruction. As a result of Israel's decision to "approach" Arafat, some 1,500 Israelis are dead today and Palestinian society is the most jihadist society in the world. Indeed, Barghouti's close relations with Hamas perhaps make him attractive to a terror-obsessed Palestinian public, but still that public - in Barghouti's own hometown of Ramallah - voted overwhelmingly for Hamas in the January 2006 elections where the imprisoned Barghouti headed Fatah's candidates slate.

Fatah has only benefited from its devotion to the big lie of peace loving murderers. The question is why has the Olmert government decided to embrace it?

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.