Ten days after the Pakistani elections, the geopolitical consequences of President Pervez Musharraf's defeat are beginning to come into focus. And they are grim.

By any measure, Pakistan is a dysfunctional state. At least 25 percent of its 160 million people live in abject poverty. A third of Pakistanis suffer from illiteracy. The only prospering school system in the country is the Islamist system, where millions of children are indoctrinated by preachers who share the world views, religious beliefs and political goals of al-Qaida and the Taliban.

As to that, with popular backing, the Taliban is currently fighting to extend its control over Pakistan's Northwest Frontier Province. It has controlled North and South Waziristan since 2005. It is now asserting its control over the Kurran, Kyber, Mohmand, Orakzai and Bajaur agencies and much of the Swat Valley. This control, together with the Taliban and al-Qaida's territorial gains in eastern Afghanistan over the past year, are enabling the two Islamist organizations to intensify their insurgency in Afghanistan and to increase their popularity in Pakistan.

In a report this week, Asia Time's Pakistan bureau chief Syed Saleem Shahzad wrote that with their territorial gains on both sides of the border, the Taliban and al-Qaida intend to create a strategic corridor from western Pakistan to Kabul and cut off NATO forces' supply lines from Pakistan. Those supply lines were already attacked in January.

Shahzad reported that the Pakistani military and NATO forces in Afghanistan are gearing up to preempt the Taliban-al-Qaida offensive, scheduled for April, with an offensive of their own in March. But he notes that the election results in Pakistan could prevent such an offensive from taking place.

Pakistan's elections took place against the backdrop of Musharraf's crackdown against the judiciary and the press, and former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto's December 27 assassination. They crowned as kingmaker Bhutto's widower, Asif Zardawi, who succeeded her as head of the Pakistan People's Party. The PPP, which won the most parliamentary seats in the elections, needs Bhutto's former political rival, former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, to form a governing coalition in parliament. Sharif's Pakistan Muslim League came in second in the elections.

Campaign pledges by both the PPP and the PML centered on a commitment to return Pakistan to civilian rule, overturn Musharraf's pre-election constitutional amendments against the judiciary and curb military control over foreign policy. But what most unifies them is their commitment to reach an accommodation with the Taliban. In a post-election media appearance, Zardawi extended an olive branch to the Taliban and al-Qaida stating, "We will have a dialogue with those who are up in the mountains and those who are not in parliament."

Sharif has been even more explicit. His campaign was supported by A.Q. Khan, the father of Pakistan's nuclear arsenal and the architect of its nuclear proliferation activities, which extended support to the North Korean, Iranian and Libyan nuclear programs.

Sharif supports the institution of Shari'a law. Since the elections, Sharif has courted the Islamist parties, and he has been outspoken in his insistence that the next Pakistani government end Musharraf's cooperation with the US-led campaign against the Taliban and al-Qaida in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

After meeting Monday with US Ambassador Anne Patterson, Sharif held a joint press conference with Qazi Hussain Ahmad, whose Islamist party Jamaat i-Islami boycotted the elections. Sitting next to the overt Taliban supporter, Sharif said, "So far the war on terrorism has not been clearly defined to make it acceptable for everyone and we would like that this war should not be fought with the gun alone and the option of dialogue should also be used."

Truth be told, Pakistan's fight "with the gun" against the Taliban and al-Qaida has not been particularly hard fought. What it has been is wracked with corruption and defeatism. Since 2001, the US has provided Pakistan with $5.4 billion in military assistance. This week the Guardian reported that US officials believe that some 70% of that money has been misspent. The Indian government has repeatedly complained that Pakistan is diverting the funds, which were supposed to be used to fight the Taliban and al-Qaida, to purchase weapons systems such as the F-16s that have been deployed along the Indian border.

The Pakistani elections results place the US in a position where it has no empowered allies in the country with which to fight the Taliban and al-Qaida. It is a clear defeat for US policy. And this is not surprising.

Since the September 11, 2001, attacks on the US, America's overarching policy towards the Islamic world has been clear enough. The US sought to empower forces opposed to the jihad, and to fight with them against the jihadists. The policy itself is correct. But it has been poorly implemented.

In Pakistan, the US placed all of its eggs in Musharraf's basket after September 11 and expected that faced with an outraged superpower, he would share America's interest in destroying the Taliban. But this is not what happened.

Musharraf's policies were always determined by his interest in retaining his grip on power. And while the US never made a credible threat to his grip on power, the jihadists and the non-Islamist political forces opposed to his military dictatorship did. And so, rather than combat the jihadists, he sought to appease them. And rather than work with democrats, he repressed them.

In his bid to accommodate the jihadists, Musharraf rejected US requests to interrogate Khan about his nuclear proliferation activities. So, too, Musharraf rejected repeated US requests to deploy its forces inside of Pakistan. He rejected US offers to train Pakistani counterterror units. He refused to purge jihadists from the ranks of the Pakistani army or the Inter-Service Intelligence organization that itself is the founder of al-Qaida and the Taliban. Rather than defeat the Taliban, Musharraf allowed the Pakistani military to be humiliated and signed "peace accords" with the Taliban in North and South Waziristan effectively ceding sovereignty over the areas to the jihadist group. With no competent counter-insurgency plan in place in the areas, the local populations under Taliban rule largely maintained their traditional, tribal support for the group.

Although Pakistan's nuclear arsenal no doubt informed much of the US's decision to handle Musharraf with kid gloves, the fact is that the US's inability to properly identify and support social forces and individuals in Pakistan that share its desire to defeat the jihadists has been the rule rather than the exception in its post-September 11 treatment of the Islamic world in general. The US's dealings with the Mubarak regime in Egypt and the House of Saud in Saudi Arabia are clear examples of the same misguided American embrace of leaders who do not oppose the jihadists.

THE MOST striking example of this post-September 11 American penchant for choosing its allies unwisely is the Bush administration's embrace of Fatah in the Palestinian Authority.

The Palestinian example stands out because while the US may have strategic interests in Egypt and Saudi Arabia that as in Pakistan make it leery of muddying the political waters with liberalism too aggressively, no such interests exist in the PA. The Palestinians do not have oil, a large, US-trained army, or nuclear bombs to threaten US interests with. And in Israel, the US has a strong, loyal, democratic ally with the means to combat Palestinian jihadists. And yet, rather than turn its back on Fatah, the US has lavishly supported it politically and financially, and has trained Fatah militias while opposing any Israeli military plan to defeat Fatah on the military or political battlefields. And like the US's support for Musharraf, the US's support for Fatah has come back to haunt it and will continue to haunt it in the future.

Just as the Clinton administration upheld Yasser Arafat even as he built his terror armies while negotiating with Israel, so the Bush administration upholds Fatah leader and PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas as he follows in Arafat's footsteps. Like Arafat, Abbas is a master of double-speak. While waxing poetic about his yearning for peace in his talks with Israelis and Americans, inside the PA he supports terrorists, and in addresses to Arab audiences he explains that he shares the terrorists' strategic goal of destroying Israel.

On Thursday, Jordan's Al-Dustur daily ran an interview with Abbas. There the supposedly moderate Palestinian leader and US ally in the war on terror made clear his support for jihadists and their goal of destroying Israel. Abbas boasted about his refusal at the Annapolis conference last November to accept Israel's Jewish identity. He argued that the only difference he has with Hamas - which he hopes will join Fatah in a unity government - is that he thinks that the use of violence against Israel is counterproductive today. As he put it, "At this present juncture, I am opposed to armed struggle because we cannot succeed in it, but maybe in the future things will be different."

Abbas bragged about his role as a terrorist in the 1960s and about Fatah's role as the founding father of modern terrorism. In his words, "We [Fatah] had the honor of leading the resistance and we taught resistance to everyone, including Hizbullah, who trained in our military camps."

In 2002, President George W. Bush nearly ended US support for Fatah when he essentially ordered the Palestinians to end their support for terror and liberalize their society. His words were met with jubilation not only by Israelis but by many Palestinians who had been suffering under the terrorists' jackboot since Arafat established the PA in 1994. And yet, rather than implement his stated policy and empower those Palestinians who shared his opposition to jihad, Bush turned his back on them, pretended that Abbas was a liberal reformer and embraced him as a US ally.

This month, a remarkable article was published in The Wall Street Journal. Co-authored by Natan Sharansky and Palestinian human rights activist Bassam Eid, the article chided Bush for his insistence on supporting Fatah.

The authors wrote, "Rather than establish a clear link between support for the PA and reform, and openly embrace the genuine Palestinian reformers who are the democratic world's true allies, [Abbas] is promised billions despite having done nothing. With the media entirely under his control, incitement continues and no one raises serious objections. He is, we are told, too 'weak' to take action."

THE SITUATION in Pakistan is grave. And its implications are clear. As the leader of the fight against the forces of global jihad, the US must redouble its efforts to seek out and cultivate the anti-jihadist forces in the Islamic world. Until it does so, rather than win the war, it will continue to stymied by the Musharrafs, Zardawis, Sharifs, Mubarak's and Abbases of the world who promote jihad while speaking of moderation, stability and democracy.

Originally published in the Jerusalem Post.

Sunday thousands of IDF and police forces began streaming to the border with Gaza. In a massive show of force, they successfully deterred Gazans from participating in Hamas's first attempt to assault the border with Israel on Monday morning.

Israel's successful response to Hamas's provocation stemmed from the IDF's understanding of the doctrinal source of Hamas's call for tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians to approach the border together.

Just before Israel's precipitous withdrawal from southern Lebanon in May 2000, Hizbullah launched a similar attack on a South Lebanese Army base at Taibe. Back then, Hizbullah organized a crowd of thousands which marched on the base and threatened to overrun it. Not wishing to kill civilians, SLA forces abandoned their post. The move precipitated the collapse of the SLA's lines throughout South Lebanon.

All of Hamas's moves today - from its mortar and missile campaign against Israel, to its use of mass protests, to its weapons buildup, to its political and military humiliation and hamstringing of Fatah, to its tactical doctrines - have Hizbullah written all over them. And when you say Hizbullah - you say Iran.

Any lingering doubts about Hizbullah's intimate connection to the regime in Teheran were dispelled in the aftermath of Imad Mughniyeh's assassination in Damascus this month. The same Hizbullah leaders who for years had denied any connection to Mughniyeh and even denied that he existed - suddenly bemoaned the death of their operational commander. The same Iran which denied any connection to Mughniyeh, sent its foreign minister to his funeral in Beirut. The near identical vitriol calling for Israel's annihilation and likening the Jewish people to pestilence flowing from the mouths of Iranian Supreme leader Ali Khamenei, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Hizbullah chief Hassan Nasrallah exposes the simple, self-evident truth that a thousand denials sought to hide: Hizbullah is an Iranian organization.

IN THE WEST, public discussion of Iran is compartmentalized. Most discussion of Iran is focused on its nuclear weapons program. And Iran's nuclear weapons program is presented as separate from its other strategic policies in the region. This compartmentalization of the West's treatment of Iran is the result of the US's misdiagnosis of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs ahead of the 2003 invasion of that country. And while it is understandable, it is also self-defeating and dangerous because the danger posed by Iran's nuclear weapons program, and the obvious intentions of Iran's nuclear efforts can only be fully understood when seen in the context of the war that Iran is waging against the US, Israel and the West through its regional policies.

The linkage between Iran's nuclear program and its other strategic policies in the Middle East was made clear in July 2006. Then, as the G-8 met in Russia and was poised to develop a joint policy for preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, Iran ordered Hizbullah to attack Israel, kidnap soldiers and so precipitate war.

That is, as the world powers were scope-locked on Iran's nuclear weapons program, to divert international attention away from that program at a critical juncture, Iran ordered its proxy to go to war with Israel. Rather than understand the ploy, by and large the international media, and with it, the international policy community completely ignored the connection between Iran's regional policies and its nuclear program. Consequently, in the discussions leading up to the war's inconclusive conclusion, no attention was paid to how the war's outcome would affect either Iran's willingness to set aside its nuclear program or the developments in other Iranian sponsored battlefields in Iraq, the Palestinian Authority, and Afghanistan. The Israel-Hizbullah war's impact on Iran's escalating domination of Syria was similarly not taken into consideration at the time or since.

IN AN attempt to break through the post-Iraq invasion compartmentalization of Western discourse on Iran, the American Enterprise Institute published a 68-page report last week that sets out Iran's actions in Syria, Lebanon, the Palestinian Authority, Iraq and Afghanistan. Authored by Frederick Kagan, Kimberly Kagan and Danielle Pletka, the report, "Iranian Influence in the Levant, Iraq and Afghanistan," shows in copiously documented detail how Iran is strengthening its regional posture at the West's expense not only through military actions but also through economic, cultural and infrastructure projects that build bilateral and multilateral relationships with states and terror groups based on dependency on Teheran.

In November 2006, Syria's parliamentary speaker Mahmoud al Abrash said, "Damascus considers consultation and cooperation with the Islamic Republic of Iran as a major rule and principle of its foreign policy." The report's authors explain that since Syrian President Bashar Assad replaced his father as the country's leader in 1999, Iran has worked steadily to transform its relationship with Syria from a strategic partnership between two equals to a master-vassal relationship.

Assad has allowed the Syrian economy to become dependent on Iranian investment. Iranian cultural domination of Syria is similarly rising as Iran builds cultural, religious and educational institutions throughout the country. At the same time, Iran has essentially asserted control over the Syrian military and Assad has allowed Iran's Revolutionary Guards not only to operate throughout the country, but to open training bases outside Damascus. As the authors' conclude, "Th[e] growing economic interdependence (with Iran at the center of the dependency network) and the increase in military aid from Iran to Syria risk reducing Damascus to a vassal state that is so tied economically and militarily to its more powerful patron that disobedience may become unthinkable."

SOME ANALYSES of Hizbullah's position in Lebanon in the aftermath of the 2006 war with Israel argue that its decision to go to war weakened its popularity in Lebanon. The destruction caused to Lebanese infrastructure by IDF operations made many Lebanese who had previously supported Hizbullah turn against the organization they believed sacrificed Lebanon's well-being to advance Iran's interests.

While Hizbullah may have suffered some political setbacks as a result of the war, its determined fighting then and Iran's open support for its rearmament since have successfully intimidated its foes in Lebanon. Hizbullah today, acting openly as Iran's agent, has paralyzed Lebanon's political system by blocking the election of a president for three months.

Iran's sponsorship of Palestinian terror groups is longstanding. Islamic Jihad was established by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards in 1988. Hamas leaders have been trained in IRGC camps in Iran since the early 1990s. After Israel temporarily deported 415 Hamas leaders to Lebanon in 1992, the operational connection between Hizbullah, Iran and Hamas deepened. And of course, IRGC officers received their first terror training at PLO camps in Lebanon in the early 1970s as they prepared the Khomeinist revolution.

AHEAD OF the January 2006 Palestinian elections, Hamas together with Hizbullah and Iran decided to transform Hamas into a Hizbullah-like political and military force in Palestinian society. As the AEI report notes, since Hamas's electoral victory, it has received some $400 million from Iran. Thousands of Hamas fighters have undergone advanced military training in Iran and IRGC and Hizbullah trainers are also active in Gaza. The report's authors explain that Iran's economic assistance to Hamas is not simply aimed at enabling military operations against Israel. Rather, "as in Lebanon, Iran appears to be insinuating itself into the social and economic fabric of the Palestinian areas, making itself an indispensable ally."

IN IRAQ, both through Hizbullah proxies and through its own IRGC command structure, Iran has set out not only to sponsor both the Sunni and Shi'ite insurgency, it has also worked to destabilize the Iraqi government while engendering Iraqi dependence on Iranian economic ties and fragmenting Iraqi society.

The report documents that not only is Iran financing, training and arming the Shi'ite militias, it is also sponsoring elements of al-Qaida in Iraq and the Sunni Ansar al Islam group. In al-Qaida dominated areas in Baghdad for instance, 15-20 percent of improvised explosive devices were made in Iran. The report concludes, "There can be no question that Iran is actively supporting multiple insurgent and terror groups in Iraq, that its efforts began even before the American invasion, that Iranian elements have included the provision of direct support in the form of weapons and advisers, and that they have been involved in the growth of a solid relationship between Lebanese Hizbullah and Iraqi Shi'ite militias."

AS THE report notes, Iran's multilevel policies aimed at promoting dependence on Teheran play out in Afghanistan as well. In 2007 alone, Iran made low-cost but vital infrastructure investments in Western Afghanistan that worked to economically tie the region to Iran and cut it off from Kabul. It destabilized the Karzai government by forcibly removing more than 100,000 Afghan migrant workers from Iran in a three month period and so fomented the resignation of two Afghan cabinet ministers. It gave sufficient military support to the Taliban at critical junctures to sow Western demoralization and military instability. And it topped off its efforts with information operations aimed at alienating the Afghan people from the West and engendering sympathy with Iran.

What the report shows is that Iran engages in a concerted, multilevel policy of containing, deterring and defeating America, Israel, the West and moderate Muslims throughout the region. At the same time, by refusing to acknowledge the comprehensive and well-considered nature of Iran's strategic policies, the US, Israel and the West bar themselves from constructing a similarly well thought out, comprehensive strategy for containing, deterring and defeating Iran. And as deterrence theory shows, when both sides of a struggle are not equally aware of what is happening, the chances of full-blown war rise.

ISRAEL WAS right to mass its forces along the border with Gaza on Monday. But that was just one small battle in a long war. As one Iran analyst in Washington recently noted, "Iran is playing chess and we're playing backgammon. We have to understand the game they're playing."

The AEI report provides the factual basis for understanding the game. It is the responsibility of policymakers and political leaders to use that understanding to construct a comprehensive policy towards Iran before it is too late.

Originally published in the Jerusalem Post. 

Kosovo's US-backed declaration of independence is deeply troubling. By setting a precedent of legitimizing the secession of disaffected minorities, it weakens the long-term viability of multi-ethnic states. In so doing, it destabilizes the already stressed state-based international system.

States as diverse as Canada, Morocco, Spain, Georgia, Russia and China currently suffer problems with politicized minorities. They are deeply concerned by the Kosovo precedent. Even the US has latent sovereignty issues with its increasingly politicized Hispanic minority along its border with Mexico. It may one day experience a domestic backlash from its support for Kosovar independence from Serbia.

Setting aside the global implications, it is hard to see how Kosovo constitutes a viable state. Its 40 percent unemployment is a function of the absence of proper economic and governing infrastructures.

In November, a European Commission report detailed the Kosovo Liberation Army's failure to build functioning governing apparatuses. The report noted that "due to a lack of clear political will to fight corruption, and to insufficient legislative and implementing measures, corruption is still widespread... Civil servants are still vulnerable to political interference, corrupt practices and nepotism." Moreover, "Kosovo's public administration remains weak and inefficient."

The report continued, "The composition of the government anti-corruption council does not sufficiently guarantee its impartiality," and "little progress can be reported in the area of organized crime and combating of trafficking in human beings."

Additionally, the prosecution of Albanian war criminals is "hampered by the unwillingness of the local population to testify" against them. This is in part due to the fact that "there is still no specific legislation on witness protection in place."

The fledgling failed-state of Kosovo is a great boon for the global jihad. It is true that Kosovar Muslims by and large do not subscribe to radical Islam. But it is also true that they have allowed their territory to be used as bases for al-Qaida operations; that members of the ruling Kosovo Liberation Army have direct links to al-Qaida; and that the Islamic world as a whole perceived Kosovo's fight for independence from Serbia as a jihad for Islamic domination of the disputed province.

According to a 2002 Wall Street Journal report, al-Qaida began operating actively in Kosovo, and in the rest of the Balkans, in 1992. Osama bin Laden visited Albania in 1996 and 1997. He received a Bosnian passport from the Bosnian Embassy in Austria in 1993. Acting on bin Laden's orders, in 1994 his deputy, Ayman Zawahiri set up training bases throughout the Balkans including one in Mitrovica, Kosovo. The Taliban and al-Qaida set up drug trafficking operations in Kosovo to finance their operations in Afghanistan and beyond.

In 2006, John Gizzi reported in Human Events that the German intelligence service BND had confirmed that the 2005 terrorist bombings in Britain and the 2004 bombings in Spain were organized in Kosovo. Furthermore, "The man at the center of the provision of the explosives in both instances was an Albanian, operating mostly out of Kosovo... who is the second ranking leader of the Kosovo Liberation Army, Niam Behzloulzi."

Then, too, at its 1998 meeting in Pakistan, the Organization of the Islamic Conference declared that the Albanian separatists in Kosovo were fighting a jihad. The OIC called on the Muslim world to help "this fight for freedom on the occupied Muslim territories."

Supporters of Kosovo claim that as victims of "genocide," Kosovar Muslims deserve independence. But if the Muslims in Kosovo have been targeted for annihilation by the Serbs, then how is it that they have increased from 48% of the population in 1948 to 92% today? Indeed, Muslims comprised only 78% of the population in 1991, the year before Yugoslavia broke apart.

In recent years particularly, it is Kosovo's Serbian Christians, not its Albanian Muslims, who are targeted for ethnic cleansing. Since 1999, two-thirds of Kosovo's Serbs - some 250,000 people - have fled the area.

The emergence of a potentially destabilizing state in Kosovo is clearly an instance of political interests trumping law. Under international law, Kosovo has no right to be considered a sovereign state. Even UN Security Council Resolution 1244 from 1999, which the KLA claims provides the legal basis for Kosovar sovereignty, explicitly recognizes Serbian sovereignty over Kosovo.

For Israel, Kosovo's US-backed declaration of independence should be a source of alarm great enough to require a rethinking of foreign policy. Unfortunately, rather than understand and implement the lessons of Kosovo, the Olmert-Livni-Barak government is working actively to ensure that they are reenacted in the international community's treatment of Israel and the Palestinians. Today, Israel is enabling the Palestinians to set the political and legal conditions for the establishment of an internationally recognized state of Palestine that will be at war with Israel.

By accepting the "Road Map Plan to a Two-State Solution" in 2004, Israel empowered the US, the EU, Russia and the UN, who comprise the international Quartet, to serve as judges of Palestinian and Israeli actions toward one another. In November 2007, at the Annapolis conference, the Olmert-Livni-Barak government explicitly empowered the US to "monitor and judge the fulfillment of the commitment of both sides of the road map."

That these moves have made Israel dependent on the kindness of strangers was made clear this week when Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni instructed Israel's ambassadors to launch a campaign to convince the international community that Israel and the Palestinians are making great strides in their negotiations toward the establishment of a Palestinian state. Livni's move was precipitated by growing European and US dissatisfaction with the pace of those negotiations and by reports from the meeting of Quartet members in Berlin on February 11. There all members voiced anger at the slow pace of negotiations and opposition to Israel's military actions in Gaza, which are aimed at protecting the western Negev from rocket and mortar attacks.

The US representative at the Quartet's meeting, Assistant Secretary of State David Welch, reportedly told his colleagues, "First, we must not allow the suicide bombing in Dimona and the shooting on Sderot to affect the negotiations."

Welch reportedly added, "It is also important to us that neither the Palestinians in Gaza nor the Israelis in Sderot are hurt. Also, we must continue to strengthen Mahmoud Abbas and Salaam Fayad."

Moreover, Ran Koriel, Israel's ambassador to the EU, reportedly warned Livni that the Russians are pushing for the re-establishment of a Fatah-Hamas government. Several EU states, including France, are reconsidering their refusal to recognize Hamas.

If Israel had not empowered the Quartet generally and the US specifically to determine whether the PA and Israel are behaving properly, a European or Russian decision to recognize Hamas would have little impact. But given their role as arbiters, Quartet members can take punitive action against Israel if it fails to comply with their wishes. The Quartet can replace international law in determining who can assert sovereignty over Gaza, Judea and Samaria and how Israel can exercise its own sovereignty. And so, Livni is reduced to begging them not to recognize Hamas.

Once the US decided in 1999 to commit its own forces to NATO's bombing of Serbia and subsequent occupation of Kosovo, the jig was up for Serbian sovereignty over the area. The fact is, NATO forces in Kosovo were deployed for the express purpose of blocking Serbia from exercising its sovereignty over Kosovo, not to prevent violence between the Kosovars and the Serbs or among the Muslims and Christians in Kosovo. That is, NATO deployed in Kosovo to enable it to gain independence.

And if US or NATO forces are deployed to Gaza or Judea and Samaria, they will not be there to protect Israelis from Palestinian terror or to prevent the areas from acting as global terror bases. They will be there to establish a Palestinian state.

Failing to understand the meaning of Kosovo, the Olmert-Livni-Barak government refuses to understand this point. Indeed, the government is actively lobbying NATO to deploy forces in Gaza. Just as it wrongly hoped that UNIFIL forces in south Lebanon would fight Hizbullah for it, so today, the Olmert-Livni-Barak government insists that NATO forces in Gaza will fight Hamas for it.

If applying the lessons of UNIFIL to Gaza is too abstract for the Olmert-Livni-Barak government, Israel has experience with EU monitors in Gaza itself to learn from. Wrongly assuming that the Europeans shared Israel's interest in preventing terrorists and weapons from entering Gaza, Israel requested that EU monitors set up shop at the Rafah terminal linking Gaza to Egypt after Israel withdrew from the border in 2005. Yet whenever confronted by Fatah and Hamas terrorists, rather than fight the EU monitors flee to Israel for protection. And its monitors' experience with Palestinian terrorists taking over the border has never caused the EU to question its support for Palestinian statehood.

Then, too, since the US, EU, UN and Russia all consider Gaza, Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem to be one territorial unit, it is not surprising that Israel's request for NATO forces in Gaza has been greeted by a US plan to deploy NATO forces in Judea and Samaria. If NATO forces in Gaza would do nothing to secure the border with Egypt or to fight terrorists and would scuttle Israeli operations in the area, NATO forces in Judea and Samaria would not simply prevent Israel from protecting its citizens who live there. They would also prevent Israel from taking action to prevent the Palestinians from attacking central Israel and asserting control over the border with Jordan. And yet, as The Jerusalem Post reported this week, Israel is conducting talks with the US regarding just such a NATO deployment.

What the Serbs made NATO fight its way in to achieve, Israel is offering NATO on a silver platter.

Not surprisingly, Abbas's adviser and PA propaganda chief Yasser Abd Rabbo reacted to Kosovo's declaration of independence by recommending that the Palestinians follow the example. Abd Rabbo said, "Kosovo is not better than us. We deserve independence even before Kosovo, and we ask for the backing of the United States and the European Union for our independence."

For its part, the Olmert-Livni-Barak government has responded to Kosovo's declaration of independence with customary confusion. But the lessons of Kosovo are clear. Not only should Israel join Russia, Canada, China, Spain, Romania and many others in refusing to recognize Kosovo. It should also state that as a consequence of Kosovo's independence, Israel rejects the deployment of any international forces to Gaza or Judea and Samaria, and refuses to cede its legal right to sovereignty in Judea, Samaria, Gaza and Jerusalem to international arbitration.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

It is quite possible that terror master Imad Mughniyeh was not killed Tuesday night in Damascus for his past crimes, but to prevent him from carrying out additional attacks in the future.

On January 30, French security services raided a Paris apartment and arrested six Arab men. Three of the men - two Lebanese and one Syrian - were travelling on diplomatic passports. According to the Italian Libero newspaper, the six were members of a Hizbullah cell. Documents seized included tourist maps of Paris, London, Madrid, Berlin and Rome marked up with red highlighter to indicate routes, addresses, parking lots and "truck stopping points." The maps pointed to several routes to Vatican back entrances.

Libero's report explained that the "truck stopping points" aligned with information the French had received the week before from Beirut. There, Hizbullah chief Hassan Nasrallah had convened a conference of his senior terror leaders where he ordered them to activate Hizbullah cells throughout Europe to kidnap senior European leaders.

The day of the arrests, French Defense Minister Herve Morin was meeting with his American counterpart, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, and with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in Washington on a previously unannounced visit. During his public appearances, Morin criticized the US National Intelligence Estimate on Iran's nuclear program from November. Morin said, "Coordinated information from a number of intelligence services leads us to believe that Iran has not given up its wish to pursue its [nuclear] program," and is "continuing to develop" it.

Other recent reports relayed French concern that their embassy in Beirut is being targeted for attack by Hizbullah. On January 15 terrorists attacked a US Embassy car in Beirut, killing four and wounding 16. This week, French President Nicholas Sarkozy's chief of staff told L'Express newsweekly that the threat of terror against France "remains quite high."

All of the feared terror attacks against French and European targets have the classic earmarkings of Hizbullah operations chief and Iranian Revolutionary Guards officer Imad Mughniyeh. Mughniyeh was the pioneer of embassy bombings and high-profile kidnappings.

Most of the reports of his death treated Mughniyeh as a has-been. Coverage was devoted to his attacks against American, Israeli and Jewish targets in the 1980s and early 1990s. Yet at the time of his death, Mughniyeh remained one of the most dangerous and prolific terror operatives in the world.

Mughniyeh's broad-based leadership role in the global terror nexus was made clear by the reaction of seemingly unrelated terror groups to his death. Representatives of the reputedly nationalist, secularist Fatah terror group expressed their pride in his life's work. "We're very proud to have had a Palestinian holding such a high position in Hizbullah," a Fatah official who worked with Mughniyeh in the 1970s and 1980s told The Jerusalem Post. Every Palestinian terror group - from Fatah to Hamas to Islamic Jihad, to the Popular Resistance Committees, the PFLP and DFLP - mourned Mughniyeh as a hero and martyr and called for revenge against Israel and the US.

In Iraq, Shi'ite and Sunni terrorists alike bemoaned his death and called for revenge. Shi'ite militia leader Muqtada al-Sadr, whose forces were trained and organized by Mughniyeh and Iran, condemned Mughniyeh's killing. Sadr's supposed arch-foe, Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, who leads al-Qaida in Iraq and whose operational commanders are in Iran, responded to his death by calling for attacks against Israel.

And of course, Hizbullah and its state sponsors Iran and Syria all condemned Mughniyeh's death in the strongest terms and vowed to avenge his killing.

These condemnations were not nostalgic pinings for a has-been. These uniform reactions from across the terror spectrum were the cries of Mughniyeh's soldiers for their commander. Through Iran, Mughniyeh was in effect the commander or godfather or both of all of these forces. His life's work embodied the growth, development and modus operandi of the forces of global terror and jihad. And understanding his life's work is a key to understanding the nature of the jihadist forces arrayed against the Western world and Israel.

MUGHNIYEH BEGAN his terror career in the 1970s in Fatah leader Yasser Arafat's Force 17 in Lebanon. There, in addition to terrorizing Lebanese Christians, he and Arafat trained Iranian Shi'ite jihadists. These men arrived at PLO camps in Lebanon in the early 1970s to train to overthrow of the Shah of Iran and install their leader Ayatollah Khomeini as the head of a new Islamic state. In 1979 they became the backbone of the newly formed Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps.

When Israel forced Arafat and his Fatah terror army to flee Lebanon in 1982, Arafat gave Fatah's arsenal to Mughniyeh, who at that time, as an officer in the new Revolutionary Guards Corps, was forming Hizbullah. As Fatah's terror heir, Mughniyeh and his colleagues set out to throw the Americans, French and Israelis out of Lebanon and to disenfranchise Lebanese Christians and Sunnis. They accomplished their goals through a mix of terror tactics including car bombings, suicide bombings, airline hijackings, kidnappings, assassinations, missile and rocket attacks on civilians, and embassy bombings; and guerrilla warfare tactics like ambushes, RPG attacks on convoys, sniper fire, popular indoctrination and psychological warfare operations. Most of these operations were carried out in Lebanon.

In the 1990s, Mughniyeh and Iran took their show on the road. Not only did they reenact their car bombings in South America, they also expanded their terror nexus to the then nascent Sunni Wahabist al-Qaida organization. As Thomas Joscelyn documents in his short book Iran's Proxy War Against America, Iran through Mughniyeh has been instrumental in training, arming and sheltering al-Qaida since the early 1990s.

As an Iranian agent, in the early 1990s, Mughniyeh built operational alliances with Osama bin Laden, Ayman Zawahiri and al-Qaida's military chief Saif al-Adel when al-Qaida was based in Sudan. Adel, along with several hundred other al-Qaida operatives, travelled to Lebanon to undergo training at Hizbullah camps. Hizbullah trainers also worked at al-Qaida camps in Sudan and al-Qaida operatives also trained at Revolutionary Guard camps in Iran. From 1996 through 1998, 10 percent of bin Laden's satellite phone calls were to Iran.

Operational cooperation between Hizbullah and al-Qaida quickly followed.

In 1996, Iran ordered Hizbullah to blow up the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia that housed US military personnel; 19 US servicemen were killed. Although al-Qaida was never officially tied to the bombing, Zahawiri phoned bin Laden to congratulate him on the attack.

The al-Qaida terror cell in Kenya that carried out the Kenyan arm of the twin US Embassy bombings in Nairobi and Dars el-Salaam in 1998 underwent training in Hizbullah camps in Lebanon. That attack had all the markings of Mughniyeh operations. Like the 1983 attacks on the US Marine barracks and French paratrooper base in Beirut, the 1998 attacks were double car bombings carried out in disparate locations nearly simultaneously.

As Joscelyn recalls, the 9/11 Commission called for further investigation of Iran's role in the September 11, 2001, attacks on America. Adel, a veteran of Hizbullah camps, was intimately aware of the bombing plans before it took place. Ramzi Binalshibh, the plot's mastermind, travelled in and out of Iran several times in the months before the bombings. Then, too, eight to ten of the September 11 bombers transited Iran assisted by Hizbullah and Revolutionary Guard officials in late 2000. The Iranians did not stamp their passports. Several of the bombers transited Iran en route to Lebanon. Mughniyeh himself flew to Beirut from Teheran aboard the same flight as September 11 hijacker Ahmad al-Ghamdi.

Although Iran and the Taliban nearly went to war against one another in 2000, in the wake of the US-led invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001, according to jailed Taliban leaders, Iran pledged to assist the Taliban in their war against the US. Teheran opened its doors to fleeing Taliban leaders and senior al-Qaida commanders - including Adel and bin Laden's son and heir apparent, Saad and Abu Musab Zarkawi. From Iran, Adel and bin Laden Jr. planned and ordered attacks in Saudi Arabia.

Moreover, from Iran, Adel and bin Laden worked with Zarkawi in planning the group's insurgency in Iraq. Citing an extensive report from the German Cicero magazine, Joscelyn describes how Zarkawi set up his terror network under the protection of the Revolutionary Guards. Zarkawi had no problem operating in Iran in spite of his avowed hatred of Shi'ites who, after entering Iraq, he massacred at every opportunity.

Then, too, as Al Sharq al Aswat reported Wednesday, Mughniyeh played a central role in organizing and training Shi'ite militias in Iraq. He worked as the head of Iran's intelligence directorate in southern Iraq, trained Sadr's Mahdi army fighters in Iran, Iraq and Lebanon and set up shop in Basra to facilitate their entry into Iraq from Iran.

After the 1993 Oslo Accords between Israel and the PLO, Iran abandoned Arafat as a traitor. Mughniyeh was responsible for mending fences. In 1999 he brought Fatah back into Iran's orbit when he acted as a middle-man in negotiating the Iranian sale of the Karine A weapons ship to the Palestinian Authority; the vessel was intercepted by IDF naval commandos in January 2002.

After Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005, Mughniyeh worked as a middle-man bringing Hamas under Iranian control. That control was consolidated in a meeting between Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Syrian President Bashar Assad and Mughniyeh in Damascus in January 2001, after Hamas's electoral victory in the PA's legislative ballot.

Later in 2006, Mughniyeh returned to Lebanon to plan the kidnapping of IDF soldiers that was carried out on July 12, 2006, and precipitated that summer's Second Lebanon War. Mughniyeh reportedly commanded Hizbullah forces during the campaign. After the war, he oversaw Hizbullah's rearmament as well as the training of Hizbullah and Hamas forces in Iran. Saad bin Laden had reportedly travelled to Syria to oversee weapons shipments to Hizbullah during the war.

IT IS possible that Mughniyeh was irreplaceable. The pivotal role that he played in the nexus of global terror was unique. No one else had such wide-ranging accomplishments. But placing too much stress on Mugniyeh's uniqueness would serve to obfuscate the basic reality that his life's work embodied.

Mughniyeh embodied the fact that terrorists of all shapes and colors willingly collaborate with one another against their common enemies in the West. Mughniyeh personally bridged all the divisions within the world of Arab and Islamic terrorism. He showed that when it comes to attacking the West, there is no distinction between secular, nationalist, religious, Islamist, Sunni or Shi'ite terrorists.

His work revealed the inconvenient truth so fervently denied by policy-makers and politicians throughout the Western world. He showed that for the jihadists there is no distinction between terrorists who attack in Israel or against Jewish targets abroad and those who attack non-Israeli and non-Jewish targets. Moreover, his work as an Iranian agent demonstrates Iran's central role in sponsoring jihad throughout the world.

Mughniyeh's legacy is not simply a laundry list of massacre and torture. It is the nexus of global terror. While it is a great thing that he is dead, it must be understood that his death is insufficient. Hundreds of thousands converged in Beirut to celebrate his life's work. The West must understand the significance of that work and unite to destroy it - layer after layer.

Originally published in the Jerusalem Post.

On Tuesday Eli Lake from the New York Sun reported that Democratic Presidential frontrunner Illinois Senator Barack Obama's senior foreign policy advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski was leading a Rand Corporation delegation to Syria.

I wonder if Zbig "blame the Jews" Brzezinski was in town when Imad Mughniyeh was finally sent to his big, fat, ugly, virgins in Hell. Did it occur to him that there might be something wrong with a regime that plays host to the mastermind of the murder of so many of his countrymen? Will anyone ask Sen. Obama what he thinks about his senior advisor covorting with people who host to people like Mughniyeh? Does he think such trips advance world peace? If so, how?

I'm an elitist. Eighty percent of the critical decisions affecting Israel are shaped by maybe 100 or 200 people, 300. These are my clients.

Thus spaketh Prof. Yehezkel Dror, the resident blabbermouth in the Winograd Commission, which Prime Minister Ehud Olmert appointed in the wake of the 2006 war with Hizbullah. Dror made this statement in his interview with the Jerusalem Post last week.

In a separate op-ed in Haaretz, Dror expanded on his theme. He explained that of these 300 decision makers who make life and death decisions in Israel, "less than thirty" are elected officials. So as Dror sees it, less than 10 percent of the people who determine the direction of the country on the greatest issues of the day are accountable to the public. And that's okay by him.

In his interview with the Post, Dror explained that while he wouldn't mind if the nation as a whole read the Winograd report, the 300, overwhelmingly unelected decision-makers "are the people I want to read the report and discuss it. The other people, I also want them to read it, but I'm more interested in those few hundred. Because a few can make a difference."

Given Dror's open prejudices, it is clear that when he told Ma'ariv that in his view advancing the diplomatic process with the Palestinians is more important than ousting Olmert and his colleagues from office for their incompetence, it is clear that he wasn't addressing the general public which opposes the Olmert-Livni-Barak government's policies towards the Palestinians. He was talking to his fellow, unelected elitists who run the country and support their policies.

Dror said, "We must think of the consequences [of forcing Olmert from office]. What do you prefer? A government led by Olmert and [Defense Minister Ehud] Barak or new elections that will give rise to a government led by [opposition leader and Likud Chairman Binyamin] Netanyahu?"

The "We," he referred to was not, "We the people of the State of Israel." It was "We, the unelected leftists who run the country."

The Winograd report went into rhetorical and logical contortions to defend Olmert's handling of the last stages of the war. Its central assertion was the dubious, poorly argued claim that Olmert's decision to launch a 60-hour ground offensive in Lebanon after the UN Security Council had unanimously adopted resolution 1701 which set the terms of the cease-fire was not only reasonable but unavoidable. Thirty-three soldiers died in that offensive which the commission acknowledged served no military purpose. The report's conclusion all but silenced the reservists and bereaved families demanding the government's resignation and new elections.

GIVEN DROR'S conviction that the he, like the other members of the Winograd Commission are members of Israel's governing elite, it is important to discuss the wisdom of its members' views and perceptions of reality, as they are informed by their leftist political bias. Dror asserted that Olmert's embrace of the so-called peace process "is a serious consideration" when determining whether Olmert should be permitted to remain in office in spite of his obvious failure in leading the country in war in 2006. He further claimed that it is his rich professional experience, rather than his ideological prejudices that lead him to reach this conclusion.

But do the facts back up his claim? And what do the facts tell us about the desirability of being led by "professionals" rather than "politicians?"

Today Olmert and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni are conducting "secret" negotiations with the leaders of Fatah towards the establishment of a Palestinian state. In the course of their negotiations they are discussing the transfer of the overwhelming majority of Judea and Samaria as well as neighborhoods in eastern, northern and southern Jerusalem to Fatah control. Fatah leaders, including Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas are embraced by Olmert, Livni and their colleagues as peace partners who have made the decision to work to live at peace with Israel.

And yet, Fatah was among the groups taking credit for the suicide bombing in Dimona last week. Fatah-run media outlets glorified the bombers in Dimona as martyrs. Fatah forces in Gaza have integrated in large numbers into Hamas's terror forces. Fatah forces are responsible for a plurality of the rocket, missile and mortar attacks against the Western Negev. Most of the IDF's operations in Judea and Samaria target Fatah terror cells, many of which are directed by Iran through Hizbullah. Even the US, which seeks to rebuild Fatah forces into a counter-terror gendarmerie, believes that rebuilding them into counter-terror forces will cost $4.2 billion to $7 billion over five years.

Is it reasonable to support a diplomatic process with Fatah which would transfer control over large swathes of Jerusalem, and the majority of Judea and Samaria to terrorists openly engaged in acts of war against Israel and openly in league with Israel's sworn enemies?

Olmert exhibits the same incompetence he displayed towards Hizbullah in 2006 in his treatment of the bombardment of southern Israel from Gaza today. Does the fact that he supports this diplomatic process with Fatah render him competent to continue to lead the country?

THEN THERE is the Israeli elite's view of UN Security Council Resolution 1701. As the representative of that elite, the Winograd Commission heaped praise on the government for the resolution which set the terms for the cease-fire. Yet it is far from clear why 1701 is praiseworthy.

Under 1701, Hizbullah has reasserted its control over South Lebanon. Under the nose of the UNIFIL forces which 1701 supposedly empowered, Hizbullah has deployed a massive arsenal of anti-tank missiles in the south to counter any future IDF ground offensive. It has also deployed missiles and missile launchers in the south. Posing as journalists, Hizbullah operatives carry out daily reconnaissance missions along the border to assess IDF troop levels, fortifications and positions. And under 1701, Israel is prohibited from taking action to mitigate this growing threat. All it can do is complain to UNIFIL, which in turn, does nothing.

So is it reasonable to applaud the Olmert-Livni-Barak government which now seeks to negotiate a similar agreement for the deployment of foreign forces in Gaza? Is it "professional" to support the government in its quest to see Fatah reassert its control over Gaza's border with Egypt? Does it make "professional" sense to block new elections to protect a government that seeks to reinforce Egyptian troop strength along the border when the Egyptian military - like the Lebanese military deployed in South Lebanon next to Hizbullah - at best does nothing and at worst collaborates with Hamas and its fellow terrorists as they infiltrate Gaza with advanced weapons supplied from Iran?

If the intuitive answer to these questions is no, then this tells us something deeply disturbing about the quality of Israel's elites, which like the members of the Winograd Commission, have rallied around Olmert because he is committed to giving Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem to Fatah in exchange for an empty promise of peace which no one actually believes.

DROR NOTED rightly that many of the governance problems that Israel faces today are a consequence of the country's youth. More than 60 years are required for a nation to get things right.

But the fact is that Israel's surrender of governing authority to unelected, unwise elitists is not unique. In the US, the publication of the National Intelligence Estimate on Iran last December has been characterized by the Wall Street Journal and others as an assault on presidential authority by unaccountable, unelected career State Department officials on loan to the office of the Director of National Intelligence. These officials - Thomas Fingar, Vann Van Diepen and Kenneth Brill - are reputedly deeply partisan and hostile to President George W. Bush's foreign policy goals and skeptical of the threat posed to US national security by Iran's nuclear program.

Last week, the Admiral Michael McConnell, the Director of National Intelligence, tried to mitigate the damage the NIE did to US efforts to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. The NIE's blatantly politically motivated opening line, which asserted that Iran suspended its nuclear weapons program in 2003 empowered Iran and sent US efforts to build an international coalition against Iran into a tailspin from which they have not recovered.

As reports emerged about Iran's installation of advanced centrifuges for enriching uranium, McConnell testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee and claimed that the Iranians may acquire a nuclear bomb by 2009. Yet his testimony was no match for the "professional" work done by his unelected underlings. It received but a fraction of the news coverage the NIE enjoyed. And it is not clear that his statement will affect the chances of ratifying a new, watered-down sanctions resolution against Iran in the Security Council.

WHAT ISRAEL'S experience with the Winograd Commission and its unelected elites, and the US's experience with the NIE and its unelected elites show quite clearly is that contrary to the assertions of Dror and his elitist colleagues, it is not the presence or absence of "professionals" at decision-making levels that determine whether or not wise policies are adopted. What determines whether or not good policies are adopted is whether the ideologies held by leaders concur with reality or clash with it and whether leaders are men and women of intellectual and personal integrity.

Beyond that, the experiences of both countries show that time after time, the public is far quicker to abandon failed ideologies than the elitists who lead while shirking accountability in the name of professionalism.

With all due respect to Dror and his colleagues in Israel and their counterparts in America, we need less rather than more "professionals" forcing their ideological agendas on us in the name of "professionalism." We need to ensure that those making the decisions which determine matters of life and death are accountable to us, and not to unelected, generally unwise elitists.

 Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

Josh Mandel is a first-term legislator in the Ohio House of Representatives. He is also a sergeant in the US Marine Corps reserves. Last year, Mandel arrived at the state house in Columbus after a tour of duty in Iraq.

There, he saw first-hand how Iran was fueling the insurgency that is killing his fellow servicemen and Iraqi innocents. His experiences led him to introduce a bill that would divest Ohio's public employee pension funds from companies that do business with Iran and fellow state sponsor of terror Sudan.

As his bill made its way through the various committees, Mandel's initiative received a body blow from an unexpected direction. AIPAC representatives asked him to pare down his bill's divestment requirements to include only companies that invest more than $20 million in Iran's oil and gas sector.

Mandel was surprised. Why should companies that invest in Iran's defense, telecommunications and other sectors be immune from divestment? AIPAC went over his head to Ohio House Speaker Jon Hustead. Hustead amended the bill along AIPAC's suggested lines.

Mandel's experience is not unique.

Christopher Holton is director of the Divest Terror Initiative at the Washington-based Center for Security Policy, where I serve as a senior fellow. In August 2004, the CSP launched its campaign to divest public employee pension funds from companies that do business with countries listed as state sponsors of terror by the US State Department. The decision was inspired by a study of companies invested in states that sponsor terrorism undertaken by Roger Robinson, the founder and president of the Conflict Securities Advisory Group.

Working from Robinson's research, the CSP discovered that on average, 15-23% of US state employee pension funds were invested in companies that do business with state sponsors of terrorism. In 2004, the estimated total value of those investments was $188 billion. Some $70b. was invested in companies that did business with Iran, Syria and North Korea.

In 2005, after coming across the CSP's research, Missouri State Treasurer Sarah Steelman divested a portion of Missouri's pension plans from companies that do business with state sponsors of terror.

In late 2006, the terror divestment campaign received a major boost when Likud leader Binyamin Netanyahu embraced it as a means of slowing down Iran's race to nuclear capabilities.

Encouraged by Netanyahu, Republican presidential hopefuls John McCain, Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich announced their support for the plan in late 2006. Their announcements induced state legislators around the US to introduce bills that would follow the Missouri example and make their pension funds free of investments in countries that sponsor terror. Working with Robinson, London's FTSE financial index announced last November that it would begin providing a series of terror-free screened indexes that will allow public and private investors to easily screen their portfolios and divest from countries that do business with state sponsors of terrorism.

And then, AIPAC moved in.

Holton assists state legislators in their bid to introduce divestment bills. He explains that in Texas and California, AIPAC lobbyists led by AIPAC's policy director Brad Gordon, advocated that divest terror bill sponsors take North Korea and Syria off their bills. As they did in Ohio, they also strongly recommended that divestiture from companies invested in Iran be limited to companies that invest more than $20m. in Iran's oil and gas sector.

In Texas, AIPAC's interference so frustrated the bill's sponsor, State Senator Dan Patrick, that he allowed the initiative to fizzle out. In California, the bill passed into law reflected AIPAC's view, except that at the insistence of the bill's sponsor Assemblyman Joel Anderson, it also divested California from companies involved in Iran's defense and nuclear sectors.

In Florida, AIPAC pre-empted supporters of broad-based terror divestment. It advocated its pared-down, Iran only, oil and gas sector only divestment plan before a broader-based initiative could get off the ground.

Currently, AIPAC is working to pare down bills in Massachusetts, Maryland, Pennsylvania and Georgia. In the meantime, without AIPAC's intervention, the Louisiana legislature moved toward a broad-based divestment policy by establishing a terror-free investment index last year. Mississippi and Utah are also considering broad-based bills.

A message to Gordon's office this week requesting his comments on AIPAC's actions went unanswered. Ron Dermer, who as Israel's economic minister at the Washington embassy works on the issue with AIPAC, provided three general explanations for AIPAC's actions.

As Dermer explained, first, AIPAC wishes to limit divestment to large investors in Iran's oil and gas sector because that sector - which makes up at least 80% of Iran's exports and 40% of its governmental revenues - is the engine of Iran's economy and its Achille's heel. Second, AIPAC argues that it is unconstitutional for states to divest from companies that do business with terror sponsoring states. Third, AIPAC believes that by limiting the divestment program to Iran's oil and gas sector, they will mitigate opposition from pension and hedge fund managers and so enable more divestment laws to be passed than would be passed if states tried to adopt a broader approach.

YET AIPAC's arguments - as explained by Dermer, who does not work for AIPAC - fail to stand up to scrutiny. While it is true that oil and gas are the anchor of Iran's economy, it is also true that Iran's ability to function economically, support terror and build nuclear bombs is dependent on many other economic sectors as well. It is also clear that the strength of Iran's fuel economy is not dependent only on direct investments in oil and gas but also on indirect investments from other sectors.

Take Iran's dependence on imported refined fuel products, for instance. Although Iran is the second largest exporter of oil and gas after Saudi Arabia, it lacks refining capabilities and so is dependent on imported fuel products. Last week one source of that refined fuel disappeared. India's oil refiner, Reliance, decided to end its supply of refined oil products to Iran after the French bank BNP Paribus announced that it would no longer issue letters of credit for Iran. BNP Paribus and its cohort Calyon bank stopped offering Iran letters of credit due to political pressure from the US Treasury, which sanctions financial institutions that deal with Iran. So in the BNP Paribus example, financial sanctions from the US government on the banking sector are making it more difficult for Iran to run its oil and gas sector.

Many other firms not involved in oil and gas similarly contribute to the viability of the Iranian regime and its rogue activities. For instance, Alcatel SA, a French telecommunications firm, has operations valued at $300m. in Iran, Sudan and Libya. Much of its technology is inherently dual-use with major civilian and military applications. Alcatel's militarily relevant operations in Iran include the provision of data transmission and switching network capabilities to state-owned companies. Alcatel is also installing an undersea telecommunications cable in Iran. It is undertaking similar activities in Sudan and Libya.

Germany's Siemens has operations in Iran valued in excess of a half a billion dollars. They include the development of Iran's mobile telephone network, power plants and transportation sector. All of these projects have enormous military implications. Austria's Steyr-Mannlicher arms manufacturer sold Iran sniper rifles in 2006. None of these companies are targeted in AIPAC's limited divestment plan.

Beyond that, as Holton explains, most of the major companies invested in Iran's oil and gas sector - like France's Total SA and Norway's Statoil and China's Petro China - invested in Iran's oil and gas sector after Iran was declared a state-sponsor of terrorism. That is, they made a conscious decision to invest in Iran in spite of its behavior and irrespective of the financial implications for doing so in their trade with the US. The likelihood that these companies will end their operations in Iran as a result of the divestiture movement is not large. In contrast, many companies whose investments in Iran are below $20m. would be more likely to pull out their investments if maintaining them cost them US investment capital. So AIPAC's plan targets companies that are less likely to change their behavior while giving a free pass to companies that are more likely to be convinced by the divestiture movement to pull out from Iran.

AIPAC has informed state legislators who push for broad divestment that it would be unconstitutional for individual US states to divest from companies that do business with Syria. Its contention is based on a US Supreme Court decision from 2000 relating to a Massachusetts statute that prohibited the state from signing business deals with companies that also do business with Burma.

But according to Prof. Orde Kittrie, who served for years as an attorney at the State Department working on issues related to international sanctions, there is a distinction between divestment and taking direct action against foreign firms. A state is within its constitutional rights to decide where to invest its funds.

Finally, AIPAC's argument that broad-based divestment bills cannot expect to pass is troubling on two different levels. First, objectively, this is untrue. Louisiana's law is broad-based. Currently, broad-based divestment bills are moving through the Utah and Mississippi legislatures.

But even if AIPAC is right, and these broad-based divestment bills lack sufficient political support, why AIPAC is actively working to undermine them is a mystery.

There is a legitimate debate regarding the capacity of financial tools to compel governments to change their behavior. Generally speaking, when dealing with ideologically motivated, terror-sponsoring regimes such as Iran, Syria and North Korea, financial tools will be insufficient to force a consistent and credible change of behavior. But they can make it more difficult for such states to conduct their nefarious business as usual.

In the case of Iran, these extra difficulties can conceivably buy the West more time to either strike Iran's nuclear facilities militarily, or to induce regime overthrow by backing regime opponents, or both. What is absolutely clear is that the broader a divestment plan is, the worse for Iran and its fellow state sponsors of terrorism.

AIPAC's arguments are not without merit. It is not the contentions that are strange, but their source. It is simply bizarre that of all the organizations in the US, the organization dedicated to strengthening America's alliance with Israel is leading the effort to shield the North Korean, Syrian and Sudanese economies from divestment and to limit the damage the divest terror movement can exact on Iran's economy.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

Where does Arab fanaticism come from? Does it come from the mosque? Or does it come from the fanatics' intended targets' refusal to close down the mosque? The death by natural causes of George Habash on January 26 indicates strongly that the latter is the case.

Habash, the founder and commander of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine was a repugnant, fanatical, mass-murderer. Habash's terror specialties included airplane hijacking, hostage taking, massacre, assassination, and suicide bombings. Far from an Islamic supremacist, Habash was a Christian.

One of Habash's signature tactics was his use of Nazi-style "selections." After his henchmen hijacked passenger jets, they would walk among their hostages, separating the Jews from the non-Jews, or sometimes the Jews and the Americans from the non-Jews and non-Americans. They would let the non-Jews and non-Americans go, and hold the Jews and the Americans hostage.

Habash was not simply a sworn enemy of the Jewish people, Israel and the United States. He was also the enemy of the Hashemites in Jordan. In August and September 1970, Habash conducted five sensationalist airline hijackings. The hijacked aircraft and his Jewish hostages were sent to Jordan. Habash's hijackings were a central component of the PLO's campaign - backed by Iraq and Syria - to overthrow the Hashemite dynasty and to replace it with a Communist Palestinian Soviet-satellite state. The PLO's aims were only scuttled because Israel answered the late King Hussein's pleas for help and stopped the Syrians and Iraqis from invading Jordan.

Rather than hang Habash, Jordan gave him a home. Habash wasn't buried in a potter's field. Thousands attended his funeral and hailed him as a hero for his massacre of Israelis and Jews. And this, 13 years after Jordan signed a peace agreement with Israel.

HABASH'S EVASION of justice for his crimes is typical. In his first term of office, President George W. Bush railed against this harsh reality of non-accountability by referring to it as the "soft bigotry of low expectations." Bush pledged to work to replace Arab bigotry and tyranny which breed fanaticism and embrace terror with tolerance and freedom.

Six years later, Bush is not only ignoring his word, he is undermining it by rewarding regimes and societies that lie to him and systematically break their word to him.

Case in point is Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas. In his State of the Union address last week, Bush praised Abbas as a leader who "recognizes that confronting terror is essential to achieving a state where his people can live in dignity and at peace with Israel."

But two days before Bush reaped such praise on him Abbas declared three days of official mourning for Habash's death in the PA and ordered flags to be flown at half mast for the entire mourning period. Abbas referred to Habash as "an historic leader" and declared his death, "a great loss for the Palestinian cause and for the Palestinian people for whom he fought for 60 years."

Rather than hold Abbas and his colleagues accountable for upholding mass murderers as heroes, Bush insists that they must be given a state before he leaves office. And last month Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice paved the way for the international donors' conference in Paris where the international community pledged $7.4 billion in financial assistance to Abbas and his Habash and Arafat worshipping government.

THE US POLICY of ignoring Arab culpability extends far beyond Jordan and the PA. US policies towards Syria and Saudi Arabia illustrate the breadth of the problem. Syria supports and engages in terror, proliferates weapons of mass destruction, allows terrorists and terror weapons to transit its territory en route to Iraq and Lebanon, and has allowed itself to become an Iranian protectorate. Yet the US invited it to the Annapolis peace conference and is planning to sell it dual-use computers.

Saudi Arabia supports Hamas, and al-Qaida. It is warming its ties with Iran. It finances jihadist indoctrination throughout the world. It refuses to increase its oil output to stabilize the world economy. And it has no human rights to speak of. Yet the administration embraces the Saudis as moderates and Congress is poised to approve the sale of $20 billion in advanced weaponry including JDAMS to Saudi Arabia.

BACK IN the days when Habash was hijacking airplanes, there was a hierarchy for not giving in to his extortion. At the bottom were the British, who insisted on giving in. Then came the Americans who thought the British shouldn't give in unless absolutely necessary. Finally there were the Israelis who said that terrorists must never be negotiated with. Period.

Thirty years later, the British are giving extra welfare checks to Muslim polygamists for each extra wife. The Americans are pushing for terror states and Israel is too timid to enforce its laws towards its Arab minority.

Not only did the Olmert government never considered demanding that Abbas apologize for celebrating Habash. The Olmert government couldn't even see the need to condemn the decision by three Israeli Arab MKs, Ahmed Tibi, Jamal Zahalka and Wasal Taha to travel to Amman to participate in Habash's funeral. There they upheld as a hero the man who hijacked an Air France passenger jet to Entebbe in 1976.

This isn't the first time that these three have acted in a seemingly traitorous manner. In September 2006, just a month after Israel's war with Hizbullah ended, Zahalka and Taha travelled to Beirut with former MK Azmi Bishara who has been on the lam since last April after having been indicted for spying for Hizbullah during the war. MK Tibi for his part has openly served as an agent for the Fatah terror organization since 1994.

The Israeli legislators followed up their trip to Amman with a memorial service for Habash in his birth city Lod where they demanded that he be reinterred. Lod's significance in Habash's life is not limited to the fact that he was born there In 1972 Habash ordered the massacre at Lod airport which left 27 Israelis murdered.

The Arab legislators' embrace of a sworn enemy of the country whose laws they took an oath to defend came just ahead of their call this week for a nation-wide Arab strike. Israel's Arab leaders' newest beef is Attorney-General Menachem Mazuz's decision not to indict policemen for their actions in quelling the Israeli Arab riots of October 2000 during which 13 rioters were killed.

Mazuz, who is usually only too happy to appease Israel's Arab leaders, is constrained in this case by the absence of any evidentiary basis for indicting police officers for using undo force in quelling rioters who were throwing firebombs at them and causing general mayhem while targeting Israeli Jews for attack.

THE REASON that even Mazuz couldn't indict anyone is because at the instruction of the Arab MKs, the families of the 13 refused to cooperate with government investigators. They refused to permit autopsies of the deceased. They refused to respond to questioning from Israeli authorities. As one Justice Ministry official told ynet, "In a law-abiding state one does not submit indictments based on speculations and gut feelings. There is one criminal law, and it stipulates clear and strict conditions for indictments that apply to all men and all events."

THE AIM of the Israeli Arab leaders here is clear. By acting contemptuously towards Israeli laws and law enforcement officers, while stirring hatred and mayhem, Israel's Arab leaders are seeking to reach the point where any attempt by Israeli authorities to apply the laws of the land to Israeli Jews and Arabs equally will be perceived as a violation of Israeli Arabs' human rights. The very notion that Jews have the right to assert authority over Arabs is the primary target of their actions. And, like Habash with the Jordanian authorities and Abbas, Syria and Saudi Arabia with everyone, Israel's Arab leaders are not being held accountable for their actions.

Today the only place where we see Arab leaders acting with any semblance of accountability is Iraq. There ahead of the anticipated US and Iraqi offensive in Mosul, Iraqi leaders joined American military commanders in the city and pledged to purge it of terrorists. There every day Iraqi military forces are fighting al-Qaida and other terrorist forces with a tactical acumen and commitment that only grows over time.

The reason for the disparity is because Iraq is so far the only Arab society that is being given a real opportunity for freedom. And with opportunity comes responsibility.

That's the thing of it. In the name of Arab rights, Arab tyrants, be they terrorists like Habash or Abbas, or autocrats like Bashar Assad or King Abdullah or Saddam Hussein, obliterate the notion of individual rights and with them, individual responsibility. And in the name of tolerance, or progressive values and peace, Israelis and Americans pretend that Arabs can't be held responsible for their actions because doing so will only make them angry and send them into the arms of the fanatics.

But it is the lack of accountability that does that. It is the double standard, the "soft bigotry of low expectations" that argues against applying laws and international norms equally to Arabs that instills in them a contempt for Israel and the West. And that contempt cultivates fanaticism. Whether they kill in the name of Soviet Communism as Habash did, or in the name of Allah as his friends in Hamas, Fatah, Hizbullah and al-Qaida do, terrorists must be held accountable for what they do. It is our willingness to see men like Habash die in their beds that tells people that it is okay to kill.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

In March 2006, the Israeli people elected incompetents to lead us. It only took four months for Hizbullah to make us pay a price for our mistake. In the July and August 2006 war, Israelis came to understand that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, then defense minister Amir Peretz and then IDF chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. Dan Halutz were together and separately the worst leaders that Israel had ever seen.

Almost from the war's outset it was evident that Israel's leaders were in over their heads. They acted as though there was no difference between running a war and running a political campaign against their political rivals. Hizbullah chief Hassan Nasrallah and his Syrian and Iranian overlords could, they assumed, simply be insulted out of fighting.

The brutal reality of war confounded them.

They had decided to respond harshly to Hizbullah's cross-border attack which left eight soldiers dead and two soldiers - Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser - missing in action. But they never actually realized that they were leading the nation to war. Indeed, through to the bitter end, they insisted that we weren't at war at all. We were simply involved in a "campaign."

They sent up fighter jets to bomb Hizbullah to Kingdom Come. But when the bombing failed to affect Hizbullah's ability to attack Israel with missiles, and when the televised footage of the bombs' destructive force squandered international support for Israel, Olmert and his colleagues lost their stomach for the fight they had never understood. They sent ground forces in willy nilly, to conduct operations with no operational logic. Then they begged America to pull their fat from the fire by negotiating a cease-fire without victory.

The public reacted to their failure with justified rage. Demoralized reservists marched on Jerusalem. The parents of soldiers killed in militarily meaningless actions took to the streets. Recognizing that their careers were on the line, Olmert and his colleagues did what any hack politicians in their positions would do. They appointed a committee and told it to take as long as it wished to decide not to call for their removal from office. The media, not wishing to see opposition leader Binyamin Netanyahu and the Likud win an election, supported the maneuver. And so the protests abated and the reservists and bereaved parents sat on the sidelines and waited.

When last April the Winograd Committee issued its interim report, it seemed as though Olmert's plan was backfiring. The committee members, led by retired judge Eliahu Winograd, were dangerously close to missing his point. They actually held Olmert, Peretz and Halutz responsible for their actions. Neither Peretz nor Halutz were able to withstand the interim report which found that they - and Olmert - had failed the test of leadership. And each in turn was forced to resign.

But Olmert held on and quietly conspired against his own committee. With Olmert's backing, the IDF's solicitor-general Col. Orna David repeatedly petitioned the Supreme Court and secured rulings prohibiting the Winograd Committee from recommending that Olmert or anyone else be compelled to resign for their dereliction of duty.

So it should have come as no surprise to anyone that in its final report issued Wednesday, the Winograd Committee failed to point its finger directly at Olmert and call for his removal from office. It should similarly surprise no one that in its continued bid to keep the Likud from power, the media ignored the report's harsh conclusions about Olmert's mismanagement of the war, seizing instead on the commission's refusal to assign blame.

In truth, by demurring from placing a metaphorical gun to Olmert's head, the Winograd Committee did the Israeli people a favor. Its members stated flatly that it is the people's responsibility - not theirs - to decide who leads the country. And now more than ever, it is the public's duty to protest the continued tenure of the Olmert government and force it from office.

This duty is not simply a matter of historical vindication for past wrongs. Olmert and his colleagues must be forced from office not because of their failed leadership in the 2006 war in Lebanon. They must be forced from office because of their mismanagement of this year's war in Gaza.

In its most devastating condemnation of Olmert and his colleagues, the Winograd Commission explained that throughout the war, they never decided - and barely discussed - what sort of war they were fighting. Once the government decided to respond forcibly to Hizbullah's cross-border raid, the commission noted that it had two clear and distinct options for proceeding. "The first was a short, painful, strong and unexpected blow on Hizbullah, primarily through standoff firepower. The second option was to bring about a significant change of the reality in the south of Lebanon with a large ground operation, including a temporary occupation of the south of Lebanon and 'cleansing' it of Hizbullah military infrastructure."

Unable to decide what sort of war it was waging, for 34 days the government moved from tactic to tactic, strategy to strategy, never following through with anything, never realizing that there were consequences for what it was doing. And today, it follows the same model of incompetence in Gaza.

FOR THE past two and a half years Israel has taken no effective action to end the rocket and mortar offensive against the Western Negev from Gaza. And rocket and mortar attacks have quadrupled over this period.

When Hamas seized power in Gaza in June, Israel failed to develop a strategy for dealing with the fact that an Iranian armed, trained and commanded terror group was perched on its border with Gaza and threatened to destabilize its largely undefended border with Egypt.

Still led by Olmert and Livni, who are now joined by Defense Minister Ehud Barak - the engineer of the unilateral withdrawal strategy of ceding land to terrorist groups - Israel cannot figure out what it is supposed to be doing. It has no strategic goal and so it can formulate no coherent plan.

Israel changes its mode of contending with Gaza on a near-daily basis. Sometimes it threatens to launch a ground campaign in Gaza to end the Palestinians' mortar and rocket campaign against its citizens. Sometimes it attacks from the air and declares victory. Sometimes it threatens to stop supplying electricity and fuel to Gaza. Sometimes it threatens to stop its support for Gazan banks.

Then again, sometimes it renews its fuel and electricity supply to Gaza, lets trucks full of cash enter Gaza from Israel, allows Gazans to receive free medical treatment in Israeli hospitals and permits them to work in Israel.

Internationally, sometimes Israel threatens to retake control over Gaza's border with Egypt. And sometimes it asks Egypt or the UN or the EU to take control of the border. Sometimes it criticizes Egypt for enabling weapons and terrorists to move into Gaza. Sometimes it praises Egypt for being a force of stability.

Sometimes the Olmert-Livni-Barak government supports Fatah's reassertion of control over the border between Gaza and Egypt. Sometimes it admits that Fatah terrorists are full partners in the rocket and mortar campaign against Israel from Gaza; that Fatah security forces willingly integrated into Hamas's army after Hamas seized power; and that anyway, Fatah has neither the will nor the means to defeat Hamas in Gaza or anywhere else.

In Gaza today as in Lebanon during 2006, the Olmert government's strategic incoherence has led to public relations disasters. Today in Gaza, as in Lebanon in 2006, Israel's inability to define its goals has made it unable to defend its actions. And so it is stands condemned as its citizens are held hostage to the vagaries of Palestinian mortars and rockets.

THE WINOGRAD Committee properly noted the government's failure to define what it was doing in Lebanon. But it did not explain why the government failed. The source of the government's failure in Lebanon 18 months ago and of its failure in Gaza today is its political commitment to the strategy of unilateral withdrawal from territory. Olmert's Kadima Party and Barak's Labor Party both have embraced this strategy. It is the centerpiece of their governing rationale.

The unilateral withdrawal strategy is predicated on a two main assumptions. First, it assumes that it is the presence of Israelis in a hostile or disputed area which causes terrorists to act. If Israel retreats, the terrorists will melt away.

Second, the unilateral withdrawal strategy assumes that Israel's interest in defeating terrorists is not unique. In the minds of Israel's leaders, all nations share Israel's goal of protecting its sovereign territory and its citizenry from attack. Consequently, the unilateral withdrawal strategy assumes that if Israel withdraws from a terror-infested area like Gaza or southern Lebanon, another authority - be it Egypt or Fatah or the European Union in Gaza, or the Lebanese army or UNIFIL forces in Lebanon - will take over where it left off and fight the terrorists for it.

During the war in Lebanon and since Israel withdrew from Gaza, the guiding assumptions of the unilateral withdrawal strategy have proven false. But Israel's leaders have refused to acknowledge reality. Rather they claim that it is reality, not their policy, that is mistaken. Their daily search for new silver bullets is a manifestation of their denial of reality.

A telling episode touched on in the Winograd Committee's final report drives this point home. After meeting with the American negotiating team on July 28, 2006, Peretz held a consultation with his security brass.

According to the report, (p. 129), "At the outset of the meeting, the defense minister expressed his bad feeling in the aftermath of the meeting with the American team. This came after he was made to understand that a multi-national force would not enter an area [of south Lebanon] that the IDF hadn't first 'cleansed' of Hizbullah forces." Peretz could not countenance the fact that no one will take action to defend Israel that Israel itself refuses to take. And so he didn't. And neither did Olmert or Livni. Throughout the war, Israel's goal was for an international force to be set up to fight Hizbullah for Israel. And low and behold, UNIFIL refuses to fight.

And still today, the government refuses to recognize that suing for an international force then was a mistake. Indeed they are repeating it in Gaza.

Speaking to the media Wednesday evening about her decision to join the protesters demanding that Olmert and Barak resign and call for new general elections, bereaved mother Elisheva Tzemach, whose son Oz was killed in the last stages of the war, explained that she demands the government's resignation not for her dead son, but for her sons who still live. They cannot be commanded in war by Olmert and his colleagues.

Mrs. Tzemach, of course, is right. And Winograd was also right. If Israel wishes to survive in our hostile neighborhood, it is the duty of every citizen to join Mrs. Tzemach, her fellow bereaved parents and the reservists in their demand for new elections. If we remain silent now, we will deserve whatever price we are made to pay for our indifference.