The following book review was published in Jerusalem Post on June 27, 2008.

By Caroline B. Glick
Gefen
427 pages; $29.95

It is often said that either you are an idealist or a realist. Indeed, these two worldviews almost always clash. But Jerusalem Post deputy managing editor Caroline Glick, an American-Israeli with strong Zionist convictions, somehow embraces both with vigor. This has helped her produce consistently compelling commentary that wastes little time cutting to the very essence of the issues she explores.

Yet, in nearly every dispatch, Glick conveys either a subtle or even strong sense of frustration with her Israeli and Jewish-American audiences that refuse to wake up to the dangers that loom in the Middle East. Her first book, a well-structured compendium of her columns, may sadly serve as a map for the road not taken in the fight against radical Islam.

The seemingly endless Palestinian war against Israel is perhaps the greatest source of frustration for Glick. Several of her most compelling pieces hammer home the fact that the "Palestinian goal today is genocide," and their "central organizing principle is the physical elimination of the Jewish people." This should be obvious to most readers of Middle Eastern affairs. Yet a majority of American Jews and even Israelis continue to hold out hope for peace.

The author soundly rejects the notion that even the sweetest US or Israeli incentives can prod the Palestinians toward peace. She observes that the Palestinian people receive "more aid per capita than any people on earth" but prefer "poverty, violence and war to prosperity." This applies to all Palestinians; while Hamas is typically vilified for its gruesome acts of terror, we cannot forget that Fatah maintains "goals that are incompatible with the continued existence of the State of Israel." In other words, it has become impossible to separate the "general Palestinian population from those involved in terrorism."

She arrives at the sound conclusion that "Palestinian society itself must be transformed before there is to be peaceful coexistence."

Glick sums up Israel's security predicament succinctly: Israel must find the "courage to recognize that security, not peace," is the ultimate goal. Yet, she observes that her country is suffering from a "lack of outrage," and Israelis have "gotten used to being killed." She therefore yearns for Israel to win its security through a show of force on the battlefield.

The poor Israeli performance in the 2006 war against Hizbullah was a source of agitation for the author. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's military blunder not only weakened Israel's deterrence in the Arab world, but it may have also weakened Israel's Western alliances. Moving forward, she believes that only Israeli military victories will end the growing notion that Israel has become a "strategic liability for the West."

Regarding Iran, Glick could not be any clearer. She notes that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has started a "countdown to the next Holocaust" and that the "catastrophe that will follow an American collapse into isolationism and appeasement is undeniable." She further warns that the failure to prevent Iran from going nuclear will result in "suffering, destruction and death on an unimaginable scale."

To Glick's chagrin, the international coalition necessary to thwart Iran's nuclear ambitions has been moving at glacial speed. She therefore encourages her readers to support the growing movement led by several states in the US that are divesting their pension funds from companies that do business with Teheran.

But divestment for Glick is not enough. Through the pages of this book, she growls at Ahmadinejad, asserting that the maniacal Iranian leader uses Holocaust denial as a ruse among his county's other dangerous foreign policies, so that appeasing nations can claim to stand against Iran "without actually doing anything to stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons."

Looking beyond Iran, the author understands that the West is now engaged in a "world war" with Islamists, but yet most of us "do not notice it." Glick is unrelenting in her insistence that "we must do everything to destroy them and nothing to give them hope for victory." One key to this victory, she correctly notes, is strategic communication. Unfortunately, she notes, the enemies of the West continue "to define our world for us." Put another way, the "leftist-Islamist front is eroding the free world's sense of justice." This is a battle the West continues to lose.

Notably, the battle is being lost quite badly on America's university campuses. Indeed, "campuses throughout the Western world are known as hotbeds for radicalism" - including Israeli campuses. Glick notes that "educators," such as Columbia University professor Rashid Khalidi, attack those who support Israel as bigoted or virulent. She observes that jihadists are now teaching the next generation in ways that "prevent us from seeing the dangers and defending ourselves."

But, in the battle of ideas, the West is taking its worst drubbing over the war in Iraq. Glick, who was embedded with the US military during the Iraq War, immediately understood the importance of the US-led reconstruction efforts, and the need to properly explain the military operations there. Glick's dispatches from her time in the field with American military men revealed her enduring patriotism for the country she left behind. She lambastes critics for "buying into Hizbullah's psychological warfare in repeating the analogy between Iraq and Vietnam." She notes that if the American public falls prey to the wrong messages, prompting the US to leave too early, the US would lose its standing "as the leader of the free world in the midst of a global war."

While a great many of Glick's observations ring true, the reader may not always walk away from Glick's work nodding in agreement. For example, she asserts that during the 2006 war with Lebanon, the Bush administration supported Hizbullah's claims to Mount Dov (also known as Shaba Farms), or that it sought to "appease Iran." At another point, she claims that Bush has followed a string of US presidents who allow Israel to "beat Arab aggression militarily, but [force] it to lose the war politically."

In a column last July, she warned that the US was pursuing an "alliance with Saudi Arabia with vigor while eschewing and downgrading its alliance with Israel." Castigating Israel's loyal ally - particularly an administration that has been incredibly supportive for eight years - hardly seems like a battle worth fighting.

In the end, however, Glick understands that radical Islam is the enemy. She snarls at the "rotten evil that characterizes the ideology of our enemies" and unabashedly states that defeating this enemy is the "mission of our generation." Indeed, the author seeks to "pave the way for a secure, peaceful and moral future for our people and our world."

The writer, a former US Treasury intelligence analyst, is director of policy for the Jewish Policy Center and author of the forthcoming book Hamas vs Fatah: The Struggle for Palestine (Palgrave, November 2008).

What is one to make of Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni? Is she the next Golda Meir? Is she a woman of steel who can stand before world leaders and demand that they treat Israel with respect? Can she win a war? Can she - as Golda did in the Yom Kippur War - keep her head when all about her are losing theirs and blaming it on her?

On Sunday, Livni dutifully followed Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in voting to approve the terrorists-for-dead-hostages deal with Hizbullah. Despite the government's best efforts to put a brave face on the decision, the deal with Hizbullah is arguably the most humiliating step ever taken by a government of Israel.

In exchange for the bodies of two dead soldiers - Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser - Israel has succumbed to all of Hizbullah's demands. It will release six murderers from prison and send them to Lebanon for a hero's welcome. It will give Hizbullah the bodies of 200 terrorists and so empty Israel's Potters Field for terrorists. Moreover, it has pledged to close Israel's graveyard for terrorists and so has committed future governments to never keeping terrorists' bodies as bargaining cards for future swaps of Israeli hostages. Israel has agreed to provide Hizbullah with information on four missing Iranian "diplomats." And it has agreed to release an unknown number of Palestinian terrorists from prison.

This deal will cement Iran's control of Lebanon through Hizbullah. It also all but guarantees that any future Israeli soldiers taken hostage by Hizbullah will be killed on the spot. Why care for hostages when you can murder them and expect to receive the same payoff you would get if you kept them alive?

Livni voted for this deal along with 21 of her fellow ministers. Unlike her colleagues, who hide behind their surrogates and spokesmen, Livni is out in front - lying to the public about the nature of her action.

Obviously cognizant of just how humiliating and strategically disastrous this deal is for Israel, Livni is spinning her move in a naked attempt to shirk her responsibility for having voted as she did.

After the government's vote, Livni told reporters that she will not support implementing her own decision if the Palestinians Israel releases are "central terrorist operatives." She will only agree to release terrorists who are small-time operators. And if she is called upon to release senior terrorists, she will not support moving ahead.

LIVNI'S STATEMENT is disturbing on many levels. First, it raises the disconcerting prospect that the government never discussed the identity - or number - of Palestinian terrorists it just agreed to release. Are we to believe that Livni sat through a five-hour cabinet meeting and never once asked who she was voting to release? Is it possible that Israel's Foreign Minister never took it upon herself to be informed of the substance of her decisions? Beyond that, how could she have voted to approve a deal that she doesn't understand?

More than anything, Livni's statement is depressing for what it says about her character - or lack thereof. By making this statement, Livni was attempting to evade responsibility for her own actions. And these actions go beyond her vote in favor of this execrable, morally atrocious and strategically disastrous deal with Hizbullah. They consist of all her moves as foreign minister since Regev and Goldwasser were abducted from their position at the border with Lebanon on July 12, 2006.

From the earliest stages of Israel's war with Hizbullah two years ago, Livni preached defeatism. Livni began calling for a negotiated cease-fire that would leave Hizbullah in charge of South Lebanon just hours after Hizbullah attacked Goldwasser's and Regev's unit and began bombing northern Israel with rockets. She exhorted her colleagues that Israel had no prospects for military victory. Livni did this even as it was clear that the only good option Israel had was to fight for a military victory.

Had Israel defeated Iran's foreign legion in Lebanon on the battlefield, it would have secured northern Israel and enabled the March 14 democracy movement to fulfill its promise of transforming Lebanon into a multi-ethnic democracy. Already on July 12, 2006, it was clear that an Israeli defeat would pave the way for Hizbullah's takeover of the country.

Yet in the face of this known reality, Livni called for Israel to capitulate. The policy she advocated involved Israel throwing itself at the mercy of the UN and begging the Security Council to deploy forces to the border to protect Israel. And in the end, Livni's defeatism was embraced by Olmert and her fellow ministers and so Israel lost its first war.

On the ground, the international forces whose deployment along the border was the centerpiece of Livni's policy are a joke. As was foreseen by her critics both within the government and in the public discourse at the time, UNIFIL is wholly ineffective because it has absolutely no interest in fighting Hizbullah. As expected, it has done nothing to prevent Hizbullah's rearmament. It has done nothing to protect the pro-democratic forces in Lebanon from Hizbullah. Indeed, in Hizbullah's putsch last month, UNIFIL forces behaved as if nothing was going on. Far from protecting Israel's border, UNIFIL forces have acted as a buffer to enable Hizbullah to reassert its control over the border unchallenged.

LIVNI OF course, has never acknowledged her own mistakes or share of responsibility for this dismal state of affairs. And now, after voting to cement Hizbullah's victory over Israel, far from accepting responsibility for the situation she has been instrumental in fomenting, Livni makes self-serving and patently false statements to reporters in an obvious attempt to hide her own basic defeatism.

Livni's character and behavior are worth considering because the media has all but anointed her Israel's next prime minister. Every article about businessmen making cash payments to Olmert is accompanied by a fawning profile of Livni. She is down to earth. She looks good in tailored pants suits. She is hard working. She isn't a thief. And she plays the drums.

The media would have us believe that the mere fact that Livni is not under police investigation renders her competent to lead the country. Obviously this is ridiculous. The real question is not whether Livni is a crook, but whether she is a leader. Is she?

OVER THE past three years, Livni has introduced and implemented a new doctrine for Israeli foreign policy. Its central theme is Jewish powerlessness. Livni has expressed this basic guiding notion in every major foreign policy address she has given since late 2005. Most recently, she repeated her view at a speech at Tel Aviv University's Institute for National Security Studies on June 22.

There Livni explained that Israel's legitimacy as the Jewish state is conditional. The Jewish people's right to sovereignty is completely dependent on Israel's acceptance by the international community. And in her mind, that acceptance is completely contingent on the push to establish a Palestinian state.

As she put it, "Today, the existence of Israel is being delegitimized, not just its physical survival, but also its existence as the national home for the Jewish people... Only the fact that a profound international argument is being waged because of the Palestinians' demand for their own national state leads the world to perceive Israel's demand to be recognized as a national home for the Jewish people as legitimate... That means that [the Palestinians‚] demand solidifies and reinforces the perception of the existence of Israel as the national home of the Jewish people."

In other words, as Livni sees things, if Israel is not perceived as wholly committed to Palestinian statehood - by the Arabs and the West alike - then the world will never accept Israel and therefore, in her view, Israel's right to exist will disintegrate.

Livni's doctrine is unacceptable for two basic reasons. First, it is inherently bigoted against Jews. Livni's world view is built on the assertion that unlike every other nation on earth, the Jewish nation has no inherent, natural right to self-determination.

Moreover, from her perspective, Israel itself is completely powerless to change the situation. It cannot defend itself in international arenas. It can only bow to the prevailing winds and hope for the best. So in Livni's view, the fact that Israel has already existed as the sovereign Jewish state for 60 years has in no way changed the Jewish people's status. We are just as vulnerable to the political machinations of others today as we were for 2000 years of stateless exile, and we are fated to always be powerless. By her lights, our hard-won sovereignty is an empty shell that can never be filled.

LIVNI'S DOCTRINE does not merely make clear that she is a deeply limited thinker. It also exposes her as a follower. British Field Marshal Bernhard Montgomery once said, "My definition of leadership is this: The capacity and the will to rally men and women to a common purpose and the character which inspires confidence." The essence of leadership is the ability to present people a vision of a goal and then rally them to work with you towards achieving it.

Livni's world view is completely antithetical to this basic central notion of leadership. Far from rallying the people to a common purpose, she tells us that there is no goal we can achieve. As far as she's concerned, our state is nothing at all. Our power is nothing. Our collective will to persevere is counter-productive. Our heritage has value only if outsiders recognize it. Our rights are only as great as others' willingness to accept them.

Livni is not the first empty shell to be proclaimed by Israel's media as the next great white hope. Others, such as former IDF chief of staff Lt. Gen. (ret.) Amnon Lipkin-Shahak and former Labor party leader Amram Mitzna, have also enjoyed that distinction. After years of media build-up, both men were quickly exposed as followers once they were actually challenged to lead.

It can only be hoped that Livni will be similarly challenged and so exposed before she is propelled to Israel's top spot. The nation can scarcely afford to be led by another weak-kneed sheep.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

On Sunday Prime Minister Ehud Olmert will bring the matter of IDF reserve soldiers Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser before his cabinet. The two reservists, who are presumed dead, have not been heard from since they were kidnapped to Lebanon by Hizbullah on July 12, 2006. Olmert will instruct his ministers to vote on whether Israel should release Samir Kuntar and three Hizbullah terrorists from its prisons to secure the return of their bodies.

On April 21, 1979, Kuntar and four other terrorists infiltrated Israel from Lebanon. Kuntar entered the Nahariya apartment belonging to Danny and Smadar Haran and their daughters, two-year-old Yael and Einat, a four-month-old baby. Kuntar forced Danny and Einat to the beach below. There he shot Danny in the head and then drowned him in the sea. He crushed Einat's skull on a rock with his rifle butt. Smadar evaded capture by hiding in a crawlspace of their apartment with Yael. While trying to keep Yael silent, Smadar inadvertently suffocated her.

Kuntar has pledged that if released, he will join Hizbullah and continue his quest to bring about the destruction of Israel. He has no regrets.

As the government ministers vote to release Kuntar and his associates in exchange for Goldwasser and Regev's bodies, Ofer Dekel, Olmert's point man for hostage negotiations, will be sitting in Cairo. There he is negotiating the price of releasing IDF soldier Gilad Schalit, who for two years has been held hostage by Hamas and its fellow terror groups in Gaza. Unlike Regev and Goldwasser, Schalit is presumed alive. His captors have forced him to send messages to his parents demanding that Israel release Palestinian terrorists in exchange for his freedom.

According to the Egyptian media, Hamas is demanding 1,000 terrorists now in Israeli jails in exchange for Schalit. Most of them are convicted murderers. For its part, the government has expressed its willingness to release murderers for Schalit. But it is still unclear how many.

Among the many killers whose release Hamas demands are the masterminds of the Seder massacre at the Park Hotel in Netanya where 30 people were murdered on March 27, 2002. According to the Arab media, most of the masterminds of suicide bombings in recent years are on Hamas's list.

It is impossible to know precisely how many Israelis will be killed in the future if the deals now on the table are approved. But past experience shows that at a minimum, dozens of Israelis now innocently going about their business will be murdered by the terrorists Israel releases. And at a minimum, one or two Israelis will be abducted by Hamas or Hizbullah or one of their sister terror organizations. They will be abducted in Israel or while they are travelling abroad and they will be brought to Lebanon or Gaza and the cycle of blood extortion and psychological warfare will begin anew.

That Israel will pay a price in blood if the deals go through is a certainty. That more Israelis will meet the fates of Schalit, Regev and Goldwasser is a certainty. The only thing we do not know today is the names of the victims. They could be any one of us. Indeed, they are all of us. For all of us are equally targeted simply by virtue of the fact that we are Israelis.

Given these certainties, it is obvious that the deals now on the table ought to be rejected completely. And yet, they will both almost certainly be approved. The fact that this is the case is yet another damning indictment of Israel's elected leaders and its media. In equal parts, they share the blame for the fact that Israel is about to accede to Faustian bargains that will bring untold suffering to the country.

TO DATE, the only clear public call to reject these deals was made by former IDF chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. (res.) Moshe Ya'alon. At a conference on military leadership Tuesday, Ya'alon argued against the deals explaining, "In some situations, the price to pay as part of the deal is much heavier than the price of losing the captive soldier."

Ya'alon's statement should have been a springboard for a reasoned debate. But the local media would have none of it. Rather than enable a responsible debate, the media called on Schalit's father, Noam Schalit, to rebut Ya'alon.

Noam Schalit brutally and unfairly denounced Ya'alon as a political operative. In his words, "No politician or political operative has the right to determine the fate of an IDF POW, except a commander during battle. Ya'alon was an army commander, but today he is mainly a politician and a political operative. He and anyone else can determine a POW's fate only if it concerns their own son."

Piling on, Goldwasser's father, Shlomo Goldwasser, said, "Such words can only be spoken by a man whose son is not held captive by the enemy. He would have spoken differently had the matter been a personal concern of his."

The brutal truth is that the hostages' fathers have things precisely backwards. With all due respect, it is they that should not be listened to.

Through no fault of their own, the Regev, Goldwasser and Schalit families have become the mouthpieces of Hizbullah and Hamas. This is as natural as it is tragic.

The moment their sons were abducted, the Schalit, Regev and Goldwasser families also became prisoners. In constant agony over the fate of their sons, these families are incapable of acknowledging the cruel and devastating fact that the safety of three soldiers cannot be placed above Israel's national security. In their unmitigated suffering, they cannot come to terms with this horrible fact because for them the country, and indeed the world, is made up of their loved ones. This is the natural human condition. Each person's world is defined by the presence and absence of his loved ones. For the Goldwassers, Regevs and Schalits, Israel is a meaningless, cold, dark place when it doesn't include their sons Ehud, Eldad and Gilad.

And it is precisely for this reason that they cannot be allowed to dictate policy. It is precisely for this reason that the only ones who can responsibly weigh Israel's options for releasing them are those who are not personally affected by their plight.

IN 2005, then-prime minister Ariel Sharon had his ministers vote on a proposed deal in which Israel would release hundreds of terrorists in exchange for the bodies of IDF soldiers Benny Avraham, Omar Suweid and Adi Avitan, and for Elhanan Tenenbaum, an Israeli drug dealer held hostage by Hizbullah. Among the few ministers who voted against the deal was former Prisoner of Zion Natan Sharansky.

Sharansky recalls that Sharon called him the evening before the vote in an effort to secure his support. "He told me, 'As a former prisoner, you above all should understand our moral responsibility to bring about their release.'"

Sharansky responded that, indeed, "As a prisoner, it is important to know that your country is doing everything it can to secure your release. But it is also true that you are not willing to be released at any price. There are things that are more important than your personal survival."

It is a stinging indictment of Israel's political and media culture that the debate about these life-threatening deals has been dominated by the impassioned and tragic pleas of the hostages' families. As Sharansky notes, if as Messieurs Schalit and Goldwasser argue, issues of paramount national security are to be determined by the parents of soldiers, then no government can ever commit forces to battle. It is an abdication of national responsibility for Olmert to send the Goldwasser, Regev and Schalit families to his colleagues to beg them to vote in favor of these blood deals. And it is an abdication of responsibility by the media when they provide these terrified, victimized families with an open microphone to rail against our politicians for refusing to have mercy on them.

Due to Hizbullah's and Hamas's deliberate, evil designs, the Goldwasser, Schalit and Regev families find themselves set apart from the rest of their countrymen. And since their personal suffering is easier to understand than the general suffering of the public if the murderers go free, it is difficult, but not impossible to understand what is at stake.

Again, that the price is not clear is the fault of the media and the pandering politicians. Disgracefully, both have left the Israeli people as a whole unrepresented in this debate.

AND THIS is not a unique situation. In recent years, led by the hydra of its media and self-interested politicians, the Israeli public has had next to no representation in the public square. This came across clearly in the politicians' handling and the media's coverage of the other major story of the week. That story of course was the backroom deal forged Tuesday night between the Labor Party and Kadima that torpedoed the opposition's plan to hold a preliminary vote Wednesday to dissolve the Knesset and move to general elections in November.

The deal, in which Kadima committed itself to holding a primary for its leadership post in September, guaranteed the Kadima-Labor-Shas government another nine months in power. Olmert, Labor Chairman Ehud Barak and their surrogates have defended the deal by arguing that what Israel needs most now is political stability. The only one harmed by their decision, they proclaimed, is Likud leader Binyamin Netanyahu. The media parroted their arguments, scoffing at Likud politicians for "sewing their ministerial suits too early."

As with the hostages-for-terrorists deals, by personalizing the issue at hand, both the politicians and the media ignored the public. The reason that "stability" can only be assured by preventing elections is that for the past two years, public opinion polls have consistently shown that the public wants to replace the Kadima-Labor-Shas government with a Likud-led government. It is not the personal ambitions of Likud politicians that were scuttled on Tuesday night. It was the public's will.

It may seem crass to conflate issues affecting Israel's national security with issues affecting the identity of Israel's national leadership. It can be argued that they are unrelated. But the fact of the matter is that in both cases, no one is representing the public interest. In their rush to treat general issues as personal stories, whether of victimized families or of ambitious politicians, both our media and our leaders behave as if there are no general consequences for their actions.

Personal stories are always powerful. Whether they are tragic, titillating or irritating, they never fail to attract our attention. But their attraction must not dwarf matters of national concern. Looking ahead, Israel's troubles will not end until our leaders and our media finally accept that Israel's collective fate is not the personal affair of any one of us.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

What on earth could have prompted the Israeli government to negotiate the current "cease-fire" with Hamas? What could have brought the government to negotiate with this Iranian proxy group which makes no bones about its intention to use the lull in fighting to expand its arsenal and army ahead of the next round of fighting? What could have motivated Jerusalem to pave the way for Hamas's acceptance as a legitimate regime in the international arena?

The most vocal advocate of embracing Hamas has been Defense Minister Ehud Barak. And on the heels of the "truce," Barak and his associates are now pushing for the government to approve Hamas's demand that Israel release of up to a thousand terrorists from its prisons in exchange for Gilad Schalit, who was illegally kidnapped to Gaza two years ago.

In an attempt to explain his actions, Barak spoke last week to sympathetic Ha'aretz columnist Ari Shavit. In a supportive column, Shavit explained that Barak himself is under no illusion about the nature of Hamas or the chances of reaching a long-term accommodation with the Iranian-controlled jihadist movement that seeks Israel's destruction. The rationale for the move, he explains is Barak's assertion that the only way to justify a military operation - which will involve military and civilian casualties - is to first demonstrate that Israel had no other recourse but to act in its own defense.

As Shavit put it, "Since the repercussions of an operation could be grave, it is necessary first to try the other alternative - so that every mother liable to lose her son in the Gaza alleyways will know. So that every civilian in the Gaza envelope liable to get hit during the fighting with Hamas will know. So that Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak will know that Israel did not choose a military move, which the Egyptians fear, before giving a chance to the diplomatic move they initiated."

SINCE THIS is the line being offered by the government today to justify its actions, it is worth considering it. The first question that arises is whether Barak's expressed concern about mothers of soldiers and Israelis who live within Hamas's rocket and missile range is genuine.

At Sunday's cabinet meeting, Shin Bet Director Yuval Diskin gave the government his first post-cease-fire intelligence briefing. Diskin told the cabinet ministers that since Thursday, Hamas has stepped up its arms smuggling and military training. The significance of his statement is clear. The Hamas that Israel will confront in the aftermath of Barak's cease-fire will be a more formidable foe that it was before the cease-fire. And consequently, more soldiers will need to sacrifice their lives in the postponed confrontation. And since Hamas is using this lull to expand its arsenals, it will no doubt expand the range of its missiles. Consequently, more Israeli civilians will be attacked by Hamas rockets and missiles in the inevitable, delayed showdown than would have been under fire if it had been launched this week.

In other words, far from being informed by his concern for Israeli civilians and the families of soldiers, Barak's embrace of Hamas as a negotiating partner has ensured that more Israelis will be burying their loved ones when the cease-fire leads inevitably to war. Indeed, it is because of this that residents of Sderot have been the loudest proponents of military action and the angriest opponents of the government's cease-fire agreement with Hamas.

So if Barak is unconcerned with the lives of Israeli soldiers and civilians, who is he playing to in negotiating the cease-fire?

LIKE MANY Israeli leaders in recent years, Barak is concerned with how the Israeli appeasement lobby will react to a confrontation. He hopes that by appeasing Hamas now, these people - many of whom are Labor Party members and voters - will forgive him when the inevitable occurs.

Israel's appeasement lobby is comprised of Israeli Arabs, the Meretz party to which post-Zionist Labor voters and politicians can always defect, university professors, and small but well-funded pressure groups like Uri Avineri's Gush Shalom organization and Peace Now. Here it bears mention that the Labor party's membership drives in Arab villages in recent years have given its Arab members - who vote as a bloc - a controlling influence over the results of Labor party primaries that determine the identity of the party leader and Labor's Knesset faction. Many Labor leaders - like former party chief Binyamin Ben Eliezer who was unseated by Arab Labor party members - have bemoaned this fact and noted that Arab members of Labor don't even vote for the party in general elections.

What is most disturbing about Barak's pandering to Israel's appeasement lobby is that past experience has shown clearly that Israel's appeasement lobby is itself unappeaseable. That is, there nothing that Israel's enemies can do that will cause members of Israel's appeasement lobby to support IDF operations.

ON JUNE 1, 2001, a Palestinian bomber exploded himself at the Dolphinarium nightclub in Tel Aviv and murdered 21 Israeli teenagers. The public outcry was deafening. Popular support for a counter terror offensive aimed at destroying the Palestinian Authority and killing or expelling arch-terrorist Yassir Arafat was at an all-time high as the dimensions of the massacre, and the identity of the victims became clear.

Yet then-prime minister Ariel Sharon ignored the public and refused to act. As his spokesmen made clear, Sharon was concerned that the Israeli appeasement lobby would join forces with Europe to condemn such an IDF operation. And so, in an attempt to appease his far-Left antagonists, Sharon waited ten months to act. During that time, he engaged in fruitless US and European sponsored talks with the Palestinians. He bowed to their pressure and began referring to Judea and Samaria as "occupied," and so demoralized his own constituents. And as he took these steps, another 250 Israelis were murdered by the Palestinians.

Sharon approved Operation Defensive Shield in the aftermath of the Palestinian massacre of 30 Israelis celebrating the Passover Seder at the Park Hotel in Netanya. While his supporters often laud Sharon for his courage in acting, the fact is that had Sharon not acted after the Passover massacre, the public and his party would likely have booted him out of office.

Sharon's long refusal to defend his citizens from murder by the Palestinian massacre machine did not win him any sympathy with the appeasers. During Defensive Shield Uri Avineri from Gush Shalom and Israeli professors like Niv Gordon rushed to Arafat's headquarters in Ramallah to act as "human shields," physically opposing IDF operations. Israeli professors signed petitions calling for foreign divestment from Israel and urged their students to refuse to serve in reserve duty. Arab Israeli leaders like MKs Ahmed Tibi and Azmi Bishara similarly joined forces with Arafat. And of course, Europe experienced its worst wave of anti-Semitic attacks since the Holocaust as European leaders, joined by then UN secretary general Kofi Annan, and their media organs and international human right organizations lined up behind Arafat and accused Israel of committing war crimes.

IN THE end, the only ones who actively supported the IDF's 2002 counter-offensive were the Israeli public, the US public, and world Jewry. And ironically, these were the same forces that would have supported an IDF offensive after the Dolphinarium massacre ten months earlier. The US government - which did not stridently object to Operation Defensive Shield - acted no differently than it would have if Israel had taken action at that earlier juncture. So Sharon's decision to avert confrontation for ten long months - during which 250 Israelis were murdered and thousands were wounded - accomplished nothing.

But what about Barak's argument about Egypt? Will Egypt support a future IDF operation in Gaza when the cease-fire it has mediated falls apart? The answer here is similarly obvious: Of course not. Since 2000, when Egypt began hosting "cease-fire" talks among various terror masters in Cairo, the Mubarak regime has done more than any other government to legitimize Hamas.

Moreover, in diplomatic forums, Israel has no greater enemy than Egypt. Cairo uses every international and regional stage to attack the Jewish state.

Then too, Egypt has permitted Hamas to use its territory as its logistical base for arming Gaza and sending hundreds of terror operatives to Iran and Lebanon for training.

Egypt has done all of this because it believes that its national interests are advanced by weakening Israel. Were Egypt to support an Israeli offensive against Gaza, it would be strengthening Israel. And so under no circumstances will Cairo ever support an IDF operation against Hamas. Pretending it will is to engage in reckless fantasizing.

SO THEN, why has Barak led the government to embrace Hamas as a negotiating partner and a legitimate regime in Gaza?

We are left with two possible explanations. Either Barak is risking the lives of Israeli soldiers and civilians to pander to the most radical elements of Israeli society while seeking to win sympathy points from Cairo in a general election campaign, or he is gullible enough to believe that Israel's radical left and the Egyptian regime are moved by facts rather than interests.

It is hard to know which explanation is more distressing.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post. 

The Olmert-Livni-Barak-Yishai government's liquidation sale of Israel's strategic assets opened officially this week. Iran's proxies have pounced on the merchandise.

The first asset sold was the security of southern Israel. The Olmert-Livni-Barak-Yishai government's "cease-fire" with Hamas transferred all power to determine the fate of the residents of southern Israel to Iran's Palestinian proxy.

Under the "agreement," Hamas will refrain from attacking Sderot, Ashkelon, Netivot and surrounding kibbutzim for as long as it serves its interests. Since temporarily halting its attacks on southern Israel is the only thing that Hamas has agreed to do, it will use the lull in fighting to build up its arsenal and its military infrastructures in Gaza. When it has built up its forces sufficiently, or when its Iranian overlords give it the order, Hamas will again attack southern Israel. And when it reengages, it can be assumed that it will do so with a vastly expanded missile range. So under the guise of the "cease-fire," Hamas will place hundreds of thousands more Israelis at its mercy.

The Olmert-Livni-Barak-Yishai government's agreement with Hamas does more than sell out the security of the South. The agreement also divests Israel of its former ability to isolate Hamas diplomatically. Fatah's renewal of negotiations toward reconciling with Hamas is a direct consequence of Israel's actions. As these talks unfold, it is clear to all concerned that they will not lead to any sort of power sharing agreement between the two parties. Hamas today holds all the power in Palestinian society. Israel's acceptance of Hamas's power over the safety of Israeli citizens only amplified this fact. Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas - who cannot even travel to Nablus without IDF protection - is not approaching Hamas as an equal, but as a supplicant.

Moreover, Israel's willingness to allow Gazans to enter Israel, and its acceptance of Hamas's control over the Rafah international terminal that separates Gaza from Egypt, constitutes de facto Israeli recognition of the Hamas regime in Gaza. And the direct consequence of Israel's diplomatic and strategic capitulation to Hamas is that no one in either the Arab world or the West today will agree to isolate or boycott Hamas.

But the Olmert-Livni-Barak-Yishai government apparently doesn't care. Israel's leaders actually don't want anyone to isolate or boycott Hamas anymore. The government's reported negotiations regarding the deployment of an all-Arab "peacekeeping" force in Gaza in a later phase of the "cease-fire" make clear that Israel is pushing for Hamas's international legitimization.

After all, unlike Israel, Hamas would never allow any government that doesn't recognize its legitimacy to deploy forces in its territory or along its borders. So any Arab force that deployed in Gaza or along Gaza's borders would have to recognize Hamas's regime. Beyond that, of course, Israel's advocacy of such a force indicates that the government has no interest in ever confronting Hamas militarily and is ready to tie the hands of any future Israeli government to do so since the presence of Arab forces in Gaza will render it much more difficult for Israel to defend itself. For if such a force is deployed, any future counter-terror operation in Gaza is liable to cause casualties among foreign Arab soldiers and so risk escalating the conflict to the level of regional war.

Israel's decision to embrace Hamas is so outrageous that even the US State Department apparently hasn't had a chance to get its bearings. Reacting to the news on Wednesday, State Department deputy spokesman Tom Casey said, "Saying you've got a loaded gun to my head but you're not going to fire today is far different from taking the gun down, locking it up, and saying you're not going to use it again." The agreement "hardly takes Hamas out of the terrorism business," Casey added.

The "cease-fire" with Hamas also has direct implications for Judea and Samaria. If Hamas holds its fire for six months, then Israel will be obliged to end its counter-terror operations in Judea and Samaria. That is, if Hamas keeps its powder dry until January, Israel will effectively enable it to assert its control over Judea and Samaria and so place Iran in control of the outskirts of Jerusalem, Kfar Saba, Afula and Netanya.

IF THE US was aghast at the Olmert-Livni-Barak-Yishai government's capitulation to Hamas, UN officials are aghast at its second asset drop. This week the government conducted its second round of negotiations toward the surrender of the Golan Heights to Syria. Speaking of the surrender talks to a group of Israeli diplomats, Terje Roed-Larsen, the UN Secretary General's Special Envoy for the implementation of UN Security Council Resolution 1559, condemned the move, arguing just by holding the negotiations, "Israel has given Syria a huge gift, without thus far receiving anything in exchange."

Larsen continued bitterly, "Syria is receiving legitimacy for free. Europe is courting the Syrians because of the negotiations with Israel, and they are no longer being asked to give anything in exchange."

Indeed, far from moderating their behavior, the Syrians seem only to have strengthened their already intimate ties with Iran since Israel initiated the surrender talks last month. Reacting to the second round of talks, Iran's Ambassador to Syria, Sayyed Ahmed Moussavi, told a German news agency that Iranian-Syrian ties have strengthened still further over the past four months. Moussavi, who also serves as a general in Iran's Revolutionary Guards and as a senior adviser to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, hinted that Iran is planning on sharing its nuclear arsenal with Syria. As he put it, "Islam taught us to pass on our knowledge and we can pass our [nuclear] experience to Syria if it wants it."

In its rush to obliterate Israel's defensive positions, the Olmert-Livni-Barak-Yishai government apparently doesn't care that Iran may well attack Israel with nuclear warheads launched from a post-withdrawal Golan Heights. What is most important to the government is to make Syria look good. And so, following the second round of negotiations with the Syrians, Olmert practically got down on his hands and knees to beg Assad to meet with him face to face when they visit Paris together next month. The two have been invited by French President Nicholas Sarkozy to participate in the launch of his Mediterranean Union initiative on July 13. Assad, no doubt enjoying the moment, rejected Olmert's pleas. As Larsen warned, Assad has no reason to pay for something he is already getting for free.

APPARENTLY, THE Olmert-Livni-Barak-Yishai government couldn't suffice with capitulation on three fronts in one week. And so it moved to a fourth one. Far from displaying alarm or anger over US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's decision to visit Beirut and give the US's blessing to the new Hizbullah-controlled Lebanese government, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert joined her defeatist bandwagon. He announced that he wishes to open negotiations with Iran's Lebanese proxy and to that end he is willing to surrender strategically critical Mount Dov - or what Hizbullah refers to as Shaba Farms - to Hizbullah. So eager is Olmert to surrender, that even after Hizbullah's puppet Prime Minister Fuad Saniora rejected his offer, he reiterated it.

Like Assad and Hamas, Hizbullah sees no reason to honor Olmert and his colleagues with direct talks. As Hizbullah parliamentarian Nawar Sahili said this week, "If they really want to give us back our land, they can withdraw."

Finally, there is the Olmert-Livni-Barak-Yishai government's handling of the Israeli soldiers being held hostage by Hamas and Hizbullah. The government agreed to the "cease-fire" with Hamas without securing Gilad Schalit's release from captivity. Rather than acknowledge that they have likely signed his death warrant, the government insists that it's not done capitulating. It will begin begging Hamas to accept hundreds of Palestinian murderers jailed in Israeli prisons in exchange for Schalit next Tuesday.

As for Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser, who were kidnapped to Lebanon by Hizbullah two years ago and haven't been heard from since, the Olmert-Livni-Barak-Yishai government is poised to spring arch-murderer Samir Kuntar from prison together with three other Hizbullah terrorists in exchange for their release - dead or alive.

In a naked attempt to divert the public's attention away from its surrender drive, Thursday morning the government initiated a violent confrontation with Israeli residents of Samaria by ordering the destruction of homes in the community of Yitzhar. In other words, while surrendering to Iranian proxies on four fronts, the government has turned its guns against Israeli citizens.

THE GOVERNMENT'S actions no doubt increase prospects for a major war. But beyond that, it is important to note that Israel is discarding its strategic assets in the face of the burgeoning threat of nuclear annihilation.

No doubt buoyed by the government's strategic incapacitation, Iran mockingly told the Europeans that it will be happy to consider their European-American offer to build Iran nuclear reactors and normalize relations with it - so long as it is understood that they will accept their largesse while continuing their uranium enrichment activities.

In Israel's 60-year history, there is no precedent for the government's actions this week. And if history is any guide, Israel can only expect more of the same in the government's remaining time in office - however long that might be.

Until Olmert was elected prime minister in 2006, Defense Minister Ehud Barak enjoyed the distinction of being the worst prime minister in Israeli history. And Barak's behavior in his waning days in power is instructive for understanding what we can expect from Olmert and Livni and Barak today.

In July 2000, after he lost a no-confidence vote in the Knesset, Barak went to Camp David and shot for the moon, offering PLO chieftain Yasser Arafat a state in all of Gaza, 90 percent of Judea and Samaria and parts of Jerusalem. Arafat rejected his offer and went to war. Facing the rejection of the Israeli electorate at the polls, rather than curtail his capitulation efforts, Barak redoubled them. As Arafat's soldiers were busy blowing up buses and lynching Israeli soldiers, Barak offered Arafat still more land in Judea and Samaria and the Temple Mount.

And today, with Barak at his side, Olmert - who similarly has been rejected by the electorate - is repeating Barak's move fourfold. And he can be expected to continue on this course until elections are held and he is sent packing.

Next week the Knesset is expected to vote on a motion to disband and move to general elections. It is far from clear that the vote will pass. Barak and his Labor Party may well decide that capitulation suits them just fine and remain on board Olmert and Livni's sinking ship.

As the Israeli public stares at the wreckage and danger that has marked this disastrous week, hopefully it understands that this is what happens when we elect bad leaders. All of this was eminently predictable in 2006 when Kadima and Labor both ran for office on capitulationist platforms. Choices have consequences. And we will be suffering with the consequences of the 2006 elections until its winners are finally thrown from office.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

Caroline B. Glick is the deputy managing editor of the Jerusalem Post and the senior fellow for Middle Eastern Affairs at the Center for Security Policy. Author of the recently released book Shackled Warrior: Israel and the Global Jihad, Glick recently spoke to National Review Online editor Kathryn Jean Lopez about the region, the book, and the American presidency.

In an interview Sunday with Britain's Observer, US President George W. Bush made an important observation. The president argued that the common wisdom about the Middle East, which argues that Palestinian statelessness is the root of regional instability and jihadism, is incorrect. It is Iranian aggression rather than the lack of Palestinian sovereignty that lies at the root of the war.

As Bush put it, "When you go to the Middle East and you sit in my seat and listen, yes, there's concern about the Palestinian state. But the dialogue has shifted dramatically from 'solve the Palestinian state and you've solved the problems in the Middle East,' to, now, 'solve the Iranian issue and you solve the problems in the Middle East.' "

In acknowledging this basic reality, the president finally accepted the self-evident truth that people like US scholar Michael Ledeen, the author of The Iranian Time Bomb: The Mullah Zealots' Quest for Destruction, have been pointing out for years. It is Iran which is fueling the war in Iraq. It is Iran that has used its proxy in Lebanon to attack Israel and assert control over the country. It is Iran that stands behind the resurgence of the Palestinian jihad against Israel. And it is Iran that is developing nuclear weapons both to destroy Israel and to assert its control over global petroleum markets.

Given the continuously escalating nature of the Iranian threat to global security, Bush's remark was significant. And since Britain has led the campaign to convince the US that it is the absence of Palestinian sovereignty that stands at the root of the war, the fact that Bush made this statement of strategic lucidity to a British newspaper on the eve of his trip to Britain made it doubly significant.

So it is especially troubling and disappointing that in spite of the president's clear recognition of the nature of the Iranian challenge, he is refusing to confront Iran in any practical way.

As he moved through European capitals, Bush asserted repeatedly that he is completely committed to Europe's policy of diplomatically engaging Iran on its nuclear weapons program. He never once brought up the option of forcibly preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. Rather, he sufficed with calling for the three, toothless UN Security Council sanctions resolutions against Iran to be enforced.

BUSH'S STATEMENTS came against the backdrop of Iran's latest rejection of the West's latest offer to buy it off in exchange for a mere "suspension" of its uranium enrichment activities. That is, he embraced "negotiations" after Iran essentially said, again, that its nuclear weapons program is non-negotiable.

Bush tried to place a wedge between the Iranian regime and the Iranian people by arguing - correctly - that the Iranian people are suffering under the mullahocracy's jackboot. But he has also taken toppling the Iranian regime off the table. So the oppressed Iranian people have no reason to believe that were they to risk their lives in an attempt to free themselves of their leaders, the US would support them.

According to the US media, there was some talk a while back about a US strike against terror training camps in Iran that are used to train insurgents who are killing coalition forces and Iraqi citizens in Iraq. According to international law, such an attack would be permissible. But the Pentagon reportedly nixed the idea, arguing that while the US may start such a confrontation, it would have no control over how events would unfold.

This unfortunately, is a wild distortion of reality. The reality is that Iran has been actively engaged in confronting the US and its allies since 1979. And in every theater of action, it is Iran that has been calling all of the shots. A US strike against the terror training facilities in Iran would mark the first time that the US has ever seized the initiative in Iran's war against it and against the rest of the free world. So opposing such a strike is not an argument against confrontation, but an argument against acknowledging the existence of Iran's ongoing war against the US.

LEBANON IS one of Iran's key battlegrounds for regional dominance. Through its Hizbullah proxy, last month Iran consolidated its control over Lebanon. Hizbullah's bloody takeover of the country was capped off with the signing of the Doha agreement. In Qatar, Lebanon's defeated pro-democracy forces from the March 14 movement officially accepted Hizbullah control of the country by acquiescing to Hizbullah's demand for control over the Lebanese government.

Rather than accept that at Doha the Lebanese government became an open tool of Hizbullah, the Bush administration has decided to pretend - along with Europe - that nothing has happened. As far as the Bush administration and Europe are concerned, a pro-Western, democratically elected government still runs Lebanon's government.

Sadly, there is nothing new about this policy of denial. After the March 14 democracy movement successfully forced Syrian forces to withdraw from Lebanon in 2005, Hizbullah stepped in to protect Syrian and Iranian interests in the country by joining Fuad Siniora's supposedly pro-Western government. Like Europe, the US refused to acknowledge the fact that Hizbullah's partnership with Siniora rendered the Lebanese government - and with it the March 14 movement - proxies of Hizbullah and Iran. And so, prodded by France, throughout the 2006 Israel-Hizbullah war, the US ignored the fact that the Siniora government was nothing more than Hizbullah's diplomatic cover.

In 2006 the US and Europe justified their studied denial of Lebanon's political realities by arguing that Hizbullah was only a minority member of Siniora's coalition. This argument was never persuasive given that Hizbullah's Iranian-trained, financed and armed military force is more powerful than the Lebanese army. But it was a convenient excuse for inaction for leaders unwilling to acknowledge that Iran is the source of regional instability. Today, with Hizbullah in control of the Siniora government, this dubious argument has been wholly discredited. And yet the West's policy of denial has only escalated.

Immediately after the Doha agreement was concluded, the US announced its desire to expand its support for the Hizbullah-controlled Lebanese military. And Monday, Al Hayat reported that during his visit with French President Nicholas Sarkozy, Bush agreed to reward Hizbullah for its aggression directly.

Al Hayat reported that during his visit with Sarkozy, Bush agreed to accept Hizbullah's demand that Israel surrender its control over Mt. Dov - or what it refers to as the Shebaa Farms - to Lebanon. Israel's control over Mt. Dov has served as Iran's justification for its proxy's continued aggression against Israel since Israel withdrew from Lebanon in May 2000.

ISRAEL SEIZED control of Mt. Dov from Syria during the 1967 Six Day War. It was never considered Lebanese territory. In 2006, Lebanese Druse leader Walid Jumblatt stated outright that Hizbullah's claim to the vast, strategically critical area which separates the Syrian-controlled Golan Heights from the Upper Galilee was a complete fabrication. Yet, acting as Hizbullah's mouthpiece, in 2006 the Siniora government demanded that Israel surrender the area to Lebanon. Refusing to acknowledge that Siniora was controlled by Hizbullah, in August 2006 the US placed this groundless demand before the UN for consideration in the UN Security Council's Resolution 1701 which set the terms of the ceasefire.

And now, with Hizbullah - that is Iran - the undisputed ruler of Lebanon, Bush has reportedly accepted Hizbullah's unjustifiable demand for control over the area.

Then of course there is the Palestinian war against Israel, which Bush himself acknowledges is a consequence of Iranian aggression rather than its source. And yet, rather than embrace the policy which logically stems from this correct assessment - namely that the Palestinians' role as an Iranian proxy means that it makes no sense to support them - the Bush administration has made pressuring Israel to make concessions to the Palestinians the core of its Middle East policy. And in so doing, the administration has contributed to the solidification of Iran's rule in Gaza through Hamas and the expansion of Hamas's Iranian-controlled power in Judea and Samaria.

As is the case with the Hizbullah-controlled Siniora government, so with the Palestinians, the US refuses to acknowledge that the Fatah terror group is indistinguishable from and acts as diplomatic cover for the Hamas terror group. And so it forces Israel to make concessions to Fatah that directly endanger Israel and strengthen Hamas and Iran. As IDF commanders warned during Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's latest trip here this week, the thousands of US-trained Palestinian security forces that Rice forced Israel to permit to deploy in Jenin and Nablus last month have overseen the expansion of terror attacks against Israel and enabled Hamas to expand its influence. The same is the case in Ramallah.

Then too, IDF commanders warn that if Rice succeeds in forcing the weak and incompetent Israeli government to take down yet more roadblocks in Judea and Samaria, Israelis can expect for the Palestinians to begin shooting rockets and mortars at Jerusalem and central Israel from Judea and Samaria. That is, by purposely undermining Israel's military control over Judea and Samaria in favor of Fatah - which is Hamas's proxy - the Bush administration is actively promoting the expansion of Iran's control over Judea and Samaria.

Sunday it was reported that Pakistan may have sold designs for advanced nuclear warheads capable of being launched from Iran's Shihab-3 ballistic missiles to Iran. These reports came as Pakistan's new "democratic" government has signed agreements transferring control over border areas with Afghanistan to the Taliban and al-Qaida. That is, the report of Pakistan's nuclear proliferation activities came to light as Pakistan openly supports the war against NATO and Afghan national forces in Afghanistan.

For years, the US has been very careful not to attack Pakistani territory in spite of the fact that it is used as a sanctuary for the Taliban and al-Qaida because Pakistan has nuclear weapons. In other words, the US's inability to contest the actions of a nuclear proliferating, terror supporting state is the consequence of its refusal to take action to prevent Pakistan from acquiring nuclear weapons in 1998. And of course, compared with Iran, Pakistan is "moderate."

Throughout much of his presidency, and especially since 2006, what has been most notable about Bush's rhetoric is that it has been completely disconnected from his policies. As he considers the legacy he is about to leave behind, it will hopefully occur to the president that the only way to leave the world more secure is to match his policies towards Iran to his rhetoric.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

There's one thing you have to admire about the Iranians - they always tell you just what they think of you. They never beat around the bush.

On Tuesday, the day after Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki completed his three-day visit to Iran, his envoy to the Islamic Republic received a care package - delivered to his front door. When Iraqi Ambassador Muhammad Majid al-Sheikh's driver opened the package, he discovered it was a bomb.

In their best Farsi imitation of the Godfather, Iranian police spokesmen claimed that the package was not a bomb - but aquarium equipment. And in a way, they were right. The package was supposed to help Sheikh "sleep with the fishes."

Just as is the case with their Syrian allies, the Iranians view assassination as the easiest way to "signal" their displeasure with diplomatic developments. In this case, clearly the Iranians were acting out after what they considered to be a deeply disturbing discourse with Maliki.

Until recently, Maliki was viewed with suspicion by many observers due to his apparently warm relations with Iran. Indeed, ahead of his visit, just to make sure he got the message, US military commanders in Iraq stated clearly that they hoped Maliki would protest the fact that Iran is the central engine of the now waning but still murderous insurgency in Iraq. The Iraqi people too, expected him to be clear about the untenable state of affairs where Iran wages war against Iraq through proxies on the one hand, and waxes poetic about its great friendship with Iraq on the other.

Writing in Iraq's Al-Dustour newspaper ahead of Maliki's visit, editor-in-chief Bassim al-Sheikh opined, "Maliki's delegation will be presenting the Iranian side with irrefutable evidence of Iranian interference in Iraqi domestic affairs. In this light, the visit could prove to be a watershed in Iraqi-Iranian relations, especially now... that the covert game Iran has been playing in Iraq has become all too overt, with very few hidden cards left in Teheran's hand."

Then too, Iraq's Al-Sabah al-Jadid editorialized, "Maliki's visit to Iran could be the last chance for a rational settlement of any differences and a final dissipation of any misunderstanding that may still exist between us and our big neighbor. There is nothing in the lexicon of political pragmatism that will help us evade the consequences of living next door to this neighbor, as recent history has shown with such clarity."

Media reports of the visit included no details of what Maliki told his Iranian hosts. But given their attempt to assassinate his ambassador the day after he left, it can be assumed that the Iranians were uninterested in "a rational settlement of any differences." And indeed, it can be assumed that Maliki didn't mince any words as he discussed the war Iran is waging against his people.

What the media reports of Maliki's visit did highlight was Iran's apoplectic response to Baghdad's current negotiations with the US toward an accord on the modalities of the long-term deployment of US forces in Iraq. The Iranians - from supreme mullah Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad - were absolutely clear that from their perspective, if the Iraqis sign such an agreement, there will be hell to pay.

But the Iraqis have also been clear that they are interested in signing such an accord. While in its coverage of the negotiations, the Western media has concentrated on statements by Iranian-backed Iraqi lawmakers voicing their staunch opposition to the agreement, most Iraqis support it. They simply want to ensure that the agreement that is eventually signed protects their interests as a country. As Iraqi blogger Muhammad Fadhil noted last week in an article published on the Pajamas Media Web site, this is why the Iraqi government has "sent delegations to Germany, Japan and South Korea to listen to what they - and not the mullahs - have to say about [their experience with long-term US troop presence on their soil]."

The strategic agreement now being negotiated between the US and the Iraqi government is a watershed event. Five years after Saddam Hussein's terror-supporting, weapons of mass destruction-seeking regime was brought down by the US-led coalition, a democratically elected Iraqi government has emerged that views its strategic interests as aligned with the US's. Its forces are fighting side by side with US forces toward the shared goal of routing al-Qaida and Iranian-backed terror militias in Iraq. Indeed, in March, Maliki himself led the Iraqi assault on the Iranian controlled militias in Basra. Two months later, Iran had been routed not only in Basra, but in Sadr City in Baghdad where Iraqi and American forces fought side-by-side in street after street.

Although referred to as a security agreement, to all intents and purposes, the agreement that the US and Iraq are now negotiating is a peace agreement. As most political theorists will attest, peace agreements are contracts between countries with shared interests whose representatives sit down and write out how they will advance their shared interests together. So five years after the fall of Saddam, a multi-ethnic, multi-confessional democracy in Iraq has emerged that views the US as its primary ally.

This is what a strategic victory looks like.

NOT SURPRISINGLY, just as the meaning of developments in Iraq has escaped the notice of most Americans, so too, it has escaped the notice of most Israelis. And this is a shame for two reasons. First, it is a shame because Israel is missing out on the most significant development in our neighborhood since the Six Day War. And like the Six Day War, Operation Iraqi Freedom holds great opportunities for Israel. The second reason that Israel's almost complete ignorance of the significance of events in Iraq is a shame is because as Israel moves toward early elections, developments in Iraq point the way toward a new strategic framework for the next Israeli government to base its policy-making on.

For months, US commanders in Iraq have been saying that the Iraqi people cannot abide the Iranians, the Syrians or the Saudis. They know that these countries have been the chief sponsors of the insurgencies that have killed tens of thousands of Iraqi citizens over the past five years. From the mass graves of al-Qaida victims in Diyala Province to the death squads of Iranian-backed militias in Basra, the Iraqis know that these countries have acted with malice aforethought in their actions aimed at transforming Iraq into a massive killing field.

For Israeli ears, what is striking about the Iraqi discourse is the near total absence of anti-Israel or anti-Semitic propaganda. Indeed, there is no discussion about Israel at all. From the 1930s through the fall of Saddam's regime, Iraq was one of the central propagators of Arab hatred of Israel of both fascist and jihadist pedigrees. Successive Iraqi regimes have used hatred of Israel as a way of solidifying and justifying their tyranny. And now, for the first time, Israel isn't an issue.

The Iraqis are concerned about their future. Whether US forces remain in place for years to come under a President John McCain or they are summarily withdrawn by a President Barack Obama, the Iraqis know that one day they will be on their own. And they will need allies. They cannot trust their Arab neighbors, which treat the Shi'ite majority country now governing democratically with hostility and suspicion. Obviously Iran and Syria aren't good options. They will both be quick to pounce on a post-US withdrawal Iraq.

And then there is Israel.

THERE IS no reason to doubt that Israel has a potential strategic ally in Iraq today. Indeed, Iraq could become the next decade's version of Turkey in the 1990s or Iran in the 1960s and 1970s. Both in their day were Israel's primary regional ally.

Diplomatic and military discussions may be drawn out and difficult. They may even be exasperating. And depending on developments in Iran in the coming years they may never lead to the signing of a peace treaty on the White House lawn or the exchange of ambassadors. On the other hand, they might.

But what is clear enough is that today Iraq shares vital interests with Israel. It has common enemies. It has common challenges as a democracy. And it doesn't hurt that Palestinians are nearly universally reviled by Iraqis who view them as Saddam Hussein's most stalwart henchmen.

An Israeli-Iraqi alliance would help secure Jordan. It would frighten Syria and perhaps force Damascus to reconsider its alliance with Teheran. It would provide Israel with a new source of natural gas and so end its dependence on fickle Egypt. It would mitigate Israel's political isolation in the region. It would provide Iraq with a safe port in the Mediterranean for its oil exports in the event that the Shaat al-Arab is closed by Iran in a future war. Iraqi Shi'ite leaders could help draw Lebanese Shi'ites away from Iran's Lebanese proxy Hizbullah. Indeed, the potential of an Israeli-Iraqi alliance is seemingly endless.

A basic political fact of life stands at the heart of this theoretical Iraqi-Israeli alliance. Peace is possible for the first time between Israel and Iraq because, for the first time, Iraq perceives its interests as aligned with Israel. That is, peace is possible because at a very basic level, Iraqis today - whether they admit or not - are Israel's friends. And they know it.

And this raises the larger point that should inform the next Israeli government. Specifically, unlike what Israel's Left has been preaching for the past 20 years, peace is made with friends and not with enemies. It is impossible to make peace with enemies because enemies perceive their interests as being in competition with one another. And since peace agreements are nothing more than codifications of the modalities for acting on perceived shared interests, no peace treaty with an enemy is worth the paper it's written on.

It is hard today to find an Iraqi leader who overtly states his desire for peace with Israel. Mithal Alousi is the one heroic exception. But that is not important. By signing a peace treaty with the US and confronting Iran head-on, the Iraqis are making it abundantly clear where they believe their interests lie.

By way of comparison, of course, there are Iran's Palestinian and Syrian allies and proxies who claim that they are desirous of peace with Israel at the same time as their actions - and indeed their other statements - make clear that they perceive their interests as antithetical to Israel's. As a result, no matter how hard Israel tries, it will be unable to make peace with them - unless the Palestinian and Syrian perception of their interests changes.

There is little doubt that the Olmert-Livni-Barak-Yishai government - which has ignored Iraq throughout its tenure as it has capitulated to Iranian proxy after Iranian proxy - will fail to recognize this opportunity. But the next government's strategies should be informed by the call: Give peace with friends a chance!

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

The Olmert-Livni-Barak-Yishai government is marching the country into another military confrontation with an Iranian proxy army. As was the case in the last confrontation with an Iranian proxy army two years ago, the country's leaders are fully committed to Israel's strategic defeat in the current one.

Tuesday, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and Defense Minister Ehud Barak will meet ahead of Wednesday's security cabinet meeting to determine their preferred course of action in Gaza. As media reports and statements by the three's surrogates over the past several days make clear, Israel's political leaders oppose launching a military campaign aimed at defeating Hamas's Iranian directed, financed, trained and armed army and dislodging Hamas's jihadist regime from power.

Indeed, as their actions and statements over the past several months make clear, what Israel's political leaders really aspire to is a cease-fire agreement with Iran's Palestinian proxy regime. Under the proposed cease-fire, Hamas will suspend or scale back its illegal missile war against Israeli civilians in the South. In return, Israel will effectively accept Hamas rule of Gaza. Israel will allow Hamas to continue to build up its military forces in Gaza and have open access to the Sinai.

In light of Hamas's negotiations with Fatah towards the reestablishment of a Hamas-dominated Palestinian Authority unity government, such a cease-fire will also entail an end to the economic isolation of Gaza. Since they would be formally governed by Fatah - Israel's "peace partner," Gazans will be allowed to use Israeli ports and even build their own seaport and perhaps reopen their airport in Rafah. The debate in the West over whether or not to negotiate with Hamas will effectively end - with an international embrace of Hamas as Fatah's partner.

For the Olmert-Livni-Barak-Yishai government, a cease-fire is attractive politically. By providing a temporary respite from the jihadist missile attacks against southern Israel, the cease-fire will suspend the local media's coverage of the grave and gathering threat to Israel's security in the South. And the lull in media coverage of the Iranian threat in Gaza will provide breathing room for the scandal-ridden and deeply unpopular Olmert-Livni-Barak-Yishai government as it seeks desperately to avoid new general elections.

Gifted politicians that they are, Olmert, Livni and Barak know that if they decide Tuesday to reject the IDF's pleas to conduct a military campaign to dislodge Hamas again and opt instead to sign the Egyptian-mediated cease-fire deal with Iran's Palestinian army, they will be properly accused of political opportunism and cowardice by the media and their political opponents. So to sign on to a deal with Hamas, they need military cover.

As The Jerusalem Post reported last week, that smokescreen will likely be what Olmert, Livni, Barak and their surrogates refer to as a "medium-sized military option" against Hamas. The aim of their preferred military approach is not to defeat Hamas. They just want to "send it a message." In plain English, what their preferred military option involves is committing IDF forces to battle in numbers insufficient to defeat Hamas. IDF forces will be killed in battle and in the end, Hamas will still control Gaza. But in their public speeches, Olmert, Livni and Barak will claim victory arguing that now that they have "sent Hamas a message" they can sign the cease-fire agreement.

For their part, the local media will justify the government's decisions and agree to present them to the public as a strategic achievement. The media can be expected to do so for two reasons. First, they will not wish to upset the families of the soldiers who will die in the campaign by noting that their lives were sacrificed for nothing. And second, the leftist media is uninterested in general elections which will bring Likud to power and so they will work to block them by collaborating with the government in its attempts to pretend that the "medium-sized military operation" was a good idea.

As for the political opposition, as was the case in the Second Lebanon War, they will be unwilling to criticize the government while Israeli forces are risking their lives in battle. Afterwards, they will fear being castigated by the government and its media flacks as "unpatriotic" or "warmongering" if they criticize the outcome of the "medium-sized military operation" that will leave Hamas and Iran strengthened and free to expand their control to Judea and Samaria.

In short, Olmert, Livni and Barak are about to decide to sacrifice the lives of IDF soldiers in order to delude the public into believing that signing a cease-fire agreement that leaves Hamas in charge of Gaza and in a position to take over Judea and Samaria is a strategically sound policy.

This drastic assertion could be easily attacked as delusional and even paranoid if we hadn't been here before. But we have.

Two years ago, Israel was the victim of naked aggression when Hizbullah forces launched an unprovoked attack on an IDF patrol, killed three soldiers and abducted Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser while pummeling northern Israel with Katyusha rockets and short-range missiles. Although Olmert at the time declared war against Hizbullah, he, Livni and then defense minister Amir Peretz refused to order the IDF to defeat Hizbullah.

They refused for weeks to launch a ground campaign. They refused for weeks to call up reserve units. Interested in "sending a signal" to Hizbullah rather than defeating its forces, for four weeks they ordered the IDF to conduct operations with no operational logic in which IDF forces were killed in battles that had no strategic purpose.

Then, after squandering some 30 days of fruitless fighting, reacting to the public outcry against his incompetence, Olmert belatedly ordered a ground assault of South Lebanon. He ordered IDF forces to move in helter-skelter and attempt to complete an operation that was planned to take more than 96 hours in 48 hours. Most egregiously, the entire operation was launched after the UN Security Council had passed resolution 1701 defining the terms of Israel's cease-fire with Iran's Lebanese proxy army.

That is, even if the campaign had been successful, it would have had no impact on the outcome of the war which had already been determined - with Israeli support - in New York. And yet, to assuage the public demand for victory, the Olmert-Livni-Peretz-Yishai government launched the last minute "medium-sized" 48-hour attack in which 33 IDF forces were killed in a battle for nothing.

Resolution 1701 left Hizbullah intact and provided the illegal army of jihad with unprecedented political legitimacy. Under the cover of 1701, Iran and Syria have rebuilt Hizbullah's forces, which in turn have reasserted their military control over South Lebanon.

Just last week Barak warned that Hizbullah is setting up fortified positions along the border. He also said, "The Syrians are working in intimate cooperation with Hizbullah, and they are in large part responsible for the transfer of weapons and supplies to Hizbullah. The ultimate responsibility, as far as we're concerned, lies with Hizbullah on the one hand, and with the Iranians and the Syrians on the other." Barak's statements came two weeks after Hizbullah effectively overthrew the pro-Western Saniora government and through the good offices of the Qataris, forced the March 14 democracy movement to sign the Doha agreement, which transfers control of the country to Hizbullah. Hizbullah leader Hassan Nasrallah was then quick to announce his army's subservience to Teheran.

The Olmert-Livni-Barak-Yishai government responded to Hizbullah's violent takeover of the Lebanese government by rewarding it. As Michael Young of Beirut's Daily Star wrote recently, Hizbullah is presenting its swap of dead IDF soldiers' body parts for Hizbullah spy Nissim Nasser as a first step towards a massive Israeli release of Hizbullah and Palestinian terrorists from its prisons in exchange for Regev and Goldwasser.

Such a prisoner release will play directly into Hizbullah's hands. It will effectively justify Hizbullah's decision to go to war with Israel two years ago to the Lebanese public. Such justification is essential as Hizbullah moves forward towards gaining internal Lebanese acceptance of its role as ruler of Lebanon.

Beyond its effective support of Hizbullah, the Olmert-Livni-Barak-Yishai government is strengthening the Iranian-controlled axis by conducting negotiations toward the surrender of the Golan Heights with Syrian President and Iranian proxy Bashar Assad. Here too, Israel is signaling to Assad that his decision to cast his lot with Teheran was a wise one.

The international consequences of Israel's behavior have already been unmistakable. This week both French President Nicholas Sarkozy and British Foreign Minister David Miliband visited Lebanon and accepted Hizbullah's demand for control over Mt. Dov on the Golan Heights. Israel seized the strategically vital area which controls the approaches to the Galilee in the 1967 Six Day War from Syria. Hizbullah claimed that it is continued Israeli control of the area that justified its war of aggression two years ago.

This all brings us back to the situation in Gaza. In his post-Doha address, Nasrallah urged Hamas to follow his successful model of war against Israel both in order to hasten Israel's destruction and to facilitate the extension of the terror group's control to Judea and Samaria. And of course, that is precisely what Hamas has been doing for the past two years.

The Olmert-Livni-Barak-Yishai government's political opponents have claimed that with the ongoing corruption probes against the prime minister, the government lacks the political legitimacy to conduct a military campaign in Gaza. This is a false assertion. As Israel's elected leaders, the Olmert-Livni-Barak-Yishai government has a duty to defend the country and the only way to do so is to launch a military campaign in Gaza.

The problem is that the Olmert-Livni-Barak-Yishai government is incompetent to successfully carry out such an essential campaign. As in Lebanon two years ago, so in Gaza today, the type of campaign that this government will launch will only endanger Israel still further.

Originally published in the Jerusalem Post.

Dr. Mohamed ElBaradei's most prominent personality trait is his chutzpah. Two weeks before Israel destroyed the North Korean-built nuclear reactor in Syria on September 6, ElBaradei, the director of the International Atomic Energy Agency, was complaining to Australian television about the US's decision to augment its military assistance to Israel by $30 billion over the next 10 years. The move, he said, would lead to a regional arms race.

As far as ElBaradei is concerned, diplomacy means never having to say you're sorry and always attacking people who actually care what you think. And so it is not surprising that ever since Israel destroyed the installation in al-Kibar, ElBaradei has reserved his sharpest attacks not for Syria, which was exposed as an illicit nuclear proliferator, but for Israel and the US.

Unlike Israel, Syria is a signatory of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. At this week's meeting of the IAEA's Board of Governors, ElBaradei discussed how - in breach of its treaty obligations - Syria has refused IAEA requests to inspect the bombed out site and three other suspected nuclear sites in the country.

The IAEA has been asking for permission to inspect al-Kibar since September. And since September Damascus has ignored the requests. Satellite photography has shown that Syria has used the intervening months to build a new structure over the destroyed reactor to hide it. Evidently Damascus is now comfortable with the situation on the ground because it has apparently agreed to allow UN inspectors to visit the site later this month.

Damascus's belated response to IAEA requests is anything but a sign that Syria is ready to come clean on its nuclear programs. While allowing inspectors at the altered al-Kibar site, Syria has refused IAEA requests to inspect three other military installations where it is suspected of developing nuclear weapons. Nuclear experts told news agencies this week that two of those sites are operational. One is suspected of having equipment that can reprocess nuclear material into the fissile core of warheads.

But ElBaradei doesn't really care. At the Board of Governors meeting this week he sufficed with the laconic statement that Damascus "has an obligation to report the planning and construction of any nuclear facility to the agency."

The countries that really got his goat were Israel and the US.

ElBaradei complained bitterly that the US waited until April to tell the IAEA what Israel bombed last September. And, of course, he attacked Israel for attacking the nuclear reactor in the first place.

In his words, "It is deeply regrettable that information concerning this installation was not provided to the agency in a timely manner and that force was resorted to unilaterally before the agency was given an opportunity to establish the facts."

ElBaradei has headed the UN's nuclear watchdog agency for six years. His stewardship of the IAEA landed him the Nobel Peace Prize in 2005. Given the Nobel committee's open anti-Americanism and embrace of terrorists and their state sponsors, the committee's support for ElBaradei makes sense. For under ElBaradei's leadership, the IAEA has devoted itself to performing two tasks. It seeks to be informed of rogue regime's illicit nuclear weapons programs before those programs are exposed in the media and cause the IAEA embarrassment; and it works to ensure that nothing will be done to thwart these rogue regimes' nuclear weapons programs.

If he had to choose between the first and second goal, ElBaradei has been clear that he will always choose to protect rogue nuclear programs - even if they are hidden in plain sight. As he explained to the BBC in May 2007, "I have no brief other than to make sure we don't go into another war or that we go crazy killing each other."

Hinting at his reason for obfuscating Iran's quest for the atom bomb he added, "You do not want to give additional arguments to new crazies who say, 'Let's go and bomb Iran.'"

To prevent such "crazies" from acting, in August 2006 ElBaradei launched an attack against the US Congress. In an icy letter to the then-chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, Rep. Peter Hoekstra, ElBaradei attacked the committee's report on Iran's nuclear program that accused Iran of developing nuclear weapons and accused the IAEA of working to prevent conclusions from being drawn about the nature of Iran's nuclear program.

IT IS in light of ElBaradei's unrelenting work to protect Iran's nuclear program and his campaign against Westerners who wish to take concerted action to prevent Teheran from acquiring nuclear weapons that the IAEA's latest report on Iran is so remarkable.

The IAEA submitted its latest report to the UN Security Council and its own Board of Governors on Monday. A far cry from its anemic predecessors, the latest report is a smoking gun.

The report sets out considerable evidence implicating Teheran in an attempt to develop nuclear weapons. It also admits that Iran has failed to explain documented evidence of military aspects of its program.

Specifically, the IAEA report noted that Iran is building structures that fit the description of a nuclear test site. Iran has performed work designing a missile re-entry vehicle. It has conducted studies toward building a uranium conversion facility that would convert uranium yellowcake to UF4, or Green Salt - a process vital for producing uranium metal for weapons cores. Iran made advances toward adapting its Shihab-3 ballistic missiles to detonate some 650 meters above their targets - a capacity only relevant for nuclear warheads. It has developed and tested exploding bridgewire detonators "that could be applicable to an implosion-type nuclear device."

The IAEA report also warned that the Iranian Revolutionary Guards-owned company Kimia Maadan has been actively involved in the nuclear program, as have several other firms run by the Iranian military. These firms include the Physics Research Center, the Institute of Applied Physics, the Educational Research Institute and the Defense Industries Organization.

The IAEA's report is devastating. Indeed, it seems to back up the Mossad's warning that Iran could have an atomic arsenal by next year. At a minimum, it moves the international conversation about Iran's nuclear program from the question of whether Iran is building nuclear bombs to when Iran will acquire nuclear bombs.

THE QUESTION that naturally arises from the IAEA report is why did ElBaradei agree to publish it?

Given his openly stated objective of preventing anyone from attacking Teheran's nuclear installations, the only reasonable explanation for ElBaradei's behavior is that he is convinced that Iran's nuclear installations are safe. That is, ElBaradei is willing to point a finger at Iran because he is sure that neither the US nor Israel will prevent it from getting the bomb.

To have reached this conclusion, ElBaradei needed no further intelligence than the morning papers. Reading them, he would have seen that the US intelligence and foreign policy communities have decided to throw in the towel on the war everywhere other than Iraq. The US capitulation, which began with the Bush administration's decision to appease North Korea last year, went into full gear with December's publication of the National Intelligence Estimate on Iran which claimed it had ended its nuclear weapons program in 2003.

Then came the Bush administration's embrace of Palestinian statehood as what Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice referred to as "a vital US interest" in her address to AIPAC's policy conference this week.

After that came the downfall of Pakistani dictator and guardian of Pakistan's nuclear arsenal Pervez Musharraf. As the effective release of Pakistan's Dr. Strangelove, A.Q. Khan, from house arrest this week, and the new "democratic" Pakistani government's surrender of North and South Waziristan to the Taliban in recent weeks show, the US's support for Musharraf on the one hand, and failure to support or develop anti-jihadist forces in Pakistani society and the Pakistani military on the other, has brought about a situation where the US has no one to turn to in Pakistan today. Rather than take action to secure Afghanistan from the Pakistan-based Taliban or arrest Khan, the Bush administration has sufficed with whining and begging the new pro-jihad and anti-American "democratic" government to accept more US military assistance.

On the ideological front, the US has similarly capsized its war efforts. In April the Homeland Security Department distributed a memo instructing US officials not to use the terms "Islamic," "Islamist," "jihad" or "jihadist" to describe the US's enemy in the war. Moreover, the new guidance - which the State Department reportedly adopted happily - also asserts that it is wrong for the US to use the word "liberty" to describe what it hopes to replace jihad with in Muslim societies. From now on, the war is to be described as a campaign to bring "progress" to the Middle East. And the war is no longer a war. Rather, it is the "Global Struggle for Security and Progress."

But not everyone was satisfied with the new Orwellian terminology. Last week the Financial Times reported that Charles Allen, the Department of Homeland Security's undersecretary for intelligence and analysis, wrote a memo arguing that the term "war on terror" should also be dropped. In his view, the term creates "animus" toward the US in the Muslim world, which automatically (and unaccountably) associates terrorism with Islam.

And of course, in ordering US officials responsible for analyzing intelligence and conducting US diplomacy to ignore the nature of the enemy as well as the US's counter-ideology of liberty, the US is merely following the example of the EU and Britain, which abandoned any attempt to bring rationality into their intelligence analyses long ago. Given that these are the people who are responsible for assessing data on Iran's nuclear program, ElBaradei probably figured that he has nothing to worry about.

To all of this, of course, must be added the developments in Lebanon. Apparently, the US's new policy for Lebanon is to ignore the fact that two weeks ago, the Doha agreement between Hizbullah and the Saniora government transferred control of the country to Hizbullah and its state sponsor Iran. In her speech before AIPAC, Rice applauded the Doha agreement as a "positive step." Earlier in the week, in a visit to Beirut, Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Eric Edelman announced that the US intends to increase its assistance to the Lebanese army, which takes its orders from Hizbullah and Iran.

So through its serial capitulation to its enemies, the US has convinced ElBaradei that Washington has washed its hands of the war.

THAT OF course leaves Israel.

For the past five years, Israel's leaders - from Ariel Sharon to Ehud Olmert, Tzipi Livni, Ehud Barak and Eli Yishai - have acted as though Iran's nuclear program is someone else's responsibility. "Washington is leading the campaign against Iran," everyone has said. Aside from issuing periodic backhanded threats, Israel has developed no coherent diplomatic or coercive policy for actually preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.

Israel can delude itself no longer in thinking that someone else will protect it from annihilation. ElBaradei's lack of concern that "crazies" will attack Iran shows the Israeli people that if we wish to survive, we must ensure that our leaders understand that we alone are responsible for our security and survival.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad suffered a humiliating setback this week in his quest for international legitimacy. Ahmadinejad is expected to arrive in Rome this week to participate in a UN summit on the global food crisis (which has been caused by the rise in oil prices that Ahmadinejad is so pleased to have had a role in fomenting).

Ahmadinejad was hoping that while in the Italian capital he would be able to have a photo-op with Pope Benedict XVI. To secure the meeting, Ahmadinejad - who has called for all nations to convert to Islam or be destroyed (except for the Jews who can do nothing to avoid destruction) - has been sweet talking the Vatican for months. In his latest move, during a meeting in April with Archbishop Jean-Paul Gobel, the Vatican's representative in Iran, Ahmadinejad referred to the Vatican as a "positive force for justice and peace."

But Benedict was unmoved by Ahmadinejad's flattery. His request for an audience with the pontiff was unceremoniously rejected.

Not surprisingly, the Israeli government has nothing to say about Benedict's humiliation of Ahmadinejad. This is unsurprising because the Olmert-Livni-Barack-Yishai government has never bothered to pay attention to anything that the pope does. His bold moves in recent years to challenge Islamic leaders to repudiate murder and coercion in the name of Allah have elicited no support and indeed no reaction of any kind from Jerusalem.

The Olmert-Livni-Barack-Yishai government's neglect of the Vatican is regrettable, but it is par for the course for this government which has limited Israel's foreign policy to appeasing Palestinian terrorists and kowtowing to the State Department. The best that can be said for this state of affairs is that at least Israel's neglect of the Catholic Church - like its neglect of Africa, Asia, Europe, South America and Australia - is benign. In contrast, the treatment that the Vatican has received from some American Jewish leaders has been far from neglectful and far from benign.

RATHER THAN stand with the Catholic church as Benedict moves boldly against radical Islam, American Jewish leaders led by ADL Director Abe Foxman have been attacking the church for its theological decisions. Last year, fresh from his bitter campaign against Mel Gibson's movie about Jesus, Foxman began targeting the Vatican for its decision to permit wider use of the traditional Latin Mass which includes a prayer for Jews to convert to Christianity.

While it is unpleasant for Jews to consider millions of Catholics praying for us to abandon our faith, it is unclear why what they say in their churches should interest us so long as they aren't demanding our presence at disputations or forcibly converting us. After all, in our prayers, we explicitly reject their faith as false. And this is to be expected.

Every religion asserts itself as the one true faith and demeans all others as false. As the American Jewish radio host Dennis Prager noted at a lecture for the David Horowitz Freedom Center in Santa Barbara, California this weekend, "There is no Judeo-Christian faith. There are Judeo-Christian values."

JUDAISM AND Christianity are different religions. But they share common moral values and it is on the basis of these values that joint action can be taken and separate actions can be judged. Jews and Christians cannot judge each other on the basis of theology, only on the basis of morality.

Pope Benedict's actions clearly show him to be a friend of Israel and the Jewish people. Unfortunately, due to the grave absence of Jewish leadership in both Israel and the US today, he has little to show for it.

But any grief that Israel's neglect, and men like Foxman's unnecessary criticisms may have caused the pope are nothing compared to the insults Jewish leaders have heaped in recent months on our most prominent Protestant Christian friend. The humiliating treatment that Pastor John Hagee, the founder and national chairman of Christians United for Jews has suffered at the hands of American Jewish leaders is simply a travesty.

This week in Washington, DC, AIPAC is hosting its annual policy conference. It will be an illustrious affair. Heavy-hitters from both American political parties will be in attendance, as will scholars and activists from Israel and the US. But one name is noticeably absent from the three-day program. John Hagee - who in three years has transformed CUFI into a grassroots pro-Israel movement that dwarfs AIPAC in size - is not on the program. And this is a horrible thing.

AIPAC's decision to shun Hagee says something terrible about the state of American Jewish politics today. Quite simply, Hagee has become a victim of liberal American Jewish leaders' decision to place their leftist political preferences above their concern for Israel's survival and for the well-being of American Jewry.

SENATOR BARACK Obama, the presumptive Democratic nominee for President, has a problem with his religious background. Until last weekend, Obama was a 20-year member of the Trinity United Church in Chicago. In recent months, his former pastor Jeremiah Wright, the man who converted him to Christianity, officiated at his wedding and baptized his daughters, has been exposed as an anti-American, anti-white and anti-Semitic political activist who preaches a black supremacist version of Christian teachings to his enthusiastic congregation. Then too, Obama's Catholic friend, and friend of Trinity United, Father Michael Pfleger, has been exposed as an anti-American, anti-white and anti-Semitic political activist who preaches a black supremacist version of Christian teaching to his enthusiastic congregation.

Obama's longstanding and deep connections to these spiritual mentors have placed him in a problematic position vis-à-vis the American electorate. To mitigate the damage, Obama's supporters have sought to counterbalance Wright with a conservative clergyman of equal weight in the Republican camp. And Hagee, with his avowedly anti-homosexual, anti-abortion views and public prominence was the chosen target.

THE FIRST Obama supporter to hone in on Hagee was Rabbi Eric Yoffie, president of the Union for Reform Judaism. Yoffie has long sought to discredit Hagee who he sees as a threat to his view that the only way to be pro-Israel is to support the establishment of a Palestinian state.

Hagee endorsed Republican John McCain for President in March. In early April, Yoffie called on McCain to reject Hagee's endorsement and he called on American Jews to reject CUFI, claiming that CUFI's unconditional support for Israel precluded its support for a Palestinian state.

In his words, "No, we cannot cooperate with Christian Zionists. What [Hagee and his allies] mean by 'support of Israel' and what we mean by 'support of Israel' are two very different things. Their vision of Israel rejects a two-state solution, rejects the possibility of a democratic Israel, and supports the permanent occupation of all Arab lands now controlled by Israel."

FOLLOWING YOFFIE's lead, Democratic activists desperate to find a Republican counterpart to Wright, focused their fire on Hagee. They attacked him for anti-homosexual remarks he has made. And they grossly distorted remarks he made on historical Christian anti-Semitism to portray him as an enemy of the Catholic church. Then too, they attacked him for a sermon he gave where he argued that the Holocaust was God's way of getting the Jews to Israel and so absurdly implied that a man who has devoted his professional life to improving Jewish-Christian relations, ending Evangelical Christian drives to convert Jews and supporting Israel is an anti-Semite.

The Democratic Jewish charge against Hagee compelled McCain to reject Hagee's endorsement, and so drove another wedge between McCain and the Republican voting Christian Right. It also successfully created an illusion of symmetry between Wright and Hagee.

This in and of itself is morally repugnant since there is no moral equivalence between Hagee and Wright. Hagee clearly loves America, doesn't have a problem with whites or blacks and loves Jews. Wright is a man defined by his hatreds.

But even more insidious than Hagee's forced estrangement from McCain is the effort to have him disowned by the American Jewish community and Israel. Yoffie, together with the pro-Palestinian Jewish American lobbying group J Street, have been pressuring Jewish leaders to distance their organizations from Hagee and CUFI and to boycott CUFI's annual conference in Washington next month. Not surprisingly, Foxman answered their call by announcing that he was placing the ADL's relations with CUFI "on hold." And no doubt bowing to their pressure, AIPAC neglected to invite Hagee to its policy conference this week.

As for Israel, just as Yoffie made his initial attack on Hagee, Hagee was setting out to Israel with a thousand CUFI members on a solidarity mission. He held a rally of his supporters at the Jerusalem Conference Center. There he distributed six million dollars in contributions from CUFI members to Israeli charities and educational institutions. No doubt in response to Yoffie's pressure, the only prominent Israeli politicians who attended the event were Likud leader Binyamin Netanyahu and former Likud minister and MK Uzi Landau. No government minister attended and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert sufficed with a private meeting with Hagee.

HAPPILY, NOT all American Jewish leaders have agreed to toe the line. Senator Joseph Lieberman has rejected demands by Yoffie and J Street to boycott CUFI's conference in Washington. The American Jewish Committee and the Zionist Organization of America have refused to distance themselves from Hagee. Israel and American Jewry should follow their example.

These are terrible times for world Jewry. Islamic Jew-hatred is genocidal. The international Left has betrayed us. Our leaders are weak. Our friends are few and far between.

If we wish to persevere in this environment we must embrace those who support us while eschewing those - even in our own ranks - who tell us that support for Israel is conditional. Now is not the time to quibble over Christian theology. Now is the time to stand united with our friends against our common enemies.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.