Listening to the news in Israel these days, it is hard to escape the feeling that the Israeli political discourse has become dangerously irrelevant.

Take Iran for example. On Tuesday, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told the heads of UN member states, "The dignity, integrity and rights of the European and American people are being played with by a small but deceitful number of people called Zionists. Although they are a minuscule minority, they have been dominating an important portion of the financial and monetary centers as well as the political decision-making centers of some European countries and the US in a deceitful, complex and furtive manner."

Ahmadinejad then promised that Israel will soon be destroyed - for the benefit of humanity.

For these remarks, he received enthusiastic applause from the world leaders gathered at the UN General Assembly.

And how has Israel responded? It hasn't done anything in particular. And it has no intention of doing anything in particular.

This point was made clear to the public on Wednesday when Israel's new UN ambassador, Gavriela Shalev, gave an interview to Army Radio. While bemoaning Ahmadinejad's warm reception, she said that the world leaders were probably just being diplomatic. She noted that many of their ambassadors say nice things about Israel to her in private.

Israel's woman at the UN devoted most of her interview to defending the UN. In fact, she said she believes it is her duty not simply to defend Israel to the world body, but to defend the UN to Israelis. As she put it, her job is "correcting the UN's image in the eyes of the people of Israel."

Shalev's appointment to the UN was the work of Foreign Minister - and would-be prime minister - Tzipi Livni. And her view of her role as Israel's ambassador is strictly in keeping with what Livni perceives as the job of Israel's top diplomats. They are the world's emissaries to Israel.

Livni has spent the better part of the past three years at the Foreign Ministry telling us that the UN is our friend, the Europeans are our friends and that the Americans and Europeans and the UN will take care of Iran for us. The Palestinians are also our friends.

As anti-Semitic forces grow throughout the world, Livni has not communicated one single policy for defending Israel abroad that doesn't involve the kindness of strangers. Her response to Ahmadinejad's speech was a case in point.

The one thing the woman who believes that she has the right to lead the country without being elected by anyone thinks that Israel should do in response to Ahmadinejad's call for our physical destruction is to object to Iran's bid to join the UN Security Council. Livni's only concrete response to Ahmadinejad's promise to annihilate us was to issue a directive to Israel's embassies telling our diplomats to ask their host governments not to support Iran's bid for Security Council membership.

Livni doesn't actually think Iran is Israel's greatest challenge. The Palestinians are. And as far as she is concerned, giving the Palestinians a state by handing over Judea and Samaria (and Jerusalem, although she never says it outright), as quickly as possible is Israel's most urgent task. We need a two-state solution and we need it NOW, she says.

Neither Livni nor her colleagues in Kadima, Labor and Meretz, nor her supporters in the Israeli media ever bother to acknowledge the troublesome, inconvenient fact that the Palestinians don't want a state. They want to destroy our state.

This basic fact was made clear - yet again - on Tuesday.

On Tuesday, Livni took time out of her busy schedule of political meetings with Labor, Shas and Meretz leaders with whom she is attempting to build a government without being elected by anyone, to meet with Fatah's chief negotiator Ahmed Qurei. Although Livni refused to tell us what she talked about, she promised that progress was made toward the urgent imperative of forming a Palestinian state.

But Qurei was not so enthusiastic. In fact, he was contemptuous of Livni and of the very notion of peaceful coexistence between the Palestinians and Israel. After the negotiating session, Qurei told Reuters that if the talks toward an Israeli surrender of Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem collapse, the Palestinians will renew their terror war against Israel. In his words, "If the talks reached a dead end, what do we do? Capitulate? Resistance in all its forms is a legitimate right."

Just to make sure he understood Qurei properly, the reporter asked whether that meant that the Palestinians would renew their suicide bombing campaign against Israelis. Qurei responded, "All forms of resistance."

We have been here, of course, a million times before. This is the same threat that Yassir Arafat and his men have made - and implemented - repeatedly since signing the Oslo Accords with Israel 15 years ago. They use terror and negotiations in tandem to squeeze Israel into giving away more and more of its land. And it works.

When Livni heard about Qurei's remarks, she called him and reportedly told him that they were unacceptable. So he said he was taken out of context. No skin off his back.

He knew Livni wouldn't do anything. At the same time that Livni said his remarks were unacceptable, she pledged to continue negotiating Israel's surrender of Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem with him for as long as she remains in power.

Today, Livni and her colleagues in Kadima, Labor, Meretz and Shas are working fervently toward forming a new government that will continue holding irrelevant but dangerous negotiations with the Palestinians and the Syrians, and pretending that Iran's nuclear weapons are not going to be used against Israel. They argue that we need the "political stability" that they can provide us in this dangerous time.

The Israeli media gives these fantasies their full support. Indeed, anyone who notices that the world is sitting back and allowing Iran to acquire nuclear weapons or points out that the Palestinians don't want a state is immediately shot down as an alarmist and an extremist.

This national discourse - which has been the only one permitted in the country since the advent of the "peace process" with the PLO 15 years ago - is Israel's Achilles' heel. Until the general public is set clear on the reality of the world confronting the country, there is no chance that Israel will take the necessary steps to defend itself and ensure that it survives.

Understanding this basic fact, former IDF chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. (res.) Moshe "Bogie" Ya'alon has taken it upon himself to tell the Israeli public the truth about the world we live in. Ya'alon is a rare bird among Israel's current pantheon of luminaries. He is an honest man who lives by his principles, and he doesn't bend them, ever.

Last week Ya'alon published a book called The Longer Shorter Road in Hebrew. Ya'alon, whose tour of duty as Chief of Staff was unceremoniously cut short by former prime minister Ariel Sharon in June 2005 due to his trenchant opposition to Sharon's planned withdrawal of IDF forces and Israeli civilians from the Gaza Strip, has written a book that sets out the facts of life clearly, credibly and passionately.

The book's title is derived from a speech that Ya'alon's commander, Yoram Ya'ir, gave to his officers during the First Lebanon War. Ya'ir explained that short-cuts are not necessarily better than long roads. In fact, it is often better to take the longest route. As Ya'ir put it, "There is a long road that is short and there are short roads that are long."

Ya'alon uses Ya'ir's point to demonstrate that the Israeli Left's insistence on peace "now" and a solution to the Arab-Israel conflict "now" has placed Israel on a strategic trajectory that has brought it, and will continue to bring it only bloodshed and danger. Israel's enemies in the Palestinian Authority, Lebanon, Syria and Iran view Israel's insistence on finding immediate solutions to the threats it faces as a sign that Israeli society is collapsing.

As a consequence, every step that Israel has made toward appeasing its neighbors - from recognizing the PLO and bringing Arafat and his legions into Judea, Samaria and Gaza; to retreating from Lebanon in 2000 and Gaza in 2005; to failing to properly prosecute the Second Lebanon War in 2006; to doing nothing to combat Hamas's regime in Gaza since 2007; to embracing the false paradigm of peace at Annapolis last November - has strengthened their conviction that Israel can and will be destroyed.

Ya'alon also dwells on the moral collapse of Israel's political and media elite and that collapse's adverse impact on the senior command echelons of the IDF. The abandonment of Zionist values and public and private integrity by our politicians and media has cast and kept Israel on a path of self-delusion, where the only thing that matters is immediate gratification. Politicians promise the public "hope" based on illusions of peace-around-the-corner to win their votes. The media support the politicians' lies both because of the media's post-Zionist ideological uniformity and due to their refusal to acknowledge that their populist demands for peace "now" have brought Israel only war and danger.

Ya'alon's book is part memoir and part polemic. He reminds Israelis of what it is about us that makes us a great people, worthy of our land and privileged to defend it. At the same time, he chastises our failed leaders who have tricked the public into following a strategic path that endangers us. His book's greatest contribution is not in providing a set path forward, but in courageously and unrelentingly explaining the reality that surrounds us today and in showing the public how it is that we have arrived in our current predicament.

In exposing himself, his values and his beliefs to the public, and juxtaposing his own leadership experience and personal integrity with the corruption and weakness of our political and intellectual leaders, Ya'alon is telling the public in a very clear way that there is an alternative to defeatism and self-delusion, and that he - and we the public - represent that alternative, that "longer shorter road."

Livni, Defense Minister Ehud Barak and their colleagues on the Left in the Knesset and the media insist that we not take that longer road to security and peace. In fact, they deny that it even exists. They attempt to convince us that elections are unnecessary by arguing that there is no difference between political parties today, because their short cut to defeat is the only path available to us.

It must be fervently hoped that Ya'alon will soon enter the political fray. Like the Likud under Binyamin Netanyahu, Ya'alon is proof positive that Livni and her cronies are lying. There are great differences between those that would lead us and the paths they would take.

And the only road to safety is the long road that is paved on reality.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

American Jews have good reason to be ashamed and angry today. As Iran moves into the final stages of its nuclear weapons development program - nuclear weapons which it will use to destroy the State of Israel, endanger Jews around the world and cow the United States of America - Democratic American Jewish leaders decided that putting Sen. Barack Obama in the White House is more important than protecting the lives of the Jewish people in Israel and around the world.

On Monday, the New York Sun published the speech that Republican vice presidential nominee and Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin would have delivered at that day's rally outside UN headquarters in New York against Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and against Iran's plan to destroy Israel. She would have delivered it, if she hadn't been disinvited.

The rally was co-sponsored by the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations, the National Coalition to Stop Iran Now, The Israel Project, United Jewish Communities, the UJA-Federation of New York and the Jewish Council for Public Affairs. Its purpose was to present a united American Jewish front against Iran's genocidal leader and against its genocidal regime which is developing nuclear weapons with the stated intention of committing the second Holocaust in 80 years.

Palin's speech is an extraordinary document. In its opening paragraph she made clear that Iran presents a danger not just to Israel, but to the US. And not just to some Americans, but to all Americans. Her speech was a warning to Iran - and anyone else who was listening - that Americans are not indifferent to its behavior, its genocidal ideology and the barbarity of its regime. Rather, they are outraged.

After that opening, Palin's speech set out clearly how Iran is advancing its nuclear project, why it must be prevented from acquiring nuclear weapons and why and how the regime itself must be opposed by all right thinking people - not just Israelis and Americans - but by all people who value human freedom.

PALIN'S SPEECH was a message of national - rather than simply Republican - resolve against Iran's nuclear weapons program and its active involvement in global and regional terrorism. She made this point by quoting statements that Democratic Sen. Hillary Clinton has made against the Iranian regime.

The speech detailed Iran's past and current attacks against the US, beginning with its bombing of US servicemen in Lebanon in 1983 and continuing with Iran's proxy war against US forces in Iraq and against Iraqis who oppose its intention of taking control of their country.

By discussing Iran's role in Iraq she not only made a convincing case for why an American victory there is essential for defeating Iran. She also made clear that Iran is actively making war against the US, not just Israel.

From Iran's war against Israel, the US, and freedom loving peoples worldwide, Palin's speech turned to the regime's war against its own people. She attacked the regime for its systematic repression of Iranian women. She applauded the extraordinary bravery of women like Delaram Ali who risked their lives and their families to demand basic rights for Iranian women. Ali, she noted, was sentenced to 10 lashes and three years in prison for having the courage to speak out. An international outcry has temporarily suspended her sentence.

Then Palin returned to Iran's nuclear weapons program and its support for terrorist groups pledged to Israel's destruction and to the destruction of the US. She returned to Ahmadinejad's calls for Israel's annihilation. She reiterated Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain's solemn promise to work with Israel to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons and she joined her name to his promise to stand side by side with Israel to prevent another Holocaust.

IF PALIN had been allowed to deliver this speech at Monday's rally, she would done just what the organizers of the rally, and what the Jewish people in Israel, America and worldwide need to have done. She would have elevated the imperative of preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons and the implicit moral and strategic imperative of overthrowing the regime in Teheran to the top of America's national security agenda. Given the massive media attention she garners at all of her public appearances, Palin's participation in the rally would have done more to steel Americans - across the political spectrum - to the cause of opposing Iran than 10 UN Security Council sanctions resolutions could do.

It was a remarkable speech, prepared by a remarkable woman. But it was not heard. It was not heard because the Democratic Party and Jewish Democrats believe that their partisan interest in demonizing Palin and making Americans generally and American Jews in particular hate and fear her to secure their votes for Obama and his running-mate Sen. Joseph Biden in the November election is more important than allowing Palin to elevate the necessity of preventing a second Holocaust to the top of the US's national security agenda.

The rally's organizers invited both Clinton and Palin to speak. It was a wise move. In light of Iran's monstrous oppression of Iranian women, had the two most powerful women in American politics joined forces in opposing the regime and its war against human freedom, their appearance would have sent a message of American unity and resolve that would have reverberated not just throughout the US and in the US presidential race, but throughout the world and into Iran itself. But it was not to be.

The moment that Clinton found out that she was to share a stage with Palin, she cancelled her appearance. By cancelling, she signaled to Jewish Democrats - and Democrats in general - that opposing Palin and the Republican Party is more important than opposing Ahmadinejad and the genocidal regime he represents.

THE JEWISH Democrats on the rally's organizing committee got the message loud and clear. Two of the rally's co-sponsors - the Jewish Council for Public Affairs and the UJA Federation of New York demanded that the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations disinvite Palin.

The JCPA is led by Steven Gutow. Before joining the JCPA, he served as the founding executive director of the National Jewish Democratic Council, which is the Jewish support arm of the Democratic Party. The UJA Federation of New York is led by John Ruskay, who began his Jewish communal career as an anti-Israel "peace" activist in the radical CONAME and Breira organizations. Among their other endeavors, CONAME and Breira opposed US military assistance to Israel during the Yom Kippur War and called for US recognition of the PLO after the group massacred 26 children in Ma'alot in 1974.

Gutow and Ruskay were supported in their demand to disinvite Palin by the National Jewish Democratic Council and by the new Jewish pro-Palestinian lobbying group J-Street.

In an attempt to assuage Gutow and Ruskay, the rally organizers invited Biden to speak. But he had a scheduling conflict. So the organizers contacted the Obama campaign and asked it to send a representative. The campaign offered Congressman Robert Wexler.

But the Democrats knew that Wexler would be no match for Palin. So they continued on the warpath, absurdly claiming that by inviting Palin (and Clinton, Biden and Wexler), the organizers were endangering the sponsoring organizations' tax-exempt status. That is, through Ruskay and Gutow, in their bid to prevent Palin from appearing at the rally, the Democrats threatened to bring down the organized Jewish community.

Never mind that the threat is absurd. The likelihood that the Internal Revenue Service would open an investigation against every major American Jewish organization for daring to invite Palin to a rally opposing Ahmadinejad's appearance at the UN and Iran's stated intention of annihilating Israel is just slightly smaller than the prospect of Ahmadinejad wrapping himself in an Israeli flag and singing "Hatikva" on the UN rostrum.

But no matter. The fear that these Democratic Jews would openly split the Jewish community on the need to confront Iran frightened the organizers. The notion that the Democratic Party, and its Jewish supporters would openly turn their backs on the need to confront Iran to advance the political fortunes of their party and their party's presidential slate was too much to take. Palin was disinvited.

LIBERAL AMERICAN Jews, like liberal Americans in general, and indeed like their fellow leftists in Israel and throughout the West, uphold themselves as champions of human rights. They claim that they care about the underdog, the wretched of the earth. They care about the environment. They care about securing American women's unfettered access to abortions. They care about keeping Christianity and God out of the public sphere. They care about offering peace to those who are actively seeking their destruction so that they can applaud themselves for their open-mindedness and tell themselves how much better they are than savage conservatives.

Those horrible, war-mongering, Bambi killing, unborn baby defending, God-believing conservatives, who think that there are things worth going to war to protect, must be defeated at all costs. They must intimidate, attack, demonize and defeat those conservatives who think that the free women of the West should be standing shoulder to shoulder not with Planned Parenthood, but with the women of the Islamic world who are enslaved by a misogynist Shari'a legal code that treats them as slaves and deprives them of control not simply of their wombs, but of their faces, their hair, their arms, their legs, their minds and their hearts.

The lives of 6 million Jews in Israel are today tied to the fortunes of those women, to the fortunes of American forces in Iraq, to the willingness of Americans across the political and ideological spectrum to recognize that there is more that unifies them than divides them and to act on that knowledge to defeat the forces of genocide, oppression, hatred and destruction that are led today by the Iranian regime and personified in the brutal personality of Ahmadinejad. But Jewish Democrats chose to ignore this basic truth in order to silence Palin.

They should be ashamed. The Democratic Party should be ashamed. And Jewish American voters should consider carefully whether opposing a woman who opposes the abortion of fetuses is really more important than standing up for the right of already born Jews to continue to live and for the Jewish state to continue to exist. Because this week it came to that.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

Iran is just a heartbeat away from the A-bomb. Last Friday the Daily Telegraph reported Teheran has surreptitiously removed a sufficient amount of uranium from its nuclear production facility in Isfahan to produce six nuclear bombs. Given Iran's already acknowledged uranium enrichment capabilities, the Telegraph's report indicates that the Islamic Republic is now in the late stages of assembling nuclear bombs.

It would be a simple matter for Iran to assemble those bombs without anyone noticing. US spy satellites recently discovered what the US believes are covert nuclear facilities in Iran. The mullocracy has not disclosed these sites to the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency, which is charged with inspecting Iran's nuclear sites.

As to the IAEA, this week it presented its latest report on Teheran's nuclear program to its board members in Vienna. The IAEA's report claimed that Iran has taken steps to enable its Shihab-3 ballistic missiles to carry nuclear warheads. With their range of 1,300 kilometers, Shihab-3 missiles are capable of reaching Israel and other countries throughout the region.

In support of its swiftly progressing nuclear program, Iran has escalated both its conventional military and terroristic adventurism. It has also ratcheted up its diplomatic assault on the US. This week, Teheran conducted a countrywide air defense exercise. Gen. Khatim al-Anbiaa, the commander of Iran's Air Defense Corps, explained that the exercise was aimed at defending against both electronic jamming systems and actual bombing strikes.

Also this week, Yahya Rahim Safavi, the former commander of the Revolutionary Guards Corps and current senior adviser to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei for security affairs, announced that Iran has shifted responsibility for naval warfare on the Persian Gulf from its regular naval forces to its more fanatical Revolutionary Guards. The Iranian navy will now be deployed only in the Gulf of Oman and along the Caspian Sea.

The deployment of the Guards along the Persian Gulf means that the force will be responsible for naval operations in the narrow Strait of Hormuz, through which 40 percent of global oil shipments travel. Issuing Iran's most explicit threat to US naval forces in the area and global oil shipments to date, Safavi declared, "The entire Strait of Hormuz is under the tight control of the Iranian security forces, which are ready to defend Iran against any threat."

As for terror, al-Qaida boss Ayman Zawahiri's recent tirade against the Islamic Republic notwithstanding, Iran has apparently intensified its cooperation with al-Qaida. Over the past two weeks, Israeli counterterror officials have issued explicit warnings to Israeli vacationers to immediately depart from Sinai. They have stated that terror cells from al-Qaida and Hamas are working with Iran's Hizbullah to abduct groups of Israeli vacationers to Gaza. Moreover, as Hamas and Teheran have openly acknowledged their "brotherly" ties, more and more reports have been published about al-Qaida's escalating presence in Gaza.

Beyond all this, both regionally and globally Iran is escalating its diplomatic and strategic offensive against the US. It has widened its diplomatic operations in the Western hemisphere from Venezuela, Cuba, Ecuador and Nicaragua to the Caribbean by opening diplomatic relations with Grenada and St. Vincent, and it is pursuing diplomatic ties with Jamaica.

Teheran has initiated its own pro-Russian diplomatic initiative to "stabilize" the Caucasus. This week Iran's Foreign Minister Manoucher Mottaki caught the US State Department by surprise when he arrived in Tblisi to meet with Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili. That meeting was part of a regional tour that took Mouttaki to Russia, Azerbaijan and Armenia, as well as Germany.

Finally, of course, there is Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's annual trip to New York for the UN's General Assembly opening session next week. Aside from being honored by leaders of the supposedly pacifist and clearly anti-Semitic Quaker and Mennonite churches, Ahmadinejad will be feted by newly elected General Assembly President Miguel d'Escoto Brockmann from Nicaragua.

COUNTERING TEHERAN'S sprint to the nuclear finish line and its intensifying threats against Israel and the West are three Western initiatives to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.

First, the US, France and Britain have stepped up their rhetoric calling for additional economic sanctions against Iran. During the General Assembly meeting in New York, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is scheduled to meet her counterparts from the other permanent members of the Security Council and Germany to try to agree on such sanctions. But this will be an exercise in futility.

Russia has made clear that it will reject any further sanctions. Indeed it is intensifying its military and financial ties to Teheran. Moscow has pledged to have the Bushehr nuclear plant up and running by the end of the year. And Iran is already suspected of diverting plutonium from the plant to develop still more nuclear weapons.

Germany, too, has evinced no interest in curtailing its financial ties to Teheran. To the contrary, German trade with Iran expanded 12% in the last year, from $2.7 billion to $3b.

So the US will fail to pass additional sanctions against Iran in the UN Security Council. And this is a shame. But even if a miracle occurred and Russia, China and Germany agreed to adopt and enforce stiff sanctions against Iran, those sanctions would come too late to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.

The uranium that the Iranians took from their Isfahan plant will be weapons grade and attached to Shihab-3 missiles or transferred to Hizbullah, al-Qaida or Hamas terrorists for use long before such hypothetical sanctions would even be noticed.

The second way that the West - and particularly the US and Israel - have sought to stymie Iran's nuclear ambitions is through sabotage. As Yediot Aharonot reporter Ronen Bergman documented in his book, The Secret War with Iran, over the past few years the Mossad and US intelligence agencies have had some success killing personnel involved in Iran's nuclear weapons program. They have also managed to sell faulty nuclear components to Teheran that have slowed down and sabotaged its operations. As the assassination of Iran's terror master Imad Mughniyah in Damascus in February demonstrated, Israel has the capacity to carry out sensitive covert operations deep inside enemy territory. And more successful covert operations could no doubt cause still more damage to Iran's nuclear program.

But it is all but impossible to see how any such operations can prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons in the short term. With that uranium from Isfahan hidden away in one of its covert facilities, with terror operatives deployed all over the globe and in charge of Lebanon and Gaza, and with the Shihab-3 missiles happily accepting nuclear warheads, it is apparent that no matter how bold, limited covert operations have not and will not prevent Iran from crossing the nuclear threshold.

Finally, there are the private initiatives to use international law, capital markets and political pressure to deter Teheran from acquiring nuclear weapons and to persuade states not to cultivate ties with Iran.

A year ago, The Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs began a push to indict Ahmadinejad as a war criminal for his breach of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. His calls for Israel's annihilation make him guilty of the explicit crime of inciting genocide. The JCPA's initiative has fomented similar calls by groups in Canada and Australia and, most recently, by tens of thousands of evangelical Christians.

The Anti-Defamation League and AIPAC are waging public campaigns against European oil and gas companies that are involved in developing Iran's oil and gas fields.

The Center for Security Policy in Washington spearheaded the initiative to divest US public employee pension funds from companies that do business with Iran and other state sponsors of terror.

Several major American Jewish organizations are organizing a massive protest outside UN headquarters that will take place during Ahmadinejad's address to the body next Tuesday. Other groups, like the Israel Project, conduct intensive briefings for the media in the US and Europe to educate reporters and editors about the Iranian nuclear program.

All of these private initiatives are vital for raising public awareness in the West about the lethality of the Iranian threat to Israel and to global security in general. They are also important for embarrassing governments - particularly Germany, Austria and other European governments with histories of anti-Semitic violence - that refuse to end their bilateral trade with Teheran. Beyond that, they serve the important goal of weakening the Iranian economy.

But again, none of these programs can do a thing against that uranium for six bombs that Iran removed from its plant in Isfahan. They can't stop those centrifuges in Natanz and in covert facilities throughout Iran from buzzing along. They can't destroy those Shihab-3 missiles. They can't kill the scientists assembling the bombs.

IN LIGHT of Iran's unrelenting and rapid progress toward the nuclear finish line, it is clear today that while positive in their own rights, none of the actions the West is taking will succeed in blocking its path to the atomic bomb.

For that matter, the one option short of war that might have put an end to the mullahs' race to the bomb three years ago - namely supporting the Iranian people in their wish to overthrow their regime - cannot be adopted fast enough to prevent the likes of Khamenei and Ahmadinejad from pushing the button now.

Today, there is only one way to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. Israel must bomb Iran's nuclear installations. Such a strike will not end Iran's nuclear program. It will not overthrow the regime. It will not cripple Iran's economy. It will not end Iran's active support for international terrorist groups.

All an Israeli air strike against Iran's nuclear facilities will do is set its nuclear program back for a couple of years. Such a strike will buy Israel and the rest of the world time. And during that time, Iran will no doubt expand its diplomatic, terror and political offensives against Israel and the US. But if Israel and the US are wise, they can use the time as well.

If Israel and the US are wise, they will use the extra time to ratchet up international economic sanctions on Iran. They will use the time to conduct covert operations against nuclear and regime targets. They will use the time to increase international pressure on countries that do business with Iran and sell it arms. And they will use the time that an Israeli military strike against Iran's nuclear facilities will buy to support Iranian democracy movements and so weaken the regime and perhaps eventually topple it.

It is clear today that the Bush administration will not take action against Iran. This week five former secretaries of state said that the US should pursue diplomatic ties with Teheran regardless of Iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons. There will be no will in Washington to act against Iran until after Iran has attacked Israel with nuclear weapons.

So it is up to Israel. Too bad we don't have a government in Jerusalem.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni may not be a crook, but she is a fraud. And if polls are to be believed, Livni the fraud is just one fraudulent election away from becoming our next prime minister.

Her basic dishonesty is expressed both in her political maneuverings and in her behavior as a policymaker. In both areas, she upholds herself as Mrs. Clean - the servant of all of us who are sickened, demoralized and revolted by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and his hordes of corrupt Kadima colleagues and staffers. But she is not our servant. Rather than serve us, like Olmert and her Kadima colleagues, she lies to us in a continuous bid to expand her power.

Case in point is her participation in Wednesday's anti-democratic Kadima primary, which will elect the party's new leader to replace Olmert, who of course is both a fraud and a crook.

Unlike all the other party primaries that have been held over the years, this one is designed not as a preparatory step ahead of general elections to the Knesset. Rather, it is intended to replace general elections. The expressed goal of Livni and her three opponents - Transportation Minister Shaul Mofaz, Public Security Minister Avi Dichter and Interior Minister Meir Sheetrit - is not to ready Kadima for elections, but to select a new prime minister who will form a governing coalition that will bar the public from electing its representatives until March 2010.

KADIMA'S MOVE to trample the people's right to choose our leaders is not the only reason that its primary is an affront to the public. The primary is not just anti-democratic, it is also a fraud.

Only 15 percent of Kadima's members joined the party on their own initiative. According to analyses conducted over the past several months, these 15% are people who were swept up in the initial excitement when Kadima was formed by Ariel Sharon in 2005.

According to pollsters, like most Israelis, these idealistic Kadima members became disenchanted with the party over the past three years. Accordingly, they are the least likely to vote in Wednesday's poll.

The other 85% of Kadima's 70,000 members are people who were brought into the party by those nefarious standard-bearers of Israeli politics of recent years: the vote contractors.

Vote contractors are political bosses and paid political operatives who peddle their influence in various communities, labor unions and population sectors to persuade citizens to join specific parties as bloc voters.

In its brief political life span, Kadima's membership rolls have been subject to multiple criminal investigations. In one case now under investigation, up to 1,000 people were signed up for the party without their knowledge. Vote contractors forged their signatures on membership forms and paid their membership fees.

Although the media - which are openly biased in Livni's favor - have placed most of the blame for this state of affairs on Mofaz, the truth is that Livni has not shied away from backroom deals with influence peddlers selling votes. For instance, she has used Deputy Foreign Minister Majallie Whbee to sign up blocs of Livni voters in the Arab and Druse sectors. Arabs and Druse comprise 20% of Kadima's members and it has been widely predicted that they will cast the decisive vote. Livni is expected to win some 70% of their votes.

Then there is the Russian community. Here too Livni has hired vote contractors to sign up blocs of voters on her behalf. And like the Arabs and the Druse, there is no reason to believe that the Russian olim even support Kadima. They are just as likely to vote for another party in the general election. Livni knows this. She just doesn't care.

Owing to the basic fraudulence of Kadima's voter rolls, the fact is that regardless of the identity of the victor, he or she will be beholden not to voters, but to a few dozen influence peddlers. That Livni upholds this anti-democratic and wholly corrupt electoral farce as a legitimate path to the premiership puts paid the notion that she is an honest politician dedicated to cleaning up politics and making politicians accountable to voters.

LIVNI'S EMBRACE of fraud is the thread that ties her political machinations to her policy maneuvers. Indeed, fraud - that is deceit - has been her chosen tactic for advancing her political fortunes since she first rose to prominence in 2004.

The most blatant recent example of Livni's deceitfulness is her behavior on the issue of sovereignty over Jerusalem. For the past year, Livni has led the negotiating team with the Fatah faction of the Palestinian Authority. In her position, she has been the architect of whatever agreements the government has concocted regarding the surrender of Judea and Samaria and parts of Jerusalem to Fatah.

Supported by the local media, Livni and Olmert have denied the public the right to know what they are discussing on our behalf and so prevented any public debate about their actions. This is crucial for them because opinion polls show that their presumptive plan to withdraw from some 98% of Judea and Samaria and partition Jerusalem is not supported by the public.

The issue of Jerusalem is particularly sensitive. Olmert pledged to coalition partner Shas that he would not discuss the city with the Palestinians. Since Shas doesn't wish to leave the government, Shas leader Eli Yishai pretends he doesn't know that Olmert's pledge was a fraud. For their part, Livni and Olmert defraud the public by claiming that Jerusalem is not on their diplomatic chopping block.

On Thursday, Olmert, Livni and Shas had their bluffs called when the US Consul in Jerusalem Jacob Walles told the Palestinian Al-Ayam newspaper that the government has agreed to give the Palestinians control over most of eastern, southern and northern Jerusalem. Livni and her representatives were outspoken in their angry denials of Walles's statement.

Yet as Channel 10 reported on Sunday night, just a few weeks ago, Livni told her supporters that she is negotiating the partition of the city. Livni has told sympathetic reporters of her intention to form a far-left governing coalition with the non-Zionist Meretz party that will be supported from the outside by the anti-Zionist Arab parties. But she doesn't want the general public to realize how radical she is. So she lies.

LIVNI'S LIES about Jerusalem are of a piece with all the lies she has told and all the frauds she has advanced over the past three years. In 2004 as justice minister in Ariel Sharon's government, Livni concocted a detailed fraud to compel her Likud colleagues Binyamin Netanyahu, Limor Livnat and Silvan Shalom to vote in favor of Sharon's bid to withdraw from Gaza and northern Samaria and expel all Jews from the areas.

Livni authored what she referred to as the "compromise agreement." Forming the basis of the government's decision in favor of the withdrawal, it stipulated that the Jews would be expelled in four stages over a period of several months. At each stage, the government would stop to reevaluate and each new stage would have to be separately approved. This decision was legally binding.

Right after she convinced her colleagues that Sharon would respect the compromise deal and so secured their votes, Livni discarded her grand compromise. Arguably in violation of the legally binding decision she had herself crafted, Livni, together with Sharon, claimed that national security considerations overrode the stipulations of the decision and therefore Sharon was within his rights to order that the expulsions be carried out in one operation that lasted a less than a week.

And defrauding her colleagues to advance her political fortunes wasn't the only way Livni exploited her undeserved reputation as an honest woman during her tenure as justice minister. In the months leading up to the expulsions, she presided over the country's law enforcement bodies as they systematically trampled the basic legal rights of law abiding citizens who sought to demonstrate their opposition to the expulsions.

Thousands of protesters were illegally arrested and held in jails for weeks at a time without charges being brought against them. In many cases, groups of demonstrators were illegally charged as groups. Protesters were physically assaulted by police. Buses carrying protesters to legal demonstrations were illegally blocked on highways.

A few months after the withdrawal and expulsions were completed, Chief Public Defender Inbal Rubinstein's office released a report documenting how laws were prejudicially enforced based on the demonstrators' political views. Livni's response was to threaten Rubinstein with firing. Rubinstein apologized for releasing the report and mumbled something about it not representing the views of her office.

This, of course, is not how one would expect a politician dedicated to the sanctity of the rule of law and good governance to behave. But it is how one would expect a politician motivated only by her will to power to behave.

In her belief that all ends justify the means, Livni is a loyal representative of Kadima. She has defrauded the public by lying about the fact that she is actively advancing the cause of Jerusalem's partition. She has defrauded her political colleagues by crafting "grand compromises" she knows will never be implemented. She is defrauding the public by using a fraudulent electorate to catapult her way into the prime minister's office. And she does all of this while deceiving us into believing that she is competent to lead.

She tells us that the cease-fire with Hizbullah she crafted which paved the way for the Iranian proxy's takeover of Lebanon was a diplomatic success. She tells us that we have no option of victory over our enemies and the best we can do is beg others to defend us. And she tells us we should give her the reins of power because she tells us the truth.

The public is powerless today to do anything in the face of Livni's and Kadima's trampling of our democratic system and open contempt for our national interests. It can only be hoped that whenever elections are eventually held, we will punish them for what they have done.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

With its nuclear weapons program, its control of Lebanon, Gaza and Syria, its massive influence in Iraq and Afghanistan and its messianic, global ambitions, Iran is rightly viewed as the greatest threat to global security today.

One of the most disturbing aspects of the Iranian challenge is that on the issues of greatest concern to the West, there is no way to divide and conquer the regime. Anti-Semitism, anti-Americanism and the quest for Islamic dominance worldwide are sentiments shared by all levels of the regime. The desire for nuclear weapons that can be used together with terror armies to destroy Israel and the West is shared by all members of Teheran's decision-making bodies.

Those who preach appeasement towards Iran claim that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is not reflective of the regime. They argue that Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei is far more moderate than Ahmadinejad, and it is Khamenei, not Ahmadinejad who calls the shots.

While it is true that Khamenei calls the shots, it is not true that he is moderate. Khamenei is just as radical as Ahmadinejad. It was Khamenei's decision to elect Ahmadinejad president. And Khamenei has approved every move Ahmadinejad has made in office. Moreover, last week Khamenei announced that he wants Ahmadinejad to serve a second term.

Then, too, Khamenei's rhetoric is just as vitriolic as Ahmadinejad's. On Tuesday, he exhorted Iranian judges and members of parliament to patiently await Islam's defeat of the West and not accept calls to embrace "rationality and moderation" or agree to peacefully coexist with "the global arrogance," which is how he refers to the US and Europe.

The Iranian regime came to power in a violent revolution 29 years ago. Led by the charismatic Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the hate-spewing, Koran-thumping ayatollahs overthrew the pro-Western autocracy of the shah. The Islamic revolution was a popular revolution. The shah's repressive policies and the resonance of Khomeini's Islamic dogmas gave the ayatollahs broad support among the Iranian people.

In the years and months that preceded the fall of the shah, the West failed to understand either the sources or the dangers of the revolution. The US, Europe and Israel had such close relations with the shah that they hadn't realized that while broad, Iran's alliance with the West was skin deep. Indeed, the fact that the Iranian people identified the West with the shah made it easy for Khomeini and his followers to convince them that the West was no less their enemy than the shah was.

THE IRANIAN revolution is frequently recalled as a cautionary tale for the West as Americans, Israelis and Europeans continue to view unpopular, yet ostensibly pro-Western Arab autocracies as stable. Such warnings have been uttered with increasing frequency in recent years in regards to Egypt, whose pro-Western dictator Hosni Mubarak now enters the twilight of his reign.

Mubarak has been ruling Egypt with an iron fist since 1981. He is 80 years old and the state of his health is uncertain.

The Egypt Mubarak presides over is an economic basket case. Egypt's population of 80 million - the highest in the Arab world - has doubled since he took power after Anwar Sadat's assassination. Forty percent of Egyptians are under 15 years old.

Mubarak has done little to advance his country's economic prospects. A fifth of Egyptians subsist on less than a dollar a day. The average per capita income, which has been declining since 2000, was $1,485 in 2006.

With few job prospects, Egypt's youth increasingly turn to the mosques for consolation. There they embrace the jihadist doctrines of the Muslim Brotherhood. Like its spinoffs - al-Qaida and Hamas - the Muslim Brotherhood upholds jihad in the quest for Islamic world domination as its highest goal. And due in large part to Mubarak's failure to develop his country, the Muslim Brotherhood is the strongest social force in Egypt.

Owing to Mubarak's careful cultivation of Egypt's military and intelligence services and his control of the media, the US and Israel uphold him as a strong leader of a strong state. Yet Egypt's inherent weakness and Mubarak's own incompetence is exposed every time something goes wrong in the country. Whether al-Qaida strikes in Sinai or ferries sink to the bottom of the Red Sea, Egyptian authorities are incapable of handling disasters.

On Saturday, at least 50 families were buried in rubble as part of a rocky cliff crashed onto a shantytown in Cairo. According to The New York Times, in the months leading up to the rock slide, residents had complained to authorities repeatedly that the cliff was disintegrating. But the authorities ignored them.

On Saturday it took rescue workers several hours to respond to calls for help. And when they arrived, they occupied themselves not with saving those trapped beneath the rocks, but with preventing the crowds from demonstrating against the regime. By Thursday, 64 bodies had been pulled from the rubble and the excavation was far from complete.

For the past several years, Mubarak has been grooming his son Gamal to replace him. But it is far from clear, even if he replaces Mubarak, that Gamal will be able to maintain a grip on power similar to that of his father. Unlike Mubarak, who commanded the Egyptian Air Force before he became Sadat's vice president, Gamal has never served in the military. He does not enjoy the strong backing of the military command, which prefers to see Mubarak's heir emerge from its ranks.

The prospect that a post-Mubarak Egypt will be seized by jihadist fervor capable of fomenting a jihadist takeover of the country is real. And both Israeli and US policy-makers should be planning contingencies for such a turn of events. But recent developments in Pakistan show that while it is possible that the Muslim Brotherhood could take over Egypt after Mubarak dies, it is also possible that a less conclusive reality will ensue.

MUBARAK'S RULE of Egypt bears many similarities to recently ousted president Pervez Musharraf's rule of Pakistan. Like Musharraf before him, Mubarak understands that his hold on power is based not on his own people's consent but on the US's continued political and financial support for his regime. Consequently, like Musharraf, Mubarak views secular democrats - who enjoy Western support - as greater threats to his regime than the jihadists, whom the West opposes.

So, too, like Musharraf, Mubarak's owes his ability to remain in power to his control of Egypt's military and intelligence services. And like Musharraf, Mubarak has maintained their support both because he himself emerged from their ranks and because he showers the army and intelligence services with economic power and social prestige.

It was the US's support for Musharraf's secular opponents and their call for elections that forced Musharraf from power this summer. The Pakistan the US now confronts is led by the weak government of newly elected President Asif Ali Zardari, who was sworn into office on Tuesday. Unlike Musharraf, who commanded the military as president, Zardawi has little sway over Pakistan's General Staff and the powerful Inter-Services Intelligence force.

After the September 11 attacks on the US, Washington was so concerned with the prospect of what would happen if Musharraf were to leave office that it subordinated its own interest in defeating the Taliban and al-Qaida to its interest in maintaining him in power. For six years the US refrained from attacking al-Qaida and Taliban redoubts inside Pakistan for fear that doing so would weaken Musharraf's credibility within the military and among the Pakistani population in general. Like their Egyptian counterparts, Pakistanis are better disposed toward jihadists than they are toward the US. And in the interest of maintaining Musharraf's support for its operations in Afghanistan, the US allowed him to host al-Qaida and the Taliban in Pakistan.

In Musharraf's last two years in office, the US's policy of self-restraint became increasingly untenable. The Taliban and al-Qaida took control over more and more of Pakistan's border provinces with Afghanistan and used the areas as launching pads for their stepped-up insurgency in Afghanistan. In recent months, it became apparent to Washington that if the US wishes to achieve victory in Afghanistan, it will need to extend its fight to Pakistan's border provinces.

Counterintuitively, it was Musharraf's very exit from power that has enabled the US in recent weeks to steeply intensify its operations in Pakistan. While Pakistan's military commander Gen. Ashfaq Kayani is far less supportive of the US than Musharraf was, he is also far weaker. What's more, the US has little investment in his longevity in power. The same is the case with Zardawi's government.

Last month, Kayani met with Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen and Gen. David Petraeus, who has now taken command of the US Central Command, aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier. There he apparently rebuffed their request for Pakistani military support for American operations in Pakistan.

But given the US's lack of investment in Kayani, his refusal did not have the same effect as Musharraf's opposition to such raids had. Whereas the US respected Musharraf's refusal to allow American forces to operate in Pakistan, Washington feels free to ignore Kayani's objections.

The fact that in Pakistan today no one person or faction has the power to control the country is what rendered the US's stepped up operations inside of its border provinces with Afghanistan politically feasible. The US's stony silence in the face of Kayani's condemnation Wednesday of its ground forces' raid on a Taliban camp in Pakistan this week showed that America is no longer deterred by Pakistani objections.

There is no doubt that the current state of affairs in Pakistan is inherently unstable. If the US raises its military profile in Pakistan too much, it is liable to foment a backlash that could propel its enemies to power in that nuclear-armed state. But if the US is able to press its advantage with a weak regime, it may be able to defeat the Taliban and al-Qaida before they muster the strength necessary to take over the country and so secure Pakistani neutrality for the foreseeable future.

RECENT DEVELOPMENTS in Pakistan show that the situation in Iran need not repeat itself in Egypt after Mubarak exits the scene. Weak interim regimes provide opportunities that do not exist in strongly authoritarian and deeply unpopular regimes.

Based on the current situation in post-Musharraf Pakistan, perhaps the US and Israel should not be fearing that if Gamal Mubarak fails to secure full control of Egypt after his father dies they will have to contend with an Iranian-style Muslim Brotherhood regime. Maybe what will emerge is a more amorphous situation where no one group will have the power to assert absolute power. Such a situation could free the US and Israel to concentrate on simply defeating their enemies, without concerning themselves with the fortunes of those who have yet to join in the fight against the forces of global jihad.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

What a difference a year makes. It was just one year ago this week that the IAF destroyed the North Korean built, Iranian financed nuclear reactor in Syria. The raid exposed Syria as a full partner in the Iranian-led jihadist axis. Its prolonged diplomatic isolation was a foregone conclusion.

But just one year later, Syria is being feted by France. It's signing billion-dollar oil and gas deals with France's oil giant Total. A triumphant President Bashar Assad is openly demanding that the US follow France's lead and start licking his boots.

Syria has Israel to thank for its stunning reversal of fortunes. It opened the door that Assad gleefully walked through this week as he playacted the role of responsible international leader while remaining loyal to Iran, Hizbullah, Hamas and the terror militias in Iraq.

Israel opened the door by participating in Turkish-mediated talks with Syria regarding a surrender of the Golan Heights. Although both sides referred to the talks as "peace negotiations," it was obvious that no peace would come from them.

Since the early 1990s, Syria has recognized that intermittent, fruitless discussions with Israel about the Golan Heights are the best means of maintaining or reestablishing its acceptability in the West. After Assad ordered the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri in February 2005, he immediately turned to Israel to pull his fat from the fire by offering to renew negotiations regarding a surrender of the Golan Heights. Israel held out for two and a half years and during those years, Assad wasted away in international isolation. With even the UN breathing down his neck, Assad and his regime were hanging on for dear life.

But then suddenly, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert came to the rescue. Thanks to Olmert, Syria is back in the driver's seat and as one could have expected, Assad's first order of business was to throw Israel under the bus. No longer in need of its assistance, as he stood next to French President Nicolas Sarkozy, Assad announced that the "peace talks" are suspended. And both Assad and Sarkozy blamed their suspension on Israel, whose "political instability" makes it impossible to proceed.

There is no doubt that the country will pay a price for Olmert's decision. But it is also fairly clear that the next government - whether led by Kadima or the Likud - will be unlikely to repeat his mistake. Olmert's political opponents warned him that his move would endanger Israel by legitimizing Syria and rewarding it for its strategic alliance with Iran. And his opponents' view that Olmert was wrong to reach out to Assad is shared by a majority of the public and a fair amount of the media. Indeed, since Israel began negotiating the surrender of the Golan Heights in 1992, the consistent view of the majority has been that the country is better off with the Golan than without it, even if that means no peace treaty with Syria.

WHEREAS OLMERT's Syrian gambit is unlikely to cause any irreparable damage and is unlikely to be repeated by his successors, the same cannot be said of his gambit with the Palestinians. There Olmert acts against little organized or coherent opposition. And his actions are openly supported by his colleagues in Kadima, who have to varying degrees all committed themselves to continue his policies.

Kadima was elected on a platform of unilateral withdrawal from Judea and Samaria. While it never disclaimed its intention to expel up to 100,000 Israelis from their homes in the areas and withdraw, after the Hamas takeover of Gaza and after the war with Hizbullah in 2006, the government claimed that it would only expel them after it signed a deal setting out the contours of a Palestinian state with Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas. And in the interest of achieving just such a deal, the government has been carrying out negotiations for the past year.

As has been the case with the talks with Syria, the government has precluded public debate about the wisdom of a potential deal by hiding the details of its discussions and its intentions from the public. Backed by the Bush administration, which has championed the negotiations, the Olmert-Livni-Barak government has kept their content secret.

At the same time, it has quieted its opponents by loudly proclaiming that the chances that a deal will be concluded before President George W. Bush, Abbas and Olmert leave office are slim.

Moreover, in light of Hamas's control of Gaza and its threat to Fatah in Judea and Samaria, both the government and the Bush administration have argued that the agreement being negotiated will not be implemented even if it is concluded. It will only be implemented after Palestinian society accepts Israel's right to exist and agrees to live at peace with the Jewish state.

The agreement, they claim, will provide impetus to the Palestinians to accept Israel because it will commit all future governments to treat Judea, Samaria and parts of Jerusalem as Palestinian territory and so offset any lingering doubts about Israel's commitment to peace.

THE CONCERN has lately arisen that although the Palestinians will certainly not implement their side of the agreement, Israel will implement its pledged withdrawal from Judea and Samaria. This is the case for two reasons. First, unlike the situation with Syria, Olmert's support of the deal with Fatah is shared by Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, who is expected to succeed him, by Kadima and Labor and by the media. It is quite possible that they will argue that the existence of the agreement suffices to move ahead with their original intent to destroy Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria and expel their residents.

The concern that the Olmert-Livni-Barak government or its successor is planning to withdraw has increased in recent weeks, as military and police authorities have begun abrogating the legal rights of residents of Judea and Samaria in a way they haven't done since the expulsions from Gaza.

Two weeks ago, OC Central Command Maj.-Gen. Gad Shamni issued orders evicting three residents of Samaria from the area for four months. No criminal charges were filed against the three; they are suspected of no crimes; they have been arrested for no crimes. Yet the IDF has decided to expel them from their homes and separate them from their families by arguing that they are "provocateurs."

Last Tuesday, the men's supporters and families decided to stage a protest outside Shamni's house in Re'ut. The police had other ideas. A bus holding 50 protesters was stopped en route to the protest. Its passengers were arrested and brought to the police stations in Ramle and Modi'in and told they were being held due to suspicion that they were intending to attend an illegal demonstration.

There is of course, no crime on the books regarding a person's "intention" to participate in a demonstration. And yet the would-be demonstrators were held until the middle of the night. The last time such draconian actions were taken against law abiding citizens was in 2005 in the lead-up to the expulsions from Gaza.

The fear that the government is planning to begin expelling Israelis intensified on Sunday when, in a surprise move, the government convened a discussion of a bill setting out the levels of restitution those who are forced to leave their homes in Judea and Samaria will receive. Why would the government debate such a bill if it doesn't believe it is about to sign a deal with Abbas? And why would it debate such a bill if it truly intended to shelve its agreement until after the Palestinians eschewed their hopes for Israel's destruction?

THE SECOND reason justifying concern that the government is planning to withdraw from Judea and Samaria is due to the contrast between how the public views a withdrawal from the Golan and how it views a withdrawal from Judea and Samaria. Whereas the consistent majority view is that the country is more secure with the Golan Heights than without it, since 1993 there has been sustained majority support for the view that we will be better off without large swathes of Judea and Samaria. This view has been cultivated by leftist activists and their supporters in the media who claim that Israel's chief strategic challenge is not the Iranian axis, but the presence of what they consider an unabsorbable Palestinian population in Judea and Samaria.

The belief that the Palestinians are the greatest strategic danger to the country is belied by reality. Putting aside the open question of whether they are truly incapable of integrating into Israel society or whether they challenge the country's identity as a Jewish state, the fact is that Judea and Samaria today constitute the least dangerous front Israel faces. And this is so because the IDF controls the area. Iran, Gaza, Lebanon and Syria are Israel's primary concerns today. And Gaza and Lebanon are dangers precisely because Israel followed the left's demographic and political arguments and surrendered them to Iranian proxies.

The fact that a majority has been convinced that the Palestinian population in Judea and Samaria is a critical threat just because it exists means that the threat of a withdrawal will remain acute until the Kadima-Labor-Shas triumvirate is driven from power in a general election and replaced by a Likud-led government and even then it will not abate. The threat will only abate if a Likud-led government is able to lead a public discussion about an alternative strategic assessment of Judea and Samaria.

Such an assessment would necessarily begin with the following assertions: Israel should not be rewarding the Palestinians for their aggression and has a duty to secure areas necessary for its national security. Such assertions engender the conclusion that far from ceding its rights to Judea and Samaria, Israel should apply its law to the parts of them that are critical to its defense, including Gush Etzion, Gush Adumim, Gush Ariel and the Jordan Valley.

To a degree that exceeds the dangers of Olmert's ill-advised talks with Assad, his talks with the Palestinians imperil the country by setting the conditions for disastrous withdrawals. Unfortunately, this danger will remain in place for as long as Israelis believe that our only viable option in Judea and Samaria is retreat.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

Both the challenges of war and the challenges of politics are challenges of leadership. And both military strategists and political strategists agree that the most basic leadership challenge in both arenas is to know and understand yourself - your strengths and your weaknesses - and to know your opponents and their strengths and weaknesses. While this may seem like basic common sense, it is quite amazing to see how often it is ignored.

The rarity of this sort of strategic wisdom in the public sphere was brought to the fore this week in the political uproar generated by US Republican presidential nominee Senator John McCain's selection of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate. McCain's selection of Palin was remarkable because in choosing her from the list of possible candidates, he made a decision that embraced rather than ignored this most basic challenge of leadership.

Given that the universality of the logic that informed McCain's selection of Palin is followed more in the breach than in practice, it is worth analyzing his choice, both for what it tells us about his leadership skills, and about the nature of his domestic opposition. But it is also useful to reflect on his choice of Palin to draw lessons that can be applied more widely by non-leftist political strategists and military strategists throughout the free world.

In the months preceding McCain's announcement of Palin as his running mate, his central challenges as the Republican presidential nominee came into focus. In Senator Barack Obama, McCain faces a young, vigorous and charismatic opponent who has successfully energized his supporters and the powerful US liberal media establishment. Owing to that excitement, Obama has raised unprecedented amounts of campaign contributions. He has also rallied tens of thousands of loyal foot soldiers who have volunteered to serve his campaign. Both the donors and the volunteers are essential for winning voters and bringing them to the ballot boxes on November 4.

Obama's velvet tongue is also a formidable asset. His ability to mesmerize audiences with soaring rhetoric is compared favorably to president John F. Kennedy's eloquence.

Obama's other massive advantage is the liberal media. Since he first launched his primary campaign, the liberal media - which include the major US newspapers, television news networks and two out of three cable news networks - have been actively advocating on his behalf while downplaying his opponents.

But all of these formidable strengths are matched by countervailing vulnerabilities. While Obama's supporters are energized, the drawn-out primary election battle with Sen. Hillary Clinton splintered the Democratic Party base. Whereas most of Clinton's voters will no doubt vote for Obama in the general election, their support is more tenuous in swing states where Obama's cultural cache is less appealing.

And while Obama is a stunning speaker, his record of actual accomplishments is all but nonexistent. The combination of his extraordinary speeches and his ordinary empty resumé engenders a sense that Obama suffers from extreme arrogance.

Then, too, while the media has done its best to project a positive and credible image of Obama, his past political associations with radicals such as Rev. Jeremiah Wright and William Ayres and corrupt influence peddler Tony Rezko call both his patriotism and his honesty into question.

McCain's balance of assets and deficits is almost the polar opposite of Obama's. He has a wealth of leadership experience and demonstrable political accomplishments. His patriotism is massively recognized and respected.

On the other hand, McCain has been unable to generate excitement in his party. His reputation as a maverick has often been earned at the expense of his political base, which is overwhelmingly socially conservative and suspects him of being a closet liberal. This has made fund-raising a challenge, and raised concerns that many conservatives will simply not vote on Election Day.

Moreover, McCain has never distinguished himself as a great communicator. His war wounds, which prevent him from raising his arms above his shoulders, make him appear even older than his 72 years. When compared to the vigorous, handsome 46-year-old Obama, McCain tends to look and sound like an old man.

This age and rhetorical distinction is only magnified by the disparity of media coverage of the two candidates' campaigns. The media have a pronounced and documented tendency to play up McCain's weaknesses and Obama's strengths while downplaying McCain's strengths and Obama's weaknesses.

IN LIGHT of these realities, McCain's strategic challenge has been on the one hand, to transform Obama's strengths into weaknesses while bringing Obama's actual weaknesses to the public's attention in a persuasive way. On the other hand, McCain needs to unify his own party around his candidacy without alienating independents and Democrats whose votes can be won.

In recent weeks, largely through the well-conceived, satirical use of television ads, McCain sought to meet these basic challenges. By comparing Obama's speech in Berlin to Moses's parting of the Red Sea, he playfully yet effectively drew attention to Obama's arrogance and called the credibility of his rhetorical skill into question. Other ads effectively brought Obama's slim record of actual achievements into view. Still other ads sought to attract disaffected Clinton voters by using her own primary campaign denunciations of Obama's record and radical associations.

Most importantly, in the lead-up to Palin's selection as his running mate, McCain has successfully provoked a public debate about the fairness of the media's support of Obama.

McCain's selection of Palin as his running mate, then, came after he had set the conditions for a strategic assault on Obama by successfully weakening him and discrediting his support base. The surprise entry of a young, accomplished woman with a compelling personal story who was all but unknown to the national audience, placed the Obama campaign and particularly his media supporters in a state of shock. And in their shocked reaction to her selection, the liberal media destroyed their own credibility - not to mention likability - among the general public.

The media claimed that McCain's choice of Palin was ill-conceived for three reasons. First, they argued that the popular Alaska governor has no experience in foreign policy and with only two years in state-wide office, little demonstrable experience in governing. Yet their assertions merely highlighted Obama's own inexperience while amplifying McCain's wealth of experience.

Second, the media insinuated that Palin is unfit for office because she has an infant child with Down's Syndrome. Either she will be a bad mother, or she will be a bad vice president, they claimed. Yet in so arguing, the liberal media merely demonstrated their own hypocrisy. While claiming the mantle of feminism, the media commentators belittled Palin's right to choose - together with her macho, blue collar husband - to serve her country as a mother of a child with special needs. Their harping on her personal family choices angered the vital demographic of middle class working mothers who felt personally insulted by their attacks on Palin.

Finally, of course, there was the media circus generated by Palin's belated announcement that her teenage daughter Bristol is pregnant and engaged to marry her teenage boyfriend. The news of her daughter's pregnancy evoked the ugliest media assault on a teenager in recent memory. Here, too, the media's pillorying of Palin as a lousy mother and her daughter as morally challenged discredited the media while increasing Palin's sympathy with voters shocked by this scurrilous assault on her daughter and her family values.

At the same time as McCain's selection of Palin as his running mate pushed the media over the edge, it profoundly rallied his own Republican base to his side. Palin's opposition to abortion, her membership in the National Rifle Association, her remoteness from Washington, her Pentecostal faith, together with the media attacks on her family gave social conservatives reason to be enthusiastic about the prospect of a McCain presidency.

IT BEARS noting that that the sight of Palin's pregnant daughter appearing happily with her clean-cut fiancé at the Republican Convention on Wednesday served to reinforce the fact that women who are "pro-choice" actually have the choice not to abort unplanned pregnancies. Their presence in the hall demonstrated that embracing the responsibility of parenthood even at an early age can be a source of happiness and personal fulfillment for both fathers and mothers. That image alone no doubt ensured that on Election Day, tens of thousands of volunteers will work to bring voters to the polls for McCain.

Indeed, the value of the image is so enormous that the possibility arises that using his understanding of the media as an adversary and his understanding of his own political base, McCain viewed Bristol Palin's pregnancy as an electoral asset.

In the midst of the maelstrom swirling around her in the days that preceded her address to the Republican Convention, it was noted repeatedly that Palin's performance Wednesday evening would make or break McCain's candidacy. If she failed to present herself in a compelling fashion, she would destroy McCain's chances of election because her failure would serve as an indictment of his judgment. But if she succeeded, she would advance significantly the Republican ticket's chances of winning on November 4.

Many argued that McCain took an unnecessary gamble by placing such an enormous burden on her shoulders. Yet the fact is that McCain no doubt knew precisely what her capabilities are as a speaker. Unlike the media, he claims that he has been watching her political rise for years. He knew that she was capable of rising to the challenge. Far from a gamble, his move was a stroke of brilliance that showed an acute understanding of who Palin is, how he himself is perceived, and what motivates both the media and his own party base.

McCain's undoing of the elite, leftist media provides a universal lesson for contending with the Left. At base, the Left's ideology, whether relating to women's rights, human rights, academic inquiry or war and peace is not universal but tribal. Moreover, when the Left is challenged on any one of its signature issues, because it cannot actually make a case for the universal applicability or even logic of its views, it tends instead to embrace the politics of personal destruction while ignoring the obvious contradictions between its stated beliefs and actual behavior.

Although a necessary component of political warfare against the Left is the ability to expose its hypocrisy, exposing its hypocrisy alone will not bring victory. Leaders and policies capable of supplanting the Leftist elite and their failed ideas are also required. In the case at hand, had Palin been perceived as under-qualified to serve as vice president on Wednesday night, McCain's chances of winning the presidency would have been vastly diminished despite his successful unmasking of the Left's hypocrisy.

McCain's strategic grasp of the requirements for a successful presidential race provide an important lesson for policy-makers and political leaders. To win in politics and war you must be willing to acknowledge both your strengths and your weaknesses, and those of your opponent. It is never easy to look reality in the face. But unless leaders are willing to do so, they will never win. What's more, they will lose.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

Hamas and its international collaborators have a new plan. To forcibly end Israel's embargo of Gaza's seacoast, they intend to operate a "ferry" service that will sail from Cyprus to Gaza every couple of weeks. The plan was announced on Friday by American Hamas collaborator Paul Larudee. Larudee and 32 other Hamas collaborators from North America and Europe disguised themselves as "peace activists" last week as they ran the gauntlet of Israel's naval blockade in a bid to facilitate Hamas's unfettered access to the high seas.

Israel is fully cognizant of what these Hamas collaborators are up to. It knows they are trying to force the country to concede its vital interest in maintaining the blockade to prevent massive quantities of heavy weaponry from being brought into Iran's Hamas-controlled enclave. Israel understands what is at stake. But it has absolutely no idea how to contend with this new challenge. Speaking to The Jerusalem Post over the weekend, defense officials said that they have no policy for contending with additional ships in international waters that set sail for Gaza with the declared aim of ending Israel's blockade of the coastline.

The Olmert-Livni-Barak-Yishai government claims that its handling of last week's blockade runners was successful. By allowing the ships to sail to Gaza and then return to Cyprus, the government argues that it averted a public relations trap that Hamas and its collaborators set for it. Had Israel interdicted the ships, they argue, Hamas and its allies on board would have been able to demonize Israel by accusing it of preventing humanitarian aid from getting through to suffering Hamas supporters and regime officials in Gaza.

While Israel's decision to capitulate rather than defend its interests did in fact avert bad headlines, that success should be a comfort to no one. For Israel's decision to permit the ships to sail to and from Gaza exposed two of the government's most egregious and devastating strategic failings.

IN STANDING down in the face of Hamas's high seas challenge, Israel demonstrated yet again that it prefers to capitulate rather than pay a price to defend its vital interests. And Israel's readiness to surrender came as no surprise to either Hamas or its European and North American agents. They have watched for three years as Israel has taken no action to end Hamas's use of Gaza's border with Egypt to smuggle sufficient quantities of advanced weaponry into the area to transform Gaza from a tactical nuisance into a strategic threat to southern Israel. Through its refusal to launch a military operation to retake control over Gaza's international border, Israel has daily demonstrated its unwillingness to fight to secure its vital interests of ending Iranian encroachment on its borders, and weakening with the intent of overthrowing the Hamas regime in Gaza. Knowing this, Hamas and its international collaborators rightly assumed that Israel would similarly take no action to prevent their access to the high seas.

The blockade runners were also quick to capitalize on was Israel's other major failing: Its consistent refusal to recognize and contend with the role of international collaborators in advancing the Palestinian war effort against it. Hamas's international allies knew that Israel would take no action against the ships because they have watched for years as Israel has capitulated to their colleagues who challenge the IDF in support of Palestinian terrorists in Judea and Samaria. They saw for instance in the weeks leading up to their decision to set sail to Gaza that the Olmert-Livni-Barak-Yishai government has preferred to humiliate and court martial IDF commanders operating against terror collaborators in Ni'ilin rather than formulate a coherent information and law enforcement strategy against them.

Since 2001, international groups posing as peace activists and human rights champions have enjoyed generous funding of European governments as they have violently challenged IDF counter-terror operations in Judea, Samaria and Gaza. Operating under the aegis of groups like the International Solidarity Movement, the Israel Committee Against House Demolitions, Anarchists Against the Wall, Rabbis for Human Rights and other EU-funded anti-Israel groups, these terror collaborators have actively engaged in criminal behavior to thwart lawful IDF actions.

They have illegally entered closed military zones. They have illegally interfered with IDF operations. They have worked openly with Palestinian terror masters including Marwan Barghouti and Ismail Haniyeh. In so doing, these groups have been fully integrated into the Palestinian information war against Israel which itself is a vital component of the overall Palestinian war effort against Israel.

Far from acting to expose these criminals as terror collaborators, and then targeting their European governmental financiers, outlawing them, and arresting, imprisoning or deporting their members, Israel has not even tried to challenge their false self-identification as "peace activists." In surrendering the war of words to its adversaries, Israel has facilitated their war efforts against it. In legitimizing Hamas's international allies, Israel has ensured that as they have promised, they will expand their use of blockade running ships to enable Hamas's free access to the high seas.

The terror-enabling ships' successful challenge of the government demonstrated once again that under the Olmert-Livni-Barak-Yishai government, Israel's deterrent capacity has utterly collapsed. In international affairs, deterrence is the only truly effective way to prevent war. Deterrence is predicated on a state's ability and willingness to credibly threaten its adversaries' vital interests if its own are endangered. Under the Olmert-Livni-Barak-Yishai government, Israel's deterrence has collapsed because the government freely dispenses threats that it has no intention of carrying through. Rather than frighten its enemies and so convince them to relent in their attacks against the country, Israel's reckless recourse to empty threats under the current government has emboldened them and so placed the country in ever greater jeopardy.

THIS ABYSMAL and dangerous state of affairs was fully in evidence with the government's decision last week to tell the local media that it had just "reached a strategic decision" not to permit Iran to acquire nuclear weapons. Showing again its contempt for Israel's empty sloganeering, Iran announced it has finished installing 4,000 uranium enriching centrifuges at its Natanz nuclear facility, that it is preparing an additional 3,000 centrifuges for use, and that it has armed Hizbullah with long range missiles.

In light of our enemies' open contempt for the government's continued use of empty threats it is clear that far from preventing war, the government's continued utilization of threats actually increases the likelihood of war. The question that necessarily arises then is why is the government still making threats that its enemies do not believe?

THE ANSWER to that central question was provided on Sunday morning at the government's weekly meeting. That meeting was dominated by statements by Kadima ministers who are running to replace Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in this month's party leadership race. Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, Transportation Minister Shaul Mofaz, and Internal Security Minister Avi Dichter all outdid one another in their criticisms of Olmert's last ditch bid to conclude and accord with Palestinian Authority figurehead Mahmoud Abbas that will commit Israel to surrender Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria to the Hamas-dominated PA before he leaves office.

Their criticisms of Olmert were shocking for what they say about the fundamental cynicism of Kadima's would-be leaders. After all, in his feverish attempts to strike his deal with Abbas, Olmert is simply discharging the policies that all of them have repeatedly signed off on. Indeed, Livni has chaired Israel's negotiating team, and Mofaz and Dichter, like Shas leader Eli Yishai have repeatedly supported Olmert's and Livni's efforts in the face of outspoken criticism from Likud.

The cynicism of Kadima's would-be leaders exposes the actual target audience of the government's wholly discredited threats against Israel's enemies. That audience is not Israel's enemies, but the Israeli people. The government knows full well that none of Israel's enemies take its threats seriously. Between Iran, Hizbullah, Hamas, Fatah and their international collaborators, not a day goes by when Israel's bluff isn't called. The government makes those threats not because it actually intends to defend the country, but because it wants us all to believe that it will defend the country despite mountains of evidence to the contrary.

BUT BEYOND that, the criticisms that Olmert's own Kadima colleagues launched Sunday against the policies he is advancing with their full support and participation tells us two fundamental truths about the nature of the Israeli public.

First, it shows us that Kadima's leaders understand that in advancing the cause of capitulation to the Palestinians in Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem, they are acting against the wishes not only of the general public, but of their own party members. Livni, Mofaz and Dichter are vying for the support of some 70,000 Kadima members who alone have the right to vote in their primaries. By attacking Olmert for carrying out capitulationist policies they themselves have supported, they are signaling that they understand that those policies are opposed not only by their political opponents, but by their political supporters.

The second fundamental fact that their condemnations of Olmert exposes is a troubling one. While Livni, Mofaz and Dichter - like Yishai - understand that Israel's enemies are unmoved by their protestations of readiness to protect the country - they all believe that Kadima members and the Israeli public as a whole are willing to believe their cynical lies. And the polls seem to back them up. Despite the Kadima-Labor-Shas government's systematic destruction of Israel's deterrent capacity, public opinion polls show that one in five Israelis still intend to vote for Kadima in the next elections. Shas's support has not been significantly degraded since the last elections. As for the Labor party, its recent fall in the polls is due to the exposure of a new corruption scandal surrounding Defense Minister Ehud Barak and his wife, not to Barak's facilitation of Hamas's entrenchment in Gaza. Although Likud still leads Kadima in the polls, the Right's projected parliamentary majority is a narrow one.

The Kadima ministers' cynical manipulation of public opinion so prominently on display on Sunday morning together with the utter collapse of Israel's deterrent capacity makes clear the Right's central political challenge today. Likud Chairman Binyamin Netanyahu and his allies must convince the public to call the government's bluff, just as Israel's enemies have. Until the public stops its habit of believing wholly discredited threats and declarations on the part of the government, the incompetent politicians scuttling Israel's national security will continue their failed policies. Moreover, they will stand a chance of winning the public's trust to continue on this disastrous course for years to come.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.