Two years ago, the North was a war zone. Fields and forests, homes and hospitals were set ablaze by Hizbullah missiles. But on Sunday afternoon, as a tireless patriot was laid to rest in the Jezreel Valley, the ground was not burning with missile fire, it was exploding with fecundity. It filled the air with the aroma of its promise of spring harvests.

A multitude of mourners from all over the country crowded into Moshav Moledet's small cemetery to pay their final respects to 53-year-old Tzafrir Ronen, who died of a heart attack on Friday night. The man they mourned had dedicated his life to defending the country. In recent years, Tzafrir spent nearly every waking moment fighting for its soul. He sought to educate his fellow Israelis about the threats facing the country generally, and specifically about the existential danger to its viability presented by the Left's defeatist and post-Zionist narrative.

For this son of the Jezreel Valley, who grew up with the land, that narrative - which argues that Israel has neither the ability nor the right to defeat its enemies and to settle its land - was the single greatest threat to the long-term well-being of the country. Over the years, as Tzafrir's frustration at the direction the country was taking grew, his message became angrier and more urgent. As each of his successive warnings - about the fraudulent Oslo peace process, the withdrawal from southern Lebanon, the criminalization of Jewish building in Judea and Samaria, the refusal to enforce laws in the Israeli Arab sector, the expulsion of the Jews from Gaza and northern Samaria and the establishment of the Hamas terror state in Gaza - were ignored by successive governments, by the media and, inevitably, by voters, Tzafrir, like so many others in his position felt he was shouting into the wind.

MARGINALIZING AND silencing voices like Tzafrir's is one of the Israeli Left's greatest achievements. By consistently ignoring or demonizing voices like Tzafrir's - who have been correct about every major strategic issue facing the country - while steadfastly legitimizing and lionizing men and women like Amos Oz, Shulamit Aloni, Yossi Beilin and Haim Ramon - who not only have been wrong about every major issue in the past generation, but have also often taken leading roles in our enemies' propaganda campaigns - the Left has managed to remove our most vibrant thinkers and bravest builders and fighters from the national debate.

But the hundreds who crowded into the cemetery on Sunday are proof that the Left's success has been far from complete. The mourners at his funeral included Israelis from all walks of life -- religious, secular, farmers, city dwellers, Jews, non-Jews, new olim and sabras. The fact that people from such diverse backgrounds and traditions have found the way to work with one another shows that in spite of the demonization of the Right, people are still interested in defending and building the country. They are still are drawn to voices in the wilderness, like Tzafrir's, which say that we must fight, and win, and that we deserve to win and should feel privileged to fight for what is right.

On the face of it, Tzafrir, his colleagues and friends could feel vindicated by the Olmert-Livni-Barak government's decision to launch Operation Cast Lead against Hamas's regime in Gaza. Since Ariel Sharon, Ehud Olmert and Tzipi Livni first began advocating the surrender of Gaza in late 2003, Tzafrir and his colleagues were at the forefront of the protest movement against the giveaway. Not only did they argue that the forcible expulsion and destruction of communities in Gaza was a moral outrage, they warned that a withdrawal would transform Gaza into the jihadist hub it has become.

AND OF course, they were right. Far from bringing peace and stability, as they warned the likes of Olmert and Livni, withdrawal from Gaza started the countdown to the war we are now fighting. And as they warned would happen, withdrawal from Gaza allowed Hamas to become an Iranian proxy and build the Iranian-supplied army that now assaults the South with missiles and rockets.

Moreover, the international outcry which has greeted the IDF operation, and the tepid US support it has enjoyed, shows clearly that by "ending the occupation" of Gaza, (which actually ended with the establishment of the Palestinian Authority in 1994), Israel weakened rather than strengthened its international supporters. Today Israel is being condemned more harshly than it was in 2004 when the IDF nearly destroyed Hamas in Gaza by decapitating its leadership.

On the face of it, Tzafrir and his colleagues could pat themselves on the backs and say that by waging Operation Cast Lead, Livni and Olmert and the architect of unilateral surrenders of land to terrorists himself - Defense Minister Ehud Barak, who handed South Lebanon to Hizbullah in 2000 - have finally seen the light. They understand that terrorists have to be defeated and that the country is better off controlling hostile territories than allowing its enemies to control them.

BUT THIS is not the case. Olmert, Livni and Barak have made clear that they haven't changed their defeatist and post-Zionist view of Israel's prospects at all. Their current operation in Gaza is not aimed at defeating Hamas. They have uttered no call for victory. To the contrary, as Olmert made clear in his speech on Saturday evening, the goal of the current campaign is simply to "change the situation" in the South. The question is what "change" they have in mind.

For her part, Livni has called for installing the Fatah terror group in Gaza instead of Hamas. But Fatah has been rejected not only by Gazans, but by the Palestinians in Judea and Samaria as well. Bringing Fatah into Gaza would do nothing to stabilize the situation. It would simply be an invitation for Fatah to conduct war against Israel and seek an accommodation with Hamas and Iran.

Barak has claimed that we can no more negotiate a settlement with Hamas than the US can negotiate a settlement with al-Qaida. And this is true in principle. Just as al-Qaida will never live at peace with America, so Hamas will never accept peaceful coexistence with Israel. But Barak has never been one to abide by principles.

He didn't adhere to that principle six months ago when he convinced Livni and Olmert to accept a cease-fire that enabled Hamas to build its army and its missile arsenal without fear of IDF attack. And Barak did not adhere to this principle when as late as last Tuesday he was calling for a renewal of the failed, one-sided cease-fire.

THE FACT of the matter is that the change that the Olmert-Livni-Barak government seeks today has more to do with the public's perception of its competence than with any interest in changing the situation in Gaza in any fundamental way. During the Second Lebanon War, the government showed that it could not be trusted with the defense of the country and with the proper deployment of IDF soldiers. And in the aftermath of that war, the government lost its moral right to send its forces into battle.

Now it uses its campaign in Gaza as a means of winning back its moral authority. But the problem is that despite its protestations of cunning competence, the government's aims today are the same as they were in 2006. As was the case with Hizbullah, the Olmert-Livni-Barak government is signaling that it seeks a new negotiated settlement with Hamas. The hoped-for settlement, which has been telegraphed to the public through the pro-government media, will leave Hamas in power in Gaza. Although the government claims that the postwar Hamas will be more peaceful than the prewar Hamas, there is no reason to believe this will be the case.

Just as has been the case with Hizbullah since the government failed to destroy the terror army in 2006, so if Hamas remains in control of Gaza after the current war, no matter what its condition, it will be perceived as the winner.

HERE IT is important to make a sharp distinction between the IDF's clear military successes in Gaza and the political leadership's problematic management of this campaign. In the former case, it is inarguable that by destroying Hamas's military installations, killing its military commanders and incapacitating its weapons smuggling infrastructure, the IDF is weakening Hamas as a military organization. And this is a great and long-awaited achievement.

In contrast, the Olmert-Livni-Barak government's refusal to reconsider its defeatist political philosophy makes it apparent that in the longer term, any strategic advantage enjoyed from the IDF's success will be marginal. Like Hizbullah, Hamas - which enjoys Iranian and Syrian state sponsorship and authentic popularity throughout the Islamic world - does not have to defeat Israel to be perceived as the victor. It merely needs to survive. That is the great difference between jihadist organizations and Western democracies. And by surviving, it will expand its international cachet.

JUST AS the Bush administration seeks to accommodate Hizbullah by selling advanced weapons to the Lebanese government it dominates, so too, in the aftermath of the current campaign, Hamas will be accepted by the West.

Tzafrir Ronen, and his colleagues whose strategic wisdom caused them to be banished from the public square, can always depend on hapless, defeatist governments like that of Olmert, Livni, and Barak to remember them in times of crisis. Like a Swiss clock, whenever leaders who preach nothing but defeat and retreat to their countrymen find themselves in a position of having to fight our enemies, they know they can count on men like Tzafrir to fight for them. And to date, men like Tzafrir, who served in the IDF's elite combat units, and whose sons and daughters continue to bear the greatest burdens in our defense, have answered their calls without hesitation.

Looking at the faces of the mourners on Sunday afternoon and listening to the many eulogies of Tzafrir that repeatedly praised his Zionism, there was no room for doubt that again today these people will answer the call. But how long will this state of affairs continue? How long can failed and strategically blind politicians continue to expect the men and women they demonize to save the country after they fail, and then hand it back to them to endanger again?

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

This morning I knew the strike against Gaza was beginning when the thunderous roar of jet fighters en route to their mission shook my home. I was immediately overwhelmned by a profound sense of hope and relief.

Finally, after months of passivity, incompetence and empty threats that simply eroded Israel's credibility in the eyes of our enemies and friends alike still further, the IDF has been ordered to defend the country. Finally after the anger and defiance of residents of Ashkelon, Sderot and the kibbutzim and moshavim around Gaza had long been transformed into pleas of desperation, the government seems finally to be fulfilling its most important duty -- protecting the citizens of the State of Israel. 

I have my doubts about the goals of this mission and about the competence of this government to secure the country. And I will address these issues in due course. But today, all I can do is pray -- for the safety of all Israelis in the line of fire and for the success and safety of our brave pilots and soldiers. I pray that God will grant wisdom to our commanders and our leaders so that we will defeat our enemies and remove the threat of rockets, mortars and missiles from our southern cities. 

God bless the State of Israel. God bless the people of Israel. God bless the IDF.

Both Iran and its Hamas proxy in Gaza have been busy this Christmas week showing Christendom just what they think of it. But no one seems to have noticed.

On Tuesday, Hamas legislators marked the Christmas season by passing a Shari'a criminal code for the Palestinian Authority. Among other things, it legalizes crucifixion.

Hamas's endorsement of nailing enemies of Islam to crosses came at the same time it renewed its jihad. Here, too, Hamas wanted to make sure that Christians didn't feel neglected as its fighters launched missiles at Jewish day care centers and schools. So on Wednesday, Hamas lobbed a mortar shell at the Erez crossing point into Israel just as a group of Gazan Christians were standing on line waiting to travel to Bethlehem for Christmas.

While Hamas joyously renewed its jihad against Jews and Christians, its overlords in Iran also basked in jihadist triumphalism. The source of Teheran's sense of ascendancy this week was Britain's Channel 4 network's decision to request that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad give a special Christmas Day address to the British people. Ahmadinejad's speech was supposed to be a response to Queen Elizabeth II's traditional Christmas Day address to her subjects. That is, Channel 4 presented his message as a reasonable counterpoint to the Christmas greetings of the head of the Church of England.

Channel 4 justified its move by proclaiming that it was providing a public service. As a spokesman told The Jerusalem Post, "We're offering [Ahmadinejad] the chance to speak for himself, which people in the West don't often get the chance to see."

While that sounds reasonable, the fact is that Westerners see Ahmadinejad speaking for himself all the time. They saw him at the UN two years in a row as he called for the countries of the world to submit to Islam; claimed that Iran's nuclear weapons program is divinely inspired; and castigated Jews as subhuman menaces to humanity.

They saw him gather leading anti-Semites from all over the world at his Holocaust denial conference.

They heard him speak in his own words when he called for Israel to be "wiped off the map."

And of course, over the years Ahmadinejad has often communicated directly to the British people. For instance, in 2007 he received unlimited airtime on UK television as he paraded kidnapped British sailors and marines in front of television cameras; forced them to make videotaped "confessions" of their "crime" of entering Iranian territorial waters; and compelled them to grovel at his knee and thank him for "forgiving" them.

The British people listened to Ahmadinejad as he condemned Britain as a warmongering nation after its leaders had surrendered Basra to Iranian proxies. They heard him - speaking in his own voice - when he announced that in a gesture of Islamic mercy, he was freeing their humiliated sailors and marines in honor of Muhammad's birthday and Easter, and then called on all Britons to convert to Islam.

Yet as far as Channel 4 is concerned, Ahmadinejad is still an unknown quantity for most Britons. So they asked him to address the nation on Christmas. And not surprisingly, in his address, he attacked their way of life and co-opted their Jewish savior, Jesus, saying, "If Christ was on earth today, undoubtedly he would stand with the people in opposition to bullying, ill-tempered and expansionist powers."

He then reiterated his call for non-Muslims to convert to Islam saying, "The solution to today's problems can be found in a return to the call of the divine prophets."

THE FACT of the matter is that Channel 4 is right. There is a great deal of ignorance in the West about what the likes of Ahmadinejad and his colleagues in Iran, Syria, Hizbullah and Hamas stand for. But this isn't their fault. They tell us every day that they seek the destruction of the Jews and the domination of the West in the name of Islam. And every day they take actions that they believe advance their goals.

The reason that the West remains ignorant of the views and goals of the likes of Hamas and Iran is not that the latter have hidden their views and goals. It is because the leading political leaders and foreign policy practitioners in the West refuse to listen to them and deny the significance of their actions.

As far as the West's leaders are concerned, Iran and its allies are unimportant. They are not actors, but objects. As far as the West's leading foreign policy "experts" and decision-makers are concerned, the only true actors on the global stage are Western powers. They alone have the power to shape reality and the world. Oddly enough, this dominant political philosophy, which is based on denying the existence of non-Western actors on the world stage, is referred to as political "realism."

The "realist" view was given clear expression this week by one of the "realist" clique's most prominent members. In an op-ed published Tuesday in Canada's Globe and Mail titled, "We must talk Iran out of the bomb," Richard Haass, the president of the Council on Foreign Relations, argued that given the dangers of a nuclear-armed Iran and the dangers of a US or Israeli strike against Iran's nuclear installations, the incoming Obama administration must hold direct negotiations with the mullahs to convince them to end their nuclear weapons program.

In making this argument, Haass ignores the fact that this has been the Bush administration's policy for the past five years. He also ignores the fact that President George W. Bush adopted this policy at the urging of Haass's "realist" colleagues and at the urging of Haass himself.

Moreover, Haass bizarrely contends that in negotiating with the mullahs, the Obama administration should offer Iran the same package of economic and political payoffs that the Bush administration and the EU have been offering, and Teheran has been rejecting, since 2003.

Even more disturbingly, Haass ignores the fact that Teheran made its greatest leaps forward in its uranium enrichment capabilities while it was engaged in these talks with the West.

So in making his recommendation to the Obama administration - which has already announced its intention to negotiate with the mullahs - Haass has chosen to ignore Iran's statements, its actions, and known facts about the West's inability to steer it from its course of war by showering it with pay-offs.

Haass and his colleagues in the US, Europe and on the Israeli Left are similarly unwilling to pay attention to Hamas. In an article in the current issue of Foreign Affairs, Haass and his colleague Martin Indyk from the Brookings Institute call on the Obama administration to either ignore Hamas, or, if it abides by a cease-fire with Israel, they suggest that the Obama administration should support a joint Hamas-Fatah government and "authorize low-level contact between US officials and Hamas." The fact that Hamas itself is wholly dedicated to Israel's destruction and Islamic global domination is irrelevant.

Similarly, Haass and Indyk assume that Damascus can be appeased into abandoning its support for Hizbullah and Hamas, and its strategic alliance with Iran. Syrian President Bashar Assad's views of how his interests are best served are unimportant. Both Assad's statements of eternal friendship with Iran and his active involvement in Iran's war effort against the US and its allies in Israel, Iraq and Lebanon are meaningless. The "realists" know what he really wants.

MUSLIMS AREN'T the only ones whose views and actions are dismissed as irrelevant by these foreign policy wise men. The "realists" ignore just about every non-Western actor. Take Iran's principal Asian ally, North Korea, for example.

This week North Korea's official news agency threatened to destroy South Korea in a "sea of fire," and "reduce everything treacherous and anti-reunification to debris and build an independent, reunified country on it," if any country dares to attack its nuclear installations.

North Korea made its threat two weeks after Kim Jung Il's regime disengaged from its fraudulent disarmament talks with the Bush administration. Those talks - the brainchild of foreign policy "realists" Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Assistant Secretary Christopher Hill - were based on the "realist" belief that the US can appease North Korea into giving up its nuclear arsenal. (That would be the same nuclear arsenal that the North Koreans built while engaged in fraudulent disarmament talks with the Clinton administration.)

After Pyongyang agreed in February 2007 to eventually come clean on its plutonium installations (but not its uranium enrichment programs), and to account for its nuclear arsenal (but not for its proliferation activities), Rice convinced President Bush to remove North Korea from the State Department's list of state sponsors of terror and to end its subjection to the US's Trading with the Enemy Act this past October. And then, after securing those massive US concessions, on December 11 Pyongyang renounced its commitments, walked away from the table and now threatens to destroy South Korea if anyone takes any action against it.

North Korea's behavior is of no interest to the "realists," however. As far as they are concerned, the US has no option other than to continue the failed appeasement policy that has enabled North Korea to develop and proliferate nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles. As the Council on Foreign Relations' Gary Samore said, "I think we're sort of condemned to that process, because we don't really have any alternative."

Samore and his colleagues believe there are no other options because all other options involve placing responsibility for contending with North Korea on non-Western powers like China, South Korea and Japan. More radically, they involve holding North Korea accountable for its actions and making it pay a price for its poor behavior.

As the "realists" claim that the US has no option other than their failed appeasement policies, back in the real world, this week military officials from the US's Pacific Command warned that North Korea may supply Iran with intercontinental ballistic missiles. These warnings are credible given that North Korea has been the primary supplier of ballistic missiles and missile technology to Iran and Syria and has played a major role in both countries' nuclear weapons programs.

Defending Channel 4's invitation to Ahmadinejad, Dorothy Byrne, the network's head of news and current affairs, said, "As the leader of one of the most powerful states in the Middle East, President Ahmadinejad's views are enormously influential. As we approach a critical time in international relations, we are offering our viewers an insight into an alternative world view."

When you think about it, broadcasting Ahmadinejad really would have been a public service if Byrne or any of the delusional "realists" calling the shots were remotely interested in listening to what he has to say. But they aren't. So far from a public service for Britain, it was a service for those who, unbeknownst to most Britons, are dedicated to destroying their country.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

Yesterday I filmed the first segment of a new show on Pajamas Media web TV. The show is called The Middle East Report and it will be filmed every week. 

Before you check it out, I feel it necessary to warn you that I am new to this TV stuff. I managed to do my makeup all wrong and wear the wrong color. As a result, I look like a plaster ghost.

I promise to plan better next time.

The show this week is free. In general though, PJTV is a subscription based endeavor. I encourage you to check out the site. There's a lot of great programming coming out. If you like what you see, maybe buy yourself a Chanukah or Christmas present and take out a subscription.

Best wishes to all my readers for the holidays.

Caroline

If additional proof is needed that Israel is in desperate need of a new government, one needs to look no further than the situation in the South.

After the Olmert-Livni government failed to defeat Hizbullah in the 2006 war, the public demanded that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert resign and enable the people to elect a new government capable of defending the country and fixing the damage that he and his colleagues had just wrought. Olmert refused. He justified his contempt for the public by claiming that since he was the one who had failed, he was in the best position to fix the mess he created.

His reasoning was not simply self-serving. It was strategically devastating. His stubborn insistence on remaining in power made it impossible for the country to embark on a new course.

And today, with the South under siege, the hollowness of Olmert's assertion that he and his colleagues could be trusted to learn from their mistakes is unmistakable. On Sunday the IDF was forced to order schools around Gaza to bar children from playing outside. And as Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) director Yuval Diskin acknowledged at Sunday's cabinet meeting, their fate may soon be shared by hundreds of thousands of other children.

Diskin announced that over the past six months of Israel's one-sided cease-fire with Hamas, Hamas expanded its rocket range from 20 kilometers to 40 and is now capable of attacking the outskirts of Beersheba, Ashdod, Gedera, Kiryat Gat and Kiryat Malachi in addition to Ashkelon, Sderot and Netivot. So due to the so-called cease-fire, Hamas now has more than a million Israelis at its mercy.

SINCE IT abandoned Gaza in September 2005, the government has more or less stood down and allowed Hamas to build its armies and terror arsenals unchallenged. But with the February 10 general elections swiftly approaching, and with public anger at their abandonment of the South daily rising, on Sunday Olmert's ministers decided that the time has come to launch a military offensive into Gaza.

To prepare the ground for the promised offensive, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni has ordered the diplomatic corps to build international support and understanding for the planned military action. Of course, as Likud Knesset candidate and former chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. (res.) Moshe Ya'alon pointed out on Israel Radio Monday morning, the very fact that Israel today lacks international support for defending the country against Hamas's illegal terror offensive shows how empty pledges made by Livni and Olmert on the eve of the 2005 surrender of the Gaza Strip truly were.

At the time, Livni, Olmert and their colleagues promised that after Israel left the area, if the Palestinians dared to attack the country, Israel would have full international backing to defend itself. Now, with an Iranian proxy in control of its southern border, Israel finds itself condemned for every action it takes to secure its citizens from murder.

At any rate, the cabinet decided that whenever Livni, Defense Minister Ehud Barak and Olmert feel comfortable with the international climate, the IDF will gradually escalate its currently anemic operations in Gaza. Presently the IDF is not even going after Hamas targets, just Islamic Jihad ones. And on Monday morning Barak announced that every additional operation will require prior approval by the government.

While the government is congratulating itself on its willingness to defend the country after three years of negligence, the fact is that its strategic aim is not to defeat Hamas. This fact was made clear in the summary of the government's decisions reported in the media on Sunday afternoon. The government made clear that the aim of both the diplomatic and military offensives is to pave the way for the "international community" to intervene in Gaza to protect Israel from Palestinian terrorism.

IF THAT sounds familiar, it is because it is. It is the same strategy, and the same strategic goal, that the government adopted during the 2006 war with Hizbullah. After reacting helter skelter to Hizbullah's initial aggression which began the war, Olmert and Livni decided that Israel shouldn't bother trying to defeat Hizbullah. Instead of ordering the IDF to defeat the enemy, they ordered it to put on a sound and light show replete with aerial bombing and some good photo-ops of ground forces raising the flag in Bint Jbail and other villages. The aim of their military extravaganza was to convince the "international community" to deploy forces to Lebanon's borders to protect Israel in place of the IDF.

In defending their strategy to the public both during the war and in its aftermath, Olmert and Livni refused to acknowledge the prohibitive cost of surrendering borders to terror armies. Instead, they spoke darkly of the cost to Israel of controlling its own borders as part of an ongoing "occupation." In Lebanon, Olmert and Livni succeeded in expanding the size of the UNIFIL force deployed along the border. And they presented the expanded force as proof of their strategic genius. But UNIFIL is a disaster.

It has consistently refused to lift a finger to prevent Hizbullah from rearming and reasserting its control over the border area. Rather than contend with Hizbullah, UNIFIL devotes its time to condemning the IAF for conducting surveillance flights over Lebanon. Those flights enable Israel to keep tabs on the Iranian and Syrian weapons shipments to Hizbullah that UNIFIL has refused to prevent.

Under the protective gaze of UNIFIL forces, which Livni and Olmert promised the public would protect Israel from Hizbullah, Hizbullah launched a successful coup against the pro-Western democracy forces in the country in May and gained control over the Lebanese government. And under UNIFIL's protective gaze, the Lebanese army - which has both the US and Russia standing in line to sell it state of the art tanks, fighter jets, helicopters and precision bombs - has actively colluded with Hizbullah and the Iranian Revolutionary Guards in south Lebanon.

AND NOW, rather from learn from their mistakes in Lebanon, Livni, Olmert and Barak are seeking to repeat them in Gaza.

In moving to implement their tried and failed "war" strategy in Gaza, Livni, Olmert and Barak are abandoning their tried and failed and tried again and failed again "cease-fire" strategy. Unlike their war strategy, which has only been tried and failed in Lebanon, their cease-fire strategy has been tried and failed in Lebanon and Gaza.

Barak was the first leader to adopt the cease-fire strategy. He implemented it in Lebanon after he surrendered Lebanon's southern border to Hizbullah in May 2000. At the time, as prime minister, Barak announced that Israel would use overwhelming force to combat Hizbullah if it dared to attack after the withdrawal. But then when Hizbullah kidnapped three IDF soldiers along the border in October 2000, Barak refused to take action.

Barak's one-way cease-fire with Hizbullah was exploited by the group to build up a formidable missile arsenal, to organize and train its forces and to construct its warren of underground bunkers and command and control centers which it used to such great effect in the 2006 war. Moreover, emboldened by successive Israeli governments' refusal to lift a finger against Hizbullah, the Iranian-proxy trained, funded and directed Fatah terror cells in Judea, Samaria and Gaza in their attacks against Israel.

In Gaza, the Sharon government first enacted the one-sided cease-fire with Palestinian terror groups led by Fatah in June 2003. In exchange Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas promised to take action against Hamas and Islamic Jihad rocket squads. Of course he never did. And of course, all Palestinian terror factions used the cease-fire to rebuild their forces and expand the range of their rockets - at the time from six to eight kilometers to 15-17, placing Ashkelon under attack from the first time.

ISRAEL FINALLY decided to end its non-aggression pledge in the aftermath of a joint Hamas-Islamic jihad massacre of 20 children and their parents travelling on a bus on their way home from the Western Wall in August 2003. The response involved taking out a Hamas terror commander in Gaza.

Not surprisingly, supported by Egypt, the EU and the Israeli media, all Palestinian terror groups were quick to blame Israel for ending the "truce." The unilateral cease-fire strategy in Gaza was never replaced by a plan to have the "international community" deploy forces to defend Israel. This was the case mainly because no one ever expressed any interest in sending forces to Gaza. In the absence of a foreign deus ex machina to save the country, Ariel Sharon, Olmert and Livni decided to follow the path blazed by Barak in Lebanon and simply surrender Gaza to the terrorists.

Before the government sends IDF forces into harm's way to put on a pre-election show for the public and invite an international force to come to Gaza and protect Hamas from the IDF, the public would do well to consider whether we are truly limited to repeating failed strategies over and over again. Is there perhaps an option other than failure we could choose?

The answer to that question is yes. There is an alternative strategy, and it has already been tried. And it succeeded. That strategy is the strategy of victory adopted in Judea and Samaria during Operation Defensive Shield in 2002.

In Defensive Shield, IDF forces were sent into Palestinian terror centers with orders to defeat enemy forces. And they did. In succeeding months and years, IDF forces were ordered to remain in place and prevent enemy forces from rebuilding their capacity. As the absence of rocket arsenals in Judea and Samaria and the near disappearance of suicide bombers from Israeli cities shows, the strategy has worked.

THE PROBLEM with repeating the successful strategy used in Defensive Shield in either Gaza or Lebanon is that doing so would require politicians to admit that they have made mistakes. Livni, Olmert and Barak have all based their careers on their advocacy of the view that Israel must not "occupy" land to defend itself, but rather should subcontract its security to peace treaties, to its enemies and to Europeans and Americans.

They cannot implement a strategy that requires them to recognize that the price of defending ourselves is smaller than the price of surrendering our security to our enemies. Doing so would be tantamount to acknowledging that they have led the country astray. And as they demonstrate through their stubborn maintenance of tried and failed strategies, this is something they will not do.

But then, as Ya'alon noted in his radio interview Monday, that's why Israel is lucky to be a democracy. On February 10 we will have the opportunity to make clear our view that leaders who have failed cannot be trusted to clean up their messes.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

Imagine what would happen if all the horse racing experts in the world got together and bet their money on a dead horse to win the Kentucky Derby. As far-fetched as that sounds, today all the who's who in foreign affairs are either actively supporting or enacting an analogous policy toward the Palestinian Fatah movement.

Cheered on by the Olmert-Livni-Barak government, this week the UN Security Council passed Resolution 1850, which among other things calls on all UN member nations to provide political and financial support for Fatah chief Mahmoud Abbas's government. And no doubt the call will be answered with enthusiasm. Over the past year, Fatah received $1.7 billion in international aid - some $600 million more than the world's foreign policy gurus promised to give last December.

But Fatah is a dead horse. Even if it were to sign a peace deal with Israel - and really meant to keep it - the deal would be a dead letter because the Palestinian people themselves want neither peace with Israel nor Fatah.

Fatah lost the Palestinian Authority's January 2006 legislative elections to Hamas. In June 2007 it was violently ousted from Gaza by Hamas. And next month, on January 9, Abbas's term of office as PA chairman will end. If Abbas refuses to relinquish power on January 10, as far as the Palestinian people are concerned, Hamas will be right to reject his authority and to seek to overthrow his government in Judea and Samaria.

With the massive backing he enjoys from the US, in all likelihood Abbas will remain in power on January 10 and will refuse to run for reelection. Palestinian journalists and Fatah officials in Ramallah readily acknowledge that were Abbas to face Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in open elections, Haniyeh would win big. And this is Fatah's fault.

OVER THE past 13 years, Palestinian society has come to view jihad against Israel and the US as its definitive goal. And Fatah brought about this state of affairs.

Fatah indoctrinated the Palestinians to support jihad through a massive campaign of media incitement. Fatah has controlled the Palestinian media since 1994. Although it lost that control in Gaza in June 2007, aside from declaring their support for Hamas, Gaza's media today are no different than they were when Fatah was in charge.

By convincing Palestinian society to support jihad, Fatah paved the way for Hamas's takeover. Although Fatah operatives have killed more Israelis than Hamas has, Hamas still has more credibility in the jihad department. This owes mainly to Fatah's image as a US and Israeli stooge.

Fatah's American and Israeli champions justify their support for it by noting that since Hamas took over Gaza, Fatah has been willing to fight Hamas. But Fatah - which is begging Israel to reconquer Gaza for it - has not tempered its commitment to Israel's destruction. The reason it fights Hamas is because Fatah's leaders rightly view Hamas as a mortal threat.

In an interview with Jerusalem Post editor David Horovitz last week, US Lt.-Gen. Keith Dayton, who as US security coordinator for the PA has been working with Fatah militias for the past three years, praised the US-trained Fatah forces now deployed in Jenin, Nablus and Hebron as "state-builders."

Dayton also defended Fatah's behavior during Hamas's coup in Gaza. Noting that some 250 Fatah members were killed during the coup, Dayton claimed that Fatah forces fought well before they surrendered. In his words, "These aren't people that simply, immediately raised their hands and surrendered. I know this. It took five days... They were clearly outgunned and still they stood their ground for five days."

Perhaps this is true. But what Dayton ignored is the fact that Hamas would never have been able to build up a force capable of outgunning Fatah forces if Fatah leaders hadn't let it.

IN SPITE of the fact that the entire Israeli-Palestinian peace process was predicated on Fatah's pledge to disarm and disband Hamas, from 1994 until the 2007 coup, Fatah and Hamas were strategic allies and constant collaborators in their common war against Israel. Indeed, at the time of the coup, as partners in the PA's unity government, Fatah and Hamas were closer than ever.

When on January 9 Fatah finds itself lacking any legal basis to lead the PA, Hamas will be sitting on top of the world. In addition to enjoying the support of the majority of Palestinians, Hamas is now second only to Hizbullah in Iran's terror proxy pecking order.

Hamas cemented its alliance with Iran in December 2005 and it has only benefitted from its proxy status. Iran has provided Hamas with hundreds of millions of dollars. And to Iran's monies must be added US and European financial assistance. Using the massive inflows of US and European contributions, Fatah transfers tens of millions of dollars to Gaza each month to pay the salaries of 70,000 Fatah-aligned PA employees in Gaza. That money frees Hamas from the need to develop Gaza's economy, enabling it to devote itself to building up its war machine against Israel.

Iranian military assistance includes both training and equipment. Thanks to Israel's decision six months ago to implement a largely one-sided cease-fire toward Hamas, since June, Hamas has doubled both the size and the range of its rocket and missile arsenals. Today it fields more than 10,000 rockets, missiles and mortars and has extended their range from 20 to 40 kilometers, placing major cities like Beersheba and Ashdod under threat.

If the government ever permits the IDF to defend the South by launching an offensive in Gaza, Hamas will be able to put up a very strong fight. Thanks to Iranian assistance and Israeli passivity, today Hamas's forces are organized much like Hizbullah forces were in 2006.

Hamas has raised a 16,000-man army divided into eight brigades. Its forces possess advanced anti-aircraft and anti-tank missiles. Like Hizbullah, Hamas has developed sophisticated intelligence capabilities. And like Hizbullah it has constructed 50 kilometers of tunnels and bunkers along Gaza's borders with Israel and Egypt.

As a member of the Iranian camp, Hamas deters Israel from attacking it by raising the specter that any serious IDF operation in Gaza will be answered by the entire axis. An Israeli strike in Gaza is liable to be greeted not only by Hamas but by Hizbullah, Syria and Iran.

Hamas allies drove this point home over the past week. As Hamas escalated its rocket offensive against Israel, Iran launched state-sponsored rallies in support of Hamas and announced it is sending a "humanitarian aid" ship to Gaza to break Israel's naval blockade. Hizbullah launched identical protests and likewise stated its intention of sending a "humanitarian aid" ship to Hamas.

Then, too, Hamas-controlled UNRWA announced on Thursday that it is suspending its food assistance to Gaza to protest Israel's blockade of the Gaza coastline. This in turn will generate an outcry in Europe and give Iran and Hizbullah an excuse to attack Israel for refusing to let their "humanitarian aid" ships dock in Gaza.

TO DATE, Israel's strategy for contending with Fatah's demise has been to deny it. As for Hamas, the Olmert-Livni-Barak government has adopted Defense Minister Ehud Barak's favored policy of speaking loudly and carrying no stick. As Abbas moves from failure to failure, they cling to him ever more tightly as Israel's irreplaceable interlocutor.

After Hamas renewed its war against Israel this week, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and Barak have all threatened to take action against Hamas. But at the same time, they have sent emissaries to Egypt to beg Hamas to reconsider its decision.

Since Abbas gave his final refusal last month to Olmert's pleas to finalize a peace deal with Israel before US President George W. Bush leaves office, and since Hamas renewed its missile offensive against Israel last month, Livni, Barak and Olmert have found it impossible to justify their policies to the public. With elections around the corner and with dozens of rockets and mortars now being launched against the country daily, Yediot Aharonot's leftist military columnist Alex Fishman tried to help them out.

In a front-page commentary on Thursday, Fishman gave four major justifications for their decision to allow Hamas to build up its armed forces without an Israeli challenge for the past six months.

First, he argued that had Israel not given Hamas a free pass for six months, Israel wouldn't have been able to negotiate the surrender of Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem to Fatah.

Presumably this is so because had Israel opted to fight Hamas, Fatah would have sided with Hamas against Israel. Of course, given Fatah's preference for Hamas over Israel, it is unclear why negotiating with Fatah is in Israel's interest. But Fishman ignores that issue.

Fishman then claimed that by not attacking Hamas for six months, Israel has allowed two Palestinian "states" to be established - the Hamas state in Gaza, and the US- and Israel-sponsored Fatah state in Judea and Samaria. And again, this is supposed to be a good thing because if only one Hamas-Fatah state existed in both areas, then the Olmert-Livni-Barak government wouldn't have been able to negotiate the surrender of Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem to Fatah. The fact that Hamas can and will overthrow a Fatah-run state in Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem as easily as it overthrew the Fatah-run state in Gaza went unnoted by Fishman for some reason.

Fishman also argued that Israel's decision to stand down against Hamas has improved Israel's relations with Egypt. This assertion rings hollow, though. Throughout this period of supposedly improved relations, Egypt has continued to turn a blind eye to massive Iranian arms transfers to Hamas through its territory.

Finally, Fishman asserted that Israel's unilateral cease-fire toward Hamas has been a good thing for Israel because it facilitated the return of the so-called Saudi peace plan to the regional agenda. But since the Saudi plan requires Israel to commit national suicide by withdrawing to the indefensible 1949 armistice lines and accepting millions of hostile, foreign-born Arabs as immigrants, it is hard to see why its return is a positive development for Israel.

And still, with Hamas now in the driver's seat and ready to roll out its new war against Israel together with its many allies, everyone who is anyone is putting his money on Abbas, who in less than three weeks will lose his last vestige of democratic legitimacy.

In his interview with the Post, Dayton couldn't think of a way that Hamas could be ejected from Gaza. On the other hand, it is self-evident that if the people betting on Abbas get their way and Israel gives Fatah Judea and Samaria and Jerusalem, Hamas will quickly take over those areas as well.

That's what happens when you bet on a dead horse. You lose.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

People who are concerned about maintaining the rule of law in Israel have great reason for worry these days. The sine qua non of a society ruled by law is the principle of equality under the law. In a society governed by the rule of law, individual citizens can trust that the state's law enforcement arms will treat them in the same manner as their fellow citizens.

When instead, a society's law enforcement arms determine how a citizen will be treated on the basis of his or her political convictions, religious orientation or any other extraneous factor, then the rule of law is trampled. The principle of equality before the law is replaced by the tyranny of law enforcement arms.

Disturbingly, both recent events and empirical data indicate strongly that today Israel is not ruled by law. Instead, and to an alarming degree, Israel has become a society ruled by politicized law enforcement bodies that selectively enforce the law based on an individual's political affiliation and ethnic origin.

Last week, a government-appointed committee charged with assessing the phenomenon of massive illegal seizures of state lands in the Negev by Israeli Beduin submitted its recommendations to Housing Minister Zev Boim. The committee, chaired by retired Supreme Court Justice Eliezer Goldberg, recommended "legalizing" 50,000 illegal buildings constructed on state-owned lands and giving legal recognition and state funding to 42 illegal settlements constructed over the past several years by Beduin on state-owned land.

Boim enthusiastically accepted the Goldberg Committee's recommendations and pledged to bring them before the government for a vote before the February 10 elections.

Both the Goldberg Committee's report and Boim's embrace of its findings are stunning. They represent a complete capitulation of state authorities to criminality of unprecedented dimensions. This lawless behavior, in which vast tracts of the Negev have been stolen from the state, has been actively abetted by the state itself - and particularly by its legal bodies.

The Supreme Court, in response to petitions on behalf of the Beduin lawbreakers submitted by far-Left organizations, has repeatedly prohibited the government from taking any action against the land thieves. And the state prosecution has refused consistently to open criminal investigations or file indictments against the Beduin, not only for their illegal seizure of land, but for their massive criminal activity which spans the spectrum from polygamy, to agricultural theft, extortion, racketeering, drug trafficking and treason.

Responding to the Goldberg Committee's report, right-wing members of Knesset called for the government to legalize all the Jewish Israeli settlements in Judea and Samaria that were built without proper authorization over the past decade. Their reasoning is clear and sensible: If the state has decided to ignore the law with relation to the Beduin, then it must also ignore the law as it relates to Jews.

BUT THAT'S the thing of it. The non-enforcement of law towards Israeli Arabs and indeed towards Palestinian Arabs is one side of the coin of the politicization of law enforcement by Israeli legal officials. The other side of the coin is over-enforcement of the law against right-wing Israelis who reside in Judea and Samaria and their political supporters throughout the country.

At Sunday's cabinet meeting, Defense Minister Ehud Barak excoriated the lower courts for what he claimed is unjustified leniency in their treatment of Jewish residents of Judea and Samaria. "We must be more severe in punishments meted out to lawbreakers in Judea and Samaria," he said to his colleagues. He then mapped out how the Defense Ministry, the IDF and the police are working together to clamp down on Jewish residents of the areas.

What apparently got Barak's goat was the decision by Jerusalem Magistrate Court Judge Malka Aviv last week to release Zeev Baroudah from jail. Baroudah was arrested in the wake of the legally questionable and violent expulsion of some 200 Israeli Jews from the Jewish-owned Peace House building in Hebron on December 4.

The police claimed that Baroudah shot two Palestinians without provocation. The police based their contention on a video of his purported crime that was filmed by the pro-Palestinian far-left B'tselem organization. The video, which was shown repeatedly by the local media in prime time news broadcasts, portrayed Baroudah as a cold-blooded, would-be killer. And on the basis of this interpretation of the video, he was remanded to custody for a week.

Yet Aviv noted that the video itself did not show what either the police or B'tselem claimed it showed. Rather, it showed that Baroudah was the victim of an attempted lynch by Palestinians. As she put it in her decision, "From the film I saw, it is clear that the attempt to lynch the suspect [Baroudah] took place while he was lying down helpless on the ground while in the film we see Palestinian residents coming and joining in the attack against him without provocation or justification, simply with the goal of kicking and hitting the suspect."

Aviv accused the police of negligence for not arresting any of the Palestinians filmed attacking Baroudah. Arguing that he shot off his gun in an attempt at self-defense, she released him to his home in Kiryat Arba.

Both the police and the state prosecution immediately tried to force Aviv to cancel her decision. According to a statement she released later that day, both representatives of the State Attorney's office and police commanders paid unsolicited visits to her chambers and demanded that she revise her decision. They argued that her decision contradicted media reports alleging Baroudah's guilt that were published in both Israel and abroad and that as a consequence, she was likely to cause grave damage to Israel's international image if she did not send Baroudah back to jail. In explaining her refusal to back down, Aviv noted that her job is to adjudicate on the basis of facts and not on the basis of media reports.

Later that day, the District Court bowed to massive pressure by the police and the State Attorney office. While agreeing with the Magistrates Court's assertion that Baroudah was the victim of an attempted Palestinian lynch, Judge Orit Efal-Gabbai allowed that he might be a danger to Arabs and so remanded Baroudah to house arrest. Supreme Court Justice Elyakim Rubinstein upheld the District Court's decision, after the State Attorney again appealed the decision not to send him to prison on Sunday.

On the face of it, it seems strange that the police and the State Attorney's office would go to such lengths to remand a suspect to custody in the face of documentary evidence, pointed out by Aviv, showing that there is significant doubt as to both his guilt and the danger he manifests to society. But unfortunately, this is routine practice.

LAST WEEK the right-leaning Organization for Human Rights in Judea and Samaria published a report which demonstrated that Israeli Jewish residents of Judea and Samaria are discriminated against by law enforcement agencies including the police and the state prosecution as a matter of general policy. This is true in comparison to the general population of the country and even more blatant in comparison to the state's treatment of both Palestinian and leftist Israeli lawbreakers in Judea and Samaria.

The report was based entirely on data published by the police and the state prosecution, court records, official state prosecution regulations, and official statements by police commanders and representatives of the State Attorney's office. Among other things, it shows that the number of policemen per Israeli citizen is four times larger in Judea and Samaria than in crime-infested Acre, and five times larger than in equally crime-infested Netanya.

The tendency of police to open criminal investigations against right-wing Israeli Jewish suspects in Judea and Samaria when no complaint has been filed against them is 80 percent greater than the tendency of police to open such investigations in the rest of the country.

In Judea and Samaria, 38 percent of criminal investigations against right-wing Israeli Jews end in indictments. The national average is 14 percent. On the other hand, the conviction rate for indictments against right-wing Israeli Jews in Judea and Samaria is a mere 54 percent, while the national conviction rate is 97 percent. As the report's authors point out, this finding is particularly devastating as it shows that the first instance where Israeli Jewish suspects are considered innocent until proven guilty is in the courts themselves.

EVERY FRIDAY, leftist activists descend on Judea and Samaria where they conduct violent riots against IDF forces and border guards involved in the construction of the security fence. Yet, of the 400 criminal investigations opened for disturbance of the peace in 2008, only 38, or nine percent, were opened against leftists. And none have led to indictments.

Even more disturbingly, the State Attorney's office operates a special forum, the "Follow-up and Coordination Team," chaired by Deputy State Attorney Shai Nitzan. Team members include representatives of other departments in the state prosecution, the IDF, the Shin Bet and the Civil Administration. Its purpose is to oversee the collection of intelligence against Israeli Jewish residents of the areas, to prepare investigations, open investigations following media reports critical of Israeli residents of the areas, and reopen investigations that were closed.

The team convenes every month in spite of the fact that it was officially disbanded by then attorney general Elyakim Rubinstein in 1998. Rubinstein disbanded the forum following Knesset and government orders declaring the forum, whose existence had been kept secret, a serious abrogation of the principle of equality under the law.

According to the left-leaning Israel Democracy Institute's annual Democracy Index, between 2004 and 2008 the public's trust in the state prosecution has nearly halved descending from 66 percent in 2004 to a mere 35 percent in 2008. Public trust in the Supreme Court has similarly plunged from 79 percent in 2004 to 49 percent in 2008.

In light of all of this, it is disturbing that whenever politicians speak of the necessity of upholding the rule of law in Israel, they state in the same breath that it is vital to uphold the extraordinary powers of the Supreme Court and the state prosecution. Whether these statements - by politicians across the political spectrum - stem from agreement with the legal fraternity's radical political agenda, or fear of its unbridled power and its willingness to undertake politically motivated prosecutions, the fact of the matter is that these statements exacerbate the current, unacceptable situation.

If Israel is to become again an open democracy ruled by law, ahead of the elections, it behooves all citizens to demand that our political leadership rein in our law enforcement arms and require them treat all citizens equally before the law.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

The "international community" is eagerly anticipating the incoming Obama administration's policy toward Israel. It is widely assumed that as soon as he comes into office, US president-elect Barack Obama will move quickly to place massive pressure on the next Israeli government to withdraw from Judea, Samaria, Jerusalem and the Golan Heights in the interests of advancing a "peace process" with the Palestinians and the Syrians.

Giving voice to these expectations this week was this year's Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Martti Ahtisaari. The former Finnish prime minister used his prize ceremony to call on Obama to make contending with the Palestinian conflict with Israel his chief focus during his first year in office. This is the same Ahtisaari who recently demanded that the West recognize Hamas as a legitimate political movement.

People who have been in close contact with Obama's foreign policy transition team have privately acknowledged that the widespread belief that Obama will move swiftly to put the screws on Israel is fully justified. According to one source who has spent a great deal of time with the transition team since last month's US elections, Obama's people are "scope-locked" on Israel.

The source reports that Gen. Jim Jones, Obama's designated national security adviser, is Israel's most outspoken critic. The source, who held a two and a half hour meeting with Jones, told his associates that Jones is keen to deploy NATO forces, perhaps including US troops, to Judea and Samaria.

Jones's plan, which is vociferously opposed by the IDF, would make it impossible for the IDF to carry out counterterror operations in the areas. As a practical matter, the lives of hundreds of thousands of Israeli citizens who live in the areas would be imperiled. Just as Hizbullah has used UNIFIL forces in south Lebanon as a shield from the IDF behind which it has rearmed and reasserted control over the border zone, so too a NATO force would facilitate an empowerment of Hamas and Fatah, which would unify, arm and organize free from the threat of IDF counterterror operations.

Jones's plan is not new. In a 2002 interview, Samantha Power - who has been one of Obama's closest foreign affairs advisers for years and now serves as a member of his transition team for the State Department - called for US forces to be deployed to Judea and Samaria as "a mammoth protection force" to protect the Palestinians from Israel, which she claimed was guilty of "major human rights abuses."

Obama's team, like its supporters in the international foreign policy establishment, is dismayed by the Israeli opinion polls that show that Likud, led by Binyamin Netanyahu, is favored to win February 10's general elections by a wide margin.

In anticipation of Likud's expected electoral victory, they have been piling on against Netanyahu and the party. This was most recently evident at last week's Middle East policy conclave in Washington organized by the pro-Obama and post-Zionist Saban Middle East Forum at the Brookings Institute. There, both secretary of state-designate Hillary Clinton's surrogate, former president Bill Clinton, and current Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice castigated Netanyahu's assertion that peace must be built from the bottom up through the liberalization of Palestinian society, rather than from the top down by giving land to terrorists.

Netanyahu foresees Palestinian liberalization coming through economic development in an "economic peace process."

Both the former US president and Rice attacked his plan, claiming that it is antithetical to the sacrosanct "two-state solution."

As far as they and their many colleagues are concerned, the only thing that remains to be discussed is when Israel will vacate Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem. The fact that there is no significant Palestinian constituency willing to peacefully coexist with Israel is irrelevant.

In light of the incoming Obama administration's palpable hostility toward Israel, and particularly toward Israel's political realists, the results of the Likud primary this past Monday were especially significant. In selecting the party's slate of candidates for Knesset, Likud members favored sober-minded politicians who use their common sense to guide them over those with records of support for the fraudulent "peace processes" so favored by the local media, Kadima, Labor and the international jet set.

Likud politicians who warned of the dangers of then-prime minister Ariel Sharon's decision to withdraw from Gaza and expel some 10,000 Israelis from their homes in Gaza and northern Samaria were elected to the top of the Knesset slate. Those who supported Sharon's withdrawal and expulsion plan - which is now widely recognized to have been Israel's most disastrous strategic move in recent history - were either rejected out of hand, or demoted.

The men and women selected by Likud's voters will provide Netanyahu with the political strength to stand up to pressure from the Obama White House. They will support him when he is forced to reject US demands that Israel give away vital territory to Fatah and Hamas militias and to Syria's Iranian-sponsored regime. They will support him when he is compelled to refuse US demands to deploy NATO forces to Judea and Samaria. They will back him when he says that Fatah is not a peace partner for Israel but Hamas's partner for war against Israel.

That the general public shares the sensibilities exhibited by Likud primary voters is made clear by the fact that Likud's standing in the polls has not significantly diminished since the primary. If, as the media warned, the public would reject a list comprised of sober-minded realists, one would have expected that support to drop. Instead, it remains steady even as Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni castigates Likudniks as naysayers and opponents of peace and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert scandalously invites the nations of the world to turn against Israel if Likud wins the elections.

One might have intuited that the striking contrast between the sober-minded Likud party and the delusional and defeatist Kadima and Labor parties that was brought so prominently to the fore by the Likud primary would have been the central message that Netanyahu chose to convey in the days that have followed Monday's vote. But sadly, one would be wrong to think that.

Disturbingly, rather than drawing distinctions between his party and its rivals, Netanyahu has spent the days since the primary drawing distinctions between himself and a minor player in his own party. Both ahead of the primary and in the days since, Netanyahu has devoted the majority of his time to attacking his sharpest critic within the party - Moshe Feiglin, who heads the far-right Jewish Leadership Forum in Likud and won the not-particularly-senior 20th position on Likud's Knesset slate. On Thursday, Netanyahu succeeded in pushing Feiglin down to the 36th spot.

Feiglin has more in common with the Left he abhors than with his party members. Like the Left, Feiglin bases his strategic and economic notions on a complete denial of reality. Whereas the Left ignores the Arabs, Feiglin ignores the West. Feiglin's religious adherence to his views has made him few friends in Likud or elsewhere in Israeli politics. The threat he constitutes to Netanyahu is negligible.

Given Feiglin's inherent weakness, Netanyahu's post-primary focus on him is shocking. Netanyahu has argued that Feiglin will lose votes for Likud. But assuming that is true, the last thing Netanyahu should be doing is placing a spotlight on Feiglin. Rather, Netanyahu should be emphasizing his strongest suit: the clear distinction between Likud on the one hand and Kadima and Labor on the other hand.

In focusing the public's attention on Feiglin, Netanyahu appears to be reacting to foreign pressures rather than domestic ones. One of Netanyahu's most difficult challenges during his tenure as prime minister from 1996 to 1999 was handling his relations with the hostile Clinton administration. From the moment Netanyahu was elected until the moment he left office, the Clinton administration's Israel policy was devoted entirely to bringing down his government. In close collusion with Netanyahu's political opponents and the local media, for three years Clinton worked steadily to overthrow him. Clinton's assault culminated in the 1999 elections when he sent his own campaign managers to Israel to lead the Labor Party's campaign against Netanyahu and Likud.

No doubt, it is in the hopes of building better relations with the incoming Obama administration that Netanyahu now seeks to distance himself from Feiglin and advocates forming a broad governing coalition with his political foes in Kadima and Labor. Apparently, in his view only such a broad coalition will insulate him from a US presidential assault. In the interests of forming such a coalition, while highlighting his disputes with Feiglin, Netanyahu has sought to obfuscate his ideological differences with Kadima and Labor.

Although Netanyahu's motivations are understandable, his mode of operation will bring him results exactly opposed to the ones he seeks. It is true that to withstand pressures and even an all-out assault by the Obama administration Netanyahu will need a broad coalition. But that coalition cannot be based on a simple will to power, as Olmert's coalition and previous leftist coalitions have been. To survive a hostile White House, Netanyahu will require a broad coalition founded on support for his ideas and his party's policies, not a broad coalition populated by political and ideological opponents dedicated to undermining his ideas and policies.

Rather than obfuscate the differences between Likud and Kadima/Labor, Netanyahu must highlight them. He must convince the Israeli electorate to vote for Likud on the basis of these distinctions. Likud must be perceived as the party of commonsense ideas and clear-minded policies that inspire, attract and convince the Israeli public to support it. And Netanyahu and Likud have those ideas and policies.

On a strategic level, Netanyahu and Likud have made clear that they stand for three main principles. First, they are committed to establishing defensible borders for Israel by securing Israeli sovereignty over all of greater Jerusalem, the Jordan Valley, the Samarian Hills and the Golan Heights.

Second, they recognize that the Palestinian society that elected a terror group to lead it is a society that is uninterested in peace with Israel. Consequently, any future negotiations must be preceded by a full reorganization and reform of Palestinian society.

Third, they reject the Kadima/Labor fantasy that foreign militaries and international forces can be expected to protect Israel in place of the IDF.

If Netanyahu runs on these policies, he will not merely win the elections. He will win a clear mandate to govern. And only if Netanyahu runs on these policies will he have a chance of blunting the pressure that will certainly be brought to bear by the Obama administration. For although it is clear that like Clinton, Obama will have no problem opposing the will of an Israeli government, he will be hard pressed to oppose the will of the Israeli people.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

Doctors at the Mumbai hospital who treated the victims of the past week's jihadist attacks were rendered nearly speechless by the carnage. As two doctors explained to the Indian news Web site rediff.com, violent gang wars and previous terror attacks didn't hold a candle to what happened.

The bodies of the victims showed clear signs of preexecution torture. The worst tortured, they said, were the Jewish victims. As one doctor put it, "Of all the bodies, the Israeli victims bore the maximum torture marks. It was clear that they were killed on the [first day of the assault]. It was obvious that they were tied up and tortured before they were killed. It was so bad that I do not want to go over the details even in my head again." India's Intelligence Bureau revealed that a captured jihadist explained that they were instructed to seek out foreign and especially Israeli victims.

In the aftermath of the Mumbai massacres, it is hard to imagine that there is anything as pernicious as the jihadists who sought out and murdered non-Muslims with such cruelty. But there is. Their multicultural apologists, who enable them to continue to kill by preventing their victims from fighting back, are just as evil.

The jihadists in Mumbai, like their counterparts throughout the world, were motivated to kill by their adherence to totalitarian Islam. Totalitarian Islam calls for the annihilation of the Jewish people and the subjugation of all other non-Muslims.

The jihadists in Mumbai, like their counterparts from Gaza to Baghdad to Guantanamo Bay, have been defended, and their acts and motivations have been explained away, by their allies and loyal apologists: Western multiculturalists. Multiculturalism is a quasi-religion predicated on both moral relativism and a basic belief in the inherent avarice of the West - particularly of the US and Israel. Multiculturalists assert that Westerners - or, in the case of India, Hindus - are to blame for all acts of violence carried out against them by non-Westerners.

IN THE case of the Mumbai massacres, the jihadists' multicultural defenders began justifying their actions while they were still in the midst of their torture and murder spree. In Newsweek, Fareed Zakaria hinted that Indian Hindus had it coming.

"One of the untold stories of India," he explained, "is that the Muslim population has not shared in the boom the country has enjoyed over the last 10 years. There is still a lot of institutional discrimination, and many remain persecuted."

Then too, the multicultural media suppressed the fact that the jihadists were targeting Jews. Outside of Israel, it took the media nearly two days to report that the Chabad House had even been taken over by the jihadists. And once they did finally report that Jews were being targeted, they made every effort to downplay the strategic significance of the jihadists' decision to send a team off the beaten path simply to butcher Jews.

Emblematic of the Western media's attempts to play down the story was The New York Times. Two days into the hostage drama, the Times opined, "It is not known if the Jewish center was strategically chosen, or if it was an accidental hostage scene."

JEWS WERE not the only ones who had their identity obscured. The jihadists did too. For almost an entire day, major news networks in the West suppressed the fact that the murderers were Muslim jihadists, claiming oddly, that they could also be Hindu terrorists. This was odd not because there are no Hindu terrorists, but because the perpetrators referred to themselves from the outset as "mujahideen," or Islamic warriors.

Once the jig was up on their attempts to hide the identities of the perpetrators and their victims alike, the jihadists' multicultural enablers started blaming the victims. For instance, on Sunday, The Los Angeles Times published an op-ed by University of Chicago law professor Martha Nussbaum attacking Indian Hindus. After blithely dismissing the atrocities that were still under way while she wrote as "probably funded from outside India, in connection with the ongoing conflict over Kashmir," Nussbaum focused her ire against India's Hindus. Recalling the gruesome and apparently state-sanctioned violence against Muslims in India's Gujarat state in 2002, Nussbaum cast the jihadists as nothing more than victims of a Hindu terror state which has been victimizing Muslims for no reason since the 1930s.

Nussbaum's essay was a patent example of selective multicultural memory. She apparently forgot about the Islamic conquests of India from the seventh through the 16th centuries in which India's Buddhists were wiped out and 70 million-80 million Hindus were slaughtered by Muslim overlords. She also forgot about the thousands of Indian Hindus who have been murdered by jihadists since the 1990s.

After ignoring India's long and recent history of jihad, Nussbaum condemned an imaginary double standard which she claimed labels all Muslims as terrorists and gives Hindus a free ride in subjugating them. Of course, thanks to multiculturalists like Nussbaum, the double standard we suffer from is the exact opposite of what she described: Muslim terrorists, we are told, are victims of persecution and represent a teensy-tiny fraction of Muslims. On the other hand, all non-Muslims involved in even marginally violent activities against Muslims are murderers, fanatics, extremists. Moreover, they are representative of their non-Muslim societies.

THE ATTACKS in Mumbai and the multiculturalists' rush to minimize their significance exposed two disturbing truths about the global jihad. First, they showed that the jihadists are quick studies. With each passing day, their capacity to attack grows larger.

The attacks in Mumbai were exceedingly sophisticated in design and execution. There were echoes of previous attacks, including the al-Qaida bombing of Mike's Place café in Tel Aviv in 2003, and its execution of Northern Alliance commander Ahmed Shah Massoud on September 9, 2001. But there was also a clear implementation of the lessons learned from those and other attacks carried out by al-Qaida and other terror groups.

By making clear their ability to improve their skills by drawing on lessons from past operations, the jihadists in Mumbai were similar to their counterparts in Pakistan, Gaza, Lebanon, Iran, Syria and every other place where jihadists have safe operational bases. Their obvious knowledge of their enemies' weaknesses also calls to mind the sophisticated modes of operation of Islamic terrorists in the West and in Israel.

In all places where jihadist forces operate in secure bases, they are becoming more sophisticated in their tactics, training and doctrine. Their weapons are increasingly advanced.

Jihadist regimes, like their terror proxies and allies, are not only increasing their direct support for jihadist terrorists. Regimes, and particularly Iran, are matching their increased support for terror groups with their own nonconventional weapons programs. So, in the case of Iran, its takeover of Lebanon and Gaza through Hizbullah and Hamas is being made even more dangerous by its progress in its nuclear weapons program. So too, nuclear-armed Pakistan's military and ISI are expanding their support for al-Qaida and the Taliban at the same time they are facilitating jihadist attacks in Pakistan's large cities as well as in India.

This progressive improvement in the capabilities and tightened coordination between jihadist regimes and jihadist groups lends credence to the view that the probability increases with each passing day that a jihadist regime will arm jihadist groups with nuclear weapons.

THE SECOND truth about the global jihad that the Mumbai attacks exposed is that there is nothing that jihadists can do to make the multiculturalists stop defending them. And there is nothing effective that democratic governments can do to defend against the jihadists that multiculturalists will deem acceptable. This is the case because multiculturalists cannot accept the fact that the jihadists are waging war against the West without disavowing multiculturalism itself. And since they will not disavow what has become their religion, they will never be convinced that they must stop defending jihadists. In line with this basic fact, it is worth returning for a moment to Nussbaum.

The only advice she offered the Indian government that had just absorbed a coordinated attack, launched and planned by domestic as well as foreign operatives on sea and on land, was to treat terrorists like regular criminals. As she put it, "Let's go after criminals with determination, good evidence and fair trials, and let's stop targeting people based on their religious affiliation."

And of course, Nussbaum herself is little different in her refusal to acknowledge the fact of the global jihad than many of the governments principally targeted by jihadist regimes and terror armies. Take the incoming Obama administration for example.

Iran daily threatens to destroy the US, annihilate Israel, close the Straits of Hormuz, use nuclear weapons and proliferate nuclear weapons to other states. It controls Syria, Lebanon and Gaza. It is the primary sponsor of the insurgency in Iraq and, with Pakistan, the major sponsor of the insurgency in Afghanistan. It has cultivated strategic ties with US foes in the Western Hemisphere like Venezuela, Nicaragua and Ecuador.

Yet one of the first foreign policy initiatives promised by the incoming Obama administration is to attempt to diplomatically engage Iran with the aim of striking a grand bargain with the mullahs.

Or take Israel. The outgoing Olmert government may well lead the Western world in its attempts to deny the existence of the global jihad which has marked Israel as its central battlefield. During his visit to the White House last week, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was confronted by an incredulous US President George W. Bush who simply couldn't understand his strange enthusiasm for the prospect of giving Syria the Golan Heights. Bush couldn't fathom Olmert's fervent, if rationally unsupportable belief that if Israel gives Syria the Golan Heights, Syria will happily abandon its best friend and overlord in Teheran.

What he apparently didn't realize is that Olmert's championing of an Israeli surrender to Syria stems from his devout adherence to multiculturalism. If Syria can't be peeled away from Iran, that means that Israel can't be blamed for Syrian aggression. And that is a prospect that Olmert simply cannot abide by.

SOME COMMENTATORS dismiss the danger emanating from the global jihad by noting that its global designs are not matched by global capabilities. They argue that when the West finally decides to defeat the jihadists, they will be utterly vanquished.

Unfortunately, this view ignores two things. It ignores the fact that the jihadists are devoting all of their energies to improving and expanding their capacity to fight their war. And it ignores the fact that the multiculturalists' influence is growing steadily and has repeatedly stymied Western attempts to confront the jihadist threat head-on. Unless something changes soon, the consequences of the jihadist-multicultural alliance will be suffered by millions and millions of people.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.