Caroline Glick :: January 2010 Archives

January 2010 Archives

January 29, 2010, 12:07 PM

Keeping Zionism's Promise

"Never again!"

So declared Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu as he spoke at Auschwitz-Birkenau on Wednesday, the 65th anniversary of its liberation.

Netanyahu used his speech at the notorious death camp to nudge what he referred to as "the enlightened nations of the world" to recognize that "murderous evil" has to be stopped as early as possible to prevent it from achieving its aims. Unfortunately, the events of the past week show clearly that evil is on the march, and "the enlightened nations of the world" are on a coffee break from enlightenment.

As Netanyahu addressed the world from the site of the most prolific genocide factory in human history, at the place where over a million Jews were gassed, starved, beaten, raped, frozen, shot and hanged and then burned in ovens, Iran's leaders were declaring loudly that they intend to finish what the Nazis started. They will destroy the Jewish people.

Iran's dictator supremo Ali Khamenei used a photo-op with Mauritania's President Mohammed Ould Abdel Aziz - who cut his own country's diplomatic ties with Israel last January - to renew his pledge to commit yet another Holocaust. As he put it, "Surely, the day will come when the nations of the region will witness the destruction of the Zionist regime... When the destruction happens will depend on how the Islamic nations approach the issue."

And as he spoke, the ability of "the enlightened nations of the world" to deny that the Iranian regime is building a nuclear arsenal was finally and utterly wiped away. On Monday, Germany's Der Speigel reported that evidence gleaned from document intercepts and from the testimony of two senior Iranian defectors who were involved in the Islamic Republic's nuclear program, proves beyond a reasonable doubt that Iran's nuclear program is not a peaceful one. The Iranians are designing and building nuclear warheads for their Shihab-3 ballistic missiles. According to a summary of the findings now circulating through the halls of power, Teheran will have the wherewithal to build nuclear warheads by 2012.

So the Der Spiegel report showed that Iran is developing the capacity to carry out a second Holocaust in under a hundred years. And yet, in the face of their sure knowledge that evil is on the march, as they did 70 years ago, the "enlightened nations" of Europe are siding with evil against its would-be victims.

On a popular level, as Sunday's release of the Jewish Agency's annual report on global anti-Semitism documented, there were more anti-Semitic attacks in Europe in 2009 than there had been in any single year since the Holocaust. The report stated that the attacks were carried out by Jew-haters on both the Left and the Right.

Europe's anti-Semites wasted no time in proving the report was accurate. On Monday, Polish Catholic Bishop Tadeusz Pieronek said that Jews have "expropriated" the Holocaust as "a propaganda weapon." Jews, he claimed, "enjoy good press because they have powerful financial means behind them, enormous power and the unconditional backing of the United States, and this favors a certain arrogance that I find unbearable."

Then we have the political alliance of leftist anti-Semites with Muslim anti-Semites. Together they not only attack Jews, they provide political cover for expanding those attacks by rejecting Israel's right to exist and justifying violent attacks against Jews outside Israel as the logical outcome of their politically correct anger at Israel for refusing to destroy itself. Case in point is Ilmar Reepalu, the mayor of Malmo, Sweden.

Malmo is one of the most dangerous places for Jews in Europe. The city's small Jewish population is fleeing. The situation in Malmo was graphically demonstrated last March when Israel's tennis stars Amir Haddad and Andy Ram faced off against Swedish rivals at a Davis Cup tie in Malmo and Swedish authorities closed their game to the public. Malmo's Muslim residents and their post-Christian partners on the Left threatened to attack them. Malmo's authorities didn't think it was their responsibility to protect their Israeli guests. So Haddad and Ram were forced to play in an empty stadium.

Interviewed in a local paper this week about the rise of anti-Semitic attacks in his city, Reepalu blamed Israel. In his view, the violence against Jews in Malmo by the far Left and Muslims, "spilled over from Gaza."

By his lights the Jewish national liberation movement is just as bad as the Jewish annihilation movement. As he put it, "We accept neither Zionism nor anti-Semitism. They are extremes that place themselves above other groups they think are less important."

Reepalu then blamed Malmo's Jews for their victimization by his fellow leftists and his Muslim comrades. As far as he is concerned, the Jews brought the violence on themselves last March when they responded to Haddad and Ram's treatment by holding a demonstration supporting Israel. In his view, Malmo's Jews need to separate themselves away from Israel, not support it.

Since the Holocaust, old-style right-wing anti-Semites in Europe have had a hard time getting political traction for their desire to see Jews suffer. But by conflating Jews with Israel, their colleagues on the Left have made sticking it to the Jews, our state and our supporters the easiest way to score political points. So it was that in her first speech as the EU's new foreign policy chief, Britain's Catherine Ashton went out of her way to condemn Israel for building in Jerusalem, closing its border with Hamas-controlled Gaza and defending itself from Palestinian terrorists in Judea and Samaria.

AS FOR Israel's friends, they are hounded, driven out of Europe and where possible placed on trial. Dutch MP Geert Wilders, the head of the Netherland's Freedom Party, is one of Israel's greatest supporters in Europe. Today Wilders is on trial for publicly criticizing what he views as the endemic anti-Semitism of the Koran.

Against the backdrop of the persistence of right-wing Jew hatred, and the politically ascendant Red-Green alliance of anti-Semites, it makes sense that Europe will not raise a finger to prevent another Holocaust.

And so, not surprisingly, in the wake of the Der Spiegel report, the EU's foreign ministers got together and decided not to support any new sanctions against Iran - unless they are passed by the UN Security Council. Since Europe's foreign ministers all know full well the Security Council will not pass sanctions against Iran because China has announced that it will veto any sanctions against Iran, this week the EU's foreign ministers got together and essentially said they're okay with another Holocaust.

With Europe out, and with "enlightened" Asian, African and South American countries never really in the game, the only "enlightened" country that might be expected to stop murderous evil before it can carry out its aims is the United States. But unfortunately, like the Europeans, the Americans don't feel like being responsible. President Barack Obama, his administration and many of his fellow Democrats would rather take on Israel.

This week 54 Democratic members of Congress wrote Obama a letter asking him to apply pressure on Israel to remove its restrictions on the import of goods - including dual use goods like construction materials - to Hamas-controlled Gaza. Never mind that under US law it is legally problematic to provide any aid, (including the $300 million Obama has pledged) to Gaza in light of the fact that it is controlled by a terrorist organization.

For its part, the administration apparently believes that there is no reason to seek the overthrow of Hamas simply because the US is required by US law and binding UN Security Council resolutions to do so. The US Treasury Department has reportedly just removed all but one Hamas official from its list of known terrorists and so paved the way for Hamas to receive funding from Europe.

As for Israel, during his trip here this week, Obama's Middle East envoy George Mitchell came up with a revolutionary new idea. In the face of Palestinian intransigence, Mitchell introduced the earthshaking concept of pressuring Israel to make concessions to the Palestinians.

This week Mitchell asked Israel to stop all of its counterterror operations in Judea and Samaria, and allow Palestinian forces to operate not only in the Palestinian areas, but in predominantly Israeli areas as well. Specifically, Mitchell asked Israel to allow Palestinian forces to deploy in what the arguably defunct Oslo agreements refer to as Area C, where the Palestinian Authority has no security authority whatsoever.

When it comes to Iran, the Obama administration behaves as though the jury is still out on whether the mullahs are even seeking nuclear weapons. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said last Thursday that Iran might face some tough statements from the world if it continues to refuse to be appeased by the Obama White House, although she couldn't say whether any actual steps would be taken to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, which she wouldn't acknowledge the mullahs are developing.

And in his State of the Union address on Wednesday, Obama himself made clear that the US will do nothing to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons. As far as Obama is concerned, the nuclear arsenal in most urgent need of evisceration is the US's nuclear arsenal.

ALL OF this just goes to show that at the end of the day, now when the chips are down, there is only one "enlightened" nation in the world that may actually do something to prevent the advance of murderous evil. And Israel unfortunately is of two minds on the issue.

On the one hand, we have Netanyahu, who is clearly focused on preventing another Holocaust of Jewry. But on the other hand, we have Defense Minister Ehud Barak, who on Tuesday claimed that the absence of peace with the Palestinians - not Iran - is the greatest threat that Israel faces today. As he put it, "The lack of defined boundaries within Israel, and not an Iranian bomb, is the greatest threat to our future."

Barak's outrageous pronouncement is a succinct encapsulation of the great aspiration of the Israeli Left. If he could only be right, then Israel would be able to singlehandedly solve all the problems of the region and be immediately adored by the likes of the EU and the Obama administration just by making itself smaller.

So with the scourge of moral and strategic blindness rampant not only in Europe and America, but within his own government, Netanyahu rapidly approaches his moment of truth.

In what will undoubtedly be the most fateful decision of his life, he will have to decide whether Iran will become a nuclear power, or whether Israel, standing alone, will prevent it from becoming a nuclear power.

Was his declaration of "Never Again," at Auschwitz just the bloviating of yet another "enlightened" leader who lacks the courage of his convictions? Or was it a solemn vow that Zionism's promise will be kept?

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post

Posted on January 29, 2010 at 12:07 PM

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January 23, 2010, 11:28 AM

The perils of presidential failure

US President Barack Obama is feeling the heat. His response to the current crisis threatening to sink his one-year-old presidency is telling for what it says about the future of both his domestic and foreign policies. Israel should take heed of his responses.

Obama's Democratic Party, and indeed the US political establishment as a whole, received a jolt on Tuesday when Republican Scott Brown won the Massachusetts seat in the US Senate that had been held by the Democratic Kennedy dynasty since 1952. The question now on everyone's lips is whether Brown's stunning victory will cause Obama to change his course and moderate his policies.

The Massachusetts Senate race was a real world example of what opinion polling data has shown. Since last summer, a consistently growing number of US voters oppose Obama's policies.

Brown's victory was nationally significant because it removed the Democrats' filibuster proof, 60-man super-majority in the Senate. With Brown as the 41st Republican senator, the minority party can now muster the votes to block legislation from being called to a vote before the full Senate and so prevent laws from being passed.

In addition to its immediate legislative significance, the larger political importance of the Massachusetts election rests in what it signals for House and Senate Democrats who will face reelection in November. Dozens of Democratic lawmakers are reportedly now veering into full-blown panics about their prospects in those elections. As Indiana Sen. Evan Bayh put it, "If you lose Massachusetts and that's not a wake-up call, there's no hope of waking up."

Tellingly, Obama and his White House advisers are refusing to "wake up." Obama responded to Brown's win as he has to many of his setbacks since assuming office a year ago this week. He blamed his predecessor, George W. Bush.

In an interview on Wednesday with ABC News, Obama said, "People are angry, they are frustrated. Not just because of what's happened in the last year or two years, but what's happened over the last eight years."

Obama argued that the growing unpopularity of his programs is due not to substance, but to style. As he put it, "We were so busy just getting stuff done... that I think we lost some of that sense of speaking directly to the American people about what their core values are and why we have to make sure those institutions are matching up with those values."

Even as Democratic lawmakers are openly expressing misgivings with moving forward in implementing Obama's radical plan to reform the US health care industry, Obama's senior adviser David Axelrod told the media that abandoning the initiative is "not an option."

Rather than accept that Massachusetts voters elected Brown because Brown repudiated Obama's agenda - on both domestic and foreign policy - the Obama White House has argued that Brown's victory was simply the consequence of poor electioneering by the Democratic candidate and poor planning by the national Democratic Party apparatus.

Obama's imperiousness is even more apparent when compared to the behavior of his predecessors in office. When in 2006 the Republicans lost control of Congress, George W. Bush responded by embracing the Democrats' policies on everything from Iran to mortgage banks. When the Democrats lost control of Congress in 1994, Bill Clinton adopted the Republicans' "Contract with America" as his own.

What Obama's refusal to hear Tuesday's "wake-up call" from Massachusetts shows is that his chief concern is not listening to what the public says. It is not even remaining in office. Rather, his behavior in the wake of the Brown victory shows that Obama's top concern is enacting his radical political agenda. He is an ideologue first and a party leader second.

While his fellow Democrats in Congress say that Brown's election means that Obama's plan to nationalize one-sixth of the US economy through his health care plan is dead in the water, Obama claims the time to move forward is now. As he sees things, he has 11 months left to effect the radical change he seeks for America.

Obama believes that plowing ahead is the only thing that will save the Democrats. As he has put it, "I... know what happens once we get... [health care reform] done. The American people will suddenly learn that this bill does things they like."

Far from slowing down, he will redouble his efforts to ram his agenda down the throats of an unwilling populace.

ELECTIONS ARE blunt instruments, not precise readings. Voters cast their ballots for specific politicians and their political parties based on their wide perceptions of general trends rather than on specific policies related to specific issues. Candidates in turn emphasize specific issues because of what those issues symbolize about the general state of affairs.

In the US today, there is a widespread public perception that Obama and his party colleagues in the House and Senate have gone on a spending spree when what the deepening economic recession requires is frugality. Obama's plan to spend up to a trillion dollars on nationalized health care in this economic environment is emblematic of the public sense that the national leadership is behaving irresponsibly.

A similar view pervades with respect to Obama's foreign policy.

Speaking to National Review, Brown's chief political strategist Eric Fehrnstrom said that "terrorism and the treatment of enemy combatants" was a "more potent issue" for Massachusetts voters than health care. If health care is emblematic of the growing perception that Obama and his fellow Democrats are irresponsible on the domestic policy front, so "terrorism and the treatment of enemy combatants" are emblematic of the public perception that Obama's foreign policy is too weak.

The administration's failure to detect, prevent or adequately characterize the jihadist massacre at Fort Hood, Texas, like its failure to detect, prevent or adequately handle the aftermath of the attempted airline bombing on Christmas day by a Nigerian jihadist, are viewed by Americans as proof that Obama's foreign policy is weak and dangerous.

As with his domestic agenda, in foreign affairs as well, the clear antidote to Obama's political woes would be to change course and moderate his policies. Were Obama interested in ensuring that the public supported and trusted his handling of American foreign policy, he would repudiate his plan to transfer terrorists now jailed at Guantanamo Bay to Yemen and cancel his plan to try senior terrorists like September 11 architect Khaled Sheikh Muhammad in civilian trials.

But rather than do so, Obama has responded to the public's opposition to his foreign policies by doubling down. In the face of massive criticism over his administration's decision to try the September 11 mastermind in a civilian courtroom in New York, the administration opted to treat the Christmas bomber as a criminal defendant as well. Indeed, as its top counterterror officials made clear in Senate testimony on Wednesday, the administration never considered treating the terrorist as an illegal enemy combatant.

In a related matter, on Wednesday the State Department announced that the US has dropped its opposition to permitting Islamist leader Tariq Ramadan from entering the US. Ramadan - whose grandfather founded the Muslim Brotherhood which spawned the likes of al-Qaida and Hamas - is a hero of the far Left in the US and Europe. He was barred from entering the US since 2004 due in part to his personal contributions to Hamas.

In short then, rather than respond to the public's rejection of his posture of weakness abroad by replacing that posture with one of strength, Obama has ratcheted up his policy of weakness. What this shows is that like his domestic agenda, Obama's foreign policy - including his national security policy - is the product of his firmly held beliefs and ideological commitments. Obama is weak on foreign affairs because he chooses to be weak. Through both his actions and his words he demonstrates his belief that the US must adopt a posture of contrition to make up for its past global leadership. His goal is to weaken America's position in the international arena, because he doesn't believe that America has a moral right to be stronger than anyone else.

Given the congressional backlash to the Massachusetts election, it is possible that Obama will be compelled to put aside his domestic initiatives, or at least to repackage them. US presidents have only a limited capacity to unilaterally implement massive changes on the domestic front. Congressional support is required for most major endeavors. Today, it seems likely that many Democratic lawmakers will refuse to fall on their swords for Obama. So his health care initiative, like his environmental and immigration agendas, may well be buried in committee.

On the other hand, the US Constitution gives the president a much freer hand in foreign affairs. And here we are likely to see a full-court presidential press to force through his radical agenda on everything from nuclear weapons to counterterrorism to appeasement of the Islamic world. Given the prominence Obama has already given to his anti-Israel posture, it can be assumed that Israel will be the focus of even more intense pressure from the White House in the months and years to come.

All of this should concentrate the minds of Israel's leaders. They should assume that Obama's Middle East envoy George Mitchell will intensify his pressure - and escalate his threats - on Israel to make massive concessions to the Palestinians. Indeed, given Mitchell's trip this week to Lebanon and Syria and Obama's refusal to end his appeasement overtures towards Iran, Israel should expect the US to expand its pressure on Israel to agree to imperil itself on all fronts.

SINCE TAKING office on March 31, the Netanyahu government has adopted two distinct policies for dealing with Obama. Until September, the government's policy was to politely delay as long as possible its ultimate polite refusal to accept US demands for more concessions to Palestinians.

After Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's meeting with Obama at the UN in September, however, he adopted a new policy of caving in to US pressure. First he announced his support for Palestinian statehood. Then he agreed to bar Jews from receiving construction permits in Judea and Samaria. Apparently, Netanyahu was led to believe that his concessions would cause Obama to ease his pressure on Israel.

But as the White House's escalating threats and demands for new Israeli concessions in the wake of Netanyahu's change of course demonstrates, Israel's policy shift was counterproductive. And given Obama's current political trajectory, Israel will be best served by a return to the government's initial policy. Rather than seeking to placate Obama, Israel should try to wait him out. And at the same time, the government should robustly advance Israel's national interests, both by unapologetically defending those interests in the diplomatic arena, and more importantly by adopting policies and taking action to secure and strengthen the country.

The political winds in America are blowing against Obama. Even with his relatively free hand in foreign affairs, the ill winds will necessarily slow him down. Israel should do nothing to smooth his path forward.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

Posted on January 23, 2010 at 11:28 AM

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January 19, 2010, 1:55 AM

Latma interviews Egyptian Minister of Conspiracy Theories

Egypt's Minister of Conspiracy Theories, Mr. Halil Majnoun visited Latma's studio to discuss why Israel is trying to take over the world.

Posted on January 19, 2010 at 1:55 AM

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Latma interviews head of US Airline Security Administration

Mr. Morris Tery visits Latma's studios to tell us about the lessons the US has drawn from the panty bomber.

Posted on January 19, 2010 at 1:51 AM

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Latma sums up the last decade

In light of the new decade, Latma put together the following retrospective on the last ten years.

Enjoy!

Posted on January 19, 2010 at 1:40 AM

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January 15, 2010, 9:00 AM

Code Red on Code Pink

Oh the shame of it all. Last month, 1,300 pro-Palestinian activists from the US and Europe came to the region in the name of peace and social justice to demonstrate their solidarity with the Palestinians in Gaza. Led by the self-declared feminist, antiwar group Code Pink, the demonstrators' plan was to enter Gaza from the Egyptian border at Rafah and deliver "humanitarian aid" to the Hamas terrorist organization.

But it was not to be. Led by Code Pink founder and California Democratic fund-raiser Jodie Evans, the demonstrators were not welcomed by Egyptian authorities. Many were surrounded by riot police and barbed wire as they demonstrated outside the US and French embassies and the UN Development Program's headquarters. Others were barred from leaving their hotels.

Those who managed to escape their hotels and the bullpens outside the embassies were barred from staging night protests in solidarity with Hamas on the Nile. In the end, as the militant Israeli pro-Palestinian activist Amira Hass chronicled in Haaretz last week, all but 100 of them were barred from travelling to Gaza.

The lucky few allowed into the Strip included neither Evans nor her friends, former Weather Underground terror leaders Bernadine Dohrn and William Ayres. But they bore no grudge against Egypt. The Egyptians were mere puppets of the real culprit: Israel. As Evans said, "It's obvious that the only reason for [Egypt's treatment of the demonstrators] is to make Israel happy. Israel is behind the refusal [to allow the demonstrators into Gaza] - what other excuse could there be?"

Dohrn, the woman who has called for a "revolutionary war" to destroy the US, felt that the Egyptian authorities' behavior was nothing but an unfortunate diversion from their mission. As she wrote in a blog post from Cairo, "We find ourselves unwillingly in Cairo, drawn into clashes with authorities and one another on side issues, when what we most want is to keep our eyes on the Palestinian people."

Unfortunately for the lucky 100 who were permitted to enter Hamastan, the diversions didn't end at the Egyptians border. Hamas immediately placed them under siege. The Palestinian champions had planned to enjoy home hospitality from friends in Gaza. But once there they were prohibited from leaving the Hamas-owned Commodore Hotel and from having any contact with local Gazans without a Hamas escort.

Rather than being permitted to judge the situation in Gaza for themselves, they were carted onto Hamas buses and taken on "devastation tours" of what their Hamas tour guides claimed was damage caused by the IDF during Operation Cast Lead. And then these international protesters were forced to participate in a Hamas-organized march to the Erez crossing.

As Hass tells it, in "a slap to many feminist organizers and participants," no Palestinian women were allowed to participate in the march, which "turned into nothing more than a ritual, an opportunity for Hamas cabinet ministers to get decent media coverage in the company of Western demonstrators."

But they didn't really mind. Reacting to her effective imprisonment in the Hamas-owned hotel, one of the demonstrators, an American woman named Poya Pakzad, cooed on her blog that the Commodore Hotel was "the nicest hotel I've ever stayed at, in my life."

Pakzad did complain, however, about what she acknowledged was the "farce" devastation tour she was taken on. She claimed that her Hamas guides were ignorant. In her studied view, they understated the number of Palestinians rendered homeless by the IDF counterterror offensive last year by some 60 percent.

Pakzad is something of a Hass groupie. She wrote that on the bus to Gaza, still smarting from the rough treatment the group received from the Egyptian authorities, Hass "made me realize why I came in the first place: to break the siege!"

Hass's participation in the pro-Hamas propaganda trip is a bit surprising. In November 2008, she was forced to flee from Gaza to Israel after Hamas threatened to kill her. At the time, Hass appealed to the Israeli military - which she has spent the better part of her career bashing - and asked to be allowed to enter Israel from Gaza, after sailing illegally to Gaza from Cyprus on a ferry chartered by the pro-Hamas Free Gaza outfit.

Hass's behavior is actually more revealing than surprising. The truth is that Hass and her fellow demonstrators were willing to be used as media props by Hamas precisely because it isn't the Palestinians' welfare that concerns them. If they cared about the Palestinians they would be demonstrating against Hamas, which prohibited local women from participating in their march to the Israeli border, and which barred non-Hamas members from speaking with them. It would offend their sensitivities that Hamas goons beat women for not covering themselves from head to toe in Islamic potato sacks. It would bother them that Hamas executes its political opponents by among other things throwing them off the roofs of apartment buildings.

The demonstrators did not come to Gaza to demonstrate their support for the Palestinians, but rather their hatred for Israel and for their own Western governments that refuse to join Hamas in its war against Israel. As one of the organizers told Hass as she sat corralled by Egyptian riot police outside the UNDP offices in Cairo, "In our presence here, we are saying that we are not casting the blame on Egypt. The responsibility for the shameless and obscene Israeli siege on Gaza rests squarely with our own countries."

By happily collaborating with Hamas in its propaganda extravaganza, these demonstrators demonstrated that the rights of Palestinians are not their concern. Their concern is waging war against their own societies and against Israel. They are more than happy to have their pictures taken with the likes of Hamas terror master Ismail Haniyeh. And while they will never acknowledge that his organization's terror war against Israel is illegal and immoral, or care that Hamas's founding charter explicitly calls for the genocide of Jewry, they will demonstrate from today till doomsday against their governments' recognition of Israel.

IN THIS, the Free Gaza movement members are but a chip off the old psychopathic block of nearly a century of far-left Western activists whose hatred for their own countries motivated them to hide the crimes of mass murderers from Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong to Fidel Castro and Ho Chi Minh to Daniel Ortega and Saddam Hussein. As Jamie Glazov chronicles in his recently published book, United in Hate: The Left's Romance with Tyranny and Terror, their attraction to mass murderers - from Stalin to Osama bin Laden - and their concomitant hatred of their own societies "is a secular religion."

These fanatics are usually dismissed as fringe elements. But the truth is that during the late 20th century, the distance between these true believers and the centers of state power has not been very great. Glazov notes, "The tragedy... is that the Left has shaped much of the cultural and political consciousness of our time. The Left's agenda mattered immensely during the Vietnam War: even former North Vietnamese officials have admitted that the antiwar movement in American can take credit for communism's victory in South Vietnam and, therefore, for the tragic bloodbath that followed."

Likewise, these radical movements' extremism today has not marginalized them politically. Since it was formed in 2002, Code Pink has openly sided with US enemies against the US and its allies. Evans and its other leaders have met with Hamas leaders in Gaza and Syria. They have visited with Hizbullah in Lebanon. They have met with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in New York and Teheran. They have supplied Iranian-backed insurgents in Iraq, and before the US-led invasion in 2003, they organized a solidarity-with-Saddam Hussein mission to Baghdad. And this month, fresh from Egypt and Gaza, Code Pink launched an advertising campaign on the Muslim Brotherhood's English-language Web site.

At home in the US, as documented by Web sites like Big Government and Atlas Shrugs, Code Pink's members have launched psychological warfare operations against American soldiers outside of military bases with the aim of persuading them to desert. They have taunted and frightened children of US servicemen. They have harassed Bush administration officials, their family members and Republican Party leaders.

In Israel, counterparts to Code Pink like Uri Avineri's Gush Shalom acted as human shields to protect Yasser Arafat and his fellow terrorists from the IDF during Operation Defensive Shield in 2002. Anarchists Against the Fence stage violent riots against IDF soldiers every week. Four Mothers successfully compelled the Barak government to surrender south Lebanon to Hizbullah.

Traditionally, the far left's ability to shape national policy in Israel and the US alike has owed largely to the sympathetic coverage they have garnered from fellow-travelling media outlets. In the US, the anti-war movement probably would have failed in its mission of transferring South Vietnam to Communist control if The New York Times and CBS News hadn't supported their efforts. So, too, the Barak government would likely not have withdrawn the IDF from south Lebanon if Four Mothers hadn't been ardently supported by state-owned Israel Radio.

WHILE BOTH the Israeli and American media continue to promote the agendas of far left groups, by among other things, not reporting their open ties to terrorist organizations, today some of these groups have direct access to the halls of power.

Code Pink, for instance, is welcome at the Obama White House. Its leader Evans was an official fund-raiser for Barack Obama's presidential campaign. Evans visited the White House after travelling to Gaza last June. While there she met with Hamas leaders who gave her a letter for Obama. Evans met Obama himself at a donor dinner in San Francisco last October where, while standing in front of cameras, she gave him documents she received in Afghanistan, where she met with Taliban officials.

Then, too, among the board members of the Free Gaza movement is former US senator James Abourezk. Abourezk is reputedly close to Obama and according to knowledgeable sources has been a key figure in shaping Obama's policy towards Israel.

Then, too, like Evans, Dohrn and her husband, Ayres, are also friendly with the president of the United States. Dohrn and Ayres have been Obama's political patrons since he launched his first campaign for the Illinois state Senate in 1996. In White House visitors' logs, Ayres is listed as having twice visited the building since Obama's inauguration.

Israeli authorities tend to treat groups like Code Pink and its Israeli allies as nothing more than nuisances. Since unlike Egypt and these self-proclaimed human rights champions themselves, Israel actually does care about human rights, it would never occur to anyone to treat these demonstrators as Egypt did. At the same time, the Egyptian authorities' actions were clearly informed by their understanding that, with their ties to Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood, Hizbullah, Syria and Iran, Code Pink and its friends are active collaborators with the jihad war machine.

With their open ties to our jihadist enemies on the one hand, and their direct line to the White House on the other, Israel ignores them at our peril.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

Posted on January 15, 2010 at 9:00 AM

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January 9, 2010, 1:44 AM

Israel's opening to China

The growing power of the UN-based international community is one of the gravest emerging threats to Israel's national security.

This threat stems from two sources. First, the

UN-led system of global governance is working to redefine international law by on the one hand whitewashing war crimes by states associated with the majority, and on the other hand rendering it illegal for unpopular countries to take action to protect themselves against aggression. Second, and most important, Israel has become the scapegoat of the UN-led international community. The 57-member Islamic bloc has built an automatic majority for its unrelenting and ever-escalating assaults on Israel's right to exist.

The new - and false - interpretation of international law gives every General Assembly resolution the weight of binding Security Council resolutions and international treaties. Among this new "legal" regime's most dangerous features is its bid to overturn state sovereignty by subjecting leading citizens of weak states to politically-motivated criminal prosecutions under the rubric of universal jurisdiction.

With Israel's right to exist - let alone to defend itself - being denied in an avalanche of General Assembly and Human Rights Council resolutions, the acceptance of universal jurisdiction is a short step away from turning every Jewish citizen of Israel into an international outlaw.

THIS ESCALATING threat is already hurting Israel's ability to carry out routine relations with foreign countries. Just last week the IDF was compelled to cancel plans to send a delegation of its officers to England for a joint conference on asymmetric warfare after British authorities were unable to promise that their guests from the IDF wouldn't be arrested over spurious war crimes allegations during their stay.

During her visit to Israel this week, British Attorney-General Patricia Scotland made clear that the British government is unwilling to cancel Britain's universal jurisdiction law despite the fact that anti-Israel activists exploit the law to abuse Israeli officials visiting her country.

In her view, the most important thing is for Britain to maintain its commitment to universal jurisdiction. Any mitigation of the right of unaccountable, anti-Israel British judges to issue arrest warrants would, in her mind, water down this most precious of legalisms.

While Britain demonstrates that it prefers international legal conceit to both justice and its bilateral relations with Israel, senior Israeli jurists are making clear that they prefer to maintain their good reputations in places like London over defending the actual legal rights of their country.

On Monday, former Supreme Court president Aharon Barak announced that in his view, Israel should accept the jurisdiction of the inherently anti-Israel International Criminal Court. In his words, "Israel is part of the international community, and it must conduct itself in accordance with the interpretation that is common in international law."

The fact that this "common interpretation" is common only when convenient and is actually antithetical to international law and to the rights of nations is of no interest to Barak. Also of no interest to Israel's international legal superstar is the fact that the institution set to do the judging is politically stacked against Israel, and that the Islamic bloc-dominated "international community" redefined international law for the purposes of the ICC to make all Israeli communities beyond the 1949 armistice lines criminal.

Concerned not only about the anti-Israel likes of Richard Goldstone but also about the likes of "international community" obsessed Barak, IDF Chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi this week ordered army commanders to integrate legal advisers in decision-making not only during the planning of battles, but also during battles themselves.

In an effort to offset some of the crushing pressure the UN-led international community is placing on Israel to stop defending itself, senior IDF officers have been dispatched to lobby US and UN officials. Unfortunately, it is hard to see how the IDF's efforts to convince the UN or the US that it upholds international law will make any difference. The UN is a lost cause and under US President Barack Obama, America has been moving swiftly in the direction of Europe in accepting the authority of the UN as the linchpin of a morally-relativist, post-nationalist, philo-Islamic international system.

In his speech at the UN General Assembly in September, Obama renounced the US's right to lead the international community when he proclaimed, "No world order that elevates one nation or group of people over another will succeed."

Obama's decisions to try terrorists as criminal defendants; to close the American military prison at Guantanamo Bay; to join the UN Human Rights Council; and to open criminal investigations against US intelligence operatives all demonstrate that the US supports the expansion of the power of the UN-led international system against actual international law that views independent nation-states rather than the UN as the foundation of the international legal system.

America's behavior towards the UN today should serve as a reminder to Israel that we mustn't put all our diplomatic eggs in America's basket. If we wish to neutralize the threat the UN-based international community poses to our national interests, we must expand our international alliances.

IN OUR efforts we have a potential ally in China. One of Beijing's abiding positions is that it opposes UN sanctions on individual states. In the Chinese view, such sanctions diminish national rights to sovereignty. It is on the basis of this claim that China has justified opposing sanctions against rogue states like Iran and North Korea.

Israel should make the case to the Chinese that China should back Israel in international institutions, by among other things vetoing UN Security Council resolutions against Israel. If in defense of the principle of sovereignty China is willing to block sanctions against Iran and North Korea, then surely Beijing should be willing to take the far more benign step of supporting Israel.

China's willingness to buck the US and Europe in refusing to support sanctions against international rogue states has expanded China's international influence by making it a country that cannot be taken for granted. Likewise, were China to block international sanctions against Israel, it would become an influential player in the big power game in the Middle East. And whereas its support for Iran and North Korea potentially endangers China by empowering destabilizing actors, support for Israel would serve China's interest of enhancing regional stability since a strong Israel deters regional aggressors from stirring up trouble.

Israel should back up its approach to China with a prolonged public diplomacy campaign to educate the Chinese about the Jewish state. A groundbreaking effort in this field is being initiated this week by StandWithUs, the US-based Israel-advocacy organization. This week, StandWithUs members from Israel will travel to Harbin, China, to present a photography exhibit called "Inside Israel." Their goal is to educate the Chinese about Judaism, Israel's history and life in Israel.

It is true that China does not share Israel's democratic values. Owing to this, it may be difficult for Israel to sustain a bilateral alliance with China over time. However, China and Israel share the distinction of being the two oldest, continuous civilizations. This shared direct line to antiquity can form the basis of a strong bilateral relationship. It is already a source of Chinese attraction to the Jewish state.

Over the past 15 years or so, Israel's expanding trade ties with China have been a source of friction with the US. As the US turned a blind eye to Chinese theft of US military technologies at places like Los Alamos, New Mexico, American officials were quick to attack Israel for selling military technologies to Beijing. To placate Washington, Israel effectively ended its military sales to China in recent years. It is probably reasonable to continue this practice if only because there is a strong likelihood that China will sell Israel's military technologies to the likes of Iran and Syria.

At any rate, it is not anti-American for Israel to cultivate closer ties to China. As America's alliances with Israel and Saudi Arabia and its courtship of Iran and Syria show, international affairs are not and should not be monogamous. This has never been more apparent than now. The Obama administration's moves to subordinate US foreign policy to the UN-based international community make it less clear that Israel can rely on the White House to veto anti-Israel resolutions in the Security Council.

It is fortuitous that this time, when Israel's need to diversify its international affairs has become acute, that the foreign minister is not a Shimon Peres-type who believes that Israel's ability to achieve its national interest is a function of the number of European cocktail parties he attends. Whatever Avigdor Lieberman's drawbacks may be, they clearly don't include excessive worship of the international community's taste for opulent statecraft or a desperate desire to be loved by Europe.

From his first moments on the job, as the Obama administration subordinated the US's joint interests with Israel to the president's dream of establishing a Palestinian state by 2011, Lieberman moved quickly to diversify Israel's international ties. Noting that his predecessors harmed Israel by behaving as though our international relations began and ended with negotiations with the Palestinians, Lieberman turned his attention to the great world they ignored.

In September, Lieberman travelled to Africa. There he bolstered Israel's strategic ties with potential allies in Ethiopia, Kenya and Nigeria. In July, he went to South America with the declared goal of blunting Iran's influence in the continent. In at least one of the countries he visited - Colombia - great potential exists for a strategic alliance.

On Tuesday, Lieberman reached out to the Balkans. During a meeting with visiting Macedonian Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski, he noted that the forces of global jihad are making a concerted effort to penetrate the Balkans through the Albanian and Bosnian Muslim communities. This encroaching threat should induce states like Macedonia to enhance their relations with Israel.

Lieberman should seek a diplomatic opening to China just as he has reached out to states in Africa, South America and the Balkans, as well as to Russia. With its Security Council veto, China would be a major asset to Israel in its bid to neutralize the UN-centered international community's campaign to delegitimize its right to exist.

By supporting Israel, Beijing stands to lose nothing and gain a great deal. Just as China's support for Iran has not harmed its trade ties - and its burgeoning military ties - with the likes of Saudi Arabia, so its support for Israel will likely have no impact on its ties in the Arab world. More important for China, its support for Israel would enhance its ability to challenge the UN-besotted Obama White House in the great power game.

Ironically, to the extent that by supporting Israel China secures the rights of nation-states threatened by the rapidly expanding UN colossus, China will become a pivotal defender of embattled democracies on the world stage.

Originally published in the Jerusalem Post.

Posted on January 9, 2010 at 1:44 AM

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January 4, 2010, 3:49 AM

Iranian protesters tear down, stomp on Khamenei's picture

Look at this footage from Iran from Dec. 27. While Obama was playing golf and talking about the alleged assailant and the suspected "extremist" on the flight to Detroit, these Iranians were risking their lives, stomping on Khamenei's poster and calling for him to die.

Posted on January 4, 2010 at 3:49 AM

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January 1, 2010, 11:12 AM

A low and dishonest decade

Upon returning from Cairo on Tuesday, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu proclaimed, "It's time to move the peace process forward."

The most sympathetic interpretation of Netanyahu's proclamation is that he was engaging in political theater. It was a low and dishonest statement uttered at the end of what has been, in the immortal words of W.H. Auden, "a low and dishonest decade."

Everyone with eyes in their heads knows that there is no chance of making peace with the Palestinians. First of all, the most Israel is willing to give is less than what the Palestinians are willing to accept.

But beyond that, Gaza is controlled by Hamas, and Hamas is controlled by Iran.

For its part, Fatah is not in a position to make peace even if its leaders wished to. Mahmoud Abbas and his deputies know that just as Hamas won the 2006 elections in Judea, Samaria and Gaza, Hamas would win elections today. To maintain even a smudge of domestic legitimacy, Fatah's leaders have no choice but to adopt Hamas's rejection of peaceful coexistence with the Jewish state.

Clearly, now is not the time "to move the peace process forward."

No less than what it tells us about Netanyahu, his statement is notable for what it tells us about Israel. Our continued willingness to ensnare ourselves in the rhetoric of peace processes demonstrates how little we have progressed in the past decade.

In 1999, Netanyahu was ejected from office by an electorate convinced that he was squandering an historic opportunity for peace between Israel and its neighbors. A majority of Israelis believed that Netanyahu's signature policies of demanding that the Palestinians abide by their commitments to Israel, and maintaining the IDF's security zone in south Lebanon were dooming all hope for peace.

His successor, Ehud Barak, promised to remove IDF troops from Lebanon and forge a final peace with the Palestinians and with Syria within a year. After winning the election, Barak famously promised a swooning crowd at Rabin Square that the "dawn of a new day has arrived."

Barak lost no time fulfilling his campaign promises. He withdrew the IDF from south Lebanon in May 2000.

He launched talks with Syria in December 1999. For four months he begged Syrian dictator Hafez Assad to accept the Golan Heights, stopping only after Assad harshly rebuffed him in March 2000.

And in July 2000 at Camp David, Barak offered Yasser Arafat Gaza, 90 percent of Judea and Samaria and half of Jerusalem in exchange for peace. After Arafat rejected his offer, Barak sweetened it at Taba in September 2000, adding another 5% of Judea and Samaria, the Temple Mount, and extra lands in the Negev, only to be rejected, again.

Barak made these offers as the wisdom of appeasement exploded before his eyes. Hizbullah seized the withdrawal from Lebanon as a strategic victory. Far from disappearing as Barak and his deputy Yossi Beilin had promised it would, Hizbullah took over south Lebanon and used the area as a springboard for its eventual takeover of the Lebanese government. So, too, with its forces perched on the border, Hizbullah built up its Iranian-commanded forces, preparing for the next round of war.

Similarly, Barak's desperate entreaties to Assad enhanced the dictator's standing in the Arab world, to the detriment of Egypt and Jordan.

To the extent he required encouragement, the ascendance of Hizbullah, Syria and Iran made it politically advantageous for Arafat to reject peace. Buoyed by their rise, Arafat diverted billions of dollars in Western aid from development projects to the swelling ranks of his terror armies. Instead of preparing his people for peace, he trained them for war.

Arafat responded to Barak's beggary at Camp David and Taba by launching the largest terror offensive Israel experienced since the 1950s. The Palestinians' orgiastic celebration of the mass murder of Israelis was the final nail in Barak's premiership, and it seemed at the time, the death-knell of his policies of appeasement.

A year and a half after he took office, the public threw Barak from power. Likud leader Ariel Sharon - who just a decade earlier had been taken for dead - was swept into power with an electoral landslide. To the extent the public vote was for Sharon, rather than against Barak, the expectation was that Sharon would end Barak's appeasement policies and defeat Arafat and the terror state he had built in Gaza, Judea and Samaria.

But this was not to be.

Rather than abandon Barak's policies, Sharon embraced them. He formed a unity government with Labor and refused to fight. He didn't fight after 22 teenagers were massacred outside the Dolphinarium nightclub in June 2001. He did not fight after the September 11, 2001, attacks and the Palestinian celebrations of the slaughter in New York and Washington.

Sharon did not order the IDF to fight until the carnage of March 2002 that culminated in the Seder massacre at Netanya's Park Hotel forced his hand. Had he not ordered the IDF to dismantle the Palestinian terror infrastructures in Judea and Samaria at that time, he faced the sure prospect of being routed in the Likud leadership race scheduled for November of that year.

Operation Defensive Shield was a textbook example of what you get when you mix weak politicians with a strong society. On the one hand, during Defensive Shield, the IDF took control of all the major towns and cities in Judea and Samaria and so enabled Israel to dismantle Palestinian terror networks by remaining in place in the years that followed.

On the other hand, Sharon refused to allow the IDF to launch a parallel operation in Gaza, despite repeated entreaties by the army and residents of the South. Most important, Sharon barred the IDF from toppling the PA or even acknowledging that it was an enemy government. And he maintained that the Palestinian jihad began and ended with Arafat, thus absolving all of Arafat's deputies - who were then and today remain deeply involved in the terror machine - of all responsibility.

In acting as he did, Sharon's signaled that he was not abandoning appeasement. Indeed, he made clear that his aim was to re-embrace appeasement as his national strategy as soon as it was politically feasible.

Most Israelis explained away Sharon's behavior in his first term as the price he was forced to pay for his coalition government with Labor. So when in 2003 Sharon, Likud and the political Right won an overwhelming mandate from the public to lead the country without the Left, the expectation was that he would finally let loose. He would finally fight for victory.

Instead, Sharon spat on his party, his coalition partners and his voters and adopted as his own the policies of the Left that he had condemned in his campaign.

To implement those policies, Sharon dismantled his government and his party and formed a coalition with the same Left the nation had just overwhelmingly rejected.

The past decade's major policies: the withdrawal from Gaza, the construction of the security fence, the acceptance of the road map peace plan, the Annapolis Conference, Operation Defensive Shield, the Second Lebanon War and Operation Cast Lead all shared one central feature. They were all predicated on ignoring the lessons of the failure of appeasement in 2000.

Whereas Defensive Shield's strategic success was owed to Israel's decision to maintain control over the territory the IDF seized in the fighting, in launching the wars with Hizbullah and Hamas, Sharon's successor, Ehud Olmert, ignored that success and chose instead to emulate the operation's failures.

To further his government's appeasement policies, Olmert refused to order the IDF to seize south Lebanon or Gaza. By the same token, like Sharon in Defensive Shield, Olmert announced at the outset that he had no interest in defeating Israel's enemies. He limited the goals of the campaigns to "teaching them a lesson." And of course by not seeking victory for Israel, Olmert enabled both Hizbullah and Hamas to claim victory for themselves.

By opting not to defeat Hizbullah or Hamas, Olmert communicated the message that like Sharon before him, his ultimate strategic aim was to maintain the political viability of appeasement as a national strategy. He was fighting to protect appeasement, not Israel.

As we move into the second decade of this century, we need to understand how the last decade was so squandered. How is it possible that in 2010 Israel continues to embrace policies that have failed it - violently and continuously for so many years? Why, in 2010 are we still ignoring the lessons of 2000 and all that we have learned since then?

There are two main causes for this failure: The local media and Sharon. Throughout the 1990s, the Israeli media - print, radio and television - were the chief propagandists for appeasement. When appeasement failed in 2000, Israel's media elites circled the wagons. They refused to admit they had been wrong.

Misleading phrases like "cycle of violence" were introduced into our newspeak. The absence of a security fence - rather than the presence of an enemy society on the outskirts of Israel's population centers - was blamed for the terror that claimed the lives of over a thousand Israelis. Palestinian propagandists and terrorists such as Fatah leader Marwan Barghouti were treated like legitimate politicians. Palestinian ties to Iran, Syria, Iraq and the nexus of global jihad went unmentioned or uncommented upon.

At the same time, opponents of appeasement - those who had warned of the dangers of the Oslo process and had spoken out against the withdrawal from Lebanon and a potential withdrawal from the Golan Heights and Gaza - were not congratulated for their wisdom. They remained marginalized and demonized.

This situation prevails still today. The same media that brought us these catastrophes now derides Likud ministers and Knesset members who speak out against delusion-based policies, while suddenly embracing Netanyahu who - with Barak at his side - has belatedly embraced their pipe dreams of appeasement-based peace.

Then there is Sharon. The man who built the settlements, who removed the PLO from Lebanon, who opposed Oslo, Camp David and the withdrawal from Lebanon; the man who opposed the security fence and pledged to remain forever in Gush Katif. As Israel's leader for most of the past decade, more than anyone else Sharon is responsible for Israel's continued adherence to the dishonest, discredited and dishonorable dictates of appeasement.

Whether due to his alleged corruption, his physical enfeeblement, his fear of the State Department, or his long-held and ardent desire to be accepted by the Left, Sharon betrayed his voters and his party and he undermined Israel's ability to move beyond failure.

Auden's "low and dishonest decade" was the 1930s. It was the West's obsession then with appeasement that set the world on course for the cataclysm of World War II.

As Israel enters the new decade, we must redouble our efforts to forestall a repeat of the cataclysm of the 1940s. Disturbingly, Netanyahu's call for a fraudulent peace process shows that we are off to an ignoble, untruthful start.

Posted on January 1, 2010 at 11:12 AM

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