Latma's Tribal Update this week discusses among other things, the Mossad hit against Haman in Shushan.

The second sketch is a parody of a television personality here in Israel who does a lot of commercials. You may or may not understand it. Also some of the news briefs are inside baseball. But you'll get the drift.

The sound quality this week isn't great and we apologize for that. Our studios were broken into hours before we shot the show and most of our equipment was stolen so our producer Ofir Shteinbaum had to rent everything at the last minute.

Hope you enjoy the show!

There is something pathetic about what passes as European foreign policy these days. Quite simply, more often than not, the concerted positions of the EU member nations have nothing to do with any of their national interests.

Take the EU's initial response to the killing of Hamas terror-master Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai on January 19. A senior terrorist engaging in the illegal purchase of illicit arms from Iran for Hamas-controlled Gaza is killed in his hotel room. The same Dubai authorities who had no problem with hosting a wanted international terrorist worked themselves into a frenzy condemning his killing. And of course, despite the fact that any number of governments, (Egypt and Jordan come to mind), and rival terrorist organizations, (Fatah, anyone?) had ample reason to wish to see Mabhouh dead, Dubai's police chief Lt.-Gen. Dahi Khalfan Tamim blamed Israel.

Not only did he blame Israel, to substantiate his claims, Tamim released what he said was video footage of alleged Mossad operatives who entered Dubai with European and Australian passports.

Relying only on Tamim's allegations, EU leaders went into high dudgeon. Ignoring the nature of the operation, the basic lack of credibility of the source of information, and the interests of Europe in defeating jihadist terrorism in the Middle East and worldwide, the chanceries of Europe squawked indignantly and threatened to cut off intelligence cooperation with Israel.

In Britain for instance, Foreign Office sources told the Daily Telegraph, "If the Israelis were responsible for the assassination in Dubai, they are seriously jeopardizing the important intelligence-sharing arrangement that currently exists between Britain and Israel."

It reportedly took the intervention of the highest echelons of Europe's intelligence agencies to get their hysterical politicians and diplomats to stop blaming and threatening Israel. After being dressed down, on Monday, the chastened EU foreign ministers abstained from mentioning Israel by name in their joint condemnation of the alleged use of European passports by the alleged operatives who allegedly killed the terrorist Mabhouh.

And lucky they held their tongues. Because on Tuesday, Tamim claimed that after the hit, at least two of the alleged members of the alleged assassination team departed Dubai for Iran. It's hard to imagine Mossad officers feeling safer in Iran than in Dubai at any time and certainly it is hard to see why they would flee to Iran after killing an Iranian-sponsored terrorist.

What the initial European reaction to Tamim's allegations shows is that blaming Israel has become Europe's default foreign policy. It apparently never occurred to the Europeans that Israel might not be responsible for the hit. And it certainly never occurred to them that cutting off intelligence ties with Israel will harm them more than Israel.

They didn't think of the latter, of course, because Europe has no idea of what its interests are. All it knows is how to sound off authoritatively.

THIS HAS not always been the case. It was after all Europe that brought the world the art of rational statecraft. Once upon a time, Europe's leaders understood that a nation's foreign policy was supposed to be based on its national interests. To advance their nation's interests, governments would adopt certain policies. And to facilitate the success of those policies they developed rhetorical arguments to explain and defend them.

Contemporary European statecraft stands this traditional foreign policy model on its head. Today, rhetoric rules the roost. If actions are taken at all, they are adopted in the service of rhetoric. As for national interests, well, the Lisbon Treaty that effectively bars EU member states from adopting independent foreign policies took care of those.

With national interests subordinated to the whims of bureaucrats in Brussels, Europe does little of value in the international arena. As for its rhetoric, as the EU's rush to threaten Israel for allegedly killing a terrorist shows, it is cowardly, ineffectual and self-defeating.

If the Mossad did in fact kill Mabhouh, then the operation was an instance in which Israel distinguished itself from its European detractors by acting, rather than preening.

Unfortunately, such instances are increasingly the exception rather than the rule. Over the past 16 years or so, Israel largely descended into the European statecraft abyss. Rather than use rhetoric to explain policies adopted to advance its national interests, successive Israeli governments have adopted policies geared toward strengthening their rhetoric that itself stands in opposition to Israel's national interests.

Take Israel's positions on Iran and the Palestinians, for instance. Regarding the Iranians, Israel's national interest is to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. Today, the only way to secure this interest is to use force to destroy Iran's nuclear installations.

Given Iran's leaders' absolute commitment to developing nuclear weapons, no sanctions - regardless of how "crippling" they are supposed to be - will convince them to curtail their efforts to build and deploy their nuclear arsenal.

Beyond that, and far less important, the Russians and the Chinese will refuse to implement "crippling sanctions," against Iran.

IN LIGHT of these facts, it is distressing that Israel's leaders have made building an international coalition in support of "crippling" sanctions against Iran their chief aim. And this is not merely a rhetorical flourish. Over the past several weeks and months, Israel's top leaders have devoted themselves to lobbying foreign governments to support sanctions against Iran.

Last week Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu went to Moscow to gin up support for sanctions from the Russian government. This week, Defense Minister Ehud Barak traveled to the UN and the State Department and Strategic Affairs Minister Moshe Ya'alon flew off to Beijing just to lobby senior officials to support sanctions.

It isn't simply that this behavior doesn't contribute anything to Israel's ability to destroy Iran's nuclear installations. It harms Israel's ability to do so, if only by diverting our leaders' focus from where it should be: preparing the IDF to strike and preparing the country to withstand whatever the aftereffects of such a strike would be. Moreover, by calling for sanctions, Israel contributes to the delusion that sanctions are sufficient to block Iran's race to the nuclear finish line.

As for the Palestinian issue, it is fairly clear that at a minimum, Israel's interest is to secure its control over the areas of Judea and Samaria that it requires to protect its Jewish heritage and its national security. But it is hard to think of anything the government has done in its year in office to advance that basic interest.

It is argued that Israel's interest in maintaining good relations with the US administration trumps its interest in strengthening its control over areas in Judea and Samaria that it deems vital. The problem with this argument is that it takes for granted that Israel can determine the status of its relations with the US administration. In the case of the Obama administration, it is abundantly clear that this is not the case.

President Barack Obama and his senior advisers have demonstrated repeatedly that they are interested in weakening - not strengthening - the US alliance with Israel. This week the administration condemned Israel for defining the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron and Rachel's Tomb in Bethlehem as national heritage sites. The fact that they are national heritage sites is so obvious that even President Shimon Peres defended the move.

Moreover, Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, reiterated for the millionth time this week that he opposes military strikes against Iran's nuclear installations. That is, for the millionth time, the top US military officer effectively said that he prefers a nuclear armed Iran to an Israeli strike on Iran's nuclear installations.

In the interest of strengthening Israel's ties with a hostile administration, the Netanyahu government has adopted rhetoric on the Palestinian issue that is harmful to Israel's national interests. It declared its support for a Palestinian state, despite the fact that such a state will define itself through its devotion to Israel's destruction.

It has outlawed Jewish construction in Judea and Samaria, despite the fact that the move simply legitimizes the Palestinians' bigoted demand that Jews be barred from living in Judea and Samaria.

And it has advocated on behalf of Palestinian leaders like Mahmoud Abbas and Salam Fayyad who refuse to accept Israel's right to exist.

Indeed, if Israel were to reject the current European model and craft a foreign policy that advanced its national interests, one of its first acts would be to point out that the unelected Palestinian Prime Minister Fayyad is not a man of peace.

Just this week, Fayyad threatened to respond with a religious war to Israel's classification of the Cave of the Patriarchs and Rachel's Tomb as national heritage sites. Last Friday he joined rioters at Bil'in to attack Israel's security fence. Fayyad has taken a lead role in the campaign to implement an international boycott of Israeli products. Over the past couple of years he has sought to take control over the PA's security forces not to fight terror, but to prevent Israel from fighting terror. Finally, since the Hamas victory in the PA legislative elections in 2006, he has overseen the transfer of hundreds of millions of dollars to Hamas.

In short, Fayyad, a former World Bank employee, is not a "moderate," as his supporters in the US and Europe claim. He is a fiscally sound terror financier and sponsor, actively waging war against Israel.

RECENT REPORTS indicate that IDF Chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi - who strangely received a nice medal from Mullen two years ago - is the main opponent of an Israeli military strike against Iran's nuclear installations. If this is true, then Ashkenazi must either be forced to change his position or lose his job. The Iranian threat is too great to place in the hands of a commander the US reportedly views as its "friend" in Israel's decision-making circles.

As for the Palestinians, the situation will not be remedied simply by firing a few incompetent office holders. For 16 years, in the interest of enhancing the country's ties with Europe, and to a lesser degree with the US, successive Israeli governments have ignored Israel's vital national interest in maintaining its control over Judea and Samaria. Indeed, they have preferred Euro-friendly, and Israel-unfriendly rhetoric to the sober-minded pursuit of Israel's national interest.

Yet as Europe's immediate response to the Dubai operation makes clear, Europe itself has abandoned the sober-minded pursuit of its own interests, in favor of cowardly, feckless, self-defeating rhetoric. Obviously Europe should favor Israel over a Hamas terrorist. But in its current state of strategic imbecility, no European leader can acknowledge this basic fact. Consequently, Europe may well be doomed.

To avoid Europe's encroaching fate, Israel must abandon its current course. The purpose of rhetoric is to support policies adopted in the pursuit of a nation's interests. And Israel has interests in need of urgent advancement.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

This week's show from my Hebrew language media satire website latma.co.il discusses among other things the sorry tale of Uri Korb, the Assistant District Attorney in Jerusalem. Korb, who serves as the chief prosecutor in Ehud Olmert's upcoming trial was forced to take a leave of absence this week. 

I am going to depart from my area of expertise to discuss a film. The Hurt Locker has been hailed by conservatives and liberals and everyone in between as the best movie about the war in Iraq to date. I just saw it. It literally made me sick. I think that it is one of the worst movies I have ever seen.

In truth, I don't see many movies. I don't recall seeing any movies about Iraq. I watched this one because I happened to be visiting relatives who happened to have rented it. If this is what passes as a good movie about Iraq, then I am relieved that I haven't seen any other Hollywood movies about Iraq. Aside from that, the plaudits it has received tell me that people have some horribly low standards.

The Hurt Locker is a film about a bomb disposal unit deployed to Iraq at the height of the insurgency in 2004. Its hero is Staff Sgt. Will James, (played expertly by Jeremy Renner) who leads a bomb disposal squad. In scene after scene he dismantles IEDs. And that's the problem. There is no plot. We don't know anything about these soldiers. We don't know why they joined the US Army. We don't know how they feel about Iraq. We don't know what they think of Iraqis who are nothing more than background noise in the movie, except for an apropos of nothing Iraqi boy who simply reenacted the role of a South Korean boy from MASH. 

When the movie starts we are told they are going home in a few weeks and that builds suspense about the possibility of them getting killed. Each new scene of defusing bombs is yet one day closer to home. But we don't care about the soldiers who we are never given the opportunity to know -- lest we relate to them. All we are given are GI Joes who defuse bombs. Supposedly by watching them, we are supposed to achieve some deeper understanding of the war. But really all we see is context-free violence which teaches us nothing about war. Supposedly James is a hero. But we don't have any idea what he's fighting for. So why should we care about him? Indeed, how can we care about him? The only thing we can feel for him is fear. 

My sense is at The Hurt Locker was made with two target audiences in mind: teenage boys and radical leftists. Teenage boys are everyone's target audience because they pay money to watch movies in theaters and then buy the DVDs and any merchandise related to films. Teenage boys love violence - the more gratuitous, the better. And The Hurt Locker has lots and lots of violence. In fact all it is is violence interrupted periodically by gratuitous, generic cute kid scenes. 

As for radical leftists, The Hurt Locker works for them because its post modern, context-free rendering of the war is a picture perfect far left portrayal of war. No, the Americans aren't terrible, they are nothings. And anyway, their nature is irrelevant. War is futile. There is no purpose to war except staying alive. There is no greater good. Therefore, war is wrong because there is nothing worth fighting for What could be a better war message than that for the far left?

I'm no film critic. But I know soldiers and I know war. And soldiers aren't two-dimensional and war isn't about nothing. And the war in Iraq is neither futile nor meaningless. 

The Hurt Locker was a two-dimensional film about a meaningless war and nothing soldiers. If it weren't up against the anti-American, anti-Israeli 3-D allegory Avatar, I would say it was a sure bet to win the best picture.

This week at Latma we translated our weekly videocast "The Tribal Update" into English. It is our intention to translate all of our videos into English from now on and I will post them here as well.

A regional war may well be approaching. The actions and statements of Iran and its Syrian, Lebanese and Palestinian proxies over the past week or so indicate that this is what Israel's enemies are gunning for.

In preparing for this growing threat, Israel's leaders need to consider more than just the military challenges it faces. They must consider the political actors at home and abroad that limit the IDF's ability to fight to victory and develop strategies for neutralizing those actors.

The latest developments are menacing. Last Saturday, Iran's unelected president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad threatened to open up a new round of hostilities on February 11. Then Wednesday, Iran launched a new missile into space. Israeli and US missile experts claim that the missile launch signals that Iran is developing intercontinental ballistic missiles and building the capacity to launch nuclear warheads on ballistic missiles.

Following the missile launch, Syria's president and foreign minister issued incendiary comments threatening Israel with war. Notably, they did so the same day the US informed Syria of its intention to send an ambassador to Damascus for the first time in five years.

Hamas, for its part, sent barrels of explosives drifting to the Israeli coastline - exposing new ways it can kill us. And Fatah, for its part, decided to kiss Hamas's ring this week. Senior Fatah official Nabil Shaath's obsequious visit to Gaza Wednesday was a graphic demonstration of Hamas's preeminence in Palestinian society.

Then there is Hizbullah. In a speech on January 15, Hizbullah leader Hassan Nasrallah pledged that the next war will "change the face of the region."

This may not be an exaggeration. It isn't simply that under the blind eye of UN peacekeepers Hizbullah has replenished and expanded its arsenal to include long-range missiles. It isn't simply that in the three and half years since the war Hizbullah has taken control over the Lebanese government. Hizbullah has also built up a formidable ground force. In the event of war, these forces may be deployed as an expeditionary force inside northern Israel.

And if the precedent of former MK Azmi Bishara - who fled Israel after learning that he was about to be indicted for serving as a Hizbullah agent in the 2006 war - is any indication of Hizbullah's modus operandi, Israel may also face Israeli Arab fifth columnists assisting Hizbullah forces inside the country.

Assuming for the moment that the IDF and the government are prepared to contend with these mounting military threats, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and his colleagues must take the necessary steps to withstand and minimize the effectiveness of the far left's expected political warfare against Israel. As the past decade has made clear, the aim of that warfare is to delegitimize Israel's right to defend itself in order to make it impossible for Israel to pursue the war to military and political victory.

As in the military arena, so in the political arena, Israel's foes have grown from nuisances into strategic threats over the past decade. The UN-sponsored Goldstone Report, which effectively denies Israel's right to defend itself and criminalizes its military efforts to secure its citizenry and its territory, is evidence of the gravity of the threat Israel faces as our leaders plan for the coming war.

ON THIS latter plane, the past week has been an eventful and hopeful one. The latest developments offer guidance for how the government must proceed as the winds of war blow ever stronger. Late last week, the Zionist student movement Im Tirzu published a detailed report demonstrating that 16 anti-Zionist NGOs funded by the post-Zionist New Israel Fund worked hand in glove with the UN Human Rights Council and Richard Goldstone to bring about the establishment of the Goldstone committee and give credibility to its allegations that Israel committed war crimes during Operation Cast Lead. According to the Im Tirtzu report, 92 percent of Israeli allegations that Israel committed war crimes in its campaign against Hamas came from these 16 NIF-funded organizations.

Im Tirtzu's report was prominently covered by Ma'ariv last weekend. The media coverage provoked calls in the Knesset this week to investigate the NIF and its operational arms in Israel, both through regular committee hearings and perhaps through a parliamentary investigative panel.

These calls are extraordinary because they represent the first time in a decade that the legitimacy of these NGOs has been seriously scrutinized. 

Since the Palestinians began their terror war against Israel in September 2000, NIF-sponsored groups have worked steadily to intimidate political leaders, law enforcement officials and military commanders to toe their anti-Zionist line. In the wake of the PLO-incited riots in the Israeli Arab sector in October 2000, the overtly anti-Zionist NIF-funded Adalah group agitated for the formation of the Orr Commission. Charged with investigating the police who quelled the rioting rather than the rioters whose violence forced the prolonged closure of major highways to Jewish traffic throughout the country, the Orr Commission had a devastating impact on the police's morale and organizational culture.

Adalah successfully cowed the Barak government into agreeing to rules of inquiry for the commission that denied police officers even minimal rights of due process. They were not allowed to confront or question their accusers. In the aftermath of the commission's public hearings - which amounted to little more than show trials - the careers of several dedicated officers were destroyed. As a consequence, police commanders began curtailing their law enforcement activities in Arab villages. Everything from illegal building to livestock theft to incitement to war against Israel has gone uninvestigated and unpunished.

Furthermore, the Adalah-instigated and orchestrated Orr Commission empowered the most radical voices in Israeli Arab society. Supported by Arab political leaders, Adalah published a manifesto calling for the destruction of Israel as a Jewish state. Bishara's suspected espionage for Hizbullah, and the legal establishment's self-evident fear of prosecuting him for treason, are also the direct consequence of the Orr Commission.

As for the IDF, NIF-funded organizations have played a key role in organizing the weekly riots at flashpoints like Ni'ilin and Bi'ilin and in the recent expansion of these riots to other places in Judea and Samaria like Neveh Tzuf. Supported by anti-Israel activists from Europe and the US, these riots have had a devastating impact on the IDF's morale and its ability to defend Israeli communities.

The NIF-funded pro-Palestinian group B'Tselem provides the rioters with video cameras with which they regularly shoot distorted footage. Their canned films portray Israeli civilians seeking to defend themselves from the rioters as attackers. They portray IDF soldiers trying to keep order and protect Israeli civilians as violent bullies. B'Tselem gives these films to its supporters in the Israel media, which broadcast them as credible footage and demand that the IDF open investigations against its officers for carrying out lawful orders.

On the defensive, the IDF is compelled to curtail its operations and Israeli civilians, now demonized, are viewed as legitimate targets for terror attacks. One recent film of the rioting outside Neveh Tzuf posted on YouTube shows border policemen simply fleeing the scene and leaving the residents of the community to fend for themselves.

Im Tirtzu's offensive against the NIF sparked outraged protest among the NIF's supporters on the far left in Israel and in the US. Everyone from Ma'ariv's in-house anti-Zionist reporters Maya Bengal and Meirav David to J Street have piled on, attacking Im Tirtzu's financial backers and seeking to demonize the organization by referring to it as extremist, far right, racist, fascist, out-of-the-mainstream and all the other routine far-left terms used to demonize Zionists. 

What is most encouraging about the aftershocks of the Im Tirtzu report is that the Left's attempts to demonize it have so far failed. Indeed, the loudest voices calling for an investigation of NIF and its sponsored organizations have been MKs from Kadima.

THE HARSH truth is that the main cause of Israel's poor performance in Cast Lead and the Second Lebanon War was the Olmert government's ideological dependence on the far left and its central contention that it is Israel's presence in contested areas rather than our enemies' commitment to Israel's destruction that causes wars. Owing to their allegiance to this falsehood, Ehud Olmert and Tzipi Livni were unable to prosecute the wars to victory militarily, justify the limited steps they did take to defend Israel diplomatically, or discredit the rising chorus of Israeli NGOs arguing that Israel had no right to defend itself politically.

Since Cast Lead, however, two important things have happened. First Kadima was replaced by the Likud. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu rightly recognized the Goldstone Report as a strategic attack against Israel. If Israel has no right to defend itself; if its moves to do constitute war crimes, then Israel cannot fight, cannot win and will be destroyed. Rather than give credence to the report, Netanyahu has made discrediting it one his primary aims in office. And to counteract its force, among other things, for the first time since the start of the Oslo peace process with the PLO, Israel's government is asserting the Jewish people's right to Judea and Samaria.

Beyond that, Kadima itself has changed its tune. Now in the opposition, Kadima no longer needs to defend its rejected plan to unilaterally withdraw from Judea and Samaria. Mahmoud Abbas's refusal of Olmert's offers to withdraw Israelis civilians and military personnel from nearly all of Judea and Samaria and to cede sovereignty in Jerusalem discredited the notion that it is possible to make peace with the Palestinians. Most importantly, the fact that Goldstone castigates Livni and Olmert as war criminals requires Kadima to fight all forces - including the far left it previously supported - that give credibility to Goldstone.

These developments clear the way for the Netanyahu government to take steps to neutralize the potency of these groups. The government should move swiftly to order the police and the IDF to enforce the law against these groups and their allies. It must also provide the political support to police and military commanders in the field to empower them fulfill their orders without fear that they will be persecuted for doing their jobs.

If the government seizes the opportunity to weaken these subversive groups, not only will it be making it clear that the political open season on Israel is over. It will be clearing the way for any future war to end not only in military victory, but in political victory for Israel as well.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.