Crime pays

Posted on November 29, 2011 at 4:34 PM

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Calling things by their proper names

Next month, America's long campaign in Iraq will come to an end with the departure of the last US forces from the country.

Amazingly, the approaching withdrawal date has fomented little discussion in the US. Few have weighed in on the likely consequences of President Barack Obama's decision to withdraw on the US's hard won gains in that country.

After some six thousand Americans gave their lives in the struggle for Iraq and hundreds of billions of dollars were spent on the war, it is quite amazing that its conclusion is being met with disinterested yawns.

The general stupor was broken last week with The Weekly Standard's publication of an article titled, "Defeat in Iraq: President Obama's decision to withdraw US troops is the mother of all disasters."

The article was written by Frederick and Kimberly Kagan and Marisa Cochrane Sullivan. The Kagans contributed to conceptualizing the US's successful counterinsurgency strategy in Iraq, popularly known as "the surge," that president George W. Bush implemented in 2007.

In their article, the Kagans and Sullivan explain the strategic implications of next month's withdrawal. First they note that with the US withdrawal, the sectarian violence that the surge effectively ended will in all likelihood return in force. 

Iranian-allied Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki is purging the Iraqi military and security services and the Iraqi civil service of pro-Western, anti- Iranian commanders and senior officials. With American acquiescence, Maliki and his Shi'ite allies already managed to effectively overturn the March 2010 election results. Those elections gave the Sunni-dominated Iraqiya party led by former prime minister Ayad Allawi the right to form the next government.

Due to Maliki's actions, Iraq's Sunnis are becoming convinced they have little to gain from peacefully accepting the government.

The strategic implications of Maliki's purges are clear. As the US departs the country next month it will be handing its hard-won victory in Iraq to its greatest regional foe - Iran.

Repeating their behavior in the aftermath of Israel's precipitous withdrawal from southern Lebanon in May 2000, the Iranians and their Hezbollah proxies are presenting the US withdrawal from Iraq as a massive strategic victory.

They are also inventing the rationale for continued war against the retreating Americans. Iran's Hezbollah-trained proxy, Muqtada al-Sadr, has declared that US Embassy personnel are an "occupation force" that the Iraqis should rightly attack with the aim of defeating.

The US public's ignorance of the implications of a post-withdrawal, Iranian-dominated Iraq is not surprising. The Obama administration has ignored them and the media have largely followed the administration's lead in underplaying them.

For its part, the Bush administration spent little time explaining to the US public who the forces fighting in Iraq were and why the US was fighting them.

US military officials frequently admitted that the insurgents were trained, armed and funded by Iran and Syria. But policy-makers never took any action against either country for waging war against the US. Above the tactical level, the US was unwilling to take any effective action to diminish either regime's support for the insurgency or to make them pay a diplomatic or military price for their actions.

As for Obama, as the Kagans and Sullivan show, the administration abjectly refused to intervene when Maliki stole the elections or to defend US allies in the Iraqi military from Maliki's pro-Iranian purge of the general officer corps. And by refusing to side with US allies, the Obama administration has effectively sided with America's foes, enabling Iranian-allied forces to take over the US-built, trained and armed security apparatuses in Iraq.

ALL OF these actions are in line with the US's current policy towards Egypt. There, without considering the consequences of its actions, in January and February the Obama administration played a key role in ousting the US's most dependable ally in the Arab world, president Hosni Mubarak.

Since Mubarak was thrown from office, Egypt has been ruled by a military junta dubbed the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces. Because SCAF is comprised of the men who served as Mubarak's underlings throughout his 30-year rule, it shares many of the institutional interests that guided Mubarak and rendered him a dependable US ally. Specifically, SCAF is ill-disposed toward chaos and Islamic radicalism.

However, unlike Mubarak, SCAF is only in power because the mobs of protesters in Tahrir Square demanded that Mubarak stand down to enable civilian, majority rule in Egypt. Consequently, the military junta is much less able to keep Egypt's populist forces at bay.

Throughout Mubarak's long reign, the most popular force in Egypt was the jihadist Muslim Brotherhood. The populism unleashed by Mubarak's ouster necessarily rendered the Brotherhood the most powerful political force in Egypt. If free elections are held in Egypt next week as planned and if their results are honored, within a year Egypt will be ruled by the Muslim Brotherhood. This is the outcome Obama all but guaranteed when he cut the cord on Mubarak.

Recognizing the danger a Brotherhood government would pose to the army's institutional interests, in recent weeks the generals began taking steps to delay elections, limit the power of the parliament and postpone presidential elections.

Their moves provoked massive opposition from Egypt's now fully legitimated and empowered populist forces. And so they launched what they are dubbing "the second Egyptian revolution."

And the US doesn't know what to do.

In late 2010, foreign policy professionals on both sides of the aisle in Washington got together and formed a group called the Working Group for Egypt. This group, with members as seemingly diverse as Elliott Abrams from the Bush administration and the Council on Foreign Relations, and Brian Katulis from the Center for American Progress, chose to completely ignore the fact that the populist forces in Egypt are overwhelmingly jihadist. They lobbied for Mubarak's overthrow in the name of "democracy" in January and February. Today they demand that Obama side with the rioters in Tahrir Square against the military. And just as he did in January and February, Obama is likely to follow their "bipartisan" advice.

FROM IRAQ to Egypt to Libya to Syria, as previous mistakes by both the Bush and Obama administrations constrain and diminish US options for advancing its national interests, America is compelled to make more and more difficult choices. In Libya, after facilitating Muammar Gaddafi's overthrow, the US is faced with the prospect of dealing with an even more radical regime that is jihadist, empowered and already transferring arms to terror groups and proliferating nonconventional weapons. If the Obama administration and the US foreign policy establishment acknowledge the hostile nature of the new regime and refrain from supporting it, they will be forced to admit they sided with America's enemies in taking down Gaddafi.

While Gaddafi was certainly no Mubarak, at worst he was an impotent adversary.

In Syria, not only did the US refuse to take any action against President Bashar Assad despite his active sponsorship of the insurgency in Iraq, it failed to cultivate any ties with Syrian regime opponents. The US has continued to ignore Syrian regime opponents to the present day. And now, with Assad's fall a matter of time, the US is presented with a fairly set opposition leadership, backed by Islamist Turkey and dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood. The liberal, pro-American forces in Syria, including the Kurds, have been shut out of the post-Assad power structure.

And in Egypt, after embracing "democracy" over its ally Mubarak, the US is faced with another unenviable choice. It can either side with the weak, but not necessarily hostile military junta which is dependent on US financial aid, or it can side with Islamic extremists who seek its destruction and that of Israel and have the support of the Egyptian people.

HOW HAS this situation arisen? How is it possible that the US finds itself today with so few good options in the Arab world after all the blood and treasure it has sacrificed? The answer to this question is found to a large degree in an article by Prof. Angelo Codevilla in the current issue of the Claremont Review of Books titled "The Lost Decade."

Codevilla argues that the reason the US finds itself in the position it is in today owes to a significant degree to its refusal after September 11, 2001, to properly identify its enemy. US foreign policy elites of all stripes and sizes refused to consider clearly how the US should best defend its interests because they refused to identify who most endangered those interests.

The Left refused to acknowledge that the US was under attack from the forces of radical Islam enabled by Islamic supremacist regimes such as Saudi Arabia and Iran because the Left didn't want the US to fight. Moreover, because the Left believes that US policies are to blame for the Islamic world's hostility to America, leftists favor foreign policies predicated on US appeasement of its enemies.

For its part, the Right refused to acknowledge the identity and nature of the US's enemy because it feared the Left.

And so, rather than fight radical Islamists, under Bush the US went to war against a tactic - terrorism. And lo and behold, it was unable to defeat a tactic because a tactic isn't an enemy. It's just a tactic. 

And as its war aim was unachievable, the declared ends of the war became spectacular. Rather than fight to defend the US, the US went to war to transform the Arab world from one imbued with unmentionable religious extremism to one increasingly ruled by democratically elected unmentionable religious extremism.

The lion's share of responsibility for this dismal state of affairs lies with former president Bush and his administration. While the Left didn't want to fight or defeat the forces of radical Islam after September 11, the majority of Americans did. And by catering to the Left and refusing to identify the enemy, Bush adopted war-fighting tactics that discredited the war effort and demoralized and divided the American public, thus paving the way for Obama to be elected while running on a radical anti-war platform of retreat and appeasement.

Since Obama came into office, he has followed the Left's ideological guidelines of ending the fight against and seeking to appease America's worst enemies. This is why he has supported the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. This is why he turned a blind eye to the Islamists who dominated the opposition to Gaddafi. This is why he has sought to appease Iran and Syria. This is why he supports the Muslim Brotherhood-dominated Syrian opposition. This is why he supports Turkey's Islamist government. And this is why he is hostile to Israel.

And this is why come December 31, the US will withdraw in defeat from Iraq, and pro- American forces in the region and the US itself will reap the whirlwind of Washington's irresponsibility.

There is a price to be paid for calling an enemy an enemy. But there is an even greater price to be paid for failing to do so.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post. 

Posted on November 25, 2011 at 10:20 AM

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The Arab times they are a-changin'

Posted on November 25, 2011 at 10:07 AM

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The scourge of clientitis

For many years, observers of the US State Department on both sides of the American political spectrum have agreed that State Department officials suffer from a malady referred to as "clientitis." Clientitis is generally defined as a state of mind in which representatives of an organization confuse their roles.

Rather than advance the cause of their organization to outside organizations, they represent the interests of outside organizations to their own organizations.

In some cases, diplomats are simply corrupted by their host governments. For generations US diplomats to Saudi Arabia have received lucrative post-government service jobs at Saudi-owned or controlled companies, public relations firms and other institutions.

Often, the problem is myopia rather than corruption.

Diplomats who speak to foreign government officials on a daily basis often simply ignore the context in which these foreigners operate. They become friends with their interlocutors and forget that the latter are also agents of their governments tasked with promoting foreign interests in their dealings with US diplomats.

In Israel the situation is similar. Here, too, Foreign Ministry officials have a tendency to give preference to the positions of the governments or institutions to which they are assigned over the interests and positions of the Israeli government that sent them to their posts. 

For instance, in September 2008, shortly after the UN allowed Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to use his speech at the UN General Assembly to accuse the Jews of controlling the world in a bid to poison and destroy it, then-Israeli ambassador to the UN Gabriela Shalev gave an interview to Army Radio in which she said her primary duty is "correcting the UN's image in the eyes of the people of Israel."

Since the scourge of clientitis among diplomats is widely recognized, governments are often able to consider its impact on diplomats when they weigh the credibility or wisdom of recommendations presented by their professional diplomats.

LESS WELL recognized and therefore largely unconsidered is how clientitis has negatively impacted the positions of military commanders.

Clientitis first became prevalent in the US Armed Forces and the IDF in the 1990s. In the immediate aftermath of the Cold War, the Clinton administration began transforming in earnest the US armed forces' role from war fighting to nation building. In Israel, with the onset of the peace process with the PLO in 1993, the IDF was ordered to change its operating guidelines. From then on, peacemaking was to take priority over war fighting and defeating terrorists.

Since September 11, 2011, the US military has vastly expanded its nation building roles around the world. US military commanders are promoted more for prowess in acting as diplomats-in-uniform than for their capacity to train and employ soldiers to kill and defeat the enemy. Commanders deployed to train the al-Qaida-infested Yemeni or Afghan militaries; liaise with the Hizbullah-dominated Lebanese Armed Forces; or train the Iranian-penetrated Iraqi military have little personal incentive to warn against these missions.

So, too, in working with their local counterparts on a daily basis, like their State Department colleagues, these US military officers have a marked tendency to ignore the broader context in which their local colleagues operate. And so, like their civilian colleagues at the US embassies in these countries, military commanders have a tendency to become the representatives of their foreign counterparts to the Pentagon and to Congress.

In the case of the IDF, in 1993 the entire General Staff was encouraged to embrace clientitis. Then prime minister and defense minister Yitzhak Rabin's decision in 1993 to appoint IDF commanders to lead negotiations with the PLO politicized the IDF to an unprecedented degree. Only generals who completely supported the peace process and forced their underlings to completely support it could expect promotion.

This political corruption of the IDF survived the destruction of the peace process in 2000. Due to successive governments' decisions to continue negotiating with the Palestinian Authority despite its refusal to make peace with Israel and its sponsorship of terrorism, the IDF has continued to participate in negotiations with the PA and lead liaison efforts with the Palestinian security forces.

As a consequence, whether due to the political views of officers on the ground, to institutional corrosion, or to officers' inability to view the statements of their Palestinian counterparts in the broader context of Palestinian and regional power politics, these IDF "peacemakers" act as the PA security services chief lobbyists to both the Israeli and US governments.

IN RECENT conversations with senior sources on Capitol Hill, it became apparent that American military trainers who work with the Lebanese Armed Forces were highly influential in convincing Congress to end its opposition to renewed US military assistance to the LAF.

Congress put a temporary hold on US military assistance to Lebanon in August 2010 after a Lebanese army sniper murdered IDF Lt.-Col. Dov Harari and critically wounded Capt. Ezra Lakia. Both officers were stationed on the Israeli side of the border.

In April, when Hizbullah gained control over the new Lebanese government, the Obama administration again temporarily froze military assistance to the LAF.

In September Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told the Hizbullah-controlled Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati that the US would renew its assistance. In October, the Pentagon hosted Lebanese Army Commander General Jean Kahwagi on an official visit.

According to Congressional sources, Congress has permitted continued military assistance to Lebanon, despite Hizbullah's control over both the government and the armed forces, because of the outspoken support of the US military for the military assistance program.

So too, according to Congressional sources. House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairwoman Ileana Ros- Lehtinen's decision to end her committee's block on US military assistance to the PA's security forces owed to IDF pressure to renew the assistance. That assistance was cut off in September following the PA's bid to achieve statehood at the UN.

Following the aid cut-off Palestinian commanders warned that if the US did not renew its financial support for the US trained Palestinian security services, its soldiers would seek funding from elsewhere - including from terror sponsoring governments like Iran and Syria, and from Hamas, and Hizbullah.

Obviously these warnings were nothing more than acts of extortion. And despite outcries from the Obama administration, Mrs. Ros-Lehtinen held firm.

However, according to senior Congressional sources, Mrs. Ros-Lehtinen was unable to brush off entreaties by IDF commanders asking that the US renew its funding of these forces. Two weeks ago - just as the PA renewed its unity talks with Hamas - she lifted her committee's block on military assistance to the PA.

THE IDEA that governments gain leverage over other governments by assisting them is not a new one. And it is certainly true. However, in all cases, the leverage gained by assisting foreign governments owes entirely to the other governments' understanding that such assistance can and will be ended if they fail to meet certain benchmarks of behavior that are dictated from the outset.

Once a government's threat of aid cut-off to another government is removed or is no longer credible, then the leverage the provision of aid afforded that government is lost. So long as the Palestinians believe that Israel will never cut off its support for Fatah and the PA security services, they will continue to sponsor terror and collaborate with Hamas and other terror groups without fear.

So long as LAF officers and soldiers believe that Hizbullah's threat to attack the LAF is more credible than the US's stated willingness to end its support for the Lebanese military, the LAF will continue to openly support war against Israel and collaborate with Hizbullah.

Proof that a state's ability to leverage its foreign aid owes entirely to the credibility of a threat to cut off that aid came earlier this month in the aftermath of UNESCO's decision to grant full state membership to "Palestine." Due to US law, the Obama administration had no choice but to cut off all US funding to UNESCO in response to the move. As a consequence, the PLO's bid to gain full membership in other UN institutions has floundered.

Not wishing to suffer UNESCO's fate, no other UN institutions are willing to repeat UNESCO's action. And so the Palestinians' great victory at UNESCO has become a Pyrrhic one.

The Obama administration never sought this outcome. As his representatives have made abundantly clear, if US President Barack Obama had the power to maintain US budgetary support for UNESCO despite its conferral of membership on "Palestine," he would have done so. 

But because the law is not subject to interpretation, US leverage over the UN actually increased in the aftermath of the UNESCO vote. Recognizing that actions have consequences, other UN agencies have buried plans of granting membership to "Palestine."

Governments must give due consideration to the positions of their professional diplomats and military commanders as well as to those of allied countries when they weigh various policy options. But while doing so, legislators and policymakers must also take into account the built-in biases influencing the judgment of these professionals. Clientitis is a serious impediment to good judgment. And it is found wherever professionals are charged with building relationships, rather than achieving concrete goals.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post. 

Posted on November 23, 2011 at 10:09 AM

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Radio interview on the Milt Rosenberg Show

Posted on November 23, 2011 at 10:04 AM

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Posted on November 18, 2011 at 11:05 AM

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Defending Israeli Democracy

US Embassy cables leaked by Wikileaks in September exposed the ugly truth that self-described champions of Israeli democracy would like us to forget about the actual goals of Israel's self-described human rights organizations.

In a meeting with then US Assistant Secretary of State Michael Posner at the US Embassy in Tel Aviv in January 2010, B'Tselem director Jessica Montell explained what her group wished to achieve by colluding with the UN's Goldstone Commission's inquiry into Israel's handling of Operation Cast Lead. According to the embassy report, Montell said, "Her aim...was to make Israel weigh world opinion and consider whether it could 'afford another operation like this.'" 

In other words, in colluding with the UN's anti-Israel commission, whose mandate from the UN Human Rights Council was to explain how Israel broke international law by acting to defend its citizens from Hamas's illegal, indiscriminate missile assault, B'Tselem's goal was to undermine Israel's ability to defend itself. B'Tselem wished to use the UN commission to foment an international witch-hunt against the Jewish state that would exact a prohibitive price for defending the country. Israel's democratically elected government would react to the international onslaught by ignoring the needs of the Israeli public and opting not to defend the country again.

Obviously, if Israel ceases to defend itself, in light of its enemies' dedication to its destruction, it will cease to exist. And in a meeting with US Embassy officers in February 2010, Hedva Radovanitz, the New Israel Fund's then-associate director in Israel said that would be just fine by her. According to a leaked embassy cable report of the meeting, Radovanitz said "she believed that in 100 years Israel would be majority Arab and that the disappearance of a Jewish state would not be the tragedy that Israelis fear since it would become more democratic."

THE LIKES of Radovanitz and Montell are acutely aware that most Israelis do not share their extremist goals or their radical visions for Israel's future.

Radovanitz acknowledged that public support for the radical left, which the NIF supports to the tune of $18 million per year, has no serious domestic constituency.

As the cable put it, she described the "disappearance of the political left wing" in Israel and the lack of domestic constituency for the NGOs.

She noted that "when she headed ACRI's [the Association for Civil Rights in Israel's] Tel Aviv office, ACRI had 5,000 members, while today it has less than 800, and it was only able to muster about 5,000 people to its December [2009] human rights march by relying on the active staff of the 120 NGOs that participated."

As for Montell, in a meeting with the US Embassy's political officer in February 2010, she "estimated that [B'Tselem's] 9 million NIS ($2.4 million) budget is 95 percent funded from abroad, mostly from European countries."

The reality that these Wikileaks-leaked documents expose is precisely the reality which the Knesset this week launched a renewed effort to contend with by submitting three separate bills for consideration. Two of the Knesset bills address the issue of foreign funding to NGOs. One bill would limit the amount of funding Israeli political NGOs can receive from foreign governments and international organizations like the EU and the UN to NIS 20,000 per year. A competing bill would deny tax exemptions - that is, government subsidies - for such contributions and apply a 45% tax to all such foreign contributions.

While the laws would apply to all NGOs, obviously they would be particularly problematic for the NGOs run by Israeli radicals like Montell and Radovanitz that have no domestic Israeli constituency and rely on foreign governments to support their anti-Israel efforts.

THE THIRD bill addresses the main source of the political power of these foreign-funded NGOs - Israel's radicalized Supreme Court.

For the past 20 years or so, as the radical left has discredited itself as a political force in Israel, it has increasingly used the Supreme Court to achieve its aims. The Court is dominated by far leftists who legislate laws from the bench that would never pass in the Knesset.

Petitioning the Supreme Court, EU-funded groups like B'tselem, Peace Now and Adalah have been able to place court-imposed constraints on IDF operations.

They have been able to block or hamper the implementation of security measures that enjoy broad public support like the construction of the security fence.

They are able to block political leaders from devising and carrying out policies they believe serve the country's interests such as preventing illegal PLO activities in Jerusalem and building Jewish communities on Jewish- owned land in the Galilee.

The Supreme Court's radical legislative agenda is not limited to political and security issues. It has also overturned Knesset laws to liberalize the media and privatize sectors of the economy like the prison system. It has acted on the basis of constitutional claims that have little grounding in actual law, and that it applies inconsistently in accordance with its judges' ideological leanings.

The public has taken notice of the Court's increasingly undemocratic activities. According to a recent Maagar Mohot poll, the Supreme Court, once the most trusted institution in Israel, is now seen by 54% of the public as politically biased and, by a 75% to 11% margin, slanted left. Sixty-three percent of the public believes that the personal political views of the judges influence their legal decisions to some degree.

The Supreme Court's radical agenda is facilitated by Israel's undemocratic method of selecting its members.

Court members are appointed by the Judicial Appointments Committee. For all practical purposes, the committee is controlled by the Supreme Court itself and so the justices effectively select themselves. Fifty-six percent of the public wants this selection method changed.

The bill submitted by Likud MKs Yariv Levin and Zev Elkin would subject all Supreme Court nominees to public hearings conducted by the Knesset's Law, Constitution and Justice Committee. These hearings would provide legislators and the public with full disclosure on the views, activities and associations of prospective justices. Doing so would constitute a tiny step toward bringing court appointments procedures more in line with those in effect in most other western democracies.

While the bills dealing with foreign funding of NGOs and the bill concerning Supreme Court appointments are ostensibly unrelated, in fact they are directly linked.

Speaking to the media, the heads of various NGOs claim that the bills addressing their foreign funding are "unconstitutional" and therefore of little concern.

They know that they can depend on their ideological brethren in the Supreme Court to protect them from the public and its representatives in the Knesset. Just as the Court has not hesitated to block legitimate governmental policies and reforms in the past in the interest of the justices' radical ideological convictions, so the NGO representatives believe, the Court will protect them from the Knesset's actions this time around as well.

This means that the only way to protect Israeli democracy from subversive, foreign funded groups who seek to undermine the foundations of the state is to reform the Supreme Court that enables their activities.

All the bills that were submitted this week are serious attempts to tackle a serious threat to Israel democracy.

And they are not the first of their kind. Over the past several years, Israel's legislators have introduced several bills aimed at achieving the same goals. And each of these bills in turn has been attacked by the leftist Israeli media as "anti-democratic."

The media are repeating their standard practice today. Rather than foster debate about the substance of these bills and the problems they seek to address, the media are colluding with the heads of the NGOs and their foreign governmental donors to demonize the bills' sponsors and to threaten Israel with "diplomatic consequences" if the Knesset moves ahead with the initiatives.

All of this is bad enough. But what makes the situation even worse is the behavior of self-declared champions of democracy among senior Likud politicians. In the name of democracy, Ministers Bennie Begin, Michael Eitan, and Dan Meridor all oppose these measures, which are all focused on protecting and strengthening Israeli democracy.

Meridor can always be depended on to take the position of the left against his party's voters. But Begin and Eitan have distinguished themselves as independent thinkers. Eitan has taken a tough and independent line on governmental corruption. Begin has not hesitated to oppose the leftist media and bureaucracy in issues related to terrorism.

Yet here, these men habitually embrace the specious and frankly indefensible arguments of the radical left that represents no one but itself and its foreign funders.

It was the opposition of the likes of Begin, Meridor, Eitan and Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin that gave the radical left the necessary political cover to torpedo previous parliamentary initiatives to protect Israel's democratic institutions from their foreign-funded onslaughts.

And the Supreme Court's success to date in averting any serious parliamentary or governmental attempts to check its anti-democratic actions owes in large part to these Likud leaders' championship of its judicial usurpation of legislative and governmental power.

It is hard to know what is driving these men to act as they do. But it is high time that they exercise some independent judgment and rethink their support for the radical left's foreign funded, judicially enabled assault on Israeli democracy.

Originally published in the Jerusalem Post. 

Posted on November 14, 2011 at 4:26 PM

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The experts weigh in on bombing Iran

Posted on November 11, 2011 at 3:02 PM

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Jewish American Community in Danger

Posted on November 11, 2011 at 1:04 PM

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With friends like these

The slurs against Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu voiced by French President Nicolas Sarkozy and US President Barack Obama after last week's G20 summit were revealing as well as repugnant.

Thinking no one other than Obama could hear him, Sarkozy attacked Netanyahu, saying, "I can't stand to see him anymore, he's a liar."

Obama responded by whining, "You're fed up with him, but me, I have to deal with him every day."

These statements are interesting both for what they say about the two presidents' characters and for what they say about the way that Israel is perceived by the West more generally.

To understand why this is the case it is necessary to first ask, when has Netanyahu ever lied to Sarkozy and Obama? This week the UN International Atomic Energy Agency's report about Iran's nuclear weapons program made clear that Israel - Netanyahu included - has been telling the truth about Iran and its nuclear ambitions all along. In contrast, world leaders have been lying and burying their heads in the sand.

Since Iran's nuclear weapons program was first revealed to the public in 2004, Israel has provided in-depth intelligence information proving Iran's malign intentions to the likes of Sarkozy, Obama and the UN. And for seven years, the US government - Obama included - has claimed that it lacked definitive proof of Iran's intentions.

Obama wasted the first two years of his administration attempting to charm the Iranians out of their nuclear weapons program. He stubbornly ignored the piles of evidence presented to him by Israel that Iran was not interested in cutting a deal.

Perhaps Obama was relying on the US's 2007 National Intelligence Estimate about Iran's nuclear weapons program. As Israel said at the time, and as this week's IAEA report proves, it was the NIE - which claimed that Iran abandoned its nuclear weapons program in 2003 - not Israel that deliberately lied about the status of Iran's nuclear weapons program. It was the US intelligence community that purposely deceived the American government and people about the gravest immediate threat to US national security.

Israel, including Netanyahu, was telling the truth.

So if Netanyahu never lied about Iran, what might these two major world leaders think he lies about? Why don't they want to speak with him anymore? Could it be they don't like the way he is managing their beloved "peace process" with the Palestinians? The fact is that the only times Netanyahu has spoken less than truthfully about the Palestinians were those instances when he sought to appease the likes of Obama and Sarkozy. Only when Netanyahu embraced the false claims of the likes of Obama and Sarkozy that it is possible to reach a peace deal with the Palestinians based on the establishment of an independent Palestinian state west of the Jordan River could it be said that he made false statements.

Because the truth is that Israel never had a chance of achieving peace with the Palestinians.

And the reason this has always been the case has nothing to do with Netanyahu or Israel.

THERE WAS never any chance for peace because the Palestinians have no interest in making peace with Israel. As the West's favorite Palestinian "moderate," Fatah leader and Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas said in an interview with Egypt's Dream TV on October 23, "I've said it before and I'll say it again. I will never recognize the 'Jewishness' of the State [of Israel] or a 'Jewish state.'" That is, Abbas will never make peace with Israel.

Acknowledging this, on Tuesday Netanyahu reportedly told his colleagues that through their recent actions, the Palestinians have abrogated the foundations of the peace process. As he put it, "By boycotting negotiations and by going instead to the United Nations [to achieve independent statehood], they [the Palestinians] have reneged on a central tenet of Oslo."

That tenet, which formed the basis of the Oslo peace process, was "land for peace."

As Netanyahu explained, Israel gave up land within the framework of the Oslo Accords. In exchange the Palestinians committed to resolve their conflict with Israel through direct negotiations that would lead to peace. Their UN gambit, like Abbas's statement to Egyptian television, shows that the Palestinians - not Israel - have been lying all along. They pocketed Israel's territorial concessions and refused to make peace.

So why do the likes of Sarkozy and Obama hate Netanyahu? Why is he "a liar?" Why don't they pour out their venom on Abbas, who really does lie to them on a regular basis? The answer is because they prefer to blame Israel rather than acknowledge that their positive assessments of the Palestinians are nothing more than fantasy.

And they are not alone. The Western preference for fantasy over reality was given explicit expression by former US president Bill Clinton in September.

In an ugly diatribe against Netanyahu at his Clinton Global Initiative Conference, Clinton insisted that the PA under Abbas was "pro-peace" and that the only real obstacle to a deal was Netanyahu. Ironically, at the same time Clinton was attacking Israel's leader for killing the peace process, Abbas was at the UN asking the Security Council to accept as a full member an independent Palestine in a de facto state of war with Israel.

So, too, while Clinton was blaming him for the failure of the peace process, Netanyahu was at the UN using his speech to the General Assembly to issue yet another plea to Abbas to renew peace talks with Israel.

Clinton didn't exhaust his ammunition on Netanyahu. He saved plenty for the Israeli people as well. Ignoring the inconvenient fact that the Palestinians freely elected Hamas to lead them, Clinton provided his audience with a bigoted taxonomy of the Israeli public through which he differentiated the good, "pro-peace Israelis," from the bad, "anti-peace," Israelis.

As he put it, "The most pro-peace Israelis are the Arabs; second the Sabras, the Jewish Israelis that were born there; third, the Ashkenazis of longstanding, the European Jews who came there around the time of Israel's founding."

As for the bad Israelis, in the view of the former president, "The most anti-peace are the ultra-religious who believe they're supposed to keep Judea and Samaria, and the settler groups, and what you might call the territorialists, the people who just showed up lately and they're not encumbered by the historical record."

BY RANKING the worthiness of Israel's citizens in accordance with whether or not they agree with Clinton and his friends, Clinton was acting in line with what has emerged as standard operating practice of Israel's "friends" in places such as Europe and the US. Like Clinton, they too think it is their right to pick and choose which Israelis are acceptable and which are unworthy.

On Wednesday we saw this practice put into play by British Ambassador Matthew Gould. This week the Knesset began deliberations on a bill that would prohibit foreign governments and international agencies from contributing more than NIS 20,000 to Israeli nongovernmental organizations. The bill was introduced by Likud MK Ofir Okunis with Netanyahu's support.

According to Haaretz, Gould issued a thinly veiled threat to Okunis related to the bill. Gould reportedly said that if the bill is passed, it would reflect badly on Israel in the international community.

Last month, Makor Rishon published a British government document titled, "NGOs in the Middle East Funded by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office."

The document showed that in 2010, outside of Iraq, the British government gave a total of £100,000 to pro-democracy NGOs throughout the Arab world.

In contrast to Britain's miserly attitude towards Arab civil society organizations, Her Majesty's Government gave more than £600,000 pounds to farleftist Israeli NGOs. These Israeli groups included the Economic Cooperation Foundation, Yesh Din, Peace Now, Ir Amim and Gisha. All of these groups are far beyond Israeli mainstream opinion.

All seek to use international pressure on Israel to force the government to adopt policies rejected by the vast majority of the public.

So for every pound Britain forked out to cultivate democracy in 20 Arab non-democracies, it spent £6 to undermine democracy in Israel - the region's only democracy.

And the British couldn't be more pleased with the return on their investment. Speaking to Parliament last year, Britain's Minister of Middle East Affairs Alistair Burt said the money has successfully changed Israeli policies. As he put it, "Since we began supporting these programs some significant changes have been made in the Israeli justice system, both civilian and military, and in the decisions they make. They have also raised a significant debate about these matters and we believe these activities will strengthen democracy in Israel."

In other words, as far as Britain is concerned, "strengthening democracy" in Israel means tipping the scales in favor of marginal groups with no noticeable domestic constituency.

These shockingly hostile statements echo one made by then-presidential candidate Obama from the campaign trail in February 2008. At the time Obama said, "I think there is a strain within the pro-Israel community that says unless you adopt a[n] unwavering pro-Likud approach to Israel that you're anti-Israel, and that can't be the measure of our friendship with Israel."

Scarcely a day goes by when some foreign leader, commentator or activist doesn't say that being pro-Israel doesn't mean being pro-Israeli government. And like Obama's campaign-trail statement, Clinton's diatribe, Sarkozy and Obama's vile gossip about Netanyahu and Britain's self-congratulatory declarations and veiled threats, those who make a distinction between the Israeli people and the Israeli government ignore two important facts.

First, Israel is a democracy. Its governments reflect the will of the Israeli people and therefore, are inseparable from the people. If you harbor contempt for Israel's elected leaders, then by definition you harbor contempt for the Israeli public.

And this makes you anti-Israel.

The second fact these statements ignore is that Israel is the US's and Europe's stalwart ally. If Sarkozy and Obama had said what they said about Netanyahu in a conversation about German Chancellor Angela Merkel, or if Netanyahu had made similar statements about Obama or Sarkozy, the revelation of the statements would have sparked international outcries of indignation and been roundly condemned from all quarters.

And this brings us to the other troubling aspect of Sarkozy and Obama's nasty exchange about Netanyahu. Their views reflect a wider anti-Israel climate.

 Outside the Jewish world, Sarkozy's and Obama's hateful, false statements about their ally provoked no outrage. Indeed, it took the media three days to even report their conversation. This indicates that Obama and Sarkozy aren't alone in holding Israel to a double standard. They aren't the only ones blaming Israel for the Palestinians' bad behavior.

The Western media also holds Israel to a separate standard. Like Obama and Sarkozy, the media blame Israel and its elected leaders for the Palestinians' duplicity. Like Obama and Sarkozy, the media blame Israel for failing to make their peace fantasies come true.

And that is the real message of the Obama- Sarkozy exchange last week. Through it we learn that blaming the Jews and the Jewish state for their enemies' behavior is what passes for polite conversation among Western elites today.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post. 

Posted on November 10, 2011 at 4:38 PM

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Anti-Jewish indoctrination in Spanish public schools

Posted on November 9, 2011 at 9:15 AM

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Waiting out Obama

Over the past week, there has been an avalanche of news reports in the Israeli and Western media about the possibility of an imminent Israeli or American strike on Iran's nuclear installations. These reports were triggered by a report on Iran's nuclear program set to be published by the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency later this week.

According to the media, the IAEA's report will deal a devastating blow to Iran's persistent claims that its illegal nuclear program is "peaceful." Specifically, the IAEA report is expected to divulge information about Iran's efforts to develop and test components that have no plausible use other than the production of nuclear weapons. These activities include experimentation with triggers used only for detonating nuclear weapons, and the development of missile warheads capable of carrying nuclear weapons. They also include the design of computer simulation programs to test nuclear weapons.

Most nuclear experts claim that Iran currently has sufficient quantities of enriched uranium to produce four or five nuclear weapons. They also claim that it will take Iran another three years to develop a fullblown nuclear arsenal. Finally, Israeli and Western sources claim that in light of Iran's bid to develop hardened, underground nuclear sites, its nuclear installations will be immune to ballistic missile attacks or aerial bombing within a year.

Confronting Iran's rapidly developing nuclear capabilities, Israeli hawks and doves are united in their view that Israel's preferred option is for the US rather than the IDF to launch a military strike to destroy Iran's nuclear installations. This view is reasonable because the US has the military capabilities to destroy Iran's nuclear program completely and do so with minimal risk to America's international prestige and position.

Moreover, if the US, rather than Israel attacks Iran's nuclear installations, Israel will be able to devote all of its own resources to fending off missile and ground assaults from Iran's proxy regimes in Gaza, Lebanon and Syria. Between them, Hamas, Hezbollah and Syrian President Bashar Assad have some 100,000 missiles aimed at Israel. For the past two years Hizbullah has been planning a ground offensive against northern Israel in conjunction with a missile offensive. Syria has chemical weapons.

If as expected, Iran unleashes these forces in response to a strike on its nuclear installations, the IDF will have its hands full.

As for the option of an Israeli strike on Iran, assuming a tactical nuclear strike is not under consideration, Israel probably lacks the ability to completely destroy Iran's nuclear facilities on its own. Unlike the US, Israel would have to limit any operation in Iran to destroying the most dangerous Iranian nuclear facilities while leaving others untouched.

THE LIMITED nature of an Israeli strike could enable Iran to rebuild its nuclear capabilities. If so, Israel would likely need to launch another strike later on.

Unlike the US, Israel would have no international coalition to fight with. Jerusalem would face the unpalatable prospect of being condemned for its action by UN and other international bodies, including by states that would quietly support it.

Most importantly, given the likelihood that Iran's proxies would launch a new round of aggression against Israel in response to a strike on its nuclear installations, Israel would be beset by a multi-front war at a time when much of its Air Force and perhaps other strategic assets are out of the country.

Against this backdrop, it makes sense to assume that reports of current Israeli preparations for a strike against Iran are less indications of an imminent strike than an Israeli attempt to send messages to two target audiences. First, Israel is signaling Iran that it has the capacity to strike its nuclear installations. Second, Israel is signaling the Obama administration that it is time for Washington to get serious about preparing a military operation to destroy Iran's nuclear facilities, lest Israel be forced to act on its own.

There are some indications that even without Israeli maneuvering some Obama administration officials have finally awoken to the dangers. On Sunday The New York Times reported that the administration's assessment that it can contain a nuclear-armed Iran in much the same way the US contained the Soviet Union "took a hit," after Iran's plan to penetrate terror operatives into the US through the Mexican border was revealed. The thwarted Iranian plan to use terrorists brought in from Mexico to stage spectacular terror attacks against Israeli and Saudi targets in Washington taught administration officials that Iran continues to view terrorism as a strategic tool. They finally realized that it is impossible to rule out the possibility that Iran would use terror proxies to transfer and detonate nuclear bombs in third countries. And their inability to rule out this prospect placed their previous conviction that they can contain a nuclear Iran in serious question.

Unfortunately, from statements to the media last week by a senior US military source, it appears that the administration's belated recognition that Iran is more comparable to Nazi Germany than to Stalinist Russia does not mean that they are interested in actually doing anything to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power.

Speaking to reporters in Washington a senior US military official said that the US continues to view the prospect of an Israeli strike against Iran's nuclear installations as just as problematic as a nuclear armed Iran. As he put it, the US is "absolutely" concerned about a potential Israeli attack, and "increasingly vigilant" with regard to activities in both Israel and Iran that could indicate military intentions.

THE OBAMA administration's stubborn refusal to acknowledge the obvious fact that a nuclear armed Iran constitutes a far greater danger to US interests than an Israeli military strike to deny Iran nuclear capabilities is in line with the administration's consistent refusal to treat Israel as an ally. Its unserious handling of Iran is of a piece with its gentle policies towards Hamas and Hezbollah, its refusal to call Fatah on its bad faith, its blindness to the threat emanating from Islamist movements in Turkey and North Africa, and its consistent pressure on Israel to appease its enemies. The administration's apparent antipathy for Israel has played a significant role in causing it to underestimate the threat that all these forces pose not only to Israel but to the US and to international security in general.

And Israel is not the US's only Middle Eastern ally that has suffered from its strategic myopia. Iran's pro- American Green Movement was betrayed by Obama's decision to side with the regime against the Green Movement in 2009. Iraq's pro-American political forces will be harmed if not destroyed in the aftermath of the administration's planned withdrawal of US forces from Iraq.

Then there are the Sunnis. Under Obama, the US betrayed its most important Arab ally when it called for then-Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak to resign in response to the anti-regime demonstrations in Cairo. America is supporting the Muslim Brotherhood takeover of Tunisia, Libya and Egypt. It supports the Muslim Brotherhood-dominated, Turkish organized Syrian opposition to Assad's regime. It upholds Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Islamist, anti-Semitic and anti-Western regime as the US's greatest regional ally.

With its dismal track record, it is far from clear that Israel is well-served by pressuring the Obama administration to take action against Iran. On Sunday, British military commentator Con Coughlin noted in the Sunday Telegraph that in recent years, the "only measures that have had any demonstrable effect on slowing Iran's nuclear progress have been undertaken by Israel, via a skillful combination of targeted assassinations and cyber-warfare."

So Israel's low-key, tactical operations against Iran have been effective while all of Obama's high-profile strategic operations have empowered Israel's enemies.

True, Obama has not yet taken any operational steps to attack Iran's nuclear installations. But the dire implications of his track records cannot be ignored.

At least until the US presidential elections next year, Israel's best bet may be to simply step up its covert efforts to sabotage Iran's nuclear program.

The goal of these efforts should be to slow down Iran's nuclear progress sufficiently to prevent it from developing a nuclear arsenal or moving its nuclear project to hardened locations until after the US presidential elections.

In the meantime, Israel should continue to develop its independent capacity to attack Iran. It should also take military action to weaken Iran's terror proxies in order to limit their capacity to wage war against Israel in the aftermath of an eventual, post-presidential election Israeli or US strike against Iran's nuclear facilities.

Obviously, it would be a mistake to assume that Obama will lose his reelection bid. But even if he wins, as a lame duck, second term president, he will have less power to harm Israel than he will as a first term president poised for reelection.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post. 

Posted on November 9, 2011 at 9:07 AM

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Delegitimizing the delegitimizers

You have to hand it to the Palestinians.

They decided to abandon the peace process and seek international recognition of the "State of Palestine" - a state in a de facto state of war with Israel. And they are pursuing their goal relentlessly.

This week their efforts bore their first fruit with the UN's Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization's (UNESCO) vote to accept "Palestine" as a full state member.

It is not a coincidence that the PLO/PA decided to apply for membership for "Palestine" at UNESCO first. Since 1974, UNESCO has been an enthusiastic partner in the Palestinians' bid to erase Jewish history, heritage and culture in the Land of Israel from the historical record.

In 1974, UNESCO voted to boycott Israel and to "withhold assistance from Israel in the fields of education, science and culture because of Israel's persistent alteration of historic features in Jerusalem."

UNESCO's moves to deny Jewish ties to Jerusalem and the rest of historic Israel have continued unabated ever since. For instance, in 1989, UNESCO condemned "Israel's occupation of Jerusalem," claiming it was destroying the city through "acts of interference, destruction and transformation."

In 1996, UNESCO held a symposium on Jerusalem at its Paris headquarters. No Jewish or Israeli groups were invited to participate.

Beginning in 1996, the Arab Wakf on the Temple Mount began systematically destroying artifacts of the Second Temple. The destruction was undertaken during illegal excavations under the Temple Mount carried out to construct an illegal, unlicensed mosque at Solomon's Stables.

UNESCO never bothered to condemn this act. It was silent despite the fact that the Wakf's actions constituted a grave breach of the very international laws related to antiquities and sacred sites that UNESCO is charter bound to protect. Similarly, UNESCO never condemned Palestinian desecration of Rachel's Tomb, of Joesph's Tomb or of any of the ancient synagogues in Gaza and Jericho which they razed to the ground.

The reason for UNESCO's miscarriage of its responsibilities is clear. Far from fulfilling its mission of protecting world heritage sites, since 1974 UNESCO has been a partner in one of the greatest cultural crimes in human history - the Palestinian and pan-Arab attempt to wipe Jewish history in the Land of Israel off the historical record. 

And UNESCO's crimes in this area are unending. In 2009 it designated Jerusalem a "capital of Arab culture." In 2010, it designated Rachel's Tomb and the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron as "Muslim mosques." 

UNESCO's campaign against Jewish history is not limited to Israel. In 1995, it passed a resolution marking the 50th anniversary of the end of World War II. Despite requests from Israel, the resolution made no mention of the Holocaust.

In December 2010, UNESCO published a report on the history of science in the Arab world. Its report listed the great Jewish doctor and rabbinic scholar Rabbi Moshe Ben Maimon - Maimonides - as a Muslim renamed "Moussa ben Maimoun."

In light of UNESCO's virulently anti-Jewish policies and actions, it is not surprising that it cooperated with the PLO/PA's bid to achieve recognition of a state that is in a state of war with Israel.

MORE SURPRISING than UNESCO's behavior was the behavior of all but five EU member states. Aside from the Czech Republic, Germany, Lithuania, the Netherlands and Sweden, all EU member states either voted in favor of the Palestinian membership application or abstained.

The reason this behavior is surprising is because the EU has made strengthening UN institutions and speeding up the peace process between Israel and the Palestinians to facilitate Palestinian independence the central aims of its foreign policy. And by supporting or failing to oppose the Palestinian membership bid, the Europeans undercut both aims.

UNESCO was weakened by the vote for two reasons. First, since US law bars the US administration from funding UN agencies that accept "Palestine" as a member nation outside the framework of a negotiated peace with Israel, in accepting "Palestine" UNESCO reduced its budget by the 22 percent covered by US contributions.

Second, by accepting the Palestinians as a member state, UNESCO undermined its legitimacy and organizational viability. Accepting "Palestine" represents a breach of the organization's charter. The charter stipulates that only states can be accepted as members.

Moreover, it represents a repudiation of the goals of UNESCO as laid out in its charter. Those goals involve among other things promoting cooperation in education and advancing the rule of law. As a recent report by the Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education (IMPACT-SE) showed, PA textbooks remain imbued with Jew-hatred at all education levels.

By enabling this breach of the UNESCO charter, the Europeans made a mockery of UN rules and so weakened not just UNESCO but the UN system as a whole.

The Europeans' claim to support the cause of peace between Israel and the Palestinians was rendered hollow by their behavior at UNESCO. The peace process between Israel and the PLO/PA is predicated on the latter's commitment that a Palestinian state can arise only as a consequence of a peace treaty with Israel. By supporting the Palestinians' breach of this fundamental commitment at UNESCO, the Europeans diminished the possibility of achieving a negotiated peace that will lead to Palestinian statehood.

The Europeans' behavior at UNESCO indicates that just as UNESCO is willing to undermine its mission to harm Israel, so the Europeans are willing to undermine the declared goals of their foreign policy for the sake of harming Israel.

This state of affairs has important consequences for Israel. To date, Israel has placed fostering good relations with EU member states high on its list of priorities. In light of the Europeans' behavior at UNESCO, this ranking should be revised. The Europeans do not merit such high consideration by Israel.

Finally, the UNESCO vote exposed disturbing truths about US President Barack Obama's position on Israel. Obama has been widely praised by American Jewish leaders as well as by Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu for his announced commitment to veto the draft Security Council resolution recommending that the PLO/PA be granted full state membership at the UN. Obama's pledge - forced out of him by massive congressional pressure - is touted as proof of his commitment to the US alliance with Israel.

But Obama's response to the PLO/PA's bid for UNESCO membership tells a different story. In the lead up to the vote, the Obama administration went out of its way not to threaten UNESCO. It did not threaten to withdraw the US from the organization. Instead, just days before the vote, US Under Secretary of Education Martha Kanter addressed the body and praised the "great things [that] have happened at UNESCO," over the past year. Kanter then announced the US's bid for reelection to UNESCO's executive board.

The administration did not attack the move as one that undermines chances of peace. It did not note that by endorsing the PA/PLO's decision to act unilaterally, UNESCO was making it all the more difficult for Israel and the Palestinians to achieve a negotiated peace deal. Rather, State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland sufficed with claiming that the move was "regrettable," and "premature."

Administration officials did not make clear that in accordance with US law, all US funding to UNESCO would end if the Palestinian membership bid was approved. Rather administration officials joined forces with UN officials to lobby Congress to change the law.

As Claudia Rosett reported in Forbes on Tuesday, David Killion, the US ambassador to UNESCO, made what bordered on an apology for the US funding cut-off when he said, "We sincerely regret that the strenuous and well-intentioned efforts of many delegations to avoid this result fell short."

Killion added, "We pledge to continue our efforts to find ways to support and strengthen the important work of this vital organization."

So after UNESCO thumbed its nose at the US, after undermined its own mission, breached its own charter and seriously diminished chances of Palestinian peace with Israel by accepting "Palestine" as a member state, the Obama administration reacted with near groveling apologetics.

TO UNDERSTAND the full significance of the administration's behavior, it is important to contrast it with the administration's response to the Israeli government's decision in the aftermath of the UNESCO vote to approve the construction of housing for Jews in Jerusalem, Ma'aleh Adumim and Efrat. All of the housing units will be built in areas that will remain part of Israel even after a peace deal. And the administration knows this.

But speaking of the government's decision, a US official told Reuters that the administration is "deeply disappointed by the announcement."

"We continue to make clear to the [Israeli] government [that] unilateral actions such as these work against efforts to resume direct negotiations and do not advance the goal of a reasonable and necessary agreement between the parties."

So on the one hand, the Palestinians' move to abandon the peace process and UNESCO's support for their move is merely "regrettable" and "premature." But on the other hand, Israel's decision not to discriminate against Jewish property rights undermines efforts to resume peace talks and harms prospects for an agreement.

Since entering office, Netanyahu has repeatedly characterized Arab and leftist efforts to delegitimize Israel as "a strategic threat" to the state. In truth, he overstates the danger. Delegitimization is a political threat, not a strategic threat. Israel will not be destroyed by the UN or by professors at Oxford and Columbia or by trade unions in Norway.

But still it is a threat that Israel cannot ignore.

Since September 2009, citing the need to demonstrate the dishonesty of the delegitimizers' accusations against Israel, Netanyahu abandoned his lifelong opposition to a Palestinian state. He believed that Israel had to embrace the PLO/PA as a legitimate partner for peace in order to prove to the likes of Obama and his supporters that Israel has a right to exist. In the meantime, and in the face of Netanyahu's staggering concession, the PLO/PA abandoned the peace talks and escalated its political war to criminalize Israel and delegitimate it.

UNESCO's acceptance of "Palestine" demonstrates that Netanyahu's chosen policy is misguided.

By accepting the legitimacy of the Palestinian demand for statehood, Netanyahu indirectly conceded Israel's rights to Judea and Samaria and at a minimum placed its right to sole sovereignty over Jerusalem in question. In so doing, Israel gave the Palestinians' supporters at the UN, in Europe and at the White House no reason to reconsider their anti-Israel bias.

After all, with the Palestinians relentlessly asserting their rights, and Israel conceding its rights, why should anyone side with Israel? 

In the end, the only way to defeat those who delegitimize Israel and deny our rights to our land, our nationhood and our history is to expose their corruption, and their malevolent, dishonest and hateful intentions towards the Jewish people and the Jewish state. That is, the only way to defeat the delegitimizers is to delegitimize them by proudly and consistently asserting Israel's historic and legal rights and the justice of our cause.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post. 

Posted on November 4, 2011 at 1:02 PM

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The Ballad of Oslo's Children

Posted on November 4, 2011 at 12:50 PM

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