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July 30, 2012, 6:20 PM

Mitt Romney KNOWS the capital of Israel

And he didn't even need to be asked in order to give us the answer. 

I especially love the part about the Palestinians...
...that's right, he never mentioned them.
How refreshing, an American leader who doesn't think that Israel is a synonym of "peace process."

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July 28, 2012, 12:34 PM

What's the capital of Israel?

Someone should ask Romney when he's in Jerusalem. 

Perhaps he has a better idea than the sitting president who seems to have forgotten the answer.


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July 27, 2012, 2:57 PM

Latma updates and some happy house cleaning

As regular visitors to this site know, Latma, the donor-funded Hebrew language media satire website has taken a break from our regular weekly satirical television on internet newscast The Tribal Update to explore new ideas. We'll be coming back next week. In the meantime, here are a bunch of sketches we've worked on in recent weeks. 

I hope you enjoy them all.

BSN News Network's amazing plan for peace


The Peace Movement Leader's amazing confession


Shaul Mofaz's Rolodex


Israel's Treasury betrays the cause of social justice


Improvising Jihad


In the meantime, this month, after eight years of being honored to work with the Center for Security Policy in Washington, I have transferred my hat to the amazing David Horowitz Freedom Center in Los Angeles. 

I'll remain at the CSP as the adjunct fellow for Middle Eastern affairs. At the Freedom Center I will serve as the Director of the Israel Security Project. And I couldn't be more excited. Here's the link to the flattering write-up on my move from Frontpage Magazine, the Freedom Center's amazing online news source.

Next week I'll post the link to donate to Latma through the Freedom Center. Also on Monday, I'll be speaking in LA for the Children of Holocaust Survivors. Here's the information on the talk. If you're around, I hope you'll join us. 

An election that will set the course of U.S.-Israel relations for the next four years is a little more than three months away. Children of Jewish Holocaust Survivors is proud to present, Caroline Glick, one of the most important Israeli commentators speaking on "Israel on the Eve of US Elections."

Threats mount everyday against Israel and Jews worldwide. Israel faces the danger of a nuclear Iran while the international community dithers and engages in ineffective negotiations with the leading terror state. The United States engages in diplomatic attempts to ingratiate itself with the Muslim Brotherhood and formed a "Global Counterterrorism Forum" (GCTF) that excluded Israel from its proceeding this month. The administration appears to be making continual attempts to stop Israel from taking action to defend itself against a clear and present danger, but does not appear to have a plan to stop Iran from obtaining the ultimate weapon against the Jewish state.

$30 per person

Cash or check at the door

Register by email to RSVP@cjhsla.org

Please include your name and the number of people in your party
For more information please call  (818)704-0523


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The Muslim Brotherhood's American Defenders

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On Wednesday, John Brennan, US President Barack Obama's assistant for homeland security and counterterrorism, made a quick trip to Israel to discuss Hezbollah's massacre of Israeli tourists in Burgas, Bulgaria last week.

Hopefully it was an instructive meeting for the senior US official, although his Israeli interlocutors were undoubtedly dumbstruck by how difficult it was to communicate with him. Unlike previous US counterterror officials, Brennan does not share Israel's understanding of Middle Eastern terrorism.

Brennan's outlook on this subject was revealed in a speech he gave two years ago in Washington. In that talk, Brennan spoke dreamily about Hezbollah. As he put it, "Hezbollah is a very interesting organization."

He claimed it had evolved from a "purely terrorist organization" to a militia and then into an organization with members in Lebanon's parliament and serving in Lebanon's cabinet.

Brennan continued, "There are certainly elements of Hezbollah that are truly a concern for us what they're doing. And what we need to do is find ways to diminish their influence within the organization and to try to build up the more moderate elements."

Perhaps in a bid to build up those "moderate elements," in the same address, Brennan referred to Israel's capital city Jerusalem as "al Quds," the name preferred by Hezbollah and its Iranian overlords.

Brennan's amazing characterization of Hezbollah's hostile takeover of the Lebanese government as proof that the terrorist group was moderating was of a piece with the Obama administration's view of Islamic jihadists generally.

If there are "moderate elements," in Hezbollah, from the perspective of the Obama administration, Hezbollah's Sunni jihadist counterpart - the Muslim Brotherhood - is downright friendly.

On February 10, 2011, Obama's Director of National Intelligence James Clapper made this position clear in testimony before the House Select Committee on Intelligence. Clapper's testimony was given the day before then Egyptian president and longtime US ally Hosni Mubarak was forced to resign from office. Mubarak's coerced resignation owed largely to the Obama administration's decision to end US support for his regime and openly demand his immediate abdication of power. As Israel warned, Mubarak's ouster paved the way for the Muslim Brotherhood's ascendance to power in Egypt.

In his testimony Clapper said, "The term 'Muslim Brotherhood' is an umbrella term for a variety of movements. In the case of Egypt, a very heterogeneous group, largely secular which has eschewed violence and has decried al-Qaida as a perversion of Islam. They have pursued social ends, betterment of the political order in Egypt, etc."

Watching Clapper's testimony in Israel, the sense across the political spectrum, shared by experts and casual observers alike was that the US had taken leave of its senses.

The slogan of the Muslim Brotherhood is "Allah is our objective; the Prophet is our leader; the Koran is our law; Jihad is our way; dying in the path of Allah is our highest hope." 

How could such a high-level US official claim that such an organization is "largely secular"? 

Every day Muslim Brotherhood leaders call for the violent annihilation of Israel. And those calls are often combined with calls for jihad against the US. For instance, in a sermon from October 2010, Muslim Brotherhood head Mohammed Badie called for jihad against the US. 

As he put it "Resistance [i.e. terrorism] is the only solution against the Zio-American arrogance and tyranny, and all we need is for the Arab and Muslim peoples to stand behind it and support it."

Badie then promised his congregants that the death of America was nigh. In his words, "A nation that does not champion moral and human values cannot lead humanity, and its wealth will not avail it once Allah has had His say, as happened with [powerful] nations in the past. The US is now experiencing the beginning of its end, and is heading towards its demise."

The obliviousness of Brennan and Clapper to the essential nature of Hezbollah and the Muslim Brotherhood are symptoms of the overarching ignorance informing the Obama administration's approach to Middle Eastern realities.

Take, for instance, the Obama administration's policy confusion over Syria. This week The Washington Post reported that the Obama administration lacks any real knowledge of the nature of the opposition forces fighting to overthrow the Syrian regime. Whereas one senior official told the paper, "We're identifying the key leaders, and there are a lot of them. We are in touch with them and we stay in touch," another official said that is not the case.

As the latter official put it, "The folks that have been identified have been identified through Turkey and Jordan. It is not because of who we know. It's all through liaison."

The fact that the US government is flying blind as Syria spins out of control is rendered all the more egregious when you recognize that this was not inevitable. America's ignorance is self-inflicted.

In the 16 months that have passed since the Syrian civil war broke out, the administration passed up several opportunities to develop its own ties to the opposition and even to shape its agenda. Two examples suffice to make this clear.

First, in October 2011, according to the Beirut-based Arabic news portal al Nashra, Dalia Mogahed, Obama's adviser on Muslim affairs, blocked a delegation of Middle Eastern Christians led by Lebanon's Maronite Patriarch Bechara Rai from meeting with Obama and members of his national security team at the White House. According to al Nashra, Mogahed canceled the meeting at the request of the Muslim Brotherhood in her native Egypt.

The White House canceled the meeting days after Rai visited with then French president Nicolas Sarkozy in Paris. During that meeting Rai angered the French Foreign Ministry when he warned that it would be a disaster for Syria's Christian minority, and for Christians throughout the region, if the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad is overthrown. Rai based this claim on his assessment that Assad would be replaced by a Muslim Brotherhood- dominated Islamist regime.

And nine months later it is obvious that he was right. With Syria's civil war still raging throughout the country, the world media is rife with reports about Syria's Christians fleeing their towns and villages en masse as Islamists from the Syrian opposition target them with death, extortion and kidnapping.

Then there are the US's peculiar choices regarding the opposition figures it favors. Last August, in a bid to gain familiarity with the Syrian opposition, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton met with opposition representatives at the State Department. Herb London from the Hudson Institute reported at the time that the group Clinton met with was dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood. Members of the non-Islamist, pro-Western Syrian Democracy Council composed of Syrian Kurds, Alawites, Christians, Druse, Assyrians and non-Islamist Sunnis were not invited to the meeting.

Clinton did reportedly agree to meet with representatives of the council separately. But unlike the press carnival at her meeting with the Muslim Brotherhood members, Clinton refused to publicize her meeting with the non-Islamist opposition leaders. In so acting, she denied these would-be US allies the ability to claim that they enjoyed the support of the US government.

The question is why? Why is the Obama administration shunning potential allies and empowering enemies? Why has the administration gotten it wrong everywhere? 

In an attempt to get to the bottom of this, and perhaps to cause the administration to rethink its policies, a group of US lawmakers, members of the House Intelligence and Judiciary Committees led by Rep. Michele Bachmann sent letters to the inspectors-general of the State, Homeland Security, Defense, and Justice departments as well as to the inspector-general of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. In those letters, Bachmann and her colleagues asked the Inspectors General to investigate possible penetration of the US government by Muslim Brotherhood operatives.

In their letters, and in a subsequent explanatory letter to US Rep. Keith Ellison from Rep. Bachmann, the lawmakers made clear that when they spoke of governmental penetration, they were referring to the central role that Muslim groups, identified by the US government in Federal Court as Muslim Brotherhood front organizations, play in shaping the Obama administration's perception of and policies towards the Muslim Brotherhood and its allied movements in the US and throughout the world.

That these front groups, including the unindicted terror funding co-conspirators, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), play a key role in shaping the Obama administration's agenda is beyond dispute. Senior administration officials including Mogahed have close ties to these groups. There is an ample body of evidence that suggests that the administration's decision to side with the hostile Muslim Brotherhood against its allies owes to a significant degree to the influence these Muslim Brotherhood front groups and their operatives wield in the Obama administration.

To take just one example, last October the Obama administration agreed to purge training materials used by US intelligence and law enforcement agencies and eliminate all materials that contained references to Islam that US Muslim groups associated with the Muslim Brotherhood had claimed were offensive. The administration has also fired counterterrorism trainers and lecturers employed by US security agencies and defense academies that taught their pupils about the doctrines of jihadist Islam. The administration also appointed representatives of Muslim Brotherhood-aligned US Muslim groups to oversee the approval of training materials about Islam for US federal agencies.

For their efforts to warn about, and perhaps cause the administration to abandon its reliance on Muslim Brotherhood front groups, Bachmann and her colleagues have been denounced as racists and McCarthyites. 

These attacks have not been carried out only by administration supporters. Republican Senator John McCain denounced Bachmann from the floor of the Senate. Republican Senator Marco Rubio later piled on attacking her for her attempt to convince the administration to reconsider its policies. Those policies again place the most radical members of the US Muslim community in charge of the US government's policies toward the Muslim Brotherhood and other jihadist movements.

It is clear that the insidious notion that the Muslim Brotherhood is a moderate and friendly force has taken hold in US policy circles. And it is apparent that US policymaking in the Middle East is increasingly rooted in this false and dangerous assessment.

In spearheading an initiative to investigate and change this state of affairs, Bachmann and her colleagues should be congratulated, not condemned. And their courageous efforts to ask the relevant questions about the nature of Muslim Brotherhood influence over US policymakers should be joined, not spurned by their colleagues in Washington, by the media and by all concerned citizens in America and throughout the free world.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post. 
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July 24, 2012, 12:13 AM

Syria threatens Israel with chemical weapons, Obama pressures Israel

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I am travelling now and so have been very much out of the loop for the past several days. But I have noticed a couple of things that I think need to be pointed out. First, there is Syria. Today it was reported that the Syrian regime is threatening Israel with chemical weapons. According to Reuters' report

Foreign Ministry spokesman Jihad Makdissi said the army would not use chemical weapons to crush rebels but could use them against forces from outside the country.

"Any chemical or bacterial weapons will never be used ... during the crisis in Syria regardless of the developments," Makdissi said. "These weapons are stored and secured by Syrian military forces and under its direct supervision and will never be used unless Syria faces external aggression."

Israel of course has not threatened to attack Syria. Rather Israel has made clear that it reserves the right to use force to prevent the embattled terror sponsor Bashar Assad from transferring his chemical and biological weapons to Hezbollah in Lebanon.

And now Syria is responding by threatening to attack Israel with chemical weapons.

I don't want to trivialize this threat by bringing it down to the level of politics. And so at the outset, it is crucial that we recognize just how serious things have become. 

First, there is Iran. Iran through Hezbollah just massacred Israeli tourists in Bulgaria. 

Iran is probably past the point of no return with its nuclear weapons program. And so today, when we speak of a military option for preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, probably the only viable option is to kill the vast majority of Iran's nuclear scientists. One or two top guys will not be enough. Today anyone and everyone in possession of nuclear know how in Iran should have a target mark on his head and should be killed. Nothing short of this will do if we are determined to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power.

I don't know if it is possible to carry this out. And I don't know if it is possible to find and destroy Syria's chemical and biological weapons. But just as Iran has done with its nuclear weapons program, Syria has pointed its gun at Israel's head. We know where they want to take this. And if Israel is to survive this Islamist tsunami, things are likely to get very ugly, and very violent very quickly.

To confront these massive threats, Israel could really use American support, even if it is only rhetorical.

Now that we have this cleared up, we need to recognize how it is that we have reached this incredibly dangerous time. Let us start with Syria.

Over the weekend, the main headline about the US response to the war in Syria was that the US is concerned about Israel acting unilaterally. 

The Syrian government is daily engaging in massacre. Its opponents, for their part are increasingly open about their jihadist ideology, spurring the Christians of Syria to flee from their homes, and the Alawite minority to fear for their lives

But what makes the Americans most fearful is that these competing groups of terror sponsors and mass murderers will find their arsenals of genocide destroyed by Israel, acting in self-defense.

If this sounds familiar, it is. This is, after all, Obama's primary concern about Iran and its nuclear weapons program. 

Speaking to reporters in a conference call on Monday Obama's foreign policy surrogates claimed there is still "time and space" (whatever that means), to reach some sort of a deal with Iran. It bears noting that in the best of cases, that deal would not end Iran's nuclear weapons program. It could temporarily slow down some of Iran's uranium enrichment but probably wouldn't even do that. At this point, the most probable deal would have no impact whatsoever on Iran's progress towards a nuclear arsenal but would serve to slow down the imposition of sanctions on Iranian oil exports. That is, at this point, if a deal is reached with all the "time and space" available to Obama, such a deal will only redound to Iran's benefit, including to the benefit of Iran's nuclear weapons program, which, I repeat, will not be cancelled, stopped or diminished. 

Many have criticized Obama by arguing that he has no policy on Syria. But actually, he does. He sees Syria in the same light that he sees Iran. In both cases, his main concern is to prevent Israel from defending itself. 

  


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July 13, 2012, 9:37 AM

If settlements are legal, then Israel must be breaking the law

This week on Latma unplugged, our experimental pause before launching a new/improved Tribal Update, we bring you an example of Israeli news analysis at its best.

 

And here's another one we produced following the news that several anti-Israel groups are playing major behind-the-scenes roles in producing this summer's anti-capitalist demonstrations.


 

 Over the next few days, I should be posting several more sketches we've done and will continue to do so until we've finished this process. I hope you enjoy them all.

Shabbat shalom!


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July 12, 2012, 10:39 PM

Obama's spectacular failure

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Two weeks ago, in an unofficial inauguration ceremony at Tahrir Square in Cairo, Egypt's new Muslim Brotherhood President Mohamed Mursi took off his mask of moderation. Before a crowd of scores of thousands, Mursi pledged to work for the release from US federal prison of Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman.

According to The New York Times' account of his speech, Mursi said, "I see signs [being held by members of the crowd] for Omar Abdel-Rahman and detainees' pictures. It is my duty and I will make all efforts to have them free, including Omar Abdel-Rahman."

Otherwise known as the blind sheikh, Abdel Rahman was the mastermind of the jihadist cell in New Jersey that perpetrated the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. His cell also murdered Rabbi Meir Kahane in New York in 1990. They plotted the assassination of then-president Hosni Mubarak. They intended to bomb New York landmarks including the Lincoln and Holland tunnels and the UN headquarters.

Rahman was the leader of Gama'a al-Islamia - the Islamic Group, responsible, among other things for the assassination of Anwar Sadat in 1981. A renowned Sunni religious authority, Rahman wrote the fatwa, or Islamic ruling, permitting Sadat's murder in retribution for his signing the peace treaty with Israel. The Islamic group is listed by the State Department as a specially designated terrorist organization.

After his conviction in connection with the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, Abdel-Rahman issued another fatwa calling for jihad against the US. After the September 11, 2001, attacks, Osama bin Laden cited Abdel-Rahman's fatwa as the religious justification for them.

By calling for Abdel-Rahman's release, Mursi has aligned himself and his government with the US's worst enemies. By calling for Abdel-Rahman's release during his unofficial inauguration ceremony, Mursi signaled that he cares more about winning the acclaim of the most violent, America-hating jihadists in the world than with cultivating good relations with America.

And in response to Mursi's supreme act of unfriendliness, US President Barack Obama invited Mursi to visit him at the White House.

Mursi is not the only Abdel Rahman supporter to enjoy the warm hospitality of the White House.

His personal terror organization has also been the recipient of administration largesse. Despite the fact that federal law makes it a felony to assist members of specially designated terrorist organizations, last month the State Department invited group member Hani Nour Eldin, a newly elected member of the Islamist-dominated Egyptian parliament, to visit the US and meet with senior US officials at the White House and the State Department, as part of a delegation of Egyptian parliamentarians.

State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland refused to provide any explanation for the administration's decision to break federal law in order to host Eldin in Washington. Nuland simply claimed, "We have an interest in engaging a broad cross-section of Egyptians who are seeking to peacefully shape Egypt's future. The goal of this delegation... was to have consultations both with think tanks but also with government folks, with a broad spectrum representing all the colors of Egyptian politics."

MURSI IS not the only Arab leader who embraces terrorists only to be embraced by the US government. In a seemingly unrelated matter, this week it was reported that in an attempt to satisfy the Obama administration's urgent desire to renew negotiations between the Palestinians and Israel, and to satisfy the Palestinians' insatiable desire to celebrate terrorists, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu offered to release 124 Palestinian terrorist murderers from Israeli prisons in exchange for a meeting with Palestinian Authority Chairman and Fatah chief Mahmoud Abbas.

Alas, Abbas refused. He didn't think Netanyahu's offer was generous enough.

And how did the Obama administration respond to Abbas's demand for the mass release of terrorists and his continued refusal to resume negotiations with Israel? 

By attacking Israel.

The proximate cause of the Obama administration's most recent assault on Israel is the publication of the legal opinion of a panel of expert Israeli jurists regarding the legality of Israeli communities beyond the 1949 armistice lines. Netanyahu commissioned the panel, led by retired Supreme Court justice Edmond Levy, to investigate the international legal status of these towns and villages and to provide the government with guidance relating to future construction of Israeli communities beyond the armistice lines.

The committee's findings, published this week, concluded that under international law, these communities are completely legal.

There is nothing remotely revolutionary about this finding. This has been Israel's position since 1967, and arguably since 1922.

The international legal basis for the establishment of the Jewish state in 1948 was the 1922 League of Nations Mandate for Palestine. That document gave the Jewish people the legal right to sovereignty over Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem, as well as all the land Israel took control over during the 1948- 49 War of Independence.

Not only did the Mandate give the Jewish people the legal right to the areas, it enjoined the British Mandatory authorities to "facilitate... close settlement by Jews on the land, including state lands and waste lands not required for public purposes."

So not only was Jewish settlement not prohibited. It was required.

Although this has been Israel's position all along, Netanyahu apparently felt the need to have its legitimacy renewed in light of the all-out assault against Israel's legal rights led by the Palestinians, and joined enthusiastically by the Obama administration.

In a previous attempt to appease Obama's rapacious appetite for Israeli concessions, Netanyahu temporarily abrogated Israel's legal rights by banning Jews from exercising their property rights in Judea and Samaria for 10 months in 2010. All the legal opinion published this week does is restate what Israel's position has always been.

Whereas the Obama administration opted to embrace Mursi even as he embraces Abdel-Rahman, the Obama administration vociferously condemned Israel for having the nerve to ask a panel of senior jurists to opine about its rights. In a press briefing, State Department spokesman Patrick Ventrell banged the rhetorical hammer.

As he put it, "The US position on settlements is clear. Obviously, we've seen the reports that an Israeli government-appointed panel has recommended legalizing dozens of Israeli settlements in the West Bank, but we do not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlement activity, and we oppose any effort to legalize settlement outposts."

In short then, for the Obama administration, it is all well and fine for the newly elected president of what was until two years ago the US's most important Arab ally to embrace a terror mastermind indirectly responsible for the murder of nearly 3,000 Americans. It is okay to invite members of jihadist terror groups to come to Washington and meet with senior US officials in a US taxpayer- funded trip. It is even okay for the head of a would-be-state that the US is trying to create to embrace every single Palestinian terrorist, including those who have murdered Americans. But for Israel's elected government to ask an expert panel to determine whether Israel is acting in accordance with international law in permitting Jews to live on land the Palestinians insist must be Jew-free is an affront.

THE DISPARITY between the administration's treatment of the Mursi government on the one hand and the Netanyahu government on the other places the nature of its Middle East policy in stark relief.

Obama came into office with a theory on which he based his Middle East policy. His theory was that jihadists hate America because the US supports Israel. By placing what Obama referred to as "daylight" between the US and Israel, he believed he would convince the jihadists to put aside their hatred of America.

Obama has implemented this policy for three and a half years. And its record of spectacular failure is unbroken.

Obama's failure is exposed in all its dangerous consequence by a simple fact. Since he entered office, the Americans have dispensed with far fewer jihadists than they have empowered.

Since January 2009, the Muslim world has become vastly more radicalized. No Islamist government in power in 2009 has been overthrown. But several key states - first and foremost Egypt - that were led by pro-Western, US-allied governments when Obama entered office are now ruled by Islamists.

It is true that the election results in Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco and elsewhere are not Obama's fault. But they still expose the wrongness of his policy. Obama's policy of putting daylight between the US and Israel, and supporting the Muslim Brotherhood against US allies like Mubarak, involves being bad to America's friends and good to America's enemies. This policy cannot help but strengthen your enemies against yourself and your friends.

Rather than contend with the bitter consequences of his policy, Obama and his surrogates have opted to simply deny the dangerous reality he has engendered through his actions. Even worse they have come up with explanations for maintaining this policy despite its flagrant failure.

Nowhere was this effort more obvious than in a made-to-order New York Times analysis this week titled, "As Islamists gain influence, Washington reassesses who its friends are."

The analysis embraces the notion that it is possible and reasonable to appease the likes of Mursi and his America-hating jihadist supporters and coalition partners. It quotes Michele Dunne from the Atlantic Council who claimed that on the one hand, if the Muslim Brotherhood and its radical comrades are allowed to take over Egypt, their entry into mainstream politics should reduce the terrorism threat. On the other hand, she warned, "If Islamist groups like the Brotherhood lose faith in democracy, that's when there could be dire consequences."

In other words, the analysis argues that the US should respond to the ascent of its enemies by pretending its enemies are its friends.

Aside from its jaw-dropping irresponsibility, this bit of intellectual sophistry requires a complete denial of reality. The Taliban were in power in Afghanistan in 2001. Their political power didn't stop them from cooperating with al-Qaida. Hamas has been in charge of Gaza since 2007. That hasn't stopped it from carrying out terrorism against Israel. The mullahs have been in charge of Iran from 33 years. That hasn't stopped them from serving as the largest terrorism sponsors in the world. Hezbollah has been involved in mainstream politics in Lebanon since 2000 and it has remained one of the most active terrorist organizations in the world.

And so on and so forth.

Back in the 1980s, the Reagan administration happily cooperated with the precursors of al-Qaida in America's covert war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. It never occurred to the Americans then that the same people working with them to overthrow the Soviets would one day follow the lead of the blind sheikh and attack America.

Unlike the mujahadin in Afghanistan, the Muslim Brotherhood has never fought a common foe with the Americans. The US is supporting it for nothing - while seeking to win its support by turning on America's most stable allies.

Can there be any doubt that this policy will end badly? 

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post. 
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July 11, 2012, 3:36 PM

Thoughts on Olmert's partial acquittal

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I have not had the opportunity to read the court decision on Olmert. And so my thoughts on his acquittal have little to do with the merits of the prosecution in the three cases adjudicated by the Jerusalem District Court.
I have a problem with corruption investigations against politicians generally and against Ehud Olmert specifically. In general, I find these sorts of investigations against politicians inherently biased. I take my cue from the Federalist Papers, and there I believe it was James Madison who explained that the presumption has to be that politicians are all corrupt. Their power puts them in contact with powerful and wealthy men who use their proximity to politicians to advance their interests. The larger government is - that is, the larger government's influence over the economic life of a society, the greater the likelihood of corruption. The more power a politician exerts over the economy, the larger his propensity to take bribes from people interested in making a profit.
This is the way of the world. And in our world, where governments control enormous welfare states and therefore exert massive influence over the economic life of a country, the assumption ought to be that all politicians are corrupt. 
This assumption then leads to the clear conclusion that every corruption investigation and prosecution of politicians is inherently discriminatory. If all politicians are on the take to greater or lesser degrees, then the decision regarding who to investigate is essentially a decision about who to single out. And therefore, all corruption investigations of politicians are by their nature unjust. The investigations are themselves corrupt.
These understandings led Madison and his colleagues to the conclusion that all government should be limited as much as possible. It also led them to call for a system of checks and balances so that all arms of government checked one another's power. 
In Israel, (and increasingly in the US as we see with the Obamacare ruling), the third branch of government - the judiciary - has become increasingly unhinged from this system. In Israel, the judiciary has effectively co-opted the state prosecution. Under the de facto control of the judiciary, the prosecution has leveraged itself into a position where, like the judiciary, it appoints and promotes its own without answering to elected officials. This situation has weakened severely Israel's democratic system, attenuating the ability of the public to control its government or trust its institutions.
It is due to these twin issues - the assumption that power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely and therefore all people with power can be assumed to be corrupt; and the imperial nature of Israel's legal system - that I view all corruption scandals in Israel with great suspicion. We have consistently seen the tendency of the legal fraternity to selectively prosecute corruption allegations in order to advance the fortunes of the Left against the Right.
And this brings me to my special difficulty with the legal prosecution of Olmert. 
Objectively speaking, Olmert was the worst prime minister that Israel has ever had. And that is saying a lot. He had stiff competition from Ehud Barak, but he managed to outdo him in incompetence and general failure to meet the challenge of the office he aspired to in his unmitigated shamelessness and hubris. 
Olmert lost the war with Hezbollah in 2006. He lost Israel's campaign against Hamas in 2008-2009. He failed to block Iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons. He weakened Israel's international position and its alliance with the US. And so on and so forth.
The public never forgave him for his failed leadership in the 2006 war. And rightly so. There can be no forgivIng or forgetting his decision to send forces to their deaths in battle AFTER he had already accepted the ceasefire ensuring that none of their action would make any difference. I believe that 34 IDF soldiers died in the last 36 hours of the war that took place AFTER Olmert had agreed to the ceasefire. 
And this brings us to the issue of his alleged corruption.
The Israeli media specifically, and the left generally holds the lion's share of responsibility for the outbreak of  the 2006 war due to its massive propaganda campaign to coerce successive governments into withdrawing from southern Lebanon in 2000. Had Israel not run away in May 2000, Hezbollah would not have been free to attack Israel in 2006. It's that simple. 
In 2006, the media were unwilling to acknowledge the cause for the war - them. So right after it was over, they sought to bury it and forget all about it. But the public would not put it behind them. The reservists called up to serve in the war and risk their lives for a war their government decided to lose formed a protest movement and marched on Jerusalem demanding Olmert's resignation. 
The establishment tried to deflect their anger first by seeking to discredit them. Led by Channel 10's Raviv Drucker, the media sought to castigate the reservists by accusing them of being closet right wingers whose only goal was to avenge the expulsions from Gaza. 
When that didn't work, they tried to punt by forming the Winograd Commission to investigate the war. The mandate of the committee was to begin its investigation with what happened AFTER the unilateral withdrawal of May 2000. By so determining the mandate of the commission, the establishment ensured that no attention would be paid to the cause of the war - Israel's withdrawal from Lebanon.
But even the Winograd Commission's findings couldn't assuage the public's hatred for Olmert. So the media decided to sacrifice him to the wolves of the state prosecution on corruption charges. They decided that Olmert had to be sacrificed to protect their ideology. And so he was. It is a scandal of historic proportions that Olmert was ousted for anything other than his unforgivably failed leadership of the country in war. His alleged corruption was at best a tertiary concern.
There is now some talk of Olmert making a political comeback. All I can say to that is that if the Israeli public is stupid enough to allow him back in power, then we deserve what we get. But I don't believe this talk.
The one possible silver lining in all of this is that Olmert's partial acquittal has put the prosecution in the dock. If its failure to convict Olmert finally empowers the Knesset to reign in our out of control prosecutors, then perhaps it can be said that there was a divine plan to all of this. But since I am in no position to understand God's design, all I can say is that there are no heroes in this story. The bad guys won, and the bad guys lost. 
 

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July 6, 2012, 4:22 AM

The dour old man

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July 5, 2012, 5:03 PM

Yitzhak Shamir's good, great life

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There was something about Yitzhak Shamir, Israel's seventh prime minister who passed away last Saturday, that made you feel shy, in awe when you stood in his presence. In his eulogy at Sunday morning's cabinet meeting, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu noted that Shamir "didn't radiate charisma. He simply radiated inner strength."

Shamir, the diminutive, taciturn leader, was a strong man. And Netanyahu was absolutely right, Shamir's strength owed to his commitment to his convictions. What motivated him to act were not external conditions, but an internal compass, an internal call to devote his life to the Jewish people and our freedom and safety in our land.

Netanyahu began his eulogy to Shamir on Sunday morning by placing him in the context of his generation. Netanyahu said, "Yitzhak Shamir was from the generation of giants that founded the State of Israel."

There is much truth in this statement. The generation of Jews that came of age in the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s and established the State of Israel confronted challenges unmatched in human history. They survived the European Holocaust. They stood down and bested the British Empire. They withstood massive terror from the Arabs and repression and betrayal from the British. They defeated the invading armies of five Arab states with a ragtag force of Holocaust survivors and farmers, with little access to arms, and almost no money.

They carved a beautiful, modern country out of the rocks and sands of a long-desolate land.

They absorbed massive waves of aliya from all over the world. They brought together Jews with diverse customs, traditions and languages and reforged a unitary Jewish people bound to one another by our common heritage, faith, resuscitated language and land - all stronger than what divided us.

They suffered agonizing losses at every turn.

But they kept moving forward, sometimes in giant leaps, usually in tiny steps. But they kept moving forward.

So it is true that Shamir's generation of Jews had more than its normal share of great men and women. But to do Shamir's memory the justice it deserves it is important not to obscure his personal greatness by bracketing him inside his generation. This is true for two reasons.

First, it was not inevitable that Shamir became a strong, dedicated, successful leader.

Many in his generation were not.

Shamir faced enormous challenges. And his most serious challenges came from his fellow Jews. People like Chaim Weizmann - whom the late Benzion Netanyahu referred to as "a disaster for the Jewish people," due to his chronic preference for British approval over Jewish national and legal rights - were more than willing to compromise away the national rights of the Jews to a state of our own in our historic homeland.

Indeed, in the years preceding Israel's declaration of independence, national sovereignty was only perceived as a viable option and reasonable goal by a minority. As Shamir said in a 1993 interview published this week by The Times of Israel, in 1945 David Ben-Gurion called for the establishment of a Jewish commonwealth, rather than a sovereign Jewish state. As Shamir put it, "It was curious that the Zionist movement officially didn't accept the slogan of a Jewish state as the aim of the Zionist movement!... Weizmann was against it....He want[ed] Jewish unity here... not a state."

LATER, DURING Shamir's tenure as prime minister in the unity government with then-foreign minister Shimon Peres and the Labor Party from 1986 to 1988, Peres sought to undermine his leadership and bring about his defeat in the 1988 elections by collaborating with foreign governments against him.

According to top secret documents from 1988 first disclosed by Yediot Aharonot's Shimon Schiffer in June 2011, Peres collaborated with then-Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak to destabilize Shamir's government. Peres also sought US assistance in subverting Shamir and fomenting his electoral defeat. Aside from that, in breach of both Israeli law and the expressed wishes of Shamir, Peres dispatched his emissary, then-Foreign Ministry director general Avraham Tamir, to Mozambique for secret meetings with Yasser Arafat.

Throughout his career, Peres, who is also a member of Shamir's generation, has distinguished himself as a politician who prefers his personal gain over that of his nation. In keeping with this consistent preference, last month Peres traveled to Washington to receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom from US President Barack Obama, at the same time that Obama rejected Israel's request to commute the life sentence of Jonathan Pollard. It is safe to say that Shamir would probably not have been offered such an award from a US president.

But it is also safe to say that had he been offered the award, Shamir would have used the occasion to publicly press for Pollard's release.

The other reason it is wrong to view Shamir as a mere product of his times is because by doing so, we effectively say that there is no point in emulating him. If he only became the person he became because he lived through the times he lived through, then his story has nothing to teach us about what it means to lead, or to live a meaningful, good life in the service of a goal greater than ourselves. And this cannot be true.

In a poetic coincidence of timing, as Netanyahu eulogized Shamir on Sunday morning, Netanyahu's immediate predecessor, Ehud Olmert, entered a courtroom in Tel Aviv for the start of his criminal trial related to the so-called Holyland Affair. Olmert is accused of taking bribes from the developers of the capital's architectural monstrosity cynically named "Holyland," during his tenure as mayor of Jerusalem. He allegedly received money and other benefits in exchange for his willingness to allow the developers to expand the size of the project to more than 10 times the size initially allocated for it.

Olmert's Holyland trial is only the latest of the ex-prime minister's legal troubles. On July 10, the Jerusalem District Court will hand down its verdict on two other corruption scandals - the Talansky Affair, in which Olmert is on trial for accepting bribes and for campaign finance irregularities, and the Rishon Tours Affair in which Olmert is accused of double billing his travel expenses.

However Olmert's legal travails pan out, the fact that he is facing corruption charges to begin with is wholly a function of his character.

Unlike Shamir, Olmert is perfectly prepared to abandon the public interest to advance his personal comfort. During his tenure as premier, rather than stand up to US pressure for Israeli concessions of land and rights to the Palestinians, Olmert preemptively capitulated.

He called for Israel to unilaterally surrender much of Judea and Samaria to the Palestinians, despite the latter's rejection of Israel's right to exist. He offered to carve up Jerusalem in his peace proposal to Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas. He continued to embrace the cause of appeasement despite Abbas's preference for peace with Hamas over peace with Israel.

So too, during the Second Lebanon War, Olmert chose to lose the war, in a vain attempt to uphold his preference for appeasement over justice and victory. To that end, he accepted a cease-fire that left Hezbollah in charge of south Lebanon. That cease-fire led directly to Hezbollah's takeover of all of Lebanon in 2007.

Olmert defends his behavior through a mixture of lies and self-justification. At The Jerusalem Post Conference in New York on April 29, Olmert claimed that the Second Lebanon War was the greatest military victory in Israel's history. Apparently he thought we had forgotten about every other war Israel has fought. So, too, Olmert claims that he had no choice other than to submit to US pressure regarding the Palestinians.

SHAMIR'S RECORD is a standing rebuke of Olmert's excuses for his failures. 

Yes, in two key instances, Shamir caved in to US pressure. He did not respond to Iraq's missile offensive against Israel during the 1991 Gulf War. And he agreed to participate in the Madrid Conference in 1991 where then-US president George H.W. Bush forced Shamir to hold negotiations on the basis of "land for peace," with the Palestinians and the Syrians.

In both cases, Shamir's acquiescence to American demands may have been unjustified. Certainly he didn't exact a high enough price for his sacrifice. 

Yet even these concessions did not change the situation on the ground. Shamir did not agree to give the Arabs any land. And during his tenure the US significantly upgraded its strategic ties with Israel.

Moreover, from the perspective of Israel's long-term viability and prosperity, Shamir exacted the greatest concession Israel ever gained from the US. He convinced Bush to stop steering Soviet Jewish émigrés to the US and away from Israel. This ensured that one million Soviet Jews made aliya. The Soviet Jewish aliya fundamentally transformed Israel's economy and demographic posture, and upgraded its strategic position. Whatever damage Israel may have incurred as a result of Shamir's concessions to Bush was likely outweighed by his success in bringing Soviet Jews to Israel.

And it is true that Shamir was never beloved or even liked by the US government or the leaders of Europe. But it is also true that during his tenure in office major countries, including China and India, renewed their diplomatic relations with Israel.

By standing up for his country, he earned the respect of the world - not just for himself, but for Israel as a whole. And in international affairs it is far more important to be respected than liked.

In his obituary for Shamir, Rabbi Shlomo Aviner explained that Shamir was a successful leader because he was intelligent and tenacious.

Aviner noted that Shamir's intelligence was hard-earned. He took the time to learn the details of every subject he had to contend with. He was a voracious reader and wanted to gather as much information as possible before he made decisions.

Shamir's devotion to learning made it possible for him to intelligently weigh the costs and benefits of various courses of action.

Aviner wrote that Shamir's tenacity was a consequence of his life experiences. He was the commander of the Stern Group (Lehi) guerrilla force in pre-state Israel. He was imprisoned and escaped, twice. He was a Mossad officer. At each stage of his life, he faced great challenges and overcame them.

And each experience steeled him for the next until he gradually became the force to be reckoned with he was as prime minister.

It is important to recognize that Shamir was the product not only of his times, but of his values and of the choices that he made throughout his extraordinary career. 

The greatest compliment one can pay another person is to say that he is a model to be emulated, and that his life should serve as an example for what a good life can and should be.

We were blessed to have had him as our leader. And his memory should be a blessing in the annals of Jewish history.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post. 
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© 2013 Caroline Glick