The resolution did more than accept the Goldstone Report's baseless claims. It sought to silence those who are trying to make the Red portion of the Red-Green alliance pay a price for its abetment of jihad.

The resolution "expresses its concern about pressure placed on NGOs involved in the preparation of the Goldstone Report and in follow-up investigations, and calls on authorities on all sides to refrain from any measures restricting the activities of these organizations."

This statement was inserted to defend the EU-supported Israeli organizations - overwhelmingly associated with the far-Left New Israel Fund - that took a lead role in providing Richard Goldstone and his associates with false allegations of illegal actions by IDF soldiers. Those organizations - and the New Israel Fund - have rightly been the subject of scrutiny in Israel after their role in compiling the Goldstone Report was revealed in January by the Israeli student organization Im Tirzu.

Israel is not the only target of the Red-Green alliance. Its operations span the globe. Sometimes, as in the case of the Goldstone Report, the Left leads the charge. Sometimes, as with the Hamas-led missile offensive against Israel that preceded Cast Lead, the jihadists move first.

In general, jihadists are motivated to attack non-Muslims by their religious belief that Islam must dominate the world. And in general, the Left's justification of jihadist aggression stems from its neo-Marxist faith that the liberal nation-state is the root of all evil. Whether the Left recognizes that if successful, its collusion with jihadists will lead to the destruction of human freedom, is subject to debate. But whether or not the Left understands the consequences of its actions, it has played a key role in abetting this goal.

IN NIGERIA on Sunday night, the jihadists led the charge. With the apparent collaboration of the Muslim-dominated Nigerian army, Muslim gangs entered three predominantly Christian villages around the city of Jos and killed up to 500 innocent civilians, including children, with machetes, axes, and daggers.

According to eyewitness reports, some victims were scalped and many were raped. Most had their hands and feet chopped off. Infants and children were among the butchered.

The massacre was premeditated. According to government spokesmen, Muslim residents were tipped off two days prior to the attack. To ensure their victims were Christians, the jihadists addressed them in Fulani, the language spoken by local Muslims. If the victims responded in Fulani they were saved. Otherwise they were hacked to death.

Sunday's massacre could have been expected to lead the news worldwide. But it didn't. Indeed, it was barely noted.

That scant coverage the barbarous events received was itself plagued by obscurity and vagueness. Commentators and reporters alike hid the identities of the aggressors and the victims, characterizing the jihadist butchery as "sectarian violence."

They also sought to obfuscate its significance, claiming that the Muslim gangs decapitated infants in response to tribal property disputes.

Jessica Olien at The Atlantic not only made these claims, but brushed off the dimensions of the atrocity, writing, "It's worth noting that police have confirmed only 109 dead."

After minimizing the death toll, Olien turned her literary daggers on the victims, claiming that they had it coming. As she put it, "It's hard not to compare the weekend's attack with one in January in which 150 people from the same Muslim community responsible for Sunday's attack were brutally killed. The attack on March 7th drew considerably more international attention the previous incident."

Ah, so unfair. The over-reported atrocity unfairly portrays murdered Christians as victims. But Olien knows better. The Muslims were simply retaliating for the attacks they suffered.

Sadly for Olien and her erudite justification of barbarism, it is far from clear that the victims of January's violence were Muslims. Writing in the London Times on Thursday, British Baroness Caroline Cox claimed that the primary victims of January's slaughter were Christians, not Muslims.

According to Cox, eyewitnesses to the events in January "indicated that the killings began when Muslim youths attacked Christians on a Sunday morning on their way to church. Muslims were also killed as those under attack began to fight back."

Cox continued that Sunday's attack followed a now familiar pattern. Attacks "are initiated by well-armed Muslim extremists, chanting militant slogans, attacking and killing Christian and other non-Muslim citizens and destroying homes and places of worship.

"In the early stages of the attack, the Muslim militants take corpses to mosques, where they are photographed and released to the media, creating the impression that these are Muslim victims."

The international media are only too willing to accept  at face value these false accusations of Muslim victimization at the hands of their actual victims. And so are their leftist comrades in international governing circles.

In the wake of Sunday's massacre, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon both issued statements making no distinction whatsoever between the victims and the aggressors. Both called for "both sides" to act with "restraint."

In the Left's apparent willingness to hide the nature of January's attacks and then underplay Sunday's massacre, we have an example of Leftist facilitation of jihadist violence. In Nigeria, of course, the jihadists are the main actors and the Left are merely their helpmates

IN ISRAEL, the roles are generally reversed. Here it is the Left that leads the jihadists by the hand. Take the Left's campaign against Jewish property rights in Jerusalem. In the Sheikh Jarrah/Shimon Hatzadik neighborhood, buildings owned by Jews were seized by Jordan in 1948 after its conquest of the city. For the past decade Jewish property owners have been working through the courts to assert their rights to their buildings and remove the Arab squatters who took them over.

Court after court upheld their rights to their property. And, indeed, more than a decade ago, the squatters reached a settlement in which they acknowledged the owners' property rights and the owners agreed to let the squatters stay so long as they paid rent. But when the squatters stopped paying rent, the Left pushed them to refuse to vacate the premises and to try to re-litigate the old settlement. Finally, the case made it to the Supreme Court, which also recognized the rights of the Jewish owners and ordered the police to enforce its ruling and remove the illegal squatters.

The police removed the squatters last month and within hours, Jewish residents moved in, in accordance with an agreement with the buildings' lawful owners. Since they moved in, the Jews have been under constant attack from their Arab neighbors. They have been beaten and threatened with murder.

In the meantime, the Left has turned the case of the illegal Arab squatters into a cause celebre. Last week, thousands of leftists staged an anti-Semitic demonstration outside the compound, demanding that the Jews be removed from their homes. The argument, of course, is that allowing Jews to exercise their legal property rights by peacefully residing in a predominantly Arab neighborhood is an unacceptable "provocation." The Arab squatters attempting to steal the property, on the other hand, are "victims."

Rather than characterize the protesters as anti-Semites who are stoking violence against innocent Jews for their crime of lawfully living where they choose, the local and international media have described the demonstrators as "peace activists" and "human rights activists."

For turning reality on its head and championing the cause of jihadists against the human rights of their victims, these leftist demonstrators are lionized by their comrades in the media and in the chanceries of the Western world. The State Department said it was "unacceptable" that Jews moved into their homes.

So, too, the UN raced to accept the Left's claim that human rights demand the denial of Jews' property rights due to their ethnicity. Its peace process boss Richard Miron said, "I deeply deplore the totally unacceptable actions by Israel in which Israeli security forces evicted Palestinian refugee families... to allow settlers to take possession of their properties."

It is a depressing commentary on our times that spokesmen of democracies and supposed champions of human rights are willing to state publicly that granting Jews the equal protection of the law is an unacceptable imposition on their bigoted neighbors. But the notion that Jews have an equal right to buy and own property in areas of Jerusalem from which they were illegally ethnically cleansed by the Jordanians in 1948 is now a great cause of the Left. And one can only assume that the jihadists will soon make their move - to the gratification of their leftist comrades - against the innocent Jews of Jerusalem.

THIS BRINGS us to the events surrounding US Vice President Joseph Biden's visit to Israel this week. On the first day of his visit, as a matter of routine governance, the Jerusalem Planning and Building Committee approved plans to build 1,600 housing units in the Ramat Shlomo neighborhood. Ramat Shlomo is a neighborhood with more than 20,000 residents located between the even more populous Ramot and Sanhedriya neighborhoods. From an Israeli perspective, it is just as uncontroversial as Yad Eliahu in Tel Aviv or Hadar in Haifa.

But not from a Red perspective. Just moments after the decision was announced, the Left used it as proof of Israeli venality. For approving the construction of new homes in its capital, the government was condemned again and again. The Palestinians and the Arab League jumped on the bandwagon. And now, owing to the Left's anti-Israel onslaught, anyone murdered in Jerusalem - or anywhere else for that matter - will be dismissed as a product of fully justified Muslim anger.

Observing the Leftist charge, led in this case by the frothing-at-the-mouth Israeli media, Biden moved swiftly. The man who came to Israel on a charm offensive could no longer hide the truth about where the Obama administration's true sympathies lay. After declaring his undying love and fidelity to Israel just hours before, Biden switched gears and condemned Israel for "undermining" prospects for peace.

On Wednesday morning as he referred to his condemnation of Israel's decision to build homes in its capital, Biden said, "Sometimes only a friend can deliver the hardest truth."

And at least in this case, he is correct.

And so, in the spirit of that sentiment, it must be said: When those who purport to support peace and human rights join forces with the Red-Green alliance, what they are actually supporting is bigotry, violence, murder and, ultimately, the destruction of human freedom. Whether the Left recognizes the significance of its actions or not, it is time that it be held as accountable for its defense of jihad as the jihadists are for carrying it out.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post. 

The resolution did more than accept the Goldstone Report's baseless claims. It sought to silence those who are trying to make the Red portion of the Red-Green alliance pay a price for its abetment of jihad.

The resolution "expresses its concern about pressure placed on NGOs involved in the preparation of the Goldstone Report and in follow-up investigations, and calls on authorities on all sides to refrain from any measures restricting the activities of these organizations."

This statement was inserted to defend the EU-supported Israeli organizations - overwhelmingly associated with the far-Left New Israel Fund - that took a lead role in providing Richard Goldstone and his associates with false allegations of illegal actions by IDF soldiers. Those organizations - and the New Israel Fund - have rightly been the subject of scrutiny in Israel after their role in compiling the Goldstone Report was revealed in January by the Israeli student organization Im Tirzu.

Israel is not the only target of the Red-Green alliance. Its operations span the globe. Sometimes, as in the case of the Goldstone Report, the Left leads the charge. Sometimes, as with the Hamas-led missile offensive against Israel that preceded Cast Lead, the jihadists move first.

In general, jihadists are motivated to attack non-Muslims by their religious belief that Islam must dominate the world. And in general, the Left's justification of jihadist aggression stems from its neo-Marxist faith that the liberal nation-state is the root of all evil. Whether the Left recognizes that if successful, its collusion with jihadists will lead to the destruction of human freedom, is subject to debate. But whether or not the Left understands the consequences of its actions, it has played a key role in abetting this goal.

IN NIGERIA on Sunday night, the jihadists led the charge. With the apparent collaboration of the Muslim-dominated Nigerian army, Muslim gangs entered three predominantly Christian villages around the city of Jos and killed up to 500 innocent civilians, including children, with machetes, axes, and daggers.

According to eyewitness reports, some victims were scalped and many were raped. Most had their hands and feet chopped off. Infants and children were among the butchered.

The massacre was premeditated. According to government spokesmen, Muslim residents were tipped off two days prior to the attack. To ensure their victims were Christians, the jihadists addressed them in Fulani, the language spoken by local Muslims. If the victims responded in Fulani they were saved. Otherwise they were hacked to death.

Sunday's massacre could have been expected to lead the news worldwide. But it didn't. Indeed, it was barely noted.

That scant coverage the barbarous events received was itself plagued by obscurity and vagueness. Commentators and reporters alike hid the identities of the aggressors and the victims, characterizing the jihadist butchery as "sectarian violence."

They also sought to obfuscate its significance, claiming that the Muslim gangs decapitated infants in response to tribal property disputes.

Jessica Olien at The Atlantic not only made these claims, but brushed off the dimensions of the atrocity, writing, "It's worth noting that police have confirmed only 109 dead."

After minimizing the death toll, Olien turned her literary daggers on the victims, claiming that they had it coming. As she put it, "It's hard not to compare the weekend's attack with one in January in which 150 people from the same Muslim community responsible for Sunday's attack were brutally killed. The attack on March 7th drew considerably more international attention the previous incident."

Ah, so unfair. The over-reported atrocity unfairly portrays murdered Christians as victims. But Olien knows better. The Muslims were simply retaliating for the attacks they suffered.

Sadly for Olien and her erudite justification of barbarism, it is far from clear that the victims of January's violence were Muslims. Writing in the London Times on Thursday, British Baroness Caroline Cox claimed that the primary victims of January's slaughter were Christians, not Muslims.

According to Cox, eyewitnesses to the events in January "indicated that the killings began when Muslim youths attacked Christians on a Sunday morning on their way to church. Muslims were also killed as those under attack began to fight back."

Cox continued that Sunday's attack followed a now familiar pattern. Attacks "are initiated by well-armed Muslim extremists, chanting militant slogans, attacking and killing Christian and other non-Muslim citizens and destroying homes and places of worship.

"In the early stages of the attack, the Muslim militants take corpses to mosques, where they are photographed and released to the media, creating the impression that these are Muslim victims."

The international media are only too willing to accept  at face value these false accusations of Muslim victimization at the hands of their actual victims. And so are their leftist comrades in international governing circles.

In the wake of Sunday's massacre, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon both issued statements making no distinction whatsoever between the victims and the aggressors. Both called for "both sides" to act with "restraint."

In the Left's apparent willingness to hide the nature of January's attacks and then underplay Sunday's massacre, we have an example of Leftist facilitation of jihadist violence. In Nigeria, of course, the jihadists are the main actors and the Left are merely their helpmates

IN ISRAEL, the roles are generally reversed. Here it is the Left that leads the jihadists by the hand. Take the Left's campaign against Jewish property rights in Jerusalem. In the Sheikh Jarrah/Shimon Hatzadik neighborhood, buildings owned by Jews were seized by Jordan in 1948 after its conquest of the city. For the past decade Jewish property owners have been working through the courts to assert their rights to their buildings and remove the Arab squatters who took them over.

Court after court upheld their rights to their property. And, indeed, more than a decade ago, the squatters reached a settlement in which they acknowledged the owners' property rights and the owners agreed to let the squatters stay so long as they paid rent. But when the squatters stopped paying rent, the Left pushed them to refuse to vacate the premises and to try to re-litigate the old settlement. Finally, the case made it to the Supreme Court, which also recognized the rights of the Jewish owners and ordered the police to enforce its ruling and remove the illegal squatters.

The police removed the squatters last month and within hours, Jewish residents moved in, in accordance with an agreement with the buildings' lawful owners. Since they moved in, the Jews have been under constant attack from their Arab neighbors. They have been beaten and threatened with murder.

In the meantime, the Left has turned the case of the illegal Arab squatters into a cause celebre. Last week, thousands of leftists staged an anti-Semitic demonstration outside the compound, demanding that the Jews be removed from their homes. The argument, of course, is that allowing Jews to exercise their legal property rights by peacefully residing in a predominantly Arab neighborhood is an unacceptable "provocation." The Arab squatters attempting to steal the property, on the other hand, are "victims."

Rather than characterize the protesters as anti-Semites who are stoking violence against innocent Jews for their crime of lawfully living where they choose, the local and international media have described the demonstrators as "peace activists" and "human rights activists."

For turning reality on its head and championing the cause of jihadists against the human rights of their victims, these leftist demonstrators are lionized by their comrades in the media and in the chanceries of the Western world. The State Department said it was "unacceptable" that Jews moved into their homes.

So, too, the UN raced to accept the Left's claim that human rights demand the denial of Jews' property rights due to their ethnicity. Its peace process boss Richard Miron said, "I deeply deplore the totally unacceptable actions by Israel in which Israeli security forces evicted Palestinian refugee families... to allow settlers to take possession of their properties."

It is a depressing commentary on our times that spokesmen of democracies and supposed champions of human rights are willing to state publicly that granting Jews the equal protection of the law is an unacceptable imposition on their bigoted neighbors. But the notion that Jews have an equal right to buy and own property in areas of Jerusalem from which they were illegally ethnically cleansed by the Jordanians in 1948 is now a great cause of the Left. And one can only assume that the jihadists will soon make their move - to the gratification of their leftist comrades - against the innocent Jews of Jerusalem.

THIS BRINGS us to the events surrounding US Vice President Joseph Biden's visit to Israel this week. On the first day of his visit, as a matter of routine governance, the Jerusalem Planning and Building Committee approved plans to build 1,600 housing units in the Ramat Shlomo neighborhood. Ramat Shlomo is a neighborhood with more than 20,000 residents located between the even more populous Ramot and Sanhedriya neighborhoods. From an Israeli perspective, it is just as uncontroversial as Yad Eliahu in Tel Aviv or Hadar in Haifa.

But not from a Red perspective. Just moments after the decision was announced, the Left used it as proof of Israeli venality. For approving the construction of new homes in its capital, the government was condemned again and again. The Palestinians and the Arab League jumped on the bandwagon. And now, owing to the Left's anti-Israel onslaught, anyone murdered in Jerusalem - or anywhere else for that matter - will be dismissed as a product of fully justified Muslim anger.

Observing the Leftist charge, led in this case by the frothing-at-the-mouth Israeli media, Biden moved swiftly. The man who came to Israel on a charm offensive could no longer hide the truth about where the Obama administration's true sympathies lay. After declaring his undying love and fidelity to Israel just hours before, Biden switched gears and condemned Israel for "undermining" prospects for peace.

On Wednesday morning as he referred to his condemnation of Israel's decision to build homes in its capital, Biden said, "Sometimes only a friend can deliver the hardest truth."

And at least in this case, he is correct.

And so, in the spirit of that sentiment, it must be said: When those who purport to support peace and human rights join forces with the Red-Green alliance, what they are actually supporting is bigotry, violence, murder and, ultimately, the destruction of human freedom. Whether the Left recognizes the significance of its actions or not, it is time that it be held as accountable for its defense of jihad as the jihadists are for carrying it out.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post. 

I just spent the evening at Netnayhu's father, Prof. Benzion Netanyahu's 100th birthday party. Prof. Netanyahu ended the evening with a short address in which he stated that he is certain that Israel will stand up to Iran and win. The Prime Minister very ostentatiously went over his father's speech with him before he gave it and walked him up and down the steps to the stage at the Begin Center where the event was held.

I certainly emerged from the evening with a strengthened belief that our leader will not bow to the Obama administration.

On Monday Biden will arrive in Israel for a three-day visit. Biden, who will meet with Israel's leaders, will be the most senior official in the cavalcade of senior US officials that have descended on Israel in recent weeks. Biden will replace Senator John Kerry, the Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee who was here this week. Kerry himself replaced Adm. Michael Mullen, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff who was here two weeks ago.

In his press conference in Jerusalem on Monday, Kerry explained the purpose of these visits. As he put it, "...I am here and other people were here and Vice President Biden is coming shortly... to make sure we are all on the same page and that we are all clear about [Iran]."

Although Biden is just the latest senior US official to visit Israel to try to coerce the government not to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power, his visit is novel in one respect. In addition to his meetings with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and the rest of Israel's senior officials, Biden intends to make a case for the Obama administration's policies towards Iran, the Palestinians and Israel directly to the Israeli public. During his trip he will give what is being billed as a major policy speech at Tel Aviv University.

In light of the gaping disparity between the Obama administration's policies and those of the Israeli government, the apparent goal of Biden's address is to shore up the position of the Israeli Left as an alternative to Netanyahu. Apparently, the picture emerging from all of the senior US officials' meetings with Netanyahu is that Israel's leader still feels comfortable defying them. Presumably, they now believe that the only way to force him to toe their line is by making him believe that the price of defiance will be his premiership.

This of course is a difficult task. The Left after all was roundly defeated in last year's elections. Making it a credible alternative is no mean task.

The Israeli Left for its part is doing its best to tie its own fortunes to the administration. Opposition leader Tzipi Livni placed herself squarely in the Obama camp this week during her confrontation with Netanyahu at the Knesset. Belittling the results of last month's Gallup poll which showed that Israel enjoys the support of two-thirds of Americans, (and 80 percent of Republicans vs. 53 percent of Democrats), Livni blamed the premier for Israel's international standing. By not bowing to Obama's demands and ending all Jewish construction in Jerusalem and accepting the radical peace proposals she and former prime minister Ehud Olmert made to the Palestinians during their tenure in office, Livni claimed that Netanyahu is ruining Israel's diplomatic position in the US and throughout the world.

There is nothing new or surprising about Livni's use of the Obama administration's animosity towards the government as a means of positioning herself as an alternative to the government. And on the surface it makes sense for her to use it. After all, it was by building a partnership with the Clinton administration against Netanyahu the last time he was in power that the Israeli Left was able to bring down his government and win the 1999 elections.

The Left's hope of forming a coalition with Obama against Netanyahu was given its most explicit expression last July in an op-ed by Ha'aretz's editor-at-large Aluf Benn in the New York Times. After expressing his support for Obama's policies, Benn bemoaned the fact that due to Obama's low approval ratings among Israeli Jews, (at the time they stood at 6 percent and later plunged to 4 percent), it would be hard for him to convince the Israeli public to abandon its support for Netanyahu in favor of Obama's - that is the Israeli Left's - policies. To improve this dismal state of affairs, Benn suggested that Obama simply needs to make his case to the Israeli public, which "will surely listen," to him.

As far as Benn - and his fellow leftists were concerned - Obama's credibility problems redounded not to his policies, which the Left supports. Instead they owed to his failure to dazzle the Israeli people with the same rhetorical magic he used on the Arabs and the Europeans. It was Obama's tone, not his programs that needed to be improved.

In arguing thus, Benn, like Livni and their colleagues on the Left are acting on their memories of their glory days with the Clinton administration. As president, Bill Clinton was able to simultaneously embrace Yassir Arafat, and take down Netanyahu without anyone ever questioning his undying love for Israel and the Jews. And because of this, he became the hero of the Israeli Left which he swept back into power in 1999.

As the Left sees it, Clinton retained his reputation as the greatest friend Israel ever had in the White House, despite the fact that his policies were the most hostile policies the US had ever adopted towards Israel, because he knew how to charm the Israeli electorate. His frequent visits to Israel and his saccharine, lip-biting declarations of love for Rabin and Israel were all it took in their view to convince the public to reject the Right. If Obama would just repeat Clinton's practices, he too could bring down Netanyahu and convince the Israeli public to trust him.

When Benn's article was published his recommendation was shrugged off by the administration. So too, the White House rejected repeated requests from the local media for interviews with the President. Now however, with Obama's approval rates slipping and his Iran policy in tatters, the White House apparently decided that it needs to embark on a charm offensive in Israel to make Netanyahu more vulnerable to coercion.

Biden was selected as the man for the job because he is widely perceived as the most pro-Israel senior member of the administration. The fact that before becoming Vice President Biden had one of the most pro-Iran voting records in the Senate has done nothing to mitigate this perception. Indeed, despite the fact that Biden voted repeatedly against sanctions on Iran, claimed that Iran's quest for nuclear bombs was understandable and called for the US to sign a non-aggression pact with the mullocracy while threatening to move for George W. Bush's impeachment if he were to order a military strike against Iran's nuclear weapons programs, Biden continues to be viewed as a solid supporter of Israel.

And indeed, in line with this perception, he can be expected to declare his undying love for the Jewish state several times during his speech. Yet still, and sadly for the Israeli Left and for the Obama administration, his charm offensive will fail to get the girl. The most his visit is likely to yield is a momentary rise in support among Israelis that will quickly recede. And there are four reasons this is the case.

First, Obama himself is far weaker than Clinton was. His obsequious attempts to curry favor with the Arabs and Iran have been even more disturbing to Israelis than his refusal to visit the country. Moreover, unlike Clinton, who was popular with Israelis even before he was elected, Obama has never been popular in Israel. Part of this can perhaps be chalked up to timing. Clinton of course succeeded George H.W. Bush who was deeply unpopular in Israel. Obama replaced his son - who was regarded as a great friend of Israel.

Given Obama's weakness, it is hard to see how he can convince the Israeli public that he will be capable of protecting the country from a nuclear-armed Iran or that he can force the Palestinians and the Syrians to end their support of terror in the event of an Israeli withdrawal from Judea and Samaria or the Golan Heights.

Second, the Netanyahu Obama faces is not the Netanyahu Clinton faced in the 1990s. Today the premier leads a far broader coalition than he did in his previous government. It is also more stable. Labor Party chief Defense Minister Ehud Barak knows he cannot unseat Netanyahu. Indeed, he knows he can't even trust his party to continue supporting him if he leaves Netanyahu's government. As for opposition leader Tzipi Livni, the latest polls show her trailing far behind Netanyahu as the people's choice for prime minister. Her party's popularity rates are decreasing, Likud's are growing. 

Third, there is the fact that today the Left does not control public opinion to the degree it did the last time Netanyahu was in power. During his first government, due in large part to the media's delegitimization of the Right in the wake of Rabin's assassination, the media was able to market the PLO as a credible peace partner for Israel. Yassir Arafat himself was portrayed by a popular television show as a sweet, peace loving sock puppet who only wanted to make peace with the craven, war mongering Netanyahu. Consequently it became socially unacceptable in polite circles for Israelis to admit that Arafat and the Palestinians were less than devoted to the notion of peaceful coexistence with Israel or that Netanyahu was right not to give up the store. So too, it was socially unacceptable in certain quarters to criticize Clinton who presented himself as Rabin's greatest friend. Today, people are far less embarrassed to make these claims.

This is the case of course, for the fourth reason that Biden will fail in his mission. In the 11 years since Netanyahu was forced from office, the Left's political platform has been discredited by events. Since 1999 the Palestinians - as well as the Lebanese - have demonstrated that the Left's appeasement policies are disastrous. The 1,500 Israelis who have been killed since then by the Palestinians and Hizbullah, the transformation of post-Israeli withdrawal southern Lebanon and Gaza into jihadist enclaves, the rise of Iran, and Fatah's open rejection of Israel's right to exist have all made the Left's policies unacceptable to a wide majority of Israelis.

The public's rejection of the Left's policies is so overwhelming that it has even rejected the Left's current central claim - namely that Israel will lose its Jewish majority if it abstains from surrendering Judea and Samaria. By a 53-28 percent margin, a Ha'aretz poll last month showed that Israelis do not believe that Israel's continued presence in the areas will lead to the destruction of Israel as a Jewish state.

What all of this shows of course is that it will take much more than a change in tone for the Obama administration to win over the Israeli public. Indeed, Obama's open hostility towards Netanyahu has probably been a significant factor in shoring up the public's approval of his performance in office.

The Israeli public is not interested in a change of tone - from Obama or from the Israeli Left. It is interested in a change of policy. Until it gets it, the public will in all likelihood remain loyal to Netanyahu.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

I hope you enjoy the show and spread it far and wide.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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