Israel-Diaspora Relations

ZIONISM AT THE CROSSROADS
Isi Leibler
Jerusalem Post, October 12, 2009

After 2000 years of dispersion, persecution and powerlessness and in the wake of the greatest disaster ever to have encompassed the Jewish people, Zionism rose like a phoenix from the ashes of the Shoah and achieved the impossible. In what must be the most remarkable achievement of any people and unique in the annals of mankind, it resurrected a homeland and empowered the Jews.

After fulfilling its principal objective of creating a Jewish state, it is not surprising that the Jewish Agency for Israel and the World Zionist Organization are now mere shadows of their former glory. Even after being substantially downsized because of a drastic decline in donor income, the Jewish Agency remains a bloated bureaucracy. Aside from a few prominent personalities, the World Zionist Organization is widely perceived as a retreat for failed or retired Israeli politicians or apparatchiks who compete fiercely for paid executive positions with the perks of overseas travel. With a few notable exceptions, most Diaspora Zionist organizational affiliates have eroded and become marginalized.

For most Israelis, especially younger people, the term Zionism has become an anachronism and an expression of derision or contempt.

Yet despite this, the Zionist movement has a vital role to fulfill for the Jewish people -- especially today, when post-Zionists or Hebrew-speaking Canaanites seek to transform Israel into "a state of all its citizens," a euphemism for the dejudaization of the Jewish state.

For many Jews and Israelis, the Holocaust and the struggle to create a Jewish homeland are dim historical memories relegated to history books. In the Diaspora, many have become disillusioned and traumatized by the burgeoning anti-Semitic climate and intensive media campaigns demonizing the Jewish state. Some have distanced themselves from Israel and even endorsed the anti-Zionist chic.

This was highlighted in Stephen Cohen's survey of non-Orthodox American Jews in 2007. The findings displayed apathy and an alarming decline in attachment to Israel among the younger generation. This has particular relevance because aside from religious observance, Israel is now the key factor sustaining Jewish identity.

In such an environment, only a vigorous Zionist movement in conjunction with the government could reverse the tide, strengthening the Israel-Diaspora relationship and endeavoring to maintain the centrality of Israel in Jewish life.

Yet alas, aside from the unquestionably important 10-day Birthright visits -- which since its inception in 2000 has brought 215,000 Jewish youngsters to Israel -- and other programs for young people, there is no concerted strategy to deal with these issues.

Indeed, in recent times, successive Israeli leaders have themselves contributed to the erosion of Israel-Diaspora relations. They focus almost exclusively on wooing wealthy donors to fund their interests in lieu of nurturing Zionist leaders. Former interior minister Meir Sheetrit even went so far as to suggest the curtailment of aliya and abrogation of the Law of Return.

Jewish Agency policy, which in the past was always determined by Zionists, has now been hijacked by wealthy - primarily American -- donors who have sought to transform it into a replica of the non-Zionist American Federation system. The newly elected chairman, Natan Sharansky, whose Zionist credentials are impeccable, was forced by his board to desist from assuming the traditionally parallel role of chairman of the World Zionist Organization. This reflected the efforts of the agency board to marginalize the Zionist ideological component and transform it into an efficient charity -- no more.

The dominant influence of the American funders was further evidenced by the abrupt termination of a major promotional campaign against intermarriage initiated by MASA, a Jewish Agency subsidiary. Whereas the campaign presentation may have been tasteless and warranted revision, the cancellation was unjustified and was allegedly imposed by board members who feared confrontation with donors, many of whom had intermarried couples within their own families. The prevailing mood of "sensitivity" in relation to confronting assimilation and intermarriage was also exemplified in the recent article "What Israelis need to know about intermarriage in North America ," published in The Jerusalem Post by Edmund Case, CEO of Interfaith Family.

Aside from denying that the vast majority of children born to interfaith unions are lost to the Jewish people, Case broke new ground by making the preposterous assertion that intermarriage was "not a threat but an opportunity" and represented a great benefit because "intermarriage actively enlarges Jewish communities."

Needless to say, every Jew has the option of marrying whom he or she chooses. But it is hardly surprising that growing assimilation in an open society leads to increased intermarriage. Still, one would at least assume encouragement of conversion so that children of such unions would have some hope of remaining Jewish. To describe the tragic erosion of the Jewish community via intermarriage as grounds for celebration is surely obscene.

While the strongest resistance to intermarriage understandably emanates from religious Jews, opposition to intermarriage has always been a central tenet of Zionist ideology. The failure of today's "Zionist" leaders to adopt a strong stand concerning this issue reflects the growing influence of wealthy assimilated Jews.

Another disturbing manifestation of the dilution of Zionist values is the inclination to avoid all discussion related to aliya. The Jewish Agency has already subcontracted aliya to Nefesh B'Nefesh, an independent body that has handled this issue with far greater efficiency and humanity than the agency bureaucrats.

The negative attitude toward this central Zionist ideal was exemplified by the recent capitulation to demands of American donors that those directing Birthright categorically desist from any encouragement of aliya. "Momo" Lifshitz, a former IDF officer who heads Oranim (by far the largest trip provider for the project), -- a secular program strongly supported by non-Orthodox groups, and by far the largest trip provider for the project -- recently broke away from Birthright. Lifshitz passionately proclaimed that Oranim would henceforth operate as a separate program because he refused to accept prohibitions by Birthright organizers from urging participants to "raise your children Jewish," encouraging aliya or providing free honeymoons to Israel for couples who met during their visits.

The bulk of Jews in Western countries are unlikely to pack their bags tomorrow and come to Israel . But it is imperative that committed Jews continue making aliya because this represents the most important bridge linking Israel and the Diaspora.

Continued dilution of fundamental Zionist objectives will have disastrous repercussions for the Jewish people. In addition to weakening Jewish identity and intensifying assimilation, it will lead to further alienation of Jews from Israel and weaken Diaspora Jewry's efforts on behalf of Israel , with particularly damaging consequences to Israel-US relations.

One would hope that the current government will be more positively inclined toward supporting Zionism than their less-ideologically-motivated predecessors.

Together with Sharansky, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu should concentrate on encouraging the emergence of a vigorous new Zionist leadership to focus on reinforcing the centrality of Israel in Jewish life and strengthening the morale of Diaspora Jews suffering in the wake of the intensified efforts to criminalize and delegitimize the Jewish state.

"ISRAEL HAS A DISTORTED VIEW OF DIASPORA JEWRY"
Haviv Rettig Gur
Jerusalem Post, October 27, 2009

"The government of Israel has a very distorted and shallow view of Diaspora Jewry, and this is the result of far too many gatekeepers blocking a genuine dialogue between Israeli Jews and the Diaspora," according to Toronto Jewish Federation President Ted Sokolsky.

Sokolsky, who represents the most-affiliated and arguably most Israel-supporting Jewish community in North America , is worried about declining funds and declining affiliation in many Diaspora communities.

And Israel , he believes, bears some of the responsibility for fostering a stronger relationship with world Jews that could help reverse these trends.

"There are very few avenues for authentic communication" between Israeli Jews and Diaspora Jews, he says, though he won't name the "gatekeepers" who prevent this communication. "Instead, contact is generally based on stereotypes we have of each other."

Sokolsky spoke to The Jerusalem Post last week on the sidelines of the President's Conference in Jerusalem , and reflected on some ways Israel can start to take responsibility for the "strategic asset" of the Diaspora.

In a recent meeting he had with Education Ministry director-general Shimshon Shoshani, a former head of Taglit-birthright israel , "Shoshani said he believes teaching about Diaspora Jews is a gap in the Israeli education system that needs to be addressed. He told us that when Israel doesn't understand Diaspora Jews, it harms Israel 's own sense of Zionism."

Like other European countries that only recently came to see an ethnic or religious Diaspora as an asset -- Sokolsky points to Poland , France and others -- Israel will have to start doing its part to keep it strong. "If you want to lead the Jewish world, you have to invest in the Jewish world," he says. "You can't expect it to be otherwise."

Specifically, this could involve Israeli funding for "the training of teachers and principals, for summer camps -- simple things that can even be conducted in Israel and add to the Israeli economy."

Besides Israeli investment, the Jewish world has a pressing problem with affiliation trends in American Jewry, Sokolsky believes. Representing perhaps 80 percent of Diaspora Jewry, a crisis of affiliation among American Jewish youth has dramatic significance for all Jews everywhere.

He may be able to help.

According to sociologist and demographer of Jewish communities Prof. Steven Cohen, Toronto 's community is per capita the most affiliated among all the hundreds of Jewish communities in North America . It raises more funds, sees more active involvement in its institutions and sends more of its community members to Israel than anyone else.

About half of all eligible children -- some 11,000 -- are in private Jewish day schools, even though Ontario , like the US , does not fund such schools, making the "price barrier" as high in Toronto as it is in much of the US .

Where does Toronto 's surprising communal strength come from?

"We are falsely accused by my American colleagues of being 'a generation behind,'" a suggestion that Toronto will soon see at home the worrying assimilation figures suggested by recent studies of American Jewry.

In reality, he insists, Canadian Jewry is not behind the times, but is moving in a very different direction that Americans would do well to study.

"We have a different way of handling Judaism," says Sokolsky. " Canada is not a melting pot [like the US ]. For most Jews in Canada , their primary identification is Jewish."

This strength comes from Canadian society's strong emphasis on particularistic cultures, evidenced in the freedom granted to French-speaking Quebecois to develop and preserve their distinct identities, or similar rights granted to native First Nations.

Jews, too, are considered a distinct minority deserving of recognition and preservation.

Ahava Zarembski, an Israel-based strategic planner who works with the Toronto Federation, offers an example of the effect the Canadian environment has on the Jewish community: "You have people like [Canadian MP and law professor] Irwin Cotler , who becomes the minister of justice of the country, but who speaks fluent Hebrew and talks to First Nations about his connection to his homeland," Israel.

Unlike in America , the Canadian census specifically counts Jews.

Thus, says Sokolsky, the sense of Jewishness is inextricably tied to being a people, not just a religious or cultural affiliation as in many parts of the American Jewish community. "The connection to Israel is part of the substance of the community," he says.

Research bears this out. Most dramatically, Canadian Jews are just 7% of North American Jewry, but send to Israel 25% of the continent's olim.

Meanwhile, Sokolsky worries that American Jews are affiliating less not only within their own communities, but with the rest of the Jewish world.

"There are times that I'm concerned that the great American Jewish community is an iceberg that's drifting away, that's melting as it drifts. I'm seeing fundamental divisions growing between American Jewish attitudes on many issues and those of the rest of the Jewish world."

In particular, "there is a major danger in the younger American generation's discomfort with Israel and with the word 'Zionism.'"

FROM OUR READERS: SPECIAL FRIDAY EDITION

N.B.: This is a new ISRANET Daily Briefing feature: selected letters from our readers will run on the last Friday of every month.

How can we show the proof of the wrongness of Israel 's accusers?

How do we demonstrate that Arab Israeli citizens have a real equal opportunity to share, in all respects, life in Israel ?

How do we demonstrate that not Israel , but any country which attacks Israel and is sworn to its annihilation is really the hate-filled people and state?

S. Vineberg
Sept. 20, 2009

Dear Sirs,

Three brilliantly written, logical and compelling arguments today.

Pity it will all fall on perennially deaf ears and only confirm the thoughts of those of us who already know the truth picture -- "preaching to the converted", as the saying goes.

This is the problem, we are not changing anyone's mind and never will. Those often repeating the lies and calumny against Jews and Israel are so entrenched in their thinking that the repetition itself has made it true for them, and only the arrival of the Messiah Himself may change their antisemitic minds.

I fear we will have a very long wait.

Jerome Henen
Aug. 11, 2009

Generally I find CIJR very informative but the attached stuff from you [today] is just drivel.

First of all it is limited to a US perspective - even the terms liberal & conservative don't mean the same elsewhere; in Israel the attitudes typical to the US dichotomous framework would be laid out quite differently. I, for example, might be classed a "liberal" because like all non-delusional people I am in favour of properly organised health care that focuses on epidemiological standards and is organised in a way that avoids the inflated costs and cruelties 0f the US "system" - that does not necessarily make me a "liberal" in other senses. In a US sense I am probably a socialist on some issues and a neo-conservative hawk on others. Like all sensible (classical) Zionists I am motivated by the classic and secular perceptions that led to the success of Zionism - rather than Johnny-come-lately religious adherents who began as anti-Zionists and, baffled by its success, had to find a religious excuse - and now they promote policies which are costly and probably futile if not damaging. Having said that, I remain undeviatingly loyal. People like me are the majority, I am certain, even an overwhelming majority when the time comes for critical decisions. (importantly, I am also an Israeli citizen, by the way)

Please balance your articles like you usually do. This selection was unrepresentative and silly.

Daniel Bentley
October 4, 2009

I usually find your blog enjoyable and informative, however I strongly disagree with Baruch Cohen's article ["A Forgotten Hero -- Jonathan Pollard", IDB 2,130, July 17, 2009]. Jonathan Pollard is no hero. He is an individual who, by his actions, put other Jews at risk by raising the specter of dual loyalty. And, ironically, his original motivations were driven more by the financial demands of a self-possessed fantasy-world fueled by drugs and debauchery than by his love for Israel . Now of course, he professes that aforementioned love as well as the newfound piety of one who has been caught and hopes to garner sympathy and support through his religiosity. His supporters may mean well and believe in his cause, but Pollard is undeserving of their sincere efforts....

S. Jonas
July 18, 2009

I wanted to make the following comments re: Jack Wertheimer's article, "The Truth About American Jews and Israel ." [IDB 2,107, June 12, 2009]

It is of utmost irony to say that Israeli leaders grasp the dangers to Israel, should a large portion of American Jews move away from Israel, because they are obviously blind or apathetic to the more palpable and real danger: that a large number of Israeli Jews have moved away from Israel. In Israel itself, a significant number of Jews are unaware of their own history and have since Oslo, been fed the lies of the Arab "narrative" that today sees Israel dismantling itself and pitting Jew against Jew....

It follows then, that Israeli leaders and government officials should be looking within, to stop the polarization of Jews into two camps in Israel itself. Had there been unity within Israel itself, divisions among Diaspora Jews would have been much less remarkable now. Again, why should American Jewry side with Israel , when Israel continues to blame itself for what it now believes and legitimizes as "wrongs and injustices" that it has done to the so called "Palestinian people"?

It is hypocritical to try to curb American Jewish alienation from Israel , when the Israeli establishment has been responsible for the tremendous rifts among its own people by embracing appeasement policies toward its enemies at the expense of Jewish tradition and identity in its own State. There is no doubt that such attempts will lead to failure, because as long as Israelis delegitimize their own rights, the number of Jews worldwide supporting Israel will fall, and more Jews will move away from Judaism.

Regards,

Lisette Murad
June 6, 2009

One of my Mexican heroes, Emiliano Zapata, declared, "I would rather die on my feet than have to live a lifetime on my knees," is pertinent today. The Muslim world has been unable to defeat Israel militarily, but now, with US support, Israel is faced with political pressure that will, or may, crack Israeli resolve. From my reading and understanding, the founders of Israel said there would be no more Holocausts. Sixty years have passed since the birth of Israel . Where do Israelis stand today? Will living on their knees be their future?

Nazario A. "Tito" Gonzales
June 2, 2009

Dear Professor Krantz,

Your article on the war dead in Italy was most moving. I fought in Italy as a Battle Captain in B Squadron of the British Columbia Dragoons, an Armoured Regiment. To my certain knowledge, when we went into action I was the only Jew in the Regiment. Yet when I visited the Allied cemetery in Cassino after the war, there were three graves with a Magen David among our three rows of dead Dragoons. They were all young men from Vancouver who must have been sent up as replacements for battle casualties during the offensive, and I never knew they were there. I took pictures of the graves and sent them to CJC in Vancouver .

I appreciate your kind and respectful words,

HCol BJ Finestone, CD, CdeG, (Ret`d)
May 25, 2009

You say "occasional mailings" -- I hope you intend to continue the daily mailings. You guys do a terrific job of doing the reading for us, packaging it and disseminating it. Don't stop.

Best regards,

Barbara Stern
March 17, 2009

HAPPY PURIM!! RABBI BEREL WEIN IS RIGHT!! THE "NGOs THAT CALL SELF-DEFENSE WAR CRIMES" ARE AMALEK!! AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL IS AMALEK!! HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH IS AMALEK!! OXFAM IS AMALEK!! DESTROY THEM ALL!! THEIR LEADERS ARE AMALEKITES AND THEY MUST BE DESTROYED!! THEIR LINEAGE MUST BE WIPED OUT FOR ALL TIME, JUST LIKE HAMAN'S!! KILL THE LEADERS OF AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL, HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH, OXFAM AND ALL THE OTHER AMALEKITE NGOS, AND KILL THEIR SONS AND DAUGHTERS AND GRANDSONS AND GRANDDAUGHTERS AND GREAT-GRANDSONS AND GREAT-GRANDAUGHTERS!! HAPPY PURIM!!

Larry Derfner
March 10, 2009

Charles Krauthammer, Fouad Ajami and Judea Pearl -- three ignoramuses in one e-mail. You really out-did yourselves this time.

Montreal Muslim News
February 6, 2009

Dear Sir,

I have been receiving your newsletter for several months now.

I would like to express my support for Israel . I would also like to say, from the outset, that I am not Jewish. I am not half Jewish. I believe this is important for you and others to understand.

I find that your latest newsletter expresses some of my opinions very clearly. There is a tremendous bias in the media. The latest demonstrations here in Montreal against Israel and in favor of the Palestinians/Hamas make me aware, again, that there is a persistent, rooted anti-Semitism at work here.

It is not my battle. I have no relatives or friends in Israel or in any country in that area of the world. However, I want someone to know that I feel the media wars are heating up. As in the earlier case of Lebanon , the world seems to be dominated by anti-Israeli sentiment.

Count me as a supporter of Israel .

I cannot believe that a normal country would tolerate having rockets fired onto its territory. I find it mysterious that people have attempted to justify these rockets by saying, "The rockets don't kill many people." That is almost ludicrous. What country or person could take such opinions seriously without invoking some sort of bias?

In my opinion, which tends to be rather hawkish on this subject, Israel made a mistake in pulling out of Gaza in the first place. The second mistake was in tolerating the rockets for so long. World opinion notwithstanding, Israel has a perfect right - and obligation - to send their troops into the Gaza territory, where they should have left them.

How is it possible that the people in the Gaza territory have dug tunnels and brought in countless numbers of rockets and other ammunition but have not used those same tunnels to bring in medicine and other relief supplies? What does that demonstrate about Hamas? It certainly demonstrates that their priorities are not the well-being of their citizens.

Only if the international community agrees to very stringent inspections and control of the area should Israel accept to leave. They should stay in Gaza until the cows come home. Let the rest of the world like it or lump it. These demonstrations make me sick.

I am a teacher. I encourage you not to lose courage and not to give in to the bullies of this world.

Sincerely,

Bruce D. Peterson
January 9, 2009

Shabbat Shalom to all our readers.

Diplomacy and Demography in the Middle East

THE BIG AMERICAN FREEZE
Barry Rubin
Jerusalem Post, October 25, 2009

If solving the Israel-Palestinian and Arab-Israeli conflict is the centerpiece of the Obama administration's Middle East policy -- at times it seems the keystone of its entire policy -- there's an obvious problem derailing it.

The president of the United States and senior officials have repeatedly announced that they consider final status negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA) as high priority. It is one of the most basic rules of foreign policy that you don't put the chief executive's prestige on the line unless you know for darn sure beforehand that what he says will happen.

The fly in the ointment here is the PA. It forcefully insists that it won't even meet formally with Israel until all construction in all Jewish settlements in the West Bank and east Jerusalem stops completely. Already, however, US-Israel discussions have moved past that point. We don't know precisely where they stand, but clearly the administration isn't pushing for a total halt and it isn't pushing all that urgently on the issue. Therefore, while Israel has succeeded in conciliating the US, the PA is defying Washington ....

PA leader Mahmoud Abbas is not going to back down on his demand. He is more afraid of his own colleagues, Hamas's baiting him as a "moderate" (a compliment perhaps from the West but a deadly insult in Palestinian politics) and his own people than of Obama. Indeed, nobody is afraid of Obama, which is one of the main problems with his foreign policy.

Disdaining the use of threats, leverage and pressure, the Obama administration is not likely to push the PA very hard on this and even if it did, Abbas would stand firm. Having extolled the Palestinians as peace-loving martyrs, courting Arab and Muslim opinion, treasuring popularity, the administration won't get tough.

No amount of funding or other goodies is going to move the PA or Abbas either. For Abbas, it is something like the classical choice which can be paraphrased as: Your money or your life? So there is, and will be, a deadlock, month after month into 2010. Is there some clever way out? I don't see one and I bet the administration doesn't either.

Abbas also has what for him is an attractive alternative: strike a militant pose, blame America , seek rapprochement with Hamas. In addition, what both the US and Europe fail to see is that the Palestinians don't need or want rapid progress on negotiations or even a state except on what would be completely their own terms. They can also afford the luxury of believing -- and this is what Western policy has taught them -- that Europe and America need them more than they need the West. Moreover they believe, and again this is what they have been shown, that intransigence on their part actually brings more criticism on Israel . If you believe, rightly or wrongly, that the world is about to condemn Israel as a pariah, war criminal state why make compromises with it?

This is the corner into which the Obama administration has painted itself. And all that it has left is what might be called the cat strategy. Have you ever seen a cat miss a leap or have an embarrassing fall? It merely licks itself and looks around with an expression saying: I meant to do that. Everything is going according to plan. But it isn't.

The newest development is the idea, favored by many in the European Union, of endorsing PA Prime Minister Salaam Fayad's "plan" for there to be a de facto Palestinian state within two years. Of course, this won't happen either. The whole thing is taking on a comic opera air. It reminded me of something. And then I remembered: the classical description of the Arab defeat in the 1948 war and Israel 's creation by Constantine Zurayk, vice-president of the American University of Beirut , in his book The Meaning of the Disaster.

He wrote: "Seven Arab states declare war on Zionism in Palestine , stop impotent before it and turn on their heels. The representatives of the Arabs deliver fiery speeches in the highest international forums, warning what the Arab states and peoples will do if this or that decision be enacted. Declarations fall like bombs from the mouths of officials at the meetings of the Arab League, but when action becomes necessary, the fire is still and quiet and steel and iron are rusted and twisted, quick to bend and disintegrate."

For the Arab states, the fiery speeches do have a value of their own -- cowing rivals and mobilizing the masses to support their local dictator. But when the US acts like a pitiful, helpless giant -- even if it is a nice and friendly, apologetic one -- the world shudders and shakes.

WAGING DIPLOMATIC WAR
Caroline Glick
Jerusalem Post, October 22, 2009

If, to paraphrase Carl von Clausewitz, diplomacy is war by other means, then just as armies are called upon to concentrate their efforts and resources where they can do the most good for their cause, so governments must utilize their diplomatic resources -- whether plentiful or scarce -- to advance their most important national interests.

The Palestinians and the Iranians have formidable diplomatic resources at their disposal. Both the Palestinians and Iran can expect to receive the support of automatic majorities at the UN for everything they do. And today most international diplomacy is conducted under the aegis of the UN or its affiliated bodies. Understanding their strength, the Palestinians and the Iranians use the UN and its affiliated organs to advance their most important goals. In the Palestinians' case, UN-based diplomacy is used to delegitimize Israel . In the Iranian case, UN-based diplomacy is used to facilitate the mullocracy's acquisition of nuclear weapons. Over the past week, both the Palestinians and the Iranians enjoyed strategic victories in their diplomatic campaigns.

Last Friday, the UN Human Rights Council passed a resolution condemning Israel in every possible way for asserting its sovereignty over its capital city and for defending its citizens against wanton, massive, unprovoked and illegal terror from the skies emanating from Hamas-controlled Gaza . The resolution represented a massive achievement for the Palestinians. It referred Israel to the Security Council with the recommendation that Israel 's leaders be tried as war criminals before international tribunals. That is, the UNHRC's resolution effectively delegitimized Israel 's right to exist by denying that it has a right to defend its territory and its people from illegal aggression carried out by an illegal terrorist organization.

Then on Wednesday, Mohamed ElBaradei, the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency's virulently anti-Israel chairman, announced a deal has been reached between Iran and the US, Russia and France regarding Iran's nuclear program. The deal -- which the parties initialized in Geneva after just three days of talks -- legitimizes Iran 's nuclear weapons program and effectively transforms the US , the EU and Russia into facilitators rather than opponents of that program....

Until Wednesday, in accordance with three binding UN Security Council resolutions, the US , Russia and the EU refused to accept the legitimacy of Iran 's uranium enrichment activities. Their refusal stemmed from the fact that by enriching uranium, Iran stands in breach of its commitments under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Wednesday's accord ignores this inconvenient fact and so whitewashes Iran's illicit behavior, effectively accepting Iran's right to enrich uranium....[T]he deal allows Iran to surmount the scientific hurdles it reportedly now faces, clearing the mullahs' path to acquiring the weapons-grade uranium.

For their part, the Iranians haven't wasted a moment pushing the diplomatic envelop still further. As the Americans, French and Russians were offering them more than they could have ever imagined possible -- including the prospect of US personnel serving as human shields against a possible Israeli air strike on Iran 's nuclear installations -- back in Teheran they ratcheted up their demands....

Until Wednesday, Israel refrained from publicly attacking the US 's decision to seek an accommodation with Iran . This made sense. Israel had no interest in being perceived as pre-judging the outcome of a process on which the Obama administration staked its prestige. But now that the administration has agreed to an accord that effectively transforms America into a facilitator of Iran 's nuclear weapons program, the time has come for Israel to start voicing its objections.

Unlike the Palestinians and the Iranians, Israel has no great diplomatic assets. It can assume that it will always be condemned by the UN. The EU, with its member-nations' own anti-Jewish baggage, a burgeoning and radicalized Muslim minority, and an addiction to Arab oil cannot be expected to stand with Israel . Western NGOs are largely funded by anti-Israel governments and leftist philanthropists and so use their resources to advance the causes of Israel 's enemies....

In the current climate, Israel 's diplomatic resources are limited to popular opinion in the US , and shared interests on specific issues with a number of governments throughout the world. In light of Israel 's diplomatic assets, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, who in recent months has been travelling the globe to cultivate bilateral ties with countries in South America, Africa, Central Asia, and Central Europe , should be congratulated for his efforts.

On the public diplomacy front, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, his cabinet ministers and the Foreign Ministry should use every opportunity to discredit the latest deal with Iran . They should point out its dangers and call for an end to this diplomatic catastrophe before more damage is done to the cause of preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. Such a campaign would probably fail to derail the current talks. But if successful, it would prevent the deal from being used as a means to delegitimize Israel 's right to militarily strike Iran 's nuclear installations.

As for the Palestinians' diplomatic triumph with the risible Goldstone Report and its attendant UNHRC resolution, Israel 's response to date has been misguided and self-defeating. This week, the government began considering forming a commission of inquiry into the IDF's handling of Operation Cast Lead. Judge Richard Goldstone has been claiming that if Israel conducts an investigation into his allegations that our soldiers committed war crimes and crimes against humanity, Israel can avoid prosecution of IDF personnel at the International Criminal Court. Lawyers like Attorney-General Menahem Mazuz have latched onto Goldstone's statements and the media are atwitter with rumors that Netanyahu may agree to form such a commission.

That would be a wrong move for several reasons. First of all, Goldstone is in no position to negotiate. Once he submitted his libelous report to the UNHRC, Goldstone's writ of authority was a thing of the past. Even if he now wants to get Israel off the hook he placed it on, he has no power to do so. And the officials at the UNHRC who gave Goldstone the mission of proclaiming that the IDF committed crimes against humanity have no interest whatsoever in crediting any internal Israeli investigation or ending the organization's hounding of the Jewish state.

Beyond that, any investigation Israel could launch into the IDF's conduct of Operation Cast Lead would be perceived internationally as an admission of guilt. If that commission were to conclude truthfully that the IDF conducted its operations in full accordance with international law, its findings would be dismissed as a whitewash....

Israel 's enemies are making adept use of their vast diplomatic power to advance their most important goals. Israel should use its meager diplomatic powers to do the same by going on a public diplomacy offensive against the criminalization of Israel and against the international community's surrender to Iran . A good first step in that direction would be to stop using our limited powers in a manner that expands our enemies' advantages over us.

THE CASE FOR DEMOGRAPHIC OPTIMISM
Yoram Ettinger
Jewish Week, October 13, 2009

The all-time record of daily Jewish births at Tel Aviv's Ichilov Hospital , set on Sept. 21, reflects the substantial rise in Israel 's Jewish fertility. Delivery rooms are functioning at 100 percent capacity.

Anyone claiming that Jews are doomed to become a minority between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean -- and therefore the Jewish state must concede geography in order to secure demography -- is either dramatically mistaken or outrageously misleading.

An audit of births, deaths, school and voter registration and migration documentation from Israel and the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics certifies a solid 67 percent Jewish majority over 98.5 percent of the land west of the Jordan River (without Gaza), compared with a 33 percent and an 8 percent Jewish minority in 1947 and 1900, respectively, west of the Jordan River.

The audit exposes a 66 percent distortion in the current number of West Bank (or, Judea and Samaria) Arabs -- 1.55 million and not 2.5 million, as claimed by the Palestinian Authority. In 2006, the World Bank exposed a 32 percent bend in the number of Palestinian births. Inflated numbers have provided the Palestinians with inflated international foreign aid and inflated water supply by Israel . It has also afflicted Israeli policy-makers and public opinion molders with fatalism and erroneous demographic assumptions, which have impacted Israel 's national security policy.

Refuting demographic fatalism, the robust growth of Israel 's Jewish fertility (number of births per woman) has been sustained during the last 15 years, while Arab fertility and population growth rate (birth, death and migration rates) experiences a sharp dive.

The number of Jewish births during the first half of 2009 accounted for 76 percent of all births, compared with 75 percent in 2008 and 69 percent in 1995. Unlike all other developed societies, the number of annual Jewish births has grown by 45 percent from 1995 (80,400) to 2008 (117,000), while the annual number of Israeli Arab births has stabilized around 39,000.

The secular, rather than the religious, sector has been chiefly responsible for the Jewish growth. For example, the olim (or, immigrants) from the USSR arrived in Israel with a typical Russian fertility rate of one birth per woman; today, those women are giving birth to two to three children, the typical secular Israeli Jewish birthrate. Moreover, the Arab-Jewish fertility gap shrunk from six births per woman in 1969 to 0.7 births in 2008, with the two converging toward three births per woman.

The Arab fertility rate in the West Bank has declined rapidly (now at 3.5 births per woman), as has been the case in all Muslim countries except Afghanistan and Yemen . In Jordan it is three per woman; Syria , 3.5; Egypt , 2.5; Saudi Arabia , 4; Algeria , 1.8; and Iran , 1.7.

The swift decline in the Israeli Arab fertility rate reflects the impressive Arab integration into Israel 's infrastructure of employment, education, health, trade, finance, politics, sports and culture.

The sharp decrease in West Bank Arab fertility rate is the outcome of modernity. A 70 percent rural majority in 1967 has been transformed into a 70 percent urban majority in 2009, burdened by civil war, terrorism and severe unemployment. Elementary and higher education have expanded dramatically, especially among women. Median wedding age and divorce rates are at an all-time high. In addition, West Bank Arabs have experienced a high emigration rate since 1950, further eroding the population growth rate.

The current 67 percent Jewish majority west of the Jordan River (without Gaza) could expand to 80 percent by 2035, leveraging the aforementioned Jewish demographic tailwind and the potential aliyah resulting from the global economic meltdown and the rise in anti-Semitism (e.g., a half-million olim during the next 10 years from the former Soviet Union).

Baseless demographic fatalism has played a key role in shaping Israel 's state of mind and national security policy. It has eroded the level of confidence in the future of the Jewish state. However, well-documented demographic optimism now confirms that there is no demographic machete at the throat of the Jewish state, that demographic scare tactics are hollow and that Israel 's challenge is not a "demographic time bomb" but rather a demographic "scare crow."

(Ambassador (ret.) Yoram Ettinger is CEO of Second Thought: A U.S.-Israel Initiative,
which conducts demographic and strategic studies in Judea and Samaria.)

Wednesday's "News In Review" Round-Up

Weekly Quotes

"Allah protect us from the fitna [sedition] of these people; Allah protect us from the evil agenda of these people; Allah destroy them from within themselves, and do not allow them to raise their heads in destroying Islam.... You will see a lot of them going to the kuffar, taking them as friends and allies. The wrath of Allah is upon them. If they were true believers they would never take them as allies." -- Imam Saed Rageah, during a sermon at North York 's Abu Huraira Centre, delivering a hate-filled plea for Allah to destroy the kuffar, a derogatory term for non-Muslims. (National Post, Oct. 22)

"When Hamas deals seriously with the Goldstone report, with some reservations on it, this is evidence that Hamas respects the international law and is ready to cooperate with this law. If the report, or any other side, has any reservations on Hamas' actions, we are ready to explain them and we will form an honest and neutral investigative committee in Gaza to give Goldstone and its committee and the international community the facts." -- Hamas leader Khaled Meshal, in an interview with the Palestinian Note website, committing a burden-of-proof fallacy in support of attacking against Israel 's right to defend itself from Hamas terrorism. Meshal also complained that Hamas military capabilities were too weak, and that it did not deliberately target civilians: "Hamas does not aim to kill civilians. Hamas does not want to target civilians. Hamas defends itself, but because it has simple abilities and its rockets are inaccurate in targeting, so it reaches the civilians, but we do not intend to do that." (Ha'aretz, Oct. 27)

"Israel can move from being the defendant to framing the international legal narrative.... I know of no other democracy that has engaged in a review of its warfare and its involvement in hostilities that has gone beyond its military's own internal review. Israel could set a model internationally. It would be making an important and maybe enduring contribution to the development of international human rights and humanitarian law. That is not something that should be marginalized." -- Professor of international law and Canada 's former justice minister MP Irwin Cotler , supporting the proposal that Israel should conduct an independent investigation into Operation Cast Lead. Cotler argues that an inquiry would present Israel with the opportunity to proactively shape the debate over the fight against terrorists who use civilians as human shields. ( Jerusalem Post, Oct.22)

"We know how to give security to our children-defend the children, not use them as human shields and not send them out in front of us." -- Israeli President Shimon Peres, speaking to schoolchildren at Kibbutz Cabri, highlighting Israel's responsible policy in explaining why the media have correctly identified "that more children are killed on the Palestinian side, and that children are not killed on ours." (Ha'aretz, Oct.26)

"The Taliban are obviously manipulating children and using them as cannon fodder.... There is one place west of Kandahar City where they shoot at us every day through a shield of children. They actually stack them up, with eight-year-olds at the front and 15-year-olds at the back. There is an insurgent commander in Zhari known to employ kids. If they are detected it puts us in a difficult situation. If there are civilian casualties, they use it against us.... You have to understand the fight that we are in. It isn't easy. Our soldiers have to deal with this every day." -- Maj. Robert Dunn who oversees operations in Southern and Western Kandahar , in Ottawa , insisting that Taliban tactics in Afghanistan are increasingly employing children, and that this presents a great challenge for NATO troops. (Canwest News Service, Oct. 26)

"The fate of Jerusalem will be determined only by confrontation and not by the negotiating tables.... Jerusalem is all of Jerusalem, not only [the east Jerusalem neighborhood of] Abu-Dis. The Arabs and Muslims are [the city's] residents, and the Zionists have no claim over it.... I call for angry protests in Palestine and in the Arab world. Today, protests began in Gaza, and we hope they will spread to the West Bank.... We must send a message to the world: In light of the settlements and actions in Jerusalem , there are no negotiations and we must rethink our steps." -- Hamas leader Khaled Meshal, in a speech from his base in Damascus , encouraging violent protests over the Israeli claim of Jerusalem as their capitol. ( Jerusalem Post, Oct. 25)

"Iraq cannot be ruled by one color or religion or sect. We clearly saw that sectarianism and ethnic grouping threatened our national unity. Therefore, I believe we should bring all these different colors together and establish Iraq as a country built on rule of law and equity and citizenship. The Iraqi people encouraged us. They want this. Other parties are also organizing themselves like this. No one can run anymore as a purely sectarian bloc.... Our experiment is very unique in this region." -- Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, during an interview in Washington DC, explaining why he has decided to run on the "State of Law Coalition" platform, a pan-Iraqi, nationalist alliance of some 40 political parties, including Sunni tribal leaders, Kurds, and other minorities. (NY Times, Oct. 25)

"The White House must stop dithering while America 's armed forces are in danger. Waffling while our troops on the ground face an emboldened enemy endangers them and hurts our cause. President Obama's advisors have decided that it's easier to blame the Bush administration than support our troops." -- Former U.S. Vice-President Dick Cheney,

"I'm a Hungarian nationalist. I love my homeland, love the Hungarians and give primacy to Hungarian interests over those of global capital-Jewish capital, if you like-which wants to devour the entire world, especially Hungary." -- Oszkar Molnar, a member of Hungary 's main opposition party, promulgating antisemitic conspiracy theories in a TV interview earlier this month. Molnar's statement sparked an outcry among Hungarian politicians as well as the Jewish community. But his party, Fidesz, has not condemned his statement, and according to the polls, Molnar is likely to take power when elections are held next spring. (Ha'aretz, October. 19)

"If I could advise the President to solve one problem among the many problems-this would be it. This is the epicenter, where we should focus our efforts..." -- U.S. National Security Advisor General James Jones, speaking at the J Street "pro-peace" lobby conference in Washington , DC . Jones comments are reminiscent of U.S. President Barack Obama's 2008 presidential campaign comment, made to Atlantic journalist Jeffrey Goldberg, that the Israel-Arab conflict is a "constant sore, infect[ing] all of our foreign policy." (Ha'aretz, Oct. 27)

"The party and the viewpoint that we're closest to in Israeli politics is actually Kadima." -- J Street executive director Jeremy Ben-Ami, speaking to the Jerusalem Post during the new "progressive" lobby's first conference. "A two-state solution and the establishment of borders...is a centrist, realistic position." While Kadima MKs Shlomo Molla and Meir Sheetrit agreed with the sentiment, some participants in the conference are not so sure. Judith Baker, of Brit Tzedek V'Shalom, a left-wing group recently absorbed by J Street , rejected the lobby group's "pro-Israel" label during a conference panel, protesting that "to say that you have to love Israel or be pro-Israel to be part of J Street is a terrible mistake." (Jer. Post, Oct. 27)

Short Takes

BAGHDAD BOMBING KILLS 160 -- ( Baghdad ) Two devastating terrorist bombings are expected to cripple Iraqi government agencies for months, as the number of dead reached 160. The attacks targeted the Iraqi Justice Ministry, the Ministry of Municipalities and Public Works, and the Baghdad Provincial Council, all symbols of Iraqi sovereignty. The Islamic State of Iraq, a Sunni terrorist group that includes al Qaeda, has claimed responsibility, calling the targeted locations "dens of infidelity." In response to the bombing, the Iraqi government broke a deadlock in negotiations over election laws in anticipation of January's vote. ( Washington Post, Oct. 27)

AMID VIOLENCE, CLINTON ARRIVES IN PAKISTAN -- (Islamabad) U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her Pakistani counterpart, Shah Mohammed Qureshi, vowed that their government will not be deterred from fighting terrorists. Nonetheless, Clinton 's arrival in Pakistan Wednesday was overshadowed almost immediately by a bombing that killed at least 86 people. The bombing in a crowded market in Peshawar was the deadliest attack in Pakistan this year. It was also the latest in a wave of suicide bombings, assassinations and attacks, staged in response to a major Pakistani offensive against Taliban sanctuaries near the Afghan border in the Northwest Frontier Province, that have killed hundreds of people. (Washington Post, Oct. 28)

UN QUERIES U.S. USE OF DRONES -- (United Nations) The U.S. must demonstrate that it is not randomly killing people in violation of international law through its use of drones on the Afghan border, a United Nations rights investigator said Tuesday. The investigator, Philip Alston, added the American refusal to answer to UN concerns was an "untenable" position. Alston said his concern over drones had grown in the past few months as the American military prominently uses them in the rugged area along the Pakistani-Afghan border. He said the U.S. may be using the drones legally but needed to answer questions he raised in June. "Otherwise you have the really problematic bottom line, which is that the C.I.A. is running a program that is killing significant numbers of people and there is absolutely no accountability in terms of the relevant international laws," he said. (New York Times, Oct. 28)

NATO MINISTERS SUPPORT U.S. GENERAL ON AFGHAN WAR -- (Bratislava , Slovakia) NATO defense ministers have endorsed the ambitious counterinsurgency strategy for Afghanistan proposed by U.S. General Stanley A. McChrystal. Their support gives new impetus to his recommendation to pour more troops into the eight-year-old war. It was another in a series of judgments that success in Afghanistan could not be achieved unless troop levels were increased substantially. Meanwhile, October has become the deadliest months for U.S. troops since the war began in 2001, with 55 soldiers killed. Eleven American soldiers and three U.S. civilians died in two helicopter-related crashes Monday, and two bombs killed eight soldiers and an interpreter in separate attacks Tuesday. (New York Times, Oct. 24 & 27; Washington Post, Oct. 27 & 28)

URANIUM ENRICHMENT PLAN FOR IRAN WOBBLES -- (Beirut) Last week, a tentative deal was reached which would have seen most of Iran's stockpile of low-enriched uranium (LEU) shipped to Russia for refining into fuel rods for Iran's small research reactor. Now, Iranian officials are hinting that Iran would not ship all of its LEU to Russia at once, which would undermine the deal. France has made it clear that the uranium must be shipped all at once before the end of the year. Iran has said it will formally respond on Friday to the proposal. Iran is also continuing to produce LEU, and can replace its stockpiles quickly enough to make the deal nearly meaningless. (New York Times, Oct. 28)

ISRAEL, IRAN MET DURING SECRET NUCLEAR TALKS -- (Cairo) In the first direct meeting between the two countries since the Iranian Revolution of 1979, Israel and Iran met last month in Cairo to discuss declaring the Middle East a nuclear-free zone. Israel Atomic Energy Commission agent Meirav Zafari-Odiz and Ali Asghar Soltanieh, Iran 's ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency, met several times along with representatives from other Middle Eastern countries, Australia , the EU and the U.S. In the meetings, Zafari-Odiz would neither confirm nor deny Israel 's nuclear capabilities, while Soltanieh insisted that the Iranian regime did not hate Jews, but was "merely opposed to Zionism." (Ha'aretz, Oct. 22)

ROCKETS FIRED INTO ISRAEL FROM LEBANON -- (Jerusalem) A single Katyusha rocket was fired from the Lebanese village of Houla at the Israeli town of Kiryat Shemonah on Tuesday, causing no damage. UNIFIL and Lebanese army forces found another four abandoned Katyusha rockets in the village and dismantled them. IDF forces responded with artillery fire into Lebanon , with no casualties reported. Senior Christian Lebanese political figure Samir Geagea called the Katyusha launch "a crime against the residents of Lebanon ," and accused Hezbollah of paramilitary activity in southern Lebanon . (New York Times, Oct. 28; Jer. Post, Oct. 27)

IAF STRIKES GAZA WAREHOUSE, 2 SMUGGLING TUNNELS -- (Jerusalem) The Israel Air Force targeted a building in the southern Gaza Strip and two smuggling tunnels on Oct. 22. The airstrikes were in response to rocket fire into Israeli territory the day before. An IDF statement said that Palestinians have fired more than 250 rockets and mortar shells into Israel since the end of Operation Cast Lead in January. (Jerusalem Post, Oct. 22)

NETANYAHU: LEGAL TEAM TO COMBAT GOLDSTONE -- (Jerusalem) Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu will put together a small team of legal experts and foreign ministry officials to reassemble and re-evaluate material gathered by the IDF in its partial investigation of Operation Cast Lead in Gaza. The team will only use existing material, and will present the findings as an internal investigation refuting the allegations in the Goldstone Commission report. In related news, Defense Minister Ehud Barak announced Oct. 25 that Israel would fight the legitimacy of the report and fight to change the laws of warfare to fit the new reality of terrorist combat. (Jerusalem Post, Oct. 25)

EU LAWYERS DRAW UP LIST OF IDF "WAR-CRIMES" SUSPECTS -- (London) Human rights lawyers and pro-Palestinian activists in several European countries hold lists with names of IDF soldiers allegedly linked to war crimes committed during Operation Cast Lead. Existing legislation enables arrest warrants to be issued against these officers if they enter those countries. Lawyers in Britain , the Netherlands , Spain , Belgium and Norway have been collecting testimonies of Palestinians and other data from Gaza since January. They maintain this data proves that IDF officers committed war crimes during the offensive. Daniel Ayalon, the Israeli Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, became the latest victim to face arrest on alleged war crimes charges after an official visit to the UK . Ayalon returned to Israel Tuesday evening after a two-day visit to London , during which pro-Palestinian activists attempted to have the minister arrested. (Jerusalem Post, Ha'aretz, Oct. 27)

EGYPT SHUTS OUT ISRAELI CANCER RESEARCHERS -- (Jerusalem) Although they were granted all the necessary security clearances, a team of Israeli breast cancer researchers were denied entry to Egypt last week. The team had hoped to participate in breast cancer awareness and advocacy programs and workshops organized by the American-based group Susan G. Komen for the Cure. But just before departing, they were informed that Egyptian Health Minister Hatem el-Gebaly had decided they would not be allowed to attend. (Jerusalem Post, Oct. 21)

J STREET CAMPUS BRANCH NO LONGER "PRO-ISRAEL" -- (Washington) As left-wing lobby group J Street's conference got underway in Washington yesterday, the organization's university wing, "J Street U", has removed "pro-Israel" from its "pro-Israel, pro-peace" slogan. The decision was made in order to alleviate concerns among J Street -affiliated students who felt uncomfortable and alienated by being "pro-Israel". Lauren Barr, secretary of J Street U 's student board, explained that "we don't want to isolate people...so we say 'pro-peace'...but behind that is 'pro-Israel'". ( Jerusalem Post, Oct. 27)

GERMANY: BRITISH BISHOP FINED FOR HOLOCAUST DENIAL --(Berlin) A British bishop was fined $16,822 for denying the Holocaust in an interview with Swedish television in Germany . A court in Regensburg issued the fine against the bishop, Richard Williamson, for incitement. Shortly after the interview, Williamson's excommunication, imposed over a theological dispute, was lifted by Pope Benedict XVI. In the interview, the bishop said he did not believe that any Jews were killed in gas chambers during WWII. (New York Times, Oct. 28)

ISLAMISTS IN SOMALIA FLOG WOMEN FOR WEARING BRAS-(Mogadishu) Somalia's hardline Islamist group al Shabaab has publicly whipped women for wearing bras, amputated a foot and a hand each from two young men accused of robbery, and banned movies, musical ringtones, dancing at wedding ceremonies, and soccer. Al Shabaab, which means "youth" in Arabic, controls large areas of south and central Somalia , and is responsible for a growing insurgency throughout the troubled country. (Reuters, Oct. 16)

Do America's (And Israel's) Jews Live On J Street?

ANOTHER OBAMA TEST ON ISRAEL
Gabriel Schoenfeld
New York Post, October 23, 2009

J-street is a new Washington, DC-based Jewish lobbying group that is seeking a place at the table alongside more venerable organizations like the American Jewish Committee and the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee. Started only a year ago with generous "seed money" from the financier George Soros, its first national conference begins this Sunday. The keynote speaker-if he shows up-will be National Security Adviser Gen. James Jones.

The "if" is an important question, for there is a chance, if the White House pays attention to the controversy it would be stepping into, that Jones won't show. Among the growing list of notables who've already dropped off the program's "honorary host committee" are New York 's two senators, Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand. The reason for such distancing isn't difficult to fathom. J-Street has been engaged in a bit of pretense. It bills itself as "pro-peace" yet is anything but-except, perhaps, if its policy recommendations were ever followed, the peace of the grave.

Consider the Goldstone report, recently approved by the United Nations Human Rights Council, which denounces Israel for committing "crimes against humanity" when it acted decisively in Gaza last winter to defend itself against Hamas rockets being lobbed daily into its territory. J-Street has issued two statements on Goldstone. Neither contains an iota of criticism of a report that even The Economist, not exactly friendly toward Israel , calls a "thimbleful of poison" and the product of "willful blindness." Instead of condemning this UN travesty, J-Street has treated it with respect, calling upon Israel "to credibly address [its] full range of charges and findings."

Then there's the Iranian effort to acquire nuclear weapons, where J-Street has staked out a position to the left of the left. Last year, it launched a petition drive against a congressional resolution calling for tougher inspections of air and sea cargo heading for Iran , calling it "provocative" and "saber rattling."

More recently, J-Street has applauded the administration policy of "engagement" with the mullahs. There's nothing especially controversial about that. But J-Street has also adamantly opposed setting what it calls "artificial deadlines" in the talks now under way. Even the administration, as it goes the extra mile in diplomacy to probe Iran 's intentions, is aware that time is an important factor in facing up to the Iranian bomb program. Indeed, the administration has set just such an "artificial deadline" in case Iran is using the negotiations to run out the clock.

J-Street calls itself "pro-Israel," but on one issue after the next-from the administration's call for a total freeze on "natural growth" in settlements to its advocacy of direct Israeli talks with Hamas-it embraces positions overwhelmingly rejected by the Israeli public. It even has endorsed staging the play "Seven Jewish Children," by the British playwright Caryll Churchill, which draws a "direct line" as The New Republic's James Kirchick has observed, connecting "Nazi Germany's mass murder of Jews to Israel 's treatment of Palestinians."

It is difficult to see how the term "pro-Israel" applies. A better term might be "pro-squeezing Israel ." J-Street favors a US policy that would force Israel to take steps long favored by the American and Israeli left that Israel 's democratically elected government has considered time and again and deemed severely wanting. As a presidential candidate, Barack Obama spoke of how the US alliance with Israel is based on shared interests and shared values. "Those who threaten Israel ," he said, "threaten us." Israel , he continued, "has always faced these threats on the front lines. And I will bring to the White House an unshakeable commitment to Israel 's security."

Yet as president, Obama has been sending more than a few mixed signals and creating doubts about where he really stands. Jones has thus far kept a low profile as Obama's national-security adviser. Giving a keynote address to the phony "pro-peace" and "pro-Israel" J-Street convocation, if it proceeds, will be a revealing test of the administration's true intentions.

( Gabriel Schoenfeld , a Hudson Institute senior fellow, is a resident scholar at the Witherspoon Institute.)

[National Security Advisor Gen. James Jones spoke at J-Street's conference today, proclaiming, "I'd like to congratulate you on this impressive conference and I'm honoured to represent President Obama and make sure that we'll be represented in all future conferences."-ed.]

J STREET 'S SPIRITUAL CONCEIT
David Weinberg
Jerusalem Post, October 23, 2009

It was the Buddhist seders that tipped me off to the real conceit behind J Street . The sensitive "progressive" types behind the new Washington lobby are deeply concerned, it seems, for the morality and soul of Israel . Gee thanks.

A love for Buddhist seders, a penchant for avant garde poetry (including a ballad entitled The Queer Intifada), and an abiding concern for Israel's spiritual quintessence-all while being intermarried down to nearly the last Jewish soul among them-is how The New York Times recently characterized the founders and key staff members of J Street. They seek, you see, justice and holiness and Jewish meaning in the world. Especially in the Arab-Israel conflict.

This explains the preponderance of numerous, vaporous spiritual types at this week's big J Street hug-in in Washington . Rabbi Sharon, Rabbi Amy, Rabbi Tirzah, Rabbi Jennie, Rabbi Julie, Rabbi Toba and Rabbi Melissa are among the prominent speakers. They are "diversity facilitators," "spirituality counselors," and "interreligious leaders" at places called Neve Kodesh, Brit Tzedek, Dorshei Tzedek and Just Vision.... You know that all this righteousness just needs to be exported-through tough love, if necessary-to Israel . To repair the Middle East . To spiritually save Israel in spite of itself. Or at least to salve the sacred American Jewish soul.

Well, enough, I say, of this misty, sentimental and self-serving gobbledygook. All this soft spiritual urgency, supposedly on "behalf of" Israel , belies a triple conceit; or should we say, a great deceit.

Firstly, J Street is peddling the nutty notion that spirituality has anything to do with Mideast peace. The latent chutzpa is the insinuation that authentic identification with the Jewish prophets and morality dovetails with the dovish side of the political map. If only American Jews and Israelis were more religiously dovish and in touch with the forgiving and compassionate side of their Jewish souls-we would do the "left" thing and concede more generously to the Palestinians. Then, lo and behold, peace would come to the Mideast .

The second conceit is that such J Street -peddled nonsense-along with J Street support for talks with Hamas, opposition to military action against the Hamas, and opposition to sanctions or military action against nuclear Iran -represents the majority of American Jewry. Hogwash. Patently false.

The third conceit is that, if only Israel were to change-and it is J Street's job to get America to force Israel to change-then peace would come to the Mideast. As if Israel was the party unwilling to compromise. As if Israel hasn't already offered the Palestinians at Oslo and Camp David and Taba and Annapolis just about everything they want of post-67 Israel . As if the Palestinians have compromised on their demands one wit since the great handshake on the White House lawn. But it is Israel that needs to be pressured, say the J Street moral oracles.

J Street is a new form of Jewish apostasy. Its adherents hasten to embrace their Jewishness (even if they don't really know much about authentic Jewish tradition and morality) in order to besmirch Israel and the mainstream Jewish community. They earnestly declare how "profoundly" Jewish they are, in order to engender a distancing in US-Israel relations.

I guess that's why J Street has spent most of its resources bashing long-standing supporters of Israel-calling them extremists and right-wingers and accusing them of a 'silencing'-and listing things that Israel must be made to do. All this, instead of calling out the dangers of Iranian nuclear weapons or Palestinian genocidal anti-Semitism. That's why they fret over the Jewish soul instead of working to save and protect the physical Jewish State of Israel.

The only people clearly not fooled by all this spiritual mumbo-jumbo are Salam al-Mayarati, Trita Parsi and other leaders of the American Muslim Public Affairs Council, American Task Force on Palestine and the National Iranian American Council-all of whom are speaking-surprise, surprise-at the J Street Jewish soul jamboree this week. They undoubtedly see past the pious claptrap, and know-and appreciate-exactly what J Street is up to.

(David Weiner is director of public affairs at Bar-Ilan University 's
Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies.)

WHY MAKE A FUSS ABOUT J STREET ?
Isi Leibler
Jerusalem Post, October 21, 2009

This weekend J Street is launching its first major convention at which it claims 160 members of Congress and a number of former Israeli left-wing politicians will participate. Only 18 months old, J Street already boasts of a $3 million budget which, while minuscule compared to AIPAC's $70 million, is nevertheless impressive. It also receives glowing liberal media coverage, especially from The New York Times.

American Jews take pride in being an open and pluralistic community. So why make a fuss about an organization, even if it does engage in activities that many would consider offensive? Besides, blackballing such a fringe group would lead to accusations of attempting to stifle freedom of expression and transform it into a martyr.

However, the fact is that no one is seeking to deny freedom of expression to J Street or other groups hostile to Israel . The issue is whether organizations should be able to exploit the Jewish community as launching pads to campaign against the Jewish state while presenting themselves as mainstream Jews.

Most Jews would concur that a red line should be drawn between legitimate criticism of Israel and concerted campaigns to pressure the US or any government to force the democratically elected government of Israel to make concessions which could imperil the lives of its citizens. J Street has crossed that red line even though it continuously recites the mantra that it is "pro-Israel," insisting that while it "disagrees with certain Israeli government policies our bottom line is that we always support the State of Israel and its future as a democracy." Or to quote executive director Jeremy Ben-Ami "we are trying to define what it means to be pro Israel ... you don't have to adopt the party line."

Yet J Street has the chutzpa to openly campaign against Israel on the grounds that it possesses a superior understanding of what is best for Israelis. It obscenely spins this by likening itself to parents who are obliged to employ "tough love" with children who are drug addicts. It is surely unconscionable for Jews resident in America to lobby their government to pressure Israelis, contrary to their will, to take steps that could have life and death implications.

In fact, J Street 's policies are more extreme than even their radical Israeli counterparts. During the conflict with Hamas, which was endorsed by all Jewish political parties in the Knesset, J Street proclaimed that Israel 's "escalation in Gaza would be counterproductive" and was "disproportionate." It also alluded to a moral equivalency between the policies of Israel and Hamas, stating that it found difficulty in distinguishing "between who is right and who is wrong" and "picking a side."...

J Street also "opposes the role of force by Israel or the United States " against Iran and even canvassed Congress to block a bipartisan resolution calling for tougher sanctions. It also urges the US and Israel to negotiate with Hamas. Despite President Barack Obama having done so, J Street chief Ben-Ami refused to endorse Israel as a "Jewish state", relating to it as a "Jewish democratic home in the State of Israel."

J Street also raises the issue of dual loyalties which has been resurrected by anti-Semites in recent times. Ben-Ami expresses concern about "the impact of Israeli policies on our interests as Americans and Jews," suggesting that continued "blind" support for Israel would lead to alienation from the American public which would conclude that Jews display greater loyalty to Israel than America .

J Street raised similar sentiments when it defended Obama's initial choice of Chas Freeman, the fiercely anti-Israeli former ambassador to Saudi Arabia , to become chairman of the National Intelligence Council. Not coincidentally, Stephen Walt, the coauthor of the viciously anti-Israeli The Israel Lobby and Foreign Policy, publicly hailed the emergence of J Street as "good news."

An even more ominous cause for concern was the recent disclosure that Arab and even pro-Iranian elements were funding J Street . One donor and member of the organization's finance committee, Genevieve Lynch, was a participant of the National Iranian American Council. Judith Barnett, a former registered agent for Saudi Arabia , is a donor and serves on the J Street Advisory Council. Nancy Dutton, until 2008 an attorney for the Saudi Arabian Embassy, donates to J Street 's political action committee which has been financing anti-Israeli congressional candidates....

Today Israel is undergoing a critical phase in its relationship with the US . The pressures on the Jewish state are not limited to calls to freeze settlements. In the aftermath of the toxic Goldstone report, Israelis travelling abroad may now face the threat of prosecution. Israel also faces the challenge of defining defensible borders and addressing the danger of a nuclear Iran . In these and other existential challenges, Israel is largely dependent on US support which J Street seeks to undermine.

There is no doubt that the vast majority of committed Jews are outraged by a Jewish organization whose principal raison d'être is to lobby the US to act harshly against Israel. ...

No one seeks to deny Israeli bashers freedom of expression. But there is a need to make the public aware that J Street represents an insignificant group of uncommitted Jews. It must be exposed as hostile to Israel and marginalized from the Jewish community. If Americans understand this, J Street 's ability to undermine Israel will largely be neutralized.

The "Goldstone Report" - A Critical Reprise

THE GOLDSTONE FACTOR
Yossi Klein Halevi
Adelson Institute, October 2, 2009

The Israeli reactions to the Goldstone report on the Gaza war of January 2009 have focused, understandably, on its outrageous omissions and distortions and one-sided judgments, as well as on the moral corruption of the report's sponsor, the UN's Human Rights Commission. But the far-reaching strategic implications of the Goldstone report require no less urgent consideration.

If a large part of the international community endorses the report's conclusions and opts to put Israel on trial-symbolically or literally-the clear message to Israel will be the rescinding of its right to self-defense against Hezbollah and Hamas, both of which are embedded in civilian populations. That will require a basic rethinking of Israel's current strategic policy of containing the terrorist enclaves on its northern and southern borders.

In the decades following the Six Day War, Israeli policy, upheld by successive Labor and Likud governments, was to deny terrorists a foothold along any Israeli border. That was, in part, the rationale behind Moshe Dayan's open bridges policy between Israel and Jordan in the 1970s, as well as Ariel Sharon's West Bank settlement drive and the 1982 invasion of Lebanon. When that war soured, so did the appeal of the policy that inspired it.

Israel's two unilateral withdrawals-from Lebanon in 2000 and Gaza in 2005-both resulted in the creation of terror enclaves on its borders, negating long-standing strategy. The policy of prevention was replaced by a policy of containment.

That policy of containment was expressed in the 2006 operation against Hezbollah in Lebanon, and by this year's operation against Hamas in Gaza. In both those mini-wars, Israel opted not to uproot the terrorist enclaves, hoping that the partial flexing of Israeli power would deter further aggression.

The Goldstone report may well mark the end of Israel's limited wars against terrorist groups. Israel cannot afford to continue to be drawn into mini-wars against terrorists hiding behind their own civilians to attack Israeli civilians, given that each such conflict inexorably draws the Jewish state one step closer toward pariah status. Limited victories on the battlefield are being turned into major defeats in the arena of world opinion.

That untenable situation may well leave Israel no choice but to return to the post-1967 policy of preventing altogether the presence of terror enclaves on its borders. Better, Israelis will argue, to deal decisively with the terror threat and brace for temporary international outrage than subject our legitimacy to constant attrition, even as the terrorist threat remains intact.

Israelis will be keenly watching the pace of Qassam rocket fire from Gaza for signs of an emboldened Hamas. If attacks do intensify-as they have sporadically in recent days-and the quiet achieved by the Gaza offensive is forfeited, the Israeli public will blame the Goldstone report. And Israelis' operative conclusions will likely lead to a less restrained response next time- the opposite result Judge Richard Goldstone sought to achieve in his apparent attempt to deny Israel the right to self-defense.

WHO'S BEING UNFAIR?
Richard Goldstone
Jerusalem Post, September 21, 2009

The responses from the government of Israel to the UN Fact-Finding Mission on Gaza have been deeply disappointing. The mission's mandate enabled Israel to bring its concerns and facts relating to Operation Cast Lead publicly before a UN inquiry. It could have been used by Israel to encourage the UN and especially the Human Rights Council to move in a new direction beneficial to the interests of Israel. I repeatedly requested the government of Israel to do that, and to meet with me in Jerusalem to discuss how the Fact-Finding Mission should approach its mandate.

Even after that approach was rejected, the mission sent a substantial list of questions to the government requesting information on issues in respect of which we proposed to report. We did not wish to make findings adverse to Israel public without having the benefit of the facts and its views on them. That request for information also fell on deaf ears.

So it is hardly fair for Israel to accuse the mission of "getting its facts wrong." In short, the benefits of an even-handed mandate from the Human Rights Council were squandered by Israel.

I am also surprised and disappointed that some critics of the Report have dismissed its criticisms of Hamas and other armed groups in Gaza, who have committed serious war crimes against the civilian population of southern Israel. These have been fully documented and the terror they have caused to so many has been comprehensively described and condemned. There has been criticism of the Report on the basis that it devotes disproportionate attention to the conduct of Israel. That was unavoidable considering the many incidents the mission was obliged to investigate in Gaza....

In its report on Operation Cast Lead, the government of Israel acknowledges in unequivocal terms that it considers itself bound by the norms of international humanitarian law. In particular, it recognizes the crucial principle of distinction-the legal requirement to protect civilians consistent with military necessity.

It cannot, I suggest, interpret that requirement of proportionality to mean that all members of Hamas are combatants. In that context, the government of Israel has not provided any explanation for the bombing of food factories, egg-producing chicken farms and what was the sole flour factory in Gaza. It has not explained why it destroyed or severely damaged thousands of homes. And it has not explained why the bombing on the first day of the military operations of densely populated civilian areas was timed for the busiest time on a weekday when the streets were full of people going about their business....

I still nurture the hope that in the coming days, people of goodwill in Israel and the occupied territories do some soul-searching and come to realize that unaccountability for serious violations of international law creates a barrier to peace.

The recognition of the humanity of all people-the recognition of Israel by Hamas and the recognition of the Palestinian right to self-determination-are both pre-requisites for peace. And I still nurture the hope that the facts contained in the Report of the Fact-Finding Mission will assist, even in a small way, to finding a peaceful way forward in the Middle East....

(Richard Goldstone leads the UN-mandated Gaza Fact-Finding Mission established
to investigate alleged crimes committed during Operation Cast lead earlier this year.
The Mission released its 575-page report last month.)

A BRITISH COMMANDER'S VIEW OF THE GAZA WAR
Richard Kemp
National Post, October 17, 2009

What follows is an oral statement delivered on Friday [Oct. 16] to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva by Col. Richard Kemp, the former commander of the British forces in Afghanistan.

I served with NATO and the United Nations; commanded troops in Northern Ireland, Bosnia and Macedonia; and participated in the Gulf War. I spent considerable time in Iraq since the 2003 invasion, and worked on international terrorism for the U.K. Government's Joint Intelligence Committee.

Mr. President, based on my knowledge and experience, I can say this: During Operation Cast Lead [the 2009 Israeli operation in Gaza], the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) did more to safeguard the rights of civilians in a combat zone than any other army in the history of warfare. Israel did so while facing an enemy that deliberately positioned its military capability behind the human shield of the civilian population.

Hamas, like Hezbollah, are expert at driving the media agenda. Both will always have people ready to give interviews condemning Israeli forces for war crimes. They are adept at staging and distorting incidents.

The IDF faces a challenge that we British do not have to face to the same extent. It is the automatic, Pavlovian presumption by many in the international media, and international human rights groups, that the IDF are in the wrong, that they are abusing human rights.

The truth is that the IDF took extraordinary measures to give Gaza civilians notice of targeted areas, dropping over two million leaflets, and making over 100,000 phone calls. Many missions that could have taken out Hamas military capability were aborted to prevent civilian casualties. During the conflict, the IDF allowed huge amounts of humanitarian aid into Gaza. To deliver aid virtually into your enemy's hands is, to the military tactician, normally quite unthinkable. But the IDF took on those risks.

Despite all of this, of course innocent civilians were killed. War is chaos and full of mistakes. There have been mistakes by the British, American and other forces in Afghanistan and in Iraq, many of which can be put down to human error. But mistakes are not war crimes. More than anything, the civilian casualties were a consequence of Hamas' way of fighting. Hamas deliberately tried to sacrifice their own civilians.

Mr. President, Israel had no choice apart from defending its people, to stop Hamas from attacking them with rockets. And I say this again: The IDF did more to safeguard the rights of civilians in a combat zone than any other army in the history of warfare.

(Col. Richard Kemp delivered his oral statement under the auspices of UN Watch,
a non-governmental organization based in Geneva whose mandate is to monitor
the performance of the United Nations by the yardstick of its own Charter.
For more information, please visit www.unwatch.org.)

UN'S GOLDSTONE REPORT GIVES COMFORT TO TERRORISTS
Yoram Elron
[Montreal] Gazette, October 18, 2009

The adoption of the Goldstone Report by the UN Human Rights Council, a misnomer if ever there was one, is yet another politically motivated attempt to undermine the right of Israel to defend itself against terrorism; and proof once more of that body's murky record in upholding its expressed mandate.

This fundamentally flawed report unfairly describes Israel's measures to defend its citizens from terrorist attacks as "war crimes," while essentially whitewashing Hamas's deliberate strategy of targeting civilians, operating within populated areas, and using of human shields.

By casting doubts over Israel's basic motivation for launching its operation against Hamas earlier this year, the report simply dismisses the eight-year-long barrage of more than 12,000 rockets endured by Israeli civilians in the south, and questions Israel's basic right to protect its citizens from harm. In fact, the Goldstone commission's findings blame Israel for even being rocketed in the first place, by labelling such attacks as "reprisals."

Consequently, the message conveyed by Justice Richard Goldstone and company is that terrorism pays.

However appalled by the report's findings, Israel is not at all surprised to see the UN deliver yet another political statement veiled in the jargon of a legal analysis. After all, what should one expect from a "fact-finding mission" commissioned by the Human Rights Council, a body whose obsession with Israel has led it to produce more resolutions condemning Israel than all other nations of the world combined. When a UN organ that is mandated to deal with human rights across the globe dedicates more time to Israel than to all other trouble-spots put together, it becomes blatantly clear that its agenda is set by clear political motives. In its blind zeal to demonize Israel, the HRC, a "guardian of human rights" whose membership includes the likes of Saudi Arabia, Cuba and Pakistan, to name a few, has now gone so far as to produce a document that effectively undermines every other democratic nation's fight against terrorism.

This is why it should come as no surprise that the mandate designed by the HRC for the Goldstone mission was so one-sided. In it, the HRC condemned Israel's "massive violations of human rights" and called for the dispatching of "a fact-finding mission to investigate all violations of international human rights law and international humanitarian law by the occupying power, Israel, against the Palestinian people." Not only did the mandate make no mention whatsoever of possible Palestinian violations, but it first established Israel's guilt, and then sent Goldstone to gather the evidence. As the queen said to Alice in Alice in Wonderland: "Verdict first, evidence later."...

The methodology of the mission itself, of course, was no less biased. The unprecedented holding of live telecast hearings clearly demonstrates that political considerations overruled legal prudence. What Gazan would dare to utter a word against the terrorist Hamas in such testimony? The fact that all witnesses were pre-screened and selected, and that none was asked obvious questions pertaining to terrorist activity or to the location of weapons caches supports concerns that this was indeed an orchestrated political campaign.

The Goldstone Report's attempt to present Israel's respected justice system as unable to examine the actions of its own military simply ignores the facts. Investigations by Israel's relevant authorities are indeed underway and its courts remain, as has always been the case, open to all-including Palestinians and NGOs-who seek redress....

The Goldstone Report not only rewards Hamas's terrorism and blatant crimes against humanity, but also undermines efforts to forge a lasting peace with our moderate Palestinian neighbours. Therefore, Israel calls upon all responsible nations to outright reject it.

(Yoram Elron is Consul-General of Israel for Quebec and the Atlantic provinces.)

GOLDSTONE BACKS AWAY FROM REPORT:
THE TWO FACES OF AN INTERNATIONAL POSEUR
Alan M. Dershowitz
Hudson New York, October 13, 2009

With so much (though not all) of the civilized world justly condemning (or ignoring) the Goldstone report for its distortion of the facts and its one-sided condemnation of Israel, Richard Goldstone himself now seems to be backing away from the report's conclusions-at least when he speaks to his Jewish audiences.

In an interview with Jewish Forward, Goldstone denied that his group had conducted "an investigation." Instead, it was what he called a "fact-finding mission" based largely on the limited "material we had." Since this "material" was cherry-picked by Hamas guides and spokesmen, Goldstone acknowledged that "if this was a court of law, there would have been nothing proven." He emphasized to the Forward that the report was no more than "a road map" for real investigators and that it contained no actual "evidence," of wrongdoing by Israel.

"Nothing proven!" No "evidence!" Only "a road map!" You wouldn't know any of that, of course, by reading the report itself or its accompanying media release....

It is as if there were two entirely different "Goldstone Reports." The first submitted to the United Nations and the second to the Jewish community. In speaking so differently to different "audiences," Goldstone is reminiscent of Yassir Arafat, who perfected the art of double-speak, by using bellicose language when addressing Arab audiences and more accommodating language when addressing western audiences.

Goldstone apparently lacked the courage to stand up to the other members and staffers of his commission and to insist that his clarifying language be included in the report itself. Nor did he have the courage to file a dissenting or concurring statement. Instead, he spoke out of both sides of his mouth, sending one message to those who read the actual report and a very different message to those who read his words in the Jewish Forward (and the New York Times for whom he wrote a more ameliorative op-ed on the day after the release of the Report). In doing so, he is trying to have it both ways.

Goldstone went so far as to tell the Forward that he himself "wouldn't consider it in any way embarrassing if many of the allegations turn out to be disproved." This is total nonsense. Goldstone has put his imprimatur-and his reputation-behind the reports' conclusions. The only reason anyone is paying any attention to yet another of the serial condemnatory reports by the United Nations Human Rights Council is because Richard Goldstone-a "distinguished" Jew-allegedly wrote it and signed on to its conclusions....

If Goldstone stands behind what he told the Forward, then he must come forward and condemn those who are treating his report as if the allegations were based on "evidence" and "proven." Don't hold your breath, because such a statement would be heard by both of Goldstone's audiences at the same time.

(Alan M. Dershowitz is the Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law at Harvard Law School.)

Please see our "Picks of the Week" for more opinions of the Goldstone Report by Alan Baker, Jay Sekulow and Brett Joshpe, Yossi Alpher, and Richard Goldstone.

Academia, Free-Speech, & "Psycho"-Intellectuals

A PROGRESSIVE FIRST FROM A CONSERVATIVE THINK TANK
Elliot Jager
Jerusalem Post, October 8, 2009

Ask Martin Kramer if spearheading the country's first liberal arts college isn't a daunting-maybe unachievable-goal in these hard times, and he invokes the name of his old friend Prof. Zvi Yavetz. The venerable historian, Kramer tells me, was part of a small group of scholars who helped to found Tel Aviv University, ex nihilo, in the 1950s. They gave their lectures in makeshift classrooms in Abu Kabir. As Kramer heard it, the vision of creating a world-class university, on a par with the already-existing Hebrew University of Jerusalem, that would teach everything from music to physics was hashed out by Yavetz and his contemporaries as they worked away "in miserable shacks." Kramer quotes Yavetz: "Students who were later to become great professors sat on first graders' chairs."

Relative to Yavetz, Kramer has certain advantages. All he is trying to do is bring to fruition a small liberal arts college that, if everything goes according to plan, will one day have an enrolment of 1,000 students. And he is doing it at the behest of Jerusalem's powerhouse Shalem Center.

EJ: Where did the idea of a college come from?

Kramer: The idea has been an aspiration of Shalem since the center's inception. In a way, the Shalem Center was the interim framework established until a kind of critical mass and reputation were achieved that would allow this step.

The 55-year-old president-designate of Shalem College, who spent 25 years at Tel Aviv University as a scholar of Middle East Studies, has made a name for himself outside academia as well, with the publication of Ivory Towers on Sand: The Failure of Middle Eastern Studies in America-a book which argued that many Middle East departments on US campuses had abandoned serious scholarship to become trendy bastions of shoddy research and anti-Western bias.

When Edward Said, the late Columbia University English professor who became an indefatigable advocate of the Palestinian Arab cause, challenged the scholarship of Bernard Lewis, Kramer's dissertation adviser and the doyen of Western Middle East experts, Kramer went on the offensive. He initiated a campaign to depoliticize and re-professionalize university Middle East Studies departments wherever they had fallen under the ideological sway of Said's followers....

When he first came to Tel Aviv University in the early '70s, Kramer reminisced, Middle East specialists were held in especially high esteem. "In those days, you didn't have Israeli academics, journalists and diplomats traveling about the Arab world," he said. Scholars who were fluent in Arabic-he named Shimon Shamir, [Itamar] Rabinovich and Haim Shaked as examples-became iconic figures. Israeli newspapers featured their interpretations of events in the Arab world.

Paradoxically, Kramer lamented, the ability of Israeli Middle East experts to illuminate what was happening in Arab and Muslim civilization diminished even as more of them began to travel to neighboring countries-in part because the newer generation of experts was more narrowly educated. Remedying this now-endemic pedagogical deficiency is one of the motivations driving Shalem College....

[A]n often myopic educational experience, Kramer argued, has created a generation of Israeli leaders who may know how to get things done, but have forgotten why they should bother. In contrast, the country's founding generation had a more rounded intellectual experience and was thus well-versed in Jewish and world history, said Kramer. "Go visit David Ben-Gurion's personal library in Tel Aviv and you can get an idea of the range of his knowledge and reading. Israelis...needed leaders who could explain where they had been and where they were going."...

For the challenges ahead, said Kramer, Israel needs a skilled military, a strong economic base and highly trained technocrats. Leaders of Israel's hi-tech sector recognized the need to produce thousands of engineers a year, Kramer noted, "and the system geared up to do just that.... But where are we going to produce that cadre of 100, 150, 250 people a year with a holistic view, who will be prepared for any eventuality and the sense of responsibility in going forward? I am a great admirer of Israel's universities, but they are focused on competing to enter the rankings of the top 50 universities in the world.... [T]here tends to be less attention paid to what goes on in the humanities and social sciences until someone in one of the departments writes an outrageous op-ed in some American newspaper that casts Israel in a bad light and attracts negative attention onto their university."...

Whether they specialize in Middle East Studies or in a combined program in philosophy, political theory and religion-other majors will be added over time-all students will be expected to master the same core curriculum that Kramer considers essential for a "learned person" aspiring to leadership of this country. It will run the gamut from Plato to Keynes, from the Hebrew Bible to Hobbes....

Ours is not a political project that is in some way different from the enterprise of the State of Israel itself. I was struck that the president of Ben-Gurion University recently felt it necessary to assert that her institution is "proudly Zionist." So I take it that it will not be counted as a strike against us that we see ourselves as a Zionist institution, too....

There is no doubt that various departments in various Israeli universities are not in line with the country's mainstream. But I think we are where the mainstream is in Israel today. Zionism isn't Left or Right. It's a commitment to Israel as the national home of the Jewish people. We plan to bring together outstanding scholars who share that commitment.... The heart of any educational institution is its faculty. It's not the buildings. The students graduate. But what gives a university or college its flavor is the faculty. We have a core of people who will be making appointments, who have shared values and who know how to respect the best scholarship," said Kramer....

"We've seen that value-free scholarship has infiltrated from the sciences-where it makes some sense-into the humanities and social sciences, where it is corrosive. Shalem will be looking for faculty whose values commit them to the Jewish people and to the State of Israel-the vessel for Jewish survival. Yet this will not be a school for the indoctrination of Zionism. When you look at our curriculum, you see that we don't actually come to the history of Israel until the second semester of the fourth year. Why? Because we think that the Zionist conclusion emerges only from the full reading of Jewish history and Western history and philosophy."...

Shalem has always operated on the battleground of ideas, melding Diaspora creativity and money with an Israeli stubbornness that, said Kramer, does not accept failure as an option. It is this track record, Kramer told me, that persuaded him to take on an assignment that seeks a different path for Israeli higher education.

ACADEMIA GOES SILENT ON FREE SPEECH
Peter Berkowitz
Wall Street Journal, October 17, 2009

Professors have a professional interest in-indeed a professional duty to uphold-liberty of thought and discussion. But in recent years, precisely where they should be most engaged and outspoken they have been apathetic and inarticulate.

Consider Yale. On Oct. 1, the university hosted Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard. His drawing of Muhammad with a bomb in his turban became the best known of 12 cartoons published by the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten in September 2005. That led to deadly protests throughout the Muslim world. On the same day, at an unrelated event, Yale hosted Brandeis Prof. Jytte Klausen. Her new book, "The Cartoons that Shook the World," was subject in August to a last minute prepublication decision by Yale President Richard Levin and Yale University Press to remove not only the 12 cartoons but also all representations of Muhammad, including respected works of art.

The Westergaard appearance inspired protests.Muslim students condemned Yale's invitation to the cartoonist as religiously and racially insensitive, compared him to Holocaust deniers and white supremacists, and declared his art and utterances hate speech rather than free speech.... It is to be hoped that those who opposed Mr. Westergaard's invitation will learn at Yale that the aim of liberal education is not to guard their sensitivities but to teach them to listen to diverse opinions and fortify them to respond with better arguments to those with whom they disagree.

Mr. Westergaard's appearance did prompt a small faculty-led panel discussion on Oct. 7. It dealt mainly with Muslim reaction to the cartoons, though Prof. Seyla Benhabib said that in Ms. Klausen's position she would have withdrawn the book. But generally the faculty has been unmoved by Yale's censorship of Ms. Klausen's book, which suggests that lessons in the fundamentals of liberty of thought and discussion may be lacking on campus....

Can't rights, including freedom of speech and press, be limited to accommodate other rights and goods? What if reprinting the cartoons and other depictions gave thugs and extremists a new opportunity to inflame passions and unleash violence? Can't the consequences of the cartoons' original publication be understood without reproducing them? Weren't the cartoons really akin, as Yale Senior Lecturer Charles Hill pointed out in a letter to the Yale Alumni magazine, to the depictions of Jews as grotesque monsters that successive American administrations have sought to persuade Arab newspapers to cease publishing? And isn't it true, as Mr. Hill also observed, that Yale's obligation to defend free speech does not oblige it to subsidize gratuitously offensive or intellectually worthless speech?

These are good questions-to which there are good answers.

Rights are subject to limits, but a right as fundamental to the university and the nation as freedom of speech and press should only be limited in cases of imminent danger and not in deference to speculation about possible violence at an indeterminate future date.... Even if the cartoons exhibited a kinship to anti-Semitic caricatures, it would cut in favor of publication: a scholar would be derelict in his duties if he published a work on anti-Semitic images without including examples. And finally, if Yale chooses to publish a rigorous analysis of the Danish cartoon controversy, which affected the national interest and roiled world affairs, then the university does incur a scholarly obligation to include all the relevant information and evidence including the cartoons at the center, regardless of whether they are in themselves gratuitously offensive and intellectually worthless.

The wonder is that Yale's censorship has excited so little debate at Yale. The American Association of University Professors condemned Yale for caving in to terrorists' "anticipated demands." And a group of distinguished alumni formed the Yale Committee for a Free Press and published a letter protesting Yale's "surrender to potential unknown belligerents" and calling on the university to correct its error by reprinting Ms. Klausen's book with the cartoons and other images intact. But the Yale faculty has mostly yawned. Even the famously activist Yale Law School has, according to its director of public affairs, sponsored no programs on censorship and the university.

Alas, there is good reason to suppose that in its complacency about threats to freedom on campus the Yale faculty is typical of faculties at our leading universities.... [P]rofessors from other universities haven't had much to say in defense of liberty of thought and discussion either. This silence represents a collective failure of America's professors of colossal proportions. What could be a clearer sign of our professors' loss of understanding of the requirements of liberal education than their failure to defend liberty of thought and discussion where it touches them most directly?

(Peter Berkowitz is a fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution.)

"PSYCHOACTIVE" AGAINST ISRAEL
Petra Marquardt-Bigman
JPost.com BlogCentral, October 18, 2009

What a bizarre title, you may be thinking-and you're right. But it only reflects how bizarre things can get when you venture out to the fringes where it's fashionable to demonize Israel as a uniquely evil force in today's world. It wouldn't be worth writing about...were it not for the fact that when it comes to demonizing Israel, nothing is too absurd to get aired in respectable media outlets or at academic conferences; indeed, there are even prestigious awards to be won.

A good example is former Israeli lawyer and political activist Felicia Langer, who was recently awarded Germany's "Federal Merit Cross, First Class." Langer, who has lived in Germany for some 20 years, has made a name for herself as a fierce critic of Israel who wouldn't even shy away from language that suggests comparisons between the Jewish state and Nazi Germany. Reportedly, she left Israel out of protest and has explained that she made "a politically conscious choice for Germany...because I understood with what brutality and sophistication Israel was exploiting the Germans' guilt."...

Recently I came across an article that railed against the "tropes of 'Jewish antisemitism'" and dismissed the "concept of the 'self-hating Jew'," which was described as having been "dignified with a pseudo-psychopathology by those keen to suppress dissent." The writer, Antony Lerman, is a regular contributor to the Guardian's "Comment is Free" blog, and this was not the first time that he expressed his passionate rejection of the concept of Jewish "self-hatred." One of the previous occasions was in Lerman's recent review of a book by Chief Rabbi Sir Jonathan Sacks, whom Lerman criticized sharply:

He wants space for dissident voices, yet repeatedly gives credence to the notion of Jewish self-hatred, a bogus concept that serves no other purpose than to demonize Jewish dissent. He calls on Jews not to see all criticism of Israel as anti-Semitism, but he endorses wholesale the idea of the "new anti-Semitism"-basically, that Israel is the Jew among the nations-which licenses Jews to do precisely what he says they shouldn't....

While I myself have reservations about the concept of Jewish "self-hatred"-though for very different reasons than Lerman-it seems to me that his thinking on the matter is rather confused. To give just one example, consider his assertion: "Far from being the antithesis of Jewish self-hatred, it is arguable that Zionism was actually a display of it." Really?

Moreover, in his most recent article, Lerman hardly helped his case when he praised a conference held last week at Birkbeck, University of London, which explored the subject "Sites of Conflict: Psycho-political Resistance in Israel-Palestine." Lerman explained that this conference "was prompted by the work of a group called Psychoactive-Mental Health Professionals for Human Rights" and he highlighted the contribution of Professor Uri Hadar of Tel Aviv University, an Israeli psychologist, who "sought to explain 'Israeli brutality towards Palestinians and what enables it.'"

According to Lerman, Hadar presented a "troublingly controversial" argument by suggesting "that Israel has never been properly able to mourn the mass murder of six million Jews, thus never properly assimilating it into the Israeli psyche, and that this has led to [a] 'full-blown Palestinian Holocaust being part of an unconscious Israeli itinerary.'"...

A recent article written by some of the members of the "psychoactive" group whose work inspired the Birkbeck conference throws some light on their own "psychoactivity." In an article published in September, members of the group describe their emotions during and after Israel's military campaign against Gaza. They note that due to their opposition to the Gaza campaign, they felt "a sense of deep disconnection from the Israeli collective." At the same time, it seems that the efforts of the group members to remain engaged in a mutually supportive dialogue with their colleagues in Gaza, the West Bank and Israeli Arab communities were not all that rewarding:

The fact that we were activists speaking out against the attack did not really count in our favour: we were perceived as part of the attacking entity and hence as an address for expressions of frustration and outrage. [...] From time to time the Jewish participants came up with calls for Palestinians to express their disavowal of Hamas or their recognition of the suffering of the Jewish citizens of Sderot or the Gaza area. Such demands were perceived as non-legitimate by most Palestinians.... Whether consciously or not, we expected to receive recognition and acknowledgement in our activities, and to assert the difference between ourselves and the Jewish majority. We needed to confirm our humanity and morality through its appreciation by the Palestinian participants. When this did not quite happen, we found ourselves, again, coping with a sense of isolation and loneliness."

When the bar for the sought-after "recognition" is set so high, some real effort is required-like talk about a "full-blown Palestinian Holocaust being part of an unconscious Israeli itinerary" during a conference in London. That should do the trick and get the Jewish group members the desperately sought "recognition and acknowledgement," and help them "to assert the difference between ourselves and the Jewish majority" by confirming their "humanity and morality through its appreciation by the Palestinian participants."

Obviously, this is the perfect description of what is usually meant by "self-hatred." But this example also provides a perfect illustration why this concept is problematic: the "psychoactivity" described here has nothing to do with self-hatred; to the contrary, it reveals a sense of superiority that sets a small self-appointed "elite" apart from an inferior majority that is unable and unwilling to live up to the lofty standards this elite holds dear. But what can you do: in Israel, it just isn't everybody's thing to hold out for a pat on the back and a heart-felt "well done" from people who see no reason to disavow Hamas.

(Petra Marquardt-Bigman is an Israel-based freelance writer
and researcher with a Ph.D. in contemporary history.)

Shabbat Shalom to all our readers.

Afghanistan: Lessons Learned & Unlearned

AFGHANISTAN ANGST
Amir Taheri
New York Post, October 22, 2009

After two months of bickering over alleged fraud, Afghan authorities have agreed to hold a run-off of the presidential election on Nov. 7. Three things are certain:

The processing of the Aug. 20 vote took two months and was abandoned before completion. If experience is any indication, whoever wins on Nov. 7 will need weeks, if not months, to form an administration. In the meantime, the advent of Afghanistan's harsh winter could herald a lull in insurgent activities. That could deprive the McChrystal message of its urgency, enabling the administration to continue wiggling out of making strategic choices that might prove risky in US domestic political terms.

Although hailed as a sign of Afghan democracy, the run-off is full of risks. It could divide Afghans along ethnic and sectarian lines. Security problems will mean a reduction in the number of polling centers in the predominantly Pashtun areas where the insurgency is most active. That would deprive Karzai of a portion of the votes that he easily won last August. A lower turnout among Pashtuns would make Karzai more dependent on Uzbek and Shiite Hazara votes. That would mean the virtual isolation of the Tajiks, some 36 percent of the population, who are likely to vote for their "favorite son," Dr. Abdullah Zamariani.

The problem is that, thanks to higher rates of literacy and urbanization, the Tajiks account for a disproportionate percentage of the Afghan civil- and military-service personnel. Thus, if Karzai wins, he'd have to work with a state machinery dominated by people who voted against him. Washington's "arrogant posture" could push a victorious Karzai further toward Iran as the foreign ally that Afghanistan needs once the Americans withdraw.

Karzai has signaled his strategic leaning toward Tehran by naming two pro-Iran politicians as his vice-presidential running mates. One, Gen. Muhammad Qassim Fahim, a former Mujahedeen commander, makes no secret of his anger at "the way Americans treat us like children." The second is Abdul-Karim Khalili, a Shiite scholar trained in the Iranian "holy" city of Qom and a vocal critic of the US "occupation."...

A third figure, this time in the shadows, completes the triumvirate that could emerge as the power behind the throne in a second Karzai administration. He is former ethnic Uzbek "warlord" Gen. Abdul-Rashid Dostum, who was forced into exile in Turkey under pressure from Washington. Last August, Karzai called him back home to help mobilize the Uzbek vote.

Because of his background, political convictions and temperament, Karzai may remain a pro-US politician. Nevertheless, his confidants say, he feels "betrayed and hurt" by Washington. That feeling is shared by many in the new Afghan political and military elite, the very people whose cooperation President Obama would need when and if he manages to work out a strategy for Afghanistan.

FOLLOWING IN MOSCOW'S FOOTSTEPS
Sebastian Gorka
National Post, October 16, 2009

General Stanley McChrystal's recently leaked report on the prospects for stabilizing Afghanistan contained no substantive surprises. The message from America's commander on the ground was that he is under-resourced, and that corruption is rampant among his Afghan governmental partners....

Gen. McChrystal repeatedly called for...a strategy that will address the drastic shortfalls in men and finances, and cleanse Afghanistan's political and bureaucratic structures of undesirable elements. The subtext is that America currently doesn't have any real strategy. Eight years after the 9/11 attacks, we have sent American men and women into harm's way without explaining to them how they will pacify a part of the world that has bested more than one empire in the past few centuries.

The first step is to answer the question: What is our ultimate goal in Afghanistan? Over the last eight years, the answers have ranged from making sure al-Qaeda cannot attack us again to creating a representative and effective government serving the Afghan people. These are two very different aims, existing at opposite ends of a broad spectrum. Until Barack Obama definitively articulates America's goal, we should remind ourselves of the basic facts in Afghanistan....

Afghanistan is 150% bigger than Iraq -- and as large as Texas, but with terrain that is far more challenging. Afghanistan's population is roughly comparable in size to that of California or Canada -- but with more than 30 local languages. About 10% of the population is involved in Afghanistan's world-beating drug trade. At the same time, the Afghan National Police force stands at just 50,000 uniformed officers or so.... New York City's police force comprises just under 40,000. These characteristics make Afghanistan one of the most difficult, if not the most difficult, counterinsurgency scenarios that any modern state has ever faced.

Consider the U.S.S.R.'s experience in Afghanistan. Whilst recently teaching a course on strategic thought to members of the U.S. armed forces and other government agencies, I asked my students: What would the Russians have had to do in order to win in Afghanistan during their campaign there in the 1980s?

Obviously, numbers and brute force alone didn't work. Washington is debating whether or not to add to the 60,000 troops already deployed. But the U.S.S.R. had up to 104,000 soldiers in theatre.... [My] students knew that they needed to home in on the three factors that led to Russia's defeat, and which NATO will now have to deal with should they wish to tame Afghanistan in any lasting way: The presence of a federal leader who is a member of the majority Pashtun ethnic group, but who is recognized by and able to make lasting deals with the Tajik, Uzbek and Hazara groups; [t]he ability to co-opt the most significant tribal players; and [t]he ability to cut off the insurgents' sanctuary across the porous border with Pakistan....

How are we faring in regard to these three factors?

Regarding the question of Afghanistan's leadership, it would seem that Hamid Karzai, though Pashtun, does not enjoy the level of recognition and influence needed to maintain national unity.

Has America co-opted the most important tribal leaders and warlords? In the early years, millions of dollars were distributed to people identified by the CIA and State Department as leaders who could stabilize the most dangerous regions in the South and East. But most did not stay "bought." Here, there is a cultural obstacle. Americans do not generally like the idea of having to buy the favour of political actors, especially when we are at the same time attempting to establish representative government....

The third and last factor listed above is, of course, strongly connected to the second. The lifeline of any insurgency...is dictated by the lines of retreat and sanctuary. All insurgencies start small and must choose their battles with the government until they have adequately built a counter-state and are in a position to challenge federal forces openly from permanent in-theatre bases. As long as entry and exit into and out of Pakistan is not controlled by U.S. forces, the Afghan National Army or Pakistan, our soldiers and innocent people will continue to be killed in Afghanistan.

This is exactly the same trap we fell into in Vietnam: Cambodia and Laos were never fully taken out of the equation as enemy sanctuaries. As a result, the insurgency could always recruit, regroup and resupply. In Southeast Asia, for political reasons, we enabled a war of attrition to be implemented against us. We are doing so again.

Did America deploy to Afghanistan to create a nation-state in a region that knows neither nation nor state? Or did we send Americans into the Hindu Kush to make sure another 9/11 never happens? These strategic goals are very different -- and they require different tools and methods to pursue. Hopefully, the U.S. President will soon decide which goal we are fighting for, and provide our forces with the resources to match.

(Sebastian L.v. Gorka, PhD, is founding director of the Institute for Transitional Democracy
and International Security, associate fellow of the Joint Special Operations University,
and military affairs fellow with the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies.)

THERE'S NO SUBSTITUTE FOR TROOPS ON THE GROUND
Max Boot
New York Times, October 22, 2009

"I hope people who say this war is unwinnable see stories like this. This is what winning in a counterinsurgency looks like." Lt. Col. William F. McCollough, commander of the First Battalion, Fifth Marine Regiment, is walking me around the center of Nawa, a poor, rural district in southern Afghanistan's strategically vital Helmand River Valley. His Marines, who now number more than 1,000, arrived in June to clear out the Taliban stronghold. Two weeks of hard fighting killed two Marines and wounded 70 more but drove out the insurgents. Since then the colonel's men, working with 400 Afghan soldiers and 100 policemen, have established a "security bubble" around Nawa.

Colonel McCollough recalls that when they first arrived the bazaar was mostly shuttered and the streets empty. "This town was strangled by the Taliban," he says. "Anyone who was still here was beaten, taxed or intimidated." Today, Nawa is flourishing. Seventy stores are open, according to the colonel, and the streets are full of trucks and pedestrians. Security is so good we were able to walk around without body armor -- unthinkable in most of Helmand, the country's most dangerous province. The Marines are spending much of their time not in firefights but in clearing canals and building bridges and schools. On those rare occasions when the Taliban try to sneak back in to plant roadside bombs, the locals notify the Marines.

The key to success in Nawa -- and in other key districts from Garmsir in the south to Baraki Barak in the center -- has been the infusion of additional United States troops. The overall American force in Afghanistan has grown to 68,000 from 32,000 in 2008. That has made it possible to garrison parts of the country where few if any soldiers had been stationed before.... The chronic troop shortfall made it impossible to carry out the kind of population-centric counterinsurgency strategy that has paid off in countries from Malaya to Iraq. NATO forces could enter any district but not hold it. As soon as they left, the Taliban would return to wreak vengeance on anyone who had cooperated with them....

Now the coalition has enough troops to carry out a "clear, hold and build" strategy -- but only in a few districts. Overall force levels remain far below what they were in Iraq during the surge -- when 174,000 foreign troops worked with 430,000 Iraqi security personnel. Afghanistan, which is bigger than Iraq, has just 102,000 coalition troops and 175,000 local security forces. That is why Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top American commander in Afghanistan, has submitted his controversial request for 40,000 additional troops. He emphasizes that this is not an inflated figure but the bare minimum required to roll back a tough, determined foe.

Some in the White House and Congress imagine that our troops can muddle along at current levels while training the Afghan security forces to take over. But this ignores the brutal logic of war: Either you have the initiative or the enemy does.

In the past few years, the Taliban have been on the march. They have been able to bring large areas of eastern and southern Afghanistan under their sway. If President Obama rejects or waters down General McChrystal's request, he would be sending a terrible message of irresolution that would embolden the Taliban and dismay any Afghans tempted to cooperate with coalition forces. If, on the other hand, the president were to back his commander, the general would be able to maintain and build on the momentum generated by this summer's operations.

During 10 days spent in Afghanistan at the invitation of Gen. David Petraeus, the head of Central Command, I observed that a difficult task has been further complicated by the checkered results of the Afghan election. But what seems to be conspicuously absent from the conversation in the United States is the realization that Afghanistan's corruption problem, like its security problem, can be best addressed by additional troops. Given what I saw and heard on my visit, I believe it is indeed possible to get Afghanistan's politicos to do a better job -- you just have to watch them closely. That's what soldiers from the Third Brigade, 10th Mountain Division, are doing in Baraki Barak, a district of Logar Province south of Kabul, under the command of Lt. Col. Tom Gukeisen....

Colonel Gukeisen's soldiers have thrown a security cordon around Baraki Barak. Inside they are carrying out what they call an "extreme makeover." Working with a support team from the State Department, they are dispensing aid dollars and enhancing the authority of the local governor, whose new district center is next to a joint Afghan-American combat outpost. "If you're not sticking next to the Afghans," one American officer tells me, "they're going to hell." But if United States soldiers and officials do stick close by their Afghan counterparts, substantial improvements are possible. Nawa and Baraki Barak make that clear.

Poor governance is an argument for, not against, a troop surge. Only by sending more personnel, military and civilian, can President Obama improve the Afghan government's performance, reverse the Taliban's gains and prevent Al Qaeda's allies from regaining the ground they lost after 9/11.

(Max Boot is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.)

Please see our "Picks of the Week" for Max Boot's breakdown of "How We Can Win", as well as analyses by Ralph Peters, George Friedman and Reva Bhalla of the challenges we face in Afghanistan.

Wednesday's "News In Review" Round-Up

Mediaocrity of the Week: "[W]e do have an update involving talk show host Rush Limbaugh and the controversy over his effort to help buy an NFL football team. Limbaugh denies he said quote, 'slavery has its merits,' it was a quote that appeared on MSNBC this past Monday and Tuesday. MSNBC attributed that quote to a football player [linebacker James Farrior] who was opposed to Limbaugh's NFL bid. However, we have been unable to verify that quote independently. So, just to clarify."-MSNBC Friday co-host David Shuster admitting that racially charged quotes he and other hosts attributed to U.S. conservative radio talk show personality Rush Limbaugh were unverified. There has been no formal retraction or apology of the quote, nor has Limbaugh been invited back into the investing group bidding on the St. Louis Rams NFL franchise. ( Media Research Center , October 19 )

Weekly Quotes

"It would be reckless to make a decision on U.S. troop levels if...you haven't done a thorough analysis of whether, in fact, there's an Afghan partner ready to fill that space that the U.S. troops would create and become a true partner in governing the Afghan country." -- White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, arguing that the U.S. government should assess the stability and commitment of any new Afghan government before deciding whether or not to deploy more U.S. soldiers. President Obama has yet to decide on a policy for salvaging Afghanistan . "It would be entirely irresponsible for the president of the United States to commit more troops to this country when we don't even have an election finished." (Washington Post, Oct. 19)

"China 's position on the Iranian nuclear issue has been consistent and clear-cut. We support maintaining the international nonproliferation regime. In this sense, we are strongly against the idea that the Iranians should develop nuclear weapons... And at the same time, we believe that each country, according to the non-proliferation nuclear weapons treaty, has the right to utilize nuclear power in a peaceful way and for a peaceful purpose." -- China 's ambassador to Israel , Zhao Jun, in an interview with the Jerusalem Post, explaining, in principle, Chinese opposition to an Iranian nuclear arms program. Last year, trade between China and Israel exceeded $6.4 billion. (Jerusalem Post, Oct. 16)

"[Russia's] sorry lesson [to Obama] began last month, when the president unilaterally scrapped plans to deploy an Eastern European missile-defense shield meant to take out incoming Iranian missiles. The decision broke a Bush administration pledge to U.S. allies in Poland and the Czech Republic. But Obama officials spun it as a gesture meant to improve relations with Russia , especially in dealing with Iran 's growing threat." -- A New York Post editorial, arguing that the Obama administration has been outmanoeuvred by Russia in the diplomatic arena. Since the Obama administration cancelled the missile defence program in Eastern Europe to placate the Russians -- much to the chagrin of the Eastern European countries who would benefit from increased U.S. protection against Russia -- the Russians have reciprocated by stonewalling American efforts at building a case for sanctions against Iran . (New York Post, Oct. 18)

"...I fully understand how when someone is attacked... that there is a responsibility to protect oneself and protect civilians.... I have just had a great education in terms of where weapons were fired from [ Gaza at Israel ] and so on. I want to look at the [Goldstone] report in terms of how does it describe [Operation Cast Lead]...

"I'm not sure if the Israeli standpoint is that much different than the Canadian standpoint, having had the experience in Afghanistan. ... We have really come to understand and appreciate what the Israeli forces have had to counter for quite some time and the techniques, the way and the procedures that the Israeli military has adopted and evolved over the past few decades. We're learning what can we adopt from Israeli forces that will enable us to reduce risks to our people." -- Canadian Armed Forces Chief of the Defence Staff General Walter J. Natynczyk, speaking to the IDF magazine BeMachaneh, in Israel. Gen. Natynczyk, in Israel for a three-day working visit, met with IDF Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi, and Defense Minister Ehud Barak. He was also briefed by senior IDF staff on Israel 's strategic position in the region. (Jerusalem Post, Oct. 21)

"The reality is that every would-be immigrant in the world knows that Canada ranks at the top in its treatment of minorities, thanks to its constitutional guarantees, independent judiciary, elected parliament, vigorous civil society and free press -- that all can speak for affected minorities and provide remedies where needed.... But there is not a single domestic institution that will speak for the two million black African migrants persecuted in Libya , the ethnic minorities oppressed in Tibet , or the women subjugated in Saudi Arabia . That is precisely where an international voice would be vital." -- Hillel Neuer, Executive Director of UN Watch in Geneva, discussing the hypocrisy of the UN investigating Canada for human rights violations instead of countries such as China , Cuba and Chechnya . Gay McDougall, the U.N.'s chief monitor for the government treatment of minorities, has picked Canada as her eighth investigative destination since her appointment in 2005. Her previous targets have included France, Greece and the Dominican Republic. (National Post, Oct. 16)

"One thing is clear... Arabs will not dictate to us when to go up to the Temple Mount." -- Rabbi Shmuel Rabinovitz stating that Jewish law, not the Arab world, determines when Jews can go up to the Temple Mount and when they cannot. Since 1967, when the site first came under Israel's control, "the majority of rabbis, including the heads of religious Zionism...ruled that it was forbidden to go up to the Temple Mount...The reason we are not allowed to go up is because the Temple Mount is our Holy of Holies, and we have not merited being able to purify ourselves as we need to. We hope to go up there. But the time has not come." According to Jewish law, it is forbidden to ascend the Temple Mount while being in a state of ritual impurity. (Jerusalem Post, Oct. 16)

"During Operation Cast Lead, the Israeli Defense Forces did more to safeguard the rights of civilians in a combat zone than any other army in the history of warfare. Israel did so while facing an enemy that deliberately positioned its military capability behind the human shield of the civilian population.

"Hamas, like Hezbollah, are expert at driving the media agenda. Both will always have people ready to give interviews condemning Israeli forces for war crimes. They are adept at staging and distorting incidents.... "[There is an] automatic, Pavlovian presumption by many in the international media, and international human rights groups, that the IDF are in the wrong, that they are abusing human rights. The truth is that the IDF took extraordinary measures to give Gaza civilians notice of targeted areas.... Many missions that could have taken out Hamas military capability were aborted to prevent civilian casualties. During the conflict, the IDF allowed huge amounts of humanitarian aid into Gaza . To deliver aid virtually into your enemy's hands is, to the military tactician, normally quite unthinkable. But the IDF took on those risks.

"Despite all of this, of course innocent civilians were killed. War is chaos and full of mistakes.... But mistakes are not war crimes. More than anything, the civilian casualties were a consequence of Hamas' way of fighting. Hamas deliberately tried to sacrifice their own civilians." -- British Colonel Richard Kemp, defending Israel in a speech to the U.N. during last Friday's debate on the Goldstone Report. Kemp spoke on behalf of UN Watch, an independent Geneva-based human rights group which monitors the human rights record of the UN. A video of his speech became one of the top 100 viewed videos on Youtube last week. Despite Israeli lobbying efforts, the U.N. Human Rights Council endorsed the Goldstone Report with a vote of 25-6, with eleven abstentions, on Oct. 16, sending it on to more powerful U.N. bodies in New York for action. (Jerusalem Post, UN Watch, October 16. To see the video of Col. Kemp's speech, follow this link.)

Short Takes

PAKISTAN MOUNTS MAJOR OFFENSIVE AGAINST TALIBAN -- (Dera Ismail Khan, Pakistan) Initial reports suggest that the fighting in South Waziristan , pitting the Pakistani army against Taliban insurgents, is very heavy, with most of the combat taking place around the Taliban stronghold of Makeen. The army launched a three-pronged attack on Saturday to expel the Taliban presence from South Waziristan , which is responsible for 80 percent of recent terrorist attacks in the country. In the twelve days prior to the operation, more than 166 were killed in a wave of terror attacks. (Globe and Mail, October 21)

TERROR ATTACK AT PAKISTANI ISLAMIC SCHOOL MYSTIFIES STUDENTS -- (Islamabad ) Two suicide bombers struck The International Islamic University, one of Pakistan 's premier conservative, gender-segregated schools, killing six people and wounding dozens. The attack has mystified Pakistani students, including Erum Yasir, visiting from New Jersey, who said "When I heard that it was Islamic University, I wondered why an Islamic institution would come under attack." Pakistani interior minister Rehman Malik said that "the attack here is to tell the Muslims of the world that Pakistan is not safe for anyone." (New York Times, October 21)

REVOLUTIONARY GUARD COMMANDERS KILLED IN BOMBING -- (Riyadh , Saudi Arabia) At least five commanders of Iran 's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps were killed -- in addition to 37 others -- and dozens more wounded in two bombings along the Pakistani border. The attack is the result of hostilities between Iran 's Shiite leadership and the Sunni Baluchi minority insurgent group, Jundallah, which took responsibility for the bombings. Iranian officials accused foreign powers of supporting Jundallah. The strike against the Revolutionary Guards has great symbolic meaning, as they have emerged as the most powerful political, social and economic bloc in Iran since the July 12 presidential elections, eclipsing even the clergy. (NTY, October 19)

IRAN AGREES TO NUCLEAR REFINEMENT DEAL -- (Vienna) International Atomic Energy Agency head Mohamed ElBaradei has confirmed that Iranian negotiators have agreed to a draft deal that would send most of Iran 's nuclear material to Russia for processing. The deal would still require ratification by Iranian leaders. The deal is purported to be the same deal originally proposed by the IAEA, in which Iran would ship 75 percent of its enriched uranium to Russia where it would be turned into metal fuel rods for use in a small research reactor in Teheran. David Albright, of the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security, said that any such deal would buy only a limited amount of time, as Teheran could replace the uranium sent to Russia in a year. (Jer. Post, Oct. 21)

U.S. CONSIDERS INTEL RE-TELL -- (Washington) The controversial 2007 National Intelligence Estimate which assessed that Teheran had halted its efforts to build nuclear weapons in 2003, has been heavily criticized in light of a series of revelations regarding Iran 's ongoing nuclear weapons program. The 2003 assessment from 16 U.S. intelligence bodies stated with "high confidence" that Iran had halted its program in 2003 and with "moderate confidence" that as of mid-2007 Iran had not resumed the program. Now some officials are suggesting that it should be rewritten. A new assessment likely wouldn't be available for months, since the U.S. and its allies have imposed an informal December deadline for Iran to comply with Western demands that it cease enriching uranium or face economic sanctions. (Wall Street Journal, October 19)

SYRIAN LONG RANGE MISSILES TRANSFERRED TO HEZBOLLAH -- (Jerusalem) According to the Kuwaiti newspaper Al Jarida, Syria has supplied Hezbollah with 25 percent of its arsenal of medium and long range ballistic missiles. The Kuwaiti paper quoted Israeli security sources. According to the report, since Syria does not want to enter a direct confrontation with Israel , it is aiding both Hezbollah and Hamas as its proxies, and it has given Hezbollah access to any weapon in its arsenal. Moreover, according to Al Jarida, Iranian and Syrian officers are training Hezbollah terrorists how to fire the new missiles, as well as how to operate Russian- and Chinese-made early warning radar systems now operating in Lebanon. (Jerusalem Post, Ha'aretz, Oct. 15)

ISRAEL , U.S. CARRY OUT JOINT AIR FORCE DRILLS -- (Jerusalem) USAF and IAF units will begin operation Juniper Cobra 10, the largest missile defence drill yet, today. Over 1,000 soldiers from each nation will participate, testing Israel 's Arrow 2 anti-ballistic missile system, the U.S. AEGIS anti-missile system, as well as the Patriot 3 missile system. The drill will also include U.S. and Israeli naval vessels, and radar stations across Israel. The test comes in the wake of Iran 's May test-firing of a solid fuel ballistic missile able to reach Israel and Europe. (Jerusalem Post, October 21)

WORLD POWERS OPPOSE GOLDSTONE REPORT -- (Jerusalem) Susan Rice, the U.S. envoy to the UN, declared that the United States would continue to stand by Israel as a loyal friend in the fight against the Goldstone report, which accuses the IDF of war crimes and crimes against humanity. The report also calls on the UN Security Council (UNSC) to refer the matter to the International Criminal Court at The Hague to prosecute Israeli officials for war crimes. Chinese officials told a visiting Israeli delegation that China would oppose discussing the Goldstone report at the UNSC, although it endorsed the report at the UN Human Rights Council, as did Russia, earlier this week. (Ha'aretz, October 21)

EX-NASA SCIENTIST AGREED TO SPY FOR ISRAEL -- (Chevy Chase) Stewart David Nozette, a former NASA scientist credited with discovering evidence of water on the Moon, was arrested this week for attempting to communicate, deliver, and transmit classified information to an FBI agent posing as an Israeli intelligence officer. The arrest does not implicate the government of Israel or anyone acting on its behalf. The affidavit alleges he agreed to provide regular, continuing information and asked for an Israeli passport. U.S. and Israeli reports also allege that Nozette consulted with Israel Aerospace Agencies, the country's largest exporter of defence and aerospace technology. (Ha'aretz, October 20)

KARZAI AGREES TO NOV. 7 RUNOFF VOTE -- (Kabul ) U.S. Sen. John F. Kerry spent four days meeting with Afghan Pres. Hamid Karzai who has now reluctantly agreed to a run-off election. The August 20 Afghan election is widely regarded to have been fraudulent, leading the Obama Administration and its NATO allies to press for a runoff between him and former foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah. Discussions have also begun regarding a power-sharing agreement between Karzai and Abdullah, the runner-up in the last election, in order to better-consolidate the Afghan government in the face of mounting Taliban terror. (Globe and Mail, Washington Post, October 21)

Turkey's Loss -- A Strategic Blow to Israel

AN OPEN LETTER TO MY TURKISH FRIENDS
Efraim Inbar
Jerusalem Post, October 6, 2009

For years I have been active in Israel-Turkey relations, traveling often to that beautiful country, writing about it and acquiring many good friends there. The Begin-Sadat Center (BESA) for Strategic Studies, which I direct, pioneered Israeli-Turkish academic dialogues and made it its business to educate Israelis about the nature and the strategic importance of Turkey by organizing symposia and lectures. Turkish academics, journalists, and political and religious leaders were always welcome at BESA. I believe that the Israeli-Turkish strategic partnership is of utmost importance and value to both countries, and to the West. As result of being a philo-Turk, some Israelis even have called me "Mr. Turkey ."

AS A true friend of that country, I am today greatly concerned. The Turkey I have learned to admire seems, unfortunately, to be sliding in the wrong direction.

In contrast to many in the West who were suspicious of the Islamic credentials of the ruling AKP party, I welcomed the ascendance of the AKP in Turkish politics. I argued that traditional Kemalist secularism needed a religious corrective to help Turkey find a delicate synthesis between rich religious tradition and modernity. I believed that an AKP-led Turkey had the potential to become a true model of moderate Islam for the Islamic world; a world that is grappling, mostly unsuccessfully, with the challenges of modernity.

Looking today at AKP foreign and domestic policies I am coming tentatively to the unpleasant conclusion that I was wrong.

Turkey under the AKP is increasingly succumbing to Islamic impulses; relegating its political and cultural links to the West to a secondary priority. For example, Turkey welcomed the despicable President of the Islamic Republic of Iran Mahmoud Ahmadinijad, for a formal visit in August 2008. No Western country has issued such an invitation to the Iranian leader. Moreover... Ankara announced recently that it is not going to join any sanction efforts aimed at preventing Iran from going nuclear.

Similarly, Turkey has deviated from the Western consensus by inviting Sudan 's President, Omer Hassan al-Bashir, who was charged with war crimes and genocide in Darfur . Befriending such international pariahs, Ankara 's moral stature is deeply hurt.

Turkey 's defense of Hamas, a terrorist organization, also indicates that Turkey has sacrificed its moral compass for a very primitive Muslim brotherhood. Even the Arab pro-Western states supported Israel 's struggle against Hamas. The Turkish premiere's vehement and deeply insulting denunciation of Israel during Operation Cast Lead also grates heavily on my ears. We cannot simply chalk up his criticism to cynical domestic public opinion needs.
At home, traditional Ottoman and Turkish tolerance is gradually being replaced by pressure to conform to Muslim mores and by intimidation to comply with government policies.... A sensational trial of former officers, government officials, journalists, businessman and academics, accused of plotting against the AKP government (known as the Ergenekon affair), continues to occupy Turkish attention since 2007, and seems to play a role in intimidation of political opponents too.

Similarly, the recent huge fine of $2.5 billion imposed by the tax authorities on the Dogan Media Group, which dared to adopt a critical attitude toward some government-sponsored activities, smacks of an attack on the freedom of press. Colleagues in academic institutions speak openly about leaving the country if the situation gets worse.

The AKP-led government is still playing mostly by the democratic rules of the game. It garnered only about 35 percent of the popular vote and it could be replaced if the fragmented Kemalist camp puts its house in order and comes up with a decent political leader. Such a scenario is unlikely...

Turkey is amidst the throes of an identity crisis, trying to find a successful accommodation between its Muslim roots and the challenges of the 21st century. It is at a historic crossroads. Hopefully it is not too late to choose the right path, despite the many signs that Turkey is slipping into Islamist retrogression.... The "loss" of Turkey to Islamism would be a great strategic blow to Israel and the West. But first and foremost it would be a tragedy for Turks.

(Efraim Inbar is professor of political studies at Bar-Ilan University
and the Director of the Begin-Sadat (BESA) Center for Strategic Studies.)

HOW TURKEY WAS LOST
Caroline Glick
Jerusalem Post, October 15, 2009

Once the apotheosis of a pro-Western, dependable Muslim democracy, this week Turkey officially left the Western alliance and became a full member of the Iranian axis.

It isn't that Ankara 's behavior changed fundamentally in recent days. There is nothing new in its massive hostility toward Israel and its effusive solicitousness toward the likes of Syria and Hamas. Since the Islamist AKP party first won control over the Turkish government in the 2002 elections, led by AKP chairman Recip Tayyip Erdogan, the Turks have incrementally and inexorably moved the formerly pro-Western Muslim democracy into the radical Islamist camp populated by the likes of Iran, Syria, Hizbullah, al-Qaida and Hamas.

What made Turkey 's behavior this week different from its behavior in recent months and years is that its attacks were concentrated, unequivocal and undeniable for everyone outside of Israel 's scandalously imbecilic and flagellant media. Until this week, both Israel and the US were quick to make excuses for Ankara. ...

Jerusalem made ... excuses for Ankara when during the 2006 war with Hizbullah Turkey turned a blind eye to Iranian weapons convoys to Lebanon that traversed Turkey; when Turkey sided with Hamas against Israel during Operation Cast Lead, and called among other things for Israel to be expelled from the UN; and when Erdogan caused a diplomatic incident this past January by castigating President Shimon Peres during a joint appearance at the Davos conference. So, too, Turkey's open support for Iran's nuclear weapons program and its galloping trade with Teheran and Damascus, as well as its embrace of al-Qaida financiers have elicited nothing more than grumbles from Israel and America.

Initially, this week Israel sought to continue its policy of making excuses for Turkish aggression against it. On Sunday, after Turkey disinvited the IAF from the Anatolian Eagle joint air exercise with Turkey and NATO, senior officials like Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon and opposition leader Tzipi Livni tried to make light of the incident, claiming that Turkey remains Israel 's strategic ally.

But Turkey wasted no time in making fools of them. On Monday, 11 Turkish government ministers descended on Syria to sign a pile of cooperation agreements with Iran 's Arab lackey. The Foreign Ministry didn't even have a chance to write apologetic talking points explaining that brazen move before Syria announced it was entering a military alliance with Turkey and would be holding a joint military exercise with the Turkish military. Speechless in the wake of Turkey 's move to hold military maneuvers with its enemy just two days after it canceled joint training with Israel , Jerusalem could think of no mitigating explanation for the move....

Erdogan's anti-Israel and anti-Semitic blows were followed on Tuesday evening by Turkey's government-controlled TRT1 television network's launch of a new prime-time series portraying IDF soldiers as baby- and little girl-killers who force Palestinian women to deliver stillborn babies at roadblocks and line up groups of Palestinians against walls to execute them by firing squad. The TRT1 broadcast forced Israel 's hand. Late on Tuesday, the Foreign Ministry announced it was launching an official protest with the Turkish Embassy....

Turkeys ' break with the West; its decisive rupture with Israel and its opposition to the US in Iraq and Iran was predictable. Militant Islam of the AKP variety has been enjoying growing popularity and support throughout Turkey for many years. The endemic corruption of Turkey 's traditional secular leaders increased the Islamists' popularity. Given this domestic Turkish reality, it is possible that Erdogan and his fellow Islamists' rise to power was simply a matter of time.

But even if the AKP's rise to power was eminently predictable, its ability to consolidate its control over just about every organ of governance in Turkey as well as what was once a thriving free press, and change completely Turkey's strategic posture in just seven years was far from inevitable....

Turkey 's decision to betray the West holds general lessons for Israel and for the free world as a whole. These lessons should be learned and applied moving forward not only to Turkey , but to a whole host of regimes and sub-national groups in the region and throughout the world. In the first instance it is crucial for policy-makers to recognize that change is the only permanent feature of the human condition. A country's presence in the Western camp today is no guarantee that it will remain there in the future. Whether a regime is democratic or authoritarian or somewhere in the middle, domestic conditions and trends play major roles in determining its strategic posture over time....

The loss of Turkey shows that countries can and do change. The best way to influence that change is to remain true to one's friends, even if those friends are imperfect. Only by strengthening those who share one's country's norms and interests-rather than its procedures and rhetoric-can governments exert constructive influence on internal changes in other states and societies.

Moreover, it is only by being willing to recognize what makes an ally an ally and an adversary an adversary that the West will adopt policies that leave it more secure in the long run. A military-controlled Turkish democracy that barred Islamists from political power was more desirable than a popularly elected AKP regime that has moved Turkey into the Iranian axis.

Turkey is lost and we'd better make our peace with this devastating fact. But if we learn its lessons, we can craft policies that check the dangers that Turkey projects and prepare for the day when Turkey may decide that it wishes to return to the Western fold.

STRATEGIC BLOW TO ISRAEL
Ron Ben-Yishai
Ynet News, October 14, 2009

The Israel Air Force's capabilities will not be significantly undermined. Turkey is not the only region where the IAF can hold drills simulating various combat scenarios: Long-range missions, operations in unknown territory, and cooperation with foreign forces. Nonetheless, the decision to cancel Israel 's participation in NATO's aerial drill in Turkey must serve as a glowing warning sign in respect to the strategic and economic implications that may follow our growing diplomatic isolation.

The Muslim Turkey was for many years a formidable and reliable ally of Israel . At this time, however, our strategic relations with it appear to be at a freefall. The deterioration started after the failure of Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan's effort to mediate between former Prime Minister Olmert and Syrian President Assad; it turned into a tsunami during and in the wake of Operation Cast Lead in the Gaza Strip.

The anger felt by Erdogan, the devout Muslim, towards Israel, and the tailwind he has been getting from the Turkish street prompted him to force his desires on the secular security establishment, whose heads are apparently still interested in ties with Israel. As a result, the openly visible as well as the more surreptitious security cooperation between the two states is increasingly being eroded....

[T]he cancellation of Israel's participation in the aerial drill is a truly negative shift, even though we are dealing with a demonstrative propaganda move meant to appease domestic public opinion; the decision does not undermine Israel's security directly or immediately. However, Turkey (which is interested in gaining acceptance into the European Union) would not have dared adopt such move in defiance of Washington and its European allies had its government not reached the conclusion that the benefit it can expect among regional states by shunning Israel is greater than the potential damage.

In order not to sabotage whatever is still left of the relationship, officials in Jerusalem prefer to maintain a low profile and refrain from a significant response. However, we must recognize the fact that Ankara , for the time being at least, is no longer a dependable strategic and security partner for Israel . This fact already constitutes a substantial blow to our national security because it erodes our deterrent power vis-à-vis Iran and Syria . Anyone who looks at the regional map can easily understand this....

WHO LOST TURKEY?
Editorial
Jerusalem Post, October 15, 2009

Could Israel have done anything to avoid the apparent rupture of its relationship with Turkey ? Could we have made it inconceivable for the Turks to air, on state television, a serial portraying the Palestinian-Israeli conflict as a struggle between sociopathic Zionists and wholesome Palestinians?

No doubt, had Israel responded to the violent Palestinian "resistance" not with an Operation Cast Lead but with Gandhi-like passivity, with a declaration that so long as there were women and children in Gaza, our army would not shoot back -- had Israel, instead of imposing a "siege," responded to Hamas's takeover of Gaza by supplying concrete for an airstrip that would accommodate Iranian cargo planes-Israeli and Turkish jets might now, we suppose, be conducting joint maneuvers.

But let us go further. If tomorrow, Israel withdrew to the 1949 Armistice Lines, redivided Jerusalem, abandoned Judea and Samaria, strategic settlement blocs, the Jordan Valley -- the whole kit and caboodle -- in the name of "ending the occupation;" if we came down from the Golan Heights, accepted the influx of millions of Palestinians "returning" to our newly truncated, 15 km.-wide state; agreed not to contest the extradition of the IDF General Staff to The Hague to face trumped-up war crimes charges; and if the Jews held their tongues as their state was dismantled while Palestinian factions fought it out for supremacy-comity would likely reign in Turkish-Israel relations. We can even imagine the UN General Assembly deferring discussion of "the Question of Palestine."
Plainly, what is inhibiting this nirvana is Israel 's stiff-necked insistence on the same right to self-defense other sovereign states enjoy.

The truth: Turkey 's turn against Israel is best understood in the context of its evolutionary transformation from the secular, nationalist and Western-oriented ethos of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk to the dogmatic, radical, pan-Islamic and Middle Eastern attitudes of its current rulers. This is most clearly reflected in Turkey 's apparent decision not to actively pursue membership in the European Union because it has given up trying to reconcile what it wants for itself with what the West wants for it....

The overriding explanation for what is happening in Turkey and among the Palestinians (and happened decades ago in Iran ) is that these polities could not make peace with modernity. Instead, to varying degrees, they turned to radical Islam, which promised an end to ethnic and national rivalries and the promotion of socioeconomic equality.

These fragmented societies succumbed to the opiate of radical Islam because it provides absolute answers about right and wrong and uplifting distinctions between believers and infidels. But it also ensures never-ending estrangement from those who have chosen another path. Since this predicament stems from within Muslim civilization, so, too, must any solution.

Please see our "Picks of the Week" for Ufuk Ulutlas' reply to Efraim Inbar, as well as more analyses and opinions of the Israel-Turkey relationship by Eldad Beck, Zvi Bar'el, and the Jerusalem Post editors.

Obama in Afghanistan: Cut and Run, or Stay and Win?

A NATION AT WAR
Clifford D. May
National Post, October 17, 2009

I picked an interesting moment to visit Pakistan: four terrorist attacks in less than a week. The first was at the World Food Program office here in the capital: five killed. The second was in the Khyber Bazaar in Peshawar: more than 50 killed. The third was at the military's General Headquarters (GHQ) in Rawalpindi, where Taliban insurgents, armed with automatic weapons, grenades, and rocket launchers, fought for 22 hours. According to government spokesmen, a brigadier, a colonel, and three commandos were killed. More than two dozen hostages were taken, but most reportedly were saved when a would-be suicide bomber was shot and killed before he managed to detonate his vest.

A couple days later, terrorists attacked a military convoy, killing about 40 near the Swat Valley-territory only recently liberated from the Taliban by Pakistani military forces following a difficult and costly battle.

If you look closely, you'll see a message written in this blood: "You, Pakistan's so-called leaders, can't provide food for the hungry or security for the marketplace. Your soldiers and officers can't even protect themselves. You are useless and weak. You will submit. Or we will destroy you."

Pakistanis can be remarkably nonchalant about terrorism: They have suffered 129 terrorist attacks in the two years since the assassination of Benazir Bhutto. Since Sept. 11, 2001, at least 5,000 Pakistanis have been killed in acts of terrorism.

But the assault on the GHQ seems to have shaken people up. Hitting the Pakistani equivalent of the Pentagon is, as a headline in the daily newspaper Dawn puts it: "audacious." The military is the country's strongest, proudest, and most durable institution. Retaliation is expected, probably in Waziristan, where the Taliban seems to have made recent gains.

I was invited to Pakistan by the State Department under a "U. S. Speaker and Specialist" program intended to improve the dialogue between Pakistanis and Americans. My hosts have been the American embassy in Islamabad and the U.S. consulates in Lahore and Karachi. Terrorist attacks have been carried out in all three cities. Americans have been among the targets. An American security official tells me: "There will be more. It's a question of when, not if."...

Pakistan is a nation of 175 million people-the third largest Muslim majority country in the world. Since last year, it has had a democratic government-but not a particularly popular one. Before that, it had a military dictator; he had even less support. Pakistan possesses nuclear weapons-al-Qaeda says it intends to acquire them in time; the Taliban will help if it can. Last May, U.S. Secretary of Defence Robert Gates voiced the suspicion that within the Pakistani military and the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency are those who "play both sides"-who have sympathies for and links with various militant jihadi groups.

I find people admirably hospitable. Many are friendly. But on the campuses, in particular, mixed in with hard but fair questions, is a large measure of anger and resentment against the United States, a supposed Pakistani ally. The grievances cited include: The U.S. interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan, U.S. support for India and Israel, U.S. drone attacks against militants in Pakistan (which allegedly kill many innocents-though both U.S. and Pakistani officials deny that), Vietnam, Hiroshima-the list goes on.

I meet with a group of religious leaders. They are remarkably diverse in their views. One refers to "moderate Islam." Another says: "There is no such thing as 'moderate Islam.'" I ask what term he would use for the Islam of Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar. "Oh, that's not Islam at all," he says. "So they are heretics?" I ask. "If we call them apostates and they call us apostates, where does it get us?" he replies. I respond, "What do you do instead? Ignore those around the world slaughtering innocents in the name of Islam and hope that someday they might see things differently? Why would that happen?" He thinks hard, but does not come up with an answer.

Flying from Lahore to Karachi, I sit next to a young man with a bushy beard, reading a book on sharia finance. I try to keep to myself but eventually we begin talking....

He tells me he is worried about the possibility of more wars and conflict and a deteriorating economy. He has a wife and two children, a five-year-old and a three-year-old. He has a brother, a doctor, who lives in Oklahoma. But he also tells me that he does not think America can be trusted. The usual reasons: The U.S. is too close to India and "the Zionists." What's more, Pakistanis suspect that Americans want to take away their nuclear weapons. That would mean "a small and weak Pakistan under the control of India-if it even remains as Pakistan and is not divided into small states." He adds: "Who created the Taliban? It was America herself!"

Many Pakistanis view the Taliban as an enemy. But others will tell you that there is a "good Taliban" and a "bad" Taliban. If that is meant to imply that some groups that call themselves Taliban don't really buy into the ideology and are therefore "reconcilables"-fine; I have heard that also from senior American military officers in Afghanistan. But sometimes it seems to be implied that the "bad" Taliban attacks Pakistanis, while the "good" Taliban attacks Americans....

America is criticized for "occupying" Afghanistan. America also is faulted for having abandoned Afghanistan in the 1990s, after working with Pakistan and Saudi Arabia to support the Afghan insurgency against the Soviets. The result of that abandonment: anarchy leading to the rise of the Taliban. My response becomes: "So there are just two things you insist Americans must never do: leave and stay. What third option would you recommend?" This generally gets a laugh. Pakistanis are not without humour.

At the University of Karachi, I debate these and related issues, one after another. I say I find it curious that no one ever mentions the genocide of black Muslims in Darfur, the brutal oppression of protestors in Iran, the plight of the Chechens and the Uighurs. But no one does-not even after I've said that.

As for terrorism, I propose that we agree that whatever your grievances, it is wrong to address them by killing other people's children. Most in the audience seem to find that sensible-at least in theory. At the end of the conversation, I receive polite, even warm applause. But one young man, clean-shaven and in western dress, throws his shoe at me. It misses.... Apologies are repeatedly proffered.... The next day, the shoe-throwing incident is reported on the front-page of major newspapers and debated on editorial pages.

Pakistan is having a historic debate and it is having it in the midst of a civil war. Pakistan is a front-line state in a global conflict. For a while we called it the War on Terrorism; now we can't even agree on a name. I'm persuaded that the majority in this country is on the right side of the debate, the civil war, and the global conflict. But among history's lessons is this: When moderate majorities face radical and determined minorities, there is no guaranteeing the outcome.

(Clifford D. May is the president of the terrorism policy institute
Foundation for Defense of Democracies.)

WITHOUT DEMOCRACY IN PAKISTAN,
FORGET VICTORY IN AFGHANISTAN
Tarek Fatah
Globe and Mail, October 14, 2009

The attack by the Taliban on Pakistan's "Pentagon" in the garrison city of Rawalpindi had barely been quelled, when jihadi militants struck an army convoy on Monday in the Swat Valley, killing 40 and injuring dozens more.
Although it was the fourth terrorist attack in a week, it was the raid in Rawalpindi that has stunned governments around the world and left the people of Pakistan in a state of shock. How could the Taliban infiltrate Pakistan's most guarded military institution, take senior military officers hostage, then engage in a 22-hour battle that left 20 dead, including a brigadier-general and a lieutenant-colonel? The questions being asked are: Was this an inside job? Did the attackers have links to rogue elements of the Pakistan Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI)?
The four terrorist attacks in Pakistan were preceded by an audacious attack by the Taliban on an isolated U.S. military base in Afghanistan in the town of Kamdesh. Reports say more than 300 Taliban fighters attacked the U.S. base under cover of fog. When the battle was over 24 hours later, eight Americans lay dead, dozens more were wounded and the Taliban attackers had vanished into the mountains with at least 25 Afghan policemen as hostages.

Lost in the details of this deadly firefight is the fact the U.S. base was located near the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, and that the large Taliban attack force is suspected of being made up of fighters who had been driven out of the Swat Valley by the Pakistani Army. Had the Pakistanis extended their fight beyond Swat, the Taliban would have been caught in a pincer, but for some odd reason, the offensive was eased. This allowed the Taliban to move across the border.

Observers believe the sudden surge in terrorist activity in Pakistan is linked to a new bill approved unanimously by the U.S. Congress that will ensure the Pakistani Army and ISI do not subvert the civilian administration. This has unnerved shadowy rogue elements in the Pakistan Army's intelligence service, the ISI, who fear an end to their ability to turn on and off, at will, military and financial aid to the very Taliban they claim to be fighting.
The thought of peace between India and Pakistan on one hand, and Pakistan and Afghanistan on the other, terrifies the elites of Islamabad who feed off the hysteria of Islamism and anti-Americanism while sending their own children to the U.S. to be educated.

Opponents of détente between Pakistan and its eastern and western neighbours are so riled, they've targeted the Kerry-Lugar bill, which for five years authorizes $1.5-billion (U.S.) annually in aid to Pakistan, primarily for economic assistance.... For the first time in U.S.-Pakistan relations, American aid will be directed at Pakistan's economy and social infrastructure and not entirely toward its armed forces. The result is an uproar among the beneficiaries of the country's military-industrial complex whose sense of entitlement seems to be in a state of disbelief.
Buried deep inside the Kerry-Lugar bill is a line that has unnerved the Islamists and their military and media allies. The bill states quite explicitly: "No security assistance and offer to sell major defence equipment to Pakistan may be provided, until the Secretary of State certifies that ... the security forces of Pakistan are not materially or substantially subverting the political or judicial processes of Pakistan."

This unprecedented clause places the Pakistani Armed Forces firmly under the thumb of the civilian government, where they should have been all along.... This change of policy by the Obama administration has stung the beneficiaries of the Islamist agenda in Pakistan. For the first time in decades, a U.S. administration is backing an elected civilian government over its traditional military allies....

The West has an opportunity it shouldn't let pass. The Pakistani people have shown tremendous maturity in defeating the Islamists in the last election. In the current military offensive against the Taliban, the people of Pakistan were solidly behind their army, as were the people literally liberated in the Swat Valley.

If Mr. Obama wants to rescue American prestige and avoid a defeat in Afghanistan, he should first strengthen the civilian democratic government in Islamabad. If the rogue retired generals of Pakistan and their Islamist media cohorts succeed in toppling democracy in Pakistan, all is lost.

The road to Kabul passes through Islamabad. Without a stable civilian, democratic government in Pakistan, there is no possibility of even a semblance of victory in Afghanistan.

(Tarek Fatah is author of Chasing a Mirage: The Tragic Illusion of an Islamic State,
a former activist in Pakistan, and a founder of the Muslim Canadian Congress.)

DON'T GO WOBBLY ON AFGHANISTAN
Frederick W. Kagan and Kimberly Kagan
Weekly Standard, October 12, 2009

"To defeat an enemy that heeds no borders or laws of war, we must recognize the fundamental connection between the future of Afghanistan and Pakistan-which is why I've appointed Ambassador Richard Holbrooke. . .to serve as Special Representative for both countries." That "fundamental connection" between Afghanistan and Pakistan was one of the important principles President Obama laid out in his March 27, 2009, speech announcing his policy in South Asia. It reflected a common criticism of the Bush policy in Afghanistan, which was often castigated as insufficiently "regional." It also reflected reality: The war against al Qaeda and its affiliates is a two-front conflict that must be fought on both sides of the Durand Line.

Now, however, some of the most vocal supporters of the regional approach are considering-or even advocating-a return to its antithesis, a purely counterterrorism (CT) strategy in Afghanistan. Such a reversion, based on the erroneous assumption that a collapsing Afghanistan would not derail efforts to dismantle terrorist groups in Pakistan, is bound to fail.

Recent discussions of the "CT option" have tended to be sterile, clinical, and removed from the complexity of the region-the opposite of the coherence with which the administration had previously sought to address the problem. In reality, any "CT option" will likely have to be executed against the backdrop of state collapse and civil war in Afghanistan, spiraling extremism and loss of will in Pakistan, and floods of refugees. These conditions would benefit al Qaeda greatly by creating an expanding area of chaos, an environment in which al Qaeda thrives. They would also make the collection of intelligence and the accurate targeting of terrorists extremely difficult.

If the United States should adopt a small-footprint counterterrorism strategy, Afghanistan would descend again into civil war. The Taliban group headed by Mullah Omar and operating in southern Afghanistan (including especially Helmand, Kandahar, and Oruzgan Provinces) is well positioned to take control of that area upon the withdrawal of American and allied combat forces.... The fear of renewed Taliban assaults would mobilize the Tajiks, Uzbeks, and Hazaras in northern and central Afghanistan. The Taliban itself would certainly drive on Herat and Kabul, leading to war with northern militias. This conflict would collapse the Afghan state....

Within Pakistan, the U.S. reversion to a counterterrorism strategy (from the counterinsurgency strategy for which Obama reaffirmed his support as recently as August) would disrupt the delicate balance that has made possible recent Pakistani progress against internal foes and al Qaeda.

Pakistani president Asif Ali Zardari, army chief of staff General Ashfaq Kayani, and others who have supported Pakistani operations against the Taliban are facing an entrenched resistance within the military and among retired officers. This resistance stems from the decades-long relationships nurtured between the Taliban and Pakistan, which started during the war to expel the Soviet Army....

Zardari and Kayani have been able to overcome this internal resistance sufficiently to mount major operations against Pakistani Taliban groups, in part because the rhetoric and actions of the Obama administration to date have seemed to prove the Taliban advocates wrong. The announcement of the withdrawal of U.S. combat forces would prove them right. Pakistani operations against their own insurgents-as well as against al Qaeda, which lives among those insurgents-would probably grind to a halt.... And a renewed stream of Afghan refugees would likely overwhelm the Pakistani government and military, rendering coherent operations against insurgents and terrorists difficult or impossible.

The collapse of Pakistan, or even the revival of an aggressive and successful Islamist movement there, would be a calamity for the region and for the United States. It would significantly increase the risk that al Qaeda might obtain nuclear weapons from Pakistan's stockpile, as well as the risk that an Indo-Pakistani war might break out involving the use of nuclear weapons....

What if the United States did not withdraw the forces now in Afghanistan, but simply kept them at current levels while emphasizing both counterterrorism and the rapid expansion of the Afghan security forces? Within Afghanistan, the situation would continue to deteriorate. Neither the United States and NATO nor Afghan forces are now capable of defeating the Taliban in the south or east. At best, the recently arrived U.S. reinforcements in the south might be able to turn steady defeat into stalemate, but even that is unlikely.

The accelerated expansion of Afghan security forces, moreover, will be seriously hindered if we fail to deploy additional combat forces. As we discovered in Iraq, the fastest way to help indigenous forces grow in numbers and competence is to partner U.S. and allied units with them side by side in combat....

As a result, it is very likely that the insurgency will grow in size and strength in 2010 faster than Afghan security forces can be developed without the addition of significant numbers of American combat troops-which will likely lead to Afghan state failure and the consequences described above in Afghanistan and the region.

The Obama administration is not making this decision in a vacuum. Obama ran on a platform that made giving Afghanistan the resources it needed an overriding American priority. President Obama has repeated that commitment many times. He appointed a new commander to execute the policy he enunciated in his March 27 speech, in which he noted: "To focus on the greatest threat to our people, America must no longer deny resources to Afghanistan because of the war in Iraq." If he now rejects the request of his new commander for forces, his decision will be seen as the abandonment of the president's own commitment to the conflict.
In that case, no amount of rhetorical flourish is likely to persuade Afghans, Pakistanis, or anyone else otherwise.... [I]f the United States is not determined to succeed, then, in the language of the region, it is getting ready to cut and run, whatever the president and his advisers may think or say....

(Frederick W. Kagan is the director of the Critical Threats Project at AEI.
Kimberly Kagan is president of the Institute for the Study of War.)

Please see our "Picks of the Week" for reports by Jane Perlez and Stephen Brown on Pakistan.

Self-Hating Jews? Non-Jewish Jews?

JEWISH SELF-HATRED

...What is self-hatred? What forms does it take? How can it be studied? Does it assume different forms within different groups? Does it alter its external manifestations according to when and where it appears? The present study is an attempt to examine one manifestation of self-hatred, Jewish anti-Semitism, in a comparative manner. While evident parallels can be made to other manifestations of self-hatred in the West, Jewish anti-Semitism does provide a self-contained problem which in turn reflects certain basic structures inherent in all manifestations of self-hatred. Thus Jewish self-hatred is both unique, following the fortunes of the treatment of the Jews within both Jewish and non-Jewish communities in the West, and representative, since its deep structure is universal.

"Jewish self-hatred" (a term interchangeable with "Jewish anti-Judaism" or "Jewish anti-Semitism") is valid as a label for a specific mode of self-abnegation that has existed among Jews throughout their history. Yet, as a label it has a very specific history and ideology.... As in the case of the supposed difference between "anti-Judaism" and "anti-Semitism" in the history of the treatment of Jews in Europe , we are dealing with shifts in the articulation of perception, not in the basic perception itself.

Self-hatred results from outsiders' acceptance of the mirage of themselves generated by their reference group-that group in society which they see as defining them-as a reality. This acceptance provides the criteria for the myth making that is the basis of any communal identity. This illusionary definition of the self, the identification with the reference group's mirage of the Other, is contaminated by the protean variables existing within what seems to the outsider to be the homogenous group in power. This illusion contains an inherent, polar opposition. On the one hand is the liberal fantasy that anyone is welcome to share in the power of the reference group if he abides by the rules that define that group. But these rules are the very definition of the Other. The Other comprises precisely those who are not permitted to share power within the society. Thus outsiders hear an answer from their fantasy: Become like us-abandon your difference-and you maybe one with us.

On the other hand is the hidden qualification of the internalized reference group, the conservative curse: The more you are like me, the more I know the true value of my power, which you wish to share, and the more I am aware that you are but a shoddy counterfeit, an outsider.... Thus the liberal promise and the conservative curse exist on both sides of the abyss that divides the outsider from the world of privilege.

Those labelled as different react in the classic double bind situation. Anyone faced with a set of such conflicting, inherently irreconcilable signs represses this conflict, saying, in effect, the contradiction must be within me, since that which I wish to become cannot be flawed. Perhaps I truly am different, a parody of that which I wish to be. The first sign-be like us, and you will become one of us-implies accepting one's own difference. But the more one attempts to identify with those who have labelled one as different, the more one accepts the values, social structures, and attitudes of this determining group, the farther away from true acceptability one seems to be. For as one approaches the norms set by the reference group, the approbation of the group recedes. In one's own eyes, one becomes identical with the definition of acceptability and yet one is still not accepted. For the ideal state is never to have been the Other, a state that cannot be achieved....

Sander L. Gilman, Jewish Self-Hatred: Anti-Semitism and the Hidden
Language of the Jews (Baltimore , 1986), pp. 1-3

THE JEWISH ENEMY WITHIN
Barbara Kay
National Post, September 30, 2009

Here's a first for me: a citation from the Koran in support of an historically unhappy truth about my people. Surah 59:14 says of the Jews: "There is much hostility between them: Their hearts are divided."

Nothing has the power to divide Jewish hearts like Israel , daily proof of which appears in the news. On the extreme end of anti-Israel agitation we find Canada 's most famously faithless Jew, Naomi Klein, rarely out of the headlines between tearful photo-ops in Ramallah and attempted film-festival smears in Toronto . And then there's the slightly more demented Diana Ralph, stalwart of the Israel-hating fringe group Independent Jewish Voices, recently outed as a tinfoil-hatted anti-Zionist, anti-American conspiracy theorist.

As candidly hopeful Israel executioners, they are but a melodramatic tip of an underlying iceberg. Klein and company won't administer the coup de grace to the Jewish people. That will come from more seemingly trustworthy, influential elites, nominal Jews who don't realize that they have abandoned Judaism for another religion, one presently antithetical to Judaism's existential portion....

Liberalism is today the de facto religion of most American Jews, a stunning 78% of whom voted for Obama, no particular friend to Israel , to say the least. It would seem that Jewish voters are more concerned about women's right to unconstrained abortion than Israel 's survival.

Ahavat Yisrael, the (not uncritical, but steadfast) love of Israel is the heart and soul of Judaism, like it or not. In his new book, Why are Jews Liberal?, Norman Podhoretz, elder intellectual statesman of American Jewish neo-conservatives, explains liberal Jews' rejection of Israel-centred peoplehood as the post-Enlightenment price they willingly paid for acceptance and equality in the Diaspora. But rather than adopt a purely secular philosophy, he says their abandonment of Judaism "had the feel and the force ... of a conversion from Judaism to another kind of religion."

When the left abandoned Israel in 1967, leftist Jews abandoned Judaism, but in galling displays of self-love (please don't call them self-hating Jews; they adore themselves), they refuse to hand in their Jewish passports. Our publicly anti-Zionist Jews flay their fellow Jews, but flaunt their Jewishness to clothe their non-Jewish anti-Zionist colleagues with respectability. They insist, even as they scream for boycotts of Israeli academics or films, even as they denounce Israel as an "apartheid" state, that they are the true standard-bearers for Jewish values like "social justice," that catch-all shibboleth for the ennoblement of myth-driven anti-Semitic Arab revanchism.

A perfect example of this irrational tic was on display in an op-ed in these pages last week by professional leftist Judy Rebick, purportedly a defence of ["Jewish" anti-Israel writer] Naomi Klein's attempted attack on the [Tel-Aviv focused] Toronto film festival. With no rational argument at hand, Rebick cynically opted to play the shmaltz card in a kitschy homage to the warmth and liveliness of her grandparents' oh-so-Jewish home, stating her grandmother "would have been so proud of Naomi Klein," a revisionist canard of a peculiarly chutzpadik order, as Rebick's pogrom-surviving grandmother would doubtless have been appalled by a smug Jew consumed by Israel-hatred.

The Jews have been expelled from 94 countries. There is but one, our homeland since time immemorial, from which Jews can be blown to smithereens, but not expelled. Israel is today in mortal danger from Hitler's myriad godchildren....

AIPAC, J STREET , OR JDATE?
Chuck Freilich
Jerusalem Post, October 12, 2009

Israel 's national security is predicated on three strategic pillars: The commitment, resolve and resilience of Israel's people, the IDF and other defense agencies, and the "special relationship" with the US . All three face serious challenges today.

The US-Israeli relationship is largely unparalleled in history, a relationship carefully nurtured over decades and in which AIPAC has played a vital role. It is a relationship under attack from numerous quarters, including pro-Arab and generally left-leaning groups, renowned scholars who write scurrilous attacks on the " Israel lobby," and others. It is a relationship showing increasing signs of "Europeanization," where Palestinians and Arabs can do no wrong, Israel no right, it seems. It is a relationship weakened by well-meaning but dangerously misguided Jewish Americans, who established the group J Street as a "moderate" alternative to AIPAC....

It is presumptuous of our brethren in the US , and frankly offensive, for them to believe that they "know better" what is right for Israel . The Jewish state is a vibrant, pluralistic democracy. Only Israel 's citizens, who endure the consequences, bear the responsibility for its policies. The place to change Israel 's policies is in Israel , not Washington . A corollary of sovereignty is the right to err. We waited for that right for 2,000 years.

J Street 's stated position, that it "supports political solutions over military ones" regarding the Palestinians and "strongly opposes the use of force by Israel or the US " against Iran , is the height of presumption and chutzpa. So was its position earlier this year, during the Gaza operation, when it opined that "escalation will prove counterproductive" and called for an immediate cease-fire.

We all prefer diplomatic solutions. Sometimes it is not entirely up to us; sometimes there is no recourse but military action. The residents of Sderot, now enjoying their ninth month of relative quiet, might question the military expertise behind J Street 's assessment. Israel -and only Israel -will decide whether to attack Iran 's nukes. Hopefully it will never come to this, but if it does, J Street had better be behind us....

Only "the Jews," with their well-earned and arguably endearing reputation for fractiousness, could conceive of doing something that weakens AIPAC. A model to be emulated, the envy of virtually all other lobbies, AIPAC has been at the forefront of the bilateral relationship for decades....

[T]here is a wise, old American saying: "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." AIPAC is definitely not broken, and for those who take issue with some of its positions and actions, the appropriate recourse is to work for change from within.

To date, despite the plethora of Jewish organizations in all other areas, the US-Israeli relationship has largely had one voice in Washington . This is as it must be. AIPAC has a devoted, sophisticated, often brilliant professional staff and lay leadership. It simply does not get better.

For those seeking new and different relationships, get on JDate.

(Chuck Freilich is a former deputy national security adviser in Israel and a senior fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School)

AN OPEN LETTER TO AMBASSADOR MICHAEL OREN
Jeremy Ben-Ami
Jerusalem Post, October. 13, 2009

Dear Ambassador Oren,

I am writing to reiterate an invitation to you to address the first National Conference of the new pro-Israel lobby, J Street taking place later this month.

In just two weeks, over 1,000 people-most of them American Jews-will gather in Washington to give voice to a burgeoning movement that loves Israel , cares about its future, and believes only peaceful and immediate resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict can secure Israel 's future as the democratic home of the Jewish people....

You seem well aware, both as an American by birth and as a student of American Jewish communal dynamics, that the connection to Israel for a large number of Jewish Americans has become strained over time.
We're all looking at the same research and data. A majority of Jewish Americans have never been to Israel . Large-and increasing-numbers don't take part in the traditional communal organizations. Levels of attendance at synagogues among the non-Orthodox remain low.

There is a generational dimension to these trends as well, one you undoubtedly noticed as a respected academic in the classroom. Young, liberal Jews have even less connection to Israel than their parents and grandparents, and they talk more openly about the challenges and difficulties facing Israel and about its responses.

There is good news, however. The excitement that J Street has generated and its rapid early growth indicates that there is a thirst in the progressive Jewish community-and among young liberal Jews-to find a way to relate to, to talk about and, yes, to advocate for Israel that is consistent with progressive Jewish values....

Public comments by your spokesman last week indicate that you have "concerns over certain policies [of J Street 's] that could impair Israel 's interests." I'm sure you also have concerns and disagreements over policies advocated by certain political parties and their leaders in Israel . That's democracy-and it is fitting that there would be deep disagreements at moments of important communal decision.

We too have our own serious concerns over the policies of the present Israeli government and its impact not just on Israel 's interests but on our interests as Americans and as American Jews.... As Americans, we worry about the impact of Israeli policies on vital US interests in the Middle East and around the world.

Finally, as American Jews, we worry that the health and vitality of our community will be deeply affected by what happens in the region, how the world perceives Israel and by how our community here at home deals with increasingly complex conversations around Israel .

Mr. Ambassador, what J Street shares in common with you far outweighs that on which we disagree.... Your attendance-even to clarify some of our areas of disagreement-will be respectfully welcomed, and we promise you an open hearing as we hope and expect you will welcome us at the embassy one day to present our views and opinions in that same spirit.

We hope to see you at the Conference on the 25th.

(Jeremy Ben-Ami is Executive Director of J Street)

AN OPEN LETTER IN RESPONSE TO J-STREET'S
Gil Troy
Jerusalem Post, October 15, 2009

Dear Jeremy Ben-Ami,

Allow me to respond to your open letter to Ambassador Michael Oren with an open letter of my own.
I share your worry "that the connection to Israel for a large number of Jewish Americans has become strained over time." I love your statement to the Ambassador, and presumably to the entire pro-Israel community, that "what J-Street shares in common with you far outweighs that on which we disagree."...

Alas, when I examine what you advocate and what you ignore, when I read your statements, surf your website and look at your conference program, I am troubled. For starters, I do not see the use of the word "Zionism" anywhere. I wonder if that is tactical or ideological.

I wonder if you would display on your website the following statement: "Year after year, century after century, Jews carried on their traditions, and their dream of a homeland, in the face of impossible odds.... And I deeply understood the Zionist idea-that there is always a homeland at the center of our story."

Those are the words of then-Senator Barack Obama, spoken on June 4, 2008, the day after he clinched the nomination. Or what about this:

"My starting point when I think about the Middle East is this enormous emotional attachment and sympathy for Israel, mindful of its history, mindful of the hardship and pain and suffering that the Jewish people have undergone, but also mindful of the incredible opportunity that is presented when people finally return to a land and are able to try to excavate their best traditions and their best selves."

Obama again. If President Obama is not afraid to affirm Zionist ideals, why do you seem to be?

Note on your website the comment that: "The Palestinian people are likely to continue to nurture an anger that leads some to armed struggle as long as there is no mutually accepted resolution to the underlying political conflict."

True, Palestinian anger must be acknowledged. But why do I hear nothing about the other phenomenon that must be acknowledged, Israeli anguish? Why do I hear nothing from you about the 850,000 Jewish refugees expelled from Arab lands, decades of Arab rejectionism, Palestinian anti-Semitism, the fact that withdrawal under Oslo and after the Gaza disengagement has only fed more violence, or the pain of Israelis whose blood has been spilled over the years? Why have I not heard a J-Street statement as passionate as this one:

"The first job of any nation-state is to protect its citizens.... If somebody was sending rockets into my house, where my two daughters sleep at night, I'm going to do everything in my power to stop that. And I would expect Israelis to do the same thing."

That, too, was said by President Obama, during his visit to Sderot in July, 2008. Without the assurance that Israel's pain is felt, without understanding that Israel faces a series of untenable choices when defending its people against terrorists who hide among civilians, without noticing that Oslo and Disengagement triggered more violence, the "peace of the brave" we all seek is reduced to a delusion-or an anti-Israel mugging.

I understand your desire to be evenhanded, and believe there is room in the pro-Israel and Zionist movements for voices such as yours. I hope that from your "J-Street" address you can see the Golden Path to a solution. My fear, though, is that you can only see Israeli sins and not Palestinian crimes; that your mythical address prevents you from seeing the facts on the ground we see in Israel , on campus, in the UN and elsewhere. I would love to see progressive voices lead the fight against the ugly campaign to de-legitimize Israel . We need civil rights activists who fought against apartheid to repudiate the libel falsely comparing the Israeli-Palestinian nationalist conflict to South African whites' ugly racist oppression. We need people with impeccable progressive credentials willing to confront the Arab dictatorships, condemn Muslim homophobia, racism, and sexism, and to denounce terrorism.

Instead, I see a conference program more comfortable with finger-pointing at Israel . Why not call your "Messaging 'Pro-Israel, Pro-Peace'" session "Pro-Israel, Pro-Peace and Anti-Delegitimization," acknowledging how much the rejection of Israel harms the peace process (just as most Israelis learned in the 1990s that denying Palestinian nationalism is counter-productive)? Will " Israel on Campus," address the dilemmas so many students face: Attacks on Israel are so extreme, they fear any constructive criticism of Israel they utter will be used as fodder to continue demonizing their homeland-and all too often, their people?

And I would be more comfortable with the Americans for Peace Now session "West Bank Settlements: Obstacles on the Road to Peace," if anything in the conference program acknowledged the "Obstacles on the Road to Peace" constituted by the Hamas charter, terrorism, demagoguery in mosques, rabble-rousing on the Temple Mount, harassment of Palestinian moderates, refusal to acknowledge Jewish rights to the land, Arab anti-Semitism, etc.

I hate to sound so unwelcoming. I believe there is no inherent contradiction between being progressive and being a Zionist, that Israel represents a remarkable attempt to establish liberal, democratic and Jewish values in the Middle East . We need a broad coalition of pro-Israel forces. But my sense is that Ambassador Oren senses what I sense. You find it easier to bash Israel than to criticize Israel 's adversaries. Maybe the burden is on you to establish some street cred by fighting the anti-Israel delegitimizers, the anti-Semitic anti-Zionists, who are affronts to what you so eloquently call "the values we bring to the table as Jews and as Americans."

In friendship, Gil

(Gil Troy is professor of history at McGill University and a CIJR Academic Fellow)

Shabbat Shalom to all our readers.

N.B.: In response to queries, if you would like to make a donation to the Baruch Cohen Student Israel Internship Fund, either please follow this link and fill out the secure online form, or send a cheque made out to CIJR, at PO Box 175, Station H, Montreal Quebec, Canada, H3J 2K7.

October 15, 2009: Baruch Cohen Is 90!

ON BARUCH COHEN'S 90TH BIRTHDAY
Frederick Krantz

Baruch Cohen is the long-time Research Chairman of the Canadian Institute for Jewish Research, which I direct. Inscribed on and through his life has, indeed, been the history of our times: born in Bucharest just after World War I, in 1919, married just as Adolph Hitler came to power in Germany, he lived through the Depression, appeasement, and Munich, the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of 1939 dividing Poland and spurring the final outbreak of World War II, and the early advent of the Holocaust in Romania, under the "Iron Guard" government of Marshall Antonescu.

Suffering through the Holocaust, surviving pogroms, labour camps, and killing fields, and then post-1945 the antisemitic Communist regime, he made it to Israel with his wife Sonia and young daughter Monica, serving there in the IDF and ultimately joining Sonia's mother, sister Magda, and family, who had emigrated earlier to Canada, and Montreal.

When I first encountered Baruch he had already retired as a successful chief financial officer with a major Canadian corporation, and gone back to school at Concordia to obtain a Master's degree in Judaic Studies. We met in 1987-88, after we had both written letters to local newspapers criticizing media delegitimation of Israel during the first Palestinian-Arab terrorist intifada. Baruch became a member of a small group of academics and lay people which defended Israel in the press and media, and out which developed the Canadian Institute for Jewish Research.

Baruch and I have now known each other and worked together for over twenty-one years. I soon came to respect his incredible intellectual ability, moral authority, and inexhaustible energy, all focused on his great love for reborn Israel and the Jewish people. And I witnessed too his involvement in the Montreal Holocaust Memorial Center, where he remains today an indefatigable docent. He played a leadership role in the successful campaign to make known the then-largely ignored Romanian Holocaust and killing fields of Transnistria.

Today, thanks to his and others' efforts, the Romanian Holocaust is inscribed on the Wall of Remembrance at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC, and known world-wide.

Lenore and I lived through, too, Baruch and Sonia's tragic loss, the death to cancer at an unbearably young age of their beloved daughter Monica, Malka, wife to Lawrence Bergman and mother of Mark and Stuart. Her beauty, striking presence and Jewish creativity are known and fondly remembered by many in the Montreal community.
Personally, without Baruch's support and sage advice, I could not have had the strength to play my role in building CIJR into the internationally-respected and activist pro-Israel academic organization, and proud pro-Zionist force for Jewish consciousness and education, which it is today-for that I thank him. Without Baruch, Montreal's survivor community, and the never-ending holy work of educating the next generation in the lessons of the Holocaust, would be immeasurably weaker. And for that we, and young people everywhere, thank him.

And without Baruch's creative Jewish memory, learning, and witness-not only through CIJR's ISRAFAX and Daily Isranet Briefing publications, and the pages of the Canadian Jewish News and the Jewish Tribune, and his teaching at the Holocaust Center and CIJR, the Montreal and Canadian Jewish communities would be less than they are today. His unstinting work for Jewish education and Jewish unity-on our campuses and at large-in the face of today's growing antisemitic and Holocaust-denying forces, has been a beacon of light and hope in often-difficult times.

Baruch is my tzaddkik, and he is our morenu, our great teacher, not only through his work but through his life, through the example he embodies of Jewish courage and truth-seeking and will to live, to overcome tragedy and, while never forgetting the past, to look always to the future. He is a remarkable combination, as I always say, of sweetness and tenacity, of charm and determination-a steel fist in a velvet glove. He is our witness, and one of the lamed vavniks, the 36 heroes and saints in each generation upon whom rests the fate of the world.

I, and the CIJR family, thank him for his life and his work. And I invite all of you reading this, who are familiar with his writing in the Briefing and Israfax, to contribute to the enduring monument to him, and to his love of students, we are building with your contributions-the Baruch Cohen Student Israel-Advocacy Internship Fund-being established in his name.

So please join with us in the toast which will be given him this evening, at the surprise party being thrown for Baruch's ninetieth by his family, friends, colleagues, and students: l'haim, l'haim, un' bis a hundert und zwangig, to a hundred and twenty years!!

(Prof. Frederick Krantz is Director of the Canadian Institute for Jewish Research.)

Aviva Raz Shechter

Baruch Cohen has been at the forefront of the fight for the Jewish people and for Holocaust recognition over the years. His tireless efforts combating antisemitism and defending Israel, and his work on behalf of Holocaust survivors (of which he is one) and victims, have truly and visibly helped the Jewish community, not only in Canada or his native Romania, but also at large.

As one of the founders and current chairman of the Canadian Institute for Jewish Research, Baruch has helped create and maintain a key player in world Jewish affairs. The many articles and poems that he has written are an inspiration to us all, and his work as an educator is second to no one. It was put best in a letter once written to him by Concordia University after a lecture he gave: " You moved the students... you are a wonderful teacher."
I have been following his work over the years and hope that he continues to write, teach and inspire us as he does so well. I would like to extend my deepest and sincerest congratulations to Baruch on his 90th birthday. May he have many more, good health and happiness.

(Aviva Raz Shechter is Director of the Department for Combating Antisemitism,
Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Jerusalem.)

TO BARUCH COHEN AT 90
Ira Robinson

I became acquainted with Baruch Cohen thirty years ago, in 1979, when I started teaching Judaic studies at Concordia University. Baruch, who had begun studying for his Bachelor's Degree in Judaic studies at Concordia at the age of 54, in 1973, was then poised to finish his degree. He needed to take one more course in the Fall semester of 1979 to complete his requirements, and, by chance, he took the first course I ever taught at Concordia, Religion 301: the Hebrew Bible.

Having finished his BA at the age of 60, Baruch wasted no time in enrolling in Concordia's MA program in Judaic studies in January, 1980, and I was privileged to teach him in several courses before he graduated with his MA in November, 1985.

What characterized Baruch, then as now, was his combination of determination and intellectual curiosity. His ambition was to acquire a deeper understanding of Judaism and of Jewish history. At an age when many people want to start slowing down, he was just beginning to see how far he could go in his second career as a student.
It was no surprise to me to see that, having received his MA, Baruch was not going to rest on his laurels. With his special combination of practicality and idealism, Baruch soon began his work at CIJR, where his winning personality and sagacity have made a real difference over the decades to the organization and its efforts.
When I think of Baruch and his single-minded persistence, both as a student at Concordia and as CIJR's Research Director, I am reminded of the exhortation in Pirkei Avot (5, 22) that speaks of persistence in the study of Torah:

Turn it and turn it again, for everything is in it. Contemplate it, grow gray over it, and do not stir from it. For you can have no better portion than it.

(Prof. Ira Robinson, a CIJR Academic Fellow, is professor at Concordia University.)

Jackie Douek

Baruch Cohen is one of the most passionate people I know. He is a captivating man and an inspiration to all who know him or who have come to know him through his speaking and writing. Baruch sets the bar high: he continues his daily activities at CIJR, including his work with students; he regularly struggles to tell his Survivor story to high school children, in spite of the internal turmoil it causes him; and he still finds time to babysit his great-granddaughter. Baruch is someone whom I strive to make proud and I am happy to count him as one of my closest friends. Yom Houledet Sameach, Baruch!

(Jackie Douek is a former CIJR Assistant Director.)

WITH LOVE
Karen Lazar

Baruch, you may be turning 90 but I can think of many more reasons than that on why your are such a wonderful extraordinary person. Our friendship was born the moment I set foot in cijr. Never a day went by at the institute when you didn't offer a helping hand or wise counsel. Alongside the advice was the nurturing grandfather who encouraged me to take a moment to go for a walk or short break. Your strength, compassion, and principled view of the world serve as constant ongoing sources of inspiration. Your dedication to advancing CIJR's goals are clear in everything you do. You are a genuine treasure that has become so important to me.
I congratulate you and wish you many more years of good health and happiness. Best wishes and happy birthday.

(Karen Lazar, B'nai Brith National Director of Communications, is a former CIJR Assistant Director.)

Eric Adler

I have come to know a survivor.

Baruch Cohen is a survivor who not only subsisted in an unimaginable time, but whose ongoing work will endure eternally. His devotion to the generations that follow him, guiding and encouraging our development, ensures that his character is not defined by a historical fact, but by a lifetime of accomplishment. His continuing work promoting his championed principles to improve the world around him reinforces and contributes to his indefatigable survival.

Baruch Cohen is a survivor, and, thanks to him, I am a survivor too.

(Eric Adler is CIJR Research Associate.)

WE SHALL NOT LET YOU DOWN
Alan Herman

With Baruch Cohen, you always have an open door, a ready ear, and your best interests in his heart. Also, with Baruch, you have a man who quickly develops a sixth sense for whenever you have problems on your mind that you're hiding, and he's not afraid to call you into his office to get to the bottom of them. Well beyond Baruch's open office door, both he and Sonia are only too happy to open their home to you. I cannot help but recall the seder dinner in their home during my first year at the Institute, and in Montreal.

But well beyond being a co-worker, and well beyond being a friend, Baruch Cohen is a teacher and a bridge between the past and the present. The articles he writes for the Canadian Jewish News and the visits he guides through the Montreal Holocaust Memorial Centre, are both lessons, and warnings, for us all.

For two years now, I have attended Baruch's annual Holocaust memorial talks at the Liberal Arts College. Once a year, for the past two years, I have gathered with dozens of others around two double seminar tables in the LAC basement and been walked through Baruch's Romanian Holocaust experience. As soon as Baruch begins speaking on this subject, there is an intense silence that fills the room, as our dear friend takes us back some sixty years and walks us through the horrors he witnessed in his youth. His raw account of this experience is conveyed to us through his soft voice and the graceful but haunted expression on his face. It is in this way that that we, his listeners, acquire a glimpse into this most neglected chapter of the Holocaust. Baruch puts himself through this ordeal year after year out of a sense of duty to us, the succeeding generation, so that we will not forget, or allow to repeat, the horrors of the past.

Perhaps the most striking moment to me of Baruch's success at bridging the past through to the present was this year's Holocaust memorial service. The overall service was thorough, solemn, and effective. However, the part that struck me the most was the role of the high school Yiddish choir. As this young and vibrant choir sang their beautiful but unknown songs to us, I suddenly was aware of Baruch and many of the other older community members joining in. As their voices filled the hall I suddenly could see myself connected to the past. Those pre-War Jewish songs filled the hall and reminded me of how I was part of this continuity, and how, if we are not careful, the horrors of the past can and will repeat themselves.

I assure you Baruch that we, the succeeding generation, shall not let you down. !????

(Alan Herman, of the Quebec-Israel Committee, is a former CIJR Research Associate.)

AD ME'AH V'ESRIM!
Hillel Neuer

From the time of CIJR's birth, Baruch Cohen has always been like a dear Zeideh to me: a person to look up to as a mensch, committed Jew and untiring champion for Israel's cause, who warmly took naches in my own progress.

Dear Baruch, may you continue to be an inspiration to us all.

(Hillel Neuer is Executive Director of UN Watch in Geneva, Switzerland.)

Radu Ioanid

I wish Baruch Cohen many happy returns. He was always in the forefront of the battle for Holocaust remembrance and against Holocaust denial.

(Radu Ioanid is Director of the International Archival Program at the Center
for Advanced Holocaust Studies of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.)

WITH LOVE AND ADMIRATION

May you continue to contribute your exceptional talents for the good of the Jewish people, as you have until now. And as I lift a glass in your honour I say:

(Prof. Sally Zerker, a CIJR Academic Fellow, is Professor Emeritus at York University.)

OUR BEST WISHES AND HUGS TO YOU AND TO SONYA
Miryam and Eli Shvili

And the rest of our tribe in Haifa and in the Galilee

Dearest Baruch , to everybody else in the world, today may be Columbus-Day.

But, for us it's a far more special day than that!

It's the birthday of our favorite Uncle-the one who never ever forgot all our tribe-members birthdays and who always made us proud and happy!

We would love to see you on your birthday and help you celebrate. But we can't-so we send you our love. We hope you'll have many, many happy birthdays and cheerful look from all your family members.

IN LOVING MEMORY OF HIS DEAR MALKA ^Z"L
Rafi Vago and family

Please convey my best greetings to Baruch Cohen, to his family and the CIJR family, on his 90th birthday.
Baruch is a unique person, the outstanding Jewish "elderly personality," dedicating his life for his loved ones, for the Jewish people, and a living memory of the Jewish tragedy of the 20th century.

(Prof. Rafi Vago is a Senior Lecturer and Senior Research Fellow at Tel Aviv University.)

Miriam Taylor

While life would have entitled you to become bitter and hard, you personify a gentleness of soul that encourages me to have faith in the human spirit. It gives the mirror you hold up to the past an all the more authentic reflection.

(Dr. Miriam Taylor received her D.Phil. in theology from Oxford University.)

HERE'S A MAN
Carole and Herb Feifer, and family

Here is a man who is a true father to our community.
Ensuring that our history and our Israel share continuity.
Here's a man whose mind belies his age.
A man who is a tzadik, a leader, a sage.
Here's a man of dignified, quiet strength
An intellectual giant, who belies his breadth and length.
Here's a man who so many has inspired
An equal kindred spirit who my mother Mona so admired
Here's a man, with his Sonia by his side, and our Lawrence, and the spirit of Malka, all filling him with pride.
Here's a man-a great grandfather and grandfather to Molly, Cole, and parents Mark, Stuart and their wives.
His wisdom and love, as all who know him, enrich and grace their lives.
Here's a man who must wonder where the years have flown
Who will live on and whose ideas will flourish and grow from the seeds he's sewn.
Wishing you a hearty and healthy 90th year!

With love,
Carole and Herb Feifer and family

(Herb Feifer is a member CIJR's Board of Directors.)

MIT A VARM GEROOS
Seymour Mayne

Yasher koach, Baruch. May you continue to serve CIJR, the Jewish community in Canada and abroad with your strong resolve, sharp intelligence and unwavering spirit.

To a hundred and twenty mit gezunt, Baruch,

(Prof. Seymour Mayne is professor of English at University of Ottawa.)

Judy & Amos Sochaczevski

Congratulations and mazal tov on achieving this milestone. May you go from strength to strength and continue doing the extraordinary work that you do.

(Amos Sochaczevski is Vice-Chairman of CIJR's Board of Directors.)

WITH RESPECT AND MUCH LOVE
Harold Shachner
New York City

On this, your 90th birthday, I wish to express my deep appreciation and admiration for your dedicated and constant work for remembrance of the past, and for education and inspiration for the present and future.
May your outstanding achievement continue, and may you have many happy returns of this day.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY
Joyce and Myer Deitcher

All honour to Baruch Cohen-a gentleman, a scholar, and a proud Jews.

(Joyce and Myer Deitcher are members of CIJR's Board of Directors.)

HAPPY BIRTHDAY! MAZEL TOV!
The Liebman Family
Montreal

Baruch Cohen is a true tzadik, a scholar and a gentleman-a light unto our community and to the next generations. May he and Sonya enjoy continued health and happiness for many years to come.

Josh Peters

After you meet Baruch Cohen, you are a better person. Baruch, you inspire me, and all who know you, to greater heights of achievement and moral behavior. Thank you for your unwavering support and all the g'milut chassidim that you do, every day.

Happy Birthday!

(Josh Peters is CIJR Assistant Director.)

Wednesday's "News in Review" Round-Up

Weekly Quotes

"Those Israelis who are going to make peace with their neighbors are going to be asked to take immense risks, extraordinary risks with themselves, their families, their children. In order to take those risks, they need to be able to trust the [Obama] administration. It's crucial.... That doesn't mean we agree on everything or there aren't obstacles to overcome. There is nothing in my experience up to this point that would suggest in any way that that is changing."-Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Michael Oren, during a speech at the Hudson Institute in Washington, referring to a recent poll that showed that only 4 percent of Israelis approved of U.S. President Barack Obama. Oren insisted that Obama must do more to improve his standing in the eyes of Israelis, but that "there is no crisis going on" in Israeli-American diplomatic relations. (Jerusalem Post, Oct. 9)

"We do not have a partner for peace in terms of emotions. The peace that we have and the peace that will come is not romantic. It will not come from love, but from necessity. That kind of peace is better for us than a process with no end. We didn't dream about peace that way, but that is what there is."-Israeli President Shimon Peres, speaking at the opening of the winter session of the Knesset, stating that Israel's goal is to make progress on peace, not to dally in negotiations. (Jerusalem Post, Oct. 13)

"I want to give a message to the Taliban that what we did with you in Swat, we will do the same to you there, too."-Pakistani Interior Minister Rehman Malik, reacting to the Taliban attack on the army's operations headquarters that left 23 people dead, vowing to reduce the Taliban in South Waziristan as it did in Swat Valley. (New York Times, Oct. 11-12)

"The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided that the Nobel Peace Prize for 2009 is to be awarded to President Barack Obama for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples. [He] created a new climate in international politics.... Only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world's attention and given its people hope for a better future. His diplomacy is founded in the concept that those who are to lead the world must do so on the basis of values and attitudes that are shared by the majority of the world's population."-The Nobel Committee, in a press release, awarding the 2009 Peace Prize to the U.S. president. In accepting the prize, Pres. Barack Obama admitted, "To be honest, I do not feel that I deserve to be in the company of so many of the transformative figures who have been honored by this prize, men and women who've inspired me and inspired the entire world through their courageous pursuit of peace." (NobelPrize.org, Oct. 9)

"[V]acuous aspirational justifications for giving the Nobel to Obama simply obscure the real ideological motivation behind the award: the Norwegian committee is promoting a cause, its cause. They seek to promote and encourage a particular kind of American, one who finds favor with European Leftists, who constantly ask, paraphrasing Rex Harrison's musical query in 'My Fair Lady': 'why can't Americans...be more like us?'

"In 2002, for example, in selecting Jimmy Carter, the then-chairman of the Nobel Peace Prize committee said the award was intended as 'a kick in the leg' to President Bush, which should hardly be a qualification, let alone a public justification. Then, in 2007, former Vice President Al Gore's selection for his global-warming work was widely seen as criticism of Bush administration environmental policy. Over the last several decades, moreover, the Nobel has repeatedly honored UN agencies or personnel, rewards increasing in inverse proportion to the organization's effectiveness.

"This year, one Nobel Committee member, Aagot Valle, of Norway's Socialist Left party, said we should view the selection as 'support and a commitment for Obama.' Indeed. Unable to vote in America's 2008 presidential election, the Nobel Committee apparently decided to vote this year, making their ideological perspective unmistakable....

"The Nobel Committee, as its chairman proudly boasted, has engaged in 'realpolitik,' directly intervening in American politics. It has thereby shown just how little it understands our country, it has gravely undermined its own credibility, and it has devalued the Peace Prize itself. Instead of preening itself on the wonderfulness of honoring Obama, the Nobel Committee should have worried more that it was actually hanging an albatross around his neck."-Former U.S. Ambassador to the UN John Bolton, in an op-ed, criticizing several Nobel Committee selections for its Peace Prize. (New York Post, Oct. 11)

"We hope that this gives [Obama] the incentive to walk in the path of bringing justice to the world order. We are not upset and we hope that by receiving this prize he will start taking practical steps to remove injustice in the world."-Ali Akbar Javanfekr, an aide to Iranian Pres. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, commenting on U.S. Pres. Barack Obama's Nobel Prize for Peace. (Al Jazeera, Oct. 10)

"The burka has absolutely no place in Canada. In Canada we recognize the equality of men and women. We want to recognize gender equality as an absolute. The burka marginalizes women."-Farzana Hassan, a spokesperson for the Muslim Canadian Congress, calling for a ban on the burka and niqab full-body. Hassan said many women who cover their face in public are being forced to do so by their husbands and family. "The Koran exhorts Muslims toward modesty, which can be expressed in a number of different ways and it doesn't have to be that you have to cover your face or you have to wear a virtual tent wherever you go. This is not a requirement of Islam or the Koran. We are saying this practice has become a political issue promoted by extremists and to counter this trend we are asking for a ban on the burka." (National Post, Oct. 8)

"The eventual plan for which the group was training was an attack which would cripple infrastructure and involved attacking Parliament and blowing up truck bombs."-the public statement of facts agreed to by the Canadian Public Prosecutor and Zakaria Amara, the leader of the "Toronto18" terrorist group, announcing Amara's guilty plea. Amara has admitted to "an al-Qaeda-inspired" plot to detonate a massive truck bomb in downtown Toronto. He had already built and tested the detonators and was attempting to acquire the ammonium nitrate and nitric acid required for such a bomb. RCMP investigators also found plans for an attack on Parliament Hill. Amara is the fourth of the eighteen suspects arrested in a June 2006 sting operation to plead guilty. (National Post, Oct. 9)

"The linkage between [the Taliban and al-Qaeda] is, at this moment, beneficial for both of them...there are different goals and different aims for the two groups, but they have a mutual benefit in co-operating and being linked.And then, on top of that, they have the mutual common enemy in the infidels, and the Western world and America, and that is connecting them as brothers."-An anonymous member of the intelligence team working for NATO's International Security Assistance Force in Kabul, explaining the ongoing alliance between the Taliban and al-Qaeda. Military officials say this alliance gives Osama bin Laden's group a wide territory to operate within Afghanistan. Any increase in the Taliban's power will increase the potential power base of international terrorism. (Globe and Mail, Oct. 13, New York Times, Oct. 10)

Short Takes

TERROR CELL CO-LEADER GIVES UNEXPECTED GUILTY PLEA-( Ottawa ) Zakaria Amara, 24, became the fifth member of the "Toronto18" to be convicted since the group's arrest in 2006, after unexpectedly pleading guilty. Prosecutors said some of the remaining accused members were peripheral players who did not have full knowledge of Mr. Amara's plan to damage the Toronto Stock Exchange, the Toronto office of Canada's intelligence service and a military base. The planned bombings were intended to terrorize Canadians and cripple the economy, forcing Canada to withdraw its troops from Afghanistan. (Canadian Press, New York Times, Oct. 9)

PA SEEKS UN CENSURE OF ISRAEL OVER GAZA, TEMPLE MOUNT-(Jerusalem) The UN Human Rights Council's planned deliberation over the recent Goldstone report on last winter's Gaza offensive will also deal with Jerusalem, and the recent Temple Mount Riots. The Israeli Foreign Ministry is facing a diplomatic battle ahead of the Council vote, scheduled to take place Monday. The Palestinian Authority and a group of Arab countries intend to submit a resolution censuring Israel and demanding unhindered Palestinian access to all holy sites, including the Temple Mount. According to a political source in Jerusalem, the main motivation behind the Palestinian request to discuss the Goldstone report came from "Israeli provocations in Jerusalem" (the Palestinian Authority's initial decision not to have the report discussed was criticized by Hamas and Arab states). (Ha'aretz, Oct. 14)

ISRAEL: LEBANON TURNING BLIND EYE TO HEZBOLLAH ARMS-(Jerusalem) Israel accused the Lebanese army on Tuesday of letting Hezbollah rebuild its military infrastructure. The accusation came one day after an official in the Shi'ite terrorist group died in a blast at one of its arms caches in south Lebanon. The Israeli ambassador to the UN, Gabriela Shalev, made a formal complaint to the UN secretary-general, Ban Ki-Moon, and to the president of the Security Council. She said the explosion in the village of Tayr Filsi violated the UN resolution that ended the Second Lebanon War between Israel and Hezbollah. Resolution 1701 called for the disarmament of Hezbollah and banned paramilitary forces south of the Litani River. (Ha'aretz, Oct. 14)

ISRAELI NGOs LEAD RELIEF EFFORTS IN PHILLIPINES-( Jerusalem ) Over the last week, a delegation of six Israeli volunteers has treated over 600 typhoon victims for water-related diseases in the Philippines. The help is coordinated by IsraAID, a coalition of Jewish and Israeli NGOs which provide relief work and education abroad. Members of the Fast Israeli Rescue & Search Team (FIRST)-arrived in the Philippines Oct. 10, a week after typhoon Parma made landfall. Parma and typhoon Ketsana, which hit in late September, have left over 650 dead and hundreds of thousands homeless. (Jerusalem Post, Oct. 13)

TURKEY SNUBS ISRAEL, FLIRTS WITH SYRIA-( Istanbul )Syria said on Tuesday it would hold military exercises with Turkey. The announcement came shortly after Turkey had unilaterally cancelled manoeuvres with Israel. Recently, Turkish military officials allegedly approached the IDF with a surprising demand that Israel refrain from participating in this week's NATO air force exercises. Meanwhile, Turkey and Syria held a day of meetings and ceremonies Tuesday that signalled an era of improving relations between the countries. (Reuters, Wall Street Journal, Oct. 12)

PAKISTANI ROLE SUSPECTED IN BLAST NEAR INDIAN EMBASSY-(Kabul) A car packed with explosives blew up beside the Indian Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan, killing seventeen people in the second direct attack on the embassy compound in two years. The two attacks on the embassy, both suicide car bombings, immediately raised suspicions of Pakistani involvement. Zabiullah Mujahed, a Taliban spokesman, claimed his group was behind this latest attack. But U.S. commanders, who believe the Taliban in Afghanistan are a set of related insurgencies that crisscross regions and countries, said it was unclear which group was responsible. (New York Times, National Post, Oct. 9)

IRANIAN NUCLEAR SCIENTISTS DEFECT TO U.S.-( New York ) Two Iranian nuclear scientists who mysteriously disappeared in recent weeks have reportedly defected to the U.S. Reports of the defection have caused considerable embarrassment to the regime in Tehran. The reports first broke in the Saudi-owned newspaper Al-Sharq al-Awsat, and suggest that at least one scientist, Shahram Amiri, who worked on nuclear research and development, defected several months ago to the West during the hajj pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia. One more person, whose identity and specialization remain unclear, was arrested in Georgia a few weeks ago and agreed to defect as well. (New York Post, Oct. 8; Ha'aretz, Oct. 9)

SUICIDE BOMBINGS, TERROR ATTACKS ROCK PAKISTAN-( Islamabad ) At least 125 people have been killed in a series of blasts and attacks in Pakistan in the past week. A suicide bomber, reported to be just 13 years old, struck in northwest Pakistan, killing 45 people Monday. An audacious raid by Islamist terrorists, wearing army uniforms, on the Pakistani army headquarters near Islamabad left 23 people dead this past weekend. A suicide bomber walked into the lobby of the Islamabad offices of the U.N.'s World Food program Oct. 5, killing five people, and a massive car bomb Oct. 9 killed 52 people in Peshawar. (Wall Street Journal, Oct. 11; National Post, Globe and Mail, Oct. 13)

IRANIAN REGIME CLAMPS DOWN ON DISSENTERS-( Cairo ) Iran's Revolutionary Guards Corps has moved to tighten its grip on that country, most recently with its takeover of a majority share in the nation's telecommunications monopoly. The nearly $8 billion acquisition is yet another indication that the paramilitary force has reached far beyond its military capacity and evolved into the nation's most powerful political and economic force. Meanwhile, government officials have sentenced to death three protesters who took to the streets following the nation's disputed presidential election in June. The death sentences are the first to be made public in cases involving hundreds charged in the vast protests that followed the government's declaration of victory for incumbent president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. (New York Times, Oct. 9 & 11)

RUSSIA DISMISSES TALK OF IRAN SANCTIONS-(Moscow) Rejecting U.S. hopes for a diplomatic consensus on sanctions against Iran, Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov has said that new sanctions would be "counterproductive." Lavrov said that, in light of the meeting in Geneva earlier this month in which the Iranians agreed to allow UN inspectors access the clandestine nuclear facility at Qom, diplomacy should be given a chance to work. (Globe and Mail, Oct. 14)

U.S. BUYING BUNKER BUSTERS-(New York) The Pentagon has put out a rush order on a new class of fifteen-ton "Massive Ordinance Penetrator" (MOP) bunker-buster bombs. The laser-guided bombs, which carry a payload of over 2500kg of explosives and are claimed to be able to penetrate 70 meters of concrete, are designed to destroy underground fortified nuclear installations. The MOP bombs-the first four being operational by 2010-are the largest and most powerful in the U.S. arsenal. (New York Post, Oct. 14)

Obama's War and UN Justice: Afghanistan and Goldstonistan

A 'NECESSARY' WAR?
Peggy Noonan
Wall Street Journal, October 10, 2009

All in. All out. Double down. Withdraw. The language of the Afghanistan debate is stark, as seem the choices. But at least the debate has begun, forced by the blunt recent comments of Gen. Stanley McChrystal. It is overdue. At the very least, less than a full airing of all the facts, realities, challenges and possibilities in that region shows insufficient respect and gratitude toward those we've put in harm's way. Nobody, really, is certain what to do, or wherein lies wisdom. It isn't a choice between right and wrong or "clearly smart" versus "obviously stupid" so much as a choice between two hells, or more than two.

The hell of withdrawal is what kind of drama would fill the vacuum, who would re-emerge, who would be empowered, what Pakistan would look like with a newly redrawn reality in the neighborhood, what tremors would shake the ground there as the U.S. troops march out. It is the hell of a great nation that had made a commitment in retreat, abandoning not only its investment of blood and treasure but those on the ground, and elsewhere, who had one way or another cast their lot with us. It would involve the hell, too, of a U.N. commitment, an allied commitment, deflated to the point of collapse.

The hell of staying is equally clear, and vivid: more loss of American and allied troops, more damage to men and resources, an American national debate that would be a continuing wound and possibly a debilitating one, an overstretched military given no relief and in fact stretched thinner, a huge and continuing financial cost in a time when our economy is low. There is no particular guarantee of, or even a completely persuasive definition of, success. And Pakistan may blow anyway....

It is strange-it is more than strange, and will confound the historians of the future-that Gen. McChrystal has not been asked to testify before Congress about Afghanistan, about what the facts are on the ground, what is doable, what is desirable, how the war can be continued, and how it can end. He-and others, including experienced members of the military past and present, and foreign-policy professionals-should be called forth to talk to the country in the clearest terms under questioning from our elected representatives....

A few members of Congress have begun calling for hearings. Democrat Ike Skelton of the House Armed Services Committee told this newspaper that "it would be useful" to hear Gen. McChrystal speak of his proposed strategy. Rep. Skelton said he'd like to hear it from "the horse's mouth." Missouri 's Republican senator, Kit Bond, has noted that while the president may not want to hear from Gen. McChrystal, Congress does. But no hearings are scheduled. Why? The Pentagon doesn't want them. A spokesman said Gen. McChrystal should be working the war, not in Washington "wading into the debate." But Afghanistan will be settled in Washington , not Kabul , and the debate has already begun.

Which gets us to the commander in chief, who directs the secretary of defense, who runs the Pentagon. The president, as almost all have noted-and for once, almost all are correct-has not distinguished himself in this matter. Afghanistan is a necessary war or not, we'll see. He famously talked to Gen. McChrystal only once in the latter's first 70 days in Afghanistan . He is meeting with advisers, considering options. Would that he'd begun earlier.

At the moment he seems a sort of anti-Lincoln. President Lincoln was early on damaged by Gen. George McClellan's leaking to his friends in the press, but Lincoln every day was focused on one thing, the war, and took no offense. He knew what was urgent. For Mr. Obama, many things are urgent. But when many things are urgent, nothing really is urgent.

Mr. Obama reportedly began intensive meetings on the future of Afghanistan in the past few weeks. Lincoln used to go to McClellan's house down the street from the White House and wait in the parlor for a chance at deliberations.... One senses Afghanistan has been waiting in the president's parlor. Now that's he's focused, and deliberating, why not include the public?

What is said might box in the president, and Congress, but only because they've left a void. Hearings would illuminate issues, air differences, broaden the picture, and make clear the stakes. And all of those things would help spur decisions that spring from a thing badly needed, consensus.

YOUNG HAMLET'S AGONY
Charles Krauthammer
Washington Post, October 9, 2009

The genius of democracy is the rotation of power, which forces the opposition to be serious-particularly about things like war, about which until Jan. 20 of this year Democrats were decidedly unserious.

When the Iraq war (which a majority of Senate Democrats voted for) ran into trouble and casualties began to mount, Democrats followed the shifting winds of public opinion and turned decidedly antiwar. But needing political cover because of their post-Vietnam reputation for weakness on national defense, they adopted Afghanistan as their pet war. "I was part of the 2004 Kerry campaign, which elevated the idea of Afghanistan as 'the right war' to conventional Democratic wisdom," wrote Democratic consultant Bob Shrum shortly after President Obama was elected. "This was accurate as criticism of the Bush administration, but it was also reflexive and perhaps by now even misleading as policy."...

Brilliantly crafted and perfectly cynical, the " Iraq war bad, Afghan war good" posture worked. Democrats first won Congress, then the White House. But now, unfortunately, they must govern. No more games. No more pretense. So what does their commander in chief do now with the war he once declared had to be won but had been almost criminally under-resourced by Bush? Perhaps provide the resources to win it?

You would think so. And that's exactly what Obama's handpicked commander requested on Aug. 30-a surge of 30,000 to 40,000 troops to stabilize a downward spiral and save Afghanistan the way a similar surge saved Iraq . That was more than five weeks ago. Still no response. Obama agonizes publicly as the world watches. Why? Because, explains national security adviser James Jones, you don't commit troops before you decide on a strategy.

No strategy? On March 27, flanked by his secretaries of defense and state, the president said this: "Today I'm announcing a comprehensive new strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan ." He then outlined a civilian-military counterinsurgency campaign to defeat the Taliban in Afghanistan . And to emphasize his seriousness, the president made clear that he had not arrived casually at this decision. The new strategy, he declared, "marks the conclusion of a careful policy review."...

[But then] the White House began leaking an alternate strategy, apparently proposed (invented?) by Vice President Biden, for achieving immaculate victory with arm's-length use of cruise missiles, Predator drones and special ops. The irony is that no one knows more about this kind of warfare than Gen. McChrystal. He was in charge of exactly this kind of "counterterrorism" in Iraq for nearly five years.... When the world's expert on this type of counterterrorism warfare recommends precisely the opposite strategy-"counterinsurgency," meaning a heavy-footprint, population-protecting troop surge-you have the most convincing of cases against counterterrorism by the man who most knows its potential and its limits....

Yet his commander in chief, young Hamlet, frets, demurs, agonizes. His domestic advisers, led by Rahm Emanuel, tell him if he goes for victory, he'll become LBJ, the domestic visionary destroyed by a foreign war. His vice president holds out the chimera of painless counterterrorism success. Against Emanuel and Biden stand Gen. David Petraeus, the world's foremost expert on counterinsurgency (he saved Iraq with it), and Stanley McChrystal, the world's foremost expert on counterterrorism. Whose recommendation on how to fight would you rely on?

Less than two months ago-Aug. 17 in front of an audience of veterans-the president declared Afghanistan to be "a war of necessity." Does anything he says remain operative beyond the fading of the audience applause

INVESTIGATE THE INVESTIGATORS
Richard Landes
Jerusalem Post, October 10, 2009

Judge Richard Goldstone has presented his report on Gaza and, among other recommendations, suggested that Israel conduct its own inquiry. Israeli government officials, assuming he meant an investigation like his into Israel 's misdeeds, declined, noting that that they have and continue to investigate their army's behavior on a constant basis.

But after reading most of the report, another possibility presents itself. It rapidly becomes clear to any reader not driven by a thirst for "dirt" on Israel , that Goldstone's work represents a new low in the tragically deteriorating world of international justice. It fails on every count, from its handling of evidence, to its legal reasoning, to its unstated but pervasive assumptions of Israeli guilt and Palestinian innocence, to its astonishing conclusion (from someone who knows the gruesome details of Bosnia and Rwanda), that Israeli behavior was so bad it might well constitute "crimes against humanity." As a result this report takes the army with the best record in the history of warfare for protecting enemy civilians and accuses it of targeting them. Goldstone makes Kafka's Trial seem fair....

I'd like to suggest a different approach to the question of "investigation." I propose that either the State of Israel, or an International Citizens' Tribunal, should begin an investigation into the Goldstone Fact-Finding Mission's proceedings. In it they should ask the fundamental question: "How could this Mission have conducted itself with such systematic violation of the simplest rules of equity in judgment?" In doing so Israel could bring to light three fundamental issues that the Goldstone report systematically downplayed in its considerations: Israel's plight (Sderot, surrounding population, long-term negative trends); the repugnant behavior of Hamas-its use of human shields, indoctrination of genocidal hatred, suicidal death cult; and the role of the mainstream news media and NGOs in giving credence to Palestinian claims, many of which could not stand up to serious examination.
An investigation team should gather high-level legal and military experts, summon witness testimony that Goldstone either refused to hear-Yvonne Green, Richard Kemp; or ignored-Dr. Siderer, Noam Bedein; people who have worked on the "data"-Jonathan Dahoah Halevy, Elihu Richter, as well as specialists on urban warfare to compare Israel's records to other nations.... Legal experts could highlight the way in which the commission violated basic principles of legal procedure, equity, and reasoning.

At the same time, Israel could address a series of problems that Goldstone either ignored or dismissed, which lie at the heart of why Israel has been so maligned and the Palestinians treated so gently by both journalists and NGOs. Israel must examine the role of intimidation, of advocacy, and of access in distorting and falsifying evidence, the role of political correctness in making us incapable of discussing the problem and the astonishing lack of critical thinking in assessing witnesses.

With these factors in mind, the investigation might reexamine the Palestinian testimony to the Goldstone Mission and offer some of the hard questions that, had these judges had any self-respect, they would have raised to challenge the extraordinarily dishonest testimony they systematically accepted. Alas, the proceedings were geared at getting damning testimony-reliability be damned.

After going through these crucial issues with very broad implications for the way the rest of the world views this conflict, Israel could then conclude the investigation by interviewing people who could testify to the nature of the cognitive war that Jihadis like Hamas, Hizbullah, Hizb ut-tahrir, the Muslim Brotherhood, al-Qaida and so many others wage against the West. They could illuminate the way in which Israel , for peculiar reasons, represents the soft underbelly of the ultimate target in this war, the West.

Goldstone gave Israel the floor; let Israel take up the challenge, and strike back. To paraphrase Ecclesiastes: "there's a time for receiving rebuke and a time for rebuking..." and the time for rebuke has come.

(Prof. Richard Landes , a CIJR Academic Fellow, teaches history
at Boston University and has just launched a new collective website:
Understanding the Goldstone Report [http://www.goldstonereport.org].)

SACRIFICING PEACE FOR PROPAGANDA POINTS
Barry Rubin
Jerusalem Post, October 11, 2009

Should the Palestinian Authority be the main advocate pushing acceptance of the bizarre Goldstone Report in order to demonize Israel at the UN, or might it just stand aside and let a couple of dozen Arab and Muslim-majority states take the lead in doing so? This is-or should be-a minor issue, but it has escalated to push the real barrier to solving the Arab-Israeli conflict into everyone's face once again.

When the US government asked the PA not to be the main sponsor in demanding UN sanctions against Israel , the Palestinian leadership agreed for a few hours. But then, unable to resist flaunting its radicalism and obstructionism, it double-crossed the United States . This step further sabotaged President Barack Obama's efforts to advance the peace process, seemingly his No. 1 international priority.

The Palestinian leadership is once again shooting itself in the foot. It is throwing away a real opportunity for a state.... When it comes down to a choice between continuing the conflict and trying to win a total victory that wipes Israel off the map, or making peace and getting a state, the Palestinian leadership always chooses the former. And when it comes to choosing between being a bit more moderate and gaining Western support, or being demagogically radical and appealing to the most radical forces, the Palestinian leadership chooses the latter. The Fatah-dominated PA doesn't want peace with Israel ; it prefers peace with Hamas, its rival that not only murders and tortures Fatah people but-one more irony-is the main beneficiary of the Goldstone Report.
The Obama administration is trying to make peace and wants the PA's cooperation. If the UN goes ballistic and now bashes Israel as an evil, illegitimate war criminal-on the basis of Hamas propaganda, no less, which is all the Goldstone commission really purveys-this will not help the cause of peace and will wreck US policy. Israel will reject more concessions; Arab states will have another rationale for not making peace and will demand that the world punish Israel with sanctions or even extinction.

The Obama administration basically said to the PA: "Look, we're getting you lots of money and diplomatic help on the basis of the idea that you want peace. No president in history has ever been more sympathetic and supportive of you. So stand aside on this issue for a few days. Do us this little favor." But this is too much for the PA, which now faces protests and criticism at home for daring to make a small tactical concession that has no practical implication....

This is at least the fourth time in the short, nine-month history of the new administration that the Palestinians and Arab states have done this to Obama. Before the latest development:

Remember that the peace process ended when then PA leader Yasser Arafat refused a state, along with more than $23 billion in aid. Remember that the Palestinians, handed all of the Gaza Strip, made it a launching pad for rockets aimed at Israel .... Remember that when the Bush administration was trying to be supportive, the PA made a deal through Hizbullah with Iran to bring in massive amounts of arms on a ship....

Peace is a beautiful dream. But that dream keeps getting interrupted by recurring nightmares. Those who lead nations and are responsible for the lives and welfare of their people, those whose duty is to inform the people, and those who speak out publicly have a duty to cast aside wishful thinking and face the truth, as demonstrated by numerous examples and historical experience:

As for Obama and the European leaders, you've had the experience; now learn the lessons.

Remembering, and Honouring

LAURENT MURAWIEC (1951-2009) Frederick Krantz (Director, Canadian Institute for Jewish Research) The worlds of Middle Eastern scholarship and Israel advocacy, and of the study of European and Western politics and history generally, have lost a remarkable intellectual, scholar and human being. Laurent Murawiec, after a long and noble struggle against cancer, passed away this week, leaving behind his wonderful wife Claudia Kinkela Murawiec and two young daughters, Morgane and Johanna. A courageous and tenacious scholar, a sweet and loving person, and a resourceful and unfailing friend, Laurent was the author of innumerable articles and a series of far-ranging and important monographs, including La Guerre au XXIème siècle, a superb translation of Clausewitz, De la Guerre, a study of modern Saudi Arabia, Princes of Darkness: The Saudi Assault on the West, and a magisterial two-volume historical-political study of Islamist ideology, The Mind of Jihad. Born to a Polish Jewish family which suffered in the Holocaust and fled to Paris, Laurent -- secular scion of a long line of rabbis -- was brought up and educated in France. But as a young scholar he emigrated to the U.S., teaching at several universities before becoming a Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute. He fell in love with American democracy, and was a strong and consistent advocate of the necessity of American world leadership, and of support for the embattled state of Israel. Laurent was also a Fellow of the Canadian Institute for Jewish Research, which was honoured to publish his work on American Israel policy and the Middle East, in French and in English. (His most recently written article, "Obama: l'idéologie, vous dis-je", appears in CIJR's Communiqué ISRANET, available on our website.) I will, as will all who knew him, miss him deeply, as a friend and colleague, and as a person. Indeed, in terms of the impact of his profound mind and creative, wide-ranging scholarship, it can be said of Laurent, as it was said of that democratic realist we both admired, the great Florentine republican chancellor Niccolò Machiavelli, tanto nomini, nullum par elogium.

HUDSON INSTITUTE MOURNS THE LOSS OF SENIOR FELLOW
LAURENT MURAWIEC (1951 - 2009)
Hudson Institute

Laurent Murawiec was a big thinker who published with ease in French, German, and English. He was a well known intellectual in France, a gadfly who challenged the conventional wisdom by drawing on an encyclopedic knowledge of history, political thought, and theology.

Prior to moving to the United States, he was an advisor to the French Ministry of Defense and taught the history of economic planning at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) in Paris. He also taught military analysis and cultural anthropology at the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University. Prior to joining Hudson in 2002, he was a senior international policy analyst with the RAND Corporation.

His intellectual legacy -- whether at RAND, Hudson, or the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales -- includes pioneering research on Islamic radicalism, the future of Asia, the revolution in military affairs, and cyber-warfare. At Hudson and RAND, he undertook numerous studies for the Office of Net Assessment at the Pentagon. He was well known as a forthright analyst among strategic thinkers in the United States, Europe, and Asia.

Murawiec's August 2002 briefing to the Defense Policy Board at the Pentagon on Saudi links to Islamic terrorism -- which was later published in Europe and the United States -- nearly created a major diplomatic crisis between the United States and Saudi Arabia.

Murawiec never shied from controversy. His work was published nonetheless by the world's finest academic publishing houses, including Odile Jacob and Cambridge University Press, which published his most recent book, The Mind of Jihad (2008).

His op-eds have appeared in major newspapers throughout the world, including Le Monde, Le Figaro, Die Welt, and the Financial Times. He was a fixture on French television analyzing U.S. politics and international affairs.

HOLOCAUST DENIALS
Avi Shafran
Jerusalem Post, July 20, 2009

Never had the appearance of a word on a page so shocked me. It just made no sense. Those English letters, in that order, simply didn't belong there.

It was nearly 20 years ago, in the library of a Jewish day school in Providence, Rhode Island where I was teaching at the time. The word was "Holocaust" and it so discombobulated me because the book I had opened had been published in the late 1800s.

Even stranger, it was an English translation (likely the first one) of the Mishna, the backbone of the Talmud.
After a moment's reflection on that fact, I realized I hadn't gone mad. In context, the word was how the translator had rendered the Hebrew word ola -- a sacrifice in the times of Jerusalem's Holy Temple that, unlike all other offerings, was burned in its entirety on the altar, without any portion set aside for human consumption. "Holo" in Greek means "entirely" and "caust" means "burned."

Indeed, whoever first applied the word to what occurred on the European continent over the years 1939-1945 may well have chosen it because of its Jewish source. After all, the Third Reich aimed to rid the world of Jews, considering them the ultimate, mortal enemy of civilization. And, when all was tragically said and done, Hitler and his helpers in fact succeeded in murdering nearly two out of every three European Jews -- if not an ola, staggeringly, devastatingly close.

Others, to be sure, were persecuted and killed by the Nazis too: Romani (Roma and Sinti peoples), political dissidents, criminals of various sorts, physically and mentally disabled people, Jehovah's Witnesses, homosexuals, Poles and Slavs.

But the Endlösung -- the "Final Solution" -- was for "der Judenfrage" -- "the Jewish question." There was no "Romani question" or "Homosexual question." The Nazis hated many types of people and for a variety of reasons, but they singled out only one group of people for utter destruction. The disabled and homosexuals were persecuted only in the Reich, not in territories the Nazis occupied. The Romani, in the words of historian Alex Grobman, "did not have to be annihilated completely." That was a fate reserved for the Jews alone.

Even in his final moments, Hitler obsessed over the Jews, charging his followers shortly before his suicide to demonstrate "merciless resistance against the universal poisoners of all peoples, international Jewry." Thus there were no speeches like the Reich Organization leader's 1939 "The Jews or Us" ("There is no room in the world for the Jews any more. The Jew or us, one of us will have to go") about Poles. No book like 1937's The Eternal Jew (which sought to graphically portray Jews as subhuman) about Slavs. No Mein Kampf ravings about the "peril" posed by the disabled. And no issues of Der Sturmer on newsstands with the motto "The homosexuals are our misfortune!" on the cover page.

There is a reason, in other words, why the Holocaust is most readily associated with the destruction of European Jewry, why the Berlin Holocaust memorial -- the monument that stands in the maw from which the Holocaust emerged -- is called Denkmal für die ermordeten Juden Europas -- the "Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe." It shows no insensitivity to any of the groups that suffered under the Third Reich to appreciate the straightforward fact that only one was identified as a noxious threat to humanity itself; that only one was targeted for total genocide -- both within and without Germany's borders -- that none suffered the loss of life that the Third Reich inflicted upon the Jewish people.

And yet, maintaining the special linkage of the Holocaust to Jews is becoming politically incorrect.

The recent controversy surrounding the Holocaust Memorial Mall in Sheepshead Bay is a case in point. It already bears an inscription recognizing other victims of Nazi persecution, including homosexuals. But an active member of a "gay synagogue" campaigned for a more prominent set of stone markers recognizing Nazi victims others than Jews. When the city acceded, New York State Assemblyman Dov Hikind protested what he saw as a subtle devaluing of the special nature of the Jewish people's singular targeting by the Nazis.

Hikind was subsequently taken to task by, among others, the New York City Council speaker and the mayor. More recently, two candidates for a City Council seat attacked a third one for the sin of having been endorsed by Hikind. One of the candidates intoned that he "would never compromise my principles by having an endorsement like that," and labeled "outrageous" the contention that, as he put it, "there are two classes of victims in the Holocaust." A writer in The Jerusalem Post went so far as to compare the assemblyman's stance to Holocaust denial.

No one, though, is denying many groups suffered, and greatly, under the Nazis. But if there is any subtle denial in the air these days, if anything delicately desecrates the history of the Holocaust, it is the reluctance of some to recognize a profound and qualitative difference -- the difference between the Nazis' persecution of political enemies and "social misfits" and the visceral, genocidal loathing they reserved for the Jews.

(Avi Shafran is director of public affairs for Agudath Israel of America.)

REWRITING SHOAH HISTORY IN ESTONIA
Efraim Zuroff
Jerusalem Post, August 22, 2009

Most people in Israel when asked to identify the country which hosted the most recent reunion of Waffen-SS veterans would probably guess either Germany or Austria, which is a logical but incorrect response.

The answer in this case is Estonia, the smallest of the Baltic republics and generally not known for particular Nazi sympathies. But the problem is that in the Baltics, which suffered German and Soviet occupations, the historical concepts generally accepted throughout Europe and the rest of the world are turned topsy turvy, with the Nazis being regarded as the by-far lesser of the two evils and the Soviets considered the arch-villains.

Thus late last month, a day before I arrived in Tallinn to launch the Russian-language edition of an anthology on contemporary anti-Semitism dedicated to the memory of Simon Wiesenthal, Estonia hosted its annual reunion of Waffen-SS veterans at Sinimäe, the site of one of the fiercest battles fought by the 20th Waffen-SS Grenadier Division (also known as the First Estonian Division) against the Soviets in the latter stages of World War II.
SS veterans from other European countries, in which such gatherings are illegal, were only too happy to join in the festivities in a country where their service on behalf of the Third Reich is considered by many to be worthy, rather than denigrated.

The existence of such a reunion, however, is only part of the story. The attitude of the local authorities to the SS veterans and their supporters on the one hand and to those opposed to such gatherings on the others, is indicative of the distorted view on history currently prevalent in Tallinn. Thus, for example, foreign SS veterans who came to the reunion, as well as younger persons sympathetic to them, were welcome guests in Estonia.
Foreign and even local anti-fascists who sought to demonstrate against the reunion, on the other hand, were treated very harshly in a manner totally unbecoming a country which is a member of NATO and the European Union. Thus protesters from Finland and Latvia were declared persona non grata and expelled from Estonia, whereas local anti-fascists were arrested when they sought to protest in concentration camp garb, while others were detained for no reason to make sure that they would not be able to register their legitimate protest.

The annual SS veterans reunion is only the tip of the iceberg of sympathy for these men who are considered fighters for Estonian independence even though the victory they sought to achieve was for Nazi Germany, which had no intention of granting them sovereignty. Thus all sorts of souvenirs of the unit are widely available for purchase, its outstanding soldiers are lauded as local heroes and their exploits are memorialized in an impressive album readily available which emphasizes "their selfless courage against communism and for the restoration of Estonian independence," but which begrudgingly admits only in passing that they "had to wear a German uniform to do so" (The Estonian Legion in Words and Pictures, Tallinn, 2008, coedited by none other than former [twice] Estonian prime minister Mart Laar).

During my visit, I encountered several additional examples of the Estonians' reversal of conventional historical wisdom about World War II. The most famous, and the incident which sparked violent riots in Tallinn in the spring of 2007, was the removal of a monument honoring the Soviet soldiers who liberated the country from the yoke of the Nazi occupation, from its central location in the capital to a military cemetery on the outskirts of the city.

Besides grievously insulting the large Russian minority which views the Soviet troops as heroes who achieved a vital victory in the fight against Nazism, the removal of the statue was also a painful blow to the Estonian Jewish community, whose annihilation in 1941 was orchestrated by the Nazis and their Estonian collaborators. Having visited both the monument's original location opposite the national library and its new site, it is clear that Estonians prefer not be reminded that their current narrative is a distortion of the historical events of World War II.

I encountered another blatant example of the rewriting of Estonian history at the Maarjamae memorial ground, dedicated to "the units participating in the 1944 defensive battles in Estonia." It was bad enough to see large plaques commemorating the infamous SS Viking Division and other European Waffen-SS units, but the most shocking and infuriating sight was a marker in honor of the Omakaitse, a paramilitary self-defense organization which played a very active role in the arrest and murder of numerous Jews and communists in 1941. Among its more notorious commanders was the mass murderer and rapist Evald Mikson, who commanded the unit in Vonnu and whom the Wiesenthal Center exposed living in Iceland in 1991.

Today will be marked in Estonia as a day of remembrance for the victims of totalitarian regimes. This ostensibly innocuous initiative to commemorate Nazi and communist victims together is actually just a first step towards obtaining official recognition that communism and Nazism were equally evil, a major step toward undermining the current status of the Shoah as a unique tragedy and one which will help deflect attention and criticism from the Estonians' distortion of history and failure to face their Holocaust past. (They have since independence, failed to prosecute a single Estonian Holocaust perpetrator, while bringing to trial numerous communist criminals.)
On the surface, it would be poor manners for our ambassador to be absent from the ceremonies, as if we are oblivious to Estonian suffering under the communists, but as long as Estonia and the other Baltic countries insist on rewriting history and relativizing Nazi crimes, Israel must make it unequivocally clear that we will not support such initiatives.

(Efraim Zuroff is Israel director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center.)

THE BEST, AND LAST, OF AN ERA
Laurence Weinbaum
Ha'aretz, October 9, 2009

The death of Marek Edelman, on October 2, surely marks the end of an era. Although a handful of Warsaw Ghetto insurgents are still with us, Edelman was certainly the best known of them, and was the last surviving leader. He escaped through the sewers and returned to fight again in the abortive 1944 Warsaw Uprising. Edelman wrote one of the first accounts of the struggle of his comrades in the ghetto. Characterizing the Jewish resistance there, he said: "We fought simply not to allow the Germans alone to pick the time and place of our deaths."

After the war, he settled in Lodz and studied medicine, determined to play a part in the building of a new Poland founded on socialist principles, in which Jews would enjoy civil rights and cultural autonomy. This was, of course, not to be. For Edelman, like others, Jews and non-Jews alike, who genuinely believed in the socialist cause and in human rights, the so-called "People's Poland" proved a great disappointment. Over successive years, many voiced that disillusionment with their feet by leaving the country.
But Edelman remained in Poland, even when his immediate family chose to leave. "After all, someone has to stay here with all those who perished here," he repeatedly declared.

One can decry that stubbornness or admire it, but there is no denying that in electing to live in Poland, he became a thorn in the side of the communist regime -- and a symbol of the Polish-Jewish symbiosis that many believed had perished in the gas chambers of Treblinka and, immediately following the war, in the bloodstained streets of Kielce.

True to his Bundist roots, Edelman never made his peace with Zionism, and was often a bitter, even vitriolic, critic of the Jewish state and its policies. In August 2002, he wrote a letter in support of those whom he called "commanders of the Palestinian military, paramilitary and partisan operations -- to all the soldiers of the Palestinian fighting organizations." Although condemning the wave of suicide bombings that wracked Israel at the time, Edelman expressed solidarity with the Palestinian struggle. In so doing, the ghetto veteran furnished advocates of the Arab case with potent ammunition.

Edelman's disenchantment with Israel arose out of his own sense of humanism. Above all, it was rooted in his belief in an ideology that has been relegated to the dustbin of history. Edelman was probably the last representative of a once-flourishing movement in Poland and throughout East Central Europe that believed in doikeit (Yiddish for "hereness"). Bundism rejected the idea that Jews should pick up and leave their native lands.
While neither religiously observant nor a Zionist, Edelman was a passionate Jew. Had he succumbed to the fleshpots of New York, Paris or Melbourne, perhaps his former ghetto comrades now living on kibbutz could have forgiven him. It was his decision to remain in the dilapidated city of Lodz, the former epicenter of the Shoah, that seemed so objectionable and even offensive -- and an inexplicable, yet powerful negation of Zionist triumphalism.

Upon hearing of Edelman's death, Tadeusz Pieronek, a Polish bishop known for his liberal views opined, "I respect him mostly for the fact that he stayed in this land, which made him fight so hard for his Jewish and Polish identity ... He became a real witness; he was giving real testimony with his life."
Like many witnesses asked to describe events in which they had taken part, Edelman was an imperfect source of information. At times, his undisguised and intemperate distaste for his Jewish political rivals tainted the veracity of his testimony.

After the war, perhaps Edelman's "finest hour" was in the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s, when he joined the precursor of Solidarity and later the mass movement itself. During that time, he displayed courage and outspokenness in the face of the repressive policies of the Communist regime. He was even once briefly subjected to house arrest.

In 1983 he was invited to take part in a showcase ceremony to mark the 40th anniversary of the ghetto uprising. He refused to participate in what he saw as a shameless and transparent attempt by Communist authorities to deflect international attention from its attempt to stifle opposition. To appear at the event, he claimed, "would be an act of cynicism and contempt" in a country "where social life is dominated throughout by humiliation and coercion."

Edelman did, however, take part in the 1989 Round Table Talks that led to democratic rule and genuine national rebirth, and was elected to the Polish parliament, the Sejm.

Writing in Haaretz earlier this week, Moshe Arens, one of the commanding personages of the Revisionist Movement -- for which Edelman, it must be said, had nothing but contempt -- described his own failed attempts to secure an honorary degree for Edelman. "I ran into stubborn opposition ... in Israel. He had received Poland's highest honor, and at the 65th commemoration of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising he was awarded the French Legion of Honor medal. He died not having received the recognition from Israel that he so richly deserved."
Perhaps that graceful and generous display of recognition by one octogenarian for another, though on the opposite side of the political fence, is a most fitting obituary for the complicated and cantankerous Polish cardiologist and ghetto fighter -- and the best testimony to his greatness.

(Dr. Laurence Weinbaum is chief editor of the Israel Journal of Foreign Affairs, and co-author of a forthcoming book on the Jewish Military Union (ZZW) in the Warsaw Ghetto.)

Shabbat Shalom to all our readers.

Obama's Fateful Decision: Afghanistan Policy

Wednesday's "News in Review" Round-Up

Choices Narrowing on Nuclear Iran

Iran, U.S., Israel: Attack, "Or Else"