FresnoZionism.org — ציונות פרסנו

Hours after the security cabinet ruled against a large military operation in the Gaza Strip, IDF Chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi said Wednesday that it was impossible to defeat a terrorist group without having control on the ground.

During the day, more than 20 Kassam rockets were fired into the western Negev, pounding Sderot and outlying communities. A young girl was lightly wounded by shrapnel in her leg and two others were treated for ringing in their ears after one Kassam struck the middle of a residential neighborhood in Sderot.

“I don’t think that this reality can continue for much longer,” Ashkenazi said at a conference on Israel’s future security challenges at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv. — Jerusalem Post

The rocket attacks have barely missed a day since Israel unilaterally withdrew from the Gaza strip (the withdrawal was complete in September 2005). In 2006, over a thousand rockets were fired. They have killed 12 Israelis and caused numerous injuries and much property damage.

The rockets and Israel’s disinclination or inability to respond effectively to them are emblematic of the whole situation. The Qassam rockets are not significant in a military sense. Although they are aimed at the civilian population they are not even a real terror weapon, like the German V-1’s and V-2’s.

They are a psychological weapon, designed to crush the self-image and spirit of Israelis. Every rocket that falls and drives shrieking children into a shelter carries the message “we can do whatever we want to you, you cannot defend yourselves, you are nothing”.

But like the chemical warheads that mix two by-themselves harmless substances to form a deadly agent on impact, the Qassams are binary weapons. Unlike the chemical warheads, though, the rocket only carries one half of the destructive payload. Without the second component, the rockets are almost harmless. And that component is Israel’s weak response.

The Chief of Staff is not the only one that understands that there is no alternative to an incursion and continued military occupation of strategic parts of Gaza, including the Beit Hanoun area from which many of the rockets are fired, and above all the ‘Philadelphi Corridor’ which runs along the Egyptian border, and under which weapons, explosives and terrorists are smuggled.

So what’s stopping it? Surely the government understands the damage the rocket barrage is doing.

Here are some of the deterrent factors:

1. Hamas has built fortifications, tunnels, bunkers, etc. along the Gaza-Israel border which would be difficult to overcome, and the fight would bring Israeli casualities.
2. An incursion into heavily populated Gaza would result in Palestinian civilian casualties.
3. A fight in Gaza might cause Hezbollah to open a second front in the North, firing its (more potent) missiles as in 2006.
4. The US, in order to placate the Arab nations that are so important to her effort in Iraq, has forbidden Israel from anything more than limited operations.

The IDF can overcome obstacles 1-3 by careful and creative planning. Ashkenazi believes this, which is why he has made the remarks quoted above.

But he can’t overcome no. 4. Only an Israeli government with the strength of character and self-respect to face the US as a sovereign nation can do this. And it’s not impossible:

• Sooner or later the US will realize that its real enemies are the same as Israel’s enemies. Our relationship with Saudi Arabia has cost us dearly, and our re-engagement with Iran and Syria promises more of the same.
• The US has few real allies in the Mideast, and especially not ones with an effective military and nuclear capability — except Israel.

Strength of character. Self-respect. And a belief in the rightness of the Zionist enterprise, the creation (and now preservation) of a Jewish state in her ancestral home.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Gaza, Gabi Ashkenazi

I just opened my mail to find a solicitation for funds from Rabbi David Saperstein of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism.

Rabbi Saperstein finds that this dark, cold winter is “dark politically as well”, and I agree with him. Israel is in as much or more danger today as she has been since 1948, and things don’t look so good for the Jewish people in the USA either, with a surge in antisemitic expression in popular and ‘intellectual’ culture.

Imagine my surprise, then, to find that the issues Rabbi Saperstein is most concerned about do not include antisemitism at all, the issue of Israel is mentioned last — and the policy he advocates in this regard is the worst imaginable!

Here are Rabbi Saperstein’s top ‘challenges”:

• Supreme court nominations,
• Civil rights protections for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered people,
• Global climate change,
• The international health care crisis,

and finally this:

• “During too many years of a hands-off approach to the Middle East conflict, the Reform Movement was the most outspoken national Jewish organization calling for U.S. efforts to help craft a two-state solution. Finally it appears that the U.S. is reengaging, and there is now an opening toward peace. The RAC is working vigorously with members of Congress and the Administration to advance a viable and lasting resolution to the conflict.”

Now I am quite concerned about climate change, and certainly have opinions about all of the above issues, although they may or may not be the same as Rabbi Saperstein’s. But keep in mind that this is a solicitation from a Religious Action Center to a specifically Jewish audience, supposedly concerned about Jewish issues. Yet most of these issues are simply white bread liberal politics.

I’ve heard it said that Jewish ethics, as understood by Reform Jews, is identical with mildly left-wing liberalism. If this is false, I certainly can’t tell that from Rabbi Saperstein’s letter.

Now let’s get to the last “challenge”.

Rabbi Saperstein would undoubtedly call himself pro-Israel. But as I’ve written countless times, the so-called policy of “engagement” is really a policy of appeasement of violently anti-Israel and antisemitic regimes. The policy embraces arming Israel’s enemies and forcing Israel to make concrete concessions that damage her ability to survive in the face of terrorist and conventional assaults, in return for absolutely nothing — unless it is the increased contempt in which she is held around the world.

Does Rabbi Saperstein really believe that “there is now an opening toward peace”? With whom, the despised, powerless Mahmoud Abbas, who nevertheless refuses to recognize Israel as a Jewish state and insists on the right of return to Israel for 5 million Arabs? The Saudis, with their ‘peace’ plan that requires complete Israeli surrender on every issue before there will be “normal relations” (but not recognition)?

Does he agree with the statement issued under US auspices at at the Annapolis conference — at which Israelis were not permitted through the same door as Arabs — which condemned “terrorism and incitement, whether committed by Palestinians or Israelis”?

Rabbi Saperstein’s position supporting the US present Middle East policy is therefore pernicious. It is a position that no Jewish religious organization should take in view of the importance of Israel and Jerusalem to Judaism (see the Reform Movement’s own ‘Miami platform’ of 1997). It is no more or less than the standard liberal dogma about this issue, like all the rest of his “challenges”.

As a member of a Reform congregation myself, I have a “challenge” for Rabbi Saperstein: explain to me how your letter is supposed to appeal to me as a Jew and a Zionist. Or are these categories irrelevant to Reform Judaism?

Technorati Tags: Reform Judaism, URJ, Religious Action Center, Saperstein, Israel

The American plan for Israeli-Palestinian peace which relies on Palestinian ‘moderates’ is less than worthless, and should be terminated immediately.

Arms and money given to the Palestinian Authority (PA) today will be used against Israel in the future, when the present unstable situation collapses. Forcing the IDF to withdraw from the West Bank will make the inevitable war even more difficult.

The division between Fatah and Hamas is artificial and cannot be maintained. Even one Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza would have difficulty being economically viable; two could never be. Today Saudi Arabia and Egypt are working to bring the sides together, and there is no doubt that a coalition will shortly be formed. Maybe it will be called Fatmas.

Although Fatah is presented as being moderate and Hamas extremist, their views about Israel are actually very similar.

Fatah’s demands include a right of return for refugee descendants, no recognition of Israel as a Jewish state, withdrawal to 1949 armistice lines, and Arab sovereignty over all of East Jerusalem, including the holy sites.

Mahmoud Abbas claims that if Israel meets these demands, a Palestinian state will live in peace with Israel.

Hamas makes exactly the same demands, except that they offer a 10-year hudna (truce) rather than peace.

Both organizations have ‘military’ (read: terrorist) wings. Indeed, Fatah’s al-Aqsa brigades murdered an Israeli the day before the opening of the Annapolis conference.

Fatah’s functionaries are corrupt, many of them involved in drug dealing, extortion, and other kinds of crime. They are highly unpopular among Palestinians because of this, and because many think that Abbas deliberately lost the power struggle in Gaza in order to break up the Hamas-dominated PA government (you will recall, Hamas won the Palestinian election) in order to restart the flood of US aid. The only reason Fatah is in control of anything now is that the US is propping it up while the IDF fights off Hamas’ attempts to take over the West Bank.

Hamas was founded on Islamic principles, while Fatah is more-or-less secular. Hamas and Fatah are both quite brutal to their enemies. For Palestinians on one side or the other this is important, but for Israel it is irrelevant. The only difference is a promise of what might happen if Israel meets impossible conditions.

The situation today is that the US-financed Fatah and the Iranian-backed Hamas are struggling for leadership, as proxies of their patrons, while at the same time Egypt and Saudi Arabia are trying to give birth to Fatmas — an entity which they will control. Fatmas will be much more dangerous than its predecessors, combining the legitimacy of Fatah with the militancy of Hamas.

It is very hard to imagine any other outcome than a Fatmas coalition. One thing that I am sure of is that the winner is not going to be the US-backed Abbas faction by itself. So weapons we give Fatah today will either be inherited by Fatmas or taken by Hamas.

So how can the US maintain its influence?

How about by supporting Israel, our true ally in the region, as opposed to dishonestly playing both ends against the middle by arming and encouraging her enemies?

Technorati Tags: Israel, Palestinian Authority, Fatah, Hamas, Fatmas

Everyone knows that the UN is heavily biased against Israel. But maybe everyone does not know that the organization whose charter calls for “friendly relations among nations based on respect for the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples”, and which is “based on the principle of the sovereign equality of all its Members”, holds an annual event devoted to denying the legitimacy of one of its members and the right to self-determination of one of the oldest identifiable “peoples” in history.

I am, of course, talking about the “International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People” held every November 29, the anniversary of the Partition Resolution of 1947!

In other words, the UN — since 1977 — has commemorated a prior UN resolution by repudiating it.

Here are some of the things that the UN has done recently on this special day.

In 2005, a map of the region showing ‘Palestine’ and not Israel was displayed. There was also a moment of silence in honor of suicide bombers.

In 2006,

…the U.N. Trusteeship Council room was adorned with a series of panels rewriting the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict from the Arab point of view, describing 7 or 8 million Palestinians claiming a right of return — enough to destroy the Jewishness of the state of Israel, and lauding the success of the violent Palestinian uprising or intifada.

This year, following protests by Israel, the event had only two flags: that of the UN, and that of ‘Palestine’. You can read the article linked above for details on what was said by the various pro-Palestinian speakers.

The 2005 map of ‘Palestine’ on which the word ‘Israel’ does not appear, along with the UN and Palestinian flags.

Every year the Israeli ambassador denounces this travesty of fairness, and every year the Palestinians and their friends find new ways of expressing their contempt. Israel should apply some form of sanctions to UN personnel and agencies on her territory to make it clear that there will be a cost attached to this really intolerable treatment.

Technorati Tags: UN, Israel, Palestinians

There’s lots of speculation about the significance of the US government making the NIE (National Intelligence Estimate) public, and the spin that is being put on it. We really know very little — was this a strike against the Bush Administration or a maneuver by it? Does it mean that the ‘military option is off the table’, if indeed it ever was on the table?

We don’t know, although it is clear that the forces opposing a confrontation (military or diplomatic) with Iran over her nuclear program have suffered a severe setback — notwithstanding the fact that a close reading of the NIE text does not justify this.

A thread which I’ve been hearing lately is that the US has made a deal with Iran: take the pressure off us in Iraq and we will take the pressure off of your nuclear program. And there’s another deal with Syria, too: stop supporting the insurgents and we will not interfere in Lebanon. Debka and Ted Belman provide an exposition of this theory here.

Is it true? Probably not in precisely the way they spell it out. But they are close. Keep this in mind:

The view in the US, from all sides of the political spectrum is that the trap we have fallen into in Iraq is the biggest disaster for the US in recent memory (pro-administration spokespersons will say otherwise, but I guarantee that this is what they think). While disagreeing about how or why it happened, we can be sure that the one thing politicians of all stripes do agree about is that almost anything we can do to get out without creating chaos will be justified (of course they also disagree about the meaning of ‘chaos’). Just the economic damage done by the war will be a massive blow to the US in years to come.

The policy that we are now appearing to follow is the policy of ‘engagement’ with the major players in the region that are acting on Iraq — Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Syria — that was originally spelled out in the Iraq Study Group Report, which I wrote about in these pages almost exactly one year ago. I found it notable that so much mention was made of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which appears to have little to do with Iraq.

But this is not surprising, given the identity of the players and their policy goals: Syria to dominate Lebanon without interference from Israel or the US and to get the Golan without having to give a real peace agreement in return, Saudi Arabia to get their ‘peace’ plan implemented (and thereby to be the ones to finally end the Zionist entity), and Iran to cement her influence over the Eastern Mediterranean area by way of Hizbullah and Hamas, in spite of Israel.

So, Ami Isseroff is correct when he tells us that

Iran’s nuclear program is not just about Israel. It was never just about Israel. The Iranian program is a threat to the entire Middle East, especially its Arab neighbors in the Gulf, and to the United States. They aren’t necessarily going to use the bomb. They are going to use the possession of the bomb as leverage to out the US, from the Gulf and impose their own will there and in the rest of the Middle East. The NIE report, which causes such jubilation in Tehran, caused fear among Arab states. Ahmadinejad has tried very hard to make the issue into an Israel issue, because that defuses Arab opposition and recruits domestic support in Iran for the project.

All this is true. But it is also true that Israel has become central to the regional conflict, her interests a set of bargaining chips in the hands of an increasingly desperate USA.

Technorati Tags: Iran, Iraq, Syria, Israel, NIE

A huge amount of the international aid to the Palestinians has always been either stolen or used to support the war against Israel. Normally such scandals more or less come to an end when they are found out, but this one has legs, and one of the reasons seems to be that media persist in ignoring the facts.

You Owe Us Bigtime: The distortion of Palestinian aid politics

By Barry Rubin

My favorite sentence of the week is this one: “Asking for record $5.8 billion in aid through 2010, Palestinians promise fiscal reform.” Karen Laub wrote on this subject for the AP, December 5, 2007. The request came from “Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas” to double projected aid to the Palestinian Authority (PA).

What is funny about that opening sentence is that the PA has received so much money before and squandered it. Reform promises have been made and broken for more than 13 years. It is hard to remember that the PA has existed that long with so little positive achievement. If Palestinians have such a bad economy it is not due to the “occupation” or to Israel but to their own leaders’ greed, incompetence, failure to end violence, inability to present an attractive investment climate, and unwillingness to impose stability on their own lands.

So how does an AP story deal with the unintentional humor of the idea that pouring more money into the PA will lead to any diplomatic progress or that this regime will make better use of the funds? Remember that to a very large extent the United States and European governments are basing their whole Middle East policy on this mistaken idea. Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair has turned this into a second career.

This is such an extremely important story that it is worth examining in detail.

(more…)

The slogan “Two States for Two Peoples” is supposed to express the position of ‘moderate’ Israelis and Palestinians that peace can be achieved by establishing a Palestinian state alongside Israel. Supporters of this ‘two state solution’ often say things like “we already know the general lines that an agreement will take, it’s just a question of working out the details”.

I’ve often pointed out that the ‘details’ — Jerusalem, refugees, etc. — are not as simple as they seem. But there is really a much greater problem.

The ‘moderate’ Palestinian leadership — the Palestinian Authority under Mahmoud Abbas and Salam Fayyad — do indicate by this slogan that they want there to be two states (at least for a while), but they make it quite clear that they expect both states to be for the Palestinian people.

This is why they categorically refuse to agree to accept Israel as a Jewish state, and why they insist that the 5 million descendents of the Palestinian refugees of 1948 have the right to ‘return’ to Israel.

Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel also insist that the Jewish character of the state be ended, and that Israel be defined as “a state of its citizens” (although with special rights for the Arab minority). This is the ‘Israel’ part of the “two states”. Here is what Muhammad Barakei, chairman of the Israeli Arab Hadash party said recently:

The movement will fight against any population swap plan. We were the first to come out with the slogan of ‘Two states for two nations’ and just because [Prime Minister Ehud] Olmert and [Foreign Minister Tzipi] Livni are distorting this slogan, it doesn’t mean we have to give it up.

The population swap idea was supposed to solve some of the ‘mere details’ mentioned above by allowing Israel to keep some areas in the West Bank that are heavily populated by Jews, ceding Arab-populated land within the Green Line in return. Israeli Arabs are violently opposed to this for various reasons (they see what it’s like in the West Bank and Gaza), but from an ideological point of view, they believe that they are the rightful owners of what is called ‘Israel’, not some to-be-created Palestinian state.

Nothing can be clearer than the consequences of accepting the Arab demands. There is a fundamental difference in the way the two sides understand “two states” which is a much greater obstacle than the way the final border will be delineated.

There is no more important part of any peace agreement with the Palestinians or with any of Israel’s neighbors than recognition of Israel as a Jewish state.

And in opposition to the demand of the racist Saudis, this recognition must come first, before any territorial concessions.

Technorati Tags: Israel, two-state solution

The release of the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) a few days ago created quite a stir, as it included a statement to the effect that Iran had stopped developing nuclear weapons. Many suggest that therefore the US should back off on its aggressive stance toward the Iranian nuclear program. An editorial in our local newspaper is a good example:

But whether Bush wants to acknowledge it or not, the NIE fundamentally changes things. The intelligence community has weighed in, as the principal deputy director of national intelligence told Congress, “to ensure that an accurate presentation is available.” This information should stop irresponsible talk of unilateral U.S. attacks on Iran.

The report’s message is unmistakable. Its first line reads, “We judge with high confidence that in fall 2003 Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program.” There is no Iranian “rush to a weapon,” a view corroborated by others, including International Atomic Energy Agency Director Mohamed El Baradei. — Fresno Bee Editorial, Dec. 7, 2007

But maybe it’s best to read beyond the first line. Here are some more excerpts from the NIE:

We judge with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program; we also assess with moderate-to-high confidence that Tehran at a minimum is keeping open the option to develop nuclear weapons…

• We assess with high confidence that until fall 2003, Iranian military entities were working under government direction to develop nuclear weapons.
• We judge with high confidence that the halt lasted at least several years. (Because of intelligence gaps discussed elsewhere in this Estimate, however, DOE and the NIC assess with only moderate confidence that the halt to those activities represents a halt to Iran’s entire nuclear weapons program.)
• We assess with moderate confidence Tehran had not restarted its nuclear weapons program as of mid-2007, but we do not know whether it currently intends to develop nuclear weapons.
• We continue to assess with moderate-to-high confidence that Iran does not currently have a nuclear weapon…

We assess centrifuge enrichment is how Iran probably could first produce enough fissile material for a weapon, if it decides to do so. Iran resumed its declared centrifuge enrichment activities in January 2006, despite the continued halt in the nuclear weapons program. Iran made significant progress in 2007 installing centrifuges at Natanz, but we judge with moderate confidence it still faces significant technical problems operating them…

• We judge with moderate confidence that the earliest possible date Iran would be technically capable of producing enough HEU [highly enriched uranium] for a weapon is late 2009, but that this is very unlikely.
• We judge with moderate confidence Iran probably would be technically capable of producing enough HEU for a weapon sometime during the 2010-2015 time frame…

Iranian entities are continuing to develop a range of technical capabilities that could be applied to producing nuclear weapons, if a decision is made to do so. For example, Iran’s civilian uranium enrichment program is continuing. We also assess with high confidence that since fall 2003, Iran has been conducting research and development projects with commercial and conventional military applications—some of which would also be of limited use for nuclear weapons…

We assess with moderate confidence that Iran probably would use covert facilities— rather than its declared nuclear sites—for the production of highly enriched uranium for a weapon. A growing amount of intelligence indicates Iran was engaged in covert uranium conversion and uranium enrichment activity, but we judge that these efforts probably were halted in response to the fall 2003 halt, and that these efforts probably had not been restarted through at least mid-2007. [emphasis is mine]

In other words: there was a program to build a nuclear weapon that appears to have been halted in 2003, but the production of highly enriched uranium continues, as do other technical developments that are relevant to weapons. Even if a program was halted, it is not clear that all programs have been halted; and even if so, they can be restarted to produce a bomb between 2009 and 2015.

On top of this, it’s even possible that the alleged halt in weapons development is simply a bit of Iranian disinformation! The New York Times reports that

[officials] said that the Central Intelligence Agency and other agencies had organized a “red team” to determine if the new information might have been part of an elaborate disinformation campaign mounted by Iran to derail the effort to impose sanctions against it.

In the end, American intelligence officials rejected that theory, though they were challenged to defend that conclusion in a meeting two weeks ago in the White House situation room, in which the notes and deliberations were described to the most senior members of President Bush’s national security team, including Vice President Dick Cheney.

“It was a pretty vivid exchange,” said one participant in the conversation.

The NIE is in no way the (pardon the expression) bombshell that it has been made out to be. It is interesting to compare Israeli intelligence estimates:

As [Defense Minister Ehud] Barak later told Israeli Army Radio, “It seems Iran in 2003 halted for a certain period of time its military nuclear program, but as far as we know it has probably since revived it.” He added: “We are talking about a specific track connected with their weapons building program, to which the American [intelligence] connection, and maybe that of others, was severed.” The Israeli defense minister implied that the new U.S. assessment was “made in an environment of high uncertainty.”

Israeli intelligence sources told Time that for the past five years, Mossad, Israel’s equivalent of the CIA, had made spying on Iran its top priority, and that its assessment is that Iran would be weapons-ready by 2009. — Time [my emphasis]

The release of this report along with the spin being placed on it suggests that the US is losing its appetite for taking a strong stand against Iran. This is apparently a manifestation of the new American strategy of appease — er, engagement.

Technorati Tags: Iran, NIE, nuclear weapons

Not everything is amenable to compromise:

The Hamas-dominated Palestinian Legislative Council Thursday passed a law that makes any concessions on Jerusalem illegal.

The law, which was approved by first reading, also defines such concessions as a crime of high treason…the law is expected to pass in second and third readings in the coming days…

…many Fatah legislators have made it known that they too support the law, which states that Jerusalem is a Palestinian, Arab and Islamic city and that it is totally forbidden to give up or conduct negotiations about any part of the city…

The law is intended to embarrass Abbas and ties his hands on the eve of the resumption of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations on core issues, including the future status of Jerusalem. Hamas officials said Abbas would have no other option but to endorse the law…

“The Palestinian people want a state in the 1967 borders, including Jerusalem,” [Abbas] stressed. “We also want a solution to the problem of the refugees in accordance with the Arab peace initiative and United Nations resolution 194.” — Jerusalem Post

This racist point of view, in which Arabs must be permitted to live in Israel, enjoy full rights of citizenship, and even demand that Israel’s Jewish character be eliminated — while Jews must evacuate the Palestinian areas and must accept the definition of Judaism’s holiest place as “an Islamic city” — should be totally unacceptable to the civilized world.

It seems, however, that racism and intolerance are permitted to Arabs. How else to explain the lack of an outcry from such centers of enlightenment as the UN, which has multiple commissions and sub-organizations to fight racism?

Why is the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia allowed to institutionalize discrimination against Christians and Jews, and even to insist on Jim Crow treatment of Jews at the recent Annapolis conference, where Jews were not allowed to enter by the same door as Arabs?

The Arab position on ‘details’ flows from their racist assumption of superiority and absolute refusal to accept a Jewish right to self-determination. This has not changed since the beginning of the conflict; in fact, it has gotten stronger with the rise of Islamic fundamentalism.

Unless this changes, there will never be a possibility of agreement on things like borders.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Arabs, Jerusalem, racism

How come the United States invited Mideast leaders, including those of Saudi Arabia and Syria – and even Iran, although they refused to come – to a meeting about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, when the real priority is to find a solution to the situation in Iraq?

It’s a long story.

US policy since 9/11 has been remarkably bad, and the Bush Administration – which I admit, with regret, to having voted for – may well go down in history as the one that finally ended the golden age of America.

President Bush declared total war on 9/11, but he was fuzzy about who the enemy was. In war you have to kill the enemy, and if you don’t know who that is you end up killing people arbitrarily. Lots of deaths but no victory.

The President said that he would take steps to dry up funding for terrorists and bring down governments that support terrorism. Some steps were taken against financial networks, but today Al-Qaeda, Hamas, Hizbullah, etc. are swimming in money. We did not kill the enemy.

He did depose the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, but depended on Afghan warlords and Pakistani troops to trap Bin Laden. Unsurprisingly, Bin Laden bought his way to safety, and the Taliban is still fighting after six years.

Despite the ‘total war’, most Americans – with the exception of those in the military and their families – found their lives unchanged. The war was financed entirely by borrowing.

Then Mr. Bush chose to overthrow Saddam in Iraq, who – while certainly a sponsor of terrorism and an all-around rat – had nothing to do with 9/11. That may or may not have been a good idea, but the execution by the political echelon was disastrous (the military did fine – they wiped up the Iraqi army as ordered).

The combination of unpreparedness, lack of good sense, incompetence, cronyism and sheer corruption that characterized the administration of conquered Iraq allowed our real enemies to take advantage of local antagonisms and unsettled scores to trap us between multiple insurgencies.

So far, the administration has managed to confine the damage to, as before, military people, but when the bill for the enormous cost of the war comes due, inflated as it is by corruption, the consequences for average Americans will be devastating. The fact that all of the same weaknesses that caused the occupation of Iraq to fail have resulted in massive failures here at home hasn’t helped.

And the blunt way that the administration hacked away at the constitution in order to prevent terrorism – or at least to look as though it is preventing terrorism while really protecting its own interests – may well come back to haunt us when the destabilizing effects of the coming economic crunch start to hit.

The various insurgencies in Iraq are supported by Iran, Syria, and Saudi Arabia. Defeating them would mean fighting Iran and Syria as well as forcing the Saudis to do our bidding. We believe that we can’t afford – in blood or money – to do the first, and for at least 35 years we have not been able to go against the wishes of the House of Saud (“Israel lobby” conspiracy theorists please note). We are unable to fight our true enemies.

So the administration has chosen a different approach, that of ‘engagement’. This means asking the sponsors of the insurgents what we need to do to get them to turn down the heat – which, by the way, looks like it is already happening – and then give it to them.

Syria has simple needs: we need to stop annoying them with questions about who killed Rafiq Hariri and enough anti-Syrian members of the Lebanese parliament to change the balance of power; we need to not interfere with the takeover of the Lebanese government by Hizbullah (and we must prevent Israel from interfering); and we need to make Israel give them the Golan heights in return for nothing.

Iran would like us to be more understanding of her aspirations to be a nuclear power. And we are already beginning to back off on the rhetoric; maybe they’re not developing weapons after all.

All three nations are marking out their spheres of influence in the soon-to-be dismembered Iraq. Why not? They have defeated the United States, with its massive military power, by forcing us into a corner which they are betting that we will not try to fight our way out of. And…oh yes. There is one more thing.

While the Israeli-Palestinian conflict involves far less territory, far fewer people and far less natural resources than any number of conflicts flickering around the globe, it has enormous mind space. It has been presented as a titanic clash between the villains of history, the Zionist Jews, who are crushing an Islamic people in pursuit of their goal of destroying all of Islam (never mind that there are more than 100 Muslims for every Jew in the world).

The boundary between cynical employment of this myth and acceptance of its truth, even by sophisticated Arabs (and Persians) has long been crossed. The removal of the Jewish state from the Mideast is a major goal for them, and the Iranians and Saudis are both cooperating and competing to be responsible for it, even though none of them likes the Palestinians much. But they are to be one of the tools for the job.

And this is why the US convened a conference on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This is what the Saudis wanted. In the background there are secret agreements with Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia; in the foreground, a process that will – in keeping with promises made to the Saudis in the 1970’s – force Israel back to the 1949 armistice lines, hand her capital to the Palestinians, and probably end in a regional war whose goal will be, yet again, to destroy the Jewish state.

So whether or not the Bush Administration makes a graceful exit from Iraq, the shape of the Middle East in the future will be one in which the dominant power is not the US, but probably Iran, with Russian backing.

With all of its macho posturing, this administration may be the one that marks the beginning of the inglorious end of the American era, and possibly the republic as well.

Technorati Tags: Bush Administration, Iraq, Israel

As if any more evidence for Jewish provenance in Jerusalem is needed:

Israeli archeologists have uncovered a monumental Second Temple structure in a parking lot just outside the walls of the Old City of Jerusalem opposite the Temple Mount which was likely the ancient palace of Queen Helena, the Israel Antiquities Authority announced Wednesday…

According to the director of the dig, the elaborate edifice, which is an anomaly in the landscape of the Lower City at the end of the Second Temple period - which was marked with modest buildings - was probably a palace built by Queen Helena, a wealthy Iraqi aristocrat who converted to Judaism and moved to Jerusalem with her sons…

The well-preserved structure being uncovered in the ongoing excavation is an impressive architectural complex that includes massive foundations; walls, some of which are preserved to a height in excess of five meters and built of stones that weigh hundreds of kilograms; halls that are preserved to a height of at least two stories; a basement level that was covered with vaults; remains of polychrome frescoes, water installations and ritual baths…

The large edifice was overlain with remains that date to later periods: Byzantine, Roman and Early Islamic, while below it there are remains from the Early Hellenistic period and even artifacts from the time of the First Temple. — Jerusalem Post

Incidentally, the Queen Helena we are talking about is also referred to as “Queen Helena of Adiabene” and “the Nazarite Queen” (because she took Jewish religious vows; a nazir is a monk), and is not the same person as the mother of the Roman emperor Constantine who lived a few hundred years later.

Nadia Abu El-Haj will probably tell us that she was really a proto-Muslim. It’s interesting to keep in mind, when the Palestinians talk about their illustrious civilization that was displaced by European Jews in 1948, that Helena lived about 2000 years ago, more than six centuries before The Prophet was a gleam in his father’s eye.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Jerusalem, Queen Helena

Bradley Burston, Ha’aretz:

People who hate the very idea of peace

You know them. The people who come out every time there’s any chance of anything resembling a move toward peace between Israel and the Palestinians. You know their simmering rage, their triumphant condescension, their propensity to call anyone who opposes them, at best, a wishful thinker, at worst, a dangerous traitor.

They are people for whom the very idea of peace ignites a passionate hatred. It is, more often than not, directed against people on their own side of the Jewish-Arab divide.

They will tell you that this peace, any peace, is fictitious, virtual, a fantasy, a sham. They will tell you that for true peace, you need not give up a thing…

You know them. The people who come out cheering for anything that has the word ‘peace’ in it, no matter how unlikely it is to bring peace or how likely to compromise security. You know the way they are prepared to believe any Palestinian atrocity story, and think that the occupation of the West Bank by Israel is worse than the possible occupation of Israel by Palestinians.

You know their simmering rage, their triumphant condescension, their propensity to call anyone who opposes them, at best, anti-peace, at worst, a right-wing extremist just like Yigal Amir.

They are people for whom the very idea of a Jewish state ignites a passionate hatred. It is, always, directed at those who value self-determination for the Jewish people above the aspirations of the Palestinians.

They will tell you that the threat from the Palestinians and their allies is fictitious, that if only Israel will give up a little more, true peace will follow.

Yes, I do know them.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Bradley Burston