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Answer: not a hell of a lot.

Hitler and friends at the Hofbraühaus in Munich where the Beerhall Putsch took place in 1923

Prisoner Rehabilitated; Fifty Million Die
By Barry Rubin

Each day we’re told that radical Islamists, terrorists, and assorted extremists are going to moderate, so why not negotiate with them, appease them, defuse their grievances, have dialogue, and then everything will be okay.

But, those who are doubtful argue, shouldn’t we have learned from history that militant ideologies are not prone to compromise and ruthless dictators don’t change their stripes. You cannot appease them, they don’t go away; displays of weakness make them more aggressive.

Oh, no! Not the Nazi analogy again!

And yet what can you say when confronted with this New York Times headline of December 21, 1924:

“Hitler Tamed By Prison; Released on Parole, He Is Expected to Return to Austria.”

This is not a satire. See for yourself here [unfortunately the article is not free — ed.]

The correspondent explains that Hitler, once a demigod for the extreme right, was released on parole from the Landsberg fortress where he had been sent for trying to overthrow the democratic German government in what has come to be known as the Beerhouse [Beerhall] Putsch.

Prison, the article continues, seems to have moderated him. The authorities were convinced that he presented no further danger to the existing society. In fact, it was expected that he would abandon public life and return to his native land, Austria.

Well, that problem was certainly solved easily.

And also the Times learned its lesson, hasn’t it?

As the newspaper explained in a June 30 editorial:

“Few countries can afford the luxury of limiting their diplomacy to friendly countries and peace-loving parties. National security often requires negotiating with dangerous enemies.”

Right. And believing their protestations of moderation, making concessions to them, ending sanctions, blaming ourselves for problems, and never using force is the actual content of such negotiations.

Then the leaders of Hamas, Hizballah, Syria, Iran, the Muslim Brotherhoods, al-Qaida, North Korea, Zimbabwe, Sudan, etc., will no doubt be tamed, abandon public life, and go back to their homes.

Henry Kissinger once told the joke — or at least is credited for doing so — that it is very easy to have the lion lay down with the lamb, as long as you put in a new lamb every day. Kissinger no doubt little expected at the time that this would become the democratic world’s favored strategy. No surprise that the main villain for the politically correct West is Israel, the lamb that refuses the honor.

Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), with Walter Laqueur (Viking-Penguin); the paperback edition of The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan); A Chronological History of Terrorism, with Judy Colp Rubin, (Sharpe); and The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley). To read and subscribe to MERIA and other GLORIA Center publications or to order books, visit http://www.gloriacenter.org.

Technorati Tags: Hitler, appeasement, NY Times, Islamism

 

Hero Moshe Plesser, immediately after shooting the terrorist

Today’s terrorist attack in Jerusalem in which an “Israeli Arab” driving a huge articulated loader (not a bulldozer) killed three people and injured tens more is nothing special, except for the murder weapon. But there was lots of human drama, like the mother throwing her baby out of a car window to safety before the massive bucket came down and crushed the life out of her, or the heroes that jumped up on the machine and struggled with the driver, the off-duty soldier Moshe Plesser finally shooting the terrorist to death as he yelled “Allahu Akhbar!”

For a good real-time account of the story, including video links, see IsraellyCool here.

Press reactions were the usual, with speculation about the ‘motives’ of the Arab construction worker, Husam Taysir Dwayat. Excuse me, what motivates an Arab to kill as many arbitrary Jews as he can and shout “Allahu Akhbar”, a concern for  peace, justice, and human rights?

His family and friends acted surprised. Husam was known as a drug dealer, but not a ‘political’ person, they said. Maybe he had been taunted by Jewish teenagers and just ‘lost it’, they suggested.

But Palestinians understood and cheered. Elder of Ziyon presents some Palestinian reactions to news reports. It was a big hit with them.

The Hebrew University bomber, the Merkaz haRav murderer, and now this one, all lived and worked in the Jerusalem area and had Israeli identity cards. Does this mean that there’s no future to the idea of Israeli Jews and Arabs living together peacefully, if not in friendship?

Unfortunately, that is probably exactly what it means. And the consequences of this will be terrible for Jewish and Arab Israelis. The fault lies with the Arab leadership and elites who have insisted for 60 years — no, for almost 100 years — that there must be no peace.

It lies with the Arab newspapers, TV networks, websites, religious establishment, political systems, educational systems, writers and intellectuals, Yasser Arafat, Fatah, Hamas, Azmi Bishara, the Balad party, Hosni Mubarak, Hafez and Bashar Assad, Hassan Nasrallah, Mohammed Bakri, Raed Salah, Mahmoud Abbas, the House of Saud, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Haj Amin al-Husseini, Sheik Ahmed Yassin, and I could go on, and on, and on if my fingers weren’t tired.

Every day there is one overwhelming message broadcast to every Palestinian and Israeli Arab from every direction: the Jews took your land, they are responsible for all of your problems, they are your deadly enemy, the highest praise is due to martyrs in the fight against them, they are destroying the al-Aqsa mosque, they are the sons of apes and pigs, they have damaged your honor, etc.

Is it any wonder that Arabs who are not engaged in organized professional terrorism often involve themselves in amateur terrorism, or that “non-political” types like Husam Taysir Dwayat often explode into ‘impulse terrorism’, the so-called “sudden jihad syndrome”?

But in fact these are distinctions without a difference. The idea of a Jewish state with a peaceful Arab minority isn’t going to fly any more.

This is one of those facts whose consequences are so bad that everyone insists that it’s not true. But it is true, and it’s probably too late to reverse the trend, which in any event is accelerating, not slowing down. This horse is already out of the barn, thanks to the abovementioned list of disseminators of hatred, and all the efforts of the “pro-peace” people are not going to put it back in.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Arabs, Husam Taysir Dwayat, terrorism, Jerusalem

Many of the wars of the 21st century will be asymmetric conflicts. There are multiple definitions of this term, so I won’t try to define it in great detail. Suffice to say that asymmetric warfare is often practiced in order to nullify the advantage of a belligerent that is much stronger than another.

Let’s look at the Arab-Persian aggression against Israel in particular and analyze the form taken by one asymmetric conflict.

One feature of it –  at least in its present stage – is that it is a proxy conflict. Israel is not fighting Iran, Saudi Arabia, or even Syria. Her direct antagonists are Hezbollah and Hamas. This permits the real enemy, in this case primarily Iran, to deny any connection to atrocities committed by its proxies, and to avoid international sanction while still pursuing an aggressive course. Proxy warfare is a common asymmetric technique; the Vietnamese war comes to mind in which the US fought soviet-backed Viet Cong and North Vietnamese forces, or the Soviet-Afghan conflict in which US-backed Mujahideen returned the favor.

Another feature is that it is primarily a low-intensity conflict. Much of the time fighting is confined to skirmishes between small units or terrorist attacks against the civilian population. The aggressor attempts to calibrate the damage done by his attacks so that the conflict will remain at a low enough level that its victim will not be able to justify using its superior forces. From time to time, for short periods, it may erupt into more conventional conflict. But the aggressor will try to keep these periods short to reduce the amount of damage that he will sustain from his more powerful adversary.

Finally, it is important to realize the degree to which this stage of the war is primarily a propaganda battle. The goals for the aggressors are not the traditional ones of destroying armies and conquering territory. The main goal is to change attitudes and opinions among various groups of people in order to manage the outcomes of the more intense flare-ups and to lay the groundwork for a successful conventional assault, when the time comes. There are several main groups that are targeted:

1)    The aggressor’s own population. Successful low-intensity warfare, combined with propaganda that vilifies the enemy, is an excellent tool to recruit personnel and funds for the cause.

2)    The world in general. Although the aggressors may not have the power to force the victim to give up territory directly, it may be possible to manipulate the major powers who do have the ability to change fundamental geopolitical realities. The government of South Africa, for example, which was much more powerful militarily than the ANC, was forced to cede control by international pressure. The Second Lebanon War, a conventional flare-up in the midst of low-intensity struggle between Israel and Hezbollah, ultimately resulted in a better strategic position for Hezbollah –  despite the fact that Israel had the military advantage –  because of Hezbollah’s management of world opinion.

3)    The victim’s population. The frustration of trying to fight a low-intensity conflict is highly damaging to the morale of a conventional army. The combination of terrorism with propaganda is also effective in causing a civilian population to doubt the rightness of its own nation’s cause, or in extreme cases to support the aggressor.

Read the rest of this entry »

News item:

Hamas on Monday said it was emboldened by Israel’s decision to trade Hezbollah terrorist Samir Kuntar for Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev.

Gaza strongman Mahmoud Zahar, speaking to the independent Al-Quds radio station, said Hamas would take advantage of this decision “to release people Israel accused of having blood on their hands like Samir Kuntar. We have to take advantage of this to release our prisoners”…

Amos Gilad, a retired general involved in the Egyptian-brokered negotiations to free Schalit, told Army Radio that Sunday’s cabinet decision would have no effect on the talks.

“Hamas’s demands regarding Gilad Schalit have been known for some time,” he said before Zahar spoke. “They haven’t been influenced by the contacts with Hezbollah.”

Yes, their demands have been known for some time. The difference is that now they can be sure that they will be met.

Here’s the deal that Israel made with Hezbollah:

According to the resolution that was approved by an overwhelming majority of 22-3, Israel will receive Goldwasser and Regev, as well as a Hezbollah report on the disappearance of airman Ron Arad, captured in Lebanon in 1986, and the remaining body parts of soldiers killed during the Second Lebanon War.

In exchange, Israel will release Lebanese terrorist Samir Kuntar, responsible for the brutal deaths of four Israelis in Nahariya in 1979; four Hezbollah fighters being held by Israel; dozens of bodies of infiltrators and terrorists, including eight Hezbollah men; and information that will be given to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on the disappearance of four Iranian diplomats in Beirut in 1982, during Israel’s invasion.

After these exchanges are made, Israel is to release an undetermined number of Palestinian security prisoners. According to the cabinet resolution, the number of prisoners to be released, as well as their identities, will be determined by Israel. Hezbollah, according to government sources, demanded the release of 700 Palestinians, something that Israel did not agree to.  — Jerusalem Post

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert explained:

Olmert, in his lengthy comments to the cabinet, summarized the agonizing moral question lurking behind the decision, saying that “there is no escape from dealing with the fundamental and essential issue of what the obligation is for a country which sends its soldiers into battle, and they are taken captive while in its service.”

Olmert said that while the country’s values demanded that no soldier be left behind, “over the years we also learned that this obligation has limits. A country must have limits even when dealing with the price of freedom for soldiers, and the price for their very lives.” Indicating that once this deal, and the deal for the release of Gilad Schalit, were done with, Israel would establish new game rules for dealing with prisoner swaps, he said there was a need to set “organized, agreed-upon and firm procedures to deal with this issue in the future, and we will do so soon.”

Olmert said that he struggled with the question of whether holding out now would have brought about a better deal, and that he concluded that if Israel followed that path it could well face a situation similar to the situation it faces with [missing IAF navigator Ron] Arad – that the fate of the missing soldiers would not be known for decades.

Olmert also said that it was not a ‘good’ decision, that there can be no good decision in this situation. Of course he is right about this. An operation to return a soldier from the battlefield, dead or alive, justifies a very high price, and there are plenty of cases in which such a price has been paid under fire by the comrades of a captured, wounded or dead soldier.

The problem in this case is that it is not a fixed price. It is an open-ended commitment to pay a similar price every time an Israeli falls into enemy hands. Saying that there will be a set procedure for dealing with such situations in the future is meaningless: if the government could not withstand the pressure today, what will change if there are guidelines?

There was a guideline that Israel would not make trades for prisoners with ‘blood on their hands’, but this has been officially changed in connection with the Schalit negotiations so that those convicted murderers who did not actually pull the trigger themselves could be released. Leaving aside the fact that this means that the planners of suicide operations like the Passover Seder Massacre are now eligible (one assumes that those who blew themselves up are not), Kuntar very literally had the blood of 4-year old Einat Haran on his hands. Very literally. So much for guidelines, for ‘next time it will be different’.

When will the next ‘next time’ be? How hard is it to grab some Israeli kids traveling in India or Thailand?

I’ve made these suggestions before, but here they are again:

• Israel must establish and carry out a death penalty for terrorist murder. So there will be no Kuntars to exchange.
• The government needs to stop worrying so much about international reactions to its actions and do what’s necessary to survive. The enemy’s success at asymmetric warfare depends on Israel’s bending to pressure to avoid civilian casualties.
• Asymmetric warfare also depends on keeping the level of conflict low enough so that the victim cannot bring its superior firepower to bear. Therefore, Israel should escalate the conflict.

Technorati Tags: Israel, prisoner exchange, asymmetric warfare

Tomorrow (Sunday) the Israeli cabinet is expected to decide whether to free the brutal multiple murderer Samir Kuntar in return for two Israeli soldiers, Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev — or their bodies, since there has been no sign of life from them since their capture by Hezbollah two years ago. At the same time, indirect negotiations are underway with Hamas to free Gilad Schalit, who has been held in Gaza for an even longer time, in return for hundreds of prisoners — including the planners of the Passover Seder Massacre in Netanya of 2002, where 30 were murdered by a suicide bomber.

Both the left-of-center Ami Isseroff (“Hezbollah prisoner swap: it’s not too late to save our boys and girls“) and the right-wing Caroline Glick (“Not a personal affair“) have argued eloquently against agreeing to the deals. They point out the obvious:

• that if the deals are made, the kidnappings will have accomplished their purpose and will certainly be followed by more of the same;
• that the return of a living, unrepentant, murderer for the bodies of Israelis will establish that terrorist kidnappers needn’t even keep their captives alive in the future; and
• that the hundreds (perhaps more than a thousand) Hamas prisoners that would be released in a deal for Schalit, prisoners who were taken in operations in which Israeli soldiers lost their lives, would certainly go on to kill many more Israelis.

Yes, it is correct that Jews are required to reedem captives; the obligation derives from Abraham’s redemption of Lot from captivity (Gen. 14). But is there an obligation to redeem present captives (or their remains) if that act is certain to lead to captivity and death for more Jews in the near future? Glick writes,

That Israel will pay a price in blood if the deals go through is a certainty. That more Israelis will meet the fates of Schalit, Regev and Goldwasser is a certainty. The only thing we do not know today is the names of the victims. They could be any one of us. Indeed, they are all of us. For all of us are equally targeted simply by virtue of the fact that we are Israelis.

The situation of the families is tragic, and we who are not in their position may not criticize them for their efforts in trying to save their loved ones. My own son was part of many missions in South Lebanon before the withdrawal in 2000, often in close proximity to Hezbollah positions. My worst nightmares became horrible reality for these families.

The Israeli government must not give in to the pressure to make these trades, so that more nightmares do not become real.

Update [29 Jun 0823 PDT]: Of course the cabinet has decided (by a vote of 22-3) to swap a live, undoubtedly grinning Kuntar for the bodies of Regev and Goldwasser.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Hezbollah, Hamas, prisoner exchange, Goldwasser, Regev, Schalit