Warning cries from Herzliya

From THE JERUSALEM POST, Feb. 22, 2009, by DANIEL DORON:

Prof. Uzi Arad, founder of the Herzliya Conference and the tough former head of Mossad research, is not usually given to soul searching. The audience of VIPs that listened to his farewell speech on leaving Herzliya for a top security job therefore reacted to his public expression of anxiety with stunned silence.

"I lie awake at night," Arad confided, "fretting over Israel's mishandling of the present danger from Iran. We have wasted precious years doing little about this danger; many in our political elites are ignorant, are in denial and cynical. They are deluded by a false messianic fervor, an irrational pursuit of peace. This prevents them from tackling the real dangers facing us."...