From Jerusalem Post, by Isi LeiblerMarch 21, 2007 ...
Throughout the Diaspora there are alienated Jews on the fringe whose primary involvement in Jewish life is centered on undermining the Jewish state.
Now they are seeking to establish themselves as a respectable alternative Jewish voice. This is the price we are paying for having long buried our heads in the sand, failing to isolate from the mainstream Jews who dedicate themselves to delegitimizing and demonizing Israel.
The potential damage they are capable of inflicting upon us cannot be underestimated. ....
....Today those delegitimizing the Jewish state are frequently indulged in respectable Jewish circles. Some Jewish leaders have even suggested that a "pluralistic" community should not discriminate against anti-Israel "dissidents."
Much of the responsibility for misplaced tolerance of those promoting our destruction originates inside Israel. The vilest anti-Israeli propaganda has for years been emanating from tenured academics at Israeli universities.
Now the problem has begun mushrooming out of control. In view of the fact that demonstrating hatred of Israel has become a key prerequisite for eligibility to membership of the "progressive" camp, one finds Jews at the forefront of the vicious campaigns demonizing Israel in virtually every country.
Yet to accuse these renegades of indulging in self-hatred is considered as a cardinal sin in many circles. It is thus legitimate for Jews to defame Israel as an "apartheid state," accuse their kinsmen of behaving like Nazis, apply double-standards to Israeli behavior, accuse Israel of ethnic cleansing, war crimes, even genocide; it's even acceptable to call for dismantling Israel and replacing it with a binational state, or to support the "right of return" for Arab refugees - all in the name of communal tolerance.
Yet to stand up and brand such views as extremist is deemed an expression of "Zionist McCarthyism."
IT IS A pathetic reflection of our times that people such as Tony Judt, Marc Ellis, Norman Finkelstein, Jacqueline Rose and Tony Kushner are considered martyrs, and tolerance of their malicious efforts to delegitimize the Jewish state has become confused with freedom of expression.
What a red herring. Insisting that Jewish demonizers of Israel comprise an extremist fringe and speak only for themselves does not represent suppression of free speech.
Our enemies allege that condemnation of those delegitimizing Israel is designed to cover up and deflect legitimate criticism. Never mind that genuine friends of Israel - indeed, Israelis themselves - are often vociferous critics of this or that Israeli policy. But there's a difference between being critical of a policy and delegitimizing the Jewish state.
Regrettably, efforts to obfuscate these polar opposites have increasingly been endorsed by much of the media.
When American academic Alvin Rosenfeld wrote an essay for the American Jewish Committee exposing the double standards and deviousness of Jews challenging Israel's right of existence, he unleashed a storm and was accused of playing foul for supposedly branding all criticism of Israel as anti-Semitic. That he deliberately avoided using expressions like anti-Semitism and self-hatred was ignored. Yet once so-called liberals misrepresented his views, even mainstream New York Jewish trendies began to join the pack attacking Rosenfeld.
At a time when Israel faces genuine existential threats, the audacity of the Jewish anti-Israeli camp has reached alarming levels. For example, a purportedly "Zionist" body demanded the right to introduce Israeli "refusenik" draftees to American campus students, describing their initiative as a "Zionist act of love," leaving mainstream Jewish campus groups divided whether to support such a bizarre proposal. Elsewhere a number of Jewish organizations which identify themselves as "pro-Israel" have been lobbying Congress to reject the community's mainstream positions, urging instead that Israel be pressured into pursuing policies contrary to its interests.
Meanwhile, in London the head of the only Anglo Jewish think tank cannot comprehend why his publicly stated belief that the Jewish state was a mistake and should be transformed into a binational state makes him ineligible to hold such a position. And the chair of this institute, who is also chair of Anglo Jewry's most important newspaper, has accused those calling for his director's resignation of behaving like McCarthyites.
I recommend that our recently-appointed minister for Diaspora Affairs, Isaac Herzog, place the issue of legitimate versus illegitimate criticism of Israel high on his agenda, and convene a world conference of mainstream Jewish organizations who cherish the name of Israel and all it represents. They should adopt a united stand to expose as a sham the obscene pretensions of Jews who carry out diabolical campaigns to delegitimize Israel - and have the gall to claim that they do it out of a sense of Jewish values and justice!
The writer chairs the Diaspora-Israel Relations Committee of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs and is a veteran international Jewish leader.
Thursday, March 22, 2007
Israel a "critical miltary partner"
From JTA.org, 21/3/07....
The supreme commander of NATO operations in Europe called Israel a "model state."
Gen. John Craddock, who also heads the U.S. European Command, told the U.S. House of Representatives Armed Services Committee last week that Israel will receive 93 percent of EUCOM area military aid this year. Craddock called Israel a "critical military partner" in "this entangled seam of the Middle East."
The supreme commander of NATO operations in Europe called Israel a "model state."
Gen. John Craddock, who also heads the U.S. European Command, told the U.S. House of Representatives Armed Services Committee last week that Israel will receive 93 percent of EUCOM area military aid this year. Craddock called Israel a "critical military partner" in "this entangled seam of the Middle East."
EU holds talks with new PA coalition government.
From JTA.org, 21/3/07 ....
The European Union held its first formal talks with the new Palestinian Authority coalition government.
The E.U. envoy to the Middle East, Marc Otte, met Wednesday with P.A. Finance Minister Salam Fayyad, an independent who the Hamas-led Cabinet hopes will help lift a Western embargo on direct aid.
Earlier this week, a U.S. official held talks with Fayyad, breaking with its policy of shunning the entire P.A. government until it recognizes Israel's right to exist and renounces terrorism. The United Nations was expected to follow suit later Thursday with a meeting between its regional envoy, Alvaro de Soto, and Fayyad. Those talks would mark, effectively, Fayyad's acceptance by all members of the Quartet of foreign mediators in Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts. The fourth partner, Russia, never agreed to boycott the Hamas-led Palestinian Authority.
The European Union held its first formal talks with the new Palestinian Authority coalition government.
The E.U. envoy to the Middle East, Marc Otte, met Wednesday with P.A. Finance Minister Salam Fayyad, an independent who the Hamas-led Cabinet hopes will help lift a Western embargo on direct aid.
Earlier this week, a U.S. official held talks with Fayyad, breaking with its policy of shunning the entire P.A. government until it recognizes Israel's right to exist and renounces terrorism. The United Nations was expected to follow suit later Thursday with a meeting between its regional envoy, Alvaro de Soto, and Fayyad. Those talks would mark, effectively, Fayyad's acceptance by all members of the Quartet of foreign mediators in Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts. The fourth partner, Russia, never agreed to boycott the Hamas-led Palestinian Authority.
Wednesday, March 21, 2007
"Women's Rights" at the UN
From Eye on the UN, by Anne Bayefsky ....[Fanz Kafka couldn't have dreamed up a more ridiculous farce....]
Last Friday, March 9, 2007 the UN wrapped up its annual session of the UN Commission on the Status of Women.
Guess where they found a violation of women's rights?
Last Friday, March 9, 2007 the UN wrapped up its annual session of the UN Commission on the Status of Women.
Guess where they found a violation of women's rights?
- Among the hundreds of thousands of women who are dead, dying, mutilated, displaced or raped in Sudan?
- Among the million female migrant workers cowering in the basements of Saudi Arabian villas from the taskmasters who stole their passports the minute they got off the plane?
- Among the women stoned and hanged for "adultery" in Iran?
- The millions of women forcibly aborted in China?
- The thousands murdered or forced to commit suicide for the crime of "dishonoring" their fathers and brothers across the Arab and Muslim world?
... none of the above...
...The UN's lead body charged with promoting and protecting women's rights identifies only one state as violating the rights of women in the world today – Israel. The vote was 40 for and 2 against (the United States and Canada).
Israel snubs Norwegian envoy
From THE JERUSALEM POST, Mar. 20, 2007 by Associated Press ...
The Foreign Ministry canceled a planned Tuesday meeting with a top Norwegian government official in a sign of displeasure the day after he met with Palestinian Authority government leaders from Hamas, Norwegian and Israeli officials said.
Norway's deputy foreign minister, Raymond Johansen met Palestinian Auhtority Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas and other government officials on Monday, becoming the first high-ranking Western official to visit Hamas leaders. His spokeswoman, Gry Larsen, said a meeting scheduled at the Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem for Tuesday had been called off, but she did not give further details.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev ... said ..."There was a Cabinet ruling last year. ...International dignitaries who meet with Hamas officials will not receive meetings with Israeli officials..." ...
The international community imposed a diplomatic and economic boycott on the Hamas government to pressure it to
The Foreign Ministry canceled a planned Tuesday meeting with a top Norwegian government official in a sign of displeasure the day after he met with Palestinian Authority government leaders from Hamas, Norwegian and Israeli officials said.
Norway's deputy foreign minister, Raymond Johansen met Palestinian Auhtority Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas and other government officials on Monday, becoming the first high-ranking Western official to visit Hamas leaders. His spokeswoman, Gry Larsen, said a meeting scheduled at the Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem for Tuesday had been called off, but she did not give further details.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev ... said ..."There was a Cabinet ruling last year. ...International dignitaries who meet with Hamas officials will not receive meetings with Israeli officials..." ...
The international community imposed a diplomatic and economic boycott on the Hamas government to pressure it to
- explicitly recognize Israel,
- renounce the use of violence and
- endorse previous peace agreements between the Palestinians and Israel.
The Cabinet on Sunday declared it would not deal with any member of the new Palestinian government and called on the international community "to maintain the policy it has taken over the past year, of isolating the Palestinian [Authority] government until it recognizes the three principles of the Quartet."
The Quartet is still appraising the new Haniyeh government and has yet to say whether it intends to change its position.
Norway, which is a member of the UN but not of the EU, recognized the new government the day it was sworn in, raising Israeli hackles. "It is surely a mistake to give legitimacy and recognition to an unreformed extremist (group) and it cannot serve the purposes of peace," Regev said after Johansen met Haniyeh on Monday.
'Islamic world in cold war'
From Ynet News, 20/3/07, by Yaakov Lappin ...
...The Islamic world is entering a cold war period as the divide between Shiites and Sunnis escalates, Israeli experts said during a conference at Tel Aviv University on Tuesday afternoon.
Dr. Uzi Rabi, of the Department of Middle Eastern and African History at Tel Aviv University, said both Iran and Sunni nations were sending envoys to battle it out in Iraq.
"There are many reports of Saudi Arabia indirectly supporting al-Qaeda, in order to prevent a Shiite takeover of Baghdad," Rabi said.
"There is a cold war going on in the Middle East between the agents of Iran and Sunni states," he argued, adding: "pragmatic Arab states, such as Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, and the small Gulf states, have recently joined into a bloc aimed at checking the Shiite phenomenon sweeping the Middle East."
He added that for the first time in Israel's history, there was a possibility for the country to "partially join this Sunni strategic alliance."
Rabi cited Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, who said in a speech that Shiites that live in Arab states were disloyal to their home countries, and saved their allegiances for Iran. "Jordan has also warned of the Shiite axis stretching from Iran to the Mediterranean that could split the Arab Muslim heart of the area," Rabi noted.
He stressed a massive growth of anti-Shiite reports in the Sunni media, and an "obsessive" level of coverage on the alleged attempt by Shiites to convert Sunnis to Shiism. "I am amazed by the volume of reports on this," Rabi said.
"There is a sea of articles on the Shiite danger. Sunni states have called for collective action to stop the Shiites, and may even begin nuclear programs to counter the Iranian threat," he added.
Rabi said the Sunni states also used the pretext of a Shiite threat to crack down on radical Sunni opposition groups at home.
"The conflict between Shiites and Sunnis is not a passing phenomenon. This conflict has crossed the borders of Iraq," he concluded.
Iran seeking access to border with Israel
Earlier, Professor David Menshari, an expert on Iran at Tel Aviv University, said the Islamic Republic was seeking to spread its influence to any area in the Middle East that was not strong enough to repel it, with the Palestinian Authority being a prime example of such a region. "Hamas can help Iran link up to the border with Israel," Menshari said. "Wherever the ground gives way, Iran can be found. They go after the soft targets, such as Lebanon, Gaza, and Iraq, but stay away from the strong countries," he stressed.
Menshari added that "to believe that there was homogenous body of Shiites, a unified axis, would be doing ourselves an injustice."
He cited many voices within Iran that were opposed to the government of the ayatollahs, saying: "There is a series of religious leaders in Iran opposed to clerical control of the state."
...The Islamic world is entering a cold war period as the divide between Shiites and Sunnis escalates, Israeli experts said during a conference at Tel Aviv University on Tuesday afternoon.
Dr. Uzi Rabi, of the Department of Middle Eastern and African History at Tel Aviv University, said both Iran and Sunni nations were sending envoys to battle it out in Iraq.
"There are many reports of Saudi Arabia indirectly supporting al-Qaeda, in order to prevent a Shiite takeover of Baghdad," Rabi said.
"There is a cold war going on in the Middle East between the agents of Iran and Sunni states," he argued, adding: "pragmatic Arab states, such as Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, and the small Gulf states, have recently joined into a bloc aimed at checking the Shiite phenomenon sweeping the Middle East."
He added that for the first time in Israel's history, there was a possibility for the country to "partially join this Sunni strategic alliance."
Rabi cited Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, who said in a speech that Shiites that live in Arab states were disloyal to their home countries, and saved their allegiances for Iran. "Jordan has also warned of the Shiite axis stretching from Iran to the Mediterranean that could split the Arab Muslim heart of the area," Rabi noted.
He stressed a massive growth of anti-Shiite reports in the Sunni media, and an "obsessive" level of coverage on the alleged attempt by Shiites to convert Sunnis to Shiism. "I am amazed by the volume of reports on this," Rabi said.
"There is a sea of articles on the Shiite danger. Sunni states have called for collective action to stop the Shiites, and may even begin nuclear programs to counter the Iranian threat," he added.
Rabi said the Sunni states also used the pretext of a Shiite threat to crack down on radical Sunni opposition groups at home.
"The conflict between Shiites and Sunnis is not a passing phenomenon. This conflict has crossed the borders of Iraq," he concluded.
Iran seeking access to border with Israel
Earlier, Professor David Menshari, an expert on Iran at Tel Aviv University, said the Islamic Republic was seeking to spread its influence to any area in the Middle East that was not strong enough to repel it, with the Palestinian Authority being a prime example of such a region. "Hamas can help Iran link up to the border with Israel," Menshari said. "Wherever the ground gives way, Iran can be found. They go after the soft targets, such as Lebanon, Gaza, and Iraq, but stay away from the strong countries," he stressed.
Menshari added that "to believe that there was homogenous body of Shiites, a unified axis, would be doing ourselves an injustice."
He cited many voices within Iran that were opposed to the government of the ayatollahs, saying: "There is a series of religious leaders in Iran opposed to clerical control of the state."
Meltdown at WJC
From Isi Leibler (personal blog), March 20, 2007 [intro only - follow the link to read the rferenced articles from The New York Times, Globes and The Jewish Forward]...
I attach ... three articles, samples from the immense global press coverage of the WJC over the past few days. Jews everywhere must be distressed at the scandalous nature of the entire saga which continues to provide immense satisfaction to enemies of the Jewish people. Hopefully this disgraceful episode is now finally coming to an end.
The positive aspect is that despite overwhelming odds, people power has triumphed. However, having served the WJC in a senior capacity for over thirty years, I am genuinely saddened that it was only after three years of ongoing scandal that the long overdue decision to dismiss a Jewish leader who had violated his fiduciary duties and misappropriated public funds was implemented. Moreover, even that took place under utterly chaotic circumstances.
Had our insistence three years ago that public funds be considered sacrosanct and our appeal for an independent audit been implemented, this scandal could have been entirely avoided. The WJC would not have been diverted from its mission by the devastating investigation of the New York Attorney General and squandered millions of dollars of public funds in futile efforts to cover up the improprieties.
To avert a total meltdown and ensure that democracy prevails, genuine elections must be held as soon as possible to select new leaders who are not tainted with the scandals and improprieties of the past. They must be committed to healing the divisions and reuniting the organization in a framework of good governance and genuine financial transparency capable of serving as a role model for all Jewish organizations. The WJC could then once again resume its leading global role dealing with the challenges facing the Jewish people during these troubled times.
Isi Leibler
I attach ... three articles, samples from the immense global press coverage of the WJC over the past few days. Jews everywhere must be distressed at the scandalous nature of the entire saga which continues to provide immense satisfaction to enemies of the Jewish people. Hopefully this disgraceful episode is now finally coming to an end.
The positive aspect is that despite overwhelming odds, people power has triumphed. However, having served the WJC in a senior capacity for over thirty years, I am genuinely saddened that it was only after three years of ongoing scandal that the long overdue decision to dismiss a Jewish leader who had violated his fiduciary duties and misappropriated public funds was implemented. Moreover, even that took place under utterly chaotic circumstances.
Had our insistence three years ago that public funds be considered sacrosanct and our appeal for an independent audit been implemented, this scandal could have been entirely avoided. The WJC would not have been diverted from its mission by the devastating investigation of the New York Attorney General and squandered millions of dollars of public funds in futile efforts to cover up the improprieties.
To avert a total meltdown and ensure that democracy prevails, genuine elections must be held as soon as possible to select new leaders who are not tainted with the scandals and improprieties of the past. They must be committed to healing the divisions and reuniting the organization in a framework of good governance and genuine financial transparency capable of serving as a role model for all Jewish organizations. The WJC could then once again resume its leading global role dealing with the challenges facing the Jewish people during these troubled times.
Isi Leibler
Tuesday, March 20, 2007
Palestinian PM backs terrorism
From Reuters, Sat Mar 17, 2007 by Nidal al-Mughrabi [emphasis added]...
GAZA (Reuters) - Palestinian leaders ...met to usher in a unity government intended to halt factional fighting and ease a crippling Western aid embargo. ...Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of the Islamist Hamas movement said the new coalition government upheld the right to "all forms" of resistance against Israel.
Israel again ruled out dealing with the new government, citing Hamas's refusal to accept demands, set by a Quartet of foreign peace mediators a year ago, that it
....The coalition's future may hang on whether it can erode the foreign boycott of the aid-dependent Palestinian Authority, which has been unable to pay its employees in full for a year. The Quartet -- the United States, the European Union, Russia and the United Nations -- suspended direct aid to the government after Hamas beat Fatah in elections and took power last March.
The United States is expected to continue its boycott, but a U.S. official said on Friday that Washington would leave the door open to unofficial contacts with Finance Minister Salam Fayyad, an independent with strong reformist credentials. France has invited new Foreign Minister Ziad Abu Amr to Paris, and Britain plans to allow diplomatic contacts with ministers not from Hamas.
....The Saudi-brokered accord reached by Hamas and Fatah on February 8 pledged "respect" for past peace deals with Israel. Even though those agreements were intended eventually to create a Palestinian state alongside Israel, Hamas says it will never recognize the Jewish state's right to exist.
Hamas officials say the Islamist movement will back the government's political agenda only as a "transitional" phase. "We believe in liberating our land gradually," senior Hamas lawmaker Mushir al-Masri told Reuters. "Any transitional agenda that deals with gradual achievement of our goals on the basis of constant rights is one we can favor."
GAZA (Reuters) - Palestinian leaders ...met to usher in a unity government intended to halt factional fighting and ease a crippling Western aid embargo. ...Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of the Islamist Hamas movement said the new coalition government upheld the right to "all forms" of resistance against Israel.
Israel again ruled out dealing with the new government, citing Hamas's refusal to accept demands, set by a Quartet of foreign peace mediators a year ago, that it
- forswear violence,
- recognize the Jewish state, and
- accept past interim peace deals.
....The coalition's future may hang on whether it can erode the foreign boycott of the aid-dependent Palestinian Authority, which has been unable to pay its employees in full for a year. The Quartet -- the United States, the European Union, Russia and the United Nations -- suspended direct aid to the government after Hamas beat Fatah in elections and took power last March.
The United States is expected to continue its boycott, but a U.S. official said on Friday that Washington would leave the door open to unofficial contacts with Finance Minister Salam Fayyad, an independent with strong reformist credentials. France has invited new Foreign Minister Ziad Abu Amr to Paris, and Britain plans to allow diplomatic contacts with ministers not from Hamas.
....The Saudi-brokered accord reached by Hamas and Fatah on February 8 pledged "respect" for past peace deals with Israel. Even though those agreements were intended eventually to create a Palestinian state alongside Israel, Hamas says it will never recognize the Jewish state's right to exist.
Hamas officials say the Islamist movement will back the government's political agenda only as a "transitional" phase. "We believe in liberating our land gradually," senior Hamas lawmaker Mushir al-Masri told Reuters. "Any transitional agenda that deals with gradual achievement of our goals on the basis of constant rights is one we can favor."
Sunday, March 18, 2007
Syria prepares for war
From THE JERUSALEM POST Mar. 15, 2007 BY Caroline Glick [my own emphasis added - SL]...
This has been a banner week for Syrian diplomacy.
First, together with their big Iranian brothers, the Syrians were given a place at the table alongside US officials at the conference on Iraqi security in Baghdad last weekend.
At the same time as their underlings exchanged recriminations with the US, Syrian dictator Bashar Assad and Iranian Defense Minister Mustafa Muhammad Najjar merged the Syrian and Iranian militaries at a summit in Damascus. On Sunday Najjar explained the deal to reporters saying, "We consider the capability of the Syrian defensive forces as our own and believe that expansion of defensive ties would ... help deal with the threats of the enemies." Najjar added that Iran "offers all of its defense capabilities to Syria." The meeting was capped off on Monday when Najjar signed a memorandum of understanding on military cooperation with his Syrian counterpart Hassan Turkmeni.
Tuesday, US Assistant Secretary of State for Refugees Ellen Sauerbrey became the first senior US official to visit Syria since Damascus engineered former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri's assassination in February 2005.
Following closely on Sauerbrey's heels was the EU's foreign policy chief Javier Solana. Like Sauerbrey, Solana was the first senior EU official to set foot in the Syrian capital since Hariri was murdered. Unlike Sauerbrey, who came and left without making a sound, Solana used the occasion to drop a diplomatic bomb. Standing next to Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Moualem Wednesday, Solana announced, "We would like to work as much as possible to see your country Syria recuperate the territory taken in 1967." .....
Solana's statement that Europe supports the reassertion of Syrian control over the Golan Heights came in the midst of a massive Syrian deployment of offensive weapons systems close to its border with Israel. Early this week, Israeli military commanders revealed that since last September, Syria has deployed between 1,000 and 3,000 missiles and rockets close to that border.
This revelation followed the apparent murder of Russian journalist Ivan Safronov. Safronov, who fell to his death from his fifth floor apartment window in Moscow on March 2, told his editors at the Kommersant newspaper just before his death that he was working on a story exposing Russian sales of advanced Iskander missiles to Syria and jetfighters to Iran.
This week, Michael Maples, the director of the US Defense Intelligence Agency, announced that "Syria has a program to develop select biological agents." Maples explained, "Syria's biotechnical infrastructure is capable of supporting limited biological agent development." He added that Syria is seeking to install biological and chemical warheads on its missile arsenal.
Indeed, according to opposition leader Binyamin Netanyahu, over the past year Syria has increased its military outlays by a factor of ten.
Syria is using the smokescreen of near weekly protestations of interest in negotiating with Israel to divert attention away from its clear preparations for war. Rather than see these statements for the psychological warfare antics they are, Israeli leftists have pounced on them. Led by the Haaretz newspaper, the Israeli Left is exerting massive pressure on the rudderless Olmert-Livni-Peretz government to force it to open negotiations with Damascus - negotiations that would lead to Israel's surrender of the Golan Heights in exchange for a piece of paper from Iran's Arab colony.
Due to the government's general incompetence, it is unable to formulate a coherent policy towards Syria. The Left's calls for surrender talk consequently dominate the public debate on Syria. This in turn has paralyzed the state bodies responsible for taking measures to prepare the IDF and the public for the prospect of war.
The IDF's public assessment of the Syrian threat is evidence of the confusion. Last month, Military Intelligence chief Maj.-Gen. Amos Yadlin addressed the Syrian threat at the government's intelligence assessment meeting. Yadlin said, "The chances of a full-scale war initiated by Syria are low, but the chances of Syria reacting militarily against Israeli military moves are high." Yadlin's statement was presented to the public as good news. But it was not good news. Syria will not initiate a full-scale war against Israel because it would lose a full-scale war. Syria's comparative advantage against the IDF is found in the area of low-intensity warfare, and as Yadlin noted, there is every reason to expect that it is this sort of warfare that Syria is preparing to initiate.
Over the past several years, Syria has built up massive artillery, missile and rocket arsenals capable of causing extensive damage to the IDF and to Israeli communities in the Golan Heights and the Galilee. So too, Syria fields a highly trained commando corps capable of exacting physical losses and tactical setbacks to the IDF.
Syria has two good reasons to go to war against Israel. Since 1973, every Arab state and terrorist organization that has gone to war against Israel has benefited from their aggression. Syria no doubt expects for the pattern to continue. In all likelihood, if Syria is able to fight Israel to a stalemate as Hizbullah did last summer, the Israeli Left, the EU and the US can be expected to increase their pressure for an Israeli surrender of the Golan Heights.
Moreover, a war with Israel would shore up Assad's dwindling support at home. Sherko Abbas, a Kurdish-Syrian exile living in the US, heads the Kurdistan National Assembly of Syria. He explains that due to Syria's economic weakness and the Assad government's profligate corruption, the regime is widely despised by its Syrian subjects. According to Abbas, the organized domestic opposition to the regime crosses ethnic lines and includes Kurds, Druse, Alawites, and even members of Assad's family clan.
Three years ago, regime-sponsored Sunni thugs attacked Kurdish soccer fans in Dayz az Zawr, a Kurdish city along the border with Iraq. The attack led to three days of Kurdish anti-regime riots. Rioters destroyed regime monuments and burned government offices. Brutally quelled, the riots left 85 Kurds dead, hundreds wounded and thousands imprisoned.
Numbering between 2.5-3 million, Kurds make up some 15 percent of the Syrian population. On Monday, hundreds of thousands of Kurds flocked to cemeteries to publicly commemorate the anniversary of the riots. As Abbas sees it, the fact that the Kurds were unafraid to publicly commemorate their uprising is proof of the regime's weakness.
Most Israeli politicians claim that were the regime to be overthrown, it would be replaced by the Muslim Brotherhood. The specter of an Islamist government arising in Syria is seen as sufficient reason for the Israeli government to do nothing to destabilize the Assad regime despite its strategic partnership with Iran.
Abbas disputes this view. He claims that the Muslim Brotherhood is a spent force in Syria. "If the Brotherhood were capable of replacing the regime, it would have overthrown it when there was a chance in 2004," he argues.
To offset his regime's unpopularity, over the past few years Assad has imported more than 100,000 "immigrants" from Iran. These new Persian-speaking Syrians are keen to influence their adopted society. To this end, they have built new Shi'ite mosques throughout the country and are paying Syrians to convert to Shi'ite Islam.
According to Abbas, the regime has settled its new loyalists in Damascus, Latakiya, Homs and Aleppo. All these areas - in close proximity to Lebanon and Israel - are of strategic importance to the regime.
By the same token, repeated press reports from Syria over the past year indicate that Assad replaced his Syrian security detail with a new presidential protection force comprised of members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps and Hizbullah.
With Syria clearly on war footing, there are several moves Israel must make right now. Militarily, Israel must prepare for war. The IDF should be pre-positioning equipment in the Golan Heights, training its reserves and regular forces for war, and updating its doctrine for fighting in the Golan Heights. So too, municipal authorities should be readying their bomb shelters for another war and preparing contingencies to evacuate civilians from the North.
If Syria does initiate hostilities, the IDF's goal must be to destroy the Syrian military and avoid a stalemate at all costs.
Diplomatically, Israel must work to cancel the diplomatic gains that Syria made this week. The goal must be to return Syria to the international isolation it has been relegated to since it engineered Hariri's murder.
Israel must also identify and assist forces in Syria working to undermine and topple the regime. Last week the Knesset's Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee invited Syria's US-based agent Ibrahim Suleiman, who held contacts with the far-left former director-general of the Foreign Ministry Alon Liel, to address its members. That invitation should be rescinded. Rather than Suleiman, the Knesset should invite regime opponents to speak to its members.
Working with the Kurdish opposition, the US-based Center for Democracy in the Middle East operates a satellite television station that runs limited broadcasts into Syria in Kurdish, Arabic and Persian. The station educates its viewers about the regime's corruption, suppression of human rights and democracy. It calls for peaceful coexistence with Israel and the rest of Syria's neighbors. Israel should be helping to fund, expand and run these broadcasts.
For its part, the regime itself announced this week that it is planning to launch a satellite television station that will advance the Syrian-Iranian line to the Arab world. Imagine how refreshing it would be for audiences to have the opportunity to watch something other than jihad on television.
In all its dealings with Syria, Israel must understand that today Syria is a clear enemy whose interests are diametrically opposed to the interests of the Jewish state. As a result, in all arenas and at all times, Israel should be working to weaken and destabilize the regime. There is much it can do to advance this purpose.
Unfortunately, until the current government is replaced, it is hard to imagine how this can happen.
This has been a banner week for Syrian diplomacy.
First, together with their big Iranian brothers, the Syrians were given a place at the table alongside US officials at the conference on Iraqi security in Baghdad last weekend.
At the same time as their underlings exchanged recriminations with the US, Syrian dictator Bashar Assad and Iranian Defense Minister Mustafa Muhammad Najjar merged the Syrian and Iranian militaries at a summit in Damascus. On Sunday Najjar explained the deal to reporters saying, "We consider the capability of the Syrian defensive forces as our own and believe that expansion of defensive ties would ... help deal with the threats of the enemies." Najjar added that Iran "offers all of its defense capabilities to Syria." The meeting was capped off on Monday when Najjar signed a memorandum of understanding on military cooperation with his Syrian counterpart Hassan Turkmeni.
Tuesday, US Assistant Secretary of State for Refugees Ellen Sauerbrey became the first senior US official to visit Syria since Damascus engineered former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri's assassination in February 2005.
Following closely on Sauerbrey's heels was the EU's foreign policy chief Javier Solana. Like Sauerbrey, Solana was the first senior EU official to set foot in the Syrian capital since Hariri was murdered. Unlike Sauerbrey, who came and left without making a sound, Solana used the occasion to drop a diplomatic bomb. Standing next to Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Moualem Wednesday, Solana announced, "We would like to work as much as possible to see your country Syria recuperate the territory taken in 1967." .....
Solana's statement that Europe supports the reassertion of Syrian control over the Golan Heights came in the midst of a massive Syrian deployment of offensive weapons systems close to its border with Israel. Early this week, Israeli military commanders revealed that since last September, Syria has deployed between 1,000 and 3,000 missiles and rockets close to that border.
This revelation followed the apparent murder of Russian journalist Ivan Safronov. Safronov, who fell to his death from his fifth floor apartment window in Moscow on March 2, told his editors at the Kommersant newspaper just before his death that he was working on a story exposing Russian sales of advanced Iskander missiles to Syria and jetfighters to Iran.
This week, Michael Maples, the director of the US Defense Intelligence Agency, announced that "Syria has a program to develop select biological agents." Maples explained, "Syria's biotechnical infrastructure is capable of supporting limited biological agent development." He added that Syria is seeking to install biological and chemical warheads on its missile arsenal.
Indeed, according to opposition leader Binyamin Netanyahu, over the past year Syria has increased its military outlays by a factor of ten.
Syria is using the smokescreen of near weekly protestations of interest in negotiating with Israel to divert attention away from its clear preparations for war. Rather than see these statements for the psychological warfare antics they are, Israeli leftists have pounced on them. Led by the Haaretz newspaper, the Israeli Left is exerting massive pressure on the rudderless Olmert-Livni-Peretz government to force it to open negotiations with Damascus - negotiations that would lead to Israel's surrender of the Golan Heights in exchange for a piece of paper from Iran's Arab colony.
Due to the government's general incompetence, it is unable to formulate a coherent policy towards Syria. The Left's calls for surrender talk consequently dominate the public debate on Syria. This in turn has paralyzed the state bodies responsible for taking measures to prepare the IDF and the public for the prospect of war.
The IDF's public assessment of the Syrian threat is evidence of the confusion. Last month, Military Intelligence chief Maj.-Gen. Amos Yadlin addressed the Syrian threat at the government's intelligence assessment meeting. Yadlin said, "The chances of a full-scale war initiated by Syria are low, but the chances of Syria reacting militarily against Israeli military moves are high." Yadlin's statement was presented to the public as good news. But it was not good news. Syria will not initiate a full-scale war against Israel because it would lose a full-scale war. Syria's comparative advantage against the IDF is found in the area of low-intensity warfare, and as Yadlin noted, there is every reason to expect that it is this sort of warfare that Syria is preparing to initiate.
Over the past several years, Syria has built up massive artillery, missile and rocket arsenals capable of causing extensive damage to the IDF and to Israeli communities in the Golan Heights and the Galilee. So too, Syria fields a highly trained commando corps capable of exacting physical losses and tactical setbacks to the IDF.
Syria has two good reasons to go to war against Israel. Since 1973, every Arab state and terrorist organization that has gone to war against Israel has benefited from their aggression. Syria no doubt expects for the pattern to continue. In all likelihood, if Syria is able to fight Israel to a stalemate as Hizbullah did last summer, the Israeli Left, the EU and the US can be expected to increase their pressure for an Israeli surrender of the Golan Heights.
Moreover, a war with Israel would shore up Assad's dwindling support at home. Sherko Abbas, a Kurdish-Syrian exile living in the US, heads the Kurdistan National Assembly of Syria. He explains that due to Syria's economic weakness and the Assad government's profligate corruption, the regime is widely despised by its Syrian subjects. According to Abbas, the organized domestic opposition to the regime crosses ethnic lines and includes Kurds, Druse, Alawites, and even members of Assad's family clan.
Three years ago, regime-sponsored Sunni thugs attacked Kurdish soccer fans in Dayz az Zawr, a Kurdish city along the border with Iraq. The attack led to three days of Kurdish anti-regime riots. Rioters destroyed regime monuments and burned government offices. Brutally quelled, the riots left 85 Kurds dead, hundreds wounded and thousands imprisoned.
Numbering between 2.5-3 million, Kurds make up some 15 percent of the Syrian population. On Monday, hundreds of thousands of Kurds flocked to cemeteries to publicly commemorate the anniversary of the riots. As Abbas sees it, the fact that the Kurds were unafraid to publicly commemorate their uprising is proof of the regime's weakness.
Most Israeli politicians claim that were the regime to be overthrown, it would be replaced by the Muslim Brotherhood. The specter of an Islamist government arising in Syria is seen as sufficient reason for the Israeli government to do nothing to destabilize the Assad regime despite its strategic partnership with Iran.
Abbas disputes this view. He claims that the Muslim Brotherhood is a spent force in Syria. "If the Brotherhood were capable of replacing the regime, it would have overthrown it when there was a chance in 2004," he argues.
To offset his regime's unpopularity, over the past few years Assad has imported more than 100,000 "immigrants" from Iran. These new Persian-speaking Syrians are keen to influence their adopted society. To this end, they have built new Shi'ite mosques throughout the country and are paying Syrians to convert to Shi'ite Islam.
According to Abbas, the regime has settled its new loyalists in Damascus, Latakiya, Homs and Aleppo. All these areas - in close proximity to Lebanon and Israel - are of strategic importance to the regime.
By the same token, repeated press reports from Syria over the past year indicate that Assad replaced his Syrian security detail with a new presidential protection force comprised of members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps and Hizbullah.
With Syria clearly on war footing, there are several moves Israel must make right now. Militarily, Israel must prepare for war. The IDF should be pre-positioning equipment in the Golan Heights, training its reserves and regular forces for war, and updating its doctrine for fighting in the Golan Heights. So too, municipal authorities should be readying their bomb shelters for another war and preparing contingencies to evacuate civilians from the North.
If Syria does initiate hostilities, the IDF's goal must be to destroy the Syrian military and avoid a stalemate at all costs.
Diplomatically, Israel must work to cancel the diplomatic gains that Syria made this week. The goal must be to return Syria to the international isolation it has been relegated to since it engineered Hariri's murder.
Israel must also identify and assist forces in Syria working to undermine and topple the regime. Last week the Knesset's Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee invited Syria's US-based agent Ibrahim Suleiman, who held contacts with the far-left former director-general of the Foreign Ministry Alon Liel, to address its members. That invitation should be rescinded. Rather than Suleiman, the Knesset should invite regime opponents to speak to its members.
Working with the Kurdish opposition, the US-based Center for Democracy in the Middle East operates a satellite television station that runs limited broadcasts into Syria in Kurdish, Arabic and Persian. The station educates its viewers about the regime's corruption, suppression of human rights and democracy. It calls for peaceful coexistence with Israel and the rest of Syria's neighbors. Israel should be helping to fund, expand and run these broadcasts.
For its part, the regime itself announced this week that it is planning to launch a satellite television station that will advance the Syrian-Iranian line to the Arab world. Imagine how refreshing it would be for audiences to have the opportunity to watch something other than jihad on television.
In all its dealings with Syria, Israel must understand that today Syria is a clear enemy whose interests are diametrically opposed to the interests of the Jewish state. As a result, in all arenas and at all times, Israel should be working to weaken and destabilize the regime. There is much it can do to advance this purpose.
Unfortunately, until the current government is replaced, it is hard to imagine how this can happen.
Netanyahu addresses AIPAC
Click below to hear Benjamin Netanyahu address AIPAC recently ...
His message. Divest in Iran.....divest, divest, divest.
Each video clip is about 5 minues. If you have only five minutes, go to the Closing Remarks....
Part 1
Part 2
Closing Remarks
His message. Divest in Iran.....divest, divest, divest.
Each video clip is about 5 minues. If you have only five minutes, go to the Closing Remarks....
Part 1
Part 2
Closing Remarks
Friday, March 16, 2007
Hamas digs in for war in Gaza
From The Australian, March 16, 2007, by Abraham Rabinovich, Jerusalem ...
HAMAS is busily fortifying the Gaza Strip with the help of Iranian expertise and funding for what may be the fiercest fighting the embattled enclave has seen [....probably before the end of the year]
"They're digging bunkers and tunnels 20m underground equipped with airconditioning," retired Israeli intelligence officer Brigadier General Shalom Harari said this week. "That's something the Iranians taught them."
Since Israel's withdrawal from Gaza 18 months ago, hundreds of Hamas fighters have gone to Iran for intensive military training sometimes lasting months, according to Shin Bet security service chief Yuval Diskin. Iranian experts have also reportedly reached Gaza.
Mr Diskin said on Tuesday that militants last year smuggled more than 30 tonnes of explosives into the Strip, mostly through tunnels from Egypt. According to an Israeli assessment, there are 120,000 automatic weapons in Palestinian hands in the 40km-long strip.
Mr Diskin told the Knesset foreign affairs and defence committee that Hamas had significantly upgraded its rocket arsenal. Some could now hit Israeli towns 20km away. Hamas had also acquired in recent months Russian missiles capable of penetrating heavily armoured tanks. Newly acquired anti-aircraft missiles would challenge Israel's domination of the skies over Gaza for the first time.
Brigadier General Harari said: "Hamas and Iran have formed a strategic alliance. Iran sees Hamas as part of a pincer aimed at Israel." The other arm of the pincer, in Lebanon, is Hezbollah.
Like Iran, Hezbollah belongs to the Shia branch of Islam. Though Hamas members are Sunni, they share Iran's fundamentalist ethos and its militancy towards Israel. Iran is also funding militant groups in the West Bank, which borders Israel's heartland. However, Israeli forces are still deployed in the West Bank and almost nightly arrests of militants have prevented Hamas from gaining traction.
Israel is closely monitoring developments in Gaza and has drawn up detailed plans for a large-scale incursion that it would like to press home before Hamas reaches Hezbollah's level of military sophistication. "Hamas wants quiet now so that it can continue its preparations," Brigadier General Harari said. "But their build-up will oblige an Israeli operation, probably before the end of the year."
A major clash with Hamas threatens to be far bloodier than the war with Hezbollah.
South Lebanon, where most of last summer's war was waged, is a thinly populated rural area. Its residents were warned by Israel through leaflets and radio broadcasts to flee before their villages were bombed or shelled. Gaza, by contrast, is one of the world's most densely populated areas, with few secure places to which civilians could flee. If Israeli forces wished to root out Hamas armories and rocket workshops, they would have to fight their way into built-up areas.
In all the years of skirmishing, Israeli troops have never engaged in significant house-to-house fighting in Gaza City or other urban locations.
Given the lacklustre showing of the Israeli Defence Force against Hezbollah last year, it is highly motivated to seek a decisive victory against Hamas. But international pressure could prove a restraining force if many civilians were killed.
Hamas has mined the approaches to Gaza's towns and is expected to mine streets and buildings inside the towns when fighting appears imminent. It is also believed to have dug tunnels under the Israeli border fence to infiltrate fighters behind the Israeli lines.
Israel has drawn up plans for an orderly evacuation of settlements bordering the Gaza Strip when and if fighting starts.
HAMAS is busily fortifying the Gaza Strip with the help of Iranian expertise and funding for what may be the fiercest fighting the embattled enclave has seen [....probably before the end of the year]
"They're digging bunkers and tunnels 20m underground equipped with airconditioning," retired Israeli intelligence officer Brigadier General Shalom Harari said this week. "That's something the Iranians taught them."
Since Israel's withdrawal from Gaza 18 months ago, hundreds of Hamas fighters have gone to Iran for intensive military training sometimes lasting months, according to Shin Bet security service chief Yuval Diskin. Iranian experts have also reportedly reached Gaza.
Mr Diskin said on Tuesday that militants last year smuggled more than 30 tonnes of explosives into the Strip, mostly through tunnels from Egypt. According to an Israeli assessment, there are 120,000 automatic weapons in Palestinian hands in the 40km-long strip.
Mr Diskin told the Knesset foreign affairs and defence committee that Hamas had significantly upgraded its rocket arsenal. Some could now hit Israeli towns 20km away. Hamas had also acquired in recent months Russian missiles capable of penetrating heavily armoured tanks. Newly acquired anti-aircraft missiles would challenge Israel's domination of the skies over Gaza for the first time.
Brigadier General Harari said: "Hamas and Iran have formed a strategic alliance. Iran sees Hamas as part of a pincer aimed at Israel." The other arm of the pincer, in Lebanon, is Hezbollah.
Like Iran, Hezbollah belongs to the Shia branch of Islam. Though Hamas members are Sunni, they share Iran's fundamentalist ethos and its militancy towards Israel. Iran is also funding militant groups in the West Bank, which borders Israel's heartland. However, Israeli forces are still deployed in the West Bank and almost nightly arrests of militants have prevented Hamas from gaining traction.
Israel is closely monitoring developments in Gaza and has drawn up detailed plans for a large-scale incursion that it would like to press home before Hamas reaches Hezbollah's level of military sophistication. "Hamas wants quiet now so that it can continue its preparations," Brigadier General Harari said. "But their build-up will oblige an Israeli operation, probably before the end of the year."
A major clash with Hamas threatens to be far bloodier than the war with Hezbollah.
South Lebanon, where most of last summer's war was waged, is a thinly populated rural area. Its residents were warned by Israel through leaflets and radio broadcasts to flee before their villages were bombed or shelled. Gaza, by contrast, is one of the world's most densely populated areas, with few secure places to which civilians could flee. If Israeli forces wished to root out Hamas armories and rocket workshops, they would have to fight their way into built-up areas.
In all the years of skirmishing, Israeli troops have never engaged in significant house-to-house fighting in Gaza City or other urban locations.
Given the lacklustre showing of the Israeli Defence Force against Hezbollah last year, it is highly motivated to seek a decisive victory against Hamas. But international pressure could prove a restraining force if many civilians were killed.
Hamas has mined the approaches to Gaza's towns and is expected to mine streets and buildings inside the towns when fighting appears imminent. It is also believed to have dug tunnels under the Israeli border fence to infiltrate fighters behind the Israeli lines.
Israel has drawn up plans for an orderly evacuation of settlements bordering the Gaza Strip when and if fighting starts.
Thursday, March 15, 2007
The Quadrant lecture by Melanie Phillips
From The Quadrant lecture by Melanie Phillips, Quadrant dinner, Sydney, Australia, 1 March 2007 [very brief excerpt only - follow the link for the full transcript]....
Londonistan was a term of abuse coined by the French for a Britain that had allowed itself to become the European hub of al Qaeda. To me it’s also a state of mind, when people not only seek to appease but come to believe and absorb the ideas and assumptions of the enemy that intends to destroy them. It’s a state of mind that applies not just to Britain but throughout the west, where people refuse to face up to the reality of the jihad because they can’t bring themselves to accept what must follow. It’s so much easier to take refuge in alternative explanations, particularly ones that blame themselves for their own victimisation. And just as they embrace their enemies, so they turn against their allies......
.....There is a persistent refusal to accept that we are in the throes of a holy war waged upon the western world for more than 25 years without our even recognising it because it doesn’t fit our definition of war. It is a world war being fought in many disparate theatres with many proximate causes, but all with one single coherent aim: to defeat western civilisation, establish Islam as the dominant power in the world and restore the medieval Islamic caliphate.....
.....Many take refuge in excuses. It’s rage over Iraq. It’s Islamophobia. It’s poverty or discrimination. It’s segregation. But none of these stands up to scrutiny for a second. .....
.....People are rightly concerned not to tar all Muslims with the brush of Islamist conquest. Which is why I go out of my way in my book to say many Muslims in Britain and around the world are deeply opposed to the jihad; indeed Muslims are its most numerous victims. That’s why I use the term Islamism, to distinguish those who believe in Islamic conquest from those who merely draw upon Islam for spiritual sustenance. But at same time, it is false to deny that Islamism is the dominant force in the Muslim and Arab world, false to deny that it is radicalising millions of Muslims in the west, and false to deny the huge inroads it has made into western society through this pincer movement of terrorism and cultural pressure.
As I say, there certainly are moderate Muslims. But this immediately poses the question: what is a moderate? In Britain, it appears that only those Muslims who endorse the murder of fellow Britons are not moderate. Those who merely endorse the murder of Israelis or coalition forces in Iraq are deemed to be ‘moderate’ — because that is merely exercising ‘resistance’.
This is clearly absurd. But worse still, there is an alarming number of Muslims in Britain may abhor violence but whose views are not moderate by any reasonable definition. Opinion polls suggest that between 40 and 60% of British Muslims would like to live under sharia law in Britain; almost a quarter say the 7/7 bombings can be justified because of the war on terror; nearly half think 9/11 was a conspiracy between the US and Israel; 46% think the Jewish community is ‘in league with the Freemasons to control the media and police’; 37% think the Jewish community in Britain is a legitimate target ‘as part of the ongoing struggle for justice in the Middle East’.
In further surveys, seven per cent of Muslims polled — equivalent to 112,000 British Muslims —thought suicide bombing in the UK was justified in some circumstances, rising to 16 per cent — or 256,000 —if a military target was involved. These are horrifying statistics. Clearly, the problem we have is not just ‘a few unrepresentative extremists’. It is much broader and deeper.
That’s why the head of the so-called ‘moderate’ Muslim Council of Britain, the main Muslim representative body, has said his aim is to encourage Britain to adopt sharia law and more Islamic ways. That’s why, after the transatlantic airline plot was uncovered, 38 British Muslim organisations along with various Muslim MPs and members of the House of Lords threatened that unless Britain changed its foreign policy, it would have more terror attacks. That’s why, the day after the soldier kidnap plot was uncovered, other so-called ‘moderate’ Muslim representatives demanded of the government that sharia law on marriage be adopted into English law and that assorted Muslim holidays should become British national holidays. That’s why the Muslim Council of Britain called last week for all schools to ban ‘un-Islamic activities’ like dance classes, teach contact sports in single-gender groups, to allow Muslim children to wear all-encompassing garments while swimming, and to limit certain school activities during Ramadan including science lessons dealing with sex, parents’ evenings, exams and immunisation programmes.
I see this situation not as ‘a few unrepresentative extremists’ but as a continuum of extremism which acts as a conveyor belt to terror. Even those who don’t support violence may endorse the kind of ideas which are the drivers of terror — ideas such as the belief that the west is a conspiracy to destroy Islam, that the Jews are the puppet-masters of the west, that Britain should be governed by sharia law, or other views hostile to British and western society......
.....What should be done? Simply, this. We all have to grasp that terrorism is not the biggest threat we face. The biggest threat is the ideology that drives it. It’s not enough to fight terror, vital though that is. The principal battleground is the world of ideas. The Islamists understand this. They understand that if they can hijack the human mind to the cause of hatred and lies, they have an army; and if they can further hijack the minds of their victims, they will win. They understand that psychological warfare – the fomenting of paranoia, resentment, hysteria and demoralisation — is their most effective weapon.
But we haven’t even understood that this is where the real battleground is. The liberal west, which worships at the shrine of reason and makes such a fetish of the power of intellect, will not acknowledge that ideas can kill – and we flinch from what we would have to do to address this. As a result Britain, Europe, America and Israel have all left the battleground of ideas totally undefended, allowing the unhindered advance of falsehood and hatred. Worse still, our intelligentsia and media often act as an Islamists’ fifth column.
It is only if we act against the ideology that is spreading such falsehood and hatred, and stop its advance under the umbrella of minority rights, that we have any chance of defending the free world. That means – while showing respect to Muslims who derive only spiritual sustenance from their faith – resisting the Islamism which uses religion to attack western values, life and liberty, reasserting western values and resisting any attempt to subvert them. It also means facing down in public the lies spread about the west. Only if we stop deluding ourselves and take such action necessary for our survival will we stop sleepwalking to defeat.
Londonistan was a term of abuse coined by the French for a Britain that had allowed itself to become the European hub of al Qaeda. To me it’s also a state of mind, when people not only seek to appease but come to believe and absorb the ideas and assumptions of the enemy that intends to destroy them. It’s a state of mind that applies not just to Britain but throughout the west, where people refuse to face up to the reality of the jihad because they can’t bring themselves to accept what must follow. It’s so much easier to take refuge in alternative explanations, particularly ones that blame themselves for their own victimisation. And just as they embrace their enemies, so they turn against their allies......
.....There is a persistent refusal to accept that we are in the throes of a holy war waged upon the western world for more than 25 years without our even recognising it because it doesn’t fit our definition of war. It is a world war being fought in many disparate theatres with many proximate causes, but all with one single coherent aim: to defeat western civilisation, establish Islam as the dominant power in the world and restore the medieval Islamic caliphate.....
.....Many take refuge in excuses. It’s rage over Iraq. It’s Islamophobia. It’s poverty or discrimination. It’s segregation. But none of these stands up to scrutiny for a second. .....
.....People are rightly concerned not to tar all Muslims with the brush of Islamist conquest. Which is why I go out of my way in my book to say many Muslims in Britain and around the world are deeply opposed to the jihad; indeed Muslims are its most numerous victims. That’s why I use the term Islamism, to distinguish those who believe in Islamic conquest from those who merely draw upon Islam for spiritual sustenance. But at same time, it is false to deny that Islamism is the dominant force in the Muslim and Arab world, false to deny that it is radicalising millions of Muslims in the west, and false to deny the huge inroads it has made into western society through this pincer movement of terrorism and cultural pressure.
As I say, there certainly are moderate Muslims. But this immediately poses the question: what is a moderate? In Britain, it appears that only those Muslims who endorse the murder of fellow Britons are not moderate. Those who merely endorse the murder of Israelis or coalition forces in Iraq are deemed to be ‘moderate’ — because that is merely exercising ‘resistance’.
This is clearly absurd. But worse still, there is an alarming number of Muslims in Britain may abhor violence but whose views are not moderate by any reasonable definition. Opinion polls suggest that between 40 and 60% of British Muslims would like to live under sharia law in Britain; almost a quarter say the 7/7 bombings can be justified because of the war on terror; nearly half think 9/11 was a conspiracy between the US and Israel; 46% think the Jewish community is ‘in league with the Freemasons to control the media and police’; 37% think the Jewish community in Britain is a legitimate target ‘as part of the ongoing struggle for justice in the Middle East’.
In further surveys, seven per cent of Muslims polled — equivalent to 112,000 British Muslims —thought suicide bombing in the UK was justified in some circumstances, rising to 16 per cent — or 256,000 —if a military target was involved. These are horrifying statistics. Clearly, the problem we have is not just ‘a few unrepresentative extremists’. It is much broader and deeper.
That’s why the head of the so-called ‘moderate’ Muslim Council of Britain, the main Muslim representative body, has said his aim is to encourage Britain to adopt sharia law and more Islamic ways. That’s why, after the transatlantic airline plot was uncovered, 38 British Muslim organisations along with various Muslim MPs and members of the House of Lords threatened that unless Britain changed its foreign policy, it would have more terror attacks. That’s why, the day after the soldier kidnap plot was uncovered, other so-called ‘moderate’ Muslim representatives demanded of the government that sharia law on marriage be adopted into English law and that assorted Muslim holidays should become British national holidays. That’s why the Muslim Council of Britain called last week for all schools to ban ‘un-Islamic activities’ like dance classes, teach contact sports in single-gender groups, to allow Muslim children to wear all-encompassing garments while swimming, and to limit certain school activities during Ramadan including science lessons dealing with sex, parents’ evenings, exams and immunisation programmes.
I see this situation not as ‘a few unrepresentative extremists’ but as a continuum of extremism which acts as a conveyor belt to terror. Even those who don’t support violence may endorse the kind of ideas which are the drivers of terror — ideas such as the belief that the west is a conspiracy to destroy Islam, that the Jews are the puppet-masters of the west, that Britain should be governed by sharia law, or other views hostile to British and western society......
.....What should be done? Simply, this. We all have to grasp that terrorism is not the biggest threat we face. The biggest threat is the ideology that drives it. It’s not enough to fight terror, vital though that is. The principal battleground is the world of ideas. The Islamists understand this. They understand that if they can hijack the human mind to the cause of hatred and lies, they have an army; and if they can further hijack the minds of their victims, they will win. They understand that psychological warfare – the fomenting of paranoia, resentment, hysteria and demoralisation — is their most effective weapon.
But we haven’t even understood that this is where the real battleground is. The liberal west, which worships at the shrine of reason and makes such a fetish of the power of intellect, will not acknowledge that ideas can kill – and we flinch from what we would have to do to address this. As a result Britain, Europe, America and Israel have all left the battleground of ideas totally undefended, allowing the unhindered advance of falsehood and hatred. Worse still, our intelligentsia and media often act as an Islamists’ fifth column.
It is only if we act against the ideology that is spreading such falsehood and hatred, and stop its advance under the umbrella of minority rights, that we have any chance of defending the free world. That means – while showing respect to Muslims who derive only spiritual sustenance from their faith – resisting the Islamism which uses religion to attack western values, life and liberty, reasserting western values and resisting any attempt to subvert them. It also means facing down in public the lies spread about the west. Only if we stop deluding ourselves and take such action necessary for our survival will we stop sleepwalking to defeat.
Wednesday, March 14, 2007
Sick Europe
From THE JERUSALEM POST, Mar. 13, 2007, Michael Freund [my emphasis added - SL]....
Even for a continent with such a dishonorable record of appeasement, Europe has been outdoing itself. For the first time in more than two years European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana will pay a visit this week to President Bashar Assad at one of his numerous palaces, marking a resumption of high-level EU contact with the Dictator of Damascus.
And what exactly has Mr. Assad done to deserve this diplomatic prize? Let's see. His track record includes the murder of political opponents, allowing foreign fighters to traverse Syria and join the insurgency in Iraq and playing host to terror groups such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad.
The Assad regime is believed to have orchestrated the February 2005 assassination of former Lebanese premier Rafik Hariri; it has funneled arms and financial support to a cast of nasty characters including Hizbullah, and it has openly threatened to wage war against the Jewish state.
Syria's government also continues to suppress the most basic and fundamental rights of its citizens, and it has been steadily building up a military arsenal bristling with chemical warheads.
So how exactly have Europe's guardians of civilization decided to respond to Assad and his appalling record of behavior? By rewarding him, of course.
It doesn't seem to matter one whit to Solana that he will be sipping tea and exchanging pleasantries in Damascus with a man who has arguably done more than any other head of state to sow chaos in the Middle East over the past 24 months. And if that weren't enough, the EU diplomat will likely fawn all over his host, pleading with him to play a "more constructive role" in the region, as if such blather is likely to convince an autocrat like Assad to stop causing trouble.
I don't know about you, but I've had it. I am sick and tired of Europe's haughty hypocrisy, its maddening myopia and its duplicitous double-standards when it comes to the war on terror and the Middle East.
IT'S TIME we stopped deluding ourselves into thinking that Europe can be counted on to stand by Israel and the United States in times of crisis, and start realizing just how unprincipled and unscrupulous European foreign policy has become.
Take, for example, the issue of Iran's nuclear ambitions. As the Wall Street Journal pointed out last month, "The European Union - led by Germany, France and Italy - has long been Iran's largest trading partner," with the EU accounting for more than one-third of Iran's total imports.
Even after the International Atomic Energy Agency revealed in 2003 that Iran had been conducting a secret nuclear program for 18 years aimed at enriching uranium, Europe went ahead and expanded its trade with the mullahs. The Continent's exports to Teheran rose 29% between 2003 and 2005 to nearly 13 billion euros.
So while publicly they wring their hands about the Iranians possibly obtaining a nuclear weapon, the Europeans are busy earning a fast buck by doing business with them, in the process pumping a steadily-increasing stream of revenue into the Iranian treasury's coffers. The fact that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad seems intent on using these funds to replicate the results of the European Holocaust of six decades ago does not appear to enter into the equation.
AT THE same time we are witness to an increasing array of insults, invective and verbal abuse hurled at the Jewish state by prominent Europeans. Earlier this month, on a visit to Jerusalem, German Bishop Gregor Maria Franz Hanke had the gall to compare Israel to the Nazis, and likened Ramallah to the Warsaw Ghetto. This from a man whose nation systematically murdered millions of innocent Jews.
Then there is the brouhaha over the Eurovision song contest, where organizers have said they may bar Israel's entry in the May competition because it expresses opposition to being incinerated by Iranian nuclear weapons. Does the fact that Jews wish to live sit heavily on the collective European conscience?
In light of all this, it is time for Israel and the US to stop giving so much weight to European political preaching and diplomatic pontificating. With their record of cozying up to dictators and pursuing commercial deals at the expense of Western strategic interests, European leaders have lost the moral right to tell us how best to run our affairs.
Instead of courting people such as Solana and his ilk, Israel and the US should publicly and aggressively call the European leadership to task for its shameful stance on various key issues.
Just because a relationship goes by the name "alliance" does not necessarily make it so. Europe has a long way to go before being worthy of such a description.
AND WHEN the EU starts bossing us around, as it inevitably will, telling us to accommodate the Palestinian Authority or negotiate with the ayatollahs, we should politely but firmly say: "Shut up, Europe!"
In the mid-19th century, Czar Nicholas I of Russia coined the phrase "the sick man of Europe" to describe the decline of Ottoman Turkey. I would suggest adapting that expression to reflect the reality of the Continent today.
The sick man is Europe, and it is time we started treating it as such.
Even for a continent with such a dishonorable record of appeasement, Europe has been outdoing itself. For the first time in more than two years European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana will pay a visit this week to President Bashar Assad at one of his numerous palaces, marking a resumption of high-level EU contact with the Dictator of Damascus.
And what exactly has Mr. Assad done to deserve this diplomatic prize? Let's see. His track record includes the murder of political opponents, allowing foreign fighters to traverse Syria and join the insurgency in Iraq and playing host to terror groups such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad.
The Assad regime is believed to have orchestrated the February 2005 assassination of former Lebanese premier Rafik Hariri; it has funneled arms and financial support to a cast of nasty characters including Hizbullah, and it has openly threatened to wage war against the Jewish state.
Syria's government also continues to suppress the most basic and fundamental rights of its citizens, and it has been steadily building up a military arsenal bristling with chemical warheads.
So how exactly have Europe's guardians of civilization decided to respond to Assad and his appalling record of behavior? By rewarding him, of course.
It doesn't seem to matter one whit to Solana that he will be sipping tea and exchanging pleasantries in Damascus with a man who has arguably done more than any other head of state to sow chaos in the Middle East over the past 24 months. And if that weren't enough, the EU diplomat will likely fawn all over his host, pleading with him to play a "more constructive role" in the region, as if such blather is likely to convince an autocrat like Assad to stop causing trouble.
I don't know about you, but I've had it. I am sick and tired of Europe's haughty hypocrisy, its maddening myopia and its duplicitous double-standards when it comes to the war on terror and the Middle East.
IT'S TIME we stopped deluding ourselves into thinking that Europe can be counted on to stand by Israel and the United States in times of crisis, and start realizing just how unprincipled and unscrupulous European foreign policy has become.
Take, for example, the issue of Iran's nuclear ambitions. As the Wall Street Journal pointed out last month, "The European Union - led by Germany, France and Italy - has long been Iran's largest trading partner," with the EU accounting for more than one-third of Iran's total imports.
Even after the International Atomic Energy Agency revealed in 2003 that Iran had been conducting a secret nuclear program for 18 years aimed at enriching uranium, Europe went ahead and expanded its trade with the mullahs. The Continent's exports to Teheran rose 29% between 2003 and 2005 to nearly 13 billion euros.
So while publicly they wring their hands about the Iranians possibly obtaining a nuclear weapon, the Europeans are busy earning a fast buck by doing business with them, in the process pumping a steadily-increasing stream of revenue into the Iranian treasury's coffers. The fact that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad seems intent on using these funds to replicate the results of the European Holocaust of six decades ago does not appear to enter into the equation.
AT THE same time we are witness to an increasing array of insults, invective and verbal abuse hurled at the Jewish state by prominent Europeans. Earlier this month, on a visit to Jerusalem, German Bishop Gregor Maria Franz Hanke had the gall to compare Israel to the Nazis, and likened Ramallah to the Warsaw Ghetto. This from a man whose nation systematically murdered millions of innocent Jews.
Then there is the brouhaha over the Eurovision song contest, where organizers have said they may bar Israel's entry in the May competition because it expresses opposition to being incinerated by Iranian nuclear weapons. Does the fact that Jews wish to live sit heavily on the collective European conscience?
In light of all this, it is time for Israel and the US to stop giving so much weight to European political preaching and diplomatic pontificating. With their record of cozying up to dictators and pursuing commercial deals at the expense of Western strategic interests, European leaders have lost the moral right to tell us how best to run our affairs.
Instead of courting people such as Solana and his ilk, Israel and the US should publicly and aggressively call the European leadership to task for its shameful stance on various key issues.
Just because a relationship goes by the name "alliance" does not necessarily make it so. Europe has a long way to go before being worthy of such a description.
AND WHEN the EU starts bossing us around, as it inevitably will, telling us to accommodate the Palestinian Authority or negotiate with the ayatollahs, we should politely but firmly say: "Shut up, Europe!"
In the mid-19th century, Czar Nicholas I of Russia coined the phrase "the sick man of Europe" to describe the decline of Ottoman Turkey. I would suggest adapting that expression to reflect the reality of the Continent today.
The sick man is Europe, and it is time we started treating it as such.
EU hesitation on Iran
THE JERUSALEM POST Mar. 14, 2007, by JPost.com Staff...
Strategic Affairs Minister Avigdor Lieberman (read his JPost blog) lashed out at European leaders on Wednesday for refusing to impose economic sanctions on Iran.
"There are European leaders who think they can sacrifice Israel for the sake of their economic interests," Lieberman declared at a meeting with American Jewish Council delegates.
Speaking to the AJC delegates, the strategic affairs minister compared the current situation to the state of affairs in Europe "on the eve of World War II."
....Lieberman said it was the responsibility of the international community to stop the Iranian nuclear program, but that neither Israel nor its friends should become "hysterical."
The strategic affairs minister said that the government of Israel was "doing more than any other country to confront the Iranian nuclear threat....We can face the country even if we're left to face them one-on-one," ...adding, however, "I think it would be much better for the world if the international community were to step in."
Sheera Claire Frenkel contributed to this report.
Strategic Affairs Minister Avigdor Lieberman (read his JPost blog) lashed out at European leaders on Wednesday for refusing to impose economic sanctions on Iran.
"There are European leaders who think they can sacrifice Israel for the sake of their economic interests," Lieberman declared at a meeting with American Jewish Council delegates.
Speaking to the AJC delegates, the strategic affairs minister compared the current situation to the state of affairs in Europe "on the eve of World War II."
....Lieberman said it was the responsibility of the international community to stop the Iranian nuclear program, but that neither Israel nor its friends should become "hysterical."
The strategic affairs minister said that the government of Israel was "doing more than any other country to confront the Iranian nuclear threat....We can face the country even if we're left to face them one-on-one," ...adding, however, "I think it would be much better for the world if the international community were to step in."
Sheera Claire Frenkel contributed to this report.
Professor Raphi Israeli
From ICJS, Monday March 12, 2007, by Ronit Fran Ralph ...
Professor Raphi Israeli spoke at an ICJS function last Sunday night at Beth Weizmann. We had about 360+ people in a packed out hall. All people who didn't book (probably 30-40 people) had to be turned away.......
Reverend Dr Mark Durie gave a detailed and concise presentation of the Dhimma pact as it was in traditional form, and how it is now slowly being re-instated stealthily around the globe.
In essence, reduced to a single question, he asked: Why do non-muslims have to do the PR for Muslims? Are Jews expected to say that Christianity is a wonderful religion? Are Christians expected to say to the world that Judaism is a wonderful religion? Why then do people such as George Bush, Mary Robinson and countless others have to go on-record telling us that Islam is the religion of peace, Islam has made enormous contributions to our society etc etc.
Mark explains this in terms of an ancient religious / cultural requirement within Islam for non-muslims to acknowledge the superiority of Islam. This is part of the Dhimma pact which provides protection for non-muslims from Islamic Jihad.
To read another article by Mark Durie see Isa the Muslim Jesus
Prof Israeli spoke about how Islamic individuals were encouraged after WWII to provide manpower for a severely depleted workforce. They came largely from the French, Dutch and African colonies. He explained how the situation evolved from individuals to whole communities, eventually resulting in the importation of Imams to deal with their religious needs.
However, the Imams taught (quite correctly within the structure of Islam) that all institutions of society have to be based on the Sharia, and anyone who thinks he can improve on the Sharia is considered a blasphemer. This is the core of a clash.
Then Prof Raphi Israeli spoke about the theoretical foundations of democracies - that sovereignty is with the people. Also he dealt with the pragmatic manifestations of democracy - a parliament, an opposition, a smooth transition from one administration to the next after an election. And he made a convincing case that all of these structures are foreign to Islam, where the Koran is the only source of authority. Fundamentally anyone who claims that "man" (forgive the genderist term) is a source of authority is a blasphemer.
This dovetailed well with what Prof Israeli said at a private function on Friday night, that the whole concept of "democratisation" is phoney. It would be like "pregnantisation" - the notion that you become pregnant gradually. A country is either democratic or not. Conditions conducive to democracy can be put in place, but that does not constitute democracy or democratisation.
Professor Raphi Israeli spoke at an ICJS function last Sunday night at Beth Weizmann. We had about 360+ people in a packed out hall. All people who didn't book (probably 30-40 people) had to be turned away.......
Reverend Dr Mark Durie gave a detailed and concise presentation of the Dhimma pact as it was in traditional form, and how it is now slowly being re-instated stealthily around the globe.
In essence, reduced to a single question, he asked: Why do non-muslims have to do the PR for Muslims? Are Jews expected to say that Christianity is a wonderful religion? Are Christians expected to say to the world that Judaism is a wonderful religion? Why then do people such as George Bush, Mary Robinson and countless others have to go on-record telling us that Islam is the religion of peace, Islam has made enormous contributions to our society etc etc.
Mark explains this in terms of an ancient religious / cultural requirement within Islam for non-muslims to acknowledge the superiority of Islam. This is part of the Dhimma pact which provides protection for non-muslims from Islamic Jihad.
To read another article by Mark Durie see Isa the Muslim Jesus
Prof Israeli spoke about how Islamic individuals were encouraged after WWII to provide manpower for a severely depleted workforce. They came largely from the French, Dutch and African colonies. He explained how the situation evolved from individuals to whole communities, eventually resulting in the importation of Imams to deal with their religious needs.
However, the Imams taught (quite correctly within the structure of Islam) that all institutions of society have to be based on the Sharia, and anyone who thinks he can improve on the Sharia is considered a blasphemer. This is the core of a clash.
Then Prof Raphi Israeli spoke about the theoretical foundations of democracies - that sovereignty is with the people. Also he dealt with the pragmatic manifestations of democracy - a parliament, an opposition, a smooth transition from one administration to the next after an election. And he made a convincing case that all of these structures are foreign to Islam, where the Koran is the only source of authority. Fundamentally anyone who claims that "man" (forgive the genderist term) is a source of authority is a blasphemer.
This dovetailed well with what Prof Israeli said at a private function on Friday night, that the whole concept of "democratisation" is phoney. It would be like "pregnantisation" - the notion that you become pregnant gradually. A country is either democratic or not. Conditions conducive to democracy can be put in place, but that does not constitute democracy or democratisation.
Download an MP3 of Professor Raphi Israeli lecture, complete with the introduction by Dr Durie, here.
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