Obama envoy to Middle East doomed to failure.

 

by Cal Thomas

Like Linus van Pelt sitting alone in the pumpkin patch, George Mitchell, Obama's special envoy to the Middle East, is in that dysfunctional region thinking that if he and the Obama administration demonstrate enough sincerity, the diplomatic equivalent of the Great Pumpkin will arrive, making all things right. Mitchell's mission is bound to fail, like every mission before it, for the simple reason that peace and stability are not about us, but about them. Their road to hell is paved with our good intentions.

In his first interview since becoming president, Obama said to Al-Arabia, a Dubai-based television network, "Americans are not your enemy." No, but we are the enemy of many of them and that is where the problem lies. The president suggested the Bush administration had contributed to frayed relations with the Arab and Muslim world. Few presidents have pushed harder for a Palestinian state than George W. Bush and he got nowhere because the objective of America's (and Israel's) enemies is not a Palestinian state, but no Israeli state and, eventually, no United States.

If evidence were sufficient to prove the futility of these diplomatic efforts, we would long ago have abandoned efforts at persuasion and focused more on self-defense and a stronger offense. The latest evidence should convince all but the most deluded that the jihads will settle for nothing less than total victory over all who prefer freedom.

Somalia is rapidly becoming an Islamic state. In Minneapolis, several members of the Somali community have disappeared and are believed to have traveled to their native land to engage in jihad. The FBI is investigating the Abubakar As-Saddique Islamic Center and its imam on suspicion the imam influences Somali young people to become jihads. Predictably, the mosque denies this. No one ever admits to training jihads. They drop out of the sky, fully formed.

In an exquisite example of self-delusion, nine alumni of a Saudi rehabilitation program that is supposed to reform "ex-jihads" have been arrested for rejoining terrorist groups. The idea of Saudi re-education camps for "ex-jihads" is something like expecting the Ku Klux Klan to change the minds of white supremacists. Saudi Arabia fuels jihadism by exporting the most radical brand of Islam, Wahabism.

Why would Westerners believe that a country responsible for radicalizing increasing numbers of Muslims could suddenly reverse itself and start teaching the opposite? A Saudi kingdom divided against itself cannot stand. Instead of listening to the sound of our own voices, we should be listening more to the sound of their voices, like that of deputy emir of al-Qaida and former Guantanamo prisoner Abu Sufyan Al-Azdi Sa'id Al-Shihri, who can be seen in a video (www.memri.org) promising to continue jihad until "we set up an Islamic state and establish a caliphate." In another video, the emir of al-Qaida, Abu Basir Nasir al-Wahishi, says, "We must cut off the aid to the Zionist crusader military campaign and kill every Crusader in our lands."

What can George Mitchell offer that will cause such people to change their mind? Back to the Somalians in Minneapolis, and growing Muslim communities throughout the country. In the forthcoming book "Al-Hijra: The Islamic Doctrine of Immigration: Accepting Freedom or Imposing Islam?" written by two former Muslims, Sam Solomon and Elias Al Maqdisi, "The Hijra was enshrined by Muhammad from the outset within Islam as the 'Doctrine of Immigration,' or the 'peaceful' means of extending the Islamic political state garbed and girded in religious terminology. Hijra and military conquest are two components of Islamic expansion." The cover art is of a Trojan horse.

We can awaken to this twin threat, or we can, like Linus, keep waiting for The Great Pumpkin. Our enemies know how to play us. If President Obama thinks like his predecessors, he will have the same result and America will become more vulnerable.

Cal Thomas
Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

 

 

Cease-Fire, with Whom?

 

by Raphael Israeli

 

Until recently, armies used to launch wars from territories of states, to conquer lands or lose them, to gain dominance or to yield it, and finally to lead negotiations which settle the conflict until the next one erupts, via peace treaties or cease-fires, border agreements and spheres of influence, prisoner exchange, imposition of duties and granting of rights.

 

That was, for centuries, the accepted pattern of conduct in international relations. But since the Muslim world has launched its war of terror against the West, new rules have been drafted, for it is no longer clear who fights against whom and in whose name. Non-state groups initiate acts of hostility against individuals, groups and states, kidnap hostages and dictate terms for their release, forcing the termination of the conflict under the conditions of the terrorists. And since these belligerents are intermingled with the civilian population and shielded by it, it has become near impossible to defend oneself efficiently against them without raising the wrath of the entire world.

 

             However, the focus of the problem here is not the conflict itself, but the exit map from it. Between states there are treaties, alliances, agreements for peace, cease fire or truce, which put an end to conflict. But terrorist groups have been imposing their own terminology and vocabulary, and the rest of the world has capitulated and adopted them, though they are foreign to the accepted international terms. Hamas and Hizbullah have invoked the hudna, a well-defined Islamic term which has antecedents and set rules in Islamic shari’a law. Israel and the rest of the world, have accepted it and forfeited the international rules of discourse, like cease-fire, truce and armistice, which apply to the entire world, save the Muslim terrorist groups. Lately, since even the hudna has seemed too institutionalized to the Hamas, for fear that it might imply, Allah Forbid, an indirect  recognition of Israel, they invented a new concept, the tahdi’a, some sort of amorphous, non-binding and temporary truce, and coerced Israel to consider that terminology as a basis for negotiation. And lest anyone miscomprehend the message, they insist that it cannot last more than a year, or one year and a half at the most. And then what? A return to square one? A short respite until they have had the chance to regroup their forces, to absorb new weaponry and then resume their bombardment of border towns in Israel? In other words, while for Israel a cease-fire would serve as a stepping stone for peace and quiet, for the Palestinians it becomes a price to pay, pending a better preparation of the launching pad for the next assault.

 

            It is clear why the Hamas is using this terminology, which is not a semantic game, but is pregnant with long-term repercussions. It is less clear why Israel, and others, should feel obliged by it and educate the Israeli public to believe that international relations are being conducted on that basis. Israel and the world should entirely reject this Islamic vocabulary and insist on the use of the accepted terms which conform to international law and usage, and have meaning, validity and exit stations. When anyone urges Israel to accept a hudna or a tahdi’a, it should ask for an internationally accepted interpretation of those terms. When the US alliance fights in Iraq, Afghanistan, or elsewhere, it insists on defeating the Taliban and al-Qa’ida, just as in WW II the Allies refused to negotiate any cease-fire with the Axis, short or a total capitulation. Now Israel is asked not only to renounce the total surrender of Hamas, but to accept its alien terminology for negotiations. This is an exaggeration that the terrorists did not imagine they could achieve, even in their wildest dreams.

            And worse still. Does anyone envisage parallel negotiations with any government and the opposition to it at the same time? Israel is obligated by its agreements with the Palestinian Authority, and those understandings include neither a hudna nor a tahd’ia. So, either the PA does not represent the Palestinians, and Israel should arrive to arrangements with the Hamas, or it should persist in its commitment to the Authority and reject any dealings with the Hamas, directly or via Egypt. Mubarak would have refused to talk with Israel if at the same time it conducted negotiations with the Muslim Brothers who oppose his rule. Neither would any negotiator, like the US,  negotiate with terrorist groups in  Iraq, Afghanistan or Pakistan, while it recognizes  and supports the legitimate governments of those countries. Israel cannot implement the Oslo Accords with the PA, whatever their worth, and at the same time negotiate a hudna with another part of the same Palestinian people. Israel has never declared that it recognized two separate Palestinian entities.

            The conclusion is that Israel must put an end to this confusion, decide whom it recognizes and with whom it concludes agreements. It must revert to the agreed international terminology which alone possesses accepted interpretations and recognized institutions of enforcement when needed.

Lending legitimacy to two separate Palestinian entities, in addition to Jordan and  the separate Palestinian identity which has been cultivated among Israeli Arabs, can only generate instability, conflict and chaos.

A Palestinian state, yes, by all means; but three and a half Palestinian states?!

 

 

Raphael Israeli is a Professor of Islam at the Hebrew University, Jerusalem.

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

 

 

 

 

Defending the West.

 

A Critique of Edward Said's Orientalism

by Ibn Warraq
Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 2007. 556 pp. $29.95.

Reviewed by A.J. Caschetta

It is now five years after the death of Edward Said, the man who made it cool to hate the West, and the reevaluation of his thought and work is thankfully well underway. Said forged a career out of revisiting the past, "deconstructing" what he found and writing it anew. Defending the West: A Critique of Edward Said's Orientalism by Ibn Warraq, founder of the Institute for the Secularisation of Islamic Society, reveals just how massive a fabrication Said's version of history is. The book spells out in great detail Said's deeply flawed writings and his legacy: the modern academic fetish for examining microscopically the flaws and failings (real and imagined) of the West while simultaneously portraying an ever-peaceful East perpetually victimized by the technologically superior but, of course, morally benighted West. This is the fashionable narrative in the humanities departments of virtually every college and university in America, if not in all of Western academia.

Those who perpetuate it Ibn Warraq calls "Saidists." Among them, Said has achieved cult-like status as a prophet who (in the tired cliché of the Left) "spoke truth to power." They see it as their mission to reveal cracks in the deception foisted on the world by an older generation of historians whose work attempts to disguise an aggressive, dominating West. A corollary, more covert mission is to erect their own wall to insulate the East from the kinds of attacks they themselves make on the West. And the Saidists have been so successful that many people now see colonialism and empire as creations of the West and symptoms of a Western moral inferiority that (especially for Western scholars) must be atoned for in many ways. Saidism, one might say, is a way to atone.

Ibn Warraq's ambitious book brings together three projects, each worthy of a full-length study: first, a critique of Said's thought and work focusing on the insidious effects of his magnum opus, Orientalism;[1] second, a defense of the West against the academic assaults that have become commonplace since Said's book was published; and third, a welcome reappraisal of the eighteenth- through twentieth-century linguists, historians, artists, and writers who studied the East and who are known today as Orientalists, a term Said made pejorative. Ibn Warraq masterfully weaves the three projects together in 556 pages.

The author lays bare Said's methods of obfuscation, which often use nonsensical and impenetrable prose, insinuation, and outright falsification. Said's ad hominem attacks against those who criticized his work are recounted, demonstrating that Said was both a metaphorical as well as a literal stone-thrower. And the growing list of Said's "historical howlers" (obvious inaccuracies and misstatements of fact) unmasks an amateur historian who was either extremely sloppy or just plain dishonest.

Ibn Warraq's defense of the West centers around what he calls the "Three Tutelary Guiding Lights" (rationalism, universalism, and self-criticism), which he portrays as the cement of Western civilization. From ancient Greece to Victorian England, Ibn Warraq takes his readers on a ride through history, repairing the damage wrought by Edward Said and his Saidists, arguing that the three "golden threads" are always present. By contrast, some of Ibn Warraq's defense of the West is accomplished by a comparison to the East in which the flaws of the latter are examined. This brave and decidedly un-PC tack tells the story of Eastern imperialism (which Said largely ignored) and exposes a litany of human rights abuses in Eastern, often Islamic, nations in what will be an eye-opening experience for some readers.

In reappraising the Orientalists, Ibn Warraq defends their works as labors of love rather than exploitative endeavors. Those readers unfamiliar with these Orientalists will find themselves seeking out their work where, Ibn Warraq tells us, can be found "no disdain, but rather sympathy, patience, attentive curiosity, and the surprise of discovery." Ibn Warraq argues that rather than the conniving and condescending bogeymen Saidists portray, "Orientalists of the late nineteenth century were drawing upon a humane tradition established 250 years earlier."

In adducing evidence for his arguments, the author proves versatile, equally at home summarizing the latest academic arcana, describing the pleasures of Orientalist paintings, and quoting comments left by a tourist in the guest book of a museum exhibiting Orientalist art work. Passages range from the erudite to the commonsensical. On the erudite side, Said's claim that the Orientalists "essentialized" the Orient is itself exposed as an argument dependent on an "essentialized" portrayal of the West. On the commonsensical side, there are many outstanding passages: My favorite comes in chapter 12 where Ibn Warraq neatly dismantles the arguments of Linda Nochlin, a Saidist of some note. Discussing the paintings of Jéan-Léon Gerôme, Nochlin claims that the absence of a Western colonial presence in the scenes comprises an attempt to hide the historical reality of that presence, presumably in the furtherance of some vaguely imperialist agenda; Ibn Warraq responds with the following bit of disarming logic:

If you have ever visited the Taj Mahal … you have not resisted the temptation to take a photograph of it. If you have taken a photograph, you were anxious not to include some fat Western tourist, in shorts, hat, and sunglasses with a camera slung around his neck, in the frame. You waited until there were no tourists near to spoil the view; such tourists would have looked out of place and as inappropriate as their dress. Orientalist paintings were often commissioned by Europeans or Americans back home, and the latter certainly did not want to buy views that showed tourists.

This is brilliant in its clarity and simplicity—Occam's razor meets art history. Another gem comes in an attack on the cultural relativism that has become academic orthodoxy: "relativism, like cholesterol, comes in two forms: good and bad … the good type of relativism was originally only a way of preaching tolerance to others—the Other." Insights abound, many of them very quotable.

Those readers who were intrigued by Ibn Warraq's brief scheme of "the three Islams" in the introduction to his ground-breaking Why I Am Not a Muslim[2] will appreciate the elaboration on the idea in his chapter "The Pathological Niceness of Liberals, Antimonies, Paradoxes, and Western Values." This section would serve nicely as a stand-alone piece and as an excellent anodyne to any college freshman who has survived, mind intact, the institutionalized pabulum that passes as "global studies" in most public schools today.

Will Ibn Warraq's new book end forever the deleterious effects of more than thirty years of petulant, dishonest, self-loathing Saidism? Probably not. But any honest acolytes of Edward Said who read this book will either be forever relieved of their knee-jerk faith in the simple dichotomy of Western guilt and Eastern victimhood that is at the core of Said's thought, or they will be forced to participate in their own hoodwinking. Ibn Warraq's critique of Said's thought and work is thorough and convincing, indeed devastating to anyone depending on Saidism. It should do to Orientalism what Mary Lefkowitz's Not Out of Africa[3] did to Martin Bernal's Black Athena.[4] And it should force the Saidists to acknowledge the sophistry of their false prophet.

A.J. Caschetta is a lecturer in the English department at the Rochester Institute of Technology where he teaches literature, linguistics, and a class called "Writing Terror" about the rhetoric of terrorism.

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

 

[1] New York: Vintage, 1978.
[2] New York: Prometheus Books, 1995.
[3] New York: Basic Books, 1997.
[4] New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1989.

 

Israel's last ditch effort to destroy ... itself

 

by Caroline B. Glick

An urgent memo to the next government

The outgoing Kadima-Labor government's anticipated decision to release a thousand terrorists, including several dozen mass murdering terror commanders, in the framework of a ceasefire deal with Iran's Palestinian proxy Hamas is simply the latest troubling legacy that the Olmert-Livni-Barak government is leaving its successor.

Once the deal goes through, Hamas will be able to quickly expand the threat it poses to Israel. The jihadist group is already using the political legitimacy Israel is conferring on it to reestablish its unity government with Fatah. When that government is formed, the US and Europe will move hastily to recognize the terror group.

Hamas will use its increased legitimacy as a screen behind which it will expand its offensive capabilitiesThis is particularly true in the field of ballistic weapons.

We know this will happen because we have already seen what happened with the last Iranian proxy that Israel signed a ceasefire agreement with. Since Israel agreed to UN Security Council Resolution 1701 and brought its war with Hizbullah to an end in August 2006, Hizbullah has reasserted its political and military control over south Lebanon and has taken over the Lebanese government. Moreover, it has massively expanded its missile capabilities not only by tripling the size of its arsenal, but by tripling the range of its missiles.

In 2006, Hizbullah's most powerful missile was a Fajr rocket with a 100 km range and a 50 kilogram warhead. Today, according to Avi Schnurr, executive director of the Israel Missile Defense Association, Hizbullah has an arsenal of Fatah-110 ballistic missiles with a range of 300 kilometers and a 600 kilogram payload.

While our media elites endlessly drone on about whether or not Likud is sufficiently "pro-peace" to satisfy Meretz and Kadima, our national discourse is ignoring the greatest threat this country faces: missiles.

Schnurr warns that today there are more missiles pointing at Israel in absolute numbers than at any other country on earth. While Israelis are properly concerned with suicide terrorism and Kassam rocket attacks, the fastest escalating threat that Israel faces come from ballistic missiles.

In addition to Iran's Hamas and Hizbullah proxies, its client state Syria has a massive missile arsenal housed in hardened silos. Syria's missiles are capable of attacking every square centimeter of Israeli territory. And of course, with its rapidly growing land and sea-based ballistic missile arsenal, Iran itself is the fastest growing missile threat facing Israel.

 

IN RECENT YEARS, rather than taking any immediate action to meet the growing threat, Israel has sufficed with launching long-term development programs that promise to provide protection for current threats in four to eight years. For instance, in response to Syria's medium-range missiles, Israel is developing the David's Sling anti-missile system that should be ready in eight years.

Israel could in the meantime upgrade its PAC-2 anti-missile batteries responsible for contending with medium-range missiles, with US-made PAC-3s. But the powers that be in the Ministry of Defense have decided that the PAC-3's $100 million price tag is too high.

Indeed far from installing upgrades, Israel is downgrading its existing anti-missile arsenals. According to Defense News, Israel is planning to end its involvement in the Arrow anti-missile program because it feels the maintenance costs of its Arrow batteries are too high. So as the number of missiles arrayed against it rises, Israel has decided not to bother increasing its anti-missile defenses.

Even more alarmingly, Israel has no medium-range or long-range conventional missile arsenals. Although Israel has the domestic capacity to produce both ballistic and cruise missiles, it has never bothered to build them. Consequently, its options for contending with rapidly escalating long-range threats from places like Iran are limited to manned aircraft and its suspected nuclear arsenal.

As Schnurr relates, Israel's decision to contend with the spiraling missile threat it faces by ignoring it extends to short-range missile threats as well. Israel has rejected relatively inexpensive existing anti-rocket and mortar systems that could provide immediate protection to Sderot among other places. It has preferred to leave Sderot and the Western Negev unprotected while awaiting the development of the Iron Dome system now being developed by the Ministry of Defense.

Israel does field advanced radar systems. The Green Pine radar is one of the best in the world and together with the X-Band radar system the US recently deployed in the Negev, Israel's ability to detect incoming missiles is significant. The problem is that all of Israel's radar systems are facing east - towards Iran. Last December Iran signed a strategic alliance with Eritrea that permits its Revolutionary Guards to set up bases in Eritrea, strategically located to Israel's south at the mouth of the Red Sea. Israel has no radars pointing to its south.

 

AFTER YEARS OF denial, today even US intelligence agencies acknowledge that Iran's ballistic missile program is part and parcel of its nuclear program. While most Israeli observers have devoted their energies to assessing the destructive capacity of a direct nuclear attack against the tiny country, and to the various delivery mechanisms - from the Shihab-3 missiles to Syrian Scuds to Hizbullah or Hamas death squads - that Iran could field against it in the event of a nuclear attack, the fact of the matter is that Iran has an indirect option for using nuclear weapons to attack Israel that would likely be more destructive than a direct nuclear attack. And it is an option that Iran can wield not only against Israel, but against every country in the world.

An electromagnetic pulse or EMP attack is an indirect nuclear attack. It has the capacity to destroy a target country's electricity grids and so revert a post-industrial, technology-based country such as Israel or the US to a pre-industrial condition. If an aggressor launches a nuclear device of whatever size and detonates it above the atmosphere and in the line of site of its target country, the x-rays and gamma rays emitted by the blast will cause an electromagnetic pulse, or wave a million times stronger than the strongest radio wave. That wave, which comes in three successive stages, will destroy a country's electrical grids and through them, its ability to function.

In 2000, concern about the EMP threat in the US caused Congress to mandate the formation of a commission comprised of the leading US experts on the issue to study it. The EMP Threat Commission's 2004 report warned that the effect an EMP attack would have on the US's national infrastructures "could be sufficient to qualify as catastrophic to the nation." As JWR contributor Frank Gaffney, President of the Washington-based Center for Security Policy, explained in his 2006 book War Footing, by destroying a country's electrical power systems, an EMP will destroy its economy since it will wipe out its banking system. All vehicles that operate with electronic systems - that is all vehicles made since the mid-1970s - would be rendered inoperable. Telecommunications would end. A country's ability to store food through refrigeration would end. Its ability to transport water and pump gasoline would also end.

Since almost no one would be killed in the immediate aftermath of an EMP attack, a threat of retaliation against the aggressor country would lack credibility because such an option would be politically unpalatable. But while an EMP attack would not kill many people directly, it would kill millions of people indirectly. As Gaffney notes, by wiping out a country's ability to support itself, an EMP attack would cause mass starvation and disease.

The threat of an EMP attack was not taken seriously by US military planners during the Cold War because they were concerned with the primary Soviet threat to annihilate the US and its allies by launching several thousand nuclear warheads against them. But as nuclear and missile technology has proliferated in the post-Cold War period, and more technologically primitive countries get their hands on missiles and limited nuclear capabilities, the threat of an EMP attack as become far more acute.

In Iran's case, the mullahs have signaled clearly through both word and deed that they find the option of attacking their enemies with an EMP attack attractive. An article published in Iran's security journal Nashriyeh-e Siasi Nezami in 1999 identified an EMP attack as a way to defeat the US as a military power and as a state. Then too, as William Graham, who headed the US's EMP commission explained in an interview with World Net Daily last year, Iran is openly building the capacity to carry out such an attack. Last year, Iran described a ship-launched test of its Shihab-3 missile in the Caspian Sea as "successful" in spite of the fact that like an EMP, the missile detonated in mid-launch.

More disturbingly, Iran's successful satellite launch earlier this month makes clear that the mullahs now have the technological capacity to effectively wipe out Western civilization. Three to five nuclear bombs of any size, launched into space on satellites and detonated above the US, Europe and Asia would send Western civilization back to the 19th century. Last week Iran announced it is building seven more satellites. Yet rather than recognize that once its nuclear arsenal is online Iran will represents a threat to all nations, the West ignored the significance of the satellite launch.

The US's EMP commission's report explained that to defend against such an attack, it is necessary to build redundant electrical systems and have difficult-to-build replacement parts like turbines on hand to replace ones destroyed by such an attack. Since the report was published, the US has made some modest progress in that direction.

 

THIS IS NOT the case, unfortunately in Israel. Although as a small country, Israel has the capacity to replicate its systems relatively cheaply and quickly, the outgoing government has paid no attention whatsoever to the growing threat. As a consequence, were Iran to attack Israel with an EMP attack, Israel would be rendered defenseless and at the mercy of Iran and the Arab world. For their part, they would undoubtedly be tempted to invade the Jewish state to finish what the Iranians started.

Through IMDA, Schnurr is trying to raise awareness of the growing missile threat and recommend ways to contend with it in the Defense Ministry as well as in ministries that control critical infrastructures. He has had some modest success, but to date, no one has taken any action.

With coalition negotiations only now beginning, it is hard to believe that soon we will be led by leaders more interested in contending with the threats we face as a country. But such a government is apparently on its way. In light of the growing conventional and unconventional missile threats facing us, one of the Netanyahu government's first actions in office must be to review and rapidly expand Israel's offensive and defensive missile systems, and quickly move to replicate critical national infrastructures to defend against EMP attack.

JWR contributor Caroline B. Glick is the senior Middle East Fellow at the Center for Security Policy in Washington, DC and the deputy managing editor of The Jerusalem Post.

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

 

Britain's surrender

 

by Melanie Phillips

In Britain, the war in Gaza has revealed the extent to which the media, intelligentsia and political class have simply crumbled in the face of the global jihad.

The U.K. is a major player in European and world politics and is America’s most significant strategic ally. Until now, it has been considered one of Israel’s firm supporters and a linchpin of the Western defense against the world-wide Islamist onslaught. With the reaction to Gaza, however, that reputation is no longer sustainable.

Years of demonizing Israel and appeasing Islamist extremism within Britain have now coalesced, as a result of the media misrepresentation of the Gaza war as an atrocity against civilians, in an unprecedented wave of hatred against Israel and a sharp rise in attacks on British Jews.

Throughout the war, London’s streets have witnessed a hallucinatory level of violent and explicit support for Hamas from Muslims, members of the far left and supposedly progressive individuals.

Night after night, Israel’s embassy in well-to-do Kensington found itself under violent siege. Demonstrators attempted to storm the building, howling their support for the terrorist body whose genocidal intentions toward Israel and the Jews necessarily includes killing every one of the occupants inside.

Certainly, there have been anti-Israel protests around the world. But in Britain, not only have these been particularly violent but the authorities have done nothing to stop such incitement of hatred.

The police told pro-Israel demonstrators on at least one occasion to put away their Israel flags because they were ‘inflammatory.’ Yet officers allowed some anti-Israel demonstrators to scream support for Hamas — and even to dress up as hook-nosed Jews pretending to drink the blood of Palestinian babies.

In general, the police have reacted passively to the violence. One recent video clip captured the astonishing spectacle of Muslims stampeding through London’s West End hurling traffic cones and other missiles at the police, all the time shrieking ‘Allahu akbar’ and ‘cowards.’ The police ran and stumbled backward rather than standing their ground and stopping the rampage.

Not only has such violence barely been reported. There has also been no acknowledgment of the explicitly Islamist nature of these demonstrations. Keffiyeh-clad demonstrators prostrated themselves in prayer or shouted ‘Allahu akbar’ as they attacked Jewish-owned or -founded stores, such as Starbucks and Tesco, on numerous occasions.

Instead, the political class has simply regurgitated Hamas propaganda. In a debate in the House of Commons last week, one MP after another expressed horror at Israel’s supposed crimes against humanity in Gaza.

More serious still, Foreign Office Minister Bill Rammell cited as fact the Hamas claim that 300 children had been killed in Gaza, even though Israel has given a much lower figure, and said the Israeli action was ‘disproportionate’ and the bombing was ‘indefensible and unacceptable.’

Similarly, Prime Minister Gordon Brown, commenting after this weekend’s cease-fire that ‘too many innocent people’ had been killed, made no mention of Israel’s strenuous attempts to minimize civilian casualties, nor Hamas’s responsibility for holding Gaza’s civilians hostage.

In fact, the British government has effectively taken the view that Israel should not be allowed to defend itself by military means against the Hamas rockets that ministers have taken care to condemn.

From the second day of the war, Foreign Secretary David Miliband was calling for an immediate cease-fire by both sides. Since Hamas would take no notice, this in practice amounted to pressure upon Israel to stop defending itself.

It was Britain which took the lead in framing the United Nations resolution calling upon Israel to withdraw all its forces from Gaza while making no mention whatever of Hamas. And it was Britain which also drew a disquieting moral equivalence between Hamas terrorism and Israeli self-defense.

Certainly, neither Mr. Miliband nor Mr. Brown — a reputed supporter of Israel — can be unaware that it was Tony Blair’s refusal to call for an immediate cease-fire by Israel in the 2006 Lebanon war that finally led his MPs, already enraged by his support for the war in Iraq, to force him prematurely out of office.

But Britain’s new coolness toward Israel is due to much more than this. The government’s failure to support Israel’s war against Hamas as the front line of the West’s defense against the global Islamic jihad reflects its failure in turn to acknowledge the nature of that world-wide phenomenon.

Last Thursday, Mr. Miliband wrote in the Guardian that there was no single, unified Islamist threat but merely a set of various local grievances, such as Kashmir or the Golan Heights.

Such startling ignorance of the goals and ideological antecedents of the Islamic jihad, from Hamas to Hezbollah to Pakistan’s Lashkar-e-Taiba, is of a piece with the British government’s stubborn refusal to accept that the West is under assault from a war of religion.

The government denies this fact because it does not want to face up to the unpalatable realities of fighting such a war. So although ‘middle Britain’ is beginning to grasp that the Islamists in Gaza are the same as those rampaging through the streets of London, ministers are intent on appeasing Muslim extremism and intimidation both at home and abroad.

Accordingly, while Britain’s security services have had significant success in smashing Islamic terrorism plots, government strategy for combating Islamist extremism rests upon seeking to mollify Britain’s two million or so Muslims by avoiding confrontation — which means turning a blind eye to threatening statements.

Recently, prominent British Muslims who advise ministers against Islamist extremism wrote an open letter making the veiled threat that unless the government condemned Israel there would be a rise in violence in Britain.

Ministers’ openly stated fear that this will indeed happen as a result of the war in Gaza makes them anxious to show Britain’s Muslims that they oppose Israel’s actions. They don’t understand that, by showing such weakness in the face of intimidation, they are not just betraying their Israeli ally but also undermining the Western defense against the jihad.

Across the spectrum, Britain’s elites are terrified of dealing with militant Islamism. It is hard to avoid the conclusion that, in a pattern which goes back to the foundational Christian blood libel against the Jews, they are concealing their fearful inability to deal with Islamist aggression by displacing the blame onto its Israeli victims instead.

 

Melanie Phillips

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

 

Why Time is on Israel's Side

 

by Max Singer

 

A Long-Term Perspective on Israel's Security Challenges

With new governments coming to power in Israel and the US, now is a good time for a long-term assessment of Israel's security situation. In the past, some Israelis have supported "peace" approaches with the argument that even though the evidence made their prospects seem poor, "there was no alternative." The absence of a better alternative is a strong argument, but unfortunately it is also the argument used by people who sell pills that claim to protect you from earthquakes.

This essay describes how Israel can live with earthquakes; that is, the unpleasant security-diplomatic world it faces. If we put aside hopeless and dangerous diplomatic options such as the search for a "New Middle East" (the Oslo process), unilateral disengagement strategies, or taking sovereignty of the whole Land of Israel now — there is ample room for optimism.

If we take a long-term perspective, of, say, several generations or a century, Israel's prospects for peace and security as a Jewish and democratic country are quite good. This is not guaranteed — except perhaps by Divine Providence — and the result depends partly on how we act and partly on developments over which we have very little influence. Nevertheless, it is far less an "impossible dream" than was Herzl's goal of creating a Jewish state in Israel.

The long term trend in the world is clearly toward democracy and peace. Eastern Europe is going democratic, as are the modern countries of Asia, and many countries are becoming modern. It is hard to believe that radical Islam can overcome the rest of the world. Its threat will come to an end as did fascism and communism. Then the realistic part of Palestinian society will have a chance to make its voice heard.

What are Israel's security problems? It faces low-level terrorism by suicide bombers and by rockets and missiles. This requires IDF "dirty work" to keep Palestinian terror in check. This includes the steady work the IDF and GSS in Judea and Samaria and the kind of intermittent military project just completed in Gaza. Israel faces a few dangers: international economic sanctions isolating it from the world; Iranian (and later perhaps other) nuclear weapons; and internal fatigue, division, or collapse, particularly if it continues to agonize excessively over how its security requires it to act towards the Palestinians, and to be distressed by international condemnation.

Each of these problems will be discussed below in turn. Israel's security situation is bad enough that it is justified to look for a way out; although it is not so bad that it cannot brace itself to do what is necessary and go forward, staying away from desperate attempts which worsen the situation — as Oslo did. In most ways Israel is far better off than its Jewish predecessors were 20 or 60 or 100 years ago (although the results of Oslo and the momentum of the current attempt to mobilize jihad are major setbacks).

What puts Israel in the spot it is in? And what changes may happen to the forces that bear on Israel?

The first critical feature of Israel's condition is the Palestinian public and political behavior. Briefly put, the Palestinians are determined to destroy Israel, and no concessions or improvements in our treatment of them will induce them to give up their goal. Secondly, the Palestinians have a weak and corrupt political system and leadership. Poor conditions will persist, despite any amount of assistance they receive, until they learn to develop better political leadership. In addition to making their lives miserable, their inadequate political system makes it harder for them to move toward realistic accommodation with Israel. However, the Palestinians' weak political behavior makes it easier for Israel to protect itself against their attacks.

By themselves, the Palestinians would not pose too great a problem. They are made more dangerous because of the support they receive from the Muslim and especially Arab worlds. For the most part, this support is not based on Muslim or Arab concern for the wellbeing of Palestinians; it comes mainly from distaste for non-Muslim control of lands formerly ruled by Muslims in the heart of the Muslim part of the world, and also from antagonism to the US and the West. The strength and importance of the Arab and Muslim support for the Palestinians depends on the political situation in the world.

Today it is somewhat weakened by the Arab fear of Iranian regional power-seeking. Another critical feature of Israel's situation is Europe's position on the Arab- Israeli conflict. This is determined primarily by European reactions to Muslim diplomatic power, to the Muslim internal challenge, and to the jihadi movement. European positions also are influenced by Europe's relationship with the US, and perhaps by some degree of anti-Semitism — although this is not a decisive component. The European perspective is supported by some Americans and some Israelis.

European opinion and policy about Israel is in no way an independent and objective evaluation that merits moral or intellectual respect; it is a political response to European perception of their political realities. They will support the Palestinians until there is a basic change in their own policy toward Muslims, jihad, and the US. European funding of Palestinian leaders who prefer fighting to peace is one of the reasons such leadership stays in power. Also, since State Department professionals, and elements of the American political elite often have great respect for what the western Europeans say, the danger of the US neglecting diplomatic protection for Israel is largely bound with pressures from western Europe.

The dominant element of the current political situation in the Middle East is the effort of Islamist jihadists to mobilize Islam for a violent jihad against the US, Israel, and the West; and the American-led program to defeat this effort and prevent a "real jihad." At the same time there is also a major conflict between a coalition led by Iran and resistance to it by the Sunni Arab states, especially Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Jordan. If the US wins, Israel's situation will get better; if the US loses, Israel's situation will get worse. President Obama's inaugural speech recognized that the US is in such a struggle, speaking of a "war" against a "network."

Betting on US Success
It is likely that the question of whether the US can prevent a real jihad in this generation will be settled over the next, say, three to ten years. A judgment that Israel will be in a worse situation three years from now implies a belief that the US will fail to prevent the current attempted jihad from expanding into a real jihad. That is, it is a bet that the US effort to reduce the number of governments supporting terrorists to zero — will be setback.

Of course the US might fail. It is plausible that five or ten years from now the struggle will still hang in the balance; but it is equally plausible that by then we will know whether the US can prevail. In any case, it is a mistake for Israel to assume that the US will fail, or to make policy on the belief that the power of terrorist-supporting governments (primarily the current governments of Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Syria) will be greater three years from now than it is today.

As a matter of policy, Israel should expect the US to win and prepare accordingly.

The US has more economic and military power than any combination of countries. It has a healthy democracy, which is one of the reasons for its economic and military power, and for its continued vitality and dynamism. It has — uniquely for the major Western powers — a growing population, which by the end of this century will be approximately half that of India and China.

While its political leadership and intellectual elite are showing signs of the European form of national fatigue, its population still believes in itself and cares about American freedom. America has never lost, and it is unwise to bet that it will lose in the future — although it may go the wrong way for a long time, causing its allies great losses.

The big picture today is that many Arabs and Muslims are influenced by their hope that the US can be defeated by radical Islam — although that hope is dampened by the apparent positive outcome in Iraq. There is widespread fear in Europe that it is too dangerous to resist Muslim encroachment on either domestic or foreign policy. Nevertheless, Israel has good reason to believe that this Muslim hope will be dashed. It is probable that over the next 3-10 years the US and its allies will overcome this challenge. Such a failure of the jihadi enterprise will substantially change the political environment for the better, even though the struggle to reconcile Islam to the non-Muslim world will likely continue for generations.

If during the next three to five years Israel does no more than continue to limit suicide-bomber damage to the level that it has maintained since Operation Defensive Shield in 2002; if it wisely employs offensive tactics like the recent campaign in Gaza to suppress rocket attacks; if it preserves internal stamina and morale; and if the US weakens the terror-supporting regimes — Israel will be in a far better position than it is today. The major remaining question relates to the attempt by the current Iranian regime to acquire nuclear weapons and to use them to destroy Israel directly or indirectly. This challenge will have to be overcome.

Dr. Max Singer, one of Washington's most experienced foreign policy strategists, now makes his home in Jerusalem. He is a senior research associate at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies.

 

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To have peace, win big Page I

 

by Prof. Paul Eidelberg

1^st Page 2  

Part I: To Israel's General Staff: Lessons From A Master Of War

Israel's General Staff would do well to emulate George S. Patton, the general most feared by Nazi Germany.

On the eve of battle, Patton would admonish his soldiers: "The object of war is not to die for your country. It is to make the other poor dumb bastard die for his." This requires confronting and killing the enemy on the battlefield.

"Never let the enemy rest." No cease fires or hudnas. Unconditional surrender should be Israel's proclaimed war aim!

"We want the enemy to KNOW that they are fighting the toughest fighting men in the world!" This precludes benevolence (which Arabs despise). Just as Hamas terrorists would show no mercy to you, so you should show no mercy to them. These terrorists must be killed even if this results in civilian casualties.

"Forget about army regulations ... [which] are written by those who have never been in battle...Our only mission in combat is to win." Hence general officers may sometimes have to disobey orders of the political echelon!

Israel must devastate the Arabs from top to bottom so as to erase the Islamic arrogance that prompts them to wage war against the Jewish State.

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Defense Minister Ehud Barak must not shy from these war principles, which would require them to order the IDF to confront and kill the enemy primarily on the battlefield. Bombing the enemy's infrastructure should not obscure the importance of destroying the enemy's ground forces. The defeat of these Arab terrorists must be so thorough that it will eradicate their desire to wage war for a hundred years — the policy of the Allies powers that made militant Germany and Japan lovers of peace.

Israel's political echelon will be reluctant to pursue this policy not for humanitarian reasons — recall its brutality ay Amona — but it fears world opinion, UN condemnation, and possible sanctions. This fear cannot but undermine the General Staff and the fighting spirit of Israeli soldiers. This fear is baseless.

It is of capital importance that Israel's ruling elites pursue the war in Gaza as a war between good and evil. They must shun the moral relativism that tainted Ariel Sharon who said, while Jews were being reduced to body parts, that he does not think in terms of "black and white."

Israel's victory in Gaza will ultimately depend on whether its General Staff is animated by the profound sense of good and evil that inspired America's greatest generals — suffice to mention, along with Patten, William Tecumseh Sherman of Civil War fame. Both generals inspired their armies with complete confidence in the justice of their cause. Yet both pursued a war strategy that actually minimized casualties on all sides. They imbued their soldiers with the will to win and in the shortest possible time. This requires the use of overwhelming force and the uninterrupted attack.

The general who believes in the justice of his country's cause will not shy from cruelty against Hamas because it is by means of cruelty that he can shorten the war and thus minimize bloodshed. Thus, in this war between good and evil, those Israeli generals who implement the principles of war will be our greatest humanists.
 

Part II: General Carl von Clausewitz on War

Let us recall certain lessons on war by one of the greatest military scientists, General Carl von Clausewitz (1780-1831).

Clausewitz's magnum opus, On War, is studied in military schools to this day. He defines war as "an act of violence intended to compel our opponent to fulfill our will. Violence is the means; submission of the enemy to our will the ultimate object." For as long as the enemy remains armed, he will wait for a more favorable moment for action.

The ultimate object of war is political. To attain this object fully, the enemy must be disarmed. Disarming the enemy "becomes therefore the immediate object of hostilities. It takes the place of the final object and puts it aside as something we can eliminate from our calculations."

Clausewitz warns: "Philanthropists may readily imagine there is a skillful method of disarming and overcoming an enemy without causing great bloodshed, and that this is the proper tendency of the Art of War. However plausible this may appear, still it is an error which must be extirpated; for in such dangerous things as war, the errors which proceed from a spirit of benevolence are the worst."

Not that Clausewitz advocates indiscriminate slaughter. He warns, however, that "he who uses force unsparingly, without reference to the bloodshed involved, must obtain a superiority if his adversary uses less vigor in its application." "Let us not hear of Generals who conquer without bloodshed. If a bloody slaughter is a horrible sight, then that is a ground for paying more respect to War, but not for making the sword we wear blunter and blunter by degrees from feelings of humanity, until someone steps in with one that is sharp and lops off the arm from our body."

It follows that moderation or self-restraint as a principle of war is absurd. To defeat the enemy the means must be proportioned to his power of resistance, and his power of resistence must be utterly crushed.

The statesman must take into account not only the forces of the enemy. He must solidify the confidence and determination of his people. They must believe in the justice of their country's cause and understand the importance of victory as well as the consequences of defeat. The statesman must display wisdom, decisiveness, and clarity.

Above all the statesman must have, in his own mind, a clear view of his post-war goal or political object. The political object will determine the aim of military force as well as the amount of force or effort to be used.

This is the crucial point in Israel's attack on Gaza. Does the Government have a clear view of the goal or political object of this war?

Is it simply to stop Hamas from further attacks on Israel, or is it to disarm and destroy the enemy?
 

Part III: Destroy the Enemy to Obtain One Hundred Years of Peace: Epaminondas

"Those who wish to enjoy peace must be ready for war."

Referring to the democratic reformer Epaminondas, the warrior-philosopher whose Theban army defeated Sparta (370-369), military historian Victor Davis Hanson offers insights that Israeli generals and citizens as well as universities should take most seriously. The excerpts below are taken from Hanson's The Soul of Battle: From Ancient Times to the Present Day, How Three Great Liberators Vanquished Tyranny (1999):

"I think it is almost axiomatic that if a general of a great democratic march is not hated, is not sacked, tried, or relieved of command by his auditors after his tenure is over, or if he has not been killed [as was Epaminondas] or wounded at the van, he has not utilized the full potential of his men, has not accomplished his strategic goals — in short, he is too representative of the very culture that produced him, too democratic to lead a democratic army ..."

"... we of the academic class are sometimes reluctant to equate mastery of military command with sheer intellectual brilliance. But to lead an army of thousands into enemy territory requires mental skills far beyond that of the professor, historian, or journalist — far beyond too the accounting and managerial skill of the deskbound and peacetime officer corps."

"From Epaminondas's philosophical training [he was a Pythagorean], the corpus of his adages and sayings that have survived, and his singular idea to take 70,000 men into Laconia and Messinia, it is clear that, like both [William Tecumseh] Sherman and [George S.] Patton, he had a first-class mind and was adept in public speaking and knowledge of human behavior. Perhaps with the exception of Pericles and Scipio, it is hard to find any military leader in some twelve centuries of Gaeco-Roman antiquity who had the natural intelligence, philosophical training, broad knowledge, and recognition of the critical tension between military morale and national ethics as Epaminondas the Theban. In his range of political and strategic thought, he towered over his Greek contemporaries ... in precisely the way Sherman did over all the generals of the Civil War, precisely as Patton dwarfed his British and American superiors."

"In short, Epaminondas, the philosopher, may have been the best educated man of the ancient world — an education that stressed logic, mathematics, rhetoric, memorization, philosophy, and literature, an education far more valuable to the leadership of great democratic armies than what is offered in most universities today...."

"There was one key ingredient to Epaminondas's military career that perhaps stands as an exemplar of democratic leadership. Such generals must not be timid or afraid, must not lead their army in the very manner in which they themselves are audited and held accountable by a democratic consensus. Epaminondas by all accounts was a zealot and fanatic — Sherman and Patton [discussed the in sequel] perhaps even more so. The worst generals in the ancient and modern worlds were those with a constant feel for the pulse of the assembly or board of overseers ..."

"Armies are not assemblies. The conduct of war is not a discussion over taxes of public expenditures. The very qualities that make a poor democratic statesman in peacetime — audacity, fatalism, truthfulness, fearlessness, initiative, hatred of compromise, fanaticism, even recklessness — are critical for command of a great egalitarian army, just as the strengths of a politician — affability, consensus-building, retrospection, manners, inactivity even — can prove lethal to a campaign."

"Would that the American generals Schwarzkopf or Powell had risked resigning for insisting that American troops march into Baghdad to liquidate the [Saddam] Hussein regime [in 1991]."

And what shall we say of various Israeli generals who adhered to the feckless policy of self-restraint vis-à-vis Israel's implacable but Lilliputian enemy, the PLO-Palestinian Authority?

Prof. Paul Eidelberg

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