Rael Jean Isaac
 
Stahl-gate
With all the focus on the bogus documents on Rather's 60 Minutes segment, another media scandal has gone all but unnoticed: Leslie Stahl's report which portrayed AIPAC as the conduit of Pentagon secrets to Israel. As Joel Mowbray has pointed out in "The Spies Who Aren't" (FrontPageMagazine.com, Sept. 17), the whole story is essentially a smear (a policy paper, resembling an op-ed, containing no sources or methods, simply advocating tougher diplomacy in dealing with Iran was apparently mishandled by Larry Franklin, a low-level Iran analyst at the Pentagon). The damage caused by this story will remain long after the story has dissolved: many in the public will believe that Jewish officials in the Pentagon are disloyal (never mind that Franklin is a Catholic) and AIPAC is a transmission belt for spies.
It is the more remarkable that Stahl (and the liberal 60 Minutes) would lend herself to this particular kind of canard. Historically the supposedly nefarious Jewish lobby has been the whipping boy of the far right. Indeed Mowbray reports that one of those purportedly interviewed for hours by the FBI in connection with this case is "Stephen Green...a free-lance writer on a two-decade long quest to prove that Paul Wolfowitz, Doug Feith, and other Jews are actually embedded Israeli spies". In promoting this spurious case, Stahl and 60 Minutes have allied themselves with the anti-Semitic far right with results that may be with us long after the Burkett memos are forgotten.

Reagan vs. Bush
President Bush makes no secret of his admiration for Ronald Reagan. When it came to the Soviet Union Reagan was unwilling to tolerate the endless pursuit of failed policies and embarked on radically new ones, even if they affronted the conventional wisdom. Reagan turned his back on detente, on the notion that the Soviet Communist empire must be accommodated and at best contained. To the surprise not only of pundits but most of his own administration, the evil empire (the very term sent frissons of horror through the media and academic establishment) collapsed.
The war on terror (really against Islamic jihad) has clearly made President Bush rethink long accepted policies on the Middle East -- but has not affected his policy on Israel. The pursuit of failed policies continues, the notion that "territories for peace" will produce peace remains unchallenged. In his UN speech on September 24 the President promised a return to the "roadmap," the most recent variation on the inevitably failed theme. Why can the President not say that the first order of business is for the Arabs to show their willingness to live in peace with Israel? That the first order of business is to put an end to the Arab refugee issue by resettling the so-called refugees in Arab states? Now there's a way to shake up business as usual in the Middle East.

Dan Rather Peres
While it is hard, outside of the realm of psychosis, to compete with Shimon Peres in embracing delusions, Dan Rather is coming close. After the documents on Bush's National Guard service had been exposed as crude computer forgeries, he told Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post that if they proved to be false he wanted to be the one to break the story and subsequently, after being forced to apologize for the documents on-air, told a Texas newspaper that he still believed them to be real. Actually one of Peres' silly aphorisms, newly come to light, could be invoked here. In a new book in honor of the late General Benny Peled, the general quotes Peres saying: "A lie is like a half a brick. It flies further."

Spain Promotes Eurabia
Bat Yeor, the famed historian of dhimmitude, has coined the term Eurabia to describe what she asserts is a decision arrived at decades ago by European leaders to throw in their lot with the Arabs in order to achieve greater influence in the world. In the most recent manifestation of this mindset, the new Spanish prime minister Jose Zapatero (brought to power by Arab terror, as the Madrid train bombings persuaded voters to choose the candidate promising to take Spanish troops out of Iraq) has called for "an alliance of cultures" rather than a war on terror. Zapatero says he has asked UN Secretary General Kofi Annan to set up a group to study the creation of "an alliance of civilizations" which would "have as its fundamental objective to deepen political, cultural and education relations between those who represent the so-called Western world and, in this historic moment, the area of Arab and Muslim countries." And what would be on the first item on the agenda of this "alliance of civilizations"? Zapatero says "the international community must combat terrorism rationally by dealing with its roots in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict."
Translation: The "alliance of civilizations" will devote itself to extirpating the Jewish state.