APPEASING TERROR
Herbert Zweibon

FROM THE EDITOR
Rael Isaac

THE MISSING MORAL DIMENSION
Roger A. Gerber

A REJECTED CONSTITUTION
Nidra Poller

MADAME SECRETARY, DO YOUR HOMEWORK
Hugh Fitzgerald

THE WAR ON WHAT?
Zack Lieberberg

MORE ON THE AUT BOYCOTT
Ruth King

Outpost
Editor: Rael Jean Isaac
Editorial Board: Herbert Zweibon, Ruth King

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Herbert Zweibon

Even as President Bush and Prime Minister Sharon pose rhetorically as leaders in the no-holds-barred fight against terror, on the ground they pursue the policy of appeasement.

Jerusalem Post editor Caroline Glick sums up the situation: As for Sharon’s policy, she writes, "on a psychological level, the images of an Israeli retreat from Gaza and northern Samaria will be footage for jihadi recruitment videos for years to come...there can be no doubt that, as attractive as watching helpless hostages getting beheaded may be to potential recruits, the spectacle of Hamas and Fatah flags being foisted onto Israel homes in Gaza and Samaria is even more alluring. And footage of Jews attacking one another as Israel comes apart at the seams will also serve the terrorists' purposes wonderfully well."

But the impact on the United States will also be devastating. As Glick notes, the President has been persuaded by "the know-it-alls from Washington to London to Riyadh...that the Palestinian terror war against Israel has no connection to the global jihad being launched by the likes of 'real' terrorists, such as Osama bin Laden and Abu Musab Zarkawi."

In fact, the two are intimately bound up. In Cairo in March, Glick reminds us, "PA chairman and U.S. favorite Mahmoud Abbas invited the leaders of Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine--General Command to relocate from Damascus to Gaza after Israel withdraws. How does this square with the U.S. strategy to bar terrorists from receiving shelter?"

Al Qaeda itself, in anticipation of Israel's retreat, is setting up shop in Gaza. In FrontPageMagazine.com P. David Hornik quotes a Jerusalem Post report by Khaled Abu Toameh citing PA security officials who say a new terrorist group called Jundallah ("Allah's Brigades") with close ties to Al-Qaeda has started operating in Gaza. U.S. counter-terrorism officials have testified that Hamas is merging with elements of Al Qaeda.

The Administration response? More pressure on Israel, more money for the PA; a fulsome White House welcome for Mahmoud Abbas with President Bush heaping praise on him for "rejecting violence” and calling on Israel to retreat to the 1949 borders (any changes "must be mutually agreed to," i.e. will not happen). This is despite the fact that nothing has changed under Abbas: there is the same vicious incitement in the media; terror organizations flourish unchecked; Abbas himself just prior to his White House junket called the creation of Israel “the greatest crime in human history” and has used the ceasefire to upgrade the PA's terror capabilities. The President even ignores Abbas's direct spit in the American eye. On May 1 Al-Khayat Al-Jadida, a newspaper Abbas controls, declared: "Blessing to Saddam Hussein the faithful, the legal President of the Republic, on the occasion of his 68th Birthday...We wish him...to free the Arab nation from [U.S.] foreign imperialism."

As Caroline Glick writes, "What will happen to the Arab democrats from Baghdad to Damascus to Beirut to Riyadh when they are force-fed footage of mosques being built on synagogues in Gush Katif 24/7?....Will they be willing to stick their necks out when they see how America lets Israel, its ally, lose?....It is impossible to sustain an argument that...Israel's withdrawal from Gaza will do anything other than strengthen the cause of global jihad and Arab authoritarianism. Unfortunately, until the U.S. abandons the contrived belief that what happens to Israel has no connection to what happens to the U.S., it will be unable to see -- and thus thwart -- the dangers that await it."

Rael Isaac

THE ROT GOES DEEPER

The rot in American policy goes even deeper than that described in Herbert Zweibon’s editorial. Olivier Guitta reports that the Arab media have been buzzing with the revelation that the Bush administration is engaging in open talks with Islamists, including Islamic terror groups. For example, in Beirut on March 22 U.S. officials met with representatives from Hamas, Hezbollah, and (the Lebanese and Pakistan-based) Gamaa Islamiya. Azzam Al-Tanimi, head of the Institute of Islamic Political Thought in London, who took part in the meeting, explained the U.S. about-face as a new realism: Americans know that in a democratic process, the Islamists will win.

Both Israel and the U.S. sooner or later will pay the bitter price for appeasement. Israel has yet to fully pay for its helter skelter flight from southern Lebanon five years ago; that payment will come when northern Israel comes under the rain of the 12,000 rockets which Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah openly boasts it has installed along the border, capable of attacking all of northern Israel. Part of the price of that same exercise in terrorist-appeasement has already been paid: it has been the encouragement of terrorism in Judea, Samaria and Gaza -- of which the euphemistically styled "disengagement" from Gaza is the most recent achievement.

And the aftermath of the eviction of Jewish communities will make the effect of the Lebanon collapse seem trivial. Already Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz has warned the cabinet that Palestinian security forces have smuggled into Gaza, from Egypt, Strella anti-aircraft missiles capable of shooting down both commercial and military aircraft. In January Israeli intelligence chief Avi Dichter told the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee that if Israel relinquishes control over the Philadelphi Corridor linking Gaza to the Sinai (which Israel has since announced it is doing) the current “trickle” of arms coming into Gaza from Egypt will become a “river.”

MISTREATING THE KORAN

Nothing better illustrates Moslem arrogance than the riots over the alleged flushing of the Koran down a toilet at Guantanamo. The story turned out to be untrue (as one pundit observed, it should never have passed Newsweek's initial smell test, given the obvious impossibility of flushing that lengthy volume down an environmentally correct toilet that has problems accommodating a modest dose of human waste). But apart from Newsweek's folly, what business do Moslems have being outraged? Saudis routinely shred Bibles, as well as Korans printed outside the kingdom, confiscating them on entry into the country; Moslems have no hesitation in destroying Jewish cemeteries -- after 1949, the Jordanians used Jewish headstones for latrines; suicide bombers expect a divine reward for blowing up churches (and churchgoers) in Iraq. Moslems seem to have no problem desecrating the Koran when it will discomfit Westerners. It emerges what really did happen at Guantanamo was that a Moslem used pages of the Koran to stuff up a toilet to annoy his guards.
What is most disturbing is the U.S. response: we act like Eurabians when we let these morally infantile people get away with their shamelessness. Thus Condoleeza Rice waxes indignant about the very thought of disrespect to "the Holy Koran." She could have said we respect the fact that the Koran is holy to a large segment of the world's population. But the Holy Koran? It is not holy to Christians like Ms. Rice and it is dhimmitude to use that phrase. If she had referred to "the Holy Bible" the ACLU would probably have forced her to apologize.

CRITICIZING ISLAM OUTLAWED

In what has rightly been called an act of total insanity, at the urging of Turkey, the Council of Europe has decided to ban criticism of Islam, equating it with anti-Semitism.

But as Moslem-born dissident Ali Sina observes on his website www.faithfreedom.org, anti-Islamism is not the same as anti-Semitism. People, not doctrines, must be protected. Prohibiting criticism of Islam is like prohibiting criticism of Judaism or Christianity. "Only during the Inquisition was criticism of Christianity against the law. Are we trying to introduce an Islamic inquisition to appease Muslims? Are we trying to institute the blasphemy law that is practiced in Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Iran to make Muslims happy?" Al Sina notes that the Quran itself calls those who are not Muslims najis, which means filthy, untouchable impure. Should we then ban the Quran? How can we condemn anti-Semitism if we are not allowed to criticize Islam that incites hatred of the Jews and says God transformed them into swine and apes?

Nonetheless, on May 25 an Italian judge in Bergamo ordered journalist Oriana Fallaci to stand trial in her native Italy on charges she defamed Islam in her book La Forza della Ragione (The Force of Reason). The president of the Muslim Union of Italy sued Fallaci, claiming her book is offensive to Muslims.

As Ali Sina sees it, Europe treads a dangerous path, with two likely undesirable outcomes: 1. Islam is left alone to grow unchecked, which means Europe will succumb to Islamism before the end of this century or 2) The Europeans sense the danger too late, panic and give birth to Eurofascism to counter Islamofascism.

EGYPT'S NOOSE TIGHTENS

As Jerusalem-based writer P. David Hornik points out: "To cap off the unfolding security nightmare [following "disengagement"], Israel's Deputy Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has said that “Israel is willing to gradually give up control of the Rafah crossing between Egypt and the Gaza Strip (the Philadelphi corridor), handing it over to the Egyptians within a few months of...disengagement."
Yuval Steinitz, chairman of the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, compares this most recent folly of the Sharon government to the decision of the ancient Greeks to allow the Trojan horse to enter their city. “The strategic blindness of both decisions is equally complete” says Steinitz.
Egypt's Foreign Minister Aboul Gheit has already said Egypt plans to deploy 1,500 to 2000 troops along its border with Israel. Hornik sums up: "According to the 1979 Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty, Egypt was only allowed to deploy lightly-armed civilian police along its border with Israel. The newly planned contingent, however, is supposed to consist of border guards or, as Gheit put it, 'strong enough forces to control that part of the border.' In other words, it sounds as if the sole lasting achievement of the Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty -- the demilitarization of Sinai -- is well on the way to unraveling. It sounds, that is, like territorial continuity for jihad from Cairo to the Negev."

HATS OFF TO DOV HIKIND

In solidarity with the communities of Gush Katif, New York State Assemblyman Dov Hikind, whom we honored at AFSI’s national conference several years ago, has gone to Gaza to remain with the embattled communities there through their forcible expulsion by the Sharon government.

CLEAR THINKING WOMEN

It is striking the extent to which the most eloquent and clear-thinking champions of Israel, within Israel, are women. Caroline Glick is perhaps the best known outside Israel but there are the intellectually equally formidable Sarah Honig, Evelyn Gordon, Ruthie Blum and Naomi Ragen. Their contribution is the more striking given the mental collapse of so many of Israel’s most gifted male defenders in this country. People like Norman Podhoretz, Charles Krauthammer and William Safire have (we hope only temporarily) abjured thinking altogether, in favor of a blind belief in President Bush and Prime Minister Sharon.

Roger A. Gerber

The controversial "disengagement" plan proposed by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has precipitated, in the words of Yossi Klein Halevi, "one of the most severe domestic crises in Israeli history." In fact, writes Halevi in the current Azure, "the result could be a schism so profound that the Jews of Israel will no longer feel bound by a common destiny." In January, 2005 Caroline Glick, the respected columnist for The Jerusalem Post, wrote:" Major cultural icons like Yair Lapid have demonized the settlers, extolling the virtues of a civil war. Lapid argues that such a war would not be a war between brothers because, as far as he's concerned, anyone who wants to stay in Gaza, Judea and Samaria and opposes the establishment of a Palestinian state is no longer to be considered a "real" Israeli and hence is no longer part of the family. Prime Minister Sharon, in a recent interview on NBC television, made the astonishing assertion that "One should not underestimate the tension here, the atmosphere here. It looks like on the eve of a civil war."

In attempting to comprehend the apocalyptic atmosphere, analysts typically focus on the security, geo-strategic, economic, and political ramifications of Sharon’s plan but omit the attendant burning moral issues. Yet, it is the moral dimension that accounts for the depth and intensity of the passions that have been aroused by the plan that Sharon conceived, as he recounted to William Safire, "in consultation with myself."

Under what moral or legal principle does a democratic government expel by force from their homes and businesses 25 communities populated by its own citizens for the sole reason that they are Jewish? Pursuant to what principle does the government tell the citizens of Kfar Darom who reside on former swamp land purchased almost a century ago, that they are to be forcibly evicted? Even if the government were to decide for political reasons to withdraw the IDF from Gaza and the northern Shomron (and I wish to make clear that I agree with Daniel Pipes' appraisal of the "disengagement" plan as "an act of monumental political folly"), the awesome power of the state to deprive its own citizens of their freedom to remain in their homes and communities should be circumscribed. Under what moral principle must disputed land be made "Judenrein"? Prime Minister Sharon declared last year that there will be "no Jews in Gaza by the end of 2005", a rather curious desideratum to be enunciated by a Jewish prime minister of a democratic Jewish State, as if it would be inconceivable for Jews to live in an area relinquished to Palestinian Arab control. (Sharansky and others have pointed out that if it is impossible to conceive of Jews living in an area under Palestinian control then that area should not be relinquished to Palestinian control in the first place).

In a speech on the floor of the United Nations some years ago, then Ambassador Chaim Herzog asked why he should be "forbidden to settle on land of a village in the Hebron Hills, Masuot Yitzhak, which bears my late father's name and which is Jewish owned, for one reason and one reason only: because I happen to be a member of the Jewish People." In their failure to grapple with these moral issues, the various commentators can neither comprehend nor convey to their readers the nature and depth of the opposition to the euphemistically named "disengagement" plan. (As David Bedein has pointed out, Sharon's plan, while expelling Jewish communities and withdrawing Israel's army from Gaza and northern Samaria, envisions intertwining Israel and Palestinian lives in numerous ways including industrial zones, supplying utilities, and various other economic arrangements) For this plan, unlike other controversial legislation that periodically roils the Israeli political scene, strikes at the heart of basic moral codes, both Jewish religious and secular Zionist imperatives, and raises fundamental questions of democracy and the legitimacy of Israel itself.

Perhaps most telling is the lack of a single historical precedent for the planned expulsions of the 25 Jewish towns by a democratic government. (Some have attempted to draw a specious analogy to the concept of eminent domain in American law, which entails a public taking by "due process" for a "public purpose" with "just compensation," and typically involves a lengthy and time- consuming process of judicial review. A major eminent domain case currently before the Supreme Court, Kelo v. New London, has been wending its way through the judicial system for almost five years.) Therefore, it would seem that the Government of Israel has a heavy burden of establishing the reasons for the implementation of such a draconian plan, particularly when it is aware that it has opened a dangerous chasm in the nation.

Notwithstanding this burden to forge a consensus, the prime minister has elected to refrain from giving even one single nationwide address to explain the reasoning behind his proposal; he has ducked out of a planned debate with MK Uzi Landau on the specious grounds that the parties were unable to agree on
modalities for the debate; in his interviews on the subject he has merely recited a series of conclusory statements, such as the "disengagement" will help the economy and security, but without any supporting reasoning or factual data. The prime minister has also failed to articulate a vision for a post-withdrawal and post-expulsion Israel riven by the shock of the Sharon plan.

A concomitant serious adverse consequence has been the stifling of dissent and the acceleration of the decline of democratic norms in Israel that began with the ill fated Oslo process, dubbed by Sharon "the deepest mistake that any government has done, bringing over here thousands of armed terrorists." Writing in Commentary, Hillel Halkin asserts that "if the opposition to disengagement has been stifled, I for one have failed to notice". Apparently Mr. Halkin does not view as "stifling" dissent Prime Minister Sharon's public statement that "those opposed to the disengagement are involved in incitement," or the unprecedented dismissal by Sharon, prior to the cabinet vote on "disengagement," of two cabinet ministers whom he knew to be opposed. Minister Natan Sharansky, at a cabinet meeting, remarked that "it is frightening to see how an entire public of law-abiding citizens who oppose the disengagement are being delegitimized." What Sharansky regards as "frightening" Halkin views with complete equanimity.

Halkin also asserts that he "knows of no one in Israel who has been threatened or intimidated for adding his voice" to the opposition to Sharon's plan -- this despite numerous reported cases of police harassment and arrest of demonstrators against the "disengagement," while permitting similar demonstrations in favor. In one recent incident, the police forced a group of eighth graders who were attempting to distribute anti-disengagement stickers and flyers to return to their bus and ordered the bus driver to return to his point of origin. When Sarah Baumol and her son's eighth grade class attempted to pray at the Western Wall at the conclusion of a class trip, police required the children to remove orange tee shirts and orange bracelets worn in support of the Jewish residents of Gaza. In an especially ludicrous incident, Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom was forced to issue an official apology to the Indian Embassy after Knesset security personnel required visiting Indian legislators to remove their orange scarves in order to enter the Knesset; orange is the official color of the party to which the visiting Indians belong. "I found it to be ridiculous not to allow a piece of cloth," one of the Indian delegation members told Army Radio. "Those are messages of intolerance. Today it's cloth, and soon it could be ideas that are barred."

The election of 2003 in Israel did not entail a direct election of prime minister; Ariel Sharon took office as the leader of the Likud party and his obligation of fidelity to the Likud platform is vastly greater than in the American political system where the president is elected directly. The platform in 2003 assumed an even greater significance since the leader of the Labor Party, Amram Mitzna, proposed a unilateral withdrawal from Gaza which was forcefully rejected by Sharon. In fact, following the election, which resulted in a Likud landslide victory, Sharon and Mitzna met to see whether a unity government was possible. As reported by Haaretz, Mitzna stated that he was "shocked" by Sharon's refusal to consider evacuating the Gaza settlements; Mitzna stated that at the meeting with Sharon he "heard a lecture on the strategic importance of Netzarim and the historic importance of Kfar Darom … and I came out even more worried than when I went into the meeting."

Subsequently, when Sharon made a sudden and inexplicable U-turn and essentially adopted Mitzna's proposal, many commentators including Sharon's long-time supporter and confidant, Uri Dan, advocated a referendum on the Gaza plan. Uri Dan wrote that "only a referendum will restore to Sharon the moral-political legitimacy needed to execute his plan;" failure to do so, Dan wrote in The Jerusalem Post, would risk "failure at the national-strategic level" and having the plan "becoming a tragicomedy."

Even Yoel Marcus, the prominent Haaretz columnist and a stalwart supporter of "disengagement", wrote that the Sharon government's procedures have engendered "this gnawing feeling of disgust inside me." He went on to say that "one must admit that the process itself was not entirely democratic." Marcus points out that Sharon has never explained why the unilateral Gaza plan is now a good thing for Israel when he strongly rejected the plan when introduced by Mitzna. Nor, it might be added, has Sharon explained why he labels Uzi Landau and other opponents of his plan "extremists" for stating essentially the same arguments that Sharon himself made just two years ago in
the election campaign against Mitzna. [It may be difficult for an American, who is accustomed to presidential speeches to the nation, press conferences and in depth congressional hearings on matters of major public policy, to comprehend that none of these things occurred during the formulation, or adoption, of Sharon's unprecedented plan.]

The question has been posed by those who do not understand the prevailing norms of Israel's media establishment as to why have the numerous instances of police excess and government overreaching not been reported by the press. Former prime minister, and a likely candidate for leadership of the Labor Party, Ehud Barak, a supporter of withdrawal from Gaza and most of the other disputed territories, recently stated that, when it comes to the Sharon plan, "the media are remaining mute, people are not talking about the situation as it really is. There is no true reporting and there is no true debate and there is no true discourse. Everything is being kept under wraps. Everything is being kept in a state of fogginess."

One can only surmise the reasons for the obfuscation, but Barak believes that "Sharon's fogginess is intended to avoid speaking the truth and to avoid having to cope with the truth." The truth to which Barak refers is that Sharon is misleading Israel into believing that he obtained a U.S. commitment to retain major settlement blocs in Judea and Samaria despite the fact that President Bush has made it clear that U.S. policy requires Palestinian Arab consent to any changes in the 1949 armistice lines. Is not this avoidance of the truth the inevitable result of Sharon's failure to address the moral dimension of his plan?

The prime minister and his confidant, Ehud Olmert, have said that the withdrawal and expulsion plan is not limited to Gaza and the four specified northern Samarian communities. On his recently concluded visit to the U.S., Sharon stated that, although "the major Israeli population centers in Judea and Samaria will remain" in Israel, the status of other areas of the disputed territories are subject to the "final phase of the permanent agreement negotiations and talks." In the context of Olmert's earlier remarks that the four northern Samarian settlements "will not be the last, but only the beginning of withdrawals from Judea and Samaria," Sharon's elliptical statements presage further divisive moral battles.

Sharon seems to have the attitude toward the Jewish citizens of Judea and Samaria publicly enunciated by Ami Ayalon, sponsor of the dovish "People's Voice Initiative" and an enthusiastic supporter of Sharon's plan, who stated when asked whether he would favor evacuation of an Arab village as Sharon's plan envisions for 25 Jewish towns, "There's a difference. You [the settlers] are public servants and we sent you. The mission of some of you has ended." This high handed approach may reflect Ayalon's background as a distinguished Israeli naval commander accustomed to giving orders, but it surely ignores both the facts (the settlers are not "public servants" nor were they "sent", as on a military mission; in some cases, such as at Kfar Darom, the inhabitants purchased their land prior to the creation of the State of Israel.) and the moral considerations attendant on expelling entire communities for reasons of ethnic identity. Ayalon's remarks are illustrative of the moral obtuseness of much of Israeli officialdom.

Observers of Israel have frequently been struck by the prevailing attitude that neither ideas nor words are of great consequence. Thus, it was not surprising that when American leaders of Israel Bonds pointed out to Sharon in May of this year that the Palestinian Arabs are describing the withdrawal and expulsions as a victory, Sharon replied: "So what if they say so? What is important are the facts and not what they will say. On our side also there are people who say things they should not. So what? Does it make the Jews any weaker?" Of course, the Palestinian Arab perception of victory will not only boost their morale and encourage further violence on their part but will aid in recruiting additional terrorists.

In summary, Sharon's firing of ministers who indicated that they would vote against his "disengagement" plan in the cabinet, his insistence upon a Likud party plebiscite which he pledged to honor when it appeared he would win and then promptly ignored when he lost overwhelmingly, his refusal to conduct a referendum, his failure to explain to the nation the reasons and goals of his traumatic plan, his incitement to violence by describing Israel as on the verge of a civil war, his delegitimization of the respected Likud leader and Knesset member Uzi Landau and other opponents as "extremists" for basically taking the same position he took in the national election less than two years previously, and his callous disregard of the trampling on the rights of citizens of Israel who disagree with his withdrawal and expulsion plan, have seriously diminished the ethos of democracy in the State of Israel. It is this diminution of democracy in Israel, together with the avoidance of coping with the truth described by Ehud Barak and the "gnawing feeling of disgust" reported by Yoel Marcus, that has, sadly, weakened the cohesion of Israeli society, divided Israel "in ways that may poison the body politic for decades" in the words of Daniel Pipes, and undermined the moral fabric of the nation.

Roger A. Gerber’s most recent article for Outpost was "The Chimerical Moderation of Mahmoud Abbas.”

Nidra Poller

To the surprise and dismay of mainstream political leaders on both right and left, French voters voted "No" in the May 29th referendum to ratify the treaty to establish a European Constitution. French rejection will put a halt to the forward march of the European Union — given the current state of European society, a good thing for the forward march of democracy.

What exactly is this Treaty for the establishment of a Constitution? The document is long and indigestible. Brave souls have in fact read it, specialists have analyzed it, but no compelling arguments are based on its intrinsic qualities. The choice morsels were spoon fed to TV audiences in sober clips that opened with the blue flag and its circle of stars, asked a question, then answered it with low fat citations from this or that Article. The immediate effect was soothing and reassuring.

But that was not the image that emerged from conversations with friends, acquaintances, neighbors, waiters, shopkeepers and their customers over the weeks preceding the vote. The overall impression was doubt and dismay. Formal aspects of the Constitution faded into the background. People explained that the French have to vote oui so we won’t look like cons (asses)… So we won’t be isolated… Because there’s no alternative, we have to go forward. They rarely mentioned a single detail about the type of government that would be established by this Constitution.

Some undecided voters seemed to be haunted by a very real disappointment in Europe as experienced in their daily lives. Not sure whether this Constitution, whatever it is, will make things better or worse, and unsure of where to place the blame--on Europe or on their own government or on the proverbial bad French character--for what they see as a general degradation of their situation, they feel vaguely disenfranchised. On the other side of the question, among the yea sayers, were self-confident, well-dressed, modern ladies and gentlemen who walk with a sure step in a modern world. They are not afraid of the future, feel at home in a globalized world, welcome competition…and probably will welcome Turkey into the EU with the same breezy confidence. They disparage retrograde voters who think they can opt out of Europe and snuggle cozily into a safe little France.

They would almost be convincing -- were it not for the dark clouds looming over Europe. If, instead of trudging through the Constitution, one reads the 43-page report drafted in 2003 by the High Level Advisory Group appointed by then European Commission President Romano Prodi, an utterly different picture emerges. The Euro-Mediterranean “Dialogue” is a masterpiece of abject surrender. The European Union functions therein as an intermediate stage of an ominous Eurabian project that calls for a meltdown of European culture and its recasting in a monumental paradise of cultural relativism…that closely resembles the Muslim umma. Isn’t this a more accurate vision of what the Union is preparing for its docile citizens? When subversive appeasement hides behind the veil of “Dialogue,” what unspeakable ambitions might be dissembled by the noble word “Constitution”?

If, as claimed, the Constitutional Treaty is a giant step forward in the creation of a United States of Europe, what exactly is the political system it enshrines? The sleek answer is: something better than what we’ve had this far. More United, more European, looking more like a government, stronger, able to speak with one voice and (explicitly or implicitly) heavy enough to counterbalance the overweening hyperpuissant arch-rival--the USA. Jack Lang, former socialist Minister of Culture, vaunts the Constitution: it will make Europe strong enough to stand up to China, India, the United States.

Behind the sturdy images of a forthright Europe on the road to a bright future lurks the shadow of a shameful anti-Semitism that has soaked into the very skin of European society. Economic stagnation and plus 10% unemployment eats away at France’s elegant foundations. Life has become harsh, violence of all sorts is on the rise. The strong euro is no help to French wage earners. Social services are breaking down. Anti-war pro-Palestinian anti-American activism has not even brought hollow victories. Man can not live by bluster alone.

Democracy is leaking out of this tattered Europe. As national sovereignty is handed up to the higher echelons of the European Union, citizens lose their grip on the affairs of state. For all its brand name institutions—parliament, executive, commission, president and now secretary of state—the EU does not have a democratic infrastructure. It is recreating something like an old fashioned European empire where the ruling classes hobnob together in feasts and palaces, and dictate their will to the people. In the absence of grass roots power, commoners, with no constructive means of expression, resort to the sullen refusal to work, freedom to throw a monkey wrench into the system, go on strike on a holiday weekend, burn down an occasional factory. Some serious analysts of the Constitutional Treaty describe it as a blueprint for gridlock. Neither streamlined nor democratic, a far cry from a system of checks and balances, it institutionalizes ingrained European mistrust; every initiative will be vulnerable to blockage regardless of its scope or thrust. Good old fashioned power politics will be played on the ruins of this fictitious harmony. And France still seems to cherish dreams of grandeur.

When all of this is said and done, is it good for the Jews? According to Claude Barouch, president of the UPJF (Jewish entrepreneurs and professionals union…that aspires to be a Jewish lobby in France) a stronger, more united Europe will be kinder to Israel, less biased in favor of the Palestinians, more mature and responsible; economically France has everything to gain from a stronger more assertive Europe; new member states will have a positive effect both economically and politically. He advised us to vote oui.

But a little handmade, unscientific, offbeat public opinion poll in my immediate vicinity contradicted this optimistic vision. Many people told me they planned to vote non to sanction Europe, with France in the forefront, for fomenting anti-Semitism, delegitimizing Israel, aligning itself with the enemies of the United States, and pandering to Yassir Arafat all his life, until his death, and beyond. When Eurodeputy François Zimeray succeeded, against overwhelming opposition, in mobilizing a demand for investigation of the use of EU funds generously donated to the Palestinians, the EU Commission sidetracked the investigation, whitewashed the PA. And Zimeray’s party kicked him down stairs and out of the Parliament. Europe, with no credible military defense, gloats in demonizing the United States and Israel because they stand up to Islamic jihad. And even before the Constitution is ratified, the European Commission has chosen the infamous Javier Solana as European Foreign Minister.

Is there any common measure between the grouch vote of nostalgic crypto-peasants and the “parochial” vote of French Jews and neo-conservatives who want to stop the European machine in its tracks? Many voters said non to the Treaty for the establishment of a European Constitution because they believe in democracy, cherish Europe’s Jewish and Christian values, and trust national sovereignty more than EU oligarchy. For these non voters, the Treaty for a Constitution is more like a Munich agreement and nothing like the timeless, elegant, document framed by America’s Founding Fathers.

Nidra Poller is a novelist and journalist who lives in France.

Hugh Fitzgerald

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice recently cited Turkey as a model showing that "Islam, the Muslim world and democracy" do not contradict each other. And in a speech to the members of the American Society of Newspaper Editors, Rice said: "I think Islam, the Muslim world, is indeed going through an evolution, and as with any evolution there are both potential negative outcomes and potential positive outcomes. The negative outcome would be the continued rise of extremism and those who would hijack the great world religion to a cause that clearly has nothing to do with Islam. Islam is a peaceful religion..."

If Rice means what she said, she is a grave disappointment. And neither she, nor anyone else who thinks in the same vein, is likely to be able to comprehend how much vaster is the problem than anything bringing "democracy to Iraq" will solve. Let us stick only to Turkey, since Rice raises it as an example. Indeed, Turkey is an example. But of what? The historical record shows the following:

1) Kemal Ataturk was a war hero and strongman who took full control of Turkey -- which was not a democracy at the time -- in order to save his country from what he regarded as further disaster and possible dismemberment (it had already lost its possessions) in 1924.

He instituted a series of measures designed to limit the power of Islam in political and social matters. These included:

a) the Hat Act. This abolished the wearing of the brimless fez which made praying easier and insisted on Western caps to go with such Western, non-Islamic dress as coats and ties.

b) giving women the right to vote.

c) having the Qur'an translated into Turkish -- to break the cultural hold of Arabic -- and even supplying a special tafsir, or commentary in Turkish.

d) ending the use of Arabic script and adopting the Western alphabet.

e) monitoring the mosques and creating a Ministry of Religious Affairs entrusted with composing the khutbas delivered at Friday Prayers -- carefuly vetted by government officials so that they would not contain any dangerous material.

f) forbidding conscripts in the army from rising in the ranks if they demonstrated any detectable signs of religious fervor, such as reading the Qur'an too much.

g) forbidding the wearing of the hijab in any government office or at any official function.

h) cracking down on any newspapers that offered articles deemed "pro-Islamic."

i) making the army the bastion and protector of Kemalism.

And much more.

Note that Ataturk did not try to change the text of Qur'an. Nor did he try to de-authenticate dangerous hadith. Nor did he try to re-write the life of Muhammad. (In some ways the cult of Ataturk, now the national cult of Turkey, was a kind of replacement for Muhammad.) He realized that this was impossible, but that in order to bring Turkey kicking and screaming into the modern world (Turkey was poor, Turkey was on the ropes, Turkey needed a Strong Man and as a war hero he fit the bill perfectly), he and those who supported him had to force through all these constraints on Islam.

2) Turkey offers another lesson; Kemalism requires constant vigilance for it to be maintained. Even though a secular class has been created in Turkey, that class has been insufficiently aware of how tenuous its position is, and of how it is constantly in danger of being chipped away at, and undermined, by the determined "Islamic" element in Turkey. Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan is not an example of someone admirable, but of someone exceedingly cunning. He is able to use the E.U.'s requirements to hobble the army, the sole guarantor of Kemalism

The undermining of Kemalism in Turkey offers a salutary lesson: that Islam is a powerful force, and cannot be changed, only constrained. And to the degree that any country becomes more Muslim, to that same degree that country will -- no matter how long or close its seemingly heartfelt alliance with the United States has been -- pull away from that alliance, forget all that was done for it, and become hostile to the United States, as it would be to any Infidel power practicing muscular self-defense. The same is true of Pakistan. Neither country can be trusted to be on America's side, no matter how plausible some Turkish generals in Ankara may seem (or may be) to their American counterparts, or how many ramrod-straight Sandhurst graduates in Karachi manage to impress, or at least try to make us overlook, how Pakistani generals were in up to their neck in supporting the Taliban and the extracurricular activities of that remarkable man, A. Q. Khan.

3) The example of Turkey shows that Islam can only be constrained by a strong man rather than by "democracy" -- for a "democratic" state where the people are almost entirely Muslim will inevitably redefine everything in terms of Islam. Whatever is bad -- i.e., corruption -- will simply be defined as "Infidel" and therefore to be opposed. Whatever is desirable will simply be labeled in the spirit of Islam -- and this will happen everywhere that head-counting is the accepted definition of democracy, and not head-counting plus the rights enshrined in the First and Fourteenth Amendments, or the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Condoleeza Rice has been misled. That is not her fault. Many people have been misled about Islam. But at some point they must realize that the evidence of their senses suggests that they have been fed an incorrect analysis, a "theory" or "model" of Islam that does not explain all the data we have collected over 1350 years, nor seems to have much explanatory value for what is happening now, not only in Iraq and with Israel, but in the Sudan, in Nigeria, in Pakistan, in the Philippines, in Indonesia, in Bangladesh.

Perhaps the entire political class in this country is guilty -- Republicans and Democrats alike -- of failing to learn about Islam, and failing to offer imaginative and intelligent means to resist it. These means do not require vast invasion forces on the ground. Nor do they require the spending of hundreds of billions of dollars in Iraq and tens of billions more, apparently, in Afghanistan -- not to mention the continuation of American aid, for no good reason, to Egypt, to Jordan, to Pakistan, and of course to the shock-troops of the relentless Arab Jihad against Israel, the local Arabs renamed the "Palestinian people."

Never before have we so needed leaders willing to take the time to study, to return to their books, to be willing to jettison prefabricated phrases about "tolerance" and "peace" and to be willing to understand some very unpleasant truths. It is not asking too much of our leaders to ask them not to dismiss the dangers of Islam, and to request that they study not the apologists but the real scholars (a book or article on Islam written in 1920 or 1930 does not lose value, and because it was written at a time of much less inhibition, in a less guarded and fearful language, it is likely to be of far greater value than what is written today.) Intelligence and imagination will allow them to come up, very easily, with a dozen ideas that will help to weaken Islam, to exploit its natural fissures, to visibly limit its present and future economic power, and to support, within Europe, those who are now thoroughly alarmed and intent on stopping the spread of a belief-system that is totalitarian in its Total Regulation and Total Explanation of the Universe.

Surely that is something that can be understood by some in the army and in the civilian administration -- and can percolate not downwards, but upwards -- from those who still have the time to do their own studying, and do not have to rely on 2-5 page summaries prepared by aides.
Long live the colonels who educate the generals. Long live the staff aides who educate the Senators and Congressmen. And long live all those who take the time to read, study, and think.
It is they who will rescue us.

Hugh Fitzgerald is a frequent contributor to Outpost. This article was originally writte for Jihadwatch.com.

Zack Lieberberg

Russian people are incredibly rude. They are so rude that even when they make an effort to be polite, they sound threatening. And when they want to sound threatening, it comes out perfectly believable. When Prime Minister Putin, his face still burning after the heavy slap he had received at Beslan, announced to the world that from then on he intended to strike terrorists preventively on Russian territory as well as beyond, I said to myself, Uh-oh. We've got ourselves an ally that may cause more problems than all our enemies combined. As it turned out, I had nothing to worry about. In the almost 19 months since the siege that left more than 344 hostages, 172 of them children, dead, Putin has been carefully emulating his more experienced colleagues. Like Sharon, he went after terrorist leaders and managed to kill a couple of them. These tough measures did about as much good to Russia as they do to Israel. The only difference was that the world did not defend the Chechen terrorists' sacred right to kill and maim their victims with the same passion they usually defend the Arab terrorists' sacred right to kill and maim theirs.

Like President Bush, Putin managed to indict just a single participant in the attack. The man is currently on trial. As far as striking terrorists goes, Putin summoned all the self-discipline a martial arts expert can possibly master and managed to contain his vengeful urges. Instead of fighting a war against terrorists, he proceeded to sell modern weapons and nuclear technology to the worst terrorist states in the world. That's his war on terror.

What about ours? It forges ahead. Iraqis enthusiastically kill each other. Unfortunately, they also kill American soldiers, but their sacrifices do not seem to produce any tangible benefits for this country or the remnants of the free world. The price of gas has reached a plateau twice as high as its pre-war level. The terror alert indicator has been frozen in the middle of the scale for such a long time that most people no longer remember if it has a meaning.

The original goal of defeating terrorism has been substituted with a pipe dream of bringing democracy to primitive peoples who harbor an old, deep, incurable hatred towards us simply because we happen to be non-Muslims, and the fact that we are so much more advanced and lead so much better lives only makes their hatred burn ever brighter. Even if democracy and Islam were not mutually exclusive in principle, the question remains, how would this make the United States any safer than we are today? And if it wouldn't, then we should ask what concrete steps our government has undertaken to diminish the terrorists' capacity to threaten this country and its citizens. The establishment of the Department of Homeland Security and other reorganizations within the government bureaucracy has so far failed to bring down the terror alert indicator, much less produce any tangible results, so I will not count them in. Liberal media regularly publish tearful stories about unwarranted restrictions imposed on good Muslims by the bad government of the United States, but I see too many of those good Muslims in the streets to believe that these atrocities may have put a dent into jihad. Astronomically expensive efforts to improve the security of our airports have been easily sabotaged by politically-correct government policies, which, basically speaking, mean that my chances to smuggle a bomb on board an aircraft are better if I wear a keffiyeh and scream allah akhbar!during the security check.

Once in a long while we hear of a Muslim charity shut down for financing terrorism. Its runners receive a slap on the wrist and continue collecting donations for jihad under another phony name. Does this put even a dent into financing terror? How can it if the United States government is probably the second, after the European Union, most generous donor to the Palestinian Authority? Or are we the first? The PA is the PLO; it has the same leaders, the same members, the same goals, and applies the same atrocious means towards achieving its murderous ends. Therefore, the PA is a terrorist organization. Therefore, it is our enemy. As of now, this enemy remains undefeated. Would the US government consider providing humanitarian aid to the German population before the date for D-Day was even chosen?

A war is supposed to be a process. It goes on for a while. Then one side wins, the other one loses, and everyone who didn't get killed, moves on. Our War on Terror is no longer a process. It has become a state. A permanent state. We may succeed in replacing a government we don't like with a government we hope to be able to control. Trying to make it look legitimate, we may succeed in putting together a semblance of elections that can win Jimmy Carter's endorsement. But the government we are hoping to control will inevitably bend to pressure from the people who hate us more than they love their own children. The democracy we are trying to build among the cavemen will never take root. Jihad will continue unabated as long as Islam is allowed to wage its war against us.

In the immediate aftermath of Beslan, a diplomat accredited at the UN was on TV gravely expanding on terrorism and related matters. He was asked why the UN hadn't taken any steps against the Chechen “militants.”

“It is so complicated,” the diplomat complained. “Those people are not controlled by any government.”

“Bingo!” I thought. I suddenly saw how simple it was to define terrorism: Terrorism is a military action conducted by a non-governmental organization. Armed with this definition, we can now declare terrorism a capital offense. You participate in it — you are liable to be killed on sight, no questions asked, and no statute of limitation. No more humanitarian assistance to the murderers. No more invitations to the White House. No more hiding in the Mukata, in Paris, or even at Berkeley. Just an uncomplicated choice between death in battle and death on the gallows. Had we the honesty to implement it, how long do you think terrorism would have remained the favorite weapon of jihad? Oh, Muslims would no doubt have thought of something else, because there is no Islam without jihad, but we would find efficient ways to deal with anything they could possibly bring up against us. It's not that we don't have the power to end jihad; the problem is, we are not willing to.

Why will my definition of terrorism never be accepted? Because it would give Israel legal means to stop the unending Arab war against it, and this is exactly what the international community is determined to prevent. The world wants Israel destroyed. As a result, terrorism remains undefeated and behaves like untreated cancer — it spreads, leading to Beslan, to Madrid, to 9/11.

Do we need another 9/11 to finally wake us up? Or have we become completely incapable of doing the right thing even if our survival, the survival of our country and our entire magnificent civilization depends on it? Can we still tell right from wrong?

Zack Lieberberg is a Russian-born mathematician living in New York. This article was translated from the Russian by Yachiko Sagamori

Ruth King

I received the following letter from Professor William Firshein of Wesleyan University.

"The boycott by the Association of University Teachers in England was overturned.. I say big deal!...

An excruciating effort was mounted to reverse what should never have been considered in the first place except for the barely contained anti-Semitic views of those who first organized the boycott. It is just one more of the everlasting steps (a blip really) to delegitimize Israel if not by actual warfare -- which the Arabs have failed miserably to accomplish time after time -- then by what David Pryce Jones calls “psychological warfare" where the success has been palpable.

From the equating of Zionism with racism to the comparison of Israel to apartheid South Africa, to perhaps the most despicable, the likening of Israel’s right of self defense by the IDF to Nazis committing genocide....it is a sickening manifestation of a growing acceptance by the governing bodies and rank and file of so many "righteous" groups including the International Red Cross, many members of the United Nations (did you hear that El Salvador has just named a prominent plaza in their capitol after Arafat?), the European Union, many Protestant churches, and of course, last but not least, faculty at many Universities ... that Israel has no right to exist.

I truly do not know how all this will end, but it sickens me that we have to continue to fight these calumnies.

Bill Firshein
Department of Molecular Biology and Biochemistry
Wesleyan University
Middletown, Conn

I too would not pop the cork on the champagne. And it is important to recognize that some who fought the boycott were part of the problem. Look at the devious role of “Engage,” the British group of academics who protested the boycott but had a role in creating the very climate which brought the boycott about.

I have had an exchange with Professor David Hirsch, who heads “Engage.” When I remarked that even if the boycott were to be overturned, it would not obviate the fact that so many British academics are anti-Semitic, Professor Hirsh responded: “I think that most people who voted for the boycott did so because they didn't understand the issues properly. They reacted to the ‘Israel is apartheid, so boycott it’ argument because they wanted to ‘do something to help the Palestinians.’ There are anti-Semites behind the campaign, but not everybody who supported these bans were anti-Semites. Some were just ignorant -- and we are doing everything we can to change that.”

I challenged the notion that the boycott participants were not anti-Semites and remarked on the appalling ignorance of those teachers. This clearly annoyed Professor Hirsch and elicited an e-mail which he copied to several academics who had joined the debate on my side.

“Yes, many of them are teachers, some of them teach Math and biology... they have no special knowledge of Israel. Many of them, too, are administration staff, library workers etc. They didn't think they were acting to help the enemies of Israel: they thought they were acting to help innocent Palestinians who are living very difficult lives under Israeli occupation. Don't make allowances for anti-Semites—but do think clearly.”

Well that annoyed me, perhaps igniting a forme fruste of feminism, so I did a bit of homework on the organization named "Engage." I became suspicious when Hirsch wrote on April 22, 2005 about the infamous Ilan Pappe: “Pappe remains in his job, in spite of the fact that his views are extremely unpopular in Israeli society. Let us hope that the university continues to respect his tenure, as it is now doing.” Then, confirming my suspicions, Professor Hirsch sent out an e-mail describing “Engage.” Following are excerpts. (The entire text may be read on the organization’s website: www.liberoblog.com.)

“Engage opposes Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. We are in favor of the foundation of a Palestinian state alongside the state of Israel.

“Israel is not illegitimate in the sense that the white apartheid state in South Africa was. It is the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza that is illegitimate, and the discrimination against Palestinians that is illegitimate, not the existence of Israel.

“Engage wants to bring together academics and cultural producers in solidarity against the occupation.

“Opposing the sometimes brutal actions of the Israeli government and army is not anti-Semitic. But, sometimes anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism.

“Zionism is not racism. Zionism is Jewish nationalism and it is not fundamentally different from other forms of nationalism. Nationalism often leads to racism, but nationalism is not the same thing as racism. The Zionism is Racism (or Zionism is Apartheid) claim is problematic because it understands Jewish nationalism to be necessarily and incurably much worse than any other nationalism on the face of the earth.

“And Jewish nationalism has a plurality of traditions, some actively and consistently anti-racist, others shamefully racist and Islam-phobic, most somewhere in between.

So, here is what I wrote to Professor Hirsh.

Dear Sir:

You really ought to consider changing the name of your little group, ostensibly set up to protest the boycott. The title “Enable” is far more fitting. You burnish your credentials as a protester by indulging in the same anti-Israel claptrap that drives the boycott itself. The links on your site give you away. Among the more egregious are Jews for Justice for Palestinians, Friends of Bir Zeit University, Yesh Gvul, B’Tselem, Refuser Solidarity Network, and a host of groups that promote the rights of Israel’s enemies and even encourage soldiers to resist.

The “occupation” upsets you as does the “discrimination” against Palestinian Arabs. Not a peep from you about the poor Palestinian Jews whose daily life is tormented by fear of a terrorist act carried out by the people whose discomfort exercises you so much. It never seems to cross your mind to ask why the local Arabs have to pass checkpoints; why poll after poll discloses that Palestinian Arabs overwhelmingly support terrorism; why the “poor” Palestinian Arabs accept money to sacrifice their young in suicide missions; why the Palestinian Arabs are in a wretched state and who put them there.

Given your great compassion for Palestinian Arabs, why do you fail to mention that their lot under Israeli control was far better than in any Arab country including Jordan where a Hashemite rules over 82% of Mandated Palestine?

You claim that your organization wants to inform, but you promote anti-Israel disinformation instead. To have you lead an anti-boycott group is akin to a fox guarding the hen house.

You should read an article on the Israel Insider webpage “Plain, Old Jew Hatred.” The author David Meir Levi, excoriating the boycott, writes:

“…a growing number of academics and liberal leaders, erstwhile paragons of the pursuit for truth, working unfettered in the bastions of free speech, have adopted this newly revised edition of Jew-hatred as a cornerstone in their prejudiced fight for justice. These putative defenders of our social and political systems, which for centuries have been defined as having malice toward none and equal opportunity of access for all, have incorporated the new euphemisms of Jew-hatred into their publications, speeches, and classrooms...much to the bewilderment of many, and to the glee of a hate-driven few.

“And perhaps most odd of all, they have done so of their own free will, enthusiastically exploiting their faculty status and academic freedom to proffer anti-Israel propaganda as scholarship and anti-Zionist polemic as education. Their criminal misuse of their positions of trust among colleagues, students, and society at large, has contributed directly to the creation on many campuses of an atmosphere of hate and distrust toward Israel, Israelis, Jews, and anyone identifying with any of the above.”

How sad, Professor Hirsch, that this describes you as well as the boycotters. When the rising tide of European anti-Semitism starts to lap at your ankles, the anti-Semites you and your Jewish cohorts gratify with your anti-Israel statements will ignore you. Although you helped implement their agenda you will no longer be a “useful”….er…professor.

The truth is that you will have no one but yourselves to blame -- because of your inability to think clearly.

Yours truly,

Ruth

ON ETHNIC CLEANSING
Herbert Zweibon

FROM THE EDITOR
Rael Jean Isaac

THE MONSTROUS REGIMENT OF UNIVERSITY TEACHERS
Melanie Phillips

A LETTER TO THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION OF UNIVERSITY TEACHERS
Angela Bertz

A RICH HISTORY-NO FUTURE?
Jews and Christians in Iraq
Erich Isaac

NOAM CHOMSKY'S HATREDS
Edward Alexander

FROM DARLING OF THE LEFT TO PARIAH STATE
Norman Berdichevsky

MAY 14TH, 1948
Ruth King

MAY 16TH, 1948-THE NEW YORK TIMES
Ruth King

Outpost
Editor: Rael Jean Isaac
Editorial Board: Herbert Zweibon, Ruth King

Americans For a Safe Israel
1623 Third Ave. (at 92nd St.) - Suite 205
New York, NY 10128
tel (212) 828-2424 / fax (212) 828-1717
E-mail: afsi @rcn.com * web site: http://www.afsi.org

Herbert Zweibon

The Anti-Defamation League has taken out a series of morally obtuse ads lauding Prime Minister Sharon's uprooting of Jewish communities.
Since when is the ADL and Abraham Foxman (who signs the ad as National Director) a proponent of "transfer?" If Israel were to suddenly "ethnically cleanse" itself of 8,000 Arabs, utterly destroying their communities, we suspect the ADL would not be taking out ads in celebration of Sharon's "vision and courage." When Meir Kahane proposed "transfer" as the solution to the problem of Israel's Arab minority, the government's morally outraged reaction was to strip him of his right to run for the Knesset. We don't recall the ADL coming to the defense of Kahane's freedom of speech let alone praising him for "vision and courage."
After three of the Cohen children lost four limbs in a terror attack on their school bus, and lay in a Jerusalem hospital for many months, their mother Noga wavered about returning to their home in Kfar Darom. She reports that Prime Minister Sharon told her that for the sake of Israel she must return, and the family did so. And now Sharon tosses the family, which has sacrificed so much, out of their home? How would Mr. Foxman go about forcing out this family? Would he have police drag out these children? Sharon’s behavior does not display courage but moral turpitude. Daniel Pipes points out that what Sharon is doing is historically unprecedented: no other democracy has forcibly removed thousands of its own citizens from their lawful homes. And the Gaza and northern Samaria evictions are only a precursor: Sharon clearly plans to evict many more thousands of Jews from their homes in Judea and Samaria.
The ADL ad lauds Sharon for "the risks you are willing to take at this crucial time." But the ADL should not be fawning over Sharon for engaging in policies that are as strategically insane as they are morally infamous. U.S. officials report that Sharon has emphasized to President Bush and others in the administration that he fears an expected U.S. withdrawal from Iraq in 2006 will trigger a Middle East war against Israel with Iran in the vanguard. As Aaron Lerner of Independent Media Review and Analysis points out, how can someone who anticipates an all-out war against his state "invite Egypt to station its army a few kilometers from Ashkelon -- with attack helicopters, armored vehicles, anti-tank missiles etc., retreat from the Gaza Strip so that it can become what Israeli security people term a 'land based Karine A' [the ship Israel intercepted loaded with weapons headed for Gaza] with rockets that will first reach Ashkelon and then Ashdod -- and then create a similar situation in northern Samaria?" And the army's top echelon has emphasized that as soon as Israel leaves Gaza, a huge new wave of terror will be launched.
If the risks are obvious, Sharon has been unable to name a single benefit. On the contrary, by his actions, Sharon endorses the premises of Israel's bitterest enemies. In leaving Gaza he endorses their claim that Israel is an oppressive power, occupying land that rightfully belongs to Arabs. He reinforces the Hamas/Hezbollah/Islamic Jihad conviction that terror pays rich dividends. He encourages international pressures for more and deeper retreats. As Daniel Pipes sums up: “Mr. Sharon betrayed the voters who supported him, wounding Israeli democracy. He divided Israeli society in ways that may poison the body politic for decades hence. He aborted his own successful policies vis-à-vis the Palestinians. He delivered Palestinian, Arab and Muslim rejectionists their greatest boost ever. And he failed his American ally by delivering a major victory to the forces of terrorism.”

Rael Jean Isaac

DISARMING TERRORISTS PA STYLE

Mahmoud Abbas has developed a novel way of disarming terrorists, his first obligation under the so-called Road Map. He is incorporating 350 gunmen from Hamas and Islamic Jihad, all of them on Israel's list of wanted terrorists, into the Palestinian Authority security forces. The move, said PA Minister of Agriculture Ibrahim Abu al-Naja, "is designed to protect them against Israeli assassination attempts. They are entitled to join the security forces because of their involvement in the resistance." The PA's security forces are clearly not going to contribute to Israel's security; the well-deserved joke on Abbas is that they are hardly likely to improve his security either.

THE OTHER RACHELS

The indispensable Steven Plaut reports that a play "My Name is Rachel Corrie" premiered in London at the Royal Court Theatre on April 14. Corrie was the campus radical from the International Solidarity Movement (with Arab terror) who was inadvertently run over while trying to prevent Israeli bulldozers from destroying a tunnel used by terrorists in Gaza to smuggle in explosives. Plaut (with thanks to writer Tom Gross) cites some other Rachels who have not been similarly commemorated: Rachel Levy (age 13, blown up in a grocery store); Rachel Thaler (age 16, blown up in a pizzeria); Rachel Levi (age 19, murdered waiting for a bus); Rachel Gavish (killed with her husband and son, at home); Rachel Charhi (blown up sitting in a cafe); Rachel Shabo (murdered with her three sons, 5, 6, and 13, sitting at home). Plaut observes that it would be interesting to know how many of these Rachels were murdered with explosives smuggled in through the same tunnels that Rachel Corrie and her ISM pro-terrorist friends were "defending."

A POPE'S PLEA

With the passing of Pope John Paul II, Jews might also reflect on the life of a great predecessor, Pope John XXIII, Angelo Guiseppe Roncalli, whom Jews have reason to remember with special affection and respect.. Shortly before his death, in an eloquent prayer in 1963, he asked the Jews' forgiveness: "We recognize now that for many centuries blindness covered our eyes so we were unable to see the beauty of your Chosen People....We recognize that we carry the mark of Cain on our foreheads. We recognize that for centuries Abel was lying down covered with blood and tears while we forgot your love. Forgive us that we with our condemnations crucified you for the second time because we didn't know what we were doing." (Our thanks to Herb Loebel for bringing this quotation to our attention.)

SHARON ANSWERS WHY

In a meeting in April with Jewish leaders in Washington D.C., Sharon was asked by the ZOA's Mort Klein why he took a strong stand in favor of the Gaza settlements in his campaign for Prime Minister and a year later was determined to uproot them, even though the head of the Israel Defense Forces, General Moshe Yaalon, believes the withdrawal "will blow up in our faces." This was the gist of Sharon's answer: "First of all I understand that the Oslo agreements were the greatest disaster Israel ever had. But we cannot sit quietly and take no steps. The world won't accept it, including the U.S. and the U.S. is under pressure from Europe to pressure us." Although he rambled on for close to 15 minutes, Sharon offered not a single benefit his action would bring to Israel. The notion that Israel "cannot sit quietly and take no steps" is what produced Oslo. But if Sharon recognizes Oslo as the greatest disaster ever to befall Israel why does he want to repeat it on his watch?

What's wrong with saying that until the Palestinian Authority totally roots out the terrorists and their organizations, Israel is not prepared even to communicate with its leaders. What's wrong with standing firm, with building up Israel's communities rather than tearing them down, with punishing terror rather than rewarding it? It's a wonderful alternative to the suicidal actions pursued by this Prime Minister.

NEW ISRAEL FUND AGAIN

Fifteen years ago AFSI published a pamphlet on the New Israel Fund entitled A New Fund for Israel's Enemies. There was an outpouring of outrage from establishment Jewish organizations and leaders who came to the Fund's defense. How right we were (and how wrong, as usual, they were) has become more obvious with each passing year. A couple of examples: Currently B'Tselem, the mislabeled "human rights" group (wholly uninterested in Jewish human rights) and long a major beneficiary of the New Israel Fund, has issued a document "Land Expropriations and Settlements" demanding that Israel evacuate every inch beyond the 1949 Green Line, including the Jewish Quarter in the Old City, Ramat Eshkol and French Hill. And then there is New Israel Fund 2004 Fellow Shamai Leibowitz who goes the distance. Leibowitz, as Avi Bell reports in "NGO Monitor," since receiving the Fellowship "has devoted great efforts to advancing the cause of economic and diplomatic war against the existence of the Jewish state." He participated in the Palestine/Israel Conference on One Democratic State (promoting the PLO demand to eliminate Israel and replace it with a single "democratic" state) and has written and testified tirelessly in the U.S. on behalf of divestment resolutions directed against Israel, singling out for special praise the Presbyterian Church for its divestment resolution.

CUT FLOWERS

Historian David McCullough in a fine speech at Hillsdale College on February 15 entitled "Knowing History and Knowing Who We Are" quotes the late historian and Librarian of Congress Daniel Boorstin who said that trying to plan for the future without a sense of the past is like trying to plant cut flowers. We were reminded of Israel's Shimon Peres who never tires of dismissing history -- "I have become totally tired of history," "Instead of dwelling on the history of the past, we have to look to the history of the future," "I have very little patience for history. I am bored with history." (See AFSI's pamphlet Shimon Says for the sources for these and other examples.) Israel's leaders, and Peres is simply the most brazen in articulating it, have cut themselves off from the past as they shape Israel's future and in so doing are planting cut flowers. Alas, Israel will wilt very fast.

SPENCER BOOK

A new book that should be in the library of every AFSI member (available from Amazon): Robert Spencer's essay collection The Myth of Islamic Tolerance: Islamic Law and Non-Muslims, published by Prometheus.

AN ORGY OF HATRED

Melanie Phillips notes that it is not just on the left that the virus of hatred for Israel spreads through England — it also infects conservatives. Writes Phillips: “Public debate in Britain is now marked by a collapse of objectivity, truth, fairness and balance caused by a post-Christian and anti-Western victim culture, which stands truth and morality on their heads. British hostility toward Israel and the Jews should be set in the context of this wider assault on the Christian values of its society. And behind these Christian values are Jewish values. It is the Jewish moral codes constraining human appetite in the blueprint for the values of Western civilization that are now under attack in the culture wars. It is therefore no coincidence that the people who gave the West its moral codes now find themselves at the very heart of the firestorm of hatred engulfing Britain and Europe.

Melanie Phillips

Editor’s Note: After Phillips’ article was written, Britain’s 48,000 member Association of University Teachers (AUT) did indeed meet and vote to boycott Haifa and Bar Ilan Universities for collaboration with the “crimes of the occupation.” The demagogic anti-Israel speeches at the meeting were met with rapturous applause. And, as Phillips expected, the AUT did in fact rule that Israeli academics who publicly attack Israel will be exempt. Phillips writes below that the AUT will “debate” the boycott resolution but, in the event, the organization permitted no debate. Indicative of the AUT’s contempt for all democratic values, the AUT’s executive president denied boycott opponents the right to speak.

If anyone had ever told British academics that there would come a time when they would punish colleagues because of the views they held, and would treat them as pariahs and try to destroy their livelihoods in order to intimidate others into toeing the sole approved political line, they would have been incredulous. In the western tradition the universities are, after all, the custodians of free intellectual inquiry and open debate. Censorship, suppression of ideas and intellectual intimidation are associated with totalitarian regimes which attempt to coerce people into the approved way of thinking.

Yet that is what is now happening in British universities -- and the pariah is, of course, Israel. As the Guardian reported yesterday, the Association of University Teachers is about to debate a proposed boycott of Israeli academics who refuse to denounce their government's policies in the occupied territories. But the motion will “exclude ‘conscientious Israeli academics and intellectuals opposed to their state's colonial and racist policies’.” So in true totalitarian tradition, those who denounce their own will be permitted to have a livelihood. Gee, thanks! To survive in the cradle of free expression, Israelis will have to betray their own people. This is a natural development from the implicit -- and sometimes explicitly stated -- assumption that has been coursing through British intellectual circles in the current hate-fest against Israel, that only those British Jews who denounce Israel's policies can be considered to be British; anyone who supports Israel is guilty of 'dual loyalty.'

This requirement to denounce Israel as the price of continued social acceptance is doubly disgusting. First, it is a profound betrayal of the cardinal principle of intellectual endeavor, which is freedom of speech and debate. And second, it is a monstrous inversion of right and wrong, victim and victimizer which turns Israel, the victim of unbroken annihilatory Arab terror for the past half century, into the regional bully while sanitizing Palestinian aggression. Yes, the Palestinians have suffered hardship and restrictions in the last few years; but that is because they have been engaged in a murderous war against Israel which has deliberately targeted innocent civilians and against which Israel, like any other country, has had to defend itself. Before this current intifada started, the Palestinians were living under Palestinian governance. If they genuinely foreswore their war of extermination against Israel, there would be no barrier to their quest for self-government and prosperity. To pretend that their difficulties are caused by the victims of their own aggression is simply Orwellian double-speak.

An unnamed academic defends the boycott in the Guardian story 'as a means of registering my protest against Israelis' lack of respect for human rights and continuing illegal occupation of Palestinian land.' This parrot mindlessly repeats the mantra of the left about the 'illegal occupation' in apparent ignorance of the fact that a) the occupation is perfectly legal under international law as the defensive measure against attack that it was; b) that it is not 'Palestinian land' at all but territory that belonged to the British colonial power until it was illegally occupied by Jordan and Egypt and is now -- since they have washed their hands of it -- most fairly to be described as no-man's land; and c) that parts of these territories, such as Hebron, are the sites of Jewish settlement of great antiquity, predating the Arab colonization by several centuries but where Jews were massacred and driven out by Arab occupiers. If we're talking colonization here, the Jews of Palestine were the historic victims.

What is notable about the AUT motion is that it reflects the truly shocking ignorance of the region's history and current political reality, the resulting deep gullibility to propaganda based on lies, and the consequent vicious double standards and prejudice that now characterize British received opinion on the subject of Israel. Yet these are our university teachers, the very people responsible for shaping the assumptions of a society, whose own profound ignorance, prejudice and twisted morality are now on such conspicuous display.

This article was posted at www.melaniephillips.com on April 6.

Angela Bertz

It is unlikely that in any of their discussions the British Association of University Teachers will include the death of Sgt. Nadav Kudinski. He was part of the Israeli Defense Force Canine Unit. On December 7, 2004 his unit was involved in a predawn search several meters from the Israeli–Gaza border. They were, as is often the case, searching for weapons that Palestinian terrorists have used relentlessly against Israel since the start of the current Intifada.

With no warning, a bomb placed in a booby trapped chicken coop that Nadav was searching exploded. By the time his comrades found his body, both he and his dog were dead. Four more soldiers were wounded in cross fire with Palestinian Arabs, as they evacuated his now lifeless body to safety.

Nadav was 20 years old. He was the only male grandchild of Holocaust survivors.

Later that day members of the armed wing of Hamas held a press conference in Gaza City. They proudly held rifles in the air and wore hoods while claiming responsibility for the attack.

Still later on that same day young Israeli soldiers also covered their faces. Not with hoods to hide their evil faces from the world, but with their hands to cover their tears at the tragic loss of their friend and comrade.

Three days later on December 10, Professor Lars Thelander of the Royal Academy of Sciences addressed the Swedish Royal family and a packed auditorium in Stockholm. He was about to present that year’s laureates with the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. The prize would be awarded for the discovery of life's own death-labeling system. The discovery of controlled protein degradation could lead the way to producing new medicines against many deadly diseases.

Two out of the 3 recipients of this prize were from Israel, Aaron Ciechanover and Avram Hershko, both from The Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa.

Israel is no new-comer to innovation and many of its ideas in technology, science and medicine are used around the world to save and enhance the lives of millions.

Even while Israel was looking on with pride at yet another testimony to its fantastic achievements, the Palestinians were keeping themselves busy testing mortar shells and Kassam rockets. They fired close to 10 shells and 2 rockets into Jewish towns in Gaza. As many as eight people were wounded, one seriously.

Two days later, on December 12, the Palestinians reached yet another high in innovation. Five Israelis were killed, and six more were wounded, when a tunnel packed with explosives blew up underneath the side of an Israeli Defense Force post in Southern Gaza. After the explosion, Palestinian gunmen, not satisfied with their work, continued to attack by throwing grenades and firing rifles. Still others fired mortar shells. Two terrorist organizations, Hamas and Fatah, claimed responsibility for the attack. One and a half tons of explosives had been placed inside the tunnel for the blast.

The campaign of The Association of University Teachers in the United Kingdom has been lucky to have at its disposal terrorist apologist Sue Blackwell, a lecturer at Birmingham University. Gargi Bhattacharyya, executive member and president-elect of this biased bunch of bigots, also supported the boycott. He says Palestinian academic colleagues support this boycott saying the international emotional pressure is an important and peaceful way to support them.

One can only show utter contempt at the blatantly low level of moral integrity displayed by this bunch of terrorist supporters. In all their rhetoric on Israel's actions in the so-called "occupied territories" not one of these academic hypocrites have bothered to point out the over 100 homicide bombings perpetrated by well trained Palestinian terrorist organization on Israel's buses and restaurants. Most of these attacks were not carried out in any "occupied territory" but in a sovereign and recognized state, against innocent people.

Gargi Bhattacharyya and Sue Blackwell, with all their excellent education, seem to have no idea what it means to scrape a dead Israeli baby off a restaurant wall and wonder if its mother will ever regain consciousness to hear the tragic news. British academics are seemingly unable to make any distinction between cold blooded terrorism and a country that has had to take every measure to protect itself against this onslaught of barbarism.

Israel will continue, with or without the support of British academics, to take great leaps forward in all its endeavors. It will continue striving for the same excellence that won it the Nobel Prize for Chemistry and has placed it solidly on the world's stage as one of the world's most innovative and advanced nations.

Angela Bertz is a writer living in Israel.

JEW AND CHRISTIANS IN IRAQ

Erich Isaac

The Jewish community of Iraq is gone. Christian communities, despite Iraq’s new vaunted democracy, are in danger of following a similar path, this time not through government edicts (which forced out the remnant of the Jews in the late 1940s), but as a result of Islamist intimidation and terror. And yet both the Jewish and Christian communities there vastly predate Islam and the Arabization of Mesopotamia -- in the case of Jews by approximately fourteen hundred years.

Iraq – historically Mesopotamia – has an importance to Judaism surpassed only by the Land of Israel itself. Abraham came from Ur of the Chaldees, in southeastern Mesopotamia, and familial connections remained close at the time of Isaac and Jacob. The first exile, as a result of the conquest of the northern kingdom in the 8th century B.C. by the Assyrian empire, brought a major part of the conquered population to Mesopotamia. With the sixth century destruction of the Judean kingdom and the Temple in Jerusalem by the Babylonians (who had replaced the Assyrians as the rulers of Mesopotamia), a large Judean population joined the earlier Israelites. It is this exile which produced the famous lines from Psalm 137 “By the rivers of Babylon, There we sat down, yea, we wept, When we remembered Zion.” Mesopotamia was the only place of Biblical prophecy outside the land of Israel. Here Ezekiel prophesied the return of the two exiles, of Judea and the Northern Kingdom, “I will make them one nation in the land, upon the mountains of Israel, and one king shall be king to them all; and they shall be no more two nations, neither shall they be divided into two kingdoms anymore at all.” [EZ: 37:22]

An active Jewish community remained in Mesopotamia after the return of a portion of the exiles to Judea following the fall of the Babylonian empire to Persia. Indeed both the written and the oral law took their classical form in the Babylonian academies. The great scholar and moral exemplar Hillel (Hillel clubs in our universities are named after him) was a first century B.C. Babylonian who migrated to Israel and has gone down in history as Hillel ha-Babli (the Babylonian). Babylonian centers of Jewish study, the most famous of them in Sura and Pumbedita, actually came to overshadow those in Palestine. After the destruction of the Second Temple, for a period of four centuries, they were the undisputed authoritative centers shaping normative Judaism for the entire diaspora. Indeed until the end of the eighth century A.D. their influence, via responsa to questions submitted from every land with Jewish communities, was a major one. Scholars from Byzantium, Egypt, Tunisia, the Mahgreb (most of today’s Algeria, Morocco and parts of Mauritania), Italy, Spain and elsewhere came for study – even the sons of the Palestinian geonim (major religious authorities).

The Talmud, which has determined Jewish life from the first century B.C. until the present, was developed in both Palestine and Mesopotamia. The latter, known as the Babylonian Talmud, has had precedence. Thus Herman L. Strack, one of the great experts on the Talmud, noted that in halachic decisions “only when the Babylonian does not oppose the Palestinian Talmud may the latter be followed.”

Within Babylonia, the Jewish community was largely autonomous, ruled by an exilarch who claimed descent from the house of David. After the Moslem conquest in the seventh century, the institutions of Babylonian Jewry, headed by the exilarch and the heads of the two great academies of Pumbedita and Sura, remained in place for hundreds of years. In fact, within the Mesopotamian area, the borders of the administratively nearly sovereign Jewish ‘Bavel’ (Babylonia) were painstakingly delimited by the scholars of the academies. With minor changes they enclosed much of the historical core area of the long vanished ancient Babylonia.

This quasi-autonomy of course atrophied under Islam. As dhimmis under Moslem domination, Jews experienced periods of cultural, political achievement and prosperity alternating with periods of severe oppression and eventually decline. When the Mongols conquered Baghdad in 1258 A.D. they confirmed the autonomy of the Jewish community and its exilarch Samuel ben David. Thus these Davidic rulers remained in Baghdad until the city’s fall to Tamerlane in 1401.

After World War I, and the British occupation of then Ottoman-ruled Mesopotamia, the League of Nations established a British Mandate (at San Remo, 1920) over the newly British invented kingdom of Iraq. The large Jewish community of 135,000 enjoyed a period of security and prosperity with the civil service now open to them as well as positions in commerce. At that time Jews were the largest non-Moslem community in the country, with the 90,000 Jews of Baghdad constituting a fourth of the city’s population. But the Moslem masses were hostile, viewing the king as a British puppet, the British themselves as infidel occupiers and, under the influence of pro-Nazi propaganda spread by the mufti of Jerusalem Haj Mohammed Amin al-Husseini who had slipped into Iraq in 1939, saw the Jews as part of a Zionist plot to dominate the Middle East.

Edwin Black in his recent history of Iraq, Banking on Baghdad, recounts the events surrounding the massive pogrom in 1941, marking the beginning of the end of the Iraqi Jewish community. The mufti conspired with pro-Nazi Iraqi officers to stage a coup, forcing Iraq’s governing regent to flee Baghdad. The German air force cooperated by attacking the giant British air base near Fallujah. Within two months the British regained control but in order to avoid the appearance of a counter-coup instructed their commanders to remain on the outskirts of the city, allowing the Regent to return unescorted. When a contingent Jews went to greet the Regent, the Mufti-inflamed masses (the Mufti, in radio broadcasts, accused the Jews of having caused the failure of the pro-Nazi revolt) launched a huge pogrom, for 48 hours raping and murdering Jews at will. Too late, order was restored by Kurdish soldiers of the Royal Iraqi army. Ten years later, the British gone for good, the government of Iraq completed what was begun in 1941, expelling, after a campaign of systematic persecution, Iraq’s then remaining 100,000 Jews. Only a handful remained, eventually to be held hostage by Saddam Hussein.

Mesopotamia was once also a center of the earliest Christian churches. Today Christians constitute perhaps 3% of the population, roughly 780,000 out of 26 million Iraqis. The large majority belong to the Chaldean Catholic Church and are sometimes known as “Assyrians,” because of their claim to be descended from ancient Assyrians. (The term Assyrian, as distinct from Chaldean, should more properly be reserved for those who are not affiliated with the Roman Catholic church.) In fact, until modern times they were comfortable with the appellation Nestorian Christians. Within Iraq today, under Iraq’s Transitional Administrative Law, this religio-ethnic group is called “Chaldo-Assyrian.”

Their history goes back to Nestorius, a deposed patriarch from Constantinople, whose views on the human nature of Christ were condemned at the Third Ecumenical Council of Ephesus in 431 A.D. and then again at Chalcedon in 451. His followers established their church in Seleucia on the Tigris (in central Mesopotamia) in 498. There were other ancient churches in Mesopotamia and its mountainous northern borderlands prior to this, including the Armenian church (with followers today in Iraq) but the Nestorians, although a heavily persecuted minority in Byzantium, became the dominant, active missionizing church in Mesopotamia and penetrated from there into central Asia and India. Ironically, the Eastern Churches, as they called themselves early in their history, were pilloried as “Jews” by the Byzantine emperors.

Mordecai Nisan in his Minorities in the Middle East notes that “once Islam made its tremendous appearance, the Assyrians were the target of converging Sunni forces from the south and the north, and Shiite forces from the east. It therefore became of the utmost security importance to seek collective well-being in the wild and rocky Hakkari Mountains, an area of rural village life that served as a natural military fastness.” In this area of south-eastern Asia Minor (in today’s Turkey), Nestorian Christians would preserve “their Assyrian identity, Syriac language [Aramaic], and now their sectarian Christianity in a state of extended autonomy for long centuries.” They were helped by their martial tradition, which was still apparent in the period following World War I when Assyrian auxiliary forces attached to British units in Iraq were highly prized. Attempts by the British to reward the Assyrians with their own territory foundered when the area was assigned by the League of Nations to Turkey in 1925. A League of Nations recommendation to establish Assyrian autonomy in Iraq around Mosul came to nothing.

In 1933 the British turned over their residual civil control to an Iraqi administration which committed itself to guarantee minority rights. As it turned out, Assyrians were right to be unimpressed, for within that same year bloody massacres were carried out against them. Nisan reports that sixty-five out of ninety-five Assyrian villages in northern Iraq were ransacked or burned to the ground. Hundreds were gunned down. Many of the survivors fled to Lebanon and Syria, others went as far afield as India and the United States (where there are now an estimated 120,000 Chaldean Christians).

Those Assyrians who remained in Iraq were happy to see the return of the British in World War II and the Assyrian fighters (known as the Assyrian Levies) took part in the fighting to overcome the Rashid Ali pro-Nazi revolt of 1941, which produced the “Farhud,” the great anti-Jewish pogrom. In recent decades, under Baathist rule, Assyrians were culturally repressed as part of Saddam’s Arabization campaign (Christians, for example, were forced out of their villages in the north), but were free to practice their religion and their children attended Christian schools. In fact they enjoyed certain commercial advantages: for example, because of Islamic restrictions on alcohol consumption, they were given a monopoly on the liquor retail business (which enjoyed a large Moslem clientele).

But as Nimrod Raphaeli reports in “The Plight of Iraqi Christians,” Iraq’s liberation from Saddam has exacerbated the problems of the Christian population. Christians have been targeted by Islamists who label them “infidels,” accuse them of collaborating with the ”invading crusading army” and of spreading “moral corruption.” The Islamists destroy their businesses, not only their liquor stores but their barber shops (shaving and haircuts also are Islamically objectionable), harass and threaten Christian students, and have bombed Christian churches, murdering Christians at prayer. In Basra alone (a Shiite city, it has been free of the Sunni insurgency) 400 Christian stores have been closed. Wealthier Christians were targeted for kidnappings.

Approximately forty thousand Christians are estimated to have fled since the American occupation, adding to the 600,000 who left Iraq since 1987, most after Saddam’s invasion of Iraq and the subsequent sanctions brought severe hardship to the Christian middle class.

In November 2003 the Chaldean Bishop of Baghdad warned the Vatican that Iraqi Christians faced a grave future, declaring “We ask for our interests to be included in the new Iraqi constitution, for our villages to be protected, for our rights to maintain our religious, cultural and linguistic traditions to be recognized.”

But whatever the formal provisions in the Constitution, the problem is the spirit of intolerance, not only on the part of Islamic extremists but Kurdish militias who are seeking to extend their control of Mosul where many “Chaldo-Assyrians” live. The situation has become so bad that Nina Shea, director of Freedom House’s Center for Religious Freedom, calling the Christians the “canaries in the coal mine for the Great Middle East” seeks a solution in creation of a special protected zone near Mosul. As Anthony Browne notes in the (English) Spectator, “Iraq may still be occupied by Christian foreign powers, but the Islamist plan to ethnically cleanse Iraq of its nearly 2,000 year old Assyrian and Armenian Christian communities is reaching fruition.”

The problem is by no means confined to Iraq. The Jesuit magazine La Civilta Cattolica reported in October 2003 that a third of the Christian population of Islamic countries – three million people – have emigrated to the West over the last decade. The decline of Christianity in the modern Middle East goes much further back than this; it goes back to post-World War II decolonization which removed the protection the European powers had given religious minorities. Ironically, as The Myth of Islamic Tolerance (edited by Robert Spencer) notes, for many decades the deteriorating situation of Christians largely escaped notice because of Christian involvement in the Arab war against Israel. In their search for acceptance, Christians formed the vanguard of Arab nationalist movements, hoping to find in pan-Arabism – with hostility to Israel its motor force -- an alternative to Islamic identity.

As Freedom House’s Nina Shea has noted, the United States is focused exclusively on instituting democratic “process” in Iraq, deliberately avoiding the issue of “values” – “that is, they are not concerned about the outcome, only how it is achieved.” But that means religious freedom and other fundamental human rights may receive short shrift in the new Iraq. It is scarcely a good sign that, according to the New York Times, the epithet Iraqis use for coalition forces, especially American soldiers, is “the Jews.” The overwhelming majority of Jews were forced out of Arab countries fifty years ago. Will what the Arab street calls the Sunday people now suffer the same fate as the Saturday people?

Erich Isaac is a retired professor of Geography at City University of NY and a founder of AFSI.

Edward Alexander

"What is needed in the U. S. today [1968] ... is a kind of denazification." "Washington is the torture and political murder capital of the world." (1979) "This [9/11] is certainly a turning point: for the first time in history the victims are returning the blow to the motherland." "What's happening [in Afghanistan in late 2001] is some sort of silent genocide...we [the U.S.] are in the midst of apparently trying to murder 3 or 4 million people."

This equation between America and Nazi Germany and the concomitant depiction of America as the center of the world's evil will no doubt remind many readers of Ward Churchill, the Colorado professor whose allusion to the 3000 people massacred in the World Trade Center on 9/11 as "little Eichmanns" deserving their fate landed him in a great deal of trouble. In fact, however, these (equally obscene) remarks were made by Noam Chomsky, honored on April 20 as a University of Washington Danz Lecturer.

(The Jessie and John Danz bequest to the University of Washington was intended to fund a series of lectures on "the impact of science and philosophy on man's perception of a rational universe." But the lectureship--following the usual academic pattern--has frequently been hijacked by tenured guerrillas to serve their political purposes, which rarely conduce to "a rational universe.")

Chomsky is, of course, something more than a Ward Churchill with a brain, indeed a very formidable brain that revolutionized the field of linguistics (albeit with a kind of "creationism" that makes many uneasy). His great distinction as a political polemicist has been to demonstrate the truth of the French saying that les extremes se touchent (extremes meet). He is among the few writers trumpeted by the leftist Nation magazine and the neo-Nazi Journal of Historical Review, by Alexander Cockburn and David Duke (who praised Chomsky in 1998 for "daring to expose the truth about Zionism and Jewish supremacism"), by antisemitic Holocaust deniers like Robert Faurisson and David Irving and by leftwing antisemitism-deniers, who habitually label the murder of Jews in Buenos Aires, the burning of synagogues in France, the Arab lynchings and suicide bombings of Intifada II, and the boycott of Israeli scholars and researchers "criticism of Israeli policy." Indeed, Chomsky has himself produced the classic utterance of antisemitism-denial: "Anti-semitism," he declared in 2002, "is no longer a problem, fortunately. It's raised, but it's raised because privileged people want to make sure they have total control, not just 98% control. That's why anti-semitism is becoming an issue." As this charming remark indicates, the line between antisemitism-denial and antisemitism (the thing itself) is a fine one.

It used to be said that Chomsky, in simultaneously appealing to the crackpot right and the crackpot left, was like "a bigamist who must constantly strain to keep one of his families secret from the other." This referred mainly to Chomsky's eager collaboration with La Vieille Taupe (The Old Mole), a French neo-Nazi organization that seeks to vindicate the original Nazis by denying that they murdered the Jews of Europe. When Chomsky's fellow leftist Pierre Vidal-Naquet learned, in 1979, that Chomsky was writing a preface to the aforementioned Faurisson's book of Holocaust-denial, he warned Chomsky that Faurisson was a long-time, well-known neo-Nazi antisemite.

Undaunted, Chomsky proceeded with his preface and even affixed to Faurisson the inane label: "a sort of apolitical liberal." When taken to task for his sycophantic allusion to Faurisson's "findings," Chomsky had the gall to claim that Frenchmen with imperfect English failed to understand that "findings" means "conclusions" and not "discoveries." Vidal-Naquet then "concluded" that Chomsky's zeal on behalf of this previously secret family would not cool until the French republic passed a law requiring that Faurisson's squalid tract be read in public schools and sold at the entrances to synagogues.

But the concealment is no longer necessary because Chomsky's two families have now become one. The current resurgence of antisemitism in Europe is largely the work not just of Muslim fundamentalists but of liberals, leftists, strugglers against "racism"--and haters of America. Virtually no Parisian demonstration against America is without placards reading "Mort aux Juifs" (death to the Jews). Chomsky's two pet hatreds-America and Israel--have become linked in Europe (where his popularity is greatest) and in those scattered American outposts of European sentiment and ideology: our universities.

EDWARD ALEXANDER is UW professor emeritus of English. The article appeared in the University of Washington Daily.

Norman Berdichevsky

On this fifty-seventh anniversary of its birth, the state of Israel, despite (because of?) its stunning achievements, reels under worldwide obloquy, with the most venomous attacks coming from those who consider themselves "progressive" and "morally sensitive," e.g. the mainline churches, university faculty, the media elite, those on the left side of the political spectrum. In an exercise similar to that of Stalin's staff of photographers, who could skillfully subtract Bolshevik leaders who had been purged from old photos, many of these same "progressives" proclaim that the birth of Israel was fostered primarily by the United States and it was American support for Israel which has inflamed the Moslem world since 1948. In fact the entirety of what was then called "enlightened public opinion" rallied behind Israel's struggle. In contrast, the U.S. administration's support for Israel was, at best, half-hearted.

The major Arab armies invading Palestine in 1948 were either British-led, trained and supplied (Egypt, Iraq and Trans-Jordan) or French equipped (Syria). Israel's victory owed much to heavy equipment mostly provided by the Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia (including the rifles the Czech army would have used to defend the homeland had Czechoslovakia not been betrayed by the Munich agreement). In contrast, the American State Department declared an embargo on all weapons and war material to both Jews and Arabs in Palestine -- but not to the Arab states which sent in their forces to crush the Jewish state. The embargo substantively affected one side -- those sympathetic to the Zionists who were forced to smuggle weapons to the beleaguered nascent Jewish army.

There was nothing "progressive" about those who supported the Arab side. The acknowledged leader of the Palestinian Arab cause was the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, who had fled from Palestine to Iraq to exile in Berlin where he led the "Arab office," met with Hitler whom he called "the Protector of Islam," served the Germans in Bosnia where he was instrumental in raising Muslim volunteers among the Bosnians to work with the SS. At the end of the war, the Yugoslav government declared him a war criminal. Palestinian Arabs still regard him as a heroic leader. Lending active support to the Arab war effort were Falangist volunteers from Franco's Spain, Bosnian Muslims and Nazi renegades who had escaped the Allies in Europe.

Ranged on the side of the Jews of Palestine were such colorful personalities as Dolores Ibarruri, the lively Basque woman communist delegate to the Cortes (Spanish Parliament), known as “La Pasionaria,” who had gone into exile in the Soviet Union. In 1948 she issued a proclamation saluting the new State of Israel and comparing the invading Arab armies to the Fascist uprising that had destroyed the Republic. Just a few months earlier, the cultural hero of the American Left, the Afro-American folk singer Paul Robeson, had electrified the crowd at a gala concert in Moscow with his rendition of the Yiddish Partisan Fighters Song. The crowd was in an ecstatic mood due to the support of the Soviet Union for the new state of Israel.

No more ringing Zionist declaration was ever given than by the Soviet delegate Andrei Gromyko, who in his famous speech to the U.N. General Assembly on May 14, 1947 (a full year before the Israeli declaration of statehood), asserted the right of "the Jews of the whole world to the creation of a state of their own," declaring "It would be unjust not to take account of this fact and to deny the Jewish People the right to realize such aspirations." Taking a lead from Moscow, the Palestinian communist organizations merged their separate Arab and Jewish divisions and established the Israeli Communist Party which gave unconditional support to the war effort and urged the Israel Defence Forces to "drive on toward the Suez Canal and hand British Imperialism a stinging defeat."

Apart from a few states with large Muslim minorities (e.g. Yugoslavia and Ethiopia), in the UN vote the Arabs managed to wheedle support only from the most corrupt non-Muslim states. Cuba was the only state without close links to the Muslim world to vote “no.” Mexico, anxious to parade its anti-American credentials, abstained, as did Chile and Argentina, the two Latin American states that had been pro-Axis at the outbreak of the war and only declared war on Germany in the war's closing weeks. The rest of Latin American countries, most of them democracies, enthusiastically voted for partition.

All the West European nations (except Great Britain) voted for partition as well. No other issue to come before the U.N. has had such unanimous support from the European continent or cut across the ideological divide of communist and western sectors. The Jewish state was even supported by Richard Crossman, a member of the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry on Palestine who had been handpicked by Britain’s anti-Zionist Prime Minister Ernest Bevin. Crossman, taking a principled stand, refused to endorse the Labor Party Line. He had visited the Displaced Persons camps in Germany where Jews who had sought entry into Palestine were being detained. He realized that their sense of desperation derived from a world with no place which they as Jews could truly call home. He wrote that when he started out he was ready to believe that Palestine was the “problem,” but his experiences made him realize that it was the “solution.”

Up to 1956, Israel's closest ally was France, which was also its major military supplier. When, together with Great Britain, the Israelis and French sought to turn back Nasser's nationalization of the Suez Canal, it was the United States under President Eisenhower that forced an Israeli, French and British withdrawal. In 1967, American pressure prevented Israel from rolling on towards Damascus. In the 1973 Yom Kippur War, the Americans prevented the Israelis from closing their siege of the Egyptian Third Army. Despite this the myth persists, and is constantly reinforced, that Israeli owes its existence and military superiority to the United States which unlike the "Europeans" has never followed an "even-handed" policy in the Middle East.

What can account for this startling transformation of attitudes, opinions and views of the conflict as portrayed both by the media and the political Left? One could call it a mass psychosis, a delusion of crowds, turning both the history and current reality of Israel on its head. To take a small example: Israel’s top football club, which won the Israel Cup last summer and participated in the Uefa Tournament, is Bnei Sakhnin (after a small Arab village in Galilee). The team is made up largely of Israeli Arabs but also includes a number of Africans, while the manager and several key players are Jews. No other country has a national team in which Whites and Blacks, Christians, Jews and Muslims are represented. Had such a team represented any other country, media giants like CNN or the BBC would have outdone themselves in holding up the team as an example for the civilized world to follow. But because it was an Israeli team, instead there were a few isolated and grudging references in the media laced with sarcasm, denigrating the team as “renegades” or “puppets”. Such is the media in a world where those who consider themselves moral arbiters have become moral madmen.

Norman Berdichevsky is a geographer, writer and translator.

Ruth King

Post-Holocaust Zionist efforts to establish a Jewish return to biblical Israel culminated with United Nations Resolution 181 in November of 1947, recognizing the Jewish claim to Palestine. It was the first and only time the United Nations created a state by way of a General Assembly vote. (In fact, the partition gave Israel only 51% of the 23% of the original Mandate for Palestine, 77% of which had been lopped off by the British to create Transjordan.)

At the UN meeting on November 27, Thor Thors, the delegate from Iceland, demanded an up or down vote rejecting more unending hearings. There had been intensive lobbying for partition most notably by three members of the UN Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP):

Ivan Rand, the Canadian representative who later became a distinguished judge on the Supreme Court of Canada, played a pivotal role in persuading the hesitant Swedish, Czech and Peruvian delegates to support partition.

Jorge Garcia-Granados of Guatemala and Uruguay's Enrique Rodriguez Fabregat were also tireless champions of the Jewish cause. Granados wrote a book The Birth of Israel—The Drama as I Saw It. He later became Guatemala’s first ambassador to Israel, and established its embassy in Jerusalem. Fabregat, a literature professor, was Uruguay's first ambassador to the United Nations, where he remained a stalwart supporter of Israel.

The Jews of Palestine accepted partition and declared independence on May 14th, 1948 with these brief but memorable words:

“The Land of Israel was the birthplace of the Jewish people. Here their spiritual, religious and political identity was shaped. Here they first attained to statehood, created cultural values of national and universal significance and gave to the world the eternal Book of Books.

"After being forcibly exiled from their land, the people kept faith with it throughout their Dispersion and never ceased to pray and hope for their return. Impelled by this historic and traditional attachment, Jews strove in every successive generation to re-establish themselves in their ancient homeland. In recent decades they returned in their masses.

“Pioneers and defenders, they made deserts bloom, revived the Hebrew language, built villages and towns, and created a thriving community controlling its own economy and culture, loving peace but knowing how to defend itself, bringing the blessings of progress to all the country's inhabitants, and aspiring towards independent nationhood.

"We hereby declare the establishment of a Jewish state in the land of Israel to be known as the State of Israel."

This month marks the 57th anniversary of this declaration. In spite of our dismay at the suicidal policies of Israel’s present government, the state, for its epic rescue of world Jewry, its stubborn adherence to the lofty principles upon which it was founded, and as the locus for the prayers and aspirations of the Jewish people, deserves our full support.

MAY 16TH, 1948 THE NEW YORK TIMES

Two days after Israel’s declaration of independence, New York Times correspondent Mallory Browne’s article, headlined “Jews in Grave Danger In All Moslem Lands: Nine Hundred Thousand in Africa and Asia Face the Wrath of Their Foes,” ran on the front page of The New York Times. Browne wrote: “There are indications that the stage is being set for a tragedy of incalculable proportions.”

Browne noted: “In Syria, a policy of economic discrimination is in effect against Jews. Virtually all Jewish civil servants in the employ of the Syrian government have been discharged. Freedom of movement has been virtually abolished.”

Browne reported that in Iraq, home to 130,000 Jews, no Jew was permitted to leave unless he deposited the equivalent of $20,000 with the government and no foreign Jew was permitted to enter.

He wrote that the situation of Jews was worst in Yemen, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Iraq and Egypt. In Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia, then under French rule, conditions were better. (This of course was to change markedly after the French left their colonies in Africa.)

However, all Jews in Moslem nations —- 900,000, including 75,000 in Turkey and 30,000 in Libya — felt threatened and unsafe, according to Browne.

As subsequent events proved, the fears of the Jewish communities in Arab lands were fully warranted. In the end, the vast majority were forced out, most going to Israel, leaving behind billions in property and goods. These were the refugees for which Israel made no claims. They were absorbed as citizens in the epic rescue known as the “ingathering” that followed independence.

Instead the word “refugee” was applied to between 450,000 to 600,000 Arabs who left Israel and have remained for four generations in the “refugee camps” administered by the United Nations. There they remain squatters in squalid conditions, abandoned by their Arab “brothers,” exploited so as to foment hatred and terror against Israel.

The New York Times has long forgotten the saga of those Jews from Arab lands as it incessantly parrots and perpetuates the claims and libels of the so-called Arab refugees.