THE WEST'S RESPONSE TO TERRORISM: FUND MORE OF IT
HERBERT ZWEIBON
Chariman of Americans for a Safe Israel

FROM THE EDITOR
RAEL JEAN ISAAC

REDEFINING DEMOCRACY
WILLIAM MEHLMAN

YOU'VE WON MR. SHARON, I'M DISENGAGED
NAOMI RAGEN

MUSLIM EUROPE IN THE MAKING
MOSHE SHARON

UNSUNG HEROES
YALE KRAMER

A NEW ROADMAP FOR PEACE: LOOKING UP TO THE SKY
RABBI DOV GREENBERG

WHY THEY HATE US
HUGH FITZGERALD

MORAL MISCHIEF
RUTH KING

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

OUTPOST is distributed free to
Members of Americans For a Safe Israel
Annual membership: $50.

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
Chariman of Americans for a Safe Israel

At the end of the G8 summit, following the murderous attacks on London commuters, the assembled heads of the industrialized world issued a joint statement: "We are united in our resolve to confront and defeat this terrorism that is not an attack on one nation, but on all nations and on civilized people everywhere." The ever eloquent Tony Blair summed up: “There is no hope in terrorism, nor any future in it worth living. And it is hope that is the alternative to this hatred, so we offer today this contrast with the politics of terror."

Demonstrating a profound disconnect between rhetoric and reality, Blair proudly announced the G8's “contrast with the politics of terror” — $3 billion to fund terror, specifically the brand practiced by the Palestinian Authority. The EU, along with the United States, has been pouring money into the sinkhole of terror and corruption that is the Palestinian Authority since the 1993 Oslo agreement, over $5 billion up to 2000, and vastly more since. Virtually none of it went to improve the life of Palestinian Arabs. It funded Arafat himself, the cronies and underlings who kept him in power and terror activities against Israel. Arafat may be gone, but the way the money is used will not change. As the Center for Security Policy points out, "Abbas celebrated the London bombings in Damascus, where he was the guest Thursday night [the evening of the bombings] at a festive meal hosted by Syrian dictator Bashir Assad, along with Hamas’s Khaled Mashal, Islamic Jihad's Ramadan Abdullah Shallah, and Ahmed Jibril, head of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, all designated as terrorist organizations by Britain and the United States."

The Jerusalem Post (June 27) reports that the PA has already invited all these groups to relocate to Gaza after the Israeli pullout. Abbas has been filling his security forces with terrorists from Hamas, to whom the G8 bounty will also be siphoned.

The United States has been pressuring Syria to shut down the various terror groups that will now relocate to Gaza. So what possible strategic sense does it make for the U.S. to support the creation of a new territorial base for terror that will not only be an existential threat to Israel but will target Western interests worldwide? It appears the London terrorists had close ties with Hamas. Indeed the German newspaper Bild am Sonntag has reported that the Mossad has told British security authorities that the material used in the London bombings was the same Chinese-produced explosives used in the bombing of Mike's Place in Tel Aviv by London-based terrorists, suggesting the same group was behind both.

Yet, locked into an alternative universe, the U.S. mindlessly pursues the creation of a new Middle East terror state. As Aaron Lerner of Independent Media Review and Analysis observes, in the wake of the London bombings Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice declared "there's no separate peace to be made with terrorists" [except Palestinian terrorists]; "the terrorists are after our way of life and we have to defeat them" [except Palestinian terrorists]; "there is no other way to deal with them than through strength [except Palestinian terrorists who have to be won over with concessions]; "you have to fight this war on the offense [and retreat in Gaza]; "that's why you have to take away territory from places like Afghanistan [and give it in northern Samaria]."

The combined folly of Ariel Sharon, Western Europe and the United States mortally imperil Israel, world Jewry and the civilized world.

RAEL JEAN ISAAC

SHARON CLOSES OFF GUSH KATIF

Fearful of planned large scale demonstrations of support entering Gush Katif, Sharon has cut off the area from contact with the rest of Israel over a month before the planned eviction of residents and destruction of their homes. This wicked and lunatic uprooting of Jewish communities (wicked, because a Jewish Prime Minister is tearing Jews from their legal homes and communities solely because they are Jews and lunatic, because the result will be massively more serious terror emanating from "liberated" Gaza) will be Ariel Sharon's legacy. In one evil action he has wiped out all he accomplished for Israel as a general and will go down is history as one who fulfilled the terrible biblical prophecy “Your destroyers and those that lay you waste shall come from among you.”

ISRAEL'S DEFEATED LEADERSHIP

Many years ago, at an AFSI national conference, Yoram Hazony described Israelis as suffering from a species of depression, as if they required Prozac. Now Ehud Olmert, Israel's vice prime minister, makes it clear to what depths of defeatism its leadership has sunk. Seymour Reich, president of the correspondingly defeatist American Israel Policy Forum (allied with the Israel Labor Party) quotes Olmert's words at a New York speech in June: "We are tired of fighting, we are tired of being courageous, we are tired of winning, we are tired of defeating our enemies." Of course the more "tired" Israel becomes, the more energized her enemies grow. Unfortunately Olmert, Sharon, Peres and the rest of Israel's morale-sapping leaders are apparently too exhausted to extract themselves from the seats of government. If Israel is to have any hope of survival, the public will have to supply the energy for their removal.

DONATING THE ROPE

Thank British government and European Union largesse for transforming English-born Moslems into terrorists. Their indoctrination took place at the Hamara Youth Access Point, a government funded storefront in Leeds that served as a hub of radical Islamic politics. The Center has now belatedly been searched after three of its staff informed police that at least two of the suicide bombers had been "very regular" visitors there at all hours and a third had also been seen there.

The authorities had plenty of previous warning. One of the workers says "It had become so radical and so hateful that I asked if I could stop working there." He, and other staff, report that it was a hotbed of Islamic organizing, routinely hosting mysterious figures to speak about extremist politics. How many other such centers are being funded by English government and EU funds? How many "youth centers" in Moslem neighborhoods in this country are fomenting radical Islam courtesy of U.S. government funds?

DIANA WEST

Perhaps the best single column in response to the London terrorism was written by Diana West. West writes: "Only one faith on earth may be more messianic than Islam: multiculturalism. Without it--without its fanatics who believe all civilizations are the same -- the engine that projects Islam into the unprotected heart of Western civilization would stall and fail. To live among the believers -- the multiculturalists -- is to watch the assault, the jihad, take place, unrepulsed by our suicidal societies." Not only does West nail the core of the problem, but she refuses to accept the artificial separation of "radical" from a supposedly "normative" Islam. West says the danger to our way of life comes from "Islam." She writes: "Notice I didn't say 'Islamists.' Or 'Islamofascists.' Or 'fundamentalist extremists.' I've tried out such terms in the past, but I've come to find them artificial and confusing, and maybe purposefully so, because in their imprecision I think they allow us all to give a wide berth to a great problem: the gross incompatibility of Islam-- the religious force that shrinks freedom even as it 'moderately' enables, or 'extremistly' advances jihad -- with the West."
KILL ALL INFIDELS

Even as the Blair-led G8 was vowing to drown the Palestinian Authority in money, the PA was inciting hatred of those who give the money.

Less than a day after the London bombings, PA TV broadcast a sermon calling for the extermination of infidels: “Annihilate the infidels and the polytheists! Your [Allah’s] enemies are the enemies of the religion! Allah, count them and kill them to the last one, and don’t leave even one.”

UNSUNG HEROES

While our media carefully remind us of the anniversaries of a Marilyn Monroe or Elvis Presley, the true great anniversaries go largely unremarked. There
was little celebration on June 7 of VE Day, when the Allied Powers brought to an end a terrible ideology that had murdered so many millions. (We could also have been reminded of how much more easily and quickly it could have been ended had those same powers not appeased Hitler for so long.) Similarly the anniversary (appropriately on July 4, 1976) of Israel’s brilliant Entebbe rescue went largely unremarked. Yet this might be considered the opening salvo in the war on terror, removing the aura of invincibility from airplane hijackers.

THE BBC AGONIZES OVER THE "T" WORD

The BBC's guidelines state that its credibility is undermined by the "careless use of words which carry emotional or value judgments." Foremost among such words is "terrorist." The guidelines declare "The word 'terrorist' itself can be a barrier rather than an aid to understanding. We should try to avoid the term, without attribution." (In other words, the word can only be used if it occurs in a quotation from a named source.) The BBC has had no problem applying these guidelines in Israel, where buses full of innocent people are blown up by "militants," "fighters," etc. But in the immediate aftermath of the July 11 bombings in London, the BBC abandoned its guidelines to refer repeatedly to "terrorism" and the perpetrators as "terrorists."

It didn't take long for rethinking. While "terrorist" in reference to the Leeds murderers has not been wholly expunged, the term "bomber" has clearly become the preferred term. Indeed, the BBC even reedited some of its coverage, changing the term "terrorists" on the BBC website to "bombers." Chances are before long the word "terrorist" will disappear altogether. Yet, as Melanie Phillips points out, this is simply a war on truth: "Terrorism is the deliberate killing or infliction of harm upon innocent people, in order to inflict terror upon wider populations to achieve through violence political ends which cannot be achieved by lawful means. The BBC's refusal to use this word...means only one thing--that it has decided that terrorism does not exist but is merely a matter of subjective opinion....No wonder the BBC is institutionally hostile to the war against terror. It's a war against a phenomenon which apparently does not exist."

To be sure, much of the "elite" U.S. media is not much better, with its incessant use of "insurgents" to describe Iraqi terrorists. Even President Bush, while he uses the term "terror" freely (as in the endlessly cited "war on terror") avoids mentioning that the terrorists are Islamic jihadists. Simply from hearing the President speak, one would have no idea who perpetrates the "terror" with which we are at "war."

BRITAIN WILL YIELD

While the airwaves resound with ringing declarations of resolve from Britain's Tony Blair, Englishman (and National Review columnist) John Derbyshire points out that it is more than likely Britain in the end will seek the path of appeasement.

Writes Derbyshire: "This can be said with fair certainty because Britain did yield to the previous concerted series of terrorist attacks on her soil, the one carried out by the so-called Irish Republican Army...from the early 1970s to the late 1990s. The terrorists who carried out those attacks were in many cases arrested, convicted, and imprisoned; they have now all been released, even those serving life sentences....The terrorist leaders who organized and directed the attacks have been given well-paid jobs in the British civil service, with secretaries, chauffeur-driven cars, and handsome pensions. The arm of British law enforcement that bore the brunt of the attacks, the Royal Ulster Constabulary, has been disbanded at the terrorists' request, and its decades of brave and honorable service to the Crown are being flushed down the memory hole as fast as it can be done....Yes, Britain will 'do a Spain.' I am sure of it....They know how to do it slowly, imperceptibly, so that nobody much notices. You could ask a Turkish Cypriot, or a white Rhodesian, or of course an Ulsterman."

NAOMI RAGEN

I'm watching the news on television. The screen is filled with a major Israeli security operation. Seven hundred police are involved, with major military backup. Could it be, perhaps, an attack on Hezbollah, which just sent three terrorists to infiltrate Israel, and attacked Har Dov with artillery fire, killing a 20 year old soldier from Beersheva?

No, they are involved in clearing out a bunch of teenagers from an abandoned hotel in Gush Katif! There are ten soldiers and policemen for every kid. I see them dragging the children by their legs. I see them putting a young girl in a head hold. It takes them twenty minutes, tops, to empty the "right-wing extremist stronghold."

And this is how I feel: Disengaged, in the real sense of the word, not Mr. Sharon's spin. I feel detached, withdrawn, my ties and obligations severed.

Who are these people who are running my country? I didn't elect them. I voted for those who promised to support Gush Katif, to fight terrorism. I sent my son to the army to shoulder arms and risk his young life to protect his people, not drag them kicking and screaming out of their homes.

Of course, you'd never know this listening to the Israeli media, who have joined forces with European and Palestinian spin doctors to foster anti-Israel propaganda. How many times did I hear the newscaster showing this shameful footage call these kids "Men of the Right." Men? I didn't see any men. I saw fifteen year-olds, confused and unhappy and hyper.

Now why should that be? I mean, the fact that their government gave out guns to terrorists after signing worthless agreements with them couldn't be a factor, could it? It couldn't be seeing their friends, neighbors, parents, teachers and Rabbis gunned down or blown up in cold blood by their Palestinian neighbors? Or the fact that they are about to lose their homes and have their synagogues, schools and even cemeteries bulldozed? I mean, that's no excuse for sitting on the roads and blocking complacent Tel Aviv home-owners trying to get to their television sets and humus. No, they must be "dangerous criminals who will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law."

Disengagement: To detach oneself. Free oneself from an obligation or pledge. To withdraw. I guess that's how I feel about my government and the Israeli news media today. I'm disengaged. I think I speak for many.

Naomi Ragen is a U.S. born novelist living in Israel.

WILLIAM MEHLMAN

If elections were synonymous with democracy, we would owe Adolf Hitler and Yasser Arafat at least half an apology. Ineradicable blots on the face of humanity though they were, they were both elected to their respective offices quite democratically.

The same could be said of Hezbollah, the Iranian-financed, Syrian-enabled terror organization that won all 17 contested south Lebanese seats in that country’s first parliamentary elections in decades. Ditto Hamas, Hezbollah’s Palestinian compadre in murder and torture, whose looming victory in the originally scheduled July 17th elections for the Palestine National Council, compelled PA President Mahmoud Abbas to postpone the election until 2006.

The elections in Iran did not have to be postponed because none of the mullahs who rule that radical Islamic roost was in the slightest put off by the first round victory of Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani as president and of course were delighted by the subsequent landslide victory of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the hardline mayor of Teheran who won the runoff in a landslide.

The defeated Rafsanjani, let it be understood, had been labeled a “moderate” by a Western world whose unyielding quest for Islamic “moderates” with whom it can “deal,” makes Diogenes’ search for an honest man look like an exercise in sloth. As the old saying goes, if you can’t find a “moderate,” invent one. That suits the mullahs just fine. If it’s elections the West chooses to dwell on while Iran completes the enrichment of its plutonium, well then, give them elections. It was Ali Khamenei’s spokesman who put these Iranian elections into their proper context. “Freedom, democracy and stupidities of this type,” he averred, “cannot be carried over in any part and these concepts are out of spirit with the principles of Islam. Islam always spoke with the sword in hand and I don’t see why now we should change attitudes and talk with other civilizations.”

It is their participation in elections that is rapidly transforming Hamas from a blood-spattered killer and crippler of women and children into a “political party,” a “player” in the jaundiced eyes of the real-politicos. And who can count the number of “elections” Robert Mugabe has won in Zimbabwe? Had the Mafia been astute enough to follow the electoral path, the Dapper Don would have been addressing Rotary Club luncheons instead of ending his days in prison.

What all this underscores is the obvious fact that elections, divorced from a moral and ethical framework, however “democratic” they might be, have as much relevance to democracy as a symposium on chastity in a bordello. And where sovereign states are concerned, that framework must include freedom of speech, the press, religion and personal physical movement, the civilized treatment of women, concern for the rights and safety of minorities, racial and ethnic equity, the right to a fair trial and laws codifying and protecting all those rights. Above all, the litmus test of any democracy is its tolerance and acceptance of the “other” in its midst.

The Arab world has yet to satisfy any of these criteria. Nowhere does the application of “democracy” to describe its political posturings – elections included – appear as oxymoronic as in its 57-year denial of the slightest measure of tolerance and acceptance to its most “significant other,” Israel. And nowhere is that fact more tragically illustrated than in the Palestinian context..

The thought of a “democratic” Palestine living side-by-side in peace with its Jewish neighbor, as envisioned by President Bush, is reduced to gibberish by anybody who spends 10 minutes exposed to the material gathered, translated, published and rebroadcast by Israel’s Palestine Media Watch, the aptly named watchdog that monitors Palestinian radio, TV and the press every day of every year. The venom, the calumny, the hatred, the demonization, the threats of annihilation directed against Israel is incessant, deafening, almost beyond conception. And it comes from every direction – the mosques, the markets, the schools, the kindergartens, the internet, even the board games and the crossword puzzles. Goebels and Streicher at their malevolent best never achieved this degree of saturation. Most egregious of all, it emanates from a Palestinian leadership that is boldly attempting to convince the world, most particularly the U.S., that its election pretensions have some relation to democracy and democratic behavior.

What head of any state calling itself civilized would publicly proclaim the existence of its democratic neighbor – the one with whom it is expected to share peaceful borders – the “greatest crime in human history.” Those were the exact words of Mahmoud Abbas on the occasion of Israel’s 57th birthday in May. To Mr. Abbas, of course, it wasn’t the 57 anniversary of Israel’s independence, but “Nakba” or “Catastrophe” Day, an official Palestinian holiday marked by black attire, sirens, special mosque services and other signs of public mourning. Can President Bush really conceive of this confidante of Yasser Arafat, certified holocaust denier and paymaster for the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre of Israeli athletes, creating a legitimate democracy prepared to live in peace with a neighbor whose existence he’s characterized as a “crime,” no matter how many elections he presides over?

Echoing Mr. Abbas, the Palestinian Authority’s prime Minister, Mr. Ahmed Qurei employed the Nakba Day inversion of Israel’s independence celebration to declare that “our wound is still bleeding 57 years later.” “Our people,” he added, “will never forget. The generations will never forgive.” The last word on the subject was appropriately left to Hamas, the PA’s newly minted “political” partner. Hamas took the occasion of Israel’s 57th birthday to label it a “cancer” and to promise to continue bombing buses, hotels and cafes “until the liberation of the last inch of our land and the last refugee returns to his home.”

If prosaic venom doesn’t convey to the White House and the State Department the “democratic” spirit of the Palestinian leadership’s “Nakba” perspective on life alongside Israel, perhaps some poetic venom might help. For that, there is hardly a better source than Palestinian poetry icon Mahmoud Darwish. The following excerpt from his much loved, widely memorized 1988 poetic address to his Israeli “others,” “Passing Through Passing Words,” pretty much says it all:

“Take your names and get out…
Don’t pass among us like flying insects
Take your bony skeletons
Collect your illusions from abandoned holes and get out…
It’s time to get out
Reside where you will, but not among us
Die where you will, but not among us
Ours is the past here
And the present and the future
Ours is the world here
So get out of our soil
Our earth, our sea
Our wheat, our salt
Our everything
Get out of all memory
And remove with you, your dead. "

The forced evacuation of 9,000 Israeli Jews in 25 thriving communities in Gush Katif (Gaza) and northern Samaria makes Darwish’s depraved poetic rantings read like prophecy -- even to the extent of the Sharon government’s plan to exhume the graves of the terror victims buried in those communities.

Mahmoud Abbas had it half right. The world is indeed being asked to bear witness and give consent to a monumental crime -- not the birth of Israel, but the crime being devised against Jews in the land chosen for them by God. It is the perversion of democracy and everything it has ever stood for, the “Nakba” that could haunt us to the end of our days

William Mehlman chairs AFSI in Israel .

MOSHE SHARON

In 1683 the armies of Islam besieged Vienna for the second time. The first time had been a century and a half earlier, when the Islamic Empire was at its zenith under the reign of Suleiman the Magnificent (1520-66). Then it had seemed the conquest of all of Europe was only a matter of time. Fortunately for the Christian world, when the Moslem armies attempted to besiege Vienna the second time, the Ottoman Empire was already on the decline, its expansion westwards had been checked, and the European powers could begin threatening the Muslim Empire rather than be threatened by it.

Yet for the Ottomans, the Christian countries of Europe remained Dar al-Harb – “the Land of War” – the term used by the Muslims for all the territories not yet under Islamic rule. The term, charged with religious belief and emotional fervor, is both legal and political. Legally, it defines the relations between the Lands of Islam and the lands of the infidels. Infidels – in Arabic Kuffar (singular: kaffir) – are all those who are not Muslims, mainly Jews and Christians. They are, therefore, seen, both theoretically and actually, to be in a state of war with Muslims. Allah made it incumbent on Muslims, the Community of the Faithful, to subjugate the whole world and bring it under His rule. The fire of jihad, Holy War, must burn in the chest of every Muslim. It is a personal and collective duty, incumbent on every Muslim leader, particularly the head of the Muslim Empire, to pursue this goal. Every Christian who came from the Land of War – dar al harb – had the status of harbi. This was different than to be a dhimmi, the status imposed on Christian and Jews permitted to live under Islamic rule as third class subjects. The harbi was simply an alien enemy of Islam, even when no acts of war were underway between the two sides.

Europe, more than any other part of the world, personified the Land of War. As the major enemy of Islam, it was the natural place to wage Jihad. But Europe proved to be a difficult enemy. In the middle Ages the Crusades brought the Europeans, for the first time, into the heart of Islamic lands, but Islam recovered from this success of the infidels, which had put the Muslims for the first time in a defensive position. But Islam did not recover from the loss of Spain (“the Jewel in the Islamic Crown”). Once Islam conquered Spain, it became for Muslims an Islamic land. Its re-conquest by infidels seemed to reverse the course of history for it negated the rule which says that once Islamic, that land is forever Islamic Land. To this very day, Spain, which the Arabs insist on calling Andalus, is regarded as a lost Islamic territory, the recovery of which is a religious and political objective and duty.

After destroying Constantinople in 1453, the last symbol of Roman Christianity in the east, the Ottoman offensive against Europe in the 16th century was the natural course of the Islamic jihadi idea. However, the Ottoman Empire failed, retreated, deteriorated, and was finally destroyed in the Great War in 1918. Moreover Christian civilization and the modern way of life of Europe were victorious in another way. Kemal Attaturk's national regime in 20th century Turkey dramatically changed the nature of state and society by importing from Europe whatever western civilization could offer, from script to technology, from system of government to fashion, with the declared aim of creating a modern secular Turkey and expelling Islam from its dominant position in state and society.

Another major setback to Islam was the establishment of the state of Israel. This was a greater blow than the loss in the 15th century of Spain, a double reverse of history because it involved not only the loss of land but also the wholly unacceptable situation where Jews, who are dhimmis, rule over Muslims.

There was yet another setback as Europe ceased to be the only dangerous land of the infidels. The United States joined this category, and proved even a tougher opponent than Europe, both militarily and ideologically.

However, modern Muslim activists came to realize that Europe, after World War II, showed signs of frailty and weakness, and the mighty West in general proved to be surprisingly vulnerable. They saw Islam as a vital growing power waiting to be deployed, with changed strategy and tactics. The revivalist Muslim movements – the Iranian revolutionaries, the Muslim Brotherhood, al-Qaeda, Hamas and Islamic Jihad, to mention only a few, looked for, and discovered, the weak links in the Western defense. On the one hand they proved that terror, similar to that practiced by the Muslim assassins in the Middle Ages, can be devastating, its impact going beyond actual physical damage and bloodshed. In one act of terror they succeeded in changing the government in Spain. Also, like the Soviets, they soon discovered the ease with which they can use the European democratic system, the liberal ideologies, leftist intellectuals, the media, and even the governments, to achieve their objectives.

The Muslim jihad for the conquest of Europe started a few decades ago, and the Europeans are taking part, not on the enemy side, but as full collaborators. The establishment of the European Union has done away with national borders, obliterated defined national entities, weakened ancient values and the sense of national pride and national defense. It has also played into Muslim hands by creating a wonderful infrastructure for the infiltration of Islam into Western Europe by millions of Muslims who keep their Muslim identity, hold on to their Muslim values and regard the whole of Europe as their own land. Bin laden, Qaradawi, the Ayatollahs of Iran, and many other teachers of Islam tell them that they arrive in Europe as masters not as immigrants. These Muslims, using European laws and exploiting leftist intellectuals, the “Useful Fools” (to use Lenin’s immortal definition), behave like masters, rather than guests, in the host countries. Thousands of mosques have been established in every country from Finland to France. The Muslim way of life is even imposed on economic institutions, and the Islamic version of history and thought is creeping into all aspects of political and intellectual life, affecting the educational system on every level.

As early as 1983, official Europe convened the Hamburg Symposium to humbly acknowledge the importance of the Islamic contribution to the creation of European civilization, and to encourage the study of the Arabic language and Islamic civilization in Europe, free from the (sound, and scientific) “Orientalist method” of research, namely in accordance with Muslim traditional methods; concurrently it encouraged the departure from the Judeo-Christian heritage and minimizing its contribution to Western Civilization.

This effort to drive modern Europe away from its true moral, cultural and historical sources, in which Judaism occupies a central place, also has a political aspect. This aspect is yet another success of Islam, a byproduct of the infiltration of its version of modern history into European society and institutions. Muslim propaganda has succeeded in presenting the foundation of the State of Israel as a sin committed by the Europeans against the World of Islam, an easy way by which post war Europe atoned for the crimes of the Nazis and their helpers at the expense of the poor Arabs.

The idea has sunk not only into the minds of the “useful fools” from the European Left, but has also found its way into the business and political community. Nowadays, one can hear in all these circles and in the media (sometimes couched in clouded language) that the establishment of Israel was a “moral and political mistake.” In other words Europe would be very happy to see an all-out Arab pogrom, to which it would quietly contribute its part, that would rid her of the guilt of this “moral and political” sin. Much of the European pro-Arab policy in the Middle East, and particularly the official enmity to Israel, is directed and formed by these sentiments. And we have not yet mentioned the ingrained anti-Semitism which was covered over for a while, but from which Europe has never recovered.

Instead of paying attention to its steady conquest by Islam and the loss of its Western character, Europe has again found the usual, ancient solution to all its problems – the Jews, and now also, very conveniently, their state. There is a grave possibility that Europe will become Islamic in less than half a century and the transformation will be of its own making.

Professor Moshe Sharon teaches Islamic History at the Hebrew University. This article is adapted from a longer essay published in German and Hebrew.

YALE KRAMER

[Editor’s note: A recent major biography of Aaron Aaronsohn by Samuel Katz The Network: The Aaronsohn Saga is not yet available in English.]

Every once in a while I encounter a good story that is both surprising, counter-intuitive, and relatively unknown in this part of the world.

When we hear of Jews who have left their mark on the modern world we are most often told about great physicists, doctors, scholars, musicians, bankers. The story I heard recently is about a group of young Jewish men and women who became amateur spies, men and women not only of sensibility but of action, and great courage, a group led by a charismatic leader whose strength and knowledge played a powerful part in the victory of the Allies in World War I in the Middle East.

Before the outbreak of the war in 1914 the Jews of Palestine were poised to be loyal to the Ottoman Empire, which controlled all of the Levant at that time. But as soon as Turkey became an ally of the Central Powers it became apparent that the Germans were the real masters of the country.

It also became clear to Aaron Aaronsohn, a leader of the Palestinian Jewish community, that the German aspirations to seize and control the Middle East would make any Zionist hope of a Jewish Palestine virtually impossible. He decided that the Turkish-German hold over Palestine must be broken, and that the British Government would be the best hope for a Jewish Palestine.

To achieve these ends he formed a group with the name of NILI, an acronym based on the initials of its Hebrew password: Netzach Israel Lo Yeshaqer, (The Glory of Israel shall not lie down), a phrase from the Book of Samuel. The leaders of NILI were a triumvirate of outstanding men—besides Aaron Aaronsohn, a scientist of international reputation, there were Absalom Feinberg, a brilliant poet and an extraordinarily courageous man, and Alex Aaronsohn, Aaron’s younger brother, who achieved some fame later in America as an author and lecturer.

One of the biggest problems that the leaders of NILI had was to contact and convince the officers of the British Military Intelligence in Cairo that this group of eager amateurs, officially citizens of the Ottoman Empire, and Jews to boot, had something of value to offer the mighty British military. For over a year, from 1915 to well into 1916, Alex Aaronsohn and then Absalom Feinberg made many attempts to get past the gatekeepers of British Intelligence and were met with disdain and insolence on each occasion.

It wasn’t until Aaron Aaronsohn himself decided to break through to the people at the top that contact was finally established. Aaronsohn was not one to be taken lightly. A giant of a man with a booming voice, he was by then world famous as an agronomist and the leading expert in Middle Eastern agricultural science. After a long, dangerous, and secretive journey from Palestine by way of Berlin and Copenhagen, he arrived in London and, through his commanding presence and reputation, he was able to convince diplomat Sir Mark Sykes and through him Lloyd George that NILI was an important source of military intelligence.

Having been a scientific protege of the Baron de Rothschild, Aaronsohn was used to dealing with important men. Eventually he came to know and work with all of the major players in the Middle East from Djemal Pasha, Governor General of Palestine, to General Edmund Allenby. Here, from his diary, is an excerpt about one of Aaronsohn’s meetings with T.E Lawrence:

"Sunday, August 12th, 1917. Cairo-Alexandria.

I had a chat with Captain Lawrence this morning. Our interview was devoid of amenity. He has been too successful at an early age—and is infatuated with himself. He gave me a lesson on our colonies—the mentality of the people—the feelings of the Arabs, etc., etc. As I was listening to him I could almost imagine that I was attending a conference by a scientific anti-Semitic Prussian speaking English….One would gather from the above interview that nothing can be done in Judea and Samaria where Faisal will never gain access. There might be something to do in Galilea. But Lawrence will conduct his investigation by his own methods in order to learn of the mentality of the Jews in Galilean colonies. If they are in favour of the Arabs they shall be spared, otherwise they shall have their throats cut. He is still at the age where people do not doubt themselves—happy young man! He is plainly hostile to us…"

What did NILI do to help the Brits win the war in the Middle East? They were able to create a network of agents everywhere in Turkish Palestine: Medical officers in the Turkish Army, engineers who were at the head of road building and water supply, recruiting officers, commissariat officers. Others were on the front lines collecting first-hand data about military positions, guns, etc. Even the strategies of the Turkish GHQ were discovered.

The net result was that the British acquired an accurate assessment of the Turkish order of battle by the middle of 1917, as well as a clearer picture of the degree of Turkish disorganization and the poor morale of the Turkish forces. But perhaps most important of all was what Aaronsohn himself was able to contribute strategically because of his knowledge of the Sinai desert. He knew that there was water available in the Sinai and where it was located. This intelligence was crucial in Allenby’s breaking through the Turkish front by a concentrated attack against Beersheba.

Eventually NILI came to be regarded as the Brit’s best and most reliable source of intelligence. This is suggested by Major General George MacDonough, Director of Military Intelligence at the War Office, who gave a lecture in 1919 at the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich: “You will no doubt remember the great campaign of Lord Allenby in Palestine and perhaps you are surprised at the daring of his actions. Someone who is looking from the side lines, lacking knowledge about the situation, is likely to think that Allenby took unwarranted risks. That is not true. For Allenby knew with certainty from his intelligence (in Palestine) of all the preparations and all the movements of his enemy. All the cards of his enemy were revealed to him, and so he could play his hand with complete confidence. Under these conditions, victory was certain before he began.

A few years later, Raymond Savage, Deputy Military Secretary to Allenby, told a New York press conference: “It was very largely the daring work of young spies, most of them natives of Palestine, which enabled the…Field-Marshal to accomplish his undertaking effectively.”

But despite NILI’s contribution to British Military intelligence, it was Aaron Aaronsohn’s powerful influence on Allenby which shaped the latter’s strategy in the 1917-18 Palestine campaign. Aaronsohn knew Turkish Syria and its rulers as perhaps no other man then did and could articulate a compelling view of the political and military situation which Allenby was able to exploit victoriously.

Aaron Aaronsohn died mysteriously in May of 1919 during a flight over the English Channel at the age of 43. At the time he was an important participant in Anglo-Zionist affairs and had he lived he would doubtless have made significant contributions to the development of Israel.

Yale Kramer is a psychiatrist and writer who co-authors the website Horsefeathers on which this first appeared.

RABBI DOV GREENBERG

We've been reading about the "road map" to peace in the Middle East for years. Anyone can see it hasn't taken us very far. It's been like trying to get to the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco using a map of Lower Manhattan. You can try harder, pray harder, and double your speed. But your efforts only succeed in getting you to the wrong place faster. The fundamental problem has nothing to do with traffic jams, diversions or delays; it has everything to do with using the wrong map.

For over a decade, Israel has navigated tirelessly to achieve peace using the Oslo map, which was built on this premise: Assuage the other side's grievances -- end the occupation; give the Palestinians land, armed forces, their own state -- and peace will follow. Hence in 1993, Israel brought the P.L.O. out of exile and gave it recognition, international legitimacy, governmental autonomy and authority over 98% of the Palestinian population.

Where has this map brought us? In the past decade, terrorism has increased dramatically. Eleven years ago, Yitzhak Rabin, in his historic speech on the White House lawn, spoke of a future in which mothers no longer wept for sons lost in battle. But the weeping has not ended; it's reached a deafening crescendo. Terrorists killed more Israelis in the years since Oslo than in the 45 years of Israel's existence before that.

Obviously we've been using the wrong map to move us toward peace. Is there an alternative?

Ludwig Wittgenstein once said that his aim as a philosopher was to show the fly the way out of the fly-bottle. The fly keeps banging its head against the glass in a vain attempt to get out. The more it tries, the more it fails, until it drops from exhaustion. The one thing it forgets to do is look to the sky. Like the frustrated fly, the one thing Israel has forgotten to do is look to the sky.

If Israelis were to look up, they would see an alternative map to peace, provided by El Al, Israel's renowned airline.

El Al is the gold standard in aviation security. There is a security, safety and comfort on El Al planes felt by all of its passengers — Jews, Christians and Moslems alike — that one does not feel on any other aircraft. This is an astounding achievement, since El Al is the world's most coveted terrorist target in the sky.

Now, imagine if El Al decided that because it has been despised for decades, it is time to change its policy and methods of security.

First, El Al would invite people who in the past wished to hijack and blow up its planes and passengers and give them "autonomy" on one section aboard El Al aircraft. In these sections, former hijackers could move about freely without scrutiny or supervision. Next, El Al would make these "reformed militants" responsible for the security of passengers seated in their area of the aircraft. This overture of peace would certainly demonstrate to the international community that El Al is truly committed to coexistence and liberal values. It would help put an end to the animosity felt by many toward El Al.

Some would propose that El Al show more "flexibility" and relinquish its control of the cockpit to the former terrorists. Some would advocate that El Al construct a wall to enclose the autonomous aisles or to unilaterally withdraw from several seats that are in close proximity to those aisles.

All of these strategies, of course, would be suicidal for El Al. All of them miss the fundamental point. Compromising on security or granting autonomy on a single seat would spell cataclysmic disaster for the entire airline. The life of every passenger, Muslim, Jew and Christian, would be placed in mortal danger. Travelers would before long bid farewell to El Al. That would spell the end of the airline.

The only way for El Al to eradicate terror from its airplanes is not through concessions or autonomy, but rather by destroying any hope the terrorists have of achieving their objectives. El Al has adopted an uncompromising stance against terrorism, and they make no apologies. The world stands in admiration of what El Al has accomplished. The El Al road map goes by the name "peace through strength."

This is the right road map to peace in Israel.

If the last decade of the Oslo process has taught anything, it is that no responsible government can give in to terror. Such behavior does not end terror, but invites it yet more.

The Arab terror war against Israel is no more a territorial conflict than was al Qaeda's strike against America, and it can no more be resolved by the current "road map" than anti-Americanism could be appeased by yielding New Jersey to Osama bin Laden.

Hence, Israel's intent to withdraw from Gaza is profoundly misdirected. The Palestinian goal over the last decade has been to demoralize the Israeli people through terrorism and force a unilateral Israeli withdrawal from the territories. If they succeed, the relentless war against Israel will be launched far more advantageously from their newly acquired territory.

At the end of World War II, Winston Churchill quipped, "You can rely on America to do the right thing, once it has exhausted the alternatives." Israel, which has far fewer alternatives than the U.S., has long ago exhausted them all. How much more innocent blood needs to be spilled before we abandon the failed maps of the past?

How many more children have to be blown up by suicide bombers before we pursue the course El Al has bravely charted?

Rabbi Dov Greenberg is director of Chabad at Stanford University.

HUGH FITZGERALD

The question itself -- "Why do they hate the West" -- is the wrong question, and inevitably encourages the wrong answers.

The correct question is: "Why do they hate the rest?" Anytime anyone, anywhere, talks about "Why they hate America" or "Why they hate the West" they have already, unwittingly, conceded much of the case.

But like the Ptolemaic (geocentric) theory, that could not account for the data or have predictive value as did the Copernican (heliocentric), those who keep focusing only on "the West" will not be able to arrive at the correct conclusion.

Again and again it must be pointed out that the greatest victims of Islam have been Hindus, with some 60-70 million killed, and tens of thousands of temples destroyed. The Greco-Buddhist civilization of Afghanistan was largely destroyed by Muslim invaders. The Hindus and Buddhists who once inhabited the East Indies have been steadily reduced, under constant Muslim pressure, as a percentage of the population. The attacks all over Asia, and all over Africa, of Muslims against Christians (not only the Sudan, but the Jihad, with Egyptian pilots strafing Ibo villages, that was the war to suppress Biafra) and animists, need to be constantly recalled.

Not the "War Against the West."

But "War Against the Rest" -- all the Rest.

If Israel was, in the last half-century, the Infidel victim that received the most media attention, this was only because the tiny Infidel state of Israel is located right in the Middle East. Similarly, the Christians of Lebanon, though they did not possess a state of their own, have been targets, especially the Maronites of Lebanon.

If America has been the main target, it is not because of American foreign policy but because America is the most powerful, and most unyielding, and most unsusceptible (chiefly, but not entirely, because it has far more believers in muscular Christianity, not the etiolated pro-"Palestinian" kind, and far fewer followers of the Western cult of "tolerance" that the Dutch, to their own great surprise and sorrow, have suddenly and still confusedly realized leaves much to be desired, and is no substitute for knowledge of the enemy).

What Do Women Want? is a title with which we are familiar.

What Do Muslims Want?

That is a title that needs a book to be written under it. Okay, I hereby copyright it, pour tous pays sauf l'U.R.S.S., (which rumor has it no longer exists, so I needn't worry)

Phrase the question wrongly, and hark what silliness follows.

Phrase it correctly -- and you are in, like Flynn.

One of those taking part in the discussion here answered: "They hate us because they think we're corrupt and evil. We have pornography. We have drug use. We have homosexuality."

Is that it? Do the Sudanese blacks, all those Nuer and Dinka tribesmen, spend their time sniffing cocaine or watching Linda Lovelace? Did those 60-70 million Hindus who were killed, or Buddhists, or those devout Christians, singing their hymns, routinely blown up in Pakistan and Indonesia, or those Christian nurses punished in Saudi Arabia for singing Christmas hymns, or those naughty Copts in Egypt, who dare to remain Copts, and ditto with those Maronites in Lebanon -- are these people "hated" and persecuted and murdered by Muslims because they were "corrupt and evil...have pornography...drug use...homosexuality"?

What a failure to comprehend. No, let me put it to you bluntly: the Dinka and Nuer, the Hindus and the Buddhist monks in Thailand, the Christians opening their hymnals in Karachi or Lagos, the Hindu villagers in Kashmir and Pakistan and Bangladesh, are not now, and never were, "corrupt and evil...[with] pornography...drug use...homosexuality."

It is not cocaine and rainbow parties which caused Muslims to persecute and murder non-Muslims everywhere they conquered, and today, even within the countries called "Muslim," to keep the non-Muslims in their place.

It is the fact that they were, they are, Infidels. That's it. Whether we are in our Sunday-go-to-meeting best, or looking like Paris Hilton, looking at Rembrandt, or solemnly examining at the Tate Modern the unmade bed, underpants, tampax, and all the unseemly rest, that recently won a prize as "art."

Infidels. The prim and the libertine, le cru et le cuit, the wise man and the fool. It doesn't matter. Infidels -- that's our original sin. And unless we submit, as dhimmis or as "reverts," we will have hell to pay. Don't think that putting your soul in an upright position will save you, will prevent those Muslims from trying to hijack the civilizational plane you are on -- it won't work.

No, Mr. and Mrs. and Miss Infidel, and all the ships at sea, wherever you are, you can do no right by Islam. Don't even try.

Hugh Fitzgerald is a frequent contributor to Outpost. This article first appeared on www.jihadwatch.org

Ruth King

A few weeks ago, a man, motivated by racial hatred, killed a woman in the White Plains, N.Y. mall. His comments were chilling: he awoke that morning determined to find a female victim, and his dispassionate account of the random way in which he chose her and stabbed her, evoked media outrage. The tabloids called him a “heartless monster” while more sedate papers called him a “brutal and remorseless criminal.” We were spared blather about the "hopelessness and despair" that must have engendered such barbaric behavior.

This leads me to wonder why the same wanton murder committed out of hatred in the same random way, but with more victims, is attributed to “insurgents” or “militants” with exquisite regard for the “grievances” which supposedly occasion their barbaric conduct. How many do you have to kill before you are branded a terrorist? If the setting is Israel, forget about it.

Case in point: England’s Prime Dhimmister reeled off a long list of nations afflicted by terrorism in his statement to Parliament in the wake of London bombings. Said Blair: “It seems probable that the attack was carried out by Islamist extremist terrorists, of the kind who over recent years have been responsible for so many innocent deaths in Madrid, Bali, Saudi Arabia, Russia, Kenya, Tanzania, Pakistan, Yemen, Turkey, Egypt and Morocco, of course in New York on September 11 but in many other countries too.”

Note: Israel is not even included. Neither was Israel on the London Sun’s list: the paper subsequently apologized, saying it was because so many attacks took place in Israel [apparently disqualifying it]. Speaking of terrorism without including Israel is like talking about the Holocaust and mentioning only the gypsies and homosexuals killed by the Nazis but omitting the Jews.

Only days after the London bombings two horrendous events took place….in Israel, a suicide bomb in a mall in Netanya, which killed five people and injured dozens. The carnage in Netanya could have been worse than that in London had not enhanced security intimidated the killer who detonated his bombs outside the mall. Why were not the Israelis praised as lavishly as the British were for their stoic and civilized reaction? Why did the mainline media virtually ignore this event? Ah yes, they were too busy calling the brave citizens of Israel opposed to the destruction of Jewish communities in Gaza “fanatics” and “extremists.”

The other horrible murder was committed in Iraq (also not on Blair’s list). A suicide bomber in a car plowed into an American GI distributing candy to Iraqi children, killing the soldier and many of the children. Americans were properly incensed, but the hallmarks of both attacks are the same. Same ideology, same methods, same killers, same Arabs, same jihadist goals.

In our own country, where our President once reacted so strongly to the events of 9/11, we now conduct parallel and hypocritical policies on terrorism. Pundits write about “connecting the dots” as they trace terrorism, but the only time Israel is included is when the “dots” focus on the Palestinian Arabs under Israeli “occupation.” Condoleeza Rice appeases Mahmoud Abbas, a terrorist mastermind, referring obsequiously to 'The Palestinian Authority and its elected president Mr. Abbas.” She dismisses with proper disdain and revulsion the Arabs who create havoc in Afghanistan and Iraq, but continues to press Israel for concessions each time the Arabs ratchet up their demands. Why talk tough about Korea but tiptoe around the murderous intent of the Arabs aligned against Israel?

There is serious moral mischief here. It has no benign explanation.