Why Not Two?
Herbert Zweibon

From the Editor
Rael Jean Isaac

The New York Times and the Jews
Ed Lasky

Who Is Amir Peretz
Steven Plaut

Islam is a Riot
Burt Prelutsky

My Trip to Israel
Robert Spencer

Do Iranians Say What Others Think?
Edward Alexander

Uneasy Lies the Throne of Eastern Palestine
Ruth King

The Trap (Revisited)
Jochanan Bloch

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

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Herbert Zweibon

The fire-breathing speech by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad calling for Israel to "be wiped off the map" focused attention on Iran as the greatest danger to Israel. There is nothing new in the sentiment, which was repeatedly articulated by the Ayatollah Khomeini and those who followed him. But Iran's nuclear weapons program lends force to the threat. Several years ago Ahmadinejad's supposedly "moderate" predecessor Hashemi Rafsanjani made the chilling assertion that while Iran could withstand a second strike, "the use of a nuclear bomb against Israel would leave nothing on the ground."

We do not make light of the approaching danger from Iran. But that existential danger makes it all the more distressing that the United States itself undermines Israel's sovereignty and fosters her vulnerability to the more immediate dangers posed by neighboring enemies. Case in point: in November Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice successfully pressured an unwilling Israel to sign agreements that abrogate Israel's basic rights.

Indeed so terrible are these agreements that it is reported that, in an unprecedented move, all Israel's security branches sent strong written protests to both Sharon and Minister of Defense Shaul Mofaz. On Frontpage P. David Hornik has chronicled some of the most egregious provisions of these agreements. At the Rafah crossing between Egypt and Gaza traffic is to be "monitored" by Egyptians on one side and the Palestinian Authority on the other. A contingent of European Union personnel will monitor the monitors, but the EU has already made clear they will serve as rubber stamps. All Israel will have are surveillance cameras which will send video feeds to a liaison office at Kerem Shalom. Writes Hornik: "Incredibly, the liaison office...on sovereign, supposedly undisputed Israeli territory--is to be staffed by Israeli as well as European and Palestinian personnel. In this theater of the absurd, Israel not only loses the right to a presence on the Gaza-Sinai border; it also loses the right independently to monitor the monitors by video feed on its own territory without being monitored there, in turn, by other Europeans and Palestinians!”

Then there is the Karni crossing from Gaza to Israel. Under the agreement up to 400 trucks from Gaza will go through daily by the end of next year. What is more, bus convoys, starting this month, and truck convoys, next month, will go to Judea and Samaria: i.e., as Netanyahu told the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, “Kassam rockets and mortars will be transported through Judea and Samaria to be launched at Israel…The biggest danger is that the Palestinians would be able to transfer the Strella missiles, which are already in Gaza, to the area overlooking Ben Gurion Airport and threaten planes landing and taking off.”

But the problems with the crossings pale in insignificance compared to the agreement’s biggest blow: a green light for the Palestinians to build a seaport in Gaza. Four years ago Israel captured the Karine A cargo ship, attempting to smuggle weapons from Iran to Gaza. Notes Hornik: “It need not have bothered. Under the new deal, the Karine A will be a harmless fishing boat compared to the munitions, certain to include long-range missiles sooner or later, that the Palestinians will be able to bring in routinely.”

This administration repeatedly sounds the theme that we cannot now leave Iraq because to do so would be to create a terror base in the Middle East. Yet it is becoming ever more obvious that the Bush administration (for all the empty bubble about Palestinian “democracy”) in the real world is making every effort to establish an anarchic terror base alongside Israel, where Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, al Qaeda, Hamas and assorted groups of the same ilk will vie with one another. If one terror base is desirable, why not two?

Rael Jean Isaac

Naming Sharon's New Party

Ariel Sharon is establishing a new party he has named Kadima, meaning "Forward." Given that Sharon's purpose is to retreat from more territory (and he feels the Likud, bruised from the last round, is likely to balk at the massive expulsions of Jews he has in mind), we suggest a more appropriate name for the new party: Achora meaning "Backwards."

The party will send Israel backwards in every respect. Since it will not have a majority, Sharon will depend on a coalition with Labor which, under the leadership of the primitive Amir Peretz (see Steven Plaut's article on Israel's new leader of the Labor Party in this issue), will mean a return to the stifling socialism from which the Israeli economy has finally begun to emerge.

Idiocy, American Jewish Style

The academy is overflowing with anti-Israel fervor. Mainline churches embark on divestment campaigns. Moslems attack Jews, desecrate cemeteries and destroy synagogues in France. Anti-Semitism in England becomes virulent, the flames fed by its ever-growing Moslem population. Iran's President calls for Israel to be wiped off the map. A TV series based on that notorious forgery the Protocols of the Elders of Zion further poisons the Arab world against Jews. Opponents of the Iraq war, left and right, attack it as a neo-con (read Jewish) conspiracy to help Israel.

So how does the Anti-Defamation League address these extremely serious problems? By ignoring them, that's how, and instead attacking evangelical Christians, Israel's chief base of support in the United States, as the great threat against which the Jewish community must mobilize..

The chutzpah of the ADL's Abe Foxman is breathtaking. For what is the sin of the Christian right in his eyes? Why it's doing what the ADL and other Jewish organizations do routinely. As Hillel Halkin aptly observes In an essay entitled "Foxman's Hypocrisy," Foxman accuses the Christian right of pushing an "agenda on a wide range of issues, including judicial nominees, stem-cell research, same-sex marriage, abortion restriction and faith-based initiative" -- each of them issues on which major Jewish organizations have "again and again, fought for politically liberal positions." Columnist Don Feder reports that the ineffable Foxman in June actually wrote to the superintendent of the U.S. Naval Academy demanding an end to the practice of grace being said-- led on a rotating basis by Protestant Catholic and Jewish chaplains -- before midshipmen take lunch. As Jews and Israel come under fire everywhere, this is what engages the ADL!

Not surprisingly, the Union of American Hebrew Organizations, under the equally disgraceful Eric Yoffie, has trotted after Foxman, passing a resolution attacking the Christian right for engaging in political action. With chutzpah to rival Foxman's, it then passed a resolution demanding that the Senate reject Samuel Alito's nomination to the Supreme Court.

It is hard to avoid the conclusion that the fight against anti-Semitism would be best served if the ADL and the UAHC went out of existence, given that both organizations actively promote anti-Semitism by doing their utmost to make enemies of would-be friends.

Christians in "Palestine"

While Christians continue to thrive in Israel, in areas governed by the Palestinian Authority they have shrunk to less than 1.7% of the population. So writes Professor Justus Weiner in his new monograph "Human Rights of Christians in Palestinian Society,” which can be read in full at www.jepa.org/christian-persecution.htm. Weiner writes: "Their plight is, in part, attributable to the adoption of Muslim religious law (sharia) in the constitution of the Palestinian Authority. Moreover the Christians have been abandoned by their religious leaders who, instead of protecting them, have chosen to curry favor with the Palestinian leadership." Their situation has been ignored by the West, the media, and human rights organizations. The Vatican has recently obliquely taken notice, lamenting that Bethlehem, "where Christ was born, the place of the Incarnation...the heart of all Christians" and where Christians were not long ago the majority, may soon be wholly empty of Christians.

"Liberated" Iraq

At the U.S. backed "reconciliation conference," held in Egypt under the auspices of the Arab League, leaders of Iraq's warring Sunnis, Shiites and Kurdish communities reached common ground -- attacking the Americans is "in," attacking Moslem civilians is "out." The "memorandum" issued at the end of the conference by the 100 Iraqi representatives, many of them running in the coming elections, legitimized the insurgency against coalition forces on the grounds that “resistance is a legitimate right of all nations." The memorandum condemned only "terrorism and acts of violence, killing and kidnapping targeting Iraqi citizens and humanitarian, civil government institutions, national resources and houses of worship." Incredibly State Department spokesman Sean McCormack was unconcerned with the endorsement of killing Americans saying the U.S. "had no quarrel" with "the right to peaceful protest." Hello? Ahmad Chalabi was not such a fool, denouncing the conference and calling the distinction between terrorism and resistance "very very dangerous."

While the State Department may strive to put a false face on the proceedings, ordinary Americans may well ask "Is it for this our soldiers sacrificed their lives and continue to sacrifice them?"

Targeting Douglas Feith

It looks as if Douglas Feith, a patriot who gave up a lucrative law practice to serve as undersecretary of defense under Donald Rumsfeld, is being set up to take the rap for the intelligence failures preceding the war. Feith is being unfairly portrayed as "a main architect of the Iraqi war" and Republicans and Democrats alike are piling on this bandwagon. Both the Republican Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and the ranking Democrat on the Senate Committee on Armed Services have demanded an investigation of Feith's "prewar intelligence activities." The Pentagon inspector general has undertaken a review to determine if Feith gave the White House uncorroborated intelligence, bypassing the CIA.

Since the CIA's then director George Tenet is known to have told President Bush that it was a "slam dunk" that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, it would seem that bypassing the CIA or going through the CIA would make little difference. The fact is that all Western intelligence agencies were convinced Saddam Hussein was up to his neck in WMD programs. Blaming Feith is shoddy behavior. Our politicians should be focusing on Iraq's ungrateful politicians, who are legitimizing the murder of our soldiers -- it is shameful of them to turn on one of the most dedicated of our public servants.

Haaretz Outdoes The NY Times

For 20 years CAMERA has painstakingly followed the often biased media coverage of Israel and the Middle East, documenting errors and often obtaining (reluctant) corrections. For the most part CAMERA has covered the U.S. media, although it has also paid attention to the blatant falsities of the BBC. Last year CAMERA opened an office in Israel and began to monitor Haaretz, described by its admirers as Israel's New York Times. To CAMERA's amazement, it discovered that unlike American and international outlets, Haaretz absolutely refused to admit or correct the most egregious errors. Tamar Sternthal, director of CAMERA's Israel office, writes that Haaretz "considers itself above criticism...and appears to believe readers have no right to fault them for shoddy, inaccurate coverage."

Exemplifying Haaretz's incompetence, assistant editor Ruth Meisels inadvertently sent Sternthal what was clearly meant to be internal Haaretz email. Addressed to an Haaretz employee who handled phone calls, the email warned (in Hebrew): "In the event that this [CAMERA complaint] gets to you: We have a quasi 'policy,' on the orders of [editor-in-chief] David [Landau], to ignore this organization and all its complaints, including not responding to telephone messages and screening calls from Tamar Sternhal [sic], director of CAMERA. Otherwise, we will never finish with them."

If Haaretz could anticipate unceasing CAMERA corrections, it is because of the unbelievable sloppiness of its bitterly anti-Israel (in their own lingo, "post-Zionist") reporters and columnists. Haaretz desperately needs the sober corrective sober eye of CAMERA that it so arrogantly repudiates.

The Displaced Jews of Gaza

Now that it has expelled and destroyed the communities of Gush Katif and northern Samaria, the government has turned its back on them. Thousands are still stranded in small hotel rooms, and very few have received any of the promised compensation. Most unbelievable of all, those who had mortgages on their now-destroyed homes have had their bank accounts frozen so that the loans can be automatically repaid. Never mind that the government destroyed their assets — as far as the banks are concerned, and they have been backed by the government, the former residents must repay the loans. Adding insult to injury the Israel Electric Company announced it was leveling a charge on each family for disconnecting the electricity in the homes, greenhouses and other enterprises of Gush Katif. The sum, especially for farmers, is expected to reach thousands of shekels per person. And this despite the fact the Electric Company did no disconnecting -- the army's bulldozers destroyed the houses and with them their electric meters while, in the greenhouses, rioting Arabs looted all the electric equipment.

We strongly recommend reading an interview Kenneth Levin, author of The Oslo Syndrome, gave to Frontpage Magazine. It can be seen at http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=20222

Ed Lasky

The New York Times narcissistically regards itself as the patron saint of minorities. The paper shifts into attack mode whenever it sees the slightest and most ephemeral whiff of prejudice against blacks, women, or immigrants – especially Muslims. Private golf clubs, college sports teams, corporations, the Patriot Act, all have been tarred by the Times in their quest to abolish prejudice.

Yet The New York Times seems to take the opposite approach when dealing with one particular minority: Jews. The Times’ method of dealing with anti-Semitism ranges across a very narrow and disheartening spectrum: indifference, whitewashing, defense and promotion of its practitioners, and finally, and most repugnantly, the paper itself seems to occasionally engage in anti-Semitism.

This charge is not, and never should be, lightly made. Indeed, it would come as a shock to many of its readers. American Jews have always had a soft spot for the Grey Lady, and many rely on the Times as their sole news source, adopting the Times’ opinions with an inexplicable obeisance.

Jews are concentrated in major urban areas and many have some connection to New York City; clearly Jews tend to live in Times Country. A Jewish family rejuvenated the paper over a century ago and any minority group takes pride when glass ceilings are broken and feel a loyalty towards those among them who have struggled and succeeded against great odds.

However, Jews’ loyalty to the Times is misplaced. It certainly has never been reciprocated. Laurel Leff, in her superb and revelatory new book, Buried by the Times: The Holocaust and America’s Most Important Newspaper, has damning evidence that the Times not only ignored the plight of European Jews and the events of the Holocaust, but actively sought to downplay or deep-six any news items regarding the horrors being perpetrated against the Jews. The Times is now publicly-owned, but is led by Arthur (Punch) Sulzberger, Junior, a descendant of the controlling family, who not only is apathetic about his heritage (except the career boost he got from inheriting his position), but takes pride in announcing that he was raised as and considers himself an Episcopalian. However, he has inherited his relatives’ indifference to the plight of Jews.

Many fine groups (CAMERA, Honest Reporting, Mediacrity) have noticed the frequent bias the Times shows against Israel. However, I think the issues surrounding the Times’ attitude toward Jews go beyond disputes between Israel and the Palestinians. The Times has consistently ignored the rank genocidal anti-Semitism that is the governing “philosophy” of Hamas, which it usually describes as an activist group concerned with the social welfare of Palestinians: a philanthropy, in other words.

Similarly, the paper skips over the anti-Semitism taught in schools and during sermons in Palestinian-controlled areas. There are precious few examples of the Times reporting on Arab anti-Semitism, and when it does, it usually involves putative American allies, such as Egypt. However, this can also be seen as a rod to beat the Bush Administration for its inability to influence a nation that received billions in aid from us every year.

As CAMERA points out, “The New Yorker Bests (The New York) Times on Anti-Semitism Coverage”. The experts at CAMERA point out that the New Yorker takes notice of the extreme anti-Semitism of Hezbollah, which they depict as being Nazi-like in intensity and geared toward the destruction of Israel. The Times, on the other hand, portrays Hezbollah as a social service agency, complete with social, educational and agricultural branches. Yep, a regular 4H club. A Nexis search by CAMERA at the end of 2002 showed no mentions in the Times of anti-Semitism in connection with the group. That is correct: no mention.

The whitewashing of anti-Semitism is particularly inexplicable since, given the demographics of its readership, that would seem to be a subject of particular interest. However, the Times seems to systematically avoid reporting instances of anti-Semitism. For example, Democratic Congressman John Conyers staged a mock anti-Bush hearing some months ago. The hearing was simulcast at the Democratic National Headquarters, since a number of democratic Congressmen were in attendance at the “hearing” itself. The “hearings” featured anti-Semitic conspiracy theorists, and during the event anti-Semitic literature was handed out at the DNC. How do we know this? The Washington Post was at the event and reported on the anti-Semitism; The New York Times was there as well, yet had not one iota of news about this aspect of the conference when it reported on it.

Cindy Sheehan was given a lot of space by the Times to attack George Bush – but the Times found no space to touch upon her kooky anti-Semitism. The Times has also had many stories on the Reverend Al Sharpton, with nary a mention of the fact that he has a long history of anti-Semitism and led a small pogrom against a record store in Harlem that resulted in multiple deaths and destruction. When the Times covered the funeral of Rosa Parks it had the audacity to characterize Sharpton and fellow anti-Semite Louis Farrakhan as “dignitaries.”

Among Farrakhan’s notable utterances: “Listen, Jewish people don’t have no hands [sic] that are free of the blood of us. They owned slave ships, they bought and sold us. They raped and robbed us. If you can’t face that, why you gonna condemn me for showing you your past, how then can you atone and repent if somebody don’t [sic] open the book with courage, you don’t have that, but I’ll be damned, I got it.” And of course, the statement that helped to make him what he is: Judaism is “a gutter religion.” In Times-world, that makes him a “dignitary.”

Tariq Ramadan is a Swiss-based “academic” with a long history of statements that could certainly be construed as anti-Semitic. He had a visa to visit this country but the Department of Homeland Security revoked his visa on security grounds. The Times, of course, went to bat for him.

The Times seems to have a soft spot for Muslim anti-Semitic professors because they had a glowing profile of Columbia University assistant professor Joseph Massad who was charged by students of engaging in anti-Semitism. In an April 8th New York Times report, he was called “a fan of free speech” yet he has been charged with shouting down those who disagree with his inflammatory views. He has argued that intellectuals ought to see European Jews as colonizers and that American Jews are often racists. Yet the Times gushed about him, portraying him as a sensitive aesthete and a perfect host. The Times was so eager to support the academics charged with anti-Semitism that it violated its own journalistic code when it refused to interview students for their opinions when Columbia University released its report regarding the controversy.

Of course, the New York Times’ obsession with praising and supporting the most anti-Israel organization in the world (besides the Arab League and terror groups) – the United Nations – is well known. The Times routinely ignores the anti-Semitism behind much of what transpires at the United Nations. This was made clear in a story provided by Anne Bayefsky, whose articles have appeared in some of the finest publications in the world. In an article in Capitalism Magazine, she tells an Orwellian tale of working with the Times to get an op-ed about the UN into its pages. To summarize, she was forced to omit critical passages about many of the dictatorial states represented on the UN Human Rights Commission. However, the censorship was even more repugnant. In her original op-ed she referred to the grotesque anti-Semitism on display at the UN’s Durban Conference against Racism. The Times omitted this reference.

One of the most notorious anti-Semitic stories from the Nixon years concerned an official, Fred Malek, who compiled a list of Jews in the Bureau of Labor Standards because Nixon believed that Jews in that department were frustrating his policies. Some of these people were fired or demoted. Malek is now part of a group that is angling to buy the Washington Nationals baseball team. The Times coverage of the proposed transaction omitted this story from his past. As Timothy Noah at Slate wrote, “Think the New York Times might be interested in a story about anti-Semitism? Naaah.”

The Times' approach toward Jews goes beyond merely ignoring anti-Semitism. The paper seems to have a penchant for praising certain anti-Semites. Yasser Arafat has been responsible for the death of more Jews than anyone since Hitler. Yet the Times wrote that he has a “heroic history”.

When Mayor Giuliani spotted Arafat and his entourage strolling through Lincoln Center on their way to a private box, he was disgusted and he ordered them off the premises. The Times was appalled, and criticized him for failing to play a gracious host.

Mahathir Mohammed is the former Malaysian Prime Minister who said, “Jews rule the world by proxy. They get others to die and fight for them.” He had a long history of such anti-Semitic utterances, blaming the Jews for the Asian financial crisis during the Clinton years, for example. This did not prevent Times columnist Paul Krugman from going to work for him or for later, in a Times column, trying to understand and explain the reasoning behind his comments.

The Times gave front-page treatment to the story of an illegal immigrant teenage Muslim girl who was deported after investigations revealed she was frequently visiting Islamic anti-Semitic websites. Clearly the Times objected to this deportation.

The Times’ cultural coverage has also been marked by an insensitivity to the murders of Jews. The Palestinian film, Paradise Now, about two homicide bombers, was praised as a superior thriller which sustains a mood of breathless suspense, whose shrewdly inserted plot twists and emotional wrinkles are calculated to put your heart in your throat. The reviewer calls these terrorists “all-too-human.”

Perhaps, the most egregious example of the Times’ attitude toward Jewish people is when they adopt the anti-Semitic formulation of Jews as racists or Nazis. They constantly criticize the security barrier that was built to defend Israelis from terror attacks. They have started using a new formulation which seems to support the anti-Semitic charge that Israel is the new apartheid state: they are calling the security barrier a “separation barrier.”

This terminology conjures up an image of Israel attempting to create South African-type Bantustans, a charge of racism that is insulting to all Jewish people. Tom Friedman, the best known of Times columnists, has often propagated the charge that Israeli Jews exercise undue influence in the White House, a charge with ominous anti-Semitic antecedents. Friedman has also talked about “fascist” forces in Israel, another circumlocution for Jewish Nazis.

The Times carried one of the most anti-Semitic ads in recent memory, replete with stereotypes about mysterious Jews working behind the scenes, with a hirsute gorilla holding an Israeli flag on top of the dome of the US Capitol. The ad was sponsored by a well-known anti-Semitic group.

The Times has also attacked Jewish claims to Jerusalem by trying to disparage an archeological discovery in Jerusalem that may be part of King David’s palace. Steve Erlanger of the Times casts doubt on the veracity of this claim by characterizing the dig as being funded by a conservative businessman who wants to prove a Jewish connection to Jerusalem. Barry Rubin points out in his article, “The New York Times Bashes the Jews” that this type of theory is the same sort of anti-Semitic conspiracy theory that is popular in the Arab world. Erlanger gives implicit support to the abhorrent view of Arafat and other extremists that denies any Jewish historical rights to Jerusalem.

While the Times uses its immense resources to protest what it sees as ill-treatment of every minority group under the sun, it seems to have little will to use its prestige to help one of the smallest minorities, Jews. Why American Jews continue their allegiance to a paper that ignores them at best and maligns them at worst is unfathomable. However, maybe some Jews are beginning to wake up and smell the coffee when they unfold the paper in the morning. Readership and circulation figures are plunging in its home market, and it is no longer the most-read paper in New York City. As the internet continues its ascent to become the number one news source for Americans, the Times will now have to face stiff competition. The news will no longer be what they choose to print.

Jews have historically been at the forefront of combating discrimination in America and around the world and have long considered the Times an ally in that noble struggle. Perhaps, the power of cognitive dissonance has created a blind spot regarding the Times’ shameful treatment of Jews. The “say it ain’t so, Joe” impulse can be overpowering. The need to believe that the Times is the gold standard of reporting dies hard.

The Times preens as a protector of minorities around the world. Some of those minority groups are quite large indeed: blacks, Muslims, women. There is one very small minority (less than 0.2% of the world’s population) that is regularly attacked and for whom calls for genocide are routinely made. Yet the Times not only ignores attacks against Jews, its negligence and occasional outright support aids and abets them.

(This is an edited version of an article that appeared on the Nov. 17 The American Thinker website, of which Lasky is news editor.)

Steven Plaut

Amir Peretz, who was crowned head of the Labor Party in a surprise upset over Shimon Peres in the Labor Party primaries, is a party hack who built his career mainly by establishing a power base in Israel's corrupt Histadrut trade union federation. He has always been instantly recognizable in the media thanks to his huge Zapatista moustache. He seems to have been made for caricaturists. "I love the moustache," he once confessed to Dalia Karpel of Haaretz. "A small moustache wouldn't suit me...."

Born in Morocco, Peretz immigrated with his parents to Israel at the age of four. He served as a warehouse and maintenance officer in the Israeli military, sustaining a leg injury in the Sinai in 1974 when his personnel carrier was involved in an accident.

Peretz first came to public attention in 1983 upon his election as mayor of the economically distressed working class Negev town of Sderot. In 1988 Peretz was elected to the Knesset: he was a token Moroccan Jew recruited by Labor leaders concerned with the party's difficulties attracting working class "Mizrachi" or Oriental-Jewish voters. (While styling itself the party of the working man, the Labor Party has long been the bastion of the middle and upper-middle-class Ashkenazi establishment.)

Recognizing that his prospects for a senior position in Labor were close to nonexistent, he joined the disaffected faction set up by Haim Ramon in the early 1990's. Ramon considered himself a serious he was being blocked by the party machine. Ramon and his sidekick Peretz decided to challenge the Labor establishment inside the Histadrut trade union federation with their own dissident slate named "New Haim" (or "New Life," a play on Ramon's first name).

In the Histadrut union elections, the Ramon team beat the Labor machine and seized control of the trade union federation. By then the Histadrut, once a powerful state within the Israeli state, was little more than a weak and corrupt anachronism, stripped of its control of Bank Hapoalim, Israel's largest bank, after the "bank share scandal," and having lost control of many of its insolvent pension funds, which had long served as slush funds for Histadrut commissars, and of its captive "General Sick Fund," Israel's largest health service provider.

In 1995 Ramon resigned from the leadership of the Histadrut, making his way back into the Labor Party’s upper echelons and leaving Peretz in charge. Peretz in 1999 decided to use his power base in the Histadrut to challenge the Labor Party and set up his own competing "labor" faction, named Am Echad (One Nation).

Using funds appropriated, Jimmy Hoffa style, from trade union accounts, Peretz spent his way into the parliament as a small two-seat (later three-seat) party. His victory was, however, large enough to force Labor to co-opt Peretz and his people and offer them reserved Knesset seats in the elections slate.

In parliament Peretz only bothered to show up for about 11 percent of the votes and was dubbed the "laziest member of Knesset."

Politically, Peretz, who likes to describe himself as a "social democrat," is associated with the Israeli Oslo Left, and was long a board member of Peace Now and the left-wing New Israel Fund. His ideas on economics are little different from those of nineteenth century socialists and syndicalists, and he dreams of turning Israel into some sort of hybrid combination of Sweden and Belarus. He has no patience for and no understanding of market economics.

While mouthing socialist slogans about the working class, Peretz actually built his power base mainly on the elitist "unions" of highly skilled, lavishly paid professionals – i.e., feather-bedded workers in government-owned or sponsored monopolies such as the Israel Electric Company, whose "workers," including engineers and technicians, are probably the most grossly overpaid group of people in Israel. Peretz made common cause with the "workers" in this and other sectors – such as the seaports and airports – in which market competition is suppressed by the Israeli government. He single-handedly shut down Israel's airports so often that foreign businessmen were refusing to come to Israel altogether, not from a fear of terrorism but from a fear of getting stranded when the airports were shut down.

Will Sephardic voters be enticed by a Peretz-led Labor Party? Don't count on it. Labor may have long viewed Peretz as a magical key to opening the door to bring in Sephardic voters, but Oriental Jews in Israel remain far more likely to vote for the Likud and the religious parties.

The more likely effect of the Peretz nomination will be to drive away much of Labor's Ashkenazi rank and file – and some of the leaders as well. A good chunk probably will end up in the semi-Marxist Meretz Party whose parliamentary strength had shrunk almost to the endangered-species level.

While mouthing the slogans of the Left about Oslo, "disengagement" and the "peace process," Amir Peretz clearly means to make anti-market economics and "social issues" his main banners. One should bear in mind that the Israeli Left does even more damage when it gets concerned about "social issues" than it does when it pursues "peace." The way it invariably pursues "social issues" is through seeking massive tax increases and budget outlays for "social needs" coupled with massive interference in market mechanisms.

But Peretz's ambitions go well beyond that. Should the Israeli public ever be foolish enough to allow Peretz to seize the reins of power, he will quite simply destroy the Israeli economy. He would order massive across-the-board wage increases detached from productivity considerations, which would drive countless businesses into receivership while raising unemployment to astronomical levels. He would promote the interests of state monopolies and seek to nationalize more industry. He would suppress competition and attempt to restore the quasi-Bolshevik system of price controls and rationing that nearly caused Israel to collapse during its first years of independence, controls wisely trashed by the socialist Mapai leaders of the 1950's when they came to the realization that these could not possibly work.

Peretz would also seek to expand the powers of the Histadrut, which all the while would operate under his fiefdom, turning it back into a state within the Israeli state – an unelected anti-democratic second government, a dictatorship of the unionized middle-class pseudo-proletariat.

It is precisely because of his promises to establish a system of socialist command-and-control central planning that some of Israel`s most foolish professors and journalists have endorsed him with such enthusiasm. Dreaming of creating a Scandinavian-style welfare state combined with "class warfare" against the big bad "industrialists," and led by a bullying trade union mafia, these armchair revolutionaries see Peretz as the last great hope of leading Israel out of the First World and back into the Third.

Steven Plaut is professor of economics at Haifa University. This is an edited version of an article that appeared in The Jewish Press.

Burt Prelutsky

The best thing about the rioting in France is that it proves once and for all that pandering to Islamists is always a bad idea. Even when you provide them with all the perks available to sluggards in a socialist society, it’s no guarantee they won’t turn right around and bite the hand that feeds them.

France made the mistake of throwing open its doors 40 years ago to cheap Arab and African workers, and came to discover, to its dismay, that the children and grandchildren of those original immigrants don’t care for the French any more than the rest of us do.

There are those who believe that the rioting is the result of the French failing to assimilate Muslims into their society. Far be it from me to defend France, something you may have noticed over the past century the French, themselves, are extremely reluctant to do. However, you might as well condemn Old MacDonald for not assimilating with his farm animals. It’s not French snobbery that isolates the Muslims or creates their embarrassingly high rate of unemployment. The fact of the matter is that their young men are too spoiled and too lazy to do manual labor, and too ignorant and ill-educated to do anything else. Combine a welfare state that provides them with food and lodging with a religion that condemns all non-believers as infidels, and you have gasoline just waiting for a lighted match.

Most liberal pundits, I’ve found, justify riots, blaming society at large for its marauders. I, on the other hand, am not so easily hoodwinked. Check out the photos of every riot you’ve ever seen and you will discover that it’s the very same riff-raff in every mob, no matter where the vandalism takes place. Remove the 16-25 year old male punks from the pictures, and you’d be left with a lot of lamp posts and telephone poles minding their own business.

Whether it’s the Rodney King mob burning down stores in Los Angeles, the PLO bums throwing stones in Jenin, or the lay-a-bouts in Paris, they’re exactly the same as the punks in America who run amok every time their home team either wins or loses a Super Bowl or an NBA title. There is a reason why you rarely see anybody over the age of 30 out in the streets. Could it be that only youngsters are ever oppressed or downtrodden? Hardly. It’s because even their own parents know that the young hoodlums would be just as likely to stone them as to stone the cops. It's far likelier, in fact, because their folks are less likely to be armed and dangerous.

It’s no secret that testosterone-driven young males enjoy busting windows, spray-painting graffiti, and starting fires. Unfortunately, just as with certain parents who are in denial when it comes to the antics of their bratty children, social workers, members of the liberal media, and other assorted pacifists, habitually blame riots on capitalism, western imperialism, gas companies, and, for all I know, premature potty training.

Frankly, what I most fear is that in a world in which multiculturalists, including even President Bush and Secretary of State Rice, feel obliged to bow and scrape to Muslims, in a world so overflowing with infantile feel-good rhetoric about the joys of Islam, that this world will eventually and inevitably give rise to fascism.

Each time I hear people defending Islam, pretending that it’s merely another humanistic faith like Christianity, Judaism, and Buddhism, I wonder if they would have insisted that National Socialism was just another political party, and that being a Nazi was no different from being a Republican or a Democrat.

I worry that in a world filled with folks lying about the emperor, it will finally take a Hitler to point out he’s as naked as a jaybird.

Frankly, I’m sick and tired of hearing people parroting the lie that Islam is a religion of peace. I suppose so long as you’re willing to set aside your Bible and pick up the Koran and start kneeling to Mecca, they’ll let you live in peace--unless, of course, you belong to a different sect. In which case, in the name of the great and merciful Allah, they’d have no choice but to cut your head off.

Of course, American Muslims aren’t like the butchers and suicide-bombers who murder in the name of their religion, or so we’re told. But just how would we know that to be true? What we do know is that even after 9/11, until the F.B.I. put a stop to it, many of them were funneling funds to Al Qaeda.

Before I’m convinced there’s a real difference between our Muslims and those other ones, the faithful Muslims in the United States will have to first stop whining about racial profiling, their young people will have to start enlisting in the armed services, and they’ll have to begin condemning their co-religionists loudly and often. For openers, it would be a nice gesture if they passed the hat around the old mosque and then announced they’d come up with a multi-million dollar reward for Osama bin Laden, dead or alive.

As for the rest of us, it’s high time we stopped trying to come up with highfalutin’ excuses for murderous mobs. The answer, nearly always, to why young people riot is simple. It’s fun.

Burt Prelutsky is a writer for television and movies. This article appeared on chronwatch.com

Robert Spencer

Israel is at the front line of the global jihad movement. Ever since the State of Israel was founded in 1948, and even before, it has faced jihadist opposition from groups adamant in their determination to destroy it utterly. Yet I expect that a poll of Americans would find only a tiny minority would affirm that Israel faces the same foe, with the same ideology, as the one the United States has faced since 9/11. The Left, of course, and many others -- including some of the Arabic-speaking Christians with whom I am in daily contact -- believe fervently that Israel is the aggressor against an innocent and aggrieved Palestinian people, and that the conflict is solely about "stolen land."

I was recently offered, and immediately seized, an opportunity to see for myself. I arrived in Israel November 15. Among many other things,
I explored the Muslim Quarter and other sections of Jerusalem's Old City;
Peered into Syria from an Israeli bunker on the Golan Heights;
Traveled by bulletproof bus through the West Bank, and inspected the security fence;
Slept (fitfully) in a Bedouin tent in the desert, and savored the magnificence of the stark land;
Walked through the 700-year-old streets of Safed, not far from where the Hezbollah rockets fell a few days ago near Kiryat Shmona and Metulla;
Strolled around modern Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.

I also had the honor of meeting Natan Sharansky and the Chief Sephardic Rabbi of Jerusalem, Shlomo Moshe Amar. I met a couple who had recently been evacuated by the Israeli government from their West Bank "settlement," where they had lived and worked for twelve years, and endured daily gunfire from Palestinians since the Al-Aqsa intifada began in September 2000. I met an American who now lives and works on a kibbutz in the Golan Heights, cultivating land just across the Syrian border, in defiance of the danger involved. Like so many other Israelis all over the country, he must carry a gun at all times. I photographed a large, confidently imposing, and clearly thriving mosque near my hotel in Tel Aviv, the very existence of which stands as poignant refutation of the charge that Muslims are oppressed in Israel -- especially in light of the glaring non-existence of synagogues in Muslim lands and the precarious existence of churches in them.

Israel is a country at war, a country under siege. Everywhere I went, even into a shopping mall in Tel Aviv, armed guards stood at the entry, searching everyone. Many Israelis with whom I spoke discussed the weariness of the people after decades and decades of war. They said that many, and maybe even a majority, are willing to cut any deal, even one involving giving up half of Jerusalem, in order to buy a peace that they themselves say will last only a few years.

But at the same time, there is a tremendous spirit among the people. I saw the greenhouses and agricultural projects making the desert bloom, and the determination of so many not to be intimidated in the face of jihad violence. Long may they prosper.

Israel stands virtually alone in the world not only because of lingering anti-Semitism, but because Palestinian Arabs and their allies have succeeded in convincing opinion-makers that their land was taken illegitimately by Israel, and that they are oppressed there. The facts are otherwise. The state was established legitimately and with the approval of the United Nations, and even the "occupied territories" were obtained according to what have been universally recognized throughout history as the rules of war. (Or should the United States give up the "occupied territories" of California, Texas, and other Western states? Should Russia withdraw from its "occupied territories" in Konigsberg, eastern Finland and eastern Poland? Should Muslims across North Africa, the Middle East, Iran, India and Southeast Asia withdraw from those "occupied territories" back to Arabia?)

While I am sympathetic to genuine Palestinian Arab refugees, I can't help but notice the role of Arab states in exacerbating and prolonging the refugee problem for reasons that are ultimately rooted in the jihad ideology. I can't help but notice that I was able to visit the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, Mount Tabor, and other Christian holy sites in Israel, which mean a great deal to me personally, while Bethlehem, under Palestinian Authority control, has become a dangerous place from which Christians are fleeing as quickly as they can. I can't help but notice that there was no call to establish a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza between 1948 and 1967, when those territories were under Jordanian and Egyptian control respectively -- despite the alleged difference of nationality between Palestinians and Jordanians and Egyptians.

Ultimately, if the nations of the world are interested in defending universal human rights and the equality of dignity of all people, they need to stand with Israel. Misdiagnosis of the problem -- that is, the unwillingness or inability of Western governments to acknowledge the motives and goals of the jihadists who want above all to destroy Israel -- has largely prevented this.

Yet as Benjamin Franklin said long ago in a far different context, we must all hang together, or we will most assuredly all hang separately.

Robert Spencer is the author of The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) and Onward Muslim Soldiers. This appeared on Jihadwatch.

Edward Alexander

Twice in the month of October the Islamic Republic of Iran laid claim to being the world's chief continuator of Nazi policy with respect to the Jews. First, at the Frankfurt Book Fair, it displayed (in violation of German law) the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, the satanic forgery concocted by the Czarist secret police in 1903 to "prove" that a cabal of Jewish capitalists, communists, and rabbis had been conspiring (at the Zionist Congress of 1897) to bring the world under Jewish domination. It became Hitler's holy book long before there was a Jewish state, but the Islamic Propagation Organization explains that Israel is the main target of its new Iranian edition. That is to say, the pariah people is now the pariah state.

Then, in a speech to a Teheran conference delicately entitled "The World without Zionism," Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad declared that Israel should be "wiped off the map," and expressed confidence that the latest wave of Palestinian butchery of Israeli civilians would remove "this disgraceful blot from the face of the new Islamic world."

The Iranian peddling of the Protocols elicited little criticism outside of Germany itself, where its ultimate results (for Germans as well as Jews) are only too well-known. Among Iran's co-religionists in the Arab world, the Protocols is on sale everywhere, a mainstay of Arab culture and raw material for popular television programs. The work has also been enjoying a revival among numerous American liberals and leftists for whom the existence of Israel is the sole impediment to a peaceful world. Writers in the liberal journal Tikkun warn of Jewish "conspirators" who run the U.S. government and praise "the industrial-sized grain of truth" in the Protocols. Noam Chomsky, speechifying in 2002 in the wake of anti-Semitic violence all across Europe, declared that "Anti-Semitism is no longer a problem...It is raised, but it's raised because privileged people want to make sure that they have total control, not just 98% control."

Ahmadinejad's call for genocide, on the other hand, elicited a good deal of tongue-clucking. There was outright condemnation from America, Russia, Australia, Canada, even the European Union. A few barely audible squeaks of criticism came from Arab countries like Egypt, which was warned by the Iranian president that it would "burn in the fire of the Islamic nation's fury" because it had established diplomatic relations with Israel. Egypt replied that "We are beyond this type of political rhetoric..."

Indeed they are. In the good old days Egypt's own leaders, like Gamal Nasser, constantly declared that "Israel's existence is itself an aggression" and that they intended to "turn the Mediterranean red with Jewish blood." When Egypt and its allies suffered a catastrophic defeat in their 1967 aggression, they (and the Arab world generally) ceased speaking of their desire to reduce Israel to sandy wastes and instead redefined their struggle as the search for a haven for homeless Palestinian Arabs; this was a calculated (and hugely successful) appeal to liberals, who now habitually blame the Jews themselves for Arab rejection of Israel.

Nobody has mastered these rhetorical arts better than the Palestinian Arab leadership. The chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat, for example, responded to the Iranian's genocidal ravings by saying that "Palestinians recognize the right of Israel to exist, and I reject his comments. What we need to be talking about is adding the state of Palestine to the map and not wiping Israel from the map." The only problem with this admirable sentiment is that the Palestinian leadership has already (as has often been noted) cartographically wiped Israel from the map: in its schoolbooks, in its maps of the Middle East, in the insignia that pictorially define the would-be Palestinian state as encompassing the whole of Israel.

Nor is it only the Palestinian Arabs who must now be lamenting Ahmadinejad's grossly undiplomatic speech. Iran is hardly the only country comfortably seated at the UN despite being in permanent violation of the UN's founding principle of mutual respect for the sovereignty of other member nations. Neither are Islamic and Arab UN members the only force in the world working to make Israel a pariah nation. We have had the British Association of University Teachers imposing a boycott of Israeli academics and researchers; we have seen countless American professors taking to the pages of The Nation and The New York Review of Books to call for an "alternative" to Israel; we daily witness the "progressive" churches (Episcopal, United Methodist, Presbyterian Church USA, United Church of Christ) promoting "divestment" campaigns (in gross violation of American laws that make compliance with the Arab boycott of Israel a criminal act). I suspect that all of these utopians must now be lamenting the way in which the Iranian president has given extreme and radical expression to their very own sentiments about "a world without Zionism," and thinking: "Good causes attract bad advocates."

A frequent contributor to Outpost, Edward Alexander is University of Washington professor emeritus of English.

Ruth King

Jordan’s pretty queen Rania was interviewed by George Stephanopolous on November 13th, following the bombings in Amman. After the requisite denunciation of terrorism -- terrorism which kills Muslims, that is -- she offered her take on one cause of the suicide bombing in Amman, namely, the “two occupations of neighboring countries: Iraq and Israel." The queen, it should be noted, led a large anti-Israel demonstration in Amman in April 2002 which included burning an American flag.

The comely queenlette routinely identifies herself as Palestinian and both the Jordanian and American media describe her as a “Palestinian” from Tulkarm. In fact, she was born in Kuwait to a wealthy doctor of “Palestinian” origins, and she did indeed become a “refugee” -- when Kuwait expelled 400,000 Palestinian residents following the first Persian Gulf War, as punishment for their support of Saddam Hussein.

The family went to Amman, where she doffed “refugee” status, put on designer duds, and practically took a cab to the court and a wedding to Abdullah, the son of King Hussein. Her website and her US media appearances describe her as “a working mother” who appreciates that the “hard work” must be done. Among her hard labors she has to make sure that the royal meals are tasted by others as a poison alert.

Her husband King Abdullah is described as a direct descendant of Mohammed and heir to the “ancient Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.” This history is also a tad untrue. He may descend from Mohammed, but the "ancient Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan" dates only as far back as 1920 when the British deeded 82% of Mandated Palestine to the Arabs. The British gave Iraq to King Feisal and his kid brother Abdullah Senior (great-grandpa to the present Abdullah) had to be mollified so they gave him Trans Jordan. He was assassinated and his grandson King Hussein, known as Al-Malik Al-Insan ("The Humane King"), succeeded his own father Talal the insane, who ruled only for a few months.

Check out the family tree which derails the spin of that ancient Kingdom of Jordan (http://www.kinghussein.gov.jo/rfamily_immediate.html). Until 1922 the Hashemites were Emirs of Mecca. When Abdullah (the First) took over Jordan the local population was totally indifferent. Calvin Coolidge could have been made king and no one would have cared.

Abdullah's mama was a British girl named Antoinette “Tony” Gardener. She was King Hussein’s second wife and she bore him four children. On conversion to Islam the "award-winning field hockey player, former typist, and daughter of a British army officer turned innkeeper," she was given the title Princess Muna al Hussein. Apparently Hussein’s mother did not like her and pressed her son to divorce her, which he did in 1972. Her present whereabouts are unknown.

The late King Hussein understood the shaky nature of his rule. In 1962 he penned a book named “Uneasy Lies the Head.” In it he wrote: "I had seen enough of Europe even at 17 to know that its playgrounds were filled with ex-kings, some of whom lost their thrones because they did not understand the duties of a monarch. I was not going to become a permanent member of their swimming parties in the south of France."

In 1970 when the PLO got uppity in Jordan and exerted a thuggish local rule in Amman and other cities, King Hussein killed and expelled thousands in what became known as “Black September.” The terrorist thugs alighted in Lebanon where they ruled until the Lebanon War of 1981 when Israel almost finished them off. A U.S. enforced ceasefire and missteps by the Reagan administration exiled the PLO to Tunisia but Jordan was forced to accept several thousand. King Hussein had to greet them and kiss each and every terrorist on both cheeks. One shudders to think of the royal chaff from all that stubble and one shudders to think of them among the population.

Abdullah knows the PLO aims to topple his regime. Despite the dozens of medals adorning his chest -- since his coronation he has received medals and honorary titles from all over the world including the Order of the White Eagle of Poland and the Grand Order of Nungunghwa of Korea -- he and his wife are in a tough situation. Unlike his father, Abdullah cannot count on a modus vivendi with Israel, including shared intelligence, protection of the palace and a de facto understanding about control of Judea and Samaria. Oslo queered that deal forever. So Abdullah snuggles up to the Arab League and plays a duplicitous game, with soothing speeches to Western leaders not matched by what he practices at home or among his Arab friends. Like Humpty Dumpty he straddles a slippery wall.

Times have changed and Abdullah and Rania may yet have to get their swim suits out. France has too many Moslems for the family to live in peace, but they could easily become the new A list "it" couple in the Hamptons.

Jochanan Bloch

(Editor’s note: This is the third time we publish these prophetic words. The late Jochanan Bloch was a distinguished philosopher whose most famous work was Die Aporie des Du: Probleme der Dialogik Martin Bubers (The Internal Contradiction of the Thou: Problems in the Dialectic of Martin Buber). In 1970, Dr. Bloch, professor in the Department of the History of the Jewish People at Ben Gurion University, wrote in response to the decision of the Israeli government to accept a ceasefire at the Suez Canal. No Israeli newspaper would publish what he wrote; he was told it was too “frightening” and an “overreaction.” Outpost first printed his prophecy in May 1975 and then again in June 1994 in the wake of Oslo. What Bloch wrote is even more applicable today as international “monitors” begin to displace Israeli forces.)

The worse our position becomes, the more we will be dependent upon the help of the United States. Yet the more our situation deteriorates, the more the United States will hesitate to come to our assistance, for fear of confrontation with our enemies, and she will demand with greater sternness our retreat, a retreat we have in any case agreed to and signed. If we point to the dangers involved in a retreat, the principle of ‘protection’ will be extended whether we want it or not. As answer to any risk they will offer us the guarantees we have invited…

What the government does not realize at this point is that we will essentially have to retreat to the borders of 1949. A peace treaty we won’t get; we’ll get guarantees. Here there will be demilitarization; there will sit a UN force; here will be a corridor; there a mixed police force; here shared administration; there an enclave. Immigration will stop, for such a state will not be able to attract newcomers. Emigration will resume and reach dimensions which we have never known...Defense expenditures will not decrease but grow in direct proportion to the worsening of our situation. And peace? It is clear that the Palestinian forces will increase their activity with the support of the Arab states; even if for the time being states don’t enter into war with us. Our defensive capability will be desperately handicapped in the choking collar of the ‘peace borders’, and the international guard forces. And then we shall turn to our friendly protecting powers and will ask for their help. And it isn’t hard to guess what they will say.

They’ll tell us that they are not willing to get involved in a world war, that we must not bring war upon the world. The process of blackmail will begin. If immigration has not yet ceased by itself, they’ll demand that we stop it. And the guaranteeing powers will explain to us that it is evil for us to exist on this outdated Zionist principle that can drag us to war… We will, in fact, be returning to the Mandate period and in two or three years they will say in America that the ‘experiment of the Jewish state’ has failed, and that it is necessary to find a reasonable solution for the problem of Israel. And why not a Palestinian state in which one will ‘guarantee’ the lives of the Jews? What began with the silly slogan “territories for peace” is likely to end with the liquidation of the state, unless we can retrace our steps and escape from the nightmarish trap we have fashioned with our own hands.”