NO MONEY Herbert Zweibon

FROM THE EDITOR Rael Jean Isaac

DID BUSH LIE? George Massay

ISRAEL'S PECULIAR POSITION Eric Hoffer

THE IDF IN METAMORPHOSIS William Mehlman

MIDDLE EAST DEMOCRACY: DEAD ON ARRIVAL

ISRAEL LACKS THE WILL TO SURVIVE Joel Hilliker

MAINSTREAMING QADDAFI Ruth King

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

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Yuval Ne’eman

We deeply mourn the loss of this soldier, scientist and statesman. An unwavering supporter of an undivided Land of Israel, Neeman was a founder of the Techiya Party and served as minister of science and technology in the government of Yitzhak Shamir. Opposing Shamir’s agreement, under U.S. pressure, to negotiate with the Arabs in Madrid, Techiya left the government. Ne’eman argued for remaining and turned out to be right, for in bringing the government down, Techiya paved the way for Labor’s victory and Oslo.

Ne’eman was best known as a scientist. In the 1960s, independently from Murray Gel-Mann (who received a Nobel Prize for this work) he developed the “Eightfold Way” of classifying elementary particles (the quark model). Among his many awards were the Israel Prize (1969) in exact sciences and the Einstein Medal for his contributions to physics.

Ne’eman balanced an academic career with one in public service. He founded Tel Aviv University’s physics department, served as director of its Sackler Institute of Advanced Studies, and became President of the University. He also served as Chief Scientist in the Defense Ministry from 1974-76, vice-Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, and in 1983 founded the Israeli Space Agency.

As a soldier, Ne’eman served with distinction in Israel’s War of Independence, becoming operations officer of the elite Givati brigade during the war. AFSI founder Erich Isaac served under him and remembers Ne’eman’s lectures, during lulls in the fighting, on the “red shift” (evidence for expansion of the universe).

After the war, Ne’eman’s family expected him to remain in the family pump business (started in Haifa by his grandfather in 1900) where he showed his talents by designing three new pump models. But Ne’eman longed to study physics and after the 1956 war, while serving as Israel’s military attaché in England, he enrolled in the Imperial College in London.

Ne’eman represented Israel at her very best: personally modest, a brilliant scientist, a committed Zionist, he differed from the vast run of academics – and alas, Israeli politicians -- in his political astuteness, his understanding that Israel could not survive through appeasement but must assert and maintain her legitimate claims.

Sister Rose Thering

Sister Rose Thering, for many years a professor of Jewish-Christian studies at Seton Hall University, was a true friend of Israel, symbolizing her dual love of Catholicism and Judaism by wearing her trademark crucifix inside a Star of David. She led innumerable trips to Israel, to European concentration camps, to refuseniks in the then Soviet Union and worked tirelessly in interfaith programs on behalf of Jewish-Christian relations. Her doctoral dissertation is credited with helping to persuade the Vatican to issue its 1965 document Nostra Aetate, bringing to an end the blaming of the Jews collectively for the death of Jesus. More recently she was influential in making study of the Holocaust mandatory in New Jersey public schools.

Barbara Roth

AFSI mourns the loss of this long time member and supporter in its New York City chapter.

Herbrt Zweibon

No money. That should be the word to the Palestinian Authority and yes, to Ehud Olmert, as he seeks approval – and eventually funds – from the Bush administration for uprooting Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria.

The U.S. has agreed to provide $10 million to the PA, so that, in the words of Secretary of State Rice, “Hamas policies and actions should not deprive the Palestinian people of their legitimate humanitarian needs.” But as columnist Diana West retorts, “Why ever not? Why shouldn’t Hamas’ ‘policies and actions’ driven by a Hitlerian plan to ‘obliterate“ Israel, deprive Hamas constituents of their ‘needs,’ humanitarian or otherwise?” In the world according to the Bush administration, writes West, the voters who gave Hamas a landslide victory “remain voiceless victims even after exercising their political will at the ballot box.” Yet, she tellingly observes, “If democracy makes leaders accountable to the people who elect them, it works the other way as well: People are also accountable for their elected leaders.”

Olmert has said publicly that his plan to uproot up to 100,000 Israeli civilians from their homes will cost $10 billion (Israeli economists figure it will be twice that sum), which he plans to underwrite with funds from a U.S. traditionally eager for any and all Israeli territorial retreats. How mistaken such a U.S. position is will be clear to anyone who reads Caroline Glick’s report for Frank Gaffney’s Center for Security Policy which identifies the ways in which Olmert’s “convergence plan” is devastating to U.S. interests.

For it is not only Israeli national security that will be seriously compromised when Hamas takes over the Jewish historic heartland, putting Israel’s population centers and national infrastructures under direct threat from missiles, rockets and ever more suicide attacks. The Hashemite regime in Jordan (whose population is nearly 80% “Palestinian”), thus far bolstered by Israel’s military control of Judea and Samaria, will be equally endangered. With both Israel and Jordan destabilized, the land supply routes to U.S. forces in Iraq (U.S. military assets are warehoused in both countries) will be jeopardized. On an operational level, a de facto terror state of Palestine, writes Glick “together with its allies Syria, Iran and Hizbullah, will provide a training, logistics and information warfare base for terrorist groups currently at war with the United States.” Given that one of the aims of the War on Terror is to deny bases of operation to terrorists, this will mean a major defeat for the United States.

In the longer range, the psychological boost for Islamic radicals is likely to be even more profoundly damaging to U.S. interests. The prestige of the terror factions and the movements and states that support them – what Glick calls “the backbone of the international Islamofascist forces currently engaged in war against the U.S.” -- will rise enormously. Glick points out that in the perception of the Moslem world, the U.S. and Israel are linked. An Israeli retreat will be seen not just as a defeat for Israel but as an American defeat and a huge victory for global jihad. This will undermine the most important effort of the U.S. in the Middle East -- namely to mobilize forces within the Arab and Islamic world to help defeat the Islamists.

After 9/11 President Bush advanced a simple and sturdy dictum: in the War on Terror, if you are not with us you are against us. The United States can win the war on Islamic terror, but only if the administration returns to that clear first principle. Hamas embodies all that we fight against in that war. So it should be obvious that we must do nothing to strengthen it. That means no money for the Hamas-controlled PA, including so-called “humanitarian aid.” And the message to Olmert should be: if you want to convert the Land of Israel into a terrorist base, such indescribable folly will not merit a penny from us.

EU LEXICON

The Wall Street Journal of May 9 reports that the EU is developing guidelines for a “non-emotive lexicon” to describe the war on terror. “Islamic terrorists” are to become “those who have an abusive interpretation of Islam.” Jihad is likely to be banned as well on the grounds that it “can also mean the internal struggle to become a better man.” EU spokesman Friso Roscam Abbing explains the purpose of these verbal gymnastics: “We want to take away any possible motivation or justification for people who are on the brink of becoming terrorists.”
To be sure, all this is no more absurd than the new Israeli lexicon; “disengagement” and “convergence” for plain old “retreat under fire.” As for Jerusalem, Israeli pols declare they will not “divide” the city, heaven forefend. They will “share” it.

PERES IN WAITING

With Shimon Peres in his 80s, the role of national fool will soon be up for grabs. One promising candidate is Haifa mayor Yona Yahav who, asked by an interviewer for the Israel-Arab newspaper Kul al-Arab if he accepted “in principle” the return to the town of tens of thousands of Palestinian Arabs who fled Haifa in 1948, responded “Basically I don’t see any reason why some of the Palestinian residents should not go back to Haifa in the framework of a deal that would be accepted and signed by the Israeli government” and “put an end to the conflict.” (At the same time Palestinian Foreign Minister Mahmoud Al-Zahhar detailed his own plan to “put an end to the conflict”: “Palestine in its entirety is our land; This does not mean that if they withdraw from any inch of land, we will refrain from spreading our rule over it. Every inch of land without relinquishing an inch…Our second principle is that the right of return must be guaranteed – to Jerusalem, Haifa, Jaffa and everywhere.”)

In the meantime, the prince of nincompoops is still going strong. The Knesset will soon be voting for the ninth President of Israel and Peres is emerging as a foremost candidate. Peres went down to humiliating defeat for the post in 2000, unexpectedly defeated by the relatively unknown Moshe Katsav. We have been told that AFSI’s pamphlet Shimon Says, a collection of pearls of foolishness emitted by Peres, which was distributed to all Knesset members, played a role. Now a top Kadima official declares that Peres would raise the post to “its former glory.” Indeed, in the current Knesset he should be a shoo-in.

NEW ENGLISH BOYCOTT

Last year the British Association of University Teachers (AUT) launched an academic boycott of Israel which fizzled. Proving once again you can’t keep a really bad idea down, the boycott is back, this time proposed by the rival higher education outfit, the 67,000 member National Association of Teachers in Further and Higher Education (NATFHE).

Melanie Phillips (author of the new must-read Londonistan) had predicted this because the AUT boycott had not been defeated on the right grounds: namely that it was based on a series of Big Lies about Israel. Running through the opposition to last year’s boycott, writes Phillips, “was the argument that academic freedom was necessary in order to continue to demonise and delegitimise Israel” which “was not only wrong in itself but ultimately self-defeating because it meant that the inspiration for the boycott was not only not being addressed but would surely lead to the boycott springing to life once again.”

Unfortunately the same actors are taking the lead in opposing the new boycott, including the dreadful “Engage” which, as AFSI’s Ruth King wrote in Outpost (June 2005), indulges “in the same anti-Israel claptrap that drives the boycott itself.”

DUTCH DHIMMIS

Remember how the Dutch for years harassed Ariel Sharon, clamoring to bring him to trial as a supposed war criminal? Now, in full appeasement mode, they have driven out Ayaan Hirsi Ali, their most courageous citizen, black, a woman, a Moslem, a member of the Dutch Parliament, who insisted on putting the oppression of Moslem women on the Dutch political agenda. Fortunately for us, she will be coming to the American Enterprise Institute in Washington D.C.

"MY OWN ARM SAVED ME" ISAIAH

A stunning video on the destruction of the Osirak reactor in July 1981, based on classified documents newly released by Israel, can be seen on your computer. While you have to write in a lot of numbers you will be delighted you did: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2295792440224502914.

The words of Isaiah (63:5) could not be more apt for this 45 minute documentary chronicling how Israel stood alone in confronting mortal danger: “I stared but there was none to aid—So my own arm wrought the triumph.”

George Massay is a minister in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ).

Did Bush lie? Yes, he did. Every time following 9/11 that he said Islam is a religion of peace—and there were several of those times—he lied.

Did he lie about Islam intentionally? Not really. He simply expressed the hope held by millions of non-Muslims, or more accurately, infidels, that jihad is just an awful dream, a nightmare, from which we can awaken to a world of peace. It is the same naiveté that assumes one can separate terrorism from Islamic faith—it can’t be done. As Samuel Huntington observed, “Wherever one looks along the perimeter of Islam, Muslims have difficulty living peaceably with their neighbors”—a classic example of academic understatement.

The widely held view that, if only there weren’t a George W. Bush or if only America were not a “superpower,” a peaceful world would be possible, has to ignore some hard historical facts regarding Islam’s relentless military conquests over the centuries. These utopian views are only a little less far fetched than the naïve ideas that if the Palestinians had a state, or if Israel ceased to exist, the mess in the Mideast could be resolved.

Did President Bush lie about Saddam’s possession of weapons of mass destruction?

To the extent that he believed they existed, he certainly did not lie. What he did was to accept what every intelligence agency in the world, including the French and indeed the U.N, thought was the case. And one thing cannot be denied. The invasion of Iraq made certain that Saddam would not be employing WMDs. Even those who, in spite of all the atrocities committed by this brutal despot, nevertheless remain sanguine about him, know he won’t be using them any more.

That Saddam had had WMD and, furthermore, had used them is not in doubt. Nor is there any question that he stone-walled the inspectors suggesting that he did indeed have something to hide. Is it beyond the realm of possibility that before and during the much delayed invasion of Iraq there was time for Saddam to get rid of evidence of WMD? Obviously, he did have sufficient time; but, even then, was not able to get rid of all of it.

Some WMD’s were uncovered after the invasion, but not enough to convince skeptics that they were a significant threat. Interestingly, what has been uncovered by the Iraqi Survey Group (ISG) is that during the cynically conceived Oil For Food program when top U.N. officials and many, particularly Europeans, were robbing the program blind, Saddam was pocketing more than enough to have his WMD program ready to launch full speed when sanctions were lifted. In the case of anthrax, it could have been up and going within a week. (An operational supposed-fertilizer factory, directed by Dr. Rihab, “Dr. Death,” described as “the most dangerous woman in the world,” was more than ready. And anthrax was just one of a host of deadly weapons, including smallpox, Saddam had at the ready once sanctions were lifted.)

Is Iraq a mess now? Yes, it is. That is hardly surprising. So is the entire Middle East. But Bush did not create that mess. It was a boiling cauldron of conflicts long before he came into office, and it will be far into the future. As long as the world is deeply dependent on Middle East oil, for good or ill, we shall be involved—either as victors or as the vanquished. Disengagement is not a possibility.
T
he view widely held in France and other Western European countries that America and Israel are their enemies may be fatal for the remains of what can barely be called Western civilization. The Islamic world, as it has done for over a thousand years, is going to continue to promote the West’s destruction, even as many in the West use their freedoms to destroy freedom.

As the Islamic jihad spreads—and it is spreading rapidly all around the world—it is not going to end with genocide against the Jews. We forget at our peril that in the Islamic faith it is not only Jews, Christians, Hindus, and Buddhists who are infidels, but so too are the irreligious and/or atheistic intelligentsia. And, if you are the wrong kind of Muslim (Sunni vs. Shia), indiscriminate terrorism will be employed; or, if you are a black Muslim in Sudan, Arab Muslims will slaughter you—with Osama’s blessing. This should be a sobering thought for many in Europe and elsewhere.

The idea that the European Union, in coalition with Muslim states, could form a super-power, Eurabia, to act as a counter-force to American hegemony was a vain dream, but doubly so now that the EU is in severe disarray. Eurabia, however, could and did undercut American efforts to use force against Saddam and the Taliban.

Now that Arafat’s corrupt terrorist Fatah has been rightfully discredited and is out of power and Hamas, blatantly terroristic, is in power, all the millions and millions poured into Arafat’s coffers by France and the EU, plus the United States and even the Israelis, in order to earn points with the Muslim oil states, are worthless. And Chirac’s to-the-bitter-end support fSaddam Hussein is also proving to be an investment with only negative returns. Not surprisingly, the Europeans are doing it again, and now incrementally the U.S., this time with Hamas.

It is unfortunate for the Western heritage that, in addition to the widespread anti-American and violently anti-Jewish manifestations in Europe, a sizable percentage of Americans and a surprising number of Jews feel that the U.S. and Israel, by their very existence, are the principal contributors to whatever is wrong or bad in the world. These are people who are determined to join the highest order of beings in the Western scheme of things today—”victims.” Frequently, they seem hell-bent on pushing their fellow Americans and, in Israel, their fellow Jews to embrace the policies of appeasement, surrender, and defeat. In doing the mea-culpa bit they feel virtuous. But where they plan to live—if they live—when their dreams are realized is unaddressed and unanswered.

Few touted diplomatic triumphs illustrate the virtues of victimhood better than the Oslo Peace Accords. Isn’t it ironic that after all these years of effort there is no peace and there are no accords? The Road Map goes nowhere except to defeat for Israel and by association, the United States. A Palestinian state controlled by a fascist Hamas will soon have an airport and a seaport, resulting in the likelihood of an exponential explosion of global terrorism. With Israel neutered, if not eliminated, Europe and even neighboring Islamic countries will have good reason for trepidation.

Among the voices speaking against Israel are those coming from liberal churches. If their disinvestment-in-Israel campaign, led by the Presbyterians and Anglicans, has the desired effect, the time before there was a Hamastan and a liquidated Israel will be remembered as a better time—difficult, but not absolutely without hope. The question of how such blatant anti-Semitism reared its ugly head in name-brand churches should be disquieting to all who view the church as a force for good. For those who view Christianity as a source of evil—well, they are not entirely wrong.

The self-important church bureaucrats who are promoting disinvestment in Israel think they are being prophetic. They see themselves as being on the side of the poor and the oppressed and working for peace and justice. What they are actually doing is promoting the worst of the anti-Semitic tendencies that have long been present in Western societies and the church and giving their blessing to the rabid endemic Muslim hatred of the Jews. True, there is a certain ecumenical quality to all of this, but it is ecumenism gone amok.

At the very time Islam ratchets up its declared war against the infidels, the great institutions of the West are in a state of advanced disintegration. The Left, deeply entrenched in the universities, the courts, and in many churches, regularly attacks devout Christians and Jews while at the same time endorsing Muslim goals.

Into this intellectual and spiritual vacuum comes Islam, yet again—militant and ruthless. What the jihadists see are the empty cathedral-mausoleums of Christianity waiting to be occupied or razed. Except as a source of tourist revenue, they will scarcely be missed and under a caliphate, not even remembered.

Today, when there are more Muslims worshipping at mosques in Britain than there are Christians worshipping in churches, the role of Christianity there is virtually finished. Of course, given that many in the Anglican Church think of evangelism as persuading people to become homosexuals or at least accepting homosexuality as a superior part of the divine order, does one not have to ask just what is worth saving? Add the support for abortion-on-demand to extolling the virtues of homosexuality, and the few remaining Christians congregants are being taught to faithfully commit suicide. Unfortunately, this dead-end thinking is not limited to the Church of England.

On the continent, Belgian Roman Catholic bishops, to pressure their government into welcoming illegal immigrants, are approving the use of 30 churches as dormitories for the illegals, most of whom are Muslims. The squatters show appreciation by turning the churches into mosques. This does not seem to bother the bishops. One wonders what kind of attack on the church and what kind of invasion of the country would bother them.

Few incidents illustrate better the effete character of Europe than the cup-in-hand Danish Lutheran church delegation that traveled to Egypt, their tickets paid for by the Danish Foreign Ministry, to apologize to senior Islamic clerics for the cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed. It was the perfect group to receive an apology because some of these Muslim clerics have justified suicide bombings and jihad against infidels.

If they had been up front, the bishops would have first apologized for being such wimpy descendents of the Vikings. Then they should have stated that, while they were high dignitaries in the Danish Lutheran Church, they have virtually no congregants on whose behalf they could speak. And, if truth be known, a high percentage of those few they do have are old women. Aside from being a nice government-financed junket and a wonderful press opportunity for Islam, the journey to Egypt was little else than an example of bishops sucking up to imams. It is worth noting that during the Nazi reign in Germany, when Hitler was carrying out genocide on the Jews and other minorities, he did not have to jail one single German bishop. The tradition continues.

If the central issue surrounding the Iraq invasion is whether Bush lied—a question that by its very nature tends to condemn Bush and exonerate Saddam—there are other more pressing questions. For example, can a fractured Europe survive with its political correctness, effete secular hedonism, and rapidly aging and precipitously declining native population? What chance is there of winning in a struggle with head-chopping, terroristic-suicidal bombers— Islamic fanatics who are multiplying like rabbits?

Are Europe’s problems caused by Israel? Today, many in France and rest of Europe, along with a huge percentage of Muslims worldwide, believe that the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon was actually a Jewish plot. Is it much of a step from this position to the view that the intifada riots in France are instigated by Jews? That sort of thinking was present in Germany and all over Europe before World War II. Could it happen again? The recent vicious attacks on Jews in France and elsewhere in Europe are ominous signs.

Academics may argue about whether or not the State of Israel should have been established or, better put, re-established. But, once the state became a reality with the support not only of the United States, but of France and Britain, and when millions of Jews were driven out of Muslim lands immediately following its creation, those nations that helped to form Israel had a moral obligation to defend it. This view has dropped off the radar. Nevertheless, another holocaust for the Jews, should it occur, will have horrendous consequences for the world—not just for Jews. It never ends with the Jews. That is only the beginning.

If Bush told less than the truth when he said Islam is a religion of peace, he is not the only one deceiving himself. Because of his leadership position, however, his misidentification of the enemy has especially serious consequences. Even though he has repeatedly said that terrorism, not Islam, is the enemy, terrorism is simply a method, a technique. The enemy is the culture, politics, and faith that create, sustain, and justify indiscriminate bloody terrorism. That source is Islam. Against a West blindly committed to political correctness, diversity, and comfort—comfort at all costs—Islam’s embrace of terrorism works.

The hope of many in the West that democracy would make possible more open and more tolerant societies in the Middle East underestimated the total intolerance of Islamic culture and faith. Even though there have been a few amazingly heroic Muslims who, at great risk, have spoken out against the terrible intolerance of the faith, they are very much the exception. Now that Hamas has been “democratically elected” to implement sharia and with the same having happened in Iraq and Afghanistan and coming soon to Egypt and Syria, not to mention Turkey, democracy is dead on arrival.

If, as abundant brutal and tragic evidence shows, Camus was correct that the real drive of the 20th century was toward slavery, what would his insight be about the direction of the 21st century? Would he think that the drive to slavery is lessened as Leftists attracted to Communism regularly join hands with Muslim fascists to form a united front? Not to worry—an answer to that question is on the way.

George Massay is a minister in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). This article was written as a letter to a French friend.

Eric Hoffer

(On May 26, 1968 the Los Angeles Times ran this prescient article, easily as timely today as when it was written—foreseeing that although Israel might stand alone, its fate would be shared. Hoffer, a self-educated former longshoreman and social philosopher, died in 1983, after writing nine books and winning the Presidential Medal of Freedom. )

The Jews are a peculiar people: things permitted to other nations are forbidden to the Jews. Other nations drive out thousands, even millions of people and there is no refugee problem. Russia did it, Poland and Czechoslovakia did it, Turkey threw out a million Greeks, and Algeria a million Frenchman. Indonesia threw out heaven knows how many Chinese - and no one says a word about refugees.

But in the case of Israel the displaced Arabs have become eternal refugees. Everyone insists that Israel must take back every single Arab.

Arnold Toynbee calls the displacement of the Arabs an atrocity greater than any committed by the Nazis. Other nations when victorious on the battlefield dictate peace terms. But when Israel is victorious it must sue for peace. Everyone expects the Jews to be the only real Christians in this world.

Other nations when they are defeated survive and recover but should Israel be defeated it would be destroyed. Had Nasser triumphed last June he would have wiped Israel off the map, and no one would have lifted a finger to save the Jews. No commitment to the Jews by any government including our own the paper it is written on.

There is a cry of outrage all over the world when people die in Vietnam or when two Negroes are executed in Rhodesia. But when Hitler slaughtered Jews no one remonstrated with him. The Swedes, who are ready to break off diplomatic relations with America because of what we do in Vietnam, did not let out a peep when Hitler was slaughtering Jews. They sent Hitler choice iron ore, and ball bearings, and serviced his troop trains to Norway.
The Jews are alone in the world. If Israel survives, it will be solely because of Jewish efforts. And Jewish resources. Yet at this moment Israel is our only reliable and unconditional ally. We can rely more on Israel than Israel can rely on us. And one has only to imagine what would have happened last summer had the Arabs and their Russian backers won the war to realize how vital the survival of Israel is to America and the West in general.

I have a premonition that will not leave me; as it goes with Israel so will it go with all of us. Should Israel perish the holocaust will be upon us.

William Mehlman

The most disquieting news out of the Middle East these days is not Iran’s graduation to the nuclear club, or Hamas’ establishment of its key training base in abandoned Morag, about 20 minutes from Tel Aviv, or even the delivery of Israel’s defense ministry portfolio, like some marked down shalach manot package, into the hands of Amir Peretz.

They are all minor league incubi compared with a report by a spokesman for the Israel Defense Forces that its current crop of young soldiers may not be mentally or psychologically prepared to deal with a new round of Palestinian violence, much less full scale war. Most of today’s IDF troops are not only of a “different generation” but also of a “different breed” than those who dealt with past terrorist insurgencies, the spokesman averred. They “don’t have the same conscience that others had in the past, telling them to sacrifice themselves and risk their lives for the country,” he added.

Credence for the IDF spokesman’s claim has been bolstered by another high ranking IDF source who cites a growing demand among combat troops, shaken by the prospect of intense warfare, for psychological assistance. The commander of one IDF elite unit, the Dudevani, reported that some of his men refused to participate in a recent raid on a terrorist base in Jenin because their request for psychological counseling had been rejected.

To fully absorb the gravity of this news, one must be aware that Israel’s life literally hangs on the ability of the 18 and 19 year-olds who constitute its relatively small standing army to hold the line against an individual or combined enemy onslaught for the 48-72 hours it takes to mobilize the country’s larger reserve force. If their capacities—physical, mental, emotional—are not up to the task, the Third Jewish Commonwealth could be history.

This indication of a psychological malaise spreading through the IDF ranks is in stark contrast to the chilling clarity with which Israel’s enemies perceive their own position in the conflict. “Israel hasn’t got the stamina to withstand a protracted struggle,” trumpeted Hamas bigwig Mashaal Khaled in a recent interview with Lebanese TV. “Arabs have the tenacity needed for the long haul…We have spiritual and material resources and we will prevail.”

And just what is it that makes Mr. Khaled so confident of his end-game scenario? The answer, in a word, is “disengagement,” or as the squeamish currently call it, “convergence.” Khaled isn’t in the market for euphemisms. “Were Israel strong, it would not withdraw,” he declares. “Israel is in deep crisis.”

If Israel is in the “deep crisis” that only the victims of a self-induced coma could deny, then nothing more metaphorically defines that condition than the reported mental state of its army. Of one thing we can be certain: If the once most feared, most motivated military force in the Middle East has been transformed into a glaring question mark, it didn’t happen by itself. The “different breed” referred to by the IDF spokesman in comparing today’s Israeli soldier with his predecessors could not have been the product of other than a “different breed” of Israeli national leadership. So radical a break with precedent, if that is what Zahal is experiencing, could only have been engineered by a political leadership whose standards of integrity, courage and simple self-preservation are so at variance with Israel’s past, they have damaged the fragile psychological structure of the teenage defenders upon whom its future rests.

Of all the blows to the Israeli psyche delivered by that “different breed” of Israeli leadership over the past nine months -- beyond the destruction of 25 vibrant Jewish communities and the ruination of their 10,000 residents, beyond the transformation of Gaza into the world’s largest Arab terrorist base – none was more lethal, more unconscionable than the employment of the IDF, the army created to defend the Jewish nation, as a political weapon against the most devoted, most vulnerable segment of its citizenry.

Israel, moreover, is being warned almost daily by the new Ehud Olmert/Shimon Peres-led Kadima government that it will not hesitate to use the IDF to wreak further devastation on the Land of Israel and its people. Over the next two years, Mr.Olmert is committed to converting up to 90 percent of Judea and Samaria into a Palestinian homeland, scattering its Jewish inhabitants to the four winds.

Caught somewhere between a flat-earth political leadership hell-bent on proving that retreat is the yellow brick road to salvation, a compliant media and a constituency that has already achieved the ne plus ultra in reality escapism, a repair to the psychotherapsychotherapist’s couch hardly seems out of order for an army whose esprit de corps in the face of heavy numerical odds has always been predicated on an unassailable sense of mission. It would be tragic beyond contemplation if that sense of mission were not to be rediscovered and reaffirmed very soon.

“Moral reflection…does not characterize modern Israeli society,” Jonathan Rosenblum observed in a recent column in The Jerusalem Post. “Indeed, it is more notable by its absence. Of Jewish brain power – as reflected in the amazing number of patents, medical innovations, high-tech start ups – we still have an abundance. It is Jewish wisdom that is missing.”

Has it become extinct?

William Mehlman chairs the AFSI chapter in Israel

l

Editor’s Note: This is an edited version of an article posted by an anonymous blogger, a contractor in Iraq, on antiprotester.blogspot.com.

If the Iran nuclear crisis seems like “deja vu all over again" it's because it is.

The United States, along with most of the world, stood in awe during the run-up to the Persian Gulf War, as Saddam Hussein seemed to make and break a dizzying array of promises with frightening speed, right up until the moment we unleashed our tanks and his vaunted armies unleashed their white flags. The UN, Europe, and the Clinton Administration jumped for joy at every promise the talented Mr. Arafat spewed forth until his unbroken streak of broken promises finally ended -- but only because he finally died.

Now we have a similar scenario with Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (let's just call him "Uncle Mah", shall we?) who makes more promises about "peaceful future intentions" than a convicted child molester up for parole. The only difference is, the child molester has a much better chance of keeping his promises to reform and rehabilitate -- and we all know how likely that is!

So what is it about these followers of the "Religion of Peace" that enables them to -- not bend, not spin, not obfuscate -- but flat-out lie? I'm no anthropologist, but the time I've spent in Iraq over the last couple of years has provided me with a big clue….They have internalized and mastered what Sun Tzu's considered the most valuable tactic in warfare: deception. To them it's not really lying. To them, lying is simply the most effective means at their disposal for saving face, being clever, getting ahead, and trying to appear superior. Deception is not a matter of shame, it's a matter of pride.

I never had cause to think about what a powerful concept "Agreement" is until I came to Iraq. Agreements provide us simple human creatures with the amazing ability to come together and create a shared vision about a future point in time. Then, together as agreed, we can organize and accomplish something towards that point in an otherwise chaotic world fraught with unpredictability.

But in the Middle East, there is no such thing as an Agreement. Whether a verbal commitment or a look straight in the eye or firm handshake or even a written contract, these things are worth next to nothing. Rather than organizing or finalizing anything, these acts merely serve as a continuation of the struggle. The Agreement, that poor casualty of the desert sands, is considered to be “a first step."

A few days ago, I was called point blank and to my face a "thief" and a "liar" by an 85-year-old Iraqi from whom we are leasing a house. I wrote the lease agreement, including clearly stating the price for the first 6 months, and then a discount price for the second 6 months. These prices were based on verbal (read: painful) negotiations that had lasted for days. Once completed, I gave the lease contract to the gentleman, and he had it for two days. He contacted me a couple times to change a few minor details, which I did. He then signed it, and I signed it, and then I sent it off to our offices in the U.S. for payment processing.

The day after we signed, the gentleman was beside himself and putting on all sorts of theatrics. With full-blown indignation, he said the price was too low, and "the person" who wrote that wretched lease was trying to trick him and was a thief and a liar! (He knew that "the person" was me, he just wouldn't say so to my face -- more on that below).

Only in the Middle East can one be called a thief and a liar for conniving to make the terms of a contract clear, and then expecting those terms to be met after the contract is signed.

In addition to trying to screw each other, there ondition of trying to avoid embarrassment -- to "save face" or keep one's "honor" in front of each other. Under this cultural imperative the lies fly, efforts die, but the Muslim, forever, keeps his head held high.

So, for example, when you are talking to a company president about delivery progress of a critical item by his company to a location, he's getting his information from his assistant, who is getting it from the field supervisor, who is getting it from the guy who is related to the guy who is friends with the guy who owns the trucking company, who gets it from the dispatcher, who gets it from the truck driver (who also happens to be the company president’s nephew, but that's another story).

Each and every one of these guys, all the way through the chain, will lie to the guy above him when asked about the delay in shipment (and there IS a delay -- always). In order to save face, each will say whatever they think is good news, no matter how false and misleading it actually is. By the time you talk to the boss, who is also trying to save face with you, there is no relationship between what you are being told and what is really happening -- none.

I had steel prefabricated buildings to construct at project sites throughout Iraq. They were to be ordered from a factory in Kuwait, fabricated, loaded, and trucked to sites in Iraq in 11 weeks. I inquired as to progress at least weekly. I was told when they were ordered, when manufacturing began, when they were completed, when the buildings were staged, when they were loaded on to trucks, and when the trucks were waiting at the Iraq border. Everything was communicated with exact details every step of the way.

The trucks were held up at the border for several days, then a week, then two weeks. Excuses abounded. I finally sent a Westerner down to the factory in Kuwait, only to find that the first step -- the order -- had not yet been placed.

I have the same story for drawings development, materials delivery, work crew subcontracting and mobilizations, security incidents, equipment delivery and basically every single step that involved only Arabs when no Western direct oversight was possible.

Why not just do it yourself?

Direct oversight is the key, of course. But if I need to verify that the doorknobs are actually at the warehouse like I'm told, it costs me thousands of dollars in security services to go see for myself, and me and my team are all risking our lives in the process. I have projects out on the Syrian border in the Anbar province—a tough area. The area was deemed by the Government too dangerous to allow Westerners to stay at the sites, so the work was to be done by Iraqi subcontractors. I was beside myself after two months of good progress reports, but not one photo. Naturally, I had to go see it for myself what was going on -- such is life when the Government is asking you every day where millions of dollars of taxpayer money has been going for months and you have not one verifiable answer.

So I got out there under heavy escort, and naturally the work was way off schedule compared to the reports. But to find that out, the cost to the project (your tax dollars at work) was about $35,000 in security escort costs, just for me to get to the truth beyond the giant force field of lies. I finally got the roughly 200 photos I needed. That's about $175.00 per digi-photo, for those keeping score at home. Of course, any of the Iraqi engineers on site could have taken the photos I had repeatedly requested and simply e-mailed them to me. But that would have caused his boss to lose some of his "honor" -- simply unacceptable. Good news means honor, bad news means dishonor, and accurate news is never seriously considered.

Think about this the next time Uncle Mah starts talking about using his nukes to provide electricity for starving farmers and poor school children. He's not lying; he's just trying to tell the PC West (our collective jugular) what it really wants to hear. He's a pleaser, and he's out to please you!

After being in this snake pit for some time, I find it absolutely hilarious that anyone can think that "diplomacy" or "negotiations" or "agreements" with any Middle Eastern leader during a crisis can possibly result in anything productive. They have no reservations -- none -- about lying about anything and everything. Their words and agreements mean absolutely nothing. How far can negotiations take you under such conditions?

Let's take a quiz:
Q: Why are there no democracies in the Muslim Middle East?
A: Democracies are based on the possibility of mutually held Agreements between people. Democracy is unsustainable in cultures where lying is acceptable and constant.
Q: Why is every Muslim Middle Eastern country characterized by either rigid oppression or chaotic violence?
A: The coercive use of violence is the only way to ensure Muslims in the Middle East will live up to any obligations, including basic social order and function. Middle East countries where chaos currently reigns are merely examples of what Muslims are like without coercion.
Q: How is it that intelligence gathering by Western powers, whether it is about the weapons capabilities of an entire nation, or the simple location of a lone thug, is so constantly stymied and duped in the Middle East?
A: The job of intelligence gatherers is to determine the truth. I wouldn't take that job in the Middle East for all the money in Michael Moore's Halliburton stocks.
Q: Have you ever seen anything that says "Made in Saudi Arabia"? What was the last thing invented or produced by Middle Eastern Muslims that helped advance humankind? Why are they so incompetent at virtually everything?
A: Although some individuals with quality talents certainly exist here, it would be impossible to gather enough in one place to agree to cooperate in any sort of complex or significant effort. The only time Muslims can stick together long enough to produce anything en masse, like nuclear missiles for Uncle Mah, is under the threat of force.
Q: Why is it that Muslim leaders can stare the world in the eye and lie without flinching?
A: They're not lying, they are "negotiating" with people they assume to be complete suckers.
Q: Are they right?
A: Good question.

Joel Hilliker is managing editor of thetrumpet.com (Philadelphia Church of God)

The Jewish state’s latest election represents nothing less than the collapse of a nation’s determination to endure.

Born in controversy, raised on war, steeled by terrorism, reviled by the world, the Jewish state has suffered more than its share of trials. It aches for peace, it honors its diplomats, but it turns to its warriors when war is required.

Until now.

“The Koran is our constitution, Mohammed is our prophet, jihad is our path and dying as martyrs for the sake of Allah is our biggest wish!” This chilling pronouncement tripped off the lips of a Palestinian Authority legislator after the PA’s parliament rubber-stamped the government’s new cabinet on March 28. It shouldn’t come as a shock: In January, Palestinians awarded a strong majority of parliamentary seats to the terrorist group Hamas. Hamas was founded in 1987 for the express purpose of destroying Israel, and since joining politics has staunchly, publicly clung to that goal. It denies Israel’s right to be. It considers all previously signed agreements with Israel void. The new PA prime minister, Ismail Haniyeh, plans (as a first step) to drive Israel back to 1967 borders and establish an Arab state with Jerusalem as its capital. His cabinet brims with hardline terrorists who have been jailed or targeted for assassination by Israel.

For Israel, this is a time of crisis. War is in the cards. But rather than appealing to its warriors, in its latest election Israel embraced its defeatists.

On March 28—the same day as the PA cabinet approval—Israeli voters crowned Ehud Olmert their new prime minister.

Olmert is a professional politician, not a fighter. Last June, to the Israel Policy Forum in New York, he said, “We are tired of fighting, we are tired of being courageous, we are tired of winning, we are tired of defeating our enemies.” It’s impossible to comprehend how Olmert could be tired of winning and defeating enemies, when 33 years have passed since Israel won anything.

Perhaps Olmert confuses the litany of losses, retreats, terrorist violence and global derision his nation has suffered during that time with winning. But by taking that stance at precisely the moment Hamas is fortifying its position, he guarantees that his people will soon learn how much quicker they grow tired of being conquered.

Olmert campaigned on a pledge to extract Jews from West Bank settlements. In what amounted to his victory speech, he spoke directly to the Palestinian leaders: “We are ready to compromise, to give up parts of the beloved land of Israel … and evacuate, under great pain, Jews living there, in order to create the conditions that will enable you to fulfill your dream and live alongside us.” Israelis have elected a prime minister who wants to enable Hamas to fulfill its dreams.

This man fantasizes about Hamas terrorists dreaming of living alongside Jews—and calls that fantasy a foreign policy. By comparison, Chamberlain looks like a lion.

What drove the Jews to elect Ehud Olmert? Essentially, the vote reveals a battle-fatigued, deeply ambivalent, directionless people. Tired of fighting, tired of being courageous—yet acceding the unreliability of negotiation—they grasped at a thin promise of something different: a third way.

Olmert’s Kadima party is the brainchild of Ariel Sharon, who sought to break the deadlock by defining Israel’s borders without Palestinian cooperation. He sought first to pull Israelis out of areas already heavily populated by Arabs—therefore hard to defend; then to fortify the portions of Israel that remained; then to finish the security wall and call whatever lay on the other side a Palestinian “state.”

Then Sharon suffered a devastating stroke and Olmert became acting prime minister. Still, Kadima’s shift in leader from former warrior to third-rate politician didn’t substantially shrink the planks.

Soon after came Hamas’s shocking landslide win in Palestinian elections. Still, there was no Jewish response—no swing right—no outcry for strong leadership with firm policies to ensure Israel’s security.

Olmert doggedly stuck to his West Bank eviction plan—preferably, he said, with Hamas’s support, but, if necessary, without it. “We will try to achieve this [setting Israel’s final borders] in an agreement with the Palestinians,” he said. (It’s hard to see how borders of a country can be agreed upon with a negotiating partner that does not believe that country should even exist.) He even put forward a deadline for completing his plan: 2010. And still, his countrymen clung to him.

On March 28, voters handed Israel’s conservatives their worst defeat ever. Likud—Israel’s main conservative party, led by Benjamin Netanyahu—came in fourth with just 12 seats (in 2003 elections, it won 38).

Some commentators interpreted the election result as Israelis simply turning their back on a peace process they recognize as a failure, demanding the government focus on “more pressing” domestic issues like fighting poverty and improving education. If that is so, then Israelis’ read on the peace process is correct—however, by turning to a government whose plan will embolden terrorists and endanger Jews even more, they shouldn’t expect great improvements on the domestic front.

Haaretz gave this assessment: “The people have spoken: The land will be divided. … It’s the end of the controversial legitimacy of the separation maneuver. From now on, the question is not if, but when, to where, and how. The Greater Land of Israel is over and done with” (March 30).

In the fantasy world of Olmert and those who voted for him, a smaller Israel is a more defensible Israel. Shrinking borders equal stronger borders.

In Olmert’s world, reducing Israeli military oversight in Palestinian areas makes for happier Arabs who are less likely to attack.

In Olmert’s world, “Hamas is not a strategic threat.” These were his words to the Knesset’s Defense and Foreign Affairs Committee in February. In Olmert’s world, the key to pressuring the Palestinians—he told the committee—is through diplomacy rather than military action.

However, in the real world—within which Israel has managed to survive for the past six decades—all those utopian notions have repeatedly been proven dead wrong.

No previous Israeli leader, no matter how entangled in negotiation he became, ever embraced such erroneous thinking so wholeheartedly. Every one of them proceeded “forward” with a measure of caution, making concessions contingent upon at least a pretense of peace efforts by the Arabs.

Not so Olmert.

Israel’s new prime minister essentially promises to give Hamas what it wants—or at least a good part of it—regardless of how Hamas behaves. At times he speaks of this move as being defiance of terrorism. Of course, it is precisely the reverse.

Israel is tired of fighting. Hamas is eager to fight.

The unfortunate truth is that, if your enemy is determined to fight you to the death, he denies your peaceful options. Barring intervention from God, your choices are limited: fight to win or be destroyed.

Israel is making no appeal for protection from God. And it has declared its unwillingness to fight.

Ugly truth: Terrorism works against Jews. Olmert’s victory proves it.

Like the weary man they have placed at the helm of their state, a majority of Israelis are tired of fighting, tired of being courageous. They are tired of intifada and jihad, tired of Arabs shouting their hatred to the heavens, tired of Arabs blowing themselves up on buses, in cafes and discos. Israelis just want the struggle to end. They want to withdraw to safety. Build a big wall and duck behind it. Shut up any Jews who provoke Arabs. Whatever it takes.

Whatever it takes, that is, except fight. Because, you see, they tried that for years and, well, it just didn’t work.

No—the only way forward, a slight majority of Israeli voters say, is retreat.
Even clear-headed Western minds should recognize surrender when we see it. But to minds enflamed with the intoxicating Jew-hatred of Islamist extremism—minds convinced that Allah will ensure Islam’s ultimate victory over the poisonous scourge of Zionism—Israel’s commitment to retreat is more than mere surrender. It is providential justice. It is a step—yes, only a step, but a beautiful step—toward the realization of the Muslim kingdom of God. A kingdom in which the Jews are gone forever.

That is what Hamas really dreams about.

You don’t have to believe God has blessed and protected the Jewish state in the past—an idea most of its citizens once espoused—to recognize how much stronger a nation committed to defending itself based on that belief is than one unwilling to defend itself at all. But whether you believe it or not, there is a spiritual reality underpinning the transformation of Israel from the lion of Judah into the bunker state it is becoming.

That reality is that the Jews are suffering a curse from God for their lack of faith and their disobedience to His laws. “And I will break the pride of your power” God warned (Leviticus 26:19). Though Israel is by far the region’s strongest state in power, it has also become the weakest state in will. Israeli pride in its power has been supernaturally broken.

This truly is Israel’s most perilous hour. Its enemies wax strong while it grows weak. Now, the Israeli electorate has thrown its support behind a policy of recklessness and desperation unprecedented in its nation’s short history.

By all appearances, Olmert’s goal of bringing the situation to an end by 2010 may well come to fruition—though in a manner very different from the way he hopes.

Joel Hilliker is managing editor of thetrumpet.com (Philadelphia Church of God) in which this article (slightly edited here) appeared on April 4.

Ruth King

While the entire nation was focused on the President’s address and the issue of illegal immigration, Secretary of State Rice announced that the United States was resuming diplomatic ties with Libya. Dr. Rice said: “We have witnessed the beginning of that country’s re-emergence into the mainstream of the international community.”

Hmm. Muammar Qaddafi, author of the incoherent Green Book (which details astonishing facts such as “men do not get pregnant” and black people have more children because “they get sluggish in hot climates” along with other trenchant observations about sports, government and suggested life styles) is now just another mainstream guy.

Has Madame Secretary forgotten his role in the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 on December 1, 1988? Until 9/11/2001, the bombing of Flight 103 was the worst act of terrorism against United States civilian citizens. Of the 270 victims (259 on the plane, 11 on the ground) 189 were American men, women and children.

Has Madame Secretary forgotten….or did she ever know….that Qaddafi has used his nation’s oil wealth to foment terrorism, insurrection and civil war throughout Africa since the 1970s? Did she know ….or care…..that Libya was a way station for shipment of arms to terrorists; that he maintained schools to train many of the perpetrators of the genocides in Africa; that because of Qaddafi’s involvement and support more than a million Africans were starved, tortured, raped and mutilated in Liberia and Sierra Leone; that Qaddafi was best friend and enabler of former Liberian President Charles Taylor who has been found guilty of eleven counts of war crimes against humanity for the devastation he heaped on millions of Africans? Did she know...or care...that in November 2004 Qaddafi gave his annual “human rights prize” to Venezuela strongman Hugo Chavez for “fighting imperialism and the enemies of freedom inside and outside” [i.e. President George W. Bush].

As J. Peter Pham, director of the Nelson Institute for International and Public Affairs at James Madison University, writes: “In the wake of the Iraq war, it is completely understandable that Qaddafi should try to mollify the West by dismantling his nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs, as well as by talking about democracy and human rights. That the West should be seduced by this charade is not only pathetic; it also betrays an ill-disguised double standard that smacks of racism.”

Mainstreaming Qaddafi is not statesmanship; it is not coherent policy; rather it is reminiscent of paying “tribute” to the ruler of Tripoli in the same way that British and Americans did during the Barbary Wars when the Arabs seized American and British vessels and held crews for ransom or sold them into slavery.

Most important, it sends a message of appeasement to our enemies while our soldiers are on the ground fighting terrorists in Iraq.